Anti-Social Advertisers

Why aren’t advertisers spending money on Social Media?

They know it’s popular. People now spend an average of around 7 hours a month on Social Networks with key target groups like young people using Social Media a lot more. And yet worldwide advertisers only spend just over 1% of their budgets on Social Media. They spend 50 times as much on TV.

Other research quoted by Scott Monty shows that marketers rate Social Media #4 in terms of ROI as a marketing channel but #6 in terms of budget allocation. Mass media is #7 in ROI but #4 in budget allocation.

Part of it is the newness of the medium. It took TV 26 years and a world war to overtake radio as a medium in terms of ad expenditure. And Social Networks only started 11 years ago with Friendster in 2002. But I don’t think that is all.

It is to do with the nature of the medium. Newspapers are primarily about information. Ads are a natural fit. They tell you something about the brand. Radio and TV’s role is entertainment. It took advertisers a while to realize this. Early ads were essential print ads brought to life. It was only when brands like Kodak and Timex discovered the power of narrative to entertain that the medium took off. Now all the best TV ads convey a message while entertaining you.

Social Media is essentially social (Duh!). It is about connecting with other people, being part of a community and sharing things. It is about conversations between people with shared interests. Advertisers find it hard to contribute to this.

We say that brands are like people but this is just a conceit. I don’t want to be friends or have a relationship with a brand in the way I do my human friends. So brands can rarely be a member of my Social Network. That doesn’t mean they can’t have a role. The best brands do. Red Bull is a curator for what I care about, providing material for my social group to form around. Oreo provides a forum for me to connect with other Oreo lovers in a lighthearted way.Converse allows me to show my creative counter-culture side. Starbucks continues its passion for coffee. As such they act more like they do as brands rather than using Social Media as a communications medium.

But the fact is that it is not an easy fit and we as advertisers are still finding our way. Until we do Social Media will stay the poor relation and not get its fair share of advertisers’ spending.

Why don't we ask more questions?

Nowadays in advertising we are exhort to engage our target in a conversation. For example Nick Moore from Wunderman gave a great talk at Cannes saying just this. Simlilarly Seth Godin exhorts us, “Conversations among the members of your marketplace happen whether you like it or not. Good marketing encourages the right sort of conversations.”

But how?

Our creative briefs are based on single-minded propositions. Our creative brings these alive and gets a message across. We measure the impact our message has in terms of reach and message recall.

Our aim is to tell people something about ourselves in the most creative and engaging way we can.

But is that how you’d start a conversation in real life?

No. You’d start by asking questions.

How are you doing?

How’s the new job going?

Did you see what Jennifer Lopez was wearing at the Oscars?

What about them Leafs?

Or as a particularly ineffective friend of mine used to say to girls in bars ‘What’s the word?’

So why don’t we ask more questions in advertising?

We know it works. Here are some great examples to inspire us. But we need more.

Wendy’s famously asked ‘Where’s the beef?’

Shirley Polykoff asked ‘Does she or doesn’t she?

Caramilk challenged us with “How do they get the caramel in the Caramilk bar?’

And Dove has asked us ‘ Grey or Gorgeous?’ and most recently – ‘Does retouching distrort your perception of beauty?’

Great examples. But there must be more out there. Please send me some and I’ll post them.

TV Advertising is Dead

Seems a lot of people are saying this 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 

But as an old school ad guy I'm been resisting the idea that TV is dead. And of course at one level it isn’t true. TV advertising is still over 40% of all ad spending and is projected to remain so. Young people still spend four times as much time watching TV as they do on Social Media. There'll be a need for mass advertising for some time yet.

But what interests me is the complete change in balance of interest creative teams have in it and other channels. A few years ago online advertising, events and social media were the poor cousins creatively. They were done by the promotional agency, the direct response agency or the PR agency. The creative teams at the ad agency would look down their noses at it. And I was with them. We threw in an ambient ad or an event but our heart was in the TV. But that has all changed. Creative teams at 'traditional' agencies are clamouring to do viral videos, events and other non-traditional approaches.

And I've had a change of heart too.

