Search results matching tags 'digital' and 'Advertising'

Real People

2116546 — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:33:00 GMT

I often wonder how many 'virals' have been viewed by real people.

I'm not talking about those figures that may have been faked by bots and all that underhandedness, but people outside of the industry we all have the privilege of working in. Ok, I know we are real people that consume so our viewing figures do count but if I had a quid for the amount of friends I've mentioned 'famous' viral campaigns to and they've never heard of them I'd probably have about £20.

Part of our job is viewing work being produced by our competitors so sometimes (well, most of the time) I'd love to be able to reclaim a YouTube view so as not to add to the clip's figures, or at least mark myself as "work in the industry, just checking out the promotion, not actually interested in the product".

Who needs Ad Agencies

2116546 — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:10:00 GMT

After spending a couple of days digesting this news I'm still not entirely sure what I think about it so excuse the brain dump.

I do think it fits into the viral subject however as Ideas Bounty is surely a viral exercise in itself but can this really work as a sustainable model across a brand's advertising. I'm not a huge fan of over-inflated ad agency models myself but there's more to creative than just shitting out a one-off idea. Isn't the Peperami brief (which is a tactical element of the overall 'Animal' creative concept) essentially another lazy UGC campaign in the same vein as Doriotos, Confused.com and quite a few others? It's great news if a client is taking more responsibility for the creative output of their brand, but it's not like Creative Agencies have been doing absolutely nothing for the past 50 years; is it?

Ok, I'll eat my face (on face)

2116546 — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:32:00 GMT

As I've previously mentioned I'm not a big fan of face-on-face. This is perhaps just me, I don't get it, why would I bother. I don't like things not making much sense within their own world - however much fantasy is involved; I also still doubt how many people have direct to camera images of themselves.

However, if you get a chance to sniper a friend and the technology is the best implementation yet seen I can be proved wrong so check it out here.

Oh, and here's a kind of face-in-video that Ralph have just produced (www.jigsawsgame.com), but that's only one small part of the entire experience so I think we got away with it!

I'm wrong aren't I; people love seeing their own picture in anything?

#worldview - deconstructing the silo mentality

2544553 — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:38:00 GMT

Even with the perceived turnaround in the global economy, we are all aware that the global recession has caused, and continues to cause, seismic shifts in the advertising and marketing industry, precipitating the need for rapid change. One area being impacted by the combined forces of recessionary pressures and technological progression is organisational structure.

One of the macro trends that we are starting to see is the deconstruction of the silo mentality that has been the status quo within client organisations, and which is mirrored by agencies in the major holding groups.

Discipline-specific fiefdoms exist around silos, with individuals and agencies behaving territorially to protect their specific areas of competence, guarding revenue streams or marketing budgets fiercely, and having accountability solely for delivery in the channel for which they have been responsible.

“My hope is that the recession will have been a huge wake-up call to clients with regard to that siloed mentality,” explained Bob Jeffrey, Chairman and Worldwide CEO, JWT. “It’s not only inefficient from a cost-savings perspective, but the more you collapse the silos, the more integration you drive, ultimately leading to a more effective environment in which to deliver better ideas and stronger creative output.”

Bob Jeffrey

Chris Colborn, Executive Vice President & Chief Experience Officer, R/GA, sees the silo mentality as a fundamental problem in developing effective creative work: “Many clients operate traditional structures where leads sit within verticals, each in charge of a discipline-specific agency and responsible for maximising effectiveness in a single channel. This model creates an artificial disincentive for collaboration, and therefore doesn’t engender an approach in which holistic synergies naturally form.”

Chris Colborn

“It’s a huge challenge for clients to evolve that model,” says Colborn, “to be leaner, more dynamic, cut costs and develop a more holistic structure, whilst still getting the best out of their agencies.”

The siloed organisational structure not only proves detrimental in terms of developing exceptional creative work, but actually creates natural disharmony and tension within the holding group verticals.

“I’m constantly saying that agencies need to work smarter,” Jeffrey continues. “They need to know when to compete and when to collaborate. Agencies are inherently territorial, tribal and competitive, but it’s critical to take an agnostic, less ego-centric approach to collaboration, and to have a bigger view of the world and the direction in which the world is heading if agencies are to achieve the ultimate goal of making their clients successful.”

