An article from Research-Live.com on CGM, with an example from Toyota.

Being able to overhear more consumer conversations doesn’t automatically guarantee a clearer view of consumer perception.

Let the People Speak

Copy of the report, in case the link dies

let-the-people-speak

Your Local Newspaper Printed Wherever You Are.

Print any of 600 newspapers instantly

I noticed this wired kiosk at St.Pancras station as I waited for my Eurostar train to Paris last week.

The kiosk let’s you choose from any of 600 newspapers produced daily or weekly from cities around the world. The idea being the kiosk downloads the artwork via broadband and is able to print your local newspaper, no matter where you are in the world.

The idea had immense appeal. Sadly I couldn’t find copies of:

The Vail Trail

or

The Whistler Question

But I guess my taste in niche newspapers ventures a little off-piste.

The only down-side to having a copy of foreign newspapers printed ‘hot off the press’ on demand was the price. As a quality nerwspaper is around £1 per edition in London. A charge of nearly 3 times this figure, even to obtain a more difficult to obtain daily read, appeared rather excessive. Convenience is worth a lot - but is it worth treble?

While the newspapers and magazines were flying off the shelves of this store. Sadly the new, expensive, digital news innovation stood ignored.

Kitsch Cafe Lounge at IET, Savoy Place

This space is in the venue near the Savoy, along the Thames Embankment, I attended 2 conferences by the Future Foundation on Friday. The building is the original home of the BBC, although is now operated by the IET. I call it kitsch cafe chic:

The check list for myself:

1 - Blogbox
2 - Global Newspaper printer
3 - Marketing Society award
4 - Surface computing at BlueWater
5 - Sugar Cuebes – happiness research
6 - Future Foundation conferences
7 - Snaps from recent weeks
8 - CDP Bag Spotted
9. Luke Gaydon’s new job

I’ll try and tick these off in the posts over the next week.

You will have heard the phrase ‘We have a raft of ideas.’

If ideas arrive in rafts, is the collective noun for innovations canoes? Or is there a more suitable form of transport for them?

I heard this the other day on BBC Radio 4. A lighthearted take on being British in the noughties:

What does it mean - “To be British”

You spend a night out in an Irish themed pub,
drinking Czech or Belgian beer, or wine from Australia.
On your way home, you pick up a take away,
probably an Indian or Thai curry, or a Turkish kebab.
Which you eat, sitting at home on your Swedish sofa,
whilst watching American TV programmes
on your Japanese TV.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Apologies, I haven’t been posting during the hiatus of my change in job to work at John Brown Group as their Senior Planning Partner.

I’ve been learning what the 20+ clients are up to, as well as trying to remember as many of the staff names as I can. No wonder Richard Branson advises his business units to keep to a size of around 100 people, so you get to know who the people are that you work with and operate as one team. I’ve been learning my way around the 4 businesses within the group: John Brown - the publishing business, Fingal - a digital and communications agency, Code - a directory/catalogue business, and John Brown Kids - who work across all comms targeted specifically at children.

The clients include Aston Martin, Emirates, John Lewis, Orange, RBS, Rolls Royce and Waitrose. An interesting mix and having reviewed much of the work and getting to know the team who work on their behalf, I can see why the clients work with us.

As well as heading the planning and research departments across the group, one of my responsibilities is to rebrand the combined companies, which will happen in the next few months.

Anyway, now you know what I’ve been up to. Back to a blog post:

HIPPO
An acronym you may have come across was used recently in a presentation by Jonathan Rosenberg, SVP product management and marketing at Google …

Avoid HiPPOs: A hippo kills more people than any other animal. In business, hippos kill more products and ideas than anyone. A hippo is the opinion of the highest paid person in the meeting room. Hippos say “I think…” It’s not uncommon for everyone to then fall into line with the Hippo’s view, possibly without even airing their own. Often the more junior clients will have little ability to influence their senior staffer, who has now publicly committed to a view, as the boss would lose face and isn’t open to discussion.

In variance to this, one management technique used by P&G, amongst others, during reviews of proposals and ideas with their agencies came to mind. It involves letting the most junior member of the marketing team present at a meeting to comment first. They are followed by the others, ascending in order of seniority; leaving the final comments to be spoken by the most senior person within the team. Sometimes 3 or 4 others may have commented before the Hippo speaks.

