DIFFUSION

Gap And MySpace re:brands in crisis.

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Byrne) — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 09:33:00 +0000

One of the problems of rebranding led by high profile logo redesign is that it can expose the lack of thorough consideration of what the process itself is designed to achieve.

It now seems Gap and now MySpace have fallen victim to the inevitable focus on the pretty picture, rather than the big picture.

While no one would necessarily argue that either companies are suffering. Gap has annual sales of US$9.12b and MySpace is still the world's second largest social network with more than 50m users. However, both have significant brand problems which no logo redesign is going to solve, even if the claim is that this is only one part of a more r/evolutionary path.

In Gap's case, the brand has been struggling with frumpy perception issues for years as its core product has come under threat from more highly attuned brands like HandM, Uniqlo and Zara. It hasn't been helped by falling sales. Same-store revenue at Gap stores fell 1% in September but it wasn't as bad as the 8% drop in 2009.

MySpace has also been similarly blighted. Global revenues are expected to fall by 21% this year, under News ownership its suffered from constant management flux, a falling headcount and Qantcast estimates US visitors are leaving in droves with numbers down by 10m between April and September.

And obviously Gap didn't see anything worth learning from Kraft Australia's painful debacle last year when it crowdsourced its new iSnack 2.0 as the new name for an extension of its popular Vegemite brand. Despite the use of a highly anonymous panel of "brand experts" to vet the process (I suspect they were all internal), the result was a resounding public relations thud and a frank mea culpa from Kraft that 48000 submissions later, the name was axed. Gap pretty much followed the same sad route.

The lesson: unrestrained crowd sourcing of an extremely popular and well known brand is inevitable folly. More so, don't focus on the tactical.

Perhaps Gap recognised this when it posted on its Facebook page what could only be regarded as the beginning of a reversal: “Thanks for everyone’s input on the new logo! We’ve had the same logo for 20+ years, and this is just one of the things we’re changing. We know this logo created a lot of buzz and we’re thrilled to see passionate debates unfolding! So much so we’re asking you to share your designs. We love our version, but we’d like to… see other ideas. Stay tuned for details in the next few days on this crowd sourcing project.”

Gap North America president Marka Hansen later engaged in further dissembling on Huffington Post claiming that the rebrand came from a desire "to see how our logo - one that we've had for more than 20 years - should evolve. Our brand and our clothes are changing and rethinking our logo is part of aligning with that.

"We want our customers to take notice of Gap and see what it stands for today. We chose this design as it's more contemporary and current. It honors our heritage through the blue box while still taking it forward, " she said.

While Hansen said Gap was "listening" and would continue to take customers on the "journey" and consider their design submissions, the damage to the brand and reputation is already irreversible. Even more laughable now that the new logo has been dumped.

Put simply, Gap recognised there was a problem with the old logo and claims it's doing something about product and stores, but a brand is the sum of all parts. Hansen as a senior executive should know better, Gap needs radical brand reinvention not revitalisation. If Gap has been in a three year turnaround, as Hansen claims, where's the resulting sales? The brand tracker? And more importantly, what's the strategy? It really needs to start with some clarity of brand vision bought out of deeper customer insight as well as a braver sense of brand stewardship. All of which might have gone AWOL at Gap, a fact clearly exposed last week and confirmed when it announced plans to dump the new logo as quickly as it showed it to Facebook.

One would hope MySpace management has been watching Gap's PR tsunami and sees something to learn. It's new logo is not even launched yet. But the conversation has started, MySpace might want to rethink its already creaking credibility.

Transmedia is not new. Transmedia strategy is.

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Byrne) — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 04:09:00 +0000

There is a significant opportunity now for a paradigm shift in the development of transmedia strategy for brands.

While there was a mild peak in interest in transmedia and the discussion around transmedia strategy in 2006/7 with the publication of Henry Jenkins' Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide , the buzz died soon died down to be replaced with discussions around narrative exposition and the centrality of the brand story.

One of the problems of Jenkins' critique is that the role of brand has largely been underplayed in subsequent discussions of transmedia. The assumption that brand assets like fictional content, media property and entertainment franchises are so evolutionary that they appear largely ownerless and un-branded, perhaps even disenfranchised by transmedia as well, seems naive. Now with the confluence of technology and brand creating ever more powerful social media platforms, brand owners have begun to realise that significant revenue streams have gone largely unexplored and undervalued, the argument for transmedia strategy now seems unequivocal.

Still brand development and planning continue to remain resolutely in brand strategy and advertising planning silos, rather than in the more convergent disciplines such as PR and social media which now cover "influence" rather than platform-based awareness. All the while the simplification of technology production and wider device access is radically increasing the ability, scale and scope of individual and audience collaboration and co-creation in brand development, it is still rare for brands and the campaigns that follow to embrace more than one or two transmedia approaches, even better still a full and lengthy transmedia strategy.

I believe much of the problem lies in three parts. Firstly, both a disavowal and a general ignorance of the role brand and brand creation has in the development of the transmedia assets. Secondly, the tactical short-term focus most brands have on brand deployment and engagement and subsequently followed by the action of their agencies. Thirdly, this concentration on short term campaign development (linked to agency renumeration and commission structures), replaces the more favourable strategic objective of long term brand equity building.

The above video is a broadcast of slides for my lecture to a Masters class at the University of Technology, Sydney. It is simply an introduction, designed to inform a larger discussion on the emerging role of transmedia strategy in brand and marketing planning.

Some thoughts on transmedia strategy, brands and the future of media planning.

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Byrne) — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 01:11:00 +0000

How can brands plan and deliver unified long term strategy, build value and engagement in the message fog created by continually splintering and fractured media and audiences? The answer might be in the new field of transmedia strategy.

A transmedia strategy is designed to create an evolving and "self saucing" brand story through interaction between brand owners and their audiences. A transmedia strategy is contextual and continues the life of brand by permitting constant brand renewal through a process of reinvention and re-engagement. In a transmedia strategy, a brand's core ideology and brand platform has to have been developed sufficiently for brand messages to be coherently delivered to different audiences via a variety of media forms over a long period of time, rather than in the current highly geared campaign format and timeframe. Derived from transmedia story telling with its high profile examples like the multi-storied/multifabled Matrix and Star Wars saga brands, in a transmedia strategy messages have much less need to be integrated as they are independently delivered by a wide variety of media over time but can still contribute to the evolving brand.

Behind transmedia strategy is the idea that a campaign should be seen as less a campaign but more an episode or chapter, executed by discreet media opportunities for the evolution of a brand. Each of these media opportunities - whether they be for brand building or for deliberate interaction - can sit independently but is designed to contribute, over time, to the development of the brand.

Consider it this way: transmedia enables brands to more effectively deliver messages and communicate ideas to its targets and is better able to meet the overall brand aims. Take, for example, a traditional government-funded social marketing-based brand campaign. Most of these campaigns, for all their apparent success, are built around traditional bursts of media and rarely funded more than annually and are often highly television media dependent and here lies the opportunity for long term brand building.

Almost any government funded and long term social-based education program is ripe for a transmedia strategy. That these campaigns prominently emphasise display media such as television, internet advertising, cinema and print is often because of their inherent visibility (politicians like this as well) and well, because the agencies involved are not only better rewarded for this media but still regard it as the most able to deliver core messages to the widest possible audiences, regardless of its effectiveness and ability to create change.

In the case of a social marketing anti-smoking brand campaign such as Australia's long running Quitnow, traditional display media is exclusively used to deliver core messages to primary targets. But sometimes radio, PR, advocacy and now social media can also be more actively being leveraged to deliver actual engagement and achieve behavioral change.

However, with a transmedia strategy communication tasks and some of the targets can be more precisely and discretely divided between media, rather than looking to, as is often the case, to heavy spend across all media just to ensure TARPs, message spread and often annual budget exhaustion.

Take for example, the Australian Government's long running National Tobacco Strategy. With a transmedia strategy, the strategy aim could now be to create a fully integrated long-term brand play by starting to treat the Quitnow centred campaign as a more fully developed and evolving brand, rather than achieving implementation objectives via tactical and limited campaigns, which is now the case. Though the National Tobacco Campaign’s discreet approach has been highly successful for some of its target audiences, the continuing fragmentation of audience and media no longer guarantees success will be as likely or as easy. These days communication objectives can no longer be met by bursts of high cost but pocketed media activity.

A highly geared campaign emphasis on television spots in these types of campaigns does elicit specific audience actions that may fulfill some campaign objectives, but will it achieve “effective contribution” for the campaign? What is the state of audience fatigue with these messages? TARPs, in my opinion, is a singularly disingenuous measure these days, created when television was media dominant. Television is evolving and is now more suited to developing a character-based narrative for campaigns and not just for awareness raising. For example, the campaign's TV advertising should move away from the wave of “shock-and-awe” led campaigns to develop ad series built on connected family scenarios on smoking and its consequences. Each scenario emphasing life stages or turning/stress points.

With cigarette smoking the most social of habits, what's suprising in this Australian example, is this has not played a more significant part in campaign planning. The role of digital in delivering often low cost measurable target audience awareness, engagement and access to support should be framed within a component social media strategy, that both contributes to the anti-smoking brand like Quitnow but also works independently and alongside complimentary campaigns run by various state organisations and cancer groups. As it is the campaign's leading online property, the Quitnow website is severely underdone and it desperately needs expansion. My to-do list might include a Quitter’s page with first hand stories and opportunities to input approaches and solutions; a Quitnow YouTube Channel featuring the television spots or extended to become episodes; links to a Facebook page and other social media comment badging; deeper and more comprehensive SEO given Google’s new search algorithm ( with the possibility of guerilla tactics like link baiting); Wikipedia links to the archives and all existing Quitnow campaigns; Twitter brand conversations from anti-smoking brand ambassadors as well as a focus on separate non-English Speaking Background and indigenous channel development. In a transmedia strategy all of this is designed to develop the brand's narrative and contribute to more active engagement - something that just won't come anymore from simply calling a telephone number.

Australia's anti-smoking strategy was developed when media consumption patterns and accompanying planning were largely dominated by television and other increasingly redundant display media. Sure it worked then but effectiveness is now acknowledged as diminishing for a variety of reason but with no recent measures available to track audience fatigue and a flagging strategy, I'm left feeling that the "tried and true" approach doesn't cut it anymore. A transmedia strategy can deliver long term brand development and engagement, allows agencies to develop more active and discreet campaign media expansion over time, prioritises audience media use and allocates discriminant awareness and engagement tasks to each media against core brand messages. Media buying can still continue to be driven by TARP, GRP, CPA or any other measure a brand owner might use. Transmedia strategies requires insight, daring and vision and an acknowledgement that social marketing campaigns need no longer be driven by visibility imperatives but by more effective and newer patterns of brand involvement.

There's nothing like the question of identity.

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Byrne) — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 04:44:00 +0000

There's nothing like international television advertising for a country to create seismic ructions around questions of national identity, but that's just the effect the newest There's Nothing Like Australia campaign from Tourism Australia is having.

With a collapse in April inbound tourism numbers to Australia from the key markets of the US, UK (both down 6%) and Japan (also down 20%) unlikely to abate, the ink has hardly dried on the launch of this three year $150m campaign before questions are arising not just about it's ability to rescue an already Australia's ailing tourism sector but more importantly it's also raising the question - who or what is Australia? And how should Australia be seen overseas. And who should be in charge of its image?

