whatstheidea. whats the idea
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Just as farmers are toiling now with herbicide resistant weeds, members of the marketing community are having trouble connecting with advertising resistant consumers.
Roots.
Roots is a concept I discuss with my consulting clients; the return to a simpler, more prideful lifestyle. Don’t throw away your million iPazzles — not that type of simple. But do watch old black and white, finely crafted movies on them. (Etsy is a hot web property that plays to the roots phenomenon — catering to the hand-made crowd.)
Because of herbicide resistant strains of weeds, many farmers are back in their fields plowing and manually pulling weeds, a practice hey had long forgone. Roots. Advertisers, on the other hand, rather than creating more meaningful and sales-appropriate messages — also roots — have decided to take their selling messages to new places. Advertising is now all over our favorite web applications and phones and and and… As we become more resistant to sales message we don’t need to invent new media to carry those messages; we need to reinvent the messages themselves. The introduction of account planning to advertising was the first acknowledgement of that. It’s use in digital media is growing and not a moment too soon.
Marketers, here are some words to live by: don’t overly complicate, message the benefit, avoid sameness, read Maslow, and smile (whistle) while you work. Peace!
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Tags: Account Planning, digital media, etsy, herbicide resistant weeds, ipad, ipazzle, marketing, roots, smart phones., whatstheidea. whats the idea
Product placement is a funny thing; more often than not when you see a brand in a movie or a TV reality show it’s been placed there at a price. Most of the time, those placements are heavy-handed and disruptive — not a good thing. If a viewer feels the product has been curated into a story it suspends belief. Kind of like bad acting.
When discussing commercial social media I often refer to the need for the brand poster – the person posting on behalf of the brand — to create a persona, complete with a tangible, obvious motivation. For Zude.com, for instance, “Tip-Z” was created as a roving help person. She assisted people with the drag and drop application, but she did so as a bit of a tippler. Hic. So some of her help came out a bit garbled, goofy and funny. Personality flaws aside, it made Tip-Z real.
Product placement on TV that doesn’t fit or social media personalities that lack personality underachieve. Content may be king but context is key. One way around what Steve Rubel calls “The Attention Crash” is to create muscle memory for brands. While others are out there shamelessly hawking product and services one on top of the other, smart brands are standing out because they create memorable context. Meaningful, memorable context. Peace!
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Tags: product placement, social media, Steve Rubel, the attention crash, whatstheidea. whats the idea, zide.com
I had two meetings yesterday at one of the world’s largest ad agencies. (Hint: Its name is 3 letters.) Not only is this agency doing good, effective work but it has a better than average track record of integrating digital and traditional media. The meetings were with an analytics director and a creative director.
Analytics
The analytics guy was inspiring and convincing and made a great case for plotting marketing success through data. Evidence-based analysis, he said, grounds marketing in reality, not sales BS. If the data informs the creative then the brand can work toward one or many measurable goals. This gentleman wasn’t being paid by the teraflop, he cared about selling product.
Creative
My other meeting was with a creative director. “Creative is pretty poor today” he offered. “It’s all the same. Not much stands out. Too much rational thought. People buy based upon emotion. People are emotional. Did you get married based on a rational decision or an emotional one?” This gentleman didn’t obsess about creative awards, he cared about selling product.
So both care about selling product – that’s why this is a good shop — yet these two guys will never meet. Typically they connect via an account planner who writes the brief. The account planner is a little right brain, a little left brain. Good planners act as mediators between these two disciplines. Great planners act as conduits. Brilliant planners find ways to bring them together and help them see the brand through a single set of eyes. Heavy lifting indeed. Peace!
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Tags: account planner, Account Planning, analytics, creative director, marketing, whatstheidea. whats the idea
“Fall forward fast” is a marketing maxim many have followed with great success. Be bold, be quick, correct as needed. It’s a fist-mover approach and it was good advice back in the day. But the Internet has sped things up a bit don’t you think? Fast today is a lot faster than it was 4 years ago.
Google Buzz was brought to market too fast. Is it correctable? Sure. Will Google take some heat? Sure. Will it recover, sure. That said, I suspect there’s a little tainted blood in the Google bloodstream thanks to this effort and Google needs to take a breath. When you launch a new service and the phrases “opt-out,” “disable,” “sorry,” “feedback” and “critics” become keywords of the coverage you have not done enough homework. Google “google buzz”+”critics” and see what pops up.
