Our new Fairyconomy campaign has received the ultimate accolade... a UG spoof on YouTube... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNBZu0IpkPA
It put me in mind of an essay I wrote a year or so ago for the aol/discuss website. Since that site is now in mothballs I thought I'd post the essay here. Download out_of_control_v2.doc Times have moved on, obviously, but it may still hold a little interest.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2001647,00.html
Do you agree with Gary Ruskin, that it's "sad and pathetic" or is it possible to create 'tipping points'?
An article from today's paper.
Check, in particular, the last three paragraphs, which raise 'the big question' again.
http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardian/story/0,,2000468,00.html
I did promise that this post would be cheerful and in a way it is, although, in another, it's not.
Yesterday I took delivery of a Humax box. It's like having Sky+ only I don't have to give a penny to Murdoch for the pleasure of receiving Extreme Topiary Scene Investigation - Channel 248.
It took me 5mins to get it working and to programme it to record every episode of Home and Away until 2019.
I can pause live TV, rewind, fast forward, record, watch picture in picture, you name it.
It even has a button that allows you to jump 30" forward, specifically to avoid the ads... ahh shit.
John
For those of you who didn't see it, Claire Beale wrote an article about user-generated commercials in The Independent yesterday...
http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article2152868.ece
She was raving about Dove's entry into the fray, with its invitation to regular people to enter their own ads into a competition, the winner of which will have their commercial screened during an ad break in the coverage of the Oscars.
It occured to me that, if Campaign and its representatives are coming, rather late, to this phenomenon some of you guys might be too, so here's just a couple of things to think about.
According to Wired the first UGC, emerged in 2004 and this was its...
Unlike the Dove ads this was created without the invitation of Apple. The guy who created it, George Masters, just did it for the hell of it in his kitchen.
Since then loads of people have been at it,some with, and some without, encouragement from the manufacturer.
Our own brand, Clover, has been part of some pretty weired stuff on YouTube...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXiqbnDs8Ts
Some of the companies who've had a go at this have seen it backfire miserably, witness this article about Chevy's attempts...
Perhaps the most significant thing to look at is this part of... currenttv.
This is where agencies (and or clients) can post briefs for UG commercials. The submissions can win up to $50,000 if they end up running. In fact this one did...
Pretty scary huh? Who needs an expensive ad agency when a 17 year old can do that in his bedroom?.
For me this raises some massive questions about the future shape of an 'advertising' agency.
What do you think it will look like?
It would be impossible to exaggerate the significance of the strands that have arisen as a result of the discussion around Dirt is Good on this blog (and in other more hallowed halls). To that extent then, Dirt is Good is good. (I know that's of little comfort to Unilever, but who cares, we work for P&G.)
I genuinely believe that the future of our industry hangs in the balance at the present time. How we respond to the challenges of the next few years will determine whether we have jobs in advertising in 2010 or have to resort to the aforementioned sugar beet farming.
With the fear of manure spreading at the forefront of my mind, here is an attempt to draw together those strands, for further debate...
Richard Huntington and a lot of other people see the ‘Dirt is Good’ campaign as the ‘poster child’ for the future of brand communications. (If you’re reading this Richard, I apologise if I mangle your argument, but you know where the comment button is.) These guys have got excited about DIG for a number of reasons, which I’ll try to delineate below. (Please suspend your cynicism for this bit.) Then I’ll consider whether it’s any good or not, according to a series of objective and subjective criteria. (Unsheathe your cynicism here.) Next I’ll offer up a couple of other campaigns that have attempted something similar. Finally I’ll identify some questions that are turning over in my mind. Hopefully you’ll have some answers or more questions to add. If you do, you know what to do.
