Filed under: Advertising, Award winning Ad, Branding, Creativity, Marketing budget | Tags: Fallon, Grand Prix, Xbox 360
gorilla
TWO Film Grands Prix ave been won by Gorilla for Cadbury’s, and Halo 3 for Microsoft Xbox 360. According to Chris Willingham of winning agency Fallon of the UK, Gorilla has spawned a whole new advertising genre.
The video of a gorilla drumming to a Phil Collins song was intended for the UK market but spread virally on the net, generated legions of re-mixes – some on producer Glass And A Half Full Productions site – and is being used in Canada, New Zealand and Australia, Willingham said. “This is the one ad that has the ‘Wow, did you see that!’ factor.”
Halo 3, which won the Integrated Grand Prix for this and other parts of the campaign, has also won a Grand Prix in the Other Film Content section of the Film categories. The film is from McCann Worldgroup San Francisco and T.A.G. The creative team is Scott Duchon, Geoff Edwards, and John Patroulis. Art director on Gorilla was Juan Cabral.
Willingham said Gorilla’s underlying philosophy of branded entertainment is here to stay, with Glass And A Half Full Productions already at work on the next ad. “Now the idea has become established we will see a whole range of ads. We could put almost anything in the framework we have established with Glass And A Half Full. As long as it gives you the same uplift as eating chocolate, the idea will go on and on.”
Filed under: Branding
Many marketers are rapidly becoming more concerned with how retailers think. They want to know their concerns, objectives, equities and images and how they go about creating bonds with shoppers.
That’s because today’s retailers are evolving far beyond their historical role as simple points of distribution for selling national brands. They have changed their approach, marketing their stores as their own brands and systematically building better, stronger relationships with shoppers.
As a result, on behalf of our clients, we must now help the retailer build its business.
Think about it: With the average U.S. household making 150 to 200 store visits a year, it seems reasonable that while shoppers might make several trips to their local stores each week, they may not purchase the same branded products each time. Thus, shoppers generally have more contact and experience with their local retailers than with the majority of national brands.
Going their own way
Clearly, the nature of retailers’ value creation has dramatically changed. And rather than just establishing loyalty to branded products, retailers want voices of their own. They are seeking to establish their own brands, and they are doing so by tailoring their customer experiences, differentiating them from their competitors’ and creating better, ongoing relationships with shoppers.
Today’s retailers have made huge inroads in fortifying their relationships with shoppers. Research by “Private Label Strategy” authors Nirmalya Kumar and Jan-Benedict E.M. Steenkamp clearly suggests that the nature of shopper loyalty is changing. While many shoppers are still loyal to brands, a significant portion increasingly are loyal to stores. This may be largely a function of convenience, but at the very least, retail brands are becoming more established in the minds of shoppers.
For example, Aldi, the European hard-discounter extraordinaire, has done a good job making its customers feel like smart shoppers. It has been aggressive in driving down prices on branded consumer package goods through strongly negotiated deals with manufacturers. It has created a wide range of store-brand products that also keep the price of the average shopping basket down. Its small, Spartan store formats help make the shopping experience more efficient. It has also developed a number of near-legendary promotions featuring “hot-priced” items ranging from well-known brands of wine to laptops specifically designed for and sold through Aldi stores, which are known as a place to “treasure hunt.”
Believing that their long-term growth is tied to shopper loyalty, retailers increasingly want to develop their own shoppers. And because it is easier to get additional shopping trips, and increased purchases per trip, from shoppers who like your store, retailers are consistently using organized, data-driven, shopper-insight approaches.
Retailers as diverse as Best Buy, H&M, Zara, Tesco, Tchibo, Kroger and Safeway are creating better touch points and shopping experiences to build stronger, more-loyal shoppers. This is largely the result of the creation of their own voices — their retail brands.
