No Mean Girling in Advertising

It's really easy to be tempted into making digs at competitors in ads. I'm not talking slander on par with political campaigns. But with the growing role of agencies in clients' digital media management and content development, an agency can be searching for post fodder.

That happened to me today when we heard about a competitor dealing with a PR faux pas. In the end, it really came down to overly cranky customers and there was nothing inherently unethical or "wrong" with the brand's actions. But it would have been sooo easy to allude to the topic in a snarky Facebook post.

But it's too easy. We joked about it and toyed with it before we quickly settled that it just isn't worth it. Picking on a competitor never actually make consumers trust your brand more. The finger pointing only wastes our efforts on publicizing another brand while saying nothing of real substance about our actual client.

Sympathizing with what mess our competitor's PR team and creative agency must be dealing with, it got me thinking on creative responses to negative press or feedback. I tucked this example in my back pocket back in June when Smart Car came up with an awesome response to a Twitter comment. 

A lot of brands, big or small, deal with social media trolls who aim to incite reactions out of fans or spout off negative comments about a company and its products just to be sensational. Smart Car came across one such tweet from some a-hole who has an entire website dedicated to inventing trash-talking quips about advertising.

Clayton Hove tweeted, "Saw a bird had crapped on a Smart Car. Totaled it." Rather than lash back or let it slide, Smart Car decided to respond in a much more interesting and playful way – creating some serious buzz and even changing the mind of said hater. They calculated just how much bird shit it would take to indeed total a car. Read the full story here.

All I'm saying is to take the negative feedback, the easy digs, the "mean girling" mentality and turn it into an actual creative opportunity that says something about your brand and their personal touch on taking the high road.

Brilliant

And she didn't even know she was a billboard.

An Astounding Campaign Case Study

St. John Agency just released a case study on one of their most successful projects. It's inspiring really. What's more fantastic is that they call all us ad kids out on our grand representations of how successful and earth-shattering we like to portray our projects as being.

I lol-ed anyway...

Apartment Hunting

I’m apartment hunting. The best friend and roommate is leaving to San Francisco in a few short weeks and I am left on the prowl for my next digs. She’s done a lot for me, inspired me to get tattoos that I’m still too afraid to commit to, educated me on the art of how cutting big pieces of sushi in half with chopsticks – this is something I believe she picked up in her home state of Colorado. Be wary of seafood practices created in a landlocked state. She’s shared her precious pup, Kaiyuh, which is great because I get all the love and none of the responsibility. It’s like being an aunt or uncle. You can love on her and play to your heart’s content, but then pass the buck on “taking care of her” just like you’d pass the baby when the diaper needs changing. By now we communicate more in our own high pitched language of moans, squeaks and little kid speak that resembles the characters on Rugrats. I’m sure it’s annoying to the rest of the world, but we’ve long surpassed the point of recognition or consideration for others' ears. My gal Nichole is leaving on a jet plane, thus leaving me with the task of finding a new apartment. House hunting is one of those actions that’s like an emotional oxymoron of sorts. It evokes the seemingly opposite or unrelated feelings of excitement as well as dread and panic all at once.

And since I’ve begun the task of scouring for vacancies I can’t help but be dumbfounded at how lazy, non-existent or downright unappealing landlords make their apartment listings appear. Let’s take this gem for example:

The description tells me little more than the price and general area of my search. Upon viewing the full listing, it tells me the address and when I can move in. Contact Ray for more details – I’d love to! (I think to myself) but Ray has chosen to not leave a phone number or email to reach him by! I also have no idea what the place will look like, as there are no pictures. Though it is commendable that his psychic powers knew that my major priority was how close the apartment is to food resources and busses to get there.

At least Ray was smart enough to list his space on Craigslist. After only returning a few hits a day for my criteria, I abandoned the internet and spent two hours driving around the neighborhood I’m looking to live to find droves of vacancy signs posted outside apartment buildings. This was a fun test in multi-tasking as I drove up and down streets with a pen clenched in my teeth, pulling over every few feet to use my x-ray vision on deciphering the size 12 font of vacancy listings that hung on placards above building entryways. After an afternoon of pulling over, writing down phone numbers and checking my rearview mirror periodically to make sure I wasn’t blocking traffic, I realized just how inefficient and archaic this all seemed for the poor apartment seeker.

It would seem commonsense enough that providing basic details and a little incentive would get renters more apartment seekers knocking on their door. Tell me the basic information, give me a visual of what I’m in for, and tell me why it’s worth my while. I’m going to make a chart. Because charts are legit.  It's a funnel.

The fact that most renters neglect these basic steps only implies that they don’t care enough about their product, which sends up red flags on the character and quality of the apartment and its management. I think this last point can be true for a lot of product advertisers. I won’t be calling Ray and his apartment shrouded in secrecy. Guess who I did call? The lovely couple who listed their apartment on Craigslist replete with details and images, have a flyer with images, renter benefits and contact information in front of the house, and a lovely answering message that tells me all about the apartment I’m interested in before clicking over to the beep. What’s more, I’m actually excited about it rather than filled with dread and panic.

