FRANKthoughts

The new ad for ANZ is starting by showing us “a bank” that is very good at ignoring their clients. I really like the lady actress there – she’s so good you’d think she’s working at your branch! The script is so clever, so bizarre and almost too real. Then, in the last five seconds, the ad becomes somewhat like science fiction.  It shows us the ANZ way – a guy/girl (they switch depending on customer’s sex) is welcoming the customer to the branch with a smile and the tag-line “we live in your world”. Wow, I’ve been a client of ANZ for the last seven years and NEVER was I greeted by anyone there. The result? the ad leaves you with the bitter taste of “no truth in advertising” while reminding you that “living in your world” means treating you the same but with a new logo.

But the ad isn’t the only thing broken. It’s the brand communication strategy that needs fixing. If you’re going to claim to be “living in my world” why don’t you have something about it on your website? in branches? How about having a real person helping people out on twitter?

I don’t catch many TV ads these days thanks to Windows Media Centre  but the occasional one slips through when I am not paying attention. I was first drawn in to the latest AAMI Safe Driver Rewards TV spot by the tongue-in-cheek use of an annoying yet comfy Gen X classic ‘What about Me’, and the twit who crashed into the shop .. whilst tweeting…

Then as the stereotypical scenarios rolled out it kept me engaged and entertained. It also appealed to me because, like everyone else, I am the most responsible, safe and best ever driver in the history of driving and it annoys me that I pay for other people’s stupidity. A strong product built on a solid insight. And a well pitched campaign (even if they do drive ‘lorries’ at Badjar Ogilvy) that has generated some good early social media chatter.

After just two weeks there have been over 7,700 youtube views with over 60 positive comments . (they couldn’t all be from the agency could they?)

A quick search of Twitter reveals a similar picture of overwhelming positivity:

can’t get rid of the soundtrack in AAMI’s latest TVC out of my mind “what about me….” it’s been playing in my mind whole night…”

Lol at the aami add lol “I was twittering and drove into thr corner shop” :p

You know that car insurance add for aami, does that dude say he was twittering away before he crashed into the corner shop? Lolol

♫ ♫ ♫ I was twittering away when I crashed into the corner shop ♫ ♫ ♫

What about me it isn’t fair .. Cldn’t help myself AAMI TV ad LOL Lol -AAMI Insurance Ad – What About Me?

And ofcourse the odd whinge (can’t please everyone):

Anyone else cringe over the new AAMI TVC with “What about me?” song (orig by Moving Pictures)? The talent can’t sing, the song is wrong.

With so many fans of the ad I wonder what AAMI are going to do to nurture them? How about a simple facebook ‘what about me’ fan page where they get people talking about their own experiences and scenarios. Maybe incentivise them.

Does this campaign strike a chord with you too?

There’s nothing better than to start the new year with some fresh ideas. The Customer Learning Curve is showing that your target audience is made of different people in different stages of their relationship with your brand. Check it out and let me know what you think:

As a marketing communications company we owe it to ourselves and our loyal clients to stay abreast of the ever evolving communications-shift that is in play. One of my solutions to appear knowledgeable is to surround myself with people and companies who are pioneering change.

One such company is Lookout Mobile who make iphone apps, jointly managed by Patrick and Daniel. One of their hero app is Aussie Rules Live and they are one of the leaders in this emerging market.

I was talking with them yesterday and they remarked that app development is now in its third-wave, which intrigued me. Wave One…all the way back in July 2008 largely came from 3G backyard developers and in hindsight were kind of crude, but fun. Wave Two emerged with 3GS. The “S” is for speed and gave birth to funkier apps such as the compass, improved gaming and augmented reality. A great example of the latter is in this clip.

Wave Three is capitalising on “second-mover advantage” which revisits existing apps and simply improves upon them. Weather apps are a good example with Pocket Weather emerging as one of the most popular.

