Ray Ban has been extremely successful with a new viral video seen and then sent to friends by millions of people:
So can you tell why Ray Ban is behind it? Enjoy !
Tag Archive for 'Advertising'
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There is no doubt that Google has changed the way people use the Internet; it’s search tool and to a certain extent other great services like GoogleMaps and GMail. I was surprised by learning however about the relationship that Google seems to have with design. Douglas Bowman has just left Google and explains his decision, albeit the reasons behind it in a really interesting article about his experience there. There is an underlying theme of how Google relies too much on data to decide how design decisions should be settled.
I found it fascinating, having worked in the same type of situation and also the opposite, where design is not tested and relies on the gut feeling of the creative people rather than user experience testing. The success of this approach is the luck of the draw though. And even with world class creatives, nobody is perfect and your gut feeling isn’t always going to be the right decision, even if you can convince your entourage it is. Bowman seems to be really good and you can feel the frustration of his creativity being put into question by other aspects or realities of the Google business:
Without a person at (or near) the helm who thoroughly understands the principles and elements of Design, a company eventually runs out of reasons for design decisions. [...] Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such minuscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle.
The article Bowman links to on NY Times actually describes the issue and the role that Marissa Mayer had in this story (on page 3):
A designer, Jamie Divine, had picked out a blue that everyone on his team liked. But a product manager tested a different color with users and found they were more likely to click on the toolbar if it was painted a greener shade.
As trivial as color choices might seem, clicks are a key part of Google’s revenue stream, and anything that enhances clicks means more money. Mr. Divine’s team resisted the greener hue, so Ms. Mayer split the difference by choosing a shade halfway between those of the two camps.
You feel you’re getting a peak view and understanding of an event, like watching the intrigue of you favourite TV show unfold. In this case though the importance of the debate and the impact that each party could have, can affect the crucial services that Google offer. On the one hand you can say that Google have an impressive track record, on the other, you wonder whether innovative and creative solutions aren’t stifled in the process. Too much creative lead ‘can’ damage the best overall user experience without proper testing. But never taking a chance with a different creative approach can result in uniformity / dullness. I do feel that design, when applied to services and products that thousands or millions of people will use, should be tested by people from different backgrounds to see how well they interact with it. This may again be considered data, but real live people testing your work is going to happen sooner or later, hopefully…
OK so you know that being able to serve adverts to people that mean something to them is a good idea. I was watching an episode of “Being Erica†a new series from CBC and heard a song a liked and remembered. Pick up the words that follow each other “With the rhythm of my heart is beating like a drum†paste into Google and find that the singer is (uhhm forgotten but shouldn’t) Rod Stewart. You click on link and find on imdb.com that it is no other than ‘Rod Stewart’
And there you kind of freak out because on the imdb.com web site you see an advert for ‘La Redoute’, a French catalogue company, specifically advertising the Braun Oral B electric toothbrush that you looked for on their site last week. Freaky and not cool…
So if there were some type of celebrity match ‘show down’, SEO would at the moment win against behavioural marketing. SEO is for many just a buzzword, to throw in front of the client without understanding what it entails, in the same way that mentioning Twitter is the hip thing to do at the moment.
But when clients start to understand that most SEO efforts are far more difficult to analyse from an ROI perspective than behavioural marketing, the latter being far easier to analyse when used properly, this should change.
When you realise that the technology exists to tailor content ‘on the fly’ to a visitor of your web site that can try to learn click by click or even by the movement of the mouse what a visitor is interested in, and subsequently serve them more appropriate content, you shudder to think what is coming next. I was interviewed and blown away by a company called Touch Clarity that was gobbled up by Omniture several years ago, and still wonder whether I should have pushed forward with them to this day but hey life is full of surprises. 
You can easily see how serving content will not only help companies spend their money more efficiently (both ad and site development using behavioural targeting) but should also provide them with better analytical data to better understand their clients. Kind of explains why Omniture invested in a company like Touch Clarity. But only time will tell whether Behavioural targeting (or BT among friends) will win the competition with SEO.
