Viral videos seem so easy to make. I mean, even Rachel Black made one! However, the reality is that virality is ever-elusive. There’s no single equation. You can’t buy it anywhere. No internet marketer/video editor, no matter what they tell you, has the one formula to guarantee viral success. It’s not like six pack abs—those are sought after but there’s a clear formula. Eat well. Exercise often. That’s it. That’s the formula. You heard it here first. Just look at my abs as proof (please don’t).

But it is possible to create a video that goes “viral” (however you want to define “viral”). We may not be able to unearth the scrolls that house the secret formula, but we’re going to dig deep into why some videos have found success, and why audiences were so compelled to share. Here are 8 traits we found in some of the most successful viral videos.

Note: This isn’t comprehensive, nor exclusive. Also, just having any one or two of these traits doesn’t guarantee success.

1. Extremely Funny

Arguably the most common aspect of a viral video is humor. Audiences love to share videos that will make other people laugh. It’s human nature. But being funny isn’t easy, and many people have failed at this. If you put the effort into it though, it can be a huge benefit for your brand, like this video from John St., a Canadian advertising agency.

The flipside, and a legitimate concern for brands taking a shot at viral success, is that a video can unintentionally be funny, ending up as the butt of the joke. Rebecca Black uploaded her music video in hopes of pop stardom, but it reached viral status when the lyrics of the song were carefully dissected. “Fun, fun, fun, fun. Looking forward to the weekend!” Though it’s very arguable that it’s the best thing that has ever happened to her.

2. Something We Can All Relate To

When the content of videos appeal to a wider audience, the likelihood is much greater that someone is going to share the video throughout their social networks. A recent viral success, Sh*t Nobody Says is a prime example. A spinoff of the viral meme Sh*t Girls Say (which falls in both this and the previous category), this version found a topic that we can all relate to instead of the niche crowds the other spinoffs targeted (not that those don’t have value). Well written and acted, Sh*t Nobody Says spread like wildfire. I mean, does anyone understand taxes?

A subcategory of this would be “Something Useful.” There have been a number of videos that have seen viral success within their targeted communities by creating a video that the audience not only could relate to, but also found useful and shared with others that would appreciate the video. One such example is Janssen-Cilag’s (client) Living with ADHD video. The video wasn’t intended to reach millions (the audience is parents with children who have ADHD), but is considered one of Europe’s most successful pharma videos. Brands creating valuable content that audiences can use is a great way to encourage audiences to not only share but come back for more.

3. Exposing the Truth

One aspect of viral video success that seems to go under the radar is exposing the truth. Ever notice those crazy before and after weight loss pictures (specifically those you see as featured videos on YouTube)? Ever wonder if they’re real? Or if not, where the pictures come from? I came across a video that exposed how these body transformations happen, and this guy did it in 5 hours. Three days and over three million views later, the video was viral.

Of course, as Dominos will tell you, you can come out on the wrong end of a viral video exposing a sad truth. Luckily they were able to rebound with a quite effective ad campaign, but they were forced up against the ropes for a while.

4. Emotional

One of the best angles for brands to take is to weave an effective story into a video that draws emotion from the audience or targets a pain point they can relate to. A recent branded viral video (and a personal favorite of mine) came from the David Cornfield Melanoma Fund. Well written (you’ll notice it’s funny in the beginning to get/keep your attention, but gets serious at the right time) and well produced, the young nonprofit (founded in 2007) has had the English version of their video viewed over 5 million times. They also have Spanish, French and Russian subtitled versions.

Brands take note: The video includes real stories, and stories are powerful and inherently want to be shared.

5. Completely Unexpected

2010 saw one video go viral that had everyone saying, “What, what sound just came out of that man’s mouth?” The homeless man with the golden voice appeared on YouTube courtesy of a reporter from the Columbus Dispatch, and immediately Ted Williams’ life had completely changed. Nobody driving through that intersection would ever expect Williams’ voice to sound like that, and the sidewalk story in the latter half of the video helped create a piece of viral history.

6. Something You’ve Never Seen Before

Creativity is key when producing a video in hopes of viral marketing success. LA-based musical quartet OK Go are the poster children for creating videos with content so unique and amazing audiences are compelled to share it. They were so successful that we wrote a post outlining some of their secrets to success. In reaction to that post, the OK Go twitter account gave me this reply:

Here’s their latest video for their song “Needing/Getting” in which they partnered with Chevy (another way to leverage viral success). Over 7 million views in three days (thus far). I think they’ve got this viral thing down.

Brands like Old Spice have found success by creating sharable content unlike anything anyone has ever seen, although it’s difficult for me to categorize a national ad as a viral hit.

7. Interactive

Some brands utilized the interactive capabilities of YouTube to gain viral success. Both TippEx and Hell Pizza created a “Choose Your Own Adventure” series that garnered millions of views. TippEx put the fate of an unsuspecting bear in the hands of the viewer in their Hunter Shoots a Bear series. Hell Pizza painted an accurate picture of the inevitable 2012 apocalypse in their series where the viewer has to help a delivery man deliver a pizza to a woman trapped on top of a shipping crate surrounded by zombies. I mean, who hasn’t had that happen?

8. Right place, right time

These are the ones you can never predict, and it’s rare for a brand to take advantage of situations like this because the situations themselves are rare and inherently unpredictable. Videos like Charlie Bit My Finger and David after Dentist are organic. When the person behind the camera hit record, they didn’t know what they were going to get. While this is a commonality found in many viral videos, it’s not one any brand should bank on. Oh, and here’s Charlie and Harry for your viewing pleasure.

What shouldn’t go unrecognized is the inherent risk in creating viral videos. Many successful viral videos required a large investment in time and money to create something that is not guaranteed to go viral. Few brands are willing to take this risk, but there’s no way to ever guarantee success.

What are some great examples of branded viral video success? What traits did we miss? Let us know in the comments.

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HAVE YOU REGISTERED FOR THE POST-ADVERTISING SUMMIT YET?

We’ll be peering into the future of all things content marketing, advertising, journalism and social media at our Post-Advertising Summit, March 29th in New York City. We’ll stop talking and start DOING with workshops that put pen to paper and truly create a piece of valuable content. Speakers including Simon Dumenco (AdAge), Shira Lazar (What’s Trending), Joe Pulizzi (Content Marketing Institute) and more. In order to get the best price, reserve your seat at the Summit table today!

Like it or not, your car is becoming more intelligent. With the integration of advanced technologies, your car may know more about you than you know about yourself. Automakers are so committed to equipping their vehicles with the technology users (and brands) want that Ford, GM, and BMW have all opened research labs in Silicon Valley to scout out new technology and keep ahead of trends.

Below, we’re taking a look at some of the coolest technology that’s out there now, how marketing and advertising plays into this brave new world, and we’re making predictions on where all of this is heading.

The Future is Now

My in-laws recently purchased a Ford Edge equipped with Microsoft Sync, and as I needed any excuse to get out of the house and away from the confidence succubus that is my mother-in-law, I took it upon myself to “learn” how to operate Sync. While it does a great many things, I was most impressed by the smartphone integration. Soon enough, the car was reading me my texts, playing my C+C Music Factory channel from Pandora, and giving me a list of how the stocks my father-in-law invests in were performing (I now understand why I wasn’t given a dowry). While I sat in amazement at how great all this new technology was (as well as the car reading this text from my significant other: “My mom is just drunk. I’m sure she’s sorry she called you a putz. Will you come in now?”) I realized a car is no longer a place where people disconnect from the world. People want to stay connected, and car manufacturers need to stay on top of the tech trends in order to market cars to consumers.

Ford isn’t the only one getting into the technology game. GM announced they’re experimenting with technology that will let you update your Facebook status or check Facebook messages through voice commands. Toyota’s Entune system lets you find restaurants and make reservations through Open Table or purchase movie tickets through MovieTickets.com. And if that weren’t enough, you’ll soon be able to “friend” your car on Twitter so it can keep you up-to-date on how it’s doing. (Change the brakes, your fuel economy is down, replace the front tire, you drive like a jackass, etc…) Clearly, having the latest technology is a desire for most car owners, and keeping them safely connected is a priority for car manufacturers. And with all this technology comes great information flowing in and out of the car.

Your Car: The Billboard

Anyone who’s spent time in New York City in the past five years surely understands the increasingly grating experience of sitting through your cab ride accompanied by local television personalities talking about the weather while simultaneously reminding you to watch their shows and buy various products via the in-cab television. Trust me, marketers would want nothing more than to get inside your car and serve you a plate of warm advertising via that nifty touchscreen placed on your dashboard. With all that information you’re sending off into the world via your web searches, e-mail, and social networks, expect advertisers to try and get a hold of some of it when it comes from your car.

• Oil companies would love to know that you’ve just plugged a 500 mile trip into your GPS. They’d love to direct you to their closest filling station to help you get there too.
• Your radio is almost always tuned to the classic rock station which means ticket brokers would pay a premium to inform you about the Crosby, Stills, and Nash concert happening at the local stadium.
• The shock sensors in your 4×4 have been having a field day during your trip to Joshua Tree. Outdoor gear companies would foam at the mouth to put you in the crosshairs of their targeted advertising with this information.
• Did you send an e-mail from your car again? And did it contain the word “meeting” more than three times? You’re obviously doing business from your car, and the nearest hotel would love to know that a savvy business man who is in need of a rest is about to drive past their establishment.

It’s these types of pinpointed information that can attract advertisers. It’s been said before, “How you drive is a reflection of how you live your life,” and your behavior behind the wheel will give those advertisers trying to reach you a great idea of who you are. If advertisers can leverage this information responsibly, then we may see more relevant, informed, and dynamic advertising showing up in automobiles very soon.

Our Predictions

Despite living under high-tension wires and being cursed by a shaman in a New Orleans back alley, I’m not clairvoyant. In fact, based on my latest prescription for contacts, I’m not really normal voyant. But I’ve been in the advertising game long enough and been in several cars in my life which makes me an absolute expert in making predictions about the future of advertising in automobiles. Here are some of the things we can expect to see from car manufacturers and advertisers in the next decade.

• Your GPS will link up with an advertising service that’ll let you know when you’re in close proximity to various stores via voice instructions. (“It’s just about lunch time and Outback Steakhouse is up ahead on the left in .3 miles. They’re having a special on cheese fries.”)
• By allowing these advertisements into your car, manufactures can subsidize free technology upgrades such as placing GPS units in lower-end cars.
• By linking up your car to a Twitter account, it’ll automatically announce when you’ve hit certain milestones. (@AdamsCar: Just hit 50,000 miles on State Street in Santa Barbara, CA, or @JonsEscape: Just completed a long trip from Boston, MA to Baltimore, MD.)
• Based on the make and model of your car, advertisers will be able to serve you ads based on the general demographic for similar car owners. High-end restaurants can promote their businesses to people driving luxury automobiles while cheaper food options can serve ads to economy-class cars, thus creating geo-located targeted advertising.
• A flying car. I realize this isn’t advertising related, but Back to the Future II was over 20 years ago, and the dream of owning a flying car is no more realized than it was in the mid-80s.

What are your predictions for the future of mobile (literally) advertising?

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HAVE YOU REGISTERED FOR THE POST-ADVERTISING SUMMIT YET?

We’ll be peering into the future of all things content marketing, advertising, journalism and social media at our Post-Advertising Summit, March 29th in New York City. We’ll stop talking and start DOING with workshops that put pen to paper and truly create a piece of valuable content. Speakers including Simon Dumenco (AdAge), Shira Lazar (What’s Trending), Joe Pulizzi (Content Marketing Institute) and more. In order to get the best price, reserve your seat at the Summit table today!

You didn’t know there was a war going on in Europe? That’s because it took place in 1939. It’s the beginning of the Second World War, and it’s being retold on this date and at this time by the Twitter account @RealTimeWWII. After tweeting for only three months, @RealTimeWWII, which according to Mashable is maintained by Oxford graduate Alwyn Collinson, has already exceeded 150,000 followers. Why can’t brands be this inventive?

WHERE ARE THE BRANDS?

While unique and intriguing, this historical exhibition had our post-advertising team wondering, “Isn’t this a major missed branding opportunity?” Where’s LIFE, whose logo is often seen on the images posted to the account? Where’s the History Channel? Can you imagine the benefit if a university’s history department had developed this idea as a course exercise?

