Hasta La Creative!

The ubiquitous iPod has not only spawned hordes of similar products, but ads as well. And often if it’s not a blatant rip off of the the classic iPod style, it’s a feeble attempt at borrowed interest. You can almost here the marketer saying “Hey, I’m cool. I have an iPod in my ad.” Well a recent campaign from DDB Sydney turns that model on it’s head and slams it down on the ground — quite literally. The ads for the NSW Police Department seek to bring attention to the alarming rise in the number of teen deaths that have been occurring as the teens, lost in tunes, fail to pay attention as they cross the road. All of the ads feature a single line of copy “Watch for cars when wearing headphones.” Nice work. Simple. Clean. Arresting. It will be interesting to see what sort of response they get from Apple.

Technorati Tags: iPod,PSA, review, advertising, beyond madison avenue

This is the second introductory post, and a follow-up to Your Brand Is Not My Friendâ„¢.

The real digital revolution has nothing to do with advertising or marketing. In fact, it’s the mortal enemy of advertising and marketing.

Because the real digital revolution is about consumer empowerment, the ability to research and learn about products and services and make decisions independently from, and in spite of, any sort of marketing and advertising messages.

That’s what’s really changing the way we market. It’s not about our inability to control the conversation. It’s about our inability to even get in on it. “They” are talking about us and we can’t butt in. I mean Word of Mouth is wonderful and all, but it ain’t got nothing on a glowing review from CNET.

The car companies are actually the ones who are hardest hit by this development. Given that a car is the second most expensive purchase you’ll make in your life (your home being the first), sophisticated consumers are flocking to review sites, message boards and the like to get the real deal on the car they plan to buy. And even to find out what kind of car someone like them should buy. A pretty shocking development in a market that was shrouded in mystery and misinformation for years.

Sure there was Consumer Reports and the car magazines. But CR attracted a very specific, Naderesque demographic and the car magazines were rarely concerned about the sorts of things the average car buyer was concerned about, especially if the average car buyer had kids or mostly used the car for commuting.

Now what all this information does is destroy the power of image-based brand advertising. I might see some “this car is cool” VW ads and think VW is great, so great that I decide I want to buy a Jetta for my next car. But, if I go online and read about how much the Jetta sucks and how much better the Nissan Sentra is, I’m buying the Sentra. No matter how much Marc Horowitz (the guy who lived in his Sentra for 10 days) bugs me. Brand advertising can’t stretch the truth anymore or try and gild the lilly. Because if it does, we’re going to find out about it and it’s not going to be pretty.

The informed digital consumer isn’t just a threat to the auto business: S/he’s a threat to any business where there are objective standards for judging the product. So while something like food may be immune (you either like Oreos or you don’t, there’s not much objectivity there) even packaged goods like laundry detergent can fall vicitm, since there’s an objective standard for how clean your clothes are getting.

All the noise you hear from the 2.0-niks about “conversations” is often just a fancy term for people sharing objective opinions of products on review sites, blogs and other digital media. The “conversation” is when the marketer responds to criticism with a pledge to try harder or some such. Which, while it’s not practiced as much as it should be, is just common sense. But enough “conversations” about how bad your product is, no amount of clever advertising or radical media placement is going to save it.

Now people are people and of course we’re always going to need some sort of brand advertising to help us distinguish between the cool brand and the not-cool brand. But, especially on high ticket items, the ability to research, to learn all the details and facts that were previously unavailable to us— that is what is ultimately going to drive our purchase decision.

And that, my friends, is the real digital revolution.

So it is not often here I get to post rumors/”inside the industry issues buzz”, but I would love some clarity from all of you faithful readers – both of you know who you are… I’m talking right to you.

Anyway, so as most of you might or might not know, Friendly’s Creative duties were given to the ever un-inspiring Zimmerman in Fort Lauderdale. Fine. But what is odd is that another newer agency that was in contention and passed on was Full Contact. Full Contact is headed by a few fellas from Hill Holiday. Now, why that is relevant is because Hill Holiday has done some great Dunkin Donut work – I reference the charming Fritalian – and Friendly’s is now being headed up by some ole’ DD guys.

So, they have obviously worked together in the past and produced some decent results, so why not continue the partnership as that happens quite often in this business as everyone knows? Can anyone shed any light on this? Was the relationship not as Friendly (sorry) as I, and many others, assumed?

If you know anything, please talk to me.

Word.

Technorati Tags: dunkin donuts, friendly’s creative, zimmerman, beyond madison avenue, agency

I thought this was a fitting first post since it’s the idea that really launched my blog. It does a good job of laying out my take on the current state of the ad business and some of the mistakes people are making. My hope is that this, and the two or three articles to follow will provide a good framework for my future commentary and ad reviews.

When I was 23, a site like Facebook would have been my second home. Keeping track of the daily comings and goings of my 100 closest friends? Check. Comparing our tastes in music, movies, books, photos, and travel destinations? Check. And when I wasn’t on Facebook, I’d have been Twittering everyone that knew that I was going to the store. And then leaving it. With a middle Twitter to let them know that the cashier was being way too slow.

And while I was busy Facebooking and Twittering, the absolute last person I’d have wanted to hear from is an advertiser. I mean when you think of it, it’s kind of creepy. Facebook is the 21st century diner or malt shop. It’s where teens and young adults go to hang out. And the last thing they want is some salesperson trying to have a “conversation” with them while they’re figuring out what movie they’re going to see. They don’t want to talk to you. They want to talk to their friends.