Note: just read that the Marketing Sherpa report has behavioural marketing placed just below SEO in terms of efficiency. Funny story when trying to find out more information about it, the page I was served stopped me from getting to the site.
So, imagine you have to come up with a campaign for selling shoes, sports shoes, trainers. You tell yourself well there is a right foot, a left foot and what does that make you think of. The Ying and Yang concept of course, or opposites attract, etc. Well Asics have come up with such a campaign and they are putting the left and right forward… “What’s a left without a right?” And pronto you think about Adam and Eve of course. I started thinking about the left and right parts of my brain but then I’m a bit weird
And of course the temptation to go back to basics and talk about Adam and Eve…
Using focus groups to test an upcoming product / service / system is common practice and can really help pin point issues before launch date. Depending on the money behind the product, the size and variety of the target population there can be several focus group tests and/or different phases before launch. On the other hand some companies don’t do anything, considering that their knowledge is paramount to any form of focus group feedback.
It is more and more frequent that companies launch web based services as a ‘beta’ and thus acquire testers to provide feedback on the system and help them perfect it. When done properly it can even be sold as a special invite only, VIP type event so that users feel special. But companies that launch their new product or service, with a new look and feel, can get a deluge of feedback from unhappy customers. If a focus group has one person representing loyal customers and gets swayed by the whole idea of being part of the focus group this can skew the feedback. The other loyal customers may be really unhappy about seeing a change in the packaging or look and feel of the new product. Tropicana recently changed their design but has now decided to switch from their new packaging design back to the old following all the complaints. As a Tropicana loyal customer it was a shock for me to see this new packaging (even though it is for the US). I mean it looks like some cheap orange juice and has no soul to it!
And the one that I just love to see in my fridge:
What is interesting around the whole Tropicana packaging debacle is that how the message got back to Pepsi the owners of the Tropicana brand. There was a deluge of messages telephone calls, forums, letters, emails, twitter…
An article on NY times about the Tropicana incident talks about the ad for Motrin pain:
And in November, many consumers who used Twitter to criticize an ad for Motrin pain reliever received responses within 48 hours from the brand’s maker, a unit of Johnson & Johnson, which apologized for the ad and told them it had been withdrawn.
Articles are flowing about how big companies are cutting away at their budgets, if they are not cutting then they are renegotiating costs with their agencies, here and here…
The article on AdAge explains how companies are also taking a look at consolidating:
PepsiCo last week reported a 43% drop in fourth-quarter profits on write-downs and restructuring and a 9% drop in full-year profits. During Coca-Cola’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Feb. 12, CEO Muhtar Kent said the marketer has slashed its agency roster by more than half. “We have consolidated, ” he said. “Agency numbers have gone down by more than half, and I think we have driven a lot of efficiencies in our marketing, our market-research costs.”
The survey in the above emarketer article indicates cuts are increasing in the various marketing and advertising areas.
The survey also demonstrates it is not always about cuts in spending but also about reallocation of Ad spending. We are seeing during this time of recession that ROI and the ability to provide hard data about ROI is important. There is a distinct move of money from TV to Digital and big companies are putting their money behind the idea that there is a better return on investment in digital media.
Being more efficient with money that is available to spend on advertising is therefore very important. You see so many catch-up campaigns where companies are just trying to better their competitor without looking about being innovating and really thinking about what will allow them to provide interesting and hopefully even innovative services to their customers. There is great article from the creator of the subservient ‘chicken campaign‘, not really innovative or providing an interesting service but as memorable ads go this is right up there with the effective few.
But even though it is cold outside, paying attention to clients needs does pay off and companies that are doing a good job in this arena, like Google, are getting top scores.
“Since new customers are harder to come by in an economic downturn, firms need to pay even more attention to building loyalty with their most important customers,†wrote Bruce Temkin, author of Customer Experience Correlates to Loyalty.
Companies that have a good brand, that people will trust and who also advertise efficiently are highly likely to come out of this recession far better than the others…
Note: there is a new article on emarketer (20 March 09) concerning a Myers Publishing survey providing a new view on how ad spending will evolve.
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