New York, January 1, 2010 —  Last Exit, LLC. has appointed Willie Mack as Executive Director of Engagement and Communications.

As an Executive Director will assume high level responsibilities for the growth of the company. Willie will assist in the business development and expansion of the agency into the Luxury, Fashion, Entertainment and Music industries, while forging strategic partnerships and alliances. He will also direct and mange client engagements utilizing his 15 years in client services and business consulting experience. He will provide the agency with a keen insight into the dynamics of brand-consumer behavior online and offline.

“As part of the pathway to growth, Last Exit has partnered with other companies to provide all the services our clients need. The relationship with Willie Mack from Mack Industries proved to be not only a step forward strategically but also a leap culturally. We’ve worked very successfully and very happily together on a few campaigns and being good friends simply make this good business sense.” said Nuri Djavit, Founder and CEO at Last Exit Group.

“Over the past 15 years I have had the pleasure of working with iconic and emerging brands to develop and execute integrated campaigns that engaged the media and consumers while increasing market-share and revenue for my clients. I am excited at the prospects helping to grow with Last Exit and increasing its services offering for our clients.” Mr. Mack stated.

Willie Mack will also expand the communications, social media and online PR services of the agency. “A brand has to be able to not just create a great product but also tell a relevant story to consumers in a compelling way. Digital provides countless platforms  to disseminate, track and measure these engagements and Last Exit is a leader in helping clients understand the best ways to capitalize on these platforms.” Willie said.

In 2003, Willie Mack founded MACK Industries a brand consulting and creative services agency. It was during this time he developed and executed numerous global campaigns, press/product launches, exhibitions, photo shoots and TV commercials for a range of clients such as: ABSOLUT, AMEX, Ben Sherman, Flavorpill, Persol, Ray Ban, TED, Icon, GOOD, and Wired Magazines and celebrities such as Gisele Bundchen, Common, Cirque du Soliel, Eve, Lenny Kravitz, The Roots, and The Police.

“We are truly delighted to have Willie join our team, it’s a pleasure to have someone of his caliber share our vision for Last Exit and its potential within the digital communications industry.” said Paul Newnes, Founding Partner & Commercial Director at Last Exit Group.

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New York, January 1, 2010 —  Last Exit, LLC. has appointed Adam Phillips as Director of Strategy and Media. Phillips will oversee consumer and media strategy development, connections planning and analytics.  “With Adam’s expertise, we will be able to expand our digital media services both on and offline. We are extremely excited to have him join the agency,” said Paul Newnes, Partner and Commercial Director.

Phillips has a keen insight into consumers and their interactions with technology, media and culture. Prior to Last Exit, he was a Strategic Planner at McCann Erickson, and a freelance strategic planner and media consultant working on brands, such as MasterCard Malibu, Ketel One, Avis, Applebee’s, William Grant and Sons, and RJ Reynolds.

Commenting on his appointment Phillips said, “I’m really excited about being in a place so on the front lines of where the communications industry is headed. Last Exit has a great team that consistently creates great work. I believe that in my new position as Director of Strategy and Media I can help add the cultural and behavioral insight that will inspire and direct that great work beyond simply a supporting role communications strategies, to being a foundation for communications that defines and elevates our clients brands.”

Adam has blended the roles of the account planner, the media strategist and the data analyst, into an approach to strategic planning tailored for the digital media world.  At Last Exit, he will expand the company’s capabilities and services on and offline by bringing these skills together to craft business solutions through human insights, cultural currents and behavioral analysis.

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A nice little article first published here was re-published a lot.   Doesn’t mean any of our trends for 2010 will be correct, but nice anyway.

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There seems to be a growing tension in the world of social media!

Almost every client brief now asks how we would place brands within the social environment. And I find myself questioning if there really is a place for every, or even any brand, within our personal pages online?

Aren’t the likes of Facebook and Twitter the realm of mates rather than marketing, of chat instead of commerce, of sharing, not shopping?

Perhaps it is for these very reasons that brands are so keen to be part of the social sphere? Marketing managers doubtless recognise this ‘emotional’ environment as very different from the “rational” destinations they create for their own brands online. They no doubt also note their own changed state of mind, when looking at their Facebook pages or writing their latest Tweet? These are times when we are all off-duty, open-minded, less cynical and potentially more receptive.

