While today's New York Times advertising column features a rewrite of a press release about some stunt from Unilver's Axe brand, the really interesting story in the business section is this one about how big law firms are turning to YouTube (or, more accurately, a YouTube imitation) in an attempt to recruit law students.
And while the creative is what it is, the idea and use of media is a whole lot hipper than what so many of our clients are up to. So next time someone "just isn't too sure about all this new stuff" you can point out how even conservative law firms in conservative Boston are using it.
Sep 28, 2007
Taking Me Literally
So both CK and Bill “Make The Logo Bigger” Green emailed me a press release from an agency called 22 Squared (formerly known as WestWayne) that literally operates under the theory that your brand is indeed my friend and that people are just sitting there waiting for brands to befriend them.
I kid you not.
Here’s what it says on their agency blog, “The C Word”: ("C" means "consumer" which for some reason they feel is a bad thing. More on that in a minute.)
Why we're here: Everybody's talking about how ad agencies and marketing firms are broken. There's a lot of talk, a lot of criticism, and a lot of negativity. What's missing is a solution. A theory that helps understand where things went wrong and, more importantly, where they can go really, really right. People are sick of being called consumers. They're sick of being marketed and sold to. They're looking to be treated like...well, people. We think we've got a pretty unique way to stop selling them like consumers and start befriending them like people. We're looking to share our thinking, to share our belief that if you market brands the way people make friends, you'll end up with a lot more friends (and a lot more money). We're three people with a new lens, and some optimism for marketers everywhere. Try being a friend to people, it's amazing what it does for business. This isn't a monologue or a soapbox, we hope it can become a dialogue and discussion. As any good friend does, we welcome (and hope for) input, perspective, criticisms, and commentary. We look forward to talking with you, Karen, Brandon, & Evan
Now in their defense, I get the broader notion of what they’re trying to do here. (I think.) They’re advocating a less in-your-face sales approach in favor of a more consensual one, where clients tell the consumers things they want to hear rather than things the client wants to say.
But Karen, Brandon and Evan: that ain’t friendship. It’s just a different kind of sales technique. And pretending that we're not consumers isn't just disingenuous; it's dishonest.
As I wrote on my initial post on Marketing Profs Daily Fix (coming Monday, I'll post about it when it's up) marketers who try and pretend that they’re not sales people remind me of the Lefrak family. The Lefraks, a prominent New York City real estate clan, changed the family name to LeFrak about a dozen years ago. And I’m not sure who they thought they were fooling. I mean did they expect Skip and Muffy to suddenly say “Oh, they’re French! All these years we thought they were Jewish! Now we can finally invite them to the club!”
Consumers aren’t looking for more friends. We already have plenty. What we’re looking for is authenticity. That means you tell us the truth. Admit when you’re wrong. Don’t treat us like criminals. And talk to us when you have news.
And Karen, Brandon and Evan, "telling us the truth" means you've got to stop trying to pretend we're not consumers and you're not sales people. Because we both know that's not true. Now you can be much nicer salespeople, the kind of salespeople we might actually like, but it's a strictly commercial relationship we've got going on here, not an emotional one.
Because as everyone knows, Your Brand Is Not My Friend™
Sep 27, 2007
Thursday Break
A little lightness in between the more serious posts.
Check out this very funny video from Digital Kitchen
Sep 25, 2007
Barometer
So there's this interactive creative team I know, great guys who do excellent work.
I stumbled upon their LinkedIn profiles the other day and it struck me as odd that in the section right under your name, where the rest of us put things like "ACD at BBDO" or "VP/Account Director, BBH," they had this:
What struck me as odd was that they clearly felt the need to shout out their non-digital, offline creds in order to be taken seriously. And the reverse just isn't true. I mean I doubt you'll find too many Creative Directors at BBDO who put "Creative Director Who Also Knows His Way Around Designing A Website" on their LinkedIn profiles.
And I don't think these guys are misguided: for all the talk of how digital is the future, how it's where everything is going, if you're on the ground, with the troops, in September 2007, the people who work in digital are still not getting anywhere close to the respect they deserve.
Especially in big, allegedly integrated agencies.
*Agency name omitted to protect their privacy
I stumbled upon their LinkedIn profiles the other day and it struck me as odd that in the section right under your name, where the rest of us put things like "ACD at BBDO" or "VP/Account Director, BBH," they had this:
Senior Partner, Creative Director/ Workhorse/ Guy with an idea or two, Big Agency* (perform off and online magic)
Associate Creative Director at Big Agency. I dabble in the Internets ;), print , DM, TV, whatever needs to be done
What struck me as odd was that they clearly felt the need to shout out their non-digital, offline creds in order to be taken seriously. And the reverse just isn't true. I mean I doubt you'll find too many Creative Directors at BBDO who put "Creative Director Who Also Knows His Way Around Designing A Website" on their LinkedIn profiles.
And I don't think these guys are misguided: for all the talk of how digital is the future, how it's where everything is going, if you're on the ground, with the troops, in September 2007, the people who work in digital are still not getting anywhere close to the respect they deserve.
Especially in big, allegedly integrated agencies.
