the fruits of imagination

Creative Reach & Frequency

far more interesting than a print ad, far more experiential, far more compelling... and likely delivering the equivalent reach and frequency of a traditional buy. nicely done.

An advertisement by Jung von Matt/Alster for watchmaker IWC. Bus straps have been fashioned from images of IWC’s Big Pilot’s Watch to allow bus travellers near the airport to try before they buy at Berlin, Germany.

a different angle on behaviour

  

The digital explosion we’ve witnessed over the last 10 years may not be the result of technology itself  - the internet and it’s many attendant mobile devices - but an unequivocal demonstration of pent up consumer demand resulting from fundamental shifts in behaviour. The internet and digital devices just happen to be the penultimate media which can, and has satisfied, peoples altered behavioural needs.

WALLED GARDEN TO FREE RANGE:

•    Where only a generation ago, our collective world view was formed within a walled garden of limited media access and selection, yet today we can globally peruse some 22,000 magazine titles across 276 verticals (specific interest areas), tune into 15,464 TV channels, and jump to any one of 5 billion websites globally.

•    For brands this is critical: centrally controlled editorial is extinct and real access to information and opinion exist at will: any time, any where and well beyond the control of the company, brand or marketing.

PASSIVE TO EXHIBITIONIST

•    Technology has given us power… and the time of the passive consumer has past. Today, right now….people are assimilating facts, fallacies and forming perspectives on brands….our brands, and significantly shaping if not controlling the brand's narrative, image and value.

•    People are actively commenting on, co-creating and -re-creating brand equity through the 200 million blogs on typepad, the 4 million entries in wikipedia and 65,000 youtube posts, rants and raves that occur each and everyday worldwide.

•    Where only 10 years ago, people we used to call show offs, grandstanders, big mouths and braggers had but a small town stage on which to play, these same people now known as bloggers perform to a hungry and attentive worldwide audience.

•    This online exhibitionism has become a behavioural condition of the digital explosion to be heard, understood and passed along.

BLIND TRUST TO ONLINE ACTIVISM

•    76% of people don’t trust advertisers to tell them the truth, 64% of people trust companies less than they did a year ago and food specifically is trusted by only 55% of people.

•    With people saying “I can no longer rely on one source of information or what I’m being told’ the masses are turning to their peers online for the real, unmitigated scoop and perceived value found in collective wisdom: 61% of people trust others like themselves…except now those ‘others’ are not local but global ,or few but many, and connected to together anywhere and at anytime placing marketing very much in the hands of others than ourselves.

TELL TO ATTRACT

•    Brands can no longer push out commoditized and functional messages to a supposedly desirous and passive audience and hope to get response.

•    “We’re a society driven by entertainment and in an entertainment culture, everything must compete with entertainment…” which demands that all content ..even brand content, be not only ever changing and but personally interesting and created with the rules of entertainment in mind.

•     And of all media, it is digital's fundamental ability to provide endless, instant and timely hyper personal entertainment - inclusive of information and education presented correctly -  that begins to explain increasing levels of internet penetration, time spent and astounding mobile adoption.

•    Digital then in essence is the one media hope that can most effectively arm current consumers with the most personally relevant tidbits to tell the best stories…. And brands whose consumers tell the best stories in the age of entertainment….win.

        This ‘new reality’ is markedly different than the fiction many brands continue to speak and live today - the way in which they market themselves to their respective consumer. The digital explosion is a result of an unexploited need and a fundamental shift in behaviour, which until digital remained dormant and inactive.

   

Burger King in Global Taste Test

In search of a truly valid taste test, the King took their burgers around the globe looking for people who have not been subjected to American culture.

Once again, Crispin proves that commercials without scripts are especially evocative. No director or writer could conceive the types of reactions these people give to the Whopper. The simple fact that they didn't know how to hold it left me in awe.

Source: Whopper Virgins

Audi R8 stars in another commercial

While I could have done with a few more moments of the R8 purring as it idles through the parking lot, all in all another great spot. Not quite as on point as the original but still damn fun.

Just for kicks, here's the original as well.

The New Microsoft campaign

Since the winter, we have all been wondering what Crispin Porter could do for Microsoft. It's an 800 pound gorilla with more than a few warts and at the best of times can be quite a handful.

For years they have been taking it on the chin from Apple whose snappy ads have been helping them steal market share. The goal this time around, at least for Microsoft, was to open up a conversation with consumers and educate them about Vista. But you must be careful what you wish for as the big secret is out and it less than glowing.