I recently asked my students (I teach creative advertising) to find ‘cool’ advertising ideas. Less than a quarter were regular TV ads. There are still some great TV ads out there they found – Direct TV and Honda CRV for example. But more, though still video in format, were viral or interactive videos e.g. the Guardian's 3 Little Pigs ad, Smart's Water's use of Jennifer Aniston (though I don't know who got the better deal) the UK’s anti-knife campaign or Skittles “Touch the Rainbow”.  

But the really interesting ones were not even lead by video.

Take NAB’s Canned Grand Prix winning campaign from Australia. People believed the banks there were all in a cosy relationship so NAB publicly broke up with them using advertising, social media, PR. It actually broke through Twitter.

And promotions and events are now cool. Take this Cannes award winner for Bing and Jay-Z which uses every channel possible to engage people. Or these variations on the flash mob idea: the Budweiser Flash Fans and the Nike Catch the Flash.

Or this ad which uses You Tube perfectly. I won’t give away the brand as that will give away the ending but check it out.

And Facebook doesn’t have to be sad ads about finding a mate near where you live as this campaign for Mix FM shows.

And as they say on Creativity.com ‘then there’s this’. Is it advertising? I don't know but I don't care either.

Why are my students impressed?

Simple.

Firstly they are great ideas whatever the channel.

Secondly they are winning awards. Many of the campaigns mentioned above are Cannes award winners. And some of the most interesting winning camapigns are interactive. Take Tribal’s Carousel ad for Philips. Or Dove’s Evolution.

And Canadian agencies are doing well in this area. Many of the above examples are Canadian. BBDO won Strategy’s agency of the year lead by non-traditional campaigns. A good friend of mine Siobhan McCarthy presented some BBDO ads to my students. The four campaigns she chose were all non-traditional: the Cannes winning Rotisserie Channel they developed for Swiss Chalet , as well as the Skittles campaign already mentioned, Tropicana Arctic Sun and BBDO Proximity’s M&M’s Find Red.  She could also have mentioned Gillette’s Personal Grooming campaign (also here).

A few years ago I could never have created a list like this of non-traditional ads I admire. Now its easy. And I've undoubtedly missed out some great examples - if I've missed your favourite let me know.

The truth is that the exciting creative opportunities exist in non-traditional media nowadays. And to that extent TV advertising is dead.

All for a Good Cause

Are you getting a bit tired of all these goody-goody advertising campaigns? I am.


Take Hellman’s Mayonnaise for example. It recently won the Cassies Grand Prix – the Cassies are Canada’s Advertising Effectiveness Awards. Their campaign involved creating community gardens in cities and later promoting local food.

All very worthy – it’s a Good Cause.

And Hellman’s isn’t the first to gain the Cassies approval. Last year the Grand Prix winner was Sun Chips for their promotion of their green production and packaging. And in 2007 it was Dove for the Campaign for Real Beauty.

Now part of all this is guilt reduction by the juries (that’s the last Cassies award I’m ever going to win). They feel better about working in advertising if they can feel we are making the world a better place and so they vote for campaigns like this.

But that isn’t all of it. These campaigns work. That’s the whole point of the Cassies. Hellman’s mayonnaise increased its brand share from 24% to 29% when it advertised this way. Sun Chips and Dove similarly proved their in-market success.

Now we are in a period of marketing when the brand is all and the brand is mostly defined by its values and beliefs rather than its product performance. The fact is there is little to choose between most brands in terms of their performance. So we end up choosing on more intangible things – like whether we feel it is a brand for me because of what it believes in. And what it believes in is demonstrated by what it does e.g. Urban Gardens.

And there’s another factor which I’ve talked about before and that’s positive consumer activism. I drive a hybrid at least partially to encourage the manufacturers to invest in these kind of products. It certainly isn’t to save money on gas. I’d have to drive it for over 8 years to do that. And I stop at Sunoco for gas rather than Esso because at least they’re trying to be more environmentally responsible. So by buying Hellman’s I’m encouraging that attitude – as opposed to Miracle Whip’s punk rock “I will not tone it down”.

