As any good real estate agent will probably tell you, timing is king. Sure “Location, Location, Location” is their mantra, but there’s not a lot you can alter about location, whereas timing is all down to you.

When you put your property on the market, when you look to buy, when you place a bid and when you stop bidding – it’s all about timing. As such, it’s only natural that we look to real estate agents for advice on the subject. They are, after all, professionals.

Which is why one well-established, navy blue and white real estate agent has me very confused.

Way back in March, the week after the Formula One Grand Prix, I was letterbox dropped a postcard with a picture of a generic looking race car on it and the headline “Our team can give you the winning formula!” Formula, Geddit?

My first thought though wasn’t “hey that’s a shit headline”, (even though it is). It was “but the Grand Prix was last week” (because it was).

Then, the week after Easter they dropped another postcard with a picture of some cute yellow chicks breaking out of their egg shells and the line “Need to find a new home this Easter?”

The writing wasn’t getting better, and neither was the timing.

Finally, the week after Mother’s Day, another postcard. Care to guess at the content? Yep, a picture of a mum and a baby rubbing noses and a line about this particular agent wishing all mums a happy Mothers Day.

So what? Is it really a big deal if they deliver postcards a few days late?

Well, yeah. Maybe not to you personally, but what is it actually saying about them as an organisation? What it tells me is they don’t know a damn thing about timing. They’re a national company, probably have hundreds of competent staff, they might even know everything there is to know about market fluctuations, the latest buying trends and what colour house sells best.

But I’d not use them – because now I don’t trust them.

This is not the market in which to screw things up. There are at least half a dozen different agents that letterbox drop me every month, so it’s not like I don’t have a choice. Yet because of the actions of either the marketing team, or the approvals team, or the agency, or the printer, or the mailhouse, or the letterbox droppers, the reputation of the whole company suffers.

It’s not about the terrible writing and the crap stock shots. It’s about the constant disregard for hitting some quite obvious timings. Personally I don’t want to be with the agent who doesn’t even know when Mother’s Day is – I assume real estate agents have mothers yeah?

And this boys and girls, cats and kittens, is why we should all bust a hump to not miss deadlines.

Whether you’re a client and you aren’t thinking far enough ahead, an agency and you’re making promises you can’t possibly deliver on or a printer or mailhouse saying yes when you should have said no. Regardless of where you are on the food chain, if you blow your timings you’re doing more than just missing a date in a diary – you’re potentially ruining a business.

Too dramatic? Maybe I am being too harsh, maybe I’m over reacting a bit, ranting before it’s called for, but you see my point.

As for the real estate agent in question, I’m tempted to write to them, but I’ve decided I’d rather wait until November and see if they’ll wish all the dads a happy Father’s Day first.

d

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The art of exceeding expectations

We’re a pretty demanding bunch.

We’ve got fast but fuel efficient cars, iPads, digital cameras, we eat free-range organic eggs on locally-baked five-grain bread, we know where we can get a great skinny decaf latte and where to buy the best home-grown designer threads. The list goes on.

These days, with cutting edge technology and so many options we demand a hell of a lot and when a company or product lets us down (my coffee is cold! My hair isn’t the same colour as the lady on the packet! My iPod has corrupted!), we have no qualms about telling anyone and everyone who will listen.

In service industries it’s well-known that while you might tell two or three people if you get great service, the average person harps on to seven people when they receive what they deem as poor service. Eck! That’s the reason I always let people know when I’m not 100% happy with the service I’ve received. Quite frankly with those stats, it’s my duty to tell my hairdresser I’m not stoked with the colour she dyed my hair – I believe I’m actually doing her a favour by helping her remedy what could snowball into seven people thinking her salon is crap!

But how does one rise above and against all odds to leave customers feeling so satisfied and valued that they can’t help telling everyone about it?

It’s pretty simple – exceed expectations. Think about what your customer or client already knows about your company/service and what they are expecting – put yourself in their shoes. What would turn a satisfactory, nothing-to-write-home-about interaction with your company into a “that was outrageously great!!”? Not quite getting it?

