mediation

Quid Pro Quo and the generosity of our age: how engagement and reward are the new reach and frequency

it may just be me, but I seem to have returned from my Easter adventures in TasVegas to a bit of a utility and relationship-building love in.  generosity, it seems, is all around...

first up, as reported in Contagious, is a trailer (above) for mobile game The Nightjar, an experience which places you alone in space and challenges you to escape using only sound. the app will use 3D sound and will be voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch of the parish of Sherlock Holmes.  all generously provided by the marketing efforts of Wrigley's 5 Gum and all very brilliant, but its what lies behind it that is even more intriguing...

AMV BBDO creative partner Thiago de Moraes explained to Contagious that The Nightjar is the first in a five-year (ie forever in marketing terms) effort to create 'The 5 Experience'.  combining film, art, fashion and music, the project aims to "create a new and unique experience for participants at every single touch point. the idea of The 5 Experience is to turn Wrigleys into an entertainment company as much as it is a company that makes gum ... [we're] going to create brilliant new sensorial experiences that people can take part in."

the 5 experience from Wrigley: we like

imagine that.  a company that makes gum deciding that its not - as far as marketing is concerned - in the business of making gum.  but is rather an entertainment company.  imagine the combined available marketing spend of Wrigley's 5 Gum being invested in entertainment utility for it's target audience.  if I was a competitor I'd be keeping the closest eye on how the 5 experience progresses.

next up, generosity knows no bounds from Turner's TruTV, who asked fans to rally to the 'Operation Repo' Facebook page.  in return they got nothing less than an entire episode made just for them.  AdAge reports that for the first time, a program has created a Facebook-only full-length episode as the fans' prize (for reaching 500,000 likes).

the Operation Repo facebook page.  reward fans for liking the show?  hell yeah!

it a significant gesture to existing and potential fans but also to Facebook.  the economics of the exercise must have had to shift, with the cost per viewer on Facebook being significantly higher than the equivalent CPV on broadcast TV.  but, as TruTV may have gathered, not all viewers are created equal.  they have, quite rightly, decided that the increased cost per view for a dedicated and advocating audience is more than worth it.

but wait, there's more.

the spirit of generosity is also alive and well with new media megaliths Google and Facebook, who in recent days have both launched outreach programs to agencies of all people.

Mumbrella reports that the Google Engage For Agencies program will see agencies and consultants looking to help clients with products such as AdWords and the Google Display advertising network get preferential support including training and events.

meanwhile, this month saw Facebook launch Facebook Studio.  the effort see's the social network create a platform on which creatives can share ideas, comment on (Facebook) campaigns and learn what it takes to create a successful FB brand page.

Facebook Studio - building bridges with agencies

aimed at ad agencies, PR firms and media strategy companies, creativityonline reports that the move is "a first step in a give-and-take dialogue between Facebook and the creative advertising world ... until now, Facebook has been mostly hands-off with agencies, letting them navigate the frequently changing Facebook waters without a compass" ... Blake Chandlee, head of Facebook's newly formed agency relations team commented that "we need to do a better job of engaging with agencies" ... this from the new head of new agency relations team.

from Wrigleys' efforts to entertain the young people of our planet and Operation Repo's reward of it's show's fans, to Google and Facebook's generous agency outreach and support programs, the spirit love and understanding (as Cher so eloquently put it) does seem to be all around at the moment.

the cynic might observe that these are nothing more than veiled attempts to influence an audience.  that Wrigleys just want to sell more gum.  that TruTV want more fans.  that Google and Facebook just want more ins with agencies to sell more of what they sell, to more clients, more often...

of course they do!

and that's absolutely fine.  in fact it's great.  because if a company want's me to buy more of their gum I'd rather they entertained me into it.  if a TV show want's me to like them on Facebook I'd rather they rewarded me for doing so.  and if Google and Facebook want me to be more effective at planning their wares by making me more familiar with what they have I'd rather they engaged me in and rewarded me for having a conversation about doing so.

because it's quid pro quo.  and it always has been.  and it always will be.  the game hasn't changed, but the currency has.  engagement and reward are the new reach and frequency.  and thank goodness for that.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The Expendables vs. Eat Pray Love vs. The World: lessons from Hollywood on content, sociability and adding value

it has been many moons since Mediation bemoaned Michael Bay's tirade against Paramount's marketing for the dire Transformers 2.  you can relive the magic of those crazy days here, but the point of the post was that advertising can't turn a bad product into a good one...

