Category Archives: Planning

Dec 23 2015
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Advertising, Business, Digital Strategy, Insight, Marketing Strategy, Planning, Social Media, Strategy

Farts, Apple Watch, Racial Tensions: This Is What People Read in 2015

Another year is nearing its end. This year the most popular posts ranged from flatulent humor to Apple watch (and everything in between).

I had time to post a little bit less than on previous year, but readership remained stable and some surprises in the most read post list as well. You never know yourself what post will tickle your reader´s fancy.

This year I read lots of interesting books, saw some interesting movies and had some interesting debates. However, despite the Apple Watch, the year seemed a little bit boring from advertising and technology point of view.

I think it will be calm before storm, and next year will be humongous (both in macro and micro –level).

Or it is just the same old shit, you never know.

Most read posts 2016

  1. Ideas are like farts
  2. Why Apple Watch is Crucial For The Future of Apple
  3. Anatomy of An Insight: #Joulurauhaa
  4. Rethink Your Marketing Research
  5. Forget The Apple Watch This Is The Only Wearable That Truly Matters
  6. 5 Ways To Make Your YouTube Pre-Rolls Kick Ass
  7. Agencies Are Slow
  8. Digital Pre-Testing: Harmful Waste Of Money
  9. Just Say The Obvious, But Do It With Flair
  10. Anatomy of Insight: Straight Outta Somewhere

This will be my last post for the year.

I will be returning, whether you want it or not, in 2016.

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Dec 21 2015
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Advertising, Business, Digital Strategy, Insight, Marketing Strategy, Planning, Social Media, Strategy

#sometrendit2016: The Only 2016 Social Media Trends You Should Read

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As the year approaches the end, it has become an annual tradition for me take a look at crystal ball and share my views with Kurio Social Media Agency on the next year´s social media trends.

For those adapt at Finnish, I recommend reading the whole report. If you are not interested in the predictions of 28 other Finnish digital marketers, you can also jump straight to the most important ones (mine) below.

Before I go into my answers, I have to quote myself from the last year:

I have to say that I have not been interested in social media as such for a long time. Do not get me wrong. Social plays crucial role in digital business. But I seldom think digital as a separate entity either: digital is air. Digital, mobile and social should be a part of every business. Sometimes at the core, sometimes playing supporting role and sometimes playing no role at all. Strategy is about deciding what to do, but even more importantly what not to do. If you are thinking social media as a separate unit you are missing the bigger picture. 

The dominance of digital universe goes well beyond our traditional silos.

And here are the bold/boring predictions of 2016:

  1. 1. Biggest Social Media Trend in 2016?

Internet will be build more and more upon instant messaging. We have moved to the latest phase of Internet: the Age of Messaging. What is most interesting, who will be the master of that era? If previous phase was the Age of Social and Facebook was the undisputed king, is it able to keep its lead? Currently it seems with the dual-strategy of WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger that Facebook will continue to dominate.

2. Social media platforms to look out for 2015?
Last year I was speculating about anonymous messaging and those services were not able to live up the hype. On the same speculative tip, I would keep an eye on live-streaming platforms like Periscope. It is easy to recognize the opportunities Periscope can bring to the brands. Bigger question is will they be truly interesting to actual users?

It is worthwhile to keep an eye on WeChat, because what it does today in China, Facebook will do in western world tomorrow with its Facebook messenger.

3. Biggest challenges in doing social media marketing in 2015?

The huge portion (probably somewhere around 3/4) of sharing in social media is so-called “dark social”. This means that social media listening gives one-sided and even totally faulty picture about what people are really talking about. People share where the brands play no role.

This is great for consumers, because brands are not ruining your conversation or begging you to like them. It makes our work way more difficult. Established channels like FB and YouTube are 100% paid media. To some IM services you cannot get even when you are paying. There is no such thing as earned media anymore.

4. Social Media Buzzword, which hopefully disappears in 2015?

Content marketing.

Despite all the hoopla about native advertising and new content agencies, the division of labor is simple. In Internet there is only good (or bad) content or good (mostly bad) ads. Ad agencies have shown that they cannot truly create content and content marketers have not been good at creating ads (which essentially move products of the shelves). There is role for both counterparts, but it is utter stupidity to think that you could replace one with another. Or that one agency could be great at creating both of them.

To see what I have been predicting in previous years, see the following links:

Social Media trends 2013

Social Media trends 2014

Social Media trends 2015

 

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Dec 09 2015
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Advertising, Business, Digital Strategy, Insight, Marketing Strategy, Planning, Uncategorized

Obey Your Data

For various reasons I have been reading quite a bit about big data lately. Based on everything I read and the experience, I have come to three conclusions:

  1. It does not matter anymore why something happens. It matters that it happens.
  2. In life there is no such thing as certainty; therefore you should just aim for high probability.
  3. Correlation trumps causality.

“In many cases, the deeper search for causality will take place after big data has done its work, when we specifically want to investigate the why, not just appreciate that”
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Kenneth Cukier (Big Data)

I would say that in our industry knowing why is more of a philosophical question. Examples show that when you just work on what you have (data) and act on that, the results are better. If data shows that it works, you don´t really need to know why it works. It might be interesting from academic point-of-view, but should not matter when doing marketing for the people.

There is still aversion against data in our industry. Maybe it is because logically thinking people generally don´t gravitate towards advertising (and why our business models are so antiquated). For lack of better data, we have tolerated egomaniacs (disguised as gurus) in our industry for too long.

Advertising is not a rocket science; it is just a data science. Just like everything else in this world.

We have self-inflated view of how difficult our work is, but eventually we will be replaced by algorithm. Gut feeling is not necessarily bad if it is based on experience. I.e. if you have done thousand display campaigns you know anecdotally that call-to-action button should be red. Too often, someone just wants it green because it is his favorite color. And person with no experience could say the right thing just based on the right data.

Experience will trump stupidity.

Data will trump experience.

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Dec 08 2015
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Advertising, Insight, Planning

Anatomy of An Insight: #joulurauhaa

I haven´t been following that actively the advertising scene in Finland, but this ad truly moved me:

Insight: The vibe in Finland has been quite depressing for a while. There has been lots of animosity against immigrants. This animosity is usually from people in small cities (rather like villages) who have most likely never even met a foreigner. They attribute their own misgivings and failures to foreigners coming to Finland. They let their prejudices cloud their mind. They view themselves as true Finns, but in reality they are not representing true Finland at all.

This film shows how being a Finn is not about your color of your skin. It is great that company takes a stand against xenophobia. It is everyone´s responsibility to fight against it. Different cultures are richness, which countries like Singapore have understood. Finland should understand that as soon as possible.

Great ads touch emotions and this is one of them. The story is a juxtaposition of traditional “manly” Finnish activities (which I never done, expect gone to Sauna and army) done by Finns, who are not necessary fitting to your general stereotype of Finnish person. You should also never underestimate the power of a great soundtrack. The song in the video, for those who are not that familiar with Finnish popular culture, totally summarizes the Finnish psyche:

unemployment, booze, axe and family
Snow, police and the last mistake

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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 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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