Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

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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eMarketer newsletter brought fresh data on the relation of social media usage and shopping behavior - esp. among the so-called “Generation Y” demographic:

• 85% of Gen Y and 39.3% auf US “retail respondents” are social networkers
• The most relevant social networking sites (for the US) are, still, Facebook, MySpace and YouTube.
• Search engines, online rating systems, discussion forums and blogs are perceived as the most relevant sources for product information that influences purchase decisions. These media rank above company websites, even.

eMarketer: “Consumers’ use of social media is altering the way they make purchase decisions. To stay relevant, retailers must determine how to incorporate social media, such as social networks and blogs, into their marketing strategies.”

And that’s exactly the point: Companies must find ways to engage with people who have increasingly learnt to come to the internet for peer produced information. Simply advertising in social networks may be a start - at least there is reach. But the real challange is for brands to raise to peer-level in terms of trust, authenticity - and relevance.

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C. G. Jung used association tests to identify so called complexes, which are located in the unconscious of psyche. The brandtags site doesn’t necessarily get in touch with the unconscious areas of people’s minds, but it provides quite nice brand insights. Everyone can take part and type in own associations of prompted brands. What you get is a survey of all brand associations - ranked by frequency. Check out the results for brands you love, hate, or whatever… Or you can do the quiz by guessing to what brand the shown words are relating.

The bottom line is: This experiment doesn’t fulfill the quality criteria for empirical studies, of course. Anyway, one might possibly get some funky brand insights.

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Despite the season we invite you to a lovely outdoor experience. OK, it’s only a digital one, but www.welcomebackspring.com isn’t just interesting for someone who’s into gardening, but also for anyone who’s into great brand and user experiences. It provides joy of use by combining general information on gardening with concrete product offerings. The overall mood is very relaxed, what mirrors a real garden experience. The best part is that you can meet with some virtual hobby gardeners, what gives the site its personal touch.

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UK Agency Republic brings the car make smart with a promotional website online. It seems that smart got a handful of insights of non-smart-drivers about the misconceptions and customer prejudices of the small city runabout. So the user passes a journey through themes like comfort, safety, space and fuel consumption and smart’s features in a british humorous way.

The site demands interaction and decisions, shows other users’ behaviour and presents the answers of the putted questions in amusing experiments. Excellent implemented: sales support, possibility of direct contact and lead generation at the end of the experiment process - well done!

So, who would you call if your smart has a meeting with a wrecking ball? The ambulance or a mechanics? Decide by yourself!
http://www.truthaboutsmart.co.uk

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Pretty funny site for the new Subaru Forester: You can play director of the subaru photo shoot, turn angles and submit your shoots. It’s pretty fun, makes you wanna stay, and isn’t even that elaborate.

The best thing are the stereotypical comments of the irate Director (you), such as “Get me a slim latte, it’s not that hard, is it?”, etc..

Check it out…

http://www.sexysubaru.ca/index2.php?lang=en

(Thanks Philipp)

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