andrewspencer.biz - blog: Creative Business Strategy Archives

October 02, 2006

Netflix: "Who wants to be a millionaire?"

Side note: I go for weeks without updating my blog and then when I do, I am suddenly inspired to blog about everything. So instead of posts spread out evenly over the weeks/months, I end up with multiple posts on the same day... and then nothing for weeks.

I just saw an article on the New York Times Website in which Netflix is offering a million dollars to the person that comes up with a better ratings/recommendation system. Netflix revolutionized the way people rent movies, taking the market by storm to the extent that Blockbuster video, whose name had become synonymous with "renting a movie", had to reinvent themselves... doing away with late charges and trying to regain market share by opening up a "DVD by mail" channel in their own business. (I forget the statistic, but they were down significantly at one point thanks to this shift in how people rent videos.

This new move by Netflix is brilliant, in the age of "Web 2.0" where the "user is in control" netflix is making a database of 100 million movie ratings available as part of a competition with a goal of improving their recommendation system.

A very bold, and brave move by Netflix... I applaud you.

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 09:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 15, 2006

Great article about packaging...

In my research today (and my ongoing quest to point out the commonalities in the brand and/or marketing strategy of great companies), I came across this article from the San Francisco Chronicle about Apple Packaging...

I'm going to go ahead and paste the whole article here, because I think it's brilliant. The basic premise here is around the way Apple computer packages their products.... and why that matters. If you think it doesn't, this might convince you. If you think it does, then you'll smile all the way through this one.

Lick Me, I'm A Macintosh
What the hell is wrong with Apple that they still give a damn about design and packaging and "feel"? - By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist, Wednesday, October 1, 2003

"Oh right like you even care.

Like careful sexy product design even matters and as if you give a twit for packaging and aesthetics and user experience anymore in this overly plastic bloatedly excessive landfill wasteland Wal-Mart dystopia we call proud capitalist gimme gimme gimme America.

And OK maybe every now and then you sigh and give in and buy yourself a new tech gadget, because you're just that kind of consumer lackey and not really expecting much anyway but who the hell cares it's just one more hunk of tech landfill but what can you do.

And maybe you buy yourself, say, a new Apple PowerBook, as I just did, and it comes in this really quite beautiful sleek black box with small elegant typeface and gorgeous subtle graphics and a strange and obvious attention to detail and you think, pshaw, who cares, just another big heartless tech corporation trying to smooth talk me, just another suckass hunk of plastic and wire and metal to break down in a month and be obsolete in a year and really, why should I give a damn.

And yet. You can't help but notice. Apple seemed to really put some serious work into this, into the details, the packaging, the shape and texture. The rich black box, the clean unobtrusive font, the silver sliver inch-wide side-shot photograph of the PowerBook itself on the box lid.

No screaming colors and no garish cartoon graphics and no massive corporate logo and no bullet-point exclamation points listing the outrageous features you'll never use and you're like, wait a minute, what they hell does Apple think they're hawking here, art?

You can't help but handle the package with something approaching astonishment and even a trace of reverence. Could this actually be something interesting and reasonably cool? Could this be something tactile and lovely and graceful that flies in the face of normal mediocre dumbed-down consumer design and tepid IKEA kit furniture and bland Windows chyme?

Could this be, in short, something that actually adds a modicum of refined grace and simplicity and aesthetic warmth to the world, instead of sucking it away like so many disposable DVD players and garish LED-spasming boom boxes and 10-gallon drums of spaghetti sauce from Costco? Nah.

And you open the gorgeous black box and lift the white cardboard inside flap, itself adorned with clean offset typeface declaring "Designed by Apple in California," and you are confronted with what is quite possible the most thoughtfully designed and pleasing packaging you've ever seen, not like you care about this stuff and hey it's all just Styrofoam and garbage anyway, but still.

Cables wrapped in elegant tight slots on the sides. Small manual and paperwork in the center. All clean and clear and meant for optimum visual and tactile experience. Lift out the top half of the foam and there's the computer itself, solo, centered, encased in beautiful eminently touchable sleek aluminum, a subtle tech-fetish object par excellence, wrapped in delicate foam padding and not cluttered with crap and not requiring you to do anything but lift it out and peel back the sheath and stroke the silver metal and turn it on.

And there it is. The welcome screen. An exquisite downtempo chill soundtrack and the world "Welcome" swimming over the monitor in a number of different languages and you think, what the hell is this? Where's the pain? Where's the hassle and the misaligned factory molding and the broken keyboard and the 3,000 setup steps and the sense that I'm drowning in a sea of programmer jargon and plastic waste and ubergeek hell?

This is what Apple does. This is what they are known for and why their design team is so famous and why they win so many awards and why they engender such passionate devotion from their adherents and why Macs are still far, far superior to PCs and always will be. It's true.

Apple actually cares about this sort of thing. Which is odd. Which is rare. Which is why they deserve gushing adulation now and then. They actually put the time and energy and labor into creating a gorgeous package most people will toss anyway, and why they include a first-time welcome experience, with subtle music, with flowing lush clean graphics, one that will never be repeated, just because.

This is the point. Detail and nuance and texture and a sense of how users actually feel, what makes them smile, what makes the experience worthy and positive and sensual instead of necessary and drab and evil.

These are the things that are nearly dead in our mass-consumer culture, things normally reserved for elitist niche markets and swanky boutiques and upscale yuppie Euro spas and maybe cool insider mags like I-D and Metropolis and dwell. They are most definitely not to be expected of mass-market gadget makers. This is why it matters. This is why it's important.

Oh sure, Apple's elitist. This is the common line. Sure they're slightly more expensive and cater to artists and designers and creative types and people who actually care about such pointless stuff as fit and finish and "feel."

And they command only a sliver of the PC market overall and despite how their designs and innovations resonate across the entire industry and in fact affect industrial design across all consumer culture, true PC/Windows geeks just scoff and snort and go back to trying to patch the latest of 13,876 "severe" or "drastic" security flaws in the nonintuitive bug-ridden hell that is Windows.

Look here, at the packaging for the iPod. You ain't about to find this type of artistic approach in any sort of mass-consumer package design. Yes, it is one of the most expensive MP3 players on the market. Yes, it is by all accounts the best and most elegantly designed MP3 player on the market. And, yes, it is selling by the truckload. There are reasons for this.

Fewer and fewer manufacturers of consumer landfill crap give a damn for how consumers might actually, dare I say, care about the fit and finish of the products they decide to allow into their lives. And this is exactly the sort of nuanced stuff we so desperately need more of.

Is it just another goddamn overpriced radioactive instantly obsolete tech gadget they suck you into buying via sinister marketing and cloying ad copy and the sense that if you don't buy one now you must be a Luddite dork? Sure. But then again, maybe, just maybe, if you look a little closer, it doesn't always have to be. "

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 06:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 15, 2006

Interactive Marketing has gone to the dogs...

This entry on a TBWA blog shows a campaign by Tequilla Holland for Pedigree dog food.

The post is simple, the message is clear:

"Dogs love Pedigree

In contribution to World Animal Day this outdoor promotion was developed especially for dogs. A sticker, in the shape of a dog barge, forms the promotion. The sticker was placed on floors in front of pet shops and supermarkets. And it has something no dog can resist: the scent of delicious Pedigree dog food!

The dogs went nuts! The dogs' ownsers couldn't pass by without buying something from Pedigree for his dog."

Talk about a targeted Interactive marketing strategy. This is absolutely brilliant!!!

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 07:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 08, 2006

The importance of content...

My former employer made an announcement last year to all of its employees that we were in the age of "attention" where someone's time is their primary currency. Most of the recent thought leaders in the world of Marketing and Advertising have said that the world of Advertising has changed completely and that we will no longer be able to "interrupt what people are talking about" but rather BE what people are talking about.

Design, creativity and relevance have become critical components of communication moreso than ever before, and the playing field is being leveled as the average person (with a computer and Internet access) has the ability to broadcast their message to the entire world. Emails, Websites and now even video and audio are as easy to distribute across the globe as they are to create (and they are becoming so easy to create that the major media companies are freaking out).

