Otis Regrets... or not

Why baby carrots are evil

Maybe it’s too soon to call the campaign a runaway success, but the respected Middletown, OH Journal is reporting that at least some students at Cincinnati high schools are indeed purchasing baby carrots out of vending machines now that they have been repositioned as junk food.

Evil baby carrots in their vending machine jackets

The campaign was produced by Crispin Porter + Bogusky though I assume without the participation of Alex Bogusky, who pronounced he was sick of advertising and quit earlier this year. It’s not a big media buy, $25M total, so in order to see their edgy commercials you’ll have to hit the right teen programming or just watch them on the web. The most popular seems to be a spot in which a woman fires baby carrots out of a Gatling gun at a guy who is trying to catch them in his mouth.

To me, baby carrots are kind of quease inducing to begin with. They are not actually “babies” at all but mature carrots with minor blemishes which have been tumbled and shaved until they are small and cute. (Thank goodness human babies are not made this way.) And apparently the process makes them last forever since they are typically sold without refrigeration in supermarkets and, I assume, in high school vending machines. Sometimes they get a white powdery coating with age, a kind of patina. But I guess that’s okay, right?

But what’s evil about this is the cynicism of the agency creatives, who seized upon this loophole in the creative brief: we don’t have to make kids eat them, just BUY them from the vending machine. And thus the pro bonos of the healthy school movement are satisfied even though most of the carrots are likely being used as projectiles, bookmarks, doorstops or god forbid this. (A demo of carrot warfare can be found in a fortunately timed V-8 commercial in which two kids are flicking baby carrots at each other across a table in the cafeteria but one of the kids is OK because he’s drinking a V-8… quite possibly containing some of the shavings that were a byproduct of those very baby carrots.)

Changing behavior through an ad campaign is hard, especially when it involves a pliable young audience with a shifting definition of cool. A campaign that did succeed was the “Truth” effort in Florida, aimed at reducing teen smoking by making it cool to attack adults who manipulate kids to smoke. See how many memes are encapsulated just in the description of that campaign? A villain… who may well be your own parent. A superhero… transformed from an ordinary teen. That’s your ad dollars at work.

By contrast, the Baby Carrot people took $25 million that could very well have been used to do something good and spent it on a smirk. Maybe Bogusky quit because he just didn’t want to work with these characters any more. Or maybe he just wanted to go off and be a farmer of great big, foot-long carrots.

Why context matters in your advertising

We’ve talked before about verisimilitude—the principle that, in addition to actually being true, an advertising message must appear to be true or the skeptical public won’t trust it. A parallel concept is context… in any given environment the audience expects to receive information in a certain way and you can either fit in with this convention, or startle and gain attention by doing the opposite.

Ads or banners that look like editorial content go down like butter. Direct mail packages that look like they are official notices get opened automatically. Of course, you need to stay in character or the audience may feel duped if your message turns out different than it appears.

Frost's fake bank book inserted in the Wall Street Journal

For the “startle” approach, a good example was inserted with a recent Wall Street Journal (home delivered in Dallas, where I was traveling): unfold the paper and a bankbook falls out. Whoa, a bankbook! But it’s not really a bankbook because it has a headline on the front: What we believe.

Inside, we have ten spreads containing statements of belief, most of them no more than a sentence. Example: “We believe you get what you pay for.” It’s not until the very last page that the advertiser is revealed along with a CTA: We believe there is only so much you can learn from a book. Call (tollfree). WhatFrostBelieves.com Frost (logo)

Now, there’s nothing terrible about any of this… for a corporate website, or an annual report. But this isn’t marcom, it’s ADVERTISING and quite expensive advertising at that. I can see the boardroom wheels turning: Wall Street Journal readers are well heeled influencers. Let’s impress them with our sincerity and maybe they will become our customers.

Not likely. There is just too great a leap between a statement of purpose and high mindedness, and the actual activity of deciding to do business with a bank. A few readers may pass the bankbook around their office as a curiosity but very few are going to do the thoughr process of “these guys seem decent enough, they’ve proved it by not trying to sell me too hard, therefore I will get a loan or open an account with them.”

The thing is, there is a way this promotion could have potentially been VERY successful: make it look like a real bank book. With nothing on the cover so you don’t give away that it’s marketing… or, wait a minute, let’s put the Frost logo on. That’s realistic and establishes brand up front.

Inside, some stage management—fake transactions. The account holder has built up a huge balance, earned some nice interest, then withdrawn it all. (This is Texas, remember.) Tell a story with the numbers. The Wall Street Journal reader will like this. Then on the last page, a call to action: save a point on your business loan when you return this bankbook to Frost. That’s how you buy business by being out of context.

