Nike, Tiger and Earl

April 11, 2010 2 Comments

Lots of discussion this week regarding the Nike’s new Tiger Woods commercial I’m a bit torn.  Well, not so much torn as contradicted.

I hate the execution.  But I admire Nike for doing something.

I admire them because they’ve been nothing if not consistent.  The first Nike spot featuring Tiger – ‘Hello World’ – clearly established a bigger agenda for Tiger and the brand. Tiger was never going to be about just golf and Nike embraced this. To confront the issue he’s dealing with, which again is clearly bigger than golf, feels reasonable, genuine in fact, given that history.

Nike also stuck by Tiger.  They were one of the few sponsors to unequivocally support him, to have a view, whether you liked it or not, about how they saw his indiscretions.  So again it seems genuine for them to support him in this way, too.

This was the biggest return to sport I can remember.  Thursday at the Masters was huge. It would actually seem odd for Nike not to have had something to say about it, even though it would possibly have been easier to just say nothing. So I also admire Nike for fronting up, for doing this knowing that it would annoy, and probably offend, a lot of people. But I like that Nike is prepared to put the focus on its core audience, knowing that anyone who’s really aggrieved about it was never a ‘Nike person’ to begin with. There aren’t many brands that would have that conviction.

And it’s compelling viewing. Like it or not, it’s hard to look away from, and it’s even harder to not have an opinion about.

But there’s one reason why I don’t like the execution.

I don’t like the way they’ve appropriated his Father.  He’s dead.  Who knows what his thoughts on Tiger’s behaviour might be?  He might (and I think this is just possible) be massively disappointed, dismayed that a son he once predicted would do ‘more than any other man in history to change the course of humanity’ has instead done something tediously tawdry and commonplace. What I would imagine his Father would not be is largely detached. It seems unlikely he’d be mildly curious to understand ‘what you’re thinking was’. It seems more likely he’d be pretty angry.

But I don’t know that. And nor does Nike.  Which is why I think it’s pretty offensive that they’ve assumed any kind of view on his behalf.

I say make the ad. Continue to explore what it is to be a sportsman living a life that’s so much bigger than sport. Tackle the subjects that are easier left alone. Support Tiger in whatever way you feel is right.

Just don’t appropriate a dead man’s voice to do it.

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I closed my Twitter account.

March 25, 2010 1 Comment

I closed my Twitter account about a month ago.

I did it for a couple of reasons, one of which I suspect must be very common.

The first was that what I was tweeting had drifted into an unfortunate territory. I found there was a risk for me in the way in that Twitter works, a dangerous confluence of immediacy, brevity and superficial community. I’d become one of those tiresome characters who feels the need to chip into conversations at a dinner party with what he thinks are witticisms, but are actually inanities. It was just too easy to say something off the cuff, which would be OK but for the fact that it’s being shared with the world, and so rather than the mild contempt of a few fellow diners you find you have a large group of people thinking you’re a twat. And because it’s often ostensibly a ‘direct’ conversation (even when you’re not DMing) you get lulled into thinking that it’s a private conversation, when it obviously is entirely public.

And worse than the inanities, I’d become snide. Twitter was all a bit insular, lots of advertising people talking to advertising people (with the grandstanding and one-upping that goes along with it) making comments that wouldn’t be at all outlandish when shared between a few friends with the context considered, but that were quite childish when shared with the world-at-large with the context removed.

Part of the problem is that Twitter has no nuance. When I make a throwaway comment to friend, experience informs meaning – there’s a tone of voice, a nod and a wink, an understanding of what I really mean, or, more importantly, the tone with which I mean it. But there’s none of that when a tweet or a post is read. It’s cold and literal.

None of this would be such a problem if not for the way in which Social Media has changed our attitude towards opinion. To state the obvious, one of the benefits of Social Media is its ability to let people share opinion. But one of the increasingly apparent downsides is the concomitant capacity for those opinions to be judged. We have a mechanism that encourages people to share opinions, quickly and widely – at a basic level encouraging people to say what they’re thinking without really thinking about what they’re saying. But then that same system fuels the judgement of what they say, treating them no longer as throwaway comments but as considered opinion.