Seemingly as fast as new digital tools emerge, impassioned fans have found new and unique ways to use them. @RealTimeWWII is just one example of the versatility of Twitter, which in its short history has chronicled the comic ramblings of one man’s father (which spawned a short-lived sitcom), hosted group chats, brought fictional TV characters to life (both branded and fan-based), fueled computer sales and provided a platform for customer support but, most important, has given brands a new way to creatively connect with its audience.

PERCEIVED TWITTER GATEKEEPERS

So why aren’t more brands actively searching for more ways on Twitter to provide valuable and engaging content, like @RealTimeWWII? The necessity for a sustained, persistent effort coupled with the blind faith that people will eventually catch on can be a major barrier to entry for brands that have little patience for devoting resources to an effort with no immediate or guaranteed return.

Success on Twitter is often calculated by the most tangible of measurements: number of followers. Any seasoned marketer knows, however, that given the numerous black-hat get-rich-quick methods of gaining followers and the necessity for relevance, follower count is not a metric you can ultimately measure success by. It’s this obsession with numbers that brands must get past to take a whack at creating the good stuff, the content that doesn’t scream “Marketing!” and that instead entertains or informs or, as in the case of @RealTimeWWII, both.

STEAL THESE IDEAS

The branded Twitter landscape isn’t barren, though. There have been a few efforts (like the Weather Channel, below) that can be considered quite post-advertising, and also a few that we’ve come up with on our own. Take a look, and let us know your ideas in the comments:

• The Weather Channel taking over accounts named after hurricanes, like @Irene, where they give up-to-the-minute information about the storm from its point of view.

 

• Paramount Pictures or Disney Pixar creating characters’ personas on Twitter before the specific movie is released, in a prequel of sorts, as if the character had a Twitter account before the movie action took place.

 

• Ford creating a unique Twitter account for the development and eventual unveiling of its latest model, including live updates from the manufacturing facility, gradual insight into features and road testing (with media).

 

• Sports Illustrated creating an account for a fictional Chicago White Sox batboy in which he chronicled the famed 1919 “Black Sox” season in real time.

Even if a brand doesn’t come up with an idea but finds an effort still in its early stages that it can align itself with and that can become a true resource, the brand can own the effort and benefit from the momentum. The History Channel could still help sponsor the @RealTimeWWII effort, enabling it to be developed in more languages (currently offered in Spanish @TiempoReal_IIGM and Russian @war_only) or even from different perspectives (British, German, American, etc.). Regardless, any brand that wants to get involved will have to do more than just logo slapping if it wants to keep the existing audience and momentum.

Whether your brand is filling the wastebasket with half-baked ideas or looking for the right idea to help cultivate, Twitter is fertile ground for brands extending their reach and helping grow audiences. Success won’t be immediate, no matter what your goal, but if you believe in the idea and dedicate the right amount of sustained resources, content marketing on Twitter can pay huge dividends.

What opportunities are being embraced or missed by brands on Twitter? Do you have any more to add to our list?

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Okay, it’s not exactly a party. But it’s not exactly a conference, either…This one-day event is meant to make branded content real for you. Luminaries from Ad Age, The Week, Electus, Bluefin, OMGPop and many more (see the speakers list) will converge to inspire you with bright revelations concerning the Future of Information and the Future of Entertainment.

It’s not just about meeting new media stars, however. The Summit is a daylong series of collaborative events (see the schedule) that break down the walls between “speaker” and “attendee,” between digital and actual audiences. It’s about moving beyond theorizing about best practices—with your help, we’re going to create real content in real time. And it’s about making sure that branded executions will work in the real world, with all those crossed-arms consumers, while carrying out brand objectives.

It’s going to be a lot of fun, and a damn good excuse to visit New York, if we do say so ourselves. If you can make it, we’d love to see you. There’s a discount available for you Post-Advertising fans (ssh!) that’ll save you $100 off the admission; use the code PABLOG when you sign up. If you sign up by Friday EOD you can also take advantage of the $100 off Early Bird Special (price goes up $100 next week). For more details, click here.

Hope to see you there!

At Story, we believe that content is king, so it’s hard for us to support this type of vague and generic advertising. TV shows are brands, and in a crowded media landscape brands must make themselves useful, fast, or get the hell out of the way. For each of these real posters, can you deduce the real plots from our fakes? If not, we submit that they’re probably too vague to be effective audience drivers. But feel free to challenge us in the comments section. Meanwhile, have fun!

Move to the next page to start the quiz!

]]> http://www.postadvertising.com/2011/09/vague-tv-ads/feed/ 5 http://www.postadvertising.com/2011/09/post-advertising-summit/ http://www.postadvertising.com/2011/09/post-advertising-summit/#comments Thu, 15 Sep 2011 16:23:27 +0000 Jon Thomas http://www.postadvertising.com/?p=6225 The Post-Advertising Summit celebrates the end of the broadcast age and the dawn of a new era for marketing. The advertising-as-interruption model has collapsed and the ad world is evolving. Today, we live in an opt-in culture, which means the only messages your audience will see or hear are those that they choose to see and hear. So how do you get positive attention? By creating great media that is relevant, informative, and on-brand.

In a Post-Advertising world, brands can only communicate with audiences by producing genuinely useful and entertaining content…the kind people actually want, and can share. This summit is a peek into how it’s done. A morning panel and work session focus on the FUTURE OF INFORMATION. After a sponsored lunch uniting panelists and spectators, the afternoon shifts focus to the FUTURE OF ENTERTAINMENT. The Summit will prove the promise of Post-Advertising by demonstrating the amazing content that can be created by smart people on behalf of sponsors, and the extent to which great stories will spread.

Don’t wait! Register now before the price goes up!

Speakers:

• Simon Dumenco – “The Media Guy,” Advertising Age
• Joe Pulizzi – Founder, Content Marketing Institute
• Shira Lazar – Host/Executive Producer, What’s Trending?
• Steven Kotok – President, The Week
• Laura Caraccioli-Davis – EVP of Advertising, Electus
• David-Michel Davies – Executive Director, Webby Awards & IADAS
• Andrea Miller – Founder, YourTango.com
• Dan Porter – CEO, OMGPOP Games
• Tom Thai – VP of Business Development, Bluefin Labs
• Jon King – European Managing Director, Story Worldwide
• …and more to be announced soon!

LEARN MORE AT THE FULL SITE HERE

Who it’s for:

Marketing strategists, brand managers, designers, photographers, copywriters, and creative directors. Basically, anyone interested in turning the ad world upside down and developing a new method of engaging the audience.

What you’ll get out of it:

These workshops will reveal the power of storytelling and demonstrate how brands can create interesting, compelling media to effectively connect with their audiences. We’ll showcase those that are doing it best, plus, we’ll collaborate on a few mock campaigns ourselves to put this belief in action.

5 Reasons the Summit is Different:

1. You will be an engaged and integral part of the event
2. You will leave the Summit having CREATED two pieces of content
3. You will be part of conversations and workshops that shape the future of marketing
4. Our speakers are experts across varied disciplines, not just marketing or social media
5. It’s the only event where advertising and storytelling can be mentioned in the same sentence

The Basics:

• Date: March 29th, 2012
• Location: Cult Studios, NYC (27th between 6th and 7th)
• Time: 9am – 5pm, with a cocktail reception from 5-7pm (see full agenda here)
• Cost: $395 Early Bird; $495 Advance; $595 Day-of

Sponsorship:

Are you a pioneering brand leading the surge into the post-advertising age? If so, click here to learn more about becoming a sponsor of the Post-Advertising Summit.

This post originally appeared in our August issue of “Live Report from the Future of Marketing,” our monthly Post-Advertising newsletter. Subscribe for free here.

Most marketing agencies approach their content with the standard brush. They take a look at the latest tools and trends, and pull together a few tips here and there. That subtle approach is not necessarily a bad thing, but in this difficult economy, that’s no longer good enough. Desperate times call for bold strokes. That’s why we at Story Worldwide have decided to put our money where our mouth is — we’re not only outlining five key ideas for the future of content marketing, we’re currently investing in them.

1. Big brands need editorial councils

Content is the only thing that attracts and truly motivates consumers in this opt-in world. It’s required to start and sustain all conversations in social media. But managing ongoing multichannel content production is complex, combining best practices from traditional publishing companies, marketing consultancies and digital agencies. Not to mention, not everyone is truly a natural storyteller. Real storytelling requires different skills and experience than traditional advertising. It requires a mastery of narrative techniques. Metaphors. Archetypes. Character. Story arcs. It also requires a committing to being ‘always on,’ producing content and managing the resulting conversations on an ongoing continual basis.

Brands that truly strive for effective multichannel content, particularly if it spans borders, languages, and traditions, must establish what we call an Editorial Council. They produce an Editorial Strategy and an Editorial Calendar. All content proceeds from there. The brand feeds the Editorial Council; the Editorial Council creates the Editorial Strategy and the Editorial Calendar, which guide all executions. At Story we’ve seen this work to great success with Lexus, and as big brands begin to embrace content more wholeheartedly, we expect to see it become far more commonplace.

2. Make every employee a content producer

Often brands that create content, especially blogs, have dedicated authors. They’re usually a select few individuals, often in the marketing department (and strangely removed from much of the brand’s day-to-day operations), who gather and produce the content. But we’ve shifted to a place where valuable content lives in every nook and cranny of your brand and business. You’ve got talented team members churning out valuable and unique products, yet their expertise and knowledge is restricted to their cubicle or personal blog.

Leverage the most valuable assets within your company – your employees – and encourage and empower them to share their expertise, turning it into a truly unique piece of content. They don’t have to write the final version (that’s where the real writers come in), but they can be a source of content that no marketing department can ever unearth on their own.

Consider creating a blog post, a how-to series, an eBook, or simply interview them and upload it as a podcast or a Q&A on your blog. At Story, we not only help produce such content for companies like Toasted Head wines, but we’ve also begun producing a series of 16 eBooks (one is available now) written by our talented game developers, writers, designers, and more.

3. Feed your community with fresh content

Simply maintaining a stream of content for your community, whether it’s on a blog or on Facebook, is not enough. In order to effectively engage audiences, brands must constantly produce unique content to keep their audience’s attention piqued. Otherwise, like produce, your community will spoil.

We’re not just talking about the difference between infrequent and frequent content. Simply posting content frequently doesn’t mean it’s “fresh,” in this case. I can eat a fresh grapefruit every day for breakfast but after a while, no matter how juicy it is, I’m going to get sick of it. We’re suggesting that on top of frequently posting content, in order to properly cultivate a community, you MUST continually innovate – create many different types of content, including unique content (think games, live event coverage, innovating upon user-generated content) that can ONLY be found within your community. We go much more in depth here.

4. Be willing to leave your home base

A common strategy for most brands is to create individual  pieces of content that pull the user back to the brand’s home base. This content spreads across paid and owned — from Google PPC to eBooks to social media accounts — with the basic idea that you should reach audiences where they are and bring them back to your brand site (home base) where they can learn more, print a coupon to purchase your product or fill out a contact form to inquire about your services.

It’s a standard strategy and we’re not suggesting you ditch your home base completely (particularly for SEO purposes), but moving forward your brand needs to have more respect for both your individual content pieces and the audiences you’re trying to reach. View each piece of content as a brand advocate in and of itself. Design them in a way that carries your brand objectives and brand values with links to the places you want to take consumers. It’s not reasonable to think that an advocate of your brand actually wants to spend time on your brand’s site. What’s reasonable is to think that your brand advocates will help a great piece of content spread. Experiences are now between the person and the useful content, so focusing more on creating that spreadable content and less on how to get them back to your site will pay dividends.

5. Allow digital content marketing to drive offline behavior

“Involve the fans” is the sine qua non of digital marketing today. But to date, these participation opportunities have been strictly limited. Bringing them into your community is always important, but what happens when they get there? Are your goals loftier than just engagement? Particularly if your product or service is tangible, can you really use digital to move the analog needle? And can generating productive online-to-offline behavior really lower traditional ad spending?

Yes, believe it or not, digital content marketing is not restricted to just driving online behavior (becoming a fan, signing up for a newsletter, sharing a post, or e-commerce). You can drive offline behavior through digital by involving advocates materially in the creation of content, and curating the digital communities that form around it. We’ve seen this happen first hand with our client WGNA and their How I Met Your Mother Superfan community. WGNA features “Superfans” in TV spots, tweeters show up in crawls during shows, and fans program the lineup for episode marathons (primarily achieved through Facebook and YouTube). In exchange, WGNA has been able to leverage the show’s existing online fan base to drive audience, positioning WGNA well for the long-term transition from lean-back-TV to online-interactive experience. Not to mention, it means they can continue to reduce their stake in budget-intensive traditional advertising and move a portion of it towards post-advertising while banking the rest.

