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Agency traffic departments are when it starts to go wrong

CHRIS BARRACLOUGH — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:56:00 GMT

The moment an agency begins to lose it is when it hires its first traffic manager. A traffic department acts as a buffer between the creative and account handling departments. It is designed to ensure work flows through the agency more smoothly, ensuring processes are duly followed and mistakes are eliminated.

Seems sensible, doesn't it? But it's not.

The trouble is that it becomes the moment the client is even further distanced from the creative process. Typically, account handlers have to arrange meetings with creative teams through the traffic department - even for some simple amends. The team spirit and sense of shared responsibility that often develop between account handlers, planners and creatives is fractured. Most critically, the responsibility for successful campaign management moves to people who are not directly answerable to the client. For example, a job is only urgent if a traffic manager says it is. The client, screaming for a fast turnaround, is not their problem.

Traffic departments, along with yachts at Cannes and 4 weeks to deliver initial concepts, belong in the 1990s. Nimbleness and flexibility are key to a modern agency's success and digital technology enables us to deliver on that. Creative people working directly with account handlers they trust is the best guarantee of great work that keeps a client happy. It's more fun, too. Account handlers have more responsibility and a better life. And creatives who win the trust of clients are more likely to win awards.

If you can't manage your agency so everyone works together and takes direct responsibility, it's not the size that's the problem, but the structure.

Woolworths, Dixons – can big brands really live on in ‘Internet heaven’?

Mark Tomkins, TDA — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:00:00 GMT

Should dying brands simply be left to expire in peace? Is it prolonging the agony to keep them on ‘life support’ in some vapid online guise? Obviously Dixons has pulled off a comeback with their controversial John Lewis baiting camaign and Woollies have got a new one in the offing. But can the brand still have the same significance in people’s lives – without a high street presence and a living, breathing sales force? Or is it just a rather sad exercise in ‘retro’. Surely it’s all too easy to buy up the name of a once great brand, stick it at the top of an Amazon imitator and expect the masses to come flocking? There’s probably a short-term novelty value of a famous face coming back from the dead, but is it sustainable into the future? My guess is that there’s going to have to be some serious brand re-engineering if it’s going to mean anything to anyone.

Charities are still getting it wrong at Christmas

CHRIS BARRACLOUGH — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:06:00 GMT

It's time for Christmas Charity appeals. I had 2 today. One from Children with Leukaemia, the other from Shelter. The former has sent me a book of raffle tickets with a Jaguar X-Type as prize. Very little in there about Leukaemia. In fact, they give as much space to a list of their celebrity friends as they do to what the charity is doing today. The body copy, being reversed out, is also hard to read. The 2 disembodied childrens' heads on the cover of the leaflet look like aliens. The one powerful human story they feature is tucked away inside the leaflet.

I've no idea why they've written to me. Have I donated in the past? I don't think so. The letter (from Ant and Dec) is so short they don't have space for things like that. Nor much about the charity and what it does. A P.S. casually added suggests I might want to 'think about a direct debit'. There are 20 personalised labels included too. This whole pack must have cost a few pence to produce. And yet it is a confusing, amateurish jumble. I'm not going to give just because the chirpy Geordies ask me to. There's a lot of competition around and this is not Comic Relief. It is a cause with which I have some affinity and they've blown it by not getting the basics right.

On the other hand, it looks like Shelter has gone back to basics. About 12 years ago I gave them a lot of money. I stopped giving when I felt Shelter was trying to "become a brand" rather than a charity for homeless people. No brochure this time, just a letter telling Emma's heart-rending story. They've also included a snowflake decoration onto which I'm supposed to write my name and return it with my donation. The care workers will then hang it up "to make their centre more cheerful". I'm not too fussed by this gimmick but at least they tell Emma's story properly. They also take the trouble to acknowledge my past relationship with the charity. I think I'll give.

I hope the Leukaemia pack works because it's a good cause. But with more focus on children, cancer, research and treatment and less on celebs it could have worked so much better. Christmas appeals are not rocket science. But you need to get the basics right.

What’s your poison?

