Getting consumers to create ads was BIG in 2007, peaking with a slew of such ads shown in the almighty Super Bowl of that year. But, it is still alive and kicking in 2008. In fact one of the Bowl advertisers that ran consumer generated fare last year, Doritos, now has claim to what might be the cheapest ad ever made.
The ad for Doritos in the UK was made for just over $12 by Matt Bowron and John Addis and isn’t half bad.
I feel guilty about not blogging for a few weeks - Richard has his mind on other things (his new book, 2011, is on the shelves of bookstores everywhere) and I’ve just been, well, busy, and a little lazy, but mostly busy. I gave a keynote speech at the Retail Advertising & Marketing Association’s annual conference in Sonoma a couple of weeks ago. I was hot! No, really, I was very hot. It was because of the freakishly warm weather with temperatures creeping above 100 degrees. It was a great session though. Lots of very thoughtful and switched-on senior marketers from the retailing industry, struggling from the demands of their jobs in a tough economic environment. We talked through the Punk Marketing Manifesto and everyone there seemed to get it and buy into it. But, what really got them excited were some simple tips I’d put together on the things they could do the very next day that they got back into their offices to raise the bar of their marketing. They’re just simple ideas really, that are the first baby steps on the way to big change. Things they could do under the radar without having to change the whole of their marketing…just yet.
Here they are:
1. DON’T OUTSOURCE ALL OF THE CREATIVITY TO YOUR AGENCIES. IT NEEDS TO BE PART OF EVERY DECISION WE MAKE ON A DAILY BASIS. IT’S NOT TRUE YOU ARE EITHER BORN CREATIVE OR NOT. IT’S LIKE A MUSCLE – THE MORE YOU USE IT, THE STRONGER IT’LL GET, AND BOY IT’LL FEEL GOOD!
2. SIT DOWN WITH A SOME OF YOUR TEAM AND LIST OUT THE CONVENTIONS OF YOUR SECTOR, THEN THINK OF WAYS TO TURN THEM ON THEIR HEADS (NOT YOUR TEAM, THE CONVENTIONS)!
3. GET TOGETHER A SMALL GROUP OF YOUR SMARTEST PEOPLE FROM INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE ORGANIZATION. GO SOMEWHERE FUN, LIKE A BEACH CLUB. ASK THEM TO HELP YOU THINK THROUGH ONE THING YOUR STORES CAN BE THE BEST IN THE CATEGORY AT – MAKE IT VERY SPECIFIC AND ACTIONABLE (NOT BEST AT CUSTOMER SERVICE – IT’S TOO VAGUE!). THE NEXT DAY START PUTTING THAT INTO PLACE. MAYBE IT’S THE BEST WAY OF SAYING GOODBYE TO YOUR GUESTS – A NICE PIECE OF CANDY ETC.
4. PICK ONE STORE AND SET UP A CONTEST THERE FOR 10 OF YOUR STAFF AND OUTSIDE PARTNERS (INCLUDE PEOPLE FROM THAT STORE). MAKE IT LIKE “THE APPRENTICE” – SPLIT THE GROUP INTO TWO TEAMS AND SET THEM A SALES TARGET FOR THE DAY, THE WINNERS TO GET A GREAT DINNER SOMEWHERE. THE NEXT MONTH DO IT IN ANOTHER STORE.
5. PICK ANOTHER STORE AND GET THE STAFF TO DO SOMETHING AMAZING AND WONDERFUL IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD. WHEN IT’S DONE REWARD THE STAFF THEN ASK OTHER STORES TO DO THEIR OWN INDIVIDUAL COMMUNITY PROGRAM. DON’T DO ANY PR UNTIL YOU’VE DONE 10 OF THEM.
6. DEFINE YOUR ENEMY – NOT THE OBVIOUS SUCH AS YOUR IMMEDIATE COMPETITOR, BUT AN ATTITUDE. HINT: APPLE’S ENEMY ISN’T REALLY THE PC, IT’S “SAMENESS” OR “DULLNESS.” NOW DRAW UP A BATTLE PLAN TO COMBAT IT.
7. ASK YOURSELF: “AM I A GOOD CLIENT TO MY AGENCY? DO I SET THEM CLEAR GOALS AND GIVE THEM THE FREEDOM TO COME BACK WITH INTERESTING SOLUTIONS?” IF NOT, TALK TO ME ABOUT WAYS TO IMPROVE. IF SO, AND THE WORK YOU’RE SEEING STILL ISN’T GREAT, THEN TALK TO ME ABOUT FINDING A NEW AGENCY.
