Digital Connections

T-Mobile at Trafalgar Square (Thurs 30th April at 6pm)

Interesting to hear that T-Mobile are filming another flash mob tomorrow night, this time at Trafalgar Square. I blogged about the first T-mobile "life's for sharing" flash mob back in January.

The Trafalgar Square event is currently being Tweeted about here or here (if the #Trafalgar hash tag takes off) 

After their previous success, I'm curious to see how T-Mobile and Saatchi & Saatchi will handle the larger crowd numbers and expectation that the word of mouth (partially aided by all those extra twitter users) will no doubt generate.

Happy Birthday Samuel Morse: A Classic Logo from Google

I always try to keep an eye out for Google's daily logos, although admit to finding recent efforts somewhat disappointing.

Today's (27/4/09) however was a stroke of genius... creative, simple and very clever.

A return to form indeed!

Timeless Marketing Classics: Jon Steel

Jon Steel: Planner at WPP & author of Truth, Lies and Advertising, and Perfect Pitch.

As this project comes to close to an end, I'm starting to finalise my own list of Timeless Marketing Classics, and Jon Steel will definitely have one if not two books on the list.

Readers of Perfect Pitch and Russell Davies blog (Interview between RD & JS) will know that Jon doesn't read business books. Could this be true, in an attempt to find out I posed the question "Jon, which books are your timeless marketing classics?” 

"I don't often read business books. I've written two myself, but if I hadn't written them I sincerely doubt that I would have read them.
 
I prefer to spend my time reading novels, quality newspapers and good magazines like the New Yorker. I've learned more about planning from that than I ever would have done reading most of the books written by advertising people.
 
The only books I would ever recommend are Ogilvy on Advertising and The Book of Gossage. Both David and Howard were writing a long time ago, but what they have to say is as relevant today (maybe even more so?) as it was then."

Timeless Marketing Classics: Eaon Pritchard

Eaon Pritchard: Head of Digital Strategy at Geronimo

Seth Godin: Purple Cow

I first encountered Seth Godin’s ‘Purple Cow’ around 2004, I think it had been out for a year or so. At the time I was working as Creative Director with an online gaming firm, I had a gut feeling that we were approaching both the design the marketing of our product from the wrong angle.

I was under pressure to conform the look and feel of our games to look similar to the other casinos and gaming sites and the press ads, online ads etc were just not delivering the traffic.

I knew we had to do something but was not sure what.

I was pointed to ‘Purple Cow’ by the manager of one of the local branches of a well know book retailer. He was a convert and had used the principles of Purple Cow to turn around the fortunes of his store the previous year.  He had been voted store manager of the year at the company’s conference and also went on to receive industry wide recognition at the national book awards as bookseller of the year.

I’ll have some of that, I thought.

In a nutshell, Seth describes ‘Purple Cow’ as:

 ‘a manifesto for marketers who want to make a difference at their company by helping create products and services that are worth marketing in the first place. It is a plea for originality, for passion, guts, and daring. ..Today, the one sure way to fail is to be boring. Your one chance for success is to be remarkable."

Some say that Seth Godin can be too simplistic (the advertising plannersphere may look down it’s nose at him) I prefer to call him accessible.

Anyone can pick up this book and get something out of it., and it gives you a framework for judging the worth of an idea -  simply ask yourself  ‘why is this idea totally remarkable? Why would anyone bother to tell anyone else about it?  Where is the ‘purple cow’ in this idea?

I’d like to be able to finish off the story by saying I used the cow to transform the gaming company from also-rans to world beaters. No such luck.

But reading this book was the first step for me in realising that it was not enough to just make pretty pictures, I had to get interested in the ‘reasons why’.  I also realised that this was not going to happen in the job I was in so I quickly left (see another essential Seth title ‘The Dip’).

Timeless Marketing Classics: Neil Perkin

Neil Perkin: Director of Marketing & Strategy for the commercial functions of IPC Media

Seth Godin's "Purple Cow" & Clay Shirky's "Here Comes Everybody" are a couple of the more recent ones I'd pick, simply because  I think they have each moved the debate on significantly.

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However Mark Earls' Herd is one of those books that I keep going back to again and again.

A connected world dictates new thinking about the way in which ideas spread, but HERD touches on some truths about the way humans behave, and our intrinsic herd-driven nature, that are so fundamental that the ideas at the heart of the book seem almost simplistic. But they challenge some of the most basic assumptions that are common in the business of communications.

I like it because it was, and remains, fresh, different and inspiring.

Timeless Marketing Classics: Russell Davies

Russell Davies: Open Intelligence Agency, planner and really interesting chap, writer for Campaign and Wired Magazine.

Thanks to Russell for his interesting selection, Britain by Mass Observation is a great choice - I haven't looked through that book for years ... and now want to find a copy.

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"Great idea, good stories, splendidly-written. A good way to think about brands."
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"As above. This and Eating The Big Fish is all you need to know about how to do advertising planning."

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"A ripping yarn and a clear illustration that nothing ever changes in adland."
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"They actually paid attention to the world around them."

