mediation

The Myth of Fragmentation: and the danger of failing to recognise that people haven't just moved, but that they've moved on

a Scout Trooper with a fragmentation grenade: has no bearing on the post other than the fragmentation reference but any excuse ... source

there's a very good opinion piece in this week's Adnews by MediaCom's head of implementation, planning and investment Nick Keenan. if you're a subscriber you can track it down here.

Keenan makes the smart observation that 'fragmemtation' is an overused and too simplistically deployed term: "It felt that unless you had worked out how to speak the new hybrid tongue of 'Tradigital' (my invented language of combined consumers) being spoken across new 'BIG' consolidated/integrated networks you as an advertiser were now hopelessly lost and would never see a mass audience again. We were told and believed we now must grapple with using multiple platforms within traditional media to reach the large numbers we once accessed in single channel environments"

source: Nick Keenan writing in Adnews 3.4.12

Keenan goes further, arguing quite correctly that not only do mass audiences exist, but they have more mass than ever before: "Facebook has over 80% of all people 25-54 ... Google has 96% of all Australians online ... Put simply these examples along with others such as Amazon, YouTube, and eBay have enormous mass audiences, the likes of which we have never seen."

source: Nick Keenan writing in Adnews 3.4.12

whilst its very true to say that mass audiences still very much exist, and indeed exist with more mass than they have ever had (media consumption is increasing overall), there is a very real and present danger that we fail to recognise that people haven't just moved (from Nine to Facebook or Ten to YouTube), but that they have very much moved on too ...

they are no longer the 'passive massive' (as Faris would put it) that they were when mass audiences existed in the broadcast stream, a mass audience on Facebook or YouTube may be as big or bigger than a Nine or Seven audience, but they (1) behave very differently and (2) have very different expectations of brands ...

a mass audience on Facebook or YouTube is in control of what they watch, listen, or interact with. it was Clay Shirky (I think) who observed that whilst in the long tail of content the average quality of what gets made goes down, the average quality of what gets consumed goes up. just landing our content in the new mass platforms is no guarantee that they'll be viewed let alone interacted with or passed on.

our expectations of what we want in exchange for our attention have changed. the old mass contract stated that if you give us 30 seconds of your attention we will entertain / educate / inform you. the new mass contract is essentially the same, albeit with an extended list of services (utility for example), only now we have a lot more to choose from and less attention to give.

so I'd counter that fragmentation is one of the most profound shifts in our industry right now - but its not fragmentation to platforms (big audiences, as Keenan rightly points out, are getting bigger rather than nicher); rather its a fragmentation towards individual moments and decisions ... to watch or not, or pass on or not. that's crazy fragmentation that introduces more than a little chaos into our mass delivery systems.

yes the mass audience has moved, but more importantly ... they've moved on.

Coles and Woolies' Death Star moment: the beginnings of the brand rebellion in Australia's Supermarket Store Wars

The more you tighten your grip, Woolies and Coles, the more brands will slip through your fingers

my return from a rather long winter blogging break has been greeted with the glad tidings that some brands have finally chosen to take a stand against the big two Australian supermarkets.  Adnews reports today that Glenn Cooper, boss of Coopers Brewery has described Coles and Woolies as being the "killers of Aussie brands".  Cooper went further:

“Blatantly, Coles and Woolworths are not brand builders, they are brand destroyers … it’s harsh, but they are not about building brands, they are just about turning over quickly.”

SMH only last week reported that this is an opinion recently echoed by no less than Heinz' chief financial officer and executive vice-president Arthur Winkleblack.  in a briefing to US analysts on the company's first-quarter earnings, Winkleblack specifically name-checked the Australian supermarket sector and blamed them for an erosion of its margins.  sentiments echoed by Heinz' chairman and chief executive Bill Johnson:

''There is no doubt that in terms of retail environment, the Australian market is the worst market, and ultimately the people that will pay the price over there are the consumers because products will ultimately be devalued to address the price points that customers are asking us to address ... So the consumer is going to ultimately be the big loser in Australia.'' 

