Native Advertising: Ad Agencies Dip Their Little Toes In The Deep End

Native Advertising: Ad Agencies Dip Their Little Toes In The Deep End

Native Advertising as popularly defined (pick one) is nowhere near "the big idea", and further underscores a dark truth concerning the fate of every ad agency in the business.

As is often the case in the one-upsman world of advertising Native's definition is still in the land-grab phase. But in short:

"Native advertising is a web advertising method in which the advertiser attempts to attract attention by providing valuable content in the context of the user's experience."

In other words, theoretically without employing traditional interruptive tactics, advertisers would deliver brand messages in the form of - gasp - honest to goodness desirable content, products or services that users might be willing to seek out and pay money for, except that it's probably free.

In yet other words the same old ham-fisted, ad industry bozos are trying (still) to clod their way through yet another little bit of age-old interactive media obviousness as though it's some big new idea.

In truth, the underlying observations that have inspired today's "Native Advertising" breathlessness have been openly in place for over 15 years.

And while there is clearly valid intent embedded in the notion of a kind of "native" solution, this current set of native advertising definitions are all somewhat on the incomplete side.

Why should this trickling acceptance of reality have taken a young voter's entire life span?

I strongly believe it's because, by their very design, ad agencies are built, trained and honed to do one thing well: interrupt the consumer experience with a message of value that is itself just valuable enough to keep viewers from looking away.

The entire 100+ Billion dollar industry. Staffed, funded, and optimized. That's what they do.

And that singular capability is entirely misaligned with the very fundamental principles of interactive media. The future of media.

Think about that - Ad agencies are the wrong tool for the future.

It's just a whole lot easier to sneak an ad in front of a captive audience, an ad that is just good enough while it sufficiently delivers its brand message that people don't get up and leave, than it is to create something so valuable and magnetic that a regular person will seek out, be willing to pay for, and enjoy it.

Not surprisingly, this truth doesn't get talked about much in ad circles.

I know, I've heard it, "good advertising IS valuable", "Lots of people watch the Super Bowl for the amazing spots", "People in the UK go to the theater early to watch the commercials", and "My wife buys fashion magazines for the ads."

Memes that keep an industry of frustrated creatives from feeling the need to get into real content industries.

In reality, lots of people watch the Super Bowl (real content), so advertisers spend way more money on those ads which invariably suck less - but those same viewers would be just fine watching the game without interruption. People in the UK are just as annoyed as people in the US when they pay for a movie (real content), show up on time and are stuck watching 20 minutes of commercials. And your wife would be quite pleased if the magazine provided more fashion review and commentary (again, real content) in place of those ads.

At this point in the conversation my advertising friends point at Old Spice Man.

Jesus. Yes, there is a type of freakery along every skew of humanity, ads that become eagerly shared being one of the very rarest. Every 6-7 years there is one Old Spice Man. That is not a repeatable, sustainable solution. A meaningless blip on a radar that is otherwise teaming with actual useful data that is being openly ignored.

Don't you wonder why there are so few wildly successful ads in the interactive space? Don't you ever wonder why? I mean these aren't just random people making YouTube cat videos. These are paid professionals who are theoretically masters of their art form. Why then is advertising in interactive not more obviously successful and coveted?

Periodically advertisers try to acknowledge this disconnect and do tip toe into the deep end with what seem like penetrating PowerPoint decks, that try to sound all hard, hip and anarchic, generally stating that today's busy, connected consumers are just disinterested in brands and ad messages altogether. And I guess this must feel like a cathartic, even maverick, stab at the truth. But these are ultimately impotent decks, never going all the way. Always falling short of any real disruption. Never willing to upturn their own boat to reveal the utter brokenness of their paycheck. These exercises (and all ad agencies toy with presentations like these) end the same way, with some softball, vaguely nuanced adjustment to the old ad models.

Because those few that do look critically, all the way under the rug with open eyes, see a slightly horrific slippery slope that ends with upheaval. The implication that the industry is no longer built on solid ground. That the very ad agency infrastructure is literally not aligned on the foundation of the future.

That creative directors, art directors, copywriters and producers - are the wrong people. The wrong people to invent the solutions - helping companies evangelize their offerings into interactive media and extend awareness through the social spaces of the future. (planners do have a role however, more on that later)

From where I sit, all this agency hyperventilating of the virtues and potential of "Native Advertising" is just little more than the dozy ass-scratch of a sated, comfortable industry that hasn't yet felt the crunch of the iceberg needed to rouse from its operational hammock-basking.

Why bother? When we can rely on the apparent solid ground of past innovations?Yes - there are a lot of hard working creative people in advertising - but they are generally working below this line. They are working within the Matrix, below pointed, self-critical analysis and reinvention of the industry's very models and structure. It's reason for being.

The industry chose the blue pill.

A Reboot is Needed

In software, developers of big systems spend a relative long time nursing legacy code over time, modifying and amending to adapt it to a changing world. But there comes a point where it becomes unwieldy and inefficient, where the originating code base is no longer relevant, where its developers have to step back and ask "if we were building an ideal system from scratch today, would this be it?" When the answer stops being "possibly", then the legacy design usually gets retired.

The same must be asked of legacy business processes.

Clients and agencies need to ask the same question of the existing agency business and infrastructure. Big gains will come from reinventing it, rebuilding it directly on the back of solid interactive principles.

This requires a reboot.

Following such a reboot a lot of good ad people will necessarily have to redirect their careers. And other new skill sets will suddenly be in high demand.

"Whoa, whoa whoa," you say, "Good lord man, you're wrong in this, surely. If all this were really true it would have been revealed before now. It would have been obvious. Clients wouldn't keep paying for interruptive ads. It never could have gone on this long.

"In fact by sheer virtue that clients keep paying to have the same agency conduits create and deploy traditional, interruptive models in interactive media - that must prove that it's still valid, right?"

No I don't believe that. The present economics, while very real today, create the convincing illusion that the industry must be right-configured. That it must be aligned with interactive media and therefore, the future of media. But this belief is little more than another kind of bubble. A bubble that was indeed solid at one time. Back when the Men were Mad. Except that today, the center has leaked out.

"But anyway," you assert, "you're missing the main point - lots of the ads do work for the most part, we get conversions! Definitive proof that everything is solid."

For now perhaps, and to a point. So what will pop the bubble? Mere discovery of the "new best" - a true native model. That's how tenuous this is.

At Lego they have a corporate mantra "only the best is good enough". We all aspire to that in many things. The implication of that line though is that there must something else, something other than the "best" that is considered by most others to be "good enough".

And today clients are willing to pay for our current best, which is good enough it seems to do the trick, while convincing us we're on the right track. But I strongly assert, it's not the best. There is a best that has been sitting in the wings (for 15 years!). Clients and consumers don't seem to know this best is an option, I assume because they haven't seen it yet.

Steve Jobs famously commented on innovating new solutions that "…people often don't know what they want until you show it to them." And so it goes here too.

Understanding "Native" - a New Best

To find a new best, we need to align ourselves firmly on the backbone of interactive media. So we need to know what interactive media really is.That awful definition of Native Advertising at the top of this page (courtesy of wikipedia - the expression of our collective psychosis) illustrates a pathetic lack of understanding.

"...a web advertising method..."

Web advertising? Really?

Is that the "medium" you ad guys are working in? The World Wide Web? Ok, so what do you call it when the user is offline, not in a browser, using an app? Or some new unknowable device? Does the ad method just stop working there? C'mon, you're thinking too small.

To find what's right, you have to ask yourself "what functionally defines this medium landscape?" What one feature is consistent across all states of the medium, the web on PC, the web on mobile, apps, socializing on various platforms, both connected and offline etc.? And what attribute differentiates the medium from all other mediums.

The main point of difference and the consistent theme across all states is that the user is in control.

User control is the primary function afforded by the computer. That is what the medium is. It is the medium of users. Usership is what we mean by "interactive".

Connectivity is merely the distribution of that control.

And we can't gloss over this: it's the user that is in control.

Not the content creators, certainly not the advertiser. No. Rather, content creators are just servants.

