The concept is dead on; execution notwithstanding. We've been talking about this for awhile now.

Seth has a post up on his blog called Benefit of the Doubt. In it, he basically suggests that when doubt is swinging your way in the minds of your consumers, they won't be so ready to tear you a new one when you (inevitably) screw up. On its face, it’s difficult to argue with this insight. You know, self-deprecation and all that. It’s amazing to me that it’s much of an epiphany for anyone, but I’m sure it is.

Whatever. I wonder about something a little more diabolically subtle about the benefit of the doubt. I wonder whether those who attempt to ingratiate themselves to doubt’s benevolence realize what a cruel bitch it can be when you’re on the business end of it. I wonder this because, in spite of Seth’s five pithy “brainstorms to get you started” in extracting doubt’s benefits, he doesn’t offer the insight that seems to me of singular importance to the topic: Don’t be a damn liar. To demonstrate what I mean, here’s one of Seth’s “brainstorms”:

Build up expectations of difficulty. Magicians are really good at this. If people think what you're doing is really difficult, they root for you.

For my part, I think benefit of the doubt is conferred upon those in whom we have some trust. We either trust them because we know them or we trust them by proxy: reputation, demeanor, they wear the same brand of socks that you do, etc. So my rejoinder to Seth’s advice is to have real relationships with your customers, use those relationships to honestly exhibit your philosophy and practice, and only rely on the benefit of the doubt when it is offered.

I don't know why I haven't posted something about this before. I find myself talking about this all the time. Here's the gist:

Marketing is dead. You can be humans again.

No, really. Not the practice of taking things to market; I mean “marketing, the paradigm”. Marketing, of necessity, has been about dealing with customers at arm's length. This is a byproduct of the industrial revolution. In order to pass the value of economies of scale to customers, companies had to be big. They had to talk to a lot of people. Since Gutenberg, the only tools available for—indeed the only ways to even think about—talking to a lot of people have been unidirectional. These univalent tools are the currency of marketing. They offer really no meaningful dialogue.

Continue reading "It's the Humanity, Stupid!" »

The Consumerist has a post about some excellent customer service from SmartBargains.com.

Every ad agency should be making every attempt to sell some kind of customer service initiative with every campaign. An authentic interaction. If the marketing is going to tell a compelling story, it had better be congruent with the customer's experience when something inevitably goes wrong.

...wherein I discuss the finer points of business theory with Odin, from his Madison Avenue penthouse, "Little Valhalla."

me: Great place you've got here.

Odin: ...

me: Right, so for whatever it's worth, I've drawn a good deal of inspiration from your business.

Odin: Oh yeah? What do you do?

me: We architect novelty. In all kinds of situations. In all kinds of organizations.

Odin: Well now you just need the big client.

me: We're working on it. We're talking to Macy's about a big idea. We've been working with Monsanto on some novel communication approaches. But yes, we are always looking for big opportunities to help craft innovations.

Odin: ...

me: ...

Odin: Now you just need to get cool.

me: ...

Valkyrie: Hey, Odin, I've got some people here that want to be near your hair.

ODIN EXITS WITH VALKYRIE.

me: ...

USA Today has some stats on recent campaigns. They called out the sleep aid Rozerem. Check it out here. This is just an update from a blog post a couple months ago about what the drug company behind this ad should do seeing that sales are very far behind the category leaders.

We're back on Broad Street. Morning engagements kept me from the first two presenters, and I've come into the middle of a presentation on "Entertainment." The session is "curated" by Lee Maicon; Bald Guy, and Head of Planning at StrawberryFrog. The program doesn't contain the names of the three panelists. One of the panelists is a particularly smart cat who is speaking about narrative and meaning. He (the smart dude) just walked us through some movie clips - one from Kurosawa's "Ran", and one from the Matrix. I haven't been able to determine what exactly they're trying to tell us, but I've only been here for a few minutes.

Continue reading "futuremarketing redux - electric boogaloo" »

I'm sitting here in the "Downtown Ballroom," 41 Broad Street, NY, NY for the futuremarketingsummit. As of fifteen minutes ago, Scott Goodson was to begin his keynote. It has yet to begin. Okay, well he's just starting now. Technical difficulties with projectors and computers were repeatedly met with Scott's opening line, "Welcome to the Future."

