The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words – Hippocrates

Pop quiz, readers. Re-calibrate your synapses, set your faces to stunned and prepare for linguistic splashdown. Feast your eyes on this smorgasbord of gibberish and pick out the runt of the litter:

“Building a conversation strategy will allow us to visually see our complete marketing ecosystem and bake in our communication throughout all touch points.”

“First, by socializing all media, the engagement experience is cyclical and ongoing. Second, by identifying conversation groups (social graphs) and tapping directly into them and then connecting them together, the long tail of niche market segments become your mass or ‘mainstream’ media play.”

“Develop a multi-faceted communication program utilizing both traditional media and truly interactive social media channels, where listening and acting upon your human being’s wants is KING”

“A multimedia mix framed to spark conversations requires a compelling message concept that can work across a multimedia platform.”

“…Package the compelling message (internal marketing, external marketing and social network marketing) into an organized dashboard that exponentially expands website real estate, then push the content in real time to all product/service distribution points…”

Which of these abominations were written with a straight face, by real people with working brains? And which is the fraudulent imposter, demanding to be bound in the back of a transit van, driven to a remote woodland clearing and shot at close range through the back of the head? Well, are you sitting down? Because, remarkably, they are all genuine. And to someone somewhere they really do mean something.  To those displaying the characteristics of sentient and evolved human beings, however – upright, opposable thumbs, a rational mistrust of Scientology and men with winter tans – they are nothing more than a dreadful noise. A low, humming dreadful noise. And as someone who sat through much of the Guantanamo Bay-inspired torture purporting to be cutting-edge insight, from the industry’s “leading thinkers” at this year’s Cannes Festival, like a latter day, hairier Martha Gellhorn I can report from the frontline that this sort of smoke-and-mirrors propaganda is not restricted to the written word. People actually say this stuff, too. And other people clap. Loudly. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Or, to put it less succinctly, the Danish vertical has become unsynergised from the positive engagement factor of the mainstream virtual/emotional experience vector.

Children, children….

And herein lies much of the problem, folks. Language has become a barrier to understanding. As 2009 hauls its broken carcass across the finish line there is a definite funk in the air. The funk of hostility. Peace, or whatever there was of it, has been ripped asunder and the emergence of gauche upstart “digital” as a major player has caused much irritation among the “traditional” set. There is a very obvious rift and it seems to have morphed into the media equivalent of an East End turf war, but without the samurai swords and Rottweilers.

Superficially the debate has always been, and remains, an “either/or contest”. Unlike Michael Jackson’s skin pigmentation or Tom Cruise’s sexuality, you are one or the other. Or in the words of that great twenty-first century Kierkegaard, George Walker Bush, “You are with us or you’re against us.” We seem pathologically incapable of approaching the discussion in anything other than purely Manichean terms. Traditional is, depending on your heritage, either prehistoric and profligate or awe-inspiring, while digital is either the emperor’s new clothes or revolutionary. In this world the two are mutually exclusive. The reality, of course, is far more complicated and any attempt to delineate them is redundant. So, in an effort at clarity, I contend that the crux of this spiteful little mess is not really about real value or superiority, but rather one about perceptions of value and how it is communicated.

It Ain’t Always Wot We Do, It’s Sometimes Wot We Say

Whatever your opinions on the merits or otherwise of digital, one thing that its advocates must admit to is an horrendous and unforgivable butchering of language. It‘s painful to witness and, sadly, has only served to keep digital alienated from the realities of popular marketing and communication. We have become so saturated in a kind of meta-language, a simulacrum of sense that we have made it almost impossible to understand. Marketing has been awash with jargon for many years, and it would be disingenuous to suggest otherwise, but why has digital assumed the role of chief flag-waver for bullshit? It’s impossible to see who gains from it.

It might be sacrilegious to suggest, but could it be because just sometimes the numbers don’t add up? That when it comes to emotion, persuasiveness and good old-fashioned storytelling, nothing comes close to a well-made TV ad or a beautiful, epic cinema spot? Could it be that in falling short of the sheer scale, reach and romance of TV, digital apostles have created an amphetamine-fuelled demi-language that gives the illusion of grandeur? Could all this talk of “multi-media migration” and “cross-vertical communication utilisation” be a subconscious attempt to cloud this issue? This is not to disparage digital in anyway. There is some remarkable digital work by some wonderful minds. What some brands have achieved through digital is extraordinary and certainly can’t be matched by our offline cousins. Digital does utility better than any other medium. It enables people to act. But what it can’t do, or has failed to find a way of achieving so far, is a deeper emotion.

