Moustache - HIDING A STIFF UPPER LIP FOR OVER 37 YEARS.

I will put the disclaimer for this blog right up front.

I work for a B2B (Business to Business) advertising agency, so there is a vested interest here.

However that doesn’t distract from the fact that most B2B advertising is appalling.

And it’s appalling on so many levels.

Go through a B2B publication, there are hundreds of them, and you will see what I mean.

The ads lack a strategy or an idea, are poorly written, poorly branded and look like they were designed by the boss’s 3 year old.

They make a dog’s breakfast look like the winner from Master Chef.

You could almost expect a lack of creativity and communication skills in an ad for an EP/NN100 Coal Mining Conveyor Belt from the Shuangma Rubber Co Ltd.

But why is it well-known consumer brands suddenly take on a chameleon persona as soon as they run an ad in a trade publication? They spent millions of dollar building equity into their consumer brands then flush it down the toilet, by running a trade ad that mimics the rest of the dross in the magazine.

Isn’t the consumer, who is looking to buy an industrial air conditioner for a factory, the same one who might be looking to put a reverse cycle wall unit into the family room?

There shouldn’t be one brand strategy for consumer ads and another, inferior one, for B2B.

The consumer sees one brand and it’s bad for business if that brand doesn’t see one consumer.

Football

I don’t follow football, so what I am about to write may be obvious to those who are sports aficionados.

Being a layman has its advantages, as you actually see the world from a novice’s perspective.

I went to a lunch yesterday where the guest speaker was Paul Hamilton, General Manger Football at the Essendon Club.

Paul went through their reasoning for appointing the new coach, James Hird, and their rationale for also appointing Mark Thompson as assistant coach.

James has never coached before while Mark has an enviable track record, as senior coach, at Geelong, winning two premierships there.

So why appoint the novice ahead of the proven professional?

The answer is ‘marketing’.

James Hird is a legend at Essendon, an inspirational captain and player. Regarded by many as one of the greatest players of the modern era.

Getting him to coach the club was as much a marketing decision as it was a game winner.

James has a loyal following and is regarded as part of the fabric of the club.

So what they did was hire the personification of the brand, with the hope that this would lift their fortunes.

James Hird isn’t an ego like so many others. He is a genuine person, a team player.

It must be noted that Mark Thompson also has a great history with Essendon, after all, his nickname is ‘Bomber’.

Given the reception that Paul Hamilton received yesterday, I think this marketing exercise might just work.

There used to be clever campaigns.

They ran on TV, radio and in print.

The medium wasn’t important, the idea was. And the idea was so clever that it could run anywhere.

If the 1980s campaigns, by CDP, for Hamlet Cigars or Heineken Beer ran today, they would still be media neutral.

There would be iPhone apps, social media and of course the obligatory website, all built on the back of the core idea.

So why is there a proliferation of executions that only involve one media?

Like social media that only communicates if you tweet in ‘leetspeak’ or installation ads that speak to a miniscule audience with the hope of attracting PR.

I once had a creative director that would never approve one off ads. He was always looking for the campaign idea.

He believed that techniques went out of fashion while clever ideas were timeless.

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Hayden has just pointed out that Google did in fact print a number of hard copies of Think Quarterly.

These were free for their advertising and industry partners and they say that they have no plans to do a larger print run.

I still believe there will more printed soon and they will be for sale.

Time and marketing imperatives will tell.

Google has just produced an online magazine called Think Quarterly.

It’s aimed at their business partners and advertisers, and is stylishly designed.

I guess, given the name, that they intend to publish it four times a year.

It is the sort of publication that would make an excellent collection, especially a printed version sitting in your bookcase or on your coffee table.

However Google have made it very clear that this will remain an Ezine and there will be no hard copies.

Below is an extract from the Think Quarterly site.

“We’re flattered by the positive reaction but have no plans to start selling copies!”

Making the product a rarity is one of the oldest marketing tricks in the book. It also gives it a higher perceived value.