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Here goes…
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Washing powder is the archetypal category for our industry. If you had to say what advertising was all about in colloquial terms, you might conceivably describe it as ‘flogging washing powder to housewives’ (or househusbands, but that wouldn’t be colloquial). At the same time, notwithstanding some of the comments almost nothing has received, I believe the consumer isn’t really that interested in washing powder. Most normal people spend seconds in the laundry aisle, buying on auto-pilot. Most normal people would rather do something else than the laundry. (Incidentally, if that doesn’t apply to you, let me know and I’ll bring mine in and you can do it for me.) Most normal people would rather discuss Celebrity Big Brother with their neighbours than the pros and cons of lipase enzymes and boric acid’s inhibitory effect on proteases. Moreover, most normal people regard most washing powder ads as an insult to their intelligence. I don’t know whether David Ogilvy had Daz in mind when he felt it necessary to remind us that ‘the consumer is not a moron, she’s your wife’, but if you watch their historical reel it’s easy to imagine he did. Unfortunately, most of the washing powder manufacturers and their agencies have failed to heed his urgings and ‘washes whiter’ is not just a cliché in our world, you hear respondents use the expression in groups, meaning ‘I’m being lied to and I know it’. In short, washing powder is a torture test for any new approach to marketing communications.
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That’s the backdrop to DIG. Now the backdrop to brand communications in general.
Once again notwithstanding some of the comments, the power of the 30” commercial (and for that matter the 40”, 60” and 90”) is waning. Hopefully you read the facts from Richard about PVR use. When people have a choice, they don’t watch our ads, most of the time anyway. And who can blame them when those ads (as measured by that TGI statement) have become so much less likeable. Of course there are other media that allow us to deliver our brand messages, but these messages are just as easily avoided in press (if not more so) and on posters and the radio (less so, probably) as they are on TV. So then what? The oxygen supply for brands, that is ATL communications, is gradually being restricted. How will we build emotional connections with people when they’ve metaphorically torn up our media plan and flushed it down the lav?
The answer, many of the marketing and advertising community are hoping, lies in ‘engagement’, ‘conversational’, ‘interactive’ or ‘participatory’ communications, the stuff Guy described in his polemical comment on the ‘Are we doomed?’ post. (If you haven’t read it I commend it to you.) These are brand communications that people actively seek out and involve themselves with, for more than a fractional moment. (No-one really seems to have found an adequate phrase to describe this kind of communication, largely because it’s always existed to some extent; witness, for example, people getting to the cinema in time to see the commercials, students blu-tac-ing Absolut press ads on their walls or, annoyingly, people adopting that awful ‘Whassup’ phrase from the Bud commercial.)
(If you want to read more about marketing as a conversation, this is one of the best places to start…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluetrain_Manifesto )
Now we come to the nub. Richard H and his acolytes would contend that DIG is an example of these ‘conversational’ communications. That’s why they’re getting so animated. They believe that if Persil can do this, any brand can. The fact that our interruptive communications don’t work anymore doesn’t matter. We won’t have to take our communications to people, because people will come to our communications. Like this…
Now a number of people have had a pop at this campaign, and I would be the first to say that I don’t like it, not least because the ads are crap. And whatever Richard H says, I don’t think you can divorce strategy from execution. Until someone’s written and sold some decent commercials, you can’t really judge the strategy. (Account managers and creatives, please step up to the plate.) Beyond the small matter of the ads, Ollie doesn’t believe anyone’s been to the website, so DIG’s not really engaging is it. I’ve seen the Persil share figures and they’re in decline – volume from 26.6% to 21.8%, value from 26.8% to 23.3%, over the last three years. Bouncy thinks that it’s cynical, that it’s ‘fake friendship’. (Bouncy is one of the commentators, in case you’re wondering.) Furthermore, I’ve sat in groups and heard people pointing out a major, major flaw in the argument – Persil is rubbish – “Let your kids go play in the mud and you’ll live with the stains for as long as they’re wearing the clothes.”
Plenty of reasons to diss the campaign then, but are they reasons to abandon faith in this new marketing paradigm? (Sorry, but I had to get that word out at some point, if only to provoke some outrage.)
