A Final Word from the 2010 Lucky 13 Interns
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The end of summer has brought the departure of our six fantastic Lucky 13 interns. (Sniffle.) |
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and a five-minute “Third- and Final-Impressions Video.”
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Take a quick look at either, and you’ll see why we were the lucky ones to have this crew around. --Kristine Olson, director of corporate communications, Lucky 13 fan |
Google to be Microsoft for Smartphones
Quantcast had a very interesting recent post on their blog outlining how Apple, despite the amazing success of the iPhone 4, is losing share every month to Google’s Android smartphone operating system.
In fact, the trend is clear. It is just a matter of time until Android overtakes iOS (Apple’s operating system) in usage. If the iPhone 4 can’t hold off the charging masses of the HTC Incredible, Sprint Evo 4G (also by HTC) and the Motorola Droid X is it time to panic in Cupertino? Not quite. Just look at recent history – in fact – look at Apple’s recent history.
Here are two companies, Google and Apple, lead by some very smart people, falling into the same patterns that we saw in the mid ‘90s with the rise of the PC. Not that I need to remind most people, but when PCs went mainstream, Microsoft Windows won the battle. They went with a more open infrastructure, providing a cheap, inter-operable system for any PC manufacturer to adopt. With an aggressive pricing strategy and a developer-friendly focus, they quickly dominated the entire PC operating system market. Today, there are around 1 billion PCs running Microsoft Windows. It was a business success not seen since the time of the Gettys, Carnegies and Morgans. Sound familiar? That is Android’s business plan, only they are giving it away for free so Google can own the app store and keep the search traffic in network.
It is largely forgotten, but Apple was much more prominent than Microsoft when they started their PC ascendency. It was said that Apple could have owned the PC. But they chose not to. And it looks like they are going to make that choice again with smart phones. For all the smoke, an expansion of the iPhone to Verizon has been just that. Smoke. I have no doubt that Apple will expand carrier partnerships someday, but that will never be their focus. Their focus will be crazy tight integration of software and hardware with a best in class approach to smartphones, share be damned – just like they did with PCs. Why? To protect margin. Despite having a massively smaller user base than Microsoft, Apple is making a higher profit than Microsoft these days. And organizationally were ready for the next wave in MP3s and now Phones.
What do I take away from this? There are always multiple ways to “win” for our clients. Sometimes you grab the profits sitting right in front of you. But sometimes you need to look down the path and strategically give up near term “wins” for long term brand health (and profits). At times, business objectives need to look beyond this quarter or even year. Think about what success looks like before you make your first move. Until you do that you will rarely get there.
-- Chris Wexler, VP/director of digital media, smartphone addict, Compass Point Media
Food Carts, Pop-Tarts and New Marketing
Posted by: Lance Saunders | Comment (0)|
Since moving to Minneapolis, I have come to love our independent restaurants that use local ingredients. But last month as I was walking around Portland, Oregon for the first time and looking for something to eat to avoid the dreaded-but-forthcoming focus-group sandwich (do focus-group food caterers also supply food for the nation’s prison system?), some of the best smells I have ever experienced came wafting from a posse of food carts in a parking lot close to the hotel. With them came a lesson on having a brand “experience.” |
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I asked our cabbie and local foodie Tracy about the Food Carts (yes, cabbie and local foodie – he and his wife even have a website), and he mentioned that the carts are ingrained into Portland’s food culture. While some vendors cannot afford to run a stand-alone restaurant, many others also have traditional restaurants but use carts to reach out new people and offer new experiences. (Tracy also recommended doughnuts at Voodoo, which we wolfed down at 7 am in his cab on the way to the airport. Try the Bacon Maple Bar with a whole piece of cooked bacon on top -- as an ex-pat Canadian I am still very partial to Tim Horton’s, but I digress…) |
| In cities like New York, street food culture has become so ingrained in the food scene that they even hold annual food cart awards: the “Vendies.” As chef Mario Batali put it, the awards are “the Oscars of street food for the real New York.” I remember every summer in Toronto making lunch pilgrimages to Little India on Gerrard Street for the roasted Indian sweet corn sold off a cart.
