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I think I first saw it when the guy across from me on the train was reading the Metro. And I was intrigued. Just what is going on there? Is that really Usain Bolt impersonating Richard Branson?! Read More »

So UK retail sales are up by a ‘whopping’ 0.6% in December.

What were we all worried about?

I think, though, that rather than high-fiving and laughing in the face of recessionary Armageddon, we should be asking ourselves questions about what we are measuring and why.

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I was prompted to write this as above our blogs is normally the commercial that Campaign deems to be Turkey of the week and this week it was the surreal Pantene ad, which pretends or intends to be a reality ad, shot in a research hot house that is a shampoo laboratory. My proposition is why didn’t someone say along the way – somewhere between inception and board room unveiling – “are we sure about this?”

The media business and life are littered with examples of an idea or product that just doesn’t work, and every industry has one.

Here are my top favourites.

The Beagle bouncing Mars explorer ball, that bounced all around Mars- and as far as we know still bouncing.

There are some cracking digital posters out there now,love the Ocean ones at Hammersmith,however on the left hand side of the M4 elevated section going west is an enormous poster for Ricoh which I think is a photocopying company – so on that level communications mission complete.
On the negative side it boasts to be the first solar powered wind powered poster in the world except that it can’t be, rarely is there more than one turbine turning and the clock beneath the logo never on. It does when dark however shine like a beacon visible from at least Reading – is it plugged in?

Steve Mclaren and England.

Madonna’s new movie WE – just wait, if you go you’ll think “Hey why did no one say something. Anyone – the editor, distributor, the exhibitor?” someone probably did and got sacked.

John Prescot’s M4 lane.

OnDigital. No not the concept that lives on alive and well with Freeview whose value now lies with Channel rentals. No I mean the name. I was lucky enough not to be directly involved, I always admired Michael Green’s ambition despite so many barriers to success. Weak transmission, crap boxes that frequently froze, an awesome competitor in Sky etc.

However, one thing you could effect was the name. It was very kind of the new company to invite a couple of us from the old world (basically Mick Desmond and me) down to the unveiling of the brand name of the platform that would save our skins in the new world.

Anyway after much pre-research naming type talk from the marketing fellow of the day the curtains were pulled back (figuratively speaking) and there in all its glory was the name …… ON – yep ON. “You can clap!” the marketing chap enthused – golly he earned his pay….. Why did no one say something ?

Any Lenny Henry comedy.

Finally, Westminster Council and the night time parking fiasco. Imagine the scene ……. Council meeting someone pipes up ” I’ve got a good idea let’s totally cheese off most of London by making it really difficult to park taking the kids to a birthday theatre treat” – “brilliant,” they all reply “that’s just the sort of thing that’ll ensure we get voted in again”. Luckily for us this time Boris and the Evening Standard did say something about it .

So what’s the conclusion? I suppose don’t listen until its to late?

Having read last week’s Close-up piece on new agency The Corner, it reminded me of iris’ early days.

What a couple of years it has been – Crayon, Chemistry, Meteorite, Karmarama, Kitcatt Nohr, Taxi and many more.

There has been a definite acceleration in the amount of interesting and talented agencies finding bigger partnerships.

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I use two tube lines The Hammersmith and City when working with Acknowledgement and the Piccadilly  line for the West End .
I discovered the tube when I left Carlton, imagine my surprise to see that below the very streets on which we walk and work somebody had built a train system – yes trains ,trains that even David Cameron and Rihanna use ;anyway these trains are rocked full of consumers,consumers consuming media.

So I thought I’d do some research independent research, research that includes Qual and Quan so sales forces can use it in pitches and research companies can use it to confuse clients.

So over the last 15 days using the five seats on the opposite side of my seated position and four on my side plus one more from another five ( ‘cus I’m in one !) I noted down the media consumption very day on the am journey. The more frenetic pm trip I’ll leave for another time.

To merge the data across the two lines was tricky so on the Hammersmith line I excluded anyone travelling to a station using the qualitative method of if he or she was pulling a hostess bag or sweating whilst frequently looking at a watch they were excluded ie on their way to a departing overground .
Likewise on the Piccadilly line I excluded any one who may have alighted at Heathrow Qual was again used here this time my exclusions were anyone wearing flip flops,staring too intently at the tube map or carrying one of those oversized blue shiny Ikea bags tied up with string.

So here are the quantitative results all based on the % travellers of those ten seats doing something .

30% Metro
30% Smartphone – tapping on keys or headphones in
20% Kindle/iPad
10% Bored  no eye contact mid air mid carriage vacant stare
5% Book
5% City AM/Sunday Times Section at least up to Tuesday .

There are a few observations :

Metro pretty static every day at 30%
Generally more Kindles than iPads
More females with Kindle and books.
Mostly blokes  tapping on their smartphones
Stuck in tunnel consumption intensity off the scale !

The conclusion for me are :

1. It seems that post signal cutting out Metro and City Am  is the  only place ads are being consumed ( excluding the phone India for tupppence Tube cards )

2.New gismos enhance the no eye contact expereience

3.Kindle/ipad on the grow – Important to get consumers to download Digital Print pre office for ad consumption.

