Honda emailed all of its customers a link to their new spot

You’re probably thinking, oh great, another Superbowl blog post. I know that’s what I’m thinking whether I’m reading one or writing one. But there are some interesting developments worth noting. Given the cost of advertising on the game, the pressure to run a memorable spot and the vocal participation of viewers on Twitter, Facebook and online polls, advertisers have to pull out all the stops if they expect to win on both effectiveness and public reaction.

Here are some practices, if not possible trends, worth noting.

Super Bowl spots are getting longer

It ain’t cheap to run a commercial on the game in the first place — $3.5 million for a 30-second spot.  Nevertheless we’re seeing multiple brands running 60’s and Honda ponying up to produce a two-and-a-half minute spot for pre-game release, likely to be a sixty-second buy in the game itself. The cliché explanation, of course, is the need to break through the clutter. But the real reason is that no matter what you run, the pressure to do well – on polls, on Twitter, in the court of public opinion – is higher than it’s ever been. Twice as long may not mean twice as good, but it does leave more room for gags, humor and story-telling.  Some, like Toyota succeed.  Others, like Acura, don’t. Honda may or may not play as well in the on air :60 as it does in the online version.

Story telling gives frat humor a run for the money

I’m sure the latter isn’t extinct quite yet, but it does appear there may be a little more true story telling this year and maybe fewer formulaic reveals at the end. Honda’s Matthew Broderick spot is a miniature movie. It may not tell me anything I don’t know about the vehicle, but the length of the commercial alone will put it at the right end of the buzz meter and the charm of the performance will no doubt win plenty of votes on USA Today and Brandbowl. Granted that doesn’t necessarily turn into sales or even consideration – just because I like an ad doesn’t mean I’ll buy the car. Brand likeability may be a motivation to buy, but that remains different from liking a TV spot.

While Honda may have nothing to say other than it stands for playing hookie, Audi has some very specific features to share with us. Like the LED technology in its headlights.  The carmaker may have jumped on the overcrowded vampire bandwagon but at least there’s a relatable story in its 60-second execution. And as we all know, stories make things easier to remember and share with others.

User generated spots start to feel old

While I am a big fan of getting our customers involved, it comes with a huge problem: formulaic, highly derivative, re-cycled ad ideas. The Chevy spot in which a college grad thinks he’s getting a car is among the most expected. We’ve seen it done for everything from wallpaper to Pepsi in the famous Cindy Crawford ad. The Doritos dog trick spot is even worse.  Strategy: product looks, tastes, and is so good that customer can’t resist it. Seen it. Done it.  Plus I think Bud Light has used up all the jokes in that genre.

The use of social platforms grows

I am excited to see what Wieden does with the Coke polar bears. Given that they’re the guys who brought Old Spice to Twitter, I’ll guess that the execution of the bears’ reaction to the game, their respective teams (the bears are not rooting for the same team) and even the commercials will be fun, and ideally offer some genuine interactive features for the user. At least I hope so.  If it’s just more “pay attention to us,” but in different venues, that would not be very Wieden like. Will be yet another coup for Facebook.

We can also assume that everyone, or at least Bud Light, will have a hashtag, now that they know what they are.  A year ago, when Audi stuck one on the back end of an ad for a full half second, the press went nuts. “A hashtag!” What an innovative marketing technique.  Now, 12 months later, it’s practically mainstream and expected.  A reminder that it’s not about using the media, it’s about what you do with it. You still need a creative idea.

The “Mikey, he likes it,” metric matters more than ever

It started with USA Today’s Ad Meter. Then came Brandbowl. And now likes and +1s and embeds and views. It’s almost as if the only thing that matters is whether or not the ad and the execution win praise and thumbs ups. We may make believe that other numbers – reach, awareness, consideration, a bump in sales – really matter more. And, of course they should. But I wouldn’t want to be the agency whose work comes in the bottom third of the polls. Or doesn’t get a few million views on YouTube (even though many of those are paid for.)

The pre-release strategy goes mainstream

It was only a few years ago when Superbowl spots were kept under wraps and guarded at all costs until the day of the game. Now, we’re likely to be tired of the commercials before they ever actually run. After the whopping success of VW’s The Force in 2011, pre-releasing one’s Super Bowl spot appears to be the new normal. They’re on Hulu, on YouTube, on blogs and all over Twitter and Facebook. Not everyone welcomes the loss of surprise; there’s something culturally communal about having 100 million plus fans sees the same spot for the first time all together.  But the web has changed that. And certainly a marketer could argue that every view counts so extending them from before the game to after stretches the media budget. In fact the Honda spot went from no views to 4 million in the first 36 hours.