Let me give you an example.

A couple of weeks ago I took a couple of friends who were visiting Melbourne to a restaurant I quite like. We’re talking funky atmosphere, tasty Asian fusion food and reasonable prices. I had made a booking, but when we arrived our table wasn’t quite ready. Our waiter apologised and sat us in the lounge area on some couches and suggested he get us some drinks while we wait for the table. We weren’t too worried, the couches were comfy, we weren’t in a hurry – no major. We ordered a bottle of red and just as we were raising our glasses for a toast, the waiter popped up again “looks like your table will be ready in ten and, you know that bottle of wine is on the house, don’t you,” smiled and left. Sweet!

In my opinion that was above the call of duty, and my friends and I were impressed. Excellent. Later in the evening after a few more bottles (that we happily paid for ourselves) one of my friends, deep in conversation, knocked over a full glass. But just as the glass and wine was about to hit the table a tablecloth magically appeared to soak up the wine as it fell from the glass. In disbelief my friend looked up to find out how this miracle had occurred.

Yes, it was that waiter.

He saw it happening, acted quickly and as a result “was an absolute legend!” as my friend professed. We left the restaurant, rather jolly, having thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

And having left a generous tip for our new, favorite waiter.

And having already planned our next trip back.

The secret – when your customer or client least expects it, surprise them with something that will make them smile and leave them feeling special.

Gen

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..but I’ve learned a few lessons from Taiwanese computer animated sequences.

Last week, The Age featured an article about the new viral sensation of Next Media, an animation company from Taiwan that specializes in reenactment of real news events.

It all started with the Tiger Woods scandal, and then Lindsay Lohan, and more recently the ’so sad yet so funny’ Australian election.

Anyway, these videos have taught me five lessons:

Lesson one: Viral can happen anywhere, even the tiny island of Taiwan. It’s all about the story. If it’s interesting, it will generate interest.

Lesson two: If you’ve watched the clips, you’d notice that most of them last for 60–90 seconds. In less than 2 minutes the production team managed to craft complicated messages into a simple, understandable, engaging form. (Sounds familiar?) Even if we don’t understand Mandarin, we could pretty much get what’s happening in the videos. These animations understand and apply the art of simplicity.

Lesson three: Apparently it only takes a few hours for this Taiwanese company to churn a video out. I know Asia is speculated to dominate the world’s economy in the next decade or so. Now I’m wondering if the domination includes advertising production.

Lesson four: It seems that, because the company is Taiwanese, they’re able to apply fresh, daring takes on western events and news. To have a ground-breaking solution to a problem, perhaps we first need to step away from the problem?

Lesson five: If you find yourself in a Taiwanese animation, you’ve made it and you’re famous.

H.

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So, in the last 12 months we’ve seen the GFC pass by, the FIFA world cup come and go for another 4 years, we’re entering into the finals season and the Ashes battle is almost upon us.  Oh and let’s not forget the change in government leadership and the fact that the final of Masterchef gazumped the political debate on television!

Lots of change, lots of action but, in the communications world, the fundamentals remain the same.

A marketer’s goal is still to understand brands and consumers, and work out the most efficient and effective ways to build and sustain a relationship between the two.

More questions are being asked about the success of marketing communications at a campaign level as well as at the boardroom level.  In addition to this, the ongoing proliferation of media channels, the advent of new and innovative digital channels and content distribution providers, have all increased the potential for wastage as well as the greater potential for targeting.

Our mantra “Don’t count the consumers you reach, reach the consumers who count” is more relevant than ever.

The question on most marketer’s lips is “how do I make social media work for my brand as well as my customers”.  Some brands have managed to engage consumers  well, for example the recent Old Spice Twitter campaign, others have failed and been caught out – after all, as David Ogilvy said “the consumer is not a moron”.

As consumers receive more messages through more channels than ever before, they will continue to be more selective, so relevancy is still so important.  Relevancy is driven by a better understanding, fuelled by greater data insights – I don’t just mean more interrogation of the customer database, although this will certainly help deliver the insights, but by collating as much research, consumer behaviour and information available from a multitude of sources.

