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Okkuper Wall Street – reklame

Konfrontasjoner har det blitt. Okkuper Wall Street bevegelsen har jo blitt stormet og fjernet i New York og vi har her Norge sett noen tafatte forsøk på noe tilsvarende, bare at vi her bruker betegnelsen Okkuper Stortinget. Bare navnet i seg selv synes jeg vitner om hvor lite man har forstått, for meg står okkuper Stortinget for noe helt annet enn å demonstrere mot “storfinansen” og den økonomiske krisen.

Skal denne bevegelsen i Norge gjøre det som man gjør i USA, begynne med merkevarebygging og annonsering? Nei, jeg tror at denne meget dårlige norske kopieringen av en bevegelse som stilte gode spørsmål har spilt ut sin rolle!

Her er i hvertfall Occupy Wall Street sin første reklamefilm for å skape sympati og skaffe penger (f.ø laget av en mann som før denne jobben laget reklame for Wall Street Journal!)

Will iPad change the way of ads?

A good article from Jonathan Salem Baskin about how IPad could change the ideas of advertising:

While technology has not been kind to traditional advertisers, next week’s launch of Apple’s iPad offers an immense opportunity. Big brand names like FedEx and Chase have bought much of the ad inventory for the next few months. I wonder if they’re going to make proper use of it.

It’s an obvious buy from the perspective of eyeballs and buzz. Not only will the gizmo sell in the hundreds of thousands, but there’ll be many, many more watching it work over friends’ shoulders, or testing the things in-store. Early-adopters of expensive stuff are highly attractive to marketers. Add in the media hype that’ll surround the first few weeks and you have a bonanza for traditional advertisers: a qualified, inspired audience staring at your commercials. Granted, it’s only a fraction of the folks reached by traditional TV spots but the logic is familiar (and accordingly comfortable, hence the big spends).

Only the logic’s wrong, isn’t it?

I’ve long believed that the problem facing advertisers has never been about medium or channel, but rather the meaning, relevance, and utility of the content. Context matters — it always did, only it used to be simpler, less conflicted, and thus easier to address almost intuitively — so I’d change Marshall McLuhan’s famous quote: the message still is the message, only you have to take into account the delivery media and the qualities of the consumption experience. Maybe a more relevant quotable quote for understanding this equation would be from architecture: form follows function.

Advertisers, especially those experimenting with new media, have got this equation mostly wrong, or simply avoided trying to make its variables add up to anything meaningful to businesses. This is why there’s so much “branded content” that successfully absorbs consumers’ time without telling them anything useful or, conversely, why we see bumper ads in online video programming that mimic the nuisance interruptions of broadcast TV.

One approach gives up any pretense of utility in lieu of the presumption that happily wasting peoples’ time will benefit brands, while the other treats the media as simply insert channels through which brands should say whatever they choose to say about, well, brands. Both are wrong, and they evidence the sad fact that much of the pain for advertising agencies these days is self-inflicted.

But back to iPad.

I think the iPad offers an immense opportunity to do things different (yes, that was an iPun). I’m sure we’ll see ads that exploit the immense technology coolness of its screen, and some of them will be quite funny. But there are at least three qualities that could differentiate standard operating procedure approaches from some truly game-changer experimentation:

Context as content. What if ads addressed the unique moment(s) of new user experiences instead of blathering on about brands? Chase’s Sapphire credit card has bought out two months’ of ad units on the New York Times so why not fill the space with content that is meaningful, relevant, and useful to those readers? It could launch an article series that complements the Times’ text. Ad creative could acknowledge the first-timeness of iPad users…maybe offer games or surveys linked to their usage? How about an ad as a doorway to a social media community that will rate/discuss the day’s news headlines? I’d assume greater ad minds than mine could come up with much better ideas, but one thing I know is certain: if the Sapphire ads are about Sapphire — i.e. they could have appeared on any other online or offline media — then all Chase will accomplish is extend its misunderstanding of advertising to a new outlet.

Ads as apps. Imagine going one step further and approaching ad space as if it were an application? I’m not suggesting writing software, per se, but simply giving paid commercial speech the obvious utility users expect from pushing those little virtual buttons. FedEx has bought space on apps that will be retailed by Reuters and Newsweek; why couldn’t it offer some utilitarian prompt, like “check today’s drop off deadline,” or “schedule a package pickup?” I know, I know, it sounds boring but doing something is far more compelling and reliable than just saying it. It would be amazing if iPad ads generally did things differently than ads on other media; my hunch is that perceptions of value would emerge more from providing value than from describing it.
Co-sell experience. The ad-supported publishing business is dead, and no pretty, colorful technology invention is going to revive it. Putting ads next to articles is old thinking and almost dares readers to realize that one has no connection to the other; worse, I think people see this disconnect and find it jarring or, worst of all, just ignore the ads entirely (just see how long before the first iPad ad filter software comes out). So why not consciously and purposefully link the two? Capital One, Buick, and Oracle have bought space on the Wall Street Journal’s $17.99/mo. app, so why wouldn’t they co-fund subscriptions (“subscribe now and Oracle will give you your first month for free”)? There could be lots of follow-on collaborations that redefined the ad/content relationship. Who cares if this audience is much smaller than the eyeballs available on TV once upon a time? Get them to do things and they’re potentially worth more.

