Blogging for food

Droga and I

Alastair Duncan — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 10:46:00 GMT

It’s hard when presenting in Stockholm not to throw in a few one-liners about suicides or Abba. “I’m so excited to be here I nearly killed myself", “You’re a great crowd, is it a Swedish convention not to clap?” “We’ve come a long way from Waterloo to get here” and so on. So it was good to see Dave Droga speaking at the Eurobest event last week without too many localisation jokes, but with dry wit and passion about the work he’s been up to. Dave likes only to work on things he feels passionate about and make a difference. There’s a superb campaign for Obama with Sarah Silverman getting Jewish grandparents in Florida to vote for change, and the Tap campaign in New York (getting people to pay for tap water as a charitable act). Creatives do love to work on things they feel passionate about, in fact, we all do. But it does leave the industry with a big question. How do you get passion for the brand from everyone involved in developing and delivering the communication?

Developing a different approach is one way. We talked at Eurobest about how developing a more modern approach to getting attention and engagement of specific target audiences with niche work can be highly effective. To be successful in Europe, cultural insight and relevance is critical. Others showed ideas living well in several channels. Others showed work that was just ‘cool’. And that’s ok. Because if it’s cool, and consumers feel differently as a result of seeing or engaging with the message and the experience of what the brand stands for, it does rather a lot of good for the brand.

Not discussed so much, but underpinning the mood of the whole event, is the tough question about the budgets out there. Not many marketers are expecting to spend more, and are expecting robust business cases behind activity. As Shakespeare put it, ‘twas ever thus. The difference now, though, is that if we can’t put numbers in front of work, it won’t fly. But sometimes we need to understand the context of emotional decision-making and passion for brands, which don’t necessarily follow the logic of numbers. It got me thinking about what people feel strong ‘emotional connections’ with.

Let’s imagine we’re pitching for an insurer called Manchester United. The data shows us that there are 2 million homeowners in London who buy their insurance from another firm called Chelsea. The marketing task is simple. Let’s get 5% of the Chelsea policy-holders to switch to Manchester United and we'll hit our target. But for reasons that nobody can quite explain, the Chelsea loyalists ('fans' in Facebook parlance) don’t want to switch. In fact they send mailers back, deface the posters on the Cromwell Road, hack the site and stand up saying “we hate Man U” in the pub. Of course it takes time, heritage, high levels of engagement and product performance to get to the place Manchester United and Chelsea hold amongst their strongest fans. And I choose these teams as (arguably) they have a higher proportion of fair-weather fans (prospective switchers) compared to say, Liverpool, or Luton Town. Not all brands have the same investment capacity. But every brand should have something inspiring to say if you think hard enough.

www.eurobest.com

http://mingeltv.eurobest.com/videos/details/48

http://mingeltv.eurobest.com/videos/details/45

Is it the brand, or is it the brief?

Alastair Duncan — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 11:04:00 GMT

At the British Interactive Media Awards (ps got one for Intel woohoo) last night Nike and AKQA did really well – congratulations to them for an outstanding showing. I was asked by another Client at the event how helpful it is to have Nike as a brand to play with. Poke did well with Orange too, another brand that has a certain award friendliness.

Years ago I was watching a focus group through a glass wall, with the moderator showing some work we had made for a car client. (I’ll keep the names quiet to protect the innocent). Then he showed a host of competitor pieces, and everyone lit up. We thought, and post-prodded consumers came round to the idea too, I’m pleased to say, that our work was really good. Different, provocative, even. But it didn’t get a gut reaction.

Chatting to the moderator afterwards, he said, well, it’s the brand, They just see those (dull, bland, ordinary) cars, and when they see the other (cool, sporty, dynamic) cars, they, well, just light up.

I guess it’s all of our concern to create work that sets the long-term values and tonality for brands that give them privileged status with the consumer. Is it so much harder to win awards with more ‘challenged’ brands?

Brother, can you spare a paradigm?

Alastair Duncan — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 11:41:00 GMT

Has any agency really solved the multi-disciplinary thing yet? On both the demand and supply side of the marketing process, we still stumble over the idea that we might be living under a different paradigm. Much of what I’ve seen about cross-disciplinary thinking is actually effort to keep the problem alive, rather than to solve it once and for all. We aren’t always working with today’s realities about media consumption and consumer choice environments, but on yesterday’s paradigm - to reach as many consumers as possible with a single message.

