Have you heard about Shazam? If you own a smartphone you probably have. And you probably know exactly what Shazam does, right? One more question. Have you ever seen an ad for Shazam? I haven’t, and I’m guessing a lot of people haven’t seen one neither. Shazam is a service so simple it doesn’t need advertising
Since it’s birth the advertising industry has specialized itself in selling bad products through advertising, where today they actually should be specialized advising companies how build products that advertise their selves.
If we want ad agencies to be relevant in the future we need to convince brands to help with the R&D of their new products. Instead of hiring agencies to invent a brandpromise and advertise across media old and new, hire agencies to help building a product or a service that doesn’t need a promise, nor a USP.
“Sometimes strategic and creative time is best spent thinking of new product or service innovations for clients. Ad agencies have developed amazing innovations for clients, and I think the best example of this is the Happy Meal for McDonalds. Just this week I heard CP+B is testing a new product for Kraft Mac and Cheese for the Grill.”
Mel proposes some steps we can take to move more upstream in a client’s business starting at an execution level, moving up to strategy (where most of the agencies stand today), further up to R&D ending up in Venture Capital, where agencies are no longer hired, but an actual partner in developping the business.
But do we belong as far upstream as Mel suggests? We do. In this videoDavid Pogue, tech columnist at NY Times, points out where brands fail to build products or services that fail. Not because they lack innovation, but because they are built from a technological point of view.
Modern brands that really get what lives with people today already know they should be authentic if they expect consumers to engage. Modern brands know they should go beyond the promise and proof what they stand for.
But consumers are smart. Just as much as people were wary of brands (s)talking through old skool mass media, people are still on their guard when brands act. Brand behavior is not about getting your act together, but it's much more about defining what you stand for and making sure it fits your brand character. People aren't stupid, they know when you are greenwashing. They know when you are trying to gather personal information to spam their facebookpages.
This presentation contains a very insightful quote: "Remember, consumers don't judge authenticity based on actual behavior but, rather, the intention behind it."
Just read an interesting Business Week article today on Facebook's strategy in the current doom & gloom economy. While the article details why Facebook keeps persuading a "spend now make profit later" strategy it also reveals a interesting take on Facebook's planned revenue streams :
Facebook hopes to make money in three ways.
- Online advertising is far and away the most important, accounting for an estimated $200 million to $225 million in revenues this year.
- The company is also selling digital goods—electronic versions of guitars, flowers, and the like that Facebook friends give each other. Charging $1 apiece for these goods will generate $30 million to $40 million this year, estimates venture capitalist Jeremy Liew.
- The third leg of Facebook's business may be the most controversial. The company is seriously considering a plan to take a cut of money from the software developers who create applications for the site.
Original article "Facebook's Land Grab in the Face of a Downturn", here.
As an illustration of "Starting the conversation from within" we launched The Sweetest Cook for our client Tiense Suiker earlier this week. Built on the product truth that a commodity product like sugar can actually become high involving in a social context, we urge people to nominate their favorite desert and its author. Herman De Croo, Joël Smets and Dirk De Smet already nominated their Sweetest Cook. Who will you choose?
Tom Himpe's is thinking exactly the same thing we're saying to our clients when we talk about "Building brand beyond the promise" so we thought we'd share his brilliant presentation here.
Earlier this week the Axion Banner Concerts-jury announced the 25 finalists that will compete to break out their banner for a "real concert" in the Ancienne Belgique. Non-musicians could get lucky too ; Axion is giving away 1 year of free calling and sms credit for that lucky guy/girl who votes for his/her favourite banner concert.
The second wave of our campaign starts December 1st but you can already have a peak at the contenders here.
Sprint Nextel, leading mobile broadband internet provider, wants you to experience the now. For that purpose, they commissioned a number of animated infographics that illustrate random data from around the world.
Next they upped the ante just an extra notch. In a clever play at the current information widget fad, Sprint presents Plug Into Now, a dazzling, interactive overview of random data and information about the world, now. The deluge combines information gathered from a variety of statistical sources with live feeds from all over the internet (top search terms, top Google searches, the Internet Buzz Meter).
Seemingly unrelated information are linked through the animated graphics (the number of houses being built vs the amount of forest being cut), and you can also add yourself (if you have a webcam). There's even a big red button that doesn't do anything (which reminds me of a certain Punch feature on a certain Marketing blog...).
And it goes without saying you can also download a condensed version for use on your favorite social platform. An great idea, superbly executed and wonderful to look at.
This is how you could put the challenge that Droga5 was facing in order to help Barack Obama win the US Presidential election.
Key swing states like Florida make the difference between winning and losing. A significant part of Florida's population consists of retired Jews, who contrary to their liberal grandchildren, tend to vote Republican. In order to win them over to the Democratic side, Droga5 came up with a rather smart strategy that could serve as inspiration for traditional political marketing : to ask liberal Jewish grandchildren to convince their less liberal Jewish grandparents to vote for Obama.
The campaign-platform's main feature is an hilariously effective 4 minute commercial feauring Jewish comedian Sarah Silverman that's been viewed 1.4 million times in only 2 weeks. The ultimate objective is to get as much people to fly over to their grandparents on Columbus Day Weekend in Florida. To do that the campaign site has some nifty social features like a printable PDF discussion guide, pre-written emails and a facebook group that already gathered more than 15.000 members.
Given Axion's mission to support youngsters in their (financial) ambitions, we literally created a platform for young musicians to get their music on stage. Not via a festival, not via classic talent scouting event but in an environment where most young bands already try to break through : the web.
To promote the contest we recorded 4 concerts of well known Belgian artists (Tim Vanhamel, Malibu Stacy, Tom Helsen & A Brand) ... in the confines of a web banner. In this first phase that spans September and October we aim to raise awareness and get young bands to send in their demo's. All submissions will be judged by a professional jury (Peter Crosbie (producer of Daan, Axelle Red, ...), Kurt Overbergh (Artistic Director of Ancienne Belgique), Alex Stevens (programming at Dour)). Eventually 25 finalists will get the chance to have their own banner concert recorded. This will become a valuable asset for the bands to break through the virtual clutter.
In December the second phase of the campaign starts with the 25 banner concerts evenly spread across a number of high traffic sites. Fans of the finalists will also be mobilised to copy a banner concert-widget on their profile page. The band with the most votes wins a 'real' concert at the Ancienne Belgique', a recording of their concert on AB-TV and a day of professional recording time in the AB-studio.
With this campaign Axion proves that a youth bank can give real added value for youngsters, other than pure entertainment or shopping discounts. Not only does Axion offer its own media-space to ambitious young bands, it also enables them with tools to promote their music in the sphere of social music networking.
