Digital Hive

Twitter - I'm over it

Check out this great post on Three Minds - sums up what I've always felt about Twitter. Also includes a nifty graphic from David Armano that describes the tech adoption curve from the customer's perspective - there's a lot of wisdom here we all need to reflect on.

The Land of Luxury?

Okay fashionistas and luxury brand fanatics – pop quiz: What brand comes to mind when I say Hamptons Signature Satchel? Bleeker Duffel? Heritage Stripe Tote?

Did you guess Coach? You smarty pants – you are correct.

Where do you think that Hamptons bag was made? Think again.

I have recently begun an arduous program of using every gift card, gift certificate and store credit I’ve ever been issued.  Reason number one being many of them will be eaten by their issuers at a charge of $2.50 to $5.00 per month if not used. I fear some companies may go out of business altogether, so hey – I’m shopping.

This weekend I was only up for one mall store visit so I chose Coach as I had a $100 gift card to burn. (That one has been hanging around for a while because there is not much at Coach in the $100 price range.) Now I need another handbag like I need another arm, but one cannot let gift cards evaporate.

To spare myself the agony known as retail clerks, I hit the website and made my selection on line, carefully memorizing the name of the product.  “I would like the Hamptons Signature Tote Capacity Wristlet in black please” I practiced in the mirror.

Luck was on my side because as I entered the store I spied the exact item hanging on the front wall. I snatched it up and walked directly to the register. To wait in line. Ugh. The economy may be struggling, but not, apparently, in the luxury leather goods market.

A young woman with a palm pilot-like device approached asked if I’d found what I was looking for as she tapped some information into the device. I showed her my selection and proudly declared “I would like the Hamptons Signature Tote Capacity Wristlet in black please.” “Yes,” she sniffed, “I got that.”  I don’t think I received an ounce of credit for memorizing the name. I was informed that someone would be out with my bag shortly and directed to pay the young woman behind the register.

I paid up and then wandered the store for 5 minutes until someone in the back room wrapped the bag in tissue, applied a sticker and delivered it to me out front. I perused the featured bags ranging in price from $798 to $7000. Yikes, step away from the display table. Before I could do any damage fortune smiled and a young lady stepped from the back room and called my name. I grabbed my bag and ran.

When I got home I unwrapped my new bag and when I finished removing the Coach branded tissue from inside the bag I found an interesting surprise – a country of origin label. MADE IN CHINA. Are you kidding me?

For all of the counterfeit goods seizures in the news, Coach sent its patterns to China? I bought a $98 thingy and it wasn’t even made here? I dragged out a few bags from my luxury closet (okay, a basket in the regular closet) to see where they were made. Prada: made in Italy. Groom: made in Paris. Il Bisonte: made in Italy. Coach, what are you thinking?

Is a luxury brand still a luxury brand if the country of origin is better known for counterfeit luxury goods?

Operators are standing by and I’m dying to learn your opinions on this one.

The Rationale Behind our Irrational Ways

     As human beings, we like to think of ourselves as rational creatures, capable of overcoming our emotional impulses. Yet it turns out that we not only tend to act irrationally, but we do so in a predictable fashion.

    

     In the new book “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions,” Dan Ariely, a professor at MIT, offers an empirical approach to reveal the underlying logic to our illogic.  In a recent New Yorker article, he states, “our irrational behaviors are neither random nor senseless—they are systematic.  We all make the same types of mistakes over and over.”  He argues that we’re so attached to certain kinds of errors that we’re not capable of even recognizing them as errors.

    

     Ariely’s field, behavioral economics, has been around for about 25 years mostly as a result of the work done in the 70's by Israeli-American psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman.  After examining how people deal with uncertainty, they found that there were consistent biases to the responses and that these biases could be traced to mental shortcuts—what they deemed “heuristics.”  Some of these heuristics were fairly obvious, such as making inferences based on our own experiences (i.e.: people who’ve recently witnessed a traffic accident will overestimate the danger of dying in a car crash).  But others were more surprising or even silly.  For example:

• Tversky and Kahneman asked subjects to estimate what proportion of African nations were members of the UN.  By spinning a wheel of numbers in front of them, they found that they could influence the subjects’ responses: when a big number turned up, the estimates suddenly swelled.

