Category Archives: planning

blogging, converging, listening, planning

Listening and learning: Contagious and Naughton on the importance of responding to conversations

Contagious_2008
Twas the day before Christmas, when all thru the comms industry; Not a planner was stirring, not even a still-drunk buyer from the Christmas party the night before…

and so the last post before Chrimbo brings the loveliest of Christmas pressies from Contagious, who have given us all their Most Contagious review of the year for free.  it's packed full of cracking examples of the best marketing and comms ideas from the last twelve months, some of which pick up on what was their anticipated theme of the year – the conversation:

"If 2006 was about user-generated content and 2007 about social media, then 2008 is about the conversation.’ So predicted Contagious editor Paul Kemp-Robertson in The International Herald Tribune back in January. ‘In other words, brands will have to steel themselves to the idea that marketing is a two-way street, not just a conduit for directing their messages toward pliant consumers."
I hope that's true.  I want it to be true.  I want 2008 to be the year that our conversations stopped being one-way, and where marketing and communications learned how to listen in interesting and relevant ways.  because listening isn't enough; it's easy to say 'we're listening' with one hand yet continue to deploy messages for perception or behavioural change in the broadcast streams with the other.

and if 2008 was the year of the conversation, I hope that 2009 brings the year of informed debate.  the year that we can use those conversations in ways that influence how we go about doing what we do and saying what we say.

this importance of conversation was highlighted in a great article by John Naughton in the Observer, who reports on how a WSJ article failed to correctly understand a story on Google's relationship with ISPs.  more crucially though, when the blogosphere went about correcting the article, their contribution was then largely derided by the broadcast stream.  Naughton observes that:

"Watching the discussion unfold online was like eavesdropping on a
civilised and enlightening conversation. Browsing through it I thought:
this is what the internet is like at its best – a powerful extension of
what Jürgen Habermas once called 'the public sphere'."
this is the ambition, this is the hope.  that brands not just only listen in on the conversation, but then act on the information and opinion discussed within it's increasingly public sphere…  have awesome Chrimbo's guys, here's one last little treat from those crazy kids at AKQA, enjoy.
 
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ad funded programming, advertising, branding, broadcasting, content creating, converging, engaging, gaming, innovating, internet, planning

From theory to practice: the challenge of planning Transmedia

Keith_Arem_Ascend
Keith Arem's graphic novel Ascend, for which a game is currently in development

it's now been over two years since Faris bought transmedia planning to our attention in his post of the same name on TIGS.  the theory has been well expounded in the period since then; with a post by Jason Oke at Leo Burnett Toronto which explored the TP concept within the context of a single ad quickly kicking things off.

I'm sure that the idea of TP has cropped up in most media, comms and ad agencies by now…  it certainly has in Mediation's.  but we've yet to see – as far as I can make out – a significant campaign emerge based on TP principles.  the same is actually true of the entertainment industry; in an interview with Games TM magazine(edition 75), Henry Jenkins – the Godfather of TP – concedes that truly persuasive examples have yet to arrive.

they're doing better than us though.  transmedia planning should be everywhere by now.  the theory is familiar and is not only relatively unchallenged, but is offers the very solution to some of the biggest marketing challenges of the moment.  of its many advantages, the primary benefit has to be the extent to which it pays back on the time taken to consume it.  Jenkins goes on to observe that "regardless of the commercial motives behind it, transmedia entertainment done well also provides rewards for fans".

so why is getting the theory working in practice so difficult?  here's some starters for ten…

firstly, the financial investment required.  the reason the best examples of TM largely remain in the entertainment arena (the Matrix, Cloverfield, Heroes, Lost etc) because it takes a significant chunk of investment to develop and then create the content often required.  the commercial models for Fox or Paramount are set up to do this, the commercial models for marketeers often aren't.

but this is a bit of a cop out.  for the cost of making three 30 second ads you can certainly afford to make an episodic drama for online distribution.  and no it doesn't matter if it's not going to go on broadcast TV because those people who consume AV content online are exactly those people most likely to 'get' transmedia narratives…  this means of course that the media budgeting has to evolve just as much as the production pot.

no, the real issues in making TP happen lie much closer to home than 'we don't have the budget' territory.  they are twofold, the first of which is we're bound to the conventions of the media spaces we use.  in the Games TM article mentioned above, Keith Arem discusses the TM principles behind his graphic novel Ascend (the image above).  he observes that:

"if a project requires a 30-minute budget introduction, games can do that, but the medium could just as easily offer six high-budget five-hour episodes to revolutionise the story.  film and television are still limited by rigid series structures and minimum lengths".

