A day in the life of Harvey & Gilmot

Entries from September 2009

Vodafone and customer service. They go together like chewing gum and hair.

September 30, 2009 · 4 Comments

I took my iPhone into the Vodafone store this morning. I’ve had it for three months, and it’s taken to freezing, and staying frozen for a couple of hours at a stretch. It’s done it twice in the last two days. So I figured that having it looked at would be wise.  Hence my visit to the Vodafone store from which I bought the phone (and paid for the extra warranty/insurance offer).

I explained the problem.

The person behind the counter asked if I’d been making sure the software was up-to-date.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say he posed the question in an accusatory fashion, but I did recognise the very specific tone that my wife adopts when I suggest that something’s not where I left it.

I explained that when a software update was indicated it was installed.

He suggested that the best plan would be for him to send the phone away to be looked at and that this would take about three/four days.

I asked what I should do for a phone in the meantime.

He asked me whether I had a spare one.

I explained that given I had bought the phone specifically so that I could access my email so would need a replacement phone that would allow me to access email.

He told me that wasn’t possible because they only had phone phones.

I suggested that this was exactly what a warranty was for – so that if what I had bought stopped working, I would be given something else that did the same job.

He told me that wasn’t possible because they only had phone phones.

I suggested that this didn’t quite meet the definition of a warranty.

He didn’t look very happy. He went away. Then he came back. He still didn’t look very happy.  He offered to lend me a Blackberry, but explained that this wouldn’t actually work because it would need to be completely reconfigured so I probably wouldn’t be able to get email anyway.

I explained this didn’t really help me very much.

He told me that if I had a car that was under warranty and stopped working I would be given another car but that it wouldn’t be exactly the same (in brackets ‘you’re being completely unreasonable and I’m not sure what you expect me to do’).  He looked quite pleased with himself.

I pointed out that if I had a car that stopped working and was given another car, I would at least have something that served the same purpose – I would still have a car in which I could get where I needed to go.  But if I had a device that’s core purpose was to allow me to get email and he replaced with a device that didn’t allow me to get email, the parallel didn’t really stack up.  If I had a car that stopped working and it was replaced with a chair then the parallel would be more accurate – it would approximate one function of the car, but not the one that mattered.

He looked a bit confused. Then he looked a bit annoyed. Then he explained that a three or four day turnaround was actually very good. Apparently it would probably take ten days if I had a Nokia that wasn’t working.

I looked a bit bemused because I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to make of this.  You’re not able to solve my problem, but at least I’m better off than if I’d bought an different product from you that would have meant I’d spend longer not having my problem solved?

He suggested it would be quicker if I took the phone to the repairer myself.  In convenient Mt Wellington.  Which by the time I take it there, wait for it to be diagnosed, possibly fixed, and then venture back probably means a three-hour trip.

His manager arrived to reinforce that I was lucky to be an Apple owner because it would be a lot worse if I had a Nokia, that the best plan would be for me to take it to get it fixed myself, and that it would be too difficult to have replacement phones sitting around in case something went wrong with one owned (and under warranty) by a Vodafone customer.

Realising that continuing the discussion would get me nowhere I went back to the office. At which point I found that my phone had no SIM card in it because the Vodafone person had removed it and, obviously, not put it back.

Back to the Vodafone store I went to collect my SIM. (To be fair, at least the guy was apologetic.)

So after my experience I still have a phone that doesn’t work reliably. I face the prospect of a three-hour trip to Mt Wellington to get it fixed. And I have an overwhelming desire to discourage everyone I know from dealing with Vodafone.

And at a basic level I have the same frustration that customers have had forever.  The start point for Vodafone seemed to be that they were right.  That it was very likely my fault that the product wasn’t working. That the fact that they were prepared to fix the phone was enough. And that I wasn’t listening and appreciating the reasonableness of their position.

The issue is nothing more complicated than expecting to feel that Vodafone wanted to understand my problem.  It’s not the old cliché of the customer always being right.  But it’s a new cliché of the customer at least always being the focus.

Which unfortunately must be the trap that so many businesses fall into when they grow.  They start out being customer-centric. And in the case of Vodafone they start out not being Telecom.  But as they grow they inevitably become more about themselves, and their processes, and their rules and their restrictions and their view of the world.  Which is what they wanted to talk about.

So even though I was the customer and the one with the problem, it just wasn’t a conversation about me.  It was a conversation about Vodafone.

Categories: Diversion · Marketing
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It’s not technology that’s killing advertising

September 30, 2009 · 1 Comment

An article in MediaDailyNews highlights that the more popular the TV show the more likely TiVo users are to timeshift the show and to fast-forward through the ads.

