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. We can give them a regular reason to repurchase and an always-on platform to express their advocacy to their own groups across their own social networks. Their advocacy can then be used to promote awareness to this new audience.

The Virtuous Communication Cycle

We’re not talking here about display advertising on social networks like Facebook, but rather, as The Economist notes this week, Facebook is probably worth $100bn because of three reasons, one of which is:

social marketing. Few sales pitches are as persuasive as a recommendation from a friend, so the billions of interactions on Facebook now influence everything from the music that people buy to the politicians they vote for.

You see, Shopper Marketing is not only about targeting elusive influencers, but also targeting your currently engaged buyers, and their extended circle of influence.*

In this way, the path-to-purchase has become The Virtuous Communication Cycle** where each item of communication – each consumer touchpoint – relates back in its own way to the Big Idea at the heart of The Virtuous Communication Cycle.

PS Okay, admittedly at times it’s convenient to show the path-to-purchase as linear; in these cases we should look first to the current customers and use their loyalty and then advocacy to leverage awareness amongst their spheres of influence:

The All-New Path-to-Purchase

* Indeed some say that it’s not the influencers who matter. Rather, it’s about targeting the groups that matter. See Grouped, by @padday who also tweets that his “least favourite word is influencer“.

** The Virtuous Communication Cycle or TVCC has not been trade marked. Not by me. You’re welcome to it. Acknowledgement in a creative commons fashion is appreciated. Please note, TVCC only works if there is a big idea at the centre!

Today, we understand that relationships are formed through regular, little stories and this is how products will become loved brands in the eyes of consumers. Across all consumer touchpoints (ie on-line, in-store and in-between!) we must therefore create and manage “frequent, lightweight interactions” *.

Clearly, the retail world is evolving. There are countless stories to tell stating how, where and why. But there are fewer people who understand not only the strategic implications of mixing social media with retail communications but also what this means from a practical perspective.

“Pinterest Joins Twitter And Facebook As The Newest Self-Expression Engine" says TechCrunch. Today, we must ask how will brands start to use new social media such as Pinterest’s pinboards to tell their story?

So that’s what the team I work with does: we specialise in strategy, creative development AND activation. We understand how, where and why to create these frequent, lightweight interactions.

The big idea is even more important than ever

Think small, act frequently. But to do this without confusing the consumers & shoppers there needs to be consistency. To have a range of consistent conversations brands need to have a big idea which is even bigger than before. It has to hold up to scrutiny across social networks.

The big idea can no longer be broadcasted out there for the duration of the campaign then forgotten about or amended. It might live forever as is. And if it’s the right sort of big idea, you’ll want it to live forever. So we have to make sure there is one big idea which can be managed across all media.

To get to the big idea, we need to make sure the planning is well conceived:

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, have. Drop box, icloud, box are three of the services that I use. One day my office will go cloud and I won’t need all my personal space. Or will I? But it’s more than that. It’s about an infrastructure rethink. As CommBank CIO, Michael Harte, says:

“When you look at [cloud computing] from an enterprise point of view you’d say, hell we’re really stuck in an old IT model. We’ve got 50 to 80 per cent of all of what we spend a year tied up in infrastructure and that infrastructure isn’t conferring any strategic advantage; it’s just a cost of doing business.”

Source: http://delimiter.com.au/2010/04/27/commbank-cios-attempt-to-break-vendor-choke/

Now the MD of Aussie cloud computing startup Ninefold, Peter James adds a different sort of fuel the fire. Keeping up with the Joneses:

In February 2011, the then US Government Chief Information Officer, Vivek Kundra, shook up the US establishment with the announcement of his Cloud First policy. Cloud First means that the US Government is now firmly on board for the great cloud computing ride… With the US and now UK examples, surely its time to call in the cavalry and have Australian governments follow this lead. Without federal, state, territory and local governments playing a leading role there is a real risk that the innovations and investments made by Australian ICT companies will not be enough to prevent Australian cloud from lagging further behind.Cloud computing adoption in this country is calling out for some real leadership. Where is our own Vivek Kundra going to come from?

Source: http://ninefold.com/blog/cloud-computing/cloud-first-why-australia-needs-a-vivek-kundra/

The ripost:

Do we need a more concerted effort from CIOs, vendors, government figures and so on on the cloud? Do we need Australia’s own Federal Government CIO, Ann Steward, to make some sort of dramatic ‘Cloud First’ statement? Personally, I’m not sure.

I think much of what James is talking about with respect to the cloud in Australia refers to the cloud at “The Peak of Inflated Expectations” on Gartner’s hype cycle. Cloud First sounds great in practice … but like any artificial imposition on technology projects, it’s not something that will be held to in practice — and if it is, it has the potential to be harmful.

Source: http://delimiter.com.au/2011/11/11/does-australia-need-a-cloud-computing-visionary/#more-63115

What it does go to show is that we have only one direction to go in. It’s a question of how quickly we can afford to go in that direction. I think – from an Australian perspective – to discard cloud computing as old news is foolhardy. Aka – having one’s head in the cloud. Or not, as the case may be.

