Marketing Mash-Ups

July 31, 2009 Leave a Comment

Two interesting ideas I’ve come across this week, both demonstrating that interesting outcomes result when unexpected things are put together.

This project takes IKEA products and looks at them not as finished products, but as raw materials. A bunch of people then set to work creating new objects by combining elements intended for different products to create something entirely new.

Stumble Safely resulted from a newly-relaxed US Government policy regarding data protection.  Using public domain data detailing crime stats, liquor licenses, public transport, construction areas, railway lines etc, this site allows you to plot the safest route to take home after a night’s drinking. (It seems a remarkably meticulous way to approach a night’s debauchery, but maybe that’s how they roll in Washington.)

Anyway, what I love about it is that it combines loosely-related ideas to create something entirely new.  Which again, is how I think we need to approach media. It’s similar to the Fresh vs Packaged media idea I was talking about the other day.  If we see the point of media being to place a brand idea at the point at which that brand is most relevant to a person, shouldn’t that, almost by definition, create something new?

I wonder whether the issue is that we tend to look at media as a two-part puzzle? That is, how to put this brand together with that consumer in the simplest possible (read cheapest and existing) way, a process that will most commonly end up with the media answer that’s most common.

Maybe what we need to do is make the process more complex in order to make it more compelling. If instead of just trying to put a brand together with a consumer, we tried to put a brand plus at least one other idea that’s relevant to that person (but traditionally unrelated to the brand) together we might get something more interesting, more memorable, and ultimately more useful and valuable to that person. Or we might not. But at least it would be worth trying.

(And if you enjoy your mash-ups of a more musical nature, this has been around for a few months but is still great – Jaydiohead – Jay-Z meets Radiohead.)

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Country was Hip Hop when the Beasties were just Boys

July 31, 2009 1 Comment

My two favourite musical genres are Country and Hip Hop.  I’ve always maintained that this makes perfect sense. They’re actually enormously similar. As I prefer them, they both tend to be lyrically driven, storytelling genres. They have been the music of choice for people struggling for a voice.  And as a result they’ve given us the best ‘protest’ songs (as well, unfortunately, as some painfully well-known novelty acts, which might just undermine my point a little).

Anyway, someone asked me the other day what my favourite albums are.  I go for De La Soul’s, Three Feet High and Rising at number one, followed by John Prine’s eponymous album at number two.  Both were debut albums and both were probably best known for songs that dealt with drug addiction. John Prine produced his in 1969, while De La Soul produced theirs in 1989, so while both touched on it in the language of their time, both also did it in such a way that the language was pretty timeless.

John Prine’s, Sam Stone tells the story of a Vietnam Vet who returns to his family with a morphine addiction, his battle captured perfectly in the line ‘there’s a hole in Daddy’s arm, where all the money goes. Jesus Christ died for nothing, I suppose’.

De La Soul’s, Say No Go describes a drug-addicted mother giving birth to a baby that’s ‘brought into a world of pits, and if it could’ve talked that soon in the delivery room, it would’ve asked the nurse for a hit’.

Both were dealing with a subject (or at least using an example) that certainly wasn’t being tackled in mainstream music.  Bob Dylan famously never wrote a song about Vietnam and De La Soul certainly ran counter to the prevailing glorification of drug taking. Same subject, different voice but an enormous amount in common.

Nathan Rabin does an infinitely better job of exploring this than me.  He’s a hip-hop writer for A.V Club who decided to spend a year listening to nothing but country music. He’s written a great series of articles that are here.

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Peter Spencer

July 29, 2009 Leave a Comment

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Peter Spencer died this morning. He suffered a heart attack on Monday.  It’s a spectacular understatement to say that he’ll be missed.

I first met Peter at a time when the role of Assistant Account Executive still existed. I was a newly-minted one, fresh from University, positively drenched behind the ears.  I had joined O&M in Wellington, while Peter was the National MD.

I’d been there about a week when Peter came to town. He was set-up in a meeting room, and I was taken in to meet him. He had his diary sitting in front of him. It was about the size of a One Show annual and covered in a burgundy velvet.  His name was embossed on the front. In gold.  At that point his mobile phone rang. He answered it with a confident ‘Spencer’.  I decided then and there that Peter was one of the coolest men in the world.  He was what I wanted to be when I grew up.

Some years later he’d moved into recruitment and I had moved into a job I wasn’t enjoying. I rang Peter to ask if he knew of anything going. He asked me to come and see him.  He indulged me as I outlined my grievances with my current role.  He took a sip of water and said, in his wonderfully measured way, ‘It’s always better to make something of the job you’ve got than to hope a new one will be different’. Self-interest entirely ignored, he spent the next half hour highlighting the merits of my current role, what I needed to do to make more of it, and, most importantly, the need for me to understand my obligations to an employer who had shown faith in me. I left chastened, wiser and determined to do better.

