Never get out of the boat

Thursday, November 08, 2012

i'm a mess

For some reason neuromarketing seems to be flavor du jour in some quarters at the moment, I appear to be hearing about it all the time.

Or perhaps it’s another example of the ‘frequency illusion’, or 'the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon' that we've mentioned here before.

I was asked to describe our point of view and approach to this subject via one of our clients and responded that, yes, this one area of enquiry that we can turn to in informing how we look at describing buyer behavior but certainly not any one-method-fits-all.

In truth, our process means we probably ‘magpie’ some relevant parts of neuroscience research, mix it up with other bits of behavioural economics and human psychology.

It’s not important or even necessary to have a complete understanding of the above sciences however it’s important have a broad understanding to pick out the pieces that are most useful.

In fact one of the most important parts to address before developing strategies is knowing 'how' a product or service is bought and what the influences are.

We often hear about communications that affect a behavior change, or otherwise.

But what is often not properly explained is what-the-existing-behavior-is-that requires-changing.

Selecting product X versus product Y is not a behavior change it’s just an instance or two of substitution of product.

I like this four quadrant model for identifying buying behavior which I’ve paraphrased from ‘I’ll Have What She’s Having’.

Independent choices

1. Guesswork – where the choice is mostly independent, in categories with with low differentiation and a high number of choices - then things like sales promotions, 'twofers', and suchlike are key . Things like insurance often purchased in this manner.

2. Considered choice – again the choice is broadly independent, but there are fewer choices – in the book Mark cites things like deodorant falling into this bucket.

Social choices

1. Copying experts – where there are fewer number of choices but a higher price point then expert opinions matter – high end tech products are one example, some automotive is probably another.

2. Copying peers –where there are a high number of choices then social influence is a major factor. Fashion, music, movies etc. This is a pretty large quadrant and in fact most buying behaviour is influenced by peer copying.

Once this is established then the fun starts...

The key thing is to understand that the combination of social influence and then a layer of human biases is a heady mixture and testament to the idea that we really don't act in the rational cost-benefit-analysis way that economists and marketers imagine we do. In fact we are manipulated by our own biases all the time.

Here's my top five favourite biases.

ANCHORING BIAS
A common human trait to rely too heavily, or ‘anchor’ on one trait or piece of information when making decisions.
Here’s a real cancelled flights example that I fell for recently.

Airline: 'Sorry Mr Pritchard the 5.45 has been cancelled, but I can put you on the 9.45'
Me: 'WTF!'
Airline: 'Hang on, there's one seat on the 7.45 I can get you'
Me: 'cool!'

FRAMING EFFECT
The restaurant wine list – we instinctively go towards the mid price wines because the restaurant are craftily framing them with super-expensive and cheapskate options.
Or buying a car – 'do I get the basic no frills model or the high end super deluxe souped-up version? Actually let’s go for the one in the middle that looks like better value'

We've recently applied this to how we frame donation levels for a charity's online campaign. I expect to see an uplift in overall donations vs where they have been.

AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC
A mental rule of thumb in which we use the ease which similar examples come to mind to form an idea about the probability of certain events.
For example, more people are killed every year by refrigerators falling on top of them than by terrorists, but because of the 'availability' of information about terrorism we see that as more of a threat.

CONFIRMATION BIAS
Someone who has to write a blog post about neuromarketing, for example, will primarily search for information that would confirm his or her pre-existing beliefs ;)

COMMITMENT BIAS
The situation where people justify increased investment in a process, based on the cumulative prior investment, despite new evidence suggesting that the cost, starting today, of continuing the decision now outweighs any expected benefit.
See also 'sunk cost fallacy'. Think about CommBank who continued to pump money into the 'CAN' campaign despite early evidence that it was sure to flop. heh.

And the best of all…

HINDSIGHT BIAS
Also known as the 'knew-it-all-along effect' is the inclination to see events that have already occurred as being more predictable than they were before they took place.

'I wish I'd put that $100 on Green Moon, I knew it was going to win…'

That’s not an exhaustive list by any stretch. There’s literally hundreds of foibles we all succumb to on a moment by moment basis.
I’m working up a post on the Texas Sharpshooter Bias as we speak, so stand by for that…

Also the other fundamental to remember is that behaviour shapes attitudes not the other way round. We will almost always modify our attitudes to be consistent with our behaviours.

We post-rationalise our decisions afterwards.

Any given product does not have to be clearly better in terms of rational features or benefits. Its social value, for instance may be more useful.

After all, there’s plenty of 'better' phones out there other than Apple’s but, for now, it's arguably still the popular choice because it says something about the taste of it's owner.

So the if objective is to change the buyer behaviour first, this may involve moving the behaviour around a product or service from one ‘type’ of behaviour to another.

For instance, outside of two or three big ones, the majority of breakfast serial purchase behaviour could be lumped into in the guesswork category. Driven by promotions and such-like, so any behavior change strategy would first involve moving buyer behaviour from a guesswork, commodity, space into a peer-copying space .

There is a precedent, I've seen some research to suggest that around 60-70% of groceries are bought because they are the brands that 'mum' bought, so there’s a territory to start with.

Unfortunately there is no 'buy-button' in the brain despite what some neuromarketers say. If only it were as straightforward.

There’s a great TED talk I saw recently, and I forgot to bookmark it so if any readers recognize this bit then please point me to the talk.

The speaker recounts the ways in which through his research he identified the ways in which people describe the 'story' of their lives.

A Journey?
A Film?
A Novel?
A Battle?

These were all popular descriptions.

No-one described their life story as a mess.

But, for most of us that’s what it is.

For those looking for a silver bullet in marketing then the bad news is that there isn't one.

Human behavior is a big wonderful a mess that you just have to pick through and try and find the bits that are going to work for you.

Friday, November 02, 2012

out to lunch

I'm having a few days off. Don't expect anything here til next Wednesday at the earliest.

Thursday, November 01, 2012

don't be a menace

This post on Finalmile cought my eye this morning.

In 'Don't be a cheater' they pose a question that asks; can our sense of identity and therefore behaviour be affected just by the simple construct of a question or statement?

This is described as noun vs. verb framing.

In an experiment participant groups were given different sets of instructions prior to the test - 'don't cheat' vs 'don't be a cheater'

'When ‘Please don’t cheat’ (verb form) was used in the instructions, participants in a group resorted to the same amount of cheating as a baseline group, whereas using ‘Please don’t be a cheater’ (noun) eliminated cheating completely.'

'Why should this happen? People can downplay instances of cheating and convince themselves that these occasional lapses do not make one a dishonest person – this is harder to do with the use of a self-relevant noun that clearly states the implications of cheating.'

If you work with nfp organisations on fundraising, for example it's worth considering experimenting with the subtle difference between 'please support/donate/help' or whatever and 'please be a supporter'.

Indeen it's worth A/B testing noun vs. verb framing with any call to action for that matter.

'Find out more' vs 'be one of the first to know' or even 'Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood'.

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

there's a bit of magic in everything, and some loss to even things out

The majority of the readers of this blog seem to come from in and around the greater New York area and from broadly round that eastern part of the USA that has been the worst affected by Hurricane Sandy.

So this post is just a message of support from Boat HQ to all of you out there, hoping that the worst is now over and that everyone can shortly start to pick up the pieces and get back into the swing as soon as possible.

I recall listening to an interview with - quintessential New Yorker - Lou Reed that was being conducted in a mid town Manhattan hotel room.

In between questions the journalist commented that it was becoming hard to hear Lou's answers because of the noise of the traffic outside the window.

To which Lou Reed responded 'It's New York. What do you want me to do?'.

