Hilarious

Charlie Brooker from BBC 4 comments on the biggest c***s and she-c***s in advertising. (Note: Strong language)



It gets even better.

Taglines

When I started in advertising, taglines were everything. We sat in our offices for hours, days, weeks, even months to come up with a tagline. The tagline was the centerpiece of the campaign - once we established it, everything else fell into place: Commercials, Print, Billboards, Stickers, etc.

Things have changed dramatically: Michael Jackson tapes his face with weird stickers, a cowboy became president (oops, I guess it's not the first time) and taglines are now on life support, according to this article from Brandweek:

“Too often, taglines are used as safety nets out of a fear that the rest of the campaign isn’t communicating well enough, he said.

Taglines are often more utilitarian and less emotional, experts say. They tend to be fed through the focus group mill until they’re watered down beyond recognition. That process does not produce “Think Different,” “Got Milk?” or “Just Do It.”

“If the Nike tagline were suggested today, the question back would probably be, ‘Just do what?’” said Wolfsohn. “There’s a level of trepidation now that people won’t get it and they won’t be able to parrot the idea back to you. So, taglines get over-defined.”

That’s when they lose strength and become meaningless, he said.
For a slogan to stick, it’s not just coming up with five catchy words or less, said Landor & Associates’ managing director Allen Adamson. It’s vital to weave that message through all the communications and the very brand DNA itself.

“It has to be the right promise, with the brand living up to it, expressed in a sticky, unexpected way,” Adamson said. “And then you have to spend money and stay with it for the long haul.”

He points to GE’s “Imagination at Work” as a breakthrough tagline because it’s more than a slogan. “It’s the business strategy,” he said. “It’s the mission of the company.”

It's a good article and I would like to add one important factor:

Taglines reflect the brand promise. Looking at today's taglines, the promise is very mediocre at best, horrendous at worst: (With a name like Smuckers, it has to be good. It's a new morning. Brew something good) Just pointless lines that serve no purpose except to fill up the pockets of agencies.

Consumers don't buy promises anymore. They buy great product and brand experiences. Big ideas don't come out of advertising, they come out of R&D labs and consumer insights. Great products need low advertising support and high-involvement in conversational marketing. Mediocre product need the advertising idea but these ideas will fall shirt in the end because product experience is king.

I'm glad to see the mind-numbing taglines leave the market and head to the traditional marketing graveyard. Taglines based on the heart and soul of a brand and product experience will continue to live and thrive. Because they are not based on a promise, they are based on facts.

The inhumane network

Advertising can be entertaining (Well, actually it should be!), inspirational, informational. Good creative combined with a sophisticated, well thought out media buy can be magical. Good creative combined with an unthoughtful media buy can be worse than Chinese water torture.

Case in point: Cisco's current campaign for their human network. Yesterday, I was catching up on my Fox shows online and enjoyed the first commercial interruption brought to me by Cisco - interesting visuals, intriguing story and creative. I even memorized the URL for later exploration. But my memory became really foggy when I had to watch the identical commercial message for a second time. Third time. By the fourth time, I felt like water was slowly dripping onto my forehead, driving me insane. And my drive to explre Cisco's site just disappeared and turned into anger. At the lazy media buyers who didn't even bother thinking about frequency capping, user experience and, most importantly, how they wasted their client's money.

It's very easy to turn an engaging experience into an annoyance if you didn't focus on the little details of each campaign.

I must be in the wrong business

Tim Vanderhook writes in his latest MediaPost column about the aftermath of acquisitions (DoubleClick, aQuantive, etc.) and his predictions for the future of portals.

The last paragraph reads:

The biggest winners in this year of acquisitions will be consumers — receiving more relevant ads, at more appropriate times. Experience shows consumers don’t necessarily like advertising but are willing to endure it for free content. If the ads they see are relevant to who they are, what they are interested in, and where they are located, it becomes a win-win for all parties in the chain.

How do we motivate young people to join our industry when our lofty goals are for consumers endure our work? When I started in advertising, I wanted to entertain, inspire and engage people. Question is, if you compare your work to a root canal or an IRS audit, how can you expect to connect with people and, ultimately, sell a product?

Viral Marketing

Great post by Scott Monty on his Social Media Marketing Blog. He starts out:

"Viral marketing is like the weather: everyone's talking about it, but no one is doing anything about it.

You know why? Because you can't. That's right. You can't simply manufacture viral marketing. But don't tell that to some marketers. They're out there, practicing something akin to alchemy."

