Do I want to be Harry Redknapp?

OK, so this post is a bit rant inspired but, I was driving down the M4 into London yesterday afternoon and noticed a Nintendo poster hosting a picture of Harry Redknapp and the line “Play Mario Kart like The Redknapps”.

For some reason it really pissed me off and took a bit of the shine off my own love of Mario Kart (virtually unbeatable as Luigi I might add!). The ad was rough and ready, unimaginative and very, well, not-Nintendo. But there was something else that bugged me that I couldn’t put my finger on. It’s not that I disapprove of celebrities advertising products, I actually quite like the matching TV ads showing the Redknapps, Patrick Stewart, Girls Aloud and co having fun with various Nintendo stuff. So what was it? What was different? (Other than the fact one’s a poster and one’s on tele.)

This got me thinking about Carl Hovland. Whilst working as part of the US World War II propaganda machine Hovland examined various ways to present a persuasive message. He concluded that the most effective approach to persuasion is to present an audience with a logical argument showing how changing their attitudes or behaviour will benefit them. For example:

Or, in the case of the Wii TV ads, we’re told that we should buy Mario Kart as playing it with all the family means we’ll have a great time, as shown by the Redknapps doing exactly that. Sounds pretty logical. What about the posters? Here we’re told that if we buy Mario Kart we can be like the Redknapps.

Now this is a different message and where I think they’ve gone off piste. I don’t actually want to be Harry Redknapp (despite having Louise Redknapp as a daughter in law); I just want to have fun with my family like he does on the tele.

Hovland developed his theories further and, in 1953, presented the “Yale Communication Study”, the basic premise of which remains well known and well used today. In trying to persuade people there are four main variables: Who says what to whom by what means.

In the case of the Mario Kart example not only has the ‘what’ (message) and the ‘means’ (TV to poster) changed, but also the ‘who’. For the TV ads it was the Redknapps telling me that Mario Kart was great, on the posters it’s Nintendo.

It is generally agreed that, amidst a range of factors, the degree of involvement of the ‘who’ with the ‘what’ (message) affects the audience’s interpretation and evaluation of it (Social Judgement Theory). For instance, we’re more likely to believe our neighbour who owns the same car as the one we’re considering buying than the retailer who’s trying to flog it to us. Similarly, we’re more likely to listen to our pals the Redknapps who, after all, look just like our very own happy family than we are Nintendo, the manufacturer of the game.

Of course, I’m not suggesting that companies shouldn’t advertise directly (that would just be silly) more that the posters have missed the crux of the Nintendo campaign. It’s meant to be about the Redknapps showing how good the game is, not Nintendo trying to turn us into minor celebrities.

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I just don’t want to be told so overtly that I want to be like the Redknapps because secretly I do? Or maybe I’m worried little Louise Redknapp would actually whoop my Luigi alter ego? Or maybe the posters are just crap?

I think I’m with the latter. (Luigi would definitely win.)

Simon is considering his Social Media status

I’ve been doing a lot of work with Social Media of late and unsurprisingly everybody’s first point of reference if Facebook. It seems to take a bit of effort to get clients to think bigger than Facebook sometimes and it can be even trickier getting them to realise what they can actually do with the network itself.

We were discussing this for a client this week saying how great it would be if rather than simply creating a fan group we could get everybody to change their status to show that they were taking part in our promotion. Something like Alison Christie is loving the TNCC Mini-Movie Maker right now.

Whilst I really liked the sound of this I’ll own up to not really ‘getting’ the whole status update thingy. Anda Goddard is looking forward to buying a fish. Keith Halifax is sore from football. Simon Gregory is probably skiving work right now. Thanks for letting me that your life is more eventful than mine.

Then I came across a decent post by Grant McKracken on “Exhaust Data” (the posh term for status updates). He suggested that these updates act as phatic messages (where the function is to perform a social task rather than overtly carry a message) carrying a message in their own right:

"A 'newsflash' about my cat helps keep the network node called Grant McCracken from blinking out... But this is not just news that I am extant, but that I am, as much as this is ever true, emotionally and intellectually active."

A status update acts as a consistent reminder that I’m here, you’re here, we’re both OK, our network’s OK, and we can communicate whenever we want. Nice way to look at it. Rather strangely this reminded me of a random stat about marketing spend and return on capital during a recession.

PIMS International conducted a piece of research on ad spend during a recession looking at the resultant returns and market share when an economy starts to recover. Based on a wide range of companies they came to the following conclusions:





The argument that you’re better off spending during a recession is old ground, but the effects of maintaining spend were surprising. 3% Return On Capital Employed and 1% increase in Market Share during a dodgy period is pretty good! Is this the equivalent of maintaining your status update?

Is maintaining marketing presence a brand’s equivalent to us updating our status? We know that consumer confidence is vital during a recession so can, and is it important for, brands to send out similar phatic messages? We’re still here, we’re both OK, we’re still talking, we’re here when you need us, everything’s all good?

Simon Gregory is unsure what this means for the Social Media presentations he’s working on.

Veni Vidi Data-avi(?)

OK - dodgy title I know (and will probably do bugger all for search traffic) but anyway, this week I was asked to right a couple of paragraphs on my opinion on the role of data in today's media climate. So I thought I'd share.

Media use, habits and diets have been changing steadily for several years – ‘Media stacking’, the Internet, e-mail, mobile phones, and so on. Unsurprisingly, changes in consumer behaviour have followed. As Bob Liodice (President and CEO of the Association of National Advertisers) confirms, “It’s no longer a matter of if consumers change their behaviour, but how fast and whether we can keep up.” Never has understanding the consumer been so important.

Today the customer journey may not be any longer than it was 10 years ago, but it is has certainly become much more random and harder to follow. Our traditional ‘funnel’ has become a snakes and ladders board.

Luckily, the increased use of digital technology has created a magnifying effect allowing us observe what consumers are thinking, experiencing and doing relative to the buying process with greater clarity and granularity than ever before. We now have access to real time information about what people search for, buy and how they make their purchase decisions. Facts, figures, likes, dislikes and so on. The value of data has increased tenfold*, if not more.
However, this data, unless it is harnessed, will remain nothing more than facts, figures, likes and dislikes.

