Who's been watching "The Story of Us", the documentary series recounting the history of the United States? I caught a couple of the shows and was both entertained and underwhelmed. The story of the U.S. is certainly rich in drama, intrigue, heroism and violence, and there were some interesting details I hadn't known about. But I was also struck by the program's breathless account of a passionate group of rebels sticking it to a large, organized, well-disciplined army girding against them. Sound familiar? As the saying goes, the victors get to write history. With everything going on in the world right now, it gave me pause to consider how the present time will be considered by future generations. I don't think that was at all the intention of the series, mind, but definitely a thought-provoking byproduct.
Meanwhile, do check out Burt's article in the current issue, which digs into Bank of America's $4 million deal to run two-minute spots throughout the programs.
What do trendy musicians OK Go have in common with insurance mega-giant State Farm? Turns out, more than "not much". But this is more than just another version of the "corporate brand meets hipsters, falls in love" story we know so well. Rather, this highlights how proactive creative types are looking beyond traditional parameters to get support for their work. And brands are biting. In this case, State Farm paid to have a place at the creative development table as the video for the song This Too Shall Pass was storyboarded. The result: a walk-on part in the delightfully chaotic promo, embedded below—note the State Farm van that literally kicks things off and the State Farm teddybear, seen fleetingly. The insurer gets a shout out screen at the end of the video: "OK Go Thanks State Farm for making this video possible". And State Farm paid an undisclosed sum to ensure that fans can embed the YouTube video of the song on their own sites.
This is a bigger deal than you might imagine, one that points to the ongoing turmoil within the music industry. As it happens, label EMI disabled the embed function on OK Go's breakout video hit, Here It Goes Again, which involved the musicians cavorting on treadmills and which has been viewed some fifty million times on YouTube. As the band's lead singer Damian Kulash outlined in a February 19th New York Times op ed piece this decision was disastrous.
This isn't how the Internet works. Viral content doesn't spread just from primary sources like YouTube or Flickr. Blogs, Web sites and video aggregators serve as cultural curators, daily collecting the items that will interest their audiences the most. By ignoring the power of these tastemakers, our record company is cutting off its nose to spite its face.
Todd Fischer, manager of national sponsorships at the Bloomington, Ill.-based State Farm, was keen to assert that EMI had been "at the table" throughout the negotiation process on this latest video, which started back in fall of last year. But clearly he's also more than happy that State Farm gets to play the part of forward-thinking innovator, working to supply fans with what they really want and need (the ability to take the video and include it on their own sites). In supporting a band that epitomizes the DIY, can-do, I'll-take-it-and-I'll-mash-it attitude of contemporary culture, the insurer taps into a young audience in a cool, appropriate way. The band, meanwhile, gets to make another fantastic video, harness buzz and win over new fans: the film had nearly 1.4 million views in less than 48 hours.
Keiichi Matsuda is currently finishing up his architecture master's degree at London's Bartlett School of Architecture. He created this intriguing, beautiful and somewhat unnerving vision of everyday life in the future, as embellished by augmented reality that, he writes, "may recontextualize the functions of consumerism and architecture, and change the way in which we operate within it." I'm not entirely sure why we'll need disembodied voices to explain how to make a cup of tea in the future, but I thought the film was pretty nicely done. [Hat tip to CR blog, which also has a pretty good discussion about the film going on in the comments section.]
This morning, I headed to Soho House in Manhattan to hear Seth Godin talk to an assembled audience of 100 or so ad/brand/marketing/design folks. The $195 a ticket event, organized by hip trendwatchers, PSFK, was a way for Godin to tout his latest book, Linchpin, the subtitle of which asks the question, "are you indispensable?" Godin, who is clearly in his element in this type of scenario and whose shtick blends just the right amounts of self-deprecation, flattery of his audience and nimble wit, had some stern words for anyone whose instant response to the question was less than flag-wavingly affirmative. In fact, he offered four main calls to action for those within branding and marketing who are looking not merely to exist in the modern world but to thrive in it and shape it for themselves:
1. "If there is a map or a set of rules, reject it. You will not get paid fairly if all you do is follow the rules."