• Ariely and a colleague asked students at MIT's Sloan School of Management to write the last two digits of their Social Security number at the top of a sheet of paper.  Students were then asked to record (on the same piece of paper) whether they were willing to pay that many dollars for a fancy bottle of wine, a not-so fancy bottle of wine, a book or a box of chocolates.  The students were also told to record the maximum amount they’d be willing to spend on these items.  At the end of this exercise, Ariely asked the students whether they thought their social security numbers influenced their bids at all.  The students of course dismissed the idea, but after Ariely tallied the results he found that students whose SS number ended with the lowest figures (00 to 19) were the lowest bidders.  For all of the items combined, they were willing to offer $67 on average. The students in the middle group—20 to 39—were somewhat more free-spending, offering $102 on average. The pattern continued up to the highest group—80 to 99—whose members were willing to spend an average of a $198, or three times as much as those in the lowest group, for the same items. And these are MBA candidates!

• In another study, subjects were willing to help out others—moving a couch, performing a tedious exercise on a computer—when they were offered a reasonable wage. However, when they were offered less money, they were less likely to make an effort. Yet when they were asked to help for free, they started trying again.

     Tversky’s and Kahneman’s initial discoveries have been confirmed and extended over the years in dozens of experiments and even awarded them the Nobel Prize in 1996.  This research even extends to democratic theory—demonstrating how voters decisions’ are influenced by factors such as how names are placed on a ballot—as well as Americans’ inability to save money.  Clearly this work had some disruptive implications for the field of economics—after all, how can you regard people as rational calculators if their decisions are influenced by random numbers?

    

     We can see this at work both in the online and offline marketing world.  For example, Amazon.com offers “free super saver shipping” if you increase your order (which often costs us more than we originally intended to spend—but we ration that we’re ‘saving’).  Ariely also gives the example of the board of prices at Starbucks, where it’s the other numbers on the board influencing your opinion on what the tall non-fat cappuccino is worth (and not the interplay of supply and demand as microeconomics would have us believe).

    

     We need to become more aware of these patterns and also learn to accept our irrationality  humanity.

Media driving big creative marketing ideas: it's about time!

Check out this AdAge story about a speech given by our own David Kenny at the American Association of Advertising Agencies' annual Media Conference and Trade Show.

"In a talk called 'Navigating the Blur,' Mr. Kenny described a world in which the web has created a massively fragmented media landscape, with smaller websites and other media outlets reaching niche groups of consumers. Advertisers may have to release many different versions of creative in order to entice smaller packs of would-be customers flocking to various media outlets -- each of them with a different reason for surfing in or with a different expectation for how ads ought to play out in a specific environment."

"It is essential that media agencies have more input into the creative brief."

Anyone who knows me knows I've been spouting this til I am blue in the face for a long time, because we know it works. Media is no longer about buying eyeballs to see a message cooked up in a vacuum. Media is about understanding how where when and why a brand can add value to a consumer. And about inspiring the team with those insights.

We routinely get great ideas from media. That's why we've added connection planning to account planning at Digitas. That's why our media group is involved right up front when brainstorming potential solutions for a client challenge. We have grown our business tremendously through applying smart media insight to developing big creative marketing ideas.

We have countless examples where a media insight or possibility has provided the "spark" for the team to develop a really breakthrough creative marketing idea. I can't talk about it in detail (DTAS folks are welcome to come visit me for additional texture) but for a recent pitch for an online media property, media was an absolutely key angle for getting to the right in-market program recommendations, which were (I'd argue) quite breakthrough and likely to be much more effective than conventional "push marketing" media approaches.

Start working this way, people - it's smart! it's fun! it works! and it's how the world is changing, so get out ahead of the curve. Don't just take it from me, our CEO also says "just do it."

Making sense of the fashion world

Are you as confused as I am about what fashion is all about? Leave it to the WSJ to plot it all on a 2x2 matrix. Check out the WSJ.com's interactive graphic (reg. req'd.) evaluating fashion week's recent looks (still shot above).

A simple way to tease an interesting story out of a category that's sometimes a challenge to make sense from.