Jeffrey understands that, “absolutely each agency needs to develop their own brand and build a reputation for creative excellence, but if client organisations start to evolve to be structured less around verticals, then agencies will be able to collaborate more effectively to deliver better work.”

The recessionary pressures on revenues and costs are forcing every client to analyse in fine detail how effective their marketing department is, and whether they are operating the most efficient ROI structure in a fast-changing environment.

As digital, mobile and social media platforms become more prevalent across all consumer segments, the discipline-specific silo mentality seems increasingly outdated and ineffective.

With CEO’s and CMO’s the world over looking to cut costs and increase the value of their spend, the time for significant and radical structural change is upon us. This will not only impact the client organisations themselves, but by definition the relationships with roster agencies across all disciplines.

Bob Greenberg, the Founder, Chairman, CEO & CCO, R/GA, believes that, “if you’re organised with a client around the consumer, then you’ll be much less affected by the storm than if you’re part of a siloed organisation. If you’re organised in verticals then the impact will be felt much more keenly, as cuts across each silo will need to be made. Nike are a client that have reorganised their internal organisational structure to revolve around the consumer, which is a model that I believe is much more efficient and effective.”

Bob Greenberg

If we look at some of the work that Nike are delivering, through R/GA as well as a number of other roster agencies, it is clearly evident that the reformulation of their organisational structure is paying dividends.

Ideas such as Nike+, the Ballers Network, NikeID, and HEAD2HEAD demonstrate that the company has truly put the consumer at the heart of all its thinking, delivering multi-platform solutions that are implemented more effectively by running a streamlined, de-siloed structure.

Chris Colborn summed up the dilemma facing many clients by describing why digital agencies are increasingly being perceived to offer greater value for money than the traditional agencies: “Initially digital agencies were one of the siloed verticals, but it quickly became apparent that every other silo needed a digital equivalent, in some form or another.”

“If you combine the breadth of experience, therefore, that digital needs to deliver, along with the relatively low spend in comparison to other channels, you can see why digital agencies are able to think more holistically in their approach to marketing, and also to deliver solutions that improve ROI levels.”

Although Colborn and Greenberg are approaching the topic from a different angle to Jeffrey, they are all in agreement that the concept of the traditional silo structure is fundamentally flawed.

The deconstruction of this model, reformulating around a more consumer-centric structure that has engagement and participation through digital platforms at its heart, is one of the major shifts that the recession has precipitated.

As with many of the changes this recession has brought, and will continue to bring, it is not that the shift wouldn’t have happened eventually; it’s just that the economic downturn has forced dramatic change to happen much more quickly.

The problem is that a rapid, fundamental structural revolution within the advertising industry has caused, and will keep causing, a great deal of pain while it happens.

Is Purefold pure gold for brands or pure confusion?

2292853 — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:14:00 GMT

Coming soon from Free Scott, the new entertainment venture of Ridley Scott and his brother Tony, is a trippy new sci-fi entertainment project called Purefold that plans to let brand’s sponsor the content, and let the audience drive the plot line using social networking platforms.

Produced by Ag8, the concept will see participating brands “…take an alternative route to brand integration than traditional product placement and embrace invention within a narrative framework.” The project explores transmedia entertainment and will launch off of cross-platform channels. What? Purefold just might represent pure gold for brands looking to reach audiences in an extremely interactive format, but as of now, it has a lot of people baffled as to how it will work, what it will be, and if branded content is a good idea or not.

Discussions about Purefold on Friend Feed, the main resource planned to “harvest” story ideas, are already brewing about the question of what it means to be human, the driving theme behind the story that will be loosely based on Blade Runner. Ag8 is getting people to explore the idea of what “transhumanism” is in the Purefold discussion group on Friend Feed, but the project is often met with confusion, with participants trying to understand what is happening, and what role they will play. For insight as to what people think of Purefold, I’ve been asking around.

A few entertainment insiders were willing to go on the record to share what they think of the project and here is what they had to say: Jenifer Hanen, a blogger from Los Angeles, was wary of the idea of brand’s sponsoring content based on projects she has seen fail, but likes the DIY media side of the project and the idea to have the plot line driven by the audience. Listen to a conversation I had with Jen about Purefold here.

Film Production Designer Tema L. Staig, who is based in Los Angeles, first reacted to the idea of Purefold saying “The project sounds almost like virtual mad libs for content and advertising.” She also had this to say: "Universally, people have always needed to create visual and/or verbal stories and have a cathartic experience through those stories, either through the telling or the viewing. This is what makes us human. This is what connects us across the globe. Historically, unrelated cultures share similar myths and stories, suggesting that we all have a desire to explain the natural, unnatural, and supernatural. It’s our most primal of needs.

