LOVE

Click - Part Five

I was keen to hoover up any metrics at the Click conference, partly because I'm intrigued to see if anyone is measuring the success of digital campaigns with any accuracy and thoroughness.  It was maybe a little unfair to expect much because it was a 'Creative' conference, not a 'Measurement' conference but for all the great ideas shown, there were very few presentations that talked about results in any convincing way.  I picked up two sets of numbers that interested me. First, a few presenters banded around a broad rule of thumb saying that "5% of Youtube users are actually 'creating', 50% are 'interacting' (i.e commenting, sending stuff on etc) and 45% are 'passivley surfing'.  Are these the generally accepted figures anyone? Second, Anson Harris from Meme shared this little chart that they'd used in a pitch for Lenovo.   They were basically trying to put some figures on what could be deemed a successful viral campaign (by the way, the common concensus is that the term 'viral campaign' is misleading and 'digital word of mouth' campaign is preferred.)  Meme reckon that there may be only 1 campaign a year on average that will hit the 'Outstanding 5 million+ hits’ level and a vast majority are deemed ‘ok’ at best.  Clearly more needs to be done in the area of measurement if clients are to be persuaded to put their faith and money in the hard to ‘measure and predict’ world of digital.  Until then, it's going to be an unpredictable and experimental step into the unknown for brands.

Posted by Jonathan Rigby

Click - Part Four

So the other case study that Will McGinness from Goodby went through was the most recent Got Milk? campaign.  The brief was to develop a campaign that appealed to teenagers and parents and imparted a load of 'benefits of milk' information and was fun and got talked about.  Will defined the campaign in terms of the 'narrative premise' which was "a race of brittle-boned, insomniac aliens are trying to obtain the white wonder tonic from what they describe as the supreme ones".  What I liked about this Got Milk? idea was that it was divided into two completely different campaigns.  There was no concern about everything looking and feeling the same across all channels.  One was the 'back story' of victimised farmers across the US and their attempts to prevent alien abduction. I haven't got the whole campaign, but Will showed lots and lots of neat tactical, print and viral ideas that had simply been put together in the agency (great ideas are really cheap and easy to produce).  But here's a viral (or a digital word of mouth film).

The other half of the campaign was what I assume was the TV campaign (it looks like this half of the campaign had more budget thrown at it.)  This is where you meet the Brittlacticans.  Here's one ad, but the other four are easily found on YouTube.

 

Posted by Jonathan Rigby

Click - Part Three

Will McGinness, Creative Director of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners got the last spot at 16.50 at Click.  After a long day, I didn't envy him (and annoyingly people kept leaving during his presentation which was a bit rude).  However, he kept most of us glued to our (uncomfortable) seats as he talked about the new Rolling Rock campaign.  Most of you will already know about it, but basically Rolling Rock had been recently taken over by Anheuser Busch and there was concern that this would upset the core base of drinkers who respected the quirky independence of the brand.  Of course A-H didn't buy RR to just sit on it, so they needed to get out and re-launch the brand.  The brief was to "harness RR's mystery and protect its independence, but do it in a way that started conversations with new and existing customers alike".  That's a mother of a difficult brief.  The trouble with digital word of mouth campaigns is that you have to physically be there to see them evolve, otherwise you don't get a true feel for how a campaign played out, but basically they invented a RR executive called Ron Stablehorn, VP Marketing for Rolling Rock.  He was the front person for the battle between the new owners and the core fan base.  Ron was seen aplogising for the crap new TV ad that he'd commissioned - a commercial which featured a dancing ape and lots of stereo-typed bits of advertising naffness.  No-one saw the commercial (Ron had pulled it before it aired) but word of mouth was fueled by the release of more and more apologies and complaints.  The commercial finally broke on YouTube and it received 1.5m hits in just a few days.  Although it ruins the whole set-up, here it is. 

Of course, when the crap ad broke, people loved it because it was SO bad.  So what did I take out of all this?  The first thing is that ideas for the digital age are very complex to explain.  Forget the simple, single-minded thought.  Digital word of mouth campaigns are described more by 'narrative premises' or 'broad themes'.  Second, these broad themes are not all perfectly choreographed and worked out in advance.  The ideas evolve depending on the reaction of consumers and the degree to which digital consumers start to play with and 'co-create' the idea . That requires a bit of a step into the unknown for brands. Third, consumers were automatically visiting YouTube, without prompting, to see the film.  They just assumed it would be there which underlines the power of YouTube as the default source of video stuff.  Anyway, hope you enjoy the commercial even though I've ruined the punchline...

Posted by Jonathan Rigby

Click - Part Two

Chris Colborn was the Chairperson and opening speaker at Click.  His job title is Executive Vice President Creative Director at R/GA (American job titles are so much more impressive don’t you think?). His presentation was full of good stuff, but what interested me most was how R/GA has evolved as a business over the years whilst always keeping Design + Technology at its heart.  In the 70’s R/GA started as a 2d animation company and soon after were pioneering 3-D computer assisted animation in major Hollywood movies.  With so much technical talent ‘in house’ they were able to pioneer the emerging digital studio trend and then ride the wave of the first dotcom boom by applying their production skills to web design.  Where’s this all going, I hear you ask?  Well one of the big themes emerging out of that thing called Web 2.0 is the integration or re-integration of production back into creative agencies.  Put another way, the successful agencies of the future are going to be ‘making more stuff’ in-house – mini-films, virals, prototypes, content, movies, books, pictures, art, illustration, animation etc. 
Along with companies that started as design studios (like LOVE), film production companies, digital start-ups, 2/3d animation houses etc are all starting to take a bigger share of client budgets at the expense of traditional advertising agencies. As creative requirements shift, the craft skills required will constantly shift too, making it increasingly difficult for cumbersome, inflexible agencies staffed with 'old-style' specialists to evolve quickly and often enough.  So do they take the time to re-train everyone?  Do they employ lots of new-age specialists and slowly 'offload' the old-schoolers?  Do they create an agency of generalists - multi-skilled craftspeople who know a lot about creating lots of things?
Or is there a new model – loose collaborations of ‘micro-businesses’ who pool their specialist craft skills to make new things.   And if they’re groups of little businesses connected by technology, do they all have to sit together in big buildings in city centres?  If you're sitting in an agency wrestling with these issues (and if you're not, wake up!) you'll be re-assured to know that one big theme emerged from the conference. No-one has found the answer.  Yet.

Posted by Jonathan Rigby

Click - Part One

As conferences go, I thought the Creative Review 2nd Annual European Online Creative Advertising Forum (thankfully known by the shorter title ‘Click’) was pretty good.  It was a bit of a bum-numbing day, due largely to the ‘tasteful’ chairs that normally only get hauled out for weddings and bar mitzvahs.  I’m sure there will be a full report of the day made available in the next issue of Creative Review (and many of you out there might have heard it all before, so scroll on), but largely for the benefit of the LOVEsters, I’ll write a few bite-sized posts summarising what I took out of the day and stick them all together in a handy Click 2006 category thingy.

Posted by Jonathan Rigby