Category Archives: Insight

Mar 30 2015
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Advertising, Insight, Strategy

Cultivating The Culture of Winning

I have been in different agencies during my career. Although the people and process were different, there has been one consistent trait in all of them:

The best agencies live on winning.

Sometimes that might result in competitive cutthroat environment, sometimes to a more collaborative family one and sometimes something in the middle. The latter traits are more around based on the personalities of the people, but the obsession of winning is universal.

As I have been always juggling between business and creativity I have enjoyed the winning from both of the angles. And that is how it should be. Great agencies have a culture that enjoys both creative and business wins. It is everyone´s responsibility to

1. Winning creatively

Great agencies live on pushing the boundaries and moving the needle to right direction. Regardless of the department you are working, doing great work should give you the biggest satisfaction. And if it doesn´t, you are probably in wrong line of work.

2. Winning new business

You are either hunter or a farmer. Both are needed, but nothing gives more jolt to the balls (so to speak) to agencies than winning new business. It is also totally vital for the agency as you always lose some older clients despite how good you are. New business gives the biggest buzz in the agency and the culture should embrace it.

Culture of winning is also a culture of trying, failing and coming back up. Winning mentality does not always mean winning. It just means that every time you step up to the court, you give everything you got and try to win by all means necessary. If it results to losing, you just get back up and try again.

It does not matter how many times you will be knocked down. It is how many times you get up.

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Mar 20 2015
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Advertising, Business, Insight, Planning

Send A Message, Send A Dick

If I had a shiny gun,
I could have a world of fun
Speeding bullets through the brains
Of the folk who give me pains;
 
Or had I some poison gas,
I could make the moments pass
Bumping off a number of
People whom I do not love.
 
But I have no lethal weapon-
Thus does Fate our pleasure step on!
So they still are quick and well
Who should be, by rights, in hell.
–Dorothy Parker (Frustration)

Advertising industry is obsessed by positivity. All the ads are filled with shiny happy people pointing their fingers at computer screen. Everyone is smiling. Everyone has friends. No one is fighting. There is no politics, grudge or evil. Everyone cares about the brand and how that special toothpaste comes to save the day.

The advertising reality is pure fiction.

Same time the best advertising is based on truth:

listerine_new

You can dramatize the truth and make it interesting. But there has to be truth in it, otherwise it is meaningless: not connected to the real life, only connected to advertising life. The truth above is simple: bad breath is disgusting and ruins your social chances*. Nothing positive about that, but the message is powerful.

Advertising life should never be separated from the real life. The truth is that your life is filled with annoying tasks, annoying people and annoying circumstances. If more brands would recognize that we would have more truthful advertising. More truthful is also more powerful and resonates with real audience (not focus groups).

There is something profoundly truthful with this new service called “Dicks By Mail”.

dicksbymail

The brand promise is simple:

“In only a few minutes you can send a literal Bag of Dicks to that special asshole in your life.” 

The “dicks” in question are actually candy, which you can send in anonymous package:

candy

This is a great politically incorrect idea. The truth is that everyone could come up with quite long list of people (who are dicks) to whom this jolly gift should be sent (to let the whole world know that they are dicks).

Sometimes the truth hurts.

* Of course advertising played vital role in making halitosis a social problem. That would not have been possible, if Listerine ad message would have been positive. Ad below is naturally revolting when analyzed from today´s point-of-view, but it is based on truth. Sometimes truth is hard to swallow, even harder than Listerine.

listerine_old

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Mar 17 2015
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Business, Insight, Marketing Strategy, Planning

Much Ado About Meerkat

“Those sorts of consumer shifts used to take years or decades, but now they can happen in months or weeks or days, and we’re becoming accustomed to that idea”
– Ian Bogost, game designer

Have you heard about Meerkat?

Don´t worry, you might not even need to.

The hype cycle of new apps gets faster at every moment. I heard about Meerkat couple of weeks ago, this week it has been all the talk of the SXSW town and now it has already been declared dead.

Meerkat is essentially live-streaming app, which used heavily the social graph of Twitter and allowed you to connect to your Twitter connetions in Meerkat. Twitter has already blocked this fun, in conjuction of buying similar app called Periscope. Hence, Meerkat suffered a blow and in the world of tech news hyper babble that blow is naturally deadly.

I was not excited about Meerkat, when I heard about it. I didn´t and don´t recognize the novelty or appeal in the app. Opportunity to livestream is nothing new. When I was working in MySpace, we collaborated with Bambuser, which pretty much was Meerkat with MySpace-era user experience. There are currently many streaming apps available, like the one Twitter just acquired.

