Creative as a commodity: Design outside the box

Much is made of the role creative plays in digital and traditional design. 

In traditional agencies, creative is even a noun, usually synonomous with an entire group of people, organized in a box...on a chart.

In much of the digital world, creative is more an adjective, used to describe the manner in which people approach something...these people may be technical, client service, analytic or image + word focussed among others. 

Inevitably, there is a role--and a need--for both definitions. It's often the tension between the interpretation of terms like 'creative' that makes for the most interesting reading. Especially when the digital domain becomes a channel for selling 'creative'. Like CrowdSpring.com

CrowdSpring.com wants to make graphic design and creative a commodity. Done on spec. 

Here's how it works: you need something designed. A website, a logo, a tshirt (an ad campaign?!). You lay out the specs, what you are willing to pay, and run a competition. Anyone...credentialled or otherwise...who wants to submit a design can. You pick the winner, you get the design, the designer gets the dough.

In some ways it's like submitting a bid, but with the spec creative attached. Of course noone wants to do spec work, but there are more than 12,000 designers registered with the site, a sure sign that there are many who are willing.

So What?

Three possible implications jump out (I'm, sure there are many others...please append as you see fit):

1. With increasing competition and a show-me-what-I'm-paying-for approach to bidding, downward pressure on design rates would seem inevitable through sites like crowdspring and others (e.g., elance.com, guru.com).

2. With increasing competition, perhaps agencies will resort to spec work to keep their creative departments engaged? It might be effective in retaining current clients or in the hopes of turning a project into an account with a new prospect.

3. When creative is commoditized, attributes like customer service and value adds may become the table stakes of differentiation (now there's a bundle of buzzwords!).

Surely there will be legitimate hue and cry about quality and credentials from entrenched interests in the creative-as-a-noun club (see prior post here). And while some large companies have signed up and used CrowdSpring and similar sites, noone expects large scale creative work to be bid on spec...yet. Then again, many have been slow to realize the online impact on offline business...notable among the late adopters are the creative-as-a-noun agencies.

In the digital space, like the free market at large, a little creative destruction can go a long way toward encouraging out of the box thinking.

In Advertising We Trust

[Today's post is from Claudia Zellman, Account Supervisor at R+K]

So I set my TiVo to record TNT’s new drama Trust Me many months ago in anticipation of a series centering on two best friends working as creative partners at a top-ranked Chicago ad agency.  I mean, hello? Advertising, Chicago, it sounds like programming tailor made for me.  I pictured The Office but about the ad biz instead of the paper industry.  Perfect! Then by the time the show finally started, I had forgotten all about it. I didn’t hear any chatter around the office, no big hype or ratings that I saw. 

Last week, I got a call from my father-in-law who had started watching it asking me how “real” or how “funny” I thought it was. Turns out the first two episodes had already been collecting dust on my DVR so I finally sat down to watch and see if I was missing anything. 

So, what can I tell you? Is it true to life? Entertaining? So far, I would say yes. It’s definitely filled with clichés – the writers know what they are talking about having worked in the industry for 20 years at well known agencies like J. Walter Thompson and Leo Burnett. I was extremely impressed that they went through all the trouble of creating a website for their “fake agency” – complete with client extranet!! Very realistic (here).  

I imagine that the success of AMC's Mad Men could have had something to do with the premise of the new show. Who knew advertising would be so relatable and interesting to the masses? Or are we just talking to ourselves? Well, that’s where the jury is still out for me. Mad Men is this retro, glamorous, un-politically correct drama with well written plots and smart scripts that is more about the era than about an accurate depiction of advertising. The humor in Trust Me is certainly a refreshing departure from the soap opera drama in Mad Men but I wonder if people outside of the industry will relate too. 

My focus group of one, my husband, thinks yes (but he doesn’t count because he already has kind of an insider perspective from my raves and rants about my job!). The tidbits from real life, like the unveiling of the Effen campaign and mentions of well known brands like Dove and Potbelly’s is rewarding somehow and may just be enough for people to get hooked. 

I personally don’t know if I can unwind from the work day watching another show about work! Even if it made me chuckle, it also made my stomach turn when things weren’t going well for the Agency. So jury is still out for me, I really wanted to like it but think it got off to a slow start. 

Now let the virtual office cooler talk begin…..what do you think???…….  

Online Reputation Management: Minding the expectation gap

Yep, the web democratizes information. Everyone with an internet connection can be a blogger-journalist, twitterreporter or impassioned consumerist friendfeeder.

Plumbers, cleaning services and pest control companies can all have their reputation polished or tarnished on Craigslist, Angies List and a host of consumer review sites. 

In the ideal world (which is to say, the world that does not exist) one's online reputation would be a direct output of the quality of service/product one delivers. Like politics, though, online reputations reflect the numerous individual interpretations of 'truth' that real people, reasonable or otherwise, can reasonably be expected to hold.

Take doctors and healthcare. Did the doctor fix you? Were you fixable? 

The expectation gap inherent in these questions can lead to smiles or to a malpractice suit. In between these extremes are the thousands of online comments that serve to define Doctor Who or Doctor What's reputation. Online reputations can become so important that some feel the need to attempt to manage the unmanageable: through legal means (or at least the intimidation of a legal threat).

Some doctors have taken to having patients sign agreements that they won't post bad things online about the doctor under threat of legal action (here)...when the First Amendment meets Healthcare Reform, expect drama.

Marketers, PR professionals and company leaders big and small all ride the volatile love-hate relationship coaster with those online: We love those who would sing the company's praises--and stress out over those who so "unfairly" shout out the injustice of our company's practices...from perceived abuses of human rights in the developing world to callous call center support.

Managing one's reputation online can be a fulltime job...not every Twitterer or TripAdvisor review warrants a response. But you can't know which ones do and don't if you don't even know what you don't know. 

In some regards, this is the value proposition of a tool like Twitter search...when companies are able to search the realtime grunts and groans of customers and prospects, they can make informed responses to the realtime online reputation (hopefully derived from the real world brand experience)...this approach is also known as dialogue.

Then again, there are those who would make their fortune serving as arbiters of reputations through a neat and tidy score. Vanno, The Company Reputation Index, makes it simple to let people search a company against several criteria to see what their reputation is...all from the convenience of a widget anyone can post on their blog/web microphone:

 

The Company Reputation Index

One can ask the question, though: Why isn't Vanno in the index? [UPDATE: My bad. Apparently Vanno's parent company IS in the index...see comment from Nick DiGiacomo co-founder in comments section]

The Corporate Website: 3 things to know well

We work with some pretty big names in our little corner of the world. 

And these big names often have big company websites. Like the biggies, even our smaller client companies (we love them just as much) sometimes feel the natural pull to talk online about what they really know best...and that's themselves.

Heck, even our corporate website is mostly about ourselves...and the traffic shows it. Job postings are number one...big time. Always have been. Because that's not just about us.

The challenge for the corporate website, then, is to find a way to talk with the real people about what they want...on their terms. 

The struggle is that Corporate websites are generally a collection of items intended to serve a collection of interests....everyone, if noone in particular. They are typically amalgams, created and maintained by a virtual army of vendors + partners, internal and external stakeholders, with noone really in charge. 

Here's three things that (in our experience) a corporate website needs:

1: A customer-centric experience

By organizing—and enabling action—around the tasks of customers, the corporate website ensures that the user’s experience contributes favorably to the overall brand impression.

