Are you surfing the web or swimming in print?

My recent column in CW (Communication World) magazine is the beginning of what has become an introspective view of where we are headed with all this digital content seeping out of every pore. I borrowed the headline from a campaign for the magazine industry that uses the word ‘swimming’ (in print) to compare it to what they suggest is a less engaging online experience of surfing.

The point I suggest is that we are creatures (and should be connoisseurs) of both worlds.

Download the article here.

The follow up to it will take it further – dealing with ‘Content Snacking!’

If you think that’s a fascinating phrase, consider the phrase ‘Micro Boredom.’ I had not heard of it before. Apparently it had been used by Motorola a few years back. 

 

Why shout, when you could communicate?

A few months ago I blogged about a street vendor (left)  in Trafalgar Square, and some interesting things he told me about ‘making a statement.’

I expanded that idea into an article that appeared in the latest issue of Communication World. For those of you who are not IABC members, here is a link to the PDF.

I wrestled between  givinng this article the headline”Stop shouting and I will pay attention!” and “Silent Messages in an Over-communicated World.” The editors settled for “Picture This!“

Let me know what you think of the article.

 

Cell phones, fast cars and iPods

It’s a natural fit in marketing: products go after products in the quest for smart targeting. It’s not your typical sponsorship.

Take this story about Vodafone looking at Ferrari racing fans as a great target audience. Over 360 million viewers (a cumulative annual audience of 5.7 billion people in 2003) watched each Formula 1 race live. The Vodafone brand was on-screen for an average 20% of every race broadcast. So Ferraris have become a medium? Check it out here.

But see how another fast-car alliance works the other way around: Jaguar considers Mac users a viable target audience.

“Mac users are people that shape opinion; they use Macs to create,” said Stephenson. “They are independent thinkers that don’t follow, they lead.”.”

 

Bush-Kerry Political Cartoon boosts viral concept

The Web cartoon, also referred to as the ‘bi-partisan toon’ will give non marketing people a new look at the potential of viral marketing.

Produced by Jib Jab media, a Santa Monica-based animation studio to promote itself (and not a political message), it is one of the most entertaining takes on the present political brand war raging in the U.S. It is slightly irreverant, but the short film captures the campaign bullet points very well, in under 2 minutes.

 

Brand Stories

This post appears on the official Global PR Blog Week site.

Blogging is new to many of us who never imagined that something akin
to gossip and story telling would impact deeply entrenched professions
such as advertising, PR and journalism. But it has, giving rise to a
journalism effect that fills the gaps of credibility in branding,
politics, journalism, and mass marketing. My topic is marketing
communications. As I noted in my backgrounder the people at the periphery have a voice –and the reach— that those at the center once enjoyed. 

Our modern variants of gossip –marketing communications (which is
all about telling our commercial stories) and public relations (which
is used to narrate particular angles of a story) – have quietly
eclipsed the corporate video, the press conference, the product launch,
and the celebrity-studded TV commercial. The most interesting seem to
be the unofficial storytellers–the ‘unauthorized’ corporate bloggers,
the ‘self embedded’ journalists-blogger posting stories from the war zone, the ‘citizen journalists’ reporting for OhMyNews in South Korea, and the ‘un-ad agencies’ such as Crispin Porter + Bogusky. Even a group of consumers who release viral content for benign reasons or some form of activism have an audience.

These communicators at the periphery have realized that people and
institutions at the center –the corporate icons and the traditional
gatekeepers— have lost their credibility. Notice how it’s not just the
Ken Lays and Martha Stewarts of this world who are being put away. Also
being sidelined are information and image brokers from Tom Brokaw
(whom, we learn, is losing audiences), McCann-Erickson
(a powerful global advertising network/conglomerate which is losing
accounts to hot shops.) And yes, even newspapers have lost their
credibility, as a recent Pew Research study shows.

Whose brand stories will people listen to? It depends on who
provides more relevant content, rather than who crafts the best press
release. Consider the GlaxoSmithkline ‘story.’ No matter how you spin it, when New York Attorney General filed a lawsuit against their product, Paxil, the patients took to the message boards.

