advertising buzzword bingo

Because saying them isn't fun enough.

social media me

Another one to throw in the mix (there are plenty better one's out there but I'm all for sharing). Somewhat simplified.

Bigger version there.

UNICEF: Scan & Help

If a person in a developing country could reach out to you directly and ask for your help, wouldn’t you give it to them? That’s the premise behind SCAN AND HELP, a display advertising campaign that uses Mobile Tags to connect people in the first world with people in developing countries.

Scanning the tag will launch an augmented reality application that will let users explore the environment of the person on the poster (who may be a relief worker or aid recipient).
via: PSFK

Unicef went a step further by also integrating deals with sponsors/partner discounts offering discounts at retailers in catalogues (using mobile tagging) and as part of the checkout process, users would be able to donate the money they saved to a campaign or in store where they would have the option to donate then or at checkout. Tags would be integrated in to the retailer’s POS system so the cashier could scan the Mobile Tag and log the donation as easily as scanning a traditional barcode.

I've often thought this a sweet spot for charity organisations, we know people spend to feel good, we also know that altruism makes you feel good too, lets connect those experiences.





holy crap we're creating a democracy

Social media. Naughty countries get exposed. Naughty brands do too. Nothing new except its going to get bigger, increasingly adopted and with larger reach and more technology - people increasingly will own your brand.

UPDATE: Interesting article on the correlation of internet access and democracy

actions speak louder than words

I have always strived to live by this adage. Its one thing to say something and its quite another thing to live your life by it. I could tell you what I’m good at but if nothing in my life demonstrates it – I’d be tripping on empty words. And so philosophically speaking, while we’re ever keen (especially it seems in the world of advertising) to blow our trumpets and shout the loudest, know that people will expect the same promises reflected in your behaviour.

 

via Edward Boches Presentation on Making Digital Work

I read an article recently which asked the question of whether the way we tackle a brand’s position should evolve in the same way that the landscape has. Taking in to account the notion of the purchase funnel turning upside down, with loyal customers being more important than prospects and the affects of social media where a brand talking about itself won’t be able to have a credible engagement with a community because essentially its consumers who own the media.

via Edward Boches Presentation on Making Digital Work

What does this mean for positioning? David A. Aaker defines Positioning as “…part of the brand identity and value proposition that is to be actively communicated to the target audience and that demonstrates an advantage over competing brands.”

Building strong brands is hard these days; price competition (directly affecting the motivation to build brands), proliferation of competitors reducing specifically the positioning options available, media fragmentation plus internal pressures such as organisational bias against innovation and pressures to invest elsewhere mean that there are growing challenges in ensuring your brand is preferred.

Well with new, vigorous competition coming from various sources and even those entering different categories through brand extension strategies (such as Weight Watchers food or Dove Shampoo), new product development (think Coke providing alternatives to carbonated drinks such as bottled water and juice) and innovation, there are fewer holes in the market to exploit. These competitors not only contribute to price pressures and brand complexity, but also make it harder for brands to hold their position.

Some interesting points are made about the idea of key benefit “As products become less distinctive, benefits are more likely to reside in the brand experience than in product performance or image characteristics. Differentiation now is as likely to lie in ‘our customer service rocks’, ‘we have great apps’ or ‘we support the same causes you do’ as in better, faster or cheaper.” While I doubt product differentiation is going to lose importance and by virtue of Moore’s Law statistically impossible as we continue to innovate and I like to think, co-create culture (doesn’t that sound wanky?!) – the brand needs to behave in a way that articulates what it stands for. As Carol argues; "new strategic tools are needed to helping a brand understand how to connect with customers at an individual, human level."

To me this is the brands vision/ambition, the brands “why” we connect with our customers, its noble purpose. Behaviourally this goes beyond a one-way message, it is the expectation that brands ‘walk the talk' and position themsleves in a place that connects with the customers not just by what they say, but also what they do.

via Edward Boches Presentation on Making Digital Work

One of the first vital lessons I learned in advertising is that everything communicates and as we all know, what we say is only 10% of what we communicate. Hence, actions do speak louder than words.

being a misfit

I have just finished reading a great book called "Thinque Funky" by a funkadelic Swede named Anders Sorman-Nilsson, a futurist, a trend spotter and inspiring speaker. His book asks us to look and prepare for the future, with an understanding of what is needed to progress to the next chapter. The world of web 3.0, digilogue technology, androgynous culture and creative commons.

