Digital Hive

Millward Brown conference

I was invited to participate on a panel of industry leaders at Millward Brown's Marketing Forward conferece in Miami earlier this week. As always, it was energizing to connect with colleagues who are as passionate about insight and ideas as I am. It was also nice to be welcomed by people who are as geeky (if not more geeky) than I am about rigor.

A few highlights:

• Allen P. Adamson, managing director at Landor (and author of this cool blog) talked about his new book Brand Simple, and offered what I think is a pretty relevant definition of the often-misinterpreted word branding: it's 2 pieces, brand + ing,  with brand being the meaning part, and "ing" being the signalling part. I think this idea of branding is powerful because it separates what the brand means (its essence, etc.) from the efforts to bring the brand to the audience. Brands can do well (or be challenged) on either front (meaning or signalling), or perhaps both - but if you don't pick it apart, you might be attacking the wrong problem. I find it particularly helpful to think about these 2 factors when taking up a brand problem for the first time.
• Steve Hardwick, who's running Grey NY (he formerly led Strawberry Frog), reminded us that we're humans first, and consumers second (one of my personal mantras) - so always think about basic human stuff before getting all bogged down in the markteting gobbledygook. I'm not crazy about his term "tradigital" which describes the coming integration of traditional and digital (Steve admitted Stuart  Elliott didn't like it much either), but I was sympathetic to his point about the constant troll for talent that thrives on storytelling, thinking in ideas not ads. Particularly loved his definition of creativity: original thinking that adds value.
• Arianna Huffington, creator of the Huffington Post - what a firecracker, everything you've heard about her is true, and more. Really enjoyed hearing her perspective on the colliding worlds of old and new media. She thinks selecting from between the 2 is an impossibility - kind of like picking between Ginger and Maryann (for you Gilligan's Island fans in the audience). With characteristic wit, Huffington says why choose, it's the new millenium, it's time for a 3-way - because a "hybrid" media is coming soon. I particularly enjoyed her diagnosis of the mental "ailments" facing each medium: "mainstream" media has ADD - they flit from story to story never covering anything in great detail and giving a story up once a new shiny object appears (her question about what Elian Gonzalez is doing today - nobody knows! - made the point nicely). But new media has OCD - grabbing a story and not letting go, even if it's lost its relevance. Huffington sees a new hybrid emerging, which combines the best of old media (fairness, accuracy, fact checking) with the best of the new (community, speed, innovation). Let's hope she's right! 

With me on the industry leads panel were Julie Roehm (former Wal-Mart and Chrysler marketing whiz), Drew Ianni (chair of ad:tech), and Cleve Langton, DDD's global new biz guru (we were ably moderated by Millward Brown's charming global CEO Eileen Campbell).

When asked what I'm following in marketing with the greatest interest I covered 2 things (I was asked to focus on the media perspective):

• Measurement & accountability. At Digitas we talk a lot about "liquid media" - how today consumers constantly move between channels and devices, seeing mesages, having experiences, sharing their point of view with others. The trick is, how can a marketer accurately pinpoint the impact each channel, execution and interaction is having on a consumer whose journey and brand interactions are so fluid? Rapidly evolving technologies that provide addressability are clearly part of the puzzle. But in the meantime, how can the rigor of measurement keep pace with the increasingly "liquid" nature of media? This is true for all channels, but particularly interesting around WOM (which I consider a medium even thought it's usually not "paid") - it was very interesting to hear last week's news about IPG's alliance with Bzz Agent, who provides a fairly standardized approach to delivering and measuring WOM. The reason we care about measurement is, our clients are very large businesses that require scale - nice efforts are nice, but don't necessarily move the business forward. You need to be certain that a creative marketing idea if achieving the scale it needs.
• Search. We're also paying very close attention to search, specifically, how the industry can take search to the next level. Search is where virtually every online interaction begins, so it has a major impact on the way people relate to the web. We did some research with teens recently and they don't bother remembering the URLs of sites they visit, they just look it up on Google whenever they need it. We've seen interesting advances in search - think about what Google has done with local search - and obviously it will remain a major element in the media mix - but I'm hoping it will be able to provide additional value to both marketers and consumers - including branding and functionality. For example, we're starting to see efforts to measure the branding impact of search. I think consumers will appreciate a whole new level of functionality - providing branding experiences, but also the ability to sample and buy brands without having to visit product pages.

I couldn't resist giving a plug to HoneyShed as something I'm watching closely - it's a mesmerizing mix of entertainment, social networking and e-commerce that I think has the potential to revolutionize how people shop online (check it out!).

The panel was spirited and collegial, and the audience seemed to enjoy it.

Who needs the funk?

