Entertainment, utility and the interest graph are the solution to marketing challenges

E-Marketer worries that too many screens and distractions fragment our attention

I had an interesting interview yesterday with E-Marketer. They’re working on a project to explore the implications of too many screens and too little attention. It appears that consumers these days are flipping through digital pages on their iPad or fiddling with an app on their smartphone when they’re supposed to be paying attention to the TV commercials. What’s a marketer to do?

Interestingly the questions alone suggested that too many of us are still stuck in an old way of thinking and aren’t leaping quickly enough onto the newer platforms that call for engagement and collaboration rather than advertising.

The questions

“Should advertisers be trying to elevate a consumer’s attention level? Or should they instead accommodate themselves to current behavior and try to craft messages that will make a positive impression even if the consumer isn’t paying much attention?”

“Research has shown that many consumers check their e-mail during them commercial breaks of TV shows they’re watching. If they’re not looking at the TV screen but haven’t bothered to mute the sound while the commercial pod is on, does this mean that (for reaching this segment of the audience) the sound track is more important than the visual element of a commercial?”

“In the age of distraction, does consumption of ad content need to be more a lean-back activity (thus accommodating other simultaneous media usage) or can it be a more immersive, lean-forward activity?”

 A response

Such questions suggest that marketers are still in the business of buying attention. Fat chance. The idea of actually creating a more memorable soundtrack because someone’s looking down at their iPad instead of up at the screen in hopes of securing recall is ludicrous while the thought of making a positive impression on someone who isn’t paying attention strikes me as incomprehensible.

There are three things we can do, however. The first is simple. Be so damn interesting and entertaining that consumers not only welcome out content, they seek it out and pass it on. This is hard, but essential. The more choice a viewer has the better an ad has to be.

The second, of course, is to forget all about buying attention and focus entirely on adding value through utility. Years ago when we had no remote control to save us Charmin’ could force Mr. Whipple into our living room. Today, however, the brand has graduated to utility like Sit or Squat, an iPhone app that crowdsources the locations of clean, public restrooms. Clearly a better way to think about the second or third screen is to create content that considers context.

The third, and perhaps most promising approach is to go where we’re wanted. If a marketer is paying attention at all he or she knows that the newest trend in digital behavior is the interest graph – new platforms that encourage consumers to express their interests (Pinterest) and better yet their intentions (Springpad*) in ways that practically invite brands to connect, inspire and incent people who actually want their presence.

Granted the latter once again calls for marketers and advertisers to learn new tactics, master yet another form of conversation and figure out how to add value on a user’s term (hint: that requires more than simply posting your content on those platforms or adding a “spring me” or “pin me” button to your site) but who wouldn’t make the effort if there’s access to people who opt in. (I’ll be writing and speaking more about this over the next few months.)

As we’ve discussed lots of times, advertising in its traditional form won’t go away. At least not enirely. But thinking that we can meet the challenge of new behaviors and technologies by simply moving old tactics to new mediums is a sure way to accelerate its ineffectiveness.

*Note that in addition to my job as chief innovation officer at Mullen, I also work as CMO for Springpad, thanks in great part to Mullen’s willingness to let me experiment more and explore the startup world.

A brief history of advertising

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.)

Can advertising really help Bank of America?

The bank we love to hate is looking for a new advertising agency. While still the second largest bank in America – JP Morgan recently snuck past BofA in assets, $2.289 trillion to $2.219 trillion – Bank of America’s stock – both on Wall Street and on Main Street has plummeted. It’s share price toppled by more than half in 2011 and its public opinion fell even more sharply.

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?

Three ways to look at Benetton: the cause, the creative, the controversy

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.

10 ways to get your agency more mobile

With apologies to the Economist

There is no shortage of facts, figures, stats and predictions on the proliferation of mobile and the market penetration of smart phones. Apparently you can make a pretty good living issuing research reports about how many people now have smartphones and what they’re using them for. (Hint: That would be everyone and everything.)

You can also fill up the web, or try, simply re-posting and regurgitating those facts in one form or another.  Take a look at some of the coverage of Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends report from a week or so ago. Hundreds, if not thousands, of press and bloggers embedded her deck or linked to her talk.

Most of the write-ups added little value for their readers; they simply cut and pasted what was in Mary’s deck. (If you want one of the better lists of Mary’s facts, check out blogger Dave Allen.)

The real question is what you’re supposed to do with all of this information, from Forrester, from Pew Research, from Mary Meeker. Sure you can put it all into a deck with your logo on the front and present it to clients. But I’m not sure that will get you very far. At least not in the long term.

It’s not about knowing that mobile is soon to be the dominant digital and social platform, it’s knowing what to do about it. I can’t claim to be an expert, but here’s what I’m thinking you should be doing.

