Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category
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.
When I saw Rick Perry’s Presidential Debate “Oops” re-played on the news this week, I cringed. Not because I was concerned for Rick Perry (this is a non-political blog post), but because of how easily I compared Perry’s “Oops” to the average commercial on TV today.
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?
Imagine that you’re moving your company to a new office space. You have the opportunity to let it say everything about you that you want your customers, business associates, and vendors to know. You spend time with an expert contractor coordinating improvements. You work on room designs with a space planning specialist. You use your IT guru to ensure your computers, phones, etc. will operate effortlessly. You do this because when it’s finished you’ll have work space that not only helps your company’s productivity, but also defines your brand for every visitor to see.
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.
We knew information overload would become a deterrent to the online world, just maybe not so fast. After all, the concept of being able to talk to (and hear from) almost everybody in our universe has been so exciting the past few years that the number of friends, followers, likes, retweets, blog comments, etc. created a lot of egomaniacs trying to win popularity contests. No more. Statistics show many people are now spending more time unfriending others on Facebook than they are sending friend requests. Another report says there is as much unfollowing as following going on in the Twittersphere. Not to mention emails, RSS feeds and blog posts that are being ignored more than ever. Let’s face it. It only took a few years for us to be over the excitement of this new technology that connects everyone, everywhere, 24 hours a day.
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.
