Separate But Equal

My buddy Ian Schafer has a great post today about the increased use of mobile internet and what that means for advertising.

And seeing how Research In Motion (Blackberry) has increased its share of the market to 44.5% of all smartphones got me to thinking about something I’d posted about on MP Daily Fix a few months back: I have a sneaking suspicion that “smartphones” may be a misnomer.

Because I don’t think we’re going to use our mobile internet devices (MIDs) as phones down the road.

Already, I see many people who keep two phones: a regular cell phone for making and getting calls, and a Blackberry or iPhone for emails and web browsing. (Full disclosure: I am one of “those people.”) In fact, a recent study showed that a full third of iPhone users keep a second phone for phone calls.

Now there are multiple, overlapping reasons for this.

For me, and many others, it’s the ability to keep work and personal lives separate. So that if I’m going to the movies on a weekend, I can take my cell phone in case the car breaks down or the baby sitter calls, while leaving emails and all matters work-related at home on the dresser, on my Blackberry.

Which leads to reason number two: since many smartphones are employer-provided, people are often hesitant to use them for personal matters, both for ethical and privacy reasons.

But I think there’s also another, bigger reason, one that we may not be consciously aware of: calling has fallen out of favor.

It was only about 5 years ago, that checking your voicemail was a reflex action after you emerged from a long meeting. Now you check your email. Who calls anybody anymore?

In a business setting, phone calls are reserved for emergency or immediate messages: Smith’s plane never took off—the meeting’s cancelled. There's a meeting in Conference Room C- we're all around the corner in Room D instead. We rarely just call to chat, let alone exchange relevant information.

Part of that is due to the ease of email and IM and other communication that allows us to avoid face-to-face conversations. But part of that is due to the fact that it’s just easier—and more socially acceptable in many situations-- to read something than to talk, out loud, about it.

Think about all the meetings you’ve been at where other people have been surreptitiously (or not so surreptitiously) checking their email during the meeting. Or the places you’ve been forced to wait-- a doctor’s office, an airport, a restaurant—where talking on the phone would have seemed rude but emailing or browsing the internet on a smartphone was perfectly acceptable because it was (a) silent (b) private and (c) something you could pause at any moment.

So given all the myriad ways and reasons why we’ve separated voice calls from reading-focused activities (email, IM web browsing) it stands to reason that we’ll continue to separate them on our mobile devices. Leaving us one device that lets us do all sorts of visual and typing related things (email, browsing, texting, photos, video) and another that's just an interactive talking device. (e.g. a phone.)

It will change the way we view our portable media devices, for sure. And if nothing else, it’ll certainly make the product designers jobs a lot easier.

Worth Checking Out

Two nice blog posts worth checking out this weekend:

David Armano, over at Logic + Emotion writes about the mistakes marketers are making right now in "Marketing's Wheel of Misfortune." It's got one of his trademark graphics on it and it's a nice easy-to-digest summary of all that ails us these days. Good summer reading that will have you nodding along in agreement. (And the graphic is a good thing to print out and have on hand next time you find yourself in one of those situations.)

Jason Heller has an excellent-- and very true-- rant over on his blog The Digital Blur. It's called It's Not A Magical Parallel Universe, It's Just The Internet and it covers all the ways that traditional and digital agencies shoot themselves-- and each other in the foot by not playing well together. It offers a very common sense approach to looking at the changing media landscapes and even provides some link love for a very special blogger. A bit weightier and more thought provoking than the first piece, but definitely worth spending some time with.

Finally, I'm going to spread the word about a wonderful little app I've discovered. It's called PandoraBoy and it's definitely changed how I listen to music at work. It's nothing more than a free-standing client app for Pandora, the internet music service that lets you create your own personalized radio stations. Pandora normally works through a browser and I was forever accidentally closing the window it was open it, thus reducing its daily use viability. But with Pandora Boy I can listen to any of the dozens of stations I've created without having to worry about accidentally quitting. Small thing, but it's made me very happy this week, so I thought I'd share.

