Will Content Kill the Agency Business?

Interesting post on The Kaiser Edition titled The Content Manifesto. Not a manifesto really but a collection of posts from many great thinkers and planners of today. Many of the pieces listed under the manifesto are seminal in the way they see the advertising and marketing business a bit into the future. The thinkers at Kaiser believe that content is the future of advertising and that agencies need to morph into producers of good content. Like what Mother is doing here. Getting started with comics.

There are many interesting thoughts on similar lines out there. None of it better than this presentation by Paul Isakson. Some of the more interesting slides include the way traditional advertising/marketing looked at consumers as being at the periphery of the game, with the product being at its heart. Paul inverses this diagram by simply flipping the arrow making customers move in towards the brand using advertising, CRM, distribution and packaging.

Further on, Paul quotes what he thinks is the new CPB folklore of Alex Bogusky, who tells his people that he does not want to see scripts anymore, but the press release.

Some of the examples of this thinking include the recent Burger King Wopper Freakout. Was it an ad, a commercial, an interaction, an event? It got spoken and written about all over. The Philips BodyGroom work. The online work for Coke, The Coke Zero Game.

As with most modern concepts, there is a section on utility, or branded utility with Nike+, Dominos BFD builder and mobile tracker.

There are some examples of how companies are using new tools to ask consumers what they want. Including the recent My Starbucks Idea.

Paul sums up by finding the definition for new marketing as something that improves peoples lives, as opposed to selling, or introducing people to products and services.

Duffy Does Logos

Legendary Graphic Designer and founder of Duffy Design has a deep and interesting post on the logo.

The Battle For Supremacy In Contactless

We love new, new things and we will continue to report on the changes that are happening in the space of contactless payments. Especially when you hear facts like how, by adopting contactless, establishments will be able to reduce wait times by up to 40%. This one is from Europe on how many vendors are jostling to become the preferred choice of banks, mobile phone operators and of course the consumers. Payez Mobile (French only site, sorry), seems to be getting ahead of the race, especially in France. Read more.

Self-Service Banking For The Wealthy.

A wise man once said, “When you have money, you are rich. When you have the time, you are wealthy.” Apparently all that’s changing, with even the wealthiest, not finding enough time to do the things they would otherwise do at leisure. Like getting personalized financial advice. Belgium’s Fortis Bank started a pilot in January for a service called Direct Personal Banking for their more affluent customers. A personal relationship model using a combination of internet and telephone banking. There are many experiements going on around the world to automate banking for both the rich and the not so. Read more from The Banker Magazine.

Monetising The Networked Economy

Will it be possible for social networking sites to make money, or will they like email services, succumb to competitive pressures and subsidise the service to a point where they will never, ever turn in a profit? That’s the question The Economist is asking at a time when the near bankrupt AOL has paid up some $850 million for European networking site Beebo. Many commentators feel that in the future social networks will come to you rather than you needing to log in and check stuff out, ruling out the opportunity to target custom ads. Technologies like virtual tagging of physical spaces and the use of mobile phones to access networks will mean finding newer ways to make money from such services, unlike the closed systems of today that many people (wongly ?) believe are worth billions of dollars.

Visualising The Banking Crisis.

And-I-Still-Persist blog has done a Gapminder style visualization of the current sub-prime crises that’s destablising the global financial markets. The presentation takes in all kinds of data that US banks have to file with FDIC and uses a new age data visualization tool like Boomerang. There are charts that show how much the top banks are effected by people not able to pay their loans, and when the rot really started to set in. The creators of the blog have promised more data in the weeks and months ahead. So maybe you want to bookmark this link. Still on the subject of mortgage crisis is this chilling clip from BBC of how many tent towns are springing up in the suburbs of the US, of people who have lost their homes, unable to pay back their home loans.

Onserts Work!

Fed up putting communication messages on envelopes? Here’s a bit that might help you change your mind. 64 percent respondents of a survey said they would use personalized offers printed on their bills or statements. From 1 to 1 weekly.

10 Ways To Get Inspired

Most of us use the net as the starting point for work. Googling a word or an idea in the search box has become the way to get the juices going. The Creative Something blog has complied a list of 10 most inspiring ways to get going. Here’s the list.

Show Me, Don’t Tell Me.

Visitors to last week’s New York International Auto Show were in for a surprise. While there were gleaming automobiles all over, the Ford display was conspicuously different. The Ford Taurus on display looked like it had been involved in a crash. It had a crumpled hood and half of the front bumper missing (More pictures here). Ford intentionally crashed the vehicle in a test facility to show consumers how well the 2008 Taurus — and by extension, the rest of its vehicles — can withstand a crash.

People are becoming more and more circumspect of advertising messages and technology is allowing people to avoid ads, so marketers need to devise new ways to catch people’s attention. “One of the problems that almost all the Detroit automakers have is breaking through the resistance that people have to even look at the cars,” said Art Spinella, of the automotive consulting firm CNW Marketing Research.

The Ford effort is not an isolated one. Starbucks, battling image problems, and the belief that their in-store experience is not as good as it used to be closed all their 7100 stores for three hours in the US to retrain its 135,000 staff. A visible act from Starbucks of showing the world that it is changing.

One of the problems with older physical brands is that they are caught up in the ‘tell and they will listen’ mode. There is an interesting post on Umair Haque’s HBR blog on how new age brands like Google talk less and listen more, which was rejoined by Millward Brown’s Nigel Hollis. In fact Nigel’s post tells us how brands like Google can actually show and not tell the world about their superior product, without using traditional advertising, because users experience the offering very easily.

Which brings us back to one of the most interesting thoughts that we discussed in the newsletter many weeks ago. From the Head of Zeus Jones. Adrian Ho had this wonderful post about the 85-15 point. Marketing focus versus brand impact. On how marketing is focused on a very small portion of the time a person interacts with a brand, about 15% or less, yet marketers spend most of their attention on getting this seemingly small bit right. Rather than focus on the 85%.

And finally to the point that in the changing world of marketing is customer service the new advertising? As illuminated by David Armano at the Ad Age, Digital Marketing Conference. And to this wonderful story of how Virgin went many miles to serve a customer who had forgotten his wallet on the check-in desk.

Cause Chat

The next time some one hauls you up for chatting during work, tell them you are helping a cause. As Microsoft’s im Live is sharing a portion of the ad revenue it’s making with a charity of your choice. Here.