stefan burford

the nike olympic ambush 2012

 

 

Nike vs. Adidas.

The classic battle of tactical based Olympic comms vs. the big traditional sponsorship. 

Even with very strict IOC guidelines, it appears as though Nike are once again winning this duel with a massive 7.7% of Olympic mentions being linked to them and a mere 0.49% for Adidas. (latest Jam Research).

Why? 

      1. Athletes.

     Nike know that everyone aspires to be an athlete. They don’t focus on music, arts, fashion but always on the one thing that people can relate to…the athletes themselves.

       2. Social.

     They have set a new benchmark for social integration with their #makeitcount campaign. It truly connects above the line, social, digital and experiential with top athletes making pledges.

It also shows how social works best when it is simple. This idea is just as powerful for a runner, footballer or tennis player.

Everyone wants to improve whatever their sport.

        3. Content.

     Nike spend only 15% of their marketing budget on above the line advertising with the rest going into content and non traditional advertising.

They have consistently produced some of the best pieces of content on the web from the classic Ronaldinho football viral to the latest Rafa / Ronaldo tennis vs. football mash up.

They pull people towards the brand not push messages at them.

    4. Digital.

    Nike Digital Sport is a new division launched in 2010 and has had phenonmenal success not only with Nike + but most recently FuelBand.

These digital utilities not only bring the brand closer into peoples lives but also give it tremendous scale with a potential social media audience of 200 million.

For me this is the area that is making the biggest difference.

A willingness to think big in the digital space and get people involved in the marketing activity.

 

All in all the ambush seems to be working for now but it’s never over till the final whistle blows and Adidas have got some pretty cool things in the pipelines (including evolving miCoach and some great new ads) so we’ll see what the rest of the summer brings.

strategy and the art of motorcycle instruction

When you start riding a motorbike the instructors give you one golden rule; focus on where you are heading and do not focus on avoiding pot holes right in front of you.

Focusing on where you want to go gives you stability, confidence and gets you to destination faster.

The same is true of communication ideas.

In order to do great work do not focus on avoiding clichés, well worn territories and that obvious social media application but concentrate on what success looks like and create an idea that gets you there.

 

what you can expect on your first day at apple

this note that they give out to all new employees is what makes the apple brand so special.

50 words of wisdom

During my last UTS lecture I was asked what advice I would give to a graduate starting out in the industry.

Below is the shortened version of the response I gave them:

1. Focus on the product not the politics.
2. Treat every brief as a potential award winner.
3. If you can’t be great, be nice.

 

why 'lightweight' interactions aren't always enough

In advertising, as in life, the common axiom is that ‘bigger is better’.

We are often asked to buy the biggest billboards, create the most sophisticated websites with amazingly rich content and develop consumer promotions that give away the biggest of prizes.

But in the brave new world of social media is bigger necessarily better?

 The agency had a visit from Facebook’s Paul Adams who argued, amongst other things, that ‘lightweight’ interactions are more meaningful in the social space than rich & heavily branded content.

I totally agree; no one wants a long and deep brand experience in an environment designed for sharing funny cat moments or commenting on the latest Lady Gaga clip on your lunch break.

It is the role of communications planners to balance these ‘lightweight interactions’ as part of a broader brand universe where deeper brand experiences can still impact how people perceive brands.

I believe one of the channel lever that does ‘jumpstart’ brand loyalty and advocacy is the deeper real world brand experiences (face to face, experiential marketing, sponsorships etc.) however these can only be fuelled and maintained through meaningful lighter digital interactions.

However in the spirit of Paul’s comments, I have kept this blog post short and sweet.

death of the uber planner

As a young buck eager to impress clients in communications strategy, I would often look across to my creative agency counterparts and feel pangs of jealousy.

Not because I felt what I was doing was any less creative or exciting but something much simpler. I was always developing and presenting strategic ideas on my own.

I didn’t have a strategic or creative partner that would challenge me, disrupt my thinking and importantly collaborate when it mattered.

Now it is worth saying that I did have a boss and a wider team of colleagues working on the same account - but it wasn’t the same.  I wanted to be part of a dynamic duo.  Not only because it looked more exciting to feed off someone else but I could see that some great work was borne out of a genuine partnership and collaboration.

Of course, as an agency newbie, I wasn’t ready to question the status quo just yet. This was the way real strategy had always been done with the role of strategist that of boffin, maverick and auteur.

Auteur in the film world is used to describe a filmmaker whose strong personal style and vision shapes all elements of the process and gives the movie its unique feel.

This is how people previously looked at strategists.  They were individuals who used a combination of art and technical skill to sprinkle some magic dust on otherwise dry ‘media’ presentations.

I vividly remember numerous presentations from senior strategy people who referred to these strategy folk as rather menacingly ‘uber planners’ - people that could do everything, all of the time, without the need to complicate things by working within a team.

