ZZ blog in English.

"Man with Talent" by Heineken

Heineken continues it's Fridge and walk-in Fridge series by bringing it to new level and taking serious fun of all the "Talent" Show. I am more than sure that it will not end there. 

 

 (via Adverblog)

The latest from Nike: Nike Grid and Nike Music Shoes

Two great campaigns by Nike released last week. 

1. Nike Grid - urban challenge for street runners in London. 

"London is your gameboard. 
You have 24 hours to claim your streets.
40 postcodes across London. 
North. South. East. West.
Grid phone boxes in each postcode.
Run between them. Score points. 
Run more. Score more.
Badges awarded for speed, endurance and stamina.
Play for your postcode. 
Get the glory. Claim the crown"

(by NikeGrid on YouTube)

Quite a self-explanatory video in combination with great mini-site and strong link to Facebook community. Easy to register thanks to Facebook Connect. Great aesthetics. 

But over that all - one more great example of combination of what digital technologies can do (and why they are attractive to young people) with some activites in real, physical live. The proof of "It is what you do that matters, not what you say!" once again. 

 

2. Nike Music Shoes (Wieden + Kennedy Tokyo)

Released around a week ago it got quite an attention from advertising and digital community. Because of cultural differences with Japan it is too early to judge how successful it could be. But it is attractive and fun anyway. 

Starbucks. "The Big Picture"

Starbucks and BBDO NY. Again. Literally few days ago (15/04/2010). The next step in great series of simple, emotional acitivies that encourages (incites) people (ones that care!) to do something, to show their attitude rather than just shouting out some kind of "constructed" brand message in mass media. 

Going for impact rather than reach. Because actions speaks louder than words. And creating stories. Because stories are spreading. Rather than just words. 

 

On management books

"Management books on branding usually trade on the apt anecdote: They either rely on a whirlwind of short, seconhand snippets or else use quick I-was-there insider briefings to demand that the reader accepts their arguments. From an academic viewpoint, what is troubling about these books (some of which have been written by academics) is that the empirical data that author summon is so thin that they cannot possibly develop an explanatory model. The reccomendations that flow out of these models are so vague that it is impossible to distinguish between the activities of the best brands and the most medicore. Further, much of the "data" that drive the findings in these books are actually assembled from predistilled stories reported in business press. So rather than careful primary research, most authors are simply repeating stories that the patagonists (the client and agency) want to tell about their brands. The average analysis of a brand in most of these book extends all of two or three pages, satisvactory for coctail conversation and not much else"  

Douglas B. Holt "How Brands Become Icons. The Principles of Cultural Branding", Note #2 to Appendix, p. 243

The Campaign of the Week: UNIQLO UTweet

 

The campaign that surprised me most last week is UNIQLO UTweet - positive, simple and colorful. In the same time as smart in using digital technologies in very human way as it has been with most of UNIQLO campaings last few years. 

Don't look for something hyper stategic or serious there. Digitally most awarded brand in 2008 and 2009 offers you entertaining show that last few minutes and is cusomized up to your choices of keywords. It also plays around with elements of randomness acualized by growing popularlity of latest digital fad -Chatroulette.com in their target group. 

The only thing I haven't found answer yet - is the campaign in any way linked to opportunities to T-shirts of advertised UT series. That would be great link to real life.  

Anyway, UNIQLO UTweet is the first "Discovery of the Week" or "Campaign of the Week" from my blog. To be continued. 

 

Latest from Nike

Within last few months there has been few great new campaigns from Nike. 

1. Nike Human Chain (2010) 

2. Nike Mercurial (2010) already has got some recognition in sources (blogs, magazines) related to creativie industries:  

It's director Edouard Salier is also director of last years Nike Woman "Show Me You Dark Side, Mother Nature" (2008/09).

 

3. And also funny and very scientific :) explanation of Nike Air secret that traveled the e-mails, blogs and tweets on April 1, 2010 and after. 

Digital is not about digital at all

Last weekend I have run into one more interpretation of good, old idea that I strongly believe. This time it comes through the lenses of British public services and was prepared for 5th National Digital Inclusion Conference by one of participants, paraphrasing great election campaign by Bill Clinton in 1992 based on "It's economy! / It's economy, stupid"):

 

(via Neil Perkin)

The same applies for the world of marketing communications and could easily be rewritten for advertising industry. 

