Never get out of the boat

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

make the logo bigger, eaon

I got hammered by some commenters on Mumbrella for suggesting that the John Lewis Christmas ad, while a stunning piece of content, creativity and all that, is best viewed as an exception rather than a rule in terms of the amount of branding available in the film.

I noted that for most brands - and the challenge of mental availability - it is advisable to introduce distinctive brand assets into their content quicker and more frequently than the John Lewis example.

I stand by my remarks, and offer this by way of an example.

Is this piece of RedBull media any less exciting because of the presence of branding?

Monday, November 25, 2013

excuse me while I kiss the sky

The Asch conformity experiments were a series of laboratory experiments by psychologist Solomon Asch in the 1950s.

The various experiments demonstrated the degree to which an individual's own opinions and behaviours can be influenced by those of a majority group

The Asch experiments informed the idea about social proof that we often use in advertising.

8 out of 10 cats and suchlike.

Essentially people will often do things that they see other people are doing.Especially similar others.

One experiment, easily replicable and with predictable results is the one in which one or more direct agents in a public space would point up into the sky, as though there is something to see.

Bystanders, or passive spectators if you prefer - will predictably stop to look up into the sky to see what the other are looking at.

My hunch is that some of this background was influential in the creation of this fantastic bit of digital outdoor created by Ogilvy for British Airways.

Who among us has not gazed up to the heavens at a climbing plane and not thought 'I wonder where that one is off to?'.

And then thought 'Wherever it's going, I wish I was on it'.

The lesson? It's easy to lose sight - amid all the huffing and puffing about what advertising does or does not do - of the simple fact that the fundamental, number one task advertising has to perform is to get noticed in the first place.

Gold Lion in Outdoor.

Friday, November 22, 2013

Fridays Angels: links of the week 22|11|13

The latest attempt at a recurring feature in this journal.

Friday's Angels will hopefully be one post every Friday with a handful of links of interest from around the web this week.

This week here's three favourites.

Squat the…?
As an entertaining and rewarding nudge to promote exercise (in the context of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia) OlympicChanges installed a very special ticket machine at a Moscow subway station.
Instead of accepting money as payment, the ticket machine only accepted exercise.
Riders receive a free ticket by standing in front of the machine’s camera, and performing 30 squats or lunges.

next

Sharing fast and slow?
The psychological connection between how we think and how we spread news on social media.
What drives sharing? It’s a mix of attention, emotion, and reaction. Here’s hard data on which news stories took off and which didn’t on social.
Obviously 'Fast and Slow' is a riff on Daniel Kahneman's thinking, and most of the points in this article refer directly to some of those key concepts.

read Sharing Fast and Slow

finally

How to protect yourself from 'prediction addiction'.
I always say 'never make predictions'.
Particularly about the future.
We can't stop second–guessing what's coming next. Our need to gaze into the entrails of the markets – what Jason Zweig, the behavioural finance expert, calls our "prediction addiction" – is hard-wired into our brains.
But the one really predictable thing about our forecasts is that most of them will turn out to be wrong.

read Prediction Addiction

Thursday, November 21, 2013

dog's dinner

Richard Rumelt's Good Strategy/Bad Strategy is just so full of sense and nuggets that it would be easy to just quote the whole book.

Such is it's dip-in-and-out-ability, it's handy to have at one's side to be referenced on almost any occasion.

This passage seemed to resonate this week as a kind of slice of agency life...

'One form of bad strategic objectives occurs when there is a scrambled mess of things to accomplish—a “dog’s dinner” of strategic objectives.

A long list of “things to do,” often mislabeled as “strategies” or “objectives,” is not a strategy.

It is just a list of things to do.

Such lists usually grow out of planning meetings in which a wide variety of stakeholders make suggestions as to things they would like to see done.

Rather than focus on a few important items, the group sweeps the whole day’s collection into the “strategic plan.”

Then, in recognition that it is a dog’s dinner, the label “long-term” is added so that none of them need be done today.'

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

a note on salience and the purpose of branding

As much for myself as for anyone reading this, it's worth - from time to time - to have a quick refresh on the fundamental purpose of branding.

