PR can be a shady biz

So I'm a marketer, not a publicist. I can't relate to the popularity culture that PR agencies base their credibility on and don't truly understand the black arts by which they can create or eliminate buzz.

But anyway, TechCrunch, a Seattle-based entrepreneurial blog recently wrote about some PR maven who made their shit list. It's really illuminating to a world we rarely see but have some pretty strong perceptions about nonetheless.

Lois Whitman is apparently the poster child for everything that's wrong with PR, sez TechCrunch, and uses spam tactics like a crying child to convince people to give in to her demands until she gets what she wants.

Now, I'm fenced up on this one. On the one hand, I am a fervent advocate for relevance-based marketing that makes marketers work creatively to gain people's attention, but on the other hand reading her vicious words really made me smile:

"CES publishes a list of press. You are one of a few thousand. Everyone has access to that list for all kinds of reasons. It is publicly published. As a PR agency we use that list so we can solicit press for booth appts. I hope you can appreciate that. If you don’t, let me introduce you to the “delete” button. Or in the future do not sign up as a press person for CES. Furthermore, do not make any threats to my company. I don’t need you to tell me what is right or what is wrong. I have been in the CE business for 42 years. I have seen nasty people like you melt away faster than a snowball going up hill in the rain. I am waiting for an apology. Maybe we can meet at CES for a hug or a slug. P.S. I just visited your web site. I would hardly call your blog a publication, However, you do have very interesting content and we have lots of client you would like to know more about to help you in your endeavors. Call me."

Decide for yourself.

If she's such a PR maven, it'll be interesting how she manages to quell this blogosphere revulsion against her.

Marketing best practices

Killing two birds with one stone is great isn't it?

I'm writing an appendix about advertising channel marketing strategy right now for a report as part of my 601 project and I thought about posting the analysis up to the blog!

I love original content!!!

It's really abbreviated, but it's a quick comparison of old and new best practices of various online and offline advertising channels. I've tried to be comprehensive and unbiased here (although I personally think that untargeted advertising can go to Hell....) but it's a good synopsis of the different benefits and recommendations for effectiveness for each channel.

You'll see that throughout this chart I'm really in support of integrated campaigns. That means marketing communications that simultaneously leverage the other active channels. It's the newspaper ad that tells you to go online and try virtually test drive the new model car, it's the radio spot that tells you to look for Count Chocula sampling this Saturday at Metro stores in the GTA.

God, how I wish there was a product sampling of Count Chocula....but I digress.

Oh, and BBAs, plagiarize away! Just don't expect to develop unoriginal, uncited analysis and hand it to me to give to one of our clients.

