the fruits of imagination

The Colbert Effect

Have you ever watched Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central? He is a daily case study on how to talk to teenagers and 20-somethings alike. He has the power to get his "nation," as he calls it, to rally behind him for whatever cause he chooses. Case in point, the WristStrong Bracelet. He recently broke his wrist and is now promoting wrist awareness through the purchase of a WristStrong Bracelet. The only rule is that you must surrender it to someone more famous then you. Pure Genius.

Another example is his gag on Wikipedia. He got his "nation" to go to the infamous website and edit the Elephant post so that it said that the population had tripled in Africa last year.  For months after, both his wiki entry and the elephant post were locked by the administrators because of the resulting attack. You'd almost think that getting through to teens was easy based on how well he can connect with them.

Colbert Green Screen Challenge: made by a fan

His target audience loves his monologues lampooning this person or that person. They love his challenges that get people involved in the show like this one and this one. He has a venerable teen nerd army that he bends to his will.The best part is that those examples are just the tip of the iceberg.

Between Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, they can sway the opinion of many youngsters around North America.But how should the rest of the world go about it? Sure it works for Colbert and his team of writers but how about your average run-of-the-mill marketing person?

In my humble opinion, the Colberts and Stewarts of the world work because they thoroughly understand their audience. And I mean, thoroughly. I can't vouch for their research practices but whatever they are doing is working. All I can suggest is that you watch the show, just once. Even if you don't like it, you will be able to grasp why teens and 20-somethings are enthralled by it.

Marketers have their research and their man-on-the-street consumer interviews and many think that is enough. But after all that nonsense is done, we still get mediocre advertising that screams "We're trying to be cool!" Just look at my post on Walmart/Target yesterday. I know I am preaching to the choir about this issue but the fact remains that, like the quote says, "I know that half of my advertising dollars are wasted ... I just don't know which half."

I'll bet that a lot of the waste was meant for the youth demographic.

I know that everyone has seen great examples of consumer involvement with a brand. Does anyone have any favourites that they'd like to share?

Contributed by: Angus Gastle

Another Facebook Charade

Walmart has decided to take a more serious gamble on this whole Facebook subject. They have recently started a branded Facebook group called Walmart Roommate Style Match. At 1,183 members (as of Aug. 29th), it is one of the smaller corporate sponsored groups but congrats to Walmart for getting that many people interested in the brand. It was intended to be a Back to Dorm focused communication that allowed your average university student to get involved and interact with Walmart. A pretty good idea in theory. But as always, the execution is a little bit more complicated than the idea.

Take for example, this comment/post:

David Valenzuela (UCLA)
wrote at 10:54am

Every Toy Recalled In The U.S. Shares The Same Label: Made In China http://consumerist.com/consumer/chinese-poison-train/every-toy-recalled-in-the-us-shares-the-same-label-made-in-china-270323.php

1.5 Million Thomas & Friends Toys Recalled Due To Lead Paint From China http://consumerist.com/consumer/chinese-poison-train/15-million-thomas--friends-toys-recalled-due-to-lead-paint-from-china-268658.php

China: Consuming Low Levels Of Poison "Not Harmful" http://consumerist.com/consumer/diethylene-glycol/china-consuming-low-levels-of-poison-not-harmful-265484.php

Two Hospitalized After Eating Deadly Mislabeled Chinese Pufferfish http://consumerist.com/consumer/chinese-poison-train/two-hospitalized-after-eating-deadly-mislabeled-chinese-pufferfish-263740.php

In fact, the Walmart Facebook page has been hijacked and is now being used as the mouthpiece for anti-Walmart dialogue and discussion. It just goes to show that buying media from Facebook is still a relatively new concept and can be underutilized or completely mishandled very easily.

Target has also purchased a Back to Dorm group on Facebook called Brave New Dorm. Their use of the space is decidedly better than Walmart's although there still is some nominal chatter about low wages and how they treat their employees. If you put all that aside, there are some really great comments about how much time people spend there and how it is such a great place to go. Plus, they have 6,684 people (as of Aug. 29th) in their group! Nice job.

In summary, it is obvious that people are still working out how to use Facebook in a useful manner to promote their brand. Some, like Walmart, are getting burned a little by their experiments but on the whole marketers are becoming more web savvy everyday. There is so much opportunity here, I can't wait to see where we go in the future.

Contributed by: Angus Gastle

Planning for Good, New Orleans, and the Idea Village

The first assignment has been posted in the experiment that is Planning For Good. The brief is for the city of New Orleans; specifically for an amazing organization called the Idea Village.

