Nick Dickson pointed me in the direction of this lovely little video which tells the story of how Boondoggle brought music to the web for their client Axion. whilst I'll let the video speak for itself, its worth considering for a moment the elegance of the creative solution...
I've talked often and at at times at length on a theme of "we media and advertising people got this amazing thing to play with called the internet but we screwed it royally by applying 20th Century broadcast thinking to what was a two-way engagement platform, etc" ...what the above bit of creative thinking shows is a beautifully crafted way of doing what we should be doing... bringing utility to the web
as I type this I'm listening to some tunes courtesy of the joy that is Spotify, an ad by Diesel has just done a similar thing - I caught a snippet about how they've created a branded radio station on the platform to showcase new music. thats utility too. and its a brilliant thing.
all this reminded me of the Windows Apple banner wars from a while back, and whilst the efforts of Apple were an attempt to creatively use the space that is the banner / sky, its still an ad.
the gig in a banner concept goes a simple but crucial step further... by being there on users' not advertisers' terms, its adding value to my time on the internet - not distracting me from it. it deserves every one of the five Cannes Golden Lions it picked up.
James barry's The Progress of Human Knowledge and Culture, which - appropriately - surrounded us at the RSA yesterday
“Behavioural Economics provides a floodgate of inspiration to our industry. Our challenge is to ‘chunk’ it down, and apply it in ways which make a meaningful difference to client agency dialogue and communications planning and execution. It’s just the sort of breath of fresh air we need to stimulate our intellectual juices and rise above conversations about time sheets and schedule. It gets us back to the core of what we do and why we do it.”
Rory Sutherland, IPA President
and so yesterday I gathered at the RSA with other industry folk as the IPA, led by Rory, began its journey into the world of Behavioural Economics. and a brilliant session it was. it was such a stimulating morning that I'm at a bit of a loss on how to capture it all - so I'll have a go at listing the gems that I took out of each of the talks before adding some thoughts of my own at the end.
First up was Doctor Matt Grist who is director of the RSA's Social Brain project
Grist introduced us to the notion that Behavioural Economics are a "patchwork of theories that predict irrational behaviour", (versus rational behaviour as predicted by neo-classical theory) - essentially its Economics + Psychology
Behavioural Economics in action has been popularised by books like Nudge. 'nudges' work by guiding behaviour thru changes in choice architecture... ie its not awareness and consideration that primarily dictate our choices but the context in which those choices are made, here's a good example...
historical consensus has been that there are two systems in the brain; automatic and reflective. automatic is when we take our regular tube journey or are reading a book. reflective is when we have to concentrate on taking a new / different route to work or have to write an essay. but Grist proposed a third element and a new model:
Grist's model of the brain's three behavioural systems
this opened up the interesting question of how much of our behaviour we actually have control over? Grist observed that we ought to think of these brain systems as "libertarian paternalistic" ie they are supposed not to erode autonomy and responsibility - this is achieved thru training; top-down, sideways and bottom up. I then got awfully lost and at one point I fear I scratched my head and squinted.
anyhoo the next stage, for Grist, is understanding to what extent thinking in terms of the threefold system above empowers people to be more autonomous and responsible?
next up was Nick Chater, Professor of Cognitive and Decision Sciences at University College London
his three themes were how we perceive magnitudes, decisions and valuations all without the context of internal scales. it turns out that we have very limited capability to put a value on anything... everything is relative. when perceiving magnitudes we only have about five 'buckets' in which to separate out degrees on any particular perspective on the world. the system is limited at a very basic cognitive level.
when it comes to decision making, we're similarly it turns out "all over the place" - all we have is binary judgments. take for example £300. if I was to say I'm going to put £300 in your wallet, right now, your response would probably be "whoo hoo" or something similar. if however I was to say I'm going to right now take £300 off of your mortgage, your response would probably be "so what?!" or something similar.
