Facebook pitches social TV to the world.

Facebook has to move with the times to survive, it must grow just like any other up and coming web based service, and it looks like they are going to give their best shot, by taking over our TV’s.

Andy Mitchel, the SVP of Strategic Partner Development at Facebook, has said very recently…

“If you look at the program guide [as it stands now], you’re trying to figure out what to watch among five hundred channels. It’s really hard. But think about a program guide where you see what your friends are watching, that changes the experience. ”

With the likes of Samsung already leading the way with TV applications, and TV internet crossovers, its only a matter of time before we get to see what our friends are watching on TV. Whether it be live as its happening, with live forum style commentary chat or just as a like button on peoples favorite shows.

But does it end there, what about the world of advertising… How long will it be before you like a brand on your laptop or smartphone and then see your own or your friends face endorsing the very same brand live on TV.

Twitter analytics

Everyone seems to be getting their knickers in a twist about Twitter analytics at the moment. Both Wired and The Economist have run hefty articles on its potential power recently. It’s easy to see why; a company in the States has just patented an algorism that assesses all tweets about new box office films. They claim that they are able to predict with 98% accuracy the takings for every one of the 24 films tested.

We all know that people now display their thoughts, hopes, fears and aspirations online. As such, many companies, organisation and governments are now turning to blogs and social networks for answers to many of the questions usually assigned to analysts, economists and indeed, planners (the most intelligent of all!).

Real world events such as consumer confidence, product demand and political voting can apparently now be accurately predicted. So powerful are thoughts and sentiments expressed in the online world that a new discipline – gracelessly named “infodemiology” – has sprung-up.

The potential for direct marketers is huge. I believe the rise of mobile monetisation and the ability to buy where you want, when you want will simply add another layer of behavioural analytics, making the insight provided by Tesco Clubcard feel as relevant as basic socio-demographic segmentation does now.

The trouble is such analysis requires a great many people with Oxbridge mathematics degrees (and the hedge funds are hoovering all these boffins up in their forecasting departments) and sadly, it would seem we are still a long way off decent sentiment analysis software.

Creative Responsibility

There are obviously many ways you can generate response creatively – there is a plethora of different consumers insights and emotions you can tap into. In direct marketing it’s often easiest to appeal to consumers’ fear, naivety or confusion. And as such, there are unfortunately far too many unscrupulous businesses and advertisers willing to do so in order to entice consumers to spend money on a product or service they don’t need. We’ve all seen them; they are those lowest common denominator, no win-no-fee-style ads that plague daytime TV. They simply act to exacerbate the negative reputation that direct response TV often has.

I saw a perfect example of this last week when I was off work for a day with a dreadful bout of man flu; day time commercial breaks now seem to be full of ads offering to claim a four figure refund from mis-sold payment protection insurance. However, the FSA (unusually for them) have gone out of their way to act in the consumers’ best interest and ensure that claiming back PPI insurance is as straightforward as possible. Yet, companies will still typically charge more than 30% commission on refunds that could have been claimed with the minimum of fuss.

We recently worked with our client, Which? and Barclays Bank to dispel any confusion in the market place about the rights of consumers to claim PPI compensation. It would have been very easy to bamboozle our audience with financial jargon in an attempt to gain attention. However, the brand image of both organisations would have suffered enormously and we therefore, took a no-nonsense, simple approach.

Financial aggregators and comparison sites have provided a new creative benchmark, which proves that financial services ads do not need to stick to the traditional DRTV conventions to be highly effective. There is now no excuse or justification for ads such as this.

When Marketers Lose Sight of the Real World

An amusing story caught my eye recently.  Lurpak’s latest on-pack promotion had caused some confusion with some of its older customers. The promotion (grow your own basil seeds) had been mistaken for a biscuit with customer receiving a mouthful of mud and seeds rather than the pleasure of a biscuit.  When I saw the packaging myself I could understand why someone could have made this mistake. The idea of associating Lurpak with fresh cooking was no doubt a great idea but was it executed in the right way?

This led me to think about the development of offers and whether they should follow a process more akin to new product development. The best ideas can fail if the voice of the consumer is not taken into account at some point in the development, from that initial embryonic thought to market implementation. Products are rarely developed and launched without numerous consumer feedback stages but communications, new propositions and offers are often brought to market based on internal judgement.  Communications for certain organisations are business critical, as communications are the main route to market e.g. service brands, charities, direct sellers.  Therefore identifying the winners from the duds is a business imperative.

Whilst not wishing to over complicate this, the development of an offer or promotion ideally requires a certain amount of pre-testing with consumers.  I’m sure we’ve all had moments when an idea has been lost in translation. Consumer pre-testing gives perspectives you potentially lose sight of, being eclipsed by the excitement of the idea.  Pre-testing may not be worth it in every case but for offers which are either expensive or high risk, it can be invaluable.  The pre-testing methodology needs to seek out likelihood to ‘respond’ and needs to simulate live testing. At WPN we use our tool Response Insight which has been developed specifically to measure response.  Which? now run all new consumer guides through Response Insight, which has delivered some impressive business results.

