Mister Three Sixty

What The Wheel of Concept tells us about the state of digital marketing

misterthreesixty — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 08:39:59 +0000

I’m sure you’ve all seen the wonderful Wheel of Concept app from Tribal DDB (former employers). You name the brand, its spins the wheel and delivers you a fashionable digital concept (think Crowdsourcing, iPad app, Augmented Reality etc).

The ideas is so funny because its so cynical. And so true. Another former Tribal strategist wrote a great piece last week in London’s Campaign magazine on the fetishing of technological novelty in the creative industry. There is a distinct tendency towards neophilia in our world. I guess if you’re trying to present yourself at the frontier of marketing innovation you’ve got to throw some cool new shit around.

Is it this constant fascination with the new that makes us forget our true calling: to create strong emotional connections between people and brands. All the evidence suggests that it is emotional engagement that delivers the behavioural change we’re seeking. I recently called on Twitter for examples of awesome digital campaigns that genuinely moved people emotionally (almost all responses were video-based BTW). The best by far was the iHobo app from the De Paul charity.

You download a homeless person to your phone and have to care for them for three days. While they take drugs, get soaked, sick and threatened. It dragged me into their cause and I actually ‘felt’ for this virtual hobo (and yes, I’ve been buying The Big Issue homeless person’s magazine since).

I’m as excited as the next geek by the potential of digital technology to change our lives and societies for the better. But let’s not forget that the marketer’s job is to make stuff that works, even though it might not emplpy cutting-edge technology every single time.

Senior Social Straegist? You can contact me here:

misterthreesixty — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 10:11:05 +0000

DDB UK – the merged DDB London and Tribal DDB agency is hiring a
senior strategist with a proven interest in Social media marketing and
a credible social presence of their own. The agency globally has
aligned around the idea of Social Creativity and has embarked on a
significant change programme, including the recruitment of increasing
numbers of social specialists around the globe. In London we’re
socialising the entire agency and now we need Strategic minds to help
bring a social point of view to the table.

The successful candidate would most likely have been working in a
strategic or planning role at a well-known creative or similar
marketing agency. With around 5 years experience on respected brands,
you’re as comfortable developing brand strategies and creative briefs
as you are with using data to tell a convincing story. More than
anything though, you’re excited by the opportunities presented by
social media and the changes it is bringing to marketing and
brand-building. You may have been trying to recommend social
strategies and tactics to your existing clients and now you want to
ramp it up a notch or two.

Please send me a cover note briefly referencing;
1. Your social media markeitng credentials
2. Your personal social media presence (blogs, twitter
followers/account in particular)
3. And attaching your CV

Please send your email to: Leo.Rayman@tribalddb.co.uk

Thanks

Leo

Post-Social Media

misterthreesixty — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 17:11:29 +0000

Right now social media is hot. Burning hot like the sun, with agencies
and clients swirling around giving-off all sorts of hot-gasses.

But the demise of social-as-specialism is already underway. Whilst
marketers argued over who had the right to sit at the top table as
chief social media counsel, they failed to see that everyone has a
right to (and a responsibility towards) social media. Social is
relevant to all the marketing disciplines because its bigger than
marketing communications. Social media is already giving way to social
business as Jeff Dachis and others have argued for a while.

Social monitoring, into which companies are leaping head-long, leads
to one inevitable conclusion; people talk about brands without
respecting the borders of the brand’s marketing department. Customer
service complaints on your promotional facebook page? Deal with it.
Companies need advisors who can see beyond social as marketing
amplification. They need people who can socialise their businesses.
Who would you entrust that task to?

If you’re a social media type sitting in a marketing agency, your true
purpose is to socialise your company’s culture and operating model.
Teach them about dialogue, participation, sharability, being nice,
being always-on, being fast. Show them the power of lo-fi content and
shareworthy applications. Help them rebuild their processes to move at
the speed of culture, not the speed of antiquated production.

In the post-social world, social, like digital, will be intrinsic to
every department, to every supplier, to every employee, to every
marketing agency. And just as the first generation digital agencies
are integrating vertically to offer clients non-digital strategic
advice and offline creative services, so it will be for the social
media specialists. Integrate, get bought or die.

