There’s a rather unhealthy dissatisfaction with just about everything nowadays. Job, car, house, partner……. if you’re tired of it, change it. Everything moves at such a speed that nothing is permanent any more.

It’s the same in marketing. The 30 second TV commercial, the 2 minute vid on YouTube, the one-liner on Twitter. Now even retailing’s gone temporary. HMV are launching ‘pop-up’ stores for Christmas. Apparently they are looking for vacant premises, and with Woolworths, MFI, Adams, Zavvi and The Pier in administration or liquidation there’s no shortage of outlets with landlords desperate to do a deal that will put a bit of cash in the till…theirs, not the retailers’.

A few years ago clients put their trust in agencies and focused on building productive and mutually profitable long term relationships. Now, it’s all too often simply about another brief and another round of pitches from whichever agencies’ creds are on file.

Perhaps Procurement Departments could focus more on improving the efficiency of the relationship between their brands and their existing agencies instead of spending so much time on pitches. After all, better briefs lead to better work, which with an agency that knows the client’s systems well, can often lead to great work produced more cost-effectively.

As in life, client/agency relationships are often seen as transitory and as a result have become too temporary. As the great American country rock band Lonestar (now sadly, and ironically, split up) put it in one of their biggest hits….. Whatever happened to going the extra mile?

Marcomms Man

Here is a neat concept whereby, from the  official website you can explore the streets of London that inspired the songs  of the band as well as preview the tracks. Just a pity the new album isn’t up to much…

How many tabs do you have open in your browser at any one time? It’s quite scary but by the end of the day with my computer processing slower than the bumper to bumper traffic outside on Oxford street, I could potentially have 20 or more tabs open. Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia entries, numerous blogs, Google mail, Google reader… the list is endless…

The way we interact with our computer has changed. Real time interaction has become more important than ever. Things can’t wait – you’re input into dialogue is required NOW. All of this is because information is updated at such speed now. I’ve always been a proponent of this seismic shift in the way that we disseminate and interrogate information. The more the better. Greed is good – as long as it is for information; knowledge is after all a currency that we trade in that makes us feel good about ourselves.

A friend of mine though recently bought the subject of ‘constant partial attention’ into conversation. It is a relatively new concept that I hadn’t really given much thought too before he explained it – I was probably too busy clicking and skimming . In short, the idea surrounds our situation whereby we are overwhelmed with data and cognitively suffering from multitasking. Constant partial attention looks at the information surplus that we now have and suggests that too much digital information use is in danger of dumbing us down.

Constant Partial Attention

As human beings, we have limited information processors and the problem with obtaining all our information online is the constant temptation. It is now incredibly easy to be led off down tangents whether it be from a word that has to be looked up or an inviting looking link. In short, our attention span is becoming ever smaller.

I recently started an after work course that is 3 hours after work twice a week. Now, these three hours are split in half with a five minute break. For the first few sessions, it was incredibly difficult to concentrate fully for the entire period of time…and this was only an hour and a half. It demonstrated that the way we interact with information has changed significantly as the internet has developed. Our attention spans are reducing as our exposure to information increases.

So what does this shift mean for marketers? Well, to remain relevant today brands need to realize they increasingly have to create valuable utilities that consumers ‘pull’. These need to seamlessly integrate into the hubs where consumers are investing their shrinking attention. Useability is set to become the new ‘awareness’…

And what does it mean for consumers? Start allocating some time firmly away from your browser and revel in the opportunity to work things out for yourselves…

THE BIRTH                                                                                            

White paper blank. Mind                                                    

focused but empty. Try

associated images, trends, influences,

yet still no inspiration.

Then, out of the blue, an idea forms,

developed, nurtured, honed and sharpened,

loved.

And there it is on the page,

Turning white into colour

vibrant, living, breathing,

a thing of beauty.

Mined, refined……mine.                

Roger Hyslop                        

So, the big news for the advertising industry this week is the expected decision that will allow commercial broadcasters to show sponsored products for the first time. If, as expected, the decision is passed, there will be another avenue for brands to promote their wares. The days of fictional products will disappear and pints of ‘Newton & Ridley’ in the Rovers Return will be replaced by Stella, Heineken or A.N.Other highest bidder.

Soon to be Wetherspoons?

In some ways, our soap operas will return to their routes. The name ‘soap opera’ stemming from the original serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers such as Procter & Gamble, Colgate – Palmolive and Lever Brothers as sponsors and producers targeting weekly daytime slots when mostly housewives would be available to listen.