The purpose of branding is to identify the source of any given product or service, and to help us, buyers, make quicker decisions that require less processing/ thought

This is why branding was invented.

This requires the use of things and characteristics that distinguish one brand from other competitors.

First and foremost is, obviously, the brand name itself.
Along with with other distinctive elements of a brand identity.

Coke has the colour red, and the bottle shape, for example.
And taglines - 'Just Do It', 'Think Different' etc.

All of these things help buyers to notice, recognise and remember the brand, in buying situations, and are the most important parts of advertising.

A great creative idea is a great commercial creative idea when it acts as the vehicle to get the brand noticed and remembered.

The more distinctive and salient these ideas are then the more links are made in memory, therefore the easier it is for the brand to be identified and remembered at the right time.

One of the ideas from psychology literature that it's important to recognise and apply in these situations is the idea of the 'availability' heuristic.

Whereby we tend to estimate the likelyhood of events by how easy it is to think of similar examples.

For instance one is statistically far more likely to be killed by a refrigerator falling on top of you than in any act of terrorism, but because examples of terrorism attacks come most easily to mind we fear those more.

In the advertising industry bubble one has no problem in identifying the latest John Lewis Christmas ad, in part, simply because of the availability of the discussion, within the bubble, around the ad this week.

It would be an error, however, to assume that anything approaching the same amount of discussion and dissection has happened in the lives of ordinary people.

However, for John Lewis, to get noticed and remembered by a mass of people in a buying situation would be the ultimate result, and with a huge PR and integrated push around this 'ad-as-event' it looks to have succeeded.

But it is interesting to watch the video below, and notice how little 'branding' ordinary people take away from the ad on first look, and how many other brands they speculate could be the providers of the content before it is finally revealed.

Also recognise how easily this could have been fixed by inserting distinctive branding throughout the spot.

Therein lies the lesson for the rest of us.

That's not to say it's not a great piece of creativity, and without doubt evokes an emotional response, but as commercial creativity it's an exception rather than the rule.

For most brands, even the greatest creativity cannot act as a substitute for establishing the brand name, the source of the product or service, if it doesn't prime the viewer to remember the brand name it fails.

Waiting until 1:57 to reveal is a risk for all but the most compelling content.

I'm being slightly harsh, John Lewis are big enough, popular enough, famous enough - and the JL Christmas ad is an 'event' anticipated by the public - to get a pass (ha!) this time, but we should be mindful not to take this example as case in point or applicable to the majority of our clients.

thanks to Martin Weigel who tweeted the vid.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

because I'm in love with rock'n'roll double jeapordy

The marketing phenomenon that is perhaps the hardest one for many marketers to stomach, the duplication of purchase law, can be described for us nicely and pop-punk-ily in Ready Steady Go by Generation X.

I was in love with The Beatles (ooooohh!)
I was in love with The Stones (no satisfaction!)
I was in love with Bobby Dylan
Because I'm in love with rock'n'roll

Very, very few people are 100% loyal to any single brand.

People who bought the Beatles also bought the Stones and bought Dylan.

A brand only gets big by attracting less committed buyers (although they may be heavy buyers of the category) to buy a bit more often.

Exclusive brand loyalty is largely a myth, and focussing effort on cultivating it is commercially unwise.

People who bought Generation X also bought the Pistols, the Clash and the Jam.

Unfortunately, in the UK, the Pistols and the Jam attracted more light buyers than Gen X did.
Presumably that's why Billy eventually bailed out and relaunched himself in a bigger market (the USA) with a bigger label and more reach and went on to be one of the biggest pop acts of the 80's.

And Tony launched Sigue Sigue Sputnik as a mass media spectacle, creating huge mental availability before any physical product was available to buy, which subsequently led to massive rapid growth.

Indeed Gen X probably suffered under the law of 'Double Jeopardy'.

The Jam, for example, were rewarded twice: they not only had more buyers, but these buyers also boughty more often (thus with greater loyalty). Whereas a smaller brand like Gen X were sadly punished twice: they had fewer buyers who bought less often.

