Making it Up As I Go Along

It's Half Time In America

2012-02-10T07:26:00.000-08:00

Why is it that the Americans do this stuff so much better than we do, than anyone does for that matter?

You may dismiss it as over emotional, sentimental, hokey, corny schmaltz.

What you can’t deny is that it is made so damned well, every word is crafted for maximum impact, the people (please let them be real people!) so perfectly selected and sequenced. The two firefighters – a shot that says nothing yet says so much, I nearly cried at that point!

Whether it makes America more or less likely to buy a Chrysler will remain to be seen but it’s got America talking.

An ad.

That has got the whole country talking.

To.

Each.

Other.

Brilliant!

Makes you think though, what would a British version be like?

Ray Winstone? Ellesmere Port? Not quite the same is it?

First posted at www.taylorobrien.com

New Year's Revolution

2012-01-19T08:44:00.000-08:00

'Evolve or die' was the mantra this time last year. Right now I think it's more like 'revolt or die'.

Now, I've never been one to over dramatise, but (deep breath) we are all teetering on the edge of the abyss, and from where I'm standing I can see more and more people falling in. It's like Dante's Inferno or the climax of Ghostbusters. (Just covering all my bases there, and you'll note the assumption that all marketeers are destined for a future down below.)

But it is that serious. In 20 odd years (or two recessions) I've not seen our industry in a state of collapse like this, and it's not just the small and weak that are affected, there have been some big casualties - certainly out in the regions. Don't be fooled by all the PR guff about merger and partnership, just dig a little deeper and you'll see lots of strange bedfellows and marriages of (in)convenience, but hey survival is survival.

It's probably the toughest time to be in an agency ever. No sympathy required, as an industry we enjoyed our boom years and now we must cope with the lean times.

Enough doom and gloom. How are we going to get out of this?

Let's just put the macroeconomic picture to one side for a moment. Not ignore it, just focus on things closer to home, things we can directly affect, which little by little will help the bigger picture. Remember an economy is made up of people, and if we all change a little then it will make a lot of difference.

We are all creative people.........stop, don't say it, it's a small 'c', if we didn't understand creativity then we wouldn't be engaged in this industry. It doesn't need to be in the job title, we all have a responsibility for creativity. Yes suits, that means you too.

So we should harness that creativity and look at what we do, how we do it and make change happen. First in our own businesses, then for our clients, and maybe, just maybe we can get through this.

If the last four or so years has taught us nothing it is that this state of change is permanent, it is not going away. To merely evolve is not enough, we must fundamentally examine every element of what we do and seek a better way of doing it. There might not be one, but by looking deeply into our processes we will find new ways to work, new ways to engage, new ways to create things.

Our economy, our country even, was built on manufacture right from the stone age, through the indsutrial revolution and beyond.

Our greatest export now is our creativity so whilst we stand on the edge of that abyss, I believe this is the greatest time to be in the creative indusrty and it also offers us the greatest opportunity we will ever have.

It's up to us wheter we choose to take it or not.

So this time the revolution will most definitely not be televised, it will be on iphone, ipad, pc and mac alike and it will be happening in front of your very eyes, if you're not careful.

Trade Places With Your Customer

2012-01-19T07:16:00.000-08:00

Not only is it a great 80s movie reference, but this always reminds me of the importance of putting yourself in your customer's shoes, thinking how they think. Some call it empathy, I just call it common sense.

If you treat the customer as a human, as someone with hopes, dreams, likes, dislikes, fears and ambitions rather than a statistic then you will have a greater chance of understanding what will motivate them to respond to your message rather than the other 1,345 they will be exposed to today.

Think about how they will be exposed to the message, their likely frame of mind when they are receiving and take this into consideration too.

For example, I have been watching/brainwashed by (delete as appropriate) Channel 5's Milkshake strand of late. If you don't know it runs from around six in the morning and is a combination of Peppa Pig, Thomas, Noddy and all the usual suspects linked by a disgustingly perky and shiny set of presenters for that time in the morning.

I noticed over Christmas a much greater proportion of ads clearly targeted at parents in amongst those for ridiculously expensive toys and games aimed at the children themselves . Step forward the usual roster of baby products, toiletries and laundry products.

As a media planner the opportunity looks great on paper, bang on demographic, good share for the time of day, mainstream channel - but has anyone considered what the audience are doing in the breaks?

If our house is typical then the 'audience' will be looking behind sofas for dropped pieces of toast, dashing upstairs to get to the potty on time or roughly translated anything but watching the screen.

So for true customer insight, really get to know your audience, after all the relationship with our favourite brands is akin to a friendship, and friends know how each other think, and sometimes it's what we don't say that's as important as what we do say.

Now how do I get my hands on a genuine GI Joe?

Suck On This

2012-01-16T08:34:00.000-08:00

Sucking eggs - why would you want to do that?

Anyway here are a few things I've been musing on as it's the start of the year, and to be fair it just reads like a whole load of common sense to me! So at the risk of feeling like the man in the picture ...............read on.