But I’m starting to feel manipulated. But the link of Community Gardens to Hellman’s is somewhat tenuous. Yes Hellman’s is ‘Real’ in that it is made from natural ingredients but it isn’t local. And they had a total of only 5 gardens, each with 12 plots that consumers could apply for. They probably spent several times the cost of the plots advertising their largesse in creating them.

You wonder how deep these beliefs and values go. As we know Dove is made by Unilever that also produces Axe – hardly a model of enlightened views of female beauty.

I’ll still go with Hellman’s for now. Like I said about Sunoco, at least they’re trying. And they are putting some money in. But I am starting to look a bit harder at them and other Good Cause advertisers to see how real their commitment is.

Who's brand is it anyway?

Pity poor Howard Schultz. With imagination, skill and hard work he builds one of the great new brands of recent years – worth $3.3 billion as a brand Starbucks is one of the most valuable 100 brands in the world according to Interbrand. And yet when he tries to change the logo on his brand all he gets is grief.

As one user says on the website "Who's the bonehead in your marketing department that removed the world-famous name of Starbucks Coffee from your new logo? This gold card user isn't impressed!"

And he isn’t the first to get into trouble. Gap recently had the embarrassment of proposing a changed logo and then having to change their minds. And Tropicana had similar consumer backlash to a pack change. And who can forget New Coke.

Tropicana responded to the criticisms and reversed the change because as Neil Campbell, president of Tropicana North America, said they came from some of “our most loyal consumers.”

The fact is Howard Schultz doesn’t own the Starbucks brand any more. He may own the trade mark but the brand’s consumers believe it belongs to them and you do something they don’t like at your peril.

As Schumpeter says in the Economist ‘Much of the rage in the blogosphere is driven by a sense that “they” (the corporate stiffs) have changed something without consulting “us” (the people who really matter). This ... reflects the sense that brands belong to everyone, not just to the corporations that nominally control them.’

Smart companies make use of this. Take for example the tendency for consumers to give their favourite brands nicknames. Smart companies go with the flow and adopt the names themselves. For example take Disney, Coke , Pepsi, Mini, FedEx, Bud, and Stoli.

But it is hard.

I worked on Campbell’s Soup. This is a well loved brand that occupies a space in people’s minds that Ries and Trout would be proud of. It is what love give to your children to show you love and care, particularly when they are ill. Deep archetypal analysis gave its essence as Mother’s Loving Touch.

The most popular ad amongst consumers was one called Foster Child. In this commercial a child is brought to a new foster home and is unhappy and ill until his new foster mom brings him Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup. The boy says “my mom used to give me this.” The foster mom replies “So did mine.” Cue tears all round. But it did nothing for sales. It reinforced what people already knew.

To get more sales we either had to make more kids sick or find a different role for the brand as an everyday healthy meal. We did ads that presented a modern view of the family with messages about low fat and servings of vegetables. These ads did drive sales. We won a Cassies award to prove it.

Most were very popular with consumers, but one got complaints. We called it Yummy Mummy. In it a kid says to his friend “Your mom’s hot”. The friend replies “You’re so dead.” Innocuous enough but it drew the wrath of quite a few loyal users, who felt it didn’t portray the right family values. Interestingly they didn’t complain to Advertising Standards Canada. They complained to Campbells. I read this to say they weren’t offended in a broad sense. They just didn’t think their brand should act in this way. Campbells took their concerns seriously and stopped running the ad – we had plenty of others in the campaign they loved.

But the lesson is clear you don’t own the brand any more. Its users have a major stake as well.

It can be OK to move it in new directions. We did so with Campbell’s and we did with another brand I worked on. Tetley Bitter is a British icon of a beer, but in the 80s was suffering as lagers were growing. We created advertising that took the brand in a new direction and appealled to young people – the big beer drinkers. We also tested it with loyal older drinkers. They didn’t like the ads but I’ll never forget what they said. They were glad we were doing it because it was keeping their brand alive and introducing it to a new generation of drinkers who could then come to enjoy the wonderful product as much as them.

So you can change things, but only with the consumer’s permission.

