In a recent New Yorker article, Jonah Lehrer reports on the decline effect, which describes what happens when researchers try to validate the findings of prior scientific studies. The article points to a number of findings across a range of fields, some of which have come to be widely accepted as fact, that can’t be replicated. Scientists have even found it difficult to measure gravity, perhaps the most sacred of truths, consistently and reliably. It does not appear to be the particular findings that are the problem — rather, there appears to be something endemic in academic research that makes replication difficult.

In short, the article makes the case that the truth is at best subjective. And at worst, unstable.

What does this have to do with marketing and brands?
For a long time, marketers accepted that there was some underlying Truth to a brand, something immutable, like the law of gravity, about it. That it occupied a consistent position in the consumer’s cosmology.

At least, that was the belief. When brands defined themselves.

But what is the brand Truth in a world where the brand is increasingly defined by each of its consumers? If scientific researchers, the heavyweight champions of objectivity, find it difficult to agree on the Truth, how can a marketer hope for consumers, many of whom are delighting in becoming their own subjective media outlets, to ever agree on the Truth of the brand?

Does the Truth of a brand shift from the mind of one consumer to another as the Truth of scientific facts shift from one research study to another?

Managing shifting sands
Since the answer is clearly “yes,” how do you manage a brand in such an environment?

A flippant answer is “you don’t.” You let the brand adapt to the consumer’s truth. Consider these examples:

• A startup called Baynote, based in San Jose, California, has developed software that automatically reorganizes a website to respond to how users behave on the site,  presenting different information based on where a user scrolls, how much time is spent on each page, when the user clicks and the search terms used.
• Glen Urban, professor of marketing at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, suggests that even the form of information could change based on demonstrated user preferences, allowing some users, for example, to see information in charts, while others see simplified text comparisons of products.

And it’s just a few short steps from that to allowing the very attributes that define a brand — color, voice, identity, etc — to shift based on the user.

Of course, there are dozens of examples of technology-based applications that move the seat of the brand Truth from the marketer to the consumer. The news here is that the movement in marketing may be part of a larger shift. A shift that sees broader segments of the population recognizing that concepts like Truth and Certainty are, despite our best efforts to pin them down, fluid.

Flickr photo courtesy of Pulpolux !!!

The creative team has been the most important aspect of my time in an advertising agency. It is what I was first exposed to. It was the only thing I knew and understood.

College textbooks walked us through the processes of conceptualizing, forming ideas, and creative steps. And professors taught us the makeup of creative teams composed of a copywriter and art director under a creative director.

So I was a little surprised when I picked up Mario Pricken’s Creative Advertising: Idea and Techniques from the World’s Best Campaigns. I was expecting to see a new profound outlook on the evolution of the creative team in a text published in 2010. Oddly, I noticed that it repeatedly stressed the importance of a creative team where one may not exist.

Not exist?

Don’t get me wrong, the book is great and details a terrific approach to creative advertising and idea formulation. What confused me was that the world had strayed from the basic principles of things such as brainstorming sessions and understanding the creative process. Had agencies forgotten the importance of the creative team? Had the world become this static? Was the meeting room only being used for presentation of safe ideas with no room or time allotted to form creatively brilliant ones? The truth is that the makeup and application of the creative team is being questioned and, in some instances, teams are things of the past.

But companies straying from the “sacred” creative teams may be missing the point. The traditional creative team is necessary for the same reasons it has always been. The perfect balance of words and visuals creates a concept that encompasses a client’s value system, vision, and the client itself. Sure, times are changing. The creative team cannot handle the entire load of the ever-growing digital age. But they have never been expected to.

Now, out of fear of this age, agencies often sacrifice the creative team, pawning creative responsibility off on their newly acquired digital staff and account executives.

It makes little sense.

Your business must evolve. Destruction of the traditional creative team is not an option in a world where creativity, humor, wit and brilliance monopolize the market. Just as the world of advertising has changed, so too must your business structure. But your entry-level copywriters and art directors have changed as well. Most are internet savvy. Most are up to the task of taking on more than their comfort zones. Multi-tasking is the norm for today’s iPod wearing, iPad browsing copywriter and art director. So how will your agency succeed in these times? Evolution. Not by ending the reign of the creative team as we once knew it, but by complimenting it with creative interactive gurus, web designers and social media wizards.

