the fruits of imagination

More product demos

Found another few new Nike ads, again from Wieden, this time in support of their new Juice line of golf balls.  They're tougher and engineered to go farther or something (I'm not a golfer so it's lost on me).  But instead of going on about the technology or how it will improve your game, they've just shot some beautiful film of them being shot at high velocity through various things like a cantaloupe, a lava lamp, a ceramic rabbit, and jello.  Which, needless to say, is infinitely more interesting.

With the lab setting, smiling engineers, and the "what else can we destroy?" attitude, it's very similar to BlendTec.  Although these Nike ads have even less of an overt product message.  And they're much more gorgeous to watch.

As we've noted before, there really seems to be a product-demo renaissance going on, but with a web 2.0 twist.  It's about finding a way of demonstrating your product that is not as much persuasive as it is contagious, so that you get the "ohmygodyouneedtoseethis" reaction.  And those people who want to know more will find out more. 

Leland has given some thought to a few more examples of other interesting product demos.  I especially like this Mercedes website which finds some very clever ways to simulate various sensory experiences over the web.

Bravo Barcelona

I'm sure some of you have already seen this but it made me happy.  FC Barcelona has been one of my favourite (well, favourite non-English) football clubs for a while. In a sport that has become heavily marketed, and where jersey sponsorship is one of the most highly sought after properties fetching in the tens of millions for a world-class team (Manchester United's recently went for almost $100 million US to AIG), Barcelona has been unique among the world's major clubs in always refusing sponsors.  For 107 years, there has never been a logo on their shirt other than the team crest, costing the team untold millions in potential revenue.  It has become a mark of pride. 

But this week Barcelona changed all that.  In a twist, they announced they've finally agreed to put a logo on the shirt - and the logo belongs to UNICEF.  And instead of getting revenue, the club is paying 2 million Euros a year to the United Nations Children's Fund for the "privilege" of being associated with them.  The money will go to projects in Africa.  For a sport that has seen its share of ugliness and cheating and rich primadonnas, this is a lovely gesture of what can be done when the responsibility and possibility that come with fame and influence are taken seriously.  Children around the world look up to these players.  Barca's slogan is "more than a club" - and this is a fine demonstration of that. 

Now imagine a world-famous brand forgoing revenue for bettering the world and supporting something they believe in.  How powerful would that be, and how effective at winning customers?  I wish we saw more of this.  Go Barca.

Via Mike at DigitalAgency

Cheap kicks

Basketball shoes are not a topic on which I profess any knowledge (Air Jordans are good, right?) but I just read something that sure sounds like it might shake up that category.  Check out this article from BrandWeek on Starbury, the new line of shoes from the Knicks' Stephon Marbury. 

His shoes are launching with a whole new economic model: in a category where $150 price points are the norm, they will retail for $14.98 (no, that's not a typo, fourteen dollars and ninety-eight cents).  Apparently, they didn't have to sacrifice quality, either - the shoe was created by designers who've worked with Nike and Fila, using Marbury's input, and Marbury will be wearing these exact shoes when he plays this season.  That's right, an NBA star will be playing in $15 shoes.

So what's the catch?  It turns out that b-ball shoes, even good ones, aren't very expensive to make.  The vast majority of Nike or Reebok's mark-up is in marketing costs.  By avoiding typical shoe marketing, Starbury hopes to pass the cost savings on to the masses.  So Marbury has forgone the big up-front endorsement contract, and is instead taking a percentage of sales.  The line is being exclusively sold at Steve & Barry’s, a discount sports apparrel chain that also doesn't spend money on marketing.  Instead Starbury and the retailer plan on using tactics like courting basketball shoe blogs, shooting guerilla video of Marbury playing in the shoes, and sampling at urban pick-up games. 

New economics + new marketing = new iconic shoe?

thanks to John Grant for noticing the story

Slow-motion beauty

Staying on the theme of the grace of elite athletes: over the years Nike has made very good use of Tiger Woods (unlike, say, Buick), and they're at it yet again with Swing Portrait. 

They shot a perfect Tiger golf swing from multiple angles with military-grade cameras able to shoot 4000 frames per second, so the swing streches out over a minute.  It's gorgeous simplicity, like a zen rock garden or a Ramones song.  The whole thing is suitably understated: subtle music, not messed up with copy, the products there but not taking away from the main attraction.  Nicely done.

Via Digital Agency who make the great point that "consumer generated media has a long way to go in some respects, with work like this around."

