I complain a lot. To counter that, I'm going show what I think makes the advertising industry great -- critical problem-solving done in highly creative, imaginative, innovative and interesting ways. Obviously this is highly-subjective. But if I can't spout subjective, irrational, unsupported crap from time to time I wouldn't be much of a blogger.
3. McDonald's - Lonely Burger (sorry, have to link out. It doesn't appear to be on Youtube. Damn you Cossette.)
2. Ikea - Lamp
1. Honda - Cog
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
The Death of the Advertising Industry: Part 2
In part 1 I talked about a guy who's out to convince clients that agencies have no value. Part 2 is about a client who's been convinced.
I came across this article in The Guardian recently. Unilever in the UK has dropped Lowe, their agency for 16 years for Peperami meat snacks. Happens all the time. What makes this interesting is that they've convinced themselves that they can get better work by crowdsourcing the creative.
"We believe Peperami is a brand that deserves radical creative solutions and are confident taking our brief out to thousands rather than a small team of creatives will provide us with the best possible idea and take our advertising to the next level," said the Peperami marketing manager, Noam Buchalter.
Their 'radical creative solution' uses the Idea Bounty website to source creative. They have put up $10k for the winning idea and opened it up to pretty much anyone with an email address. And agencies were up in arms about the Zappos cattle call.
In some ways I like the commodification of creativity. The very notion is a challenge to me. It makes me ask "am I really better at this than the uneducated, inexperienced chump next door?" Which is actually a pretty good question to ask every once in a while, because a lot of the time marketers are much too clever for their own good. Though I'd probably change my mind about it pretty quickly if I lost my steady paycheque and actually had to submit my creative to Idea Bounty and it's ilk just to pay the rent.
One of my clients has been crowdsourcing creative for over a decade. They run an annual tv commercial contest that's open to the public. They hold a huge, campy gala event where they screen the finalists announce the winners and drink a lot of beer. It's a lot of fun, with some pretty good ideas making the cut. However, my client will be the first to tell you that most of the submissions are junk. Poorly thought out, wildly off-brand, often off topic, sometimes in frighteningly poor taste. Most of it is not unlike what happens when you let a 24 year old CEO come up with the ad concepts.
I'm not too afraid for my job just yet.
I came across this article in The Guardian recently. Unilever in the UK has dropped Lowe, their agency for 16 years for Peperami meat snacks. Happens all the time. What makes this interesting is that they've convinced themselves that they can get better work by crowdsourcing the creative.
"We believe Peperami is a brand that deserves radical creative solutions and are confident taking our brief out to thousands rather than a small team of creatives will provide us with the best possible idea and take our advertising to the next level," said the Peperami marketing manager, Noam Buchalter.
Their 'radical creative solution' uses the Idea Bounty website to source creative. They have put up $10k for the winning idea and opened it up to pretty much anyone with an email address. And agencies were up in arms about the Zappos cattle call.
In some ways I like the commodification of creativity. The very notion is a challenge to me. It makes me ask "am I really better at this than the uneducated, inexperienced chump next door?" Which is actually a pretty good question to ask every once in a while, because a lot of the time marketers are much too clever for their own good. Though I'd probably change my mind about it pretty quickly if I lost my steady paycheque and actually had to submit my creative to Idea Bounty and it's ilk just to pay the rent.
One of my clients has been crowdsourcing creative for over a decade. They run an annual tv commercial contest that's open to the public. They hold a huge, campy gala event where they screen the finalists announce the winners and drink a lot of beer. It's a lot of fun, with some pretty good ideas making the cut. However, my client will be the first to tell you that most of the submissions are junk. Poorly thought out, wildly off-brand, often off topic, sometimes in frighteningly poor taste. Most of it is not unlike what happens when you let a 24 year old CEO come up with the ad concepts.
I'm not too afraid for my job just yet.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
The Death of the Advertising Industry: Part 1
No question, things are changing in the marketing industry. The multinational conglomerates are in a feeding frenzy, eating up digital shops and rolling them into their agency networks as fast as they can. They're buying bright minds on the leading edge of new media and figuring out ways to roll them in as part of their vertically integrated service offering. They're doing this because that's where the money is moving to. Surprise, surprise. This is nothing new.
