mediation

The ultimate video remix?: How Marco Brambilla is bringing civilisation to NYC's Standard Hotel

a Relentless blog post pointed me in the direction of the above video installation by Marco Brambilla.  it's a video collage featuring 400 video sources molded together into one image which runs the length of the lift shaft of the Standard Hotel in New York.  1920 pixels across and 7500 pixels vertically track your ascent into heaven or descent into hell.  depending on your direction of travel.

it has to be a contender for the ultimate version of the remix.  William Gibson and Lawrence Lessig would be proud.  the efforts of four hundred who have gone before remoulded and melded together to form something new, elegant and utterly mesmerising.

this is the kind of thing that more comms briefs should be delivering; pieces of conceptual art produced for comms objectives that can then be explored online or amplified through broadcast.  starting, creatively, at the end point of the plan (ie the TV ad or the print execution) means you miss the opportunity to think about where those executions come from. rarely have I seen investment of time and effort in the creation of an original piece from which a variety of ad executions (in a variety of media) could then derive.  I hope and expect that to change.

in the meantime click HQ, full screen it, sit back and enjoy...

The Fork In The Affiliate Road: Quality Or Quantity? And At What Price?

Mediation is guest Mediated today by James Atherton, affiliate planner at Vizeum.

Since the credit crunch first reared its ugly head, tongues have been wagging around the affiliate world, with one main concern spilling out of people's minds; was the looming cloud of a recession gilded by the sweetest of silver linings?

With every penny ever more precious, with every cent being counted, would the greater focus by merchants on return from marketing spend see an industry seeing significant year on year growth make the shift to a dominant mainstream channel? Or would overall reduced marketing spend mean affiliates would suffer along with press, radio and TV?

For a while it seemed that affiliates were at least safe, and were at best coasting to a better, and richer, future. As one might expect, merchants were increasingly enticed by the idea of a channel that only pays out on a tangible return. However, overall reduced marketing spend has seen a more significant shift as merchants have shifted focus on other media to CPA and ROI targeted campaigns. Aggregators, PPC and traditional display-based advertising are delivering on CPA and ROI based models that have begun to return lower CPAs than affiliates and higher ROI.

There’s a simple lesson to be learnt from this; it is no longer enough to simply drive sales. Whilst this represents a sea change in thinking for many, for affiliates to capitalise on the current economic condition it is imperative that two things are addressed, and soon:

• Quality of traffic
• Costing Models

Without a significant increase in the quality of traffic, or the way that traffic is handled, the opportunity that is available to affiliates, that sweet silver lining, is likely to evaporate. By changing the overall perspective of a volume driving channel to one that is linked to profitability, ultimately doors will be opened rather than shut.

This is not to say that fundamental upheaval is necessary. However, publishers need to accept that positioning and potential will need to be increasingly tied to the needs of the merchant rather than CPAs and EPCs as merchants become more educated.

A simple example of this would be loyalty sites, a group that have seen huge successes in recent times, but who have also left a bad taste in merchants' mouths that have been burnt one too many times. Simply by developing offerings that tie into the LTV of a customer – for example an insurance bounty that only pays out on renewal of a policy – they can create a harmonious model that would make significant steps toward realising the huge potential growth for affiliates that is currently available.

The affiliate channel currently sees itself at a fork in the road; partially through its own impressive and intrinsic growth, but also through unforeseen global economic changes. By acting quickly and sagely, it can make the move from being a specialist part of the marketing mix to something that consistently sits at the heart of all merchants’ overall media strategies.

Popping up at Somerset House: How Bombay Sapphire's Dusk Bar is engaging drikers with it's botanicals intrinsics story (and mixes a mean cocktail)

so last night Mediation went along to the launch event for Bombay Sapphire's Dusk Bar at Somerset House.  the pop-up - which will have residency at the site for the duration of the summer - is an explosion of illuminated blue plastic and metal, the brief of 'bring the iconic bottle to life' being more than met.

what's was more interesting though was the expression of the product intrinsics at the bar.  all spirits are comprised of 'botanicals' - key flavours and ingredients that contribute to the spirits taste profile.  Bombay Sapphire has ten - all of which were on display in various forms at the event.

the actual botanicals were there in bowls themselves, everything from the juniper berry (natch) to the Orris root and Grains of Paradise amongst others; but beyond this, Bombay Sapphire had asked ten leading mixologists from London's most fashionable bars to each create a cocktail from the bar. each cocktail is inspired by a botanical ie key product intrinsic (Mediation's favourite turned out to be the one with elderflower cordial but I can't remember it's name).

so the question of whether or not Bombay Sapphire and Co. can mix an awesome cocktail aside (they can) there's the bigger question of why do a pop-up bar in the first place?  what's it adding?  who is it for?  and what's the payback?

