mediation

Vote for Chris to be the most stylish woman in media: how Grazia created an experience and how I "wear my style well"

whilst you'd be forgiven for thinking you'd stumbled onto the auditions for next top model, this is in fact not a professional effort.  rather its what happened when Grazia - in a bid to work their relationship with the UK's media industry - visited Vizeum towers to snap the girls for their Style Hunter Awards.

girls?  style?  whatever!

I'm sure you'll agree (if you do you vote here) with the official Grazia line that "Chris has clearly got a strong sense of style. Wearing G Star jeans, a Cold Method jumper and a scarf from Topman, he wears his style well."  they didn't mention the Nike 6.0s on my feet but we'll let that slide.

if you're so inclined you can vote for me here.

all joviality aside, its great effort by Grazia to come in and engage with we media types by doing what they're about rather than saying what they're about.  no presentations, no docs or bags with expertly crafted trinkets destined for recycling.  instead, a fun and disruptive experience to more firmly make agencies think that Grazia = style.  brilliant stuff.

oh, and did I mention you can vote for me here?!

Thinking from a different place - the rewards of letting go: what happened when Vizeum debated who exactly is in control?

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.

'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.

The importance of maintaining the journey: how the Autism Trust started strong but lost me on the way

what a wonderful opening gambit.  saw the above poster yesterday in Stockwell.  no brand, no logo, just a message to Gordon Brown on a very public space...  very disruptive and very timely.  so far so brilliant.

so you call the number and you get a voicemail saying "hi this is Polly.  sorry I'm not around to take your call..."  here's where it starts to go wrong.  Pollie shouldn't be expecting me to call.  she should be expecting Gordon to call.  the message should be for him.  opportunity missed to keep the consistency of the consumer journey.

anyhoo you can leave a message or visit a website; theautismtrust.co.uk, where you're greeted with the following screen...

the opening screen asks if I want to see more support for individuals with autism and their families?  well, no.  I'm following a trail of breadcrumbs left for the prime minister.  I'd be more than happy to invest time in learning more, but not when I don't know why I'm on a site for an autism charity.  opportunity #2 missed.

such a shame.  what should have been a brilliant bit of cause-related marketing is reduced to no more than a stunt.  a fraction more investment in the welcome page, combined with a whole lot more strategic join-up, could have created a consumer journey with more impetus than a, well, thing with lots of impetus.  instead, I fear lots of interested people are right now just getting lost on the way.

Ka's missed opportunity to make 'Find It' tangible: why brands need to incorporate incentive for time & attention into campaigns

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.

(here's that adidas ad - a joy)

Exploring a new word order: visualising word associations with Visuwords's online graphical dictionary

 I've been pointed in the direction of the wonderful visuwords application by Eva.  describing itself as an 'online graphical dictionary', it assembles words in space depending on their relationship to each other.  so in the above example brandmark (verb: "mark with a brand or trademark") is three steps away from symbol (noun: "an arbitrary sign (written or printed) that has acquired a conventional significance).

it would be even cooler if you could click on a word and then subsequently see the association cloud emerge from that word; but then you wouldn't want to lose too many hours on a word association breadcrumb trail...

a great tool for quick desk reference when writing decks, brainstorms or to explore the word associations of brand names or positionings.  try typing in Absolute for example, and you're not far away from arbitrary, living and infinite; not such bad word-company for a radio brand in the early 21st Century.

Connecting with Fans and giving Reasons to Buy: how Trent Reznor's Nine Inch Nails are re-writing the rules of music marketing

the above is a great video from MIDEM - the world music marketing conference - that took place in Cannes (where else?) a few weeks ago.  in it, Michael Masnick discusses how musician Trent Reznor - for his band Nine Inch Nails - has been experimenting with a variety of new and unique business models to reach and connect with fans.  according to Masnick, Reznor's secret is really quite simple:

CwF + RtB = $$$ ... where:

CwF = Connecting with Fans

Reznor has used a range of techniques, including hiding secret urls in tour t-shirts (al la ARG), allowing interaction with the music, and ultimately giving a lot of his music away for free

RtB = Reason to Buy

tangible reasons to purchase a product above and beyond the music itself.  for example using CDs that change colour when they're played (a 'non-duplicable USP'), or developing added features which you only get when you purchase product rather than download for free.  Reznor has gone further by super-premiumising physical content (up to $300 a pop for an album) for which fans are happy to pay a super-premium rate

$$$ = lots of revenue generation

the approach certainly seems to work.  by super-premiumising limited editions of Nine Inch Nail's Ghosts I-IV album, he generated $750,000 in less than 30 hours.  the album was free to download, and yet it generated $1.6m of revenue

Masnick goes on to suggest a broader model for Reznor's approach:

Compete with Free + Return to Business = $$$

we could apply this model to a whole host of brands and products.  compete with free by giving your product away; to fans to generate WOM or to potential customers as a recruitment tool.  then return to business; developing ways to premiumise a brand or product, adding value - through marketing - which encourages purchase and revenue generation.  fewer people buying fewer things but at a vastly increased unit price could be no bad thing?

marketing is too often about selling.  it shouldn't be.  selling focusing on the needs of the seller, marketing should focus on the needs of the buyer...  marketing should be a natural extension of the product that adds value and desirability to products based on the wants and needs of the target audience.  how could brands you work on benefit from thinking that Connects with Consumers and develops Reasons to Buy?