Despite this changing landscape the basic principle of delivering the right message to the right people at the right time holds true. In today’s climate it is essential that we use this wealth of raw information to form real insights and a superior understanding of our consumers. Only then can we respond to what we’ve learned quickly and with a greater degree of relevance irrelevant of media.

We are no longer media-centric, but consumer-centric instead.


And there we go. Thoughts?


*Allen Adamson's new book BrandDigital was insightful on this

Interacting with Interactivity

OK, so I’ve been pretty inactive the last month (I blame it on house and job moving). Anyways, given that I’m now getting my hands dirty in the digital world I thought I’d better have a bit of a read up on interactivity. So I read one of the most un-interactive overcomplicated titled articles in the world –

“Social psychology of interactivity in human-website interaction” in the “Oxford Handbook of Internet Psychology”.

(To be fair, once de-academicised it’s pretty good reading.)

Here's what struck me...

It’s generally agreed that there’s a basic advantage to digital methods of communication: it encourages active participation and not just passive reception. You can get involved more with it. It’s interactive.

Take a look at “interaction” in the Oxford Compact and you get two definitions:

1. Influencing each other
2. (of a computer or other electronic device) allowing a two-way flow of information between it and a user, responding to the user’s input

The second definition will carry no surprises for digi advertising folk but the first is interesting. Can simply making something interactive make it more influencing?

There's a solid argument to suggest so:

• Numerous studies (especially by Sundar) prove that there is a direct correlation between amount of interactivity and positive appraisal of a website. Basically, more interactive stuff makes people like the site more.
• Secondly, interactivity increases involvement which leads to greater engagement with the site's content. This, in turn, increases scrutiny of the site. People become more focused and form more considered opinions.

So are we saying that if we increase interactivity people will like our stuff more?

Not necessarily. There’s a few things to consider:

• Site vs Content – A positive opinion of a website doesn’t always mean a positive opinion of the actual content. I might think a funky new agency’s website is brilliant but it doesn’t mean I think they have something interesting to say.
• Navigation – What if interacting is a pain in the arse? Sure, there are loads of things I can click, tweak, drag, etc but if it’s too much of a hassle it’s a turn off.
• Cognitive Burden – If I’m using so much of my brain interacting and determining how to best digest the site have I got enough of my little brain left to absorb the actual content properly?

It’s funny really. People claim that more interactivity makes them like the site more. Yet, when it comes down to engaging with the actual content or message of the site there’s less of a correlation. Too little interactivity and no-one wants to get involved, too much and they miss the actual content. ‘Medium’ interactivity seems to be the way forward and results in more positive appraisals.

Of course, getting people to like your content is also dependent on the construction of the message itself not simply on the cleverness of the interactive design. Nonetheless, interactivity has the potential to generate greater involvement and engagement. There must be a sweet spot somewhere.

Finding this ‘sweet spot’ is one of the keys to making successful digi campaigns in my opinion, but it can be tricky. And does this spot change based on type of content (eg entertainment vs news)? Or by gender, relationship with brand (prospect vs advocate), motivation for visiting and so on?

Either way, maybe content isn’t always king after all…

Stupid Google and the Pancake People

I came across a really good Nicholas Carr article during my post-holiday-looking-for-anything-to-avoid-work blues last week. It’s about how Google is changing the way we consume info and had a lot of blogging action already. (Thanks to Amelia for the link.)

The basic principle is that our mind is adjusting to consuming information the way the internet presents it – in short, sharp, interlinked snippets. We quickly scan small chunks of info hopping from page to page in search of that key nugget of information (‘power browsing’). Hyperlinks propel us from site to site where footnotes once suggested further reading, aggregators give a peak at info where “Introductions” once gave an overview and Yahoo Answers lets us cut through the crap altogether and grill a whole community for specific info.

Apparently all of this is obstructing our ability to read and absorb longer texts, full articles and books. The British Library, for instance, noted that people using their online journals and e-books constantly jumped from source to source rarely returning to any text they’d previously visited. They simply “skimmed” a few pages before bouncing to the next article.

Carr points out that, ironically, we may actually be reading more today than we did in the 70s (thanks to SMS messaging, e-mail and the internet) but in a totally different way. “Once we were scubadivers in a sea of words. Now we zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski”. This is even being echoed offline. Since March this year The New York Times has devoted the second and third page of every edition to abstracts of the articles featured.

Way back in the 4th century BC Plato’s character Socrates feared that the development of writing would hinder day to day general knowledge (men would “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful”). The Gutenberg printing press drew similar concern from Squarciafico (the Italian Humanist) questioning whether the easy availability of books would lead to intellectual laziness. Should we be concerned that the net is making us stupid?

I guess it’s a simple debate of breadth vs depth – we may learn about a whole load of new stuff, just in less detail (although there are exceptions, such as Wikipedia). I mentioned this point a while ago when debating whether ‘integrated clients’ would struggle to review a variety of work from a variety of agencies across a variety of media. Would they become ‘pancake people’ (thinly spread across a broad area)?

What about a ‘pancake agency’? Is a fully integrated agency simply a jack-of-all-trades? A recent report from the University of Chicago Graduate School highlights the so-called “Dilution Effect” (Rory Sutherland touched on this the other week). Put simply, people generally want things to serve more than one purpose, but when said thing accomplishes multiple goals it becomes less associated with the achievement of a single goal. For instance, a laser-pen is great when you want to give a lecture and make notes at the same time, but would you use it just for day-to-day writing? Apparently not. Likewise the gym – it may have started as a great place to exercise but once it also becomes a place to socialise it loses an element of its status as a get fit venue.

So would Fallon, for example, lose some of its reputation for great TV ads if they started doing good DM? And could an integrated client judge it anyway?

