Well- at least one big agency is getting the internet these days.
Hill Holliday in Boston gave up the flash driven, glam site of the mega agency for an entire site in WordPress.
That’s what we’ve been talking about for the last 13 months.
That’s why we started the Blogosopher seminar- and why we stoped wasting our clients money with sites that don’t deliver what Word Press can- faster and cheaper.
What do you think?
I’ve always thought P&G was full of itself with its “brand manager” concept. I’ve also wondered who ever came up with the idea of “Marketing” as a separate part of any business- if you don’t have everyone on board with the idea that the company is in business to sell something- you shouldn’t be in business.
Marketing in its simplest terms is letting people know about your product or service- and then selling it. At The Next Wave- we call it “Create lust, Evoke Trust” sm – the idea of making people want what you have- and then making sure they trust you to deliver that product or service.
There was a time when companies like P&G paid other companies to collect all mentions of their products- so they could analyze and react “appropriately” to any perceived threat to their precious “brand.” That was well and fine in the old days (pre Google and pre web) but now, all you have to do is a simple Google of your product or service- and you will find that there are a lot of people talking about you- and it may or may not be good.
Case in point: LaCie, a brand of computer peripherals that was at one point tied closely with hard drive maker Quantum. I’ve been buying their products for over 15 years- and was generally happy with them. Then about a year ago, I bought one of their “Big Disks”- a 500GB external RAID enclosure. Two months after the 1-year warranty expired- so did the drive. Luckily, I believe in backing up- and didn’t lose much other than three days of being able to get much done as the restore took time.
A blog I read regularly had posted a note about having problems with his “Big disk”- and I had mentioned that I had had good experiences with LaCie- this was 2 weeks before my crash. You can follow the storyline on the blog- which now has a ton of entries with other people venting about premature failure of their drives.
The point is- anyone now looking to buy a new LaCie Big Disk, will probably find this thread- and change their mind about buying this substandard product. Here is the perfect time and opportunity for a LaCie “brand manager” work at preserving the brand name and image- but so far, it hasn’t happened. In the short sighted world of so many companies, no one has stepped up to volunteer a repair program, warranty extension or a power supply trade in (which is what I believe is the cause of these failures). With the connectivity of the web, and the ease of content publication via blog technology, brand managers need to be actively searching the web and addressing these types of brand bashing (rightfully so in this case) issues to preserve the brand equity.
Companies that hope to survive in this new economy should train their entire workforce in how to spot these types of attacks- and report them to a brand equity preservation specialist- before there is no brand left to manage.
What do you think?
So, this is a rant. It’s also a comment on the future of advertisings golden child- television ads. It’s also a message to Rupert Murdoch- who obviously either doesn’t get it- or is putting up a good front. It’s also a message to local NPR affiliates who are up in arms about NPR making programs available as PodCasts. Oh, yeah- Clear Channel- you too- wake up.
To those powerful people that still believe that they can “bundle” programming- that they don’t create- and resell it as a package, your days are numbered.
A la carte TV will work- it will just be delivered by someone other than:
These are all soon to be obsolete leftovers from the day when it took expensive technology and hardware to distribute programming. Much the same way that if you build newspaper printing presses- you best be looking for a new profession. “Bits not atoms” as Nicholas Negroponte said in “Being digital” way back in the nineties. In other words- what is digital, should stay digital. The articles on the computer at the newspaper should stay on computers instead of being converted to ink on dead trees. Same goes for digital media like TV shows and movies- and radio broadcasts- no need to “package them” anymore- just put them on a server like the iTunes store and deliver them direct to the consumer- unbundled.
So, I’d be willing to pay $5 per episode of the Soprano’s- in HD quality, or $2 in podcast version. And if Cadillac wanted me to learn all about Tony’s new Escalade- they could subsidize my download (I’ll watch and interact with their 2 minute infomercial for $5 off my $5 download- where they will quickly learn that I’d never drive that monstrosity unless it ran on water). Note- I don’t really need anything else from HBO- at this point Netflix does a better job of delivering movies to me- and as soon as HD DVD’s appear- HBO’s last advantage will be gone.
While NPR affiliates are worried about losing access to their subscribers due to podcasts- what they haven’t worried about is creating valuable local community oriented content- which would have helped them build a relationship with their audience- allowing them to have their listeners come to their sites instead of the national site. It’s a learning curve that will sort out the visionaries from the hacks in media really quick.
So- while I can’t download the Soprano’s right now- I’m more than ready too- and HBO better find a new model for distributing the only products that they have had a hand in creating.
The idea of A la carte cable packages only is a discussion if you still believe anyone needs the distribution systems of yesterday. As soon as there is a digital rights management system as solid as iTunes available to everyone- content producers- like David Chase, producer of “The Soprano’s” will be able to sell their programming direct, with an intermediary aggregator like iTunes store or Google video offering the nexus that provides the targeted message insertion handling for those who want to subsidize their viewing.
For me- all I want is my Soprano’s now- so, HBO if you are listening- put it up on iTunes- before you force me to either go to a friends house- or to Bit Torrent. One show isn’t worth a $70 cable bill a month. Capish?
What do you think?
How many times have you heard “it’s not rocket science, it’s only ____________” (and it’s ok to substitute “brain surgery” for “rocket science”) and thought I should be able to do that? It’s one of the things those of us in advertising hear all the time- as if creating this great stuff is so easy.
How long did it take Wieden + Kennedy working on Nike before “Just do it” came along and changed everything? Do you think “Where’s the beef” was a happy accident on the set? Hopefully not. The fact is- some very talented and smart people worked a lot of hours to come up with those famous three word combinations. Three words- and they propel sales and awareness through the roof.