Yes, it's true that bigger brands do receive slightly more loyalty than smaller brands.
But the big difference is not about how loyal their customers are, but simply that they have so many more of them.

The Clash would have been much bigger than they were if they had gone on Top of The Pops and reached a larger audience beyond simply the hardcore of Clash fans. In walked U2 a couple of years later and stole their chops and thunder.

Indeed the rejection of Top of The Pops by the Clash could be interpreted as something of a 'sunk cost fallacy', there is something of a dissonance at play as their decision to tour as support for the Who (mass audience, light buyers, Shea Stadium etc) helped them the huge selling Combat Rock album in '82, just before the band imploded.

To a large degree success begets success. It's driven by the ability to scale.

Moreover, brands share their customers with other brands in the category and usually in line with their market share.
It's no surprise that Billy was in love with the Beatles, the Sones and Dylan. The three biggest and most popular rock'n'roll acts of the 60's.

So while people do have loyalties to a degree, they are promiscuous.
People are pretty happy to buy from a number of brands in a category.

It doesn't mean they like you less, but it's a mistake to expect devotion from anything but a very few.

Sure, the few need to be looked after but if you have the chance, ask the world to dance.

Or you'll be dancing with yourself.

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

making the brand easy to buy

Creatives will hate this, and it won't trouble any award shows but I'd put money on it being super effective advertising.

To paraphrase Prof Byron…

'What works in branding is surprisingly simple – making the brand easy to buy by maximising it’s physical and mental availability'.

Combine Old Spice guy and prominent Coles branding (two memorable sets of distinctive brand assets = mental availability) And I can buy it in Coles (physical availability).

Thursday, November 07, 2013

right on target so direct, you're gonna make me lonesome when you go.

Ever wondered how some of the ads in the music/fashion/motor/gossip etc magazines you read on your way to work, the same ads every reader of the magazine sees, seemed strangely more relevant than the highly targeted data-driven ads you are subjected to on something like Facebook when you fire up your computer?

How can this be, when nature of brand advertising is not personal?
It knows nothing about you, yet this fact is one of the reasons why it works so well (when it's done well).

From Bob's 'Tangled up in Blue'.

'Then she opened up a book of poems and handed it to me,
Written by an Italian poet from the thirteenth century,
And every one of them words rang true and glowed like burning coal,
Pouring off of every page like it was written in my soul from me to you,
Tangled up in blue..'

Whether Bob is experiencing a moment of clarity or simply subjective validation is unimportant.

General human truths connect, they appear to be highly personal and relevant because something is true if a one's belief demands it to be true.

But hang on, my highly targeted social media campaign delivered incredible response rates?

It’s hugely tempting to get excited about response rates but it’s important to note that response rates are, in fact, not a very good indicator of effectiveness.

For a start, your followers on Facebook and Twitter are, for the most part, already your customers, and they are a tiny section of your customer base, among your heaviest and most loyal buyers.

So therefore an 40% response from targeting 10,000 people Facebook is less in terms of total responses than a 10% response from targeting 100,000 people anywhere else.

Plus the fact that the response rate is so high is skewed as these buyers would probably have bought anyway, at some point.

It’s the equivalent of handing out coupons inside your store.

That's not to say that gathering a group of enthusiasts has no value.
But these customers should be viewed as an asset not an audience.
An asset that requires putting to work to share, amplify and reach new people.

Here’s the thing about targeting and relevance. These are not the same thing.

And even in a direct marketing sense, precision targeting can actually be counter to effectiveness.

Highly targeted campaigns are fashionable with short-termist marketers because they typically deliver high arse-covering ROI in the short term, but don’t deliver growth in the long term (and in some cases can be counter to growth – as even the most loyal of customers tend to become less loyal over time, ergo targeting these customers at the expense of acquisition can make the brand smaller) but that’s for the next marketing director to worry about.

The objective must be to reach as many buyers in the category as possible – most importantly the buyers of competing brands – because growth and profit comes from here, not from existing customers.

Because the purpose of brand advertising is not to persuade or coerce individuals but is to create brand salience - the propensity of the brand to be noticed or come to mind in buying situations by more people.

