The folks who brought us Windows Vista and Bob the Paper Clip are coming up with some good advertising all of a sudden.
In a spot promoting a photo retouching service, mom is frustrated because she can’t get all her family members to look charming at the same time for a photo, so she says “to the cloud” and accesses an online link where she can mix and match faces from different photos. This is the first execution of a “cloud computing” message I’ve ever seen that works… most marketers get obsessed over explaining the technology and stumble on their copy, as in my example from the DMA recently.
On, you thought I was going to talk about the “Really?” campaign for the new Windows Phone? Well, here’s my problem with that. I first saw the full version of this during the 2nd inning of the World Series last night (GO GIANTS) and thought it was damn funny: people so obsessed with their phones that they are banging into each other, ignoring strippers and in one case picking up the phone after it’s been dropped in a urinal, causing the guy at the next stall to say “Really?” Then (without really showing the phone, because it hasn’t been released) Microsoft closes with the tag line, “it’s time for a phone to save us from our phones.”
The new spot has well over a million hits on YouTube since it went up on October 10, and a viral campaign has been launched inviting viewers to share their own “head in phone” moments. Hipsters get it. But I think this is going to go completely over the heads of post-ironic consumers of mass media. They are going to look at the obsession over phones, see Microsoft as the sponsor, then conclude “I want a phone that is so cool I can’t put it down like the people in the commercial.”
Though come to think of it, that might sell a lot of phones. Really.
Born in Dallas and a longtime San Franciscan, I have taken an unusual interest in this year’s baseball playoffs. As my teams climbed higher my viewing apparatus got correspondingly smaller. The first round was watched in a hotel suite with big screens, the early games of the league championships on a tube set in a hospital room, and by the time we got to the final game where Texas beat the Yankees I was using the live update feature on ESPN on my iPhone.
Glued to the tiny screen as I was, I barely noticed that there were advertisers who wanted me to click away to their websites. In these days when we TiVo everything I wanted nothing more than to be on the screen at the exact moment when the rangers got the final out. On the other hand, this is a great spot for brand advertising. Anybody who inserts themselves unobtrusively in the heat of the moment, as ESPN did with some of its own self promos, becomes part of the experience and is carried along with the ride.
Yet the final out in a baseball game is one of the rare times when you can know that the drama is about to happen. Most baseball excitement is unpredictable, a lull shattered by sound and fury. Many fans miss the moment because they are kibitzing or out for a beer, so they rely on replays or on announcers to tell them how excited they are. It’s rare to have an end-to-end nail biter like the Giants’ final home victory when I told myself, “I’m watching a game for the ages” before the commentators informed me of that.
And this is something we marketers can do something with…. remind consumers how excited they were at some pivotal point in the past and then offer some product with a real or imagined tie-in. I did this with a video continuity program for an old series called Highlander, asking people to remember where they had been when they saw the show for the first time. (Not having been there myself, I channeled the experience of watching the final episode of The Fugitive, as a wee lad at a youth hostel in Scotland.) Didn’t win a pennant but it got an Echo and, more important, sold a bunch of videos.
After my frustration using my iPhone in San Francisco during the DMA earlier this month, I’ve decided to pull the plug. When my contract is up at the end of December I’ll move to Android, most likely the Droid X unless something better comes along. And will do this on the Verizon network, which I know as a former customer has far more towers in the two areas where I spend most of my time, San Francisco and Upstate New York.
My top 5 reasons for making the change:
1. Better coverage on Verizon. Yes, I could wait till the Verizon iPhone is released, but why? The other reasons are enough to switch.
2. Better GPS by all accounts. Even in good coverage areas, GPS in iPhone is near useless if you need to find something in a hurry. By the time the little dial has stopped spinning you are at/past your destination.
3. Ability to use the phone as a modem and tether my computer to the web. The iPhone offered this briefly, then took it away with a system update about a year ago. Having tasted freedom, I want it back.
4. Video camera. Like the idea of one fewer device to lug around when I need to shoot a quick video of something.
5. As a marketer, I’m looking forward to the experience of buying apps in a free market environment, both to experience the buying process and to see what’s available. Meanwhile, there are plenty of other Apple users in my family so I can stay up with what Brother Steve is doing.
And also:
6. Flash movies. This would be much higher on the list if I had confirmation it is working, but seems like it is. You need Android 2.1 or later which the Droid X has and you’re good to go.
7. I’m not sure I really like the idea of listening to music on my phone, as opposed to… an iPod! My two favorite headsets don’t have microphones, and I don’t feel like paying a lot to get a new headset that has both high quality audio and a decent mic. Seems like I am in a minority that feels talking on the phone and listening to music, even though both involve the ears, are two different activities.
I for one could not get enough of the rescue of the Chilean miners yesterday. I spent much of the day watching “Miner TV” and I quickly switched to Telemundo so I could actually hear the statements of the rescued miners instead of Larry King talking over them. It was an inspiring example of teamwork on both ends of the tunnel and a testament to what determination and a little technology can accomplish.
The haters (including a few journalists) are now saying that it was no big deal, they weren’t actually in that much danger. Balderdash. For the first 17 days, when they had no idea whether they would be rescued, the miners subsisted on 48 hours worth of rations and when they were discovered the bloodwork showed their systems had started to feed on themselves from dehydration. The medics up top knew that to quickly bulk them up with candy bars or other sugar sources would send them into shock. So the miners got copious liquids… first water, then energy drinks, gradually giving way to protein and finally to empanadas that were specially shaped to fit in “la paloma”, the tube used for lowering supplies into the mine. By the time of the rescue, there was a little concern that some of the miners would fit into the rescue cylinder.
