Author Archives: Riku Vassinen

Dec 07 2015
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Strategy

Learning How To Lose

I ran my 16th marathon last Sunday (exactly to my target 4:00:00). Coincidentally I came across this paragraph from J.M. Coetzee:
“Sport teaches us more about losing than about winning, simply because so many of jus don´t win. What it teaches above all is that it is OK to lose. Losing is not the worst thing in the world, because in sports, unlike in war, the loser doesn´t get to have his throat cut by the winner.
…
Because that is the great lesson of the sport. You lose most of the time, but as long as you stay in the game there will always be a tomorrow, a fresh change to redeem yourself. “
–J.M. Coetzee (Letter to Paul Auster, October 21, 2010)

Although I generally share the sentiment of Coetzee, where I differ is the line “it is OK to lose”. I think what sports teach us that it is never OK to lose, but it is normal to lose. There is a huge difference in that. Practicing sports helps us to deal with setbacks in life in general. It does not matter how many times you have been knocked down, it matters how many times you get up.

Whether it is my recreational running, weightlifting or pick-up basketball, I want to win. Depending on the sports it is against a real opponent, imaginary opponent or just myself, which I guess is a mixture of both. More often than not I´ll lose, but that does not mean the losing is ok. It happens, but you should not tolerate it. It just makes you want to win harder. I have never understood people who just run, or just play and don´t want to win.

If you do not care about losing or winning, you do not care about anything in life.

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Dec 01 2015
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Advertising, Insight, Marketing Strategy, Planning, Uncategorized

Sex is The Killer App

“Pornography was the unacknowledged “killer app” of the World Wide Web, not to mention the printing press, photography, and video before it.

The vibrator was the first handheld electrical device, predating the cellphone by century. Scooters took off in postwar Europe, particularly Italy, because they let young couples get away from their families.

Facilitating dating was surely one of the “killer apps” of fire when Homo Erectus discovered it a million years ago; and equally surely, a key driver of increasing realism in humanlike robots will be the sexbot industry.

Sex just seems to be the end, rather than the means, of technological evolution”

Pedro Domingos (Master Algorithm)

Sometimes the most basic needs are driving the consumer behavior. Many marketers fail taking into account those animal urges that still largely are driving us. As marketers try to stay politically correct, they will come up with lukewarm insights that are not really rooted in true human behavior. Tinder is growing in conservative countries like Indonesia & India, although it has not been that widely acknowledged. Humans are always humans, no matter where you are from.

People are driven by lust, hunger, jealousy and greed. Your brand might not be about those things, but if you fail to understand the real motivations you will not be able to make the connection with your audience.

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Nov 16 2015
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Advertising, Marketing Strategy, Planning, Strategy

Advertising is Just A Shortcut For Product Selection

“Brands are not the rich sources of differentiation marketers like to think of them as, but short cuts through the complexity of decision-making.”
Ian Leslie

I have been fighting against the lofty term engagement for a long time.

There is time and place for marketing activities that are not only aimed at reach. However, they should be approached like investing and with the notion that those activities will most likely fail. In terms of majority of marketing budget, you need to focus on top-of-mind. There are too many alternatives out there to every product imaginable so as a consumer you cannot be bothered. You want to buy your stuff and focus on other more important things in life. Advertising provides a shortcut for product selection. Therefore it is crucial to keep reaching people all the time, be consistent and be different than your competition.

In your next social media seminar there will be an annoying social media guru waxing lyrical about engagement. On that instance, close your ears and keep in mind these essentials:

1.Focus on light buyers.
Like professor Andrew Ehrenberg nicely put it: “your customers are customers of other products, who occasionally buy your products”. If you are doing consumer goods, you are mass product and you need to do mass advertising.

2.Focus on socially inactive audience.
1% of the people actually create content, while 99% are lurkers. Not all your activities should be focused to lurkers, but majority. 1% rule applies to general content in Internet. People who are creating content about your brand are on your payroll or they are crazy. Or both.

