Strategy

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

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

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

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

How Much is a Like Worth?

Advertising, Brand, Social influence, Social media, Strategy 1 Comment

Nothing. Zero. A Like on Facebook has zero value.

Yet so many brands are obsessed with Likes, as if this is the ultimate indicator of social media success. In award entries I judge, there are boasts of hundreds of thousands (or millions) of likes, which to me has all the credibility of a businessman boasting to his friends that a stripper in a gentleman’s club (has there ever been more of a misnomer?) winked at him. I know the love, or in this case the like, was bought. Most of the time, the more dollars you put into attracting (buying) Likes, the more Likes you will get. And Likes by themselves are of no value.

Before you slam me in 140 characters, let me explain. Read More

Curiosity

Creative, Inspiration, Strategy, Technology 0 Comment

One of the many things we owe to the enquiring and brilliant mind of Sir Isaac Newton is our modern understanding of light and colour. Up until the late 1600s, white light was widely considered to be a pure and irreducible subtance. The notion that it constituted in some hidden way all the colours of the rainbow was not merely fanciful but arguably heretical.

And then one day Newton jammed a needle into his eye socket… Read More

Casanova’s secret

Advertising, Brand, Marketing, Social influence, Strategy 0 Comment

Brand X makes a good product but has what they deem to be a relatively small slice of it’s category, enough for business to tick over but should ideally be growing faster.

In addressing this issue Brand X, unfortunately, are prone to committing the number one biggest mistake in marketing.

They continually look at the problem from their own perspective, rather than their customers.

In fact, through market research and focus groups Brand X has recently discovered, the WRONG people are buying their product.

This annoys conceited Brand X because these customers that they DO have, don’t match the image the brand has of itself. Read More

Bet on Facebook or Google? Probably Google.

Advertising, Brand, Marketing, Strategy 0 Comment

Friends outside the industry have been asking me a lot recently about whether I think Facebook is over or undervalued. Now to be clear, though I have had a number of finance clients in the past, I am far from an expert on the workings of the stockmarket.

What I can tell people though, based on experience as an agency working with Facebook, and having an understanding of why brands advertise, is that Facebook is going to struggle (though even Google has some impending problems). Quick disclaimer: Google is one of our clients. Read More

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