“When you see humans interacting with other people, or with animals, there is very little feedback. It’s too infrequent and when it happens it is bad… it’s nasty…. especially in the work place… especially from boss to employee.
It’s as if there is some schedenfreude there. As if we actually take delight in people getting things wrong, so that we can then moan and groan and bitch at them.
This I would say is the biggest human foible that we have: we take the good for granted and we moan and groan at the bad”.
“Is it just me, or does it feel like almost every ad or piece of branded content you see these days is a brand patting itself on the back for having helped some unwitting participant enjoy a richer, better, more thrilling life experience?
Nowadays, when brands aren’t using integrated comms campaigns to make us over, revamp our houses, or pimp-up our cars, they are pulling Derren Brown-style stunts on us that will make our lives more momentarily fun, or gift us our dream job. It takes me back to a simpler time, when all brands did was tell us how great they were and what their products did. To find out if their claims were true, we had to trial the product; but the memory of those quainter ads is getting fainter and fainter.
Now that my 7-year-old can work pretty much every product in the house, including the latest apps and social technologies, then maybe brands have done all the explaining and promoting possible, and now must use interactive marketing campaigns to actively enter into and improve our lives. (It is certainly a lot more fun to watch videos of Dell’s “Piano Stairs…Enjoy the piano tunes as you climb up the stairs” than it is hear about their super-cheap super-reliable laptops).
What this high-profile form of participatory advertising has led to, is the necessity for real people’s responses to generate part of the creative end-result itself. What I mean is that the brand advertisement is not complete until people actually interact with it and show their surprise and gratitude.
Economist Umair Haque says brands must now expect that people will not ask is this product better than competitor’s offerings, or the last version; but instead: did it make me fitter, or wiser, or have more fun or improve my own or my community’s well-being? And also, was it an exciting and entertaining experience to engage with and to watch other people engaging with?
If the new trend in advertising is to provide real-life “solutions, not propositions” (Faris Yakob), then the state-of-play for marketers is no longer about creating social media activations and creating ads, but about creating ads wholly based upon social media outcomes, like this example below where Oreo’s uses a TV spot to promote an Oreo Whisper Fight Instagram campaign.
Though ultimately all of us in the comms business must remember that however sophisticated our promotional tools and techniques become “the best ad is a good product” (Alan H. Meyer)”
As posted on The Drum, an opinion piece on the future of the communications industry:
“A panel session with some sixth formers discussing the communications industry leads Jono Marcus, digital partner at marketing communications agency Inkling to offer his views on the industry of the future and how the agencies will be formed to service it.
Recently, I was asked to take part in a question and answer session with some sixth formers who were looking to get into the communications industry. The questions they asked were often: “How many ideas would I be expected to come up with in a day?”, but were very rarely: “Should I go into PR or media-buying or advertising?” The students reflected an audience that has grown up in a converged media culture and cares about great ideas, rather than great ads, or great PR stunts. A generation that presumes everything will end up on YouTube at some point anyway, whatever format it started out on.
The digital-savvy teens reflect the future of the communications industry, reliant on a combination of creativity and technical intelligence (or at least technical sensitivity). A technologist’s thinking and a creative’s inspiration does not need to come from one person, as such people are rare; but, certainly these two talents need to come from people in increasingly close proximity in the future.
The PR and newer ad agency models of the early 2000s will soon be killed-off, because they were all about being able to say in one breath a) what the idea is and b) how it could be achieved in one neat package. This was their massive competitive advantage, up to now. However, in the communications industry of the future, the emphasis will once again full firmly on the creative side, with the quality of the idea being the most valuable currency, in a landscape where digital and new technologies are making almost any type of execution possible if enough care is applied. Thinking of the idea in the first place will be what matters most. It is however, crucial that those coming up with the big ideas do eventually have the staff, contacts or network (wherever in the world those maybe) with the highly sophisticated or cutting-edge technological know-how to activate “anything is possible” ideas. Faris Yakob even put out the provocation that the technological aspect will become so important that in the future clients may judge creative on the quality of the coding behind it, not the final creative and copy.