Only last month Australian Trade Minister Simon Crean announced the launch of the new $20m Brand Australia logo and tagline to promote Australia's image overseas.

“Australia Unlimited has the breadth to market all of Australia’s strengths - grounded in our commitment to innovation and quality,” Mr Crean said.

“Australia Unlimited is aimed at taking us beyond tourism messages. It will deliver a national brand for Australia through a consistent image and a consistent message.”

With AusTrade and M&C Saatchi handling the tricky business of Australia's image among business and Australian Tourism and ad agency DDB managing the consumer image both domestically and overseas, the main issue again seems to be what are the core and central messages and images that should be used to promote Australia as both a brand and a destination. Right now (see above) they appear discordant.

At the launch today Tourism Australia chief Andrew McEvoy claimed its research found "80% of Australians wanted to promote their country as a travel destination so we invited them to share their pictures and stories at the campaign website.

“Australians have identified our people, wildlife, beaches, the reef, the outback, vibrant cities and laid-back lifestyle as the things that make Australia a unique and special place to visit. These suggestions are highlighted in all the elements of the new campaign." Unreservedly so it seems.

Regardless of the perceptible quality problems with both campaigns, it seems that while the core of both and the unifying concept is claimed to be Australia's people, there is still little agreement in both as to what Australia represents as a brand and how it should be portrayed, except for readiness to slide back to traditional imagery.

Brand Australia says it wants to take Australia "beyond tourism messages. It will deliver a national brand for Australia through a consistent image and a consistent message."Yet while the sample images it uses seem modern, they are cold and generic and could be interchanged with almost any wealthy western country's brand.

But the new There's Nothing Like Australia with it's singalong and imagery rendolent of "wildlife, beaches, the reef, the outback, vibrant cities and laid-back lifestyle" seems in stark contrast to Brand Australia's desire for "a more contemporary and multi-dimensional light than has previously been delivered". Right now neither serves to build on the other and both seem so fractious as they may even cancel each other out.

Late in the eighteenth century Australia was referred to as Terra Nullius, it's a narrative strain that remains at the heart of the Australian psyche and neither of these programs resolve.

DIFFUSION and Lucas make their mark on new Lowy Cancer Research Centre.

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Byrne) — Fri, 28 May 2010 03:44:00 +0000

DIFFUSION and Lucas Melbourne's work has featured in the opening of the new Lowy Cancer Research Centre in Sydney on May 28 2010.

The new centre features a bold strikeout sans serif word mark incorporating colours from the building’s architects Lahz Nimmo.

The new centre was opened by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, NSW Premier Kristina Keneally and its main benefactor, chairman of Westfield Corporation Frank Lowy.

DIFFUSION principals Stephen Byrne and Monique Defina-Nancarrow and Lucas were responsible for the development of the new centre’s brand strategy, positioning and creative brand development. It was a year long project working with a joint working party between the two institutions as well as key sector influencers and stakeholders.

DIFFUSION strategy director Stephen Byrne and Lucas director Chris Lucas said they were proud to have been invited to develop the “make your mark” on cancer graphic idea - part of the main platform for the centre’s brand.

The $127 million research facility is at the University of New South Wales’ Kensington campus and houses 400 cancer researchers from both UNSW and the Children’s Cancer Institute Australia for Medical Research (CCIA) is the largest in the southern hemisphere.

Brandfail: Sydney Australia 2010.

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Byrne) — Tue, 18 May 2010 06:58:00 +0000

Recently launched brands for the Australian government's Australia Unlimited and the NSW government's new Sydney.com are sorry reminders of what happens to nation and city branding that have been defined by unremarkable strategy.

Australia's newest branding exercise was decided on last year after the Australian Government handed over $20 million to global ad agency M&C Saatchi promote the new brand over the next four years.

The Brand Australia website says the aim of the new brand was to "better position Australia as a global citizen, global business partner and world class destination."

According to the Brand Australia FAQ, the Brand Australia program "is about providing an overarching, strategic approach to positioning Australia in the global marketplace."

However, launching a visual identity first seems less a strategic response and more a creative and tactical one and smacks of a committee based approach.

Austrade, the organisation tasked with managing Saatchi's and this new branding, added that now "the hard work begins to develop the brand architecture" along with any co-branding. This only begins to confirm my belief in the seeming lack of strategy in this whole exercise. Even the most rudimentary of brand strategy texts would tell you that brand architecture would be developed prior to any rollout and this would include all aspects of the identity and associated sub-brands including any other brand extensions.

To say that strategy is a secondary to strapline and logo development, suggests this project is subject to political expediency in an election year driven by an "advisory board", said to be made up of prominent business people and marketers from Austrade.

Worse still Saatchi’s slogan was taken to international research panels with the full knowledge that the it was already trademarked by News Ltd, who in their munificence, have now “lent” it to Austrade and the Australian government. In my experience I would usually be reluctant to present an already trademarked name, unless the client clearly briefed this in and understood the risks.

And the Australia Unlimited logo is itself is in an unremarkable and unownable sans serif typeface in Australia’s official colours and framed by stylised boomerang parenthesis. It’s like a gaudy airport tourist trap store identity, exactly the sort of thing you would expect an ad agency with an advisory board as clients to come up with. But don’t forget there has been no formalised strategic development from this. It’s all still to come.

But let's head back to the idea of nation branding and there's no better place to start than the Brand Australia FAQ.

Successful nation branding identifies any gap between a country’s reputation and its actual capabilities and contributions, then addresses this gap with a program that better communicates the country’s offering.

The irony is that it is wider than what Austrade thinks it is, yet it has been tasked with managing this rollout.

A nation brand represents a country as a whole. It is broader than a tourism or ‘destination’ brand and promotes a wider range of capabilities across business, culture and community.

Where's the gap between the perception of Australia and it might be positioned? What is it? How is it captured by the Australia Unlimited visual identity, strapline campaign? Is it the success stories of ordinary and some exemplary Australians? How will this position Australia? What is the brand idea, the core proposition that has been is communicated by the tagline "Australia Unlimited"? Australian’s unlimited? None of this is either sufficiently differentiated nor strongly put yet.

Already announced is the publication of a magazine for launch at Shanghai World Expo. A magazine? It’s all tactical and so old media, reflecting similar tactical campaign profiles for the previous Australia campaign..something that Austrade might say has nothing to do with it but was yet positioned as another national branding exercise.

Australia might currently be positioned ninth in 2010 on the Anholt-GFK Roper Nation Brands Index but its the same spot it occupied the previous year. Conversely, it's ranked number three on Futurebrand's 2009 Country Brand index - so you can draw your own conclusions as to the validity or worth of any of these rankings survey over the next. The point is that promoting a survey as some kind of evidence of possible success or otherwise in these stakes seems to me to be oversimplifying the benefits of nation branding.

If place branding is about the development and presentation of a core set of brand attributes to represent and promote a place, then the latest Sydney branding exercise is, like the Australian Unlimited identity, a failure before it begins.

Subject to even less fanfare is the launch of this new logo/wordmark for Sydney (you'll see my fuzzy version had to be lifted from the Sydney.com page where it competed with other versions of the Sydney logo). Again, the product of an Events NSW Government committee, the launch has been both low key and perhaps embarrassingly touted as part of the new Sydnicity campaign from NSW Tourism. No media storm and apart from seeing it framing the arrival of Jessica Watson's landing on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, almost invisible.

The logo is itself an undefined tech looking curlique set against another sans serif Sydney word mark. Again, like Australia Unlimited, the same questions arise around the strategic requirements for this rework.

If Sydney needs to be rebranded to compete against a more complex and multi-facetted Melbourne, then where is the evidence that supports this approach? Where is the proof that this approach is evidence of best in class for the country’s only global city, a crown Melbourne might soon wrench away? Melbourne’s rebrand is part of a well documented complex and successful branding and marketing strategy for the whole of Victoria, so why hasn’t Sydney followed suit?

Perhaps both cases illustrate that nation and city branding,should always be built on uniquely defining long-term brand strategies rather than tactical and often reactionary approaches, driven by the current political exigency. Otherwise, like the next election campaign or the last minister responsible, their impact will be limited, their influence questionable and they might not get another term.

Enter at your own risk: the real value of social media-based brand engagement.

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Byrne) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 23:43:00 +0000

Let’s be straight. Brand engagement does have quantifiable financial benefits. Increasingly this type of engagement via social media also has quantifiable benefits, it’s just no one knows what exactly they are, yet. So while the latest and only social media study reluctantly admits this, real financial bottom line value is still only partially proven.

By any standard definition brand engagement is an emotional connection or attachment developed during repeated and continuing interactions with a brand. Over time this should accumulate through satisfaction, loyalty, influence and excitement and other factors. Organizations who engage customers to the point where they are moved to a behavioral change do so by creating opportunities for emotional connections through consistent and positive experiences. Social media seems an opportunity for some brands to develop such opportunities, albeit at least turn any negative ones into positive.

However, alongside other media and non-media forms, social media is and should be regarded as just one part of a suite of engagement channels for brands. So, for example, a brand’s appearance or lack of presence on Twitter or Facebook, might harm its perception or level of engagement, it’s just that it won’t hurt if the current levels of engagement are low. And regardless, for some industry sectors it purely demonstrates a rational and logical extension of their core business activity.

In July the WetPaint/Altimeter Group released its ENGAGEMENTdbReport aimed at measuring how deeply engaged the top 100 2008/9 global brands were in a variety of social media channels and, more importantly, understand if a higher engagement correlated with financial success. Unremarkably, the study understated one of the key defining aspects of these rankings – that the level of financial success generated by the brands had already put them a top 100 brand. A position not defined by some other event or cause like social media.

WetPaint/Altimeter claimed their study not only measured the level of engagement but also the depth. They evaluated and scored each brand’s engagement in various channels and found the more a brand leverages multiple channels, the higher the level of engagement is (seems to make sense!) Ranking Starbucks as the most engaged brand, with a presence across 11 social media-based channels, they also linked exponential growth in the depth of engagement with continued growth in the channel.

Not surprisingly, it also found engagement differs by industry and with media usage. So the most engaged industries are naturally Media and Technology and the least, Financial, Apparel and Food & Beverage. In addition, the study found distinct target audiences can influence the level of engagement eg. Toyota’s media channels used to promote Prius are different to those used by either Mercedes or Porsche, again this would simply represent segmented buyer behaviours.

But what interested me the most, despite all claims to the contrary, was that the study admitted NO ONE has the data to determine whether there is a direct cause and effect between financial performance and social media engagement. While it claims companies “deeply and widely engaged in social media surpass their peers in terms of both revenue and profit performance by a significant difference”, it also points out these findings don’t necessarily imply a causal relationship between these two but POWERFUL implications, whatever that might mean.

So while it comes as no surprise that one of the least connected brands at 98 was AIG, the world’s most successful brand Coca Cola is tagged as a wallflower and is down at no 51. Go figure the financial relationship there between brand and performance.

There’s nothing particularly revelatory in statements like “a customer oriented mindstep stemming from deep social interaction” generates superior profits thus enabling further engagement investment and a virtuous circle of increasing profits. But social media is, within the primacy of media, a marketing and communications tool for brand engagement in the same way point of sale, packaging, store design, direct mail are.

