Uncategorized | Liri Andersson

Archive for the ‘ Uncategorized ’ Category

Bye bye dialogue, bye bye engagement, and bye bye potential lifetime customer!

Most marketers would agree that being honest about your offer is an important part of marketing and communications. It’s so crucial to anything we do at this fluid world transparency is one of our ‘eight absolute truths of engagement’.

Why? Because no one likes being lied to, no one likes to engage with people that are not honest and not truthful. So why would we want to engage with brands that breaks such a human basic rule?

Yet in the age of dialogue, engagement marketing, and the pursuit of life time customers companies continue to be just that – not transparent.

The other day my friend Sara received this e-mail.

The campaign in their own words “Everybody knows that social networking is realer than real life. So don’t mess around with a profile pic that depicts you as any less stunning than the supermodel you are. Put your best Facebook forward with Estée Lauder’s Your Beauty. Your Style. Your Profile. extravaganza this week at Selfridges. During your appointment, beauty advisors will bronze, line, lacquer and do whatever it takes to perfect an effortlessly gorgeous visage. A professional on-site photographer will snap your best angle and provide you with a print and USB key for instant portrait uploading”.

Fair enough I say. Nothing wrong with a great facebook picture and absolutely nothing wrong with looking stunning on-line!

But to me the campaign breaks the cardinal rule of transparency.

Firstly the communications never mentions that there is a cost of £15 attached to this. I let them off the hook on this one as they do mention it when one makes an appointment.

The major issue is with the end product. Spot the problem?

It certainly isn’t the makeover; there is a Venezuelan lady on the Estée Lauder counter in Selfridges who get full marks!

But what’s up with the branded background? Let’s not forget that this campaign is not for a makeover, and it’s not for Selfridges, it’s for a great facebook profile picture!

I don’t know about you but to me it feels like Sara has just paid 15 pounds for the privilege of advertising Selfridges on her own on-line property!

I’m not sure many people would choose to do that, and I suspect Estée Lauder’s and Selfridges know that (hence their silence), but hey who cares, they do have their 15 pounds!

Except people care, and people remember, and people talk, and brands abusing people’s trust by not being honest = people walk.

Bye bye dialogue, bye bye engagement, and bye bye potential lifetime customer!

Close Bookmark and Share This Page

Save to Browser Favorites / Bookmarks

Email This to a Friend

Copy HTML:

If you like this then please subscribe to the RSS Feed.

2010: 06/06
CATEGORY: Uncategorized
Write comment

The paradox of exploitation and exploration!

‘The what’ I hear you say…

I’m referring to the problem every business has (and if they think they don’t, they are wrong). I’m talking about needing to change, and yet at the same time needing to stay the same.

Let me explain…

Every business has to exploit the present (make money today), but due to the unpredictable world we live in all businesses also have to explore, and subsequently evolve or change, in order to capitalize on opportunities brought by the changing environment (or avoid the threats). The first usually involves an organisation’s core business (basically doing every day business), and the second involves activities such as innovation, NPD, entering new markets, potential disruption, etc.

One demands stability… and the other demands fluidity (constant change or evolution). As we know change is the enemy of stability…and there will always be tension (and not of the good kind) in an environment where stability and change have to co-habitate.

Despite this challenge both exploitation and exploration are needed to ensure the survival of a business, today and tomorrow – hence the paradox!

Paradox of our times

So how do you deal with this as a business, how do you run an organisation in this paradoxal context?

In the early 90’s Barry Johnson developed the concept of Polarity Management in an attempt to answer different paradoxical questions such as work life balance. The idea is that a great many (not all) of the issues we define as problems to be solved are actually polarities to be managed.

Mr. Johnson’s theory is that by definition a “problem” is an issue which requires a solution. The goal of a problem is to find a fix to the current situation and move forward to a new reality without being required to ever look back. However, a “polarity” is an issue that needs to be addressed, but the “solution” is not one that can survive independently, and will actually still require continuous support.

By that rational the solution to the “exploiting and exploring paradox” is to continuously manage the situation by putting the right mechanisms and processes in place to ensure everyday business continues, while the necessary activities related to exploration are encouraged and supported.

This could for example be warning mechanisms such as the old 3M principle of 20% of sales having to come from new products. If an organisation goes below the magic 20% they know that “every day business” has taken over on the expense of needed innovation.

I have for a long time been promoting the value of encouraging both exploitation and exploration as it means a balance between continuity, consistency, clear direction and new opportunities, progress, creativity. However, identifying, and putting the right mechanisms in place to ensure this balance is maintained is crucial, but also extremely difficult. I know this because it’s a challenge faced by many of my clients over the last 15 years, and it has become a crucial part of the solutions we propose to the clients we are interacting with through the company I recently founded with Jonathan MacDonald, this fluid world.

We have found that creating “solutions that can survive independently” in order to manage the “exploring, exploitation paradox” is not something an organisation should do in isolation, or leave up to chance. Why? Because organisations often have a myopic view of the business they are in, but also because getting through the business day, and reaching sales targets, will always be prioritised, especially in these difficult times.

