Shutting the label door

August 29, 2007 By

Prince

I’ve talked quite a lot here about the future of music and of record labels’ role in it. Well last night I saw that future in action, and it was in the shape of an iconic Minneapolis superstar jumping around like a mad man on stage at the dome.

Prince has sold out 21 nights at the O2′s 20,000 capacity venue, managing to get a half a million Londoners to see this frankly knock-out show, without needing to resort to the ridiculous prices of the Madonna tours. As you go into the concert, you also get a free copy of his latest album. Before the uber-cool one comes on stage, we see promo videos for all the merchandise which is on sale outside, and then there’s the after show (where he played another 12 songs last night), for those that want to keep on going (and keep on spending).

In Prince’s case, after the huge row over the use of his name in the early 90s, I’m sure he’d like nothing more than the demise of the majors. And, of course, most artists can’t sell out 140,000 seats in 20 minutes (as Prince did with the initial run). But it does go to show: if the music can be almost freely distributed (remember the actual album launch was a cover-mount on The Mail on Sunday), then the artists can make their money by playing great concerts, flogging the hell out of ancillary sales and the odd private appearance at billionaire’s birthday parties.

Filed Under: marketing, music

In the name of democracy

August 27, 2007 By

Bartlet vs Richie debate in the West Wing

This post from a chap at LBi starts out as a review of Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail but turns into an interesting discussion about the concept of democratisation in internet economy and amongst internet communities.

We talk endlessly about the effect that the internet has on people. It allows anyone with a PC (and let’s shelve for the moment that this doesn’t include most of Africa and big chunks of the Middle East) to say what they like about what they like, out loud. It encouages freedom of speech (except in Turkey). Freedom of speech is part of democracy and we  tend to say that this openness is a ‘democracatisation’ of access. But of course (as the post points out), democracy isn’t actually what the internet does. He’s taking this from work by Esther Dyson:

“The greatest structural impact of the Net is decentralization; things and people no longer depend on a center to be connected. People often confuse that with democracy, but democracy is where the majority rules (…), whereas decentralization is where the masses separate into small groups.”

This may sound like the splitting of hairs. But it’s actually quite a profound difference.

What is it we like about democracy in the first place? I suspect it is that no leader was allowed to wander too far from the crowd. Well it seems pretty fair to assume that’s more the case now than ever before, because huge freedom of speech and access to information provides more systems of checks and balances.

The best definition Google can find me of democracy is:

‘A system by which social equality is favoured. Democracy means “rule of the people”. Democracy includes open discussion, direct voting on significant issues, policy formation in all realms of social life; economics, education, religion and public life.’

But surely what we see online is not consensus arriving through discussion but rather groups forming where consensus already exists. They’re pretty open groups, but they’re also pretty small. There is no need for the centre of all of these groups, there is no necessity of greater consensus or even greater sharing.

This reminds me of a point Andrew Orlowski made at one of the early Chinwag discussions that the perception of disent in online discussion online is misplaced. His way of explaining it, is that you might meet someone with a fundementally divergent opinion at a social event in real life and end up really exploring your differences and remaining civil but that online this doesn’t happen, you just chose to go with another group.

What does all this mean? Well it should make us question the automatic virtue with which all additional online chatter appears to be heralded. It should make us question the automatic virtue of the long tail. Do we really want the ‘unlimited demand’ (as of the cover of Anderson’s book) to be sated? Should we really want it in the name of ‘democracy’?

Filed Under: democracy, marketing

Dogs on skateboards or cats with ADD

August 25, 2007 By

Dog on a skateboard

There’s a brilliant post here by George Parker. As per usual, no prisoners are taken as George savages advertising’s attempt to shove their films into YouTube with the new “Overlay ads”. George is a fan of dogs on skateboards. Personally I don’t think you can beat a cat with attention deficit disorder operating a toilet but hey, each to their own. What neither of us thinks particularly likely is that when watching our favorite pet misbehavior, we’re likely to want to watch an ad for the new Hyundai 4×4.

I know, why not force me to watch the ad by making it a pre-roll? That’d be even better. Or – and I know this sounds crazy - try and come up with something interesting to say that I might actually chose to watch?