Last week, some guy wrote an opinion piece entitled 5 Reasons You No Longer Need an Agency. I've been loathe to talk about it because it's such an obvious sensationalist ploy for blog hits and retweets. Regardless, the author brings up a couple interesting points worth discussing.
I'm going to paraphrase reason 1: There's no longer a need for 'the big idea'. Media fragmentation, content distribution and things like "consumer conversations" have fractured the 'big idea' into many small ideas.
My retort: The ‘Big Idea’ is as relevant or perhaps more than it ever was. The big idea is your brand. I don’t agree that the big idea needs to come from inside an organization. It’s great if it does, but I can’t see any reason why that kind of insight can’t be generated externally from information provided internally. (Communications theorists might disagree, but nobody listens to those guys anyway.) Sure media is fragmented and content can now be created for specific consumer subsets. But you still need the skills to accomplish that.
Then there’s the matter of execution. You need to outsource all the separate pieces of production and you still need to increase the skill level in-house to accomplish what most agencies can do. An in-house marketing team with Wordpress isn't likely to replace Razorfish any time soon.
Paraphrase reason 2: Websites are too big and expensive. Clients are getting talked into buying more than they need.
My retort: He has a point here. It’s like realtors—given their fee structure, what incentive do they have to sell you a cheaper house? However, it’s also incumbent on you to determine at least partly what you need and how much you want to spend. An agency can help you with some or all of that. And the end of the day you determine whether you want to spend $500k on a site or $5k on a Wordpress site. As a marketer you still have to be informed enough to make that decision.
Paraphrase reason 3: Traditional marketing is ineffective and online marketing is complicated, so you need to simplify--just use Facebook, Twitter and a blog.
My retort: I'm pretty sure he's just making this point up because '5 reasons to ditch your agency' is way more impressive than 4. However, I’ve heard the traditional is dead argument enough times to start to see how wrong it is. Traditional has a place. Facebook isn’t likely to move a lot of socks or dish detergent, no matter how stoked your friends are about it.
Paraphrase reason 4: Focus groups are evil and expensive.
My retort: I agree. The focus group was never reliable or accurate and much better ways of gathering that kind of information are emerging. I think Twitter is better than a focus group and significantly less costly.
Paraphrase reason 5 (and this is a doozy): You need to rebuild and restaff your organization in order to take advantage of the first four reasons.
My retort:I hate to say it, but I agree again, despite how preposterous the idea is. If you can hire and retain top-tier talent for any length of time, and also remove the management-imposed shackles that are systemic in your organization, then do it!!! Good luck with that.
Last week, some guy wrote an opinion piece entitled 5 Reasons You No Longer Need an Agency. I've been loathe to talk about it because it's such an obvious sensationalist ploy for blog hits and retweets. Regardless, the author brings up a couple interesting points worth discussing.
I'm going to paraphrase reason 1: There's no longer a need for 'the big idea'. Media fragmentation, content distribution and things like "consumer conversations" have fractured the 'big idea' into many small ideas.
My retort: The ‘Big Idea’ is as relevant or perhaps more than it ever was. The big idea is your brand. I don’t agree that the big idea needs to come from inside an organization. It’s great if it does, but I can’t see any reason why that kind of insight can’t be generated externally from information provided internally. (Communications theorists might disagree, but nobody listens to those guys anyway.) Sure media is fragmented and content can now be created for specific consumer subsets. But you still need the skills to accomplish that.
Then there’s the matter of execution. You need to outsource all the separate pieces of production and you still need to increase the skill level in-house to accomplish what most agencies can do. An in-house marketing team with Wordpress isn't likely to replace Razorfish any time soon.
Paraphrase reason 2: Websites are too big and expensive. Clients are getting talked into buying more than they need.
My retort: He has a point here. It’s like realtors—given their fee structure, what incentive do they have to sell you a cheaper house? However, it’s also incumbent on you to determine at least partly what you need and how much you want to spend. An agency can help you with some or all of that. And the end of the day you determine whether you want to spend $500k on a site or $5k on a Wordpress site. As a marketer you still have to be informed enough to make that decision.
