Faris Yakob's MCAD Discussion

eeing Faris's talk at MCAD was an interesting one. Rather than a prim and proper business man coming in to talk about how amazing he is working in NYC with all these important people, we get someone who is a little bit more down to earth. While this isn't a completely unheard of at MCAD it is a welcome change from what you normally hear about in the advertising world.

One common trait I see in Faris along with many individuals we talk about at MCAD is the ability to make a name for himself. This wasn't someone who picked a role and excelled in it. Instead, he decided none of the rolls fit what he wanted to do so he found something that seemed to be lacking and made a role to fit it. Now that consumers have the ability to nearly be everywhere at the same time Faris figured he should help plan out where exactly the brand should choose to live.

Its not as easy as coming up with one of these anymore:



On the down side you can't just throw money at the TV and know people will see it. Instead people have DVRs, Hulu and various other "channels" of media they choose to spend their time on. You can't guarantee anyone will be on any given platform at any given time anymore(exceptions being the Super Bowl and such).

On the plus side the ever increasing amount of platforms brands and consumers choose to shout from give benefits as well. Once a new medium has been thoroughly tested and rules have been put in place it can turn into new opportunities. Faris used the example of Nikon using Twitter, Ashton Kutcher and user submitted short films they were able to create a extraordinarily cheap campaign considering how much attention it received. This increase in platforms splinters audiences, but it also gives opportunities to reach consumers in new ways.

Now you can argue for every Nikon story there are 10,000 automated Twitter bots that do little other than ruin the experience for others. There was the UK company, Moonfruit, who topped Twitter's trending charts for days until being taken off by Twitter simply by offering Macbook Pros to anyone who tweeted #moonfruit. While it was incredibly successful for Moonfruit, it cheapened Twitter for many users. Being a poor college student I'll be the first to admit that I indulged in the #moonfruit, but I'm certain those who follow were less than thrilled to read nonsense in their feed.

As a brand I think the most important thing to do is to realize you can't be everywhere and to choose carefully where to go. You need to manage your online and offline presence more than ever now, because if you don't consumers will come up with an identity for you and its rarely a positive one. Brands need to realize that the consumer is more in control than ever before now that there is 0 latncy for content delivery whether its reviews, opinions or the ability to move on to the next new thing. All brands can do now is do their best to cater to their consumer's desires and have a function that makes them truly unique and desired. You can't simply exist and have an advertising budget anymore; become relevant or you run the risk of simply disappearing.

Oh and I'll close with this little Gem Dr. Pepper thought would be soooooooo cool to do. I believe this is the epitome of doing something simply for the sake of trying to fit in. Don't just have something because everyone else does, make sure there is at least some context for doing so.

Predicting Faris Yakob

I was digging through Faris Yakob's blog looking for one specific post that really jumped out at me. Not limiting myself to recent posts or even thoroughly reading them in chronological order. In doing so I ended up with a post of his from December 2009 entitled, "No Rational Content". In this post he sums up various other sources that point us in the direction of irrationality.

His first source comes from the Journal of Advertising Research, in which they ask the simple question of, "What do we KNOW about advertising?" It sounds like a rather simple question, but when you get deep down into the question its anything but simple. Hundreds of elements, techniques, failures and successes that both support and contradict each other come into mind.

He goes on to discuss the findings of Les Binet and Peter Fields who researched the findings of papers that won the IPA Effectiveness Awards . These awards focus on the business results of advertising rather than the creative side. To sum up Yakob's summation of the findings, they come to the conclusion of:

"The most effective advertisements of all are those with little or no rational content."

I had to think about this one for a while, finally coming to a conclusion that seemed to fit Yakob's overall attitude. Rationality in a branding message isn't what people want to see when they're busily walking from their car to their cubicle or killing time online during when nobody else is looking. They want to be distracted, the last thing they want to be is sold on.

One person that came to mind after reading the above quote on the effectiveness of irrationality was Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He gave a presentation at TED in 2004 about happiness and how people find it. One thing he points out is that humans can generally take in 110 bits of information a second. If we can somehow consume a majority of those 110 bits, we can escape from reality because we don't have enough bits leftover to notice reality. Forgetting boredom, money issues, problems at home or whatever else that bogs us down. Escaping reality, even if for only a few seconds is something everyone wants. Now while this may seem irrelevant to Yakob's post, I see a connection on at least some level.