You see it in how social media channels fuel controversy. There’s a momentum that drives people to share their view. The community finds an issue and lights a fire under it. But once the views start coming out there’s a parallel momentum to judge the validity of those views. At the risk of sounding ridiculously dramatic, it’s a subtle form of entrapment – Social Media facilitates the crime then casts the judgement.

I also started to get this sense of a different world. I found myself believing that a different set of rules applied, that the world of social media was creating something new, a place in which things were done quite differently. And this was beautifully self-reinforcing. I’d find myself mocking the people who ‘don’t get social media’ convincing myself that because there were people I could judge not to get it, that that must mean that there were different rules.

I thought I was fine because I had a basic principle I operated by. I’d puff out my chest and proudly say that I’d never post or tweet anything that I wouldn’t be prepared to say to someone’s face. Which was true, but missed the rather obvious point that I wasn’t saying it to their face. I was really saying it behind their back, but in a very public way. And the problem came when someone else said it to their face for me.

I don’t know who originally said it, but I’ve always loved the description of hotel rooms existing on an entirely different moral plane – the idea that things get done in hotel rooms that just wouldn’t be contemplated anywhere else, by people who know better. I guess I worry that Twitter’s a bit the same. It just has a dynamic to it that seems to draw a different line around acceptable commentary. (Tim Burrowes at Mumbrella does a lovely job of describing this phenomenon here. As one of the comments says, ‘I will endeavour to read this post at least once every three months’.)

The second reason I closed my Twitter account was that it just got so time consuming (I’m guessing this is quite common?). I realise that this is a failing of mine, not Twitter’s, but I was just never that good at being able to duck in and duck out. Once I started to make a few interesting connections via Twitter (and I did make some really interesting connections) I started to worry about the connections I was missing out on. So it all got a bit frantic, and I spent too much time on Twitter when I should have been spending time on the guitar, too much time on the keyboard when I should have been on the fret board (sorry).

So I’ve had a month off. I’ve recalibrated. I’m giving Twitter another go. And I’m trying very hard not to be concerned about what I missed out on during that month.

Filed under Advertising, Marketing, Media Tagged with ,

A very smart taxi driver – an updated post

March 17, 2010 Leave a comment

I had an interesting taxi ride last night. Interesting in the ‘I learned something from a very pleasant driver’ way, rather than interesting in the “I stared death in the face’ way.

I wandered up to a Shortland St rank to be met by a beaming driver. He told me he hadn’t had this good a week in five years.

He’d recently taken delivery of his new car – a Camry Hybrid. He’d only had it a week. He told me two things had changed since he got the new car.

He was finding that people were treating him with more respect. On embarkation they complimented his car instead of just barking a destination. And once people commented on his car, he would take the opportunity tell them why he chose this particular model and why in his mind it was a good investment for his business. He said he felt that this was the reason why his passengers were treating him with more respect – not because his car was new, but because his car was an investment. He was very proud that to his passengers, even if briefly, he stopped being a taxi driver and became a businessperson.

He was also finding that people were taking his advice. He said it was his policy to suggest a couple of ways they could get to their destination and to ask passengers if they had a preferred route. He said that most would be very specific, and gruff, about how they wanted to get there. But since he got his new car more people told him to go whichever way he thought best. He said he believed that this was because ‘I look like a professional and people take the advice of people who look professional’.

Which were two of the most insightful observations I’ve heard all week, and prompted me to re-post this piece about what media people can learn from taxi drivers.

What media people can learn from taxi drivers

I flew back from Sydney last night. I spent a little bit of time enjoying the hospitality of the Qantas Club before my flight. And by hospitality I mean Campari.

I also enjoyed the in-flight service (and by service I mean Gordon’s) before having a nice little sleep. Which meant that by the time I got into a cab in Auckland I was a little…vague. Which may be reflected in this observation.

Because on the journey home I came to the conclusion that there’s a remarkable similarity between the media business and the taxi business. Here goes:

Everyone thinks they can do your job because it’s actually not very hard.

People pretty much begrudge what taxi drivers do. Most people know how to drive, so at a basic level believe they could do the job.

It’s the same for media people. Most people read, watch, browse and listen, so at a basic level believe they could do your job.

The answer is never right.

If a cab driver takes you to your destination via the most obvious route, they haven’t added any value. But if they take you via an unexpected route, they’re taking a risky option that you suspect will probably cost you more and take longer than the conventional route. You sit in the back of the cab suspicious that the other option would probably have been better.