Facebook‘s Beacon advertising program wasn’t thoroughly vetted before launch nor was the Google Nexus One, released before back-end customer care issues could be properly handled.
Overdogs.
Did you watch the Superbowl? Which team did you root for? The overdog or the Saints? Overdogs are leaders. They, more than anyone, need to be careful when bringing new services to market. Take a breath. Do some reconnaissance. Let power users spank the brand a bit (“brand spanking” is a great overdog research methodology). Then launch. Too much Starbucks, as Zack de la Rocha might say, “can killa man.” Peace!
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Tags: facebook beacon, google buzz, google buzzed, nexus one, overdog, saints, superbowl, whatstheidea. whats the idea, zach de la rocha
Back with a flourish.
Back in the day, so the story goes, Smith and Wollensky’s Steak House was about to close its doors for lack of business. Poppe Tyson and creative director Fergus O’Daly created an ad for them – a full page in The New York Times – with a life-size picture of a Smith and Wollensky’s matchbook in the lower right corner atop a small headline: “Finally a match for the Palm and Christ Cella.” The rest, as they say, is history.
Steak for Stock
Today in that same New York Times Smith and Wollensky continues its great run of print advertising with “Steak for Stock.” Not sure if Alan Stillman (CEO) is still behind the advertising but it certainly feels like him. The “Steak for Stock” ad invites you to bring in valid stock certificates in exchange it for a juicy, aged and perfectly charred sirloin. Can’t you just smell the certificate paper?
Smith and Wollensky has made a living with its wit, its wine, its relevance and its meat and spinach. I’m probably borrowing this from Ben Benson’s, another brilliant NY steak house, but Smith and Wollensky’s is, indeed, the quintessential NY steak house. Great to see them mixing it up again. Peace!
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Tags: Advertising, Alan Stillman, Ben Bensons, Christ cella, Fergus o’daly, ny steak house, poppe Tyson, Smith and Wollensky, stock for steak, The Palm, whatstheidea. whats the idea
Mitch Joel and Jaffe Juice’s Joseph Jaffe squared off yesterday in a podcast that was a good deal of fun. Each agreed they were good friends but that was about all they agreed upon — save for the obligatory strokefest at the end. Mr. Jaffe is a principal at Crayon now owned by Powered and Mr. Joel is president of Twist Image a leading digital shop based in Toronto. Both are published (books, blogs and pods) and practiced “duelists.”
The discussion with which they played pong was “Is social media a discrete marketing practice?” Mr Jaffe says “yes,” Mr. Joel “no.”
The crux of the debate is this: Social media needs to be well integrated into the marketing and digital practices of corporations. Today, it’s not. Mr. Joel says there are smart companies doing so and he’s right. Mr. Jaffe says those companies are the “exception not the rule” and he’s right. Powered is betting that specialized shops – best of breed social shops – will be better positioned to make waves and earn low hanging engagements. Mr. Joel believes that cleanest most likely social successes will come from integrated digital shops, and in the long run that is probably more correct. But his approach is less promotable and less newsworthy. Social media is the haps today. There is demand for it and a social marketing swell surrounding it.
Da Monies.
So where is the money in social media? Tweeting buy the pound? Friending by the hundred? In strategy? Yep. Where is the money in the integrated approach? The answer is tweeting by the pound and building websites – a more lucrative approach.
Win by Knockout?
No. Both arguments are very compelling. Mr. Jaffe and Powered CMO Aaron Strout are loudly breaking new ground. (There are supposedly scores of quiet social media agencies in NYC alone.) Mr. Joel gets it for sure, and though his sound bite is not as powerful he will probably have higher margins this year. Were I a marketing director and these two pitching my business, I’m sure the last one to present would win the business.
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Tags: Aaron Strout, crayon, Joseph Jaffe, Mitch Joel, Powered, social media, Twisted Image, whatstheidea. whats the idea
Adrian Ho made an insightful observation yesterday on his Zeus Jones blog (Does anyone else type “blob” accidently?) about the different marketing functions of strategy and production.