U.S. supermarket chain Kroger is a prominent example of such a makeover. While working hard to become more efficient in its operations, Kroger also has negotiated sharper prices for its shoppers, has developed its store brands and is experimenting with new formats (for example, Kroger Right Now, a convenience, vending-machine format at gas stations). Kroger also is leading retailers in its investment in a shopper-loyalty program (with Dunhumby, the same firm that was instrumental in establishing Tesco’s successful shopper program), the kind of strategic investment that provides an advantage in developing shopper insights and the ability to uniquely tailor the shopping experience to reach core shoppers.
Fresh focus
Safeway, another U.S. food retailer, recently has aligned itself with freshness and quality. Its lifestyle-store format has remade perishable areas such as produce, ready-to-eat meals, bakery and salad bar while creating new category/aisle descriptors (for example, Poetry in Bloom for floral). Its “Ingredients for Life” campaign extends the freshness/quality focus beyond the store. Moreover, its creation of store-brand product lines Eating Right and O Organics is designed to meet shoppers’ needs. Such store-brand product lines are not simply about price points but are in sync with customers’ lifestyles — and unique to Safeway. It will be interesting to see how the marketplace reacts to Safeway’s announced rollout of its house brands to competitive grocery chains. Will the availability of those brands at other stores cannibalize Safeway trips and sales?
It’s an intriguing move because there does not seem to be a clear historical precedent. For example, Canadian-based Loblaw sold its President’s Choice products to other retailers, typically in the U.S., so increased sales were generated from the additional distribution. But typically only one retailer or store banner carried the President’s Choice items in a given market; thus there was really no competition for shopper loyalty or trips.
These supermarket examples, which similarly exist in other retail categories, indicate a fundamental change in how retailers are now approaching profitability. While efficiency is important, it’s a “greens fee.” Whether they be Whole Foods Market (natural/organic), H&M (celebrity design) or Zara (fresh fashion), retailers see long-term profitability as linked to their ability to provide unique shopping experiences that create loyal shoppers.
This shift in perspective suggests that the brand-marketing discipline many grew up with — and the marketing-mix tools previously used — have evolved. Retailer brands are now about connecting with shoppers’ lives to build bonds and differentiate one retail experience from another.
Complex brands
Retailers are focused on positioning themselves through alignment with shoppers’ lifestyles, and these positionings are less about marketing platforms than strategic cultural ideas.
It is also worth noting that retailer brands are generally complex, with many more dimensions than a traditional CPG brand, demanding that retailers turn to a new and growing set of marketing-mix tools to create the voices of their multidimensional brands.
The new marketing mix being used to create and maintain these retail brands is a far cry from the traditional one. Store ambience, layout, category organization, food theater, store-brand product lines, shopper programs, design, assortment and websites are just a few of the tools being used.
Today’s retailers are first and foremost “meaning managers” or “choice editors” aligned with the needs and lifestyles of their shoppers. Retailers and manufacturers together must align with shopper needs to create unique shopping experiences and programs that help shoppers choose one store over another.
Working together
It is also important for retailers and manufacturers to align business goals, including driving traffic to the store or a specific destination in the store; creating larger sales receipts, better conversion rates, solution selling and cross-selling; and improving the total shopping experience — for example, making it easier or more engaging, entertaining, educational or inspirational to shop.
Manufacturer brands must provide solutions that align with and help build and leverage retailers’ equities, are tailored to retailers’ needs and objectives, and are consistent with the positions the retailers are trying to establish and maintain.
Today’s challenge for brand marketers is to help leverage retailers’ marketing-mix tools (the shelf, category organization, in-store media or loyalty programs) or co-create new tools (new media, unique offerings, tailored products or packaging) to help retailers build stronger, better brands.
Filed under: Award winning Ad, Creativity | Tags: Advertising, communication, Creativity, NGO
Filed under: advertising effectiveness | Tags: Advertising, Creativity, effectifeness
The existence of an obscure subatomic particle called a “cascade b baryon” was recently established by accelerating a proton close to the speed of light and smashing it into the nucleus of an atom.
By observing the trails of the subatomic wreckage caused, scientists were able to derive fundamental information such as mass, charge and direction of spin. They used this to establish that the cascade b baryon was, in fact, composed of three types of quark – called, somewhat prosaically, “down”, “strange” and “bottom”.
