Rassak’s Law: Creativity and Competition

Over the years Rassak has helped a bunch of companies solve sticky problems through creative communications. So when I was invited to present to a group of business execs and investors at Gild International in Barcelona last week, I thought Creativity itself would an interesting topic. Big thanks to Saar Gur,  David Hornik, and Steve Reale for the great ideas to prep for this talk. I wish I could’ve used all your examples.

BTW, if the bit in the video about “brutal editing” in the creative process speaks to you… it’s a theme I have spent some time on in this blog. See Editing Engineers, What’s In a Word?, Less is More, and Where Blood Tasted of Blood and Honey of Honey.

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Investing in “Je Ne Sais Quoi” … It Pays To Be (Perceived as) Cool.

Check out this screengrab of the website of Rentokil Initial. I circled one of their news items. It is THEY who are announcing that they will be using a vendor’s product (in this case Google Apps). Often vendors fight just to even be allowed to mention that somebody is using their product… but when a customer perceives that an association with a vendor brings them something… even if it is a certain “je ne sais quoi” … that makes the vendor’s life a lot easier, more efficient… and makes marketing a lot cheaper. The implication is it’s worth investing in a little “je ne sais quoi”. It pays to be (perceived as) cool… or cutting edge.. or i don’t know, something!

Vendor's Dream

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Great Stunt Gives Sinking Feeling

Great marketing stunts don’t happen that often. They are the marriage of attention-getting wizardry and clear, simple communications. They are like brilliantly executed ads — that don’t have to be paid for.

This week the government of the Maldives pulled a great stunt. The Maldives are a chain of more than one thousand islands  — and 80% of its land is just one meter (about three feet) above sea level. Rising water levels aren’t an academic discussion there.  The government really wants to draw attention to the problem.

Their idea: hold a cabinet meeting UNDERWATER.

I hope it's ok I'm using this pic... click it to get to the original article.

It got the point across and got them noticed. The Maldives hunky president Mohamed Nasheed had this to say in the BBC: “What do we hope to achieve? We hope not to die. I hope I can live in the Maldives and raise my grandchildren here.”

BTW… here’s a great photo of the event.

Of course this week had another event that, authorities at least, are calling a publicity stunt. The “balloon boy” incident shows how it’s not that hard to draw attention… but drawing attention and communicating clearly at the same time, that’s the trick!

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A Book Publisher Feels the Web

Check out this nice little video promoting the kids book group at HarperCollins—and highlighting some of their titles. It’s a nice example of an old-line old media company dipping their toes into emerging media — and using content in smart ways to market themselves. This doesn’t feel like a top-down corporate thing… most likely some young’uns who feel the web in their daily lives had an idea to make a video and put it on YouTube. (If this is a pro job by a  guerilla marketing specialist, I don’t know about it). I felt the ending to be a little anticlimactic … but let’s hope this is just the beginning. More commentary after you watch.

I’m sure the people in the video are not joking when they say most people asked whether they had nothing better to do. And I believe their answer: “no.” Print publishing marketers are notoriously old school, even as digital media threatens them as marketers and in the core of their business. Even if the people who made this video had something better to do in the immediate term (like, I don’t know, file an expense report) I’d argue that this sort of activity is more important than almost anything. The ability to pique interest in a products/brands/companies is hard. Really hard. It gets harder over time. And it gets almost impossible when the old ways of doing it are disrupted by new ways — and the people in charge, like the slowly boiling frog, have no clue until it is too late.

Thanks to 100 Scope Notes … where I first saw the video. BTW, if you guys make another.. keep up the opera. Nice.

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Google Ties it Together: Billboards That Change Daily, Twitter (Of Course) … Plus Paper and Thumbtacks

Here’s an ad/marketing campaign from Google worth studying. It’s for their Google Apps product. Apps, for those of you who haven’t tried it, are the web-based version (basically) of the ubiquitous Microsoft Office.*

I feel the messaging on the campaign that I’ve seen so far could be tighter, clearer. But it’s certainly OK. What’s is really smart about this campaign is that is  nicely integrated (fancy marketing speak for “tying various elements and media together”). It uses traditional billboards in strategic locations… but does something interesting with it to generate attention (the billboard will change every day for a month) …

… it leverages Twitter as a viral distribution platform

… plus (via this website) Google is attempting to leverage paper and thumbtacks as a viral distribution platform The site calls on converts to do “internal marketing” on their behalf with things like flyers for tacking up on cubicles. Here’s one:

The "spread the word" website allows converts to print these and paste 'em up

* Of course ubiquity is a fickle beast— my kids (a sample of the future population) use Google Apps (email, word processing, chat, etc.) almost exclusively for their school work. Although… my eldest son, who just got a netbook for his birthday, IS asking for PowerPoint on it.