Advertising channel	Channel description	Old best practices	New best practices
Website development	Includes website design, management, analysis, promotional microsite development. Important channel for speaking directly to tech-savvy, younger consumers.	Clear site navigation and shallow site structure with few deep levels. Integrate web metrics tracking for site optimization and online marketing. Promotion in offline marketing communications as a source of extra information about a brand.	Site users have the opportunity to create content and interact bilaterally with the site. Important to integrate websites with offline communications including print and television (often these drive consumers to the website). Provide relevant brand and product information in multiple formats, allowing consumers an opportunity to take content with them or send to their friends off the site. Promoted in offline communications as a destination in itself and a place to go as part of Web 2.0 consumer interactivity.
Email	Includes email design, deployment, analysis, and potential integration with database segmentation. Important channel for direct marketing and establishing brand relevance.	Use an attention grabbing subject line. Display the best content “above the fold” of the screen. Do not be too copy-heavy, leverage text and pictures. Communicate exclusive offers, promotions, and deals to “our best customers”.	Perform active segmentation and response analysis on house list to determine most optimal messages/content to be included in targeted email to consumers. Must be easy for consumers to unsubscribe or change their email settings. Position as nonintrusive consumer touchpoint that is relevant to you. Email is highly useful to create a curriculum or education campaign for new consumers or a multi-wave campaign.
Social media	Includes brand promotion through social media public relations, viral content development and distribution, network ‘seeding’, and identity development on social network profile sites. Important channel for brand identity building through online affiliations and new project promotion.	Note, because this is such a new channel, best practices are being developed as part of an ongoing mutation of the medium. Social media is too young to have any “old” best practices, because marketers are still trying to understand how to use it effectively.	Pay attention to emerging consumer memes and viral trends online. Ride these. Create a clear identity that allows users to comment, rate, or interact with the brand’s social media presence. Use social media PR sparingly and only to announce exciting brand developments or significant launches. “Feedback 3.0” is the act of brands actively responding to and commenting back to their commentators in online forums. (TrendWatching.com)
In-store retail promotion	Includes design of product packaging and printed promotional materials, development of coupons and offers. Also includes total management of promotional projects and events, including multiple-party promotions.	Eye-popping visuals and unique creative execution. Display in preferred locations in retail environments (end of aisle, eye level, front of store and produce area). Promotions are used to highlight exciting new product launches or as a boost to seasonally low sales.	Retail promotions are immediately relevant to the consumer (because they are physically interacting with the product and have opted-in). Therefore how are promotions used by brands to develop long-term positive relationships with their consumers? Promotions must be thought of like big impressions for brand building and used for activating new brand strategy. Strong integration of promotions with other non-tangible brand communications.
Experiential	Includes the planning, execution, and management of in-person demonstrations, sampling, physical product interactions, sensory advertising, and other impression-based advertising experiences.	Create innovative and original experiences – make the consumer say “wow, I’ve never seen this before”. High traffic locations are effective to reach as many people as possible. Eye-catching or permits prolonged or repeat impressions.	Demonstrate measurability and big impact on sales by using experiential techniques. Cannot simply generate a ‘big splash’. Use experiential advertising projects as opportunities to also establish customer listening posts and gain valuable primary research about brand perceptions and usage.
Direct mail	Includes the design, writing, segmentation, deployment, analysis, and management of print advertising, flyers, brochures, offers, product samples, and house-list magazines that are targeted to specific consumers (not mass mail).	‘Test and learn’ – perform frequent empirically controlled tests to different consumer segments to understand what is the optimal form of creative and offer to generate higher response. Personalize direct mail and provide a compelling reason to open it (similar to an email subject line)	Integrated use of direct mail with CRM database for clients. Understand customer behavior across response channels (direct mail, web, email, SMS). Like in-store retail promotion, direct mail establishes an intimate connection between the brand and consumer because it is highly interactive and tangible. Clear announcement of purpose and call to action so that customer understands role of direct mail in context of all other interactions they have with the brand.
Out-of-home	Includes the design, deployment, and management of all messaging that appears on outdoor ‘surfaces’ in high-traffic or visible areas. Note, limited effectiveness of this channel at driving response and engagement from consumers. Highly passive engagement by prospects in this channel.	Like experiential and in-store retail promotion, out-of-home should be immediately understandable and capture interest. Copy must be concise and non-informational. Strictly call-to-action.	A classic medium, the best practices have no changed significantly because of limited innovation potential of the platform. Obvious integration of out-of-home advertising with existing in-market campaigns in other channels.
Mobile	Includes copywriting, segmentation, deployment, management, and analysis of text or multimedia messages distributes to mobile phone subscribers over a network. Important channel for brand building and relationship development.	Note, because this is such a new channel, best practices are being developed as part of an ongoing mutation of the medium. Mobile technology is also rapidly evolving and permits unique applications like proximity sensitive out-of-home marketing (billboards that activate when a consumer walks by) and geo-targeted messages direct to the consumer.	Must be an opt-in house list and must permit easy unsubscribe for recipients. SMS marketing is highly invasive (it’s marketing that vibrates in your pocket). Therefore the message should be targeted, relevant, and actionable by the consumer. Therefore, SMS is not optimal for informational campaigns. Instead, use for direct response or experiential purposes (e.g. respond now).
Television	Includes the design, production, media buying, and management of television commercials or infomercials. Important channel for broad awareness of brand strategy to consumers. This sets the tone of an integrated campaign with multiple channel strategies.	A great ‘hook’ to immediately capture attention. Clear link between story and brand, story and message, and brand and message. Clear call to action for viewers, or an understanding of what they are being made to believe.	Best practices somewhat unchanged for mass media. Perhaps greater concern for how television commercials are able to change behavior among consumers. Is this really an advanced form of marketing that succeeds at building a relationship with consumers? Call-to-action that is integrated with other marketing communications in market. Useful capstone to large campaigns which rely on a broad mix of mediums (out-of-home, online, promotional, print, and radio).
Radio	Includes the design, production, media buying, and management of radio commercials.	Memorable messages that listeners can associate to a brand with unaided prompting. Local message optimization because of the ability to purchase large blocks of commercial time from radio station conglomerates that own stations in different markets.	Same as above. Positive associate to highlight existing in-market or upcoming promotional campaigns for integrated marketing campaigns.
Mass print media	Includes the design, production, media buying, and management of printed advertisements in newspapers, magazines, flyers, and other non-targeted print media.	Classic principles apply here for copywriting and call-to-action development.	Same as above. Considering existing volume of print media advertising that continues to be done, important to integrate this activity with marketing mix of online and offline channels. Can be used as a traffic-driving source of consumers to online channel where more information can be found about brand.