Filed Under: advertising, agencies

Planning Innovation

August 25, 2007 By

underpants

Presumably there’s no surer sign then the whole industry is about to melt down than the increasing talk about businesses that don’t have any plan to move to profit being bought or re-financed with millions of dollars of pension fund money. There’s a horrible sense of deja-vu from the 90s.

Antony reports on this sort of behavior here, with Twitter funder Umair Haque suggesting that traditional business plans are no longer relevant, and the seductive although meaningless quote, ‘Spreadsheets aren’t strategy’.

Well Twitter’s obviously an interesting example. A lot of people have asked how they can afford to continue to fund the volume of SMS traffic without any inbound revenue streams. Did they have a secret plan? Or will this be reminiscent of the brilliant ’underpant gnomes‘ strategy in Southpark captured by Richard at AdLiterate?

underpants2

Well I, for one, am not delighted to hear that they don’t know either!

Bill Gates pointed out recently that Google’s record of monetising products is actually fairly poor. It’s just that their biggest product is a barn-stormer so they get almost infinite R&D money to play around with. Microsoft has been doing the same, working on a “get it out first, monetise it later” approach; and all the talk now is of failing fast. Obviously Microsoft and Google can now afford to do that for a while. Can Twitter?

Old style, 5-year business plans may be obsolete, if only because looking five years into the future is becoming harder and harder, but that does not mean that you don’t need constantly understand what you are in business for and how it is sustainable. The market (in the capitalist sense) is not a pure abstraction, it is by definition the reason you are in business.

Can we take ideas from the world of Lean to apply to the purpose of a while business? What would Shingo and Ohno say? Should the business plan be allowed to iterate? Monthly? Presumably the whole company (and as far as we could take this) its customers should be involved and take responsibility for the plan; should be rewarded for its success or failure.

But, to take the analogy more into Agile, what should happen when the business plan doesn’t build, when the numbers don’t add up (even after a hefty dose of 2.0 or 3.0 futurecasting)? It is important too that, the business be able to change course. How many companies are truly willing to close down or to re-invent themselves because they have become obsolete, ?

Filed Under: marketing

Grubby behavior

August 20, 2007 By

turd-polish

From the department of faster horses*, Robin’s post about the new ad format from Yahoo! The Smart Ad reminds me of a few quotes:

Firstly, when VCCP (where I worked) announced it was starting its own search specialist, Rob Forshaw of Grand Union was quoted as saying  ”The move is potentially very lucrative, although I’d have thought it was too grubby for VCCP to get into.”

Secondly, John Wanamaker, famously said “I know half my advertising dollars are wasted, I just don’t know which half”.

Thirdly, and finally, a quote from Beavis and Butthead: “You can’t polish a turd”.

The idea behind the  Smart Ads, is using the total knowledge of the user’s behavior (including for example, their last search or which of  the Yahoo! sites they have visited and with what frequency), to influence which ads are then shown. Smart ads allow those ads to be configured on the fly to include a relevant offers or promotions. The constituent parts, presumably are to be made up in Digitas’ Greater China Sweatshop (as we saw with Publicis’ digital strategy):

David Kenny, chairman of Digitas, said technology platforms like SmartAds hold the promise of bringing the hyper-targeting and effectiveness of search into the 95 percent of Internet pages that are not search results.

Has anyone at Digitas seen a single eyetracking survey? Users simply tune out visual advertising? They do this because they’ve learned that it’s normally not relevant. This is why AdSense works. It looks like links – which customers are used to finding useful.

But why are ad agencies so obsessed with it being visual anyhow – even if the idea of a simple insight driven message is gone? Isn’t this just a desperate attempt to keep the old norms of advertising intact?

And they don’t work. If John Wanamaker’s quote were being applied to online display advertising (or direct marketing), he would have had to have said, “I know 98% of my advertising dollars are wasted, I just don’t know which 2% are not”.

If advertisers are now so interested in targeted messages, perhaps a few of the agencies should simply reconsider their reticence over grubby targeting advertising.

