Using parentheses in promotional writing

I work with some guys that you would say come from the old school of advertising. Back in the day, before flashy websites and 3 second TVCs, well written copy was highly valued.

Today we are taught about the ruthlessness of advertising copy, keeping it short, calls to action, active sentences. However, every now and then I enjoy reading promotions that are well written by someone that takes pride in their product descriptions and catalogues.

Of all the things that I think stand out for me is the use of parentheses in promotional writing. The old school is not afraid to use parentheses to provide more context or give a little more meaning. Some might think if it's in parentheses then its superfluous, but to me it can add a little fun.

It may seem silly when you're competing so heavily for the consumers time but just adding a little flourish to your usual pared-back promotional copy might be a nice change (give it a try, I dare you).

Little things that count

A recent Ford Focus commercial grabbed my attention because 8 seconds into the ad there is an overt reference to Triple J.

In the scripting of this commercial any radio station could have been mentioned, but Triple J was chosen. Why?

Looking at the stats (part of the privilege of working at a market researcher) Triple J isn't the most listened to station by Ford Focus purchase intenders, but it is up there with Fox FM and Nova. I wonder what (or if) the decision making process was to choose this station in the TVC?

Here's the full ad:

The saddest Ad I've seen

This latest TVC for the iPad really hit me quite hard. Most examples shown are what I would consider a natural extension of technological communication and media interaction, but there was one snippet that made me really sad.

The kid learning to write on an iPad in what looks like a crayon style just hit home how removed our future generations will be from reality. If future generations will learn to write using an iPad then what understanding will they have of the crayon 'font' if they have never actually seen or used a crayon.

The gradual extinction of pen and paper and the rapid move to a digital world lived behind a glass tablet is one of the saddest things I've seen recently.

Development continues in multi-touch

I was pointed towards an article about a mob called Visual Planet that has developed a thin film that is able to turn any screen into a multi-touch screen.

It's definitely an interesting concept (if it is affordable) that could possibly take large format multi-touch a little more mainstream than it currently is. Although I imagine the software and creative development is still fairly costly.



Amnesia have been keeping tabs on the development of multi-touch on their blog which is well worth a read. It goes to show that with the level of development in this space there must be some bright sparks that see that it has a mainstream future.

But my favourite multi-touch application is still Johnny Chung Lee's multi-touch Wii-remote hack. It goes to show with a little ingenuity and a lot of creativity anything is possible.

In a down-turn focus on the optimistic of us

While there is doom and gloom on the economic horizon with debt crises in the USA and job losses in Australia, one thing I've heard talked about from a marketing viewpoint is that in times like this you should focus on the optimistic people in the economy.

The people that feel safe in their job and positive about the future will continue to spend. This is reflected in the chart above from Gallup. It shows that in the USA those earning above $90k per annum have actually increased their year-on-year spending to July 2011.

Similarly in Australia look at your research and find your optimistic customers and focus your efforts on them. You will be able to put some money towards stemming losses from pessimistic customers (possibly through discounting) but focus the majority of your effort on optimistic customers, possibly by direct marketing to high-value customers.

QR Codes and merging print and digital media

The guys over at Marketing Magazine asked the question whether QR codes will ever take off in Australia and I think they will, in-fact they may have already. Just this week four catalogues in my letterbox had QR codes linking print media to its digital cousin.

1. Woolworths promoting more recipes online
2. Mitre 10 promoting DIY videos online
3. Bunnings, similarly with DIY videos, but also with store locators
4. Bras 'n Things with a store locator QR code

Without stats I can't say whether this has taken off or whether it's just the marketing department trying out new things. It does make me happy, though, that there seems to be a concerted effort to provide a more connected experience between the brand and the customer.

Finally, a question that I have had bubbling away for a while is, 'have we already surpassed qr codes?'.

Taking a logistical tool and turning it into a marketing key to the digital world was a great idea and it has been one that, overseas at least, has had great commercial success. But with the advent of Google Goggles and augmented reality (AR), where applications can now 'read' real-world objects, have 2D barcodes become obsolescent?