Don’t wait for business to get backto what and where it used to be – heads up, things have changed, they willnever be the same again.

Understand this phrase “You are whoGoogle says you are”. You can’t control the message like you used to. Monitorand interject only when appropriate.

Be your own biggest critic. Beforepresenting anything be able to clearly define the pros and cons, play devil’sadvocate and be able to mitigate every possible risk that might be identified.Above all else, ask yourself if you are proud of what you are sending out thedoor.

Meet with past clients every quarterfor lunch. Keep in touch.

Always be learning.

Love what you do. No really, lovewhat you do – it shows!

Add value within your community orsphere of influence.

Understand your product inside out.

It costs less to delight a clientthan it does to frustrate him.

The most effective way to get newclients is to impress old ones.

The most compelling thing you cansell a client is more sleep.

There are at least 10 things yourclients wish you’d do differently. Find them and do them!

If your clients can go monthswithout hearing from you, they can go just as long without recommending you.

Never assume your clients recogniseall you can do for them.

Find out what it’s like to be inyour clients shoes. What are their targets, what will make them look good.

Experience your clients brand firsthand. Buy it, wear it, work it, sell it.

Surprise your clients with somethingfor free, a three hour clinic on a particular issue or subject, or lunchtimeseminars.

Resist the temptation to urgesalespeople to close deals quicker, avoid the whiff of desperation.

Go after the ones that got away,competitors positions may be weakened.

Try what worked before. Do otherthings as well, but don't discard what worked.

Challenge your clients thinking,don’t always take what they say at face value.

Slow the decision making processdown. They’ll thank you for getting it right, not getting it spent.

If what you do can be done as wellfor less, be the one to tell them. Your brand is based on trust, don’t letsomeone else devalue that.

Frame the proposal in their terms,it’s their outcome that needs to be achieved, you are a means to that end.

Detach from the outcome. It’s notalways about closing, if that’s your focus they can smell it. Be willing towalk away for the good of both parties.

Ask your client how you canhelp – and listen to the answer.

Love it or hate it.....................

2012-01-12T02:13:00.000-08:00

A client who shall remain anonymous once rejected a piece of creative I presented with the immortal words ‘I don’t like it’.

To the surprise of my colleagues I replied ‘Brilliant!’.

Once I’d allowed everyone to relocate their jaws I continued, ‘would you buy your product?’. ‘Well of course not, it’s cheap tat’ they replied, and made my point for me quite effectively.

‘We’ are not always the target for what we produce, so ‘we’ don’t have to like it for it to be an effective piece of communication.

An essential part of the briefing process is to understand the target audience. That means getting deeper than demographics and statistics. What are their motivations for buying (or not buying)? Why are the engaging (or not) with your brand? How will your brand enhance their lives?

We don’t think of the target audience as a chart or a PowerPoint presentation, we give them a personality and think of them as people. That way it’s much easier to understand what makes them tick and what’s likely to make them respond to our communication.

As long as we have a clear view of what we are trying to achieve then the solution will be an appropriate one.

And if you don’t ‘like’ that well you know what you can do!

Be Careful What You Ask For....

2011-11-11T08:35:00.000-08:00

How often are we preoccupied with the answer, when the question is the most important thing?

My little boy is wearing me out at the moment, he’s reached the ‘why’ phase. I can’t wait for ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘when’ by the way!

Unlike a child’s relentless barrage of (sometimes meaningless) questions the key is asking the right question.

It’s been said that the most important part of a CEO’s role is to be ‘Chief Question Asker’ and not the provider of the answers.

Great CEOs and business leaders ask great questions, questions that are disruptive, questions that make a difference.

The ‘right’ question framed in the ‘right’ way is often subversive, it puts people in a place where they have to think, not just answer robotically. Yes, it can be uncomfortable at times, but that’s not always a ‘bad’ thing. When does exercise do you the most good? When your muscles ache, don’t forget the brain needs exercise too!

Great business leaders aren’t afraid of the answer, they need exercise as well!

Asking questions isn’t limited to the CEO by any means, but it’s their responsibility to deliver a culture and framework in which questioning is respected, valued and encouraged. Then it’s up to all employees to ask questions of themselves, their colleagues and their superiors.

Asking questions creates conversation, conversation creates communication, communication creates collaboration and collaboration creates solutions. Those solutions will take your business to a better place than it is today.

Thinking about how the question is framed is important too. ‘Why’ or ‘why not’? ‘What do we stand for’ or ‘what do we stand against’? Sometimes we need to take ourselves into a place that stimulates invention and new ideas.

If the last five years has taught us anything, it’s that there will be no ‘back to normal’ – ‘this’ is ‘normal’. Change will be the only certainty, so we need to make sure that we’re organisationally ready to make change work positively for our brands and our businesses and generating new ways of working and new ideas will be central to this.

