February « 2010 « Big Orange Slide

When blogs die

February 26, 2010 by Ian Mackenzie

Some recent comings and goings in the world of marketing blogs:

15 ideas
After more than 400 posts, Proximity Chicago Creative Lead Kevin Lynch says he’s shutting down his 15 ideas blog. That’s bad news for the blogosphere – especially since he’s blaming it on something he said at Big Orange Slide. Goodbye Kevin’s funny blog. Sorry about that.

Applied Arts Wire
The Applied Arts Wire blog has unveiled a sleek new look to put it in line with the recently relaunched AppliedArtsMag.com. The tag is “Your window into the Canadian creative community.” Recent action includes campaign profiles (ZAK’s eating disorder campaign), portfolios (Mike Grandmaison), industry surveys and a big community-building push on Twitter.

The Ad Contrarian
Bob Hoffman posted twice this week about the latest Edelman report – the one that says consumers don’t trust their friends anymore. In so doing, he offers faint praise to Patricia McDonald of BBH Labs: “Unlike most social media proponents, [McDonald] at least can think straight and write a coherent sentence. She doesn’t write in clichés and jargon and she’s not in denial about the facts, like most agencies will be. (You can bet agencies won’t be showing the Edelman report to their clients any time soon. Too much money to be made in social media.)” Oh, snap! Except he’s wrong. We shared the report with our clients right here this past Monday.

Church of the customer blog
“There’s a lot marketers can learn from artist and musician Lady Gaga,” says Jackie Hubb. Among them: “Give fans a name . . . Make it about something bigger than you . . . Develop shared symbols . . . Make your customers feel like rock stars.” Good call.

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What brand do you think is most in need of a makeover and why?

Design
February 25, 2010 by Big Orange Slide

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Why I love/hate Terry O’Reilly

Culture
February 24, 2010 by Dave Hamilton

I’ve been working, often passionately, at the business of advertising for the more than a decade. Which is a roundabout way of saying that I now very much look forward to not thinking a stitch about it two days of the week: Saturday and Sunday.

Which brings me to Terry O’Reilly, a man I’ve worked with, admired, and even envied for his considerable and seemingly effortless talent. Terry is the host of a radio show called The Age of Persuasion, now in its 4th season on CBC Radio. The series takes listeners deep into the world of advertising, providing a well-researched and wonderfully quirky history of the business, as well as insights about a phenomenon that, according to Terry, drives culture, art, communications and politics.

Here’s the trouble:

It airs Saturdays. And it’s about the business of advertising. And now, despite my best efforts to cleanse the palate over the course of my weekend, I find myself going to considerable lengths to listen to The Age of Persuasion, putting off chores, laying down books. I’ve even made myself late for the gym, sitting parked in my car to hear the end of an episode on the art and science behind famous – and sometimes infamous – hits and misses.

Terry’s infectious. So is his enthusiastic fascination with the fragile, enduring and every evolving relationship between consumers an their best-loved brands. And though he’s told to my face this show is not written for guys like me, guys in “the biz,” I know he’s wrong about this.

The Age of Persuasion is precisely for people like me. Because what makes you great in this business of ours is falling in love with our history long enough to want to shape it. The great storied past that inspired me to care and learn, to dig deeper and wrestle ideas to the ground in the first place is what’s really on offer Saturday mornings at ten. And so, I find myself giving up a little of my weekend. Giving it to the very business I so look forward to retreating from at the end of the week. Giving myself over to the crazy, enduring wonder of it all in the hopes I’ll learn something new. Again.

Thanks Terry.

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iSearch – Part 3

Digital
February 23, 2010 by Matt Rogers

iPhone apps created for brands: What’s out there? What’s working? What’s not? And who’s thinking differently? Just some of the questions I’ll be asking, and hopefully answering, in an ongoing series for this here blog.

$1.99 is a rip-off!

I was initially going to be reviewing the CTV Olympic app, but as I started reading its reviews, I became intrigued by something else: the incredible animosity towards it.

