Every year at the start of the new year there is something that most of us do without realizing it. It is related to making new year's resolutions, but it is more about sequencing your long term goals into the order in which you want to achieve them. One example might be saying to yourself, "I want to be married and then have a kid before I turn 35." Life is full of these little promises. So full, in fact, that often we make them to ourselves without even thinking. It raises an interesting marketing question as well.
What would it take to get a customer to reevaluate the life sequence they have already set for themselves?
It becomes a particularly important question when you consider a brand selling a product that is all about fitting into the right stage in life. A product, for example, like a car. When you consider when people buy new cars, it is very much about life's stages. Graduating from college, landing a new job, getting married or having a kid. Each of these life changes can often be triggers to consider buying a new car.
Honda's new campaign for the CRV may have found one way to solve that challenge. With their Honda LeapList campaign, they encourage consumers to go online and make their own lists of what they want to accomplish before they turn 30, or what they want to do before they get married. It is a brilliant way not only to encourage people to dream and perhaps even act on their longstanding dream to travel the world, but also to encourage them to think about how getting a new car might fit into that sequence. The underlying message is a perfect one for their consumers: why wait? You can do all the things you want to do, and you can do them on your own time. But maybe you should just think about buying that car right now instead of waiting.
Sure it's clearly a marketing message - but what they perfectly prove is something that any marketers would do well to remember. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do to sell your product is help your customers to imagine exactly when they should buy it.
Let me tell you a little secret. I look forward to putting together an annual trend report the same way that some people look forward to having Turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. I realize that may sound a bit strange, but ever since I did my first trend recap last year I was hooked. This year, the process of collecting the trends took all year. I have a folder on my desk labelled "Trends 2012" and throughout the year I would rip out articles from magazines or printout webpages to save. Last November I started actually writing my trend presentation and finally released it on Slideshare yesterday.
A few things surprised me about the trends this year. Here are a few of the most unexpected things:
Only 2 out of 15 trends are based on innovative technology (Trends #10 and #13). Given the prominence of technology in our lives and more and more digital tools, I expected that more of the trends for 2012 would be based entirely on technology innovation. That ended up not being the case as most of the trends focused more on either behaviours or the use of sites and technology that already exist and don't really require much innovation in order to keep growing.
Creativity and design are more important than ever. While it would have been too obvious to point this out as a trend on its own, many of the trends that were included in the presentation were highly dependent on encouraging more creativity and delivering great design. Measuring Life, for example, has taken off in part thanks to great product and interface designs. Pointillist Filmmaking or Social Artivism are clearly based on creativity and design. Even Retail Theater, Tagging Reality and Charitable Engagement are all trends that require creative thinking and strong ability to use design to engage people.
People actively seek opportunities to participate, collaborate or experience something. Doing something together came up as a big motivator for many of the trends this year, as Social Loneliness led people to look for more opportunities to have great experiences or be part of something worthwhile. Pointillist Filmmaking, Civic Engagement 2.0 and Retail Theater are all examples where people are seeking the chance to participate in something. Charitable Engagement ChangeSourcing and Co-Curation are other trends where people offer their time and passions to collaborate together on something.
Let me know what you think about these trends with a comment here or on Facebook, or feel free to send me an email at influentialmarketing@gmail.com. Next week I'll be starting my trend folder to gather stories for 2013 ...
The fact that most retailers use the term "doorbuster" to describe their best deals from this weekend should tell you everything you need to know about the frenzied few days of retail activity that traditionally follows Thanksgiving day in America. Despite futile protests from lots of unfortunate retail workers who had to give up parts of their holiday, stores opened earlier on Thursday night for "Black Friday" and tried hard to capitalize on the extended hours to sell more stuff at deeply discounted prices.
Today the weekend is extended into the invented "Cyber Monday" where shoppers retreat into their homes or offices for another day of deal seeking. Amidst the excitement, some brands found great ways to stand out while others focused on the meaningless or insulting to try and capture attention. Here are just a few that stood out to me as a consumer and marketer watching the frenzy unfold:
BEST - Best Buy And The $199 TV
In terms of pre-buzz, Best Buy had the lion's share thanks to their hottest deal - a Sharp 42 inch HDTV for only $199. People waited all night to pick up one, and before you immediately criticize them - think of it in financial terms. If you have to wait for 12 hours to buy a TV that you can save about $600 on, you're effectively getting "paid" $50 an hour. It's strange reasoning, but certainly enough to keep someone in line to get a high value item - and enough to get lots of attention for Best Buy.
