A New Way to Pitch

A few weeks ago, a new microsite launched in Canada called whatsinyourbudget.ca. Although that URL might sound like a government site explaining the current bailout package, it's not. It's from Elemental - a global agency (though the campaign is Toronto based) - and it's a call to action for marketers across Toronto to rethink their agencies.

Unlike the traditional RFP process that most brands make agencies go through, Elemental is asking interested brands to fill out a small form and apply for their services. The winning agency will receive free strategic and creative servies for the campaign of their choosing (any prodcution or media won't come with the deal but still, it's a great prize - especially for a small to mid-sized business).

The campaign launched with a large street team moving through the central agency district in Toronto the way a protest moves through the streets. A Twitter page has also been launched to help support the campaign and the microsite provides additional materials to check out and help spread the word.

So does something like this work?

According to a colleague, the answer is yes. In the first 24 hours, the agency received a few applications and I'd assume that they are going to receive at least 20-30 over the campaign period (they've got direct mail to help support as well). What I'm interested in is what brand they select to represent and how the relationship grows over time.

At the end of the day, most agencies just want one chance with a new client to show them their capabilities - a small brief or challenge. If the client isn't impressed, you move on. If they are, you can suddenly find yourself drowning in a ton of new briefs.

Thanks to Dustin for the heads up and all the links.

Bye bye those big up front buys

I feel like the majority of AdJoke's rants are captured nicely in this video. To the tune of American Pie.



Thanks Dave.

"Global, Social, Ubiquitous and Cheap"

Media has changed. We all know this and have read through the statistics on usage, consumer habits and, of course, the decline of the print world. The old world models are over. The control is in the hands of the consumer and the conversation is totally uncontrolled.

To most people in the digital world, these ideas aren't new. But this TED talk, featuring new media guru Clay Shriky, is. What I love about the talk is that it provides context on how technology has changed the way media works and showcases case studies on the massive changes in our global culture.

Watch this talk as soon as you can and let the conversations begin.

100 Advocates

I had a great conversation tonight about shifting the way we think about advertising. Instead of thinking in terms of reach, frequency and impressions, let's think about interactions and individual customer experiences.

This way of thinking isn't new. Some top marketers rave about the importance of every customer interaction. Michael Dell comes to mind instantly. With a few horrible years of customer service and millions of product failures, Dell was on the decline. In order to keep the company relevant, Dell changed their vision to managing the life of the consumer - one interaction at a time.

Dell's strategy bang on. TV spots, billboards and display ads can only go so far. A great campaign can drive people in store but if the salesperson is too busy chatting with friends or unable to answer the most basic questions, the experience is ruined. Some people tell their friends about good ads but ALL people tell their friends about horrible experiences. I bet if you think about the last two weeks of your life you can remember at least three interactions that left a bad brand taste in your mouth (yes Air Canada, I'm talking to you).

So why don't we focus on the customer experience? A lot of brands think that they do. Through customer retention programs, special offers, etc. But many of these programs can be viewed as strategic ploys to simply up-sell (vs. provide added value). It's a good start - but we need to go much further.

Think about the Apple Genius program or the Amazon recommendation tool. These tools help me find things I wasn't even looking for. They qualify me based on my tastes and they are specific. They do a great job adding value and help enhance my desires - not the desires of a Canadian male who is 25-34. Mine.

So what can we do in addition to focusing on the customer experience? I think we need to make a constant effort to find the 100 people who love our brand most. And enable them to share their passion with their networks of friends. That sharing could then lead to more experiences, more sharing and more passion for the brand.

What if we could identify the 100 people who loved our brand most? How would that change our campaign or media plan? What sort of reach would they have if we enabled them - through digital - to talk about their authentic experiences and engage in conversations with people offering products that they are thrilled with?

Would we still spend millions of dollars in media with the hopes of influencing a few? In the short term, yes. But harnessing the voices of our passionate loyalists could yield amazing results. And if anyone knows strategies on how to find them, I'd love to hear them.

Don't get me wrong - mass advertising has a huge place in our world; especially when it comes to awareness objectives. I love TV spots, branded content and digital experiences. But I think a balanced approach of advertising and customer service (and indivudalized experiences) builds powerful brands together. It's impossible to have a great brand that falls short on one of those pillars.

In short, think about the good brand experiences that you have and keep sharing them. And the bad ones? Scream them as loud as you can.