Knowing the stoicism of many of my east coast buddies, this week's events won't be too much of a problem.

Finally, and on a customer-service-as-marketing note, we were interested to learn from Business Insider that many of the major banks have agreed to waive a number of fees for customers in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut through till Wednesday.

Citibank, Capital One, and Chase customers will pay no fees on many items including extended overdraft, returned Item and insufficient funds Fees, late fees on credit cards, and also loans, including mortgages until the the storm is over.

Friday, October 26, 2012

the death of...the death of...the death of...

A second Schnabel related post.

Regarding the death of this, that, the other and the next thing which seems to be reported every other week.

Personally I've learned in recent years to stop worrying and love the bomb.

Back in 2008/09 I probably was that douche-bag pontificating about the death of advertising and how only social media conversations etc etc was going to be the saviour of marketing.

Eventually one gets over one's own bullshit, to a degree.

I'm taking each day as it comes.

I guess you would call this a MT...

“I thought that if [advertising]is dead, then it’s a nice time to start [doing advertising]. People have been talking about the death of [advertising] for so many years that most of those people are dead now.”

having a job and blaming it for your inability to do your own art

As it's Julian Schnabel's birthday and during my formative years as a young art student the big emotional neo-expressionism of Schnabel and others like Basquiat and even David Salle was pretty exiting, we'll have a quote from him.

That whole 80's period was a bit like punk for painting, a breath of fresh air amongst the pseudo intellectualism of the minimalism that was the dominant or establishment ascetic in the mid 80's.

Schnabel is also known for being a bit of an egocentric mouthpiece hellbent on self-promotion.

So, I probably picked up those 'qualities' from him too.

For all that, he also had a pretty solid work ethic.

This is one of my favourite soundbites.

"It's a great excuse and luxury, having a job and blaming it for your inability to do your own art. When you don't have to work, you are left with the horror of facing your own lack of imagination and your own emptiness. A devastating possibility when finally time is your own."

strategy jukebox friday

If a customer's bond with a brand/product/service is strong enough, then they will continually repurchase without jumping through any of the previous decision journey hoops that they initially made to get there.

This is different from any status quo bias because it is about bond not inertia.
The cult of Apple being case in point. We'll put up with foibles and mistakes from Apple because we feel something for them. The relationship is not simply transactional.

Up to a point, obviously.

A big part of strategy has got be about this, a solid bond.

Though how this can be expressed in a spreadsheet, or brand onion I've yet to find out.

'Feel.. is a word I can't explain,
At least not in words that are plain,
Makin' it easy to express, But I'll try to do my best, to hit you where it counts,
I just want to build up...a solid bond in your heart'

Friday, October 19, 2012

free your ass, your mind will follow

On the day it was announced that the mighty George Clinton and the Parliament/Funkadelic mothership are to headline Victoria's Golden Plains Festival early next year, it seemed like an appropriate juncture to finally call out the legendary P-Funk architect on one small issue.

Changing people’s behaviour first is, in fact, the best way to open their minds.

Action come first, attitude comes second.

For instance, it has been scientifically proven that the simple act, the behaviour, of donning the labcoat of Dr Funkenstein would enable one to believe oneself the actual intergalactic master of outer space Funk.

So we should be better advised to Free Our Ass, then our Mind will Follow.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

come on feel the noize

Our thanks go to Tomas Czeszynski, over in Sweden - and a constant source of interesting behavioural nuggets - who pointed to an old post on the Branding Strategy Insider blog yesterday.

Controversial author Martin Lindstrom - remember? Love your iPhone, Literally - published a splendid article on Sensory branding, and the criminal lack of attention paid to the power of sound in advertising.

Lindstrom, this time talking sense, points out:

'There can be no doubt – sound is immensely powerful. And yet 83 per cent of all the advertising we’re exposed to on a daily basis (bearing in mind that the average person will see two million TV commercials in a single lifetime) focuses, almost exclusively, on the sense of sight. That leaves just 17 per cent for the remaining four senses.

Consider to what extent we rely on sound. It confirms almost all our digital and electronic connections. We rely on it to dial or text on our cell phones. Interestingly, the revenue from the slot machines in Las Vegas fell by 24 per cent when the whirring and tinkling sounds was removed. Furthermore, experiments conducted in restaurants show that when music slower than the rhythm of a heartbeat is played, we eat slower and we eat more!'

At the end of the post he also references some research his company conducted that produced three top ten lists of the most 'addictive' non-branded and branded sounds.

Unsurprisingly - from an evolutionary standpoint - baby noises top the chart, and from a cultural point of view, cash register sounds also figured highly in the overall combined chart.

How many times during creative development in advertising have you witnessed the scenario whereby the soundtrack or audio components are the last things selected?

Perhaps even some stock audio has been crow-barred in as a semi-afterthought?

Even if it's just a few it's too many.

Legend has it that Quentin Tarantino takes the audio route first and actually selects and plots the soundtracks for his movies before commencing the writing of the script.

The power of music and sound to evoke memories, feelings and emotional responses is undeniable, that's why it was one of our earliest pre-language forms of communication and continues to have the power to shape culture.

Indeed, everyone has a soundtrack to their lives.

Here's my soundtrack to the spring of 1973, a lanky brat running round smashing windows in Aberdeen with short trousers.

find products for your customers

I remember this story from last year about the kid who invented a doorbell which calls the householder's mobile phone if nobody answers the door.

Laurence Rook, the 13 year old boy from Croydon, said he got the idea after noticing his mother had missed several deliveries by not being in the house.

Laurence licensed his invention off to the tune of circa 250k.

At the time it struck me that the combined innovation departments of BT, Orange, T-mobile, Vodafone and goodness knows who else from the telco sector had failed to notice this simple customer insight/problem, yet a 13 year-old kid, paying attention, had come up with fantastic piece of utility using a sim card and some bits and pieces lying about the house.

Another one that the telco's have missed cropped up on FIR: the Hobson and Holtz Report podcast that I listened to this morning in the car.

This was the first time I'd heard of Connectify, a software based router for Windows computer that shares wi-fi connections your other devices.

One of the principal benefits for the business, or otherwise, traveller being that in many hotels the wi-fi access is limited to one device at a time - Connectify solves that conundrum.

Again, one has to wonder why this had to be invented by a small start-up (the software's development was funded via crowd-funding platform Kickstarter, by the way) when there was a simple customer insight to be leveraged and yet none of the telco's saw the opportunity.

I'm reminded of this simple maxim that Seth Godin is often quoted on, in regard to where businesses should look for innovation opportunities and to temper the impulses that lead them to be hellbent on acquisition of new customers.

'Don't just look to finding customers for your products, find products for your customers.'

Friday, October 12, 2012

the paperless office self-nudge

I wonder if this one will work? I took a tip from Pete at work and in an attempt to cut down the amount of paper (ie printed material) in my office at home I've simply made the desk space so small as to be nigh on impossible to stack up documents, therefore discouraging me from printing in the first place.

Friday, October 05, 2012

chair man of the bored

Just a couple of points on the Facebook 90 second film released online yesterday. The ad has been broadly panned by the social media commentators for a variety of banal reasons I wont go into, however I liked the spot before I knew this and the criticism has only served to make me like it more.

It's worth stepping back for a second and remember what this advertising is for.

It's not about acquiring new customers or promoting trial.
It's not about brand awareness.
It's not even any sort of post-purchase rationalisation.

It's no accident that Facebook picked Wieden and Kennedy be agency of record, the next evolution of Facebook, the brand, will have to involve moving it out of the technology and social network categories - how they do that and where it goes will be interesting to watch - but from a comms point of view that's just the kind of emotional storytelling shift that is bread and butter for W&K.