What about this?
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http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com/
I’ve heard loads of people in our industry say this is the dog’s proverbials and the ‘Evolution’ film has been mightily well received. (It’s on the site if you haven’t seen it.) Is this ‘fake friendship’? As I understand it, Dove’s market share is going from strength to strength.
More pertinently, what about this?
http://discuss.aol.co.uk/home.aspx?id_Content=2
Millions have visited the site. Thousands have voted. Hundreds have posted. All that despite the fact that AOL is, in the end, little more than a wire sticking into the back of your computer. AOL’s not the internet. We just kind of appropriated the issues of the internet and in so doing seemed to have caught the general public’s imagination. If you look at the intermediate measures we had access to before we parted company with AOL, they suggest the campaign was working, as do the acquisition costs for new customers. The last piece of activity we engaged in was 10 (ten) times more efficient than anything they’d ever done before. But for our parting of the ways, I’d be confident of a gold at the next IPA effectiveness awards..
So maybe their is some merit in the principle of 'conversational' communications. What do you think?
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Here are the questions in my mind:
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Firstly, are the Dove and AOL campaigns as cynical as bouncy believes DIG is? Will brands be allowed, by people, not us, to step into these loaded, potentially socially explosive areas?
Is it possible to engage people for more than a fractional moment if brands are restricted to less controversial debates? Some people have already mentioned BMW films, but would that work with a low interest category? Bacofoil TV anyone?
What will happen when the land grab is over? Is there a limit to the number of positionings that are big enough to ignite debates?
Is this ‘conversational’ activity a temporary phenomenon? Will people max-out on engaging with brands? Will they just want to go back to reading a book, watching telly or staring aimlessly out of the window, rather than posting their inner-most thoughts on http://andrex_moist_toilet_wipes.weblog.com/ ?
What will happen when the interruptive media have so dwindled, there’s no way of alerting people to your funky new online presence?
What brands do we have that could grab the high-ground quick, now that our test-bed, AOL, has departed?
Had we better establish ‘conversational’ roles for all our brands, now, before their oxygen is cut off?
Answers not on a postcard please…
Recently we were asked this question by a new business prospect. The answer, which has a lot in commmon with some of our commentators, went as follows...
Television. Sky is pouring a fortune into technology to get more out of it. BT is launching its Vision. Virgin Media is reputed to be planning to invest £50m in the ATL re-launch of NTL. Sony's stock price is being bolstered by sales of them. In the UK in October, more than one flatscreen TV was sold every second of every day (and night). It seems that reports of the death of TV may be somewhat exaggerated. Surely the end is more nigh for 'endism' (if that's not a contradiction) than it's nigh for TV. But TV as we know it, may soon be entering intensive care.
In the era of YouTube and Ohmynews, of Vlogging and Mashing, of Playstations and Wiis, of iPods and allofmp3, of Long-Tail-ism and more-time-spent-on-the-internet-than-in-front-of-the-telly-ism, manifestly the old sit-back-and-be-braodcast-to model of TV is beginning to wither.
But television needn't be defined in this way. What happens when someone watches a UG video on channel 344? What happens when the BBC's Your News gets up and running? What happens when Channel 4's programmes are all available on line? what happens when you can watch IPTV created by your three best mates? Then the limits of televison are finished. Televlision need not be broadcast. It need no longer be produced by studios and networks. It hasn't got to fit 30- and 60-minute time slots. It doesn't depend on blockbusters, on appointment viewing or on millions of viewers. Primetime is anytime. Television isn't about channels. It isn't about scheduling. We can interact with televison. We can schedule our own televison. We can create our own televison. The didactic model of television is dead. Long live the conversational model of television.
Three conversational TV 'stations':
http://www.gobeyond.landrover.com/gobeyond/
Are they worse or better than 'Just the two of us'?
Comments welcome...
I'm sure you'll've seen these before, but just in case, click on the links below. They're four of my favourites from the last 12months of YouTube.