Not every business has the luxury of a customer or prospect database, but I would recommend that every business should aim to develop one regardless of industry sector.

Another way to increase relevance will be to focus more on testing different strategies and executions and measuring the outcome.

Australia has been criticised for not focussing more effort on testing but we are seeing more clients allocating more funds to learning more with the ultimate ambition to increase effectiveness.

And I can’t comment on the next 12 months in direct marketing without making a huge point about the creative idea.

Driven by insights, demonstrating relevancy, the creative idea has to be delivering to the single most important need that the consumer faces in the context of the communication.  It has to ensure cut through, it has to be surprising and it has to get the consumer to open the envelope, read the email, click through, and ultimately respond to build that dialogue that only direct marketing is capable of building.

Cheers,

Mike

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There’s a primary school rule that haunts every copywriter I’ve ever met.

It makes us tear out our hair in debriefs, bang our heads against the table in meetings and, worst of all, bore our art directors to tears with passionate rants about language.

The rule is this: “Never start a sentence with and.”

Here’s a fun thing to do.

Read that rule, out loud, to a copywriter near you. Watch as their eyes roll towards heaven, their face reddens and they start furiously defending and. It really is the single most frustrating thing you can say to a writer.

See, copywriters write to sell.

We’re not putting together a formal business proposal, writing a thesis or doing a Grade 2 test where it would be inappropriate to start (or end) with and.

We’re writing to convince someone to take action – whether it’s to buy a can of soup, vote Green or take out a home loan. In this environment, starting with and is one of the most powerful ways to add drama to our writing. And emphasis.

And pacing.

There’s no word like it for really adding some punch to your writing or making the important bits really stand out.

Actually, until this morning I thought it was the rule itself that was incorrect (or just old fashioned), but it turns out I’d simply forgotten the definition of a sentence. If Grade 2 is as far back for you as it is for me, here’s a refresher:

A sentence is a group of words that includes a subject and a verb and expresses a complete idea.

So truth is, we’re technically not breaking any school rules by starting with and. Because the ’sentences’ that start with and, but or because are not strictly sentences. They rely on you having read something before them. They don’t express a complete thought. So they’re just phrases.

And there’s no rule (Grade 2 or otherwise) that says you can’t start a phrase with and.

xk

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If you’ve ever had a chat with a 5-year old, you’d have noticed they ask ‘why’ a hell of a lot.

Why is the sky blue?
Why don’t plants have eyes?
Why is that dog sniffing that other dog’s butt?

So perhaps I never grew up, because whenever I hear a marketing ‘must-do’, the first thing I ask is why.

Take ‘the power of integration’ for example. We all bang on about it, but why is it so important.

A text book (or your boss) would define integrated marketing as:

A data-driven approach that focuses on identifying consumer insights and developing a strategy with the right mix of channels to forge a stronger brand-consumer relationship.

Yawn.

Much more exciting to look at the ‘why’.

Let’s start with a snapshot of the science that sits behind the method.

It’s called the multiplier effect.

Simply put, when your target market sees, hears and interacts with a campaign in multiple channels, the impact of your message intensifies. So they understand it quicker and in greater depth.

The old adage ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ has been debunked by psychologists.

In fact, it’s just the opposite. We not only pay more attention to a message or brand the more we see it, we become predisposed to like it. So show your audience the television commercial, hit ‘em with some press, get them interacting with your brand in social media, maybe throw an outdoor billboard at them on their way home from work. Their recall will improve because the information is being processed at a deeper level.

Integration also helps you get a fuller message across. Some media lends itself to information, whilst others are better for emotional engagement. By combining media you can include both.

So that’s why integration is a good thing.

On to the ‘how’.

Experts say the key to optmising the multiplier effect is – surprise, surprise – creative.

‘Creative links’ and varied designs strengthen the effect. So to achieve the multiplier effect there must be strong creative links between the different media channels you’re using.

