Category Archives: advertising

advertising, branding, innovating

How not to make ads: why randomised communications don’t work

Ad_generatorthe Ad Generator is a brilliant application created by Alexis Lloyd, a a multimedia designer, information architect, and new media artist, who describes how…

"Words and semantic structures from
real corporate slogans are remixed and randomized to generate invented slogans.
These slogans are then paired with related images from Flickr, thereby generating
fake advertisements on the fly. By remixing corporate
slogans, I intend to show how the language of advertising is both deeply meaningful,
in that it represents real cultural values and desires, and yet utterly meaningless
in that these ideas have no relationship to the products being sold."

it's a fascinating idea, and it completely works as art (and even as a nifty screen saver if browsing in Firefox you press F11), but the product doesn't cut it as ads.  the assertion is flawed; the idea that "these ideas have no relationship to the products being sold" is from an age long-ago abandoned, if indeed it ever existed.

John Grant in After Image articulated that, instead of relying on the traditional (image-based) approach, brands should direct their efforts at building
shared meaning and learning as the basis for marketing.  this was after 'image'.  and you can't randomise words and pictures to create shared meaning and learning.  as Faris would observe; brands are ideas, and people have an intrinsically participatory relationship with ideas.  not with random words and pictures.

as for me, I believe that the role for brands is twofold: that brands give people reasons to be loyal to a product or service, and further that brands provide an affirmation of our purchase decisions.  as such, adverts are what brands say.  you can't create that from the ether.  whether or not you resonate with and believe them is another thing, but you can't random up an ad.

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advertising, broadcasting, researching, television, viewing

Getting more out of the ad break: how ITV prove the extent to which content affinity is transferred to advertising

ITV_event_research_2
some new research from ITV attaches some numbers to what we all – should – intuitively know.  the network's Event TV research, which can be viewed here, quantitates the simple theory that "compelling content generates higher levels of interest and awareness" in advertising.

the research looked at 'event TV' – programming that is anticipated, time-sensitive (ie less likely to be time-shifted), and which often involves ritual behaviour (getting the pizzas in for example).  what most defines such programming however is the extent to which it is a shared experience. 'true fans' – those more likely to seek-out additional programme content and talk about it – are also those most likely watch in groups.  the shared experience doesn't of course stop there – they are very much aware that the same broadcast is being watched by millions of others at that very moment.

ITV_event_research_shared_experience
watch with other (source: ITV)

the research goes on to quantify the extent to which such fans are less likely to flick over when the ads come on, and therefore more likely to watch the commerciality that is the break (eg true soap fans are 97% more likely to watch the ads during their shows than their non-fan equivalents).  finally, it demonstrates the extent to which affinity for programmes seems to be transferred to ads, with fans of TV shows having more positive opinions of the advertising in breaks throughout the show.

it must be said I find myself asking what this actually tangibly means for planning and buying.  the benefit for ITV is clear; this research makes the case for the justification of investment in event (and therefore often peak-time) programming.  but this airtime is oversubscribed as is – further encouraging agencies to plan into this space will only lead to further premiumisation (I know that's not a word btw) of said airtime.

that quibble aside, this is not only a solid bit of research to add to our collective canon, but is research brilliantly presented in the form of a video-diary of a day ('sofa-Saturday') in the life of a household from the perspective of the TV.  you can view it from the above link, I recommend it.

it also highlights the extent to which viewers will track desired content across platforms; there's an interesting multi-platform (transmedia) opportunity for a campaign that wanted to acknowledge and capitalise on the multi-platform relationship true fans have thru their content.

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advertising, broadcasting, experiencing, television, viewing

Things I’ve learned about TV ads; courtesy of a Night of the Adeaters

TV ads sometimes get a bad press; often seen, unfairly, as the blind refuge of the creative process.  they're blamed for narrowing creative thought into a pre-determined construct that's allegedly irrelevant in a digital age.

well a night with the Ad Eaters is more than enough to demonstrate otherwise.  what occurred to me last night, as I sat watching several hours of TV ads from around the world, was how perfect the audiovisual short is for communicating a brand – or indeed any – idea.

it's no surprise that the 'TV ad' became the common currency of the advertising agency.  indeed one can't help but think that even in the absence of a broadcast model that reinforced the TV ad construct, the short AV piece would have emerged as the vessel of choice for brand ideas.  forcing clarity, relevance and conciseness, it may come to be seen as the 20th / 21st Century equivelent of the cave painting or Aesop fable.

there was as much joy and pleasure in seeing again BBH's Underwater Love for Levi's (above) or early Smirnoff efforts, as there was in seeing for the first time some of MTV's campaigning work or an Audi ad with a dog chasing a car in the snow…

some other things I learned last night:

