Great Ad!...What was it for again?

TV ads have become so theatrical, production value is so much higher than in past decades, that they often overshadow the very products and brands they are suppose to promote.

I find many ads entertaining, funny, and very well made. However, are they doing their job?

To be sure, there are many that do a great job of making the product/brand central, Aflac comes to mind as a recent home run.

Of course what is the option? With these traditional ads being blocked more and more, it is almost a must to make our ads so entertaining or note-worthy that people will look for them on the DVR or YouTube!

Today, 15% of consumers say that they use technology to skip TV ads — more than three times as many as in 2004. This behavior will continue to spread — Forrester projects that more than 50% of US households will use a DVR by 2010.

(Forrester 2006)

On line video ads are not the silver bullet either:

My take aways are simple:

1. Make your ads as entertaining as possible, but make your brand central, integrate it into the concept

2. Over the next 10 years work a plan to get your video and rich media into other platforms such as gaming, mobile devices (cell, PSP, iPod, etc.), out-of-home, etc.

3. Find ways to incentivise people to act on, get involved with, and share your advertising

Test your knowledge of some campaigns here: http://money.aol.com/special/best-ads-of-all-time-quiz

How did you do? Did you attached the right brand to the ads?

J

Digital as a Verb – Part I

We have all heard it, but maybe not noticed, “Google it” (check Wikipedia) , “Hit the Space”, “Blog”, “Surf”, “Post”. The web is about action, it is about doing and experiencing. Many web-age brands get this, Yahoo for example got it early and played to it with their “Do you Yahoo” campaign. Of course, it may have done well for the Yahoo brand but we all “Google” and I have never heard anyone say they were going to “Yahoo” something, but it was a good attempt to harness this phenomenon.

So what is it that moves a brand into this space? From being an abstract product or service provider to being a part of what we do, a verb? For Google is seems to me that it is very much about the way they started. In 1998 Google was just a logo and a search box (check WebArchive.org). One word, one page, one function (and a few links that I had forgotten about, Linux...) . For this reason the brand name is forever tied to the activity. They were relatively early into the space also, and had at the time the best search algorithm. It is worth nothing that it appears the search function is still what we think of as “Googling”, not so much the newer services they have rolled out.

Also, many web brands are so wrapped around their services it is hard to separate them. Used to be that we would see an ad on TV, billboard, or magazine and we would go visit a store or make a phone call. These activities are separated by time and by medium. Enter the web and it can all happen within minutes and all in the on line space. So even if your product is not purely web based it can be closer to this model than you might think.

But why are all on line brands not experienced as actions, used as verbs, or social powered waves? This is the mystery to crack. We have identified here a few factors:

1. Be a pioneer or at least early into a space

2. Be sure that the service or product is from the heart of your brand

3. Simple is better than complex

4. Be surprisingly good, better, or different

In installment two I think we will take a look at some other companies that have some of this happening right now, Apple is worth a look. Also, we will talk about this phenomenon outside of the actual verb usage proper; what are the essential elements of this phenomenon and how can brand and product marketers create the catalyst to spawn and harness them?

J

MMORPGs - Do you know them?

MMORPG – “Massively Multi-player On-line Role Playing Game”, or more generally MMOG - “Massively Multi-player On-line Gaming”. Have you heard of it? You will.

Forrester has noticed:

“Huge communities like Habbo Hotel (which has 70 million registered accounts) and Cyworld (with 18 million registered accounts just in Korea) not only challenge MySpace.com as social networking destinations, but generate significant revenues from item transactions”

“World of Warcraft is the most popular current example of this type of virtual world — it had 8.5 million active subscribers as of March 2007, each paying up to $15 per month after an initial free trial period.”

(Forrester, March 20007 - The Real Business Of Virtual Worlds, by Paul Jackson)

The business is growing and some real money is at play. What is interesting to me is that it seems there is very little effort to leverage the potential advertising exposure opportunities withing this growing segment.

While there is no doubt that it is tricky in certain cases, it is doable. Some first hand experience: My son and I play FFXI – Final Fantasy XI On line. FFXI is more than a simple game, it is truly a digital world. On our server alone there are no less than 2000 players on-line at any given time. Square Enix maintains some 20 servers for FFXI. The game is immersive and can be played indefinitely, there really is no “end” or “winning”. Players create teams, groups, and do hundreds of missions, quests, and other things together. You can have a career such as cooking or blacksmith; you can marry other players; and you can “skill-up” in literally dozens of areas. Most players play for many years. As with other games of this type, a real-world economy exists around the purchase and sales of in-game items and currency.

Surprisingly, there is zero advertising in this experience. One reason is that there would be no way to advertise in the game itself. You have to realize that the game is fantasy space, it would ruin the effect of a virtual other-world to have Coke and Nike logos all over the place. However, let us not be so narrow. A few ideas:

• There are many other interfaces as you log on and manage your account. A brand could absolutely buy space in the log-on, billing, messaging, account, and other areas.

• Sponsorships are another fertile ground. A brand could gain massive exposure and impact by offering to pick-up ½ the subscription fees for a month; or they could work with the game publisher to create a hot new in-game item.

• There could also be brand reps in game. EA, a huge player in gaming, could hire someone to organize an EA group within WOW, FFXI, or another game. By leveraging the resources of a large company such as EA the members of such a group could gain some interesting benefits.

• Points and rebates could be offered in the form on in-game currency or items.

These are just a few ideas. This area will continue to grow. It will expand into different devices, business application, broader audiences and more.

J