(We believe in this last one so much that we’ll be hosting a session at Content Marketing World about this very topic.)

These are five of our big ideas that are brewing at Post-Advertising. Do you think we’re on-point or off-base? What big ideas do YOU have?

Take Perm, Russia. About 900 miles from Moscow, Perm was a sort of identity-free zone during the Cold War…a “closed city” kept secret due to its military production facilities. As detailed in this New York Times article, the public perception was a grim “Gateway to Siberia.” Try that on a t-shirt! Being the butt of national jokes has a real costs in terms of civic growth; Perm lost over 160,000 young people between 1997 and 2004.

Today, post-war Perm is working to stop the mass exodus and turn the city into an attractive place to live. The face-lift: Rebuild Perm into a national destination for modern art (Lenin be damned), art, and art lovers. To this end Perm has dedicated almost $53 million USD (a full three percent of its budget) to cultural development, opening museums, galleries, and performance spaces and accenting the city with street art and statues. Oleg Chirkunov, governor of Perm, has even appointed an avant-garde theatre director as the Minister of Culture to bring a fresh, vibrant perspective.

Will it work? Time will tell. Changing a city’s image is no walk in the park. Cities are history, and geography and topography, and neighborhoods and populations that change at the slow pace of generations. An all-out effort to reshape a city’s public perception is an important first step toward turning around its fortunes. But it’s important to remember that the brand of a city, like all brands today, is ultimately in the control of its consumers — in this case, citizens inside and outside its walls.

In 2001 the phrase “place-branding” was coined to represent this growing phenomenon. Atlanta, Toronto, Glasgow, Liverpool, Melbourne, and even my hometown Durham, North Carolina all leap to mind when I think about cities rebranding themselves. Locales are constantly generating new slogans: In 200the p5 Mayor Bloomberg tried to sell New Yorkers on “The World’s Second Home,” but R&R Partners’ brilliant “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” campaign was more successful, bringing a record 37 million visitors to Vegas in 2004. I could go on.

Branding a city may have higher stakes in terms of people’s lives and livelihoods, but the marketing challenge is not materially different from branding and marketing other products. You start with a clear business objective (to attract more youth, to bring in tourists, to raise property values) and a communications objective (we are friendly to business, we are green and eco-friendly, you will want to raise your kids here). Once these are established, you can start looking at your target audience’s habits and prejudices and begin to develop content that supports your objectives, is supported by the evidence and credible to your audience, and is packaged to be shareable, spreading productive conversation.

Here’s how it works in the real world.

In 2010, we helped New Detroit, the city’s largest community organization, create an agenda to involve the people of Detroit in taking their first steps toward reimagining the city. Detroit was as troubled a brand as cities get: The national media was literally calling Detroit a city that couldn’t be saved. So the minds behind the New Detroit Project decided to fight back and regain control of their city’s story, with the help of Story Worldwide. Understanding that communities are defined by multiple voices, we proposed and helped New Detroit organize what became known as “Taking Charge of Our Story.” More than 250 of Detroit’s journalists, business professionals, and politicians met face to face for a one-day, promoted and live-blogged public summit. They discussed where Detroit has been, where it was then, and where it intended to go. We created a visual design that drew on Detroit’s rich history (think Motown, the Golden Age of Autos, etc.) to help form a solid foundation for a better future for the city. The project led to the creation of a unique news start-up, Detroit143, that is now out raising capital and finding partners.

Rebranding cities, like rebranding products and services, is a continuous process — it can’t be fixed with a short-term “campaign.” In a digital age where conversation goes on forever, brands need to commit to long-term engagement with key audiences. For cities, this means committing to real improvements and proof points that support the new image they’re trying to portray. They need to be honest and transparent throughout the process — whitewashing won’t be believed and evil will be exposed.

In the end that’s the most important thing for cities to remember: In the post-advertising age, consumers control brands. The public has had a lot of fun with the idea of coming up with “realistic” state mottos like “Montana: Now Completely Overrun By Packs of Hyperintelligent Wolves” and “West Virginia: Technology Ain’t Welcome Here.” They’ve even concocted tourism “campaigns” of their own:

Any rebranding campaign should properly start with the citizens themselves, because they’re the ones who will tell your story every day…for better or for worse.

How about your city…could it use a little rebranding work? Let us know in the comments.

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The Facts:

The creators: San Francisco-based agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners — the same heads responsible for the long-running “got milk?” slogan. The client: the creepily named California Milk Processor Board. The campaign: A “funny, good-natured” take on PMS and milk’s purported powers to lessen its symptoms. The light-hearted approach to the touchy-by-definition subject matter offered pre-approved apologies men could tell the women in their lives such as, “I’m sorry I listened to what you said and not what you meant.” A tongue-in-cheek microsite called everythingidoiswrong.org (no longer live) provided men with a resource on how to deal with their PMS-suffering partner. The content was linked to from a print campaign whose ads feature damned and desperate men illustrating the question: “Are you a man living with PMS?” For men it’s a solution; for women it’s a flame accelerant. Media, content, conversation…what’s not to like?

The Controversy:

The overall intent appears more to inspire the ire of female sufferers for the sake of publicity than to playfully propose milk as an antidote for not just women, but men. Dysphoria, irritability, anxiety, and a hint of irrationality are just some of the negative emotions the California Milk Processor Board evoked.

The Coroner’s Report:

Why did this campaign go sour so fast, and was its death predictable or avoidable? Did milk go too far? It would certainly appear so… The microsite, planned to run through August at least, has been shut down prematurely and replaced with gotdiscussion.org, a half-hearted attempt to convert all that controversy into a productive sales funnel. It’s easy to argue (and tough to retort) that the campaign’s humor went too far. But the question you always have to ask these days: Was all of it intentional? Is it true there’s no such thing as bad press…is every social media failure a meta-success? Nope. As illustrated in this case, sometimes it’s just a failure.

First step in the diagnosis is to acknowledge that this is nothing new. The technical claim “Milk can reduce the symptoms of PMS,” springs from research dating back to 2005 (featured here), which found that getting 1200 mg of calcium per day (basically, four full glasses of milk) reduced symptoms in 55% of women. Because nothing fights that bloated feeling like drinking four full gas-inducing glasses of milk in a day.

The idea that milk could magically reduce PMS, and thereby produce all sort of positive benefits for PMS-punished men, actually began that same year, as previously advertised:

In fact, as Steve James, executive director of the milk board tells The New York Times, it’s “something we’ve done as a campaign five, six times, in general media and in Hispanic media.” So how come 2005′s spots didn’t offend like 2011′s? According to Goodby, “It was a different world in 2005.” Indeed. To steal a good point from AdWeek’s list of the top 10 most piggishly sexist ads ever: The blunt sexism of previous generations now seems otherworldly, but more fingers are being pointed at ads of today that are significantly less sexist in nature and more humorous and tongue-and-cheek in tone.

But we have to ask the question: Are we not being too sensitive? Is a clever (but admittedly edgy and insensitive) approach to advertising a brand claim being unfairly sunk as sexist? Could be. If these great FunnyorDie.com parody ads are any indication, Milk certainly could have done much worse.

In fairness to Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, by all unoffended accounts the spots and supporting digital presence are legitimately funny and, more importantly, very well executed. If they took a joke too far, the original everythingidoiswrong.org microsite did it in style, with a global color-coded PMS system, a “puppy-dog eye-zer” photo app that gives any wrongfully endangered dude adorable puppy eyes, a Sensitivity Vocabulator, and even an emergency milk locator (nice product tie-in, guys). The campaign appeals well to a great number of men, while successfully getting the other gender talking. Which is supposed to be what social media is all about.

THE FALLOUT

But there’s no use crying over spilt milk campaigns. (Come on, you knew we couldn’t resist that one.) Everythingidoiswrong.org was quickly replaced with gotdiscussion.org, a seemingly earnest mea culpa featuring a brief apology on behalf of the brand and a rundown of comments and news articles posted. Agency head Jeff Goodby proclaimed, “I don’t see it as ending it or pulling the plug. We accomplished what we set out to accomplish.” Steve James from the milk board talked to The New York Times when the campaign was set to launch, admitting they hoped to “get attention” and “ignite some social media discussion and conversation.”

Brave talk that explains a well thought-out strategy…but quick research reveals that the domain name for gotdiscussion.org wasn’t even registered until July 18th, after the initial campaign had launched. Bravo to Goodby, Silverstein & Partners for cleaning it up quickly, but let’s not pretend nobody dropped the jug. AdWeek declines to accept this success talk, and so do we.

Here’s why: Getting a piano-playing cat or a dentist-drugged kid to go viral is child’s play. But when marketing for a brand, we don’t get the freedom to gauge a campaign solely on the noise it generates—it has to move product. The central communication goal was to make people understand that milk can alleviate PMS symptoms, for the purpose of selling more milk. The perceived sexism of the ads was a major backfire—if someone thinks a creative execution is “wrongheaded,” they’ll be disinclined to believe the point the brand is trying to make. In this case they offended the gender making the purchases. “It certainly wasn’t our intention to offend people. We regret that,” says Jeff Goodby now. “No question, with some people we have stepped over the line.”

To be fair, nobody’s going to boycott milk. The reactionary site gotdiscussion.org contains little more than a collection of inflammatory articles and comments, but the anger is either losing steam or being infiltrated by brand-friend positivity police.

And that, ultimately, is this campaign’s great failure. New social media presences produced nominally to “continue the conversation” are being neglected by the brand—at this point, the brand hasn’t posted on Facebook since July 11^th, when the new campaign first launched, and they rarely if ever respond to the myriad of comments. Hardly a robust, two-way brand-consumer conversation. The missed opportunity is the genuine discussion going on with real people right now at gotdiscussion.org. Milk, or their agency proxies, need to get involved, converting the reactionary anger on gotdiscussion.org to a well-hosted home of milk-related topics. If the California Milk Processor Board is going to follow up with an earnest invitation to talk things out, they must actively participate with no exceptions. It’s a captive audience eager to actually talk about your product—stop covering your ass and dare to meet your detractors face to face.

What’s your prediction on how this running story will end? Talk to us below.

Luckily, they don’t always get away with it. We consumers don’t like to be deceived or manipulated, so we use our voice to speak out, causing an uproar that can ultimately damage a brand image — especially when, as in the following examples, the brand’s new feel-good message is so hypocritical in comparison to its day-to-day operations that it becomes an outright joke.

1. Road to Nowhere

In an effort to revitalize a brand that was running on empty with American auto buyers, Chrysler put the pedal to the metal with an epic two-minute Super Bowl commercial that featured a similarly resurgent Eminem and a heartstring-tugging message that encouraged consumers to reconsider buying from Detroit. But consumers were also quick to point out that maybe a debt-riddled company running on taxpayer handouts shouldn’t be blowing $9 million on a Super Bowl spot—especially as it was shutting down plants in Michigan in favor of cheaper labor in Mexico. And this wasn’t the company’s first offense: In 2008, Chrysler ran an ad campaign called “If you can dream it, we can build it” to realign the company with its core standards (quality, safety, technology, connectivity, and environmental responsibility) and interest customers in its new hybrid vehicles. But it also left the decision on selling hybrids up to individual dealerships—who overwhelmingly voted against investing money in training and new tools, and rejected the innovation.

2. Chicken Burrito—Hold the Benefits

Chipotle told the world it was part of the crusade for farmworker justice — although that may not apply to its own. A fast-food company that prides itself on offering “food with integrity” that is environmentally friendly and socially just, Chipotle in 2009 helped promoted Food Inc., a film that explores the negative effects of America’s industrialized food system and encourages consumers to become more socially and environmentally conscious. Unfortunately for Chipotle, their tomato farmers in Florida’s Immokalee area spoke up, pointing out that they were subjected to some of the poorest labor standards in the US.

