Eaon Pritchard

Eaon Pritchard

Head of Innovation

Eaon’s talent is hard to put in a box. As former Director of Digital Innovation at Clemenger and with over 15 years experience in interactive/digital marketing, advertising and product development in both the UK and Australia, we guess you could say he is the godfather of social marketing. Eaon has developed award winning cross-media marketing programs with brands like Coca Cola, Xbox360, EA Games, Snickers, M&Ms, the PR Grand Prix at Cannes and National Australia Bank applying his expertise in marketing strategy at the intersection of people, brands and social technologies.

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Posts by Eaon

why economists get things wrong

behavioural economics 0 Comment

This video from Irish economist, broadcaster and author David McWilliams opens with this observation – is it not ridiculous that we should be listening to the economic ‘forecasts’ from those very same experts who, of course, completely failed to forecast the current crisis coming in the first place?

The core issue being neglected by the ‘experts’ that as soon as humans are involved (ie always) then standard economic theory goes out the window, and all kinds of foibles and biases come into play.

McWilliams’ own flavour of behavioural economics influenced analysis is labelled Punk Economics and this clip is part of a series of films under the same banner. All of which are ably illustrated by Mark Flood and can be viewed via their YouTube channel.

David says ‘Economics and economic analysis has become similarly overblown and self-indulgent. Worse still, many (not all) economists have failed to make it simple, easy and comprehensible for the vast majority of people, something economics must be, if it’s to be of any use to us.’

Plastic bags and customer journeys

Marketing, Strategy 0 Comment

Many years ago I was involved in an indie record shop.

For the benefit of younger readers we were purveyors of 12inch diameter round pieces of plastic on which a groove was etched. When activated these grooves produced music.

If you’ve seen or read High Fidelity then this will give you something of a flavour.

It was a bit of a shambolic operation at the best of times but I only got an actual bollocking once from the owner.

Post-bollocking I never made the same mistake again.

It wasn’t for ordering too much stock of some obscure Italian jazz-house oddity.

It wasn’t for not opening up until mid-day because of some hangover or other.

Nor was it for keeping the best promo’s for myself (I was also a club dj of some repute)… Read More

acquiescence

Agencies, Marketing, Strategy 0 Comment

Here’s a trap that we often find ourselves falling into.

Even when you know this it’s hard to stop yourself repeating it.

Take this example.

Your agency has just produced a new piece of work and it’s worthy of making a noise about.

So the project leader will send a company wide email asking for support via tweets and Facebook status updates from the group to help spread the word.

All good so far, except usually no-one responds and only very few comply with the request.

It’s an example of what is known ‘diffusion of responsibility’ and is closely related to what psychologists call the ‘bystander effect’. Read More

find products for your customers

Advertising, Marketing, Technology 0 Comment

I remember this story from last year about the kid who invented a doorbell which calls the householder’s mobile phone if nobody answers the door.

Laurence Rook, the 13 year old boy from Croydon in South London, said he got the idea after noticing his mother had missed several deliveries by not being in the house.

Laurence licensed his invention off to the tune of circa 250k.

At the time it struck me that the combined innovation departments of BT, Orange, T-mobile, Vodafone and goodness knows who else from the telco sector had failed to notice this simple customer insight/problem, yet a 13 year-old kid, paying attention, had come up with fantastic piece of utility using a sim card and some bits and pieces lying about the house.

Another one that the telco’s have missed cropped up on FIR: the Hobson and Holtz Report podcast that I listened to this morning in the car.

This was the first time I’d heard of Connectify, a software based router for Windows computer that shares wi-fi connections your other devices.

One of the principal benefits for the business, or otherwise, traveller being that in many hotels the wi-fi access is limited to one device at a time – Connectify solves that conundrum.

Again, one has to wonder why this had to be invented by a small start-up (the software’s development was funded via crowd-funding platform Kickstarter, by the way)
when there was a simple customer insight to be leveraged and yet none of the telco’s saw the opportunity.

