Monthly Archives: October 2009

The Usability of Advertising

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Having been steeped in the world of digital media the last couple of years and seeing how important usability is to web companies, it dawned on me that perhaps we marketers should begin to ask ourselves about the usability of advertising. I don’t mean to pile on, but I read a $20-30,000 ad in The New York Times today, the headline for which was “Excellence.” One world headlines are so awesome!

The usability of this ad was close to nil. If you don’t know the company you flip the page. If you read the logo and know the company, then from a usability standpoint you must decide if you want to spend the time to find out what is excellent about the company. This presumes the company being excellent is newsworthy — meaning it is not normally excellent.  If  it simply reinforces what you already know, the ad is not useful.

In order for an ad to have usability, it must educate, stimulate, show something never before seen, entertain (if one needs entertaining), or warm up a part of the brain that persuades. A usable ad makes you “feel something then do something.” Every maker and approver of ads should pay heed. We need to make more usable ads. Peace!

Global Warming…the brand.

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emissions

Today is Blog Action Day, the topic for which is the environment.

Global warming is a horrific, long-term problem for the planet. The trapping of carbon dioxide, methane and other noxious gases is altering the planet’s flora and fauna in ways we can’t imagine in our day-to-day world view. But the brand “global warming” is in some ways even more insidious. Who ever came up with the term created a brand that’s quite a euphemism. When has the word warm really had such a bad connotation? And how about “climate change” or “greenhouse gases,” those terms shiver me spleen.

Methane gas escaping into our atmosphere accounts for about 1/3 of all greenhouse emissions and stays there for 10 years. Carbon dioxide, the most common gaseous emission, lingers 100 plus years. Are you getting a warm feeling? Not me, I’m pissed.

Methane, carbon dioxide and the euphemistic words used to describe the ecosystem-changing area above our planet need to be demonized. No more happy words! For a society that curses and drops the f-bomb as we do, you’d think we could come up with some more apt, creative words to describe what’s enshrouding our planet. Here are some starter words to think about: toxic, deadly, cancerous, poisonous, noxious, odious, grisly… (Please comment with your entries, I’d enjoy hearing them. Here’s one: Global Warning!)

So on Blog Action Day I could ask you to shut off you lights, use more energy efficient appliances, stop flushing for number 1, and say “no bag please” to the deli guy, but I’d rather you change the way you refer to what happening to the planet. Let’s get more indignant. Let’s get angry! Words matter. Peace!

(Photo by New York Times, and EPA)

The Few, the brave, the marketers.

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I don’t know Mike Braue of David&Goliath and I haven’t seen Dave Angelo since softball in the 90s (Nice mouth, nice hands.) but I have been a fan of their work for years. Mr. Braue wrote a post for Talent Zoo this week in which he shared David&Goliath’s corporate philosophy of bravery.  I’m on board with bravery, not of the stupid, blind type that seeks to “break through the clutter” (Oh, how I loathe those words), but the bravery that makes one feel a bit uncomfortable and suggests acting with an unpredictable outcome.

Crispin Porter (May I call them Crispin Potter? They are sort of Harry Potteresque.) has a theorem about creative that suggests good work must create conflict for the consumer; conflict being a keystone of good storytelling. Oddly, when I present a brand strategy there is typically one word that makes the CEO uncomfortable. Often it’s a critical word…a strategically pivotal word. When I hear that nervousness, I know I’ve got them. You see CEOs want to be brave, love to be brave – that’s how they got to be CEOs.

Seeing the future and predicting the future is not for the weak kneed. Seeing and acting on the past on the other hand is the practice of 92% of marketers. The brave have been hit in the schnoz, they’ve been struck by an arrow…and lived. Stick your nose out, take an arrow. Be brave. Peace!

You one finest, overcome excellence.

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When in a fun mood, I like to speak in a dialect called angry Korean grocer, something picked up on Saturday Night Live skit. Silly I know, but it makes my wife laugh. The title of this post is not in that dialect though, it is an assemblage of 5 headlines from NYU Langone Medical Center’s latest ad campaign (the comma is mine). Each one-word headline sits atop an expensive testimonial picture and one sentence story, followed by a little sell, e.g., Scott Abrams, injured in the line of duty, walked out of our hospital, when he couldn’t walk in.”