So nothing new under the sun, been there done that.

After that comment I can declare that I have officially become an old fart. A person who thinks he has seen anything in his life and can´t just wait to tell that “we tried it already in 2008 and it didn´t work then”. Old farts are the biggest obstacles of any innovation, because the old farts have seen it all. They have also innovated it all. Unfortunately, those innovations have happened only in their heads.

That horrible vision made me think Meerkat again.

The idea can fail for many reasons, but always the reason is not that the idea is bad. iPad was not the first tablet. Facebook was not the first social network. Idea can fail in so many phases, that you cannot really judge the initial idea. Ideas are not unique, executed ideas can be. Technology improves so fast, that the ability to do user-friendly and enticing live-streaming app is totally different than couple of years ago. Maybe 2015 is just the right time to launch live-streaming app. Executing idea is also just one thing, how do you market it and make it sexy is the other thing. Meerkat has been at least way more effective with their PR and hype machine than their competitors.

My opposition against Meerkat is that I do not see live streaming behavior taking off. To be honest, I did not see that Snapchat would evolve to be a legit app beyond teens sending their nude photos to strangers. I can also admit that I was wrong. Although it is easier to latch onto existing behavior, technology can also create new behavior. That we are glued into our smartphones is quite new behavior in history of human race. I don´t think that no one predicted exactly that to happen.

We are obsessed with new.

Meerkat has had disproportionate amount of hype, because media wants a new social media phenomenon. Old farts criticize it, because it is not new enough. Somewhere between the overhype of media (and tech hipsters in SXSW) and underhype of old farts is the truth. Which is: essentially no one really knows what will happen with Meerkat. But it is interesting to see.

You cannot ever evaluate the success of technology when it is hyped and brand new. The true stress test is when technology has become old and boring. That is when they start to make business sense.

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Mar 16 2015
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Advertising, Business, Insight, Marketing Strategy, Strategy

Training Hard Makes You More Human

“We are not encouraging people to just run faster for the sake of being faster. We are saying that ultimately you will be able to enjoy life if you take the time to cater to your own humanity.”
–Matt O´Toole (Reebok President)

Reebok has been a really interesting brand lately.

Their commitment to fitness has been a bold move and also makes perfect sense (as we have to also bear in mind that Reebok is owned by Adidas). Especially there has been tremendous growth in “tough fitness” which includes crossfit, martial arts and other “more demanding than your regular Zumba”-activities. What started out as a niche exercise has become now mainstream and everyone is flipping tires these days: me as well.

During the latest Super Bowl, Reebok launched their new brand belief piece “Be More Human”:

I like it (mainly because I am part of target audience). Also because the message Reebok conveys is part of my whole life philosophy. I don´t eat to live, I don´t train to live. I live to train & eat. Sports is not just a way to prevent your inevitable physical deterioration, it also strengthens you mentally and socially.

Training hard improves you as a person. Competing against others makes you tougher but it is also social. I have learned more from teamwork, leadership and grit from basketball court than from work. When you push it to the limits in sports, you are more likely to be able to push it to the limits with other things as well.

And that belief I heartily endorse.

The other reason why Reebok´s message is compelling is that it is not for all. Reeboks has made a deliberate decision to be exclusive. Their core focus is in tough fitness and quite hardcore training with blood, blisters, sweat, snot, tears and tear down. Whereas the usual scared brand advertiser would have expanded the target audience and showed people doing all the mundane fitness moves and have message about how “fitness is for everyone”, Reebok kept the focus. Reebok is for those who train hard (or think they train hard, like me). The almost brutal nature of their ads is refreshing compared to the touchy-feely lifestyle-routes the majority of sports brands have chosen.

“We’re confident that when we push ourselves, we not only transform our bodies, we transform our entire lives.”
Matt O´Toole

That brings us to the last point. They are expanding, but they are promoting the whole category of tough fitness (which can basically mean quite diverse things) and training hard. Their message resonates naturally to those who currently are sport freaks, but it also has appeal to people who push themselves in other things in life. Showcasing the more “holistic” (in the lack of better word) benefits of intense exercise, they collaborated with scientist David McRaney and created the Human score to calculate your level of humanness:

It is a human nature to be a sucker for tests and I could not wait to test my humanness. I was luckily still more close to human than android. “Brain buff” also sounds like a new upcoming fad term like spornosexual:

brainbuff

As part of the campaign there is also a selfie competition (because no brand is perfect) and some other infographics about how training affects your brain.