Or take BBC journalist, Stuart Hughes, who’s Iraq ‘audio blog’ on the Web,
is riveting journalism, more so, because it is not an official news
report filed through Hughes’ employer. These are seemingly isolated
examples of how spin, brand management (managed by one-time ‘brand
guardians,’) damage control, and intermediation are not always what the
audience wants.

This is not necessarily a pessimistic view of communications. We don’t have to look to Blogs per se
for the answer. The concept of blogging, of transparency, and allowing
multiple contributions is being embraced by the advertising and
marketing world, even as we speak.

Larry Light, the chief marketing officer of McDonald’s proposed a curious marketing idea last
month. He called it ‘brand journalism’ which is not a very accurate
label for what he was proposing, since it is neither journalism, nor
branding. “As a mass brand…we marketed a mass message through the mass
media appealing to masses of undifferentiated consumers,” he said. But
“customers will not accept monotonous, repetition of the same
simplistic message. They want a dynamic, creative chronicle.” Mr. Light
was not overtly referring to online ‘chronicles’ but he did have in
mind the rich tapestry of multiple opinions, and daily inputs to this
chronicle: “It means telling the many facets of our brand story every
day in 119 countries.”

And in the face of those he warned as the ‘positionistas’ (those brand advocates who defend the ‘positioning’ theory
of the one-voice, one-look, and one-brand image) he said that
McDonald’s would redefine its brand communication in a “non
advertising-centric world” where like the tapestries of old, this thing
called ‘brand journalism’ would be an “endless story” when unfurled
over time.

Welcome to the non advertising-centric world of marketing communications!

 

Integrated Marketing and Microsoft?

Microsoft, appears to want Ad agencies to push the envelope, as was reported in Adverblog.

The press release from Redmont talks of “the paint, canvas, and technical support” it will lend to Creative Directors of agencies who want to use “sight, sound, motion and interactivity” to reach customers via integrated marketing campaigns.

To make that possible, MSN launched what it called a ‘Creative Connection Program’ involving the tools and talent of MSN, plus an accountability study, and a media tour to showcase the work.

Buried in the release is a quote from Kathy Delaney, managing partner and executive creative director for Deutsch NY, who strikes an interesting note. “Our connection with MSN allows us to do it without any handcuffs,” Delaney is quoted as saying. That’s almost like saying that Microsoft initiatives typically DO have strings attached!

 

Branding from the inside out.

People who dabble in branding probably know all the arguments that CEOs and non-marketing folk come up with when a new external brand strategy is being planned. Internal branding is even harder. In fact the two are interdependent.

I sat in a packed room today (at the IABC international conference that I have been reporting on for the past 2 days) and listened to a case study on internal branding at Qwest Telecom, and thought this was the most moving inside-out campaign I had ever heard of.

If you’re in one of the states that Qwest serves, you’d have probably heard of the “Spirit of Service” theme. Most people would dismiss it as ‘branding foo foo.’ The presenter, a marketing VP named Mark Pitchford, showed us why the brand turnaround was more than a pretty new slogan.

The ‘Spirit of Service’ was the title of a painting done of a lineman, one Angus McDonald, who went out in the blizzard of 1988 to fix the phone line, and also rescued passengers trapped in a stalled train. Apparently there are thousands of employees who are children and grandchildren of people who worked in the original phone company, and they share their stories with the CEO, via email. It’s these ‘spirited’ stories that are worked into the marketing. How do they make employees such a powerful part of the business strategy? Pitchford shared 5 principles that are worth following for any internal branding campaign:

1. Give employees the information they need and it will make them passionate about the company. The CEO often emails employees and responds to each email that comes in –some 80,000 over a two year period.
2. Build employee advocacy by giving everyone in the organization an opportunity to directly impact the bottom line. Qwest employees are part of a labor union, but they still volunteered time for grass-roots marketing.
3. Tap into your employees’ minds. Encourage them to share their ideas.
4. Use measurement to thoroughly understand the level of engagement, and the build on it.
5. Celebrate accomplishments. Qwest always rewards employees for going above and beyond the call of duty for customers.

Interesting sidebar: All models used in Qwest branding are employees. Gives deeper meaning to ‘employee communications,’ doesn’t it?