Social Media's Fatal Flaw

This morning, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails wrote a long post on his NIN forum about why he is going to be leaving social media.

In the last number of years, NIN and Reznor have led the social media charge. They ditched their label, created one of the best ARG's out there and have been active in forums, Twitter and any new technology that helps them connect better with their fans. Like Radiohead, they released one of their albums via the web and allowed users to pay what they felt it deserved.

When I think about social media, NIN is always one of the brands that first comes to mind. They've been there, connecting with their fans on a one-to-one level, personalizing the converastion, giving access to everypart of their everyday lives. A dream for a hardcore NIN fan.

But not for Trent.

For every 100 fans, followers or comments, there are always 3-4 that go over the top. They might be racist, they might be sexist, hell, they might even be death threats. Fact is, there are psycho people out there and the anonymity of the web allows them to say and do whatever they want. You can try to get rid of them - cancel their profiles, ban their email addresses, restrict their access. But they create another profile, they sidestep your best efforts and they do whatever it takes to ruin a great discussion.

Why? Because they don't have lives. They are, in the truest sense, sad losers. And Trent has had it with them:

"I will be tuning out of the social networking sites because at the end of the day it's now doing more harm than good in the bigger picture and the experiment seems to have yielded a result. Idiots rule."

This is the dirty secret of social media - the ability to be anonymous. To say what you want without consequence. To be whatever you can't be in real life. In some cases, it's a good thing but in most cases, it allows a-holes like the ones who eventually rode Trent off social media to run wild doing whatever they want.

Is the solution networks that verify identification through government issued ID? Maybe.

But for now, social media has a problem and only a few people have spent enough time in it to realize the extent of it. We just lost one of them.

Sound Familiar?

I'm a big fan of music in spots. A great track can take an average spot and put it over the top. A bad track can take a great idea and make it terrible. If I think back to some of my favorite spots of all tie, they've all got a perfect song behind them.

So when I saw this spot from Chivas, I couldn't help but think about one that we blogged about a few months ago:



Not bad. But I still prefer this one:



What do you think?

Should GM be making new ads?

I really don't know. For a company that's just declared bankruptcy, received billions of dollars from governments across the world and is closing dealerships at an alarming rate, should they be investing in a 60 second spot with a huge North American media buy? (even though they already owe their media agency over $75 million dollars?)



When I first viewed this ad this week, it made me angry. We're not witnessing the "reinvention of GM". We're witnessing a company that failed to recognize the dramatic shift in customer desires. A management group that didn't react to cheaper competitors by building smarter, but by building bigger, less efficient cars.

Most companies would have to pay the price of going out of business. GM, with it's thousands of workers, must keep on going to keep the economy afloat. And they are being forced to make dramatic changes, I just wonder where this execution came from.

I have a feeling that it was created to help manage the negative perceptions about the company (a few that I've just shared). This spot is designed to get people thinking differently about the bad GM headlines they read every morning. GM hopes, it seems, that we will recognize that things are changing for the better and the company is going to make smart decisions in the near future - cutting down brands, building more fuel efficient cars, etc.

It just feels a bit strange and maybe slightly too soon. I've seen this spot with different groups of people and they've all had the same reaction - well that was nice. I guess I just paid for it.

I think that these perceptions will change over time and maybe GM wanted to get on the airwaves fast to move people along. But still, for a company that has just received massive amounts of public money, it seems a bit strange to be spending millions on a media buy just to tell everyone that they've changed.

We know you have.

Molson's 2010 Wall Mural and what it should have been

Is this campaign a case of digital agency vs. mass agency, of clients hungry for a UGC campaign or just really bad brand management by the marketing team? Whatever it is, it is wrong.

The 2010 wall mural is on it's own a decent thought. Not quite an idea and definitely not a campaign but it is a nice thought. Where the idea falls flat is that it was done by Molson Canadian who recently has launched a excellent spot (see below and following links) that continues it's long standing direction and takes me back to the days of "The Rant".



Now you ask so what is his problem with "The mural"? My problem is that is has nothing to do with the brand campaign. The unwritten code is the campaign and I know they could have done a dozen better campaigns that were integrated and supported the overall brand positioning.

As I always like to do I am going to open myself up and put out an idea (not a thought) that I feel would better deliver the brand and support the campaign.

