buena vista

The future of marketing and advertising etc.

Good thoughtful post from planner Paul Isakson via Armano. Of course experience and relationship is the space where folks like IDEO and Engine are implicitly playing, even if they're talking explicitly about product and service innovation.  As Engine say - Better Services, happier customers.

Of course, notes Armano, the hard bit will be actually delivering, as many of the cornerstones - collaboration and a user-centred approach fly in the face of the skills and business model of traditional marketing and advertising.

Speaks nicely to this blog's 'moving from décor to core'. Anyway... check Paul's presentation...

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Real and Right people.

first direct - possibly the most innovative amongst UK banks, known as the first telephone only bank, open 24/7/365, plain talking and user-centred in it's approach, is an exemplar of good customer service. It's been around since 1989 and is the only bank within the HSBC roster to retain it's own identity, Oh and 1 in 3 people who join the bank do so through personal recommendation.

I like this ad for which talks about the right people.

"Technology is responsible for some pretty amazing things. The internet. Mobile Phones. Karaoke machines. And we love that. But there some things technology just can't do. Like talk to people, for instance.

That's why we have real people answering your calls. We don't want to waste your time by making you punch digit after digit into your handset. We don't read from a script either. We know that every one of our customers is an individual and they deserve to be treated that way.

That's also why we hire people who are naturally approachable, engaging and friendly and train them to be bankers, rather than hire bankers and train them to be approachable, engaging and friendly, which can be a much more difficult prospect.

Give us a call. We're looking forward to talking to you."

The portion that resonates with me most is the 'we hire people who are naturally approachable, engaging and friendly and train them to be bankers, rather than hire bankers and train them to be approachable, engaging and friendly' bit.

In designing a service, we typically around People, Places and Things (pretty much everything then). All these three are vital, if one element not right the whole house of cards falls down.

For a bank, even a 'virtual one' (first direct has no physical branches) people are traditionally at the very sharp end of delivering the service; but to explicitly hire folks who are not bankers is actually very clever.

In a world where we're increasing seeking to design-in service differentiation, people are a prime way of delivering just that - typically through an emotional even empathic understanding of the customer; as the ad puts it 'approachable, engaging and friendly'.

In a physical retail space, the sales assistant can see you and assess physical signs; where you're looking, what you look like, body language etc. but for services delivered with no face to face interaction, that's not possible. This is where super empathic and emotional detective skills are more important in a co-worker over and above content skills, especially if the latter can be taught - as clearly they can be at first direct.

So where else are these emotional skills more important than content skills? What other content skills are easily taught?

Or is this merely an update on the traditional sales skill - where this sales skill is the indispensable ingredient in staff given you can more easily give them the product training.

What do you think?

Link for the first bit of August

Rashmi Sinha helps us with planning and packing for a roadtrip
Boxes? bags? How to label for best access  and using Information Architecture best practice. Interesting as I'm often wondering how 'online' skills might be deployed 'offline'. Like this... It's an old link on Human Factors on Rashmi Sinha's blog - check July 12 2002!

It is only a matter of time until nearly all advertisements around the world are digital.
Or so says David W. Kenny, the chairman and chief executive of Digitas, the advertising agency in Boston that was acquired by the Publicis Groupe.

The plan is to build a global digital ad network that uses offshore labor to create thousands of versions of ads. Then, using data about consumers and computer algorithms, the network will decide which advertising message to show at which moment to every person who turns on a computer, cellphone or - eventually - a television...

The Penguin that sold it's soul to a Mouse.
What with the release of the kids movie Surf's Up - following up on last year's awesome Happy Feet... Penguin seems to be the animal 'du jour'. So I'm happy to see that kiddy soc net site Club Penguin has sold it's soul to Disney. Now if had sold to Pixar, that might be interesting but heck we haven't even visited Disneyland so far and there's clearly life in the old mouse yet...

