Dentsu NYC Blog

Finally, the word is out. I’ve been holding Google’s secret for the past 4 months.

Dentsu sent me to attend the Google presentation of the work in Project Re:Brief in November at the New Museum in NYC.

I was at first impressed with the heavy hors d’oeuvres and fancy cocktails, but by the end of the presentation, it was the simple Coca-Cola that had us all really amazed. We enjoyed hearing from an impressive cast of advertising icons and some of the creative minds that originated the classic campaigns that were getting an overhaul. It’s amazing that ads were running before I was born are still quoted as normal conversation today, e.g., when I say “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing”, every day, after lunch.

One of the most exciting parts was seeing the World Coke vending machine in action. They had a working model in the auditorium. The speaker had someone record and send a message live. We watched the animation take off and the machine come to life with the video message we just saw recorded and an ice cold Coca-Cola. I was instantly thirsty and wanted to try it myself, sending it to everyone I know. Literally buying the world a Coke. Not bad.

It was actually amazing. To think this works around the world is pretty impressive and really touched a soft spot seeing the genuine excitement of the machine users who got to try it (watch the video here).

The concept behind the Google Re:Brief project is fantastic and can serve as an inspiration for the possibilities of any great piece of work. It was really fun to hear how the creatives of then worked with the creatives of today to make the past relevant to the world right now, despite their feelings of doubt and general feelings of out-of-the-loopedness.

These re-imagined campaigns prove that the medium is not the idea. The idea is the idea. And if it’s great, it can live anywhere, in any decade, on any device.

See Creativity Online’s write-up here

Often the reason we avoid trying new things is fear of failure. It’s the reason we don’t speak up in meetings, avoid taking on challenging projects, and don’t put forth new innovative ideas. Basically, it’s why we “go with the flow.”

Alberto Savoia, Director of Engineering and Innovation Agitator at Google Ads, has a different way of looking at failure and innovation. His thought is that the key to coming up with a successful idea, otherwise known as the right “it,” is to reach the failure stage as soon as absolutely possible if that’s where it is going to end up. Savoia has developed a series of methods for testing ideas, which are all organized under the philosophy he calls pretotyping.

While most of his methods and philosophy are focused around entrepreneurs, that same attitude towards innovation, ideation and how we treat failure can be applied to any job we do. And by taking the fear out of failing, it allows us become the people who speak up in meetings, put forth innovative ideas and challenge others to think of alternative ways of doing things.

Last week Lucas Watson, Google’s VP of Sales and Marketing for YouTube kicked off our Speaker Series and spoke in the café at 360i, our downstairs neighbor. YouTube is restructuring its content and advertising platforms and Lucas Watson gave us the deets.

To compete with cable and general content providers like Hulu, YouTube must surface from its position of being a cluttered, unorganized internet junkyard and become a destination—not simply a URL you’ve ended up at.

The new plan for YouTube is to organize everything around Channels. So instead of the 300+ channels we all have, you can have 20 (or 3 or 50) that have exactly what you want. This lets the advertising become increasingly more tailored.

Google with YouTube has the awesome goal of keeping the creative behind the content in the benefit. They have a twofold goal of being 1) the best platform for artists, creators, and innovators. 2) To make an economically efficient system that pays the artists, not the middle men. Ideally paying the content creators directly to host their content.

To keep advertisers relevant, YT is introducing The TrueView approach to advertising, which allows viewers to skip an ad. If the ad is skipped before its full play, Google doesn’t pay for it. So if someone isn’t getting paid even if an ad technically runs, then what does this mean for advertising? That the creative must get better. It will cease to be an obligatory 15 or 30 seconds before your show and become something viewers can opt out of. Not unlike fastforwarding with a DVR, but with highly tailored ads, but now it’s a more personal blow.

This is of course a call to creatives, but also a call to the clients to be willing to serve the viewer. To blatantly skip the one single spot that comes before a show? You gotta make that spot shine. Or else someone doesn’t get paid, and it’s not the content creators.

