Licence to Roam

Frank Kelly is the CEO of Arnold US and has written a book ‘The Breakaway Brand – How Great Brands Stand Out’. However, I found his talk about using interactive to help build brands extremely frustrating, with multiple asides and exclamation marks in my notes as he said something that I disagreed with or just left me baffled. (I’ll add those in to the notes as I go through). As the person next to me said, he was obviously selling his book but not necessarily giving any real insights into interactive usage. He’s CEO of an agency that has dome some great interactive work but he’s the CEO – I’m not sure that indepth understanding is within his remit. The first half of the talk was about branding in general before moving onto interactive. Again notes are taken as fast as i could, paraphrasing where necessary.
Building Breakaway Brands in an Interactive World

Companies aspire to get their brands to a great place and the book looks at 50 brands that great.

The web is the greatest development in marketing since TV; there’s unbelievable potential but lots of problems. You have to understand it but by focusing on many small details, on building a better heart monitor, we may end up blowing up the hospital.

To be a breakaway brand you have to be in a category of one, you have to be different. Interactive is a growing influence in building a brand. 15% of Arnold employees are digital specialists; for their biggest 20 clients these specialists sit in the service teams, not in a separate team.

You have to understand how the brand is different and then execute to drive the brand away from the competition. Interactive currrently has aound $16billion out of an industry of $300billion so there is a plenty of growth available.

The disaggregated model make sit harder to get a breakaway brand as all elements need to work together. You have to have a core idea against which all activity is executed. A good example would be Dove, Campaign for Real Beauty. The best campaigns often come from such simple insights.

Marketing has moved from building businesses to building brands and is now building communities. The two key elements in any campaign are TV and the web; you need to focus on how they work together, along with all the other channels. (The conference chair later made a comment about how three years ago they were doing sessions about convincing people that the web was an important component so was pleased that a CEO was now saying it was key)

We now move into the core of the talk, where Fran goes through 7 areas where he thinks the web really helps drive brands.

Building Commuity

Interactive is best for this. Three examples his agency has worked on – Royal Caribbean Cruises, Timberland and VW.

This section was the one that most annoyed me. There was no talk about how these sites build community; from the examples and from the text, it seemed to be that building community was equated with building a interactive site that engages people and gets them to spend time on the site. Not encouraging interaction and feedback amongst brand fans and back and forth with the brand which is where I’d put building community.

Driving Results

Examples – Google and Vonage. Both of these have used the web to successfully drive results and drive brands. Google is a $140billion idea and Vonage uses brilliant segmentation to drive targeted advertising.

Google is a web company and of course needs the web to drive the results. Google search was used as the key example that drives the results as opposed to the contextual ads which were the key to driving revenue. Again, the example driven did not illustrate the point enough for me.

Stretching Budgets
Example: theTruth.com Truth funding has reduced from $100m to $25m. !0 years ago 80% of their advertising was on TV, now it is only 20% and they are using the web to drive most of their message and stretch their budget. The site is continuosly changed and updated to keep it fresh

Here’s an example I agree with. The web is great for making more of your budget when it comes to engagement (if you are not necessarily after mass reach) And the site itself looks perfectly targeted, at ‘young, disaffected teeens’. As he says, the teens who are likely to be affected by the ‘talk to your children/talk to your parents’ message are unlikely to actually be the ones the need the message!

Respecting the Channel

examples – two commercials that were used on abc.com online programming. You cannot just repurpose the TV ads for this, both the ads were specially created and were effective.

Although this is not a reason why the web is good (which most of the rest are) it is a reason why you need to think differently and cannot just use it as an extension of TV or print but have to think holistically about the whole campaign and how all the parts fit together

Building Loyalty

Examples: thetruth.com and espn.com. Tracking has shown that people can spend 10-45 mins on thetruth.

Is he measuring engagement and interest or loyalty. The first is about how long someone may stay on your site exploring it; the second is about return rates (for a website at least)? the principle is sound, the explanation is poor.

Brand Modernisation

Example talbots. A classic clothes brand (catalog) that has used the web to improve sales. the web is its fastest growing and most profitable of its biusiness. the web shopper has higher purchase and lower return rates than the catologue shoppers.

