The results are in for the American Advertising Federation’s Fifth District student ad competition- and the winner is the University of Kentucky. These students will get to go to San Francisco in June for the National competition and square off against teams from across the country. The client, Postal Vault, of Dallas Texas, was the first “small client” in the history of the competition and they gave the students a taste of a real world, with changes halfway through the assignment and some odd requests in the brief. As in all things advertising, the campaign presentations ran from the bad to the very good.
I’m in a position to know- I was selected to be the client representative on the panel.
The competition is still going on in some districts, so I will limit myself to say that reviewing the planbooks and presentations by 9 teams is a lot of work- but very rewarding. Often times in advertising we search out young talent to give us a fresh perspective on our business- and while I saw some incredible talent today- there is much to be said for the wisdom that comes from years of experience.
Watch this space in the near future for a tip sheet for building effective planbooks for this competition- and for making an effective presentation. For now, I just want to say it was an honor to be a judge, and that the process served as a reminder of how and why I love this business. If you ever get the call to be a judge on one of these competitions- I highly recommend it- even if it will mean missing sleep and a day or two of work.
Not only will you be giving something back- you’ll walk away with a creative battery recharge that will surprise and delight you.
Congratulations to all the teams- I hope this was a good introduction to our amazing field.
The other winning schools:
2nd. place Western Kentucky University
3rd place Ohio University
4th place Youngstown State
John Carroll University, Marshall University, Mount Vernon Nazarene University, Murray State University and Xavier University were the other participants.
The latest hip thing to do in advertising is let your customers create the ads for you. In fact, Fast Company lists advertising creatives as one of six jobs that won’t exist in 2016- because:
“Talented amateurs making ads for fun and posting them online seem to be better at your job than you are. Bonus: No more “whither the 30-second spot” whining.”
Right now Mastercard is fishing for ideas for their “Priceless” campaign officially with a spot _____________ is _____________, etc.
Read more: on adfreakThe Consumerist or Ernie Schenck
Spending money making ads asking people to make ads- hmmm, sounds like the ultimate creative cop-out to me.
In the business- often time marketers with big budgets ask for Spec work- and that’s “Spec” as in “Speculative” not as in “Special.” If we like it- we’ll hire you. (See http://www.no-spec.com for the right answers to this practice).
We had Arby’s ask us for Spec work- my answer was that when they start serving roast beef- where people only have to pay if they like the sandwich- I’ll consider it. “The Apprentice” likes to use marketing tasks to evaluate Donald Trump’s future yes persons. It seems that every other task is to make an ad, or figure out how to sell something- yet most of the candidates aren’t marketers- and the job they are auditioning for isn’t a marketing position.
Advertising Age points out yearly that the ad industry isn’t paying competitively with other business fields- that managers, finance people and accountants all earn more. And granted, there are a ton of bad agencies doing crap work out there- but, in the end, someone has to be brilliant and change the Nike’s of the world from running shoe maker to lifestyle brand with “Just do it.”
So- before any more of you marketers consider letting your fans do the work- (see adcandy for more of this_enabling them with packaged flash clips on your site- take a look at what someone did with this Chevy Apprentice site tie in- and realize- maybe it is better to pay someone to do your spots afterall.
What do you think?
After watching this creative execution- using the crazy high budget shots to “sell” an SUV- the same “create your own spot tool” was used to create a comment on the insanity of these types of spots- click here.
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.
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.
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:
Television networks
Broadcasters
Cable systems
Satellite TV systems.
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?
Next time you look at a campaign being presented by your agency, step back and pretend you are your biggest competitor. If you are selling HD video cameras and your name is Sony, pretend to be Canon, or Panasonic. If you are Dell, pretend to be HP, if you are Honda, think like Toyota- or if you are Miami Valley Hospital, pretend to be Kettering Medical Center.
On first glance- does the ad look like everything else they’ve done? If yes, then do I need to worry about any groundbreaking challenges to my position? If yes, what would I need to do to counter this ad? And all of a sudden you are looking at your own advertising and evaluating it in a whole new way. Proud of yourself, huh?
Problem is- your competitor isn’t your problem.
I’m not suggesting you work in a vacuum, but this is how you produce safe, boring ads that keep you in the status quo section of the market- and that is where you are most vulnerable to losing market share- even if you are the leader in your field.
Here is a secret- there is no such thing as “Market share.” While Procter & Gamble is comfortable with the idea of market share, and Coke and Pepsi slug it out over fractions of a percent shifts, consumers are not part of group, they are individuals making decisions as single entities. The moment you start lumping them into percentages or demographics, you loose sight of the part of marketing that is magical- what should be the goal of every creative toiling away on your account- and what makes a product into a brand- and that is making a connection one-on-one with that customer- where they identify themselves with you, not as your target.
Think of archery- we can shoot arrows at the target from far away, but if you really want to hit the bullseye- the heart- the easiest way is to be a part of that target and impale the arrow in yourself. Sounds gruesome- but that’s when your ads hit pay dirt.
So, instead of talking about yourself- try to give the consumer the tools to talk about their life with your product- in a way they don’t feel that they are owned by you- but that they own your brand. Nike accomplished this with “Just do it” – probably better than anyone, the question is- when you are looking at that next ad you are going to run- “Is is about us” or “Is it about our customer plus us.”
Makes all the difference in the world.