The communications industry of the future will still have the odd agency that sells itself on the format of the end output. For example it will only execute in one format, like only producing print and TV ads, but these will be exceptions to the rule, fighting to survive in a marketplace geared to give them lower and lower returns for that narrow vision or skill-set. This view was backed up by the sixth formers I met, who saw working in marketing as an art form, not a science of having specific know-how in either just PR, or advertising or media deals. Instead, a blend of all disciplines, with enough technical awareness to see how imaginative concepts could become a reality with the new possibilities of cutting-edge technologies. Seth Godin describes this phenomena of thinking like an artist before worrying about end results in his book on the future of successful business, The Icarus Deception, describing: “a lifetime spent noticing begins to turn into the ability to see what others can’t”.
These teens, who represent the future of the communications industry, are digital natives, their smartphones are my generation’s laptops. This means that there will simply be no place in the industry in the future for those that want to dodge acquiring a mixture of computing, digital and technological skills. At the very least they must demonstrate understanding how crucial digital is in their job and offer a perspective on that. However, the future communications agency won’t just be full of technologists.
The agency of the future will be chock full of people with psychology, anthropology and art degrees. This is because in the digital age, almost every piece of communications created lives or dies in the hands of dialogue with a very active and well-heard audience, whom can each act as micro broadcasters to thousands and millions within their own digital networks. The understanding of what makes people (and groups of people) tick: their wants and dreams, becomes more important than ever. So, ultimately who better for your future ad agency than an anthropologist-artist-coding-creative-planner?
Walk around inside the communications agency of the future and you will see people not only with very different backgrounds and skillsets to the majority today’s professionals, but doing different things too. Expect to see a couple of people huddled over a new communications invention with a soldering iron, shouting across to someone rewriting the computer coding that makes it work, next to the artist who is hosting a viewing of the process, which is being beamed to millions of followers over a live-stream. In short the communications industry of tomorrow we be primarily concerned with inventing new kinds of communication solutions, not as at present with simply exploiting the current formats”.
Do we now live in an economy that doesn’t ultimately celebrate compliance, but rewards the extraordinary?
If you genuinely want to win big and achieve enduring success must you ignore the rules and shun the system? Does the “connection economy” reward those with the mindset of artists.
I hope so… the trailer for Seth Godin’s new book puts it rather snappily: “The people you truly care about, don’t value safe. They value daring. They value gasps…”
As a digital marketeer my days used to be mainly concerned with social networks, digital innovations and whether a piece of video content might go viral. Now as a joint business owner, alongside three other partners at Inkling, my concerns are a lot broader and I have learned four secrets crucial to any employee to boss convert.
1. The Future Is Now
Businesses that don’t grow are as dangerous as those making a loss, so while you are thinking of the work this year, you are also thinking: “Are we making the right decisions to do better next year?” A bit like the manager of a football team, also being the Chairman of the Club, Chief Scout and Board rolled into one.
People’s opinions change. So what might be an agreed vision for the future a month ago might take an about turn later. Surprisingly human issues my have amazingly big repercussions for the business vision. For example, if a partner in the business has a major illness then your plans to grow their area of business fastest in the year ahead, would likely be ditched, in favour of consolidation.
It is exciting not just living in the six month to a year future like you are often required to as an employee, as long as you can swap around the “future-gazing hat” between all the stakeholders in the business, as it is probably harmful for one person to spend to much time in the future, as Marty McFly knew.
2. Money Matters
Suddenly instead of highly creative people spending 99% of their time talking about creative things, a good 15% is spent talking about money, one way or another. All of a sudden George Osbourne’s announcements really matter and liberal arts bias political stances may begin slipping, as you want what is best for your business.
There will be a sliding scale in business philosophies in any partnership. For example, between one who thinks paying staff a good salary and treating them well is financial incentive enough for them; and one who thinks you must spend as much as you can afford to make staff more rewarded at your agency than anywhere else. This is human differences, but in running a business money and staff matter to keep the business alive and healthy, so constantly negotiating this sliding scale of attitudinal difference matters a lot.
It often comes down to small subtleties of motivation, every partner in a business wants it to be strong and profitable, the discussions comes over exactly how much profit, against how much reinvestment, against how much outgoing or salary levels. You’d think that deciding how much to pay yourself would not be something that would not be a really important business decision, but it is. Pay yourself too low, and you get an unrealistic sense of business profitability, too high to early and you destroy your own business.
A good financial director is worth their weight in gold – sometimes literarily, but young businesses can’t always afford them in their early days. If you can’t afford one then teaching yourself to remember five numbers each week is key: Income, Expenditure, Net Profit, Forecast Income for the quarter ahead, Target Income for year Target Net Profit For Year. Seriously off by heart.
