Media Post’s tweet early this afternoon gave me cause for thought. The article Let’s Make Greed the new No-Smoking intrigued me. It hovers around the age old question: “Does marketing influence human behaviour?”
We work hard to influence choice. But human behaviour?
Marketers are keenly aware of the culture and we use trends as our guide.
For instance, I am fascinated by the food industry. This morning Kevin and I had a conversation around “processed” — it all started when I asked him what the vile brownish stuff that he was spreading on his toasted English Muffin was. (Turns out it was cinnamon butter — all these years I have been sprinkling my buttered toast with cinnamon and sugar!)
Marketing, or maybe culture, has captured the word “processed” and built a generation of fear. But “processed” food may not be inherently unhealthy. Peanut butter, whether in the most native state without additives or straight from the Kraft kitchen, is processed. Processed, in its most simplistic definition, means that we have done something to something to change it. Today, the word has come to mean: “Beware! That product is processed — it’s bound to be bad for you.” Few health conscious homes today house Velvetta in the cheese compartment in the refrigerator. Their reason? It’s processed.
Back to the point.
The article is based on America the Possible, a book by Gustave Speth, which (at the risk of being reductive), suggests that the root of America’s downward spiral into oblivion is greed (sometimes known as consumerism).
And it all started with Henry Ford — who, in spite of some interesting personal foibles and ironies, engendered a new generation of consumerism. His vision of America, encapsulated by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World, is founded on a manufacturing system that could produce hundreds of thousands of low cost items so that the ordinary person could afford them.
It all makes me wonder what my grandmother would think of my personal, one cup coffee making system. She was thrilled with the glass bottle of freeze dried powder — all she had to do was boil water. But I can afford a personal coffee system because it’s relatively inexpensive, satisfies my need for elitism, and contributes to my desire for convenience and choice.
As I read the article, I couldn’t help but go back to my literature roots and think about Chaucer. His Canterbury Tales captures human nature. Greed, pride, desire, envy…. these are not new to the 21st century.
The article suggests that marketing work to overcome greed, using our skills in understanding culture. It’s an interesting proposition for a society that has purchased more than 50 million iPads.
Marketing, in its most basic form, is sharing information. It can inspire, convince and mobilize. People, consumers, a free to choose. In North America our well stocked stores give consumers amazing freedom.
But our observation is that motivation is still most effective when it addresses human nature’s deep recesses.
One of our non-profit clients, in launching a new product, did an extremely educational test. Their product was simple: become a monthly donor to support a child who was disabled in some way. We tested two names with two copy approaches. Photos, graphics and offer were identical. “Enable” positioned the child in the context of opportunity, courage and possibilities. “Forgotten Children” provided the brutal context in which these children were hidden and passed over. We anticipated that Forgotten Children would be more effective than Enable–but not ten times.
Marketing doesn’t determine culture. Leaders, families, education and contexts do. Marketing looks deep into our culture and mirrors our trends. Can greed become the new No-Smoking?
You tell me….

A client just gave us their photo resources. 40,000 photos were dropped off in a hard drive.
Gathering photo and story resources is one of the biggest challenges we face — daily.
Brian, our data base specialist, casually commented that what we received were photos, not resources.
He is bang on.
Only about one out of every hundred or so photos is actually usable. Less than 10% are high enough resolution for quality print. There is no information attached to the photos, no names, no stories.
In my wildest dreams, I imagine a client who has a Resource Library, searchable, updated, filled with video, photos, stories. When my dream is explicitly vivid, the library is cross referenced. When my dreams dance with primary colours, the library records where the resources have been used in past publications, creative work, communications and fund raising.
But in my real world, the one I live in every day, there is no Resource Library. There is simply a hard drive filled to the max with photos taken by a volunteer with a point and shoot.
Why are organizations so recalcitrant?
When I started as a Creative Director at World Vision, my boss took me into a 12 x 12 room that was filled, wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling, with boxes of photos, slides and film strips. His direction was: organize this.
OMG
We were saved by digital formats…. and World Vision International hired a full time librarian who implemented and maintained an international resource data base.
World Vision understood the power of their digital assets.
Too many organization today are short changing themselves by using less robust solutions like Flicker, Adobe products and other made for the photographer.
You see, organizations need a Resource software solution, not an digital image solution.
There’s good news here.
Shoebox, a Digital Asset Management software, is a perfect solution. Created specifically for non-profits, the software is ideal for organizations that tell stories. Ten Thousand Villages and The Leprosy Mission Canada are just two of our clients who have found the benefit of the software — and it’s completely amazing!
Call us (519-571-5058) and ask us about it. (of course, you can email as well! gayle@barefootcreative.com)

