A Better Course

• Nokia’s primary market: Jackson Library: Stanford GSB
  In an age of experience-driven consumption, retailers must do more than simple advertising and product placement […] Successful retail requires a personalized shopping experience for consumers to interact and become familiar with the products.
  (tags: nokia product userexperience retail marketing jacksonblog)
• advertising practitioner: angry blogging, finger wagging, happy happy joy joy
  Although the venture capitalists and MBAs think of web advertising as one huge machine for the rational sorting of functional needs we humble ad folk have learned something more alchemical; how to turn sparks of inspiration into economic drive.
  (tags: russelldavies blogging business advertising google microsoft online creative)
• Where’s the sausage?: The store that’s a nightclub – breaking codes
  being brave enough to break codes and stand out pays off. […] Does it work? Well, on both days I went people were queueing to: i) get in, ii) try stuff on, iii) pay.
  (tags: abercrombie&fitch branding brand retail wheresthesausage)

Stanford GSB’s library blog had a piece on the Nokia Flagship store in Shanghai today. The store allows its users to interact with the products and services before buying them. So far, so Apple Store, but there’s a good quotation; “In an age of experience-driven consumption, retailers must do more than simple advertising and product placement. […] Successful retail requires a personalized shopping experience for consumers to interact and become familiar with the products.“.

What does interaction mean outside the context of technology? Brand Gym recently cited the Abercrombie & Fitch flagship store as an example; there’s no window display, the lighting is dim, and the staff are all models. It’s an interaction with a product that’s about more than trying the product – it’s about engagement with the brand and, perhaps more importantly, a story about a brand.

(Having said that, Brand Gym’s post could be read as meaning that the staff being models is the reverse of their being helpful. If that’s the case I’m not sure it’s a great long term strategy, but it’s an interesting attempt at something different.)

• Business.view | Psst—want to be a billionaire? | Economist.com
  [Zuckerberg] has shown good judgement in resisting offers for his firm of between hundreds of millions and $1 billion. Yet $15 billion is a different story, especially for a firm that has yet to make a profit and has annual revenues of barely $100m.
  (tags: theeconomist facebook business)
• FORTUNE: Tech Daily AdBrite launches Facebook network «
  Rafer says Facebook’s big challenge is to figure out how to spot social momentum behind products. For example, the social network needs to find a way to pinpoint and capitalize on a wave of popularity behind a new book or music album.
  (tags: facebook fortune advertising web2.0)
• Online Marketers Joining Internet Privacy Efforts – New York Times
  “Instead of having interruptive ads, jarring things that will grab your attention, things are tailored to be suitable to your experience,” said Jules Polonetsky, the chief privacy officer for AOL. “We think tailoring advertising content in a way tha
  (tags: nytimes aol analytics advertising privacy online)

There’s been a lot written recently about the advertising model of Facebook and other online social networks. A lot of this is concerned with the lack of success banner adverts have on these sites, and whether all of the billion dollar valuations are predicated on banner adverts starting to work or the development of a new strategy that will be successful.

Banner adverts are based on a model that, Seth Godin opines, is exhausting people. “Commercials used to be a minute long, sometimes two. Then someone came up with the brilliant idea of running two per minute, then four. Now there are radio ads that are less than three seconds long”. This is the advert-as-flick-book – you view it very quickly, get the message, move on. You don’t want to hang around to watch it, and only occasionally see something you want to click on.

On the opposite side of this, there’s the model of the advert as photo album – something you do want to go back to, to look at even when you don’t have a reason to, to show other people. In the UK, there have been some superb examples of this recently, the below all from Fallon London:
Play-doh (Sony Bravia)

Cake (Skoda)

Gorilla (Dairy Milk)

It’s kicking back, not only at the increasing shortness of TV adverts, but also people’s increased ability to skip them.

A lot (especially in the context of social software) is talked about the relevance of the advert to the user. However, relevance is actually something we, as consumers, are quite used to outside the internet; it’s the default setting. We watch TV shows that reflect our interests; the ads the breaks are going to be targeted at people with those interests or (presumed) demographics. We buy magazines on possibly even more specific interests, and the advertisers in those magazines are selling to people with those interests.