I’m fascinated by the resurgence of interest in ‘emotional’ decision-making. TV is making a play for comeback through the work of Thinkbox, though its efforts to help educate the latest generation of media people into the art of emotion are falling on deaf ears in the DM agency world. The latter ask the (fair) question of “how come they get £3m to spend on a brand campaign with ‘no roi’ yet I have to justify my 200K mailing effort with actual sales?” TV enthusiasts say “without any emotional content presented as frequently as possible to everybody, the brand won’t be famous enough to remember. ROI is about the long term, not just the short term.” Ironically, both have a point. Clients ultimately need to decide where to put the money. But agenda free advice is a rare thing.

Digital media doesn’t respect the old model. Nor does it appreciate the effort of the old paradigm to keep it boxed up as ‘just a direct response channel’. It’s rather more complicated than that. I believe it's as powerful to create emotional experiences that reach right into the hearts and minds of consumers about matters that are important to them on the website as it is in the TV ad. We know it's harder when the exposures aren’t measured in the same way.

Cumulative effect is one way to look at things, and to some extent, the media metrics systems being developed now are beginning to get that. Pretty much every ‘creative’ agency structure, though, still seeks to identify the single effect that each agency is responsible for, and can claim credit for in a credentials later. I’m not sure this is good enough in the new paradigm, where media planning is increasingly about keeping a brand ‘in the air’ not ‘on the air’.

i am an iams cat

Alastair Duncan — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 23:13:00 GMT

A relaxing Friday night at last watching TV. And I'm confronted with some terrible ads, and one that keeps coming back to haunt us. "I am not an ordinary cat. I am an IAMs cat." The bag is orange, which a charming cat points out. I wonder if any of the cats at orange have seen this one. Meeow.

Flash report from the imedia brand summit

Alastair Duncan — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 11:59:00 GMT

Intel, the BBC, Dell, Coca-Cola, Samsung and Cadbury’s et al presented experiences of interactive capacity and competency in their companies.
I was asked to moderate a panel of experts from the newspaper industry, the BBC, the online travel world and the global advertiser on the state of the nation of the impact digital technique has in the world of communication. A very high quality panel discussed a range of issues, including how businesses are organising themselves for effectiveness in the digital world, and what some of the challenges have been in getting them there.

Peter Ward from WAYN (the travel social network) spoke well about how his business has pushed the limits of technique from the beginning. As with many other social networking sites, WAYN enables its users to create a profile and upload photos. Users can then search for others, and link them to their profiles as friends. If you register it is possible to send and receive messages using email, discussion forums, eCards, SMS and instant messaging. Matt from the BBC spoke about how stakeholder management remains a skillset we need to excel at since the need to get so many interest groups focused on a single strategy around the consumer is as critical in the BBC's world as it is in the world of brand communication.

Simon Shipley from Intel was firm in his belief that delivering digital work required a commitment to learning new skills. Intel has undertaken a serious programme of training internally to digital knowledge. And the ability to develop communities of interest amongst target audiences has been one area of growing effectiveness. Intel runs a programme aimed at IT Managers, a critical audience (in both meanings of the word) called the IT Manager Game. It’s proving to be more and more effective as time spent and quality of content consumed through the game play increases. It’s a completely ‘non-traditional’ activity, which makes it harder to measure in terms of media metrics, but easy to measure in terms of effectiveness of shifting perception and commitment to the Intel brand.

Anne Foster from the Newspaper Marketing Agency reflected on how the demands of advertisers had changed to reflect the audiences, and the mood in the media industry was definitely a focus on sales and ROI rather than brand. Also there were different levels of media need by category. We had talked offline about an increased interest in emotional factors influencing decision making, which, and how we are in danger of too much focus on the short term. It’s inevitable, though, in current forecast market conditions. Anne also presented a strong grip on the statistics of consumer behaviour, how they consume media and what this means.

Measurement remained a big issue for everyone. I put the question to the floor “is anyone happy with their measurement?” and the universal response (although in such an environment it’s natural for people not to give too much away) was “not really.” There are new dynamics of measuring digital media, and dashboarding gives us a view, but there is a shortage of common currency, both in planning and measurement. For example, the current pressure on ROI and direct response means refocusing on click through, but as consumer behaviour online has adapted to the range of content and browsing behaviour, click through just isn’t enough.