*Agency name omitted to protect their privacy
Sep 24, 2007
The Human Flipbook
Saw this on Adpulp and thought it was great. It's for a quirky Midwestern sandwich chain with the equally quirky name Erbert & Gerberts. I'm a sucker for a good flip book, especially a human one.
If you share my enthusiasm, definitely check out the site www.humanflipbook.com where you can also see a fascinating-yet-relatively-short video on the making of "Human Flipbook." I usually find these sort of "Making Of" videos incredibly tedious, but this one is well done and the process is really quite interesting.
Kudos to the agency, Colle + McEvoy*, out of Minneapolis for making a spot that's entertaining, appeals to a broad demograpic, and (more importantly) manages to make the client's product a natural part of the entertainment.
*WARNING: Colle + McEvoy's website makes loud pounding noises upon loading in clear violation of Toad's Law Against Agency Websites That Play Music Or Make Loud Noises Upon Loading. Deduct 10 points.
Interview With A Toad
So I went to a "Blogger Meet-up" last week, organized by the lovely and talented CK of CK's Blog where I met a whole bunch of other marketing bloggers and had the unique experience of introducing myself as "Toad."
One of the people I met, Toby Bloomberg, an Atlanta-based PR and marketing dynamo who writes the Diva Marketing Blog (#28 on the AdAge Power 150) thought her readers would find it interesting to read an interview with some weird dude who calls himself "Tangerine Toad."
You can read it here.
Sep 23, 2007
When Bad Ads Happen To Good People
So I’ve been working on an account lately that’s a perfect case study for this proposition.
It’s a big company and the marketing clients are exactly what you want your clients to be: they’re smart, nice people, and actually appreciative of what we bring to the table. I mean they seriously say things like “you guys are the experts.” Even better, they really do seem to get it, so that when we suggest something beyond what we initially discussed, they intuitively understand why and how it makes the ads better.
So where do things go wrong?
Well, they work for a corporation that doesn’t place a whole lot of value in marketing. And so as they send the work around for approval from the non-marketing teams (e.g. sales, corporate) they’re often presented with unreasonable dictates they can’t appeal. Things like “I don’t like blue.” “This sentence needs to read exactly like this:” “Put all four logos at the bottom.” They feel frustrated, undervalued and I fear they’re not going to stick around very long.
So if you’re a client and you’re reading this, how do you prevent your company from falling into this trap? Well here’s Toad’s Plan For Getting The Most Out Of Your Agency So Long As You're Paying Them Big Bucks.
The CEO Has To Value Marketing. That’s step one and without it, nothing else works. The CEO has to support the marketing team. She has to be aware of what’s going on and to let it be known that the new campaign has her full support and that anyone who is actively working against it is going to be actively looking for a new job.
The Marketing Team Has To Be Empowered. Another place good intentions fall apart is when the marketing team is forced to abide by the decisions of other departments, all of whom think they know a lot about advertising (because everyone in America thinks they know a lot about advertising.) So the CEO needs to set up a policy whereby the sales and research and product management teams get to give initial pre-brief input, but where their commentary on the actual creative output is limited to factual errors like “It’s now called the Widget-2100, not Widget-2000.”
Get The Lawyers Out Of The Way. Even where the first two steps are in place, nothing can derail an ad campaign faster than an overzealous lawyer. Now I understand all about our litigation-happy society and why lawyers get that way. But no good can come out of sentences like “The Widget 2100 may possibly be an okay widget.”
This is another place the CEO needs to step in again and take charge. The lawyers who make these sorts of decisions aren’t necessarily experts in advertising law, and so the CEO needs to gently remind them that ads are not legal briefs, that every statement need not be supported by a footnote and, most importantly, that she’s seen the lawyer’s objections and is okay with the ad going forward as is.
Marketing Managers Have To Serve As Strong Advocates For The Work. Small clients are great for agencies because you present directly to the decision makers. Bigger clients, however, have multiple layers and so it’s up to the marketing department to sell the work through. This is a lot tougher than it sounds. Many (if not most) corporate cultures maintain the belief that marketing is the domain of good-looking, socially adept airheads. So anything the marketing department says or does is met with incredible skepticism and/or scorn.
When the CEO strongly supports the marketing department, that perception is somewhat ameliorated. But the marketing team still needs to be strong advocates for the work, selling it with as much enthusiasm as the agency presented it. Even if it means calling in some of their counterparts from the agency to help.
I can’t stress how important this step is, since I’ve been in too many situations where the marketing department’s idea of selling the ads through was to send a PDF of the work to the appropriate higher-ups and wait for the inevitable fallout. (Now to be fair, this happened in large part because in-person presentations devolved into opportunities for the sales team to mock the marketing team and really, who wouldn’t want to avoid that. But with an activist CEO, this should no longer be the case.)
De-Balkanize Your Ad Budgets. Big companies often have multiple divisions with multiple ad budgets. So rather than one $100 million budget, you have twenty-five $4 million dollar ones, with a whole lot of overlap and the inability to do anything unique or significant. A smart CEO will recombine those budgets into one big pot, giving the company the opportunity to really make a mark with their advertising. If that’s not possible, she should give the marketing team the power to combine some of the smaller budgets and to reevaluate those budgets and the messaging they’re supporting to ensure that there’s no overlap. This requires some degree of planning and vision on the part of the marketing team, but if it’s used to say, fund a photo shoot or video shoot that all divisions can share, it can pay off in spades.