The challenge is fascinating. While most of the coverage of New Orleans has focused on the problems and negatives, another story has quietly emerged: the city has become a magnet of sorts for adventurous young people with energy, a sense of purpose, and a realization that this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience to help re-invent a city. As Forbes Magazine has said:

"Now, instead of the brain drain, the city is nurturing a brain gain. New Orleans has become the testing ground for a new career and lifestyle ideal among today's 20-somethings."

The Idea Village is positioned at the heart of that. It's a not-for-profit that helps to fund and support innovative entrepreneurial ventures (about 250 so far) to not just rebuild New Orleans, but to turn it into a world-class model city.

The brief is to help the Idea Village build their brand, so they in turn can help build New Orleans. How should the Idea Village define and articulate who they are and what they do? How can they attract and motivate these smart young people moving to New Orleans?

See the Planning For Good page on Facebook for more detail on the brief and how to submit your ideas. Additional information and thoughts from the client will also be posted there as we get it. If you're Facebook averse, leave a comment here, at Influx, or at Brand New and someone will send you stuff.

Please take a look at the brief and give it some thought. If every one of the talented and generous people (that means you) in the marketing blogosphere spends a few hours on this, some amazing stuff will happen.

We have one month to collaborate and collect ideas to send back to the Idea Village. Contributions from anyone are very welcome (you certainly don't need to be a planner). And while we hope to get some big, fully developed ideas, any little thoughts or even questions are also encouraged - they might spark an idea in someone else.

New Helmet Ads from Australia

From DDB, Australia comes these inspired bicycle safety PSAs on wearing helmets. Personally, I'm not sure if I connect vegetables with helmets and the copy does not help. I originally thought it was for a grocery store.

However, they are visually stunning and will generate some buzz on the interweb if nothing else.

Coca Cola Happiness Factory Documentary

Wieden + Kennedy, Amsterdam has come out with a faux documentary on their Silver Cannes winning spot entitled "Coca Cola Happiness Factory". It is a series of short vignettes that dive a little deeper into the lives of the creatures that live in the Coca Cola vending machine. Very intriguing stuff. If anyone knows where or if this is running anywhere, please let us know.

You can see the documentary, in all its glory, below.

UPDATE: Thanks to Tim Keil. check out the Coca-Cola Happiness Factory Mini-Movie below.

SPAM vs. Email Advertising

Have you ever stopped to read a spam message? It may look something like this, (actual message from my gmail account).

Subject: Adobe Adobe Professional

Body: Cheap chaep Adobe products!!! Click here best price on all software. (link removed) Adobe Professsional $199.99 USD. Limited time offer!!!!

Like 99% of other computer users, I just delete the messages before I even read them. According to CudaMail.com, it costs companies like Leo Burnett Canada about $50,000 a year. Even if their employees are deleting the emails without opening them. However, it only costs serious spammers about $0.0125/message to flood our in-boxes with emails hocking everything from Viagra to Coding.

The sad part is that some people still fall for these scams. Just how many? Let's look at the math.

The serious spam mer sends upwards of 100,000,000 emails* at a time (using zombie networks, this is entirely possible) at an approx. cost of .00125/email:

100,000,000 x $0.0125 = $125,000 to send the email that tried to sell me Adobe Professional.

At that rate, they would need <1% to reply in order to break even. Not bad odds.

So what does this have to do with advertising? Well, our legit email marketing campaigns are getting caught up with all of this spam. Many spam filters are collecting our perfectly crafted sales pitches for real products with real benefits much like this one. Marketers are spending thousands on messages that might not ever see the eyes of their consumers!

If you have not started doing so, forward the suspicious messages you receive to http://www.FTC.gov/spam/ as they will use the messages to track down and prosecute the slammers. And hopefully, we can start to win the fight against spam! Contributed by: Angus Gastle

 

* Does that number seem high? AOL blocks up to 10 Billion Spam messages per day!

Online research under fire

Amidst all of the talk about the declining effectiveness of advertising, and the corresponding rise in advertising avoidance, another point is starting to be more discussed: market research has the same problem. I know I've been banging on for a while about how we tend to ask people questions they can't answer, but this is something even more endemic. 

The thing is, market research shares a core problem with marketing - it's an industry that annoys people with unwelcome, boring interruptions. 
When we do that with marketing, people stop paying attention to marketing, which makes marketing less effective.
When we do that with market research, people stop answering market research, which makes research less valid. 

Online research was supposed to avoid some of that - no more telemarketers calling during dinner, no more cumbersome 20-page mail surveys. But unfortunately it hasn't turned out that way.