I’m reminded of this simple maxim that Seth Godin is often quoted on, in regard to where businesses should look for innovation opportunities and to temper the impulses that lead them to be hellbent on acquisition of new customers.

‘Don’t just look to finding customers for your products, find products for your customers.’

System justification

Advertising, Agencies, Strategy 0 Comment

‘Systems are inherently brittle and retain authority only as long as we treat them as having authority’, according to Beaudrillard.

As humans, of course, we have this inherent authority bias, never more apparent than in the famous Stanford Prison experiment that we rediscovered recently.

The experiment was conducted at Stanford University from August 14 to August 20 of 1971 by a team of researchers led by professor Philip Zimbardo to examine the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard, with pretty startling results.

While likening the advertising establishment to the situation Zimbardo was attempting to evoke is probably a bit harsh,  the system justification we persistently hear describes how multi-channel advertising campaigns are nearly twice as effective as their traditional counterparts. Read More

It ain’t where you’re from, it’s where you’re at

Advertising, Agencies 0 Comment

 

At Sputnik Planning Labs we love our cognitive biases; and a particular favourite is the one sometimes called ‘the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon’ or more commonly the ‘frequency illusion’.

This particular foible being the illusion in which a word, name, phrase or other thing that has recently come to one’s attention suddenly appears ‘everywhere’ with ridiculous frequency.

So, if you’ve never heard of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, never fear, you’ll absolutely be hearing about it again soon.

In this case it’s the phrase ‘world class’, and the context principally Australian advertising.

This or that campaign or spot is ‘world class’. This CD/Planner/other is ‘world class‘, this or that agency are ‘world-class’. Read More

Larry, Woody and me

Strategy 0 Comment

Some comedians and comedy writers would make excellent planners.

Larry David would have been a classic, for instance.

‘Anyone can be confident with a full head of hair. But a confident bald man – there’s your diamond in the rough.’

Also

‘If you tell the truth about how you’re feeling, it becomes funny.’

Insight, is the comedy writers stock in trade.
Read More

Momentum and strategy

Advertising, behavioural economics, Brand, Social media, Strategy 0 Comment

I’ve always thought that the single most valuable skill of a strategist or planner, if you prefer, is the ability to be constantly on the alert, noticing things and then interpreting them.

This is called having insight.

It doesn’t have to be an earth shattering revaluation, just ‘apprehending the true nature of things’.

Our thanks then go to our Tahlia, in the Sputnik Insight and Planning Lab, who noticed this yesterday and pointed the rest of us to it.

An excellent short sequence of heavily loaded tweets – posted below – from the Obama 2012 campaign that clearly demonstrates that – despite Cass R. Sunstein’s recent departure from the Obama camp – applied behavioural economics are still very much part of the Obama strategy. Read More

Do not track

Advertising, Marketing, Technology 0 Comment

Certain unscrupulous corners of the advertising world, those on the dark side of the (other) digital divide, are not best pleased.

It appears that Microsoft are sticking to Plan A and shipping ‘Do-Not-Track’ as the default option in Internet Explorer 10.

Do Not Track is a web privacy scheme that tells online advertisers to NOT collect or use data specific to a user’s web activity.

Advertisers can still show ads, obviously, but they would not be allowed to record that a user browsed certain car websites, for example, and then proceed show car ads where ever they go.

While these advertisers were reported to be willing to put up with ‘Do-Not-Track’, they were only accepting the basis that it was certain to be something that users had to actually enable and activate for themselves. Read More

Shot by both sides

Advertising, Brand, Inspiration, Marketing, Strategy 1 Comment

In the quest for enlightenment extremes of self-indulgence on the one side and self-mortification on the other are not advised by the Buddha.

Thus the recommendation, as described by the Noble Eightfold Path, is often called the Middle Way.

Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration.

Notice there’s no specific mention of Right Facebooking and Right Tweeting (though these are covered as subsections of all of the above).

For the new marketing provocateur this, however, presents another problem. Read More

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