3.Focus on being focused.
Marketing directors and advertising agencies have short attention span. They feel the need to fix something that is not broken. They feel the need to tinker a brand that is in good shape. They want to innovate when they should stick to their guns. If you want people to remember you, you have to be consistent.

If you will keep your focus, you will be doing effective advertising.

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Nov 06 2015
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Insight, Planning, Strategy

Elevator Repair is The Best Corporate Wellness Program

Everyone knows that if worker´s are in good health, it will be beneficial to the company. There are different corporate wellness programs, but because people are motivated differently their results are not always so successful. In our office building there has been one major change, which most likely will have the biggest impact on the well being of workers. This is not any corporate wellness program and not even run by HR, but it has suddenly got people moving:

Best corporate wellness program

Best corporate wellness program in action

If you want to get your workers to exercise, break down your elevator.

Instead of three elevators, we are currently down for only one. It currently takes around 10 minutes to wait for an elevator, so majority of people have switched to walking stairs. We are nine floors high, so some of the people will actually quite good exercise by just walking the stairs. Instead of trying to get people to exercise, you make exercising more desirable option instead of waiting for the elevators. Of course some people are waiting for the elevator, but most likely they would not start exercising in any case.

In Singapore you are automatically opt-in for organ donor program (which should be the case in every country). You have to make effort to opt-out. This naturally has resulted on high organ donor rates. If you want to nudge people towards certain behavior, you should make the alternatives less desirable, more cumbersome or even totally impossible.

Hopefully people continue walking the stairs, when elevators have been fixed. Especially those lazy bastards on first and second floor, you should walk the stairs every day no matter are the elevators broken or not (I am at fifth floor).

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Nov 04 2015
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Advertising, Insight, Planning

How To Be A Blind Tasting Planner

In blind-tasting we only trust our tastebuds, in normal tasting we will automatically favor the more expensive alternative

In blind tasting we only trust our tastebuds, in normal tasting we will automatically favor the more expensive alternative

I recently read “Blind Tasting Manifesto”from Robin Goldstein, which is a though-provoking text about wine tasting. It also has three important lessons for a planner:

1. Always Manage and Manipulate The Expectations of the consumers

Expectations rule our evaluation of wine. Especially expectations based on price: you are automatically favoring wine if you know (or believe) it is expensive.

People are not rational and sometimes contrary to traditional economic model decreasing price can lead to fewer sales. Price is important anchoring point for quality. If something is too cheap it is not aspiring, believable and it does not get your expectations.

Too often we neglect consumers expectations and current biases around our product. We are too busy on focusing what we want to say and do within current campaign that we fail to realize that quite often our audience has already created their impression of our brand before even seeing any ads or experiencing the product. Consumers get the brand that they believe they get, not what the brand truly is.

2. Don´t trust the experts

Experts, who guide our wine expectations, cannot be trusted. Many studies have proven that many so-called wine experts fail miserably in blind-tasting setting.

Same thing goes with marketing. I stopped going to seminars, because I was constantly underwhelmed with all the “gurus” talking about the same things on their Keynotes. Planners want to be experts and also refer to other so-called “experts” too often. The most important thing is to absorb information and stimulus as possible, but at the end of the day, do your own decisions. If you are able to do unbiased decisions…

3. Try to Keep An Open Mind

Your true preferences are out there awaiting discovery via blind tasting. You might even like the cheaper wine, so keeping an open mind can save your money.

We as planners can easily fall prey to experimenter´s bias. Our expectations regarding study results bias the research outcome. Too often, we find exactly what we are looking for. That is totally counter-effective to what true planning should be, we should find something new.

Advertising is one of the most subjective industries in the world. We planners should try to be the most objective we can be. It is not easy, but if we are not trying, no one else is either.

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Nov 02 2015
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Digital Strategy, Insight, Planning

Recipe for An Internet Hit: Cross-Section of Highbrow Concept and Lowbrow Vulgarity

Beautiful landscapes combined with pair of men´s balls. That is the latest phenomenon among guys. Being a huge fan of infantile humor myself, I am naturally delighted by this art.

nutscapes

There is nothing surprising with this phenomenon. We know that males are naturally leaning towards below the belt every time there is an opportunity. Generally the best coping mechanism in this world is to try to take the piss out of everything. At the same time it is weirdly empowering and disgusting. Like all the great memes, the “nutscaping” is inclusive and the creator has been helpful enough to give tutorial how to create your own “Nutscape” on his website.