Anachronisms on “Mad Men”?

Is anybody else getting the feeling that the writers on the AMC advertising series “Mad Men” are messing with our heads as they get a little closer to the present day? Last Sunday, on episode #405 “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword”, we had:

Roger referred to as being “out of the loop”, a phrase that could not have entered general conversation until knowledge of computer programming became widespread. Here’s a source that says its first published use (actually “in the loop”) was in 1970, though it’s acknowledged that it was used in the scientific community somewhat earlier.

Don taking his date to Benihana, a restaurant that was indeed opened in 1964 according to Wikipedia, with the first one in New York. However, it was very unsuccessful until the Beatles discovered it a year or two later so it seems unlikely it would have been as full as it was this night when Don ran into his rival for the Honda account.

And the week before, use of modern two-way mirrors for a focus group. Again, the internets tell us that focus groups were indeed a part of marketing as early as the 1960s but I have trouble accepting a modern setup vs sitting behind a curtain…. in fact I remember in my early advertising days (quite a bit later than 1964, by the way!) being admonished to be quiet because the participants could hear us.

Oh! And also recently, we find Peggy Olson hit on by the lesbian photo editor from Life she meets on the elevator. Peggy’s response: “I have a boyfriend!” For a conservative Catholic girl in 1964, wouldn’t a more appropriate response have been, “what are you doing?”

So not exactly untrue but skirting the edge of the truth, just enough to drive us, yes, Mad. And this is from somebody who took the trivia test on the AMC website and got 9 out of 10, by the way.

While I was at it, I forced myself to do a search for “Mad Men 9/11 falling man” because I have always recalled that unsettling photo as looking very much like the title sequence of Mad Men in which the ad man reclines as he plummets down the side of a skyscraper with a cocktail in hand. I had remembered the 9/11 falling man as wearing shiny black shoes and a crisp white shirt, neither of which is the case nor is he reclining. As horrible as it is to go back there, this realization gave me some relief. I have no doubt that the image is seared into the memories of the Mad Men producers but I will now accept that it could be unconscious, instead of them making a particularly cynical analogy. I’m glad they are not messing with us in this instance.

Cool in tech: my favorite iPhone apps

I was asked what apps on my iPhone get used more often. Here’s a brief list, combined with a rant:

1. ZipCar. How cool that I can reserve my car, unlock it, and find it in a lot by making its horn beep…. all from the iPhone.

2. Zillow. How much is that house actually worth? Ha! As long as I trust Zillow’s occasionally goofy algorithm, I can get the embarrassing answer while I’m standing right in front of it.

3. Pandora, as long as you appreciate its limitations. “Guy Clark Radio” turns up new thoughtful songwriters. “Robert Earl Keen Radio” is set to deliver songs about going to Mexico and getting drunk… not the right algorithm.

4. Yelp. Just plain essential if you ever go anywhere and get hungry.

5. NPR news.

6. Amazon. The other day I went to Walmart to buy a Smokey Joe mini charcoal grill, found they no longer carry it, ordered from Amazon while I was standing in the aisle. I also like that I can take a picture of something and they will try to find it for me (not always successfully).

7. Tiger Woods Golf. I know, I know. But I have learned a lot of golf by stroking my screen with the tip of my finger.

8. My bank’s mobile deposit feature. A problem that my bank is not in town. A solution that I can take a picture by aligning the check with the screen and deposit that way.

9. Email. This is actually the killer app for me. I don’t read much email in detail, but I do know when somebody is trying to get in touch so I don’t have to interrupt what I am doing and find a wireless connection for my laptop.

10. Caterday on YouTube. I said most used apps, not most used by me. For 8 year olds, a few Caterday episodes make a long car ride pass quickly. Then the battery runs out of juice, and that is even better.

And now the rant: why is it that location based apps (including several of the above) must find your location before they will load any of the program information such as your search box? It makes for a frustrating experience, often means that by the time you get to use the app you have passed whatever you were interesting in, and it just doesn’t seem necessary. WTF?

Cool in tech: Yerba Buena TechnoCRAFT maker’s party

Last night I attended an “adult entertainment” at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. We were invited to roam the galleries showing examples of mods and hacks in which the user (who could be a practicing artist or simply a consumer) modifies an existing item into something else. We also got to do our own mods, such as decorating our shoes with a rich assortment of buttons, dayglo puffs and various appliqués.

"Fragile" salt and pepper shakers must be broken apart before use.