So- is there a secret to coming up with this stuff? I ran across a site that has eight strategies to “thinking like a genius”- and wouldn’t you know it- they all apply to coming up with great advertising.
If you want to have genius advertising- I can add one more thing strategy to the list: hire an agency and work together at learning each other’s business. It’s often said that clients get the advertising they deserve- and most of the time this comes from an arrogance – often founded on the premise that they don’t believe that advertising is actually creative rocket science. So before you hire or fire your agency- look at how you handled the relationship- was it one of mutual respect? Did you work as hard at educating the agency as the agency worked at educating the client? If the equation wasn’t 50/50- you probably didn’t get what you could have.
What do you think?
AsiaMedia :: Ailing radio broadcasters see promise in podcasts
I grew up listening to the greatest radio station in the world (see my previous post on WMMS).
It was intimate, it was timely, it was a relationship- between me- and the coolest people I knew.
Those days are long gone- since three major networks gobbled up every station in sight.
Now- I see that Japanese broadcasters are trying to last gasp their audience by making their programming available as pod casts. We’ll see how fast it happens here.
But, advertiser be warned- a podcast is much the same as TV on TiVo- where unless your radio/podcast spots are really great- they will be skipped.
Soon- the only relevant local offline advertising will be outdoor and guerrilla.
What do you think?
As far as I can see there are only two TV campaigns out there that I want to watch over and over.
I’ve talked about both of them in previous posts.
Two of the best agencies- according to Ad Age- and according to me: Wieden + Kennedy and Crispin Porter Bogusky, and two very different clients.
When you say “Nike” – you are really saying “Wieden + Kennedy”- the agency has been there almost from the start. All the emotions, all the brand karma – come from this long, sacred relationship between marketer and agency. The latest spots for the “Jumpman” brand- are beautiful. They’ve taken Michael Jordan and made him fresh- they’ve also introduced another classic tagline- “Let your game speak” which may not be “Just do it”- but it’s what Adidas, Reebok and others should have come up with long ago.
It’s also what good advertising should do- let the product speak by itself- without that announcer voice telling you what to think about what you are looking at.
The fact that this “2nd generation” spot has no spoken words in it- yet works- moves it to the top of my list. That they can just take a scene from it- and run it with the logo as a 5 second break- says even more. Granted- we had at least a dozen years of watching Michael Jordan do things on a basketball court that made highlight reels over and over.
In :30 seconds, W+K evokes my emotion- it makes me feel, it moves me, and I’m not even a huge basketball fan. I’ll never buy basketball shoes- just like I’ll never palm a basketball, but, if I did- I’d think that there was some bit of magic in those soles that would move me the way Jordan could.
VW is another story. I grew up loving VW’s – I learned to drive in a ’72 Beetle. This was the brand that helped launch modern advertising- with Bernbach and his “lemon” ad. Then the eighties came- and VW ignored everything that made them what they were- and lost their market share and their brand position- that of inexpensive, reliable and not being a slave to fashion. They also started going through ad agencies like babies go through diapers. Then they landed with a smaller agency out of Boston called “Arnold.” Their “Drivers wanted” started to reconnect the idea of a car as something fun to drive- instead of being about displaying your ___________ (insert ego, machismo, status etc.). The campaigns were simple, they didn’t have the VO saying “with it’s 2.4 liter, double overhead cam drive blah, blah, blah” (Detroit, take note), and they created positive emotional ties between you and your VW- be it driving around town picking up old furniture or taking a drive with friends with the top down on a star lit night.
The campaign did the job- VW didn’t. The cars quality wasn’t there, and these aren’t tennis shoes with a 6 month shelf life- it’s a car- the second largest purchase people make. After years of screwing their customers, they hired a new marketing chief- and said screw you to the agency that bought them a second chance.
Now we have Crispin Porter + Bogusky telling us to “Unpimp your auto.”
From an entertainment standpoint- I love these spots- I laugh at tuner cars all the time. For as much as these kids put into a Subaru WRX, Honda Civic, Dodge Neon, etc- they could have a lot more car. I’d take a used Boxter over a hopped up Civic any day- and I imagine most women would rather say “My boyfriend drives a Porsche” than “my boyfriend has an Eclipse” or- a “Mark V GTI from VW- pretuned by German engineers.”
These spots stick in my head like a bad song on your clock radio that wakes you up from a deep sleep- and then doesn’t go away all day- think “My Sharona” by “The Knack” and then some. That says to me they are good advertising- they cut through the clutter- especially car ads- which as a category are more formulaic than a Big Mac (two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickle, onion on a sesame seed bun- and yes- that tagline has stuck with me for over 30 years).
But, while the Jordan Next gen ads leave me with a feeling of love and awe- the UnPimp spots leave me feeling – well, entertained and that’s it. Yes, people will talk about the spots, and some may now think about VW again- and may go out and look at one- but, in the grand land of automobile choices- I’m not sure I want to own a car that is unPimped- or even associated with that entire genre of transportation.
Granted, I’m not in the tuner car demo- but the VW base price is at least $5K more than the cars they are making fun of. Not only that- the ads local dealers are running in the papers don’t connect at all with this new “campaign.” While this kind of entertainment may work for something like Burger King- where franchises don’t run their own ads- and proudly display anything that is sent down from corporate- the dealers have to be part of the entire buyer experience. Are we going to see lab coats on the sales floor next?
So- as much as it makes me chuckle, and that I enjoy watching it- CP+B need to go back to the drawing board- “Drivers Wanted” beats doing what ever it is with your “fast” any day. And W+K deserves a second shot (they has Subaru for 2 years) at a car account.
My question is to CP+B- can you let your VW speak?
The brand had a voice once- understated, honest, cool- bring it back. Please.
What do you think?