This is, as we know, very much a short-term solution, and one that may ensure the success of an organisation today, but not one that will lead to a bright future tomorrow.

If you don’t believe me ask yourself what happened to gas light companies, and many after them…

Close Bookmark and Share This Page

Save to Browser Favorites / Bookmarks

Email This to a Friend

Copy HTML:

If you like this then please subscribe to the RSS Feed.

2009: 09/10
CATEGORY: Competitive Advantage
Organisational Behaviour
Strategy
Thoughts
Uncategorized
Write comment

Brand idol vs brand building!

I was in Lausanne a few days ago and the headline’s of Bleu (the free paper in Switzerland) stated the following: ‘A Frenchman sells himself to brands. Ready to tattoo 5000 ads on his body’

headline Bleu

In summary AdvertisingHim.com has just launched the concept of “Body Advertising”; to tattoo the entire body of Tom French (and yes he is French) with advertisements. His body will be divided into 5,000 spaces, with a few parts of his body not for sale at any price… Once the space for sale is sold out, he will travel the world on the advertisers’ requests, in exchange for healthy remuneration (source: Vanksenculturebuzz, 27th of August 2009).

This made me think of an article I read in Campaign (February 2007) written by John O’Keefe, then Creative Director at BBH.

“There are those who say that the big idea is dead, that now it’s all about having lots of little ideas, as unrelated as they are unrelenting, and that that is the way to drive brand success in an era of ever more fragmented media. I think that way lies a short-term, “Brand Idol” world, and I don’t like the look of it. What do I mean by Brand Idol? (More to the point, can I sell it to Endemol?) What I mean is, short-term stunts or “one-offs”, for want of a better expression, that lead to possibly spectacular, but, at best, short-term bursts of brand fame. Brands are big investments for companies. I think they deserve longer-term strategic thinking than that.”

I could not agree more John! What we often see today is one agency, one brand, one organisation after another jumping on some panic bandwagon in the hope of being noticed, or in the name of ticking the ‘we have done something in new media’ box.

What we are not seeing enough of are brands looking at these new tools, channels and opportunities and assessing them according to the strategic role they can play in building the brand, beyond creating headlines for a day or two.

I’m not saying that there is anything wrong with having a little fun, nor am I saying that there is anything wrong with looking to feature on headlines….what I’m saying is that when “one-off brand-idol activities” start replacing solid strategic thinking and planning, when it starts to become the norm rather than the exception…then I do worry for the future of our profession (OK so I have been worried for a while).

Brands are indeed big investments for companies, and they do indeed deserve longer-term strategic thinking… so let’s see Mr French if you feature on MindShare’s or OMD’s next media plans! Ahh but Advertisinghim.com seem to have thought of everything, you can buy the advertising space on their website, clearly no need for a media agency here !!!

Close Bookmark and Share This Page

Save to Browser Favorites / Bookmarks

Email This to a Friend

Copy HTML:

If you like this then please subscribe to the RSS Feed.

2009: 09/01
CATEGORY: Advertising/Media
Branding
Thoughts
Uncategorized
Write comment

Brand Paris (as the most romantic city in the world) is doing well!!!

In the spirit of it still being holiday for some, and Friday for others… I’m giving business a break, in favor of a story…

I love Paris, for more reasons than I could fit in this blog (but I’m obviously biased)! I had the pleasure of being home a few weeks ago, and was not only blessed with great company, but fab weather! Getting off at St Pancras it wasn’t just the rain and the lack of boulevards that made me want to turn 180 degrees and get straight back on L’Eurostar destination Paris, but a small round pink table and two chairs.

Let me explain!

It was a warm Tuesday evening; I was in the Canal Saint-Martin area on my way to have dinner. Walking by the canal I looked up and on one of the bridges I saw people dining.

Canale Sainte-Martin

I had no idea that the restaurants by the canal offered the opportunity to dine on the cute tiny bridges connecting the banks. Despite the fact that I was on my way to one of my favourite restaurants, despite the fact that I had not been there in ages and was really looking forward to it, I felt super envious of whoever was sitting there, eating al fresco, in the middle of what looked like a painting!

As I walked across the bridge I saw a couple sitting at a beautiful little pink table with two pink chairs. What a setting… the canal, the lights, the bridge…amazing! But most amazing of all is that the table did not belong to a restaurant…someone had, to surprise his/her partner I guess, organised a dinner on the bridge. And what a dinner, a three-course meal with wine, real beautiful china, candles…everything was perfect down to the smallest detail (no vacuum packed sandwiches or pack of Tayto in site).

Equally as amazing is that no-one stopped and stared (obviously this is the kind of city where this happens all the time ), or that no policeman turned up to inform them that they can’t drink in public, or that they constitute a fire hazard.

I kept smiling, reassured by the fact that romance is alive and well, and living in Paris (qu’elle surprise!)!!!

With citizens like that, brand Paris’ tile as the most romantic city in the world is in safe hands (and if you don’t believe me, ask Google, most search results will give you the same answer, Paris).

Romantic Places