So how does the Wetpaint/ Altimeter study contribute to the dearth of research on the effectiveness of social media?
1. Social media engagement effectively enables direct and two way communication for the brand. This is new
2. Brand engagement can be better managed and measured via social media
3. The cost and revenues that accrue from this engagement can be directly measured and accounted for
4. Social media is purely digitally driven. Though the by products from which it is derived are not
5. Social media brand engagement is governed by levels of participation in the same way any other engagement is. Active, latent, pro-active etc
6. Social media enables deep and broad brand engagement
6. Digital brands aren’t necessarily social media brands but it doesn’t hurt they are

What the study also reveals is that social media enables brands via this form of agency to quantify the value of the brand engagement and subsequently contribute to brand valuation. The contribution of brand engagement to financial value is already factored in many valuation models but this partition of the contribution is something that can effectively stand alone. We are yet to see how that might happen and who might use this.

So while the WetPaint/Altimeter study contributes to our understanding regarding the level and extent of brand engagement via social media, there’s really not enough evidence here of a direct financial return is not surprising. Indeed page six of the Altimeter report confirms the link between social media engagement and financial performance is not proven. Unlike one of the often quoted quantitative models, the Harvard Business School’s Sears Model, which proves a direct correlation between internal employee brand engagement and financial return in the vicinity of around 20%. .

And another study conducted in June last year for Adobe (not ranked by Wetpaint/Altimeter) by Forrester Consulting developed another model and demonstrated a 66% return. This study examined the total economic impact and potential return on investment companies might realise by increasing investment in engagement initiatives, with an emphasis on using both existing and emerging technology touch points such as social media.

It wasn’t extensive research (200 companies surveyed and six in-depth interviews) but Forrester did use what it calls a Total Economic Impact (TEI) methodology to measure impact. TEI not only measures costs and cost reduction (areas that are typically accounted for within IT) but also weighs the enabling value of a technology in increasing the effectiveness of overall business processes such as customer communication.

Forrester found three main results – firstly, increasing investment in online customer engagement through Internet-based channels improved the efficiency and effectiveness of customer interactions and the customer experience. Secondly, improved efficiency translates to reduced overall cost of sale as well improved internal staff productivity (much like the Sears Model) and thirdly, like the Wetpaint/Altimeter study, improved effectiveness translates to improved top line revenues resulting from higher purchasing frequency and improved customer value. Overall, the value of the ROI around 66%.

However, while the study focused on Adobe products and their introduction as part of a wider technology strategy, it still confirmed one of the main but unproven conclusions from Wetpaint/Altimeter. Those organisations with higher financial returns were those that developed a deep connection with their customers using online channels such as social media, ultimately raising customer awareness and purchase intent. Just ask Dell about its oft cited Twitter experiment.

In a turning bay: some questions on the future of brands in social media.

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Byrne) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 00:42:00 +0000

This is a conversation I had recently on the future of brands and social media with Jenni Beattie, Director at Digital Democracy, a Sydney based digital communications consultancy.

Stephen Byrne: I want to start with some work Forrester did in April last year when they outlined the five phases of the social web. They are:

1) Era of Social Relationships: People connect to others and share

2) Era of Social Functionality: Social networks become like operating system

3) Era of Social Colonization: Every experience can now be social

4) Era of Social Context: Personalized and accurate content

5) Era of Social Commerce: Communities define future products and service

Forrester study found that the technologies will trigger changes in consumer adoption, and brands will need to follow, resulting in these five distinct phases.

I don’t think technologies are going to be the only triggers for new consumer adoption. My view is that the marketing of brands as we know it in a state of flux. What we are seeing, to use a French phrase, is an “eventment”, where for example, social media and technology are combining to mitigate against many of the old marketing paradigms. You only have to look at what’s happening on the agency level.

Jenni Beattie: I believe the marketing of brands as we know it has fundamentally changed. Today consumers expect to have a say, be able to feedback and make a mark on a brand. This can be as simple as using review features on websites to user generated content such as naming a brand.

After spending time in digital market research, you can see how the social web is impacting that discipline. In the past it was very much a parent-child relationship with the researcher asking a very set question and the respondent answering. Today, more interactive forms of research such as online community research are taking place with a more ‘organic’ flow to the questioning i.e. the participants driving and forming part of the research. Good examples of innovative research can be seen from international companies such as Fresh Networks and PeanutLabs.

SB: In the final phase Forrester projects consumers will rely on their peers as they make online decisions, whether or not brands choose to participate. Socially connected consumers will strengthen communities and shift power away from brands and CRM systems; eventually this will result in empowered communities defining the next generation of products.

I’m not sure if I accept this phase. It’s like the worst effects of crowdsourcing and consensus politics. I don’t think we’re going to get an entirely technology driven brands, as Forrester’s analysis implies, but there is certainly some dramatic changes occurring with regards to consumer empowerment and in terms of brand preferences.

JB: There will be an increase in consumers defining products and services. Online branded communities created by Dell, Starbucks and P&G are already helping give customer feedback and in turn helping to define the future products and services.

A good international example of innovation and consumers defining brands was when The Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) of the USA awarded Kettle Foods, Inc. one of the two 2008 Awards for Innovation and Creativity. Kettle Foods, Inc. won the award for its “People’s Choice” campaign. The campaign combined “consumer interaction, PR and R&D into one program. According to the press reports the company has had than 11,000 new business leads, more than 7,000 new flavour suggestions, and 75,000 unique Web site visits all for a low cost investment”

As far as power shifting away from CRM systems I don’t believe that to be the case. CRM will reinvent itself, Gartner refers to this as Social CRM. Gartner analysts say “There’s operational CRM, analytical CRM, and now there’s collaborative or social CRM”. Today CRM budgets are looking towards more social applications such as Twitter that are at the coal-face of customer service.

SB: Right now there seems to be a lot of confusion between social media and the definition of community. The idea of community is right now as fairly elusive one and is being bandied about like it’s some sacrosanct term. Community built around consumption is, for me fairly transitory. It reminds of an unruly mob during the time of the Paris Commune. We’re not going to get a whole lot of sense out of this right now.

Then there’s these dire warnings coming from people like Forrester, that brands will be excluded from consumer choice because somehow they are now being defined by communities and no longer by the brand owners themselves. I think this is both disingenuous and untrue. Forcing brands out of their hands via social media created communities is only part of the story. While even as early as 2005 Tomi Ahonen and Alan Moore warned marketers, in their prescient work Communities Dominate Brands, that if they didn’t cut loose the shackles of the traditional advertising agency and TV network model they would lose their brands. I’m seeing many of the same warnings again this year, particularly in the wake of the great financial crisis. But what real, if any, changes have we seen to this paradigm? No brands have fallen by the wayside because they didn’t have a social media strategy or because they continued advertising in traditional media.

JB: Brands may not fall by the wayside as such but brands will become stronger because of their consumer engagement strategies. For example, the well known Dell Hell scenario certainly impacted on that organization negatively but by engaging with the community they have come back stronger and more relevant to their client base. If they hadn’t done that who knows where that organisation will be.

Some brands come to social media like Dell in a ‘reactive’ fashion knowing they now need to engage with consumers due to a negative event/issue. Other brands initiate the online engagement strategy ‘proactively’, understanding it will add value to their knowledge base, understanding the client better, product development and customer service.

SB: Ahonen and Moore predicted the consumer and their connected communities, would select the products and brands that are engaged in the most relevant dialogue with them. Somehow this would become the centre of a new modern and sustainable marketing model. While I think there are some massive shifts occurring, I don’t think we’re quite there yet with this because I’m not sure anyone understands these kinds of ROIs yet.

JB: First of all, it is important not just to focus on ROI but measurable goals and each company will have varying goals. Social media marketing is typically a long term investment so to set short term ROI goals is going to be difficult. Setting ROI for a specific short-term campaign is more logical i.e. we spent X dollars taking this campaign to the market place and X dollars in sales. There are many intangible benefits from social media marketing such as increased loyalty from customers, insights and R&D innovations and better customer service many of these are hard to equate with a dollar value.

There is a balance when setting ROI expectations. Many social media audits have an AVE advertising value equivalent metric assigned. This stems from the AVE metric that the public relations industry used but discredited about a decade ago saying it was simplistic and backward looking rather than useful for future strategic planning. Unfortunately, just as in the traditional PR world many c-level execs still want the $ figure and so in the social media marketing world the metric is still used but with some hesitation.

SB: There’s already a view that Web 2.0 and pervasiveness of new community archetypes make demographics dead, but I don’t see this is as too different to these axiomatic definitions of community.

JB: If companies were using demographics as the only avenue for ‘understanding ‘ their customer then, yes demographics are dead. Companies need to have a relationship with the customer rather then simply put them in isolated boxes. Let’s face it boomers today don’t act like middle-aged people years ago – times have changed so the context for those demographics has to change as well.

As far as using demographics to reach consumers via social media marketing, that is still relevant but rather than just understanding income levels and postcodes we need to understand how they relate online and what sites they are using. We need to understand their technographic profile. For example, women 55 plus and men 55 plus operate differently online understanding this will mean you can engage with them more effectively.

Gartner published research on what they call Generation V (virtual) indicating that the generation isn’t defined by specific demographics but by the way they use technology i.e. a behavioural categorisation. Elements of this categorisation incude accomplishments, how they build and share knowledge and their preference for different media channels.

Let’s not throw out the ‘baby with the bathwater’ demographics are not dead but demographic elements need to be relevant to social media marketing.

SB: One of the things I am seeing is the built around the question of measuring influence in social networks and communities. I’m not sure if brands are really measuring this and how much use, if any, they are making of influence metrics.

JB: There are a myriad of ways to measure influence in social networks and the impact of social media marketing. Normally there is a mix of qualitative and quantitative measurements.

To set your measurements you need to set your marketing objectives and relate the metrics to those. For example, if you want to raise awareness of a new product or service attention metrics such as the amount of views of your content are important if you are after sales metrics than you need to look at actionable clicks rather than just views.

I like to break the metrics down into Visibility Metrics (i.e. getting seen) and Engagement Metrics (what people do once they see your content site). So, for example. engagement metrics would include items such as links shared, comments on blogs etc.

SB: I don’t think we’re really in a position to say that brands and companies without a social media strategy are going to find that customers will go elsewhere.

JB: Yes, It may not be quite as apocalyptic as that but recent research looking at brand relationships has shown that on average they are 15% stronger for digital consumers. Even products such as motor fuel and hair care (as shown below) can be impacted favourably by engaging with the consumers online.

Some brands will have more synergy with social media marketing than others. A good example is the non-profit area, where there is already a lot of passion and energy around their company or cause. For example, the United Nations Refugee Agency recently launched their Causes page on Facebook. They reached 50,000 members in just under seven days, raised just over $50,000 and boosted their Facebook fan page to 20,000 fans.

Having said that even brands that you would think would have less ‘talkability’ in social media such as tax (think H&R Block) have done well using social media strategies.

Let’s not forget that while some may think that social media marketing is radical and very new in reality Doc Searls and David Weinberger (the founders of The Cluetrain Manifesto) were spouting social media marketing many years ago.

SB: One of the problems is how social commerce is really going to work. Given the growing failure of traditional advertising in almost all media forms, the real question now is how are brands going to be sold in the future.

Facing the break boundary: how advertising agency models no longer work.

