“Hard Work” needs work…

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The new TV campaign from Tangerine, formerly ING Direct, has all the right pieces but ignores one important element —humans have very short attention spans. One of the first things drilled into my head decades ago was that advertisers had less than 15 seconds to let consumers know what were selling. After that, they lose interest.

Today, we don’t even have that long to grab them.

In 2000, the average attention span was 12 seconds. Thanks to the proliferation of mobile digital devices and social media in our multi-screen world, research has discovered that the average attention span has now dropped to 8 seconds. According to the research study released last year by Microsoft, goldfish at 9 seconds have a longer attention span than we do.

What that translates to for advertisers is that waiting until the end of a commercial to reveal the brand, let alone the product or service category, is definitely not a good move. Unfortunately, that is what Tangerine has done with its new campaign.

The online bank has nailed its strategy, “You work hard for your money. Does your bank?” together with its “Forward Banking” tagline. This message is conveyed via a sequence of scenes of people hard at work in occupations such as health care, daycare and factory work. It’s all set to a terrific military-style cadence. The music is memorable and the visuals are well done but, to me, the spot suggested social programs, health care or labour unions. I tuned it out after a few seconds. It wasn’t until I read about the campaign launch in trade media that I took a second look and watched until the very end to find out that the ad was for a bank.

The agency behind the campaign may balk at the idea of superimposing the Tangerine logo on a corner of the screen or at least having one of the workers in the montage slip a cheque into their pocket at the end of a long day, but at least the viewer wouldn’t have to work so hard to get the message.

Stick to what you do best …

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The potential purchase of Tim Hortons by Burger King could ultimately be a very good way for Tim Hortons to put its focus back on what it does best – coffee and donuts.

Tim Hortons has been straying from its core business for a while. It has had a limited menu of sandwiches and soups, which until now have fit well into the operation. Recently it has added breakfast sandwiches, questionable hash browns and with rumours of expansion into other items, Tim Hortons is dangerously close to no longer being considered a quick-serve restaurant.

We’re already seeing longer lines and longer wait times, both inside and drive-through, that will soon turn off even some diehard Timmies fans. Sticking to the core business is a lesson that McDonald’s learned in the 90s when it tested personal and family-sized pizza at some of its locations. Consumers really liked the product but not the 11 minutes prep time.

If the deal happens, both Tim Hortons and Burger King will hopefully continue to operate as two separate brands and concentrate on their individual core businesses. Burger King will get tax savings through the formation of a Canadian holding company and, because Burger King is an international brand, Timmies will get the opportunity to take the coffee and donuts that Canadians love to the world.

 

If it ain’t broke…

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Earlier this summer Telus announced that following a review, it is ending its nearly 18-year relationship with Taxi and having The&Partnership take over as its creative AOR effective September 1. Advertising for subsidiary brand Koodo will be moving to a Vision 7 agency early in 2015. Taxi launched the Koodo brand for Telus in 2008.

It’s understandable that after such a long run a company might decide to reassess its marketing and advertising efforts or its agency – but to make a radical change to the look and feel of the advertising could be damaging to brand recognition and equity.

This is particularly true of the Telus and Koodo mobile brands. Advertising campaigns for both are distinctive and easily recognizable. Those are particularly important characteristics for advertising today in an age of texting, short sound bites and young people with the attention spans of a flea. Even 40 years ago, the rule of thumb for advertisers was that they maybe 12 to 15 seconds to capture consumer attention with their brands. Today they have about three seconds – if that.

The friendly, recognizable style we see in all the Telus print and TV advertising is as ideal for today’s consumers as it would be 18 years ago. Viewers just have to get a glimpse of the engaging animal or reptile actors shilling for Telus or a short peek at Koodo’s blue-hooded El Tabador cartoon mascot to identify the brands. Consumers that stick around for the end of the commercials or take a closer look at the print ads always find the messages or offers easy to find and understand.