3. Oil’s Well the Ends Well

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award was meant to help make Shell look greener as it battled a reputation of endangering the environment. The world’s third-largest oil company donated 750,000 pounds to the British Natural History Museum to sponsor their international showcase of the best nature photography from 2007-2008, while its business remained rooted in oil and gas production, one of the greatest causes of climate change. The public outrage was so extensive, supporting an anti-brand traveling show called Shell’s Wild Lie, that the effort was discontinued after two years.

4. Making Green from Greenwashing

The Royal Bank of Scotland sponsored Climate Week in the UK, which sought to raise awareness and publicize methods of fighting climate change. Unfortunately, RBS proved it will sponsor just about anything — 7 billion pounds to climate-change-exacerbating coal companies included. Scottish students voted it the winner of the Greenwash Coup of the Year Award for claiming to support the environment while actively contributing to climate change.

5. Rubbing Sugar in the Wound

Oh, KFC, how we love to scratch our heads over your apparent insanity. The same company that brought obesity-fearing Americans the Double Down sandwich (boasting deep-fried chicken patties in place of bread, bacon, and cheese) and the Buckets for the Cure campaign (raising money for breast cancer research through the sale of fattening fried breasts) has now done something uniquely new to baffle the world. It’s a simple concept: Buy a $2.99 Mega Jug of soda—boasting a whopping 56 spoonfuls of sugar and 800 calories—and KFC will donate a dollar of said purchase to fund research to try to cure juvenile diabetes (brilliant scientific conclusion #1: don’t drink a half gallon of sugary soda). Yes, we’re aware that type 1 and type 2 diabetes are two different diseases, but still: Nobody thought this was a bad idea?

6. Freedom or Fifty Cents Off? You Choose!

Groupon’s Super Bowl ad, like many, used humor to get its main point across: that Groupon uses strength in numbers to offer great discounts on things consumers want. But consumers also want to help the less fortunate and oppressed populations on the world, and using Tibet’s decades-long struggle for freedom as a punchline wasn’t just in poor taste—it was especially hypocritical for a company that began its life as a website called The Point, which utilized public votes to generate publicity and funding for worthy non-profit causes.

7. What’s German for Blatant Racism?

Admittedly, this Unicef ad ran in Germany, which doesn’t have the same history of racially-based enslavement and discrimination that we have in the United States (although history would certainly suggest that racial tolerance has not always been high on their priority list). But using children painted in blackface in an attempt to generate respect and compassion for underprivileged people in Africa might not have been the wisest choice…

8. A Shot in the Dark

This one is more of a silly (or scary) nonsensical connection: a Montana Radio Shack offering a free gun (or pizza!) with purchase of a Dish Network system. But think about it as a franchise owner: Rather than handing out guns as burglary protection, wouldn’t the owner prefer, I dunno, to sell a home security system? Or just let the robbery happen and then have customers coming in needing to replace an entire home of stolen electronics?

Have any others ruffled your feathers that we forgot to mention? Let us know below!

Images: Denver Fair Food, A World to Win, Flashmunki Photography, Unicef, and Selfish Giving

There’s no doubt that there is serious value in Tumblr’s services. The site attracts 19 million unique global visitors per month with roughly 45,000 new users signing up each day. Tumblr’s unique format, which allows users to simply and easily share images, quotes, and other quick tidbits, has managed to stay more relevant in an environment where young bloggers opt for quick ways to share, and are moving away from blogging platforms that require them to hammer out lengthy posts.

But how is Tumblr staying afloat? In addition to free and customizable templates, they also offer blog themes that users can purchase (ranging from $9 for a basic theme to $49 for premium). These sales have provided a smale-scale revenue source for Tumblr. Of course, patient and supportive investors have helped too.

The question is, what will a seamless, non-interruptive advertising model look like for the company going forward? How can Tumblr monetize their great product without interrupting and diminishing the user experience?

Image courtesy of adfreeblog.org

Chobani, one of the most popular greek yogurt brands, has embraced digital storytelling by embarking on its first ever national advertising campaign. Launched on Valentine’s Day, Chobani’s Real Love campaign leverages the brand’s passionate customer-base with television spots, out-of-home placements, and social media, all featuring “real stories from real Chobani lovers.”

In their “Cho Theft” commercial, Stephanie Lane, a real Chobani lover from Richmond, VA, has her Chobani yogurt stolen from the refrigerator at work — surely something we can all relate to. The spot goes on to show how she now hides her daily treat from nefarious coworkers.

Stephen Wright, another Chobani lover and Eli Manning look-alike, was featured in Chobani’s  “Cho Bike” commercial, which documented his early-morning 80-mile bike ride to the Chobani factory. They even created a cute “behind-the-scenes” look at the making of their videos, which shows just how real — and nervous — the stars of the commercial are.

Chobani’s billboards even add some social flair by featuring actual tweets from fans, including the Chobani lover’s own Twitter handle.

Where the campaign gets truly post advertising is on the brand’s Facebook page where fans can share their “Chobani love story” via videos, images, and text. On their Real Love tab they share that week’s most beloved fan submissions from across the globe (the photo to the right is one of my favorites).

User submissions can be as simple as a photo from your webcam or as creative as a video of a man singing opera about being “King of Chobani.” Other users can then vote on the images and the most “liked” story gets a free case of Chobani, which the winner can customize with their favorite flavors.

Though utilizing user-generated content (UGC) isn’t a new idea, Chobani’s efforts stand out because they’re finding innovative ways to reward the real people that share a real love for Chobani. These are the folks who are  most likely to become brand evangelists (if they aren’t already). Each week’s Real Love Story winner is featured as part of the brand’s profile picture on Facebook, while a select few get to recreate their love stories by starring in Chobani’s nationally televised ads. Maybe it’s just me, but that sounds cooler than having a pallet full of Wheat Thins dropped off at your doorstep.

For consumers, the most trusted brand marketing comes in the form of recommendations from people we know. It’s been that way since we stepped foot in school and started wearing what the popular kids were wearing. However, according to Nielsen, the second most trusted form of advertising is a recommendation online from a complete stranger. We trust a complete stranger before we trust what a brand is saying on their own website.

By giving a confessional platform to yogurt fans to demonstrate the emotional connection between consumer and brand, Chobani is providing social proof — the most powerful form of advertising available. This could have flopped if Chobani’s fans weren’t as passionate or didn’t get as involved as they have so far. The brand took a risk and it appears to be paying off.

We believe that people can have emotional connections with brands by leveraging digital storytelling. If you’re in the UK, consider stopping by our London (Primrose Hill) office on March 24th for our free seminar on Social Media for FMCG. Learn more about the seminar here.

This information comes in conjunction with findings from Advertising Age and Ipsos Observer that 63% of internet users surveyed ”somewhat and strongly dislike” mobile ads. There’s no doubt that now, more than ever, self-serving advertising is no longer acceptable in any medium.

We have said it before and we’ll say it again: The medium isn’t the message; the message is the message. The brand-consumer relationship is a delicate one, and if your advertising is interruptive or irrelevant it will be fast-forwarded through or clicked out of existence. Consumers only welcome brands into their world that offer content of value, including mobile advertising.

The mobile advertising industry is still very young, but that doesn’t mean it’s not poised to be quite powerful. In fact, Google is now on pace to rake in more than $1 billion in Android advertising revenues in 2012 (source). More recent Nielsen research has shown that iAds, a platform based on content-rich multimedia experiences, are twice as effective as TV ads.

At Story, we’ve had the pleasure of working with Unilever to create one of the first iAds, and it’s proven one thing: No matter what the platform, there are always ways to engage the consumer with useful and entertaining content while still promoting the brand’s story and improving brand awareness. So while many marketers are trying to migrate the traditional interruptive model to the web and mobile, we’ll be focusing on providing consumers with relevant, informative, and entertaining content. We suggest you do too.

What have your experiences with mobile advertising been?

Image courtesy of eMarketer.com.

This post originally appeared in our January issue of “Live Report from the Future of Marketing,” our monthly Post-Advertising newsletter. Subscribe for free here.

According to the results of a recent Break Media study on digital video advertising trends, a frightening percentage of marketers still consider the pre-roll ideal placement because the audience is “held hostage to watch.” In spite of plentiful research indicating that new formats and techniques are more effective,  marketers still want interruptive advertising. Have they learned nothing?

After the mainstream embrace of the world wide web in the mid 90′s, advertising was quick to ride the wave into the digital age. But the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. The interruptive model traditionally defined by billboards, television spots, and print ads was replaced with more of the same in the digital realm — irrelevant and intrusive banner ads, email spam, and captive online video advertising.

The recent Digital Video Advertising Trends 2011 study from Break Media is further proof that confirms all our worst fears. According to the research, around 40% of advertisers [who] favor pre-roll [over any other video ad format do so] because they believe the audience is “held hostage to watch” and thus the format “garners the most attention from the viewer.”

We’ve preached that there are better ways to market — strategies that prioritize engagement, relevancy, value, and storytelling — in which audiences opt-in to expose themselves to branded (as well as non-branded) content. It’s a fantastic ideal, and we’ll never stop striving towards this model, but to imagine that the entire advertising world will see the light and adopt this approach is, well, unrealistic, and it’s important to recognize that.

As long as there is an easy way to kidnap eyeballs, a large faction of lazy marketers will resort to the lowest common denominator, even if this approach does, according to Break Media, run contrary to “research indicating consumers are weary of [pre-roll] and newer formats hav[ing] greater impact on purchase intent.” It’s simply too easy for brands to purchase attention instead of truly earning it. Why try when you can just buy?

Story Worldwide CEO and fellow Post-Advertising blogger Kirk Cheyfitz addresses this in the Story of Story:

The big agencies are even trying to put TV ads on the web. I was trapped recently by a Prilosec 30-second TV spot running on Yahoo! It was placed there as an unavoidable penance that had to be endured before the site would let me see a news video. Folks: Just in case anyone was wondering, this is not an endearing or effective move. It gave me heartburn, for which I now have nowhere to turn. Thanks a lot, Prilosec.

I could understand a Prilosec ad being served to me if I was searching for “acid indigestion” or anything that made it likely that I need Prilosec. But to play it to me because I clicked on a news item about Iraq is just silly. (Unless, of course, one of AstraZeneca’s agencies has undisclosed research that news from Iraq exacerbates esophogeal reflux disease.)

I suppose we could look at it two ways. On the one hand, it’s sad to see marketers still clinging to traditional, self-serving methods like barnacles to the bottom of the Titanic. On the other hand, we could be happy knowing that all those advertisers are going down with the ship, leaving the post-advertisers to set sail.

The traditional ad agencies are going to lose because creating great, engaging content is emerging as the key skill in marketing. And they don’t have it.

(This article has also been published on the Huffington Post)

This is great news for the news business, which badly needs new revenue sources to replace dwindling traditional ad dollars. But it is threatening to the big ad holding companies–WPP, Omnicom, Interpublic, Publicis and their ilk–which have been dinosaur-like in adapting to a media environment that has been suddenly and radically changed by technology.

Dinosaurs were replaced by mammals (including, ultimately, you and me) because we were better able to adapt to radically changed conditions after a huge meteor’s impact with Earth. The extinction-level event for traditional ad agencies is the ad world’s rapid uptake of the idea that original content is the new path to engaging consumers. In a world where brands need to create and own original, engaging content, it is publishers–the people who actually understand and manage content creation–who are best positioned to profit from selling content-creating services to their advertising clients.

These changes are just beginning. They will not be completed without a struggle, especially since ad agencies still perform the role of creating and buying (or not buying) most ad space in magazines and newspapers. The traditional agencies may yet save themselves, especially since the publishing world has delayed taking action for so long. In fact, watching publishers from the outside for the past decade, it seems they’ve been doing everything possible to avoid change and distract themselves from their real problem: the collapse of advertising revenue.

PUBLISHERS’ AD REVENUE HAS BEEN IN FREEFALL

Newspapers have led the advertising disaster. Their print ad revenue peaked in 2000; combined print and online ad revenue peaked in 2005. By 2009, America’s newspapers had lost $22 billion in total annual ad dollars–44% off the peak. This has negatively impacted our society in many ways, including massive unemployment in journalism, fewer newspapers and, most disturbing, less original reporting.

Magazines have fared better, but not much. According to Pew’s most recent research, newsstand sales, the most profitable form of magazine circulation, “tumbled 35% from 1998 to 2008.” Worse, the number of ad pages sold fell 26% in 2009 following a 12% drop in 2008. Even in 2010, as the magazine industry boasted of a “strong” recovery, ad pages declined again, although only by 0.1%, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. That’s a 35% drop in ad pages in the past three years. PIB claimed that ad dollars rose in 2010 despite the continued fall in pages sold, but its revenue numbers ignore the industry’s heavy discounting and are viewed as unreliable.