Google Goggles still has a long way to go before it is accurate enough to surpass QR code readers, and with no accepted standards in AR, I think that QR codes will have a healthy life yet in Australia. But we have already seen the future and for marketing at-least I think it is one without 2D barcodes.

Video production for online continues to grow

The bear rouses, from his slumber... yes, it's been a while between posts, but hopefully you can excuse me!

I've read a number of articles this week that have driven me to post again, and surprise, surprise, its another post about online video production (I just can't get enough of it!).

Here's whats got me all excited...

MangnaGlobal, media strategists and forecasters have predicted that online advertising will overtake newspapers as the second largest advertising medium by 2013.

ComScore, have released the latest online video consumption figures with stating, "In Australia, 10.3 million unique viewers consumed online video content during the month, averaging nearly 8 hours per viewer."

And finally, here's another example of big brands taking to the Internet with custom videos designed for the online world... Kevin Bacon for logitech and Google.

3D Projection Mapping

Every couple of weeks a new example of 3D projection mapping is filmed and amazes me. Known also as architectural projection mapping and event outdoor amongst other terms, it is developed by mapping a real-world object with 3D animation software and creating artistic projections within and around the constraints of the real-world object.

It's an awesome example of augmented reality and from the examples below you can see it can be used for advertising, story-telling, live music, outdoor events, gallery spaces... so many incarnations of this fascinating cross-over art.

Non-linear video consumption and other fancy terms

A big hat-tip to the folks at Viocorp for pointing me towards a blog post on Glee's new Superfan video player.

The player has been designed for watching re-runs and has some pretty swanky functionality, none-more-so than the ability to drill down into non-linear content. For content producers and marketers alike I can see the salivating already occuring.

From a content producers point of view imagine that a bit-player in the show walks into shot and the fan isn't quite sure of the back-ground of the character - one click and it brings up a bio with background story of how they fit into the show.

From a marketers point of view, those product placements really can work for the money. Context sensitive links will now allow you to click on those sweet kicks the star is wearing and find out where they're on sale.

The other social functions of the player including Facebook and Twitter connections I have already written about previously and more and more these are a given with video consumption.

Truly social and interactive video consumption is coming very very quickly.

Image credit: Glee on Fox

Chinese youth culture today

One area of marketing that I would love to study further is youth culture throughout Asia. Below is a great presentation on Chinese youth culture. It shows the evolution of Chinese youth to an individual yet inclusive culture, where millions of youth are facing similar societal pressures. It shows that when the youth do not find the cultural values they seek within China they will turn to international cultural consumption from Taiwan to Thailand and Japan. This is in-turn feeding new cultural industries within China melding external influences with local Chinese culture.

There are too many insights to summarise here so I suggest you view the presentation to get all the great information!

Ypulse Mashup presentation: Building deeper connectin with China youth

View more presentations from Lisa Li.

The good company

What makes a company good? And by 'good' I mean good for everyone, the world, the whole box and dice. Talk to some economists and they would say the only responsibility a company has is to its shareholders. Make sure the shareholders get as much cash as possible and let the individual make the decision. Talk to others and they'll say a company can be good only by being a good corporate citizen. This is more ill-defined, but generally one would say this means ethical business practices, giving back to the community, lowering carbon emissions and the like.

I've been put on this train of thought because of an article written by Umair Haque on the HBR blog. The Great to Good Manifesto largely explains this phenomena and picks out Pepsi's latest 'Refresh' campaign as a key example.

While the scale of this good company principle varies immensely, especially from industry to industry, it would seem that at least in the FMCG and bulky-goods industries, the more holistic style of good company is rising.

Examples of how these FMCG companies are becoming good companies seem to be coming through more and more frequently. Using the criteria of ethical business, giving back to the community and lowering carbon emmissions we see that industries are increasingly seeing the commercial benefits of being good companies.