He's spot on with his post. I would like to add 2 thoughts:

1) It's all about the idea. Revolutionary things are happening in the advertising world but the core of advertising remains: A good idea will be successful.
2) However, in this new world of gazillion channels, our job as marketers is to find the right distribution channel to allow the great idea to spread.

My formula would be: Research + outstanding idea + chosing the right distribution channels: Wildly successful campaign.

Advertising Week - Day 1

Interesting am session with Carla Hendra (Ogilvy), Rishad Tobaccowala (Denuo) and David Verklin (Carat).

A few quotes:

David Verklin: "The future is not brands telling stories, it's people telling stories about brands."

Rishad Tobaccowala: "Media companies have to distinguish between paid and earned media."

"Drop the word advertising and change it to marketing services."

"The only way to face the future is to face reality."

One of the questions asked by the audience why PR always seems to be missing from panels. Scanning the list of attendees, only a handful of PR firms are even present at these conferences. It's a missed opportunity since PR and Advertising need to work closer together to connect better with consumers.

Two great sites

Dutch agency Achtung created an amazing 3D site, marketing the capabilities of Schiphol airport. Apparently, Schiphol has plans to expand and communicates with the site to environmentalists and neighbors the need for further expansion.

The animations are breathtaking and engage you to learn more about how Schiphol works and why this airport is so vital for the economy.

Via Adverblog

Fight For Kisses //// www.ffk-wilkinson.com
Uploaded by killafather

Hilarious trailer and nicely integrated site for Wilkinson. Animation feels 2001 but the the campaign idea makes up for it.

An ad-free city

From Adbusters:

"In 2007, the world’s fourth-largest metropolis and Brazil’s most important city, São Paulo, became the first city outside of the communist world to put into effect a radical, near-complete ban on outdoor advertising. Known on one hand for being the country’s slick commercial capital and on the other for its extreme gang violence and crushing poverty, São Paulo’s “Lei Cidade Limpa” or Clean City Law was an unexpected success, owing largely to the singular determination of the city’s conservative mayor, Gilberto Kassab."

"One sore loser in the battle was Clear Channel Communications. Having recently entered the Brazilian market, the corporation was purchasing a Brazilian subsidiary as well as the rights to a large share of the city’s billboard market. Weeks before the ban took effect, Clear Channel launched a counter-campaign in support of outdoor ads, with desperate slogans that failed to resonate with the masses: “There’s a new movie on all the billboards – what billboards? Outdoor media is culture.”

Although legal challenges from businesses have left a handful of billboards standing, the city, now stripped of its 15,000 billboards, resembles a battlefield strewn with blank marquees, partially torn-down frames and hastily painted-over storefront facades. While it’s unclear whether this cleanup can be replicated in other cities around the world, it has so far been a success in São Paulo: surveys indicate that the measure is extremely popular with the city’s residents, with more than 70 percent approval."

What an amazing and revolutionary idea.
It really shocks me that São Paulo could take this step and that 70% of the residents approve of it. I can't even imagine how Los Angeles or New York would look like without billboards. Is the outdoor advertising a crutch for city planners not to focus on city planning? Is it a crutch for us to feel hip and alive in a city?

The real question is: Is this a one-time event or will other cities follow? Reading the comments on Adbusters, some mentioned that São Paulo had the worst clutter of OOH anybody every experienced. Does it have to get extremely bad before people will stand up against advertising pollution?

A lot to ponder. At least advertisers don't have to worry about breaking through the outdoor clutter anymore.

Check out the YouTube video below for a more in-depth look at this revolutionary initiative.

Playstation leaving TBWA/Chiat?

News hit a few days ago that Playstation and TBWA/Chiat might head for Splitsville.

Two thoughts:

1) Playstation is in a tough position. The PS3 is a glorified Blu-Ray player, albeit cheaper than a stand-alone player, and even the price cuts will not change that. Xbox has taken the lead in the gaming community niche and Wii just has been fabulous in connecting with the casual gamer. Even though PS3 was the latest player to be released, their social networking options are pretty limited. Is there a chance Playstation doesn't get it?
2) TBWA/Chiat is known for disruptive advertising. Is there a chance this doesn't work either anymore?

My guess is we have to focus more on Playstation. Or rather Sony. There was the scandal about fake blogs. Or the scandal about CD copy protection.

Sony doesn't get it. Yet. What we see out there in the markets, changes in how people connect with brands, how people are taking control from brands is not a fad. It's not going to pass by.