Mark Tomkins, TDA — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:07:00 GMT

For malicious virus writers it’s virtually anything that’s breaking news. Most recently it’s been Google search results for the hype-rumoured death of rapper Kanye West and the managerial status of Harry Redknapp at Spurs, but in the past we’ve seen everyone from Michael Jackson to Barack Obama succumb to their wicked ways. Of course, their real tour-de-force was purporting to offer anti-virus software which was actually a virus in itself! If nothing else, should us marketers have a sneaking admiration or perhaps even learn something from their wily ways?

The sheer speed at which they appropriate and hijack today’s talking points and turn them into evil deeds? Any self respecting web designer would surely envy their click-through rates. Obviously they’re going for the lowest common denominator, but it’s the seemingly instant ‘tapping into’ the zeitgeist that’s most impressive.

The fact is, by the time many organisations latch onto to a web trend, it’s already upped and left the building. Take the way that ITV, YouTube and Simon Cowell missed out on the potential windfall from selling advertising against clips of Susan Boyle. Act in haste and reap the benefits, indeed.

Are you sneering at the Royal Mail and its postal workers?

CHRIS BARRACLOUGH — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:33:00 GMT

Everyone's bashing the Royal Mail and CWU. The Royal Mail are being criticised for poor management, arrogance and for failing to adapt quickly enough to the realities of the digital age. CWU are being criticised for much the same thing with Billy Hayes pilloried as a modern day Arthur Scargill (Wiki him if you're under 30),

There may be truth in both accusations. But I'm not going to explore the merits of the dispute.

What I really don't like is the sneering tone of affluent urban classes - "we don't really need the post these days, do we? I do everything on my Blackberry..." the sub text being "do we really have to subsidise the post for Ethel Miggins living in a rural Cumbria?" (Yes, you do).

It's the same unpleasant sneer that's you can see in the latest Dixons.co.uk campaign where they have a pop at John Lewis' middle England values. You always used to experience it when buying a hi-fi or computer - "You want what?...you ARE joking aren't you...?". And I sense other brands are adopting an approach of "you must be stupid/out of touch if you don't use our brand" for their advertising.

The mail service provides a lifeline for many communities and for older people. My mum would be lost without it. Direct mail still delivers high quality customers and donors for many brands. I was also reassured that my surgeon chose to communicate complex, life or death medical information to my consultant in a considered letter, rather than dashing off a quick email (with the inevitable typos). And I want my internet purchases to be delivered without an extra £7.50 charge for courier delivery.

It may well be that a strike is one of the last throes of a dying industry, but we would all be poorer without it. I do hope the sneer does not become the tonal template for Cameron's Britain. It's all too reminiscent of the unpleasant 80s when we knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. Ok ya?

Could the new Dixons campaign rank amongst the worst advertising ever?

CHRIS BARRACLOUGH — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 09:23:00 GMT

If you've not seen the new Dixons ad it simply says "Step into middle England's best loved department store, stroll through haberdashery to the audio visual department where an awfully well brought up young man will bend over backwards to find the right TV for you - then go to dixons.co.uk and buy it".

If the sneering tone wasn't off-putting enough, the strapline is "Dixons.co.uk - the last place you want to go." Yup. You couldn't make this up.

I've found it's always a good idea when trying to win customers off a competitor not to remind them what the competitor does a lot better than you. In my experience the men and women at said department store are uniformly helpful and knowledgeable. If "bending over backwards" to help you means they are "well brought up" then I'm all in favour. It's why middle England goes there. Oh and best not to sneer at your potential customers' shopping preferences, either.

Finally why should I buy it at dixons.co.uk? Are they cheaper? Quicker? Badly brought up? They don't do haberdashery? No reason is given. It surely can't be price because the nameless store is never knowingly undersold.

By all means produce a knocking ad when your competitor has real weaknesses. But this doesn't. It is smart alec advertising. Junior team stuff. These customers are shopping in a traditional way for a reason. Ask yourself why and come up with a positive answer to shift their behaviour. And grow up.

Any creative team without a good writer is seriously missing out

CHRIS BARRACLOUGH — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:21:00 GMT

There are creative teams coming out of college not knowing who's the writer and who's the art director. Fine up to a point. Why make a distinction when the best answer is a great idea that can come from either or both? Unfortunately, it's a more naive and unrealistic position than ever.

Most creative work these days from TV ads to banner ads, from email to radio, from posters to websites, demands words. Some of it demands a lot of words, such as the leaflet explaining home insurance or the web page introducing 'member benefits'. In fact, the web has led to an explosion of copy with online interaction still predominantly a text-led experience.