Staying ahead of the curve is vital to the success of today’s agencies, yet some choose to compromise creativity to stay in the technological race.

Can this compromised approach work? Highly unlikely. Creative teams are professionals in humanity, something even today’s digital age can’t afford to lose.

Flickr photo courtesy of bounder

You can’t help but be moved by the daily images of oil gushing from the severed pipeline miles under the ocean. It makes what we have all known for so long: that our dependence on fossil fuels is killing our planet; so visible, so undeniable.

So what’s a person to do? Turn off the news? Buy stock in Dawn?

My solution: jump over to www.good.is and reassure myself that there is hope. That people everywhere are working to end the addiction. And, that’s where this image jumped out at me.

I’ve known about green roofs and white roofs and the benefits they have for energy conservation, but green walls?

Just think of the square footage that could be devoted to changing our environment. Just think about all the opportunities for messaging. I mean, what would Times Square look like in Myrtle instead of neon?

And with Copenhagen now mandating green roofs, it seems green walls would be the next natural extension of harnessing unused square footage in battle for carbon neutrality.

For advertisers, it’s a reminder to look beyond the traditional approaches to messaging. To partner with inventors, builders, and architects as well as, producers, directors and web gurus.

As for me, it looks like my current vocabulary of Helvetica and Bodoni will be expanding to include Coreopsis and Sedum.

For more information on how you can look beyond the traditional in your industry, visit our creative development page.

Flickr photo courtesy of PghFun1 via the Good.is blog.

Kudos to P&G’s Dawn brand for donating thousands of bottles of their soap to the horrific oil slick that was once the verdant Alabama and Louisiana coastal regions. Long before the BP oil well exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, Dawn had pledged itself to be “Everyday Wildlife Champions”—so the company’s capitalization on this environmental disaster is a logical fit. This case appears to be cause marketing at its best: the product is highly relevant to helping the cause it’s supporting. You see, according to bird specialists Dawn is the preferred solution for washing off crude oil from animals since it cuts through the grease without hurting their skin.

(Watch the Dawn commercial here)

On the other hand, I about fell out of my La-Z-Boy when I saw KFC’s Buckets For The Cure spot shown below. I believe this campaign embodies cause marketing at its worst: the product is potentially hazardous to the cause it’s supporting. Many angry individuals and organizations, including watchdog group Breast Cancer Action, are now accusing KFC of “pinkwashing” because their high-fat, high-sodium, high-calorie grub can be dangerous to one’s health. Critics point to a recent study by the American Society of Breast Surgeons that found obesity raises a woman’s risk for breast cancer. In addition, KFC chicken contains hydrogenated soy oil (trans fat), high fructose corn syrup (linked to diabetes), MSG (linked to cancer), sodium nitrite (linked to pancreatic cancer), Red #40 and Yellow #5 (chemical colorings). Turns out Pink isn’t on the ingredient list at all.

Shame on you, KFC and Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

Want to work with a creative, results-focused and responsible agency that knows how to do cause marketing right? Contact Point to Point today.

(Watch the KFC Buckets For The Cure commercial here)

We in the ad industry have always professed that the more your advertising entertains, the more likely it will be watched and remembered.

We claimed that “creative” ads did a better job of selling because people were less likely to ignore the message that was being delivered.

We never had any concrete data to prove this. We went by the ratings of the television shows. We looked at quarterly sales and made some educated guesses as to which spots worked and which didn’t.

In today’s ROI-driven world, that ain’t good enough. And the idea that creativity and entertainment actually drives ROI is being challenged. But to understand the power of creativity and entertainment in advertising, to understand its effectiveness, you need only look to YouTube.

The other day, I searched for some spots that the advertising world  considers creatively excellent, and you know what I found? People want to watch good commercials.  They want to see them over and over again.

Don’t believe me? Just check out these data points.

The e*trade baby commercial? 750,000 views.

The Geico caveman at the airport spot? 1.1 million views.

The Apple PC commercial? 1.2 million views.

That’s the kind of exposure companies would pay thousands upon thousands of dollars to achieve. Yet, because their communication is worth watching, because it is rewarding in an emotional sense, they are getting that exposure for free.