Can You Draw the Internet?

I grew up with dial-up. In 1998 at 12-years old I really only used the Internet to chat with friends on AIM. I may have researched a book report or two on AOL.com, but the Internet wasn't totally clear to me beyond being a communication tool. The Internet connection regularly failed, mom would pick up the phone or it would just flat out crash, resulting in exaggerated pre-teen meltdowns because I'd be mid-instant message to the hottest boy in the 7th grade and get logged off. So I would sit, staring at the little yellow AOL man as he attempted to log me back on with the digital screeches of modems reconnecting. It was the dark ages. And nowadays the Internet is somewhat of an inconceivable abstraction. Creative agency Saint took this notion and wanted to expand upon it by posing a simple question - can you draw the Inernet? In a culture of grown ups who have seen the the role of the Internet rapidly evolve and creep into every cranny of our lives, business and socialization, we are overrun with the necessity and capacity of the Internet. Yet we can still recall times when the Internet played only a small role, if any at all - smart phones, for example, were first introduced in the mid 90's, and we didn't see our beloved iPhone appear until 2007.

But now, we've reached a place in time where there are young generations who have never experienced life without the Internet at their immediate disposal. Kids have an astonishing innate agility and affinity with technology. While I am still teaching my mother the concept of right-clicking, my boss tells a story of how his 4-year old daughter picked up an iPad during a trip to Best Buy and began to easily navigate the applications using a natural technology common sense.

Saint directed their creative challenge to members of the advertising and design community, and then, to a group of kids in primary school. The results were posted on November 12, 2010 and viewers can vote for their favorite representations. Not only is it interesting to compare the artistic thoughts of professional creative talents and those of some awesome kids, I also find it interesting to examine trends and interpret what makes the highest-ranking drawings "the best" in the minds of the public.

It appears that the front running designs all convey a simple, pointed emotion through analogies and visual representations that pertain to the role the Internet plays in human life. Even in the adult entries, the drawings that communicate a single-minded thought with emotional resonance, rather than convoluted social commentary or complex subtexts to wade through, were chosen as favorites. At the end of the day, there is no real winner because there is no single answer to what the Internet is and what significance it has. What we can tell, is that the saturation and reach of the Internet is becoming more of a second nature rather than an application we control.

Wannabe Junk Food

You can put racing stripes on a turd, but it's still a turd. Now baby carrots are not turds, but agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky have certainly given the lil snacks a racing stripe. Adding to the new trend of disguising or hiding healthy foods in not so healthy fare [examples here and here], Big Carrot baby carrot packaging company has hired the ad agency to give their carrot packaging some kid friendly appeal. The solution? Creating a new packaging look that mimics the traditional look and feel of potato chip brands. Not surprising, Crispin happens to have fast food titans like Dominos and Burger King on their roster so they're familiar with making unhealthy food seem oh so irresistable.

What's unique about this health food cover up is the strategy of using design styles and touchpoints typically seen in conjunction with fast food to market a health food. It's not hiding cauliflower in the mashed potatoes, it's using design choices and familiar fast food touchpoints to make carrots seem cool, approachable and desireable. But will the strong association with junk food via Doritos-esque packaging and marketing really convince kids that carrots taste good or just make them more fun to eat? It might not matter as long it results in increased carrot consumption. A colleague recently recounted the appall her daughter expressed upon discovering that the french fry shaped apples in her BK Kids' Meal were in fact fruit masquerading as french fries! Kids are not dumb, and duping them into eating healthy usually only works if they never discover said ruse. But this campaign isn't about hiding carrots, its about revamping their image, which just might work with picky eaters big and small.

See all of the incognito carrots campaign extentions at PSFK.

Vintage Facebook – Didn’t We Already Try This?

It was six years ago, my freshman year in college, when Facebook hit college campuses, and I got hooked along with the rest of my collegiate cohorts. But amongst the social, informational and emotional benefits of Facebook, we dug the fact that it was just for us college kids. Friends and siblings still stuck in high school weren’t allowed to join the Facebook ranks until they experienced the rite of passage into college. Better yet, our parents and other adult authority figures couldn’t tap into the social world we’d created. It was a club. And the exclusivity made it cool.

It only took a year before our sweet reign over the Facebook kingdom ended and FB expanded to the entire world. The college members-only social platform of my heyday is now a thing of the past. But wait! Meet CollegeOnly, a new social network that is reintroducing the college-only social networking site. Mashable sat down with creator Josh Weinstein, a New York-based entrepreneur – creator of other college-centric social networking sites RandomDorm and GoodCrush – who explained that he saw a gaping hole that was never filled after Facebook went global. “Facebook has changed — for the better,” says Weinstein, “But its original use case is currently unserved, as college students are less likely to upload photos or post what they are up to with parents and potential employers looking on.”