Sneakiness doesn't buy anything. Except a bad rap and a decline in brand favorability.
Stealth Marketing is the weapon of choice for companies who try to claim they get it but continue to market the old-fashioned way. Sure, it will work once in a while but it's not the real solution. A band-aid. A drink for the road.

Sony has to understand that people will find out. How they market to them. How the PS3 has been a failure so far. And how Sony is struggling to stay a premier brand.

Sony doesn't get it. Yet. They better hurry.

A billboard that rocks

Not user interactivity but sun interactivity.

Fly me with balloons...

BBDO Duesseldorf was tasked to create awareness for Silk-epil epilators from Braun. Their solution was the tie helium filled balloons to a model's skirt so there would be nothing to look at but her legs. The model drew attention wherever she went and generated an in-store traffic increase around 25%.

The video can be found here.

Clearly, a typical advertising stunt. But one that works with the product and breaks through the clutter in a more circus-like way.

Future of ad agencies

In this video, digital leaders look into the crystal ball:

Nick Law – Chief Creative Officer, North America, R/GASteven Marrs – Vice Chairman & Global Head of Digital & Branded Content, Nitro
Clark Kokich – Worldwide President, Avenue A/Razorfish
Torrence Boone – President Boston, Digitas

A great quote from the R/GA Nike Running case study.

"A completely new category where the product, the online experience and the marketing are inseparable"

Amen

Clients and agencies

BusinessWeek surveyed advertising and branding elite from both the client (Kraft, Home Depot, Yahoo!, etc.) and agency (BBDO, Leo Burnett, Saatchi & Saatchi, etc.) sides to gain insight on the future of marketing. Below are two interesting snippets.



It shows clearly that advertising agencies still don't get the power of WOM, utilizing traditional PR techniques. Clients are starting to get it. That's a huge opportunity for niche agencies or a hybrid of advertising/PR agency.

Advertising part of PR?

As illustrated in the video, change is almost always incremental:

We were discussing marketing ideas for one of our clients.
A few years ago, we would have discussed banners, SEM, advertorials, sponsorships and other ways to push our message out to the consumer. Today we were talking about buzz, blogging, viral messaging, outreach, etc. We see the 'traditional online media' as a given and focus more and more on WOM techniques.

I would argue that the changes in marketing, communications and media are so pervasive, so fundamental and so dramatic that advertising agencies and PR firms won't be referred to as advertising agencies and PR firms anymore. They will be something different. Something new.

Let others worry about how we'll be calling this.
For now, let us just worry about great ideas. Ultimately, clients don't care where ideas are coming from. It's not about the delivery service, it's about the product

Design and Advertising

I'm a copywriter by trade but since I started in the advertising business, I've been working with designers each and every day.

The importance of copy has diminished in the last few years since the advent of digital media. Design is becoming more important from day to day in our advertising lives.

adliterate wrote a piece about the role of design in advertising. Here are a few excerpts:

"But anyone in advertising or design that has worked closely with the other will know that a truely collaborative relationship is not easy.

Part of the problem is that, just like the relatioship between the US and UK, advertising and design are separated by a common language.

I have felt this separation most acutely working with identity agencies but even working with in-house designers can be a challenge when the two of you think you are in agreement but mean something totally different.

So I thought I'd record the differences (albeit from an advertising perspective) in order that an understanding of them will promote fraternal love and co-operation.

1) When advertising people talk about a brand we mean the set of associations that exist in peoples minds. While designers clearly think this is important for them the brand is much more about the mark or identity. Our brand is nebulous theirs is concrete - it's what the identity looks like and the values that it embodies.

2) As a result advertising people see themselves as shepherds marshaling brand associations over time, whereas designers prefer to see themselves as police laying down the law of the brand and then enforcing it, often using their favourite tool - the Spirit Book.

3) Advertising people prize originality above any other value (we are obsessed with things that have never been done before regardless of whether this is relevant to success) while design people prize control over any other value (the extent to which they can control every manifestation of their creation). That's why they like Spirit Books so much.

4) So when it comes to integration advertising people try to encourage strategic coherence across all channels and activities whereas design people like to see executional consistency.

5) Designers often create things that are permanent manifestations of the brand - the packaging, the retail facia, the staff uniforms and of course the brand's physical representation in the form of a mark. As a result they are very conscious that these things need to last and rise above trends and fads. Advertising people produce things that are instantly disposable, the temporary manifestations of the brand so they like to play with cultural currency and at best to contribute to it. Perhaps this is one reason why advertising people like things being funny and designers do not.

