The All-New Path-to-Purchase
Many shopper marketing consultants are wrong. The path-to-purchase is not linear. The path-to-purchase in days gone by was just a tool “to drive consumers from the couch to the shopping mall to the aisle.” The line was:
we’ll turn consumers into shoppers and shoppers into buyers
…often where “integration” meant a “matching luggage approach” to the creative work by a range of agencies.
Yesteryear's Path-to-Purchase
Putting the matching luggage issue aside, this Path-to-Purchase, which we might call “yesteryear’s p2p” only works now for TOTALLY NEW products. You see, for the majority of products – from recognised brands – social media has changed the path-to-purchase for ever.
Today, we’re all familiar with the idea that there exists a myriad of new channels for consumers to communicate to each other. Brands now can thrive or die because of these interactions.
New channels should be considered as springboards for conversations, for the frequent, lightweight interactions that are vital in today’s socially networked society.
The path-to-purchase now starts with your current, engaged audience. Your current buyers. (more…)
Tech post: head in the cloud?
Here’s a good example of Gartner’s Hype Cycle (1995).
The Hype Cycle (Gartner, 1995)
Cloud computing is here. In a booklet released this week, “The Big Little Box of Nexts: Trendspotting for 2012″, ad agency EuroRSCG writes,
We assume you already know the cloud is the big news, with all of us storing our vitals on a fluffy cloud in the (virtual) sky, but what else is trending? (p134)
And then they go on to quote Geekettes, Personal Connectivity, “Got Tablet”, Pittsburgh being the next Silicon Valley and Robotics as the 5 trends to watch. It’s lightweight and an interesting quick read… but it dismisses Cloud Computing as so trendy it’s not cool to discuss. And that’s interesting!
You see, many businesses haven’t come around to embracing it yet. Many consumers, on the other hand, (more…)
11/11/11 so we remember our hubris and our humility
It’s Remembrance Day. 11/11/11.
News Limited (soon to be News Australia) has published ads in its print newspapers – blank pages apart from the words “Lest We Forget” at the bottom, with a picture of a poppy, on the suggestion of ad agency Clemenger BBDO in Adelaide. Nice idea. I posted a comment on the mumbrella article that brought this blank-page-ad to my attention and included a piece saying I don’t like the expression “Lest We Forget” which is widely accepted in Australia as the expression to remember “the Diggers” lost in the wars. I prefer a positive expression, like, So We Remember. I feel strongly that we should remember the lives lost. And TRY not to repeat the attrocities of the past. (But we will, won’t we?)
I’ve since found out that I’m arguing poetic expression with Rudyard Kipling and his poem “Recessional” written at the end of the 19th century:
God of our fathers, known of old—
Lord of our far-flung battle line—
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget! (more…)
Should ad agencies advertise?
In 2006 I was on a project at Patts Y&R in Melbourne. The now-famous Russel Howcroft had just been appointed as MD. The receptionist asked me what project I was working on. I explained that I was working for Russel and, with a senior account director called Tobi, helping them articulate today’s stories for the agency and to find ways to package them up and disseminate them to prospective clients. The receptionist’s summary was succinct:
You’re advertising the advertising agency!
I use that line nowadays when people ask me what I am doing for a living. But in reality, we all know an advertising agency seldom advertises itself. Not in the traditional sense of paid advertising.
When it comes to the paid-owned-earned media debate, agencies just don’t pay for advertising space. Hell, we’re bad enough with our owned media (how many out-of-date websites are there and/or offices ‘soon to be renovated’). And few agencies are fabulous at sparking the conversation in earned media (what percentage of agencies goes beyond PR-ing breaking campaigns, updating a Linkedin profile and the occasional tweets?). But this piece isn’t about owned and earned media, not today.