Now that the Minneapolis City Council has recently relaxed some of the municipal food street codes we should hopefully see more food carts here. I was excited to read on the local food blog Heavy Table highlights about some local food-vending carts. I found most interesting, though, that like Portland, at least five of the carts mentioned -- Meritage, 128 Café, The Brothers Deli, Cruzn Café, and Sonny’s Ice Cream -- also have stand-alone restaurants to accompany their new meals on wheels. So what does this all have to do with an agency blog beyond an excuse to talk about my love for doughnuts and good cheap eats? First, here’s a shout out to these restaurateurs and others who are out there serving up great street food; let’s support them. But secondly, these chefs and cooks know something intuitively about marketing that many CPG clients don’t: how important it is to provide customers with new ways to experience your brand. As Christopher Stuzman a principal analyst at Forrester Research recently argued on the World Advertising Research Center Site (WARC), winning companies today have moved beyond the tried and true marketing techniques to create genuine product experiences: ‘‘While consumers are tuning out marketing messages, they are actually seeking out more product experiences.’’ While this might sound like heresy to read on an agency blog, I agree with his comment that marketers today are relying too much on communications to build their brands. Just recently an old brand I used to work on, Pop-Tarts, was all over the news for opening up a store in Times Square. I honestly can’t remember when one of our old Pop-Tarts :30 TV ads got any kind of coverage no matter how high our ASI/Millward Brown test scores might have been. But here it was mentioned from coast-to-coast in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, CNN, CBS, Howard Stern (guilty pleasure) and many other media outlets. The Pop-Tarts store is now serving customized and unique food offerings (including Pop-Tarts sushi, which is not as scary as it sounds). They have joined M&M’s and Hershey’s in providing new ways to experience the brand. If you want to go back to the old research-testing methodologies, as wrong as they are, I would bet lunch (at any local food cart) that the day–after-recall among those visiting Pop-Tarts World is higher than that among viewers of any of their TV spots. The recall does not even measure how people talk about and see the brand as more fun, contemporary and creative. But beyond putting all of your money into pop-up stores and less in our own media department, Christopher back at Forrester argues winning brands today are also baking marketing into their product as well. From Method to Dyson’s new bladeless fans, they are building in product experiences at the design level. For more on this subject read Alex Bogusky and John Winser’s book called “Baked In’’ -- the premise is essentially that your product, not your marketing, is your most effective tool. Put another way the message is not the product, the product is the message. Never mind the obvious and cliché example of pointing out the product experience of Apple products; but have you ever opened a new Apple package? The packaging is designed as well as the product. I left my Apple TV inside the package for about an hour after I opened it, as I did not want to disturb it -- it was like cutting into a beautiful cake. |
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In regards to building or baking in a product experience, last week while in Toronto and shopping in a men’s store called Got Style, I was given a free Stella Artois beer-experience kit, which highlighted the special nine-step pouring ritual for having a great glass of Stella. (Yes, it is a lot more than just popping off the cap and quaffing.) Apparently Stella gave the kits to the store to give to their best customers – not me, but if you are friendly and nice sometimes you are rewarded. So guess what is chilling in my fridge? The brand with an experience -- in this case, a “pouring ritual.” As good as Stella’s TV ads are, they weren’t what won me over. (An aside: if you are ever in Toronto, pop into Got Style. It’s part men’s store and part spa/lounge with cool chairs for reading or watching sports. In other words, it’s an “experience.”) |
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To all the local chefs out there on the streets trying to reach new consumers and bring the mountain to Mohammed, all the best. I hope your customer lines are around the block. I especially look forward to lining up at the Smack Shack at 4th St N and 1st Ave for a lobster roll sandwich. To everyone else who’s still using the old 1960’s CPG textbook, time to write a new chapter. -- Lance Saunders, EVP/Director of Account Planning, planner of good eats
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Google and Verizon want a piece of your marketing budget...
…not directly, but they are recommending an internet regulatory scheme that amounts to that. If you are a marketer and you haven’t read about the ongoing debate about Net Neutrality, it’s time to get acquainted with debate that is going on in D.C. right now. The NY Times has a good primer on the issue as it stands (http://nyti.ms/bITJ52).