Cool for me were a small table made on the beach by melting pewter then pouring it into a pattern hand-dug in the sand; we saw the table and also a stop-action movie of the artist creating it. Also, a room full of consumer products in which the consumer mods it in some way after purchasing: a dress that comes with a set of Sharpies for decorating; a shaggy lamp, made of discarded packing tendrils, that can be coiffed to your preference; and the “Fragile” salt and pepper shakers shown here that have to be snapped apart to be used. Also cool: mods and hacks by San Quentin prisoners to turn a Bic pen, a toothbrush and a tightly rolled up sheet of paper into a shiv.

Less cool was a lot of stuff that looked awkward and, to the extent it actually means to be used (however ironically) impractical and uncomfortable. I’m especially thinking of an exhibit of 100 chairs made in 100 days of cast off materials, which looks to me like 100 days of a very bad backache.

By the end of the night I was hungry for some Martin Puryear… the artist who makes definitely impractical things out of a reverential processing of everyday construction materials such as wire, tar and wood. Let him make a chair, and I’ll sit in it.

The YBCA show runs through October 3.

In media res with Groupons and social media

I have over the last year become a heavy user of Groupon, the viral couponing site that urges you to recruit your friends to share in the savings. Or, more correctly, a heavy buyer because I currently have more coupons in my bucket that I am able to use on my trips to the Bay Area. And that’s okay (for the merchant) because I’ve paid up front and they have my money whether or not I use the Groupon.

I will devote some time to talking about Groupon at my DMA preso on October 11, because this marketer is a great example of the “in media res” nature of social media. Traditionally there was one entry point for advertising. You hook them with your print ad, TV spot or direct marketing and off you go.

But with social media, there are many possible entry points. Maybe you are on the email list. Maybe you get a Groupon offer forwarded by a friend. Or maybe you hear about it on a local TV news show, which is quite possible because of the “Groupawn” who has mounted a campaign to live successfully for a year with no money, just Groupons, and he wins $100,000 if he does.

Homer had some thoughts about plot construction when he wrote the Iliad and Odyssey some 3000 years ago. Instead of starting at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, which many of his readers were bored sick about, he starts in the middle. Then the plot has occasional flashbacks but mostly you catch up as you go along.

For social media, what’s key is to have an anchor concept which is always present no matter when you arrive at the conversation. For Groupon, it’s the “live on Groupons” meme which was well articulated in a number of videos from contestants who promised to spend a year without money, using only Groupons (barter ok) to get their daily necessities.

You can “live on Groupons” because they’re so cool and the savings are so great, even if you don’t take it literally. That’s the message that gets across, no matter where you join the conversation.

Cooking in somebody else’s kitchen, Part II

As long as it is on or near a lake or stream, an upstate NY vacation home is called a “camp”. There’s usually some concession to rusticity without really roughing it. In the case of my wife’s camp, it is a stove with only two burners (the others having been destroyed in a flood), a collection of pots inherited from her parents, and country cupboards which not only conceal their contents, but move them around when I am not looking so I can’t find an ingredient at the exact moment I need it.

I am up here with my two boys and I have learned to make weekly specials at the local market my friend; if it is advertised in the flyer they are more likely to actually have it at the lone store in town. Shopping with a preplanned meal in mind: very bad idea.

We tend to make a big pot of something and repurpose it over several days. Chicken Cacciatore (prepared with Mr. Purdue’s bargain leg quarters, not the prissy organic birds we buy “down the line”), carnitas and Texas chili (beans on the side) have figured so far. There is a steady stream of teen and preteen boys through the kitchen requesting hot chocolate, which is a good thing because I found three boxes of Nestle Cocoa in the cabinets, all expiring in 2010. Now looking for ideas to draw down a dozen half used boxes of pasta and 4 bags of lentils; when one wants to be sure something is on hand in camp, one tends to bring it up from the city forgetting one did the same thing last year, and the year before.

I have learned to successfully cook coffee in a stovetop percolator (the secret: don’t use too much coffee, or the water can’t seep through from the top grounds to the bottom) and broil on an ancient gas grill prone to flareups (always have a can of beer in your hand…. that’s to put out any leaping flames).

I look forward to being back in a kitchen where the utensils and equipment will do what I ask them to, and forgotten ingredients are five minutes away, but it is nice to have limitations and learn to stick with them. I am in awe of caterers and “secret kitchen” chefs who work like this every day.

Cooking in somebody else’s kitchen, Part I

The past month I’ve been cooking in two unfamiliar kitchens, the first being the San Francisco bachelor/bachelorette pad shared by several friends of my daughter and the second the “camp” belonging to my wife in the Adirondacks.

