The recent election brought home just how much power this network has and, quite rightly, the coalition government has recognised that it isn’t something only useful for the election but in the longer term.   It makes perfect sense to use the heightened engagement in politics from the election to retain involvement from a wider audience.  This view is also directly in line with the greater vision of Facebook – it was created as an entity in its own right, far more than just another site because it enables interaction in a more powerful way than any other.

This is because Facebook isn’t just another website or technology, it is a social utility and should be used as such.  No other channel or media offers this direct, real-time dialogue by which the public can be engaged and understood.  Facebook is more than a network of people, it is a tool to reach out to them, share information and gain understanding which can’t be replicated by other tools available but is invaluable to the political sphere.

Of course, it’s not infallible.  The very nature of Facebook means you can’t censor it and you have to take the rough with the smooth.  But that’s just what makes it such a valuable tool for politicians who need to work more transparently than ever to clean up their profile following the scandals of recent months.  The truth is, a political Facebook campaign isn’t a disingenuous attempt at being cool, it is something that any representative body can’t afford not to engage in in modern times.

By
Richard Perry
Chief Operating Officer
GyroHSR

Twitter: richjperry
Linkedin: uk.linkedin.com/in/richardjohnperry

Having joyfully scrutinized the best print work in the world with my esteemed colleagues; elegantly lead by Mark Tutssel, I realised that the answer lies in the purity and art of print.

We should celebrate the power of well-crafted copy and exquisite art direction which combined with brave ideas is still one of the most powerful tools we have. Print is one of the only mediums you can create an intimate connection with the reader; as you read it in your hands or as it stops you in your tracks.

What we might take from this is to be less digital and more analogue, more real. Print can inspire, intrigue and fill you with goosebumps. It creates more intimacy between the brand and the audience.

Billboard, Almap BBDO Sao Paulo; Scrabble, Ogilvy Mexico; St. John Ambulance, BBH London; Volkswagen, DDB London and Dixons, M&C Saatchi London prove this. Press is alive and flying high.

Despite all this glorious work, press, a category famous for capturing most of the Lions was almost empty. The usual suspects, like cars, FMCG, clothing and home electronics clearly abandoned press. Budget migration to the sexy “alternative media world” was clearly felt.

When it came to choosing the Grand Prix (no point adding further to the massively covered final scandal), we had two clear winners, Billboard and Scrabble. Both celebrated the purity and unseen creative genius of press; pristine art direction, engaging copywriting and an ignitable concept. In the end victory was Billboard’s with its essence of music piece. A concept born for press; but truly expansive way beyond print. The campaign, a golden lion winner in Design and a strong Cyber entry is clear proof of how the new print can interconnect with other disciplines and celebrated without losing power or uniqueness. Like the sunshine, pure print excellence shone in Cannes too.

By
Christoph Becker
Chief Creative Officer

The implications are staggering to anyone who seeks to ignite ideas.

Most of the information on which we snack as we flit from link-to-link and text-to-text in the point-and-click world in which we live simply doesn’t stay with us. It finds a place in our short-term or working memory only long enough for it to be useful in the moment, and then it disappears. Unlike those things we savor, repeat and ruminate, such digital snippets just evaporate. They are not stored. They are never again available to us to throw a spark somewhere in our imaginations. (cf, “Cultivate Copiousness,” blogpost, October 1, 2009)

A mental life spent entirely on the fly is ultimately not equipped to be creative.

Carr cites volumes of empirical studies, including one by Jordan Grafman of the National Institute of Neurological disorders who, “explains that the constant shifting of our attention when we’re online may make our brains more nimble when it comes to multi-tasking, but improving our ability to multi-task actually hampers our ability to think deeply and creatively.”

He’s right. Even I who am known to you as the resident bookworm have of late found it much more difficult to maintain acuity of attention to a book, a long article or a lengthy white paper, and now I know why. Carr writes, “In the choices we have made, consciously or not, about how we use our computers, we have rejected the intellectual tradition of solitary, single-minded concentration, the ethic that the book bestowed on us. We have cast our lot with the juggler.”

Can you do it? Can you read this book, or still read any book? I challenge you to read The Shallows. In the meantime, I’m off to Tolstoy’s War and Peace, just to prove to myself that I still can.

Rick Segal
Worldwide President
Chief Practice Officer

Ash cloud returned, blew over, returned, blew over …
Greece went bust
Greece was rescued
The UK voted
The UK was thrown into political turmoil
The Eagles sent the Owls down

Oh, and one other thing – The World Cup bandwagon got well and truly rolling!

Back in London this week and I feel I can’t move for brands getting in on the act of hyping both the event and England’s chances (2nd round exit to Germany?).

For some brands the link to World Cup 2010 is clear. Adidas? Check. Carlsberg? Yes I can see their relevance to the competition too and the “teamtalk” execution is certainly rousing if it fails to quite get the hairs on the back of my neck standing as high on a second viewing. But Kit Kat and Mars though? C’mon! Give me a break …. (sorry!)

Anyway, the brand that has executed a World Cup idea most beautifully has to be Louis Vuitton. It’s here and it’s cool. It has Zidane, Pele and Maradona in it so how could it not be? Even if their link to the beautiful game is tenuous at best.

http://www.louisvuittonjourneys.com/legends

By
Richard Mabbott
Senior Vice President, Strategic Planning
GyroHSR

“The Lazarus profession: how advertising keeps rising from the dead”

Our work, our ideas, our use of language, our imagery, our mastery of applications and technologies must be so much more awe-inspiring, cutting-edge, arresting, provocative, engaging and memorable than what some clever fellow might cobble together with a MacBook and flip phone.