...the point is that exactly the same amount of money engendered totally different responses because of the context in which it was placed. everything is relative, but relative in a very limited (binary) sense. the same contextualisation applies when we get used to a variable having a certain amount - so for example in banks money generally goes in in much bigger chunks than it comes out... the consequence: losing £300 is a lot more worse than gaining £300 is better.
the same applies for time discounting... analysis of Google data demonstrates our pre-occupation with the immediate future and our ambivalence to the distant future.
finally, when it comes to perceiving valuations, we can't. we know the price of everything and the value of nothing. experiments with pain (like Dr Peter Venkman at the start of GhostBusters) show how the value of pain (ie how much we're prepared to pay to avoid it) changes depending on how much we have to spend. demand is extra-ordinarily malleable. how much is the value of a cup of coffee? don't know, how much does it cost? £2. I guess its value is £2 then...
then it was up to IPA President Rory Sutherland to tell us why we should care about any of this
he's written a full piece on this in this weeks Campaign, which is a great read, but here are a few of his gems from yesterday...
most successful businesses of recent times have started by figuring out how to make value, and only then worked out how to make money off of the back of that value. as an industry though where we make money and where we add value are different things - we've "hitched our fortunes to media spend", and here's the danger; if - as supply increases - media becomes cheaper, it will have less value to clients (see above) and those clients will skimp on the expense of getting the most out of that media (or other exposure).
people have a preference to solve problems with infrastructure solutions rather than persuasion solutions. but persuasion solutions can be a lot more effective. and we, the communications industry, should be experts in the applied-psychology business. "ad-folk are better at ideation off of a theory" ...understanding and applying behavioural economics is fundamental to the success of most businesses and social problems. he gave a wonderful example, I don't know if its true...
Rolls Royce were having problems selling cars in their regular showrooms. so instead they sold them at Yacht fairs, where the items on sale go for a few million rather than a few hundred thousand. "I think I won't buy that £8m yacht" says mister man. then he sees a lovely Rolls Royce and thinks, "I've just saved £8m, what's £350k for a lovely car?!" ...behavioural economics works.
the last speaker was Nick Southgate, who explored how we could apply all of this
first up brand preference. people don't express a preference when they don't need to. structure is more important than preference, indeed structure creates preference... competitive positioning is very important to brands; it what creates the structure - and therefore determines preferences - within a category.
second, brand positioning. in example after example, introduction of a third choice massively changes the preferences of the first two. one implication - the launch of 'me too' products actually make the existing market leader look better.
thirdly from a creative perspective, testimonials don't work. behavioural economics might help explain why... the plan to make us buy something because someone expresses their preference for it is flawed by the - incorrect - assumption that behaviour follows attitude. but we forget our attitude whilst automatically going on with a behaviour... you get to the top of the stairs (automatically) and on the way forget why you were going upstairs. chimpanzees do the same thing - they will remember that they're looking for a stick to get termites only whilst the termite hill is in view. behavioural economics is something that would seem to apply to all great apes...
and then on to the panel discussion which I won't summarise but instead pick a few themes that emerged...
targeting
it had occurred to me throughout the session, and was suggested by an audience member, that understanding BE presented opportunities for better targeting. does understanding what BE tells us make attitudinal targeting redundant? if we don't make decisions based on attitude, then why are we segmenting people based on what they think? and if so, what should we be identifying and segmenting people based on? anyone?
NB Mark Lund (formerly of DKLW and now Chief Executive of the COI) who was on the panel noted that the COI would be publishing research at the end of November that "will affect segmentation" and that will demonstrate the requirement for another degree of (agency) segmentation.
agency and industry structures
Lund suggested that he believed that agencies will have to get flatter and wider; with expertise spread across a wider number of areas. he referred to the adage that to a man with a hammer, every solution looks like a nail... if agencies are to provide more holistic solutions, they're going to require more than hammers.
Kate Waters, Planning Partner at Partners Andrew Aldridge, observed that "we don't have the right relationships to make our ideas happen" - beyond the buying of conventional media spaces, experiential, DR we have little implementational skill. if BE says we need to be creating structures that influence behaviour, then we're severely limited in the structures we can change. our industry engine is one built around awareness generation and perception change. we may need to seriously reconsider our long-term agency and industry structures.
ethics
a wonderful debate on this one, does the ability to sub-consciously affect what people do give us too much power? and is there are conflict between planning the Change for Life campaign in the morning and a campaign for Snickers in the afternoon?
