Keeping it real – How finely tuned is your b*llsh*t detector?

Christmas time and the media is full of it.

Good cheer that is, together with twee little adverts featuring ‘people’ just like you and me having a tremendous amount of seasonal fun. But how much of this stuff are you actually buying – both in reality and metaphorically?

Is that your kid up there on the stage buying you an i-pad – retail price £399 – or is yours the one that can’t wait for Christmas just so he can hand over a beautifully wrapped box that he happens to have sourced on the high street all by himself?

I have to say I don’t really go for any of it and that includes the Redknapp family (or whoever it is this year) all playing Wii together – cuddled up on the sofa – which they seem to be able to do without ripping each others’ heads off.

I know – it makes me come over all Charlie Brooker.

What I do like however, is a dose of reality, which came last week in the shape of Benton/Fenton and his owner in a simultaneously hilarious and horrific YouTube clip. You must know it by now , the one where a dog out for a jolly walk with his owner herds a bunch of London’s finest deer over a busy road in Richmond Park – it’s had 2 million hits so far….

The thing is, we are now all so media savvy, with our BS monitors turned up to 11, that good old reality in all its raw horror and comedy trumps expensive advertising every time.

And so it is when we come to post something on social media. Lord knows I love the challenge of a dull day with not much to say, creative and inventive are my watch words – but look at the stats when you post up a genuinely engaging set of pictures featuring real people or when you share proper news with your followers.

I think people respond instinctively to the genuine – so today’s take away?  Keep it real whenever you can and pray the Redknapps don’t drop round this Christmas for a game of Wii.

Why owned really is the new earned.

Have you heard the buzz phrase – PEO is the new SEO?

Do you think it’s portentous nonsense and another example of appalling jargon? Me too. But there is something really important we can take from it.

If P is paid for and represents advertising and E stands for earned, which is what old style PR was all about ie. getting clients in the newspapers or on TV – then it is the O that we really want to look at.

O stands for Owned and is a key marketing development to emerge from the internet maelstrom.

Advertising and PR experts were all about getting exposure for a brand. They took the established media, whether that was billboards, tv spots or magazine editorial and worked hard to get their clients some space there in order to showcase their wares.

But the internet turned the world upside down and made space, which was scarce and expensive, into an infinitely available commodity. Anyone can publish content on the internet. You want a blog post? – Have ten. You want to show me your beautifully shot arty photos? Have an account with Flickr.

The O part of PEO – the Owned bit – looks at all that cheap space and says – ok, we are going to use this freedom – we are going to become our own publishers with our own community of readers and viewers, with our own agenda, which we OWN.

This is a marvellous opportunity for brands with a strong following to step off the treadmill of someone elses agenda to make their own and the kings of this, in my view, are Boden.

This upmarket clothing label didn’t even have a blog a year ago, now they have an entire community. It’s a hive of activity with hosted discussions and guest ‘columnists’ talking about style and kids parties and Christmas…..there are places to post photos, to chat and ask questions. It is, in short. a brilliant use of the owned space.

Would it work with a smaller community for a lesser known brand? I think this is basically what we all need to be aiming for and the medium is the Facebook page. It can be hard to get a community going when people are reluctant to comment and get stuck in, but if we don’t start engaging people then I think the consequences are serious.

Pages with low levels of engagement simply won’t show up in people’s news feeds. If you want your page to thrive you are going to have to start creating the kind of content that people want.

If you build your own buzz, nurture it and develop it you may find that the O part of PEO turns into more than just jargon.

 

QR codes and why it’s the content that counts.

Have you noticed an outbreak of mystical black patterns on everything from leaflets to packaging?

If you haven’t, you soon will because QR codes are the very latest in communications technology, allowing you to zap via smart phone from a square, three D bar code, into a world of information.

The implications for marketing are huge and I could spend my entire post giving you the QR code ABC, but these guys at notixtech.com have done a great job with this QR code FAQ Do read it if you need to get up to speed.

Understandably, early adopters are eager to seize the advantage while the idea is still hot and are busy educating people and creating exciting uses for the codes. And this, I feel is the crux of the matter, because like any technology, once the shine of the new wears off, it is really only as good as the content it delivers.

I was with a restaurant owner recently who is very excited by QR codes and has put them on his menus and flyers, but when he showed me how they worked it took so long to download the information he could have talked me through the entire menu and given me a personal tour of the kitchens, so usability is important too!

Here are some of the more creative uses of QR codes I’ve spotted so far.

