ThoughtSpurs

The Birth of eV

2011-08-16T14:13:00.000+12:00

The BBC just launched a new version of its iPlayer ap for people with a web connected TV. The Beeb has an enormous store of content and a less restrictive model than most commercial broadcasters. As both content creator and distributor it can decide its own rules. While this might be a unique position in the market and give the broadcaster a slightly unfair first mover advantage it does offer a glimpse of what ‘TV’ might mean in the future that is converging upon us.

Features of the new app:

•   on-demand
•   advanced search
•   playability on multiple platforms - mobile and static.

Audiences have become used to adding layers of experience to television viewing. TV remains a channel with few restrictions on quality based on bandwidth. It is a fire hydrant compared to the relative trickle of the web. In recent years a significant proportion of the viewing audience have also overlaid secondary media to their viewing experience. Laptops, tablets and smartphones mean engaging with a show can aslo mean engaging with other fans in real time to augment the experience.

The new BBC iPlayer app targets TV buyers who like:

•   interactivity,
•   social networking,
•   TV on-demand,
•   email.

The system can:

•   flip between the various BBC TV and radio,
•   refine content by category or featured content,
•   list favorites.
•   Simultaneously browse while watching a selection,
•   search content by phrase like Google.

The app is initially only for Sony, but will be rolled out for other platforms.
Still it is slick and points the way forward to how we will enjoy eV in the future.

The One & Only™ ...Me…ClanDestiny

2011-08-15T22:50:00.005+12:00

I've been busy.
Creating a company takes time.

And focus.

For the past year (ok, make that two) I have been imagining what the my future might look like.
My history is advertising.

Advertising is history.
What is the point of creating something amidst an enterprise where the business model has been a has-been for at least a decade?

Dead men talking.

I know, I know…ranters will tell me that television viewership is up, that magazines are more intimate than a set of la Perla knickers and that social media increases the opportunities for people to see and share your 'viral' content.
Well...it's not for me.

Short form smart-arsism will, hence-forth be confined to my blog.

I hung my shingle out a couple of weeks back.

MacGregor Media Limited.
Why such a tedious name?
'Are you not the maverick who imposed Milk Moustache upon the world of Auckland advertising in the early '90's?'

Yes but…

In the spirit of The 1&O™ may I advance my thinking?

I am MacGregor.
(Not McGregor - my father made me return the book I won at school for being the best at art because the inscription was wrongly spelled.

Not only was I humiliated by both parties I am certain I was thrashed without mercy for the most feckless of crimes the following year…

'Pull up your socks MACgregor - and if I catch you skateboarding without proper PE attire again I shall thrash you boy.
In fact I shall thrash you anyway.
See me in my study!').

A pathetic lesson in identity.

But one well learned.

It cast a spell(it right) on me.

I am me.

And you can't be.

So MacGregor Media it is.
I went one step further and had my family's crest redrawn as my logo.

We are sheep thieves after all.

My identity as a Scot is leavened by the story of migration.

I am neither Scot nor Kiwi.

But I am both and I draw on my children's whakapapa as much as my kith and kin.

My daughter is Te Aupouri and my son's family hail from Mairangi Bay.

They are of me and I of them.

I don't see why a spot of of time traveling can't be allowed in the present/future?

It would be easy to come up with a random, humorous name - Starfish Bluenote or Behind the Knee - but hey…what is the point of having come all this way to give birth to an abstraction.
This grey hair is real.

My experience is real.

Some of my ideas are really stupid (free broadband in both of NZ's major cities) and others - like Family Health Diary and Idealog magazine have become iconic on the New Zealand media landscape and game-changing, left field solutions to questions unasked (at the time).

People want reality and to feel connected with the products and services they choose.
A little non-fiction?

Solved with a lot of Non Fiction Advertising®

MacGregor Media is about developing media properties that resonate with people.
Agnostic.

Don't care if it is eV, TV, Web, Social, Sitting round the campfire singing Kumbaya…
If it's media…it's me.

Let me know if you want to know more on the serious plane.

By the way the Gaelic on the crest reads 'Royal is my race'. But, famously we are sheep theives and malcontents and I am a republican.
Adaptable - but not maleable.

Level the playing field.

Lock up your spinsters.

Theo Jansen's Strandbeests - Wallace & Gromit's World of Invention Episo...

2011-06-23T22:50:00.000+12:00

Today I attended a conference organised by New Zealand's Ministry of Science and Innovation.
Frankly - my head spun. The international speakers were genius. The ideas that formed were exciting.
I was covering the event for Idealog Magazine - for some reason it was invitation only. It should not have been.
However, let me chat about this video.
Wow.
That is all.

Likemarks™ - the new measure of brand health?

2011-06-22T10:51:00.000+12:00

A few years back Saatchi & Saatchi CEO popularised a new take on brands by coining the phrase Lovemarks.
A clever repositioning of his agency that proved popular with clients and staff.

But in the era when brands are scrambling to find meaning in social media, perhaps Lovemarks is a little bombastic - asking too much?

Facebook's 'Like' is ubiquitous. Commercial pages are deemed successful by the number of 'Likes'.

It is, perhaps, a lazy way of expressing approval - and it certainly can't be extrapolated into the kind of passion for the brand that Lovemarks describes. But the people have spoken.

So - I have created Likemarks™.

More thoughtful essay to follow.

John Key disagrees with the BBC

2011-05-31T16:25:00.000+12:00

I was lost for words when I saw it. Not a common occurrence. There he was, the Prime Minister of New Zealand on the BBC. How proud he looked (or smug, I can never tell), surrounded by various kiwi tchotchkes – kitsch kiwis and an adorable little bathtub waka.

The interviewer, clearly better informed than we are used to seeing in these parts and clearly intent on preserving the integrity of his show deftly proceeded to (how can I say this delicately?) tear Mr. Key a new one. It seemed our Dear Leader didn’t realize he wasn’t dealing with Petra Bagust and the show’s name was HARDtalk for a reason.

What struck me about the encounter was the sheer folly of feinting almost every difficult question with the catchall statement “Well, I don’t agree with that…”
For example the interviewer asserts that our international advertising slogan is bollocks – New Zealand is as far from pure as it is from our traditional markets.
“Well, I don’t agree with that…”. Key was confronted with data from a report by Dr Mike Joy from Massey University (based on science from our own government’s agencies NIWA and Landcare) - 90% wetlands are gone 70% of our native forests are gone. 40% of our lowland waterways are polluted 57% of bird species are threatened 89% reptiles oh, and all of our amphibians are gone. How then can we justify the 100% Pure tag? The response “…for the most part in comparison with the rest of the world we are 100% Pure” Then came the rather obvious riposte “I’m sorry Prime Minister but hundred percent is a hundred percent”. Pure gold.

I don’t want to litigate the merits, or otherwise of the tourism campaign (I always liked the double entendre of New Zealand and New Zealanders having a unique character, rather than the dodgy literal translation).

This is an election year, and potentially the one where social media will make a difference. Rather than waiting for the political parties to set the agenda there is a real opportunity for New Zealanders to actually participate in shaping our democracy. I know we’re an apathetic lot. ‘Sure, here, take a third of my income and spend it on what ever you think is right…new fleet of luxury limos…hey, why not. Why not embark a fact-finding mission while you’re at it. Paris is nice this time of year…can’t join you this time though. Having trouble putting food on the table.”