I vote for Jessica Alba

I’m torn when I reflect on the drive to encourage Gen Ys to vote and contribute to the democratic process. Don’t get me wrong, I really like democracy, I like what it stands for and I like the egalitarian ideals that are the foundation of the US constitution….it’s just the seedy and irrelevant way it’s being packaged to youth.

Take DeclareYourself.com, a “nonprofit campaign to empower and encourage every eligible 18-year-old in America to register and vote in the presidential primaries and 2008 presidential election.” As much as I’d like to try to be controversial and brand this as campaign as frothy, feel-good clusterf*ck of Gomorrahian proportions, I really respect the integrated marcom aspect of the whole project. DeclareYourself has strategic partnerships with key media, retail, and tech companies and the campaign is ubiquitous in online Gen Y social spaces. Check out some of the partners:

• Cricket Wireless
• Yahoo
• MySpace
• ComedyCentral
• ClearChannel
• Starbucks
• American Eagle
• Van’s Warped Tour
• Seventeen Magazine
• The WB Network
• Google

DeclareYourself.com is also a terrific website. The FAQs are really clear and answer any stupid questions that newly-legal Gen Y might have about voting, such as “who are the main political parties” – yes, it says this! The site is well-designed and encourages a lot of user interaction and dialogue in the form of forums, social network affiliations, blogs, and a bunch of videos.

Ok, but here’s where it goes off the rails for me…it’s overdosing on celebrity endorsements and the frame of reference is moving out of focus. Voting is about people. The site is about young people voting. It’s about you and me and exerting our democratic freedom to elect political officials. It might be about the issues, it might be about the candidates. Either way, DeclareYourself.com wants you to vote.

So why is there so much interest and vocalization of the whole platform by celebrities? It’s sickening to see the commercialization and packaging the presidential election as if Nov 4th doesn’t correspond to the general election, but rather to a movie opening. It’s not fair that the main character in the movie isn’t the newly-minted 18 year old who can vote for the first time in their life, but Jessica Alba.


It’s a movie and all the stars are invited to the premiere!



And the movie certainly has great commercials:





In fact, nearly all the video clips sponsored by DeclareYourself feature celebrities.

Really, it doesn’t matter what celebs say and frankly a lot of Gen Y – especially the ones smart enough to actually vote! – would tell you that they’re 0% influenced by what celebs do, say, or advocate.

Jessica Alba has nothing to do with me voting, so why is she the star of the movie?

And DeclareYourself isn’t along in superficial endorsements. Here’s Adrian Grenier showing his chops for RockTheVote.



Doesn’t that seem a little self-indulgent?

Contemporary marketing is about measurability and effectiveness. Fortunately for DeclareYourself, these celebs have likely offered their endorsements for free since they have nothing else to do all day. They’re working pro bono to assure themselves that they’re performing a valuable service to society and are atoning for generally being brainless pillheads. But how is anyone sure whether their endorsements and appearances at events and in videos are serving any purpose?

Again, the democratic process is beautiful. It’s a wonderful thing that DeclareYourself is so committed to getting a new generation familiar with their rights and proud of the electoral system the US has in place. It’s marketing platforms are strong through the use of integrated media and online channel promotion direct to Gen Y. I’m just skeptical about how tarnished the message can become when it’s no longer about young people, it’s about Jessica Alba.

Max to the Media: Grow a pair already

This is a marketing/advertising/cultural blog, not a political one. Opinions fly fast and furious here but it’s usually constrained to bashing Rogers Wireless, hating on Microsoft, or extolling our own organizational virtues.