As an agency, we DO believe there is a place for brands within the social sphere, but only if a certain mindset and approach is applied:

• social media is a personal, emotional space – standard advertising and promotion isn’t appropriate
• context and personalisation are key, relating to users, their likes and dislikes, preferably on an individual basis, are likely to engage and, therefore, succeed
• considering and involving friends and groups is a powerful way to achieve relevant and timely interest
• overall, this is a pretty intolerant space – ‘road-blocking’ or ’spamming’ is guaranteed to create a negative brand reaction

In summary, our belief is that there is no problem combining brand messages with our personal spaces, as long as sensitivity and care are used.

Playing devil’s advocate now, allowing advertiser access to our beloved social media sites may be a necessity anyway! Facebook, Twitter and other social spaces operate under generally unsustainable revenue models today. Inviting brands to get more involved may be the only way we can hold on to these sites we have become so attached to.

Indeed, it would appear that Facebook’s recent news about imminent profitability is heavily driven by The Gift Shop, Facebook Connect, and other ways brands can engage on a deeper, better informed level with consumers, as opposed to monetisation of display advertising alone.

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Forrester Research has just released a forecast showing considerable gains in digital marketing, with a cut back in ‘traditional’ advertising dollars.

Their research shows a considerable shift to what marketers see as an efficient communication platform, citing digital as “no longer experimental”, but more efficient where advertising is more inefficient. Six out of ten marketers Forrester surveyed agreed with the statement “we will increase budget for interactive by shifting money away from traditional marketing.” Only 7% said “we have no plans to increase our marketing budget.”

The report also indicates a massive shift towards social media marketing; something that we are excelling in here at Last Exit, with campaigns such as that for Canon.

Read the rest of the article by clicking here.

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Many have exploited the accessibility and affordability of online video, most have done it poorly including those brands with big budgets. Occasionally, however, we see a great example of relevant, compelling and aspiring content that is, ultimately, good advertising. Inspired Bicycles of the UK, have a produced a lo-fi video featuring one of their sponsored riders Danny MacAskill and delivered it via YouTube.

Perfectly targeted to their demographic and even entertaining/interesting to the rest of us unwilling and unable to perform such feats, it still proves that Digital is a space where every brand can play.

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“Above all else, getting serious about digital means getting serious about creative, whether you’re talking about a simple banner ad or a cutting-edge viral campaign. After all, big ideas move successful campaigns in any medium, and the web is no exception.

But as larger agencies struggle to redefine themselves in the lean-and-mean digital ecosystem, a grassroots army of smaller, specialty shops is raising eyebrows. Some work on assignment from larger agencies, but others have begun taking ownership of the client relationship for themselves. While this is by no means an exhaustive list, these are some of the independent agencies that made us stand up and take notice with campaigns and ideas that push web creative forward.”

Full article on iMedia Connection.

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According to a Marketing Daily article by Sarah Mahoney [May 11], online retail is “bo-ring.” Well, I might go a little further; it’s uninspired, technically driven, over-analyzed and sterile. It’s become so grounded on SEO that all brand and character has been stripped and the experience has been commoditized where price is king and peer review the court jester – is it real? For many the experience relies on price comparisons from multiple sites and cross checking reviews to ensure their authenticity and validity. And that’s it.

Sarah’s article details how dissatisfaction with an online retail experience detrimentally affects sales and a mere single point increase in satisfaction netting out a 9% increase in revenues! Surely the same rules apply in the brick an mortar stores, so why then have we not translated basic principals to the digital realm?

There are similarities here to hype-cycles where we have gone past the initial peak of online shopping and the industry has now settled into a plateau where a lot of investment is made to make incremental advances in revenue and ROI is beginning to decrease. Shopping sites have become amazingly search engine optimized and offer the ‘searcher’ easy and rapid access to whatever s/he is looking for, buffeted by an over emphasis on predictive analytics; previously you bought x, therefore you might like y, or: other people who bought y also bought z, etc. etc. The question is how effective are these tactics versus the ‘annoyance’ factor? For many and especially the casual browser there doesn’t seem to be much on offer and the experience is obfuscated by a system that thinks it knows what you need or want and continually wants to ram it down your throat.

In many ways, it reminds me of the web fifteen years or more past, where everything internet was the fiefdom of IT folks (still is to many companies!). No strategy, no design, no ergonomic appreciation and no sense of ‘human’ problem solving. Just built sites that conform to a technology strategy that, apparently, we must abide to if our stores and products are to be found, not to mention to make our media companies’ lives easier. The heuristic approach that analysis of user behavior data has taken us has has left us uninspired, uninterested and unwilling to buy – at least at your store if you have failed to innovate.