From an ethical point of view green is the new black and companies far and wide are both promoting their green credentials and giving customers the option of greening their products (a la carbon offsets for flights and car-hire). In the FMCG market one of the highest profile decisions has been Cadbury's decision to become Fairtrade certified in its Dairy Milk branded chocolate. You can read more about their efforts on the Cadbury Fairtrade blog.

By far the hottest good thing companies are doing at the moment is giving back to the community. The idea of integrating good corporate citizenry and marketing promotions is really taking off. You can debate whether this is opportunistic or not until the cows come home, but there is a clear trend towards customer purchasing decisions being made based on a company's propensity to 'give-back'.

FMCG organisations are going on the 'give-back' offensive across the board and it has started in the tween and teen market. Social networking is increasingly giving tweens the power to decide en-mass and their role in purchasing decisions cannot be under-stated.

Examples of the tween community offensive include the Pepsi Refresh campaign, Best-Buy's @15 community, and closer to home Starburst has teamed up with Camp Quality.

A third good company criteria is the company's carbon reduction actions. This strategy, partly driven by legislation and probably more focused at the adult community, is more prominent in essential FMCG goods and shareholder information. Woolworths in Australia has committed to reducing CO2 emissions through improvements in store operations (example: refrigeration) and logistics. In the UK Tesco now identifies the carbon footprint of its milk products on the product label.

What is a good company? It would seem the days of measuring how good a company is solely by shareholder return are numbered. If the promotions by Pepsi, Best-Buy and Starburst are anything to go by the holistic good company is on the rise.

Can I say trans-informational?

In the old marketing text book that I used to read at University there was a great section on informational advertising and transformational advertising and I really took those two theories to heart.

It was pretty simple really, informational advertising was used in important decision making processes. It was to remove fear like medicinal advertising or explain complex expensive products (you know those car comparison ads that list how many cup-holders a car has?). Then there was transformational advertising used either to gratify the ego with a minor purchase decision like how a can of coke will get me a whole lotta chicks in bikinis, or to satisfy the ego with large purchases like how when I bough my new Macbook I just knew that I would become hip.

But what I'm experiencing nowadays is that there is definitely a middle ground. And I think this middle ground is growing with the growth of online communities and networks.

Let me explain. Transformation feeds the ego and gratifies the individual while information gives the individual the required understanding of the needs required to go from being without satisfaction to having satisfaction. What better way of getting in the clique than by joining a community of experts and conversing and learning from the experts on how to transform yourself.

It is these online communities and networks that I believe fill the middle ground between information and transformation. This is the trans-informational advertising. Get this space right, create a space for the expression of emotion and transfer of knowledge, feed it with the occasional talking point of content and the community will can self-sustaining.

Example: The 2010 Ford Mustang
The new 2010 Ford Mustang is in anybody's book a pretty big purchase. To sell one of these babies you need to latch onto a heap of emotion, give lots of sexy information about the power of the beast, and of course have a space where fans and potential buyers can salivate together about this animal.

Let's start with tansformation. This is a beast of a car and has no practical use on the speed regulated roads whatsoever. But it is sexy, fast and down right red-blooded Amrerican muscle. Tell me this doesn't transform you:



Now information. You want specs? I'll give you specs. Take those details and shove 'em up your imported piece of plastic. As much as information is there to remove the fear of purchasing an inferior product it can also be used to reinforce your decision for buying an over-specced rocket on four wheels.

And the middle ground. I love these videos, I think this car is awesome, I want to salivate with someone over the fact that I could get the top of the range model for under $50k Australian!!! (if you didn't take into account import taxes, and every other obvious barrier under the sun to getting one in Australia).

Ford services this middle ground with a very healthy Facebook fan page with over 350k fans and a very nice assortment of photos, videos and applications to play with and discuss intimate stories about abnormal love affairs with inanimate objects. Facebook, as you can see from this example is the perfect platform for servicing this new and exponentially growing marketing ground.