A customer-centric experience starts with defining the customer of course. Then it embeds:

 

• Usability: Ensuring a usable online experience (that the user is able to complete the task they set out to accomplish efficiently, consistently, and without unrecoverable error). This starts with task-based design that identifies, supports, and is consistent with the way a user expects things to work (Should it matter to you if your phone company's billing department is called 'Revenue Reconciliation'? Would you click on such a link if you had a question about your bill?).  

• Utility: Prioritizing information that is useful and relevant to customers and making it available where customers want it (including 3rd party sites, microsites, and mobile devices for example). I can get market data from my broker on my phone...or flight status notifications from my airline. I'm not required to visit the corporate website for every transaction. Utility can include the ability to listen—and respond—to the feedback and input of the customer voice online...want to know what's working or not? Ask...and listen. 

• Desirability: Ensuring that the online experience reflects at least some of the aspirational and emotional goals of the customer. This includes personalization + humanity: Ensuring that, wherever possible, the online experience remains human, uplifting and forward looking.  Your customer's shouldn't feel the cold impersonality of the corporation.  They should recognize themselves in the tone and imagery of content and see names and faces of the very real people who make up the company).

2:   Metrics + Measurement

The online + digital realm provide numerous opportunities for capturing, analyzing and using data. Integrating this data into ongoing corporate website planning and execution enables integration among elements of the larger sales and marketing experience. There is no secret measurement, no single dimension that explains success (or failure!).  

Effective metrics and measurement of the corporate website rely, instead, on:

• Sharing: Regular communication of the performance of online ads, search, and web traffic among clients, vendors, and partners and among internal and external stakeholders. 

• Analysis: Assessing clickstream data against key performance indicators to answer the questions already asked and using data to determine what new questions ought to be...including what you should ask users (see Utility above). 

• Integration: Using online data to inform, evolve, and more tightly integrate offline sales and marketing strategies.
  

3: Innovation + testing

The corporate website presents an opportunity for marketing innovation. And we're not just talking about implementing technology that all the cool kids are playing with. It's about providing a different expectation of the company website:

• Establishing the company as a facilitator: Expanding offerings online to encompass a broader context in which the company's product or service is used. Third party information, non-traditional formats, options for customer participation in product design. Engagement isn't something that only Apple, Dell and Nike get to do. And it doesn't require that a company do it all themselves. Partnerships and sponsorships work online too you know.

• Leveraging non-traditional tools (of course, today's non-traditional tools become tomorrow's mainstream media) for enhancing the customer experience and testing them on a small scale. Though company's tend to think big, innovation requires small scale tests and the ability to scale what works...and jettison what doesn't. This requires a more scientific approach to trial and error than one built on intuition or personal preference.
  

None of this is rocket science of course. Nor is it comprehensive. Hopefully it's a useful referesher on a few of the important principles for creating an online experience a customer finds worth knowing.

 

But as the online world moves faster toward a

Twitter for Business: Why free isn't always good

Over the last year, we've posted on and about Twitter, Tweetathons and various approaches to always-on information-sharing with Twitter. Even staid agri-businesses, like Monsanto, now have Twitter accounts (here).

Twitter, though, still isn't quite ready for primetime business success. Again this morning... 

 

Social media may not be about marketing (here), but Twitter seems continually to remind us why it's still a free service.

And, yes, the Skittle campaign may be to blame (here). 

Supply + Demand: Making the News Pay

[Today's post is by Diane Martin, Group Account Manager at R+K]

A recent article in Ad Age Media Works--entitled “Wanted: Online Payment Plan for Print”  by Michael Learmonth--is worthy of a quick read (here). There are a couple things to note, none of which have to do with media’s continued denial that the paradigm has permanently shifted.  

First of all, and much more interesting than the whining, is that this article points out how technology enables increasingly rapid paradigm shifts. For example, the online ad market went from $0 to its peak of $20 billion in about a decade.  

Next, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette example is interesting.  Their attitude and approach resonate with me in that they seem very honest about where they can compete and what their audience wants.  They’ve made it palatable--or at least inoffensive--to pay for an online subscription  – an online subscription of $4.95/mo that is less than half the cost of full-service home delivery at $13/mo.  Perhaps more interesting is the AD-G’s CPM differential for display advertising:  $35 print vs $1 online.  

The paper’s owner and publisher, Walter Hussman has some choice quotes about where and how he’ll compete.  "I always ask people, 'When was the last time you bought something from looking at a banner ad?" he said.  

And he knows that online advertising is not a viable, long-term revenue source for his paper. The article quotes Mr. Hussman on the possibility of losing a few $1 CPMs to Yahoo. “So what? If we want the traffic, we can get it in an instant,” he said. “The traffic does not translate into revenue.” 

Finally, while I’m stunned by the notion of taxation to underwrite a model sorely in need of repair, I’d prefer to address the comments from  Jim Spanfeller of Forbes.com and Robert Thomson of The Wall Street Journal regarding editorial quality. Indeed their organizations put out fine news products. But it appears they believe news organizations such as theirs are the arbiters of journalistic quality, not the readers.  Obviously they need to drink a little of the kool-aid that Charlie Tillinghast, president of MSNBC.com, drinks.  "Consumers won't pay; it's just that simple." They'll read amateur blogs and everything else first before they pay for general news and information. Those are the physics of our business."  

But perhaps the fact that I’m sharing commentary on an article from Ad Age Media Works suggests that Mr. Tillinghast isn’t 100% right – I pay my annual online subscription for Ad Age.

177 million channels and nothin' on: Domain masters

Verisign, the domain registrar, reported (here) that the number of domains at the end of 2008 was 177 million. That's up 16% over the number in December 2007.

So What?

Consistent with one of our five 2009 marketing themes (here), the continued growth in online destinations (i.e., inventory) bodes ill for those who would hope for pricing power. Ad deflation would seem the inevitable outcome of an expansion in places for people to spend their time...for those who seek a place to invest their time, it's like having a TV with 177 million channels...on demand.

For those whose value is sold in cost per thousand impressions, 177 million is a big universe to target (of course they are not all ad sites, but you get the point).

For those who may appreciate the irony of a 57-channel TV overload lamentation (now 16 sweet years old), YourToob takes you back in time to...Bruce:

Selling shovels to prospectors: Social Media Marketing's epic fail

Ok, so the headline is probably a bit extreme. Sorry, I don't usually like to trade in sensationalism. But as I was discussing yet another pitch by a social media metrics company with a colleague, the metric of 'friend counts' came up.

The pitch goes something like this: "You know, our research shows that 80% of soc-net users have 0-100 friends and 20% have more than 100...the 80-20 rule. So we use this key metric to identify influencers for special marketing treatment...because if they have more than 100 friends and a bad experience, well, that's alot of risk".

It sounds logical. But counting friends is meaningless. Here's a few reasons:

• Are they really friends? It is a well known phenomenon—Trophy Friends--that some people collect and keep score with their friend counts (or linked in connections, or Twitter follows or friendfeeds, etc.)

• Are influencers always influential? Identifying influencers based on gross generalizations about individuals (e.g., friend counts) is something marketers have always tried to do…Is someone you friended after a 15 minute conversation really influenced by your opinion on detergent? There are literally millions of us, though, who get to be influential once in a while among small groups of people.

• What does 100 friends mean in creating a definition of influencer? Why not 50? Would a social media metrics company feel good about saying it’s discovered a new rule: 95-10, where 95% of users have less than 5 friends? Probably not...because it doesn't promise easy. If you really wanted to understand influence, versus the willingness to click ‘add’, then you’d want to track a recommendation or comment that made it’s way through the ‘friends’ network of a supposed influencer.