[Thanks to @renailemay whose articles I've discovered for the first time today.]

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!

The tumult and the shouting dies—
The Captains and the Kings depart—
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

Far-called our navies melt away—
On dune and headland sinks the fire—
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe—
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard—
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding calls not Thee to guard.
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!
Amen.

And this is sung as a hymn in Australia, especially on Rememberance Sunday. That’s how it’s been built into Aussie everyday vernacular.

War Atrocities Museum, HCMC, Vietnam

I wonder if everyone knows this is from a Kipling poem written about pride in the British Empire and woe that it might fall like other empires have fallen. A story of hubris vs humility, lest we forget that we are fallible. I stand corrected. I will happily enjoy the expression Lest We Forget. It’s not just about remember the lives lost. It’s about remembering our fallibility, our mortality… and our idiocy and the attrocities we have committed.

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 that I’m putting the agency out there in a way that is unfair on the agency: all attitude and no substance. This ad is, therefore, a bit too ‘salesy’. As the age-old adage says:

Everyone avoids a salesman; everyone loves a storyteller.

After all that’s what WILL.I.AM, rapper and creative director at Intel, said recently on the US Adage website:

Make conversations, not ads… If your ad, marketing plan or communication doesn’t increase, rebuild, enable or empower community, then don’t do it.”

And, as it happens, we’re doing just that. Only you probably won’t see that particular story for a while, unless you’re a prospective client. We’re going DM rather than above-the-line.

You see, when agencies do advertise themselves they just look like they’re clutching at straws: Ogilvy had a go earlier this year. And I’m not sure what the ads actually achieved. Their brand is well known, after all. Recency / top-of-mind awareness and that’s all, I’d guess. As reported in mumbrella, Ogilvy in Australia had a madmen dress-up competition internally (was that really press-released!) and Tom Moult’s (beautifully written, mind you) long-copy ad. Not exactly an integrated campaign and not sure it really did much for their brand or their business. But it didn’t denigrate the brand – well the long copy ad didn’t. Phew. I bet there was consternation on the inside – especially from the agency that in its old (Singo) guise refused any sort of self-promotion.

I asked a couple of ad gurus* if they knew of any great agency advertising and one told me he has “no recall of great ads by agencies for agencies” and the other said, “Chiat did a graceful ad when they lost Apple the first time round in the 80s (‘thank you, Apple. Seriously). But I can’t think of a campaign that worked.”

Is there any great advertising for ad agencies? Either then or now? It’s my contention (after some reflection) that pure advertising for ad agencies themselves never really works. And I mean advertising, rather than self promotion.

*Gurus being Charlie Robertson of Red Spider (ex BBH) and Adam Morgan of EatBigFish (of challenger brand books including Eating The Big Fish and The Pirate Inside)

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 onto the sentimental bandwagon. Sort of.

Even before reading Adam Ferrier’s article, I found myself reflecting on my perceived bandwagoning. Flowers sparked this reflection. You see, just after walking past the Samsung store this morning I saw the flowers outside the Apple Store next door. And as the security guard opened the doors, he had to brush aside some of the flowers that had been laid there over the weekend.

Flowers for Mr Apple

To a large extent, I agree with Adam Ferrier’s whole article (not just the ‘out-of-context’ quote above). Plus I was shocked by the flowers. A bit over the top, I thought.

That said, it is pretty impressive for Jobs to have wooed and won the world over, not only with technology-led consumerism, but also with ideology and positive enthusiasm. He wooed enough to win flowers outside his shop. Flowers from his customers.

I don’t think many shop owners get that.

That said, if you’ll forgive me, I’ll keep my feet on the ground about this one. I have respect, but flowers outside his shop? I don’t think I’ll be laying a wreath. Will you?

UPDATE: Turns out that the Samsung queue was at the pop-up store ambush – giving away phones for $2 only…

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/samsung-ambushes-apples-iphone-4s-launch-in-sydney-20111012-1lk0d.html

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. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Cool now

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

“Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.”

Steve Jobs, Stamford commencement speech in 2005.

Steve Jobs was a technical whizz and a fabulous story teller; let’s see what Tim Cook, the new CEO at Apple, can do. Big shoes to fill. And last time Steve Jobs left Apple he had to come back to fix it. That’s unlikely to happen this time round.

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 article about how we destroy but can consciously create. Hell, there are more trees on farmland now than there are in wild forests. The article introduces the concept that we’re in a new period the Anthropocene. Where people are at the centre. Most ecologists talk about the ecosystem with human influence removed:

The advent of the Anthropocene… means treating humans not as insignificant observers of the natural world but as central to its workings, elemental in their force.

Okay – that makes sense. Every city we build has a profound impact on the future of the planet. But we’re a pragmatic species that needs to worry more about the present and the future. Right?

