With this flighty temptress we call Mother Nature up to her unpredictable tricks this year, Bogus Basin (and many ski resorts) has had a rough beginning to their winter season. For those of us who live in the Boise Valley, Bogus is our mountain. It’s the place we go after work to get in a couple night skiing runs, or mountain bike rides. It’s where we teach our kids to ski and board on the weekends. It’s the place we call in sick from (sick with powder fever—and for the record, I’ve not done this nearly enough). It’s our respite from the infamous and dreary Boise inversion.
So what happens when we can’t strap on our snow gear and tear up the snowy mountain? Dry-heaving sobs, of course. But also, Bogus employs up to 700 of our friends and neighbors. And these friends and neighbors have been without a job for the past couple months. This effects more than our ability to shred the proverbial gnar.
The good news: we live in a community that cares greatly for one another. That’s why many of us live in Boise and the surrounding areas. We love our jobs, we love our people, we love our lives and the lifestyle this area affords us.
Our little community has pulled together to support Bogus Basin. We’ve had musicians, vendors, community celebrities, and community figures pull together to create this evening’s event, Get Louder For Powder, a community rally to bring the snow. By the looks of it this snowy morning, we’re getting the job done!
Please join us in supporting Bogus and our community tonight on the Basque Block from 5pm – 8pm. It is free for everyone, and we hope to see lots of families, lots of friends, lots of people who love our mountain.
We’ve got a stellar music lineup, Curtis Stigers, Rebecca Scott, Bill Coffey, a.k.a. Belle, In Joy Drum and Dance, Marchfourth Marching Band, Reilly Coyote, Steve Fulton and Shon Sanders. Agri Beef, Hayden Beverage and Payette Brewing Company have so generously provided food, beer and wine. All the profits from food sales will benefit Bogus, which is a nonprofit organization. If you are a current season passholder, show it and you’ll get a Double R Ranch Bogus Burger for $1 as well as $1 beers.
Let’s turn this valley into a snow globe tonight! Be sure to wear your winter gear: snow pants, googles, ski jackets, and the like, and let’s bring it!
Recently I’ve been studying the papers of Dr. Robert Heath. Of particular interest is his terrific exploration of brand relationships: how they’re strengthened by emotion and, to a certain degree, weakened by attention. It’s why I probably like this:
The common assumption is that advertising works best when it delivers a rational message that tries to persuade and change beliefs. Most advertising models here in the US are underpinned by this approach.
But when we think about the brands we love, and the marketing that, over time, has gotten us to the point of love, do we recall the individual messages along the way or is it more of the total feeling?
The work of interpersonal communication psychologist Paul Watzlawick found that it’s more of the latter. Emotion is the content that primarily endures, not the rational points. Thinking about The Home Depot, for instance, we remain excited about the possibilities of home improvement far longer than we’re able to recall the featured products we saw in the ad.
The first reason emotion works in this way is through the “Reinforcement Model”, which was originally coined by Andrew Ehrenberg in ’74 but I came to understand the principle more recently through Godin’s writing when he talks about worldviews. The Reinforcement Model says that it’s far better (and more successful) to reinforce the current worldviews of the audience than it is to try and create new ones or change someone’s mind.
PUMA did this beautifully…
We gravitate to the emotions that we want to experience ourselves when we’re interacting with the product.
And here’s another interesting thing about emotion and communication from Dr. Heath’s papers:
“Every communication has a content and a relationship aspect such that the latter classifies the former and is therefore a metacommunication.”
The metacommunication is the nonverbal stuff that goes along with the message. How important is that? Watzlawick’s research on interpersonal communication between couples found the following:
“When relationships between couples were on the verge of collapse, the “communication” was often perfectly reasonable and sensible, but it was the metacommunication that was causing the breakdown. In other words, although people were saying good things, the way in which they said them was causing friction and negativity. They found that by correcting the metacommunication they could often repair the relationship rift, even when damaging and negative things were occassionally said.”
It’s how we say things that builds relationships. And I think this is true for brands just as much as it is for people.