Here’s a somewhat relevant example of that using twitter. The list filters popular content against a list of Twitter users who were first to Tweet about it…it’s a proxy, but one could make the case that, at least in this example, some of the first movers are influencing those who follow (i.e., friend) them. The trouble is that once you get below the top 100, you have thousands of people who get to be first…once. Classic Long Tail statistics


So what?

This gets at the issue afflicting social network marketing…the point of social networks is NOT marketing…that’s why Facebook has millions of members and no revenue. (see here for a post on this point).

Finding ways to appeal to millions of people around shared interests will require thousands of approaches…none of which will make the marketers job easy…pitches referencing 80-20 rules or other hokum feel right because it conforms to the marketers pre-existing belief system (which, at least in the client data we’ve worked with, isn’t generally true--or useful).

So getting to the point of this post: If there’s a gold rush on, the real money is made is selling picks and shovels to the prospectors.

Facebook: Putting a value on the daze of our lives?

As an indirect consequence of the AP's investigation of a lawsuit, we discover that Facebook values itself (as of last summer) at $3.7B. (see here for a more detailed rundown of the circumstances and implications of this valuation including a special note on how NOT to use computers to redact information in a document).

So what?
Aside from the obvious question: "What happened to the $15Billion valuation frequently referenced just last year?" there is an interesting advertising message in the math. 

A little simplistic math looks like this:

$3.7Billion dollars / 30 million unique visitors per month (the active users) = $123 per user.

So the market value of the enterprise, assuming it's ALL in the user base, is based on a user value of $123.00 each.

If an impression online costs somewhere south of  one-half a cent (using $5 CPM as a basis), that means you would need to serve each Facebook user 24,600 impressions to justify the market value...if advertising is the revenue model. 

Assuming a generous 2 seconds of attention for each and every impression, that amounts to requiring each user to have 13.66 hours of their lives monetized by impression-based advertising on Facebook.

You can substitute 'virtual drinks' or 'hugs' or whatever you want to substitute for the impressions, but Facebook still has to find a way for it to total $123 per user over whatever the revenue horizon is. 

Of course this is oversimplified math to make an oversimplified point: Social Networks are not about marketing. 

In a deflationary environment (here for prior post), imbalances in the value we assign to things are corrected. Some things, like cars, houses and material goods will be valued less in monetary terms. Other things, like time spent with friends and family, might be valued more than they have been...in non monetary ways (see here for this and other marketing themes for 2009).

Expecting the monetary value of time spent with advertising to increase in such an environment seems an unlikely path to marketing success...especially as the word 'social' regresses to its meaning.

ePocrates: Having a doctor in the palm of your hand

ok, I'm not a doctor and I've never played one...on TV anyway. So I'm not really the target for ePocrates, a company that is developing electronic tools targetting real healthcare professionals (also known as doctors + nurses). But I have been playing with one of their mobile applications, ePocrates Essentials, for the last week and it matters...and not just to real healthcare professionals.

What does it do?

The (currently) free version I have on my Windows Mobile device (yes, there is a version for the iPhone, Palm and Blackberry devices) is an amazing collection of useful information in a usable form factor.

As a consumer (or healthcare professional), I can:

1. Look up any drug and see if it's covered under healthcare plans targetted to my geography, including generic programs like Target and others...see manufacturer's pricing...and alternatives.
   
2. Create and manage custom formulary information sets.
   
3. Discern indications, dosing, adverse reactions and all-important interaction warnings for thousands of drugs.
   
4. Calculate conversions and values for a multitude of measures and data associated with treatment and monitoring (e.g., Body-Mass Index to Osmotic Gaps to Transtubular K gradients)
5. View and complete Continuing Education Medical units
   

All of these features and other, subscription-based modules--like symptom assessment, disease reference, lab diagnostic and infectious disease treatment--are available in automatically updated form on my mobile device: anytime, anywhere.

So What?

As one presenter discussed at the healthcare strategists' forum (here), the quality of healthcare service delivery is the marketing. And that's why ePocrates matters to marketers. Healthcare is, afterall, a knowledge industry.

As in other knowledge industries, control has been shifting to consumers because of the availability of knowledge beyond once-restricted walls of various professional priesthoods. As the information becomes widely available, the expectations and definitions of exceptional service delivery are being redefined on the consumer's terms...ePocrates further deploys knowledge to everyone with a stake in effective, efficient healthcare delivery.

Consistent with one of our marketing themes for 2009--Time as a Risk to Manage (here)--ePocrates anytime, anywhere approach goes one step beyond existing web-based services. It allows patients and their advocates to ask more specific, directed questions of providers--on their schedule. And it provides a source of reference to providers that reflects the always-on world of the healthcare professional...including the time outside the healthcare facility's walls.

ePocrates would appear to appeal to both the healthcare professional AND their customers...healthcare marketers--in both human and animal health domains--may be seeing the immediate future of service delivery improvements from the customer's view--its all right there in the palm of their hand.

The only bad PR is no PR? Journalists and Company websites

I'm not a journalist...though I did do time in journalism class decades ago.  Back then, there were no company websites.  Now, of course, what company can be without one? 

When we develop a company's online presence, we always discuss the value of a creating a special place just for journalists and what it should entail. 

If you expect journalists to cover your company, afterall, what is it that they need from your company website? We have a PR staff at R+K that includes former journalists and their insight into the utility and usability needs of a site is a key element of our efforts. And what do they have to say? 

Unsurprisingly, journalists want the same types of things customers want from a company website: what they are looking for, not necessarily what you want them to hear. 

In fact, usability guru Jakob Neilsen's organization recently summarized the results of their more formal research into 'PR on Websites' (here). According to JK, here's what journalists said they need-specifically- on a company's website:

• Locate a PR contact (name and telephone number)
• Find basic facts about the company (spelling of an executive's name, his/her age, headquarters location, and so on)
• Discern the company's spin on events
• Check financial information
• Download images to use as illustrations in stories

That's it. No mission statement. No virtual tour. Not that they won't use these things, but they don't come to the site for them. 

And what do they do if they can't find what they need? Just like customers and prospects...They go elsewhere...or write about something else. 

If a company wants coverage by journalists (in all their emerging forms) then the company website must provide the users with what they want. To find out what someone wants, of course, you have to ask the question "What do you need?"

 

Death by format: Movies move to enter the ether

Long ago and far away, we wondered aloud whether theaters and DVD's had much of a future. And now the future seems to be arriving quickly, riding the greased wheels of macroeconomic deflation and the cheap revolution.

DVD purveyors + the studios that count on physical media sales are suffering (here). Shipments of physical DVD media in 4Q08 were down 37%.

"Home-video sales and rentals, mostly reflecting DVDs, accounted for 68 percent of the $88.9 billion global filmed- entertainment market in 2008, according to estimates by New York-based PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. The figures include $3.89 billion in online rental fees and digital streaming revenue."

It would be too easy to chalk it up as just another victim of recessionary pressures.  In fact, the streamers, as they will be henceforth known, are up...significantly. Netflix 4Q08 revenues were up 19%.

And Netflix is evolving. I've been using their streaming service--available through my existing Xbox and computer--free. Well, ok, I had to have the unlimited rental plan, but it doesn't cost any extra. And though the selection is limited to a subset of the total NetFlix rental catalog, it's still an impressive breadth.

So What? 

Netflix' integration with Xbox is impressive enough that a million XBox users have signed on to try it in the first three months. A nice example of distribution networks (NetFlix and Microsoft) collaborating to expand the use of their offerings without requiring additional purchases...classic share-gain strategy in a technology-enabled world!