It’s easy to look at the last Obama campaign and hold it up as a paragon or template for how to win an election (read Yes We Did for an insider’s deconstruction of the tools and techniques deployed). The politicians in New Zealand who use Facebook and Twitter seem to use it as if they are broadcast media. Rarely do they actually engage with their constituents online.

Let’s turn the web into a giant town hall meeting 24 hours a day, seven days a week and set the agenda together. I’m relatively non-partisan. I don’t think any of the parties have a clue. Our opportunity is to harness the brainpower of the country, rather than leave it up to ideologically deluded polis.

My own particular hobbyhorse is developing the creative industries and reducing our dependence on primary produce. It still galls me that the current government’s solution to jumpstart the New Zealand economy was to back a plan for a cycle-way. Fiddling while Rome burned. The recent budget demonstrated that there is no imagination in parliament and even less ambition. Selling the family silver is not a long-term solution. It simply means more money will be exported overseas and the downward spiral – our race to the bottom – will continue and be even harder to pull out from.

John Key’s performance on HARDtalk broadly equates to his leadership stratagem. Just smile and wave boys, just smile and wave. If the facts don’t fit your agenda get some new facts. Cling to power for power’s sake and pull the wool.

Well, power to the people I say. Lets make something happen.

In praise of simple pleasures: Food Alley Review

2011-04-18T21:44:00.000+12:00

I don't keep food at home.
There are a number of reasons for that.
Principally: buying uncooked food comes with responsibility.
You have to cook it.
I am OK with pot noodles.
But the subtlety of anything more complex eludes me.
In pragmatic terms I also have to deal with the small matter of having the right equipment to prepare the raw ingredients for consumption. Have you seen the prices of Le Creuset pans or a decent set of knives from Henckels?
Then there is the simple fact that my cooking talent could fit on the head of a pin with room left for a million angels.
So, once I have spent my small fortune (and believe me my fortune is small) on grocery items and the obligatory impulse purchases - have you seen the price of fresh vege and meat?! (...It is criminal. Our prisons are crammed full with lesser offenders.) …I don't seem to be able to get out of a market without dropping forty bucks. Minimum.
I could be cooking peanut butter and jam sandwiches and they would cost me forty bucks.
Then I would set out make my warm salad of toasted walnuts and blue cheese (or PB&J) and it will taste like shit.
Because, like telling jokes the trick is.........timing.
I just don't have it.
So.
Expensive produce only produces a miserable effect and self loathing.
So.
Pointless.
That's why I like to eat out.
It's cheaper.
And I don't have to do the cleaning up.
I live in a hotel in Auckland city.
There is no shortage of choice of eateries in the neighborhood.
Not all of them good.
But for reliability it is hard to go past Food Alley in Albert Street - opposite the Stamford Plaza Hotel, and down a little.
As a creature of habit (usually bad ones) I find myself drawn to the Malaysian stall asking for a Chicken Laksa.
I know the stall owners know what I am going to ask for. But I pause for a moment and scan the menu anyway. It's good to have rituals in your life.
But a Laska it is.
The servings are huge.
I once asked for a half portion.
But it didn't compute.
I might as well have asked for a Magic Unicorn Laksa.
If you don't know the dish-it is the ultimate in Asian comfort food.
Combine 2 piles of noodles - thick ones and vermicelli.
Add a spicy coconut broth.
Top with chicken (or fishy things), deep fried tofu, half a boiled egg, some dried onion (or whatever that crunchy brown stuff is)...
Mung bean sprouts make you feel less bad about the rest of the ingredients.
The confection is a powerfully robust, warming confection that I have a love/hate relationship with.
Hearty. But probably not good for my heart.
It costs nine bucks and, for me, is two meals - I can't complete the task in one sitting. So a dodgy doggy bag is always required.
As for Food Alley. I love the ambiance, the vibe and eclecticism of the crowd. I like that, if my daughter wants an Indian curry or Japanese - then she can have what pleases her and I the international dish that makes me happy.
It is the most family friendly dining experience.
I can't award any stars for decor; or feeling posh.
But as an everyday utility, the equivalent of a street market in Singapore or a hairbrush, if performs its function with elan.
I recommend you try it.
There has to be room for simple pleasure in our dining experiences.

The commoditisation of advertising and the rise of social media

2010-08-09T16:47:00.001+12:00

How the dynamics of media economics was turned on its head and how thinking and planning must become the most valuable assets in marketing communications.

The world of marketing communications has dramatically changed in the past few years. You will be familiar with the statistics that are frequently exercised to demonstrate the rise of social media. If Facebook accounts were national population then it would be the third most populous on the planet – succumbing only to China and India. More than 500 Billion minutes are spent viewing Facebook pages every month. I don’t even want to think about the implication that has for the world’s productivity…YouTube has 24 hours of new video every minute.

There is no doubt about the gravity of social media as an influential force in the world. As a subset of the world – that means it influences marketing and marketing communications.

There has been decline in ‘legacy media’. But that decline is less interesting than the rise of social on the business radar.

But here is the nub of the problem. The economics of contemporary media are somewhat different to the economics of post World War 2 mass media.

Rewind: Before 1984 (in NZ) advertising agencies derived most of their income from media commissions. Owners of the media appointed agents to sell time and space (hence advertising agency) to marketers on their behalf. Agencies were ‘accredited’ by the media. This was the equivalent of a license to print money.

If an advertising agency’s client spent a million dollars under the system of accreditation (pre 1984) they received $150,000 for booking the media and a further $50,000 for ‘prompt payment’. Given the terms of accreditation prompt payment was assured.

So, aside from the difficult business of coming up with ideas with which to fill the time and space, making money in advertising was a doddle.

Here’s the other twist: Advertising agencies would relinquish their golden goose if they rebated any of the commission to their clients. They had to keep the cash.

The problem arose when the business was deregulated in ’84 – a curiously out-of-character move by the Muldoon government which had a propensity toward central control and status quo.

From there on marketers (AKA clients) were able to negotiate terms with the agency. A client that spent millions in media could now argue that a week of media planning and buying for a year campaign was worth three percent and not 20 percent of the budget.

Where creative work had been underwritten by media spend it was now something of an orphan. Clients had been spoiled by the fact that creative was thrown in at the cost of an hour but the thinking behind execution was subsidised by the commission and could not be recovered. Planning and house cleaning suddenly had exactly the same monetary value.

While execution could be valued the thinking behind it could not.

And then…along comes no-cost media.

Media buying and selling is a low value service.

Coming up with headlines and pretty pictures is a low value service.

Creating innovative business ideas and communicating them well at the lowest possible cost is a high value service.

The future of marketing communications doesn’t depend on the skill in tweeting or setting up a Facebook fan page.

Marketing needs big ideas that differentiate you from your competition. It relies on people feeling they are part of something bigger than themselves alone – without simply becoming part of the herd.

Food Fight!

2010-08-02T16:35:00.002+12:00

The recent release of the new standards relating to advertising food to children has led to a flurry of praise from stakeholders in the food industry who have a burning desire to be seen as responsible – processed food manufacturers like McDonalds and the advertising agencies that present their stories to the populace.

