What advertising and publishing should both learn

Let’s take a break from comparing advertising to politics, and take a look at publishing instead.

Here what Daniel Victor, social media editor at ProPublica, has to say about this job:

“You need equal attention to the distribution and the reporting aspects of the job. [...] The big temptation is to focus more on the distribution than the reporting.”

This sums up very neatly that major problem for advertising today: it’s not the recession, it’s not commoditization, it’s not globalization. It’s spending too much time thinking at how we’re going to distribute an idea via social media/influencers/promotions/applications/younameit, and too little time thinking at the merit of the idea we want to distribute.

Always-On Marketing: what it is, what it’s not, and what politics should learn from it.

(This is the third post in a series comparing political and brand communication)

What I most admire in political communication, and without any doubt what businesses would benefit the most from, is its pragmatism, its focus on the one thing that matters: voting. Yes, perception, fundraising, volunteering, word-of-mouth are all important, but the only thing that really matters in the end is how many people will turn out on election day and vote for that one candidate.

This is in remarkable contrast with brand advertising, where we plan our campaigns to address KPIs like brand metrics, data capture, website visits or Facebook likes, as opposed to the behaviour that really creates value. Even campaigns rewarded for their effectiveness highlight their business results, but fail to demonstrate how they were engineered around the intended behaviour: more often than not, they highlight a disproportionate effect on the usual metrics (perception, website visits…) and imply that this somehow led to achieving the objective, but in a way that is hard to really pin down.

A good political campaign manager can instead trace the number of votes in each constituency back to the “get out the vote” drives and calls, to the field operations and to media communication within an acceptable degree of statistical significance.

Of course, this is greatly helped by the one key difference between votes and purchases: elections take place in one day, the same for everyone. This makes it much easier to plan investments and messages, concentrate efforts and mobilize voters.

However, is the focus on election day doing more harm than good to politics?

***

There’s a big literature on how winning elections has gone from being a mean to being an end in itself,  and how governments have failed to execute the policies they were voted for, opting instead to prepare for the next election cycle. What many commentators do not understand is that this is not a triumph of marketing, but rather its failure.

The draining drive towards a cathartic instant when change would happen and a new time would start makes it incredibly hard for politicians to maintain support and use it when it matters even more than on election day: every single day after it, when policies must be passed and enacted through a number of obstacles.

It’s not for a lack of effort: Organizing for America was created precisely for the purpose of mobilizing voters in favour of Obama’s legislative agenda. Yet Organizing for America failed. The greatest support-generating machine in political history failed to generate support for its first major, defining policy: health reform.

I believe this is due to a fundamental misunderstanding of marketing (hence its failure): marketing is seen as what leads to a sale. It’s entirely normal then that once the sale is secured, and the elections are won, the best talents move on to the act of governing and policy-making (or backroom politics) until the next election cycle, where they’re brought back into the field to secure re-purchase.

This is a familiar pattern to anyone who runs a commercial business, and this is where politics can learn from Always-on Marketing.

But first we should define what it is.

Always-on Marketing is not monitoring what’s happening and reacting in real time: that’s all right and good, but it’s only tactical behaviour that leads to spot promotions and damage control. It doesn’t affect the fundamentals of the relationship between you, your consumer, and your product.

Always-on Marketing is not pestering your consumers every day trying to engage with them and get them to join the conversation: that’s a childish behaviour that provides no value apart from feeding your brand’s ego.

Always-on Marketing is also not Customer Relationship Management, if by that we mean an effort to provide a satisfactory service and performance in order to secure the next sale. There’s much more to that.

Always-on Marketing is designing your product to be a journey: the product is just the ticket, the real value is in the ride. And your role as a brand is to point out the exciting directions where people can go, and help them get there. Again, the first obvious example is iPhone: the phone is the ticket, but Apple soon moved on to advertising apps, and then games, and then films and tv-series… On a smaller scale, Lurpak is doing the same.

There are obviously some products that are not suitable for this (toilet paper, anyone?), and in particular we can say that Always-on Marketing works at its best with products that are platforms.

Yet too many of them are still not marketed this way, starting from politics.

***

Politics is fundamentally a platform: a series of relationships between elected officials, activists and voters, that can be used to activate policies.

Looking at it through the filter of Always-on Marketing allows us to bridge the gap between campaigning and governing, and look at the system as a whole, where:

- elections give candidates an opportunity to build the platform

- the strongest platform wins the elections

- the platform is activated by policies, that are at the same time its purpose and its vital support

- if that’s the case, maintaining the platform is as important as using it to activate the policies, so as much talent should go into the former as into the latter

- actually, activating the policies equals maintaining the platform, and the other way around, so the same talent should do both

In  politics, your best policy expert is also your best community organizer.