He gives a good example of a retailer that has used the web effectively to maintain and grow sales in a world that no longer relies on printed media for its at home purchases. But does this modernise the brand. Does beng on the web mean that a brand is hip and with it? No, it does not, it’s reality of marketing today that you often need to be on the web but being on the web is not a short cut to modernisation.

Disintegration vs Integration

The great brands see all the channels pulled together, it’s part of the whole campaign not treated as something different.

Again agree. But can also see the place where the web is great to try out the outer reaches of the brand message.

And that was the end of the speach. Writing it up I’m still frustrated and annoyed. Kelly is a successful speaker about building brands and building great brands. The book itself is supposed to be good. But he hit all the wrong buttons with me, not really explaingin his points.

One more to go ‘taking control of UGC’. Happily, the panel were more realistic than the title.

Nissan have been runing some interesting commercials this week, to promote the new (I assume it is new) Nissan Sentra. Marc Horowitz has blogged his story - it was last week – and explains the rules.

1. I must live 7 straight days out of my Sentra. I am free to come and go from the Sentra as I please.
2. I must not return to my apartment at any point during the 7 days.
3. I must assume my normal day-to-day responsibilities including work and all scheduled client meetings.
4. I must personally prepare at least 4 meals within the immediate vicinity of my Sentra.
5. I must go on at least one date. Hopefully more.
6. I must not let anyone else drive my car for the 7 days.
7. I must sleep in a different location each night. Once the location is chosen I must not move from it.
8. I must not set foot outside of my car for any reason from 12am to 5am.
9. I must host at least 2 social functions in my Sentra. One must be on or after Day 6.
10. I must maintain the highest standards of personal hygiene.

The last one is curious, as he only thought he needed three pairs of underwear for the week!  Maybe this is why Nissan put a disclaimer on the link to the blog about not necessarily agreeing within everything said
The car industry was mentioned today as one of the areas that is embracing integrated marketing and this is a good example.  I’m not sure where else this is – definitely online ads, not seen it elsewhere, but I like it.

Today, I spent some time at the IAB ‘Agency Summit’ which looked at interactive advertising. I took notes of a few of the sessions, the first being a look at Total Communications Planning. The panel comprised of:

Bob DeSena, Managing Partner – Director of Active Engagement, Mediaedge:cia
Louis Jones, EVP, Managing Director, Media Contacts
Maria Mandel, Partner, Executive Director – Digital Innovation, OgilvyInteractive
Moderator: Mike Donahue, EVP, AAAA

The notes I took are verbatim or sumarised when the talking came too fast.

Mike: Can I ask the panelists to define TCP?

Maria: It’s a paradigm shift in marketing, moving from a content-centric push channel to a consumer-centric pull channel, where you plan around the user’s day, plan around the touchpoints.

Louis: the definition is still being written and there’s still a way to go. It’s changing all the while. Data and measurement help round out the picture.

Bob: Data is one of the key skills missing in TCP in many agencies. TCP is 21st century marketing and starts with the consumer. It needs a creative core, we run the risk of being too specialised and do not take a holistic view. A new model that needs a new way of thinking.

Mike: Do you think clients have the urgency to change?

Louis: Yes; they are interested in a single voice that resonates through the channels, but in practice this is difficult due to client/agency structures. Marketeers are beginning to change but still a way to go.

Mike: How are digital practictioners coming at TCP?

Maria: Everything is moving digital now; currently 50%, moving towards 80% in a few years. All channels move towards it; it comes down to the fundamentals of marketing.

Mike: How good is the measurement of TCP?

Bob: there’s some, but it’s disparate, oftne proprietary. In the end it all leads to sales but there are no standards – they are being worked on. But this is not a new metric to replace the old but is about understanding that this is a whole new world. We need to move away from transferring the old points of reference (TV/print) to the new one (the first TV was just radio with a camera pointed at it). We need to target better, to move closer to the consumer. the principles of marketing are the same but we need to increase the depth.

Mike: Do companies recognise the importance of opening their data up?

Louis: We keep pushing it, some do. The sales feeds is a key to understanding behaviour.

Mike: Are non-retail clients data driven?

Maria: Yes. Digital allows you to measure more than before. All clients now need/want data and agencies are evolving to match their needs.