I’m no accountant, but I’d say that’s pretty good ROI.

The lesson learned: Creativity matters. It matters to your audience. It matters to your exposure. It matters to your bottom line.

To learn more about how we can help improve your creative product, contact us today.

Aw, screw it. Grab whatever's cheapest.

I recently read a thought-provoking article on boston.com outlining how in this long-standing bad economy, more and more shoppers are opting for big box stores’ private label products over their typically more expensive brand name counterparts. Which got this copywriter to thinking about a few things, especially from the perspective of creative development.

My first question is whether any amount of branded advertising is capable of carving out a sense of loyalty in a price-sensitive consumer’s mind right now. Because as one of the peeps quoted in the article said, “I am not loyal to any grocery store or any brand…I am loyal to savings.’’

You see, this trend isn’t just anecdotal, either. According to Nielsen, unit sales of private label goods have jumped 8 percent since 2007, while brand names have declined roughly 4 percent.

The following questions, amongst others, I’m left pondering as I head out to the grocery store with my pockets full of coupons:

• Can more marketing move more brand name products, or as illustrated in the case of Domino’s “Pizza Turnaround,” do branded products need to be improved before people will reconsider buying them?
• Are the big brand names of the future only the big box stores like Target, Wal-Mart, Wegman’s, etc. and their private label products?
• Will brands in the crowded packaged goods category start to disappear as their sales continue to decline, or will they maintain market share by lowering their prices to compete with the private labels?
• Are consumers reaching the threshold of choice—that is, with so many choices in front of them in the cereal aisle, is price the only differentiator left?

All in all, I think the private label movement is proving yet again that we are in the era of total consumer control. Online and offline, consumers are dictating what brands need to be thinking about, not the other way around. It’s also mandating that if brands expect to get premium dollar for their products, the stuff needs to actually be noticeably better than the generic. Because as the data’s proving, pretty packaging and clever advertising just ain’t cutting it anymore.

Curious how this digital advertising firm can improve your brand and set it apart from the rest? Contact us today to learn more.

Photo courtesy of cafemama via Flickr Creative Commons.

When you look at the rising cost of healthcare, there is a whole lot of blame to go around.

But one villain has gone unnoticed: The ad regulators.

I was recently watching television, when an ad for Cialis came on the air. It was probably the 1,000,000th pharmaceutical ad I had been exposed to, but it was the first time I was really struck by how much legal copy was being thrown at me. The disclaimers literally took up half of the 60-second spot, informing me of every possible side effect that might (but probably won’t) occur if I took the drug. After about 5 seconds, I just tuned out the announcer and watched the b-roll footage of a man and his partner sitting in two separate bathtubs in the woods.

Magazine ads are no different. For every one page of ‘advertising’ there are two pages of mice-type disclaimers.

The pharmaceutical industry  is the only industry that is this regulated in regards to full disclosure. Heck, even the warnings on cigarette packages aren’t that detailed.

Which got me to thinking. Is all that extra copy (and extra expense) really necessary? I understand that the government wants to protect its citizens. But if nobody is listening to the “disclaimers” on TV and nobody is reading the 4-point-type treatises in magazines, why have them?

Wouldn’t it be better to just say “serious side effects may occur” and lead them to a website that details them?

Just think what it would do to cut costs. TV buys would be cut in half. Print buys by two-thirds. And drug companies could save millions upon millions of dollars that could be earmarked for research or passed along to the customer. Either way, it’s a win.

And if we don’t have to watch two old folks in a bathtub? Well, that’s a win too.

If you would like to ask us about our healthcare marketing experience, contact us today.

This past weekend I had the honor and the pleasure of judging the Pittsburgh Addys. Besides the fact that my car broke down on the drive there, it was a truly delightful experience. The folks who run the Pittsburgh Ad Fed are some of the nicest people I’ve met in the business. And their organization is top-notch through and through.

Generally speaking, I like judging the Addys. It gives me a good sense of what is going on the advertising world as a whole. It allows me to see beyond my own agency and clients to get a true sense of our business. It’s really reinvigorating for a creative guy, like me.

Without giving away the winners, here are a few observations I came away with after a weekend immersed in creativity.