But with better tailored content, it can become a worthwhile investment. Think Google ad words gone big. (Lucas assured us that it would not be in a creepy way, but in a “yay, I love that ______” kind of way.) Of course, traditional pre-roll ad space will still be offered, but knowing you can skip might lead you to watch because you can decide if you want to skip.

Interesting concept and it will be exciting to see where it goes. Here’s to making the unskipable ad!

It’s a special time of year when we sit around with our loved ones, eat for hours, drink too much, and yell at the tv. Yep, it’s the Superbowl of Advertising, with a few football interruptions. If you’re in the ad world, you can probably consider these 4+ hours billable time because you need to be savvy come Monday. And your sodium hangover is no excuse for not having an opinion.

What’s your favorite superbowl pastime? Is it discussing the possible conversations that happened during brainstorms and client meetings to make that terrible ad come to life? Is it hopping online to that obscure URL to “see the rest of the saga unfold!”? Is it going on facebook and inadvertently finding out who’s playing and what the score is? If not, then I have no idea what you normal, non-ad world people do.

You probably watch the game. Let me know who wins.

My advice to people just starting out in advertising – don’t do it. Unless you love the work. In which case please do it. Do it because rewriting a banner headline sounds delightful. Do it because you never fast forward through the commercials. Do it because you really, really, really want to write a fabulous mobile strategy. Do it because you have an unusually strong opinion about Helvetica. One of the great ironies of advertising is that if changing a logo by 4% causes you gastric distress, then this is probably a good occupation for you. The most successful account man in the business has been known to cry when looking at storyboards. Because he loves the work. If you do too, then join us. Advertising is for lovers.

That’s usually the first question I ask the bartender of my favorite Manhattan biker bar but upon further reflection, that’s probably the question consumers should be asking some of our preferred brands. We buy into imagery or as some layman call it, lies, and not into the actual utility or lack thereof, of the product they’re spending their money on. Brilliant people like myself (did I just humbly call myself brilliant?) know that and we take advantage. Does the product actually do what it claims or do we, as both marketers and consumers, ignore that completely and willingly accept a fantasy? I can think of a few marketing fantasies that my colleagues have been serving with piss beer for years.

“Hello, nice to meet you. So, you can’t seem to attract women no matter what you do. You’re sexually frustrated and there’s no hope. ” Logically that conversation should descend to evaluating that persons approach, the aura they project and maybe what they’re looking for in a relationship and where they’re looking. But no, someone like me decided that making you sexually desirable had nothing to do with making yourself a better human being. No, what you need, my sexually inept friend is Axe body spray. You splash a gallon of this on you and women will start throbbing from miles away. Bras will become sling shots as they swing from lamp post to lamp post with Spider-Man type precision to attack you with violent and repeated pelvic thrusts. Sound ridiculous doesn’t it? But it’s not. Axe is a category leader in the young adult male fragrance category and they did it by playing with every man’s greatest insecurity…women. Has anyone actually done a survey to see if sexual encounters have increased after using the product? Have we measured the number of voluntary and involuntary pelvic thrusts that have been…uh…thrusted? Hell, did anyone even ask a woman if Axe encouraged her to liquidate her morals? I sound like I’m pitching a long form video for Axe that could end up being a big viral hit.

Y’know, I’m starting to think this beer really is pee. It’s so…foamy.