Fighting the Future: reaching a rose-tinted concensus at the IPA 44 Club's Future of Advertising in a Networked Society

A short history of marketing from jabi on Vimeo.

the rather lovely above video - by jabi - neatly sums up the collective dilemma of how brands, marketers and, specifically, agencies address the challenge of social media.  the issue was the topic of discussion last night at the IPA 44 Club's inaugural event of 2009: The future of advertising in a networked society.  quite the session it was... here's the gist:

part one - report findings

• social media = the online tools and platforms people use to share information, thoughts, opinions, content etc
• problems is that brands are "crashing the party rather than hosting it" (Russell Davies)
• many brands are experimenting but not getting traction in the area
• we need a model of comms that reflects 'ME' as opposed to 'brand'
• a model that's about conversation and participation rather than interruption and engagement
• a model that incorporates David Armano's thinking about 'influence ripples'
• Johnny X by Dare is a cracking example
• which succeeded in concentrating the feeds into and out of it's online space (64% of upstream and 84% of downstream feeds came from 10 sites each)
• planning social media should focus on targeting the few, that demonstrate: (1) expansiveness (propensity to chatter), (2) popularity (propensity to filter and target) and (3) reciprocity (likelihood to act)
• network size is predictable, as is network flow, as is circulation

part two - agency survey

• brands in a socially-networked world are more responsible for creating and disseminating the right information - brands should be more discretionary in what they produce [Mediation found this less than substantiated and at odds with Clay Shirky's comments at the MGEITF this year on filtering in a content-abundant world being after the fact, ie produce then allow the network to filter]
• the way to reward brand advocates is not through financial incentive
• the industry disagrees on two areas: (1) that advertising principles are the same in a networked society and (2) that social media behaves in a fundamentally new way
• it is believed that most revenue is up for grabs in content creation, then data & insight, then market research & insight gathering (amongst others)
• these new revenue streams represent £11bn of additional revenue opportunity, with another £5bn potentially
• ...which would be (exactly!) enough to meet the £16bn shortfall in industry revenues by 2016 predicted by the IPA's Future of Advertising and Agencies report of two years ago (£16bn = the difference between the IPA's 'Central' and 'Consumer' Scenarios)

part three - the discussion

I won't bullet this because it's getting late and you had to be there, but this was the better part of the evening with discussion ranging between philosophy of brands in a social media space to the (inevitable) measurement and accountability of such activity.

for me a kind of rose-tinted consensus was reached; consensus that went along the lines of:

• marketing has always been about great social networking, the challenge is the same - getting the right content in the right place, its just that...
• (1) people power is more potent (we have 500 networked connections not 50 disparate ones) and (2) we need to react to the context our message are in rather than control the context our messages are in
• it's brilliant because we can react to real people in real time in the context of a real conversations
• social media isn't a bolt on, it has to be woven into every brand touchpoint
• brands need to behave differently, and understand that their relationship with consumers is - to consumers - much less important than consumers' relationships with other consumers

so in a nutshell social media is great because it's as old as the hills, better than the disruption model, measurable ...and there's a freak-off big commercial opportunity for the brands and agencies that get it right.

I just don't think that it' that easy.  our industry is woefully unprepared for the future.  there's some brilliant thinking and debate going on, but the commercial models, joined-up industry measurement systems, and marketing best practice principles - from a 'what works' as opposed to a 'self-regulatory' point of view - just aren't moving fast enough.

most importantly, not enough consideration was given to the integration of broadcast and social media.  they're not going to exist in isolation and broadcast media is going nowhere. iTunes didn't kill CDs and Amazon didn't kill Waterstones.  social media certainly won't kill mainstream broadcast media; the same mainstream broadcast media that in the vast majority of instances provides social media users with the content they comment on, pass on, or reappropriate for their own ends.

the other interesting question is how the behaviour of digital natives will evolve...  we're familiar with the media 'hubs' that are the current crop of adolescent's bedrooms; they're multi-tasking away across ten devices and infinite bits of content.  but what happens when they grow-up?  how much of their social media behaviour will they take with them into adulthood and how much will they replace with the aggregated broadcast consumption of their parents?

we live in interesting times; and I guess we wouldn't have it any other way.

one last word, I urge you to read JVW's post about the event and specifically his debate on how the IPA can use social media to get their social media report into more people's hands whilst not impacting on revenues.  a pleasure and a joy.