HOW TO NUTSCAPE:

  1. Find yourself somewhere awesome.
  2. Turn your back to the awesome scene.
  3. Drop your pants.
  4. Bend over and shoot Nutscape back through your legs.

Other helpful hints include adjusting width of stance to accommodate hanging state (either high or low) of nuts. When you are nutscaping at height, use free hand the anchor and remember to “mind the tip” (so that it does not turn to dickscape).

Obsev.com turned Nutscapes into motivational posters

Obsev.com turned Nutscapes into motivational posters

The cross-section of inspiring and repulsive is something that catches like wildfire in the Internet. Instagram has already suspended Nutscapes, because essentially they are hypocritical and lack any sense of humor. What could be a new energy boost for photography is now crippled by censorship.

“I believe Nutscapes has great artistic depth because it touches upon both a low-brow vulgarity and a high-brow concept. Simply, testes are f*cking funny. Always have been; always will be. They add humor to a subject matter, landscape photography, that is typically a little dry.”

– Clancy Philbrick (Creator of Nutscapes)

This highlights the dilemma brands have when they want to go viral. Extremes are interesting, but only handful of brands can truly take it to the max (and even should try to it). Quite often sharable content lacks any deeper meaning, purpose and any substance whatsoever. It is just fun because people can sense that there a no hidden agenda. Great brands are all about agenda, not even hidden one. Agenda is seldom something you want to share unless it is your agenda.

What makes a good meme does not make a good brand.

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Oct 29 2015
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Advertising, Insight, Strategy

Millennial Dilemma

Although I actually quite like Hotline Bling and the memes involved, I also have recognized that I have become quite old.

Technically I am earliest installation of Millennials. What that means is that, we can use digital devices but had to learn how to use them. It is not something that has always been part of my life. Majority of my friends are from Generation X and my frame of reference has always been more from that side. So to put it to movies context, I am more “Straight Outta Compton” than “We Are Your Friends”.

Age is nothing but a number, but generally I found that there is more to learn from younger people than old geezers. Old age brings experience. Experience brings predictability. Predictability brings cynicism. Which means that every year brings you closer to become a truly whiny and bitter bastard. No need to beat around bush, that is where we all are eventually heading.

The behavior of real millennials (not from older end, like me) is shaping the future. If I think about my own parents they have eventually turned out to all things early adopters first pioneered, whether it is Netflix, smartphones or Finnish hip-hop. You cannot learn about stickers by reading about them, you have to observe people who are actually using them. There are lots of things to learn from younger generation, but how to meet them? I have three methods to try to pick brains of millennials:

  1. Be available mentor

Whether it is a company initiative or someone is approaching you for help, try to be available and meet different people. Bad experiences are valuable experience as well and when you mentor someone you most likely learn even more from you mentee. Millennials might think that you have something valuable to contribute, so be helpful. One coffee can make a big difference.

  1. Try to talk to the students

Today I was talking to marketing students in SMU. They were super active and smart bunch. Questions were sharp and made me also think from different angle. When you are at beginning of your marketing career it feels that you are actually thinking more straight and clearly. All the marketing jargon has not yet totally polluted your brain. Well, there is time for everything.

SMU

Selfie with SMU students taken by our HR Director, Kevin

  1. Go where the young people are

I don’t actually know where young people nowadays are and I would not dare to go there even if I know. And I don´t really want to know. Clubs are too noisy. I just want to hang out at home, listen to vinyl records (from when I was teenager) and enjoy a good glass of wine. So two out of three is ok as well.

If you don´t know what millennial is and you don´t know if you are one, check this Vanity Fair guide. Funnily (or sadly) in the latest Vanity Fair, there was a letter to the editor by (younger) millennial. She referred to VF as a magazine, she envisioned to be reading when she would be over 30. Damn, I have read VF from when I was 20.

