Category Archives: Marketing Strategy

Feb 15 2013
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Advertising, Digital Strategy, Marketing Strategy, Planning, Social Media

6 Seconds of Fame: Idiot´s Guide to Vine

I heard it through the grapevine, that Vine has been all the rage in the social media circles last couple of weeks.

Here is brief summary what it is all about:

What is Vine?
It is basically Instagram for short videos. Twitter mastered the microblogging with 140 characters and now it is aiming to do the same with microvlogging and six seconds. Vine currently works only in iPhone and best in conjunction with Twitter. Vine was launched on the end of January.

What it supposed to be?
“Posts on Vine are about abbreviation — the shortened form of something larger. They’re little windows into the people, settings, ideas and objects that make up your life. They’re quirky, and we think that’s part of what makes them so special.”
Dom Hoffman, co-founder & GM, Vine

How it works?
Go to Apple app store and download the Vine app. Then you (preferably) log on with your Twitter handle to the app. After that start shooting. The process is super simple: press what you want to film with your thumb. Then edit what you filmed to 6 second video. Share it on Twitter.
To use Vine is really intuitive and simple, but to make something worthwhile takes probably more than just six seconds.

How does it look like?

More examples can be found here.

What Twitter has to do with it?
In a way Twitter missed the Instagram bandwagon, so Vine is natural leap from photo sharing. It tries to benefit from the overall rise of visual storytelling in our current digital culture. It´s a little bit Instagram, little bit YouTube, little bit funny GIFs and working solely on your mobile. Twitter wants to strengthen it dominance in the short-form messaging and Vine is at least some sort of answer.

What brands already use it?
General Electric, Taco Bell, McDonald´s, Marriott Hotel, Urban Outfitters to name a few. Also porn industry has found it, like all the technological breakthroughs.

Give me some examples!
Not showing you the porn ones, but here are three Brand vines:

What brands should use it?
If your brand is already strong on Twitter, Vine is quite natural extension to your Twitter presence. If your company is not that active in Twitter, Vine probably is not the first social media channel you should invest in.

Where it can be used?
There are couple of good listings about potential use cases of Vine for brands, but currently I think the most prominent ones are the following six:

1. Flashing your brand´s digital cojones: Like with all new applications, there is currently the short timeframe when your brand can appear to be on top of the curve. Half-baked Vine executions will probably fill Twitter in the following weeks.
2. Improving your customer service: Short how-to guides about the products.
3. Spicing up the internal marketing: Employee presentations made more interesting and faster.
4. Even faster way to convince investors: Quick elevator pitch for your company.
5. Enhancing your rapid social media responses: Wheat Thins message to Questlove above is a good example of that.
6. Making your product catalogue come alive: New ways to showcase products (like Urban Outfitters has done below)

Hot or not?
Some might argue that Vine is a novelty app, but so is Instagram. That novelty had $715 million price tag. It remains to be seen will the 6 seconds be as revolutionary as 140 characters were. Vine has potential though. It is certainly something new. With its strong social, local and mobile dimensions it might just be the new killer app.

Now I am just waiting for Harlem Shake Vine edition.

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Feb 14 2013
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Advertising, Digital Strategy, Insight, Marketing Strategy, Planning, Social Media

Advertising should be like Harlem Shake

The biggest meme of the year thus far has been the Harlem Shake. Originally Harlem Shake was a dance coined in Harlem in 1980´s. It was inspired by Ethiopian dance called Eskista.
Last summer EDM artist Baauer did his song by the same name. It was played in the clubs, but nothing major happened.
Then it was quite quiet until YouTube-user called Filthy Frank did his version:

This video inspired other one, which created the current form of the Harlem Shake video:

Currently there are over 4000 Harlem Shake videos uploaded daily to YouTube with over 40 million views. The mainstream media is also quick to catch to the new Internet craze:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Harlem Shake is great example of what kind of content spreads in YouTube.

What marketers can learn about Harlem Shake?

1. Make it short
Attention span for the content in the Internet is getting shorter and shorter.
Who has time for a three minute music video?
Or a 500-word blog post?
You have to be able to tell your message in 30 seconds or 140 characters. That is all the attention you will get.

2. Make it stupid
If you want to make viral hit, you have to hit the lowest common denominator. YouTube videos are majorly consumed in coffee breaks. People want then to escape their boring routines. They want entertainment, not education. Harlem Shake fulfills that need.
You can watch quite many Harlem Shake versions within your lunch break.

