Archive for the ‘Advertising’ Category:
Facebook and The Transparency Bandwagon
While the tinfoil hatters amongst us who fear the divestiture of liberty keep pointing to the likes of the Patriot Act, the US Census or Google’s caching of every search known to man, the real worry for all of us should be Facebook. Well, all of us that aren’t in marketing, at least. The truth is that the “new openness” that Facebook is propagating has two wildly untapped (and yet genius) ideas at its core.
First of all, it’s tapping into a generational zeitgeist. There’s just something about Millennials that make them not only prone to share intricate details about their lives (and subsequently making them wide open for identity theft) but also willing to let that information be used to help them connect to better products. They don’t feel sold, the feel catered to. And for the generation that lives at home until almost 30, takes their parents to interviews and has never used a card catalog system in a library, why would they expect anything else? This notion of “openness” is also a major tenet of successful social campaigns over the past several years. A certain current president of ours ran on such a platform (never mind that it’s not practiced) to wild acclaim and popularity among Millennials. The concept of opennness is really driven by the use of the web in general, and since Facebook is the standard bearer for all things social, web-oriented and open, why shouldn’t they be the first to sally forth into such unknown territory?
The second thing it taps into is the kind of low-cost targeting that marketers are salivating for. Never mind that Millennials (and that oh-so-coveted 18-35 year old audience) are incredibly difficult to nail down and push your message at, this additional, product and brand-centric style of targeting gives Facebook the ultimate power in the universe to wield over desperate media wonks and marketing directors alike. They will be able to give you more targeted information about their users and segment users better than even Google. It’s staggeringly simple and genius at the same time. About 18 months ago when Facebook made a huge push to be the “login credentials of choice” for hundreds of sites across the internet, it seemed odd. But this, now, makes perfect sense. If Google is out to “organize the world’s information,” then Facebook is out to “segment the world’s people into highly targeted and affordable lists for companies to purchase and profit from.”
But the reality is that Google is loosing its sheen as a kind of do-gooder company. After their initial IPO, people loved everything they did. Now, after a few fumbles with their Android software updates, a couple censorship issues in China and some sneaky backroom stuff with the White House later, Google is mirroring a corporate image as opposed to a warm, smart startup. Whereas Facebook, well, they still have Mark Zuckerburg’s warm, childish face to be the, um, face of their company. They are the living expression of relationships in the 21st century. Therefore, how could we so demonize them? This, mind you, is after the Beacon fiasco of a few years back. They learned and got more sneaky about it. But they’re still tallying buckets of information about you that you are willingly giving them. We, as consumers, are blind to it because it is leading to us getting better access to deals and brands we want. In fact, the level of data that Facebook is able to gather on its 411 million users makes Google’s data from search look more like geo-targeting by zip code. It’s good, but beaten by emerging standards.
And you were afraid of the government.
The Discipline of Targeting
This topic has been rolling around in my noggin for quite some time, and after watching last night’s episode of Mad Men (3:2), I decided it was time to go ahead and put pencil to paper. Or keyboard to blog. Whichever suits your fancy. So here’s the crux of it: good consumer targeting takes remarkable discipline from both the agency and the client. Allow me to explain.
As marketing professionals we should always be able to watch a spot on TV and immediately decipher the target audience. Beer spots: men. Lifetime promos: women. It should be that easy, but it’s not. Why? Ineffective and inefficient targeting. I was watching TV the other night and a spot for a certain brand of yogurt comes on. The main character is an attractive young woman shopping at a grocery store. Shes very flirty with the camera, the setup is way over the top and the ending is downright odd. To my maleness, there was sexuality in play from the character. My wife, who is a retired account director herself, totally missed it. She just thought it was weird to end a spot like that. But to the trained male eye, there was far too much “naughtiness” in the spot for it to be accidental. From my point of view, the spot came off as if it was the result of dude-think: a bunch of guys sitting around concepting and ending up on something that appealed more to them than it does the target audience. OR, it could be that the client was a dude and chose something that skewed more to his liking than the target audience.