However, there’s something irking me about the US Presidential campaign and passivity of the media to issues that actually matter.

On the economy

The financial market muckup is making me nervous for my career prospects when I graduate. It’s hardly like I’ll be going into investment banking, but the instability poses a massive risk for the confidence of investors to undertake perceived non-revenue generating expenditures – ad and marketing campaigns! With such a dazzling presidential campaign filled with such charismatic people, we’ve all become a little myopic to this economic disaster. Greater focus must be given to this situation and all candidates in the presidential campaign must be questioned about what specifically they would do to strengthen investor confidence, enforce regulation and standards where appropriate, and raise the productivity of the US economy. Low-skilled jobs have gone to China. They are not coming back. But that doesn’t mean that America has no basis for international economic competition.

The US spends more than it earns. Despite the $3 trillion foreign debt carried by the US government in the form of treasury bills sold to foreign banks – international investors still have confidence in the ability of the US economy to chug along and continue consuming. In a bizarre twist of economics, it’s become a self-sustaining debt cycle supported by twin fiscal and trade deficits. If China cashed in their t-bills tomorrow, they’d be as hurt as the US by the complete collapse of the economy. No one is ready for that.

So it’s a Sword of Damacles that neither McCain nor Obama have really been able to address. Palin certainly doesn’t have the answer. I haven’t seen a strong acknowledgement of the severity of this problem from either side. Most worrying however, is that no one is pressed by the media to solve it.

What about the recently announced $700 billion infusion of cash to take the risk from unsecured mortgages – essentially a loan from American taxpayers. How will the next president ensure that this is repaid by the major banks and that accountabilities are set? Bush has actually bankrupted the country – what do the candidates feel about this?

Through the cunning entanglement of bundles of financial securities by risky investors who were poorly monitored, investment banks are now unable to separate good loans from bad loans. Does Obama have a plan to fix this? What is McCain’s strategy for regaining investor confidence in the financial system?

On their backgrounds

Here’s another bother: why are we no longer seeing Maverick McCain? He was a rabble-rouser in Washington with a reputation for action and doing the right thing. Why has he lost this? Why isn’t he being asked to explain why he lost this?

Why is Obama not being asked to explain why he chose Joe Biden over Hilary Clinton if McCain picked Palin as an apparent come hither pander to female voters? What does he really think of John McCain and Sarah Palin?

What does he think of the fact that many Americans will likely not vote for him because he’s black, despite what they tell pollsters.

But what offends me most – no surprise here – is the kid glove treatment Sarah Palin is receiving by the media…except for Barbara Walters and Joy Behar. Watch:



…yes, exactly WHAT reform is Palin known for?? And thank God for Matt Damon…



Why hasn’t anyone in the media asked her more of these questions? Sarah Palin IS absurd. Matt’s right, she IS terrifying. If she’s going to be in a senior position of government, I want to her to answer for her hypocrisy of promoting abstinence in sex-ed while her daughter gets pregnant right under her nose. This is not unreasonable to ask. I want her to answer for why she thinks that after having governed a town of only 8,000 people with no sizable economy to speak of, she’s now capable of crafting economic policy that will impact the world.

What’s terrifying is that whenever she is asked tough questions like this, the McCain camp puts their defensive blinders up and attacks the media for being too unilateral. They thought Tina Fey's portrayal of Palin on SNL was sexist. Let the journalists do their job. Let's comedians do theirs. It just goes to show how little substance she has that the McCain campaign is unwilling to let her answer their questions.

News media is being far too soft on everyone in this campaign.

They’re complicit when Republicans mewl and whine when questions stray too far away from lipstick and too close to energy policy and creationism, and they’re complicit when Democrats make utopian claims for the future while offering no substantive facts about how they’ll implement it.

I'm astounded by how political figures attempt to point the finger of blame at the media for asking too many sensitive questions and how tacitly the media accepted this as a natural part of journalism! Start demanding that politicians answer difficult questions.

This really is the scariest election ever because no one seems to be taking it seriously.

Why we should watch the Olympics

The Summer Games of the Twenty-Ninth Olympiad are upon us and we celebrate the glorious harmony of the success and achievement of the People’s Republic of China!