It’s the same for media people. If a media person recommends the most obvious solution, they haven’t added any value, or, more damningly, thought innovatively. But if a media person chooses an unexpected media vehicle, they’re taking a chance on a risky option that you suspect will cost more and be less effective than the conventional choice. Either way, there’s always the sense that you might have done something else and that the other option might have been better.

Technology and costs are your problem.

People believe they should really only be paying for the driver’s time. I bet you do it. You take a 20-minute trip to the airport. It costs you $65. You think ‘that’s outrageous, that’s nearly $200 an hour he’s making’. Only he’s not. He’s running a car, paying for petrol, a GPS, a mobile eftpos machine and probably plenty more besides. But people don’t see why they should pay for that, because he needs them to do his job, so they’re his responsibility.

It’s the same for media people. Agencies pay significant amounts for research, training, premises etc, but clients don’t see why this is their issue (partly, in my view, because we keep telling them that people are our only asset). They pay for those people to work on their behalf. What we are required to provide those people so that they can do their job is our problem.

You should be able to anticipate problems before they happen.

If you’re a taxi driver you’re supposed to be able to anticipate when there are likely to be traffic problems. Two car collision outside a school on Remuera Rd at 3.06pm? You should have seen that coming. You are also supposed to know an alternative route that no one else is aware of that will allow these problems to be avoided. If you can’t anticipate these problems you have a passenger in the back unhappy because you’re obviously not very good at your job.

It’s the same with anticipating media problems. Banner for an oil company served on the same page as an article about irreversible environmental damage caused by excessive mineral exploration? You should have seen that coming. Two ads with very similar blue backgrounds on opposing pages of the Saturday paper? You should have seen that one, too. Because if you can’t anticipate these problems you are obviously not very good at your job.

What it says on the meter isn’t what it costs.

When you finish a taxi journey, what it says on the meter isn’t what it costs. There are things called ‘Extras’. That’s a word that immediately gets you offside. Extra? To what? And why? Then there are the surcharges and the service fees and it all just seems complicated and somehow underhand. It doesn’t matter whether the total cost is reasonable, it’s messy and carries the unmistakable whiff of rip-off.

It’s the same for media agencies. Commissions are awful. So are levies and monitoring charges. The simple outcome is that clients aren’t sure what they’re paying for. And clients don’t like that.

So then I got to thinking that if we are similar to taxi drivers, what might we be able to learn from them?

Be the best Taxi Driver you can.

There are some people who just want to be good at what they do. They take pride in the job and all that goes with it. While they very probably would like to be doing something else, you’d never know. While lots of media people broadly like what they do, they often wish they were doing something a bit cooler – a more senior job, a more interesting client or task – and you can tell.

It’s seldom the driving. It’s knowing when to shut up.

Most taxi drivers are adequate drivers (though we’ve all had the horror experience). It’s what goes around the driving that matters. Some passengers like to talk. Some like to listen. Some like silence. Clients are like that, too.

A clean taxi is good. A taxi with an in-seat DVD is bad.

A clean taxi suggests pride in one’s work and respect for one’s passengers. A clean boardroom and the offer of a glass of water do the same. A taxi with an in-seat DVD suggests an indulgent driver and fares that are probably too high. A retractable 52” flat screen and a tray of almond croissants do the same.

Confidence goes a long way.

I don’t like being asked which way I think we should go. But I don’t mind being told which way the driver thinks is best, and asked whether I agree. My sense is that most clients feel the same way.

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When we say we’re about ‘ideas’ what do clients hear?

March 10, 2010 3 Comments

I’ve written about this before, but I’m consistently surprised by how often we use language in ways that undermine our efforts as an industry.  It surprises me because communication should be the one thing we nail – clear, precise language that explains exactly what we mean – but actually we’re often pretty bad at it.

On one level I think this is a problem for Marketing in general.  We’re an industry that’s quite comically inclined to invent language, largely in an attempt to lend weight, substance and (we hope) credibility to what we do. So we’ve invented a language that’s high on complexity and low on meaning (I highlight ‘granular’ and ‘conversation-catalysts’ as recent favourites).  In an attempt to make our discipline sound more like, well, a discipline, we’ve succumbed to the easy temptation to develop an insular language, one designed to exclude. It’s a carefully constructed façade of inside knowledge, based on the flawed logic that if we appear to know something that others don’t then that knowledge must somehow be important and valuable.

