…so declared the writers declared of The Cluetrain Manifesto back in 1999. It’s still enormously relevant and important, even though many of their predictions haven’t yet come to pass, and the old ways of Business As Usual have proved remarkably resilient. But broadband technology and the growth of social media in the last 2-3 years is now providing the environment for these conversations to flourish and grow.
Markets are conversations. Barter economies were based around individuals trading with each other to exchange goods. Information spread through word of mouth. Wise men kept their ‘ear to the ground’, and those with the best networks could command the best prices and biggest markets.
In recent times these inter-personal conversations were drowned out: new technology and communications media enabled those with money and resources (companies and their brands) to shout louder and for longer. Advertising and marketing campaigns became monologues; broadcasting messages from brands to persuade rather than engage or provoke any response besides purchase. They effectively overtook the individual’s ability to conduct conversations.
Now the technology has developed further, and is giving those abilities back. News spreads fast; review sites and social media enable strangers to recommend or condemn brands and products. In some companies and sectors faster than others, this is and will require a fundamental change of approach.
Many companies still “BAU” (Business As Usual) as an everyday term, which seems to imply that they are trying to preserve what has gone before, and everything else is perhaps “nice-to-do”. The very use of language is conservative and incrementalist, suggesting that change will only come when it arises from the pre-existing models.
Marketing Sherpa has recently published research indicating that Social Media and Search have overtaken email spend, and already significantly exceed display advertising. Companies are having to work differently…
It ain't about advertising...
However, many are still clinging to their historic approach to media. They claim to want to engage their consumers more directly and personally, yet they continue to spend a tiny fraction of their time and effort on this. They prefer to spend money advertising in traditional ways through traditional channels rather than hiring staff or systems to engage in conversations with their customers directly. They seem to fear the lack of control and certainty that comes from interacting with individuals, rather than the comfortable assumption that consumers are all the same. Well, we’re not.
Technology is giving people back the ability to engage each other more directly. There’s more truth in The Cluetrain Manifesto’s 11-year-old declarations than in most marketing reports published last month. We’re starting to help some of our clients learn how to face the future, and it’s already beginning to demonstrate results…
Filed under Advertising, It's about people, Search, Social media by Chris | 0 comments...write one
We’ve always believed that marketing and advertising works best when it delivers an emotional connection between whatever is being ’sold’ and whoever is supposed to be doing the buying.
No emotional reaction means no response or action.
Bigger, better, faster, cleaner, tastier is all very well. But it doesn’t ‘get’ you; like Don Draper does in this fantastic scene from the first series of the excellent Mad Men.
Good luck in your next meeting…
Filed under Advertising, It's about people by Chris | 0 comments...write one
(Inspired by a tweet from @socialmedia2day…)
Marketing teams spend millions of pounds in manangement time and agency fees developing briefs, tone of voice guidelines, and executions for every single broadcast message they put out. Every comma becomes a trauma, is that wardobe choice dynamic enough, does that font project our innovativeness? And once they’ve fine-tuned these messages and filmed them in glorious technicolour, they seem to sit back, their labours complete, and rest.
We like to think of marketing in human terms (see our previous post on this). I’d like to suggest this behaviour by brands and their owners is the equivalent of me seeing someone across a crowded room, falling in love with them from afar, going home and crafting a perfect declaration of my love and why I am the ideal person for them, dispatching this missive, then sitting at my open bedroom window, gazing at the stars, sighing wistfully.
The time and resources devoted to enabling relationships between brands and their consumers can still be achingly inadequate. People who make an effort to find a brand and try to engage in conversation often go unrewarded, faced with impersonal automated email systems or glossy brochure websites.
But this can be easy: it certainly doesn’t need to be hard, or even expensive. But it does require a change of mindset, it does require brands to think of their customer relationships more like, well, real relationships; which need to be 2-way, they need maintaining, they need work. Otherwise, they’re not really relationships.
Filed under Advertising, It's about people, Social media by Chris | 1 comment...write another
While we’re always keen to explore new ways of connecting brands with their audiences, it’s doesn’t always have to be complicated. Evoking an emotional response with a simple idea will always resonate strongly. Traditional media carry ideas just as well, often better.
Occasionally I read about a campaign or idea that prickles the hairs on my neck, makes me wish I’d been involved. Or in recent weeks, two campaigns. Their aims of these campaigns are noble, and the executions are genuinely exciting and moving.
The first is an Australian campaign for the UN from 2008 using interactive posters to alert people to the stories of minorities and other marginalised groups. It adheres (almost) to the age-old rule of posters of ‘5 words and a pack shot’, a simple, arresting headline “Listen to me” and striking full-face image, commanding the viewer’s attention. While waiting for your bus, simply snap a picture on your m0bile of the poster, which ‘rewards’ your engagement with a phonecall, putting a voice and a story to the face. It’s a clever use of traditional media with interactive technology (the cynic within wonders whether there wasn’t enough money for TV!). But if there wasn’t, good. This is way better than any preachy, very-worthy-but-most-likely-very-dull TV campaign could have been.
The other campaign is an even simpler, more striking use of posters, where the medium for once really is the message. The Zimbabwean ran billboards of worthless Zimbabwean bank notes to raise awareness and promote readership of the newspaper, and recently won the Cannes Lions Grand Prix award for outdoor advertising.
The ads outline how the regime of Robert Mugabe had introduced a 55 per cent import ‘luxury’ duty on The Zimbabwean, making it unaffordable for the average Zimbabwean. The campaign went further, distributing trillions of dollars worth of Zimbabwean money stamped with provocative messages and a call for support for The Zimbabwean.
There are further images on The Zimbabwean’s Flickr photostream.
Filed under Advertising, Social media, Technology by Chris | 0 comments...write one