advertisers on those channels are bound by those same conventions; conventions we as an industry – planners, buyers and media-owners (and indeed Ofcom) alike need to start challenging.  it's the limitations of the spot model that in many cases is preventing transmedia's breakthrough into broadcast channels; and as long as transmedia only exists online, it's unlikely to capture the imagination of marketeers or the budgets of FDs.

but the final barrier to making TM happen in brand comms is the closet to home of all.  Jenkins notes that TM experiences can "be a source of … frustration [for consumers] if it's inconsistent, undermines the coherence of the work, or promises insights it never delivers".  Arem's solution is simple: "have a good team of like-minded individuals around you … my philosophy for all of our projects is to have a core team to supervise all creative and technical aspects of the production.  the main focus of that team is to keep the story and assets consistent, and integrate them with the entire franchise".

I think you know where I'm going with this.  agency structures are lucky if they can do this internally let alone with other agencies, resulting in the presention of a joined up and unified transmedia solution to a client.  not only might different creative agencies have to work to one vision, but that vision has to be molded by the space planned by its media agency, and of course vice versa.

the reality is that as long as the conversation with a client only gets as far as "how big is the pack shot?", both agencies and clients will be bound to a dynamic that not only acts as a barrier to transmedia planning, but actively works against it emerging into the mainstream where it so surely deserves to belong.

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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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internet, planning

“The one thing that’s the same about every holiday you’ve ever been on, is yourself”

Spore_screenbrab
Amy has pointed me in the direction of a Guardian blog post by Keith Stuart which highlighted the extent to which online gaming behaviour generally bears the same habitualised and routine patterns as the real world.

he cites research from Northeastern University in Boston,
MA, that – thru tracking the movements of 100,000 people
using mobile phone signals – demonstrated that:

"Human trajectories show a high degree of temporal and spatial
regularity, each individual being characterised by a time-independent
characteristic travel distance and a significant probability to return
to a few highly frequented locations" source

Stuart observes that the same is often true in video games (such as the hotly-awaited Spore in the image above); in his post he comments that:

"It would be interesting, within a realm like WoW or Second Life, or
even one of the larger CoD IV maps, to track player movement and match
this data to the real-life research. I think there would be
correlations. People often make the mistake of thinking games are about complete escapism, but they're not."

I think as comms planners we're guilty of being nervous of planning in the online space because we assume that consumers will adopt a completely new set of motivations and behaviours.  the reality is that they don't.  what's true for Arnie in Total Recall (the title quote of this post) is true of consumers when interacting with brands in the online space.

the internet's greatest asset is also it's greatest challenge – the fact that the canvas is so big and blank…  from ARGs to branded content via character blogs and gaming, there's a world of potential consumer engagement to explore and create.  our media planning experience makes us more qualified than most to
integrate online experiences into schedules and communications plans. 

Stuart's post reminds me that we shouldn't forget what we've learned about consumer motivations, desires and behaviours and translate them to the online space…  the canvas has changed but the fundamental rules haven't.  online is not a media channel and it shouldn't equal display and search as default lines on schedules.  brands should go create with the confidence that they're able to more confidently predict online audience behaviour than they may think.

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Clive Woodward. Why every client should have one.

clive_woodward

“Integrated Communications are like weapons of mass destruction. Everyone knows they exist but no one has ever seen it done”
David Jones, writing in Contagious Magazine (Is your work Spongeworthy?)

“My role isn’t to do players’ jobs for them. My job is to ensure that every player
performs to their potential and as part of a team”.
Clive Woodward, BBC Interview

“A coach is not a teacher and does not necessarily know how to do things better than the coachee. A coach can observe patterns, set the stage for new actions and then work with the individual to put these new, more successful actions into place.” [1]

A whole new ball game

Media fragmentation; consumers with less time, little attention and no patience; an infinite amount of broadcast and on-demand content; digitisation rendering channels irrelevant [2]; technology to control and filter demanded content [3]…

The last decade has seen the emergence of a whole new ball game. The collective response of the communications industry has been twofold. Firstly, diversification into a multitude of different and varied operations [4]; secondly, generalisation …historically all props had to do was scrummage; now they expect themselves to run, catch, pass and lift in the lineout too!

With so many new players and such a new and more complicated ball game, how does a client – our bewildered [5] Chairperson – approach who decides tactics? Who does Communications Planning on a brand?

What’s the aim of the game?