And that's why advertisers, beholden for all time to interruption, flounder.

So fundamental is that largely unspoken truth, that the user should be in control, that every single time a user is annoyed with an interactive experience, it can be directly attributed to a breakdown in compliance with this one paradigm. Every - time. Every time a content creator attempts to assert his intent, his goals upon the user - the user recoils with recognition that something feels very wrong.

For well over a decade and to anyone who would listen, I have called this paradigm The Grand Interactive Order. It's the first axiom of interactive. Really, it's old - but worth a read, I think.

The second axiom I call the Interactive Trade Agreement.

This describes how sufficient value is necessary for any interaction in the medium to transpire. Sound familiar?

Its another very old idea that nevertheless seemed lost on most advertisers for years - except that they now talk about Native Advertising which is directly rooted in compliance with this axiom.

The age of reliance on a captive audience is falling behind us. We can no longer merely communicate the value of clients and products; today our messages must themselves be valuable. Be good enough that they will be sought out. Today ads must have independent value - in addition to a marketing message. Because for the first time consumers have to choose our "ads" over other content.

This quote above was not part of a 2013 Native Advertising deck. Though it might as well have been. It was actually a thread from Red Sky Interactive's pitch deck made to a dozen fortune 500 firms between 1996 and 1999. It was philosophically part of Red Sky's DNA.

In the 90s these ideas largely fell on deaf ears. It sounded good, but it scared too many people. People who were still trying wrap their heads around click-throughs and that viral thing.

Indeed, Native Advertising is just the ad industry re-discovering these basic ideas, once again, 15 years later.

Perhaps you can see why I feel no pity as I contemplate the big ad agencies falling by the wayside. They have had so much time and resource to adapt - had they only bothered to develop a strong understanding of the medium.

Maybe they can still pull out of their disconnected nose-dive.

In the spirit of willingness to beat my head against a wall until they do, I will offer something more than criticism.

Native Marketing

First - we need to drop this Native "Advertising" thing. As I have argued - advertising is about interruption by design - and that's patently inauthentic.

However, advertising's larger parent, "Marketing" does make sense. Ultimately what we want to do is find an iconic term that will help us stay on target, and marketing in my mind is much more integrated into the process of conducting business than advertising is. Native "Business" might be an even truer expression, but for now let's sit in the middle with "Marketing".

Next, the people. The people working in advertising today are, by in large, just not trained in the disciplines that true native marketing demands.

Planners cross over, however. Planners must still do market research in the future, study behavior and psychographics and develop a strategic insight - an insight that informs the new creative teams.

To wit, gone are teams made up of Creative Directors and Art Directors and Copywriters. That's about communication of value. They'll still exist somewhere but they'll play a small service role.

True native solutions require the skills and sensibilities of the people who are experienced in creating businesses, content and products which - without the benefit of pre-aggregated viewers/users - people will pay for. These are silicon valley entrepreneurs, filmmakers, product designers, etc. These are the creative teams of the agency of the future, and they take the lead in development.

These teams must understand the client's business. Not just at it's surface - but thoroughly - every detail of sourcing, production, manufacturing processes and fulfillment. It's the only way a truly native solution can be conceived. Because remember - this is not about creating a communication of value, the new goal is to create value.

We are further not just creating value at random, We are creating value to help grow a client's business so the value we create must interlock into the client's business. To be authentic. To honor the axioms.

So our agency of the future would know enough about the company that realistic implications and cost of operation and fulfillment of any proposal will have been considered.

As such, the agency will supply a business plan - as part of their proposal.

Example - Cool Shoes

Let me put myself out there for criticism.

Below is an example of what I think qualifies as a truly native marketing solution.

Each part of the system I'm going to describe has been done. But never together as a singular execution, and never under the context of marketing a larger brand.

Let's pick a creative brand of footwear, like a Havaianas, a Nike, or a Converse. Cool brands and admittedly, those are always a little easier.

Part 1 - Product Integration

Today direct to garment printing is a generally straightforward affair. This is where a regular person can create artwork, and as an economical one-off job it can be printed professionally onto the fabric of the shoe, or flip flop rubber, or bag or shirt.

So a tool needs to be created for the products in question to allow users to upload art (and possibly even generate art), apply it to a template, and customize any other colors and features.

The company I co-founded created the first working version of Nike ID way back when, and Nike hasn't changed it much since. You still basically just pick colors and monogram words.

But this is the full expression of that original inspiration. This takes it about as far as it can go - short of structural design. And beyond color choices, allows for true creative ownership. And that's important.

This is about personalization, ownership and self expression. Factors that are critical when hoping to inspire engagement and later motivate sharing.

Naturally the user can then purchase their creation.

As I say, this is being done in places. And it's only part of the solution.

Part 2 - Contracting The Consumer

The next part gets interesting, this is where creators of personal designs can choose to put their design into our client's online store for others to browse and buy. All the social factors start to kick in here (such as following, commenting, rating etc). This is the platform on which a user can build an identity that raises his status.

But we go further, we allow the user to set a price, above ours, that his shoe design will cost. Normally we sell the product for $30 say, the user chooses $35. That margin on every sale goes straight back to the user.

Note - we are not paying the user to engage with our brand. What were doing is being honest and fair about the value that customer is providing our company.

What we've done here is create a platform where consumers are creators of our very products, and even paid employees of our company, albeit working on commission.

Again, all been done, but we are moving away from what has been done under the banner of a big brand, and moving into a business model.

Part 3 - Empowering Our Customer Contractors

Now that our customer has created a great design, and priced it in our store, we need to drop the third leg of the stool - we need to give him tools to further raise his status. To market his designs.

We create a tool that allows the customer to assemble posters, stickers, and movies, ads and spots. How the customer chooses to think of this is his call. But we provide a system that allows him to incorporate his design into artful executions - video of the design being printed on canvas, excellent typography, the ability to upload images and video of his own, access to a huge library of excellent music. In short we develop a small studio in a box. All the tools the customers needs to sell his own product to his own network. We must facilitate that.

Secondarily, like in the App Store, we can offer customers the ability to afford better placement in our storefront. They might even be allowed to trade sales dollars for that placement if they wish.

There are dozens of other ideas that can roll into such a system, but the above illustrates perhaps some basic parts.

I hope you can see that such a thing is a long way from an "ad campaign" even a so-called "native" one. Functioning together all three parts create a functional native ecosystem that centers around our client's business model with a symbiotic business model of its own. A system that will result in consumers meaningfully expressing themselves and investing in the brand, buying the products, and evangelizing on our client's behalf, by definition. Word will spread without a media buy because the system quite literally incentivises socializing, distribution of the message, and sales.

Going Native

This is just a starting point. And building in a payment scheme is not a defining feature of Native Marketing in my opinion. Rather there is a wide world of opportunity for smarter people than me if only agencies can wake up real fast to the true nature of the medium. That they will eventually be forced from accepting the advertising paradigm at face value, and the practice of interrupting consumers with creative yakking about the value or brands.

They must rebuild their position on the solid principles of interactive media - even though that means a significant shift in the skillsets required.

The promise of the medium is that anyone can become big, anyone can be in business, make money, solve problems, achieve fame, express themselves, become better, smarter and happier and it is your job as a Native Marketer to facilitate all of that for users on behalf of your clients' and their business models

.In the Grand Interactive Order you are lowly servants of our King, the User. You must provide him with value. Or you will be cast out.

That's as "native" as it gets.

And that, Mad Man, is the new deep end.

Advertisers Whine: "Do Not Track" Makes Our Job Really Super Hard

Advertisers-whine

Advertisers Whine: "Do Not Track" Makes Our Job Really Super Hard

So the Association of National Advertisers got it's panties all twisted in a knot because Microsoft was planning to build a "Do Not Track" feature into the next version of Internet Explorer - as a default setting. Theoretically this should allow users who use Explorer 10 to instruct marketers not to track the sites you visit, the things you search for, and links you click.

A letter was written to Steve Ballmer and other senior executives at Microsoft demanding that the feature be cut because, and get this, it: "will undercut the effectiveness of our members’ advertising and, as a result, drastically damage the online experience by reducing the Internet content and offerings that such advertising supports. This result will harm consumers, hurt competition, and undermine American innovation and leadership in the Internet economy.”