My friend Sonja sent me a great blog from Fast Company http://www.fastcompany.com/1825591/forget-mad-men-now-is-the-golden-era-for-advertising.

The article is great and worth a read…. I think it really reflects the challenge for traditional agencies to move with the times. While he describes the renaming of the team and an attempt to realign silos, the bottom line remains: Agencies, to be effective, need to be flexible enough to be client centric.

I agree with Matt; there is a new kind of chaos in the marketing world.

In the time of Mad Men, advertising consisted of print, TV , radio, outdoor and in-store advertising. Today, marketing teams are clamouring to find the right mix for their message.

The social media space is baffling on its own. I just did a little search for social media sites…. after about 340 listings, I just gave up. In March, 2010 another expert blogger, predicted the social media sites that would change your business. The five he cited are: FourSquare; Google Buzz; Loopt; Blippy; Groupon. FourSquare and Groupon are still around. Google Buzz dropped off to make room for Google+, Blippy just smashed into the ground with some media exposure and a general lack of interest (sigh — that’s 13 million of investors dreams). Loopt was successfully purchased by Green Dot.

So is the world really a new place?

I think the biggest change is the power of the customer. Today, as the rapid rise of Pinterest illustrates, consumers share their opinions and consumer overviews freely. In the 60’s, my opinion would go as far as my party line (a shared phone line) went (OK, seriously, I was just a very small kid at that time!). For the most part, ordinary people with ordinary lives had a small sphere of influence. Today, by the simple acts of pinning, posting, sharing and liking, the consumer’s reach is far beyond the party line.

BUT marketing intelligence continues to influence the customer.

That hasn’t changed. If anything, brands carry an inordinate power over the consumer, because owning the brand gives the consumer power. I was listening to some on-the-street interviews a few days ago. They were done in downtown Toronto. The interviewer was prodding ordinary people on the streets to see if their loyalty to Canadian would keep them loyal to the flailing RIM.

The responses were predicable. You see, carrying a Blackberry in today’s market environment is synonymous with old, tired, showing a lack of innovation and, well, completely uncool. Once labeled the only tool for business. Once regularly alluded to in articles, novels and conversation… today it has lost the cool factor.

The consumers didn’t take it there by themselves.

What Matt said in his blog is completely correct, today’s advertising power comes from the integration of the message: in the digital space, the social media space, the marketing space, the retail space and the product development.

The marketing team in the organization and the agency must work together, step by step, to walk through the chaos and intelligently choose the platforms, media outlets and social media partners to work with.

Barefoot recently let the idea of a Facebook account go. Why? Because it just isn’t in our interest. The active audience on Facebook is not our audience. My friend Ryan, who is building a wedding photography business, is flourishing on Facebook — it’s the right match for him. But my friend Ryan is not sending out flyers to neighbourhoods — he’s leaving that to Loblaws and Future Shop.

As an MA of Literature, I’m pumped about the new world. It’s about telling stories in ways that intrigue, captivate and motivate your audience. It’s always been about that, but the old “rules” of serif fonts and outer envelope tricks are more complicated now.