From an iphone owner’s point of view there are so many new apps emerging and that awareness of the best apps is largely through friends and “have you seen this app?” conversations. It occured to me that aside from itunes there is no destination which provides independent, user generated, reviews and views. Apps are currently ranked in the app store by 1-5 stars which is fine but limited. I thought such a site might be called iphoneappreview.com.au. To my surprise i was able to register this url, which i did yesterday. Dot com was taken and takes us here, a site developed by doshdosh and the wrong advice  it has over 14,000 app reviews and currently ranks 328,000 on alexa.

The iphone app market is in early stages of development and penetration and i figure with the right collective attitude and experience now is a good time to explore the opportunity to provide a UGC app-review platform as a destination in a market that is destined to grow dramatically. So is  there anyone out there who agrees with the opportunity and would like to contribute at this formative stage in the life-cycle of apps? Please let me know.

Flicking through the sports section of the weekend paper I was held up by something unusual. At first I didn’t know exactly what it was. Was it the unorthodox ‘fireplace’ format that runs across two pages? Or was it the vastness of the ‘hard working white space’ in the ad? I’d been involved in both of these techniques before so it can’t just be these. There must be more to it. 

Ah hah! Then I realised that unlike regular newspaper ads this did not have a border. Subtle at first, it only took a split second for me to work out that it was an ad for a “Borderless” TV, but it was this split second challenge that had me engaged. In the heavily cluttered world of newspapers, this little example of media innovation was enough to arrest me, make me smile and get me interested in the new product, even when I am not in the market for a telly just now.

The media placement also added to the overall effectiveness of this marketing communications strategy. Newspapers are a highly relevant context in which to display interesting new products, and with Tiger Woods in town the golf pages would be heavily read. Also according to Morgan Plasma/LCD buyers are 32% more likely to play golf than the general population, and over 20% of them watch it on the telly, so a strong target audience composition amongst golf fans.

Great use of press, but unfortunately when I jumped on the web site  the TVs displayed have more borders than Mexico!  You have to dig pretty deep to find any tellies that look remotely borderless which is a bit disappointing given the cleverness of the print campaign. Perhaps a video on the site (and on youtube) showing the telly in action from different angles?

Client of FRANkVizeum ‘Sumitomo Tyres’ has today launched its new Australian website. We recognised from the brand strategy process that Australian roads are some of the most challenging in the world and that’s why drivers and families need the best protection. From this, the Sumitomo ‘Ninja’ was born, a specialised Ninja for every type of protection.
Tyrecorp has been associated with Sumitomo for over a year, previously distributed through South Pacific Tyres. Sumitomo specialises in both passenger and truck, with their hero product the HTRZIII – the asymmetric tread pattern is categorised as a maximum performance tyre.
We look forward to expanding on Sumitomo’s Social Media Strategy in the coming months.

This week saw the combined efforts of LeoBurnett Melbourne, Blackwood Communications Group NZ & FRANkVizeum Melbourne help launch SEEK’s new brand advertising campagin ‘If it exists’.

The idea works on the promise that jobseekers can find whatever job they can think of on the website. The TVC’s have been shot in a mockumentary style to explore the work day life of employees with quirky roles such as a cannon safety inspector and a shopping trolley mechanic.

The campaign is running across both Australia & NZ, with our media investment heavily focused on TV, Radio & Outdoor.

Meet the stars of the new TVC’s below (produced by LeoBurnett Melbourne):

Greg Walters is a talented Shopping Trolley Mechanic and Damien Mashall is obsessed with cannon safety.

Have you considered a career change lately?

We asked “In the face of dynamic pull-social media platforms is there a long term future for data bases and pushing information via data bases?”

I’ve been wrestling with this issue for the last few weeks and i’m not sure i’ve resolved my head. The shift in emphasis for me is feeding value-information to an opt-in data base versus having a dialogue. The theory of opt-in data bases is fine but rarely do they deliver on the promise. I don’t know what the norm and i accept that opening rates will vary but an opening rate of 10% or less for most eDM’s might not be far off….even a bit generous. By comparison a healthy dialogue with a brand takes us to a multi-segmented, bespoke relationship.