Describing the indescribable

When the topic of copytesting comes up, Richard Huntington, the planning director at United London and keeper of Adliterate, is fond of saying "only poor advertising is predictable."  His point is that the best advertising isn't linear in its effects, it takes on a magical life of its own, getting the brand discussed and used culturally in ways it wasn't before.  As people use it and discuss it and turn it into something with meaning in their own lives, it by definition goes out of our control.  That is something that can't be predicted.  So if you can predict the results ahead of time, it's probably not great communication.  This is an important point.

I'd like to add something to that idea: "only poor advertising is describable."  This weekend the author David Foster Wallace had a tremendous piece in Play, the New York Times sports magazine, on Roger Federer called "Roger Federer as Religious Experience."  One of his main points is that it's hard for a journalist to write about the grace and genius of a top athelete because it "is next to impossible to describe directly."  He says that you can try the standard terms - "world-class serve" or "amazing footwork" - but that descriptions don't really cut it.  "All this is true, and yet none of it really explains anything or evokes the experience of watching this man play. Of witnessing, firsthand, the beauty and genius of his game."  In other words, you might be able to use simple descriptions and cliches to describe, say, me playing tennis, but not the greats.

I believe that the same is true of advertising.  A mediocre ad can be described in simple, linear terms - "a mom walks into her kitchen and talks about how great a new sandwich spread is for her family" - because there is nothing else to capture beyond the literal.  But great piece of communication relies on many subtle things coming together like (I'll use TV/film as an example, but I think it's true of any communication) casting, acting, direction, music, editing, camerawork, and animation.  It will also make use of metaphor and symbols, contain other cultural references, have depth. These are the things that make something transcend the literal and become magical and meaningful.  Here's an experiment: try to describe a great ad like Sony Bravia "Balls" or Honda "Grrr" or Apple "1984" in a way that comes anywhere close to capturing the experience of watching them.  It doesn't have to be a world-famous ad either, just a good one: to use some Canadian examples, try to describe a Telus ad or one of our Fruitopia spots. The interesting thing, too, is that the more describable an ad is, the more likely it has a clear selling message - selling messages are very linear. The less an ad has a clear USP-type selling message (like all of those ads mentioned above) the harder it is to describe in simple terms.  And yet I'd wager that makes it more interesting, more compelling, and more effective.

I realize this isn't groundbreaking or anything.  Russell has talked about embracing complexity, and execution being as important as strategy, and Gareth about the weakness of words to describe things.  But I wanted to articulate the point again because this issue presents itself with striking regularity.  Presenting storyboards to clients, testing animatics, measuring advertising awareness with a two sentence precis in a tracking study, having cost consultants award productions to the lowest bidder, getting hung up on 'main message communication' - all of these are things we deal with everyday, and all run the danger of assuming that everything important in an ad is contained in the linear storyline, in the literal message.  And all leave little room for magic.  Which leaves little room for people to pick it up and make it their own.

The literal approach worked fairly well when people willingly watched ads, when there wasn't much competition for attention, when people didn't create their own content, when people weren't highly literate in the grammar of advertising.  It doesn't work very well anymore.  People need a reason to invite a brand, a piece of communication, into their lives for a few minutes.  And that means it needs to be interesting and rewarding.  Let's aim to make things a little less predictable, and a little less describable.
 

Forty seven strikes, no balls

We recently had a conservative client cancel a TV ad we were about to make for them.  It wasn't the best ad ever, but it would have done the job quite well - I'd bet my salary on it.  It was researched, and tested well (the research company recommended using it), but the "purchase intent" scores were not considered good enough (they weren't bad, they were "on norm").  So the client's decision: cancel the ad, and spend the exact same amount of money on a media sponsorship/promotion deal.  No, they are not testing the promotion.

Now I'm not saying sponsorships and promos are a bad idea - they can be hugely effective - but there are many things wrong with this particular decision.  Leaving aside the research issues (whether purchase intent measures anything meaningful, whether basing your decision on one number makes any sense, or whether animatic testing is at all useful), the thing that struck me most is the assumption that advertising needs to be validated, but promotions are something like a guaranteed investment.  After all, promotions have a clear incentive and call to action, no fuzzy stuff like with advertising.  The problem with this assumption can been seen in this wonderful post from last week on David Nottoli's new blog.  He went to a baseball game and counted the number of branded promotions the crowd sat through.

Final score:  Mets 4, Padres 3, brands 47.  That's just sponsors and promos, it's not even counting billboards or food concessions.  Yes, forty-seven sponsorships and promotions from thirty-six brands over nine innings.  So, does that still look like a guaranteed investment?  I'm just saying.