Results tagged “advertising” from experiential thoughts

So the MadMen characters' Twitter accounts were turned back on after a bit of confusion last weekend. It appears that AMC's online marketing team at Deep Focus chatted with the AMC team and convinced them that "everything was cool". As much as it is being argued that these are "fan generated" they do seem to have an amazingly coherent voice with the show and one wonders if they might not in fact be agency/production/marketing generated. No matter, they are an interesting experiment/extension and I'm interested to see how they evolve and survive over time.

That all said, there does seem to be an expansion of the number of characters twittering, including several that one has to question the "reality" of them actually using twitter. Would Betty Draper (@bettydraper) or Francine Hanson (@francine_hanson) have really used twitter? One of the nice things about the usage within the agency was the rate of adoption and difference in usage patterns. To suddenly have the crew of characters from outside that community join and adopt in full force makes me wonder about the faithfulness of the adoption to the character profiles. Betty's character is not exactly prone to discussing things in public -- at a minimum her account should have been set to private, a bit of a party line that you'd have to ask to join.

But this is a grand experimental world we're all playing in, so I can't fault those behind this experiment too much. It will be interesting to see how this all resolves.

The other odd thing from this is the appearance of several Twitter accounts of real but deceased individuals from the MadMen era. Bill Bernback has appeared as (@billbernbach) with tweets referencing Don Draper. This is a bit of a tread into dangerous territory, especially if it is agency/marketer conducted, as the estate of Bernbach and the current DDB Legal team probably have some serious issues with this.

So where does the line get drawn?

• Is impersonating fictional characters as a fan "OK" in the name of audience engagement?
• Does it matter if there is a formal agency or producer approval?
• Does said approval need to be public?
• What about impersonating figures from history?
• Is the situation different if the impersonation is related to a commercial project vs a non-profit or personal project?
• Is it any different if the figure is from long ago vs recent history (think Charlemagne vs JFK)?

All things to ponder for the lawyers and practitioners...and all things I will ponder here in the coming weeks.
Thoughts?

The team from MadMen is bringing some of the characters to life on Twitter... @don_draper, @joan_holloway, @peggyolson, @pete_campbell & @bertram_cooper have all joined over the last few days...



The interesting thing is not just that the twitters are very well done and in character, but that the order in which characters have joined, and the way they tweet is very much in line with the way that Twitter seems to grow through groups and organizations. Having been the first one at my last agency on Twitter, and then having followed the ebb and flow of usage throughout the organization over time, the SterlingCooper twitter adoption rate seems spot on.

To me, this is a perfect example of how to bring the art of storytelling to life in interactive space. Study the medium you are going to work in, and use it the way that real people use it. You wouldn't shoot footage of someone doing something completely unreal in a TV or Movie Drama, don't force your characters to behave in an unreal way on Twitter or any other social media platform.

And just like in any form of entertainment -- the more attention you pay to the little details, the more real it will become to your audience, and them more engaged they will become. The medium changes what those details should be, but not the fact that there should be details, and that they need to be right.

This is one of the best uses of the native feature set in a social media application I've seen from a campaign yet. John McCain is leveraging the questions feature in LinkedIn to invite participation, ostensibly from an "expert" set of individuals. Given the LinkedIn usage stats, his campaign is onto something. I'm curious to see if they incorporate the comments here into the McCain platform or campaing planning.

I also wonder if either of the Democrat candidates will reach out in the same way, or if the demographics of LinkedIn seem too upper income business user for them to spend their money that way... which would be their loss I think.

The Q/A Page: http://tinyurl.com/5hvb6q

McCain's Profile: http://tinyurl.com/5ny3p7

UPDATE: John McCain does also accept LinkedIn connections (at least when politely worded) and wisely keeps his connections private.

UPDATE 2: HIllary Clinton is also on LinkedIn: http://tinyurl.com/4pfr7z

A article in yesterdays NY Times did a great job of illustrating to me the ingrained flaws in the way ad agencies and the people that run them think. Never mind that the article starts out with: "DECADES ago, brewers determined that television commercials were just about the best way to sell beer..." Decades ago? and that should be relevant still now why? But the thing that really pissed me off was at the end of the article:

Even so, Mr. Haven [Jim Haven, co-founder & creative director @ Creature] is demonstrating a fondness for kicking it old school. From all the film shot in Mexico for the online videos, “we cut a couple spots” in 30-second lengths, Mr. Haven said, that could become TV commercials.

