Cannes. Specialist Agencies Lose Out.

A debate is raging in the direct marketing, promo and media agencies around the world about how so many of the awards in their categories have gone to mainline agencies? The Grand Prix in all three categories were won by mainline agencies. JWT Mumbai winning in direct, BBDO New York winning the promotion grand prix and Sweden’s Forsman & Bodenfors taking home the top media prize with their MMS campaign for AMF Pensions.

A look at the gold winners in direct and things don’t change too much. Couple of golds for Lowe Bangkok and one each for JWT’s London and Costa Rican offices. The only “non mainline” agencies to have won golds are new-age integrated agencies, BMF Sydney, MortierBrigade from Brussels and The Communications Agency from London. Same is the case in promo and media. No “traditional” media agency won a gold in media. The winners in promotions too were no different.

The only two categories where specialists were able to hold forth were design and cyber. Even in design six of the 11 gold winners were mainline agencies.

Somehow the story of specialist agencies losing out is not restricted to Cannes alone. Faris Yakob, writing in Campaign UK laments the inability of true media agencies to win media awards at Clio where he was on the jury.

Faris has a point. And he feels the problem is not with the specialist agencies as much as it is with award shows and the entry process. He thinks that the entry is almost as important as the idea itself. “Since most of the campaigns are from other countries, as a judge you may have never encountered the work, you have no idea how it resonated locally, whether people loved it and talked about, or simply ignored it.”

The other thing, he feels that works against specialist agencies is that the entry is all you have to go on – a short form video advert for an agency. And traditional advertising agencies have quite a lot of experience making short form video adverts, whereas media agencies don’t.

Writing for Adweek Janet Evans Barker, one of the judges on the Cannes Direct Jury echoes what many people in specialist agencies think. “The reality is that some direct marketers and even some sales promo folks feel that Cannes is the bastion of general agencies. Some commented that the Direct Lions aren’t really about direct marketing at all, but about cool creative ideas masquerading as direct marketing in an attempt to win an award.” While she doesn’t fully agree with this view, she believes that while there is a hell of a lot of innovative direct work being done by (DM) agencies —that truly IS direct— it simply isn’t being submitted. Maybe there is a some truth in there. We searched for “Cannes” in Direct Magazine and there were some old bits but nothing about the 2008 festival and winners. DMA only does a little better.

So here is what we think. Specialists agencies have to think differently when it comes to winning at Cannes and Clio Awards. Explaining entries using a good video is critical if we have to top contenders in broad based award shows. Sure we can be happy with our Echos and Caples. But just as traditional agencies are crossing borders and walking away with accolades that are reserved for direct marketing, DM agencies need to learn the tricks of packaging their truly brilliant ideas as well as some of the mainline agencies do.

Winning The Battle Against Email

Like most people IBM’s Luis Suarez was drowning in email he would receive at work. Tired of his ritual of spending many hours of his mornings answering mails, Suarez decided to cut back. The fact that he is a social computing evangelist at IBM helped him make the switch easily. His one act, of cutting back on answering every mail he received reduced his mail traffic by 80% in the first week. He also started to use more social networking tools, like instant messaging, blogs and wikis, among many others. Read more from New York Times.

Student Bank Coming Of Age

The Graves County High School in Kentucky has something extraordinary going on for them. The school’s student-run bank is aimed at educating students about banking and making a profit. Chris Sanders, a 17-year old techie, is the President who took upon the task of automating all accounting functions. This would mean not just daily deposit and withdrawal transactions, but also processing loan requests, loading all customer data, allowing balance enquiries, etc. Sanders designed a Microsoft Windows based software platform that allows all this and more account management needs. The bank is essentially a hands-on learning platform for the Banking and Finance students of the school, who are also its sole operators. Duties are handed over to new students with each passing year and revenue is generated not just from the school, but also from other miscellaneous avenues like yearbook sales. Wonder how far this would go once the bank has an
online portal. Read more about this interesting project here.

Slay And Save

Kids in Japan will learn to save in a new RPG adventure with the soon-to-be launched game, Bankquest. Kids can shove money into the slot of this piggy bank tower, allowing the game to progress, and can then buy weapons and armor to slay dragons and beasts on behalf of their chosen protagonist. The game comes from Takara Tomy, the leading Japanese toy and entertainment company that has give Japan some of its favourite toys and games. This latest fascinating game is played through a small LCD window mounted in the side of the bank. Buttons underneath the screen let players control the game’s hero as he fights his way through a monster-infested tower. More than slaying and fighting, the game is mainly an incentive to save: equipment for the hero, necessary to defeat the tower’s denizens, can only be purchased by putting real money into the bank. The idea of taking a piggy bank further ahead in a gaming avatar is certainly making it a fun way of collecting money. Due to release in August, one will have to wait and see how this picks up among the Japanese kids. Read more here.

Visa’s Facebook Strategy for SMEs

Information is getting democratic, personal and ubiquitous more than ever and business operators are digging into this trend. Visa is paying Facebook $2 million to advertise their new service, Visa Business Network, designed specially for Facebook users. Visa will give away $100 advertising credits to the first 20,000 US start-ups that download its service via Facebook. This online service is designed to help small firms run their businesses more efficiently. The company aims to tap into Facebook’s global audience of 80 million people. About 80,000 small businesses already have profiles on Facebook and thousands of Internet programmes have been developed specifically for the social networking site. But the majority of these applications are based on social activities, such as gaming, listening to music and picture-sharing, rather than traditional commercial activities. It will be interesting to see how this plan unfolds, even as small business operators find more ways of getting closer to their audiences. Many other companies like Visa may also follow suit to tap the power of social networking and that might come as a relief to sites such as Facebook, who would only welcome the extra income. More on this from Finextra.