See Nike, Levi's, P&G to name just a couple.

This spot didn't have to be made for any commercial reasons, but works as a kind of celebration of what's been achieved and a look-how-far-we've-come.

Facebook is one of those American dream success stories so perhaps a little hedonic boost is permissible and from a strategic point of view, starting to position Facebook in that same iconic Americana-brand-for-the-world, space like Nike and Levi's is the correct move.

One small note to the writers - it's aeroplane not airplane.

Tuesday, October 02, 2012

to be perfectly frank

I don't know if Frank Sinatra ever wrote a song in his puff.

But it's hard to argue that as an artist his blues-inflected saloon balladeer ouvre (particularly his mid-50's period circa 'Only The Lonely') pretty much wrote the book of sharp American masculine cool, and with significant sex, style, subversion and skill to boot.

Sinatra's ability to interpret a song, and take it somewhere else was his art.

It was not necessary to have been the originator of the material.

As a young guitar slinger in the early 80's I was the principle tunesmith in several bands.

(None of these particularly 'made it' but that's not what the story is about.)

I was a fan of the hits of Burt Bacharach and Hal David for a time, but the prolific nature of that partnership meant there were literally hundreds of their songs that I was not familiar with.

So to write tunes for my band I would often pull out the Bacharach-David songbook, pick a tune a didn't know and use the chords to make up my own tune.

I couldn't read music so all I had to go on were the chord shapes.

So nine times out of ten I'd end up with something new based on 'copying' Burt and Hal.

In advertising we idealise and revere the novelty or originality of ideas and insights.

In fact, we relentlessly pursue the 'new', almost at all costs.

We hold aloft the stuff that proclaims 'this has never been done before'.

Really this is the true advertising conceit.
If we are honest, advertising has routinely hi-jacked, jumped upon or otherwise adopted and commercialized existing cultural ideas since day one.
That’s what it does, and that’s why it works.

But is new always better?

I've no qualms at all about adopting an insight from somewhere else and applying it to the particular problem I'm looking at.

I've equally no qualms about adopting the basis of an idea that may have been used somewhere else and improving it.

Because, and I’ll quote enfant terrible of le Nouvelle Vague, Jean Luc Godard here, it's not where something comes from that's important, it's where it goes to.

Novelty is over-rated, to be perfectly frank.

We don't always need new, just better.

Friday, September 28, 2012

new york city

We are currently loving this stop motion video from director Greg Jardin for the late great Joey Ramone’s 'New York City.' - a splendid, and joyous love song to his home town.

The tune is taken from the posthumous album, '…ya know?' - a collection of previously unavailable sketches and demos retrieved from Joey's post-Ramones sessions and archives.

Among the the 'cast' in the clip are Ramones long time producers Ed Stasium and Tommy Ramone (also of course the original drummer), Andrew WK (whatever happened to him, btw?) plus assorted members of equally legendary punkers The Dictators, and a selection of interesting looking regular New Yorkers who happened to be passing by.

Don't know how my NYC friends and readers feel, but if the New York City tourism office are thinking of launching a new ad campaign any time soon, then I would humbly suggest that they look no further than this piece.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

one of the problems with Australian advertising

At Sputnik Planning Labs we love our cognitive biases; and a particular favourite is the one sometimes called 'the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon' or more commonly the 'frequency illusion'.

This particular foible being the illusion in which a word, name, phrase or other thing that has recently come to one's attention suddenly appears 'everywhere' with ridiculous frequency.

So, if you've never heard of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, never fear, you'll absolutely be hearing about it again soon.

In this case it's the phrase 'world class', and the context principally Australian advertising.

This or that campaign or spot is 'world class'. This CD/Planner/other is 'world class', this or that agency are 'world-class'.

To boot, I was chatting with an acquaintance who is a very senior Professor in Melbourne the other week who informed me that this 'rating' is similarly applied to the scoring of academic papers in his University.

A top mark qualifies a study as 'world class'.

World class then, being clearly up a notch from simply Australian class.

Herein lies the problem.

It's a classic example of another of our favourite cognitive traps coming in to play; the worse-than-average effect in which people will routinely seriously underestimate their own ability to do stuff in comparison to their perceived ability of others.

When does one ever hear of 'world class' work coming from London or New York for example?

Hardly ever.

Because agencies these markets don't feel the need to benchmark* themselves against any other territory.

(*In fact 'benchmarking' itself is another hideous trap, but we'll cover that one another time.)

The work is what it is.

It's either great or not great.

C'mon Australia. It ain't where you're from, it's where you're at.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

vip mail

If you've upgraded your iPhone to iOS6 then you may have noticed the VIP mail setting in the email fuction.

For users it’s a way to flag certain contacts as VIPs and have their emails appear in the special VIP section in your mail.

Simply put, this means you potentially never miss messages from people that you want/need to hear from.

Priority mail has been around in Gmail for a while, of course, but VIP seems extra handy as it's device based and it's super-easy to aggregate contacts from different accounts for the non-geeky.

This is not to say 'email-is-dead' but is further testament to the idea that effectiveness of communication correlates directly to the existing level of permission.

Another nail in the coffin of unsolicited spam, and a pointer to perhaps a renaissance for email as a viable channel.

Friday, September 21, 2012

whoops now

Over the last goodness knows how many years I have either worked on or pitched on a dozen or so campaigns and projects for Breast Cancer Charity organisations.

And since 1993, when Janet Jackson's 'Janet' album was released featuring the now iconic sepia toned shot of Ms Jackson being supported, I must have presented an adaptation of that shot several times.

Much to my relief the idea has finally been used as part of a promotion by UK Breast Cancer charity Coppafeel featuring ex-Spice Girl Mel B as 'Janet'.

So thanks to Coppafeel and their agency (if there was one), the idea may or may not be great but it's a terrific relief to know it will never have to be wheeled out again.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

fear

Fear is a pretty powerful emotion and when confronted with fear humans seem to be wired to recoil first and ask questions second.

As a result, fear can be pretty easily sparked in such a way that is instinctive and not subject to rationality.

In fact, many phobias are firmly rooted in irrational fear - monsters and clowns for example - while other fears are rooted in more automatic areas of associated memory - fear is a pretty efficient survival tool, learning to look both ways before crossing the road it's a pretty vital early skill to learn.

Emotional manifestations of fear include things like apprehension, terror, dread and panic.

In advertising a 'fear appeal' is a type of psychoactive trigger that is often used to evoke an emotional response in the participant regarding the effect of other automatic behaviours.

This spot from Finland clearly plays to that, showing how children are affected by parents drinking habits.

A few people have pinged me this with a footnote around 'there you go, using emotions in shaping behaviour'.

But exactly how much fear induces behaviour change or a simply a looking-the-other-way is another question. I don't know.

Compare the Finnish spot to this one about teen smoking in Texas, which uses the social norms nudge '8 out of 10 Texas teens don't smoke' and a large dose of teen humour to tackle the problem.

The problems are somewhat different but I have still a wee hunch that addressing what is a social norm (parents bad drinking habits in the presence of children) with a 'fear appeal', while ultimately more effective than an information or gawd-help-us 'educational' appeal, would be more effective still, in the long game, by promoting a new social norm.

'Most parents with under-5's say one is enough', for example.

That said, it's a pretty powerful spot.

helpless

We do a lot of work in the NFP-charity sector and, regardless of media, storytelling is the probably single most powerful tactic we have to try and move behaviour.

Often this takes the form of dramatising the experience of the beneficiary.

And while direct mail is the default first tool in the box for many NFPs, I'm always mindful that film is pretty much the unbeatable storytelling medium.

