Uneven Distribution.

Channel-less advertising.

August 7th, 2008

I didn’t start this blog to gather a massive swag of subscribers, I started it as a place to write down my thoughts on the digital space, and hopefully get some conversations going with a few of the very smart people I’m lucky enough to know. So I was immensely surprised (and just a little bit chuffed) to open my Google Reader last weekend and see marketing and brand guru Gavin Heaton on his Servant of Chaos blog talking about my “Why aren’t we creating great digital work?” post. If you haven’t read Gavin’s blog, go read it now (and subscribe to his feed while you’re there).

Gavin makes some great points and evolves some of the ideas in my original post into well considered, logical thoughts. My original post was actually written for an article in B&T that was a reaction to Harold Mitchell and others’ comments at Ad:Tech that Media is owning creative in the digital space. It’s also 4 months old, and to continue the conversation I thought I would revisit some of the ideas from my post and also pick up and run with some of Gavin’s comments.

Going back to basics first. Why do brands need agencies? I’m sure Bill Bernbach or David Ogilvie or Leo Burnett have some deep and insightful answer to this question, but to me brands need agencies because:

• We are experts in communicating clearly with consumers.

• They are experts at creating products.

This was a simple concept to grasp in the past. There was a clear delineation between the brand creating a product, and that product being marketed to the consumer. Advertising often bent the truth; ads appeared mostly in broadcast media; finite broadcast space meant there were a small number of brands that could be successful and recognisable globally; and the consumer had no way to talk back. It was a one-way street, one that we’ve now obviously done a sharp left from, to enter a multi-lane freeway.

So why don’t agencies seem to be getting it right now we’re off the one-way street? In my original article I talked about three things: lack of skills and knowledge within agencies, difficulty in convincing and educating clients, and a lack of an integrated process. These are still the key areas we need to improve on, however the final point could probably now be elevated to a more top-line idea. We need to rethink why a brand needs an advertising agency, and then we can start talking about integration and better process. The result of this, is that channels are no longer as relevant.

In his post, Gavin said we need to “…think about how best we can amplify, enable and transform the experiences that consumers have with brands“. This idea should be the starting point for any big agency that really wants to be integrated (and if anyone is reading this and thinking they are at a big integrated agency, trust me, you’re not).

Advertising has evolved beyond communicating product benefits to consumers in clever and memorable ways. We have become the custodians of the brands. And if we want to survive, we need to actually have the capabilities in place to achieve this. A brand extends out through myriad ways to reach the consumer. We used to work only in the channels of broadcast, DM, outdoor, print and in-store, in relatively short lived campaigns. If we want to become custodians of the brand we need to have a long-term brand strategy, and then take ownership of shaping that brand, particularly in the digital space.

Once we move beyond the campaign and channel mentality we can be going out and listening to consumers, responding to them, and working with our clients to actually respond to consumers and grow amazing brands. That does, admittedly, sound like marketing rhetoric, but the truth is that it is now possible for any brand to become amazing. Where before broadcast channels limited ‘amazing’ brands to the Marlboros, Cokes, Fords and Nikes, the digital world now means any brand can become a legend in their own market.

Responding at a channel-less level means we simply communicate in whatever the most effective method is. It still could be broadcast or print or DM, but at the same time it could be via blogs, social networks, or even integrating right into call centres. The end result is that channels are no longer so relevant, they are simply an output through which we communicate, and through the consumer is able to respond.

Postscript: To the marketers about to go mental about the suggestion that ad agencies could become the custodians of their brand, don’t think that this means you are irrelevant. Marketers are still the ones who should dictate and understand the brand, what the agencies should be doing is communicating that to the consumer, and then communicating back to you what consumers are saying. No one will ever understand your brand like you do, but the agencies will continue to be the ones who know how to talk to consumers about it.

Cultural Integration

July 12th, 2008

The quickest way to stop noticing something may be to buy it. - Alain De Botton, Status Anxiety.

That’s somewhat of a generalisation, but for a broad spectrum of consumer products today there is at least some truth in it. There is an undeniable decrease in the excitement of owning a product after you have bought it. This is essentially due to advertising, and in the past this is principally how brands created much of the value in their products (particularly premium brands). But in the digital space, this aspirational marketing is not as effective.

The iPhone launched yesterday, a product for which Alain De Botton’s statement certainly doesn’t apply. After you’ve bought an iPhone, you won’t stop noticing it, rather it will become a central part of your identity.

In these cases, we are purchasing the intangible element of the product as much as the product itself. We are essentially buying an extension-pack for our personal cultural identity.

Marketers need to start paying more attention to these intangible qualities. There is no longer a need to talk about product benefits, consumers go elsewhere for that (and the last place they would go is to the brand). The strongest and most easily created intangible is the myth of your product. What marketers (and their agencies) therefore need to be doing is creating cultural significance in their products.

At the extreme of this cultural significance, your product attains celebrity status. While a few have come close to this, the iPhone is really the first product to attain celebrity status in western culture. But that sort of celebritism is immensely rare, and a large portion can’t be created through advertising and marketing. What is possible, is using advertising to make your product a small part of culture. Give your product it’s 15 minutes of fame.

The first, and hardest, way is by becoming part of the cultural vernacular through direct association. Apple did this with the iPod, and now the iPhone. Somewhat easier to execute are ideas like Sprite Truth Hunters, and Will it Blend. These feature often tenuous links to the product, but an idea that can become ingrained in culture nevertheless (and I can see the insight which got them to that point). And finally we have those completely random ideas that manage to achieve super-meme status regardless of the dissonance between the idea and the product (Mentos + Diet Coke, and more recently (and brilliantly) Sprint’s Sell Out).

What made all of these examples successful was that there was a sticky idea that was unique to the product, but not necessarily linked to the product. In some cases the idea was ingrained in the product’s function or benefit or a consumer insight, but in other cases the idea is a long way from any logical relationship with the product. This is important because a logical relationship simply doesn’t matter. The consumer doesn’t care. If your idea is cool, they will pass it on. No one visited Subservient Chicken and then thought to themselves “I would love to pass this on to my friends, but I just don’t see the connection to Burger King’s brand values or the unique product benefits, so I won’t”.

Make your product culturally significant, and suddenly you’ll find you stop shouting at consumers. And they’ll stop wanting to punch you in the face.

Postscript: The advertising industry over the past few years has been all about ‘integration’. To a lot of people, this simply meant bolting a digital component onto their agency. Integration is in fact far more about creating advertising across all channels that generates cultural significance for whatever you’re advertising. The reason digital is often mistaken as the key to integration is because it is digital that enables those culture-creating communications.

Title photo by Hugh McLeod of Gaping Void