Experience Manifesto

Business Blog Book Tour

Reading through lots of different blogs tonight and came across a posting about the Business Blog Book Tour. Very interesting project started by Todd Sattersten. Just missed the last tour by Al & Laura Reis for their latest book, The Origins of Brand, but I hope that they'll be more in the future! You can read all about the tours and see all of the blogs they visited at the link below.

A Penny For...

MediaPost Advertising & Media Directory

An excellent article from MediaPost about the advertising clutter during sports programming. And while we're on the subject, am I the only one who just gets crazy when networks run ads along the bottom of a screen during a show? I'm watching something already -- stop advertising to me!

WITH SO MANY REFERENCES TO "drinking the Kool-Aid" in modern culture, you would think at least some TV networks should be airing a few more Kool-Aid commercials.

Of course, that's not quite the aim the sellers of "Kool-Aid" had in mind.

The latest reference to that sugary drink comes from CBS Sports chief Sean McManus who was bemoaning the fact TV executives are now in a cult-like advertising state. That too many commercials, promotions, product placement, and electronically inserted brand names, are squeezed into sporting events - especially on his own network and especially with college football.

In effect, ad executives have been drinking the Kool-Aid by cluttering up sports contests with any advertising revenues that came their way. And it may prove to be suicidal.

The problem is if TV networks continue to spend more on sports rights fees, there'll have no choice but to sell even more of sports content to sponsors. Major League Baseball has already been experimenting in exhibition games by putting sponsors names on uniforms - which in Europe is already part of the marketing fabric for sports such as soccer and cycling.

MediaPost Advertising & Media Directory

Samuel Johnson Quote

You know, I have this hanging in my office and look at it every day, but thought that I would share it with you today! So, here's a quote from Samuel Johnson, who, as you may know, lived from 1709 - 1784. He wrote this long before the advertising world we live in today! As they say, the more things change, the more the stay the same!

Advertisements today are now so numerous that they are often very negligently perused, and it is therefore become necessary to gain attention by magnificence of promises and by eloquence sometimes sublime and sometimes pathetic."

How are you gaining attention?

Billboard campaign challenges beauty stereotyping

Here's an article about the new billboard campaign that Ogilvy & Mather created for Dove soap. The campaign is getting excellent reviews from the industry and consumers alike and feature real people. But, did Arnold Worldwide really need a study to show that people don't like advertising hype??

Lynn Fletcher, chief strategic officer of Arnold Worldwide Canada, believes consumers want more message-driven advertising.

"I think it does a couple of things: It's more marketing with people than at people. They seem to understand that what is needed is engagement more than attention."

A study by Arnold Worldwide Canada found that consumers are becoming hardened to marketing tactics.

The Mood and Mindset national online survey found that 67% of respondents have a lower tolerance for hype. They want meaning and relevance in advertising.

National Post

MindBullets™

This is an interesting e-mail that I get every week call MindBullets: News from the Future. Every week, they send me a dispatch from the future and I thought that this week's mail was particularly appropriate. Is this the future of advertising that we want?

TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES BREAK CONSUMER TRUST

Subliminal advertising is the new phobia for the 'thumbs & joystick' generation

Dateline: 19 June 2008
In a consumer revolt unprecedented in California's technological heartland, parents have taken to the streets to protest against what they claim are subliminal marketing techniques, aimed at their children, now pervasive in movies, computer games and mobile phone services.
    
In an interview with CNN's Larry King, consumer advocate Stan Nailer stated that the massive usage of electronic media has given advertisers new ways to reach customers. He said that with a market of two billion mobile phones, more than two billion internet users and one billion game consoles, producers have been tempted into radical new aspects of the technology.

Nailer's covert research into company practices has shown that even blue chip companies, which have always consciously spurned spam, seem to have turned to subliminal advertising.

Sony, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Palm, Motorola and Symbian are companies specifically being targeted in these new consumer boycotts. The impact is being felt widely in other industries such as retail and financial services.

MindBullets™

Pop-up stores: here today, gone tomorrow

For many months, the large retail space at the corner of the Rudolfplatz here was just another empty storefront, further evidence of Germany's economic malaise.

But residents walking by this month did a double take. In the storefront that until January had housed an Italian department store, MTV, Sony Ericsson, Adidas and Levi's had set up a sleek white display space, offering limited-edition mobile phones, jeans and other hipster gear. Within six days, it was gone.

