Experience the Message

BRANDS: ALL IN YOUR HEAD

This is a pretty cool project:

http://www.brandtags.net/

And please read this article from Fast Company to better understand the future of branding.

MARKETING IS A RIGHT BRAIN BUSINESS

Rarely do I agree with articles in Ad Age, and rarer still do I agree with the old guard like Al Reis. But his latest column in the venerable ad bible is worth a read. In essence, Al says, "left-brain management will never understand right-brain marketing." Filled with old-time anecdotes and spot-on observations, Al does not disappoint in this one.

At one of his first meetings at IBM, Lou Gerstner was listening to a briefing by one of his lieutenants, who was using an overhead projector and transparencies. On the second transparency, Mr. Gerstner reached over, switched off the projector and said, "Let's just talk about your business."

Management is verbal and analytical. Yet most marketing presentations are visual and emotional. They sell creativity when they should be selling logic.

Nice one. There are plenty more. But more true to the article is the notion that right-brain thinking is a must for successful marketing. I touch on this subject a bit in Brand New World when discussing the marketing and advertising coming out of India. The role of right-brain empathy is becoming instrumental in creating global campaigns and global brands.

RANDOM ARTICLES OF NOTE

Again, and I have been writing this often, I apologize for a lack of updates. In the spirit of uncorking the bottle, I've listed here a number of past articles that have caught my attention, and should catch the attention of thoughtful marketers and advertisers alike. In no particular order: The "Duh!" Article: Marketers Lack Understanding of Brand Value: ANA Study According to Promo Magazine, the majority of senior marketers lack an understanding of brand value, caused in part by following an archaic marketing model, a new survey has found.

The survey by the Association of National Advertisers and Interbrand polled 118 chief marketing officers and senior marketing executives at ANA member companies. The results indicate that because brand value is not fully comprehended, an awareness of the impact of building strong brands may not be factoring into company decision-making, the survey found.Some 64% of the executives surveyed said that brands do not influence decisions made at their organizations suggesting that companies are missing major opportunities to fully realize the economic potential of brand strength.

How about this one: Product Placement, Sampling, and Word-of-Mouth Collectively Influence Consumer Purchases According to the Center for Media Research:

• 28% of those surveyed reported that they have been offered product samples within the past three months
• 64% of those surveyed claimed they had accepted product samples. 66% of the customers characterized as Acquisitions accepted samples, as well as 63% of the Conversions, and 63% of the Retentions
• 35% of those surveyed claimed they purchased the sampled product on the same day. 26% of the Acquisitions bought the product right away, as well as 19% of the Conversions, and 31% of the Retentions
• 24% of those surveyed claimed that a sampled product had specifically replaced an item that they had planned on buying. 20% of the Acquisitions were planning to make the switch, as well as 33% of the Conversions, and 18% of the Retentions.

The "Uh-Oh" Article: CMOs Annoyed by Agencies, Ad Networks According to Advertising Age, "the chief marketing officers of Hewlett-Packard and Charles Schwab openly mulled the attractiveness of bypassing agencies to work directly with media companies and other experiments as they look to fix an agency model they see as broken." The "What a Cool Idea!" Article: Common Thread: Fan Names Woven Into Rugby Jerseys New Zealand rugby team the All Blacks appreciates their fans. And vice versa. Later this month Team Captain Richie McCaw will be presented with jerseys that have the names of 100,000 fans engraved onto a single thread used to make the jerseys.

EXPERIENTIAL ADS IN AN EXPERIENCE WORLD

This Ad Age article about UK-based Mother Experience has made me grind my teeth. As readers of this blog know, I never (purposely) write about my clients or campaigns. It's the latent journalist in me. Whenever there is a connection, I try to include a disclosure statement. So, upon commenting on the article in question, I grind my teeth because you have no idea how many times I've written treatments for branded theater, long-format content, stand-up routines and even musicals. Every time, the clients thought the ideas were stellar but were too afraid to go with them. What they didn't know scared them immensely. And so, like the sheep that most brand managers are, they followed the flock. However, it seems some sheep are less sheepish.

When the minds at Mother, London, were noodling around with a TV campaign for client Unilever, it occurred to them: Why not take the premise and adapt it into a musical comedy for its brand, Pot Noodle?

The result might be the first branded musical, which will open at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival on Aug. 1.

It seems that Mother, London is a good shepherd.