Emotion v Utility

Two examples: this 1998 TV and cinema spot is still talked about, by industry and non-industry people alike, in revered tones; and this much awarded 2007 digital strategy and execution is stunning in its scope and its capacity to involve people. The first is entirely emotion-led, the second entirely practical. Both have immense, possibly equal value to each of the brands. The former is admired by people and builds affinity through impression; the latter valued and builds affinity through efficacy. Yet comparing the two is entirely superfluous. So why do we try? Why does digital insist on attempting to muscle in on a brand of advertising that it cannot match? And why do traditional campaigners insist on belittling digital in such a vehemently supercilious manner? As long as the debate around “traditional v digital” continues along such entrenched battle lines then it will be impossible for digital to look traditional in the eyes and for traditional to be anything other than a swaggering distant relative.

One way to abandon this divide and to de-clutter the “media landscape” must be to call a moratorium on the debasement of a language that has functioned perfectly well without being manipulated into something entirely lacking credibility and authenticity. Any joker can trot out spurious and mercilessly banal media-speak, half-truths and bogus insight. The very best people don’t need to. So let’s demystify what we do and engender a little simplicity; strip back the language that clogs up presentations and blogs; demonstrate a little humility and honesty. Let’s call a halt to comparisons and competition and childish things. Let’s establish a reasonable, logical and intelligible foundation – digital can’t do what traditional can do and traditional can’t do what digital can – and move on from there. Let’s abandon any pretence and antagonism and understand that in their own ways each medium has a huge amount to offer, can work separately or, perhaps more importantly, can work together. Suddenly it all becomes a little clearer.

Beauty in Simplicity

Let’s move the focus away from the medium and back to the brand. It’s so much more simple. So, forget about vertical communication synergisation; and conversational media integration; and consumer deforestation; and interplanetary bespoke cross-platform noise generation. There is only one brand. Nike, Guinness, Levis, Burger King….there is no separate brand for online and another for offline. The same basic principles, and the integrity that your actions demand, apply wherever it exists. And wherever that might be there should be only four basic questions that need asking: Does the work created communicate the brand message? Does it impart relevant information and/or provide a utility? Is it brilliantly executed? Is it interesting?

Anything more is superfluous and obfuscation. Keeping things simple, keeping things honest and having the rigorous self-discipline to avoid distraction is far harder to achieve than creating self-justifying diversions to cloud shortcomings. It’s why the very best in the industry, irrespective of whether they are from “digital” or “traditional” backgrounds, do simply great work and those that purport to be the best merely end up talking about it.

(A special thank you to the ever wonderful The Ad Contrarian for holding his nose and sifting through the bullsh*t…so we don’t have to)

My Sky Status

Profero New York has just launched a new travel tool for Lufthansa: MySkyStatus™. Free and easy to set up, MySkyStatus sends precise departure, altitude, location and arrival updates automatically to the traveler’s

Facebook and Twitter pages while they’re in the air. MySkyStatus is able to track all flights so travelers of all airlines can keep their global networks updated as they travel the globe. So, not just take off and landing but precisely where you’re flying over and the altitude which you are flying at. Sit back and relax during your long, or short flights knowing that your friends, family, and coworkers are kept in the know. Gone are the times of boring out of office emails!

We hope you enjoy MySkyStatus, and happy travels to you.

Art made on an iPhone

The ultimate potential of the revolutionary iPhone was not realised when admirers first lauded its aesthetic appeal. Nor was it appreciated when they praised the power of the hardware that was housed within this sleek exterior. Only now, when looking at the ever-expanding choice of iPhone apps available, enabling the smart phone to become a device that rotates around the user, taking on the function of what the user desires, as a truly customisable phone that can become anything you want it to be, can we appreciate its true capability.

iPhone

The most successful apps are those that use the phones inbuilt software and hardware features effectively i.e. Accelerometer, GPS, Compass, Camera, Touch-screen etc. However, the most successful branded applications are those that seek out the part of the brand that provides an engaging mobile user experience. Carling’s iPint entertained pub-goers with a simple yet fun visualisation that could be pulled out at your local for some banter, whilst Oakley uses the GPS function to create an app that surfers could use as a utility for checking wave height and location, adding to the brand’s product truths of functionality and reliability relevant to the sport.

