Digital randomness

My agency asked me to make a prediction for marketing in 2014. So i wrote something about Native Advertising, which i think is a major trend in digital media and more broadly in digital marketing. It's simple, it's meant to be easily understandable, And it's quite the same than everyone is saying right now but you know... corporate stuff... I'll write more about it later, with a more personal view on it.

Here is the short "prediction" : 

"Native advertising", as they call it, made a great entry in the marketing jargon in 2013. They say it's about creating and providing content in the context of the user's experience of a particular media. The discipline is actually as old as advertising is (think brand sponsored shows on TV, product placement in films, advertorial in press, etc...), but for some reason this is something we forgot about when we started to advertise on the web. In fact, we literally did the opposite. We put our ads completely out of the user experience sight, in places people easily learned to avoid. No wonder why the click-through rate (CTR) of banners dropped from 2% in 1995 to an average of 0,1% today (0,04% for the standard 468x60). Only 2 guys in Mountain View thought that maybe our relation to the web was a bit different than the one we have with the other media, that maybe embedding ads flawlessly within the user experience was somewhat more important now (FYI the average CTR for Google Adwords ads is still around 2%).

Hopefully it seems like 2013 has been the year of revelation for marketers, and, more importantly, for platforms and publishers, whom have started to offer more concrete possibilities to advertise within the user experience of their website or service. I think of course about Facebook sponsored stories, Twitter's promoted tweets and accounts but also things like Forbes or BuzzFeed sponsored content or more lately Instagram's sponsored pictures. Those kinds of ads seamlessly blended in the user experience have already proven their effectiveness, Facebook sponsored stories in the newsfeed get an average CTR of 1,87% (46 times more than its sidebar ads).

I just came across this magnificient cover of Stairway to Heaven performed by the band Heart. 

The performance took place at the Kennedy Center Honors ceremony in front of the last members of Led Zeppelin an made Robert Plant cry. That's how emotionnal that thing was. It gives me goosebumbs everytime i watch it...

Of course, as everything i suspect to be able to move other people, i shared it on Facebook. The majority of my friends felt the same way as i did. But one told me she didn't understand what all the fuss was about. She felt that the singer voice was flat, and that the guitarist was flat. I tried to explain her that it was not about someone's performance in particular, but more about a whole experience of the song. She understood but was not particularly convinced. 

Then she showed me something that gave her goosebumbs. It's a cover of "Your Song" performed by a young girl in X-Factor. Here it is. 

This is when it occurred to me. When Heart performed Sairway to Heaven, their only goal was to serve the song the best they can. It was not about them, it was about the song and just the song. For the young girl from X-Factor, it's basically the opposite: the performance is just about her, about her individuality. That's all. She could have sung anything else.. 

"Thanks to the internet we have access to so many forms of culture that the current form of self-expression is creating a collage of whatever we might find interesting be it past, present or what we imagine the future to be like."

The motto of most clients and agencies when it comes to digital marketing is engagement. This is quite normal : digital clearly gives us the ability to interact more easily and more powerfully with consumers.

The things is, people are so obsessed with those new engagement possibilities that it often becomes the basis of their thinking process when they have to design digital stuff : "What we're gonna ask them to do and why they will do it?". 

I find this really really wrong. I think the key thing with digital is that it enables to create better, richer, deeper, more meaningful and more useful experiences. It enables brands to be more generous.

This is what we should take as a basis every time we think about digital.

The first question you should ask yourself should then not be "How could i make people do something in this experience by using digital?" but "How could i make this experience better, richer, deeper, more meaningful or more useful for people by using digital?". Put simply : "How could i give more to people by using digital?"

SPOILER : This article is poorly written, contains a lot of different concepts, and may look like it doesn't make sense at all. My mind does that sometimes.

I just came across this infographic on the MIT Tech Review about the TV domination on the entertainment media landscape in the US.

There are 2 big numbers to support this : 

- First, the fact that Americans are spending 5 times more time in front of their TV than on internet. 

- Second, the fact that the average daily TV viewing in US has increased 18% since 1991

Well that's actually not such news... Some other media studies already proved the point a couple of times (even generalizing it worldwide). But it got me thinking about this TV addiction we seem to have, an addiction which carries on even though we've never had so much different ways to entertain ourselves than today.

To put it really simply, i think we like TV a lot because it's kind of effortless. It's easy. You just have to turn on your TV set and content and, dare i say, entertainment, just come straight to you. And even though nowadays connected TVs ask you to do a little bit more than turning it on (which is completely wrong in my mind), television has been constructed, and is seen by people, as a really passive way to consume content. And indeed, the age of TV was the age of the "passive consumer". 

Then came the internet, and the age of the "active user". Indeed, if you want something on the internet, you have to go get it, clicking links and web-surfing in the quest for your personal entertainment. No more passiveness, the consumer is now a user, and he is an active one. At least, it used to be like that ...