On a second level, I think there’s also an issue with the looseness of the language we use to describe what we do.  And this is closer to the point I want to make here.

I betray my age when I talk about formative years spent poring over anything I could find on the subject of advertising written by David Abbott, Tim Delaney and Indra Sinha (when he was a humble advertising copywriter). They all wrote about the importance of precision in language, the need for what we write to communicate its meaning clearly and its point powerfully.

But it’s a looseness with language that I think catches us out so often.  The precision we (should) apply when communicating on behalf of our clients’ brands is often lacking when we communicate on behalf of our own.

I think a good example is the ‘ideas agency’.

As a concept it seems to be having something of a renaissance. I don’t mind admitting that I’ve used the phrase myself, as I, like many others, have tried to describe my company in a way that makes it feels bigger, more vital, than just an advertising agency. I also absolutely agree with the endeavour, the goal of being a business that helps clients succeed, whatever form that help might take. I’ve also worked with a number of agencies that deserve the label – brilliant, diverse groups of people delivering a breadth of ideas with the potential to deliver huge client gains.  So my issue’s not with the concept, more with how we describe it.

Because I read an interview the other day in which someone was describing the change he is trying to bring about in his business, to reinvent it as an ‘ideas agency’. What he said didn’t quite make sense, not because the agency he described isn’t capable of delivering ideas both valuable and beyond advertising, but more because of how they’d arrived at ‘ideas agency’ as the description of what they want to be known as.

“We can’t be an advertising agency” he said, “because CEOs aren’t looking for ads. We need to be an ‘ideas agency’ because what CEOs are looking for is big ideas”.

Which is what didn’t make sense to me, because in my experience they’re not.  I don’t think CEOs want big ideas at all. What they’re looking for is big results.  And while I acknowledge that might seem like a rather trivial, cavilling distinction, I think it’s important for a couple of  reasons.

We know that the point of ideas is to deliver results.  Some CEOs agree (while some, rather cynically, believe that the point of ideas is to be interesting, results being at best a secondary motivation).  But irrespective of the CEO’s view it feels like an example of an industry failing to take its own advice.  Aren’t we confusing feature with benefit, something we regularly criticise our clients for doing?

We’ve all had the conversation.  We’ve all told a client at some point that the world at large doesn’t care what they produce, only what benefit they deliver.  We’ve all counseled clients to move past the infatuation with what they do, to focus instead on what their customers need, the problem that they can solve.

And I would argue that clients need results. That we know that ideas are fundamental to delivering results is our issue. But what matters is that ideas are our feature. Ideas are not our benefit.

To most CEOs, the world of Marketing is beset by a frustrating vagueness.  It’s not concrete and measurable. It’s notoriously difficult to predict what will work and why. It’s not spreadsheetable, or inclined to accurate modeling.  In short, Marketing’s a bit nebulous.  Which is also what ideas are. They’re leaps, bridges intended to take you somewhere new. (Which is the very thing that makes them exciting to us, and dangerous and unsettling to CEOs.)  But my worry is that our focus on ideas reinforces for CEOs this sense of vagueness. To them it’s a wooly word describing a nebulous concept.  In contrast, results sounds like a precise word describing a concrete concept.

My second issue with the concept of the ‘ideas agency’ is that it highlights a fundamental distinction in what we value.

In the world of agencies, ideas are the currency, the thing most prized, because we believe that it’s ideas that change fortunes. So we like the thought of being an ‘ideas agency’.

We do acknowledge that ideas alone are kind of worthless, and that until an idea is executed, made real, it doesn’t have actual value.  But ultimately we do believe that it’s the idea that matters, and we do love them for themselves. In the final analysis, our fondness for the idea sometimes dwarfs our enthusiasm for the result.

But I’d wager most CEOs don’t see the world this way. They see ideas as the loose start point for results. The idea matters and is necessary, but it’s the execution, the implementation, that matters at least as much. And the focus is always on the outcome. The result is the goal, and, in the final analysis, it’s the value delivered by the result that dwarfs the respect for the idea.

And this is where I worry that the language we use undermines us.  Because when we talk about an ‘ideas agency’ we do so based on our world.  And in our world idea trumps result. But when many CEOs hear us talk about an ‘ideas agency’ they interpret it based on their world. And in their world, result trumps idea.