We believe that your brand is the truth of your business, that brands are made up of stories, and those stories lie within your business.

Our job is to help you find it, and guess what?

One of the best ways to get to those stories is to ask the questions and keep on asking til we get to the answer.

That’s why we don’t adopt a rigid process to how we make a difference to your business, we just ask the questions that count!

Originally posted at www.taylorobrien.com

Give Me Just A Little More Time

2011-11-02T10:02:00.000-07:00

‘Don’t be too harsh to these poems until they’re typed. I always think typescript lends some sort of certainty: at least, if the things are bad then, they appear to be bad with conviction.’

Dylan Thomas

It would have been Dylan Thomas’ birthday this week and looking through some of his great quotes this one caught my eye and caused me to smile inwardly and raise an eyebrow. Though not simultaneously – that would be too much like multi-tasking!

Maybe it’s an age thing, maybe it’s an experience thing, but I remember when it was harder to put a presentation or proposal together, when we couldn’t just bash our thoughts onto a keyboard and then drag and pull them into some kind of order through the wonder of PowerPoint. And I think that was a good thing.

For all the fantastic things that technology has done, and I’m certainly not a Luddite, maybe it allows us to commit our thoughts a little readily. To paraphrase the poet, maybe PowerPoint lends ‘some sort of certainty’.

The ability to work more quickly hasn’t made us cleverer, the creative process is still just that – a process, and like all good things it takes time.

This isn’t misty eyed Madmen inspired nostalgia, but I remember the time when we used to present off boards too, when we used hand crafted rather than mac ‘visuals’.

These were great, because you could change the piece then and there, in front of the client’s very eyes, as they fed back on your concept. You may end up walking out of the meeting with a completely different piece from that with which you walked in, but that was great because it was a collaborative process and one which was shaped by the business issue we were facing.

Because it was a concept rather than a finished piece, the feedback we got was at that conceptual level. We were all able to look at the ‘big picture’ and get the proposition and key messaging right before we moved to the finite detail. It wasn’t black or white, right or wrong, it was interpretative and it was more likely to be ‘right’ before it moved on to its many and varied executions.

A knock on effect of work looking so ‘finished’ nowadays is that the feedback is often very ‘literal’ and detailed, and sometimes misses the point for that. Too often, we hear too early in the process ‘the logo is too big/not big enough/too bright/not bright enough etc.’ and bypass the ‘is the concept and messaging right’ stage.

As a brand consultancy we often deal in ‘big’ questions that require ‘big’ answers – your brand is the truth of your business after all – and we make sure that we spend time working with you ensuring that the big picture is right, before we focus on the detail.

Maybe it’s because we learned the hard way, because we still see what we do as a blend of art and science, or maybe it’s just because we care that we think this stuff is important?

First published on www.taylorobrien.com

Dial M For..............................Metaphor?

2011-10-12T04:55:00.000-07:00

More and more often recently I have found myself talking to clients about ‘dials’ and how we need to turn them this way and that.

Apparently, I have been talking about the concept of ‘aggregation of marginal gains’.

As an aside, I’ve never been one for dressing up what we do in flowery language or hiding behind smoke and mirror to mystify what is, quite often, nothing more than the application of the bleeding obvious! Like the time I was asked to provide a ‘visual image representation’ of a concept – to which I answered ‘what, you mean a picture?’ – but I was young and naïve and didn’t realise that a VIR (!) cost twice as much as a picture!

Surely as brand consultants if we can’t express ourselves succinctly and clearly, then we can’t be trusted with your brand – cobbler’s shoes and all that!

Anyway, to the rather grandiosely named aggregation of marginal gains, and maybe I’m oversimplifying this, but if we treat each of the individual values of a brand as a separate measure, then surely it is easier for us to improve adherence to each value by 10% than it is to affect the whole brand by a whopping 50%.

It’s a great way of approaching a problem, when Honda wanted to lower the overall weight of the car, they didn’t look for one big change, they found a way of making each individual component one gram lighter – simple and effective.

So that’s why I’ve been talking about ‘dials’ a lot of late, because sometimes it’s easier to use visual metaphor to explain something, and I’m a simple chap.

If we treat each value as a dial and if we turn each one a single notch then we can make a significant difference to the overall brand and how it engages with its audience.

Those values should not be self sufficient, but will have a level of dependency on each other. So a positive change to one will in turn have a knock on effect on the others.

I’m sure there is a ‘management speak’ title for this out there somewhere, but I choose to think of it as the sum of the parts being greater than the whole.

And that’s a lot more straightforward than the ‘aggregation of marginal gains’ isn’t it!

Originally posted at www.taylorobrien.com

Trust

2011-08-02T09:21:00.000-07:00

Human nature dictates that we want to be liked – anyone who studied Maslow understands that.

So in these tough times, it’s a clever move to get our clients to like us more isn’t it?

The diligent Account Managers who bend over backwards to be popular with the client, who go the extra mile to meet their ever more demanding needs, working all the hours available to be liked by the client – they’re the clever ones right?

