Monthly Archives: June 2013

advertising, campaigning, commenting, creating, debating, planning

Create and Debate: Lessons for brands, courtesy of Dikkenberg and Rusbridger, on communicating credibly, conspicuously and contagiously

I had a rather delightful serendipitous few minutes yesterday when I watched consecutively two videos on YouTube. it occurred to me that between them they rather elegantly describe the formula for communicating your position or point of view in the world right now.

the first was the above video of a speech given by Who&Why Media‘s founder Simon Dikkenberg at the 20th anniversary of Mission Australia’s CYI. Simon (who is awesome) captured more elegantly than I would the point and power of unleasing a creative instinct:

“By becoming conscious of our stories and our ability to shape then, we learn that we can edit and redefine the great changes that impact our lives … what’s exciting is that we now live in era in which the tools to record and share our stories are cheap and easily accessible (most of us carry them on the phones in our pockets) … we all have our own battles and wars but it is the stories we tell ourselves about them that determine the positive or negative impact they have on our lives …”

Simon Dikkenberg (from the above video)

I next watched this video from The Guardian of Editor Alan Rusbridger describing the newspaper’s ‘Open Journalism’ philosophy.

it’s simple, straightforward, and elegant … yet it describes profound changes to how a newspaper goes about doing what it does. changes that by Rusbridger’s own admission are a “big barrier for journalists to get over”.

“Open journalism is about allowing a response … saying to readers ‘we want to hear from you’ … if you can have more than one view you get a better account … once you accept that then you’re into just the questions of the mechanics … we should be able to respond to them too … its being responsive to what comes into the building …
Its no good shoving a newspaper on the web, you have to be part of the web … as a result I think our journalism is much more approachable, much more diverse, much more comprehensive, much more challenge-able (which is a good thing), and just generally better.”

Alan Rusbridger (from the above video)

that second paragraph is of particular relevance and significance to comms planning – swap ‘journalism’ for brand and you get the following advice: ‘its no good shoving a brand on the web, you have to be part of the web … as a result I think [your] brand is much more approachable, much more diverse, much more comprehensive, much more challenge-able … and just generally better’.

I can think of little better advice I’ve ever heard being suggested for brands as they plan in an online, on-demand, fragmented and attention-light world.

perhaps what strikes me most is how the Dikkenberg Rusbridger formula of Create + Debate is so very rarely applied. brands of course create, but very rarely for the specific purpose of instigating debate. and of course brands debate, but often as a response to events or about their products as opposed to the communicates they create around a point of view.

yet when brands do embrace this simple formula, the results are often hugely successful – at the very least from a communications point of view. here are just a few of my favourites:

all these examples are awesome campaigns because they are credible, conspicuous and inherently contagious. and they are all those things, I think, because they followed the Dikkenberg Rusbridger formula: create the stories of your battles and debate with the plurality of views they engender.

the possibilities are staggering, as is the potential positive affect those stories could have on us all.

featured image via here and here

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broadcasting, debating, measuring, phdcast, social media-ising

PHDcast 28.06.13: Elections, Twitter, Hildebrand joins Ten’s Breakfast Show, hello EMMA, and Smelling the Coffeee

player not working? click here to listen via audioboo

another Friday (almost) means another PHDcast from PHD Australia

in the week that saw Australia wake up with a new Prime Minister, we talk about the social / broadcast media interaction that played out on Wednesday night. how could and should broadcast media keep pace with fast-moving events as the play out on twitter? and what is the role for brands in events like this?

there are also implications for media investment on TV and other channels, with airtime around the election becoming scarce. I spoke with our own Maree Cullum to get her advice for clients on how to help their campaigns weather the election storm.

joe-hildebrand_adam-boland

above pic via news.com.au

also this week Channel Ten announced that Joe Hildebrand is joining the line up for Adam Boland’s new morning show on the channel. we talk about the challenge and opportunity for Ten’s new morning show, and the context and situation for breakfast television in general.

if that wasn’t enough, we get into the ‘can / should media owners produce ads for clients?’, the Readership Works introduces us to Emma – the name of their soon to be launched readership survey, and evaluate the plan to pump the smell of coffee into cinemas for Nescafe Blend 43.