I'll look forward to seeing what Blockbuster, Amazon and iTunes do next with their pay-to-rent download services...either way, the business of physically distributing media would seem to be evolving toward extinction. 

I got nothin'

Zero percent interest for the bill of goods received. Zero credit earned. Zero balance in the trust bank. No more payments past due...all converted to future dues to be paid...by children.

No belief in what is real...because downtimes make for inconvenient political truths. Envy's green back turns on the gangrenous disease of consumption. Too filled to work, too barren to know need, the failure of imagination is that others hopes and dreams are no substitute for one's own reality.

When all the fiscal holes that can be dug by those who don't produce are filled only with our heirs, the truth and consequences of consumption will be told by empty bellies and vacant stares.

Drinking, Driving and Cash for Gold: Super Bowl 2009

America's current champion of sporting spectacles delivered the goods: Close game, 4th quarter drama, the underdogs looking like they could...go...all...the...way...if only for a few minutes...and then there were the ads...

In the lead up, much buzz began (here and here for examples on the RKDNA blog). And now that the ad deal is done, time for the assessment. I've' asked a few of R+K's ad experts to share their informed opinion. Here's the post-game analysis:


Robert Landa:
There can be only one answer to the wasted money, time and effort to write, produce and air the batch of Super Bowl ads for XLIII – it must be a Blackwater contract!

With very few exceptions the ads weren’t even entertaining – the price of entry for this legendary event. Maybe it’s the ad industry that’s bankrupt. Of smart, clever, unexpected ideas. Maybe there is just too much pressure on agencies to over deliver that they simply take to paths well worn. Haven’t we really seen all these ads before?

Kudos to Miller High Life for doing it different. Shame on you Pedigree for taking one of the most poignant campaigns in the last ten years and turning into a joke – and a bad one at that. Budweiser could not be more mean spirited, and I have always admired the teams who can do beer humor well – this category can be amazing. The also-rans are too numerous to mention.

Being that I didn’t have an entry in the game, I will humbly congratulate all who had the chance to participate. Maybe next year you will show the world what great minds and hearts exist in this industry, and how we are actually contributing to the world of entertainment and commerce.

Jim Myers:
As I sit here at a Super Bowl party, squinting through my cardboard 3D glasses and trying to will the SoBe critters to appear even remotely 3D, a truth reveals itself. Just as good is the enemy of great, complicated is the enemy of the Super Bowl spot at a Super Bowl party.

Dialogue? Lost. Storylines? Wasted. Character development? Please.

When a spot's playing at a big party, the recipe for success is different: Be fast and funny. Rise above the fray. Earn your moment away from the chips and beer. And for crying out loud, don't make us think.

Take a look at the crowd reactions:

Man getting hit in groin by crystal ball: Rousing approval.
Budweiser yet again flogging its Clydesdales: So totally over.
Chairbound office worker flying from window: All good.
Danika Patrick's dirty little firesuit: All sad.

The reality is stark and a bit defeating, but if you want to succeed among the party chaos, be visual, be hilarious, and don't require too many neurons to fire.

Wes Meador:
I was thoroughly underwhelmed by the ads last night. In fact, I was horrified when the first spot after the National Anthem was an Avon spot urging viewers to start their own businesses. I’m not sure if this was a national or local ad (I’m thinking local, but I have no idea). It’s such a terrible spot I don’t know why anyone would have wasted money to air it in the Super Bowl. (Not to mention the same ad has been airing for weeks during reruns of Will & Grace on Lifetime.)

The inclusion of an ad targeting women confirms that ads in the big game shouldn’t just be geared toward men. But this one, really? And, from a placement standpoint, having it appear right after Jennifer Hudson’s appearance seemed appropriate if we assume that viewership by women and gay men (potentially the target of the Avon ads) spiked or peaked with Ms. Hudson’s performance. That was the most interesting ad moment of the game…and it happened before kick-off.

Other than that, I thought NBC severely missed the boat with their promos. And the remaining ads (with the exception of the Pedigree ads – which I found amusing) were not entertaining to me. I did, however, notice several movies I’ll be avoiding in the coming months.

Maybe I’m jaded? Or, maybe the game was interesting enough that the ads paled by comparison for a change?

Deron Johnson:
Is it just me, or is the pressure to watch and pass judgment on Super Bowl ads more intense than ever? (Thank God the past two games – including last night’s – were good. Otherwise, we’d all be tuning in to the Super Outrageous Ad Bowl, with the game on the field serving as a great opportunity to go get more queso.)

But this whole spectacle got me thinking – who are we (and by we, I mean the general public, not those of us in marketing communications) to judge a great commercial anyway? Marketers spend infinite amounts of time and bags of money researching and considering their target audience. Every ad we see is not supposed to personally resonate with us – or make us log on to GoDaddy.com to see the rest of the “unrated” Danica Patrick train wreck.

Do the Dorito’s “crystal ball” ad and the Audi “progress” ad speak to the same target? Unless frat guys have suddenly become 38, upwardly mobile and flush with cash, I doubt it. But these spots and dozens of others are all thrown into the same big goofy pot (i.e., the three hours or so between pre-kickoff and post-show) and we’re asked to judge them on supposedly equal merits. All of which forces a conversation not about whether an ad succeeded on its real merits (does it inspire its target to do something) but on a much more superficial one (“Damn, aren’t those monkeys funny?”).

So, when Bruce finished his half-time show, somebody at my house asked why we’ve suddenly been subjected to all the old white guy rockers the past few years. I reminded him to think about the target audience. And then I went to the kitchen for more queso.

Eric Painter:
My impressions of the night mostly lie with who I think got a lot for their money.

Of the commercials I saw (missed quite a few) were Dennys for being so right for the times. Interesting commercial with a nice twist (mafia bosses talking and getting interrupted as the waitress spritzed whipped cream on pancakes) and the kicker of offering a free breakfast to America seemed to hit on a number of smart angles:

• Entertaining creative plot
• Free breakfast-who can think ill of a company doing this-this year -Re-introduced Dennys to anyone who has forgotten about their low prices.
• When is the last time you even thought of Denny's???

Second was Pepsi's Bob Dylan and Will I Am generational spot. Interesting to watch the then and now photos, nice to listen to, and the take away, ties into a long standing theme of Pepsi's...Taste of a new generation. It was their way of trying to position Coke as a has-been years ago. So all the equity they have built through the years is referenced. Spots like this have to be able to be watched over and over without becoming obnoxious. Solid advertising for my money.

The 3D commercials-
I was so busy trying to find my glasses and get the 3D illusion to work (it didn't), I forgot to listen or remember who paid for them...there may be something building here though?

And my own assessment based on commentary among the 20+ folks in the room....

Good: The ridiculous Pepsi take on the SNL MacGruber take on the 80s show Macguyver...featuring Macguyver...near the end of the game. Runnerups: The Doritos Crystal Ball ad where a snow globe is used to break into a vending machine; the humorous parody of the Mean Joe Greene Coke ads from the 70s.

Bad: The Sobe water 3d glasses...noone in our group of 20 even remembered to get the glasses out...the advertisers made the mistake of thinking we would care enough to remember to keep them handy. Runnersup: GE's old Ecomagination ads showing smart grids and windmills....someone in our group asked where they could buy one of those...maybe good for Sunday morning talk shows, but for the Super Bowl?

Odd: Two bankrupt C-lebrities hawking GoldForCash.com. Ed McMahon and MC Hammer promoting a virtual pawn shop were a frightening look at Super Bowl advertising in a tough economy. The plethora of beer ads, career ads, and the lack of ads from the not-so-big-3 automakers speak volumes about the state of the ad economy.