What’s the bet they will be releasing a printed version very soon?

I recently moved into an apartment and downstairs we have two coffee shops.

They both stock delicatessen items, prepare take away meals, sell lunch and of course serve coffee.

They are identical, in many ways.

One is always full and sometimes it’s hard to get a seat, while the other is normally empty.

The empty one is far cheaper, yet what they are selling isn’t that different. However one is just selling, while the other is marketing.

The difference between the two was best described by a former lecturer at the Harvard Business School, Theodore Levitt.

“Selling focuses on the needs of the seller and the need to convert product to cash. Marketing focuses on the needs of the buyer and the need to satisfy the customer through the products produced.”

The successful café has created an experience and their shelves are crammed with interesting things to buy.

You might just go in for a macchiato but you will probably come out with a basket full of imported French Brie de Meaux, Italian Sopressata and a duck egg Frittata for tonight’s dinner.

I’m off for a coffee now, and I’m taking my wallet.

The service industry is at an impasse.

For years the telecommunication and airline industries have been promoting service as one of their key benefits and a cornerstone of their business.

However as a result of the GFC, costs have been squeezed and the bottom line has to deliver returns to the shareholders.

CEOs are rewarded when they deliver a profit and the brand image is of secondary importance.

Airlines are continually cancelling flights when they don’t reach a particular percentage of capacity.

Making the claim, ”More flights more often.” seems rather lame.

Then take the telcos and Vodafone in particular.

They have spent years and millions of dollars promising service and raising the expectation of their customers.

Many consumers, sick of the monopoly and heavy handedness of Telstra, moved to the more proactive and approachable Vodafone.

Now it’s all gone horribly wrong.

With an increasing lack of service from the network and the company, their customers started to complain.

There are so many disgruntled consumers that a class action has been mounted against Vodafone. Currently 20,000 angry people have signed up.

Their initial response to the barrage of complains was to shut down their email server.

Now they are in damage control.

The Vodafone CEO, Nigel Dews, has been forced to publish a public apology, listing the steps they are now taking to rectify their shortfalls.

Time will tell if they do lift their game and invest more than just words in delivering a better service to their customers.

If you do wander past a Vodafone shop at the moment they are eerily empty. So the one area they were trying to protect, by reducing service, their profit, now seems very much at risk.

It’s been years since anyone has debated the value of a brand as being as important an asset as production lines or bricks and mortar.

This fact seems to have been lost on short-sited shareholders and weak, complicit, CEOs.

I have never been a fan of research.

It’s too often used to avoid failure rather than find success and at worst, is used as a popularity contest.

Both agencies and clients employ it as an arse covering exercise. At the end of the day they can always blame the research if it all goes horribly wrong.

The trouble with advertising communication is that there’s no guarantee of success. What works on the consumer with one product, won’t necessarily work with another.

Judging a creative idea isn’t easy.

When a concept is put into research, we are asking a bunch of ordinary people to rule on an abstract concept in a false environment.

Ten to twelve people are shoved into a strange room, behind a two-way mirror, and asked to comment on an unfinished, hypothetical idea.

They are rarely asked to be positive and assume the role of a critic, trying to find what is wrong with the concept, rather than what is right.

In these times of tighter budgets, research is often used to test strategy as well as select an ultimate winner.

Short-circuited research, like this, is more dangerous than no research at all. Its not single minded and ultimately ends up compromising all outcomes.

Even if there is no research and the client is making the decision, there still can be many problems.

They are judging the idea on many different criteria.

Is it on brand?

Is it on budget?

Will my colleagues like it?

Will my boss like it?

Will my boss’s wife like it?

Will it resonate with the consumer? (This is usually at the bottom of the list.)

Whenever I present a concept to a client, I ask them to immediately give me their first impression.

I want the response that first pops into their head, before they have had a chance to think about it and rationalise it.

This is the closest they will ever be to thinking like a consumer.

