advergirl

A whole world of people just like me

I was chatting (actually speaking out loud) with a fellow blogger last week about the nature of blog buzz - consummate early adopters, the entire lot of us, long bored with old web innovations like rss and del.icio.us and digg, even though they're absurdly cutting edge to many of our less-enchanted contemporaries. So, we hype Second Life and Jaiku and Twitter and Steamy and Flock. And, if our earnestness reaches critical mass, industry pubs pick up our buzz, translate it to "practical" (if sometimes tone deaf) marketing knowledge and main stream press occasionally follow the lead and ... well, really, what's it all matter, when more than half the agency types I know haven't even found ProAm content intriguing enough to read A blog yet, much less open a reader, try out new 2.0 toys, etc.

Anyway, I mention all this apropos of an intriguing conversation that I had with my agency's CCO last week. He suggested that as we age, our use of the Internet becomes more practical and less (my word) social.

If we marry that with two other trends, we start to see how age-old generational profiles establish themselves online...

• Trend1: Facebook: The 18-24 year old set increasingly relies on Facebook for a wide-range of human communication - from networking / establishing social connections to routine updates and communication to the flock (the replacement to email)
• Trend 2: Facilitated Creativity: Online and offline, partially homemade, scrapbooky, Home Depot-enabled projects hold sway. The middle-aged, middle class stretches its creative spirit with a little help from less-than-raw ingredients

Offline, call it, cliques and parenthood and curmudgeony behavior

Online, it lives as:

• Explorers: Curious seekers of new ideas, widgets that make life more fun, and friends. They are multi-media sharers of their life stories. At once trusting and cynical, they're hoping that fun is fulfilling or security isn't so safe.
• Inspiration seekers: Their dreams have become inconvenient, with so much else to do in a day. But they still long for play - for the feeling of being engaged and passionate and accomplished at things small enough to control and big enough for (subtle) bragging rights. They have self doubt, but, not so much that they won't try their hand at a little memory building - especially with a friendly boost.
• And, personal experts:  After a life time of trial, they get it. What works for them, what doesn't. What they care about, what's just noise. They're looking for practical answers, easy ways to see the news that matters to them, their loved ones' photos, the address to a place they trust. They want convenience, not experience.

Two completely relevant and totally shameless tricks for AEs

Sure, our jobs are more than schmoozing clients. But, hey, sometimes you’ve just got to hold your own at a boozy happy hour or impress at an absurdly over-priced dinner. For just those occasions, here are a couple of tips from old school sales guys I’ve met along the way:

How to pick up the tab without the “who’s getting this one” dance

• Easy: Excuse yourself to the restroom and hand off your AmEx to the maitre’d. The waiter will bring you the receipt to sign.
• Super slick: Get there early, hand off your card and instructions that you’ll pick it back up later that night or tomorrow.
• Out of town: Drive the route from the hotel to the restaurant BEFORE your clients get in the car. Oh, don’t you look smart.

How to NOT get completely wasted trying to keep up – the key bar orders:

• Martini. It’s easily replaced with water on the second, third, fourth … tenth…
• Jack and coke in a tall glass. Skip the Jack as the night rolls on.
• Vodka and cranberry. Same deal as above, but with vitamins since you're probably skipping the gym

I wish I had known those bar tips a few years back. I actually had to pass on an account because I was too much of a light weight to keep up with the way the client preferred to socialize… I kept falling asleep!

Advice for Newbies: Meet Your New Boss

Update: Be sure to read the comments from CD HighJive below - excellent advice.

Original post:

You’ve completed all your paperwork. You’ve perfectly positioned the framed photos of your sweetie and your cat, Snuggles. You’ve even checked to make sure that you can get to your Facebook account through the agency firewall. Do-ta-do. Now what?

First up, welcome.

Second, you’re doing it wrong already.

Here’s how to deal with your average agency boss:

Don’t sit back and wait. Advertising moves fast. It’s a rare agency that has time for step-by-step training and orientation. You’re more likely coming in two days before a huge pitch, three days after a serious missed deadline and on the day of a major client meeting. There’s an atmosphere of … scurry. Jump in where you can. Raise your hand and ask where to get started.