We call ourselves an ‘ideas agency’ because we think it makes us sound bigger.  But I worry that to clients it might actually make us sound smaller.

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What buying a house is teaching me about selling ads.

February 2, 2010 1 Comment

My wife and I are in the process of buying a house.  Which keeps presenting unexpected parallels with the process of making advertising.

We first started looking for a house a few months ago.  We established a brief and set ourselves a timeline. This process established the three drivers of the process.

  1. We needed some lawn for our kids to play on
  2. We needed to be close to their schools
  3. We had a few months in which to find the right house (and didn’t want to spend all our weekend time at Open Homes)

So pretty quickly we fell into a pattern. We’d spend a bit of time researching (or, rather more honestly, my wife would spend a bit of time researching while I watched golf on TV). We’d look at Property Press, a couple of websites, occasionally field a call from a proactive agent and maybe have three or four potential properties come our way each week.

And then we’d eliminate. We’d look for reasons why a potential house was wrong. Most commonly this would be the absence of lawn. Sometimes a slightly unexpected location. Or a potentially dubious construction technique. But our goal was to say no to anything that didn’t obviously meet the brief. And we found we were very good at saying no. Because we had a brief that set out what we should say no to.

But then something interesting happened.  The timeframe contracted.

We now have a degree of urgency. Not a blind panic, just a desire to get into our own house sooner. And with it, something fundamental changed.

Our process is still the same – the same publications, same websites, same agents, same potential pool of houses. But now we’ve started looking for reasons to include options rather than excluding them.

And so we saw two houses on the weekend that could be great. Neither meet the original brief we set in exactly the way we imagined it.  But they do both meet it.  We just had to see them, and seriously consider them, in order to appreciate that.  We haven’t changed our brief. We’ve just had our eyes opened to how it might be met.

One of the houses has almost no lawn. So it doesn’t meet the brief as written. But when you visit the house you appreciate that our brief is actually for a house where kids can gambol and be kids.  Which isn’t the same thing as having lawn.

Neither of the houses is in a location we anticipated.   But they both have a manageable proximity to school.  Manageable because there are other great things about them that reposition the importance of location.

So what changed is that our focus shifted from eliminating ‘what’s obviously wrong’ to investigating ‘what might be right’.

And I think there are two interesting parallels for the creative development process in this. One is the importance of timeframe in how you see an issue. The second is how you define the role of the brief.

The timeframe dictates the mindset

As when buying a house, an extended timeframe encourages clients to hold out for something better, or ‘more right’. It just seems obvious.  They’ve got the time and it would be irresponsible not to use it. So they look at options and keep wanting to explore. But to do this they have to focus on what’s wrong with each idea.

So I’m wondering whether there’s some science to planning when an idea gets presented?

I’m sure you could plot it on a bell curve. At the start of the process there’s a generous amount of time so a client has the luxury of rejection. So they’ll eliminate anything that doesn’t absolutely meet the brief. At the end of the process there’s so little time that they’re panicked and so seeking/dictating an idea that’s inarguably ‘right’.  So is there a sweetspot in the middle when a client is relaxed enough with the timeframe to be open to a new idea, but not so relaxed that their inclination is just to keep looking at more ideas?

What is the brief really for?

My brief said that lawn and location were paramount, but when tested it was a variation on those concepts that mattered. The important shift occurred when I stopped looking for reasons to exclude options and starting finding reasons to include them.

Which reinforces my belief that clients and agencies often still don’t agree on the role of the brief. Is it, as I suspect clients often view it, a document that defines what the right answer looks like? Or is it, as I suspect agencies more often view it, a document that asks a question that needs to be answered in the most interesting way? The former’s about eliminating wrong answers. The latter’s about embracing interesting answers.

So anyway, I’m pretty excited about potentially buying a house. Perhaps moreso because it isn’t exactly what I had in mind – it’s actually better than the house my brief might have dictated.

But now I’m kicking myself that I may have overlooked a potentially great house because I came across it at the wrong time. I’m also kicking myself when I think about the potentially great creative ideas that died because I presented them at a time when the client had the luxury of looking for reasons why they could be judged wrong, not yet the imperative of looking for reasons why they might be judged right.