And The Brand Played On

Today’s Wall Street Journal has an interesting story on the Sharper Image, the ultimate 80s mall store, and how they’ve come to realize there’s more money to be made in selling the brand than in selling the stores.

Having filed for bankruptcy back in February 2008, their plan is now to sell Sharper Image branded merchandise directly to retailers. The idea is that mid-market retailers like Target or Best Buy would benefit from the aura of carrying high tech Sharper Image merchandise. The article quotes Hilco Consumer Capital Chief Executive James Salter who says “Some brands are retailers and some are better as wholesalers. Sharper Image is better as a wholesaler.”

And while Sharper Image was full of gimmicky “why would anyone need that” merchandise of the sort found in the back of airline magazines, there was a certain cachet to their products, especially in the early years. They were, after all, one of the forerunners of yuppie consumer culture, one of the first brands that said “hey, it’s okay to spend money on something just because it looks really cool.” And by “cool” they meant sleek and business/techy looking, which, for those of you too young to remember, was kind of a breakthrough concept back in say 1984.

Turning a retailer with a strong brand image into a wholesaler is an interesting play. Sharper Image has always had a strong brand image: you knew exactly what the store was about and what the products said about the people who bought them. (Even if that message was “I spent too much money on something no one really needs.”) And their ability to have a second act, to revive the brand is directly attributable to that strong brand image.

Which is why it’s so important for brands to stay true to who they are. To keep not just their advertising, but their products and designs and user experiences, on track. Because a consistent brand is a brand that can live forever. Or for a very long time, anyway.

Adweek!

Adweek ran a version of my popular piece "Your Brand Is Not My Friend" (albeit with a slightly different headline) on Monday in both the online and offline (print) editions. I was particularly thrilled because it's a chance to get my ideas in front of a brand-new audience, especially those marketers and agency types who don't read blogs.

And as the above chart indicates, they seem to like it.

Like a reformed tax-and-spend politician who's suddenly seen the light, ad agencies are busy telling anyone who'll listen that they're not about selling anymore.

No, what they're into now is "storytelling" and "conversation." Because you see, consumers aren't really customers anymore. They're friends. But come on guys, who are you really fooling? Your brand is not my friend. READ THE REST ON ADWEEK.COM

Something Extra: Guest Post on Sean Howard's Craphammer

My friend Sean Howard, a Toronto-based marketing consultant, asked me to write a guest column for him the other day on his most excellent blog Craphammer. Given his audience, I wrote about the need to maintain high standards in terms of casting, writing and design when undertaking social media projects:

While we tend to think of “social media” as something scientific in nature, the truth is, it is every bit as subjective and dependent on executional considerations as traditional ad devices like TV commercials and print ads.

Take casting, for instance. READ THE REST HERE

Twittering Teddy

How 2.0: Make a Twittering Teddy Bear from My Home 2.0 DIY on Vimeo.

A few weeks back, Steve Coulson, from The Advance Guard, was telling me about a project he was working on that featured an animatronic teddy bear that could actually speak your tweets.

Well the bear's been live for about a week now, as part of a promotion for Verizon FIOS and My Home 2.0. The site features a video showing exactly how the show's "Techno-Gurus" made the bear (see above) and the bear itself is currently being auctioned off on eBay to benefit the Homeless Children's Education Fund.

Teddy's been a fairly active Twitterer and seems to understand the medium and it's conversational nature better than many humans.

What's more, the site's gotten a lot of press, both inside and outside the Twitterverse and helps cement the impression that FIOS is an advanced technology that helps you do cool things.

All without ever actually saying those words or anything remotely as heavy handed: social media plays are never about copy points and selling, always about giving people something memorable, fun and/or useful and getting out of the way and letting them draw their own conclusions.

Nicely done.

It's Not My Job, Man

Years ago, when I worked at the legendary Anderson & Lembke, Steve Trygg (who started the shop) was fond of saying that “an ad agency can be the contractor or it can be the architect. And you always want to be the architect.”