Once you've watched them, tell me how we keep people watching that black box in the corner of the living room, or, if we can't, what we might do instead.
Got any better ones? The comment box is below...
I took part in a panel discussion at the IAA European Advertising summit this week along with Jim Carrol and Rita Clifton and chaired by the great John Grant (who gave me a copy of his excellent new book 'The Innovation Manifesto'). We had to talk about our favourite European campaign. I chose Persil's 'Dirt is good' despite the tragic creative work in the UK. I feel that this bit of thinking really hasn't had the fame that it deserves which saddens me. This is the kind of thing that I said.
Image courtesy of KoAn
I have chosen this ‘Dirt is Good’ for Persil in order to be deliberately contrary.
I hate the ads. They are cheesy, trite, woefully lacking in any insight and horror of horrors they are by and large vignette ads. As we all know vignette ads are what creative teams wheel out when they can’t think of an idea.
But I love the strategy.
Planners like me get proposition envy when we come across thinking that we wish we had come up with. And this campaign makes me feel sick with proposition envy.
It also neatly illustrates a number of themes I am currently warming myself on.
This is a category that for decades has been seemingly incapable of creating communications with anything interesting to say. Against this backdrop of whites being washed whiter and brands with a new kind of bluey whiteness Persil decides that the arch enemy of detergent advertising throughout the twentieth century is actually its best mate. And ours too.
Persil believes that dirt – providing that you can effectively eradicate it at the end of the day – is a wonderful thing, evidence of creativity, adventure, exploration, endeavour and curiosity.
If we believe that markets are increasingly conversations then I maintain that every brand needs an opinion because opinions are the lifeblood of all conversation. And this is a full on brand opinion – evidence of a brand talking about its position not just its positioning.
And while it hasn't yielded very good advertising in the UK, dirt is good has had a sensational effect on the other parts of the communications mix and informs every part of Persil's conversation with its customers.
As part of its brilliant online presence Persil hosts the ‘United kingdom of dirt' (accessible through the link to the main dirt is good site) where the activity of the month is currently hunting for worms
Persil’s sales promotion activity is built around dirt is good – at the moment you can collect proofs of purchase for school art materials.
It works in PR with specially commissioned research into play malnutrition that suggests that child development is now at risk because of the decline in messy play.
And it even extends to Corporate Social Responsibility where Persil works with organisations like British Cycling and Learning through Landscapes to promote outdoor play and leisure.
This thinking is a work of mild genius and I love it.
Yet more proof to me that there is no such thing as a low interest category only low interest thinking.
Agreed, it's a great strategy. The thing is, it isn't entirely original. It was originally done for Sunlight, one of Unilever's North American detergent brands, by their agency in Canada (the now defunct Ammurati Puris Lintas). They created the strategy "Sunlight is an invitation to get dirty" - which was expressed in the creative as "Go ahead, get dirty" - about 8 years ago. The campaign won the Grand Prix at the CASSIES (the Canadian effectiveness awards equivalent to the IPA or EFFIES) in 1999. The case study is here:
http://www.cassies.ca/caselibrary/winners/SUNLIGHT.PDF
And I didn't have anything to do with it - just correcting the record.
Posted by: jason at June 26, 2006 09:52 PM
Thanks for the background Jason - interesting case study as well. I am not saying that the Persil thinking is original just very very good - if it was first created for Sunlight then that brand deserves my admiration too. I think what Persil/Omo have done that is clever is make it an global strategy and fully integrate it into the life of the brand.
R
Posted by: richard at June 26, 2006 11:51 PM
Agreed.
It takes the idea away from "mum or dad washing messy clothes" to focusing on the human aspect of wearing and dirtying clothes. It suddenly gives a personal feel in a market full of performance related ideas.
Its also selling a positive atmosphere, happiness in making a mess; as opposed to boredom of cleaning it up. It gives the whole brand a kind of 'smile' effect which I would anticipate will help when people are actually in the shop making a choice.