Combining Yakob's post discussing irrationality and Csikszentmihalyi's talk on happiness I come to the conclusion that if when we're focusing on any given advertisement its lack of rationality only lends to our ability to escape for that moment. With rational messages its easier to see the "advertising" in advertising, but with irrational ones its more about the story telling or entertainment value at that moment. This invites the individual to use more of their 110 bits and create that much more happiness.

Edward Boche: All According to Plan

Edward Boche has a lot of respect for the masses. He sees companies either taking advantage of their customers for cheap labor through crowdsourcing or not paying enough attention to them in the first place. He credits Netflix for crowdsourcing with a purpose other than creative. Netflix tasked all its members to improve its recommendation algorithm by 10% accuracy for $1 million (http://www.netflixprize.com/rules). Another similar examplem http://www.innocentive.com/, which aggregates problems companies are having and offers cash prizes for the person who comes up the best solution. You have to take him seriously when he says this because he practices what he preaches. Working with Grain Foods Foundation to “crowdfund” and he hosts http://www.thenextgeneration.com to help professionals understand where this up and coming social media guru generation is coming from. Instead of trying to go on business as usual, Edward is working with his clients to embrace this new user.

Edward’s key concept is to engage rather than interrupt. Social media is the perfect tool for this, but like anything in its infancy, its still being refined and mistakes are being made. The fragmentation right now is displayed in this picture perfectly (shown in Edward’s Posterous post http://edwardboches.posterous.com/the-social-media-landscape-contained-in-a-sin). It shows how much is still really being experimented with right now. Edward wants to get advertising and social media working together and to do this he promotes actively using social media rather than simply occupying space. The key to successfully doing so is to keep the conversation active rather than “only once every 16 days” and to use the metrics available to you to find that sweet spot your audience loves. Don’t be afraid to put up content that varies in subject matter or tone, but when you do keep track of which ones are performing the best. Without that content that really drives people to interact with your company on some level you simply aren’t relevant. With the overflow of relevant content they can get from the web they will very quickly forget your Facebook page, blog or Twitter account and move on to the next brand. Edward credits one of Facebook’s employees in his blog as saying, “targeting + creative + conversation strategy = the most effective social media marketing”.

If I were looking to get a job with Edward I would be involved with social media, continue to evolve my online/offline drive and don’t confine myself to any one role. Over the next couple of months I plan on reviving my since abandoned blog (studying abroad along with a job abroad can do that to you) and developing my portfolio to the point of being confident enough to officially put it online. My goal is not only to blog but actively participate in others’ blogs as well. A lot of people have a lot to say, but truly making it a conversation is what I want to do. Two years ago I wasn’t even a month old in MCAD with very little direction. Today, I nearly have the next five years of my life planned out. Will it all happen according to plan? Most definitely not, but that’s what I’m looking forward to.

Sensory Overload in Tokyo: How Not to Get Attention

Or at least good attention as far as I'm concerned. How do most advertising agencies try to get your attention in a city like Tokyo that has ads on every wall and building you look at? Easy, buy as much space as possible and contribute to the problem even more. Today I experienced the epitome of this concept on the train coming home from school and work.

I spend about an hour and a half on the train and another 40 minutes walking round trip to school five days a week so I've become fairly jaded to the 1,000s of signs and videos I see from point A to point B except for when I'm intentionally seeking them out to practice my Japanese reading skills. This afternoon was an exception:

On the way to work I saw a muted version of this commercial on one of the many screens in the train



After that I noticed all these

Any wall space that's normally reserved for a handful of ads was taken up by Turkish Airlines and I soon noticed they bought what seemed to be the entire days worth of train screen time. After leaving work six hours later and getting on this new train home I noticed the same commercial was looping and Turkish Airlines had about 85% of the train advertising real estate space.

This completely ruined it for me. Originally, I thought to myself, "Hmm, I usually like Kevin Costner and that ending has been used before, but I still like it. Maybe I'll check out Turkish Air next time I fly." By the time I got off the train to get home I never wanted to see any Turkish Airlines branding again.