Jokes aside, I am quite happy that the Games went to Beijing because it intensifies the scrutiny and critical analysis of China in broader social discourse. Think about the fact that issues such as the genocide in Darfur, human rights abuses in Tibet, rampant pollution throughout the Chinese countryside, and globalization in general have all received a lot more attention because the Games are in China than they would have otherwise garnered had the Games been somewhere else.

It’s a learning experience for everyone as viewing audiences from around the world are welcomed into a rapidly industrialized nation by enthusiastic hosts and Chinese citizens can truly feel as if they are now participating fully on a global stage. So forget the world-class sports that you see during these three weeks, isn’t it intriguing enough to leverage the media attention on China during the Olympics to learn more about this complex country and shake your Sinophobic preconceptions?

From a marketing perspective, the Games is a stunning showcase of massive, multi-media ad campaigns. In particular, I’m impressed by Bell Canada’s rebrand and the ubiquity of its new ads throughout downtown Toronto and during commercial buffers on CBC’s nightly broadcasts. I think that the launch developed appropriate buzz and momentum prior to the commercials’ release (the blue and white ‘ER’ ads were really curiosity-piquing) that it will have a strong association effect throughout the Olympics duration for the new Bell brand. I’m envious for the tourists in Beijing who get to live the street marketing, event sponsorship, and widespread promotion. So again, forget the captivating athletes who perform super-human feats and are cheered on by their nation’s entire population, the Beijing Olympics provides a great opportunity to see modern mass marketing.

Now, as much as I love American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, Celebrity Rehab, So You Think Your Kid’s a Star featuring Danny Bonaduce, Big Brother, The Mole, America’s Next Top Model, the Amazing Race, and High School Musical the TV Show, nothing can approach the Olympics as TV’s ultimate reality show. In comparison to CBC (which seems to have amateurishly produced a highly Canada-centric clip show that rebuffs coverage of competitors from all other nations), the NBC broadcasts profile the world’s best athletes, including those from the United States. NBC is doing a flawless job at producing competition segments and crafting hero myths for individual athletes, making the whole shebang quite comprehensive, fast, and entertaining to watch. So again, forget the heart-wrenching backstories of some athletes, the final reason to watch the Olympics is to marvel at the sheer production value of the online and offline media coverage.

So I’m quite saddened by those among us remiss enough to voluntarily opt-out of watching the Olympics. Have we all become dead inside to the joys in life of seeing physical triumph and achievement? Are we immune to the uplifting stories of athletes who have basically devoted their lives to performing a simple motion and movement and through dedication and perseverance have finally made it to a world Pantheon of sport?

Perhaps Canada would be a stronger medal contender if more Canadians gave a damn about the Olympics (and about winning, in general).

Scariest scenarios in marketing

So what if tomorrow the tried and true marketing techniques no longer applied…what if today’s harbingers of consumer marketing disaster materialized tomorrow in Zarathustrian proportions (shit hits the fan)?

A lot of these what-if scenarios are actually here, in practice among us, being tested on us, becoming marginally more effective as we go about our mundane lives.

AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

So as the PSA bunnies tell me, I need to keep myself aware of what’s going on so that I can Stay Alert, Stay Safe.

Here are the ten scariest scenarios in marketing:

10. Workplace advertising

Imagine, your Outlook calendar reminder pops up and announces the status update with your boss in 15 minutes. It also announces that “this meeting is sponsored by Fanta. Don’t you want a Fanta Fanta…” It’s a very real possibility that marketing will break through one of the final bastions of consumer invisibility, the office. Marketing in the office will not be subtle like before and you’ll be forced to confront brand logos, taglines, and jingles in company emails, in the lunchroom, and at corporate events.

Freakiness factor: 7
Likelihood to happen: 1
Total: 8

9. Continuing to pay more for green products

Imagine, sustainable consumer practices never really grip a majority of household buyers and prices for items like green toilet paper, organic cereal, and biodegradable dishwashing detergent remain much higher than for conventional, less eco-friendly products. The danger of this is that without a price incentive to buy green, consumers will never make environmentally sustainable buying decisions.

Freakiness factor: 6
Likelihood to happen: 3
Total: 9

8. A brand purchases your street and city block

‘My address? It’s 60 Starbucks Street East, Suite 500.’