3. Make it easy to participate
The concept of Harlem Shake is simple.
First the video starts with one guy (usually masked) doing usually quite boring dance move. After the breakdown the scene turns to total mayhem with more people. And that is basically it.
No difficult choreographies or difficult lines you have to remember. Just gather as many people you want and go crazy. This makes it also ideal for offices and workplaces to participate. Easier than have the whole office running marathon. Engagement has to be made as easy as possible. Harlem Shake provides a blank creative canvas where people can create their own interpretation. If you want to make it big and difficult, you can do it. But also if you want to make it quick and dirty. Harlem Shake just provides you the form and leaves you with the actual creative execution.

The Harlem Shake is interesting phenomenon from music and marketing perspective. Baauer´s label Mad Decent has been quick to ride the bandwagon and compiles the new versions to their Tumblr-blog.

Is it new Gangnam style?

That remains to be seen, but traditional popular culture mechanics were turned upside down in this case. Harlem Shake will be hit because of the consumer-generated meme*. With Gangnam style the pattern followed more the traditional music video route (the dance was in music video).

*And if the meme is machinated by Mad Decent, it makes it even greater case example for marketers.

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Feb 06 2013
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Advertising, Marketing Strategy

Just Watched Every Super Bowl Commercial and Here is the Real Top 10

Super Bowl ad is a different kind of beast.

Seldom you have an audience who is actually waiting to see your ads. Also seldom you are fighting the attention with biggest sport event and the biggest performers in half-time show. In Super Bowl you have to do great entertainment just to get noticed. Seldom they actually win any advertising awards either. Super Bowl ads are the populist creativity at its fullest. You have paid big price of the attention of the people, what are you going to with that attention?

To get noticed and be loved, the recipe for succesful Superbowl ad in recent years has been the following:

Make it funny+Make it Epic+Add some Celebrities in the mix+(Add Hashtag or Facebook URL if you remember)

Although there has been great non-funny Superbowl ads, it is usually easier (not easy) to be funny in 30 seconds than to make people truly sentimental. Surprisingly this year´s Ad Meter winner was not slapstick comedy, but this tearjerker from Budweiser:

I was not that convinced so I decided to watch them all through to find better ones. It took approximately the same time than it took to watch The Master. I recommend heartily the latter more. This my top 10 list of Superbowl Ads. As  you can see, I like simple ideas and celebrity comedians.

Tide: Miracle Stain

This was the favourite of the bunch. Seriously funny and also adds some topical twist to predictable ending. Reminds me about this scetch from Mitchell and Webb.

Best Buy: Asking Amy

Great way to add funny celebrity and lots of product shots as well. Simple but effective.

GoDaddy: Your Next Big Idea

Despite the more buzz about and around the akward “Bar Rafaeli Makes out”-spot, this was actually the better one. In terms of attitude, I have to give it up for GoDaddy-marketing. Rafaeli-spot got the lowest ratings in ad-meter, but also generated most buzz. Despite the angry feedback, it was also commercially succesfully and GoDaddy had record sales after the game day.

Audi: The Prom

Mercedez-Benz: Soul

Lots of car commercials as usual, but these two were my favourites. The prom is classic aspirational story about the ego-boosting capabilities of the car with great soundtrack. In terms of making truly epic ad, Mercedez-Benz scores quite high. Willem Dafoe as the devil is not a bad start. However, the ending which actually got the price of the car to the ad, made it to my list.
Toyota, Volkswagen and Hyundai “Stuck” ads were quite funny as well, but Kia Babylandia was probably the worst. Babies and cute animals score well, but still why you do this? Missing the hamsters already. The Fiat topless ad I liked as well, but probably more because I am male and also a sucker for Isaac Hayes soundtrack (for women viewers in the same bandwagon was the controversial Calvin Klein ad)

Samsung: The Next best thing

Actually the extended version is not bad either. Good balance between the funny banter and product features. I have to still admit that this still felt more like insider joke for ad people. The industry insider jokes did not score well in Ad Meter either.

Taco Bell: Viva Mas

Refreshing to have old people instead of babies or dogs in ads. Just for that reason, this requires to be in the list.

Oreo: Whisper Fight

Dramatizing the evergoing debate around the Oreo to the fullest.

Century 21: Wedding

Good idea and the whole series around this is good. Gets better with repetition as well, Might be a campaign for years.

Doritos: Goat 4 Sale

I just love the concept “Crash the Superbowl”. Crowdsourcing and UGC seem to be more curse words nowaday, but this program has maintained its quality and interest over six years. It was tough call between this and “Fashionista Daddy”

Quite ok year, but none of the ads seems to be a true classic like this one.