What do we need someone to be in charge of? Jim Taylor defines Communications Planning
(CP) as [6]:

“The discipline of developing a holistic plan, across marketing and trade marketing functions … beyond simply selecting channels and allocating monies … defining the proposition … identifying the best consumers … creating a ‘big picture’ … weaving together every aspect of a brand’s communications” (Jim Taylor, Space Race).

Fundamentally CP is about uniting budgets, and subsequently allocating that unified budget across specialist disciplines, based on the extent to which each agency can deliver on their particular aspect of a holistic strategy; so CP is:

  • Establishing the match strategy
  • Deciding who – of the 22 man squad – is on the pitch at any one time
  • Ensuring that everyone plays as a coordinated team

Who’s in charge?

One of several different models is generally adopted. The client may opt to do it themselves, but clients are limited in what they can achieve without agencies [7]. The chairman has, at some point, to relinquish control to the team, generally via a lead or all-agency model [8]. However there are two key flaws to both.

One, individual agencies can never know enough about other disciplines to ensure CP they derive consider every perspective. It’s like asking prop-forward to plan a game strategy incorporating the nuances of the role of fly-half; the knowledge required is too broad and getting broader all of the time [9].

Two, Buckminster Fuller’s principle: “If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail” (as quoted in John Grant’s After Image). A player will never take
themselves off the pitch; the very concept that any one agency can comprehensively and without bias write CP that excludes themselves is fundamentally compromised.

A new Approach

Given this fact, its little wonder CP as a discipline hasn’t found momentum [10].

It’s time for a new approach…

The Chairperson lacks the resources to implement CP, but tasking any – or many – of the players to be in charge is flawed. Yet the pitch is packed with a team of talented and skilled individuals, many of whom excel in their individual positions. The client’s problem isn’t a lack of players; the client’s problem is lack of a structure to ensure that the positions all play as, and in the best interests of, a team.

What the chairperson needs …is a coach.

The Mantra of a Communications Planning Coach

  • Coach is not a communications planner; coach does not dictate a plan.
  • Coach facilitates the establishing of match strategy and negotiates who’s on the pitch at any given time.
  • Coach is independent and neutral.
  • Coach is ‘T-shaped’; with historical grounding in one area but with a broad extent of shallow knowledge across a range of disciplines.
  • Coach captures the Communications Plan without composing it.
  • Coach work alongside agencies, coordinating their collective input.
  • Coach is independent of execution, and remunerated by client based on an annual fee.
  • Coach comes from anywhere; from within the client, from an auditor, from a management consultant, or from agency holding companies.
  • Coach doesn’t set objectives but champions them once agreed.
  • Coach utilises a ‘Connections Wheel’ [1] ensuring no consumer touch point remains unexplored.
  • Coach’s success is measured by the collective success of the CP agencies.
  • Coach is mobile but operates a shared workspace available to all agencies.
  • Coach is gatekeeper to the unified budget.
  • Coach’s perspective is from the view of the entire team, thereby keeping an eye on competitor CP, as opposed to the most visible and measurable aspects of it.
  • Coach talks to the trade as well as consumer marketing.
  • Coach only expresses an opinion when they have to.
  • Coach highlights incongruities and abhors contradictions.
  • Coach maintains a position of independence by virtue of the fact that at no point will Coach ever step on the pitch; that’s the agencies’ territory; across which each position is free to play their own role by their own rules.

Letting go

Agencies – as players on the pitch – need to let go of CP; which won’t be easy. But release brings freedom to do what they each do best; to play and perform in the knowledge that they’ll have a dedicated resource ready and willing to involve them and incorporate their ideas and recommendations into CP.

By letting go, agencies win for themselves the freedom to play their own game as part of a wider culture in which ideas can come from anywhere, and are communicated to everywhere, to the benefit of everyone on their team.

Q: What approach should a client take in terms of who does communications planning on a brand?
A: Hire their team a Coach. Fast.

Notes

[1] quote from The Complete Guide to Coaching at Work (Perry Zeus & Suzanne Skiffington)

[2] Once content is digitised, not only it can exist in any digital channel, but move seamlessly across channels. It is this intrinsic that led William Gibson
to first comment that “The remix is the very nature of digital” – ie digitisation of data and content facilitates transformation – remixing – of that content.

[3] Example of on demand include RSS (Really Simple Syndication) which automatically relays content deemed relevant to the consumer, and IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) – TV via broadband, which is currently seeing substantial investment by UK TV companies. To quote Rob Norman in his speech Do Different “In the final analysis the world has gone on demand. That puts it beyond our control”.