Borrowed interest still reigns

This year we have inspiration from Twilight, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Seinfeld. No doubt there will be more. Some will be clever. Some might border on brilliant. They’ll probably make us laugh or smile as they cover us in the warm glow of familiarity. But something in me wishes that advertising would work the other way around. That we would create the cultural icons worth borrowing or stealing from.

That would be worth even more than an extra 10 million views on YouTube.

Would love to hear your thoughts, and hope to see you in the stream on Brandbowl2012.com. The pre-game site is up now. But we’ll be rocking come game time. Remember: #brandbowl.

Below, one of my favorite spots so far.

Related posts:

Why Shazam won’t work, by @mrahmey

Coke’s Polar Bowl

Welcome to Strategic Creative Development

Thought I’d share a deck I recently used to kick off Strategic Creative Development, a class I’m teaching this semester at Boston University’s College of Communication.

The premise behind the syllabus is simple: advertising is no longer about making ads. At least not all of the time.

Now it’s as much about digital experiences, gaming dynamics, mobile utility, Facebook apps, and creatively leveraging the interest graph as it is about crafting a message. Of course you know that.

Nevertheless, it was fun to create a journey just by looking at the automotive category. It telegraphs the change brilliantly.

In the beginning – presuming we all believe that Bernbach ignited advertising’s Big Bang – there was Volkswagen. Picture of the car, usually. Clever headline that juxtaposed with the image produced a “concept,” often telegraphing as much about the user as the car. “Do you have the right kind of wife for it?”

Twenty years later Amirati and Puris filled the awards annuals with iconic work for BMW. Picture of the car, usually. Clever headline that juxtaposed with the image produced a “concept,”  often telegraphing as much about the user as the car. “You’re judged by performance. Why drive a car that lives by a lesser code?”

No much changed in 20 years. Art and copy and bought attention.

But fast-forward 16 years and all hell breaks loose. BMW films in in 2001. The first big campaign to acknowledge consumer’s use of the web, the idea that advertising could actually be sought out, and that “commercials” need not be limited to 30 seconds. Mini-Cooper in 2002, a forerunner of imitators to come, so to speak, as a CB&B makes a brand social before there’s Facebook or Twitter to help it along.

A few years later we see Art of the Heist, and some of the very first trans-media story-telling. And finally the Ford Fiesta Movement, crowdsourced content that offered both insights about the customer and content to populate the web.
The evolution?

• VW and BMW: ads that buy our attention
• BMW Films: ads that we seek out and find online
• Mini-Cooper: ads that leverage community and membership
• Audi A3: ads that invite our participation and let us play along
• Ford Fiesta: ads that hand the brand and the content over to us

#BUSCD students will get to work on digital platforms, apps and experiences to introduce the VW Bulli

I used some non-automotive examples to demonstrate the dramatic change,too, including a comparison of the infamous Mr. Whipple with the Charmin’s most recent effort: the Sit or Squat iPhone app, a crowdsourced utility helping us locate clean, accessible public restrooms when we’re on the go. We’ve come a long way, baby.

Take a look at the deck if you’re so inclined. It includes some discussion guide and questions that might help anyone who teaches advertising and social media. It offers some thoughts and suggestions for aspiring industry employees to think about. And it has a few nice little sound bites borrowed from the like of Clay Shirky and Contagious.

Plus it includes a fun assignment at the end. The re-launch of the VW microbus, coming again as the Bulli in 2014.

If you’re a student, feel free to download. If you’re a teacher, take whatever you want to and use it for yourself and your students. Got thoughts to share? Leave them below.  And as always, thanks for reading.

(Special thanks to CP&B for sharing all its Mini Cooper work.)

Brandbowl is back with more features than ever

It’s that time of year again. The online Superbowl party that Mullen started three years ago to celebrate the age of Twitter is well into development. If you remember, we began our annual project when there weren’t very many ad types on Twitter. In 2009, most of the industry was still like “huh?”

A few of us at Mullen, the kind folks at Radian 6, and some friends like Sally Hogshead and Lisa Hickey made the effort to get ad land excited. We launched what was then called Trash Talk from the Twitter Section, shared instructions for how to sign up for Twitter, and encouraged people to open accounts. Today it’s hard to imagine that Twitter needed an introduction as recently as three years ago.

