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.

Investing in Desirability

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 — desirability, coolness, cutting-edgeness, or a particular shift in strategic positioning — that can be a monster boon for a vendor. Because nothing sells like customers talking about you. Nothing!. It makes the vendor’s life a lot easier, more efficient… and can make marketing a lot less expensive. It’s worth investing in desirability.

Vendor's Dream

“Creative Risk” … Seeking Ideas and Data

I’m slated to give a talk at Gild International in Barcelona in December on the topic of Creative Risk. My thesis is pretty straightforward: the more competition you have, the more creative you have to be to get noticed and win.

Playing with the theme of risk, I’m planning to take a quick look at the types of risk investors (especially VC investors) think about when looking at companies to back (or not). I’ll then introduce a less-talked about type of risk: creative risk—basically how adept a management team is at leveraging creativity to win. I created the little graphic above for the talk. I might adjust as I get feedback and refine my thinking.

Any thoughts are much appreciated. I’m looking in particular for cases with data… examples of companies that have taken creative risks to stand out. Examples I’m playing with right now are:

• DoubleTwist’s placing of a highly competitive ad ON an Apple store — and their handling of the fallout.
• Mixx using creatiivty in their user interface to fight against competitors — and what appears to be some success in their usage numbers.
• I’ll look at how Microsoft has chosen to deploy creativity more now that they are seeing real competition from Apple — and how some think this is bad idea.

Either leave comments or mail me at barak@rassak.com

Thanks so much

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!

If Decline Had a Window Display

"Decline" could not have a more apt window display

Guru of gurus Theodore Levitt once wrote of “marketing myopia”… a condition in which CEOs don’t see the broad set of opportunities around them. The cure — seeing one’s company differently — can mean growing into more markets. Not broadening one’s horizons, however, can seriously hurt and even kill a company. The classic  example are the buggy whip manufacturers who were so focused on their market they did not see the opportunities (or ultimately the threat) of automobiles to their businesses.

I spent the weekend in Venice… a truly, truly beautiful city—but one in which you can almost taste decline. Tourism does well there as an industry–something like 20 m visitors pass thru per annum. However the local population is dwindling. Locals now number an astonishingly miniscule 60,000. That’s half than it was 40 years ago. A local housing official has said there will be nobody living there by 2046 and that Venice will become Europe’s Disneyland—all visitors, no real inhabitants. The implication being that Venice—once the center of an important empire—needs to look at itself differently.

One glaring image of decline (corporate decline) caught my eye on the beautiful Piazza san Marco: an Olivetti typewriter store.

It was so gorgeous in its time that it’s  elegance is still present even as the store stands empty and dusty.  An electric cable hangs unplugged and unattached to any device in a window.

A designer for “decline” could not have made a more apt window display.

Here are some snaps (click them for detail). The final ones of a row of red payphones — taken just a few feet away from the shop — struck me as ironic on a couple of levels.

One, Olivetti is now part of the large Telecom Italia, owner of the payphones. So Olivetti lives and is making products for our times—but it lives within a company  that also must be VERY careful of marketing myopia.

Two, the blurry old man is not using the payphone. He was looking for change left behind. He found none.

Flatteryspam

Flattery has it’s uses. I’ll admit that. But for it to work it had better be genuine — not just an empty, meaningless compliment. Here are a couple examples of flattery that, well, just come up flat. It’ll get these people nowhere (at least with me).

The first is an example of a new kind of spam that’s been showing up lately at this blog—in the comments. It is hardly ever caught by the spam filter. This means I have to read it to decide whether to approve it for publishing or not. The first couple of times I was almost fooled.. but the language is almost always the same. I don’t understand the strategy behind such spam… if I figure it out I’ll let you know. [Update ... spammer strategy: if a blogger approves the comment then the link in the comment to the spammer's website helps increase that spammer's search rankings]

I don’t know If I said it already but …Cool site, love the info. I do a lot of research online on a daily basis and for the most part, people lack substance but, I just wanted to make a quick comment to say I’m glad I found your blog. Thanks, :)

A definite great read..Tony Brown

Here’s another example… this is a money-making venture built on flattery–with a dose of faux-officialdom thrown in. And I bet it will work for them but I’m afraid I’m not going for it. Rassak just received this email from the “Board of Review” of the “U.S. Commerce Association” with the rather fancy (sounding!) address of 2020 Pennslyvania, Ave in Washington DC. Here’s part of the email I got:

I am pleased to announce that Rassak Experience has been selected for the 2009 San Francisco Award in the Marketing Consulting Services category by the US Commerce Association.

In recognition of your achievement, a 2009 San Francisco Award has been designed for display at your place of business. You may arrange to have your award sent directly to Rassak Experience by following the simple steps on the 2009 San Francisco Award order form. Simply copy and paste this link into your browser to receive your award:

Each year, the US Commerce Association (USCA) identifies companies that we believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and community.

We’re then offered one of two awards (the “crystal” one is more than 8 inches tall.. cool!!!). And for just $199 (a reduced price, mind you) we can buy both awards.

I'll definitely go for this offer... one award for the SF office, one for the BCN office :-)

Shorter is Sweeter (And Smarter) — The Proof

When communicating, make your point early. While you still have your audience's attention.

Just one of the many brilliant things about digital branding/communications/advertising and the like is that the results are so easy to measure.  We look at a lot of results data at Rassak–and often use it to improve things, even on the fly. But the data is often proprietary and unshareable.  I thought I’d share one interesting tidbit with you from some personal communications I put out on the web last week. Nobody can yell at me (except me) for sharing this.

Last week was the week leading up to the Jewish new year AKA Rosh Hashana  (in fact it is actually today… so if I were an observant Jew I would not by typing right now!). I’ve traditionally made a new year greeting and sent it via email to people who I think would be interested in the week before the holiday. Even though my greetings have been in video format for a few years, this time I decided to upload the video to YouTube and share it that way.

Once the video is seen a minimum number of times, YouTube gives you back viewing data — demographics, etc. One of my favorites is the “hotspot” data. This data compares your video to other videos of similar length — and shows where people, on average, tend to leave your video.

My new year video, is about one and half minutes long. You can see, in the image above, where people begin to get a bit antsy. This data is based on about 900 or so views on YouTube.  If you like, you can check out my  video for yourself here. And happy new year!

Now.. not all videos (of course) have the same graph. Here’s a cool video of a guy explaining hotspots.. and he shows some of his graphs.

RIP Frank Batten: An Early New Media Adopter

Frank Batten, creator of The Weather Channel, died at age 82 yesterday.

What an incredibly vibrant and experiment-to-win company he created!

It’s perhaps a bit hard to imagine cable TV as new media now–but every media was new once! The idea of putting the weather (that thing that everybody talks about ) on TV and making it work was a bold move.

When  I worked at Wink Communications in the mid-1990s, The Weather Channel was one of the very first to experiment with our then-new interactive television technology. They were really early on the web too.  I’m not close to the company anymore, but I can bet they are already looking long past what is currently considered the newest media phase/trends — social, mobile, etc.

Batten’s book, The Weather Channel, The Improbable Rise of a Media Phenomenon is a really good read about enterpreneurship, being human and media innovation. Check it out if you can.