8. INVEST THEM IN THE BUSINESS. FIRST ASK THE AGENCY TEAM TO EACH WORK IN YOUR STORES FOR ONE WEEK AND COME BACK WITH SUGGESTIONS ON HOW TO IMPROVE THE BUSINESS AND SOME CONSUMER INSIGHTS GOT FIRST HAND.
9. GIVE THE AGENCY A SMALL EXPERIMENTAL BUDGET (SAY $50K) TO USE TO COME UP WITH INNOVATIVE MARKETING IDEAS THAT YOU PROMISE NOT TO INTERFERE MUCH WITH. IT’LL MAKE THEM FEEL EXCITED AND MOTIVATED.
10. MAKE YOUR AGENCY PART OF THE WHOLE PROCESS. SET THEM BIGGER PROBLEMS AND THEY’LL COME BACK WITH BIGGER SOLUTIONS.
Hi. It’s Richard, half the equation of our Punk Marketing world. I’ve just released “2011: Trendspotting” from the great McGraw-Hill. Here is the link so go buy a copy. This book is 77 tiny chapters on just how much is going to happen ONCE we get out of this era of mediocrity. And it teaches people how to be “trend spotters” without futurists having to do it for you!
Portfolio magazine said this about it (they loved the darn thing).
And now the news. I have been thinking a lot about “slap of fame” that hits a lot of us in our lives and how it is SOOOOO much better than “brushes with greatness” or just seeing a star and telling our close pals.
This sample are the kind of words you’ll find in my new one (though below is original work):
Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for a star.” -radio era comedian Fred Allen
In the coming years, insubstantial moments where you come upon someone famous must be lessened in importance. Please stop thinking those Brushes With Greatness (”I saw X picking his nose at Olive Garden!”) make you whole.
Take my nonstop colorful buddy — let’s call her Martha — who once sat behind Kate Hepburn at a Broadway matinee and tapped her on a shoulder to ask her what the longevity was about. “Chocolate, my dear,” came the remark she’ll tell to this day.
BWG is over. Instead, let’s talk about utterly useless moments of personal fame that charge us up. “This paltry thing, our life,” as Ouisa Kittredge claims in John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation, is nothing more than fantastic vignettes to tell our friends! The way I see it, though, the tale that trumps all is when we stumble upon fame — by accident! Let’s look at times when as though by fate, we’re plucked from obscurity to become known to the masses.
Yeah, well, for a few days, anyway.
We live for the movies, TV and the “the-at-ah” — watching, talking about, and living amongst. A regular guy gets his face on the screen (or standing in real life) and everyone chatters. Here are funny examples — some from my own days in the sun.
* Inside “Annie Hall”: An older lady I met in a manicurist shop looked like Diane Keaton so I told her and she cracked up. “Remember the scene where Annie [Keaton] and Alvy Singer [Woody Allen] sleep together but he won’t let her get high so she leaves the bed and watches?” It turned out the woman in the bed with Allen was the lady from the manicurist’s, who was an artist The Woodman discovered and asked to play along. You know, 1976 was a world away from the CGI capabilities of today so a stand-in was needed. Today they’d just shoot Diane in both places. I asked the artist how it felt to be used in such a way. “Marvelous. I love seeing it.” I admit I’ve checked it out a few times since. You’d recognize her on the street.
* Inside “Manhattan”: An acquaintance’s wife had a torrid affair with Woody Allen while in her teens and a few years later got outed in Allen’s black-and-white classic. Since the 70s people have looked her up and asked what the fuck? She explains that while art imitates life, this was just a rip-off!
*Inside “Saturday Night Live”: Remember that copy-guy character The Richmeister, who added a suffix to everyone’s name in the most loserish way? “Hey! How’s the Samster today?” Well the copy-guy’s name was…yep…Richard “Lermer”. I know how this transpired, but the telling was not as uproarious as the calls I got asking me how Rob Schneider knew me. [If you want the copy-guy story about an SNL writer and a too long article I wrote for the Chicago Tribune on “Late Night with David Letterman,” write me at richard@laermer.com. Not for the blogosphere–not yet.]
* Inside “Woodstock”: The Movie: I once had this oddball accountant, Jeff Something, who blabbered all the time about his days at the Woodstock Festival. I didn’t believe him since everyone claimed same. And this dude was EIGHT YEARS OLD in 1969! But he had proof that no one but CSNY possessed. In a scene from the documentary Woodstock, you can see a chubby child version of Jeff dancing in the mud! Talk about an historic moment for the cable archives!