Wrong!

What really bonds a client and agency is trust.

If the client trusts the agency then that goes deeper than ‘like’.

I don’t particularly like my accountant, he often asks me to do things I don’t want to or that I don’t like, but I trust him.

So what’s the magic formula?

It’s easy really, do what’s right for your client, not what you think will please them, or what you think they will like.

Sure as eggs are eggs when it all goes wrong, you’ll see how far ‘like’ gets you.
Remember they’re clients not friends.

If a client trusts you they will take your advice, because even though they may not like it, they know it’s right.

It’s our job to make a difference to our clients businesses, do that and they will trust you more. The more they trust you, the greater the difference you will be able to make. And so it goes.

First published at www.taylorobrien.com

Don't Burst My Bubble

2011-06-30T07:26:00.000-07:00

This is a really interesting piece posted on TED recently.

Click here to watch!

It’s worth watching for the detail, but essentially it’s a presentation by Eli Pariser about how the constant striving to deliver personalised content and experiences online is actually limiting the information and content we are exposed to.

So rather than broadening our choice and horizons we are starting to become constrained, it’s like a high street populated with only the shops we use, so guess what? We only shop at those shops, and before long we’ve forgotten that any others exist.

It’s the same with content, imagine a newspaper that only had stories about the things we’ve expressed an interest in – sounds brilliant doesn’t it? But how would we find out about all those other things that are happening, what does that mean for expansion of our horizons and worldview?

The example of the two differing Google searches for Egypt demonstrates this superbly, this isn’t internet conspiracy theory, it’s online algorithmic fact.

Pariser covers the socio-political impacts in his piece, so I won’t! I’m more concerned with the effect this is having on brand and marketeers in general.

Initially this starts to sound like it could be a good thing, I shop and browse at Gap, Jaeger and Tesco online so my shopping choices are limited and prompted by this behaviour. That’s great for those three brands, they will be top of my shopping list – but how long will that last? How long before I tire of the range, tire of the experience and in the same way I seek a ‘different’ shopping experience away from the high street, search elsewhere?

This is where it starts to get complex and therefore interesting! How does the individual brand wrest ownership for its online place back from the search engines and social networks? How does it retain ownership of its position online?

Real world retailers, quite rightly, are meticulous about where their stores are located – there’s no Poundland on Bond Street – with good reason, but online the virtual landlords put them wherever they want, and what’s more they can change that location as and when they see fit.

There isn’t really an answer or a solution to this, it’s another of the things we need to be aware of when we are considering the brand experience in the round.

One truth, yet again, is that just because the technology exists doesn’t mean we have to use every last drop of it, and further to that, as ever, we should take the knowledge, experience and lessons we have learnt in the offline worlds and apply those in the online context.

Brands have built up heritage, history and deep understanding of their audiences and customers and we should not throw that out lightly.

First published on www.taylorobrien.com

Ivy League Still Premier League?

2011-06-17T02:39:00.000-07:00

Not surprisingly this headline on Linkedin today caught my eye:

‘A Logo Is Not A Brand’

I would normally have dismissed it and moved on, but where it was from hit me like an exocet :

Harvard Business Review.

Let me repeat that – Harvard. Business. Review.

Take a deep breath and let’s go!

A place viewed in awe the world over as being responsible for some of the most brilliant minds in business, politics, culture, the arts, science and who can claim the following amongst its alumni :

John Quincy Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, JFK, Jack Lemmon, Al Gore, Larry Summers, Bill Gates, Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg.

And what do they tell us via their esteemed publication?

That’s right ‘a logo is not a brand’.

Now the piece that followed was well reasoned, covered all appropriate points and was well written. To say it was basic would probably be a fair summary, and let’s leave it there.

It’s not actually the content of the piece that has irked me so, it’s a wider issue than that.

In the constant thirst for new content that the internet has thrust upon us, something is better than nothing, quality control has all but disappeared. And with it goes credibility, and with that goes the brand.

The author can now, quite honestly, state that he has been published in HBR and it’s a badge of honour for him. Frankly I’d have cut off my right arm to have been published in HBR, but I knew that I had nothing worthy of inclusion.

Now I’m not so sure, if this is the standard then I have plenty to say, but d’you know what? I’m not sure I want to!

For Your Eyes Only?

2011-05-26T08:22:00.000-07:00

So we’re going to get a new Bond film (at last) and we hear it’s likely to be part funded by an estimated $45m of product placement fees.

Now Bond has been no stranger to product placement in the past, let’s not forget the slightly clumsy discussion about his watch in Casino Royale and the much hyped switch to BMW in Tomorrow Never Dies, but this is a new milestone.

Product Placement has recently been given the green light on UK television, with a Nescafe coffee machine the first product featured on ITV’s Daytime slot, so it looks like something that’s here to stay and the ‘P’ logo doesn’t seem likely to leave our screens (unlike Channel 4’s red triangle) in the near future.