Employing the best writing craft in all these cases will have a direct impact on the ROI of a campaign. And many consumers, especially those over 40 (i.e. the ones with all the money) still appreciate correct English. So do all clients I've ever met. A basic grammatical error or obvious spelling mistake reflects badly on a brand and erodes its 'trust and reliability' values. If you don't believe me, get a job writing for the BBC or Daily Mail and use "it's" when it should be "its". See what happens. Even the tortuous copy sometimes created for SEO can still be correct English.

Why can't young creatives write compellingly or correctly? When I last looked schools still taught English. Yet when I take the IDM's Introduction to Copywriting course I find most of the delegates (predominantly young clients) would actually prefer a course in correct English (punctuation, grammar, spelling etc) rather than good copywriting. To be a copywriter, you need to master both, although many wrongly assume one equals the other.

Writing is a great career and you don't find many halfway decent writers out of work. And if you still want to work in a team, sort out who will write and then become brilliant at it. You'll always be in demand and you'll have a great career.

P.S. Thank you to Jon Allen for correcting my English in this blog.

Does it matter if 24% of tweets are automated

Ross Taylor — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:30:00 GMT

This is just one of the interesting statistics held in the recent report, Inside Twitter by Sysomos, which goes into some serious detail about this most loved and hated darling of the social media set. There are more women twitters than men, 50% of twitterers have less than 6 followers, and Tuesday is the most active day for tweets are just a few of the facts in the report.

Regardless of this, there is a genuine question about how all of this activity is converting into revenue, and how long will it be before Twitter is replaced with the new microblogging kid on the block. For me, both these questions are largely irrelevant as the important change is not Twitter itself, but the realisation of the value in listening and sharing small things.

For me, I only began to understand the relevance of Twitter once I realised that it is not about what you say (or tweet), but about who you are following. Once you begin to find tweets that interest you and stimulate your thinking, then very quickly you begin to extend your range of people you follow, and all of a sudden, it is an indispensable input to your day. The ability to surround yourself with other people's thinking massively accelerates your ability to sort relecant from irrelevant content - it gives you focus!

So, whether Twitter continues its meteoric growth, or whether it begins to plateau and fall from grace in the style of Myspace, the essence of Twitter will live on for a very long time.

Follow me on www.twitter.com/rosstmw and lets continue the conversation

Nokia augmented reality vision missing a trick

Ross Taylor — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 09:38:00 GMT

The new Nokia future vision video is out on YouTube of course, and shows some interesting aspects of future interaction with digital. Digitally-enabled glasses cant be that far away (though I hope they will look better than those in the video).

However there are two aspects that seem to me to be out of place in any vision of the medium-term future. Firstly, it is the phone itself. Surely, this will evolve from being the remarkably current-looking phone in the video, complete with QWERTY keypad. And secondly, it is the complete lack of innovation in using voice as a means of control, and still relying on the phone keyboard, or manually selecing emoticons. Voice to text, and conversely text to voice is already pretty advanced. Anyone trying out the AT&T Labs demo will realise that the unintelligible robotic voices are a thing of the past already, and Google Voice can transcribe quickly and easily from voice into text.

Surely, language is the most natural interface we have with our external environment. Being able to interact with the digital world simply using your voice will surely be a key indicatori of the progress we are making towards a more natural interaction with the digital world and beyond, back to reality again.

It’s a boy. We’re getting divorced. She’s dead.

Mark Tomkins, TDA — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 09:22:00 GMT

What exactly is/isn’t acceptable fodder for announcing via social media? A pregnancy – complete with scans on Facebook? A compressed critique of landlord failings via Twitter? A video diary of your kidney stone op via YouTube?

Your viewpoint, like most questions of broadcasting ‘good taste’, will probably be influenced by your age and moral standing. However, the truth is that the question of acceptable ‘netiquette’ changes by the day. We’re all getting used to the brash immediacy that new technology brings. It’ll also differ according to the social media you use and how you use it. For instance, do you really count a loose amalgam of Facebook buddies as ‘friends’ or are they just acquaintances? Like real life, it’s more to do with what’s acceptable within your particular group than the medium itself. What if that group is made up of your mum, your manager and your childhood sweetheart though? Even worse, what’s the netiquette for announcing news second-hand? Could you be sued for disseminating the ‘secret’ forthcoming divorce of a close friend? It’s a minefield and one that the law will find hard to keep pace with.