On the other side of the debate are ginger groups who feel the new standards do not go far enough to address issues relating to the effect of advertising on the consumption behaviour of the hoi polloi. The aggressively named FOE (Fight (the) Obesity Epidemic), for example, say on their web-site: “The new Code, and the accompanying fanfare from the food and advertising industries, is all about ensuring no government regulation of advertising. Its aim is to protect what, from health and child protection perspectives, is a completely ineffective self-regulation process. It has nothing to do with protecting the health of our children.”

It is probably safe to say that both sides of the debate have ideological differences that will never be broached. Unfortunately they are often at crossed purposes.

It makes sense that the food industry does not want its customers to be unwell or die of dread diseases relating to diet.

It is equally fair to say that the anti ‘junk food’ advertising campaigners are reasonable people with genuine concerns – many of whom feel they are in a ‘David and Goliath’ duel where the foe is are massive multi-million dollar enterprises. Unfortunately they can seem a little hysterical as a result.

Consumers are the meat in the sandwich. Some families have limited budgets and are time-poor. The result is a reliance on convenience foods. These aren’t inherently bad, except when consumed too often or without inhibiting the quantity consumed at each sitting.

The cost of fresh foods is often higher than processed foods and can be stocked and stored for longer periods of time. Supermarkets often move high volumes of processed food at a very low profit margin – in the low single figures (sometimes called loss-leaders) . By comparison fresh produce can deliver storeowners profit margins as high as 40% or more.

For families who have little time to spend with children the idea of ‘treat’ food as an expression of love and devotion can’t be ignored. A mother whose child is in day-care while she works a full-time might well feel a desire to please her child or compensate with exaggerated ‘treats’.

I have to confess I have been guilty of this behaviour myself; sometimes packing a variety of foods for school lunches or asking what kind of snack bars my children wanted at the grocery store – and allowing dubious choices (those with cartoon characters or ludicrously garish packaging designs are usually the most toxic – and usually the inevitable choice of a child).

Having entered stage left I must make my own ideological point. The food choices I have made for my children have always been my choices. In spite of the fact that I ‘know better’, I have bowed to convenience and pleasing behaviour myself.

I don’t blame television advertising for those choices and I think any parent who does is copping out. That said, both of my kids are as skinny as beanpoles. My daughter, in particular, has little interest in crappy foods and eats in moderation. My son burns as many calories as he consumes through a busy regimen of activity. I’ve never subscribed to a ‘clean plate’ viewpoint about meals – when you are satisfied, stop.

If enough of us want better diets for our children then it is we as parents and consumers to choose that happier alternative.

If the price of fresh food is too high – demand that the manager of your supermarket take note of your concerns. Shop around, start a blog, form a group…take action.

It is too easy to sit back and rely on vested interest groups to duke it out, ostensibly on our behalf, while we feign helplessness.

Likewise it is not the role of central government to regulate what we feed our kids (especially when the parliament has its own ideological divisions). I am not sure I am interested in the opinions of Gerry Brownlee (Nats), Parekura Horomea (Lab) or Russel Norman (Green) when it comes to the nation’s diet.

The new advertising standards seem silly to me in places. There are snags in them that make the creation of messages to promote food and drink absurd (rather like Coca-Cola’s claim to create happiness…when there is nothing in any data to suggest it has that magical capacity). Beware existential pap that implies a mood or positive association with the brand that has no substance.

Functional messages about better food choices will be subject to the same fetters as those for highly occasional foods – like KFC or Oreo cookies. Vocal members of the public will, undoubtedly, snipe at them in spite of the best intentions of the advertiser – especially if the axe they grind is intended to chop all advertising of food that children might eat from the screen.

In effect the new standards must apply to all foods advertised if children are likely to be exposed to the message. According to the law firm AJ Park: “The Code applies to all advertising that influences children. This is a subtle change from the previous code, which regulated advertising to children. While not a major change, it’s now clear you need to think about the impact your ad could have on children regardless of whether they are the target audience or not.”

I couldn’t help but laugh when I read that some of the Code was informed by a desire to comply with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. I assume that is same United Nations that sanctioned the illegal occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan that has resulted in the indiscriminate slaughter of hundreds – if not thousands of children?

We have odd priorities and sometimes even odder responses to problems in New Zealand.

Affiliate Links

Advertising to Children (Essential Viewpoints)
Advertising to Children on TV: Content, Impact, and Regulation
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Food Rules: An Eater's Manual

If you don't stand for something…you'll fall for anything

2010-07-30T15:17:00.000+12:00

Click to enlarge

In the early-mid 90's I had a business partner, Paul Jeffreys. If you knew him you probably knew him as Squeeze.
Our eponymous ad agency started out, as so many did - as just him and me rattling around in our office plotting world domination.
Our office was only slightly less furnished than our bank account, but that is a story for another time.
I came across the last remnant of our association…a business card. The back page contained our motto.
I think it has held up well.

I wrote about Squeeze here when he died.

Why Design Matters

2010-07-01T14:14:00.000+12:00

Semi Permanent is an event on the creative community's calendar that is not to be missed. This year I am going to give a general admission ticked to a student.

If you are studying design or a design related topic you can enter to win the ticket, which is worth $290.

How to enter
To enter, send me an essay on the topic of 'Why Design Matters'. Just a short essay - no more than 500 words. If you are more comfortable with images and visual communications then make an ad or a poster, as a PDF (up to A3 in size), if physical objects are your thing, make a visual of your concept that makes the point. I will publish entries online.

As far as rights go, entrants will retain all copyrights but by entering grant license to me to use or publish the work in any way to promote the promotion.

The Finalists will be those voted for in comments and then I will pick the winner from the finalists.

Visit the Semi Permanent Website

If you know a student who would appreciate the event…pass this on to them.

Why Banner Advertising should go down the gurgler

2010-06-27T18:47:00.000+12:00

There is a monumental swirling mass of waterborne toxic plastic and debris called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It offers me a visual metaphor for the Internet, though of course the Internet is bigger. We’ve developed an infinite ability to create crap and find a place to leave it so that we can conveniently ignore it, or selectively see what we want from amidst the mess.
Take advertising. It’s been elevated to an art form in many media; advertising is sometimes enjoyed more than the content it pays for. But online promotional activity is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch of the advertising business. Banners, buttons and ‘skyscrapers’ pollute content sites with their insistent flickering.

One of the problems with this form of advertising is that clicking a banner or button links you to another place on the web, and not always to a useful or nice place. So I stick with the content I sought out and ignore the siren calls of neurotic touts. Like many consumers I have developed banner blindness. I don’t even see the messages.

Not only does banner blindness lead to pathetically low click-through rates, but it does nothing to enhance the reputation of digital advertising or the brands that use it. The artistry in the best television or print advertising cannot be supported in the junk market. Why assign a creative budget to a throw-away? What self-respecting creative talent wants to produce clutter that simply swirls around in the sinkhole of the web?

Maybe Apple’s entry into the advertising fray with iAd will change things a little in the mobile arena. Their product cleverly addresses the fundamental flaw of banner advertising on the web by allowing the user to remain within the application they are using. This interstitial form of advertising is similar to an ad break on television (though with the added function of allowing the ad to be closed) and, like television advertising, the ads can be used to fund free content and applications because Apple will share 60 percent of the value of the ad with the developers who embed the code into their apps. On the other side of the ledger, Apple also offers a creation service where, for US$50,000 or more, it will produce an interactive experience for your brand that will suit the format—to Apple’s high aesthetic standard.