What did you think?

Short attention span theater: The one second ad

In an email conversation last night, Wes Meador of our Media group mentioned the Miller Brewing Company's plans to air one-second ads in this weekend's Super Bowl (see here for prior post on Super Bowl ad). 

A one-second ad? When does an ad become subliminal?

Actually, the ad almost appears to be secondary to the ad format. In an interview on the subject during NPR's Marketplace segment,  the format appears to be part of a buzz strategy (not the "please drink irresponsibly" kind). Miller wants its ads to be part of the annual pre- and post-Super Bowl ad discussions (like this I suppose)...so this year, they are trying a format experiment.

Of course, like many advertising concepts, the novelty is gone after the first advertiser does it. 

But it does raise a few questions:

• Might we see ever-shorter formats become standard (remember the novelty of the 15-second spot)? 
• Will increasing inventories of ad space generate less rigidity among broadcasters in the length of commercials they price and the pricing models they use (is there a rate sheet for a 6 second spot?)?
• Will the shorter ads be any more effective at generating measurable results than their long-winded brethren?
• Would a one-second blog post on the topic look like this?: 1-second Miller ad. (Oh wait, that's Twitter!)
  

Uncertainty of outcome. I guess that's why the play the game.

Homegrown advertising: Beating the pros at their own game?

The festivities for Super Bowl Ex-El-aye-aye-aye (isn't the Roman empire dead?) have begun. The teams have imposed curfews on their players (as game prep or PR risk-management strategy I'm not sure). The city of Tampa is decked out to welcome its own sports-infused economic stimulus package...and all of America awaits the informal holiday that has become the Super Bowl...and no Super Bowl would be complete without at least a few memorable ads.

In the democratization of America's last bastion of collective advertising attention, Doritos returns with it's own version of the Super Bowl ad prize...Crash the Super Bowl.

This year's prize of $1 million goes to the winner if their advertisement finishes atop the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter. That's a lot of coin riding on a creative brief that's, well, brief:

"CREATIVE ASSIGNMENT: Here’s the deal. Think of an idea for a DORITOS® brand commercial. Not just any idea, but one worthy of being called the best of the Super Bowl. Maybe it’s an action-packed story about the first time you tried DORITOS® brand Tortilla Chips. Maybe it reveals what life is like for the spices on the surface of the chip. Anything. Make the video that would knock you out of your seat if you were watching the Super Bowl. Make it yours.

Shoot it. Submit it. Make it as one of five finalists and win $25,000. Then, if America votes it their favorite, your video will be aired as a DORITOS® commercial during Super Bowl XLIII. But that’s not all. If your ad gets the top spot on the USA TODAY Ad Meter, we’ll give you a $1,000,000 bonus. Sound good? We thought so. Criteria for the USA TODAY Ad Meter is determined solely by USA TODAY, which is not affiliated with this promotion in anyway."

So what?

Doritos isn't the only company to attempt to engage customers and unaffiliated creatives. Heinz Ketchup's TopThisTv, Miller's Life is What You Pour Into It competition, and others all cast a wide net in the style of America's Funniest Videos: you do the content, we'll pay for the winners...no traditional ad agency need apply. A key element of most of these approaches is that they involve some form of popularity contest (via voting).

Amateur advertising comports with at least one of our five themes for 2009: Testing in the real world.

How so? Amateur ad competitions give advertisers a low-cost way to develop, test and adapt ad concepts in the real world. And then, using engagement-via-voting (or lack of it), advertisers get to determine just what rings resonant with the marketplace...a focus group of self-identifying, self-selecting thousands...or millions?

The winners may not rise to the status of high art branding, but the continued devaluation of that approach to advertising may make the issue of no concern...either way, the advertisers running the competition don't have much loot at risk...and financial risk is certainly something to be managed diligently.

Questions in search of a point of view:

What, if any, risk to the brand exists in amateur ad competitions like Doritos'?

Steelers in a 20-point blowout?

But wait, there's more! Direct response goes primetime

I don't watch a ton of TV, but is it just coincidence that I seem to be seeing more of the looks-like-it-was-shot-with-a-FlipVideo camera commerical for 5-hour energy ? Or the creepy and uber-annoying Sham Wow whammy of a shammy? Or Snuggie, the blanket with arms? Apparently not. I am seeing more of these direct-response ads...

We've posted before about the relationship between deflation and ad inventory (here) and the impact of auto and financial services exodus from brand advertising markets (here). But now, it's even hitting primetime. Direct response marketers are availing themselves of ad space that used to be called primtime for a reason: prime ad rates.

As the NYTimes confirms, the lack of primetime-paying advertisers has left the major network and cable outlets with inventory...and direct response marketers are in a position to take advantage of the opportunity.

The money advertisers spent declined 7.5 percent on network TV, and 5.5 percent on cable, from 2007 to 2008, according to TNS Media Intelligence.

The money direct marketers are spending on primetime space is sometimes a tenth of what the space went for just one year ago.

Recessionary pressures and increased emphasis on revenue-generation among advertisers is creating a perfect setting for direct response marketers to redefine primetime advertising. We can all expect more of the slightly amusing, certainly annoying, wonder-product advertising into the forseeable future.

Consistent with an Increasing Discomfort Index (one of our 5 marketing themes for 2009), it appears that primetime is a comfort zone no longer...Subprime time has arrived...the question remains whether 'As see on TV' means anything special to anyone but the advertiser.

Things I'd like to know: The value of time?

Questions I'd like answered for a Thursday morning:

Is YouTube a time machine?

Seems the site is capturing 15 hours of uploaded video--much of it with music--every minute of the day. That's 2.46 years worth of video every single day. That's alot of clutter to shout through...and alot of potential time to spend with a network that lets you decide whats on. No wonder they call it 'consumer control'.

What's would you do for a Klondike bar...or a Tweet..or a positive review?

Seems Belkin has been paying $0.68 for positive reviews of its electronic gear on Amazon (here). In an era of transparency (thanks to the ubiquitous, always on network), you'd think this type of old school marketing + PR would have died already. Paying people for their time is one thing...paying for a product review seems like a misguided shortcut.

And in another real world experiement, we confirm the power of pride as a motivator for directing where people spend their time. Seems someone (many?) has been offering to pay for people to use Twitter to vote for their entry in the Shorty contest (a contest for short prose via Twitter. What were you thinking?)...a contest with no prize money, no swag...just being able to say 'I won'. Price for each vote: $0.48. Getting to say you won: Priceless (apparently).

Sounds alot like a calendar contest we ran a few years ago: our analytics data showed that some people spent as many as 8 hours of their day voting to get their pet's picture included on a calendar! Now that's the power of pride.

When does late become too late?

Remember the venerable encyclopedia? Or the last time you actually opened one? Yeah me neither. I have a stack of them in my basement (they've been for more than a year having migrated, unused, from a book shelf to a corner by the sump pump...I haven;t found the time to get them to the county recycling station).

Well, Encyclopedia Britannica 2.0 is launching online...and they are throwing down the challenge to Wikipedia (here). Seems like a good idea if they had started 5 years ago. Now, if they can just convince everyone to start their Google search with 'Encylopedia Brittanica'...

Gratuitous YouTube headline link:

Google says goodbye to print

One of our five marketing themes for 2009 is Testing the Real World (here). The basic idea is that you can fall in love with planning, but don't fall in love with your plan...testing ideas out in the real world will tell you everything you need to know about the validity of your ideas + assumptions...and when the real world says stop, organizations must be able to say 'ok' to themselves.

