The latest hip thing to do in advertising is let your customers create the ads for you. In fact, Fast Company lists advertising creatives as one of six jobs that won’t exist in 2016- because:

“Talented amateurs making ads for fun and posting them online seem to be better at your job than you are. Bonus: No more “whither the 30-second spot” whining.”

Right now Mastercard is fishing for ideas for their “Priceless” campaign officially with a spot _____________ is _____________, etc.

Read more: on adfreak The Consumerist or Ernie Schenck
Spending money making ads asking people to make ads- hmmm, sounds like the ultimate creative cop-out to me.

In the business- often time marketers with big budgets ask for Spec work- and that’s “Spec” as in “Speculative” not as in “Special.” If we like it- we’ll hire you. (See http://www.no-spec.com for the right answers to this practice).
We had Arby’s ask us for Spec work- my answer was that when they start serving roast beef- where people only have to pay if they like the sandwich- I’ll consider it.
“The Apprentice” likes to use marketing tasks to evaluate Donald Trump’s future yes persons. It seems that every other task is to make an ad, or figure out how to sell something- yet most of the candidates aren’t marketers- and the job they are auditioning for isn’t a marketing position.
Advertising Age points out yearly that the ad industry isn’t paying competitively with other business fields- that managers, finance people and accountants all earn more. And granted, there are a ton of bad agencies doing crap work out there- but, in the end, someone has to be brilliant and change the Nike’s of the world from running shoe maker to lifestyle brand with “Just do it.”
So- before any more of you marketers consider letting your fans do the work- (see adcandy for more of this_enabling them with packaged flash clips on your site- take a look at what someone did with this Chevy Apprentice site tie in- and realize- maybe it is better to pay someone to do your spots afterall.

What do you think?

After watching this creative execution- using the crazy high budget shots to “sell” an SUV- the same “create your own spot tool” was used to create a comment on the insanity of these types of spots- click here.

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Posted in: Advertising, Everything you want to know about advertising, Future of advertising, Guerrilla campaigns, Marketing & the Web, Viral Marketing, Web strategy

Two of my favorite web sites are both built by the same people: 800-ceo-read who want to sell you business books. Instead of trying to go head-to-head with Amazon, they spend their marketing money building a trust relationship with their prospective customers through two give away sites:

• inbubblewrap.com which gives you a chance to win a business book every business day by answering two off the wall questions. The name comes from the book mailing packaging- your book comes in bubble wrap.
• Changethis.com which publishes downloadable “manifestos” on provocative business subjects. People like my friend Sally Hogshead, and my first hero business author, Tom Peters have published manifestos.

I’ve actually been approved to publish one on the future of TV- but, clients have taken priority over finishing it.
One of The Next Wave clients, Charles Halton, has his proposal up for selection- you can vote for it by clicking to this link: http://www.changethis.com/proposals/658
And sign up for e-mail updates for the next e-mail notification of new manifestos- or download a few while you are there. The site is also RSS aware if you just want to livemark it.

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Posted in: Change the world, Everything you want to know about advertising, Marketing & the Web, Retail, Web strategy

Hill | Holliday

Well- at least one big agency is getting the internet these days.

Hill Holliday in Boston gave up the flash driven, glam site of the mega agency for an entire site in WordPress.

That’s what we’ve been talking about for the last 13 months.

That’s why we started the Blogosopher seminar- and why we stoped wasting our clients money with sites that don’t deliver what Word Press can- faster and cheaper.

What do you think?

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Posted in: Advertising, Everything you want to know about advertising, Future of advertising, Great ad agencies, Marketing & the Web, Web strategy

