Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

There’s been a massive campaign in Germany for a new type of Insurance company called ERGO. The campaign shows a guys talking about what went wrong between people and insurance companies. It’s a well executed sentiment that everyone can easily understand.

Now there is a viral going around that is claiming that 60% of the copy for the Ergo TV commerical comes from a Hollywood movie “High Fidelity” starring John Cusack. In fact, not only the copy but also the scenes are exactly the same. Also the voiceover of the commerical seems to be spoken by the same guy who dubbed the movie in German.

Is this what happens when you run out of ideas, or is this (as some one suggested on Youtube), a matter of the agency bringing in High Fidelity as a mood film, and the client “wanting it exactly like that”. We’ll never know.

To be honest, I haven’t been able to verify if the spoken text is in fact the original text in the movie. But if it is, what a crass blunder!

via Matthias Lauten

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In a recent post on Retail Customer Experience.com, Jeff Weidauer speaks about how mobile couponing is heading in the wrong direction.  He references the fact that marketers trying to replicate a coupon bar code on mobile devices can be compared to Henry Ford’s famous comment that if he had asked the public what he should build they would have told him - “A faster horse.”

While I agree with his well-thought-out points on the dire situation of mobile coupon display technology, I think the revolution is almost here - where the mobile channel becomes a serious contender in the value chain.  And it all comes down to customer behavior (just like it always does).

Couponing has never been ideal for marketers or the public - with most coupons distributed willy-nilly in broadcast print media, and the vast majority of them never used.  And people hate having to remember to clip and carry - not even willing in most cases to print at home with the slew of online coupon outfits.

Marketers also have to do a careful dance with couponing - realizing that they will unwillingly subsidize a portion of purchases that their loyal consumers would have already planned to make.  And the higher the value, the more possible that they will shift the ideal price point in the consumer’s head for the product or service.

But when couponing is thought of differently, and more personally, we can get to a place where it starts making sense for everyone.  For marketers the only realistic position is personalization - if they can’t customize the coupon value for the individual, then they don’t have any way to assist in developing any real relationship with the person.  Once you are committed to personalization, the mobile channel starts to look more and more like the right place to be, and if you maintain focus on ease of use for the user, you’ll avoid the replication of real-world ‘Faster Horse’ mentality that the article takes issue with.  For retailers, they will continue to push for solutions like Kroger has, that tie manufacturer value-off deals to their existing loyalty cards - creating frictionless experiences for the big chain shoppers.

Via: RetailCustomerExperience

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Recently, I’ve come across some articles about the ad industry having a sort of midlife-crisis. This is an interesting notion, as this would premise that advertising as such has a natural life that has to come to an end at some point. And after so many people already having screamed “Advertising is dead,” I am now confused it isn’t. It’s just a mid-life crisis? Folks, get our vital signs right! Also, to follow the metaphor, what exactly is the proverbial “Porsche” in Advertising’s “mid-life crisis”?

Joking aside, just 2 weeks ago Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung painted a critical picture of the industry and mentioned that ad professionals have hard time reinventing themselves and their business model.

Just like a balding 45 year old in a track-suit with disposable income looking for a souped-up convertible to feel better about himself, advertising lacks purpose.

Today, I read Warren Berger’s take on the Bogusky situation “Maybe the Midlife Crisis Isn’t Bogusky’s?“.  Being American and a bit less cynical that his German counterpart, and using the crisis as an opportunity, Warren states that agency professionals (just like Bogusky, but without the massive payout) have been looking for deeper social meaning and context for their work ever since digital technologies have put public opinion (and advertising itself) in the hands of the people. But more interestingly, Berger also makes some nice observations that in fact remind us what the real story is:

The second part of the story suggests to me that some client companies are perhaps still a bit thin-skinned when it comes to having any kind of candid discussion about serious issues. Which in turn suggests that these companies are living in the past — in a pre-social networking era when they could actually still control the public debate.