And one last thing, who thought that it was good idea that fish would sing No Diggidy?

Just asking.

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Oct 19 2012
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Advertising, Insight, Marketing Strategy, Planning

Anatomy of An Insight: #firstworldproblems

And somewhere around the world
Someone would love to have my first world problems
Kill the moon and turn out the sun
Lock your door and load your gun
Free at last now the time has come to choose
-Matthew Good Band: Omissions of Omen

I am not huge fan of advertising for charity organizations. The work tends to be either scam or too preachy for its own good. What is usually lacking in creative idea, is compensated in shock value. That is why it was refreshing to see this:

Insight: In developed countries, our (first world) problems are quite trivial compared to (real) problems in developing countries.
#firstworldproblems

Behavior: Although the insight in the campaign is quite simple truism, it is the behavior of the brand what makes it stand out. #firstworldproblems was popular meme and DDB found a great way to hi-jack that meme to benefit WaterIsLife. Tweets about #firstworldproblems are ironic and at least meant to be tongue-in-cheek. With this campaign, you are forced to think at least for a while about real world problems while you are cracking jokes about your iPhone´s lousy battery. Of course it induces guilt, but isn´t that the main emotion you actually want to raise when doing advertising for charity organization?

It is tricky for brand to take advantage of existing memes. You have to know the meme upside down and then also bring new meaning to it. What was parody was turned to something serious. With this campaign, that was done perfectly. Zigging when everyone else is zagging.

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Oct 17 2012
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Advertising, Business, Marketing Strategy, Social Media, Strategy

Building a Successful Failing Company

Each year over 30,000 consumer products are launched. 95% of them fail.
The failure rate of TV shows is about the same 95%.
75% of advertising campaigns are failure.
(Probably the real rate 95%, but the years of crafting those Effie entries probably helped to shape that number down)

The conclusion is clear. We are doomed to fail. Or actually we have planned ourselves to failure.

Companies, who do not tolerate small failures, end up doing big ones. Perversely companies are obsessed of micromanaging the staff and punishing for minor mishaps, but eventually end up messing up themselves big time. There is too much strategy & planning, not enough doing (ironically coming from planner). The trick is to fail often and fast to avoid the big failures and to ensure big wins. Actually it is not about failing, but just doing things.

Four ways to encourage doing actual things and failing fast in your workplace:

1. Taking ownership of the ideas and making it a habit
The problem with the companies is not the lack of ideas. Not even good ones. The problem is that there is a lack of ownership of the ideas. Throwing ideas is worthless, planting and cultivating them priceless. That is why Orange idclic works. You do not just throw an idea around. You get the opportunity and responsibility to build that idea.

I remember time selling digital ideas, when clients only wanted TV ads. We always presented those ideas, even though client had not asked for them. First they were irritated, then amused, then interested and finally buying them.

Selling idea is about creativity, vision & perseverance. Mostly the latter.

If you make the habit of producing five presentable ideas to improve your business (or your client´s business) every month, you have presented 60 good ideas by the end of year. I recommend changing the client or the team, if you have not sold any of them.

2. Something Concrete/Month: Test & research with real audience
If after numerous focus groups, strategy workshops and numerous alternations to body copy you still end up messing the project, what is the real risk of just trying stuff out? Also company, which gets its Facebook status updates approved by ten different managers, cannot really be agile innovator.

Your website and social media channels give great opportunity to test things with real people before you commit millions of dollars behind certain idea. When you commit to test one of those ideas every month, you have done 12 prototypes a year. On a worst case you have 12 small failures. On the best case you have done couple of breakthrough successes.

3. Reaction fund: Show me the money to show that you care
World does not spin around your strategy. Your strategy spins around the world. And that world is changing rapidly.

“Ability is little account without opportunity”
-Napoleon Bonaparte

Every company should have reaction fund to react to current events. Something relevant happens in the real world, which opens the opportunity for your company. When the opportunity rises you should have budget to react to it. Whether you produce event, application, flashmob, social movement does not matter, reaction and taking the action is the key. The designated budget is also a proof that your company is serious about that agile innovation.

4. Skunk works Exchange program: Spreading the change to whole company
Big change starts with small movements. That is why it is crucial to start with task force, skunk works or lab, with progressive individuals who are hungry to change the company.