If Dubai is selling naming rights to its Metro stations, what’s preventing cash-strapped cities like Toronto from letting companies name streets and subdivisions in new urban developments?

Freakiness factor: 9
Likelihood to happen: 3
Total: 12

7. Guerrilla marketers become brand terrorists

The year: 2020. The place: Toronto’s gritty downtown core.

Guerrilla marketers, cast aside as communications channel rejects have become an Orc-like subspecies, ascending from the sewers to intimidate and scare unsuspecting consumers with messages designed to associate fear with a certain brand. Companies employ these nefarious techniques as smear-campaigns against their competitors and to maintain their competitive advantage by attacking another brand through psychological warfare.

Freakiness factor: 9
Likelihood to happen: 4
Total: 13

6. Google sells or loses your data – for real!

Imagine all those Google searches you do for disgusting key terms. Imagine all those emails you wrote. Imagine all those addresses you looked up. All gone, or worse, sold to some third party. Google apparently does a very good job of maintaining data security and their mantra ‘don’t be evil’ is something quite tangible in the organization. But just think how much trust we’ve put into Google with our personal details over the years…

Freakiness factor: 10
Likelihood to happen: 4
Total: 14

5. Tiered payment model for online content

Rogers and Bell Sympatico have decimated the other players in the broadband internet access market and it’s a literal oligopoly. They now implement a tiered payment model in which consumers must pay more to engage in perceived ‘high-value’ online activities such as streaming, music downloading, or....gasp, blogging! Content can be payment-based too as the ISPs are able to actually see what sites you visit.

Freakiness factor: 6
Likelihood to happen: 9
Total: 15

4. The death of the newspaper and television

The last page is turned, the last word is read. The last commercial is watched, the last remote control button is pressed.

Televisions are finally turned off and newspaper presses no longer roll. This seems like an inevitable possibility considering the immense growth and democracy of online content creation and distribution. But what about editorial, journalistic, and professional standards? Is the demise of printed and televised media the death knell for these things too?

Freakiness factor: 7
Likelihood to happen: 9
Total: 16

3. Ads on your iPod

So music players are getting considerably less expensive because of smaller and faster processors and greater memory capacity. But suddenly you find that the reason you only paid $50 for your new 200GB iPod is because before you can watch the Sopranos episode you transferred over, you are forced to watch a sponsored ad from HBO. Before you listen to Hilary Duff's 'Wake up', you are forced to listen to a 10 second promo for downloadable ringtunes from Rogers Wireless.

Freakiness factor: 10
Likelihood to happen: 7
Total: 17

2. Selling commercial time in your voicemail

The mobile phone companies have finally figured out how to give you free and unlimited phone service. All you do is buy the phone you want and you’re set. Unfortunately, it means that your phone becomes a vibrating advertising tool from Hell. You’re subjected to radio commercials while you wait for someone to answer the line and you’re stuck listening to ad spots while calling your voicemail.

Freakiness factor: 9
Likelihood to happen: 9
Total: 18

1. Cell phones that passively track your whereabouts and proximity to RFIDs

This one is actually well on its way to full scale market rollout in some places in Europe and certainly in Japan. Your cellphone becomes a transponder and broadcasts a signal to the network letting service providers and marketers know where you are and what billboards you’re close to. As you walk by a digital panel on the street, proximity sensors activate and display an ad that is deemed to be relevant to you. You’re watched and marketed to wherever you go.

Freakiness factor: 10
Likelihood to happen: 9
Total: 19

So these are a few of my favourite fears. Some of them I actually think consumers might warm to (e.g.cellphone RFID), if marketers can figure out how to implement them unintrusively. Otherwise, be on your toes!

The best Nike commercial ever

I’m an emotional guy and I like my share of sad movies, but it’s not very often that a commercial gets me weepy and gives me the chills.

It’s the 20th anniversary of Nike’s ‘Just do it’ campaign and their AOR, Portland’s Wieden + Kennedy, developed this 60 sec spot:



Chills. Watch it again.

More chills.

The perfect syncopation of the tenor of the images to the rhythm of ‘All these things that I’ve done’ by the Killers, the raw emotion immortalized in the footage of international Olympians and athletes, and the simplicity of the message really converge in a perfect storm.