Because, the fact is, there is a lot of stuff on the internet, like a lot of stuff, and the more stuff there is the more tricky it is for our mind to choose where to go and what to look for (you can check "the paradox of choice" to get to know a bit more about that). So we started to invent things that would let us minimize choices, things that would allow content to come to us, once again, as the TV did/does, and not the opposite. I think of course mostly about content feeds, would it be on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or whatever is your source of internet entertainment, but also about things like data-driven recommendation and curation tools... And so is born the age of "the passive user". 

To resume this poorly constructed argument, i'd say that this addiction for TV we have is mainly due to our love for passiveness. We are lazy bastards.  And the fact that we're currently turning an active media (internet) into a passive one is just proving my point quite well. 

I think this is something we should really take into account when thinking about digital media. Most people actually rather be passive than active. It's just easier for them. And the currently increasing complexity of our environment is definitely one of the key force that will push those people to stay in this passive state. In 3 words, the passive user is here to stay. 

The stunt format is quite a great weapon for brands to gain visibility on the social web. They always drive millions of views... I keep wondering why…I mean, if you think about it, all those stunts are actually pretty similar.

There is the "vending machine" one :

The "prank" one :

The "push the button to see something crazy happen" one:

etc...

Looking at the number of views, it is clear that, even though those videos are all basically the same, we still really like to watch them. We’re even often eager to watch the ones that we haven’t already seen. You know, the one your friend told you about.  Yes, that one.

This is quite a crazy behavior in my mind, because if we had a bit of reason, we should just tell ourselves: “A new stunt that shamelessly promotes a product I have nothing to do with? Well, I’ve seen dozen of those already. What’s the point? “. But no, we just jump on our laptops or phones to watch it… Really irrational stuff right there. Irrational stuff is interesting, that’s why I started to question myself about it.

So, why do we like those videos so much? What’s the inner driver, the inner motivation that leads us to consume this kind of content so avidly? What problem do they solve? What do they bring us?

Well, I actually found something that bonds them altogether: their storytelling dynamic is always based on surprise. More precisely, they all bring surprise into an everyday context or environment: a car test drive, a mall, a cinema, a train station, a bus stop, a random street, a job interview, etc…

And I think this is this element of surprise in the everyday life that  resonates the most in us.

We all live pretty monotonous lives doing pretty much the same things every day: same job, same journey to work, same people, same websites, same coffee, etc... This feeling of monotony and routine is even more exacerbated today as we have the ability to connect and watch people all around the world doing crazy and exciting things. This hyper connection to the lives of others actually give us the capacity to perceive and visualize how many possibilities the world actually have to offer us, how many things we could have done or we could do.

The thing is, we are actually quite stuck in our routines, like really stuck. And for most of us it is just really really hard to get out of it, not because we don't want to but because the fact that we do what we do today is not something we rationally and independently choose. There are numerous reasons, most of them being out of our control, that led us to where we are today and that led other people to do all those exciting things.

But even knowing and accepting this (which is already quite a big step towards happiness and self-redemption), there is still some kind of subconscious dissonance in our minds between knowing how much we're stuck in our routines and knowing how much we could actually do. So we try to cope with it in some kind of way. And I think one of those ways is forcing ourselves to think that even in our daily routines there will be, someday, some kind of amazing surprise, some kind of exciting thing that will happen.

In today's fragmented digital world, brand experience can be lived by consumers through a high variety of touchpoints, from store experience to product experience to experience with brand users to advertising to etc...

What's important to underline is that consumers have different expectation of the brand behavior across those touchpoints. And if you don't take this into consideration and start to say and do the same thing everywhere, you will look like an inappropriate douchebag.

But, if you must avoid ultra consistency, i.e extreme uniformity of your messages and actions across all touchpoints, in order to not look like a fool to consumers, your brand behavior should definitely be coherent, in the sense that all the interactions you'll have with consumers across all those touchpoints should be relevant for them and in accordance with what they expecting from you at that moment but eventually should lead, when you add all of them, to a strong and differentiated representation and signification of the brand in their mind. 

Coherency in branding is about making sense across all touchpoints, consistency about being senseless in most of them. 

Advertising though, in its proper form, has a strong need for impact if it wants to succeed. No impact, no communication, no persuasion (thanks Dave Trott for this). And if you want to maximize impact and recall, it's really important that consumers see the same words, the same images across the different media (our brain are wired liked this). In short, you really want your advertising to be consistent, in the sense that all the messages you spread across media during a campaign should actually be the same creatively speaking in order to have impact and to maximize efficiency.

So take care when someone tells you that coherency is more important than consistency in "digital marketing"... It really depends on what you're talking about. 

And remember that, as of today, inconsistent advertising is definitely bad advertising and that a consistent brand is not a good brand, a coherent one is.  