I must be the most failed Millennial in the world.

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Oct 28 2015
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Advertising, Insight, Planning, Strategy

Sushi Train: The Best Ideation Exercise For Workshops

I have probably spent quarter of this year (or even more) in workshops. And I love it.

The collaborative boiler room environment is something I truly like. You generally come to the solutions faster. All the important stakeholders are present, so participants are more involved and invested in actual results.

Because of the sheer volume of workshops I either attend or moderate, I rotate quite a bunch of different idea exercises. Some exercises work better than others with different groups, and one size does not fit all. One of my current favorites which seems to be generating golden ideas every time is the following:

Sushi Train (group exercise 5 to 10 people)

sushi train

Ideas just keep on piling and piling up…

What you need?
– blank paper (A4) for every group member
– pen
– timer
– fresh ideas
– hopefully readable handwriting (my biggest challenge)

How long does it take?
Depending on the group size, i.e. 5 member team takes 5 minutes to write ideas and about the same to share. Good to have about 30 minutes for this exercise.

How does it work?
1 Min Write your idea on a blank paper. After minute is done, rotate your paper within the group to the next person to you.
1 Min Build upon idea you received from your group member. Rotate the paper. If you cannot build the previous idea, just write a new one.
…
Continue this until you will receive your first paper back.
Share the ideas within wider group.

It is generally way more effective to force people to write their ideas quietly at first, before you are going to discussion. Brainwriting is better than brainstorming, because latter favors the loudest and those highest in the company food chain. When you have to write, you have to think. And more people think, better and more effective ideas you will generate. Sushi train also encourages collaboration and is a quick acid test for ideas. If other people cannot continue with your idea, it was not probably that good to begin with.

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Oct 27 2015
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Business, Insight, Strategy

Forget the Unicorns, Focus on Cockroaches

There has been lots of talk about the current tech bubble or lack thereof. Valuations have gone over the roof and money. When we are hunting for flashy unicorns, there might be many hidden ugly ducklings with lots of potential.

One can´t help but wonder that many of the new start-ups seem to be just over glorified pizza delivery services that work on your mobile phone. Although drones, virtual reality and wearables are sexy, majority of the start-ups working in the sexy side of things are just flash of the pan.

Money is where boring is.

That is why I would turn my focus to food for the next growing category. Regardless of the latest iterations of iPhone, the last time I checked, all the people still need to eat. Every one of us have to eat to live, but to make some better margins there are quite a few people who are living to eat as well. Today´s food trend is tomorrow´s food mainstream.

The next growing food category is bugs, crickets, grasshoppers and other insects. As you might have heard, the insects might be the solution for the growing demand of food. Eating insects on various forms makes perfect sense:

There is currently couple of interesting insect protein start-ups originated from Kickstarter. Both use cricket flour in their insect protein bars: Jungle Bar and Exo Protein. Bars are one thing, but I recommend eating insects also. Little bit of butter and salt, spider to the pan and you have perfect dish.

Future of food

My first encounter with fried tarantula in Cambodia 2008

If you scorn on eating ants and spiders, it is good to remember that lobsters were once considered as “the cockroaches of the sea”.

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Oct 26 2015
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Advertising, Insight

Anatomy of An Insight: Angkasa Pura Last Minute Souvenir

This idea is almost so obvious, that it nearly makes you angry that you did not come up with something similar yourself.

Angkasa Pura (company operating Indonesian airports) in conjunction with Indonesian tourism board launched a series of small paper packages showing the stories and designs behind the humble Indonesian coin:

Angkasa Pura Last Minute Souvenir

Turning forgettable coin to unforgettable souvenir

When you open them up, they work as a display stand where you can fit a leftover coin from your trip to Indonesia. These could be picked up for free in Indonesia´s airport:

angkasapura2

Insight: When you are traveling abroad, you will have bunch of foreign coins you cannot really use anywhere. What if you would turn something worthless into something worth remembering?

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