Paraphrase reason 3: Traditional marketing is ineffective and online marketing is complicated, so you need to simplify--just use Facebook, Twitter and a blog.
My retort: I'm pretty sure he's just making this point up because '5 reasons to ditch your agency' is way more impressive than 4. However, I’ve heard the traditional is dead argument enough times to start to see how wrong it is. Traditional has a place. Facebook isn’t likely to move a lot of socks or dish detergent, no matter how stoked your friends are about it.
Paraphrase reason 4: Focus groups are evil and expensive.
My retort: I agree. The focus group was never reliable or accurate and much better ways of gathering that kind of information are emerging. I think Twitter is better than a focus group and significantly less costly.
Paraphrase reason 5 (and this is a doozy): You need to rebuild and restaff your organization in order to take advantage of the first four reasons.
My retort:I hate to say it, but I agree again, despite how preposterous the idea is. If you can hire and retain top-tier talent for any length of time, and also remove the management-imposed shackles that are systemic in your organization, then do it!!! Good luck with that.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
The Value of Content: Part 1
Last post got me thinking about a whole bunch of things, not the least of which is how content is valued once it's separated from a specific channel. And then I got distracted by the news of Les Paul's passing. Here was a man who not only created unique content, but he helped create new tools that would utterly transform that content.
Les Paul was a unique voice in jazz music. His style pushed guitar up from where it strummed quietly in the back of the orchestra, right up to the front with all the other soloists and showboats. And to keep up with the horns, he electrified it to make it louder, which changed the music world by opening the door for rock and roll. And if that wasn't enough, he went on to invent multi-track recording, which transformed music yet again. Sometimes the influence of a single great mind is truly remarkable.
On cue it seems, the Globe and Mail published a couple articles today about how well Cineplex is doing. The Canadian entertainment giant appears to be where laid off auto-workers and realtors are spending their EI cheques. Content and channel again. The public thinks movies and the cinema experience are worth paying for. You can download it from iTunes if you want. You can pick it up at Best Buy, but apparently suburbia is still piling the kids into the Aerostar and lugging them down to the bank-branded mega-entertainment complex to ooh and ahh at the exploding sphinx and frickin' laser beams before the film. Compelling content, sticky experience provide by the channel (not just the floors) and people are still willing to pay traditional prices, and extra for real butter -- digitally distributed competition be damned.
The best part is that Cineplex doesn't even need to market their channel. They don't run campaigns touting the benefits of the movie house experience. The don't have to 'connect consumers with the brand'. The movies do the blanket marketing for them and for every other channel. Cineplex just reaps the benefits and value-adds with popcorn.
Les Paul was a unique voice in jazz music. His style pushed guitar up from where it strummed quietly in the back of the orchestra, right up to the front with all the other soloists and showboats. And to keep up with the horns, he electrified it to make it louder, which changed the music world by opening the door for rock and roll. And if that wasn't enough, he went on to invent multi-track recording, which transformed music yet again. Sometimes the influence of a single great mind is truly remarkable.
On cue it seems, the Globe and Mail published a couple articles today about how well Cineplex is doing. The Canadian entertainment giant appears to be where laid off auto-workers and realtors are spending their EI cheques. Content and channel again. The public thinks movies and the cinema experience are worth paying for. You can download it from iTunes if you want. You can pick it up at Best Buy, but apparently suburbia is still piling the kids into the Aerostar and lugging them down to the bank-branded mega-entertainment complex to ooh and ahh at the exploding sphinx and frickin' laser beams before the film. Compelling content, sticky experience provide by the channel (not just the floors) and people are still willing to pay traditional prices, and extra for real butter -- digitally distributed competition be damned.