Thanks for taking away everything I could practice reading from and the six or seven commercials I usually zone out with to make my trek home a little less tedious, I owe you one. Please grab my attention with something that peaks my interest next time rather than repeatedly bashing me in the face with it.

A little trivia: Coca-Cola comes out with a new product in Japan on average of every 21 days to compete with the over saturation here.

Condoms are Cool

It seems that as of lately there has been a push to use positive reinforcement or negative punishment in ads rather than the old "you better do this or else!" approach. More specifically condom companies are catching up now and I think it's a much more effective. The Durex commercial above is a perfect example. In the simplest terms its saying, "Use Durex and your sex life will be great." Before the last few years condom ads along with most other health and safety products had a much more abrasive and hostel approach.

I'll give credit where credit is due. About a year ago I did a little review of where the Trojan was with their marketing online and offline. They were taking a much more conversational and positive approach to their consumers rather than the threatening tone I remembered them having.





Using a Facebook group and Warped Tour bands to bring in their audience seemed to be working extremely well for them. Several articles (can't seem to find them a year later) from prominent blogs and marketing commentators praises their efforts and results with this approach proving their tactics.

These big names should have learned this long ago, but better late than never. No airline got customers by saying if you don't fly with them you will certainly perish in a fiery blaze. You might scare people into what you want, but fears are easily overcome. Make what you have to offer look like ice cream on a hot summer night and everyone will be grateful.

Roadtwip!

Many of you like traveling and many of you like Tweeting correct? Well, why not combine the two?! That's what the team of three at Road Twip are doing. Kurt Daradics, Jolie O'Dell and Jonathan Dingman are traveling to 8 different cities in 2 weeks to show what social media can have to offer even to the offline world. They will be stopping at BIGOmaha, a conference in Omaha to get people together and show that there are cities other than LA and NYC that can contribute to the social media movement.

They're also doing this to show the impact and importance of including IRL in social media. Not only should you Tweet and befriend people online, but you should meet up without laptops on occasion. There can be a lot accomplished in real world chit chats that can be missed when its just text on a screen.

Check them out, its an interesting little endeavor / experiment I'll be keeping up with them to see what they have to say.

Piggy Backing Ads

Lately I've been noticing a trend of one company piggy backing off another company's already established advertisement. BMW and a paint recycling company, RONA, have billboards that either counter a competitor's or plays off an already well establish company. We're getting so green now that we're even reusing ads.



BMW played off of Audi's billboard who taunted BMW saying, "Your move BMW". Apparantly BMW took it seriously and made a big move with its much bigger ad with a sly reply.




RONA did something similar without the aggressiveness. They took an already well established ad, iPod Nanos, and used it as an extension of their own ad. I wonder if there are rules for that, if not I could see lots of interesting possibilities.

MIMA - The Future of Email Marketing

On Wednesday a few students joined me at the MIMA (Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association) event on Wednesday, Inbox Insanity with Jeffrey K. Rohrs. Honestly, I couldn't think of any positives to email marketing. The first things that pops into my mind when I think of email marketing is: annoying, spam, useless and more. Jeff shifted my opinion, now I see applications for it when its used correctly.

Thinking of all the ways there are to communicate with each other it can be quite daunting. Jeff had about 25 forms of communication whether it be cell phones, email, facebook or twitter. Even though there are dozens of vehicles for communicating most have email tied in. Twitter alerts you of new messages and LinkedIn emails you when you have new messages or followers.

Email is the #1 use of the internet; of the people who use the internet 91% have at least one email address. No wonder why email is one of the preferred ways of communication of marketers. Just because you communicate with them doesn't mean you should be though.

The key is getting people's permission to send them an email first, not by lists of emails and send out thousands of emails hoping a few might bite. If you can show you have relevant information for people and have them voluntarily request the emails people will be much more receptive. Jeff mentioned Amazon being a prime example of sending update emails on items you've purchased beforehand or might be interested in, but doing it in intervals that don't overwhelm you. Not EVERY day like some do, instead only occasionally.

Three things to make me happy about getting emails from you:

1. Get my permission to email me
2. Don't email me every day, limit it to only when I need it
3. Don't make it hard for me to request information