With the total number of “Active Apps” shooting past the 85,000 mark(and counting) there are a fair share of brands that have dipped into the world of Apps, some offering engaging mini-brand experiences, others offering not so engaging branded experiences. In order to take a snapshot of the state of the branded iPhone app segment, a modestly-sized document with some examples of the latest brands trying their luck at mobile is available here, including our ten pence on just what we think of their efforts.

For a more detailed list, including more on this and other information, head over to Johnny Makkar’s blog at Attention Digital and take a look at his extensive spreadsheet. If you know of any applications he may be missing then help the gentlemen out with some good old-fashioned crowd sourcing.

Social Media

Having been in the process of writing a conclusive (And slightly overdue) piece to summarise the social media film review, I stumbled upon an article written by Andrew Hampp of AdAge that evaluates the phenomenon in a respectable fashion. The article takes a mature and well balanced stance on exploring the relationships and variables involved. Hampp also uses the studies that were featured earlier on The Hive Blog social media film review, adding to the relevance of the inclusion of this piece, so without further adieu, view the article after the break. All credit is due to the author and publisher.

Forget Ebert: How Twitter Makes or Breaks Movie Marketing Today

by Andrew Hampp
Published: October 05, 2009
Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Submit to Digg Add to Google Share on StumbleUpon Submit to LinkedIn Add to Newsvine Bookmark on Del.icio.us Submit to Reddit

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Can the so-called Twitter effect boost a movie’s box-office performance faster than any traditional form of word-of-mouth? Not yet, say many top movie marketers and researchers, but the social networking platform’s impact on a studio’s media mix and campaign management has already taken shape.

Witness Sony Pictures, one of the first studios to create branded Twitter pages for its films, which saw releases such as “District 9,” “Julie & Julia” and “The Ugly Truth” open strong and maintain momentum by keeping the branded conversation around each film active and updating the films’ followers on the microblogging site with exclusive content in the following weeks. The results? Grosses of $113 million, $90 million and $88 million, respectively, and counting.

But the idea behind a Twitter effect gained traction this summer after the Hollywood press and the blogosphere blamed Twitterers for shortening the box-office life of films such as Universal’s “Bruno,” which opened to a strong $30 million but quickly sputtered to a $12 million second weekend based on poor word-of-mouth and a high volume of negative tweets. Could moviegoers with nothing but a cellphone and a Twitter account really be undermining the millions of dollars poured into a movie’s marketing?

Market research firm 360i recently tested the Twitter effect by comparing Twitter traffic for “Bruno” during its first weekend at the box office with three other summer films, and found “Bruno” to have the highest percentage of drop-off in second-day box-office grosses (-39%) and negative tweets (21%).

But making a direct correlation between the two is far from scientific and hardly one-size-fits-all for all films, said Sarah Hofstetter, 360i’s senior VP-emerging media and client strategy. “A movie like ‘Bruno’ is exceptionally polarizing — either everyone wants to see Sacha Baron Cohen naked or they don’t,” she said. “You have to differentiate in the content and context of a film — if you give too much credence to Twitter marketing and you say, ‘Our efforts contributed to a 10% lift in ticket sales,’ no one’s going to agree on what caused that.”

Little impact
And Twitter, as well as other social media, has yet to directly affect the methodology behind the metrics supplied by box-office forecasters to the studios to gauge all-important first-weekend ticket sales weeks in advance. One major movie forecaster said active Twitter and Facebook users have yet to be included in the sample size because it “needs to be reflective of how the studios spend their money. To chase Twitter or social networks would be a disservice to that population.”

In fact, Twitter has helped forecasters such as Marketcast and Nielsen NRG steadfastly hold on to their role in manufacturing hype around those all-important first three days. In the case of “Bruno,” analysts correctly predicted the $30 million opening weekend, but stayed away from managing post-debut expectations. “Our job stops after opening day. The rest is up to the universe,” said one forecaster.