Stew wrote an article for B&T which you can read here – props to Stew for that and for getting olfactory signifyers into the PHDcast conversation …

here are the glasses-tastic Toby, Nic and Chris – your podcast team today with the exception of Stew, who missed the photo opp and Maree who’s Melbs – that’s it … catcha next week for more PHDcast

PHDcast pic 28.06.13

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celebrating, creating

Cannes Catch-Up: Saatchi & Saatchi + Dawkins + Meme theory = kinda crazy cool didn’t see that coming Cannes presentation

so just catching up with some of the flotsam and jetsam that emerged from Cannes this year and stumbled across the above video of a session brought to you by Saatchi & Saatchi and Richard Dawkins. Dawkins was introducing the agency’s New Directors’ showcase, which their website describes as a platform for:

“The very best new directing talent, identified by our offices around the world, and through the relationships we have with key internet sites … each year we wrap the Showcase around a theme … This year’s theme ‘Just for Hits’ is a visual and oral extravaganza featuring the world-renowned British evolutionary biologist, Professor Richard Dawkins. The show connects the world of science and academia, with the world of film and the Internet.”

so there.

the showcase theme, of course, addresses an enduring obsession with the industry – getting viral success. whilst ‘planning viral’ is a contradiction in terms (you can weight the odds in your favour but I defy anyone to say they can plan that something will go viral), there can be few better academic contexts than that of Dawkins’ Meme theory, developed in the ’70s and first described in The Selfish Gene.

in that regard getting Dawkins to introduce a showcase of videos around the theme of ‘just for hits’ is a rather brilliant piece of showmanship. in Dawkins’ own words “the internet is a first-class ecology for memes to spread … going viral [was] the very phrase I used in The Selfish Gene” source – his theory is the embodiment of many marketers’ wildest dreams.

here’s a video of the Guardian’s interview with Dawkins at Cannes.

featured image via BBC

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advertising, content creating, planning, rewarding

Why Lost is the New Found: How Heineken and Jeep are inviting us to get lost in very different ways

Heineken’s Voyage Ad, currently playing on a cinema screen near you

so last night I enjoyed a cheeky Sunday night trip to the cinema with Connerty, Jez and Fingers to see Brad take on the zombie apocalypse – which you’ll be happy to hear he did magnificently. before the action started however the above effort for Heineken played out. its a great ad – if slightly indulgent (btw if you think the 60″ is indulgent check out the ‘exclusive version’).

all of which is all very well and indulgent, and good on Heineken for the effort … but at the end there’s a blink-and-you-miss-it call to action directing you to www.heineken.com/voyage alongside the copy ‘legendary travelers wanted’. so having literally been called to action and after a few seconds of digging today I tracked down – via said website – another website entirely … a branded YouTube channel in fact, called Heineken Dropped:

heineken_dropped_youtube

… a content-generating, exclusive-experiencing, PR-generating platform of a thing in which guys (the site is quite clear on this aspect) are ‘dropped’ in the middle of nowhere.

adventure, of course, ensues – as evidenced by the trailer for episode one

and then in one of those frequent ‘wait for a bus’ moments I was catching up with the awesome James’ Media in Brief document from Friday (Volume 2, Issue 18 to be precise), the video of the week in which was only this little effort for Jeep by Leo Burnett Buenos Aires:

so within 24 hours a beer and a car brand both inviting me, in two very different ways, to get lost. Heineken through a competition to experience an exclusive adventure in the middle of nowhere and Jeep through a GPS that takes me on my very own individual trip to, well, the middle of nowhere.

what’s interesting (to Mediation at least) is how one territory can be explored through two very different and contrasting media models. one exclusive, the other open to anyone (presumably with a GPS and a four wheel drive) … one fulfilled through content and the other through technology … one in which nowhere is idealised and the other in which nowhere is radically accessible … and one which operates at the head of Anderson’s Long Tail and the other which thrives in the tail.

in a post far back in the mists of time (July 2009 specifically) I described the need to think about audiences with a new lore of averages.