TONE
For years I’ve maintained that one of the most important items on any creative brief is the “Tone”. But it’s usually just glossed over. Often we see a collection of non-defining, easy-to-approve words in the tone, like, “approachable,” “spirited” and “fun”. These typically aren’t very helpful or ownable. Tolstoy wrote once that the more vague a definition of a word the more often we use that word and with greater confidence since we assume everyone knows what we mean.
When it comes to tone we can be so much better! I once saw a creative tone that was “not James Bond but Jason Bourne.” How great is that? Very visceral. Identifying a unique and consistent tone is paramount because it’s the metacommunication that maintains the positive customer relationship.
I would love to see the tone on the Skittles briefs…
I’d also like to see the tone that Johnson&Johnson has been working from…
So with the correct tone we’re almost done.
But here’s the next dynamic: How much attention do we want the audience to give? This is sort of a trick question… we want them to give a lot attention, but we don’t want them to know that they’re doing so.
A 1989 study by Robert Bornstein confirmed that the less aware we are of the emotional elements in advertising the better the ads are likely to work because the viewer has less opportunity to rationally evaluate, contradict and weaken their potency.
This is why storytelling is so important. When we see “Write the Future” we get wonderfully lost in it. We’re not questioning why it’s happening which is good because, of course, rationally, it’s impossible. But we’re totally absorbed with what the brand is saying…
Emotion reinforces our worldviews and then establishes how the brand manages a successful, ongoing relationship with us.
Sounds good.
But what happens to the logical sales points that also need to be advertised?
They’re still very much a part of a brand’s plan, they just need to go in their optimal places. And that’s a post for another day. But in the meantime, from Dr. Heath:
“Of course, the opposite is the case with message-based information processing communication, where more attention will provide more recall and more persuasion. Advertising that has the tactical aim of communicating factual information (i.e. product improvements, promotions, prices, etc.) will benefit from more attention, because that way you remember better what the message is.
So this raises something of a dilemma for the issue of engagement. Advertising that needs to get a factual message over works best if high attention is paid. But our evidence shows that if advertising wishes to build strong brand relationships, it needs to incorporate high levels of emotional content, and this emotional content will be most effective if less attention is paid to it.”
There are times to get lost in an emotionally-forward brand message. And then there are times to get right to the point. Both need to be done. The wisdom and success comes from knowing when to do each and build them both into the master plan.
“Today’s market place is no longer responsive to the strategies that worked in the past. There are just too many products, too many companies, and too much marketing noise.” (Al Ries and Jack Trout: Positioning; The Battle For Your Mind).
So what do you do to get your message heard and your product recognized? Answer: correctly position your product.
To position your product means to utilize niches and narrow targets, be selective of who your target market is, and employ the use of segmentation.
According to Ries and Trout, Americans consume 57% of the world’s advertising. So what does this mean? You have to strategically postion the product or service so it stands out in the communication jungle.
Focus on the consumer, the prospect, rather than the product itself. Why would they want it? Who would want it? What will it do for them? Focus on what the consumer wants your product to be, not what you think the product is.
Simplify. There is no need to provide long-drone content to describe why your product or service beats out the competition. Keep it simple. With blasts of media and parades of commercials hitting your comsumers’ eyes and ears, it is wise to keep it simple and relevant. Here is a good example:
American: Jack Daniels. Want to dive into the American culture, feel like a true American? Drink Jack Daniels–it’s about as American as it gets.
Writing for social media and the web, takes finesse.
Marketers use many different tactics to encourage clicks, purchases, likes, what have you, all to create brand evangelists. As a consumer myself (or a human living in the age of the internet), I am aware of how precious little time there is before I decide whether I am being squawked at or being shown a glimpse of something I’d really like to be a part of (like these below).
In her article “Words that Zing,” Colleen Jones says, “Greek rhetoricians defined kairos as saying or doing the right thing at the right time.”