It’s a little like writing free-form poetry. The Modernists were great at it — because the whole purpose of the poetry echoed their desire to be free, to be unique and to be purposefully. With every poem they wrote, they broke rules — purposefully and meaningfully. Almost a century later, today’s generation struggles to understand the poetry because they don’t understand the rules.

I believe that advertising strength comes from:
1. Your brand… don’t let the consumer build it. All the great brands are deliberate about building their brand. Look at McDonald’s — today they understand that their brand has shifted. They are responding by building a whole new brand. The essence of the original brand still resonates, the the new brand is talking to a new audience.
2. Your audience… and the heart reasons they love your brand. Steve Jobs had that down pat. This isn’t about technology or actually performance, it’s about loyalty and love.
3. Live where your audience lives…. As a creative director, I have long learned that what I like intuitively is meaningless. The magic happens in the data. Watching sales figures, hits on web sites and responses to marketing by measurable data will get you ahead of the game.

The Golden Age… What do you think?

The Urban Dictionary defines a Social Butterfly as: Someone who is VERY social and easygoing; can be either a male or a female. Usually these people don’t belong to a particular group, but rather jump from one group to another. They are somewhat accepted in all of them, but don’t really have any deep friendship connections in any of them.
Today’s digital environment is filled with butterfly-like activity… it’s hard to stay faithful when there are so many other interesting (or pinteresting) things to see.
FaceBook leads — with an estimated 750 million unique visitors every month. Twitter is second, but it’s not even close at 250 million. LinkedIn drops to 110 million and it’s down hill from there.
The rest capture the attention of small (under 100 million) numbers: My Space, Google+, Devianart, MyJournal, Tagged, Orkut, CafeMom, Ning, Meetup, MyLife, MyYearBook, Badoo all rank in the top 15.
Pinterest didn’t make the cut — the numbers were taken about a week ago and Pinterest has had a huge uptake in the past 24 hours.
As I play in the social media space, I have a few observations:
1. The social butterfly effect lives. Sara and Brian (on our team) are up on the latest, drawing their friendship circles with them. They change social media groups to reflect their culture. Their friends follow (or they follow their friends) Facebook, while still used, is a little crowded, passe and for older moms and stalking grandmothers.
2. Consumer trends are fascinating to follow on social media sites, but tracking them without spreadsheets of sales and revenue growth is detrimental to long term growth.
3. Social media is like PR — it’s nice to have, can build sales and acts a bit like word-of-mouth. Bad mouthing on social media sites will impact sales. Rim and Apple are good examples. The mood around each product is dictated by social media content. Conversations about your product will help sales — if you are a big player.
4. Fundraisers beware of investing significant money in social media. While it gets attention — it doesn’t raise money.
5. We’re still working it out. Farmville — a thrilling trend on FaceBook (OK, slightly sarcastic) — wore out. Sending game scores on your FaceBook feed is declaring your social status as “loser” (even if you’ve bejeweled yet another win).
I am not belittling the impact and power of social media. But as a professional communicator and marketing consultant, I am not jumping on an exclusive charter. Social media is one component of an integrated campaign. Our job as marketers is difficult, with each new social media enterprise we have to carefully consider our response. But, if all our friends are going there, we may have to follow.

I know… the book is old, the comment is old, but the the complexity of change isn’t going anywhere.

Just before Christmas, I sat down with the development and communication leads of 9 different organizations. They were all interested in raising funds for international development. Our discussion revolved around two core questions: What’s changed and What’s our biggest challenge.

We are in a time of change. Social Media, while not yet contributing to huge gains in revenue, influences audiences. Increased competition impacts every organization. There are 25 PAGES of organizations raising funds for cancer on Canada Helps — 25 pages! (about 250 organizations). There is the perception that people are donating less. That’s an interesting perception, because, in fact, Canadians are still pretty strong responders, but, with the waning economy, there is some fear of decreased funds.

I think one of the biggest changes in the charitable landscape is the way we raise funds.

