Experience the Message

CANNES WE DO IT? YES WE CAN!

If there is any lingering doubt that we are in the midst of fundamental transformations in the advertising and marketing industries, just read the beginning of this press release from June 30th:

CANNES, France, June 30 /PRNewswire/ -- DDB Brazil and Tribal DDB Worldwide took home top honors at the 2009 International Advertising Festival at Cannes.

DDB Brazil was recognized as Agency of the Year, while Tribal DDB in Amsterdam was awarded the Film Grand Prix for the Philips interactive film "Carousel," an award that Advertising Age called "a clear admission the age of interruption is over" and that the festival said recognized work being done on all screens, not simply television. To see the work click here: www.philips.com/cinema.

Also winning at Cannes was DDB&Co. Istanbul, which was the No. 3 ranked agency in the world, clearly bringing to life the DDB network mantra that great creative work can and does come from anywhere around the globe.

There's an entire chapter in my latest book about the burgeoning "phenomenon" of sourcing creativity from across the globe. I guess the old guard at Cannes woke up to that reality this year for the first time.

THE RISE OF THE PAUPER

The consumer world is becoming poorer, and it has nothing to do with the economy. It has everything to do with the fact that there are 4 billion poor people who are yearning to join the consuming ranks, and those who are emerging into the middle class in countries like India, China, Brazil, Russia, Vietnam, Hungary and Mexico are recreating the way we are shop for and value brands.

This New York Times article takes a look at an emerging consumer in the US. The title of the article probably says it all: "Trying to Pitch Products to the Savers."

The reluctance of consumers to spend — coupled with a sudden sharp rise in the savings rate — has left even the savviest marketers scrambling to reconsider their strategies.

For instance, the Procter & Gamble Company, the nation’s largest advertiser, announced last month that it would adopt a “surgical” approach to reducing prices in categories in which Procter brands are being perceived as costing too much compared with competitive products.

In the same article, the notion of value is underscored and how experiential approaches are at the heart of a brand's positioning on the value spectrum.

And at Procter & Gamble, a line featuring new products that cost $42 to $62 each — a far cry from the price of a bar of Ivory soap — is getting a value designation because, ads assert, it performs like product lines costing much more.

The line is called Olay Professional Pro-X, part of the Olay skin-care brand. A print campaign from Saatchi & Saatchi in New York, part of the Publicis Groupe, that is scheduled to begin in July for the Intensive Wrinkle Protocol — a regimen kit of three products — will carry this headline: “As effective at wrinkle reduction as what the doctor prescribed. At half the price.”

The Pro-X items cost two or three times as much as the products in another Olay line, Total Effects, which cost about $20 to $25 apiece.

“It is getting into higher price points,” said Tim Bunch, Olay Pro-X brand manager at Procter in Cincinnati. So “if you’re going to lay down that type of money,” he added, “it ought to be for a brand you believe in.”

And this article in Ad Age will drive the point home:

The heavy betting -- and it goes well beyond Cincinnati -- is that America will eventually shake off recession but keep saving and spending more responsibly. We'll borrow only when we must. We'll pay bills and debts immediately. We'll save up before we buy big things. New England Consulting Group reported last week that people buying more store brands now don't have any plans to trade back up, and that recession-induced shopping habits are likely to persist "long after it's gone." All that has left many marketers trying to adapt with strategies such as lowering some prices, offering multiple product lines at varying price points and giving reluctant consumers reasons to buy by tying into causes such as environmentalism.

BRAND NEW WORLD: A LOOK INSIDE...

So, the book is doing well in Canada. Right now, it rests as the #1 book on Global Marketing on Amazon.ca. I hear there are a stacks of the books at Chapters -- so, please recommend it to anyone interested in learning about the new global marketing paradigm shift!!!!!!

I'll be adding a widget from my publisher soon for an inside look into the book, if you'd like to preview it.

And if you like it (or not!), I urge you to review it on your blogs and personal pages. Thank you!!!!

HOLY SHIT: PUBLISHING IS NOT DEAD!!!!

In the book Brand New World, I touch on the notion that exclusive and limited-edition brands (and the marketing around them) will be a prevalent form of beating consumer malaise, and more importantly, brand piracy. 

So check out this "limited edition" magazine! Swedish magazine Tare Lugnt have released their third issue as a tattoo!!!!

What an experiential thought! To the extreme. Click here to see how it was, um, published.

And certainly, no one can copy this experience. What an amazing, and totally brilliant, idea.

EXPERIENCE A WAR

If you think that selling ice to Eskimos is a hard proposition, how about selling the US Army at a time of war?

I have written about the Army's experiential strategy to get more folks to join their ranks in both Experience the Message and the upcoming Brand New World (disregard the cover).
 
This latest effort by our armed services takes a page straight out of the experiential playbook and applies it to the retail space.

At the Franklin Mills mall in Philadelphia, past the Gap Outlet and the China Buddha Express, is a $13 million video arcade that the Army hopes will become a model for recruitment in urban areas, where the armed services typically have a hard time attracting recruits.

The Army Experience Center is a fitting counterpart to the retail experience: 14,500 square feet of mostly shoot-’em-up video games and three full-scale simulators, including an AH-64 Apache Longbow helicopter, an armed Humvee and a Black Hawk copter with M4 carbine assault rifles. For those who want to take the experience deeper, the center has 22 recruiters.