You can now view/listen to advertisements on your TV, on your computer, on your cell phone, in line at the Supermarket, on the bus/train, in the airport, on the plane as well as on a wide range of new devices that have become part of the "toolkit" for survival in this modern world.

There are more and more ways to reach people and yet, the advertising industry seems to be shrinking. The net effect of all of these new communication channels has actually been more control for the recipient. In addition to providing new ways to reach people, the technology has provided new ways for people to ignore your ads. We don't have to rely on the "mute" button during commercials anymore, we can simply skip them. If we don't want to receive calls from telemarketers, we simply add our name to a "do-not-call" list. We can easily (in theory) unsubscribe ourselves from emails that we don't want to receive, and we can also block ads from making their way into our Web browsers. All to an extent, of course as there always seems to be a way to break through the limitations if an advertiser really wants to (look at porn).

So what is the real effect of all of this on the advertising and communications world?

Tim Hespos, who writes articles on MediaPost's "Online Spin", published an article on February 7th called "The End of Watered Down Content." According to Tim, the marketplace has chanced because people now have the "ability to unshackle content from time, place and manner restrictions."

To Tim, "[people] now value content according to how entertaining and/or information-rich it is, on a granular level. This leads to our picking and choosing the elements of the experience we wish to preserve, and what we wish to remove."

Media companies no longer control content, that's in the hands of all of the millions of people with computers, Web sites and podcasts.... ideas. So the whole idea of a "publisher of content" being able to, as Tim put it, "give you something you want" in exchange for giving you something you don't want while they have your attention, is supposedly over... as now people simply forego the something they don't want and (usually illegally) download only what they want.

On some level this may be true, but this relies on the average person being able to produce and deliver content that someone wants without any money. Let's not forget that the reason big media companies have been able to command the world of content delivery for so long is because they have had the money. Sure, some of them have made money purely on the value of their content alone, so there will always be space for someone with a really great idea, or story, to tell it. And the audience for this has just become truly global. But the production of that story had better be relatively cheap. Podcasts are a great example of this. If you've got a few hundred dollars, you can purchase a computer, a microphone and download some free audio recording/editing software that will allow you to create your own audio content that you can then publish via iTunes. But what if your story requires visuals? Well, now you've got to make a bigger investment...

Distributing your own short film may be free, thanks to the Web (not including the costs of your ISP) but making it will require more resources. Say a Digital Video Camera, video editing software, more hard drive space and more RAM for your computer. Does your story require set production? Actors/actresses? Better sound quality? Now you need more money? Who do you think pays for that? Big media companies have the budget for this kind of thing because their content is valuable... who is the content valuable to? Advertisers... ultimately somewhere, someone knows that they will recoup the costs of producing the content through various advertising and/or marketing channels. Media companies resell the rights to their content to other people that want to distribute it, the "distributors" recoup their costs by collecting money from advertisers that believe that the people watching this content are also people likely to purchase their products. The specific model that exists currently may be changing... the places where content is viewed may be changing, time is no longer an issue, I can download "Lost" and watch it anytime I want to.

I can review the Football Championship Game (not sure if I can refer to the Bowl game that happened last Sunday or not) or just the commercials that aired during the game at my leisure... but it's still not "free." An article in the New York Times mentioned that something like 23 million AOL customers downloaded the aforementioned commercials on the Monday after "The Big Game" ... for "free" but all 23 million of them had to watch an ad while the download was occurring. All 23 million of them obviously felt that this was a worthwhile exchange and the advertiser, who paid money to have their ad running during the download would likely agree. But if you're looking at the world of advertising and saying it's changed vastly... I might argue that not much has changed.

Instead of sitting in front of your TV on a Friday night watching "Dallas" on for "free" CBS and voluntarily subscribing to some :30 second spots in exchange for the content you want, you now download the content from the Web and voluntarily subscribe to some form of Web advertising (if not immediately, you gave them some information about yourself that will most likely be used to advertise to you later) while your download occurs. In some cases, you may be subjected to MORE advertising than you did before.

Tim Hespos said "the media business no longer controls the packaging" and on one level, I understand his point. The days where you'd go to the record store and buy "Vanilla Ice's greatest hits" for that one song you liked back in the day are over. Now you just go to iTunes, pay $.99 and get the one song you want. But on the other hand, if you look at the successful internet models, I'd argue that big media are still in control of the packaging. AOL is in the media businesss and they controlled the packaging for 23 million people that wanted to see the TV commercials, all 23 million of them saw an ad for a Time Warner produced TV show.

Can you legally download good content without watching an ad? Sure, you go to iTunes or Google Video and pay a nominal fee to get the "non-ad" version. But you're probably still seeing an ad for something... it might be a small text ad on the sideof the page, or it might be an ad for another tune to download... but it's still an ad... and it wasn't even free.

So the old adage of "we'll give you something you want, in exchange for giving you something you don't want while we have your attention" will still live... the place to be is still on the team that's creating the content in the first place, and if you have the ideas that appeal to the whole world, chances are somebody with something to advertise will want to give you money for your content.

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 02:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 12, 2006

Marketing: The Move from Push to Pull

Andy Lark, from the BrandShift blog posted a quote from AG Lafley (from P&G) stating that consumers "have the power in the consumption and media and message chain... and so the world is shifting from a push to a pull" giving the consumer a lot more choices.

This is quite a significant statement from the man at the helm of the company responsible for some of the biggest brands in the world, the company that practically invented the concept of "brand management" who lived and died by campaigns and taglines and mass marketing for so long.

This is not news, I know... not even for my blog. But I think that a change this big is so significant that it may need to be repeated a few times before it truly sinks in. Here are some examples from the world around of just how serious this change is, in fact, it's not just a change in how to market to people. It's a change in how to deliver any content to people, whether you're trying to sell laundry detergent or a movie you've made.

-By 2007, 42.5% of the households in the US will have a Digital Video Recorder (such as TiVo), by the end of the decade, this number will easily reach 50% - meaning more than half the country will have the ability to skip 30 second TV ads
- Over 500 Television titles were made available for release on DVD in 2003 (I need some updated numbers, send them to me if you have them) so people that don't TiVo will have a version of "Lost" without commercials altogether
- iTunes and the iTunes music store is a success story for the music industry and their struggles with online content
- A recent issue of Fast Company Magazine talked about the movie industry's plans to begin investigating internet releases of feature films, on the same day as the theatrical release, because people have created home entertainment systems through their computers and don't like to leave their house
- Television content, such as "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives" is now available for download on iTunes, and as a result Google's video service will begin exploring pay-per-view models on their site

People can almost completely control the content they are exposed to throughout their entire day, so how do you get through to them? Exactly as AG Lafley suggests, through "pull" strategies not "push" strategies.

A "push" strategy is designed for you to push information out to someone. Typically the person you are "pushing" information to hasn't asked for the information, so what you have to do is to think about the story you are trying to tell, determine what will be most appealing for the people you are "pushing" it to and then find a way to intercept them with your message. But if they are in complete control of what does or doesn't get in front of their eyes, then you'll have a pretty difficult time making a push strategy work.

In a pull strategy, you basically put your story together but rather than just dumping your whole message on someone you devise ways to get them to come to you. An example of a pull strategy would be to include a feature on your Web site that would allow people to spread the word about you to their friends. You didn't push your information out to the friends, you used good information as the reason to pull them in and you relied on people that already knew about you to do the pulling.

Some companies have recognized that this shift from push to pull is a challenge for everyone, not just the marketing department. As Seth Godin implied in his book "the purple cow" we should be focused on creating remarkable products that fill a need in society (not just the market) and then letting the "marketing" happen on it's own (well, ok perhaps with a little "push") but look at products like the iPod... It is so cool, so well designed, and so well suited to how people live their lives today that it needs almost no marketing. People know they need an iPod and just naturally flock to them.

Things to consider if you want to create a "pull" strategy for your product or service...

