Monthly Archives: November 2015

Are all marketers going starkers…

20 Friday Nov 2015

Posted by in Advertising, Branding, Copywriting, Marketing, Media

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

As you know dear reader the marketing industry follows fashion more than any other industry. Not wearable fashion, but the latest buzzword, shiny digital object, alleged tech trend, font or photography style.

Recently I’ve noticed the current trend appears to be a fascination with nudity, or the word naked to be exact. It seems naked is trending as a label for all sorts of products.

starkers

In Brisbane recently I passed this sign advertising a burger – well it’s not a normal burger it’s a naked burger. I assume the customer wears clothes when munching?

Burger

The headline under the title says “strip off the bun on any burger” with a subhead “served with relevant toppings in a lettuce cup”. Sadly I don’t have a picture of what a burger without a bun with topping in a lettuce cup looks like. I’m thinking a prime rump version of sang choy bow maybe? How does it soak up the beetroot juice?

The next day I walked around the corner from my hotel and staring me in the face was this giant outdoor poster.

outdoor poster

You can get yourself a fully loaded naked bundle from this strange bearded fellow. The mind boggles – WTF is a fully loaded naked bundle of phone lines and other telco services? Do we have nothing to say, so we use words like naked to attract attention?

Then a few days later while driving in peak hour in Sydney with my kids, I followed this taxi-back ad.

naked bar

I have no idea what it’s selling? Despite working in the industry most of my life, I’ve found the best judge of advertisements to be my kids. If they don’t understand the communication quickly, then how will busy adults? They couldn’t tell either.

This poster (and I’ve now seen other versions of her in different poses of undress) has an image of a semi-naked women with a headline “No Naughty Bits“. Next to her is a circular stamp “Aussie Bodies“. So we still have no idea what’s being sold – swimming costumes by Aussie Bodies?

There’s the word “NAKED” in bright red on what appears to be a chocolate or snack bar of some sort. You can imagine the high sugar count, given how humans make assumptions based on experience.

None the wiser, my kids and I crawled through the traffic before being affronted by a double-barrel dose of nakedness.

twin naked

That’s right dear reader – our vision was filled with a fully loaded “nakedathon“. The word naked was on headlines on both the bus and the taxi, there was a semi-naked bikini girl in front of us – just the sort of stuff to stare at while waiting at lights. My daughter asked “why are these advertisements all about being naked dad?”

“I have no idea” was the best I could muster. Though research has revealed the taxi-back is flogging a protein bar – obviously.

Now this ad uses the word “naked” to good effect – the reader understands immediately why the word is in the headline as it’s relevant to the proposition.

pink

But to invent a brand name from an over-used word all sorts of other products (like telcos and burgers) can use as an adjective in their ads, is not necessarily smart. A quick search for “naked protein bars” reveals the following:

21313_naked-protein-crunch.gif

nude bar

bear naked

The protein bar industry is fascinated with nakedness. So calling your protein bar “Naked” and then promoting it obscurely is not very original. It probably means you have to invest way more money than your competitors to stand out from the crowd.

Then again if the adage “sex sells” is true, maybe you could just use a half-naked bikini girl on a taxi smiling suggestively about naughty bits…

Those two marketers walk into a bar and share humorous Jonah Lomu memories…

19 Thursday Nov 2015

Posted by in Content Marketing

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

Sad news greeted the rugby world this week with the passing of Jonah Lomu at just 40 years of age – and only a couple of weeks after his beloved All Blacks successfully retained the Web Ellis Trophy.

I was lucky enough to go to what is regularly called the “greatest game of rugby ever played”. It was at the new Olympic Stadium in Sydney and it was not just a Bledisloe Cup Test, but a test of the ability of the stadium to manage the massive crowds expected at the upcoming Olympic Games.

Here’s the video

 

Australia had just lost to the All Blacks in NZ, where the whole stadium appeared to be blacked-out, as supporters wore black and held aloft black placards. So the return fixture was expected to be a blockbuster.

I was despairing as I couldn’t get tickets. Then my bride (An Aussie who promotes NZ as a destination for business events) was able to buy some from her Kiwi mates. I took a client – haven’t a clue now who he was BTW.