This is about a feature which allows you to choose not to have your internet behavior tracked by marketers. I'll wait till you're done laughing. Oh God my cheeks are sore.

And if the story ended here, I'd just gleefully use Explorer 10 and tell all the sputtering, stammering marketers who would dumbly fire advertisements for socks at me since I indeed bought some socks over 2 months ago indicating that I must be a "sock-buyer", to suck it up.

But the story does not end there.

The problem is that "Do Not Track" is voluntary. Advertisers are technically able to ignore the setting and do everything you think you are disallowing. The industry has only agreed to adhere to the Do Not Track setting if it is not on by default - only if it has been explicitly turned on by a human being which would indicate that this person really truly does not want to be tracked. A default setting does not "prove" this intention.

So when wind of Microsoft's plans became known Roy Fielding, an author of "Do Not Track" wrote a patch allowing Apache servers to completely ignore Microsoft's setting by default. In support of this Fielding states:

"The decision to set DNT by default in IE10 has nothing to do with the user's privacy. Microsoft knows full well that the false signal will be ignored, and thus prevent their own users from having an effective option for DNT even if their users want one."

So Microsoft - who may very well have been grandstanding with its default DNT to earn points with consumers - backed down and set it to off, by default. Now if you turn it on - theoretically it should work for those users. But of course now the same stale rule applies only in reverse, the DNT setting will be "off" for most users - not because the user chose that setting, but because the user likely didn't know any better - and presto - sock ads.

So the marketers breathe a sigh of relief. Crisis averted. Advertising's parasitic, interruptive, low-bar-creative business model can prevail.

At least it will work until the day comes that users all start using DNT. At which point we'll be right back here again with advertisers screeching that the whole thing is broken because it threatens the American way.

And if you've read any other posts on this blog you know I believe oppressive threat to the advertising business model is exactly what needs to happen.

At the end of the day - advertisers need to stop interrupting your attention and vying for surreptitious control over your privacy and your life.

The ad industry instead needs to learn how to create messages consumers actually want. Desirable, welcome things that don't naturally result in the vast majority of the population idly wishing there was a button to disallow it, as is the case today.If you are an advertiser you probably read this and have no idea what such a thing might be.

And that's the problem with your world view.

The Secret to Mastering Social Marketing

The Secret to Mastering Social Marketing

Social Marketing is huge.  It's everywhere.  If you work in advertising today, you're going to be asked how your clients can take advantage of it, how they can manage and control it.   There are now books, sites, departments, conferences, even companies devoted to Social Marketing.

Through these venues you'll encounter a billion strategies and tactics for taking control of the Social Marketing maelstrom.  Some simple - some stupidly convoluted.

And yet through all of that there is really only one idea that you need to embrace.  One idea that rises above all the others.  One idea that trumps any social marketing tactic anyone has ever thought of ever.

It's like that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark  when Indy is in Cairo meeting with that old dude who is translating the ancient language on the jeweled headpiece that would show exactly where to dig.  And suddenly it dawns on them that the bad guys only had partial information.

"They're digging in the wrong place!"

Well if you are focused on social marketing strategies and tactics - you're digging in the wrong place.

You don't control social marketing.  You don't manage it.  You are the subject of it.The secret to mastering social marketing is this:

Make the best product, and provide the best customer service.Do this, and social marketing will happen.  Like magic.  That's it.

Make the best product, and provide the best customer service.There is no social marketing strategy that can turn a bad product or service into a good one.  No button, no tweet, no viral video campaign, no Facebook like-count, that will produce better social marketing results than simply offering the best product and customer service in your category.

And if this whole outlook deflates the hopes you had when you began reading this, you are probably among those searching for some easy, external way of wielding new tools and associated interactions in order to manipulate potential customers.  Of gaming the system.  Sorry.   You're digging in the wrong place.

Social marketing is just the truth.  Or rather it needs to be.   And any effort you put into manipulating that truth will undermine your credibility when it's revealed - because it will be.  In fact, with rare exception, your mere intervention in the social exchange will be, and should be, regarded with suspicion.

Like when the other guy's lawyer tells you it's a really good deal - just sign here.  O..kay...Take the recent case of Virgin Media.  Reported to have some of the worst customer service satisfaction in the industry.  Something I can personally attest to.

It took me three months, eight take-the-entire-day-off-work-and-wait-around-for-them-to-show-up-at-an-undisclosed-time appointments (three of which were no-shows) and countless interminable phone calls to their based-on-current-call-volume-it-could-take-over-an-hour-for-an-operator automated answering system, to install one internet connection.  It then took an additional seven months (not exaggerating) to activate cable TV in my home (all the while paying for it monthly no less). But what makes this relevant was that after all the scheduling, rescheduling, no-shows, begging, re-rescheduling, being insulted, ignored and generally treated like a complete waste of the company's effort, the day I Tweeted that "Virgin Media Sucks!", I got an immediate response - in that public forum, not privately - feigning sincere interest in helping me.

Alas the superficial social marketing tactic was in utter conflict with the truth.  And so here I am, throwing Virgin Media under the train as a poster-child of disingenuous social marketing strategies, dutifully reporting how utterly crappy and self-centered the company is, making sure that many more people know that Virgin's voice in the social scene is a complete sham and should be regarded with extreme suspicion... because their customer service indeed sucks complete ass.

Conversely, had Virgin Media put effort into helping me when I needed them to - this post would be a lot shorter. Hell I might even have tweeted that Virgin Media is insanely great and the leader to go with.

Anyone who indeed manages to trick a portion of this population - this internet-connected population - will eventually see it blow up and that will be far more damaging than if they'd left well enough alone.  You can't lie in the age of full exposure.

Just create the best product or service in your category.  And then serve your customers and the inquiring public better than anyone else using whatever communication tools are available at the given moment in time.

Because you don't master social marketing, you simply serve your King.

AdBlock Works Like Magic, Ad Agencies Collectively Wet Selves

AdBlock Works Like Magic, Ad Agencies Collectively Wet Selves

The poor ad industry. It just keeps getting its ass handed to it.Well here we go again.

For years I have wished there was a magic button I could push that would eliminate all ads from any web page. A friend responded by suggesting that that's stupid, and you shouldn't have to push a button, it should just happen automatically. Well, right. Duh.

I was then introduced to AdBlock for Chrome and Safari.

Install one of these browser extensions and like magic you will instantly and miraculously be browsing an ad-free internet. It is the Internet you always imagined but cynically never thought you would see.

Literally, no ads - anywhere. No popups, no overlays, no banners, no stupid, hyperactive, take-over-your-screen "cool, immersive experiences" designed to earn some half-rate art director a Clio at your preciously timed expense. Nope - all gone. Cleaned up. Nothing but pure, clean, content. Exactly what you always wished the internet was.

So I spent a day browsing the net - ad-free - and thoroughly happy about it.  But I began to wonder what all the poor agency people were going to do. Surely they are aware of these, right? I mean AdBlocks developer, this one dude, has 2 million customers, and the number is growing.

Hey, Agencies, are you getting this? ...Yet? Not only do consumers routinely wish they wouldn't happen by the product of your full effort, they are now able to affect the medium to destroy you. Or rather, destroy your ancient, irrelevant tactics.

The fact is - interruptive ads should disappear - not because we've all installed adblockers, but because banners, popups and other interruptive tactics are patently inauthentic in an interactive environment and the ad industry should have understood this fact a decade ago and spent the last 10 years developing authentic models for advocating a client's brand.

There are ways to do it - but it means ad agencies will have to reorganize and fundamentally change their skill sets. It means they'll have to hire entrepreneurial creative teams who understand business processes and manufacturing and fulfillment systems.

Hear this, ad agencies:

The simple fact is, your interruptive advertising tactics are fundamentally, critically flawed.  Someday you will indeed have to adapt by developing valuable offerings, well above the slightly amusing ad content you produce today.In the meantime, it's lucky for you there are a lot of users who don't think to go looking for a magical ad blocker. At least not until they hear about it.But don't worry, I won't say anything. 