Then again, if we were to add a little depth to a well known figure of speech we’d realise that “Jack of all trades, master of none, though ofttimes better then master of one”. Hmm…

Naughty Me

I’ve been a little lax of late (new job, exams, etc, etc) and given that I’m buggering off on holiday tomorrow I thought I should leave at least a token entry to keep my blog momentum up! So here are a couple of things grabbing my attention at the moment…


The Newton Machine
This one’s hit the blogosphere already (thanks to Alex for the link) but the more I think about it, the more I really like it. Basically, TopShop have installed a ‘Newton Machine’ in their Oxford Street store. This ‘machine’ (invented by the German photographer Helmut Newton) is actually just a camera. However, it is set up in a way that allows the model to take the photos themselves (i.e. no photographer needed). The model stands in front of a mirror and holds a small controller that lets them adjust the camera’s timer and flash thus allowing them to perfect their pose before taking the shot. When they’re good to go they simply press a button and take the picture.

Here's its launch in 1972:

Newton’s inspiration was two-fold. Firstly, he recognised that models were usually better at taking photos than their (more often than not) boyfriend photographers. Secondly, it was a middle finger to the controlled and static fashion shoots of his time.

In TopShop, you’re the model. Try on some TopShop clothes and orchestrate your own photo shoot using this Newton Machine. Your pictures are then posted on an online gallery and you get your own A5 paper copy to take home.

More importantly, TopShop have really managed to embrace Newton’s principles and given up a bit of their brand to their customers. Bo**ocks to the static half-dressed mannequins and the engineered instore posters that we put up every month, you show off the clothes you want to wear however you want to show them off. And have fun doing it in the process.

Newton himself claimed that his job was to “seduce, amuse and entertain”, TopShop lets customers do it themselves all under the TopShop brand. Clever. And, if I am allowed to be a little self-indulgent it brings to mind a previous post on Trust and who we consider trustworthy (i.e. "people like ourselves").

Adidas Football – Dream Big
For me, Adidas really gets football. I’ve given them the nod before and their “Dream Big” online campaign is another great example.

I’m guessing it’s come out of their “Impossible is Nothing” stuff but in this campaign Adidas sends some of its top football stars to random ‘local’ destinations to have training sessions with the local teams, all of whom have ‘written’ to Adidas asking for their help. (They’ve dreamt big – get it?) Gerrard, Viera and Beckham hotfoot it to the smallest football league in the world – the Isles of Scilly (only two teams and one football pitch) – taking their Predator boots and merchandise with them whilst the likes of Kaka, Alonso and Fabregas fly out to tiny Andorra to teach youth teams the art of passing with their AdiPure boots.

Each trip is broken into a set of clips that are drip fed onto the site and, despite initial reservations, I reckon they’re really good. (I even get an e-mail letting me know when a new series is out.) They’ve got a real feel of the classic Nike “Parklife” advert which every aspiring Sunday League Player relates to. Maybe I’m being a bit naïve, or maybe it’s just because I’m one of those aspiring Sunday League Players, but I’m hooked nonetheless.

In fact, I’m going to write Adidas a letter…

Public Service Narrrowcasting

Ofcom predicts that by 2012 100% of the UK will have digital multi-channel TV. Despite the current strength of commercial broadcasters such as Sky and Virgin this should actually be great news for Public Service Broadcasters (PSB). Niche channels for niche programmes designed for niche audiences, a real way to satisfy all tastes of our culturally and demographically varied population. Gone are the days of us young city folk liking or lumping the latest topical farming issue on the Archers. We’ll all head to the American version of the Apprentice on our channel instead.

To be fair, multi-channel TV has been around for a while now and there have been some real success stories, especially amongst the sports, movies and generic entertainment channels. But there have also been some losers, most notably the likes of science, nature, classical music and history (the clever stuff you might say). Sadly a nature programme on a nature channel will be lucky to get 1% of the audience it could have received on wide-ranging BBC2.

One could argue that this is natural selection, democracy working at its best, people voting with their index fingers. However, niche channelling is rather anti-PSB. According to Ofcom Public Service Broadcasting has a duty to:

• increase our understanding of the world
• stimulate our knowledge and learning
• reflect our UK cultural identity
• to ensure diversity and alternative viewpoints are represented

Its aim, and indeed its success, is based not just on audience size but also on its schedule range.

David Attenborough, writing for The Times, is in firm support pointing out that the role of PSB is to cater for the whole population, not segregate it – Broad-casting, not Narrow-casting. He supports this argument by suggesting that many people hold ‘allegiances’ with specific PSBs: “the notion that great numbers of people, tired after a hard day's work, come home and flip through 50-odd programme channels to decide what to view is, in fact, largely illusory.”

I’m with Attenborough on this one. As Cowper (the guy who did the “variety is the spice of life quote”) says “The earth was made so various, that the mind of desultory man, studious of change and pleased with novelty, might be divulged”. It is down to our PSBs to do this ‘divulging’ (after all, nearly all of us pay for them).

However, from an advertising perspective niche channels (whether fully commercial or part public), should be the way forward. Greater ability to target audiences, more tailored creative, better media positioning, less wastage, and so on. Yet this is often not the case, if only due to incompetent media buying. As a youngish, laddish, fan of witty banter I’m partial to a bit of Top Gear and Never Mind the Buzzcocks on ‘Dave – The Home of Witty Banter’. I’m less partial to the breast milk and tampon adverts in the breaks though.

Ultimately a wider variety of content can only be good for the consumer but the digital world is asking questions of Public Service Broadcasting and their offerings (note BBC tackling it head on with its iPlayer). As Petrarch said, “Sameness is the mother of disgust, variety the cure”. It will be interesting to see what the cure is in 2012.

Who can you trust? PART 2

I wrote a piece on trust a while back and concluded that companies are more trusted than governments, but the way in which we interact with them is crucial. A couple of weeks later I went to an Acacia Avenue seminar on the topic and decided that I’d only just scratched the surface. Delving deeper was not as easy as first thought.

Even the basic definition of trust is pretty confusing – there are 24 plausible descriptions. But the first (and presumably most read) goes as follows:

“Reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence.”

This seemed pretty solid and even pays homage to the word’s origin (it comes from a Middle Age game called “tryst” involving one set of villagers chasing a load of rabbits towards a line of club-bearers who, ‘standing in tryst’, would wait for the bunnies to arrive before bopping them dead). However, one key element, featured in other definitions and implied in the game outlined above, is missing – expectation.

