Believe it or not, there was a time before television. Radio was the broadcast media, and audiences found live radio ads just as ear-catching as the programs they sponsored. When TV programs started around 1940, most advertisers took what they knew from successful radio creative and tried like the devil to paste it into TV ads. Oops.

It took a few years for technology to align with creativity, but alas we finally saw the last of singing Texaco gas station attendants and Old Gold dancing cigarette boxes. Agencies and brand managers finally realized TV viewers wanted something completely different in a television ad. Good radio creative required theater of the mind, but good TV creative required doing the mental work for the viewer.

Fast forward to 2015. Here’s what you’ll probably read…

Believe it or not, there was a time before the internet when broadcast TV ruled media, and audiences found good TV ad as enjoyable as the programs they sponsored. When digital advertising was launched around 1990, most advertisers took what they knew from successful TV creative and tried like the devil to paste it into online ads. Oops.

It took a few years for technology to align with creativity, but alas we finally saw the last of the :30 second one-way interaction commercials that had been cut and paste from TV to online. Advertising agencies and their clients finally realized online viewers wanted something completely different in an online ad. Good TV required doing the mental work for the viewer, but good online creative required involving the viewer. (Think World of Warcraft)

Check back in five years and see if we were right.

Think about it…

Governor Perry’s self-promotion opportunity was experienced by millions of TV viewers, just like a typical broadcast advertisement.  Perry was using the time and place to convince millions of citizens to choose him over his competition, again just like a typical broadcast advertisement. Viewers may not have expected Perry to be great, but they didn’t expect him to be embarrassing.  The same holds true for the average modern day TV advertisement. Perry destroyed his powerful self-promotion opportunity by coming to the party unprepared to give consumers what they really want – trust. The same holds true for most commercials.

If we take the time to analyze why we use our remote controls so aggressively during commercials, it’s because most ads embarrass us with their lack of consideration for our intelligence. Even more disappointing, the main reason today’s bad commercials aren’t getting Perry’s current level of negative press is because we’ve become immune to them. We expect Perry to deliver presidential capabilities in a debate, but we don’t expect commercials to deliver influential messages that make us want to respond.

In the movie Art & Copy, Lee Clow, Chairman and Global Director of TBWA\Worldwide, said most advertising today is bad because everyone involved with the creative itself is afraid. How true. The marketing committee of the product or service is so afraid of failing they won’t take chances. That’s why there’s a committee in the first place, right? And the agency is afraid of losing the account, so they wouldn’t dare suggest any potential risks. And yet, risk is where art meets influence, and we consumers are enticed to take action.

Instead, consumers end up experiencing the mundane. Add the current economy into the scenario, and there is even more fear of failure resulting in messages as embarrassing to most consumers as Rick Perry’s brain freeze is to potential voters.

Isn’t it a shame we’re used to it? I’d like to see the advertising industry take a stand for the customer, and promise them that all future advertisements will be produced to deliver compelling, interesting, entertaining, and truthful creative messages. Maybe Brandtailers will take this lead. Who says change always has to come from the big boys?

What equity do you offer members of your brand?

It’s all about the story.

We are symbol using (misusing) creatures- we crave meaning and how it relates to our perception of reality. Think of any memory or funny story you tell at parties- we take our perceptions of reality and share it as a narrative, with characters that have desires, who need to overcome/accomplish something in order to discover purpose or satisfaction. The stories we tell are symbols of a reality we are absorbed into and share passionately- it is innately designed within our humanity.

Communication at it’s core is symbolic. We search for the symbolic message and how it relates to the story. The cycle of “social media”-really human behavior-  longs for depth and breadth- action, momentum, a real connection.

Walter Fisher explains this in his theory of Narrative Paradigm that all meaningful communication is a form of storytelling.

We experience and comprehend life as a series of ongoing narratives (stories), each with their own plot, Fisher argues that “the way in which people explain and/or justify their behavior, whether past or future, has more to do with telling a credible story than it does with producing evidence or constructing.”

I see a direct correlation with the power of story-narrative & the adoption of YOUR brand becoming THEIR community.

When we build our communities on the credibility (ethos) of our brand with emotion (pathos) and logic/truth (logos)- it’s not only sustainable, it’s SHAREABLE.

The better the content/story- the more the members can interact and engage with media. As we continue to generate quality stories, the tribe begins to refine the community and defines the brand’s story. Each person plays a key character to the plot. The future of “membership” will become increasingly more responsible and responsive, refining the vision and demanding better stories as the community develops.

Community happens beyond the surface of transactions. Beyond the hype of gimmicks. It’s the AH HA moment when your brand becomes REAL. HUMAN. RELEVANT.

