PR Week ran an article this week Google backtracks over concerns on Google Buzz privacy settings. I commented as part of the article on how Google at the moment has the permission to innovate, but with too many failures that permission may be rescinded.
I wanted to expand on a couple of concepts around the article as I realise that it maybe read by many people particularly in the PR industry who don’t understand how technology works and how the sector works.
Firstly, Google’s Buzz problems and ‘real-world’ product recalls that other industries from toys to cars face are very different. Since Google provides a service and the ‘product’ never leaves the Google data-centre it is really easy to make iterative improvements fast.
When I worked at Yahoo! we could roll out normal, (not high-priority) changes every fortnight; usually during the middle-of-the-week. It will be a similar situation at Google. When you have something as high-priority as the privacy issue, you can bet that heaven and earth will be moved, so that once-a-fortnight schedule can be shrunk a bit and it has been with the first fixes rolling out within a few days.
Contrast this with Kryptonite who took months to rectify their lock problem when it became worldwide news six years ago, or the months of fixing braking systems that Toyota is going to go through.
One of the things that Mark Pack was concerned with was that Buzz was obviously an early ‘beta’ release, but not labeled as such. Beta release is a software term that traditionally means that your mileage may vary on a product. Features may vary, appearances change and the service may be flaky.
But with the advent of web services beta has become more than a label or a stage in software development: into a state-of-mind. Google has helped train at least some of the public into the into the beta mindset. Most of the time that consumers bet on Google has been rewarded with a product that provides superior utility; for example Google Search, Blogger and GMail. This earned Google their licence to innovate.
So what would it take to have Google’s licence to innovate revoked? Will Buzz have it revoked? No. Not by a long shot. Google has made some products that disappointed (Q&A, Wave, Jaiku, Orkut - big in Brazil is a fact, not an excuse) of which Buzz may be one of them, but the licence being revoked will be a cumulative ’straw-on-the-camel’s back’ kind of thing.
As a good rule of thumb, check out the way the world slowly turned against Microsoft. It wasn’t Microsoft Bob and Windows’95 was a ‘greater-than-Vista’ technical cock-up that turned into a classic case study into how you can make lemonade out of lemons. It was a number of things: the anti-trust case, the devastation of the start-up industry as no one wanted to start a business in an area Microsoft may want, the BSOD (blue-screen-of-death) that told you it was time for a coffee break, the ‘I love you’ virus and countless other Windows perils that ran the goodwill meter down.
So I guess what I am trying to say is that Google is not slipping into darkness, despite Buzz not being the company’s brightest hour. This was originally posted over at my personal blog renaissance chambara.
The vast majority of these ads are from the USA and generally from Republicans. Like them or loathe them, they do campaigning very well, especially during the Karl Rove era.
First up however is one of Obama’s ads. He never created “great” ads, but a good deal of his involved just him, speaking directly into camera to the audience. This has the benefit of giving a personal message and engaging directly with the viewer. In this ad, he also personalises the story of his mother’s death and the extra pain of her death due to the insurance system in the US. He then brings that story back to the personal lives of everyday Americans which is vital for a successful visual engagement strategy.
If only he was still showing this ad in the last 6 months.
This Carly Fiorina ad is bizarre. Nick named the Demon Sheep ad, it has become the object of ridicule but also fascination. It is weird and out there and I guess that is its charm. I don’t think it will work, it’s too long, appeals to a fairly small part of the population (the Tea Party) and most importantly, it doesn’t actually target the candidate that is leading the race. This is an attack ad for a spot of the Republican California Senator ticket. Fiorina attacks Tom Campbell, who is a leading member of Governor Arnie’s Cabinet. They are both losing ground to Republican Chuck De Vore, a State Assemblyman who is know for his ultra conservative stance. No wonder she was rated as one of the US’s top 20 worst ever CEOs.