I put this question to a few bar trade magazine editors who were present, and beyond "it get's Bombay Sapphire talked about" it was hard to track down more of a specific answer.  presumably there's hard and soft measures for this kind of thing...  hard ones along the lines of 'does the bar pay for itself?', how many people do we engage with an experience of the course of the summer?' etc.  these and more like them should pay back in the immediate term.

as always though its the longer term softer effects that are harder to pin down.  does the experience change people's attitude and perception of Bombay Sapphire?  does it help increase their brand reputation scores?  and crucially, will in increase the volume of Bombay Sapphire sold in bar and in future consumption thru supermarkets.  the brand has a lot to do - gin consumption is in free-fall (down 14.5% year on year).

I can't answer any of those questions, but I hope Bombay Sapphire can.  because an investment of this scale, even if it is paying back, should be aligned to a very specific long term strategy and objective.  from my perspective, if it was to communicate the existence and balance of intrinsics, as well as change my perception of gin-based cocktails, it was a job well done.  and that's not just the cocktails talking.

the Bombay Sapphire Dusk Bar is popping up at Somerset House until October 2009, for more details see their blog

How we buy what we buy: what McKinsey have learned about our non-linear non-funnel decision-making processes

Mikhail has pointed me in the direction of a report published yesterday on WARC by McKinsey which articulates what I suspect many of us have know for a long time...  that - in general - consumer purchase behaviour is non-linear and certainly not a funnel.

their study, conducted across three continents and involving qual then nearly 20,000 quant participants, found that purchase behaviour was "changing dramatically" mainly due to an increase in consumer empowerment.  we touched on transparency of product on these pages recently when we had to explain to poor Michael Bay that advertising can't make good products bad, but the extent to which this information is significantly affecting consumer behavior as a whole is now becoming very apparent.

according to David Court at McKinsey, decision making has four stages... (1) ongoing exposure during which time people "see and hear about brands", followed by (2) a trigger which instigates someone to then consider a narrow range of brands and explore and evaluate their options - during the course of which they come across more brands.

notice the reversal of the funnel - it starts narrow and gets wider during the decision-making journey...  brands that seek to reach consumers at the point which will most influence their decision take note.

(3) is the moment of purchase - where the final decision is actually made - and this is followed post-purchase by (4) a loyalty loop.  Mediation is a big fan of research into loyalty and what's brilliant about this study is that it goes beyond purchase to evaluate what happens afterwards.

it identifies active loyalists (our traditional view) who then won't consider other brands, but this person is much less common that one demonstrating passive loyalty - where a brand will be automatically considered next time but not exclusively.  the following diagram from McKinsey sums it all up:

this is really important for anyone planning media and communications...  I've feared for a while that at the back of a lot of planners (and indeed marketers) heads is the AIDA model telling them that as long as they get enough awareness up front the rest will follow.  this is dangerous thinking.  according to this report media that is always on, as well as on demand play fundamental and ongoing roles on schedules which should be consumer-decision rather than campaign based.

Things media and communications can't change #147: why advertising can't turn Transformers 2 into a good movie

oh dear.  Michael Bay probably regrets the memo - leaked to and reported in post on TMZ - he sent to Paramount in which he called the film's print campaign an "abject failure".  telling the studio that "you talk so glowingly about Transformers being the movie of the summer, but unfortunately this has not got to the public ... I have been waiting and waiting for the anticipation of an 'event movie' to make it into the 'public zeitgeist' ... Right now, we are not an event, we are just a sequel, which is very different. There is no anticipation. Remember back to Spider-Man 2 - it was everywhere."

all together now...  "advertising can't turn a bad product into a good one Michael".  I guess that in fairness we used to be able to get away with it; there was less choice, hits ruled the tail, and we didn't always know what we were buying until we'd bought it.

information and knowledge transparency: we all have instant access to what the world knows.  we can research, reveal and review products and services in a second.  no one takes a punt on anything anymore - why would you when everything has been reviewed and rated by the crowd...  we don't rely on the promise of a glitzed up poster any more.