So the great thing about brand advertising is exactly that it is unable to deliver precision targeting and lacks quantifiable ROI.

If the old adage 50% percent of advertising is wasted, but we don’t know which 50% is true, then perhaps we could say the 50% that’s wasted is the 50% that actually works.

f-like

Perhaps the Facebook like button redesign may result in what might be described as 'off-strategy' consumption in some parts of the world.

Readers familiar with the Doric dialect from my native north-east of Scotland will know that the greeting 'fit like?' is how the natives address each other. Often preceded with something like 'aye aye min'.

Loosely translated into English this phrase means 'how are you?'.

In common conversation the 'fit' is often shortened to 'f' and the greeting therefore becomes 'f'like'.

So I'll now be using the F-Like button as a simple greeting, and not necessarily an endorsement.

Social media experts please now factor this in to your important deep engagement/conversation metrics.

Monday, October 28, 2013

can you feel it?

I don't normally overtly pimp the agency work in these pages, but indulge me as I summarise the story of how we took Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Beethoven’s 7th Symphony to the heart of Melbourne.

And captured the imagination of the people of the city by immersing them in the experience.

Literally…

We needed to frame the MSO experience as accessible, desirable and relevant to a diverse mass audience of music and culture loving Melbourne-ites and drive sales of single tickets in 2014.

We knew that the MSO, and orchestral music in general, is often perceived as being inaccessible, elitist or requiring some specialist practical understanding of the theories of music in order to be enjoyed.

So we wanted to demonstrate that you shouldn’t have to know anything at all.

Because it’s something that you feel.

If we could show a mass audience of ‘people-like-me’ immersed in that experience, feeling something together we could democratise the MSO and attract new customers.

We launched their new brand campaign ‘Don’t Just Hear It…Feel It’ and the 2014 program by turning the forecourt at Southern Cross Station into a concert hall…

Last Monday lunchtime, over 50 lucky commuters, from toddlers to the elderly, were able to conduct the 40-piece orchestra themselves, while hundreds of surprised commuters looked on.

Within hours the story was picked up by the national TV news networks (Channel 9, Channel 10 and ABC News) and newspapers.

So what was our strategy?
(channeling John Grant - note for the ad nerds)

Immerse a mass of people in a richly detailed setting.
Make it larger than life, prompting childlike wonder.
Capture that experience and broadcast it to everyone else.

If you've made it this far also check the extended 12" remix.

The campaign launches today. Results to follow.

first thing you learn is you always gotta wait

In 1967 the biggest selling and most popular US album was 'More of the Monkees'. Extremely popular, millions of copies sold.

Also released in 1967 was The Velvet Underground's first album 'The Velvet Underground and Nico'.

The Velvets never troubled the top 100 album chart with this, or any of their subsequent albums, but nigh on every one of the brave souls who witnessed a Velvets performance or purchased the album went on to form their own bands or become painters, or artists of some description.

The 'influence' of the Velvets can still be felt as it permeated right through much of the important music from 1967 to this day. Although in 1967 no-one knew that they would be influential, their influence was only apparent after it had happened.

And looking at the long game the Velvets and Lou ultimately outsold the Monkees.

Lou's Transformer is as much an iconic punk document as anything else of the time, even though it's from '72.

In my first punky band as a teenager the bass player's art teacher force fed us Transformer, along with The Stooges 'Raw Power' and (somewhat out of left-field, it must be noted) The Mothers of Invention's Freak Out and bits of John Coltrane.

Later, as a young art student in 1984 my Velvets album was a permanent 'under the arm' fixture - as a signifier.

I also recall petitioning the art materials shop within the college to stock the first Velvets album, as an essential material for new students, along with their paints and canvas.

The true measure of 'influence' is what happens as a result of exposure to said influence.
How the idea propagates and what people do with the idea, over time.

Lou Reed. March 2, 1942 – October 27, 2013.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

There's more to life than books, you know. But not much more.

Has Penguin Classics 'chucked 67 years of editorial rigour and learning out of the corporate window and kowtow to the whims of a petulant pop icon' or is it that 'a single, fixed idea no longer suffices in the modern business'.

