Thanks to Sarah Ezrin at Cheetah Mail for the invite to be on a panel for Direct Marketing Club of NY during Social Media Week on February 8 at Pace University.

We’ll have 50 minutes in a panel to talk War Stories.  Looking forward to it.

Street Smart Social: War Stories from Clients and Agencies − Major brands across verticals are using social to create and power a wide range of consumer relationships. Learn how these marketing leaders are delivering and measuring bottom line impact— and where they see the channel taking their businesses in the future. Panel Discussion: Steve Goldner, Director of Social Media, HFMUS; John Baker, President Client Services, J.W.T; Moderated by Frank Radice, Social Guru, Definition 6

http://www.dmcny.org/page/2011sm_intensive

Technorati Tags: Agency Future, Software Develoment, Marketing

There is always a little trepidation when you are asked to review a piece of work — if the work is horrendous like a lot of it is, then you have to figure out how to tear it to shreds without completely pissing off an entire team, agency and client.

Doing a review of the Doritos iD3 campaign was easy — it is great work.  We all know how hard iit is to get really good interesting projects live and complex ones with a lot of moving parts deserve double credit.

I’m sure that on this one AMV BBDO did a little, Initials did a bunch and are getting the credit, and Rehab Studios have probably killed themselves.   In fact I would guess there is a team inside Rehab that have worked every week-end for 3 months and loved every minute of it.  I have the idea because we did the same for SE Bond and that is what it takes, regardless of budget.

Here are some more links about the campaign:
Rehab Studio’s Blog Post
Inside Facebook Comment
Digital Arts Article

My Review on Brand Republic

By John Baker, promotionsandincentives.co.uk, 27 July 2009, 11:40am

Promo Review – Doritos iD3 promotion

LONDON – “An amazing piece of work” is the view of joint managing director of iris Digital John Baker as he tests out Doritos’ ‘iD3′ campaign.

Every brand manager knows that media has fragmented, consumers are in control and that big headlines like “Try our new flavour! It is new and improved and extra spicy fresh!” get about as much attention as a double glazing salesman in the tropics.  The challenge is what to do.

Doritos new iD3 campaign is a great example of the Brand as Entertainer strategy.

It is an amazing piece of work and really goes well beyond the multi-level online game.  It has a promotion to drive uptake, a brand teaser campaign to build expectation, on pack code integration to drive trial, sophisticated integration of Facebook Connect to make registration easy and extend communication in social networks, a call out to bloggers that talk up the campaign, integration of retail and prize partners to help cover costs – and that is just looking at the surface!

Clearly the game is central to this promotion and it is clear that Doritos have put some real effort into it.  It uses branched video and 3D rendered game levels to keep people interested.  The puzzles are complex enough that it isn’t just a “skills-based question” promotion requirement, but a real effort to challenge the audience which assuming it is younger and familiar with gaming should work incredibly well.  For people that use Facebook Connect, personal content is brought into the game to make it more relevant, and achieve the techie cool factor.

What remains to be seen is if the campaign is central to the brand advertising that is always the heartland of FMCG launches.  Will the advertising drive people to the game?  Will the winners feature in the advertising? Will mass media be used to offer clues that are critical to success?  This is incredibly hard to achieve but if it happens it would put this campaign in the leagues of RBK’s Whodonit and Microsoft’s Vanishing Point. These campaigns were also fully integrated using DM packs for engaged participants and events to generate even more buzz.

The only challenge for the campaign — which probably has the brand planners hopping in circles — is the connection between the idea of “identity theft” that drives the game and a new lime and curry flavoured crisp which is the product.  The crisps do feature in the movies and the game but it is hard to demonstrate food product features and benefits in games.

All that said, there will be a lot of gamers out there fully entertained and talking up Doritos.  And assuming the crisps taste great, we can be sure they’ll tell their friends and the whole lot of them will all buy lots of Doritos.

Promo score:  8 out 10

Agency: Initials

This is a piece I wrote for the IAB Engage Conference Handbook:

The Future of Marketing?

“The advertising industry is passing through one of the most disorienting periods in its history … More people are rejecting traditional sales messages, presenting the ad industry with big challenges. ”
Economist, June 2004

“To find something comparable, you have to go back 500 years to the printing press, the birth of mass media …”
Rupert Murdoch, quoted in Wired, July 2006

It is an interesting time in the marketing industry.

Advertising agency executives, faced with the fast adoption of personal video recorders and shift of magazine content online, are convinced the business will cease to exist in as soon as five years. Or five minutes if you listen to Bob Garfield.

Direct Marketing agency executives are watching B2B communications shift aggressively to email and are questioning whether the traditional direct mail piece will be a relevant tool for generating leads or even delivering offers before too long.

PR agencies see that the tradition that all corporate communications is channelled through the corporate communications department to specific high circulation publishers is loosing relevance. Internal experts are expected to publish directly and the required response time for crisis management is minutes not days.

Finally, Media agencies are being presented viable online auction systems from SpotRunner, eBay and Google that could make the “buying clout” argument irrelevant. What’s more, they know the traditional media plan could quickly disappear as more channels are served and managed like search media.

In the face of all of this, amazingly the Digital Agencies also feel their business is under threat. As all briefs become “interactive briefs,” they are being stretched to compete with all agencies from all disciplines. They of all people recognise digital marketing encompasses a broad tool set and can be part of every campaign. As traditional agencies push for interactive work, they are looking to offer a broader solution including advertising or DM.

The piece that is critical is of course our clients. Marketing departments have their own pressures as product development, supply chains, communications and sales are impacted by technology. The last thing they need is their agencies bickering with each other over who does what, why and how.

As we go through this period of transformation, clients need to know they have a partner that can bring the people with the right skills to the table and know that there is clear programme management of their 360 campaigns. They need to know the core of their business will be delivered safely, but also know that their partner is willing to be adventurous. They know they need to be innovative, but briefing multiple agencies and managing the integration of the resulting work is more then a small challenge.

At OgilvyInteractive, our teams sit and work with each of the discipline organisation to be able to bring digital expertise together with the years of experience in advertising, direct marketing, healthcare marketing, sales activation or PR. As a community of digital professionals, we work with our colleagues in bespoke teams to meet our clients’ needs and work together to stay on top of the industry that is in constant change.

It may be a confusing time to be in marketing, but it is also a great time because the disciplines that were in silos in the past are now working together and clients are willing to test and measure new ideas. The big digital toolbox is being used to amplify great work across the disciplines which should be the result when you are doing real integrated 360 degree campaigns.

Published: August 06, 2007

Microsite Mania – Stop the Madness!

By John Baker

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It is official, all agencies are now digital agencies and brands are under siege… John Baker, Managing Partner at OgilvyOne, speaks out.

Advertising agencies are building brand experiences, sales promotions houses do games to drive in-store trial, PR agencies are building blogger outreach toolkits and DM agencies launch campaign microsites driving name acquisition and conversion to sales. The message has been heard — everyone realises digital marketing is important and everyone is proposing a microsite as part of their work.

The problem is that websites are persistent.

After the campaign has grown old and both the clients and the agencies moved on, the microsite remains. The flash animations play even if the promotion has long ago closed. The copy is served up even if the headline has nothing to do with the current campaign running. The webservers don’t know the online advertising impressions were all used up months ago and people aren’t clicking through as part of a “consistent campaign experience.” Someone asks them to display their message and they do.

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