Attracting attention with flashing, flickering doodads on the web is the lowest form of advertising (matched only in the real world by ugly, intrusive billboards that appear without invitation or any relevance). It’s little wonder they are ignored, but still they hover and lurk ineffectually: visual spam.

Maybe the rise of search as a marketing tool will bring about the demise of junk banner advertising. Directing visitors to online experiences that are specific and relevant makes much more sense than cheap, random, in-your-face intrusion. Creating brand experiences delivered online that people will talk about and share on Facebook and Twitter will also be more and more significant. Human curation and recommendation will trump a nasty hawker’s pitch every time.

This column first appeared in the current issue of Idealog magazine. Happy to report the magazine (which I co-founded) has just won the Magazine Publishers Association (MPA) Business Magazine of the Year…which it has done every year since we started publishing. A great credit the talnted team who make every issue come alive with stories about creative New Zealand businesses. Subscribe here…it's worth it.

The meaning of 'work'.

2010-06-11T23:24:00.000+12:00

My early days in advertising were filled with anxiety. I spent a ridiculous amount of time worrying that someone would soon blow the whistle. I would be revealed as the glib, talentless charlatan that I felt myself to be.

My father worked for his living. By ‘work’, I mean he survived by exchanging his physical labour for a modest wage. This shaped my perception of ‘work’. It certainly wasn’t having long lunches with my art director partner or discussing the oeuvre of Ridley Scott with directors vying for the opportunity to produce our latest ‘big idea’ over lunch at some fabulous establishment.

Sometimes we would claim that working in our offices was simply not conducive to the creative process. Quite why the office was unsuitable I don’t recall. In truth, our offices were about as removed from a ‘dark satanic mill’ (my father’s habitué) as was remotely possible—but no, we needed the uninterrupted quiet and space of a beachside hotel bungalow for uninhibited, free-ranging idea generation. Perhaps, most importantly, we needed room service.

We delivered the desired result: pitches that won client accounts and advertising that won awards. Those were the measures by which we were held to account back then. Competition was intense and the expectations high but, in spite of the pressure to ‘perform’, it simply never struck me as work. It was too much fun. At some stage the jig would be up, the plug pulled, the whistle blown.

I never truly believed my situation was what might now fashionably be called ‘sustainable’. And it wasn’t.

In the end I burst my own bubble, walking away to open my own firm. Many of my peers thought I would fail. Life, they said, wasn’t a 24-hour-a-day party and the world didn’t owe me a living. I sincerely hoped not and quickly found it to be true. Things I had taken for granted I now had to earn for myself, and the wages of others depended on my work. The business grew. I took in a business partner to help with administrative things I have never excelled in. We earned a little money, had a great deal of fun and even won a few awards.

Most importantly, the doubting voice in my head was silenced. Agency life had been a gilded cage. For the first time I was experiencing the liberating feeling of honest toil and success off my own bat.

I’m still visited by an inner ‘voice’. But now the conversation is different. I don’t worry about the rewards or whether I am worthy of them. I simply wonder whether I have done enough, been aware enough of alternatives and whether it will work for my clients.

I recently met one of the founders of the eponymously-titled Josh & Jamie agency. I felt a sense of affinity and admiration. I like to see creative people strike out on their own. There will be more of them in the near future, in part because the advertising agency model struggles to maintain high overheads as revenues slip and business models change. I am certain that Josh and Jamie—and you, if you ever make the leap—will find the experience curiously liberating in a way that the pampered life of an agency creative is not.

When clients look to us for results, ‘work’ takes on a more utilitarian meaning than being the stuff that is in your portfolio or on your showreel. Work becomes a verb and not a noun. Quite what will ‘work’ remains unclear. If the answers were obvious to everyone, Josh and Jamie wouldn’t have a reason for being; and neither would I.

This is my column from the latest edition of Idealog magazine.

Don't you take me to 'Funky Town'

2010-06-07T13:26:00.005+12:00

Nestle in Australia have launched a promotion called Take Time Back with the Kit Kat Desk Jockey - who is working like a machine so you don't have to.

The concept is based on the idea of having a virtual assistant (I suppose to save you time - a tenuous connection to the long running position of 'Have a break, have a Kit Kat').

Visitors to the site request the assistant to perform tasks on their behalf. It's obviously not serious. The tasks include celebrating something Mexican style to which the assistant attacks a Pinata (in Kit Kat colours) with a rubber chicken - while wearing a sombrero - in Kit Kat colours.

The 'show' is live cast for four hours a day, with a highlight reel and interstitial promotion run the rest of the day. Viewer requests are shown in a stream below the video window. The requests are a little haphazard such as 'Could you get me a Wii' or 'Could I have a family pass to Taronga Zoo'. There is also a twitter feed and Facebook fan page and the concept is supported with a national television campaign.

Aside from all of the fun, there is a sales activation promotion where people who buy Kit Kats earn rewards which increase in value depending on the number of chocolate bars consumed (from digital downloads to time saving home services)

What is interesting to me are Nestle's comments on their media selection for the campaign, reported in AdNews magazine. They express the view that television is still the medium to reach the mass audience needed for a product like Kit Kat but that the way forward is to engage on a far more personal level with consumers. Being the hard-nosed marketers they are Nestle also ensure that their is a mechanism for producing a tangible return on their investment. The budget to produce the Desk Jockey campaign was taken from the pots that would otherwise have been spent on print and outdoor advertising.

Putting aside any value judgment about the creative execution (which is cringe worthy to me but probably hilarious for some) the strategy seems to be the perfect approach for FMCG marketers to deploy social media and branded content campaigns. Combine the power of TV with interactive web content and a sales promotion to extend it beyond a 'feel good' experience for the brand.

In New Zealand we have seen campaigns for Yellow directories that have taken a similar approach to content on TV and the Web - but the missing ingredient has been the integration of a component to activate sales. It could be argued that the intention of the Yellow campaigns has been to increase awareness of the brand (or some other nonsensical non-metric), but Yellow doesn't need awareness. Everybody is aware of the brand. Indeed the process of creating a Yellow chocolate bar probably only confused many Yellow customers who spend all of their marketing money every year on a simple listing. For them the campaign probably incited confusion and anger - serving only to remind how costly the listing is and how profligate the company. Ironically the Yellow business is in dire straits while the ad campaign has been picking up accolades.

The risks in embarking on campaigns that have significant online components:

Assuming 'if you build it they will come'.
It pays to remember how big the web is. The chances of randomly stumbling across any content are about the same as finding a needle in in a nebula. SEO, Facebook and Twitter will all help bring traffic to your content (assuming it is worth talking about), but television is still the killer app in media if your goal is mass reach. Why have kick-ass content that no-one sees?

Failing to leverage the investment or assign real goals
In the second half of the 20th Century, the hay-day of modern advertising, brands were in the ascendant - in many cases the brand's positioning was the only thing that separated one product from another. Advertising that centred on the notion 'love my ad, love my product' prevailed. Today the choice of brands is all but infinite. You need to give people a reason to buy your product. Branded content is all well and good, but it should be placed in the context of sales activation. The best engagement with a consumer is for them to trial/use your product or service. Who cares how many friends and followers you have if they don't buy what you are selling?