What would I do?

So I have a feeling the client wanted to engage the country, capitalize on the Olympic sponsorship and of course continue to drive brand awareness and preference.

I would have asked Canada to help Molson Canadian write the code that all visitors to Canada should abide by while they are here for the Olympics. What can they do to truly experience the code of Canadians while they are here? Through this UGC campaign site visitors would submit and vote on the code of Canada that will allow Olympic tourists to discover more than soapstone carvings, maple syrup, poutine, snow, sleds, igloos and polar bears. This UGC created and user voted code could be handed to visitors as they exit planes at YVR, through-out the city then through street teams, installations and booths through-out the city tourists can have experience the code like curving a stick with a torch, jerseying a guy, using your arm as an ice scraper, tying boots with mittens on.... you get the idea.

Is this an amazing idea? Maybe not but it supports the brand, extends the campaign to the digital space, capatilizes on the Olympics in a truly Canadian way and is way better than the 2010 Wall Mural campaign. Which by the way they didn't even buy the URL 2010wallmural.ca or.com... no they made it extremely difficult to find it. Seriously search 2010 wall mural on Google. Nothing on the first two pages, no SEM no unique URL purchases...nothing at all. I am not even linking to it so good luck finding it.

Looking back and forward

Both of these images were originally posted back in early 2007 . I was searching for an old post today and came across them and felt the need to share them again. Back when they were first posted we were lucky to see 15 visitors a day so I figured it wouldn't hurt to share them again.

Imagination in my mind makes knowledge possible. We learn because we are curious, we are curious because we wonder, we wonder because we have an imagination. Albert Einstein was correct.


Now, onto banksy. Being a believer in the creativity, intelligence and ambition of those that I have the pleasure to work with I agree with his sentiments about the advertising industry, but at the same time I believe that we can change the way we advertise to use our collective talents to create so much more. Advertising that creates art, emotion and through true brand experiences creates desire. A desire to support a brand that believes the same things that we believe in, that supports the same causes that we support and that seeks to evolve with us, discover with us and be a part of something more than a product and a message.

What is the agency model of the future?

I’ve had a number of discussions lately with a number of people about what the future of the ad agency business model might look like. With agencies across the world seeing clients demand much more for less, networks being forced to make massive layoffs due to the global economy and slashing departments that don’t bring in revenue like they used too, we are bound for a large change in the near future.

For some agencies, this change has already been occurring through digital. Clients have gradually (5 years or less) shifted their marketing budgets from mass to digital. Traditional agencies who saw this sea change and were able to prepare for it have been well positioned for the future. Digital-specific shops, once viewed as the ‘black-box web experts’, are now seeing huge competition from brands that they never expected. There is no denying that even in this economy, digital-capable agencies continue to see substantial growth opportunities.

Does this mean in 5 years all successful agencies will be rooted in digital? Maybe. Most large Canadian clients still use over 80% of their budgets in mediums that aren’t digital. TV is not going away anytime soon and, I suspect, OOH, retail and direct will continue to play a role in large, integrated campaigns. But even though some traditional areas will remain strong, they are going to experience full-scale changes.

These changes aren’t due to different agency models popping up. They are because of the consumer. If you have a web-connection, PVR and, well, a brain, chances are you get the content the way you want it - without ads. I’m obsessed with advertising but in the last twelve months I’ve become more obsessed with the FFWD button on my remote. When you’re watching something you like, you don’t want to be interrupted.

Smart brands are dealing with this in a few ways - branded content, crowdsoucring new ideas, connecting like-minded consumers with new communities, etc. I do believe that these savvy brands have been guided by their agencies to think differently and try ideas that might scare them and, almost more importantly, might fail.

A colleague of mine frequently says that forward thinking brands need to embrace failure and learn from it. Treat small tests as chances to learn and keep doing things that you haven’t tried. There is nothing worse than seeing the same media plan, campaign after campaign, with nobody questioning it because - well - that’s what we did before.

So what does this all mean for the agencies of tomorrow? For starters, we need people who are willing to scare clients and ‘sell’ them on ideas their not originally comfortable with. But even more than that, we need to think about how the relationship might change in the future.