He wrote “There are, of course, fairly significant business-model barriers in bringing together these two different kinds of skills in a company. Production skills are often billed on an hourly basis, while strategy is typically priced based upon value. However, I think that the more difficult barriers are cultural. These two archetypes have historically been polar opposites and simply putting together people who embody one aspect with people who embody the other is a recipe for disaster.”
Mr. Ho is focused, I suspect, on digital production in his piece because he discusses social media but this strategy and production yin-yang (pronounced yong) extends to all customized creative forms. It’s the reason account planning was developed in the advertising world.
I’m working with a jewelry manufacturer who creates custom pieces. The model maker rarely sees the customer. The input for the piece is handled by a designer who gathers from the customers: pictures from magazines, drawings, descriptions and memories, all of which are put into a little bag with some notes and sent into the back room. Producer-strategist.
The companies with the ability to translate strategy into elegant, compelling production create the best work. When trying to determine good marketing partners from bad, the questions one should ask should relate to this very process, but most don’t ask about the nexus of strategy and production. They ask “Tell me about your strategic process” or “May I see your work?” Frankly, the magic happens in the hand-off. In the case of the jewelry company you need to see what’s in the bag.
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Tags: Account Planning, adrian ho, marketing, production, strategy, whatstheidea. whats the idea, zeus jones
Love is not a branding idea. Sorry Blackberry. You may be on to something with the notion that “like is mediocre” or “like is watered down love” as a campaign idea, but you’re never going to build up the brand tying it to the word love. So be smart(phone) and shut it down; get out while you can. Beatles song or not.
The strongest brand in the world today, Coke, would never have made it this far had Wieden and Kennedy been at the helm early on making ads about “happiness.” Coke is a mature brand with some unique issues, I understand, and people know it Is a cola and Does refresh (Is-Does), yet as nice as the “happiness” ads are, and they’re good ad-craft, happiness is a second generation benefit. As is “love” for Blackberry. Fah, fah, fah fail.
The smart phone category is getting to be a real mess. Though I applaud Blackberry for its attempt at brand discipline and some good may, indeed, come of it — love ain’t it.
The Motorola “Cliq” has an idea. Or, it is the MotoBlur? Either way their idea is tied to the Does benefit of being “social.” The phone was built to social network (verb). The campaign line “smart gets social” works. If the Moto Cliq can continue to open a gap between itself and competitors in offering the ability to integrate all social networking apps with grace and ease, it will win some serious share. It will have an idea I can love.
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Tags: blackberry, cliq, coca cola, coke, love, motoblur, motorola, smart phone, the beatles, whatstheidea. whats the idea, wieden and kennedy
Brand planners must view the world over time. We know the media will change, but the core selling ideas shouldn’t. The recession has been in full force now for a year and a half and marketers have been enthralled by doing the same with less. We’ve taken to the Web in the hope that pay-per-click will move merch while saving TV and print dollars. We’ve gone to conferences (not many), attended webinars, and followed social media experts who have told us to stop managing our brands and let the consumers do it. If we really listen, they say, we’ll be able to fine-tune our products and how we sell them.
Media channel is pitted against media channel and it would seem that the new media is winning. Marketers now have more selling silos then ever – all fighting for a part of the budget – and their agencies sit at the table with their own strategy person. The digital account planner sits next to the ad agency account planner, who sits by the direct response planner. It’s McCrazy.
The biggest new product launch in a good while is the Droid. I think it’s a Verizon product, but it may be Motorola. No, definitely Verizon. The email idea is “Droid Does” but the teaser TV spot’s are not about that. The TV is brilliant, absolutely riveting (McGarry Bowen), but it lacks an idea other than “coming” and “futuristic.”
Branding has become disenfranchised from marketing. Though we can now test tactics with greater accuracy, we’re collectively getting sloppy with brand management.
As a planner I always refer to the power of an idea as defined by day-after-recall testing. When you see an ad or selling communication on a Tuesday what will you remember about it on Wednesday? The picture? The color? Or the selling idea?
When the ANA meets next year and looks back on 2009 and members are asked “What were some of the biggest branding ideas of the past year?” I surely hope they don’t answer Twitter. Peace!
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Tags: Account Planning, ANA, association of national advertisers, Brand Planning, Droid, McGarry Bowen, motorola, twitter, Verizon, whatstheidea. whats the idea
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