Altacircle

Coming back to the US one of the biggest advertising things you notice is healthcare advertising — whether it is on TV, in print or online.

At JWT we have a big Healthcare practice and have just launched a first release set of websites for a new pharmaceutical for our Johnson & Johnson client.   It has been amazing seeing the work it takes to get basic product information online in this sector — managing regulatory and legal definitely add a level of complexity to the usual job!

At anyrate congratulations to the team — great to see the initial communications coming out after having worked on the pitch and strategy. 

For those member of my family that are still wrestling with what exactly digital advertising is, this is a good dose of our current thinking.  The panel session focused on measurement and the audience was mostly publishers so I talked to that, but also managed to bring in some of the Brand Journalism case studies and Nightlife Exchange.

Thank you Vizu and Scribemedia for the invite to the panel.

http://www.scribemedia.org/2011/07/12/creative-agency-as-business-consultant/

This is a must read for MBA and VCs everywhere. Smart, humorous and insightful.  The cynical entrepreneurs take on the effects of VC funding — particularly the big money all entrepreneurs are supposed to dream of, is great.

And the fact that it takes place in parking lot of dead WalMart is even funnier.

Cory Doctorow
Other People’s Money
Cory Doctorow 10.15.07, 6:00 PM ET

Gretl’s stall in the dead WalMart off the I-5 in Pico Rivera was not the busiest spot in the place, but that was how she liked it. Time to think was critical to her brand of functional sculpture, and reflection was the scarcest commodity of all in 2027.

Which is why she was hoping that the venture capitalist would just leave her alone. He wasn’t a paying customer, he wasn’t a fellow artist–he wanted to buy her, and he was thirty years too late.

Original Forbes Article

If you feel like giving up a whole 30 minutes and hear the agency perspective on the shift of advertising dollars from traditional to digital channels, here is yet another BIG chance!

Panel was moderated by Dan Beltramo, CEO & Founder of Vizu and consisted of
Paul Gunning, CEO Tribal DDB,
Carl Fremont, EVP / Global Media Director at Digitas, and
myself (sitting in for Bob Jeffrey).

Interesting highlights from my perspective?

• It is harder to move marketers from TV spending then print or radio part because it works and part because it is fun for marketers
• Local can replace print for retailers that need to cover specific metropolitan areas
• Media is all being measured and recession has forced ROI conversations about each media channel
• New IAB units are driving excitement clientside and in the industry.  Real campaigns versus simple banner ads
• Innovative multichannel ideas throw the whole media plan up in the air

Here is the archived stream: http://www.livestream.com/digiday/video?clipId=pla_1980fdee-ea17-4b7a-87e9-636bb512d30e

Lots of people call out great videos on YouTube.  The Keyboard Cat and Double Rainbow probably have as much unaided awareness as Coke Zero and this shouldn’t be surprising, video works.  TV advertising and millions of dollars of research has proven that over 50 years.

My question is as video moves online, how will it become more interactive?  YouTube has their Creative Gallery which talks about adding a set of different techniques:

• Overlay Information
• Outbound Links
• Branching Storylines
• Interactive Scenes

and there are a number of other companies offering tools like Video Tagging.  But none of these seem to be catching on a real advertising unit or interactive tool.
We can’t say it all hasn’t been hyped.  In 2006 Business Week ran an article “Video Tagging Gets Cool.”  In 2007 MGM Grand’s “Maximum Vegas Tour” had clickable areas for overlay information and navigation and won a Bronze Cannes Lion.  Today, Maximum Vegas is still on MGM Grand’s site, but it is a linear video.  Video tagging isn’t talked about and few videos include hotspots, branching storylines or even adjacent content tied to the video timeline. 
When you look at a case like Samsung’s “Follow Your Instinct” you see a branching video story that has high production values and sexy actors, but only 300k views.  Perhaps the product message is too strong to go viral like Double Rainbow (28 million views) or keyboard cat (15 million) or even Old Spice’s man on a horse (where the making of had 1.7m views).
It is well understood that video assets made for TV end up on YouTube and that they will be linear.  But all of us are also filming for digital channels and catching outtakes and looking to push the envelope to make our work more engaging. 
Why not more interactivity?

The big question is this a creative director’s worst nightmare?