Posted by: Rob Mortimer at June 27, 2006 12:51 AM
Can't disagree. Brilliant proposition that humanizes and injects passion into a commodity product.
It's not selling washing detergent anymore, but fond, warm memories!
I credit the client for going with this and seeing the potential. Most other clients would fear being associated and embracing the one thing they are trying to solve..
You could imagine an alternate conversation:
MM: Dirt IS good.....
CLIENT: Did I tell you we were reviewing agency arrangements!
I would love to see how the insight behind this brief was dissected or perhaps how MB were able to get busy mothers with family commitments to reveal an inner likeness and fondness towards dirt thus justifying the proposition?
Posted by: MM at June 27, 2006 07:34 PM
It's good to see clients brave enough to follow a decent piece of thinking, and to be willing to execute it in every imaginable way. And I feel that is the insight here.
The thinking itself goes way back. I first heard it around 10 years ago at a planning seminar.
The speaker was talking about how to get around strategic blocks, and using Audi as an example how great creative work came from an inversion of the proposition (invert 'a car for independent minded people' to 'not a car for conventional thinkers' ... and you get the great yuppie ad).
The discussion then turned to how this strategic sleight of hand could re-ignite a low interest category (re: another thread on here). The example used was Soap Powder with the speaker talking about how fantastic it would be to see Persil 'invert' clean into 'not dirty'.
The speaker? The same Jim Carrol that shared your platform ...
Small world isn't it?
BUT having said that, full marks to the planner for taking the fight to the market, full marks to the client and for the creatives for being loyal to it… getting the strategy is one thing, having the bloody mindedness to see it through is another thing entirely.
Posted by: jemster at June 29, 2006 02:34 PM
I received this comment on an email while I was hiding from the spammers - I felt it was important to post it with the author's permission.Is account handling dead from the waist up? I think not but let's take the temperature out there.
Comment begins
As one who has left for pastures new but as yet
unfound (who feeds at the old every now and then to pay some bills) I am fascinated by some of the
comments on Dirt is Good.
DIG has had a wide impact. I hear it mentioned in CSR circles (where I also spend time), in PR circles....and yes it is a planning idea. But your proposition envy cannot be applied to any planner. As the site showed the idea was not new.
Yet, the person who slogged airmiles, guts, long
hours, shrewd politics, patience, persistence, hard thinking, honesty, imagination and insight at getting this idea to come to life was a suit. OK, rather 2 or 3 suits(good and bad) and a good old-fashioned creative director.
Planning was conspicuous by its absence, as the story was told to me pretty much first hand. But, the who did what, who came up with what is NOT the point of this mail.
As I briefly touch down in the old pasture again I am struck by the weakness, the fear, the uncertainty, the pain and neurosis of account management.
The point is, in the 80's and early 90's the fable of how a suit sold that idea would have been turned into fable overnight, up there with the Moray McLennan stories about the Silk Cut posters and the guy who climbed out the window to get his Client to buy the work.
These days if account management is not being publicly disgraced on the front pages of the trade press then they are being made redundant before anyone else, whispering in corridors more than anyone else, with more incidence of job dissatisfaction, burnout and mistrust than anyone else. They are the ones apologising.
Know of any account management blogs? (I’m serious - I can't find any!)
My question is this? (Sorry it's several!) Should
account management just be allowed to slide, to
attract fewer of the best, to retain only the
desperate ones, and to become the slapping boy of the communications industry? Should it migrate to project management? Is that all it ever really was? What happens to the production of great communications if it does?
Planning is the new creative, the new black, the new groovy sexy creative thing. Everyone wants planners.
Account Management was never at such a low. It's the agencies' dirty secret.
In an era where planning is god do we need good suits? Some agencies are abandoning them.
Or is there something more to account management?
Posted by: richard at July 17, 2006 08:30 PM