Being led down the garden path to 'Funkytown'
Because digital and interactive is relatively new and requires a skill-set that is sometimes arcane it is easy to assume that only kids in pork-pie hats and pointy shoes can plan and implement a campaign or that they understand what the online audience wants.
What is true is that sound understanding of your audience transcends fashionable execution and development of quirky doodads.
Don't be sucked down into a rabbit hole. Keep a firm hand on the tiller and expect that any bell or whistle proposed is going to serve some purposeful utility. Online audiences are less forgiving of irrelevant things than in legacy media because of their active engagement - pulling the content towards them.

Link: Take Time Back - Kit Kat Desk Jockey

Design = Inventertainment

2010-05-07T17:18:00.001+12:00

I get a kick out of good design.

Not only from an intellectual point of view, but also on an emotional level.

I know I am not the first and certainly not the last person to fall in love with Apple products, for example. It's hard not to respond to something so well thought out that it just functions beautifully and is enrobed in a package that makes you feel pleasure. (I'm typing this on the keyboard of my MacBookPro, the one with the silky metallic keys. It's getting dark and the characters have lit up. It's a thoughtful, intuitive response to a problem. Even though my machine is a couple of years old and has been superseded I still enjoy my old work horse.

There are plenty of perfectly utilitarian products that execute a task exactly as they are intended to - a $2 tin opener does the job just fine. An OXO opener costs considerably more, but the pleasure you get from using it is correspondingly greater - even if you don't suffer from arthritis.

The same goes for hand crafted luxury goods. An Hermes or Louis Vuitton bag will give its owner a great deal of pleasure in the knowledge that they appreciate its quality, authenticity and exclusivity.

Design is sexy. It gives us pleasure.

It is always the product of an inventive mind as well as the craft and skill required to execute successfully.

So, in an idle moment I have given it a new name - Inventertainment.

Tell me about a product or service that matches that description…

The end of ad as spectacle

2010-04-29T16:54:00.001+12:00

The meaning of the term 'media' has changed dramatically. Where it once meant the physical vehicle, the medium, by which information was conveyed - it now represents mediation between people and the world. How we view and understand the world is mediated by the media.

It might seem like a convoluted semantic argument but, the more I think about it, the more it makes sense to me and suggests some strategies for the future.

One of the fundamental planks of media has always been that of access. I can't know what is happening in the halls of power, because I am but a plebeian schlub. But Woodward and Bernstein do have access and they become my avatars under the great domes of democracy.

Now that media has become social and we plebs now have direct access to audiences, unmediated, disintermediated, wholus bolus and it means a tectonic shift in power has taken place. We the peeps…

Or has it?

Here's the thing. I may be a blogger…here, on Posterous, on Twitter, Idealog…but that doesn't necessarily give me access to influential people (maybe Idealog does, a little).

There has always been a grudging accord between journalists and the powerful. It goes along the lines of: 'if a tree falls in the forest…but no one is there to hear…does it make a sound?. So politicians and business people, movie stars and artists grant access in return for fame and the triumphant glory of an airbrushed spread in Hello! magazine, …vanity fare.

In an era where advertising no longer interrupts the content but is the content the currency of advertising needs to change. In the era of branded content we must offer people access to ideas and people who are relevant, interesting, sexy, fun…insert adjective…but to do that we need to have access. For our clients we have to be able to broker access to the right audiences for their messages.

It is an entirely new and different skill set from the historical approach to advertising where I 'create' and you pay attention. It is entirely more participatory and the winners will be those who understand by doing, not by theorising about a market's motivations based on vagaries and abstractions like 'household shoppers'. Forget about 'target markets' and the message. Synthesising messages down to 30 second fantasies will be as a quaint as pamphleteering seems now. Telling stories and documenting interesting lives will replace the crude spectacle that advertising became. The spectacle will become a lens. Access will be crucial. Make sure you have a back stage pass.

Where there's muck, there's brass

2010-04-19T14:59:00.000+12:00

One of the most difficult tasks in marketing communications is developing promotional messages for your own company. Perhaps the most obvious reason is that we lack objectivity - the very objectivity that makes us valuable to our clients.

One of the temptations is to describe our business as something more complex or grandiose than it actually is. In conversations with the principals terms like 'paradigm shifting' seem to erupt with a curious regularity. Other buzzwords include 'engagement' slide in with the greasy ease of jargon du jour.

I'm inclined to think in terms of outcomes. Rather than waffle on about ourselves, doesn't it make sense to think in terms of what our customers want? Things that have real value - even if they are real simple?

The process of identifying the correct messages - how we meet underserved needs -has the secondary effect of forcing us to think about the kinds of product innovations are worth developing for our clients and prospects.

Our company is a very pragmatic entity. Our advertising products are systematic, rather than idiosyncratic conceptual offerings. While other advertising companies treasure the 'creative' product we simply produce advertising that is quicker, cheaper and proven to be more effective than the more conventional, bespoke alternative.

In order to better understand how our staff perceive the company the call went out to write a short description - a lift pitch. My pitch is that BrandWorld is the Toyota Corolla of advertising: It goes well, is reliable, not too fancy, has had loads of happy customers and is a bargain.

I realise there's not much status in owning a Toyota Corolla but in all honesty I would rather have the value generated by all of the Corollas in the world than ever dollar spent on Aston Martins.

Hopefully we won't be distracted in our ultimate communications decisions. Our products may not be 'sexy' by the usual measures (All of our main products have won marketing awards, but would show well in 'creative' beauty parade), but they succeed on every other scale.

Sometimes there's truth in truisms. Where there's muck, there's brass.

BrandWorld's website

When you get to the bottom. Stop digging.

2010-03-23T14:41:00.001+13:00

I encountered this description of Growth Model economics while I was researching Paul Romer.

“Economic growth occurs whenever people take resources and rearrange them in ways that are more valuable. A useful metaphor for production in an economy comes from the kitchen. To create valuable final products, we mix inexpensive ingredients together according to a recipe. The cooking one can do is limited by the supply of ingredients, and most cooking in the economy produces undesirable side effects. If economic growth could be achieved only by doing more and more of the same kind of cooking, we would eventually run out of raw materials and suffer from unacceptable levels of pollution and nuisance. History teaches us, however, that economic growth springs from better recipes, not just from more cooking. New recipes generally produce fewer unpleasant side effects and generate more economic value per unit of raw material.

Every generation has perceived the limits to growth that finite resources and undesirable side effects would pose if no new recipes or ideas were discovered. And every generation has underestimated the potential for finding new recipes and ideas. We consistently fail to grasp how many ideas remain to be discovered. Possibilities do not add up. They multiply.”

I have serious doubts that those at the tiller of the New Zealand economy (the geniuses behind building a cycle track as a pathway out of recession) have the slightest clue about how to grow a sustainable future.

Proposed mining of conservation land makes no sense whatsoever. Indeed mining mineral deposits inherently has no future. The short-term gains, if they eventuate, can only ever be a short term bonanza. Minerals are not renewable. The damage to the environment cannot be undone. Nor can the damage to New Zealand’s ‘clean green’ reputation on which we have invested so much.

