Best Ideas In The World

AC/DC played at our Xmas party

…and other adolescent fantasies …actually Ozone’s Christmas party this year was an evening out at a concert by none other than those gods of rock and roll –AC/DC.

As an adolescent in Australia, Acker Dacker were heroes to all of us long before the rest of the world fell for their classic talents. So there we were, screaming along to fantastic songs that are as much as forty years old now, by guys that are pushing sixty, and just having a great time knowing that true and deserving legends of rock were playing for us at our Christmas party.

What’s the great idea in all of this? Just some easy lessons – you can’t beat the classics, go back to them often, or as often as you need to keep them current, and speak to people about things they hold dear. Also, never underestimate the power of rock and roll – we used that in some work we did for MTV networks a while ago, http://www.ozoneads.com/work_print_MTV.html and we took the front half of that thought and applied it for our client IPAC http://www.ozoneads.com/work_print_ipac.html

Dutch Re-Branded

The Dutch government has over 200 different departments, all of which have different logos and type representing them. Whenever a new sign needs to be made it is confusing, costly, and not easily recognized as government. They needed something to unify the look of their government and cut costs of making so many different signs. To solve this problem they have re-branded their government. It has a new font, logo, and identity. The font was created by Peter Verheul and comes as bold, regular and italic. The new font of the Dutch Government is named Rijksoverheid Sans and Rijksoverheid Serif. For the next two years every department is required to use the new identity.
We know from experience that working with government entities and associations can be challenging - but also rewarding - both for us and our clients. An integrated campaign and identity that we created for Mendocino County was shown in a recent independent study to have delivered an ROI of 17 to 1!

Here’s a good idea – why not swim across the Golden Gate?

This web log is dedicated to great advertising and marketing ideas from around the globe. Sometimes, however, good ideas occur closer to home of course. One idea I had recently was to swim across the Golden Gate. It was very cool.

Well actually, it was freezing. The Bay is not known for warmth and this early in the morning it gives cool a whole new meaning. Adding to the atmosphere was a thick and heavy fog. You could barely make out the North Tower, let alone the other side. I jumped in, I started swimming, I started thinking. Staring down into the murky depths every stroke sets your mind wandering.

The fog and grey sky make the water more foreboding. You can’t see much down there. I think about the importance of clarity - specifically Message Clarity. Our client IPAC needed to clearly emphasize that the level of service they offer differentiates them from the competition. We created an ad that delivered that message loud and clear.

A foghorn’s wail shakes me out of my reverie. Down here they sound much closer than up on the bridge. MUCH. I’m passing the South Tower now. It gets very choppy around the towers, eddies pop up out of nowhere, there is nothing predictable about the currents, and every other stroke hits a wall on one side of a swell, or gropes through fresh air on the other. You have to concentrate to make any ground (is ground the right expression?).

Whoa! An arm full of seaweed! One moment you are swimming just fine, the next you unexpectedly reach into a huge wad of seaweed and it snaps you back to reality. I am half way across the Golden Gate, only my head above water. The bridge towers above – it looks a long way up from this perspective. We used the Bridge in our website design for the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.

It gets worse. I reach in for another stroke. My arm bumps against something. It’s not seaweed. It’s alive! A big, throbbing jellyfish. I hate that. They don’t get out of the way. You panic, you kick like crazy, your legs bump up against them a couple of more times before you’re clear. Jellyfish mid-swim are stressful. Makes me think of the outreach campaign we’ve just created for UC Berkeley addressing stress among students. Don’t be a Stress Head is the headline used on posters, a website and other collateral. We follow with tips for stress reduction. The tagline is Be Well to Do Well.

Land! I can see the North Tower and Marin. Nearly there. I can see the boat waiting to take us back. I’m going to make it. A warm, peaceful feeling washes over me – of course, that could just be hypothermia.

I think about some commercials we have just shot for some autobody shops – the message is peace of mind, the one true service everyone who’s been in an accident really wants.
We’ve created a website for Crocketts Premier Autobody that carries that theme through, too.

