I suppose this is news, that Apple launched its iPhone, yesterday. For months, or maybe years, this had been predicted. The patent was filed last year. As expected (since the Rokr) it’s the iTunes delivery/storage system. About the price of two smart phones, it has low battery life, but oozes with the cool factor.
These days, anything held up by Mr. black turtleneck, against the slightly out-of-focus logo, has instant coolness bestowed upon it by the media.
On its blog, Direct to Dell, Dell came back fast on the post by Robert Scoble who posed the question as to why Apple gets better treatment, and Dell gets all the bad media karma.
The language (and hopefully the attitude) is largely influenced by the early Scoble
"We entered the blogosphere in part to take on negative issues. Will we make more mistakes along the way? Sure, but we are listening and learning
as we go. In fact, the blog is all about those conversations, and it’s
why I’m recognizing this debate that goes on about and around us."
Scoble’s comments are interesting, because Apple does get a pass, and great reviews. In a previous comment about the bad customer service his son got over a Macbook, he called on the heavywright media tech writers such as WSJ‘s Walt Mossberg to show off Apple for what it really is. (Note: Mossberg, who has been featured in an Apple ad, always acknowledges his Mac preference):
Hey, Walt Mossberg or Steven Levy, why don’t you call up my 12-year-old son
and write a column about Apple’s customer service failures instead of giving
them tons of praise about the new iPod cell phone that’s gonna come out at
MacWorld in a week?
So Dell would have relished this, and reader comments to their post. Speaking of which Scoble was accused of drumming this up for turning his son’s experience into a company face off, and doing it for the kind of traffic that Jeff Jarvis got for his Dell hell post. People see conspiracies in what they want to. If I write passionately about a great experience, or a bad one, does that mean I am going off at the deep end? This might turn out to be less of an Apple vs Dell debate and more about the reviewers and bloggers. Interesting.
Ever wondered why your doctor freely hands out ‘samples’ that sometimes run into boxes of product, saving you lots? I always suspected it was marketing, but not for these reasons.
Pharma Babes, the story about the well-heeled reps who are the new persuaders of pharma products (alongside the ‘ask your doctor about…’ ads) gives us a peek into this side of medical marketing. Scott Haig’s 3rd reason this is even scary. he suggests that reps could be helping out the OR staff in tasks such as "keeping the trays and trays of little parts organized and ready for action." In any other industry, this would be unheard of, but it seems all Ok here.
I know many docs who probably wouldn’t allow such marketing intrusions, but even if it does happen in some community hospitals (and Hoag’s other 2 reasons this practice persists is true) it is going to have push back.
Today’s article in the NYT, defines a phenomenon of marketing that will probably be emulated everywhere on different scales. It’s about cameras in Times Square, being the ultimating ‘publishing’ platform. Make that the Marketing platform, when you consider the user-initiated, user-generated effect cameras and camera-phones are having.
I recently participated in he Samsung Blu-ray campaign, sending a text message to a billboard a few hundred feet away. In a few seconds, my phone received a response, and a code with which I could send a message to be displayed on the digital sign.
But it is more than placed-based marketing. These user-involved campaigns then get transmitted to other online venues such as YouTube, or shared by people on the P2P (which now also means phone-to-phone) network.
Someday we won’t have to visit Times Square of Picadilly circus to experience in and participate in what goes on there, whether it is a stupid trick by David Blane for Target, or vote on important issues, or post a picture via Reuter’s.
Take a look at both images. One is from the official, um, fake, grassroots Walmart site ForWalmart.com (that calls itself ‘Working Families For Walmart’).
The other is a sharp stick poking Walmart in the eye. It’s run by WalmartWatch, who has registered the domain ‘WorkingFamiliesforWalmart.com.
The anti-Walmart site had been registered in April this year. The scandal about the WalmartingAcrossAmerica blog (domain had been registered on the 24th August 2006) broke in October in Businessweek. Note the question mark after the word Walmart. and of course the unhappy faces in the spoof header. There are other subtleties, such as the link ‘Paid Supporters’ (to counter the original site’s ‘Paid Critics’ link, etc.
Thanks to Jaffe Juice for tipping me off to the story.
But the larger question for PR people is whether WalmartingAcrossAmerica was an astroturf campaign or a pathetic attempt to hide behind the curtain. More than being a fake grassroots attempt, it is a combination of a ‘flog’ (fake blog) and PR Puppetry (PRP) -meaning someone pulling the strings tries to hide from the audience. If you think about it, there is a lot of PRP that has gone on under the guise of advertising, too. We’re going to see a lot of exposes like this soon, as the transparency effect takes hold.
So there is life after the "468." Specifically the 468 X 60 banner ad. This was one of the topics at Ad:tech. Digitas’ CCO Mark Beeching has a great observation, that the shift away from traditional banners is symptomatic of the move away from the interruptive model of advertising.
Good example of this is Intel’s and IBM’s use of allowing a banner ad to be a way to interact with customers. More specifically a real-time chat. Story in AdAge here.
Interesting factoid: Digitas created the first ever banner ad, 12 years ago.
I am at the Ad:tech conference in New York, where everything from the coffeecups to the floors are branded. People walk around with flatscreens attached to their bodies, and you can definitelyfeel the sense that brands guardians -and that includes ad agencies– are feeling the sense of urgency to become more relevant.
The discussion here is not so much about brands, per se, but about things that are changing branding forever. I’m talking of issues such as social media latforms, mobile access and the anywhere customer, viral distribution of content (whether or not they are ‘ads’) and gaming.