1) How are people currently finding out about our product? Is advertising the only way people find out about us? What could we do to get people talking about us?
2) Do the people that do business with us or use our products feel "proud" to do so? Would they tell their friends about it? Is there some incentive we can give them that would help them spread the word without being an obvious scheme (we'll give you $100 to tell people)
3) Does our Web site feel like a brochure? Does it put things into the perspective of the audience or does it talk all about us? (We've been in business for 500 years... our product was the first, is the best, is the biggest, etc...)
4) Would someone that's not necessarily a potential customer still find our product or service intruiging?
5) Do people have the ability to maintain a relationship with us on their own terms, to choose how to communicate with us, what content they want to receive (and in what format) and so on, and in a way that does not compromise what we want to get across?
6) Have we sought out and created connections with complimentary services or made sure that we are linked to from the appropriate places on the Web? Do we have a good search engine strategy?

I have made some posts about Pandora's music service. It is very cool and has all of the key elements for a good pull strategy.

1) It's based on a very cool idea. Exposing people to new music, based on their individual tastes.
2) It's very simple to try and very simple to tell your friends about
3) It remembers you the next time you return and anything you told it about yourself
4) They have a blog, which means they can communicate with their audience, link to/from other related sites and offer content as RSS to people that want to pull their news into another location
5) Even if you aren't someone that listens to music online, the idea of a service that will help you find other artists/songs that you may like is a great idea... and the fact that it's connected to Amazon.com and iTunes gives it the potential to go mainstream since that's already how people that are online are getting music - which means it fits into their lives.

Without ever running an ad or a radio spot, Pandora can execute their idea... and keep pulling in new potential customers just by doing what they're best at... sharing music.

If you want to look at a company that's had to make a major shift in their strategy, just look at Blockbuster video vs. Netflix. Netflix keeps adding ways to make their service easier and more accessible to people, offering incentives such as 3-free months of video rentals, no late fees, a chance to share your recent rentals with your friends, and an endless queue of movies that you actually want to see. They took all of the ways in which someone traditionally rented a movie to watch at home and simplified them... so much so that you don't even have to leave your house to be a customer... and how has Blockbuster responded? By emulating the service... eliminating late fees, adding the ability to have movies mailed to your home and so on. No more coupons in the "valu-pak" mailers... now it's email referrals.

Times they are a changin'

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 10:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 09, 2005

Cell Phone Ads... good or bad?

I saw this great article on MediaPost by Wendy Davis, which refers to a survey of college students asking them about receiving ads on their mobile phones.

The article had some great statistics in it and was relevant to a presentation I'm putting together for a client of mine on reaching the 18+ demographic with their advertising.

The general assumption when looking at data is that it is good to blast younger audiences with "high tech" advertising because they typically are more willing to and capable of receiving high tech ads. In this article, Wendy points out that younger audiences haven't been happy about being blasted with your ads on their cell phones and on MySpace and everything else (although they seem to mind less as time goes by).... That is, unless of course it comes with some sort of incentive. More than half (51%) of the 650+ students surveyed said they don't want ads on their cell phones, but could be persuaded... in exchange for something free.

When I was over in London last month, I was blown away by the number of ads for ring tones. (Most of them on MTV and other channels aimed at this younger demographic). Having the ability to personalize their phone is a really big deal. People could send a text message to a certain number, which billed them and then allowed them to download the ringtone to their computer. I also saw an ad on the tube for mobile videos that cost money. Without any statistics on how much money these companies are making, I can only assume that the presence of their ads on cable and on the trains means they are having some success... and glean from this that the younger audiences will pay money (or spend their parents' money) to customize their phones to their personality.

This also seems to be the case in Asia. I recently read (I'll find the link) that in Korea, for example something like 70% of homes have high-speed internet access at home and that a good portion of the population can be seen watching television on their phones on the way to work... and a good friend returned from Japan and told us about the cell phone shops over there and all of the accessories that everyone has for their phones. She bought a little "Hello Kitty" charm that hangs off her phone and said that everyone, even business men in suits, had similar phone accessories.

For whatever reason, America has been slow to adopt mobile technologies (and accessories) compared to our neighbors to the East and to the West... so perhaps we should be paying attention to how things are advancing in these markets... and focus on developing relevant content or incentives when we invade people's phones...

I think the trick will be to find out how to fit what you have to say into their way of life and/or give them something that they can then use as a form of expression about who they are... your brand becomes part of their brand...

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 11:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 07, 2005

Advertising School for Clients

The December 2005 issue of Fast Company had a great little tidbit I just read about Virginia Commonwealth University's Adcenter. A post-graduate school for those wanting to go into the ad business (run by Rick Boyko, a former chief creative officer from Ogilvy) that has placed an interesting twist on their curriculum. They are pairing coursework on the creative side of advertising with coursework on the marketing side of business. So in the same classroom you have people that want to be a future copywriter or art director sharing ideas and learning the same concepts as people that are going for their MBA.

As the article states, "the goal is to produce ad clients who regard creativity as more than an afterthought." A noble goal, especially from someone in the ad business who is a huge advocate of putting creativity first. I applaud this effort, but I wanted to point out from almost 10 years of working with "creatives" that this approach may have another compelling side-effect: creatives that understand business strategy and can use this understanding to improve their work and better communicate their world to their clients.

In my world, I am best when I work with a creative that actually understands the business world. I don't mean to offend my artist friends, be they art directors, designers, writers or anyone else with a "creative" role, but there are definitely two (or more) types of "creatives" in the professional world. On the flip side, I think I am successful because of my creative side and my ability to help my creative counterparts understand the clients business challenges, the audience's experience with the client's brand (or service or product) and how to package our ideas so that the client will feel comfortable moving forward. Some of it may be a talent that I possess, but some of it comes from understanding both sides of this coin.

I have had quite a few clients in my career that didn't really understand my business, especially the creative process itself. These clients tend to focus on things such as the price of the estimate you placed in front of them, rather than the work it represents. They focus on how long it's going to take before they have what they need, rather than how much effort you're going to put into doing a good job for them. These clients can be in the marketing department, human resources, or even senior management. Spending some time in a class that talked about "Creative Thinking" or "Cultural Exploration" or being forced to collaborate (rather than direct) with writers and designers would really benefit these people.

Too often, the decision to work with a team of creative professionals (advertising agency, design firm, ideation firm) is made based on their existing body of work, or a promise of when a particular task can be completed (or worse, how much it will cost) rather than if their approach is appropriate for your needs.

I'd love to find out long-term if this experimental curriculum really does produce better clients? Or better creatives for that matter. At the end of the day, it's always good to get people with different viewpoints in the same room and make them learn about each other. People that understand one another and respect one another make better families, better businesses, better partners and better clients.... and ultimately produce better results.

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 11:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 04, 2005

Follow up on 2 Chinese Students...

I just read on "BoingBoing.net" that the two Chinese students that made the silly video in their dorm room have now been asked by Motorola China to endorse their new cell phones. I can't verify Boing Boing to be an accurate source of information... but I will tell you that around my office, we were all talking about this video when we saw it and I did (popping my collar now) tell everyone that I would not be surprised if they got some sort of commercial deal out of this stunt.

And to think that the poor guy behind them in the video probably thought he was going to get ahead in life because he was doing his physics homework....

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 03:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Who's in charge?

The Presidents of the United States of America, have released a music video that was shot on cell phones. I thought it was an interesting connection to the movement towards "user controlled" content, on the Web. There's a big race in interactive marketing between people that feel that the Web is moving towards personalizing everything to people's tastes, or whether it's moving more towards being this great, vast resource of public knowledge and information sharing. The good news is that it will probably continue to do both.

Examples, every other day Google seems to launch a new and amazing feature. And every time I go to see the new feature, it always feels like it shouldn't be so impressive, and yet it is. Take Google Video for example. Google has created a place to archive videos on the Web. Why is that novel? There seem to be a million other places to upload, store and share videos.... but they don't have the power of Google. What is the power of Google you ask? Ask the Chinese Students who threw up a video of them messing around to pop music and found themselves all over American TV for doing it. Google is so wide-spread that they can impact the entire Web, even when they seem to just be doing a "Google-version" of something someone else has done. Simple and smart. That's just google.