A world record Rugby crowd of 109,874 turned up. Our tickets were at lower level near the corner post, though I didn’t know this until we arrived. We walked up from below, into a sea of Gold. The ARU had retaliated to the black-out and issued something like 60,000 gold placards and caps for Wallaby supporters on the lower levels.

Staring at this massive gold blanket, I slowly counted down the steps towards our row looking at the field to my right. When we reached the row I realised our seats were to the left. I turned to find my seat and stared straight into the 2,000 seats reserved for the All Black fans – my bride’s ticket supplier.

My client wanted to leave then and there. But we squeezed between a couple of muscly Maori blokes as the AB fans started ribbing us. We even made the giant video screen in one of those “what were they thinking” images. The entire 100,000+ crowd laughing at us stuck in the black hole of Homebush.

Then the match started. And some of the best rugby you’ve ever seen was played….. by the AB’s. They scored three tries in the first 5 minutes. Then by 11 minutes they lead 24-0. The AB’s were so impressive I grabbed a silver fern flag and started waving it frantically with all those around me.

Luckily the Wallabies joined the fray at 12 minutes and by half time the game was 24-all. We were all exhausted, so I can only imagine how the players felt.

Jonah was rampaging in his usual style, but unusually he had dropped the ball a couple of times, so I became brave and started joshing my Maori mates. “Give it to Jonah” I cried out – knowing he would drop it again and give the Wallabies the advantage. The Kiwis just waved their beers at me and smiled.

The match lead changed throughout the second half until the 80th minute, when the Wallabies held the lead. Thinking we had done a Lazarus and risen from the dead to beat the might AB’s, we started celebrating among our Kiwi brethren. But the AB’s still had the ball, so the game kept going. Then the unthinkable. Almost 4 minutes into extra time, the AB’s did something they hadn’t done for a bit.

They gave it to Jonah. Well it was more a basketball lob over one of our centres than a textbook pass.

He crashed through a bunch of tackles, tip-toed along the sideline and scored right in front of us. The AB’s won. And my newfound Maori mates just raised their beers and shouted “give it to Jonah“.

Jonah about to score the winning try despite George’s best efforts…

I raised mine too – because Jonah had given it to us in spectacular style. The departing crowd was the most friendly I’d ever seen between our two nations – because we all knew we had witnessed history. And I’m certainly not planning on sitting in the AB fan club again:)

And here’s another shorter version of a longer story about Jonah. It’s probably been told many times, but this was in front of about 1,200 lunch guests at  Bledisloe Cup lunch at Darling Harbour the day before a match. And probably the first time it was told in Oz.

On stage was former New Zealand Captain Sean Fitzpatrick, being interviewed by former Australian Captain, Phil Kearns. Phil asked the question “Sean, how do you stop Jonah Lomu?”

Sean answered “it’s easy Phil, anyone can stop him if you know how“. Phil pressed him for more information.

Sean answered “he hates getting shit in his face, you just have to throw shit in his face and he stops running, simple“.

The audience tittered and Phil said the obvious, “there’s no shit on a rugby field, how can you throw shit in his face?”

To which Sean politely replied “mate, if Jonah Lomu is running at you, there’s plenty of shit on the rugby field.”

The audience roared laughing and Phil Kearns nearly fell out of his chair.

Vale Jonah Lomu – rugby legend…

maxresdefault

 

Should all alleged Content Marketers be sacked on sight?

13 Friday Nov 2015

Posted by in Advertising, BIG DATA, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Digital, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Media, Sales, SEM & SEO, Social Media, Thought Leadership

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , ,

Your headline is one of the most important parts of your content. It attracts the reader to continue to read/watch/listen.

Of course I don’t believe all content marketers should really be sacked – it’s merely a figure of speech – but hopefully, given the current trend in animosity towards content marketing, the headline will attract readers:)

Like many, I’m concerned about marketers being duped by the latest new-new thing in marketing – another label for something that’s decades old. This time it’s content marketing and if you follow Gartner’s Hype Cycles, it seems content marketing is on its way out as we read – making room for the next bright shiny digital object. Mind you Gartner predicted there’d be no mail by 2000.

