Digital Hive

iLove my iPhone Experience

Yes friends, I did what every tech obsessed adult wanted to do yesterday - I waited in line to get an iPhone. Being a lazy kind of person desiring an iPhone, I didn't arrive at the Burlington Mall until 4:15pm - less than two hours before they went on sale. As any devout Apple watcher can tell you, the Apple Stores all closed at 2pm to prepare for the big unveiling and mad rush at 6pm.

#99 in Line

The wait in line was amusing. I haven't waited in line to purchase anything since 1982, when I camped overnight in a parking lot to get tickets to see Cheap Trick at the Rainbow in Denver. The Burlington Mall line was a superior experience in that I didn't wake up covered in dew, and there were public restrooms available without the purchase of a Grand Slam Breakfast. The people in line were quite upbeat - it was easy to imagine them in the line for Santa Claus. The kids at the front of the line had been there since the mall opened, and were equipped for an 8 hour wait - that is to say they had nice chairs, food and beverages, books, iPods, laptops - and they took turns running errands for each other. The majority of people did not bring chairs. I brought my Zuca bag - a Christmas present from my husband which I thought an odd choice at first, until I learned all the ways it could make my life easier, prime among the being a place to sit when waiting at the train, or for an Apple iPhone. Ozzy Simoes, the manager of the Quizno's Subs location in the mall had the best live marketing effort I've seen in ages. He brought a tray of samples, talked to every single person in line, and gave out business cards with a handwritten coupon on the back. Smart! Another gentlemen worked the line offering his tech consulting business card. He was nice, but hey - free samples will always get you better press. The folks in line were happy to chat about why they wanted the iPhone ("It does everything!" and "I think I got sucked in by the advertising because I NEED one." were typical responses.) My friend Peter sent me text messages of encouragement/mocking - so the wait went very quickly (also I had a book, an iPod, snacks and water...)

Judging for the APG Jay Chiat awards - a prayer for planners everywhere

I spent an interesting few hours judging APG award entries today at Modernista! (thanks to Gareth Kay for hosting and Scott Karambis - heady with excitement from his trade rag-covered leap from the safety of IPG's Mullen to the thrill of independent Mechanica - for inviting me to help out). While I signed an NDA which prohibits me from saying anything specific about any one entry, client or agency, I'd like to offer a few observations and words of wisdom to all the award entrants as well as the planning population at large. These are my own thoughts - but I wasn't the only judge in the room thinking this way, let me assure you. And I don't think I'm alone in the industry (Piers Fawkes made a great comment comment about a post I did last week - pointing out that everyone hates the advertising industry - basically because we're always assaulting them with crap). My prayer is that our craft has a bright future (please follow the suggestions below to realize this vision!), but today's entries made me question this. Weigh in with a comment if you have a POV.

• Where is the craft? First off, there was a surprising lack of account planning craft skills in many of the entries. And these were entries from credible agencies with well established planning capabilities. This is a craft, people. With proven techniques, discipline and process. Not to mention a whole slew of new insight generation techniques (e.g., Communispace) being brought to market every day, none of which I saw referenced. Listening to the consumer remains the strongest driver of actionable, inspiring customer insight for great creative. This is the core of our craft. The entries that impressed us included significant "listening" grunt work - not the sexy "big idea" work they teach you in account planning school you'll be working on - which paid great dividends when it came to important things like copy choice and channel recommendations. If you want a successful planning career, learn every way of listening you can, and continue to evolve your listening toolkit as the world evolves.

• It's not just the platform idea, it's how the big idea serves executional ideas which constitute the campaign So many entries covered off on the so-called "big idea" but neglected to explain how (if?) the big idea informed, shaped and inspired the individual campaign details through which consumers actually experience the idea. Campaigns live and die through execution, and planning at its best has a tremendous influence over how individual programs and pieces bring the idea to a given segment, channel or marketing task. Knowing how to apply your planning skills to the nuts and bolts of marketing programs (and explaining this in your entry) is a smart idea.

• It's time for a return to rigor It's not enough to be targeting "all women," even if you're marketing a mass product. How will the launch pulse through the mass population - are there early adopters? likely brand evangelists? It's important to think of a target audience in more granular terms that are actionable as well as inspiring, as well to apply some old fashioned rigor to thinking about what the communication goal is, along with how we use channels to accomplish the goal. A strong dose of the thinking and process traditionally resident in media can help a lot with this. Planners need to be able to take a step back from the lofty (and sometimes unproductive, irrelevant) big idea "stuff" to think about the mechanics of the marketing problem they are solving, so that planning dovetails with the marketing challenge the client has asked us to solve. This brings credibility to planning, while making sure its contributions are relevant. Understand business and think how planning fits into it (both the agency's business and the client's business).