* Inside Manhattan Cable “Public Access”: This one proves how even in pre-Internet era any concept of privacy was laughable. A guy I know, some comedian, used to tape a show for Channel 35 back in the 20th century where he interviewed people along the street in the Village. My pal, let’s call her Martha since I only have one friend, was flying down Bleecker Street when Comic Fellow’s camera accosted her. “No — I’m way too busy right now” she yelled, with rude aplomb, as she swatted him away. It was sensational — proving to anyone that this busy talk was a doth-protest-too-much act. In years to come the thing got replayed ad nausea and she got hundreds of chiding calls saying “Was that you acting all self-important?” I love this woman for her audacity.
The lesson: fame teaches us about ourselves.
* Inside the Perverted Mind of Tennessee Williams: I was a big theatergoer before every show became cheap revival fodder. Theater is the bastard stepchild of art in this nation and brings fame to regular folks in an eclectic (screwy) way. Because of proximity we overhear celebs — I once listened to Carol Channing discussing Kathleen Turner’s drinking problem with a pal during intermission at Eric Bogosian’s “Sex, Drugs & Rock and Roll.” Long-lasting dinner fodder!
My bizarre moment with Tennessee made gossip rags - people were in hysterics — when I was in my late teens and ushered at a now-defunct Manhattan stager while sort of attending college.
The company was preparing the premier of Williams’ “Something Cloudy, Something Clear,” a biographical ditty about a boy crush of the playwright’s. I watched every rehearsal, dumbfounded by the writer’s sense and sensibilities, and struck by how charming and flirtatious he was with everyone.
There I was, on opening night, strolling down the aisle with the audience peering, critics and my parents watching me as a nervous Laermer ushered the great one. I handed him the Playbill™, exclaiming innocuously, “Another time for you, I guess, huh?”
He grabbed my chin in a most dramatic way and sighed with the dirtiest grin plausible: “Oh, why do I have to wait so long?”
Then I lived through an embarrassing audience moment during the First (interminable) Preview of AL Webber’s “Cats” when the audience was totally perplexed by what the hell was going on. Remember critics and crowds hadn’t pounced and proclaimed it the…meow. All we saw were a bunch of performers in cat uniforms perching on our laps singing breathlessly about feline forlorn memories. Then a silence while the audience waited patiently. I was fed up, though, and cocked my head to my confused companion with an unexpectedly loud “Nu?”
Everyone, cats included, had a laugh with fingers pointing. The Daily News ran my comment the next day. Like it mattered! While I detested the stink those critters caused the monster became the longest-running stage show since “Hamlet.” Me? I became the longest-running mouth in New York.
We love us some fame. Still there are those who bitch about it. In 1990 singer emeritus George Michael was quoted in the LA Times saying he refused to appear in any videos for his long-delayed follow-up to the zillion-selling “Faith.” He claimed “all this fame” had screwed with his head and he was “just sick of it.” Soon after the LAT published a Letter to the Editor from Frank Sinatra who said (I paraphrase): “You know what, George? Hate fame so much? Do us a favor and quit.”
Fame has its detractors who are liars waiting for it to appear or return. For most it’s a Paris Hilton-like accident or undeserved in a headshaking way. But isn’t it always funny?
*****Stories like this are all over “2011: Trendspotting” - buy it from McGraw-Hill. And read the free stuff at Laermer.com!
Thought experiment time.
Pretend for a moment that the nation’s publishers met Godfather-style in a smoke-filled room somewhere high atop midtown Sixth Avenue. Everyone is there: The Random House overlords; the Simon & Schuster bosses; the charming and benevolent folk who run McGraw-Hill. All the other bigwigs. In the corner there’s a nice dairy tray with lox and whitefish, but no one’s paying attention to that. The business at hand is way too life and death. The industry heads agree – yes, they’ve been flooding the marketplace with too many books. Too many authors for too many niches and too few eyes.
So they’ve reached a decision. They’re tightening the reins and establishing what amounts to a basement. Let the Internet have its laissez faire free-for-all. That’s what it’s intended for, damn it. But the ink-and-binding set will move in the opposite direction: only credentialed, worthy writers get to publish under commercial banners. Word tumbles down to the editorial gatekeepers that, yes, or rather no, there will be no more taking chances on just anyone’s two bit thesis. Err on the side of exclusion. If something looks like it should be relegated to the vanity presses, it should.
“We can’t afford to take chances on a slush pile’s silt. The draw bridges are rising up, and we’re taking the express elevator to the upper floors of our ivory tower.”
So here’s the question: is there anything wrong with this?