6) Advertising people burn up ferociously expensive media this makes them very conscious of the need for it to deliver results. Design people tend to use relatively cheap media in comparison. It is costly to re-badge every retail outlet but that investment will last a decade (unless you are Abbey). Indeed many things that the designer controls have to be produced anyway - like packaging or stationary, bags or uniforms. This leads to a fundamental difference in the urgency with which activity is supposed to work and often makes design more commercially passive when advertising seeks to be more commercially aggressive.

7) Having said that, design people are often more focused on solving problems (especially industrial designers) since their training is in finding and solving real problems in people's lives or with the status quo. This means that they are often asked to and can think more fundamentally about, how it should be solved. Take the problem of left handed people being unable to use a pair of scissors, advertising people would approach this by telling left handed people how to use the existing scissors better whereas design people would create a new pair of scissors.

8) And finally our ideas of quality are based on different criteria. The concept of Good Design is absolute, in others words there is a notion of good design and poor design and while design genius can not be taught, good design can - there are real principles upon which it is based. There is no such absolute concept of good advertising and a pretence that there is often leads to commercially irrelevant decision making. Good advertising is whatever works for this audience today, good design is eternal. This is one of the reasons that we still sit on chairs designed by mid-Century legends (like Eames or Breuer) but laugh at advertising from the same era.

Neither camp is right or wrong we simply come from different traditions that value different things in the work we produce and from the people that produce it. And the more we understand and appreciate this the better our attempts at collaboration will be."

Advertisers try to verbalize ideas. Designers tend to express their vision in a visual language. Clearly, our lives have shifted towards a hyper-visual world and verbalized ideas have become less effective and important.

What advertising, design, marketing and PR don't do well, or not at all, is the live conversation, dialogue, interaction, chatter, gossips, silly talk, water cooler chatter, reviews, recommendations, blog outpourings, etc.

Our tribe lives revolve around gazillion of things while design contributes some tribal art and advertising tries to spread shared stories and fairy tales. But the real conversation happens outside. Design and advertising have to develop a new language, a new art and new stories to connect with all of us. Or we'll be looking at them from the outside in. As paying customer of museums.

The importance of reflection

I'm a big fan of Ira Glass (of "This American Life" fame). Presentation Zen posted a couple of clips sharing his insights into the art of storytelling.

One thing that made me think was the 'moment of reflection' - that point when we take a breather from the story, action or drama, and have a chance to reflect on what we are being told. Being interesting is not enough unless we can also make sense of it and understand why it is important.

I was reminded of this again a few weeks ago: My wife and I watched a few episodes of Lost. It was just too easy to click on 'Play' again and watch an episode after another. Even though I was completely into the story, I could not remember any of the details a few minutes later. In my mind, the storyline became a big mess and it was hard for me to make sense of it all.

This is another side of the a 'moment of reflection' and the need to make sense of a story: its importance for moving memories from short term to long term memory. Short term memories are registered literally (visually, accoustically, etc.) whereas long term memories are registered semantically - it is the association and the meanings that are tied to the memories - and without the opportunity to reflect and make sense, these memories become washed away.

That's why it's so hard to remember movies on planes - the movie is immediately followed by another form of entertainment: iPod, magazines, food, conversation. Because your stuck in a god awful seat in a god awful plane, you have no opportunity to reflect and consider.

What does it mean? The question for marketers is how often consumers have a 'moment of reflection' with advertising? How many ads truly provoke reflection? Is engagement without reflection enough?

On the other hand if it is important for long term memories how many pre-testing models take this into account?

If you talked to people

Or as David Ogilvy would say: "Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your family to read. You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine."

Kudos to Gaping Void for this pearl of wisdom.

Pluto is not a planet

Bob Garfield just published a provocative piece on Adage.com discussing the Post-Advertising Age.
Because he's a gifted writer, you should read the whole column. But because we're all ADD'ing through this life, I'll be happy to post some of the most poignant parts:

"Maybe you'd better lean forward. Presently you will be given five reasons to consider something barely imaginable: a post-apocalyptic media world substantially devoid of brand advertising as we have long known it.

It's a world in which Canadian trees are left standing and broadcast towers aren't. It's a world in which consumer engagement occurs without consumer interruption, in which listening trumps dictating, in which the internet is a dollar store for movies and series, in which ad agencies are marginalized and Cannes is deserted in the third week of June. It is a world, to be specific, in which marketing -- and even branding -- are conducted without much reliance on the 30-second spot or glossy spread.

