Hasta La Creative!

Business results. ROI. Clients love it; ergo, agencies must provide it to remain essential. Enter the Warc 100, an annual ranking of the world’s 100 best campaigns and companies, based on their performance in effectiveness and strategy competitions. The rankings are compiled based on the winners of 87 effectiveness and strategy awards from around the […]

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The agency business in being pounded by a sea of rough and tumble changes today. Agencies are struggling to get lean and nimble, and MBA-toting bean counters are key to this reformulation. Unpopular though they may be, agency CFOs are nevertheless in high demand, says Jay Haines, CEO of global executive-search firm Grace Blue. One […]

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I always feel like I’m straddling both sides of the marketing equation. Because I’m a consumer, too, and often things hit me like a consumer, not an advertising copywriter.

The increasing ability of marketers to collect reams of information is particularly concerning to me. Not because they can, but because they simply don’t know what to do with all the information and can’t be trusted to use it wisely.

Most marketers, however, don’t employ the human intelligence portion that makes data collection a truly remarkable tool. The reality is marketers will always default to whatever’s easiest. Right now, collecting vast amounts of information that never reaches human eyeballs is the cheaper, efficient way to go. It’s always better to abdicate responsibility when information is used maliciously.

It would take an actual movement, not some BS marketing movement, for consumers to rise up and say, “We don’t want this intrusiveness.” I’m not holding my breath on that. As a society, we trade our personal information for convenience every day. Consider it the Terms and Conditions of living a modern life.

It’s the subject of my latest column on Talent Zoo.

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More than 50 percent of consumers who own smartphones used them to scan at least one quick response code in 2012 alone, according to eConsultancy.com. Studies have confirmed that quick response codes have become one of the newest marketing tools available that can effectively connect prospective consumers to brands and manufacturers. Viewed by many as a major upgrade and enhancement of the standard bar code design and structure, it is very easy to assume that all of these codes are exactly alike, especially since they share key similarities. However, there are actually several different types of codes that have been used by different companies and brands over the years.

Model 1 and 2 Code

The original quick response code is known as the QR code. At its largest size, this particular code is capable of storing close to 1,200 numerals. When Model 2 was released, it was evidently clear that it was an enhancement and overall upgrade from the original structure. Instead of reaching the maximum size of 73 x 73 modules, Model 2 QR codes were capable of being extended to 177 x 177 modules and retained over 7,000 numerals.

Micro Code

Although the Model 1 and 2 codes are able to retain a substantial amount of information within them, the overall size of the actual code does not provide very much flexibility. Therefore, the Micro code was developed as an alternative. Since it was capable of hosting only one detecting pattern for its integrated orientation, business owners and marketing specialists were able to print it much smaller than even before. Even though it is very small, it can still hold a maximum of 35 numerals within it.

iQR Codes

The “I” class of QR codes was the very first to have a versatile design that could either be generated as a square or a rectangle. Therefore, business owners and marketing specialists were able to have more flexibility when it came to discreetly featuring these codes within their advertising and promotional materials. For example, a rectangular code is big enough to be clearly visible to the average consumer but small enough to not become a visual eyesore. Theoretically, the maximum size (422 x 422 modules) can retain close to 40,000 numerals, according to QRCode.com.

SQRC Codes

One of the major differences of the SQRC code design is that it comes with a reading restricting function that efficiently stores confidential information. For obvious reasons, this is definitely not something that you would want to place on your marketing materials or promotional advertising. However, it is an efficient way to relay important information to your employees. Even though the structure and formatting of the code is different than other codes that are designed for public use, the visual appearance of these QR codes is exactly the same.

LogoQ

The final type of QR code that is currently being used right now is known as the LogoQ. This particular code has the most distinct look and appearance out of all other types primarily because of the logo that is engrained within the center of the colorful code. Instead of sticking to the usual pattern of black and white pixelated lines and boxes, the LogoQ can consist of logos, illustrations and even letters as well. Even though it may seem that these codes are the easiest to hack, breach and compromise, they were designed with proprietary logic which essentially prevents those cybercrimes from occurring.

Same Appearance, Different Codes

Therefore, it is clear that not all QR codes are the same even though the majority of them are very similar in appearance. Before you embark on a journey and decide to use them for your own brand marketing strategies, it is imperative for you to understand the differences and select the code type that is the most suitable fit for your specific needs.

This is a guest post.

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Digital advertising will account for 22.7% of all worldwide ad investments this year, or about $117.60 billion — up 13% compared with 2012, according to estimates from eMarketer and Starcom MediaVest Group.