George Bush Senior’s attack ad on Michael Dukakis is one of the most infamous ever. Drew Westen describes it as “one of the low points in American electoral history.” Willie Horton was a felon of the worst order and whatever happened for him to be released was clearly a mistake. The ad however has become part of history. Using emotive, almost subliminal written messaging such as Rape, Kidnap, Stab, stuck in the heads of the public. Fear is everywhere in this ad, the frightening statements, the scary mugshot, the fact that you could be the person stabbed, kidnapped and raped under a Dukakis Government. It is enough to frighten anyone. In fact, this ad wasn’t even an “official” Bush Campaign ad. It was made by the Americans for Bush arm of the National Security Political Action Committee (NSPAC).
Hilary Clinton’s 3am ad made a big difference during the 2008 primaries and was one of the reasons why she stayed in the race so long. Questioning Obama’s ability and experience, she came up with a pretty powerful and effective ad. It preyed on the fears of parents and grandparents alike. It gave her a good boost in the polls, but let’s face it, the rest is history
Gough Whitlam was the Australian Labor Prime Minster from 72-75 after 23 years of Liberal-Country Government, mostly under Sir Robert Menzies. This ad may seem a tad naff now, but at the time, the ad and the slogan “It’s Time” was hugely influential. Delightfully simple, the slogan simply pointed at the last quarter of a century under a Conservative Government, similar to the Change slogan used by the Obama campaign. No one over in the UK would realise, but the singers are all Australian celebrities and politicians. Australian’s might notice a young Jack Thompson, Jackie Weaver, Graham KennedyandBert Newton singing away. Whitlam however only lasted 3 years before he was controversially sacked by the Governor General Sir William Kerr. Whitlam, on the stairs of Parliament House then made the statement “God Save the Queen, because nothing will save the Governor General.” Thus started the first big push for an Australian Republic.
Ronald Reagan put this ad out for his re-election campaign in 1984 and it is brilliantly simple. Patriotic, conservative and a vision back to the halcyon days of America. He doesn’t even appear or speak in it, but at the same time he seems both Presidential and grandfatherly.
Just like his father, Bush Junior wasn’t officially behind this ad, but it was paid for by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. There were plenty of memorable negative ads that hit Kerry hard, but this was particularly effective. Kerry made a big deal out of his Vietnam veteran status saying in a time of war, it was important to have a Commander and Chief who had proper militaryexperience. Kerry won two Purple Hearts and one Silver Star for his heroism, but there were controversial circumstances surrounding this award and this came to the fore in the 2004 Presidential campaign. Kerry also immediately came back to the US post the war and began protesting against it. His initial campaign strategy was to portray him as a war hero, but not long after, these swift boat vets came out and hit Kerry hard. Again, the rest is history
In response to the Robin Hood Tax ad, which is one of the best campaigning ads I have seen for a while, I thought I would post some historically very effective political and advocacy ads. I’m also currently reading The Political Brain, by Drew Westen that looks at the role of emotions in political campaigning. It has been an eye-opening read, so this also gave me some inspiration for this post.
This list is by no means definitive and if anyone wants to send links to some campaigning ads, that would be great, I’d love to watch them.
This post will focus on a few advocacy ads, starting with the Robin Hood Tax ad that has been the focus of the media of late. It is a very simple ad, two voices, one face but plenty of emotion. Bill Nighy plays a leading banker who ends up squirming in response to the questioning about why a Tobin Tax shouldn’t be created. Squirming bankers is something that reverberates with a good portion of the public at the moment. This campaign plays to the slightly divergent emotions of good will and revenge brilliantly.
This next ad scares the heck out of me, although I’m not sure how effective it is. Shock ads, as I have written before, have the tendency to decline in effectiveness over time simply because of people being desensitized. I’m not sure anyone would be able to put themselves in this guys shoes, unless they have been in the same situation.
This shock ad from PlaneStupid, the organisation that focuses on climate change issues caused by the global aviation industry, is different from the previous one however. Shocking - yes. Disturbing - definitely. Effective - most certainly. Polar bears dropping from the sky crushing cars and smashing into buildings may seem like an odd choice, but it is actually very clever. The stance is that every person on a trans-Atlantic flight creates 400kg of carbon. Most people can’t conceptualize what that means however. A polar bear, which is also an icon of climate change devastation, is imaginable. Therefore this appeals to our sense of wanting to save these animals, horror at their gruesome deaths but it also puts our carbon footprint into a physical and understandable context. It was filmed in Canada, but it could be any city, again personalising the imagery.