For broadcaster it throws up some interesting challenges. What happens when a programme has a ‘placed’ product that’s in conflict with the programme sponsor, and another competitor is featured in the centre break. I think I’ll leave those conundrums to the media houses and channels to iron out, it’s no different to a sponsored supplement appearing with a magazine chock full of competitors ads is it?

So what does it all mean for a brand?

Well, here we go again it’s another new media with a lot of ‘noise’ and mystique being generated around it. But guess what? The ‘old’ rules and measures still apply.

Obviously the choice of programme and how and where the product is ‘placed’ will be made very carefully and a natural fit with content and audience will be made – just like ‘normal’ advertising.

How the effectiveness is assessed will again be similar in principle to ads and bumper breaks, with recall and impacts being judged.

I think the big challenge is how to stay on brand with the placement, rather than the product randomly appearing on screen, again just like addressing any other communications challenge.

Ensuring the (literal) tone of voice around the product is key, let’s go back to that exchange in Casino Royale for a moment – ouch! But hey, I’m not a movie director, what do I know?!

The best example of Product Placement I’ve seen recently was the four hour infomercial for Jaguar cars simultaneously broadcast on BBC1 and ITV to an estimated audience of 24m – also known as the Royal Wedding!

What fantastic exposure for a classic British (owned by Ford I know!) car marque, showcasing their latest model beautifully and backing in on the genuine feel good factor around the event – princes, kings, queens, Elton John and David Furnish, the Beckhams and the common man all as one and seemingly all entranced by the shiny Jags as they ferried their expensive cargo from abbey to palace.

I think that Jaguar have unwittingly set the bar for what good looks like in Product Placement (UK style) managing to both be integral to the programme and be noticed in a positive way without crossing over into obtrusiveness.

As a contrast here’s a brief history of product placement, from 50s American soap all the way up to 30 Rock, some subtle, some not so!

The History of Product Placement

More opportunities for brand to engage its audience? Only time will tell, but it will be interesting to see how it develops as a channel, and who is the first to make a real breakthrough on UK television.

First published on www.taylorobrien.com

The Public Wants What The Public Gets

2011-05-24T09:10:00.000-07:00

Steve Henry’s recent pronouncement that ‘advertising in its current form may go away’ at a regional marketing event, may have been calculated to grab attention – well it worked!

Pointing to the massive shift in circulation and viewing figures online and the proliferation of media choice now available, his context was the power of social media, and how brands could engage directly with consumers and vice versa.

The quote is one that guarantees a response and send media men scurrying for the Bells, and so it should as anyone who still thinks that prescribing a single channel campaign or the centre break of Corrie is the answer is destined for the same place as our chum Tyrannosaurus Rex. Simplistic I know, but you get the point.

The IPA defines ‘advertising’ as ‘the means of providing the most persuasive possible selling message to the right prospects at the lowest possible cost.’

If that’s what we’re talking about then it will never go away. That doesn’t define advertising by channel, but by purpose.

The explosion of available channels just means that we all have to work harder to find the best mix of channel for our target market.

Forget channel neutrality, this is about channel engagement.

Good agencies (and clients!) are the ones who understand that it’s the power of the idea allied to the most appropriate use of channel that will deliver results.

The ‘model’ is changing in front of our very eyes; things will never be the same again.

Anyone who still thinks in terms on ‘on’, ‘off’, ‘above’, ‘below’ even ‘through’ the line has missed the point – and the boat!

Consider the future or one of many views of the future.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P81bb0Tzwbo&feature=player_embedded]

This is a promo that PHD made for a conference they held, which generated some negativity when shown to a wider audience. Get beyond all that and consider the content, which shows us a (not definitive by any means) view of the future consumer – ‘I want to double tap on anything and get more information’ – and the subtext that ‘we can kill brands, stone dead, just like that.’

The bit that gave me comfort was that ‘I want content tailored for me, and me……etc’. Go back to the IPA definition – ‘providing the most persuasive possible selling message to the right prospects’ – as simple as it sounds this is what we should be doing, harnessing the right technology to the best ideas – just as we always have (or should have been if we were doing our jobs properly!).

So Steve, maybe it won’t always be called ‘advertising’, and they won’t always be called ‘admen’, but as long as people need to sell things then there’s life in the old dog yet!

Originally posted at www.taylorobrien.com

How Does It Feel…………….

2011-05-24T09:06:00.000-07:00

So last week saw ‘Blue Monday’ come and go.

Felt just like another day in the office to me. Maybe we’ve just got used to it, maybe all Mondays are like that.

Much more importantly this week saw the release of the latest IPA/BDO Bellwether report, which as it was reported in the press was indeed something to make us all feel blue (I’ll keep that New Order motif going if it kills me).

It told us that for the last quarter of 2010 22% of marketers had revised their budgets down compared to 17% who were increasing their investment, meaning that overall budgets were down 5.4%, the steepest fall for over a year. It also told us that confidence was at its lowest point for 18 months.