Reebok is at least having tight focus on what they are doing. I believe that it will also pay off, if they have the perseverance and patience to follow their daring brand belief through.

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Mar 09 2015
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Business, Digital Strategy, Insight

Forget the Apple Watch, This is the Only Wearable that Truly Matters…

Stop jacking off, start jacking on…
wankband
Although I have been an early advocate for wearable tech, some of the recent developments in wearables have been cringe-worthy at their best. While waiting for the Apple watch, the wearable space has been disappointing. Until now…

Enter the Wankband.

As we all know, the main developments in Internet technology have been driven by porn industry. Therefore it is only opportunity, that Pornhub should take the role to be the lighting beacon in the future of wearables with their “Wankband”. The idea is simple: wankband creates power when you love yourself (move the band in up & down motion) and then kinetic charger stores the “dirty energy” which you can use for example to charge your phone.

Although I am quite skeptical that this product will ever reach the store shelves, Wankband still embodies the five success requirements that majority of current wearables are missing at the moment:

1. Simple (Anyone can do the up & down movement)
2. Useful (Your phone is always running out of the battery, isn´t it?)
3. Instant gratification (Although you don´t necessarily charge the full battery, the journey to create “dirty energy” is satisfying)
4. Based on existing behavior (Although no one admits it)
5. Well-branded (Catchy name, good-looking site, mentions in PSFK)

The copywriter for the website and the video deserves extra credit as well with great puns.

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Mar 03 2015
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Advertising, Digital Strategy, Insight, Planning, Social Media

5 Ways to Make Your YouTube Pre-Rolls Kick Ass

Sometimes media is the message.

Lately there has been one media, which has had a sudden surge of messages: both skippable and non-skippable.

YouTube pre-rolls.

Despite annoying the hell out of users and not really making money, brand advertisers love YouTube pre-rolls. They are the new TV ads. Unfortunately that familiarity often translates to laziness. When there is lack of understanding of digital possibilities, YouTube pre-roll seems like a silver bullet. It feels easy, cosy and ticks all the right boxes (visual storytelling, digital, reach, etc.)

1. Don´t use your TV ads as a pre-roll.
There is an exception to this rule, though. If you have done genuinely funny, entertaining and effective TV ad, which works also in digital format and drives the message home in the first 5 seconds you can skip this part.
Yep, I thought so.
Although it feels tempting and easy solution, dumping your TV ad to YouTube hardly cuts the mustard.
Majority of TV ads are 30 seconds. The media buying behavior is the main reason for the duration. 30 seconds is not magical duration to tell a story. Especially in YouTube, where people watch content ranging from fraction of seconds to multiple hours.
TV ads are more passive format, as you cannot skip them as reaching for the remote is more tasking than moving your cursor on screen. You can be more boring and long-winded in TV ads and still make them work. You don´t have that luxury with YouTube pre-rolls. At its most minimum level, at least make YouTube edit of that TV ad.

2. Understand why people are watching YouTube videos
When you buy that pre-roll, you are, by default, annoying users. They want to watch some idiot eating Naga Morich, not hear about your latest anti-dandruft shampoo. You are not engaging with audience, you are interrupting them. So embrace that fact. Little contextual acknowledgement (Burger King Anti Pre-Roll) or even reward for watching the whole video (EAT: Don´t Skip Your Breakfast) will go a long way.

3. People will likely skip your ad. Make those 5 seconds count.
Depending on the source, over 94% or as little as 70% skip the pre-rolls. Nevertheless of the actual number, you can safely assume that your pre-roll is more likely to be skipped than seen or shared.
Therefore the most important part of a good story is the beginning. You have to catch the attention immediately. Like saying that you electrocute a dog if you skip the ad:

Even after this threat, only 26% watched the video in its full glory. Either there are more latent dog-haters around or people just skip the ads based on the habit. Hardest task is to make people stay and watch the first 5 seconds. After that the consumer is already committed to your content and can just hang on:

4. Don´t Sweat The Length (but make it as short as possible)
Generally non-skippable YouTube ads should be shorter than that and skippable ones could even be significantly longer. So take your time as long as your start is hard-hitting. After first five seconds everything is easier.
Only caveat is that it might be quite overkill to force user to watch 30s pre-roll when she is watching 10s video. Smart marketer would have lots of different versions of the YouTube pre-roll to suit different context (like Burger King Pre-Roll) or different lengths. The following ad from Volkswagen would work brilliantly with shorter-form video:

Doing multiple versions is more expensive from production perspective, but increased investment would also result in increased effectiveness.