Nor has Twitter had a measurable impact on studios’ marketing budgets, even as they add dedicated staffers to manage and measure social-networking activity around their slates. “While Twitter is important as social media, it is a very small sliver of our marketing campaign,” said a Sony executive. “I think it is more effective as a gauge of how effectively your materials are working and it allows marketers to take a real-time pulse on consumer attitudes towards your brand or property.”

Instead, Twitter has become the campaign-management tool of choice, one that studios and other marketers can harness faster and to a greater extent as more case studies crop up on a weekly basis. “The name of the game for the studios is to take full advantage of all early signals,” said Pete Blackshaw, exec VP-Nielsen Online’s digital strategic services. “The downside for them is a movie can be damaged really quickly — the flow of information on these platforms, and degree to which influencers are tapping into those signals is quite profound.”

But one former marketer at a major studio suggested that Sony has harnessed Twitter more effectively for a $30 million movie such as “District 9″ than other surprise blockbusters such as Warner Bros.’ “The Hangover” or Disney’s “The Proposal.”

“Sony did a very good job at continuing engagement with consumers. The film got such positive buzz from consumers that they started talking about it through [Sony's] real-time stream,” the executive said. “I don’t think those other studios knew what they had on their hands at the time.”

Sony’s fall-movie forecast
If early numbers are any indication, Sony Pictures’ fall forecast is less “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” and more “Sunny With a Chance of Blockbusters.”

EARLY HIT: ‘Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs’
EARLY HIT: ‘Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs’
The studio is taking big bets on summer-level success with a slate that got off to a strong start with the 3-D animated “Meatballs” ($60 million grossed in its first two weekends) and is off to more ambitious heights with the Roland Emmerich apocalypse flick “2012″ and the highly anticipated Michael Jackson concert film “This Is It,” each slated for the coming months. Even last weekend’s “Zombieland” was expected to top the box office with a $25 million haul, which, leading up to the Oct. 28 release of “This Is It” could give Sony a No. 1 film for at least four of the season’s first seven weeks.

“They’re positioned really perfectly,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box office at Hollywood.com. “The other studios have some good stuff going on, but it’s not like in past years where we had a ‘Lord of the Rings’ movie or a ‘Harry Potter’ to dominate the season.”

“It’s really anyone’s game, and the momentum they’re going to glean from ‘This Is It’ is really going to help them,” added a former marketing chief for a rival studio.

The concert film has already sold out more than 200 showings based on advanced ticket sales on Fandango.com, breaking the site’s records for highest-ever Sunday sales. Although scheduled for a limited two-week release, the film could be extended much in the way Disney’s “Hannah Montana” concert film was in 2008 should ticket sales soar. “If the demand’s there they’ll keep it out there,” said the former marketing chief.

“2012″ is also poised to be a summer-sized blockbuster when it opens Nov. 13, preceded by what was believed to be the largest-ever simultaneous media roadblock on Oct. 1, with two minutes of new footage from the film airing on 92 TV networks, reaching 90% of TV households and an estimated 110 million viewers.

“If you look a couple years back to ‘I Am Legend,’ there will always be a place for a movie like that in the fall,” Mr. Dergarabedian said.

And while boutique arm Sony Pictures Classics rolls out Oscar bait in November and December (“An Education,” Pedro Almodovar’s “Broken Embraces”), the main branch seems to have gotten its Academy-courting out of the way in the summer with Meryl Streep in “Julie & Julia” and the critically praised “District 9.” Instead, it’s prepping popcorn fare such as the action flick “Armored” and the romantic comedy “Did You Hear About the Morgans?” for the final weeks of the year. “It’s not about chasing Oscar, it’s about chasing the audience,” said Mr. Dergarabedian.

adage.com/madisonandvine/article?article_id=139444

Orange Rockcorps

First Orange Rockcorps organised free gigs in exchange for an organised four hours community service and now they have launched a music application for followers of the campaign called “The Sound of Orange.”

The programme allows the user to make their own music on the website, inviting friends on Facebook to participate in recording sounds that will make up a virtual keyboard. You can use this keyboard to create your own cover version of a song or create your own potentially chart-topping hit…

Well let’s be honest that’s never going to happen and if you spend long enough on the application you begin to find the sound of your friends (and yourself) quite irritating but it is, however, a great way to promote some community spirit amongst young people through digital creativity…even if bribery is involved. Then, once perfected, your music wonders can be shared with friends on blogs and social networking sites.