I'd normally be on the side of happy endings being more effective, there's fairly robust science to back that up, but occasionally something comes along in this category with a surprising twist and proves the exception to the rule.

For me, this film made for The St John's Ambulance service is another example of this almost situationist trend for communications that incriminate the audience.

The story reflects new research from St John Ambulance which shows that over four times as many people believe that more people die from cancer than a lack of first aid - an availability cascade - when there is compelling evidence and statistics to indicate that the danger of choking, for example, is at least as frequent.

(On a minor tactical note, and bearing in mind that 'virality' is going to be an important mechanic for this spot, the 'surprise' element of how the piece ends up is somewhat spoiled by the labeling of the film on You Tube)

Friday, September 14, 2012

first look at the iPhone 5?

Thanks to Mike in the Sputnik Creative Lab who pointed me to this skit from the ABC show Jimmy Kimmel Live.

JKs people went out onto the streets to ask the public to evaluate the new iPhone 5.

In a splendid demonstration of visual and verbal priming many of the participants reported the new device to be lighter or heavier, faster, bigger or benefiting from improved design.

Of course there was no iPhone 5, all the participants were looking at a regular iPhone 4S.

Thus proving that special ability humans have to post-rationalise percieved product features and benefits with System 2 following our automatic story building System 1 response based on whatever available information we have.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

larry, woody and me

Some comedians and comedy writers would make excellent planners.

Larry David would have been a classic, for instance.

'Anyone can be confident with a full head of hair. But a confident bald man - there's your diamond in the rough.'

Also

'If you tell the truth about how you're feeling, it becomes funny.'

Insight, is the comedy writers stock in trade.

In fact a cheat I often use when looking for nuggets around any given topic is to search for jokes about it.

We're working with a mental health not-for-profit, so of course I went straight to Woody Allen to see what I could find.

'More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.'

'Most of the time I don’t have much fun. The rest of the time I don’t have any fun at all.'

and

'My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.'

Unfortunately the reverse is not true. I've not met that many planners who were great comedians.

Not intentionally anyway.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

momentum and strategy

I've always thought that the single most valuable skill of a strategist or planner, if you prefer, is the ability to be constantly on the alert, noticing things and then interpreting them.

This is called having insight.

It doesn't have to be an earth shattering revelation, just 'apprehending the true nature of things'.

Our thanks then go to our Tahlia, in the Sputnik Insight and Planning Lab, who noticed this yesterday and pointed the rest of us to it.

An excellent short sequence of heavily loaded tweets - posted below - from the Obama 2012 campaign that clearly demonstrates that - despite Cass R. Sunstein's recent departure from the Obama camp - applied behavioural economics are still very much part of the Obama strategy.

Before Charlie gets at me, a quick note that this post is merely an observation on a piece of the Obama communications strategy, I'm not close enough to the policies debate or other political issues in the US to be voicing any informed opinion.

(My own representativeness heuristic does, however, lead me towards feeling that Baz is the the choice most capable for the next term, so there you go.)

A quick look at a couple of the key tweets.

'317,954 who gave were giving for the first time'
In psychology this is called the Bandwagon effect or Herding – this influences our tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same.

Also known as social proof.

This is all about momentum-as-strategy.
Despite Obama being the current Prez and therefore extremely popular with a section of the electorate there are still more (a lot more) NEW people joining the cause.

This acts as a sort-of counter availability heuristic to the neck-and-neck nature of the race as described by the opinion polls (always the scourge of momentum and often the hardest battle).

If I'm unsure about which side to back then this statement is indicating clearly that there's a groundswell for Baz's camp, something is going on.

'$5 or $10 helped, most donations were under $250 but the average was $58'
This is a clever tweet that combines a framing effect plus anchoring and a bit of herding.

Once the anchor is set, there is a bias toward adjusting or interpreting other information to reflect the "anchored" information.

This tweet anchors us on the high figure of 250 (probably too much to contemplate as a donation) however $58 seems reasonable

And that's the average i.e. That's what most people are giving. Those who gave $5-$10 are thanked but clearly are being encouraged to rethink their donation based on the social norm - $58.

The final tweet of the sequence - endings are very important in the efficacy of communications of course - adds the sense of urgency with a clear direct instruction to act. 'RT this link, right now".

The link goes to the donation page, and, wahey!, the page title is 'Build the Momentum: Donate today'.

In his paper 'Understanding how behaviour shapes strategy' Mark Earls concluded with the following paragraph, one which I seem to have commited to memory and find myself oft to recount when talking with clients about strategy.

'...wouldn’t it be useful to think about strategy in terms of momentum?
Strategy as being primarily how to create a sense of momentum in our favour?
About creating the sense that we, staff, customers, citizens or investors are moving more andmore towards something? Or that more of us are doing so?
Or that our velocity in any given direction is getting faster?
And if this is right, shouldn’t we start to judge all strategy by the sense that it is creating or sustaining momentum?'

Anyway, let's notice how the rest of the campaign unfolds.

Thursday, September 06, 2012

the planners dream goes wrong

In an experiment two participants were given boxes of lego bricks and instructions on how to build a simple robot from the bricks.

The participants earned two dollars for the first robot they built, then a subsequent fee for each additional robot on a decreasing scale of 11 cents per robot.
So robot 2 earned them 1 dollar 89, third robot 1 dollar 78 etc etc.
The participants could continue building robots for as long as they felt motivated. Both participants were told that their robots would be dismantled and the bricks re-used for the next participant.

Condition 1.
The first robot builder managed 10 builds before packing in and received $15.05 in payment.

The researcher took each of his ten constructed robots, placed them carefully in a box, in clear view, beside his table upon completion.

Condition 2
The second participant only built four robots and received payment of $7.34. Each of his four constructed robots was dismantled immediately upon completion by the researcher.

Throughout the day condition 1 robot builders averaged 10.6 robots.
Condition 2 robot builders average 7.2 robots.
The economic reward for the activity was the same for both conditions, yet the participants in the 'meaningful' condition – the ones who could witness the progress of their work – were motivated to keep building robots.

The condition 2 participants – for whom the task had no meaning – were much less motivated to continue.

This is a short version of a longer story that features in Dan Ariely's 'The Upside of Irrationality'.

I wonder if any of the planner fraternity can relate?

;)

up the bracket

The popular image of Karl Marx is the old fella with a big beard.

I get a better feeling for the man - pretty much the founder of modern sociology - with this picture of the young Karl looking like an imaginary second guitar in the Libertines.

"It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness."

Tuesday, September 04, 2012

beer chase

I would be slightly disingenuous if I did not state that the following sticks in my craw somewhat, but Clems' new Carlton Draught spot, 'Beer Chase', is great.

However, if I was going to be picky (yes, I am) - and this was something I used to repeat during my time at the agency over and over - then I would pick on the following.

If one is making a movie, and therefore giving life to a story, then there's a lot of other stuff that needs to be considered.

Until there's a better word to describe this process then we are stuck with the term 'transmedia storytelling'.

If people connect with the content - and they are, at the time of writing the clip has racked up 1.8million views on You Tube - then it's a massive missed opportunity to not create a bigger story world.

For instance.

Who are these characters?

How did they end up in America?

What happened to the money?

What are the other concurrent narratives?

The spot ends with a point to the Carlton Draught website, perhaps this will be where more of the narrative is revealed? Nope.

For the previous Carlton Draught film 'Slo-Mo', I fought to have #carltondraught hashtag on the end, this was a new idea back in 2010 which has become the norm.

A #beerchase tag to prod for conversation would have been more appropriate than pointing to a static website where there is no extension.