That's right, people. You can now shop for sneakers and join the army!!!! What a deal!!!!

EXPERIENTIAL DIRECT MAIL?!?!

How cool is this? A detergent brand in Thailand decided to send samples of Breeze Excel. The package was wrapped in a t-shirt and dropped in the mail. The proof of the detergent's efficacy was then picked up throughout the package's journey. What better way to showcase how a product works?

THE PIRATES OF EXPERIENCE

In my forthcoming book...now titled "Brand New World"...an entire chapter is devoted to piracy and pirated brands, and how this upstart phenomenon (if you discount buccaneering) is radically transforming the way companies brand and go to market.

So it's nice to see The Economist drop this article on piracy, and how it can be a BENEFIT instead of a scourge for known brands. For instance:

In other industries, piracy can help to open up new markets. Take software, for instance. Microsoft’s Windows operating system is used on 90% of PCs in China, but most copies are pirated. Officially, the software giant has taken a firm line against piracy. But unofficially, it admits that tolerating piracy of its products has given it huge market share and will boost revenues in the long term, because users stick with Microsoft’s products when they go legit. Clamping down too hard on pirates may also encourage people to switch to free, open-source alternatives. “It’s easier for our software to compete with Linux when there’s piracy than when there’s not,” Microsoft’s chairman, Bill Gates, told Fortune magazine last year.

Another example, from agriculture, shows how piracy can literally seed a new market. Farmers in Brazil wanted to use genetically modified (GM) soyabean seeds that had been engineered by Monsanto to be herbicide-tolerant. The government, under pressure from green groups opposed to GM technology, held back. Unable to obtain the GM seeds legitimately, the farmers turned to pirated versions, many of them “Maradona” seeds brought in from Argentina. Eventually the pirated seeds accounted for over a third of Brazil’s soyabean plantings, and in 2005 the government relented and granted approval for the use of GM seeds. Monsanto could then start selling its seeds legitimately in Brazil.

Piracy can also be a source of innovation, if someone takes a product and then modifies it in a popular way. In music unofficial remixes can boost sales of the original work. And in a recent book, “The Pirate’s Dilemma”, Matt Mason gives the example of Nigo, a Japanese designer who took Air Force 1 trainers made by Nike, removed the famous “swoosh” logo, applied his own designs and then sold the resulting shoes in limited editions at $300 a pair under his own label, A Bathing Ape. Instead of suing Nigo, Nike realised that he had spotted a gap in the market. It took a stake in his firm and also launched its own premium “remixes” of its trainers. Mr Mason argues that “the best way to profit from pirates is to copy them.”

Well, there are many more examples in the book. But let's just say that in the face of the growing explosion of pirated and knocked-off brands, the differentiator is "experience." No matter how well the copy is, it is the brand's ability to deliver an experience -- above- or below-the-line -- that will differentiate it and give it value.

Got you interested? The book cokes out shortly.

FRUIT BRANDING

A short blurb on PSFK presents a new advertising medium: fruit. It seems Chinese farmers have discovered how to grow a logo on fruit. Yippee!

A friend of PSFK recently sent us some pictures of a designer fruit made in Dongguan, China. The premise seems to be a marketing sticker applied at some point during development enabling the unique on-fruit design. The clearly customizable logo opens up a world of food branding possibilities. We can’t wait to take a bite out of the Chiquita banana woman.

How many marketers in the US do you think are salivating at the prospect of their faltering logos grown into millions of peaches? Too many, I'm afraid. Way too many.

BRILLIANT! A CELL PHONE TO SAVE LIVES

This is simply a great idea!

A mobile phone operator in South Korea is offering users a new service that claims to repel mosquitoes.

From Monday, subscribers to SK Telecom Company will be able to download a sound wave that humans cannot hear, but that annoys mosquitoes within a range of one metre (one yard).

For the fee of $2.5, customers can then play the sound by pressing a few keys on their phones.

The mobile phone emits a noise similar to the buzz of a male mosquito, which the blood-sucking females tend to avoid.

Although it uses handset battery power faster, the service is expected to be very popular during Korea's hot, humid summers.

The firm, the country's largest, has 17 million subscribers and controls just over half of the South Korean domestic market.

The biggest explosion in mobile phone sales comes from the Third World. The Third World is still plagued by millions of deaths caused by malaria. Imagine if this "service" comes preloaded on the phones sold in Chad, Bolivia, Bangladesh, Ghana or Cambodia! A cell phone can save millions of lives!!!!

ADS TO ART

Kudos to Adweek in putting up a profile of Steve Lambert, who has launched an anti-ad project called Add Art. Basically, he has worked with Mozilla's (Firefox) free ad blocker add-on to create a project that inserts fine art in place of banner ads and other online advertising when viewing pages on Firefox.

Brilliant. Another example of the growing empowerment of the consumer, and a resounding example of art trying to subvert commerce -- something that is usually done the other way around.

Anyone who knows about the advertising ban in Sao Paulo would quickly equate this project int eh virtual world with the efforts of the Brazilians to clean up their own visual pollution. More of this in the upcoming book....