Goodby’s cab test (part 2)
What brand do you think is most in need of a makeover and why?
When blogs die
Wall of Same
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Consumer: unplugged
At the end of last summer, my friend Nick and I went deep-woods canoe camping. We packed our gear and headed for Killarney Provincial Park about 20 minutes south of Sudbury. Just two GTA guys portaging in the Canadian Shield – it was us against the wilderness and technology wasn’t invited.
It wasn’t so much that technology wasn’t welcome as it just was simply impossible because of the very NATURE (see what I did there?) of where we were. So the phones, usually our lifeline to anyone not within 20 feet of us, were left in the car for the four-day, three-night excursion.
In the end I left the park with a clearer and more relaxed state of mind than I can remember enjoying in a long, long time. But nothing could prepare me for the backlash we would encounter from friends when we got back to the car and recharged our phones.
I was inundated with over two-dozen missed calls and even more texts, and when I got home I had people looking for me on Facebook and Twitter whom I hadn’t talked to in weeks! Turns out that when you don’t share with people in your network that you’re going to disappear off the grid for a few days (a huge social gaffe on our parts in the first place), rumours like the recent ones surrounding Gordon Lightfoot’s “death” start surfacing everywhere.
Our personal “brands” live and die by the technology we’re wired into 24/7 through the radio, the web, TV, newspapers and magazines, and most of all, our cell phones. Taking a couple of days off is akin to dead air for a TV station – unthinkable.
It’s staggering when one stops to contemplate how immersed we consumers are in the gadgets and gizmos we’ve created just to stay connected to the media mainframe. And whether those means are used for entertainment, news, buying or selling, staying connected to one another, or just spreading rumours, it’s worth stepping back every once in a while to get some perspective.
But not for too long, or people might just start thinking you’re dead.
Drifting toward predictable results
A mote of dust floating isolated in a glass of water will move randomly in every direction, buffeted by the natural motion of its surroundings. Over time, however, those random movements will compound into a significant drift in a certain direction. Physicists study this phenomenon and call it “The Drunkard’s Walk,” but that averaged, long-term movement in a particular direction is something much more important to the marketing world: it’s a trend.
In his book The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, Leonard Mlodinow introduces and explores this and other theories of randomness and statistics that affect our lives and then applies those theories to everyday situations.
Mlodinow demonstrates and discounts common fallacies when it comes to judging random chance. In advertising, one of the biggest quandaries is the extent to which we should rely on statistics and trends. Though it’s true that a random sampling of the population will sometimes represent the greater whole, Mlodinow references a study of preference in musical tastes that confounds the very idea of how we gather data: focus grouping.
Essentially, a team of researchers set up a microsite in which several groups of test subjects could listen to the same 40 tracks by completely unknown artists, rate them, and then read reviews and post their own. In each of these groups, the reviews and ratings could only be read by members of the same group.
Our intuition tells us that over a large enough sampling, each of the smaller communities would show the same tracks as most popular, or there would at least be a noticeable correlation among the highest rated songs. Instead, they found wildly differing results—that a track rated #1 in one community could be rated #40 in another—and they were lost as to why such an anomaly had formed.
As it turns out, the populations in their groups weren’t even following their own tastes, because songs that started out popular in certain groups tended to continue to be popular based entirely on the tastes and reviews of others. People weren’t judging, they were subconsciously following the trend.
If we had been privy to just one of those groups, however, we would have assumed a pattern and considered the top song to be just that—the song that would be most popular overall. But we would be wrong.
Anyone looking to drive consumers to their brand could consider these unpredictable, unknown variables as a setback. After all, if the future is unforeseeable and chance is inescapable, how can we be sure that we’ll be successful? Well, we can’t. But knowing that—and accepting it—is the first step to making that setback a positive result.
We shouldn’t rely too heavily on our statistics, because we must always consider the unpredictability of human nature when we consider the predictability of success. Mathematicians and physicists may try to predict the path of a particle in a fluid suspension, but a mote of dust is a mote of dust. When dealing with human trends, the future is even more uncertain.
Why I love/hate Terry O’Reilly
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.
Status saturation
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.”
Even better than The Real Shaq
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.
Best of January
You hit “refresh” like a thousand times a day, and yet you still managed to miss a couple of last month’s posts? Not to worry. For your convenience, a selection of January’s best:
Grip interviews: Kevin Lynch – by Dave Hamilton
Some people are born smart, funny and handsome. Kevin Lynch might be one of them. If not, he’s doing a great job of faking it.
Social media in healthcare marketing – by Ravi Dindayal and Holly Broome
How is one of marketing’s most highly regulated branches – healthcare – supposed to navigate social media? Two Grip staffers offer this insightful 9-page report.
The digital “why?” – by Jacoub Bondre
More than traditional, interactive advertising needs to create its own value proposition for the consumer. Find out why.
Vinyl comes full circle – by David Faris
Records are back. So what’s behind the trend, and are there implications for other media? One of our most Retweeted posts to date.
Mobile flexes fundraising muscle – by Patrick Robinson
When Haiti got hit hard, fast-thinking cell phone carriers helped Canadians send cash. Robinson breaks down the numbers.
What’s Anton wearing? – by Haley Fiege
Grip’s best-dressed man endures the envy of his peers. With style.
Thanks for reading. There’s much more to come in February. And if you want more than that, you can follow Big Orange Slide on Twitter. Here.
What’s Anton wearing?
Anton Ratinsky is an Art Director and possibly the best dressed person here at Grip Limited. (Sorry Bob Goulart.) While the rest of us in the creative department are kicking it in flip flops and jeans, Anton routinely shows up in immaculately pressed pants and ties, perfectly chosen to match from his vast collection. (25 ties and counting!)
We documented Anton’s looks for a week and then asked some other slightly less well-healed Grip staffers to weigh in:
Blog watching
Prescriptive marketing solutions. Everybody wants them. The marketing blogs have them. Some recent cases in point:
• What’s The #1 problem most brands have? Consistency. That’s according to Mitch Joel at TwistImage. “The brands that master consistency win. Especially when that consistency happens on top of a product or service that people love (and will talk about).” Easier said than done? Not if you follow the handy “to-do” list he’s included.
• Then, in Amplifying complaints, Seth Godin reveals the secret to effective complaining. It involves underplaying your own suffering while proposing a solution that’ll inspire the person you’re complaining at to make things right.
• Thinking about a job change? How about “Community Manager”? The folks at the Three Minds blog say it’s a role on the rise. “This role may be an ideal career succession for out-of-work copywriters or journalists because many already possess the key components of being a community manager…” Sounds like a trick. Maybe not though, because they’ve included a checklist to help you through your interview.
• And finally, Mark Nicholson at the Canadian Marketing Blog has christened 2010 The Year of Online Branding. He says we should expand our thinking of online marketing past websites, online ads and social media to “online branding,” paying special attention to search. “The bad name SEO has received with its infiltration of snake oil salesmen has left a bad taste in the mouths of many. But passing it over is like leaving money on the table. In fact, it’s the most likely source of traffic and stands to be one of the biggest contributors to your online branding efforts.”
