Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

As more pressure is put on marketers and their agencies to do more with less, some of the most interesting opportunities for connecting with people come not from creating marketing campaigns, but finding new ways of creating value for consumers outside of the delivery of marketing messages.  This situation is an exciting new charge we feel today in our agency, as we look to find creative ways to have Brands participate in society with our consumers.  It’s not just reinventing ourselves as an advertising agency, but actually reinventing this reinvention into our begin a whole new kind of partner for our clients and their business.

Razorfish recently grabbed such an opportunity in their participation of a venture with Citigroup and Microsoft - linking content (in Citi’s case consumer data), with computing power (in Microsoft’s case) to create Bundle.

Interesting and inspiring - and I can’t wait to see where they go with this!  It also raises some fascinating questions in terms of what an agency model should be when the output is not a creative asset, but a business strategy, or even a new company.  I have had the chance to work on some projects like this with our clients, and I can honestly say it is as challenging and eye-opening as it is rewarding.  Check out the Bundle beta here.

Read about the venture here.

Source: AdWeek

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I had just read this article about marketers not sure how to take advantage of Location-Based Services, specifically ones that are Social-Network based, and one of our Account people popped their head in my office to ask “What’s up with FourSquare? Is it worthwhile? And is it significant for Marketers?”

Good questions all. Foursquare allows you to “check in” to locations and awards badges for different user activities. The Article correctly states that some restaurants and bars are already embracing it, but the activities and offers are still in early days. Note the offer from Wow Bao in my building below:

Yeah – it’s a freebie offer, but I find it interesting that there is such a conversation about “is this interesting for marketers” and “how will marketers use it” – since it should make sense to pay attention to if you’ve got at least some of your audience that uses these kinds of things, and you’re worth having a relationship with in the first place (which, granted, is a big question for some marketers).

Here’s why: think about why restaurants and bars already jumped on the bandwagon. They have to develop relationships with their customers – they don’t have a choice. They don’t have a retailer that will put up POS material, or vast amounts of online ad spend (generally), and most of the places I’ve seen don’t do TV. For them, the relationship with the person in that establishment is everything, and finding new ways to prolong and enrich that relationship is the key to their success. For them the only question would be “why would I not get involved?”

Now I’m looking back over the last 12 months and thinking about the times I’ve mentioned doing something like this for a marketer, and thinking “You know what? My Client needs to break out from the shelf, their target is pretty well-connected digitally, they are not always getting the POS attention they want, or always deserve, they want more engagement, and since their relationship with the consumer is everything for them as well … so Why not?”

Bonus topic for further conversation: How different would the strategy for the marketer be from what they use for Facebook and Twitter?

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2010 Consumer Trend Report from TREND HUNTER

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If you haven’t read the “How Teenagers Consume Media” report by the 15-year-old Morgan Stanley intern then you may want to check out the original first.  Otherwise you could subject yourself to the endless blogging and news commentary all over the place here, here, here and oh just google it yourself.

Ultimately there should be nothing shocking here for people who follow behavior, rather than wishful thinking.  Yes, people want stuff for free.  No they do not tend to want to have an interruption from a Brand, or a relationship, dialog or anything else with you, unless it benefits them (and sometimes not even then).

Sure - the ’study’ was probably not the most scientific, and there are a few too many sweeping declarations, and a lot of conclusions missing about what Brands should be doing that they aren’t  However, I’m surprised that so many people are shouting that the sky is falling.

What should we expect?  We should be striving to understand the behaviour, and apply creativity to solutions for people and the Brands that they include in their lives.

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There are several good articles out now about the race to create applications (apps) for mobile phones, with the iPhone leading the charge for most agencies in the rush to create branded applications.

Ad Age: Insisting on an iPhone App? Not So Fast

Media Renaissance@mediablog.com: Going Ape over iphone apps: will the trend last?

These articles all tend to point to the somewhat obvious conclusion that apps don’t kill people, short-sighted marketing plans do.  In other words, too many marketers skip the step of making sure that their app has a reason for being before setting it loose upon the world and expecting to be on everyone’s phone tomorrow.

I think the outcry is a little exaggerated (after all we’ve really only started to see examples of obvious app abuse - there likely will be much more), but there are some basic considerations that do need to be put in context to have a successful trial of app technology.  For the most part, what we are seeing is still people testing the waters, given the lower penetration of the types of phones that run apps.  But the articles are dead-on about one thing - there are many more coming.  In a few years every phone will be app-capable, and campaigns without an app will get scoffed out of the room.  <shudder>  Yes, get ready for that to be added to the checklist, kids.

The Ad Age article at least has a smart collection of 5 reasons you might want an app:

Engagement 101. If done right, an app is an opportunity to deeply involve the consumer and a way to extend dialogue after a campaign has ended.

It can raise brand loyalty. The more times consumers interact with a brand, the greater the chances they will gravitate toward it when they’re ready to buy.

