Archive for the 'Advertising' Category

The Financial Times reported yesterday that Apple is considering launching an “all you can eat” iTunes service that would allow customers to get unlimited access to the iTunes library in exchange for their paying a premium for iPods and iPhones. This mirrors Nokia’s “comes with music” offer the Finnish company announced last December in which folks will be able to get all of Universal Music library of music by paying a premium on top of the price of a Nokia phone. The FT reported that Apple might also be examining a subscription service in which iPhone customers pay a monthly charge as part of their phone bill to get unlimited access to iTunes tunes.

What’s interesting about this is that Apple is proving itself once again to be adept at shifting and innovating as the market moves. Rather than simply sticking to the business model that has made them the most successful seller of music downloads (by far), the black turtle-necked one has recognized that being the biggest in ANYTHING is no guarantee of future success. Consumers don’t like being taken for granted and if something new and shiny comes along, such as unlimited music, they might easily be tempted to dump their iPods or iPhones in favor of a cool new Nokia phone that gives it to them. And data shows that consumers would be willing to pay a $100 premium for as device to get unlimited music over its lifetime, or $7-8 a month in extra subscription charges.

To be a Punk Marketer you have to put yourself in the shoes of the consumer (however smelly they might be) and imagine what they want and need. As a starting point, assume there is no brand loyalty, even for a brand as “cool” and iconic as Apple, and that consumers are fickle and will change allegiance as fast as it takes to say, “but this ones cheaper!” Research is useful for that, but so is intuition and common sense, and Jobs is a master at understanding what will appeal to consumers emotionally without having to see proof of it. And the other thing that Apple consistently does is to set its own standards, not be governed by those of the industry. Each product they come out with doesn’t just improve on the competition, it redefines the market. Sure, the iPhone has its problems (most of of them because AT&T’s network isn’t good enough), but it has set the standard for all future mobile devices leaving all but rival Nokia, with its new N-95 phone, scrambling in the dust.

Just when you thought consumer generated content (CCG) was dead, and had just been a fad that peaked with the crappy offerings by the likes of Doritos and Chevrolet (man, that one sucked) in the 2007 Super bowl, rebel-rousing grassroots organization MoveOn.org goes and launches a call for entries for a CCG for Prseidentail hopeful, Barack Obama.

Now, remember it was MoveOn.org who launched a CCG contest around the 2004 elections called “Bush in 30 Seconds.” The goal was to explain key points about W and his policies in, you’ve guessed it, 30 seconds. The overall winner, called “Child’s Play,” was created by adman Charlie Fisher from Denver and featured young kids working crappy jobs - at the grocery store checkout, changing tires, cleaning offices, working in public relations (alright, that one didn’t make the cut) - with endline “Guess who’s going to pay off President Bush’s $1 trillion deficit?” Nice. It was a great idea well produced. An entry that compared Bush to Nazi Germany had been rejected after it received complaints (from Nazi Germany).

This time around MoveOn.org are calling for entries that put the subject of the 30 second film - Mr. Obama - in a positive light in an attempt to “help him across the finish line” and win the Democratic party nomination. The panel of judges include such liberal luminaries as Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jesse Jackson and Oliver Stone and the winning ad will air nationally.

All of this leads me to wonder…
Will Barack himself have to “approve of this message”?
Will MoveOn’s move lead to a resurgence of interest in CCG campaigns?
Will the winning ad in fact be created by an adman, demonstrating once again that it’s not really consumer-generated at all, but Moonlighting Adman Created content (MACC)?
Will Hillary and McCain respond with some MACC of their own?
Will residents of Florida and Michigan be eligible to compete?

This week Starbucks left millions of rush hour commuters parched and disappointed when they found out the coffee joint was closed for a 3.5 hour barista training session and forced loyal customers to find an alternate way to quench their caffeine and Bonnie Raitt cravings (whoever pumps their music in loves Raittster).

Now Starbucks, which I publicly renamed “The Gap of the Coffee World” in a local paper, insists this wasn’t a publicity stunt… And yet we at Punk Marketing Central know better. Come on, coffee dudes, we could smell it.

The newspapers carried headlines (brought to them from puppy dog PR people) that said things like “Starbucks, totally awesome” and “Coffee, not just for ingestion anymore.” For a non-publicity stunt, it was a kind of a genius happening, and there is surely no shame in rising above the noisy news world.