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"Does what it says on the tin."
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Social Notworking T-Shirt by Howies

This made me laugh

Hat tip to Neil P for his tweet earlier this afternoon

Available to buy from Howies here

Timeless Marketing Classics: Adam Richardson

Adam Richardson: Creative Director at frog design & writer for Cnet on the Matter/Anti-Matter blog.

I just finished reading Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, and if you are in the business of having to present ideas to others and get them acted on, then you need to read this book.

Authors/brothers Chip and Dan Heath have put together one of the most succinct and valuable resources for helping communicate ideas effectively and inspiring others to action. They have a simple mnemonic to help remember the vital elements (and they admit it’s a bit corny): SUCCESs:

Simple: Strip away all the cruft and get at the core idea. Easy to say, hard to do. What often gets in the way here is what they call “The Curse of Knowledge” - knowledge that is in the head of the person trying to communicate the idea. This tends to make people add to much detail, but also leave out the basic underlying message which for them is a given (but is non-obvious to someone unfamiliar with the idea).
Unexpected: Shake people out of their expected conventions of thinking. This doesn’t have to be earth shattering, but crafting of the message in such a way that the problem you are trying to solve becomes more stark is important
Concrete: Engage the emotional as well as the rational when communicating by making the problem tangible: use props, scenarios, prototypes, familiar examples. Make it personal.
Credible: Through appropriate use of details you bring credibility to an idea so that it can stand on its own and be repeatable to others. The ideas should punctuate the broader idea, but your story can’t just be a collection of details. Outside experts can provide credibility and details, or the details may come from personal experience.
Emotional: Understand how people’s emotions induce or inhibit them from action, whether it be because of self-interest or altruism
Stories: Stories have an amazing power to inspire and galvanize people into action, more than seems rationally possible. Including stories as part of your message makes it more engaging, lively, and ultimately more impactful. Keep the stories short, like parables (the Good Samaritan parable for example), as these are easily memorized durable and portable nuggets that can be passed from person to person. People are very good at abstracting principles out of stories, so they are an efficient communication tool.

I have to admit I was skeptical going into this book as I’m not usually a fan of business/pop-psychology writing that strings together a bunch of anecdotes as it often misses an analytical framework that helps you abstract it to your particular situation. But the Heaths do a good job of providing that framework, and the many, many anecdotes that they have serve that. Not all the chapters are as good as the others - the ones on credibility and emotion are not quite as strong - but you come out at the end of it with a sense that you have really learned how to communicate complex ideas more effectively.

[Thanks to Adam for allowing the reproduction of the text - original is here]

Lindt: Gold Bunny Eggsperiential Campaign @ Westfield

As I've mentioned elsewhere on this blog, I'm not an advocate of the UK's so called experiential marketing industry.

The industry attempts to convince clients that "brand ambassadors" are engaging target consumers in a positive "brand experience" whilst communicating brand and product benefits. 

Absolute rubbish .. this is akin to calling a window cleaner a "vision technician".

What really happens is that a few out of pocket students are rounded up, asked to remove their earrings & cover their tattoos with a cheap uniform and instructed to hand out leaflets/samples to anybody they can find.

That's after brand ambassadors/students and event managers have "taxed" the brand of any valuable product.... anything remaining is either thrown away or dumped in a warehouse.

All of this is overcharged, ROI is rarely measured or calculated and clients would do far better putting their budgets into digital, direct or traditional advertising.

Unless the client can pull this off......

 

This Easter weekend, Lindt hosted the "Gold Bunny World" at The Westfield Shopping Centre and it was absolutely brilliant - one of the best brand experiences, in a shopping centre, that I've ever witnessed.

Situated in the atrium, outside the Nike and Apple stores, it featured a maze created from real hedgerow, stilt walkers, a pop up shop selling gold wrapped chocolate rabbits (with £1 from every sale going to GOSH), and colouring in activities and other events for children - not to mention the giant gold bunny.

If the agency that pulled this off want to give me a wave and drop me an email, then I'm more than happy to credit them for what is an excellent piece of work.

[Photo Credit: Henry Bloomfield @Flickr]

Timeless Marketing Classics: Helge Tennø

Helge Tennø: Strategic Director and Digital Planner at digital agency Screenplay in Oslo, Norway.

Helge gives us a review of the book which introduced him to planning and to this day still provides him with great value.

Jon Steel: Truth, Lies and Advertising (1998)

When I was given the opportunity to work as a planner I was the first one in the agency and had no senior planning department or planner showing me the ropes.

It was a clean start, having to jump in and self teach myself the subject and produce an understanding of what I wanted this role to be and do for my agency. I had to start building processes, models, tools and generate ideas. In other words, I needed to learn a great deal in a short time. The book started my exploration through several excellent resources introducing a very complex subject.

Truth, Lies and Advertising gives a magnificent overview and introduction to the field in a non-complex language which is easy to understand for people with a different first-language than English. At the same time I didn't want to copy or fall into a too narrow definition of what planning is, and I felt that Jon Steel's introduction was broad enough to allow for personal interpretations and ideas along the way.

The book still provides valuable insights and works as a resources I routinely check for quotes and ideas. Finding it includes the best introduction and quick understanding of the daily routine and work I do as a planner.