But what, I hear you wondering, can this obscure particle physics teach us about advertising effectiveness? I use the oblique introduction to highlight the distinction between the observations taken as proof of an effect and the actions that made it happen in the first place. In this case, the capricious cascade b baryons were only made visible by forcing an ultra-highspeed sub-atomic pile-up, using a four-mile particle accelerator somewhere outside Chicago. But a vital step before building the accelerator was the construction of a theory about the existence of quarks, baryons, gluons, neutrinos and all the other bizarre thingummies that make up matter. Without such a theory, scientists would not have been able to devise their sub-atomic experiments or make sense of the results.In other words, the development of a working theory or hypothesis is the vital first step that precedes any results.
Science has, in fact, progressed by being equally obsessed with prediction and validation. Einstein famously deduced his SpecialTheory by “thinking about it ceaselessly”. It wasn’t until 66 years later that super-accurate clocks were flown supersonically for months on end and the effects he predicted were finally proved. In our industry’s somewhat more humble sphere, a similar division exists between the science of evaluating effects and the practice of creating them.
The “evaluators” who obsess about measuring effectiveness trade in measurement, indications, comparisons, variables, quantification, elimination, modelling and so on. And they perform a vital role in validating (and sometimes invalidating) a campaign’s effectiveness. But a vital aspect of effectiveness that is often overlooked is the creation of the very effects the evaluators measure. After all, there are only sales uplifts to analyse because someone devised, created and implemented a means of encouraging people to purchase more. The people responsible for this sideofeffectiveness-let’scallthem “creators”- obsess about attitudes, behaviours, mindsets, objectives, challenges, stimulus, response, decisions,indecision and so on.
Effectiveness is not just something we measure, itis something we create, Richard Storey explains
The IPA Effectiveness Awards were conceived and introduced by “evaluators”. The awards have always placed great emphasis on measures such as “return on marketing investment”, “scale of effect” and “strength of proof.
However, it’s clear from judging the winners of the most recent awards that the recipe for a great effectiveness case is equal parts creation and evaluation. Indeed, what is fascinating about the winning cases published in Advertising Works 16 is not how well they worked, but how they worked so well. Without exception, each campaign was effective because its “creators” developed a theory about the problem it was facing and, from that, found a means of influencing the dynamics to work in its favour. I guess we call that having a strategy.
So, for example, E4’s theory was that marketing for its new show shouldn’t just aim to be where its audience were interested, but should be what its audience were interested in. So it set about embedding its new show’s characters in the social environments of its young target audience – MySpace, Facebook,gossip pages etc. Miles Calcraft Briginshaw Duffy developed a theory that the social value of Waitrose’s ethical sourcing policy could add emotional value on top of the tore’s “good quality for a fair price” positioning. So they told engaging stories about the origins of the upermarket’s citrus fruit and the welfare of the good people who grow them. The Union and The Scottish Executive needed a theory to overcoming people’s reticence to register as an organ donor. They figured that people’s reticence to consider their own death could be overcome by presenting the issue as a matter of someone else’s life or death. So they forced us to decide if we should “Kill Jill”, “Let Guy die” or “Spare Clare”.
In each of these three cases, the evaluators were able to studiously establish a return on the client’s investment, but much of the credit for the achievement belongs with the creators who devised the theories and the solutions that came from them. Because effectiveness is not just something we measure, it is something we make happen. By implication,the Effectiveness Awards are won by the “creators” who devise the campaigns as well as the “evaluators” who studiously write the papers.
So who are these “creators”? And what skills do they need to go about their business?