So, it would seem that the "making the Web more of a vast, resource" people are winning over the "make the Web as personalized a tool as possible" people... but then you look at sites like Flickr who are offering a place to upload, store and share your photographs, but have incorporated a "tagging" system that allows you to set the categories that your photos fit into. So instead of going to Google, who have built a complex indexing and searching system for other people's content based on popular keywords and a whole bunch of mathematical genius, you go to Flickr and you search for a photo of "Seattle" and you get anything from a shot of Seattle's skyline to a picture of someone's hotel room during their last business trip to Seattle. And you can add your own "tag" to it, so if you see a photo and think "No, I wouldn't think Seattle when I see that photo, I'd think 'Sleazy Hotel'" you can add that to the photograph and that photo will show up if someone searches "Sleazy Hotel" or "Seattle" ... so the more people that use it and add "tags" the more complex and interesting the connections will be.

Another site that is putting this idea into practice is Del.icio.us which is being called a "Social Bookmarking System", so instead of tagging photographs, you store all of your internet bookmarks in Delicious (which allows you to access them from any computer) and then share your bookmarks with people that you give permission to (your "friends list"). Again the idea here is that by opening up the way you think and organize your information and sharing that with others, you will begin to make connections that you might not have ordinarily made...

- Sites you would not have seen before
- Learn more about the people in your network (more business connections, personal connections, etc...)
- Make it easier to find things in the future

So... I guess "massive personalization" is giving "massive organization" a run for its money...

Which one will win? Well, I think they are on a crash course. At some point you'll be able to have instant access to just about any piece of information in the world, and the interface you use to get to this information will be drawing from all of your personal connections, the RSS feeds you subscribe to, really amazing search engines and a whole set of AI that filters out links and connections that are not going to be useful to you...

It's cool to see how it's all converging... and even cooler to see that the artists are embracing it as much as the capitalists. I read a great article about MTV2's "Video Mods" (mod = modified) where people are taking video game characters and manipulating them with their computers to appear like they are perfoming in music videos. (Think of Super Mario lip synching to a Kanye West song, where the stage and the whole environment is actually the video game visual). They were talking in the article (I think it was Southwest Airlines in-flight magazine, that or the San Francisco Chronicle... don't remember) about how they got the idea at MTV and how they loved it because it also challenges the young generation - the ones who can do anything with a computer - to combine two things they really love... video games and music videos, into a whole new art form called "Machinima" (check out Machinima.com for somemore Video Mods).

Just some recent things I've seen that have intrigued me and continue my belief that we're only beginning to understand the power of the Internet.

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 02:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 01, 2005

Creating User Journeys...

Just reading this fantastic article (link down below) on Boxes and Arrows about thinking about "User Journeys" when developin Web sites, especially at the information architecture stage.

Web people these day of the user more and more about the experience of the user. Web sites are becoming less of an online brochure and more of a completely new way to tell your story to all of the different people that need to know about you.

In my work, I often help my clients build profiles of their target audience, focusing our efforts on developing an understanding of who these people are, why they are coming to your site and how they prefer to "consume" information. These profiles are more about the users of the site as people. Once we have these profiles, we spend time behind the scenes thinking about whether or not we have the right information available to them on the site and think about how best to deliver that information based on "who they are."

The idea of the "user journey" shifts that focus away from "who they are" and more to "what they need to do" on the site and pays attention to how matching their needs on the site to your needs as a business can help identify opportunities to really strengthen your site. (Such as eliminating unnecessary content and/or presenting existing content in ways that will be more compelling and useful).

The user journey tells more of a story of the person and their ultimate goal in visiting your site. So instead of "Bob the 25 year old investment banker who has an iPod and frequents Starbucks 3.4 times a week" it's Bob the Banker that wants to book a plane flight to see his girlfriend... that's his need. Through planning Bob's journey through the site you might hypothesize that Bob already books tickets online all the time and is just shopping for a better price, or that Bob already has his airfare and is looking for a hotel deal. In which case, you can develop your information architecture and your site's content, features and functionality to address those different types of scenarios.

A very good thing to think about if you're looking at ways to keep people on your site. Think not about who they are, but what they need to do on your site. How that changes as they move from page to page... and then try to map the order of information in ways that help people get to a point where they are getting what they need and you're getting what you need.

Bob needs to book a ticket to see his girlfriend.
You need to sell more tickets online to cut down on your overhead...

What does his iPod, his alma mater, or his salary range have to do with that?

Link below:
Boxes and Arrows: An introduction to user journeys

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 05:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 31, 2005

Saying No...

Excerpt from "Create More Satisfied Non-Customers" by John Winsor.

"Likewise, brands have a habit of communicating their ability to always be on. To be there, waiting to give you the very best performance. Most of the time the “peak performance” message is quickly diluted when the customer starts interacting with the brand by such things as calling to place an order and having to wait too long on the phone or by getting a delivery only to find out half of the items are back-ordered with no communications.

The only way to solve this dilemma of promising a peak performance and delivering something less is to practice the art of saying no. It’s hard to do. Yet, I’ve lost too many clients over the years by trying to stretch our capabilities at Radar too far. I hadn’t trained enough.

I’ve learned that by saying no I can create satisfied non-customers. And, I’d rather have satisfied non-customers than dissatisfied customers, any day. "

John Winsor put this amazing post up on Corante's BrandShift today. It was a reference to another post (which I'm sure must happen all the time) which isn't significant to my post, but you can read if you'd like to. But in it was a concept that I feel very strongly about, saying "no."

Many companies I've dealt with in my life, not just professionally but as a consumer or observer, have been guilty of "trying to be all things to all people." They want their brand to appear, as John Winsor put it "always on." I like his ideas about saying "no." Not because you aren't capable of doing the job per se, or that you need the money, but because perhaps you "have a feeling" that this project might not work. Maybe you know something about how your client intends to use the product, or something intangible like someone on your team who is going through a tough time and can't give their all. Maybe you just don't think you'd have much fun doing the work.

I agree with John that in those situations, you do more for your brand by saying "no" than you do trying to take the job on.

You don't have to be "always on" you have to be always true. That's what a brand is to me. Apple Computers are a good example of that. All these years later, they still have a very small percentage of their market (computers, not iPods), they are still more expensive than a comparable "PC", and yet they are still thought of as the "artists computer"... slick, cool and easy to use. Even to the people that don't buy them. I have learned to use both platforms to do anything from audio to graphic design to running my business affairs and still prefer a Mac. They are just made for someone who organizes their thoughts and works like I do, I guess. People who know me are not surprised that I am a "Mac person" and socially it can be quite a compliment... people know that means you're probably a "creative" person. We should all be so lucky to have that kind of a reputation for our business.

Sometimes the best thing for you is to say no... and John's right, people will respect you even more for it.

I find the whole concept of a "non customer" interesting as well. Talk about people that are interacting with your brand. They chose "not to work with you" or "buy your product" because of an important reason, and they are just as likely to be connectors or salespeople to their friends and family. So how much more of an impact would it make if the people that "didn't choose you" weren't out there telling people it was because you tried to screw them on a service plan that doesn't meet their needs (ahem _________ PCS). Boy, you have Verizon!, I love them! I didn't choose them because of XXXX... but wow! I'm impressed you're a "Verizon Person."

The "non customer" is an interesting audience to think about... and I like the idea of having a good relationship with them. What they think could be quite powerful in your market.

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 05:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 11, 2005

Custom Clothing

LinkedIn: Custom Shirt Maker

LinkedIn has a new store on their Web site. It's a dynamic store that allows people to creat their own T-shirt designs and order them. This model could be very interesting for eCommerce. Imagine being able to order your favorite (insert Sport here) team's paraphernalia...customized just the way you want it.

Very cool idea, I think it's very cool that LinkedIn is doing this. Just goes to show that more and more the Web is going to put control into the people's hands.