The "pop-up" store, a cooperative effort among the four brands, was the mainstream mutation of a marketing strategy used successfully by fashion labels like Comme des Garçons in recent years. The "guerrilla stores," which have appeared from Los Angeles to Berlin to Tokyo, stay open for a limited time, sometimes a week, sometimes a year. The buzz they generate beats any public relations campaign and shakes up traditional methods of reaching customers, retail specialists say.

"Everybody's been looking for something new in retail because it's become really boring," said Russ Miller, a former public relations manager and magazine editor who founded the seminal guerrilla store Vacant. "And we kind of create a more inspiring environment."

Stores operated by Vacant, which started appearing four years ago, feature clothes, sneakers and accessories by up-and-coming designers and by established brands like Puma in a leased space that never stays longer than four weeks. The guerrilla store rejects other traditional retail practices, like putting price tags on their products or offering to help customers.

"We want you to come in like it's a gallery," Miller said, "to come in and explore."

Drawing on a database of 1.6 million people worldwide, Miller and his crew shoot off a few e-mail messages on a new store opening and then let word of mouth do the rest.

Others have followed. Guerrilla stores are popping up in France, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, or anywhere that might combine a concentration of trendy consumers and real estate laws that allow for uncomplicated, short-term leases. Word spreads among residents in the club, music and fashion scenes. Outsiders check Web sites like www.superfuture.com or the Vacant site for updates and store openings.

Comme des Garçons set up its first guerrilla store, a one-year venture, in a former bookshop in Berlin in February. Since then, the Japanese label has opened stores in cities like Helsinki and Ljubljana, Slovenia, and had a six-month collaboration in Tokyo with Colette, a Paris-based fashion gallery and store.

For fashion designers, the appeal of a guerrilla store is the chance to introduce their expensive clothes to new customers at often discounted prices, said Benjamin Malhotra, a retail consultant and professor at the Polimoda Institute of Fashion Design and Marketing in Florence.

"It doesn't go to the mass market, but it does create more brand awareness and product awareness," Malhotra said.

For major brands like Adidas and Levi's, the short-term store is a way to augment their mainstream image by offering something limited and exclusive to people they hope are trendsetters.

Pop-up stores: here today, gone tomorrow

Alphachimp@Pop!Tech

This is a really very cool part of the Pop!Tech experience called graphic facilitation, where they actually draw the conversation! It's an excellent artifact for any conference program and I would highly recommend them!

Alphachimp@Pop!Tech

Passive Aggressive Punctuation

Ze Frank gave one of the funniest presentations at Pop!Tech and I loved what he called “passive aggressive punctuation.” Here’s a picture that I took of one of the great real-time graphics that were created at the event. Basically, you were able to send e-mail using standard punctuation, but know in your own mind what each symbol stood for! Very funny! Click here to check out Ze's web site.

Philadelphia Inquirer | 10/26/2004 | Urban Outfitters' growth is fashionable on Wall St.

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, “ Same-store revenue for the first and second quarters of this year continued to grow significantly - by 32 percent and 26 percent, respectively - compared with revenue for the same periods last year.”  

Those are pretty damned, good numbers!  Why aren’t people looking at numbers like that to gauge effective ROI, rather then CPM?

Philadelphia Inquirer | 10/26/2004 | Urban Outfitters' growth is fashionable on Wall St.

FT.com / Home UK - Back to the future: advertisers get out of the living room and on to the street

Once again, the role of experience is in the media! And, being covered by Financial Times no less! Some great quotes in the article, including the excerpt below. In particular, the idea that advertising is now about engaging, not interrupting and pulling, not pushing. I hope that every time you read an article like this you are asking yourself these questions — are you engaging or interrupting? And are you defining your answer based on your feelings or the feelings of your audience? Like we’ve been saying all along, we understand that companies that create compelling and relevant brand experiences will be tomorrow's leaders. The rest will be lucky to survive.

There is growing interest in communicating with consumers outside the home because advertisers are worried that they are losing control of the living room. Consumers have greater choice in media and greater power to skip commercials by using personal video recorders such as the TiVo. Network television audiences are dwindling and the prices advertisers pay for TV time, measured as the cost per viewer, are rising.

"All the traditional media are breaking down in some form," says Mandy Pooler, chief executive of The Channel, the media knowledge centre of WPP, the British marketing services group. "Reaching anything like a decent sized audience around a campaign these days is a challenge."

The advertising industry's response to these changes is now taking shape. Advertisements that interrupt are out and those that engage are in; the emphasis is on pull rather than push, at least in theory. The big challenge for the industry is not so much what to say but where to say it, increasing the importance of media planners - the people who decide where to place adverts.

FT.com / Home UK - Back to the future: advertisers get out of the living room and on to the street