The CTV Olympic app promises to be “everything you will need on the Games from Canada’s official broadcaster”, and when you first open it, that seems an accurate description. The extensive navigation menu has News, Live Blog, Photos, Medal Count, among other things.

But as soon as you start going through the app—looking for who won the China vs. Denmark women’s curling match, let’s say—you come up against a screen telling you to upgrade to the premium service for $1.99. And this upgrade notification comes up repeatedly. Want to check out one of their blogs or get real time results? Sorry Bub, gotta upgrade.

The upgrade is making a lot of people angry. Of the app’s 1,170 ratings, a resounding 692 are the lowly one star.

Based on the comments, most of the animosity is the result of what some describe as the bait-and-switch tactic of listing the app as free but then tacking on a two buck upgrade when people want to access any content of substance.

I do think it’s ridiculous for CTV to charge $1.99 for content that’s also available for free on their own website (among hundreds of other sites covering the games), but what I find more fascinating is the larger issue of the value of things in the app economy.

$1.99. Not a lot of money, really. It’s a coffee, a couple of songs, an hour of parking. How many times a day do you drop two dollars? But within the world of branded apps, $1.99 better buy you a kidney—or else. The culture of free has become so entrenched in the App Store that you become painfully reluctant to cough up a lousy two bucks for anything.

Certainly, people are paying for some apps, but of all the top paid apps on iTunes, most are games and the only branded app on the list is for Martha Stewart recipes. (It’s $0.99.)

The belief that branded apps should be free seems to follow this logic: Branded apps are created by big rich corporations, so why nickel-and-dime me on price. And even if a branded app is helpful or entertaining, it’s still a form of marketing. You should be paying me, dood!

It’s hard to argue with that logic. Yes, Charmin’s Sit or Squat gives you the incredible utility of consumer reviews of public toilets, but it’s still just an excuse to hock toilet paper.

For CTV, the promotion of their status as official broadcaster and providing thousands of people with a handy little Olympic app wasn’t enough. And the public have responded. Not surprisingly, the Vancouver 2010 Guide—run by Bell—has much better reviews. But it may just be because of its price…free.

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Can you trust your friends?

At Large
February 19, 2010 by Dave Hamilton

A recent Edelman study indicates that our collective willingness to trust what our friends have to say about brands (and companies in general) is down.

Just as many marketers are getting comfortable with shifting dollars to social media, Edelman’s latest “Trust Barometer” presents something of a wrinkle in the plan: the number of people who view their friends and peers as credible sources of information about a company dropped by almost half since 2008, from 45% to 25%.

Reasons?

There are several we can speculate about: economic doom and gloom, a proliferation of empty “fan grab” programs on Facebook, the devolution (in many people’s minds) of FB, Twitter, etc. into mass media, or those suspiciously padded friend lists that number into the thousands.

But if consumers stop believing what their friends are saying about a product or company, the implications are significant for marketers. After all, the recent trend of shifting marketing dollars to social media has been built on the assumed endless availability of that very trust.

What to do? I’ve got my hunches:

Breakthrough: Enough with the fan pages already. Do something unique. Do it first. And don’t confine your efforts to Facebook.

Be multi-channel: Seeding your messages in at least five channels (a mix of online and offline) will give your target the opportunity to absorb your message in different ways and in different states of mind. Willingness to engage differs from channel to channel, and what you give up in reach you may just gain in a willingness to listen.

Converse: More than anything, people want to be listened to. And if your target is people, you’ll want to create avenues at retail and online, and through your PR channels for them to be heard so you can tweak and amplify your message as the relationship evolves. If they think you’re immovable, they just might be too.

In a nutshell, let’s put the mix back in marketing mix. Let’s stop looking for a silver bullet – where a full clip might be called for. Let’s strive to create dialogue and engagement that builds trust rather than erodes it.

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Five ways to get more from your agency

Strategy
February 17, 2010 by Graham Budd

Marketing essentials: Time is creative.

Time is money. It’s one of business’ best-known and most irrefutable proverbs. In the marketing world, time – and how it is managed – can also be the difference between mediocre creative and breakthrough campaigns.

