Ramblings on media, advertising, clothes and music.
January 19, 2010 Leave a Comment
I love this. It’s a piece from the If You Could Collaborate exhibition in the UK. Creative Review writes about it here.
It’s a lovely bit of type, beautifully crafted from wood by Craig Ward, Sean Freeman and Alison Carmichael.
And, at the risk of sounding both dreadfully melancholic and utterly self-absorbed, I can’t help agreeing with the sentiment.
January 13, 2010 1 Comment
This is what I saw as I was boarding a Jetstar flight last week. There’s the pilot, perched in the window ledge, cleaning his windscreen with a cloth.
I’ve shown this photo to a few people and it’s interesting what people see.
I see a pilot who doesn’t take himself too seriously, making sure that nothing gets in the way of a good (by which I mean, safe) flight.
My friend sees an example of a shoddily prepared plane and a pilot having to perform embarrassing DIY maintenance just to get it off the ground.
Why do we see it so differently? Very simply because we each see what we expect to see.
I like Jetstar. I’ve flown with them a few times and been impressed each time. So I see the relaxed, down-to-earth attitude I expect to see.
My friend had flown with them once before, in Jetstar’s first couple of days as a fledgling airline experiencing more than its fair share of teething problems. So she sees the slip-shod performance of a second-rate airline that she expects to see.
Which is all very obvious but it does remind me of the conversation I’ve had with clients many times.
As an advertiser, you never start with a clean slate. People always have a view of your brand. And they interpret whatever you do based on that existing view. Even if you’re a new brand people have a view of your category. And they interpret whatever you do based on their expectations of the category.
Which demonstrates what a difficult job being a Marketer really is.
Because those perspectives are so individual and people cling to them so tightly. No one likes to be wrong, so we look for what proves us right. Which makes it perfectly reasonable that a pilot cleaning a windscreen can be both a positive and negative reinforcement for the same brand.
And it also does a pretty good job of demonstrating how hard it is for marketers (and marketing) to change people’s perceptions.
January 12, 2010 2 Comments
I bought a new TV over the break.
I’d been thinking about it for ages but had caught myself in that trap of not being able to commit knowing that something thinner and more attractive would come along as soon as I did. And while I was certainly looking forward to owning a new TV, I wasn’t really looking forward to the process to be endured in order to get one. (Vaughn Davis wrote about his recent experience here, and I was expecting much the same.)
So I ventured into Noel Leeming in Newmarket with due sense of dread and trepidation. But what a pleasant experience it was. A smart, helpful, young man answered some questions, made some suggestions, sold some accessories and dispatched me with a lovely new TV. All in all, an enjoyable experience with an excellent outcome.
And then I opened the paper the following day and got hit by the barrage of advertising from Noel Leeming/Harvey Norman/Dick Smith et al. All of it was entirely focused on telling me what I already know. Because I know that they are all cheap. I know that they will all price match. And I know (or at least I believe) that they all sell much the same stuff from much the same brands.
Which got me wondering about why every one of those retailers is putting so much focus on the area of the market where there’s no meaningful differentiation to be found. There must have been $100k spent by the main players in the Saturday paper. All to say the same thing. In the same way.
Maybe I’m missing something obvious, but it does seem like one of those self-reinforcing arguments that marketers create. We believe that price is the primary driver (and I’m not for a moment suggesting it’s not very important) so we focus all our marketing on price. Then we ask people what matters to them, they say price, partly because it’s true but partly because it’s what all the marketing focuses on so it seems like it must be what matters. Which means we then focus all our marketing on price…..
But it’s ultimately undifferentiated. If they’re all about price, and they’re all about price, then aren’t they all just spending a lot of money to create a very expensive ground zero?
In contrast, the experience I had was quite differentiated. The guy who sold me my TV had a great manner (which I know you can’t teach) and excellent product knowledge and sales skills (which I know you can).
So why wouldn’t they take some of the money they spend on non-differentiating retail advertising and spend it on a lot more very-differentiating staff training? No all of it, obviously, but they could then spend some of what’s left on advertising that tells people about their focus on staff training, which would also be differentiating (bearing in mind that that advertising is likely be as effective as the retail advertising in keeping their store top-of-mind). And they could spend a decent chunk of it on Search.
So they’d still be in the ‘price’ game, but they’d be carving out a new service/experience game? Maybe?
I’m certainly not trotting out an argument for more ‘brand’ advertising here. That’s the last thing I believe is needed. And I’m not arguing for no retail advertising, as clearly it has a big role to play. It’s just that it can’t be the only thing that matters, and from the outside it looks like all the effort, and money, is going into a territory that’s ultimately a bit fruitless.
January 3, 2010 Leave a Comment
Sorry. I’ve been/am still away. I had high hopes of using this time for productive things like blogging and resolving, but instead I’ve used it for more enjoyable things like golfing and dawdling.
So in the absence of anything new to report, here are a few things I’ve stumbled across while away.
An excellent Economist article on the impact of technology on the newspaper industry.
A nice interview with Glenn O’Brien (GQ’s Style Guy) via A Continuous Lean. He’s a former columnist for Artforum and Details and an irritatingly broadly interesting guy (though I violently disagree with his views on the acceptability of wearing a button-down collared shirt with a double-breasted jacket).
An amusing (and accurate) suggestion that Jane Austen would likely have been an enthusiastic twitterer.
And a couple of paintings, from Eric Zener, that seems to perfectly capture summer.
