- I recently discovered a firm that will, if supplied with a brief, provide a client with 100 ideas … overnight! They use Twitter to contact hundreds of ‘ideas people’ internationally.
- Creative agencies now provide media ideas as well as creative ideas. Media agencies now provide creative ideas as well as media ideas.
- Large supermarket retailers have in-house creative departments that can provide ideas and advertising for their supplier’s brands, rather than the other way around.
Marketers have more access to ideas than ever before. Everyone now seems to be providing ideas. As a creative person I’ve been raised to believe that the more ideas on the table the better.
But now I’m beginning to wonder.
Take Nandos Chicken. They’ve tried every bizarre idea you can think of. They had a stripping Mother wearing a Nandos Nicotine patch on TV.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxsjhREHH3M&feature=related
They’ve created a radio ‘satire’ of Clare Werbeloff, the Chk Chk Boom girl.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ-pt95BNZU&feature=related
They’ve even got into the latest craze of creating a disruptive PR stunt, that disrupted the king of disruptive PR stunts: Sacha Baron Cohen’s, Bruno.
(The raw footage has been removed from YouTube but you can see some of the news coverage at the following link)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIUlpkPKGvA
Some are funnier than others - I quite like the stripping Mum spot for some reason. But what story do they tell? What problem do they solve? What brand image do they build? What, as a consumer, am I supposed to think of the brand?
I honestly can’t tell. In Nandos I see dozens of random ideas and not a single brand message.
Possible taglines like, “We’re a little bit different”, “Unexpectedly delicious chicken” or even “We’re not for everyone” would tie the zaniness together. But we don’t get any help at all.
A visit to the website makes you think your dealing with a different brand altogether. It shows a low tech, hand drawn, food focussed, ethnic style brand. Nothing like the TV, radio and PR communication. I’m even more confused now!
http://www.nandos.com.au/
Many other brands are excitedly experimenting with channels, executions and ideas. Which is fantastic … as long as each piece of communication supports and builds on a consistent brand message. The beer people are particularly good at experimentation without losing sight of the message and target consumer.
When consumers are forced to re-evaluate a brand every time they see a new piece of communication, they just don’t bother.
Potential consumers of Nandos know the brand exists, and sells chicken. But they have no idea what it stands for and therefore why they should consider it.
When it comes to brand communication, dozens of random ideas won’t help you, one correct one will.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Not more ideas!
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
History of the Australian Web
If you have 30 seconds check out this wonderful site. One of the best graphic interpretations of boring old numbers I've seen in years.
http://avant.interactionconsortium.com/australian_internet/#
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Marketing tips from your local butcher
What do cuts of meat and advertising have in common? Quite a lot these days.
A few weeks ago I was treated to a roast ‘shoulder of lamb’. I’ve never had the cut before. My host explained that it was inexpensive and pretty fatty. Fresh from the supermarket, the shoulder of lamb didn’t look that appetising. The trick, I was told, was to cook it for a long time, tenderising the meat and allowing it to roast in it’s own juices.
The result? Absolutely delicious!
Then I heard a café owner on the radio saying that he was using much more ‘shoulder of lamb’, and his customers loved it.
Why my sudden interest in Butchery and what does it have to do with advertising, you may ask?
The global financial crisis may or may not have blown over. (I’m old enough to believe that wars and recessions seldom ‘end by Christmas’)
In fact financial crises have always affected marketing and advertising in the same way. Clients cut budgets, advertising agencies and other creative suppliers cut staff. This is what has happened in all past recessions.
The difference this time round is that there are a lot fewer staff to fire. All creative suppliers are already cut to the bone.
Most large TV commercial production houses, photographers, designers, digital developers: in fact any creative supplier will be struggling. Several production houses and agencies have already closed.
So, you’re a marketer and the order has come in from head office to cut costs and grow sales. (Huh?) Your big creative suppliers just can’t do it any cheaper. What can you do?
The answer is meat. Scotch fillet makes a great meal, but it’s expensive. Shoulder of lamb makes a great meal, you just need to know about it and cook it properly.
It’s the same creatively. Let me give a recent example.
I took a TV script and a decent budget to a ‘Hot’ production company. These people had a big reputation for shooting well known TV commercials. They had an amazing office, cool people … and a crazy quote. Their ‘ballpark’ estimate was double my stated budget. Their overheads meant that their costs had a certain ‘floor’ that they couldn’t go below.
Luckily I had also approached a very experienced director who had left his production company and was working from ‘no fixed address’. I didn’t care. We could meet anywhere. I didn’t need a boardroom and a receptionist, I needed great talent at a good price.
He and his producer did everything by laptop and mobile. They had no fixed overheads. They hired suppliers as needed. They did the job on budget (which is half the price of the Hot Shop), they were keen and helpful AND the result was first class!