Be sure of your role. Your boss just downloaded the details of a huge Web project. You’re off to create a site map or write a brief or design an interface.  Where does your role end and where does someone else’s pick up? When does your boss want to get back involved? Ask.

Follow-up. Email is not enough. Gah, blasted email. Her inbox gets, what, maybe, 100 messages a day? Most get a cursory glance, a few get replies, many are lost to the good intention of getting back to them later. Don’t assume that adding your work / questions / input to that bloated inbox is enough. Get up. Go talk. Keep following up until you get what you need.

Talk to the people who can actually help you. Look, work isn’t always fun. You picked a career where it’s fun more than it’s … I don't know, wildly stressful, frustrating, disappointing, soul-crushing, etc. But, it’s still those things some of the time. The #1 mistake Newbies make is talking to the wrong people about their challenges.

Say you’re unhappy in your job – you don’t feel challenged, you feel as if you’ve been treated unfairly, whatever the issue might be. What most people do: Talk to their circle of work friends. Complain. Those complaints quickly intensify within the group because bitching is genuinely cathartic. For a while. But, then you’re even more unhappy and everyone is telling you you’re getting taken advantage of and then… then…

Right. Those people can’t help you.

What you should do: Schedule a lunch or meeting with your boss. Be straight-forward and professional about your challenges. Have suggestions about how to solve them. She’s invested in your success. Most of the time she’ll provide perspective and solutions. And, she’s someone who can actually help.

Find out what her goals are, make them yours. Chances are quite good that your boss has a boss. And, her boss has laid out goals for the year. Maybe it’s delivering better work, increasing revenue, adding a new client, etc. Find out what those big goals are and make them your own.

Solve problems.

Ask when you need help. Your  boss has been there and done that. When you come up against a challenge that you don’t have a good solution for, ask for help. You represent a lot of smart people when you speak for the agency - make sure you use them.

Give fair warning. You know the project is tanking. The client is frustrated. The deadline is about to be missed. Tell your boss – being surprised by bad news is way worse than just getting a heads up about a potential problem. Especially when she may be able to help solve it.

Embrace details. All of them.

Share ideas.

Respect your elders. Although you’re far from having your fingers rapped in the church pew, some of the old adages still hold true – show some respect for the people with experience. Most of the time they really do know what they’re talking about. Innovate, push back, keep trying new things, but know when to stop fighting and follow the advice of your boss.

Robed metro launches category

Remember that snarky Norelco site ShaveEverywhere.com that launched last year? Well, the results are in. And, they reveal well more than an optical inch':

The big number: 60% of Bodygroom buyers say they learned about the product via ShaveEverywhere.com

Wait, it gets better. According to The New York Times, the category was largely built by the buzzy little site:

• [Prior to the launch] the idea of a product specifically made for below-the-neck shaving barely existed.
• Today, the Bodygroom is one of at least four products in what’s seen as a distinct and fast-growing category; nearly 250,000 body-hair trimmers have been bought in the United States in the last year.

At a $40 unit price, that's a $10 million category launched with stock images of peaches & carrots and bleeps!

---

In other shaving news, you've got to check out the career advice from Bern on Barbasol.com's overhaul. This well-spoken hand puppet definitely knows the inside scoop...

(Click the 'How to live the Ultra Successful Life' button)

Just exactly what would you do for a client?

Front row. That's me covered in band aids.

That's my client in the johnnie.

Yeah.

We're at his kickball team's War of the Wounded theme night.

No, the other teams do not have theme nights.

Yes, I did say kickball.

---

Come on, this would make a great book - Just exactly what would you do - have you done - for a client?

Guinness 'Alive Inside'

Ew.

Some products just really don't need to be broken down to their component parts by representative humans hurling about to a booming score.

Sometimes in the search for massive production value, we forget how great simple really is...