At the TEDx talk on Friday, Anders presented his perspective on the minds we need to evangelise this movement; the misfits. The misfits who are willing to push new thinking, who drive positive change, forward-looking innovation, and solve problems creatively, and that without them your organisation really cannot compete.

Obviously as a misfit myself, I am 100% on board, but despite my bias I welcome you to take a look for yourself at his blog and appreciate the below ;)

brand insights: just an idea

What happens when you overlay SWOT analysis with an insights chart (for want of a better name)? Something I was doodling at the cafe as I tucked in to my brunch on a lazy Sunday morning. Probably not what you should be considering over a sunny weekend, but I felt the theory warranted articulation and sharing.

Insights are obviously beyond facts or info, they are the "Sparks in the dark", "Eureka's" or "Flashes of genius" and the beauty is that when applied correctly, creating alliances across Company, Consumer, Culture and Category, you get a big fat bottom line to thank you for it.

One of the things I like about this approach is the opportunity to treat your company and your consumers as an Internal influence. Increasingly we are appreciating that consumers are your brand stakeholders as essentially a brand exists in the mind of its audience - a brand is the views, attitudes and opinions that individuals have about a company or product - so it important to recognise how a company and its customers converge. Never before has the relationship between customers and brands been so tangible.

Culture gives way for so many fabulous opportunities. We live in such a fragmented time amongst niche micro cultures, fads, fascinations, multi-cultures, technologies, movements in all directions. There's ample opportunity to pinpoint inspiring and emerging expressions and values that could be leveraged far enough to redefine a brands category (great example is the recent Tontine pillows campaign)

Lastly but not least there's Category. Perhaps wrongly or rightly associated with "Threats". You could argue that Category segmentation provides more positive opportunity but I quite like looking out for "threats". It find the opposites. And while we can better understand the 'why' behind a divers set of brands/products existing in a category, looking out for "threats" broadens the scope beyond what's on your doorstep to what may be round the corner on the other street. Its a great way of looking out for substitutes and gaps in the market while ever aware of the competition to work on ensuring your market difference and advantage.

Oh dear, I feel like a royal nerd. I should probably get out more... while I work on that, I hope the above was useful ;)

why we choose?

Dan Ariely the author of Predictably Irrational uses interesting optical illusions to demonstrate our thought process (and decision making). Our intuition fools us in to thinking things in a certain way. Like an optical illusion even when we know what the right answer is we still don’t see it.

Which is longer?
(They're both the same)

The idea of illusions is that our senses feed us information however it is not a true reflection of reality. Information is provided to us courtesy of our brain, which has a set of rules for dealing with situations so that what we see is actually very different from reality in specific, repeatable, predictable ways.

The same thing applies to consumer behavior. For example, when something costs more and people expect it to be better, they actually end up seeing and experiencing it as being better. One of my favourite (and equally frustrating) product examples of this is Tiffany. Oh the weakness. But why? Well a brand is considered premium when we believe it is worth the price. And to feel that good with a shining Tiffany bracelet on is oh so worth it. Remember 'perceived quality' is one of the key brand associations that has proven to drive financial performance.

It’s like an illusion, the way that we process the information is not a function of what is out there, it’s a function of what is happening in our brain. Most of our understanding of the world comes from our brain not from our senses. We think we see with our eyes but much of what we see is happening within our brain even the way we feel about it.

Ariely uses a great example; when you lie on your back and look at the sky, you believe you’re seeing blue however the reality is that only a small part of your eye can detect that colour. If you extend your arm out in front of your face and hold your hand in a fist, that’s the only portion of your eye that can detect blue. The rest of your eye isn’t supposed to see blue. We don’t see blue because of our eyes, we see it in spite of our eyes. It’s our brain that is doing all the work to help us detect blue. The same thing happens when we process other information: Price, quality, etc. In all those cases, it is our brain that drives our expectations and determines much of our final experience.

