Build it [well] and they will come: three things to appluad about Stella Artois’ iPhone app

picked this up via a TrendCentral article describing how brands are leveraging the power of AR in the mobile space. there's nothing massively groundbreaking about the above application; we've been talking about this kind of technology for a good while now. but there are however three important things to observe…

it is done very well. its comprehensive, simple to download and seemingly easy to use. its one thing to develop the strategy of having a bar-finder app… its quite another to make one happen. and to make one happen that has clearly been developed with user-centricity (rather than brand-centricity) at its heart is to be applauded.

it was developed outside of an established silo of expertise. specialist iPhone app building agency arossair (not an existing ad, media, or digital agency) built the application for Stella. this is an agency build on the basis of being a specialist not a generalist; of being totally focused on doing one thing well and being famous for it. I can't help but think that all of us in more generalist agencies will have to decide just how generalist we want to be in the future…

…the obvious model that emerges is that the generalists will evolve into central hubs of thinking and coordination, pulling in the capabilities of specialists on behalf of brands and projects as they go. but an evolution to this role brings with it lower margins and potential revenues – especially and specifically in the area of production and execution.

finally, they did it. enough of the talk and the thinking and the chart writing and justification and exploration and debating; and more of the doing. as the early 21st Century witnesses an exponential increase in the things that brands could do, there is a pleasure in seeing a brand actually doing something. 'build it [well] and they will come' could well become a mantra for our times.

targeting

Because Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus: how Reader’s Digest reminds us about an often-forgotten targeting basic

so the lovely Emily Fairhead-Keen send me the above chart courtesy of Reader's Digest, outlining the top unfulfilled ambitions for forty-plus men and women. it makes for a wry chuckle and no doubt will reinforce those perceptions that we all knowingly or otherwise hold close to our chests: that men are generally boys that have failed to grow up and still harbor ambitions to do the extraordinary, and that women are on an eternal quest for self-improvement and fulfillment.

so far so stereotypical, but it made me think about the last time – in a planning capacity – I actively and specifically even considered let alone proceeded to target genders differently. its not uncommon to get a brief for a male or female-orientated brand or product, so you follow the well-trodden and familiar paths of newspaper sport sections or weekly celebrity mags accordingly.

but its rare to get a brief that's not gender-specific that, as a planner, you choose to split along gender lines. perhaps because whilst its easy to develop products (and brands) for a gender its a lot harder to exclusively target one or the other; and if you decide to plan to engage with each gender differently then you need a degree of exclusivity in how you do so.

or perhaps you don't?! perhaps the new media economy and ecology permits more easy reaching people along gender lines… I recall the recent work done by social media agencies in Australia for a Toyota Yaris live pitch, for which the now closed / merged Population's campaign was based around the rivalries between Sydney and Melbourne, with alternative Facebook fan pages for the two cities.

there's no reason why the same tactic couldn't be applied to gender… for the right brand with the right brief it could be just the thing to capitalise on long-ago-formed and entrenched rivalries; because whilst the ways and means by which we reach people will become ever more sophisticated, its worth remembering the basic truth that men really are from Mars and women are from Venus.

commenting, innovating, pioneering, praising, printing, publishing

Covering a story like never before: what 56 newspapers in 45 countries can teach brands about the art of collaboration and cooperation

so the long and winding road of global climate change discussion and debate has brought us to 7th December 2009, and the Copenhagen Climate Summit. the world's eyes and ears will converge on the gathering as political leaders meet to debate and, with luck, agree the principles of the collective action required to save us from ourselves. an army of bloggers, Twitterers and reporters will all be there to capture – for us and for future generations – how it all went down.

the unprecedented media coverage that is no doubt to come is preceded today by a global media first orchestrated by the Guardian in London. 56 major newspapers in 45 countries have today published an identical editorial piece. appearing in twenty different languages, the piece takes a single united message – the demanding of action – to a global audience. Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger noted that "Newspapers have never done anything like this before – but they have never had to cover a story like this before"

collaboration on this scale is unprecedented, and difficult. as the Guardian puts it; "Given that newspapers are inherently rivalrous, proud and disputatious, viewing the world through very different national and political prisms, the prospect of getting a sizeable cross-section of them to sign up to a single text on such a momentous and divisive issue seemed like a long shot" …but the long shot paid off and – with the very notable exceptions of the US and Australia aside – a united editorial piece is reaching a global audience, and its a good and powerful thing to see.