Direct Marketing creatives have long been forced to consider results alongside aesthetics and concept in creating ads.  Either people respond or they don’t and it is usually anywhere between 3 days (for email) and 3 weeks (for direct mail) before you find out.

Now this level of measurement is coming to advertising.  Whether it is social media reaction, % of watches versus fast forwards on DVRs, or clicks on tablets, our industry will be measured.  And it will change the creative we produce because we have been hired as professional marketing consultants to get results, not as professional designers to deliver creative.  The more we add science to our craft to match the magic of a great idea, the better we’ll all be.

Does the collective subconscious of 90 people make a better judge than 1 Gerry Moira?

♻ Retweet

Gerry Moira Chairman & Director of Creativity, Euro RSCG says that this is a great ad:

Award Winning Freelander Ad.

He awarded it best ad of the month in The Anna’s saying “Against a long term car park of ads with shiny metal boxes, this ad employs a confident and differentiated use of illustration…”
But does it sell? We wanted to find out if it was effective in communicating key messages of ‘0% APR Typical*’ and ‘Why get a car when you can get a Land Rover?’
We tested it with 30 appropriate people recruited via in street intercepts to avoid any bias from a self-selecting sample who had opted in to be part of a market research panel. We tracked where their eyes looked and recorded their subconscious emotional reactions using facial coding whilst they looked at an appropriate publication that included the Freelander ad.

The heatmap shows what 30 readers looked at:

Eye Tracking Results From 30 Viewers.

 

Just listened to an interesting Guardian tech podcast about interactive fiction or online storytelling.

Wired editor Frank Rose has written a book called The Art of Immersion.  Whether it is classics like the way Lost built such a convoluted story that fans were driven online to discuss it, or how Mad Men fans built twitter characters like Betty Draper.  But both of these are extensions of a serial (or somewhat serial in the case of Lost) traditional series.

More interesting to me are the experiments that change the fundamental base story.  This means not taking a series online like The Spot (1995-97), but more stories that are part generated by an online community.  

Online Caroline (2000) – Early experiment using database-driven, templated responses to a video story.  Although the site is down, there is a lot of commentary still online.

Such Tweet Sorrow (2011) – Great British remake of Romeo & Juliet set in modern day UK, but told through twitter over about a month.  Because the characters are in a public forum, fans were able to riff off story lines and engage directly with the characters.

Frank – Art of Immersion

Not a bad video — albeit like a lot of corporate futures, more attention is put on the technology then the characterization.  And the music is diabolical.

A Day Made of Glass… Made possible by Corning.

Always a bit funny to see yourself speaking, but also a great way to be better!

This is from my Social Media Week presentation in Toronto.  The presentation is about 40 minutes but the Q&A went on for a full additional hour if you really, really have nothing else to do.

JWT presents Business behind the Buzz with John Baker from JWT Toronto on Vimeo.

I’ve been listening to Cory Doctorow’s podcast on the train and it is amazing how many ideas pop into your head when you hear a futurist and technologist — or at least a good one — speak.

Creative Process / Design Competitions

In a podcast today Cory talked about a game designer at IDEO that feels their is a failure in design competitions where a cash prize is held out for the “best idea.”  The reality is by definition the best idea is generated because the best people are competing and holding back their ideas from one another. 
By structuring the competition in another way this can be avoided.  For example if there is an open community board that works to solve the problem and the prize is awarded based on participation and quality of the ideas and commentary which is all recorded, then people will be open to collaborating.

Use of Twitter for Idea Generation

The growth of Twitter has surprised plenty of people but it shouldn’t.  It is simply the technology can be used so many ways that makes it so powerful.  From sharing banalities with friends, to being an easier way to blog, to idea generation.  Here is an obvious but solid Doctorow use:  Need a column idea for the Guardian?  Ask your twitter community and then re-tweet back the ideas that are the most interesting for a second level of comment.  The result, in 20 minutes really solid ideas are generated and vetted.

Application in Advertising and Digital Agencies

Idea generation in traditional agencies focuses on small sets of people iterating ideas in dark rooms.  In digital agencies the ideas tend to be more multidiscipline and include more brainstorms before documentation, but are still managed mostly without technology.  The big question is how can some of these ideas be applied without the “committee effect” that takes a nascent great idea for the horse, and turns it into a camel. 

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