This approach has 4 effects.

1. It ensures everyone involved airs their opinion, even the most junior.
2. The less senior staff prove their ability, as they speak before the boss.
3. The meetings are more consensual in feel.
4. The most senior person gets to pick over the arguments and comments expressed by their team before uttering a word. At which point they may unify the response, focus on the most important points and speak with authority and insight that can appear more sage-like.

Meetings may take a little longer this way, but they make the most senior person appear more Sphinx-like. And they never generate a worse decision than a Hippo charge before anyone else has spoken.

After a couple of years of rumours, news broke recently that the new Anchorman movie, with Will Ferrell reprising the role of Ron Burgundy, is at the scriptwriting stage. I’m delighted, as the original movie was a personal favourite of mine.

In the US this week a video clip has been circulating, showing Bill O’Reilly loosing his cool.

Bill O’Reilly is an Amerrican news institution and has been the host, writer and producer of the most watched US cable news programme ‘The O’Reilly Factor’ (Fox News channel) for nearly a decade.

But way back when, he was anchorman for Inside Edition (1988-1995). The video clip shows a classic Ron Burgundy style rant as Bill O’Reilly’s tele-prompter develops a fault, just as he tries to record the closing link for a programme. The tele-prompter looses the anchor’s script, while the anchor rapidly looses his cool.

Go to the original: LINK

Within 24 hours of the original video appearing on YouTube, a dance-remix edit was created and posted.

The Remix: LINK

The only thing missing from this authentic anchorman-gone-postal moment is Ron Burgundy saying ‘Stay Classy San Diego’ at the end. Enjoy.

Many thanks to Dino Demopoulus for putting me on to this great presentation by Clay Shirky

Link to the video at blip.tv: HERE

Dino’s great blog, Chroma, may be found: HERE

Around a decade ago I started to meet experienced account planners who maligned the loss of planning craft in the young upstarts who were joining the diverse tribe of people who are now planners.

Times have changed; project turn-around has greatly accelerated, leaving planners tasked to complete projects ever-faster. A deadline of a week may be given for a project that may have been given 2 or even 4 weeks to complete just a few years ago. I’ve certainly experienced this change on many occasions and observed it becoming increasingly common amongst planning friends. Thank God for 48 and 72 hour turn-around from some skilled research professionals.

A couple of weeks ago I noticed the IPA Strategy Group hosted an event called Fast Strategy. The event pulled in some heavy-weight account planning talent from a variety of backgrounds to demonstrate if rapid planning could deliver a credible response to a brief.

The event went well and here is the link to the summary of the activity: IPA Strategy Group: Fast Strategy

While businesses may want definitive and actionable answers from planners as fast as possible. The decision making process within the client doesn’t appear quite as rushed. Surely people aren’t sitting on the planning reports and recommendations they’ve pushed for with such priority? Perhaps they are simply finding it tougher to negotiate the approval of planning work which has been rushed?

I do genuinely believe that it is possible for a planner who spends their day toilling within a particular industry to gain a reasonable gut-feel for what will probably work or not for a particular consumer audience. It’s the potential degree of success possible from such speedy work which is of course open to question. As there probably won’t have been time for reflection, debate or validation though research analysis before the rapidly produced work is presented.

Unearthing fresh insight, counting the numbers and debating ideas quite probably produces better planning than ‘I thought of this and didn’t have time to think of something else.’ Although in saying this, an example leaps to mind where, from first-sight of a client brief, I’d drafted the strategy and written the finished creative brief within three hours. This left the remaining six or so days prior to what became a successful pitch presentation for the creatives to work their magic around the planning idea to great effect. The rapid resolution of what to do up front also left me free to research and refine a supporting presentation. The key for this happy event was not only did I already have relevant market knowledge in my head. But I had ready access to reports and supporting data which demonstrated the relevance of the idea through facts. Facts hidden within plain sight of pre-existing research data and awaiting use.