Awesome - how do they do that - shame it's only for PC - moment
mixalbum.com - an interesting new 'service' to benefit from that bloke off Dragon's Den (Ideas as social commentary / currency) Try before you buy (yippee!) but it only works with .wmv files and PC, or something like that. Shame. As a mac user, I'm clearly in the minority. Mind you when Apple releases a rev of iTunes that mixes and blends tracks perfectly... Can't wait for some tasty Rotterdam industrial nonsense beat mixing perfectly into vintage Simonelli.

Behind you! (part 2) - The ad agency of the future

Another good post on David Armano's blog; Logic and Emotion (note - he's just moved to Critical Mass and no I'm not on his payroll!) on the future of advertising, which is a hot topic for me at the moment.

Guys from Nitro,  Avenue A/Razorfish, R/GA and Digitas have some interesting things to say in this video about the agency of the future.

Highlight was probably the Nike + case study from R/GA and I'v e picked out some of what Nick Law, their CCO said which really chimes with the way I'm thinking and, I believe, a good example of the agency of the future in action:

"Nike + started with a simple observation - people love listening to music when they run".* So right from the word go, this is about answering consumer's needs then only partially met - which goes far further than traditional marcoms of agency 1.0. The work is also embedded in a simple truth - there's a buiness opportunity which helps to de-risk the whole project.

"...a completely new category where product, online experience and marketing are inseparable". I love this and believe this is where the future really lies: combining product with a usable, uesful and delightful experience and wrapping it all up in easily absorbed marketing. There's also the added bonus of word of mouth through the community and advocacy through the service / product artifacts.

Now another 'new' category  here (although I'm sure have been many examples over the years), a partnership, a collaboration not just between two mega brands (nike and apple) but also a partnership with the agency to provide true product, service and business innovation.

"Nike + is revolutionising marketing. Consumers expect more from a brand than static outbound messaging and nike + redefines how how a brand can reach it's audiences through meaningful personal experiences , two way communication and innovative technology." 

Key here is 'reaching audiences through meaningful personal experiences'. I've talked about this shift before - no longer is it about top-down one-way messaging, now it's about creating something genuinely useful that users will fall in love with and will make sense to the business. It's about core, not décor.

and this...

"...it's not an advertising idea, it's a technology idea... we're deliver a product. Once at this destination where the product lives then we can embroider the experience with more classic marketing and provide community - now have a different relationship with Nike than if they just saw a 30 second spot, an emotional experience and  change the way they behave with the brand and their products."

Not an advertising idea, a technology idea... but does that mean ad folks are equipped to come up with these kind of ideas? Of course! - but they need to start to 'think different' (as Lee Clow might put it). We might need a few new skills, people from a few diverse (non-ad) backgrounds. But this is a real way forward - this is about creating Value and that's what both consumers and businesses want. And the big problem with ad agencies right now is that they need to find new ways of creating value.

"...a fun and active communication platform for the community."

You know, when I was a keen member of my local athletics club Croydon Harriers 20+ years ago, training for road and track races, the 1st London Marathon: I used pieces of string to measure training routes on the map, sung Clash tunes in my head - (OK, I occasionally put a cassette walkman in a backpack but mostly I was concentrating on the run too much).

I'd time myself best I could - but it was fairly unscientific and often quite a solitary experience (but actually I loved that) - funny how over the years running has become more of a communual, non-geeky, legitimate activity. That's progress.

Yup - back in 1980, I would have loved Nike +

(*please excuse any mis-quotes)

Bringing Strategy to Life

Of course we're all talking about the user moving from passive to active to control, about the whole web 2.0 'thing' and how the very bedrock that ad land is built upon now looks more like sand than granite.

One of the things I've learnt is how critical it is to make your strategy actionable, it's absolutley about Bringing Strategy to Life. If you don't, then it's pretty much all hot air.

As David Armano quite rightly says in his wonderful piece in Business Week - 'It's the Conversation Economy, Stupid'...

"We designers should stop talking and start designing conversations".