My sense is that the latter is closer to correct.

While the release of Morrissey's 'Autobiography' on the Penguin Classic label appears to have offended the sensibilities of certain elements of the literati one can't help wondering if this is a splendid demonstration of a kind of arch detournement from the Mozfather and further fuel to the notion that the quest for, or perhaps preservation of authenticity is but status-seeking/maintaining.

Presumably, for those disgruntled authenticateurs Morrissey is less authentic than Linton Kwesi Johnson, who collected poems have also been published via the Classic moniker.

But for Morrissey it's something of a marketing masterstroke.

Talk about salient, noticeable and refreshing existing memory structures.

Of course his book had to come out on the same 'label' as Wilde et al.
The Penguin Classic in hand or in back pocket is as distinctive a Mozzer brand asset as the hearing aid or gladioli.

And Penguin its growing their brand, attracting those new/lighter buyers again, for whom this tome will partner that other Penguin Classic - the copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray - that they already own.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

inattentional blindness and a plug for @gapjumpers

In their book The Invisible Gorilla, titled after the now famous Gorilla experiment in inattentional blindness (vid below if you're one of the few who have never seen it), authors Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons make a point about how experts often miss information that novices will pick up.

In their examples, experienced pilots can often be less likely to notice an unexpected plane on a runway than new pilots who have only landed a plane a few times. Similarly, experienced doctors can sometimes find it harder to diagnose a rare condition than a trainee doctor or recent graduate.

This is because the more experience one has in any given situation, the more one sees similar conditions over and over again.
Therefore one becomes blind (to a degree) to outliers, extremely infrequent occurrences and randomness.

Over time, we (humans) have developed a number of ways of managing choices more easily.
Most commonly we'll raid our existing stocks of knowledge and beliefs in order to manage new choice situations.

If previous similar decisions have involved certain biases and/or beliefs then those pre-existing behaviours will be likely to exert disproportionate influence on future situations.

That's a long way round to this pimp for Gapjumpers.

GapJumpers is a platform that connects experts that need help solving business problems and young people, so that young people can earn recommendations for their skills.

Why?

Being recommended, by an industry expert or someone at a company is the fastest way to getting a job, but young people often lack the network and work experience to get recommended. So it helps them gain that credibility.

And from this advertising planner's point of view, the fact of being very experienced means sometimes that one does see similar conditions over and over again, sometimes one does find it harder to uncover fresh insights, or new research than a fresh aspiring planner who has had less time to develop certain biases.

But I'm in good company with these foibles as people from W+K, Ogilvy Sau Paulo, Google, TBWA, ZeusJones have posted challenges and had young planners contribute insights and research.

The Gapjumpers people are, of course, friends of this blog. Have a look at www.gapjumpers.me and see if there's a problem you are grappling with that some fresh brainpower might help to solve.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

pablo picasso was never called an asshole (or the futility of authenticity part 2)

When a mysterious and previously unlisted Picasso painting fell into the hands of one of his most serious (bourgoise) collectors, the lucky enthusiast took it to the artist himslf in order that Pablo could authenticate the piece in person.

Unfortunately, Picasso took one look at the painting and declared it an imposter.

Not to be deterred, the hapless collector purchased another piece and, again, took this to the artist for authentication.

Sadly, Picasso again declared that the piece was a fake.

In a last ditch attempt our collecter commissioned a bespoke work, and then proceeded to watch over Picasso himself as he made the painting, in order that he could be sure of its authenticity, by witnessing its creation with his own eyes.

Upon completion, Picasso yet again declared the new painting to be a fake.

The puzzled collector protested 'But I saw you paint this one with my own eyes?'.

To which the deadpan Pablo replied 'I can paint a fake Picasso better than anyone'.

the futility of authenticity

We've recently been reading Erving Goffman's The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.

Goffman is considered to be perhaps the most influential sociologist of recent times.

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life - first published in 1959 -provides a detailed analysis of process and meaning in mundane interaction.

By mundane interaction Goffman means; ordinary face-to-face interactions among people in various social situations.

Goffman's method is the 'dramaturgical approach'.