To me this reinforces a couple of grim realities for our approach to advertising and media planning.

The first is that people don’t generally like being interrupted. But they particularly don’t like being interrupted while doing something they enjoy. The second is that an opportunity to see is not the same as active involvement.

The simple, and quite reasonable, conclusion to draw from this MediaDailyNews article is that it’s another example of how changing technology is the cause of many of our industry’s struggles. Technology has evolved that allows people to watch TV differently. They can record shows to watch when it suits them, in a way that suits them – as an event, relaxed and uninterrupted. And this same technology allows them to choose to avoid ads entirely. They can put their focus where they wanted it all along – on the TV show.

But our mistake is in looking at the technology as the issue. In fact we’re guilty of doing this with technology in general – technology fuels media fragmentation, technology facilitates the social networks that lure people away from ‘traditional’ media, technology (in the form of the internet) has changed the way people relate to brands, and the expectations they have of brands, to the point where advertising struggles to achieve what it used to.

But the mistake is to blame the technology, to take the easy out that ‘technology is killing advertising’. To blame TiVo, Facebook and YouTube. Because they’re not to blame. What’s killing advertising is years of crap advertising.

We used to be able to put whatever we wanted in front of people. (Or, to be fair, whatever clients wanted to put in front of people). But those people didn’t have a mechanism for avoiding the advertising that wasn’t interesting/useful. At best it just washed over them, at worst it disrespected their intelligence and verged on offensive. But our big mistake was in how we chose to measure the effectiveness of what we did.

We basically measured reach, or opportunities to see, and we tried to establish a cause and effect relationship between advertising and brand health measures. But by and large we measured exposure to advertising, not engagement with advertising. Marketers were able to simply expose what they thought should be interesting to people, instead of engaging people with what was actually interesting to them. And because we chose not to measure this, we could choose to ignore it. So we, or our clients, could put aside the fact that most of what we produced was actually alienating our audience and sowing the seeds for the problem we now encounter.

Which meant that at the point at which people were presented with a means of avoiding advertising they took to it with relish. Not because of the technology, but because their expectation of the utility of advertising was so low. It wasn’t generally interesting so it was generally avoided. And at the same time, a lot of the advertising that was useful previously (of the special-offer/buy-it-here/limited-time variety) migrated online where it became much more user-friendly, comparable and useful.

What really depresses me about this is that we don’t seem to have learnt a lesson. We have in ‘digital’ an amazing new medium and an opportunity to do things better. Wonderful opportunities to create engagement, meaningful and long-term, with people, but it seems like we’re re-creating exactly the same pattern. We’ve reverted to CPM as our primary measure of effectiveness. We measure impressions, the number of times an ad is presented, not the number of times it creates meaningful brand engagement. (I realise there are also plenty of other measures but it’s the one that I most often hear discussed with clients.)

The problem is it’s such an easy, and therefore tempting, out for Marketers. Set a goal that’s based on a deliverable that’s distinct from quality, make it easily quantifiable and report success.  And perpetuate the theory that you can’t really measure the success of ‘marketing’ because it’s too multi-dimensional.

And when the dreaded, easily-disparaged Financial Controller asks for some proof of ROI present a summary that establishes that lots of people had the opportunity to see the ads you produced, that some of them clicked on those ads, and that a brand health measure moved at some point immediately following a burst of advertising activity.

But it’s measurement and ROI that are right to the heart of the challenge we face as an industry. There are three things we can all agree on:

  1. We all believe that the general quality of advertising could be so much better
  2. We all believe that if it were better it would be that much more effective
  3. We all believe that agencies should be more reasonably paid for what they do

And all of these issues are tied up together.  The basic problem is that we don’t have a means of determining value – of proving that good work is more effective and delivers huge value that we should be rewarded for.

But we’re not really working on how we measure it. We know it’s difficult and that there’s not an easy answer.  But in the meantime we’re measuring the wrong things and watching as things get worse.  As long as we let ‘exposure’ remain the primary measure of effectiveness we will see our industry get further commoditised while the quality of work continues to fall.

The most pressing issue for the industry isn’t TVNZ and its commission reduction. Nor is it what we’ll do now that D&AD and One Show have banned scam.  And it’s not whether new technologies are killing advertising. The most pressing issue is the need for a robust measurement system that proves that good advertising is exponentially more valuable than bad advertising and that places ‘engagement’ at the centre of the effectiveness discussion.