And so by way of example, Google's plan to expand it's digital empire into print seems to be at an end. They have announced the end of the Google Print Ads application effective February 28. Which is likely fine, given the sorry state of print (as in newsprint) overall (here and here for prior examples + data).

So What?

Google has exemplified the idea of the perpetual prototype...even some of its most popular applications are still listed as 'beta'. But what Google has seen in its 'beta' approach to enabling print ad buying using the same platform as online, is that the market says stop. 

Hats off to Google for having the guts to look beyond the fallacy of sunk costs and put an end to this particular experiment.  

Rest assured there will be more experiments (from the Google blog announcement):

"We will continue to devote a team of people to look at how we can help newspaper companies. It is clear that the current Print Ads product is not the right solution, so we are freeing up those resources to try to come up with new and innovative online solutions that will have a meaningful impact for users, advertisers and publishers."

Marketing 2009: Change we can believe in

Over the course of several impromptu meetings, colleagues Diane Martin, Robert Landa and I engaged in some dialogue about the road ahead for marketers in 2009. As a synopsis of these discussions--and the many others with many others that they reflect--we arrived at five themes for this year.

We see these themes not as predictions but as a set of lenses through which to characterize and inform marketing and advertising thinking in the year ahead...we'll look forward to describing the themes and their implications with examples throughout the year. And I hope that all will feel free to contribute to the discussion.

We recognize these themes as incomplete and they are posted with the humility required by H.L. Mencken's words about what is obvious:

"There is always a well-known solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong."

With that in mind, here are five Inauguration Day themes that we believe will [continue] driving marketing change in 2009:

Theme 1: Wearing other people's shoes

The era of the simulacra in marketing--whereby we substitute a representation of what is real for what is real--will further resolve itself in 2009. Defining a customer's values by using a marketer's representation of those values will be discredited by...the customer. Unauthentic marketer monologues that rely on self-referencing notions or that characterize people as collectivist definitions based on gender, race, age, income, or as...consumers...will be cast aside. In their place, favor will rest with real conversations among real people that enable the real people in marketing to catch a glimpse of the real world as it exists where someone else stands.

Theme 2: Increasing the discomfort index

The tools and techniques that have gotten marketers where they are will be unable to sustain them going forward. In a year when many long held beliefs--from capitalism to consumption--are being questioned, people in marketing will need to question whatever makes them feel comfortable. If it's easy, if it's table stakes, it probably needs to be questioned.

Theme 3: Testing the real world

Along the lines of themes 1 and 2, the idea of market-testing ideas will continue to evolve toward a ready, fire, reload approach. With one-size-fits-all focus group and field studies too slow, too expensive and too generalized, creative and product testing will take place in realtime using clickstream data to inform evolution and variation in low cost, perpetual prototypes...much as direct mailers have practiced in paper space for some time.

Theme 4: Detailed online impressions

After years of ignoring the online space, many people in marketing have rushed in to fully embrace it...using the traditional models of impressions-based media, intrusion, and branding that they comfortably carried with them from meatspace. In 2009, impressions-based pricing online will continue its deflationary trend and be replaced by pricing models that pay only for performance. Intrusion-based ad units such as rich media and popovers will be ignored routinely. People in marketing roles will focus on the nuances of online brand experiences as defined by a long-tailed view of customer preferences and interactions with a brand. Usable, useful, and desirable will be the criteria against which meaningful brand experiences will be designed and delivered online--and off.

Theme 5: Time as a risk to manage

Time is the one commodity everyone has in equal portions each day. People in marketing will increasingly confront the reality that wasting a customer's time is a brand risk that must be actively managed. Engagement will be defined more precisely in terms of positive and negative engagements where efficient use of and respect for a person's time becomes the expectation. Whether it's call center catacombs, unusable information, spam like solicitations, or irrelevant pitches, marketers will find that a risk premium comes standard with every touchpoint.

Bonus Inaugural Theme: [Your theme here]

A human voice is a terrible thing to waste. If you have one, please make it heard.

Pulp fiction?

Previously, I've posted on various dismal assessments of the newspaper business (here and here for example). Of the many options that didn't involve variations on the status quo, one idea was to enlist citizen reports (i.e., bloggers) to make newspapers the ultimate local news source...able to be printed on demand.

Here comes an entrepreneurial precursor to making it happen: The Printed Blog.

The Chicago-based company will take the usual news gathering and distribution model and ignore it. Here's a few key features:

• Anyone can submit content.
• A physical paper will be printed twice daily and distributed at high traffic areas around the city.
• Editors will select articles around an issue theme, but the article copyright is retained by the author.
• Local versions could enable as many as 100 different papers being printed on any given day.

More on the many basics here.

So What?

Traditional news outlets have made half-hearted attempts to include video, blog postings and even Twitter-scratch in their news reports, oftentimes as a side show. But a couple of things stand out in The Printed Blog model that might be taken more seriously by Big News:

1. The model of journalists (in this case, interchangeable with the term 'bloggers') as owners of their work is something the traditional papers have been slow to make eye contact with. Except for celebrity opinionaters like Thomas Friedman or old-school investigators-turned-book authors like Bob Woodward, most electron-stained wretches get a by-line and a paycheck--but not the copyright--to their words.

2. Readers will select the blogs/bloggers they want more of. In this meritocratic approach to selecting who gets to be a reporter, one sees a different type of accountability being applied to local news reporting. Some may pine for the mythical days of the fourth estate as a place beyond the subjective demands of the marketplace or, worse, populist vagaries. But that bridge has already been crossed thousands of times. The Printed Blog acknowledges and embraces reality.

Like anything in the hype machine, the proof of concept will be told in the execution. But if the cause of any decline can be traced to a failure of imagination, The Printed Blog may at least provide a bit of inspiration for mapping a future that includes newspapers.

Required Pulp Fiction headline reference link:

Don't you beleive it: Google is green

Further indicating the maxim "Trust. But verify" the widely circulated story about the ecological costs of a Google search appear to be, well, not what they seem.

History lesson: Interwebs as unintended outcome

You've probably heard about ARPA and DARPA. But do you know about NPL? or IMPs? Cyclades even?

Here's a fascinating 6minute look at how the interwebs got where they are from 1957 to now. One can't help but notice that the aggregation of bits and pieces of technology and intentions from multiple sources--defense, commerce, academia--are all embedded in the DNA of what is known to us now as the smartest networking approach of all: the the stupid network.

It's also a nice example of history made interesting using simple animation and voice over.



History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.

House of brands or branded house: AOL says both

Big companies with diverse product lines have sometimes struggled with the idea of being a branded house (think Apple or Microsoft) or being a house of brands (think P&G).

And for all the 'new' bandied about in new media, many early movers have struggled with a portal, vortal, niche site personality disorder.

One early mover online, AOL, appears to be shifting strategy to become, to some extent, a house of brands. Having migrated from it's proprietary, garden-wall software experience (does anyone remember the landfill's worth of software install discs they received in the mail?) to a web-based experience, AOL's content remains largely branded as AOL Sports, AOL Finance and so on.

But much like magazine publishers of years past, AOL is pursuing web properties that have little, if any, brand identification with the AOL mothership. Sites like TMZ.com, Engadget or Joystiq are all part of a 75+ site AOL universe and yet you have to look very hard to see any branding with AOL.

Of course the web facilitates fragmented media for fragmented interests, but this also seems to be a turning point for AOL: Pursuing a mixed branding strategy of both branded house and house of brands.

Is it possible to pursue seemingly competing strategies? Time (Warner) will tell.

Advertising in a recession: Trust me. Honest.