For marketers, on the agency side especially, time is creative.

Think of this familiar scenario: You’re rolling out a big campaign. You and your agency are spending round after round revising a project, evolving the objectives as the project moves forward, and getting surprise feedback from stakeholders even as the campaign goes to market.

While you and your agency were investing so much time getting that project out the door, what other gardens were being left untended? Researching a consumer insight to nail the strategy for the next campaign? Dreaming up a great idea around how your business could use a new media channel? Diving into competitive research to a flush out a ripe communication opportunity?

Think about it: the more time you and your agency spend working through rounds of revision, the less time you and your agency have at breaking through big creative ideas that will truly move your business forward. There is a cost to this time, and it’s measured in big creative opportunities lost.

For your consideration, here are five ways you (the client) can get campaign breakthroughs (from your agency) more often:

1. Involve all key stakeholders in the brief.
Before engaging the agency on creative development, bring in all stakeholders at the brief creation stage and have them sign off – sales, retail partners, research, R&D, third-party sponsors, etc. Get everyone’s input, flag potential pitfalls, and sign off on the brief up front before a single agency brainstorm has started. This may seem like a massive undertaking, but truth be told, time invested here saves exponential amounts of time (and money) later on in the process. It minimizes or eliminates feedback and changes near project completion, reducing the number of rounds of revisions required, and giving you a written document that can be used to help defend the creative you’ve approved (and love).

2. Brief early.
Not always easy (and in some circumstances, impossible), but when a known project is briefed in well in advance there are myriad benefits:

• Safer timelines.
Allows for workbacks that can insulate projects against late-coming changes, keeping projects on the rails.

• Better work.
With more time, more value-adding steps can be integrated. These are the elements that, when a project is rushed, are often the first to fall by the wayside. For example: consumer research, insight testing, creative testing, competitive production bidding, detailed QA testing of a microsite, etc.

• Better decisions.
Dozens of tests have shown that people tend to do better work and make better decisions when they are not under undue time pressure.

• More options.
The agency can present more detailed and refined creative options versus a compressed creative development phase.

• Increased co-promo potential.
Extra time to negotiate the intricate details of co-promo opportunities that enhance the perceived value of your promotion and allow you to leverage the strength of another brand.

3. Treat the first campaign presentation like the final ad.
So you’ve chosen a big idea to move against and the agency has just presented a detailed creative recommendation on how to execute against that. Though you’re not seeing every execution, review the creative with a fine-toothed comb against the backdrop of the brief – take at least a day or two to really think over every detail. Take time to get the opinion of other stakeholders, and compile the first round of feedback in one consolidated document or meeting delivered back to the agency.

This step alone can drastically reduce rounds of revisions, and avoid running or trickling feedback that can spiral a project well past its timelines.

4. Give clear, actionable feedback.
Avoid guessing games as much as possible. Clarity is king. So, feedback such as, “I don’t like this, can you come back with a few options at fixing it?” means that whomever is addressing it has to take shots in the dark at answering it. And the more rounds this goes on for, the more time and money gets burned (though a seasoned account person should never let it come to this). Alternatively, feedback such as, “This copy is not hitting objective X in the brief. Can you dial Y up to deliver more strongly against that objective?” is infinitely more actionable for the agency – you identify exactly what was missed, along with a suggestion of how to get there, all related back to the brief. The brief is the blueprint. Use it to make your feedback clearly understandable and get to the results you want faster.

5. Stick to the brief.
If you’ve looped in all stakeholders at the brief creation stage and found out that, “this product is all about X,” then you’d better fight tooth and nail to make sure it doesn’t become, “well actually, this product is actually about Y and Z” after production has started (or worse, nearing completion). If stakeholder feedback late in the game is changing your brief, be prepared for the worst – in time and money. Late changes equal blown timelines and increased costs.

These five simple strategies can have a tremendous positive impact on the quality of your marketing efforts – with the goal of maximizing opportunities for spending time on what really matters: unlocking great innovative ideas.