The challenge is to spread their impact to whole company. If people in skunk works are the only ones doing the cool stuff, it helps quite little the struggling company around. Thus every member of that skunk works should be member for only limited time. When revolutionizing the company for appropriate time in that small unit, they would be located all over the company in different units. This works also other way around, task forces giving new meaning to bored employees. Think of it as a work exchange, where you do not move geographically but mentally.

The future is uncertain and the failure is unavoidable. It is how we seize the opportunities and try out new things, which determines our success.

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Oct 16 2012
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Advertising, Business, Digital Strategy, Marketing Strategy, Social Media

39.045 KM: The New High for Advertising

“Sometimes you have to go up really high to understand how small you are.”

Felix Baumgartner not only made the world´s highest parachute jump. And he not only did the record height manned balloon flight or had the greatest free fall velocity.

He is also the future of advertising. Or actually, Red Bull is.

Red Bull made the jump possible with their Stratos-project. Stratos is a textbook example of the new marketing gathering them millions worth of free publicity. When you only have your brand as the differentiator from the competition, you have to change the traditional rulebook. Also if the marketing is pretty much your only cost item, should you do something that stands out with all that money?

Why you should jump from 39 km to succeed in advertising in 2012?

From advertisements to acts.
Once upon a time, there used to be brand films. These long (at least longer than regular tv-spots) films were on top of every advertising creative wish list, because they let you capture the brand essence and flex your creative muscles. Some relics still mourn for the brand films.

The world´s highest parachute jump is the brand film of the next generation.

We cannot get back to the times of the brand film and the one-sided broadcasting era. If we, the advertising industry, cannot make the shift to do acts instead of ads, we will vanish. And deservedly so.

Many marketing managers and advertising executives throw the term “lifestyle brand” around too carelessly. Whether it is mobile phone, toothpaste, ice cream, jeans, hemorrhoid creams, you name it. The brutal truth is that the majority of brands are just products, which have merely functional value to audience. There are less truly inspirational brands than brand managers in the world. Red Bull is a lifestyle brand, build around extreme experiences. Can you really say that your brand is lifestyle brand compared to Red Bull?

The role of traditional advertising is totally miniscule for Red Bull. Judging from their cartoon TV ads, traditional advertising might even be counterproductive for their success. They have build their brand by events, strategic sponsorships and great content produced from those two. This content is mainly distributed digitally.

Before the death-defying jump, there was also a double-win on Sunday for Red Bull F1 team. Red Bull does not just stamp their logo to everywhere to fulfill their sponsorship duties. They use sponsorship as a strategic marketing weapon.

Great brand is media.
The key to successful content marketing is not producing content. The key is to produce interesting content. If your brand wants to really be part of your audience lives and be that “lifestyle” brand, you have to create content which is up to par (or as in Stratos, even over) with every other content your target audience consumes. Being OK in “advertising standards” is not enough, because people could not care a less whether you are brand or not. There is no handicap league for advertisers.

If you go visit Red Bull website, their content about extreme sports and music beats many major media sites. If you build a media, it takes longevity and it requires quality. You have to have clear picture about what your brand represents and act upon it. The parachute jump was totally on Red Bull brand. If your brand aspires to be media, you cannot only be content agregator and rely only on your partners. You have to be an active content creator as well.

Digital is natural part of the winner brands.
When you understand your target audience, the digital executions are not the challenge. You do not need social media expert to tell that you should broadcast the jump in YouTube. Or that you should have hashtag dedicated the event. Great brands master digital presence efforlessly, because they understand their audience.

Digital is air, you either breathe or die.

You might not be able to fund the world´s highest parachute jump. It might not be the right for our brand either. You should still find ways to become truly part of the lifestyle of your audience, instead of just being an interrupting nuisance for them.

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Oct 15 2012
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Marketing Strategy, Planning, Social Media

Gangnam Style: The Evolution of Popular Culture

Click the video, if you have not yet see this after 462 252 104 (and counting) views on YouTube. Otherwise proceed to text below.

It has affected South Korean tourism and the stock values of software firms. Even F1 drivers are doing it.

No doubt about it, Gangnam style has been the biggest popular culture phenomenon in 2012.

What it tells about the current state of popular culture?

1. There is always demand for a catchy pop song.
You can debate about the artistic and musical merits of PSY, but you cannot deny that structurally it is typical and effective pop song. All the elements of the perfect summer jam are there: catchy chorus, shout-outs to sexy ladies and the signature dance which you can perform even after few pints. Gangnam Style is just the Macarena for 2012. Or Ketchup Song, Lambada… You catch my drift.