He is principally concerned with the different modes of 'presentation' employed by people and therefore the meaning of each in its social context.

In essence, all human interactions are 'performance', shaped by by environment, audience, and constructed in order to provide others with 'impressions' that are consonant with the desired goals of the actor.

According to Goffman, one's social identity is a series of 'fronts'.

There is no 'authentic' 'self'.

All the world is a stage

Human social interactions are all performances conducted when on-stage, in social situations. Solitary moments - the closest thing to notions of 'self-ness' - being the equivalent of 'back-stage' pre and post performance.

What hope then for brands in finding an 'authentic voice' or being 'authentic'?
Or the much asserted millennial consumer quest for authenticity?

People are aways competing for status. Products and brands are signifiers of that status.

So, even being anti-consumption is still conspicuous, 'authenticity' is simply the new 'cool'
.
The fatal flaw is that even when one claims remove's oneself from the competition for status in the mainstream you are simply joining the competition for status in a different sphere.

'What? You mean you still actually BUY products? We only share and freecycle'

Sadly, the call for authentic brands, authentic voices is ultimately futile.

All social interaction is intrinsically inauthentic and performance.
In fact the performance itself is the only authenticity.

Tuesday, October 08, 2013

masterclass in the construction of situations

According to Debord et al a constructed situation is a ‘moment of life concretely and deliberately constructed by the collective organization of a unitary ambiance and game of events.’

A situation is designed to be lived by its participants.
It’s not just ambience, it’s an integrated ensemble of behaviour.
Situations require:

1. A temporary director or orchestrator.
The orchestrator is responsible for coordinating the basic elements necessary in the construction of the situation, and for conducting certain interventions.

2. Direct agents
The direct agents living the situation, who have taken part in creating the collective project and worked on the practical composition of the ambience.

3. Passive spectators
Passive spectators who have not participated in the constructive work, BUT whom can/should be forced into action.

In other words, a denotative lesson in how to do 21st century advertising.

1. Do something first
2. Make it surprising (funny, terrifying etc add your visceral emotion of choice)
3. Then advertise what you have done.

Do the above with skill and creativity, throw in a bit of luck and you might have a hit.
With circa 1million views in under 24 hours this one looks like a hit.

more science plus creativity #littlelesslittlemore

We know that in conditions of some uncertainty (in this case the modification of behaviour or adoption of new-ish behaviours), biases in judgement, and in particular those influenced by the availablity too much or too little information, can lead to less than desirable outcomes.

So, while the execution here, in the current campaign for Blackmore's, seems straight-forward and simple there's a real depth of understanding that makes it so sweet.

Habits are important.
'Little Less Little More' is all about describing how easy to establish new, better habits.
Because habits are more easily established than we believe. Sometimes with only one or two goes.

People are motivated to ‘do the right thing’.
Again, make it easy and fun to adopt and DO the desired behaviour and it will be more likely to happen. You will never think yerself fitter.

We are loss-averse, so the dislike of losses almost always outweighs the liking of gains.
This is compounded by the Endowment effect - whereby people disproportionately value what’s already theirs, so the appearance of taking away perceived 'benefits' or punishing behaviours often causes resistance and can be counter effective. Little less of this is balanced by a little more of that. And most of the little more 'thats' are ones that you actually like.

Most importantly, people need to feel involved and effective to make a changes.
This one is straight out of the psychology of persuasion.
The commitment and consistency effect.
People want to be consistent with what they have previously said or done, so ssk for small commitments first then bigger ones Even better, get them in writing.

The web extension of the campaign does exactly this.

The line goes 'At Blackmores we’re encouraging you to make small positive changes that are achievable and sustainable Choose what you want to do a little LESS and a little MORE of and make your commitment today.'

Finally, the behaviour of other people matters.
Let's have a look at what everyone else is doing then.

Like we said the other day...science AND creativity. What a concept.

aural sculpture

So I made my Beancast debut yesterday with Joseph Jaffe, Jay Baer, Kate Berg and host Bob Knorpp.

Topics discussed were:

RTM And Being Nimble,
3D Printing,
Context vs. Tactics For Wearables,
Where To Put That Content,
and Consumers Avoiding Brands On Social.