But this hardly Mother's first time dabbling in the arts. The agency's production unit, Mother Vision, also created the feature film "Somers Town" in a collaborative project with Eurostar (the company that operates the passenger train service from London through the Channel Tunnel to France and mainland Europe). "Somers Town," directed by Shane Meadows, won best film at the Edinburgh and Berlin film festivals, and the best actor award at Tribeca.

Will measurability and misperception spook experiential marketing?

Here's a well-written and well-reasoned article on the measurability of experiential marketing, and I'm not just saying that because I'm quoted in it.

I think it is a good estimation of some of the leading thinking around the subject, one which is bound to get people talking for some time to come. In fact, if the nut of measurability is cracked soon, then experiential marketing will help to augur in a completely new mindset for marketing and advertising. (But they said the same thin about traditional media advertising and its capacity for engagement and effectiveness, and we all know the jury is still out on that.)

Here's my favorite part of the article (and yes, it's because I said it.):

But there are others, however, that believe that the concept of measuring ROI isn't even applicable to experiential marketing. Lenderman, for instance, views present ROI measurement as obsolete and archaic; a short-term measurement that is largely based upon the sales that occur after a campaign runs.

"There is a common misperception that experiential marketing has to be tactile in nature. What they don't understand is that experiential is a methodology that is applied equally to every media. So asking for ROI on experiential is an impossible question."

Lenderman highlights the studies of retail specialist Paco Underhill, who has demonstrated that two-thirds of retail purchases are unplanned. "Two-thirds of purchases have nothing to do with that ad that you ran - but still traditional advertisers and marketers are saying that if they see a blip on the screen in sales after their ad runs then that is their ROI!" Lenderman explains.

"We are not Pavlovian dogs nor trained monkeys," he continues. "We tend to internalise messages and make a concerted and rational decision at a later time." As such, Lenderman proposes a new term on which experiential firms base their measurement: return on experience (ROE).

"ROE is a much more long-term perspective," he explains. "After a consumer has participated in an experiential area, sure we can measure the first month, but why not measure the six months after that? Or a year? If it is a test drive, for instance, perhaps the customer wasn't even going to buy a car for a few months. Or maybe a year or two later they remember the great experience they had in the test drive. The measurement of ROI is focused on short-term, and that is a totally different mindset than when you are talking about marketing experiences."

And there are other points to consider in the experiential marketing business case according to Lenderman, not least that it contracts the purchase cycle. "Customers could have months and months of seeing the same TV ad before they go out and buy the goods but with experiential you are wowed at that moment and are more likely to buy it there on the spot," he emphasises. "The Smart car launch in North America is focused on test drives to allow people to buy it there and then and they are finding that 85% of people are intending to buy the car after the test drive. It shrinks the time it takes between marketing message and purchase. I think any CEO would be interested in something that contracts your purchasing cycle by 10-20%, rather than comparing how many widgets they sold before the campaign versus after."

ETM 101: THREE ARTICLES OF NOTE

I'm not sure why I haven't posted this from AdWeek before. It's been on my desktop for a few weeks. It provides an ample round-up of some of the experiential work being done in the US. (Albeit, some of the examples are a bit dated.)

The second article from MediaPost is a bit more self-serving: I'm quoted in it. It deals with social networks and how brands are trying to cash in.

The third article is from Ad Age and presents a story about Unilever's major ad buy for the Super Bowl that came outside of it's traditional agencies. Interesting, indeed.

WORST BRAND EXTENSIONS OF 2007

I believe that, done right, a brand can experientialize itself through a compelling and contextual line extension. One only has to look at the luxury goods market to see how brands like Gucci, Ferrari, Prada, Louis Vuitton, Ralph Lauren and Chanel have grown their business through smart (and sometimes not so smart) brand extensions. Can anyone deny that the iPhone (or even iPod) made Apple a more experiential brand?

I've also written on "branded brands" as well. Both methods offer up an enhanced experience, and therefore important in the field of experiential marketing.

But here comes a great article in Brandweek about bad brand extensions...really bad brand extensions. Something like this:

"...The most questionable food extension went to Hooters energy drink (32.5%), Bumble Bee Prime Fillet Chicken Breasts (21.9%) and Trump Steaks (21.1%).

Hooters has the dubious distinction of winning a worst brand extension category for the second time in the four years the survey has existed. Hooters Airline, which has since been grounded, was the other."