CollegeOnly is an example of how deep diving into a specific target can be more fulfilling with consumers and effective from a brand standpoint than targeting a breadth of communities. CollegeOnly has more specified categories and post capabilities – such as class schedules and insider campus information like which frat throws the best parties. Because it prevents non-college students from accessing the site, students may also be more comfortable posting controversial content that my generation was burned for upon seeing the professional and personal consequences of revealing one’s personal life in a public arena. In many ways, Facebook has become more of a marketing tool that a network to create personal connections and share intimate details with trusted social circles. Of course, this could also bite students in the ass down the road for assuming that posting a picture of a bong rip comes without risks because it is securely locked away in a password protected cloud.

Another interesting consideration is how CollegeOnly will inevitably evolve in the future. Facebook expanded its reach to grow its business and extend its lifespan with consumers. Perhaps CollegeOnly won’t need to broaden its borders as Facebook did because its competitors have the market covered. But the exclusivity of CollegeOnly necessitates extreme privacy settings and restrictions to maintain a tight seal from outsiders. This automatically lends itself to a higher sense of security with users, and therefore, more comfort with the self-disclosure that has waned with Facebook and made the site devoid of some of its original personality and appeal.

Swarm Party in Vegas

Has social media and the proliferation of mass communication spread by individuals led to a culture of extreme self importance and ego indulgence, or has it launched a social revolution by expanding our circle of personal influence? I’ve been chewing on this question and the debates that it has stirred. Some would argue that the explosion of social media platforms and engagements has led to extreme narcissism and a decline of real social engagement. We are communicating more efficiently but with decreasing significance.

Or, is modern social media so disparate from traditional forms of communication that we need to assess its efficacy, intentions and impact with a new set of criteria?
Here is an example. For my recent 25th birthday, I decided to evade the internal debate of whether I am now old as balls or still a pingpong ball throw away from my last college party, and escape to Las Vegas with two of my best friends. Here is a recap of the weekend, via the social networks I currently engage with:

While in Las Vegas, I checked in on Foursquare 13 times, and on Twitter 4 times, posting 2 pictures via Twitpic. Using various social media consolidation platforms like Tweetdeck, I have also merged the majority of my social media communication applications so that they all register my updates and share with my various networks. Over the course of this three day debauchery and the ensuing week I theoretically reached hundreds of people who follow me on Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter, informing them all of my Vegas adventures and raising curiosity about what the heck I was doing at Spearmint Rhino until 7:00 in the morning – I have no idea by the way. Furthermore, from my weekend documentation, I unlocked two badges on Foursquare – inciting a small thrill and sense of achievement in the game (personal gratification). I was also privy to deals that were happening at stores and businesses around me each time I checked in on Foursquare (shared knowledge). Finally, I had multiple friends and colleagues either respond to my Tweets or ask me about the trip personally upon my return having not informed them beforehand that I was taking a trip to Las Vegas (conversation initiation).

By using forms of mass communication in conjunction with one another, I achieved a drastically larger reach and level of unsolicited response than I would have if I had used traditional forms of direct communication – such as face-to-face interaction, Email or phone call. Five years ago, an acquaintance of mine from college launched a social experiment he calls The Six Minute Project. The challenge posed to viewers is to create a photographic narrative of a day in their lives by taking a picture every 6 minutes over the course of 24 hours. The goal is to share a glimpse into your own life with the world while learning about complete strangers as well. Soon, viewers and participants were connecting, learning and appreciating the differences and similarities between themselves and random contributors from around the world. I remember looking through the photostreams and feeling a sense of excitement and connectivity with people I had never known. Five years later, the web of social media channels and their derivatives have found other pay-offs beyond the kumbaya effect of visualizing a connected global society.
Getting back to the original question I set out to tackle at the beginning of this piece, it would seem that each argument is valid. There absolutely is a level of self-importance in the impulse to update your social network on your minute-to-minute daily activities. Do people really care if I just created the best sandwich in the history of the world or checked in at the Starbucks next to my house? Not at first blush. However, the need for constant social engagement is not simply a one-way channel of communication. These seemingly inconsequential and impersonal forms of outreach actually work to create opportunities for real life interaction and knowledge transfer.

I’ll sign off with one last example, touching on the most recent role that social media now plays in advertising and marketing. Social Times posted an article about the wild success of Foursquare Swarm Parties. Small business owners hoping to boost awareness and revenues have begun toying with promoting and hosting Swarm Parties to attract a concentration of customers. Unlocking the “Swarm Party” badge on Foursquare is no small feat. 50 people must check-in to the same location within the hour to unlock this badge. By promoting an event or special deal at their establishment as a Swarm Party, retailers and business owners have begun to attract throngs of social networking consumers – radically boosting revenue and generating buzz. Businesses “get to show off their social media savvy by encouraging a still-indie Foursquare movement. And they could be a lot of fun for customers, too, who like to be rewarded for their loyalty.” What’s most exciting about the social networking revolution is that it continues to grow and evolve with users, generating new opportunities to engage, to market and achieve tangible and emotional benefits.