“when we describe target audiences we should be thinking of them as sitting along the above spectrum.  how do we plan on one hand for the very few but valuable super-attention givers from whom a lot of the effectiveness of the media investment will derive?  whilst on the other hand plan for the ‘mode’ individuals, the vast majority who will contribute the smallest amount of attention to what we have to say?”

what’s interesting is how these two platforms operate exclusively against each: Heineken creating content to be distributed to the passive massive along the tail, Jeep inviting individuals to experience nowhere for themselves. neither is, I suppose, more right than the other … but I can’t help but wonder what they have to learn from each other?

how could Heineken enable more participation in their Dropped platform, and how could Jeep amplify the individual experiences of finding nowhere to maximise reach of their investment? after that I suppose that there’s only one question … how would you prefer to get lost?

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broadcasting, phdcast, television

PHDcast TV Special: From Masterchef to the Voice, via Ten’s audience strategy, brand integration, and the future of screens


yey, another week another PHDcast from the good people of PHD Australia. this week we’re focusing on TV – the last few weeks having seen the finale of The Voice, and the return of Masterchef and The Block. we talk formats, performance and the current state and future of big reality format TV.

we also talk about Ten’s back to the future audience strategy and the challenges faced by the broadcaster. they want to be seen as the home of event TV … but to what extent can the recent cricket deal, existing content and formats deliver this for the network?

and if that wasn’t enough there’s a quick run around the future of TV … connected TVs, on demand and IPTV, second (and third) screening, addressable advertising and social TV.

enjoy.

PS. if you haven’t seen it totes check out our very own worldwide executive planning director Mark Holden on the future of TV. it rocks.

featured image: iMedia screen, featuring an SBS promotion

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branding, managing, planning, understanding

Culture Clash: Why brand planning in Asia requires a rethinking of the Western Mindset

James_Parsons_flamingo

so I had the awesome pleasure yesterday of joining an OMG (that’s Omnicom Media Group – although you can sometimes forgive any mix up 😉 – Thought Bubbles session organised by the awesome Guy Hearn, Mark Gray and Shel Vei in Singapore.

the subject was The Myth of the Brand in Asia – a talk given by James Parsons (above) who is the Managing Director (Asia) of Flamingo.

James’ point wasn’t that the idea of a brand is a myth in Asia – rather that the idea of a brand in Asia is very different from the western way of thinking about brands … and that this has implications for brands and specifically brand planning.

James cited a Richard Nisbitt’s ‘The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently…and Why’, which I had never come across but which looks fascinating. the following is from the title’s Google books summary:

“When psychologist Richard E. Nisbett showed an animated underwater scene to his American students, they zeroed in on a big fish swimming among smaller fish. Japanese subjects, on the other hand, made observations about the background environment — and the different “seeings” are a clue to profound underlying cognitive differences between Westerners and East Asians.
For, as Professor Nisbett shows in The Geography of Thought, people actually think about — and even see — the world differently because of differing ecologies, social structures, philosophies, and educational systems that date back to ancient Greece and China and that have survived into the modern world.
As a result, East Asian thought is “holistic” — drawn to the perceptual field as a whole and to relations among objects and events within that field. By comparison to Western modes of reasoning, East Asian thought relies far less on categories or on formal logic; it is fundamentally dialectic, seeking a ‘middle way’ between opposing thoughts. By contrast, Westerners focus on salient objects or people, use attributes to assign them to categories, and apply rules of formal logic to understand their behavior.”

source: Google books

James’ observation was that understanding this difference has significant implications for how brands are planned for Asia. the conceptual approach traditionally adopted by western philosophy – that of the brand onion / pyramid / diamond etc, is less relevant for Asia, where things are thought of and described not as abstract, but in more tangible terms.

James’ two principal implications are that in Asia (1) context trumps content and (2) brands grow by doing not saying. he’ll get no argument from Mediation on that front.

in fact if that is the case I think you could argue that in many ways the West is catching up with the East in this regard. that brands are now defined and judged based on what they do not what they say is I hope accepted wisdom across most of the planning community (you could be generous and say not just judged by what they say but IMHO that’s a generosity too far).

its in the area of context versus content planning however where it gets very interesting. some agencies have played with the idea of context planning; a quick search on LinkedIn demonstrates that Naked here in Australia aren’t alone in job titling around the role of the context planner.

the examples discussed yesterday included exhaustive NPD and product extensions – the creation of context through new and next and tangible must have’s etc … the start of some thinking on this … will see where we go from here.

to request a copy of James’ paper, ‘The Myth of the Brand in Asia’ contact joot.teo@flamingogroup.com

featured image via Flamingo Group

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creating, experiencing, outdoor, praising

In Praise of Physicality: a shout out to SoulPancake for making me feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside

a delightfully awesome idea via the delightfully awesome Upworthy …

SoulPancake encouraged totally random people to shout out to people who have changed their lives. and they did. and SoulPancake made a video of it. and then I watched it. and I got thinking about all the awesome people who have changed my life. and now I feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside.