This doesn’t mean taking a still from the TVC spot and whacking it on a billboard.

No, no. It means working with the basic creative idea of the campaign and using consistent visual cues in each channel. This reinforces the advertising content. Because the more we humans see something, the more connections our brains make and the more we remember!

So next time you’re working on a campaign, use the multiplier effect to your advantage.

Why not?

Cheers,
Chantelle

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Ahh Guerilla marketing, it’s all good fun ‘til someone loses a passport, gets arrested, fined and faces legal action.

As you’re probably already aware, the FIFA world Cup is in full swing in South Africa. But what you might not be aware of is the 36 women thrown out of the Holland game, questioned, arrested, fined and threatened with jail time. For wearing orange dresses.

Personally, I don’t think many people can get away with wearing tangerine, but surely this is a case for the fashion police as opposed to the actual police?

Not if you’re FIFA.

You see while a lot of us in adland regard big sporting events as a chance to do some tactical advertising, the organisers of these events are getting increasingly tired of advertising smart arsery muscling in on the official action.

A good bit of eye-catching tactical mischief can not only get a client on a tighter budget in front of an audience of millions, but also gives the impression of a brand with a sense of humour.

FIFA, however, doesn’t appear to have a sense of humour. What they do have is lawyers.

They’ve already released the hounds on Bavaria, the Dutch brewer who distributed the offending dresses. And to be fair, Bavaria already have previous form – four years ago in Germany at the 2006 World Cup, a bunch of Dutch supporters ended up watching a game in their underwear after they were told to surrender their Bavaria branded lederhosen.

In April FIFA stopped local low cost airline Kulula airline from advertising itself as “The Unofficial National Carrier of the You-Know-What.” Clearly this time they mean business.

One could argue Bavaria should have known better.

And the world is watching, in 1997 at the International Rugby League World Cup in France, during the Ireland v France game, underwear brand DIM deployed the DIM DIM Girls as ‘cheerleaders’ in the crowd. Dressed in their undies they obviously got quite a lot of attention. And got on the wrong side of the IRL.

The next IRL World Cup is in 2011. Dare the Dim DIM girls run the risk of having to hand over their outfits at the gate?

Question is, will this be the event that’s going to turn a bit of tactical advertising into something of, well, a home goal? It certainly ups the ante. I doubt it’s going to stop agency creatives from coming up with the ideas – after all, creatives do get a perverse sense of glee at messing with anything they know they shouldn’t. But are the previously brave clients going to be quite so cavalier? The appeal of a cheeky bit of guerilla advertising will lose a lot of its shine if the resulting law suit sends your company broke.

However it plays out – one thing’s for sure, this story, not unlike the World Cup itself, is gonna be worth watching.

d

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I have a confession to make.

I’m obsessed with crumple zones – you know, the weak points at the front and back of your car.

See, before crumple zones were first introduced in the 50s, car safety was all about designing cars to be stronger.

Tougher.

Able to take a crash like John Wayne could take a punch.

Problem was – doing this may have helped the car to better withstand a crash, but it meant the occupants took the full force of the impact.

So we should all thank our lucky stars that Mercedes engineer Béla Barényi started thinking passengers would be safer in a car that could absorb the kinetic energy of a crash. Instead of following the thinking of the time and developing a tougher, stronger, more John Wayne-like car, Barényi designed one to be weaker.

Brilliant!

The weak points at the front and back of the vehicle would crumple in a crash, absorbing energy to protect the passengers.

Now you may argue that this thinking wasn’t a big deal – after all, it’s based on high-school physics. But high-school physics had been around much longer than the automobile and nobody else seemed to make the link.

Barényi’s thinking was revolutionary.

And here’s what keeps me up at night:

What else are we looking at from the wrong angle?

What else are we trying to make stronger, when we’d be better off making it weaker?

What conventional thinking should we be putting to rest? Or at last challenging?

60 years ago, conventional thinking said that to make a car safer, you had to make it stronger.

