The difference between You and Me, is the I.

I have no doubt the future of advertising is online – traditional media is quickly being replaced by online equivalents. Televisions are now coming with internet connectivity and USB ports that allow consumers to download content and view consume media in a new way. Newspapers, books and magazines are increasingly being consumed on electronic reading devices such as phones, tablet PCs and e-readers and radio is no longer relevant in an age where music is consumed and acquired whenever, wherever by consumers.

The digital age has transformed society. It has evolved from media fed masses to content seeking individuals.

So what does it mean for advertisers? Personally, I don’t think that the changes in the digital age have much to do with anything digital at all. It is undeniable that consumer expectations and desires in advertising has changed with the “new media” – but in my opinion, the method of delivery has changed very little.

Viral videos are still made like television commercials (and in reality cost just as much. Many viral ads can cost up to $1 million dollars to produce) – and have only given advertisers an outlet to play with more creative and abstract ideas. Banner ads and new forms of website advertising combine traditional television commercials with traditional print strategies, and online music services still incorporate traditional radio advertising.

Some people claim that this use of traditional media techniques in a digital world is the reason advertisers have yet to catch up with technology – but I don’t think so. Because I think this reflects society in general – things aren’t replaced, they evolve. We will always have traditional media techniques long after television programs and printed material cease to exist. Digital media is new and exciting, but it isn’t revolution – it’s evolution, and to survive and excel in any new media you must first have a solid understanding of the traditional media that provided the base for change.

Interpreted the other way however, and it is obvious society is turning digital. If you prescribe to the notion that advertising reflects society than it is only expected that advertising continue to leap into digital technology as consumers try to develop new technology to fulfil the seemingly human need of interaction and socialisation.

I would warn any company to become too in love with specific advertising mediums such as Facebook or Twitter because history has a bad record of maintaining trends for too long. Consumers become bored and new fish eventually swim into your pond.

Lastly, I don’t think organisations need to think that “new” or social media is any different to the way they have been currently advertising. I think these platforms are more extension of the Technical Support and Customer Service departments than the traditional Marketing department however, and if any change organisations must make is ensuring that whichever department ends up controlling and managing social media they remember one thing: They are dealing with their consumers directly en masse. There is no more one-on-one telephone calls to a hotline number – watch what you say, and how you say it. Because you are bound to upset someone if you don’t understand who your consumer is and what your consumer wants out of you.

It’s not called an Advermovie.

In response to the question of advertising games, “advergames”, and the role of women in gaming.

The word Advergame insults me. I don’t know why; perhaps because I am a gamer, perhaps because it is just a really stupid name without a purpose, perhaps because I like language. Either way, there is no such thing as an advergame. There are games, with advertising in them – and there are games, made for the purpose of advertising.

It’s hard for me to accept that games have been predominantly a male industry for so long. While I acknowledge that the role and participation of women in games in increasing, the traditional “male” owned gaming industry – has only been in high-end, high-performance video games. Board games, card games and electronic simulation games (Tamagochi et al.) have always been most popular among girls, women and families. That social media has come along, and is being embraced by these same women, is clear that there already was an existing market.

It would be interesting to see if the participation in high-end gaming (the latest “next-generation” gaming titles) has shifted, but for now – I think it is naive and damaging to advertisers to combine iphone and social media gaming in the same category of “gaming” as high-performance, high-end gaming.

Advertising generally works in games, in my opinion, because a game is a simulated experience of real life. We don’t get to normally build a farm from scratch with such little ease, or experience war without any of the consequences – at the heart of every successful game is a slice of realism. Advertising is abundant in our society, so when encountering advertising in a game, consumers are not shocked or disappointed to see it in their real experience. Sometimes, advertising even enhances the gaming experience.

In Alan Wake, as per the literature example, the batteries used in the torch are Energizer batteries. This can cause quite a thrill in some gamers, because it reinforces that this computerised character could be them in this virtual situation (“I use Energizer too!”). It creates a connection to the real world.

Games are an immersive and sometimes intense personal experience. Successful games connect and relate their characters with the player playing it, and well-placed advertising allows consumers to recognize the world they are playing in, and help build a relationship with their character and that environment. Expect the role of advertising in games to increase.

Games made to advertise, are another beast again. It’s a fine line – because – in my opinion, any form of communication is designed to advertise something. Two and a Half Men is designed to advertise the talents of it’s actors, and the capabilities of the studio that made it. Likewise, videogames are designed to showcase the technological and craftmenship of the production company behind it. Many people will then buy a new game solely because of the people who make the game. EA have been successful in creating a brand through the quality of their games, and when a new sporting game hits the market – many consumers will check if there is an EA Sports version of that game first.