When bubbles burst, the reality of the world rushes in...sometimes it just takes a while to sink in. When it does, it can be bracing...or life changing.

In our current burst bubble, many of us are experiencing a deficit of trust. In our leaders, in our institutions...in advertising?

For some, it's been an accepted truth that advertising sells. And when times are tough, well, that's precisely the time to put your trust in advertising. Some have even go so far as to say that "you should advertise in good times, but you must advertise in bad."

But is that really a truth we can trust?

TNS Media Intelligence released ad spending for quarters 1-3 of 2008 (here). As many expected, Jan-Sept 2008 reflected a decline of 7% in ad spending overall. But I decided to take a look at the top 10 advertiser's spending and see what happened to their stock price during the same period.

The premise being that, if the recession began in December 2007, then wouldn't the biggest spender's stock price be a good proxy for earnings against which to test the must-spend pablum quoted above?

Here's the table from TNS appended with my analysis of the stock prices:



So what?

Two facts and a thought: (1) those who increased ad spending fared worst; (2) those who cut ad spending did better; (3) you can neither cut nor spend your way to growth.

My comparison of ad spending to stock price does not present a comprehensive picture or an absolute truth of course. But it does present a challenge to those of us who beleive in advertising: be honest about what advertising can do. Honesty...with ourselves and our clients...is the only foundation on which trust can be built. And honesty requires more than words.

Five questions: what's changing?

Random questions for a Wednesday:

Will the NYTimes really default on $400 million in debt this spring? And why is the story being covered in the online version of a 150-year old print publication?

Will Ogilvy's layoffs of 10% of North American staff be full price...or just a downpayment?

Apple's new DRM-free iTunes sounds great. But what about my previously purchased tunes and albums? Am I reading it right? I have to pay 30% more to unlock the songs I already bought?

Noone can predict the future, but is Ray Kurzweil's decade-old vision of 2009 as Nostradamus-like as anyone?

If you could have money or happiness, which would you choose?

Time and motion: online video

While Federal Reserve Governors continued to list inflation as their 2009 new year's resolution, at least one aspect of our lives into the new year is already rapidly inflating: the amount of time spent watching videos online.

Comscore released its numbers and the rise looks like this: a 40% jump in one year in the number of videos viewed online. In addition, the average length of a video viewed was a whopping 3.1 minutes. (See chart below or press release).

So what?

Google (which is YouTube) dominates...more than 5 Billion served in one month...followed by MySpace (which is the Fox Interactive Media number). But what the numbers also may be saying is this:

1. Broadband is enabling the rapid growth of video online.

2. Cheap digital video capture devices are continuing the growth of user-generated video online (prior post on mobile video here)

3. There is a role for professionally produced video online (via traditional network sites like Hulu, Disney, Turner) it just doesn't look like double-digit share online.

We've said it before, but if you are a network, you want all the content you can get your hands on. If you are a content producer, you want to be on the network with the broadest exposure...YouTube fits the bill. As does MySpace and certain others who let anyone be a content creator...

And in another irony of the online marketplace of ideas, some are even taking YouTube video to the big screen (see here)

Now, if the Fed, er, Google could just figure out how their YouTube debt can be monetized...

Dude, where's my slide rule?

Take one part year end list-making tradition.

Mix heaping tablespoons of technology-driven innovation.

Add a pinch of recessionary pressure.

Stir vigorously--or beat relentlessly--your preference.

Bake half way and----and voila! The 2009 list of things on the path toward obsolescence.

Think of these soon to be relics not sadly, but with the fondness of a farewell said before a journey forward.

Play along. Add your own. It's hours of family fun!

In no particular order, here's a starter set:

-Film and film cameras
-Wireline telephones
-Incandescent light bulbs
-800x600 screen resolution
-Prime Time television
-CPM/online display advertising
-VCRs (anything really that plays or records to tape)
-Travel agents
-Printed Catalogs
-CDs
-DVDs (sorry BluRay fans)
-Record companies
-Stenographers
-Fax machines
-The US Postal Service
-Newspapers
-General Motors
-Metallica
-Stock brokers
-Any phone that can't surf the web and text
-50% of all social networking sites
-The terms 'Social Marketing' and 'Social Media'

What's on your list?

Publicity + PR

[Today's post is by Laura Schmidt of the R+K's Public Relations practice]

I posted a couple of days ago (here) about the Diet Pepsi and Burger King ads (here) that are gaining a lot of publicity for their somewhat taboo approach to marketing. At the time, I promised to offer more insight into R+K’s point of view. Three points regarding publicity and PR – good and bad – for your consideration:

1. PR is not publicity. Publicity, which generates consumer awareness, is only one function of public relations. A public relations campaign might include media relations, yes, but it also might solely be about public affairs, crisis communications, internal relations, events or message development and delivery.
2. Publicity is about getting attention. PR is about influencing opinion. While a straight publicity stunt might gain public attention of a product, person, service, cause or organization, PR is meant to change public opinions and behaviors. At R+K, we dig deeper to identify credible insights and uncommon solutions to challenges that resonate with consumers, ultimately inspiring them to take action.
3. Bad PR is bad PR. It’s a blessing and a curse, I suppose, that PR offers third-party credibility that other marketing approaches don’t. Why? It’s great for your brand or organization when you generate legitimate exposure among important, influential audiences. But your PR efforts can easily backfire when those same credible sources question, discount or attack you.

Need more food for thought? Check out our consumer education and advocacy Web site at www.rkconnect.com/cae

The selfish gene: self-reference in the AdAge

Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, published a book in 1976 called The Selfish Gene. In an oversimplification of his point of view, the idea is that genes are a means unto themselves (rather than being merely players in supporting the evolution of the organism that employs them).

Sometimes, according to Dawkins, genes even act in ways that benefit themselves at the expense of the organism (think genetically induced diseases for instance).

What does this have to do with marketing? Or advertising? Or the interwebs?

Traditional advertising is a selfish approach to marketing. It not that it presumes to know what others want or need...that's not selfish, it's arrogant. It's that traditional approaches to advertising interrupt and demand that attention be rendered unto it.

Once upon a time when time seemed less scarce, when mass media was the only option, and before media consumers were themselves media producers, selfish advertising worked. It worked for it's own interests.

The environment has changed. Customers and prospects are all selfish, sometimes in a very public way. I'm not talking about people being uncaring or without charity. Quite the contrary. I'm talking about the selfishness of individual choices and self expression in the marketplace.

Consumers (not a term, I trust, most of us would choose to define our interests) have always been selfish...it's just that in the always-on, democratized media environment today, selfish advertising doesn't stand a chance against the infinite choices in self interest a person now has.

When an environment changes, organisms must adapt to survive. The same holds true for marketers. They must be cognizant that selfish prospects want to decide what's good for themselves. A marketer who takes an unselfish approach to engaging self-interested prospects might just find a way to survive...and thrive.

Word of mouth goes to the dogs

Playing on recognizable relationship stereotypes from across generations, JCPenney has unleashed a long form word of mouth video...just in time for the holidays.

Though there are surely countless numbers of those who won't get it, won't like it, and won't see themselves as the target, the vid plays the foil to the more classically romantic 'Diamonds Are Forever' and the insipid 'He Went to Jared' campaigns using humor, fast moving storyline, and believable actors.

Most importantly, the sell is subtle...and it comes at the end in an unobtrusive reference that fits within a narrative designed around human relationships.

Produced by Saatchi + Saatchi New York, the video is, of course, on YouTube (see below). But it also resides on it's own promotional URL www.BewareOfTheDoghouse.com.