I’m not certain this is a good thing. Unless, brands and their agency partners clearly know what they’re doing with all that money.

 
I posted this new Adobe commercial from Goodby Silverstein & Partners on my friend Bob Hoffman’s Facebook wall. Hoffman is a champion of common sense and logic in the face of much digital advertising speculation. Recently on his Ad Contrarian site, he pointed to a Solve Media study that claims 46% of the viewership reported by websites seems to be fraudulent. That’s a lot of ghost traffic.

As someone with feet in both the media and marketing worlds, I can say it’s not all that simple to say exactly how many people are visiting your site, where they’re coming from and if they are real people or not. Yes, there are tools aplenty, but tools are biased. How you choose to measure something impacts the data and flavors the results.

If we can’t trust the data, or the people who willfully manipulate it, what or who can we trust in terms of getting value for our ad dollars? We can’t trust the traditional ad guys who are invested in making TV. We can’t trust the digital demigods either. This is not a good situation for the ad business, nor for the clients who need to trust someone to help them reach their communications objectives.

My take is create a media plan that makes sense for your particular business situation. I often drive by a large lot of shiny Airstream campers, and I think here is a company that desperately needs well-made TV to tell the story of weekends in the mountains. Naturally, a client like this would also be well advised to develop its digital assets. Thus, the divide between TV and digital is a false divide. Companies need to spend on both TV and digital and apply the best metrics available to each, while keeping in mind that persuasion is an art.

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Generally speaking, clients across the board are not impressed. They want results and all ad people have to peddle is their sacrosanct creativity.

That’s the news from The Fournaise Marketing Group (c/o Warc, which interviewed more than 1,200 chief executive officers and decision makers around the world for its 2013 Global Marketing Effectiveness Program.

A full 78% of CEOs thought agencies were not performance-driven enough and did not focus enough on helping to generate the business results they expected their marketing departments to deliver.

In addition, 76% felt agencies talked too much about “creativity as the saviour” while not being able to prove or quantify it. Indeed, they believed that agencies were frequently opportunistic in claiming credit for results that could be attributed to other factors such as the product, sales force, channel or pricing.

So much suspicion fouling love and respect’s nest. Can we agree that we are all creative people? If we can agree to this basic tenet, I think we can make progress.

The truth is ad people can be aloof, disinterested and bitchy. Meanwhile, clients can be blind to basic realities, particularly as it relates to the value of their product or service in the marketplace. Bad clients can also be coarse and needlessly demanding. What we have here are two groups of highly opinionated “professionals” talking over and at each other from their respective sides of the polished Rainforest wood table.

You can blame the money involved for part of the hostility problem. If the client wasn’t “risking” millions and their own professional reputation, it wouldn’t be such a scary transaction. But it is scary, which means we must bring more empathy and compassion to the proceedings.

I think ad people would do well to bow to the pressure the client is under, and clients will absolutely get better work and results from the work, when they cop to the difficulty involved in making truly moving brand communications on a consistent basis.

[UPDATE] John Winsor of Victor & Spoils, arguing for new compensation models, notes in Harvard Business Review, “While some in the industry wish that we could remain as creative free spirits with our clients as patrons, clients are becoming so squeezed — and so focused on ROI — that that model isn’t sustainable.”

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Some things are still scared, but your privacy on corporate-owned communications networks is not, and never has been.

This fact of digital life has been evident for years, but the recent revelation that the National Security Agency is working closely with leading tech companies, makes it crystal clear–anything you write, say, record, transfer etc. is subject to inspection by a federal employee tasked with keeping America secure from terror attacks.

Tech companies could stand tall and say yes, we help keep America safe from terror. But they’ve chosen to deny their involvement instead.

This is what The Google has to say for itself:

We have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or any other government—direct access to our servers. Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a “back door” to the information stored in our data centers. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday.

Thankfully, Foreign Policy breaks down the geek’s coded language for us.

According to Chris Soghoian, a tech expert and privacy researcher at the American Civil Liberties Union, the phrase “direct access” connotes a very specific form of access in the IT-world: unrestricted, unfettered access to information stored on Google servers. In order to run a system such as PRISM, Soghoian explains, such access would not be required, and Google’s denial that it provided “direct access” does not necessarily imply that the company is denying having participated in the program.

A similar logic applies to Google’s denial that it set up a “back door.” According to Soghoian, the phrase “back door” is a term of art that describes a way to access a system that is neither known by the system’s owner nor documented. By denying that it set up a back door, Google is not denying that it worked with the NSA to set up a system through which the agency could access the company’s data.

