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.
one of the biggest challenges and opportunities we face is bringing to life our collective understanding of people in meaningful and engaging ways. beyond the demographic, beyond the observation or statistic, beyond the quote or the screen-grab ...there lies insight and understanding of people (I nearly typed consumer there) that inspires, influences and dictates the best of what we do.
its awesome then to see such interesting work emerging from the boys at BAMM, who sent me a note describing what they'd done for Nokia in Africa...
"As part of an international project for Nokia we looked at bonding behaviours in different cities across Africa, Asia and Europe. The team spent a week with a middle-class family in Lagos. We observed, interviewed, photographed and filmed Amaka with her extended family. We were guests at the naming ceremony for her eight-day old baby, which gave us better insights into how her community bonds."
in a world where more information about more people is more available all the time, experts who can go somewhere, experience a place in time and the people within it, and return with valuable, genuine and actionable insights about what they saw and heard becomes increasingly valuable. whenever I see what these boys do I redouble my own efforts to go beyond the observations and stats and mine for myself the insights that make our communications as meaningful and effective as they deserve to be. brilliant stuff.
you can see the video of what BAMM did for Nokia here
"I don't feel I'm a capitalist, I feel I'm a creativist. Capitalists make things to make money, I like to make money to make things - I love making things."
Eddie Izzard – Live from London (available on iTunes)
I was listening to Eddie Izzard's Live from London podcast - recorded at the apple store in Regent St - recently and was rather taken by the above quote. Izzard was meditating on the theme of the banking crisis and observed that he was, in his judgment, a creativist.
its a great thought but what's even more powerful is the logic flow that sits behind it. think about it. brands and marketers that consider themselves to be in the business of making things to make money will, I suspect, end up behaving very different from those with a mindset of 'let's make money so that we can make more things'.
let's use marketing investment not to make money as an end in itself but so that we can make more (interesting, exciting, imaginative, engaging, challenging, fun) stuff as a result. of course lots of businesses work like this - ROI from one year is reinvested into the next - but its indirect and not by any means guaranteed.
besides that what I think is more important is the attitude, the mindset that this thinking gets you into. yeah, hell lets do some successful communications and make shedloads of money. but let's be explicit about why we want to make money... we want to make money so that we can increase a brand's presence in the world; not by being in more places more often and seen by more people, but by the creation of more things. things created with people, by people and for people, that add value not just to brands but to our world.
from today I'm not a capitalist either. I'm going to be a creativist. and I'm going to be in the business of making money so that I can be the best and most interesting creativist I can be. thanks Eddie.
I popped into The Only Place for Pictures on Upper Street over the weekend and came across the history of the Keep Calm and Carry on poster that's been in and around for a while. fascinating history and a reminder that simple, elegant copy writing can lodge long in the consciousness, finding new and evolved meanings over time... what brands would give for slogans with this degree of resonance so long after its original inception.
I've copied the full text from the note in the shop below, enjoy...
in the spring of 1939, with war against Germany all but inevitable, the British Government's Ministry of Information commissioned a series of propaganda posters to be distributed throughout the country at the onset of hostilities. it was feared that in the early months of the war Britain would be subjected to gas attacks, heavy bombing raids and even invasion. the posters were intended to offer the public reassurances in the dark days which lay ahead.
the posters were required to be uniform in style and were to feature 'special and handsome' typeface making them difficult for the enemy to counterfeit. the intent of the poster was to convey a message from the King to his people, to assure them that 'all necessary measures to defend the nation were being taken', and to stress an 'attitude of mind' rather than any specific aim. on the eve of war which Britain was ill-equipped to fight, it was not possible to know what the nations's future aims and objectives would be.
at the end of August 1939 three designs went into production with an overall print budget of £20,600 for five million posters. the first poster, of which over a million were printed, carried a slogan suggested by a civil servant names Waterfield. using the crown of George VI as the only graphic device, the stark red and white poster read 'Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution will bring us Victory'. a similar poster, of which around 600,000 were issued, carried the slogan 'Freedom is in Peril'. but the third design, of which over 2.5 million posters were printed, simply read 'Keep Calm and Carry On'.