So what’s the answer to that? Again, opinions varied, and the room was divided on what we’re trying to measure. My take is that if we accept the job of the marketer is to be gaining or defending ‘share’, or launching new products, services and variants, then we need to have people with the broad view as well as the detailed ability to pick targets off one by one. Share, of course, is only one aspect. Profitability is another, and sustaining profitable share is the job of everyone, not just the marketer. There is universal need to learn, however, how ‘being part of the conversation’ can be measured in these terms.

Out with the old, in with the new

Alastair Duncan — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 07:53:00 GMT

On the day (most of) Britain celebrates parliament 'not' being blown up by Elizabethan (or more accurately Jamesian) political grievance, we should reflect for a moment on the ballyhoo the new president promises for change. There'll be lots of stuff on the news today about that. Change is good. Promises are motivating. But actually driving change is another matter. It's an age old historical argument - is it the people, or is it the circumstances? Cometh the hour, cometh the man is the ironic Shakespearean statement that springs to mind. Given the economic meltdown going on, it's fair to say that there are forces outside the control of the people setting budget demands and controls all over the world right now. The new RBS Chief Executive has declined to offer forecasts, other than to predict the bank's first ever losses. WPP is surprisingly bullish in its forecasts for 2009. What impact will the new President have? Obama is definitely not George Bush. We know that much. Will he withdraw from Iraq? Will he impose import restrictions on Chinese manufactured goods? Will he imprison those who can be identified as responsible for knowingly selling toxic assets? One thing for sure, we will see it on youtube. We will post opinion about it on our blogs. We will consume and exchange information about it more than any other generation has before. That's the impact technology has had on the political landscape. And I predict a future for people that understand that.

It's not black or white

Alastair Duncan — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 07:47:00 GMT

As America queues at the polls in record numbers to vote for the first non-incumbent for ages, it’s notable that Obama has puts his colour on the table at the last minute urging voters not to vote with race in mind. Sadly, we know many Americans will anyway. I hope it makes no difference. We skirt around the subject of stereotypes in advertising – and it’s right that the IPA should be concerned about diversity, and investigate whether the industry is a reflection of, or product of, or in denial about Britain’s multicultural make up. One underrated stereotype is the aspirational role model. The talented and the determined. Dave Trott used to say 'hard work beats talent every time'. I tend towards 'hard work and talent is unbeatable.' Both Obama and Hamilton are extremely capable, and one is already, and one will be tonight, winners. Talent will out. And more positive role models please.

Twit or Tweet version 2

Alastair Duncan — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 10:53:00 GMT

Jemima Kiss in the Guardian today picked up on an interesting angle going on in the Social Media monitoring world which Brand Republic’s mini threads of comment remain oblivious to. As the BBC story around Russell and Ross exploded over the past week or so, their websites haven’t. As complaints on the BBC ‘Have Your Say’ website reached the tens of thousands, the response by the BBC’s online world was pretty slow.

As anyone who studies organisational theory can tell you, conflict over remit or mandate leads to corporate screw-ups. In this case, the Venn diagram between corporate communication, corporate product content and corporate product promotion is hopelessly confusing for the general public. All consumers see is the BBC saying different things to itself. I've always said that companies 'take their clothes off' in their online presence, and here is all over again.

In the brand management community, who has the final remit for the online view of the brand? I know it’s irritating to hear the phrase ‘online view’ but it is worth thinking through in a moment of crisis. In theory, the brand team will take the mantle, but in practice the corporate communications people do as well. It’s clear that as everyone ‘puts digital at the heart’ it’s more important than ever to sort out the skills mix required to actually deliver a single (and strong) point of view for the consumer. This applies not only to the Agency supply chain, but also to within Client organisations.

Twit or Tweet

Alastair Duncan — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:49:00 GMT

Not more PR for Brand and Ross, but will you be following your kids down the road for the annual celebration of pagan ritual? As you all know, Hallowe’en was originally a Celtic pagan festival, celebrating the end of harvest time, to give thanks or offerings for good or bad luck for the following year. Somehow, it’s all been turned into a pumpkin. My lot are out tonight - and for the coolest new media kids in Stoke Newington - we’ll be following them on Twitter. Well, 280,003 active influencers can’t be wrong, can they?

Branding utility will save the day. Seriously.

