Radiohead Relying on the Kindness of Strangers

On last weeks Gen Y marketing Podcast (oh yeah, that’s cross-promotion) we mentioned how Radiohead were offering their latest album, In Rainbows, online, DRM-free and users could determine how much the paid for the album. No really, it was up to the people!

I am embarrassed to say, I paid $0, but in my defense, I just wanted to see if you could pay nothing. I am not a Radiohead fan and will never listen to the album (I guess I should probably have deleted it already).

A Report from the Times in the UK, said that 1.2 million people "bought" the album, and a readers poll indicating that the average purchase price was about $9-$10 AU. That’s about $10 million that Radiohead will get in revenue, revenue that they will not have to share with a record company. I bet this has been their best payday for awhile. If contracted to a record company, the band would have had to sell 10 times that number of physical albums to collect the same profit.

Its nice to see that Radioheads faith in their fans has been rewarded. Just goes to show that if you give a little you receive a little. Ten millions dollars little.

Telstra's Handle on Truth in Advertising

Telstra, Telstra, Telstra. Can nothing go right for Telstra? Today a report in The Age, that Telstra pulled a series of advertisements about its Next G mobile telephone network after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) raised concerns regarding the validity of particular statements. The statements in question – “Everywhere you need it" and "Get the coverage you need" were of particular interest to the ACCC.

When the ACCC head, Graeme Samuel, says "when the whole of Australia is not covered and coverage is not always available where consumers need it" – it comes across not only as a critic of Telstra’s advertising, its a damning critic of Telstra’s services and products.

No matter what you are selling, a product, service or yourself - you have to be careful in what you promise that you can deliver. Nothing is worse than a “let down”, and nothing destroys integrity and authenticity like false claims and incorrect brand positioning.

On the whole “truth in advertising” topic just a couple of random points:

1. Your Consumers can handle the truth. In fact we crave it and when we don't get we are disappointed.

2. Consumers are great at taking the piss out of you brand - and in the process redefines your brands image...FOR THE WORSE! Check out these good examples from valley of the geeks…

3. The Heart Foundation Tick of approval. A friend of mine worked one of the campaigns for the Heart Foundation Tick. The original copy for the ad was "the Heart Foundation Tick - the label that can't be bought". After some due diligence, the lawyers worked out that they couldn't say this, because companies do have to purchase the right to have the tick displayed on their products packaging, even though the food also has to meet other nutritional requirements. That is the label can be bought, and in fact, is bought. So they had to revise to the new tagline: “the tick that can't just be bought". I thought this is good anecdote that highlights sometimes how fickle all this truth in advertising can be. I am sure Telstra will live and learn…well at least live!

Gen Y Marketing Podcast - Episode 4

Yes its another installment of the Gen Y Marketing Podcast, episode 4 in fact. A big thank you to Glenn Rogers for dropping by for a chat and of course our usual run down of marketing news.

And check out the Gen Y Marketing Podcast blog, Jake installed a new feed player on the blog so now you can listen to the podcast on the blog. If you like what you hear, subscribe to it in itunes or your other favourite podcatchers.

Cheers

Cameron Reillys interview with Geoffrey Bowll.. definitely worth a listen

Every now and then one of the guys I work with questions me about my ability to sleep with my eyes open being that I can sit dead still at my desk not moving a muscle. Alas I am yet to master the art of open eyed sleep, more often than not my motionless existence is the result of me being captivated by a podcast. Today was one of those days as my full attention was focused on Cameron Reilly's interview with Geoffrey Bowll, Managing Director of Melbourne based ad agency Starship. I have read back though Bowll's articles in Marketing Magazine with great interest and been very impressed with his views on the marketing landscape, so getting a chance to listen to him speak was highly anticipated and I was not disapointed.

Having spent quite some time absorbing various marketing blogs and podcasts, I often wonder if the marketing gurus who produce such content actually believe all the bullshit they are spouting. I regularly find myself disheartened by the industry that seems to have such a high opinion of itself and this is why I found Bowll's interview so refreshing. He has a very down to earth approach to marketing, makes some very honest assessments of the industries future and seems to understand that marketers don't have all the answers. For this reason I highly recommend anyone who is vaugley interested in marketing to check out Cameron Rilley's interview with him.

A lesson from The Merchants of Cool

So today I was watching the PBS documentary "the merchants of cool" and despite the fact that a lot has changed since 2001 when the doco was aired (Malcolm Gladwell's hairstyle being one of them), it still has some very relevant messages for marketers.