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This Ad Campaign Won’t Be The Thing To Save Them Now… But It Might Help You

If you are a CIT employee, exec, customer or lender (am i forgetting anybody? oh yes, investors, though they saw a 70!! percent bump Friday) these cannot be easy days. The 101-year old lender to small businesses might file for bankruptcy on Monday. If that happens, it’ll be the fifth largest such filing in US history, per the Wall Street Journal.

Given my job I probably should remember a lot more ad campaigns than I do. The fact is I don’t remember very many at all. But I do remember one from CIT. I would actually look forward! to seeing the ads in the New Yorker — even the repeats. It was a really nice example of engaging, interesting, informative advertising — “content”  or stories really.  It wasn’t earth-shattering…  in fact it was a pretty basic idea of profiling customers. Somehow they did a good job choosing a mix of customers to profile. They were good storytellers. And they really dug into it with them. The straight-up print ads (which unfortunately I can’t get a hold of to show you here) were particularly engaging.

Here is where the campaign lived online: Check it out while you can here.

There are probably many lessons to learn about what CIT did wrong… but this one is something they did right.

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Making Lemonade

I have been on vacation and, um, not exactly blogging. You might call this a “transition” blog post… a way to get my mind from sun and chill … back onto work.

One place we stayed on our trip was a youth hostel in Lisbon– a funky (the good funky) spot that felt a bit more like a boutique hotel than a youth hostel. I have not been in a youth hostel in a loooong time. My wife pointed out it was a “look into the past for the parents and a look into the future for the kids”.

Anyway… the hostel is very tall.. and no elevator. And we were on the very tippy top floor. LOTS of steep stairs.

Instead of apologizing for this, the hostel turned it into a positive … using fun words to keep you going and feeling welcome.  For example:

calories per stair

encouraging

top floor (BTW, 1 Euro beers are a real positive too!)

The tallness is part of their identity … they seem to love it and make guests love it too.  The hostel, if you’re interested, is Good Night Hostel.

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Digital Threat #4: Shooting Yourself in the Foot

I gave a talk (link in Spanish) in Barcelona the other day in which one of my slides contained the following graphic.

My point was that while the digital era is bursting with opportunities (a number of which I outlined and which I will post here in video form once I get the files back), it’s also filled with THREATS. And that it’s quite possible to get f–ked by digital technology. I outlined three threats:

Threat #1:  There are so many more messages being put in front of customers now—and this is greatly accelerated by digital… so it’s just tougher, by the numbers, to be noticed.

Threat #2: Customers can get hold of a range of “tune-out” technologies so that they never even see your message.

Threat #3: Your competitors might well be getting savvy at leveraging digital to connect with customers … and as they get smarter and smarter at it, well you know where that leaves you

I just recently came across what you might call Threat #4: being kinda lame!

I’ve been loving the creative and competitive energy in the Mac vs. PC wars. Microsoft is really going for it with their strong Laptop Hunters campaign in which they ping Apple on price.

But here’s what I saw the other day when I tried to watch one of Microsoft’s ads online. Click the image for actual-size frustration.

I have a bit of sympathy for Microsoft. They have many competing goals … a number of which play out in this screenshot. One group wants you to buy PCs which means you buy more Microsoft Windows. Yet another group wants you to install their Silverlight software … so you must install it to see the ad. Then you have some third group that decides to conduct a survey on the site with another popup window!

The resultant experience is in NO WAY more than a sum of its parts.

Here are a couple of the videos in the Mac vs PC wars… you decide for yourself whether it’s worth the effort to watch the Microsoft ad: Lauren (Microsoft) vs. Megan (Apple).

BTW, some believe Microsoft shouldn’t be engaging Apple in this game at all. That they should stick to their software.

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