Nothing says bad ass more than a bad ass on a motorcycle, particularly a Harley Davidson motorcycle. It’s an image cultivated by biker behavior and myths and legend supported by Hollywood movies and recently the popular show Sons of Anarchy. Wisely enough, Harley Davidson has embraced the image as well. Recent ads feature the Harley logo and the caption reads, “Customers who purchased this also purchased…” and they have a picture of a streak, brass knuckles and a cobra. All of which aren’t exactly found in your dad’s suitcase as he goes to work in the morning unless of course your dad is a mongoose who beats up cobras before eating them for lunch after tenderizing them with raw meat. My neighbor rides a Harley and not only is he not a mongoose. He’s a vegetarian dentist with a Paris Hilton sized briefcase…I mean dog. You can’t tell him he’s not a badass because on weekends that Harley Davidson Softail comes out and that mild mannered dentist becomes a wild and wooly mild mannered weekend warrior who rides exactly five miles to the bar and wraps his meticulously manicured hands around an imported lite beer with blissful gay glee. What’s so great about the Harley brand is that even after you’re sold into the idea of being an American bad ass after you’ve purchased the product, the fantasy doesn’t die. You may be a pleated-pants wearing dentist between Monday and Friday, but come the weekend you’re the one her momma warned her about. Harley by far has cultivated their brand to transcend merely being labeled a brand; they are a cult. They are an exclusive sect who look down on others (and by others, I mean other riders with superior motorcycles) simply because they believe by wearing or riding anything that says Harley makes them a badass. It doesn’t matter that most motorcycles come with air cooling systems and Harley’s don’t. It doesn’t matter that the smallest Japanese cruiser is quicker off the line then most big Harley beasts and it certainly doesn’t matter that you get considerably more technology on almost any other bike then a Harley. None of that matters because Harley = Bad Ass and bad asses like pee in their beer.

Please understand I’m not rallying against what these brands are doing. I’m actually praising the marketers behind the brands who have identified the core emotional bond between the brand and the consumer and have woven it into credible marketing messages which have resonated with their audience. These messages speak to them knowing their brand, accepting the limitations of their product, understanding their consumer and exploiting all of it to everyone’s benefit. Brands that have the right minds on their business both internally and associated agencies will always succeed because they know people don’t care what beer you actually serve. As long as you convince them that it’s top shelf the consumer will buy it.

Other brands that have pulled this off with marvelous results include Subway which has convinced people that eating their sandwiches will produce amazing weight loss results. Newport ads have not changed their visuals in years and so we’re left to think that smoking produces big white smiles instead of yellow teeth fueled by cancer ridden throats and lungs. Nike has promised me for years that I will eventually grow up to be Michael Jordan and somewhere deep inside, I still believe that.

By now we should all have figured out we don’t need to ask the bartender if he or she peed in the glass and then served it as beer. We drink the pee all day long and if someone ever gave us “real” beer we’d probably say, “Y’know, I usually drink this served really warm.”

The Devil Works On Madison Avenue

I was at a dinner party the other night and in a revelation as powerful as Darth Vader admitting to being late on child support payments, I was shocked to learn I was employed by one of the new white collar Axis of Evil. Of course initially I was excited to hear that because employment by the Axis in my mind meant I automatically got to wear those cute ill-fitting military uniforms that Middle Eastern tyrants favor but alas… 

We all hate lawyers.  Lawyers hate lawyers. Lawyer’s mothers hate lawyers. I always joke that the only homicide you can get away with is when you murder a lawyer because there will always be another lawyer ready to get you off.  And of course how can you have a white collar Axis without having an address on Wall Street? While President Obama was repeating ad nauseum “during these unprecedented economic times” the Wall Street guys were using their fifty dollar bills to wipe clean their hundred dollar bills.

So, where do I fit in this?

Because apparently ad men have been elected as the new scum pollutant of civilized society and everyone forgot to tell me because I totally would’ve designed a shirt that read, “Newly Minted Scum” but that I was told, is why we are so horrible. We no longer see people as people, we see them as impressions or GRPS or a Nielsen rating. While we target people, we don’t see the people we target as persons but rather statistics to be manipulated to push brands and products. We are indeed soulless. Being called soulless meant I could actually sin for the rest of my life and not fear reprisals in hell because I’d have nothing the Devil could possibly want but I kept that thought to myself.

I contemplated my soulless advocacy for a second and reflected on how despite working on Brown & Williamson and increasing the market share for Kool cigarettes I never, not once asked anyone to pick up a cigarette and embrace cancer. I remember how my team and I developed single day promotions for Mohegan Sun that never, not once asked anyone to liquidate their life savings and waste their lives losing money.  I smiled fondly recalling how our ideas to reenergize the Playboy brand called on gentlemen to stand up and be counted but never demanded that they get their Charlie Sheen on.  I sipped on my beverage with a Cheshire cat grin because of the great work we did on Hendricks gin but I struggled to remember us putting the laptop in anyone’s hand and asking them to drunk Facebook  ex-girlfriends.