This brings us also to the important point about YouTube. The Internet might have revolutionized the distribution and the traditional business model of the music. It has not as much changed people´s taste for music. Although major record labels are struggling, there is still huge demand for mainstream music. If you watch top 10 of the most watched music videos in YouTube, they are all from major label artists. PSY was huge in South Korea before Gangnam style and hardly a rookie, having released his first album already in 2001.

Gangnam style would probably be not as big hit without YouTube, but it would have been hit nevertheless. You will always have gatekeepers in popular culture. The gatekeepers just might not be the same ones as before.

2. The cultural focus shifts to Asia
If you watch any new Hollywood movie, you are more than likely to see one (or all) of the following things:

a) One or more of the characters are Asian-origin (i.e. wife of Bruce Willis is Chinese in The Looper)
b) There are cultural references to Asia (i.e. Chinese gambling dens in Premium Rush)
c) The film takes place in certain Asian country (i.e. Bourne Legacy scenes in Manila)

The main reason for this is naturally the rising importance of Asian countries as the target market for Hollywood movies. As a movie producer, you have to take Asian countries in account to maximize profits and to secure investments in the future.

This cultural exchange is not unilateral. As the western companies concentrate more on Asia to keep afloat, especially the western teenagers consume more Asian culture to find their own thing and to differentiate from their predecessors.

Peculiar thing happened few years back in Finland. The teenagers started to dig everything Japanese. Whether it was J-Pop, Manga, Anime or the weird costumes. The cultural glue was the interest to everything Japanese. The same person might go to see heavy metal and dance act on same week, as long it was Japanese.

This goes against of my traditional view of how subcultures emerge. As a teenager I consumed popular culture that was majorly from USA. However it was more about certain genres than geographical areas.

K-Pop phenomenon was already making major waves before Gangnam style and something big was bound to happen. Gangnam style was just the most western-friendly, uniquely odd and the catchiest song to break into global mainstream. As a western listener you do not necessarily know where Gangnam is, or what oppa means but you can nevertheless get into singing the chorus and doing the horse-dance.

3. Ready for remix, build for parody, made for mash-up.
There used to be app for that. Nowadays there is Gangnam Style –parody for that. Even in North Korea. Here is the Singaporean version:

With current digital tools and democratization of technology, it is easier to become active culture participant. Parody is the highest form of flattery. If it has not been remixed, it does not exist. Gangnam style is the perfect song to make mash-ups on. As the money from music business now comes from different sources than traditional record sales, you have to do more than just good songs. You have to create miniature social movements, where people can participate.

Also our view of idols has evolved. When before the idol was someone you could not reach, nowadays you can just tweet to your favorite artist. And as record sales decline, the probability is just getting higher that the idol will actually respond as well. Reflecting to that PSY, who is self-proclaimed “fat father of two”, might just be the perfect idol type for the new century. At least compared to the polished superhumans of traditional broadcast era.

Will PSY be able to match the success of Gangnam style?
Most likely not.
Has he already left a permanent mark in popular culture?
Most likely.

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Sep 14 2012
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Marketing Strategy, Strategy

Decision Paralysis in Hawker Centre

Singapore is a tremendous place for foodie. I am especially fond of the concept of Hawker centres. For those unfamiliar, they are open air food complexes serving great but inexpensive food. I try to visit new stalls and new centres every week and try out new dishes.

In the beginning, my knowledge of local dishes was fairly limited. I wanted to test out new food, but as the hawker stall can be quite hectic place especially during the lunch hour, I nearly always made similar order (prawn noodles, to be precise). So after getting worried about my diet getting too monotonous, I made a simple rule to guide my lunch decision-making:

Only buy from Hawker stalls which sell only one food item.

The reasoning was two-folded:

1. If stall can make living by only selling one dish, the dish must be pretty good.

2. When you have only one alternative, your decision process is quite straightforward.

What I experienced on the stalls offering too many alternatives, was decision paralysis. And many times I still experience that. So it is probably me blocking the queue at the stall when not able to make my mind up between Mee Siam and Mee Rebus. Sorry.

The more you give alternatives to customer, the more difficult it is to make the decision and more likely that customer sticks to his learned formula of behavior. So if you have accustomed to eat chicken rice, the more new alternatives you get the more likely you are to stick with that chicken rice.