Bay's issue - that advertising can't make people watch a bad movie - is something I think we all struggle with from time to time...  we all of us - clients and agencies alike - want the products and services on which we work to be a success.  we look for the best in them, be it a nuanced intrinsic we can pull out or a genius consumer insight that will activate behavioural change.

situations where brands are divorced from products and services are at best a sticking plaster and at worst a disaster waiting to happen.  perception get's out of step with reality.  marketing (and specifically media spend) becomes an expensive cost of being in business.

some of the best marketing stories emerge when communications are a natural extension of product.  no one should know this better than movies...  Blair Witch and The Matrix brought us Transmedia Storytelling, Cloverfield was a powerplay for The Mystery Box, The Dark Knight's Vote Harvey Dent ARG was genius, even SAW understands what it's really about and has a theme park ride.

there's a reason Transformers 2 didn't make it into the 'public zeitgeist' and it's got nothing to do with it's marketing and everything to do with it not being very good.  I've seen it, it's a really, really bad movie which represents 147 minutes of my life that I'm never getting back; and in an age of radical transparency the best marketing campaign in the world can't change that.

'Plausible Promise': what Clay Shirky and Eric Roberts can teach us about devising successful big ideas

Clay Shirky opens up his Here Comes Everybody with the story of Evan Guttman, who used social media tools to help his friend Ivanna retrieve her lost phone when the finder - a young lady called Sasha - refused to return it to it's rightful owner.  he makes the observation however that these evolving social media tools (online publishing, forums, wikis, online social networks etc) are on their own not enough...

"[social media] tools are simply a way of channeling existing motivation.  Evan was driven, resourceful, and unfortunately for sasha, very angry.  had he presented his mission in completely self-interested terms ("help my friend save $300!") or in unattainably general ones ("let's fight theft everywhere!"), the tools he chose wouldn't have mattered.  what he did was to work out a message framed in big enough terms to inspire interest, yet achievable enough to inspire confidence."

you need what he quotes Eric Roberts with calling, 'plausible promise'.  and it was this idea of plausible promise that occurred to me when I saw the above mastercard ad for The Eden Project's 'big lunch'.  which is - to quote the mastercard website:

"a national initiative developed by the Eden Project to bring the country together, by asking you to sit down with your neighbours for lunch in a simple act of community ... on Sunday 19th July, the nation will witness the street party to end all street parties. The organisers of The Big Lunch are inviting as many of the UK's 61 million people as possible to simultaneously sit down together, to meet, eat, talk, laugh and feel hope."

the event - for which there's also a film-making initiative in association with Raindance - has social media at it's heart and is using Twitter, Flickr et al to enable interested parties to organise themselves into action.  but I'm skeptical about the 'plausible promise' of it all...  big enough to inspire interest, yet achievable enough to inspire confidence?

it's certainly big enough, with mastercard's not-insignificant investment behind the above 40" tv ad campaign, but is it achievable?  despite a brilliant and very functional website, will individuals really organise themselves into having lunch with a bunch of people they don't know in order to 'feel hope'?

it possibly most likely that people who already know each other will perhaps drag themselves into action using the big lunch as a sufficient reason to do so; but I fear that this fails on the second of Roberts' requirements.  it's simply not - I fear - very plausible.  any marketers and agencies would do well to check to what extent an initiative they decide to undertake fulfills the two plausible promise tests.

marketing success for initiatives of this type require more than just promise; they need to feel real, achievable.  they need to feel plausible; and I worry that this doesn't.  I hope that the big lunch is a success.  I hope it brings people together, I hope that it makes a difference, and I hope that the time, effort and investment that has gone into making it happen is worth it.

Digital Britain published. Top-Slicing given green light. Can open. Worms everywhere.

if you've been following coverage of the publication of Carter's long-awaited Digital Britain report this afternoon (Guardian covering it here) you'll already be aware of the main points.  they are - as reported in the link previous - as follows:

• Illegal filesharing is "tantamount to theft", repeat offenders will have their broadband connection reduced
• Part of the BBC licence fee will be used to fund universal broadband access
• But also a levy will be placed on all fixed phone lines to help pay for universal broadband
• A small part of the licence fee digital switchover surplus will fund regional news pilots between now and 2013
• Talks between BBC and C4 are ongoing
• Martha Lane Fox to become "digital inclusion champion"

point four has big implications.  the government has essentially given the green light to top-slicing the BBC's licence fee.  not as a one-off to pay for universal broadband (ie digital infrastructure) but for content not provided for by the BBC.

this is government-legislated revenues being used to support content provision by commercial broadcasters.  in other words, they are no longer commercial broadcasters.  there'll no doubt be much debate as a result, but bottom line...

can open.  worms.  everywhere...