Having said that, not all magazines are equal. Some, in time, become trusted sources of information and this trust extends to the adverts inside them. The Economist and Harper’s Bazaar would be examples of these – this is advertising as directory, as a valid starting point for research. The things that will be advertised are even more predictable than usual, and the readership know enough about at least some of these categories for denser, text-heavier adverts to make sense.

Which model will Facebook, MySpace and their ilk choose? Generally online advertising is a flick book – lots of messages, lots of logos, increasing awareness and salience to uncertain ends. A manager for MySpace’s TV unit recently said, “I don’t think our monetization strategy will be a prize-winning Harvard Business School study” – I’m looking forward to the strategy that does win prizes, that creates a new model of advertising entirely suited to the web.

• Microsoft-Facebook: ‘A True Bubble Deal’ | Business Week
  There are still questions about the deal that Microsoft and Facebook will have to address. “The big question is this: will Microsoft get to see what they are doing, and work with them, or are they going to be relegated to selling secondary banner inventor
  (tags: microsoft facebook businessweek bubble advertising)
• Tom Fishburne | Brand Camp | The 8 Types Of Bad Creative Critics
  Entertaining cartoon in the style of Matt Groening’s Life In Hell (but it’s about marketing)
  (tags: tomfishburne cartoon funny advertising)
• 26 Reasons What You Think is Right is Wrong | Health Bolt
  A cognitive bias is something that our minds commonly do to distort our own view of reality. Here are the 26 most studied and widely accepted cognitive biases.
  (tags: psychology bias science article social healthbolt)
• Infovis keynote: Matthew Ericson – data visualization & visual design – information aesthetics
  Matt emphasized their role as journalists (instead of illustrators) and explained how they get from raw data to finished graphical pieces that make information understandable for more than a million readers.
  (tags: datavisualisation nytimes infosthetics)
• Enabling Innovation Through Office Design | Business Week
  Seemingly practical, all of this ignored the importance of tacit knowledge—information that is in the heads of employees but not written down—as well as the business value of chance encounters, which a growing number of CEOs trumpet as the source of m
  (tags: business design workspace office businessweek innovation)
• ::: I believe in advertising ::: » Jeep: Parking Space
  Jeep advert – a lovely bit of branding. Via swissmiss
  (tags: branding advertising ibelieveinadvertising jeep fun)
• Achewood – October 30, 2007
  Today’s other comic about advertising
  (tags: achewood comic funny advertising)

Following yesterday’s post I’ve been thinking a lot about narrative; both the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, and the stories we tell our (potential) customers about our products.

Some marketing or advertising seeks to fit their stories into existing narratives – innocent do well at marketing to those who already identify as “a healthy person”. The high fruit content of their drinks and the lack of additives are all selling points.

Whilst the company are increasingly building a brand image apart from the drinks (their Village Fetes would be an example), it’s still positioned as a product that will make you more like your own self image, rather than allowing you to change your current one.

Other marketing seeks to create new categories – people will describe themselves as a “Mac person”, for increasingly obvious reasons.

It’s not only about owning the product, it’s about the story you tell yourself about owning the product – what it means to you, how you interact with it, how (you think) others consider it.

Of course, there are more factors in the buying process than this; but it’s a useful model for thinking about your product. What stories do people tell themselves about it? What stories do you want them to tell themselves about it? How well equipped is your product to give them the ‘ending’ they want, after they’ve bought it?

