Now I want to mention straight away that I am a magazine nerd. I treat mags like books and get ratty at people if they bend the covers, or flatten out the spine to make it easier to read. Some might say I’m precious – I just say they don’t appreciate the effort that goes into making a little piece of art.

Every magazine aims to immerse their reader in their particular perspective of the world – whether it be art, fashion, design – or motorcycles. But 99% of the time, pictures aren’t going to get you to appreciate a music review. And I admit, I often jump over the articles I’m not interested in. Paper, while aesthetically satisfying, sometimes just doesn’t cut it.

And this is where the iPad comes into it’s own.

Wired on iPad was unequivocally fab. Animated graphics allowed the readers to navigate themselves through the article. Videos within articles to show what can only be hinted at in an article. Instead of merely reading a music review, embedded music clips accompany reviews so readers can immediately form their own opinion. All on pages just begging to be poked, prodded, swiped and zoomed. At the end of the day, the digital version has provided the visual impact of paper, but with all the bells and whistles that a digital developer could think of.

As noted by Wired‘s editor, Chris Anderson, the arrival of iPad ‘represents a grand experience in the future of media’. But I think the iPad has even greater potential. It’s an opportunity for brands, like Wired, to increase their impact on their customers and immerse their audience in their particular view of the world. Instead of reading game reviews, the reader can experience them and decide whether the reviewer was a genius or a luddite. It also allows advertisers to more immediately grab the attention of their target markets. Every advertisement in Wired had a link to a website. Even more to Facebook groups and Twitter. The opportunity that iPad provides is the chance to grab a reader’s attention and hold onto it by taking them away from what they were originally reading. Bad for the easily distracted, but great for advertisers wanting internet hits.

For magazines, paper will always reign supreme. But there’s no denying the iPad is making editors think twice about how to connect with readers in this new digital realm.

An opinion piece by Simon van Wyk, posted on mUmbrella last week, pointed Chatterblock to an article on smh.com.au by Daniel Young: “Building a better relationship with online customers”.

The story articulates what we at ChatterBlock have been saying for eons – that social media is important, that social media is user centric, that social media breeds community and personal experiences. If we weren’t getting bored by social media stories in the news enough as it is! Young says consumers are drawn to social media ‘because it allows them to create their own experience’.

“The successful brands online will be those that understand their customer, optimise their various marketing channels, identify the connection points between media types and deliver a consistent message or experience.”

Umm, as van Wyk states, ‘Brands need to understand their customers? No shit, Sherlock’. In contrast, van Wyk argues that in the rush to social media, companies have foregoed understanding their customers in favour of making as much noise as possible online.

I tend to agree with van Wyk. The number of badly executed social media campaigns is staggering – there is this attitude that it’s ‘easy’ to go digital and, as a result, details are passed over in a way that wouldn’t occur in a print campaign, in favour of making a splash online.

A case in point: Conde Nast Digital invited a chuffed Block-et through an email flyer to join a ‘culture enthusiast advisory panel’, the Green Room. The Block-et was quickly disappointed to discover, on completing the online form, that Australia is not able to participate in the forum. Quote from the Block-et: ‘Surely being global is a key attribute to being a “culture enthusiast” yet they segment by geography’.

This is a prime example of a big brand trying to use social media in a slick, clever way, only to come unstuck because the strategy wasn’t thought through to begin with. Conde Nast Digital  didn’t think about their audience and deliver a consistent message through their campaign. On this point, Young is spot on.

There is only so much trial and error an increasingly critical twitterverse is willing to take when it comes to corporate social media campaigns. The vibe online is that, if brands aren’t willing to take social media seriously and do it properly, they should just stay offline. Markets do not expect brands to be online just for the sake of it and that a poorly planned social media presence is worse than none at all.

Young criticises big brands by saying that just 20% of the top brands in Australia have a blog, but at the end of the day, most of these companies don’t have anything to blog about. Having a boring blog is going to generate much more criticism than a company recognising that this is an inappropriate avenue to market themselves and staying offline.

Overall, yes social media is important to accessing key markets for some companies because, at the end of the day, more people are using the internet. And Young is right to say that brands online need to understand their customers, but this is nothing new. More important than just being online is being strategic when doing so. Don’t make the mistake that Conde Nast Digital did and try to be clever by producing something with more style than substance.

I love the concept of beliefs with teeth. It totally encapsulates the way certain brands take on a vision or philosophy and work the crap out of it – from what employees say, the services they provide and how they end up speaking to the public. Sadly, its common for the public to treat ‘belief-speak’ as part of a manufactured corporate package, and treat carefully worded vision statements as carefully constructed BS. Yes, there are some companies that jump on the beliefs wagon because they see every other business doing it, but when it happens it is obvious and painful to witness – as well as not generating the intended market loyalty. But when a company really believes their stated beliefs, it’s a marvel to behold.