My view, and i’d love someone to challenge me, is that databases will be dead in 3-5 years as social media chatter eclipses their relevance. Here’s some other opinions.

Tim Pethick, entrepreneur at large, brand guru and founder of Nudie, said

“I don’t believe so. We all find our way onto databases at specific moments of time in relation to a particularly relevant context in that moment of time. Change the context and the time frame and a push to the database just becomes more spam. Consumers want to be in charge and that will mitigate in favour of ‘pull’ based solutions.”

Ben Freund, CEO of goswitch, said

“I believe that data base marketing will always have a place as it gives consumers a chance to register for offers that of interest, and it gives marketers the ability to target their offers for specific market segments.”

Josephine Evans, Marketing Director of Tireworld, said

“When considering our specific industry, we do believe there is a long term future for databases and pushing information via databases.  For most part, the products and services we provide are a need and not a want and as such, databases enable us to cost effectively communicate with our customers with timely and unobtrusive messages.   The ongoing challenge for us is to better educate our employees on the importance of capturing the “right” data so that what we communicate is always meaningful and relevant to our customers.”

Adam Garone, co-founder of Movember, said

“It’s depends how the data base is sourced. If you are purchasing a database from a third party and sending them an e-mail or direct mail then, in my view there has never been any value or long term future in that.  If however your data base has been sourced through building your own community, then there is absolutely a future in continuing to provide valuable and timely information to the data base. The key being valuable and timely information.”

 ”The dynamic pull of social media has added a new dimension to how brands can communicate which presents a huge opportunity.  In this environment the tone of the communication needs to change as you are participating in a two way conversation.  That demands that you are transparent, real, don’t attempt to control the conversation and provide value to the conversation and the community.”

So opinion is fairly evenly split…i still think that databases will die a slow death. Thoughts anyone?

We asked some of our clients “As services in the  marketing industry explode beyond strategy, creative, media, PR, social media, web development, research etc. is the challenge to manage the various suppliers or is the inclination to consolidate?”

Adam Garone, one of the founders of Movember said 

“We will continue to engage the very best staff and agencies to perform these roles.  Some roles such as social media, PR and brand strategy are best done in-house.  Creative, web development and research require a range of technical skills at varying resource levels throughout the year which are best outsourced.  I prefer multiple agencies that are experts in their fields over a multi faceted agencies.”

Josephine Evans, Marketing Director from Tireworld said

“Ideally the preference for us (being a medium sized privately owned company with a small marketing team) would be to consolidate these areas as there would be obvious advantages and synergies using one agency that could provide the whole gamut of services.  Admittedly it may be an initial challenge taking that leap of faith and assigning all services to one company, as the sceptic in me would be concerned that it is less likely that one company could specialise in every marketing service and deliver a better result than individual companies that dedicate themselves to only one specific service.  Considering that agencies are becoming more and more accountable in  delivering results and achieving their clients’ KPIs, maybe it wouldn’t be such a scary thought to entertain.”

Tim Pethick, entrepreneur at large, brand guru and founder of Nudie, said

“As the environment becomes more complex typically service providers become more specialized. We’ve seen this in other industries or professions in the past. For example, accountants and lawyers have become increasingly specialized as the legislative framework has become more complicated. I think the same will inevitably need to happen with marketing services. No one provider can competently span the range of specialties dictated by the explosion of requirements. I think the trend will be for clients to manage a variety of best-of-breed specialist suppliers. This is in the best interests of the client and it also ensures service providers continue to develop deep domain expertise.”

Please join me in thanking these three for finding the time to provide their opinions. I have posted Adam’s photo in honour of Movember 2009 having its official Melbourne launch tonight.

 Next week’s question will be “In the face of dynamic pull-social media platforms is there a long term future for data bases and pushing information via data bases?”