If There Were A Marketing God

MyMarketingGod

If There Were A Marketing God

Sometimes I like to imagine what ads would be like if there were an omnipresent Marketing God.  Some supreme, completely honest marketing voice that knew all.  All about the products and companies that we have access to.In order to draw fair and complete comparisons between complicated products and conditions you have to think that ads created by the Lord our Marketer, would be pretty wordy, but because the Marketing God really wants to make sure I know the truth, and knows I am lazy, all the words would go into my head in the form of a native thought.  Pop!  Full understanding.

Like an ad for a pen might go:

"My Son‚ " My marketing God always starts his advertising copy that way.

"My Son, on the one hand at 50% off, Writemate's New Gel Premium Grip pen is well worth its monetary price, costing you $0.02 less than the cost of materials, production, packaging and distribution.  On the other, I beg that you weigheth the claim of "disposable".  Alas, it is not disposable in a compositional sense, excepting that once it runs out of ink you will simply wish to discard it.    In fact, if you buy now, the specific pen you are holding will persist intact for 357 years at which time it will be mistaken for a silverfish and swallowed by an as-yet un-evolved Sea Lion species near South American shores.  That will be on a Sunday.  It will puncture her esophagus which will make the sea lion deceased by the following thursday and will further render the unborn cub of the sea lion stillborn.  The remnants of the pen will then degrade over the following 1,263 years.  And anyway the ink will leaketh onto thine new, white Zara shirt next wednesday on a flight to Tampa due to low air pressure.  So you will have to keep your suit jacket buttoned, enduring scorching Florida heat to avoid embarrassment at the board meeting.  Also - some of the ink will get on the skin of your abdomen.  There is a new nano-particle in the ink that BioCenterLabs managed to get approved for commercial use without enough long-term testing to record its full impact on an entire human life span.  The chemical can pass through your skin; it enters the blood stream and eventually is filtered by your liver.  Unfortunately it will stay in your liver and will be a .082 percent contributing factor to your fatal organ failure at the age of 87.  That might sound old to you now - but actually people who avoid that chemical (and a couple others we need to talk about, my Son) will be living to 102 years on average by then.  Even so, if you do decide to purchase it, you will be able to use this pen to jimmy your backdoor open when you get locked out on Monday morning - so hey, it's your call."

And he puts the whole thing into a little yellow starburst in the corner of the package.  Somehow it's magically and instantly legible.  And there isn't a picture of some hot chick using the Pen either.  It's a picture of me, jimmying my back door in my boxers next to a choking sea lion.

My marketing Lord's ad messages are often inconclusive. Loaded with trade-offs and complexities.  He says that's life. Things are always more complicated than one might wish.

That said, He IS pretty conclusive with spam.  The last spam message I got from Him read:

"My Son, these Male Enhancement Pills will NOT increaseth the size of your penis.  Not in the slightest.  They will however give you a stomach ache.  I could go on about where your money will go, and what the herbs will do in your body - and the fact that some of them come from a company that employs little kids the same age as your son.  But anyway - your penis is bigger than that annoying guy at your office whom you disliketh, so feel good about that and don't bother with this product."

I was at the Super Market yesterday and so overwhelmed was He that my Marketing Lord had to stop to rest part way through.  I was at the dairy section when I saw an ad on a carton of Milk:

"My Son, Have you seen this Child?  Last seen voluntarily leaving his mother's house gleefully hugging and kissing his estranged father who loved the little boy more deeply than life itself.  The clinically neurotic, smoking, self-centered mother, had unfairly acquired custody of the boy when said father failed to show up at the custody court hearing.  He was at the time sitting by his son's side at the hospital as the boy recovered from injuries having suffered a fall in the mother's backyard while she ignored him the day prior watching Jerry Springer lounging slothfully next to her ashtray.  Of course this fact was not mentioned at the hearing.  So don't call the number below if you have information.  The kid is now happy and well care for."

No not that ad - I meant the one on the other side of the carton:

"Got Milk, My Son?  You might ask why you should.  For that matter, consider why you think of it as "milk" at all, and not, say, "fluid secreted from several mildly-tortured animal's teats?"  Or at least "Cow milk?"  My Son, human breast milk is required by human infants to start life healthily.  That is the only type of milk the human body ever requires in its lifetime. As such it should logically be what you think of when you hear the generic use of the word "milk".  But the Dairy Board has issued some very effective, multifaceted marketing strategies since well before you were born to compel your parents, and now you, to think of cow milk as some sort of wholesome, important, even mandatory part of an adult's diet.  In reality, after 2 or 3 years of age the average human body stops producing the enzymes required to digest milk.  Any milk - including this carton of cow milk.  Weened humans do not need milk.  At all, unless of course one were in an utter vacuum of other more healthy food sources.  Further consider the fact that the milk secreted from cows' udders rather specifically occurs to add an incredible 700 pounds of body weight to a comparatively dumb animal infant over only 9 months - this is far from the kind of nutrition a small, intelligent human requires.  And you have wondered why dairy is so fattening?  Anyway, whatever worthwhile nutrients one might find in cow milk can be all obtained via other easily available sources, in healthier forms.  If you're still not sure, take this test my Son: ask yourself if you would drink a tall, cool glass of homogenized rat milk.  Be honest.  Or dog milk.  Now, aside from availability issues there is no meaningful, health-based difference between these and cow milk.  Now, what about a glass of human breast milk?  My Son, it is more fit for you than cow milk, and your grimace at that thought is cause enough for you to reflect seriously on your reflexive acceptance of swallowing cow secretions.  With my deepest respect my Son, you are merely non-critically used to it.  Cow milk is simply abundant.  That is the only reason it was adopted by agribusiness.  I could go on about the rough treatment and generally miserable lives of these animals, and the hormones and drugs that are used to keep these cows in a state of pseudo-pregnancy - producing unnaturally large quantities of milk so as to feed a country's population, and how these drugs and hormones not only negatively affect the animal's health but yours too.  And that contrary to human marketing, osteoporosis is literally worsened by the ongoing consumption of large amounts of cow milk after puberty, not improved.  Instead my Son, I would simply turn your attention to the Rice Milk over there, some nuts and collard greens."

Pop!  All understood in an instant.  And there isn't a cute cartoon of a cow on the box either, no, it's a color photo of a fleshy, slightly milking-sleeve-infected cow teat dripping a squirt of delicious wholesome yellowy-white fluid.

Total honestly.  Full disclosure.

There are several aisles in my super market where my Marketing God simply screams really loud and panicky, and stutters things like "M..M..Monsanto..!" and "... CLONED BEEF!", and I have learned not to go down those aisles at all.

I wish.

Unfortunately, I don't really have a supreme Marketing God.  I'm bombarded by the sometimes overt, and sometimes surreptitious, marketing tactics of companies that operate under a type of self-preservation, survival motivation of their own with messages that are usually intentionally incomplete- lacking sincere and helpful full-disclosure at best, and often misleading, dishonest or dangerous at worst.  My only tools are books, the Internet, common sense, my wife (the previous two are interchangeable), and a willingness to question the basic status quo of every single purchase decision I encounter.

That's hard work.  The system isn't designed to support access to the truth.

It is designed and maintained to compel you to purchase and consume without such a critical thought.

Gap is the Biggest Wussy on Earth

gaplogo

Gap is the Biggest Wussy on Earth

So we all saw the new Gap logo. It looked weird. It looked wrong. It looked like all sorts of other unbecoming words that were broadcast over Twitter and Facebook within hours of its unveiling.

Then, in what is going to be (or should be) remembered as the biggest corporate branding fail of the last decade, Gap caved in to all the little whiny Tweeters and defensively pulled its shiny, new logo.

Anyone who thinks that move was rational - that pulling the new logo was the best thing Gap could have done in the situation - is somewhere between equally ball-less and an idiot.

No, it was the worst thing Gap could have done in the situation. I've read a few posters who think the whole thing was an intentional rouse to gain attention. Far fetched. There are better ways of gaining attention than intentionally making your company look like a bunch of bumbling idiots. That's not it.

