There is a new meme going around the blogosphere/twittersphere. It’s called „Things real people don’t say about advertising“ and depicts typical things clients/marketers might want their target audiences to say or think about their advertising/website/banner ads, etc.
Love it! People already seem to be sending in their own stuff, so this could turn out to be brilliant lunchtime entertainment!
(thanks, Carsten!)
I missed the last Social Media Club Hamburg meeting, unfortunately. It was booked out when I first looked, and I didn’t have a chance to check the list again later on.
The discussion must have been quite interesting, the topic certainly was: why social media projects fail. Basis for the discussion was a study amongst more than 500 Marketers across Europe.
This is the presentation of the study:
Simon Sinek has written a book about a brilliant idea: „Start with why„. Now he has written a semi-good blogpost about the ad industry titled „I hate you: a tale about the advertising industry„. His main take out: agencies knowingly produce stuff people don’t want to see, so they look for ways to make people watch that stuff anyway. His proposal:
the ad industry should work to improve the quality of their product to a point where people want to watch it.
Well, isn’t that what creative agencies are trying to do anyway? It’s a problem of targeting. The best ad is wasted on someone who doesn’t care or even hate the brand. And once an ad is well targeted, it’s message should be relevant, and there should be no question about acceptance. A good creative targeted at the right audience should never fall into the trap of being annoying.
However, the world isn’t perfect, and in mass distributed media, there will always be a spillover – i.e. ads delivered to people who don’t care about the brand, the message, the offer. And it’s not only a question of entertainment, as Simon Sinek suggests:
The quality of advertising should always be measured based on how entertaining or engaging it is. They should stop measuring how many people are forced to watch (reach and frequency) and start measuring how many people choose to watch.
The main factor is not entertainment, it’s relevance. An ad can be highly successfull, if relevant, even if it’s not in the least entertaining. Given the right context, a fitting message and good targeting, you might also want to call advertising „information“.
Of course, if neither of that is true, you should call it „spam“ or simply annoyance.
The main point of Sinek is, however, that ad agencies produce their creative having a different target audience in mind: the client. For that matter, we might even add another target audience that sometimes play an important role: jurys of advertising award shows. Much of what is created serves to satisfy individual client needs, or may be even simply client internal political structures.
So Sinek argues, that ad agencies should instead again focus on their main target audience: the end customer.
Producing a product for the consumers who are the ones actually consuming the product makes more business sense, too. Clients would be able to spend less on media because the work would be more memorable. Plus, if people CHOOSE to watch the ads, they are more likely to like the brands, products and companies featured in those ads. In other words, if advertising was made for consumers and not clients the ultimate benefactor would actually be the client…and isn’t that supposed to be the job of good advertising?
Good idea. Given what I notice in the industry, this is definitely the intention when creating new ideas. Within the realm of highly user-centric media such as social media, this thinking has already started to sink in. It just needs to permeate all the layers of „integrated“ agencies, until even the most classically oriented teams are also familiar with this idea.
2010 will be the year, in which (at least in Germany) companies will try to strategically integrate Social Media into their marketing mix. As opposed to previous years, when Social Media (often phrased as „viral“ campaign elements) was already part of the briefing due to the glitter and glamour, but nobody could actually pinpoint the relevance and contribution of the tactics.
Jeremiah Owyang is now providing some guidance for the first and essential question for companies trying to look at the subject wholistically: is it a brand play, is it a product play, shall we enter with a lifestyle approach or separate activities by location?
His approach is a Matrix: How To Choose Social Media Programs by Brand, Lifestyle, Product or Location to avoid the following pitfalls:
Companies that choose poorly will have wasted internal efforts and resources, set up false expectations for customers and may struggle with trying to redact a program in public where customers are already assembling. […] having no strategy means that product teams, regional teams, and individual regions will do whatever they want –causing clean up for corporate late.
As a first orientation I think this will serve companies quite well. Surely, each quadrant can be made more specific to each companies situation and needs, but that should be left for the individual Social Media consultant…
At the end there is short guidance on how to choose the right mix:
Not quite digital marketing, but similar rules surely apply to creating well selling online web pages. The NY Times has a piece on how restaurants are trying to improving their menues. Things like highlighting the most profitable items on the menue via putting boxes around them, display prices without a dollar sign, etc. Some restaurants seem to be continously testing how to best design menues so that revenue and profitability increases.
“If admen had souls, many would probably trade them for an opportunity every restaurateur already has: the ability to place an advertisement in every customer’s hand before they part with their money.”
Very true. An inspiring read: Using menue psychology to entice diners.
Wo ich sonst so bin...