The government owned company Solid Energy digs coal out of the ground and either uses it to fire electricity generators or to ships it off to China to power smelters and power stations – the carbon emissions from excavation in New Zealand and exhaust in China belongs on our carbon balance sheet.

The sustainable future for New Zealand doesn’t lie in scrounging about in the muck it should be centred on innovation and the creation of ideas that can be shipped without atoms. A computer game or iPhone application can be sold thousands of times at little or no additional cost. The same can’t be said for a sheep carcass (even one that has been skilfully butchered in to premium cuts) or a Central Otago Pinot Noir – even one with the finest nose.

My idea for Idealog magazine was centred on this philosophy. If the United States, the world’s most powerful economy (still, if not for long), can profit more from copyright (movies, music, books, games, …) than any other export - then so can New Zealand. We need to develop a creative economy - not one based on primary production. Ideas are the currency of the future and we should be investing in them and mining our minds.

At the moment we are simply digging a hole for ourselves by aiming too low.

Old School Rules

2010-03-16T15:40:00.003+13:00

A group of my colleagues attended the Clemenger Group's digital training academy last week. They returned to the agency abuzz with a 'noobs' appreciation of 'digital'. They've had their epiphany, their road to Damascus moment.
Finally.
No-one preaches like the converted.

Most of the work our firm has done over the years has been concentrated on developing properties that make highly efficient use of television. Most of the products we promote (last year 150 campaigns for some of the 90 of the world's biggest brands) respond well to promotion in our media properties (such as Family Health Diary, Eating Well and Discover. If you live in New Zealand and have never seen at least one of these I'll wager you don't watch very much television).
A 20% lift in sales is a modest result for our clients in most cases.

The market is beginning to shift though, and online video in particular is becoming an important tool that will be used by marketers to reach more niche markets with messages that are more enduring as part of a 'long tail' strategy.
We have developed programes for James Hardie The Drawing Board, Toyota Showroom, and Westpac Bank Talking Money Sense.
Going online means we will have to learn new ways to create efficiencies. If the data reveals that attention to videos lasts for a median 2.6 minutes and that on 16% of viewers stay with a clip until its end, then it makes no sense to leave the purpose of the communication to a vague pay-off.

Creating a complex, obscure gag with a punchline might be a disastrous strategy. It makes sense to be clear from the beginning what the purpose of a communication is. To function in this new environment will not only require the kind of person who is both creative and analytic but also values results over fawning peer praise for 'production values'.

David Ogilvy inspired me to get into advertising via his classic book Ogilvy On Advertising. I have included the classic clip of Ogilvy because if you replace the words direct marketing from his monologue with the word digital or interactive it makes perfect sense today. Digital is almost inherently meaningless now. It simply means distribution without physical form - bits rather than atoms (it is also worth rereading Nicholas Negroponti's seminal book Being Digital which, though it was first published in 1995, will come as a revelation to those of you yet to experience the digital epiphany).

The most obvious expression of the digital era is the fact that messages will be delivered via screens - TV, computer and portable devices. The risk for advertising and marketing communications practitioners is that we imagine that the creation and distribution of messages is the business we are in. That is just the starting point. We have gone beyond the dissemination of ideas that are, effectively, instructions to purchase, to ideas that our customers can make their own and share with their friends.

In the past it would be unlikely that someone would video record a commercial to show to friend. Having no tangible (atomic) form means a clip can be shared with a personal network in moments. This is mother's milk to you, I realise. But it is still not commonly appreciated by even sophisticated marketers.

I still hear advertising people talk about how awards are 'the currency' in the advertising agency business.
They are wrong and getting more wrong with each passing day.
The digital era makes everything measurable. Things you wouldn't imagine
could be measured /will/ be measured as new uses for APIs are developed.
The creative product is going to be a constant iteration and reiteration of ideas. The bits that work will stay. The bits that don't work will be discarded.
Every communication will be a test, not a work of art. Or, if is is art, it will be performance art.
A stand-up comedian doesn't keep telling jokes that don't make the audience laugh.
That's called dying on stage.
If you are measuring the performance of your marketing communications by brand metrics you are sadly out of step.
The key metrics are customer centric.
Brand equity is replaced by customer equity. What matters is the lifetime value of the customer.
Even terms like 'engagement'; liberally bandied about as brand oriented people segue to demi-digitals, are half hearted and ignore the supremacy of conversion.
Did you meet your objective?
If your objective isn't results oriented then you are simply tinkering about.

Does that mean creative isn't important?
Quite the opposite.
It just means that what you create has a very specific purpose and if it isn't fit for the purpose it is modified or thrown away.
The best people in advertising have always felt this way anyway. A willingness to 'kill your babies', the ideas you fall in love with because they are cute - or simply because you worked hard on them has always separated fey prima donnas from successful advertising practitioners.
Does that mean messages shouldn't be skillfully crafted?
No. Again, quite the opposite. But the craft is to hone the performance by degrees.
The day of the magnum opus, the blockbuster, are over Buster.

The old school rules apply like never before.

Welcome to the Particle Culture

2010-03-08T09:32:00.010+13:00

There's a line in the movie Crazy Heart that struck a chord with me. Down and nearly out country music legend Bad Boyd is softly playing his guitar while laying on (the character deftly played by Maggie Gyllenhaal) Jeanie's bed as he recovers from the car wreck that is not his life. Jeanie seems to recognise the tune and asks who played it. "I did,…I wrote it just now…the best tunes are the one's you feel you already know." - or words to that effect.

Ironically I have long believed that to be true. Paradoxically people are drawn to novelty, but we are also suspicious of it.

In the marketing classes I taught at Massey University I defined the syndrome as 'New vs. Knew'. We like innovation to progress by degree, more so than by disruption.

There are, of course, apparent exceptions to the rule - the Apple iPod had no obvious design or conceptual precedents, but it was such an intuitive response to the problem of portable music, it simply made sense. It was also so well conceived and executed that there was no reason to be afraid. It was as if the iPod had been missing, in the way that it is hard to imagine life without a new born baby.

Apple may have reinvented 'the wheel' on the original iPod, but it paved the way for the iPod touch easily by continuing a humanistic design metaphor that stretched back to the birth of the Macintosh: pointing and clicking, desktops, trash cans all seem so familiar even though they were incredibly strange by the rustic conventions of the day.

iPhone is successful not because it is a better telephone (I've never heard anyone make a single mention of the iPhone's telephonic quality) but because it continues a conversation that Apple has been having with people since the Apple II - accessible, humanistic design (including the design of its marketing language).

Apple has cleverly constructed a series of platforms from which we can leap to the next level of technology with confidence and ease. Better still, for Apple at least, we are conditioned to anticipate the next level, the same way we eagerly await the release of new songs from our favourite music artists.

Going back to the thought that new music can seem familiar, the rock music of the 50's that so horrified parents was probably more shocking culturally - for its adoption by the newly invented social group 'teenagers' who were shaking off the stiff conventions of their parents for the first time in history - than it was musically. Rock 'n' Roll's lineage extends back through many forms including Blues, Jazz, Big Band, Swing, Rhythm & Blues…In fact much of Rock music sounds so familiar because its structures extend back to the music of the Middle Ages where the Perfect Fourth structure originated. Much of Rock is written in fourths in because of the predominance of the guitar. The instrument is easy (and accessible) to play because the strings are mainly tuned a fourth apart.