Continue reading "futuremarketingsummit liveblog" »

A recent article in B-To-B Magazine shows how many publishing companies are getting into territory normally handled by ad agencies. The expanded offerings include online and word of mouth marketing services. This is getting traction in the business publication sector but consumer oriented pubs are going in that direction too. The trend appears to be that media companies are acquiring agencies with expertise in web site design & development, word of mouth marketing and PR.

Continue reading "Publishers Expanding Their Turf" »

This is silly. Red Sox management is pissed about a TV ad airing in Japan and featuring their new star, Daisuke Matsuzaka, drinking a beer. From the article:

"The ad is consistent with what's acceptable in the Japanese marketplace," a spokesperson from MLB International said in the report. "We did approve it with him drinking the beer outside of his uniform. It's a type of commercial that is really commonplace in Japan. It is not really that farfetched."

Though the ad may adhere to the law, the Red Sox are concerned with how it will look to have shots of their hot acquisition drinking beer juxtaposed with images of him in uniform.

"It is a perception," Blake said in the report, "and we certainly want our players to be perceived in the right light."

As may be obvious, I take no issue with Daisuke's ad, or the uptick in beer sales at Fenway. I only wish we collectively had the stomach to tell the handwringing, Calvinistic, moral scolds where to stick it.

The mystique that used to exist around creating great ads is fading away. More and more tools are becoming available that allow companies and individuals to do things that only the agencies could have done a few years ago. Now there are web based editing tools that can be used to make, edit and even customize ads. Here is a New York Times article about just that.

The leading advertising agencies will be the ones who stay on top of these changes and find ways to leverage them through innovative approaches, thus maintaining their value. Agencies have to focus on great concepts that can be leveraged in multiple Medias, often playing off other.

Continue reading "Easily Generated Demographic Specific Ads - You Kiddin' Me." »

Most people with an email address have no choice but to be inundated with spam for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I can’t imagine anyone enjoys the drug offers, the insults to their manhood (hello, I don’t even HAVE manhood so please target your message better), and the latest “stock tips.”

Thankfully, according to a recent article, a Dutch man was fined $97,000 for spamming. However, the most shocking news of the article was not that justice was finally served – it was that he made $52,000 in 2004. So apparently some people do respond to those stupid emails. Luckily, $52,000 wasn’t enticement enough for the guy to keep emailing; he stopped spamming because “he simply wasn't earning enough money by sending the messages."

The thing is, $52,000 is a decent salary in some people’s eyes. So if this had been a different spammer, perhaps he would have felt it was worth it to continue with his pathetic career choice. While I feel all senders of unsolicited emails should have a flaming pile of dog shit delivered to their door step, we can only direct so much anger toward them. They’re making loads of dough off pervy dudes who actually buy Cialis online. Here’s a tip, Mr. Buys Sexual Performance Enhancements Drugs Online – probably the main reason your sex life sucks is that you’re online all the time. So do the world a favor and STOP responding to spam and take your life offline for a while. Then let us people who actually want to impact the online world in a meaningful way step in.

Hearing aids are mismarketed. Right now, I should be trying to figure out how to pay $3000 for some espionage-ready X-man hearing skills. I'm talking targeted, telescopic microamps that add 100 zeros to the Whisper 2000. Seriously, these things should make the Bionic Man noise when I jut out my neck and crank heavy reverb when I suck in sound, hands on hips.

"Honey, the neighbors have termites."

VO5: "Hair treatment so revolutionary, even China gets it!"

China: "Saaaay, this V05 hot oil is PERFECT for frying every American man, woman, and child into yankee pigdog rangoon! 21st Dynasty can ya feel me!?"

Brand Noise has a post about a "hot new idea shop" called Fahrenheit 212. The post links to a BusinessWeek article about the firm. From that article:

Clients think of the firm as a way to make long-shot bets without having to use their own research and development resources. "Samsung is a lean organization. We can't afford to have people coming up with ideas that don't work," says Chief Marketing Officer Gregory Lee. "The people at Fahrenheit are very helpful because they are working on ideas that can fail--it allows you to experiment a bit." What's more, Fahrenheit ties much of its compensation to the success of the product, making it an even safer bet.