The nickel tour of the debate is this: Should internet providers (e.g. Time Warner, Comcast etc.) be allowed to charge content providers (e.g. YouTube, Pandora, etc.) for using bandwidth of their networks in addition to charging consumers (e.g. you and me) to access the internet. Can the backbone networks charge for preferential content while relegating other content to the back of the line? To date, the corporate allegiances in this debate have been predictable – the big cable companies say they can regulate traffic (and charge for access) however they see fit, and the web-based services say no way. In fact, Google has led the charge of the freedom/net neutrality crowd. Until now.
On Monday Google and Verizon announced an agreement essentially cutting up territory like they were FDR and Stalin at Malta after WWII. The internet as we know it will remain free to all content equally (following the guidelines of Net Neutrality) but the mobile web and “new special services” such as internet-delivered TV would not be free and can be regulated by the network “owners.” On the surface this looks like a win for the cable companies since their biggest and most moneyed adversary has essentially waved the white flag on the future. And that is true, but Google has seceded the mobile internet, which many experts expect to be bigger than the current wired internet in terms of traffic by the end of the decade.
In my opinion, Google has flipped Net Neutrality and essentially said that new internet technologies will be controlled by the cable companies and other access providers more than ever before, but has protected the public internet as a fig leaf covering their corporate ambitions.
If this recommendation is accepted by the FCC, the future is a bifurcated world of a public internet that is free, relatively slow, and devoid of major investments in innovation and a series of private networks (like AT&T mobile, AT&T cable, Verizon Mobile, Comcast Cable, etc.) that will preselect which pieces of content flow fast and seamlessly into your life. Those private networks will have higher-income users and bring content that is pre-curated via corporate checkbooks. Do you think NBC might have an easier time getting streams into Comcast households? I’m guessing they will. YouTube might pay the way for the 10% of their content that they can monetize into the private channels and mobile and leave the other User Generated Content to load slowly on the ghetto public network.
“So what?” you say. Guess what, we as advertisers will have to be on those private networks – and all of a sudden our marketing budgets will have another mouth to feed – not just the content creators and distributors, but now the digital backbone that our brand messages have to travel across. The privilege of access to users will have just gotten higher for every CMO. Want to get on the iPhone? Pay your AT&T tax. Want to be on Hulu? Pay your Comcast tax. Slotting fees will move from the grocery store to phones and laptops. And we will have no choice but to pay up. Our marketing budgets easily get 10% less efficient if not more, just to be seen without interruption or at high quality. And don’t think this is just an “internet” thing – TV will be delivered this way and the tax will be there also.
The ambush of Net Neutrality is a blatant grab at the budgets of those of us who fund content that is delivered digitally. And that is all of us who do marketing. Really.
One other thing: this also signals that that Google is no longer as “Googley” in their view of the world. The Paid Search market is no longer growing leaps and bounds in the US and Europe and the fact of the matter is that paid search market simply isn’t as profitable for Google in El Salvador as it is in El Segundo, CA – the US and Western Europe drives their profits. Now that Google’s cash cow isn’t growing like it used to and they have struggled to make money with their other products (just how profitable is Google Docs?), they are turning to other tactics to protect their market position. In the end, Google is maturing as a company and they have done the calculus that it is better for them that eventual competitors have a barrier to entry than the even playing field that Google enjoyed when they started up and competed against Alta Vista. The cash generated by paid search today can protect YouTube, Android, and Google search from innovation not coming from Google in the future. Google gets the fig leaf of “saving” the public internet, but the truth is that net neutrality will reign on what will essentially become a later day AOL dial-up network. And Google is betting that the lack of Net Neutrality can be overcome with their bankroll and this will help ensure that they don’t go the way of AOL circa 1999.
Google has famously stated that part of their mission is “don’t be evil.” Is abandoning Net Neutrality evil? I’m not sure, but it looks like Eric Schmidt and Google’s investors seem to have drawn that line a bit differently than Paul Bucheit and Amit Patel initially intended. Eric Schmidt’s “Evil Scale” (http://bit.ly/cbCc1d) has tipped a bit further to the realm of traditional corporation and further from the rebel outsider position Google has fought for over the years. This is yet another sign that Google has been forced to grow up due to their status as a public company. It is just too bad for us as marketers, because it is our pound of flesh that they need to help protect their profits.