the first two designs were distributed in September 1939 and immediately began to appear in shop windows, on railway platforms, and on advertising hoardings up and down the country. but the 'Keep Calm' posters were held in reserve, intended for use only in times of crisis or invasion. although some may have found their way onto Government office walls, the poster was never officially issued and so remained virtually unseen by the public - unseen, that is, until a rare copy turned up more than fifty years later in a box of old books bought in auction by Barter Books in Alnwick.
shop owners Stuart and mary manley liked the poster so much that they had it framed and placed near the till in Barter Books. it quickly proved so popular with customers and attracted so many enquiries that in 2001 Stuart and Mary decided to print and sell a facsimile edition of their original poster which has since become a best-seller, both in the shop and via te internet.
the Ministry of Information commissioned numerous other propaganda posters for use on the home front during the Second World War. some have become well-known and highly collectible, such as the acrtoonist Fougasse's 'careless Talk Costs Lives' series. but ours has remained a secret until now. unfortunately, we cannot acknowledge the individuals responsible for the 'Keep Calm' poster. but it's a credit to those nameless artists that long after the war was won people everywhere are still finding reassurance in their distinctive and handsome design, an the very special 'attitude of mind' they managed to convey.
Barter Books, Alnwick Station, Northumberland NE66 2NP, England
Postscript: since the 'Keep Calm and Carry On' poster was rediscovered in Barter Books in 2000, it has become a national icon. to read about the ongoing story of this remarkable survivor, click here.
a very illuminating visit from Guardian Media Group this morning, with Chris Pelikarno and Mia Barnes coming into Vizeum towers to talk us through their recent Word of Mouth research. the study, which follows on from their exposure and engagement research pieces, sets out a framework for identifying and measuring the extent of influence of individuals' propensity to propagate messages and information via word of mouth.
so Gladwell so good. but the study went a great deal further than this, GMG have not aggregated significant amounts of existing research and information into this area, but have then gone on to fuse the data onto BRMB's TGI so that anyone with access can tangibly integrate WOM analysis into their planning.
in a nutshell the research identified three traits and abilities make one person more influential than another... "Weak Ties, Bridging Capital and the Status Bargain are the core of what makes a person influential. When combined these factors allow people to access and spread ideas and opinions faster and more persuasively than others". the research then used Emmanuel Rosen's ACTIVE theory as a framework in both qualitative and quantitative research as a way of measuring the extent to which people have Weak Ties, Bridging Capital and are likely to make Status Bargains.
what was really smart about the research was the recruitment method for respondents... ten individuals were selected and interviewed, as well as being asked to rate themselves on ACTIVE measures. those individuals were then asked to recommend other people GMG should talk to. they were then interviewed - including rating themselves and the person who have recommended then on ACTIVE measures - and asked to recommend more people and so on and so on till the research panel was 350 people strong with ten networks running throughout. ten networks available for measurement and analysis of the extent to which different individuals and the traits they demonstrate affect the levels of WOM through the networks. fuse this onto TGI via a recontact survey of 1,359 people and Bob's your uncle you have an integrated WOM analysis planning tool.
the research - of course - achieved the task of demonstrating that Guardian readers are more influential than the average newspaper reader, but its achieved much more else besides. by investing in both the aggregation of existing WOM theory and then following thru into practice with real people in real networks, GMG has advanced the agenda of one of the most important topics in planning of the moment. as Mediation has commented previously, we too often plan brand communications with the ambition and expectation that people will talk about it, but its too often on a wing and a prayer... we're planning blind, with fingers crossed that the right people will talk enough about what we put out there to propagate our message and - as the IPA have shown - increase the effectiveness of or efforts.
but the real story of this research has only just started. in handing over control of the data and putting into potentially every planner's hands, GMG will see their efforts propagated far beyond the number of presentations they can give to media agencies. this could and should help change planning culture: going beyond the crudity of awareness and reach measures and allowing planners to plan in and around the reason advertising actually works. we're all better off for GMG's investment and generosity. other research studies could learn a thing or two.