Other aspects blur the line between games with advertising and games made for advertising. Playstation Home was introduced on the PS3 – that set up a virtual world for consumers to establish an online identity. Much like second life, consumers involve themselves in a virtual world hosted by Sony, in which they can play pool, go bowling or fly remote control helicopters. Inside this world however, and the main purpose of this world – is to advertise. Consumers can watch in-world advertisements, where the billboards in the virtual world display trailers and advertisements of real products. The clothes the avatars wear are from real stores and cost real money, and the games they play are the official games of their sponsors. There is even an in-world cinema where players can go to watch latest trailers and television commercials. One easter-egg of the virtual world is to look in the sky and see a virtual plane carrying a virtual banner with advertising on it.

Smart phones and social media, have just made it easier for developers to bring these games to a wider audience. iPhone games and social media games represent a significantly decreased investment threshold compared to normal games, meaning consumers are more able and tempted to try new things – regardless of the developer. They are low involvement products and the load of games on a consumers iPhone may change daily.

This means that consumers don’t care who produced the product – as long as it provides a meaningful and enjoyful experience, the original nature or intention of the game is irrelevant.

The key to any game in social media or on smart phones with the purpose to advertise is interaction. If you do not provide the consumer with a meaningful experience, then the game will be treated and seen as an advertisement and dismissed.

The author of Advergames, Rhys Emery – proposes that the Coke Zero playbook game was a failure because it was not heavily linked enough to Coke Zero. I oppose this view. Consumers don’t tell their friends about this cool Coke Zero game, they don’t log on to play a cool Coke game. They tell their friends, and log on to play, a cool NFL game; or a cool football game; or a cool strategy game. The fact the Coke Zero host and sponsor this game is not the consumers primary concern and the best way for Coke to reach this target is to attempt to direct the consumer to a Coke product in the future. The presence of this Coke game works on a subconscious level because every time the consumer wants to play this game, they are typing in: “coke.com” into their browser. When a consumer is attracted and involved in a game, and writes coke.com over and over to view it – the next time they head to a fridge it is more than likely the coke is going to be the first thing they think of.

As long as the game itself is interesting, interactive and enjoyable, the company that produced it, for whatever purpose, will enjoy the benefits of consumer recognition and loyalty. It is how the gaming industry has always worked and how, in my opinion, will continue to work in the future.

All that an “advergame” is, is a game where the production company has been replaced by a client.

NAB: Determined to be Diff… Wait?

When the Commonwealth Bank of Australia launched the “Determined to be Different” campaign in 2008, it showed audiences that the banking industry was open to the same creative and abstract advertising practices that dominated Australian media.

Interestingly, the “Determined to be Different” campaign was named by the Financial Review’s Neil Shoebridge as “the worst ad of 2008″ (Campaign Brief, 2008), and early comments in the blogosphere may indicate the NAB campaign faces similar judgement.

So why? Why don’t these campaigns work? Well, here is a personal opinion:
Consumers don’t want their bank to be different for ‘different’ sake.

We don’t care if the Commonwealth Bank is different, or if NAB is breaking up with the other banks. We don’t want to think of our banks as people, or with personalities. Maybe, most of all, we don’t want to see our financial institution mucking around.

I applaud creativity and well executed advertising, but in a rush to be different, it seems the agencies and management teams involved have not stopped to ask why are we different.

Maybe I’m wrong, maybe there was some well researched study behind the idea that people want to break up with their existing bank. The next few months will show if the campaign is received better than CBA Determined series.

So, what does work for the campaign? For one, it is executed well. It is a highly integrated campaign spreading from traditional media in print and television, and reaching into the online and ambient media domain. It is evident that considerable thought and planning was spent on the where and the how, and individual spots deserve recognition for their creativity.

Image via Campaign Brief

But where to now for NAB and the banking industry. If this campaign succeeds will there be an influx of “different” banks? If everyone becomes different, who will be the ‘normal’ bank?
Hopefully, this campaign will spark an increase in Integrated Marketing Campaigns executed by clients. Hopefully, it won’t scare clients away from launching a large IMC campaign because one agencies big idea was misplaced and corny. Hopefully, it will mark a short end to different banking, and return to a focus on what, in my opinion, consumers want most out of their bank. Better value for money.

Simple Surfer.