-- Chris Wexler, VP/director of digital media, Compass Point Media
A “Mid-Internship” Report from the Lucky 13 Trenches
From the moment we, the interns, stepped into the illustrious Campbell Mithun space, we were welcomed like true members of the team instead of mere temporary low-on-the-totem-pole peasants. We received the full-agency tour, shook hundreds of hands, and logged onto email to find approximately 84 messages waiting.
Now, maybe those of you reading this are, by now, so used to working life that you can scarcely recall those first few weeks when you began your careers, so let me put it in perspective. For all six of us, this was a golden opportunity — one we reached for with trembling but eager hands, mere Bambis in a Tim Burton-esque universe. We were dying — dying — to start working with clients, rolling out creative, planning media flights, and mapping the digital landscape.
And almost immediately, that’s what happened. Before we had figured out how to find our cubes on our own, we found ourselves inundated with projects and client work. Kevin and Dan, our creative interns, had concepts due by the third day; Stephanie, in digital strategy, was analyzing SEO keywords and conducting social media audits; Caroline barely breathed between her account management client meetings; and Grace and I were throwing around media-speak lingo and acronyms like we’d written the dictionary. We were breathless with projects and new knowledge, like Ariel experiencing a whole new world, or Jasmine on a magic carpet ride, or Nemo on a death-defying journey back home. (Yeah, we’re up to some pretty epic stuff.)
In between all that real-world advertising work, and all the intern meetings, and the question-asking, and the not sleeping, and the coffee-slamming, and the panic attacks, we’ve actually found time to contribute in other ways too. Like the Intern Golf Day we hosted last week to benefit United Way. Our theme was “Around the World in 6 Holes,” and for two afternoon hours, we offered some much-needed agency-wide playtime.
All lightheartedness aside, our experience here has been incredible. In our post-work happy hours, amongst ourselves, there’s a palpable sense of “Are they really letting us do this? Do people really get paid to do this? This is the sweetest gig EVER.”
As fresh-faced rookies in the industry, we’ve had our ears and eyes wide open for gathering sage advice and learning the ropes. We’ve been standing at the bottom of the mountain staring dreamily up, seeing the possibilities. The “Lucky 13” has never seemed more appropriate name, and as we face our three remaining weeks, I feel us taking a collective breath — poised and ready for the climb.
-- Natalie Gallagher, Lucky 13 media intern, data-tracker wonder girl
Left awestruck by "Inception": Pure Originality
Working in a business of ideas, I can attest to how rare it is for something truly original to get made. It's rare in marketing. (Witness: The Old Spice Man Your Man Could Smell Like, Twitter-YouTube internet-takeover tour de force: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38282026/ns/business-small_business) And it's rare in movies, where money is invested in the tried and true, and stories and scripts are dumbed down for broader appeal and less investor risk. (Scripts are even pitched in Hollywood by association. Regarding "Knight and Day" starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz: It's "True Lies" meets "Mr. & Mrs. Smith!" Or "Killers" starring Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl: It's "True Lies" meets "Mr. & Mrs. Smith!")
So I thought I would pause in this space to, as Stephen Colbert would say, tip my hat to Christopher Nolan, the writer and director of this masterpiece called "Inception." What he has achieved in this film is nothing short of true originality. It's a film with no ancestors. An original idea demands of its creators that everything done in service of its execution live up to the original insight. And they've done it here. It is an inspired piece -- a story idea that simply forces invention at every turn: in plot, production, special effects, and overall execution.
"What's the most resilient parasite?" asks Leonardo DiCaprio's character Cobb. "An idea. A single idea from the human mind can transform the world and rewrite the rules." With "Inception," Christopher Nolan has done that for movies.
Anyone in the business of creating ideas should see "Inception." It's a film that pays true allegiance to the beauty of original thought. In content and execution, it's like nothing else.
For those who have seen the movie (spoiler alert!), here's a cool site:
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Inception-Explained-Unraveling-The-Dream-Within-The-Dream-19615.html
Reid Holmes,EVP/Exec. Creative Director
Welcome Lucky 13 Interns
The Lucky 13 interns, class of 2010, have arrived at Campbell Mithun. Without wasting a moment, they’ve dug in and made an impact. (The energy, that initiative, those smarts!)