Now here we are for our fourth anniversary and we’re excited to introduce some new features. For starters, we’ve made the site, brandbowl2012.com, more interactive. (Note that at this posting it re-directs to last year’s site.) For the first time, users will be able to compare brands head to head in a statistical showdown. Whose ads are getting more attention or more favorable reaction? Brandbowl knows.

We’ve isolated a box at the top of the page, held high by a digital fan, to feature the best tweets of the game. Post something particularly insightful or clever and you could find your tweet featured atop the stream for everyone to see.

Brandbowl 2012 also has some new data to share. This year’s analytics will track the geo location of tweets and also the gender of the participant. Might be interesting to see comparisons between the sexes when it comes to talking about Superbowl ads.

The mobile experience will be better, too. Let’s face it, there’s likely to be more people watching the game with a smartphone in hand than a laptop resting on their knees. You’ll be able to check live rankings and post instantly from your iPhone or Android. Given that it’s a site, not an app, it will work everywhere.

And finally, we’ve been approached by Billboard, which wants to get in on the action. So we’ve offered them the featured tweet board for the half-time show. Madonna better watch out. Billboard knows what it’s talking about when it comes to reviewing music and performances.

Once again, our partner Radian 6 is back with its sentiment data and analytics. And for the second year in a row Boston.com is hosting the site and helping to promote it.  Given that Twitters active user base continues to grow and that social media advertising couch critics is an expanding population, we expect to get some pretty good data.

Hope to see you there. On brandbowl2012.com. Using the easy to remember hashtag #brandbowl. I know who I’m rooting for. The creative.

If you need a reminder or are interested in what this is all about, here’s a video recap of last year’s effort.

In fact it’s hard to find much positive sentiment anywhere. The Occupy Wall Street movement targeted the financial giant at every opportunity. A  congressman from the bank’s home state of North Carolina went after them for greed and abuse. Consumers pummeled them with complaints after the bank announced an ill-advised $5.00 fee for debit card use, a decision from which they quickly backed down. And just this past Friday, the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) turned Bank of America’s San Francisco ATMs into “truth machines,” covering them with non-adhesive stickers that offered customers a slightly different option menu. ATM visitors could invest in coal-fired power plants, foreclose on American homes, bankroll climate change, or fund executive bonuses. Pretty funny and clever stuff if you ask me.

Anyway, call me too modern in my thinking, but I’m not sure an ad campaign will solve much of this. No doubt we’ll see executions that pat the bank on its back for funding inner city growth, helping send kids to college, providing entrepreneurs with money to launch new businesses and practicing corporate philanthropy with efforts that include free admission to hundreds of museums.

Such messages might make management and employees feel better, but they’ll ring rather hollow to consumers. Ads will feel contrived, controlled and anything but transparent. Accomplishing the latter is likely to be particularly difficult, given the bank sought to achieve more openness with its last big campaign effort. And look where they are now.

Bank of America is trying to do away with this closed image of banking with its new, $40 million ad campaign that attempts to portray the Bank as more open and transparent. From MyBankTracker, 2009

A recent glance at Bank of America’s Twitter news feed shows an abundance of self-promotional updates, but not a single acknowledgement of recent image problems. I figured for sure there would have at least been a “touché,” tweet to RAN. Even a beleaguered bank needs a sense of humor once in a while.

The suits in Charlotte need more than a new ad agency and a $300 million ad campaign. They need a new mindset for how to solve their marketing and image problems. The “us and them” strategies that yield fee hikes rather than collaborative programs have to go. The bank should “design” its way toward good will and trust, starting with a new way to engage and a better connection with its detractors. I might even do something really radical and invite someone from RAN or Occupy to join the board. Or at least an advisory committee.

It will probably take years and multiple behavioral changes for BoA to prove themselves. You only have to read Bill Bernbach to know that peppering us with paid media to tell us how great they are, or even to celebrate the accomplishments and spirit of their customers, won’t change public opinion.

What do you think? Thoughts on what the banking giant should do? Should I make this an assignment for my class at Boston University? Is it possible to strategically and creatively  turn Bank of America into good guys?

What everyone in Silicon Valley and “Venture Land” conceive of as the real game-changing model involves capturing and capitalizing on the “interest graph. The company that succeeds in doing so would be “close to the Google search paradigm because it would be right in line with demand generation and with discovery that relates to product purposes.” Thus, it is the interest graph that defines the middle ground between Google and Facebook — between search, advertising, and the social graph.

The above paragraph comes from a year-old post in Tech Crunch, following last winter’s Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco.  It was a prescient sentiment for sure.