1.    If print is dead, someone needs to tell the folks in Pittsburgh. I was very surprised at the number of print entries at the show. I would say well over half of the submissions were still on old fashioned paper. And there was a lot of very good—even exceptional — print being done.

2.    Social media hasn’t been fully embraced by the creative community yet. This year, I was expecting to see a tidal wave of entries that had a social media component.  There weren’t many at all. Which was surprising considering the seismic shift our industry is experiencing in this area.

3.   “You can’t get creative in this category” is not an acceptable excuse for lame work. Pittsburghers proved it. Some truly outstanding work was done in categories that historically haven’t had a good track record for breakthrough messaging.

4.   If you look hard enough, some advertisers actually have money. In this, the Great Recession, I was expecting to see a tremendous dearth of high-budget production. Yet, there were numerous television campaigns, corporate videos and print submissions that clearly had the bucks to do it right. I found that particularly encouraging.

Again, my thanks to the Pittsburgh Ad Fed for inviting me. It was a lot of fun.

It wasn’t all that long ago that any agency worth its salt embraced with religious fervor the concept of “The Big Idea.” Creatives would spend days, weeks, sometimes months banging their heads against the wall to achieve that MadMen-esque moment where everything becomes clear and the tagline and three print ads and two clever TV spots practically wrote themselves. The industry believed that the magical art form of the creative process was what created inherent, billable value in an agency’s final product. And thus, creativity was revered, honored and considered so sacred one didn’t dare question it.

We fed our addiction to epiphianic moments of creativity by converting as many clients as possible to “The Big Idea” religion. We led clients to believe that when an ad campaign was pure and brilliant and inspired, it had to be good. We produced artful, eye-grabbing campaigns with the greatest of intentions but at the time had few proven scientific methods of discerning what kind of results we were achieving.

Then the era of digital marketing came along and ruined our bacchanal existence.

Now, nerdy scientific conversations about analytics and tracking and metrics and search and measurement and ROI and hypertargeting are part of the brainstorm. Now, thanks to the infinite possibilities in the interactive marketing and digital space, our thinking is no longer limited to thinking in campaigns. And I’m thrilled.

I’m thrilled we’re in the era of accountability with our clients—they deserve it. I’m thrilled we’re able to discern with a high level of certainty whether our ideas are generating a return on investment—it feels good to find out that your work is working. I’m thrilled we’re building cultures of measurement—perhaps now our industry can garner some much needed credibility.

I’m thrilled to be a part of advertising history that’ll be known for worshipping “Big Results” above all other gods.

Image courtesy of Anirudh Koul.

I’ve never been a big fan of using celebrities to endorse products.

From a purely creative standpoint, I think it’s a weak substitute for an actual idea, an easy alternative to rolling up your sleeves and developing communications that break through and convey a real point of differentiation.

But beyond creative laziness, using celebs, in my view, has a plethora of negatives.

For starters, there’s the erosion of the product’s own brand identity. As soon as you get LeBron James, for example, to sign on the dotted line, your product becomes LeBron James. Your identity becomes LeBron James. Your personality becomes LeBron James.

And when that relationship ends, for whatever reason, what have you got? Not much. Just ask all those companies who are still dealing with the untimely death of pitchman Billy Mays.

Even more risky is the control you lose. When you attach your brand to that of a celeb, the celebrity becomes the driver. And when that celeb decides to veer off course by doing something illegal or dangerous or just plain stupid, your brand winds up with the dents.

Just ask the gaggle of companies who have hitched their trailers to Tiger Woods. I’ll admit it, Tiger Woods seemed like the safest endorsement bet in the history of advertising. He’s good looking. Smart. Articulate. A family man.

What’s not to love about Tiger, right?

Then came the news of his infidelity and his violent confrontation with his wife. And overnight, his popularity plummeted. In fact, a recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll shows Wood’s favorable rating among the public has dropped 24 percentage points since June.

That’s a big hit. And as a result, companies like Nike, Gillette to AT&T are scrambling, trying to decide whether to stick with their tarnished spokesperson or to cut bait.

The lesson we can learn from this is there are no perfectly safe celebrity endorsers. There are no sure things. So my advice: Instead of tying your product to a personality, do the work it takes to give your product a personality of its own. At least you can control that.