• Hello, INTERACTIVE So many entries included no interactive applications (even a cursory a banner ad pull-down of the brand TV). Virtually no entry utilized interactive's potential to enable or extend a big idea, much less inspire it. No entry I can recall utilized online "listening" techniques. Dissappointing and sorely out of touch with reality. People, interactive isn't in the back of the bus any more, it's DRIVING the bus. Learn to use it to inspire and execute big ideas. Or find yourself unmarketable. Planners absolutely must learn the ropes with interactive and make it the centerpiece of their craft.

• Don't try to back into a planning rationale for a great creative idea if the story didn't happen that way It's apparent within a few moments of reading a submission whether or not there is a real connection between the (sometimes alleged) planning contribution and the creative output. If your agency came up with a great campaign, mazeltov for you, since that's what we're all solving for. But if the planning wasn't key to this output, please don't submit an entry claiming it was. This doesn't mean you shouldn't be imaginative about HOW planning helped. There are many ways planning can help creative with executional nuances once the big idea is nailed down. These contributions are valuable and legitimate.

• Act like you are applying for an award for excellence in communications Communicate clearly. Make sure your argument is well articulated. Excise industry jargon and marketing-speak from your entry (here's a good rule of thumb: if you're looking at a word or phrase and wondering if it's marketing-speak, it probably is). Remove all spelling errors. Planners must be exceptional communicators. Period.

The wrong way to use real women in advertising

OK, so I admit I check OhNoTheyDidn't for the latest celebrity gaffes. For once, they're covering advertising, commenting on a new campaign in Brazil (also featured in PopBytes here and AdBlog here).

Quoting ONTD, "The ads, for Itambé Fit Light Yogurt, feature classic scenes from Basic Instinct, The Seven-Year Itch and American Beauty with plus-sized models in place of Sharon Stone, Marilyn Monroe and Mena Suvari. The tag line? 'Forget about it. Men's preference will never change. Fit Light Yogurt.' "

NewsVine has some interesting perspective as well.

Maybe this approach flies in Brazil - I have no idea. I don't think it would fly here, or elsewhere in the world, particularly in the wake of Dove's succcessful global campaign celebrating beauty in all its sizes and shapes.

I found this kind of disturbing. Thoughts?

Great Active Branding examples

Here are several examples of letting the consumer sample or experience a brand in an interesting way, in his/her "natural environment" rather than via traditional media.

I am a huge fan of intercepting people with a brand's benefit or expereience where they are, instead of assuming they'll give you the time to be taken off task. Brilliant use of a bus tailpipe as creative device.

I particularly love it when creatives align the qualities of a "media property" (if a crosswalk can be called media) to convey a brand message/experience.

I also love it when a media property's inherent quality (billboard = bigger than life) is harnessed to convey a key brand message (in this case, incredible bubble size).

If you have other examples you love, please post them! Or, email them to me and I will post 'em for you (if you're not a Digital Hive author).

What's a retail CMO to do?

An interesting article in AdAge(registration required) bemoans the fate of today's CMOs. (The latest CMO casualty, Macy's Anne McDonald is pictured).

The challenge is the same as it's been for the past several years - building a brand takes time, but shareholders want results now. An age-old conflict.

I am left wondering if this conflict can ever be resolved.

Here are a few potential outcomes - please feel free to weigh in with your opinion.

1. Retail giants like Macy's commit the life-threatening error of concluding that brands have stopped mattering (perhaps the driver behind McDonald's dismissal), and start making all marketing price/item promotion that drives short term sales gains (but doesn't impact long term brand preference). Retail is thus completely commoditized again, benefitting lower priced competitors like Target, but leaving Macy's and brethren without ground to own. (BTW, I can't wait for the Target to open in downtown Boston across the street from Macy's, that ought to be fun).

2. Retailers finally recognize that the CMO role is really just about driving sales - generating demand - and develop a rigorous way of identifying how much branding will help achieve this goal, thus putting the brand topic into its place once and for all (as a subset or enabler of demand generation). The brand role reports up into the CMO role, instead of being a conflicted part of the CMO role.

3. Retail marketers finally figure out how to sell in a branded way, by making marketing less about the message (in this case, the price/item message) and more about the experience. Giving the customer value beyond just a percentage off - for example, helping them make the right product selections, notifying them when something they want is on sale, instead of expecting customers to follow the daily newspaper ads. Making the marketing about action (we call this "verbs"), not messaging. Striking the right relationship with the customer (we call this "voice"), so the brand isn't an impersonal auctioneer of distressed goods, it's a trusted girlfriend passing along the secret of the quarter's best sale, or a generous in the know friend who wants you to get in on the savings.