In business, your best experience designer is also your best evangelist.

Brand Strategy in Washington, Dc. What advertising can learn from politics. (2/2)

(This is the second post in a series comparing political and brand communication.)

In my previous post I suggested a framework for brand strategy inspired by a model for political communication devised by Edwin Diamond and Stephen Bates. It looks a bit like this:

We can use this model to judge the consistency between what some brands are currently communicating and their ideal trajectory.

Let’s start with Mobile Operators: they’re a funny breed, as they all essentially behave the very same way, to the point of even sounding the same. Don’t you see how “we’re better connected because life’s for sharing?”  That’s the sign that all operators have their feet firmly planted on a visionary territory. The problem with this is that they’re all telling slightly different variants of the same story about people and life, one in which their only direct contribution is, well, connectivity: aka, air. They bought so much into the idea that they’re an undifferentiated commodity, that they’re behaving as one: they’re not telling us about who they are (because they believe they’re all the same, so we end up believing it as well), nor about their products (save the regular new tariff…when was the last time you paid attention to one?), nor about why they’re better than their competitors (have they even given up trying to be?). They’re only telling us a human truth, be it that “together we have fun” or that “we are who we are because of the people we met”: that’s all good and true, but it is so with or without them. In other words, they’re selling us a vision that we can’t recognize as theirs, because we don’t know who they are, what they give us, and where that will take us. Things would be different if they worked out a distinctive, credible and relevant purpose for their brand, and then proceeded to position their products and services within that framework. To this extent, it doesn’t matter that they factually run the very same business. Just look at Nike and Adidas: they produce commodities, but refuse to look at themselves as one.

Fast Food chains are in a very different place: they each managed to carve their own distinctive positioning, a remarkable achievement for an industry that essentially sells meat, bread and an undistinguished bunch of toppings. Most of the communication is still focused on product (with the exception of some comparative ads), and that’s a reasonable universal trait of the food industry: it’s what makes us drool, just show it to us and we’ll want one. Now. Having said this, in response to the alleged undeniable obesity epidemics in some western countries, certain major brands have been broadening their product offer to include salads, fruit and other unlikely combinations.  These products have been marketed as evidence of a new vision of healthy/balanced/fresh/you-name-it diet, that is supposed to be more in line with what consumers (and regulators) expect today. That’s precisely the problem: that vision is in line with what consumers expect (from eating in general) and what regulators may  demand (from the fast food industry), but they’re not necessarily in line with the brand themselves. This is an issue of consistency between the brand’s DNA and its vision: no matter how sleek their new shops are, Mc Donald’s still smells of hamburgers. (Much to the delight of many of its fans). On the other hand, a vision built around “fresh” is entirely consistent with who Subway is, and as such they’ve been able to benefit from recent food trends without changing much of their offer. On the other end of the spectrum, Burger King has for a long time stayed loyal to its vision of Food for Men, one that is rooted in their products and their heritage. I’m curios to see what will happen now that things have changed.

Finally, fashion sheds its own peculiar light on this model: high-end fashion is fundamentally tautological, and it finds the justification for its promise within itself.  A certain item is fashionable because it comes from a fashion label. (More precisely, a certain item is fashionable because it respect the canons of fashion. The canons of fashion are as such because they’re established by fashion labels. And fashion labels produce fashion items). In other words, a brand dna is its vision, and the other way around:  think at Armani’s rigorous elegance (with a few exceptions that might end up proving harmful) or Dolce&Gabbana’s decadent taste. Fashion makes itself credible and relevant, so all it has to be is consistent. With the first and fourth step of the trajectory being effectively one and the same, and the third ruled out because fashion brands are tautological and as such can only be compared to themselves, all that’s left is ensuring that all the products, from haute couture collections down to accessories, are consistent with the label’s creative (and symbolic) direction. Unlike what some people think, fashion labels are not recreating themselves every few months in an effort to make their old collection obsolete and get people to buy a new one that they really wouldn’t need: that’s only a skin-deep drama, although an incredibly effective one. Fundamentally they’re the most conservative brands, always true to their core and incapable of evolution. This model visualizes why.

Brand Strategy in Washington, Dc. What advertising can learn from politics. (1/2)

(This is the first post in a series comparing political and brand communication.)

I mentioned before that US Presidential Elections can be considered the most complex and advanced form of persuasive communication, and as such can offer an interesting framework of reference for brand advertising.

