Out of nowhere I ran again across this small section of Rory Sutherland’s “Life lessons from an ad man” talk at TEDGlobal 2009. I had forgotten how interesting and brilliant, filled to the brim with awesome it was. If you like this small section, you will enjoy all the highly recommended 17 minutes.

www.ted.com
Rory Sutherland’s blog at Brandrepublic

To conclude my argument, here is what happens when you let creatives alone in a room secluded from normal people for too long:

Now, if you look past all the CGI and terrible directing, what do we communicate if we show that nature preserve we want people to rescue as a terrible danger straight out of a horror movie?

I, for one, need to buy a chainsaw, matches and a canister of gas.
Someone needs to stop the stupid.

I handed them the glasses, they checked customer data and I was told to come back some days later to pick up the repaired item. Not even five minutes passed after leaving the store I received this short text message (translated and paraphrased):

Exclusively for YOU in April!
FREE spectacle frame (max. €99,90)
with your purchase of new glasses
at your XYZXY store until 04/30/2010.
This short text message = voucher

Clearly, turning in my spectacles for repair had triggered the text message. If my glasses hadn’t been a sad little backup set, I probably would have turned back checked out the glasses at their shop.

When I started in my job, this was and is what I aim for: to turn direct advertising into meaningful communication and substantial offers. I have seen lots of case studies across the world, but this is the first good example from Austria. It is simple, but well thought out: When do you know whether a customer in your database might be considering new glasses? Answer: when he brings the glasses in for repair. There are many similar triggers one could think of that enable a company to offer the right thing at the right time.

Some people might see such an offer as intrusive, sending a text directly like this, but I disagree: A good offer is never intrusive. The problem with direct is in most cases the information is irrelevant and the offers are neither good nor in response to the consumer’s need. Like my father’s bank who keep offering me great conditions for everything. I don’t even have a bank account there and my father has already told them that they have the wrong number. To top all things off, all texts come with personal greetings to my dad from my dad’s bank consultant whom I have never met. This sort of intrusive, impersonal, irrelevant, careless and totally unwanted communication attempts constitute 99% of direct marketing.

A good offer comes at the right time. The question to ask here is: When is a good time to make an offer? In Austria obviously, all car companies twice a year advertise winter/summer tire changing offers in spring, respectively autumn. For products that don’t fall under a specific season or time, there are rarely ideas on what to do. A good offer goes beyond holidays, Christmas Season, Valentine’s Day and incorporates more than “Hey, you visited our website! Here is some advertising since you seem interested!”

I recall a second hand account about a building company that had amassed ten thousands of potential customers from fairs and advertising in their database over a period of ten years. Sounds great, but this happened because nobody had ever deleted the outdated prospects (who had built their houses) from the database. Now the database is essentially useless since only a fraction of people on their lists are still potential customers, because nobody asked “When?”. Looking at a costumer database, posing the question correctly offers the trigger and the right moment. Mostly it will go along the lines of: “How do I know X needs Y?”, “How can I tell Z is looking for Y?”.
I needed new glasses, because I brought my old ones to have them repaired (little could they know these were only my backup glasses). How do I know the client built a new home? Because the address has changed. How do I know he might still be a prospect? Because the address is still the same. (For the aforementioned company the problem is to filter tens of thousands of addresses efficiently – they will have to pick up a lump of money just to clear the duds from their database)

The tools and information are there, yet so few companies make use of it. Most still send generic mails to people with individual needs. Does anyone wonder that someone doesn’t bother buying Nokia accessories advertised in a mailing because they own an iPhone?
The more impressive I found this little text, because it showed that someone considered what I might need.

That’s quite some clutter to break through and to paraphrase PSFK, it makes you think how visible advertising really is. (btw, the video is Creative Commons licensed, very useful for presentations)

KAPITAAL from STUDIO SMACK on Vimeo.

Via PSFK.com

Yesterday evening a new series of print and television ads went on air:  ”Saturday is Breakfast Day” (via the W+K London blog). 

Inspire people to make Saturday a breakfast day. The brilliant copy and images are mouthwatering and inspiring. Again, the focus is on something you can make WITH Lurpak instead of some obscure promise what Lurpak does for you. Improve your Saturday, enjoy a wonderful breakfast, add Lurpak. Brilliant.

 I believe this resonates with many people in general (breakfast people like my wife or non-breakfast people like me) and Britain’s situation in particular.

It is hardly a coincidence that this piece appeared in today’s Times. Camilla Cavendish makes observations about the British and food that could very well be in the brief for the Lurpak campaign:

Most of us are confused. [...] We balk at paying for raw ingredients, but readily cough up for extortionate ready meals. We spend hours watching TV chefs but apparently only 13 minutes on average making a meal – down from one hour in 1980.

and the last paragraph, where she recalls Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food, drawing the contrast

between Britain’s “pornographic” onslaught of recipes and TV chefs, and the “act of true love” that he believes is making food from traditional, local ingredients. 