Just look at the current landscape. The new emerging social platforms are less about the social graph and all about the interest graph. Pinterest, Springpad, Svpply. We’re seeing an evolution from people centric social media (who I am connected with) to interest centric social media (what I care about, want to buy, hope to do.) Users are jumping on platforms like these and others in part because they make it so easy to express one’s self by posting stuff you like or find interesting.  Add in the fun of discovery and the rewards of sharing and it’s likely we’ll see accelerated user growth.

Springpad lets me discover and save stuff I want then finds me the best prices on the web.

For brand and marketers, this is good news. It’s a lot more lucrative to tap into intent and desire than it is to try and penetrate communities where you’re uninvited. Even the best conversation strategists can’t necessarily turn engagement into sales. And it’s become pretty apparent that collecting likes on Facebook will never be the Holy Grail.  Just go to any Facebook brand page and take a look at the metric revealed by dividing fans “talking about this,” by those who “like this.”  The percentages are typically pretty low.  For Harley Davidson half of one percent of fans are paying attention while Old Spice’s number is only slightly higher.

In a recent video Gary Vaynerchuk asks an interesting question. “What’s the Dunbar number for brands?” He notes that most consumers have liked so many brands they don’t even remember which ones. As marketers should know, fans rarely visit a brand’s Facebook page and unless they engage on a regular basis they won’t see brand updates in their stream either.  How many brands can we actually have social relationships with? Ten? Twenty? Certainly fewer than the number of people we engage with.

But we can like or want dozens of products and places. Books we want to read, movies we plan to rent, places we hope to visit, restaurants we know we’ll eat at. Offer that up to a marketer and it’s gold. It’s also likely that the right kind of message or alert or incentive to act, served up in a tasteful and polite manner, will be more than welcome.

Expect to see some pretty interesting (no pun intended) developments in 2012. Pinterest may have great momentum, effortlessly converting consumers’ interests into inbound links for the benefitting brand, but there’s more compelling stuff on the horizon. Springpad, a company whose board I serve on, goes beyond interest to identifying deferred intent, then delivering relevant alerts and information that convert interest to action. That’s a benefit for both a user and the brand whose product or service fulfills an obvious desire. Springpad has a slew of significant enhancements coming in February that will make it even more productive and incredibly social.

No doubt there will be others, too. I recently met a new startup called Aditive that offers yet another way to tap into intent. By making online ads social and shareable Aditive encourages readers to share offers with friends who they know might like the product or promotion being offered.  When executed right, this simple tactic multiples click-through and effectiveness by a factor of 10 because it’s allowing consumers to identify interests that their friends might have.

In March, I’m on a panel at SxSW to talk about deferred intent and the brand opportunities inherent in social media as the interest graph evolves. Between now and then I’ll probably return to the topic a few times.  Until then, I’d love to hear your thoughts, ideas and, of course, your interests.

Thanks for reading.

Other links:

Storify:  The Interest Graph

But one day, a couple of weeks before Christmas one of our developers, Joe Palasek, was teaching himself Canvas, the HTML 5 element that lets you draw on a web page.

He created snowflakes that changed direction in response to the movements of a mouse.

Because this developer sits in the middle of the creative department, the CCO walked by, noticed the snow, and suggested, “that’s cool; we should use it for something.”

A digital CD, who also has to walk by the developers on a regular basis, peeks at it and asks, “How would that look on Google Street View?” Joe lays it over Google and it looks pretty good.  He then thinks “Why not change the markers to different icons.” Ten different creatives, writers and art directors sitting within view, randomly throw in ideas. Two art directors sketch up 99 percenters, Elvis, a ginger bread couple, a Menorah and more.

Next, a creative technologist thinks we should make “epic cards” for locations that include Abbey Road and Stonehenge along with a “gallery” page that shows the most popular locations. So Joe, along with co-developer Luke Sideris, builds Snowify.me and wraps it in an interface so people can create and share their own.

A few years ago tech guys didn’t sit inside the creative department at most agencies. Creative directors didn’t start an idea by looking over the shoulder of a programmer and getting inspired by a rough rendering. Creative teams didn’t work so collaboratively in order to make someone else’s idea better.

But my favorite line and sentiment comes from Joe. “I was just playing around teaching myself Canvas. I had something cool, but it wasn’t an idea or a concept until other people made it one.”

Lessons?