Yes, the company that vows to “do no evil,” not only engages in domestic spying on its users, it uses doublespeak to cloak its activities and protect its brand value.

As users or consumers of these networks, we have few places to turn. The connected networks we know as the Internet is a classic monopoly, conceived by the military and managed by their corporate contractors. Yet, we think of it as the peoples’ media. Why? Are too bedazzled by the promise of riches to pay attention to the facts? Or just lost in another cute cat video?

For me personally, I return time and again to the importance of media literacy. If we are not able or willing to turn away from the machine, we need to know how to live with it and work with it. And this means knowing what it is, how it works, who owns which piece and so on. Media literacy is also of the essence when flithy-rich corporate entities, and the government, use language to intentionally mislead people.

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I’ve written before about a company called Automated Insights and their “written” fantasy football recaps and other content.

Now, they’re broadening their reach with the launch of Site AI, a new service that summarizes web analytics and site stats using reports written to simulate everyday language.

This could mark an interesting turning point in our use of data, charts, dashboards, and infographics and solve one of big data’s big problems: The need to put it in language anyone can understand. As the site itself says:

The problem with dashboards is they don’t directly provide insights or deliver knowledge about the data. Even worse, most visualizations require the user go through the mental exercise of interpreting the results. Site Ai does the analysis for you and presents the information in plain English.

I’ve always said that infographics are more “graphics” than “info,” simply because so many visuals are open to misinterpretation. And the big problem for most ad agencies, and other firms, is the lack of ability to turn the data into information we can use. Site AI, even though it’s auto-generated, might be able to help us make more of the data we actually collect. Which could lead to better insights, more effective user experiences, and bigger ideas.

It’s one small victory for verbal presentation against the onslaught of visual information.

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Twitter is finding its rhythm, a.k.a. business model.

Teressa Iezzi reports that the Tweet factory just inked a multiyear agreement worth hundreds of millions of dollars with Publicis-owned media giant Starcom MediaVest Group.

What does Starcom want with Twitter? Sweet data, baby!

So my TV remote is broken- which pretty much cancels my evening plans with detectives Benson and Stabler. And Eames and Goren. And Dr Grey.

— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) April 22, 2013

According to Iezzi the deal has three-parts: a social TV lab; an in-tweet mobile survey; and the ability to leverage Twitter’s API for planning.

The idea is to provide the firm’s clients with “unprecedented real-time data on how consumers are watching (TV), buying and the conversations that amplify brand messages,” says Starcom CEO Laura Desmond.

In other words, Twitter will now do the job that TV and Nielsen can not, by offering marketers real-time analysis of who is watching which programs, and what the temperature of the room is.

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Is Jeff Bezos the new Aaron Spelling?

No, but Amazon Studios, the original content arm of Bezos’ company, is offering up a lot of episodic content today — 14 new pilots to be exact. Six of the 14 pilots from are aimed at kids. The other eight are Adult Comedies. Alpha House is a political comedy; Betas is a comedy about working at a tech startup; and Those Who Can’t looks to be about lame high school teachers; and so on.

Before investing too deeply, Amazon wants to hear from people, a.k.a. “the crowd,” on which, if any, shows they liked. Presumably, the highly rated pilots will then be developed into full blown serial entertainment properties.

The programs are available exclusively on Amazon Prime Instant Video, which may make sense inside Amazon, but it results in yet another platform war. And since Amazon Prime is not linked to Apple TV, viewing is constrained to the third screen. Also, there are no Amazon trailers for these 14 pilots on YouTube. Amazon Studios does maintain a a YouTube channel, but the content there is a bit stale, given the new push.

Seattle-based GeekWire notes that Amazon’s push into the video distribution arena, means taking on the likes of Hulu and Netflix, who have been offering their own exclusive content.

Netflix, of course, created a hit with Kevin Spacey and House of Cards earlier this year. Yesterday, the company rolled out its newest program, Hemlock Grove, a chilling supernatural series based on Brian McGreevy’s novel. Unlike Amazon, Netflix is more than happy to provide a trailer for its programming on YouTube.

Netflix is also different from Amazon in that it is not testing its entertainment product on the Web. All 13 episodes of Hemlock Grove were uploaded last night. As fans begin to feast on one episode after the next — which is much easier to do, given that Netflix shows are available via Apple TV — Netflix may have another hit on its hands by Monday, and all the press that comes with it. What will Amazon have, by contrast? New data to pour over?

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