No. Wrong. The past is what’s important. David Christian spoke at TED in March 2011 about BIG HISTORY. A beautiful story about where we sit in the world. It’s worth taking the time to listen:

DNA has created organisms that can learn in real time. They accumulate information, they learn. The sad thing is, when they die, the information dies with them. Now what makes humas different is human language. We are blessed with a language, asystem of communication, so powerful and so precise that we can share what we’ve learned with such precision that it can accumulate in the collective memory… We seem to be the only species in 4 billion years to have this gift.

He calls this “the threshold moment in the history of our beautiful planet”.

And then there’s the Monty Python version of the story:

Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour…

So remember, when you’re feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space,
‘Cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth.

Notice that none of the stories have a happy ending. Not yet anyway. And let’s not resign ourselves to the Monty Python way of thinking. Even though it’s the only one of the three stories that is easy to quote after a few drinks at a wedding… or, er, so I’m told.

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.

Here’s the basic flow of a short presentation I’m about to share with a specific audience. (If you are due to attend and you read this in advance of the session, the anecdotes and asides should keep you interested. Besides you’re a captive audience as I’m just the guest speaker! So you could go make a phone call during my piece. But please don’t.)

It all starts to say how BORING advertising is getting these days. It’s just so predictable. All those ads that just say the same thing over and over again. This is nicely summed up by a couple of British comedians, Mitchell and Webb (hat tip to BBH’s Charles Wigley and his “Anti Wind Tunnel Movement” presentation)

It’s very funny. And very true. All beauty product ads do harp on about the same things. Creating stereotypes. But all categories of advertising are guilty of some degree of homogenisation aka stealing ideas. Including today’s topic, supermarket brands.

Point 1: Celebrity

Coles and Woolworths here in Australia are guilty of creating stereotypical ads: Find a celebrity (chef) and get them to endorse the brand and give a little inspiration to cheesy TV families. Coles have Curtis Stone. Woolies have Margaret Fulton, amongst others.

Well, Luke Dunkerley, head of marketing at Woolies, has some impressive achievements under his belt. For a start he’s attributed with rebranding of Woolies with Hulsbosch’s new logo. Nice. But this TV advertising is dreadful. When I arrived in Australia five years ago, Woolworths was the brand leader. Coles was big but it was grubby. And since Wesfarmers have taken hold of Coles, Woolies seems to be the brand follower. They seem to be reacting to Coles’ ads, not differentiating.

Point 2: Price-bashing

Even in the price-bashing retail ads, Woolies is directly crediting their main competitor with a good idea. Emulation is flattery after all.

Why is Woolworths, in both its “brand ads” (chefs build brands) and its “retail ads” (hands point down or punch up) on the back foot? IE why are these ads all so samey?

Point 3: Provenance

Is “Celebrity” hard to do with originality? No! Of course it’s not. Have you seen the Woolworths South Africa ads? I think they’re the work of Frost Design (Vince Frost’s leading creative shop in based Sydney, who also has offices in Woolworths South Africa.) It’s great to bring in a new – important – aspect. Locality & provenance of the product that the supermarket sells. Where does the food come from: food with airmiles, as they say, is food in need of buying carbon credits.

And while talking of provenance, did you see the beautiful story of where food comes from created for a Canadian audience. If you have two minutes and forty six seconds watch this and guess which brand is behind this piece of communication.

Point 4: Competitor Comparison

And now back to Australia. Here, ALDI has been challenging the duopoly that Coles and Woolworths enjoy. And they have recently come out with an ad called SMARTER SHOPPING. It’s a basic comparison ad. Look what our shoppers enjoy over those who shop elsewhere.

Now compare it with an ad from 1968. Another comparison ad. This is the work of famous adman Bill Bernbach:

One is a retail challenger. The other is a challenger brand. The difference needn’t be so stark. One has an idea. One has an idea plus a story well told.

Conclusion: Even for retail,
Advertising = Ideas + Storytelling

So the conclusion to my presentation (to a captive audience) is simply to build upon the wisdom of a much wiser adman than myself. It’s my contention that few ideas are new ideas. Kevin Roberts (of Saatchi’s fame) famously says agencies should no longer consider themselves as ad agencies, they should be ideas agencies.

Well, Kevin Roberts is wrong. It may sound like semantics, but it’s not when I say that advertising should be more than just ideas, because the ideas themselves are clearly in desperate need of great storytellers to bring them to life. And to bring them to life in a way consumers and shoppers are likely to remember to act upon those brand stories when in a purchasing mood.

The stories we’ve touched on here (Celebrity, Price-Bashing, Provenance, Competitor Comparison) are just frameworks to build upon the simple story of value and convenience. After all, value and convenience are the cornerstones upon which any retailer’s brand stories should be built.

And what’s more, according to a recent post, retailers should be telling stories about the new convenience and new way they can provide value, as we now shop remotely on our way to work from the comfort of public transport.

So, I wonder, will my audience be captive, captivated or at least receptive to this presentation? Time will tell, I guess. Unless you tell me first, that is.