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Byrne) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 06:31:00 +0000

I attracted a lot of traffic recently to this blog from some comments I made on AdAge on the commoditisation of agencies. One of the things I said was that the traditional agency model was no longer relevant and agencies needed to either adapt or die. And as the makers of a new season of MadMen announced this week its to premiere in the fall, I began to look around for some new thinking on the traditional agency model and found, as market analysts might say, there’s not a lot of guidance. So here’s mine:

1. The agency model as we know it now well over 70 years old and is tied to media types whose basis was honed during the 1930s and 1940s. Agencies are now at a significant break boundary.
2. On the basis of measured spending alone, there is a question over the continued viability of agency models as billable spends are in significant decline across all segments, except digital, research and PR
3. The full service agency model is no longer a differentiator
4. Increased concentration of agency ownership into massive global networks enshrines the traditional agency model to it's detriment
5. Vertical integration of the agency model and its assumption from within by client organisations foils agency growth expectations
6. Enhanced technologies disintermediates agencies and enables client side assumption of agency value add services on a lower cost basis
7. The increasing ineffectiveness of traditional agency work is a direct consequence of a fractured and media environment

Now let’s look at the foundation of all this sturm and drang.

1. The traditional advertising agency model is dying because traditional media advertising and marketing is in state of extreme fragmentation and change.
What we are seeing is what media theorist Marshall McLuhan described in his seminal 1967 work Understanding Media what economist Kenneth Boulding called a "break boundary, a point at which the system suddenly changes into another or passes some point of no return in its dynamic processes” .

Understanding Media 38

“One of the most common causes of breaks in any system is the cross-fertilization with another system, such as happened to print with the steam press, or with radio and movies (that yielded the Talkies). Today with microfilm and micro-cards, not to mention electric memories, the printed word assumes again much of the handicraft character of a manuscript. But printing from movable type was, itself, the major break boundary in the history of phonetic literacy, just as the phonetic alphabet had been the break boundary between tribal and individualist man.

In the last ten years we have seen a number of significant break boundaries as traditional media forms, in particular, newspapers and magazines, largely abandoned by both readers and advertisers in favour of screen based digital delivery of both content and advertising alongside increased usage and proliferation of connected screen based devices.

While many agencies have tried adapt to this with development of digital arms, media planning and more recently, social media – the traditional agency has distinctly failed and is failing. The “MadMen” of the synonymous television series are now mere nostalgia.

2. In the first quarter of 2009 measured ad spending in the US declined by 14%.

MEDIA SECTOR
Media Type (shown in rank order of 2009 spending) % CHANGE

TELEVISION MEDIA -9.7%
Network TV -4.2%
Cable TV -2.7%
Spot TV -27.5%
Syndication - National 0.2%
Spanish Language TV -15.4%

MAGAZINE MEDIA -20.5%
Consumer Magazines -19.2%
B-to-B Magazines -25.5%
Sunday Magazines -23.7%
Local Magazines -25.3%
Spanish Language Magazines -20.5%

NEWSPAPER MEDIA -25.5%
Newspapers (Local) -25.1%
National Newspapers -28.5%
Spanish Language Newspapers -21.6%

INTERNET (display ads only) 8.2%

RADIO MEDIA -26.2%
Local Radio -26.8%
National Spot Radio -31.7%
Network Radio -11.2%

OUTDOOR -14.6%

TOTAL -14.2%
Source: TNS Media Intelligence 2009

According to TNS, the old media triumvirate of radio, newspapers and TV are the most heavily impacted. The global financial crisis has had a more profound effect on the advertising and marketing industry than predicted, a survey released in February by the US Association of National Advertisers revealed 93 percent of companies were identifying cost savings and reductions as opposed to 87 percent in a similar survey conducted by the ANA six months previously. Further, 37 percent of respondents planned to reduce budgets by more than 20 percent, up substantially from the 21 percent of respondents in the first survey. The top five areas where marketers planned to reduce costs or expenditures in marketing and advertising efforts were:

i)Departmental travel and expense restrictions (87 percent, versus 63 percent in the previous survey)
ii)Reducing advertising campaign media budgets (77 percent, versus 69 percent in the previous survey)
iii)Reducing advertising campaign production budgets (72 percent, versus 63 percent in the previous survey)
iv)Challenging agencies to reduce internal expenses and/or identify cost reductions (68 percent, versus 63 percent in the previous survey)
v) Eliminating or delaying new projects (58 percent versus 61 percent in the previous survey)

In this respect, agencies can no longer rely simply on expanding revenues from media and production budgets. The likelihood that these budgets will return to pre-GFC levels is unlikely given a number of break boundaries have now been crossed.

3. The mass commoditisation of the full service agency model is now increasingly contributing to its decline. The "full service" agency model is an anachronism belonging to 1950s MadMen, when creative and placement were the two axis under which an agency billed. The continued adoption of full service agency models are a failed attempt to roll all aspects of marketing and communication into a single place. Few agencies now succeed because now most can never competently and completely deliver on the whole service offer. Words like “360”, “holistic” and “integrated” are bandied about like some kind of emblematic imprimatur but there are 1000s of these agencies in the world and they all say and do the same thing.

4. In 2008 nearly 40% of all global advertising was managed by just four companies Omnicom ($13.359 billion), WPP ($12.27b) Interpublic ($6.693b) and Publicis ($5.1b) but according to a 2008 Harvard Business School study on concentration levels in the US advertising and marketing services (A&MS) industry concluded “the four largest holding companies captured between a fifth and a quarter of total revenue from the A&MS industry, a share that remained quite stable over the period 2002-2006. These estimates are lower by an order of magnitude than estimates often cited in the trade press.” However, the same study estimated that for US government censuses conducted between 1977 and 2002, the actual number of firms and establishments in advertising and marketing services increased at compound annual growth rates of between two and four per cent. But in 1997 long-term growth (coinciding with exponential digital growth) ended and the number of firms and establishments actually decreased from their 1992 levels. This decline continued in 2002 and continues.

So this decline in long-term industry growth is not only forcing concentration from within the industry at the network level but also to a further concentration of service offering to meet revenue expectations and as the number of firms with billable work continues to fall.

5. Increasing backward integration of marketing and advertising functions by client organisations poses a significant threat to agency survival. Last year the US Association of National Advertisers (ANA) released preliminary findings from a survey of large national advertisers and found 42 percent of ANA member firms had established internal advertising units. Cost efficiencies and savings were reported as the major reasons for pursuing the in-house route. The most effected areas, according to a 2008 Harvard Business School study on bringing advertising agency functions in-house, were technology industries (e.g., electronics, instruments) and the creative industries (e.g., publishing, motion pictures).

6. In a post on his blog in 2007 Scott Carp ex- Atlantic Monthly head of digital and founder and publisher of publishing website 2.0 announced:

“Madison Avenue should be afraid — very afraid. Online advertising is all about scaling the infinite complexity of thousands of media channels and thousands of micro targeted ad messages — yeah, like AdWords and AdSense. Sure, it’s going to be much harder for Google to pull this off with video and brand advertising, but in order for Madison Avenue to compete it’s going to have to be completely dismantled and rebuilt .

Of course, Yahoo and Microsoft (and let’s not forget WPP) are also competing with Madison Avenue — and with Google to become the ultimate vertically integrated media and advertising company .

But the game is all about scaling — and when it comes to scaling, Google will be hard to beat.”

Carp’s right on most counts. Google might be failing with YouTube but does beat agencies at their own game. Last month it even opened Agencyland, an educational portal for advertising agencies designed to educate agency staff on Google Advertising and also help bridge the gap between Google and the agencies. But Google’s global advertising system which its built on Adwords and DIY model is designed to bring a better ROI to advertisers, and for easier monetization for TV, cable, gaming and online publishers. Microsoft is already heading down the same route and places like LinkedIn and Facebook already allow users to effectively create, place and track limited but highly effective micro-targetted campaigns.

7. Not only is traditional advertising effectiveness in decline but the work of agencies themselves is being increasingly called into question. Even as far back as 2005 advertising and marketing theorist Philip Kotler predicted advertising agencies needed to transform themselves into communication agencies. Though many agencies say they have gone down this track, from the 90s its been largely media and digital agencies who have done this, while network owners have resorted to broadening skill reach usually via acquisition to offer clients the benefits of a full integrated agency network. In the end, the traditional agency, has been left largely untouched as have been the measures of its effectiveness. Awards nights for advertising effectiveness or creative design being seen to somehow assuage client incredulity over campaign success and fail. I don’t know how many pieces of creative work I have seen that lack any real ROI, even when it’s been a specific assessment criteria or when a campaign has been deemed a success largely on the basis of viewership figures alone. Set this against the granularity of data offered from digital, where every week one agency or another goes out to market with a new measure of advertising effectiveness such as Compete who launched yet another digital advertising effectiveness measurement system. Still traditional media doesn't seem to giving up. Just this week MRI in the US debuted its AdMeasure report, which aims to put magazine publishing ad effectiveness on the same level as digital.

Earlier this week Forrester Research reported that 60% of marketers surveyed would increase their digital spend by shifting funds from traditional spend. Direct mail most cited by 40% of marketers as being one being cut followed by newspapers (35%), magazines (28%) and television (12%). And while many agencies and their clients continue to create “interesting” advertising as in a recent Harris/AdWeek poll, interesting doesn’t quite equal influence. Nor purchase. Nor survival.

The limits of Google.

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Byrne) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 11:00:00 +0000

Last month Millward Brown Optimor published their fourth annual BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands rankings and would have you believe Google's brand is worth exactly $100 billion. While I have debated the worth of these kinds of valuations and surveys in previous blogs, in the wake of the impending release of the Google Wave, it now seems a good time to consider the limits of the brand.

Some people think Google breaks the brand model i.e. no advertising on its home page, no advertising per se but both these measures are merely symbolic. While Google may have inspired what many see as a form of brand disruption, is game changing and is somehow Schumpeterian, it is a behemoth brand utilizing both the common architecture associated with monolithic status as well as exhibiting a traditional set of values not unlike Apple and Virgin.

Similarly, you could argue that Google has unlimited potential as a brand and its brand extensions merely reflect this. However, while Google is a highly successful company but with 97% of its revenues coming from Web advertising and 68% of that from advertising on its own Web sites, it is still very much a single proposition company.

Google’s market dominance means it has virtually reached the limits of organic growth and anything further can only come from transformation via acquisition and perhaps through product and service development, in much the same way Apple has. Sure it’s testing the field with Wave, Chrome and Android, which appear to be the spearheads of a greater platform strategy but if we take YouTube as an example of expansion by acquisition, it seems fairly evident that Google is a one-trick pony.

Since its 2006 acquisition of YouTube revenue estimates have varied wildly with analysts like Bear Stearns and Credit Suisse suggesting Google will see between $90 -240 million in revenues this year. It’s a big range but as the number three brand on the internet YouTube only made around $80 million last year and while that’s no small potatoes, it is struggling. Given Google’s 2006 acquisition of YouTube came with a $1.65billion price tag and Credit Suisse estimates operating costs at around $711 million this year. Therefore it’s reasonabl e to assume that despite Google’s deep pockets, the operating gap is not going to be tolerated for too long.

So what does this mean for the Google brand? Of course, YouTube’s traffic will continue to grow exponentially, with no clear end in sight as will the not inconsiderable cost of this business. Set this against mildly successful efforts at monetizing content via advertising and the overall state of the advertising market and you come back to the central problem for YouTube and ultimately, Google. The non-propietary nature of both its search engine and content that forms the basis of the Google brand and proposition is, at the same time, its achilles heel.