Why is Barclaycard mailing people with no income?

CHRIS BARRACLOUGH — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 09:23:00 GMT

My daughter is 21 and full time at Art College.She has no job. Yet Barclaycard have written to her inviting her to apply for a Barclaycard Goldfish credit card. The enticements include a £30 shopping voucher offer and 0% APR on all purchases for 3 months. The card is very much positioned as one with which to do your shopping. The letter invites her to switch all her weekly purchases to Goldfish to earn £120 to spend on the High Street.

So I hope you don't mind, Ms Mockler, Customer Service Director at Barclaycard, but I've taken the pack before she has a chance to apply. She already owes on her student loans and on her bank overdraft. In fact, she has SERIOUS BAD DEBT RISK tattooed on her forehead. Most of the small print is too small to actually read but I'm sure it says somewhere she needs to be earning money for her application to be successful. Maybe you could have put it in the letter?

Or better still, not send her the mailing in the first place. Maybe you need to be tighter with your selections or improve your propensity models? Otherwise the bank will build up all these bad debts and we know what happens then, don't we?

Don't you hate it when brands tell you what you think?

CHRIS BARRACLOUGH — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 10:06:00 GMT

I received a mailing from Volvo. It told me I would rather be "picking strawberries in June (even though it's September), hitting the perfect volley or skiing on the best snow of the season". They say they recognise that I'd rather be doing any of things, because there's more to life than Volvo. Of course this is true for all cars. Most people are not very interested in cars. Customers buy Volkswagens because they simply want a reliable, quality product. They buy Fords for the same reason. They don't understand what happens under the bonnet and they don't care.

What I can't stand is the assumption Volvo is making about my lifestyle. Let alone the cringe-making yuppy imagery in the brochure. I'm almost 50 for chrissakes, not 30. I have three children (probably like most Volvo drivers but not like the energetic singles in the brochure) and I don't pick my own fruit because we have a Waitrose. In Tennis is shorthand for swinging where I live and skiing stories compete with inheritance tax as the dullest dinner party topic of all time.

So unless you REALLY know me and understand that I'm a mad cycling, wine-drinking, Cure fan with a family don't make presumptions. And the truth is I bought a Volvo because my wife feels safe in one. And what better reason can there be than that?

New Freelander ad is certainly not new!

Ross Taylor — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 08:26:00 GMT

I have written recently about the Olympus Pen Story, which I thought was a beautifully constructed short film. Subsequently, someone kindly pointed out on this blog that it had been copied from an earlier Japanese film which was remarkably similar. Now, I see that the latest Freelander ad looks like another very close copy of the same film, though with far less invention or charm in my opinion.

While I see that Olympus have now referenced the creator of "A wolf loves pork", Mr Taijin Takeuc, I am curious to see if Freelander and Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R acknowledge Mr Taijin Takeuc. I hope that Freelander and Olympus are making an appropriate donation to support his work, as I am sure they do to their "creative" agencies.

An old debate I am sure, but at what point does inspiration become plagiarism?

Have you been involved in a 'fixed' pitch?

CHRIS BARRACLOUGH — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 10:56:00 GMT

By 'fixed' I mean the result clearly having being decided before all or some of the participants had presented. Unsurprisingly you will never hear anyone admitting to this, either on the agency or the client side. But I bet most of you recognise at least one of the following situations:

1. A pitch process is created to give the incumbent agency a 'kick up the arse', to get them to reduce costs without any intention of replacing them. 2. The client has chosen his favourite agency but is obliged to invite presentations from others to satisfy colleagues and 'due process'. 3. The client just wants to see some ideas without seeking to make an appointment.

Do these things ever happen? Well, I'll leave you to make your own minds up. Of course, there is nothing wrong in either wanting to shake up an incumbent or wanting to appoint an agency without seeing any others. It's just not ethical to put others through the considerable cost, time and effort when they have no realistic chance of success. Although nicking ideas from a 'beauty parade' without paying for them is unforgivable.

So what's the best way to avoid any unfortunate misunderstanding?