Consistency and clarity. Perfect.

It’s a woman’s world…

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Women are now the ‘drivers of change’ in the world.  

Women have been called ‘the holder of the purse strings’ for decades so I’m sure, for many, this welcome new label and increased attention from marketers will not come as a surprise.

What is so positive about this new designation is that it encompasses women around the world, not just North American, British or European women.

The new Future Perspectives report from The Futures Company* examines the evolution of women from being ‘consumers’ to ‘agents of change’ who are “shaping not just their own world, but everybody’s world”.  

“Women 2020: How women’s actions and expectations are changing the future” discusses the importance of understanding a woman’s decision-making when it comes to life stages, lifestyles and purchasing – “in particular due to significant change for women in the area of control and choice. It is through their decision-making that their ability is manifested to act as catalysts of change.”

As consumers, we’ve always known that women were a powerful force but a number of factors have contributed to women, including women in developing countries, also having a significant impact beyond that: easier access to education; increased workplace presence; increased participation in business and politics; freedom to make their own choices; and with increased life expectancy, there has been a big shift from the traditional life stage trajectory.

With this shift in life stages, women are delaying marriage and a large percentage – 43% of GenX women in the US and the UK – are choosing to remain childless. Their attitudes to aging have also changed. The report says 83% of US Baby Boomers “don’t feel constrained by social expectations of what is or is not appropriate for someone of my age or gender” and 68% say they will be physically and mentally able to work into their 70s and 80s.

Looking to the future, marketers should expect:

  • Less correlation between age and life stage, requiring the identification of new segments tied to an extended life stage model rather than age.
  • Continued growth of single person households, opening up opportunities for services and products for women choosing to live alone.
  • Women finding ways to do old things in new ways, creating opportunities for marketers to look for ways to help them resolve the tension between tradition and modernity.
  • Adapting typical male-dominated categories such as gaming, autos and alcohol to appeal to a growing female audience.
  • Access to other audiences through women.  With increased income, spending on others – children, spouses, parents and friends – will also increase, opening up other potential audiences.

 

*The Futures Company is a leading global strategic insight and innovation consultancy, a Kantar company within WPP operating in Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia.

There are a lot of bad ‘isms’ …

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Well, the Christmas season is over. According to advertisers and the media, Christmas started a few days before Thanksgiving Day in the US and ended at roughly 2pm on Christmas Day with the resumption of Boxing Week Sale and January Blowout advertising.

Prior to Christmas Day, along with all the ‘buy, buy, buy’ and ‘save, save, save’ advertising, the media treated us to endless updates on the frantic shopping and spending activities of consumers. Pollsters told us that each shopper would be spending upwards of $1000 each on Christmas this year and that retailers were expecting a banner sales month.

Time for a reality check.

Firstly, we hear this same story every year and retail predictions have steadily been falling short. Secondly, from my observations, average consumers were very reluctant to part with even $5 or $10 let alone $1000 – although, last minute shoppers were clambering after $10 and $25 gift cards on Christmas Eve.

Many of us make our living in retail, media or advertising-related businesses and know that the Christmas season has traditionally been the most lucrative time of the year for retailers but, I believe, that dwindling seasonal sales have partly been the fault of aggressive ‘pushy’ advertising.  Consumers feel pressured and are turned off by too much ‘push’. They have also been convinced over the years that they must spend excessively each year – whether they can afford it or not. So of course, if surveyed, they are going to give that type of response to the pollsters – whether it’s true or not. No one wants to be seen as coming up short when it comes to the Christmas ‘tradition’ of big spending.

On the other hand, the media sends us mixed messages about Christmas. There are heartwarming news stories and a month-long slate of Christmas-themed movies portraying all the finest sentiments, traditional values and magic that are at the heart of Christmas and our Christmas memories.  