Sure social tactics are useful (if increasingly just another form of
marketing wallpaper) but clients need intellgent, data-driven
strategic advice and we all know that the best and most social objects
will always be original ideas. So who’s got those skills at their
disposal today?

The success of social will be its total integration into every
department and into every agency. The mark of of a social specialist’s
sucess will be her own redundancy. Social will eat itself.

Integration: Meat & 2 Veg or a sumptuous dining experience

misterthreesixty — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 17:02:43 +0000

I want to tell you a story. A story about a recent buying experience and how it shone a light on the way the marketing industry treats integration.

*First, the story*

We’re going on holiday soon and since we don’t know the area we were thinking of buying a SatNav. Great for tinkering down country lanes.

On Saturday morning we were in a car accessories retailer. So I picked-up a SatNav box, had a rough look and a quick glance at the prices. This normalised the idea of actually buying one. But it also kicked-off a my desire to do due diligence and have a look online.

Sunday night and I borrowed my wife’s login to the Which? Online reviews site. This was both reassuring and frustrating in equal measure. I read the buying guide, compared the products, specs and prices and got sucked into the miserable paradox of choice.

I needed to reduce my options. Garmin had a good review (so did various Tomtoms etc) but within 5 minutes I ended-up on the Garmin site. Why Garmin? I don’t really have a strong view of their brand, I certainly don’t actively remember any of their advertising, but I was at least aware of the name. And of course I’ve seen their kit in cabs.

The Garmin site experience wasn’t brilliant (dodgy search function which underwhelmed me) but at least I begin to feel I was closing-in on a decision. At this point I began to worry about whether my chosen shortlist of models was missing the Traffic Update feature…

So back again to the Which? site. This time I saw the light. Or rather a video, on buying a SatNav which was far more instructive than anything I read.

After that I wanted to watch TV. So the decision was made, couple of final checks. And off to Amazon (Which? said they offered the second best price). Second best? That’s right. The best price was about £3 cheaper but I just had no idea who they were, or whether if I paid for it online it would ever arrive.

The deal was sealed by a review from a user. Simple, well-written, one of us, a peer, a punter, a consumer of consumables. Thanks Mr P James, you sorted me out.

*So what does this story tell us about ‘Integration’?*

First the industry goes on about how paths to purchase are complex these days. Then we bang out a big TV ad, backed-up with press and banners in the hope to drive someone instore or online. In my case it almost went the other way round. If the store experience had been compelling enough or a staff member had leapt on me I might have bought it then and there. The complex thing about integartion is making it so simple you just find it easy to buy!

Second, branding did play a role in my decision. In fact three brands played a key role in my decision (Which?, Garmin and Amazon). But it was less of a role than we sometimes allow ourselves to believe. I’d love to say that a deep-seated set of emotional associations, built panstakinlgy over years, kicked-in for Garmin. But if they did, I wasn’t feeling it. I actually wanted a TomTom at the outset. Why? Because my taxi driver on Saturday night recommended it. So once again both he and Mr. P. James ended-up being the strongest direct influences on my purchase. Bring on the Social Meejah.

Third, moving images really *are* a powerful way to communicate. The combination of faces, words, sounds, music they really get inside your head. The art of film craft will only become more important. But you know that already.

Fourth, successful integration of your marketing channels and brand touchpoints is more like cooking a meal than doing a jigsaw puzzle. You need a blend of several ingredients that will really complement each other. None of the flavours should overwhelm the dish. And of course you really need to prepare the dish carefully, selecting just the right ingredients because each meal is different. Too often I think our industry is working on a ‘meat and two veg’ basis when they should be preparing a sumptuous dining experience.

Pass the salt?

(… And thanks for reading this far)

______________________________________________________________________

DDB UK Limited Registered Office 12 Bishops Bridge Road W2 6AA Registered in England No 933578 DDB Worldwide Communications Group Inc.
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The Power of Social Capital.

misterthreesixty — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 14:18:59 +0000

What is Social Capital?