When I was much younger, ignorant and impetuous I used to believe that intermediaries who manage the pitch process, such as the AAR, were a bad thing. That they got in the way of a relationship developing between client and potential agency. I now acknowledge I was wrong. We've been involved in a number of pitches managed by the AAR, and they have been meticulously fair - whether we have won or lost. Rather than get in the way, they've helped ensure the client is clear about the brief and realistic in their expectations. They've prevented the farce of "short lists of 17 agencies with 9 invited to present..." And with the AAR involved I feel comforted that the process is being run with unimpeachable integrity. I know they would run a million miles from anything that smacked of 'fix'.

That is not to say that any pitch run without an intermediary carries a risk. Far from it. But I would urge any client reading this to talk to someone like the AAR before setting out. It may cost a bit of money but it's far more expensive to make the wrong decision.

Marketers V psychologists. Let the battle commence!

Mark Tomkins, TDA — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 07:01:00 GMT

Marketers could teach evolutionary psychologists a thing or two. That’s the inference of Geoffrey Miller’s latest book, Spent: Sex, Evolution and the Secrets of Consumerism. Well, at least according to Dylan Evans’ pithy review in Saturday’s edition of The Guardian.

It’s Miller’s, probably rather obvious, contention that marketers develop an intuitive understanding of consumer behaviour through their experience of selling real products. It’s this that could help evolutionary psychologists refine their theories of evolved preferences and sexual signaling. But hey, wait a minute Mr Marketer, that Nobel Prize isn’t quite in the bag yet! Evans also points to Miller’s argument that marketers tend to use overly simplistic models of human nature. Ones that remain uninformed by the past 20 years of research by evolutionary psychologists and behavioural ecologists. Indeed, Miller himself talks about marketers who, "…still believe that premium products are bought to display wealth, status and taste, and they miss the deeper mental traits such as kindness, intelligence and creativity".

So what’s the conclusion? Well, I guess that it’s a case of ‘could do better’. Miller gives what one might consider to be a salutary wake-up call. The truth is there’s a wealth of deep data at our disposal – especially from the wonderful world of digital. It’s real data too – not stuff conjured up in an evolutionary psychologist’s ivory tower. However, this needs to be combined with a much deeper understanding of what makes people tick. It’s simply not good enough to rely on the same outmoded stereotypical definitions of who our consumers are and what they are doing. As a discipline, marketing needs to draw upon much wider learnings if it is to discover humanity’s secret selling points!

Is Google search evolving fast enough?

Ross Taylor — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 10:13:00 GMT

The latest iteration of Google search, http://www2.sandbox.google.com/, is now available for general testing. The speed with which suggested search terms are returned is genuinely impressive, but are google now being held back by their approach to treating all information equally? I would find the results so much more useful if they were categorised in some way, identifying those results which were created by individuals in social spaces for example, as in many instances, that is what I am now looking for. It would be great to see the results grouped around social content, as they do for images for example, and then able to filter by type, for example reviews, microblogs, or bookmarks.

I often find myelf adapting the search terms I am using to try and identify user generated content (add "review" or "blog" to search term for example). So Google, it would be greate if you could help me out here, and use this amazing technology you are now demonstrating to bring back more than just suggested search terms, but content types and maybe indications of influence as well.

Thanks,

Ross

Does it matter if 24% of tweets are created by bots?

Ross Taylor — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 09:15:00 GMT

So, whether Twitter continues its meteoric growth, or whether it begins to plateau and fall from grace in the style of Myspace, the essence of Twitter will live on for a very long time.

Follow me on www.twitter.com/rosstmw if you agree!

Why did the NSPCC fall foul of the ASA?

CHRIS BARRACLOUGH — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 12:18:00 GMT

This week the NSPCC fell foul of the ASA for claiming that "1 in 6 children are sexually abused". But it would appear this terrifying stat does not represent the number sexually abused in the physical sense as you or I might understand it. It might include seeing a parent naked coming out of the shower. The data was gathered 10 years ago anyway which questions the use of the present tense.

Besides, why do NSPCC use a statistic that clearly stretches most people's credibility when they must have a library of stats and stories that are genuinely appalling? When the cold truth is shocking, why exaggerate? Sexual abuse of children is patently the most appalling thing. By claiming it is almost commonplace you risk diminishing its impact and damaging your credibility as a witness. I cannot understand that.

