On The Ground Looking Up

The Importance of How-To

Brands need to pay attention to how they inform their consumers on uses for their products and the smart ones will use the new media model and mechanism to support that. I was perusing Yahoo's top instructions search and noticed how many in the top searches are for brands specifically- LEGO, Honeywell Thermostats, iPod, Jabra Bluetooth, etc.
So in creating connection and loyalty it stuck me that brands should be creating instructions, Q&A, uses and additional uses, and more for their products utilizing the new and changing communication mediums. And they should also be encouraging their customers to share and teach others as well. Who needs the 40 page technical manual when you can see someone just like you doing it and making it seem so simple.

LINK: Yahoo Top Instructions

Shopdropping

Interesting article here from the NYTimes on shopdropping, the art of going into a retail store and putting clothes back on racks that carry a message (usually political or message based) subversively. It is the Banksy experience brought to a variety of retail outlets and products. Can you be arrested for putting clothes onto racks instead of trying to take them away?
The landscape has certainly changed my friends.

LINK:Anarchists in the Aisles?- NYTimes

What Ever Happened To Customer Service?

What ever happened to the notion of customer service? There are a few companies that still get it, but I have noticed that brands have generally forgotten that their customers are the ones that pay the bills, they support and build the brand and that tell their friends and co-workers about the good and bad experiences they have. 

Read this recent article from the UK, where the private parking company that runs the parking areas at McDonald's drive-thrus in the country. It seems if you stay longer than 45 minutes eating your McTransFat, you will get a bill in the mail for £125. So let me get this straight. If I take my time enjoying my fatty goodness, drinking my world's best coffee and inhaling the crispy potato oval not only will I pay with my cholesterol, but I could get a huge parking bill? How is this customer service? How does this help the brand?

McDonald's is a brand that consumers look at as comfort. A place you can always find,  if you need to kill an hour, you can go and get something and wait it out, a second home for some, the after school hangout, etc. etc. etc. In other words, yes, it is fast food, but the experience is about welcoming people in and giving them consistency and a place they know. Imagine if Starbucks started kicking people out of chairs after 25 minutes, if Best Buy charged people after 5 minutes of trying out the new Guitar Hero or if Apple charged you for each email you sent from their machines in their stores. It would kill the customer experience and incur ill-will with the very people who are the prime brand evangelists.

What does McDonald's really care if someone spends an hour and fifteen minutes in their parking lot. Chances are that the lifetime value of that customer is in the thousands of dollars. Sure, someone will abuse the system and if they park their car and come back 10 houre later, send them a bill, but in general the benefit of making the customer feel comfort, outweighs, the loss of a few abusers.

LINK: McParking Row - UK Guardian

Make The Logo Bigger This Xmas

WorldWideWadio gives us this Advertising Parable for the Holidays and it just gives me that warm and fuzzy feeling, sort of like when I have drank the eggnog that was sitting out a little bit too long. Bless us all, everyone.

Building Projections That Interact With Each Other

Marketing Alternatif blogged this great video of how you can create a story and interactivity between 2 different building projections. I think this is a great use of the space and creates a lot of interest for those watching.

Seen on MarkAlter...

Unrelated Brand Images Vol. 1

Flickr Pool

I believe that you cannot own creative ideas. You may own a product or the IP associated with that idea, but the idea itself is out there, in the public domain, to be thought of, critiqued, modified, remixed, mash-up up, twisted and squeezed. I have gotten inspiration for many ideas from the creative ideas of others. As such, many an idea I have had has been adapted for other marketing ideas by other companies. The real gold is associating the right idea with the right client and then add a bit of good execution. That is the value, that is the quality right there. 

In an experiment in this, for the last year I have run a Flickr pool all focused on alternative marketing. I post my pictures, pics of things that inspire me that others have done, street art and technology that is interesting and other events and spectacles in history. The goal of all of this is to give a resource for anyone who wants to come up with innovative experiences and marketing to have a resource to see other ideas that have been done and perhaps get inspired with a nugget for their own ideas and presentations. Collaboratively, we make the whole discipline better. So share, take, make your own and share again.

Feel free to join, contribute, use, steal, rinse and repeat.

Alt.Marketing Flickr Pool

Why Guerrilla Marketing Sometimes Bothers Me

This is an example of a campaign that I feel does Guerrilla a disservice. It is why sometimes I feel like guerrilla goes out of control. Done for the sake of the creative idea, not for the goal of generating measurable successes and ROI.

KFC is the culprit here. They thought they were making the world's largest logo. Seen from space. Seen from Google Earth. Blah Blah Blah. For one, Target did it way before them. But the real issue I have with it is that I do not like marketing that is solely a publicity stunt. Something that nobody else sees. Interference has done it's share of world's biggest stunts, but always in context where the maximum number of people can see them. To me it makes sense to create marketing where should the press not pick it up, it can still be a success from the impressions you get and the WOM it can create. For this KFC stunt beyond the press, there is virtually no exposure. It seems like they got some pick-up, but it just screams "COVER ME PLEASE" as opposed to "This is interesting and successful whether we covered it our not". Doing a spectacle, in the middle of the desert (no, not during Burning Man) does not seem to me to be a wise spend of your marketing dollars and this does not seem to have a clever related cultural context like Huge Homer did. What's your opinion? Cool or not? Success or not?

LINK: Nicked from Guerrilla Marketing Defined

The Dark Side of On-line Marketing

So someone is being accused of using deceptive marketing tactics and you know what, it is not us! There seems to be a buzz going on about a few agencies who work on making videos viral on the net and what their tactics may be. They seem to go against the guidelines set out by WOMMA and are causing people to pay attention to this grey area of marketing. As on-line video becomes one of the dominant media forms of current times, it will be very interesting to watch how brands and agencies treat it to generate attention for their brands.  In the below article and video, the owner of a start-up viral media agency talks dark tactics. And then of course he released an update saying that his agency would never engage in those tactics of course. I love spin.

LINKS:
The Secret Strategies Behind Many "Viral" Videos
The Retraction!

The CNN Interview

Pac-Tree

Creating exciting marketing in my world, means doing things that are out of the ordinary, get attention and get people talking.
Now this example is not for a brand (as far as I know, my Spanish is not too good), but it sure is a unique idea that is bound to generate many looks, snaps, and vids.

In downtown Madrid, they have installed a holiday x-mas tree that is a LED version of Pac-Man.

Video of the tree can also be seen here.