3. Vision Is Not Static
When you start a partnership you all agree on your shared creative and business vision. And in marketing agencies it is likely to be something to do with coming up with amazing ideas, doing game-changing work and creating a business of value with proven profit record and an impressive retained client list. Big generalisation I know. However, maintaining a vision in a partnership, is like keeping romance alive in a marriage, it needs constant attention, demonstration and revisiting.
So what do you do if the vision begins changing over time between partners or if you are all agreed it has changed. Thrash it out and adapt or die. And this is the point, when you run a business you will fight to the death to maintain the clarity of your vision to the outside world, but in a partnership you must be just as passionate for the sake of the business internally; but it is a marriage, not a battle. So, joint business owners require a willingness to start and keep going with arguments (in a constructive way) setting aside any discomfort about conflict for the sake of the business. Businesses based on an apathetic, outdated or overlooked visions, go into malaise.
Maintaining a meaning, purpose and financial vision for the business in a partnership requires a sense of obsession with and self-questioning about the vision by all of them… almost all of the time.
4. Every Persons Value Counts
One of the things I hated most working for some CEOs was the sense that they were looking at you as purely a money making commodity for them, just one aspect of the whole. CEOs who see you hollistically such as one of my former bosses Mike Mathieson are rare. Employees bring all sorted of values to a company: energy, intelligence, contacts, experience and can leave a positive legacy…that all add to the bottom line outside of directly generating new business or growing existing business.
In a young or lean business every employee must be kick-ass to justify their presence. So when you run such a business, an employee that isn’t kick-ass becomes an affront that you must either develop super-fast or cut your loses on super-fast. So difficult conversations become crucial and unfortunately so to is being more ruthless than you might ever need to be as an employee. As a head of department, you have the say on hiring or firing employees in your department, but you are not ultimately paying their salary. Running a company you are, the money you are paying them is vital for keeping the business alive, a small but substantial difference – it is your money, not just your budget. Your employees are no longer for better or worse a reflection on the good or bad taste of someone in your agency, they are a reflection on YOU and the quality of YOUR business, at least while your are choosing to pay their salary.
Running a successful business is one of the most fulfilling experiences you may ever have. Running it with partners you believe in, admire and trust is a wonderful thing. If you are thinking of taking a gamble and starting your own business, let me tell you it is liberating. And if you secretly enjoy obsessing over the future, money, vision and people…it might just be for you. My final piece of advice is “ask advice”. If you haven’t started a business before, there is no way you or indeed your business partners can have all the answers. So seek out the minds and opinions of those sages who have been there and done it, possibly numerous times. I have found it an honour to run a business in partnership at Inkling so far, and am full of admiration for those who maintain exciting and growing businesses over many years.
The founder of a brilliantly successful social media agency said today that marketing is no longer about stories, it is about joining existing conversations and provoking new ones.
If that’s the truth, I may as well pack up and leave. As a digital marketeer, I’m interested in telling the best possible brand & product stories and using whatever necessary digital technologies to do that.
If the stories are lost and all that is left are brands trying to push the right buttons to enable mindless conversations involving the brand name across social media platforms, what’s the point?
The mindset of using digital tools and social media platforms to tell effective brand stories is being lost as agencies position themselves as the masters of conversation generation (merely one facet of PR or social media marketing’s job).
I would argue that you should use social media to best tell the story of a brand, not to stack up numbers of brand conversations generated or jumped into. Use social media to make the brand stories live and breathe most effectively. Digital marketing is about a lot more than creating or judging activity around how many immediate conversations it with provokes online.
Digital marketeers are like theatre directors with the latest staging designs, set technologies and daring actors at their disposal; for the sake of the brands they work on, they should not reduce themselves to those holding the prompt script at the side, shouting out lines they hope the actors will pick up on.
It was suggested to us by the host that we should judge the entries based on David Ogilvy’s checklist for a BIG IDEA (the phrase Ogilvy himself coined):
Does it create a viseral reaction?
Do you feel envy that you didn’t think of it?
Is it unique?
Is it a perfect fit with brand strategy?
Longevity – will it resonate for decades?
However, after the night of drink, discussion and debate I found myself more often than not favouring entries based on some other criteria:
Does it do something purposeful or prompt you to be more sensitive to the way you think about things?