While I was at Clems, Draught's long standing agency, we often mused that Carlton Draught had the potential to truly transcend the beer category and could be viewed more as an entertainment brand, one for which the beer was really a marketing mechanism for the overall cultural brand.

Like a Converse perhaps?

It's a cool bit of film, funny and bang on for the brand and no doubt an award certainty in the film bucket but I still believe there's a big opportunity for Carlton Draught to be a bigger iconic Australian brand if only they could be broken out of the category mindset.

Sunday, September 02, 2012

always be closing the nylon curtain

I've no truck with so-called guilty pleasures.

I honestly don't have time to pretend to like stuff that I don't care about for the sake of some irony or fear of seriousness.

I'm deadly serious about music.

Like Keith Richards said, it's about discernement.

Knowing what the shit is, and what isn't the shit.

I love the first four or five Billy Joel albums. Maybe even six.

They are most definitely the shit. He never became big in the UK really until 'Uptown Girl', but his best stuff predates that.

Check out this interview Billy did with Alec Baldwin for WNYC's 'Here's The Thing'. The two of them riffing off of each other like a Long Island version of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon.

Even if you're not a fan I guarantee you'll hear him differently afterwards.

Alec Baldwin is the shit too. If only because he's responsible for one of the finest 8 minutes or so of cinema history in GlenGarry Glen Ross, as the salesman with balls of steel.

Always. Be. Closing.

Billy also knows a thing or two about what's important to the artist, or communicator who wants to connect an audience.

Friday, August 31, 2012

friday for a change, a little more nothing

In any given market or category, at any given time, a customer - or customers - have at least three options.

They can buy product X - your product, product Y - a competitor's product.

The third option, and by far the most popular option, is the option to do nothing.

the loch ness monster bias

We're familiar with the idea that none of us 'thinks as much as we think we think'.

It would also appear that we don't even see as much as we think we see.

Our thanks to Faris, who posted this Transport for London info spot from 2008 that demonstrates the idea of 'change blindness'.

'Change blindness' one of those little cognitive traps that shows the inherent flaws in how we process visual information.

'Whodunnit' is clearly a close relative of this 1998 study by Daniel Simons and Daniel Levin called 'The Door Study' in which a participant fails to notice when the person he is talking to is replaced by someone else, clearly demonstrating the phenomenon.

There's a full academic paper available; 'Change Blindness Blindness: The Metacognitive Error of Overestimating Change-detection Ability' if you are inclined to read more.

I'm reminded of what we doctors call 'The Loch Ness Monster bias'. Roughly translated this means that rather than rather than using the maxim 'I'll believe it when I see it' we would be better advised to note that we will, 'see it when we believe it'.

Monday, August 27, 2012

lost in the supermarket

There's an old adage that goes along the lines of 'there are no low interest categories only low interest brands'.

I'm not sure I subscribe to this point of view.
Most everyday categories are pretty low interest and most brands in those categories are too.
Simple brand recognition and habit are probably the biggest influence.

A tale of terror I am oft to recount is about the time when we had just arrived in Australia and ventured to the supermarket to purchase some sundries.

Washing powder being one of said items.

The terror of being confronted with what seemed like a hundred options and not having the first clue who any of these brands were is one that I still makes me shudder.

All of a sudden I had to actually think about a decision that should have been more or less automatic.

And sadly no amount of critical thinking was going to help me.
I had to take a punt.

Yes, big purchase decisions are perhaps somewhat determined by how we feel about brands, but so too are everyday choices to a certain extent.

Without simple 'recognition', then making a selection is hard. I had never 'heard of' any of these brands.

In case you are wondering, I went with FAB using another shortcut. They had the largest shelf presence (a proxy for popularity) and were neither the cheapest or the most expensive.

On the subject of soap powder, it was nice to see that the oldies are still the goodies, as Jarrah have sort of revived the Daz Doorstep Challenge for their tea/coffeee alternatives, with Dame Edna doing the Danny Baker part.

bust out the shack and hit the track

Most of you will know I'm a big fan of the Boss.

To be fair, I came around relatively late, probably in the last 5-6 years. But I agree with Joe, Bruce sounds great on a dark and rainy morning in England, he's also always great on a spring morning in Victoria and on the road up to Melbourne.

From a validation point of view, I'm pleased that Joe was also a fan.

There's a quote often attributed to Bruce that has been useful sometimes when looking at marketing communications problems.

'You can go from doing something quite silly to something dead serious in the blink of an eye, and if you're making those connections with your audience then they're going to go right along with it.'

Pic HT to MusicRuinedMyLife

Friday, August 24, 2012

arnold layne

This is a curious spot for Toyota out of Japan.

Watch this then consider this notion of the experiencing self, meaning the here-and-now, moment-to-moment feeling self, and the remembering self , the part of us that reflects on what we have experienced and decides how we feel about what happened.

I'm also reminded of the note that I heard (it was Rory Sutherland, I think) on the efficacy of advertising. There is apparently no correlation between efficacy and the duration.

Whether it's a :15, :30 or :60 is not important as long as the duration can carry the narrative, offer an 'interest' spike and, most importantly - this refers to the remembering self bit just mentioned - an ending.

In old money this might be described as bait-and-switch but it's certainly a 'surprise' and will have other assorted emotions in the mix depending on your worldview.

it's a long way to the top

We visited Melbourne's ACMI (Australian Centre for Moving Image) to check out an exhibit called 'Screen Worlds The Story of Film, Television & Digital Culture'.

Among the things to play with was an interactive touchscreen table thing. Scenes from Australian movies were mapped onto the ermmm.. map.

Mad Max, Hanging Rock, Walkabout etc.

One oddity however was this clip of the mighty AC/DC performing 'It's a Long Way To The Top..' on a truck going through the centre of Melbourne in 1976 with the Rats of Tobruk Pipe Band.

Apparently it's well known round these parts, but I'd never seen it.

Although the boys are globally known as Australia's finest rock'n'roll export I'm claiming them 100% for Scotland.

The Young brothers and Bon Scott were all born in Scotland.

And, fact fans, the singers name was in fact a pseudonym. To his parents he was plain Ronald Belford, his rock god alter ego Bon Scott is a shortened version of 'Bonnie Scotland'.

If that's not Scottish enough for you, then there's a favourite joke that the Aussies like to do which involves singing along with the lyrics of the chorus changed to 'it's a long way to the shop, when you want a sausage roll'.

A clear homage to Greggs the baker.

Happy Friday.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

learn to play with nothing

This will be my last comment on the forget-about-the-tools and focus on the behaviours rant for a while.

It coincides with the Modern Lovers being on heavy rotation in the Boatmobile commute, and the fact that I haven't done one of these pic-quote posts for a long time.

The interviewer asks Jonathan what he still needs to learn, as a musician.

After 'getting along with cats and dogs' and 'playing quieter so as not to hurt children's' ears' he adds...

'And we have to learn to play with nothing, with our guitars broken, and it's raining'.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

blood on the tracks

Certain unscrupulous corners of the advertising world, those on the dark side of the (other) digital divide, are not best pleased.

It appears that Microsoft are sticking to Plan A and shipping 'Do-Not-Track' as the default option in Internet Explorer 10.

Do Not Track is a web privacy scheme that tells online advertisers to NOT collect or use data specific to a user's web activity.

Advertisers can still show ads, obviously, but they would not be allowed to record that a user browsed certain car websites, for example, and then proceed show car ads where ever they go.

While these advertisers were reported to be willing to put up with 'Do-Not-Track', they were only accepting the basis that it was certain to be something that users had to actually enable and activate for themselves.

Thus users default bias would kick in and most would leave the box unchecked, and it would be happy days for the cookie brigade.