One retailer did put its money into those memories this year, while also building on some valuable brand equity from the past. Macy’s sponsored showings of the classic ‘Miracle on 34th Street’ with an entertaining celebrity-packed commercial that didn’t sell product but instead conveyed a message about the charity the retailer was supporting.

‘Miracle on 34th Street’ is one of our most popular Christmas traditions and features some very memorable lines about the state of the holiday season. Santa explains that ‘Christmas isn’t just a day, it’s a frame of mind’ while Alfred, Assistant Santa, makes a comment that is even more appropriate today than it was back in 1947: “There are a lot of bad ‘isms’ floating around this world – but one of the worst is commercialism. Make a buck. Make a buck.”

The message behind all my rambling is that maybe next Christmas if we all focus on the Christmas ‘frame of mind’ more and if the media and advertisers let up a bit on the ‘push’, we’ll all be a little merrier. Consumers would definitely be a lot less stressed and enjoy it more and, as a result, retailers might even end up with better sales figures.

Maybe it’s just nostalgia talking but I for one would really love to see more magic and less commercialism in Christmas. 

 

 

Not everything that can be counted counts…

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Marketers have always had their heads easily turned by the next shiny object that comes onto the scene, whether it’s right for them or not.

Two recent articles in Market Leader, the journal of the Marketing Society in the UK, voiced some of the issues I have with social media and digital media use by advertisers.

The first, Social media: Missing the wood for the trees, written by online communications consultant  Robin Houghton, states that a recent study found “that 25% of companies do not respond to customer service questions posted on their Facebook wall, and 65% never reply to questions asked as comments on their posts. Some even delete customers’ questions.”

Since the original premise given by brands getting into social media and setting up a company Facebook page was that it was an opportunity to develop relationships with their consumers by enabling two-way conversation, deleting questions seems rather counterproductive.  So much for good intentions…

It’s obvious to many that marketers simply see social media as ‘cheap’ advertising – and best of all results can be measured – or so they think.

On that point, Houghton says, “. . . the questions of ROI continues to hamper business confidence in social media. Every now and again a formula is created that we’re told measures the value of a Facebook ‘like’, or a particular frequency or timing of tweets is said to have an optimum effect on sales. And yet, as we have already seen, the obvious social media metrics were never intended to measure the success of marketing initiatives.

“As the saying goes: ‘Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. . .”

According to Houghton, “Brand value can be won and lost on the social web and as long as we limit our thinking about social media to campaigns, tool, gadgets and even data, we are in danger of the missing the real opportunity.”

The second article, Social media: Friends, hawkers or stalkers?, also talks about the peril of believing that a ‘like’ is somehow a measure that means something to your brand or bottom line. The article’s author Peter Dann, co-founder of UK developmental research agency, The Nursery, says his company’s research shows that brand perceptions and engagement are still driven by two things – mainstream broadcast media and by actual experience.

He says that when study participants were asked about brand activity they had noticed in social media recently, they could not recall a single example unprompted, except for “heavyweight broadcast campaigns with added-on social media elements. In qualitative discussions on brand activity, social media simply doesn’t get at mention.”

Dann cautions: “Brands should never forget that social media users don’t really want to be their friends – they just want material rewards. . .

“Because Facebook was primarily a social network for your friends, when it welcomed brands on board brands tried to behave like friends and most have never got out of the habit. But people don’t ‘like’ brands or follow them because they actually ‘like’ them – just as Facebook friends aren’t real friends – so Facebook likes aren’t necessarily ‘likes’ at all.”

Dann concludes by saying that it is when brands forget the commercial nature of the relationship that people resent the intrusion, and it is easier to tune out an annoying TV ad than to ignore unwanted, supposedly tailored messages from brands: “ When these brands start following them around, not on commercial websites but in spaces that they regard as their personal domain (such as their Facebook page), then ‘permission marketing’ becomes stalking and the brand’s attempt at a ‘relationship’ backfires.”