Take a listen to the background music: The stock price has halved. For the first time the company has not only stopped expanding, but actually closing locations. With 171 in Manhattan alone (click here to to see what happens when one man decides to hit up every NY shoppe in 24 hours), the concept of downsizing must hit Starbucks execs right square in the caffeinated gullet.

Next they are going to for the first time stop charging customers for Wi-Fi usage. (They won’t charge for the first two hours. When your time is up, just go down the street to — Starbucks.) What to say to that? It’s about time. Who charges for Wi-Fi anymore besides Boingo!? We would rather take our coffee outside, sit on a bench and steal someone’s wireless connection. And you do too. Not to sound paranoid, but it’s creepy when you sign on at Starbucks. They ask for your address, credit card and your soul. Gets us every time. When they made the big announcement about the change last week, only to receive a resounding “duh, finally” from customers.

So Starbucks needed to turn both Wall Street and consumer attention away from what’s coming out as the bad news while reminding and/or convincing people that it’s worthwhile to spend more on a cup of coffee than our anorexically-inclined lunches. How about focusing the buzz away from crap stock news to the hopefully increasing quality of its product…

And while the coverage of the gimmick was huge I’d like to ask Howard Schultz a Punk question: Do you know who you are? Is the creation you created called Starbucks still Starbucks? The place we sat in with the milquetoast sounds around us, made us feel comfy enough to buy coffee and relax. Now it’s a machine — everything is about selling me what’s playing on an iTunes-enhanced monitor! I see products everywhere. Yep. I’m in the Gap all over again.

Barista-retooling made all the papers and broadcast news, and spread around our friend the blogosphere. Even Today did a piece in this mediocre news month. Turns out Veira and Lauer were thrilled that the human coffee-makers are trained to make their Venti Soy Lattes to a higher standard. Where in the world is Matt Lauer? Now the public knows he’s at a 30 Rock Starbucks. Not shabby PR, no way no how. And if you venture into a Starry-Eyes Bucks today, you will nbote a branded-new sticker on the door stating: “We Make The Best Espresso….” Gee, are they trying to force a point down our throats?

Starbucks claims the week’s events were all about the coffee and it’s got the level of credibility we felt from bumpy Jennifer Lopez who was no way pregnant.! Punk Marketers know much better. And sure, we love a stunt almost as much as our morning joe. Problem is, someone else snuggled up to us while Starbucks was closed. During those three point five sad hours we got to sample the Dunkin’ Donuts around the block, where we discovered a one-dollar latte with a lot more froth.

It was announced today that Crispin Porter + Bogusky won the advertising account for Microsoft’s consumer products, a piece of business with billings in excess of $300million. That is some feat and I want to be the first (alright, the 589th) to congratluate my old colleagues at the agency. They’ve come a long way since I first met them in 1997 when they were less then 100 people occupying two floors in an office tower in Coconut Grove, Florida. Not many people, even in the insular ad industry, knew of them depite the fact they’d been doing great work for a few years and even when they launched the brand Truth - still one of the best campaigns for anything anywhere - the next year they were regarded by most as a bunch of oddballs who had no place working on big mainstream brands.

Well today oddball came of age. You don’t get much more mainstream than good old Microsoft, the company that people love to hate for its size, dull-looking products and geeky persona. The big MS must have realized that to transform its image, its only hope was to completely rethink its brand and, seeing what CP+B did for companies like Burger King, they became pretty much the only choice. The runner-up for the account was Fallon, a great agency, but one that has hardly done much to add that priceless ‘cool factor’ to its clients’ brands in the last few years. What they did for BMW by creating Hollywood-quality films for the web was amazing for its bravery but, hey, that was 8 years ago now.

There are few agencies that compete with CP+B. It has almost single-handedly transformed the way advertising is defined, from a format driven discipline to something much broader and organic. The way Alex Bogusky and his creative lieutenants think about markting problems is just so markedly different from the way it works in other agencies, it just doesn’t bear comparison. Smaller agencies run by big thinking renegades have a chance to learn from CP+B and create truly media neutral, holistic campaigns, but I just don’t know how the big agencies, so used to working in the old way where media determines creative (and TV is always king), have a chance. Luckily for them there are still clients who put a premium on service above creative, and global network above big thinking, but with accounts like Microsoft handing the keys over to agencies like CP+B, I wonder for how long.