The default however is on the other foot as Microsoft further enhances it's nice-ness and new-cool credentials by leaving DNT as the default, a little nudge-eyness towards making the web a bit less creepy for there users.

But...

Of course the small problem faced by DNT is that it's pretty much trust based and not enforcable.

Advertisers need to look for the DNT signal sent and decide to honor it.

Now if you are the kind of advertiser who thinks it's acceptable to creep around after individuals, record their movements and then try and intercept and 'target' them at every corner with 'relevant' ads, and then what's the likelyhood they will honor a DNT request.

After all skullduggery and coercion takes less effort than making products, services and advertising that are so great that people are attracted to look at them and do stuff with them because they deliver some actual value.

no nurse, I said remove his spectacles

I was called by a leading Australian publication the other day to comment on the main Australian political parties usage of social media, and speculate on the influence it may have on the outcome of the forthcoming federal elections.

I gave the topic some degree of consideration and sent them back a thoughtful piece about shared meaning, the ad-hoc nature of communities online and how in the connected world ideas are adopted by groups who find them salient.

I went on to lament the poor efforts of the big two parties to engage in any meaningful way and preferring to simply pushing their desired meaning onto the voters in social networks in the same way that they have done with mainstream media.

I also speculated that the banality of much of the content delivered by the parties was in fact a highly tactical move to bore the electorate to death in order to invoke the inherent status quo bias. In reality we know that this-or-that policy has less influence on voter behaviour than simply whether the candidate looks like they know what they are doing.

Dan Ariely even hypothesised recently that we prefer to elect corrupt or corruptable candidates because government itself is inherently corrupt so the candidate needs to be able to operate in that kind of space.

To the point of the story, they never published any of my comments.

Instead they elected to publish a stream of inane drivel about each party's number of Twitter followers, what an infographic is, and how Julia Gillard once had a hangout on G+ blah blah.

Now I couldn't care less if the use my material or not, but I noticed that I had become a victim of my own biases.

In this case a big bit of the authority bias, with a touch of the representativeness heuristic.

In decision-making, authority bias is the tendency to over value the opinion of someone who one views as an authority or expert.

In my case I overestimated the intellectual level of debate to the same level that I overestimated the 'authority' of the publication.

The reality being that the conversation was happening at such a low level that made Mashable look like New Scientist.

Here's another - and this is one of my favourites - everyday example of the authority bias in action.

A physician ordered eardrops to be administered to the right ear of a patient suffering pain and infection there. Instead of writing out completely the location 'Right ear' on the prescription, the doctor abbreviated it so that the instructions read 'place in R ear'.

Upon receiving the prescription, the duty nurse promptly put the required number of ear drops into the patient’s anus.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

putin lights up the fires

On the day they were found guilty of 'hooliganism driven by religious hatred' and sentenced to two years in jail In Russia, Pussy Riot also release a single 'Putin lights up the fires'. We're reposting the video from The Guardian website as a small gesture of support.

Boredom is always counterrevolutionary.

Friday, August 17, 2012

don't care

I'm reading Dan Ariely's book 'The Upside of Irrationality'.

In the early chapters he uses a story from the 1995 film First Knight starring Richard Gere to illustrate how motivation can affect performance.

The same analogy works for agencies and clients when we want to develop truly great advertising moments.

Gere's character Lancelot is an expert swordsman, who offers a sparring service to the locals where he works.

They pay a few coins to test their sword skills against the master.

Lancelot then opens the game up a bit by offering a small fortune to anyone who can beat him.

Along comes an enormous blonde geezer, who looks like he has the chops to win.

After a pretty hectic bit of metal bashing Lancelot disarms his opponent.

'How did you do this?' asks the befuddled and defeated chap.

Lancelot replies with three lessons.

And these are the lessons for us

1. Observe your opponent [customer] and learn how he moves and thinks.

2. Wait for your make or break moment [your moment of truth] and make your move.

The student nods in agreement. He's getting it so far.

Then Lancelot comes in with point three.

3. You must not care if you live or die.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

shake it up

Not sure this totally qualifies as a nudge, but it beats a billboard any day.

In order to receive the communication there is something one has to do, thereby becoming a bit more involved.

Considering that many NFPs have difficulty shaking themselves out of the we-just-do-direct-mail habit, props are due to Ogilvy Sydney and Parkinsons Disease not-for-profit, Shake It Up Australia.

you need hands

We're loving this British Heart Foundation spot for hands-only CPR (no kissing!) featuring Vinnie Jones.

Full of little story-based hooks (pairing the hard-men with the camp Bee Gees soundtrack is a masterstroke - calling attention with a 'surprise'), a splash of the old representativeness heuristic and a nice nudgey bit of chunking (call, push, stayin' alive) to make a potentially terrifying and confusing situation easier to 'know' what to do without having to think.

Top marks.

[Yes, it came out last year so I'm a bit late, put it down to southern hemisphere lag]

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

handbags and gladrags #lossaversion

So it goes that the pain of paying an extra fee for checked bags when you arrive at the airport is exasperated by the fact that you have already had to fork out for your ticket and so the additional cost of your luggage fee adds up as two separate losses.

Although the cost would be roughly the same one feels less aggrieved when paying for both at the same time on booking the ticket.

It's one loss.

So, two losses separately are more painful than if they were joined together, and likewise two gains separately are more enjoyable than when they are experienced together.

One little nudge to offset the pain of a loss is to bundle in a small gain following the original loss.

This is also know as the 'silver lining' effect.

Car dealers that offer 'cashback' as part of the deal know this.

In fact if one wants to dive deep into behavioural economics then go spend a few days in a car dealership, those guys have been practicing many of the principles for years, they just didn't have a name for it.

However my intuition tells me that the people who put up this sign need to do a bit more work on their subtleties....

hedonic boosts part 2

Legend has it that the website banner ad was born on or around October 27, 1994 with HotWired.com, and among those first hosted ads were placements from Volvo, AT&T,and 1-800-Collect.

In those early days click rates could be anything up to 80%.

Fast forward to today when an industry average is something closer to 0.05% and a campaign result of anything above that number is call for a party.

I'm all for the maxim that in order to achieve success one needs to learn to love failure but there comes a point...

One description of what psychologists call system justification bias tells us that '[its] effects are exacerbated when people are under psychological threat or when they feel their outcomes are especially dependent on the system that is being justified'.

Such is life in agencies.

In the interim perhaps we should be thankful for those 0.12% hedonic boosts, and keep making those banner ads.

Monday, August 13, 2012

the adoption paradigm

The old paradigm was 'targeting' - the new paradigm is 'adoption'.

To those for whom the message relevant, it's all good.

They adopt, then then they tell everyone else.

It's a simple equation.

My friend Harshal Gajria pointed me to this ad for the Mumbai Mirror newspaper - 'I am Mumbai' - and we wondered if perhaps all this pro-social, cultural critique, emotional advertising is getting too much.

In the old paradigm one would possiblly answer 'yes'.

In the new paradigm we can summise that - in fact - it's the only way.

Friday, August 10, 2012

it's about the behaviours, not the tools

It's surprising that in 2012 there is still so much focus, effort and money spent on trying to work out how the deployment of social media technologies and tools will impact on the performance of marketing strategies.

Every week there's another Pinterest webinar or 'how-to' leverage Linked-in conference.

And countless articles speculating and instructing about this or that of Facebook and Twitter.

However the important thing is working out what's important.

Social media tools have been adopted principally because they allow us to do stuff we've always liked to do, easier and with more people.

We share things...
Talk about things...
Create our art...
See what others are saying, doing and yes, buying...
We can argue, agree, copy...
We can demonstrate how smart, connected or philanthropic we are...