True to tradition, these summer interns are proving to be, yet again, the cream of the crop. This year they once again join us from coast to coast (Pasadena to Norfolk and everything in between). Their skill sets and backgrounds are by far the most diverse we’ve ever had; and, dare I say, this team of Lucky 13 may prove to be the strongest group yet. (Sorry former 13ers, but this group is good – REALLY good!) Their enthusiasm and energy is infectious, and we can’t wait to see what they are truly capable of.
Click to view video.
If you want a sneak peek at this year’s bunch, take a look at this quick clip of their first impressions of Campbell Mithun. And check back here for their mid- and late-summer “video reports” about what they “really” think of their Lucky 13 experience.
To keep even closer tabs on them, follow the @The_Lucky_13 on Twitter and find Campbell Mithun Lucky 13 on Facebook.
They may be called the Lucky 13, but, frankly, we’re the lucky ones.
-- Debbie Fischer, VP human resources, intern groupie
Talkinar Feedback, Anyone?
Congrats to YOU for helping shape a lively Talkinar discussion today. Your chats, Tweets and listening ear shaped this conversation.
It’s feedback time: Tell us about your Talkinar experience in the comment section below. What worked and is worth repeating? What should be avoided? What topics would you like to discuss next?
And what about the discussion itself? Learn something new about your marketing landscape? Gain insights about your brand storytelling? How about that social-media pay-off? Log your thoughts here; we’d love to know.
Two housekeeping items: If you missed the Talkinar (or want to re-live it), go to: cmithun.com/talkinar To get word of future Talkinar events, visit cmithun.com/talkinar and click on “Notify me of future events.”
Now, log onto that comment section and keep talking.
Top 13 Reasons to Attend our Talkinar
Campbell Mithun’s Talkinar, titled “How do you tell your brand story in a 140-character world?” is coming up next week. As one of the folks who is lucky enough to moderate the event, I thought I’d share a lucky list of the top 13 reasons why you should tune in.
13. You’ve been asked to provide an ROI for investing in social media, and you’re not quite sure how to answer the question.
12. You haven’t yet hit your quota of social media seminars, webinars, blog posts, articles, tweets or (dare I say) IRL conversations about social media this week.
11. You have thoughts to share about who really wins in this new landscape: Is it the consumer? The brands? The agencies? Media outlets?
10. You actually get to contribute to the conversation during this live event and could even win a gift card for an iPad just for sharing your thoughts.
9. You’ve been tasked with finding ways to provide consumers with “social currency” in your upcoming social media campaign, and none of the sites you found when you Googled “printing money” have been much help.
8. How often do you have the chance to see a brand marketer, an academic, and a pop-culture soothsayer in the same room -- talking about the same thing -- with each other?
7. I hear Adina Dahlin and Chris Wexler are pretty smart and funny. Especially that Adina chick.
6. Your boss/client has asked you, what’s the “bottom line” expectation for a brand’s social media presence, and what should I be doing in the space? You have one week to report back.
5. You’ve had a secret (man)crush on John Rash for years.
4. You’re interested in further exploring how brand storytelling has changed in the world of ubiquitous social media usage – what’s different about the conversation? How have the roles of brands and consumers changed?
3. You’ve always liked Campbell Mithun. We’re such a smart and creative agency and, doggonit, we have such nice people, too.
2. You are still a firm believer in traditional marketing planning and would like to hear from others what constants have remained core to brand storytelling in the new landscape.
1. Did I mention the iPad?
Saving the News
Legitimate, credible news, based on real journalism, is one of the critical pillars in the content pool that drives advertising-supported media regardless of how consumers access it. The business of newspaper journalism is in freefall as we all know -- check out this wickedly funny and painfully true segment from The Onion News Network:http://www.theonion.com/video/boston-globe-tailors-print-edition-for-three-remai,17572/
Google has its own take on the situation: A great piece by James Fallows in The Atlantic lays out Google’s counterintuitive desire to save real reporting and news, and the multiple ways they are attacking the problem. A favorite quote: “Nothing will work, but everything might.” Check it out: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/04/how-to-save-the-news/8095/
Just this week, AOL announced its intention to hire “hundreds” of journalists to produce content for online consumption. See the Ad Age article: http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=144334
-- Dick Hurrelbrink, news-content junkie, president of Compass Point Media
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