Interestingly, when new music discards the melodic structures we have become familiar with its popularity is often limited. Punk Rock may be musically less accomplished than the atonal stylings of Arnold Schoenberg but it conformed to conventional structures and progressions - even harmonies that had been familiar in the past.

The shock of the new often comes with novel packaging but conserves the essence of the past. For novelty to succeed it must, by definition, be new, but it must also refer to what we knew.

It may be apocryphal but I have heard that, when human infants are born, the social convention is often for family members to express with confidence how much the child looks like its Dad. There is usually, post-partum, little doubt about maternity. Most newborns actually look like E.T., having been squished through an astonishingly small birth canal (in comparison to their size), but the recognising the father supposedly protects the child from harm. Even the imaginers of the iPod, share behavioural links that extend back to Neanderthal times and probably beyond.

In many respects I suppose we are still somewhat like monkeys - reluctant to let go of one branch until we have a firm grasp of the next.

For makers and marketers and communicators there are lessons. Creativity is the process of taking existing things and combining them in new, sometimes surprising ways. Technology progresses to find new efficiencies (the internal combustion engine may soon have done its dash, but new technologies will rise to replace it so long has we crave movement at speed across moderate distances).

That said, many technologies will emerge and simply fail, because people don't see themselves reflected in them - a need to be satisfied. Sometimes the timing is simply wrong. Plenty of innovations get a second shot (Xerox invented the G.U.I. but didn't see the opportunity that Steve Jobs did to apply it to a person friendly PC).

The trick is to put people at the centre of innovation, not the product or technology. What do people crave? In the 50's teenagers craved independence and freedom, they rebelled against a culture that cultivated a monumentally destructive war. Hedonism and living for the day was married to the technologies of mass production and surplus. With more time and money on their hands than any generation before them the term 'consumer' embedded itself and endured for the rest of the 20th Century.

The 'known' is, of course a relative term. it is a definition of a personal experience. For an 18 year old today (my son) to be discovering the music of The Velvet Underground there is novelty - much in the same way that Europeans 'discovered' the 'New World' - although said New World had been developing quite happily for thousands of years. The 18yr old is, in fact, discovering himself - following the same tradition of The Velvet Underground themselves - whose influences, circuitously via John Cale included Erik Satie, looking beyond the conventions of the day - today mediated by popular music video channels and in 60's and early 70's by popular music radio. Their shared drive is individualism and rejection of 'the man'.

By virtue of plural access to media by almost everyone the things that drove the sub-cultures of the 60's might well have gone mainstream. The mass culture may have become that of sub culture - or Particle Culture, every individual expressing their wants and needs, their opinions and ideas - an infinite loop of combination and recombination. A train wreck that has already happened. A big bang expansion of the human universe. A post-modern paradise. A classical hell.

It way be a strange, unglued, unhinged time but adopting a humanistic approach seems to me to be your best bet. Put people at the centre of your thinking. The chaos out there will drive us back to embrace the things we have always known, our values and virtues, our fear of the dark, our fascination with fire, rediscovering things through the compound lenses of new technologies and new anxieties, bending and shaping, mashing and rearranging, making and consuming; choosing and choosing not to choose.

It will all be strangely familiar…but all-new at the same time.

And now…the news.

2010-02-21T11:41:00.002+13:00

The English Observer newspaper (sister publication to the Guardian) has relaunched. Agency Wieden+Kennedy have put this ad together to make The Observer seem more relevant in a 24hr, cover everything as it happens (or doesn't happen) news cycle. (see also Charlie Brooker's Newswipe parody of mindless minutae reportage).

Iraq Coverage

2010-02-05T14:43:00.002+13:00

The Iraq War as Told Through Magazine Covers from Utne Reader on Vimeo.

Interesting video from Utne Reader that tracks the progress of the war in Iraq through various magazine covers. A simple, arresting technique. (It would be hard to get a snapshot of the culture from covers of celebrity gossip magazines).

Utne Reader

Little brother is watching

2010-01-31T23:34:00.003+13:00

I shot a video clip at a local school fair that showed police cars careening around a field. It happened a year ago. I have kept the footage all this time because initially I didn't know how to get the material off the phone and onto my computer. Bluetooth connection between the two devices just wasn't happening. I solved the problem with a little memory card, downloaded it, then forgot all about it. I have been shooting and editing video recently so I was reminded that I had it on file and decided to post it.

The clips show two police patrol cars driving at speed on the school field. Aboard are children who have paid for the joy ride.

During the incident the cars drive at speed in a confined space between an ice cream truck and a inflatable bouncy castle. Children line up for ice cream and play without concern.

I have no malicious intention or axe to grind. Some commenters imply I am biased for some reason (I have since disabled comments because of vitriolic and threatening remarks). I have no bias and only the highest general regard for Police who perform their duties, which are often appalling (and, no, I wouldn't change places with them). That doesn't mean they always get things right though, they are humans, like the rest of us.

Some comments on YouTube implied that, because police are trained drivers my observation is fatuous. Who knows, they might be right, but without information about who was driving and their level of skill at the time it is impossible to make an informed comment about that. In principle one could reasonably argue that an experienced, skilled and trained driver would be circumspect about engaging in such a demonstration. Things go wrong, even for the most skilled people. Just recently a New Zealand Air Force pilot, a senior member of the aerobatics squad, was killed during a routine manoeuvre in training.

Yesterday a journalist from the Dominion Post called to ask about the clip. It is in the paper this morning.

The article said the police would be requesting the original footage to determine whether it had been tampered with. "…Police National Headquarters spokeswoman Debbie Corney said police in Waitemata district would be requesting the original footage to establish its authenticity and "speaking to staff to determine exactly what happened" The comment is telling - the initial reaction is to lash out - is it authentic? It is just as you see it. Crudely shot, in low resolution but all the footage is complete and joined together simply from it's raw form. Nothing has been sped up or altered. As for speaking to staff to determine what 'exactly' happened? Well, once again the, the video speaks for itself. Staff will only be able to subjectively interpret events like anyone else, myself included.

In part I regret posting the clip, I am not interested in bagging the Police generally and I accept that some people feel that I have been unfair. I simply recorded and commented on the event.

But it has been instructive in a sense. People in the public eye need to be aware that cameras are everywhere. I often have three cameras with me (while my old Samsung phone - that I shot this footage with is pretty rough, I also have point and shoot HD). I never know when something interesting will become material to be shared. Most times the material I do share is mundane and barely warrants a notice. Who knows, footage you or I capture might solve a crime one day?

This is the era of social media. You and I have access to our own private channels - this blog, Posterous, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook… did I say channels - I meant networks. It is a fact of life.

Sometimes the mainstream media will pick up the story. I have had photos of other observations picked up in the past - such as candyfloss in the fruit and veges section of the supermarket - media voraciously consume 'content'.