The doco looks at how marketers are doing everything they can to infiltrate the teen landscape in an effort to integrate their marketing message into pop culture thus associating their brand with whats considered "cool". But this brings about the problem, when the drivers of "cool", the early adopters, see what ever it is they are currently into start appearing in the main stream, the "cool" very quickly wears off.

It would be easy to point the finger at marketers as being responsible for ruining what is "cool" but if we wind the clock back to the days before marketers were scientifically employing psychological trickery to coax money from the pockets of the unsuspecting consumer, this phenomenon was alive and well.

The prime example of this is how music trend move through history. There is a good reason why kids todays aren't sitting around listening to Benny Goodman big band albums (well actually some of them are, but for a different reason) and thats because somewhere along the line this style of music was no longer "cool" and thus music progressed to a new sound. This happened again and again right through the last century from rock and roll to punk to disco to rap, etc.. it just goes on and on. As marketers this may seem a little frustrating, but its actually quite the blessing. There will come a day when walking around with an ipod and uploading pictures to your facebook page will be so unbeleavabley uncool that kids will be rolling their eyes at their parents for even saying such a thing out loud and when that day comes marketers will be miles away frustraitedly working on how to integrate their message with whatever IS cool on that day. So for marketers, this constant cycle will ensure the business of marketing will exist for many years to come..

ripple makes a splash for charity

Melbourne based startup ripple launched recently and seem to be making quite a splash in the philanthropic pond. The site offers two separate services the first being really quite simple, companies partner with ripple to provide advertising (usually in the form of flash based ads). Every time the advertisement is viewed the revenue is donated to one of 4 different charities working to fight poverty. This is kinda cool, especially when you realise that 1 click can provide 1 person in the developing world clean drinking water for 6 days and with this in mind watching the ad that subsequently showed on my screen really wasn't that bad (I would much rather be watching the ad than being thirsty in the 3rd world). The second part of the site is, for me, the real reason why this site can be successful..

Rather than using Google for your search results, you can set the ripple sponsored search site as your home page. The page returns the exact same results as your ordinary Google search but the revenue earned from the searching goes to ripple who pass on 100% of the money to the charities.

The thing I really love about this site is that the creators (Matt Tilleard, Simon Griffiths and Jehan Ratnatunga) have come up with a way for the general public to continue using one of the worlds most popular services (Google search) and do their bit for the global community without any inconvenience to the user whatsoever.

At last count they had 1,364 members in their Facebook group, but I have no doubt this will continue to grow rapidly and hopefully result in some decent revenue for their charity.

Pressing the Online Flesh – MySpace Impact

MySpace recently launched its MySpace Impact channel for politicians and non-profit organizations. It is a space where politicians, political and social organizations can list their official myspace pages.

Compared to places like USA and the UK, Australian politicians have been fairly slow to utilize social media (take a look at Hilary Clinton’s myspace or Barak Obama’s myspace as great examples). And it seems in this case, the Aussie Pollies have been dragged online – kicking and screaming. An interesting note – Labor MPs currently outnumber Liberal MP’s by 2 to 1 on myspace. And John Howard, the Prime Minister, has refused to signup. At last count, only 28 individual federal political candidates for the upcoming election now have official MySpace pages.

Ask any politicians what the value of a personal handshake is? There is a reason why politicians in this day and age still hit the pavement in their local electorates and go door-knocking. Social media enables politicians to make a form of personal contact with voters on a massive scale. In addition it also engages a particular segment of voters – Generation Y and builds on the perception of the politician as a real person, an authentic person and someone open to new ideas.

Check out the table below (that I plan to update every fortnight) regarding how well each of the politicians are utilising this space…



Liberal Party Candidates Total Friends: 616
Liberal Party Number of Myspace Candidates: 5
Labor Party Candidates Total Friends: 9617
Labor Party Number of Myspace Candidates: 10

Connex Trains to target cure for cancer

On the 26th of July Connex Trains, one of Melbourne's largest providers of public transport will be setting aside $1 from every train ticket sold for the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in their fight against cancer. Its a worthy cause and great to see a company kicking some profits over to help out a non profit, but campaigns such as this always attract the question "is this due to social responsibility or is the company after some positive marketing spin?".

There is no doubt that Connex has had a lot of bad press in recent months so they could certainly use some positive attention but according to their website they are hoping to hand over just $50k to cancer research, a figure im sure is not too far off what it has cost them to put together the television advertising campaign, change the print on the tickets, etc. But them if Connex put out a press release saying "we just gave $50,000 to cancer research" would anyone notice?