Where we started with the almost completely useless, we surged forward to comprehensively utilitarian. We have developed shopping sites that are powered by some amazing technology and driven by incredible science. What is surprising is the divide between brand-based sites that focus almost entirely on experience and the current state of play with transactional sites that focus completely on conversion.

The problem is exacerbated in part by a combination of two factors. The first is the economic downturn that seems will maintain an effect on spending in the months to come. The other is the commoditization of many digital production services, namely web design. There are so many off the shelf, or hosted solutions for inventory and shopping that offer retailers low cost access to a presence online and, hopefully, revenue. So less inclination and cheap or even free tools equals “Bingo”, no? No. Template sites are boring, bad for your brand and where they might have made you sales before, seemingly will decline to do so in the future.

Now with the data that is being derived by folks such as Foresee Results, we are going to see a shift in the digital retail approach. Design for experience will begin to dominate as it does in many industries, and it will and must lead innovation. Creativity will force new technologies, approaches and processes for search to be effective and most importantly, will lead retailers to unique and highly effective digital solutions. As online retail continues to grow, there is an immediate opportunity for brands to stake a bigger claim by building trusted, enjoyable and inspirational experiences driving impulse and, of course, conversion.

See the article in Marketing Daily

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Automotive Perfection

A new client in the automotive sector generously treated us to a VIP tour. This has an immediate consequence in that you arrive quite fancying a V8 Vantage ‘one day’ only to find that this was a school-boy error. You now need one very urgently and contemplate serious crime to have the keys to a DBS tomorrow.

It works like this. The seduction begins with the sheer architectural class of the buildings, the charm of the reception team and a selection of cars on which to gaze (including a cut away revealing a quite incredible attention to detail). Things move up a gear when you peruse the collection of historical cars, all immaculate. With the lineage as the appetiser and James Bond as your host the production line itself is almost too much. By the time you have seen gearbox-meet-driveshaft-meet-engine and the whole powertrain bonding with its body in the marriage station you are very excited indeed. Raybans are needed for the grand finale; inspection bays with zillions of lights to show up the slightest blemish. From my vantage point I couldn’t see any whatsoever; just a car parked in each that was automotive perfection, attended to by people who cared, and took pride.

It is one thing to see any sort of manufacturing going on in this country of ours; it is quite another to see a facility that is very likely without equal anywhere in the world. If you are considering a 911 do go and just make sure you don’t deserve something with a little more class. Quite wonderful.

Image used under a Creative Commons license, courtesy of char1iej on Flickr.

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Open 24/7

I loved working in retail. The pace of it, the volume of goods, the customers, the camaraderie of the team. Using early Psion series 2 hand held computers to count stock while earning some student cash in the food department at Marks and Spencers in London’s King’s Road. Inspecting the shopping baskets of celebrities. But what I remember most clearly is the quality of display and service to which we aspired. For example:

• ensuring that the display ends were always full, so that when you entered the store it looked well stocked, even though it quite often wasn’t
• monitoring stock levels of the top 20 lines (smoked salmon, champagne, caviar, that sort of thing) to avoid customers’ dinner parties being ruined by the absence of the crucial ingredient
• placing new lines in optimum locations so they can be seen
• opening additional checkouts if queues started to form
• having staff always on hand to help customers find the foie gras
• a consistent layout, flowers and bread at the front, cold chain to the right, groceries to the left, freezers at the back, so you know where you are
• customer services provided in a prominent location

Why then, do I find online retail so universally uninspiring? Because very little, if any, of the above has been translated into the online space. Food retailers from upmarket Ocado to value-driven Asda have websites that ask you to wade through lists (optimistically labelled as aisles) and then to scroll through endless items with miniscule thumbnails. It doesn’t have to be like this. I see no reason why the general idea behind the iTunes store or the BBC iPlayer site cannot be applied to grocery shopping, presenting things in an intuitive and appealing way. And when it comes to delivery, extra vehicles should be allocated to continue availability at the most popular times.

That said, some retailers are trying. Same day delivery for the instant gratification generation in London and half a dozen American cities from Amazon is more like it. And aggregators like Kayak for travel and confused.com for car insurance show the benefit of innovation and making things quick and simple for customers.

But the sad bottom line is that for the shopping any household needs to do most often, for the food and the washing powder, the experience is depressing. We could fill a shopping basket with ideas to make things better.

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