Mike: Do you rely on the agency or the client for analytics?

Bob: We have our own specialists and rely on outsourcing much to other third party specialists. The skillsets are not at the clients to manage the databases, to build targeting algorithms and still a long way to go with database mining.

Mike:Are clients organised for TCP?

Maria: We are still trying to figure it out on both sides. There is blurring between the advertising and content model; it is difficult when the creative and the media buyers are separate.

Mike: How do you suggest clients organise?

Louis: you deal with what you have on a case by case basis. Client organisation does impact what you deliver; you have to set objectives/goals and describe the journey and work around the organisation issues.

Mike: should it be an aggregated or disaggregated model?

Maria: A disaggregated model can work if someone from the client pulls it all together but this is often difficult to do so an aggregated model may be easier to get the pull.

Louis: Aggregated is hard to pull off. You need specialists, it’s difficult to do everything. There’s always new things. Pulling it all together is a skill.

Bob: someone has to co-ordinated. Aggregated and disaggregated are just along a spectrum, you have to have a co-ordinator. You have to connect across the channels with the what and the how and organisation can help or hinder but it still has to happen.

My take:

From this (and others) I never got clarity about what type of online marketing they were talking about – is it advertising on others’ sites, using RM data to target users or building their own properties. Despite the talk about pull media, this panel still focused on the client/agency controlled model even if the touchpoints have fractured and the user is slighly more in control about when they see advertising.

The panellist recognised the difficulties involved in both agencies and clients in moving towards a integrated model but no-one had real answers to combine mass with targeting. The lack of measurement and standards is one I face all the time, espcially when combining it with more traditional methods so we do have to challenge some comparisons that are made. No major insights came out of this for me.

Appletiser (from Coca-Cola) have a timewasting game ready for you to play – and if you are lucky you can win a diamond. Based on a cross between Tetris and another desktop game (whose name I never got but I played a lot) you get a chance to play the game and then enter a prize draw for a diamond bracelet. You don’t actually have to play the game – of you start it and then click Quit it takes you to the entry form anyway.

Unlike many sites I’ve seen it does offer an obvious text only method of entering the competions, with out having to use the flash entry form. The text version gives a link which allows you just to email your entry (although it appears their tems and conditions don’t quite allow this)

I like the new piece of functionality and guidance from the Tate.

Tate has devised a new way of looking at the Displays with a range of themed ‘Collections’. These suggest a number of personal journeys you could take, reflecting different moods and enthusiasms and revealing the extraordinary breadth of work on show.

It gives you some collections set up already but it also allows you to set up your own collection, although currently from a limited selection of art. Choose your favourites, add you commentary and produce your own leaflet to guide you or your friends through the gallery.

There is still work to be done on the selection tool as it stands – you can’t see larger versions of the images, there’s no information available on the work and it won’t let you choose less than 6. You can’t comment on your choices either.

Even with these shortcomings, I like this idea and can see it expanding. Give us the chance to choose more than 6 and let us choose from the whole collection. Let me add written commentary. Furthermore, how about letting us upload our own spoken tours round the choice. Add some voting for the best tours and you increase the community around this – pick a few favourites tours, load them up on your mp3 players, print out the maps and off you go. Nice start – but will it go anywhere?

Unlike Coca-Cola, Mentos mints have embraced the idea of mixing Mentos with a variety of pops to make fountains of sticky sugar water. They are running a competition to find the best fan video, which gives the rest of us plenty of fun to watch.

But Lloyd has to do it a little different. He’s used Stormhoek wine to produce a wine fountain. There’s a video showing how to do it and the various attempts. I wonder how champagne reacts?

University College London have been researching the digital lifestyles of the British population and put them all in a nice handy tool. There are 22 categories, ranging from E-unengaged (groups that do not have access to electronic communications or technologies) to e-experts (every confidence in their abilities to undertake on-line transactions and to make full use of electronic technologies. ) The theory is that the information can be used to help inform future policies on digital access – but of course, they could also be used to drive some advertising

The tool allows you to plug in postcodes and see what the different areas are like. And I think I’m living in the wrong place, as my area comes out as part of the E-Unengaged set – too old to be bothered. It seems to be accurate down the individual postcode, which is a group of around 50-60 houses, so it does reflect reality. I live in an ex-council flat and many of the remaining tenants are elderly.