Ok. To anyone working in an ad agency, this is a pretty shared (even though somewhat of a subjective) sentiment; still, thanks for saying it on Adweek, Warren! And, by the way, this answers my previous question of what the “Porsche” is in the “advertising mid-life crisis”: Affording yourself the irresponsible, ineffective and inefficient luxury of lolly-gagging around when it comes to changing your business model, dragging your heels on changing your creative product and pretending you still live in a brand era. However, I would say this is still true for clients and agencies alike. Dependency on short-term quarterly planning, lack of deeply thought-out foresight and interupted implementation of long-term vision apparently makes it hard to think about a more efficient, unsexy hybrid car when you can still afford the 911. You won’t be able to afford the gas in a couple of years, but hey, »Après nous le déluge«.

Hence, Warren continues to point out that the ad agency’s deliverables should change: product design, launching community initiatives, revising corporate policies, etc.

Or, as we would tell our clients: We want to help you doing things, instead of just saying things. Things that create value exchange, not messaging.

For that to happen though, the role and creative product of agencies have to change. And right now, it’s a a bit of a chicken or egg problem: a) Agency leaders have to really put their money where their mouth is, and enable their shops to actually deliver a creative product that does things with people and instead of milking a defunct business model of creating messages, while b) clients have to become more confident in matters of understanding true human behavior and consequently need to start paying their agency partners for creating purpose-driven initiatives that create a qualitative difference in people’s lives. Result of this catch-22: if agencies don’t offer it, clients can’t buy it. If clients don’t buy it, agencies can’t build those competencies.

So instead of wondering what’s first, chicken or egg, all parties should focus on the chick everyone has been talking about hatching: people-driven brands that have a human purpose, not a promise. Experiences that are authentic, not tagged-on target-audience sentiments that muddy a brand’s expression more than enable a true value exchange. If both clients and agencies came together on this simple observation, Warren’s finishing paragraph would actually not be that utopian:

It might even allow the ad agency to claim some of the moral high ground as it plays a greater role in guiding companies to do the right thing — not just for themselves, but also for the world at large. Is that an overly ambitious and idealistic vision of the future of ad agencies? Maybe. But hey, when you’re having a midlife crisis, you’re allowed to dream big.

Damn right you are. It’s what you signed up for.

In fact, there are enough examples of behavior-based and purpose-driven brands out there that show it’s not utopian to steer clear of a type of cookie-cutter advertising that is either crass exhibitionsm or bland commercialism or teary-eyed sentimentalism, but rather enable human behavior in a way that works for brands and people alike.

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A new article from TechCrunch outlines the current fight between Zygna and Facebook on the Credit System that they prefer (require) payments to go through.

The fight is interesting in that Facebook clearly would like to benefit from some of the amazing spend that some loyal users are throwing at the Zygna platforms, but also in regards to Brands who may wish to get in on the action.  When the payment platform that Facebook prefers/requires includes a cut for the ‘house’ then Brands have to think twice about playing.

We’ve spoken about the cost of participation on social platforms before, but this discussion also raises a few new questions about how to measure actions taken on the platform.  We can imagine some of the possible benefits for Brands working with Facebook to utilize, offer and redeem credits - whether or not those credits are bought, or earned through engagement on the platform.  After all, if the value of the experience that we are offering is great enough, why would some virtual currency not change hands? Rewards for positive behaviors may extend to offering these virtual benefits, which will then require more scrutiny as to their ROI than some current offerings/rewards schemes.

Via: TechCrunch

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Check our the iPad report on Horizont TV.

Part 1:
Talks about possible 3 directions of best-practices of iPad Apps for media companies.

Part 2:
Talks about Branded Applications, Target Audiences and Creative Possibilities

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I just read an interesting article from Augustine Fou over at ClickZ about Digital being at the root of modern advertising, and it seemed to resonate with some discussions we had been having in the Frankfurt office over the last few years.