[4] And a lot of specialists there now are; WPP Group has 247 companies globally and 194 offices in the UK alone.  All companies relate to communications
services “Through our companies, WPP offers a comprehensive and, when appropriate, integrated range of communications services” source

[5] Reasons for clients outsourcing Communications Planning are varied and well documented. They can’t source quality talent, nor pay for them – their headcount doesn’t justify it. Nor can they justify the investment of purchasing and integrating all the systems and data they’d need to comprehensively implement CP internally, especially for what is essentially seen as a cost centre for the business. Plus they’d lack external benchmarks from other clients.

[6] It should be pointed out that there is still no agreed consensus on what the term actually means, tending to mean different things to different agencies and clients. The IPA defines it rather vaguely as “A holistic planning approach to engaging a brand’s audience to ensure greater effectiveness”.  Source: communication Strategy – A best practice guide to developing communication campaigns (IPA), but this could arguably apply to any disciple; to any player in the team

[7] A In a recent survey, 48% of Chairpersons stated their belief that they were best placed to be in charge of CP. Whereas 31% of clients hand over control
entirely – believing that one or more of their players are best placed to be incharge. 38% of clients and agencies prefer a lead-agency approach, with 50% preferring an all agency model (Source: A best practice guide to developing communication campaigns (IPA)

[8] 31% of clients hand over control entirely – believing that one or more of their players are best placed to be in charge. 38% of clients and agencies prefer a
lead-agency approach, with 50% preferring an all agency model (source: best practice guide – IPA)

[9] The requirements for Communications Planning set out by Jim Taylor’s in Space Race are multiple: “The discipline of developing a holistic plan, across marketing and trade marketing functions, that defines how a brand will communicate with consumers … beyond simply selecting channels and allocating monies … defining the proposition … identifying the best consumers … creating a ‘big picture’ … by weaving together every aspect of a brand’s communications”. It’s ambitious for a team of agencies let alone a single agency to accommodate each of these perspectives

[10] The lack of progress is noted by Tom Morton writing in Campaign; “Comms planning as a standalone department within agencies hasn’t
been a great success”, one possible explanation is offered by John Grant in After Image who notes that “The in-fighting seems, if anything, to be pulling
some agencies and consultancies back from innovation, towards lowest common denominators”.

[11] The Connections Wheel is a tool developed by TBWA, and described by Jean-Marie Dru in Beyond Disruption. I’m not suggesting that the Connections Wheel is the specific solution for every coach, but a tool that enables the Communications Planner Coach to ensure that all potential routes are covered
will be essential.

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Two Distribution Models United by a Common Reliance on Creativity

back in Jan of last year I wrote a post outlining five thoughts on viral marketing – which essentially were: what’s the motivation to pass on, is it easy to view and pass on, does it have contemporary relevance and can it be measured?  the last of these is now infinitely easier with the announcement of YouTube’s new analytics tool – YouTube Insight.

whilst it’s good to know where in the world people are watching my holiday video, it will no doubt prove more useful in giving ammunition to the arsenals of agencies like Cake, who are responsible for distributing the above piece for Pot Noodle.  made by AKQA, it’s a spoof of Guinness’ Tipping Point.  and Honda’s Cog for that matter.  or actually the Orange ad with those colours  …or, come to think of it, a whole tranche of ads that have pretty much been developed on a similar theme ever since Cog’s effort.

what this viral relies on is it’s ability to pop a shot at these more glossy peers.  from it’s windy start, thru electric wheelchairs and wheely bins, to a blow up doll and eventually the Pot itself, the piece relies on the ability to remix what is now a very much established theme.  it’s creative remix at it’s best.  it also voices the suggestion by some of us in the industry who are thinking maybe enough of th Cog-cloning now thanks…

what separates this from Guinness’ original effort is, fundamentally, what a brand wants to get away with…  brands are eagerly able to rush in wherever the BACC fear to tread.  but it’s also a reflection of money.  it’s the level of available investment that determines whether a client adopts Pot Noodle’s viral model or the more investment-intensive broadcast model.

at lower budgets virals frankly are the only option, but it’s not quite that simple…  let’s say the above cost £40k to make and – thru free seeding and non-paid for promotion – generates 1 million views.  assuming that distribution costs nil, thats a cpt on views of £40.

compare that to a standard TV campaign that will cost – say – £300k to make and generate for the sake of argument an overall cpt (prod and media) for a 16-34 audience of around £20; twice as cost efficient as a viral.  but twice as cost effective?!  very possibly not…

the viral model is not only pulled rather than pushed content, but benefits from being recommended  rather than broadcast to an individual.  and when you consider that the above Tipping Pot viral clip has – according to Cake – been on 400 websites, three
national newspapers and on the Sky News viral round up, it’s not surprising that it’s considered to be a success.

ultimately though, each of the above models – whatever the numbers – both fundamentally rely on creativity… on the ability to capture and engage an audience with an idea.  doing that gives a brand the luxury of choice in it’s media model.  it’s perhaps to all of our detriment that too many brands – through a lack of creativity with their communications – depend only on broadcast communications for their efforts.  applying the test of the viral distribution model to more ads would be a sterner test than anything the BACC could throw at them.

thanks to lee@cakegroup.com for the link.