The campaign, for a reason unbeknownst to the reader is entitled “Any Given Moment.” Developed by Arnold NY, an agency that should know better, it is “we’re here” advertising at its worst. Lots of hospitals have taken to the papers and airwaves with new campaigns this season, but this one is pretty much idealess. Hospitals are notorious for creating badvertising, often filled with miraculous survivor stories, yet the category has been getting better. “NYU and AR-nold suffer setback. Hope they overcome.”

The trouble with Coke and Pepsi.

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coca beans

Rant time. My bad, it’s Friday. Pepsi’s sales, it was reported yesterday, were weaker-than-expected caused by lower soft drink sales in North America. Interestingly, Pepsi Cola just finished a big brand redesign which was well received by the design, advertising and brand planning communities; the latter community acknowledging the work at the recent Jay Chiat Awards in NYC. I am a dissenter when it comes to this new Pepsi strategy, which revolves around the idea “Refresh.” Pepsi’s strategy celebrates refresh more for the computer definition than the thirst-quenching definiton. Hello? Is anyone paying attention? Refreshment is Coke’s strategy.

Anyway, both Coke and Pepsi — but Coke in particular — need to focus advertising not on culture but on the ability for colas to truly quench a thirst. Nothing in the world can quench a thirst like a Coke. It creates a jolt, a satisfying, smile-provoking recoil for the thirsty drinker. Here’s a test strategic account planners: get out of the building and walk a trail in the hot sun for 8 hours. Have someone meet you at the trail’s end with a Coke in one hand a Gatorade in the other. See which your arm reaches for. (Only physicists will grab a Gatorade.)

Colas are under fire from waters, energy drinks and teas. They need to fight back. And fight back with all the syrupy, coca-ey, carbonation demonstrations at their disposal. Cola growth in the third world is strong because those consumers know that Coke and Pepsi refresh like nothing else. In the US we’ve lost sight of that. Come on people, stop over-thinking this stuff. Cultural refresh indeed! Peace.

Deloitte “2009 Tribalization of Business Study” Boil.

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The just published Deloitte “2009 Tribalization of Business” study positions them as a leader in this very fertile space — certainly as a leader among the big consulting companies. Here’s a boildown on the findings.

Telling enterprises to build “communities” or “social networks” within the company is a hard sell. The words here matter and currently connote the wrong things.

The people most comfortable with current enterprise “worker nets” are the Millennials and mega nerds. Some successes in terms of efficiency improvements are being recorded by these companies but the clean-up batters aren’t really participating and that is the tipping point challenge.

American enterprise and individualism is keeping people from sharing, for fear that others will take credit and they will not benefit financially or career-wise. “Me first, company second.”  This needs to change.

Social Business Design (coined by the Dachis Group) is the best definition I’ve heard so far for this technology and behavior pursuit – a pursuit that will alter business as we know it. It may not be long before Social Business Design becomes an acronym. (A shame said the junior high kid within.)

These are exciting times, and I’m glad Deloitte is doing good research work here, with this second study on the topic. Tomorrow, tune in for some ideas about how to get the clean-up hitters involved. Peace!

Trademarkia.com A Path Thru the Trademark Jungle.

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trademarkia

What happens when you put a lawyer and marketer in a room together? A lot of quiet. What happens when you put a lawyer and a small business marketer in a room? Nothing, it doesn’t happen. The same is often true for mid-size marketers because like Ocean Beach, NY, long known as the “land of no,” small businesses operate by a don’t ask don’t tell ethos – and they don’t want to pay lawyer fees either.

Enter Trademarkia.com, a company with a great name which combines “trademark” and “Wikipedia.” The name passes the Is-Does test – a big plus for start-up businesses. Trademarkia CEO, Raj Abhyanker, also a patent and IP attorney, realized that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and patent attorneys have not yet caught the Web 2.0 train. Furthermore he realized that there are millions of expired company names, logos and slogans in the morgue, all of which are marketable.

Mr. Abhyanker’s press releases refer to Trademarkia as the “freshest, easiest way to create a Brand” and though that goes beyond just the Wikipedia metaphor, it does capture the essence and functionality of the site. One can go to Trademarkia and for about $159, buy an expired mark and secure it. Or search for a never been used mark through the Trademarkia database and secure that.  The searching part is free. (Trademarkia was a TechCrunch50 participant this year.)