  • most of the best ads are for cars.  fact.
  • it's impossible to make a good fragrance ad.  fact.
  • some brands have the right to set agendas and others just don't
  • an audience of ad types loves a bit of worthiness – ads for the UN Development Fund were guaranteed a splattering of applause.  as the lovely Jon A puts it: "the skill of communication is like the skill of swordsmanship: it can be applied in play or in war, for better or for worse".  we collectively aspire – it seems – to do the formers.
  • it's impossible to aggregate ads around a city – "ads set in Paris" just doesn't work as a filter

all in all a very cool evening.  if there's one observation it's that the filtering could have been better.  an evening like that is essentially acting as an aggregator – so Ad Eaters has to work as hard as possible to be the best aggregator that they can be.  not doing so will only undermine future efforts – and contribute to the feeling of watching a very extended version of Tarrant On TV.  only without Chris Tarrant.  and not on TV.

Kudos to the IPA, CBS and Metro for sponsoring, and a big thanks to David at Metro for facilitating…

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advertising, broadcasting

Brands lose out as Channel 4 pulls out of DAB

Andy_Duncan
what's most surprising about Channel 4's announcement that it is pulling out of DAB is not that it's abandoning the platform, but that it took the broadcaster so long to do it.  it's been a long road for C4 since the consortium it led (which included Channel 4, Bauer Radio, UTV, UBC Media Group and SMG) 'won' the second DAB digital radio national commercial multiplex in July last year.  delay has followed delay; we were supposed to get the first stations this summer gone, but plans were subsequently scaled back to just one station (E4 Radio) to be launched in 2009.

as the MediaGuardian podcast panel observed, Andy Duncan's strategy to move into radio (and particular speech radio) was more than sound – indeed it formed a key part of a broad range of announcements and maneuvers under the 'Next on 4' banner designed to shore up Channel 4's PSB credentials, with the aim of pursuading the Government to part-fund the broadcaster as it faces a multi-million pound deficit in its budget.  but almost as soon as the announcement was made DAB ran into trouble.

the problem for the platform is simple.  DAB is an interim technology; one that in future media history lessons will sit neatly on the timeline between FM / AM signals and the internet.  as soon as internet-enabled radio listening was available on mobile phones the writing was on the wall for the platform.  in this context it would be madness to even contemplate now going ahead with a second national multiplex.

unfortunately this simple problem doesn't have a simple solution.  for a start the 30% of households which have invested in a digital radio aren't going to be jumping for joy if the signal goes down the pan.  but more importantly there doesn't exist an internet-based commercial platform to replace DAB.  there is no commercial iPlayer and certainly no commercial investment available to build one (commercial radio was struggling even before the recent downturn, and shows no sign of improving soon).  access to the iPlayer platform is emerging as the most cost-effective and consumer-centric solution.

but the group set to lose out as much as any other are advertisers.  what Channel 4 radio offered was a viable commercial offering to rival BBC Radio 4, an audio space to produce more upmarket and sophisticated audio content and advertising.  it was a space I as a planner was looking forward to exploring, and I'm sure I wasn't alone.  for a radio landscape crying out for diversification and innovation, Friday's announcement heralds a loss far greater than any one station.  it is the loss of an opportunity that may never come round again.

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advertising, branding, praising

In praise of… the old-fashioned tease campaign currently proffering a little mystery to our post-information age

Tease_sep_08
there's nothing Mediation likes more than a decent tease campaign, and this one has certainly been splashing itself around London's transport network at the moment.  tube card panels, cross-track 48s and station dominations have all been showing images of Obama outside No. 10, golden footballs, overweight kids and what I think is a pic of the magnets from the new large Hadron Collider at CERN.

the tease (then reveal) model is as old as the hills; use the medium of outdoor to tease the public with non-branded images that provoke questions as to what they are, and why they're there…  and of course which brand they're for!

it's an approach that's increasingly rare these days.  partly I guess due to the requirement for more demonstrable returns on investment (essentially with this strategy you're paying for the space twice), but it's also a model that has somewhat been reversed in recent times…

Bravia-playdoh-rabbits
its Fallon's fault.  ever since the set of their San Fransisco Balls effort was captured and posted before the ad was released, it's become somewhat fashionable to do the opposite of the tease model.  now several brands advertise the making of the ad… on-set photos of the recent M&S summer ad for example made the national press.

I guess that why I like this campaign.  not only is it demonstrating confidence with it's investment, but in a post-information hyper-transparent age it proffers a little mystery to a sometimes all-too-knowing media landscape.

———-

29.9.08 supplemental:

the campaign is for The Times.  sales and marketing director of Times Media Katie Vanneck as quoted in an article on Brand Republic:
"The Times is the only national daily without a dogma — the paper does
not tell you what to think but encourages the reader to question and to
challenge. 

"We wanted to reflect this ethos of 'show and not
tell' in our brand campaign which is why we have gone for strong,
simple images that set you questioning and thinking.