Another few years on and I had asked for Peter’s help in recruiting for a role. It was a big role, and the first big appointment I would make as MD of an agency.  Peter called me about a candidate. He was very positive about her, even though her experience wasn’t quite what we’d discussed. Not quite the right clients, not quite the right categories and, as I highlighted in a ridiculously pretentious fashion, not quite the right pedigree of agencies.  “Philip’, he said, ‘it’s good to remember that where someone’s come from isn’t necessarily the best indication of what they’re capable of”.  And he was right. I employed her and she was terrific, in exactly the ways he had predicted she would be.

I saw Peter a few weeks ago. He told me of his excitement that Michele was returning home from a holiday the next day.  He told me of his recent trip to Europe to see his boys. He told me of his life on the farm, in particular the unique pleasure to be derived from quality time spent on a ride-on lawnmower.

He is still what I want to be when I grow up.

Peter’s funeral will be held on Monday August 3rd, 11am, St Mary’s Church, Parnell.

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It’s less about the last three feet. It’s more about cold feet.

July 29, 2009 Leave a Comment

I’m certainly not the first person to suggest that we’re seeing a significant change in the way people buy.  I’ve no empirical evidence to offer whatsoever, but all logic suggests that a greater proportion of people will walk out of a shop empty handed today than would have been the case 12 months ago.

To grossly generalise, people have, if not a disinclination, at least a nervousness, around spending. But as a society we’ve made shopping a big part of our lives – it’s unchallenged as our leisure activity of choice.  So we’ve got people who are doing more and more research, increasingly online (and Search Marketing is doing a great job of helping brands in this space).  Then we’ve got people who are still doing lots of ‘leisure-shopping’, which is why you don’t see fewer people in Newmarket on a Saturday morning, just fewer bags.  So how do we help clients send people out of their stores with more bags?

Over the last few years the in-store driver has been brand choice – how to get someone to choose adidas over Nike – and so POS/ collateral etc was the appropriate focus. This idea was captured rather nicely in the phrase ‘the battle for the last three feet’, the idea of brands jostling for position, all flying elbows and raked shins, clamouring for attention on the retail floor.

But I’m thinking that the focus is becoming more fundamentally about driving purchase. Any kind of purchase. It’s not a decision between this brand or that brand.  It’s a decision between spend or don’t spend.

So if I were a retailer I think I’d be talking to partners about taking the money they’re investing in POS etc and investing it in training for staff, or simply getting better staff. Smarter, more experienced, and, ultimately, more persuasive.

In a market in which people are starting to err on the side of not buying it becomes a confidence game – do I have confidence that my money is being well spent? And while this shift doesn’t diminish the vital role played by a strong, trusted brand, it does increase the importance of a compelling, confidence-building in-store experience.   So it becomes less about the winning the battle in the last three feet, and more about preventing a customer from getting cold feet.  And that’s what a good salesperson does.

(I think this shift also has significant implications for the kind of advertising we produce, driving a requirement for our work to move (some might say return) more to an informed persuasion role, rather than an awareness or memorability goal. But that’s the subject for another post.)

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Mad Men Yourself

July 28, 2009 Leave a Comment

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I don’t mind admitting I enjoy Mad Men – it’s got suits, advertising and tumblers of hard liquor, and these are a few of my favourite things.

( I also don’t mind admitting that I kind of want to pretend that I don’t really love it because it’s just so predictable and cliched for an advertising person to love a show that’s ostensibly about advertising and everyone just assumes you really fancy yourself as some kind of latter-day Don Draper when actually I think Don Draper’s a twat. I like to imagine myself as a latter-day Roger Sterling. That guy rocks a DB.)

This Mad Men Yourself promo is great. You can create your own Mad Man avatar. And, rather tragically, use it as the wallpaper on your iPhone.

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Andy Murray is cool

July 28, 2009 Leave a Comment

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You have to love this story.

Andy Murray, world number three, Wimbledon semi-finalist, a man who so far this year has made US$2.5M from playing tennis, turned out last week for his county side, North Scotland.

Hearing that the team was struggling with injuries, and in danger of being relegated, he called the manager and offered his services.

That is cool.

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TEDx Auckland

July 27, 2009 Leave a Comment

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My friend Richard Hollingum is organising a TEDx event, taking place in Auckland in October.

TED is an annual event that gathers together a group of extraordinarily interesting, and deliberately diverse, speakers to talk, loosely, about the future.  I’ve never had the good fortune to attend, but have, like many people, watched any number of presentations on YouTube (or, conveniently, on a free iPhone app). It’s the conference to which all others aspire.

TEDx is a locally-organised event that combines video of TED presentations and live speakers.

The TEDx website explains it much better.  Attend if you can.

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What remote controls say about agencies

July 26, 2009 Leave a Comment

 

Samsung's 'pebble' remote

Samsung's 'pebble' remote

 

 

I came across this ‘pebble’ remote from Samsung the other day. It’s a lovely design piece, but it’s its utility that I really like.  It was introduced because most people find the standard remote that comes with pretty much every new TV (or any other piece of technology for that matter) much too complex.