When we create an idea we take all the information available to us and let it stew in our brains. Then hopefully, the magic happens and we come up with a concept that connects.

We don’t know how it happens we just have a gut feeling that it’s the right way to go.

That gut feeling is the most important element in creating good ads.

Gut feel should also be used to judge them as well.

In the late 1960s Stanley Politt introduced the idea of account planning, through his agency Boase Massimi Politt. Stephen King, from JWT, has also been credited with introducing a similar concept at the same time.

They felt that the agency account managers were using research too literally and too much emphasis was being placed on numbers and not insights.

Their primary concern was that the resulting advertising was too rational and lacked an emotional link to the consumer.

This form of planning made communication simple with clear, insightful thinking and creative strategies.

The planners were the conduit between the brand and the consumer.

Their involvement in the process allowed the creatives to develop work that was connecting with the market, with insight and high levels of creativity.

This was in stark contrast to the research driven ads that were coming out of the US at the same time. This numbers driven research was all about safety rather than insight and effective communication.

Soon account planners were found in many agencies in the UK and they quickly spread worldwide.

Their fame was well justified, as the work that came from agencies with planners was more memorable and resonated better with the consumer than work that was slavishly following research findings.

The clients were happy, as there were sound, rational reasons, based on research, to go with this direction.

The research was done to develop strategy, not to have a popularity contest for a particular creative direction.

Some enduring British campaigns came from that era:

‘Heineken refreshes the parts that other beers cannot reach’

‘Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet’

Cadbury’s Smash

Even over ‘The Ditch’, in the US, Jay Chiat took up the planning cause.

Some of the great campaigns that came out of Chiat/Day:

The Energizer Bunny

Nike ‘Just do it’

Apple Computers

The process was simple, find a compelling insight that connected to the target market then dramatise it in such a way that it became memorable.

As with all simple processes there are people who are hell bent on complicating them.

That, I am afraid, is what has happened to account planning. We now have:

Brand Planning

Media Planning

Connection Planning

Propagation Planning

Transmedia Planning

All with their rules, guidelines and formulae, that have been complicated with jargon and brand babble.

What was originally developed to solve a problem has now become the problem itself.

During the 80s the American hamburger chain, Wendy’s, tried to start up in Australia. They promised fresh ingredients and a salad bar.

On recollection they only lasted about 18 months before they were forced out of the market.

Their advertising was brash, confrontationalist, comparative and it worked.

McDonald’s hated it, but more importantly, so did Coca Cola.

In Australia Pepsi was the soft drink of choice at Wendy’s. However in the southern US, Coca Cola was the main provider for Wendy’s.

It so happened that the Wendy’s franchisee in Australia had both Coca Cola and Wendy’s in the southern US.

As the story goes, the Coca Cola people spoke to the Wendy’s people and ‘asked’ them to stop stirring the pot in Australia or else their Coca Cola franchise might be under threat.

The result was instant, Wendy’s shut up shop and left the country.

During the midst of the Wendy’s campaign a McDonald’s spokesman was reported to have remarked that “Maccas is Maccas, we don’t have fresh beef or salads and that’s the way it’s going to stay”.

Their attitude was arrogant and didn’t take consumer sentiment into consideration.

Just look at what McDonald’s is offering today.

I find that same attitude pervades current US politics.

Over the last few weeks we have witnessed the crisis gripping Egypt.

A revolution that has it’s source in the grass roots of Egyptian society and will ultimately be decided by Egyptians.

As I watch CNN, I see so many American commentators and politicians asking each other, “What can we do to influence the outcome of this issue in Egypt?”

The US government has to realise that these things are out of their control and in fact it is none of their concern in the first place.

This isn’t the 80s when companies or countries could live on the arrogance of their beliefs or doctrines, without considering the thoughts of the community or consumers.

If the Wendy’s Vs McDonald’s scenario was played out today, I am sure, aided with the power of social media and consumer demand, the result would be very different.