It will be interesting to see how Ag8 takes story telling to humanity’s next level. The idea of us, the greater audience being involved directly in the story is compelling in that it creates (in theory) even more empathy for the characters – those characters are a part of us. It’s our baby, even if just a little bit. How will it effect society? Will it bring us together around a global campfire? What new brainstorms might it spark? The possibilities are endless."

Here in London, I asked Mervyn Lyn, who is Vice President of Strategic Partnerships for Sony Music and often gets involved with branded content for the entertainment company, what he thinks of Purefold. At first reaction, he said it reminds him of MTV’s Dubplate Drama that turned to the audience to drive the story line, a show he enjoyed because it made the viewers feel part of the show. As for letting brand’s sponsor the content, he was cautionary about the idea because so often people are suspicious when a company attempts to sell them something through a new medium. “It depends how it is done and if it is trying to lean on branded content then they will have to strike a balance between the brand and the content so that each side doesn’t feel they are losing out,” he said.

They need to be very careful in making it driven by advertising because people see this as being railroaded and people will be cynically asking ‘what are they trying to sell me?’” The approach Purefold is using will be ground breaking in entertainment, according to producers, and it will be distributed according to the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license, giving both audiences, brands and platforms equal use rights through their participation.

According to Ag8’s Tom Himpe, Purefold will be broadcast across a variety of media platforms and spread virally across the Internet. “Most brands are aware of the fact that social media has changed the dynamics of the conversation, and they can't just spell out their message in the same way as with one-way advertising methods,” he said. “We are giving brands the opportunity to create stories over an extended period of time, in collaboration with their audiences and relying on top industry talent in both writing and directing. That's quite a unique package, especially in view of the fact that they can use the audiovisual assets freely across all their platforms and channels, from retail to mobile, from cinema to television.”

For now Ag8 is not revealing who the brand sponsors will be, but based on Friend Feed discussions the writers are already compiling what the story line will be, all set in the near future. The question many have is how brands will fit into the discussion, and for that, Himpe had this to say:

“There are two ways in which we are "guiding" the conversation. First of all, the brand is setting up the framework of the conversation, by defining one or multiple brand propositions they want to explore and picking a story line through which they want to explore that proposition. This sets up the framework within which we harvest online conversations.

So we're not just harvesting random conversations across the entire web, we set out specific parameters with the participating brands. Secondly, while we're listening to what the audience wants to see within the episodes, the ultimate creative control still resides with our editorial team and the Free Scott Directors, who are making creative sense of the audience's input. So there is another level of control there. However, it's very important for brands to understand that Purefold is about creating top quality entertainment, and not about extended the length of their tv commercials.

There's a different balance here, and sure, that's something they might have to get used to.”

Still confused, but ready to watch Purefold unfold,

-Lisa

Mixed bag of advertising that fails to build relationships

692072 — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:02:00 GMT

After last week’s incredulous blog post about eBay leaping onto Patrick Swayze’s demise, and the general state of advertising (Go Compare anyone?), I’ve actually been paying a little more attention just in case there’s anything good in between the main events.

Barclays seems to have caught a great advertising team – two ads for two different products were clever and eye-catching. I liked the latest ads for some car marque, which seemed to offer three different cars depending on your budget but I can’t remember which brand; likewise the “chasing her metaphors” piggy bank ad again, amusing ad but can’t recall the brand. I loved the army ad detailing a strike on an insurgent gun, but on reflection felt underwhelmed when this turned out to be the chap’s career highlight (the army chap, not the insurgent chap). I really liked the Cadbury’s Fair Trade ad. Actually, it was a mixed bag. I’m very glad I can avoid it all with a PVR’s ffwd button.

None of it however has been designed to develop a relationship. Even the Cadbury’s one, which presumably is part of a series designed to give me a rounded sense of the brand new brand onion, felt stuck on – unrelated to the Gorilla or those other ones that didn’t work. I’d love to see advertising that deliberately led off-screen, not just to the shop but to a place where a relationship can flower.