"there is no conflict" said Lund - paraphrasing Darth Vader, "clients would much prefer people eat less but for six decades ... its about quality as well as quantity of consumption". but this misses the wider point highlighted repeatedly by Waters; much of this isn't new. we've been in the business of affecting what people think and do for a century - all BE does is bring us an appropriate, and consistent, language for what it is that we do.
I'll leave the last word on ethics to Rory - "I'd rather be perceived as evil than be perceived as ineffective"
...
and so that was that. awesome morning and lots of questions raised which now need to be answered. workshops are going to be held in November, details of which are here. I urge you to get involved. I'll leave you with more of the lovely Rory, talking recently at TED. enjoy.
Mediation came across the above ad in today's MediaGuardian, which last week reported that the NMA - the Newspaper Marketing Agency - is seeking to highlight the benefits of newspaper advertising against a gloomy performance backdrop. Group M forecasts that total newspaper ad market will be down 26% year-on-year, representing more than £900m vanishing out of the sector.
its a issue all right, but far from providing an answer, the NMA's solution (above) tells us more about the NMA's collective failure to understand, or admit ot understanding, the roots of te sector's woes.
do more than most readers of a newspaper will do and take a good close look at the above ad. "Flies aren't the only things you can hit with a newspaper" ... "Nothing targets customers quite like a newspaper". sorry, did I miss something? I can only assume that I've woken from the weekend's adventures in the mid-90s...
its like every discussion I've had over the last eight years... about a shift from scarcity to abundance of stuff, a move from push to engagement marketing, from brand to people-centricity of thinking, never happened. its like Clay Shirky, John Grant, Mark Earls, Henry Jenkins or any other of the great thinkers who have helped us understand the shifting sands of the communications landscape never wrote a word.
we stopped (or should have stopped) thinking about how we 'hit' people with communications years ago. the ability of people to now avoid being 'hit' with things that they don't want to see or engage with is one of the pillars of the NMA and it's clients' problems. is this really how they want readers to feel?
we need news institutions, and moreover we need them to thrive. they investigate and report, they hold our public servants to account. they inform, inspire and educate us about the world, our society and our culture. The Telegraph's exposure of and reporting on MPs expenses, and the Guardian's success last week in propelling Trafigura's super-injunction into the public awareness more than demonstrate that.
but they are more than newspapers. the solution for news institutions is not to fight for an unrealistic share of advertising media budget; the world has too-far evolved, there's too much stuff out there and habits have changed too much to win that battle. news institutions need to understand what they are and adapt their business structures accordingly... as Emily Bell so eloquently writes only two pages before the above ad, "here is the fork in the road ... there is a new hierarchy of communication controlled by the user, and for the older hierarchies there is the dilemma of whether to literally "follow the crowd" or to try to make the crowd follow you"
we need right now to stop thinking about 'hitting' people with our communications, our news institutions deserve better.
IPA publish and broadcast thoughts on social media. "that's not very social" said some socially-minded planning types. "no its not is it?!" replied the IPA, "let's change that" ...so it was that last night the IPA Social Media group hosted the most social of evenings to debate and discuss the ongoing evolution of all things socially media...
the always lovely Mark Earls kicked us off with five principles that outline the big picture:
connecting people allows them to behave less independently
connectivity makes things more volatile
connectivity disrupts existing and established power relationships
its not about what technology does but what it enables
technology allows people to spend more time with other people
Neil Perkins then took us through ten principles - thought starters and jumping-off points for discussion and debate on all things social media. they and their authors are thus...
People not consumers – Mark Earls
Social agenda not business agenda – Le’Nise Brothers
Continuous conversation not campaigning – John V Willshire
Long term impacts not quick fixes – Faris Yakob
Marketing with people not to people – Katy Lindemann
Being authentic not persuasive – Neil Perkin
Perpetual beta – Jamie Coomber
Technology changes, people don’t – Amelia Torode
Change will never be this slow again – Graeme Wood
Measurement – Asi Sharabi
Neil finished his section with a quote by John Dodds that really got me thinking... “Are we actually talking about social media or has the advent of the internet simply revealed that the advertising emperor had no clothes and should have obeyed the the principles all along?”