Gartner Hype Cycle

Content Marketing heading into the abyss…in the trough of disillusionment

Creating content is not new to marketing. In fact, creating content has been in our culture since mankind stood upright. Think cave paintings to record content and communicate to others.

Check out this image from a 17th century book:

1742

The headline reads “Contents“. OMG dear reader – physical evidence of content creation in publications.

As you well know, the majority of books (including ebooks), magazines documents et al, begin by listing the content you will find in the publication. Who’d have thought hey?

So why do alleged marketers claim the creation of content is new? Whose interest are they really serving?

I can only go from my humble experience, as like most marketers I’ve been creating and curating (to us a digi-term) content since nappies. More than 30 years ago when a Marketing Manager of TNT I wrote a weekly editorial article in the Daily Mirror – an afternoon newspaper in NSW. The column was called Property Protection and gave tips on home security to readers. Accompanying the column was an ad from TNT Alarm Systems – one of the brands I managed.

So the reader saw the content in two parts – the paid content in the ad and the editorial content. The editorial wasn’t earned content – I wrote it free of charge as an “industry expert”.

Let’s move forward to 2015 and rewrite what I just wrote, but using “digital content marketing language“.

I published content in the Daily Mirror, alongside the paid media. Interestingly it wasn’t earned media because I published it free of charge. It wasn’t owned media, as Rupert owned the paper. And it wasn’t paid media because that was the ad below it.

It was thought leadership delivered as native advertising, as part of my content marketing strategy. WOW, WOW & WOW!!!

Not only was it all that – but the UX (user experience for the digitally challenged) was omni-channel wonderfulness, as the reader was able to turn the page using their finger and read both the paid ad and the native advertising in an integrated format, without having to leave the platform. Unf***gbelievable. The content was consistently presented on the user interface – that’s the page, in case you’re wondering.

You get the picture.

Yet despite all the evidence, a whole content marketing industry is booming.

There’s even a private company called The Content Marketing Institute. It’s nothing of the sort – an institute that is – but don’t you wish you’d invented that money-making-machine? Call yourself an institute and you gain faux credibility and get the gullible to part with money. Hats off to the founders for getting away with it – brilliantly I might add.

Interestingly, my mate Drayton Bird recently wrote that the founder of said “institute” believes content marketing is a fad and will only last another couple years. But hey, they’ve made their money.

So here’s today’s first lesson – if you think creating content for marketing purposes is new, you need to go back to marketing college or leave the industry – you obviously know little about marketing.

Lesson number two – if you think consumers have miraculously changed their DNA and don’t consume paid ads, you are deluded and need to go back to marketing college or leave the industry – see above.

Lesson three – if you think the future is about brands telling stories without any proposition to entice you to buy (short or long term) see lesson one.

Here are some insights from an earlier post:

Amazing Insight 1: Customers don’t really care about brands

Amazing Insight 2: Customers don’t want relationships with brands

Amazing Insight 3: Customers don’t want to engage with brands

Amazing Insight 4: Customers don’t want to join a conversation with a brand

Amazing Insight 5: Customers get pissed off if you irritate them with irrelevant content marketing about your brand

But maybe I’m preaching to an empty church?

empty church

I should jump on the content marketing bandwagon and open a content creation and curation company.

But I cannot call it a content marketing agency, as there is no such thing – it’s a commercial impossibility.

It’s against the law of natural commerce to call yourself a content marketing agency. An agency is named because it earns commission from publishers for placing paid media as their agent. This is why they are called advertising agencies.

Given the entire purpose of the content marketers is to create content that isn’t for paid media – only for earned and owned media – then by its very nature, a content marketing agency cannot exist.

There are no paid media commissions involved. So there aren’t any agents – which means there are no agencies. Simple really.

So any alleged content marketing expert calling their business a “content marketing agency” should therefore be sacked on sight for fraudulent misrepresentation – oops…

 

P.S. I’m running a content marketing seminar in Brisbane in two weeks. If you’re interested you’ll need to register today by clicking here.