To get further understand these limits, look at the performance and what I see as the eventual fate of Yahoo. Like Google, nearly all of Yahoo’s revenue comes from search and display advertising. Since Google’s 2004 float Yahoo has been losing share in search and though Yahoo is still the second most popular search engine, its searches are inferior. While Yahoo’s content continues to attract users for the moment, its search traffic is secondary to choice of Yahoo as a portal. The problem is that while content from the portal generally helps generate search traffic, yet without either distinctive content (everyone accepts that content is no longer a competitive advantage) and superior search, Yahoo is going to decline. What is best described, as Yahoo’s kitchensink approach to both content and feature development, is not disimmilar to that of Google’s. In this market “innovation” is a very tired word. Yahoo has Flickr. Google Picasa. Yahoo has Finance. Google Finance. Yahoo has Mail. Google Gmail and now Wave. Yahoo has Groups. Google Groups. Now just think of Google’s failures with News, Lively, Orkut and Knol and then apply that to a similar Yahoo’s list of failures or better still AOL, its hard not to draw the conclusion that the direction for both brands is anywhere but down.

On revenue and market performance measures alone, Yahoo is a sombre example of how little stock one can place in single proposition revenue models. In 2004 Yahoo reported net income of about $238 million and had a market value of about $36 billion. At the same time Google's stock market value was around $16 billion based on a net income of around $106 million. Microsoft’s offer for Yahoo last year put its market value $45 billion, against a brand valuation 7.45 billion. It had barely moved and most people thought Microsoft was being generous and Yahoo missed the boat. Now with the rankings reversed and sobriety entering market valuations, Google’s Wave is looking like no tsunami.

This blog was originally published in Marketing Magazine on 11 June 2009.

Before your eyes: how our media use is a history of screens.

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Byrne) — Sun, 24 May 2009 10:15:00 +0000

A short history of screens.

1. Around 1600 the camera obscura is perfected. Light is inverted through a small hole or lens from outside, and projected onto a surface or screen, creating a moving image
2. Mechanisms for producing two-dimensional drawings in motion were displayed in public halls by devices such as the zoetrope, mutoscope and praxinoscope were displayed in the 1860s
3. The development of the motion picture camera allows individual component images to be captured and stored on a single reel, "motion pictures” are shown onto a screen for an entire audience in the 1880s
4. The first commercially made electronic television with a cathode ray tube is manufactured by Telefunken in Germany in 1934
5. The first call on a hand-held mobile phone is made on April 3 1973
6. Apple Computers introduce the Apple II, the world’s first personal computer in 1977
7. Mattel introduce the first handheld electronic game Auto Race in 1977

According to the results of a landmark consumer media consumption research study released in March, it comes as no surprise that our dedication to screens know no bounds.

The research, commissioned by the US media measurement company Nielsen Media and its US Council for Research Excellence, followed 372 Americans in two full days of live media observation.

It was was designed to simultaneously observe and measure media exposure, life activities, locations for media use and where people spent their day. The mass observation study took place in six geographically disperse cities across the US. The final sample included 952 observed days and over three-quarters-of-a-million minutes of observation. A not insubstantial study.

The study found we spend on average, 67 percent of our total daily media time with live TV screen-based media (including DVRs, DVDs and games), about two minutes a day watching video via the Internet, and only a fraction of a minute watching mobile video. Even among 18-24-year-olds, the average amount of time spent watching live TV (209.9 minutes) surpassed even computer screen time (169.5 minutes).

If, as the study identifies, our total concurrent media consumption across all forms of media runs to eight and half hours per day, it also confirms our lives are now more tuned to screen time than first thought.

The research shows concurrent media use and exposure is almost the same for all age groups, media choice so rapidly changing that computer-based activities have replaced radio as our number two media. US consumers now spend on average two hours and thirty-three minutes on a computer, but only one hour and 49 minutes with a radio.

Contrary to current thinking, young demographics are not the biggest consumers of media. While the average adult spent 309.1 minutes watching live TV and 14.6 minutes playing back programming via DVR, the biggest consumers of media were in the 45-54 demographic or what the study called a “digital boomer.” Digital boomers spend nine and half hours per day using all four screens (TV, computer, mobile and out-of-home such as kiosks) compared to eight and half hours for all other age groups.

One of the most interesting findings was that on average live TV users were only exposed to roughly an hour a day of advertising and promotions. If proven by subsequent studies, this debunks much of what is claimed around the level of brand message exposure per day (at around 3000). As most live television advertising runs at 15 minutes per hour or so, on the basis of figures quoted in the study, these should be two hours on television alone or around 240 messages on live TV at 30 seconds per message). What’s difficult in this measure was “exposure” remains undefined and so do they mean a viewer actually watching advertising or just appearance? My assumption is they are defining it as active participation. For example, during the live TV commercial breaks people were observed shifting their primary attention to media such as print, phone and computing. This data seems to prove a widely-held but strongly debated view that consumers are avoiding most of advertising in programming when they view live TV. The long held view that consumers still “follow” a brand message as they shift from one media to the next also seems to be questionable.

The study now ranks computer-based time as the number two media category after live TV. Including web use, email, software and internet messsaging, computing time exceeded broadcast radio average duration by 40 per cent. The study suggests computing has now replaced radio as the number two media activity. Radio is now number three and print number four. Print covered major US newspaper and magazines with use around 22 to 41 minutes per day. Claims for the death of print are no longer an exaggeration.

The Council for Research Excellence study shows our typical daily media consumption goes beyond TV to a growing prevalence of new digital screen-based channels. One of the by-products is the finding that suggests we may actually be seeing far less advertising than first thought. Indeed, high levels of media exposure and our attentiveness to advertising may be seemingly unrelated and those oft cited high levels of advertising exposure, possibly no more than a frabrication by media planning and advertising agencies.

While the screen and our fascination with the images upon it have been around for centuries; the variety of screen-based communication channels, our use of their content continues to expand and grow at speed.

Portions of this blog were originally published in the Times of Malta's Technology Sunday supplement on Sunday 24 May and in Marketing Magazine Australia on Tuesday May 26.

DIFFUSION for national adoption brands.

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Byrne) — Tue, 12 May 2009 07:37:00 +0000

DIFFUSION have been appointed to develop the brands of Orphan Angels and Australia's National Adoption Awareness Week.

National Adoption Awareness Week, which will be held this year from November 16-22, aims to encourage, listen and acknowledge all adoption-related journeys and experiences.

Orphan Angels, founded by Deborra-lee Furness and Janine Weir, focuses on assisting global orphan projects and improving Australia 's adoption practices. One of its major projects is the National Adoption Awareness Week.

Orphan Angels President Janine Weir said the group was excited to be working with DIFFUSION as it looked to develop both Orphan Angels and the National Adoption Awareness Week brands.

“This year we’re looking to create even more connections between Australians who are touched by adoption. DIFFUSION’s appointment will enables us to better understand how we can use brand to leverage it and encourage more participation in this year’s event,” she said.

DIFFUSION strategy director Stephen Byrne said the agency was excited with the appointment, given the group’s work was high profile and the agency was continuing to expand its work with organisations that had both national and international reach as well as important social agendas.

DIFFUSION was recently appointed to develop the brand strategy for the Lowy Cancer Research Centre at the University of NSW.

When brands fail, does brand valuation too?

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Byrne) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 00:03:00 +0000

Last month Wally Olins, the man synonymous with the London brand agency that still bears his name, pronounced brand valuation an “utterly meaningless process”.

The bedrock on which many brand consultancies, accounting and valuation firms have built their reputations and practices, Olins pulls no punches on the value of brand valuation, describing it as “about as meaningful as sticking your wet finger in the wind and shouting out a number.”

He says this “ apparently rational process” is conducted through a “series of complex, arcane and to a lay mind more or less incomprehensible statistical measurements” but which ignores a number of well known truths.

“The truth is that brands of all kinds jump around all the time. They are in fashion, then they go out of fashion. They are well managed, then they are badly managed; brand managers become too risk averse or take too many risks.”

And his point is well made. Here in Australia we only need to look at a company like Babcock and Brown (B&B). Founded in 1977, this international finance and investment company had at one time 28 offices and in excess of 1,500 employees worldwide including offices in Europe and the United States. In December 2006 it had a market capitalisation of just over $8.5 billion and in 2007 its share price peaked at AU$33.90 but by December 2008 its share price had nose-dived by 99.6% to AU$0.14, representing a market capitalisation of less than $50 million. Last week the company was placed into voluntary administration.

Here Olins’ point is easy to support. Obviously, if a brand like B&B has no financial value (as the B&B board announced in January) - on what basis can any brand valuation be made?

Similarly, as BusinessWeek ranked Citibank the number 11 brand in the world in 2007 with a valuation of U$23 billion by 2009 some estimates put its brand value at around $9 billion and with that its ranking would fall to around number 40. No one can or would dare predict what Citibank’s brand value will be by the end of 2009. And given the level of US government assistance (US$25 billion to date), it’s brand may yet cease to exist (like I saw Washington Mutual close it’s doors and disappear overnight) and what then is the meaning of any valuation?

It Olins is does oversimplify of the brand valuation process in that it does examine both net present value as well as attempts to construct an idea of future value. However, he is right about how often brand valuation is trumpetted as an absolute measure of value and that, almost without exception in most valuations I have seen, the process takes no account of what either customer or market perception and sentiments is for a brand.

And Olins is only half right when he says brands have “no objective, absolute value” but the truth is that brand valuation can be used to establish an objective value but its ability to measure “absolute” value that is somewhat questionable.

The four standard brand valuation methodologies accepted by both the Financial and Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board for use on balance sheets around the world do provide an objective guide to what people should pay for brands. However, they can, in no way, be used to demonstrate absoluteness

The real fact is that by any measure there has only been a small reduction in the brand value of most of the world’s top brands and as market conditions and sentiments change values continue to change. Last week brands like Apple, Google, UPS and Amgen were being touted as possible replacements in the venerable Dow Jones Industrial Average for stricken companies like Citi Group, General Motors and General Electric.

Brand values do reflect balance sheets, market trends and sentiment but can only do their best to take account of black swan moments. In that way there can be no absolutes, and that is meaningless.

This blog was also cross-posted in Marketing Magazine Australia on March 17.

DIFFUSION's take on taglines out in India.

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Byrne) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:18:00 +0000

We're out in the world.

DIFFUSION strategy director Stephen Byrne quoted in a new article published this month by leading Indian business and marketing magazine, 4Ps.

DIFFUSION branding new Lowy Cancer Research Centre.

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Byrne) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 01:36:00 +0000

Shameless plug but here's our latest press release:

Strategic branding agency DIFFUSION have been appointed to develop the brand strategy for the new Lowy Cancer Research Centre.

The $127 million research facility is being built at the University of New South Wales’ Kensington campus to house 400 cancer researchers from both UNSW and the Children’s Cancer Institute Australia for Medical Research (CCIA).

It will be one of the largest dedicated cancer research centres in the southern hemisphere and Australia’s only fully integrated adult and childhood centre.

DIFFUSION strategy director Stephen Byrne said the agency was excited with the appointment, given the Centre’s important work and international reach.

Martin Lindstrom's Buyology: why every idea you ever had about why we buy won't be changed by what you read here.

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Byrne) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:40:00 +0000

Sydney-based author Martin Lindstrom’s Buy-ology might have made a brief appearance on the New York Times bestseller list in November buoyed by some good reviews, but by my standards and those professional marketers, strategists and critics of neuroscience around the world, its a mishmash of spectacularly insubstantial claims drawn from a single set of research experiments backed by cribbed online references and enthusiastic, anecdotal and sometimes annoying marketing evangelism.   