I'm sure Gap thinks they were "using the medium intelligently to respond to consumer opinion" or something one might read in a Forrester report on social marketing. But really they are just pussies.

The fact is, any time you launch a logo redesign you have some people who complain. The new logo always "feels weird". It feels weird because it's different. Like the...mirror image of a photograph which never feels "better" than the original orientation - until you get used to the novel nature of it.

Critics crawled out of the woodwork - and the internet lets their short-term opinions sound big. But a company has to differentiate between that kind of blip, and the long-term strategic reasoning behind their decisions.The truth is - all those whiners would have gotten used to the new logo. And they would have come to associate it positively with the brand, so long as Gap continued to invest in it and in their creative marketing efforts as they have done.

When the iPad was announced by Apple - the whole world spent 2 weeks laughing at it and making comparisons to tampons. It was ridiculed. SNL did skits about it. People made YouTube videos roasting it. It was the laughing stock.Who's laughing now?

Apple had the balls to commit (this kind of thing really doesn't take much in the way of balls - just the basics - which is why Gap is such a colossal wuss). And iPad's critical consumer responses naturally waned, like all these things do. This wasn't an oil spill for christ sake, it was a brand.

You know, I hate to say it now - but I sort of liked the new logo. I mean it was Helvetica, sure. One might argue that seems old. But so are 5 dozen other logos that use it quite well. And Gap, maybe even uniquely, has the minimalist heritage to have owned the execution. The black and white was refreshing.

So the little blue square was sort of lame at first glance - but who knows how it all would have manifested across other products and marketing devices over time. Guaranteed, Gap, the nay-sayers would have wound down, and a new crop of less outspoken advocates would have embraced the new logo quite well.

You just had to have the very slightest teensy little balls a company can have.Instead you have displayed yourself to the world as an utter corporate whip. You've done more damage to your brand equity by pulling the new logo, than the blip of negativity that naturally comes with anything new.

Now I don't give a crap how "tough" or cool your models are styled to look.Now we all know - Gap is just a self-conscious little wuss.

Going Social On Your Ass

go social

Going Social On Your Ass

Three years ago some ad agency dweeb leaned into my office and smirked "Dude, our campaign just went social".

And I think, after a brief pause, my immediate reaction was to throw up in my mouth.  I silently hoped I would never hear that stupid little term again. That something "went social".

But boy it's catchy isn't it?  Sounds all proactive and edgy and exciting, right?  If you work in an ad agency, you probably just enthusiastically thought 'Hell yeah'.

Those of you who know me know I hate these little, after-the-fact terms.  Badges that agency people glom onto in an attempt to own the things that happen to them by accident.  To claim it somehow, despite the fact that they exist outside the users' intent.  "Viral", "Word of Mouth", and now "Going social".

Hello!?  It's all the same thing, people.  Yeah yeah, someone will feel compelled to bloviate on behalf of the need for, and variances between these dumb little labels.  And it still won't change the fact that users are in complete control - share what they want, how they want, only when they feel like it - and that advertisers have never actually had permission to interrupt or effect a desire of their own upon users no matter where they do it.  And if, in wishful disregard, the advertiser still has some desire for proactivity of any sort, may at best, bow low and deep, and beggingly offer service to the king, the user.

But they rarely do.  Advertising seems meaningless unless advertisers think they have control.  So we now spend a lot of money developing and executing marketing plans that will "go social".

In the words of my old friend Nick, Social "this."

Ad agency people: in a couple short years you will no longer be uttering that term.  So save yourself the pleated, acid-washed embarrassment, and don't utter it today either.

Look at the big picture.  Make things that are valuable.  Then be silently grateful that something you created isn't held in utterly dull regard by the user.

And then maybe I won't be forced to keep swallowing my own vomit.

The Best Thing On The Internet Right Now

flash

The Best Thing On The Internet Right Now

So after a particularly frustrating day of having Flash-based content crash my browser, I finally buckled under and succumbed to the recommendation of my old business partner Tim Smith and downloaded a little, free Mac Safari plugin called "ClickToFlash".

ClickToFlash is a simple tool that blocks Flash content in the Safari browser and replaces it with a pleasant, ignorable graphic.  And if you choose to click the ignorable graphic - the Flash movie loads normally.  Simple.

But why would the average person want it?  Most advocates will tell you because it will significantly reduce browser crashing.  Which it does.  But there is something else.  Something I found infinitely more satisfying.I'd resisted ClickToFlash previously because I thought, at the time, I wouldn't want to miss out on all those cool experiences, those grey boxes would probably annoy me, and any extra clicking would degrade my experience.

Was I ever wrong on all counts.

ClickToFlash has made surfing the web a pleasant - no, a delightful experience.

The surprise came when I landed on my first page, a news site, which I was fairly sure had no Flash content on it anyway.  Naturally when I landed I saw the article, but what surprised me was what I didn't see.  What I didn't see - were ADS.  Just a nice clean page and the content I wanted.I went to another site, and another, and the obvious realization kicked in that most of the prominently positioned, above the fold and therefore expensive to place ads on the web today are Flash-based (read: sexiest and therefor deserving of being in the expensive locations).

At that moment, with great thrill, I realized ClickToFlash might just as well have been named "ClickToBeAnnoyedByAdvertising."Ah… control.  This is what Interactive media is supposed to be!  In an instant I had muted the visual screechings of thousands of uninvited, self-important, flagrant 1st-Axiom-of-Interactive violating Advertisers.

Of course this will all end come the day that the engineering teams relegated down the food chain to advertising agencies finally fire their Flash developers and start focusing on the emerging web spec HTML 5 as a platform of choice.But don't worry - that's not going to happen anytime soon.  The spec is only partially deployed, and fortunately for me, advertisers love Flash.

Way behind the curve, agencies are still staffing up with Flash developers as though the technology can replace creative ideas, as though that one technology can pull them out of the ad industry's chaotic spiral, as though it were - "the future." To them, Flash is still cool.Such is the state of creative teams in most ad agencies.  These poor guys are literally just starting to feel solid ground under their feet after a decade of "viral this" and "social that".  The desperate wishing that TV spots would just stay important forever has finally waned and most agency creatives have finally, grudgingly, begun to accept interactive media as the centerpiece of their campaigns.  See, advertising creatives don't like it when the medium carpet is pulled out from under them.  It's only happened once before and it took them over a decade to accept it;  It's hard to develop creative solutions when your palette changes so fundamentally everyday.  If technology is not in your blood - you struggle trying to track the advancements and incorporate them into something resembling a mature creative execution that doesn't smack of novelty-chasing.  So now that Flash has been embraced ubiquitously by advertisers, it will take quite a lot to move that big ship off the Flash gulf stream.  You can rest assured that advertisers will still be using Adobe's somewhat clunky tool for a long, long time.

And that suits my ClickToFlash self just fine.  That's right boys.  Graphic banners are boring.  And what the heck is Ajax or JQuery anyway?  HTML 5 (or 6?) couldn't possibly kill Flash.  Because with Flash you can create "experiences!"  Who knows maybe it will go "viral" or even better, "social".

Just you keep spending your clients' money on really humongous, big Flash campaigns.  Buy up all the available ad space for that gorgeous, experiential, Flashtrubation.  Please, I'm begging you.

And the rest of you Mac users - download ClickToFlash.

Internet nirvana awaits.

The Myth of Viral Marketing And The Rise Of Status

The Myth of Viral Marketing And The Rise Of Status

"Viral Marketing" is a myth. Always has been. It never existed. And as you'll see, even if it had, you would want nothing to do with it. "Word of Mouth"? Less toxic, but critically, equally incomplete. Social Network Marketing? Swarm Marketing? Mobile Marketing? Just more opaque containers. In a revealing display of the industry's ongoing struggle with interactive, none of the terms in use today comes close to illuminating how an advertiser can approach inspiring that Holy Grail of interactive marketing, a User-distributive spread...  Until now.