The point is not that everything begins and ends with a website/banner/facebook page, but rather the cultural impact made by the rise of all our digital options for living.  And it’s not that people live their lives online, but rather that people use digital ‘properties’ to do so much STUFF in their lives, even when they don’t think they’re ‘online’.  You use digital technology when you pay for gas with a card.  You use digital when you check the movie times on your phone.  You use digital when you Google the actors in a TV program you’re watching. You use digital when you watch a screen in a store while you wait to check out.  Your TV is as digital as most computers are.  It’s kind of everywhere, and you relate to it and use it, even if you’re not actively searching for information about a product or service.  Ultimately, there is more and more human behavior that is linked, or tracked, or enabled by digital properties. And due to the Request/Receive nature of digital properties, this behavior can be leveraged to understand needs and desires.

The value of this information about behavior (digital breadcrumbs left in our modern world) can’t be overemphasized.  Integrating digital at the core of marketing activities allows for unprecedented analysis of data related to how people interact with digital properties, making the case for more efficient and effective work, especially when it is designed from the beginning to take advantage of human insights and behavior.

I’m not sure I buy that Digital is the center, but I prefer to think of it as a key element of the modern human landscape, rather than a channel, for sure.

Via: Stephane Grunenwald @sgrunenwald on Twitter

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So, thanks to our colleague Karen Green in Chicago, we received an iPad today in the office mail.

After finding a workaround for the fact the the German Appstore doesn’t work for the iPad yet, we started playing around a bit. Apart of noticing how crappy iPhone apps look on the iPad, there are some first observations.

First off, the device is pretty amazing and we can see how it has the power to alter a lot of human behavior. But in the first moments, it’s not changing behaviors radically, it’s augmenting them. Funnily, when you use it to read magazines and newspaper apps, you revert to analog user behavior. The interesting thing is that it becomes a combination of your analog user behavior with digital interaction expectations. What this means is that User Experience professional are designing for both kinds of worlds when it comes to magazine apps. Seems pretty obvious, but when you start playing around with it you also notice a lot of gaps between those two different ways of usage. So it will be a matter of how well XPs and Designers fill that gap. You no longer do print layout or interaction design. You will have to know how to both without compromises for the print type medium and the weblike medium.

Case in point: we feel the NYT App works with much more expectation conformity than the Popular Science App. It works like a newspaper except it has some interactive elements. Even the contained advertising isn’t at all surprising or weird to the user. It’s what you would expect from a newspaper with the cachet of NYT. Like any good user experience, you don’t notice how great the usability is. It however needs a little more interactive stuff at the right place.

The popular science application however, doesn’t really quite seem what it is yet. It looks amazing, but it has an odd usage paradigm that is neither analog nor interactive nor an easy to use amalgam of both. From navigating to flipping pages and a lack of real interactivity to not being able to differentiate the advertising, it just doesn’t feel there yet.

So, I am sure web User Experience heuristics will apply for the iPad as well, but they will also radically alter. Maybe heuristics will be created for types of magazines in similar ways that different heuristics have been developed for differing types of sites, i.e. e-commerce sites vs news portals vs social networks. Finding that right user experience will probably go a long way in terms of really working for a unique brand experience that helps position the brand.

Second, apart from the obvious changes need to develop applications for private end users, when you look at this through the lens of the brand or marketing person, you get tons of ideas instantly on how to make brands relevant in this context. The long touted “brand user experience” can really happen here with the best of all media channel worlds. Also an interesting thought might be on whether the user experience paradigm of whatever eMagazine you advertise in influences your ad experience. Since ads can be interactive, their interactivity might have to embedded into the magazine’s usage paradigm to really work. Spinning cars in automobile ads are nice, but there’s probably more. Or, of course it will need to be so special that you want to interact with it regardless. The potential of print ads with stopping power: it might be back.

Third, not just that, while we believe private end users will probably keep the iPad at home (because, let’s be honest: it is NOT a working tool for the types of thing we need to do at the office, barring some exceptions), the possibilities for specific industries literally lie in your hand. Really anyone who could directly profit from bridging a analog-digital gap or augmenting existing processes and information flows will have a field day with this: car dealers, retailers, logistics, restaurants, you name it. Not just for marketing, but also internal processes. And, of course marketing departments of all types of industries will not pass this up to do their name generation, promos, etc with it.