1. Put technology and development inside your creative department.
2. Let everyone play and experiment and learn to make stuff.
3. Encourage collaboration beyond the two or three person team.
4. Create a space that fosters collisions.
5. Just do it.

Nearly half of online consumers write comments to help others, not to engage with brands

This just in: 50 percent of all social media campaigns go unnoticed. They fall on deaf ears. Consumers don’t give a damn. And brands are wasting time and money. In large part because they don’t know how to listen to consumers or deliver content that matters to them.

At least that’s according to the recent TNS Digital Life 2012 Report. The study interviewed 72,000 people from 60 countries and discovered that consumers, particularly those in the US and UK, are pretty cynical. In those two countries 60 and 61 percent of consumers have no interest in engaging with brands via social media.

Are you surprised? I’m not. In fact, we probably don’t need a study from TNS to tell us this. Look how much mediocrity is out there under the guise of “brand journalism,” or “owned content.” Much of it might feel good to its creators, but it’s a yawn inducer for customers and prospects. The fact that anyone with a laptop and Internet access can be a content creator simply means we have “mountains of digital waste” cluttering a landscape populated by friendless Facebook accounts and blogs no one reads.

While some marketers are getting it right, most appear to be missing an opportunity.  Consider that almost half of all consumers willingly comment about brands on review sites – not to complain or praise mind you, but to share experiences and help others. So they’re using social media to engage. And they’re talking about brands. They just don’t want to have those conversations with the brand itself.

Ironically, when it comes to making purchase decisions, consumers rely as much or more on a brand’s content than they do on peer recommendations. They just want it on their terms and in a relevant context.

Let’s recap. Consumers want brand information and use it to make decisions. They willingly take the time to engage online, albeit for the benefit of each other. And too many brands, at least according to this study, can’t find a way to engage.

Why? TNS suggests inefficient targeting.

My conclusion would be a lack of creativity — a shortage of truly interesting, entertaining and useful ideas. Daily posts on Facebook – polls, questions, promotional offers (though the latter tends to work) – might cut it with a select group of  already engaged fans. But will they hold their attention long term? Or delight them on a regular basis. Or succeed in attracting new customers?

I’m a huge fan of earned attention. And owning content. And being in the publishing business. But the one downside of everyone and anyone — and that includes brands and companies — being a content creator is that just like cable television, the good stuff becomes a smaller and smaller percentage of all that’s out there.

We’ve all seen, and hopefully created, stuff that’s good. It might be an event that lasts a day. Or extends for a month. It could be a price promotion.  Or a new product launch.  A single app.  Or an ongoing story.  Even a Facebook page. When social content is great, when there’s actually an idea to capture our imaginations, when there’s an execution to delight us, we want to engage.

Social media may have changed everything. But not the need for new, interesting, useful, relevant, and well-designed ideas. Let’s make more of those.

A recent Twitter exchange between John Winsor of V&S and Marty St. George of Mullen client, Jet Blue

Most successful ad agencies have been built around a combination of the two:  relationships and ideas. The former yields the kind of partnership that lets a brand team totally immerse itself in a client’s business, work as a partner rather than a supplier and take a vested interest in the success of the business.

That’s not to say that relationships are more important than ideas. After all, it’s the latter that goes into the market, attracting attention, generating buzz, driving results. No one gets famous from a relationship; it’s the ideas that make you immortal.

But you could argue that relationships contribute to great ideas in a big way. A strong relationship results in trust, which invites braver thinking. It yields a partnership that encourages client and agency to work through challenges and problems together. And it motivates creative teams to work even harder than they already do. We all want to please a client who appreciates what we do for them.

But if Will Burns, the founder of Ideasicle, is right, the relationship side of things just might be diminishing in value. In Will’s words, many clients care less about relationships and more about getting an idea faster, cheaper and more efficiently. He should know, having held senior account and new business roles at agencies that include Wieden, Goodby, Arnold and Mullen.

In response to that “trend,” Will created Ideasicle, an expert-sourcing agency.  Similar to the crowdsourcing model of Victors & Spoils, which also posts briefs to a vetted community of creatives, Ideasicle calls on an even smaller stable of hand-picked, experienced, award-winning creatives who have joined as “experts.” All of them have worked with Will in one of his previous positions, so he has a good sense of how to match them with assignments.

When Ideasicle secures an assignment – sometimes from an ad agency needing to augment and internal effort, but more often from a brand advertiser looking for fast, affordable access to top talent – it posts the news to members of the Ideasicle community. Those who are available agree to work on short notice as a swat team. They collaborate with each other online — conceiving ideas, revising them, making each other’s concepts better – but stay invisible and anonymous to clients. Hired guns, they work for the joy of creating and the guaranteed payday.