2. "What you must do is [create] generous art, gifts that change people, connect with people, lead with people, make change that matters."
3. "Ship it."
[This referred to the tendency we all have to talk ourselves out of doing something, instead convincing ourselves that it's too soon/not ready/not a good time/we'll be laughed out of town if we try it now, clearly we should delay. From the nodding heads and murmured approval around the room as Godin described this concept it seemed like a familiar problem. And, of course, the idea of shipping something that might not be perfect isn't just creatively liberating, it's really the only way to exist in a world where if you don't launch your great idea, you'll miss your moment altogether.]
4. "Treat the platform as an opportunity to give gifts and make change, not something to survive to get to tomorrow."
Smart food for thought, as well as a copy of the book that all attendees left clutching. I'm looking forward to reading more.
Forrester just released its annual Customer Experience Index, a ranking of some 133 companies across 14 industries. The firms were rated by regular users according to three principles: whether the service met the customer's needs; how easy it was to work with a firm, and how enjoyable a customer's interactions were with the company. Barnes & Noble topped the list, with Charter Communications TV and Internet service provider taking last place for the third year in a row.
Bruce D Temkin is VP and Principal Analyst of Customer Experience at Forrester and responsible for compiling the report, and he pointed out a surprise in the ranking, which is determined by votes from 4,600 U.S. consumers. While online retailers Amazon.com and eBay did well, weighing in at #4 and #14 respectively, Apple's iTunes came in much further down the list at #46.
Interesting. iTunes is often held up as being the cornerstone of Apple's innovation, way more important and influential than the beautiful looking music-playing devices themselves. And it's the iTunes system that has enabled Apple to disrupt the music industry so thoroughly. But on a user experience level, this cross-section of the American population is voting thumbs down (or, at least, not deeming it entirely excellent -- it just scrapes a "good" rating in the survey). iTunes can be confusing, overwhelming and often less than entirely elegant. As such, it really doesn't live up to the sophistication of the company's other lauded design and branding elements (mind you, the offline company experience came in at #35, also a "good" verdict). Temkin points out that many of those participating in this survey are casual users, not the hardcore tech geeks so often associated with Apple products. But even so, Apple's branding watchwords of simplicity, elegance and its intuitive design appear to be MIA in the iTunes context. What do you think?
Levi's added a line to the washing instructions on jeans urging wearers to "donate to Goodwill when no longer needed and care for our planet." This, writes Silas Amos of British design/branding agency JKR in an entertaining and thought-provoking round-up of the work and ideas of 2009, is bunk. "Wasn't the whole point of Levi's to wear them until they fell apart?" he writes. "The communication used to be that they got better as they got older, and giving them up was only possible when they were truly past physical redemption." Perhaps, posits Amos, the pressures of the quickly turning over fashion cycle have caused the branders at Levi's to rethink the wisdom of this strategy and "the shelf life of a pair is now only as long as a passing fashion for a particular cut." It raises an interesting question of how a heritage brand such as Levi's evolves its messaging both to fit the current times and be true to its past. What do you think? Misstep or reasonable evolution?
Turns out candy is dandy, at least during recessions. Beer is pretty OK, too, but cigarettes are a vice that even smokers increasingly say they ain't worth it. Overall, says the latest customer satisfaction survey by the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, American consumers are as happy with grocery-store goods as they were three months ago.
Among food companies, Hershey and Nestle both moved up 2 points while Mars gained 1 point from a year earlier, to an average score of 86 (out of a possible 100). That's their highest score ever. The trio last had an upsurge that big in the 2001 recession and in 2004, when worries about the widening Iraq War and higher fuel prices had consumers scurrying back to comfort foods, says Ross School Professor Claes Fornell, who heads the index.
Not every comfort food maker is more beloved, however. Conagra's standing dropped 7 points from a year earlier, to 78, an all-time low. Fornell attributes the decline to higher prices—Conagra jacked them up an average of 25%. Heinz retains its No. 1 ranking, with a score of 89.
