I’d love to see cameras on ratings boxes so we know what actually happens in an ad break. So this kind of cool.An Australian family sitting down to watch the Ariel Ping Pong Grand Final, the biggest sporting event of the year.
Category Archives: Communications
Posted in Advertising, Communications, TV
A magazine is an iPad that does not work
For those old farts like me (at the ripe old age of 31) that still like to peruse a magazine once in a while with a pipe and slippers might find this scary. For many people in the not too distant future, the magazine will have a very similar fate to other technologies such as vinyl, cassettes, IE6 and the horse and cart. You all look at it with romance, nostalgia and a deep down feeling that it won’t die (with the exception of IE6) but it will and become a niche media that the cool retro kids are into.
Posted in Behaviour, Communications, Technology
Henry Jenkins interviews Frank Rose
Frank Rose, contributing Editor at Wired has a new book out called The Art of Immersion. I haven’t got my grubby hands on it yet but if this interview (part one and part two) with Henry Jenkins is anything to go by it looks like a must read of the year.
In this interview Rose essentially discusses the concept of ‘deep media’, where people can engage with a story at any level of depth they like. Whilst the interview mostly references the entertainment industry, it’s clear that this is bubbling over into brand communications on a more regular basis. Ford, Honda and BMW are examples of an entire category adopting a kind of ‘deep media’ approach as discussed by Rose.
As a general rule, the majority of advertising has been about lowest common denominator stuff for decades. How can we reach the most people for the least effort and the lowest cost? I’ve said before that people have always had thresholds when it comes to how immersed they are willing to become in a communication. The net result of generations having grown up playing, watching or participating in more immersive stories will change people’s expectations of everything. Even the most humourous 30 second TVC is quite frankly pretty boring to many people. Hence innovations like this from W+K.
However in addition to thoughts on deep media, Rose also goes on to make some fantastic observations relating to the history and evolution of storytelling and communications.
“the really remarkable thing about Dickens was the way he communed with his readers. That was something serial publication made possible–and serial publication was purely a product of technology. Better printing presses, cheaper paper, trains that could deliver things reliably, rapidly growing cities with a lot more people who could read. Few of these people could afford to purchase entire books, but they could pay for short installments. An unanticipated result of this was that when books were published over a period of 19 or 20 months, readers had a chance to have their say with the author while the novel was still being written. And Dickens relished this. He took note of their comments and suggestions, and he loved interacting with them on the lecture circuit as well. One of his biographers described it as “a sense of immediate audience participation.”
But seeing new media as a threat–that’s a pattern we fall into again and again. Now it’s video games and the Internet. Before that it was TV, and before that it was the movies, and a couple hundred years ago it was serial fiction and people like Dickens. The only constant is that whatever is new is threatening. And usually it’s considered threatening because it’s too immersive–you could get lost in it. But that’s exactly what fiction is. If it’s good enough, people are going to want to inhabit it”.
Posted in Advertising, Communications, culture, Digital, Marketing
How TV ruined your life?
The ever brilliant Charlie Brooker has recently been exploring what we all know – there is in fact a massive gap bewteen what happens on TV and real life. In ‘How TV ruined your life?’ Brooker deadpans his way through iconic programming to some of the most cringing advertising ever created. Here’s my favourite episode by far.
Posted in Advertising, BBC, Charlie Brooker, Communications, culture, TV
Everything is advertising
Jess Greenwood at the recent Circus Festival brilliantly summed up how I feel these days by saying that everything is essentially advertising. Not just a TVC, but every single interaction with a customer should be treated as an opportunity to advertise in the truest sense of the word. A case in point.
Then I came across this interview with Johnny Vulkan of Anomaly where he talks about something I’ve mentioned here before. Marketing isn’t just about the promotion. There are three other forgotten Ps we should be considering as advertising. Promotion has kind of become like crack to brands and agencies, but we are undoubtedly starting to see a shift to the other stuff.
