Yesterday I had the pleasure of spending the day listening to different bands by the lake in Ouchy, Switzerland. One of the performers was a talented guitarist and singer from Ireland who put on a great show.
There was one problem though, the Irishman kept telling stories to his audience between the songs – some of them interesting, some of them funny, and some of them sad, but at no point did the audience react.
It reminded me of many brands in their attempt to communicate with their audience. It’s easy to draw a parallel between a brand’s mistakes in communicating, and our artists attempt to entertain his audience
So what can brands learn from a talking Irishman?
The audience is not yours. Assuming your audience is, well yours and that they are dying to hear what you have to say is a common mistake. Like the customers of most brands, people attending the concert were not there specifically to see the Irishman. They were there to have a nice time and enjoy a day of music. What does that mean? It means that the stories he was telling were of no relevance to the audience, they had never heard of the people he were referring to, or the musicians he was honouring. As a brand, it is rare people turn up for you, recognising that should fundamentally change how, and what you choose to communicate, or do for that matter.
Different context requires different communication. The Irishman probably has a very strong following in some parts of the world, like many brands do, people that come to a concert to see him specifically. Among your fans (loyal customers) you can tell your tails all day long – to them it’s music to their ears (no pun intended). But outside of that environment you have to adapt, read the situation correctly. A discussion forum, for example, is not your environment, and can’t be treated in the same way as your website or your packaging (although I would argue the latter aren’t your environments either).
Your language is not their language. The Irishman failed to notice that hardly anyone in the audience spoke English. I don’t know about you but I don’t speak ‘brand’, yet brands keep speaking their language to me, which I cover in some detail this post about the language used by brands in advertising. Here is an example I site in the blog from a PC World ad voice over, ‘Plus they had 200 pounds of this 47 inch LG 200 hertz 10 ETP TV and it was only 699 pounds’. What? I’m sure that no one but product managers speaks that language!
Listen to feedback. One would think that after a few stories, and a silent audience, our Irishman would understand the potential language barrier and change tactics, but no. The penny didn’t even drop when he kept asking people in the audience questions, and no one answered. How many times have you seen brands keep talking to an audience even when you don’t react, or even listen…how many times have you seen brands asking audiences to do something, and nothing happens, how many times have you seen brands commission consumer research to subsequently do absolutely nothing with the consumer feedback?!
Leave the ego at home. I suspect the Irishman not changing his behaviour had a lot to do with the fact that he was talking mostly to please himself – or his ego. And I’m sure all of us have met one…or two… or… Marketing Directors producing communications (especially those in the shape of 30 seconds) that have one main purpose, make the Marketing Director feel good about himself.
I could go on but I think you get the point!
But on a positive note, at least the Irishman had one thing going for him that many brands don’t – a hell of a product (voice) and a hell of a setting to sell it in (below view). Beats Tesco, no?
No one would disagree that Apple is a company that get a lot of things right.
In 2011 over half of their revenue will come from products that did not exist four years ago. We can safely say that ticks the innovation box.
Any company about whom people tweet the following ‘Glad I helped Steve Jobs reach sales targets this month. Feeling quite proud’ has definitely ticked ‘the army of fanatics supporting them’ box!
An organisation that successfully launches a new product (iPad) and an upgrade to a core product (iPhone 4) within months of each other gets a tick next to the commercial box.
And as for differentiation, there are more ticks than I can mention here!
So why was I feeling uneasy as I left the Mac store on Regent Street this Saturday? My experience there raised some key questions to which I don’t have an answer, but that does make me wonder if there is a crack starting to show in that shiny little Mac Apple?!
Let me tell you what I mean.
Saturday 2 AM my computer dies and at 9 AM I’m at the Mac store on Regent Street only to be told that the next appointment in the Genius bar for technical support is on Friday at 18.00.
One week to get technical support! ‘This is wrong on so many levels, and it also shows some structural problems. Below are my top line observations.
If you’re a life style brand, promoting a way for people to live their lives, then you can’t at the same time turn around and say that it’s OK to be without you for one week.
This is even more the case if your product provides some form of utility. I run this fluid world with my business partner and i can safely tell you none of our clients would be happy with me being out of action for a week.
Customer service that offers technical support one week later is just not good enough for a premium priced product – it’s not actually good enough for any priced product in this category!
Not one member of staff I spoke to disagreed with me, a one week wait is just unreasonable. If your own staff can’t support your customer service level, then as an organisation you do have a problem!