* Just in case you’re not aware of it. Henry Ford famously said, “If I’d asked customers what they want, they would have said ‘faster horses’

Filed Under: advertising, marketing

Broken Funnels

August 15, 2007 By

As Robin mentions here, Forrester has recently reported a significant shift in how marketing is working and should be measured:

The marketing funnel is a broken metaphor that overlooks the complexity social media introduces into the buying process. As consumers’ trust in traditional media diminishes, marketers need a new approach…

Once engagement takes hold of marketing, marketing messages will become conversations, and dollars will shift from media buying to customer understanding.

Clearly, we’ve been talking about these ideas for a while but hearing them said by such an influential analyst feels a little bit like when Blur and Oasis turned up on the nine o’clock news or the first time ‘Web 2.0′ was mentioned in the FT.

Exactly what value the new ‘engagement’ scores (made up of ‘involvement’, ‘interaction’, ‘intimacy’ and ‘influence’) might have remains to be seen although it’ll start to force re-evaluation.

I’m sure too, that we’ll see some advertisers trying to drive their engagement metrics using their marketing dollars, all those powerpoint decks will have to be rewritten again!

Filed Under: marketing

Making music history

August 12, 2007 By

Anthony H Wilson

This weekend marks two endings. One very sad and one very happy.

In this article, Andrew Orlowski sums up the love/hate relationship Manchester had with Anthony H Wilson, who died this weekend. A founder of the legendary Factory records and TV journalist, I remember vividly the first time I saw Anthony Wilson, on Other Side of Midnight, full of pomposity and unnecessary intellectualism, introducing breakthrough bands like Stone Roses in between bizarre folk acts that probably shouldn’t have seen the light of day and certainly not a TV studio. Or on Channel Four’s “After Dark” evoking a spirit of grand elitist debate replete with huge leather chairs, smoke filled rooms and gradually dwindling whisky decanters.

I remember vividly too seeing him in the flesh for the first time backstage at a concert by Durutti Column (whom he supported endlessly), gliding around like Manchester royalty.

Besides his manner and outspoken views, Anthony Wilson was famous for never really managing to make any money (although those around him often did).  In his own words ‘Some people make money, some people make history’.

Well perhaps Universal Music Group is trying to make history. On the weekend when we mourn Anthony Wilson, we hear that UMG will ‘test’ DRM free music. The word ‘test’ is UMG trying to keep their options slightly open as they follow EMI down the path of liberalization, but they’re very unlikely to be able to go back to DRM.

The move is a surprise, although not an unwelcome one. While the DRM debate was looking intractable, wholesale surrender hadn’t seemed very likely. The move signals intent from music companies to make their money elsewhere. UMG in particular has been pushing Apple for a cut of profits from iPod sales (a similar deal is in place with Microsoft for the Zune). Interestingly the DRM tracks will initially not be available on iTunes, meaning that iPod owners will need to experiment with other online shops (HMV and Virgin both operate in this area) for DRM-free tracks, that will now be importable into iTunes.

The result will be good for consumers. In breaking Apple’s monopoly on legal iPod-compatible downloads, there will be virtually no breaks on the price war that will ensue. At last we may be close to “decent product, decent price” digital downloads.

Filed Under: DRM, music

Direct to Hell

August 10, 2007 By

452806626_c2ea91f34f_o

There are a few things in life that sound like they’re going to be great but always seem to fail in practice: fondues, windows mobile devices, the conservative party. But surely king of the hill in terms of ‘will never live up to expectations’ is direct marketing.

Advertising is so random, we hear. So what we should do is collect loads of data about people and make sure they only get the most relevant messages. The only problem is – who do we put in charge of gathering all that vital data? It’s marketing people. They’d love to help, but they’re already a little late for lunch at the Ivy.

So we end up with content which is worse than proper advertising (creative means  “change the format” not “people will like it”) which costs more money than proper advertising, often involves huge and embarrassing environmental damage, and is harder to ignore. Incidentally “harder to ignore” is not a brand positive guys!

On returning home tonight, I had to force the door open – as usual – over a pile of Foxton catalogues (full of sold houses) and direct mail. Amongst the usual pile of nonsense I found this archetype of DM trash :

IMG_0233

The ‘creative’ idea is that I should shred my bill from my existing  supplier, and they bring this to life by “shredding” half of the letter. Brilliant. On the reverse of the mail pack is the name and address. And here’s the thing about targetting.