A build for next tiime: integrate more of a POV - make one of the axes "must buy" vs. "must avoid" so readers can just print this thing out and take to store and know what to try on. Now that's marketing as a service!

I figured a fashion-oriented posting from Milan would make sense. For you fashionistas out there here are some "latest spring looks" from Milan's shop windows (click to enlarge).

Social networking gives your marketing extra punch

Check out this great article in WSJ.com (reg. req'd., download PDF of article below) about how Etsy is using social networking to put its business on steroids.

(You might remember the post I did about Etsy last November about how Etsy was leading the "buy hand crafted" movement for holiday)

As I am constantly saying, I think there's quite a robust future in the combination of 3 really crucial interactive consumer behaviors: shopping for and buying stuff (selling too, frankly); social networking; and e-commerce. We have brought a number of HoneyShed ideas (not all "porntastic," I must note) to clients because we believe in this combo.

Rob Kalin, the founder of Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Etsy (pictured above), says, "What it means for us is that we don't have to spend anywhere as much money on marketing because there are all of these avenues for people to spread the word and talk about what we do."

"I'm not interested in controlling [members'] conversations," Mr. Kalin says, "just [in] giving them a more personalized space to have them in."

A great story about how tapping into social networking can help build a business - I highly recommend this read.

Download wsj_esty_social_networking.pdf

Joining the conversation - it's finally time, people

I came across a really interesting AdWeek piece by Joseph Jaffe, Crayon's ringmaster (the visual is dueling Jaffes: real world and Second Life versions). The piece is called "Marketing's big bang theory - why so many campaigns that begin with a sizzle end with a fizzle."

These excerpts lay out the gist of his argument:

"Marketing today is like a spectacular fireworks display. Short-lived and breathtaking. Unforgettably forgettable. The Macy's July 4th fireworks display might as well be the Super Bowl. (Take the test: Can you name 10 brands that advertised in this year's big game?) All our efforts seem to be front-loaded into launching with a bang. In order to break through the prototypical clutter, we have to take over our prospects' lives, leaving no stone unturned, nowhere to to hide.

"Today, we all chase the elusive and marketing-weary consumer with the blind ambition of buzz or viral success. We spam bloggers with form e-mails, use shock tactics to get millions of pimple-faced teenagers to Digg, rate, refer or spoof us. And when all else fails, we resort to sex, babies, bunnies or puppies in order to entice the suspecting public to remember us for all the wrong reasons.

Social media - agencies aren't getting it

Check out the typically droll Greg Verdino's review of an AdWeek article (reg. req'd) which says clients think agencies "don't get" social networking.

Quoting Verdino quoting AdWeek (this is fun!):

"TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony polled more than 60 marketers in North America, France and the U.K. to gauge how they are faring navigating the world of social media. It asked them for feedback on their agencies' abilities to help. TNS found, in its words, 'Agencies don't get it.'

Social vs. profit - try both?

This post by Piers Fawkes really caught my attention (thanks to my old buddy Greg Verdino for the tip). Piers has an interesting theory about the future of business - that it will be much more about "social" and much less about profit, in fact it'll probably be 50/50 of each. He defines this new "50/50 corporation:"

To leverage the opportunities that digital connectivity has fueled a company should be a 50/50 Corporation. 50% about being social, 50% about making profit. By doing so, that organization should attract more profit than a company that follows a 100% Profit strategy. Being 50% social doesn’t have to be all about having a social network. Having a corporate social responsibility policy that your customers love should work too.

Volkswagen is still at it

I really enjoyed this post about recent DDB Paris' Volkswagen print from Got Ads. The ads celebrate the 60th anniversary of the beloved VW bus and have really terrific copy as well as visual style reminiscent of VW's late 60's US launch work.
I particularly enjoy how the 2 I'm showing here (click to view full size) relate the VW bus to all the changes the (predominantly Baby Boomer?) generation has experienced.

I realize agencies usually push clients to change up the campaign (and thus the brand) every couple of years or so, thus it's controversial to commend a brand for sticking to its creative guns for so long, but I really like how this style doesn't change (though the copy does stay up to date). And I think it works.

BTW I had forgotten how chock full of delightful creative Got Ads is, you should definitely bookmark it pronto.