There’s no getting away from having to do the factory tour. Insights into your audience are important, but obsessing about them can make brands forget to talk about themselves.
Getting to meet the people who work there is a great antidote to this and can teach you something fresh and interesting that the people in marketing may not appreciate. The information is nearly always there, it just needs to be found.
Big Shiny Thing has a post about Google Trends. After a quick look, Mumbai beats New York and London for searches on Account Planning. Also, in most UK cities far more people are searching for Arctic Monkeys than Mcfly.
Grant McCracken has put up a thought provoking post about BMW. They seem to be positioning themselves as an ‘enemy of the enemies of ideas’. Interesting since, in the UK at least, BMW drivers tend to be seen as conservative and rather dull. I wonder, has the new ideas culture led to them to look for a new audience? Has it simply forced them to make their current drivers re-classify themselves? What do you think?
Saw this ad in the Observer. I thought it was good visual idea, dramatising the line ‘avoid getting old ahead of time’.
The problem was, I was damned if I knew what they actually do. They probably wanted to intrigue me enough to go to the website. They did, but then I had to play an irrelevant game. It took another three clicks to find out they sold childcare products. It’s no good engaging with your audience if they don’t know who you are and you don’t tell them why you should care.
Sorry for the lack of entries recently. It’s time consuming being a one man planning department.
Anyway, the newspaper society ran an interesting ad in Campaign last week. It told us that ad avoiding consumers actually look for ads in local press, nay, that’s why they buy them.
They want you to go onto www.thewantedads.co.uk to find out more and see the research.So far so good.
When you log on, the research isn’t there and you can’t have it without filling out a form and agreeing to an unspecified price. To find out how much it is, you have to phone someone in London.
Now hold on. They want our business, they’ve got our attention, and then they want us to pay for the follow through?
They may understand press, but they sure don’t get how it fits in with the other stuff.
Just been uploading pictures of last month’s trip to the Eden Project.
Perfect example of a brand with a consistent message. It’s inspiring, interesting and all about plants and the environment.
You end up being so motivated to support the cause, you end up spending a fortune in the gift shop.
These cotton seeds on my organic cotton shirt were a nice touch.
‘The Independent’ reports that this year’s World Cup could see a match winning goal broadcast in an ad just minutes after the final whistle. New technology will allow you to edit right up until the last minute. Maybe this will give more cut – through in the post PVR world. Imagine Subway airing a commercial on the same day it was made to convey freshness, or Barclaycard covering today’s priceless moments. On the other hand, let’s hope that people don’t change their minds more now there’s more time to do so. Here’s the article.
Here’s an article from Ad Age Daily about the importance of search marketing for brands. I was in a meeting last week when the media planners tried to convince the client that they needed to go on TV to be credible. We thought that perhaps there were other things to work on first. Looks like getting on search results is one of them.
It’s hard being in big meetings like that, many clients tend to listen to media people because they invoice them the most, or account people because they know they’ll agree with them. As a planner you quickly learn to say less, but to make it count when you do. Russell Davies has a triangle trick for meetings, it works and you can find it here if you scroll down to ‘Draw a triangle’.
Interesting article on Malcolm Gladwell and cheating in sport. He suggests using statistical analysis to understand if record breakers are likely to have used drugs. Another example of how research must be innovative to find new stuff, but do we really want to find out? People enjoy sport for those moments that defy explanation. Maybe Flo Jo was cheating, I for one would rather not know. Read the full article here.
American Dream turns into a nightmare of numbers
Marina Hyde
Thursday April 20, 2006
The Guardian
On this basis I ought to be a sucker for an idea floated last week by Malcolm Gladwell. The author of Blink and The Tipping Point has just finished reading Game of Shadows, the extraordinary book by two reporters who have pulled off what has been called the Watergate of steroid abuse investigations, a work all the more remarkable for the fact that its highest profile target is the living legend Barry Bonds.
NORTHERN PLANNER 
