DASI

Jack-of-all-trades is a complement when talking about your elderly fathers ability to clean out a carburetor, lay a carpet, boil an egg and ride a unicycle. But complete the sentence with ‘master-of-none’ and he sounds like an old fool who should know better. In the agency business the word ‘integrated’ has much the same effect. The agency that trumpets integration as it’s USP, may as well just admit to being specialists in nothing, quite good at most things, know some good people to outsource to and will take your money no matter what the challenge is.

That is not to say agencies can’t conceive and deliver brilliant “integrated” thinking – the challenge I believe is to do so without having to use the word integrated. It’s just become a lame word.

A similar problem is the word digital. For an agency – lets call them err, Spanner – to suddenly have an arm/wing/division/sister called Spanner Digital is about as authentic as David Beckham launching a new range of Beckham branded baby foods. But the problem agencies face is if they don’t specifically use the word digital, then how will clients know they can deliver it in the mix? The same can be said of doing “social media”. (But in my book anybody who has to have social media as a separate offering/product is more than likely to have a very weak grasp of what social media is. It’s the Internet Dummy!)

There are of course specialists in social media as there are in TV, DM and building websites. And a lot of them are very good at it. But when it comes to thinking, planning and creative – whether you run an integrated shop or are a specialist, there should be no room for anyone around the table who is not highly-comfortable seeing and strategising their particular talent in the wider context.

The truth is the more something has to be pre-qualified the less convincing it becomes.

So then, how to say integrated without saying integrated? How to say communication with out sounding like a telephone company? How to say PR without meaning Press?

The current vogue is selling “experiences” and “engagement”, which is of course just “integrated” brought up to date.

And so maybe we’ve come full-circle. For decades agencies have wrapped up their offerings with ribbons and string and attributed a value to their “product”. But maybe the irony of there being so many more channels available to the marketer simply brings into stark relief the need for planning that is all-seeing in a world where the client is all-consuming.

So if you ask me how to sell an agency these days – sell nothing, but brilliance.

The only thing more audacious than Lisa Snowdon’s logic-defying bust in M&S’s current summer advertising print campaign is the reach of the media spend that thrust it at us.

For what seemed like weeks, every publication of note was inserted, wrapped around and full-paged with Twiggy, Danni Minogue, VV Brown, Ana Beatriz Barros and lots of Lisa. Particularly Lisa.

Happily, unlike many brands, M&S have not been strong-armed by their agency (RKCR) into leaving their website address off these ads. And as a result, as well as I assume a resultant huge spike of in-store sales, there will have been a significant upturn in online traffic and sales.

But this is where the journey starts to become more arduous. The TV and Press ads are striking and even the new models recognisable at a distant glance as ambassadors of M&S.

On landing on the website home page however, an entirely different and, in-comparison, less alluring style of photography greets us. And it is only those with avowed intent who, by clicking on the link to womenswear, will find a new landing page, and on it a small but noticeable tout for the Summer campaign – “as seen on TV”. (which has since been removed – now follow the “as seen on tv link”, top left)

We recognise the friendly face of Lisa, click on her, and BINGO! There before us are Danni and Lisa and all the models looking radiant, each of them willing us to view and buy their “looks”. But wait, on closer inspection Danni’s Pure Cotton Pintuck Embroidered Shirt has already sold out – BOO! Damn that huge media spend.

Meanwhile, what’s this? Customer reviews that look like they might have been written by an actual customer? HOORAY! It doesn’t look like one of their many PR agencies wrote “M&S, when will you understand that women with a G cup do not want padded bras?” 10 out of 10 for not suppressing negative feedback. But then we remind ourselves that the M&S online store is built upon Amazon’s software – so the one thing they were always going to do was customer reviews. Maybe not so ground-breaking then? HRRMPH!

And there, before summer even starts, our short but exciting journey comes to an end. As the last glass of icy-chilled Sterhuis Sauvignon Blanc (£53.95 for a case of six from M&S Food & Wine online) slips down we can reflect on a great photoshoot and TV ad with spot-on celebrities, supported by a huge media spend followed by a trip to the website and a spike in sales both on and offline. And now it’s time to pack the BBQ away for another year. Surely not?

