Today the people live in the network era, while lots of brands stick in the industrial age, relying on industrial strategies, tactics & metrics.
If brands dont want to loose touch with their customers they must stop walking the industrial walk and change the ways how they operate and communicate.
But how?
An answer is swirling around in bits and pieces, as lots of different, savvy people already shared interesting and inspiring thoughts about how brands should change.
We simply put those statements togehter to unfold the whole story.
AUDIENCE BEHAVIOR – Advertising, for the most part, works by appealing to people’s eyes and ears — 80% of all brand communication is audio or visual. And while mainstream ad media will probably always exist in people’s lives as mostly sight and sound, the way audiences make sense of their world is obviously a more holistic sensory experience. Taste is an important part of how people develop, well, their individual tastes and palates. Touch is how people connect with and attach to the physical world and affects people’s perceptions of value. And smell is an incredibly important part of memory and feelings, affecting people emotionally 75% more than any other sense. Admittedly, multisensory media can sound a bit Orwellian, and bad advertising is still bad advertising whether you’re seeing it or smelling it, but maybe in an increasingly audio/visual world, the ways brands let people touch, taste and smell will become even more meaningful.
BRAND BEHAVIOR – While marketers have embraced sensory branding in creating product and brand environments that engage all the senses, advertising still primarily relies on sound and sight. But with recall rates at an all-time low, a multisensory approach incorporating the other senses can help make a brand’s message more appealing and memorable. Using only sight and sound limits brands to a 2-D media world, but adding taste, touch and smell opens up a 5-D brand experience. However, brands must be careful not to overdo it or put sense over substance.
A BILLBOARD WITH TASTE
Instead of just talking about how good their chocolate tastes or showing an appealing visual, Thorntons Chocolate Company decided to actually let people try their product with an edible billboard. Thorntons created the world’s first chocolate billboard (just in time for Easter) consisting of ten massive chocolate bunnies, 72 giant chocolate eggs and 128 panels made of pure chocolate. People walking by were encouraged to sample pieces of the 860-lb. 14.5×9.5 foot billboard and have a literal taste of the product.
COLLATERAL YOU TOUCH
In Portugal, 4,500 new cases of breast cancer are detected annually. Roche, the world’s largest cancer-treating drug company, is raising curiosity and generating awareness regarding the importance of self-exams using stress balls with a “lump” inside and the message: “You don’t see breast cancer. You feel it. Do the self-exam.” By physically squeezing the ball, women were shown what to look for and just how vital self-exams are. There program has inspired a 22% increase in mammograms and 28% in hospital visits.
A COMMERCIAL YOU SMELL
Nivea was the first company to utilize scent to add a new dimension of realism to cinema advertising. As moviegoers watched a typical beach setting, the scent of suntan lotion filled the theater. The ad, ending with the line, “Nivea. The smell of summer.” engaged a sense that is always on. The scent tapped into people’s memory and invoked a psychological trigger that significantly increased the ad’s impact. Exit polls showed a 515% higher rate of recall compared to the same ad shown without the scent.
Berlin’s most original person has been revealed after 20,154 fans voted for him on behalf of adidas. Featuring audience participation on a large scale, the event symbolizes the closer relationship between brands, media and consumers. A total of more than 35,000 votes were registered during the search organised by adidas Originals in cooperation with the German edition of VICE magazine (as reported earlier).
Using an entertaining online platform, the operation challenged the public to select a candidate who would be invited to design an original adidas shoe. Although the search focused on the three hippest areas of town – Mitte, Friedrichshain and Prenzlauer Berg – more than 175,000 unique visitors joined in, choosing from profiles uploaded by contestants. Even the Art Director of TBWA\Berlin made it to number nine on the list!
The event clearly demonstrates how the rules of the game are changing. The client, the agency, the media and the audience worked together as a team. People love being involved in the creative process of their favourite brands.