Beer still hits the spot. Customers say they're more satisfied with their beer buys than ever before, pushing the industry's average score to 84. The biggest gainer: Anheuser-Busch, which rose 4 points to an all-time high of 85. Yes, the company is no longer American. But U.S. consumers appreciate its cheaper brands Natural Light and Busch. Meantime, Coors, which is generally pricier, sagged 2 points, to 81. Miller moved up 1 point, to 83.
Higher prices, this time from federal taxes that more than doubled, made smokers think less of cigarettes. Both Philip Morris and Reynolds American sagged to 72, falling 9 points and 8 points, respectively. Neither had ever been below 75.
Small companies without the vast budgets of large corporations have no choice but to think creatively about how to market their wares. On Wednesday November 4th, Minneapolis-based furniture design Blu Dot is launching an interesting-sounding experiment in New York City. Capitalizing on city denizens' apparent obsession with both leaving and taking pieces of furniture on the sidewalk, Blu Dot is leaving 25 of its iconic "Real Good" metal chairs (one shown) around the city.
Banking on the idea that they won't be left lying around for long, the designers hope that each one will be taken to a "real good" home. There's a 2.0 twist, too: the chair has its own Twitter account, while most of the chairs have been embedded with a GPS chip so that they can be tracked online in real time. "Who will take them? Where will they end up? How will they be used?" asks Blu Dot co-founder John Christakos. "We have visions you may find one under a bridge being used by a group of homeless people, another in a hipster’s apartment. We don't know what's going to happen. It's fun."
Both Christakos and Michael Hart, co-founder and creative director of Mono, the agency working with Blu Dot on the project, are aware that the project could backfire. After all, some New Yorkers might not respond well to a chair left lying in the street with a potentially ominous cell phone/GPS tracker/battery pack device attached. And some might not like the idea that they were stalked by the project organizers, who intend to approach the chairs' new owners to see if they'd take part in a documentary film about the project.
But Hart and Christakos are both open to seeing what happens. "This isn’t about tricking people. It's more about curiosity and an invitation," says Hart. "If folks aren't happy to tell their story then we’ll totally respect that. It’s not about invading their privacy. And really, if nothing else then we will have given the city of New York 25 free chairs."
Everyone knows that print magazine advertising figures aren't quite adding up as publishing executives might like. So I was intrigued to be taken on a tour of Esquire magazine's "ultimate bachelor pad." The tony, 9,200 square foot space is actually two adjacent penthouse apartments (valued at around $20 million) in the heart of SoHo in Manhattan. Together, the pads serve two purposes: to show off a carefully curated environment fit for 2009 Esquire Man—and to lock in sponsors to buying pages of magazine advertising.
First things first. It seems like EM'09 himself isn't too troubled by the state of the economy. In this world, he shoots pool on an $80,000, digitally-enhanced table designed by Obscura Digital (shown, left. Pool balls, tracked by motion sensors above, "reveal" the image of an Esquire magazine cover as they roll across the table). He hosts poker nights in a room filled with large portraits of "poker-faced" celebrities and a Baccarat chandelier designed by Philippe Starck. His art installation room shows an incredible piece by video artist, Luke Dubois, and when all the excitement gets too much, he can step outside and hop into one of his two hot tubs to stare out over Manhattan or along the terrace, past the sun screens/night lights custom-designed for Davidoff (below).
And as for the advertisers? Well, Stephen Jacoby, the project's mastermind and Esquire's associate publisher of marketing, was keen to emphasize that sponsors were still keen to participate in this, the seventh year. "This is a huge undertaking for the magazine and our staff. We don’t automatically say we’ll do it again," he said in a phone interview. "But we took it to market last fall, when the economy started falling apart, and people said 'sure, sign me up'. It wasn’t so much us forcing as them pushing."
