'Cross The Breeze

The last week was pretty amazing. Thanks to TED’s 10 Ads Worth Spreading initiative I spent a few days at TED2013 in Long Beach combined with a day at TEDActive2013 in Palm Springs together with 9 other selected agency folks as well as a few people from TED and Google who are partners in the program. The reason that I got there to begin with was the fact that our agency’s ad ‘Push to add drama’ for TNT was selected as one of those 10 ads. Which is already pretty amazing on it’s own.

The one thing (to begin with) you have to do after reading this post is to go check out all 10 ads. Some you’ve probably all seen and shared already such as BBH’s ‘3 Little pigs’ for The Guardian, ‘Dumb ways to die’ from McCann or Y&R’s ‘Security Cams’ for Coca-Cola but others will probably new to you as they were to me. ‘Follow the frog’ for instance, from Max Joseph or  Make sure you check them all out, great stuff in there. Pretty cool bunch too.

So there we were. Invited by TED, ready to be inspired and with a packed agenda for 2 days at TED in Long Beach and 1 day at TEDActive in Palm Springs. Both these conferences run simultaneously and show the same content (via simulcast from Long Beach to Palm Springs). In Long Beach where the ‘real’ TED is you will find yourself amongst business leaders, CEO’s, former TED speakers, movie stars, … who are all looking forward to some great talks but also great encounters during the breaks. People will all just walk up to each other, introduce themselves to each other and start talking about what they’ve seen. And how we all know TED as a very exclusive event, the vibe at the event is pretty down to earth which was counter to what I expected it to be.

At TEDActive the crowd is much younger, I was under the impression that it was also much more international and it felt a lot more creative as well. And what struck me was that even though all talks were via simulcast on TV screens everybody would go inside and watch every single minute of it. During the sessions you would find pretty much no-one outside just chilling in the sun. Imagine that at Cannes Lions for instance – the idea alone sounds to crazy to be serious about it. Very interested crowd, very disciplined and very inspiring.

It’s too difficult to say which encounter was the best (although the close encounter with Cameron Diaz is worth bragging about ;-)) or which talk was the most interesting to watch. You have to imagine yourself sitting in between the co-founder of Groupon on the one hand side and Blaise Aguera y Arcas (2 time awesome TED speaker himself) listening to Taylor Wilson, an 18 year old that built his own nuclear fusion reactor at 14! How awesome is that?! Not to forget all the conversations with my fellow ad men about their advertising, how they got to sell it to their clients and what they think made it unique. I’m sure other sites will give a wrap up of the most powerful talks, I will probably highlight a few of them later on this blog as well.

I want to repeat myself and applaud all the awesome boys and girls at Duval Guillaume Modem for making such great work. It makes me want to go back to the office and try to make even better work so we can get back in that list from TED so one of my colleagues can experience this for him or herself. Thanks for that. This week was awesome!

And special thanks to Shanna from TED for the awesome organization!

Social media. The ‘new’ marketing trick with which brands, marketers & agencies have been struggling since about 2005 I wish to believe. It allows for better and more engaging connections between people but also between brands and people. At least that is the whole idea.

As a result, we have brands begging us to like them on Facebook, follow them on Twitter, all so you can be informed even better of what they have to say. The friends/followers race is on, social media consultants all over the world are making good money to help brands to stay on top of their game.

You should take a look at the Condescending Corporate Brand Page on Facebook. It will help you understand why most of us are doing it wrong. Very wrong. The social media race is all about tactics, nothing about strategy. And it’s definitely not about consumers. Every social media consultant will tell you to post 3-4 times a week (or is it 5-6 times now?), not to forget about Saturdays and Sundays, use images since they tend to work well and make sure there’s enough variance in the updates between news, polls, jokes, … all to delight you and me at the other end of the internet. And it annoys the hell out of me. I actually feel less insulted by 30” commercials than by the average brand Facebook status update these days.

Simply putting a Powerpoint on Slideshare doesn’t make it a social object. All the share buttons in the world aren’t going to make your content spread. It’s not more interesting because it uses Facebook Connect. Using top topicals about the Superbowl or Oscars don’t make your social presence more interesting. And last but not least, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, if you want to get people to talk about your brand or product make sure it’s damn interesting.