A very accomplished, well-known and respected ad guy spoke in St. Louis on Friday. I was in the audience. He was singing the praises of the Mark Ecko/Air Force One stunt. I asked him if the inauthenticity of the stunt (ie. that wasn't really Air Force One) might make peeps feel like they'd been had.

He responded to the effect that it wasn't inauthentic because it fit the brand.

I was disappointed to hear the lackluster results of an ad campaign I found to be clever, on target and different than other competitors. The ad was for a drug called Rozerem, a sleep aid by drug manufacturer Takada. The drug, despite $100 million ad spend ranks 6th in its category; far behind category leaders Ambien and Lunesta and even trailing two generic brands. Check out Brandweek’s full article for more details.

So now you have to ask the following: “Was the concept wrong? Was the message wrong? Is the product inferior to its competitors? Was its late entry into the category too big of an obstacle to overcome?” I can come up with a bunch more.

Without knowing all the details I have to speculate. I think the ads are well concepted and executed as previously stated. But perhaps the product is to blame. The article references that although the drug helps those with sleeping disorders fall asleep faster, they often wake up in the middle of the night. Perhaps they succeeded in capturing first time users but due to this shortcoming, those users didn’t refill their prescriptions and requested another brand. This combined with their late entry into the market could prove to be too big of an obstacle to overcome. And if this is true, and users aren’t repeating, the drug will die out in the next couple years. It would be nice to know what percentage of first time users refilled thier prescriptions and how that compares to industry standards.

This is where some consumer generated feedback, through a forum or blog would be very advantageous. Instead of speculating, they can gather ongoing feedback, both from consumes and perhaps even physicians. If what they learn is that the product is inferior, then guess what – cut your losses now and go back to the lab and improve the product. Put the money in R&D and save the money marketing the product as is. In my opinion, these kinds of web based tools need to be part of every campaign in some shape or form. The days of a well planned out campaign that would run for a couple years are over. You have to learn and adjust as you go.

Ah, the rules of marketing keep changing. Let's see what happens to Rozerem over the next 24 months.

A recent ad campaign from the Regional Tourism Committee of Paris Ile-de-France is targeting Londoners to come visit what is often considered by the English as a “stuffy museum city.” The ads themselves are pretty cool but the best part is the Cop the Parisian Attitude game. Some of those people, with their shrugs and their unnecessarily large pouts, look more Parisian than Parisians. And you’ve gotta love any ad campaign poking fun at the French.

I suggest NOT playing the f-ing M&Ms Dark Chocolate Dark Movie Game unless you have tons of time to kill. I instead recommend going to their site and forwarding it to all your friends to make up for all the times they drank your last beer. Bastards.

[And since I know you’re gonna play it and I know you’re not gonna figure out all 50 scary movies, let me just say that a quick Google search will save your sanity. Well, if cheating is your thing.]

No deep insight here, I've just gotta give this artist a link: Sarah Roper -- illustrator / director of Mastercard's "A Home for the Holidays" everywhere'd sweepstakes -- has some yummy work. Shag meets 101 Dalmations, maybe?

I was logging into Yahoo Games (shut up, you know Pyramids has got it goin' on) and for some reason actually paid attention to the 15-second Flash animation banner ad that precedes my carpal-tunnel-syndrome-inducing gaming glory. What was the ad for? Adult ADD. Does anyone else see the irony in this? I mean, yeah, I paid attention to it but would you expect the same from someone who actually has Adult ADD?

[Sorry I can’t post the link since the banner ad rotates out, but I think we already lost our ADD friends anyway]

Great example of authentic branding. Nice job of Dove’s ad firm using YouTube to reinforce Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign which is an awesome concept. I actually pitched a similar concept to the CEO of large prestige cosmetics company about 4 years ago. This idea came from the fact that this particular brand, wasn’t acknowledging the fact that their customers tended to be middle aged women – not young beauties and that they should embrace that position and market to them. No dice though – they refuse to admit who their core customers were and kept trying to appeal to younger women and continuously losing that battle to other brands more aligned with that age group. Why doesn’t anyone in prestige cosmetics want to embrace the mature woman – aren’t they the ones with the deepest pockets and strongest desire to maintain their beauty?