Social Capital is the value exchanged in online social spaces. The success of a social network is directly correlated to the amount of social capital it helps its members build.

It’s really quite simple: People earn social capital and they spend it. Brands also have social capital, sometimes they increase it, sometimes they decrease it. And sometimes both people and brands go into the red (the irritating over-tweeter you just unfriended, the Toyota product recalls you heard about).

What is Social Capital made of?

Social Capital doesn’t directly equate with money, though I believe it will become more clearly monetised in future. For now, I’d argue Social Capital is made up of a combination of:

(1) People’s time and attention. I have a limited amount of disposable time, I’ll spend it on things that interest or entertain me. As Yahoo’s Attention Economy concept showed, this has a commercial value.

(2) People’s connections. Take celebrities, they have Social Capital in part as a result of their large fan base. If you have a lot of connections, you have more Social Capital to spend.

(3) The Social Objects people create. This might seem a bit strange at first glance, but since social gatherings and conversations tend to coalesce around Social Objects (the things people talk about, use and share in social spaces), the creation of them has a value.

(4) People’s goodwill and personal recommendation. What PR’s often call Trust. The NPS crowd are big on this too and have demonstrated that a positive disposition towards someone or something is predictive of revenue growth. This is perhaps most important, since you want the time, attention, connections and social objects to be positively, rather than negatively, viewed.

There may be more elements of Social Capital but I feel these are the main ones, anything glaringly missing?

In short:

Social Capital = (Time + Attention + Connections + Social Object Creation) x Goodwill

So What?

Assessing someone’s Social Capital is one way to estimate their value in the social web. Twittratr and Twinfluence are good examples of tools designed to allow people to do just this, in a limited way.

Social Capital might also be a good way for brands to work out just how much sway they hold on the social web. It would provide a benchmark for their performance over time and a way to compare themselves to competitors. I’d like to work out a correlation between Social Capital and Revenue Growth, I bet you’d find a strongly predictive link. Has anyone done this already?

But its not just about measurement…

Businesses are already earning and spending Social Capital. When Apple releases a new product, they immediately increase their stock of Social Capital as people devote time, attention, their opinions and their connections to it. When Habitat began spamming Iranian election Hashtags on Twitter, they reduced their Social Capital as the Twitterati began to criticise them.

But it goes further than that, if businesses can understand just how they can help people build their Social Capital, I think they’ll end-up building Social Capital of their own. When OfficeMax created Elf Yourself, an amusing and viral personalised animation, they generated enormous Social Capital for themselves because they helped others be funny, amusing, smart and earn Social Capital from their own social networks.

What do you make of this? Is it interesting? Would you build on it? Would you pull it all down as a house of cards? Please let me know and I’ll revise and repost with comments included.

Transmedia Narratives: Fact of Fiction

misterthreesixty — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 11:04:20 +0000

Transmedia Narratives. A real hobby horse of mine. Much easier and more relevant to the entertainment industry than to brands. And yet… brands could learn a lot from the way Hollywood increases the engagement with its stories across multiple platforms. Full presentation can be found here http://www.slideshare.net/leorayman/transmedia-narratives-ddb

Transmedia Narratives DDB

View more presentations from Leo Rayman.

DDB UK – The Sunday Times, Top 100 Best Company 2004, 2007 and 2009

DDB London – The Gunn Report Most Awarded agency in the World 1999-2008 and 2009

Tribal DDB – Advertising Age 2008 Network of the Year

DDB London – IPA Effectiveness Agency of the Year 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006

DDB London – IPA CPD Gold Accreditation 2008
______________________________________________________________________

DDB London, a division of DDB UK Limited, Company No. 00933578, with its registered office situated at 12 Bishops Bridge Road, London W2 6AA.
______________________________________________________________________
This e-mail is intended only for the named person or entity to which it is addressed and contains valuable business information that is privileged, confidential and/or otherwise protected from disclosure. Dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail or the information herein by anyone other than the intended recipient, or an employee, or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, is strictly prohibited. All contents are the copyright property of the sender. If you are not the intended recipient, you are nevertheless bound to respect the sender’s worldwide legal rights. We require that unintended recipients delete the e-mail and destroy all electronic copies in their system, retaining no copies in any media.
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How to kick the Messaging habit

misterthreesixty — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 18:31:07 +0000

