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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iDrive, from BMW

Discussing the latest version of iDrive in a friend’s BMW made me think of the wide impact the name iPod has had. So far as I know it was the first to coin the ‘i’ and now we have everything from iDrive (BMW) to the iPlayer (BBC). Shows that a name being established in one market doesn’t mean you can’t leverage the idea in another. You only have to look at Apple, Orange and Blackberry to see that. Then again, using a vowel as a prefix is not a new concept… e-Type, o-Ring or even u-Boat. Can’t think of a name beginning with a- though. Might have to take a-look into that.

iDrive image used under a Creative Commons license, courtesy of Jon Large’s photostream 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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Virgin Atlantic advert

As the resident retro geek at Last Exit, it will come as no surprise that I enjoyed the Virgin Atlantic ‘25 years and still red hot’ advert a great deal. Our Price records, Wimpy and a brick mobile phone – sadly destroyed in the making of the clip and therefore not available as an exhibit in the Last Exit collection – all set to the thumping tunes of Frankie goes to Hollywood. There is much to love here. And there is much to love here, to – your correspondent writing to you from (sadly) seat 42H on their VS001 flight to New York. It seems incredible that it all began so long ago – or that those of us who grew up with Virgin have now grown up. It was and remains my favourite airline, and I have flown on most of them. Us brand people sometimes have a hard time convincing sceptics of the value of branding – but you only have to look at Zavvi (closed for business 15 months after buying Virgin Records) and Absolute Radio (20% drop in listeners since changing from Virgin Radio) to see the power. I think the key to the Virgin brand is the ability to inspire and motivate both customers and their own people. The crew aboard this A340 all look just a touch over 25 themselves, but red hot? You bet.

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Just when you thought you’d already seen or experienced the most pointless gifts ever, Calvin Klein has launched a combination perfume and speaker package. Novelty at best and unless I’m gravely mistaken, most people would view this as pointlessly ridiculous.

Hey, I’m all for consumerism but in a time when utility is paramount and needless waste is frowned upon (rightfully so) it’s important to avoid actually pushing out a backwash of concepts such as this. I would suggest that the power is with the employer and that maybe, just maybe, CK should look a bit closer at their product development group.

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A nice chap called Frank Rocholl (owner of design agency Rocholl Projects) has designed a fabulous font and named it ‘Nuri‘. I don’t know Mr. Rocholl but I’m very happy he has immortalised my rather uncommon name. Cheers Frank! And by the way, it’s not a cheap font

Check it out here.

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James Bond - 007 returns in Quantum of Solace

The latest Bond flick Quantam of Solace has just opened. I know this because I read a pamphlet about the development of the Ford Ka (a car so small Americans would be able to fit it in the trunk of their vehicles). The Ka is featured in the movie – in return for no small fee.

This got me thinking about products ‘placed’ in films and TV shows – no doubt a very good way to reach your audience. But how do we marketing folk know if a product has been selected because it is right for the character, or simply because of the fee received? I must confess to being rather more susceptible than the average bear to buying stuff I see on the screen, so now I am in something of a quandary. I love my BMW’s but even I winced when the Z3 served as Mr Bond’s wheels. Authenticity goes a long way and as I advance in years I find myself thinking rather fondly of the days when Aston Martin would lend the cars to the filmmakers. At least you knew where you were then.

The only car maker that is above the fray is that slice of British eccentric car making called Bristol. They won’t allow the press to drive their cars and if you’d like to own one you are interviewed first. James May, an equally eccentric host of Top Gear, a motoring show on the BBC, was recently turned down. How refreshing, if slightly quaint.

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Brilliant though Google and other search engines are at bringing some level of sense and order to the billions of web pages out there, they all still rely almost completely on our ability to look for something in the right way. Keywords are really that – KEY!

Luckily as the amount of content online grows so does the average level of skill of people using search engines. Two years ago the average number of keywords entered into Google’s search field was not much more than 1.5, today it is more like 3.0. We are being more specific when we search which is a good thing – finding a million or more results is hardly a badge of honour now is it?

In spite of this there remains the ‘Did you mean?‘ problem or the ‘Did we mean?‘ problem as I would describe it.