So fast forward a few years and all the developments that have shaped how the role has changed; the emergence of social media, the fragmentation of channel consumption, the introduction of creative and brand thinking within media agencies, the importance of behavioural change theory and most importantly the evolving consumer interaction with technology.

With all these developments and the evolution of the traditional media agency structure we need to ask ourselves has the role of a strategist fundamentally changed? And more importantly, is the ‘strategist as auteur’ approach redundant nowadays?

Is it reasonable to expect one person to truly understand, simplify, create and explode strategic ideas in a world as complex, fast moving and downright complicated as it is now?

This was the exact question we asked ourselves at the agency and the answer seemed fairly obvious. We needed to evolve our team structure to reflect not only the complexity of communications but also the creative load that is increasingly being placed on strategists.

In this spirit, we developed the idea of ‘strategy duos’ that bring together two strategy specialists from different backgrounds to work on every brief that arrives at the agency.

Just like a creative art director and copywriting pair, these duos have complementary skills, work together all year round and basically crack problems together.

Most importantly, one half of the duo will always have been born, raised and trained in digital to ensure we develop creative communications ideas that are rooted in digital thinking and not simply having digital as the last line of the media plan.

So our simple belief is that the notion of an ‘uber planner’ is well and truly dead.

We must embrace the power of the duo.

After all, we all know that two brains are better than one.

First published in Adnews on 21/11/11

the rise of useful advertising

January is a great month in adland; the Christmas hangovers have gone, detoxing is the order of the day, the sun is shining and the strategists are sat in dark rooms mulling over what the key consumer trends will be for 2012 and how these will affect our planning.

So far, JWTIntelligence have given us a new segment called Generation Go whilst trendwatching.com has embraced the relentless health phenomenon with what it’s calling the DIY Health trend.

Driven by this consumer insight and intelligence, I believe there is an evolution taking place in advertising that will reshape how we think about audience engagement over the coming year.

With the backdrop of continued economic uncertainty, the explosion of portable smart devices (particularly the increasing penetration of iPads) as well as the endless desire for applications; a perfect storm has been created where brands will need to create more than just a 30” spot to truly capture peoples attention.

In 2012, advertising will increasingly move from persuading people to make the ‘right’ decision to helping people be better informed, more equipped to deal with everyday problems and basically adding value in their lives.

In other words, we are entering a world where marketing has to have meaning rather than just memorability to have cut through with the advertising weary consumer.

In fact, this has already started around the world across a range of brands from fashion labels to financial services. So far, the most well known and successful within Australia is the Commonwealth Bank’s Property Guide iPhone application.  The application uses augmented reality fused with Google maps to give users a virtual guide to home buying including; sales history, property listings as well as loan calculators. The application had more than 100,000 downloads in the first six months alone and averaged more than 45 calls a week to CBA.

But it doesn’t just apply to the financial services category, the toilet roll brand Charmin has developed the SitorSquat application that allows you to find your nearest bathroom or changing table with users even able to add new content to the service and provide feedback on featured toilets. So far, SitOrSquat has almost 52,000 toilets in 10 countries worldwide on its database and 1,600 users have downloaded the app to their mobile device.

The most famous example of all is the sports brand Nike who have been at the forefront of this meaningful marketing for some time and only last week created a online frenzy by annoucing their latest Nike FuelBand and twitter hashtag #makeitcount which allows people to track, monitor and make public commitments about the amount of energy they use during the day. 

So in the year ahead when consumers are increasingly looking to get more bang for their buck, the smart brands will realise that marketing with meaning must sit at the heart of winning the hearts and minds of the Australian public.

zuckerberg's law: the future of sharing

 

 

Gordon E. Moore is not often a name you associate with likes, pokes and status updates butformanyhe is the father of one of the most powerful predictions within technology.

In 1965, he wrote an article that outlined how the speed of processors would double every 18 months. This has become known as ‘Moore’s law’ and it is this thinking that has primarily fuelled the digital revolution we have been experiencing for many years now.

But what has this got to do with Mark Zuckerberg and the worldwide social phenomenon known as Facebook?

Well, Mark Zuckerberg has also gone on record to outline his prediction for the future of social media sharing. Using Moore’s law as inspiration, Zuckerberg believes that the amount of content people share in the social space will double every 18 months.

This prediction known as ‘Zuckerberg’s law’ seems to be a self fulfilling prophecy as Facebook continue to release and reshape the site to encourage more and more sharing of content.

During the most recent F8 summit, Zuckerberg introduced the ‘timeline’ modification which is designed to put user’s content front and centre of the Facebook experience. This includes the development of the “open graph” which allows third party developers to ensure that their content, be it movies, songs or brands, can become inherently social and shared by the network’s users.

So what are the implications for brands that operate in the social space?