It's a been a few years now that once in a while a viral concept just comes up from the dephts of the internet and engage people all over the wordld into doing really silly stuff.   

I think everyone here can remember the whole planet planking in the middle of 2011. 

Lately we experienced one of the craziest and most viral of this kind of internet phenomenon : The Harlem Shake. 

In a couple days, the whole planet was doing it, literary the whole planet, including music bands, corporations, companies, entertainers etc... 

I actually think it was the most viral thing i've ever seen on the internet. Crazy enough, it was as well one of the most engaging one as it clearly demanded quite some organization, time and tools to do your own version of the Harlem Shake.

Anyway, a couple ago, all the social media trends websites started to talk about a new trend, a new internet phenomenon, expected to be the "new Harlem Shake" and called (and named by those websites), "Hadoukening".

Hadoukening is a photo trend where, by a an awesome special effect, you eject people around you using your force and power, as a dragon ball/street fighter character would do. 

You know what, from the very start i didn't feet it. No way that this trend could be as powerful as the Harlem Shake.

I actually had quite a debate with an other planner on Twitter on the subject. 

Basically he told me that this trend could be as and even more powerful than the Harlem Shake because it was less engaging than the Harlem Shake, that it was easier to do, so more people would be able to do it, so it would be more viral. 

I really disagreed with this. 

I told him that, what made the Harlem Shake so viral, apart from its cultural/sociological meaning, is the fact that its rules, its guidelines were about the way it should be done and not about what should be done in it. 

The Harlem shake was actually more about a framework of actions, leaving freedom and creativity to the creators regarding its content, than a set of defined and specific actions to do. 

In this sense, Hadoukening is basically the opposite of Harlem Shake. Yes there are rules defining how Hadoukening should be done, but there are also rules about what should be done in it, in this case an hadouken/kamehameha thing.

Thus it leaves way less creativity for the users, and therefore less ways to  make new things about it, less ways to surprise other users and thus it doesn't give the ability to the concept to get fully viral.

That was of course nothing more than an hypothesis...

The cool thing is that i recently got proofs supporting those sayings. 

A few days ago, a new trend just came out... it's called "Vadering."

  Vadering is basically a Star Wars version of the Hadoukening. Rules of how it should be done are the same, content is just different. You're not Sangoku or Ryu, you're Vader. 

It made me realize that people naturally tried to find an other way to express their creativity beyond the rules of Hadoukening, which i think felt a bit too restrictive for them, especially regarding its content. 

I actually find all of this quite interesting regarding how we can build creative concepts that can better involve users.

Today when you ask creatives to think about an engaging, involving creative concepts, you often come out with complex stuff that demands people do to specific things. Usually those interactions you ask for are really codified. Do this, then do this, then do this, and then you'll win. In 3 words, there are rules.

The thing is, as we saw it above, if you really want people to get involved with your concept, those rules should not be about the content of the actions you ask the user to do, they should be about the framework where those actions will be performed. A creative concept with rules focused on the framework more than the content can leave people space to express themselves within them, thus giving them the possibility to get really involved and to appropriate the concept. 

Those concepts should almost be seen as media in themselves i think, as they are more context focused than content focused.

And i don't think this is just about creative concepts. It can be extended to everything you build on digital that aim to engage and involve people. You have to build stuff that leave people space and freedom to act and speak for themselves.  Don't dictate what to do, dictate how to do. 

EDIT : new evidence, the Pottering : 

Well, well, well... I finally watched all of this year superbowl ads, and read a lot about them as well.

I was trying to write a little thing for each of them but i actually just want to talk about the GoDaddy one, the one with the kiss, because i find it the most interesting...

"Perfect Match" is one of the 2 ads that GoDaddy ran during the Super Bowl. Here it is : 

Here's some facts i went through on the web regarding this commercial : 

- "Perfect Match" got last in USA today ad meter with a score of 3.30, behind all the black crowns commercial (which were really bad).

- "Perfect Match" was named the "most disappointing commercial" of the Super Bowl by Bleacher Report and the "most misogynistic ad" by the Hollywood Reporter.

- Top comment from YouTube : "This is the most disgusting commercial I have ever seen in my life, and i have seen a lot of commercials"

On the other hand:

- As of today, "Perfect Match" got 9.242.197 views on YouTube. For comparison purposes : 

Black Crown's "Coronation" (second last in the ad meter) got 278.165 views.

Budweiser's "Brotherwood" (first in the ad meter) got 10.445.348 views

Tide's "Miracle Stain" (second in the ad meter) got 1.023.110 views

Ram Trucks' "Farmers" (third in the ad meter) got 7.108.609 views

- "Perfect Match" was the most talked about ad on social media with 255.121 mentions (Networked Insights) and it is still widely shared and talked about on social networks.