To be honest, it would have been nice to have a little more. Yes, their ads are funny (and must have cost a fortune at almost 5 minutes in length) but they lack a certain punch that Apple always delivers on. They play it safe with the mainstream variety of humour that you almost forget is supposed to be funny. And they don't mention the product very often and take time to highlight the fact that they aren't in touch with consumers; which in hindsight should be the other way around.

Their newest round of commercials feel like a completely separate campaign from the last one. Bill and Seinfeld were around for such a short period of time, they didn't even make an impact and they were already cut.

So far this campaign has been a bit of a moving target as it keeps changing every other week. But one could argue that their strategy hasn't changed. How would you describe it?

UPDATE: After re-watching the latest round of ads released today, I feel like the Mac vs PC stuff comes off a bit elitist.  Thoughts?

Heineken saves money on writers, enrages activists

The number 3 wrench in any creative’s tool kit is “Exaggerate the Benefit.” It can lead to deviously simply ideas that win award shows and garner bragging rights.

However it is also a fine line to tread, as Heineken found out in its latest ad for the famous brew. The suicide activists were on this ad quicker than the ones that went after that famed GM ad but it has yet to be pulled off the air.

It's simply just a dumb ad for a great beer in my books. That said, I would have liked to be at the meeting where they sold through the script…

My question is: Should Heineken stay the course against the critics or was this ad in bad taste?

Insightful Gifts for Everyone!

For my last post of 2007 to the Leo Burnett blog, I wanted to write something extra special. It’s also my first post to the Leo Burnett blog, so I wanted it to be doubly special. It’s also the Christmas season, so I wanted it to be filled with great Christmas wishes. I’m also Jewish, so I don’t know what those wishes should consist of. But I do know that people give gifts for Christmas. So I’m gonna give gifts. Gifts that consist of what we produce here at Leo Burnett: Insights. We also produce ideas and ads and briefs and stuff, but for my blog post I’m giving Insights.

Here’s a gift for you, MySpace: I read this year that people are flocking from MySpace to Facebook. And that the experts are attributing this to the “fickle” nature of teens. Yah, blame the teens. Don’t blame the fact that MySpace is a complicated, hard-to-use, non-user-friendly website, while Facebook is a clean, simple, easy-to-update and fun-to-use site. It’s the teens. And their fickleness.

Here’s a gift for you, Ad Agency Who Put A Guy In A Giant Snow Globe As Their Christmas Card: Your gift is me mentioning your snow globe stunt in my blog post. When making your Christmas “card,” you thought about what would actually be entertaining to watch. What hadn’t been done. What would get free media attention. Who says a card has to be a card? Not you, Ad Agency Who Put A Guy In Giant Snow Globe As Their Christmas Card. Not you.  P.S. Apparently, the motivation for snow globe boy was environmentalism: The ad agency wanted to go “green” this year by avoiding paper cards. Which makes me love you even more, Ad Agency. If you were a person and not an ad agency, I would ask you on a environmentally-friendly date.

Here’s a gift for you, Judd Apatow: Your insight is, Keep up the good work! I’m also giving you the gift of promoting your online promotion for your movie. In your promotion, you refer to the fact that it’s a promotion. And I’m promoting it. So this is all very self-referential, Post-Modern and, dare I say, Brechtian. Which is all very interesting. But the important lesson to take away from this is that your ad doesn’t say: “Hey, come see our movie. It’s funny. We swear.” Your ad instead IS funny. It’s a little short film that's entertaining to watch. It makes me laugh. And now, if I want to laugh more, I know where to go. To your movie! This is a lesson you could apply to your dating life: Don’t TELL the girl you’re nice and fun, BE nice and fun. Then she will want to be your boyfriend. This hasn't worked for me yet, but it's still a solid theory.

Here’s a gift for you, Burger King: I watched your video. Just liked I watched Judd’s video. Because your video about a Burger King where they told people they had discontinued The Whopper is hilarious. And also it’s powerful in terms of communicating how much people love their Whoppers. Which is the message I got from it. But the reason I stuck around for 5 minutes to receive that message is that the video was hilarious.