Ariely believe that we have two types of rules for our behavior. One type concerns market norms which involve how much you pay for things, how much people charge you and so on (a banking rate for example). The other type is social exchanges that have to do with fairness and warm fuzzy feelings (the 'why', the connectiveness we feel, the empowerment etc). Both of these relationships are perfectly reasonable and have advantages and disadvantages. Marketers need to understand the particular advantages and disadvantages that come with both of these relationships and perhaps more importantly the failure that can occur when the relationship is in the middle and not compelling enough in either direction.

What does The Wire have in common with advertising?

I was watching The Wire (Season 3) last night when an interesting point was flagged. Season 3 is all about change, it deals with how the drug game has to evolve as distribution channels ("The Projects") are demolished, the importance of product and efficient policing to keep to a commitment on crime numbers. Its all very political and man do I love it.

The brutality at Police Headquarters continues as Rawls and Commissioner Burrell terrorise Department Commanders over their failure to reign in the city's crime stats. In one scene in particular, one of the Baltimore's Police Sergeants gets verbally torn apart by Major Rawls after allowing his department to treat a number of thefts in a small locale with separate teams, shifting responsibility by fragmented cases, because apparently some thefts were corporate premises rather than retail outlets and individual homes albeit all on the same street resulting in poor efficiency and one really narked Commissioner.

I thought this a great metaphor for how advertising is often treated. A lot of agencies will separate by media such as TV, OOH/Print and Digital etc. which makes a lot of sense from a media booking standpoint but the irony being that at least from a strategic messaging standpoint, they all play a role in interweaving the overall campaign objective i.e. we're all working the same street.

Now I’m no expert in this, but a part of me feels that given the proliferation of media which moves away from static to interactive, we should all understand how each channel can be optimised and manage it collectively rather than in silo sharing learnings along the way. That means everything, from media, creative and production etc. or risk getting our asses whipped by the likes of Major Rawls in the not so distant future.

philosophical about the interwebs

I realised today that I have been blogging in some shape or form for 12 years now (obviously not always under jectaspecta) and whilst time has passed me by, dial up has evolved to broadband, delayed to instant and private to public - I have grown up, to some extent and now in retrospect query my relationship with what has almost converged to become my virtual butler.

Nicholas Carr is a writer who commentates on how Information Technology is integrated in to our lives as a standardised practice. More recently he has been examining the cognitive and cultural consequences the internet has been having on our minds.

"I'm not thinking the way I used to think," Carr tells us. "I feel it most strongly when I'm reading." He relates how he gets fidgety with a long text. Like others, he suspects that the Internet has destroyed his ability to read deeply. "My brain," he writes, "wasn't just drifting. It was hungry. It was demanding to be fed the way the Net fed it."

The history of reading is an interesting one. Words were once written without spaces and punctuation, they required a lot of attention to understand. Books were read aloud and shared with those who could not read (to their amazement). Readers slowly evolved to become accustomed to ignoring the sounds around them (going against our nature of alertness) and thus the deep thinker was born with cognitive ability to concentrate on the written word. Following the advent of the printing press, in a virtuous feedback loop, the public became more literate as more books circulated. How our minds adapt. Note: I bet you won't read all of this.

Carr believes that encouraged by the frenetic, fragmented, hyperlinked web, our skills in deep thought are now diminishing. We are becoming easily distracted, pay less attention to books or articles for sustained length and our minds have become data processing machines.

Carr's assertions have increasingly become a fact of accepted knowledge: that our addiction to the web and computers is affecting the way we think. That is, our capability for "deep thinking", is limited without the time to process information and draw our own conclusions.

Scarily, this concept has been shown to have significant foundations amongst academic performance in schools, studies reveal that home computers have "modest but statistically significant negative impacts" on academic performance as measured by math and reading test scores. In addition: "The introduction of high-speed internet service is similarly associated with significantly lower math and reading test scores in the middle grades." Worse yet, "the introduction of broadband internet is associated with widening racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps." Attempts to close the "digital divide" by, for example, subsidizing PC purchases may actually end up widening the divide between rich and poor in academic performance. And we thought computers promoted development.