In San Francisco, my task was to prepare a Texas brisket meal for 60 people for the wedding party. I knew what I was in for and brought a number of key components with me, including my chef’s knife, a stack of aluminum trays and several necessary spices. But there were some things too big to carry on the plane, like the brisket itself and hickory chunks for the smoker (my old one from Phillip Claypool, which had been kindly stored in the back yard of the same SF flat). Chunks were hard since not only are San Franciscans not known for their smoking but in fact there is a city ordinance against open fires; finally I found a small expensive bag at Action Rentals, which also rents cooking equipment.

Brisket, on the other hand, was a major score. Cash & Carry, a restaurant wholesaler, had USDA Choice for $1.57 a pound… a lower price than I’ve ever seen in Texas. They also had an enormous bag of shredded cabbage at the same per-pound price I’d paid for the 10 pounds I’d just shredded myself to make sour slaw, so I added that to the hand truck. I stood in line with several other happy guys sharing hints (but no trade secrets) for what we were going to do with our brisket.

I was prepared for challenges in the prep, just didn’t know what they would be. The beans (to be used for Jack Daniels style baked beans eventually) were precooked in another alien location, the galley kitchen of the “home away” where I was staying with my boys; I used every pot and pan in the place. Back at the flat, the cookspace turned out to be tiny and without a cutting surface so I went out and bought a cutting board, the only outright cookware purchase I made. And I had too many briskets to fit in the smoker so I had to cook them in two batches, making for a 10 am to midnight cooking day. Fortunately the apartment dwellers were away at the formal pre-wedding ball where I was supposed to be; I put in an appearance then scurried back to tend my brisket and I knew the culinary gods were smiling when I was able to carry four trays of dripping brisket down three flights of stairs to my car parked in the towaway zone without spilling anything on my fancy duds.

The meal turned out just like it was supposed to, served the next night to hungry people at a conference center in the redwoods who kept coming back for seconds, which I was happy to be able to offer them. One half a brisket made it through the night and for the rest of the weekend whenever you went into the kitchen at the center (which hadn’t been available to me for prep) you’d see somebody surreptitiously sneaking a scrap out of the fridge. Among them were the renowned caterers who prepared the next night’s wedding feast, high praise indeed.

Everybody’s a winner in Fast Company’s Influence Project

I signed myself up to do a presentation at the annual Direct Marketing Association conference called “How Twitter Killed Direct Marketing Copy (Just Kidding)”. The idea is to show great examples and tips of how classic marketing techniques still work in new media, while also giving old-school copywriters some juice and inspiration as they attack assignments in the unfamiliar and slippery turf of Facebook, Twitter and their ilk.

My page on the Influence Project — Click the pic to spread Otis' influence!

The conference is in early October in San Francisco, but my Powerpoint is due August 20 for “peer review” (WTF?) so it’s time to think about what I am actually going to talk about. One thing that’s definitely going to be there is Fast Company’s recently launched “Influence Project”.

Fast Company asked SF agency Mekanism for a pitch on how to make itself more successful through viral marketing. The ideas were brilliant and you can read about them all at http://www.fastcompany.com/finalists as well as download the actual presentation which is a great piece of work any creative practitioner can learn from. The chosen concept was what would eventually become the Influence Project.

The idea is that you register on Fast Company’s website, and get a special “influencer URL”. (Mine is http://fcinf.com/v/bf8c )Then promote that link by whatever method you choose. The more clicks you get (with bonus points if you get other people to join the contest), the more influential you are. The winner will be featured on the cover of the November issue as the most influential person in the world… but wait, there’s more.

The concept would have brilliant if it stopped at one winner. Maybe it would be Lady Gaga, or maybe an intrepid dark horse American Idol-style. However, in this contest EVERYBODY is a winner. Pictures of all entrants will be featured on the cover, with the size proportionate to amount of influence. If you’re too small for a dot of ink, you can still find yourself on the Fast Company website where there will be special magnifier tools and lots of cool analytics.

How this ties back to marketing is explained by the problem description in the Mekanism product brief: “Fast Company is the best thing that too few people read.” And the solution is to get people to interact with the website and hopefully stay around for other content as well as, of course, read that November issue.

To try this out, go to http://fcinf.com/v/bf8c then wait a long time for the server to load. Vote for me by clicking the “Spread Otis’ influence further” button or register yourself by clicking “Discover YOUR influence”. Email me after you do either or both, and I’ll send you a complimentary copy of the DMA preso after the conference.