In the wake of the 2011 Japanese disaster, hundreds of thousands of victims were left without access to washed clothing. In what was not an advertising campaign, Ariel stepped in to provide aid until normality in the region resumed. A purpose built laundry centre was installed in the disaster region, and over 6 months washed, dried and folded nearly 5,000 loads of laundry, including 22,000 clothing items
Does it create a chain of experiences that live beyond the initial interaction?
Tesco brought their stores to consumers. “Virtual stores” were introduced into bustling subway stations, where consumers could use smart phones to scan products into their online shopping carts
Does it make you think more people should know about this? (similar to Ogilvy’s here)
When Mars heard that Google were coming to Canada to capture images for the online map service, Google Street View, they took the opportunity to strategically place red M&M’s throughout the city in the hope that they would get snapped by Google’s cameras and etched forever in the online history books. They were successful, and these images served as a platform for the “Find Red” campaign.
A YouTube video invited people to participate in a virtual scavenger hunt. Once the four-week contest began, consumers were tasked with searching out the red M&Ms on the Google Street View map hosted on a contest microsite.
Does it break the rule book or offer a new marketing format?
To fight the abandonment of Romania national choc bar Rom by the nations youth, it was rebranded Rom as the All American Chocolate Bar. They replaced the Romanian flag on the package with the American one, announced the change through the media and prepared for people’s reaction to it. This ingenious move leveraged “Reactive Patriotism Syndrome” and brought out the Romanian people’s true patriotic ego when challenged by an outsider/foreigner – rejuvenating the target audience and strengthening Rom’s market position.
So much technology we now use is changing and developing so fast, that we don’t understand the cultural effect it will have yet.
What we do know is that technology is making media channels and routes to audience grow to seemingly infinite levels.
To paraphrase Faris Yakob: “Moore’s Law has become the driving force in media…It was when computers began getting twice as fast and half as cheap every 1.5 yrs. This changed things faster that we could understand. Cars and fridges don’t do this, no other technologies do, only computers do. Now media is a function of computers”.
Brands and media owners know that we live in a world where microbroadcasting and real-time mean what is big in the morning might be old news by the afternoon. They understand they now need to engage and involve desired audiences to win. This is because the only chance of beating the lack of latency in media now, is to ensure content isn’t broadcast and then lost without trace, but is spread by it’s audience. Media that is spread = valuable media in today’s digital age. That is why brands are so in awe of any agency that can promise to create ‘inherently spreadable’ content for them. The equally powerful promise is of a super platform their audience can spend time on that will help guarantee spreadibilty of any content that hits it – marketing spend, production ability and elbow grease alone can’t guarantee spreadability any more.
But while brands are concerned with beating the lack of latency in marketing now and ensuring they beat the real-time dilemma by creating spreadable content; they aren’t looking at how they could use real-time to benefit their whole businesses. In my opinion the last five years have been about brands engaging with social media (playing in that pool) the next five years will be about companies using the technology of real-time, to get better intelligence quicker and enable their audiences to create and spread content and ideas for them.
What real-time technology advantages can brands / businesses be adopting? Some thought starters:
Sensors can be fitted to almost any personal device (even shoes) meaning data can be derived from nearly any action or activity a person might undertake.
Crowd-sourced services can now allow people to report & document the situation around them immediately. Calling for action from the ground-up.
Open source tools now can ensure that maps and other “official” documents allow solutions that can easily evolve and be developed by whole communities together over time.
Creations of 3D printers mean anyone can create products and help others create the same products, with sites such as Thingaverse.
Imagine if brands you work on were not just participating in “social media”, but were instead fully connected into every single real-time advantage it can offer. Meaning they were using sensor technology, open source solutions, consumer creating products for them and getting using on the ground real-time data to make themselves more emotionally intelligent businesses. Being, to quote David Armano:
“Plugged into a collective consciousness made up of ALL their constituents, from employees to consumers to dealers, to assembly line works etc. What if big organizations worked the way individuals now do…. In its purest form, it’s a shift in thinking—less about media and more about tapping the benefits of being a social business in a purposeful way”.
It is agency-based marketeers who must illuminate this particularly road for clients in 2013 and beyond. As we put it at Inkling, we need to be creating and outmanoeuvring for our clients so they don’t have to be looking every which way at once, and that includes seeing where clients can use technology to improve their whole businesses, not just their marketing efforts.