Death of the Message?
Brands are talking more and more and more and more. But we’re all listening less. As someone very clever said, there is ‘no market for messages’. Problem is, the marketing communications business has grown-up within a messaging culture (you know the drill; we tell you stuff, you passively consume it, it raises your desire, then you buy our stuff, theoretically). Marketing Myth
Sometimes, we refer to this among chattering Plannery types as the ‘Proposition Fallacy’ the great myth that marketing is all about messages. Actually marketing is more about feelings than facts, more about using a brand as a mental shortcut at the point of purchase than weighing up the pros and cons, more about fitting in socially than about being rationally convinced of the product’s USPs.

The truth is; there is a very limited market for messages. There is a massive market for interesting, entertaining, relevant, useful and emotionally-compelling content. Earned Media is the stuff that people distribute and share, not the stuff you pay big media conglomerates to push out for you. Marketing investment is moving slowly but very surely in one direction, from Paid to Earned media. Sure we’ll still use broadcast advertising when it is the right thing to do. But we won’t use it just because its all we know how to do, or all clients are expecting from their agencies. Earned media requires a shift in the way you think about your job. Where you’re used to tried and tested approaches, now you need to experiment a bit more (because Earned media in the digital sphere is still pretty new and changes everyday). The Start-Stop campaigning approach we grew up with is dying. Instead we need long-term, highly-responsive Programmes. Think more like a PR, a rolling newsroom or a TV series producer keep evolving, continuously but stick to an engaging theme. I’m losing control!
Most of all, learn to give up control. We’re used to saying what we want in traditional media, because, frankly, we’re paying for the privilege. In earned media, you’ve got to look at it the other way; what can we say, do or offer that people will really value and distribute on our behalf? We cede Control but we gain Influence instead.

Enough already of the ‘Theory’ give me some examples

For an instant set aside what the companies in your category are doing and look instead at:
The X-Factor – enjoys millions of viewers, millions of YouTube views, mass-participation, free media coverage, free artist/song pre-testing, merchandising and countless other spin-offs. There’s no sign of this franchise tiring just yet Focus on entertainment first and foremost, then on the exploitation of your IP across every platform you can get your hands on.

DDB Stockholm’s ‘The Fun Theory’ http://www.thefuntheory.com/ for Volkswagen At one point in 2009 the most widely distributed viral content on the social web. With little or no media budget. An enjoyable interaction with street furniture to get people walking, recycling and generally doing good stuff for the environment, without the hair-shirt component (..a bit like driving one of Volkswagen’s ecofriendly BlueMotion cars geddit?!) Music Companies Poor them, they’ve had a rough Noughties. The kids think free music is a right not a privilege all power to them. (Have you tried Spotify? its great). The solution? Give away the stuff that’s basically free to replicate and distribute (digital music) and make your money instead on the things you can’t download; backstage passes, after-parties, meeting the stars, buying the t-shirts, playing the game, being invited to pre-screenings of their next exclusive video. If you can give interesting stuff away for little or nothing, you can charge loads for the special stuff that’s harder to come by.

What about a DDB London/TribalDDB example?

Volkswagen: The GTI Project http://www.gtiproject.com/

The challenge: Sell all Volkswagen’s Golf GTIs without using a TV ad. Previously Volkswagen has relied on TV commercials to sell their stock of GTIs. And some lovely ads we made too (“Singing In The Rain” anyone?)

The insight: GTI drivers are online, they love cars, they love gaming and they loved Scalextrix as kids.

The idea: a virtual Golf Scalextric where people race each other online (often in leagues) to complete the race in the best time possible. Choose you car, get set, ready, go. On completing the race, click through to the website to find out more.