It’s clear when you’re in the store that Apple is an organisation that prioritises sales and marketing. The look and feel of the store as you know is great, there are more sales people walking around than I have ever seen anywhere else, and they are happy letting people be on facebook all day long because ‘we’re nurturing future customers’. The problem is that ONLY a handful of people working in the Genius bar, and a sales force that can’t handle even basic trouble shooting, does nothing to nurture your present customers with a pressing problem!
And finally, when your staff speaks less than gloriously about you as an organisation to customers, in this case I had to listen to comments like ‘we’re becoming an IBM’, then you really should sit up and listen! Not to mention that the staff also seems totally unaware of the risk taken when speaking so honestly to a stranger (I mean really have they never heard of journalists, bloggers, facebook fans twitterers?!)
I did end up getting help though. One of the young men I spoke to squeezed me in. I had to wait three hours for it all to be sorted out, but it did get sorted (these chairs are really not that comfortable by the way)!
The issue is that the reason my trip to the Apple store was a success had nothing to do with Apple as an organisation, and everything to do with one person breaking a rule. Not a sustainable solution to what I think could be a major problem – a focus on product development and launches on the possible expense of customer service and staff motivation.
I propose Steve Jobs takes a trip down to one of his Mac stores, accompanied by a broken computer and a pressing dead line. I think it would do him some good, but then I suspect they would make an even bigger exception for him than for me
This is a continuation of my most recent blog ‘A bad piece of meat will always be a bad piece of meat!’ where I discussed how choosing suppliers based on image, price, or size can often lead to less than satisfactory results… In my case a very bad piece of meat from Tesco’s.
You could argue that if I could not see how bad the meat was through the packaging, then how could Tesco’s have seen it? You could then also argue that it’s therefore not their fault!
Wrong! Why? Because I don’t care who actually packaged the meet, I don’t care if Tesco’s was conned by their supplier, I just care about who sold me the product, because it’s with that organisation I have a relationship, and it’s that organisation I’m looking to trust!
Whoever is responsible for ‘the last mile’ – lets call it the royal mile (the bit just before the product or service touches me), whoever’s brand is on the packaging is the ONLY company I will blame when something goes wrong!
So when I buy a pair of Nike shoes I expect them to have been manufactured somewhere where working conditions are good, and wages are descent. I don’t care that Nike sells millions of shoes and pieces of clothing each year, I don’t care that Nike does not produce any of these products themselves, I don’t care that they have contracts with manufacturing facilities located throughout the world, and I don’t care that these contractors subcontract to companies hiring nearly 800,000 people working in factories throughout Asia.
When Unilever buys palm-oil from the Indonesian company Duta Palma who has a practice of clearing protected rainforest to make way for plantations – I don’t care who ultimately did what, and I therefore end up blaming Unilever, not Duta Palma.
All I care about is that I get the quality I pay for. All I care about is that my shoe supplier, and the company responsible for my beauty care, in their quest to get me the quality I pay for behave in the right way! All I care about is that the brands I have a relationship with, and I trust, do the right thing – because when they act, they also act on my behalf, they act on the behalf of all their customers – so what they do is not just their decision, what they do does not just affect their brand, it affects all our personal brands!
In this collaborative world we have to accept that our suppliers are our responsibility. In this collaborative world we have to make sure the right systems are in place to ensure customers buy what they believe they buy. In this collaborative world we have to make sure that not only we, but our suppliers do the right thing!
Hard? I’m sure it is, but think of all the times you have bought products without any quality problems. Think of all the multinationals that have never been caught out like Unilever and Nike – we can reasonable assume that many of them have not been caught because they have done nothing wrong.
So although it’s hard to control your entire value chain – it’s clearly not impossible!
Oh yeah, and doing the less of two evils is just well, not good enough!
If you work in an agency, or for a brand, chances are that you are trying to get your head around digital. Be it how to use it, integrate it, build brands with it, avoid the threats caused by it… or how to make money from it.
To many digital is the hope of a threatened industry.
To us in this fluid world there’s something wrong with this. To us in this fluid world it seems like the industry is missing a vital point.
Let me explain.
The reason we have major media and creative agencies like Ogilvy, Saatchi, MindShare and OMD is because when commercial TV launched, these agencies figured out how to make money from TV advertising.
The key word is FIGURED OUT not TV advertising. Trust me when I say monetizing TV through advertising was far from an easy task.