The best part is that Cineplex doesn't even need to market their channel. They don't run campaigns touting the benefits of the movie house experience. The don't have to 'connect consumers with the brand'. The movies do the blanket marketing for them and for every other channel. Cineplex just reaps the benefits and value-adds with popcorn.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Goodbye Media, Hello Media
The recording industry has been dying a slow and painful death for years. The NY Times recently published a piece that showed some staggering and thought provoking numbers. Almost all fingers pointed to piracy as the culprit. However piracy is just a symptom -- it was digital distribution that allowed piracy to happen. Digital distribution is Pandora's Box because it doesn't just affect music. It affects a whole bunch of digitally distributed content with a cascade effect reverberating into traditionally distributed content.
In this age of near-infinite digital content a NY Times op-ed writer could quite easily be confused with just another blogger with a well respected blog (Huffpo anyone?). It's becoming very easy to confuse opinion with news -- similar information, similar presentation, and in some cases, similar credibility. And on the web both are free. That leaves the average consumer wondering how important that information is that it was worth paying a buck twenty-five for at the news stand. Meanwhile the newspaper is giving it away on the web just to keep doing what they do, all the while trying to figure out how to make a buck off it.
At risk of sounding like a ten year old Wired article, I'll get to the point. Now that pretty much anything that can be digitized has been, the curtain has been pulled away and consumers are starting to perceive the value of the things they're seeing and using the way they want to, rather than how they're told to. The consumer is now helping decide what is worth paying for and how much it's worth. Why buy a whole album when you just like the one song? Why buy a newspaper when you can just graze through your favorite blogs? Which leads to questions about whether the medium itself has much value either.
Vast printing empires were built by newspapers and magazines. Incredibly powerful television networks were built to distribute entertainment. This is real infrastructure, with giant presses and studios and editing suites. And now digital distribution is stripping away a lot of the purpose and value that infrastructure once had.
Newspaper is dying, like the recording industry. But when you look closely content isn't dying (it's getting beat up a bit), but many methods of distribution appear to be mortally wounded. Think of the recording industry and the movie industry. Sure, the movie industry isn't losing money like the newspapers or record companies, but it started changing way back in the VCR age and that transformation keeps gaining momentum. The movie industry just has content that people are actually willing to pay for, unlike news or music.
Things start to become clear when you break apart media into content and distribution channel. Traditional distribution channels are being pecked at, and in some cases totally devoured by digital distribution. And this leaves content standing alone, cold and naked for everyone to see in the light of day. This is pretty dreary stuff.
The flip side is the fresh new digital distribution channels that are doing the pecking. Put in that context, a blog is content and twitter is the medium. The new newspaper -- story and source. You can do this with any number of combinations of other new digital media. A corporate website and Digg. Youtube and Google. And it's just going to grow as we discover new tools and new ways of connecting with each other. This doesn't bode well for traditional media, especially since web advertising doesn't pay nearly as well as print and TV advertising do. Maybe the value of advertising is tied to perceived value of content. Will all newspapers die? I doubt it, but some definitely will. And until they find ways to create valuable content and connect it with a convenient method of distribution they'll all be living in a very shaky world.
In this age of near-infinite digital content a NY Times op-ed writer could quite easily be confused with just another blogger with a well respected blog (Huffpo anyone?). It's becoming very easy to confuse opinion with news -- similar information, similar presentation, and in some cases, similar credibility. And on the web both are free. That leaves the average consumer wondering how important that information is that it was worth paying a buck twenty-five for at the news stand. Meanwhile the newspaper is giving it away on the web just to keep doing what they do, all the while trying to figure out how to make a buck off it.
At risk of sounding like a ten year old Wired article, I'll get to the point. Now that pretty much anything that can be digitized has been, the curtain has been pulled away and consumers are starting to perceive the value of the things they're seeing and using the way they want to, rather than how they're told to. The consumer is now helping decide what is worth paying for and how much it's worth. Why buy a whole album when you just like the one song? Why buy a newspaper when you can just graze through your favorite blogs? Which leads to questions about whether the medium itself has much value either.
Vast printing empires were built by newspapers and magazines. Incredibly powerful television networks were built to distribute entertainment. This is real infrastructure, with giant presses and studios and editing suites. And now digital distribution is stripping away a lot of the purpose and value that infrastructure once had.