It’s time for companies to tune out the hype about social media and take a clear-eyed look at whether it is really helping their business. Advertisers who are abusing digital and social media should rethink their strategies, take it out of the hands of the IT guys, and put some real marketing communications experts back on the case.

Watch for ‘Not everything that can be counted counts… Part 2’.

Mea culpa…

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My last post was 21 days ago. As an individual, I can be forgiven. But that type of inconsistency really drives me crazy when it comes to companies and brands. There’s no excuse for a company website to have a news section that hasn’t been updated for over a year or, even worse, to have months-long gaps between tweets or blog posts.  

When companies first jumped into social media, the party line was that it was a way of bringing their brands closer to consumers, engaging with them and enabling two-way conversation. Instead of making use of the relationship-building qualities inherent in social media, marketers have simply turned it into another advertising channel.  

Some companies started out with the best of intentions but then regressed into promoting product with their tweets and blogs rather than actually talking with consumers and answering their questions or complaints.  Now many have become fair-weather friends, just getting in touch with consumers when it suits them.

Social media offers marketers the opportunity to get consumers talking about their brands in a positive way.  First, they must reopen the lines of communication – and keep them open.  Then they have to remember there’s more to being a friend than counting clicks.

Everything old is new again (part two)…

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After years of unbundling agency disciplines, setting up standalone specialty shops, and the proliferation of digital boutiques, it looks like the agency business is heading back to the future.

 An article in the November issue of UK ad industry journal, Admap, discusses the structural changes agencies need to make to survive and outlines a blueprint of how this ‘new’ agency should look.  It’s called the ‘Third Wave’ agency model by the article’s author, Tim Hipperson, UK Group CEO of G2 Joshua, which is part of WPP’s G2 Worldwide network.

The ‘First Wave’ dates from the 1920s. The “Second Wave’ began in the 1980s when we started to see agencies breaking down into standalone creative and media agencies and picked up speed in the 90s as the digital momentum grew.

Hipperson says continued agency break down into even smaller subsets of digital advertising, such as tablet-based communications, will not create the integration that advertisers are demanding.  Integration will only become a reality with ‘Third Wave’ agencies combining traditional expertise with emerging technologies.

According to Hipperson, “For brands, this means an agency that can nurture customer communities; from delivering push communications, to creating pull interactions; and from managing campaigns, to facilitate conversation, and more than anything else, listen to what people are saying. In essence, becoming a connected agency for a connected world.”

His vision sounds like a return to the traditional full-service agency model, but now there is even more requirement for strong research and digital expertise. Hipperson lists and elaborates on eight main points in his blueprint for a ‘Third Wave’ agency:

Content – Engage customer communities with multichannel editorialized branded content.

Lifetime value is dead – Put less emphasis on lifetime value of a consumer and more on lifetime experience by providing a seamless brand experience across touchpoints.

Integrated planning – The agency is the custodian of the customer’s interaction with a brand so must orchestrate touchpoints to make the experience seamless and positive.

Real-time insight – A crucial part of integrated planning is the ability to listen, test and review in real time.

Marrying quantitative with qualitative – This is the ability to recognize the right data and understand what to do with it.

Co-creation – If it’s right for the customer and the brand, co-creation brings them closer together. The key is to identify the relevant customers and the right format.

Optimize online media buying – The process needs to be more flexible and faster to allow for more appropriate buying decisions.

His last point – project, not account, management – seems to be the main driver behind integration, the ability to manage and facilitate the entire process. This role would include juggling multiple strands of activity, bringing together and managing the team of specialists, and finally, delivering on time and on budget.

To make all this work, there needs to be greater collaboration between agency departments and their leaders than ever before.  The challenge will be to overcome the problems integrated agencies had in the past, such as interdepartmental rivalries.

If 60 is the new 40 …

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Why the heck are we still being bombarded by Ensure’s ‘demented granny’ TV spot?