I’ve always thought P&G was full of itself with its “brand manager” concept. I’ve also wondered who ever came up with the idea of “Marketing” as a separate part of any business- if you don’t have everyone on board with the idea that the company is in business to sell something- you shouldn’t be in business.
Marketing in its simplest terms is letting people know about your product or service- and then selling it. At The Next Wave- we call it “Create lust, Evoke Trust” sm – the idea of making people want what you have- and then making sure they trust you to deliver that product or service.
There was a time when companies like P&G paid other companies to collect all mentions of their products- so they could analyze and react “appropriately” to any perceived threat to their precious “brand.” That was well and fine in the old days (pre Google and pre web) but now, all you have to do is a simple Google of your product or service- and you will find that there are a lot of people talking about you- and it may or may not be good.
Case in point: LaCie, a brand of computer peripherals that was at one point tied closely with hard drive maker Quantum. I’ve been buying their products for over 15 years- and was generally happy with them. Then about a year ago, I bought one of their “Big Disks”- a 500GB external RAID enclosure. Two months after the 1-year warranty expired- so did the drive. Luckily, I believe in backing up- and didn’t lose much other than three days of being able to get much done as the restore took time.
A blog I read regularly had posted a note about having problems with his “Big disk”- and I had mentioned that I had had good experiences with LaCie- this was 2 weeks before my crash. You can follow the storyline on the blog- which now has a ton of entries with other people venting about premature failure of their drives.
The point is- anyone now looking to buy a new LaCie Big Disk, will probably find this thread- and change their mind about buying this substandard product. Here is the perfect time and opportunity for a LaCie “brand manager” work at preserving the brand name and image- but so far, it hasn’t happened. In the short sighted world of so many companies, no one has stepped up to volunteer a repair program, warranty extension or a power supply trade in (which is what I believe is the cause of these failures). With the connectivity of the web, and the ease of content publication via blog technology, brand managers need to be actively searching the web and addressing these types of brand bashing (rightfully so in this case) issues to preserve the brand equity.
Companies that hope to survive in this new economy should train their entire workforce in how to spot these types of attacks- and report them to a brand equity preservation specialist- before there is no brand left to manage.

What do you think?

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Posted in: Everything you want to know about advertising, Future of advertising, Marketing & the Web, Web strategy

So, this is a rant. It’s also a comment on the future of advertisings golden child- television ads. It’s also a message to Rupert Murdoch- who obviously either doesn’t get it- or is putting up a good front. It’s also a message to local NPR affiliates who are up in arms about NPR making programs available as PodCasts. Oh, yeah- Clear Channel- you too- wake up.
To those powerful people that still believe that they can “bundle” programming- that they don’t create- and resell it as a package, your days are numbered.
A la carte TV will work- it will just be delivered by someone other than:

• Television networks
• Broadcasters
• Cable systems
• Satellite TV systems.

These are all soon to be obsolete leftovers from the day when it took expensive technology and hardware to distribute programming. Much the same way that if you build newspaper printing presses- you best be looking for a new profession. “Bits not atoms” as Nicholas Negroponte said in “Being digital” way back in the nineties. In other words- what is digital, should stay digital. The articles on the computer at the newspaper should stay on computers instead of being converted to ink on dead trees. Same goes for digital media like TV shows and movies- and radio broadcasts- no need to “package them” anymore- just put them on a server like the iTunes store and deliver them direct to the consumer- unbundled.
So, I’d be willing to pay $5 per episode of the Soprano’s- in HD quality, or $2 in podcast version. And if Cadillac wanted me to learn all about Tony’s new Escalade- they could subsidize my download (I’ll watch and interact with their 2 minute infomercial for $5 off my $5 download- where they will quickly learn that I’d never drive that monstrosity unless it ran on water). Note- I don’t really need anything else from HBO- at this point Netflix does a better job of delivering movies to me- and as soon as HD DVD’s appear- HBO’s last advantage will be gone.
While NPR affiliates are worried about losing access to their subscribers due to podcasts- what they haven’t worried about is creating valuable local community oriented content- which would have helped them build a relationship with their audience- allowing them to have their listeners come to their sites instead of the national site. It’s a learning curve that will sort out the visionaries from the hacks in media really quick.
So- while I can’t download the Soprano’s right now- I’m more than ready too- and HBO better find a new model for distributing the only products that they have had a hand in creating.
The idea of A la carte cable packages only is a discussion if you still believe anyone needs the distribution systems of yesterday. As soon as there is a digital rights management system as solid as iTunes available to everyone- content producers- like David Chase, producer of “The Soprano’s” will be able to sell their programming direct, with an intermediary aggregator like iTunes store or Google video offering the nexus that provides the targeted message insertion handling for those who want to subsidize their viewing.
For me- all I want is my Soprano’s now- so, HBO if you are listening- put it up on iTunes- before you force me to either go to a friends house- or to Bit Torrent. One show isn’t worth a $70 cable bill a month. Capish?

What do you think?