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 01:11 PM | TrackBack

June 16, 2005

This is how it's done...

LiveVault is setting the standard for how to market your products via the Web. I was sent this link today by a colleague who was looking for some examples of good viral marketing strategies in preparation for a meeting with a B2B client. The link is to a Web Video they produced for IT Managers... but instead of a boring old "talking head" telling them the value of LiveVault's data back-up service, they produced a high production value "Branded Movie" with John Cleese in it making you laugh while you learn about LiveVault.

It's pure entertainment, well almost... if you're interested, it has a lead-generation tool at the end. It's a seven minute piece of content.... wait, read this again... a SEVEN MINUTE ADVERTISEMENT, that I could not stop watching.

Seriously, I was watching it, thinking about all of the other things I needed to be doing, but couldn't stop the movie... and I'm not even in their target audience.

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 04:43 PM | Comments (0)

June 03, 2005

Incorporating Design... from the Masters

All of these lessons are borrowed from the [FAST] TAKE section at the bottom of several pages within the June 2005 issue of Fast Company.

Claudia Kotcha, VP for design innovation and strategy at P&G

1. Get Buy-in from Senior Management

If the CEO isn't on board, cultural change efforts are doomed to fail.

2. Get Outside Feedback

She has a board of outside advisors who give honest comments about their work.

3. Understand the Design Process

Designers are flexible and intuitive rather than rigid and exacting. So to think like one, you have to adopt the design process.

4. Locate Designers Near the R&D Folks

Design used to be siloed at P&G, viewed by most as peripheral and unimportant. Now most designers work directly with researchers within each unit. This sparks new sorts of innovation and makes it easier for nondesigners to understand what design is.

5. Let Designers Create their own Workspace

In a place like P&G, where workspaces are standardized, this is both symbolically and functionally critical.

Brian Collins, Executive Creative Director, Brand Integration Group, Ogilvy & Mather

1. Cut-and-Paste Culture

Globally, kids are now mixing and matching things to create new forms - sampling music tracks on their laptops, creating images that meld digital photographs and magazine clips.

2. Accomplished Amateurs

Brands are already turning to their consumers for content. This trend will accelerate in advertising as tech-savvy teens, armed with cameras and cheap moviemaking software increasingly challenge the pros - and the old financial model of commercial production.

3. Storytelling Renaissance

What's oldest is new again. Good brands are always good stories. And storytelling is always interesting because it's driven by one question: What happens next? Stories make people turn the page, click on the link, enter the shop, see the show.

Joshua Prince-Ramus, Partner, Office for Metropolitan Architecture

1. Create a Common Language

The three-month research period gives the firm and its client a contextual framework they can share before beginning the design.

2. Simple is Smart

When Prince-Ramus talks about smart design, he often says he likes a dumb solution that comes only from digging into a problem.

3. Question Everything

Prince-Ramus believes in the power of questioning first principles and discarding preconceived notions.

4. Authorship is Leadership

Many designers, architects or business leaders might define a project's author as the person whose name is on it. A leader creates something not by taking credit, but by making spaces in which others can excel.

Chuck Jones, Vice President of Global Consumer Design, Whirlpool Corporation

1. Follow the Leaders

Initially, Jones put together a presentation for senior management showing how a design-focused strategy reaped rewards in stock price, market share and profitability at Apple, Chrysler, Volkswagen, and other design-centric companies.

2. Grab a Seat at the Table

For designers to help solve business problems, they need to understand Whirlpool's overall corporate strategy. Jones' team stays in the loop, participating with sales and manufacturing...in key meetings.

3. Take Smart Shortcuts

Each of Whirlpool's 16 major brands has its own language - a series of colors, textures and descriptions that tie every product together. These cues provide building blocks to accelerate new product design.

4. Use the Numbers

Jones' team takes the fuzziness out of design abstractions through extensive usability studies that quantify effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. Making the numbers opens the door for more risk taking.

Bruce Mau, Founder, Bruce Mau Design, Inc.

1. Avoid Analysis Paralysis

Rather than spend an inordinate amount of time on research, Mau will launch a project even when he has just a 10% understanding of what it actually entails. He might have more questions than answers, but he knows the answers will come when he prototypes the idea and gets feedback from the client.

2. Question Every Decision

Learn-as-you-go projects require you to continually evaluate your assumptions. Because you lack knowledge to guide your decisions, you must be brave enough to ask stupid questions. Says Mau: "I'm completely comfortable admitting that I don't understand something."

3. Bring in the Outliers

To build the project that became "Massive Change," Mau tapped outside talent - 14 students with wildly different backgrounds. Their unfamiliarity with Mau's design process freed them to challenge his thinking.

I hope Fast Company doesn't mind me pimping so much of their content. They really do seem to have their finger on the pulse of what's changing in business and I really identify with a lot of their thoughts. I don't claim these ideas for my own (though sometimes the synchronicity of where I'm at with my own career and the topic of the next issue that arrives in my mailbox is uncanny) but I do string together the thoughts that resonate with me to help you learn, about me, about what I think is important... and how it's being echoed throughout the world.

I saw an excellent article in the San Francisco Chronicle recently about how the Burning Man people are creating a global creative movement and considering how Burning Man could live on without the playa.... expect a future entry on that one too...

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)

Incorporating Design... from the Masters

All of these lessons are borrowed from the [FAST] TAKE section at the bottom of several pages within the June 2005 issue of Fast Company.

Claudia Kotcha, VP for design innovation and strategy at P&G

1. Get Buy-in from Senior Management

If the CEO isn't on board, cultural change efforts are doomed to fail.

2. Get Outside Feedback

She has a board of outside advisors who give honest comments about their work.

3. Understand the Design Process

Designers are flexible and intuitive rather than rigid and exacting. So to think like one, you have to adopt the design process.

4. Locate Designers Near the R&D Folks

1. Cut-and-Paste Culture

Globally, kids are now mixing and matching things to create new forms - sampling music tracks on their laptops, creating images that meld digital photographs and magazine clips.

2. Accomplished Amateurs

The three-month research period gives the firm and its client a contextual framework they can share before beginning the design.

2. Simple is Smart

When Prince-Ramus talks about smart design, he often says he likes a dumb solution that comes only from digging into a problem.

3. Question Everything

Prince-Ramus believes in the power of questioning first principles and discarding preconceived notions.

4. Authorship is Leadership

Chuck Jones, Vice President of Global Consumer Design, Whirlpool Corporation

1. Follow the Leaders

4. Use the Numbers

Bruce Mau, Founder, Bruce Mau Design, Inc.

1. Avoid Analysis Paralysis

2. Question Every Decision

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)

The tenets of a good strategy...

"In order to do a better job of developing, communication and pursuing a strategy, you need to learn to think like a designer."

Have you ever sat in a meeting with one of your clients and knew to the bone that you had the very idea that would solve their business problem. You did all of your homework, pulled all of the stats, put together the most informative PowerPoint presentation, stood in front of the mirror the night before for hours making sure you hit all of the salient points and when it was all said and done found yourself staring across the conference room table at a pool of blank stares? Or worse, have them start throwing out the very objections you had strategized against and already dispelled in your presentation? Then watch your idea die on the vine in favor of something safer, simpler and easier for your client to quantify?

If that frustrates you as much as me then you'll find some of the tips I've learned in this month's Fast Company to be a very helpful tool. They are featuring "Masters of Design" some of the business world's leading design people, some in positions of power at Fortune 100 corporations that you would be surprised to read about... and the best part is that the sidebars throughout the issue are small lists of tips from them about how to bring design into your business process.

I've been experimenting lately with doing more "spec work." I know that in the agency world, even the thought of doing spec is blasphemous... but as marketing has become more of a challenge with new media, new methods of measurement and a less receptive society, I've seen a reduction in my clients' willingness to take risks.

What's funny is that at the same time, I've seen the power of the ideas that the people I work with get even more exciting, more powerful... and in some cases "scarier."