In praise of Product Placement: Why 'The Superbowl for Women' is a true reflection of the branded world in which we live

so for one reason or another I found myself watching Sex and the City at the weekend.  the event was preceded on Friday lunchtime by colleagues warning me about the pervasive and excessive (their words) product placement in the movie.  I was bracing myself for the worst.

there was no need.  not only did I not find the product placement intrusive, but thought that it genuinely added to the movie (which for the record I didn't love and thought CB was intensely annoying throughout, but I'm using it as a vehicle for a post on product placement).

the internet seems to agree with my colleagues.  a post on Adrants notes that a panel for Brandchannel's Brandcameo (which conducts product placement in film studies so knows about these things) selected Sex and the City for their Film Whore award; awarded to the film that most "sold out" for product placement.

delightfully, Vanity Fair sent not one but two reporters to the movie.  they happily counted no less than 67 brands that appear in the movie, which you can explore here.  this is perhaps not surprising given that the same article reports how a New Line Cinema exec coined the movie the 'Super Bowl for women'.

I've never had a problem with product placement.  we live in a branded world, where the meanings, symbolism and trappings of brands pervade not only what we consume but why we consume them.  they in part define us and we in part define ourselves by them.  to quote John Kay:

"I am irresistible, I say, as I put on my designer fragrance.  I am a merchant banker, I say, as I climb out of my BMW.  I am a juvenile lout, I say, as I pour an extra strong lager.  I am handsome, I say, as I put on my Levi jeans."

what would be weird would be a movie without brands.  where the reality of brands was pasted out in favour of, what exactly? ...editorial or cultural purity?  there is no such so-called purity to protect.  the 20th Century's walls that separated advertising and content are being pulled down.  not because we have to (although in many instances - PVRs etc - we do) but because a media and communications ecology in which brands are able to tell their stories by attaching and associating themselves to real stuff is better than one in which 30" stall after 25x4 after 30" stall is wheeled out to effective frequency us into submission.

Movies are better for having brands, where appropriate, in them.  those who argue that the appropriate level is zero should take a look around them, because that's not the world in which they live.

result! : why setting my alarm for 4:55am this morning to log on to Facebook was worth it to secure my online identity

alarm went off at 4.45, at 5.53 the snooze kicked in and I grabbed my laptop and logged on.  Facebook's countdown clicked away and at zero a simple click of a continue button gave me my username options.  seamless.

as a result I can now be found at http://www.facebook.com/chris.stephenson.  and whilst at twenty past five on a Saturday morning this may not seem like the most earth-shatteringly brilliant thing, I suspect that in the future I'll be glad I woke myself up to secure the little place of the social graph that I wanted for my own.

The scramble to secure our online identities: why I'll be setting my alarm for 4:55am tomorrow morning to log on to Facebook

so as I start this post I have 13 hours, 25 mins and 38 seconds before I have to join a scramble in order to stake a claim on a big piece of my online identity.  at that time - 5.01 (am) tomorrow morning UK time - Facebook will allow users to select, on a first come first served basis, a username for their account.  so that instead of being http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=555836478&ref=name my Facebook web address could be http://www.facebook.com/chris.stephenson.

as a Facebook blog post explains: "Your new Facebook URL is like your personal destination, or home, on the Web. People can enter a Facebook username as a search term on Facebook or a popular search engine like Google, for example, which will make it much easier for people to find friends with common names"

it may be easy to dismiss the move as a marketing stunt, or just another in a series of initiatives that have seen the book evolve its offering over the last few years.  but in a world where our online identities are becoming increasingly important, the username you get may be more important than you think.

in What Would Google Do?, Jeff Jarvis observes how one consequence of online identities is that names are becoming more unique.  indeed many parents are registering the url of their child's name at birth (and some have even decided on a name on the basis of the url being available). in a world where everyone can exist in the same space, diversity of identity counts.

so will I be setting my alarm in the morning to register?  yes I probably will.  there's quite a lot of Chris Stephenson's out there...  from the General Manager of Global Consumer Marketing, TV, Video & Music Business of Zune, to the wrestler ranked 334th by Pro-Wrestling Illustrated 500 in 1997.  I'm neither of those.  I'm me.  and it's important that my online identity reflects that.  looks like I will be setting that alarm - only 13 hours, 6 mins and 53 secs to go...