No, there will no doubt be many more bursts of media left in the barrel, but behind the marketing scenes thoughts will already have turned to cold and wintry campaigns.

Meanwhile, the knives are out for M&S. In the Evening Standard this week Simon English makes the point that the experience in the stores doesn’t live up to the ads and in The Sunday Times (04.04.10) a full-page article by Jenny Davey entitled “Time for Plan B” described our nationally beloved M&S as “stuck in a strategic rut, tied to loyal but ageing customers and unsure how to capture a younger audience”

So come on M&S. Don’t get left behind. Your customers (and ahem, your shareholders) won’t be seduced by another new range to fling around an expensively refitted changing room or another model to empathise with only to find they can only aspire to. What might work for them however, is something different.

Fashion is of course a seasonal business and the advertising industry loves knowing that a new, expensive campaign will be needed each time the clocks change or that Santa or sunshine are on everyone’s minds. But as we all know too well these days, for every spike there is the echo of a hollow trough to fall into as someone else is dining out on your media money. Except, of course, in the eternal season of online enlightenment there are no such things as troughs. The lights never go out.

So, M&S, please don’t stop making TV ads – we love them. But please ask your agencies to think about how those ads might live a little longer on online. How they might inspire, welcome and facilitate interaction and dialogue that can be harnessed for the benefit of all. (And if the answer is put it on YouTube, call a pitch instantly.)

Meanwhile, the M&S response to the Facebook bra campaign with “we’ve boobed” was great. Well, it was a great (cropped) photo and a good political move – shame it took a full page, colour national print ad to do it – but we can’t have everything.

Media muscle is great to have, but increasingly unsubtle. Consumer engagement in the digital age does not herald the death of TV advertising or print. Nor does it mean defaulting to social networks or email broadcasts. It means striking a tone that bridges the gap between push and pull and utilising that to build a balanced platform on which to develop.

The quest for M&S to evolve must not be confined to bigger stores, better advertising and a Facebook page, but by spreading the communication load and giving loyal and loving customers a chance to sit alongside the brand on the journey both on and offline.

There is a lady mentioned above who has a problem with her G-cup. She’s probably online right now. Who will solve her problem?

…we’ve been away for a while. But now we’re back – new premises, new staff, same philosophy. You’ll be hearing much more from us very soon. But for the meantime – it’s just good to be back….

www.livingsasquatch.com

We like this for 2 reasons; because it is a nice idea and because it’s for a Jerky brand, and we’re big fans of dried meat based products at DASi.

The site was created by Australian agency www.boffswana.com. Fundamentally, it’s nothing groundbreaking – It’s the same technique that’s been around for a while now with some nice touches, but as I’ve mentioned previously what is key is that rather than the technology being the star, we’re now at a point where it’s mainstream enough that the creative element once again takes the lead.

The key to this piece’s success is its use of UGC, as it gives the campaign much more life and a far greater reach than it otherwise would have. Many campaigns which aim to become ‘viral’ fall down because of a belief that if you add the ability to forward something on, people will automatically do so; it’s just not the case. If your campaign provides no genuine element of interest, whether that is humour, competition, the ability to shock or reward the receiver, it’s liable to be a waste of time and money.

Living Sasquatch works so well because it gives the user the opportunity to be creative with what is a nice core idea, the creativity of the user is much more important that the fact it’s an Augmented Reality piece and this allows a far more mainstream appeal. As an agency head we met yesterday said, “The best technology is practically invisible.” It’s also fantastic to see they haven’t overly branded the site, I’m not sure it would have had the same effect if midway through the legendary Sasquatch suddenly whips out a packet of processed beef. Top Stuff.

I don’t imagine this is the last we’ll see of concepts similar to this, particularly as more agencies have a grip of the technology, driving down the cost in the market, but the interesting part will be who comes up with the next creative level.

The cheeky looking chap in this video is Dave Carroll, who has managed to show once again the power of the consumer in today’s user generated world. Dave is musician of (by his own admission) fairly limited success but this month he’s been seen over 2.5 million times on You Tube, all because he decided to take out his frustration at what he saw as poor customer service in the form of a song.