Community and the communal sharing of the message creates a story worth telling and builds the symbolic legacy- the shareable narrative.

How are you building a shareable community? How are you sharing the STORY online throughout media? What are you doing to invite characters along the plot to help write the rest of the story? When you connect the dots of the micro-blogs, tagged pictures, hash-tags, images, and campaigns- where do those breadcrumbs leave us?

The key contributor is YOU. The person managing the day to day, the logistics, the consistency. Maybe you are a supporting character or a part of a background ensemble- regardless, your role is critical and vital to the human story being told- one that resonates in the souls of your readers, followers, friends, connections, “likes”, reblogs, retweets… all are an echo of the larger narrative.

What story are you going to tell today?

Now, replace this office space design process with your website development process. These days, there’s not much difference. You’re just replacing tangible brick and mortar with virtual space. But if you consider which of these walls and roofs more people visit, you’ve figured out the true value of your website.

So back up for a moment and ask yourself, “How much am I willing to pay for experts who know how to turn a cookie-cutter office space into my company’s brand?” Chances are good you’re willing to pay more than a few dollars. So, why, when your website is your opportunity to show your unique brand, would you settle for one that has nothing unique?

Interesting paradox, huh? Websites are much less expensive to build than they were just a few short years ago, but if you want to make yours stand out, to represent your brand and do a big part your selling for you, you’re going to have to pay for some real experts. Not just programmers who know html, php and css, but designers and brand strategists who know how to represent your best assets online. And writers who know how to take the hundreds of keywords necessary to help your site show up well in search results, and incorporate them into enticing content that flows seamlessly.

Websites like this are not just necessary for e-commerce businesses, they’re imperative for any business that wants to take advantage of the wonderful benefits the web has to offer your brand. It’s a new way of thinking, isn’t it?

I originally wrote the blog post below in March of 2010, when we made the decision to move to a new kind of office space as soon as our lease was up. We are now just two weeks away from moving to our brand new office. I revisited what I wrote 16 months ago, to see if our rationale for moving had changed. It hasn’t. But something I didn’t realize back then was how many businesses are moving to shared work space environments. Most surprising, it’s not because of the economy.

Shared space is not a new idea. Remember Chiat Day’s virtual office disaster back in 1999? But it has certainly grown more popular for companies that used to make bigger offices on better floors more important than money. For many businesses now being run by energetic entrepreneurs this seems like a ridiculous idea. Why separate brain power? Why limit collaboration to conference rooms? And why make office size a competition between co-workers?

I personally give a lot of credit for this change in thinking to Tony Hsieh, CEO and founder of Zappos. As Zappos grew from a small online shoe seller, to the mammoth business that Amazon purchased in 2009 for $1.2 billion, Tony never thought twice about moving out of his same-size cubicle located in the middle of all the other Zappos employees. Certainly it was an act of humility, which Tony is known for, but he also knew how important it was for the company’s success that he stay in the midst of the action. In his book, Delivering Happiness, he credits the most successful collaborations came from people having direct access with him, and each other.

That’s pretty much what you’ll see at the new Brandtailers office. And, even though it’s been a little scary for us to realize we’re going to be working literally side-by-side and face-to-face, we have the team to pull it off. Stop by after August 1st and see for yourself. Our new address will be posted shortly on our Contact page on this site.

March 2010:

Brandtailers has moved four times during our 20 years in business. Each time we’ve moved to a bigger (although not necessarily better) space. Before we made our last address change a little over four years ago, it felt like we were stepping over each other just to get around the office.

So we made the move from 5,800 square feet to just short of 14,000. For the first few months the extra room to breath was so refreshing. The Creative Department had their own wing, the Media Department had theirs. The Interactive Department was on the other side of the building, while Account Services and Admin were off in a whole other section. Ahhh, space.

But guess what happened over just a couple of months? People stopped talking to each other face-to-face. They weren’t collaborating like they used to. Instead of getting out of their chairs and walking 100 feet to talk to someone in another department, they’d send them an email. We thought we came up with the brilliant solution of encouraging instant messaging to make the communication feel more personal. That was dumb. People stayed in their offices even more.

Our lease is coming up for renewal in the next year and, yes, we will be moving to a different type of space. No more “wings” for us. It just doesn’t work. Hopefully in our next office instant messaging will involve vocal chords, emails will be for external purposes, and collaboration will be spontaneous moments of smart, creative people within ear shots of each other.

For those of you who like coming to our office, don’t worry. We’ll be taking the pool, ping-pong and fuss ball tables with us. And our walls will still be bright and tell their stories. Yes, we’ll take the African spears too. But we may be stepping over each other again, so bring your own chair.