The term Viral Marketing (or "v-marketing") was coined by Harvard Business School professor, Jeffrey Rayport, in a rational December 1996 article for Fast Company The Virus of Marketing. Rayport is a passionate, engaging public speaker, and a brilliant thinker. And in 1996, a time when ad agency executives were still uttering the words, "...'new media', huh?", "Viral marketing" might have resonated for some and brought an easy mental image to this strange new behavior of consumers online. Unfortunately, Rayport's metaphoric, arm's-length reference to the term "viral" was almost immediately shortened to nil and ham-fistedly adopted as the all-purpose agency weapon of choice, it's obvious limitations unrecognized by over eager marketers, desperate for answers.

Despite Rayport's loose analogy, the fact of the matter is that there never was a practicable connection between a virus and any form of legal marketing that any of us have employed in the last 15 years. And yet - walk into any ad agency in the country today and say you want a "viral campaign", and they'll smile knowingly and give you the thumbs up.Before I go further, we've got to do this, here's the definition of "virus", really, humor me here:

virus |ˈvīrəs| noun• Any of various simple submicroscopic parasites that cause disease- unable to replicate without a host cell.• An infectious disease caused by a virus.• A harmful or morbid corrupting influence on morals or the intellect. Something that poisons the mind or the soul.• (also computer virus) a segment of self-replicating code planted illegally in a computer program, that has a detrimental effect, such as corrupting the system or destroying data.(from the Latin "virus" meaning "toxin" or "poison")

...that, plus "Marketing".

You can see why marketers loved this term. Seriously. In the face of a strange, new medium, where content was suddenly, confoundedly, intertwined with a rapid stream of complicated, new technology, where audiences had become vapor- diffused, elusive and unpredictable, behaving nothing like the reliably passive, pre-aggregated viewership that marketers were so used to, the "there" no longer being there, where virtually none of advertising's old skills and tactics got traction - and ultimately, where an utter lack of control hung thick in the air of every ad agency conference room across the country, "Viral Marketing" brought an immediate sense of relief and comfort, because "Viral Marketing" seemed to promise control.

To a population of office workers suffering under an ongoing reign of computer viruses, where the viruses were clearly a type of offensively potent "winner" over the Internet-connected masses, this term brilliantly dovetailed two perviously disparate data points, and in doing so, created the first sensation of power any advertiser had ever had relative to Interactive.

Just imagine, being able to create an ad that you could literally unleash on unsuspecting Internet consumers - one that would spread surreptitiously and offensively mind you, "infecting" vast multiples across the consumer population- powerfully, virilely, unstoppably changing brand preferences as it devoured it's unwitting hosts, until the World succumbed to the disease of your clients' brand positioning.

That's admittedly extreme, but never-the-less it is "Viral Marketing"'s clear linguistic suggestion. And too many advertisers allowed this not-so-subtle suggestion to color their unconscious hopes and expectations, falling victim to one of advertising's own superficial methods of persuasion.

The Myth Persists

Ultimately, it was to the decade-long (and still running strong) detriment of advertisers who eagerly drank this infected kool-aid. The true virus is the subconscious subtext that Viral Marketing is some sort of actual deployment tactic that gives advertisers control over the medium or their audiences. Or a valid deliverable an advertiser might offer a client. All of which placated advertisers, pulling their innovative attention away from the real challenges.  This was the critically destructive impact of the misnomer. Such was the perfect storm in advertising then that virtually no one questioned or challenged the term, rather it was fervently embraced and espoused across all levels of the industry - despite the fact that no one really knew what to do with the idea.  And so it remains, for good reason.

A vast majority of advertisers who still use the term today, have probably not read Rayport's article and recognized it's undercurrent of proposed misrepresentation and unintentional User behavior, which just doesn't ring true today.  Wish as marketers might.  And ultimately it's this suggestion of power and control that is the concept's undoing.Some have had to learn the hard way, that "Viral Marketing" isn't really. Today, when the term is spoken, advertisers now in the know experience a reflexive double-take that "Viral" doesn't mean "Viral" at all, it means "...something cool... that will hopefully be embraced by Users and shared".

A lot of terms have been employed over recent years to try to explain the nature of such a spread. At Red Sky in 1996, we called this phenomenon (the sudden user-distributed spread of a piece of content or an ad)  "Friend to Friends Marketing". If unwieldy, to this day I think that name rings truer than "Viral", because "Friend to Friends" connects, if ever so naively, with the actual, functional, activity that causes such a spread.

Today the term "Word of Mouth" is often used in place of, or in addition to "Viral". "Word of Mouth" is generally considered an advance in the thinking, and different than "Viral" to the extent that WOM perhaps is not dependent on a distributable digital item, but rather a good impression of a product or brand that can be communicated through the users' network, both in, and out of the medium. WOM never-the-less does not sufficiently suggest any actual strategy or tactic that an advertiser might use to market in a way. If "Viral" is the worst offender, grossly referring to the mere spread of a meme via an inaccurate functional metaphor, Word of Mouth comes in second revealing nothing but a past-tense condition, void of an approach to marketing. Then there's "Swarm Marketing". Do you see a pattern? A swarm may be an interesting behavioral metaphor with respect to users' interconnectedness, perhaps more accurate in its distantly observed behavior than a mere "social network" but again, it does not illuminate a direction, a plan of action that marketers can act against. Just another coat of paint on a box we've never figured out how to open.

Ultimately, each of these terms only do service in assessing a previously generated condition, what happened - after the fact. Long after the campaign ran it's course, long after the planners and strategists and creatives did their work, and after the media buy, after, by some stroke of good luck, some critical mass of users saw fit to share the thing or idea with their friends and connected networks, only then do these terms find any relevance. Advertisers step back, and look at what happened, and where it happened and announce that it spread "virally". That it was spread, and consumed through "word of mouth"... by a swarm... in a social network.  ...via Mobile.

And all of this matters to those of us who wish to understand and recreate the phenomenon.  To work in front of, and through the opaque walls of those terms.  If you're like me, you want to know what you can actually do, proactively, to make that kind of spread happen.

Peeling Back The First Layer

I've heard a lot of smart people opine on this subject. And I have not liked their answers. The more naive answers have centered around facilitation of a spread, such as variants from adding "a send to a friend button" to "seeding communities". But clearly these do not inspire a user to send a piece of content to his friends. Others circle around the idea that the content (the ad) must be "relevant". As you have probably seen in other posts on this site, I agree with that premise. However, again, in terms of inspiring a "Viral Effect", a successful Word of Mouth campaign, it is incomplete. Relevance to the target User is unquestionably necessary, but let me draw a distinction, it must be relevant for an individual User to adequately consume and positively regard a piece of content. But that does not reveal why a user will pass it on in multiples.

Inspiring Distribution

To understand, facilitate the creation of, and incidentally perhaps better label this type of marketing, one must first understand the psychology that drives this kind of interaction at all, this kind of content and meme sharing. One must understand the psychology of communication.Human beings are story-telling animals. We are, at our core, communicators. Always have been. This core need to communicate spans cultures and time. It’s how we survive as a species. As members of a society we are constantly measured against others; where communication is our primary tool for managing that measurement. Look at communication behavior closely and you will see that we do not communicate with altruism. We have a goal. Our goal is the increase of our individual status compared to others in the society.

Within Maslowe's "Esteem Needs" (the level it's safe to assume most Americans experience most of the time), literally all human interactions are governed by the continuous adjustment of status. Status is the very currency of human communication. Status, in one form or another is the basis for all communication. Also note that status is a relative measure - to gain higher status I can either increase mine or decrease everyone else’s. Most people are constantly and unconsciously engaged in ongoing status battles. You see this dynamic being played out in virtually every conversation. In virtually every exchange. It is universal in our society.

And folks - therein lies the answer.

The distribution of digital content and communication by an interactive media User can be interpreted as an attempt on the part of that User to increase His social status within the online society.

When a User's recipient responds with any level of praise-- "That was hilarious, Dude! Thanks!" (I say "Dude"... sue me) an increase in status is confirmed. Conversely consider the deflation that accompanies the reply "Yeah, I saw that last month, you just saw that now?". The user's status has lowered. And pray the recipient is so kind. Even a lack of response is the tactic of some for managing status. The range and subtleties of these interactions, and the emotions they impact are powerful evidence of Status jockeying.