Despite these obviously distressing trends, publishers largely have ignored the carnage in their ad sales departments and have fiddled instead with charging readers for online editions, erecting digital paywalls, “fixing journalism” and other non-productive, nonsensical tasks.

I’ve been preaching for several years that publishers are wasting precious time and displaying vast ignorance of digital with all this nonsense. “It’s the collapse of ad revenue that’s ruining your business, so why the hell don’t you focus on advertising?” I have inquired. I have ranted about the stupidity of media barons and preached about the new rules of advertising.

Publishers, whether in print or online, desperately need to reinvent how they generate ad revenue in a digital media world where the audience is screening out traditional ad messages, publishing their own opinions through social media and, generally, taking charge of their media instead of passively consuming what the media companies offer. The quaint 17th-century idea of selling white space to advertisers, whether on a sheet of paper or a screen, just isn’t working anymore.

MEREDITH MAGAZINES ARE LEADING THE REVOLUTION

Now at last some large, traditional publishers are slowly and painfully beginning to do just that. As I have not so gently counseled, they are turning themselves into marketing and advertising agencies in order to survive. (Let me be clear that I take no credit for any of this change. It’s simply the natural and inevitable evolution of the media business, driven by technology and social change.)

This transformation promises a path to resurgent profits for publishers (as well as for broadcasters). It also poses a new threat to the publishers’ former allies, the traditional ad agencies. The inevitable clash between publishers and agencies, by the way, is a topic that both sides fervently avoid because the publishers still depend on the agencies to place advertising in their publications. But their clash will mark the next big disruption in the media world, without a doubt.

Meredith, the midwestern magazine and TV empire in Des Moines, has been leading this slow-motion revolution very quietly. Since 2007, Meredith has been buying up marketing services agencies, mostly digital, and integrating them into its magazine operations. Now, two former Meredith executives, both instrumental in pioneering the new integration of advertising services and publishing, have jumped to Hearst and Time, where presumably they are spreading the Meredith gospel (which they helped invent) of publishers as agencies.

At the same time, smaller, savvier digital start-ups–like the Sacramento Press, a tiny online newspaper, and MedCity News, which provides specialized online news for the healthcare industry–have already arrived where the big companies are slowly headed. Both of these relatively young web publishers see the delivery of content marketing services as their primary way of producing revenue from advertisers.

Speaking at the Online News Association’s most recent annual meeting in Washington D.C., Ben Ilfeld, COO of the Sacramento Press, urged his peers at other online news start-ups to “think of what you are really good at” and use that skill set to drive revenue. At the Sacramento Press, Ilfeld quickly discovered that what his people are extremely good at is using low-cost social media to attract and unite an audience. They know how to write for social media, they know how to frame stories to get attention and they know how to use the various platforms and channels. Ilfeld also discovered this was a strategic set of skills his advertisers lacked. So Ilfeld began selling social media consulting—something only agencies used to do—to his advertisers. Now, he says, it’s the number-one revenue generator for his business.

Similarly, Chris Seper, a former Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter who co-founded MedCity News, generates the lion’s share of his growing company’s revenue by creating engaging content for his clients, most of whom are hospitals, medical centers and pharma companies that lack the skills to locate or tell their own stories. As a technology journalist, Seper knows how to create and publish engaging, accurate stories about medicine. Ad agencies still don’t know how to do that. (For more detail on MedCity News, read my friend Bill Mitchell’s “Newspay” blog for Poynter, the journalism education center.)

By way of full disclosure, I began my current career in the 1970s as a newspaper and magazine journalist, primarily for the late Knight Newspapers. In the ’80s and ’90s, I ran a fairly large independent publishing group. For the first few years of the current century, I built and ran a branded content group for McCann Worldgroup, then the world’s largest ad agency. Today, I run Story Worldwide, a “new age advertising agency” (as Fox News recently described us), that I helped found in 1999. Story’s mission is and always has been to create engaging, original content for brands and publish those brand stories in all forms (text, image, film, games, apps, etc.) and all media (digital and traditional). As a pioneer in creating and deploying brand stories, we’ve built a nice business on three continents.

So I have been blessed with a ringside seat that affords me a clear view of the media melee. And from this seat, it’s been easy to see that almost all the traditional players in the media remain transfixed by precisely the wrong set of problems in their struggle to find financial stability amid the internet-driven chaos that has overtaken their industry.

“Publishing has to adapt,” Wendy Riches told me recently over coffee at Cipriani Dolci on Grand Central’s West Balcony. Riches knows, being the woman who arguably started big publishing down the long, slow road to inevitable change. A former senior executive at Ogilvy & Mather and other top ad agencies, Riches was hired by Meredith in March 2005 to fill the newly created job of executive vice president for Meredith Integrated Marketing.

Jack Griffin, then president of Meredith’s publishing division, hired Riches and handed her the mandate and the cash to grow Meredith’s marketing services division. On the same March day that he hired Riches, Griffin also elevated a Meredith veteran, Matthew Petersen, to be her partner in integrated marketing.

With the guidance of a respected agency veteran like Riches, Meredith used its cash to buy up specialist marketing agencies, form them into an integrated marketing group and use the group to sell marketing and advertising services to Meredith’s advertisers. This is exactly the way the big advertising holding companies were built—one agency acquisition at a time.

Exactly five years later, Petersen was lured to Hearst Magazines to head a brand-new line of business called Hearst Marketing Services. And last August, Griffin jumped ship to become chief executive at Time Inc.

Proponents of Meredith’s approach now have key positions at the country’s top three magazine publishers, as ranked by total circulation. All three publishers have the deep-pocketed access to cash that only major, publicly traded companies can manage these days, since the ability to borrow money for acquisitions remains pretty much a thing of the past.

Using that cash, publishers are encroaching on what had been the ad companies’ exclusive territory.

A PUBLISHER IS NOW ONE OF THE “WORLD’S TOP 50 AGENCY COMPANIES”

Meredith has made big investments to buy its way into marketing, acquiring six specialist agencies since 2007, including:

• Los Angeles digital shop Genex
• New Media Strategies, a social media agency in the Washington, D.C. suburbs
• Dallas database and direct marketing agency Directive
• Big Communications, a healthcare marketing specialist in the Detroit suburbs
• Hyperfactory, a global mobile marketing agency that Meredith first invested in some five years ago

Following suit in June 2010, Hearst started down the same road by buying its first digital marketing company, search specialist iCrossing.

Meredith’s shopping spree has put its integrated marketing division on the map in short order. With an impressive $164 million in revenues in its 2010 financial year, according to Meredith’s public filings, the division was recently ranked #34 on the list of the “world’s top 50 agency companies” by Advertising Age, the leading trade magazine of the traditional ad business. When you also consider how Meredith is leveraging its 85-million-name subscriber database as a marketing tool for its clients, the publisher becomes a very tough competitor for any major marketing agency.

The good news for ad agencies is that Meredith still hasn’t really integrated its marketing and magazine divisions. To de-emphasize selling pages as their main revenue source, even when the revenue is shrinking, “is very hard for publishers,” acknowledged Riches. “It’s their bread and butter and it’s what they know.”

The very bad news for ad agencies, however, is that publishers are a few hundred years ahead of ad agencies in knowing how to attract and manage the talent needed to tell meaningful, interesting stories. While downplaying the coming competition between publishing and advertising, Riches is ready to underscore the publishers’ advantages. “Publishers understand what readers want and what readers are generally interested in and how to write a story around that,” Riches observes. Publishers, she adds, know how to “frame something in a way that makes people listen.”

This set of editorial skills is more and more in demand for major advertisers who, increasingly, understand they can only reach people by creating and publishing content, mostly online, that the audience finds valuable, seeks out and shares with friends and strangers. This is a set of skills that ad agencies, trapped inside their own traditional silos, do not possess.

The seers agree that 2011 will be the “Year of Content” in the ad business—a business that has seen consumers increasingly ignoring traditional ads and traditional brand websites. Geoff Ramsey, CEO and cofounder of eMarketer, an extremely influential marketing research firm, recently wrote a piece titled “2011 Trends: Content Marketing is Critical.” Writing at the end of last year, Ramsey said:

“Next year, marketers will need to rethink their approach to advertising and marketing and intensify their focus on creating magnetic content that will naturally attract consumers, rather than relying solely on the interruption model of advertising, which consumers are responding to less and less.”

This means, he went on, marketers will need to put out original content that “consumers genuinely want to engage with and pass along to others. This content entertains, amuses, informs, serves a function or satisfies a consumer need. It’s welcome instead of annoying or interruptive.”

Where all this is pointing is that one day in the not-too-distant future, publishers will disband their traditional ad sales departments and hand the job of generating revenue from advertisers to their shiny new marketing services operations. On that day, their internal, content-focused ad agencies will be completely integrated with their publishing operations. And on that day, traditional ad agencies, if they haven’t transformed themselves into brand publishers, will be in serious, serious jeopardy.

Image courtesy of Kyle May on Flickr

The Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act, which would require the Federal Communications Commission to play commercials at the same decibel volume as regular programmed shows, is now on its way to the White House, after being passed unanimously by the Senate back in October and recently by the House of Representatives on December 2. After becoming law, advertisers would have a year to comply with the new regulations and stop using the aggravating tactic of cranking up the volume during advertising spots. Perhaps this will force marketers to figure out a new strategy, like designing ads that people actually want to watch? We’re not holding our breath!

The FCC reports that consumers have been complaining about loud commercials since the 1960s. CALM should bring a sigh of relief to many disgruntled couch potatoes. But in the age of TiVo, Netflix, DVR and online streaming video, is this legislation so long overdue that it’s now completely irrelevant?

According to the FCC, loud TV ads are still a problem today: they’ve been the primary consumer complaint about TV in the past 21 of 25 quarterly reports. In an attempt to squelch the discontent, their website offers suggestions for dealing with the topic: “If you have a complaint about “loud” commercials and background noise, first try reducing the volume by checking your television and remote control.” Good stuff, FCC.

But what about Internet ads? These days, more people are abandoning their TV sets and turning to their computers to watch streaming shows and videos, and advertisers are following suit. A report from eMarketer states that “spending for video ads will continue to escalate at a furious clip in 2011,” so a major drawback of CALM is that it doesn’t extend to the digital realm. Because the Internet isn’t technically considered broadcast medium, the FCC can’t officially regulate it, though they’re exploring the extent of their authority over broadband service. Perhaps Internet users annoyed with online ads will just have to complain about them for 50 years or so before Congress decides it’s time to step in. We can only hope that long before then, marketers will stop yelling and start creating compelling advertisements that consumers actually want to watch, not mute.

Photo composite: Thinkstock(2)

And, like that, it’s over. Was this really what we were waiting all season for? There’s a unanimous feeling around our office: Sunday night’s season finale of Mad Men was, without a doubt, the worst episode ever produced. But, like an accident on the side of the road, we couldn’t look away. What the heck happened?

Don’s rash, careless decision to get hitched to his secretary (dude straight up pulled a Sterling!) didn’t feel like just another blunder on the part of his character. This time, it seemed like bad, desperate writing. Don is clearly acting in bad faith, but that didn’t exactly come through in Hamm’s performance. It’s really not his fault, though. The storyboarding was the problem here. This episode was reminiscent of the writers’ strike, when lots of seasons were shortened and hastily wrapped up. Watching this episode, it kind of felt as though we’d missed three or four installments.

Let’s not forget the utterly cringe-worthy acting of everyone involved in the scene in Peggy’s office, with the recently-fired model looking for work and a creepy-awkward Harry Crane. What purpose did it serve again? Overshadowing next season, when Don’s newly wedded wife Megan gets herself a copywriting gig? We sincerely hope not.

Speaking of Peggy, she provided perhaps the only feel-good moment in the show, when she and Ken Cosgrove secured the Topaz Pantyhose business. Ideating on the spot and emanating confidence, Peggy is turning into the Agency’s MVP. What was up with Don’s creepy conversation (and equally creepy stare) after he dropped the bomb on everyone?

Over the course of its run, Mad Men has has left us on the edge of our seats, mouths agape, on so many occasions and for so many reasons. Last night we were in the same pose, but for different reasons. We were completely incredulous at the massive failure we were witnessing. What an abusive relationship this can be sometimes.

