one part truth, two parts mixer

Race and ting

So, Cadbury have been accused of racial sterotyping with their new Fairtrade ad. I was just wondering if, as an industry, we wouldn't get into these scrapes (Trident!) if we had more ethnic minorities in the industry.

As a caucasian, you dont necessarily understand why something could be perceived as racist because you've never been on the receiving end of that kind of prejudice. So, when the ad is being reviewed there's no one there going, 'uhm, that could be taken the wrong way'.

Race is a pretty tricky topic and if I got into my view on the world, I would be here a long time. Just out of interest, does anyone find this offensive?

Anyway, just thinking out loud.

More conversation

Will wrote a really good post last night about being anti-social (you can read it here). I've been thinking a lot about social media bandwagon recently, and whether sometimes we should be advising not to get on (despite shooting ourselves in the foot fees-wise). Anyway, back to Willsy (am I allowed to call you that?). It was a good post because it generated good comments, from which two points really struck me.

Firstly, Katy made a really good point about there being another way to be social, and something that is actually key for most to all companies/brands. That is listening, rather than talking. I quote: "A brand who listens to me is being a damn sight more social, because being social is about two-way exchange. Being social isn't about social media, it's about social behaviour".

You don't have to have a Twitter account (with 7 followers that all work in the marketing department), but you should be searching Twitter to see what people are saying about your brand.

Secondly, Michael Gross made the point that "I would be even more radical and say that a lot of the stuff that social media gurus suggest during those conferences can be actually dangerous for a lot of brands". This is particularly relevant in the luxury arena: "I don't want [luxury brands] to talk to me, they don't want to talk to me - that's part of the whole deal, that is what makes them extremely admirable, holy and unreachable".

Social is as social does

Repost from Run on Toast

The IPA Social discussion last night was a massive improvement on January's report launch, in which I seem to remember resorting to drawing funny faces in Jamie's Moleskine. Well done to the lovely Jamie, Katy, Mark, Neil and all the rest of the gang for starting the right kind of discussion about social media. If I came away with one thing yesterday it is that it is still uncharted territories and everyone is finding their feet, working out what works and learning from each other. Just as importantly, I have lots of ideas, questions and *cards* from interesting people.

What follows is a collection of thoughts, in no particular order, in the spirit of being part of the conversation:

Measurement
There was a lot of talk about justifying the value of social media, defining its ROI in order to keep clients happy and prove effectiveness. Amelia Torode spoke about work they are doing with the IAB to assess the importance of social activity on the Meerkat work, and I'm sure everyone is looking forward to seeing it if Amelia makes it public. On the subject of the Meerkat, Debbie and I were talking this morning about whether there is a way of measuring the impact of social media on the longevity of the campaign. You can't discount the role of TV in driving the massive numbers that VCCP have delivered for Compare The Market, but if it had been TV-only would it have had the same mileage?

Sitting it out
I rather foolishly nominated myself to host a conversation rather late in the day despite wanting to get involved in the conversation that Amelia was hosting. Bless Katy for joining me and a girl from the IPA (sorry, forgotten your name) in a discussion about whether there were brands that shouldn't get involved in social media. A couple of points:

• Some brands, e.g. Apple, don't use social media to no detriment (I know they are a very peculiar case study, but I'm just saying...)
• A lot of brands want to use social media for the sake of it, jumping on the bandwagon, what Katy called the 'e.g. Facebook' brief
• If there isn't a role for social media, there's no point doing it
• Are you a brand I actually want to speak to socially?
• You might be better off spending that money on improving customer service (lots of successful case studies of brands using social in this space)

Responsibility
We then swiftly went and joined Nick's conversation - I think the title was about which discipline was best placed to manage social. An interesting point was raised about whether responsibility for social should sit with the client or the agency. And actually, is the marketing department (a dept concerned with selling) the best placed to manage that relationship. Maybe customer service is a better bet?

Dirty words
Someone asked a question towards the end about whether 'campaign was such a bad thing?' (UPDATE: It was Nicola Davies - thanks Amelia!). She made the point that they are involving, participatory and rewarding, and actually sometimes you don't want an ongoing conversation with a brand, which I thought it was a good reality check.

Anyway, lots to think about. Disappointed that there wasn't more participation in the mexican wave, but looking forward to the forthcoming conversation and the next meeting.

P.S. Best quote: 'Fabergé eggs? I eat them for breakfast' - Aleksandr Orlov.

Double dressing

I came across this picture from the last. ever. Rakehell's Revels. Unsurprisingly it reminded me of a trend I actually spotted (as in, I saw it in real life and not on the internet) which was named 'double dressing' by The Future Laboratory.

Photo by Christopher James @ WeKnowWhatYouDidLastNight

If you hadn't guessed, double dressing is when people wear matching outfits. The first girls I saw doing this were some south London rude girls dressed identically from head-to-toe. Same hairstyle, same hairclip, same pink MacKenzie jumper, you get the picture. I was in my pyjamas looking for a Guardian on the Walworth Road and had neither phone or camera, but these girls made a massive impression on me.

It got me thinking about how powerful the visual impact of dressing alike is in an age of individuality. Think about Gilbert and George or Viktor and Rolf - their outfits centre around quite plain suits, but the act of doubling it up make it a much bolder visual impact. I think formation dancing fits into the same social category.