In the same vein, BCM has recently posted two articles about great brand stories: Lady Gaga and The Ramones. While I love the Lady G to pieces, the Ramones article was my favourite. As author Jeff Smith said, you all know about the Ramones, but do you know any of their songs? Or hear them on commercial radio? Their name is never spoken in the same sentence as the Rolling Stones but Ramones t-shirts are the third highest selling band t-shirt in the world. All this marketing success for a band that isn’t even in the top 100 best-selling artists in the world. Why? Because from day dot they had a belief and a brand vision that was never compromised for over 22 years. Same haircut, same song structure – hell, even the same surname was mandatory. The Ramones had a vision and plugged away with it because they believed in it to their bones. Definitely a brand with teeth and one that fans continue to follow with unabashed loyalty.

This isn’t just a great story about a band, but an inspiring case study about a brand. The Ramones created a vision and consistently stuck to it. This allowed their market of disaffected youth to consistently worship what they stood for because they never waivered from their message. If more companies could brand like the Ramones, who knows what sort of market loyalty they could create. Rock on.

Not only does this billboard visually dominate its surroundings, but it also releases the smell of steak at peak hour, every day between 7-10am and 4-7pm. While I’m not a fan of the visual execution of this ad, this is a great example of a creative team taking the next step in an idea – from visually attracting their customers to literally dragging them by the nose to the nearest steakhouse. What a shame Bloom is promoting a supermarket chain beef product instead of opening up a restaurant right around the next corner!

]]> http://chatterblock.wordpress.com/2010/06/08/taking-advertising-to-new-smelly-heights/feed/ 0 annabelhay Bloom Steak http://chatterblock.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/a-late-perspective-on-the-deveny-devine-debacle/ http://chatterblock.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/a-late-perspective-on-the-deveny-devine-debacle/#comments Wed, 26 May 2010 11:48:16 +0000 annabelhay http://chatterblock.wordpress.com/?p=123 ]]> I might be late to comment on the Deveny-Devine Twitter debacle, but I still think there are many points to be made on the subject of personal versus professional tweeting, particularly for company managers deciding whether to venture forth into social media.

In the past month there have been two high profile slip ups by journalists from the left and right. In both instances these journalists made comments from their personal twitter accounts, which brought their professional reputations into disrepute.

As has been reported ad nauseum, Deveny, an opinion journalist with The Age, made comments on her Twitter account about the Logies that were in poor taste, referring to Bindi Irwin having sex and hoping that Rove McManus’ new wife wouldn’t die. The Age subsequently sacked Deveny, apparently after a number of warnings. Apparently now she is heartbroken and murdered.

Miranda Devine is a journalist at the Sydney Morning Herald. A few days after Deveny was sacked, a follower of Devine on Twitter, Justin Barbour, criticised her for allegedly making homophobic comments. Devine responded to the criticism by referring to the follower ‘rodgering gerbils’.  This, a day after she criticized Deveny for making comments that damaged the reputation of The Age. Devine kept her job, but apparently realised that no-one aside from herself thought she was funny, and deleted the comments. Thank god for screen capture.

That Deveny was fired from The Age shouldn’t have come as a surprise, particularly as it was apparently the last in a long line of warnings. As Deveny was publicly affiliated with a respected publication, The Age was of course brought into the furor and its reputation was tarnished by their connection. The sacking was, in my mind, not out of line with general censure for employees that behave in a manner that brings their company into disrepute.  This was the point that Devine made in her article, (before becoming a tweet-twit herself):

“She used the platform of the opinion page of one of the country’s oldest and most prestigious mastheads to create her brand. The Age devalued its sophisticated image and was drawn constantly into tawdry debates, such as when Deveny derided Anzacs as rapists.”

This attitude was probably not front of mind when she sent Mr Barbour and the gerbil on a date.

The Deveny-Devine debacle is a warning shot for employees that think that online comments made from private accounts will not impact their professional reputation, or indeed their employment. Many companies will have some policy around employees being chastised, or even their employment terminated, if they are found to publically promote values that are racist, homophobic or otherwise not in line with company values. Regardless, no company would want to hold onto an employee that has the potential to damage their reputation.

People need to remember that anything that is said on the internet is a publication and public. Just because it’s online, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t impact real life.

The lines between private and public have been irreparably blurred and, as such, making comments online needs to be done circumspectly. Social media mavens, old and new, keep your wits about you when you comment online. Don’t be an idiot and shoot off the cuff remarks into the blogosphere. Or, like Deveny, you – and your employer – may live to regret it.

The post stated that John Lewis has reported a 39.7% leap in sales since its launch, and the ad has got the mainstream media talking about it’s ‘powerful effect’ on the market.

I have to admit I’m a bit lost on this one. Its definitely beautiful and I enjoyed watching it, but where is the connection to the product? The visual insight – that John Lewis is with you through your life – seems at odds with the ‘never knowingly undersold’ tag.  Further, the ‘with you on your journey through life’ concept has been done to death, and the ad really could be for any product. SGIO has done the same for car insurance, but with what I think is a far more obvious connection with their product.