a beautifully sunny idea for what will hopefully be a beautifully sunny weekend... welcome to the Disposable Memory Project, which has the simple aim of telling the stories of cameras left in random places around the world. the idea is that people will pick them up, take a few photos and pass them on, with the cameras and the photos they hold eventually returning home.
it's a simple, elegant idea for an age when experiences have higher value than things, when social aggregation can be virtual and where narratives aren't predetermined or linear. I don't know if a brand is behind this, but I bet plenty wish they were.
at the heart of this idea are jeopardy and mystery. if I leave a camera somewhere will it be found? by whom? what photos will they take and will those photos make it home? there are no guarantees; something that feels exciting and different in a world - and marketing landscape - where amazing solutions vie for our attention and unbeatable answers clamour for our questions.
Mediation finds it more than a little comforting that in an on-demand world where we expect to be able to get whatever we want whenever we want it, some things aren't set in stone. I intend to join the project and set me own camera on it's way. I look forward to the uncertainty of its fate, and meeting - through shared virtual experience - some other people on the way.
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.
to celebrate their new on-screen identity, DCM (formerly Carlton Screen Media) are asking the industry to vote on their favourite ever cult cinema ad. an panel of illustrious experts has narrowed the list down to ten finalists which you can view and then vote for here.
it's quite a list - everything from Kylie's 2001 jaunt on a red velvet rodeo bull for Agent Provocateur to Tony Kaye's surreal effort for Dunlop in 1994. the best of the Diet Coke break ads is in there, as is Carling's Dam Busters, some Guinness Surfers and a reworked Bullitt chase with Steve McQueen behind the wheel of a Ford Puma.
but for me there can only be one winner. in a cinema ad-off, the vote has to go to on-screen communications that have become as integral a part of the modern cinema experience as popcorn and Green and Blacks... communications that have embraced not just the cinema screen but the Hollywood dream sprawling behind it. comms that took said Hollywood dream and subverted it to within an inch of it's life - much to our collective amusement.
over the last five years Carrie Fisher, Snoop Dogg, Alan Cumming, Steven Seagal, Sean Aston, Daryl Hannah, Spike Lee, John Cleese, Macaulay Culkin and even Darth Vader have had their projects subjected to the interference of Mr Dresden and co. the result for Orange is credibility in and associations with cinema that go far beyond the mere placement of an ad. they own this particular bit of media real-estate in a way few other brands have achieved anywhere, let alone on cinema...
in combination with a BAFTA association and Orange Wednesdays, the Orange spot is the result of a determined focus from a marketing team and associated agencies that demonstrate the power of creating content that is contextualised for the channel in which it's appearing. the Orange spot could only work in cinema, it's what gives it it's power. and it's why it's getting Mediation's vote.
an image from the Emory Douglas exhibition at Manchester's Urbis Gallery
Mediation was in Manchester this weekend and found time to catch the Emory Douglas exhibition at the splendid Urbis centre in the city. it charts the origins of the Black Panther movement and more specifically the work of Emory Douglas - the first and only Minister of Culture for the party - who illustrated the philosophical and ideological views of the party and its supporters.
the bold combinations of graphic design, drawing and slogans still resonate strongly today, but Douglas went beyond the creation and publication of his illustrations, he used media to great effect too. the exhibition leaflet observes that Douglas "turned the city into a gallery, papering the streets with posters". it was arguably this very public display of his revolutionary imagery that gave them such power.
Douglas' media legacy has some diverse beneficiaries. the National Gallery's Grand Tour is turning the walls of buildings inside out - publicly displaying and in doing so democratising access to stunning works of art. artist Banksy too owes much to Douglas' trailblazing - it is the public nature of the graffiti artist's work that generates most conversation and debate around his anti-state messages.
if a picture truly is worth a thousand words, then Douglas spoke volumes. when browsing the commercial posters on display on the average UK highstreet, how many brands can say the same?
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