Because nobody is much interested in seeing them, and because soon they will be largely unnecessary.

Perhaps you are already rolling your eyes. Perhaps you believe that vast structures on which vast societies and vast economies depend do not easily lose their primacy. Perhaps you believe that the TV commercial and magazine spread -- and radio spot and newspaper classified -- are forever and immutable, like the planets orbiting the sun. Good for you.

Now, say hello to Pluto -- the suddenly former planet. Forever and immutable, it turns out, are subject to demotion. This could be grim news for the agency business, which continues its erratic Pluto-like orbit around marketing budgets as if unaware that it has lost its stature -- and its relevance is next to go. In due course, you shall see how circumstances have conspired to threaten its place on the cosmic map altogether."

"Nor does the disruption end there. Since spring 2005, according to Magna Global USA, DVR penetration has doubled to 20% from 10%, and Forrester Research predicts it will reach half of U.S. households within three years -- well beyond the threshold at which 40% of advertisers say they will dramatically reduce their TV buys. Meanwhile, after years of steady growth in spite of steadily declining audiences, the broadcast-upfront market last year was down 5%. Coca-Cola, never a big upfront player, pulled out altogether. So did Johnson & Johnson, which shifted $250 million online. According to TNS, General Motors slashed $600 million from its 2006 ad spend. Is somebody nervous? Half of the 109 national advertisers surveyed by Forrester in 2006 said their ad agencies and media agencies were "ill-equipped" to deal with changes in the TV environment."

"Mass media, of course, do not exist in a vacuum. They have a perfect symbiotic relationship with mass marketing. Advertising underwrites the content. The content delivers audience. Audiences receive the marketing messages and patronize the advertisers, and so on in what for centuries was an efficient cycle of economic life. The first element of Chaos presumes the fragmentation of mass media creates a different sort of cycle: an inexorable death spiral, in which audience fragmentation and ad-avoidance hardware lead to an exodus of advertisers, leading in turn to an exodus of capital, leading to a decline in the quality of content, leading to further audience defection, leading to further advertiser defection and so on to oblivion. The refugees -- audience and marketers alike -- flee to the internet. There they encounter the second, and more ominous, Chaos component: the internet's awkward infancy.

The online space isn't remotely developed enough -- nor will it be anytime soon -- to absorb the advertising budgets of the top 100 marketers, to match the reach of traditional media or to fulfill the content desires of the audience. (Maybe viewers no longer demand their MTV, but what remains of the mass audience is in no hurry to surrender its Los Angeles Times and "Lost.") A collapsing old model. An unconstructed new model. Paralyzed marketers. Disenchanted consumers. It's all so ... chaotic."

(...)"Microsoft allocated to the introduction of its Vista operating system, 30% went online. If every national advertiser did the same tomorrow, Madison Avenue and Hollywood wouldn't be chaotic. They would be Pluto, relegated to some barren, subordinate outer orbit of the economy. And a lot of people would be singing a different tune."

Interesting stuff. I saw him speak tonight at the iMediaconnection Breakthrough Conference, and I was especially fascinated by the comparisons to the recent demise of the (former) planet Pluto and quotes from industry pros as well as folks like Bill Gates chiming in. This is a must read for anyone involved in the advertising industry. And make no mistake; if you work with digital signage, you are in the advertising industry as well. More than you think. I will have to let this piece sink in for a few days and will comment further on it. Until then, read it.

Now.

Advertising Agencies and Clients

Sometimes I think those of us who run advertising agencies or work in an advertising department forget that although we are mostly focused on the beginning of the sales process, we also need to be involved in the middle and the end. For at the end of the day, our bottom lines and the value of what we do are measured in sales, not landing page conversions, quote request or leads.

Not ten. Not five. One.

If you had an evening with your main client, your boss or your loved one, how many things would you want to talk about?
Are you scrambling for your list of 56 items you always wanted to discuss? Or the 15 things you wrote on the back of a napkin? Maybe the Top 10 things that have to be done?
Powerful marketing only works if you have one message at a time. Not 10. Not 56.
Next time you sit down with your client, boss or loved one, just discuss one thing. Focus one item. Explore it. Discuss all facets of this one item. And then stop. And move on.

Why not give that a try? Use your time, all your time, to sell just one thing. Go deep. Sell. Then stop.