Make mobile your new focus

You may have been late to the Internet revolution (hopefully you’re still around to take advantage of this one) and perhaps even slow to realize the potential of social. Don’t blow this one. It may be too late to be early, but it’s still early enough not to be late. What, you’re thinking mobile should be the domain of the media department? Or maybe the developers? Think again, everyone will need to be and do mobile before next year is out.

Get smart about behavior not technology

Since I’m not a developer I always start with the consumer rather than the technology. Think about social media. What was more important, the platforms or what consumers did with them?  The same is likely to hold true for mobile. How and when will people search from their devices? Will they access a retailer’s site when they’re looking for directions, or when they’re in the store? How about a museum? Will a user want hours and exhibit dates before visiting the museum? Or is she interested in the backstory of an artwork when she’s standing in front of it? Understanding how and when someone uses their device leads to better mobile functionality. 

Think utility over advertising

A few months ago, Jeremiah Owyang shared a mobile strategy deck. The mobile world changes pretty fast, but Jeremiah’s content remains relevant, demonstrating how to bring utility to every point on the purchase funnel, from pre-sale awareness generation to post sale loyalty building. He includes examples from North Face’s snow report to AAA’s roadside assistance, making this overview a good starting point to think about all the ways you can apply similar thinking to your clients.

Remember that mobile isn’t always about on the go

Heineken’s Star Player is one good reminder. It’s an accompaniment to a user’s TV set. The app makes a soccer fan a participant in a any televised soccer match. It does everything right: it understands the user and context, connects him to others in a community, and puts a branded experience in his hands for 90 straight minutes.  It may make it harder to slurp down a beer, but presumably if you use the app for that much time you can do it with one hand. If you’re not familiar with it, check it out.

Don’t forget to think beyond apps

Would you rather pinch and zoom or simply scroll vertically.

Yes we’re all programmed as users to download and use them. But as mobile search begins to rival that of desktop – it has a ways to go but is growing fast – you’ll want to be in the business of developing mobile optimized sites. And if you start developing them using responsive design, you’ll deliver a branded experience to the all of the plethora devices that make standardized apps a never-ending challenge. Furthermore your online advertising will be more effective. Most Google ad buys (full disclosure, they’re a client) include mobile, but if you’re delivering ads that link a user to a non-optimized site you’re wasting money, or at least diminishing effectiveness.

Take a look at this search I conducted to make the point. On a smartphone I searched men’s shoes. (In real life I’d just go to Zappos, but for the purpose of this exercise I used Google search.) Two paid results came up. Whose site would you use?

Remember to sell stuff and make paying easy

Apps and gaming are easily embraced, but the real future of mobile is commerce. Pay Pal will do $3.5 billion in transactions from mobile devices before the year is out. And that’s a conservative estimate. Heavy mobile users actually prefer to shop from their mobile devices versus a laptop. So make sure your commerce site is not only optimized for mobile but offers a fast and easy way to search product categories, find what you want and enter payment information.  Oh, and let us not forget mobile payment. We may have taken a long time getting there compared to some other countries, but it’s here. Learn how to leverage it.

Include mobile thinking on every assignment

There’s a tendency whenever a new technology comes along to place it in a silo. Digital. Social. Mobile. But they’re not isolated media or experiences. These days everything is connected to everything else. And I’m not talking about QR codes on print ads. Take a look, for example, at this print ad optimized for mobile. The Zappos team at Mullen knows that people discover fashion in magazines. But you can’t really shop off a magazine. Unless, of course it interacts with your smartphone. In this case we developed an ad that lets you drag items of clothes into your phone, dress a digital shopper and then connect to Zappos to actually purchase your desired items.

Learn from the startups

One thing that ad agencies and clients have a tendency to do is to copy each other. I prefer to steal from more innovative companies, in this case startups who are inventing the stuff. We can learn a lot from Instagram – fun, sharing, user participation, community and the network effect. We can learn from Spotify – a perfect application of the freemium model and an experience made better by social sharing. We can learn from SCVNGR – gaming dynamics to influence.

Make it social

One interesting fact in Mary Meeker’s presentation is how much social media is now mobile. More people tweet from their smartphone than from any other kind of device. She also reminds us that the mega-trend of the 21^st century is the “empowerment of people connected via mobile devices.” Hate to break the news, but in most cases, people want to connect to other like-minded or trusted friends via mobile more than they want to connect to your brand. So give them all the opportunity possible by creating a site experience and/or apps that not only allow but encourage people to connect with one another.

Do it to get it

Everyone who got into social media as a user got better at creating in the space. Ask Iain Tait, the brains behind Old Spice on Twitter.  Or talk to the Brammo team at Crispin. Same is likely to hold true with mobile. So don’t leave it up to someone else. Play in the space. Get excited about responsive design. Think about all the ways a mobile site can be  useful. Try all the new services. Check-in. Pay with Google. The more you use it the more you’ll get it.

Thoughts? Other things your agency is doing?  Or your clients?

Related post: It’s time for web marketers to cater to mobile users.