The thing that I find strange is that according to this document, just one of the 16 lines that Connex runs, handles 60,000 passengers per day. With a few rough calculations (number of passengers for each line, minus the number of pre purchased tickets, etc) 50K sounds a little low.

Can Diet Coke find some love from the Youtube generation?

Diet Coke are dipping their toes into the user generated content arena with a new website showing short films made by local up and coming directors, but can Coke find a place in the hearts of the Youtube generation?

In an era where audiences are embracing the freedom of video on demand, Coke seem to be taking a step backwards in posting one movie each day at the set time of 11am. From what we can gather it seems that Coke are trying to link the morning tea break with their daily video release and this isn't such a bad idea accept for all of those people that take their morning break before 11am. The site is only new so we are yet to see if previous days clips will also be available for viewers to go though at their convenience.

It is interesting to note that Coke have chosen not to dive in the deep end but rather dip their toes into the user generated content pool by keeping control of the videos that appear on their site. This obviously avoids any "negative brand connotation" clips appearing on the site, but many new media marketing experts believe that user generated content initiatives must be totally open, warts and all before users really start getting involved. Companies that enable comments on their corporate blogs run the risk of negative remarks, but part of the appeal of interactive marketing is the company's preparedness to be transparent in interacting with their customers. Those few companies that think they can control their public perception by deleting negative comments soon find themselves berated in dozens of blogs and forums sites.

We will keep an eye on Diet Cokes campaign over the coming weeks and keep you all up to date on this little marketing experiment by one of the worlds biggest companies.

Snickers Ad…Who is Satisfied?

A two-minute ad for Snickers by Clemenger BBDO Melbourne has won the gold Siren award for best radio ad of the year. Download Here!

Now let’s remember, that this is a radio ad. It is a step up from the normal ads that usually start along the lines of, “thinking of Venetian blinds…”

I must confess that I think this Ad is pretty ordinary. Listening to it, I was actually trying to pay attention to the ad (as opposed to having it forced on me on the radio when I am driving) and I was still struggling to really understand what it was all about. It didn’t make me want a snickers, like snickers or laugh out loud.

Let’s assume that it was funny and clever. Does this translate to more Snickers sales or increased brand value? I doubt it in this case. A friend of mine, who is a copy writer for a Melbourne based ad agency, told me recently that he thinks not even half of the "creative’s" would ever care to understand what impact the Ad that they create for their clients would have on sales for their clients brand. All that the "creative’s" are focused on, is making a clever humorous Ad that wins them and their agency an industry award.

So Ad agencies, with their priorities skewed towards their reputation, and intra-industry masturbations, are probably the last people that you should be asking to create your business’s ad campaigns. Then who should? You and your customers! Listen to them. Create ways for them to be able to easily communicate to you about what they want to hear from your brand and what they find valuable about your brand / product / service.

TACO BELL. Four square meals a day!

Sometimes, as marketers, we need to take risks and generated big, ambitious ideas to create some excitement and buzz. However, sometimes an idea can be just a bit too audacious, even for a marketer. A friend sent me the following link…Taco Bell.

Mid last year, Taco Bell released its "Fourth Meal" campaign with a series of changes geared toward late-night eater. In order to accommodate these changes, Taco Bell has extended the hours of its restaurants nationwide until 1 am and is promoting the “Fourth Meal”.

Now I am all for campaigns designed purely to attract attention (hey I am writing about this 1 year later – and now I know if I ever need a late-nite snack Taco Bell is always open), but the Fourth Meal. Really? Does this come across just a little manipulative and cynical, considering its aimed at a generation renowned for its cynicism and avoidance of marketing messages?

Well good luck to the Taco Bell marketing department in its attempts to alter hundreds of years of CRAZY human “3 meals-a-day” eating habits that have seemed to serve our civilisation well. CHAMPAGNE MARKETING!
(oh, and the site...gives me navigation indigestion).

hands up anyone who likes broad appeal?

Everyone has been in this situation at least once in their life. Your sitting at a table with a group of people having a general discussion on some random topic. Then a friend in the group makes a bad joke referring to something only you and they know about. You both laugh, others looks bemused, and as is the case with any "in joke" its all the more amusing cause not everyone "gets it".