I love the pure physicality of this idea. it could so easily have been a digital execution; where it would certainly have had more scale, greater pass-on, less risk and a plethora of innovations and platforms to bring depth and meaning to the idea.

none of which it needs,

despite the fact that physicality has soooooo many downsides …

physicality makes things geographically limited. stuff can get broken or damaged. people have to overcome the huge fear of public embarrassment by taking part. which means loads of people won’t. you have to get the location right and people need to be there to watch all the stuff and what if you get the location wrong. or it could rain. or there could be a local planning regulation thing that you forgot to take account of. and only 322 people will see it. and people are busy, will they honestly engage with an over-sized microphone in a shopping mall?

none of which matters.

far from limiting the idea, the physicality of how people were encouraged to do this makes it all the more powerful … the physicality of the invitation, and the physicality of people’s shout-outs transform a cute idea into a powerful affirmation of relationships and connections and influences that make us who we are.

so here’s a shout out to SoulPancake … nice job.

featured image source

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advertising, marketing, planning

Coles 1, Woolies 0: an abject lesson in new versus traditional media thinking from Australia’s favourite oligopoly

option A: partner with a major TV network to secure access to the biggest pop group in the world and give customers the chance to win tickets to an exclusive extra show. communicate this through the competition’s own dedicated website, hashtag, and social media, supported by print, broadcast and PR.

option B: make a 90 second TV ad that talks about, well, I’m not sure exactly … but I think, the value of time?

it may be harsh to call this an abject lesson in new versus traditional media thinking, but this really is an abject lesson in new versus traditional media thinking. and just in case anyone is looking for a (far from exhaustive) checklist, here it is:

  • create new news (don’t assume people care)
  • integrated the channel approach (not single broadcast solution)
  • create exclusivity and scarcity
  • do don’t say
  • leverage a passion point
  • develop a plan and strategy for earned media
  • integrate into store
  • connect to product purchase

here are the boys again … just for fun.

featured image source: Coles via Mumbrella

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broadcasting, radio, regulating

Crisis. What Crisis?: How media’s negotiation with it’s own future is compromising political debate, and its own seat at the table

featured image via SBS

on Thursday Howard Sattler, a radio presented on 6PR radio in Perth, asked the Prime Minister of Australia if her partner was gay. on Friday afternoon he was sacked by Fairfax. the question is not whether Sattler should have been sacked, rather it’s why Fairfax took almost 24 hours to do it.

the interview really does beggar belief. that the presenter of a radio station can think it appropriate to put to a serving prime minister that their partner ‘must be’ gay as he is a hairdresser, would be beyond conceivable had it not already happened.

the incident landed in the same week that reports and comments in both the UK and Australia Guardian that raise I think broader questions about the evolving role of the media in politics. in the UK an article by Steve Richards on the pessimism he is observing in politicians across the political spectrum prompted CiF contributor ratherbered to comment:

“… I blame the modern media and the way that this influences what people believe. The media more and more have a short term focus and simplistic dumbed down approach to presenting the issues we face. Small wonder that the politicians appear to be clueless when the questions they are asked change every hour and smart interviewers are constantly trying to trip them up and exploit a gaffe.”

ratherbered (source)

I rather think that ratherbered has a point. a commented on an Aussie article in the wake of the Sattler interview attributed the whole incident to the ‘death throes’ of the traditional media.

modern society has from very early on relied on the broadcast media to report the activities of our politicians, provide a forum for debate, and hold their actions to account. from the earliest print titles to today’s cable channels, media has danced a dance with politicians – frenemies that played with each other for mutual benefit, but always wary of their respective influence on each other.

it is in that context that the ‘traditional’ (I use that word with care) media is now conducting a whole new negotiation – a negotiation in which this blog aims to mediate. it is the negotiation for what their future looks like. that negotiation is tricky. it involves lower margins, more diverse revenue streams, less resource, the requirement for more content creation and an increasingly fraught battle for human attention.

the potential problem is that the last of these is measured and largely remunerated based on volume of people reached – viewers, readership, subscribers, pageviews … at that means that, with less human and financial resource, the traditional media are in an arms race for impacts.