Looking for even more ways to tilt the innovation scales in your favour? Check out Seth Godin’s How to be a great client.

What else is in your arsenal for getting to great ideas faster?

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Status saturation

Culture
February 16, 2010 by Ian Mackenzie

Have you been following all the web chatter about how there’s too much chatter on the web? If you missed it, you’re not alone. That’s because the more the Internet speaks (figuratively), the less likely you are to actually hear what it’s saying.

Here’s an overview of what the marketing blogs are saying about the noisy net:

Six pixels of separation
Mitch Joel wants you to Remove the noise. That means following fewer people on Twitter, reading fewer blogs, using or making Apps that help you screen content – rather than subscribe to more of it – and generally, “Become a better filter.”

FutureLab
David Armano agrees: “People in my own ecosystem seem utterly exhausted by the plethora of networks they manage and the number of people within those networks. E-mail, Facebook, Twitter, Yammer, Instant Messenger . . . just how many platforms can we participate in?” The challenge, he says, is not simply to connect more, but to connect more meaningfully.

Mashable
Google is already on it. According to Samuel Axon, the search giant is set to improve filter features on its new social platform “Buzz”. In response to privacy and signal-to-noise concerns, Google will revisit Buzz’s auto-opt-in, remove its Reader and Picasa connectivity, and generally give its new baby a privacy overhaul.

FastCompany
And finally, David Lavena gives council to marketers looking for more signal, less noise: “It starts with the message. Social media offer channels to communicate with a community, but the message must be sincere and provide value for both parties . . . For example, many companies have successfully created blogs that provide objective information to their constituents. Posts shouldn’t be measured for lead generation. Creating a place where people come to rely on you for valuable information is a good thing. Credibility and sincerity translate to help you cut through the noise when it counts.”

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Even better than The Real Shaq

Culture
February 10, 2010 by Ameet Acharya

For every million marketers throwing their hard-earned resources at social media, there are a few lucky players who just seem to get it right from the start. Somehow, someway, they’ve found a way to engage legions of fans with their ongoing brand story.

For your consideration, here are a few of my favourite social media mavens:

@THE_REAL_SHAQ

Celebrity: Shaquille O’Neal
Platform: Twitter

Key Points
• Funny
• Free ticket giveaways
• Enticing commentary and a candid view into his life

Why do I like it?
• Goes against the mold of athletes who don’t want to connect with their fans
• Open, honest communication
• He will tweet back to his fans
• It’s a real connection: he’ll show up at a random location, for example, and tweet his location, offering up free basketball tickets to the first person who connects with him. The winners then tweet about seeing him and winning tickets.
• It’s just cool

Barack Obama’s Drive for the Presidency
Platform: Facebook

Key Points:
• More than 7.4 million Facebook fans
• Raised $500 million+ in donations for his campaign through Facebook
• End result: he became America’s first black president

Why do I like it?
• He knew where his audience was
• He showed a willingness to take risks and reach out to us
• Quick reaction time to crises and celebrations
• He made me want to hope for a better world

Total Blender
Platform: Youtube, Twitter, Facebook

Key Points:
• Hilarious BlendTec “Will it blend” YouTube videos
• Premise: a blender that can blend anything
• Showed videos of blending iPhones, sneakers, glow sticks, etc.
• Exponential increase in sales

Why do I like it?
• Silly, easy to remember
• Daring
• Great demonstration of product benefit
• Novel idea in taking a calculated risk
• Very shareable with my friends

#shitmydadsays
Platform: Twitter

Key Points:
• Featured on Jay Leno and David Letterman
• Celebrity followers, cult following
• Started August 3, 2009
• 1,134,762 followers in less than a year
• Only 98 tweets to date

Why do I like it?
• It’s open, honest and feels real
• Simple and funny
• I can share it with my friends.
• There’s no corporation tied to this campaign – it’s just a regular guy who became popular by simple fate, luck, and the power of a good idea
• Gives me inspiration that anyone can be successful if they just try out their ideas

Maybe these approaches to social media aren’t right for all brands, but there’s much to be said for watching the pros in action.