Room sponsors this year include Diesel, which installed an in-home recording studio, and Hugo Boss, which took care of the master bedroom. The brands also committed to taking out six ad pages in the magazine, at around $100k a pop. Jacoby declined to share details of Esquire's own investment in the project, but reckons that this year they sold 50 incremental ad pages off the back of it. Not to be sneezed at.
Of course, show homes are nothing new, but Esquire also throws charity events at the venue, so that movers and shakers can actually play with the technology and the toys. (I do wonder how the swirly moving graphics on the pool table mix with alcohol.) Around 5,000 people attend an event to see the space up close in the two months that it's open. Mere mortals get to take the virtual tour.
The CMO CLUB Weekly Poll Question: Which of your groups is best equipped to help you with your social media efforts today?
Survey question conducted October 1 – October 7, 2009
114 CMOs responded:
65.6% In House
15.6% Interactive Agency
9.4% PR Firm
9.4% Social Media Agency
0% Creative/Ad Agency
A few Quotes from CMOs in the club who responded:
“With all the chatter in the industry on social media and all the agencies scrambling to stay relevant through social media, the combination of our internal marketing expertise and hiring millennials in our group that understand social networks, is working well."
“Our strategies for engaging our consumers and differentiating ourselves have not changed. Social media is simply new channels for us that we have incorporated into our marketing mix”.
“Social Media is changing the way our entire company works and engages with stakeholders. It’s not a marketing initiative but a company wide initiative.”
“We looked at a few social media agencies but they understood social networks but not our industry or customer engagement insights for our products.”
“We are still thinking through our social marketing strategies and I have assigned a team of 3 within my marketing group to help leverage social media as part of larger integrated marketing programs.”
The CMO CLUB Thought Leadership Summit, Nov. 12-13, San Francisco: www.regonline.com/cmoclubsummit
Sign up for "CMOs only" dinners at www.regonline.com/cmoclub_dinners
Interpublic Group of Companies made it official today. Its Deutsch unit will absorb Lowe & Partners in the U.S.
But they didn't take my advice by bagging the Lowe name in the U.S.
Instead...ugh...Deutsch will be known as "Deutsch Inc.: A Lowe & Partners Company."
Of course, no one in their right mind will call it anything but Deutsch. But still...
Why are ad agencies so often terrible at naming themselves?
I disagreed with the idea of renaming J. Walter Thompson JWT. Indeed, it makes sense, I guess, from a logo standpoint. But I can't bring myself to call it anything but J. Walter...or Thompson.
The worst ever was when a merged agency actually called itself CME-KHBB. And then there was Messner, Vetere, Berger, McNamee, Schmeterrer: Euro RSCG. Ick.
I often wondered what the clients thought. "You can't even market yourself coherently...what am I paying you for?"
Oh, well....here are the details of the announcement. But I say....Lowe is dead (in the U.S) Long live Deutsch.
INTERPUBLIC ALIGNS DEUTSCH INC. AND LOWE WORLDWIDE
• Deutsch To Assume Management Oversight of Lowe Operations in North America Under Leadership of Linda Sawyer
• Deutsch New York to Absorb Lowe NY Office
• Moves Further Strengthen Lowe Worldwide, Adding Dynamic U.S. Hub Agency to Growing Global Network
• Deutsch Gains Access to Global Presence to Secure and Grow Multinational Client Relationships
New York, NY – October 15, 2009 – Interpublic Group (NYSE: IPG) announced today that it will be aligning its Deutsch agency with Lowe Worldwide. Deutsch will become the North American hub of the Lowe & Partners global network, assuming management oversight of Lowe operations in North America, including Lowe New York, Lowe Roche Toronto and Lowe Healthcare, under the leadership of Linda Sawyer. Deutsch NY will absorb the Lowe New York operations. Lowe Roche and Lowe Healthcare will continue to operate without any change to their current leadership teams and branding. Deutsch LA will also be unaffected, continuing to run as an integrated agency, reporting to Deutsch Inc. Going forward, Deutsch will operate under the name “Deutsch Inc., a Lowe & Partners Company.”