This is where trust works for brands. Consumers have an expectation that brands will represent/display certain attributes. They don’t just rely on these qualities, they expect them. Stability from John Lewis (only 4 chairmen in the last 100 years), openness from Pret a Manger (recipes given away online), practising what you preach from Innocent (Fruitstock) and self-confidence from ghd (that one’s from the girls, I don’t actually have any hair to straighten).

Despite this expectation and my previous conclusions a GlobeScan survey on trust in institutions found ‘global companies’ and ‘large national companies’ to score second and third from bottom respectively. In fact, both scored negative ratings whilst ‘armed forces’ topped the table. However, a glance at Edelman’s survey on specific brand trust suggests they are far more trustworthy then the army with Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola and Microsoft leading the way!

So what’s going on? The key difference is in the question asked in each survey. GlobeScan measured “Trust in an institutions ability to operate in society’s best interests” whilst Edelman’s focus was simply on “Which brands do you trust”. One concentrates on the community and one on the individual. It pains me to say it, but Thatcher spotted the importance of this difference a while back – “There’s no such thing as society. There are only individual men and women”.

I don’t agree with her sentiments but recognising this difference is essential for the poor performing ‘global companies’. Ultimately people still crave community (think London Marathon, Diana’s funeral, Facebook, reaction to Thatcher’s comment, etc) and it is one of the original pillars of trust. Brands are our bunny-boppers.

So is the trick nowadays to think community/society and not just individual? Perhaps – Coca-Cola and Microsoft are fighting AIDs, HP are saving the forests, everyone's chasing 'green trends', and so on. Maybe we’re not in the age of the individual after all?

Hmm… this may need a Part 3. Until then, I’m sticking with Bob Dylan – “If you want somebody you can trust, trust yourself”.

Daddy, what's a planner?

Whenever there’s been a bad day at the office our creative director has got a great leveller/motivational line:

“It could be worse; we could all be doing real jobs.”

And although it’s meant as a light hearted gag I’ve always thought he’s right, to some degree. Now whether what we do counts as a real job or not is a bigger question. The problem for me is that whilst I find it unproblematic telling my mum the bits about work that make it not a real job, I struggle to actually explain the real job that I do! It’s easy to wax lyrical about the crèche-like atmosphere, table football, well-known brands and boozey lunches, but really difficult to explain what a planner does.

Now, as a planner you’d think this would be easy – a vaguely abstract idea translated into an easy to swallow thought piece. But it’s not. I don’t really know how to explain exactly what I do. It’s a bit like a doctor being the worst patient.

I even looked for advice from the APG and got an even more complex answer listing the variety of characters a planner can play – social anthropologist, brainstorming facilitator, data analyst, think piece polemicist, and so on. None of which are very ‘mum facing’.

I’d like to think that I know what I do (or am at least meant to do), and to be fair there are different types of planners that specialise in different types of fields and that work in very different ways. Yet this is a very ‘inward-facing’ explanation – you get it if you work with planners. However, outside of adland all I end up with is “I do thinky stuff and google a lot” or something vaguely attempting humour (side-stepping the question).

Whilst this plagued me for a while, I’ve decided to give up trying to explain it and have taken a different tact. Rather than think about “What a planner does”, I’ve gone for “Who a planner is”. And I found this (thanks to my boss):

I don’t know who wrote it or where it’s from, but I like it. And in true planning style it distinctly resemble a beer induced back-of-a-fag-packet solution.

So if the client asks, I’m not a planner, I’m an explorer.

What every marketer SHOULD know

I'm constantly trying to read 'insightful books' on marketing, extend my skill-set through various courses, create routines that keep me looking for anything and everything vaguely interesting, listen to the gurus of the industry, etc etc...

However, this short list hits the nail on the head for me. It's Seth Godin's guide to What Every Good Marketer knows - a simple, concise list of marketing wisdom:

• Anticipated, personal and relevant advertising always does better than unsolicited junk.
• Making promises and keeping them is a great way to build a brand.
• Your best customers are worth far more than your average customers.
• Share of wallet is easier, more profitable and ultimately more effective a measure than share of market.
• Marketing begins before the product is created.
• Advertising is just a symptom, a tactic. Marketing is about far more than that.
• Low price is a great way to sell a commodity. That’s not marketing, though, that’s efficiency.
• Conversations among the members of your marketplace happen whether you like it or not.
• Good marketing encourages the right sort of conversations.
• Products that are remarkable get talked about.
• Marketing is the way your people answer the phone, the typesetting on your bills and your returns policy.
• You can’t fool all the people, not even most of the time. And people, once unfooled, talk about the experience.
• If you are marketing from a fairly static annual budget, you’re viewing marketing as an expense. Good marketers realize that it is an investment.
• People don’t buy what they need. They buy what they want.
• You’re not in charge. And your prospects don’t care about you.
• What people want is the extra, the emotional bonus they get when they buy something they love.
• Business to business marketing is just marketing to consumers who happen to have a corporation to pay for what they buy.
• Traditional ways of interrupting consumers (TV ads, trade show booths, junk mail) are losing their cost-effectiveness. At the same time, new ways of spreading ideas (blogs, permission-based RSS information, consumer fan clubs) are quickly proving how well they work.
• People all over the world, and of every income level, respond to marketing that promises and delivers basic human wants.
• Good marketers tell a story.
• People are selfish, lazy, uninformed and impatient. Start with that and you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what you find.
• Marketing that works is marketing that people choose to notice.
• Effective stories match the worldview of the people you are telling the story to.
• Choose your customers. Fire the ones that hurt your ability to deliver the right story to the others.
• A product for everyone rarely reaches much of anyone.
• Living and breathing an authentic story is the best way to survive in an conversation-rich world. Marketers are responsible for the side effects their products cause.
• Reminding the consumer of a story they know and trust is a powerful shortcut.
• Good marketers measure.
• Marketing is not an emergency. It’s a planned, thoughtful exercise that started a long time ago and doesn’t end until you’re done.
• One disappointed customer is worth ten delighted ones.
• In the googleworld, the best in the world wins more often, and wins more.
• Most marketers create good enough and then quit. Greatest beats good enough every time.
• There are more rich people than ever before, and they demand to be treated differently.
• Organizations that manage to deal directly with their end users have an asset for the future.
• You can game the social media in the short run, but not for long.
• You market when you hire and when you fire. You market when you call tech support and you market every time you send a memo.
• Blogging makes you a better marketer because it teaches you humility in your writing.