There is no such thing as a new idea?

Separated at Birth

 

Pedigree?



  

Birds?



I saw a great commercial recently. It’s for Pedigree Dog Food and was done in Canada by TBWA. Essentially it shows dogs in very slow motion jumping in the air catching kibble. OK so it’s been around for a while but I’m slow. I loved it, though did worry about the level of branding – it could have been for any dog food.

But then I came across a music video called Birds, made by Pleix for a band called Vitalic. It too shows dogs “flying” through the air in super slow motion. It was made in 2006, clearly before the Pedigree ad. It is remarkably similar. It seems Pedigree has a twin.

Assuming the creators of the Pedigree ad had seen the Birds film, my first thought was what a rip off. I felt somehow cheated. It wasn’t as original as I had thought. And indeed it isn’t.

But then I thought some more about it.

First there is a great history of advertising taking ideas from art and repurposing them for commercial gain. John Everett Millais’s painting “Bubbles" was used by Pears Soap way back in the 19th Century. Budweiser’s "Whassup" was based on a short film entitled "True" by Charles Stone III. Even Ridley Scott’s "1984" for Apple owes a lot to his earlier Blade Runner.

So it doesn’t necessarily matter that they have used an existing idea. After all it wasn’t another client’s campaign they were using as inspiration. As many others have said “There is no such thing as a new idea".

The psychologist Brown said in "Social Psychology" in 1965

“So good an idea is never invented. The antecedents of the authors we have discussed have also their antecedents, and in the end, we find, the idea seems always to have existed. What has changed is the precision of its statement and the implications which are developed” p604. (Quoted in The Accidental Statistician.)



What’s more the creative team have taken the idea and given it a new meaning. In the original the dogs were flying to the music, with no particular reason given. In the Pedigree they have chosen to take off because they love the food so much they want to catch it in their mouths.

So overall I don’t feel so bad. A little disappointed maybe, but still a great ad (though my branding concerns are reinforced now I know it was designed for a different purpose originally).

I also hope that they gave credit to the originators – maybe they used them to make the ad. I hope so. Pears, Budweiser and Apple did.

If you know let me know.



You don't know me

For 1:1 marketers and data analytics devotees it is the Holy Grail. Knowing enough about me so they can tailor a message that is perfectly aimed. No wastage, and an ad I’m going to want to see because it is totally relevant for me.

Well sorry but no.

My Facebook page is full of offers to people over 50. Now that’s me. I am over 50. And it doesn’t bother me – much. I’m also getting tired of Grey Power congratulating me on being a good driver. Or Viagra ads in my e-mails (you mean everyone gets them not just me?).

I dread the day when Minority Report style a billboard shouts at me “Colin Flint do we have the Haemorrhoid treatment for you”.

Now these might be brushed aside as examples of poor execution – if you knew more about me then you’d know that on Facebook I’m living under the illusion that I’m hip, cool and with it (and any other sadly dated phrases that prove I am anything but). So an ad offering incontinence pads is not going to go down well.
But I don’t think it’s just that.

Recently I came across a study by Joseph Turow and others from the University of Pennsylvania. They found that when asked the seemingly innocuous question, “Please tell me whether or not you want the websites you visit to show you ads that are tailored to your interests”, 66% said no. And it increases to 89% when the rider is added that the tailoring is based on other websites they have visited.

I don’t think it’s having ads that are tailored to them that people object to. It’s what is behind it. People do not want the behaviour being monitored and collected.

I used to work with a hotel chain and they had never got into direct mail. It seemed like a natural one to us so we recommended they look at it. They did, for precisely two seconds. They then asked us what would happen they wrote to me as a guest hoping that me and Mrs Flint had had a good stay with them last weekend. Point taken. We didn’t recommend it again.

I am not a number. I am a free man. You may think you know me but you don’t. So be very careful when you target me. Who your numbers say I am may not match who I think I am or capture the kind of relationship I want to have with you. You could be completely correct and still offend me in such a way that I will never use your product again.

I no longer use Grey Power for my car insurance.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/business/20090929-Tailored_Advertising.pdf