If I were CAANZ I’d go to every similar advertising federation the world over. I’d ask them to levy every agency they represent. I’d raise enough money to engage McKinsey and have it build that measurement model.  And once McKinsey has proven that engagement is the only measure that reliably predicts brand success and that great advertising is the only tool that can reliably deliver that engagement, we might have a chance of seeing good work embraced and agencies well-rewarded. Because that’s a language that clients can understand from a source they trust.

If we do we might find that we get to produce more of the kind of work we know works best. We might find that every marketing organisation becomes more successful because of it. We might find that we get paid more for conceiving and producing that work because its value is clear for all to see. 

And we might ultimately find that we create an industry that never again needs to grapple with how to stop people avoiding what we produce. Because they won’t want to.

Categories: Advertising · Marketing · Media
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The Best of Auckland?

September 30, 2009 · 1 Comment

I realise it’s easy to be critical. And I realise I have a tendency to adopt a sarcastic tone that doesn’t reflect well on me. But I couldn’t let this pass.

I was just in collecting an alteration from the fine people at Meg’s when I spotted this on the desk.

Best of Auckland

I admire Metro and Green & Black’s for running a competition that celebrates the best that Auckland has to offer.

But I do think that when organising an Auckland-centric event, it’s important to actually be able to spell ‘Auckland’. And if you’re going to run an event that celebrates excellence, it’s important to be, sort of….excellent?

Categories: Diversion · Marketing
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Tommy and the Fallen Horses – Isolation is the New Party

September 28, 2009 · Leave a Comment

cover-289x300

This is a great album. And I get the sense probably a great story too.

It’s on iTunes or from the band’s website.  This really is a fantastic album. A bit country, a bit 70’s singer/songwriter, a bit tongue-in-cheek and a bit brilliant.

Do something good for music in this country and buy this today. He’s also playing the King’s Arms on October 23rd.  Go.

Categories: Music
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Another puzzling product

September 28, 2009 · 2 Comments

I had some friends visiting from Australia at the weekend. They rented a bach on Waiheke and were kind enough to invite us to join them.  On Saturday afternoon we came across this.

HSV Jigsaw

Now I would have thought that this was a product with a limited potential audience.  There are people who really like Holden utes. And there are people who really like jigsaws. But I would have thought that a Venn diagram illustrating the overlap between these two interests would show it to be very small indeed.

So I can think of only two plausible explanations.

Perhaps this is an early childhood brand indoctrination tool.  Kids love jigsaws, so what better way to introduce your child to the majesty of an overpowered, lime-green utility vehicle than through the medium of puzzle?  It’s really just a juvenile version of stubbie-holder.

The other possibility is that it’s part of an extraordinarily complex (not to mention, ambitious) marketing plan on behalf of Holden.  The bach we were staying in could best be described as ‘executive accommodation’. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb in imagining that the most common tenants are not Holden drivers. Mercedes, yes, BMW, very probably, Audi, almost certainly, but not Holden. So I’m wondering whether Holden have entered into some arrangement with providers of executive holiday accommodation to plant these utility-themed jigsaws as a covert way of getting Holden in front of an audience it would otherwise struggle to access?

I really hope this is the case and that at some point a guy comes home to his bemused wife driving an orange ‘ignition metallic’ Maloo R8 ute, having gone out in the morning driving a silver Mercedes E-class.  When asked why, he’ll be completely unable to explain how it happened.  But somewhere they’ll be a very smug looking Holden Brand Manager who knows it was all down a cunningly-placed jigsaw.

Categories: Diversion · Marketing
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I’m delighted to find there’s blogging kit

September 25, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Slide1

Courtesy of The New Yorker

Categories: Diversion
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Media is the context for creative

September 24, 2009 · Leave a Comment

I came across a lovely quote from Eliel Saarinen (apparently a famous Finnish architect) this morning. He was quoted by Russell Davies in an article about Rural Computing.

“Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context – a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.”

I really like this idea as a way of thinking about what we do.

I think context is interesting for us in two ways. Context should play a much more important role in how we understand consumer behaviour and the relationship people have with the things we advertise. And context should also play a much bigger role when we plan the how the work we produce is most effectively experienced.

I’ve never been able to articulate it very well, but I think everyone who works in the industry is conscious of the artificial, at-least-one-step-removed nature of what we do and how we do it. We often talk with a degree of self-awareness about the artificial nature of advertising agencies, and we know that as a sub-species we advertising people are very different (rather privileged, certainly sheltered) from the world-at-large, the audience for whom we are working.