Despite the similarity in name, “creators” are not quite the same thing as “creatives”. Creatives are paid to be creative. They invent, twist, craft, mould, add flourish, reinterpret and so on. Their primary concern is with the stimulus they create, whether that be aTV ad or a marketing stunt. They worry about whether it is original,intriguing,entertaining,moving,”creative”etc. Creators, on the other hand, are concerned with the outcomes they create, not just the campaign that creates it.They worry about whether their work will open people’s minds, change opinions, increase conviction, prompt action, change habits etc. In order to do this, they also invent,twist and craft,but,critically, they listen, observe, synthesise, theorise, question, speculate and test.They use a blend of objective observation skills, logical deductive skills and intuitive creative skills.
This kind of “diagonal thinking” is perhaps a more valuable skill in agencies, than purely linear evaluation skills. There are, of course, tests to establish whether individual people have this invaluable skill. Some creatives have it, arguably some of the very best ones. A few planners have it too. But, by and large, the best way to achieve this kind of “diagonal thinking” is to combine the thinking skills of different kinds of people into tight units.
With that in mind, it is interesting to consider the two”teams” historically favoured by advertising agency structures: “creative teams” and “account teams”. Each exists to achieve a different end; namely, creativity and client service. They are not, however, specifically conceived as “creators” in the sense I outline above. Nor are they constructed in the best way to achieve the kind of diagonal thinking creators deploy. In the quest to further “effectiveness culture”, it will be interesting to observe whether agencies continue to stick to these arguably outmoded structures.
The IPA Effectiveness Awards could also gain from accommodating this line of thinking. By making a distinction between “proof of effectiveness” and “cause of effectiveness”,the awards have acritical decision to make. Should they stick rigidly to their existing criteria as the bean counters of the advertising industry? Or should they embrace the “cause of effectiveness” agenda and acknowledge they are rewarding the creators as much as the e valuators of any campaign? Perhaps the answer lies in the usefulness of the papers these awards were devised to create. As practitioners and academics pour over the papers, either via the Advertising Works books or electronic downloads, what are they looking to learn? Are they anxious to know “how that effect was measured” or “how that effect was achieved”?
The answer is surely a bit of each, but a lot of the latter. Hence my point. Effectiveness is not just something you measure. It’s something you create. Agencies keen on pursuing an effectiveness culture should think about who their effectiveness creators are, not just their effectiveness evaluators.
Copyright © 2008 ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved.
Source: This is an extract from “Effectiveness is not just something you measure” by Richard Storey, M&C Saatchi’s chief strategy officer, from the IPA book Advertising Works 16, which was published on 3 April
Author(s): Richard Storey
Publication title: Campaign. Teddington: Apr 11, 2008. pg. 10, 1 pgs
Source type: Periodical
ISSN: 00082309
ProQuest document ID: 1501096521
Text Word Count 1318
Document URL: http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1501096521&sid=2&Fmt=3&cl
ientId=11502&RQT=309&VName=PQD
http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?index=1&sid=2&srchmode=1&vinst=PROD&fmt=… 10/08/2008
Leo Burnett
LEO Burnett Worldwide dug into its archives to screen some entertaining multimedia campaigns that proved the 30-second spot is no longer indispensable.
The Cannes presentation was hosted by Tom Bernardin, chairman/CEO; Reed Collins, executive creative director at Leo Burnett USA; and Paul Kemp-Robertson, Contagious magazine’s editorial director. They showed recent works that have been so effective, they achieved the following: Method detergent has become a $100m company; 460 million litres of foam helped make the viral campaign for Sony’s latest cameras one of the biggest in history; 330,000 LED screens were wrapped around a 15-metre Coke bottle to raise brand awareness in China; and IKEA’s catalogue is now the third most printed publication after Harry Potter and The Bible.
Filed under: Creativity
You’ve probably read stories about people who have used superhuman strength to save themselves or someone else from certain doom. It’s true that people are able to do things, such as lifting a car with their bare hands, because adrenaline shoots through their body in such a way that their muscle fibers contract at the exact same moment. At least, that’s what The Science Channel says. Believing you can do something is more important than physics. In a crisis, superhuman strength can happen automatically. However, many examples of superhuman feats happen with a determined will and effort.
