John Winsor

The Art of Bad Advertising

Goodby perfects the art of bad advertising for Rolling Rock. Here's the scoop from Adweek:

A broadcast, radio and Web campaign created by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco will relaunch the brand with a fictional battle between Rolling Rock's new owners and its core fan base over its fabricated marketing and advertising decisions. The campaign, which includes two Web sites, is centered on consumer complaints about ads that don't exist and never aired, sources said.

Ads will star a fictional bumbling A-B marketing executive apologizing for the ads and marketing decisions he's made. And consumers will have the opportunity to search the Web for pieces of the story--all the massive marketing mistakes the character makes and the offensive material--and pass them around virally, sources said. "His ads are way over the top," described one source. Two Web sites will offer the perspective from both the brand loyalists and the fictional marketing executive.

To show that bad advertising works, the video had over 1,000,000 viewers in 24 hours, a possible YouTube record.

In Moscow

I'm finishing up participating in the Brand Leaders Summit put on by the World Brand Academy here in Moscow. After my keynote speech yesterday, someone mentioned that there seems to be a lot of differences between brands and branding in the US and Western Europe.

Yet, after two days of participating with many of the entrepreneurs behind some of Russia's most powerful brands, I find that there are many more similarities than there are differences. The one difference is that many Russian brands are very young so they are spending time trying to understand not only they're customers but also who they can be as brands.

The exciting part of the conference was the passion and the intensity with which participants pursue developing their brands and pursuing a relationship with their customers. Russia is certainly on the rise.

Over the next couple of days I'll write some of hate interesting ideas that I heard from some of the other presenters.

The Power of Open Source Innovation

HBS Working Knowledge recently featured an interesting post entitled, Open Source Science: A New Model for Innovation. In it Karim Lakhani talks about some of his more recent research. Here's what he has to say:

Innovations happen at the intersection of disciplines. People have talked about that a lot and I think we're providing some systematic evidence now with this study. Another example is that a pharmaceutical company got unusual toxicology results for an ongoing drug study. The best toxicologists within the firm had a look at the results and couldn't understand them. Their external academic consultants, also toxicologists, also failed to interpret the results. Then they finally posted it onto InnoCentive. A protein crystallographer looked at the problem and basically gave an off-the-shelf solution. The pharmaceutical company had never viewed the problem as a crystallography problem; they thought it was a toxicology problem. Again, this opened up a whole new domain for the firm to pursue in terms of future studies as to how to think about the types of problems they face.

We see this in many different places. The insight is that what you want to do is open up your problem to other people—not just to serendipity, but in some systematic way.

What we don't know is whether some firms may be large enough by themselves to already have the requisite variety and heterogeneity inside the firm. Could they first start by broadcasting problems inside?

There are always issues around managerial incentives, silos, and so forth, but certainly by the way we see open source communities and InnoCentive work, in fact, by broadcasting a problem you can actually attract a lot of people. And what's also important to note is that the problem solving being done is not "We'll spend five years coming up with a solution." Most people take knowledge and information from their back pockets and transfer it to the problem at hand. In our study the average time spent by successful solvers was two weeks, so that's fairly little in the scheme of things.

And why did scientists participate:

We've found that the population was divided into two sets of folks: those motivated by money who wanted to win the challenge, and those who enjoyed the problem-solving experience in itself. They found it to be stimulating and fun, and both of those were strong indicators. Enjoyment and the challenge of learning was the strongest correlate of being a successful solver. But money was also important and it was a significant correlate.

Call it what you will, open source, co-creation, collaboration, creating the future together is a powerful path to be more innovative. It's good to see more academic research proving the point.

Charmin's New Product Sampling is in the Toilet

 

Literally. Today the New York Times reported that Charmin has constructed the perfect product testing center in Times Square, under the slogan, "You're in New York, Go in Style."

From next Monday through Dec. 31, the Procter & Gamble Charmin brand will operate a public restroom in the heart of Times Square, amply stocked with Charmin Ultra, and complete with attendants who are assigned to clean up after each use.

“Let’s face it — there aren’t a lot of environments where a bathroom tissue message is relevant,” said Dennis Legault, brand manager for Charmin. “But the message is very relevant when people really need to go.”