Study also looks at the best line extensions out there. What do we think of extensions like:

"The brands that did it right found a way to create innovative, successful extensions that are in harmony with the core brand. PetSmart PetsHotel was voted best brand extension by 34.3% of respondents. Huggies Little Swimmers sunscreen was second (29%) followed by Disney’s Fairy Tale wedding gowns (23.3%) and American Idol camp (13.4%)."

It's a fascinating read.

XM DEFINED?

Here's a great piece on experiential marketing from MyCustomer. I enjoyed reading it, and although I have some reservations about the points it raises, I do believe there are some strong arguments in the piece for more XM being embraced by marketers worldwide. Here's a choice quote:

The idea behind EM is to bring the brand ‘face to face’ with customers to demonstrate brand values and build customer expectation – it is this face to face demonstration that makes it a child of FM. EM techniques strive to forge deeper emotional connection with targeted groups and individuals by use multi-sensory stimulation. They include events, product placement, brand spaces, education classes and ultimately opportunities for customer co-creating. This is where it points the way to the future of customer experience.

What EM is not, and has been much mistaken for, is product promotion with entertainment thrown on top. Dressing sampling staff up as drag queens to sell more bleach, as one company did, is amplified product promotion, it is not experiential marketing, ie. demonstrating brand values!!

Good stuff. Enjoy the read.

KNOW LOGO

A quick piece in Brandweek cites a study in which thousands of teens were queried on their conversations and interactions among each other. The study says that:

Members of Generation Y have 145 conversations a week about brands, which is twice the rate of adults.

"They are extremely engaged in conversations about brands," said Brad Fay, COO of The Keller Fay Group, a New Brunswick, N.J., word-of-mouth consultancy whose TalkTrack survey canvassed 2,046 teens ages 13-17 during the first five months of the year.

Teens aren't just conversing about brands; they're talking about advertising as well. More than half (57%) said they cite marketing and media in their conversations compared to 48% of adults.

"Teens are highly plugged into pop culture and brands are a big part of that culture," said Fay. Products and their ads "are conversation currency."

Oi vey. The ad industry is giving teens their social currency. How depressing. What ever happened to talking about girls (or boys), scoring front-row seats to a show, looking for trouble (and finding it) on a Saturday night? Do teens really sit around and discuss the finer points of the Fourth Meal campaign?

So which brands are leading the conversation? Few will be surprised that Apple's perennial favorite, the iPod, led the pack, followed by American Eagle, Dr Pepper, Chevrolet and Nintendo, respectively.

Okay, I'm certain more than a few debates are merited for Mac vs PC. Enough of my self-righteous whining and deprecating cynicism. The article continues:

Cyber-savvy teens scored higher than adults in online brand mentions as well. GenYers are three times more likely to talk about a brand online (via text, instant messaging, e-mail, chats or blogs) than adults. Some 19% of teen word-of-mouth happens online versus 7% for adults.

Still, 61% of brand word-of-mouth mentions still happen offline, even if it's happening the same time as an online or text conversation.

"[Teens] are more socially enabled than someone working in an office 9 to 5," said Doug Akin, managing partner at Mr. Youth, a Gen Y marketing agency in New York. "They have more multichannel conversations. [Aside from just hanging out], they are texting. They are online. They are on Facebook. On these social networking sites, they are likely to stumble across a marketing message and act on it."

Oh wait. The cynicism is back. But this time, the vitriol isn't for the slack-jawed stoner kids playing with their Wiis. The bitterness is directed squarely at the typical marketing response: fuck it up for the kids with our fake-ass, bullshit marketing. Wait, there's a bit more:

Not to mention, "Brands are badges for teens," said Fay. "You are at a period in your life when you are trying to discover your true identity. Brands can be a short-cut in defining yourself."

I can't take it no more. Are we arrogant enough to truly believe that we as marketers and brand managers are helping teens discover themselves? Are we now on par with teachers and educators? Are we the quick-fix every teen has yearned for since time immemorial? What utter rubbish.

Some other stuff was in the article, like what teens talk about and such (movies, games, sports...duh). I just wish it was Saturday night, and not Tuesday. I feel like getting in trouble.

RETRACTION

My colleague at Hungama was up-in-arms about the plagiarism of Experience the Message in a column for The Hindustan Times.

His determined efforts to get a retraction and apology have paid off. Here it is. Click on the image for a larger version.