Google Chrome started it, now the rest are copying it. The trend with your internet browser is clear: keep it simple, stupid (people may be familiar with the KISS philosophy already).

Earlier this year, Microsoft launched the Release Candidate of Internet Explorer 9, which – much like the Rockmelt experiment, mimics Chrome’s simplistic and minimalistic design almost to the point of plagiarism.

So, how simplistic is too simplistic? Kirk Lazarus warned us never to go full retard – but is that the future of online surfing? I began thinking, what would the most minimalistic, simplistic web-browser look like. And I came up with this:

Introducing Simple.

Simple is as minimalistic as you can get. Stripped of everything that would otherwise hinder your web browsing experience – Address bar, OS buttons and Developer buttons are all invisible during normal browsing – but still available by hovering over hotspots in the browser.

So what do you think? Does the Simple idea have legs as a new generation web browser? Or should I stick to my Marketing Masters and keep my head out of the IT world?

New Ideas: Proximity iAd

Several weeks ago (June 8th) Steve Jobs announced the highly anticipated iPhone 4 at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in the US.

While the phone has a myriad of new features and technological triumphs – I am not going to delve into a rave of the phone in this post.

Instead I want to focus on one new and very exciting (if you are an advertiser) feature – the iAd.

Presented by Jobs in this video, the iAd is a new way for applications to display and access advertising on the iPhone.

Previously, advertising within applications on iPhones would simply link to a webpage – which would open in Safari and quit the original application. As Steve Jobs says in the launch: “Why would anyone [then] want to click it?”.

The purpose of the new iAd feature is to provide a built-in solution that can offer the interactivity of internet advertising and the emotional connection of television commercials – all which will be created by app developers and advertisers alike.  You can read more about iAds here.

But to me, I immediately thought of the wider potential of the iAd than simply access by applications…

… in Proximity Marketing.

Image via: http://bit.ly/cRRDHj

Proximity Marketing (or Bluetooth marketing) is basically transmission of advertising material and content to consumers handheld devices via Bluetooth. Generally, this practice is used mostly at bus shelters – but other good examples exist in creative locations.

How does proximity marketing expand the iAd’s potential? Well currently proximity marketing is used to transfer single files from source to receiver – a piece of text, video,  or music…  but the technology can theoretically send anything.

So what if an advertiser could send the information to launch an iAd on a consumers iPhone – and the consumer wouldn’t have to do a thing.

Obviously this raises privacy concerns. And I would imagine the public would view these in the same scope as pop-up ads on the internet, but Apple iPhone’s already have a system built-in to avoid this – Push Notifications.

The future I would like to see for the iAd plays similar to this:
Joe Consumer walks into a bus stop when his iPhone alerts him: “[Bus Shelter] would like to launch an iAd”. He is given to options – [View] and [Close]. Using the iPhone OS4 built-in iAd system, the full screen ad would launch and via bluetooth give an interactive and emotional experience for the user — with Joe Consumer’s only involvement being a single tap of the Allow button.

I’ve provided a picture play-by-play below to illustrate my future of the iAd.

Step 1: Proximity.

Step 2: Notify.

Step 3: The iAd.

So what do you think? Proximity iAd’s. A good thing? Too intrusive? Technologically infeasible? … or the future of mobile advertising.

New Ideas: Escalator Advertising

Okay, so the concept of advertising on escalators is not new – and there have been some great uses of the platform using stickers in the past, but when out shopping today I couldn’t help but wonder that the potential of the medium seems overlooked by most organisations.

Case in point, on my way “up” to the cinemas this afternoon, I noticed that VISA applied a sticker wrap to the escalators handrail. Much like this.

I’m not arguing against the use of handrail wraps – they’re simple, cheap and effective (I took enough notice to blog about them at least) – but escalators could offer so much more to potential advertisers.

What is unique, and/or exciting (depending on how interested you are in advertising), is that at its best an escalator offers a medium for simple animation. You have moving parts. Better yet, you have moving parts that can be branded.

The platform, handrail, walls and entrance/exit mats of an escalator all combine to allow your advertising to engage the customer in an unavoidable and visual marketing experience. Plus its likely to create a bit of attention.

I’ve searched the internet, but haven’t found any organisations (bar one) using escalators the way I think they could be – so I have made some examples with companies who have messages that can be best “escalator-ed” to express my point – including VISA, whose handrail wrap sparked this blog.

VISA: Accepted EVERYWHERE

Queensland Government: Buckle Up. Be Here. Here for Life.

FIFA: 2010 World Cup

So, what do you think? Are escalators underused and under-appreciated?