I may be clutching at straws here but three things stuck out for me.

Firstly if 22% of marketers are decreasing their budgets then doesn’t that mean 78% are remaining static or increasing?

Also, hidden away in the reporting was that 2011 budgets are reported to be set at a higher level than 2010. Finally it reported that highly accountable channels reported rises in budget.

And it’s not just a random piece of research either, Marketing Week’s survey taken in October told us that 83% of budgets were remaining static or increasing, with measurable and responsive channels growing (Marketing Week Webinar, Winning with Multichannel Marketing in the New Economy, 2011).

OK we’re not planning retirement and thinking about the Barbadian villa just yet, but aren’t they positive things? Shouldn’t we be giving these figures a little more prominence, or maybe that doesn’t suit the agenda?

More and more people we speak to are looking up and forward into 2011 and talking about increased budgets, increasing activity, adding people to their teams and generally being positive about this year.

Maybe it’s all relative, maybe we hit a low point in 2010 and we can only go one way. Maybe no one wants to curse the optimism by being the one to be speak out but there is certainly a will that wasn’t around during the last six months of 2010. Whether this will is a) enough to sustain us through the traditional April breakpoint and b) going to translate into demonstrable action is yet to be proven, but at least it’s there this year.

I think we’ve all learnt lessons from the recent past, and only the foolhardy would shout ‘recovery’ from the rooftops, but plenty of people are whispering it.

Some commentators are suggesting that we’ve plunged the real depths of recession, had our time of reflection and now it’s time to seize the opportunity? Where are we in terms of recovery? The truth is we won’t know until we’re out the other side and maybe 2011 may generate more confusion before the real picture appears, but as long as we’re not left in a state of shellshock then we’ve got a chance.

Originally posted at www.taylorobrien.com

If You’ve Got it – Flaunt it!

2011-05-24T09:00:00.001-07:00

‘Is brand strategy heading for extinction?’

That was the question posed on FT.com recently. On the one hand it’s good to see the salmon pink people actually taking notice of ‘brand’ at all, on the other it’s only to foretell its death (again), hey ho! So is brand strategy heading for extinction? No apologies for saying this, but what a daft question.

The definition of a strategy is that it is a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. This means that in order to succeed it will have to adapt to survive.

By its very nature a strategy should flex itself to deal with any change that’s thrown in its path. Brands, like anything else, that fail to understand this fundamental truth are destined to fail themselves.

So, no brand strategy is not heading for extinction. It’s actually become more important, and as the media mix continues to fragment in front of our eyes it becomes more and more important.

The world of the consumer and communications has changed beyond measure and continues to do s. Marketing professionals are considered to be at the cutting edge when it comes to harnessing technological advances to sell.

Way back when, it was marketers who saw the potential to sell that the television offered, and so it has been for each subsequent generation of Don Drapers and the ‘new media’ of choice. OK so they weren’t all successes – I remember the ads between the tracks on Sigue Sigue Sputnik’s album!

However it was the intelligent (and the most successful) ones that understood that not all channels are for selling though (e.g. SSS albums). They realised that there were times when there was a need to inform, even to educate, that there was a greater purpose to the brand.

And so it is today, I think the biggest challenge we currently face is identifying which are ‘selling’ communications channels and which are ‘telling’ channels, using them appropriately, and then adapting how we communicate through those channels while staying true to the brand. As we uncover new and ever more exciting ways of communicating and engaging, we aren’t always getting the time to properly evaluate them. This means that brands can use channels inappropriately, innocently.

As someone once said, ‘just because you can doesn’t mean you should’, so take a step back and consider what you’re about to do, align your objectives with those of your brand and then act. Same as it always was really. Some might call it brand strategy!

Originally posted at www.taylorobrien.com

When Is A Pitch Not A Pitch?

2010-02-25T03:01:00.000-08:00

Whether the Phillipson/Propaganda fallout is about pitching or something else, that and the Belgian ad community and its bold (public) stance on pitching have served to bring the thorny subject to the forefront (yet) again.

I remember (grumpy old man alert!) when a pitch meant a brief for a particular brand or product, and you were able to recommend how you would use a combination of channels to achieve the objective.

In the recent past I've gone up against three other agencies for a mailpack - when a mailpack isn't even the right answer in the first place - but what do you do?

Do you decline, allowing the other three to get into your client and dazzle them with words and pictures, and feel warm inside as you're taking a stand? Warm inside and skint?!

Or do you throw your resource against it, spending three times what it'll make you in the first place, and create a pack that will ultimately fail because they shouldn't be using the channel in the first place?

I haven't got any answers to this one, because if we all said 'no' to pitching, there would always be someone who would say 'yes' and so the cycle starts again.

All I do know is that when ten agencies are competing for a certain large FS companies Christmas Card, against a four page written brief and hour long presentation slots - something's got to give! I'm sure this one will run and run!