Broad appeal marketing works much the same way only (strangely enough) in reverse. As an advertiser, quite often a campaign idea will be scrapped due to its alienation of certain demographics. If we are putting together a campaign for say the Toyota Corolla, we don't want to use images and language that will alienate the over 60 crowd because as this might result in lost sales, but at the same time we don't want the car to be branded as a "grandma car" cause this might lose sales in the younger age group. So what do we do? We choose THE MOST middle class, middle age bracket people and dress them in non biased fashion so we can get the broadest appeal possible. And what ends up happening? Everyone at the table "gets it" so no one finds it all that funny.

As marketers are finding out, reaching the Gen X/Y markets is far tougher than it was with the baby boomers. These new customers are infinitely more fragmented and are constantly narrowing their own demographic. You just need to look at the shear number of sub genre's in popular music to get a feel for how things are changing, and they (the Gen X/Yers) like it this way. The less people there are in their genre the more exclusive it is and the more individual they feel.

So if your potential customers are deliberately fragmenting themselves how can you expect broad appeal advertising strategies to connect with anyone? You can't.

I look forward to seeing a main stream brand use a term like "L337" in a television campaign. Sure there will be some people that wont have a clue what it means, but for the viewer that DOES know what it means, it will be like the ad is speaking directly to them.

Taking the piss..

I'm not sure how well the phrase "taking the piss" translates in countries other than Australia, but basically it means to make a joke at someones expense. What I want to talk about today is companies that are prepared to "take the piss" out of themselves.

Carlton United Breweries (the makers of such highbrow beers as Carlton Draught and Victoria Bitter) had an ad campaign recently that was a parody of the famous scene from the movie Flashdance. Rather than having a beautiful girl dancing to the song "its raining men" they went with an overweight goofy looking middle aged male dancing around in a leotard... it was pretty funny as far as ads go (you can watch it on metacafe here).

Now I'm sure that there would have been more than a couple of Marketing Exec's who would have passed on such a concept based on the idea that people would equate Carlton Draught with being overweight/ugly/etc, but here's the thing, the ad was a smashing success! Why?

Because Carlton Draught didn't make an ad that tried to trick their consumers into thinking they would be smarter or better looking if they drank their product. Instead they made fun of themselves, gave the consumer a bit of a laugh in return for their 30sec of attention and both parties walked away happy. Carlton Draught got their impression and the consumer got entertained.

As an advertiser, I think there is a valuable lesson in this and other campaigns of this nature. You can show attractive people standing on a beach enjoying your product till the cows come home but chances are your just going to blend in with 98% of the other ads trying to do the same thing. So why not be bold, try something that's makes fun of your company in a light hearted way and maybe you wont end up with people changing channels as soon as the ad break starts.

Gone in 60 Seconds….

Waitress 1: Sorry we can’t make changes to the breakfast menu.
Customer 1: I just want the BLT served on rye bread instead of a baguette?
Waitress 1: Sorry, but we don’t make changes.
Customer 2: Can I get a Skim latte please?
Waitress 1: We don’t do skim?
Customer 2: what about Soy?
Waitress 1: Yep
Customer 2: So you do Soy milk, but not skim! Why?
Waitress 1: We just don’t…
10 minutes later…
Waitress 2: Hi, um…it seems we have run out of baguettes, would you mind the blt served on bread, or would you like to change your order?

The above was an exchange that a friend and I had with a waitress on Sunday, as we had breakfast at a café close to where she lives.

The Café is not expensive. Nor is it exclusive. It is just your typical, hip Melbourne-Fitzroy corner café. There is nothing on the menu saying why menu items cannot be altered. And each time my friend asks to have an item altered (always the BLT on Rye...such a creature of habit!) she gets inconsistent answers from the wait staff...

Make me feel special. Make me think my happiness is important to you. Get me to feel like I am part of your customer community? And I will care about you and be one of your business advocates. If they really wanted to stick to this policy what should have been said or stipulated on the menu…

Due to our small kitchen, and the busy customer traffic we experience, to ensure that all our customers get their meals quickly (and while they are still hot!), our kitchen staff unfortunately can not make changes to the menu items. We hope you enjoy your meals – and don’t forget to ask our staff about our daily specials!

Know your business value points in the minds of your customers.

A great contrast to this, comes from a company that truly understands what value it really provides to consumers - McDonalds…
Bangkok McDonalds promises your order in 60 seconds or you get a coupon for a free drink. There's an electronic timer that the customer pushes to start the countdown. Reports from when the program was first introduced, indicate the staff seemed to have fun trying to get the order done in time. The customer is being reinforced of the message that - this is fast food, McDonalds strives for consistency and customer service, and how “customers” felt was in the forefront of McDonald’s business model! I can’t think of anything else that would be more important for McDonald customers to know!