Maybe it's because I have a 4 year old son.
Maybe it's because I can never hear enough from Parliment.
Maybe this is just really, really funny.
But even after - how many years of this campaign? - MasterCard can still hit one out of the park.
Enjoy.

A helpful reality check

Thanks to the ever-insightful Jackie Huba for calling our attention to this great cartoon from Tom Fishburne, whose words are timeless and worth repeating to clients:

I have to remind myself sometimes that my brand is not the most important thing in a target consumer's life.  I think a lot of brand positioning statements are written as if the consumers are constantly thinking and obsessing about the brand.  When I hear the description, "brand loyalist", I envision a groupie with a logo tattooed on her forehead.

Obviously, even "brand loyalists" have complex lives completely separate from our brands.  As marketers, I think it's good to remember the actual role that we play in consumer's very human lives, and not overstep the significance of a brand of, say, "pickle relish".

Thanks for the insights (and fabulous cartoon) Tom! I frequently cite this mantra to clients and internal teams; usually to blank stares or even hurt expressions. I ask, "do you need a tissue?" Yes the agency believes in the client. Yes we use the product. Yes we love the brand. But our job is to create marketing that works, which has to start with reality. So please bear with us as we let the consumer's true feeling wash over you.

How should we be thinking about "microtrends"?

Check out this provocative post from Grant McCracken. He asks "does the death of monolithic trends mean that we live in a world consisting only of noisy, little, episodic ones?"

I believe this poses an interesting question for planners: how micro-trends should figure into our effort to understand the larger world and use this understanding to inspire big creative marketing ideas for clients.

Grant makes a point I thoroughly agree with - that just laundry listing micro-trends basically doesn't accomplish much. You have to dig beneath the trend to identify its root causes and implications to really be able to make it meaningful. And that's what planning is here for.

What does this mean for us? First off, exercise caution when using sources like Iconoculture which offers the valuable service of serving up micro-trends without having to go around the world collecting them yourself, but leaves it up to the end user to figure out what it means, and what to do with it all. I have always found Yankelovich's approach more practical - as well as statistically significant since it's based on survey research as well as qualitative observation. I particularly value Yankelovich's bubbling up of micro trends into meta themes which can be applied across a variety of problems.

This point probably applies to most things we do, not just trends. Think for a moment about scale - a micro trend impacting 1,000 consumers is interesting, and may well predict an enormous worldwide phenomenon. It is a valid data point and should not be overlooked. But our clients need scale now, so a micro-trend that's not yet "big" can't have much impact on our marketing today. However, it might bear watching for future consideration - and could provide an interesting new insight if analyzed properly.

Overall it's incredibly important to take a step back from the data or analysis or trend or whatever we're looking at to really think hard about what it means - which is why I am always encouraging insight practitioners to ask why why why until they are blue in the face.

One area where micro trends can be incredibly useful is in creative development - real creative inspiration comes from the tangible, granular, "human" dimension of a phenomenon or behavior, from seeing the expressions on people's faces when they're talking about their new hobby. We always need to be pushing the envelope on this front.

Honor System?

Radiohead Revolution?  Or Just Same Old?   

Initially, it appeared to be straight on story of overwhelming positive and massive buzz, as well as a potential death knell for the current record label distribution system.

Now, it might turn out to be a cautionary tale of how not to treat your most loyal customers and that the age of transparency can bite even those who seemed to be pushing the customer-in-control agenda.

Radiohead (an English band for those not familiar), recently announced that they would be releasing their latest album, In Rainbows, via their website and sans record label.  The biggest news was that the price point would be up to the consumer (aside from a small required transaction fee) - you could pay as little as £0 or as much as £100 as some reportedly paid. 

I gladly paid what I considered an amount substantial enough to represent more than Radiohead would likely have seen from a record label, but small enough to make me actually want to pay for music.  I was eager to see the results of this experiment and to see what others considered the right amount.  It appeared the initial impact was going to be big - Radiohead had at least two listings in the top 100 Google searches on the day of the release. 

All this goodwill very quickly vanished when I noticed blog posts and  even stories in mainstream media (MTV), reporting about the backlash and disappointment when the download turned out to perhaps not be the highest quality.  Ooops! I didn't read the fine print -- 160Kbs files.  Granted, this is not bad quality and it is debatable how much of a difference it makes practically, but the tone of the comments and the reported statements from the band and their manager made me feel duped.  Was this just a promotional ploy for when their CD comes out (under a label deal)? 

At the end of the day, I have an album of music I like and probably won't notice any quality issues -- and I paid what I wanted.  But I can't help lose the bad taste in my mouth about the lack of forthrightness on Radiohead's part. 

I hope they read the fine print in their next record label contract.