Apocalypse Soon

“I think customers have changed. They are no longer gritting their teeth and saying, we need to get through the next six months, they are accepting that this is new reality. This is not a short term trend.” Thus spake Halford’s CEO David Wild this week, yet another retailer reporting the gloomiest outlook for decades.

But where Wild is taking a new view, however, is that this is the world we will have to live in for the next five years at least. It isn’t going to get better, so marketers will now have to learn to live with a consumer who’s blown the froth off the coffee.  And where the retail customer goes, so goes the direct customer too.

Where does this leave us? Take a look around your local Marks and Sparks, or John Lewis. The brand’s the same. But just look at the offers.  No matter how strong your brand, unless you’re prepared to change your offer to something that the new consumer will find attractive, off they go to Aldi (yes, even the middle classes).

We did an insert for a well-known wine club not so long ago. Instead of offering the tried-and-tested 12 bottle case we got them to offer a 6 bottle case at half the price. The numbers were 800% up.

And then there was a catalogue remail: the first catalogue did so-so…the remail (exactly the same catalogue mailed 4 weeks later to the same people) went up by 50% because we offered FREE POST AND PACKING all over it.

It’s the same for fundraisers. Donors will continue to donate, but don’t assume that your brand is going to be strong enough on its own. Fundraisers have to get back to basics: what’s the cause, why do you need the money? And airy claims will simply evaporate. Hard facts, real value, and heartbreaking need is what’s going to work (and never stopped, but in headier times you could get away with something softer).

In other words, the new customer or donor isn’t worried about the old values anymore. But are marketers keeping up with them? The uncomfortable truth is that the marketing world will divide over the next 6 months: those who can’t or won’t change and believe the coming depression is just a blip, and those who see the full awesome storm heading for them and decide they can probably do quite well out of it.

I know which apocalypse I’m going for.

What are you your supporters’ real motivations?

A lot has been researched and written about donor motivations. The most common reasons for charitable support are altruistic and needs-based – people claim to support charities that they feel are worthy causes and are in need of additional funds. However, these reasons are all self-diagnostic and therefore rationalised. Is there another, deeper reason?

The greatest public show of charitable giving in the world passed my front door a few weeks ago. Each year I stand and cheer 36,000 people who, quite literally, pin their charity colours to their chest as they trudge around East London during the Marathon. Are these people solely motivated to support a particular charity because they believe in the cause, or does the charity they support say something about them as a person?

The use of signs and symbols in charity support has become more prominent in recent years. Whether it is ‘living strong’ or ‘helping heroes’, people are publicly displaying their support for causes.

Marketing has long recognised that the car you drive, the clothes you wear and even the supermarket shop in are a reflection on your personality and created campaigns that celebrate this. As well as focusing on the need of the cause, we should be careful not to forget the need of the donor and use our comms as a stimulus for the way people want to be perceived. My only question is how overt we can be in doing this. If you’ve got any thoughts please feel free to leave a comment below.

Need a tissue?

A recent online debate between advertising gurus John Hegarty and Steve Henry on the value of tissue meetings has prompted me to throw our experience at WPN into the ring.

For the uninitiated, tissue meetings are meetings between agency and client to present and discuss creative ideas prior to the official presentation.

At WPN we often use tissue meetings as part of the pitch process. On a very basic level, they allow us to make sure we have correctly interpreted the client’s pitch brief. Ok, we should have done this anyway, but with a client who is largely unknown to us, there is always plenty of scope for misunderstanding.

Sharing your thinking with the client early on also encourages them to share the ownership of the ideas. When this works out well, it means that when you go in to present on Pitch Day, you are not alone. You already have people rooting for you on the other side of the table.

But tissue meetings can also help cement relationships between the agency and potential client. Because, as much as we may like to think it’s all about the work, more often than not it’s about the chemistry. Tissue meetings are a chance to hang up our jackets and our titles and  get down to the job in hand. They give both sides a realistic taster of what it might be like to actually work together in a way that no creds presentation can.

But why keep a good thing just for pitches? Recently, we have introduced tissue meetings as part of our normal creative process with one of our existing clients. So far it’s been a positive experience on both sides. It has injected a new energy into the creative work because we no longer feel constrained to present only ‘safe’ work that we know the client will be able to run with. By showing a wider range of creative ideas, we get to push the boundaries of the brief, the brand and even the budget.

A side benefit of presenting more ideas is that it can sometimes generate more business for agency and client alike.  Clients will often favour more than one idea from a tissue meeting and, rather than throw out original and exciting creative, will look for other ways to use their second or third choices ie by adapting a cold mailing idea into a donor mailing or an insert.

Tissue meetings are a great idea. But agencies be warned. You should never use them because you lack confidence in your creative work or decision making – you should only present strong ideas and should always be prepared to make recommendations to your client. And never insult the client by running tissue sessions merely to give the impression that you value their input – unless you genuinely intend to collaborate with and listen to your client, forget it. And clients, if you really want to see what your agency is capable of creatively, why not suggest the occasional tissue meeting?  You might be amazed at you get back…