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

I made the point that some of the best marketing stories emerge when communications are a natural extension of product.  and that no one knows this better than movies...  Transmedia storytelling via the The Matrix, Cloverfield's Mystery Box marketing, The Dark Knight's Vote Harvey Dent ARG to name a few.

the last few weeks have continued the theme of the best of marketing initiatives emerging from Hollywood.  the above is for Universal's Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, an adaptation of the comic book series.  the whole marketing effort is pretty much text book.  there's an incredibly immersive iTrailer (you can put an i in front of anything these days) above, leading to an awesome website which - via its socialrama - is social to the extreme and which actively encourages remixing of the marketing material to propagate content and word of mouth.

the Scott Pilgrim movie website, or is it a comic book?  or a mash-up of both?

the socialness of Scott... a plethora of ways to share and engage across you nearest available social network

other recent marketing efforts have continued the innovative theme...  this glorious 'Call To Arms' trailer for The Expendables directly takes on the competition that is Julia Roberts' Eat, Pray, Love ...

the trailer observes that the likes of Twilight, Sex and the City and now Eat, Pray, Love, are taking over the cinema, and that this is men's last collective chance to take cinema back.  it makes the delightfully honest observation that the place to see The Expendables isn't "off your torrents but in a f***ing theatre (where violence belongs) ...if this loses to Eat, Pray, Love you don't deserve to be a man" - in the spirit of the movie, no punches pulled then.

The Expendables also brings us a genius innovative use of YouTube, following in the giant footsteps of Wario's Shake It and Cadbury's Round YouTube videos.

Hollywood seem to be learning fast.  illegal file sharing and the rise of better-than-cinema home entertainment (where you can enjoy movies sans other people talking and on a sofa) continue to threaten box-office revenues.  Hollywood need to innovate to keep people in cinemas.

but there's a further interesting angle on all of the above examples of Hollywood entertainment... in that they all start to slash the required marketing budget.  they all take advantage of the studios' owned and - predominantly via activation in social networks - earned media.

it's not unusual for a $150m movie to have a marketing budget of $100m+ ... anything that the studios take off their marketing budget goes straight back to the bottom line.  movies also have the double advantage of being content rich and very topical, there's a new and shininess which adds to their social appeal.

movie marketing is increasingly getting that marketing isn't about ensuring that as many of the target audience as possible are aware of a movie, rather its about creating value for enough of the right people and encouraging them to propagate your message.  the implicit promise... that the product you buy will live up to the marketing, is made explicit by marketing that adds value to a movie's audience before they've ever entered the cinema.

slash your marketing budget via content and sociability that adds value to potential customers.  sounds so easy that anyone could do it right?  so why aren't you?

Ideas not Impacts: what JibJab and MadMen can teach us about a world where multiple smaller ideas are better

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

so a little while back, Lauren sent me the attached clip showing us both and the rest of the Twitterpod here at PHD Australia as we'd be cast in MadMen.  it's pretty funny and pretty cool and anything that puts me in the same frame as Don Draper is to be welcomed.

but it got me thinking about how much this little video can tell us about the emerging media paradigm that's challenging brands, agencies and the media industry...  I think it can tell us a lot about idea-driven planning and the importance of doing multiple smaller things not fewer bigger things.  let me explain.

if you've worked in media as long as I you were probably taught that the role of media planners is to link three things together.  link the brand to the right media in order to reach enough of the right people, enough of whom will then do or think what the brand requires of them to make the media investment worthwhile.  a bit like this.

how I was taught: the right brand in the right media reaching enough of the right people

it's a model driven by impacts - the more impacts the better, which is all well and good.  but the above video JibJab video doesn't work like that at all.  the brand (MadMen) is there, but media is replaced with a platform - in this case the JibJab video utility / site - and the audience is replaced with the few individuals who get exposed to the video via the link that the originator sends...  so the model looks more like this.

how it think it is now: brands using platforms to plug ideas into networks of individuals

this is a model driven by ideas not impacts...  rather than having an audience who receive a message, we instead have a few individuals who engage with it.  and whilst on the face of it the overall impact is a lot less, this isn't necessarily the case - a few quick numbers...

in the first model let's say you deliver one million impacts.  at a click thru rate of 0.1% a you'll get about 1,000 people to click thru to the place or space a brand wants them to go (I appreciate that this misses the brand effect of the other 999,000 people who see the banner ad but run with it) ... the JibJab MadMen requires only 250 to make a video and send it to the three other friends who are in it reach the same number of people.

the emerging model also offers significant benefits.  the first is in targeting.  from a brand perspective, this model is a lot more likely to reach people who are into the product (in this case MadMen).  the second is the level of engagement with the content - and in this instance people are part of the content, which I'd suggest makes it pretty engaging.  the third is that it's inherently viral, the products of the model are things that people will want to share and propagate throughout their networks of friends and peers.

the challenge is that you simply don't reach enough people, but you can always amplify...  there's no reason why you couldn't use the one-to-many model to showcase certain videos, perhaps even as a promotion or competition mechanic.

there's a big implication too.  there's no way that this model replaces the scale and reach of the broadcast model, but that can't be ours to mourn...  if scale is what you're after then there's only two ways to get it.  either you have the best ideas (in the long tail of an ideas ecology the impact of the few biggest ideas will greatly exceed the individual impact of any of the majority of others), or you create more ideas.

in that context, screw fewer bigger better ... the best performing brands will be those that can scale the output of the quantity of their ideas.  a marketing effort spread across multiple smaller ideas will be better, and a great deal less risky, than the same effort invested in fewer bigger ideas.  not sure what Don would have to say about that...

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?