Your car will soon be watching over you

Nissan has recently introduced some pretty cool technology they’re touting as “Around View” that has been posted in some blogs as of late (check out this one). It’s kind of like having a set of four extra eyes that are synthesized into a bird’s-eye view of your vehicle so the driver can see their surroundings. Check out this video to see it in action.

Has parellel parking met its match? Or is this another distraction for drivers like mobile phones and in-vehicle video?

Interesting Times Ahead

Read this, posted by a fellow planner - very interesting times ahead!

A wake up call for our industry...

Welcome to the Velocity Age.

We are now living through a period of extraordinary technological and social change that is having an impact far greater than anything seen in the last 100 years on the world of advertising and marketing – and yet we barely notice it. We are like fish that are unable to ‘see’ the water that they swim in.

Ray Kurzweil – a computer enthusiast and futurologist – recently predicted that there will be 1000 times more technological change this century than the last – a prediction met with a healthy dose of scepticism at the time, but now recognised to be perhaps underestimated! This is being fuelled by the world’s information doubling every 18 months (commonly referred to as ‘Moore’s Law’) combined with the exponential growth of the internet spreading information around the globe at lightning speed.

All these changes are having a profound effect – not just on brands and their meanings – but potentially on life itself.

Humans may not win the race.

Computers are increasing in power, doubling their "intelligence" approximately every two years. Human intelligence is changing only very slowly. Personal computers are now at about the intelligence level of a fly. And that, at the predicted doubling rate, they should be equal to a human by about 2019.

So what will the future be like then? Well, once you have a PC on your desk that is as "intelligent" as you are...and they're doubling in power every two years...in two years it'll be TWICE as smart as you. In four years, FOUR times as smart. In six years, EIGHT TIMES as smart as you – the future may be less about what we do as a race – but what happens to us as a consequence of the technology we have created.

1) Your being observed: Web 3.0.
The ‘Semantic Web’ is the next big development that will replace 2.0. The semantic web is a vision of information that is understandable by computers, so that they can perform more of the tedious works involved in finding, sharing and combining information on the web.

Implication: Traditional advertising may not exist in the metaverse. Brands will no longer need to ‘target’ potential customers with conventional messaging – instead the information will be ‘delivered’ by intelligent agents that will match a products benefit to a specific personal need that can be met by only that brand at that time at that price and delivered in the most time and location specific way. Your computer will know all your preferences based on your behaviour, language, geographic location, daily browsing habits and perhaps social circumstances. Web 3.0 may totally reinvent how data is used in future.

2) Privacy.
There will be more information available about us as individuals. The big issue will be how much information about ourselves will be public and how much will private and personal.

Implication: Targeting may become even less precise rather than better due to privacy laws preventing companies having access to deep levels of data. Human rights groups may challenge laws around what is considered to be an invasion of personal liberty. The big question will be – who owns the data and who has access to it?

3) Natural Inflation.
People will find that their time online increasingly satisfies their need for information and companionship, access to goods and services and social relationships - but the awareness of the cost to the environment of a product or service will determine its success in the offline world.

Implication: Human beings will increasingly over-value the natural over the synthetic or mediated. Advertising and marketing communications will increasingly focus on the perceived emotional outcomes of using a brand expressed through the benefits to the natural world. 

There will be a rise in the use of ‘peak’ experiences as promotional elements – accentuating the power of the natural world linked to a brand’s promise.

4) Retail becomes theatre.
Everything becomes for sale online – the need to enter the physical world to buy what we want or need is increasingly lessened.

Implication: Purchasing cycles (Christmas, holidays etc) may create new value chain solutions to meet demand spikes. Those still on the High Street will need to become increasingly experiential to attract people:

Nike Town, Orange store in Amsterdam, the Samsung store in NYC etc. 

5) Brand Darwinism.
There will be an increase in the number of people in social networks rating products and services.

Implication: Only those that can survive the online scrutiny of millions of people rating and debating a product’s inherent utility will survive. Price points will be determined by benefits rather than features. Advertising may become redundant for certain categories but there will be an increase in the number of niche and specialist categories leading to much greater product diversity and complexity.

6) Superficial Knowledge.
Search engines will give us access to the answer to every question we could wish to ask.

Implication: We will know the answer to lots of questions based on scientific explanation - but bigger questions such as the nature of being will remain subjective. We will also have limited understanding of how things work – like using a calculator to do long division without learning how to do it. Brands will become increasingly concerned with educating rather than entertaining.

7) Rise in the fantastical:
New tools for creative self expression will continue to emerge allowing for works that are limited only by imagination.

Implication: Brands that celebrate the individual nature of human beings will proliferate. We will value the wilder leaps of imagination over the conventional and conservative. The frivolous and ridiculous will hold more value than the rational as people use the metaverse for escapism from the ordeals of everyday life

8) The Living Dead:
Your avatar may still exist long after you are dead.