What's actually important is getting a hang of people - and how they behave - to inform, develop and implement strategy.

Somehow this insightful cartoon that I found in an old Dr Feelgood tour program from something like 1978 seems to nail the problem.

Anyone can pick the guitar, plug it in to the amp and make a noise.

And many companies and brands are doing this.

Not many are making us move like Wilco and co.

It's about the people and behaviours, not the tools.

Thursday, August 09, 2012

hedonic adaptation

As if by magic, I had just began to understand this idea of hedonic adaptation.

We get used to things and novelty wears off.

We get used to ourselves too, so a process in which the repetition of small positive experiences - rituals, if you like - such as doing some exercise, just putting on a happy face or pulling on your Levis, can actually have a long lasting effect on our general well-being.

Behaviour shaping how we feel and think.

We want to feel good about ourselves and so we use stuff that makes us feel good about ourselves.

Of course we inherently know this, without necessarily knowing.

So marketing and advertising that provide customers with 'hedonic boosts', little reminders of the feelings that we had when we first used a product, for instance, can be super effective.

That's one of the simple insights here.

And a brand’s attribute associations are stronger when we view ourselves as having as having those personal attributes.

What I can't get my head round is that after many years of being the 'digital' guy, the communications that I'm getting most excited about these days are not digital ideas at all.

Monday, August 06, 2012

we all scream for ice cream

This spot from Little Babies Ice Cream out of the US is great advertising.

It's pure emotive thus highly memorable and, of course, talk-about-able and shareable.
Not a USP in sight, simply an unsettling, surreal mixture of fear, surprise and disgust.

Considering most other ice cream advertising goes after the happiness angle it's doubly surprising.

The makers clearly know this, hence the tag line 'ice cream is a feeling'.

Top marks.

Thursday, August 02, 2012

sunk cost fallacy

I have a hunch that the team on this account are double agents working covert for the other 3 Aussie banks on a mission to systematically destroy the CommBank brand.

I can't embed the ad 'Bomb Hoax', it's now been removed from YouTube, but it can still be viewed over on Campaign Brief.

Suffice to say it's the latest instalment of a campaign that just when you thought it had hit its dumbest point, it keeps on getting dumber.

From a psychology point of view one can only summise that this is a classic case of 'sunk cost fallacy' or 'escalation of commitment bias'.

This is the phenomenon whereby people or an organisation will justify increased investment in something, based on the cumulative prior investment and despite evidence clearly suggesting that the cost of continuing the decision now outweighs any anticipated benefit.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

blackadder and behavioural economics

I recall an anecdote from a conversation several years ago with representatives of the late, and much lamented, COI - the UK government's policy objectives and public services marketing body which sadly closed it's doors for the final time in the early part of 2012.

The agency I worked for at the time were assisting the UK Department of Health on a number of initiatives including some of the anti smoking activity.

The COI were early champions of much of the thinking that we now broadly associate with behavioural economics and were therefore right on the ball with recognising that the dominant paradigm in communications theory that placed disproportionate importance on the notion that independent thinking and rational decision making were the principle influence on the choices we make was not 100% correct.

While those factors are often significant in short-term decision making - I choose brand x baked beans because they are on special offer - they do not explain longer term behaviours, much of which are far more affected by how we see others behave, habits we've formed and our general inability to compute things like financial costs and benefits.

Anyway, research material that COI provided us to inform the work we were doing with DoH indicated that the frightening messaging on cigarette packets intended to make people think about stopping smoking (smoke these and you will die etc) was in fact having a somewhat opposite effect.

The COI psychologists were becoming concerned that the results indicated that these warnings were actually more of an encouragement to smoke because the emotional response was more akin to an 'excitement' that one would attribute to activities such as bungee jumping or other extreme sports.

Essentially extrinsic factors overpowering intrinsic motivations.

I did a short talk last night to the members of the Institute of Analytics professionals and used the following example from Blackadder to add a bit of flavour to my argument that the data industry can best complement the creative industry by concentrating effort on finding the right information and helping us all continue to qualify and quantify at least some of the following matters, because it's all there in the data and patterns.

- How other people's behaviour affects our own
- How and why habits are formed
- Fundamental motives (survival, reproduction)
- Why we are bad at simple sums

Captain Blackadder:
You see, Baldrick, in order to prevent war two great super-armies developed. Us, the Russians and the French on one side, Germany and Austro-Hungary on the other. The idea being that each army would act as the other's deterrent. That way, there could never be a war.

Private Baldrick:
Except, this is sort of a war, isn't it?

Captain Blackadder:
That's right. There was one tiny flaw in the plan.

Private Baldrick:
Oh,what was that?

Captain Blackadder:
It was bollocks.

I used Professor Kahneman's 'bat and ball' experiment on the crowd.

Remember this was 150 or so analytics professionals, data geeks and mathematics heads.

A bat and ball costs one dollar and ten cents to buy.
The bat costs a dollar more than the ball.
How much does the ball cost?

Just about everyone nodded when I asked if ten cents came to mind.

So the idea that independent thinking and rational decision making are the principle influence on the choices we make has one tiny teeny flaw.

It is complete bollocks.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

notes on insight

Those of you who know me will also know that it takes very little persuasion to get me to stand up on a stage ond pontificate about this, that and the other in our world of communications conundrums.

I'm not a pro by any stretch but give it a good go.
The more I do it the better I get, one day soon I'll have it down so stand by for that.

On the occasions when I've been on a roll, I'll often chat with delegates and audience members afterwards and (though not as often as I'd like) sometimes they will leave me with a handshake and 'thanks for the insights'.

Of course, I'm happy to accept these thanks but I feel like I should say 'thanks but there were, in fact, no insights in what you just heard'.

There will have been stories, some facts, many observations and even more opinions but not necessarily any insights.

I say this because we should be mindful of not undermining the term 'insight' in our work.
Real insight is a rare and precious thing, and should be valued accordingly.

Here's one of the the best descriptions of insight that I've encountered.
A good benchmark by which to evaluate whether something is, in fact, insight or simply observation.

[That's not to say observation isn't valuable but it's a step in the process to uncovering insight]

'Insight is the act or result of apprehending the inner nature of things or seeing intuitively'

(I'm not sure where that definition comes from. Point me if you know)

For us communicators we should understand the goal of insight.
Insight informs how we identify highest level emotional need in any given situation.

How to uncover insight?
These five steps are a good place to start.

1. Ask difficult questions. Most of these start with 'why?'
2. Look below the surface.
3. Reframe stuff (TV is the second screen, for example).
4. Trust your 'gut', your instinctive self. Under-think it.
5. Observe acutely and understand your own and others behaviours.

Of course there is also product insight, category insight, business insight and many others. But key to uncovering these is starting with 'why' not 'how'.

Friday, July 06, 2012

disbelieving is hard work

So, last week I gave a short talk for AIMIA to the assembled agency digerati, at KPMG's auditorium up in Melbourne CBD. The theme of the morning was 'Digital Agencies of The Future'. Here's a synopsis of the key points I hoped to communicate.

2012 was a record year for Australian Agencies at Cannes.
59 Lions were awarded in total, that's up from circa 40 or so last year and about 45 the year before (also the previous record).

Interestingly, Australian agencies recieved precisely Zero Lions in either the Cyber (what a ridiculous name for a category btw) or Mobile categories.

There's two ways to look at these statistics.
Either we as a nation are useless at digital advertising.
Or
Single channel executions are a thing of a bygone age, and it's only integrated campaigns and activities that actually matter, anyway.

I'm on the side of the latter.

But...