I can’t remember the last time an ad told me to visit the website in a clear, beneficial way. Oh, apart from all those second-string insurance aggregator sites of course, which do so so risibly it’s more a distraction than marketing (“let’s grab the consumer’s attention, at any cost” we imagine the account guy saying, shortsightedly – smacking of desperation on the part of both client and agency). I’d love to work with an ad agency that had the confidence to work with a digital specialist to create a genuine journey. Meerkats and Army aside, they just don’t cross-refer – and the beauty of the modern customer journey is that it can and should be fluid, media savvy and engaging, not ephemeral, boorish and – in some cases thankfully – entirely negligent of brand recall.

Bad viral is good viral

2116546 — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 09:48:00 GMT

So there's a new set of groundbreaking Microsoft viral clips/ads out for Windows 7; I say that with sarcasm behind it but I think I'm wrong to slag them off. Here (1, 2, 3) are a few of them

Apple's competitor has become known for pretty dodgy advertising of late (well perhaps it's not just a recent thing) with the laptop hunter ads and ripping off Apple's "I'm a PC" concept - why even mention/reference a company that is by far the number two in operating system market share, come up with your own campaign, but I digress.

We were in awe of the crapness on display with these 'Windows 7 Launch Party' videos, but I think we've been sucked in; damnit. They're meant to be crap, they're meant to make Apple fans go "peh, so not cool" and then pass it around. Why would they care, Microsoft will never be as 'cool' as Apple. All Microsoft want is for people to know Windows 7 is coming out and it's not called Vista.

I think I might have opened a bigger can of worms than I meant to, and there's more to be said about 'crap' work becoming viral - and it being so on purpose.

Older people passing on viruses

2116546 — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 11:37:00 GMT

I was sat in a meeting this morning talking about a Christmas concept we're working on. A lovely chap from the agency we're working with pulled out his iPhone and showed us an email he'd just got from his brother 'Look at this it's a cracker' was the subject line. I'm not going to tell you what the picture attachment was as I'm sure you can work it out for yourself.

This slightly boring story is a random link to talking about how different demographics interact with 'viral'. My Dad still sends me PPT files with a few funny pictures in and I usually respond in a Kevin The Teenager way of "oh gaaawd Daaad, I saw that yeeaaars agoo, pah". At Ralph we work predominantly in entertainment aimed at the youth market who are seemingly up for interacting with brands more than my parent's generation. Or is this bollocks? Is it just that the entertainment is different, perhaps a Hale and Pace sketch from the 80s on YouTube is the best way of reaching my Mum and Dad?

P.S. Ben, if you read this, I'm not saying you're old by receiving the cracker email!

Win £500

2116546 — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:12:00 GMT

~~Confused.com's~~ Moneysupermarket.com's latest's viral campaign is a sure-fire way to win £500 by the looks of it, at the moment you have a 1 in 10 chance of winning (probably more like 1 in 2 as most of those videos don't look like the creators are legally allowed to win).

I always think it's pretty ballsy to put views as publicly available when you're running an online promo and especially a UGC (User Generated Crud) one such as this. Prove me wrong, upload loads of videos of you being stupid (those that are obviously filmed in an agency office don't count) and then add to their views by watching all of the videos. Everyone loves watching videos of people being slightly wacky to try and win a bit of cash don't they? Bollocks they do, same as people hate the gits on the Confused.com TV Ad (hatred = viral). If they had been asked to do something truly horrendous then maybe it would work (pain = viral), but based on what's there at the moment it's like the cutting room floor of You've Been Framed or YBF as I believe it's now called.

A YouTube commenter has potentially got it nailed with "VIRAL MARKETING... FAIL!".

Advertainment

2116546 — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:09:00 GMT

I didn't make up that term, promise. It's something I've been thinking about recently though and ties into what Louise has written about here.

Digital has driven advertising to become much more about entertaining people than straight sales messages; and as I've said a few times, this has driven the term v***l to be something that all markeeters strive for. To be an advert online you need to: entertain, engage, enable, educate, economize . Holy crap that's tricky, more tricky than a lot of people give it credit for (don't get me started on budgets) and kudos to all out there that do it well, there are plenty of digital agencies out there only happy doing one of those things, usually entertainment, and forgetting about all the others. No wonder traditional ad land has a tendency to hate us digital types and refer to us as 'below the line'.

Shouldn't some brands just stick to advertising instead of advertainment, we've got a lot of shite entertainment on our media as it is; oh and are we still referred to as 'below the line' or was the guy I punched in the face for saying that to me the last one?