Now, we must take this insight one step further, we must bring "Status" into the advertisers' toolbox, and identify our role, as the creators of ideas, of content- of relevant value. As I hope you can see, it is not enough merely to provide relevant content or a relevant experience. Let's connect this insight to the first rule of Interactive:

Interactive AXIOM #1: The User Is Your King, & You, The Content Creator, Are A Subject.

What does it mean then, to serve our King if we now know that the King, confronting communication in this medium, is in point of fact, always engaged in a war for status? That when he considers sending a piece of content, or sharing a view, or even responding to someone else's blog (hopefully with our marketing message), his primary goal in doing so is that it result in an increase in His status and/or a decrease in his recipients'?Got it?  Clearly our role, as the creators of content that we hope He will send on, as the creators of positive brand memes that we hope He will share, is to provide our King with content or ideas that will, as He perceives it, raise His status.I call this proactive planning approach to inspiring the User-distributive spread of an ad, or a meme, "Status Marketing".

Status Marketing

Status Marketing is a proactive strategy that results in positive "word of mouth", that results in a "viral effect". Status Marketing must be the foundation of every online marketing campaign being planned today.

This is a very different exercise than merely attempting to create a "powerful brand message", "relevant content", a hilarious ad, or seeding a swarm or mobile network. These approaches, these types of marketing, are simply lacking in the direction necessary for motivating audiences who are entirely in control.If you look at the main components of every single successful online campaign throughout the life if the commercial Internet, you will find effective "Status Marketing" plans at work - not "Viral" marketing plans, not "Word of Mouth", and not "Social Network Marketing" or any of the other after-the-fact or container observations. You will find Status Marketing strategies and executions that either intentionally, or unintentionally, tapped into this single powerful principle.Conversely look at those campaigns that failed to achieve wide-spread, "viral" distribution, and you will see an utter failure to acknowledge the Status concept, or you'll see an ineffectively executed attempt to raise the target audience's status among their peers. Either way, this is the key, folks.Identify what will help your King raise His status among His peers and network, what kind of content, tools,  images, ideas, and data, will provide Him with that result, should He send it, and you will have discovered the Holy Grail of online marketing.

Status Factors

In a bit of an arm's race, the form of ideas and items that are going to raise a user's status will change over time, based on numerous dynamics.  But there are a number of basic factors that will enhance the likelihood that your User will subconsciously perceive the potential for an increase in His status.  To wit, one might argue that what's important is not whether an ad actually does raise the User's status, but that the User believes it will, if only He sends it on. That said, if the belief isn't paid off, your brand may not get another chance with that User (see: AXIOM #2 - section: Branding the Promise).  Here is an admittedly incomplete short list of status-enhancing factors:

1)  Relevance - I give you permission to say: "No Duh".  And while critical, this topic, alone, is usually the extent of the discussion in other Viral Marketing / Word of Mouth circles. The distinction in this context is that relevance will be measured by the User not necessarily just on whether the item resonated with Him, but how He feels it may resonate within His network.  Remember you are providing tools for the user to, Himself, enhance His brand. It's a skew that should dramatically change the way you approach the subject of "relevance" for your audience, and the creation of your marketing plans.  Typically, this topic relates to the perceived value in the offering.  If it's a joke - how funny is it?  If it's news, how timely is it?  If it's a tool, how useful is it?  But in this context, most importantly - how valuable will He feel His network will feel it is?

2)  Discovery - This is key.  The User must have the sense that He discovered it. That He has unearthed the find.   On the contrary, are you likely to share an item or idea if you feel it is commonly known or previously distributed?  Will you send it, or announce it if you feel it may have already been "discovered" by your network?  What would that do to your status?  To honor this factor on behalf of your User, consider what it means to make your ad/idea appear to be rare.  To have it, in fact, intentionally appear largely unknown or previously unseen.  A piece of work that appears to be well travelled or well marketed - will that help, or hurt the likelihood that your User will send it on?  Consider executions like "Subservient Chicken" and the ancient "Blair Witch Project", the grandfather of "look what I discovered" viral marketing.  These arguably "best of class" executions well demonstrated that items need not be polished and "professional" in the graphic sense, and in fact, the raw, unprofessional aesthetic of the work rather enhances it's "unlikely to have been seen before" perception.  Conversely, pieces that are beautifully polished and appear to be the result of large, well-funded teams, may not hold the same knee-jerk sense of scarcity (and therefor value!) that something appearing to have been created by teams of one or two people do.  Consider that strange little one-man video clips on YouTube achieve a critical mass of sheer distribution that any Fortune 100 Company would kill for.  It's about relevance, but it's also about your User believing that "it probably hasn't been seen before".

3)  Own-ability - The Users' brand must be allowed to dominate the "conversation", and own the exchange.  This critically applies any rise in status to Him.  Items that allow the User to customize content, create, and exert His creativity are powerful examples of "own-ability".  Excellent examples include OfficeMax's "ElfYourself", and Burger King's"SimpsonizeMe".   Further, when a user espouses His own thoughts, he entirely owns that exchange.  Thus providing him with data, or information that He feels confident will make him appear smarter, righter, funnier, etc, can be effective.  Conversely, items that are too-heavily branded with product logos and messaging or too thick with brand or product references can undermine this factor, wresting perceived shares of status away from a User and minimizing the likelihood that He will wish to share or send it on.

4)  Control - The User must feel He is in control of the content, His actions, and His status.  Prescriptive marketing distribution tactics ("send this ad to a friend!") can actually weaken the likelihood that the User will comply.  Give up- the User is in control.  You're not.  The User must be allowed to "invent" the idea to send something on or share an idea.  This runs to the heart of what so many comedians will tell you is a critical component of comedy - trusting the intelligence of the audience.  Similarly here, we must trust that the User will a) invent the idea to send it along, and b) know how to send an appropriately designed item on- should He decide to.  On the surface, this means that some items should appear to be for the User's sole enjoyment- even though it is hoped that He will forward the item.  Facilitate the downloading or saving of the item for the User's "personal use".  Post it in a format that interfaces with popular social networks - without "suggesting" what to do with it.  He'll know what do do after that.  To a degree these tactics, and the extra effort that may be required by Him to distribute an item, can also enhance the perception of its scarcity.  Which can be a good thing.This is nowhere near an exhaustive list, nor must all of these factors be in place to their full extent to generate sufficient distribution.  But it hopefully illuminates some of the most basic principles impacting Users' perception of Status-Building.

The term Status Marketing reminds us what ultimately drives the distributive online interaction that our Users engage in every day, and further, what our job is, as servants to our interactive Kings.  Ultimately we must empower Users to be smarter, funnier, more insightful, talented, and connected, in their battles, amidst their societies, for Status.  This is the one and only engine that drives online distribution.Take Status Marketing to heart - no matter who your target User is - and your campaign will succeed.

HP PONG: Advertising's Atom Smasher

Sorry this used to be animated and fully interactive. Thank you, Digital Dark Ages!

HP PONG: Advertising's Atom Smasher

In 1996, at Red Sky Interactive, in partnership with a rebellious band of talented individuals, I developed the HP PONG Banner Ad: the first interactive banner ad on the net, and the web's first example of "rich media".  But behind the scenes, that banner was an atom-smasher, revealing the very principles of interactive advertising- and sweeping industry changes yet to come.    

The HP Pong Banner was created in service to Hewlett-Packard's campaign at the time: “Built by Engineers, used by Normal People” (by Goodby, Silverstien & Partners). As you can hopefully see, it was a full-working version of the classic video game Pong, coded into a banner. GS&P's campaign was smart and put the focus on the brilliant, if often eccentric, HP engineers, and as represented, the Pong banner was created by an Engineer named "Jerry", after drinking quite a lot of coffee.

But GS&P had only hired Red Sky to do what everyone else was doing at the time - create static and, if we could manage within the budget, animated banners (GIF 89 files).