Another question also arises when thinking of servicing planning needs at speed. The question is of course how much will a client pay, and is it less, when work is produced more quickly? If the work is without the investigation and rigour of researched evidence, why shouldn’t it be much cheaper?

I’ve recently completed a project which required four weeks of research analysis, with the aid of statisticians to interrogate and model four years of existing research data. My gut-feel, expressed at the beginning of the research, has been proven correct. But now my planning work will be considered in light of the overwhelming evidence in the accompanying data, and not just the opinion of an observant planner.

So while we are all asked to Fast-Forward to the planning recommendations in a proposal. We still benefit from being able to pause and search, frame-by-frame, through the insights, ideas and supporting figures which reinforce and assert the value of a planning proposal.

There was a great band line-up at the Radio 1 event this weekend. The BBC also put together engaging interaction and participation elements using digital media.

For those who may have missed the ‘Band in your hand’ explanatory link on You Tube, this was the video explaining everything:

YouTube LINK

The website for the Radio 1 event:

Radio 1’s Big Weekend: Link

My attention was caught by a news item reported by AutoCar this week concerning Lamborghini. While it is generally recognised that Lamborghini has benefitted from Audi ownership; with the Gallardo a perfect example of how the Italian auto-manufacturer has successfully entered new ground under German ownership. The marriage between the manufacturers has reached an interesting stage; along the lines of ‘We need to have a little conversation.’

For while under Audi supervision and part sharing Lamborghini have; modernised, improved in profitability, product design and performance. The German influence has been recognised as impinging on the authenticity and spirit of the Italian brand. Unfortunately, in the AutoCar news item, the senior directors at Lamborghini appear to have missed an obvious flaw, as they dutifully pointed out Lamborghini’s Italian prowess and need for ‘No more than 20% shared parts from Audi.’ For the people asking for a reduction in the German contribution at the Italian super car brand are Lamborghini President, Herr Winklemann, and their Director of Industrial Components and Technology, Herr Klaus Korner.

I wonder if there is a desire to ensure the limited German quota also applies to the board of directors and designers at Lamborghini?

However I certainly agree with the sentiment, even if it was quite possibly expressed in German.

While Audi were only able to produce the excellent R8 due to Lamborghini input. Common parts, platforms and engines have led to a numbing of distinctive brand expression and design compromise between performance products with too obvious genetic sharing.

Herr Winklemann is quite possibly right in saying that Lamborghini owners may not be too concerned by electrcal systems or hoses and filters borrowed from a parts bin in Ingolstatt. But why buy an Italian supercar which looks like an Audi, drives like an Audi and sounds like an Audi? Particularly if Audi’s own super-car is, just possibly, better.

As Herr Korner said ‘When it’s better to have a unique solution, we should do it.’

I was very surprised that the FT left such a significant fact out of its front page coverage of Dawn Airey’s move back to FIVE as CEO today. Only a couple of months after she was promoted to the ITV board.

I’m sure I heard Michael Grade had prohibited any lunches being claimed on expenses from The Ivy, since their failure to reinstate Bang Bang Chicken on the menu. The move was clearly enough to make Dawn review her options. After-all, how is a board member of one of the leading broadcasters in the U.K. meant to go without her sticky toffee pudding?

Tess Alps, Thinkbox tsar, was shrewd enough to notice that The Ivy is of course just a walk around the corner from FIVE’s office in Long Acre. While ITV’s building in Gray’s Inn Road is quite a schlepp from the media haunt. Rupert Howell is thought to enjoy the brisk walk, to build up his appetite before lunch there. But the opportunity to nip around the corner for lunch has obviously proven too tempting for Dawn.

I’m sure Dawn will exact her revenge when she returns to FIVE and buys more than a desert portion of ITV. I hope the regulator has had a stiff sherry to steady their nerve for the months ahead?

Perhaps Sky will simply offer FIVE their share of ITV at half the value they paid for them? Oh the excitement is unbearable. I can’t wait for The Times to serialise memoirs by Michael and Dawn at some point in the future.

It was with genuine regret that I read of the demise of SHOP today. The agency formerly known as Campbell Doyle Dye is about to close.

The advertising agency with a flair for some digital and below-the-line campaigns punched above its weight in terms of the talent employed and their agility in making engaging creative look easy.