When you first buy the technology it’s great. Right there in your hand is a showcase of the world of possibility contained within your purchase. So much personalisation possible, so many features to explore, so much that will maximise the quality of your experience. But it doesn’t take long for this world of possibility to become a distraction. It’s actually an impediment to enjoyment – it makes the process of watching TV that much more complex than you want it to be. So invariably you end up using about three functions – on/off, volume and channel. Beyond that, you rely on the fact that Samsung know what they’re doing and that the picture will be great. It’s a very rare occasion on which you feel the need to explore the world of complexity contained within that remote. Hence the pebble remote is immensely satisfying.  It does the basic things really well, doesn’t confuse and is nice to have around.

Which strikes me as being rather like the experience of dealing with an agency. In the pitch process we bring out the full remote – all the functions, the specialities, the proprietary tools, the algorithms, the experts with the minutely-specific tasks that sound almost as impressive as their deliciously-contrived titles suggest. And just as it’s the world of possibilities that often motivate people to buy TVs, so the world of possibilities will often help a client buy an agency.

But we need to understand when we need to deliver them the agency equivalent of the pebble remote – the core functions that get the job done in the most simple, effective and satisfying way.

I think as agencies we’re too inclined to want to cling to the complex remote. We want clients to admire our depth and our complexity, when what they want is the ease of a pebble remote that does the basic things really well, doesn’t confuse and is nice to have around. And if we’ve done our jobs properly, they can make this transition secure in the knowledge that all the rigour in the world sits behind it.

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I’m financially-bulimic

July 26, 2009 Leave a Comment

I’ve just moved back to Auckland. This has necessitated doing budgets with a view to buying a house. In a misguided moment I worked out how much money I’d been paid over the last ten years. Then I worked out what I had to show for it in the way of good old-fashioned assets. It was horrifying.  

This led me to self-diagnose myself as financially-bulimic.  There isn’t a noticeable shortage of money going in. But as soon as it does, it comes straight back out, purged, thrown-up. (And, just as I imagine with a conventional bulimic, a lot of it is thrown-up on clothes.)

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NBR subscription-only content

July 26, 2009 Leave a Comment

I saw Barry Colman interviewed on Media7 on Thursday night (an NBR-edited version of the interview is below). He was explaining the NBR’s decision to begin charging for ‘premium’ online content.

On the one hand, I admire him for adopting a subscription-model. Media businesses the world over have wrung-hands over this issue for years. They’re rightly frustrated that they invest enormously in journalists, infrastructure and (sometimes) brand-building, developing content (made credible by their hard-earned reputation) then helplessly sit back and watch the world-at-large freely access it. It’s a massive dilemma for the industry and where others have done nothing, you have to admire Barry for doing something – for putting his mouth where he thinks some money might be.

But the rationalisation, at least as he articulated it on Media7, is quite spectacularly flawed.

His argument is that the NBR will only ever charge for content that is the result of significant intellectual work on the part of its staff, and isn’t being covered by other media. “It’s stuff that no one else has got and that’s useful for business”, he specified. He suggested that the subscription strategy will “lift the whole quality of journalism” as he bemoaned the fact that “80% of news is provided by PR people”. But, he reassured us, “we’re pretty good at culling that spin doctor stuff”. Instead, NBR’s subscriber-only content will be for “a story our journalist got first or a story that no other paper is covering”.

Which is a pretty reasonable argument. But it’s not true.

Here’s a link to the NBR’s Ad/Media section. As at Thursday the first piece of subscriber-only content I encountered in the section was a press release announcing the launch of a new PR company. Again, the first piece of subscriber-only content I encountered in the section was a press release announcing the launch of a PR company. A piece of spin, sent by a spin doctor, announcing the arrival of a new team of spin doctors. That, surely, is the very definition of spin. The only way to get more spin would be to have Rafael Nadal deliver the press release while wearing a home-spun jumper.

That story didn’t involve any work on the part of NBR, the story is most certainly being covered by other media and, with all due respect to the PR company involved (and I know them to be lovely people, given I must disclose a connection to them) it’s not particularly useful information for the business community at large.

So while Barry’s rationale made sense, the experience of the subscription service is nonsense. And it lets down the two parties that matter most in this.

It lets down his journalists badly. Quite rightly he trumpets their hard work and intellectual rigour. Quite rightly he publicly values their contribution, to the point where he is prepared to put a price on it. Then he completely undermines that contribution by giving it equal standing with a press release. So either the NBR believes the two things are of the same value, or, more damningly, the NBR can’t tell the difference between a press release and a piece of genuine journalism.

But most fundamentally it lets down readers (and potential subscribers). Barry proudly proclaims that NBR readers are the ‘rich and powerful’, the ‘top of the tree’. (As a regular reader, I rather liked that.) He articulates why he believes that the work of the NBR’s journalists is worth paying for. Then he recycles a press release and wants to charge me for it.

All of which leaves me feeling that while Barry rather generously thinks I’m rich and powerful, he also clearly thinks I’m a bit stupid.

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