Not that that product placement in itself is a new phenomenon. We seem to know a lot about the spending habits of our favourite fictional screen stars. James Bond’s preferred watch is an Omega (the Rolex brand manager was obviously gazumped), while ¬ Spider-Man likes a drop of Dr Pepper. It’s difficult to forget the cringe worthy scene in I, Robot in which a character compliments Will Smith’s character’s shoes to which he replies “Converse All-Stars, vintage 2004.(the year of the film’s release).

Product Placement Overkill...

I, Robot was ranked “the worst film for product placement” on a British site due to overt placements for Ovaltine, Audi, FedEx, Dos Equis, and JVC among others, all of them introduced within the first ten minutes of the film. A classic example of overkill if any was needed.

So, advertisers will need to tread carefully. Over the forthcoming months, no doubt there will be checklists developed as how to create a successful product placement. We know that relevancy will be the key. Execution will also be critical. Extreme close ups of freshly poured lager or glinting accessories are going to be a massive turn off. Logistically, it will also be incredibly interesting to see how these product placements will be managed. Will brand managers be on set to ensure that their product is shown in the perfect light? Will scripts be passed through the marketing departments of FMCG brands to check that the correct product cues are being communicated? The process promises to be a complex one.

The essence of advertising is often confused as an art form. Primarily by creative departments. The simple fact though, as communicated most succinctly by David Ogilvy is that advertising ‘has an obligation to sell’. The ultimate aim is to move product – not produce aesthetically outstanding work. Of course, the two frequently go hand in hand but they are not mutually exclusive. It is going to be the marrying of the commerciality of advertising with the simple aim of televisions shows – to entertain, that is going to create friction.

And commerciality is the sole reason behind this about turn. ITV has championed the lifting of the ban which it said would be “warmly welcomed by the commercial broadcasting industry and advertisers alike”. It has been suggested that it will earn an incremental £100m a year for broadcasters. I actually struggle to see how such a figure can be arrived at. Product placement does not mean marketing budgets will increase. The marketing pot is not dependant on mediums available. Instead, all it means is that other areas of the marketing budget will be cut and re-allocated. If I had to place a bet on where the budget for product placement might come from, I would say it would come from elsewhere in the TV budget. Product Placement is some instances could be a very cost effective way to get awareness on TV screens without spending money on ads with high production values.

My prediction is that the real level of earnings will be considerably lower. It is too early to tell now the full effects. Across the marketing world, clients will be asking agencies to look at the opportunities. Some will do it well and some less well but one thing is for certain – product placement will not be the saviour of the ailing television advertising industry.

Here is a piece I wrote for my personal blog http://mattkandela.wordpress.com/, that I thought I would post here as well…

As a marketeer, you get used to hearing certain buzz words around the place. They tend to seep slowly into your consciousness, become entrenched in your everyday vocabulary for some varying amount of time before sloping off again into obscurity. Some stick around for what seems like forever. Some disappear along with the outward forces that created such a need for the term in the first place.

 ‘Credit crunch’ is one such word. You couldn’t move for ‘credit-crunch’ some months ago, but somewhere along the way it paved the way for ‘recession’…an altogether darker more unforgiving descriptor. ‘Credit crunch’ sounded dangerous and powerful. Recession just sounds grey and depressing. And when such words enter the public psyche, we marketeers have to use them more and more ourselves because after all, the consumers affected by sociological goings-on are those people we still have to persuade to buy our products, whatever their economic situation.

 What start of as ‘asides’ in presentations quickly become ‘topics for discussion’ which in turn become presentations in their own rights. And as we grapple with these terms and how to manage these sociological changes, we create terms that tend to go hand in hand with them. Imagine an organogram with the terms that we might associate with recession. You might see ‘hard working’, or ‘cheap’, or ‘quick fix’ and ‘guaranteed results’. It is easy to see why it happens. It happens because money is tight and people start to watch their backs fearing for their jobs and ultimately their source of income. They don’t want to take any risks and give their employer a reason to get rid of them. People become more conscious of doing nothing wrong than they are of doing anything right.

 And this has to be the wrong approach for 2 reasons.

 Reason 1: Look at the facts…

 I just took a look at the unemployment statistics and found this quote from the national statistics site:

 “The employment rate and the number of people in employment have fallen. The number of vacancies has fallen. The number of unemployed people, the unemployment rate and the claimant count have all increased. The number of inactive people of working age and the inactivity rate have increased. Growth in average earnings, excluding bonuses, has fallen”

Now, if that isn’t a bleak picture then I don’t know what is. It’s not a great suprise – the contraction of the economy has meant that there simply isn’t the growth at this moment in time to support the number of jobs created pre-recession. Now, the crux of this argument is the fact is that most of those people were not doing anything wrong. The majority of them were working hard and  trying to stay in employment – trying to not do anything wrong. One thing is for sure though, not many of those people were trying to be different – to be bold or adventurous. It is understandable,  human beings are programmed to try and protect and the fear the loss  is a stronger emotion than the desire to strive for something greater.