The final ad is one that has screened on UK screens recently and was the subject of a number of complaints, but is far more subtle that the polar bear ad. Act on CO2 is a non-departmental government body that is the public face of the Government’s climate change policy. This ad simply shows a father telling a bed-time story to his child, but it is a story of the effects of climate change and includes drowning pets and other disturbing results of unabated climate change. But this ad is clever in the fact that it appeals on a personal level to adults and children. This ad scares children, hence the complaints, but it also contextualizes climate change for them ensuring they understand the potential of doing nothing. It also will frighten adults on a parental level - how can I let my child live in a world like this, what can I do to prevent it?
As I said, this isn’t a complete list, but it just a tester. I’d love your thoughts and if you want to send me other campaigns, feel free. I’ll post the political ad blog in the next couple of days.
Its a new decade, new paradigms and ways of reaching consumers nothing will be the same again. Now that I have your attention, I’d like to bring things down to earth. One of the smartest things Bill Gates ever said had to do with technology and future adoption. It was something to the effect of: we over-estimate the speed of innovation and technology in the short-term and underestimate it in the long-term.
According to Forrester, digital marketing spend has increased almost five-fold over the past decade to account for 12 per cent of marketing spend. Most of this is email marketing, search and display advertising. However, thedeclineofclickthroughrates (or effectiveness in terms of acting on the call-to-action) of these marketing vehicles has been well-documented as far back as 2007.
In addition, Google search advertising has largely become optimally priced from an economic point-of-view, so smart online marketers are becoming more open to experimentation.
I expect this to continue and expand in 2010. A second reason why expect this to expand is that with the recession-led decline in spend on above-the-line (ATL) marketing through reducing spent on advertising inventory in print and broadcast media marketers are starting to think differently about their relationship with current and prospective customers. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if Google sees a corresponding decline in spend on keywords as well.
A classic example of this ATL change came out of an interview that Tyler Brule did with Gildo Zegna(pronounced Zen-yah), CEO of luxury brand titan TheErmenegildo Zegna Group for the Monocle magazine podcast series. Zegna is interesting because he sits at the head of a dynamic family-owned business not hamstrung by institutional investors trying to second guess him.
Tyler Brule: Share with us three or four business lessons that you learned over the past year?
Gildo Zegna: From a personal standpoint, I think that what I learned was stick to the DNA of the brand. Be real, be genuine, try to keep a very close contact with the customer, listen to him and if he or she says something that you don’t like just be sure to execute rapidly.
It could be something about the service, it could be something about the price, it could be something about the creativity, it could be something about being more aggressive on how you enter markets so I think that in one word: stick to the DNA of the brand.
Tyler Brule: What are your key focuses on 2010/11?
Gildo Zegna: I just had my management meeting last week in Milano, I said listen guys back to new normality and back to growth. Cost control, shorter lead time, work with low inventory and keep investing. I think that I can believe that if you cannot afford new investment today, because unless you are a brand that has the capacity whether it is your money or money you borrowed from the financial system: now you will not make it.
I think that speed and the way you make a well thought decision is important, but surely don’t stop investing either in your store, new markets, new people and of course marketing. I think one of the biggest cut I had to do this year is in media, but you know above-the-line, below-the-line I did not save anything, events - I have never done so many events in-store. Why? Go and meet the customer, talk to them, even if he doesn’t buy anything he will come back next season. Because next season he will be poor not to buy, or not to enjoy. These are some of the activities, you know, working with you guys (Monocle) on new ideas: co-branding or new products or new services. So I think just be energetic and be creative, but at the end you have to have the resources to do it. You just can’t do it by mouth and if you do it well and if you do it in the right way then I think that business comes back.