The site allows one to send someone to the virtual doghouse for prior behavior, to learn how to get out of the doghouse should you find yourself there already, and most importantly...to forward a message by email to those significant others who may be in need of holiday reminders that no bad gift deed shall go unpunished.

May I see your papers please?

Last week I flew out of ORD...on time no less.

Big deal, you say, so do 77 Million other people a year (though of course they don;t all leave on time)!

And this would be no special trip (they all are) except that I flew out after using an electronic boarding pass on my mobile device.

American Airlines launched a mobile boarding pass application the week of 11/23 that enables travellers originating out of OHare, LAX and LGA to download a boarding pass to their mobile device (full details here).

The way it works is that you recieve a message on your mobile device. The message enables you to download a data matrix image (A GS1 data matrix I beleive. see below). At the airport security screening station, you hold your mobile device screen over a scanner. The image you downloaded is scanned and confirms you as, if not trustworthy, at least in possession of a valid boarding pass. The TSA agent still wants to see your id of course, but no obscure symbols are marked on your device screen.

At the gate, you hold your mobile phone in front of the scanner that the gate agent uses for those possessing paper passes and...voila...aboard you go.

Boarding passes are small pieces of paper...which is precisely why the mobile device presents an advantage. No small piece of paper to misplace. Not world changing, but an incremental improvement that foreshadows completely electronic identification.

Why not a driver's license on my device? Or a passport? Based on a biometric key like retina scan or fingerprint, it would certainly seem at least as secure as our current paper-based approaches.

Here's my pass

Accounting for reach: the IAB goes dictionary

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (henceforth, IAB) has released a set of Online Audience Reach Measurement standards for public comment (here).

One might ask what took so long...then again, it is easy to forget that the explosion in approaches to audience measurement--commensurate with widespread adoption of the web and broadband--is fairly recent by historical advertising standards.

The IAB puts it's intent thusly:

"This document is intended principally to guide the definition and application of measures that are to be used for commercial, revenue-generation purposes, and not necessarily those that may be developed and used for other internal or related non-commercial uses."

In other words (mine), now that the traditional media buying entities have accepted online advertising with vigor, we need to ensure that there are some common definitions around what publishers represent and what an online ad buyer can buy...definitions that accommodate the way they are used to buying traditional media.

In some ways I suppose this is an inevitable outcome of the promise of measurement online colliding with the reality of media planning offline. Offline media planning and buying has been all about identifying under of over indexing against spartan human descriptions like age, gender and race (an oversimplification I know, but also a point of understanding I hope).

So codifying definitions of reach and the ways in which they are measured is certainly to be applauded by those entrusted with buying media the old way. How one defines unique visitors, time spent on site, page views and the more obscure implications of technologies like flash, ajax or server-side applications can all result in widely varying estimates of reach.

Advertisers, publishers and everyone involved in the planning, buying and followthrough of online advertising will benefit from transparency and standardization. When a publisher reports that they have 80% reach among a target audience online, the IAB guidelines should help advertisers and their agents make a decision with some certainty that they understand where the 80% came from. It should help them evaluate CPM-based ad rates with more precision.

If you are a reach and frequency fan, then these are good for you.

It is not apparent, though, how any of this addresses the larger issues of pay-for-performance, engagement, user control, or return on investment. If you are focussed on engaging a smaller, long tail audience more intensely, then these guidelines won;t do your bidding.

These guidelines may help in developing unique, campaign-specific metrics aligned with real business objectives: cost reduction, sales, and service aligned with customer value are but a few examples...but these types of goals will require more than is contained in any set of advertising measures.

The end of slideshows: A world premiere

Tired of trying to make powerpoint move? Not sure you have the creative genetics to make your photogallery project groove?

Animoto is feeling you. Boldly proclaiming "the end of slideshows" Animoto provides a web-hosted application that takes your tired, poor, huddled images and turns them into shining beacons of slideshow movie creativity...with optional DVD quality no less.

The secret sauce (so they say) is that Animoto analyzes your images and then applies algorithms created by real life creative geniuses (directors) to devise a one-of-a-kind movie--complete with transitions, effects and edits all based on your images. And there's more!

Got an ear for a tune? You can upload your own Emmy-winning musical score, or just plain tune, or you can select from Animoto's pre-licensed music (available in a variety of styles from classical to hiphop to, well let's just call it electronic metal).

I created a demo video using random images from my computer (I was curious how Animoto's algorithm would treat them). The entire process to create my 23-second masterpiece took a grand total of 275 seconds (not counting Animoto's rendering time of 5 minutes...which was plenty of time to delete the holiday spam in my inbox).

So what?

Though the output reflects the input mostly, it also reflects an improved end to the one that requires more time or money than you have.

By embedding the expertise of video professionals in software, Animoto creates a tool that gets a job done: all without a battle of wills over creative control. It certainly won't replace professionals in those situations that require them...but it will make a lot of amateurs look a lot better...and like so many other applications of cheap computing, client expectations of cost and complexity will be influenced by consumer tools like Animoto.

And unlike iMovie, Windows Movie Maker or other consumer tools for stringing together the pretties, the hosted application approach of Animoto means it can be done without a wire and without software.

And without further hesitation, I bring you the world premiere of the Animoto collaboration entitled...Demo*

*Bonus points for anyone who can identify with reasonable accuracy more than 5 of the 9 images in this visually stunting movie.

Cars, banks and ad performance: The Sporting News

The Hollywood Reporter (no, I don't usually visit, but this is research!) has an article about a report on ad spending among financial services firms: down 10% this year through 3 quarters.

Of course that's overall. Ad spending by formerly fat cats like Bank of America (the #3 financial services ad spender), is down 30% this year...shareholders can only wish the stock price was doing as well (BAC down 70%).  Financial Services firms and the other major beleaguered industry, Automakers, represent two of the big three TV advertiser categories (consumer goods being number 3). 

Automakers have reduced TV spending in 12 consecutive quarters. Even supposing they successfully lobby for taxpayer money, it's hard to imagine those funds will be put to use paying advertising bills.   

So what?

Financial services and Autos represent the two biggest spenders in televised sports (10% of all sports advertising according to Steve Lanzano of ad group MPG North America). Should spending on sports wane, then inventory becomes available. And with any commodity whose supply exceeds demand, prices will drop (see here for a take on ad deflation).

It may be that sports sponsorships and advertising will become affordable for second tier advertisers...now defined as those who have cash. 

It might also be that those with now-scarce cash for advertising demand something more for their money than their name on a 'sponsored by' screen: namely, they may demand performance. 

A recession in ad spending may move all industries once and for all toward performance based models of advertising...the kind direct response marketers have lived with for years.  

How many Buicks did GM sell because of Tiger Wood's celebrity? How many leads did the stunning ad during the Master's generate? In the future, one might expect that question to be answered by a marketing executive in front of his shareholders, in front of the campaign...not by a CEO in front of Congress after the money is gone. 

It would be only sporting:  advertisers pay not just to have their ads show up, but like the athletes they are underwriting, for actually performing. That's a game that's not limited to professional sports.

All grown up now: The Mac OS gets viral

After years of proclaiming a virus-free computing environment, Apple quietly announces its recommendation that Mac users get antivirus software (see the Apple Support forum here).

Or perhaps, just a sophisticated way of generating sales from the Apple store in a down environment?

UPDATED 12/3...apparently Apple has removed the referenced posting to the support page. A spokesperson claims "it was old and outdated information." Computer security experts ask why they wouldn't update the information it rather than removing it.  Especially since Apple's share of the market has grown slightly. Full controversy here.