What Does The Future Hold For Social Networks?

On May 26, the Frankfurter Allgemeine published an interview in which Google CEO Eric Schmidt admitted that social networks may not be a suitable venue for online advertising. While many of us have already come to this conclusion, Schmidt’s acknowledgement is newsworthy because it’s the first time that anyone with such status in the industry has conceded that some popular sites where people spend a lot of time may not necessarily be good places to advertise. So what does this mean for sites like MySpace, Facebook and Bebo? More.

New Thinking About Direct Marketing

Some companies will go right around a negative customer situation and turn it positive. Kuwait has no residential mail system, so marketing via direct channels poses a challenge. But one company saw this as an opportunity to connect with customers in unique ways. Gulf Bank knows that almost all its banking customers in Kuwait use ATMs, so it created a personalized marketing strategy to communicate via the machines. (Specifics here in the issue of 1to1 Weekly ). Another bank, HSBC Mexico, also does something similar at its ATMs. The important thing here is that Gulf Bank took what looked like a roadblock to customer service and interaction, and created an entirely new marketing channel. And unlike most direct mail, it’s a channel that customers actually pay attention to. A little creative thinking about the customer experience and business objectives goes a long way.

Advertising As Spectacle.

Once upon a time new ads and marketing ideas were closely guarded secrets. Increasing clutter, new media channels, restless customers and a changing world meant that agencies and marketers had to rethink the formula to ensure that people look at their communication in the right way. Side by side, the stakes of making an ordinary, formulaic ad got too expensive so some agencies opted out of the box.

Nowadays marketers do all they can to get consumers involved in the process of adcreation. The Sony Balls commercial that was shot in San Francisco was unique for many reasons. Not only did the agency and the client agree to break all the rules that stood in the way of creating TV commercials, they created an ad which people happily shared and participated in even before it went on air. With the Paint, the play dough bunnies, and foam city commercials the agency and the client allow consumers become willing participants in the making of the ads.

Many marketers now believe that creating communication that’s original and unique is far more important than messages that are relevant and ingrained in the brand. Work that simply entertains without having any connection with the brand seems to be able to do more for branding and sales than work that’s been done using traditional methods.

A few weeks ago advertising took another giant leap with the Honda Skydivers commercial. The ad, difficult is worth doing (the blog was up weeks before the ad went live), was aired live on UK’s Channel 4, where, for three minutes and 20 seconds, a group of stunt drivers formed the word H-O-N-D-A, as they fell through the sky from 14,000 feet.

Channel 4’s sales director, Andy Barnes, who like other broadcast executives is battling a looming advertising downturn, said the advert, which required a special permission from the advertising watchdog, broke “the boundaries of the perceived confines of TV advertising. We wanted to create something unmissable and what better way to produce something ‘must see’ than to stage the first live ad event on TV,” he added. “It’s about creating talkability on a big scale, managing the risk and being seen as pioneers for it.”

In fact the ad did so well as a spectacle that it boosted the viewership of Channel 4. Honda’s stunt aired between 8.10 pm and 8.13 pm, during which time ratings increased from just over 2 million to 2.2 million viewers, according to unofficial TV ratings.

Clients and agencies are upping their ante when it comes to doing the improbable. Honda UK’s marketing manager Ian Armstrong, speaking to media after the event was in philosophical mood when asked about doing an ad with such a high probability for failure. “There will be no time delay and no CGI. If it works, people will know who it’s for. If it doesn’t, they won’t,” he said.

The Hondas, Sonys and Cadburys are pushing the envelope when it comes to creating spectaculars that capture people’s imagination. As more and more marketers jump into an area where the rules are still being written consumers can sit back and enjoy some pretty interesting spectacles done in the name of advertising.

Youtube Videos Get Annotated

YouTube has added ways to annotate and add interactive commentary to videos. With this feature, people who upload videos can add background information, create branching stories or add links to any YouTube video, channel, or search results page. There future of online video is annotated. See it in action in the amazing interactive card trick.

Picture Your Own Credit Card

After bringing the Card Lab, Capital One Financial Corporation has now tied up with Flickr to bring the first ever Capital One Image Card. Customers can either choose pictures from Capital One’s gallery of images or upload one of their own. The company claims that personalization will help customers create cards that are distinctly them. Users have to follow a simple online procedure to get their own cards. Last November, Capital One launched the Capital One Card Lab which provides consumers with a new level of transparency and choice in credit cards. Customers are offered a series of interactive choices related to interest rate, annual fee and reward options, where they can click to select the combination of features that are most important to them. As choices are made, the tool narrows the options in the remaining categories, eliminating options that don’t work together. For example, consumers who are willing to pay an annual fee can earn rewards faster. So while banks are focussing on the many benefits that they think will attract customers, Capital One is probably doing something better by going on the creative track. Read what some bloggers are talking about the latest offering by Capital One here.