The result: Volkswagen sold all their GTIs without a TV ad. Whilst encouraging half a million people to spend several minutes engaging with the product, the brand and having a laugh at the same time. Show me the last ad you made that achieved that kind of engagement
DDB UK – The Sunday Times, Top 100 Best Company 2004, 2007 and 2009

DDB London – The Gunn Report Most Awarded agency in the World 1999-2008 and 2009

Tribal DDB – Advertising Age 2008 Network of the Year DDB London – IPA Effectiveness Agency of the Year 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006

DDB London – IPA CPD Gold Accreditation 2008
______________________________________________________________________

DDB London, a division of DDB UK Limited, Company No. 00933578, with its registered office situated at 12 Bishops Bridge Road, London W2 6AA.
______________________________________________________________________
This e-mail is intended only for the named person or entity to which it is addressed and contains valuable business information that is privileged, confidential and/or otherwise protected from disclosure. Dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail or the information herein by anyone other than the intended recipient, or an employee, or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, is strictly prohibited. All contents are the copyright property of the sender. If you are not the intended recipient, you are nevertheless bound to respect the sender’s worldwide legal rights. We require that unintended recipients delete the e-mail and destroy all electronic copies in their system, retaining no copies in any media. ______________________________________________________________________
This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System.
For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email

Six Social Media Trends for 2010 – Harvard Business Review

misterthreesixty — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 09:01:13 +0000

David Armano, of Edelman, writes for the HBR:

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2009/11/six_social_media_trends.html

DDB UK – The Sunday Times, Top 100 Best Company 2004, 2007 and 2009

DDB London – The Gunn Report Most Awarded agency in the World 1999-2008 and 2009

Tribal DDB – Advertising Age 2008 Network of the Year

DDB London – IPA Effectiveness Agency of the Year 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006

DDB London – IPA CPD Gold Accreditation 2008
______________________________________________________________________

10 Awesome Uses of Augmented Reality Marketing

misterthreesixty — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 14:36:42 +0000

http://mashable.com/2009/12/26/augmented-reality-marketing/

Visuals are an important part of advertising, so it’s not surprising that so many companies have jumped on the augmented reality bandwagon, offering tools that visualize their products in a magical and memorable way.

Sacrifice Complexity

misterthreesixty — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:37:44 +0000

Let me get to the point: Too many people confuse complexity with cleverness.

I know the world is a complex place, with more information, more opinions, more fascinating facets and back alleys to explore every day. I also know that people can be complicated. We like complexity in our friends because it makes them richly interesting and in our brands because it makes them more lovable.

But this does not mean that complicated, involved, wordy thinking equates with smartness. I see far too much strategic thinking wearing complexity as if it were a virtue. You always know this stuff when you see it; for a start it is long, layer upon layer of considerations and sub-divisions, varieties of variables and modifications. The only limitations on the thinking being how much PowerPoint a Human can absorb. I think it stems from an assumption that nothing short of total and complete comprehension will allow for the development of powerful strategy.

There is chaotic complexity all around us and our understanding of it can never be more than partial. The job of the strategist is to try and make sense of it. Sure it means digging deep into the root causes of things, it means looking at problems from multiple angles as you seek to find the answer. But please don’t feel the need to share your complex, interlocking analysis with the rest of us. In fact “don’t show me the workings, tell me the answer”. That’s what strategic thinking is all about. Our role as strategists is to be a brilliant persuasive guide, not a Human encyclopaedia.

A wise old Ad planner used to say he could spot the smart ones from the also-rans with a simple test. He gave them an inch-thick bundle of papers to read and report on. If they came back a week later with two inches of papers, they were on their way out. He wanted one side of A4. Napoleon (not a Planner but certainly old) said “All Strategy is sacrifice”. You either charge down the hill, or you stay and wait for them to come to you. Either way you must choose one course of action and reject the others.

It is true that there is danger in oversimplification (it means we miss out important factors, like, er… actually there are no WMDs). I know that too much Advertising and Branding strategy is unhealthily and unrealistically reductive. But if you want to be strategic, the solution is straightforward Keep. It. Simple. Stupid.