Imagine if we could apply this phenomenon to our business. If an agency’s staff could work in unison, it would have an incredibly positive effect on its innovation potential. If adrenaline causes superhuman capabilities to happen, what would act as the adrenaline to cause the same to happen in our agencies?
I think an example of this type of occurrence happened during this year’s Olympics. The U.S. men’s swimming team literally willed themselves to victory over the French. As Jason Lizak, the swimmer who made up a half body-length lead on the final leg, said, “I guess I just wanted it more.” Why did the U.S. team want it more? Earlier, one of the French swimmers told the press his team would crush their American rivals. Does your agency have a “French” competitor? If so, use it to fire up your team to dig a little deeper and do what no one gives them hope to accomplish. In the sentiment of U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps, use the “trash talk” as motivation to prove everyone wrong.
Another adrenaline injection could be administered by creating an audacious goal that challenges your agency. Once the goal is decided, keep it in front of your group as a continuous reminder that they have something special to accomplish. Give it a scary deadline. Give accomplishment a reward. Do whatever you have to to get your people to stretch beyond their perceived strength.
The lack of high-quality work in our industry is due to the opposite operation of the agency. When people and departments are working independently of one another (and in many cases against one another), greatness is impossible.
Too much of what we are doing in this industry is an example of hoping for superhuman strength rather than using a determined will. We are full of excuses for our poor work that shift the blame beyond ourselves, yet they hold no weight because we all have competitors that have the same obstacles and still succeed.
The greatest challenge for agency leaders is to successfully inject the proper adrenaline into their agency. We must examine what our employees need most and then supply every opportunity for them to succeed. Day-to-day business can be distracting, but we must not forget that our success tomorrow will be greater if we act on the belief that we can do something superhuman today.
source :
Filed under: Sustainability
When Wal-Mart holds its periodic sustainability milestone meetings, CEO Lee Scott is known to joke about how big the sustainability department is getting. In reality, unlike the retail behemoth’s ballooning marketing department, there really is no sustainability department to speak of, at least in the traditional sense.
Wal-Mart Stores does have the now-commonplace “sustainability officer” — Senior VP-Sustainability Matt Kistler. But when it comes to the traditional trappings of a department head, namely budget and staff, Mr. Kistler is running lean. Fewer than 10 people report directly to him.
So goes the evolving dance between sustainability and marketing, as chief sustainability officers become as prevalent as chief marketing officers in Fortune 500 companies. Although more marketers are striving to act and look green, their sustainability officers seldom come up from the marketing side.
The gap between technical and marketing experts is nothing new, says sustainability consultant Peter Knight, but it must be bridged for companies to effectively communicate their green commitments.
More than 70% of consumers link marketers’ social responsibility to their environmental behavior, according to data from consultancy Conscientious Innovation. In such a world, sustainability officers and CMOs must find ways to join forces.
Influence gap
In many cases, the sustainability department has yet to achieve the size of the typical marketing department or the old-school power that a CMO wields in terms of sheer dollars controlled. And it probably never will.
At Wal-Mart, the “thought is if you’ve got this big department, then others will say sustainability is [that department's] job, not mine,” says spokesman Kory Lundberg. “If it’s integrated into the business, everyone has a commitment to it.”
Or consider P&G. Late last year, Procter & Gamble Co. formally created a sustainability department, naming Len Sauers VP-global sustainability. But while Global Marketing Officer Jim Stengel reports to Chief Operating Officer Bob McDonald, Mr. Sauers reports to Charlotte Otto, global external-relations officer, who reports to Mr. McDonald. Mr. Sauers oversees 50 people, but it’s not a 50-person department in the traditional sense.
“They are working with sustainability as they develop their programs within their own business units,” Mr. Sauers says.
“It’s a funny new duck that’s being created. Generally, [sustainability officers] exercise soft power. They have very little budget, direct reports or organizational authority,” says Adam Werbach, veteran environmental activist and now CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi S, which was created in January when Publicis Groupe announced its acquisition of Act Now Productions, Mr. Werbach’s green consultancy.
source: http://adage.com/greenmarketing08/article?article_id=127538