Actually I realized I was more in contact with people than your average soulless corporate executive not because I really wanted to, but because I had no choice. I can’t tell you what and why to buy unless I understand your motives why or why you wouldn’t.  I know where you live, where you work, what sites you surf when you should be working and even know what brand toilet paper you prefer and unlike evil telemarketers, I don’t use that information against you. In fact, I can recommend a better toilet paper if you’re really interested. I don’t sell your information to people looking to sell you that must have subscription to Ducks Unlimited. I don’t go door to door selling you salvation and I’d never tell your wife that you frequent Ashley Madison.com more then you should.

Nope. Not me.

A well trained communication strategist is actually a cultural anthropologist who studies the world around him. How does modern technology and the ever-in-flux media landscape change and affects what and how we do it. Curiosity is the fuel that drives an effective strategist to re-imagine traditional approaches and animate those cold and very sterile MRI and Simmons quintiles and indices.  A well trained communication strategist is more human than the humans they’re asked to dissect and analyze.

Which brings us back full cycle…

With the same Cheshire cat smile I mentioned above I smiled and said to this person, “Where do you think I can get one of those fabulous Moammar Gadhafi military cape oufits?”

Going 3D for the holidays? Are visions of 3D TVs, Blu-ray players, cameras, camcorders and laptops dancing through your head? A recent Motorola study confirmed that 25% of TV viewers across 13 countries plan to buy a 3D set in the coming 18 months . . . so assuming you’ve been more nice than naughty, at least 1 in of 4 of you should be able to revel in your holiday good fortune . . .  in 3D!

With a larger 3D installed base, inevitably my media brethren will be tasked with adding 3D flava to our 2011 plans. And why not? 3D engagement metrics are enticing: Cued recall of ads improved from 68% for 2D to 83% for 3D and on average purchase intent increased from 49% to 83% for 3D versions according to a recent Disney Media and Advertising Lab study. (Not surprising given that wearing 3D specs is a multi-tasking deterrent irrespective of how on-point your facebook update might be.)

Finding relevant 3D touch-points can be daunting. Re-runs of special 3D episodes of Chuck, Arrested Development or the soon to be canceled Medium don’t make for a particularly robust buy. With that in mind, here are a few 3D advertising platforms worth considering:

*  Cinema – No brainer, but not a slam dunk. For every Avatar, there is Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (Bonus: NCM will convert your 2D material to 3D)

*  Broadcast – ESPN 3D, DirecTV’s N3D and the forthcoming network from  Sony, Discovery and IMAX succeed by default due to the alarming lack of available 3D content

*  OOH – CineTransformer offers immersive mobile marketing . . . in 3D!

*  Online – YouTube has a robust repository of (sponsorable) UG 3D content

Speaking of UG content, Eric Curland is my 3D hero. Not only is he an advocate for 3-DIY content, but he uses two Canon TX-1 PowerShot cameras on a home-made side by side rig to achieve 3D nirvana. 3D productions need not be budget busting, ya heard??

On a separate note, I won’t be downloading any Beatles music on iTunes. Truth be told, I kind of hate the Beatles. The only British invasion that I cared about were the likes of The Smith’s, Depeche Mode, The Clash and Declan Patrick MacManus aka Elvis Costello. The blog title is an obvious nod to his first album with The Attractions (and my first Elvis Costello album purchase on vinyl from Rasputin’s in Berkeley). I’ll grant you that pretty much everything since (and including) the 1989 release of “Veronica” has sucked – and don’t get me started on his marriage to Diana Krall or that crappy Lexus ad. But My Aim is True, The Year’s Model and Armed Forces are brilliant and worth downloading.

And no, he isn’t wearing 3D glasses on Trust.