This session on viral and word of mouth campaigns has standing room only. Three case studies are being discussed. One of which was Philips which introduced ‘body grooming’ because 50% of the target audience consider body grooming (defined as ‘shaving below th neck’) as important. They knew that he media advertising was not going to cut it in building this brand. The goal wa to develp word of mouth, or ‘word of monitor’ for the concept. How did they reach 25-45 year olds?. They had traditional agencies, and PR as support.
To create the buzz, they launched a website, shaveeverywhere.com, with a highly watchable story on the landing page. Traffic from pasalong was 32%. Sales skyrocketed to 300%. It won a Gold cyber Lion, to boot.
How did they do it? No seeding, was done, but simply organic. It was featured on 500 blogs, and got 103 reviews on Amazon. Behind all this was researh and testing that indicated it would be well received. But Philips credits the creative team behind it who understood the consumer sensibilities, and took the problem (or opportunity, in this case) head on. Let’s face it, bodygrooming, that shaving below the neck proposition is not something you can easily dance around. But unfortunately that’s what many brands do, because people who manage or dare we say ‘control’ brand messages, are trained to phrase things in brand language, not consumer language.
Today that era is passing away. Just to segue to another part of the floor I was covering, there are blog tracking companies who can tell you what customers ares saying in real time about brands. Just today, they are tracking the politicial brands that will make it or flame out by the end of the day! Customers don’t talk with feature-infested vocabulary, but in what the product does well or doesn’t. The blogosphere is suddenly becoming a down and dirty way for brand managers to have a ear to the ground, as some 100,000 blogs are created by ordinary people everyday.
So yes, we may obsess about our brand messages in the right font, surrounded with the exact pantone as specified in our brand guidelines, but ultimately, the reputation of a brand, whether is as a result of a word of mouth campaign or not is ultimately what the consumer defines. As someone who’s always been at the forefront of branding, this is unsetling, but heck, it’s creating a lot more exciting opportunities for all of us.
Joseph Jaffe doesn’t mince his words. In his book, "Life after the 30-second spot" he declares that "There’s a putrid stench emanating from the world of advertising right now. If you can’t smell it yourself, then you’re either used to it or you’ve lost your sense of smell altogether.."
It reminds me of an equally abrasive statement by Ed Morrow in "Good Night, Good Luck" when he says to the who’s who of television that their business has plenty of "evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live" and that that they, himself included should "get off, off our fat surpluses" and embrace change.
I am acutely reminded of the changes sweeping aross everything we have known in marketing and media. As a business writer, I see it first hand, but as a communicator, I see the pushback based on people unable to think and strategically, futuristically –where customers and audiences are headed. Many marketers are falling behind, so no wonder advertisers are not recognizing the stench, so to speak. There are ‘agency’ people who have just stumbled on The Tipping Point — a book published 6 years ago! The world has leapt ahead since then, but they hobble on. At this rate, they will always be playing catch up..
The new media savvy companies are implementing Wikis, podcasts, and diving into Second Life. (Others are sadly still content sprucing up their web sites and polishing up their Intranets!) Even as we speak, MIT is about to launch a new web initiative; with Tim Berners-Lee is involved, you can bet it will be something big. I’m meeting some very intersting people next week involved in social networking, VOIP, and Search. They are definitely not ‘ad’ companies, but they are pushing the envelope of marketing. Stay tuned…
"We’re not interested in reams of data that says the world has changed. We get it." That’s Maarten Albarda of Coca-Cola, the Director of Media and Communication Innovation. (now that’s a new media title!).
All this talk about the world has changed may sound like someone’s all fired up after reading Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat. It’s however a statement about the new marketing propounded by Crayon, a company I mentioned a few days ago. Crayon, launched today.
This will definitely change the pace of things in ‘old marketing’ as these guys are co-opting everyone, and turning tables on the way marketing, advertising and PR has been practiced. Just to cite a few ideas from their ‘Manifesto’ (as opposed to a mission statement) they have thrown out quite a few sacred cows: They will never pitch for business, they’ll "never downsize, rightsize, leftsize or upsize" based on mood swings (a not so subtle knock at the network agencies who hire and fire entire account groups based on clients they retain or lose), and all participants er, ‘crayons’, will be allowed to have a second life –and that includes blogging and podcasting during office hours.
And of course, they are headquartered in Second Life.
But being an open-source new marketing company, does not mean they are going to listen to everybody. There’s a fine line here. "We are not superior, and we are not subservient’ they say. Not the new media, subservient chicken version of the old agency.
SIDEBAR: Check how a new media guy is experimenting with a ‘subservient human’ idea as Steve Rubel describes it. You can even rename his website!
I don’t know Josef Jaffe, but as a listener to his ‘Across the Sound’ podcast, I have to believe that his new company, Crayon, will change the game in marketing. Ruffle a lot of feathers, plant a stake in the ground etc. etc, etc, as Jaffe would say!
Also, he’s teaming up with two people I know, Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz –fellow IABC-ers– and CC Chapman, all of whom have made bold moves into Second Life.
So it was not that surprising that Jaffe’s tease on his blog talk about the company launch at ‘an undisclosed island,’ actually referred to an island in Second Life. Neville, Shel and CC dislosed the details. Their headquarters will include "a theater, a presentation
amphitheater, housing, and a variety of other elements that will all be
unveiled at our launch party this Thursday, October 26."
Interestingly, Crayon, true to new media and marketing, is "not an agency nor a consulting practice…What we are is whatever you want or need us to be" as Neville says. For Shel, he’s "leaving the world of sole practitionership and independent consulting to join a startup."
For those who’ve listened to Josef’s analogies of the box of crayons, the name is quintessiantial Jaffe! This out-of the-box un-company is prepared to pull any color out of its crayon box. A true mashup, when you think of it, using a real-world writing tool as a metaphor of a company that will operate solely in Second Life.
Hoipolloireport 