So, while it might take some time to become mainstream, it looks like exciting times for everyone. Designers get to design in a new way, marketers to market in a new way and newspapers can survive with a new type of advertising again. Almost to good to be true.

We will do some user testing on it and report back.

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Most of you have probably seen the recent Steve Jobs presentation which included a few minutes on their planned iAds platform. (watch it here, starts at 44:00).

Now, apart from this being a pretty cool thing for everyone involved who wants to make ad money (marketers, developers, agencies) there are three things which come to mind:

1. Do conventional online ads experiences really deliver no emotion and won’t iPhone ads have the same problems with click through?

Okay, first off all, unlike Steve says, I believe there have been many examples of emotional ad experiences in online ads. The real question, though, has always been: are they all relevant in the user’s context? As always, people hate being interrupted in what they are doing when they go to an online portal. So how will this be different on iPhones?

Sure, click-throughs will improve because there is now a seamless transition in the app to ad and back to app. However, let’s not muddy the issue: this is just fixing a problem apps have while online portals really don’t so much (You can easily go back to the portal from an ad). Still, the human behavior of not wanting to interrupted in my task flow by advertising will probably stay the same. And apart from the fact that you always have your phone with you and it’s location-aware, it’s not like iPhones ads (and the examples he showed) are much more interactive or interesting than stuff you used to get on a Microsite anno 2000. This is solely a function of how creative the brand or their agency wants to make their app (or in old days, microsite) experience.

I think Steve just pulled the “more emotional” trick to make iAds look more interesting to brand managers, who are driven by the notion that Advertising has to be emotional and creative. Also, he is attaching this promise to an amazing track record in creating new platforms for brands to which no brand manager can say no, especially because there is a lot of frustration in the online marketer community on online metrics and really understanding what to do. So, if he can make his community happy through delivery of a simple to use platform,  he will make a lot of money. (see point 3).

2. Do people really not use search on iPhones when they really want to find something?

There is no doubt that when you have a content and subject matter related need that is covered by one of your apps, the chances are high you are going to use Yelp, Qype and the like to “search”. For that to be true though, those apps have to be highly embedded into your lifestyle. How many apps do you have on your iPhone that you don’t even use? On my iPhone it’s 80% of my apps I don’t regularly use. It’s like this: you liked the idea of them, downloaded them but you haven’t made part of your daily behavior. So, yes, for apps you use regularly use this works well. But for free apps (mainly games) getting people to branded content is still just advertising (see point 1).

So I really don’t know how that argument even helps with Steve’s case. I doubt people who search stuff in a topic area that is not embedded in their lifestyle that will first try to find a matching app in the Appstore, make the purchase decision, evaluate the app and then use it to search.  Therefore, for everything else people will use Google Maps on the go. Rest assured, we are going to do some UX research to check this out.

And to be absolutely blunt: aren’t apps just like web portals and iAds just like online advertising? Think about it. When you go to your few favorite news, sports, and topic of interest portals it’s like your few favorite often used apps on the iPhone. And Ads? Well, there’s ads that try to interrupt on those portals you go to. And now, they will be everywhere on the iPhone. Brilliant. Advertising has paid the livelyhood of all mediums so far:  print magazines, radio stations, tv stations, and online portals. In the future it will pay for app development.

Only difference is: this channel is owned only by Apple, the way to create for the channel is owned by Apple, the delivery and distribution platform is owned by Apple, and guess what? The media agency is Apple (see point 3). Well done.

3. Only 60% revenue goes to the application owner?

Imagine you had to pay 40% to your media agency for letting you use their media buying, and imagine that this media agency doesn’t actually have to do anything for you because you will still need to actually still do the stategy, creative and program the frigging ad. Wow. Granted, iPhones users right now still represent are very interesting and affluent target audience. But still, 40% percent?? If anyone can pull this off, it’s Steve Jobs.