A friend of mine used to regularly take business trips to Lithuania, a fantastic part of the Baltic Republic where the EU dollars flow freely and everything is just starting out.

On one of those trips he met a lovely girl our there called Asta.

A couple of years later they’d split up but Asta decided she wanted to try her hand in the UK. I had a spare room at the time, I got on well with Asta and she was the best looking person I’d met in real life, so I agreed she could stay in my spare room. She registered for one bill (Southern Electric I think) in order to be able to prove she lived in the UK in case she decided this was a long-term kind of thing. 

Three months later, she moved back to Vilnius. London wasn’t as great as it had seemed, and it certainly wasn’t easy to get a graphic design job here.

The electric bill is registered to me again. Yet still the direct mail like this one keeps coming (mostly from estate agents urging her to sell). This targeted, accurate medium which drives value through intimacy is still mailing someone who never really moved here, never had residency, and had a total family income under £10. Hard to argue that the money wouldn’t have been better spent on TV advertising – in Lithuanian!

Filed Under: advertising, agencies, marketing

Turn the machines back on

August 8, 2007 By

 Monkey typing

When I read this post on Robin’s blog, I had to check it wasn’t April 1 and time for more ‘Google buys France’ and ‘Apple’s going to make a mobile phone’ stories (oh hang on a second, one of those was true). So, courtesy of the New York Times, here is Publicis Group’s strategy:

The plan is to build a global digital ad network that uses offshore labour to create thousands of versions of ads. Then, using data about consumers and computer algorithms, the network will decide which advertising message to show at which moment to every person who turns on a computer, cellphone or eventually – a television.

Of course, it’s possible that NYT has mangled the story but there are elements that even an accomplished satirist couldn’t make up. It seems Digitas – Publicis’ primary digital group (the new name in the UK for Modem Media, amongst other glitterati) – has bought a Chinese ad-building (production) company which is now called ‘Digitas Greater China’ (honestly, I’m not joking, look at the article!).

The vision is a different ad per customer, per view, targeted by stage in the purchase cycle. Well that’s bound to work isn’t it, just look at the success of Direct Marketing. And of course, we’re going to need almost infinite production capacity to get that done:

Digitas executives say that consumers end up with a better experience — even a service — if the ads they are shown are relevant and new.

Isn’t it fascinating to watch the whole industry mourning it’s quiet death with such public frustration. If some poor Chinese labour is earning $2 a week to make that banner I’m looking at, it’s bound to be great. 

First of all – what customers want isn’t better advertising, they want better marketing, including price, place, promotion and – of course – product. Advertising is a function of marketing and for years the most fun part but it is not what it is about. Second of all, since when were display ads the only type of online adveritising? At best, the popularity of the banner, rectangle, skyscraper etc can be put down to advertisers desire for something like TV and print that they can buy, certainly not because consumers want them. Third of all, isn’t better advertising better advertising,  rather than varied advertising being better advertising? And, fourth of all, what will we do when we need to advertise to the people that work in the Chinese advertising sweat shops?

Of course, some may think that Google has already produced and delivered a better strategy with adWords but no, that’s just a tip of the iceberg. Chairman and chief executive Maurice Lévy, is way ahead of the brothers Brin:

Mr. Lévy, who has a penchant for grand ambitions, says he does not plan to compete with Google — rather, he wants Google to need Publicis.

In other news. The Oxford University Press is going to see if they can produce the entire works of Shakespeare using an infinite number of monkeys. (Funnily enough someone did try this).

 UPDATE: a really interesting post on the need to invent the online (and online video) ad models.

Filed Under: advertising, marketing

Better by beta

August 4, 2007 By

macy's in google street view

From the department of ‘in case you’d missed it’.

You really can’t turn your back on the Google chaps for five seconds. The latest addition to the mapping family, street view still needs a little polish but it’s going to be quite amazing, and they just keep getting the stuff out there, as quickly as they can get it done.

Also, not sure it’s entirely a privilege to be captured on the Google cameras: “John who’s that you’re with outside Macy’s?”

Filed Under: agile, google
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