I Tweeted at the time to "be wary of John Dodds [you quote you understand not John per se - sure there's no need to be wary of him] ...Advertising is not the enemy, the too-narrow concept of the ad is. Fireworks are part of the solution"
the point I was making was that its easy and dangerous to treat social media as though its going to usurp the crass, unrefined and unsophisticated concept that is advertising. which is just plain wrong. a point made more than eloquently when Amelia Torode presented a case study of VCCP's Meerkat for Compare the Market...
Amelia was very keen to make the point that the Meerkat campaign wasn't a 'social media' campaign but a 'social' campaign. but I think this misses the point... Meerket isn't a social media or even a social campaign. Meerkat is an advertising campaign, an advertising campaign that has made the most brilliant use of social media to extend the scope, levels of engagement and fame of the ad.
great advertising is John's Fireworks that get ooohs and ahhhs from people. this is how one-to-many broadcasting advertising works. its brilliant, but let's not pretend that its social-led.
we then had a break out session on which type of agency is best placed to plan social media...
there are echos of the "who owns communications planning?" debate here. the easy answer is that comms planning is owned by everyone and no one. the harder answer is that you have to understand the role of communications in conjunction with the capabilities of a given client.
great social media planning needs generalists who can understand the role that social media plays in a wider strategy and balance the weight of effort across different behaviours accordingly. but it also needs brilliant specialists who can bring the latest technologies and activities to bear on those strategies.
social media calls for new specialist agencies, but at the same time it calls upon all of us - no matter what our discipline - to understand the role it can play and how it might affect and change how we do what we do.
who should clients trust with their social media strategies? they should trust the people most closely aligned to the role for communications...
are you looking to use social media to tackle head-on negative brand perceptions? ...trust your PR agency
social media to actively create sales opportunities? trust your media / direct agencies
or to improve customer service? ...that'd be the call centre
-----
all in all an awesome night, but its only the start... join in the debate via the facebook group, on twitter, or via Social on the IPA website. and finally a big thanks to everyone who helped organise the evening...
but what does it all mean?: Hook, Grant, Bailie, McClary and Corcoran with chair Chris Maples debating at Vizeum this evening
who's in control? that was the theme of this evening's Thinking From A Different Place debate at Vizeum. do brands make what customers want or do customers determine what brands make? do creative agencies still control creation of the best ideas, or are the crowd now creating and aggregating the best content?
a panel, consisting of Vizeum's Matthew Hook, We Are Social's Robin Grant, Martin Bailie of Glue, Michael McClary from Microsoft and Andy Corcoran from MTV all awesomely debated a range of subjects from the decline of the newspaper industry to the impact of technology, taking in the future of media agencies and the nature of brands and advertising on the way.
it's easy to summarise such a debate by saying that its all getting more and more complicated and more and more difficult and we all need to move faster and faster and be better and better to stay ahead; but a few interesting comments steered the debate in a more illuminating direction.
Martin pointed out that we focus too much on the next big technology, or on the specifics of what people are doing with technology now, rather than focusing on two millennia of human psychology to point us in the right direction. as he put it, if we "get the basics right you're 80% there" - produce interesting stuff that's based on a interesting point and view and land it in the laps of as many of the right people as possible.
the question of listening to customers was numerous times, in particular by McClary who observed that there's a "danger in highlighting [and responding to] only the loudest voices". Hook agreed, observing that whilst you can engage 1,000s in a conversation, many brands are interested in talking to and influencing millions. Corcoran reminded us of the Henry Ford quote that "If I'd asked my customers what they wanted they'd have asked for faster horses".