How about the fact that with the exception of the campaign url, nike.com/courage, there is no voiceover and only nine words of text appear throughout the entire sixty seconds?

How about that in a series of probably 200 images, no Nike logo, shoe, or apparel item is conspicuously displayed? The logo flashes on some athletes but only for a few milliseconds each time.

Advertising Age has done a terrific job of explaining the strategy behind Nike’s Just do it anniversary and the relevance of brand strategy to this commercial. So I’m not going to be a bad blogger and rehash content, you can read the original on their site.

Overall, my reflections are that this spot successfully conveys Nike as a brand for the lives of all people. It deepens Nike’s accessibility to its customers in a highly human and emotional way.

The director is Ralf Schmerberg. Way. To. Go.

Creative spaces for creative faces

Marketing culture is unique in many respects. In the workplace, there’s a high need for interactivity and stimulation to catalyze innovation. Additionally, the multi-team collaboration required on client projects means that openness and team participation must be cultivated. Style wise, this translates to open-form offices, lots of public spaces or ‘idea rooms’, and a design aesthetic that often runs the gamut between edgy and exposed or frosted and futuristic. In Toronto, the head offices of Cossette or Capital C might be good examples of the former while Wunderman is a good example of the latter.

Of course, it would be nice to have a space like this for B!G and not have to work out of the dark basement of the Schulich building, but as we’re a non-profit, I’m happy for whatever we can get!

I am saying all this because today I stumbled across a really amazing workspace downtown, called 401 Richmond. This is a converted 1899 factory that has been restored and now houses about sixty arts and media related tenants, including ad shops. Creaky wood floors, 15 foot ceilings, and big open windows invite casual passers-by and tourists into the 401 to walk through the floors and see the boutiques and bookstores. On top of the building is a beautiful flower-filled roof garden with terrific views over the neighbourhood and downtown core. But really, it’s a space for artists with working studios and galleries side by side.

Thrown into the mix are a few small boutique media and marketing shops (Boxx3G, Agito Internet Marketing , and Meta Strategies.

I can appreciate why these companies would want to set up business next to artists and creatives. Not only is the building beautiful and occupies a fantastic site in downtown Toronto, but it’s also the model of the agency interior design taken to a larger, macro level. Idea diffusion and new visioning among creative heads is far quicker and clearer when you’re working next to each other. Think of this like a perpetual motion machine that moves faster and faster, it’s the same reason why research universities and technology firms always seem to be grouped together (e.g. Stanford, MIT, UNC Chapel Hill). Innovation spreads faster when the relationships among individuals and firms are mercurial and proximate.

You cannot be creative if you’re in an artistic and cultural vacuum. Agencies should learn from examples like 401 Richmond and internalize this to mean not just sleek, sexy desks with exposed brick walls, but also collocation with artistic people who will inspire and tickle the imaginations of their creative employees.

Effective email marketing: Doing it right

Saturday is my day to go through the piles of email in my Gmail inbox from the week. I’m glad I did because it made me reflect on some of the best practices of email campaigns. To explain the importance of email marketing, please watch this video from Britney Spears:



(So poignant. Yeah, I couldn't stand to listen to it either...) On with the list of email best practices:

Recipients opt in
I really love email marketing, but for the future, it’s only going to be effective with house-list customers who are already familiar with and trusting of the brand. Purchased lists, unless they’re remarkably high quality leads, run the risk of not only being automatically filtered to spam if the email client is unfamiliar with the sender, but also being passed over and deleted by the recipient who sees it as an irrelevant message.

Key takeaway: Use email for relationship building, not acquisition. Don’t misconstrue ‘cheap’ for ‘effective’ as a driver of overall campaign value.

Test and learn
Campaigns represent opportunities to learn from your customers and solicit valuable data-based information. In addition to the substantial link and segmentation tracking that you’ll no doubt build into the campaign, why not throw in some differentiated layout or subject line testing for good measure! Copy testing is also useful, especially when you can learn whether your email recipients like punchy, ‘header-style’ copy or longer, ‘body-style’. Don’t forget to add another layer of testing and try landing page optimization with an A/B split of the inbound links from the email.

Key takeaway: Emails must always be refreshed and improved (optimized!) to make sure you stay relevant with your customers. Through testing, you’ll learn what works and what doesn’t.