The whole premise of Buy-ology is that brand and purchase decisions are not made on any rational basis but by stimulation to certain sections of the brain. Lindstrom’s neuromarketing experiments use two types of brain-scan technology - functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and SST, an advanced form of electroencephalography (EEG) - to test how various marketing stimuli can affect the subconscious. While the book quotes a number of well known research studies and runs to over two hundred pages, less than a quarter is actually devoted to detailing and recording the results of its four experiments, its the entire basis for his argument.

So here’s the four earth shattering results Lindstrom claims may set off “the biggest branding revolution in 50 years”. It will save you buying this book.

The first experiment, using SST-ECG measured the impact of product placement in television programming and finds that “ we have no memory of the brands that don’t play an integral part of the storyline of a program”. The second, using fMRI on cigarette smokers, tested the effects of “overt, direct and visually stimulating images” and its relationship with subliminal advertising, finding that its iconography and images themselves not logos that actually stimulate purchase behaviour. The third experiment using fMRI tested whether “sports, and sports heroes activate the same areas of the brand as religions did” showed “the emotions we experience when we are exposed to strong brands” is similar if not “almost identical” to the emotions generated by religious symbols. Finally, his fourth experiment, using fMRI on an unknown number of subjects (Lindstrom forgets to tell us how many participated in half these experiements) was designed to “determine whether a signature sound – like the Nokia ring tone – makes a brand more less attractive”. The shocking result: most brands do well when “sound and vision are combined in a congruent way”. Unless you’re Nokia because after a decade or so of use, its ringtone now has a strong aural disassociation. Lindstrom found this result so disturbing he had to give the company a call and tell them!

Lindstrom claims all these “controversial” and “spectacular” findings come from a three-year, $7 million experiment testing 2081 volunteers in the US and Europe (he says they were also from Japan and China but I can’t find these in the results). Buy-ology doesn’t substantiate either the costs or the length of the study period. For example, the commercial cost of fMRI can be around US$525 per hour with standard scans taking around an hour. New fMRI scanners cost anywhere between US$1m and $2.3m and portable scanners around US$2m, so perhaps he had to buy a scanner or two but I seriously doubt this. The point is that he only conducted three fMRI experiments on at least 65 people. Also the standard cost of an ECG scan in the US can range from U$100 to more than $500, depending on the purpose and type of test i.e., asleep or awake, invasive vs non-invasive electrode implantation. Lindstrom’s was non-invasive and his 400 subjects were awake. You do the math.

Untested is Lindstrom's discussion of mirror neurons, behavioural priming and somatic markers, which he tries to draw a line from his own experiments via some scholarly studies he found online. But Lindstrom’s experiments do attract an even bigger question about neuroscience and marketing – whether this kind of research is actually a useful predictor of behaviour. Lindstrom might be fairly certain of this science but most critics of the use of such limited research insist it's too early in the field of neuromarketing to draw these kinds of absolute conclusions. According to Sheffield University School of Psychology Professor Lawrence Parsons, “we don't really know what we are seeing when we watch the brain work. Is it the thing itself - the thought, the flash of insight - or just an aspect of it, the bark rather than the dog?”

It’s clear to me Lindstrom’s claims require substantial research to draw any probable link between the outcomes of these experiments and predictors of future purchase behaviour. Right now his results just show a degree of correlation between stimulation and behaviour, they don’t prove a single basis of causation.

Last year I read a New Yorker article on the roots of psychopathy, describing how researchers have being using a portable fMRI scanner to scan the brains of US prison inmates to uncover the basis of psychopathy. It suggests that if a “biological basis for psychopathy could be established” then pharmacological treatments could be developed. Might not similar treatments be developed for behaviours such as impulse buying and mall rage? These experiments have been conducted for years and have drawn the kinds of accusations which put them in the same category as nineteenth century phrenology. Yet, unlike Lindstrom, none of these researchers dare draw any final conclusions. The field, like neuromarketing is so new, researchers believe they will need more to spend the next ten years and maybe another 10000 scans linked to prisoner DNA, biographical data and case histories before anyone thinks the data makes sense.

In one interview last year Lindstrom said, “If I wrote a serious, heavy book, no consumers would read it” and a trawl through Amazon reader reviews on Buy-ology will confirm that. A Some advertising agency planners might like this book and a few business and industry people might be gobsmacked, but you won’t read anything here you don’t already know already or can’t find online. But if you like this kind of marketing sooth saying the globetrotting Lindstrom will be in New York and San Francisco in March presenting his exclusive Buy-ology symposiums, digging “wider and deeper than it was possible in the book alone, into the research findings and their implications for marketers and advertisers”. I can’t wait.

This review was also published in Marketing Magazine Australia blog on 19 January .

See this is the future of television2: new broadcast business models need airing.

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Byrne) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 03:24:00 +0000

As television audiences and ultimately revenues from traditional advertising continue to erode, free-to-air (FTA)network broadcasters need to move towards new business models, better embrace brand opportunities and adopt increasingly newer technologies.

While in Australia and throughout the rest of the western world, network television is still widely regarded as the best means to deliver the highest number of eyeballs for an advertiser. Increasingly this view is being challenged. First, by the decline in core audience numbers and secondly, from generational abandonment by would-be viewers who can now source their information and entertainment needs from a variety of media sources that sit outside traditional FTA business models.

While the ownership models of FTAs have changed, revenues have remained high and consistent for the past decade and there continues to be increasing aggregation to more whole-of-media models (where media ownership laws permit), there is little change in the way current revenues are realised.

Globally FTA networks are still stuck in a late 1940s model of advertising and sponsorship (worse still are newspapers whose models are more 18th century) barely moving beyond offering air-time to sell soap powders since the first broadcasts in the 1930s.

In 2007 total Australian FTA advertising revenues rose to $3.7 billion, an increase of only 8% from 2006 (ThinkTV/Free TV Advertising Revenues, 2008). Pay or subscription TV with revenues of $275 million, deriving around 92% of revenue from subscription, appears to have also stalled at 27% penetration in Australia despite advertising growth of around 29%. However, this seems unlikely to rise, even with adoption of personal video recorders (PVRs) such as TiVO or Foxtel's IQ.

Against this total Australian internet advertising revenues increased 34.5% to $1.34 billion. According to AdNews online advertising revenues represented the fastest growing media sector, only surpassed by total print media at $4.7billion and total TV revenues.

While FTA’s obviously enjoy a predominant position in Australian and other global media consumption in 2007, the 8% increase in advertising revenue can mainly be attributed to rate card increases.

And while they have sort to extend their brands and access to online advertising dollars through joint ventures with predominately US owned portals. Jointly, the combined media of Nine MSN, Yahoo7 and News Digital media have a market share less than 15% of the total online advertising market.

It is now generally accepted that audiences for FTA are in decline and this is likely to worsen. Between 2001-5 it was 1.4% annually or 5.6% compounded, leading the charge is the 16-39 demographic, who have declined almost 17% in absolute terms across the same period.

The flight from FTA viewing reflects a broadcasting landscape that has become less about centralised technology and more about access viewers or users have and engagement to content via a variety of platforms and devices.

In March 2008 the Boston Consulting Group warned FTA networks were in danger of losing significant revenue because they were not connecting with viewers but in reality there was no significant change throughout 2008.

So rather than fear the move away from traditional models that have changed little since the birth of television, FTA broadcasters may find embracing the brave new world is not the death knell but an opportunity for new business models and revenue streams through better brand and audience engagement. There are four I believe could work.

1. The Social Network model

This model is around a network portal where a consumer can get their information, social and entertainment needs met in one place. This would allow someone to manage, distribute and mix and match media as it is loaded onto a device of choice and share this directly with communities of interest. In the future, a FTA may look a lot more like a cross between FaceBook, Google and YouTube. The Social Network will also enable advertisers to target individuals directly or as a group and more precisely as they will choose to self identify, often on the basis of receiving free content or because they want to know about an advertiser’s product. This makes them both highly valued and a targeted set of eyeballs for an advertiser and enhances revenue opportunities.

2. The Long Tail

FTA networks have been relatively poor in optimising their return from commissioned and original programming. In a long tail scenario, an FTA could both bundle and sell branded programming of any vintage and in any classification via aggregator stores of their own creation or through established outlets such as iTunes, Amazon and Hulu. All of this could be contained within variant pricing models, dependent on the nature and type of of viewer demand.

3. Contextual programming device neutral

In much the same way YouTube is now streaming to a variety of mobile devices and most recently TiVo, contextual programming model derives its income from a pay per view independent of the device. This will enable the FTA networks to maintain control of content as the content it will continue to be stored by the network or its proxy and stream to the chosen device. Further, viewers may choose to receive advertising in exchange for lower content charges. This is way beyond current deals done on offer for mobile television by mobile phone carriers in Australia with the most recent examples, Vodafone’s newly launched Mobile TV or Telstra's BigPond TV.

4. Increased branded merchandising and branded product placement in original network owned programming

US research company PQ Media estimated that Australian companies spent A$137.8 million placing products and brands in TV programs and films in 2005. Australia is the third-biggest product placement market in the world. Against total revenues, contribution for branded merchandising and products this represents less than 0.4% . In 2007 US product placement grew by an estimated 31% with projected spending of $3.79 billion across film and television. In the branded merchandise area, even the lowly SBS network made $48m in 2007 from business interests, including branded merchandise versus $37m from advertising. There are massive and unrealised potential opportunities for FTAs to exploit this area - both in building their own brands (an area they seem to overlook), in network owned production and through product placement opportunities.

While most FTA networks are unlikely to publicly acknowledge their diminishing returns for their advertisers, they urgently need to look at new business models which better identify what and to whom they are delivering and where they can attact new income streams. Up to now FTA network business seems to have ignored the massive changes which have occurred in the rest of media and other sectors, perhaps because their product has continued to be delivered free into low cost devices. So while FTA network owners and shareholders may see some comfort in rising advertising revenues, what does seems inevitable like an inverse version of Moore’s law, is change and like newspapers, some kind of arresting demise.

AusSports viral video has a lend of Brits.

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Byrne) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 22:36:00 +0000

After being trounced by the British at the Olympics, the Australian Sport’s Commission's new viral campaign to attract rising Australian sports stars for 2012 Games has caused a bit of a stir back in the Mother Country.

AuSports “Let's rip those Brits to bits” campaign has caused a minor furore, with the Pommy press unsure whether to take the portrayal as a national insult or a bit of a lark with even the Sunday Times drawn into the debate asking if “the Aussies have lost the plot?”.

“It reflects the depth of feeling among Australians that Britain finished above them in the Beijing medals table last summer and the determination of the Canberra government to redress the balance in four years’ time,” said the Times on the weekend.

The AusSports viral video campaign, developed by Sydney digital agency Bullseye, features a London chav in a hoodie, taunting young Australians about our low Beijing medal count and baiting them to stand up and be counted for the 2012 Olympics in London.

AuSports’ National Talent Identification and Development Program senior manager Morag Croser said it was anticipating a return serve from the British as a result of the campaign, despite the fact it’s not even the target.

She said AuSports expected British indignation would “be forthcoming" and I think retaliation even swifter.

The Poms took bragging to a whole new level after it finished with 19 gold medals to our 14 in China as it looks to cement a place in the pantheon. spending US$375m on its elite athletes in the London Olympics run-up compared to Australia’s US$140m.