He rounds this off with "Obviously, knowing what to do is very, very different than actually doing it".

This is a valid point, but let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. Irrelevant of whether you agree with Seth's approach, how many people do you know that even think around these areas let alone know or do? He's right, doing is the hard bit, but having an opinion is the first step in the right direction. The next is trying to use your outlook as a basis for everything you do. Actually achieving it... well that's a tricky one!

For me, it's not the knowers and the doers that I want to work with, but the thinkers and the triers.

The silver lining to the cloud

It was my birthday this week and the usual “you’re past it” gags came out (despite only being 25 I might add!), so it somehow seemed fitting to write a bit about “The Recession”.

Yup, the economic downturn is now officially being mooted as the start of a recession and the conversations on what will happen to advertising/marketing spend have already begun.

Marketers were predicted to decrease spend by 3% at the start of the year whilst the latest Bellwether Report (Q1 2008) reveals that, for the second successive quarter, Q2 marketing budgets have been downgraded. Original estimates of a 3.2% increase in 2008 ad spend are looking ropey if reductions continue and this positive prediction is largely due to continued online investment counteracting reductions in more traditional media, especially below-the-line. (In fact, online spend has already overtaken press and it’s predicted to overtake TV by 2009.)

Now, I’m no economic analyst but I understand the logic that positions our friend the ‘marketing budget’ as one of the first victims of money-saving cutbacks. But, I’m going to stand by him – leave him be. In fact, feed him some more if you can!

The latest Brandz report from Millward Brown suggests that investing in a brand is actually one of the best courses of action during a period of economic turbulence:

“Strong brands generate superior returns and protect businesses from risk. Our data shows that strong brands continue to outperform weak ones in terms of market share and share price during recessions” says Joanna Seddon, CEO of Millward Brown Optimor.

Strong words, but there are also strong supports:

• Reports suggest that only 10% of consumers are motivated exclusively by price
• There are strong links between Share of Voice and Share of Market – invest and increase your share of voice whilst others are decreasing theirs and snatch their share of market as well
• Companies that have brands in the BrandZ Top 100 have performed significantly better in the stock market when compared to the S&P 500
• Loyal customers stay confident in a strong brand when the going gets tough. Confident customers are less likely to switch brand
• Potential customers, staff and shareholders are more risk averse during a recession. A strong brand alleviates risk in the shareholder’s mind
• There is a greater chance of a company’s value remaining buoyant in an economic downturn if supported by a strong brand

And there are cases to point to: P&G claim to have a “When times are tough, you build share” philosophy; Dutch retailer Albert Heijn tried to compete on price in 2003 only to trigger a price war that resulted in them losing share to competitors; and so on.

So could a recession become an opportunity? Perhaps, but it’s not just spend spend spend. As Millward Brown rightly points out, each industry requires its own recession strategy as each will be affected differently. Offensive or defensive, value focused or product focused, weather the storm, etc. Either way, a strong strategy utilising marketing spend is essential.

As for my own recession… well, 25 isn’t that bad at all. Really…

South Park does digital

My last few entries seem to have gotten a little heavy, so here's something that made me chuckle. It's South Park dabbling with the digital world and trying to work out how many 'theoretical dollars' it's worth.

And the conclusion?

Stan: Boy, I'm sure glad that's over with.

Butters: Me too!

Kyle: Yeah, but you know, I've learned something today. We thought we could make money on the Internet. But, while the Internet is new and existing for creative people, it hasn't matured as a distribution mechanism to the extent that one should trade real and immediate opportunities for income for the promise of future online revenue. It will be a few years before digital distribution of media on the Internet can be monetized to the extent that necessitates content producers to forego their fair value in more traditional media.

Stan: Yeah.

Yeah?

Who can you trust?

I was following a debate on a football forum this Sunday (about Ronaldo’s penalty-taking style if anyone’s interested) and came across this statement:

“I'm prepared to believe respected newspapers over people posting on an Internet message board”

Although this was merely a rant from a fan whose argument was on the ropes it raises an interesting question – “Who do you trust when gathering information”. This reminded me of a 'trust chart' I came across a while back:


In the UK businesses are actually trusted more than the government (and are only trusted less then NGOs). This seemed like great news for our brands, so I decided to delve a little deeper and checked out ‘Edelman’s Trust Barometer’ (an annual trust and credibility survey amongst global opinion forming elites).

The latest edition confirmed the prominence of businesses on the ‘axis of trust’ but revealed that whilst people trusted our brands and companies, they didn’t always trust how they found out about them.

Sure, the conventional CEO statement, company employee, press, etc sources were all listed but the highest score achieved was "media" with a mere 38% (of people agreeing that it is a trustworthy source).

So who do we trust? It’s actually the third parties – industry analysts, academics and specialists, all scoring over 55%. This makes sense, with the general consensus believing that these sources are less swayed by company propaganda and are hence not as likely to “toe the party line”.

However, there is a final trusted group that beats all of these sources hands down – “people like me”. Out of those questioned across 18 different countries 58% agreed that if they heard information about a company from “somebody like me” they would find it credible.

So who are these “people like me”? Apologies to MOSAIC and Acorn but the overall opinion is that it has nothing to do with geography, local community, demographics or even a common industry. It’s actually much simpler: “people like me” are people who “share my interests”, “have similar political beliefs” and other such logical stuff.

This brings forth the old ‘social networking’ argument. Yes, we’ve been chatting about it for ages now (amongst people like ourselves) but it still holds true.

It’s understandable that brands are unwilling to relinquish control and offer themselves up to the world of social networking – “What if they only say bad stuff?” – but whether they like it or not it’s already happening. More importantly these peer-to-peer networks are proving more impactful than the millions invested each year just to paint a pretty picture of the company.

This doesn’t mean that every brand needs its own social network, more that they have to be smarter and reconsider how and where they talk to their customers. Peer-to-peer efforts need to be incorporated with big budget comms plans. Yes it’s big, scary and seems risky, but there are small steps out there. Think how Innocent gauged customer opinion before deciding whether to enter McDonald's or not. They found people like them (current customers) and asked them.