Yesterday, Media Guardian (reg req) ran an article about Honda providing web only videos:

“This is the start of exploring different ways to provide content,” said Rebecca Tickle, the Honda account director at Wieden & Kennedy London.

This follows on from the success of Cog and Choir available. I went to take a look at the new content, but have no idea where it is, as the piece links to the home page of the website only, with no direct link appearing possible. And there’s no pointer to the new stuff. So I’ve no idea whether it’s any good or not. So they are missing a simple trick – if you have publicity about content on your site, please make sure that anyone landing on the site can find it easily.

The blog for the Sony Bravia has gone quiet over the last week, after they have finished filming – they all busy doing the editing know. There’s some great footage over on YouTube of the towerblock being covered in paint and then of the air blasts going off.

Lynx (or Axe as it ges under in most of the world) have a new campaign out. Not moving too far away from its core values, the site features lots of scantily clad women in videos and games. It also has the expected (compulsary?) user generated content competition. Load up your video of you (the expectation is that you will be male) dancing in a towel and you can win yourself and 6 of your friends your very own wash down by the promotional girls.

Following on from the You Tube change to their T&Cs, I took a look at the ones for this competition and was surprised to see that by entering you waive all ownership rights, including the right to be be identified as the author, to the work you submit. Looking at other competitions, kayak.com asks for a licence to publish but recognised you still own the work. The lawyers here are taking a very conservative stance which is contrary many expectations – if I make something, I own it.

I’ve been playing with Bix a little over the last few days and their T&Cs are a lot more reasonable

Subject to:
1. Company’s ownership of any underlying code incorporated into Content that you create with the Software; and
2. Company’s or third parties’ ownership of material on the Site, such as lyrics and music, that may be incorporated in Content you provide to Company,
you retain ownership of the copyright and other intellectual property rights in the Content, including but not limited to your performance.

Here again, they expect you to grant them worldwide rights to use the content, but that enables them to display the content on the site.

From today’s viral notifications we have something a movie trailer and a little more. Severance is a UK horror film, sending a team of sales people out on a ‘team building’ event in the wilds when somethign goes a little wrong. I’m sure many people have had to endure the horror of team building events with people they have to work with, but hopefully never this bad. The movie/game site is very straigh forward – info on the movie, a trailer and the game. I think they have borrowed the game from somewhere and reskinned it, as in gameplay it’s basically taking penalty kicks, even it is with a severed head and the idea is to hit the goalkeeper and knock body parts off.

Update: Ana has commented that they didn’t borrow or reskin…even so, I’ve played very similar games and htis one is still fun.

Over on the NewPR wiki, Paull Young and Trevor Cook have started an anti-astroturfing campaign with a great list of resouces about reported instances of the practice and commentary about it and how it can backfire.

I like stealth marketing campaigns, viral campaigns, ARGs, what ever you want to call them. When done well, they challenge and engage, provoke comment and get people involved. They are fun. But with this latest one from Court TV, the buzz is there but so are the potential problems.

Behind the scenes we have PR, media buyers, technical teams and the agency people out pretendind they are Emily – ‘she’ was outside Pennn Station in New York yesterday handing out fliers. There’s a thatgirlemilyblog that’s getting linked to, outdoor posters that are getting plenty of notice and comment and probably all other stuff in the works. So far so good. Everything is working out right.

But a few boundaries were overstepped and that could have the wrong implications for the brand and the agency. There’s a hint of astroturfing or just plain stupidness. Emily was out on the blogs and message boards spinning her tale and getting tea and sympathy back. But as with Cillit Bang, it’s not the best thing to be out and about posting as a character in places that don’t expect it. ARGs do this…but a working practice appears to have arisen – there are ways to get attention and not piss people off in the wrong place. ‘Emily’ has hurt some of the people who read and enjoy these boards…not the greatest result.

A second mistake with this campaign – they should have done a little more research and not used an identity that already exists. thatgirlemily already has a presence on message boards and other sites. Her online profile is now messed up with this one and I would not be too pleased at that as the buzz aroud the fake Emily is probably not what the real Emily would like.