The elevation of creativity

Since I'm not a speedy aggregator, you've probably already seen these ads for Michaels by The Richards Group. Nonetheless, there are two advertising trends here that I'm really excited about:

• The personalization of demographics: Increasingly, I get the sense that agencies are investing in creating identities for niche audiences - building out the story of one person - her wants and dreams and fears - to best create advertising that really speaks to emotional drivers.
• The elevation of creativity: Whether it started in advertising or advertising is merely following, I appreciate the increased value placed on personal creativity - on the validation of that fundamental emotional desire to create and share...

Oh, splendid, I was wondering how I'd become irrelevant...

... or otherwise displaced.

Apparently post-factory worker, post-knowledge worker, Digitas is planning to offshore the whole personalization of advertising business...

The plan is to build a global digital ad network that uses offshore labor to create thousands of versions of ads. Then, using data about consumers and computer algorithms, the network will decide which advertising message to show at which moment to every person who turns on a computer, cellphone or — eventually — a television. Read the article.

And, here we'll be with our college degrees and pithy headlines and clever storyboards trying to get real jobs. I blame Armano. Yeah, yeah, I know he's moved on to Critical Mass, but, come on, this has him written all over it... Logic + Emotion. Riiiiiight. We should have known to get suspicious when he started using the P-word.

Time to get serious about the 401ks, friends.

Top 5 mistakes traditional marketers make online

Time Magazine opened their Top 50 Web site list to public comment with the call to action: rank 'em.

You're looking at the poll's top 5.

How many - oh, savvy bloggers and feeders - do you actually use?

For me, it's zero.

Here's why I bring this up. I'm an online junkie working in a traditional - if evolving - ad agency. Today, there's still a pretty noticeable divide between the "interactive" group and, well, everybody else. And, as those TV and print veterans start to get excited about more and more integrated plans, there's one objection that rings through the halls: I've never heard of it; so, it must not have really caught on...

Growing pains.

Happily I have my own blog to grouse on. So, with no further ado - here are my top 5 picks for "mistakes" traditional marketers make in online planning:

1. Apply "I've never heard of it" TV wisdom. In the world of prime time TV, marketshare is akin to WOMshare. Even if you include the cable channels with non-syndicated programming, there are what - maybe 50 choices for the 9 o'clock veg hour? Compare that to the online world - let's see, how many blogs can you surf? I think the current number is 60 million. And, even the really popular ones don't have the name recognition of Friends.


2. Underestimate the size of niches: Yeah, it's ugly and your husband may never have heard of it, but little homespun LiveJournal has 13 million members. And, that's just the creators.
   
   The one essential truth about the Web that makes it different from every medium you think you know is that it's cluster driven. You play with the sites your friends recommend. And, the destinations that are shorthand in your group are completely unknown two groups down the chain. There are very few universals (maybe weather.com, CNN, etc.). The way to reach people is in their niches.
   
   
3. Misjudge ubiquity of community behavior: That may be better stated this way: We misjudge what "old" is. YES, you can reach 35+ women with high incomes online. Of course you can. They're reading and talking and shopping just like you are. The fastest growing community site on the Web, Facebookers? It's CafeMoms.
   
   
4. Want to make it too easy or too hard: People want to interact. But, they don't all want to create and edit a video or make a mashup. There's a happy medium there where I do a little something and feel involved in your brand without doing your advertising for you...


5. Think advertising is enough: If your interactive planning is done out of the media department, you're probably coming up short. All those surveys you see that say that the Web has as much or more eyeshare as TV that leave you thinking - why don't I notice as much advertising online??? Because it cannot end with advertising. Online marketing has to include destinations, community involvement, outreach, content, etc... a banner just ain't gonna do it.

Bravia: Here comes the "play doh" buzz...

UPDATE:
Here are a few pics from the set:

Play doh BUNNIES? I'm as excited as one of those costumed Potter muggles camped outside a theater at midnight on a Tuesday waiting to see a movie about a book she already read...

Original post:

The buzz-masters behind the original glorious Bravia 'balls' spot and the follow-up-you-probably-had-to-be-there 'paint' spot, are teamed up with Immediate Future for early spinning as the boxes are unpacked for the New York 'play doh' spot.

Play doh!!??

Can't wait.

Watch them Twitter on set. And, keep an eye on the ad site for more...