Get Shouty

The guys over at Three Minds have a mini review about the new Holden CRV site.

I just love this campaign- the TVC is compelling, the music’s hot, I’m loving the line ‘For Everyone you are’, and I’ve been enjoying seeing that offer unpack across some tasty cross media placement, like a fantastic pull out mag in one of our glossy monthly newspaper inserts, which which details a whole bunch of compelling lifestyle getaways and activities.

I do wonder why that offer isn’t involved in the architecture of the site, why the line isn’t included at all? Why all of the different components of the urban lifestyle have been distilled to “Function, Safety, Power”.  I’m wondering why the first benefit set is ‘fully functional, family, safety and storage’?

Wouldn’t this be a wonderful opportunity for the brand to ask the site viewer who they are? Why not allowing a consumer, who is reacting to your campaign to tell the brand that vital info before you serve them a piece of information that might really Keanu it: “whoa- that’s not me- this product is not for me”.

Sean is a legend. He’s brought to life my simple Venn diagram in a way that not only explores how to express the process in a pretty charming way (Lego consumer= tops!) but has increased my own understanding exactly what I was trying to say.

It is not only this:

“the opportunity that presents itself when we look for overlap between the Brand Position, Business Goals, Consumer Interests, and the Promise.  Aiming to be inside this area makes great sense.  It’s the point at which all the vectors unite.

But this as well:

I see the “Promise” being the tangible manifestation driving out to the community that is populated by content and interaction by and between the brand and consumers. It is the interaction of these two communities, brought together by a Position that bring the Promise to life:

Huggies and parents work together on the Position of good parenting and the Promise of sharing best practice

Dove and women work together on the Position of self esteem and the Promise that beauty is an internal expression.

Loving the blogsphere today!

Thanks to the brilliant minds over at Creating Passionate Users for the diagram above which I found following a link from Hugh’s Gaping Void.

The insight: It’s not about how much your product engages with the customer. It’s about how much your product allows your customer to engage with other people. As Kathy Sierra says in her brilliant post, “Success no longer has to be a meritocracy (or advertocracy), today it’s just as much a loveocracy.”

I’m a big fan of the old Venn diagram, to map and create intersection between brands and consumers. Yesterday I used this diagram from Richard’s Adliterate blog:

(And as Gavin is no longer within taunting distance from my desk I can only assume that we’re posting on the same diagram as an example of BSP. I found it among the fab resources at the Planner Wiki).

I find myself thinking how digital content ‘lives’ in the minds of consumers, by fulfilling a promise of the brand and making it tangible (‘the position’), and I’m loving the way the two diagrams can talk to each other :

No way! Vote for me! 

I feel a little as though I’m suffering from the loss of a limb- I am still without a laptop or an internet connection from home and the demands of moving country and starting a new job mean that my blog debt is growing exponentially.

I’ve met wonderful people and had mad adventures, which I promise to tell you all about real soon.

In the meantime, I’ve just found out I’ve been nominated on Russel Davies site for post of the month– Holy Cow!

My “Learning to read the signs” post has been nominated and I’d love it if you would vote for me here.

Sandy over at Purple Wren, inspired (as we all are) by Mack Collier and his Z list blogger meme.

I can’t tell you how chuffed I am to be there with David Armano, Evil Paul, the ever lovely CK and the tremendously silly and supportive Gavin Heaton. My soapbox just wouldn’t exist without his prompting.

You can click on all the pictures and find some new blogs and great ideas. I’m four across and three down.

This is of course put into perspective by the fact that one of my biggest referrers is a site that contains not much more content than short videos by a naked cowgirl. Odd but strangely apt.

Reported by WARC today is this:

CANBERRA: The Australian government is to launch a multi-million dollar campaign to persuade the public that regional access to broadband is not, in Rupert Murdoch’s words, a “disgrace”.
The attack appears to have stung communications minister Helen Coonan into action – that and the prospect of a general election later this year. She says the government expects to spend up to A$5 million on the campaign, including advertising

The Australian Government has now raised $45.8 billion from the three Telstra sales. The country’s average broadband speed ranks at 25th among OECD countries. Over 80% of Australians live in 6 urban centres.

How about spending some of that cashola and investing it in the services that Australian people want to use and need to have in order to to remain competitive?

My vote for the Dumbass of the Week Award goes to Helen ‘I’d rather spend your dollars making a tiny part of the population feel better than fix the problem’ Coonan.

Well here I am in Chicago. I’ve left behind the Sydney shore, where you wouldn’t  be prosecuted for being on a beach without lifeguards. And there probably isn’t much of a likelihood of snow either. At least not on the shore.