Storytelling is the marketing buzzword of today, while it’s actually nothing new. Think about the great TV commercials of all time, that was some really great storytelling. And an average Facebook update definitely isn’t great storytelling. At Duval Guillaume Modem we believe it isn’t just about storytelling, it’s about giving people a story to tell (to each other). Think about what it is you want people to talk about when they think about your brand, and make great content (even if not that often) that stands out and that make people want to like you, want to talk about you.

A while ago I did this interview for a new venture of mine (Belgian Cowboys) with Johan Van Dyck. Now before you walk away because you have no idea who that is, you should hear me out. Johan used to be the CMO of the brewery Moortgat which is most known for beers such as Duvel, De Koninck, Vedett, Achouffe, … most of which are sold all over the world. So pretty decent job to say the least, one he did so well he became local Marketer of the Year his last year on the job. And yet, one day he decides to leave this all behind to start his own little brewery. In a market that is in decline and in the country with probably already most beers in the whole world – aka Belgium – that is not an easy one.

It’s not like it was a one-day decision, Johan had become fascinated with the history of beers that had dissapeared, some of which had been hugely popular at a certain point in time. One of those beers was Seefbier, during the 1900′s the most popular beer in Antwerp. But partially due to WWI and II it didn’t exist anymore. Even worse, the recipe was lost as well, nobody knew how it was made anymore. So while at Moortgat Johan went to great lengths to try to find that recipe during his free time. Libraries, old relatives of brewers, … you name it, Johan researched all. And with succes, because he found the recipe and got to make a sample.

What started of as bit of a hobby out of control I presume got really serious then. The beer tasted actually pretty good and he started planning for his own brewery. Something he couldn’t combine with his work at Moortgat obviously so he totally went for his own adventure. Today Seefbier exists again for about a year now and it’s pretty darn good.

So back to the interview. While we were actually talking about this adventure, marketing, …  a lot of it seemed to related to a kind of entrepreneurial attitude, but from a marketers point of view. Therefore I decided to write it down that way, why marketers should think more like entrepreneurs:

1. Manage your marketing from the POV of the CEO. Plan as if it were your own money, is if it were your own business. This way you won’t just mark todo’s off your list but you will have to care about the full picture.

2. Know your product. I know it sounds obvious to many but still not to all. New on the job or new people in the team? Provide a way to make them learn the product very well before starting. Not with slides, but there where the product is being made.
3. Put the hours in.  If you want to be succesful as an entrepreneur you will have to have your business on your mind all day long. Work doesn’t stop when you close the office door at 6PM. There’s not such thing as a free lunch.
4. Value entrepreneurship and not just success. This attitude is very different in the US compared to Europe. In the US people value an entrepreneur, even if eventually things don’t work out, you will still get respect for trying. It shows courage and initative. Don’t just value success.
5. Take risks. You would expect entrepreneurs and startups to be much more careful when it comes to taking risks – it is their own money, their own loan right? And yet that is not the case most of the times. Marketers who work with other people’s money tend to be a lot more for playing on the safe side. Don’t.
6. Take decisions, give directions. Don’t just distribute all the work incl. all decisions to other people or agencies, in the end it is your business and you’re appointed to be able to design strategy and direct marketing yourself. People can support you on that but don’t just put all the hard issues with other people.

A last thing Johan told me before we finished our Seefbier is something I want to share with you as well. I wondered if he wasn’t scared about the size of his competitors (AB Inbev, Moortgat, …) to which he replied: “The bigger the plates, the bigger the holes. I need big competitors to be able to function. Bring ‘em on.” I like. Good luck Johan!

Traditional media are dead. Well at least according to plenty of opinion makers they are, and have been so for many years already. And while it’s fair to say that some of them are in trouble, or at least facing a whole new series of challenges it’s clear traditional media are far from dead. I actually believe some of the biggest opportunities in communications today are in media, but it is about time to see some action.