There are two extremes. On the one hand, non-profits are becoming much more sophisticated in getting their message out there. While volunteers are still vital contributors to promoting charitable causes, significant growth is more likely when organizations implement strategic communication tactics. One the other hand, many organizations are caught in the direct mail treadmill. We know that direct mail works, but it is getting more and more expensive. Without integrating tools and methods of fund development, direct mail soon becomes a demon to be controlled — it is essential to maintain the status quo, but increasing in cost.

If you want to read the whole report, email us at info@barefootcreative.com. We’d be happy to send you the report — it’s free.

Or not.

So the hype of the release of the new ads created for the Super Bowls has calmed down. I watched the game in Canada, so was forced to You Tube to experience the real deal. CTV took advantage of the blackout and ran a lot of promos for their own programming.

Then there was the Hyundai Sasquatch ad…. holy crap, I hope I don’t have to see that again.

But I am interested in why one ad takes off and another falls flat. There is magic in a great ad.

Take the Budweiser ad….

It’s magic.

The ad is creative, engaging and hits the target audience. Add the irony of creating a Canadian ad for the Super Bowl by focusing on hockey.

Then take the new Blackberry ad… Be Bold

The magic is missing.

The ad is pedestrian, lacks engagement and I’m not sure who the target audience is. There is irony in the statement: Be Bold.

The Budweiser ad, released at close to the same time, has already had more than 2 million hits. The Blackberry ad, 29,000.

Success happens virtually — when a commercial goes viral. Capturing the attention of your audience is your ultimate goal, affirming their loyalty.

I am commanding two screens and a tablet, with a mobile phone within reach… thinking about the  leaving my digital toys and gadgets and allowing my mind to roam freely.

It’s tempting, but seems, somehow, adulterous.

When Barefoot was in its infancy, I had a green recliner in my office. Before I  started any major writing project or strategic analysis, I would curl up in that recliner and let my mind rest. I would allow ideas about the project to enter softly, to wrap around the relaxed neurons, to day dream and build.

Today… a mere 12 years later with 17 staff, many more clients… I no longer have the chair in my office. It’s just too busy.

For a decade, growth, sustained by early day dreaming, it’s worked. But it’s time I begin to choose times of blackout, where I turn off my devices and simply imagine.I’ve revived my sketch book… I have sharpened my pencil and turned back to mind mapping. Before I build a strategy, I begin with my sketch book. Before I touch the computer, I draw words, pattern ideas, build thoughts.

And in that sketch book and pencil my imagination is freed.

Today, it’s estimated that 662m people logged onto the web with their PC… 255m from a mobile phone and 51m from a tablet. Today, at just past 9 am, I have logged into the web from my PC, mobile phone and tablet. Even as I write, my Twitter feed keeps chatting away, letting me know who’s at Starbucks and how SEM will change my marketing life.

There are so many things going on, but in the end, the winner will use their imagination to understand the patterns. They will use digital and analog media to promote their products to the right people at the right time in the right place. It’s not really a new trick. But some of us, immersed in technology, have forgotten — content is king. Technology, without content, is nothing.

I just have to get this off my chest.

Terry O’Reilly’s new CBC show, Under the Influence, is tagged as the delicate dialogue between the customer and the company. It’s very fashionable. In the age of social media, consumers can, without a question, influence products.

But let’s remember the power of marketing to influence.

Steve Jobs used this mantra: “How does the consumer know what they want unless we tell them?”

Today’s marketers must walk the delicate balance of dialogue and decision. Even in today’s social media biased environment, the spreadsheet tells the story. Romney, who placed almost last in social media dialogue, won the Iowa primary. While a lot of people showed their support through quick and easy social media apps — the people who got in their car, drove to the polling station and actually voted made the decision. A surprising one if pollsters were counting on a parallel between social media and actions.

Today’s creative marketer must integrate the learning, listening to the dialogue and believing the spreadsheets. In the end, we need to sell our product or service.