Alastair Duncan — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 10:39:00 GMT

“An extraordinary, almost unimaginable sequence of events” says Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England commenting on the past weeks' goings on in the global financial markets. Which do you prefer – the culture of blame, or the culture of coping? Weak people immediately point the finger at others, stronger people move on and work out how to make things work, develop products customers need and communication strategies to help consumers realise that's what they want, and build genuine underlying performance in their businesses.

In the FT today, the question is asked – is the MBA culture responsible? From the country that has chosen Sarah Palin as a legitimate candidate for president in waiting, one might question the decision making processes that got her there, and it’s too easy to blame the overt complexity built into the debt instruments that have brought the world's capital markets to a state of chaos. Palin is a nutter, obviously, but I think the true characteristic of disaster is the ability of executives to take things at face value. By ‘branding’ toxic assets as ‘debt instruments’ it’s easy not to look under the skin, do the due diligence, and frankly bullshit past the next quarter's earnings to worry about the next crisis.

What can we learn from all this? One point of view about branding is that it is only meaningful if supported by a set of values that a brand is credible in, performs to, stands for and stands by. For lots of products and services, this is hard to achieve, if the product doesn’t work, for example, or the service promise isn’t delivered. One enormous impact of the internet is enabling consumers to share issues about brands. These can be both negative and positive vibes. Brand owners now have to develop strategy and process internally and externally to manage this. And they are challenging their support networks (of branding consultants, PR people, agencies and technology partners) to help.

Ad people talk about campaigns, and hitting the message home and how to unravel the narrative in linear way. Consumers don’t think about this at all. They tend to see ads in passing, remember some of them, and if the ad is strong enough, may even remember the name of the brand. This works well enough, but if the brand doesn’t have a set of values to stand for, by and for consumers to believe in, they won’t necessarily hand over cash for the stuff. Everyone now likes the idea of branded utilities - virtual test driving, travel advice, holiday planners, Christmas planners and so on - as the necessary adjunct for consumers to build everyday experience of a brand in some way (beyond running in the shoes or actually eating the chocolate.) If you’ve worked in the world of the web for a while, creating interactive experience and regular customer interaction, you might say – hang on, that’s what we’ve been doing for years, but suddenly it’s become branded.

That’s what happens when the ad people get involved. If we give it a name it’s easier to believe in. I sympathise with both sides, if sides is the right term to use. Having run both ad agency and web agency organisations, you get privileged insight. The fact remains though, that unless there is genuine usefulness (either from entertainment or information value) the measurement of such things will remain in the world of wool. In the old world, if the brand didn’t stand for anything, (or indeed, as much more likely in the regulatory environment we now operate in, couldn’t), the advertising itself had to deliver the substantiation. Think glamorous cigarette ads from the 80s. In the branded utility world, you can’t just make it up. There has to be genuine interaction and exchange for consumers to see a benefit of spending, rather than wasting, time with the brand. This is where our creative and tech brains should be focused. If we get it right, and know how to get it done, there’s a new marketing nirvana to be had.

The only transformational figure is $700bn

Alastair Duncan — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 11:36:00 GMT

15 days to go till the US Election, and Obama has neatly raised $150m (that’s nearly £90m) in private donations to drive his campaigning message home in the heartland of America. Even Republicans are rooting for him now. Colin Powell’s statement of support is as incomprehensible in style “We need a president who is a generational change…a transformational figure” as it is in its subtlety of asking for a job in the new administration “If the president asks you to do something, you have to consider it.”

I’m with Colin on the concerns about Sarah Palin. Probability tells us that she is actually highly likely to be president should McCain a) be elected and b) kick the bucket in the next four years. However if the president asks you to invade Iraq on unfounded evidence of chemical weapon plants, it does beg a question as to the information he is working with. One would hope that the next President is a voracious consumer of data, is able to work out the difference between fact and opinion and has the ability to judge upon limited information. Obama appears to present as if he has these qualities. Not so sure about McCain. Still, at least they’re spending a little bit of cash on advertising.

Creative Britain's future depends on not giving away copyright. Right.

Alastair Duncan — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 09:38:00 GMT

The Creative Britain debate rages. Well, sort of. Thanks to the IPA for an intriguing debate last night about the ‘new improved’ knowledge economy. A distinguished panel of Peter York, Moray McLennan, Will Hutton and a nice lady called Christine from the design industry talking about copyright as our commercial future, and new interest and energy on the subject from the government which has suddenly realised that our other forms of exports are suddenly screwed. For those of you that saw the launch in Golden Square, it’s a great initiative, but I worry that the commercial premise needs a little more thought.