Similarly, when done effectively, this could be the definition for social media and web content. So what turns the squawking into something useful? Into a conversation? How are brand evangelists created?
By clear, concise and transparent copy. By building trust.
This doesn’t mean, though, that the power of persuasion shouldn’t be utilized. In his blog post, “You Should Follow Me on Twitter,” Dustin Curtis found that using a personal command at the end of his blog posts increased his clickthrough rate. I suspect that this also has something to do with the fact that he had been providing thoughtful and useful information in his posts, thus building trust with his readers.
With trust, comes a relationship, which is what I would argue the ultimate goal with social media has become.
And for those who want a little (fantastic and aural) squawking, click here.
It is a word, a phrase, a way of life that most have become either accustomed to or have heard endless earfuls about: green. Companies are playing their part in continuing the green effort, Coca-Cola in particular.
Recently, Coca-Cola, working with the World Wildlife Federation and Momentum Phillipines, installed a 60-by-60-foot billboard in Manila, Phillippines, made of living plants. It is the first plant billboard in the country. This particular billboard is very different than most, it actually helps absorb carbon dioxide, on average 13 pounds a year. The billboard uses 3,600 pots of Fukien tea plants, which are potted in a mixture of industrial byproducts and organic fertilizers. They are maintained by an efficient drip irrigation system called trickle irrigation or micro-irrigation. The “green” effort doesn’t stop there, recycled Coca-Cola bottles were used as pots.
As a part of the company’s “Live Positively” commitment (a commitment to make a positive difference in the world by incorporating sustainability into everything they do), Coke celebrated their 125th anniversary earlier this year with the largest building illumination ever created. Their headquarters tower in Atlanta displayed nearly 1 million lumens of light. How is that green, you ask. The emissions from this event will be offset in support of Georgia’s Valley Wood Carbon Sequestration Project.
In a world of print, digital, tv and radio – advertisers are picking up the green trend. Creativity breeds ways to infuse green into design and into new and developing campaigns; saving the world, one billboard at a time. It goes without saying – but I shall remind you, behind every great idea, is a great agency. Congrats to Momentum Philippines for a job well done.
There are several levels of successful ideas in marketing, ranging from really good ideas to epic ideas. But how do you know if a creative strategy—and its subsequent marketing expression—might be one of those rare epic ideas? Perhaps a key question can help: Does the idea work at different emotional speeds? Can it emotionally upshift and downshift and still be on strategy?
Like this:
Upshift…
Downshift…
It’s a bit like people. There are times when we want energy and excitement, and then there are times that we welcome introspection and caring. If a brand stands for something huge, the same theory should apply. In Nike’s case, standing for “the athlete” is a huge position. It upshifts and downshifts but it’s always about the athlete. Because being an athlete carries a range of emotions. Harley-Davidson has done similar over time. Allstate is doingthis now. The Gap did this when their advertisingwas part of culture.
We see this beyond advertising… we see it in rock bands. The epic groups are those capable of rocking a stadium, then immediately slowing things down, all the while still being, well, them. Consider: there’s “Pride (In the Name of Love)” and then “With or Without You.” “Revolution” and “Let It Be.” “Misty Mountain Hop” and “Going to California.” But no matter what track you’re listening to, it always feels perfectly normal and is unquestionably U2, The Beatles, and Zepplin through and through.
Most highly regarded marketing campaigns get a few great years of run time. But they need refreshing because the audience can start to wain and culture begins to shift, so we concept something new. Very normal. But I always have a fondness for emotional range. And the epic ideas are big enough to represent many different emotions all under one creative strategy, keeping the audience engaged for decades.
All you Boise tweeters out there, grab your preferred tweeting device and join us, Boise Tweetup, and Jake, The Urban Chiropractor, next Thursday afternoon to meet some new people, learn about social media laws, and support a fantastic cause.
The Deets:
Date: Thursday, July 14th, 2011
Time: 4:00pm – 7:00pm
Place: Drake Cooper Building, 416 S. 8th St. (8th St Entrance)
+ Lisa McGrath will be talking about social media law at 4:00pm.