Here’s a gift for The Guy I Saw Last Night In The Annex Sitting In His Parked Car With His Window Open And His Engine Running: Idling your car for even just ten minutes a day wastes 100L of gas in a year. There, I just saved you more than a hundred bucks. Plus I saved you extra engine life, because idling is bad for your car. Plus extra LIFE life, because idling pollutes even more than when your car is moving. Also, I won’t glare at you anymore. Which is good. Because nobody likes to be glared at. Especially not at Christmas time.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Love,

Josh Rachlis
Copywriter at Leo Burnett, Toronto

Gorillas in our midst

I'm sure everyone has seen this by now.

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.

Pre-testing, part II

I've finally got around to writing a few more thoughts on what's turned into a healthy and productive conversation on pre-testing.  You can read the original post here and the response from Millward Brown’s Nigel Hollis here.  Be sure to read the comments too.

I should offer a bit of context first. Just as Nigel’s point of reference is Link, mine largely is not. My pre-testing experiences of the past few years have been with other suppliers, some of the major players and some smaller ones. I don’t have recent experience with Link because due to shifting client-supplier relationships I haven’t experienced pre-testing with MB in 3 ½ years. So we may be talking about different things. Nigel describes ways that Link differs from other methodologies, and some of their recent developments. I can’t comment on that, but some of it does sound like some positive steps. I should also say that I’ve liked what I have seen (at a distance) from MB in recent years – things like some of the changes to Link, their attempt to understand what drives PVR users to either skip or stop and watch advertising, and indeed Nigel’s blog itself. But before this starts sounding like a love letter to Millward Brown, let’s get down to business: some responses to Nigel, and some further thoughts on pre-testing.

One of the things I’d challenged pre-testing on was a tendency to focus on the rational. Now, as Nigel mentions, recently many pre-test methods have shifted to focus more on involvement, emotional relevance and brand engagement. This is certainly true, and a welcome development. The ARF has recently published a document called “Measures of Engagement Volume II” which gives a useful overview of many of the new developments in research methodologies (Link is one of those featured).

Even if we're asking better questions, there remains some debate about whether people really are conscious of all of our emotional responses. On this issue, Nigel observes (quoting Antonio Damasio) that while our decisions are emotionally based, “unless those emotions are experienced consciously, they will have little effect.” So, he continues, “people must be conscious of their reaction if an ad is to have a lasting effect on them.” As might be expected on such an interesting topic, there are differing opinions. Robert Heath, with all of his work on Low Involvement Processing, has come to some different conclusions. In that same ARF document “Measures of Engagement Volume II,” a paper of Heath’s is published as an introduction. In it he also extensively references Damasio, but he shows how conscious attention and emotional engagement are two separate constructs; and that there is “NO direct relationship between levels of attention and levels of engagement” (the emphasis is his). This paper is definitely worth the read.

However, regardless of the methodology or types of questions asked, I still think there’s a fundamental difficulty testing certain types of ads. Much of the problem comes down to stimulus – what do you actually test? I only mentioned stimulus briefly in the original post, but it deserves more discussion.

Let’s separate ads into two very broad camps. The first type of ad has clear rational messages, straightforward action & dialogue, and are set in a familiar setting like a kitchen. These ads are really about messaging. The other type of ad is not about messaging, but about experience – it is reliant on specific casting or special effects or production values, and aims less to inform or persuade than to create emotional response or impact culture.

Pre-testing of new ideas is (by its nature) done in pre-finished form. In the first kind of “message” advertising, it is easy to separate the idea from its execution. The production details like directing and casting generally are secondary. They serve to make a good idea better – more memorable, more interesting – but at a fundamental level, how the ad works remains the same whether produced at a high level or low, or indeed if described in a storyboard or animatic. This makes them easier to test in pre-finished form. And in these cases, I think pre-testing can be quite useful to ensure clarity of communication, relevance of the situation, etc.

In the second type of ad, we cannot separate the idea from the execution: the execution is the idea. These ads have less overt messaging, instead attempting to create a feeling towards the brand. Sometimes this is through telling emotional stories, such as Dove or Axe. Sometimes it is about creating a mood, sort of like a music video, the way Nike and iPod ads often do. And sometimes ads attempt to create something visually remarkable and never seen before – such as the Bravia and Honda work. In the era of YouTube and social networks, all of these try to encourage discussion and passing along, to create an “ohmygod have you seen that yet?” effect. And all rely on the specifics of casting and direction to work. I’ll reuse that quote from Unilever’s Simon Clift from the previous post – “With Dove, for example, it's how the girl comes across – her non-verbal gestures, the cut of her hair and whether she's sympathetic, that determine whether the message is believable. It's not the words put in her mouth…With Axe/Lynx particularly, there's no way you can tell whether this or that babe is going to be appealing to a 16-year-old boy from a line drawing.” We might be able to describe these ideas in simple terms, but their real power relies on how they are produced. At a fundamental level these ads won’t work the same way if they’re produced at a lower level or described in a storyboard or animatic form. Because of this, it can be meaningless to test these types of ads in pre-finished form, for the same reasons it would be meaningless to pre-test a description of an event or a video game or anything else that relies on an actual experience.