In recent years, I’ve noticed too many brands suffer from something very similar that I like to call “Cocktail Party Syndrome.” This popular condition is when marketers try to make a brand more palatable for their cocktail party friends than to be true to the brand’s actual and potential target audience. It’s hard for an egotistical creative director, account director or even CMO to look their swanky friends in the eye and proudly say, “We just cut new price/items shells for Brand X, and I think it’s really going to shake things up in the lower-income rural markets of the Great Plains.” That’s not cool. What’s cool is to say, “We’re totally reinventing our target audience. We want the brand to be the Target of our industry. We’re shifting from a lower-income based consumer to a middle and upper income individual. They have more disposable income anyway, right?” That sounds awesome to your peers because you sound like a trailblazer. But it takes a disciplined, strategic mind to have the gumption to know your target audience and stay focused on the business at hand. Despite how much fun it would potentially be to take it there, not every brand will be Target or Apple or VW or Chipotle or even Burger King. The solutions that have transformed good brands into great brands arent prescriptive because brand maintenance is not as simple as one solution fits all.
I look at Wal-Mart and Olive Garden as excellent examples of knowing your audience and speaking to them. Wal-Mart had a few missteps over the last few years, but they totally have it down now. Olive Garden, while not appealing to me, appeals to their audience and has the consistent growth to prove it.
I re-reference Mad Men again. The model of “Men want her and women want to be her” is completely false, and we have absolutely grown past this as an industry. However, it takes incredible discipline for individuals in advertising to not fall into this mindset when your target audience is not yourself. Its ok to create work that doesnt appeal to you. Its all about being objective versus subjective. And thats an entirely different post altogether.
Anybody else think an agency B-team did the latest round here?
In advertising, nothing may be harder than keeping a long-running, high-frequency campaign fresh. I give the Martin Agency huge credit for keeping the cavemen campaign at least interesting, if not odd, for it’s long run, and especially at the ridiculous TRPs they run that campaign at. But, the Progressive “Flo” campaign, well, to me it seems like they pulled their A-Team off of it (and no not Face, Murdock, Hannibal and BA) and put in their second stringers. Why? The first two or three rounds of ideas had a clear beginning, middle and end and did a good job selling the product. But the last few executions have fallen way short. They talk about the product, but the endings have been almost as awkward as a Will Ferrell/Molly Shannon sketch. The fist explosions. The awkward exchanged with the biker dude. The weirdness of introducing classic literary figure of Captain Ahab into an otherwise surreal, everyman environment. In any case, I always wonder if consumers notice it when the creative quality of a campaign wanes.
Really good stereotypers
Recently, I’ve been working on a minority-focused campaign, and it’s done nothing but made me ask lots of questions. Now, for a typical white guy working in the ad industry, I am blessed to both work for a minority-owned firm and have very candid relationships with several black people I work with, which means they will give me nothing but honest feedback on whether or not an idea is treading too close to that mythical line of offensiveness. And for our whole creative team, that’s an invaluable asset. But this process has made me analyze the way other brands flail in their attempts to market to segments by ethnography instead of demography. All that’s to say: I don’t think anybody is getting minority-targeted marketing right.
5 out of 100 is pretty sad
In the most recent issue of Fast Company, they released their list of the 100 most creative people in business. Of the esteemed 100, only 5 of them work for a company that does “marketing” of any variety:
32: Lee Clow, TBWA
39: Greg Hahn, BBDO
59: Noah Brier, Barbarian Group
81 & 82: Karin Hibma & Michael Cronan, Cronan
So, um, wow. I thought we were supposed to be the most creative people in business? What happened here? I thought marketing was the marriage of creativity and business; that we were tasked with creatively solving business problems; that the greater ad industry was the helm of creativity. Not so, according to FC.
For this, I believe there are 2 reasons. The first is far more jaded and less plausible, but requires thought, nonetheless.
1. Is it possible that the marketing industry is far more isolated from the rest of the business world that the people we consider “rock stars” of the industry are really little more than peons in the greater business world? I think it’s highly likely. Look more closely at the names chosen. Clow is an obvious pick, since he is the Michael Corleone to Ogilvy’s Vito Corleone status. Throw somebody in from BBDO, since that’s about the only agency that most people have ever heard of (courtesy of foppish depictions of ad agencies in film. I loved Alan Alda saying “BBD and O” in What Women Want). Do ten minutes of digging past Crispin, and you’ll find Barbarian Group. And, throw in an under the radar name like Cronan, and you’ve covered your bases. And make sure you leave out Bogusky. FC has had an absurd man crush (much like most of us in the biz) on AB for quite a while now. After the big splashy feature last year and the full page blurb 18 months ago, people will begin to think they pump him up because Microsoft (CP+B’s big ole client) has a pretty hefty media buy with the magazine.
Plausible? Eh, maybe. Probable? Sure. If you’re a tad jaded.
Or, there’s the other option.