Ideasicle offers clients what it calls "expert sourcing."

Knowing my interest in crowdsourcing and new models, Will showed me a quick peek behind the curtain. The talent is impressive. And despite their anonymity, more and more clients are embracing the model, caring not who works on their business but rather what comes out of the process.

Like Victors & Spoils, which has generate impressive PR and clients – Harley Davidson, Levis’, Virgin America, General Mills, Discovery Channel – Ideasicle is challenging the traditional models as being inefficient and over-priced.

I’m not saying I agree totally with that sentiment. In a world where the only real trend that matters is hyper-connectivity, you could make an argument that brands need a deep relationship with an agency  like the one I work for, where a dedicated hyper-bundled team can deliver creative, paid media, earned media, mobile and digital all working together to produce coherent brand experiences that consider everything from context to culture.

But it’s also likely that the new models, anxious to prove the maxim that abundance breaks more things than scarcity, are to be taken seriously. Perhaps we should embrace aspects of what they do ourselves, finding ways to source ideas from more people and places and deliver them even more quickly and efficiently.

What do you think?

With a little help from my friends. Getting guest appearances from John Winsor, Sheena Matheiken, Helen Klein Ross and Daniel Stein

I’m a huge believer that we should constantly challenge ourselves by trying new things and starting from scratch sometimes. So my newest project is to teach a full semester at Boston University. Wish me luck.

The College of Communication has offered me the chance to develop a syllabus for a course titled Strategic Creative Development. Granted I’ve taught and run workshops, lectured at numerous colleges and even done a week long executive in residence at the University of Oregon. But all of that pales compared to what it takes to prepare for a full semester. I have a newfound respect for anyone who teaches.

There’s still a month to go before the semester starts, but here’s what I’ve got so far. Thought I’d share it in hopes that you might have suggestions for how to make it even better.

Course Description (what it will say in the syllabus)

Advertising strategy is no longer only about inspiring the creation of an ad. Today it has to inform how brands generate content, engage in the social stream, encourage participation, and create cohesion across all media. Likewise, creative concepts are no longer limited to the art and copy-based executions that defined creativity in the traditional media of TV, print and outdoor. They now include digital experiences, gaming dynamics, mobile utility, Facebook apps, crowdsourcing and experiences that connect the digital world and the real world.

In this course you will study, dissect, analyze and conceive creative ideas that include traditional advertising, but that emphasize social media, digital platforms, mobile apps and gaming dynamics to understand how brands connect with consumers in the new age of participation.

By the end of the semester you should have a broader definition of “creative” and some experience in generating ideas that take into consideration consumer participation, the role of influencers, the value in branded utility, and the importance of emerging social platforms.

Objectives for the course or why you are here

·     Learn to think, solve, create

·     Expand your definition of advertising creativity and possibilities

·     Understand the new roles and teams in the modern creative process

·     Practice generating creative ideas, working as teams

·     Get better at evaluating yours and others’ work

·     Push beyond the basics of traditional art/copy advertising ideas

What you’ll be asked to do

Attend class

We meet but once a week, so attendance is mandatory. Missed classes will lower grades by half a grade per class. Three missed classes lead to an F.

Actively participate

A teacher can’t really teach creativity, students have to learn it by exercising their thinking and doing muscles. We can only be successful if you play an active role in class, engaging, debating, asking questions, contributing to the conversation.

Write (to help you think and analyze)

Creatives and strategists have to express their ideas well. As part of our learning you’ll maintain a blog and post a minimum of 13 weekly blog posts (approx 400 words) with links and appropriate embedded content in fulfillment of assignments. Example: find an innovative transmedia campaign, identify objective, back out audience/community, determine strategy, assess creative.

Present

Over the course of the semester each of you will make three or four stand up presentations of that week’s blog post content and findings.

Maintain an Idea Book and generate creative solutions

I haven’t totally figured this out yet, but am inspired by Professor Deb Morrison at U of O and her book on the creative process.

Develop campaign(s)

Work over the course of the semester will include individual assignments and a semester long team project.  The latter will consist of developing insight, strategy, driving brand idea, and campaign elements that include social media, mobile, experiential, utility and advertising.

Work/think/create all the time

Creating and thinking doesn’t happen in an allocated three-hour time slot once a week. Nor does it occur during the hours you schedule to do “homework.” It is a way of being and living. You want to learn to observe, discover, capture and develop creative ideas all the time. Inspiration is in the books you read, the movies you see, the museums you visit, the subways you ride. Learn to be open to it.