New areas of experimentation are likely to include the use of location-based services. For instance, restaurants are already offering discounts through Foursquare and Plantronics sponsored the development of the Work Snug iPhone application (which is awesome) targeted at road warriors and digital nomads. In common with all the applications utilising GPS it eats batteries like nothing else, so use, but use sparingly. There is a lot of life left yet in cell triangulation yet.
In common with me-too social media campaigns and applications, users will soon tire of overused mobile ideas in the same way that Vampires, poke variants and re-skinned Flash platform games bored them in the past.
I hope that the biggest change will come from businesses not thinking of social marketing in terms of Facebook or Twitter; but in a more holistic way which takes it into the analogue world just like Mr Zegna’s small store events because this is all about people, everything else is just facilitating stuff. And if business becomes a more human thing, it is harder to replicate and easier to turn into a lifelong customer relationship. This was published over at my personal blog.
Imagine if you set up your own company and you named after yourself because you signed all your work. Over time your signature became the most valuable design asset of the company. Over time you decide that you want to take some of your hard earned cash, take time out and do the stuff that you actually enjoy. You leave your business, having been bought out.
However, you then have the problem of seeing your name plastered over absolute tat.
Welcome to Shawn Stussy’s world. I am a big Stussy fan and it is a rare season where I don’t buy something from their collection, but some of the stuff is pretty ropey and I sympathise with Shawn Stussy’s predicament; which is why I look forward to seeing what his new venture S-Double Studios will come out of the trap with. This was posted from my personal blog.
Stories about TV advertising vs. online advertising always seem to catch my eye – as previous posts such as Its a generation thing and They call me mellow yellow will demonstrate – so it was with interest that I read the recent news story on NMA discussing Toys ‘R’ Us’s planned return to TV adverts.
Toys ‘R’ Us is running a social media campaign to promote the return of its TV ad character Geoffrey the Giraffe, launching both a presence for the character on Facebook and uploading older versions of the advert onto YouTube. However all this social media activity is merely part of a plan to build engagement online ahead of the TV launch this week. So is TV is the real star of the show?
Nowadays a brand running a social media campaign to advertise itself is nothing out of the ordinary but I did think it was interested that the company plan to relaunch the TV adverts. This decision comes as many other brands are pulling their TV advertising budgets and putting everything online.
I have not seen a Toys ‘R’ Us advert on TV for what seems like an absolute age though the fact that I am now having severe difficulties getting the ‘It’s a magical place..’ jingle out of my head surely shows how successful the adverts were for building recognition around the brand.
So what do we think is more effective? Is Toys ‘R’ Us just bucking the trend to dismiss TV advertising or is this part of a TV advertising revival?! The below stories suggest a bit of a trend developing…
The media is reporting a survey by health campaign group Consensus Action on Salt & Health (CASH) which shows that some pasta sauces on sale in the UK are saltier than sea water. A good hook for a survey but bad news for celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, whose spicy olive and garlic pasta sauce topped the poll with a whacking 3 grams of salt per 100g.
This looks to have been a brand extension too far. Jamie is a brand and brands need to deliver on their promise. Over the years, he has been the front man for campaigns on better school dinners, healthier eating, animal welfare, creating employment for disadvantaged young people, apple pie and more. Today’s news is at odds with his wholesome image. What is to be done? His team will be working to focus attention on their man’s good deeds. But while they control the brand, they don’t own Jamie’s reputation. His public image will be dented. Will his sales be hit? Certainly, expect a new recipe pasta sauce to be rushed out and to hear updates on his campaigning efforts. But when his next campaign is launched with television series, website and spin-off book, his public might just take it all with a pinch of salt.
Meanwhile, the celebrity cook market remains big business, particularly in the run up to Christmas. A quick search of the web shows that today Jamie can sell you:
So for many of the uninitiated, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 was released this week. This has been the most anticipated video game since GTA IV which came out in 2008. CoD MF2 is already a record breaker with over 1 million copies being sold in day one, analysts expect 10 million sales in the run up to Christmas.
That’s mental! Record companies would bite your hand off for those figures especially when the game costs around £50 a pop.