Trademarkia does a lot of other things like send competitive alerts but its single biggest breakthrough is creating a place filled with lay explanations and search tools, to help business owners and marketers chop through the jungle that has to date been the expensive provenance of trademark lawyers. Peace!

Social Media Inside and Out.

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The smartest, most progressive companies in America are using social media to demonstrate brand strategy and brand value. It helps them recruit new (young) employees, create affinity with prospects, and retain and maintain existing customers. Social media is currently too tactical and not well governed, but that’s a topic for another post. That is what’s up in social media outside the company.

Social media inside the company is intended to extend and make more robust information sharing and collaboration with an end-goal of creating shareholder value. Social media within the enterprise started in earnest at trade shows like Web 2.0 Expo and Enterprise 2.0. Lots of companies are doing it well, but collectively we’ve only scratched the surface. The 10 years leading up to social media inside the company were the domain of software and consulting companies selling business processes reengineering (BPR) and enterprise resource planning (ERP). They made gazillions, but their solutions were 80% machine, 20% people. I like to think today’s social media offerings will invert that mix, but it will certainly be a challenge.

America’s free enterprise system rewards big ideas and breakthrough findings; our business history is filled with the names of inventors, yet we don’t have a lot of collaborator stories to tell. Companies like The Dachis Group are dealing with this needed culture shift. (A shift that might, someday, cure cancer more quickly.) Consultants of this ilk are studying how companies, enterprises and associations work — defining the 1s and 0s or the ons and offs of the enterprise knowledge worker. Dachis call it the Hivemind mentality. It’s not going to be easy. In America the hive always has a queen bee and lots of wanna bees. Stay tuned.

Macs, Markers and Music.

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Technorati code: xtkb2apfmv

I just read the first page of an IBM white paper entitled “The End of Advertising as We Know it.” IBM spends a lot on advertising, is should know of what it speaks. But IBM also spends a lot of energy and Benjamins getting people to buy machines that process data.

The IBM thesis is that one-to-many advertising – using TV to create demand and preference for brands — is old school and the new school model surrounds micro-segment targeting, where handfuls of people, even individuals, are targeted. The new school messages are delivered over a number of mediums, especially the web, in ways that are much closer to the point of sale, much more measurable and efficient. A one-to-one approach.

IBM is wrong about the death of advertising. Way wrong. TV ads will live on. In fact, they will get better as we ferret out the sloppy craftspeople. But IBM is right in that marketing budgets will be using a lot more digital tools to help find customers, set the hook and maintain loyalty. These things will coexist; finding the right mix is the key.

The problem with IBMs of one-to-one prediction is that it requires more data analysts, marketing scientists and technology to get involved in consumer communications. The highly paid creative geniuses and the poorly paid Millennials who sit at their feet are not crafting the myriad brand stories. And product image suffers. The art of brand building and brand maintenance is lost when handled by the technicians in IBM’s data-driven world. The percent of actual dollars spent on marketing will tip in favor of computers and computer services and away from Macs, markers and music. A slippery slope indeed. Peace!

Posters. Where art thou?

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Posters are original content creators who rule the social web. They write blogs, upload pictures, create and hang videos on YouTube, microblog on Twitter. The good ones create interest and action. Action might take the form of a comment or pass along of the original content — a behavior I call Pasting. So there are Posters and Pasters on the Web. The ratio is about 1 to 10. I counsel clients to target Posters and the Pasters will follow. It’s more efficient.

The million dollar question is “How do you find Posters?” Where do they congregate? And once found, how do you know if a Poster has a following? The beauty of the web is that there are a crazy number of measurement tools. Views is a good indication of a Poster’s popularity on YouTube. Number of comments on a blog is a strong litmus of sway with readers. Number of friends or tweets on Twitter is a good measure. With Flickr the number of photos or recency of photos are telling.

Numbers and measures are one thing, but sometimes the best Posters are hidden. If you find them first, on the way up, it’s like finding marketing gold. A good way to determine if a Poster is on the way up is to get into their art. Read them. View their work. See how they treat people. Do they listen and help or are they just there to crack wise. Do they care about their topic or are they just clicking for friends. What’s their motivation?
Posters earn the earned media for marketers. Peace!