I’m on the boat; I have made it – slowly but surely. My skin is blue, my teeth chatter. Freezing. Actually, very cool. Be clear with your message; be vigilant with your brand.
David

Taking Video Games For A Ride

In Stockholm, Sweden there is a crew who has decided to take video games out of the confines of their living rooms to the outdoors. With a van, a projector, and a generator they drive to various locations in the city, project their XBOX 360 games on to buildings and play. Seeking out locations to play has become a new and entertaining challenge for gamers. Their guerilla gaming technique has caught the attention of gamers all the way in the U.S.. For a generation of people who consider skateboarding a professional sport and graffiti an art, this is a great way to make XBOX attractive to them.

http://www.myspace.com/urbanxbox

Sm Biz Adv 101

Today I delivered a presentation to members of the SF Chamber of Commerce - Advertising 101 for Small Business. I’d been asked to help explain the basics, and I was happy to, because they are so often overlooked.
They are all the more important for small businesses whose budgets may be limited, who cannot afford costly mistakes, and who need every ad dollar to work extra hard.
I started by reminding the audience that advertising is not brain surgery. For one thing, brain surgeons never skimp on preparation, and never forget the basics. Sadly, with advertising, too little thought is put into the preparation. And all too often people skip over the basics. Bad idea.
Every single project at Ozone starts by asking The Questions. Answer these, and you’ll arm yourself with the necessary structure to succeed.

“What exactly is the Assignment?”: (e.g.: Re-brand/re-name/re-position an existing company…or…develop new promotional materials…etc.)

Now clarify the Objective: (Be stringent, try to avoid broad catch-alls such as “to generate more sales”, be specific. This will help you isolate what you really want to get out of your investment).

Now the all important “Who is the Target Audience?” Be precise and as informative as possible, prioritize into primary and secondary etc…

OK, what do you know about them? “What do they currently think and feel?” (Include any negatives that may need to be addressed or challenges the advertising must overcome). “What do we want them to think and feel?” (Put yourself in their shoes, what is it you want them to think, feel and say about you?)

It doesn’t get any more important than our next question – “What exactly is the single-minded message?” (This needs to be a clear definition of the One Thing that the audience must remember above all others. Ideally it will be just one word or perhaps a short phrase – i.e.: it must be single-minded).

OK, reality check time – “Why should they believe this?” (What reasons do you have for them to think and feel this way about you?)

“What else do we need to communicate?” (What are the secondary/support points? Try and establish a Hierarchy and Priorities).

“What is the Desired Response?” (Be careful here – don’t expect too much, be realistic).

Just as important and a little trickier – ”What should be the Tone be?” There are so many adjectives to choose from, but don’t try and be all things to all people … choose wisely)

“What’s my Budget?” Be honest.
According to the Small Business Administration, a rule of thumb is that 5% of an entrepreneur’s gross sales should be budgeted for advertising. That’s just a point of reference. Remember also that you’ll need to allocate for Reach and Frequency. Repetition is king. One-offs rarely have success.

And Timelines? Add them in, factor in cost implications, viable deadlines. Fast, good, cheap – pick two.

Other Considerations:
“Am I easy to contact?”
“Am I taking full advantage of all opportunities to interact?”
“Are our phone calls scripted?”
“Can I cross promote?”
“Is my sales force and staff aware of my marketing?”

“What’s left to do?
Review, reduce, revisit, refine.

In the interests of time, this is the abridged version obviously. If all of the above doesn’t all make sense, send me an email, and I’d be happy to clarify.
Message Clarity. Brand Vigilance. We offer it to all our clients.

Advertising In-sight

Imagine this: You’re walking down the street, going about your morning commute. Coffee cup in hand and headphones in ears, you’re enjoying those few moments of solitude before a long and hectic day at the office. With every stride, you take notice of your surroundings. You catch your reflection in a storefront window and stop to glance up at a humorous billboard.