Most people don’t really think too hard about what other departments do in an agency. So it’s nice to get an insider’s view every so often. In Media, one of the most amusing/frustrating/amazing aspect of our jobs is dealing with Ad Sales Reps. Some of them are pretty awesome and we love them to death (Note: this does NOT have any effect on our planning choices. Unless, of course, they’re really hot.), while others are so embarrassing that you just want to put them out of their misery. Here are a few fun examples of the more miserable ones (all names have been changed/initialed with the exception of those mangled beyond all belief):

1.   What’s My Name?

Listen, if you want to be taken seriously, get the name right.

Emily:

“Hi Elizabeth,”

“Hey Erin,”

“Thanks Jessica!”  (really?)

“Trisha”  (REALLY?)

“Hi (Name)” (This is just perfection) 

Also Canon is a body of rules, principles, or standards and is spelled with one ‘N’. Cannon is NOT a client but rather a mounted gun for firing heavy projectiles and has nothing to do with an electronics company. Get. It. Right.

2.    The Media Stalker

There’s nothing more frustrating than being harassed by a crazed rep who calls SEVERAL TIMES EVERY DAY. There is no one on earth we want to hear from so often. No one. Maybe the New York Lottery.

“Hey R –

I wanted to bring up something not related to the IO…X told me that you’ve been calling her multiple times almost every single day for a few weeks now and not leaving a message.  Even though you don’t leave a message, we have caller ID, so we can tell that you’ve called.  It’s just really odd and uncomfortable that you call her so many times, so can you please stop.  Obviously, if you have any questions you can email her or leave a voice message.

Thanks.
Y”

Thank the good lord for bosses who will tell it like it is. My favourite part is pointing out that we have a call log. Welcome to the 21^st century.

3.   Rap Fanatic + Business = Awkward

I’m leaving the best for last:

“What up E.  V-izzle?

It is your friendly neighborhood fiddy cent fan.

What is the wizzord?  For Reals, Yo, I wanna get a couple minutes of your time to discuss opportunities for next year.

Look at your Flavor Flav clock hangin round your neck and let me know what time works for you. 

Word,
Phizzil “

I can’t even comment on this because it would take away from its own magic. You just can’t make this up.

So that’s a sneak peek into the wacky world of Media. There are more of these to come, I’m sure, and I wish I could give examples of the Reps who are actually really fantastic. But we all know it’s the crazies of the world that make the best entertainment… we’re lucky that there are so many of them.

Our favorite neuroscientist — Mayim Bialik of sitcom Blossom fame (whoa) — is back in the spotlight guesting as a potential love interest for Sheldon (Emmy Award winner Jim Parsons) on The Big Bang Theory. While Blossom aired on NBC in the early 90’s and The Big Bang Theory anchors a surprisingly strong Thursday night comedy block on CBS, it was actually ABC’s Dr. Duane Varan, Executive Director and CRO of The Disney Media and Advertising Lab that put neuroscience — the oft purported next wave in advertising — in the spotlight at the recent ARF Engagement Council meeting.

NeuroStandards is an ambitious new research study that will attempt to validate the somewhat black box or magical nature of biometric and neurological methods. Dr. Varan openly challenged noted futurist and author Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law . . . Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic . . . claiming that science, by its very nature, MUST be distinguishable from magic.

Dentsu is a silver sponsor of this research initiative.

Why do we care?

Neuroscience methods – like Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), Electroencephalography (EEG) and facial coding – have become increasingly popular in media and marketing research. Through our partnerships with EmSense and the MIT Media Lab, Dentsu is preparing for the future of communications by studying different combinations of quantitative neuroscience and biometric approaches to give our clients new insights for creating advertising, content and products.

Stay tuned.

Incidentally, while some 80’s music revisionists claim that Thomas Dolby was a one-hit wonder (refer to blog title), you might want to consider downloading Hyperactive!, My Brain is Like a Sieve or One of Our Submarines from the iTunes store and judge for yourself. If 80’s new wave pop isn’t your thing, you can hear Dolby’s keyboarding on Def Leppard’s Pyromania (under the alias Booker T. Boffin) or appreciate his lyrics on Lene Lovich’s New Toy or enjoy his synthesizer stylings on Foreigner’s Urgent and Waiting for a Girl Like You.