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Posted in: Advertising, Everything you want to know about advertising, Future of TV, Future of advertising, Marketing & the Web, Media, Web strategy

Thinking like a Genius

How many times have you heard “it’s not rocket science, it’s only ____________” (and it’s ok to substitute “brain surgery” for “rocket science”) and thought I should be able to do that? It’s one of the things those of us in advertising hear all the time- as if creating this great stuff is so easy.
How long did it take Wieden + Kennedy working on Nike before “Just do it” came along and changed everything? Do you think “Where’s the beef” was a happy accident on the set? Hopefully not. The fact is- some very talented and smart people worked a lot of hours to come up with those famous three word combinations. Three words- and they propel sales and awareness through the roof.
So- is there a secret to coming up with this stuff? I ran across a site that has eight strategies to “thinking like a genius”- and wouldn’t you know it- they all apply to coming up with great advertising.
If you want to have genius advertising- I can add one more thing strategy to the list: hire an agency and work together at learning each other’s business. It’s often said that clients get the advertising they deserve- and most of the time this comes from an arrogance – often founded on the premise that they don’t believe that advertising is actually creative rocket science. So before you hire or fire your agency- look at how you handled the relationship- was it one of mutual respect? Did you work as hard at educating the agency as the agency worked at educating the client? If the equation wasn’t 50/50- you probably didn’t get what you could have.

What do you think?

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Posted in: Advertising, Careers in Advertising, Everything you want to know about advertising, Great ad agencies

AsiaMedia :: Ailing radio broadcasters see promise in podcasts

I grew up listening to the greatest radio station in the world (see my previous post on WMMS).

It was intimate, it was timely, it was a relationship- between me- and the coolest people I knew.

Those days are long gone- since three major networks gobbled up every station in sight.

Now- I see that Japanese broadcasters are trying to last gasp their audience by making their programming available as pod casts. We’ll see how fast it happens here.

But, advertiser be warned- a podcast is much the same as TV on TiVo- where unless your radio/podcast spots are really great- they will be skipped.

Soon- the only relevant local offline advertising will be outdoor and guerrilla.

What do you think?

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Posted in: Advertising, Everything you want to know about advertising, Guerrilla campaigns, Marketing & the Web, Media

As far as I can see there are only two TV campaigns out there that I want to watch over and over.
I’ve talked about both of them in previous posts.
Two of the best agencies- according to Ad Age- and according to me: Wieden + Kennedy and Crispin Porter Bogusky, and two very different clients. (more…)

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Posted in: Advertising, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Everything you want to know about advertising, Great ad agencies, VW advertising

ESPN.com: Page 2 : The Jumpman in us all

When an agency and a client get it- and build a long lasting relationship- great things happen.

Wieden + Kennedy and Nike are the perfect example. The two companies have grown up together. It’s not just been a relationship, but an evolution of both the art of sports marketing and the art of advertising.

What started out with “There is no finish line” and probably ended in the best corporate tag line ever- “Just do it” has given all of us in advertising a model of how it can be done.

People talk about the latest Nike commercial, be it “Bo Knows” – Mars Blackmon “It’s gotta be the shoes” to this latest spot featuring Michael Jordan- for all of a split second. The link above is ESPN waxing poetic about an ad- and once you watch it, you will instantly understand why I say these two companies work together to capture the heart of sport better than anyone else ever has.

What do you think?

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Posted in: Advertising, Everything you want to know about advertising

just a blip » Blog Archive » Un-pimp your advertising

By way of Ernie Schenck I find my way to Baba Shetty’s blog where he talks about the “Vee Dub” un-pimp your ride campaign from Crispin Porter + Bogusky.

Shetty points out that the new spots are number 2, 3 and 4 on YouTube right behind the story of the autistic basketball star.

While this is all good and fine- the real question is why is all this traffic going to YouTube instead of to VW? Why hasn’t CP+P made sure that these spots are available in the obvious place- VW’s site- where they can capture and analyze traffic? Being able to look at your stats and see where your product and commercials are being discussed is one of the most valuable resources a marketer has today.

And- don’t assume that everyone has broadband access- have multiple resolutions, multiple formats, all launched from a quick loading HTML page- giving the viewer the option before waiting 10 minutes for your pretentious Flash intro to load.

I was mistaken when I predicted that these spots would only air to limited audiences- I caught one in 24 on Monday night. Of course I watched it- they are funny- and it may generate some curiosity on the sales floor- only until consumers see the price tag. CB+P may be the masters of advertainment- but VW still has a long way to go to “German Engineering.”

So kids, remember- don’t leave it to third parties to distribute your ads- do it yourself- that’s the beauty of the web. And- even though you love Flash- don’t build your whole site out of it- unless you absolutely have to.

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Posted in: Advertising, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Everything you want to know about advertising, Future of TV, Guerrilla campaigns, Marketing & the Web, VW advertising, Viral Marketing, Web strategy