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Budweiser wins Super Bowl XLIV!

Media Release
February 8, 2010 by Dave Hamilton

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, February 8, 2010.

THE NEWS
Budweiser wins Super Bowl XLIV.

THE DETAILS
Budweiser Canada and its agency, Grip Limited of Toronto, scored a big social media win on Super Bowl Sunday.

In a first for Canadian marketers, Budweiser created four different 15-second spots that leveraged the Bud Plane Flight Attendants, driving consumers to Facebook for a chance to win the first row of seats aboard the Bud Plane to next year’s Super Bowl XLV. The promotion ran only on game day. And the winner was announced immediately following the game.

The Bud Plane and Super Bowl activation are well-established assets for Budweiser (60+ lucky fans earned their way to South Florida for the game this year), but the social media one-day-only promotion was a first for the brand and for Grip.

“The promotion began at 12:01 am on Sunday, but the real traction came after the first spot aired,” says Adam Luck, Director, Interactive. A fact that dialed up urgency but defies conventional wisdom about seed times for contest communication.

THE RESULTS
• 30,000+ new fans of Budweiser on Facebook in one day.
• 126,000+ total fans of Budweiser on Facebook.
• Thousands of contest entrants.
• 1 very happy client.
• 1 very exhausted technical team.
• 1 very excited winner (and three of their friends).

Grip’s Superbowl XLIV activation for Budweiser enabled the brand to reclaim its title as the largest Facebook beer page in Canada.

ABOUT GRIP LIMITED
Grip Limited is a Toronto-based integrated communications company providing expertise in advertising, design and digital. Services include strategy and planning, creative development and production for traditional and non-traditional media, brand identity and package design. Grip’s coveted client roster includes: AB-InBev, Honda Canada Inc., Boehringer Ingelheim, Expedia.ca, Cadbury and Johnson & Johnson. The company is privately held. For more information, visit www.bigorangeslide.com

MEDIA CONTACT
Dave Hamilton, Partner – Creative • (416) 340-7111

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The iPhad

Design
February 5, 2010 by Jacoub Bondre

How Apple’s hot new tablet misses the boat.

Unless you’ve been hiding under an iRock for the past year, you already know that Apple’s got a brand new bag. It’s called the “iPad.” It’s about the size of a small diary. And it’s supposed to be an e-reader and netbook in one, only better.

Apple touts this as its “most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device . . .”

If you watch the product launch keynote, or the promotional video on their site, you could be forgiven for believing they have just unleashed a new technology that will revolutionize the world in the same way the personal computer has.

When I first heard Apple was releasing a tablet, visions of a device similar in nature to the sleek and slim MacBook Air, except a tablet with a really nice stylus, danced in my head. Could this be the perfect computer for the creative mind?

Unfortunately, my hopes were dashed last week when Apple unveiled its tablet.

My first thought was, “Wow – ‘iPad’ – what an unfortunate name.”

My second thought was that it seemed to be an iPod Touch that doesn’t fit in your pocket. The more I learned about the device, the more that impression was confirmed.

So, is it a good product? Depends on what you’re looking for. Here’s my list of iPad hits and misses, divided into “Smarts” and “Stupids”:

Smart – Apps:
Whether the iPad is a “real” computer or not, having access to the Apple App Store is smart. I rarely buy new software for my computers. I used to think it was because I had what I needed and that was it. But after having an iPhone for quite some time I realized it was more about access. And if I had access to cheap novelty apps as a built-in mechanism on my MacBook, it would be making fart sounds 24-7.

Stupid – No multitasking
So there is Steve Jobs, sitting on a couch, talking about how fun and productive you can be using your iPad. Checking email, surfing the web . . . but not at the same time. If you want to come close to competing with netbooks, you need multitasking.