Nice job Dove.

I did a brief search to and find out who is behind the campaign but came up empty. Anybody know?

The third Thursday of each November marks a very important French holiday – the release of the new vintage of Beaujolais Nouveau wine. The wine itself is pretty low-grade (by French standards) and is typically only consumed by the French that first day and then is shipped out to the rest of the world where they consume it in mass, overpriced quantities.

But that first day is key – it is a day where French people throughout the country come out in droves to celebrate the new wine and drink many a bottle. It is through sheer marketing genius that they even call it a holiday and can even convince French people to get drunk on a Thursday night. And for that I am grateful because for once I’m not the most inebriated person in the bar.

So, three cheers (salut!) for French wine distributors jumping on the marketing bandwagon.

An inevitable debate is taking place around the nature of the marketing. John Moore, at his excellent blog, Brand Autopsy, has been a recent party to the discussion. He offers this edited footage of David Jones, global CEO of Euro RSCG speaking at a recent AdAge clambake.

Continue reading "The Nature of Marketing Revolution" »

As if the impending global thermonuclear wasn't reason enough to stock up on soup ...

"The Andy Warhol Foundation is staging a marketing blitz for its founder this year, opening the archives to the likes of everyone from Hysteric Glamour, to Levis, to Barney’s. The most interesting—not to mention obvious—of these collaborations is their tie-in with the Campbell’s Soup company to produce a—yes, we’re going to say it—limited-edition line of cans in Warhol’s distinct color treatments. Don’t even front like you don’t want em. Keep your eyes peeled at the Piggly Wiggly, true believers…" (via Supertouch)

The Missouri Department of Transportation is floating a reminder of the consequences of wreckless driving in highway work zones. The timing of the PSA's release is brutally appropriate, of course, as the masses prepare to schlep to and from grandma's holiday soiree in wine-and-tryptophan-induced lethargy. The sobering MODOT spot, which for a low-budget, locally produced number does a solid job of evoking care and sympathy for our orange-vested comrades, concludes with the following plea:



... but given the untapped branding power of the highway construction aesthetic, I couldn't help but think they would made have made a more powerful impression with something along these lines:

I'm sure everyone is already talking about this. Which, ain't that the point? The link was sent to me over IM. Utterly. Brilliant.

Today is November 7th, Election Day. I am thrilled that after today I won't have to be bombarded with political ads that highlight everything people hate about advertising. Between the MO Senatorial race candidates (R - Jim Talent and D - Claire McCaskill) and the proposed State Constitutional Amendments (Stem Cell Research, Tobacco Tax) I couldn't tell you what to vote based on the ads. As the Election Day came closer and closer one camp would put out an ad making a negative claim against their opponent and a day later the opposing camp would completely discredit the claim and lash back with another negative claim. The proportion of negative attacks vs. image building ads has gotten more and more distorted over the years. If Nike and Adidas pulled these same tactics people would buy Reebok and sales would plummet. Too bad our political candidate and their parties still employ tactics that create decisions based on "the least of all evils" instead of the genuine embodiment of a candidate's values and credentials.

OK - rant over.

Reports are abundant of the experts’ incredulity of the success of Sacha Baron Cohen’s new film, ”Borat’s Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan”. Two seemingly obvious questions are: Why did the film make some $9 million on its opening Friday? And, why were the experts so wrong in their anticipation of this film’s failure? I have no pretensions about being the kind of expert whom have been rendering these prognostications, but I won’t let that stop me from trying to answer these questions.

I don’t have any desire to critique the film itself, so let’s just assume that Sacha and his film are good stuff. Anyway, I don’t have to critique it, because you can go to YouTube and see any number of Borat clips. Interestingly, this clip of Borat wrestling CBS’ Harry Smith has almost 500,000 views as of this evening. I submit that this is, in fact, the answer to the above questions. I don’t know how all these clips came to be on YouTube long before the movie’s release, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were a part of a clever marketing strategy. I also wouldn’t be surprised to discover that the aforementioned experts knew little to nothing of this fact.

Update 11/6: That CBS clip has almost 900,000 views just two days later.

A lit