Well, we’ve all thought about our own advertising and debated it. And this came up again recently:
I found out the other day that Encore magazine is about to be revamped and, on top of its usual readership, it’ll be distributed among the 4,500 senior marketers on the Australian Marketing Institute’s database. And I bet the All-New Encore Magazine will enjoy heavy promotion to an even wider marketing community via its sister title, mumbrella.
And so I spoke to the Encore publishing team and was duly sent the media pack with the rate card.
As it happens Innocean, the agency where I work, will feature since another now-famous adman, Sean Cummins, will scrutinise our latest TV ad for Kia, part of a multimedia campaign for an irreverent brand.
Here lies the debate. Should we also advertise in the publication? Well, it’s too late now, we’ve missed the deadline. So, should we have advertised? And what would should have been our message?
My immediate reaction was YES, let’s advertise. A resounding YES. What’s more, I had a brilliant idea for the ad. Creatives all cringe when ‘suits’ get ideas for advertising executions. Especially when the suit says it’s brilliant! And so they should – here’s what I created on my (t)rusty old mac:
My objection to running ads like this is (more…)
The post-Jobs post: Samsung; the bandwagon; flowers
Samsung launched a new product today. Samsung Galaxy SII.
Queues for Mr Samsung
I only know about this launch because at five to eight this morning there was a queue outside the Samsung store here in the central business district of Sydney. Not a massive queue – not by Apple standards – but a queue none the less. Good work, Mr Samsung.
Well, Samsung is on the front page of The Economist last week. The business is held up as a success story.
And Apple made it onto the front of this week’s publication, of course. A success story and also an obituary.
But I when I say “Good work, Mr Samsung” I realise that unlike the recently deceased Mr Apple, we don’t know who Mr Samsung is. And I’m fine with that. As I said on the recent Mumbrella podcast (33.55), the new CEO at Apple is a self-proclaimed team player, not a figurehead.
But we should be careful about our eulogy for Steve Jobs. Especially after reading Adam Ferrier’s piece on mumbrella, the ad industry news&views source:
We are living in a world where there is an unparalleled outpouring of grief for someone who has made us fall in love with our PDAs, computers, and MP3s.
What the fuck?
Adam founded and sold the Australian branch of Naked Communications. He’s very bright and very convincing. Well, almost always. And now I feel a little silly about my last post, Computing Made Cool. You know, the one where I quoted a Jobs quote. In Adland, the Jobs quotes are as ubiquitous as the Ogilvy quotes. And I jumped (more…)
Computing made cool
Cool then
Thank you, Steve Jobs. You made computers cool. You made computing cool.
Frankly, the experience is now user friendly, largely thanks to you.
I hope that your successors at Apple have vision, tenacity and excitement.
And you have a whole book of quotes which you leave behind. Here’s one worth re reading right now:
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. (more…)
Recurring story – the search for greener living
“Embrace Our Planet.” That’s the punchline to the recurring story. Here let me show you three brilliant ways it’s being told:
Erle Ellis tells us: Human impact has been around for some time. We humans are changing the face of the earth. We have to put ourselves into the picture and work out what impact we want to have on the planet. The problem is we don’t know how to manage the future of this planet. Erle Ellis is an ecologist at the University of Maryland, quoted in this week’s Economist magazine. An erudite (more…)
tag clouds to tell your story
Okay okay, I know this is old news. But this old news tells an evolving story - yep. Make your own tag clouds to tell the story in one pretty picture. It almost works with a tag of this blog – see below.
I say ‘almost’ because of course it includes my name and the comment section. I should really spend more time cleaning up my word cloud. But I’ve got better things to do!
If you want to make your own cloud download the app (works on mac and pc) from TAGXEDO.
Supermarket brands are not trying hard enough
Bloody hell, have you seen how Coles and Woolworths are out to woo shoppers into shopping with them. However, they are doing nothing of interest. I’m sure they have stats to show how their ads are boosting sales. Of course their agencies will find those and/or other stats. And I’m sure the research shows that this is the best advertising since etc etc.
Here’s the basic flow of a short presentation I’m about to share with (more…)
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