For example, Coke has recently announced that they have chanced the compensation model with a number of their agencies. Instead of agreeing to an upfront rate, or retainer, they have mapped out clear, business objectives for the agency to work towards. If these objectives are hit, the agency receives up-to 30% more revenue than their fee. If they fail to meet the objective, they are only compensated for the hard-cost incurred for the project. Coke is calling it a ‘value-based’ model and with a huge brand like this embracing it, other companies might be picking up the phone soon to talk about compensation changes.

When I discussed this model with a CD recently, he brought up a good point - how much control does Coke now have in the approval of the work? If they are going to be tying the agency to specific targets than shouldn’t the agency have more of a say in the approval process? Ideally, yes. In practice? Doubtful.

Other agencies, like CP+B, have invested in Venture Capital divisions. They not only represent large brands, they also help to create them. I think this changes the agency-client relationship dramatically. When your group owns a percentage of the business, it helps to align them - 100% - with key business objectives. It also gives the agency an ability to be treated as a partner vs. a vendor. Scary for some clients who crave total control, liberating for others who want a passionate partner.

Whatever the model, things are changing. The question is, what will you do and, more specifically, what model do you think agencies should adopt to succeed in the future?

Trimming the bush to make the tree look taller.

This video contains a lot of firsts for Adjoke. I never thought our blog would carry an informational video on how men should properly shave down there but since it is an ad for Gillette here it is.

I also love effective PSA's

First off this kid can act, second off it is an intriguing spot that delivers the message.

Very PSA's in my mind are effective. This one is.

I Love Simple Ideas

Well done Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney. Found on I Believe in Advertising.

Do you have a short attention span?

A new campaign has recently launched for the Worldwide Short Film Festival (brought to us by the Canadian film center). You might remember a few of the :15's that ran last year if you went to the annual event (winners of the Silver Pencil at the One Show and Gold at the Bessies). Here's one of 'em:



To help promote this year's event, the next iteration of the campaign carries on with the "Short Attention Span" idea and amplifies it in a few unique ways. Along with a number of new spots, the campaign also contains a full-length music video:



To be honest, I found the video a bit strange when I first viewed it. That being said, it is good to see clients take chances with creating content like this. It's also excellent to see creative teams build on great ideas rather than tear them down and re-think new (mostly worse) ones. I think that the strategy behind this idea is great and the spots raise awareness (quickly) about the event.

Next year, I think that they could do some innovative digital tactics - especially with the site. If I have a short attention span (which I do), make it extremely easy to get the information I want. In fact, check out this Mini site from a year or so back and you'll see what I mean. I love the "enter how much time you have" utility and the way the site quickly customizes to what you want.

All in all, it's nice to see a campaign built around a solid idea. The extensions for this are limitless and hopefully the smart folks behind this campaign keep it up for the next few years.

Thanks to Chris from Doug for the links and background.

Look Familiar?

Amazing. Love this type of stuff. Created by Leo Burnett.

Imagine if you applied these types of client requests to other real-world situations. I'd love to go to future shop and redo my home entertainment system but demand that payment needed to be deferred for 120 days ala InBev. Nice work, Leo.

Is this the future of search?

Last week, a friend of mine was telling me about all the cool stuff that happened on the day he was born - popular songs, notable deaths, the time the sun rose, etc. Pretty random stuff - so random that I wondered how he knew all of it. A birthday site perhaps?

Sort of.

Wolfgram|Alpha is a new type of search engine. It allows a user to compare different terms (for example, the stock price of Apple vs. Google), answers specific questions instantly (2 x 100, for example) and provides accurate answers to detailed questions. Unlike Google, it doesn't have a laundry list of potentially right places to find your answer, it just gives it to you in seconds.

Even though the site is still in beta and has recently launched, it's ambitious goal could help propel it ahead of popular engines in the future:

"Wolfram|Alpha's long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries."

What I love about this engine is that it has a defined objective that is appealing to the masses - become the resource to quickly answer factual queries. As a University student, it took me a long time to figure out "how" to search Google to find the articles and facts I was looking for. Should I phrase it like this or like that? A lot of the time, you don't get anywhere and waste hours scrolling through page after page with the hopes of finding what you're looking for.

Wolfram|Alpha gives users what they crave - correct answers, one click away.

Could Google replicate a model like this? Maybe. But I think that Wolfram|Alpha might have a jump start on them and in the world wide web, the place that users gravitate too first usually has a huge advantage on the competition.