Filed under Advertising, Marketing

The photo’s of a pilot cleaning his windscreen. But what do you see?

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.

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Noel Leeming, Harvey Norman, Bond & Bond. Please spend less on advertising.

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.

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Focus groups. Your neighbour’s opinion. And witches.

December 22, 2009 Leave a comment

I was sent this article from Advertising Age the other day. It revisits an issue everyone in our industry is painfully aware of – the puzzling tendency of clients to rely on focus groups to inform marketing decisions.

I sent the article to a friend (who happens to be a senior marketer) to see what she thought.   Her response was interesting.

I asked her whether it might be a little artificial to ask people to explain the rational motivation for a purchase decisions when those decisions are made without any great rational thought. She said that I was trying to make the process more complicated than it actually is and that most people are quite good at explaining why they make decisions.

I questioned her as to whether asking people with no experience whatsoever in design or communication to comment intelligently on important issues of design or communication might not be a bit optimistic.  She countered that ‘agency people’ only want to design stuff that other ‘agency people’ like and that talking to real people is a necessary reality check.

But the final comment she made was the most interesting.

She said ‘Marketers don’t buy shampoo.  My neighbour does.  So I thinks it’s useful to get my neighbour’s opinion’.

Which on the surface seems like a reasonable view to take. It’s ‘ordinary’ people who buy stuff, so the view of ‘ordinary’ people should be relevant.

But the argument falls over for a few reasons (the first two alluded to above).

Firstly, most purchase decisions are emotional. Research seeks to explain them rationally.  Hasn’t neurological science established that the two processes are entirely different?

Secondly, people who buy soap aren’t qualified to design packaging or advertising for soap, in the same way that people who attend rugby matches aren’t qualified to coach players or design stadia.

But I think there’s a bigger issue that I’ve always struggled to articulate.  I can’t understand why we put people we know nothing about in a room and unquestioningly give credence to their views on a very important subject (to us at least).  These are often people who, if we met them outside the confines of a meeting room, we would possibly think were less than, shall we say, credible.  The fact is we know nothing about their view of the world, but we put them in a research group and assume the capacity for sagacity.

Then I read this at the weekend.  It’s a summary of what, according to recent research, Australians believe in.

Amongst other things, 51% of Australians believe in angels – winged messengers of God sent to earth to perform specific tasks at His behest.  It also seems that 41% of Australians believe in astrology, maintaining that the position of various celestial bodies has a direct impact on your personality, the likely course of your life and, if you get right down to it, the entire future of humanity and our planet.  But my personal favourite is that 22% if Australians believe in witches, shadowy figures using sorcery and magic to demonise the unsuspecting.

So next time you use a focus group to provide an informed and rational ‘voice of the consumer’ on a significant marketing issue, bear in mind that of the six people in the room, three very likely believe that angels walk among us, at least two are concerned with the detrimental impact of Saturn journeying through their sign (but comforted by the Sun’s imminent presence in their compassion zone) and one person believes that a shadowy figure in an unfortunate hat is galvanising dark forces to challenge the natural order through the casting of spells and placing of curses.

But don’t let that impact your view of their credibility.  I’m sure their views on your advertising are completely logical and rational. They are, after all, your neighbours.

Filed under Advertising, Marketing, Research Tagged with ,

Aston Martin Cygnet

December 21, 2009 Leave a comment

By any measure, this is not an attractive car.  It’s interesting, but I’d suggest it’s not attractive.  What’s surprising is that it’s from the company renowned for making perhaps the most beautiful cars in the world. It’s intended to go into production next year.

My first reaction is to think that this is completely at odds with the Aston Martin the world knows, a brand that, since its recent resurgence, seems entirely about making cars that are defiantly big-engined, fast and expensive, in the process flipping the bird to environmentalists, speed-camera advocates and poor people.  (In fact Aston Martin doesn’t flip people the bird. Aston Martin flips people the pheasant.)

Which makes we want to react badly to the Cygnet.  It’s so resoundingly not Aston Martin. It’s small and responsible.  But it is nicely designed, and not without a certain, ugly-duckling style (reflected in the nicely self-deprecating name for the model).

But I think it’s a brilliant idea.  Because you can only buy a Cygnet if you already own an Aston Martin.  It’s being sold on the basis that it’s what Aston drivers will use for short journeys, with their ‘real’ car only brought out when the trip justifies it.