The whole appeal of social media sites is their independence from corporate advertisers. People like the fact that they can say whatever they want to other people without any interference from anyone or anything that seems “official.” Yes, they’ll tolerate banner ads or search ads on the page, the same way that in the diner they tolerated placemats with ads on them or a Coke sign on the soda machine: that sort of advertising is innocuous and quickly becomes part of the scenery.

So I’m not sure where we’ve developed this conceit that people want to hear from brands. Because they truly don’t. At least not in settings where the primary objective is to talk to and interact with your actual friends. (And your brands, people, are not our friends.)

On a blog or message board dedicated to a particular subject, they’ll listen to someone from a company, especially if that person is someone whose name they all recognize. (In other words, if Steve Jobs himself were to post on a computer message board, people would be thrilled. But a generic post from Apple or from some unknown VP at Apple would be most unwelcome.)

Now there are some brands—I call them Prom King Brands—that people don’t mind “conversing” with, so long as they can do it on the brands own space (as opposed to MySpace.) These are the brands that have somehow managed to build a better mousetrap, but there are no more than a dozen of them and you here on DailyFix can probably name them all by heart (Here, I’ll start: Nike, Apple, Starbucks, Virgin, Whole Foods… ) Sports teams, TV shows, rock bands and movies fall into this category as well.

The rest of you are out of luck on this front. You’re not a Prom King and people aren’t all that thrilled to hang with you. So while Starbucks could probably start a Frappuccino Lovers Group on Facebook (for all I know, they already have), no one’s going to be joining a Maxwell House Lovers group anytime soon.

So if Your Brand Is Not My Friendâ„¢, does that mean you should run screaming from Web 2.0 and Social Media?

Absolutely not.

All it means is that if you’re not a Prom King brand, you need to be smarter about how you use the space. Not to mention more authentic.

Let’s take the Maxwell House example from the previous page. The one thing we know about Maxwell House (other than that it’s “good to the last drop”) is that it’s cheap. Really cheap in comparison to Starbucks. So you go on Facebook and find the Cheapskate Lovers group. And approach them as a salesperson. Not as a friend. So your script goes something like this: “Hey Cheapskates. Maxwell House knows how much you guys love saving money. And while our coffee is cheap enough as it is, if you go to this special Facebook Cheapskates site, we’ve got a dollar off coupon waiting for you.”

There’s a critical difference here: if you’re a Prom King, you define the interaction. People come to you to talk about and be around Starbucks, to get some of the halo effect of a brand they consider very cool. And even though you’re selling them big time, you can pretend it’s all just a fun little “conversation.”

But if you’re a regular brand, you need to find a situation that fits your strengths. So if your strength is you don’t cost a whole lot, you need to find a bunch of Cheapskates and then adapt yourself to their needs. And you have to do it as a salesperson. Because you can’t pretend you’re doing anything but selling them.

And if you do that, they may start to like you for it. To let you hang around more often and maybe, just maybe, they’ll start talking about you. Not to you, but about you.

Which is a lot more valuable than having them talk about your TV commercial.

News media outlets are heralding Ribbit’s goal to “be the platform company for Voice 2.0 applications.” Countless articles in mainstream news media and posts in blog media have appeared, written by individuals with a solid command of exactly what Ribbit is all about. Om Malik, writing for GIGAOM, sums it up: “…what they have done is built their own Class 5 softswitch and back-end infrastructure and married it to front-end technologies like Flash and Flex from Adobe Systems (ADBE).” Okay, if you say so.

The company calls itself, “Silicon Valley’s first phone company.” Chief Executive Officer Ted Griggs comes across as a really nice guy on a promotional video. The video will probably challenge the attention deficit Web readers are known for. Griggs basically talks about the company and what the technology means.  But the video is about as lively as a lint brush. There’s a photo of a guy in a suit on the front page of the Ribbit Web site. He’s in a Zen state of mind. Who is he supposed to be speaking to? Even a developer wouldn’t relate to this guy. Your average person, to get excited about this product, needs to know in flat English what Ribbit is going to do for us and what it will cost.

 

A page on the company’s Web site does give consumers an idea of what to expect. You’ll be able to: make calls through your computer so you have a phone wherever you have an internet connection, read your voicemails so audio playback is no longer a necessity, play your messages in any order so you decide the order of importance, and access your messages on the go from any phone through a smart voicemail interface.

A New York Times headline asked, “Would you buy a telephone from a company named Ribbit?” Most of us would if we get a unique service at reasonable cost. I actually think the name can be an asset—frogs are cute and there’s a lot of creative leeway in those little amphibians. Think about what GEICO does with a gecko who talks like an Aussie and has better manners than most of us. You have to wonder what kind of accent a Ribbit-promoting frog might speak with, in between ribbits.

Meanwhile, developers are positive. According to the Ribbit Web site, more than 600 have joined the development community to date,  located throughout the world in over 65 countries, including the U.S., Europe, Brazil, China, and India. Time will tell whether future marketing efforts will succeed with consumers—maybe we’ll see a Valley girl frog offering up a designer beer, ‘ribbiting’ with zest, selling us on a new phone service in the process.

 

So, I wanted to know a little bit more about the Indy shop Tactic since they were pitching against some of the “top heavies” for the IHOP business. Why I was searching, I came across the Australian shop Tactic.

I love the site design. Simple, and the rooster head on the man lounging around on their homepage I just dig.

I enjoyed some of their print work for National Geographic, it is sharp and some of it is pretty damned funny. They have some quality motion graphics and sound work. Check them out, they are definitely worth a look.

Technorati Tags: tactic, national geographic, motion graphics, IHOP, beyond madison avenue

If you have a creative bone in you at all, you should most definitely support the writers during the strike. If you would like to stay current with the ordeal, you can visit Hollywood Interrupted.