So yeah, old wine in new skins, where the new skin is a single platform business and license to print money. Genius.

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In their article Does Social Media Change Your Agency Relationships? I think the author missed the point.

The article (but more specifically several comments to the article) opines that marketers might need to bring aspects of social media marketing in-house because the agency’s role is to ’spin a marketing message’.

Really?  How old-fashioned is that?  Is this the 50’s?  Is this Mad Men?

I’d agree that the emergence of social media changes relationships, but to say it’s about whether or not your Advertising Agency is involved is to miss the larger change.  Wouldn’t we have to agree as an industry that social media has changed how COMPANIES can/should/must operate?  Not just Agencies, not just Brand Marketers, not just Customer Care and not just PR folks. Ultimately, the smartest marketers and agencies understand that Social is not a channel or even just a strategy, but a reality about how humans live their lives, and sometimes that reality includes Brands. That’s not to say that Brands have to participate in conversations - they don’t.  But realistically the conversation may happen with or without the Brand being a part of it, and therefore a chance missed to make a connection that is fundamentally different from a TV spot.  Social conversation is building relationships and co-creating with consumers, and, for better or worse, it’s a central experience for consumers now.

Brands need more than a strategy and process for what they want to do in Social.  They need partners to bring their values and benefits to life in the space, and processes built by students of Human Behavior to monitor, moderate, and participate in ways that grow and deepen relationships that people have with the Brands that they love.

But don’t get me wrong - the Brand Marketer (or the agency for that matter) that thinks they don’t have to change as well is in for a long, tough road.  In order for successful engagement to be built, the processes of vetting, judging, guiding and responding require commitment and organizational change from both sides of the Marketer-Agency relationship. For one thing, the old model of “take a few weeks to nail the statement and then we’ll run it by legal” doesn’t work when you have to react in real-time.  For another, the demands of an active community can seem like a new call center just opened up for Customer Service folks - it’s always on and they have a lot of questions!

I see it as 5 steps, with mostly shared activities:

1.  Agency(s) and Brand set the strategy, including input from all concerned parties like PR, Consumer Affairs Brand and Senior Management.

2.  The right channel, tools and voice(s) are chosen for each aspect to be participated in, and content creation loops are realized. Smart partner selection rounds out this step.

3.  Guidelines are set that push for flawless execution through whatever delivery channels.

4.  Metrics are implemented to ensure responsible and efficient use of resources (proving out the business case for the investment).

5.  Partners are leveraged to keep up with new opportunities, changes and innovations as they emerge.

The strain on Marketer’s organizations to deal with Social Media is enough without telling them to go it alone.  Why not share the load with your partners?

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With Facebook’s forthcoming announcements about the changes to Fan Pages, it seems relevant to bring up the odd situation that marketers and their agencies sometimes find themselves in when things like this change.  That old favorite for the digital world: Catch-up!

(Some elements of the coming changes were leaked here on ClickZ where it states that the news was sent in an email to some agencies).

Facebook knows what it has in terms of an audience marketers want access to, and users know that they have a lot of control when they’re in the FB walled garden, so changes like the move from “Become a Fan” to “Like” as an opt-in call-to-action are sure to put lots of people into a lather, and sure to get Facebook some of that user backlash they have gotten so used to lately.

A big question for me, is how quickly are marketers ready to make changes based upon this new shift?  In some ways, and especially in the case of Brands that actively use social platforms, changes like this can sometimes feel like someone keeps re-coding the internet every few months.  As soon as you get users acquainted with how things work, the rules change.  Most improvements seem to head the company/platform in the direction of streamlining or simplifying, but some missteps are bound to happen (I don’t think I ever really understood the difference between my newsfeed and livefeed).

The question, is, are you ready?  Do you have your specifications documented and know how the new changes will affect your users?  Do you have people looking into how the other changes coming can help make this change less of an issue?

Or are you planning to play catch-up all summer? 

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