The Semester (presuming things go as planned)

Every class will include a brief lecture from me, student presentations, a full hour of workshop and creative development and in many cases guest speakers. Some pretty good ones I might add, presuming client presentations and new business pitches don’t get in the way.  (Don’t worry, Matt Britton: I will find a place for you.)

January 23:  The End of Us and Them

The transition from Bernbach to Zuckerberg

Creating in an age when readers and viewers want to create, too

January 30: Strategy in the age of participation

What is the brief, what does it look like, what does it inspire?

Guest:  Kelsey Hodgkins, digital strategist/planner, Mullen

February 6:  Is the big idea dead or alive?

Do we need them? Integration vs cohesion

Guest:  Dave Weist, Tim Vaccarino, ECDs Mullen (VW, Cadillac, Jet Blue, Google)

February 13: Social from within

Being social vs using social

Guest: Daniel Stein, CEO and Founder of EVB, creator of Elf Yourself and Facebook Studio

February 22 (Tuesday make up)

Surprise visit from young creatives who’ll work with the class on their projects while I am away for the week.

Week 27:  Transmedia story telling

Complex narratives that inspire participation

Guest:  Helen Klein Ross, Founder Brand Fiction Factory, Betty Draper on Twitter

March 5:  Strategic and creative in the mobile space

Where on the funnel?  Adding value through utility

Guests:  Mike Schneider, author of LBS for Dummies, Chief Innovator at Allen and Gerritson; Brenna Hanly, mobile catalyst and strategist at Mullen

March 19: Learning from the individual

What we learn from Gary Vaynerchuk, Sheena Matheiken, Dan Savage, et.al.

Guest:  Sheena Matheiken, founder/creator The Uniform Project

March 26: Creating experiences and owning the media

Go Mo, Shocking Barack, Chalkbot and more

April 2:  Crowdsourcing

A new marketing and creative tool/strategy

Guest:  John Winsor, Founder/CEO of Victors and Spoils

April 9: Inventing things

The importance of technology, innovation and APIs

Guest:  Matthew Ray, Creative Technologist

April 16: Thinking Small

Make great stuff with small budgets

Guests:  Michael Bourne, SVP Social Media and Michael Ancevic, SVP/CD on Olympus Camera’s Will it Blend, Pen Ready and Tough

April 23:  Do brands need a soul?

Having a purpose. Richard Branson, Alex Bogusky, Simon Mainwaring

Guest:  Scott Henderson, Founder of Rally the Cause

April 23:  Bringing it all together

Presentations from semester long projects

If I don’t suck, it will in part be due to the generous advice from the likes of Professors Tom Fauls, Deb Morrison, William Ward, Tracy Tuten and Scott Sherman. And insightful suggestions from some of the smart young professionals I work with, including Brenna Hanly, Angela Ruffino, Elena Romeu and Eli Perez de Gracia.

What do you think?  Got any suggestions that might help me out?

Benetton's new campaign (right) gives a nod to the past and this 1991 kissing ad.

In The Age of the SWARM*, when every news outlet, blogger and tweeter jumps on the story of the moment, it’s no surprise that on November 16, we saw thousands of Benetton-related headlines telling us that the “Vatican threatens legal action,” and “Benetton pulls pope-kissing ad.” After all, that was the day that all hell broke loose over Benetton’s new ad campaign featuring global leaders kissing each other.

But if you looked beyond the echo chamber of RTs and redundant posts there wasn’t much in the way of real analysis. Sure the Pope was PO’d. But was the campaign any good? Is the cause it supports worthy? Was the controversy a surprise or the objective of the campaign in the first place?

It strikes me these are all questions worth considering for those of us interested in branding, advertising and social media. So I thought I’d weigh in.

The Cause:  UNHATE fits perfectly with Benetton’s history of social advocacy

These days it’s common for marketers to jump on the social cause bandwagon in an attempt to generate good will. But taking a stand and supporting causes has been part of Benetton’s DNA for decades. The brand has a long history of social responsibility (or in some cases advertising disguised as such). It’s run campaigns and launched programs to subvert stereotypes, protest war, fight famine and challenge the death penalty. There was even a campaign to encourage entrepreneurialism in Africa.