Too Busy Thinking 'Bout My Baby

2010-01-26T03:41:00.000-08:00

It's not only a great song (Marvin's version obviously!) but also a fair description of the last 12 months or so of my life! None of the books prepare you for the avalanche that is your first child!

So, after a 'brief' intermission to deal with all the joys of fatherhood, normal (albeit sporadic) service is resumed.

According to 'official sources' we are out of recession, hooray!

When is somenone going to tell clients and prospects that's the case then?

Any chance of marketeers looking slightly further forward than next week?

Funny thing is, a number of my clients have adopted this short term way of thinking and have ended up spending more money as they haven't been able to take advantage of a longer term commitment to their suppliers.

Ah, that's the key word - supplier - don't want to sound like a broken record but if clients valued the services they were buying, rather than treated them as a commodity, and treated agencies like business partners, then they'd get more from them. See earlier post for full rant.

By the way, can anyone recommend a way to make sleep more interesting than The Gruffalo at 3 o'clock in the morning?!

Blogging on the Bog

2009-02-25T03:36:00.000-08:00

(taken from The Drum : http://www.thedrum.co.uk/indepth/1729-get-blogged-down-the-best-of-blogs. There's even a pic of me as well!)

Blogs frighten the life out of me, especially ones on agency sites.

Would I let an ill-informed inexperienced member of staff go roaming the streets shouting their (equally ill-informed and inexperienced) opinions from the rooftops? Well why on Earth do agency owners do just that with blogs on their websites?

Agency heads should read some of the things that are being posted on their sites, they’d be surprised, and their lawyers would be horrified (or delighted at the potential fees!).

You certainly wouldn’t put Johnny the account exec in front of your hottest prospect to explain the thinking behind the concepts you’re presenting would you? So why let his thoughts loose on your website?

I’ve been told that a blog is the equivalent of ‘a chat in the pub’. And that’s even more frightening – the thought of a drunk Johnny voicing his unwanted opinions to all and sundry, sends shivers down my spine.

Would you want half of what you talk about in the pub broadcast in the name of your business? Thought not!

Blogs are like all things digital to me – just because we can, doesn’t mean we should. Do they add value and serve a purpose greater than their effort?

That said, even though I didn’t realise it was a blog for a while, Drayton Bird’s ‘Bird Droppings’ is great as I can’t either a) afford the fees to book him for a speaking engagement, or b) afford the time to get to wherever he is presenting, as it always seems to be on the other side of the world.

So I get snippets of the wit and wisdom of good ole Drayton, straight into my inbox on a fairly regular basis. I find his bite sized epithets absolutely ideal for reading in the ‘smallest room’.

Surely I can’t be the only person who blogs in the bog can I?

http://www.drayton-birds-droppings.blogspot.com/

Twitter - Show Me The Money

2009-02-16T04:22:00.000-08:00

"We are now positioned extremely well to support the accelerating growth of our service, further enable the robust ecosystem sprouting up around Twitter, and yes, to begin building revenue-generating products," wrote Stone. "Throughout this year and beyond, our small team will grow much bigger to meet the challenges and opportunities ahead."

In an interview with U.K.-based Marketing magazine this week, Stone suggested that the company is exploring charging for commercial Twitter accounts and creating revenue-generating features that capitalize on how brands use the service as both a marketing and customer-service tool.

So say Twitter at the weekend.

If you missed it, this was hidden away in the story about them being given - not securing, by the way! - $35m second round funding, which they hadn't even asked for!!!

And let's be honest, it's what we were all waiting for wasn't it?

So what opportunities will it open up for commercial exploitation, and, this is the big question - what effect will this have on users?

Will they leave in their droves?

We shall see.

Paranoid? Me? Who Said That?

2009-02-10T06:21:00.000-08:00

It's natural, isn't it?

You're in the pub, or at work and you zone into a conversation at the exact minute your name is mentioned by the MD. You have none of the context.........what is he saying? Is it good, is it bad, Is my reputation damaged?

So you sidle up to your colleague who was in on the conversation and ask him what it was about. He avoids the issue and finds an excuse to do something else.

So what happens?

You go home, awaiting the inevitable call into the 'corner office' the following day. You have a dreadful night's sleep and go into work looking like you've had no sleep and are mortally worried for your job, funnily enough.

Then........nothing happens.

You find out about four days later that you were only mentioned because they were talking about that bloke that sits next to you, and they didn't know his name.

The result, however, is that you've had your eye off the ball worrying about what may happen, and you've managed to cock up on an almighty scale, so you do get called in to the big office.

So the upshot is that your performance and reputation have been damaged by a social misunderstanding.

I think you may know where I'm going with this!

Replace the pub with the web, and you with the brand you manage and join the dots for yourself.

Can't promise I won't return to the subject of Social Media, mainly because the 'market' won't let me, but it's time to move on for now.