but it was the nature of control that caused the most interesting debate. Grant: "historically brands were more in position of control"; Hook: "marketers desperately want control, they do everything they can to create predictability [of the result of their actions]"; Bailie: "it doesn't matter - no one controls brands; get rid of the idea of control"
for me its about maintaining a balancing act; about knowing when to keep and when to let go of control of what a brand does and how it does it. would you ever let the crowd determine your core creative idea or brand positioning? ...almost certainly not. would you let them create content inspired by it? ...yes. should you let them make your products? ...no. should you le them choose the ingredients? ...of course.
a point was made about the recent successes of Facebook and Twitter, with a question being raised about what business they're in. they are - of course - in the business of aggregating audiences. that's the media business. the point of whether or not they can monetise that aside (big aside I recognise but run with it), part of their success is down to the fact that they capitalise on the fact that one of the best ways to grow an audience is to get your current audience to do it for you.
giving away control - of your product, or whatever is appropriate - is a particularly effective way of getting an audience to do just that. give them ownership, give them reasons to talk about you brand, its point of view and its products and services. but most of all give them a reason to come back, to stay part of the conversation with you. because its those conversations that are the most valuable bit of media real estate of all.
some of Mediation's Fringe highlights, from topish down - Pappy's Fun Club, Showstopper the (improvised) musical, the 80s Movie Flashback, Wolfboy, Private Peaceful, A British Subject, Picasso and Heyton on Homicide
on one hand an abundance of supply, with limited budgets to communicate, and a desperate need to stand out. on the other a premium on attention where time si the most valuable commodity and the biggest problem is navigating a plethora of choice.
not a crystallisation of the current media paradigm, but rather a description of the annual Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where this weekend Mediation ended his summer break with a frenetic 48 hours taking in a dozen shows. from WW1 deserters to 80s movie Flashbacks, taking in on the way a Victorian murder mystery and a musical about repressed teenage sexual tension in which one of the protagonists may or may not be a wolf.
that aside, the Fringe provides us with an interesting microcosm of what in many ways is being debated as we negotiate the future of media and communications. too much supply, not enough time and or attention, and a desperate need to stand out from a vast crowd of other acts...
some principles did however emerge
reputation (1). have one and remind people about it. in a world of massive choice a reminder of what you've done and why you deserve attention helps a lot
reputation (2). acts that were in bigger and respected venues were much more likely to convert. an hour is precious in Edinburgh and rightly or wrongly an act getting into an established venue is seen as a pre-filter of quality. choose carefully where people see you
word of mouth. create some. by far and away the most important factor that determined what I saw (after the fact that my friend was in it) was recommendation. we know this to be true... don't expect it to happen, make it happen... set up the conditions - Pappy's Fun Club for example have a diverse digital presence all aggregated on their website. they make it easy for you to recommend them
be different. no matter what the cost. being right but fading into the background is worthless. if standing out means taking a risk and / or investing a few dollars then do it and make them count. in a world of flyers being given a squidgy coffee cup with the name of an act on it was enough to make me remember and want to go
facilitate engagement. make it easy for people to find you. from thinking about what time you want to be on to shouting the venue on communications made a big difference
but above all I was reminded of how powerful a live experience was. from a play dissecting British Foreign Policy (and occasional apathy) to nationals imprisoned abroad, to a musical made up on the spot based on audience suggestions; the act of creation in a live space is a powerful way to communicate an idea. we should be more often planning for brand comms to have this potency of live experience.
yesterday Mediatel held their annual Media Playground and Mediation popped along for the afternoon seminar discussing Digital Broadcast. it's a broad topic area, covering emerging technologies, content, changing consumer behaviours and rapidly evolving business models. one thing is clear - we have a lot more questions than we have answers.
it was apparent that we're entering an age of complexity in how content is created, deployed and consumed. no one solution will predominate. Bruce Daisley - Agency Leader at YouTube - observed that it's less about the platform, and referred to a 'long tail' of competitors. that content rules, was echoed by the panel...