Side note: I had a client tell me in a meeting the other day that he liked an idea that we'd presented him. Not exactly front page news, but what was cool was that he said he liked it because it made him a little bit uncomfortable. This was so rewarding to me personally. It was like a validation of my entire position on how to do business, especially good marketing. I try to challenge my clients and the people I work with to move beyond what they are comfortable with to that place where those really great ideas come from.

Part of what's helped us engage our clients in some of these new ideas was infusing the designers (art directors) in the process sooner than we usually would. I've seen projects recently that sold because rather than asking the client to "imagine" a concept, we showed it to them, before we had a "scope of work document" or a "signed estimate." We put ideas in front of the client that showed us at our best, without having to fit it into this box or that box or make sure that we took out the part that we knew would make one person in the room uncomfortable. We just did it, and in most cases, we also sold it.

The effect of us taking this risk... this initial step to put our ideas and creativity on the line has meant that we score an emotional victory internally, knowing that our creativity has been respected and valued by our client and we are learning to rely more on our instincts. This advice is good for anyone looking to do good marketing. I hear a lot of people talking about developing marketing plans based on business plans. I've even been examining creative briefs from several of my colleagues at different agencies. And in most cases, they look like business planning documents. These documents are exchanged between client directors, strategists and clients/marketers. They focus heavily on the business goals, what do we need to do, who do we need to talk to, how will we measure if what we are doing is working?

All of this is important. Due diligence for strong marketing work... but it spends too much time in the hands of the proposal writers, powerpointeers and "decision-makers" before it goes to the designers. The best projects I have ever worked on had designers right there at the table with everyone else.

The quote at the top of this post is from the head of Ideo... in the article, it further references the value of design thinking in the development of the strategy. He talks about the importance of "prototyping" as part of the strategic development process, which really rings true. Have you ever nailed the strategy, got the client to sign off on the proposal, then sat down with the design team and had one of those moments where a designer looks at your whole thing and has a simple observation that destroys your entire strategy? I have. What do you do? You turn to them and say that their challenge is to make it work anyway....

What if they had been sitting at the table sooner? They might have pointed that out to you, or better yet to the client at a point when you could still make changes because the direction was not set and the budget not yet determined... In fact, they might even help that nervous client learn to trust you more because they begin to see just how talented your whole team is, not just the face person.

My favorite points from "Strategy by Design" by Tim Brown, June 2005 Fast Company Magazine, p 52.

"Here is Ideo's five-point model for strategizing by design.

1. Hit the Streets

Any real-world strategy starts with having fresh, original insights about your market and your customers... Very often you can build an entire strategy based on the experiences your customers go through in their interactions with your organization.

2. Recruit T-Shaped People

Regardless of whether your goal is to innovate around a product, service or business opportunity, you get good insights by having an observant and empathetic view of the world. You can't just stand in your own shoes; you've got to be able to stand in the shoes of others.... We look for people who are so inquisitive about the world that they're willing to try to do what you do... They have a principal skill that describes the vertical leg of the T- they're mechanical engineers or industrial designers... but... they can branch out into other skills such as anthropology.

3. Build to Think

Design thinking is inherently a prototyping process. Once you spot a promising idea, you build it. The prototype is typically a drawing, model or film that describes a product system or service.... The goal isnt' to create a close approximation of the finished product... [it] is to elicit feedback that helps us work through the problem we're trying to solve. In a sense, we build to think.

4. The Prototype Tells a Story

Prototyping is simultaneously an evaluative process - it generates feedback and enables you to make midflight corrections - and a storytelling process. It's a way of visually and viscerally describing your strategy.

5. Design is Never Done

Even after you've rolled out... you're just getting started. In almost every case you move on to the next version, which is going to be better because you've had more time to think about it."

Are you integrating design thinking into your business? I'm certainly trying to... I want to tell stories, inspire people, innovate... and integrate my own creativity into everything I do.

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 11:11 AM | Comments (0)

"What Comes Next" - Interactive Advertising... (swiped from AdWeek)

What Comes Next?
Swiped from AdWeek
May 30, 2005
By Catharine P. Taylor

What Comes Next?

If you were to describe the last year in interactive advertising, it would be easy-and not entirely off the mark-to call it the "Year of the Chicken." When asking online creatives to assess the past year, Burger King's garter-wearing Subservient Chicken comes up over and over, even among those who are sick and tired of talking about him. He looms so large that by the time the Clio Awards got around to giving subservientchicken.com a Grand Clio last week and the One Show Interactive gave it Best of Show last month, the crowd response was been-there, already-asked-chicken-to-do-that.

"It's like the BMW Films of 2005," says Matt Freeman, CEO of Tribal DDB, referring to the series of shorts that won Fallon Best of Show at the One Show Interactive in 2002 and 2003.

Now that the Crispin, Porter + Bogusky-created Web site is more than a year old, the discussion has turned from gushing praise to talk about how its level of consumer engagement can be applied elsewhere. The takeaways are this: the best interactive work should engage its audience without demanding too much from it, be viral, tie back to the brand promise and be something consumers actually seek out. And now that many technological barriers have been breached, it should be about how technology serves the idea rather than the other way around. "I think [the subservient chicken] gave ... a sense of hope," says CP+B interactive creative director Jeff Benjamin. "BMW Films was cool, but I think even when it came out people were saying it was TV on the Web."

Now, the best work is being created with the idea that, well, the Web is the Web, with technology, like broadband for example, as simply the underpinning that makes the ideas possible. "What you see is that people are creating communication with the assumption of broadband," says Jerry Shereshevsky, Yahoo!'s ambassador plenipotentiary of Madison Avenue.

If that thought seems as old as BMW Films, keep in mind the carmaker was one of the few who could produce such work several years ago with confidence that most of its affluent audience could see it. It's only now that advertisers are signing off on broadband work en masse. "They're buying it at a much higher rate this year," says Tribal's Freeman.

"Technology has been sort of like the matchstick," says John Butler, co-creative director of Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners, Sausalito, Calif., which produced, along with Seattle-based Web shop Zaaz, one of the most award-winning efforts of the year: the Converse Gallery (www.conversegallery.com) for the iconic shoe brand.

On the surface, the campaign, which won silver and bronze awards at both the Andys and the One Show, looks like another example of streaming video for streaming video's sake, as the site features more than 50 24-second films about the sneakers.

But the films aren't created by famous directors; instead they are created by consumers, who have sent in works that include the sneakers playing the piano and starring in action-adventure films. "Why not just go right to the source?" asks Butler of the campaign's premise. The difference isn't just who is shooting the commercials, it's that consumers can create their own media easily enough that they can be a part of the process. "The magic of that kind of work is you can get your consumers involved in the campaign the way you can't in other media," says Freeman.

Of course, every creative wants what Converse go?x2014;true engagement with the brand-but some award show jurors said they saw examples of clients misjudging how much time consumers wanted to spend with their brands. One such example cited by several jury chairs: "Meet the Lucky Ones," a series of short films, featuring 10 characters in an idiosyncratic family, for the Mercury Mariner SUV.

Created as a series of eight-minute films created by the Wunderman unit of Young & Rubicam in Detroit, along with Mother, New York, and interactive production house Kirt Gunn & Associates in New York, the campaign was designed to reach 25-to-45 year old women who think of Lincoln-Mercury as being stodgy. The brand was only a supporting character to the plots. But even though it was a showcase of streaming video just as Converse was, some thought it required too much effort on the part of the audience.

"It was too complicated. It had nothing to do with the product," says Doug Jaeger, president of thehappycorp global, who chaired the One Show Interactive jury and also judged the ADC Awards and ANDY Awards.
Still, Jaeger and others seem willing to cut advertisers and creatives a little slack if they're occasionally pushing the envelope a bit too far in trying to exploit interactive's potential. "Everyone was interested in commercials when they were new too," says Organic executive creative director Colleen DeCourcy, who served as Internet Jury Chair of the Clio Awards.

Maybe it's a signpost of how far interactive creative has come that when talk turns to the industry's next big thing, people don't talk about work that is necessarily digital, but campaigns that toggle almost seamlessly from online to offline, or bounce from electronic billboards to mobile phones to wild postings to e-commerce.