Posted in Advertising, Business, Communications, Digital, Marketing, Social Media
Thoughts on Circus Festival 2011
One of the things I miss professionally about home is the high standard of industry events and speakers. There is always something on to keep your brain stimulated and generally challenge the industry’s often institutionalised way of doing things.
Now I’ve been in Australia three years, so I think I can say this, but I’ve generally been underwhelmed with most conferences. No offence, but it’s the same people, talking about the past, or passing off creds as thought pieces.
So last week wasn’t just an improvement, it was a huge success thanks to The Communications Council. The first ‘Circus – Festival of commercial creativity’ was actually worth the money thanks to an awesome bunch of speakers.
So here were my highlights in no particular order.
Rob Campbell of W+K was both refreshingly honest and inspirational. If clients and agencies follow his call to arms, I think the industry will be in a good spot. Here’s his presentation, but without the F-bombs and candor it doesn’t quite have the same impact.
Despite the ironic tech issues (Prezzi is cool, but not that practical) Marvin Chow of Google gave a good insight into how the organisation approaches marketing. As an engineering company the cliché of creativity coming from anywhere actually seems to be true thanks to process and beliefs. Substantiated by the fact that the ‘Life in a Day’ project came from the mind of marketing co-coordinator in London and not a highly awarded Creative Director and advertising agency.
Jess Greenwood of Contagious not only had nice feet, she took us through some of the themes that are bubbling around the world of marketing -I particularly loved her statement that ‘everything is advertising’. Never a truer word said.
Agnello Dias was very humble talking about his work with The Times of India. Whilst I think he was a bit modest putting it down to luck, Dias demonstrated how agencies can lead the agenda for brands.
Josh Spear and Jeffery Cole were also fantastic. It’s great to see people talk about digital with some rigor and genuine insights. The whole concept of behaviour changing due to technology is fascinating and probably widely underestimated by people still concentrating on pumping out ads.
Charles Wigley was also great talking about the biggest problem in our industry – The marketing wind tunnel. The reason most advertising these days is either ineffective or homogenous is because of the process we all go through is essentially the same and unenlightening. You can read it here.
All up a great few days and I can’t wait for next year.
Posted in Advertising, Communications, Creativity, Digital
I hope this happens in 2011
I know I’m a bit late with a 2011 trends post, but to be honest I was even toying with the idea of jacking the whole blogging thing in before Xmas. Not because I got bored with it, I think I got disillusioned with advertising, or maybe I hit 30.
But after a few weeks reflection back home in snowy England I ‘m going to give it some intent write about how communications works rather than how shite the industry can sometimes be.
So apologies for be slack, I’m back and here are my 10 trends in no particular order.
1. I’ll be back blogging….Fact.
2. Advertising will become serious business. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been big business for decades but big brand advertising will come under scrutiny and actually become less of a feather in the cap for people.
3. Product innovation will become a marketer’s best friend. Experience designers and technologists will become more desirable than copywriters, art directors and planners. Agencies will need to develop skills in this area.
4. The importance of surprising and delighting across every interaction will be more valuable than product differentiation propaganda. That means companies that can help develop ideas across the customer experience will be in demand.
5. If being social is critical to your business, the management and implementation of social media will start to go in-house. It’s only been lack of scale, traction with customers and fear of the unknown that has kept it with outside companies. All of which are diminishing rapidly.
6. Apple will hit a few bumps (at least I personally hope so). Apple’s slick designs will no longer hide its issues with product quality, poor customer service and its desire to create a closed ecosystem.
7. Buy shares in companies that are innovating in cloud computing. As well as it being a utility that you could add to a lot of products or services, it’s the technology that has the potential to make sense of the disparate media platforms and technology that consumers have to deal with.
8. Whilst companies like Anomaly have been around for a few years, every big brand will want an alternative agency model on their roster to keep things interesting. Hence the growth of more companies likes Victor and Spoils.
9. People who looked after digital stuff for companies will start moving in to more centralised roles and start leading brands from a different perspective.