That’s why the new buzz terms are desired relevance and quality engagement. Larry Page always said his dream was to develop the “perfect search”, meaning someone would type in a couple of keywords and only one Google search result would appear because it was exactly what that person was looking for. That’s a great example of relevance and quality engagement, isn’t it? Hopefully that’s what they’re trying to accomplish with Google+, the 10,000 pound gorilla’s latest attempt to overpower Facebook. Watch a demo and see how one of Google+’s core benefits is focusing in on quality over quantity engagement. Google understands how quickly we have become fed up with TMI (too much information), and it appears they’re trying to offer an alternative that at least moves information overload into smaller buckets. We say good luck with that Google, but hey, at least they’re trying.

Yet the biggest challenge with achieving quality over quantity experiences is how the powers of the online world will most likely get there. We want relevance, so they need to know more about us. This is why search engines and websites are developing even creepier Big Brother tools to watch and respond to our every move. The more apparent this becomes, the more we complain. The powers that be say we’re spoiled; that we want to have our cake and eat it to. We say there’s got to be a better way. While that battle will take some time before it’s resolved, the average individual’s impatience with information overload is ready to explode.  Which is why we at Brandtailers foresee the next group of genius geeks will be those who can take a person’s way-too-big to be useful anymore world, and hone it back down into something meaningful, useful and, most of all, enjoyable.

But is this really a new technology? Not really. Not by the new definition of new, aka developed within the last 6 months. Augmented Reality (AR) has been around for several years, you just may not think of it as that. How about that Yelp app on your smart phone that finds and reviews restaurants you’re close to via your phone’s GPS. Or how about Layar, a popular app that shows you what is around you by displaying real time digital information (layers) on top of reality. Augmented reality (AR) has been growing rapidly since 2009, but what’s exciting (and a bit creepy) about this tool of late is the way marketers are starting to use it. Here are just a few:

POS augmented reality application: LEGO augmented reality kiosk shows what’s inside the box.

iPhone RFID: object-based media – location-based urls with your phone – wave your phone by an object and it tells you something about it, drives you to a URL.

Tissot watches – sit in front of your computer and virtually “try on” the different styles.

These are most likely just teasers for what media and communication experiences will look like in the near future. According to Juniper research, the current global revenue for augmented reality (AR) is currently less than $2 million, but is projected to be around $1.5 billion globally by 2015. At this past spring’s SXSW conference, a panel of augmented reality developers said the future of AR is working it into the everyday, via glasses/goggles or even AR contact lenses. They said once these tools are available to the masses, marketing and advertising as we know them now will once again be a thing of the past.

Hold on. It’s coming fast. And it will give all new meaning to the term “reality check”.

And yet Twitter seems to get the most social media attention second to Facebook, right? Why?

Surprisingly it’s not because Lady Gaga tweets about her sex life, or because Coby posts pre-game comments. It’s because of what happened during the election in Iran, the earthquake in Haiti, the Tsunami in Japan, the killing of Bin Laden and, most recently, the many tornado warnings tweeted across the south. It’s because Twitter’s powerful ability to instantly deliver important information anywhere in the world is undeniable. And people are catching on. In fact, Twitter celebrated its fifth birthday on March 21 and announced that “While it took about 18 months to sign up the first 500,000 accounts, we now see close to 500,000 accounts created every day.”

How many of these new accounts will be made up of active users? Here are some recent new statistics:

1. Most new active Twitter users are 25-49, well educated, affluent, early adopters and tech savvy.

2. Most new active users engage in the environment daily, and are considered influential within their online world.

3. Most new active users follow companies and brands to learn about products and services and to offer advice, input and recommendations regarding them.

4. Most new active users (79% to be exact) are more likely to recommend brands they follow.

5. More new active users are conducting B2B business than B2C business.

Let’s focus on that last one. Why is B2B so popular in this environment? Maybe because tweets can be very targeted and relevant, creating reputations of knowledge and influence. Think of a tweet as a potentially powerful blog in 140 characters or less. Then think of how easily it can be spread (aka re-tweeted) as a recommendation. Worthwhile messages can go from one influential person’s following of 500 people to 500,000+ potential customers in a matter of minutes. Try getting those engagement numbers from a direct mail piece! And to top off Twitter’s B2B strength, remember that the more relevant the 140 characters are to a potential customer’s keyword searches, the higher the tweet post will show up in organic search results. This message content can enhance a business’ overall SEO. Not bad for a free communication tool, eh?

Twitter will most likely continue to morph into something no other social media resource can offer. It’s live search capabilities, along with its increasing credibility as something more than celebrity stalking, will no doubt add millions of new active users over the next year or so. With massive numbers of active Twitter users, you find untapped potential.