its a testament to what can be achieved when editors and publishers want to cooperate, made all the more potent at a time when much is being said about the waning power of the fourth estate. and it begs a big question for brands… where's the co-operation? campaign after campaign has been rolled out to the world demonstrating commitment to reduce this or eliminate that – all inherently communicating on brands' terms rather than on the terms of the agenda against which they are developing comms…

the climate change agenda is bigger than any single brand, and some hard-fought co-opertaion could be just the thing to bring some increasingly needed credibility and scale to their – well intentioned – efforts. and if the "rivalous, proud and disputatious" printing presses of the world can do it, then perhaps a group of enlightened, forward-thinking and pioneering brands can too. its something I'd like very much to see.

promoting, social media-ising, social networking

Facebook’s betrayal: why Westfield’s $10,000 promotion may come back to bite the hand it so fleetingly fed

with the dust settling on Westfield's controversial Facebook application and the weekend drawing nigh, it's perhaps time to reflect – once again – on the trials, perils and pitfalls of brands rushing in to enter the social media spaces that angels fear to tread.

to recap. last weekend saw Westfield launch a promotion on Facebook which offered a place in a $10,000 prize draw to anyone who updated their Facebook status using the Westfield Gift Card Application. controversy and criticism soon grew however.

rumors that the promo was a hoax, suggestions that opened your Book to spam and viruses, difficult to find T&Cs and the cluttering of many a newsfeed led to the creation of dozens of anti groups and finally yesterday to the shutting down of the promotion. three observations…

one, mission accomplished. if the brief was to get into and make some noise in the space owned by people rather than on-to-many media then its a job well done and M&C Saatchi and Ikon Communications should be congratulated. we can only assume that the brief was such – any requirement to build brand credibility or improve perceptions of Westfield couldn't, or certainly shouldn't, have resulted in such a maverick solution. which brings me to…

two, it does appear to be the most invasive of promotions. the application essentially allows Westfield to spam peoples' Facebook friends with auto status updates saying, "All I want for Christmas is a Westfield gift card". more than a couple of them in my news feed would have taken me to the brink. not that it bothered University student Kristy Bell. the Courier Mail reports that she didn't think twice about adding the application… "I don't care that it can pull details from your profile – pretty much all Facebook applications can" she said. a point well made Kristy, but most pretty much all applications on Facebook do so to add utility (that mantra again) to your online / social / life experience.

three, and most importantly. digi strategist Tom Kelshaw posted that the competition appears to be breaking Facebook's rather strict terms and conditions, which state that:

4.2 In the rules of the promotion, or otherwise, you will not condition entry to the promotion upon taking any action on Facebook, for example, updating a status, posting on a profile or Page, or uploading a photo.

but in a statement earlier this week Westfield claimed that "its Christmas Gift Card promotion on Facebook is a registered promotion. Westfield worked closely with Facebook to develop the competition and Westfield has legal advice that the promotion does not breach the Spam Act."

if this statement is to be believed, Facebook actively participated in the development of an invasive and controversial application that contravened its own terms and conditions. this is important for a whole load of reasons, not least because it undermines trust in Facebook – the media brand around which many of us choose to organise social activities, communicate with friends and share things that interest, intrigue or amuse us.