2. It’s more obvious than ever that the ad industry as a whole has grown embarrassingly stale. Most of our business models are as stale as the rehashed rehashed ideas we continue to sell clients and expect them to throw money at us because we’re creative. At least we tell the we are.
For me, this theory holds a lot more water. Think about it, the basic agency model has barely evolved since the 1960s. Watch Mad Men, and you get a sense of what most agencies are still like that. (Creative team + Account team) x Media team = Agency Model. Outside of a few noteworthy shops (Mother, Creative Orchestra), we still hire people who do one thing well and throw them together with other people that do one thing well and expect a certain outcome. And we as a group are still held creatively hostage by the invoice that our clients may or may not sign based on how the last client meeting went. Until we break these two basic molds, marketers will never live up to their potential.
We should hire multi-talented, smart people who are both creative and business savvy. We should work with clients that respect the value of a good strategic partner, but first we must re-earn that title. We still have a lot of work to overcome the Charlatan stereotype that we will do or say anything for money, because the reality is that stereotype is still resoundingly true.
So, why is it that if we are so creative that we don’t focus that energy on our own business model? I have 2 explanations. 1. It’s scary. 2. Most advertising/marketing folks are bad businessmen. They mostly don’t understand it, outside of the context of a brand. If they did, things would be way different.
Hopefully, it’s just the first reason. But I have my doubts.
Is Twitter the next MySpace?
Does anybody else remember how awesome 2005 was? The economy was rolling, jobs were plentiful and MySpace was all the rage. It was everything. Marketers all over the fruited plains were making sure their brands had a MySpace page. People were blogging on how MySpace was changing the industry. It was almost as awesome as the Adkins Diet.
Now, raise your hand if you still even use your MySpace account any more. Thought so. This is precisely why I feel like Twitter will inevitably fade out of relevance in the next 5 years. Granted, I feel like marketers and agencies alike need to engage in social media and know how to properly wield it as a tactic in their overall brand strategies, but what’s the breaking point? Seeing the numbers for Twitter’s growth (something like 1400%) are troublesome for those who think it’s gonna be bigger than advertising on the television set. It’s a great tool and it should be used wisely, but make no mistake: Twitter has a shelf-life. And when it gets so saturated with your mom, your pastor and your high school English teacher that consumers start to leave, then something else will inevitably take its place.
However, I feel certain that Twitter hasn’t even come close to reaching its zenith. It’s got a long way to go down the monetization path before it gets oversaturated. People are just now figuring out how to make money off of it, so until Apple or some other worthy, cash-laden suitor makes an offer, it’s safe to work into a basic strategy. But I am afraid too many people are leaving agencies only to start social media companies who’s business model is based on the idea of twitter being relevant indefinitely. Well, I hate to break it to you, but it will fade from relevance.
Many of these agencies are also predicated on the idea that social media is right for every brand out there. Also, a farce. Many solid brands have no need of social media because their target audience is almost wholly not online. But no worries. Somebody is inevitably pitching social media to them.
I am a huge fan of the practice as a supplement to good marketing strategy, but as I’ve often stated, don’t make it the focal point of your strategies or of your agency. And especially not on one social media outlet.
Meet BuddyPress
Now that WordPress has been out for something like 10 years, people of all different web abilities and knowledge are jumping aboard like it’s the second coming of the iPhone. And don’t get me wrong, I myself am a 5-year fan of WP; I just find it staggering that it’s all of a sudden the favorite program of agencies and blowhards everywhere.
And now, a breakthrough that will surely be having every self-proclaimed “web 2.0 and new media expert” blogging like madness and selling “social media networking services” to every small business on the planet. Introducing BuddyPress, a sister project to WordPress transforms your favorite open source, free content management system into a social network platform.
Don’t get me wrong: I think this is an awesome bit of software and a great development in the social networking space. However, I know it’s going to be repackaged and resold to every pest control business, restaurant and church out there as a customer retention system. I hope that all who come across it will use it wisely.
Lots of good content. No conclusions.
Has anybody else noticed that most social media, web 2.0 and “the future of advertising” presentations have absolutely no conclusions?
Those of you who work with me know that I am a presentation junkie. I scour the web for really good ones, constantly try to up my game on style and do things that break the rules whenever possible. Because of that, I have become a pretty harsh critic of most presentations and a huge fans of the ones that are solid on communicating their intended purpose. But what’s the point of presenting information to someone without making some sort of recommendation for how they use it?
I base this on a point of view on a deck that I viewed yesterday by David Armano, who just left Critical Mass to join the unaptly titled Dachis Corporation. Here’s the deck:
Employment Branding: A Defense
So, over on another blog, I read an article insinuating that employment branding was nothing more than a way for agencies to schnooker money from talent managers. You can read the initial article here.