I think you can see where I’m going.

at what point does the financial and business pressure for viewers / listeners / readers begin to compromise the forum in which our politics is debated? where is the line in sand that defines and describes the places we need for our politicians’ policies and actions to be discussed and assessed? what if there isn’t one.

the Sattler interview could represent one bad call. or it could represent a crisis in the level of available resource and therefore capability of a modern and transforming commercial media to credibly and reliably be the forum for our political representatives that we need.

I hope that its the former. I’m not sure there is, as yet, a plan B.

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branding, conferencing, planning, publishing

Think Service not Content: What brands can take from Jeff Jarvis’ awesome advice to the newspaper industry

jeff_jarvis

featured image via the Guardian.co.uk | above image via wikimedia

so a couple of weeks ago was the 65th World Newspaper Congress in Bangkok (I know, me neither), the debate at which would have entirely passed me by had it not been for mediaweek.com.au’s handy reporting of the event which landed on my desk yesterday.

on page 9 I was very happy to see a write-up of the awesome Jeff Jarvis (above) who gave a talk at the congress entitled ‘New relationships, forms, & business models for news’. now mediation is quite the fan of the Jarvis and this is a subject Jeff knows more than a bit about – as well as working at the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism  and the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism, he has an awesome blog at BuzzMachine which you should check out immediately … after reading this post.

what Jarvis tackled, with typical energy, was the idea that newspapers were not in the content business but rather the service industry. this must have come as a bit of an annoyance to publishers who had just gotten their head around the idea that they weren’t in the newspaper printing business but rather the content business. change, as the IPA 7th Social principal states, will truly never be this slow again.

Jarvis’ argument is simple:

“[being in the content business] leads us to say that our content has value and that people should pay for it. it leads to our structures of our news organisations and how they are made … content will be one of the things we will always do. but it is only one of the things … our primary job is to begin to look at news as a service … it changes the relationship we have with the public.”

he goes on to argue that this fundamentally moves the industry from a broadcast to one-to-one medium:

“this enables us to serve people as individuals instead of mass … online it is possible to serve people as individuals … I argue we should actually be in the relationship business. we should be about crating and managing and finding value in relationships with people.”

and furthermore, the relationships formed with the people newspapers reach aren’t passive:

“… many people will become our collaborators. our readers, most importantly, become our collaborators. other news organisations become our collaborators … this leads to a rule that I like to have for newspapers – do what you do best and link to the rest.”

all the above quotes Jeff Jarvis, via mediaweek.com.au

its classic and wonderful Jarvis – clear, compelling and challenging. but its also advice that shouldn’t just apply to newspapers. reread the above but replace newspapers with brands … the themes of (1) thinking service and value not (just) content, (2) serving individuals not masses (3) collaborating with customers and, perhaps most importantly, (4) sticking to what you do best and linking to the rest … is valuable and timely advice for anyone working with and growing brands right now.

brands, like newspapers, are just getting their collective heads around the idea of content creation and distribution as a ongoing and necessary staple of their marketing efforts. whilst of course some (RedBull, GoPro etc) are miles ahead, too often we (and when I say we, I mean I) see brands tackle content from a broadcast mentality. this (1) makes it very expensive, (2) pushes timelines into years rather then months territory and (3) puts a lot of marketing collateral eggs into one basket.

… its a bit like brands approaching content the way a newspaper would approach investigative journalism. lots of effort with a high risk of little return should the story not be there or pan-out the way you thought. Jarvis argues for a much for future-facing and focused approach … one that involves thinking about what you don’t do as much as what you do. and one that demands that we think of people as interactive individuals not passively massive groups.

thanks Jeff … keep doing what you do … you rock.

also a big shout out to PHD’s (well OMG’s) Andreas Vogiatzakis who presented our very own 2016 at the same event. awesome stuff.

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