Westfield, M&C Saatchi and Ikon Communications can walk away from this with a short term hit and learnings for next time. but a few more of these and Facebook may find its not brands but users that are walking away from the social network that sold them out for a quick buck from a brand that thought that an invasive land grab into people's personal media space was the smart let alone the right thing to do.

managing, pitching, social media-ising, social networking

Live Pitching and the Economics of Free: the genius, tragedy and slippery slope of Toyota Yaris’ social media pitch

so you're a car brand that's after a social media agency. what to do? hold a pitch of course. but rather than waste time getting lots of agencies into your office and getting them to pitch their ideas with some creds and test out the chemistry, why not just get them to do the work and put it out there in the real world. see which ideas work the best and appoint that agency. my favourite – for the record – is Iris' effort above.

genius…

you get to see how real ideas work in the real world – the most important metrics are how ideas actually translate into buzz and conversations, you get to measure these live in real time. there's no or minimal media budget and production costs are low, so for not a load of investment you get a load of exposure. you get feedback thru comments and posts, not from a focus group paid to tell you what they think you want them to think, but from real people fitting your brand into their busy lives.

its a genuinely innovative, real and interesting approach to take in both developing work for a brand and for establishing with which agencies you would like to work. you get to judge agencies on what they produce, not what they promise. our industry is the better for it.

tragedy…

its an irrelevance that each of the pitching agencies was given $15,000 to produce and deploy their work. the fact is that this approach undermines the two most precious commodities in our industry; ideas and people. you ask people to come up with ideas for free; OK, that's the nature of a pitch. but then you ask them to create and deploy those ideas for free; in ways that will build and grow your brand, for free.

you may very well get an architect to pitch a building design for
free, you wouldn't get them to build you one gratis. I could pitch a
movie idea to a Hollywood executive but I'd have to explain that I'd be
hard-pressed to make it for free. I might choose a restaurant based on
its menu, but I wouldn't expect a chef to make my a meal for free (nb
I'd have a boyfriend for that). in each case asking for product for free undermines the professionalism, expertise and product of the individuals that create it.

there's a strong counter argument to this – one which I am very much aware that I have made in the past – that people (who don't work in planning, advertising, ideas or comms agencies) are out there creating and deploying stuff on your behalf. and that not only should brands acknowledge that but they should actively encourage it. in fact there's an interesting model which is that everyone works on a project basis and ideas live or die on their own merit. payment by performance taken to the logical extreme.

but the slippery slope is clear. there's a conflict between the academic theory of the evolution of media and communications, and the agency model that underpins much of the work upon which brands – and brand equity – is built. in the near future, agencies will all have to get used to and embrace the fact that our agency ideas increasingly exist in an ecology with others that came from somewhere – anywhere, everywhere – else. but in that future we have to ensure that we nurture the people and ideas upon which brands in that future will be built.

CRM-ing, data planning, IPA|ED:final - existing customers, researching, targeting

Doing and Saying: what a WOM study from HBR can tell us about understanding customer groups

formulas for calculating CLV and CRV: copyright of Harvard Business Review / V. Kumar, J.Andrew Petersen, and Robert P.Leone

the joy above are two formulas, developed for an article by V. Kumar, J.Andrew Petersen, and Robert P.Leone published in the Harvard Business Review entitled How Valuable is Word of Mouth? Mediation is a big fan of planning and incorporating WOM – in a structured way – into brand strategies, and have written a fair bit about it on this blog, so was more than a little happy when Mark H and Guy C sent me the above article.

the awesomeness of the above formulas get the authors to a place where they can compare CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) with CRV (Customer Referral Value), and something really interesting happens – there's no direct correlation. it doesn't – I don't think – occur to planners often enough that those groups of customers who are valuable because they buy the most are not necessarily the some groups of customers who are valuable because they talk about a brand the most.

so on the basis that CLV added to CRV is not a good predictor of overall customer value, the authors develop and propose a rather useful matrix of low buying / low advocacy bottom left to high buying / high advocacy top right (with the obvious skews top left and bottom right).

…by splitting customer segments out in this way you get a very clear and potentially dual role for a strategy and schedule… what's the plan (if any) for getting less vocal customers who buy a lot to talk more about your brand? versus the plan (if any) for getting the less frequent purchasers but most vocal groups of your customers to buy more of what you're selling?

data, data, data … getting it and more specifically understanding and using it to illuminate what's going on in and across brands' customer bases. better strategies, better plans and better schedules. what's not to love. you can get a copy of the report at HBR Reprints.