Few concepts have spread as rapidly as the ‘digital divide’ and with it, the hope of using modern IT to promote development. Groups from the United Nations to local governments, and private companies have seized upon the hope that the use of IT could enable even the poorest of developing nations to “leapfrog” their problems of development such as poverty, illiteracy, disease, unemployment, hunger, corruption, and social inequalities so as to move rapidly into the modern Information Age.

We know little about the factors that make for effectiveness or ineffectiveness of grassroots IT projects in developing nations. Thus, critics can point out that the cost of creating a working Internet connection in a developing nation is the same as that of providing immunization against six fatal childhood diseases to thousands of children. Others have argued that the introduction of ICT’s into communities otherwise unchanged will merely heighten existing inequalities. Do we really know?

Is knowledge and wisdom based on things like reason, experience, perception? Or is it now a commodity, or data, that can be applied for a given situation. Has it become devoid of humanity? Of deeper processing? Have we become lazy because there is a machine that can offer an answer quicker than we can ask it? Does that knowledge become less significant because of its accessibility and transparency?

Not only is it just the way that we garner information that has changed but also what we do with it. Increasingly we syndicate this data via social networks: "web-driven speaking tools that reduce our own communication to data piles, stacked with quick, surface-level proclamations".

And while we may be sociable online, the social aspect of those networks is only distinguishable by the ability to connect people to one another in the strictest internet sense - not physically scarcely audibly, but almost in abstract. In the end, as we place our focus in to the screen, we are facing only what we've directed these machines to do - that is, so to speak, we are facing ourselves.

Forgive what may come across as a geek staring at the stars but it is, essentially, the virtual manifestation of our intentions. Its a perpetual narcissistic feedback loop of enclosed interactivity. Its the social network of our online persona, controlled by our offline selves communicated via a small piece of equipment shining a rectangle of ironic interaction. Confused? I think I am too. This requires deep thought.

Simply, we are drawn to an interface by its proximity and emptiness that it begs us to fill. Its the blank canvas that allows for an aggregation of content which gives us a unique opportunity to make it our own, our individualistic way. Our fingers encounter something tactile (sometimes greasy) but in reality the image is always light years away at a unique distance that can only be described as unbridgeable by the body.

What we are communicating is a mirror of ourselves in a highly pix-elated form, existing only as far away as the fingertip to keypad and yet equally, not anywhere at all.

Perhaps we are in danger of becoming simply the same surface-level information that we have become slowly programmed to gather.

Has IT made us smarter and less wiser? Should we change the way we gather information or the way we communicate it?

Is it time to get an iPad?

australian digital landscape

Recently on my visit to meet the remainder of my team in San Fransisco, I presented an update on the digital landscape in Australia. It was a brilliant exercise and a great opportunity for everyone to share their thoughts, qualms and questions on the subject.

I've boiled it down a little for the purposes of my blog.

Australian Digital Landscape

View more presentations from Jessica Brookes.

You have a voice here - feel free to use it. Even if you just want to tell me it sucks and digital smells.

Poor rich people

This is a "communications idea" that came about recently which I felt compelled to research a little further.

I look to address the different perceptions and behaviour associated with giving and spending. It interests me because both consequentially have a similar emotional response and yet are communicated and perceived so differently.

I think its important to exercise a fresh perspective, to have a lateral approach and so whilst a part of me thinks this may just be one of those exercises to help me hone this - quite selfishly - it'd be great if it could spark some inspiration elsewhere.

I’m hoping an awesome agency/charity will be interested in bringing it to life, but I could be dreaming. I would obviously be happy for someone to take it and make it their own so long as it were true to the objective (actually, I'd be incredibly flattered!)

I'm not precious about it whatsoever; so please look for holes in it and bring it to my attention - its all part of the process.

I recommend looking at it big screen.

Poor Rich People - Changing the perceptions of giving

View more presentations from jectaspecta.