Now, what if we told you that in those few blocks you’ve walked between your coffee shop and office building, you’ve been watched? You’ve been targeted, analyzed, and computed without ever knowing it. How, you ask? That humorous billboard. You couldn’t help but glance at it, and it was also glancing at you. That’s right, billboards now watch you, watch them. Disconcerting, maybe, but not too shocking given the digital era we live in.

Our French connections tell us that Quividi, a French based marketing technology firm, specializes in creating these detecting advertisements. The young company (only 2 years old) has introduced this technology to a number of European clients, and has very recently entered the American market. Though the creator emphasizes that all recordings are completely anonymous and nothing is stored, the controversial nature of the ads still smacks you in the face doesn’t it?

The billboards (with a miniscule camera imbedded) are designed to monitor how many people stop to look, how long they look, and even establish gender and age. What some may judge as intrusive, others hail as breakthrough advancement in marketing research.

When it comes to communication, it’s all about targeting your audience. In television, online, and print mediums, it has become fairly easy to assess which demographics your advertisements are reaching. Nielson ratings, trade magazines and website monitoring have all allowed for an easy analysis. So maybe it’s not too surprising that the out of home sector has finally found a method to measure their audience.

Knowledge of this new technology has had us wondering how it could potentially adapt to our clients. Perhaps bebe could test the effectiveness of their window displays, Del Monte could alter in-store promotions based on which ones draw the most attention and UC Berkeley could examine which outreach programs have generated the strongest reactions. The ability for our clients to benefit from this technology is obvious. The digital era is not only creating new mediums, but enhancing the old.

Global corporations such as IKEA and McDonald’s have already capitalized on this technology, and it’s success can only increase. Simultaneously, arguments as to whether or not such features are invasive or hazardous only continue to spark conversation within & outside our industry.

It’s not the first time that great innovations have led to great debates, especially in advertising, and we can guarantee that it won’t be the last.

More of the Best Ideas in the World as intelligence comes in. Be clear with your message; be vigilant with your brand.
Tim McGeever, Guest Blogger

Learning to Love Mashing

Recent intel from both Asia and Australia indicates the use of ‘Mashing’ technology, which allows customers to create and upload their own ‘ads’, is ever-increasing. Some consider this technique risky, however the interaction with audiences is huge, and the viewership of these mashed ads runs into the 100s of thousands via website views and also iTunes downloads.

Advertising has never been afraid of parodying itself, but how many agencies (and brands) are confident enough to allow ‘their public’ to express their true thoughts and feelings?

A TV show in Australia, hosted by advertising professionals, called The Gruen Transfer recently inspired the uploading of more than 6000 ’spoof’ ads created by their viewers.

The ‘ads’ were made for a range of fictional products - from a beer, to an anti-ageing cream and a bank - and the number of times they were watched in just the first few days was well over a quarter of a million.

You might say that’s fine for a TV show, and fictional products, but what about the real world?
That’s where mashing comes in. Brave clients seeking genuine interaction - warts and all - can provide customers with Mashing tools - content, backgrounds, music, visuals, and product shots. Customers can then ‘Mash’ together, edit and launch ads of their own about those products.

Across Asia and the Pacific, advertisers have dabbled with the concept of consumers making ads, most notably Virgin Mobile, and a bank - NAB.

During the 2006 Football World Cup, NAB asked people to use a gallery of footage to create ads supporting the Australian Soccer team. In an eight-week period, more than 8,000 amateur, heart-felt, genuine ‘ads’ had been mashed - and were then viewed almost a million times.

A famous example here in the States was a certain SUV manufacturer who allowed the public to Mash.
Alongside aspiring owners and Ridley Scott’s, anti-SUVers also mashed away. True, the company may have preferred their products only be shown in the best light, however, the incident gave them an opportunity to promote the advantage they actually had over many other SUVs in terms of fuel efficiency. The fast that the brand was seen as willing to allow voices to be heard from all sides could also be viewed as positive. A lot of PR was generated. A LOT. And the site that showed the ads was visited many hundreds of thousands of times. Lessons to be learned, certainly, but that’s always the way when you’re pioneering new ideas.