This is true for political campaigns in general, as they all share a number of defining and challenging requirements:

1. the goal of influencing not just perception, but a specific user behaviour (or actually, two: voting v non voting, and the merit of the vote)
2. a mix of functional and emotional needs and triggers
3. a diverse audience
4. the broadest media environment (earned, owned and all sorts of paid media you can think of, including the not-so-legal…)
5. a direct, fierce competitive environment where there can only be one winner
6. a deadline everyone works against
7. a vast number of stakeholders and influencers
8. inequalities in resources
9. formal and informal rules to abide by
10. a need to respond to unforeseeable and potentially game-changing events
11. (I could go on, but I think 10 is a neat number)

Looking at the narrative and structure employed by political campaigns can provide an enlightening framework for businesses dealing with some of the issues above.

***

In their bookThe Spot (1992), Edwin Diamond and Stephen Bates identify four phases of political advertising: ID spots; argument spots; attacks spots and what they call “I see an America” spots. (For each phase I’m showing examples from Obama 2008, as the best and most recent example of a candidate going from virtual unknown to frontrunner, and Apple, as the brand with the most strategically solid trajectory.)

ID spots introduce the candidate and establish an initial credibility and positional framework. They’re necessary to lay the ground for future communication, and we can consider them akin to brand ads. They’re particularly important for candidates (or brands) that have little name recognition and need to become popular enough to be taken seriously, or have slipped out of the public eye and need to reaffirm their saliency.  

Argument spots introduce the candidate’s policies, ranging from broad statements to greater level of details, and can be (and usually are) tailored for specific communities and constituencies. We can consider them product ads.  

Attacks spots are negative ads aimed at hurting other candidates, and they’re only introduced after a positive profile of the candidate has been established. The fundamental reason for this is that getting someone to reconsider support for candidate Y is only useful if they have an immediate, acceptable alternative in candidate X. They work in a very similar way to comparative ads.  

Finally, the “I see an America” spots invite “viewers to visualize the country as it would be under the candidate’s presidency” (Craig Allen Smith, “Presidential Campaign Communication”). The purpose of the ads is at the same time to move the candidate beyond the phase of conflict making his victory seem so immediate and inevitable that it has already borne fruit, and to reconcile him with supporters of struggling rivals, offering them a future scenario they’d also feel comfortable in. This genre of ads is remarkably rare in brand communication, and rightly so given the mismatch between their ambition and the limited potential that any product has to change the future. However, there are cases of ambitions brands that come up visionary ads painting a portrait of the future and inviting us to step in: most of them are meaningless and easily dismissed, but every once in a while the combination of creative inspiration and an inch of credibility makes them stick.   

***

What does this mean for brands?

First, it defies the recent marketing myth that states that brands should not talk about themselves, but about consumers instead. If people don’t know who you are or where you’re coming from, it’s very hard for them to grant credibility to anything you say or sell.

Second, it offers a trajectory for brands, and provides a framework to evaluate messages against.

For instance, it captures how Apple went through a phase of birth, decline and re-birth, and this explains why you see two visionary ads: 1984 came on the back of the first few years of success, and was meant to open Apple to a broader audience; the recent iPad 2 ad, while displaying the product, is fundamentally stating an inspiring and approachable brand vision that can make everyone feel welcome. It’s no coincidence it does so with its most ecumenical product, and it represents the culmination of Apple’s rebirth trajectory.

In the upcoming post I’ll use this framework to look at a number of other brands from different industries.

Unlike-minded slides

A rallying cry for the unlike-minded. With fewer words and more pretty pictures.

No more like-minded people, please.

If you work anywhere near journalism, the question keeping you up at night is probably “how do I get paid?”. But if you’ve sorted that out, or if you’ve given up on it altogether, chances are that it’s been replaced by “what’s the role for journalism in the XXI century?” And namely: can journalism still play an educational role? In an age where every media organization is competing with more and more news outlets for a shorter and shorter share of attention, can we afford to feed people the stories they need to know? Or should we just serve them the stories they want, in the quality and size they want?

This conundrum is perfectly captured in online news sites that consistently favor popular headlines that people are most likely to click on over more nuanced or instructive stories that their readers are unfamiliar with. This has generated new metrics that journalism is being held accountable for, as demonstrated by a leaked document that outlines strategic objectives behind the AOL-Huffington Post deal:

“[the route towards survival is] to drive the average cost per unit of content down to $84 (from the current $99) and use “search engine optimization” and other techniques to attract an average of 7,000 page views per item, up from the current 1,500.” James Fallows, “Learning to love the (shallow, divisive, unreliable) new media”

The business plan behind this is quite simple: if you want enough eyeballs to keep your website (marginally) profitable, you have to give people what they want. It’s nothing new, as it’s the same business model that made television thrive in the XX century, but if applied to the news it raises a number of concerns, most of which are explained by Ted Kopper in “The case against news we can choose“. To sum up his argument, here is the most significant paragraph:

“Beginning, perhaps, from the reasonable perspective that absolute objectivity is unattainable, Fox News and MSNBC no longer even attempt it. They show us the world not as it is, but as partisans (and loyal viewers) at either end of the political spectrum would like it to be. This is to journalism what Bernie Madoff was to investment: He told his customers what they wanted to hear, and by the time they learned the truth, their money was gone.”