+ Bid on some great items at the silent auction, which benefits our friends at Commit 65.
+ Enjoy some good food and $2 beers.
+ Put actual faces to those twitter avatars we’re all so familiar with.
What happens when you go from being picked first, to picked last? What do you do when you once stood on top of the mountain looking down, and are now standing on a hill peering up? Time for a change.
Pepsi, for the last few years has been pitching the idea of their Pepsi-Cola brand to be rainbows and sunshine, straying away from the sugary, carbonated sweetness that made the brand the soda giant that it is today … or wait. Is not? Last year, Pepsi sank to number three, behind Coke and Diet Coke. For the past three years, Pepsi has been focusing on positioning itself as a natural, health-conscious brand, detouring from its celebrity child, Pepsi-Cola.
Last year, the company spent 153 million on advertising (about a third of what it was spending from 2005). This year change is a comin’. The company not only has decided to shift back to its prized product, Pepsi-Cola, as the focal point of its advertising, but has also increased proposed tv advertising expenditures by 30%.
Pepsi’s new campaign is geared around the concept of “Summer Time Is Pepsi Time”, working in conjunction with large amounts of tv advertising and a sponsorship deal with X Factor. The change they have made has allowed for North America beverage sales to increase 2% in the first quarter of 2011 (WSJ).
This brings me to a book I read during my undergraduate career – The Dip by Seth Godin. If you haven’t read ityet, do so. When things are no longer producing desired outcomes and what was once thriving is no longer – a change is necessary. Most products go through a “dip”, a change in likability or favorability. As a company, a product or a service – a choice has to be made. Do you succumb to the thought, the action of not being the first choice, or do you change to get back where you want to be? Building your brand or becoming, being or maintaining the crème of the crop position is about being able to adapt and change. If something is not working – change it.
The Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival is the advertising event of the year. Over 20,000 pieces of creative advertising material from across the world are judged at this event. If you receive an award, you have welcomed temporary greatness. Temporary, because you better believe your competition is brewing and boiling with ideas to surpass your last.
In the advertising business, we live, breath, eat, sleep, read, BECOME competition. It is the light to our day, the wake to our hardly sleep, the coffee in our cup. When events such as the Cannes take place, we glue down our derrieres to see what the world has to offer; who can we beat or strive to become. We sit and analyze every word, action, prop and placement – what could we have done, what would have we done. This industry is not for the faint of heart. If we see someone do something extraordinary, we are driven and determined to one-up them.
The beauty behind events such as Cannes is that it exponentially increases the creative edge of any great agency. We can’t help but want to get back to the office to explode into a rapid fire of creativity. The great and memorable ads, such as Apple’s 1984, have set the stage for creative genius. Every year, something newer is launched, like 2005’s Sony Bravia, 2008’s Monster.com “stork”, to this year’s Puma: After Hours Athlete, the Outdoor Grand Prix winner Jay-Z’s “Decoded” (Droga5) and the Grand Prix winner, Nike: Write the Future (Wieden + Kennedy, Amsterdam); each surpassing the last, in one shape or form, creating a memorable experience, noting its place in history.
Some detour from competition, from strength in progress, however, we invite it. Competition fuels greatness. We are passionate about providing the best options to every client that walks into our door. They do not come asking for mediocrity, copy-cats or stagnant ideas. Props to our industry comrades for your wins, for you have given us fuel to our ever-burning fire.
In traditional Chinese medicine, health is managed by treating the seven basic emotions. Anger lives in the liver; worry in the spleen; pensiveness in the stomach; sadness in the lungs; fear in the kidneys; and joy and shock both affect the heart.*
At Drake Cooper, creative health is managed by cultivating the following seven vitals. Moxie, imagination, beer, tenacity, hard work, levity, and style.
We are looking for a Senior Writer and a Production Designer with mega healthy, wowy-vitals. For more information, give our job posting a thorough examination.
All you Boise tweeters out there, grab your preferred tweeting device and join us,