How to start a movement

Here are some learnings from Derek Silvers TED Talk:

• A leader needs the guts to stand out and be ridiculed
• If you’re the lone nut who starts a movement, who goes out there alone, nurture your first few followers as equals – its about the movement not about you
• The first follower is an underestimated form of leadership in itself - he shows the others how to follow
• A movement must be public, new followers emulate the followers not the leader
• Leadership is over glorified; the first follower transforms the lone nut in to a leader (if we’re all trying to be leaders it’d be ineffective)
• As more people join in, its less risky, so those who were spectators now have no reason not to get involved - they won't stand out, they won't be ridiculed, they may be part of the in crowd if they hurry (Tipping point)

So, find your followers, embrace them as equals and have the courage to follow and show others. how to follow

The Future of Publishing

A very clever way to demonstrate the change publishing is undergoing at the moment. It says embrace your customer as partners in the process, let them inspire creative ideas to guide and validate the content you produce, regardless of the packaging.

And seriously, lets all get over Gaga.

Demented Augmented

"The latter half of the 20th century saw the built environment merged with media space, and architecture taking on new roles related to branding, image and consumerism. Augmented reality may recontextualise the functions of consumerism and architecture, and change in the way in which we operate within it.

A film produced for my final year Masters in Architecture, part of a larger project about the social and architectural consequences of new media and augmented reality."

- Keiichi Matsuda

IBM Colour Sensitive Interactive Billboard

Color Sensitive Interactive Billboard from milton cj on Vimeo.
Interesting use of digital signage. One might even call it 'smart'...

(via Fubiz)

Wireless communications

Its insane how rapid mobile is evolving. Mobile phones have fast become a phenomenon. They're no longer a medium for making voice calls but a platform to communicate in a ubiquitous world.

They're a tool that keeps you constantly in the present. They wake you up in the morning, facilitate gaming, stream movies, music, connect you to your proverbial social sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare. Furthermore, mobile commerce is evolving from early innovation to mainstream adoption.

Current mobile trends:

- Mobile will soon be able to stream movie content (via iPhone)

- iPhone and Android are becoming a platform of choice for developers

- iPad follows closely behind (iPad is mostly attractive to iPhone users)

- 73% of Android users are guys

- 78% of iPod touch users are younger than 25

- iPod touch users love apps and download an average of 12 a month, spending 100 minutes a day using them (37% more apps than iPhone and Android users)

- When it comes to solely paid apps, iPhone users lead the pack (half of them buy at least one app a month)

MOCOM2020 is an open think tank about mobile media worldwide. Their goal is "to develop a visualized vision of the future of mobile media in the year 2020". They also track the latest buzz on mobile communications.

AdMob serve ads for more than 15,000 mobile Web sites and applications around the world (and stores and analyses the data from every ad request, impression, and click) and offer a snapshot of its data to provide insight into trends in the mobile ecosystem.

Recently they ran a survey to AdMob publishers to understand how they are thinking about cross-platform development. The key takeaway from the survey is that 47% of publishers said they plan on developing on more than one platform in the next 6 months. Among those who plan on developing for another platform, Android was the top choice (caveat Blackberry is not included in the survey).

'In the same vein' they published results of a survey from Appcelerator which measured mobile developer interest on different platforms and found a similar strong interest in Android:

I predict in terms of the breadth of offering and functionality, mobile phone users are going to see their pocket device become increasingly dynamic and depended on in the years to come.

The challenge for brands is how they will facilitate this, using relevant content to work within a world where the primacy of once-virtual communication is transforming as, increasingly, the virtual and the real combine.

Falling Polar Bears

Well as someone who loves loves loves Polar Bears - some girls collected Barbie Dolls, I collected Polar Bears - I must admit this new cinema ad from Plane Stupid (written and commissioned by creative agency Mother and made by production company Rattling Stick. Director Daniel Kleinman) made me shudder.

However, I understand 1. It sends a valuable message and 2. The bears aren't real. So with those two facts in mind, I must admit I admire the guys at Mother UK for their audacity and the message is very clear: Your flight has an impact.

Plane Stupid explain on their site: "Like you, we're worried about climate change. Like you, we don't think the Government can be trusted to do what needs to be done".

They're a network of grassroots groups that take non violent direct action against aviation expansion. Their three demands:

• End to short haul flights and airport expansion
• Stop aviation advertising
• A just transition to sustainable jobs and transport

Interesting. Whilst I know aviation isn't the sole cause of greenhouse gas emissions, I'd be interested to learn more about the impact. As you know, after watching The Final Choice documentary I certainly reevaluated my eating habits.