Clients who follow these steps can be assured a strong, consistent marketing program, since it’s been my experience that most agencies are quite competent at their jobs. But CEOs who don’t value marketing and who don’t want to get involved would be wise to create their campaigns in-house. Why pay an outside vendor who charges you for their expertise if you have no intention of ever using that expertise? An in-house team can create ads exactly as you want them for a whole lot less.
Quality, however, is a different story.
It’s a big company and the marketing clients are exactly what you want your clients to be: they’re smart, nice people, and actually appreciative of what we bring to the table. I mean they seriously say things like “you guys are the experts.” Even better, they really do seem to get it, so that when we suggest something beyond what we initially discussed, they intuitively understand why and how it makes the ads better.
So where do things go wrong?
Well, they work for a corporation that doesn’t place a whole lot of value in marketing. And so as they send the work around for approval from the non-marketing teams (e.g. sales, corporate) they’re often presented with unreasonable dictates they can’t appeal. Things like “I don’t like blue.” “This sentence needs to read exactly like this:” “Put all four logos at the bottom.” They feel frustrated, undervalued and I fear they’re not going to stick around very long.
So if you’re a client and you’re reading this, how do you prevent your company from falling into this trap? Well here’s Toad’s Plan For Getting The Most Out Of Your Agency So Long As You're Paying Them Big Bucks.
The CEO Has To Value Marketing. That’s step one and without it, nothing else works. The CEO has to support the marketing team. She has to be aware of what’s going on and to let it be known that the new campaign has her full support and that anyone who is actively working against it is going to be actively looking for a new job.
The Marketing Team Has To Be Empowered. Another place good intentions fall apart is when the marketing team is forced to abide by the decisions of other departments, all of whom think they know a lot about advertising (because everyone in America thinks they know a lot about advertising.) So the CEO needs to set up a policy whereby the sales and research and product management teams get to give initial pre-brief input, but where their commentary on the actual creative output is limited to factual errors like “It’s now called the Widget-2100, not Widget-2000.”
Get The Lawyers Out Of The Way. Even where the first two steps are in place, nothing can derail an ad campaign faster than an overzealous lawyer. Now I understand all about our litigation-happy society and why lawyers get that way. But no good can come out of sentences like “The Widget 2100 may possibly be an okay widget.”
This is another place the CEO needs to step in again and take charge. The lawyers who make these sorts of decisions aren’t necessarily experts in advertising law, and so the CEO needs to gently remind them that ads are not legal briefs, that every statement need not be supported by a footnote and, most importantly, that she’s seen the lawyer’s objections and is okay with the ad going forward as is.
Marketing Managers Have To Serve As Strong Advocates For The Work. Small clients are great for agencies because you present directly to the decision makers. Bigger clients, however, have multiple layers and so it’s up to the marketing department to sell the work through. This is a lot tougher than it sounds. Many (if not most) corporate cultures maintain the belief that marketing is the domain of good-looking, socially adept airheads. So anything the marketing department says or does is met with incredible skepticism and/or scorn.
When the CEO strongly supports the marketing department, that perception is somewhat ameliorated. But the marketing team still needs to be strong advocates for the work, selling it with as much enthusiasm as the agency presented it. Even if it means calling in some of their counterparts from the agency to help.
I can’t stress how important this step is, since I’ve been in too many situations where the marketing department’s idea of selling the ads through was to send a PDF of the work to the appropriate higher-ups and wait for the inevitable fallout. (Now to be fair, this happened in large part because in-person presentations devolved into opportunities for the sales team to mock the marketing team and really, who wouldn’t want to avoid that. But with an activist CEO, this should no longer be the case.)
De-Balkanize Your Ad Budgets. Big companies often have multiple divisions with multiple ad budgets. So rather than one $100 million budget, you have twenty-five $4 million dollar ones, with a whole lot of overlap and the inability to do anything unique or significant. A smart CEO will recombine those budgets into one big pot, giving the company the opportunity to really make a mark with their advertising. If that’s not possible, she should give the marketing team the power to combine some of the smaller budgets and to reevaluate those budgets and the messaging they’re supporting to ensure that there’s no overlap. This requires some degree of planning and vision on the part of the marketing team, but if it’s used to say, fund a photo shoot or video shoot that all divisions can share, it can pay off in spades.
Clients who follow these steps can be assured a strong, consistent marketing program, since it’s been my experience that most agencies are quite competent at their jobs. But CEOs who don’t value marketing and who don’t want to get involved would be wise to create their campaigns in-house. Why pay an outside vendor who charges you for their expertise if you have no intention of ever using that expertise? An in-house team can create ads exactly as you want them for a whole lot less.
Quality, however, is a different story.
Sep 21, 2007
Yom Kippur
The Toad Stool will be closed from sundown Friday September 21 (EDT) through sundown Saturday September 22 in observance of Yom Kippur
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