AuSports said sporting superpowers America and China have talent pools in excess of four and 22 million respectively; the campaign is designed to increase the size of Australia’s pool, which AusSports puts at only 280,000 people.

It’s a point of national pride that we see ourselves as one of world’s leading sporting countries punching well above weight in Olympics since 1988. But being beaten by the Brits in the medal tally or, for that matter, being beaten by them in any sport is seen as somewhat of a national disgrace.

This blog originally appeared in AdAge on 17 December.

Questionable identity: what General Motors can learn from adaptive instability.

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Byrne) — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 21:08:00 +0000

Anticipating and mitigating the dramatic impact of organisational inertia on transformational brand programs can help companies better cope with a constantly shifting economic environment. Just ask US car makers.

It’s a key finding from a recent study by Harvard Business School’s Mary Tripsas on the interplay of “Technology, Identity and Inertia” within a new technology company.

While there is a wealth of knowledge around the brand dynamics that contribute to forming identity, Tripsas believes the specific relationships between brand, change and technology and the impact of inertia remain unexplored.

Tripsas’ study challenges the existing zeitgeist by arguing broader brand identities impose fewer constraints on how people view organisations. She believes those with more generic brands are better able to weather a range of changing external conditions because they can align with our wider expectations of what their brands mean.

Broader brand identities and brand architecture create flexibility for a company since they enable a form of adaptive instability.

Adaptive instability works when the external labelling of a company’s brand is fairly constant but enables an internal self label which can reflect internal shifts in a brand. BHP Billiton might be “a mining company” to all of us but it currently self identifies as “a global leader in the resources industry”, reflecting a dynamic strategy. Often it is no more than rhetoric but if a brand is internally viewed as both instable and adaptive, it is able to better respond and adapt to external environmental shifts without having to make major brand changes.

While Tripsas doesn’t say how this can be achieved, there’s been plenty of evidence to support how I believe a robustly formed brand identity supported by broader purpose and positioning statements can. For example, News Corporation has been able to better adapt to the changes wrought by the internet by positioning itself as “a diversified global media company”, rather than as a single media source company.
The same approach has been taken by oil companies such as BP and Chevron in the past few years as they moved away from external “oil company” to more generic “energy company” labels. Conversely, the American car makers such as General Motors (self label: the world's largest automaker) and Chrysler (self label: we build cars and trucks) would have done well to think about how they could be morphing their brands from their focus on pure manufacturing labels to offering broader “transport” options. The prescient Honda already self labels itself as a "mobility" company.

However, Tripsas warns if a brand is too diverse it also runs the risk of not aligning with external stakeholder understanding. It’s why the UK’s EasyGroup is such a great example of what NOT to do. Unlike the diverse Virgin group of companies, which operates against well articulated brand values and personality, I struggle to understand the fundamentals of the Easy brand beyond its ability to apply an Easy prefix to any business category from rental cars to pizza. Does anyone think Coles’ owner Wesfarmers actually has a brand? As an agricultural company it probably did but now its ambit stretches from retail supermarkets to coal mines, its even rendered label-less by its own description as “a diversified corporation”.

Even the brand essence of a company can direct and constrain action and generate inertia. Tripsas defines essence as a company’s “routines, procedures, information filters, capabilities, knowledge base and beliefs” but I call it core self belief. So when an economic downturn challenges an organisation and when pursuing change to meet that challenge violates core brand beliefs, organisations often pull up short rather than face the need for what Tripsas calls “systemic, major reorientations”. You only need to look at Woolworths bungled rebranding to see this in action.

But brand and strategy are not mutually exclusive. Unfortunately most firms have aligned brand to their marketing rather than to their strategy and subsequently ahve limited capacity for change. If a firm’s brand is expressed through elements of its strategy, does this mean a change in strategy necessarily then implies a change in brand and vice versa?

Tripsas concludes brand is not just one more factor to consider when unravelling sources of internal inertia during changing circumstances. A brand is a guidepost. Where a new dynamic such a global recession requires changes to the brand, simply altering routines, capabilities or beliefs without acknowledging the broader implications can be problematic and, in some cases (back to the US car makers), devastating.

This blog was also published in Marketing Magazine Australia on 8 December 2009.

It's about face: has David Jones given Miranda Kerr the flick?

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Byrne) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:44:00 +0000

Has Miranda Kerr, the new face of Australia’s oldest department store brand David Jones (DJs) been quietly replaced? So what happens when you realise your brand face doesn’t quite match the company it keeps?

Earlier this year DJs face supermodel Megan Gale stepped aside for lesser mortal and fellow model Kerr to be annoited the new face of DJs brand. Kerr did figure prominently in DJs Summer 2008 launch but since then has been a negligible presence in its national advertising and promotion.

DJs originally hired New York based Kerr to replace Gale on the catwalk for its bi-annual season collection launches in February and August as well as be its face in catalogues and advertising campaigns. Gale, it said, would continue in the lesser brand ambassador role.

But it’s Gale not Kerr who figures prominently in DJs major media campaigns, dominates its online presence and is widely featured in a national launch of a new American Express branded store card.

During the April baton change DJs pointedly said customers would undoubtedly embrace Brisbane born Kerr’s “warm and engaging nature." A direct link was made to her “Australian attributes”, describing her as a “ natural beauty with great sense of humour, a down-to-earth attitude and a love for Australia”.

Brushing away criticism Kerr was an unknown, DJs CEO Mark McInnes said her personality type could easily represent the brand, describing her as fashionable, approachable and aspirational.

“We want fun, fashionable and aspiring women representing our brand who are definitely not the Lindsay Lohans of the world," McInnes decried.

Yet, like Lancome’s sacking of Isabella Rosellini, L’Oreal telling Natalie Imbruglia she was no longer “worth it” and Versace’s disastrous hire of Madonna in 2005, doing good face doesn’t necessarily translate to sales if the fit isn’t right.

Kerr seemed to me to come across as neither a sophisticate nor particularly alluring in the Summer 2008 campaign; her self consciousness almost like that of a gawky teenager. More Hannah Montana than Lindsay Lohan.

Rather than adding to DJ’s brand equity and increasing it’s appeal, Kerr appears to have done neither.

Death of Print 2: Sensis and the final days of the phone book.

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Byrne) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 04:52:00 +0000

When did you last use the print edition of a phone directory?

In Australia the first directory was on a single sheet and listed just 44 numbers, now more than 100 years later it’s still in print but looks likely to go the way of the rotary dial phone. Here’s a couple of recent and related events that suggest publisher Sensis needs to prepare for the inevitable:

• Print company PMP’s contract with Sensis for production of Australian White Pages and Yellow Page directories expires on 30 June 2009;
• A new GPY&R Yellow campaign for Yellow Pages announces the release of a handy sized print version for use in the car;
• Google and Telstra subsidiary Sensis announce they have signed a deal to integrate the data from Yellow Pages business listings into Google Maps Australia;
• Total worldwide smart phone shipments hit new peak of 39.9 million in Q3 2008 while in Europe almost 40% are GPS enabled. In Australia, 3m will ship constituting 30% of all mobile phone sales.
• Google announce a new iPhone application that runs a voice translation service which enables users to speak and ask for the name of a service or store near their location and have it sent to their phones.

According to Sensis, its Yellow Pages print version does AUD$1 billion in advertising annually and the Yellow Pages Online a further $100 million. Last year more than nine million print copies of its White Pages were distributed in Australia with Sensis claiming a 99% penetration rate into Australian households. But the events above threaten these brands’ relevance and could convey them to the dustbin of history.

The long decline in landline connections can be linked to falls in use of both print editions. In February Sensis parent Telstra announced, somewhat half heartedly, that it had arrested some of the decline in its fixed line services. In fact, the decline was just 2.1 % against a 2.5 % decline in the previous six months to June, the annual decline still around four or five per cent.

But there maybe something more significant going on with Sensis’ so-called Yellow and White Pages Networks, with both registering significant online declines in viewership this year. Alexa data puts Yellowpages.com.au views of its online edition down a massive 10% for the last quarter and Whitepages.com.au down 3%. This contrasts with White Pages’ claim in March it was number one for business search and Yelllow Pages announcement in November that more 11 million Australians used its service every month.

While competitive intelligence service Hitwise’s latest figures has White Pages with an increased market share of 10.89% for the same period but this is only 0.19% of all use across the entire online market with Google’s Australian operation dominating the market with 8.38%. White Pages is not even a top 20 site in Australia. Similarly, Hitwise has Yellow Pages increase market share by 7.25% for the period for a total share of only 0.11%. Up against Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, it is a minnow.

Sensis’ deal with Google Australia seems to at least acknowledge that its market share is close to a fiction and it needs to better position its brand to take advantage of the much anticipated growth in location-based services coming from the explosion in smart phone use.

By year’s end around three million smart phones will have shipped in Australia, most with built-in GPS such as the iPhone and Nokia Navigator. Portable navigation devices like Mio and TomTom, primarily used in cars, seem already to have been sidelined as carmakers increasingly include it as standard and users opt for more personal technologies. Already Nokia is the third largest provider of mobile navigation across all platforms in Europe. In this scenario, the release of the new Sensis Yellow Pages directory for car use seems both archaic and a folly.

Sensis says 25% of all phone books don’t get recycled but end up as doorstops or propping up computers. Perhaps these users are the only demographic that’s going to find it hard to lose the phone book. Regardless, PMP might want to check its contract when it comes up next year. My feeling is Sensis is losing its way and needs a better strategy that increases relevance, brand visibility and usability for a complete multiplatform environment, otherwise it might see more of its brands (think Trading Post!) analogous to a doorstop.

Brand Australia, I've seen the trailer.

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Byrne) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 06:58:00 +0000

The Country Brand Index (CBI) now ranks Australia as the top country brand in the world. While it may suggest some homogeneity around our identity, I’m wondering whether the latest Tourism Australia (TA) campaign is made disingenuous by its link to Baz Luhrmann’s depiction of Australia in his eponymous period epic.

A plethora of film tie-ins and promos: from a range of smartly designed but nostalgic Australiana homewares from production designer Catherine Martin right through to the much vaunted TA hook-up, serve to present an identity now blurred by brand and film image.

The Luhrmann/TA TV and cinema ads opportunistically piggy back on Australia-the-film and add confusion to Australia-the-country’s identity. It’s a marked contrast to TA’s previous prognostications that it would shift perception of Australia-the-country-the brand away from a focus on natural scenic beauty. While subsequent brand refreshes in 2003 and 2004 were designed to emphasise a broader cultural context, its 2007 campaign again refocussed on natural beauty but the earthy humour was considered derisory.

Now TA’s back to Australia-the-country-the-brand filled with natural beauty and an invitation to go walkabout. This time they’ve added Luhrmann’s beautifully shot sunburnt country but the only real difference is a whitewashed Aboriginal narrative borrowed heavily from a couple of Nic Roeg and Peter Weir films. Let’s not overlook the fact the message is delivered by a character featured in both Australia-the-film and the campaign.

Australia-the-country-the-brand’s number one ranking might have everything and nothing to do with the success of TA’s campaigns. Last year visitor numbers to Australia-the-country fell by between 4-5 per cent and so has the TA's inclination to link this to their campaigns. CBI’s international travellers might indeed love Australia-the-country-the-brand-the-film, but I’m not sure which version they think they’ll see next time they visit.