BEST - Virgin America and GiltCity.com Let You Name A Plane
It is wonderfully ironic that one of the best and most talked about deals of CyberMonday was for an offer that almost no one would ever actually buy. Virgin America partnered with Gilt City to offer up a plane for a charter flight for "you and 146 of your closest friends" for the small fee of $60,000. As a side benefit, you would get to name the flight as well. Seems like the perfect ready made publicity stunt for a small or medium sized business that could afford the fee to go after.
BEST - Dyson Special Deals
If you own a Dyson (which I do), you are usually part of a cult of believers ready to talk about the superiority of Dyson vacuums to anyone who will listen. You probably also know that they rarely come on sale, so when Dyson launched their special Cyber Monday deals, everything about it seems limited. There is an hourly countdown on their landing page. All of it is geared towards offering a sense of urgency. The promotional message and strategy is clear and simple: buy that new Dyson you have had your eye on TODAY (and in the next eleven hours) or you'll miss your shot.
WORST - Kohl's Rebecca
It may not be the greatest marketing strategy to remake a song that most people already thought was super annoying into a TV spot ... but it wasn't the song that made this spot stand out as much as the attitude it promotes. The lead actor does a great job portraying the kind of person you would hate to be in the same room with - she pushes an old lady out of the way to get into the store, grabs merchandise out of a fellow shopper's cart and seems only concerned about herself. You only hope their consumers were actually more well behaved on Black Friday night.
WORST - Motorola Droid Razr
Running almost nonstop during NFL games for the past several weeks, Motorola has created a brilliantly meaningless campaign for the new Droid Razr. Promising that "thin is no longer frail" and sharing that this phone is "too powerful to fall into the wrong hands" - the entire ad focuses on what some research must have shown would be the only things people care about in phones: that they are thin and light. While other phones promote the interface or what you can do with it, the Droid Razr is super thin and powerful in some indescribable way. I'm sure it would be great if you are in a Tron-style boomerang battle with a bad guy, but slightly confusing as a killer feature for a phone. I only hope Lex Luthor doesn't get his hands on this phone. I'm pretty sure those would be the "wrong hands."
WORST - Crazy Target Lady
The underlying message from the series of spots showing an overly excited crazy lady "training" for Black Friday at Target as if it were a marathon seems clear: you have to be sad, lonely and slightly crazy to be super excited about Black Friday. I have never been a fan of this sort of talking down to your customer or turning them into a parody. There are plenty of people who did stay up late and go into Target at midnight because they wanted to get some great deals and love the store. Does Target really need to make fun of them or turn them into crazy caricatures in a national TV spot? People usually have a hard time appreciating humor when it comes at their expense.
Clearly the list for best and worst could go on and on. What other retailers created memorable campaigns for better or worse? Let me know in a comment or tweet about them with the hashtag #cybermondaymarketing or #blackfridaymarketing.
Imagine you're the marketing team at the Audubon Society, a group that has been around for nearly a century and your mission for that time has been to promote better man-bird relations -- how would you respond to a internationally addictive game which has been downloaded more than 400 million times that portrays your heroes as "angry" and encourages people to toss them into stuff for prizes?
The question probably isn't a fair one, as I imagine the Audubon Society probably hasn't lost much sleep over how the wildly popular Angry Birds mobile game has portrayed birds ... but it does bring birds and the pasttime of "birding" some long overdue attention.
Birding, as I once learned from one of my professors of English who was addicted to the activity, usually involves heading out to the forest and looking through binoculars and cameras with zoom lenses for different types of birds. Once seen, a bird is typically logged into a birding journal or documented via a photograph, and birders spend their time collecting long lists of exotic or rare birds that they have seen (the rarest of which are called "life birds") and compare lists with one another.
Earlier this month, The Audubon Society launched what is quickly becoming another addictive bird-focused game online called "Birding The Net." Tying into the upcoming Hollywood movie release of The Big Year - an upcoming Hollywood film featuring Steve Martin and Jack Black where characters compete to see the most North American birds in one year - the game is built on Facebook and offers a virtual version of bird watching where participants are challenged to find birds spread across the Internet and collect the most in order to win prizes.