The phrase "Digital is not about Digital at all" (exactly in these words) is one I has been using quite a lot in my presentations and discussions. But - as a small provocation to stress the importance of (a) not getting blinded by technology and (b) keeping the focus on people, their lives, challenges and aspirations.  

Putting emerging technological opportunities (now called digital, fifty to ten years ago - TV, a century ago - radio) as the entry point of campaign creates temptation to look to the communication challenges from technology perspective or to fall in passion of playing around with new features and new formats ("what can we do now technologically?" or "what cool feature of platform X or platform Y could we use in our campaign?"). In so many cases it ends up with the solutions that are focusing "Technology for the sake of technology" and has little relevance to what does it mean to customer.

From the perspective of creative process it creates the temptation to focus on one format of communication as a central one (e.g. TV commercial or multi-media webpage or Facebook community, for example) and when the idea for that is ready - to adapt it for other formats. That kind of adaptation was "a-kind-of-possible" in the world of one-way communication and limited number of choices (so called "Mass-Media Age" - TV, radio, outdoor, print). Not anymore in the world of abundance of information and most importantly - "two-way" communication platforms and increasing involvement and participation.

Still one thing is clear -  also in fundamentally changing world of communications great and successful campaigns will be be about big, format-neutral ideas; ideas that has emerged from great insights about (a) customer, his needs, wants and challenges; and (b) broader social and cultural trends and impact of these on our customer needs, wants and expectations. And it increasingly will be about ideas that executed create value for customers - rational, irrational or rather mix of both. 

And if idea is big enough, not only it "should be so big that it fits in SMS" (Andrew Robertson, CEO, BBDO Worldwide) but it also has to be adaptable to three fundamentally different pillars of modern communications:

• the very challenging world on new, "two-way" communication platforms enabled by digital technologies (social networks, blogs, video services) that demand consistent adaptation to different situations and formats, participation, listening, constantly providing new content and value and going to them, not inviting them to us. A challenging, unknown and in many ways unpredictable but rich with opportunities; 
• related communication activities in old, evergreen "mass media" (TV, radio, outdoor) - "one-way communication" vehicles that still are effective if used properly and taking into account their rapidly changing role in the landscape of opportunities on maintaining conversations and delivering messages; 
• in the "real life" - from variety of touch-points in the retail and service environment to the events and other real-life experiences whose importance in the age of information abundance and media fragmentation also will be increasing.

Therefore in most of the cases putting any kind of format in the center - would it be old-fashioned ones or trendy and emerging - is a limitation to what we can do to our customers. Moreover, there should be focus on what will be changing or going on in real life rather than around any kind of media or in virtual environment. 

To summarize there is a quote (by Paul Isakson) that I am using quite often in my presentations. A quote that can be generalized and used as a metaphor not only for social media but for everything we do in communication nowadays. 

Sweet revenge as a marketing weapon for bitter tonic

How to dramatize product qualitites of Paso de los Toros Bitter Tonic with limited resouces? 

BBDO Argentina recently has come up with a smart solution - to immortalize your revenge to you "Ex" and created small and smart campaign around that. One that reached its peak in sooo-sweet and full of cliches Valentines day: 

Althrough the campaign is still discussable in few details it is one great examples of increasing importance of emotional and narrowly focused (at least at the level of insight and brief!) campaigns vs. going once-so-called-mass-media way. I am more than sure that campaign was successful because of: 

• the courage to focus on a narrow group; and as result - having sharp insight that is relevant to broad audience that has lead to opportunity to create creative and emontional story that talks to so many; 
• playing with the context of situation (the bitterness of breaking up vs. illusionary sweetness of revenge);
• playing with cliches, again (sooooo-sweet and soooo-comercialized Valentines day)

And my answer to all the marketing hyper-rationalists and fans of quantifying-everything, to ones who are not being able to look over the of GRPs and TRPs of mass media age and already preparing the question about how broad was the impact of the campaign (meaning - what was the reach!) is simple and irrational - in medium to long term it is becoming much more important to brand to have deep and emotional impact to narrow group rather than formally (GRP, TRP) reaching broader audience with general and safe message that is not interesting to anyone and makes anybody to remain indifferent. Moreover - it is forgotten in few secundes. 

"Go for impact, not reach" - not in all the situations but more and more often this is the winning principle. But it requires medium to long term perspecitve.