The trans-informational middle ground is one of the most promising developments happening in marketing today. The opportunity to combine emotional transformational wants and rational informational needs in a living community of enthusiasts, executed thoughtfully and in the community's interest, can only strengthen a brand in the eyes of its core market.



*For more awesome mustang photos I recommend the Mustang fan page.

Has the real-time web killed TV programming?

Never has the television industry been more hap-hazard in its programming than right now.

We have seen it coming for a few years now and I suspect that, in Australia at least, we may have seen a watershed in the industry with the phoenix-like rise and Icarus-like fall of Hey-Hey it's Saturday, all within one week.

But to truly get a grip on how a show of such historic proportions can rise and fall in a single week we must back-track a couple of years. We're going to a time after live debates and the 'worm' but before the real-time Internet. Let's go to the late-late night time slots that were once inhabited by a motley band of money-bag grabbers that were the late-night quiz shows.

These pre-real-time-interwebz quiz shows, of which Quizmania and Midnight Zoo were poster-childs, relied on the interaction of at-home participants ringing in to try and solve puzzles to win money. Masses of calls would flood the TV shows with ample amounts of would-be contestants queuing to win.

The biggest insight TV stations gained from these shows was that the real-time nature of viewers calling in allowed TV show directors to know what was popular and what was un-popular AT HOME based on the levels of calls coming into the show. An example could be that the host of the quiz waves his arms around and yells out 'money, money, money', from this the person monitoring the caller dashboard sees a spike in calls to the show. The director then tells the host through an earpiece mic to wave his arms again and ta-da another spike in calls. Real-time TV production.

Fast forward to October 2009. The real-time Internet is in full swing. TV shows no longer rely on viewers calling in because the viewers are already swarming with conversation on Twitter, Facebook, and other social websites. Enter stage left, Daryl Somers and Hey-Hey it's Saturday the Reunion.

It's a gamble for Channel Nine, a live TV show in prime-time and we haven't seen this show in over a decade. But they had an ace up their sleeve. Real-time monitoring. Just as Quizmania and Midnight Zoo used real-time monitoring of phone calls to judge the shows success, so too would Hey-Hey use real-time monitoring of the social web to measure the performance of the show.

And it worked. The Facebook fan page was a-buzz, Twitter went off the hook and got a little-known TV show trending with the US big guns. Results were in, it was a hit again.

One week on, take-two. This time the producers were confident they knew the forumla. The host announced the Twitter hash-tags they would monitor and kept the audience updated with a Facebook fan tally. The real-time show and the real-time web were in synch.

Here comes the sun, the programming pot of gold, it was in their reach. But alas, Hey-Hey flew too close to the sun and the popular tale of Icarus was played out all over again for the world to watch. It was a curious choice of skits for the carefully planned return of this much loved show. A group of men doing Michael Jackson in Minstrel Show style. Unsurprisingly it didn't go off well. The show's big name guest didn't like it, the audience was a little awry and the response was probably closer to absolute zero than a scientist has ever seen.

Real-time show, real-time web: press play. I bet the producer monitoring the real-time sentiment graphs was already on the phone to a recruitment agency before the show was even over.

For a full report on the crash landing of Hey-Hey it's Saturday view the Crikey dishonour board. I suspect we will not see week three of the reunion.

The lesson learnt from this saga is, as we have known for a little while now, that TV lives and dies by the audience. Pre-social-web a TV station could sell ads for a whole season of a TV show. Then it was months at a time. Now, unfortunately TV programmers have the inglorious task of trying to program on a week-by-week basis and the sales team have the even worse job of trying to sell ads to a show that might not even exist in a week.

TV programming is dead.

I think marketers need to think hard about where they put their dollars, stop planning above-the-line spend annually, and generally agree that TV, once the bastion of marketing spend, is now a risky investment.

Changing of the guard for online content recognition

YouTube and Read Write Web have both commented this past day on Jill and Kevin's wedding dance and the subsequent news that Sony has actively profited from the 'improper use' of the Chris Brown song that Jill and Kevin danced to.