As David Yarnold, President and CEO of Audubon describes, “birds are the best possible ambassadors for the environment, and this will help people see them in a whole new way. This is about fun – but it’s also about getting more people involved in taking action to protect birds and the planet we share with them. And with this unprecedented use of social media and the web, we’re also making it clear that this is not your grandmother’s Audubon.”
The game, which you can get a taste of on this blog for a week by clicking one of the birds above, will run through November 7th and I predict it will succeed brilliantly as a marketing strategy for Audubon Society. Spending some time looking, it offers at least five good lessons for marketers:
Timing/Hollywood Tie-in - With the link to the upcoming Hollywood film, the Audubon Society will get infinitely more eyeballs to this campaign and lots more funding and support. Chances are the beautiful visual design of this campaign was due in no small part to 20th Century Fox’s ability to fund the agency (Goodby, Silverstein & Partners) behind this.
Recreates A Real Life Experience - The act of surfing online to various sites and hoping to see birds perfectly recreates what the experience of birding in real life is. You never know what you'll see, you are sometimes disappointed, but you get that flash of excitement when you do see a bird and it's one you haven't seen before.
Uses Behavioural Economics - When you first register, you have a clean slate of grayed out cards ... which you immediately want to start collecting. "Earning" the first several are easy - you get one just for starting and there are another 3 or 4 easily available on obvious sites like www.audubonguides.com, but then it gets tougher. Once you have started, though, you can't help wanting to collect more.
Engagement Through Design - Though this would be hard to prove, my bet is that they will get much higher engagement with this effort as a result of a very strong creative execution. Put simply, the app and individual bird cards are beautifully designed. Looking at them online, you almost wish they would produce them in print too just so you could hold them in your hands.
Built-in Shareability - There is lots of great shareability built into this campaign, from the ability to embed your own birdhouse on your blog or website to leaderboards and sharing through Facebook. The campaign has a strong understanding of why and how people share at its heart and makes it easy to do so.
Bird Personality - A visit to the Twitter account for one of the birds, the Rufous Hummingbird (@RufHummingbird) yields this bio: "Tireless traveler and flower enthusiast on a mission of nectar discovery." All the other bird Twitter accounts feature similar personality and a bit of good natured rivalry between them. It makes it fun to engage with the birds and adds an important element of, well, humanity to the campaign.
Curiosity and Discovery - Perhaps the most important element that makes this fun is the fact that you need to make new discoveries of where the birds are, and they have engaged your curiosity to see where they turn up next. It is an essential element of gaming, and one that Angry Birds (coincidentally) makes excellent use of.
Ultimately, Birding The Net stands is one of the most original uses of social media and gaming I've seen lately to achieve the dual purpose of promoting an upcoming movie as well as reminding people that a pasttime which has been around for centuries can still offer a thrill not only in the virtual world ... but if you shut off the technology and head out into the real world as well.
If there is one universal truth that almost no one in the world of technology or social media has figured out, it might be this: everyone hates evangelists. No matter what they are "evangelizing" - the world view anyone who claims this title for themselves usually has is that the product, service or idea that they have to share with the world is one that everyone should adopt. Evangelists don't see the world as it is - they see it as a place that would be better if only more people agreed with them.
That kind of one-sided thinking is dangerous, whether for joining Facebook, adopting a religion, buying an iPad or anything else. I found an unlikely reminder of this several days ago through a brilliant ad for the Toyota Venza which pits an active middle aged couple against their teenage social media obsessed daughter. As they go out into the world and enjoy their lives, their daughter laments about how "anti-social" they are and calls their 19 friends on Facebook "so sad." Check it out:
How many times might any "social media enthuasiast" find ourselves in exactly that same position? In the ad, the daughter (played perfectly by Allyn Rachel - @allynrachel on Twitter) is an evangelist for a technology that her parents are managing to do just fine without. For me, the ad stood out as a rare reminder that there is a hidden cost to our growing culture of evangelists. As marketers work to build "brand ambassadors" and ordinary customers find pleasure (and sometimes revenue) in becoming the unofficial voices for brands - there will be a coming backlash against those who are overly evangelical.
So instead of so much dueling evangelism, what if each of us just focused on ourselves instead of "converting" others to our point of view? In an ideal world, people should always feel free to share their passion about the things they love ... as long as we all don't have to agree on what those things are.