These agencies realised that they lived in a time where building name recognition and capturing audience attention was essential to the bottom line. To do this well they invented the focus group, the consumer survey, the direct-mail campaign, I could go on. Why? Because they understood that marketing decisions should be based on research and a solid understanding of the target audience.
Their focus was not on TV as a channel…but on the type of people in front of the TV, the context in which they sat there, the kind of lives they lived, and what made them tick.
By understanding people in this environment, and developing TV advertising, these agencies took one giant step into the future, a step that ensured their economic survival for decades (and a lot of Champaign).
So here we are today with a new challenge, and a new opportunity, in different economic times…desperate to take yet another giant step into the future, a step that we hope will ensure our economic survival for decades to come.
There are a few problems with this.
Digital is broader and more complex than TV, it’s not a channel it’s a lifestyle.
The speed of change and technology guarantees only one thing, and that is that change is continuous.
The conditions we live in today are completely different from what they were a few decades ago when TV advertising was born.
Yet, few seem to be taking the time to FIGURE it out – many however are talking the Mad Men learnings and principles and repurposing them. By doing this they are making the mistake of replacing one channel with another… expecting the same result.
What this industry needs is a new breed of mad men (and I mean mad in its true sense). It needs people mad enough to take the time to figure this out, in the context of today, the tools which we have to outer disposal and the reality in which we, and the people we want to get the attention from, live in.
And unlike the original Mad Men we will not be benefiting from one giant step into the future. The competitive advantage will not come from ‘figuring out how to monetize digital’. The competitive advantage will come from understanding that there will probably never be a giant step into the future…but rather a series of small continuous steps…forever and ever and ever.
By that rational, our job as marketers is to build fluidity into the way we think, do research, produce products and services, communicate, interact and manage our organisation. Our job is to learn, to prepare for change and to be ready for the next big thing.
This is why Jonathan MacDonald and I set up this fluid world. Our goal and mission is to help organisations achieve the necessary flexibility to get their head around, not just digital, but anything else on which the survival of their organisation depends on.
djojsIf you work in an agency, or for a brand, chances are that you are trying to get your head around digital. Be it how to use it, integrate it, build brands with it, avoid the threats caused by it… or how to make money from it.
To many digital is the hope of a threatened industry.
To us in this fluid world there’s something wrong with this. To us in this fluid world it seems like the industry is missing a vital point.
Let me explain.
The reason we have major media and creative agencies like Ogilvy, Saatchi, MindShare and OMD is because when commercial TV launched, these agencies figured out how to make money from TV advertising.
The key word is FIGURED OUT not TV advertising. Trust me when I say monetizing TV through advertising was far from an easy task.
These agencies realised that they lived in a time where building name recognition and capturing audience attention was essential to the bottom line. To do this well they invented the focus group, the consumer survey, the direct-mail campaign, I could go on. Why? Because they understood that marketing decisions should be based on research and a solid understanding of the target audience.
Their focus was not on TV as a channel…but on the type of people in front of the TV, the context in which they sat there, the kind of lives they lived, and what made them tick.
By understanding people in this environment, and developing TV advertising, these agencies took one giant step into the future, a step that ensured their economic survival for decades (and a lot of Champaign).
So here we are today with a new challenge, and a new opportunity, in different economic times…desperate to take yet another giant step into the future, a step that we hope will ensure our economic survival for decades to come.
There are a few problems with this.
Digital is broader and more complex than TV, it’s not a channel it’s a lifestyle.
The speed of change and technology guarantees only one thing, and that is that change is continuous.
The conditions we live in today are completely different from what they were a few decades ago when TV advertising was born.
Yet, few seem to be taking the time to FIGURE it out – many however are talking the Mad Men learnings and principles and repurposing them. By doing this they are making the mistake of replacing one channel with another… expecting the same result.
What this industry needs is a new breed of mad men (and I mean mad in its true sense). It needs people mad enough to take the time to figure this out, in the context of today, the tools which we have to outer disposal and the reality in which we, and the people we want to get the attention from, live in.
And unlike the original Mad Men we will not be benefiting from one giant step into the future. The competitive advantage will not come from ‘figuring out how to monetize digital’. The competitive advantage will come from understanding that there will probably never be a giant step into the future…but rather a series of small continuous steps…forever and ever and ever.
By that rational, our job as marketers is to build fluidity into the way we think, do research, produce products and services, communicate, interact and manage our organisation. Our job is to learn, to prepare for change and to be ready for the next big thing.