The reason this is relevant to the PR industry is the buzz around this game this week has been incredible, it has secured coverage across not only in the traditional gaming press and blogs but also mainstream broadcast and national press with MP’s debating the games’ release in Parliament. Shouldn’t they be sorting the country out rather than discussing a piece of entertainment that has already been classified and approved by the British Board of Film Classification?
I have no doubt that the game is a great piece of workmanship and entertainment and I am looking forward to playing it. What I was impressed with was the PR launch of the game. Many shops were breaking sales embargoes and there were large queues of fans waiting to get their hands on it. The most impressive aspect of the launch was the permission to use Leicester Sq in London as the site to unveil the game. This is predominately reserved for Hollywood movies, so the fact that there was a massive scale PR event with full military occupation including camo vehicles and personnel added to the drama and event. The launch also had the red carpet feel with a number of celebrities attending, proving that gaming is part of our modern culture just as music, art and movies are.
The revenues of the gaming industry worldwide are overtaking the movie industry very quickly due to huge sales and high prices for games. The scope for executing well planned and large PR campaigns for games has arrived and will be a major aspect of the PR business sector in the years to come. Expect a lot of big agencies to be pitching for software houses such as Activision, EA, Epic, Rockstar, Eidos and Ubisoft as well as crazier and bigger PR launches.
eBay Advertising yesterday launched some research about European online shopping habits and people’s receptiveness to online advertising and this truly got me thinking. Not about the research per se - people are more receptive to ads on a social network (seven per cent) than they are on a portal (five percent) – but more about how the success of online advertising is inversely proportional to its quality.
Online advertising undoubtedly works – the metrics don’t lie and money continues to flow into the sector. But I don’t think I have ever intentionally clicked on an online ad and my own research (a quick shout out around the office) revealed that is the case for others too. Online ads are still seen as intrusive and an irritant and people find them too interruptive and poorly targeted. I’m all for behavioural targeting if it can actually work but I keep getting served ads on a social network for a Chris Rea compilation, something hell would freeze over before I would even think about buying.
A good advert can generate buzz and discussion yet I don’t think a single online ad has come anywhere near the impact of say the Guinness ads. Is it a lack of creativity? I can only recall one online ad – a mocked-up IM exchange promoting the film Knocked Up – that I have mentioned in conversation (and now this blog) as an example of a strong advertisement that may have helped influence my behaviour.
So who are these millions of people that click through? Where is the creativity in the online space? Perhaps I am missing the better work but I don’t think so. All the while online advertising keeps working then I don’t see the quality being raised – a shame given the massive potential for creativity that online affords.
The Lib Dem Conference this year seems to have been more exciting than usual. I am afraid to say that too often I have dismissed it as a warm up for the main two conferences. But this year it has delivered a punch.
Whether you love Nick Clegg or you see him as a David Cameron downgrade, this year he has brought greater presence and press coverage to the conference than before. The newspapers have followed what, in particular, Clegg and Cable have had to say.
The two dominating policy announcements for me have been the ‘Mansion Tax’ - Vince Cable’s announcement that people with houses over £1 million would be charged a tax at 0.5% on the value of a house above this amount and Nick Clegg’s announcement of ’savage’ cuts.
With the ‘Mansion Tax’ Vince Cable received great coverage and it has been debated widely in the press and on news channels. In fact people have been scrutinising it as if it could be introduced by a Government. This shows that the Lib Dems have been taken more seriously at this conference.
Similarly Nick Clegg’s announcement of ’savage’ cuts was a strong call that gained a great deal of coverage, but again the messaging and PR behind the announcement was extremely poor. Nick Clegg has not thought through the messaging because ’savage’ cuts, as opposed to just ‘cuts’, suggests that frontline services will suffer. Again it is a case of Lib Dems making a great deal of noise and being scrutinised seriously and being found wanting on their messaging.
Overall the Lib Dems seemed to make progress this conference, being taken seriously. But their messaging has been found wanting. They need to now work out their proposals tightly and sell them with the right language that says they are a party that can govern not just a third option.