In those days Red Sky Interactive was a little like Fantasy Island, you know, you came in thinking you wanted "X", and Mr. Roarke sent you off with what you needed - usually not "X".  That was Red Sky's DNA. And the HP PONG Banner was one of those instances. Actually, it wasn't an easy sell. No one had done anything like it before, and if you are in anyway involved with deploying ads online today, then you know how restrictive the media owners can be with regard to formats and "unusual" technology.  None of which helped us in making the case to Goodby and HP.

Ultimately, Goodby and HP bought the idea - and together we all fought the fight to strike agreements with the media owners to get it posted.

By video game standards, the banner was mildly entertaining, it was only Pong after all. But after it’s release MSNBC and CNET both reported that it had the highest click-through of any other banner on the Internet for it's three month deployment (Yeah I know - that's back when we measured click-through, sue me). It’s admittedly possible that a good percentage of those click-throughs were merely users confronting banner interactivity for the first time, but it was nevertheless considered a success for those involved.

I don't think this banner does much eyebrow raising today, but at the time, it seemed as though few had considered degrees of interactivity within a banner. My argument in defense of the model back then had been that a longer, narrower stage didn’t mean a user couldn’t have a deeper experience that lasted as long as the user wanted. I am surprised that the creators of banner ads today still have yet to take this basic conceit to it’s most valuable extreme.

After the Pong Banner’s initial attention, we assumed that was about as much as we would see from that.But what happened next was a turning point for those of us at Red Sky.

We began to see the Pong banner stolen. No kidding, users were digging through thier cache folders, copying the .dcr file (Shockwave) and posting it to sites outside the media buy. And maybe more profoundly, they were attaching it to e-mails and sending it to their friends. Keep in mind - this behavior wasn't easily done - it took some effort and technical know-how. There was no such thing as "viral marketing" in 1996 (actually, there still isn't - that's another posting). Nor was there such thing as "Word of Mouth" as in today's popular online nomenclature. No one put buttons on web sites that said "Send to a friend". No one was making games-as-advertisements; this was before all that. Or rather, this revealed all that.

Not entirely unlike it’s contemporaries of the time (and boy am I dating myself), the “Dancing Baby”, or the “Nieman Marcus Cookie Recipe” (told you) the Pong Banner spread. Not because it had a funny tag-line, or the HP logo, but because it provided value to an online audience. Was it a novelty? Absolutely. But it was novel enough to want to share.

It's important now to stop and talk about value.  I'm not talking about the kind of value you get from finding a good sale price, I'm talking about something that's either: entertainment, information, or a service.

Let me further qualify those words with the following semantics: a feature film is "entertainment", a dictionary is "information", a cell phone is "a service".  Where does traditional advertising sit on that spectrum?  Well, it sort of doesn't.  And that's the point.

In answer to this question, more often than not, advertisers will tell you that advertising is entertaining.  Hard-core advertisers will tell you it's a mixture of all three.  And while the case can be intelligently argued, that ads are entertaining, and /or that they provide information and that in doing so provide a service, let's draw a relevant (if my own bias) distinction:

Ads may be "entertaining", but they are not "entertainment".

Before you go there, I've probably heard it. That "lots of people read the fashion magazines for the ads", that "so many people watch the SuperBowl for the spots", and that "people in Europe go to the movies early for the commercials". These are memes that have circulated the ad industry since before the dawn of the commercial Internet.  Old industry lore, a small collection of unscalable, partially true, case-studies that serve to keep a lot of industry executives and creatives engaged everyday while they generate a bell curve that rather doesn't reflect these stories.

For better or worse, interactive media and the audiences that wield it, don't hold any respect for our sense of self-worth and the selectively adjusted context that we, as an industry, have constructed to nobelize our efforts. In fact, for the most part, we are in interactive audiences' way.

Those of us in advertising today, now more than ever before in our industry's history, have the sober responsibility to shake off any ancient, self aggrandizing dust, stare coldly at our body of work, and remind ourselves of this basic conceit:  That advertising, for all it's creativity and arguable value, serves a master other than our audience, other than the creative muse, other than  our King, and is therefore starting from a deeply compromised position, where we must wield our very best creative powers just to make up the deficit.

Nowhere is this more urgently drawn than online, where the User is King. Where an interruption of any kind in our King's desired path, be it a timed delay, or an occupation of screen real estate that might have otherwise been filled with His chosen content, is utterly, patently inauthentic. This is, in part, why we must compensate the King with such excessive value.

And here's the main argument of this section: set against a traditional media landscape of pre-aggregated audiences and interruptive tactics where we'd become an industry of messagers- of communicators of value, that now, with the advent of interactive media, with the ubiquitous penetration of audiences in control, have no choice but to become an industry of value creators.  To cease merely communicating value, and to actually, honest-to-goodness provide it.  To start creating the kind of value that audiences will seek out. More than that, to start creating value that audiences will pay for, short of it being funded by an advertiser.

More specifically, and with respect to my semantic comments earlier, this means that successful interactive "advertisements" must take the form of content, products and services.

In contrast, over the years since Pong, our response to the amazing potential of interactive media has been incremental. Our ways are well traveled, and as an industry, due to size, maturity, experience, training, and so many other factors, we are loathe to rethink such sweeping, integral components, though everyone I know says they are.

Traditionally, advertising's creative bar has been set at a level that requires creative teams to produce work that, at its base, will keep audiences from looking away. Our audience has always been collected for us. You might say we've been spoiled by that. The very existence of "art director & copywriter" teams, by definition, are in place to produce messages that meet this bar, not reach the greater value we're contemplating here. Soon, this team structure will change. And so will many other elements, including our relationships with media owners, clients, our compensation models, our planning methods, deliverables, our training and staffing. And this must seem daunting. But the other side of the coin is exciting.

If you do this right,  you will find that you are no longer in the business of highly-creative communication, if you do this right you are in the business of entrepreneurialism. You will develop valuable offerings that squarely compete in an entrepreneurial landscape.  You will be creating products that compete, side-by-side, against the product companies.  You will be creating service-oriented businesses that effectively compete in the service industry.  And yes, you will also create content that competes with for-pay television, movies, books, etc.

And this (not messaging) is the future of advertising.

This doesn't mean we cease to employ any of our existing skills, really, it's a different type of communication.  Remember the old writers' adage, "Show, don't tell?"  This new era in advertising will be "Be, don't show."

The art of advertising at that point will be in conceiving business propositions that, through their very existence, stemming from the very process and product of this parallel business, will embody the client's brand values while measurably expanding it's business, and even forming new profit centers. Profit centers that the agency would most certainly be justified in participating in.

I call this type of value-based ad a "symbiotic business unit" (SBU).  A fully functioning business proposition that integrates at some level with the client's core business. Funded by ad dollars, these executions will be particularly well adept at attracting the target audience digitally, and then dovetailing them into the advertiser's primary offering.

MOVING FORWARD

If you're an agency - start thinking in terms of building a start-up team, staffed with strong business minds, consultant types with a background in launching products and services of their own. Don't wait for your client to request this- charge this new team with developing the odd SBU proposal for the right clients, unsolicited, in addition to your current deliverables. Based on their concept, consider what the agency is willing to invest in the SBU, and contemplate contracts in advance of the proposal that either:

a) procure some ongoing percentage of related new revenue,

b) retain ownership of the underlying intellectual property (software, systems, etc),

c) retain a degree of non-exclusivity such that you can redeploy the SBU on behalf of other clients, or such that you can take the product straight to consumer after some agreeable period of exclusivity,

d) consider filing patents - I doubt many ad agencies have actually gone to the effort of writing a patent for anything, but it's a key part of operating any newly invented business. Be aware of the recent availability of "Business Method Patents", a relatively new but highly relevant tool within the landscape of sweeping new technologies and their application to new businesses and innovation.

As you determine pricing for your client, do so such that you are indifferent as to which option the client agrees to (buy Vs lease for example). And if you're walking in the door with a sound business plan, that shows skin in the game and tells a story of growth and expansion, they'll agree.

Yeah, HP Pong was just a banner-based game, but I can report to you with sincerity that this vision is what it showed us all, with vivid clarity, back in 1996.

In case you were watching.