What if you could join your favourite band in studio to record their next single? For many, this is just a moment to dream of - but last month Coca-Cola partnered with the rock band Maroon 5 to do exactly that in a social experiment to create a new song in 24 hours. Fans could watch a live stream of the band working on a new song in the studio and contribute to the brainstorming process in real time via a Twitter screen that was broadcast live to the band. Check out the recap video below:
The end result was a single called "Is There Anybody Out There?" that is available for a free download from Coke. Aside from being an amazingly creative campaign idea, this could spark more brands to consider a new form of co-creation where consumers are invited not to create content themselves, but to be the spark for professionals to create content. In a sense, this is no different than real life where artists often take their inspiration from their fans.
Though Coke's efforts have cause some to raise valid criticism about whether the campaign can be considered all that successful since the views and audience seems small by Coke standards, sometimes the most forward thinking ideas aren't the ones which go viral right away. To me, the real power of this campaign is that it imagines a world where brands can help connect people with the artists they love in a way that empowers them to contribute to what the artists are creating.
Inspiration as a form of co-creation is not just a great marketing concept, but one which offers musicians and even filmmakers a new way to engage their audience on a deeper level and also get better ideas and inspiration to make their work better. The only downside is that it leaves a lot of people to thank from the Grammy/Oscars stage ...
There are some things in business that no one really teaches you. It is the "instinctive" part of being a professional, and it mostly refers to little things. A powerful reminder of how important those little things are comes from the founder of the brand I work for, David Ogilvy, who said:
"I always use my clients' products. This is not toadyism but elementary good manners."
We all have a filter when it comes to biased reviews or people who we feel are simply being paid to flack for some product. The point most of us forget is that knowledge and proximity can easily translate into affinity. In other words, we often buy the brands we work with - not because we have to, but because we want to.
Of course, there are always examples like the loyal Coke drinker who is required to drink Pepsi because of where he works ... but for every example of forced allegiance, there are dozens of others where the affinity is real and authentic. It should not be a foreign concept that people believe the best product on the market is the one they work for and the one that they know the most about.
The flip side of this is that negativity comes from personal experience as well. For example there are several brands that I had such a sour experience with while pitching for their business that I will never be a customer of their products or services. The point of all this is simple: your employees and the organizations your brand works with are potential advocates, or potential detractors.
So the next time you consider bringing on a new vendor or hiring a new employee - remember that how you treat them makes a difference. The little things (like good manners) still matter ... as they always have.
If there is one sign of hope for the marketing industry as a whole, it is that no one really wants boring, one-way, shout-oriented interruptive marketing to survive. Social media is a natural ally in this fight, given its focus on fostering conversations and creating content, but what about the role of marketing as entertainment? It isn't necessarily the first word anyone might choose to describe effective marketing, but this week at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show in Las Vegas it was the featured topic in a panel I moderated at an event focused on the intersection of broadcast, marketing, social media and entertainment.
What Is Branded Entertainment?
The focus on the panel was on branded entertainment through online video - though on several occasions it was raised that this content can increasingly find its way onto other platforms as well such as broadcast TV or mobile. There were three core models of branded entertainment being used by brands today that panelists shared:
Product Placement - The most simplistic form, some would argue that this barely qualifies to be called branded entertainment ... yet it is increasingly popular for brands to use as a way of inserting their brand or products into existing content.
Brand Sponsorship/Integration - This category had the most varying descriptions, incorporating everything from a brand simply adding a "sponsored by" slate to a video to inserting a pre-roll or post-roll ad.
Branded Content Creation - The "purest" form of branded entertainment, this area was clearly the focus of the panel. Included in this category were examples like Royal Carribean's recent Ocean Views campaign, as well as Lexus' popular LStudio online video channel that spawned the popular series Web Therapy with Lisa Kudrow which was recently picked up by Showtime as a pilot.
What Will The Future Of Branded Entertainment Look Like?
Ultimately, the premise behind branded entertainment is that great content will provide an entertainment value and there is a role of marketing to play in trying to create or support more of that type of content. The ongoing challenge will be one of setting the boundaries between what is reasonable underwriting or brand sponsorship of a message, and what is over the top. This is the real question at the heart of the growth of branded entertainment - and one that several filmmakers have recently tackled - including The Joneses (a film about a fictional family planted in the surburbs to create demand for new products by flaunting them to neighbors) and Morgan Spurlock's new documentary - "The Greatest Movie Ever Sold" or as it is "officially" meant to be called "POM Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold."