Here’s my response:
Wow.
So let’s all take a step back from the rhetoric so we can analyze this problem objectively. First of all, I can easily say that no one of competence has ever really explained employment branding to you or shown you numeric results of how it can positively affect a company. And, I assure you from experience, it can.So let’s start with the basics:
Employment branding refers to a larger group of services that treat recruitment and retention efforts like building a brand. It has nothing to do with creating brand-building tv spots like Nike or Apple, rather it has everything to do with using the same emotional triggers (often seen in good advertising and design) that draw someone to a brand outside of just rational benefits. Think Nike or Apple. Their products are more expensive, but their branding makes people want to buy them for the association and perception benefits.Case in point, the EVP, or employer value proposition, is an attempt to define the intangible qualities of working with your company. Other than their balance sheet and dental plan, what motivates me to want to work for Google over Yahoo; Nike over Reebok; or The Home Depot over Lowe’s? Sure, many of those things will be tertiary employee benefits, like bringing your dog to work or not working in a sweat shop, but they make a difference. Recruitment advertising throws a laundry list up on an 8.5×11 flyer and hopes somebody notices. It’s a classic push strategy. Employment branding takes those ideas and shapes them into a message that features the benefit of working with that company to a candidate. It uses both emotional and rational messaging to draw them into that company.
Just like in a retail brand, the manifestation of an employment brand is the combination of several talent facing and employee facing concepts, including talent management software, referral programs, college recruitment programs, signature experiences, internal communications and recruitment. Shaping a consistent look and feel that delivers on a company’s core values is really where the agency comes in. They should be able to help a CTO or HR manager extract most of the core ideas for the employment brand from the company vision statement and extended intangible benefits. Then the agency can help them express that creatively in a campaign. Also, the agency should help them place it in different media that just classifieds and Monster. There are too many opportunities out there to get in front of potential candidates that just “the old standby’s.”
And with the economy in the shape it’s in, it’s more important than ever to make sure you’re getting the right people, not just warm bodies. Because your applicant flow will be far greater now, you need to be actively screening for good people that share your core values. Again, this is where EB comes in. Not only should it screen in the right people, it should effectively screen out the scrubs you don’t want. In work that we’ve done in our past, we’ve flat out told people that “this job isn’t for everyone.” You know what that effectively does? It tells the lazy dude to buzz off and encourages the competitive candidate to step up and apply. We’ve also done work that showcased different working environments that stiffer, more corporate types would hate. And in numeric, quantifiable ways, it has worked. But don’t just take it from me, take it from the Marine Corps. They used the “We’re looking for a few good men” line starting in 1776, and for over 200 years it helped them attract a different breed of soldier. Screening worked then, and iit will continue to work today.
I know you like to think that agency folk don’t know what they’re talking about because it’s easy to hate on agencies. We lie, cheat and steal just like Darrin Stephens or Mel Gibson from What Women Want. However, some of us actually do our homework, know what we’re talking about and make a difference for our clients. Some of us do great creative work that’s strategically sound and helps HR managers get better people. So before you cast wide aspersions that employment branding is throwing millions of dollars away, dig a tad deeper. It does work.
Actually, check out a presentation I did on the basic case for Employment Branding.
It’s featured on www.Insightory.com this week as their key insight.
The client relationship
I often ponder the ad industry. Where it’s going, who’s going to be the next big player and what’s wrong with it.
Many times nothing comes of it, but today my ponderings drifted into a far more philosophical territory. What truly makes a good client relationship? What is a client’s ultimate loyalty to? Is it the cost of doing business with you, whether high or low; is it the location of their ad agency, whether local or NYC; is it the quality of the service or the quality of the creative; or is a combination of all of these things. But beyond the why, the real point of ponderance I had was, “why does a client choose to stay with you?”
See. The boys from Sterling Cooper now how it's done. A good looking CD.
There’s one type of client that I like to refer to as a “Golf Course Account” or the type of account that simply picks their agency on the golf course. That’s the kind of account that agency principle’s love and creatives despise. When the client relationship is based on nothing more than an inferior handicap, a few Michelob’s and a wager on a missed putt, there’s nothing that awesome creative and strategy can do to save a business when a better schmoozer in a foursome comes along next time that dude is at the country club. It’s a dangerous way to construct an agency and an even harder way to keep talented people around. They want to win business on the merits of their work, not on the ability of their boss to shank a drive.
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