New marketing agencies should build media

(for readers in a hurry ... start at paragraph 4)
Back from holiday I was flooded with work, opportunities, fun and very little time for blogging. But on this sunny Sunday afternoon, floating in the pool I was thinking about advertising agencies and what differentiates one from the other.

At ONE Agency we've succeeded in claiming a piece of the interactive agency territory in only a few months time. More or less everybody agrees we are a different agency. I've heard that remark from several people, customers, colleagues and competitors. In fact it was a mail from an advertising professional I got this morning that triggered my thinking, so we are different ...

Well, of course we are. We know a bit about marketing, so we think it's crucial to differentiate from competition. However, what we do different is not the result of careful strategic consideration but from what we truly believe in. And I'm convinced this is the only good way to build a company. Go for something you believe in. And either you're very lucky (which is rare), or you are a genius (even more rare) or you have gathered enough knowledge so what you believe in is also the right thing to do. I personally have been filling up my brain through different jobs, listening to intelligent people, reading books and enjoying life in a true "Blink-style" for some years now, and I have the feeling I'm starting to understand some things. Like ... what advertising agencies should be doing in this age of consumer 2.O. They should become New Marketing Agencies.

And one of the things these new marketing agencies should do is build media. Last century agencies had to help customers choose which medium to use, today we have to help them build their own media. And this is one of the things we seem to have a good view on at ONE Agency. Result is that we get solicited quite often by media-companies who are in a constant struggle with themselves these days.

Now, what do I mean with building media? For starters, when I speak about "media", I mean interactive media, as I'm convinced these will be the only ones left soon. A website is a medium, but obviously it needs to be a real platform for interaction. Something that looks more like a medium we all know is internet radio. Today one can launch a brand radio online with a limited investment. It could be in the shape of streaming radio (like www.humoradio.be) or podcasting. We have at least 4 customers/prospects who are actively working on internet TV. Again such a 'station' can take many shapes, from a simple set of movies to download, over video podcasts to something to the likes of Joost. A last medium to me are all the games and contests agencies organize today. In fact these the branded versions of TV Game shows, but interactive this time.
Not every company or brand has the leverage to build a complete medium of their own. But most successful new media sites offer features to build your own branded experience there. It could be a myspace page or a channel on YouTube or simply a blog on blogspot ... and lots of that is for free.

So where are the 'traditional' media in all of this (and I consider the portal sites as traditional media)? I think they really have to carefully consider their position. Look at what their strengths are, look at the future and decide to go for a vision that will keep up in the coming years (so not just take your strengths and translate them to something digital). If they don't, the traditional media will be overtaken by brands and marketeers, if they do, brands and marketeers will start seeing them as allies in their quest for interaction and engagement with customes.

Sloggi not fun

David Hachez (tx for the picture) reports on a campaign by Sloggi in Belgium, and I agree with his critical view. I would even go further, it SUCKS.

The billboards may attract some attention, but I've seen it so many times now that I started noticing how much the picture has been photoshopped. I thought we had arrived in the age of 'real natural beauty', and that Sloggi was about no-nonsense cute but especially comfortable underwear. The four models seem to have identical bodies with identical skin color ... they look as if they just fell out of a cloning machine.

Then the site ... it's boring, the process is time consuming, the idea is not original and the result is not interesting. The campaign has no reference to the local market, it would have been so easy to see the result of your photo shoot on a Brussels background rather then some US city. Oh and euh, photoshop doesn't work on video :)

And indeed David, you can for sure motivate quite some men to go play with female flesh, but very few women ... who are the main target group here (I assume).

Lesson: New interactive marketing is not about simply plugging a microsite in your billboard campaign.

Vista in Second Life - getting closer

I'm truly proud of this project we are doing with Microsoft for the launch of Vista, and this is why:
The launch in Second Life perfectly illustrates what we mean with "New Marketing" at ONE Agency. The combined team of client and agency have joined the Second Life community to organize something unique and innovative. Rather then buying ourselves into the place, we offer the community a free concert, working together with existing community members, and that should (will) generate a positive vibe for the brand.