I’ve been here for a couple of days now and have mostly got over the jet lag. Mind you, with the drone of the central heating, it can still feel like I’m on the plane.  

The Bears are still in the playoffs, I’ve found a great organic market and the backyard is white with snow. Bring it on Chicago!

When you haven’t had a holiday, not more than three days in a row off, for more than two years the sense of bone deep tiredness seems almost unshiftable.

2006 has been a mad year, I’ve travelled and presented in four countries across Asia Pacific, and written integrated solutions (picking up mobile as a skill!) for the entire region and some of the campaigns will be activated country by country across the globe.

The holiday seems like a light at the end of the tunnel, and it starts to blind as it get closer.

I’ll be logging in and posting every now and again. Instead of being desk bound and brand oriented I’ll be sitting on the deck at a beach shack with old friends, a great book, loads of fine food and wine and no pressing task other than some exercise (lying face down in water snorkeling is exercise, no?).

Thank you all for your support and comments. I look forward to a thrilling 2007.

Watch this space.

One of my most memorable job interviews happened when I once spoke to the biggest record company in the country. In 1995 I’d been Label Managing for a couple years and doing licensing and A&R across three continents by using email and the Internet. I was terribly excited about what this technology meant for the music industry.

I was asked where I saw myself in 5 years, and this is where I got myself into big trouble. I said that I would be in a job that doesn’t exist now. I said that I believed that we were in a time similar to candle makers after the invention of electricity. That what people want is light, not pieces of wax,  and we needed to move with the times. I said that our ability to mobilise the fans and have them as part of our business was a huge opportunity. That with the gap between the fan and the artist narrowing we needed to redefine ourselves.

 The national head of promotion did one of the best beetroot impersonations I’ve ever seen. He stood up so fast he knocked his chair clean over. Leaning as far as he could over the boardroom table he screamed at me: “Radio is king in this country and it always will be”. I assumed that the interview, and that my chance to work with the big guys, was over.

One of the other managers rang me before I got too slaughtered at the pub. He knew that tracking and activating fans, advocates, would significantly reduce his ad budget and get around short sighted Programming Directors who would not take a chance on a band without a track record. I started the next day.

This was all brought top of mind when I was reading Matt Dyke’s post Learning from the Music Industry:

Target a strong core of ambassadors
Use ambassadors to promote your music
Utilise social recommendation
Embrace (rather than ignore) file sharing

I agree that advertising can learn a lot from the music industry- from its failures as well as its successes. The fundamental reason for being for the Music Industry now has to be to help artists find their audience, to niche market on a global scale, to help artists bring their experience to their audience and to maximise the revenue to the artist.

Exchange brand with artist and you have a good launching pad for reinvention.

“My media” is all about consumer-generated content, immediacy, personalisation and interactivity and there’s been a host of discussion about this new wave of marketing communication all week.

 Adnews and Bandt outline how both advertising agencies and publishers can catch this wave of bottom-up management and communication tactics by weaving communities into their products and services, and becoming a part of a living fabric of brand loyalists. 

The emotional connection that this can create is very strong.

Motorola’s PEBL Pond allows you to share a discovery and make an impact by “starting a ripple”- engraving a skipping stone with a personal message. You can also access the messages that other people have left behind, from the philosophical to the bizarre.

The interface is simple and beautiful- it gives a real experience of what holding the phone might be like and the kind of person that might own one. The content is constantly and organically updated by people who are being inspired by the brand experience.

The CARE Power Circle uses similar interactivity to allow people who show support: by adding names and messages to the site you join a global movement dedicated to ending poverty. The Get Involved section of the site is the perfect counter to the argument that the web cannot create the same emotional connection of a TVC. The many personal stories and messages of support from Mogadishu to Montreal are a testiment to the strong call to action.

It is the brands that think smarter that allow consumers the chance to participate and be involved in message creation, and at the same time they invite this audience to act faster on their committment to their brand

The BIG issue marketers face: If I swing a bunch of money out of TV into online, how do I know I will meet my sales goals?

The problem is that when you move from an impression based-medium (a TV ad or a print ad, even a banner ad online) to an engagement-based medium engagement (like gaming, a web community or a holistic online experience) the comparisons become very difficult.

Put another way, what’s more worthwhile, a 30 second spot watched passively by 2 million people that costs half a million dollars to run or a web experience where 500,000 people actually engage with the brand for 7 minutes signing up for a contest, viewing a video, creating a mash up and emailing it to their friends?

Fundamentally do markerters want passive or active consumers? Do they want consumers to engage with their message voluntarily? The measure we need to get to is Return on Engagement.