When it launched some seven years ago Campbell Doyle Dye were known as the upstarts who stole the Mercedes-Benz account. They not only did this, they did it with style and showed many integrated agencies how great creative ideas aren’t limited by different media; but that they may be expressed in different movements along the same theme to dramatic and commercial effect.

Yes, there were of course awards. Most recently the charming TV ad for Thornton’s chocolates provided an excellent example of what a noughties advertising boutique may offer clients from a planning, creative and production point of view. And of course, it wasn’t that the idea was, in itself, original. It was that it was simply realised with such consumate skill.

Of course, if one cares to dig a little into the past, Campbell Doyle Dye was comfortably listed by the D&AD in 2004. You will find their work listed alongside entries from 180 Amsterdam, WCRS, BBH, Wieden’s and TBWA. Nice company, if you can keep it.

But then of course one is forced to start to look beneath the veneer and spot the few knots in the seemingly solid agency block. It’s true that a lot depended on the Mercedes account. In fact the other accounts appear to not just have offered smaller billings, but much smaller kudos by and large. Although this does under-value a few bauble brands who occasionally commission interesting creative work.

So was it too many boutique brands for a boutique and network free agency? I believe not. For the simple low billing level after Mercedes announced their departure must have, in itself, put the enterprise at risk. And then when you start to review the work Shop (as they were renamed from CDD) posted on their own website; more than a flutter of doubt appears to raise its head. For while the agency claimed to be the new new thing, all properly media neutral and integrated and not at all bothered if there is no TV, thank you very much. The gap started to materialise. I mean of course the gap between ambition and action. What was said and what was produced.

For while large agencies may find enough material across the dozens of campaigns they produce each month to demonstrate their multi-disciplined talents, more-or-less. Shop may have presented themselves as neutral and integrated, but they struggled to demonstrate the single inspiring ‘bloody marvellous’ idea working across multiple media above and below-the-line for any one single campaign.

They may, in effect, have become reduced to more tactical or product-centred campaigns with reduced budget and media remits. Their TV was good, press and poster work great, their online and dm competent and their inspiration creatively second to none. But how often do you recall anyone praising all of these skills being called upon and delivered by Shop, in one campaign from one brief?

Perhaps several and diverse major media weren’t required for their ideas? Or just one or two media types sufficed to meet the targets? But I’m still left with the feeling that these campaigns were too thin to envelop an audience across all their key touchpoints – at least in terms of media weight (awareness, repetition and recall). Leaving a ‘press and web’ or ‘mid-weight TV and point of sale’ feel to creative ideas. Campaigns short on coverage, but big on potential. Light spend is perilously close to none at-all. And for advertising to work it needs to be seen, heard and felt to persuade its audience.

So a melancholy mix of budget and client constraints may, just perhaps, have not only limited Shop. But unfortunately may have seen an end to the business in a way that one client’s departure couldn’t quite secure.

And so, what set out to be a creative workshop of ideas implemented with skill across different disciplines may have become a dynamo of creative energy that its clients didn’t tap into fully. As the light touch weaved by the creative ideas may have been silo-driven into restrictive and few media channels with too-slight budgets.

With such talent in evidence from the agency staff, I hope some canny recruitment takes place from the groups that painfully need such versatile and flexible talent. And the sooner, the better.

I’ll leave you with an example of the lightest of touches which crafted a beautiful ad for Mercedes-Benz; an account the agency truly worked some magic for.

SHOP website LINK

Yann Arthus Bertrand has been working on a social study since 2003; gathering videos of the hopes, dreams and fears of consumers around the world. The project recently reached the point where the material was ready for distribution and online collaboration to extend the project.

So there is now a website which allows you to select the category you wish to listen to consumers talk about. You may listen to the collected personal testimonies or add your own video to the site’s growing archive.

Click on the: LINK

I had to remind myself as sleet and hail fell between the sunshine and lightening storm today that it’s Spring.

Only a couple of weeks ago the snow settled and my kids had great fun in the park making a snowman.

I can only assume I’ll need to carry sunscreen, an umbrella and arctic survival gear tomorrow, just in case.