Update: came across this photo by Dominic Joyner (hope you don't mind me using it)

Free lunches

As you will know I was offered a free lunch on Pizza Express earlier this week. So was Anjali (who very kindly tagged me) but what interested me was that in her post she very nobly justified to her readers why she was taking the free meal, whereas I sort of insinuated that it was my divine right and was just up for the free meal.

Anyway, what interested me was that one of her reasons was that she liked the food. Which got me a-wondering, is there anyone I would actually turn down? Seeing as I haven't eaten high street fast food for over 10 years (apart from the occasional omlette and chips at Wimpy or veggie burger at Nando's) I wouldn't even consider courtship from McDonald's, Subway, Pizza Hut or Burger King, no matter how much they'd told me they'd changed. But who else?

Would I be comfortable promoting a brand like Primark, who have a dubious record regarding how their clothes are made. I actually do buy clothes from Primark (I can enlighten you with the reasons why next time we go for a pint), but I wouldn't be comfortable aligning myself with them publicly. What do you do if you're a brand that noone wants to stand next to?

Infernal lies

Interesting article in the Grauniad yesterday about lying. A couple of things struck me, and I thought I'd share:

"...in 2006, psychologists Charles Bond and Bella DePaulo analysed tens of thousands of individual performances and found that people can differentiate truth from lies only 47% of the time. In other words, we are actually a little worse at figuring out when someone is deceiving us than we would be if we just guessed randomly."

It's interesting that something that is universally accepted as a moral no-no is something that we can't acutally read. It is interesting how much we lie to make people feel at ease, the idea of the 'white lie'. Fascinating stuff.

"Even polygraph machines are unreliable. The polygraph is predicated on the idea that when people lie, they experience anxiety, but the fact is that some people don't get anxious when they lie. Some even experience pleasure."

Got me thinking about the assumptions we make regarding testing/research and how we really should be using more than a pinch of salt.

The problem with choice

I came across Coca-Cola Freestyle today, a nifty machine that can make you about 100 different variants of drinks from the Coke stable. One of the reasons that I liked being vegetarian (I eat some seafood and white fish now!) was that the restrictions on what I could eat made it easier to choose what I wanted to eat in a restaurant. The Coca-Cola Freestyle scares me. It probably scares Scouse even more, because he'd have to wait 8 hours while I tried to make a decision on what to drink (actually this would take no time at all, because I don't drink fizzy drinks, but if it was a Dolly's Ice Tea Freestyle machine...).

I've been thinking for a long time that choice is a false benefit. Or I should specify, too much choice. Having a pillow menu that offers you soft and orthopaedic is different to a two-page beast, something which is probably essential for 7-star classification. I would rather trust the hotel to have the best pillow, and if I wasn't happy with it, that they would change it to whatever I want. At El Bulli, you don't get to choose what you eat and people pay hundreds of Euros for the privilege. I realise that is a very niche example, but maybe this is a proposition for the luxe wedge of the market. If you are buying expertise - can this be applied across the board? - then surely you are paying someone else to make the decision for you.

I'm not suggesting a world where we entrust everything over to brands - oh, hang on, we're already there ;) - but just that having choice is sometimes a deceptive benefit. It's already a given that people will prefer one thing served crackingly well than a host of poorly served things. Anyway, thoughts in progress.

UPDATE: Came across this vaguely related post on Noisy Decent Graphics

TOV

That used to stand for Trouble on Vinyl until I got a job in marketing. Now I hear it and I think 'tone of voice' - how things change.

So, there's a tone of voice, championed by brands such as Innocent - you know, the quirky, colloquial, affable, lovable and eminently human tone of voice that set brands like Innocent or Ben & Jerry's apart from the corporate norm of the time. I've noticed that over time it has become the de rigeur way of talking for brands. Even the banks are at it:

 

At what point do we become totally cynical about this type of language? At what point does it become ineffective because we just read it as marketing speak? Does this ever happen?  

Predicting the future

Surely we should just be reading science-fiction? I was thinking about how so much of classic science fiction has now become reality, and was wondering if a lot of things that scientists try to make are influenced by things that creative minds (painters, authors, thinkers, etc) come up with.

One thing that comes out of Ken Robinson's brilliant talks about education is how we as a society do not place enough merit on creativity - it always takes second place to traditionally respected subjects. Robinson talks really eloquently about changing definitions about what creativity encompasses so I won't waffle on here, but thinking about how imagination shapes what is possible seems pretty relevant. I'm not saying all possibilities come from creative minds - the best scientists think creatively - but the collective imagination, a creative pursuit, is what drives innovation.

Actually, I'm not sure exactly what I'm trying to say, apart from the fact that creativity is key to innovation. If we don't push our imaginations to the limit then we can't push our achievements. So we should definitely nurture and respect it more.

Colour me bad

Last week, I went to see one of the best talks I've seen as part of the RSA's free lecture programme (if you live in London and don't know - get to know!). The title of the talk was 'Seeing myself see: The Ecology of Mind' and was presented by experimental neuroscientist Beau Lotto.

The topic of the talk was about how we see, something that I haven't really given any thought to since GSCE biology. The gist was that we don't really 'see' with our eyes but with our brain, and that we learn to see by seeing what's useful to see - i.e. what was useful for us to see in the past. So we learn to see based on context and behavioural significance as opposed to what is physically there to see. Interesting stuff, but I'm not quite sure what it means to me yet.

I would definitely recommend watching the talk when it appears on RSA Vision and also check out Lotto's website.