For some advertisers these days, the advert itself is not that important. It is a small piece in a bigger jigsaw. Most ads only have a short shelf life so if they never run again, it doesn't really matter. The ads role is to provide a headline figure that once it hits the news rooms, the PR machine takes off. The Daily Mail is outraged. The Chief Exec is interviewed by Newsnight.The bloggers and online chatters go beserk. That's what happened with the 'MMR link to Autism' research in 1998 that has subsequently been utterly discredited, yet continues to make its tragic mark. It is the premise upon which all those one-off political party posters are based.

I would prefer to believe that the number of upheld complaints is part of a healthy tension between advertisers pushing legitimate claims and regulators protecting the consumer. Occasionally it goes too far one way or the other. Sometimes the nit picking nature of the complaints makes you despair ("the hotel is 160 yards from the sea, not 150 yards as claimed"). But we should be grateful that in the ASA we have an independent arbiter of statistics, otherwise we'd never know the difference between them and all those damned lies.

Is Cash4Gold doing anything wrong?

CHRIS BARRACLOUGH — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 09:39:00 GMT

The Cash4gold ads are unashamedly tacky. They sell hard but clearly work in terms of getting people to call. They UK ads are direct copies of their US counterparts, but now with words like 'jewellery' anglicised and with English actors. Although in real England you'll be hard pressed to find a Geordie needing tickets for a European game...for Newcastle?...ha ha ha. The ad is functional and direct, if not pretty.

But who are we to carp if the ad delivers them the business they need? It's not what you might expect from Guinness or Sony but it's doing a very job to a very different target market. Are they obliged to produce a D&AD contender? No.

So what's the issue? Isn't it more to do with morality and ethics? Are the ads not preying on vulnerable people in difficult circumstances? Would we accept personal loans being sold as hard as this? No.

Yet they are urging people to part with a potentially valuable asset in exchange for cash. Does that always make financial sense? Are the valuations always accurate? Not if you read some of the US shoppers' forums. And if you opt for 'Fast Cash' transferred directly into your bank account you have to accept the valuation they give. You lose your 12 day 'cooling off' period. There are other issues too, including the terms of returning jewellery if you DO change your mind. You certainly need to read the small print first, but how many people will?

Nothing Cash4Gold is against the law - High Street jewellers offer cash for gold too (although they don't come into your living room and entice you to do it) - and I think it's fruitless to get involved in a debate about the creative quality of the TV ad. Just be sure Granny is aware of what she's doing before she sends in her antique wedding ring in exchange for a few pounds to pay for a birthday present.

Sue that tweet!

Mark Tomkins, TDA — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 12:51:00 GMT

According to the BBC, a tenant who used Twitter to complain about mould in her Chicago apartment is being sued by the lettings agency. Is it really libellous though? As someone quite rightly points out, should a humble tweet be deemed as a form of publishing? Or, is it merely the 'electronic version of a coffee shop, where you can gripe privately but have your gripes overheard?'Twitter is fleeting and disposable by its very nature. Does this mean that all our pronouncements will now have to be run by our legal departments? If I tweet that my train isn't running on time will I have to consider being sued by Virgin? Or risk the wrath of McDonalds if I say their mozzarella dippers turn my stomach? Tread carefully fellow Tweeters, indeed.

Friends Reunited to be sold at £160m loss?

Mark Tomkins, TDA — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 13:51:00 GMT

Poor old ITV. It dived into the world of social media just as the tide was turning. Now, according to the Mail on Sunday, it could be selling Friends Reunited for a paltry £15 million; that’s £160million less than it paid for it 4 years ago! FR was rather a one trick pony though, wasn’t it? Once you tracked down Biffer Bradock, shared reminiscences about Spotted Dick and dinner ladies it all kind of fizzled out; or, of course you had an affair with an old girlfriend/boyfriend! The real clincher was the rise of MySpace, Facebook and Bebo though – social media based very much in the here and now. But is this a salutary warning? How should we price these sites? Especially given that their life span may be as little as 5 years? How long before Facebook goes the same way? I’m already trying out Gather.com – the site that professes to not be about ‘…who you know or people from your past; it's about connecting with new people who share your interests and experiences today’.

UK causes Cash4Gold to have sense of humour failure

Noelle McElhatton — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 11:50:00 GMT

What a let down.

First the hullabaloo earlier this week about Cash4Gold promising to become 'the UK's biggest direct response advertiser'.