We must be exceptional; the very best at what we do. We must be able to think thoughts and do things that not everyone can do—and not everyone can think such thoughts and do such things. We must show the world that we are gifted.

Easy means of media production and distribution have closed the competency gap between wannabes and the time-passers of our profession. But tools can’t close the gap between wannabes and the truly creative, the real masters of the communications trade.

There will always be rich rewards for the purveyors of great work, but mediocre creative professionals will soon be overtaken by clever consumers who are frankly willing to put more energy and passion into it, even as their pastime.

Our emphasis on our idea culture should be regarded as a wake-up call. It relates not only to our futures at GyroHSR, but also to our futures as communications professionals, in general.

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Rick Segal
Chief Executive, North America
Global Practice Leader, B-to-B

Ferruccio’s secret? Realising that a simple element he was selling as functional, effective and reliable, could expand outwards into something that was beautiful, awe-inspiring and world-famous. Now, of course, Feruccio could have stuck to turning out his tractor clutch for tractors. But he didn’t. He realised he was only selling a percentage of what his product was actually worth, and went after the remaining potential.

It’s a lesson direct marketers would do well to learn. No, it’s a lesson direct marketers must learn, or risk finding themselves staring into the abyss. For too long, we have marched into pitches talking about data, targeting, response, measurement – all that solid, commercial stuff that we know budget-conscious clients want to hear. “Don’t spend your cash on those beautiful, but intangible brand awareness ads”, we urged. “Go for DM. It works, and here are some cold, hard (if boring) stats to prove it.”

And, for the most part, that approach has worked. Who wouldn’t want to engage with consumers in an intimate way and be able to track where every penny is spent? But the landscape has changed. The consumer has changed. And if direct marketers don’t learn to sell everything else they can deliver, then they can kiss a share of tomorrow’s marketing spend, goodbye.

So why now? What’s changed?

Well, the direct marketing industry has been focusing on the clutch – the fundamental cornerstone of its heritage. We’ve been selling our targeting and measurement. Which is great. Only now, everyone else is starting to walk the walk – or they are at least talking the talk. We all know that with a long history of understanding customer data, direct marketers are those best placed to navigate the new digital landscape for clients, but it’s unquestionable that other disciplines are staking a claim on cross-channel targeting and measurement.

Add to that the lightning speed at which consumer channels have fragmented and multiplied and the ensuing land-grab this has created. Where direct was once a one-to-one channel, it has fast become a one-to-many channel, and this has fundamentally changed the way we must operate.  We predict that we won’t see disciplines drop off, but we will see them continue to multiply.

Taking this new landscape into account forces us to reassess the way we view disciplines and channels within it. Contrary to what some may think, direct marketing is not just a tactical tool, it is a strategic approach. It can build brands and it can create an intimacy that no other approach can. Believe it, because if you don’t, you can’t sell it. And if you can’t sell it, you might be left to turn the lights out as everyone else embraces a new era somewhere in the future. This is an approach we had to adopt when launching a US campaign for agricultural and construction equipment giants John Deere. (If only these essays were themed ‘DM…and tractors’…).The challenge was clear: John Deere wanted to enter a new digger category. The audience was contractors, landscapers, farmers and dealers. So a simple offline DM piece, targeted and tracked, might have done the job.

It might have done. But then, it might have gone down as another classic example of the real potential of direct marketing going well and truly unexploited. Instead, we created a campaign that incorporated the stalwarts of direct marketing and used them to create something much, much bigger.

“Smackdown” involved staging a series of head-to-head battles featuring the top machines in a ‘robot wars’- style duel. The events—the hill climb, visibility test, power lift and serviceability—were based on real-world situations that drivers experience and were staged in front of a live audience.

Initially, the audience was engaged via offline mailers, but that was only the beginning. At the heart of the programme was the ‘SkidSteerSmackdown.com’ microsite, featuring videos of digger battles. The site was fully interactive, enabling visitors to engage in a number of ways. For example, fans could create e-postcards which could be customized and distributed to friends and co-workers. This simple tool converted dealers and operators into the campaign’s strongest advocates. A series of eDMs were distributed to alert both dealer and prospects when new content was available on the site, and finally – traditional elements such as print ads were also incorporated.

And through this activity, John Deere gained a cult following. Since the site launch in April 2008, the microsite has had more than 150,000 visitors with 125,000 unique views and more than 350,000 page views.  Smackdown videos have garnered more than 100,000 views on YouTube. Offline, the Smackdown-themed lead generators yielded a 4 percent response rate, outpacing many other similar mailers during the year. Drive-to-site banner advertising had click-through-rates of approximately 3 percent, and eBlasts promoting the site had response rates of more than 7 percent.

This was a campaign that had direct marketing at the heart – there was an identifiable audience, a clear proposition and a measurable response. But to encapsulate it in this way does no justice to the true reach of the activity. We could have sent out the mailers and waited to track the sales. But we didn’t. We took the brand to a new marketplace and created a following populated by genuine advocates. We drove awareness, created buzz and instigated WOM. And if I’m starting to sound like a traditional adman, then I make no apologies.

And neither should DM as a discipline. It is perfectly poised to tell complete brand stories through this brave new media landscape. But if DM professionals hide behind data and measurement without talking about the inspiring creative, groundbreaking online innovation and power to build genuine brand experiences, then they will be selling themselves short. They will be moaning about their Ferrari clutch, whilst never looking beyond to the potential of their own product. Go forth and sell it all, sell it now. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about

By Christoph Becker
Chief Creative Officer
GyroHSR

Links: http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/news/944635/PROMOTIONAL-FEATURE—Direct-marketing-round-table/?DCMP=ILC-SEARCH/