This is why Jonathan MacDonald and I set up this fluid world. Our goal and mission is to help organisations achieve the necessary flexibility to get their head around, not just digital, but anything else on which the survival of their organisation depends on.
If you work in an agency, or for a brand, chances are that you are trying to get your head around digital. Be it how to use it, integrate it, build brands with it, avoid the threats caused by it… or how to make money from it.
To many digital is the hope of a threatened industry.
To us in this fluid world there’s something wrong with this. To us in this fluid world it seems like the industry is missing a vital point.
Let me explain.
The reason we have major media and creative agencies like Ogilvy, Saatchi, MindShare and OMD is because when commercial TV launched, these agencies figured out how to make money from TV advertising.
The key word is FIGURED OUT not TV advertising. Trust me when I say monetizing TV through advertising was far from an easy task.
These agencies realised that they lived in a time where building name recognition and capturing audience attention was essential to the bottom line. To do this well they invented the focus group, the consumer survey, the direct-mail campaign, I could go on. Why? Because they understood that marketing decisions should be based on research and a solid understanding of the target audience.
Their focus was not on TV as a channel…but on the type of people in front of the TV, the context in which they sat there, the kind of lives they lived, and what made them tick.
By understanding people in this environment, and designing TV advertising around it, these agencies took one giant step into the future, a step that ensured their economic survival for decades (and a lot of Champagne).
So here we are today with a new challenge, and a new opportunity, in different economic times…and desperate to, via digital, take another giant step into the future, a step that we hope will ensure our economic survival for decades to come.
There are a few problems with this.
Digital is broader and more complex than TV, it’s not a channel it’s a lifestyle.
The speed of change and technology guarantees only one thing, and that is that change is continuous.
The world we live in today is completely different from what it was a few decades ago when TV advertising was born.
Yet few seem to be taking the time to FIGURE it out – many however are talking the Mad Men learnings and principles and repurposing them. By doing this they are making the mistake of simply replacing one channel with another… expecting the same result.
What this industry needs is a new breed of mad men (and I mean mad in its true sense because it wont be easy). It needs people mad enough to take the time to figure this out, in the context of today, the tools which we have to our disposal, and the reality in which we, and the people we want to get the attention from, live in.
And unlike the original Mad Men we will not be benefiting from one giant step into the future. The competitive advantage will not come from ‘figuring out how to monetize digital’. The competitive advantage will come from understanding that there will probably never be a giant step into the future…but rather a series of small continuous steps…forever and ever and ever.
By that rational, our job as marketers is not to ‘figure out digital’, but to figure things out, continuously…How? By building fluidity into the way we think, do research, produce products and services, communicate, interact and manage our organisation. Our job is to learn, to prepare for change and to be ready for the next big thing (or to create it).
This is why Jonathan MacDonald and I set up this fluid world. Our goal and mission is to help organisations achieve the necessary fluidity to get their head around, not just digital, but anything else on which their survival depends on.
Actually nothing mad about that…if I can say so myself.
It’s Friday so lets chat about something relaxing, let’s talk about percy pigs and brand extension.
When I moved to London from Paris, (which for a croissant, seine, boulevard lover like myself was a hard thing to do) I discovered one of the great pleasures of life, the little yet overwhelmingly brilliant percy pig!
I can’t think of any situation where having one doesn’t make sense, be it to celebrate, drown your sorrows, fill a little gap in the stomach, or just because you can – percy pigs never let you down!
So you can imagine my joy when a friend turned up Wednesday night with, not only a pack of percy pigs, but also some percy organic biscuits! I love tasting something new, and in this instance I couldn’t wait to double my percy happiness!
After chewing on what felt like a hard shortbread, I had to accept a harsh reality, if it doesn’t oink like a percy pig, or squeal like a percy pig, then it just isn’t a percy pig!!! – and these biscuits had definitely nothing to do with percy pigs.
I’m all for brand extension. If I produced percy pigs I would be tempted to spread some of that percy magic across a ton of new products!!!
But I wouldn’t. Why? Because I have not forgotten my abc’s of brand extension:
1) Brand extensions that does not create positive synergy for the parent product should not be pursued – I can’t imagine these hard little biscuits will bring a smile to anyone’s face, nor any value to the percy pig family (unlike the brilliant product extension percy pig and pals).