 

Branding, Texas Style…

Franchise Times magazine has just published my article on Schlotzsky’s, the Austin, TX based sandwich deli that is rolling out Wi-Fi. What was amazing about this chain, is that they were willing to go out on a limb, and offer Wi-Fi access free in the restaurants (and not just in restaurants, as I discovered.)

I interviewed the PR Director for this, and she was very convinced that the restaurant experience is much more than the product you buy over the counter. There is another story in here (my article was from a technology perspective) about bundling an intangible service with a tangible product, and creating brand equity.

Speaking of which, I just experienced the branding that no ad, and no TV commercial can achieve on another Texas product: Southwest Airlines. The flight attendant, after some mandatory landing announcements, asked those who were from a particular company to raise their hands. He then announced that these wonderful folks were being flown in to San Diego, as a reward for achieving a sales goal. The passengers broke into applause, as they often do on SWA.

It struck me that there was probably nothing in the employee handbook to say a flight attendant should or should not give another company a plug in front of some 200 passengers. But because of that little gesture, there is a high probability that a lot of us passengers flying for business reasons, would be booking our flight on that airline again.

 

Branding the experience

I’m working on an article about branding through experience. This may not seem like a new idea, but interacting with my colleagues in advertising, I know ad agencies still spend an inordinate amount of time on branding as a media exercise, rather than a people exercise.

I know of many examples from Virgin Atlantic to Southwest Airlines where the ads are not the major part of the branding. But I just came across this example I thought you brand-concerned readers would find fascinating.

It’s a cheap product that’s priced less than a cup of coffee. (So it’s not in the Starbucks league, even though that brings up an interesting sidebar on brand experience.) There is no celebrity association and no connection with sports. Or racing. Or Hollywood. Yet, it’s probably the first name you’d associate with when you hear ‘instant noodles.’

That’s right, it’s Raumen noodles! No, that’s not a typo. (Check the site here for the original spelling)

As for the ‘experience’ check this AP story. It’s about how people stand in line for over an hour to get into the Shidome Ramen restaurant, in Tokyo, where a chef dramatizes the noodle preparation in front of an ‘audience.’

As for Virgin, I like how the ads play on the experience. Check the card-insert in Business2.0 designed to look like the passenger instruction card in the seat pocket. It’s a warning to Upper Class passengers recommending they not host pajama parties in the new, spacious sleep deck. You can hardly call this an ‘ad!’ Take a look at the sleeping section here! If I flew Upper Class, I’ll want to party too!

 

The Untouchables

Advertisers have been getting off the hook. But for how long more? They are a powerful group, but if they are reading the signs, they should not kid themselves that they are untouchable. Even Oprah is under the microscope. Some marketers have begun to see the light. The Virgin group, for instance, notorious for controversial advertising (the Bennetton shortcut to fame), has changed its tack in the recent campaign for Virgin Mobile.

If you might recall, Virgin Mobile used what it called the “nominal gay reference” about someone arrested thrown into prison. The ad featured a burly prisoner asking another to pick up a bar of soap on the floor. In the late nineties, Virgin Cola dared the FTC with the same-sex kiss commercial. Abercrombie & Fitch was forced to discontinue its Christmas catalog after parent groups protested its use of sex to sell to young people.

But Janet and Madonna changed that for everyone –including the one-time untouchable, Howard Stern. You can tell Advertising Age is all upset about this. In the April 5 issue, it declares that:

“If the mainstream media opts to placate a moral majority, then younger and/or more sophisticated consumers will make their own choices –for cable, satellite, radio, the Internet, pay-per-view.”

The article is full of the standard ‘let the market decide’ bias. Sure, I like it when the market decides what’s viable or not, but the insinuation in the article is that the government is bringing the slam-the-evildoers act to the marketing and advertising world. It’s full of references to ‘the bid to cleanse content,’ ‘cultural overlords,’ and the ‘moral majority’ (as oppsed to the “more sophisticated consumers.”)

And get this: the article on the front page is carried over to page 34, with the lead in titled “Puritanism.” I bet you this is a hack job. It could very well be a ‘white paper’ for an advertising lobby against the FTC. They frame the debate as the “traditionalists” vs the “nonconformists,” “the moral majority vs the edgy elite.”

Great copy, Ad Age. Edgy elite! That’s a new one.