Oh ,and I never saw Rihanna but did bump into Bob Mullins on my final research day exit.

You can’t fail to have noticed that some of the biggest names on the web have come out against the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and it’s twin sister Protect IP Act (PIPA).

Critics claim that if passed, these Acts will destroy freedom on the Internet. This may well be true, but so far SOPA/PIPA have been great for creativity.

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The Artist, a film directed by Micheal Hazanavicius, is brilliant.

It’s a brave film in that it flies in the face of convention, it’s beautifully directed and tells an engaging story. But it does so without any dialogue. Even the musical numbers are mute and we never actually hear the voice of Peggy Miller, the young starlet whose career takes off in the ‘talkies’ as an entertainer. We never hear the flirtatious chat between her and George Valentin, the Douglas Fairbanks look-alike leading man because it doesn’t exist – other than in a few inter-title boards.

And the film has even more impact because all the bright colourful glitzy backgrounds depicted in the film are in black and white.

The absence of sound and colour leaves room for our imagination to make connections that make the experience so much compelling. Like walking at nighttime in a forest, our senses become alert to much more. The subtle (and not so subtle) references to old films (Singing in the Rain, Citizen Kane and Hitchcock’s Vertigo), comedic homages to Chaplin and a charming scene where Peggy slips her arm into Valentin’s jacket and caresses herself which I first saw in Slava’s Snow Show are playful and help to convey a cinematic richness that means you don’t miss the absence of ‘glorious technicolour’.

It’s a great lesson for us. Creatively we strive for ‘less is more’ but rarely achieve it. Yet neurologists have proved we are more receptive emotionally than rationally. By shutting down one channel of information and encouraging our audiences to engage with simple, yet powerful feelings about brands, rather than telling them what to think we will create more impact and messages that stay in their minds far longer.

What’s really interesting about The Artist is how clearly I felt every nuance of the character’s conversations and can still remember them despite the fact no words were ever spoken.

Last week I went to a fascinating talk by Mark Earl’s basically paraphrasing his latest book “I’ll have what she’s having” – mapping social behaviour.

In the first place it reminded us of the reassuringly familiar human condition –  we are social animals that take cues from each other and behave in ways that align ourselves to certain cohorts, be that through copying behaviour or gravitating to like-minded people.  So far so human.

But he also put this into the modern context using a kind of check-list of ways to consider your marketing strategy in language that is pertinent to the modern “social media” space.

I put that in quotes because, having worked in data driven marketing for, ahem, some time, marketers have been creating and trying to influence ‘social’ groups for as long as I can remember. It’s just that we had to guess much more then than we need to now about what is a natural social group and what we can, as marketers, do to influence them.

In “my beginning” there were the Mosaic & Acorn Geo-demographic groupings created in the eighties that ruled. The entire premise of these was that ‘birds of a feather flock together’ – it’s just that at that time, the only data we had available to identify these birds of a feather were details about where they lived and a little bit of Census data. So we had to create our own proxy ‘social groups’ and direct our marketing at them, making sure our branding appeared where we thought they’d be, go through the media channels we thought they’d be consuming and make sure we made a wise choice between Corrie and Emmerdale Farm.  And in doing so, hope we prompted enough thought provoking messages about our product that they’d talk about it and recommended it to each other, socially.

The next evolution was taking what was then called attitudinal data (what they said in surveys), and behavioural data (what they bought) and grouping people in that way. The purchase data might seem to be an intrinsically individual, rather than social, form of targeting. The reality however is that much of our marketing was still based on groups, or segments, that we pushed messages out to, it’s just that we overlaid individually pertinent messages at key times.  We called it “CRM”, you’ve probably heard of it. It’s a bit passé now, we’re trying to jazz it up by using digital browsing behaviour.

And now, as well as knowing where they live and what they buy, we know who their friends are and what they think. Because they post it online. So we at Albion Cell are always looking to navigate more destinations for our communications strategy, and take more time understanding where we are pleasing or displeasing our consumers & potential consumers.  So it means that those who would traditionally think of themselves as brand marketers are getting to play in the data space too. And all power to them.

The clear approach in this book to Social Media marketing is great. I’m not going to tell you what it is, you have to buy the book for that – the man’s got to earn his living.

But, the principles of companies trying effect change on their consumers’ behaviour haven’t changed. Don’t flatter yourself that you’re creating a ‘social’ group  – in most instances, as a marketer or brand, you will almost always be using the data knowledge you gain to facilitate an online manifestation of an existing social group. Which is great – putting your brand behind a forum of likeminded people can only be good if they are on your side.  But at the end of the day, it’s just another means of making sure you are where they and their friends are, so they talk about you in a nice way. Like the Bistro/Wine bars of 1990’s.

I feel like I can’t look anywhere at the moment without seeing price trumpeted for good or ill. From advertisements about energy price drops to the tale of Tesco, it’s in the news, in my Twitter feed and in my ad breaks. Read More »

This social media thing is all the rage isn’t it. If we were all confused before about integration and the impact of digital on our businesses we are doomed now.

I can’t think of a client we have that doesn’t need or use some form of social media in their day to day existence.

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