In these situations, one could still test a finished ad. For new ads this usually doesn’t make sense because once it’s produced, you’re not really able to significantly make any changes. It does however make perfect sense at other times, such as when you’re considering running a historical ad or an ad from another region to see how it would work with your audience.

So to summarize, I believe that pre-testing is biased towards certain types of ads because they are easier to test in a pre-finished format. This straightforward messaging style of advertising can be very effective. But it’s worth noting that the most highly successful advertising of the past few years falls into the second camp, and that most of those campaigns were not pre-tested.

I’d also like to mention a few other issues raised by Nigel. 

Nigel defends the predictive ability of Link by citing strong correlations with in-market sales tracking. It’s impossible to comment without having seen the actual data, but I remain doubtful for several reasons. One is that in my experience with market-mix-modeling and case study writing, I have to say I’m skeptical that the effects of advertising can really be effectively teased out from other market activity (I realize of course that lots of people spend lots of money trying to do exactly that). Markets are a highly complex system, and so many things influence sales that correlations can be misleading. Nigel does mention that some of his data do not “correct for the influence of other marketing variables” and it’s worth considering what that might be. Ads which pre-test well may build increased confidence in the marketing team that created them, translating to higher media spend, longer rotations on air, more excitement from their sales force, and so on, turning the prediction from the pre-test into a self-fulfilling prophecy (this is not necessarily a bad thing, of course). And if Nigel is relying on his clients for data then it also might not be a truly representative sample. I’ve too often seen marketers use their data selectively, discounting periods with poor sales results by blaming them on competitive activity, issues with distribution or sales teams, and so on.

He also makes a statement that is heard commonly – it’s echoed by some of the commenters – that making a decision without the benefit of pre-testing is “going on gut feel.” This makes it sound as if people are making important brand decisions on a whim, which is unfair. Nigel says “I’d prefer to base decisions on informed judgment than gut feel” [the emphasis is his]; however surely a decision made without pre-testing can still be well-informed. It’s a decision made by a team from the client and agency exercising the judgment for which they are supposedly paid, against specific brand objectives, after healthy debate, and ideally based on a significant amount of research early in the process to understand the audience, how they interact with media, and the role of the brand in their lives. To my mind, saying that is going on “gut feel” is a serious under-representation of the work and expertise involved. The sad thing is many marketers – in both client and agency organizations – have lost their faith in their ability to make exactly these kinds of judgments. In my experience, this type of research is more often used as a substitute for judgment, and as a way to minimize the potential for blame rather than as a way to maximize success.

Nigel also helpfully picks up on this point of the mindset of those involved, and we wholeheartedly agree with the need to be open-minded and flexible. He links to an earlier post with the great title “Is the Link pre-test the equivalent of the Smith & Wesson 500?” that, drawing parallels to the gun industry, questions whether research companies do enough to ensure clients use their products safely and correctly. It’s a fantastic question, and Nigel has a thoughtful response that’s worth reading. But I want to mention here that it’s not just clients and research companies that need to examine their motives. Agencies often do ourselves a disservice when we selectively use research results, championing the research (and ignoring any problems) when it supports the agency’s work, while criticizing the same methodology (and jumping on any problems) when an ad performs poorly. I know I’ve been guilty of this.

I hope I don’t come across as hating pre-testing. I think it can have lots of value. In an ideal world, I’d love to have a full understanding of each communication’s power before it was launched. It’s just that as testing is done today, I’m not sure that many of the types of ads we’re all increasingly trying to make can be pre-tested in a meaningful form.

I’ll say a huge thanks to Nigel and all of the people who’ve commented and linked to both here and his post. I don’t think there’s enough dialogue between researchers and agencies and clients about the research we do, so this has been refreshing for me.  Thankfully, in the end, I actually think we agree on as much than we disagree. And I hope we can continue to talk about this. So I’ll open it to all of you again: anybody agree, disagree, or have anything to add?