Here’s where I believe the biggest opportunities are today in media and why I believe I think there isn’t enough focus on them today. At least not where I live – and it would be dumb to believe that what happens in Belgium is unique in the world so here we go…

Invent new ways of monetization

Instead of using old ways of making money on new media approaches. Guillaume – one of the founders of the agency I work for – once said that banner advertising is what happens when you bring the worst of traditional advertising into digital media and it’s hard to disagree with that. You don’t have to throw away old rules that proved to be working fine with traditional media and their advertising methods, but they just don’t automatically apply to everything new either. When interactive television was announced (‘click the red button’) I had high hopes for the possibilities that it would give me as a consumer… just to find out after a couple of months that tv channels were charging the exact same price of an SMS to every single interaction possible. It became clear very quickly that they had a business going that they didn’t want to lose and that their innovative development was driven by the protection of that business rather than by re-thinking the user experience in this new context. Second screen, DVR, … with every new evolution the drive to protect the old seems to be focus number 1. That’s not how it should be, no innovation will come out of that. Think first about what how you could maximize the consumer experience given a new technology, and then think of (new) ways of making money with that.

Understanding second, third, … screen

Second screen is most of all linked to the television experience. Which is logical, although I wouldn’t make it something exclusive to television either. But that’s not the point I want to make here. There are plenty of second screen experiences available for television stations all over the world as we speak, and yet most of them seem to resolve around taking some kind of advantage of the Twitter activity around the show, possibly combined with some additional content. Other kinds of interaction? Not so much. I find that amazing, especially because there are examples out there of really cool ideas on how to use the second, third,… screen(s) available.

I’ve written about this before, but Kevin Slavin has probably said some of the smartest things I’ve ever heard about this second screen experience. (He has said some of the smartest thing I have ever heard full stop.) Knowing that he is responsible for some of the coolest second screen (avant la lettre) cases ever, it’s silly no to listen to what he has to say. When he gave is presentation “Laughter from nowhere” some 18 months ago at the IAB Congress, he created a bit of a theoretic frame of what it is consumers are looking for concerning the ‘second screen’. People’s main focus is in the main screen, and you need to think about what additional info/activity you can provide that makes the first screen experience better, without asking for too much focus so it doesn’t stand in the way of the main experience. The Twitter chatter about a tv show is only one – and a really tiny – example of what that could be. Check out the case above, it’s 6 years old and still one of the most remarkable I’ve seen so far.

New ways of distribution

Newspapers are print, and have a website, and a mobile site. You tune in on a radio station with your radio, or via the website. You watch tv on your television or snippets via their website. That’s about it. The traditional way of consumption for all of these channels remains the most important, that’s where the money is made but it’s in decline. So we have to think about new ways of distribution. Again especially with television, opportunities are huge I think.

Why especially for television? Because we have only started to figure out how we can get content to consumers via other means. Today the cable provider (or similar) own most of that distribution and it is a bit of a love/hate relationship between tv channels and the distribution company in many countries. What I don’t get is why media aren’t looking at all these possibilities to bypass those distributors. Think about it: Xbox, Apple tv, Connected TV’s, … there are so many devices in people’s homes that you can use to distribute your content that I really don’t understand why none of the media I have access to are using these.

And it’s not alone for television. I can get the national newspapers on my iPad… and they are updated every day around midnight. For realtime updates I have to go the newspaper’s website. Makes sense to you? Not to me it doesn’t.

Build brands instead of channels

Almost every brand I have ever worked for dreams of using lots of traditional media to build its brand. It still seems the best way to get in front of a lot of people’s faces, the get a lot of attention at the same time. And maybe rightfully so, if used in the right way. Is it then such a big jump to say that this would mean that media brands should actually be the biggest brands then? They can use traditional media all the time, as much as they want, they are the media!

But we know they’re not. Could it be that that’s so because they are building channels more then they are building brands? I think that’s what’s going in. They all have a channel that works/worked really well, and some new ones that are still improving. So they keep the channel that works best, while investing little in the new ones. If they were building brands, and people would really choose for a strong media brand, wouldn’t you think the channel becomes less important? People would look for it and consume it the best way possible? I do think so.

Do you agree? Or maybe not? Or do you want to add an opportunity that you think I missed? Let me know in the comments, I’d love to open up the discussion around the topic.

I’ve been a close witness to some of the impact short-form video has had on campaigns I was involved in. Small campaigns like the launch of IKKI.be (which most of you will be unfamiliar with) where the video was responsible for creating so much buzz within the target audience that we had reached the platform sign-up target within day