Which I think is inspired on two levels.

One is that in this day and age, even Aston’s core market must be starting to struggle a little with the enviro-carnage wreaked by cars of its ilk.  While I’d imagine that most of that market doesn’t exactly find itself wracked with guilt, lying awake of a night on its 1000 thread count sheets, it does still feel the occasional pang.  And using the Cygnet a couple of days a week assuages that guilt, but it does it, importantly, in a very public way.  Because, at the risk of being more than a little cynical, the problem with so much ‘offset’ behaviour is that no one knows you’re doing a good thing. And while public approbation shouldn’t be a motivation, it resoundingly is, and driving a Cygnet makes the gesture public.

The other is that I bet the Cygnet will acquire a degree of snob value even greater than that of the ‘real’ Aston Martin.  The Cygnet basically says that you are rich/successful enough to own an Aston Martin, but secure/unpretentious enough not to need to drive it.  Which is a delightfully public display of understatement (like the deliberately frayed shirt collars that I’m told are very popular with the English aristocracy).

So the Cygnet is effectively Aston Martin’s offset programme – you offset your environmental impact, and your conspicuous consumption, in one very public gesture. Brilliant.

Filed under Design, Marketing Tagged with ,

Social Media might just save Marketing. But not for the reason we think. (Re-post)

December 15, 2009 Leave a comment

Lots of coverage in the last couple of days of the Toyota Yaris/Saatchi & Saatchi drama from Australia that I wrote about in my last post.  Tim from Mumbrella does an excellent summary of the whole episode here.

So I re-read this old post. The events of the last couple of days certainly highlight the dangers alluded to pretty well.

All those who have bemoaned the status that Marketing is accorded in most large organisations should take heart.  Our saviour might well be upon us.

It will be enormously ironic if it proves to be true, but my bet is that social media may yet see Marketing invited back to the boardroom table.

Why? Because the boardroom table respects those things that can either deliver great success or cause great harm.  For years Marketing hasn’t seemed to deliver much potential for either. Most Boards were highly sceptical of what value marketing could deliver (certainly when compared to more operational functions). And, in a logical corollary, they didn’t really fear what damage could be done if Marketing got something wrong.

They also didn’t really buy the argument that Marketing ‘owned’ the consumer.  Either because they didn’t see the need for the consumer to be at the heart of their business, or, more likely, because they felt that some combination of sales, retail, corporate affairs etc was just as capable of representing the consumer view.

We in the broader Marketing fraternity have found this frustrating and not a little insulting.  We tried very hard to argue that we knew exactly what we were doing, ours being a professional, regimented discipline, with proven success factors delivering strong return.  But (with apologies for being both simplistic and judgemental) we tended to fall down when called on to prove this, betrayed by our meaningless language and superficial analysis.

Our panic has increased as we’ve confronted a new digital world. We’ve seen our audience wrenched away, our traditional creative strengths made less relevant and, most frighteningly of all, the rise of social media with its democratisation of opinion, free sharing of points of view and returning of power to the people.

But this is actually what might save us.  Because social media is dangerous.  It has a power that every Board should be afraid of.  Its ability to galvanise people is remarkable, and its ability to galvanise people around an issue that can threaten any business needs to be respected.

And at the same time social media represents enormous opportunity, for it galvanises people around a positive issue just as effectively as a negative one.  It allows people to share in a great service initiative just as much as a botched one.

But while its unfortunate, the truth is that for most businesses fear dominates.  Fear forces decisions much more readily than opportunity, and my suspicion is that most businesses fear social media.   Which is where our opportunity lies.

Social media is Marketing’s responsibility (not entirely Marketing’s, obviously, but for the moment we’re the ones most likely to be taking the lead). And social media cements again the need for every businesses to have the consumer at its heart. Which is exactly where they, and we as Marketers, should be.

It will be ironic. Social media has been enormously unsettling for Marketers.  We don’t understand it yet and, if you’re of my vintage, it challenges much of what you’ve spent a career advocating.  But social media will revolutionise how businesses behave.  And it’s very likely to be fear of social media, the thing we marketers don’t really understand, that will see Marketing invited back to the boardroom table.

Once we’re there, hopefully we can help people see the opportunity too.

Filed under Advertising, Marketing, Media Tagged with , ,

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