The Value of an Idea (or maybe “What Makes a Great Agency?”)

Every week my team and I set together to talk about our accounts. The good, the bad, and the ugly. We also take some time to “sharpen the saw,” reading and discussing business books like “Good to Great,” “The One Thing You Need to Know,” or any number of marketing-branding-advertising related books.

Right now were working through “Eating the Big Fish” by Adam Morgan. This morning’s discussion centered on using “advertising and the consistent strategic pursuit of the right publicity” as a strategic asset.

It’s chapter 10 in the book and it talks about the impact a “relevant and distinctive” idea can have – complete with case studies. If you haven’t read this, it might change your attitude about whether advertising is really dead as some love to claim.

Beyond mere advertising, this chapter, to me, helps to define what separates a great agency from the mediocre. A great agency, while having excellent production skills, will be able to consistently develop “relevant and distinctive” ideas. The viral program I wrote about yesterday worked because it was relevant and distinctive to its audience.

The talent to execute ideas is widespread.

The talent to birth those ideas – not as much.

The Power of Viral Marketing (or at least the power it had on SAP)

A couple weeks ago, MarketingSherpa, inducted my agency, or rather the agency at which I work, Morsekode, into the Viral Marketing Hall of Fame.

We developed a pretty simple (yet effective) program that leveraged, of all things, a rap song about ERP software called “The ERP of This Century” (link below). I’m really proud of our agency for this and I’m thrilled that the song sticks in the listener’s head. It was fun to compose and the stories are amazing.

For example, SAP Japan requested Karaoke versions of the song. An SAP Big Band in the Netherlands requested sheet music to perform it at an event.

I keep waiting for my invitation to Sapphire to perform it, but, as you’ll hear when you listen to it, the audience was SAP employees, not SAP’s customers.

To read a more detailed overview of the program, here is a link to our press release about it.

If you just want to hear the song, click “Play” on www.morsekode.com/SAP.

I’d love to hear your comments.

PS On the page linking to the song, there’s a link to the actual Sherpa report – at some point you may have to pay to access it. Sorry about that.

Lies Are Bad – Shame on you AT&T

I have an AT&T credit card (actually, I think it’s run by citi). You’ve probably all been requested to move to paperless or online statements. The benefits to the company are huge – reducing printing and mailing costs. But this below – from a recent email to me – is NOT the reason they are doing it:

Did you know that in many cases identity theft happens when someone gets personal information from your mailbox or trash? To prevent it from happening to you, we offer our Statements Online Only Program. This FREE online service replaces your paper AT&T Universal Card statements with secure, online-only statements.

Do they want us to avoid identity theft? Sure. But the line “To prevent it from happening to you” leads you to believe that identity theft is the reason they do it. BS (or, more politely, “I don’t buy it.”)

Don’t try to manipulate me by making me feel like you are looking out for my best interests when it has nothing to do with my interests.

Am I the only one irritated by this?

Really, Really Short Online Advertising

Beth Snyder Bulik wrote an interesting article in Advertising Age called “Are Five-Second Ads the Future of Web Marketing?” a day or so ago.

Another vehicle to consider if you feel your audience is perusing the short film videos on YouTube, Google Video, iFilm, or Heavy.com.

In this model, your short, presumably 5-second, ads would precede the video content. Apparently, this would help maintain a positive viewing experience (the brevity of the ad) while offering some revenue for these Web sites.

The article claims some heavy weight companies are checking it out.

Maybe you should too?

Italian Women and Cleaning

A Wall Street Journal article today pointed out how two huge consumer products companies flopped trying to introduce some cleaning products in Italy. Apparently, neither of these companies understood the Italian woman.

The statistics were amazing – Italian women on average spend around 20 hours per week cleaning as compared to the four hours most women spend in the USA. And, surprisingly, the Italian women weren’t interested in convenience but rather the strength of the cleaner.

It’s easy to pick on those two companies and say, “What the #$@#$ were they thinking? How could they NOT know their products wouldn’t sell?!!!”

Truth is, it’s pretty easy to get wrapped up in all sorts of other things. . .you’ve been there and you’ve probably seen it yourself.

Consider this a gentle reminder. Take the time to really know your audience.

Yeah, it’s pretty much that simple.

Vinegar for Your Message

This morning, I started to notice that my coffee machine isn’t sending all the water through its system. It made me think about how, over time, many of our marketing messages get clogged with sediment and undesired build up.

The result?

Well, at home there’s less coffee – eventually none. With your marketing message, it could be that your audience cannot understand you or eventually won’t hear you at all.

Many of us use vinegar to clean out our coffee machines. What’s the equivalent for our marketing messages?

This is the point where you would expect a list of “Three Things You Can Do to Decalcify Your Message.” But, to be honest, I don’t have those.

I think the point is to be aware that it can happen. I suppose you could prevent it by happening by having a solid, well-documented set of brand guidelines (just like some of you filter your water). Or maybe you have a periodic review of “the state of your brand.” Some companies have a “brand police” – a sort of checkpoint before anything leaves the organization.

My coffee maker actually has a spot for a water filter. I failed to purchase a replacement a while back and my system is likely clogged up because of that.

What do you need to do to clean up your messaging? What sort of filters should you have in place?

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to run to the store for some vinegar…

What’s There to Love About Podcasting?