The Links - May Edition

Please forgive the lack of posts over the last few weeks. Paul and I have been busy at work and also organizing a big event coming in September. AdJoke is going to keep on rolling and we recently learned that one blog listing site has ranked our little blog one of the top ad blogs in the world (#95th to be exact).

But enough gloating, here's 5 links to check out:

• Justin.tv claims that its users upload more videos than YouTube. Right.
• A jackass American conservative radio hosts decides to get water boardered because he doesn't think it's torture. To our delight, he was wrong.
  
• The Wired guide on the Palm Pre vs. the iPhone. I still like the iPhone.
• Turns out David Armano doesn't like websites anymore (sort of).
• Nokia continues to make fantastic digital experiences. This one isn't any different.

Got any more cool links? Send 'em our way...

Some Good Creativity

I'm a big fan of young creatives putting together great work. There's something about the potential of going to Cannes as a Young Lion that seems to inspire people from around the world. I think that entries are still open but hurry, there are already a number of great ones on YouTube. Here is my personal favorite:

Entreprenuers Can Change The World

Well done Grasshopper. Apparently Grasshopper is a telcom provider in the US that offers a specialized service for Small Businesses that includes unlimited extensions, call forwarding, professional greeting, etc.

To gain attention for their service they created this inspirational video that has 90,000 views 20 some days into the campaign and I have a feeling that this will only grow immensely over the next 30 days.



To help the video reach as many people as possible they have posted it to YouTube and enabled users to share it via Twitter, Facebook and all of the other usual suspects.

Drop by the site after you have watched the video twice.

Think Dangerously

Just came across a great post about dangerous ideas from Northern Planner.What is a dangerous idea? It's not something that puts people in harms way, it's a thought that challenges the way that people think. In 2006, the Edge Foundation asked industry leaders and their responses were quite amazing.

Northern Planner added a few with an ad-specific lens on them. Here are my two favorite:

• It's true that old style advertising dinosaurs could learn a thing or two from the digital brigade, but that goes the other way too. 25years ago, ad agencies made a fortune because clients didn't really know what they did. It was easy too thanks to the hegemony of ITV. It's like that now with digital. There are some brilliant practitioners our there, who graft at finding good ideas that will work. Then there are the charlatans that blind others with jargon and get away with murder. For now, others don't quite understand the technicalities of what they do, but when they catch up, things will change.

• Every agency and client should do a job swap once a year. Both would respect each other more for doing something the other cannot and wouldn't want to. The agency people be refreshed from the short hours, but glad to escape the boredom. The client would come back to the dayjob shattered, glad to escape the relentless pace and chaos, really pissed off at cancelling things at someone else's whim. The agency people would then appreciate that the client has their own internal clients and has to justify everything they do. The client people would be a little more patient, take more care to ask for what they actually want and less inclined to make impossible demands.

I really like the idea of trading places for a week or two. I think we get stuck in our roles and it gets harder - over time - to relate to the clients that we work with. I'd add one more dangerous idea to the list:

• The closer you are to being a true consumer, the stronger you are in advertising (said another way, the less 'experience' you have, the more of a chance to have to be groundbreaking for your client)

Let the debate begin.

Must Watch - PS22

Came across this great video from young music class. When you combine Eye of the Tiger with some random kids and a hilarious solo, you've got user-generated gold.

Although this video isn't ad related, it does show that everything on YouTube doesn't necessarily suck. I think that forward thinking brands will use their agencies to discover great user generated content for them and find a way to use it for themselves. Think about the categories (music, CPG, education, whatever) that would love to attach their message to something like this.



With the sheer amount of UGC out there, maybe we should change our strategies from content creation to content discovery.

SLAPCHOP RAP featuring Vince from ShamWow

User generated content is more often then not better than the original content.

New Nintendo DSI Spot

I saw this last night during the previews of the Movie "Tyson". Good movie but when I got home I wanted to do two things.

1) Find this commercial and share it.
2) Google some classic Mike Tyson quotes and laugh. That guy is ridiculous.

How good and unexpected is this creative twist?

Burger King: SpongeBob Booty

Even I have a moral code at times.In this case it has to do with my concerns around using "booty" to sell kids meals.

The New Scrabble Attitude

The new Scrabble campaign from O&M Paris. Found on CtinaClements Twitter stream. She just happens to also be one of my former Professors - taught me advertising.