Down-Underness

I’m back on the grid, and have returned with a little video diary from my first few weeks in Sydney

hey there. so I've been quiet for a few weeks but I'm back on the grid and up and running in glorious Sydney. the little video above gives an idea of what I've been up to. having a blast mainly. I've also been getting ready to start my new job at PHD Australia tomorrow. looking forward to it and to negotiating the future of media and brand communications in a different market…

what's clear is that whilst a great deal is different – be it TV trading or the subtleties of a people's expectations and behaviours in a different society and culture – much remains the same. the Australian media market is facing similar challenges to those being tackled by media industries elsewhere. digitisation, in-control and on-demand people (we've banned the word 'consumers' remember), and the migration of advertising dollars online are impacting media infrastructures here as they are elsewhere. I'm looking forward to the challenge.

I also hope you like the new-look blog. muich remains the same but I've added a central column which now largely houses news, comment and debate from elsewhere – from the latest media news headlines to recent posts from some of my favourite blogs. I always love to get feedback so any thoughts are very welcome.

thanks for reading, its good to be back.

Chris x

blogging, Down-Underness

Due South: why Mediation is going offline for a while as I head down under

me only not… sourced
so I'm going to be a bit quiet for the next few weeks. the reason being that after an amazing ten years in London I'm heading due south for a few winters (summers), as I move to PHD Australia. I'll be off the grid for a few weeks, during which I'll mainly be taking advantage of the early Australian summer, doing a fair bit of surfing and getting to know my new home.

in the meantime I available on email or via facebook. catch ya – literally – on the flipside…

sharing, thinking

A Tale of Two Matts: Plagiarism, Transparency and Outsourcing in the ideas economy

image from The Big Steal – totally unrelated but cool pic sourced here

there was a bit of a flurry of emails last week when infomaginationer and planner Matt Sadler noticed a think piece on the IPA website by Matt Harris, Data and CRM partner at Rapier which bore a remarkable resemblance to his President's Prize-winning essay, also about data.

without going thru the full story, here are the essential basics… last Tuesday Matt S notices the similarity between Matt H's article in the IPA newsletter. Matt S emails Matt H outlining the similarity and asking for an explanation. on Wednesday Matt H replies to Matt S claiming to know nothing about his essay.

but by end of play on Wednesday all was resolved. Matt H realised that he'd been the victim of some lazy freelancers and apologised to Matt S, the article was removed from the IPA site, and Matt S had forgiven everyone and suggested that Matt H and he may even collaborate on an article sometime. as Matt S put it, "forgiveness rocks!"

forgiveness may well rock but there's an incredibly worrying thread to this whole tale. one, an established, articulate and informed agency partner's response to being asked to write a think piece was to outsource it. two, some freelance writers who had been asked to write said think piece responded by copying, thought for thought, the work of someone else.

what I am not in any way seeking to do is antagonise a situation that has been resolved by the parties involved (full credit to them). what I am going to do is ask some serious questions that this unfortunate incident raises… because the fact is that we all of us use ideas and inspiration from other people within and beyond the industry all the time… if we didn't, ideas wouldn't spread and new, better ways of approaching what we do wouldn't get momentum and consensus.

indeed there's more than a little been written of late about the benefit of setting ideas free, of letting the crowd build on them and improve them, and on how all of us are better by remixing each others thoughts for mutual benefit.

but we do two things… (1) we source them and (2) we add to them from our own experience before presenting them to a client or to each other. neither of which was done in this case. I worry that there's a sense that we feel if we didn't originate an idea then we can't use it. which is madness. at an IPA event only a few weeks ago Rory Sutherland instigated a project on Behavioural Economics and suggested that we all of us as an industry co-operated to understand it, use it and monetise it collectively as best as possible.

in the idea-led economy in which we all live and work we need each others' ideas. we just need to be brave about using them, honest about the source of them, and demonstrate our expertise by using and adding to them in relevant and appropriate ways. if there's anything to be learned from our Tale of two Matts it is this. and if there's anything to be gained its everyone realising that being transparent about building on other people's ideas makes us more not less credible thinkers.

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MEDIATION

negotiating the future of media and communications