His guitar was smashed by baggage handlers last year, by operators working for United Airlines. Dave claimed for the damage but United were less than helpful, something I imagine they now regret, as his song ‘United break guitars’ has become a worldwide sensation in a matter of days and is now firmly in the mainstream media, even making it onto that most treasured of US TV shows, Oprah. Unless United now manage to do something of EA Games/Tiger Woods type miracle response, (Click here if you’ve not seen that example) they’re going to have to sit and watch as their brand takes a trashing around the world, even if it is in a nice, jovial country style.

To me, this is another top example of the internet showing how the balance of power has shifted back towards the consumer- ‘disappointed of Tunbridge Wells’ can now take on the big boys and win. It’s also a fantastic example of how, no matter what your brand offers, the internet can seriously affect it whether you like it or not. The tools freely exist to champion and trash people, products, in fact anything- look at Susan Boyle for God’s sake, she’s even known as SuBo now, so if you’ve not at least considered how you’re going to react if you’re the centre of the next story, you’re potentially in for a steep learning curve.

Twitter screen shot showing Habitat anger.

Part of my job is to know what’s going on in the giant melting pot that is the digital market place. The beauty of the medium is that news travels fast and if you take the time to look you’ll always find things to talk about, and generally people will listen. Of course the flip side is that if you get something wrong, you’re in for a proverbial shoeing of which this is a classic case in point.

If you didn’t see it last week, Habitat have been roundly slated for spamming people on Twitter by using the fash tags (#) to gatecrash the most popular trending topics. At its very worst this meant that offers for its furniture popped up amongst the discussions around the Iranian election. Unsurprisingly, this caused quite a stir, and is the kind of brand damage that will take more than a 10% voucher to undo.

Habitat sent an official apology to one of the blogs that first picked it up, which read:

“I know people have been waiting for a response tweet from us; we are treating this very seriously and wanted to offer a longer message.

We have been reading everyone’s comments carefully and would like to make a very sincere apology to any Twitter users who were offended.

The top ten trending topics were pasted into hash tags without checking with us and apparently without verifying what all of the tags referred to. This was absolutely not authorised by Habitat. We were shocked when we discovered what happened and are very sorry for the offence that was caused. This is totally against our communications strategy. We never sought to abuse Twitter, have removed the content and will ensure this does not happen again.

It has been really valuable to hear how users would like us to use Twitter and we are determined to do better for the Twitter community.”

Clearly something went seriously wrong somewhere along the chain of command here, and some very valuable lessons have been learnt. There wasn’t anything malicious in what they did, but it was naïve in the
extreme and as a result the very community they were trying to reach has absolutely voiced their negative opinion.

No brand should ever take social media for granted or make short cuts and expect anything more than at best short shrift. Thankfully these types of horror stories are few and far between, and there is nothing to fear in using social media for your brand, providing you do so with respect for the people that use it. There are some fantastically knowledgeable people out there now who can show you the ropes, but it will take some time: just because it’s free does not mean it’s easy.

The IBM Wimbledon campaign is generally one of their flagship online projects of the year. I’ve been involved in a couple of them in a previous role and there’s always a huge amount of effort that goes into them. This year, they’ve done something different, as the video above shows. They’ve developed a nice app for the Google Android phone, which utilises its camera,  internal compass and GPS function in a way which effectively gives the impression of image recognition.  It’s a nice project, and to me it’s just another example of how much the market has shifted in the last 18 months. The 2007 Wimbledon project was a celebration of 3D and rich media; I’m not sure there was any interaction with the users at all.  This couldn’t be further from this year’s focus which is complemented by a range of social media activities.

This shift is something every client needs to be aware of when considering their agency partners, and is an area I’ve been banging on about to anyone who’ll listen (I had a letter printed in Media Week a couple of weeks back on this very subject). Many agencies had to play catch up in terms of staff and structure when the digital land grab really kicked in, and this was an expensive and time consuming process. The problem is that the market has continued to evolve at a frankly mind -blowing rate and those agencies that had invested heavily in being able to offer the high-end microsite and super rich production of 2007 are now potentially again geared incorrectly for today’s world.  The danger to the client is that agencies by their very nature will, on the whole, want to sell what is in their ‘tool kit’  and if their agency of choice is still trying to catch up, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be getting the best solution to your brief.