Imagine that commercial.

Last year’s “Dog” was also a good idea in my eyes. Got Lowe GGK showered in awards, but internationally only shortlisted (i.e. Cannes). 

Yet, despite being brilliant ideas and quite successful, I believe these ads could look a lot better if the agency would be clearer about what they are talking about.

These commercial have a looong history: Along with the tagline “Alles ist möglich” / “Everything is possible” they have been showing the depressing status quo of a person contrasted with the glorious golden future of that person being a lottery winner.

These two commercials have completely left that look-at-that-terrible-job-you-are-in-now-and-the-lottery-will-get-you-out-of-there strategy and tell a much clearer message:

Play the lottery because it will you make so filthy rich that [insert commercial idea here]

I have my doubts that there has been a true strategical decision towards this message. Rather good ideas that were pressed into the old corset. The execution is still stuck in that old tradition of how these spots must be made.

So in “Opera” they spend 15 seconds telling nothing of relevance, because that was the way we have always done it. It makes no sense, does neither help story nor punchline, and it costs extra money each time the ad is aired. And it will go no further than the Cannes shortlist.

Just my two cents.

The results for the most popular searches in Austria are odd: youtube, orf, ebay, hotmail, wikipedia, herold… Not just Austria, all over the world people seem to mix up address bar and the search field.

This implies a few things: first, this seems to be a basic design flaw in internet browsers. Of course, the address bar is commonly placed on top, but for most people attention is drawn to the all important input field in the center of the start page. (Or, if I recall correctly, in Internet Explorer people’s inputs in the address bar are redirected to a search engine when no website is found)

Whatever the cause one can’t help but notice, secondly, people (the significant majority) are nowhere near internet-savvy. In some countries more, in some countries less. Really successful in the web business are the people who really acknowledge and exploit this fact: hackers, phishers and spammers. On the legal end of the spectrum, most internet advertising and market seems to just talk and connect to the experienced internet user segment.

Thirdly: Why bother printing your web-address on ads? Or, if you are internet service like check24.de or monster.at: Why bother confusing your clients with adresses? What has to stick is the brand name, and then you have to make sure you own the search results when it is entered.

And lastly, it probably pays to buy yourself into the searches for names of your competitors. Say someone wants to get to eBay, googles eBay and as first result gets the paid ad for Ricardo.at, an Austrian auctioning site. Admittedly, eBay know their stuff too well, but for most other brands you can position yourself right in front of your competition’s gates.

Usually, I am not a big fan of the commercials made for AI or other human rights groups. Most of them feel like lion bait with lots of emotion, shock etc. instead of seriously trying to win people for the cause.

But I do like this new commercial for Amnesty International. I like that it dramatically visualizes what I believe Amnesty is about (and why I am a member): normal people stepping in when human rights are violated. You might discuss the effect that effort has in reality, as in the YouTube comments. But without Amnesty and all the people engaging, the world would be a much worser place.

Edit: Agency is Mother, London. http://www.motherlondon.com/

via Consumerist

via Flickr by Greencolander

I ran into this the other day: Kevin Proudfoot talks Intimacy It is just a short list/summary which I found to be a pretty a good reminder of the golden rules of establishing meaningful communication with consumers. I believe there is no way around them:

• Let the person know you’re thinking about them. Consider the user.
• Talk directly to them. Eye level.
• Enable and encourage them to be themselves. Let people reflect themselves.( (i.e. customized Nikes)
• Avoid schizophrenia. Find one voice.

And then this washed up here and reminded me of the one rule to rule them all:

• DO. NOT. LIE. Reminder: It’s the age of the internet, if you are not honest, it will resurface as certain as a celebrity sex tape.

What will be the implications for the Dove campaign should it really be the case that their images were heavily retouched? Other than disastrous? I mean, doing EXACTLY the opposite of what you claim to do. What were they thinking?

This does not mean I am fully convinced by the story, but the damage is already done because the Ogilvy PR person was not quick enough to say “WTF?! Who is this guy?”. “We have to check..” sounds more like ” I am not sure what to answer. Please stand by till I have made up the proper lie.” This is a symptom of an inconsistent story and in an interrogation room Dove would now be screwed.

I remember this story of an retiring politician (as incredible as it sounds, I think that was the case): he was praised by colleagues and the press that he never forgot a name, a commitment, a discussion or a face. When asked how he archieved that, he answered: “Oh. That was easy. I never told a lie.”

It is true. If you find an honest tone and message, communication will be easy. You will know what to do, what to say and you (or your press spokesperson) won’t have to remember all the lies you told.