"We want readers to think again about our times and to think again about The Times"

…mission – I suggest – accomplished.  thanks to Eva for the comment on the post and the heads up…

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advertising, branding, broadcasting, internet, planning, viewing

Negotiating the digital divide: why immigrant brands must learn to go native

Natives
Natives going to meet the Spanish navy in 1792 (source)

the Pew Research Centre's biennial report into the
changing nature of news audiences has confirmed what we've known for a while;
that a generation of digital natives are growing up demanding immediacy and
plurality of content.  the report described 13% of the US public as 'net newsers'; under
35, affluent, and sceptical of many of the mainstream media's offerings.

it comes hot on the heels of last week's report by Ofcom which confirmed what
TGI and CCS have been telling us for a while…  that as our world shifts
from one ruled by digital immigrants to one dominated by digital natives, an
entire generation are defaulting to multi-tasking their media consumption.

this isn't just behavioural – our brains are physically adapting to enable us
to compulsively multitask.  digital technology changes the way we absorb
information.  as such – as Lord Saatchi was reported as pointing out in 2006 – the digital native’s brain is
physically different; “It has rewired itself. It responds faster. It sifts out.
It recalls less.”

the fact that recall rates for traditional television advertisements have
plummeted led Lord Saatchi to the conclusion that companies must now be able to
sum up their brands in a single word if they are to grab the attention of
restless digital natives, but this is to miss the point…

if digital natives demand multiplicity, brands – far from retreating to one-word over-simplification – must give it to them.  both
the above reports confirm that TV remains predominant in the media consumption
habits of digital natives.  in the UK we're watching more TV than ever;
communicating to digital natives doesn't mean abandoning TV as a means with
which to communicate; rather it means using it in conjunction with other media
channels – specifically the internet.

brand communications need plurality
– the notion of what constitutes 'critical mass' within a media channel has to
be rethought and replaced with consideration as to what constitutes critical
mass across channels.

some may not like this compulsive plurality of consumption – in his G2 column
last week, Alexander Chancellor bemoaned a "compulsion to keep in
touch" liking it to a "kind of disease".  "Addiction
to communication" he comments "seems to me as dangerous as addiction
to cigarettes or alcohol".

as hard as it may be for digital immigrants to comprehend, consistent and
constant consumption of content is as natural to digital natives as
breathing.  both immigrants and brands has better get used to it.

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ad funded programming, advertising, branding, content creating, experiencing, planning, regulating, viewing

Transparency; how Mother’s Pot Noodle has it and MG OMD’s Beat: Life on the Street doesn’t

DSC02551
on a visit to Edinburgh's Fringe Festival this weekend Mediation was lucky enough to catch a performance of Pot Noodle: The Musical.  created by Mother Vision, the show is a surreal and entertaining hour long advert for Pot Noodle – and it doesn't really pretend to be anything else.  in fact its quite clear on the matter…  its an ad.  it knows it is.  its written in the script.

I couldn't help but contrast this to the recent discussion and debate there's been around MG OMD's AFP for the Home Office.  Beat: Life on the Street was a Sunday night show first broadcast last year on ITV.  the show is now reportedly being investigated by Ofcom amid concerns it broke the broadcasting code requiring that programmes "must not influence the content and/or scheduling of a channel or
programme in such a way as to impair the responsibility and editorial
independence of the broadcaster".

so what we have here are two very different bits of content, each designed to form part of the brand narrative for two very different organisations.  but whereas one has (at the time of writing) a two and a bit star rating on the Fringe website, the other is being investigated by the regulator.  what sent them in such different directions?

well… what divides them is transparency.  Pot Noodle's musical has it, and Beat: Life on the Street just doesn't.

you can't make a programme that's funded by the Government and which is specifically designed to change people's perceptions of a state organisation and not tell people thats what it is and what its trying to do.  that's not smart media planning, its propaganda.

what's such a shame is the strategy from MG OMD is great.  in a video on the site, Head of Strategy Jon Gittings comments that the aim of the the programme was to amplify the real experience the public has with PCSOs, to:

"use communication to recreate [the] direct content that would then go on to increase value [of PCSOs] … we would create virtual experiences that bring PCSOs and the community together"

thats great thinking.  de-branding it is not.  brands have to be explicit about their intent.  whether you make noodle snacks or uphold the law, you have to protect your integrity.  say what you like about Pot Noodle making a musical, they were up front about what they were doing…

as one comment on the Fringe site notes: "I doubt that i'll ever be convinced that branded shows at Edinburgh are
a good thing but i struggle to criticise when i'm entertained as such".

well I doubt that I'll ever need convincing that smart relevant content creation – including AFP – can play a part on many a schedule; but I'll sure as hell won't struggle to criticise it when brands and (worse) their agencies think they can do so without being honest about the communications' intent.