Apple has sold a kazillion iPods. I have one. (Well, I did until last week. I lost it somewhere in my house – I trust I’ll find it). But this post is less about iPods and more about audio as a media to deliver a message.

Apple has been quite brilliant in creating this category and smacking their iPod product name on it. Brilliant! (Say that like the Guiness ads, please). But, let’s face it. Apple didn’t define the channel as much as they popularized it.

Internet radio has been streaming for years. I get my German fix via a live feed from www.swr3.de. I can watch a German news channel live at n-tv. (No, I’m not German, but I lived there while working for SAP and I have become a bit of a Germanphile as a result.)

The medium has been there. The iTunes platform just made it easy. And now others will follow suite. I was just speaking to a high-flyer at one of the largest interactive agencies in the world (Which agency, you ask? Are you kidding me? Hand you to the competition?!) and he was telling me about their “one-stop” solution for delivering Podcasts outside of iTunes. This signals the continuation of even more buzz and hype, I imagine.

(Just to be clear – I don’t really think you need the largest interactive agency to deliver an .MP3 outside of iTunes, but my friend would be bummed if your company knew that.)

So, Why Podcast?
I suppose you could pay $249 for a 6-page Forrester report “Podcasting Hits the Charts”, but do you really need someone to tell you “hey, people are going to listen to sound files in the future – in fact, some are already listening?!”

Let’s just think out loud for a moment:

• Podcasts let me listen to your message whenever and wherever I want. I can listen on any MP3 player, which may be my phone or Blackberry. Or on my laptop as I watch tv, read the paper, have a beer, and work through the kazillionth email that just wasn’t important enough to work into my regular day.
• Podcasts let me use my “dead time” (driving to work, taxi to airport, etc.) to catch up on relevant topics. I downloaded a series last year to prepare for a project while I mowed my lawn.
• Podcasts can be a pleaseant break from the world of print. Your audience may be tired of white papers, PowerPoints, and online newsletters. Podcasts may offer a new way to capture initial interest and drive them deeper into a particular topic. Joan Damico wrote up a nice, simple introduction to Podcasts in this PDF and gives some case studies. I don’t know anything about her or her services, so don’t ask me about more than the PDF.

Is any of this rocket science? No.

In the end, it’s a sound file. Do whatever you want. It’s just another tool to use. People can subscribe to it like a blog or RSS feed from a news site. That’s nice.

Sound is cool. Podcasts are cool. But they’re no big mystery. Think about sound as another way to make your message interesting. The options are endless.

The bigger mystery is truly understanding your audience and crafting ideas that surround them with a consistent brand experience – regardless of the channel. Sound (i.e., Podcasts) may be one part, but it’s not the only part.

One Tip
In addition to some of the ideas in the linked PDF from Joan, I like the idea of Podcasts for (yes, once again) internal communications – especially for large, distributed global organizations.

One Warning
Don’t fall into the trap of doing your sound recordings so cheap (“Hey, I’ve got a mic and a computer, let’s roll!”) that it weakens your brand. This isn’t the time for shortcuts in production. Keep production professional – even if you choose a more informal or conversational tone. (This doesn’t necessarily mean expensive.)

Email Marketing 2.0

I’ll keep this short, because everything you need is in this link: MarketingSherpa’s Email Marketing Summit 2006 Wrap-Up Report.

I subscribe to a number of this organization’s eNewsletters and find a lot of great value in them. Articles like this one offer usable information that you can implement on your next project.

Recently, MarketingSherpa inducted a number of viral campaigns into their 2006 Hall of Fame. I’ll talk about that in another entry, because Morsekode was a part of it and I’d like to explain a bit about it.

Online Advertising – Does it Work?

Here’s a nice overview of the state of online advertising. It’s from a tech geek magazine, but good nonetheless. (Aren’t we all a geek of sorts?).

The article brings up a number of good questions. Are “ad words” worth it? Are banner ads worth it? What is the role?

The author gives a shout out to the power of the blog mixed in with ad words.

One thing that caught my particular attention, however, was the series of case studies showing how well targeted online advertising works. Again, it reminds us how well we have to understand our audience. How we need to think like “someone who is actively shopping for a car” or maybe “checking the weather before they mow the lawn or fertilize.”

I know, “common sense,” you might say. Is it?

The article also pointed out some of the customization technogies for delivering targeted content based on online behaviors.

I like a lot of what Jim Nail says on the last page of the article. We really do need to consider the goal of each ad and base our measurement against those goals.

Good stuff to keep in mind as we all consider “online” as a suddenly well established channel for advertising.

Technology vs. Business in the Context of VoIP

I’m not a VoIP (Voice Over IP) expert. But I’ve been following it closely because it’s a disruptive technology – A technology that companies I work with are or will be leveraging.

I just read this article called “Dialing in the VoIP strategic advantage” by a Cisco Sr Vice President. It’s an interesting read. I appreciate that the author is trying to get the audience to think. And it did make me think, too.

It made me think that I’d like to see more of these things when people talk about VoIP (or any technology, for that matter):
- Real business examples of how VoIP can improve your work
- Less discounting of ROI and cost savings (most every business person cares about these things)
- More business-driven change and less technology-driven change

The most successful technology companies have learned to speak in the language of business benefits. The more clearly you can do that, with specific examples, the more your audience will see your value.