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PUBLICATIONS FINANCIAL FIRMS GOVERNMENT/NGO
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AUTOMOTIVE Chrysler Motors Corp. General Motors Mercedes-Benz NA Mercedes-Benz USA Mitsubishi Motor Sales Nissan North America Volkswagen of America Harley-Davidson TECHNOLOGY ENTERTAINMENT CONSUMER PRODUCTS
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First, I would like to thank all of the students from Stanford and Carnegie Tech that have been visiting this site and sending email. A lot of it didn't suck. Last week's piece on Adaptive Branding seemed to have struck a chord. I think that's because everybody and their brother seems to have an idea as to just what a brand is, so when you start adding words on top of the word "brand" it throws everybody into definition hell. Here is my favorite definition of a brand as described by Ford's deposed CEO Jack Nasser. "A brand is a product that got famous for one important thing." Simple. Elegant. Incontestable. It works well with our definition of an Adaptive Brand: a product that is famous for what is important to the audience now and adapts to what is important to the audience in the future. But now a few words about "the audience." Several years ago I wrote "Imagine having a terrific product to sell and a captive audience of 100 possible prospects to sell it to. Which way would move more product? Would you have one salesman stand on a chair with a microphone and pitch the entire room at the same time or would you instruct 20 salesmen to work their way through the crowd, meeting and greeting folks, acquainting themselves with the most likely customers, then figuring exactly what it would take to get them to say "yes"?" Well the same thing holds true today, but guys like Seth Godin are making bank on permission marketing like it's some kind of holy grail. This is nothing new. This is just common sense. Most people would rather not meet anybody they don't know or go anywhere they haven't been. They damn sure don't want to be bothered by advertising, or somebody asking them for permission to bother them at some later date. They would much rather be left alone to watch Spongebob reruns. I know I would. Back in 2004 we unveiled a new conceptual ad campaign for Coke Classic. With Coke's marketing in turmoil, revenues in the toilet and many agencies vying for the business, our Double Think team worked on discovering and defining the powerful product-based brand character inherent in Coca-Cola Classic. We went in to discover the prime motivator that would compel the Coke Classic faithful to become active (as opposed to passive) brand ambassadors. We hoped to uncover who rather than what defines the true character of Brand Coke Classic. While a global brand, we believed Coke to be uniquely American. We then chose to make that stand for something with the the tagline "A Cool American". "The campaign put forth a set of unique personality qualifiers that defied categorization, yet together, painted a holistic picture of a unique individual that could not easily be slotted into a demographic bucket," according to Steve Hall at Adrants. The Cool American campaign gained so much industry notoriety that three months later (December 23, 2004) Nate Ives of the New York Times headlined, "Unauthorized campaigns used by unauthorized creators to show their creativity become a trend." The article featured our Coca-Cola campaign as a prime example of "New ads and ideas for campaigns that are increasingly popping up without client or agency involvement, whether online, on television or metaphorically nailed to boardroom doors," as Mr. Ives put it. Of course the trend spoken of first in the New York Times article that led with our Cool American campaign then became known as "user-generated content," one of the most powerful aspects of so-called Web 2.0. But still the agencies ignored the changes in the audience. What do you have to do to wake these guys up? Drive a tour bus through their slate and velvet conference rooms and file the audience out one by one to pimp slap them into conciousness? So here I am again, three years later, trying to push the boundaries of how and what has come to define the state of today's advertising audience. The big difference this time is that everybody knows Madison Avenue is asleep at the switch, so I don't have to waste my breath talking to them. More importantly, I once again have my own agency and my own clients so i don't really give a damn whether anybody listens or not. But just in case you guys from Stanford and Carnegie Tech are interested, at GASP we no longer use the term "consumer," "customer," "user" or "prospect" to define the person our work is designed to influence. We are now dealing with an infinite variety of audiences that are not in any way interested in being sold to or pitched to or motivated to buy. As such, we believe that to consider these audiences as any part of the marketing effort before they have made such a decision is a fatal mistake. So it is that GASP has come to refer to those we seek to influence as simply, "the audience." The reason for such a consideration is to assure that all of those associated with the creative process at GASP, as well as our clients, give the utmost respect and consideration as to the extreme value people now place on their time and their attention. When considered as the audience, it is understood that there are certain expectations that must be met. Audience members will not sit still for having their time wasted or disregarded. If time is money (and it is) then the audience member is paying with their attention and expects to get their money's worth. "Messaging" no longer works. According to my partner, Angela Glenn, "Most people would rather laugh than think. It's no longer enough to inform. You must entertain." Taking this position puts GASP squarely in the camp of those clients who have come to understand that they must establish a two-way dialogue with those they wish to influence. Understanding the unmet wants, needs and desires of the audience is the absolute first step in establishing the grounds for that dialogue to begin. As was stated on this page last week, "This is what is meaningful to the audience: the well being of their family. The security and growth of their financial holdings. Their personal development as a human being. And last but not least, their ability to have fun and escape the pressures of worrying about issues one through three. Anybody who tells you anything else is totally out of touch with reality." It has been the ground-breaking work done by the Institute for Advanced Practices in Advertising that first set GASP on this path towards understanding those things the audience perceives as meaningful. These areas of interest are at the core of the IAPIA's work on Complex Adaptive Systems as they relate to the definition of an Adaptive Branding Theory. In their widely acclaimed book "Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life" by John H. Miller, Professor of Economics and Social Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University, and Scott E. Page, Professor of Complex Systems, Political Science and Economics at the University of Michigan, it is stated that, "The complex adaptive social systems view of the world allows us to explore the spaces between simple and strategic behavior, between pairs and infinities of agents, between equilibrium and chaos, between richness and rigor, and between anarchy and control. These spaces lie between what we currently know and what we need to know. They are not subtle refinements on the landscape of knowledge but represent substantial deviations from what we typically assume." It might sound like pretty heady stuff, but if somebody in this business doesn't start doing some heavy lifting our clients will offshore this whole damn business to Bangladore with their customer service activities. The above-mentioned agent-based models have already shown their value in illuminating the study of economic and other social processes. Their application by IAPIA to the current chaotic conditions in product marketing and branding holds great promise. I can assure you that GASP and the IAPIA will continue to seek insight into the effect of the growing empowerment of the audience as this important work evolves. And you guys will be the first to know what we come up with. If you're still awake. Stay tuned. |
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