I don’t want to take anything away from the ad as it really is gorgeous looking (and I love the Billy Joel cover) but the tag jarred with me.  Interesting to see whether Myer will take up mUmbrella’s suggestion to co-opt it for the local market and whether it will have the same impact.

What do you think? Is this a generic insight done to death? Am I totally missing the connection with the product? How will Myer morph Jennifer Hawkins to fit into a cute polka-dotted dress?

In this era of climate change freak-out, its not surprising that sustainable advertising practices are being used more often in mainstream campaigns. However options for sustainable practices are not always available. While use of recyclable paper is an obvious sustainable practice, the reality of using this paper is that it’s incredibly expensive and that clients are not always able to incorporate such an expense into their budget. The challenge: to develop campaign ideas that fuse advertising with function. And some companies are rising to the bait.

Puma was looking to reduce their environmental footprint and hit upon modification of their shoe packaging. Shoeboxes contribute millions of tonnes of waste, so Puma set to work to redesign their shoe packaging to help reach environmental KPIs and to reduce material and shipping costs. After months of testing, Puma and Yves Behar launched the ‘Clever Little Bag’. This packaging reduces cardboard use by 65%, with no assembly costs or tissue packaging required, as well as drastically impacting Puma’s environmental footprint.

It’s ideas like these that spark creative and technological revolutions. My hope is that more companies are willing to work with advertisers and get creative when it comes to sustainable advertising practices, both for the benefit of the company and the world.

Last week, Crikey commented on the new Tourism Australia campaign and their aim to create an online mosaic of crowd sourced photos. The campaign is sourcing photos through a competition on their website, and entrants are required to a raft of stringent conditions. These include assigning all intellectual property rights in their entry to Tourism Australia, and consenting to any act that in any other situation would infringe their rights in the material. Entrants are required to agree that they don’t require recognition for their work, and that they may be held legally responsible for the material’s content.

Tourism Australia’s conditions are becoming increasingly rare as bloggers and other social network users don’t generally seek ownership of the copyright in material that they post about. Bloggers have a fairly lax attitude towards copyright and intellectual property, and tend towards only referencing the original author in a hyperlink. This isn’t a criticism. The majority of bloggers use material in this way, and generally the original author would be happy to know that their work is reaching a wider audience. But this doesn’t mean that intellectual property and copyright law should be forgotten.

Courtesy of www.hellboundbloggers.com. Thanks guys.

It seems this is the new ‘hot topic’ when it comes to social media legal debates. The use of content without actually assigning copyright is something that only appears to exist in the Blogosphere and it happens every single day. To merely refer to the location of a photo in the context of a blog may not be enough to avoid stepping on the heels of other bloggers. There are a huge number of blogs that routinely post pictures from other blogs (fashion bloggers, I’m talking to you) and that reference to the location of the item may not be enough to appease it’s original author. Even The Sartorialist is getting hot under his immaculately pressed collar at The Fake Sartorialist’s use of his photos, and asked him to stop parodying his subjects (in an utterly charming way of course).

At this stage no one quite knows where the line is drawn between publishing images that inspire, and publishing images that infringe on copyright. I can imagine that this is a topic that many bloggers are sensitive about given the freedom with which content is copied from one site and added to another. With my legal background, I’m hyper sensitive about potential copyright issues and always try to attribute content to its original owners. And I firmly believe copyright is an issue that bloggers should keep in mind, or else they might accidentally find themselves in a virtual firing line.

So freakin' cool

Most marketers would think this campaign is a good idea: beautifully designed, funny and well-executed. For me, it totally blew my mind.

This sums up what I believe to be the intention of good advertising. This site evoked excitement, wonder and sheer pleasure in how beautiful it was, right down to the plates being swept off the tabletop by the passionate lovers. And it made me want an Ikea kitchen, if only because I was so caught up the campaign and the excitement that was demonstrated for the brand. At Block we pride ourselves on being passionate about the people we work for and for having the skills to communicate that passion to everyone. This ad demonstrated the passion behind the idea that we believe in. I was caught up in it and utterly swept away – plus it reconfirmed what I think: that working in this industry is damn inspiring.

It is acknowledged that opening up and being emotionally vulnerable can sometimes feel as natural as begging a dentist to perform a root canal. It’s a basic human instinct to limit the potential to get hurt. But marketing your company like you’re OK to be open and honest whilst being afraid of what might happen doesn’t really breed success. The reality about authenticity is that you may get hurt – and this is where the fun begins.

Authentic communication doesn’t mean being stupid, over-confident, under-cautious or allow people to take advantage of a perceived vulnerability. There is no point in wearing your heart on your sleeve if you undermine your company’s respect. To be responsible is to be conscious of who your company is, acknowledge it’s culture and values, and be able to articulate it online. It’s basic marketing principles with a good dose of honesty, which breeds trust and credibility, and (hopefully) loyal customers that recognise and value what it takes to be bold, open and honest.

It is possible to be both open and responsible, but what it takes is practice and a willingness to fall flat on your face. So embrace the chaos. It’s messy being real, but it can be totally worth it.

Written by Annabel Hay @ Block