20 years ago, conventional thinking said that nobody in their right mind would trust someone they’d never met on the other side of the world to honour a sale made over the internet. eBay turned that thinking on its head and paved the way for other micro-commerce sites like Etsy and Amazon’s marketplace.

Today, conventional thinking still tells us that you must never bastardise a logo, yet Google’s very successfully done the complete opposite. Not only has it not damaged their brand, it’s built them a fan base!

And just last week, thought-leader Seth Godin made a post about working fewer hours, not more, to compete more effectively.

So what other conventional thinking should we be challenging?

Love to hear your thoughts.

xk

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Popular mechanics
When I was 21, I used to get around in an illegally low jet black ‘67 Falcon. It ran 10 inch rims on the back, had a chrome scoop sticking out the hole in the bonnet and gear drive which combined with a straight through exhaust made it sound like the test lab at Boeing. Neither my parents, my neighbours or the cops were impressed.

Me and my mates thought it was the bomb.

I used to spend as much money on tyres as I earned, I was a regular at the Calder Park street drags, at the Sandown Park V8 touring car races and the NASCAR events at the Thunderdome. My Dad would probably tell you no good came of this misspent youth. I beg to differ.

At the time I thought it was both big AND clever to go as fast as I could whenever and wherever I could. To me a red light was just another invitation to drop a burnout soon as it went green again, in fact I have a nasty feeling there’s a hole in the ozone layer that can be directly attributed to me and that car.

But one day my mechanic set me straight. He ran his own sprint car team, just country speedway sort of stuff, but a race team all the same – so I listened to him.

Anyway after one of my somewhat regular visits to fix something I’d broken he told me about the 90% for 90% rule.

It applied to his team then, and it applies to all of us now.

The 90% for 90% is as obvious as it sounds, you go fast, you stay on top of your game, close to the leaders, but you don’t give it 100% until you can see the finish, you keep that 10% in reserve until you really need it.

Whether you’re pushing yourself, or whether you’re pushing your people, expecting to get 100% for an extended length of time isn’t thinking long term. Run anything at 100% from the get go and it will fail before you’re halfway done. Trust me on this.

So if you’re on the ragged edge right now, ease back, focus on what’s important, get it done and get it done well, but hold that bit back for the final lap, because when you need it you’ll be glad you did.

Like I said, obvious really, but sometimes we just need a reminder.

d

P.S. Fletch, tell your parents I’m sorry it was me doing donuts in your court that night.

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I’ve got a gripe.

And it’s not one of my usual gripes, like when Foxtel IQ ends my recording of Big Love ten minutes early, or when my hairspray runs out while I’m getting ready for a big Saturday night out.

Nope, it’s far more irritating than any of that.

It’s the inexplicable hysteria surrounding one 13 (or 14 or 15) year-old boy with a signature blow wave and an odd affiliation with Usher.

His name, for those of you who haven’t already caught on, is Justin Bieber. And he’s a Canadian-born pop star who came to fame after his mum posted a video of him singing on YouTube.

He’s had a couple of hits. And even I’ll admit they’re pretty catchy. But it’s not his music I have a problem with – it’s the ridiculous effect his image is having on young girls.

Just the other day, his only Australian gig was cancelled because a stream of thousands of frenzied teenagers – who had spent their night in a camp on Sydney Harbour – rushed uncontrollably towards the concert venue causing various injuries and hospitalizing around 8 girls.

Of course, teenage hysteria is nothing new – you only need to look to Beatle Mania for proof of that.

But here’s where I draw the line.

A 3-year-old? Crying over a boy?! She’s got the rest of her life to be heartbroken, childhood should be sodden with blissful ignorance.

Being ad folk, we all know that JB isn’t to blame for all this nonsense. He’s just a product of a much bigger, much scarier marketing machine.

Which brings me, finally, to my point.

Are these guys operating by some code of ethics? Are there any rules in place to protect kids from being sucked into pop-marketing guff?

If not, there should be.

They did it for junk food and video games. So why not protect young children – like that 3-year-old girl – against the head-honchos at the record companies who’ll sell anything, it seems, to make a dollar.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Stef

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