Read all the details about the launch on Miel's blog.

Spotzer: low price video advertising

Spotzer offers an online video library with which you can quickly produce video spots, at a low price. The system is integrated with a media distribution system allowing you to launch your spot on a number of sites.

It sounds like a "Long Tail" idea, allowing SME's to step into video advertising, but to me it sounds way too much like old markting on new media. But it guess there still a market for old skool advertising today.

Read about it on Emerce (in Dutch)

Global share of internet add spending grow to 8,6% in 2009

eMarketer publishes the results of a survey by ZenithOptimedia about the evolution of add spendings by channel. The title is "Online Ad Spending to Outpace Overall Ad Market Growth" and the subtitle too talks about a overproportional growth for online advertising. All good news for the evangelists of online advertising, but I found the numbers for online to rather low. Now, let's have a look at them in another perspective.

In 2006 online add spending is supposed to end at a 5,8% share, knowing that people spend largely over 20% of their media-time online. In three years time the online advertising share will, according to this study, be at 8,6%. But how much time will people spend online by then? Let's make a few assumptions:

1. "The Web" & stuff
Pure internet use as we know it today will grow, and let's assume it grows to the same level as time spent watching TV, about 30%. Considering the emergence of video on the web, this sounds logical. By this logic, the growth of online advertising as predicted by ZenithOptimedia simply follows the growth of the medium itself: about 50% in two years time. I don't believe this.
Online advertising is still in an infant stage. All players (advertisers, media, media planners & creative agencies) are working hard to find the right model, to become more professional and to grasp the real potential of the web. This must result in a disproportionate growth. So 8,6% in 2009? Make that 14% or so (gut feel).

2. What is TV?
How is TV defined in this context? IP TV, Internet TV, interactive TV through cable, etc. The traditional broadcast model is being challenged thanks to new technology which allow for interaction. Viewers become participants. This again requires new communication strategies which are much closer to what today is called online advertising then to traditional broadcast TV commercials. It would be an interresting exercise to try and quantify this evolution too in a survey.

3. And how mobile and games?
What about the third screen, and the game console? Playstation and Microsoft are stepping up their efforts in in-game advertising. Mobile devices, especially phones, are probably more important in time spent by the consumer then TV. Advertising on these devices is still developing, but in three years time a lot can happen.

In my opinion the 8,6% share for online in 2009 may reflect the share of 'traditional' online advertising, meaning banners of all kind. But we'll for sure add the same amount in new channels and new ways of using interactive media for marketing purposes. The world is to the creative and innovative, the revolution is on!

Confessions of a Jaffe groupy

Thank's Tom De Bruyne for calling me a Jaffy groupy :). I don't really consider myself a die-hard fan but last weekend in Gent at the "Stichting Marketing", Joseph delivered a great keynote speech. And it was not a simple re-hash of previous speeches. Of course a number of theme's come back all the time, but that's only logical. So I gladly accept to be called a Jaffe groupy today.

Here are some random highlights I noted down:

"Embrace the hate, fear the apathy and the indifference."

4 key drivers of what makes new marketing emerge:
- Broadband > In the sense of "always on"
- Wireless > Being mobile (in the toilet, travelling, etc.)
- Search > The ultimate opt-in, search happens on my terms (as a consumer)
- Network > Always connected to likeminded people

"Viral marketing is the lazy marketers' guide to new marketing."