A final word of warning: if you’re reading this and nodding along thinking that maybe I’m somebody like you, think again – according to Edelman only 14% of people found us bloggers to be trustworthy!

Chocolate guru or marketing extraordinaire?

OK, I’ll own up straight away to watching the latest Charlie and the Chocolate Factory film this Saturday (the one with Johnny Depp in). As expected, aside from some disappointing Oompa Loompas (where's their green hair gone?), it wasn’t that bad. What I didn’t expect was to find that chocolate fanatic Willy Wonka is actually a bit of a marketing guru-cum-futurologist.

I won’t regurgitate the full plot but in a later scene Charlie visits the ‘TV room’ with Wonka and the only other child left on the factory tour, Mike Teavee. They are introduced to Wonka's new machine, the Television Chocolate Camera. This gizmo can take a giant bar of Wonka’s Chocolate and shrink it into a little sample before sending it into millions of televisions across the world. People watching their TVs can then reach in, take the sample and take a bite of the chocolate.

Although Mike Teavee vents his frustration at Wonka for not realising that he’s accidently invented a teleporter, Wonka’s real achievement is creating the ultimate in product placement (at least for the purpose of this blog!).

Imagine sampling the last bit of milk in a Cravendale ad or helping yourself to a Cadbury’s Miniature Hero before Corrie started. Or even watching Corrie and reaching in for a spoon of “Betty’s Hot Pot” – now available in all good pub chains!

Now this is all very fanciful but Rory Sutherland recently made an interesting point about ‘the medium being the product’. He notes that allowing people to respond to a DM pack by telephone or post increased response rates. This, logically, seemed strange as the key question should simply be “Do you want this product or not?” Similarly, low-cost airlines increased their customer base by using online booking - a simple effort to cut costs actually overcame the irritation of being stuck on the phone for half an hour. A simple opt-in box for Gift Aid when donating online has resulted in the generation of more money for charity. There are numerous examples.

Basically, the easier it is for consumers to reply/respond/purchase/taste/etc, the easier it is to sell the product. And Willy Wonka cracked this (well, Roald Dahl really).

TV’s tried telephone call to actions, and online, and even had a dabble with red buttons. But what it really needs is a Television Chocolate Camera. Until then it’s playing catch up with other, newer, media. Just look at those SIM only Orange banners. See the banner on a website, fill in your details without having to leave your site, 3 days later you’ve got yourself a SIM card in your postbox. Awesome.

Until then, anyone for a Smell-o-vision renassiance?

It's good to talk, but even better to listen

I was talking to a friend today about her Friday night drinks. She mentioned that she’d been to a new cocktail bar, but once she got to the bar couldn’t decide what she wanted (standard!). The barman asked a simple question – “What drinks do you like?” She told him, he made her a drink based on her answer, she loved the drink. It later transpired that her ‘special’ drink was merely a random cocktail off the menu. This mattered little – she felt special, enjoyed the experience of drinking a ‘personalised’ drink and, more importantly, told me and many others about how good it was.

It’s a simple concept really, but it got me thinking. In his “De Officiis” Cicero outlines rules to ‘Good Conversation’. Sure, this may have been some 2,000 years ago but his points still ring true:

• Speak clearly
• Speak easily but give others their turn
• Be courteous
• Deal with topics in an appropriate tone/manner
• Never criticise others behind their back
• Stick to subjects of general interest
• Don’t just talk about yourself
• Don’t lose your temper

In the marketing/advertising world we constantly talk of ‘conversations’ between brands and consumers – creating them, managing them, inspiring them, encouraging them, etc, but are we doing Cicero proud? Brands can certainly deliver clear messages on appropriate themes in a courteous way yet they often fall short on a couple of vital points: “Give others their turn” and “Don’t just talk about yourself”.

In the cocktail story above these points were vital – allow the consumer to talk back to you and listen to what they say (and act accordingly). Without these points we treat our audiences like EM Forster’s “primitive audiences of shock-heads… only kept awake by suspense”. In short, we act as nothing more than a ‘storyteller’.

In a world currently consumed in conversations us marketeers could learn a trick or two from Cicero and it’s vital to keep ALL of his rules in mind. It’s easy to be a storyteller, but what the consumer really needs is a conversationalist.

If nothing else, according to Forster storytelling can result in two possible outcomes: the audience falls asleep, or simply kills the storyteller.

A bank that makes you smile?

Bit of a random one, but this really tickled me. It's from BankWest, Australia.

Once you've finished playing with the kittens check out the folders on the left. They highlight a step by step process of how BankWest's services are all designed around making their customers a little bit happier - 'Happy Banking'.

'Research' (including interviews with flowers and toy-dogs) reveals what makes people happy in the first place, 'Experiments' test these hypotheses, and 'Actions' gives a rather sweet list of what the bank does to make you happier as a result!

I don't even bank with them and I'm a little bit happier! If nothing else, when was the last time you discovered a financial services site that kept you engaged in a good way (and not in an "Oh bugger, which mortgage product will screw me over the least" kind of way)?

Let's just hope they haven't got the standard faces of misery behind their counters on a packed Monday lunchtime!

PS A final thought - similarities to Cadbury's 'Gorilla'? Random animal + instrument + song? Alas, no Phil Collins, but these kittens can spell AND whistle...

Adtube

I watched one of those token "Best 50 Outtakes/FA Cup Finals/Hit of the 80s/Grange Hill scenes 2007" shows last Friday, but this time it was about Youtube clips.

It's a real sign of the times when Youtube gets it's own "best of the best" show, but what really caught my attention was that there was not one ad/brand viral in the ultimate list. There were plenty of dancing prisoners, sneezing pandas, karate babies, examples of advanced geekery and even a masturbating kangaroo, but not one single ad-based viral. This struck me as a little surprising.

So I went and had little look on Youtube at three of probably the most famous brand virals on the web: Cadbury's "Gorilla", Dove's "Real Beauty" Honda's "Cogs". There were multiples of every clip but based solely on the top ranked version these were the results:

• Cadbury's Gorilla = 1.9 million views
• Dove's Realy Beauty = 6 million
• Honda's Cogs = 1.3 million

They absolutely destroyed some of the figures accumulated by the clips shown on TV. In fact, if you were to type "gorilla" into a Youtube search the first thing that pops up is Cadbury's classic mix of a primate, Phil Collins and a drum kit!