Elephants Circuses and Marketing

2009-02-04T07:59:00.000-08:00

Someone wrote that if the circus comes to town and you paint a sign saying 'Circus coming on Sunday', that's advertising.

If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk it through town, that's a promotion.

If the elephant walks through the Town Hall flower beds, that's publicity, and if you get the Mayor to laugh about it, that's public relations.

If you had defined the streets you were taking the elephant down and then reported that it had gone down those streets successfully, and the number of people who came to the circus from those streets, that would be targeted direct marketing.

If you'd blue toothed the message about the circus as you were walking the elephant around, that's digital marketing?

....and if you have planned the whole thing, that's integrated marketing.

So where does that put my old mate, Social Media Marketing?

Is it the man in the pub who turns to his companion and says, 'Drink up Bob, don't want to miss the Circus, do we'?

Or am I missing the point (again)?

Social Media - What's Next?

2009-02-03T03:23:00.000-08:00

I don't know, all I do know is that where we are today, isn't where we'll be tomorrow.

My biggest clue that there's something new around the corner is that I'm getting linkedin requests form the oldest of old school 'paper based' marketing people - not what you'd call early adopters, us lot!

The point is, though, that whatever's out there, isn't the key how we harness the many and various routes to communicate with our audiences, and how we understand their place in the mix?

Hang on, isn't that what we should be doing with all channels?

Beware the man who tells you that Social Media Marketing is the future for your brand. And there are plenty of them out there.

Sure , Social Media has a place, and that place is the one which is about enhancing brand reputation and engagement, it's not the one that is about directly shifting units.

Understand that all marketing activity is ultimately about selling stuff, just that some of it less overt than others.

If you grasp this, then you will be able to set objectives for each and every piece of your marketing activity.

Don't let your agency get away with 'it's very difficult to measure these things you know'.

Though it may be difficult, it's not impossible. Off line we manage to measure the effectiveness of PR, just as much as we can measure a direct mail campaign, don't we? It's just that the actual measures are different.

Think of it this way, if you're spending money on something and you expect a return, that's an investment, if you don't, then that's a cost.

How do you view your marketing? Cost or Investment?

How do you view your agency...........................................?

It's Time To Pay Attention

2009-02-02T06:35:00.000-08:00

Due to the inclement weather and the resulting breakdown in most normal services, like most of the UK I'm at home today, and whilst working I've been listening to my wife playing with our four week old baby boy in his room.

She sings him a little song with words something like this 'he's got two little eyes, and one little nose, two little ears and one little mouth' and so on.

It got me to thinking, as marketing agencies isn't it time we started using our mouths and ears in proportion?

If we listen twice as much as we speak, it strikes me that we will learn twice as much. About our clients, about their customers, about our channels, about our plans and results, and ultimately about what it's going to take to succeed.

Remember clients aren't paying you by the word, or the powerpoint slide. If you've got nothing to say then don't say it. Try applying the same rules that you should be applying to their work. Is it relevant and appropriate to target market? Yes, then proceed past go stopping only to pick up £200, if not then roll again.

That said, our old chums the clients have an obligation too.

Firstly let's get some precision and clarity in those briefs.

'Give me the freedom of a tight brief', a very wise man once said, and he was right. Only when we are absolutely clear about what we are trying to achieve and what resources we have to achieve that goal we have at our disposal are we able to provide adequate responses.

Also, share more with your agency.

Trust me you'll get more out of them - if you don't, then ask some tough questions. But if you do share more with your agency, not just a spreadsheet of results every week, talk to them about the issues facing your business, remember, one of the things you hired them for was a fresh/external perspective. So let them display it, you never know, they might just tick the 'adding value' box, and bring some new ideas to the table.

So it's very simple, agencies - listen to your clients, listen to their customers and clients - give your agency the opportunity to listen and respond appropriately by sharing as much as you can with them.

Remember - two little ears and one little mouth - use them in proportion.

Now, I've got to get that lullaby CD from Amazon, before that song drives me and Oscar mad!

You'd Back A Horse at 20:1, But Would You Back Your Own Ideas?

2009-01-22T06:46:00.000-08:00

With the explosion of the Internet as a marketing tool, so it seems, there has been an explosion in the options available for communicating with your audience.

We are seemingly besieged with modern day snake oil salesmen, telling us that whatever they happen to be selling is the right solution for us? How can you give me a solution when you haven't even defined, let alone understood my problem?

If I walked into my doctor and he gave me a bottle of aspirin and told me they were the cure before he'd listened to my symptoms, I'd think it a bit odd - no?

So why are there so many agencies out there doing just this? And why are there so many brands listening to them?

Agency heads, we should be better than this.

When was the last time you said 'no' to a client?

When was the last time you said 'we believe you'd be better doing this, and we believe it so much, that if it doesn't work - we won't charge you.'?

Didn't think so!

Would you back your team's solution to succeed for your client? If not, why are you proposing it?

Isn't it time you put your money where your (planners and creatives) mouth(s) are. Go on I dare you.