This raises couple of issues to companies. If you have only one product, the customer selection is definitely easy. It is also easy to decide against your product. So you have to have variety to address different target audience needs. However, the more you add alternatives the more difficult the selection becomes. In FMCG this usually also results to product cannibalization. The category variants do not take market share from competitor products but actually eat up the market share of your core product. Companies have to provide variety but also easy decision at the same time. Below are couple of tips to overcome this paradox.

How you can help clients to overcome decision paralysis?

1. Recommend

How many times have you taken Chef´s Special in the restaurant? If customer seems hesitant, ask and recommend. Whether you are hawker stall owner or webstore, you are also expert of your products. Highlight that expertise and make qualified recommendation to your client.

2. Show popularity

When showing Top 5 of the most popular dishes, the probabilities are quite high that the customer selects  some of them. Or just check the most popular media sites, they are always highlighting the most read stories. Popularity is a cue of superiority and it helps to make decisions.

3. Encourage word-of-mouth

Only times when I have varied from my hawker stall selection criteria was when I had recommendation from my friend or read a story about certain stall or dish on Straits Times. There is no shortcut for positive feedback. You have to provide good experience and the word-of-mouth will follow. In digital sphere you can make recommendations more visible with social media integration (showing Facebook likes, comments, FourSquare check-ins or Twitter updates regarding your company).

4. Help customer to apply his decision making rules

“I always buy the cheapest”, “I always buy the most expensive”, “I always try the new dish” or “I always eat beef on Fridays”. These are some of the rules your customer might use when selecting products. When you highlight those different motivational triggers, you make your customers selection easier. To exactly know the motivation and the rules for your customers, it requires constant monitoring and research of customer habits.

5.  Help customer to make one choice at a time

Some of the decisions are not always easy. There might be thousands of alternatives. Or there might be only couple of alternatives, but thousands different parameters affecting your choice. Especially with more complicated products, it helps if you break the decision to different parts. It is hard to make buying decision right away, but you can always take steps closer to it. Decision making in elections is great example of this, finding the right candidate requires variety of questions affecting various different categories (example: Republican primaries 2012).

Nowadays as I have learned more about different dishes I have ventured to stalls offering more variety. But even then I utilize one simple rule:

Always go to the stalls with the longest queue.

“More choice does not necessarily correlate with more business”

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Jul 21 2012
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Advertising, Marketing Strategy, Planning, Slideshare

Is Creative Advertising also Effective?

Simple answer to simple question:

Yes.

Great presentation deck on the subject from James Hurman:

The Case for Creativity

View more presentations from James Hurman
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Jul 18 2012
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Advertising, Marketing Strategy, Planning

Advertising Should Just Aim for the Popularity

To say that people hate advertisements is a vast overstatement.

The truth is that most people just don´t care about them. Most advertising is just interruption at best and invisible at worst. Occassionally some good piece of communication fells through the cracks and people start talking about them. Those ads have made the giant leap from ads to entertainment.

What combines these highly succesful, innovative and effective ads? Where you push button to add drama? Where Eminem drives Chrysler in Detroit? Where you start thinking about the benefits of birth-control? Or where hamsters jam to the sounds of nineties hiphop in Hamsterdam?

They are all popular.

People do not even judge these ads in same category as your everyday washing liquid infomercial. They are entertainment. People do not talk about how the ad skillfully manifests the strategy and touches the nerve of certain target demography. Or how it really captures effectively the brand´s tone-of-voice, communication ladder and is on brief. They talk about funny ads, emotional ads, witty ads. Even really shit ads. They talk about work which stands out of the pack and makes them feel or act.

When you say that you work in advertising, people usually start to talk about ads to you. Usually they mock the horrible ads which have been repeated until the boredom. However, the best feeling is when person starts talking about ad that has touched him or her. And you realize you have been doing that particular piece of communication.

Even though people seldom talk about ads in watercooler, it does not mean that ads do not belong there. After all, we are working in the only creative field which should be populist by nature. There is no underground culture in advertising. Even with smaller demographics, we are still talking about mainstream-size audiences. So as we advertisers drink from the well of popular culture, we should also make sure that we do not piss in it as well.

That is why the role of advertisement is simple:

Advertising should make brands popular.

Relevant popularity or even outright populism includes all the relevant definitions of the advertising. It lowers the cost of selling. It makes the product desirable. It gets recommended. It differentiates. It wins awards. It sells. It strengthens the brand.

To make people talk about your brand, product or advertisement you have to think in terms of entertaining. Entertaining is the hardest but the most satisfying job in the world. Are we able to take the task? And make entertainment that urges people to action.

You have to make your advertising a hot topic around the watercooler.

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