There’s been some mention of Apple trying to solve the problem that advertisers can’t by offering a service called iAd to place (and thus price) mobile ads. Such an innovation wouldn’t solve the challenge of delivering meaning, relevance, and utility, though it could do wonders for getting brands to pay through the nose to pursue their old, antiquated approach via new media. Eyeballs and even clicks are irrelevant without strategic vision and purpose behind them, and that’s where I worry most of the brands are still blind and inert. They’re the ones who need to get over their malaise, or Apple will get rich on their stupidity.
OK, so I don’t expect that much creative experimentation will occur in the short-term, but still I am hopeful. The iPad offers immense opportunities to stop tinkering with the mechanism of advertising, embrace the ultimate purpose of doing it (i.e. sell stuff), and come up with novel ways to use the real estate on it (and on all mobile devices).

It’s time to change the game.

Interesting way of branding things!

A music video has done something quite interesting I think, they have put 41 different ads in the video! So, how do we classify this? Is it user-generated, viral involuntary co-op branding? But it’s an interesting technique – commercials as a library for music video producers.
Ooh, almost forgot – how many of the commercials can you name??
You’ll find it here: “

Social medias and the Olympics

Here is something I read about the Olympics and would like to share with you;

The 2008 Beijing Olympics should be the perfect area for social media coverage of the event itself Social media is also being used by many big brands to capitalise upon the Games.

The very reasons we identified for social media coverage of the Games, are being capitalized upon by some big brands, whether or not they are official sponsors.

The very reasons we identified for social media coverage of the Games, are being capitalized upon by some big brands, whether or not they are official sponsors.

Here is a couple:

* McDonald’s has built a viral game called The Lost Ring, where the player uncovers the history of the Olympics (adventures in Ancient Greece and all). It’s a subtle marketing tool for McDonald’s. Their branding is not present in the game and they are pitched more as a sponsor. The terms of the game state: “McDonald’s is proud to sponsor The Lost Ring and bring the spirit of the Olympic Games to people around the world.”
* Lenovo is the more obvious backer of Voices of the Olympic Games. Their site contains blogs from some 100 athletes at this year’s Games and the branding is prominent. The product is also heavily positioned – the site stating that the athletes were provided “new [Lenovo] Ideapad laptops and video cameras to capture their experiences.”

These examples contrast very different approaches. McDonald’s are creating an experience that people will enjoy and will no doubt ensure that people know who it is that is behind the game. This is a subtle way of marketing. They capitalize upon the enthusiasm for both the Olympic Games and for social media to create and experience people will buy into and enjoy. That they may later associate it with McDonald’s is part of the strategy, but this shows social media fitting into a total marketing strategy for the brand during the Games.

Lenovo on the other hand is really branding social media activities. It has given product and a platform to some athletes and is branding their output. This approach is more overt and although it will raise awareness of the product and the brand it is not really doing anything different to it’s other sponsorship of the Games. Lenovo’s branding is all over the Games and is on the blogs too. This is less of strategic social media marketing and more a branding exercise across all media.

Both approaches will be successful. The Olympic Games are a marketers dream – the audiences are huge and the passion is great. Using social media to enhance the experience of the Games (either by providing entertainment and games, or by providing branded content) can only be a positive thing.

Here is the link to the original post

Had fun, talking about digital branding

Today, together with the Erfa group at Markedsföreningen in Stockholm, I had the opportunity to talk about branding in general, and digital branding in specific. Since this was my first meeting with them, I felt inspired meeting with a lot of people with a lot of interesting ideas.
If you are interested, join the group – and become a part of ideas and discussions about branding in Stockholm.

For me, it is time to have a nice and long eastern vacation, Hemsedal, here we come!

How to brand a baby…or…

News flash from the land of flamboyant parenting: Those wacky New Zealand parents who wanted to name their baby boy “4real” (but were foiled by a New Zealand law prohibiting names beginning with numbers) have now settled on a more familiar moniker. Superman, as he will be called in official contexts, will still go by 4real in the home.

I’ll admit, I’m one of those people who like weird names, but this level of weirdness verges on abuse. What happens when the kid’s grown out of the superhero stage or when instant messenger handles like 4real are really embarrassing? It suggests that baby naming officials — in New Zealand at least — have their work cut out for them. They told the BBC that they had recently rejected the names Satan and Adolf Hitler.

A recent Wall Street Journal article made much about the new culture of naming in which anxious parents read dozens of books and even hire professional naming consultants to help them “brand” unique children. Is this only in the US? Well, we up here in the north like to think so, but it’s kinda’ the same here. Of course, parents who misuse their naming power are not a new phenomenon. You can read about it in the papers almost everyday, so the real question is, what is this about? Now that corporate branding has saturated our culture, don’t be surprised if more doting parents name their kids after a soon to be released operating system?

My inexpert opinion is that the current preoccupation with baby naming mirrors our cultural obsession with personal expression in a time when our individual sense of political power is on the wane. In an ideal world, having a baby expresses faith in the future — a faith many parents so conscious of food additives and melting ice caps may not have. In naming a baby you get to engage in a massive act of pure parental projection — perhaps for the last time.

So maybe that’s why the state gets involved in such matters — like protecting a child from disease, maybe the idea is that communities need to protect children from names that might hurt them in the future.