And for the agencies I'm engaging with, that's where they're at - we're trying to figure out what the Conversation Economy actually looks like. From over here, it looks like there could be a transformational component with new people, new skills (relationship designers?), prototyping new ways of working and devising new revenue streams.

In order to do all that, and move from strategy to action, just one of the many things that might be very useful are Design Principles. Interesting to see that none other than Microsoft has made an attempt at defining a few at top level in their Digital Advertising Solutions Social Networking Research (!) report.

It's a very exciting challenge, the stakes are high and so too are the rewards.

So let's start designing.

Behind you! (What does an agency have to look like to succeed in the next digital boom?)

The opening session of the ‘Brands Reignited’ strand at this year’s Internet World here in London promised interest:

‘What does an agency have to look like to succeed in the next digital boom?’

Somewhat predictably most of the conversation revolved around who is the lead agency (digital agencies are scared of the ATL ‘talent) how to work collaboratively (pass) and whether or not to outsource (yes and no).

I had hoped that the conversation would really beging to wrestle with the issue of disengagement by the ‘new-consumers’, and what that means for the shape of agency 2.0, not the ususal petty industry squabbling.

Of course, they said, they’ll all for user participation and giving consumers more control – but how exaactly are we going to achieve this? What are the new skills, the processes, the spaces?

To my mind, questions around lead agency and outsourcing are power questions, and ones that won’t be easily answered. We need to think in more people-centred ways, starting from the heart of the ‘problem’ of consumer trust and disengagement and then work outwards towards the relationships between agencies and revenue generation. The 'what' followed by the 'how'.

Maybe the digital agencies, who to be fair have every right to lead this conversation with the users, should worry less about challenging the traditional ATL agencies, take the bull by the horns and just do it.

From décor to core

So… we’re all predicting melt-down of advertsing / marketing / brand / as the user glides effortlessly from passive thru active to ‘control’ but what are we going to do about it?

Well it’s not going to be a gerzillion myspaces/youtubes/flickers/blogs…

And the response isn't going to be 'user generated’ ads / films.

At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious we need to look for something that offers value to both the consumer and the brand. I believe we’re talking about Propositions.

Something of truth and proven usefulness, the very thing that delivers relevance and value to the consumer, that  that is desireable and delightful. No, it’s absolutely not about the ad.

It’s the actual service or product.

How do we know what that looks like?

Ask and understand your consumers. Engage with them. Collaborate with them in conversations, brainstorms, ‘un’focus groups, wild all night parties, whatever it takes. Avoid reliance on statistics, sure - use quanatitive research but more usefully and for inspiration mix in empathic research techniques alongside intuition.

Then use your very best skills of interaction, experience and service design to create these propositions. Of course if you’re an ad agency, those skills might not be ten a penny so therein lies a challenge.

But when it comes to awareness, that’s where the traditional advertising 1.0 skills pay off – so there’ll still be slots and posters and films and stuff but they won’t be really informing us consumers any deeper than simply that the product or service actually exists. Just kicking off the consumer-brand relationship.

Word of mouth will become even more powerful as us consumers really begin to enjoy those experiences ‘we’ helped create. Agencies will simply help that advocacy along a little.

So… post chaos we’ll be creating propositions that add value for the consumer and the business. Ad agencies will see decreasing revenue from traditional business models and the new creatives, experience / relationship / service / product designers hand in hand with empaths will become very busy. People like IDEO, live|work, Engine are explictly doing this, Many product orientated companies are doing it too, famously P&G. Many, many more design consultancies and digital agencies and some of the forward thinking 'ex' agency agencies are doing it even if they don't realise it.

The new consumer knows what she wants and won’t be sidetracked by lifestyle or fluff. She wants value for money and to be in control of the relationship.

We’re moving from décor towards core.

The new consumer

Thanks to Nick at agency.com for alerting me to Gabe Chouinard’s letter from the ‘new consumer’ on adrants. Here's a quick sample...

"You want me to buy things. You tell your clients that you can convince me to buy. You lie to them, and they pay you for your lies."

Enjoy.