the supermarket's argument is manifold and includes the rationale that this is all in consumers' interest - a Coles spokesman, in response to Winkleblack's comments, stated that "We agree with Heinz's comments that companies need to be competitive to ensure the best outcomes for customers."

but consumers don't benefit from Supermarket competition.  the concensus of an April opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald was that consumers - if they see any benefit at all - see it only in the short term.  Academic Angela Paladino commented that:

"Price wars squeeze out marginal players and change the composition of the market. Here fewer competitors seek to enter an unattractive market that is dependent on low price for success, and smaller competitors exit the market as a result of the inability to make a profit. Others may be taken over, for example the 2009 acquisition of Macro Foods by Woolworths. This has a long-term impact on consumer choice, with shoppers left in a market comprised of fewer players with greater power."

Nick Stance, Chief Executive of Choice agreed:

"The market shares of Coles and Woolworths allow them to negotiate hard with their supply chain. In fact many suppliers report they have little choice but to accept terms offered even if that makes their business barely viable ... Sometimes the benefit of lower costs is passed on to the consumer through promotions, but promotions are temporary and do not in themselves create sustainable competition ... The ''price war'' is a phoney conflict, not least because the big players usually match each others' prices."

there are only two winners in Coles and Woolies' Store Wars; and that's Coles and Woolies.  brands have and continue to exist at the mercy of these distribution Death Stars.  now Coopers and Heinz have come out of the supermarket closet.  it's just two brands.  but that's two more brands than a few months ago.

Coopers and Heinz's coming out is important.  brands standing up to Coles and Woolies is important, because the dominance of Coles and Woolies is hurting brands ... not least in expectations of media investment...

I've sat in more meetings that I care to recall where there have been two invisible seats at the table.  in discussions where the spectre of supermarket's expectations for media investment loom large over marketers, marketers dependent on these two Death Stars for significant - and often increasing - distrutions volumes.

it's a sweeping generalisation to say that Australian brands are too dependent on the broadcast interruption model (of which TV spot advertising is the main solution) for their marketing needs.  never-the-less its a generalisation that I believe is true.  a reliance on this 20th Century marketing model isn't just down to the pressures and expectations of Coles and Woolies on media spends, but they sure as hell play a very significant part: too many brands over-invest in broadcast interruption because its what supermarkets want and expect to see on those brands' media schedules.  supermarkets' expectations are holding back brands' media innovation potential.

but the effect and influence isn't limited to consequences above-the-line (a term which I hate but I'll run with anyway).  prices are down.  great.  but its not the supermarkets funding this price decrease - it's brands.  manufacturers are paying for prices to be down with their below-the-line (ditto) budgets.  and because prices are down for good manufacturers will be paying for them to be down ... for good.

The Order of Coopers - owned and earned media curating a community for the brand

what is phenomenal in this context are the levels of innovation that do get out of markets and agencies' doors and into the world.  despite the vast majority of bought media investment being diverted to an outdated (and actually never that well proven model), Coopers - for example - have built a hugely utilised online site and community.  they are investing in owned and earned media that are building a community with direct links to their brand and business that side-steps the supermarkets' Death Stars.

brands, it would seem, are starting to have had enough.  the Supermarket's weaponary have become simply too powerful to ignore.  to paraphrase Senator Organa, 'the more you tighten your grip Coles and Woolies, the more brands will slip through your fingers'.

the rebellion, I very much hope, has begun.

full disclosure: I work as a media strategist for several brands that have distribution through Coles and Woolworths in Australia.  the above comments reflect my, and my opinions alone.  the advice and recommendations I make to brands take these - as well as other - opinions and considerations into account.