Despite these cautionary notes, however, the powerful premise of branded entertainment is that brands need to get better at telling a story instead of merely hawking product benefits or service descriptions. People engage with entertainment, and they tend to share it if they like it. In a world where consumers have more ways to ignore and filter out brand messages than ever before, engagement is the new and necessary metric because it means more than empty measures of reach or frequency.
Branded entertainment today is still a strategy for marketers and organizations who are ahead of the curve. It won't be long, however, before the followers and later adopters in the mainstream start to join the party. After all, no one wants to miss out on a good show.
In Dilbert, Mordac is the character who is described as the "preventer of information services." He is a caricature of the unhelpful IT support tech who seemingly goes out of his way to create inefficiency and discontent in the workplace. Unfortunately for all of us, he also seems to be the role model upon which many television networks are basing their content strategies.
Last night, in an attempt to watch a missed episode of the ABC drama V ... I went online to ABC.com to seek out the latest episode. After several errant clicks, 15 minutes of online searching, and considerable frustration I finally found an external blog post talking about a decision ABC had made to stop allowing fans to watch episodes of V online. According to the post, ABC only issued the following statement:
Fellow V fans, It is with much regret that we must inform you that full episodes of V will not be available on ABC.com or Hulu for Season 2. Just like you, we truly wish full episodes were playing here. But we also hope our detailed recaps will keep you informed and entertained should you ever miss an episode.
Best always, The ABC.com Team
This type of thinking is why piracy is thriving in many places around the world - because getting and sharing content legally has so many restrictions. It explains part of the reason that it is so difficult to keep a consistent audience for any type of new drama. Most importantly, it demonstrates how backward thinking in the realm of entertainment programming is stifling revenues, stirring discontent and helping new programming to fail.
Instead of dreaming up ways of preventing people from accessing content, watching it where they want and on the platform they want - why not focus on creating more ways to monetize the content that you already have? Create new advertising models, sell new sponsorships. If the cost of a show is becoming too burdensome or ratings are lower, why not get a company to sponsor the availability of older episodes online?
Thinking more creatively about new revenue opportunities can not only help the economics of paying for high quality content, but also serves the dual purpose of giving consumers what they really want. Without it, you risk coming off as a brand that is hopelessly out of touch with their consumers ... kind of like ABC does to fans of V.
About two weeks ago, Levi's creative team in Australia hatched what seemed like a brilliant campaign stunt idea to promote the Levi's Curve ID jeans for women. They hired two models from New Zealand, equipped them with an "ass cam" that would tape people watching them on the street and sent them out in LA to just walk around. Predictably, they did end up capturing men and women checking out their asses [link to the video below as posted on Creativity Magazine's website, in case the video below gets removed] - the whole thing went viral on YouTube and in less than two weeks it rose to more than 7 million views.
The reviews of the video ranged from early admiration to later criticism when it was revealed that Levi's was behind the video ... a fact that is clearly missing from the video itself. Mary Elizabeth Williams, a staff writer for Salon had a particularly entertaining article about it:
"Levi's may yet pull some genius, sales-inspiring sequel out of its shapely butt here, but right now, the ass cam seems a grand example of how garnering millions of page views does not in and of itself constitute an effective advertising campaign. Instead, it just looks like a sneaky trick, one whose message boils down to "If you wear our pants, ugly guys dressed up like Jesus will stare at your caboose." Got it, Levi's. Message received. You're a bunch of asses."
The story doesn't end there, however. As of right now, the "rear view girls" have been taken off of YouTube ... probably because it features lots of people who are recognizable and were taped without their knowledge looking pretty foolish (especially that lady on the escalator). Ultimately, this will likely end up just a huge missed opportunity for Levi's. The concept of an ass-cam capturing stares to sell a pair of jeans that make your ass look great isn't a bad concept.
In this case, it was the sneaky integration of the brand that ultimately undermined a great creative concept. The fix would have been simple ... for Levi's to take credit for the campaign in the "behind the scenes" video that they also produced.
A great mystery needs to have a great reveal attached to it. When we find out the butler did it in a mystery novel, we are satisfied. Hiding that fact makes us all feel like we've been tricked, and as Williams said, just makes the people behind the whole thing look like asses.
Rohit works at Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, part of WPP - a world leader in advertising and marketing services. The views expressed on this blog are his personal opinion and do not necessarily reflect the views of his employer or its clients.