We also often note that how we learn about the things we advertise is a bit contrived, as opposed to the way that ‘real’ people relate to them. We might use a new soap, eat a new bread or drive a new car with the genuine intention of learning about it so that we can better promote it, but by necessity we do it in a slightly artificial way, actively learning about it, rather than passively experiencing it. (I don’t say this as a criticism, because by definition our experience is different.)

I think we also see the same with research, where we conduct focus groups with the genuine goal of learning more about people, but in a very artificial way. We most often put people in a sterile, neutral environment and ask them to talk and explain, rather than observing ‘real’ behaviour in its genuine context. It’s like animals in zoos, or golfers in driving ranges – it approximates reality, but it just can never be the same and is therefore not as illuminating.

I think this is a real limitation because nothing is experienced devoid of context – the room makes a big difference to the chair, just as the road makes a big difference to the car.

Then there’s the context that media delivers to an execution that I think we need to place much more focus on. (I’ve written about this before.) And I really like the analogy with a room in a house as a way of thinking about it.

You can design a room in isolation. You can have a very specific brief for a living area – natural light, hardy surfaces for kids to crash into, muted colours for relaxation, ample wall space to display art etc. And you can do a great job of meeting this brief without giving any thought to the remainder of the house. But at some point you have to open the door and let the room function as part of a greater whole. And while the room might still function really well, it may be that when the rest of the house is considered you find it could be improved slightly to work more cohesively with the whole – more aesthetically consistent, easier flow from room to room. It might only be 10% better, but that will still be 10% improvement based on thinking about the room in its bigger context.

And that’s exactly what I think we miss when we separate creative and media thinking. We’re effectively designing rooms and then looking for houses to put them in.

This certainly doesn’t mean we get bad ads. We just get ads that potentially aren’t 10% more effective. Which when you’re dealing with the fine line that separates OK from truly effective, is actually a big margin and a huge sacrifice.

Categories: Advertising · Marketing · Media · Uncategorized
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We all have a reason to renovate. Just not quite as bizarre as this one.

September 21, 2009 · 1 Comment

I heard probably the most ‘Auckland’ thing ever this afternoon.

A friend was talking about doing some renovations on her house. These included painting the roof. She was asked what prompted the decision to do this and she explained that the roof was metal and hadn’t been painted when it was first installed. We asked whether there was a problem with the roof being untreated? Did it mean the roof wouldn’t last as long, or was prone to weather-damage?

Apparently neither of these are problems. Her decision to paint the roof was inspired by Google Earth. Apparently if you look at her house on Google Earth the roof is much brighter and shinier than any other in the neighbourhood and not particularly attractive.

You know you live in Auckland, and very probably work in advertising, when you have friends who decide to paint their roof on the basis that it doesn’t reflect well on them when their house is viewed via an online satellite surveillance system.

Categories: Diversion
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Incredibox

September 19, 2009 · Leave a Comment

incredibox

I’m entirely unsure what Incredibox is for but it’s brilliant. Essentially you make your own music from the components presented.  It’s completely addictive, and the illustrations are a bonus. A really simple, hugely satisfying experience.

Categories: Diversion · Music
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Unilever goes creative crowdsourcing

September 18, 2009 · Leave a Comment

I’m not sure I’ve ever read a more depressing advertising story. I want to be outraged, but the problem is that it’s just so overwhelmingly logical from Unilever’s perspective.

Unilever has announced that it will use IdeaBounty to generate its next campaign for Peperami. It’s fired its agency, Lowe London, because according to Matt Burgess, managing director of the Unilever division that owns Peperami, “Lowe has done great work on the account over the years. They’ve created a strong creative vehicle that’s extremely well-defined and very portable. But their great work has created a problem for them, because it makes Peperami the obvious candidate for crowdsourcing.”

The agency’s done such a good job, they’re not needed any more. I want to be outraged, but they’re so obviously right.

Because we do exactly the same thing ourselves. How many times has an agency used a senior team to crack a ‘big’ idea, produce the first couple of executions that establish the framework, then handed it on to juniors to roll out? We do it all the time, and we do it proudly. It’s responsible business and efficient use of resource. And so, unfortunately, it is for Unilever.

There’s more.

“We want to get the creative back from ‘good’ to ‘outstanding’ again. The best way to increase our chances was to increase the amount of creatives exposed to this brief. This is the overriding driver.”

Again, I want to be outraged. The problem is that there aren’t enough creatives exposed to the brief? Surely only a client could think quantity more important than quality when applying creative minds. But, once again, we do it ourselves. How many times have we stood before a client in a pitch, or even just a significant presentation, and told them that this is such an important/interesting/last-ditch project that we’ve put ‘all the agency’s resources to work on it’? We say it all the time, believe it to be true, and so teach clients that more is merrier.

