02Feb / 2011

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.

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15Nov / 2010

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.

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28Oct / 2010

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’.

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02Sep / 2010

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.

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06Aug / 2010

Technological progress and addiction

Paul Graham has just posted this great read on the acceleration of addictiveness. Essentially the world is more addictive than it was 40 years ago and it’s going to get even more so.

Interestingly he puts this down to technological progress, which in his words means ‘making things do more of what we want’. Which is probably one of the most articulate ways of talking about all this stuff that’s going on in a digital world.

However it’s also this gem of an observation I love;

“What hard liquor, cigarettes, heroin and crack have in common is that they are all more concentrated forms of less addictive predcessors….

“Checkers and solitaire have been replaced by World of Warcraft and FarmVille. TV has become more engaging, and even so it can’t compete with Facebook”.

Obviously when technological progress means things doing more of what you want, predecessors such as TV, that don’t evolve quick enough in the right direction, aren’t essentially keeping up with that new demand.

I wonder what ad revenues might look like now if all the TV channels clubbed together, backed web enabled TV and put them in the house of people for free ages ago? They’d probably be more addictive and looking a lot healthier.

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28Jul / 2010

Does the world need better Strategists?

Over at Naked NYC’s blog there’s a provactive post about whether the world needs Digital Strategists. As one, I actually agree with much of the post. I agree with the fact that de-centralising strategy is not a good thing.

However one thing that concerns me about some comments, is the air that digital strategy is somehow subordinate to traditional planning and it’s just a skill you can pick up by spending time on the Internet. Or that Digital Strategists don’t get brands or can’t generate insights as well as traditional planners.

I do believe that putting it in a silo is unhelpful, but lets not forget how it came about and why it still exists. As professionals who are paid to understand people/culture/media on behalf of brands the vast majority of planners have dropped the ball and not delivered. Hence digital strategists. You can’t blame people for filling voids and creating opportunities that you have allowed to exist.

My gut says that in the not too distant future digital strategists, won’t exist, but they will be running strategy or marketing departments.

Give the same problem to the best ‘digital strategist’ in the world and the best ‘traditional planner’ in the world and I’d have my money on the former.

So I’d re-phrase their post to ‘Does the world need better strategists?’

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09Jul / 2010

A tale of two buttons – Fan versus Like

So according to this article Facebook is serving 3 Billion ‘Like’ buttons a day. Don’t get me wrong, Facebook did a smart thing launching the like button. It spreads its seed across the web because it’s obviously much easier to like something than it is to be a fan of something. I might admit to the fact that part of me likes prancing about to a bit of Culture Club, but I wouldn’t call myself a fan. It requires less commitment.

From friend to friend it works, but from a brand’s point of view I think I kind of preferred fan as a benchmark, it made you work harder. ‘Like’ lowers the standards (which are already often low), resulting in the interaction being weaker and inflating the numbers. I’d go even as far as saying it’s the closet equivalent of some sort of standard volume metric in social.

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01Jul / 2010

QR Codes are only useful if they do useful things

I can tell you why QR codes haven’t really flown outside parts of Asia. Because they aren’t really used that well. Replacing a URL or showing another ad, is let’s face, not useful. This on the other hand is…

Via

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01Jul / 2010

Planning stuff and doing stuff

I’m in the rather unfortunate position to have the word ‘strategy’ in my job title. I say that for a couple of reasons. One, I feel like a tosser when introducing myself to people. And two, the word is a bit on the nebulous side. Perhaps that’s why I feel like a tosser?

I hate to say it, but I will. In marketing land ‘strategy’ is too detached from the doing. I’m not saying planners should also be ideas people, but being good at generating insights and storytelling isn’t really cutting it with me. A planner today needs to be much closer to helping solutions see the light of day and making them happen.

Here are two; not so much contrasting views, but they highlight my point. To be honest I agree with them both, but if you asked me who I would prefer to employ it’s the person that ‘sweats the small stuff’ than tells the stories.

Rory Sutherland articulates the problem perfectly: “The big stuff is done magnificently well, what you might call the small stuff is done spectacularly badly. There’s a complete gridlock in solving these solutions. The people that can actually solve them are too powerful and pre-occupied with what they call strategy to actually solve them”.

1. Rory Sutherland. Sweat the small stuff

2. Skills of the Rockstar Planner: Communicating Ideas

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24Jun / 2010

Big seeds AND little seeds

Having worked on both sides of this fence, I’m convinced that the argument over mass reach marketing versus niche ‘influencing the influencers’ is nothing more than a pissing contest. It’s about how both of these work together and to be honest it always has been, but now we can see the relationships through the abundance of data at our finger tips. Here’s a neat explantion of the fallacy of niche targeting courtesy of the Viral Ad Network

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The Communications Room

Category Archives: Communications

I hope this happens in 2011

Is a good product the new advertising?

Have brands forgotten how communication works?

Marketing as platforms and applications

Technological progress and addiction

Does the world need better Strategists?

QR Codes are only useful if they do useful things

Planning stuff and doing stuff

Big seeds AND little seeds

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