Interpublic Group of Companies is in advanced talks to merge the U.S. offices of Lowe with Deutsch. The talks were first reported by Adweek.
Lowe has been in disarray for years, dating back to when agency founder Frank Lowe went on a buying spree around the world in the late 1990s, adding agencies to a global network with little care or attention to operating efficiencies, overlaps, governance, proper accounting, or anything else resembling business sense.
[Full disclosure: I worked at Lowe for three years, from 1994-1997]
The network today has 70 offices across the globe and rakes in about $400 million in total revenue. Deutsch has two U.S. offices, and brings in $200 million in revenues. Hmmmmmmm. Which agency seems better run?
Lowe's U.S. office has been a revolving door of top managers for years.
When IPG bought Deutsch in 2000, there had been talk of combining Lowe and Deutsch then. IPG management and even Frank Lowe, who was still chairman in those days, saw Deutsch chairman Donny Deutsch as just the executive who could make sense of the agency, which had been merged with Scali,McCabe, Sloves; Lintas; and Bozell, adding up to a total "dog's dinner" of agency culture.
The talk now is that Deutsch would swallow Lowe's clients and the people who are critical to running them. But the Lowe name would likely go away in the U.S.
Deutsch has always been a much stronger brand in the U.S. than Lowe. And it would be crazy to sully or confuse it by naming it Deutsch/Lowe. That is my opinion, anyway, and one shared by plenty of people at Deutsch.
NBC's "Heroes" has been spared the axe because ratings for the network drama were better than originally measured by Nielsen when digital-video-recorder viewership was factored in.
This is flawed logic at its best and reveals how endangered the TV network model is.
As reported by The New York Times, the ratings climbed from an anemic 2.6 to 3.7 when DVR viewership within a few days of the show's live airing was added in. That is enough, it seems, to keep the show on the air.
But why?
DVRs allow people to easily watch programs whenever they wish. The networks are touting the data as a plus. But DVRs also, of course, allow us to skip the ads entirely.
If rating points are there to determine how much advertisers are willing to pay for the ad time, then what difference does the DVR data make if people aren't watching the ads.
CBS has an answer for this. The network says 44% of the people watching programming on DVRs are watching the ads too. Less than half. That's a business model?
But let's face it, the real number isn't nearly that high.
I am a habitual time-shifter. Ninety-five percent of the TV I watch is time-shifted with my DVR. The ads don't get skipped under four scenarios: I have fallen asleep; I am distracted from the program by a magazine, my laptop or my son; I am in another room with audio on (a baseball game); I have died and no one has yet discovered my body.
In each case, I'd say the advertisers were hardly getting their money's worth. My own habits shouldn't necessarily be projected over the DVR population. But...I actually think they can be.
I am dubious of CBS's research about how many people are watching ads on DVR playback. The networks are entirely self interested here. It reminds me of when I try to track all the food and calories I take in on www.sparkpeople.com
My intentions are good, but I wouldn't trust the data.
Ad Age today previews a report due from Forrester Research that suggests that the day of the “brand manager” is dead.
The article says the recommendation by the research firm is to think of and re-name the person in charge of managing the brand as “brand advocate.”
The suggestion reflects the age of social media, and that a brand, any brand, today is not so much "managed" as it is…advocated? by someone inside Procter & Gamble or Unilever.
With all do respect to Forrester, I think the firm still has it wrong.
With a nod to Larry Light, CEO of Arcature, and the former CMO of McDonald’s, the correct term and description for today’s brand manager is really “Brand Editor.”
[See Larry Light's comments about "Brand Trust" in Businessweek's recent "Best Global Brands" report.]
Light says he realized, while working at McDonald’s as chief marketing officer, that his real job was “Brand Editor.” He believed, and still does, that consumers and other forces, like the media, had too much control over how McDonald’s was perceived for him to pretend he had so much control.
He reckoned that his overall marketing scheme, which encompassed advertising, PR/Communications, franchisee communications, the Web, online forums, the start of social media, “should be treated like a magazine.” And he was the editor-in-chief.