Time will tell. What do you think?

¹Stats from Hypebot

But TED’s founder, Chris Anderson, never meant for TED to become an elitist venue. That’s one of the biggest reasons why he developed TEDx. Created in the spirit of TED’s mission, “ideas worth spreading,” the TEDx program is designed to give communities, organizations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level.

As the CEO and owner of an agency that has the highest regard for good branding, I also appreciate the strict brand guidelines  TEDx organizers must adhere to. Everything we have created for our venue must pass TED’s brand police approval process. This way every TEDx event around the world will maintain the spirit, appeal and rich content TED is so well known for. I really appreciate this.

But what’s up with Orange County? Most of us think of OC as something a bit more than reality TV, right? Perhaps it is So Cal’s little Silicon Valley? I would bet, if you ask the average person in Silicon Valley about TED, they would launch into their favorite TED talk. Yet what I’ve discovered in Orange County is quite different. In fact, I’m down right surprised at TED’s much smaller brand awareness here. My reason for co-organizing TEDxOrangeCoast is to change this.

Orange County is the perfect breeding ground for “ideas worth spreading”. There is so much brilliance and innovation occurring around us every day, but it’s too quiet. We’re a little too laid back. We need a jolt. That’s also the reason for our TEDxOrangeCoast theme, “Innovation Without Borders”. Our local area is bursting at the seams with powerful stories of local people who are not only innovative, but inspirational in the ways they’ve broken through cultural, physical, economical, geographical and political borders to achieve their goals.

Our speaker line-up is off the charts. 24 innovators from all walks of life, some whose names you already know, and some who – once you hear them – you’ll never forget. But the speakers are only part of what TEDx events are about. They participate (pro bono, by the way) to initiate and stimulate conversations within the audience. Most TED and TEDx venue attendees say they learned the most from conversations with fellow attendees during the breaks and afterward. That’s our plan, too.

If you still don’t quite understand what TED is, I encourage you to spend just a few minutes on their site. Look at the topics of the talks, the quality of the speakers and the massive interaction occurring worldwide thanks to this organization. Then look around you. You’ll probably see what I see. A wonderful opportunity for Orange County to embrace TED and share our own ideas worth spreading. I hope you’ll join me.

Think about it. Why would you pay to advertise in a medium that allows the viewer (aka potential customer) to skip past your television ad with one simple click? Or to have your product shown to a semi-targeted demographic audience that’s been defined by way of archaic technology (can you say Diaries?) Why would you, the advertiser, invest in this form of media when you could pay for only your exact target audience’s guaranteed viewership? That’s the difference that will become increasingly obvious over the next 12 months as online video really takes over the internet.

Why hasn’t it happened yet?

Until recently, online streaming was limited by bandwidth challenges, interrupting viewers enjoyment of what they were watching online to buffer the next chunk of media. Those days are almost gone, which is the last big challenge the online world had to conquer in order to become the source of choice for viewership.

So, imagine this…

You’re an advertiser. You can now pick and choose where your television ads run based on finite behavioral consumer characteristics, one viewer at a time. You can pay a premium to have your ad run in a venue that does not allow viewers to fast forward past it, or you can pay a lower fee and take your chances they’ll still watch your ad. Either way, you know the viewer is a perfect target for your message. Or maybe you’re willing to pay a higher fee, but only when they click on the ad that lands them on your web page. The common denominator – no waste. Compare that to today’s average television advertising options. There’s no comparison.

The powerhouses currently in charge of accepting media and advertisements in the online world are aware of the flaws broadcast television has when it comes to offering advertisers the best choices. You can bet they will not be cutting and pasting a strategy that no longer works into a new media ripe for gleaning billions of ad dollars. And YouTube (aka Google TV) will lead the way.

What will consumers expect from the increasing number of ads that will find their place in front of their eyes? A lot. First, it had better be relevant. Next it had better be refreshing (and trustworthy). Then, if it’s persuasive enough, it had better allow them to click through to something equally relevant and useful. Otherwise they will click on the button that reports back to YouTube (or whoever) that they found the ad a waste of their time.

The days of media placement costs sucking up 80% of an advertising budget while creative costs about 20% are quickly coming to an end. Certainly the immediate future of online advertising video placement costs will be nowhere near the cost of traditional television ad space. (Don’t hold your breath that this will stick) But the requirement for the very best, smartest and most trustworthy message will increase greatly. It would come as no surprise to us if, in the next few years, the “idea”, along with its creative execution, switches places in the 80/20 scenario. Time will tell. What do you think?