An opportunity not to be missed: what Tiffany Shlain's 'Connected' means for brands as the internet transforms us and our world

so last night, thanks to Disco Davo (thanks Disco), I was lucky enough to be amongst a cinema of people gathered to watch an Aussie-first and unique screening of a movie called Connected: An Autoblogography about Love, Death & Technology.

organised through social media club sydney in conjunction with AMP's AmplifyFestival, Tiffany Shlain's (@tiffanyshlain) film is a narrative on how the internet is fundamentally changing us, interspersed with a personal account of a year in her life.  the result is a fascinating polemic on the nature of our interconnectedness as a species.

much was well-trodden territory for this blog ... but there were two aspects I hadn't heard before that I found particularly interesting.  I hope that Shlain won't object to me sharing here...

one, Shlain described how in her father's book 'The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image' he made the connection between how the invention of the written / printed word had coincided with the rise of men in social, political and commercial circles.  he argued that this was because the written word is processed by the left side of the brain, which is more male.

last century's 'iconic revolution' (Shlain's term) - which saw imagery and images became a more predominant form of communication - coincided with increased predominance of females in society.  images are processed by the right side of the brain which is ... more female.

the interesting conclusion is that the internet, with it's heady mix of words and images, is processed more of less equally by both sides of the brain, and is therefore a mass-communication channel that isn't biased towards one gender or the other...

the other aspect I found fascinating is how the brain and our body chemistry is predisposed to both connectedness and the pleasure hit we get from the stream of information on the internet.  when we connect, we release oxytocin - which evokes feelings of contentment, reductions in anxiety, and feelings of calmness and security.  Wikipedia notes that 'many studies have already shown a correlation of oxytocin with human bonding, increases in trust, and decreases in fear' ... so the more we connect, the less anxious we are, and the internet allows us to feel more connected than ever before...

dopamine is released when we experience something pleasurable, and encourages us to keep performing the action ad-infinitum (as there's no diminishing return from dopamine).  Shlain's interesting observation is that - as dopamine is released when we get a 'hit' of new information ... we are becoming addicted to the internet (or more specifically the infinite content that it gives us access to)

if you get a chance to catch the movie I urge you to do so ... it's a fascinating and beautiful experience.  and it left me thinking about the role of brands and advertising in Shlain's interconnected and interdependent world.  from one perspective advertising and media fuelled the worst of the excessive consumption society that is now placing sustained pressure on our environment...

...but on the other I can't help but think that Shlain's hypothesis presents us with a clear opportunity, an opportunity defined by a simple question that I can't shake.  in an inter-dependent world where billions of people increasingly connect, communicate and coordinate as communities, why do we continue to so readily seek to engage with individuals?

in an inter-dependent world, the only thing that matters is shared agendas and communities of interest.  and more specifically, what matters most is an opportunity for brands to fuel - rather than interrupt - their interconnectedness and interdependence.

its utility, but its more than that ... its potentially brands becoming a key and fundamental part of a dopamine and oxytocin-fuelled revolution in how we live on earth...  it's tantalising enough to warrant asking what you would want of the brands with which you work?  ...  for them to be part of humanity's next giant leap, or reconciled to history as part of the iconic revolution that for a while so influenced our culture and behaviour?

Running away to the Circus: Dispatches from The Festival of Commercial Creativity - Charles Wigley and BBH's Anti-Wind Tunnel Movement

"getting medieval on our ass" was what Charles Wigley, chairman of BBH, promised the circus audience last week, as he got "back to the core of what we do with big brands and set processes".  he asked a simple question ... how can we spend our time better?

Provocation

Wigley argued that just like how at some point all cars started to look the same - we've done exactly the same thing to our industry ...he refers to it as the anti wind-tunnel marketing movement, and there's a rather nifty presentation embedded below (via a post on BBH labs).

The Anti Wind Tunnel Marketing Movement, by Charles Wigley

View more presentations from Mel Exon

he observes that we talk differentiation, but that 90% of the stuff we "burden the earth with" is the same; "we are churning out similarities" - he suggests two reasons:

(1) we all follow largely the same (consumer insight-oriented) process: "professionalism has led to homogenization and systematisation of the creative process ... a model of creative development that traps us all" ... the result being that most brands approach the same questions with the same people in same way

(2) we consistently fail to ask the question: is it different?  we focus so exclusively on relevance that we fail to think about whether our work is true or different. a point summed up rather neatly with this still from the above slideshow.