We have no reason to look forward to in the next season — no looming questions, no cliff hanger. We can only hope that next season opens well into the future when Megan is already out of the picture again. Please please please get a prenup, Don! Well, the show must be doing something right if we’re still rooting for this jerk.

Photo by Michael Yarish via AMC

The viewer got both sides of the creative coin — the glitz and glamor of Don’s win at the Clio awards (what was up with all that hand holding? Joan is one lucky red head…), juxtaposed with the ugly, behind the scenes slog of Peggy and her new bozo of a creative director working through the weekend to finish a new pitch — something all ad folk can relate to. We also saw how Don first cleverly finagled his way into the ad biz — albeit bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (even if his suits didn’t fit as well, dude looked like he still had a soul back then!).

Such blasé creative behavior — Don, tanked, coming up with tag lines for Life cereal while meeting with the client, inadvertently swiping the copy kid’s “common cold” idiom, Peggy stripping for the sake of cough drops and cold syrup (one liner of the ep: “let’s get liberated”) — continues a flattening of the old ad structure — a cutting of creative across the institutional, preordained hierarchy.

Ad-wise, the situation is dire. The pre-spot trivia, mostly recycled at this point, included one interesting addition: a quote by one David Ogilvy. Does everyone who watches actually know who Mr. Ogilvy is (or worse, care to)? Other bumps included Chase (established context with show — they were around in the 1960’s), Breyers (re-run of the terrible parody spot), Clorox (new fact, same old sexist commercial), Bridgestone, and BMW.

But why didn’t they run a placement for Life cereal? They could have constructed a fresh-but-retro-looking campaign along the lines of the episode’s “Eat Life by the Bowlful” angle. They could have certainly had some fun with that, and got the long-running breakfast brand to pay for some far more integrated (not to mention subtle and highly relevant) branding here. Building off this idea, how cool would it be if AMC started working in classic advertisements into the show’s commercial breaks? It’d be a lot more entertaining than just those facts. Say, a classic spot like this:

Other post-ad musings:
-The whole Life pitch seemed pretty radical to us. Was it really done this way (minus the booze, of course)? More importantly, was it really that easy to get a client to sign off on new work?!
-Don Draper: a boozin’, award winnin’, high-flyin’ hot mess. Everything is fine now, but things are going to hit the fan soon enough, man.
-How to knock a pitch out of the park: get drunk, inadvertently plagiarize
-If you’re a copy troll, hard work doesn’t pay off (See Peggy’s work on Glo Coat, gone unrecognized)

So, what’s your take on the season so far? Advertising or otherwise — let’s hear it! Then, head over to The Awl and Gawker for superb insight from the internet’s best.

Image via NYT

This week’s episode was actually, in many respects, quite endearing. Perhaps at the bequest of one of our recent commentors (shout out to S. Zargari!), the main story arch followed a pitch (in this case, for Honda) from inception to its ingenious, nonexistent final concept.

And then there were the usual suspects — the show’s same few sponsors and their now-repetitive (but relevant!) barrage of commercials. At this point, the ads are either too personalized to the content and context of the show (and, as such, often out of touch with their present-day consumer), or entirely unrelated.

This again included Hotels.com, Clorox, Chase and Unilever in spots primed and prefaced by factoid fuzz — sometimes much to the dismay of their target audience (for example: Clorox’s alignment with adultery). For some, it meant running the same commercial repeatedly (how ironic).

Well, what happened in ad-ville, plot-wise? The gist:

-Bets is probably crazy
-SCDP gets tricky to thwart a rival agency
-Roger goes on a racial tirade
-Miss Blanketship: perfect comic relief
-Pete Campbell is still a twerp (but a slightly more justified, intelligent one)

Whatever the case, the show is at least stepping it up with smarter, more creative (!) storylines about the “golden” era of Madison Avenue advertising.

Okay, so it’s not a done deal yet. But the California legislature will soon consider a proposition for the creation of new “smart plates” — digital license plates that would display advertisements right there on the bumper of your car. It could look something like this:

The digital plate would switch to advertisement mode four seconds after coming to a complete stop, and would enter into a scrolling set of advertisements based upon the vehicle owner’s preferences. These images and messages would be accessed wirelessly via a computing cloud, rather than an on-board chip.

Twenty-five California state senators agreed that it’s worth looking into, primarily to determine if it could positively affect the states woeful economy (which ironically happens to boast the highest GDP of any state and also ranks within the top 10 GDP’s in the entire world).

Turning citizen’s private property into billboards with wheels? I bet Tommy Jefferson is rolling over in his grave down there in Charlottesville. If I were to throw my brain in the trash for a minute and actually get one of these plates (if I have a choice, that is), is it still my car, or has it become their billboard?

From a post advertising perspective, this isn’t just offensive because it’s a breach of privacy — this is the old interruption model of advertising taken to a scary extreme.  Beyond the invasive aspect, it’s also just flat-out dangerous. And perhaps MOST importantly: what’s to stop criminals from wiring the plate so it’s always in advertisement mode? What about a malfunctioning plate that just won’t turn on?

Will this help California’s financial troubles in the short term? I couldn’t tell you, because I got a D in finance. Will it increase health care costs as a result of all the accidents they could potentially cause? I’m guessing it will. One thing that is certain: there are safer and less invasive ways that the state can make money. One thing, for example, grows straight up out of the ground with nothing more than a little sunlight and water. Harvest it, sell it, and tax it. Hint: it’s already the state’s largest cash crop.

Dove’s spot, for example, felt a little one-dimensional. By mimicking the style of Mad Men, they grab the viewer’s attention, but the message itself felt disingenuous. Two ad men are going back and forth about how to market Dove, when a female secretary chimes in about how smooth it makes her skin feel. It’s too self-conscious Norman Rockwell cheese, not enough Don Draper cool. They did get the era right, and I, for one, hit ‘play’ on my DVR remote. Verdict: post advertising in form, but not content. Head over to AdAge for a stream of it.

Clorox’s spot, structured more like a print ad (a slow, deliberate zoom-out on a crisp, white shirt), managed to ooze sex in a subtle, Mad Men era way, and the cinematography had me convinced we had returned from commercial break. Was it politically incorrect? Yeah. A little off brand too. But eye-catching. Here’s a still:

Quick, but important tangent: how does lip stick even end up on a collar? In the course of impassioned adultery, sure, I understand how this might happen, but I’m bewildered as to how this became such a common trope. Never made any sense to me. Okay, maybe I’m all alone on this one.

Then there is BMW, who have really showed the way as far as all this ad-on-ad action goes. Their spots are meta (ads about the history of their own marketing campaigns), but they are also nostalgic, elegant, and tasteful.

As for the show beyond the ads: PULL IT TOGETHER, DON! Really. Are we supposed to believe that the illusion of family life was propping you up to such an extent? At the very least, I suppose it was helping you maintain appearances (and forcing you to flee the city at a somewhat reasonable hour). We know you’re struggling right now, but this pitiful, emotional rock bottom thing is really unbecoming. It’s borderline schtick at this point. And now you’re making rookie mistakes, like, uh, sleeping with secretaries you aren’t even attracted to. But perhaps viewers find sad sack divorced Don “more relatable” than the previous incarnation of our protagonist? Let us know in the comments.

A tip of the hat to Peggy for recognizing that their work isn’t “all about the client.” She is right when she says that you can’t let them get in the way of great work. Ultimately, this relationship is built on compromise — just like life is a balance of “what I want versus what’s expected of me.”

As usual, you can find a full rundown about the real life products and campaigns from the episode over at The Awl.

The irony that this is a show about advertising isn’t lost on AMC, and that’s a good thing. They actually manage to feature some good content during the commercial breaks, including an entire spot by BMW on the history of their advertising campaigns. A Mad Men TV spot is a golden opportunity for brands to try something a bit different like this, because viewers are already ensconced in a world where the veil of advertising has been lifted. In this case, the carmaker even included an interview with the creator of their slogan, “The Ultimate Driving Machine.” It felt like a scene straight out of Art & Copy. In another context, a spot like this might feel forced or just irrelevant, but to an audience so keenly attuned to advertising, it’s ideal.

As for the show itself, Don is now part of a newly formed agency (Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Pryce) and has landed himself in a potentially damaging PR situation. While he’s created a smash hit advertisement for Glo-Coat that has the papers buzzing, he doesn’t see the point in selling himself when interviewed. He promptly gets panned in an Ad Age article. Roger Sterling, his esteemed business partner, sums it up best: “You turned all the sizzle from Glo-Coat into a wet fart.”

Draper is a virtuosic brander, but when it comes to personal PR, he’s lost. It’s the concept of personal branding he’s missing: a decidedly key consideration these days for ad execs and public figures. Luckily, by the time the credits roll, Don’s woken up to the importance of his personal brand and delivers a charming, candid interview that leverages the power of his work.

As always, Mr. Draper unleashes a deluge of quotables throughout the episode. Of his successful Glo-Coat commercial he says that nobody knows it’s an ad…“at least not for the first 30 seconds.” (The spot features a lengthy and captivating intro.)

There’s also the point when he reams out, and then throws out a potential client (!) for being behind-the-times and too stubborn to change: “You need to decide what kind of company you want to be: Comfortable and dead, or risky, and possibly rich.”

And, in perhaps the best example of ahead-of-its-time advertising (dare we say, post advertising?), Peggy orchestrates a stunt on behalf of client Sugarbear Hams, to save the account, that doesn’t sound too far removed from antics we regularly chronicle here at PA. Two women are paid to fight it out over one of the brand’s hams at a supermarket in the name of exposure and press coverage. They execute the stunt and get paid off to stay quiet — it works, but very easily could’ve gone wrong, as Don makes sure to note. This brings to mind the recent foolhardy efforts of KFC. If carried out today, the Sugarbear campaign would most likely also be recorded by an onlooker, uploaded to YouTube and spread across the net.

As a reader keen on contemporary advertising and progressive branding, what was your take on this season’s premiere? Are you seeing the same kind of parallels we are? Do you feel the efforts portrayed on the show are representative of the time period? Most importantly: WHY DOES DON LIKE GETTING SLAPPED AROUND IN THE SACK?!

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The folks at Hill Holiday report that the iAds themselves behave much like full-blown applications. Instead of opening up into a sluggish browser window, they sweep across the page, offering an altogether smoother experience. An exit button is always within view too, and the original content never seems far out of reach. Meanwhile, current handheld ads mean banner taps that lead to clunky web pages and bland content. As Jobs recent stated, “we think most of this mobile advertising really sucks.” Seems like reason enough to take a stab at something better.

Demoed during WWDC 2010, the upcoming Nissan Leaf iAd is a step in the right direction. Simple, elegant design and a variety of useful features make for a compelling experience:

Let’s not get too hopeful, though: news surfaced this morning that the platform has caught the attention of the feds, prompting a full investigation around claims that new terms will unfairly hinder competition and ultimately hurt developers and consumers. Could this be a play by Apple to selfishly keep their phone’s highly-coveted marketplace all to themselves? They’ve been accused of unfairness before, most notably with the App Store itself and the continued denial of various submissions (including the high-profile veto of Google Talk) on the basis of mysterious, often vague reasoning.

Beyond the investigation, details about the platform itself are still foggy: will Apple’s ads share a set of common traits? How creative do they plan on getting during the process? How many of them will make use of location-based technology and provide social connectivity features? These spots may prove little more than glossy, slick endorsements, each packed with the same bells and whistles as the last.

Questions notwithstanding, it’s still an exciting platform for many big brands. Jobs claims that the iPhone’s userbase spends an average of 30 minutes per day fiddling around in applications. They’re browsing for tips and information on any number of topics via these unique, specifically designated programs. That’s significantly different than the PC world, wherein users overwhelmingly spend their time wading through search engine results. It’s enough to convince the likes of Unilever, AT&T, and JC Penney to pair up with Apple and throw a proclaimed 60 million in ad dollars at initial launch offerings.

The opportunity certainly seems to be there for better advertising. Unlike the iPad and its content, which have remained (for now) mostly stale and unexciting due to a lack of innovation by publishers, iAds are being developed chiefly by Apple itself. While it may be an attempt to muscle their way to a bigger piece of the pie (they’ll be taking a very significant 40% cut of the ad profit, leaving developers with 60%), we’ll be surprised if we don’t see a lot of brands working to develop truly stellar “iAds.”