Offers and giveaways
Response to consumer emails is enhanced by the offer of a special feature or free giveaway. Try a contest or promotion to launch a new product and remember to use this as another opportunity to collect consumer data. Analyze their responses. I like to think of these giveaways as the sizzle to an email. Remember to mention the free giveaway in the subject line – it will draw the greatest possible open rate of any subject line. Incentives work, use them.

Key takeaway: People like free stuff. Give it to them. Email is a perfect way to tell your customers that they are the select few to receive a special offer.

Content optimization
You’ll learn through testing and customer segmentation what content works for what groups of people, however you can’t go wrong by providing lots of information in an easy to digest form. Lists work well, as do quick specs. Ultimately however, your customers will tell you through their clicks what they find attractive and what your client has in the email as filler.

Key takeaway: Short and sweet. Focus the email on communicating information honestly and compellingly. Email is not a good medium in which to be coy or deceptive. You’ll be burned for it.

Channel integration
Email marketing satisfies one component of your overall CRM strategy. Since you’ll likely be using email in combination with other channels (e.g. direct mail, web, in-store, telephone, SMS), make sure that as far as your communication strategy goes, the left hand knows what the right is doing. A little vague I know, let me explain: you know how Aeroplan will send you an email with your updated account balance? Great. How about when American Eagle uses email to notify you of an upcoming online sale at their website? Super.

Key takeaway: Email marketing does not exist in a vacuum. It is an effective component of your overall marketing communication strategy. Effective emails have a high degree of verisimilitude to the consumer’s other experiences with the brand and their account.

So go ahead and call bullshit on all those Nostradamian gurus who question the effectiveness of email as a marketing medium and predict its demise as customers become more selective with their brands. The sophistication of email deployment technology now means that emails are modular and are unique to each recipient. A campaign can have a massive number of permutations depending on the desired segmentation, content inclusion, and testing. When done right, email is a highly cost-effective marketing channel that is perhaps the most poised of any communications media to convey relevance to the customer.

...btw, these were all Britney Spears' thoughts on email, not mine.

Kiss

A month ago I had the occasion to attend a technology conference in Waterloo where various speakers, including the editor of Wired and Google’s former Chief Innovation Officer, discussed the evolution of the internet and where technology is headed. A major theme of the conference was the ‘nicheification’ of online content and the fact that with user-generated editing capability so firmly entrenched as a Web 2.0 best practice, the potential market of consumers is getting more and more fragmented.

However, another point brought up during the conference, and one that I wanted to elaborate on tonight, is the idea that all content is moving toward a free media model. Today at work I was reviewing creative and the phrase “free information” was used in our marketing copy. “Free information” I thought, was kinda redundant.

Isn’t all information free now? Shouldn’t all information be free?

Did you know that the cost of streaming ten hours of video from YouTube to one viewer only costs ¼ of 1 cent? So with technology that basically allows for nearly unlimited access to any media content at zero cost, how do marketers justify asking consumers to pay for information?

Prince provides an interesting corollary here. I consider Prince to be a musical genius and a marketing genius. Refer to the 2007 Superbowl Halftime Show for sufficient reason to tremble at his other-worldly skill with an axe. To promote a 2007 concert at Wembley Stadium in London, Prince gave away free copies of his latest CD in the London Daily Mail newspaper. Free content, huge publicity. Of course it helps that Prince owns his record company, NPG records, but it was still a very innovative move. At a time when the record industry is languishing from stronger content distribution competitors and an inherently flawed value proposition, Prince essentially broke ground on a new revenue model. At nearly $200 per seat, the money comes from concert ticket sales, not from CDs. I’d be remiss if I didn’t also concede that Prince recently sued fans for unlawfully distributing his music. Additionally it was difficult to find actual Prince videos that have not been removed or silenced on YouTube. Thankfully Songza came through. It seems that he’ll promote his music, but on his terms.

I’m about to tuck in for the night and watch an episode of the Sopranos that I downloaded from a torrent site. I did not pay for this content. If I bought DVDs of all six seasons of The Sopranos, I would have probably paid $300. Frankly, the concept of paying for media content is anathema to anyone under the age of 25.

So let’s get used to free content. Let’s demand more of it. Remember that as consumers and as marketers, we always have options.