 5. If you don´t have anything interesting to say or show, you are not interesting
YouTube pre-roll has certain limitations and opportunities, which are good to keep in mind. At the end of the day, it is still about good marketing communications. Great story is a great story whether it is 5 seconds or 5 hours. And on the other hand: If it looks like shit and smells like shit, you don´t need to really taste it to verify that it is shit.
If you are doing the latter, you should be ashamed of yourself. No matter what the medium. And if you are being clever and having fun with the medium you can actually expand the interest from 5 seconds to 1 minute:

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Jan 20 2015
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Advertising, Insight, Marketing Strategy, Planning, Strategy

Rethink Your Marketing Research

Majority of brands are doing research wrong. They spend all their efforts with focus groups, where “target audience” is overanalyzing ad storyboards in conditions that could not be more removed from the reality where those ads really are seen. In addition to focus, there is also qualitative research where the same “target audience” lies to their heart´s content about how they care about sustainability, ethicality but in reality only care about the price.

Don´t get me wrong. Right research is essential to successful marketing. Majority of brands would benefit with constant testing and research in the marketplace. You should be able to change advertising assets based on their actual performance in the media. Yes, it requires a little bit more production budget but will result in better success rate. Although there has been quite a lot talk about optimization, it is still surprising that how few brands and brand managers do the effort to measure, optimize and improve. It is just so much more convenient to blow up the money on useless focus groups.

Research is a powerful tool if we approach it differently. Where boring background research is generally reserved to the beginning of the project and happily forgotten by the time there is the creative development is on its full swing, you could actually make research integral part of your advertising. No need to be too scientific or cerebral about it:

Research is essentially just finding things out.

How you find things out is not limited to traditional methods. With digital tools we have more agile ways to do research and figure things up. Don´t let the bad image of current market research stop you. Be more of a mad scientist, less a census data collector and get your hands dirty with the research. On the right hands research can be a powerful creative tool and not just requisite tick in the box.

Great example about this is Shave Test by Gillette. Gillette could have done the usual boring qualitative study and ask women how they feel about beard. When asking someone for an opinion, you always give her opportunity to lie. Therefore observation is always better than asking. Therefore women might have been tempted to say that they love beards, because all the hipsters around sporting their beardos clouded their judgment. Regardless of the truthfulness of the answer, the guys could not have cared less. It would just have been another boring research piece that brands do all the time and no one really notices.

So instead of opting for boring, Gillette collaborated with Tinder for the rogue research. Right swipe in Tinder has become a unified standard for sex appeal. So Gillette and Tinder tested, which get more right swipes: bearded or well-groomed guys. The results were probably not that surprising to women, maybe a little bit to all bearded hipsters out there. You can watch highlights on the video below or get more detailed results in the campaign website:

How many times have come out with exciting creative from your focus groups?

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Jan 19 2015
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Business, Insight, Marketing Strategy

ScootBiz Bidding: Gamification That Works

Gamification used to be the trendy buzzword couple of years back. Although industry hot shots are not raving about it anymore, the main idea makes still perfect sense. Gamification is making boring tasks fun, rewarding and immersive (not necessarily even game-like i.e. frequent flier programs).

Small example of this came from Scoot airlines, with whom I was flying last weekend. Little bit before my flight I got a mail from Scoot, which gave me an opportunity to bid for business class seats. I could set my own price and if my bid would be successful, I would get business class seats:

Screen Shot 2015-01-19 at 4.23.17 PM

This is a brilliant idea for two quite obvious reasons:

1. The opportunity makes the thief

My main concern when selecting budget airline is price, price and price. I would never book so calle ScootBiz in normal circumstances as my mindset is minimizing the investment. However, given the opportunity to bid on those Scootbiz seats, it felt different case. The price for economy class was already sunken cost, so I evaluated the opportunity to “win” those seats in new light. Bidding is an attention grabbing, active and addictive way to get people to spend more. It is likely that bidding also makes you spend more than you had thought, because it feels “risk-free” investment. You set your own maximum, which you are willing to spend. What many people do not realize that every price you set is already in addition to what you were first willing to spend. They also show “the strength” of your bid, which naturally prompts you to bid higher.