When finance gets friendly: how Barclays and RBS are using comms to charm customers

spotted.  sign in a Barclays bank window in Buxton, Derbyshire.  if you walk into this bank you are - officially - one of the loveliest people in the town.  welcome to marketing post credit crunch; where the banks are the bad guys with the perceived need to re-engage with the customers on whose savings (and borrowing) they depend.

the problem is that I'm not quite sure a sign saying 'you're lovely' is quite going to cut it given the spate of irresponsible banking practices that helped in their own little way to bring about a global credit crunch.  it's a fine gesture but does feel rather duplicitous given the scarce availability of credit and the limited extent to which government interest rate cuts are being passed on to consumers.

I'm told (thanks Phil G) that this started out as a employee-facing initiative, to make them feel (even) better about working at Barclays.  this makes sense and in many ways extending it to customers is analogous to what Halifax achieved for a long time with Howard et al.  but you have to question the tone in a customer-facing communication given the current economic climate.

unfortunately being overly nice seems to have caught on like a flu in the banking sector of late.  this from Stephen Hester, chief exec of RBS:

"At RBS we will take seriously our duty to support our customers and try hard to avoid a repeat of the events that have weakened us. We need to rebuild our strength, to work closely with Government and the communities we serve" (source)

supporting communities, that's nice.

from Mediation's point of view there's a real opportunity here for a bank that's prepared to break the mold in the current climate and take customer commitment beyond window displays telling them they're nice or press releases about community support.  something like a First Direct approach for the credit-crunch age...

communications that provide advice and education in a rapidly changing financial climate.  communications that offer transparency about the positions and propositions of banks.  communications that talk honestly about the state we're in rather than the currently emerging knee-jerk reactions that lead to 'you can trust us because we're the biggest or the longest or the fastest' ads.

the opportunity is there for the taking.  customers are no doubt feeling bad enough about their financial futures without a barrage of 'buy me' - or worse 'like me' - coming at them...

but if you are one of those customers don't feel too bad; remember, you're lovely.

Here we go again: why brands should care whether or not viewers trust that their votes will count

the last few weeks have seen the spectre of viewer trust raise its head again, but unlike last year's Blue Peter name-the-cat debacle and Ant and Dec's Jiggygate affairs, recent events are far more opaque.

last time round, the cheating was obvious.  judgments were delivered and calls were made that clearly ignored the voice of viewers.  sanctions were duty handed out and much hand-wringing ensued.  everyone learned their lesson, got it off their collective chests at Edinburgh, and everything was OK again, right?

well no actually.  because the last few weeks have seen the voting viewer confidence undermined once more, again in the arena that is Saturday night event reality TV, and by both ITV and the BBC.

first up we had Dianagate courtesy of the X-factor.  to cut a long story short she let rip at a bonfire party, was ill, the producers gave her a get out of jail free card and Laura went out.  cue a call for the decision to be referred to Ofcom, a massive online petition to get Laura back in, and a mention in Parliament.

up next we had of course Sergeantgate on the BBC.  one of the biggest stories of last week saw the big guy pull out saying "The trouble is that there is now a real danger that I might win the competition. Even for me that would be a joke too far."  Sergeant hinted at the existence of pressure to go (from the BBC / judges / other contestants), The Daily Mail suggested that the reason was a P&O cruise that was beckoning, whilst Richard & Judy writing in the Express blamed his wife.

why does this matter?  why is this getting a post?  why can't we all just accept that it's just a TV show, get over it and all agree to get along?  and most importantly why should brands have any beef with all this?

because it's either reality TV or its not - if Sergeant winning isn't an option (in his or anyone else's mind) he shouldn't be taking part in the first place; if we're going to ask the time and money of viewers to participate then they have to believe that their contribution will count.

because the principles of viewer interaction and contribution are too important to allow rules to be broken.  because the principle of 'have your say and the majority will determine the outcome' has got to be seen to be upheld.  and most of all because the difference between voting-viewer and contributer / co-creator is in name only...

in both the above cases we're asking people to engage with branded content.  similarly in both cases the decision of producers - to allow Diana to stay and to allow John to go - took the ability to control the outcome out of the hands of viewers and into the hands of producers.

brands should tread carefully where Saturday night producers seemingly don't fear to tread.  in a digital age that demands engagement and co-creation with brands thru media, brands (1) have to remain transparent and (2) have to be content for power - once devolved - to lie and remain with their consumers.

this is the reward for engagement; the quid pro quo for the time and energy of getting involved; consumer ROI if you like.  time will tell what the fall-out is for X-Factor and Strictly - but brands that fail to learn the lessons will find it less easy to waltz off in to the sunset with their credibility intact.