Examples

of ads that are indistinguishable from each other...

Banking - NAB, Westpac and St George
SUVs - Jeep, BMW and VW
Cereal - Coco Pops, Milo and Sultana bran

(NB I'm trying to track these down on YouTube but can't find many / any of them - I'll keep trying and post when I do)

Wigley's simple and elegant point is that because the briefs are all the same, the results are the same. this extends into digital solutions too ... there's a very real danger that advertising will eat itself.

the cliches are now so ingrained that adverts can be created that that play with the established conventions of the category and market...

Reasons

why this is happening...?

part of the problem is that lack of tangible USPs.  Wigley argues that we now rely on ESP (emotional selling propositions) to market brands, and so the holy grail becomes the key consumer insight.  but we all have the same products in the same category marketing to the same people with the same process to the consumer insights - and the ideas they generate - are all the same.  we are, as Wigley puts it, "dancing on a pinhead when dealing with these briefs".

But does it matter?

well yes it does.  when we create parity communications with similar insights "we're removing the cost efficiency of real brand differentiation".  we accept a situation where the biggest media budget will always win, a flight to a centre-ground where the biggest spenders remain the biggest spenders and innovation and ideas and differentiation and engagement and adding utility and entertainment to the world through are communications become a quaint dalliance that the communications industry had with itself and consumers at the turn of the 21st Century.  media becomes a commodity not an opportunity, a barrage of impacts not a platform for engagement.  could the last people to leave the industry please turn out the lights.

Solutions

Wigley rightly observes that we all use the same brands in presentations...  Nike, Google, Uniqlo.  what do they have in common?  they are brand leaders not consumer followers.  So ... how do we put differentiation back into the ideas we generate and the work we produce?  Wigley offers ten solutions...

1. use insights from multiple points of view and disciplines ie go beyond the consumer insight.  lead don't follow consumers.  focus on brand - Wiley quoted Siddarth Banerjee, Unilever's Regional Marketing Director of Asia: "what is the single most important part of the marketing mix that is essential to ensure a better chance of success in the marketplace? ... ownership of a point of view" ... Wigley describes this as the main distinction between a convention brands and a conviction brands, and observes that the fastest growing brands are in posession of energized differentiation - in that they have vision, innovation and dynamism
2. Is it different? is the first and last question we should ask
3. remember that not all consumers are created equal.  there are leaders, followers and the rest.  followers are cheaper and easier to find
4. test in the real world not in the test tube (echoing what Marvin Chow discussed when he shared Chrome's marketing strategies earlier in the session).  get work up and online and evaluate it based on actual not expected performance
5. bring back regional test market (was good to see a Yorkshire Television logo up on the screen)
6. look to the future not the past.  "what's the foresight not the insight?" ... Innocent saw colourful fun health coming and built their brand for the future that was to embrace it
7. hurry up.  what are we so often waiting for?  speed up the process.  Wigley refers to Colin Powell's 40%-70% rule: if you have information to the extent that you're less than 40% likely to make the right decision then get more information.  but if you collect information beyond 70% chance of success you're likely to get it wrong - you'll have too much information and the situation will have changed.  in short act whilst you have more than 40% but less than 70% chance of success
8. value inexperience as much as experience ... we've become too expert in sometimes very niche categories
9. put judgement back into the job spec - he quoted one marketing director who after being presented to by the agency said "I absolutely love this work, let's go straight to research"
10. restructure the organisation.  Wigley suggested that the difference between single brand companies vs multi-brand companies was that in the latter people don't work specifically on brands, but rather are sharing the same info with all the brands in the company.  sometime you need new structures and groups to create differentiation - for example First Direct or Unilever siloing Axe into an entirely separate unit

Wigley left us with this delightful observation - courtesy of Mitchell and Webb - into how advertisers approach communicating to women and men.  not sure how it related to the topic in hand, but made the Circus crowd chuckle...

for more information on BBH's Anti-Wind Tunnel thinking you can visit BBH LABS - I recommend that you regularly do so ... as labs go, these ones rock