Typical bravado from a Florida-based gold trader that managed to pony up enough cash to buy 30 seconds of famously expensive Super Bowl airtime earlier this year.

The Super Bowl ads with MC Hammer and Ed McMahon had some central creative conceit too - using famously impoverished celebrities who might need to cash in their valuables.

But Cash4Gold's debut UK ad is truly woeful - a dinosaur of a direct response TV ad. Looks like it was made in-house, but it was in fact created by Euro RSCG.

You don't think it's Cash4Gold's idea of UK-style irony, do you?

Still I cheered up when I saw a spoof Cash4Gold ad. Watch it. It's funny.

I think, therefore IP

Dan Douglass — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 10:39:00 GMT

I've just read 'Magic and Logic', the report prepared by the IPA, ISBA and the Chartered Institute of Procuring & Supply - and I love the fact it dares to think big. Understanding how agencies create value is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to achieving a mutually rewarding client agency relationship. They note that the way forward is not the tired fee-based arrangement of yore, but a more radical re-think on IP. Some agencies have succeeded in negotiating the IP rights in their work, and licence ideas to clients for a fee on the basis of a tariff for the use of the idea based on geographic usage and media usage and time. Agencies are beginning to own rights to music, characters, brand names, properties, brand entertainment, content, games and brand creation. In other words, owning more of the output. What creative agencies do every day is surrender original thought - names for new products and promotional themes, etc - as part of a fee. Traditionally, the idea has given them the permission to charge a fee, produce the work or take part the media commission. But as the fee becomes the sole form of remuneration (and even that's getting squeezed), where does the value get recognised? As one agency said 'we know our IP has value. Nobody makes us give our IP away - it's our choice. We've decided to sell it. We charge a different amount depending on whether we keep the IP or not; we ask clients to decide if they want to pay less and licence the idea from us, or pay more and keep the IP rights'. And it's far easier to wrap up all the diversion, distraction and contemplation needed to arrive at an original thought within the IP rights. Jeremy Bullmore has described the current agency business model as 'insane'. 'Agencies', he writes, 'are not only members of a cottage industry, but they also work on a sale-or-return basis. Everything they make has to be different so there are no economies of scale. If clients don't like the first product they're offered, their agencies have to make another one for free. And maybe another. They can spend three months producing nothing of value - or can make a client rich on the back of an idea that took less than a minute to flower. Accepted definitions of efficiency are at best irrelevant and at worst destructive.' And so say all of us. So isn't it time to reflect true creative value based on the rather more familiar parameters of intellectual property?

Christian Aid Poverty Over - been there, done that, got the T-shirt

Dan Douglass — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 07:39:00 GMT

I really love the beautiful simplicity of the new Christian Aid campaign theme to eliminate global poverty - "Poverty over", with the word 'over' embedded in the word 'Poverty'. So much so that I actually had a hand in creating it seven years ago at DP&A - a fully integrated cause-led campaign for our charity client global NGO World Vision. 'Poverty over' with the word 'over' embedded in the word 'Poverty'. Outdoor, TV, DM - even the T-shirt, which still sits on my desk as a source of pride and a memento of what could have been if 'Make Poverty history' hadn't launched soon afterwards and consigned our campaign to history. So I'm grateful to Christian Aid for giving it another outing. And I hope it will succeed. To which end, and as a footnote, they may want to contact World Vision for a few campaign learnings.

Social media monitoring goes mainstream

Mike Talbot — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:51:00 GMT

I've long contended that social media is a vital part of the marketing mix and that the analysis of social commentary has fundamentally changed marketings function. When any communication is put in the market it will be discussed somewhere on line. The marketing message is no longer fully under the control of the brand.

This is so important for so many reasons - it used to be that a badly written piece of copy or a badly targeted campaign might have lead to a few conversations down the pub, well no longer are those conversations private, they are wide open and easily discoverable, it is vital that this kind of reaction is assessed and the impact measured.

I've met a number of big brands that are running scared, but I think that this is actually a great new way to really gather feedback, far more interactive and all encompassing than a focus group.

So putting our money where our mouths are, Alterian has acquired a social media monitoring company, Techrigy, that has indexed more than 1.5bn conversations and can put that data right into the hands of marketers so that they can really assess their impact of their messaging. I believe that all marketers need to access this data so that they can capture the zeigeist and ensure that they are making the most of their communication opportunities.