While it might be easy to call such campaigns integrated, Benjamin Palmer, president and co-founder of Boston's The Barbarian Group, which helped CP+B develop the Subservient Chicken Web site and judged the traditional work at the ADC Awards, uses the word "thorough." He defines a campaign as thorough not because it appears in multiple media but because its central idea is completely implemented, with the idea dictating what media it will appear in. If there's no reason to employ text-messaging to support a given idea, and plenty of reason to shoot a TV commercial, so be it.

One of his favorite campaigns of the year was the "Remember Rainier" effort for Rainier beer by Cole & Weber/Red Cell, Seattle, which centered on an effort by two fictitious Rainier fanatics, Tim and Chuck, to bring back the brand's classic commercials and won gold at both the ADC and the Clios.

Yes, it includes a Web site, www.rainier-vision.com, which serves as a crossroads where all of the different media meet; but it has also featured a Wayne's World-style late night show on the local UPN affiliate, an old neon Rainier sign driven around the Seattle area in the back of a pickup truck by Tim and Chuck, visits to bars where they distributed petitions to bring the commercials back, and of course, the commercials themselves.

Yahoo's Shereshevsky puts Tribal's "Lincoln Fry" campaign for McDonald's in the same category. Centered around a French fry that was purported to have the silhouette of Abraham Lincoln, it launched in February, including not only a Super Bowl ad but also a fake blog, a Web site and eventually a Yahoo! auction of the "fry" to benefit Ronald McDonald House charities. The campaign ended on a bizarre note, with the fry selling for more than $75,000 to the notorious online casino GoldenPalace.com, which has also made headlines during the past year for buying an advertising avail on a pregnant women's belly and a grilled cheese sandwich said to contain the image of theVirgin Mary. But from a marketing perspective, what may have made it notable, is that no one element-even the Super Bowl buy-dominated the campaign.

And let's not forget that the Subservient Chicken itself was an exercise in thoroughness. Not only could the chicken react to 25,000 keywords, by Palmer's estimate, but he also was featured in commercials, countless PR ops and the DirecTV chicken fight.

If campaigns such as these are what online executives see as the future, then there's a lot to ponder in what they are leaving behind. When clients say they are looking for out of the box thinking these days, they are usually looking for something beyond television. For online creatives, it's the box containing the computer monitor that might be getting a bit cramped.

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 10:58 AM | Comments (0)

May 20, 2005

time for creativity

Everyone's talking about the emerging role of design in business. It's suddenly become glaringly obvious (to most of us) that you can't package the same old stuff in a "cheaper box" or a "different color" and expect the products to fly off the shelves. The "customer experience" has taken flight as a concept that is important to every single individual involved in developing business strategy. Companies like Apple are having "I told you so" moments every day as they get more and more blog links, articles and word-of-mouth kudos for the elegance and sophistication they put behind the design of their products and several other companies have found another dimension beyond just brand recognition and a good distribution and marketing model - but creating connections with people through products that are flat-out cool.

And it's not that good engineering, good marketing, good distribution aren't important anymore. It's just that without the insights that go into creating a remarkable product, a "lovemark" as Kevin Roberts put it, you can get by in the short-term but you will achieve only minimal success. As I read all of this "new age business talk" about Purple Cow's, "Lovemarks", the "Attention Economy" and the "Age of Design" I'm blown away by how natural all of the concepts seem.

- Don't create the marketing until you've created the product.
- You can't just kill people with ads and expect them to "get it" and love, or even like your product... you have to make something they will love.
- Designing a new product does not begin and end in the Engineering department.
- Create something that your loyal customers want to tell everyone about.
- Putting 12 people in a cold room with flourescent lighting in a chair at a conference table where they know there are people on the other side of a piece of glass watching their every move is a terrible way to see how what you've created will impact their lives.

I could go on and on, but they all seem so logical. I read Jennifer Reingold's Q+A with A.G. Lafley of P&G and hear about how he has created a revolution inside the company known for branding by doing one simple thing - requiring them to focus back on the products themselves and making them more remarkable through design and I ask myself... "How could the biggest brand company in the world not know that? Why is that such groundbreaking news?"

I laughed out loud on BART this morning when I read Reingold's interview with Claudia Kotchka where Kotchka talks about what would have happened to "Altoids" if P&G were to buy that product. (Actually, first I laughed out loud at her description of Altoids - "the scent of peppermint oil wafts ouf the box... the nostalgic typeface... the satisfyingly crinkly liner paper... even the hand-made mints." Clearly, I'm not in Altoids' "early adopter" group because I never really felt they created a revolution in mints. Sure, they're curiously strong... but I didn't have an orgasmic reaction to the liner paper inside... but it's about the 3rd time I've heard Altoids described as such... so I relent). She characterized their old design approach in this way, "We're gonna cost save on this tin. We're gonna get rid of this stupid paper - it's serving no functional purpose" and then she picks up a cheap plastic box with boring beige mints inside of it that taste just as good but are much cheaper to make.

And I realize, that's what happened. Somewhere along the line, we got so industrialized that the ultimate goal in business was to find the balance point where the product that you may have spent years creating becomes a commodity that is completely indistinguishable from the next guy's, but is much cheaper to make, or sold in more stores.

I guess the idea here was that people didn't really care much for "who made it" or "what it looks like" as long as it was waiting for them where they expected to see it, more visible to them than the other 20 variations of the same thing, and they could afford it.

So American cars (like Ford which some could argue were a "lovemark" before Kevin Roberts was a twinkle in his daddy's eye) - a symbol of freedom and the ability to "go wherever you want to go today" became faster, cheaper and smaller... and things break all the time. So you can go wherever you want to go but you might not be able to enjoy the ride because the motor in the radio antenna stopped going up and down and your back-right speaker is cracked - and why? Because they found someone that could make that little motor for $1 cheaper per piece and increase their profit to the point that they could price someone else on that model of car or pay for some more advertising. But if you're like me, you'll never buy another American car again.

To the point that today, very few owners of American cars really "love" their car (truck owners, but that's a completely different type of person - and those cars are actually "designed" for the customer). Plenty of people choose a particular American brand, maybe because their dad drove one, or because they could unload their old trade-in and get a better deal than they could on a Volkswagen... but not because American cars are superior... and now look at them. Over the years, American cars have fallen from grace. They either have absolutely no personality whatsoever - and are designed to be "rental cars" or they have poorly executed "features" that don't work like they are supposed to and break down long before they should. And someone at Ford or GM would probably tell you that they made more money by doing so... that somehow this approach has been better for business.

But American car manufacturers did something right, you can't call them a bad... but you can't call them amazing either. They aim for th e middle and they own it... they might not have lots of recurring customers (except rental car companies) but they have lots of revenue... and in that world, design does not have to take a front seat. If you are trying to sell something once, you don't have to have a remarkable product... you just need a remarkable sales pitch.

What would happen if American car companies stopped cutting corners in their designs? Hopefully some of their cars would just disappear forever. The remaining ones would be redesigned and cost more and their distribution system might feel it for a while... but when people bought one of their cars and had a great, lasting experience... they'd buy another one. Maybe not as soon as Ford or GM would like, but they would because they would feel that their investment had been rewarded. Road trips would be enhanced with air conditioning that still works. Automatic windows that roll down and up. Door panels on their cars that don't rattle when you go over bumps. They'd be like BMWs, VWs and Toyotas, Macintosh computers and I guess even Altoids and people wouldn't mind spending more money. Short term profits might shrink and they might have to slim their operations down a bit... but we'd create healthier companies, better products, and a happier society.

I guess in the end, that's the point of my rant on design. The implications of the design age are much larger than just the impact they'll have on business. In fact, I suspect that it won't change as much as all of us Fast Company, Purple Cow, Lovemark lovers would like. I don't think we're going to witness the downfall of the production line, or the "cheaper alternative to the same thing" but the markets are shifting and the big company with average products will have to share the market with the little guy with remarkable products.