The debate, whilst witty enough, studiously ignored two fundamentals. One, the Chinese economy, soon to be the largest in the world, represents a billion new capitalists with a different point of view on copyright laws. Competing on the world stage will be tougher. Two, the ad agency business, in general, hands over all copyright to its clients. Intellectual property will be a new battleground for agencies to learn about. We do support the copyright of our supply chain, as it happens, with image rights and usage rights and so on, but give away our own ideas on the basis of monetising the upfront advice in the form of fees and charges over production.

In my own company we do ideas and make stuff, but we also develop software. This makes us an unusual combination, but a useful one in this context. Years of experience of warranty on the applications we develop (those now ever so trendy brand utilities) and code libraries that (in theory at least!) help us sustain new product at a commercially viable rate. I think all the digital agencies do this to some extent, but as we have to compete on the world stage, we’re all going to have to get a bit more serious about this.

PS Loved the definition “Intangibles are fluff, tangibles are stuff.”

Innovation or investment - the way forward?

Alastair Duncan — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:01:00 GMT

Or government bail out, which looks the most likely if you are a German or Irish bank. I suppose bleating about how big you are doesn’t help at this point, because what matters is public and private confidence in the business and stability of client relationships who will continue to look for better ways of getting and keeping consumer attention.

A little reassurance from the past. All across London, there are houses that were built in a mini boom in the early thirties. Think Chertsey Road. Twickenham. Hampstead Garden Suburb. The Holly Lodge Estate. (How can this be? I hear you cry, as the cold winds of the 1929 crash summon up images of the dustbowls of middle America). But the 1930s were in fact a golden age for British innovation. London expanded dramatically, as a trip to the Tranport Museum in Covent Garden will tell you. The cat’s eye was invented, to ease night time driving on the increasingly utilised road networks. That was when modern became post - modern. OK, so there weren’t so many people then, but clever media was just beginning, and modern typography and illustration blossomed.

It was a time of the first jet engine, the first nylon stocking, the first biro, the first parking meter and the first television. All great inventions, and developed at a time when the world was in crisis. I guess Sir Martin Sorrell and Rupert Murdoch have a point – that if you wait for the recession to bite you, it will. Mind you, they’re probably in a better position than most. But for everyone else, it’s not a time to panic. It’s a time to think. And to invest in innovation.

You can't save your way out of recession. You have to innovate.

Alastair Duncan — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 14:12:00 GMT

I was most taken with the comment headlining this post - a quote from Craig Barrett, founder of Intel, last night, courtesy of and Oxford Business School event I was lucky to attend. It reminded me that one of the things that digital marketing has taught the industry in the past ten years is about remembering to innovate. Advertising people talk about innovation rather a lot, but rarely deliver it. Because we have people with ‘creative ‘ job titles, we think we have a god given right to talk about innovation. Wrong. Most of the innovation in our industry comes from technology changes, and insight into consumer’s use of technology. I’d like to ‘shout out’ as Jamie Oliver might say to the technologists who solve problems, make stuff happen, think of new stuff every day. We are closer to how magical that can be in a ‘new media’ world than perhaps some of the new entrants are with their mad men ways. I do think that belief in innovation will become an important differentiator in the not too distant future. It true that creative content generators take advantage of technology, and put it to brilliant use, but they’d be sitting twiddling their thumbs most of the time without clever people who invent things like the internet, make the cinemas 3D, make the computers work. I guess the true test of successful innovation is imitation. And we’re really good at that, aren’t we?

Sir Martin O'Sorrell

Alastair Duncan — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 08:46:00 GMT

Once upon a time in Ireland, if you earned your living as a writer, you didn't have to pay income tax. What a great way to encourage a creative culture, from the country that brought you Joyce, Behan, Yeats and Samuel Beckett. Now WPP is moving to Ireland to take advantage of the tax conditions.

Is the Irish government encouraging creative accounting as well? Of course it's not so simple. WPP is a holding company with hundreds of entities serving a variety of distributed client contracts around the world. It is, on one level, a British 'success story'.

As the Goverment launches its 'Creative Britain' campaign, it seems ironic that one of the major firms that capitalises on creative talent should be fleeing the country. I wonder if they'll all fly Ryanair.