10. Brighton and Hove Albion will get promoted from League One.
Posted in Communications, Marketing
Is a good product the new advertising?
I can’t remember where I recently read a quote saying something along the lines of advertising now being a tactic used to address defects in a product (if it’s you let me know, I’ll give you a HT).
But it’s true, with the exception of leading brands the majority of categories essentially tell people the opposite of what the desired audience believes. From finance to automotive, brands have spent the last few decades generally asking people questions like: “What’s your issue with said brand and/or category?” Then they spend stacks developing ads that address the said ‘insight’. If they’re marginally smarter they will create a helpful online tool or cool piece of content that is intended to make people forget about the problem in the first place. Why? Because it’s much cheaper and quicker than addressing the actual problem with the product.
This Adage article highlights the trend of marketers taking money out of product development and ploughing it into advertising at the expensive of the product quality.
“For decades, the focus of many companies has been taking cost out of their products, often to invest in marketing and always to increase profit.
“It all raises the question of whether efforts to cut production costs have gone too far and whether marketers would be better off putting more money back into quality control — even if it means spending less on marketing”.
I believe we have gone back to the days where the strongest brand survives. The best products will generate the most conversations and therefore the most sales. In today’s networked economy it’s no longer possible to get away with an average product that has its cracks covered up by half decent advertising.
Being more optimistic, the rules are now slightly different. We are seeing product and marketing essentially becoming one in the same thing. Technology increasingly allows us to not only improve the product but do it in a way that’s actually networked. Think Nike Grid, Visa’s Right Cliq, iTunes Ping, Starbucks and Foursquare to name a few.
Have brands forgotten how communication works?
I’ve long held the belief that marketing, when in the right hands, is a genuinely exciting industry to work in. And without sounding too lofty, I also think it makes the world a better place.
However in the wrong hands it’s anti – social, shouty, samey, artificial, inefficient and in many instances misleading.
To be honest, marketing’s main problem is that it’s forgotten how communication works. How and why do people communicate? How do people obtain value from the things we develop? Products, brands, advertising, social media or otherwise.
It’s evolved into an unnecessarily complex system with rules, beliefs, conventions, layers and many unhelpful and irrational motivations. Many of which have no relation to how people communicate and their relationship with brands.
I’m optimistic though. There is a bubbling under current of common sense and perhaps there is a straw about to break the marketing camel’s back. I hope so.
First Faris sparked some debate with this post about all market research being wrong. The headlines being 1) we don’t know why we do what we do. So why ask them, you’ll just be led up the garden path. Then 2) the gulf between claimed attitudes and actual behaviour is vast.
Then BBH Labs (an increasingly great agency blog) challenged that the reason we misuse our metrics is because of cultural issues that marketing departments and agencies have developed over time.
Finally Umair Haque summed it all up by stating ‘Marketing can do better’. Essentially Umair questions why the fundamental assumptions of marketing haven’t changed for decades.
I feel a series of posts brewing. Something about ‘it’s how we communicate stupid’.
Posted in Advertising, Communications, Marketing, Uncategorized
Marketing as platforms and applications
I’ve always believed that the single easiest way to get your head round digital and more importantly the direction of communications and culture type stuff, is to simply look at the vocabulary being used by the people that do the doing, not the thinking. This post on Savage Minds highlights a potentially better way of looking at marketing by comparing the techy terms like platform to culture and application to subculture.
It makes sense when you think about. You don’t really manage a brand in neat little channels anymore. Like in John Grant’s book, The Brand Innovation Manifesto, brands are really defined by a bunch of complimentary associations and experiences. John calls these brand molecules, but it’s essentially the same. You should be creating a platform, with a series of applications that allow you to keep moving quickly and effectively. Much like Starbucks has done
Don’t get me wrong, we don’t need anymore marketing words, but we do need to use more helpful ones.
Posted in Branding, Communications, Digital, Digital Strategy
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