This blog was also published in AdAge's Global Idea Network.

Beyond Seiko. Defining emotional technology.

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Byrne) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 22:57:00 +0000

There isn't a definition for emotional technology, despite it being used as a band name and some scant references to the term in post-modern discourse.

Yet in 2007 Japanese watchmaker Seiko began referring to its watches as using emotional technology. Since then press releases and advertising clips from the company have described how:

SEIKO believes that the wristwatch is, above all, an intimate accessory. The best watches live in harmony, and interact, with the wearer and its functions offer the user a re-assuring and emotionally satisfying bond.

SEIKO's technological development is focused on the creation of 'emotional technologies'. Emotional technology creates the interaction between the wearer and the product.

From here it’s easy to deconstruct a definition from Seiko's text, set it within a meaningful context and even go beyond. First, technology is the product, not the mechanical or electronic drivers used to build or drive it. Second, emotional technology is defined by the creation of emotional intimacy between a user and the technology. Finally, this is measured by the level of comfort and efficacy derived from the technology and from the experience of closeness with it. For Seiko or any other technology brand, this occurs on between user and brand as well as on a collective basis.

Intimate engagement with technology is gauged by both degree of closeness and time. Technology needs to meet user expectations across the full span of a relationship, not just at purchase. Apple’s high rate of product innovation is not only the commercial imperative of in-built obsolescence but also the emotional commitment by users to its product. There is no better confirmation than hysteria surrounding the iPhone release or the opening of a new Apple Store (see below). Each demonstrate how Apple has a much better understanding of its users than most technology makers (think Sony’s Walkman failure and more recently, Motorola’s struggles) and has constructed this with real purpose.

The level of association between user and technology requires constant and increasingly intimate communication. Overt and expressive it includes visual branding, general advertising, promotion and communication. It also occurs by non-direct forms via personal proximity, audio and kinetic branding and technology design. While most technology branding does the former well and most do some form of the latter - the visual ubiquity of Apple’s white iPod headset, audio branding by Sony Ericsson or the distinctive design of a Dyson, all come to mind - few are exemplary in generating a high degree of intimacy.

Like all good relationships the success or failure of an emotional technology is affected by its nature, trust and the culture in which it operates. Mobile phones are more able to build trust and therefore a higher degree of intimacy than a washing machine, simply because the level, degree and type of relationship is different. Culturally, as Seiko notes, this "reassuring and emotionally satisfying bond" with a mobile phone is also going to be different for the 14 year old Gothic Lolita in Tokyo and the Gossip Girl fan in Manhattan. For each the basis of a more intimate engagement is determined by both usage and degree of customisation.

Importantly, emotional technologies need to ensure brand and product attributes are clearly defined, understood and shared. To see this is linked to brand success take a look at Saatchi’s Love Marks top 50. Without spelling out the obvious, the idiosyncrasy of this list is almost wholly dependent on the degree of intimacy and identification people feel between themselves and brands. Apple, the iPod and Google all occupy top 10 positions, while the Technology top 50 has Sony, TiVo and Sonar top 10 followed by Atari, Nokia, Nintendo, Canon, Blackberry and Nikon.

Seiko, for all its investment in its ownership of "emotional technology” is yet to make the list. Ironically it’s an old technology watch brand that does. No surprises, its Rolex.

This is an alternative version of a blog which originally appeared in Marketing Magazine on November 10. http://www.marketingmag.com.au/blogs

Brand priming or why Reidel glasses make wine taste better.

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Byrne) — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 23:00:00 +0000

What makes wine in a Reidel glass taste better? Is it because Reidel is called “The Wine Glass Company” and it claims its glasses make wine taste all the more better than any other? How come a Tiffany diamond engagement ring set the benchmark for all others? And why do people queue for the latest release of the Apple iPhone, when they wouldn’t for any other phone? Does brand exposure influence a wider range of behaviours than we previously thought? Can exposure to specific types of brands and their associate brand messages really unconsciously influence our behaviour?

That’s the inference from a Canadian study Automatic Effects of Brand Exposure on Motivated Behaviour: How Apple Makes You "Think Different", which explored whether our unconscious can be so primed by exposure to certain brands they can create automatic and predictable behaviours and performance.

Published early this year by the University of Waterloo in Ontario Canada and Duke University in the US, the study looked at whether the generally accepted priming effects applied to our social behaviours can be applied to consumer behaviour and how brands can influence this. If so, can so-called brand primes shape our behaviour and how do they does this happen?

Priming occurs when mental constructs are created around or by a particular situation. For example, it’s been well documented that exposure to the “elderly” can often cause behaviour we have already hard wired around this stereotype: so people who have been primed “elderly” may walk more slowly and display poorer memory than those who haven’t primed. Traditionally Most behavioural priming research hasfocussed on activating such these constructs via exposure to related words. If you prime someone with words related to “rudeness” they’ll probably behave rudely.

It is already accepted that exposure to brands can shape consumer decision-making. One US study found that consumers exposed to low-end brand names such as Wal-Mart chose products of higher value but lower prestige in contrast to those people who have been exposed to high-end brand names such as Barneys New York. Another found that as the frequency of exposure to a brand increases, so too does our tendency to choose that brand (this is not the same as frequency of message or frequency of advertising). Yet most research has been limited to exploring the consequences of brand exposure for subsequent brand or product choice. Does the impact of brand exposure end with purchasing decisions or can it actually extend to behaviours unrelated to the products the brand represents? In other words, so if words and exposure to certain people can cause people to behave rudely or walk more slowly, can brands also evoke both cognitive and motivational effects?

Much of the psychological value we get from brands appears to come from their ability to help fulfill our personality and identity. In representing desired personal qualities such as sophistication or manliness, brands such as Tiffany's or Jeep are goal-relevant in nature, symbolizing our aspirations and unattained goals. In particular, some brands may come to represent "be" or ideal-self goals (e.g., to be sophisticated), which describe people's aims to improve themselves. Just as exposure to certain role models such as people who represent success can inspire certain goal-directed actions, so too should exposure to brands that symbolise success at a given goal. Through associations with desired human qualities, goal-relevant brands can trigger these ideal-self goals and shape behaviour. For example, Nike is associated with traits such as 'active' and 'confident.' These characteristics are generally seen as positive, so the brand plays a motivational role, symbolising a desirable future and an ideal self.

Brands are often linked to our personality traits in the same way symbols or representations of people can (i.e.Virgin is a young, fun out-there brand and if we use a Virgin product therefore it may represent who we think we are). Brands can also be symbols of aspiration, representing desired personal qualities such as sophistication or power (Bentley versus Maserati) and brand-priming may well motivate performance-based behaviour. The study wanted to know whether these types of behaviours actually do result from priming by brands.

In a series of lab experiments, the researchers had subjects look at a screen that displayed a series of flashing numbers and kept a running tally of the results. Interspersed between the numbers were subliminal flashes of Apple or IBM logos. The same subject group was then asked to perform a creativity-measurement task, in which they were asked to come up with as many uses as they could for the common house brick. In many replications of the experiment as well as with control groups, the researchers found that people exposed to the Apple brand not only came up with more uses for the brick but that these were also more creative than those exposed to the IBM logo or no logo at all. In effect, Apple made you more behave and think more creatively.

These experiments measured and manipulated qualities of priming but this new research demonstrates that brands can also serve as sources of unconscious performance-based behaviour. Recent theory has it that brand primes initiated goal-directed behaviour only when those brands were associated with qualities desired by the individual i.e. I want to be more creative (Apple) or I want to be more active (Nike) Meaning a brand can affect your output and, in the case of Apple’s brand, it may make you think and work more creatively What these findings may also enable us to predict is when the various types of priming effects occur and what the behaviours are likely to be.

In blind taste tests even the best Reidel glasses, as well as they are made, don’t actually make your wine taste any better than say a $10 glass from Target. Apple’s iPhone looks and performs well but it does is no better on a benchmarked performance basis than a Blackberry Bold or a HTC Touch Diamond. What these brands and so few others have has been able to achieve is what these researchers do indeed prove – regardless of the efficacy of a product or its service attributes, the prospect of superior performance can be primed and can directly our purchase decisions.

Brand priming might help to explain why brand promise is no longer going to be enough; the point of difference is going to have to be buried deep in a brand’s DNA. The saliency of a brand can no longer just be determined by more dominant operational and visual attributes but by triggers that prime our unconscious.

This is a longer version of a blog which originally appeared in Marketing Magazine on November 5. http://www.marketingmag.com.au/blogs

Why companies need to rethink rebranding: Research International's new logo.

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Byrne) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 06:27:00 +0000

One of the most important things a global rebrand has to offer a company is the chance to both refocus organisational culture and change market perception.

The effort behind a brand rollout should be commensurate with both the quality of the strategy and the design output behind it, so when global research firm Research International (RI) recently launched a new logo and strapline, it again drew attention to these issues.

This is something I touched on when I looked at Australian supermarket giant Woolworths and the glacial speed of its recent rebranding effort (DIFFUSIONblog 7/9/08). While Woolworths might have some trouble convincing people the new logo looks like either an unpeeling apple or a man with upraised arms but the new RI's logo is so over rationalised as to strip it of any real meaning.

It's yet another example of both poorly differentiated design (think of a hundred other company logo designs that use interwining strands on a globe eg. News Limited), capitalised sans serif type all of it rendered in trusty blue and orange accompanied by an equally generic tagline. The problem with this kind of rebranding is that it challenges the authenticity of a company's brand meaning and restricts the effectiveness of the messages it creates to back rebranding efforts.

That RI even bothered to trademark its new 3I (Insight.Inspiration.Innovation.) sphere logo and strapline seems ironic when you consider, as one of the world's largest research companies, it has built a major value proposition around the kind of insight its research can provide on global brand strategy. From the new website they describe how they are:

Insightful: when a major brand wants to rethink the entire global brand marketing strategy, they come to RI. We've been tying consumer motivations and behaviors to the bottom line for major manufacturers for many years.

But they are so far from it. Even from the press release that accompanied last month's launch, goes on to both deconstruct the meaning of the sphere and then destroy it all in the same breadth:

All this is represented by Research International's new Global Innovation Sphere TM logo, which symbolizes RI's status as a trusted global advisor, particularly in the innovation research sector. It is comprised of three key components: the globe, the interweaving bands, and expanding arrows. The globe symbolizes Research International's belief in the power of global marketing as RI boasts one of the largest research networks in the world. The interweaving bands symbolize RI's belief in the power of teamwork and the sharing of knowledge around the world. It includes RI's dedication to working in tandem with its clients, advising them throughout their marketing processes. The arrows symbolize RI's commitment to growth through innovation for our client's biggest brands. Collectively, the new logo aptly portrays the company's mission and ongoing commitment to helping clients find innovative solutions to their business issues.

Design rationalisation is important and few companies bother to make it public as part of the rebranding process, instead relying on one liners and leaving their agencies and other interpreters to do the explaining. But I mean really, why write this stuff?

How many times can the word "innovation" or any of its derivations be used in a single paragraph? What are RI's proofs for its use of the 3Is? What kind of changes in client motivation and behaviour do they think this will create? Why are they any different to any other of its other competitors who all claim similar innovation in their research methodology, insight into their client's business and who can also provide similar inspiration from their research results?

More than ever companies need differentiated propositions and positioning supported by simple brand messages, distinctive logos and wordmarks that are not restrained by epistolary explanation and an anemic strapline.