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advertising, broadcasting, planning, viewing

Conventional blinkering; how Visa’s Mystery Box was closed too soon

back in January I posted on JJ Abrams idea of Mystery Boxes; that the intentional withholding of information is much more engaging than giving someone the whole story… that sometimes mystery is more important than
knowledge.  I suggested that in comunications planning we’re too obsessed with giving consumers
information and resolution…  instead we need to more often give them some questions, some
intrigue.

I was reminded of this thinking recently when I caught the above ad for Visa.  it opens with a big fat mystery box; a panicked guy running naked thru a desert.  how come he’s there?  why’s he naked?  where’s he running to?  lots of questions… which in short mean you keep on watching the ad.

it’s a great ad, but it could have been a lot braver with it’s media…  why did they have to give the whole thing away in 30 seconds?  they could have top and tailed it – extending the mystery box across the ad break or even across a whole TV show.  and if they’d been really brave, they could have teased the ad for a week without showing the resolution.

by resolving the mystery box so soon, Visa have missed out on sparking a multitude of conversations, roughly around the theme of "why’s man running naked thru the desert with nothing but a Visa card?"

a great ad which missed out on being a brilliant piece of
communication because it played to the conventions of a TV spot…  conventions are there for a reason, but sometimes they’re there to be broken…

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There now follows a simple exercise in Building Brand Associations…

Mm_dark…courtesy of M&Ms.  this is quite old now but I just came across it today whilst browsing a post  by Jason Oke who writes on the Leo Burnett Toronto blog.

so you’re M&Ms and you want people to know and remember that you have a new product in the form of Dark Chocolate.  you could invest in an ad that communicates this and deploy thru relevant and effective media, or

…you could get consumers to find out and then re-enforce (multiple times over) the association for themselves via an online game where you have to find 50 hidden movies – all of which have a ‘dark’ theme.

this is stand out for two reasons.  one, only the buffest of movie buffs will know all the answers, so you’re compelled to pass it on and try to work out the answers amongst your mates.  it’s very sociably-networkable.  which is good.

secondly this little piece stands out for the sheer elegant simplicity with which it has been put together.  using flash you navigate your way around the image, zooming in and out as you go.  and once you’ve spotted and noted a movie it blacks out, allowing you to focus on the remaining movies you haven’t got yet.  infuriatingly addictive and of course very easy to pass on to others to inflict the same brand association building on them.

click here to play but be warned; it’s addictive.

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advertising, planning, viewing

BBC’s Best and Worst on Show at the Cinema

Doctor_voyage_of_damnedgot to the cinema super early this week and was delivered two bits of commerciality from the BBC.

the first was audio for the Chris Moyles Show, with the man himself chatting to a side-kick as sounds flew around the cinema.  lots of "ooohh, I can make this sound go from left to right, listen…". 

innovative and interesting use of the capabilities of the media channel’s surround sound.

the next was a trailer for the Doctor Who Christmas Special.  the corporation no doubt hopes that Voyage of the Damned, the Tennent / Kylie-fest planned for Christmas Day will be better received by critics than last year’s spiderfest. 

a straight-forward TV trailer then, played in a cinema.

one of these two ads was brilliant, the other was irritating and annoying.  no prizes for guessing which one…

by the time Moyles and co were halfway through, I was ready to personally pull the speakers off the wall.  it was childish and tired; and anyone who thought that playing with sound in a cinema would impress, should check out what Dolby have been doing – consistently and rather elegantly – for years…

the Doctor Who trailer on the other hand was glorious.  seeing it on the big screen did justice to the both the quality of the cast and ambition of the plot and effects.  a simple piece of media planning that put the right communication in the best of places at the right time.

the lessons here is that sometimes less is more.  of the two pieces, the Moyles audio was by far the more customised for it’s environment – it was infinitely smarter; but that didn’t make it better.  by contrast the simple act of trailing a TV show on a big public screen rather than a small personal one, afforded it the credibility of a cinema piece with the anticipation of a movie trailer.  I know which one I’ll be tuning into.

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