Curiously enough even mundane material is deemed more 'important' when it is in the newspaper or on TV then buried amongst the millions of clips and images on YouTube. My clip would have been ignored if the journalist hadn't been listening out on Twitter and it would only have been part of the conversation in my limited networks. I'm not interested in leading a crusade (unless it is to improve men's health)

This morning other media outlets have been contacting me through Twitter and Facebook. Interestingly the clip isn't news. It is an artifact, a year old, something to discuss and think about. I am not interested in being drawn into an antagonistic conversation about the police generally.

Flying by the seat of your pants.

2010-01-28T15:47:00.002+13:00

Air New Zealand has just launched new seating concepts, to be introduced on long-haul flights in November of this year.

The significance of the press event seemed to me to be less about the actual design of the seats—handsome and innovative as they are (and I think they will certainly impress the travelling public)—and more of a reinforcement of the significance of Air New Zealand itself to the New Zealand economy and our national identity.

Seats symbolise the airline business more so than wings or smiling cabin crew. Seats are the carrier’s inventory. An empty chair on an aircraft can’t be stored, repriced and sold at a later date. The complex inter-relationships of, not only seats sold, but also at what price margin is as significant as the variable cost of fuel and the cost of the funds (paid in US dollars). There are other factors, but these will determine how much profit or loss the business makes.

There are also functional requirements for convenient timetables, attractive destinations and favourable rates/landing arrangements at airports around the world. Who’d want to be in the airline business? Many operators have made a small fortune (usually out of a large one—even Air New Zealand has experienced its share of turbulence in the past).

Airlines are also notoriously difficult to differentiate from competitors. All of the above factors are common to all; no one escapes the operational complexity. Combine that with simple fact that most airlines on long haul routes buy or lease the same aircraft types and have limited ability to reconfigure the cabins. Aside from colour schemes and cabin crew uniforms most passenger jet experiences are interchangeable.

As Air New Zealand’s CEO, Rob Fyfe points out, the inflight experience drives the airline’s investment in the new cabin configurations, seating, entertainment and service. It is this experience that defines the passenger’s impression of the brand. In-bound holidaymakers represent a much higher percentage of travellers with Air New Zealand than business travellers and because the distances covered are far greater than most other national carriers, the opportunity is to turn a potential negative into a category leading positive. As the national carrier there is the added responsibility to predispose travellers to New Zealand long before they even set foot on our soil and reinforce their experience on the journey home.

The process of redesigning the long haul cabin experience has been a long haul in itself. General manager of the international division, Ed Sims, says the process began four years ago. Internationally-renowned design consultancy IDEO was commissioned to guide the company through the early stages of development. IDEO rapid prototyping and anthropological approach to useability and function are something of a legend in the design community. Some might find it curious that an international firm be commissioned to lead the process, but the stakes are sky high. The result seems worthwhile so far. By including four leading local structural design firms to assist in the design implementation the cross pollination of ideas and expertise adds value to the design community.

Air New Zealand says there is an opportunity to license the designs to other airlines. Hopefully that policy will be judiciously deployed. It would make little sense to diminish hard-won competitive advantage by offering it to rivals on the same routes you travel.

The initiative is a significant one for the airline. It could pay-off in spades. It doesn’t take much to get me to hop on a plane; I’d probably travel in a cabin with passengers who have brought livestock aboard (I have, long story). But the prospect of experiencing a much more comfortable journey, with great, simple food and happy, proud cabin crew takes the promise of a long-haul flight to a whole new level.

Divertimenti 1

2010-01-06T00:33:00.002+13:00

TOP 10
by extermitent

As I am on holiday this post is a simple diversion. I have to confess my admiration for folks who take the time to conceive, plan and impleiment this kind of artwork. It's a clever triple entendre mashup of iconic music, graphics and the once ubiquitous Rubik's Cube (which I never did solve).

Enjoy.

Via Simon Grigg's blog

Media has always been social

2009-12-02T23:32:00.005+13:00

I participate in a new blog about social media. One of my fellow contributors (and the founder of the project) Justin Flitter left a video post which demanded a reply.

I have concerns that the novelty of 'social media' is overwhelming common sense and experience?

I hope the last thing you take out of my reply to Justin's post is any sort of Luddite view. It's just that I feel the discovery of access to media isn't such a novelty really for people who have had something to say and which they can articulate with at least a modicum of skill - mass media has to be fueled with content. In a way it is like a teenager discovering The Beatles today. New - but old.

I have to confess that I didn't really understand the central thesis of Justin's video. But some of his points stimulated the following thoughts of my own:

I have worked in social media all of my working life, since 1983 anyway. That may sound paradoxical but assuming broadcast or mass media isn't social or doesn't have a social dimension is false. In many ways broadcast media has more social dimensions to it than what we have come to describe as 'social media'.

In New Zealand TVNZ alone has the capacity to reach every household in the country. Our relatively homogenous and harmonious society is, in part, a direct consequence of this dynamic. Broadcast TV is a strong binding element in our society. It is, by definition, mainstream. The majority shared in the cultural conversation, albeit vicariously. I would venture that television programmes like Pukemanu, Close to Home, Gliding On, It's in the Bag, Top Town (the original) and the six o'clock news broadcast (and on an on) helped define our national sense of identity in very real ways. I don't consider this to be premised on the desire to have everybody conform. More like holding a mirror up to the audience.

It is too easy to write off broadcast media as 'one-way'. Paradoxically it is and it isn't. Given that advertising is essential to free-to-air television's survival broadcasters have a compulsive obsession with ratings. If the audience finds the content disagreeable it changes channels or switches off. Curiously enough Nielsen PeopleMeters are a 'listening campaign' and broadcasters pay close attention.

Your remarks about interpretation and meaning are also not exclusive to 'social media'. We all process information based on our experience of the world (both a priori and a posteriori), regardless of the source of the information. It is wrong to assume that every communication received from TV, say an advertisement, will be received in the same was as a matter of course by the entire audience. Television might be influential because it is TV, but even that dynamic is changing because TV exists a world where we now have a far greater portfolio of media. @aplusk is influential on Twitter but only because of his access to traditional media - That 70s Show and Punk'd (not to mention the tabloid press via his consort, the former Mrs Willis). Likewise Ellen Degeneres and Oprah. Broadcasters around the world are looking to the opportunities digital tools offer. They will have to learn new skills, to be sure, but they will.

Finally, to my initial point, as an advertising writer and designer I always believed I was having a conversation with the audience. Not the same kind of conversation as the one we would have over a coffee or a beer, but one that conformed to the timeless rules of engagement - be polite, be respectful, be interesting and share. I like to think my awards were compensation for that belief. Sure there are plenty of advertising messages that are rude and offensive (Harvey Norman are you listening), but the same is true on Twitter, Facebook and the bogosphere (sometimes in extremis). Mediated communication is a matter of degree. A standup comedian is having a conversation with the audience, but it is one that is rehearsed and the occasional heckler or interjection isn't a dialogue in the usual sense. A Papal speech probably talks directly to a believer - even if it is broadcast via TV or radio (or YouTube). Hey, Bob Dylan's music from the 60's talks to me - even though it was recorded decades ago.

Much as I am enjoying learning about the new tools we have at our disposal I don't think the principles of communication have ever been any different, and - so long as we are human - ever will be. The tools and dynamics are a little different but, since the invention of moveable type and the printing press, it has always been about giving voice to ideas. Being in print, or on the airwaves or Internet has never made the content a truth. The message will always trump the significance of the medium.