Now the suspense is over: Quote (26) from Prenzlauer Berg is officially Berlin’s Most Original Personality. Thanks to the operation, adidas Originals has managed to get back onto the agenda of Berlin’s most original tribe without using intrusive advertising. Instead, it adopted an intelligent approach driven by the brand’s core idea and an understanding of how the target audience digests media.
The Media Arts Monday (MAM) by TBWA\Media Arts Lab for almost three years; mad-blog.com is re-publishing the MAM Top 10 by Eric Hanson and Frank Striefler.
AUDIENCE BEHAVIOR – Since we treat people like an audience, not just a consumer, it changes the way we think about how to create ideas for our brands. But at the same time it must also change the way we think about measuring these ideas — particularly with the growing significance of social media. Audiences are not just exposed to marketing messages. They react, reject, discuss, share, contribute, create — a ripple effect of responses that conventional models for measuring advertising effectiveness tend to ignore. To truly measure the impact of our ideas, we need to shift from campaign metrics to customer motivations, or what we like to call “audience currencies.” When an idea is passed along, it means people cared enough to pay attention. When an idea is spoofed on YouTube, it means audiences were compelled enough to act. When an idea is blogged about, it means audiences recognize a point of view. So start measuring what matters.
BRAND BEHAVIOR – The inherent measurability of “the click” has established the Web as the most quantifiable medium, which is why online initiatives tend to be more about driving response than about branding. But with the rapid growth of social media comes the challenge of measuring the new ways audiences are sharing advertisers’ messages and content, which cannot be done using traditional online metrics, like measuring ad exposures and click-through rates. Marketers need to realize that it’s a different game and that success looks different in the social-media space. Read more…
For an industry that traffics in trends, the fashion business is surprisingly old-fashioned. Its preferred methods of promoting its wares are the same as they were in the 1950s: glossy magazines and fashion shows. The latter are looking increasingly outmoded, especially as they often require willowy models to fly thousands of miles, leaving a carbon footprint bigger than the dresses they will be wearing on the catwalk.
But change is afoot on the Paris fashion scene. During the recent autumn/winter fashion shows, most of the action happened in showrooms. Clothes were examined by appointment. Some designers even chose to make videos of their collections.
The biggest event happened away from the catwalks, however, with the opening of a shop called Merci. Actually, this large space in the Marais district is more like an indoor market. Bernard and Marie-France Cohen, founders of successful children’s wear brand Bonpoint, are behind the retail experiment. The concept is simple: all the store’s profits after overheads are donated to a children’s charity in Madagascar. The couple made their fortune from kids and now they want to give something back. That’s why the store called “Merci”, you see?
This is no tatty charity outlet, though. Everything about the store is thoughtful and elegant. A café and second hand bookstore on one side of a quaint courtyard welcome visitors. Opposite are a florist and a corner devoted to perfumer Annick Goutal, where customers can refill their existing flacons for 40% off the usual retail price.
The real attraction, of course, is the fashion. Alongside vintage items, several luxury brands have agreed to design pieces and even entire collections exclusively for the store. They include Yves Saint Laurent, Stella McCartney and Maison Martin Margiela. And as everyone has waived profits, the items are much less expensive than they would be in the designers’ flagship outlets.
There are even whispers that designers have donated “personal items” to the selection of second hand and antique objects on sale upstairs.
Shop and feel good about it – what could be more now?
TBWA\EUROPE has put together a worldwide overview on Disruptions in retail, to learn more about the recent publication please email Caroline McGinn.
If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions please email Mark Tungate.
Merci can be found at 111 Boulevard Beaumarchais in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris.
Heineken’s walk-in fridge commercial not only entertained the fans of the Dutch beer brand: millions watched and shared the film on YouTube. Heineken’s success must have been so desirable that others joined in. Bavaria spoofed the walk-in fridge.
Let’s send a round of applause to the Heineken team for creating a piece of communication that actually became part of contemporary culture – and a reference even competitive brands try to leverage. Enjoy the spoof.
For decades the color of taxis in Germany was light beige. There was no exception. Law defined it. In 2004 these strict regulations were lifted and NIVEA simply used the still existing convention in the heads of people to get additional attention for NIVEA Sun self-tan lotion. They just mixed tanned taxis among all the pale ones.