2) Positive feelings towards the original product will not automatically transfer to the new one – if I didn’t believe that to be true I would have tried to convince my business partner to call our company this percy world rather than this fluid world.
3) Brand extensions must be a logical fit with consumers’ expectations. I can stretch from candy to biscuits, but not from super soft and filled with personality to hard and boring.
4) It works both ways, brand extensions that creates confusion or a negative image for the parent should therefore not be undertaken – if you’re sitting on something brilliant, don’t break it (in this instance I was genuinely worried about breaking my teeth).
As I went to bed that evening I wondered if my biscuit experience would have a negative effect on my love for percy pigs…
Apparently not, as I ran out last night to meet a friend I found myself making a de-tour to M&S at Bond Street station for some you know what (you should I’ve only mentioned it 14 times in this post).
Which means I think I have to adjust rule 4 by adding ‘unless you’re lucky enough to have a product that so totally rocks it’s bullet proof to brand extension mistakes!’.
I wonder how many brand managers are out there sitting on a product that would pass the percy test, in my experience not many!
(Do you think I‘ve mentioned percy pigs enough times in this blog for them to send me a massive box? )
Have a great weekend!
P.S this one is for you Ludden for being brilliant, and for sharing my love of pigs (and crumpets of course, vive l’Angleterre!!!).
Last night walking around San Francisco with my friends Martha and Mike I saw something that reminded me of a debate we had in economics class, it was about companies and how much tax they should pay.
The most common point of view was that if companies created opportunities for employment, and products for people to use and benefit from…they should be given a break and not be burdened with having to pay too much tax. However, a small part of the class had an interesting counter argument. Companies don’t own the part of the earth they build their HQ’s on, they don’t own the air their employees breathe, and they don’t own the free natural resources they use to function, hence they owe something back, not only to society, to the people that live in it, but also to the earth.
It seems like Toyota has taken this argument to heart in their “Harmony Between Man, Nature, and Machine” campaign”. Thanks to the car maker and their agency Saatchi & Saatchi LA you can see “Solar Flowers” reaching up to 18 feet high in San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Gardens.
According to Fast Company the oversized flower sculptures are partially powered by solar panels on the back of their petals and the base of their stems. Each of the five Solar Flowers provides seating for up to 10 people, access to free Wi-Fi service and power to charge cell phones and laptops. So you see, they’re not only good for reviving spirits, they’re good for reviving computers and cell phones too, in addition of course to allowing you to surf, which is very helpful indeed!!!
It’s also nice to see that the campaign follows through on-line where a cute (ok a little annoying at times) site has been created to promote the car. Although it does not mention the lovely “Solar Flowers” touring the US, it does make it clear how Toyota, through innovation and technology, brings man, nature and the car together.
As for giving back to society, to people and to the earth…
Does this man not look delighted recharging his laptop and surfing for free?
And as for nature I’m sure it was relieved that it had one less computer to power yesterday evening!
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’
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 !!!
Re-branding, why not I say! As long as it does not take your eye (and resources) off the important ball, which is what your organisation is about, what it is supposed to do, the effect it is suppose to have, and the value it is supposed to bring (and of course a brand can be a FAB way of communicating all this!)!
The Department for International Development (DfID) is due to release a whitepaper today where they are to unveil a re-branding plan aimed at raising the profile of the ministry. Their operations in the developing world will from now on be known as “UKAid” (I do want to add that the white paper is also to cover a wide issues related to aid).
The article clearly describes what this re-branding exercise is about – ensuring that aid coming from the UK is recognised as such.
Ok so I can live with the human and political drivers, and the search for recognition, that would lead to such a decision – if it ultimately benefits people in need. I can also accept resources being dedicated to a name change, as long as it helps raising the awareness among the British of the needs and activities taking place in the developing world, in the hope of it inspiring additional help and contributions from the British people (note how I did not say raising the worlds awareness of the UK’s contributions to the developing world).
What I would find impossible to accept is if the DfID’s attention and resources are not primarily allocated to what it says it does on the tin, International Development! This means there job is not to promote the United Kingdom’s generosity, but to ensure right aid, gets to the right people, at the right time (I’m sure most people do focus on this).
It’s because of this I sincerely hope Matt Waldman, an independent aid consultant is wrong when he says, ”Clear Substantive changes are required, but a name change is not one of them”.
I don’t know the ins and outs of the DfiD (and I am sure they do incredible work) but if change is needed, change is what they should focus on, and maybe promoting the UK name could have waited a little….
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