I love you. I don’t respect you…

Today I was put on hold twice. Nothing particularly unusual in that regard, I make tonnes of calls during the day and find myself on hold, waiting for a page and being transferred plenty of times each day. What was particularly interesting was the contrast between the two “on-hold” experiences. Let me recap…

Call 1. The Marketing Message Wait: National Travel Agent. On hold for 4 minutes. Put on hold by personal assistant, to listen to “hold music” consisting of a 2 minute loop of the companies marketing message, detailing what the company can potentially do for me and how convenient they are to deal with (what with more than 200 locations Australia-wide – do I have to say Ironical??).
Call 2. The Radio Message Wait: National Real Estate Agent. On hold for 5 minutes. Put on hold by secretary, listening to 5 minutes of a national radio program.

I don’t know about you, but when I am put on hold I can get a bit irritable. Frustrated? Sure! Bored? You bet. Is this the best time to be marketing your company to me in an impersonal way? HELL NO!

In the first call, the Travel Agent's marketing department obviously was trying to take advantage of utilising every available opportunity to deliver to their customer's the “marketing message”. I was on hold. I was bored. I was irritated. Did they try to solve my problem? No. Was this a useful marketing exercise? I highly doubt it. Despite the repetitive name recognition that the marketing loop perhaps embedded into my head, telling someone how good you are when you are causing them irritation and inconvenience does not work.

Although, as marketers, we need to take advantage of any touch-point that we can identify with our customers, we also have to make sure we are choosing the right moments to interact with our customers, and that the message and conversation we have with them matches specific circumstances of the interaction.

Try this for example. Go up to someone you love. Punch them in the arm. Then tell them you love them. Wait. Do it again. If you manage to survive the next 20 seconds without being punched or screamed at, try it again. The person will be confused, probably wary of when you next approach them, and my guess is that they will start to think you are a bit of a prick. The problem is that the two messages that you are giving the person do not match each other.

When I was put on hold to the radio, sure this wasn’t ideal, but I was certainly less bored, not annoyed by boring marketing messages, and also got to catch up with the latest Christina Aguilera song!

What is wrong with sincerely apologising to your customers for the inconvenience? Solve their problem!!! If your customers are bored, entertain them. If they don’t have enough, or the correct information to be able to interact with you business easily, efficiently and quickly, give them this information.Now nobody likes being put on hold.

Nobody likes to be forced to line up in a supermarket for 5 minutes, for the privilege of paying for their items. But sometimes the inconveniences we cause our customers are unavoidable (despite our best intentions). The key to excellent customer service is, what are you going to do for your customers in response to causing this inconvenience and the privilege of having their attention?
Nat xoxo

A break in the connection...

Before I start this post, please let me apologise for the overuse of stereotypes, I am hoping that if your reading this, your cluey enough to work out the moral of the story..

So you wake up to your expensive linen and stop for a moment to look out your penthouse apartment window at the sweeping views of the ocean. After sliding into a $1500 suit you grab the keys to the BMW and head off to the office. Your first meeting for the day is a discount clothing chain store who have asked you to pitch them some marketing idea's you have to help them reconnect with their consumers. The question comes from the client "what do you think our customers want?".

I'll tell you what your customers want, they want what you have! But the cant have it cause they bust their balls day in day out in a job they hate for a boss they despise in a futile attempt to make the mortgage payments and pay for their kids school uniform which they cant and THATS why they are shopping at your store!

The problem here is that the people who are most in touch with the discount clothing chain brand are not the same people that are designing the advertising for said chain. Sure, I don't expect that every client passing though your doors will be a company selling a product you use on a regular basis, but it doesn't take a genius to see that there is something a miss here.

If you asked me to speculate what a Lithuanian farmer is looking for in a biscuit brand, i would quite happily tell you that I don't have a clue. I can tell you a whole stack of things that I "THINK" he might want, but chances are I'm guessing and chances are I'm wrong, but if I'm quick enough on my feet and can belittle my client with a long list of marketing catch phrases I can probably still win the contract. The question is, am I the best person for the job?

My point here (if its not already blindingly obvious) is that far too often marketers are entrusted with responsibilities they have no place accepting. The Gen X/Y market is no doubt where the money is in consumer products these days, the problem is that its not always Gen X/Y marketers that are sitting across the table from the client.

So if you happen to be reading this and you happen to own a discount clothing retail chain, you might want to spend a day sitting out the front of your store watching the types of people that shop there because chances are this is going to be more bang for your buck than asking an upper-middle-class-40-something what your customers will respond to..