The YouTube post discusses how rights holders of content such as music can actively manage their content through YouTube's click-to-buy which has been live for a year or so. YouTube highlight's the direct correlation between the appearance of J&K's wedding dance and the Chris Brown's year-old song rocketing back up the iTunes and Amazon charts.

Read Write Web then goes on to highlight the change in tactic Sony has employed going from restricting use of their content in these User Generated (UGC) videos to identifying themselves as the content owner of the music and adding in a click-to-buy advertisement pointing people to either iTunes or Amazon to purchase the song.

I think it's a great move on Sony's behalf and the proof can be seen in the dollars rolling in. YouTube's ClaimID system that can automatically identify a song and notify a rights holder would really be an ace up their sleeve if all major and independent labels encouraged the method Sony has taken.

Imagine all the machinima creators, vloggers and other creative types out there being encouraged to take their pick of any song they wish instead of a limited amount of home-study productions. I think we'd see a whole new wave of UGC being unleashed onto our screens.

This is a real win for fair-use and share-alike on the web and I only hope it can extend further. If logos such as Facebook and YouTube could have a ClaimID type system attached you would no longer have to fret about whether some big-bad lawyer is going to serve a take-down notice on your site because of the improper use of a logo or content.

I can also see Internet radio having a great time with this. One click to purchase any song playing live online right now.

Maybe for artwork and design too? One click on an image to go to an online shop to purchase the original creator's work.

Text? Could it go too far? Should we all just freely use each other's work and share-alike?

Maybe this new tack from Sony poses more questions than it answers, but the fact that everybody seems to win from the deal makes it such an appealing option.

The growing world of Augmented Reality

Disclaimer: I'm writing this blog post with no, repeat NO, technical understanding about how AR works, so keep that in mind.

Augmented Reality (or just AR) is picking up steam, largely i think off the back of new powerful mobile devices a la iPhone and the likes.

New AR applications are being released almost every week. They seem to be falling into two camps at the moment: Practical tools or gimiky advertising.

The gimiky advertising use of AR has built up steam and while some in advertising might lament the over-use of AR and the questionable tangible benefits, it is had to go past the "we're doing it because it's cool" arguement, because frankly, it is cool.

Here's a few examples of advertising uses of AR:



On the practical side of things, there are plenty more tangible benefits. By watching the clips below you'll see that assisting technical operations and overlaying information on points of interest are just some of the great ways AR can help bring real-time information to real world situations.

Here's a few examples of practical uses of AR:



The rumor mill has it that Apple will bring out AR support for the iPhone later this year - it'd be a hard one for Apple to pass by with the amount of applications possible.

You may be in the 'why isn't one reality enough?' camp or you might be in the 'bring it on' camp but the short of it is that mobile devices and demand for real-time information mean that reality and virtual reality are on a collision course and AR is how it is playing out.

Oh, and i'll leave the last word to a comment posted by mihaiviteazu5 on YouTube,":D idiot proof , the way of the future".

Billboard relevance

In my continuing fascination of the somewhat un-loved billboard I am really appreciating the Triple M footy billboards at the moment.

Not so much for creative, rather for its execution. In the series of billboards a different commentator is featured depending on the location of the billboard in the city.

Danny Frawley, pictured above, is featured in a billboard in Moorabbin near the home ground of his old club, St.Kilda. James Brayshaw is featured on a billboard near the Bolte Bridge in Kensington near the North Melbourne home ground where he is president. I suspect Shane Crawford and Jason Dunstall would be prominent in the eastern suburbs near Hawthorn.

Appealing to local allegiances in AFL is just one more way to use the benefits that a local billboard can offer.

Kleenmaid's foray into YouTube

Kleenmaid Appliances, an Australia whitegoods retailer went into voluntary administration on April 9 with an estimated debt of $73 million.

To provide Kleenmaid customers with an update on what this meant, the directors, Bradley Young and Andrew Young, took the unusual step of broadcasting a message via YouTube.

View it here. I have linked rather than embedded it because embedding permissions have been turned off.