 But when you look at the facts,  it doesn’t actually make any sense to ‘be safe’. The reason for this is that ‘being safe’ ensures you stay in the same lottery bowl as everyone else. By ‘doing different’, you at least give yourself more of a chance to succeed.

 Reason 2: The need for change

 The second reason is that when things are bad, people are looking harder than ever for something different. Something to drag them from the boring minutiae of their everyday life into a place where for they can forget about their worries. If we can recognise this as marketers and try and give consumers something different from what is already in existence but at a lower price point, then we stand a chance of engaging them. We need to adjust our psyche to take risks in adverse environments. If we can do this,  then we are more likely than not to succeed.

 Why? Well ,let me quote another blog (in French) ‘envie d’entreprendre’ which explains why an innovator would have a higher likeliness of success in periods of crisis:

“Since financing is more difficult to obtain, those who know how to operate in a low-cost, frugal environment have an edge. Since many people wait and see, even are “frozen”, using the crisis as an excuse not to act or cannot act because of lack of financing, there is less competition. Since there is less competition, the market is easier [and more talents are available].

I like these arguments: less competition + better efficiency = increased likelihood of success. It seems that periods of recession can create opportunites to become MORE entrepreneurial, innovative and push boundaries. So maybe, it’s about time we stopped talking about always delivering ‘value’ and ‘hard working approaches’ and start thinking about how we bring the greatest possible changes to those people who need them most.

This post was created by a colleague of mine from INITIALS. He remembers the days before the internet changed the way we do business…unlike myself! This is a great entry about what he makes of the changes in the media landscape that we are currently living in…

Now that I have apparently been granted a Second Life in cyberspace, encouraged to tweet like a bird and blog the secrets of my life to the universe, I’m just beginning to wonder whether I am living in the real or the virtual world. Is life actually happening around me or is it all just one big fantasy?

 It’s nice to be LinkedIn to all my work colleagues and have so many friends on Facebook but do I really have the time to connect digitally to my virtual world? There are no more hours in the day than there were 30 years ago in BC (before computers) 1979, so it means that I am already living part of my life in this virtual world. Which in turn suggests that part of me is no longer real and that I have become almost a virtual person, existing on a diet of digital fodder being constantly fed to me by persons or forces known or unknown out there in computerland. Perhaps I am being secretly microsoftened up for a fate worse than death, which can only be in the eternal world of virtual reality.

I want my real life back! I want to converse with friends not have to talk to them remotely, because at the moment they haven’t the remotest idea what I’m really thinking when they only communicate with me digitally.

 In a business context too, life has changed beyond (voice?) recognition. As an agency man I can sometimes look back with affectionate nostalgia to those days when we travelled weekly to our clients’ offices to present, live and in real person, our proposals to a group of marketing folk who had time for a few preliminary chatty courtesies before the serious business of advocacy commenced. See the whites of their eyes, watch for the buying signals, gauge the reaction in real(ity) time, then travel back to the office to discuss the meeting and decide on the next action. 

Now, we hardly have time to grab our (Standard Class) seats before the fruits of our labours are being mixed with Blackberries and emailed back to us with instructions on what is required within the next 24 hours. Don’t get me wrong. This new order is exciting, stimulating and moving at the speed of light.

Marcomms Man remembers a different era...

The world of marketing has got pretty confusing though. Here too there is the real world and the digital world. One is regarded as traditional and slow-moving, the other dynamic and multi-platformed. It took radio 38 years to reach an audience of 50 million. It took the Internet 4 years and the iPod just 3 years, so it’s little wonder that even the brightest marketing exponents are still sprinting to catch up with the pace of change.

One thing I’ve learnt though. The ‘traditional’ and the digital marketing world are not mutually exclusive. In fact there’s nothing traditional about TV, radio, press, posters and the like. That’s the real world, inhabited by real people with needs, aspirations and emotions. People who will continue to visit precincts, shop in stores, react and respond to propositions they see, hear, read about and experience.

Increasingly though, they also want to inhabit their virtual world. So it’s up to us to provide them with the signposts that will direct them to those parts of the digital community that will give them fulfilment. By seeing the real and the virtual world as one, and by using the same skills of communication and creativity in both, we have the opportunity to engage them in a way which was unthinkable in the BC years.

I wish I could go on. But as improper as it sounds, I suddenly feel the need to do a tweet and a blog.

Marcomms Man