More of the Best Ideas in the World as intelligence comes in. Be clear with your message; be vigilant with your brand.
David

Ghost of a Russian Past

An idea has surfaced courtesy of our Russian connections.
It seems the use of a venerable elder statesman as a spokesperson is being considered. Nothing especially remarkable about that, and campaigns have been successful in the past utilizing this tactic, so of course consideration should be given where this idea may be applicable and appropriate.

The less than conventional element in this case, though, is that the ‘statesman’ in question is none other than Josef Stalin!

It should be noted that evidence overwhelmingly points to decades of brutal dictatorship in the USSR under Stalin, and the death of millions.

Things are never as they seem, it would seem, and Russia Today, the international broadcaster based in Moscow would like to promote itself by telling the world about a whole side of Stalin that many people never knew. Did we realize he wrote romantic poetry, for example (placed next to an image of him holding a quill).

Russia Today has a signal which can be received in more than 100 countries. It broadcasts in English and Arabic. Its intention is to establish itself as a news channel on a par with CNN and BBC – yet obviously with it’s own Moscow-centric perspectives.

Full page ads have been placed in English Language publications. The slogan for this campaign is apparently ‘proud to be different’. And there can be little doubt that the executions that have been shared with us (if you’ll pardon the expression) are certainly that. Under the auspices of ‘any publicity is good publicity’ results have already shown a 100% increase in visits to their website. We will continue to track and share results as they become available. We can’t help but feel however that this idea should never have seen the light of day and the positioning damage it imposes may take a long time to counteract.

Be clear with your message; be vigilant with your brand.
David

The Latest from our British Connections

Some recent intel on an effective direct marketing perspective came in from our connections in the UK. While they are as bombarded as we are by myriad direct response pitches, one particular approach was seeming to have cut through. It is not entirely unique, there’s’ not all that much new under the sun, but it is a nice new twist, and it does lend itself well to this particular brand and this particular audience.

Please remember that it was Napoleon that first referred to the British as a ‘Nation of Shop Keepers’, so you would have thought that they’d be used to this whole ’selling’ thing by now, but the truth is that they really rarely appreciate an overt pitch, and so creative ways around this aversion constantly need to be sought.

J.P. Boden & Co. Limited, a clothing catalogue company and their founder Johnnie Boden have had immense success with marketing that features extremely targeted, very personal, yet light and funny prose.

One of our British connections talked about how, as a stay-at-home Mum, she felt removed from a lot of messages, and rarely related to any that did get through to her. However, she really liked how Johnnie talked to her directly in a conversational way and signs off each direct mail piece to her personally (or so it seems), as well as each section of the website that talks directly to the customer. He is casual in his tone, and ’says’ things in the direct mail items like “…I hope I haven’t upset you, but I haven’t heard from you in a while…”

She reports that because his personality comes through so well, and because it is now so established, that he can ‘get away’ with being so personal, she responds to his advances much more often than she would otherwise.

It all comes down to carefully crafting the wording (while making it seem not crafted at all) and being consistent. But there could, of course, be learning here for clients everywhere.

Johnnie takes it further, and while virtually all of his business is online, he also has an outlet store, and on the walls of that store ‘he’ has framed and posted complaint letters from customers. While this may seem crazy at first, there is also a certain confidence to this approach, and it definitely furthers his brand. Many of the complaints area actually unreasonable, many are funny, but he goes ahead and posts them, and that says a lot about him and his positioning. There is some double-bluff irony to this particular tactic, and it may work better in some markets than others, but it extends his brand, so that should be noted.

More of the Best Ideas in the World from the UK market, and indeed this particular category, in future postings. Be clear with your message; be vigilant with your brand.
David