I finding myself getting angry at this campaign, most likely a slightly over the top response, but agencies doing these things badly makes it more difficult to get compnaies to even touch these types of campaigns. I strongly beleive they work well when done well. done badly and clumsily like this one means that the whole industry gets tarred with the same brush.

Updated…
My friend Keiron sent me a few links (from Fark)to what is, to all appearances, a new viral campaign..for something. Not quite sure what yet, but it’s definitely looks like a campaign. First of all read ThatGirlEmily. She started a blog a few weeks ago and then sudden calamity. A women scorned, swearing a 2 week campaign of vengence on her cheating husband. She has some nice contacts – called in a favour on Saturday night and less than 48 hours later she has billboards up in 2 cities declaring vengeance.

Now Will Thompson has done some digging and gives a rundown as to how you can spot that this is a campaign. Starting off with the perfect spelling and grammar and purple prose. ( I wonder how many client reviews the agency had to go through). And the multiple postings of the same message on different discussion groups, calmly posted 15 minutes apart when she is supposed to be on her way to see a PI. There’s a few other postings that Emily appears to have made as well, including this one, or this talking merrily about her lovely husband at the same time as posting that he is cheating on her on her blog.

And with all the advice that the women on these boards have offered, she’s not gone back and told them about her campaign to get back at her husband? But she is posting comments on other peoples blogs.

It’s at this point I hope I’m completely wrong, that it is not a stealth marketing campaign, that all these pointers are just because she is an extremely gifted writer/editor and very quick at picking up on blogs/message boards and her posts to some of the boards just got delayed in the timing. (because if not, this could severely backfire given the time and concern that is being expressed on the boards where she has posted. I’ve subscribed ‘cos I’m interested in what she’s going to do in the 2 weeks of wrath she promises (interestingly the feed is listed as new yesterday in bloglines).

Update: I’ve got confirmation that this is a campaign for Court TV. (friend of a friend).

And here’s a follow up comment from Smart at Love:

Manipulating forums like this where people actually go for actual help just to sell your products to people already suffering… that’s the lowest of low.

I can’t wait for someone to find and out the scam marketers responsible for this, so we can publish all their REAL personal info on the internet. And billboards.

There are other similar messages on the message boards where Emily has been asking for help and advice.

There’s a billboard up in Chicago as well

“London is a unique market, with a highly developed start-up culture. In the UK, start-ups are more fashionable and sexier and clients are often more inclined to give them their business. In the US, they don’t generally succeed – the size and scale of business is a barrier to entry for start-ups and means the top talent generally believes they will be better off staying with established agency brands.”

Someone thinks the UK is brilliant for startups – a definite change of opinion from previous US/Valley only comments.

Well, it would be if they were talking about technology startups. Instead this is David Jones, EuroRSCG, talking to Campaign magazine about advertising agency startups.

Updated: they’ve now added moderated comments,and are regularly updating. Thanks Ed for the response.

Via Adweek, I see that Sony have being listening to their consumers (at least one bit has…still not sure about their music/DRM section), seen the enthusiasm for the bouncing balls and are going to let the bloggers follow along the making of their next commercial.

Online viewers will be treated to exclusive content here on this site including video blogs directly from the ad shoot. Bloggers will be supplied with Sony Cyber-shot digital cameras to film themselves, each other and the action straight from the set. Seeing it first, means seeing it here!

Look, they’re even going to to let bloggers on the set, give them tools to film the filming and create online buzz all by themselves.

Now, I admit there’s a nice piece of film on the site about the making of the previous comercial (I always like behind the scene stuff) but isn’t this all a little one way? A select few will be allowed to film (I’m going to hazard a guess that they may have to sign some kind of promise not to diss them too much?). But the rest of us? I can feed back about what I like the site, but only via a set questionnaire. Are they going to share the comments from that? There’s no open comments, no chance to ask questions and challenge them….and no chance to build a relationship and rebuild some potential bridges. Now i could be charitable and say, from previous experience, that the lawyers said no to open comments and they do not have the funding to pay for full time moderation. But with the bashing that Sony have taken in the past in areas – and the great buzz they got over the Bravia ads – surely it’s a missed opportunity to take a small step to an open conversation.