———-

supplemental:
thanks to Phil who pointed me in the direction of a BBC report on Pot Noodle which includes an interview with the creatives from Mother who devised the thing…

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advertising, branding

Why we have to be braver about brand communications that ‘might’ offend


you have to sympathise for creative agencies.  I don’t envy their position…  required as they are by clients to create things that get noticed but don’t cause controversy.  the most recent case in point is Mars who have pulled the above Snickers ad because it might offend the gay community.  is it offensive?  to speed-walkers possibly but certainly not, I suggest, to boys who like boys who like boys.

the key word here is ‘might’.  ‘might’ cause offence.  ‘might’ cause controversy.  well ads ‘might’ do a lot of things, but one of the things they ‘have’ to do is get noticed…  especially when said ad is for Snickers and therefore carries a need to convey macho, retrosexual, masculine tones.  what’s a creative agency to do?  make ads that get noticed but only get  talked about it the right way?  brands never had that kind of control, let alone thinking they have it in the digital age.

if there’s a problem here is not with ads.  its with one of two other things.  either (1) the brand positioning is wrong; if communications that establish then reinforce the positioning are being pulled then Mars has to ask themselves how sustainable this is in the long-run (they always ‘might’ piss someone off)

or (2) the problem lies with marketeers who lack the courage of their conviction to approve, run, and then ride the discussion and debate caused by their communications.  the more they pander to people who ‘might’ take offence, the more we move away from a culture that engages in and enjoys public debate.  and the harder it will be for creative agencies to produce genuinely ground-breaking and challenging work.

of course if a brand was really smart they’d make ads that engage by virtue of normalising (I use that word carefully) gay life.  the below was made by Guinness.  it challenges some whilst no doubt affirming the beliefs of others.  its a brilliant piece of brand communication.  its a shame Guinness never had the courage of their conviction and broadcast it.

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advertising, viewing

The Lynx Effect: Changing a Business without Changing the Business

saw the Lynx 3 ad in the cinema last night.  you’ve got to give them credit…  how do you use communications to double the volume of consumption of your product?  well… you get people to use twice of much of it whenever they do use it.  shamelessly brilliant…

it follows on the heels of previous ads which have visually suggested using the spray all over one’s body – the same tactic being employed; get people to consume more whenever they do use it, increasing frequency of purchase as a result.

a simple communications solution to a key business challenge  …without any elaborate suggestions about how a client needs to fundamentally change their business.  like Lynx that regard…  refreshing!

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advertising, branding, content creating, IPA|ED:five, user-generating

The Trampling by Brands of User-Generated Creativity; why we have to do better than this

Ann_summers_viral_academy
so if once is an incidence, twice is a co-incidence and three times is a theory, then I reckon we have a hypothesis on our hands.  I’ve now noticed three brands of late directly asking users to create adverts for them on the brands terms.

the first and loosest brief came from Ann Summers (above) and their viral academy.  they’re quite direct about it "we don’t retain a creative agency; instead we welcome ideas from talented creative people who contact us directly".  fair enough.  having had content independently submitted, they wanted to make sure it was more formalised.  but the brief remains loose…

"We expect most of the ideas to be for short films – like the ones you can find here  but we don’t want to limit you in any way. If you have a great idea for
a game, a song, a comic – anything at all – we’d love to hear it" [source]

much more recently I’ve come across a couple of examples that don’t show quite the same latitude in their briefs, or what they’re willing to accept.

Doritos_make_me_an_ad_2
first came ‘you make it, we play it’ from Doritos.  they’re getting a bit more specific about what they want…  it’s got to be – for example – exactly 29 secs in length.  a bit more specific then…

but any reservations that Doritos might be taking a slight advantage of consumers  was blown out of the water when I saw Armani’s brief at the weekend…

Armani_advertising_contest
the rules – downloaded from the Armani contest website, stipulate that:

"each creation must comprise:

  • a packshot of the Emporio Armani For Him and For Her
    fragrances: either the packshot found on the Site (which under no circumstance
    may be modified) or a packshot of these fragrances created by the entrant;
  • the two logos found on the Site: Emporio Armani and Get
    together;
  • The English signature “Emporio Armani, The two fragrances:
    Get together”,to the exclusion of any other"

I’m not quite sure slave labour is what Larry Lessig had in mind when he talked about a truce in the corporate | consumer creative pact.  and I’m as sure as hell that ordering an army of consumers to use a packshot, logo and tagline as stipulated by Armani when user-generating, wasn’t approaching what Gibson or Jenkins had in mind when they described a future vision of participatory culture and collective intelligence.

brands either embrace the user-generation on their terms, with all the diversity that comes with it.  or once again miss the boat because they applied a brand-centric old model to a consumer-centric new world.  we surely have to do better than this.

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