Firstly, with more information about users and what they are sharing, Facebook will be able to build up more accurate profiles of its audience and ,in turn, advertisers will be able to run more targeted campaigns to sell their brand, products and services.

Secondly, there will be multiple opportunities for forward thinking brands to build applications and campaigns that help navigate, manage and have fun with all the content that is available.

The best example recently has been Intel’s successful “Museum of Me” application, which took all of your Facebook information and created a three-minute long montage of your life.

Lastly, this ramping up of information could create a consumer backlash with content overload or even concerns that Facebook is becoming dangerously close to an all seeing eye. More content also means more stuff to trawl through and ultimately we could see people either tightening their social networks to cope with information overload or potentially switching to a different platform such as Google+ (the behemoths recent competitive play for the social web). 

We all know that predicting the future is always precarious, however with more than 800 million users worldwide, Mark Zuckerberg’s place in the history books is already secure with or without the his ‘law’ coming true.

 

what it takes to win the ZMOT

Advertising and media agencies love buzz words. We thrive on them to fill endless presentations, impress our clients and comment on in our multitude of blogs.

The newest buzz word on the block is ZMOT (pronounced “zee-mot”). A catchy acronym that has got marketing and agency teams across the world frothing with excitement. So what is it and what should we be doing about it?

It all started in 2006 when executives at Proctor and Gamble explained how they always work to win The First Moment of Truth. This being the critical point at which consumers make a decision at the supermarket shelf about which brand to buy.

 

In other words, the moment where the marketing magic really happens.

Knowing that buying the product is only one half of the experience they also developed the concept of The Second Moment of Truth. The second one follows the first when the consumer takes home the product and tries it for the very first time.

Acknowledging the importance of The First Moment of Truth, P&G have used this as the starting point for their communications strategies. They devise creative (and effective) campaign ideas that work from this moment backwards to ensure mums make the right decision when it matters most.

So far, so good well until earlier this year when the new kid on the marketing block, Google, yet again changed the marketing rulebook.

They developed the idea of The Zero Moment of Truth. Referred to as ZMOT, it explains how the internet has fundamentally changed our purchasing behavior as people search, investigate and make up their mind on what products to buy before they ever reach the supermarket shelf.

They probably search online, read blogs, look at consumer reviews, browse user comments and ask their network of friends on facebook.

The real question for advertisers and agencies alike is what does it take to win this battle at The Zero Moment of Truth?

Well firstly, advertisers must develop brand stories and campaign ideas so engaging that they connect beyond just the moment at shelf. This means treating digital media as the starting point for all communications not just as a platform for idea amplification.

Secondly, rethinking the traditional marketing funnel so that we are communicating to the influencers (and their communities) and not solely to the ‘target audience’.

Lastly, exploiting ‘word of mouse’ to ensure that there is a meaningful brand presence at every stage of the consumer journey (notably mobile, search and social).

Whether it’s the buzz words of FMOT, SMOT or ZMOT, the most successful advertisers will always be those that adopt a Darwinian approach where they continually adapt to the changing communications landscape to ensure brand survival.

The joys of brand gardening

Marketers and agencies alike are at a cross roads within the evolution of communications.

The old world of TARPs, GRPs and reach & frequency is now firmly behind us and what lies in front is the new social media currency of likes, friends, comments and views.

So, we have a choice to make - do we take route one which tries to apply old media thinking to this new landscape or do we take route two which demands a new set of engagement principles that puts consumer conversation and advocacy at the heart of what we do.

The strategic leaders within the advertising and media communities have a duty of care to guide their clients through the thorny path of route two but are we sometimes in danger of further adding confusion rather than illumination?

I could say the answer lies in propagation planning, transmedia thinking or digital storytelling however it is much simpler than that.

It involves brand gardening.

More specifically, treating brand development in this brave new world as you would tend to a garden.

There are three principles of ‘brand gardening’ that are critical to success.

Firstly, we must acknowledge that a brand is more than what you just see on the surface – it has a complicated ecosystem beneath the surface that, although we might not always be in control of it, we need to acknowledge it helps fuel the more visible parts of the brand.

Secondly, the brand garden (and ecosystem beneath it) needs constant cultivation, attention and nourishment. We cannot and must not start planting brand & advertising ideas without a real commitment to maintain them. Many brands are guilty of not following this principle; they create a social media page or mechanic to recruit fans but have no strategy in place to continue the conversation longer term.

Watering everyday must be the most important commandment in the brand garden.

Lastly, the personal touch. The successful ‘gardens’ will always follow the most important maxim of branding. Put simply, differentiate or die. What is unique, special or original about the garden that differentiates it from all the other gardens? Without this, why would consumer want to visit it at all?

With these new brand engagement principles in place, route two shouldn’t seem quite as daunting and means for marketers there has never been a more exciting time to be a gardener.