Dazzle Ships

You can't beat the real thing

A quick follow up to the Branding for Good post of a few weeks ago.

Coca Cola's stated objective for its distribution strategy is, allegedly, that no one should ever be more than an arm's length from a Coke.  Ambitious, you might say, but then anyone who has travelled the world at all will know that they work pretty hard to make this as real as possible.

It's a formidable undertaking.  And now there's a brilliant idea to put this network to use above and beyond selling Coke.  Colalife is a campaign to get Coca Cola to use this distribution network to distribute basic medicines to hard to get to places.

It's a brilliantly simple idea - using an already existing businesss asset to potentially enormous social effect - exactly what CSR should be about.  Find out more here, or sign up to the  Facebook group - currently at 6,500 but, in my view, deserving of many more.

-- Toby

Another Paradigm Shift?

In May of this year, amid much hoop-la, Fox unveiled 'Remote-Free TV', a 'paradigm-shift' in TV advertising, according to Fox Entertainment President Kevin Reilly.

What this meant in practice is that in two of its big Autumn launches, JJ Abrams' Fringe and Joss Whedon's Dollhouse, would have restrictions placed on ad minutage, airing about half the number of ads that would normally appear.

Whilst perhaps not quite the 'paradigm shift' you may have been expecting, it was, nonetheless, a brave move.  In a highly commoditised market, cutting minutage and charging a premium of around 35-40% was clearly a risk.  Just ask GCap.

Well, Fringe debuted in the US last month (and is currently showing over here on Sky).  And it appears, at least initially, to have been successful.  As you'd expect there were some tough negotiations, but they managed to get through higher CPT increases.  Perhaps more importantly initial research findings seem to be pointing to increased audience engagement with both the show and, most importantly for us, with the advertising.

So, 92% of viewers stayed with the programme through the commercial breaks, compared to the ususal 87%.  More impressive are some of the early tracking stats.  Ad attention is up 31%, likeability up 61% and unaided recall up a whopping 250%.

It looks, then, as if Fox could be onto something with this approach.  I think it makes more sense on TV than on radio as active channel hopping is much more prevalent (as the marvellous ad from the 1950's above illustrates nicely).  But before we get too carried away, a couple of words of caution.

First, whilst it is undoubtedly refreshing for viewers to only have ad breaks of, on average, 1 minute 18 seconds (against 3m 16s on the rest of the network), let's remember refreshment doesn't last.  At the moment this is the exception not the rule.  They've used some nice tactics such as flagging up the length of the break ('Fringe will return in 70 seconds...') but if this approach becomes more widespread, viewers will simply recalibrate their expectations.  This will only lead to more downward pressure on ad break length, thereby destroying the advantages both viewers and advertisers get.

Secondly, I think there's a real danger that we're falling into the classic media agency 'numbers only' approach.  There could be something more obvious at play here.  Here's a rundown of the ads that appeared in Fringe.

They sound pretty good to me.  Maybe even the sort of ads that people wouldn't mind watching.  It seems almost embarassing to have to say it, but I'm going to - Let's not forget the impact of the creative work.  And let's hope that these impressive sounding early numbers don't get destroyed by people piling in with dreadful ads. 

Perhaps agencies could even club together and buy whole breaks of 'good' ads?

That really would be a paradigm shift.

-- Toby

The guy who didn't vote

Although we've seen similar virals before for Dexter on FX , Mini, BurgerKing and others it's neat to see this sort of innovation being adopted in the US presidential race.

You can create your own version here.

Stephen

Welcome to the Coro-verse (?)

Sam's written here before about the 'Whedonverse' and the group of pioneering writers, directors and producers in the US, such as JJ Abrams, Tim Kring and the master himself, Joss Whedon, who are changing the shape of entertainment by creating fully immersive worlds out of their properties such as Lost, Heroes, Buffy, Firefly and so on.