Last night I went along to the New York launch party for Sunsilk shampoo (one of the brands I’m working on). It’s a well known brand for me but is just being launched in the US..and the Unilever are pulling out all the stops. The voice of the brand on all the comercials is Mario Cantone, who was the star guest at the party. There were a lot of other ‘celebrities’ but I’m obviously not up to speed on the New York social life as there was no one I recognised. Even when i was told their name. However, I’m pretty sure photos will appear, as there were plenty of press and cameras there.

The party also launched the Hairapy Guys onto the world. They’ve been pretty busy on the PR circuit and will be doing htings like appearing on the VH1 Best Week Ever tonight.

The team here have been working hard on the web stuff and the main site launches next week. In the meantime, check out Micah’s Hairapy blog, Micah being one of the HG’s. The writing gives you a good indication of what he’s like in real life..great fun.

Going one better than GM’s Fastlane Blog, Ford this week launch BoldMoves.com, tying in with their new campaign in the US. This is a reality video blog, documenting the trials and tribulations of the company as they try and find a new direction. Ford is allowing cameras into business meetings throughout the comonay and also using the site to comment on the state of the US motor industry. Launched 2 days ago, it’s already garnering plenty of comments.

Ford appear to have embraced conversation, syndication and sharing. You can embed the video in you own blog or subscribe to feeds for the videos or the blog. They are offering opposing arguments and letting disagreemtn show in the comments. But the proof in the pudding is if we see reaction to the comment and conversation that they are encouraging. All in all, a bold starting position from the company.

Nice to see Guinness win a coveted award at the weekend for the Noitulove commercial. This ad cost over 1million GBP to make, full of CGI and expensive filming. To see it you can go to YouTube, although a better quality version (although with an age and country check) is available on the official site. You have to go in as being from England though, as it is not available on the other versions of the site. Good to see that Carlton’s Big Ad is also up there – a firm favourite. The third one in the running for the main prize was the Sony Bravia Balls.

All three are very good ads and 2 of them have shown definitely demonstrate a wider impact than the TV commercial they are aimed at. the Big Ad demonstrated the power of great content going viral with the story of the link to the website being sent out to

Cannes Advertising Festival is taking place this week, so it’s a perfect opportunity for the various execs to pipe up about how their business is adjusting to the new world. Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP, talked on Monday in the Financial Times .

The head of the UK advertising group also acknowledged the difficulty of competing against websites that destroyed business models. “How do you deal with socialistic anarchists?” he asked, referring to Craigslist, the popular, free classified advertising site that has been threatening revenues at US city newspapers. “The internet is the most socialistic force you’ve ever seen,” he added, noting that the response from some media groups had been to offer their content for free in traditional and digital form.

Not necessarily the best thing to call one of the most successful websites. Especially as he goes on to state that successful companies need to good people and changewho have been used to the quick reactions of the web. As most of these are probably extremely at home with Craigslist, far more so than the ads produced by most of WPP’s group of agencies. He thinks that agencies need to set up a separate group to manage through the changes.

Meanwhile Craig Davies, worldwide creative director of the JWT recognsies the change..”The redefinition of advertising is not being led by ad agencies. It is a consumer-driven phenomenon. There are just so many ways to say no to advertising.” (also FT, but firewalled). So he thinks that “The challenge to us is to stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in.”

So in an attempt to do just that, JWT took over all the advertising on the Huffington post for a week. Let people watch full ads when they want, is the idea. Unfortunately part of the campaign slightly backfired..the ‘buzz marketing’ part. MaxPower has a good breakdown of what appears to be astroturfing

There a lots of companies that provide this service, sending out information and tips to blogs, message boards and other community sites. I’m not against it, as long as done openly. If the ad/game/video etc is good, it will usually be picked up, but doing it in an underhand way is old school marketing, doing it openly is closer to to the concept of markets of conversations – sending on stuff to people you know..and being honest about why you are doing it. In this case, it looked like whoever was behind the emails was not that clear..leading pretty quickly to a bad taste in the mouth of a few of the bloggers on the receiving end.

And in the spirit of disclosure, I’m currently doing some work for JWT…but nowhere near the stuff mentioned above