Few people read a magazine front to back unless they are trapped on a plane, says Light. He says that his insight was that McDonald’s had to offer different audiences different “content,” not ads. But all the content needed to tie back to a central brand idea. BusinessWeek, for example, or People or Time, have different sections and a variety of content for different readers, and each story is edited, art directed and written to a brand identity and mission that make them a BusinessWeek story or People story. The same thinking, thinks Light, should be applied to a brand like McDonald's, Chevy or Microsoft when it comes to creating brand content.
Light says that each piece of content McDonald’s puts out should reflect the “I’m Lovin’ It,” idea, but also that McDonald’s is accountable and that it is a brand that listens.
This thinking came about at a time when McDonald’s business was falling and its reputation was sinking with Moms who are the chief editors of what their families consume. McDonald’s not only changed its menu but began treating its “Brand Magazine” more like a real forum and less like an advertorial property. That’s why you saw the company engaging in issues like obesity, physical fitness, animal rights, and the environmental impact of big agriculture. And the company is not bashful about entering public conversations and debates where it knows it can’t come out smelling as good as its french fries. Take the current debate it is in over how humanely chickens are killed for their McNuggets at chicken farms: The company hasn’t figured out a way it can make the animal rights activists happy, but it stays engaged in the debate. It keeps listening.
He recognized as “brand editor” that consumers (aka McDonalds readers) were increasingly going to be influencing the content and overall communications of his brand. BusinessWeek, for example, only began enlisting readers in the last year to seriously influence our story selection.
In my reporting over the years, I have come to view the consumer, not the company executive, as “brand advocate.” A brand advocate is considered someone so connected to the brand that they use their own resources and voice to amplify and echo the positive aspects of the brand: i.e. someone who organizes a Harley Davidson gathering or manages a fan site.
I know “Brand Advocate” has a nice ring, but it doesn’t accurately reflect the change that should be going on at companies. Sure, I’d say the brand manager role probably is dying. Perhaps “Brand Community Organizer” would be a far more accurate descriptor, though it doesn’t sound as snappy as “Brand Advocate.
Then again, there is a man in the White House who pretty successfully leveraged “Community Organizer” into a good gig.
An enhanced fruit juice from a mainstream brand like Minute Maid is tough to make cool against the myriad of New Age beverage boosters like Vitamin Water. And they especially look dowdy next to the Red Bulls of the world.
But Minute-Maid is making some headway, at least creatively, with the second iteration of its "Oops" campaign that shows how someone can be stupid, lame, or insensitive before drinking a Boost, and much sharper after a Boost.
The new effort from Doner is much better executed than the last ad I recall from this effort. That spot, you'll recall, showed a guy in a mall or airport first admitting to possible paternity (ouch).
My biggest problem here was that the casting of the woman. Let's just say she looks like no nun I ever saw at school. The makeup, etc.? No way. It was an over-reach by the copywriter. Couldn't she just have been his son's Kindergarten teacher?
This new effort, by ad agency Doner, is much better executed, and puts a good campaign premise on a solid footing for more engaging scenarios.
News Feeds 
Small companies without the vast budgets of large corporations have no choice but to think creatively about how to market their wares. On Wednesday November 4th, Minneapolis-based furniture design 
Everyone knows that print magazine advertising figures aren't quite adding up as publishing executives might like. So I was intrigued to be taken on a tour of Esquire magazine's "ultimate bachelor pad." The tony, 9,200 square foot space is actually two adjacent penthouse apartments (valued at around $20 million) in the 
And as for the advertisers? Well, Stephen Jacoby, the project's mastermind and Esquire's associate publisher of marketing, was keen to emphasize that sponsors were still keen to participate in this, the seventh year. "This is a huge undertaking for the magazine and our staff. We don’t automatically say we’ll do it again," he said in a phone interview. "But we took it to market last fall, when the economy started falling apart, and people said 'sure, sign me up'. It wasn’t so much us forcing as them pushing."