Sure it’s elitist. But we’re evolving into a culture that can allow for a healthy dose of selective elitism when needed. You aren’t Spielberg? So what. Throw that video of your toddler angrily dropping Fuck-words on the family cat onto YouTube. If it’s compelling, a few million people will watch it. Or maybe they’ll prefer your neighbor’s video of Grandpa belching out the national anthem.
But you’ll be better off, either way, because the chance of someone in Singapore seeing your adventures in auteurism is much higher than if you decided to try for a dozen years to secure foreign distribution through Universal.
It’s an extreme and not completely analogous example, but there’s truth to it. Despite all those fancy technological advancements and truncated attention spans leading publishing gradually down the path to the dinosaur graveyard, books matter. They still have cachet. Having your name on the spine right above Knopf or St. Martin’s or Penguin-Putnam still means something to *you as a writer (*did I say me?).
But walk into any Barnes & Noble and look on those overflowing tables. Just gander at some of the people “playing author” right now. It’s one thing to be an expert in a particular field and have a little assistance, whether from a ghostwriter or a co-author, like many in business do. But some of these books are midlife crises with acknowledgments, an index and a marketing budget.
Just because you’re good at one thing, doesn’t mean that you’re a natural in another. It seems true in the book biz. Some people have compelling stories that should be told. Most people do not. And the filters are broken.
There’s a reason we call them vanity presses. They appeal to those self-absorbed bits of every person’s soul, or the bulbs that light whenever you pick up Tolstoy and murmur with your eyes ablaze, “Shit. I could do that.” So go ahead. Publish. Do it independently. Write up your masterpiece, put it on Amazon or in the back of your van, and take it to the people at a state fair. If it’s good it’ll sell—you just have to make them open it up.
The home-schooled child who wrote that dragon book proved just that. More likely, what you wrote is really just for your friends and associates…it’s not good and will not sell. At which point . . . think about giving up. Because just like it’s not every morning a shower karaoke balladeer winds up on Sony BMG, not every halfwit who can “keyboard” (type) and spare time to jot it down, should wind up clogging an already ridiculously congested publishing pipeline.
[I will add that just because you aren’t a pro writer doesn’t mean you need to stop reading books and posting fantastic blog comments….]
Here’s the idea. When you go to hulu.com, the website set up by NBC Universal and Newscorp to compete with YouTube, to watch a video clip you can choose what ad you want to watch with it. “You want a sports coupe ad with that clip from the Office, sir? Or perhaps you’re more in the market for a SUV? Let me get that for you straight away.” Hmm.
“It’s choose-your-own-adventure advertising,” enthuses Jean-Paul Colaco, Hulu’s ad guy quoted in today’s Financial Times. Yeah, JP, it’s a veritable adventure. One bad car ad over another, that’s real consumer control. He recognizes that online vid viewers (OVVs) get bugged by having to watch the same old “pre-roll” ad at the for the first 15 seconds of the video and hence the solution - a nod towards relevant content (rather than simply, you must be a young adult if you’re watching this stuff so we’ll plop an ad for a product targetd to you lot before the real entertainment begins).
But it is just a nod. And is a very blunt way of targeting. The viewers won’t, for instance, be able to forgo watching the an ad altogether; they can just choose from a very limited selection which one to play.
If they want to see the damned clip, they have to just grin and bear watching the godawful ad too! Got it?
YouTube’s approach, announced a couple of months ago, is a little different. There will be overlay ads on the bottom quarter of the video screen which viewers can expand to fill the whole screen or, thankfully, block out altogether.
This is better than forcing people to watch the ads, but is still a far from perfect solution; one that uses the medium as the interactive experience it should be. I always loved “Pop-Up Video” on VH1 - you know, the music video show in which trivial facts about the videos popped up as they played - and now dream that online video could do the same thing. For online video the pop-ups wouldn’t come up automatically - as, on a screen that small they would obscure the whole picture and only doesn’t irritate on much repeated content, such as music videos you’ve seen a hundred times before - but would pop up if you, the viewer, decided you wanted to know more: more about the character, the production or maybe even the stuff (aka “the products”) shown. Rolling the mouse over the cool car in the clip could give you a price and some specs, perhaps mention a promotion or invite you to click for a test drive.
Thing is, that technology is available now (see the demos on videoclix.com), it’s just that using it would take too much effort for advertisers to individualize the pop-ups to each different video. They like a one-size-fits all approach, treating the audience as one homogenous demographic, rather than recognizing that in this new Punk world marketers need to customize their messages.
Oh well, I’ll keep dreaming, and probably avoid altogether watching the online videos with pre-roll ads.