2. Only upside for Scoot

As you offer the bidding opportunity for those who have already booked their tickets you can wait to sell those seats until last minute. In best case scenario they might get even more money than normally. At its worse, they still get something. No matter what price Scoot gets from the bidding process, it is still better than no price at all.

Simple ideas are always the strongest.

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Jan 15 2015
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Insight, Marketing Strategy, Planning, Strategy

Anatomy of An Insight: This Girl Can

This could almost be Nike ad (that is highest compliment for an ad I have)

Insight: There is currently a gender gap in sports in UK. The amount of females doing sports is only 66% compared to men. One of the main reasons holding women back is the fear of judgment (apparently guys do not fear it). Women think that other people in gym are semiprofessional low body fat athletes, when in reality everyone can benefit and enjoy from doing sports.

You should not also think about how you look when doing sports, because every one looks stupid when doing sports. Case-in-point: the all-time greatest basketball player Michael Jordan:

michael jordan tongue wag

Michael Jordan and his trademark tongue wag

More important is that when repeated enough times, doing sports makes you look better afterwards.

Will this ad change the sports habits of UK women?

Not solely. It is a great rally cry and provides inspiration for women to take on sports. The usage of regular women in the Nike-esque ad powerfully conveys the message, that everyone can do sports. That is important starting point and good kickstarter for the habit hange

Inspiration is not really enough to change a habit. It is a main component in motivation, but you also have to make sure to address cue, routine and reward to make it stick. Therefore it is interesting to see will “This Girl Can”-campaign play solely on inspiration space or will it expand to even more concrete actions.

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Jan 13 2015
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Advertising, Insight, Marketing Strategy, Planning, Strategy

Newcastle Brown Ale, No Bollocks and The Importance of Consistent Brand Behavior

We are approaching Super Bowl, which is tremendous for ad aficionados (not necessarily for sales, though). During the last year´s Super Bowl, the favorite ad I had was actually one that did not even air at the actual commercial break.

Every brand tries to be a part of big event and competes against limited amount of attention, which is really focused on the actual game. In reality there is more exposure to be had by exploiting an event in the outskirts where the other brands do not dare to venture. They are playing safe and being scared of doing anything out of ordinary. This creates a great opportunity for the bold ambush marketer. Tap into big events and sponsorship, but try not to pay for it, is my motto.

That motto was followed by Newcastle Brown Ale last year with these highly entertaining ads piggybacking Super Bowl ad craze:

The Teaser for The Trailer for Newcastle´s Mega Huge Football Game AD

The Mega Huge Football Game Ad Newcastle Could´ve Made

Rest of the videos can be seen on the campaign site and here is the full case study of the success of the campaign:

I have had debates about the campaign (which is usually good sign, seldom you even notice a campaign, thus argue about it). Does it really fit with Newcastle Brown Ale brilliant brand promise? Their approach has been all about “No Bollocks” which means avoiding the usual beer ad clichés. Their pseudo super bowl ad is essentially in its post-modern sarcasm and ad irony is, well, bollocks. Sometimes you have to point out that you are not bollocks by first demonstrating what the bollocks is. In these ads by showing the beer ad bollocks clichés, Newcastle takes the higher ground by using parody and rises above the bollocks. That´s some serious philosophy right there. Not to mention that the ads are truly the dog´s bollocks.

Consistent brand behavior is not about repeating the same line over and over again. That is just an attempt to bore you into buying. Great brand behavior has strong brand belief (like No Bollocks) that manifests itself in everything or whatever the brand does. Therefore you don´t have to repeat “No Bollocks” if you show and demonstrate what no bollocks –attitude means. Being an underdog is also about the attitude. Newcastle Brown Ale is able to portray challenger underdog mentality, even though they are owned by big beer behemoth Heineken.

Consistent brand behavior also means that you stay true to your course. Quite often brands change their direction too often, although their current approach just started to work. After the success of last year´s Super Bowl Newcastle Brown Ale continues with the same brand behavior and similar tone. Not buying Super Bowl ad, but tapping into this biggest advertising showcase in the world. This time they are trying to “crowdsource” ad with some other brands, because they do not have budget to buy super bowl slot:

Newcastle Brown Ale also tapped into one of the most famous ad properties around Super Bowl (Doritos Crash The Super Bowl) and made their own “Doritos” ad:

Internet does not like sequels, but their approach showcases unique brand consistency, which is rare nowadays. More importantly the ads are funny as well.

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