Views are one thing, but as Charles Colton (and Ghandi!) once told us, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery". Is imitation a sign of a good clip? If so, these three brand beauties definitely score well!

Here's my favourite versions as a little taster (look at how many hits they're getting!):

• Cadbury Spoof
• Dove Spoof
• Honda Spoof

Check out the full top 50 clips here.

Online Copycats

Loren Coleman specialises in suicide prevention and in his book, The Copycat Effect, he examines suicides committed by prominent public figures over the last 300 years. Interestingly, in the majority of cases such suicides were followed by a near immediate increase in the overall suicide rate. He also found that there were usually links between the public figures and those in the general public that killed themselves – in method and, more interestingly, in physical appearance and lifestyle.

He cites, for example, the death of Marilyn Monroe in 1962. In the month after her death there were 197 suicides in the US that corresponded closely to that of the actress, and most were young blonde women. Weird?

Perhaps not. Most people relate to celebrities, at least on some level. We admire those who stand up for what we believe in, follow those who like the same things that we like and, more often than not, like to feel that we’re just a bit like them. Now I’m not suggesting that we’ll all be topping ourselves at the first sight of our favourite celeb's death, but such sheep-like behaviour is all part of human nature.

Asch proved that we’d happily agree with the masses when answering a simple question, even if, instinctively, it felt wrong. When queuing to use the urinals we always stand at least a metre away (apparently!). It’s just what everybody does. So we follow suit.

This has huge implications when it comes to the world of online communities. Social networks provide vast opportunities for peers to link up and to publish and share their thoughts, actions, lifestyle, etc. It’s a perfect way to find more people even more like you. You can join a group, follow bloggers, chat to music fans of similar taste. Peer to peer? For sure.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not implying that the online social scene is a grooming ground for lemmings, but it is a perfect arena for the “Copycat Effect”. Rather scarily, could the Bridgend suicides be a rather tragic example?

Facebook - The Hotel California

It's all getting a bit sticky for Facebook as their list of privacy issues gets longer and longer. If worrying about how they use your details wasn't bad enough (shown by the consumer backlash to their Beacon application), apparently you're still in trouble even after you've left. Check out this article on how tricky it can be to delete your account.

The Hotel California quote sums it up really - "You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave." Deactivate? Yes. Delete all your details? No.

Ironically, if you really want to delete your account one of the best ways can be found on a Facebook group - "How to permanently delete your Facebook account".

Brand Power

I came across a Frubes Brand Power advert the other day and was a bit confused by it all. I'd never heard of 'Brand Power' before so I thought I'd have a bit of a potter on the internet.

Their mission statement centres on providing "rational information about grocery products to help you make an informed purchase when you're at the supermarket". Apparently they make TV ads, websites, catalogues, etc but from a "Facts and Value through information" point of view, as opposed to glorifying the product through a more traditional advertising approach. Put simply they're trying to cut through the bullsh*t that we're paid to create!!

I can kind of see where they're coming from; thinking of the consumer first, providing a useful, informative service, trying to promote honesty through neutrality, allowing the real benefits of the products to shine, and so on. But, for me, there seems to be a few real weaknesses with this.

1. To get a Brand Power advert you have to sponsor them. Some might say pay. Paying for neutrality? Hmm...
2. The adverts often conflict messaging used in the brand ads.
3. Brand Power is neither a recognised industry body, nor is it seen as one by the average Jo Consumer. It lacks gravitas. That little "Brand Power" stamp in the bottom corner doesn't mean anything. Nor does the dodgy newsesque music that accompanies it.
4. I don't believe for a minute that they'd mention a flaw or weakness in a product (i.e. Aquafresh is great for cleaning your teeth, but if you don't want stinky breath you should try Colgate).
5. I'm not sure that they deliver on their promise - who decides that Frubes are "Fun to eat"? Fun? Because you don't need a spoon? Really?
6. The adverts are really really bad.

Attempting to be neutral and providing an informative as opposed to a marketing service seems like a nice idea, especially in the current climate of consumer power. I just don't see this approach working and, more importantly, I don't buy it for a minute. And neither do many others by the look of it: their website invites product users to write their own reviews on the brands that they cover. Across all their brands and products they've only had 19 pieces of input so far... And how would Nescafe feel if they were paying Brand Power x amount of cash just for consumers, and presumably Brand Power as the voice of the consumer, to slate them!

In fact, albeit a little vain, I quite like being wowed by those shallow brand ads sometimes, and I'd like to think I could cut through the bulk of the crap myself. What do you mean you don't get hooked up to a jellyfish when you buy a 3 phone? If I use Lynx I won't turn into chocolate?

I reckon Adland's safe.

Super Bowl or Super Ads?

So, Super Bowl XLII is over with the New York Giants overcoming the Patriots at the last to clinch a 17-14 victory and their 3rd Super Bowl ever . OK, I pretty much copied the above from a BBC article and I actually know bugger all about American football and have little inclination to learn either. However, I do have a geeky side that is a *tiny* bit obsessed by stats.

I had a bit of a snoop around some search activity in the States over the last weekend (with the Super Bowl in mind) and, unsurprisingly, found not only the official Super Bowl site but links to the sponsors and a site solely dedicated to the 'commercials' (complete with links to accompanying microsites). More surprising were the other search volumes results picked up by Google analytics.

On the run up to the weekend there was an increase in searches concerning "kick off time" whilst on the day itself (3rd Feb) there was a lot of activity around the search terms "giants win superbowl". In fact, the latter was the 11th 'highest search riser' of the day - no shocks there.

But guess who made the top ten? The sponsors. At number 4 and 5 was "goddady.com" and "go daddy.com" (a web hosting company), at 6 was "Audi R8 price" who just pipped "life water" at number 7. All featured adverts during the Super Bowl commercial breaks.

Not only did the sponsors dominate the search volumes on the day of one of the biggest sporting occasions in the US, a quick look at searching volumes so far today reveals that "super bowl commercials" appears no less then 4 times in various formats in the top 10!