What this all means to the client is that knowing your potential agency partners inside out is key. It’s a market of incredible choice, so being thorough in terms of research and asking a few probing questions has never been of more importance.

My.IKEA from Robin Westergren on Vimeo.

Following on from my post last week, is this little beauty. More proof that once you understand the technology properly, then you can really be creative.

There’s a few other nice (and more importantly useful)  examples beginning to appear now for AR which is a sign that the technology has reached a point where it has established its own niche and isn’t just being used as an extension of another idea.  I had a conversation along these lines with Scott Seaborn, Ogilvy’s head of mobile technology recently.  He’s an incredibly enthusiastic chap, with a real passion for mobile; the type of champion that less established areas need. His belief is that for a completely new medium to become really established within advertising it might take as long as ten years.  During this gestation period, the new technology will evolve from just being used as another format for an existing area, to a standalone channel, one that has independent briefs and ideas.

We see smaller versions of this all the time within the digital space- new ideas and technology emerge, and for a while they’re seen as cool but very few people make them work commercially. Some never get past this stage and eventually begin to fade (you could argue Second Life is in this group) but for others there’s the penny drop moment; when the technological possibilities are matched by an understanding of them.  This time is when you get the mainstream uptake, and to me this feels like where AR is at the moment.

Clearly for clients, it’s hard to know when to invest some of that precious budget into relatively uncharted media waters – too soon and it will whizz over all but the early adopters’ heads, but too late and you’re just a ‘me too’ brand.  It’s not an easy balance, but with a good agency partner and a little luck the potential rewards are great. One thing is for sure though; the worst thing you can do is stand still…

Ford Fiesta First Date from Beto Lopez on Vimeo.

I picked up this story: http://ping.fm/WgHZV  off a tweet from the nice chaps at neoco, and it’s a decent example of how big brands are starting to really go after the social angle. 

In a nutshell, Ford in the US have given 100 people new Ford Fiestas to use in their day to day lives for the 6 months leading up to launch. Each of the ‘agents’ (as they are calling the test drivers) are documenting their adventures through a variety of social networking sites. To keep it more interesting than pictures of boots, sorry, trunks,  full of shopping they all have a range of ‘missions’ to complete – some of which were suggested by the public. The whole thing is packaged in a suitably dramatic title ‘The Fiesta Movement’. 

My personal opinion on this is a little mixed, it does feel a little too ’forced’ to me; the agents in the majority are annoyingly good looking and and it feels a little OTT so I get a slight ‘corporate attempting to be cool’ feel, but that might actually just be the American tone (have a look at the Dodge Ram challenge for another example) which to a Brummie like me is fairly alien.

It is undeniably though, a bold move at an incredibly difficult time for the automotive industry and they should be applauded as such. It wasn’t so long ago that this campaign would have been a very pretty but ultimately identikit full 3D minisite- full of flashy video and loading bars to boot.. 

As a final note, interestingly, Ford now have a ‘head of social media.’ I’d fully expect to see a few more of them in the next few months.

This has been all over Twitter the last couple of days, and I’m not suprised. Augmented Reality (AG) has been around for a while now, and has been the darling of a few agencies on the R&D front of late, we recently ran a pitch that 2 of the 4 agencies presented an AG concept; they were lovely in their own right, but there wasn’t really a practical edge, just a cool one. This is often the case with new bits of technology, as agencies always want to be doing the coolest and and most interesting work- that’s what makes them creative beasts, but that can sometimes mean that the true business needs of the client aren’t top of tree (where they should always be).

Step forward AKQA in the states who’ve produced the above. It’s amazingly simple as an idea; but then the best ideas are often are and there’s a real end user value, something that will make an impact past the couple of mins initial dwell time.  It might not be the sexiest of products or uses but who cares, no doubt you’ll see this come awards time, and we’ll not be arguing. Smashing.