This is dangerous on a number of levels, and it’s a debate that has been going on for a while, but I think it’s worth taking this conversation outside of the media environment. To me, for instance, it’s about eggs.

***

Waitrose is an upscale British supermarket chain that, like all British supermarkets, is going above and beyond to meet the latest food culture: meat comes from local farmers; tuna are best friends with dolphins; whatever you think of, you can have it organic. And eggs are not only free-range, they are “reared with care by farmers who share our values”.

Of  course I understand what lies behind it (sustainability, care, reassurance), but there’s a point when rhetoric gets too far. And when I find myself sharing an ideological affinity when I happen to buy half a dozen eggs, I tend to think we’ve crossed that line. We’ve always made fun of the most radical ideological consumers who let their beliefs dictate their every purchase, whether they were extreme fashionistas or no-logo activitists; the difference is that what was once a fringe behaviour is showing the first signs of stepping into the mainstream.

Over the past few years businesses have borrowed the rhetoric of the internet ideologues (transparency, collaboration, generosity…) and supercharged their brands with Values. There’s nothing wrong with adopting those values and a lot of good can actually come from it. It’s when you use those values to create belonging to a close, like-minded community that things get dangerous, because communities based on belonging inevitably end up building fences around them.

Now, no-one will grow intolerant to those who buy eggs from farmers who do not share their values. The problem with rhetoric happens when it builds up into a consistent message that we find everywhere we turn, and starts affecting our view of the world. Over the past 10 years we’ve been exposed to more and more of the same message: follow the news you like, buy products that your friends have bought, read books recommended by people who share your taste… (It was inevitable that we’d end up with Cupidtino: a dating site for Apple fanboys and fangirls.)

The internet has provided the most efficient platform to enable this, but it’s not a technological trend; it’s a cultural trend.

We want more of the same. And this is understandable, at the very least for two reasons: the world is a scary place and we’re afraid of the unknown; and the world is a messy place and sorting through that mess to find new, hidden gems requires time and effort that we’d rather spend somewhere else.

So what’s the problem?

***

The problem is that self-segregation was never a good idea throughout history, and there are more reasons now than ever to say that we can’t afford it.

Like it or not, we’re an increasingly diverse society, and we need to make common choices. We won’t be able to make those choices if we don’t even speak the same language or agree on facts, let alone find a shared interest or define the common good.

And like it or not, the greatest challenges that we’re facing in the XXI century, from energy dependence to welfare reform to international cooperation, require radical new thinking, and innovation doesn’t come from hanging about with like-minded people, nor from experiencing more of the same.

That’s true for individuals, that’s true for governments, that’s true for businesses and brands.

We have a shared responsibility to get out of our comfort zone and pursue the unexpected, day in day out. As for me, I’ll start looking for a farmer who doesn’t share my values but can still sell decent eggs.

Run before you walk

Walk before you run: the adage all of us must have heard over and over, when assessing a new project, investment, process… And who wouldn’t agree with it? It’s plain common sense. After all, that’s how human beings work, so it should be the same for organizations, shouldn’t it?

It sounds like the reasonable thing to do, but it’s not. We can’t afford it.

The thing is, as human beings we are wired to grow into running, and to do it by a certain stage. We may start with walking, but we soon start moving our feet quicker and quicker. And then we trip. No big deal. We cry a little, pick ourselves up, start walking faster. And trip again. And pick ourselves up again. Until we look around, and we’re running. (With that realization we usually trip again.)

If human beings evolved into running like organizations do, we’d have a committee forecasting the amount of attempts and energy required by running against its supposed benefit (assuming they could see one, as you could reach the very same destination just by, well, walking); then they would invest in a simulation to predict the optimal body balance and step succession to achieve the ideal running; there would be contingency plans in case of trips, an event whose chances would have to be minimized anyway not to upset stakeholders; finally, they’d impose a deadline by which return on investment would have be proved, or they’d pull the plug on this new “running” scenario, leaving someone else to experiment with it.

If we evolved in our lives the way we evolve in our work, we’d still be researching “Global benchmarks in running” by the age of 8.

Instead, we inevitably try running way before we’re ready for it. The urgency of the inevitable. That’s how things get done.