I predict that some entrepreneur will quickly come to market with “The Chile Miners Diet” consisting of this process… but in reverse. Start with a normal diet then strip away everything except protein and ultimately water. Hopefully it will stop at that point before the miners’ original state is reached. You read it first right here.
The annual Direct Marketing Association conference is a challenge for exhibitors. It’s a horizontal show, with many different categories of vendors represented from bankers to software to printers to agencies. And many of these have complex value propositions that are hard to convey with an elevator pitch.
Orange icing = cloud computing, get it?
In this environment, the booth shown here stands out. Everything is orange, and they’re giving away cupcakes with bright orange icing. The cupcakes attract traffic, and when the sales force follows up after the show they can say “we’re the people who had the orange cupcakes, remember?” All good.
The marketing tie-in is a little more tenuous. The booth staffer explained that “we’re the only software-as-a-service solution at the show for migrating legacy systems” for order entry, customer records and other mail order chores. That’s a bit complex to convey in an elevator pitch so the company—named “swyft” and pronounced “swift” I will guess—decided to just go for being remembered. Some people might go to their website, but in any case there are these orange cupcakes.
A bit of research was done, consisting of looking at the collateral. The cupcake tie-in becomes clearer, though the copywriter unfortunately cannot resist a treacly flow of plays on words: “Sweet! Ripping and replacing legacy systems is about as fun as a root canal. It can be a slow, painful process and leaves a bad taste in your mouth. That’s why we built the Swyft Interaction Hub to sit ever so sweetly right on top of your existing customer systems. It’s like the icing on your customer infrastructure cupcake.”
I have the feeling the booth people either weren’t fully briefed on this platform or didn’t feel comfortable mouthing it. I pressed the booth rep on the tie-in between the cupcakes and the product and she said “we’re cloud computing” and we agreed the puff of orange icing was indeed like a puffy cloud. OK.
I’m giving them best of show for the DMA by default but you see how this could have been even better. Think through that metaphor of cloud computing and maybe there’s a better way to express it…. maybe cotton candy which was being given away at the next booth (not as a gimmick, just free candy). Or here’s an idea, how about tying into the name “swyft/swift”? Any metaphors come to mind for that one?
I had been looking for a bad example of social media marketing to use in my DMA talk on Monday 10/11, when the good people at the Gap dropped one right in the lap of my denim jeans. Funny thing is, I don’t think they were aware they were involved in social media marketing which is part of the problem.
Gap old and new logos
Gap, as you may know, changed its logo last week. To my non-designer’s eye, the new logo looks like something I was offered free at a conference by an outsourcing design firm: I was asked to answer a few questions about my business, then come back in 20 minutes. Gap’s new logo is simply its name, set in the same font used for the table of contents in the New York Times magazine, with a little blue square at the side as homage to the old logo they’re getting rid of. On the face of it this does not seem like a particularly good change. Plus the old logo had a lot of recognition built up over 20 years; most marketers would consider that brand equity but Gap felt it was a problem. They’d had the same logo for 20 years, so it was time to get rid of it. Not evolve it, as many companies have done (think about how Betty Crocker, Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima have morphed over the years in response to changing social mores). Just toss it out and start over.
The change drew over 1000 comments on Gap’s Facebook Wall, with the balance overwhelmingly on the negative side. (The Facebook page still displays the old logo as of this morning, by the way. Oops!) The critics tended to say either the new logo looked like an exercise from a beginning Photoshop class, or that they loved the old logo and didn’t want to see it go. And, not a few offered to redesign the logo themselves. That’s where it starts to get strange.
Gap's Facebook page still displays its old logo. Oops.
Gap President Marka Hansen wrote on her Huffington Post blog that “given the passionate outpouring from customers that followed, we’ve decided to engage in the dialogue, take their feedback on board and work together as we move ahead and evolve to the next phase of Gap. From this online dialogue, it’s clear that Gap still has a close connection to our customers, so tapping into this energy is right. We’ve posted a message on the Gap Facebook Page that says we plan to ask people to share their designs with us as well. We welcome the participation we’ve seen so far. We’ll explain specifics on how everyone can share designs in a few days.”
Aside from the condescending we-we language (“passionate outpouring”? more like “howls of outrage), what is really going on here? Is the lame new logo actually a placeholder and publicity stunt? Does Gap really want its customers to help design a new logo, and if so why did they not say that in the first place? And if they are indeed going to hold a design competition, what are the rules of the game and how will the winner be compensated? (Designers are already posting to warn their colleagues not to offer designs until copyright protection measures are made clear.)
Right now Gap’s getting a whole lot of free publicity. Problem is, most of it is negative especially for a company that would like to have a positive image for its design and customer interaction skills. It will be interesting to see how this unfolds.
UPDATE: on the evening of 10/11/10, Gap announced that it was going back to its old logo. Here’s their Facebook statement, thankfully free of we-weisms: “Ok. We’ve heard loud and clear that you don’t like the new logo. We’ve learned a lot from the feedback. We only want what’s best for the brand and our customers. So instead of crowd sourcing, we’re bringing back the Blue Box tonight.” And according to Ms. Hansen in their press release, “There may be a time to evolve our logo, but if and when that time comes, we’ll handle it in a different way.” Sounds like a plan.