Can Apple bring the mobile ad industry kicking and screaming into the post advertising age? July 1st is right around the corner, folks.

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Loud, gimmicky, and crassly expensive, Super Bowl commercials have long epitomised old-school advertising. But there are signs that things are beginning to change.

Take Budweiser. A couple of weeks before the big event, it uploaded three different commercials to its Facebook page. The brand then asked people to choose their favourite, promising to air whichever received the most votes.

Simple yet effective, this word-of-mouth strategy helped Budweiser attract 150,000 new Facebook friends—150,000 people it can learn from, market to, and use as brand ambassadors for years to come.

Like Budweiser, Google went crowdsourcing for help with this year’s ad. More specifically, it browsed its own YouTube channel to find its most popular Search Story. Parisian Love was in the lead, so it decided to run it—completely unaltered—at the Super Bowl.

Around 8 million hits later, it’s looking like one hell of a decision. The ad even inspired a few unofficial follow-ups, including this one based on the trials and tribulations of Tiger Woods. You can be sure Messrs Page and Brin won’t mind a bit; the end result is still great talkability for the brand.

And let’s not forget how Pepsi went all in, putting its entire $20m Super Bowl budget into a social media campaign. (We’ll be keeping an eye on it.)

So what can we expect from next year’s Super Bowl ads? We predict more of the same. That’s because brands are becoming increasingly aware that shouting slogans doesn’t work anymore. Instead, they need to invite customers in, listen to what they have to say, and allow conversations to start organically. It’s a brave approach—and one that still intimidates some of the biggest brands in the world—but done well, it will inspire brand loyalty in a way that traditional TV advertising never can.

The internet has empowered everyone to publish and broadcast content on their own. This means that marketers are now no longer in complete control of their brands; consumers are in the driver’s seat. But it doesn’t mean brands are helpless. Maintaining their presences on relevant social networks will keep them competitive in the sea of voices. The upside is that good brand stories can spread at relatively low cost across social networks, where they will be repeated and amplified by advocates who will help ensure that your brand grows. The downside of not participating, of course, is getting left behind.

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This morning, while at the breakfast table, I saw a pack of Lizi’s Organic Granola Luxury Toasted Cereal (!). Someone persuaded poor old Lizi to add the word luxury to already very long and already quite annoying name of her cereal. Now, without going amok on the notion of semantics, what I am getting at is, of course, related to the concept of authenticity.

Today, the real currency of any brand is quality, substance and craftsmanship. The reality is that the rational entry barriers to becoming a brand has never been lower–production of your goods is instant, channels and access to the audience has converged, and prices for entering the market are low. The irony is that your ability to jump the emotional barriers, the reason that your brand will actually succeed, is  dependant on your ability to deliver…you guessed it, quality, substance and craftsmanship.

Now, as most real luxury brands are fully aware, the perception of the new digital channels such as social web needs to be embraced in the same manner, focusing on what is right for the individual audience. Blogging and networking may be right for certain brands if the executions of those platforms are performed as exquisite and imaginative as every other facet. However, if you feel that brands like Moet and Cartier are somewhat beneath you, it wouldn’t make much sense to engage with even closed social networks like the more exclusive A Small World. Put a bit differently, if your product, your internal behaviour, and your communication don’t overlap, there’s no authenticity.

One of the reasons true premium brands are relatively slow to embrace the social web is because they don’t automatically connect with the obvious archetype of the social-media savvy customer. This doesn’t mean that they don’t understand the new landscape; they just want to adapt differently than the less premium brands, which follows quite naturally from their raison d`etre, allowing to serve only a select few.

The morale? Well, this time it’s two fold. First, when it comes to establishing a luxury brand, make sure you can claim it. Really claim it. With luxury it’s not just about your marketing budget, it’s about your will to deliver. Secondly, when it comes to innovation within the social web, look to the so-called slow adapters within true premium luxury. As with everything that is actually luxury, it will flow to the masses later.

That’s what happened when Story Worldwide’s long-time client I Can’t Believe it’s Not Butter!® reformulated its popular spread to completely eliminate hydrogenated, making it healthier than ever with 70% less saturated fat than butter and no trans fats, all the while maintaining the product’s  signature butter flavor.

Story Worldwide stepped in to unearth the new brand story—yes, stories exist within brands; it simply takes a skilled journalistic approach to uncover them—and then to tell it to the masses. Story Worldwide, along with PR, promotional and media partners were responsible for the ideation of this campaign. Story conceptualized and developed online digital assets and email communications, as well as distributed content experiences to bring this program to life. The savvy team over at Mindshare Entertainment ultimately brought the new story to the small screen with a 30-second commercial spot and a full-length music video (launching on December 16th). And Megan Mullally of Will and Grace fame helped tie the whole thing together with joyful song and dance. Here are the four steps Story Worldwide took to help tell this new story.

1. Unearth the brand’s story.

Anybody can tell a clever story or come up with catchy messaging for a brand. (Well, not anybody, but meaningless campaigns that tell you nothing about the product at hand—and sometimes even work to distract you from it—are a dime a dozen, wouldn’t you say?) Story’s approach was to focus on those elements that differentiate I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter® from competing brands and to use those elements as the foundation of the brand story. Because these unique elements lie in the product’s improved nutritional value, Story Worldwide wanted to emphasize them with a practical, but fun, approach: get consumers to pay attention to the nutrition facts on the back of the tub.

And thus was born, “Turn the Tub Around,” a campaign whose soundtrack is based on Gloria Estefan’s song “Turn the Beat Around,” only with a buttery twist, and vocals/dancing by the lovely Megan Mullally.

2. Decide who to tell it to.

Story Worldwide decided that because the brand’s new story was so rich and because it was one that people across the country would be anxious to hear, that it would actually transcend media channels. In other words, there was no need to limit this story to a specific platform—such as online, print or TV—it’s one that would engage people wherever they happened to be.

3. Create a central hub where engaged customers can find more information.

Knowing that the message would be shared over numerous channels, Story Worldwide created TurntheTubAround.com, a microsite housed on the main I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter® brand site.

Visitors are led to this site from a 30-second TV commercial (produced by Mindshare Entertainment) and print ads. The site displays the new messaging front and center, and creates a clear visual tie-in with the other platforms. Most importantly, visitors are encouraged to, you guessed it, turn the tub around, by clicking on a flash animation that spins Megan Mullally and the tub of I Can’t Believe it’s Not Butter ® so that the nutrition facts face the visitor.

4. Tell your story to a mouse, in a house…  (Tell it to everyone, wherever they are.)

This story is multi-faceted, with a series of components that will launch over the next two months. In mid-December, you can look forward to a series of user-generated content applications that will help Story tell this story even better. And in January, a digital campaign will make it back to viewers with a pretty spectacular ending (yes, this story has a happy ending) that incorporates all elements to date.

In addition to unearthing this story and giving it an online home, Story Worldwide worked with I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter® to create all online digital assets and email communications for this series. Stay tuned!

On Friday, Forbes.com’s Laurie Burkitt wrote about how GM pushed back against these brand-bashing “badvocates,” as they’re called, and directed a team of six social-media employees to scour the web to engage in brand discussion. The initiative is in addition to GM’s launch in July of “Tell Fritz,” a section on GM’s Re: invention site where anyone can comment or ask questions from GM’s CEO Fritz Henderson. Burkitt quotes Scott on one benefit of using social media in a brand’s storytelling: “We need to know there are real people out there.”

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The rules for endorsements and reviews have been rewritten for

To keep bloggers and their brand relationships on the straight and narrow, the New York Times reports that the F.T.C. will require full disclosure when it comes to payments and freebies given for product review. Under the new guidelines, they would be considered endorsements, which must be clarified as such by the author. Plus, bloggers must identify any previous connections with a product or service.

The study also covers testimonial advertisements (a favorite of weight loss products — or think spokespeople like Subway’s Jared). Until now, they just needed disclaimers along the lines of “results not typical.” The new rules go further. It demands companies lay out what consumers can generally expect. But what the F.T.C. will define as a “typical” result isn’t yet defined.

This legislation — the first rewrite since 1980 — could be a rite of passage for blogs, which were once written off as unreliable sources. But their profound effect on society has been recognized and they’re here to stay.

As consumers flock to the web for consumer-generated content (presumably unbiased and trustworthy) new-age web payola must be accounted for. But are the regulations too ambiguous? Will bloggers now fear mentioning brands? Even worse, will they stifle creative brand collaboration with bloggers?

What’s your take on the new regulations? Leave your thoughts in the replies.

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Hey, check it out! Our very own Simon Kelly, chief operating officer at

Image by Phil Manker

HuffPo warns you that it moderates all comments to prevent “ad hominem” attacks and abusive comments and off-topic nonsense and other crimes against nature or humanity. So I tried to keep it clean and impersonal, clicked “submit” and waited patiently. And waited. And checked back after a bit. And waited. And so on. Ten hours passed. Then about 144 more.

Like I said, the web is about interaction, not interminable delay. Interminable delay is the core of traditional media, not digital. Finally, with nothing of my comment yet in sight, I have decided to take action and do what good netizens are supposed to do: Publish the comment myself.  So here it is:

One potential problem with HuffPo is that anyone, apparently, can shoot off his mouth with any or no justification. There is not a single fact in this meandering post. And the offending language — which is the traditional media exec’s verbal equivalent of a jerking knee or a facial tic — can be found here:

“As an industry we have discussed that changes may have to be made by some… For the most part this means specialization, or enhanced relevancy.  Newspapers don’t have to disappear, but they may have to stop trying to be all things to all people. Ditto most every media business.”

See? He did it. He just changed the subject. In the middle of talking about advertising, he suggests that traditional media’s all-too-evident problems with tumbling ad revenue (down roughly 30% across print properties in Q1) can be solved by changing journalism or somehow fixing other content.

Now tell me:  How exactly does that work? That’s like having your plumber tell you he’s going to fix that clogged toilet by repainting the bathroom. But when he’s done, you’ll just wind up with a pretty pink bathroom knee-deep in excrement instead of a blue one.

If you think that comment is ad hominem, abusive or off topic, please let me know. Otherwise, please let HuffPo know that their moderators should move a little quicker in the 21st century. And also let them know that reports of the death of advertising have been understated, if anything, except by Jarvis Coffin.

Promising accessibility to industry critics, Hill nevertheless chided “the incessantly negative adverbloggers out there.” In an oblique reference to the bright and always scatological George Parker, author of the blog Adscam, she added, “I challenge the central premise of at least one bogging provocateur’s claim that…the 4A’s Leadership Conference is…simply an expensive wank-fest.”

Defending her industry, Hill took the odd approach of citing an April 15 Harris poll that found, in Hill’s words, “66% of consumers said advertising agencies have at least some responsibility for the current economic crisis that we’re in because we (advertising professionals) caused people to buy things they couldn’t afford.”

Hill asked rhetorically, “Imagine that? Advertising agencies causing the crippling of the economy because we stimulate consumer desire and consumer demand. Who says advertising doesn’t work?”

For a moment, I was transported back to the heady days of Mad Men. To the 1957 publication of Vance Packard’s ominous book The Hidden Persuaders, which maintained that ad men were omnipotent characters who manipulated people into buying what they didn’t want. Then I looked up the Harris survey that Hill had cited and it snapped me back to reality. It appears that no one really believes advertising has any power anymore. And if they do, Ms. Hill certainly hasn’t demonstrated it. (In polls investigating the relative confidence placed in various American institutions, advertising doesn’t even figure.)

First, ad agencies were far from alone in taking blame for the economic debacle. In fact, 59% of the people asked said the print media deserved some blame, 56% liked online news as a culprit, 55% blamed talk shows and fully 46% felt their “friends and family” were implicated. Is it possible that Bernie Madoff has that many friends?

The Harris poll didn’t even offer people the choice of blaming the most culpable people and institutions, such as lax regulators, avaricious mortgage lenders, investment bankers or AIG. (AnABC-Washington Post poll found that banks got at least some blame from 95% of the people and big business was tagged by 91%—figures that tend to put the ad business in the friends-and-family category of culpability.)

Harris actually acknowledged the limited value of its own survey, saying, “Americans are angry and upset about the state of the economy and need someone or some group to blame.” Ad agencies, Harris said, “are normally under the radar screen. Now, thanks to television shows like Mad Menand Trust Me, they are slightly more visible and they are an easy scapegoat.”