But we cling to the belief that it doesn’t happen in other ‘professional’ industries. We like to point out that it wouldn’t happen with doctors. You might get a second opinion, maybe, but the key to arriving at a diagnosis isn’t just throwing more doctors at the problem. Which surely proves that the focused eye of experienced experts is much more valuable than just randomly having more people look at it (whether it be a medical or an advertising problem)?

But it’s a different issue, because when diagnosing an illness you want the right answer, of which there is only one (and, importantly, one that can be proven to be right). But when you’re developing a creative idea you want the most interesting answer, of which there will almost certainly be many (none of which can be proven to be right). So the parallel is flawed.

But the real issue is time and cost. The reason you wouldn’t get a dozen doctors to diagnose the cause of your sore throat and shortness of breath is that it would take too long and cost too much. You’re in some discomfort, you want someone to tell you why and give you something to make it stop. So you go to a doctor you trust, pay them for their expertise and do what they tell you because it’s reasonably immediate and reasonably affordable.

But if it were practical to get twelve doctors in one room, all listening to you describe your symptoms, all being presented with your vitals and then all giving a diagnosis, well that would work. You’d get access to a broad range of experience, a good chance of someone having dealt with your issue before and possibly even the confidence of seeing that the majority of doctors are all of a similar mind. And getting that diagnosis wouldn’t take any longer than visiting your regular GP. Getting treatment started wouldn’t take any longer either. And if as a bonus you only had to pay a fraction of what you currently pay your GP, then that’s a win/win/win.

And they’re the two barriers that crowdsourcing services remove – time and cost. You’ve got the same timeframe, reduced cost and more ideas. How could a Unilever not see this is a good thing?

We also throw up the argument that to develop great work you need people who are intimately familiar with the brand, and to whom the brand’s language is second-nature. This closeness, we argue, is what enables these people to deliver consistently outstanding work. But then in a completely contradictory stance we argue that the essence of any great brand should be able to be distilled to one word, any great idea captured in a simple statement and any decent brief distilled to a single-page. Which really means that any strong creative mind should be able to develop good work for such a brand. So again, you can see the client’s logic for a crowdsourced solution. They’ve defined the brand, established the campaign idea and have a clear brief for the execution. You don’t need familiarity with the brand, which means you don’t need an ongoing relationship with a good agency.

I also don’t believe we can claim any great surprise. Clients have been building towards this for a long time. I’ve been in the industry 20 years and most marketing departments have been crowdsourcing for at least that long.

Because for most clients, crowdsourcing is what focus groups are for. Put eight people in a room, give them a half-baked new product idea and ask them to redesign it. Then slavishly do whatever they suggest because it’s ‘what consumers want’. Change the format, the flavour or the font. Ask them what the packaging should look like, what cause the brand should support and who should be cast in the ads. Ignore the opinions of the experienced professionals and take guidance sourced from the interested amateurs. That’s crowdsourcing.

And unfortunately, this may give us the strongest clue as to how this will evolve. I’d suggest that just like the research industry, we have two choices available to us. We either become ‘coordinators’ or ‘sages’.

The ‘coordinators’ will basically be agency structures that provide a framework for producing stuff. Help establish the task, source a few ideas, get told what to produce and get on with it, much like the research companies that do little more than book the room, make sure the sausage rolls are warm, put the consideration in the envelopes, summarise the verbatims, bind the document and find the amusing clip art for the powerpoint presentation.

The ‘sages’ will be the agencies (or individuals) that help clients make sense of complexity and deliver ideas that generate great leaps forward. These agencies will be at the heart of defining the problem, identifying the opportunity and create the work that changes fortunes, much like the researchers who help clients makes sense of the world, delivering clarity, insight and actionable opportunity.

And of course the ‘sages’ will have value and get paid adequately. While the ‘coordinators’ will be commoditised and have to fight for every dollar.

Which unfortunately, once again must make perfect sense in the Unilever world. As a client, why wouldn’t I choose between these two options as the situation warrants? I want to be angry and rail against the injustice, just as I want to be able to mount an argument that suggests the whole argument for creative crowdsourcing is flawed. But I just don’t think that from a client perspective it is.

I don’t believe that crowdsourcing is likely to deliver a great, fortune-changing idea for a brand. I do believe that working closely with a collection of smart people (possibly within an agency) might.  Because that’s been my experience.  But I just can’t find a way to explain to a company like Unilever why that’s the case.

Categories: Advertising · Marketing · Research
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