If you haven’t checked out Benetton’s new initiative, you should. Benetton’s in-house agency Fabrica (working with outside agency 72andSunny) didn’t just launch an ad campaign for the sake of generating buzz, it created  the UNHATE foundation and introduced a series of programs it hopes will contribute to a culture of tolerance. The effort appears to be much more than lip service.  It includes educational programs and support for international NGOs that teach tolerance, a Global Tolerance Index, efforts to promote human rights and support for art programs that bear witness or contrast hatred.

UNHATE may or may not be its biggest or best effort to date – it’s too soon to tell, despite the fact that SWARM thinking wants instant conclusions – but perhaps we should credit the Italian apparel maker; it chose both to speak out and to put resources behind a worthy cause and message.

(I did come across one face worth noting in writing this post: while Benetton is a brand that prides itself in social responsibility, it ranks rather poorly in certain related behavioral traits you’d expect the company to do well in, including carbon emissions, environmental policy and labor conditions.)

The Creative:  Not the best effort

If the main job of a creative execution is to get noticed, then this campaign works brilliantly. But if we want to apply higher standards – taste, cleverness, originality – then the kissing campaign does not rank among Benetton’s best.  Take a look at some of the United Colors of Benetton ads of the past.  The integrated family. The vials of leaders’ blood, all of it the same color. The white baby nursing from a black breast. The images were not only startling, but less expected. There’s something about the kissing joke that feels a little too easy and obvious.

Past Benetton campaigns were more clever and charming and still unexpected for the time in which they ran

Then again, it does give a nod to another great Benetton kissing ad featuring a priest and a nun, produced 20 years ago. I suppose that for the few of us familiar with Benetton’s history you could argue it’s an inside joke.

We all know it’s easier to be critical than to come up with a better idea yourself, but it doesn’t help that Oliviero Toscani, the photographer who created the most famous Benetton ad images slammed the campaign, calling it “pathetic and the product of a beginner’s art class.”  Ouch.

On another note, the website is pretty good. It’s clean, well designed, easy to navigate and invites participation via the Kiss Wall.  Perhaps what this effort and campaign really needs is just some time.

The Controversy:  Intentional or accidental?

If you want your next ad campaign to generate millions of media impressions just add a picture of the Pope in a compromising position. Search “Benetton Pope” and you get pages and pages of coverage. It’s hard to imagine a better viral scenario. The cynical among us have already ventured that the entire campaign was created for no other reason to generate press coverage.

It’s unlikely that Benetton will admit whether or not they sought such a reaction, but it’s hard to imagine it didn’t cross their mind to expect comments like Father Federico Lombardi’s declaration that the doctored photo exhibited “a grave lack of respect for the Pope, an offense against the sentiments of the faithful and a clear example of how advertising can violate elementary rules of respect for people in order to attract attention through provocation.”

Marketers often find themselves deluged by unexpected reaction, whether in response to a calculated risk or a innocent mistake. Just witness Qantas’s #qantasluxury fiasco yesterday. But in Benetton’s case the brand had to know from past experience.  In response to Benetton’s Death Row ads in 2000 Sears removed all Benetton products from its stores and terminated its contract with the company.

Last year Benetton net income fell 33 percent, a fact Benetton attributed to the economy. Perhaps a little free publicity and controversy is just what the brand needs to jump start business and stay top of mind.

It may not be a strategy for all brands, but it seems to work over and over again for the Italian company.

Questions:

• Is UNHATE a good cause? Or is it too generic? Would it be better to choose a cause that would generate customer participation more meaningful than posts to a kissing wall?
• Do you think the work rivals the Benetton campaigns of the past, particularly those photographed by Toscani Olivieri?
• Is generating controversy a smart marketing tactic? Is it too risky? Could more brands take advantage of it?

Please share your thoughts. If you are a teacher, consider using this as a topic and discussion guide.

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The SWARM: a quick and concentrated focus on a topic fueled by social buzz and the inevitable drop off the radar

The SWARM is my new term for the digital echo chamber we live in. It’s an acronym for the Social Wave Amplified by Repetitive Media. We see it all the time. A story breaks — maybe in the traditional press, maybe online, maybe on Twitter — and in order to be part of the story bloggers, tweeters, and every one with a presence in social media feels compelled to link, RT or somehow declare they’re in the know, creating The SWARM.  If you like this acronym, feel free to use it as a hashtag.  If you want to link back to its original explanation here, you can do that, too.

Thanks for stopping by.

More links and images on Storify.

I am adding this video after the fact. Creativity Magazine recap of the campaign in its five best of November 23. A good perspective on the comprehensiveness of the effort.