This collection of self-styled geeks have realised that, in this age of 'democratic' distribution, their goal should be to build the sorts of obsessive fan bases who will not only contribute to the stories themselves, but pay handsomely to indulge these obsessions.

And very successful it's proved.

So successful, in fact, that ITV are getting in on the act, creating ranges of products off the back of Emmerdale and Coronation Street.

What are we to make of this?  Well, it's certainly an interesting development.  The big difference between what they're doing and the concept of the Whedonverse, is that the products they are licensing do little or nothing to advance the 'story' of Emmerdale or Coronation Street. 

That said, they have not gone as far as, say, George Lucas (the master of licensing), who slapped Star Wars logos over everything on its initial release.  Putting Luke Skywalker on duvet covers, pencil cases and lunchboxes makes lots of money, but doesn't really advance the story of Star Wars.

It looks to me like they've steered a sensible middle ground.  Licensing the Newton and Ridley beer (from the Rovers Return), still preserves the illusion that Coronation Street is 'real' - which is, of course, the strength of these 'stories' - people want to belive in them.  The Corrie themed tea sets and restaurants I'm a little more sceptical about.

(Thanks to Ghazi for the tip)

-- Toby

Negativity, attention spans and political advertising

It seems that, as ever, accusations of 'negative campaiging' are swirling around the Amercan election, coming to a head in last night's Presidential debate.

Despite his protestations that Obama has spent more on negative campaigning, the reality is that, as a proportion of spend,McCain's campaign has been more neagtive than Obama's.  This appears to have been a big strategic miscalculation on his part.

From a personal perspective, I applaud his standing up for Obama in the face of the ludicrous accusations some of his supporters are making.  At the same time, Palin's relentless 'Who is the real Obama?' rhetoric is clearly whipping up this hysteria (and we only met you 6 weeks ago - and the 'real Sarah Palin' seems to be pretty unimpressive).

Against this backdrop, I wanted to show this. Certainly the best political ad I've ever seen:

Not only is it positive (eventually), it gives lie to two of the big myths of modern advertising - that consumers have no attention span, and that, in an age of video, copy-writing is dead (subscription needed).

More of this, please.

-- Toby

Happy Birthday!

I went to the Media Guardian 'Changing Advertising Summit' a few days ago, and the phrase 'Amazoned' came up.  If you haven't heard it before is refers to businesses like Barnes & Noble that got blind sided by a new business model.  Kodak is a famous case in point.  In ten years they have seen their staff count fall 75% as they failed to respond quick enough to the movement towards digital photography.

Anyway, with the endless doom and gloom that is in the press, it got me wondering how Amazon was doing, compared to the high street. The first thing I found out was that it was Amazon.co.uk's birthday yesterday.I know what you are thinking - I wasn't invited either! They clocked up their first sale ten years ago yesterday(15/10/1998). In that time I doubt there is one amongst us that has not bought something from the retail giant. 

Worldwide, Amazon websites have come a long way, selling almost anything apart from groceries. In 2007, it sold £12 billion of goods around the world, up 35% on 2006.  Not bad. The company estimates that every year, 81 million people buy something on Amazon, and yes, I also found out that while High Street stores are suffering, Amazon has yet to feel the credit crunch. Happy Birthday indeed!

With regards the Advertising summit, I will write a summary of the interesting points soon.

- Sam

The Sage of Omaha speaks

 

Congratulations taxpayers!  We just bought a bank!  Maybe the railways'll be next.  Let's hope.

Anyway, if, like me, you're still a bit confused about how we got here, and, most importantly, where we're going, this'll help.

It's an interview with Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, and the richest man in the world.

Despite, or maybe because, of this, he speaks with great clarity and huge sense.  He's clearly got his feet firmly on the ground.  Though this is perhaps what we would expect of a man with a personal fortune of over $60 billion, who still lives in the same townhouse he bought in 1971 for $31,000 and who pays himself the modest salary of $100,000, when there are people who would pay millions for just a few minutes of his time.

He's not known as the Sage of Omaha for nothing.

-- Toby