The next time Ms. Hill wants to prove that advertising works, she’d better come up with a better set of statistics.

Photo of Nancy Hill by Lee White courtesy of 4A’s

Traditional, ad-supported media’s precipitous fall over the edge of the flat earth they have made for themselves is releasing a torrent of concern from everyone in the media business. Here at post-advertising, we love great television, believe newspaper-style journalism is critical to the world’s well being and agonize over the collateral damage of traditional advertising’s demise. So we want to do our part to help rescue the news business.

A couple weeks ago in a post titled “How NOT to Save Your Newspaper”, I rejected Walter Isaacson’s prescription for saving newspapers. Isaacson, like many others in the news business, thinks the solution is to make online readers pay “micro-charges.” (See his Time magazine cover story “How To Save Your Newspaper.”) But Isaacson’s plan won’t work because it’s been demonstrated that the vast majority of online readers won’t pay. Even if wishing would make it so, charging readers more can’t be the whole answer. The news industry’s first reaction to declines in ad revenue must be to look for more and different sources of ad revenue, not to chase away the majority of their audience by charging them.

This crisis, clearly looming for more than 25 years, finally has captured our collective attention. A lot of smart people have written a lot of smart stuff about the future of media. Among them is a recent blog post by Clay Shirky. You should read it all (“Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable”), but I’ll summarize.

Shirky makes a crucial point with which I agree completely: “Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism.” Real journalism (i.e., original reporting and careful editing) is a very expensive habit. (Here is what I wrote to tell Seth Godin exactly how expensive.) The pressing question is not how we save newspapers, but how we fund journalism as traditional advertising continues to go away. After enumerating all the strategies that have been tried and failed (including micro-charges for online readers), Shirky concludes:

“For the next few decades, journalism will be made up of overlapping special cases. Many of these models will rely on amateurs as researchers and writers. Many of these models will rely on sponsorship or grants or endowments instead of revenues…. Many of these models will fail. No one experiment is going to replace what we are now losing…but over time, the collection of new experiments that do work might give us the journalism we need.”

I have a different take than Shirky. I believe we have the journalism we need (more or less). The primary problem here is cutbacks in traditional advertising. We are in the middle of a crisis in advertising, not journalism.

I know that daily newspaper readership in the US peaked in 1984 and has fallen by more than a third since. But during roughly the same period, readership of alternative newsweeklies nearly tripled, according to the Pew Research Center’s invaluable annual report “The State of the News Media.” More to the point, Pew reports, people reading news online exceeded people reading news in print in 2008. Virtually every worldwide survey of online activity ranks reading the news as the second or third most popular activity on the web (behind email). The sites of the big traditional journalism companies, print and broadcast, consistently rank near the top of the traffic charts and the time-spent-on-site metrics. Cable news audiences, of course, have exploded. Journalism’s ability to attract and hold large and growing audiences isn’t broken and doesn’t need reinventing. (Journalism sure ain’t perfect, but the myriad stuff that IS wrong with journalism is part of a much different conversation than this one.)

The news business’s disaster comes from the blinkered and antique approach of its business side—the ad sales departments. By sticking to the outdated rules of a 400-plus-year-old print culture, the editorial departments aren’t helping, either. But the heart of the problem is the narrow definition of what can constitute “advertising.”

Old-fashioned ads are dying fast across all media, even online. The price of remnant online banner and display ads (a good indicator of current value) dropped 48% in the last quarter of 2008 compared to the same period a year earlier. These kinds of ads are rapidly devaluing because they are the web’s imitation of traditional advertising; everyone knows that virtually no one pays attention to banners. Despite this, newspapers keep flogging away at the outmoded practice of selling space—peddling fractional pages in print and their moral equivalent, banners and display ads, online. This goes a long way toward explaining why newspapers have been unable to turn their growing online audiences into commensurate growth in ad revenue.

All these traditional advertising tactics are part of a withering marketing model. In the old model, publishers attracted an audience with engaging stories (news and entertainment) and then marketers were allowed to interrupt those stories with commercial messages. The interruptive model is failing and is being replaced with a new model that stresses engagement. Commercial messages must now be attractive, informative and engaging stories (news and entertainment) in their own right. They absolutely must deliver a valuable media experience to the audience—an experience that informs or entertains or, heaven forbid, does both. This is especially true online, where engaging experiences are the only form of communication that gets any attention or results. As all media—newspapers, magazines, TV, film, and so on—become digital and migrate to the web, the engagement model of marketing is becoming the only viable model.

It is now past time for newspapers to adopt the new marketing model—to redefine the advertising they carry in print and online as media experiences that are every bit as engaging as the news itself and that may even be, in many cases, the news itself. This will require these companies to add non-traditional marketing services to their skill set. Simply selling space won’t do anymore. (All eyes in publishing, by the way, are on Meredith Publishing, home of Better Homes and Gardens, Ladies Home Journal and many other magazines, because they have acquired several marketing services firm in recent years, including the L.A.-based web shop Genex. But despite claiming to do integrated marketing, Meredith has failed so far, I’m told by insiders, to integrate these acquisitions into its magazine sales departments.)

Story happens to have a unique history as a place where journalism meets advertising to produce satisfying, authentic experiences for people and positive results for brands. Because of our history, we actually have one solution with the potential to turn old media into new media, creating new streams of revenue for journalism and entertainment. This is not the only solution. There must be other revenue-growing experiments that also will work. But this is one that I know will work now.

The difficult news is that old media companies will need to achieve a cultural makeover if they are to thrive in the new environment. One very destructive cultural icon of the current news culture is the ancient notion that editorial and business cannot work together without corrupting the truth and trustworthiness of journalism. It’s simply not true and needs to change.

There are many examples that demonstrate how and why this isn’t true, but let me just pick one. The various international print, online, video and mobile versions of Lexus magazine have been a trusted, award-winning source of reporting about unique, off-the–beaten track travel and cultural experiences for the past dozen years. Story’s editors regularly cover boutique hotels, extraordinary restaurants and fascinating cultural experiences. Part of the magazine’s credibility, of course, stems from the trust that Lexus owners place in the brand. They know driving a Lexus is a great experience; they have sufficient reason to believe that experiences recommended by Lexus will be equally deserving of their time and money. But another reason our journalism for Lexus can be so good and honest is that we use many of the same writers as the major travel magazines, but we do not rely on travel advertising to pay for the content in print or online. In that regard, of course, Lexus magazine can be far more independent than Condé Nast Traveler and all the other travel books which must get chain hotel ads or die.

The emerging agencies that practice content marketing stand for the proposition that marketers must be publishers if they are to attract and hold an audience. Brands must create engaging content covering subjects in which they have demonstrated expertise and authority. By doing so, they can provide value to audiences and advance the brand’s business goals.

Whenever I explain this proposition to journalists, they immediately conclude that no reader will ever believe anything a brand says. I try to explain that in the public’s mind there is very little difference between GE asking us to believe NBC News and a brand asking us to believe authentic stories in its marketing or on its web site. People, I explain, will trust what proves to be trustworthy. (And the biggest drawback to traditional ads—apart from irrelevance—is that they do not appear to be very trustworthy, by the way.)

The single biggest problem facing publishers, to paraphrase Will Rogers, is not what the traditional media managers don’t know (about brands and marketing, for example), but what they know for sure that just ain’t so (aout what constitutes advertising, for example). In other words, their biggest problem is their cultural mythology.

Just as brands need to be publishers, so publishers need to be marketing agencies that can create opportunities for brands to tell their stories, as well as helping to craft the stories they tell. At a moment in history when ads are giving ground fast to immersive and informative experiences, publishers need to quit selling space and start selling their ability to help tell and host media experiences. But why should that be so hard? It is, after all, what publishers are supposed to do: Tell stories.

Traditional media need to transform themselves at least partly into content-based marketing services organizations. They need gradually to quit working with media buying and advertising agencies, which keep relegating them to their traditional roles. They need to work directly with clients to define and solve marketing challenges and produce results. I know the devil here is in the details of each project and I know it’s hard for both traditional marketers and publishers to wrap their heads around a new model. The first question I usually get when I start talking about these idea to journalists is, “What corporation is going to fund the Baghdad bureau?” One answer, of course, is we do not have to get every word of the news paid for by a marketer. But it is equally true that if we can generate added revenue from local car dealers by featuring their cars appropriately in stories about great weekend drive, to cite one example, we can spend some of that money on the Baghdad bureau just because it’s a good idea.

Traditional media know how to create great content. Now they must learn how to customize and leverage that content to captivate an audience while driving marketing results for a client. Their content capabilities make them well suited to survival in the post-advertising age. But it’s time to break with their tradition-bound history, take a chance, try an experiment and rise to the new challenge.

Photo by Jason Greenley.

Time’s former managing editor, now head of the Aspen Institute, Isaacson essentially argues that people should pay for content on the web even though they have shown they won’t. I hate to break the bad news, but people should do a lot of things that they don’t.

Time calls Isaacson’s idea “A Modest Proposal.” I call it a merely wishful one. Either way, Isaacson starts off by anchoring his analysis in the less-than-up-to-the-minute ideas of Henry Luce, who co-founded Time in 1923 and died in 1967 (sadly, without muttering “Rosebud” on his deathbed). It was well before the creation of the personal computer, let alone the web.

Isaacson recalls that Luce “disdained the notion of giveaway publications that relied solely on ad revenue… because he believed that good journalism required that a publication’s primary duty be to its readers, not to its advertisers.” This is very quaint, but not very relevant. It’s also misleading and, ultimately, untrue.

If Luce were alive today, I could ask him what he thinks of the underground free weeklies that sprang up beginning in the 1960s and ’70s. Many (like this one and this one) still thrive today, attracting advertisers by serving a large readership very well. I also might ask what he thinks of TV news—the free, ad-supported source from which most people receive their news. I might  point out that big, mainstream newspapers have been beholden to advertisers for many years. If this were not so, they wouldn’t be in so much trouble as advertising dwindles and Isaacson wouldn’t be trying to save them. Yet, despite their dependence on ad revenue, quite a few newspapers continue to produce great journalism; continue to serve their readers.

Good journalism is not so much about who pays the bills, Mr. Isaacson, as it is about the journalists. As the former president of Chicago magazine, I was pretty damn dependent on Marshall Field’s (subsumed under the Macy’s name in 2006) for ad revenue. But I also could argue successfully to the department store chain’s CEO that if I wrote what he dictated and my editorial content wasn’t credible, then his 144 ad pages in Chicago wouldn’t be very credible, either. But I digress.

As we have written here at postadvertising before (here and here), all traditional media may sooner or later be headed either for a new business model or the ash heap of history. One thing is certain: Proposing that readers act the way we wish they would is not helpful. Instead, since we can’t do without journalism, we need a real, workable solution. Story Worldwide’s modest proposal is that we actually execute a new business model. I’ll detail that model in a future post.

Though the commercials imply it, are Mac sales outstripping PC sales? Not even close. Apple owns about 3-4% of the personal computer market, with Windows-based PCs taking the overwhelming majority of the rest of it.

However, since May 2006, when the campaign launched, Mac sales have skyrocketed, moving from about 1.3 million units a quarter to 2.3 million units in the first quarter of 2008. Similarly, Apple’s personal computer market share increased from 2.5% to 3.5% over that same period.

So how’d they do it? Characters.

Brands are like people. They have stories, personalities, and can interact with each other and with other brands similarly to how people interact with each other. Apple had the guts to reduce their very dynamic and complicated product into one T-shirt wearing guy. (This is not an endorsement of Macs; PCs are equally dynamic and complicated.) It was probably a much easier pill to swallow to reduce the competitor to a stodgy, aviator-glasses-wearing nerd.

To see why a brand would be afraid to do this is simple. Marketers don’t want to pigeonhole their product into one thing that their prospective customers may or may not have affinity with. Allowing that fear to prevent a marketer from doing something like this points to a very common marketer mistake: Looking at people as types and not people. People—even the most boring, anemic people—are far more dynamic and complicated than any computer, or any product or brand, for that matter.

Great characters tell great stories with their very existence. Read the first rule of the post-advertising age in big, upper-case letters to your right: IN THE POST-ADVERTISING AGE, THE BRANDS THAT TELL THE BEST STORIES WIN.

Enjoy the new spots:

Here is a link to a host of Mac vs. PC parodies.