You’ll be ready when the app market really explodes. Within five years, In-Stat expects handset makers to ship a total of more than 100 million units that are app-compatible, so now is the time to gain some experience.

It’s where the eyeballs are. The numbers are compelling: some 800 million downloads from the iPhone App Store.

IPhoners have great demographics. Their income specifically makes them a very desirable target, and they’re ravenous multimedia users. According to AdMob, iPhone generates half the smartphone traffic in the U.S.

As we covered in TechCheck last year, mobile applications are going to keep exploding, and first movers will generally have the advantage, especially if they really focus on creating smart value for the user, and make sure that the use of the app resonates with their Brand.  Our opinion and recommendations to clients remain rooted in human behavior:  what we do must be relevant for the person, feel like the Brand, and have a clear reason for being.  (I’m not sure how the iFart app rates on these items, but it’s funny as hell.  For about a week.)

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While reading a recent interview with Lars Bastholm about creativity, he speaks about how creative technologists are getting more and more involved in the creative process, and earlier and earlier.

A lot of the technologists here are really considered part of the creative team.

Often, we’ll also go down to the guys in tech and say, “You know what? We have this really crazy idea — is this doable?” The great thing about our tech guys is that normally, they’ll be like, “Huh. I can’t think of how to do it right now, but I’ll find a way to make it happen.” We never get a “No, that’s not possible.” We always get “I might not know how right now, but I will certainly crack that.”

This experience mirrors our own over the last several years in our agency, where it is clear that we have to stay ahead of what is being done technically, in order to continue to innovate creatively.

Read the full text here

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The results from the last quarter of 2008 are in, and available for your perusal here.

Enjoy!

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In the times of the oh-so-empowered “Prosumer” user-generated outcries over companies, brands and their sometimes inane advertising has been the domain of blogs, forums and review sites. Now, first reports come in that the chatty monosyllabic twitter crowd has also made some forays into user-generated consumer advocacy, or, shall we say, advertising-related hate tweets. Case in point: Motrin’s mom-alogue video.

Is this a case of trendspotting gone wrong? Yeah, the baby wearing thing is a trend and forums are agog with mothers discussing it. However, trying to usurp that trend is apparently another story.

I personally think the whole thing is a stretch conceptually, but regardless of that, I can see how some moms, especially those who are supposed to be relevant as an audience, might take offense, or at least, write it off as insipid marketing hu-ha. How convenient that you don’t even need a blog anymore to rant, but instead, you can micro-blog the bejesus out of brands: it’s even faster feedback that brands have to deal with now. Result for Motrin: the twitter outrage made it into the TOP 5 of google search results when you search for Motrin.

It’s time brands developed a fall-back plan for failed ad ideas that are getting ripped apart by the blogosphere, and recently, the micro-blogosphere, or, actually, have something relevant to say instead of straddling this or the other trend, just because for lack of better ideas.

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Geschmackslabor, German for Flavour Lab, is a new restaurant located in a former school in Bremerhaven. The ‘lab’ part of the name refers to letting customers add flavour to their meals.

Dishes are served ready-to-eat, but diners are encouraged to enhance them by adding one or more of twenty custom-made seasoning oils that Geschmackslabor has on offer. The seasonings are all based on very pure olive oil, which is infused with flavors ranging from Arabica coffee and rosemary to papaya and coconut. Geschmackslabor’s menu suggests which seasonings go well with which dishes, but the whole point is for customers to experiment and find their own delicious combinations. The restaurant supplies plenty of bread for trying out different oils before adding them to food, allowing customers to sample a full range of spicy, sour, salty, sweet and bitter. The oils are also sold separately at EUR 4.90-5.50 for 100 ml.

Adding olive oil to prepared food may not appeal to every consumer, but Geschmackslabor’s DIY approach to ‘finishing’ a dish definitely adds a new level of experience to eating out. It’s an adventurous, taste-focused alternative to the usual ketchups and hot sauces, and should appeal to those daring consumers that trendwatching.com calls trysumers. 

 

Website: www.geschmackslabor.com
Source: clipped from Springwise: Promising new business ideas for entrepreneurial minds 8/20/08

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When we started using Google Trends to glean some trend insights, it was all business at first. Then, it became a tool look at some trends no one likes to talk about. We started entering stuff like “Porn” or even worse “child porn” or anything nasty. Hence, I coigned the term “Nastiness Trending”. It’s quite a sublime thing, from which to derive a weird, negative pleasure. The pleasure part comes from knowing which countries have the nastiest google users, and being lucky if your country isn’t in the Top 10.

Obviously, we weren’t the only one with this idea, in fact a German newspaper made an article about it.

However, the whole thing is a bit tricky, because you have to choose the keywords in a certain language, so you cannot definitively say that, e.g. in the porn case, South Africans are the nastiest.

I am waiting for the day where you can do compound trending in different languages.

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