And for the many people who have trouble understanding Joseph's South African accent combined with all the marketing newspeak, here is a small "Jaffe lingo for dummies":
- Second Life:
An online virtual world in which Joseph Jaffe started his agency called Crayon.
- Crayon: "Wascos"(in dutch), what kids use to color drawings.
- Crayola: The N°1 brand in for crayons in the US.
- Top of page: Showing up at the top of page of search results e.g. in Google
- Being above the fold: Same as of page, but high enough to be seen on a screen without having to scroll down. Refers to the fold of a letter you take out of an envelope.
- The funnel of trust: The long term process of winning consumer's trust
- The Tipping Point: Famous book by Malcom Gladwell who later wrote "Blink". The tipping point is the point at which things start spreading like a virus.
- The Wisdom of Crowds: another must-read book by James Surowiecki about how many people together are more intelligent then individuels.
- Web 2.0: Much disputed term for a number of new things happing online, ranging from technical gimmicks (e.g. Ajax) to the web as a catalyst for communities.
- Net Promotor Score: Another book to add to your library: The Ultimate Question. Jaffe explains the idea of net promotor score during his speech.
- Organicaly promoting a brand: Natural word of mouth, not induced by an award-mechanisme.
- Silent salesmen/women: People who organically promote your brand
- A million of my closest strangers: Today on the web people have very easy access to like-minded people, e.g. through a blog you can reach and influence many people without really knowing them.
- Lurker mode: Lurking means you read or listen in on a conversation (e.g. read blogs, listen to podcasts, etc.) without contributing yourself.
- Walk my talk: Not only talk about something but also do it in practice.
- Podshow: One of the leading "new media companies" mainly active in podcasting.
- Adam Curry: MTV VJ in the eighties, internet entrepreneur in the nineties and now considered the 'inventor' of podcasting ("The Podfather"). He's also the man behindshow together with Ron Bloom.
- Ron Bloom: Adam Curry's partner in crime at Podshow.
- Involvement and not interactivity: Take interactivity one step further, foreget about how many times people click, but consider what they are thinking when they click (or don't click).
- Tony Robbins: A well known motivational speaker.
- Comcast: A US Telco operator similar to Telenet in Belgium.
- VOD system: Video On Demand system
- Frappr: Cool website where you can stick yourself on a world map, try it out on this blog's Frappr map in the right column.
- A different ball of wax: Something completely different, similar to "A different ballgame".
- Mashup: A mix of different elements thus creating something new, can be a mashup of music, but also a mashup of internet services (e.g. a mashup of Google Maps and a list of houses for sales). Internet technology is ideally fit for creating online service mashups.

Here's where you can listen to the speech again and read more about the conference:
Joseph Jaffe at Stichting Marketing Keynote speech as a podcast
Stijn Vercamen covered the conference on De Standaard (in Dutch)
http://www.jaffejuice.com/

Later today I'll be writing up a summary of the conference for Digimedia .

I also had the opportunity to grab a few drinks with Joseph on thursday evening during the party at ONE. Robin Wauters from marketingblog.eu made some nice pics. And Joseph simply is a cool dude!

Joseph Jaffe discovers how difficult marketing through social networks can be ...

This is an interresting one. Joseph Jaffe -new marketing guru- has run into trouble with Adam Curry. He did an interview with Adam and Ron Bloom (they're the guys behind Podshow.com). He ran the first half of the interview in his podcast Across The Sound and then (quote) "held the second part hostage" untill Adam Curry would "give him some love" (read: "promote Jaffe's show") on the "Daily Source Code" (a much listened to podcast by Curry).

Adam responded in his typical way (half fun, half serious) and claimed back the right to use the second part of the interview untill (go listen to the podcast). I agree with Curry, Joseph's idea about keeping the interview hostage is fucking lame. But the story gets even better. Apparently Joseph sent Adam an apology of some kind, but Adam won't play it "for Joseph's own protection". A lot of negative reactions also towards Jaffe.

Looks like Joseph is running into a similar problem as Agency.com when they launched their failed atempt to leverage viral marketing in a pitch for Subway.

New marketing and social media, it's not all that easy. But if you ask me, it all comes down to common sense, being transparent and honest, and a minimum of emotional intelligence.