Stupid – No full-featured web browser
Mr. Jobs (which seems like an appropriate name right now) also claimed that it was the best web browsing experience, period. Really?! No third-party plug-in support. No Unity. No Flash. Nothing? 33% of web content is Flash. I’d hardly call not being able to access 33% of the web “the best experience.” Not to mention the lack of support for Hulu (Flash Player). When I was living in The Big Apple (see what I did there?), all my TV viewing was done during lunch watching Hulu, along with millions of other Americans. No Flash = no Hulu = :-(

Smart – iBooks
This goes back to my comment about accessibility to product. The iBook store will make finding and buying books easier than ever. And when something is easy to do, humans will tend to do it. Even when we shouldn’t.

Smart – Same hardware as iPhone
By using the same processor and other hardware elements that the iPhone and iPod Touch use, Apple was able to keep costs on the product low. Given that the product is larger in dimension, Apple was also able to cram in a bigger battery to power low-demand hardware. This translates into impressive battery life. But still not as good as the Kindle.

Stupid – Same hardware as iPhone
Really?! Here is the most anticipated product launch since the iPhone. A product that your customers want as a Notebook/Netbook alternative. And you give it a phone’s CPU? You can’t run anything of substance on it! It is just not powerful enough. It feels like Steve has created something for himself here, not considering the needs and wants of his customers.

Smart – iTunes for movies and TV
The biggest barrier that I have had to buying TV shows and movies from iTunes has been not having a comfortable venue to watch said shows. And I’ll be damned if I buy yet another piece of electronics and attach it to my TV (AppleTV, hello?). Having access to iTunes, a comfortable chair, and an iPad is an intriguing prospect.

Smart – Its screen
Having a big, bright colourful screen will be a bonus to many people. That screen will make movie buying and watching worthwhile.

Stupid – Its screen
If one of the reasons Apple wants you to buy an iPad is to read books, then they should have used a screen technology that is easier on the eyes. The Kindle and Sony Reader’s ePaper screens reflect light similar to paper, so they reduce eye strain.

Stupid – Not a real computer/no stylus or pen
The iPad is not a real computer. What I mean by that is that it is not a full-service operating system. It doesn’t have a full-powered CPU, with proper inputs and outputs (USB). People were looking for a real computer. People were looking for a lightweight Apple alternative to a netbook. What they got was literally an oversized iPhone – except it doesn’t fit in your pocket, and you can’t make a phone call with it. It doesn’t even have a stylus or handwriting recognition. What good is a tablet you can’t write or draw on? The only benefit you get from this device being a tablet is that it is nice to hold.

Stupid – Its name
The “iPad” . . . Really?! What about this device is pad like? Is it like a landing pad? A pad of paper? A feminine hygiene pad? There is nothing pad-like about this product. Or is there? On top of all this, people in Massachusetts are wondering how to differentiate talking about their iPod and their iPad. (Accent joke!)

Stupid – It’s not positioned well against anything
I struggle to try to figure out what the iPad is great for. What is it positioned against? Is it a reader with added features? Well if you were going to buy a digital reader, you would likely want something that is pleasurable to read. The iPad’s bright LED screen can and will cause eye-strain. Let’s look at the iPad versus the Kindle.

iPad has video.
iPad has colour.
Kindle is easier on the eyes for reading.
Kindle is smaller and more portable.
Kindle is cheaper.

For an e-reader, advantage: Kindle.

If you are in the market for a sub-$500 Notebook or netbook, you are likely going to want something that is powerful enough to run the applications you need, and perform the functions you want it to. You would likely want something you can plug external devices into like a USB key, hard drive, or even your iPod. If we compare the iPad versus a netbook . . .

Netbooks are cheaper.
Netbooks are more powerful.
Netbooks have full browsers.
Netbooks can multi-task.
Netbooks have USB and external interfaces.
Netbooks are real computers.

For a sub-$500 computer, advantage: Netbook.

Conclusion
Overall, the iPad is on the wrong side of dull. It’s a product that tries to fill many roles, but fills all of them poorly. It is positioned between two high-demand products, without anything close to an advantage that would make the average person want to buy it.

Apple will likely sell thousands of iPads simply due to the brand following and “cool” factor of new technology. Over the long run, however, unless Apple positions themselves better in the market, I can see the iPad hurting their overall brand image.

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