The 20-stall restroom will be at 1540 Broadway, between 45th and 46th Streets, in space formerly occupied by a bar, Bar Code. It will be open from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. (except for Christmas Day, when it will close at 6 p.m.). Two of the stalls will be accessible to people with disabilities, and baby changing stations will be available. There will also be a seating lounge, with its own photo-op: A six-foot stuffed Charmin bear, just waiting to have its picture taken with a visitor.

It is not on street level, but it will be hard to miss. Charmin representatives will be roaming the Times Square streets dressed as toilets, handing out fliers advertising the restroom’s location. Electronic billboards at local airports will announce it, too, and Charmin will prominently post the location on its Web site. Doris Roberts, Raymond’s mom on “Everyone Loves Raymond,” has agreed to do the ceremonial first flush on Monday.

Product testing is all about being in the right context. Charmin's got it right.

Obsessive Consumption

Rob Walker writes about Kate Bingaman- Burt's site Obsessive Consumption in his New York Times' Consumed column. Here's a preview:

“Obsessive Consumption is repulsed and grossly fascinated by the branding of consumer culture,” her site explains. “It wants to eat the entire bag of candy and enjoy the sickness that it feels an hour later. It doesn’t want to be an outside critical observer. It wants to be an active participant.”

The Wisdom of Crowds and the Election

Francois points to an interesting post at Reasononline entitled, The Prediction Markets Stumble: The "wisdom of crowds" crapped out in Election 2006.

Personal Space

I was especially intrigued by Stephanie Rosenbloom's article in the New York Times today entitled, In Certain Circles, Two is a Crowd after I was at a restaurant with my family two nights ago and was particularly disturbed by a very drunk and obnoxious older man as he bickered loudly with his wife. The volume and tone of their interaction definitely intruded on my personal space.

Yet, it's not only a person's behavior that can effect personal space, it can also be the brands that someone uses. Think about someone bumping into you while they are listening to their iPod or loudly talking on their cell phones. Likewise, how does it make you feel you pull up to a stoplight in a small car and a Hummer pulls up next to you?

Brands do effect personal space and in turn, that interaction effects brand perception.

Dog Generated Media

In a very fun spin on comsumer generated content, Purina's Secondnature House Training Solutions has been running a contest entitled, The Poop Confession Contest. Here's what they have to say:

Every dog has his or her day—especially the courageous canines that have shared their darkest, dirtiest secrets with us. Thanks to secondnature®, they don’t have to hold it in any longer! Watch their videos and vote on your favorite Poop Confession Contest entry now.

The contest is now down to Busta, Gericho and Lulu so be sure to vote before the 25th. 

It goes to show that getting customers involved can be fun and easy for any brand.

The Brand Immune System Cure

So, how do brands overcome people's development of their brand immune system, both off line and on line? The only way to combat this progression is to focus on understanding a brand's customers in the context of their lives by getting out and using tools like ethnography and then telling the customer's story in a compelling enough way, with tools such as video, to empower all facets of a company to be more intimate with the needs and desires of their customers.

For instance, it's one thing to talk about jeans in a focus group facility with people who have been recruited from a database of research participants and it's quite another to follow passionate jeans consumers into their closet or on a visit to a store and have a deep dialogue about what makes jeans right and wrong for them. People love to tell their stories, if only they are asked in a thoughtful way. 

Without such a deep conversation it is difficult to combat people's ever developing brand immune system.

Is the Brand Immune System Extending Online?

Unfortnately, many brand efforts have become a distorted form of communications in which a company assumes the position of power and is not necessarily required to either listen or respond to feedback. People are expected to sit quietly and listen; many react to this by tuning out much of what is said. In traditional media they have developed a Brand Immune System, caused by being overwhelmed by the sheer number of marketing messages viewed each day.

The brave new world of marketing, as it exists in places like MySpace and YouTube, makes it much easier for both the brand and the consumer to engage in a two-way dialogue.

But, will the rush to get online turn this relatively unclutered brand territory into a place with an overwhelming amount of branding? If so, expect people’s brand immune system to kick in, making them glaze over as they are bombarded with messages.