Rhys McLachlan - head of implementational TV at MediaCom - noted that this is, ultimately, what consumers will resolutely follow. this was echoed by Jon Mitchell of Spotify who suggested that Hulu - recently down 3% - is plateauing. they have (as opposed to Spotify) a limited amount of content, to thrive in a digital content economy you need ubiquity of supply.
and where eyeballs go commercial impacts follow right? not necessarily. McLachlan, in one of several soap-box moments, commented that "clients are increasingly risk adverse" and that "it's hard to invest in channels that are unproven. there's an absence of valid metrics out there ... we are retreating to rather than flighting to quality. people who want a share of my broadcast budget aren't making a strong enough case for their platforms"
McLachlan went on to comment that "we're complicit in perpetuating a trading model that was created in the 1950s ... we need to move on from this legacy model, a model that's been broken for some time".
it occurred to me that it's not the only model that's broken. what so often get's lost in the maelstrom of how to aggregate and commercialise impacts in the new world of digital broadcast are the opportunities to engage audiences beyond the spot. the spot is important and will not vanish into history anytime soon, indeed Daisley noted that YouTube's best performing ad (Gorilla of course) out-viewed their best performing piece of longer-form content (Wallace and Gromit if you're interested) by a ratio of forty toone "YouTube", he said, "is empirical evidence that great ads work".
but the spot ad no longer sits alone in the communications toolbox, and to approach commercialising long-form on-demand content by interrupting with ads really does defy belief. interruption in a on-demand world is at best a contradiction in terms and at worst a failure to grasp the brilliant opportunities that on-demand offers the brands (and for that matter agencies) willing to embrace it...
because if anything is true as we negotiate the future of media and communications it is this; that brands and brand communications have - like everything else - to be in demand.
blast from the past; Caramel's Bunny is back (pic source from Kerry Wheelers blog)
you may have noticed them, the old-stlye fonts, the birth dates in shop windows, the retro copy, the return of longed for icons (see above)... yes, it would seem that a whole herd of marketing folk have collectively led adland into nostalgia-ville. and adland not only likes the place but has moved in, made itself at home, and started churning out nostaligia ads like they're going out of fashion. as if.
Hovis kicked everything off last year with this effort - two whole glorious minutes of British history as seen thru the eyes of a boy with a loaf of bread...
very shortly after this I can imagine 'make me a Hovis' was heard in meeting room in and around the capital. a sentiment no doubt encouraged by the worsening economic climate. in a world of increasing uncertainty, a reminder that a brand had been around for a bit was a reassuring thing indeed.
then came Virgin's lovely effort in which we recalled the gloriousness that was 1984. brick-shaped cell phones, mullets, Wimpy bore witness to a pilot and his crew who reminded us in no uncertain terms that Virgin were still red hot after a quarter century.
but it's this year that the nostalgia train really started ploughing down the tracks. Dirt is Good was abandoned by Persil in favour of reminding us that they're been Tough but Gentle for 100 years...
...and then May saw not one but two retail giants battle it out for the nostalgia crown - with Sainsbury's reminding us how they'd been trying something new since 1869 (that's 140 years)...
...and M&S rolled their 21st Century campaign-packaging out (thats Twiggy) to celebrate 125 years since their first penny bazaar opened (that's 1884 if you were working it out)
so what to make of it all? of the avalanche of nostalgia that's hit us all of late? is it co-incidence? bad timing? in some instances possibly, but there's no doubt that a recessionary mentality has kicked in. as Stew G has noted writing for Vizeum, the recession is forcing all brands (and especially retail brands) to demonstrate affordability without compromising on product or service: hence the lower price + still good quality = value for money equation playing out all around us.
and this is arguably where the above tranche of ads come in to play. prices may be dropping all around us but any brand that's been around for over 100 years has heritage, and presumably with it, authenticity and quality. as a short cut, it would seem to play.
but there are flaws with the strategy. firstly it's increasingly very undifferentiating. secondly it's very brand rather than consumer focussed... of course its all packaged up in stuff that's been done to benefit consumers (Sainsbury's made good food affordable for all, M&S are changing the way we treat our planet) but it does all eventally come across as a bit of an indulgence - a bit like an internal communications project with a bit too much budget to play with.
as John observed in a puppy-feeding post, it can all start to feel a bit too retrospective: "We want to buy things from companies we feel understand the modern world, not ones that are stuck in the past"
perhaps we can just hope that they've all gotten it out of they're collective system now... and we can get back to developing marketing communications that tell differentiated brand stories about the products and services that exist for existing and potential customers.
then again, if the below is anything to go by, the nostalgia trip is far from over... I'd say enjoy, but...