Now what he meant is that you could be the trusted partner the client went to for advice and guidance on all matters strategic.

Or you could be the guys who made the ads.

And since “the guys who make the ads” were a dime a dozen, you wanted to be a bit less replaceable.

I was reminded of his point last week when I witnessed a somewhat disturbing exchange over on BBH London CD Simon Veksner's Scamp blog. He had praised a series of spots from Droga Five for a start-up phone service called Net 10. And with good reason: they’re wonderfully entertaining spots.

So entertaining, that I set out to see if Net 10 was worth switching to.

And there, as the saying goes, my troubles began.

Like any reasonably savvy consumer, I turned to Google and entered the phrase Net 10 Phone Service Reviews. What came up were a bunch of mediocre reviews from fairly reputable sites (e.g. amazon.com) almost all of which mentioned the company’s horrible customer service.

So no Net 10 for me.

Now what was particularly disturbing about this is that the entire ad campaign is based on the premise that other phone companies are “evil” and Net 10 is not. And if you’re going to be calling other phone companies evil, you’d better not have dozens of online reviewers throwing that moniker back at you. I mean you’d better be loved and adored by all who come into contact with you. And love and adoration were notably missing from the vast majority of the reviews.

I noted this fact on Veksner’s blog and urged some of the readers who’d praised the campaign to try googling the company themselves. And while there were some who got why this made the Net 10 campaign fairly moot, especially in the midst of the Real Digital Revolution, a number of the ad creatives who read the blog did not.

They took the attitude, expressed by one poster that “Droga 5 are doing THE ADVERTISING, Net 10 do THE PHONE BIT including the service and therefore cannot be responsible for user reviews.”

And that attitude, in a nutshell, is why our industry is in the position it’s in.

We’ve turned ourselves into the contractors. The guys who make the ads. Who cares about the strategy, who cares about the actual product, if the ads are funny and clever and likely to win awards?

And clients get that. They get that in spades.

That’s why they turn to PR agencies like Edelman and strategy shops like Naked and even management consulting firms like Bain and McKinsey to do all the work their agencies should be doing. Because they know that too many agencies can’t even be bothered to use Google to see if the product actually lives up to the brief. Can’t be bothered to realize that for most non packaged-goods items, the consumer pattern is now ad -Google-purchase. Not ad-purchase. (And that “ad” now encompasses a range of things from TV commercials to social media mentions.)

Now the real danger here is that if all you’re doing is making an ad, you don’t need an agency. You need a general contractor.

As for me, I’ll be over at the drafting table with all the architects.

Unfriendly Skies

So the talk this time of year, on the lush green playing fields and crystal blue pools of my leafy upscale burb is of summer vacation plans.

And even the most upscale of my neighbors are talking about how avoiding an airplane trip is at the top of their agenda.

Every conversation is identical: the virtual doubling of airfares coupled with what's perceived to be the complete disintegration of service has lead people to find ways to avoid air travel.

And for many of my neighbors, it's not even a question of money-- it's perceived value, or lack thereof.

A summer airline trip is now seen as nothing more than a series of all-but-guaranteed lines and flight delays followed by hours in a cramped uncomfortable cabin with surly service and no guarantee of making it to one's destination remotely on time. Cross country flights, which were once the province of spacious 747s are now flown by small single-aisle planes where even the first class seats seem like coach.

So if you're an airline, that's either a kick in the ribs or an opportunity to prove you understand your customer's pain.

Because if an airline were to run a campaign that was honest, that took the position "hey, things have gotten a bit rough, prices are up, delays are more frequent, we'll do what we can to make it up to you," I suspect that campaign would resonate with consumers in a big way.

Anyone who's been on an airplane lately knows that all that all the usual happy talk is just wishful thinking-- even airlines like JetBlue and Virgin Atlantic who normally do a great job are at the mercy of lengthy security lines, overscheduled flight patterns and erratic weather conditions. So a little honestly would go a long, long way.

Any takers?