As a sports fan this broaches quite a few philosophical questions, but if you put these aside for a rainy day you're left with a great example of a tradionally hard to measure media having a direct, and measurable, effect. Awesome.

As for the most popular search term on the day of the mighty Super Bowl, I have no idea who "Tom Petty" is nor "How old" he is. But give "How old is Tommy Petty" a go on the Google machine - seems to be the done thing stateside.

A worryingly easy way to spend a lot of cash!

Great example of the benefits of integration as Gucci make online shopping easy-peasy here.

Something caught your eye on that Gucci ad? Found the site but struggling to find the exact trinket you think you saw? Simply select "ad campaign" and choose the relevant ad.

Behold! A pictorial overview of the key screen shots and (rather attractive) models parading clickable objet d'art! Give one a click and up pops a brief overview and close up. Just a few more clicks and you could be £11k down!

The horizontal slider could be a bit smoother, but if you're after a horsebit ring with 5 carats worth of brown diamond it's worth a look.

When does a silence become a radio silence?

I've been feeling a bit guilty for not contributing more to my blog of late; it's been about a week since my last entry. But given my (decreasing) scepticism to blogging, I'm still not sure how frequently you're meant to blog. I'm balanced between fear of failure and self-indulgence...

Of course, different blogs are updated at different times, for different reasons, caused by differing motivations, but this Catch 22 predicament I've managed to create for myself is a bit like a contact stratgy. Am I spamming the customer? Are they feeling loved enough? Do they find what we send them interesting? (Do I have any customers!?!)

Which is why making the brand/customer relationship two-way is so important. Unless the brand (or blog) gets adequate feedback (and shows sufficient interest to encourage more) you're never really going to know. The current trend for "creating conversations" seems painfully obvious in this light.

Doesn't really help my posting deliberation much though... Luckily Uncle Seth always has an interesting answer.

Either way, I think I need some loyal readers before I need to worry about p*ssing them off!

PS The trends are quite interesting as well

I have to admit that I'm a big fan of trendwatching.com. A large part of this maybe because I'm either too lazy or too narrow minded to explore the insights that they unearth myself, but another reason is, quite simply, they link to a lot of good stuff. All those random sites that show a new type of media that's never going to take off, a product that offers you a personalised niche in an already niche industry, and so on.

Just take a look at their current offering on an 'Expectant Economy'. Awesome. Make a personalised DVD with your child buddying up with Spiderman, buy shares in a Bulgarian basketball team, create your own chocolate portfolio, or join the elite Claseo fashion club - if you're not on the guest list you're not coming in. A plethora of examples on the world of cool, random, innovation, genius and downright weird.

But just to prove that our friends at trendwatching don't have a monopoly on all that's new and cool, here's my current favourite site - Adidas Football.

Anybody with any interest in football will get this (which is why you'd be on this area of the site in the first place I'd guess). People like football. People liken themselves to favourite footballers. People try and adopt the style/qualities/attributes of said footballers. People buy the boots that will help them emulate those qulaities.

Adidas nails this and add a bit of charm as well. Put simply, the tough tackling destruction machine Gerrard takes on the stylish delicate touch of Kaka with the 'youngun' Messi flitting around with tricks galore. All brought to life through a cartoon drawn by the players themselves. Click the player that looks/plays most like you, buy his boots. Quality.

Not sure if it's part of a trend yet though...

Saw this and thought of...

...'the blog'. Nice little youtube clip of Derren Brown playing games with the ad-men.

Subliminal Messaging

Would be interesting to see if this would work on the Blackberry yielding Account-Man.

Integrating the integrators

So, a flying start to my blog then...!

In fairness I've been spending the best part of the last week on part 2 of IDM's new Integrated Marketing Diploma. As a member of the "Integrated Fanclub" and with few marketing qualifications under my belt it seemed like a good fit, and in all honesty it's been pretty good so far (and where else could you get "cognitive dissonance", "attitudinal measurement" and "hermeunetics" in one sentence?).

However, its approach does raise a few questions. If my generation of marketing is part of a new wave of "Integration", can old school silo converts teach this field effectively? Can an experienced marketeer, even with knowledge across a number of areas, ever argue from a purely integrated perspective?

We're increasingly reminded that IMC is a strategy, a concept, an approach, and not simply a combination of media, yet, realistically, our mentoring has to come from those with experience limited to how different disciplines can be brought together effectively and evolved to form synergies. Schultz would not be a happy bunny.

Don't get me wrong, the speakers on the course have been exceptional and their points well constructed and biases diluted, but you can't help feeling that there will always be issues in "How to teach IMC" until the 'true integrators' and 'fully integrated brands' come through with their completely integrated experiences. This will take time, of course, and will become easier as IMC is introduced to companies from day one (and not through step by step changes).

In the meantime a lot of 'old school' stuff remains relevant, and as long as us 'younguns' stay fresh faced, challenging, and keep aiming for consumercentricity, the future's pretty exciting.

Until then, 4 P's (plus consumer!) anyone...

Biting the bullet...

OK, to be honest I've always been a bit of resistor when it comes to blogging. I liked reading other blogs out there, but always found the concept of my own a little self-indulgent and egotistical. Maybe I was just worried that nobody would read it! But anyway, in the spirit of New Year I've decided to bite the bullet and get cracking under the guise of it being vaguely work related!

This is meant to be a bit of a self-made library in all honesty. A handy tool to save anything interesting, relevant or just, well, cool that I might want to fish out at a later date (when cool may actually become relevant!). But, to anybody that stumbles across these ramblings, a little about myself...

My name's Simon Gregory, I'm from Liverpool and I work in London. I work for an integrated direct marketing/advertising agency (depending on who's asking) as a planner and have worked, in the majority, on Mercedes-Benz and 3 mobile (mostly DM and digital). I've been in the industry for around 2 years and am still at my first agency. This is getting cringesome already...

Well good blogs are meant to be succinct and useful so I'll sign off with my current sources of blogging inspiration (in case I need them later):

Seth's blog
Amelia Torode's blog
Fallon blog
Rory Sutherland
TomPeters!