If you have any comments or suggestions please email mad blog editorial team (team@mad-blog.com).
When the popular American sitcom Friends rose to fame in the UK in the late 90’s, the notion of a coffee shop being a centre point for social groups, gatherings, events and relaxing spaces sowed its first seed. Add to this, another American influence – Starbucks. In 1998, it had entered the UK market with 60 outlets. By 2005 it had opened 455stores.
Correspondingly, The total tea market in 2005 recorded a drop of 12% – from £707m in 1999 to £623m in 2004. Further, in 1997 there were just 778 branded coffee outlets in the UK, by 2005 that number had jumped to 2,428. Now, 80% of adults in the UK drink coffee every week.
Professor Leigh Sparks of the Institute of Retail Studies at Stirling University sums up this transformation effectively: “We’ve gone from a nation of tea-drinkers to a nation of coffee-drinkers in a decade.”
If we apply this to society, we can see that the little changes themselves become the habits that orchestrate the change.Every now and then soon becomes all the time, and because of these little stages, that happen fragment by fragment, it seems to be nothing dramatic. But with just the two facts, side by side without the year on year growths, that change is still a confounding one. The same as when a caterpillar emerges from its cocoon, it is unrecognisable as the creature it once was.
It is only by studying and seeing these little fragments of change that we can understand, or take part in, the bigger story. Any change, no matter how small, whether it is the flap of a butterfly’s wings, or the phrasing of a sentence, plays an active role in the big pictures that affect us all. In effect, transformation is only created by the small, tiny, silent changes occurring within it.
If you have any comments or suggestions please email European Intelligence Team (intelligence@mad-blog.com).
AUDIENCE BEHAVIOR – Advertising, for the most part, works by appealing to people’s eyes and ears — 80% of all brand communication is audio or visual. And while mainstream ad media will probably always exist in people’s lives as mostly sight and sound, the way audiences make sense of their world is obviously a more holistic sensory experience. Taste is an important part of how people develop, well, their individual tastes and palates. Touch is how people connect with and attach to the physical world and affects people’s perceptions of value. And smell is an incredibly important part of memory and feelings, affecting people emotionally 75% more than any other sense. Admittedly, multisensory media can sound a bit Orwellian, and bad advertising is still bad advertising whether you’re seeing it or smelling it, but maybe in an increasingly audio/visual world, the ways brands let people touch, taste and smell will become even more meaningful.
Using an entertaining online platform, the operation challenged the public to select a candidate who would be invited to design an original adidas shoe. Although the search focused on the three hippest areas of town – Mitte, Friedrichshain and Prenzlauer Berg – more than 175,000 unique visitors joined in, choosing from profiles uploaded by contestants. Even the Art Director of TBWA\Berlin made it to number nine on the list!
AUDIENCE BEHAVIOR – Since we treat people like an audience, not just a consumer, it changes the way we think about how to create ideas for our brands. But at the same time it must also change the way we think about measuring these ideas — particularly with the growing significance of social media. Audiences are not just exposed to marketing messages. They react, reject, discuss, share, contribute, create — a ripple effect of responses that conventional models for measuring advertising effectiveness tend to ignore. To truly measure the impact of our ideas, we need to shift from campaign metrics to customer motivations, or what we like to call “audience currencies.” When an idea is passed along, it means people cared enough to pay attention. When an idea is spoofed on YouTube, it means audiences were compelled enough to act. When an idea is blogged about, it means audiences recognize a point of view. So start measuring what matters.
But change is afoot on the Paris fashion scene. During the recent autumn/winter fashion shows, most of the action happened in showrooms. Clothes were examined by appointment. Some designers even chose to make videos of their collections.
When the popular American sitcom Friends rose to fame in the UK in the late 90’s, the notion of a coffee shop being a centre point for social groups, gatherings, events and relaxing spaces sowed its first seed. Add to this, another American influence – Starbucks. In 1998, it had