I’m sure I’m not the only one annoyed by it. Every time this commercial airs – and once I’ve restrained myself from throwing something at the screen – several questions come to mind (but not usually in such polite language):

• does the ingredients list include amphetamines;
• should a woman who is considered infirm by her children be living in a house with a flight of 20 stairs leading to her front door;
• who approved this spot;
• why did this person approve this spot; and finally,
• how can this person believe it’s okay to continue to run this spot and still keep their job?

Marketers have access to a lot of research and there is no shortage of reports on Baby Boomers, the apparent target of this commercial. If you read the research, it is apparent that, yes – 60 is the new 40, not only because we’re all living longer but also because of the Baby Boom generation. Boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964, are now 48 to 66 years old.

Insights from the Euro RSCG Worldwide Aging: Moving beyond youth culture, 2012, global survey concluded that the global obsession with youth is undergoing a transformation. Youth and youthfulness are no longer just about chronological age. How one ages is now believed to be controllable, not predetermined.

Additionally, the Euro RSCG report supports what marketers have been told for several years – and many persist in ignoring – that older consumer segments do enjoy and employ new technologies and do continue to be active consumers.

It’s not that the Baby Boom generation is the generation that won’t grow old; it’s the generation that believes that aging doesn’t mean you’re old. Even those that don’t continue to work beyond standard retirement age, plan to continue to live life actively and spend their time and money on hobbies, travel and other interests.

A great many marketers unwisely began ignoring Boomers once they moved beyond the 18 to 49 consumer segment. Over the next five years, more than 50% of the US population will be 50-plus and control 70% of the disposable income, according to the Most Valuable Generation, a report released by Nielsen in late August.

The Nielsen study also states that Boomers account for more than 80% of premium travel and are prolific online shoppers, spending almost $7 billion online. In fact, Boomers represent 33% of all online users, all social media and Twitter users, and heavy internet users.

As with all consumer segments, marketers should take a closer, deeper look at Boomers and not make the mistake of lumping everyone over the age of 55 into the category of enfeebled, white-haired simpletons.

Although the Ensure brand really missed the mark with its advertising, RBC’s current “It’s Time to Define Your Retirement” campaign is spot on. In print, online and on air, RBC is not condescending or patronizing, with its theme:
“For the last forty years your generation has helped to change the world by challenging the status quo. Now that you’re retiring, you can challenge the definition of retirement as well.”

The Baby Boom generation is still the most valuable generation in marketing history so ignore them at your peril.

I would also venture to say – don’t piss them off.

Everything old is new again…

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There are signs that once again change is coming to the ad agency business.  Like new fashion trends and the season’s hottest colours, expect changes in agency structures and models to look a lot like the old ones.

As in the past, the change is being driven by marketers. Coordinating integrated communications is still a problem for marketers.  Many of them currently work with 20 or more agencies but are beginning to pare down rosters and are looking for agencies to lead the integrated communications process.

According to an Avidan Strategies poll in the US, 51% of the 1,900 respondent companies had already reduced the number of agencies they employed and another 44% were expecting to make cuts.  It also reported that 69% of advertisers expected to reduce the number of digital shops they work with and 48% the number of creative agencies. Recently, J&J scratched Mother, Deutsch, Lowe and Martin Agency from its global consumer products list.

Agency accountability continues to be a priority for advertisers but they also realize they can do a better job of aligning their in-house and agency teams.  Forty-six percent of respondents say traditional agencies are still struggling to integrate digital into their model; 36% believe agencies are making progress in acquiring digital assets but are having difficulty integrating them into the agency.

In a Forbes article about the study, Avidan’s founder stated that agencies need to become proactive and experiment with different business models, and make measurement and integration an essential part of their offering.

How agencies are expected to accomplish all this is not clear, but what the study does show is that there is the opportunity for an agency structure that offers better integrated communications to clients by managing all disciplines – both inside and outside their agency families.  

It sounds a lot like a traditional full-service agency with an outsourcing twist, doesn’t it?