Among the many Australian integrated efforts that did well, GPY&R's Mobile Medic which picked up Lions in 3 different categories, Naked's fantastic 'Steal Banksy' effort which took out a Gold in PR and even CumminsRoss's Agassi films pulled a Bronze in brand ed content, NONE OF THESE THINGS WERE CREATED BY DIGITAL AGENCIES.

Next I showed a lovely picture of a chicken and avocado sandwich.

'Digital agencies, this is your lunch'.

The bad news is that the advertising agencies are coming to eat it.

In their delusion the BDAs think they can do what you do, digital agencies.
They can't.

BUT they are better at convincing the clients that they can, than you can.
And that's your problem.

Listen.

As far as the big ad agencies, the media agencies and - most worryingly for the digital community - clients are concerned...

Digital = production.
Digital equals = making what you are told to by the big boys.

Brothers and sisters, you are in the ghetto.
This ghetto is a creation of your own minds, and if you don't get out of it soon I fear for the future of your agencies.

'Once you have accepted a theory and used it as a tool in your thinking, it is extraordinarily difficult to notice its flaws. If you come upon an observation that does not seem to fit the model, you assume that there must be a perfectly good explanation that you are somehow missing. You give the theory the benefit of the doubt, trusting the community of experts who have accepted it.'

'In mixed gambles, where both a gain and a loss are possible, loss aversion causes extremely risk-averse choices.'

(Both quotes via Daniel Kahneman)

Of course, it appears a mixed gamble.

But according to McKinsey, this year...
- 67% of digital agencies think they have strong strategic capability
- 16% of their clients agree

That should be frightening.
What are you going to do about it?

Wednesday, July 04, 2012

the man in the chair

Apparently, the below is one of the best known, and most oft quoted examples of advertising advertising.

Not so for me, I only came across it last week as I plough through The Intention Economy, the latest book from Doc Searls, of Cluetrain and Project VRM fame.

Created for The McGraw-Hill Business Publications Company in 1958, 'The Man in the Chair' ad is revered as one of the most effective and influential works in the genre. In a 2012 context, there is still much to be gleaned from its message.

I don’t know who you are.
I don’t know your company.
I don’t know your company’s products.
I don’t know what your company stands for.
I don’t know your company’s record.
I don’t know your company’s reputation.
Now, what was it you wanted to sell me?

Doc says:
'The true lodestar of advertising has always been the customers.
This is why the [McGraw-Hill] ad was so important. It was a signal sent by McGraw-Hill to advertisers on behalf of its readers. It spoke of the company’s relationship with those readers and said to advertisers that it stood on the readers’ side.
It demanded substance, relevance, and earned reputation from its advertisers. It said relationships were possible, but only when customers sat with companies at the same table, at the same level.'

What this ad is about resonates with me when placed in the context of the great digital divide - ie, on the one hand, the school of advertising - online in particular - that favours the hyper-targeted, 'personal' and data-driven tactics that are manifest in the near subterfuge of cookies, surveillance/tracking and all manner of 'behavioural' targeting.

And on the other the approach that favours strategies that contain content, usefulness, values-based communication, involvement, storytelling etc to name but a few. Where salience (ie visibility, sharability) and social proof are the drivers.

In many ways being objective about the value and values of good advertising one could surmise that - for the most part - our industry is still often short of the mark and has perhaps lost its way compared to one humble, yet somehow futuristic, b2b print execution from 1958.

Friday, June 08, 2012

The technology always comes first: part 2

I'll be interested to watch Xbox Smart Glass develop.

Unveiled at E3 2012, it's, indeed, a pretty smart next iteration on multi screen interaction for gaming but i can also easily envisage some equally smart people picking up on this technology as a platform and doing something with it for any form of entertainment, and advertising of course...

Don't get hung up on the Microsoft guy's slightly hammy presentation.

Remember kids...The technology always comes first.

Then the creative people come along and make something with it.

Artists never invented oil paint, or the movie camera but they saw the opportunity the technology gave for creativity and messed with it.

HT TMac

Wednesday, June 06, 2012

empire state chicken burger

Andy Warhol’s influence on culture and of course advertising continues to be apparent.

There’s plenty written on this subject so I’m not going too far down that rabbit hole, but there’s two examples from the advertising world that I’ve noticed this week, one fairly explicit and other less so.

Firstly ‘Which Warhol’s Warhol’s’ is a challenge for guests staying at Melbourne’s Art Series hotels. The winner get’s to go home with a genuine $20,000 Andy Warhol print providing that they can pick the ‘real’ Warhol from one of the 10 ‘Warhols’ displayed in the hotels between May and August.

The other 9 are forgeries created by art forger Tony Tetro.

I love this idea.

Perhaps more than any other artist Warhol’s pieces are social objects – conversational in nature both from a subject point of view (what is or isn’t appropriate content for ‘art’ – death, disaster etc) And from an objective view point. His industrial methods of production and low-touch involvement in the production process itself.

‘Which Warhol’s Warhol’s’ plays to both of these conversational elements, and is inherently high in involvement and experience. It’s almost impossible to encounter the ‘campaign’ and not have something to say about it.

Art Series Hotel Group CEO Will Deague is also reported as saying that the other purpose of the intervention is to stimulate discussion and debate around the production of replica art and it’s impact on working artists.

This is a great example of creating a bit of culture first then advertising the idea.

As opposed to an advertising idea.

Which segues neatly into the next example.
The current advertising for ‘Hungry Jacks’, the Aussie Burger King.

But firstly some notes on one of Warhol’s most noteable journeys into the film medium.

Officially, the only way to see the Andy Warhol’s 1964 film Empire, an epic eight and a half hour stationary shot of the Empire State Building in New York is to borrow a copy from the MoMA.

It has never had any distribution on video or dvd, nor is it available online. Any screenings that happen are usually in museums or galleries.

The film itself has no script, and other than the Empire State Building itself, no characters (if one discounts the momentary flashes of Warhol and cinematographer Jonas Mekas as reflection in the window of the Time-Life building from which the film was shot) and, of course, no traditional narrative.

In effect the movie is more an academic exercise in the medium of film rather than anything that is meant to be ‘watched’ in the traditional sense.

The only narrative events are more like non-events - a twinkling light at the top of a nearby building marks the passing of time. According to Warhol, the point of this film is simply to ‘see time go by.’

Despite being a movie that few people have ever seen it’s one of Warhol’s most iconic works.

The Hungry Jack’s ‘Nothing naughty about it’ ad for its ‘chicken’ burger range has also certain Warholian characteristics. But is closer in nature to the Empire movie in it’s unintentional celebration of the banal.

The spot is based around it’s own non-event, a rock chick eats a chicken burger, turns into a ‘nice’ girl to the horror of here rock band mates.

The observation here is that, like the Warhol ‘forgeries’ this ad is an advertising forgery.

It’s a facsimile of advertising.
For all intents and purposes it has all of the appearance and stylistic attributes of advertising.
It looks and behaves like an ad.
It has a message of sorts.
A look and feel.
Some logos.
A notional ‘audience’.
A ‘gag’ of sorts (like a gag except not funny)

But it’s somehow empty.
A replica.
It’s not even trying to be an idea.
Devoid of any inspiration or insight - it's pure construct. It’s a pure excercise in the stylistic conventions of advertising without actually being advertising.

Warhols famously, and somewhat archly said ‘If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, there I am. There's nothing behind it'.

To that point the only thing more banal than the Hungry Jacks campaign is the commentary around it that arose yesterday on the industry blogs.

This is not a rant against TV advertising, by the way.
Film is still the greatest storytelling medium. Provided you have a story.
Compare Hungry Jacks to the Proctor and Gamble film 'Best Job' for the 2012 Olympics.
Then let's have a conversation about values, inspiration and insight.