"British Airways flies hundreds of thousands of passengers between New
York and London every year. So it feels right for us to be backing
something genuinely useful for people living in and traveling between
NYC and London" ...is the elegantly simple reason that BA give for creating Metrotwin; a social networking site that twins New York with London and treats both cities as a single online community.
at the heart of the site is utility - classic aggregator territory here - with the site aiming to recommend only "the ten best places to drink coffee" and suchlike. Metrotwin’s
recommendations come from locals, bloggers and online communities based
in both cities but can be reviewed and rated by everyone.
speaking at the Social Networking World Forum (social networking must have come of age - they have a world forum, though its not in Cannes so a bit to go yet) in London this week, Chris Davies, digital marketing manager at BA said that this and another social networking site from the airline had "challenged
the perception of the brand" and made the airline seem more "up to date and
exciting".
I'm not sure I'd go that far. but the site is clean, simple, brilliantly designed and - most importantly - really single-minded about what its there to do and why BA is doing it.
I was going to do my usual "it's not joined up - they need to be amplifying their online content with broadcast" line, but I think the (presumably deliberate) separation between Metrotwin and the broadcast campaign that BA has been touting (the 'do what a local does stuff) is totally right.
two very different strands of communication from BA. one generated by users, the other by the good people of Kingly Street. one is digitally-centric whilst the other is broadcast-centric. but what unites these two bits of communication is local knowledge. do they need to be seamlessly integrated? no. they need to come from the same place, with the same brand voice; each living in - and making the most of - its own media world.
that said, I do hope that BA and agencies are using Metrotwin content in the online advertising. it would be a shame to see such great user-generated digitally-centric content siloed in the site - get it out into online spaces, show the web what you're up to - cos its all good.
and so to Benjamin Button (great but too long), which Mediation caught last weekend at the Brixton Ritzy; or more specifically the ads that came before it. the new adidas effort with Becks at the coolest house party ever was on show (wonderful - very post-Skins - and cracking seeing it in the cinema), but what caught my attention was the new Ka effort.
opening with the copy '80 Kas?', the ad clearly invites you to look for and find the 80 Ka images hidden in the ad. the fact that you could never catch them all in one view means that you have to follow the trail online. after a bit of online exploring you eventually reach www.gofindit.net, only this appears not to exist, as you're immediately directed to Ford's corporate space for Ka.
so far so complicated. the site then has a host of product stuff and ways you can engage with the campaign and the brand, much of which is vaguely interesting but its a bit of a gush of stuff. everything from Banksy street art in Shoreditch to using mobile phones to make a Ka digitally appear in the real world are present. and they all genuinely add up to the campaign 'Find It' idea.
the question I have is why? aside from engaging further in the campaign, what's the reward for taking part? a huge amount of effort has clearly gone into creating a great ad (= broadcast & amplify the campaign idea) and website (= access & digital engagement), but not a lot of effort - it would seem - has gone into incentive.
you could argue that the website being difficult to find is reward in itself, but its a bit of a push. no, it seems Ford, like a lot of campaigns, are assuming that engaging with the campaign is reward enough. it's a busy and cluttered world out there. time is short and attention precious. planners should be asking themselves hard questions about what they are giving consumers back. what's the quid pro quo for their time and attention.
would have been great to have seen some Kas hidden either around the country or in the digital space. how much fun could it have been to make the campaign idea tangible by physically being able to find and take home a Ka? this could also have provided the link between the TV ad and the digital experience... the first person to locate all 80 Kas wins a real one?
the question for planners is clear... what incentive are you planning into your campaigns? what's the reward - above and beyond engaging in your brand's idea - for someone's time and attention; it may not come as cheaply as you may think.
Contagious Magazine Global intelligence resource identifying the ideas, trends and innovations behind the world’s most revolutionary marketing strategies. NB login required for advanced features.