Steak or shoulder of lamb? It depends on your budget and your knowledge.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Mama Mia - Here's the news
A bit of a random thought today. I work out in a gym about three mornings a week. They have a dozen or so TV monitors playing various shows. You can plug in your headset and listen to one channel like a normal person. Or like me, you can look at them all at once and try to figure out what's going on. I can now lip read the Family Guy cartoon quite well.
But something hit me this morning after months of silent viewing. The news in Italian is filmed differently to any news show I've ever seen. It's shot wider so the news reader is smaller in frame. BUT unlike all other countries' news you can see their hands!
These men and women lean and wave and flap like there's no tomorrow. It's great. And quite personal as well.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Masterchef: Not a show, more a huge piece of research.
A giant piece of real research into the Australian character has just been completed. You can access it for free. If you watched the final of Masterchef Australia last night, you took part in the study.
Australians have put down the tea towel and wandered into the TV room in record numbers.
It’s been said that Masterchef has captured the spirit of the times (or zeitgeist for the show-offs): that we’re staying in and learning how to cook again.
Maybe so, and that’s nice, but the show has also handed a gold plated gift to all Australian marketers and agencies. What the producers of Masterchef have done brilliantly is turn ‘likeability’ into an art form. They have spent millions supplying advertisers with a picture of the perfect consumer.
Let me explain.
The original gang of contenders were no random bunch of kitchen wannabes. Each had the potential to be Australia’s most loved person. The producers selected a cross section of middle Australia. Young, middle aged, pretty, average looking, Asian, even black.
Then they made them jump through culinary hoops as we grew to know and like them. The contest was not really about cooking, it was about who had the grit to pick themselves up after a near loss, dust off the flour and come back fighting the next day.
Gradually contestants were eliminated until a group small enough for us to remember their names remained.
Up until then Masterchef looked like any TV contest show (albeit a much friendlier one). ‘May the best cook win’ and all that.
But suddenly 3 eliminated contestants were given a second chance and brought back! Back came pretty blonde Justine. Back came pretty Asian Po. Back came gentle black Tom.
Justine was fairly good but Po and Tom were bit hit and miss when it came to cooking. Could it have been that the punters just liked this trio? Were they too good for the ratings for Masterchef to let them go?
The game continued. Tom left. The ratings climbed.
When Justine left the judges cried! Now that’s taking your ratings seriously!
Finally Po, slightly overweight Julie, and zany, hat wearing Chris were left.
Again if viewers thought this was just a cooking competition Chris’ departure answered that. He had been a strong performer throughout. His dishes were for the most part original, tasty and well presented. But had his confidence started to become cocky-ness? Had Australia fallen out of love with him?
Chris was astonished when Julie’s incomplete, unfinished, mess of a meal beat his unusual but professional offering. If Chris had won, as he should have, the final night could well have had a smaller audience than it did.
But as it turned out, over 4 million Australians (a fifth of the nation) stopped to see if Julie would beat Po. She did.
And now we know the kinds of women Australia loves at this moment.
Po is attractive, creative, experimental, hard working, organised, gutsy, determined, and ready to laugh.
Julie is middle class, a little overweight, obsessed with her family, a bit messy, brave, undaunted, focussed physically tough, and good humoured.
Australian marketing community, meet your ideal consumer. 4 million Aussies say so.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
What can copywriters learn from Thomas Jefferson?
All American school children know that Thomas Jefferson wrote the declaration of independence in 1776.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” This most famous quote demonstrates Jefferson’s genius as a writer and an original thinker.
Or does it?
I hate to disappoint American school children and students of history, but Jefferson was not the sole genius behind the writing the declaration, and ‘self-evident truths’ was borrowed from another document altogether.
Admittedly Jefferson wrote the initial draft. But it was heavily amended by the rest of the committee he was part of, and then vigorously debated in full congress.
Jefferson’s original document was mercilessly altered. It lost about a quarter of his original text and 146 new words were added. Like most writers, Jefferson felt his work had been significantly weakened by the help of others.
And the ‘pursuit of happiness’ passage? That was very close to the Virginia Declaration of Independence written some time earlier by a George Mason. With a few changes it was appropriated by Jefferson.
Do these inconvenient truths lessen the power of the declaration? Or do they make Jefferson any less of a brilliant man? Not at all.
But they do bust the myth of the lone genius. And they highlight a few key realities in writing compelling copy of any kind.
1) Jefferson and his colleagues were aiming for clarity, rather than sounding important. In a time when sentences could run for pages they remained brief and to the point.
2) The project was owned by Jefferson but he had help. It was neither an orphan raised by a committee nor was it the sole preserve of one man.
3) Jefferson felt free to borrow ideas that worked for his cause -“all men are created equal”. He and his colleagues felt no need to reinvent wheels when it came to capturing a vital sentiment.
So, if one of the best-known documents in history had to be drastically edited by two committees and used recycled material, then maybe our advertising and communication copy can stand some scrutiny too.
And maybe we copywriters should consider constructive criticism a moment longer, before we automatically reject it.