Jump over to BeanCast HQ for a listen or better still subscribe.

Thanks again to Bob for having me on. Hopefully we'll do it again sometime.

Friday, October 04, 2013

fluff

I don't know how it took me so long to get round to reading Good Strategy/Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt.

Aside from being choc full of wisdom it's a hoot.

Rumelt describes one of the hallmarks of Bad Strategy as 'Fluff'.

'Fluff is superficial restatement of the obvious combined with a generous sprinkling of buzzwords.

Fluff masquerades as expertise, thought, and analysis. As a simple example of fluff in strategy work, here is a quote from a major retail bank’s internal strategy memoranda: “Our fundamental strategy is one of customer-centric intermediation.”

The Sunday word “intermediation” means that the company accepts deposits and then lends them to others.

In other words, it is a bank. The buzz phrase “customer-centric” could mean that the bank competes by offering depositors and lenders better terms or better service.

But an examination of its policies and products does not reveal any distinction in this regard. The phrase “customer-centric intermediation” is pure fluff.

Pull off the fluffy covering and you have the superficial statement “Our bank’s fundamental strategy is being a bank.”

Thursday, October 03, 2013

science AND creativity. what a concept.

It's interesting to unpack the latest iteration of the Coca-Cola Happiness campaign - this execution appears to be initially out of Amsterdam - from an evidence based marketing standpoint.

If you've followed this blog at all in the last couple of years there's been something of an about turn over time as the point-of-view has shifted from a digital-centric view to one much more influenced by investigations into the science of advertising and how that combines with things like behavioural economics and bits of other social sciences.

One of the key influences in this turn about has been getting to grips somewhat with some marketing science principles outlined by Dr Byron Sharp, Professor of Marketing Science at the University of South Australia and Director at Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, in his book How Brands Grow.

Dr Sharp debunks a lot of conventional marketing theory and proposes a framework for building brands based on what works in scientific practice.

In a nutshell How Brands Grow identifies that real challenge of marketing is principally about availability – mental availablity and physical availability.

The splendid Coca-Cola activation appears to be an almost text-book example of this practice, in practice.

In the clip you'll see the Coca-Cola truck take-over a grey urban space by creating a pop-up park resplendent with trees, grass and a Coke vending machine. Passers-by are invited to kick off off their shoes and receive a free coke.

The activation seems to match HBG's seven rules for brand growth to the letter.

1. Continuously reach all buyers of the category – avoid being silent.
While always-on is a social media buzzword de jour, real always-on means being constantly being available.
The Happiness campaign (of which this is an iteration) never stops, and hasn't stopped.

2. Ensure the brand is easy to buy (communicate how the brand fits with the users life).
This iteration is entitled ‘Where Will Happiness Strike Next?'. Coke brings you happiness. This is how it fits. The emotional outcome rather than a fabled emotional 'connection'.

3. Get noticed (grab attention and focus on brand salience to prime the users mind).
Case in point. And watch your mirror neurons fizzing.
This is actually a piece of real social media, a social object. A public intervention that lets people see each other so that they can copy each other.

4. Refresh and build memory structures (respect existing associations that make the brand easy to notice and easy to buy).
The physical cue of taking of shoes and stepping on the grass is a nice little bonus hedonic boost. And you get rewarded for doing something. Attitudes follow behaviour, remember.

5. Create and use distinctive brand assets (use sensory cues to get noticed and stay top of mind).
The coke bottle shaped grass, red everywhere amongst the grey. Happy smiling people using the product. Simple.

6. Be consistent (avoid unnecessary changes, whilst keeping the brand fresh and interesting).
One could argue that coherence rather than consistency is better description but again, the brand idea remains the same as it ever was, the creativity is in finding new exciting expressions of the core idea.

7. Keep the brand is easy to buy and avoid giving excuses not to buy eg by targeting a particular group or groups.
Look at the people in the video. Theres no segmentation going on here. Happiness (ergo Coke) is for everyone.
Even the multi-ligual intro indicates this.

So what if it's semi-staged. It's advertising.

Science AND creativity. What a concept.