• blog all dog-eared pages: where the suckers moon (tecznotes)
  Good creative people didn’t operate by the same rules by which, say, good bankers do. And clients don’t always recognize the value of good creative work […] so an account exec had to be prepared to fight or anger the client, even risk dismissal or fire
  (tags: advertising tecznotes bookreview)
• 30-Pound DVD Set Will Showcase United Artists – New York Times
  Encased in frosted glass and weighing nearly 30 pounds, the collector’s set carries a suggested retail price of $869.98, making it one of the most expensive DVD offerings ever. [..] “It’s unique enough that some small number of people will pony up tha
  (tags: nytimes movie unitedartists gimmick)
• If It’s Retail, Is It Still Rock? – New York Times
  “I don’t think there’s a deal being made today where the 360 model doesn’t come up,” Mr. Lipman says. Merchandising and endorsement in the music industry
  (tags: music celebrityendorsement nytimes)
• Shaping the Workforce of the Future | Business Week
  The diversity and technology revolutions have changed much about business; no revolution will ever make unethical behavior acceptable. How and when we teach and enforce ethics to a dispersed workforce is a question about the future that we cannot duck.
  (tags: businessweek ethics business predictions)
• In Search of MyProfits | Business Week
  “I don’t think our monetization strategy will be a prize-winning Harvard Business School study,” says Jeff Berman, general manager of a new MySpace TV unit.
  (tags: businessweek myspace online web2.0 advertising)
• FT.com / Companies / Media & internet – Facebook founder sets sights on big leagues
  Private equity and hedge fund investors may be more difficult to win over, however, particularly at such a ripe valuation. “I just don’t know how you can pay that sort of valuation for an option on a business model,” says one big private equity inve
  (tags: facebook web2.0 advertising business ft)

I recently went to see a talk by Radha Chadha on the rise of luxury brands in Asia, about which she has recently written a book. She had moved from India to Hong Kong a decade ago to work for an ad agency and, fascinated by the attitude to luxury brands that she noticed both around her and in the accounts she worked on, started to research a book about them.

Two facts that interested me most, because they speak about my demographic on a different continent –

• 94% of women in their 20s in Tokyo own a Louis Vuitton bag
• Office workers in South Korea buy Ferragamo shoes on installment plans

A lot of the talk focussed on handbags, and the rise of the “logo line”; these account for a massive share of the luxury market in Asia. This led into the main conclusion of the book and talk – that luxury brands were a convenient way of expressing identity within a group. This has become more important as old class systems in Asia have broken down; the idea that these brands emerge because “there are no rules for being rich” was an interesting one, although not entirely applicable to buying by those who weren’t rich (and were buying shoes on an installment plans).

Of course, Japan as a country has been relatively affluent for some time which, in itself, provided an accelerator for the market. Whilst salaries are high, houses are small and cars inconvienent; the body has emerged as the most convenient means of expressing wealth, in the form of luxury clothes and accessories. Other accelerators in other countries have provided different pictures of consumption. In China, where gift-giving is important for business and politics, 50% of the market is male, compared to 25% elsewhere in Asia.

My favourite quotation of the whole talk came at the questions, when someone asked Radha Chadha why she was so interested in it. In reply, she talked about enjoying finding out what drove people who had attitudes to buying so different to her own – not speaking to consumers of luxury goods, but speaking to people and finding out what matters to them about what they do. She concluded by describing this process of investigation as “just lovely, really”, an attitude that I think would result in far more empathetic marketing if adopted widely.

• The Benefits of Facebook “Friends:” Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites
  We use Facebook as a research context to determine whether offline social capital can be generated by online tools. The results of our study show that Facebook use among college-age respondents was significantly associated with measures of social capital.
  (tags: education facebook identity research web2.0 technology michiganstateuniversity networking)

• Brain regions responsible for optimism located | U.S. | Reuters
  Phelps said the researchers had a hard time getting the volunteers to think of purely neutral events in the future. “They tended to make them positive,” she said. “We sort of stumbled upon this optimism bias that psychologists have talked about before.”
  (tags: reuters optimism brain research)
• Chris Heathcote: anti-mega: planning? design? agility? thinking. plotting. pondering.
  a lot of “experience design” is actually just designers doing people-grounded marketing. […] I’ve generally found ‘design research’ to be rather woolly, so I’m interested in the research and analysis techniques from advertising.
  (tags: antimega design marketing analytics product)
• Rock, Paper, Shotgun – PC Gaming » Blog Archive » No Jokes Aren’t Funny Anymore
  “That’s a really fun cover. That’s lovely.” I stopped and thought a little, before continuing, “And it’s good to see someone smiling on the cover of the mag. When was the last time someone was smiling on the cover of PCG?”.
  (tags: rockpapershotgun teamfortress2 computergames smile fun keirongillen)