Ultimately, I think it's our analysis of them that will change with our new society. People want more. Not more products, more satisfaction with the products they have. They want to believe in what they spend their money on... that they are respected and appreciated for spending it and that it fits their individual need and "design" or rather "creative thinking" should be a part of the development of that product from day one.

I know I'm talking in circles... so I'll go back and revise this entry later so that it's a little more coherent. Right now I'm just enjoying having a place to blab.

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 10:29 AM | Comments (0)

May 17, 2005

"How media and creative can come together"

Another good article from Advertising Age, May 16, page 35.

This article was put together using pieces of a speech by Jack Klues, CEO of Publicis' Starcom Media Vest Group. My current employer does both creative and planning so I can see both sides of this coin. I'll come back and comment on this later, these are just my favorite points from the article.

How media and creative can come together

"I've got a few ideas about how media agencies and creative agencies - our teams - might better come together. You are welcome to debate them, but I ask you to hear them"

1. Advertising is not a Production Line

"It's true that great advertising starts with a brilliant idea" but ideas aren't restricted by geography. They can come from anywhere."
"The ability to conceive a great idea isn't limited to someone who has the words "creative", "copy" or "art" in their title."
"Let's abandon the assembly-line-worker mentality" and replace it with a championship-sports-team approach.

2. Stop Arguing Over Who Owns Planning

"Understanding the consumer is more than one full-time job."
"To get the absolute best, most actionable insights, media agencies and creative agencies must, at minimum, stop purely talking brand speak and find ways to make insights deliver valuable and tangible returns"

3. Broaden Our Concept of Creative

"In a world increasingly populated by TiVo, broadband, multiple screens in multiple places, we have to be brilliant craftsmen and women across every viable platform. Many agency models are still built off of reels, storyboards and TV ads that can be spun into other formats and retrofit into another media."
"Many of the best creatives argue, 'I know how to do a good online ad.' And they do. Brilliantly. But we have to improve the cycle time and price tag required to get the most relevant message in front of the consumer."

4. "POWERFUL" Creative Needed

"It is our job to be contact experts across all forms of media."
"It's incumbent upon us to move beyond the traditional touch points... The 'where' world is increasingly about events and sponsorship, experiential points of contact with consumers. It is about word of mouth, embedded content, complementary content and branded entertainment. We have to know how to buy and sell experience."
"Powerful experiences require powerful creative"

5. Our Clients Want to be Closer to Us

"Perhaps we need to re-engineer the role of the account director. Think about it. Several major events have changed the agency model in the past few years. Media spun off. Digital took off. And advertising started being replaced by communications planning. Still, I don't know if we ever evaluated all of the agency roles to see what might need re-engineering"

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 01:35 PM | Comments (0)

pay for performance?

My friend Amy from JWT's Mature Market Group sent me a great article from the May 16 issue of Ad Age. "If you want big ideas from your agency, tie pay to performance." (page 34, author: Jonah Bloom)

With all of the ways to track the performance of your advertising, I was not surprised to read this article. If the media can follow a pay for performance model, then agencies that create ideas that are then executed through media should be thinking about their pricing structures as well. While it may freak some people out, the fact that Jonah finished his article by saying "that kind of compensation system would turn agencies into what marketers need them to be: growth consultants" makes me feel like this is something that the "idea community" should embrace.

He makes some good points, saying that the current system of agencies creating estimates based on the amount of hours it takes to complete a project makes the agency more of a vendor than a partner. Agencies that become relegated to the "vendor" category often feel like their creativity has been marginalized. I've never thought of any of the agencies I've worked at as a vendor, but I've seen agencies position themselves that way to win business... and I've also been in situations where the only way to get approval on a project was to reduce our creative time in the estimate and hope to make our money on the delivery side.

In that model, everyone suffers. If a marketer only paid the agency for the successful advertising, everyone would win... agencies that are not truly creative would not survive (maybe that's why everyone's scared of this), we could all take more risks with our work and express some of our more creative ideas. Think about it, clients don't often choose the "edgy" campaign. They can't, because even when it feels like the better idea they've got too much on the line to take a risk - and they opt for the "safer campaign." So the agency ends up being held responsible for putting out the "safe" campaign with a big price-tag on it (a recipe for disaster)... and guess what happens when the safe campaign doesn't drive up sales, or generate more leads? As Bloom said "Imagine if the CMO, instead of telling his board that they are investing millions in the possibility of an uptick in a fluffy metric such as unaided recall or likability, told them that the focus is to increase market cap or sales, and that the agency would forgo payment in the case of failure."

According to Mr. Bloom's article, some U.S. agencies are following this model now and the AAAA and ANA have seen proposals to "transition from the current standards they recommend for fee compensation to a new structure of genuine partnerships."

Sounds like a great idea to me. I'd be willing to put my ideas on the line against my competition and not my rate card, any day of the week. If my ideas don't work, I'd better find another business. But that's why I got in this business, because I believe in my ideas. Now this isn't saying that you don't pay the agency anything at all. Of course there's an investment that should be shared equally when it comes to developing an idea and putting in all of the work to executing the idea. But I believe that if the agency shouldered more of the responsibility for the time it takes to develop the ideas, then the agency would produce more inspired work.

In this new "attention economy" the consumer is the client - they decide when and what messages they will tune into. It's changing the way information is delivered, which in turn changes how and where advertising is used, so no reason the way it's created and paid for shouldn't follow suit.

According to Bloom, the proposal made by Andy Berlin to the 4A's also gives the agency ongoing rights to the work, rather than that intellectual property being owned by the client. Funny, but I think that within the agency community, even though the .PSDs, the radio spots and video footage may belong to the client, the idea has always belonged to the agency. "Think Different" will be Chiat Day's idea forever, no matter who has the CD with all of the files on it. That being said, they put a spin on it by adding that perhaps the agency could be paid by some type of "royalty agreement" for the ongoing support work it takes to keep the idea alive.

Definitely interesting stuff, especially for an idea-guy like me.

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)

May 06, 2005

Where are the inspired, creative workplaces?

"Consulting guru Peter Drucker has being saying this for decades: Money is a necessity but not a sufficient condition to attract and retain motivated employees. People work for paychecks and benefits, but really perform at peak efficiency when the quality of work is ideal, creativity is encouraged and relationships at work are positive."

This is the closing statement of an excellent article I just read by Scott Goodson, called "Tear down that cubicle" which provided some excellent insights on the value of a positive workplace.

He began the article like this: "So there I was, four weeks on the job as CEO of StrawberryFrog USA, walking along Madison Avenue, when I was reminded of a quote by Studs Terkel.

Terkel wrote: 'Work is about a daily search for meaning as well as daily bread; for recognition as well as cash; for astonishment rather than torpor; in short for a sort of life, rather than a Monday-to-Friday sort of dying.'"

This personal statement really resonated with me, I know so many people that go to work depressed and leave feeling like another piece of their soul has been chipped away. So many people that are looking for "something" more out of what they do. I know I definitely have been in this category at one time or another in my career. You know, that point where your cat could run the company better than the CEO does because so many talented people are being wasted, which leads to the "grass is greener over at ________" syndrome. But more and more, I'm realizing that there's more people around me, in the cubicles close enough to hear me typing away on my keyboard right now, that are just as passionate about what they do and about making a change to bring more focus, more creativity and more fun into what they spend the majority of every day doing: working.

If I don't bring my own inspiration and creativity to the workplace, then I'm no better than anyone else and not only will my current job continue to bore me to death, but my next job will be the same.

Scott Goodson also said this: "An enlightened environment is also an effective business model. Companies with positive employee attitudes tend to show positive financial outcomes. In a Gallup study, organizations with a 'satisfied' work force had 27 percent higher profits than those with an 'unhappy' one. Staff turnover is lower in small businesses, largely because of flatter management structures, better communication and greater staff input. Work provides a source of identity and a social outlet."

Hmmm.... have an identity, have fun, be more creative, and make more money... sounds like a good idea.

Link to the article.

Posted by Andrew Spencer at 01:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack