advergirl

Step into the Spotlight: Tsufit is Sark for Suits

What I love about business books is the anecdotes. The collections of a gratis illustrations from women who’ve been running the room for 20 years. The totally repeatable, wow I didn’t know that’s how they came up with that ideas. The insiders guides to the coolest trivia your industry has to offer.

Good business books are - quite simply - repeatable. And, particularly if you're new(er) to your career, can help you learn how to speak the shared language of industry and cultural metaphor.

So, I’ve enjoyed flipping through Tsufit's new book: Step into the Spotlight. It’s not exactly the kind of book you would sit down and read cover-to-cover, but more one that you keep handy for right after a painful conference call or one of those incredibly long networking events that seem to stretch as long as an average week. A quick flip will lead you to a little perspective, a fun anecdote or an exercise in figuring out, well, you.

And, all written in the chatty, playful voice of a woman who divides her career among executive coaching, book writing and stand-up comedy.

It’s incredibly reminiscent of what Sark did for everyday creativity. Her scribbly journals and stream-of-consciousness creative guides at once elevate playfulness and introspection, seeking to loose a little wild creativity.

Tsufit may be a bit more buttoned up, but you can quickly see that her message isn’t the words on the page, it’s what she wants to inspire in her reader. A little confident, sassy business savvy that feels like you found it yourself.

Investing in the agency brand: SCPF’s “Solutions for the Modern American Life”

I get a lot of emails about agency self promotions. Curious forays into what creative minds can do when unencumbered by practical concerns, like, for example, selling variable annuities or wedding registries.

And, I get a veritable slew of emails (and the occasional ominous paper wrapped mailing cylinder on my porch) from PR agencies working to build buzz about their client’s product or book or thing-a-ma-do.

But this was the first time I got an email from a  PR agency about an agency’s self promotion. Obviously, I had to investigate:

The site is called “Solutions for the Modern American Life”, which they describe as “a collection of high and low tech products, methods and techniques that will help America.” It’s a retro little throwback to the days when the recipes on the back of the Jello box were serious culinary stuff and agency self-promotions were a little more … well, like an episode of Mad Men.

And, I don’t think I’m going too far to say – it’s kinda out there.

So, I tracked down Gonzalo Marti, SCPF’s Creative Director out of Miami to get the back story on the development, inspiration and promotion investment:

Advergirl: Why did your agency decide to invest in a multimedia self promotion?

Gonzalo: In 2005, - closing in on SCPF’s tenth anniversary – the agency made the decision to leap across the ocean into the U.S. market. Since then, we’ve felt the need to explain the ‘newcomer’s’ point of view about the United States and the “American way of life” from a more Spanish and European perspective.

Advergirl: Where did the creative idea / concept come from? What was the inspiration?

Gonzalo: We wanted to develop a campaign that would speak creative volumes about our agency, our culture and our traditions to the business and creative community here in the U.S. We didn’t want it to seem too self-promotional but reflect how we do business and how we can help bring a different and certainly, fresh perspective to a campaign. 

Advergirl: What are your goals for the site?

Gonzalo: With our first ‘house’ ad campaign, we wanted to continue raising the agency’s profile in this market and to position ourselves as a key creative partner to our clients. We will continue to challenge the mainstream and bring new ideas to the table.

Advergirl: We’ve all worked in an agency where the big idea for self promotion hit some bumps along the way. I’m thinking of a certain agency holiday card that everyone was supposed to sing a carol for … except somehow the executives all had an identical whistle in the final rollout. Did you run into any internal challenges / objections during development?

Gonzalo: No, everybody was enthusiastic about this project and promoting SCPF. We believe strongly in the power of the creative product - that’s what SCPF has always been about.

Advergirl: [Oh, come on. Really???]

Advergirl: Thanks, Gonzalo

Those of you struggling with your own agency Web site design might want to check out SCPF’s temporary -> lasting solution
 

Favorite new multimedia sites

With every new location comes a new pipe to deal with... and this one is... slim. Checking out Flash sites lately has been a little circa-1997-56k-modem-enter-a-URL-and-go-make-dinner-while-it-loads. Nonetheless there have been a few delightful ones this month that were absolutely worth the wait:

Best B2B
Motorola City's show-and-tell of their commitment to public safety. Wait, stop yawning at the title, this site is slick:

Best I-don't-even-begin-to-get-it but somehow admire what you're doing:
Modernista's site relaunch that basically leverages DHTML and some open sourceness to dynamically assemble content from around the Web. I think the point is: we fundamentally get how the Web works in ways that other agency's don't. I think the visual experience is, in a word: painful.

 

Best basic landing page:
Haagen Dazs Help the Honeybees issue site. For its beautiful illustration and actually worthwhile soundtrack.

Best for kids:
Nintendo's Professor Layton and the Curious Village game promotional page. It brings the game to life and (at least seems) very fun and interactive for kids.

The Open Brand

With Adver-boyfriend off following his favorite NCAA team around the country this weekend, I had time to catch up on three industry books that have been tempting me from the bedside table. This week, I'll share perspectives on each of those, starting with:

By Kelly Mooney and Nita Rollins
Home agency: Resource Interactive

There are two schools of thought on the role of the 'expert' in consulting industries like ours: (1) it's our job to be the smartest guy in the room on our 'best at' subject or (2) it's our job to make our client feel like the smartest guy in the room.

Mooney/Rollins definitely fall in the latter. They've built a book that converges all the big ideas and groundswell of momentum around the social Web into a simple story on impact and action.

Kind of a Daring Book for Girls for CMOs

I say 'built a book' because it's the structure that agency wonks will be attracted to. A visual approach to the ideas and concepts we talk about every day (Come on, who among us hasn't taken a little real-work inspiration from one of Armano's quick sketches of clarity?), repeatable cases and solid frameworks.

For clients and newbies, it's all content.

A few of the ideas that got me scribbling notes in the margin:

After outlining the pitfalls of business-as-usual in a new medium, Mooney/Rollins lay out a New Relationship framework in simple Venn diagram fashion. The center is passion, overlapped on three sides by consumers, community and brand.

I love the idea that passion is the shared quality - the opportunity to build engagement (with people, with networks, with employees). At brunch this weekend, we were talking about the phenom coup Resource's PR team pulled off: Four paragraphs about The Open Brand in this month's cover story of Fast Company. When a friend - who, I should preface, knows everything about a million things I know nothing about - asked me what Fast Company is? And, to try to describe it now ... is, stalling. But, you probably remember when it launched, in the heydey of dot.com, when we were all rethinking work and what it means to find both delight and challenge in what we do every day, and essentially finding passion in work. I like to think that ethic has found its resurgence in the social Web.

The Open Brand also has a great information graphic on the motivations of iCitizenry, plotted on a continuum of everyday to elite:

• 74% are motivated by competence: "I can" (use Web tools for fun, learning and efficiency)
• 16% by collectivism: "I connect" (connect and share with people who have similar interests)
• 7% by culture change: "I am" (effect change that improves companies, products or the experience of others)
• 3% by celebrity: "I matter" (seek recognition or some degree of fame)

In a conversation (darn, I used THAT word) that has largely been shaped by the 1% Rule and other outcome-based frameworks, it's interesting to turn to the why instead of the what.

I digress. The framework is followed by a hall-of-fame of sorts of some of the loudest voices on the Web - from Kos to the diva of Amazon.com product reviews.

Someone I follow on Twitter - maybe Jaffe - asked (more eloquently than I am recreating here) is the Web creating more amateur professionals or is it simply giving us access to more true professionals. It's an interesting question for ad bloggers, but in the largest context of the social Web, it has another dimension: are there new 'careers,' new needs for voices and approaches (like the mega reviewers) that have essentially become the foundation of everything else?

That said, I think for most marketers, the challenge isn't in understanding the outlyers. They're relatively easy to learn about with various social aggregating tools and their own self promotion. Your agency can attack those (with some degree of grace or lumbering) the way they could any other opinion leader. The challenge is understanding the common person. What the key profiles of social behavior are and how those cross-index beyond age ... with a wider swath of loyalty and offline behavior.

I'm guessing the ethnographers at Resource save that level of detail for folks willing to spend a little more than $16.95...

People are people

So, it's Sunday night. You're watching guilty-pleasure TV, making a conscious decision not to catalog the litany of junk food choices you made during the football game and generally being irresponsible-lite on your too-short weekend.

Tomorrow you don your suit. Ok, at least a clean sweater. Fill the gas tank, grab a Starbucks, commute to work. Does that fundamentally change you? Do you suddenly become Dr Spock - driven fully by logic and data - or are you still, pretty much, yourself? You - a person who digs simplicity and fun and motion and a really good email in your inbox?

The single biggest mistake B2B marketers make: forgetting people are people.

Even in a cube, we still value understanding how a product benefits us - selfish us. The us who bought the random throw pillow at Target this weekend. The us who is baffled by our 401k. Us who always wants desert even if we don't order it.

We still value things looking great and working great and generally adopting a consumer ethic of responsiveness and relevancy.

So, why does most B2B marketing feature a toad with a crown introducing 59 charts and enough lingo to lose the geekiest among us?

Here are three sites in the B2B space that I admire for adopting a consumer ethic of show/don't tell and generally building a brand experience even in these most practical of spaces (glue, janitorial supplies, and store signs):

Sales vs. Marketing: The shared challenge of B2B

Clients always want potential agencies to demonstrate knowledge of their industry - do you have experience with my PRODUCTS? But, an equally valid measure of competence might be - do you have experience with my PROBLEMS?

Many, many B2B marketers seem to share the same struggles - and figuring out how to talk about their products generally isn't one of them. Much more challenging issues tend to grow from the battle between sales and marketing - for dollars, leadership and trust.

PROBLEMS to understand for marketers in traditional B2B sales organizations:

1. Teaching an army of sales guy to understand how marketing works / what to expect from it
2. Convincing leaders who grew up in sales to invest in marketing
3. Mining deeper information about the customer base - or, really anything beyond name, company, projection
4. And - in lieu of the budget to do lots of research - pushing the limits of the shared corporate assumptions about who those customers are
5. Successfully communicating the difference between branding, marketing and lead gen
6. Facing the unrealistic expectations for results with the ridiculously small budget challenge
7. Tracking results / getting information back from the sales team
8. More often than not - being the only woman at the table
9. Controlling the message in the field
10. Maintaining momentum

Attendees at DMA's DM Days identified these shared troubles:

• Eighty-seven percent of B2B marketers have little confidence in their customer data
• Fifty-four percent of B2B companies surveyed indicated that the lack of sales and marketing collaboration is their most important challenge.
• Fifty-two percent of companies surveyed claimed to have integration between their sales and marketing systems.
• Thirty-nine percent of respondents indicated that data-related issues were the next challenge facing their marketing efforts.

Survey source: Media Buyer Planner

Little guys are great advertisers

Great idea: Leagas Delaney used magnetic ads on top of cars to advertise a trucking magazine to long-haul drivers.

Found at: Advertising for Peanuts

Think that's cool? Check out this coffee cup.

I love this game -

Ok, I'd normally be the last one to say so - but, Eyewonder nailed this one. Well, ok, the whole integration of the campaign was probably McCann Erickson, but, it's still a great, great viral site and game -

Here's the deal. Staples runs an Easy Button TV spot driving users to the site to play the game. The game has the same theme as the commercial and users can press the Easy Button three times to make the game, well, easier. Still right on message, the campaign integrates even further - all the way to the brick and mortar - by giving online high scorers gift certificates to the store.

Oh, and get this - the game is fun! (Very reminiscent of that great penguin game.)

Via AdBlather

Bisley, Perfectly organized

See a larger collection at Adverbox.

Client: Bisley, Quality Office Furniture
Agency: Unknown

Which trend will win - measureless marketing or scented checkbooks?

BtoB reports a "renewed investment in intellectual capital and less of an obsession with return on investment" as a major marketing trend in 2006.

The emerging trend was uncovered at the Business Marketing Association’s What to Expect in 2006 event Wednesday in New York. Panelists indicted the rear-view mirror approach of ROI and demanded a refocus on creativity and big ideas.

Needless to say no clients nor their business-minded bosses were present.

In other news, a UK agency called Brand Sense is out to build banking one sniff at a time.

Their approach relies on Mr. Science statistics - 83% of all commercial communications are visual when 75% of our emotions are influenced by what we smell, and there’s a 65% chance our mood will change when we hear a new sound.

Big fans of the Singapore Airlines patented flight attendant smell (er, perfume), their current project will use smell to calm consumer nerves. At an unnamed bank, Brand Sense will alter the environment of long waiting lines by creating a positive fragrance that will emphasize the bank's brand positioning of "personable, proper, fresh and new".

The scary part - the scent will be sprayed in the banks and on the stationery - including checkbooks! Nothing like having your plumber think you squirted a little perfume before you slipped him a check for unclogging the commode.