As well, comments and response videos have also been turned off. What this says to me is that Kleenmaid had the best intentions for using YouTube as an engaging medium in what must be quite a stressful time. But the stress may have been too much, by turning off all forms of two-way communication this has meant people have circumvented this non-communication by other means.

Here are the examples to be found on YouTube today:





Yes, YouTube is full of weird and wonderful people, but like any other new media/social media platform, an inherent part of its purpose is to facilitate two-way communication. As seen in this example, people will call you out when you "don't play by the rules". And yes, going into voluntary administration must be stressful enough without having to respond to all the people of the interwebs. But if you choose YouTube as a form of communication then you should obey the etiquette and its reason for being.

Take for example GE. GE is a global manufacturing and financial services organisation that no doubt angers many people for various reasons. However, though its communications arm it has bitten the bullet and agreed to allow customers, shareholders and the public to comment on everything from its products to its financial performance through its GE Reports website and YouTube channel.

The worst that can happen is that you get a bad comment which, if defamatory, you can moderate. The best that can happen is that you can control the debate via responding to comments and centralising the debate.

Savvy businesses are realising that YouTube and two-way communications platforms are providing a whole new level of engagement with their customers and shareholders. By using these platforms to craft and moderate the debate much of the fire that comes out at retail outlets or shareholder meetings can be abated.

And on a final note out of all the saga of Kleenmaid and its stuttering foray into YouTube, here is my pick for the winner. Amos, a Kleenmaid technician from Adelaide that has had the foresight to respond to one of the negative Kleenmaid spoofs. Well done!

The big balloon, you can't avoid it

Spotted over Caulfield race course this morning, the Carlton Draught big balloon is out and about again.

Conveniently, there is two weeks left to register for the latest Carlton Draught competition, Drop the Bomb.

Maybe it has been in town for the Grand Prix/AFL launch, maybe it is in the air to promote the latest competition. Either way, the hot air balloon is a great way to get attention.

I remember in 2006, the Australian F1 GP launched a hot air balloon in the shape of an F1 car to gain attention during the Commonwealth Games. The hot air balloon is possibly one of the best tools in the ambush marketing tool-box.

What-ever the balloon is doing in the sky, it's always a fun sight (well, the world's largest beer at 8am in the morning may not be the *greatest* sight).

As an events promotional tool for sheer attention grabbing, it beats dancing girls, celebrity autograph signing, stunt cars, and all other manner of events promotions. It's big and it's there and you cannot avoid it!

Billboard usage (or lack thereof) in Melbourne CBD

As you can see above, this is a billboard for Will Smith's Seven Pounds film. It advertises, "In cinemas January 8". Why is this billboard still up?

As my previous post shows, billboards are still being used quite creatively, even in this market. But then again, in the belt-tightened economy groceries (an alcohol) are still doing well. Maybe beer is the exception to the general outdoor advertising trend.

Maybe outdoor advertising is feeling the pinch. You'd think a billboard near the corner of Bourke and Elizabeth Streets would be a snap to sell.

But I have also noticed that the office tower at Melbourne Central is advertising three whole floors for rent. I don't think I've ever seen an vacancy advertisement on a building as popular as that.

Maybe the doomsayers are right, things will certainly be interesting in the CBD over the next 12 months.

Cascade gives a billboard back to nature

For the first time ever, a cross promotion with AlexofMelbourne, my poor second blog-child. I have been very tardy in updating my adventures in Melbourne, so in sorry attempt to give it some love I am giving it air-time in Love Number Two.

Here is a great billboard at St.Kilda Junction. Strangely, it was being erected on Friday evening.

This Cascade Green billboard had been erected a number of times in 2008 but this one in St.Kilda Junction is the biggest I have seen yet. Billboards, ever such a restrictive medium, rarely get loving such as this, so when they do it is refreshing to see and certainly catches the eye.

Let's just hope Melbourne gets some more rain over the coming weeks as I guess water restrictions will prevent Cascade from watering the plants!