Advertising Age pointed out last week that "growing doubts about the validity of online market research have prompted the Advertising Research Foundation to form a council to draft new standards aimed at stemming erosion of client credibility."  This stems from a roundtable meeting held last fall where several marketers called online quant into question. P&G presented evidence of two identical surveys done a week apart, with the same supplier, which returned completely opposite results. The ARF has since commented that "reports of the failure of online studies to replicate when repeated are becoming more common." What's worse, ComScore has done research into online surveys that "showed that 0.25% of the online population accounts for 32% of responses... while less than 5% account for more than half of the responses."

The ARF is responding (as it usually does) by forming a committee: The Online Research Quality Council will hold its first meeting September 10, and aim to establish a set of industry standards for evaluation by next spring. I imagine they'll end up recommending something like better screening and incentives. But surely the problem runs deeper than than any quick methodological fix - in an era of conversations and choice and control, is answering a bunch of awkwardly worded questions for a market research survey just not something most people care to do anymore? After all, as Max Kalehoff has pointed out, most market research surveys are actually highly negative experiences for the brand. If I'm already skipping a :30 ad, surely I'll also skip a 30 minute questionnaire. 

Almost all of our clients now rely on online research as their primary source of quant.  Anybody else a little bit worried about this turn of events?

Dear architects

I'm late to this, but it's kind of awesome.

A year ago, the writer Annie Choi penned an open letter to architects in Pidgin, the magazine of the Princeton School of Architecture. The letter is titled "Dear Architects, I am sick of your shit."  It caused (and continues to cause) a bit of a stir in the architecture world, and even apparently earned her a supportive note from Rem Koolhaas. It's a rant against self-importance in the architecture industry and a lack of healthy perspective about what actually matters to people, and it is by turns lyrical, vulgar, and hilarious. But honestly, it also could easily have been written about the marketing industry.

To follow some of the discussion from architects read the comments here and here.

Trends in Organic Cotton

Continuing on from Jason's post, the green movement truly is the wave of the future. But I'd like to talk more specifically about Organic Cotton. In 2006, sales in the organic cotton market nearly doubled to ~$1.1 Billion with international retailers like Walmart and Nike starting to really push their organic clothing lines and offers. As the market grows explodes, it will be interesting to see how retailers react.

Organic Cotton Market
2001	2005
100+ SMB Retailers	30+ Major Retailers
Global Sales $245 Mil.	Global Sales $583 Mil.
Demand 5,720 Metric Tons	Demand 32, 326 Metric Tons
Supply 6,480	Supply 31,017 Metric Tons

Let me also mention that the market is growing 110% annually and is projected to be $2.6 Billion by 2008 which is an increase of 116%. In addition, by 2008 consumers are expected to be consuming 99,662 Metric Tons which is an annual growth of 75%. Therefore, it is sufficient to say that the players in the organic market are set to reap a large ROI.

Interestingly enough, the top consumer of organic cotton is Nike followed closely by Coop Switzerland (Grocery Store), Patagonia, Otto (Major German Retailer) and Walmart.

Other big players in the market include H&M with their new H&M organics line, Roots and their 100% environmentally friendly yoga studio, American Apparel and their Sustainable Edition line to name a few. These companies are starting to embrace the needs of their consumers and have the opportunity to corner the market on organic cotton. H&M specifically has a very cool organic baby line that will appeal to all mothers who want the best for the baby. (On that note, congratulations to Neil & Laurie and their new baby boy!!)

As Jason mentioned, pressure from the market is quickly mounting on all companies to employ more environmentally friendly standards and sell products that are better for the earth. The real selling points for me on this discussion are the numbers above. $2.6 Billion by 2008, 110% market growth year-over-year, almost 100,000 metric tons... the numbers are staggering.  The opportunities in this arena are huge. Only a handful of companies have made a real commitment to the environment (Patagonia and Cotton Ginny are 100% Organic). With so much demand for organics already and an ever increasing profit margin for the companies that decide to play ball, how much longer can the Walmarts of the world really wait? Contributed by: Angus Gastle

Sources: Organic Exchange, Google, Press Releases

AdAge Power 150

Todd Andrlik has been compliling a list of the top marketing and media blogs in the world for the past six months or so. It was a very useful service, and a great way to find other interesting blogs, so much so that earlier this month Advertising Age magazine partnered with him to start publishing the list under their name - it can be found here.
I particularly like this quote from Jonah Bloom, AdAge editor:

"The fact we’ll now also be ranking the media and marketing blogs says a lot about how important that community has become in a very short time."

And happily we make the cut (around 130 today). It's quite a humbling list to be on, given its global scope, and being peopled with the likes of Seth Godin, Joseph Jaffe, Richard Edelman, and Russell Davies. What's still amazing to me is we're one of only about 4 agencies on the list.

The rankings are mostly based on the size of your readership and how many links you receive, so thanks to all of you for your support, for making us a small part of your day, and for helping us acheive this honour.