As an agency advising our clients on SEO or search engine optimisation one of the toughest tasks is convincing businesses to think like customers and ensure the way they write about themselves online does likewise. By all means ‘build it’ but they won’t be coming unless the way you talk matches the way they search!

Take Last Exit and PaperVision for example. We are a Papervision3D agency and would like to be found as such when potential clients search for this kind of service online. Because PaperVision is a new technology however the challenge is to make sure we talk about it in the right ways. The correct description for this Flash plug-in is PaperVision3D but a quick check within Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool reveals a whole host of ways people are looking for it – papervision 3d, paper vision 3d or even pay per vision 3d are all commonly used. 

This wouldn’t be a problem but as I say above search engines rely on keywords in a very exact way. Try it yourself – a query of ‘paper vision 3d agency‘ will deliver very different results to one of ‘papervision3d agency‘ regardless of the fact both may be intended to find an agency supplying PaperVision3D.

Granted this all sounds very anal indeed but the truth is that Google and the other search engines are very anal indeed! Words, and the exact way they are used, are all they have to go on when routing that important query of yours to a handful of those 3 billion web pages!

The solution is writing for the web, making frequent reference to important keywords, and writing like the customers you want to attract would ask for you.

The solution is really not rocket-science, or should that be rocket science!

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Pete Blackshaw of Planetfeedback.com, wrote in AdAge today a (self serving, yes) article about consumer feedback, or rather the lack of it.  Here’s a snippet:

I wonder if we’re afflicted with service schizophrenia. Take a mega brand such as McDonald’s, which aggressively spends billions to position itself around ease, convenience and service (e.g. “We make you smile”). The company practically hides the most basic of contact forms on its website. Further adding to the disconnect, the company’s comments-rich corporate blog is called “Open for Discussion.”

From the point of view of a design agency, these forms are, for the most part, blown off, left until last and pretty much standard.  The sub-conscious assertion being that if someone really wants to contact us, they will.  Most forms are pretty simple simple and easy to use but yes, definitely uninviting and if you’re a brand projecting an open door philosophy, this could be detrimental to your cause.  Worse still are customer service telephone lines.  These seem to be designed to frustrate and often cause extreme anger as you are constantly passed from department to department and required time and again to repeat your account details.  OK, we’re not going to go into all that as we don’t have much control apart from suggesting better approach to our clients.

Back to web-based consumer feedback.  After reading this post, I considered one of our recent clients, an Italian motorcycle brand, that prides itself on being very connected to its consumer.  We’re currently in the design production cycle and considering the global community behind this brand, I thought it necessary to review our strategy.  We’re now considering allowing users to upload images, movies and to format their feedback via a rich text editor (much like using word) so our client’s customers can really articulate their message.  I’ll post a link once we’re done.

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As a digital agency, one might think it odd that we’re producing our reel as a hard media, DVD. In deed, it has been a bone of contention for some time and thats why, several months after completing our 2008 Design Reel
, we are only just approving the production. After laboring over the reel itself, we’re spending a fair penny on mastering, duplication, packaging and distribution. So I’m still asking why? when we’ve done a great job encoding at different sizes and serving. Electronic distribution is easy and basically free and above all: immediate. As a digital agency, perhaps we should be committed to the channels we predominantly work within? The answer is punctuated by a single word that my partner at Last Exit often heralds “RELEVANCE”. On top of that, I would like to add “penetration” and “visibility”. Our in-boxes are, unfortunately crowded with enough spam to fill a million cheap sandwiches and whilst we can use many different creative tactics to draw attention to a mailer, we believe in a multi-channel and relevant approach that taps into the the behavioral characteristics of our audience. Ours is splie between CMOs at the brands themselves and producers/CDs at ad agencies. Both sets have spent much more time in TV/Radio than in interactive and whilst the transition is happening it’s important to bridge the gap, speak the right language and not to be too disruptive.

So, our belief is that receiving a well designed, beautifully produced DVD (spot glossing and all) will, at the very least, leave an impression in the recipients mind (even if they never actually load the disk into a player) backed by the appropriate and well timed follow up. This is a tried and true and simple tactic that has worked for many reps and EPs in the advertising and motion business and whilst there’s not model for reps in interactive, we’ll give this a go.

Here’s a few screen shots. You can view the reel here, or let us know if you’d like to receive DVD.

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