Newspaper is dying, like the recording industry. But when you look closely content isn't dying (it's getting beat up a bit), but many methods of distribution appear to be mortally wounded. Think of the recording industry and the movie industry. Sure, the movie industry isn't losing money like the newspapers or record companies, but it started changing way back in the VCR age and that transformation keeps gaining momentum. The movie industry just has content that people are actually willing to pay for, unlike news or music.
Things start to become clear when you break apart media into content and distribution channel. Traditional distribution channels are being pecked at, and in some cases totally devoured by digital distribution. And this leaves content standing alone, cold and naked for everyone to see in the light of day. This is pretty dreary stuff.
The flip side is the fresh new digital distribution channels that are doing the pecking. Put in that context, a blog is content and twitter is the medium. The new newspaper -- story and source. You can do this with any number of combinations of other new digital media. A corporate website and Digg. Youtube and Google. And it's just going to grow as we discover new tools and new ways of connecting with each other. This doesn't bode well for traditional media, especially since web advertising doesn't pay nearly as well as print and TV advertising do. Maybe the value of advertising is tied to perceived value of content. Will all newspapers die? I doubt it, but some definitely will. And until they find ways to create valuable content and connect it with a convenient method of distribution they'll all be living in a very shaky world.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Global Advertising, Local Testing
The Ad Contrarian has spent the last couple days railing about the laziness of the big global shops. His point is that local audiences are unique, not global, and advertising is more effective when it recognizes that. While transposing global messages is cheap, more business opportunities can be leveraged by addressing the unique qualities of locality.
I was taught that advertising was about showing consumers a need. For example, people with teeth can benefit by cleaning them with toothpaste. So does that mean we can leverage business opportunities by localizing the message? Calgarians who have ‘Stampede Breath’, should use Colgate toothpaste. That’s glib, but there’s a whole range of product and service categories that don’t offer up much opportunities for leveraging with local spin.
To prove his point, The Ad Contrarian mentioned Pepsi’s advertising in Quebec, which, according to the New York Times is one of the only markets in the world where Pepsi outsells Coke. As a Canadian, it’s hard to dispute that Quebec is unique. Tell a Quebecer he’s not and you’ll likely end up with a oeil noir. So it’s not much of surprise the Association of Quebec Advertising Agencies (AAPQ) is launching the Yul-Lab - an advertising test-bed that leverages Montreal’s unique media opportunities. Strategy Magazine writes “that Quebec, and Montreal specifically, are isolated from the rest of North America. All of this making it the perfect place to experiment new communications solutions, such as finding the right media mix.”
So if the Ad Contrarian is right, how successful is Yul-Lab test-bed likely to be? Testing the media mix is one thing, but how well are messages adapted from global campaigns likely to be in a place as unique and insular as Quebec? And if they test well in that audience how well will they translate back to global audiences?
I was taught that advertising was about showing consumers a need. For example, people with teeth can benefit by cleaning them with toothpaste. So does that mean we can leverage business opportunities by localizing the message? Calgarians who have ‘Stampede Breath’, should use Colgate toothpaste. That’s glib, but there’s a whole range of product and service categories that don’t offer up much opportunities for leveraging with local spin.
To prove his point, The Ad Contrarian mentioned Pepsi’s advertising in Quebec, which, according to the New York Times is one of the only markets in the world where Pepsi outsells Coke. As a Canadian, it’s hard to dispute that Quebec is unique. Tell a Quebecer he’s not and you’ll likely end up with a oeil noir. So it’s not much of surprise the Association of Quebec Advertising Agencies (AAPQ) is launching the Yul-Lab - an advertising test-bed that leverages Montreal’s unique media opportunities. Strategy Magazine writes “that Quebec, and Montreal specifically, are isolated from the rest of North America. All of this making it the perfect place to experiment new communications solutions, such as finding the right media mix.”
So if the Ad Contrarian is right, how successful is Yul-Lab test-bed likely to be? Testing the media mix is one thing, but how well are messages adapted from global campaigns likely to be in a place as unique and insular as Quebec? And if they test well in that audience how well will they translate back to global audiences?
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