So, yes, a lot of people got offended by the "Perfect Match" ad. Yes, it was the most detested ad of the night. But this controversy helped it emerge in the commercials ocean that is the Super Bowl.

Greg DiNoto, chief creative officer at Deutsch New York (the agency behind the ad) said : "We understand that a spot like this will be polarizing and controversial. There are others that find it silly. But everyone finds it memorable - and that's important."

And he's right. No matter how good, how clever or how loved other ads were you can be sure that the most memorable one was indeed "Perfect Match". 

Why? Because GoDaddy chose to be different. When 70 ads aspired to be the most loved ad of the night, "Perfect Match" aspired to be the most hated. This is a smart move. They created a category where they were the only one to compete. When you have to choose your most loved ad, you have 70 spots to remember, 70 spots to judge. 70. Even impact of the best ads are diluted in such a density... This not the case when you're playing in "the most hated" category.. You're alone in the category. There is just one ad to judge for people, one ad to remember. Your impact is even multiplied (if you think about it, this is just a girl kissing a guy... how shocking.).

Other clever move from the brand, the "shocking" ad was followed in the second quarter by a more classic ad urging viewers to go register their big idea to godaddy.com. Here's the second commercial: 

In my mind this is really good strategy : 

First you create a big impact with a "controversial" ad that catch people's attention.

Second you drive behavior.

Third you just wait for the money to get into your pockets. 

For the record, the Monday after the game was the biggest sales day in GoDaddy history :

Hosting sales jumped 45% yty

Dot-com domain sales rose 40% yty

New mobile customers increased by 35% yty

Charles Saatchi

Well, i'm just gonna throw this here. 

I always thought there was something missing in the R/GA model (stories x systems), but i didn't know what. I knew it was something about building awareness and changing consumer behavior. Something that, in my mind, stories and systems cannot fully accomplish.

Stories and systems (and their intersection) are great to express a message, a product asset or a brand mission in the digital age. 

But how do you build awareness for your story? Your system? their intersection?

How do you truly impact on people's behavior towards your product and your brand? 

Well i think it is by making eitheir your story or your system genuinely social at core.

Groove #25

So it's been a few weeks i'm reading stuff from people like Bob Hoffman and Martin Wiegel about the amount of money wasted by businesses on useless online advertising and how digital advertising agencies are just full of bullshit. 

I will be honest, i'm working on a 100% digitally-led agency, and, yet, i think as well that most of what we conceive here when it comes to pure advertising is definitely not fully effective. And i'm not talking about banners and CTR (which i think is the main object of Bob Hoffman's obsession) but about what are often behind those banners : digital advertising campaigns.

Even though the object of discussion is a bit different, the main point stay the same : most people don't want to interact with advertising and brands. They just don't.

This is quite a scary fact for agencies. Most of what we built and what we still building is based on the idea that people have the need to interact with our clients on digital. Need for content, need for entertainment, need for conversation, etc... Our whole model is based on this assumption and a lot is still being constructed on this basis (i let you count how many articles are written on the subject everyday). Scary shit. 

Scarier though, is the fact that clients are beginning to realize how much then their money is thrown away by their agencies using this deficient model (the economic crisis may have played a little part in this sudden realization, as may have the tragic fall of Facebook stock). 

So does it mean that digital agencies are the biggest lie of the 21st century? Is digital advertising "dead" (to use the famously overly used formula)? Well i don't think so. And this is the point where i don't fully agree with Mr Hoffmann. 

You see, Mr Hoffman is basically saying that people are still watching a lot of TV and so this is where you should put your money at. No need for online advertising.  While the first assumption is a correct one today, Mr Hoffman cannot deny that, with time, people are and will be increasly moving away from the traditional TV set (as people have moved from radio). Yes, TV will still exist, as radio, but digital will be the most used media. No question. So yeah, you may need to put some money on it. 

The true problem (and the one Mr. Hoffman doesn't seem to want to solve) is that we still have not found the way to do efficient digital advertising. What we're actually doing everyday is just trying to adjust a model that is profoundly deficient. The thing is: it costs everyday more and more money to adjust the model (i let you guess how much money you have to put on the table to get noticed doing "brand content" nowadays). 

It seems that we are too scared, lazy and (mostly) dumb in the advertising industry to change this even though we rationally know that the model can't be sustainable. 

But yeah, you know, client is paying for it, i don't care if it cost a lot for nothing. I still make money.   

Wrong answer bro. As i said earlier clients are starting to understand and realize that the model they put their money on, and that most digital advertising agencies are selling them, is rubbish and inefficient marketingly speaking. 

That's why (and this is my fundamental point) i think that agencies which will be able to completely disrupt the existing model, demonstrating and selling efficient online advertising strategies will be the big winners of the next few years. 

We just have to find the new model now. :)  

Groove #24