• AXA Bank are very keen on QR codes and in one ad build a giant code using paint cans which were then hoisted onto a billboard. See the ad here
• AXA were at it again – this time with an interactive QR code you had to scan to see the rest of the ad – watch it now
• 23,000 people liked the QR posted by Lady Gaga to her fans on Facebook, linking to a downloadable ring tone for Born This Way
• Estate Agents placing a QR code on the For Sale sign outside a house allow anyone casually spotting the property to instantly access a full video walk through, including price details, from their mobile phone.
• QR codes on flyers and even business cards can give you access to smart promotional videos which let the customer know more about you – like this one Disclosure; the voice over is mine!

Do you think QR codes are here to stay or just a passing fad? And please do share any examples you’ve seen.

Lucy

What Makes A Memorable Ad?

Advertisers will do anything to make their product memorable.

Some do their job too well. Whoever unleashed the ‘Go Compare’ opera singer on the world needs to be locked in a cupboard. ‘Compare the meerkats’ just about gets away with it because it’s kind of cute.

Kids love this stuff by the way. If  an ad appeals to children, then it’s definitely hitting the spot.

Children like a catch phrase they can repeat in the playground. At the moment it’s  ‘We buy any car’ with it’s incessantly chirpy rap jingle.

But they love the surreal too and animals are always a winner.

I’m thinking now about the epic Muller cow advert. Have you seen it?

The 60 second mini-feature stars Mary the cow, who has done such sterling service providing milk for yogurt that she is being rewarded with a dream come true.

Her dream, it turns out, is to gallop along the beach like a horse, to the sounds of REO Speedwagon. Who knew?

Mary is part of a £9million pound advertising campaign.

She has her own website and is already pulling them in on You Tube

It’s epic, it’s a bit mad and  it will surely have kids and students sharing video and possibly downloading the track, because of course the REO Speedwagon is a stroke of genius. It’s inspired by the revival of soft rock via Glee, just look at Don’t Stop Believing

The fact that cows probably hate water and would never dream of being seen imitating a horse is neither here nor there. The industrial yogurt factory and the mass milking parlour are far from our thoughts as we watch Mary gallop(just about) along the sand.

It’s a nice piece of work.

Go on Girl Gallop

Does Location Matter ?

In the Madmen heyday if you were in advertising and you weren’t on Madison Avenue you were nowhere.

Today you can run a successful business from anywhere so long as you have a computer and wi-fi access; and plenty of people do.

So why is location creeping back into the equation with a huge buzz around GPS and Geolocation technology ?

Advertisers love it for a start. It means they can direct local adverts to local people and now means I get ads via Spotify for Wilkinson’s in Maidenhead (that gave me a fright.)

Newspapers can use it too, to show their readers online via Google maps exactly where incidents took place.

You can tag your photos with the location you took the pix and you need never get lost again either on foot or in the car.

foursquare is geolocation presented in the form of a game, with users checking in to places and earning kudos for visiting most often. It can even lead to free drinks and discounts if you become ‘mayor’ of certain bars or shops.

People over the age of 30 have been known to use it, to check out their contacts  in order to arrange impromptu meetings. (Thanks @Grahamjones)

But I am still not convinced that we have the local mindset to make this fly.

I have spent the last 10 years transferring my shopping habits online and global. I don’t need an ad on my mobile for a local gaming shop  because I am already buying my Nintendo DS games from Hong Kong on E-bay for a fraction of the cost. Everything else comes from Amazon.

Real life shopping is now a treat to be savoured and I  don’t want advertisers bombarding me with spam while I do it.

Anyone concerned about the way modern life sucks up their personal data should be freaking out about geolocation tools. It’s one thing being able to see which mate is in which bar, but imagine yourself as a little red dot moving across a map being tracked by …..insert here (the council, the government, MI5 ? )

It should certainly make Private Detectives lives a lot easier.

But as to whether location itself matters ?

I am glad not to have to live in London anymore and to be able to connect with influencers from around the world via Twitter. As someone who writes I can also send my work wherever it needs to go via e-mail or publish direct.

But I will still work hard to maintain a network of people who are physically local to me and unless we are George Clooney in ‘Up in the Air’, we need to connect regularly with real people to keep our feet on the ground.

What do you think ?

* Thanks to Melanie Mackie from Scarletta Media who got me thinking about these issues when she announced her first local Tweetup for contacts in Wokingham. Good luck, I hope it goes well.