“And the music is licensed for air,” he added hopefully.

WHAT??? The agency wasted the client's money by not only licensing the music for broadcast but also cutting 30 second spots? Now I understand that licensing is cheaper when done in batch negotiations, and that adding the extra versions probably didn't add substantial cost either, but the fact remains that both were done for the egos of the agency folks. There appears to be absolutely no reason to have produced TV spots besides the fact that the CD wanted to hope for both splashy TV and an "integrated" campaign to submit to the awards shows. This in my opinion is the kind of mind set that should get agencies fired by clients. It's one thing if the data shows that not only is TV and appropriate medium for reach but also that the audience pays attention and gives a damn about your TV presence. Generally, this is no longer true. But, TV ads keep being produced even when not appropriate at least in part because agencies like making them and the awards shows glamorize them. Don't even get me started on the media component of things...
The article in full can be read here >>

There's finally starting to be a lot of talk in agencies, media companies and marketing consultancies about leveraging data in optimizing campaign effectiveness. Adweek's recent article about the concept reminded me of a concept I've been thinking about on and off for some time now.

What if we not only started leveraging campaign and interaction data to optimize, update and inform creative, but also started leveraging real time market data as well? By this I'm saying -- take the Wall Street model that Adweek references, and incorporate not just the methodology but the data as well. What if your marketing analytics dashboard not only gave you insight into not just what your potential customers were doing within various media, but what related and competitive firms/products were doing in the market? Furthermore, what if you could cross compare online and offline buzz & media trends in regard to your industry/product/consumer mood with which media units were being engaged with? Seems to me like you have a hell of a lot more insight into where you and your company/product/service fit into the current and trending conversation.

Sounds like it could be one heck of a tool to build and make relevant, and probably far more complex than any agency or marketing consultancy would be willing to invest in at this point. But the one that is willing to will leap far ahead of the others. This kind of tool is much like the kinds of quant & trends tools that hedge funds have used to become the trading powerhouses that they are, and could play the same role in remaking the marketing services landscape.

I guess this brings me back to my title - what is your plan for leveraging data? As a corporate marketer, are you talking to the folks in the financials and information services side of your organization to build better dashboards that look at the bigger picture? As a marketing services firm, are you asking your clients to partner with you on the development of such dashboards? Are you willing to test not just 10s but 1000s of pieces of creative and let them auto-optimize? Are you willing to take the investment and financial risks to make this kind of change happen? And are you willing to let realtime quant systems make your least favorite creative run everywhere and your most favorite creative end in the dustbin?

I personally look forward to the growth of these kinds of systems, and hope to be part of building one and putting it to use for clients. Anyone want to help me build it?

American Express™ has launched an interesting travel promo wherein they sell a set of “dream trips” a day for a week. The thing that makes it interesting is that the price goes down every twenty minutes until the trips are gone. These are all high end trips that fit right in with the AMEX brand experience, and the general experience on the site is right in line with the idea that AMEX can provide members with access to experiences that they wouldn’t otherwise have. I’m still intrigued by the aspect of the decreasing price, and trying to figure out what that does besides drive traffic and interest. Would I have been as interested in the site without it? I highly doubt it. Does it play into the AMEX brand properly? I’m starting to think that it does, given that it rewards “risk within reason”. By this I mean that it since customers that are willing to risk waiting and having all trips purchased increase their savings, the entrepreneurial spirit is rewarded… to a point. AMEX doesn’t want to encourage or associate with wanton risk, but measured risk. At least, that’s the way I see it. Or it could just be a marketing gimmick.

Check it out yourself: http://goingonce.amexnetwork.com/

 A bit of discussion on the current state and potential future of mobile technology, usage, advertising and content from Davos:



Makes me think again about all the discussion of the "keys to the kingdom" of advertising & content. There are representatives of most of the players here, albeit with agencies not surprisingly a bit lacking in their presence. Do they even play a role in this discussion? Or are they all to caught up in their old revenue models to even have a chance?