Caution: do not move the mouse over one key repeatedly as it can result in a hugely grating repetitive sound. A one-man, one-tone beatbox is not a note it’s a noise.

The British Biscuit Advisory Board (BBAB) is the home of all the advice, news and tips to educate consumers into eating biscuits safely and with 500 Britons involved in biscuit related accidents annually, the topic has never been hotter.

Mother London has created this new campaign for Fox’s Rocky biscuits across television adverts, print and most successfully via the official BBAB website.

The whole campaign is styled on early lo-fi public information videos whilst mocking today’s health and safety-crazed society. This slightly satirical style still maintains the safety advice preached today but simplifies it in a humorous way with one catchphrase explaining “Rocky, rocky, rocky, NO! Rocky, tomato, sheep, GO!”

The website provides links to newspaper articles such as The Telegraph, The Daily Star and The Sun documenting many biscuit incidents and leaving you wondering whether the BBAB could be real or not.

You can also interact with others who share your views on biscuit safety via several social networking sites. The BBAB Facebook page gives you breaking biscuit news as it happens, important discussions and a poll on where you store your biscuits. The YouTube channel houses all the important safety videos plus a series of public opinion videos where Britons are asked questions like: Do you think children and the elderly should be supervised when eating biscuits? As they explain, they continually engage with real people, to stay at the forefront of public opinion on all matters biscuit related.

Enjoy a safer biscuit future.

Profero Sydney have developed this widget on behalf of Universal Music in the lead up to the much anticipated release of the latest Wolfmother album “Cosmic Egg”. Packed with content such as video, audio, pics and a Twitter feed, the widget is more like a microsite in tiny little widget form. Video will be dynamically updated in the lead up to album release with never before seen behind the scenes footage, especially for the Wolfmother lovers out there who are awaiting the new album with baited breath.

The widget was produced by Profero Sydney using the free Clearspring platform, which allows for the creation, development and tracking of widgets. The share functionality means that fans can grab and share their widget across the platform of their choice, be it a social network, blog or iGoogle desktop.

I read Rory Sutherland’s engaging blog post in Campaign today validating the continuing need for great copy in advertising. The only thing it was missing was a purposeful discussion on the subject within the digital world, so that’s what I’ll attempt here.

In our digital industry, we are seduced by the ever-expanding list of things technology allows us to do. With the emergence of technologies like Natal, Android and ARG, we exist in a wonderland of visual excitement and pioneering knowledge. It’s a great place to be. Even glancing back for a moment, our industry has been one that has up till now been sustained by audiovisual excitement of subservient poultry, wayward balloons and smartphone apps that really do make it look as if you are drinking that beer. We have been the Willy Wonka to the Cadbury factory of the good old traditional ads.

But social media has brought about one fundamental change and dusted down a discipline that I was worried had almost expired within the so-called ‘new media’ agency.

I doubt very much that readers can point to a piece of digital work whose awards were garnered by its masterful use of copy; the Ogilvys, Bernbachs and Abbotts would have little to detain them if they were to be brought into a judging panel for digital work. Yet, when I flick through my social media accounts, there is one thing that exerts a stopping power so great, I feel like a galloping, excited greyhound that’s just forgotten that it was tethered to a concrete wall.

You can see great copy coming. As you flick down the endless retweets and automatic blog posts, it’s almost like your eye sees the great words before your brain has had time to start reading. Beautiful writing never goes out of fashion, and it’s just about to become very important indeed.

On Twitter, there are certain people whose avatars are a prompt to stop scrolling out of pure habit. Charlie Brooker, Richard Herring and Paul Carr are all people who have the power to captivate you with no more than 140 keystrokes. They make you smile, think, flinch or disappear into a fit of giggles. On the other hand, there are people who should hold far more sway in the digital world who are truly undermined by the high volume and low readability of what they put out there. Please take a bow Robert Scoble, Piers Fawkes and Guy Kawasaki. Don’t get me wrong – once I connect with what these people are on about, they are as compelling as anyone, but words aren’t their forte.

I have seen precious few brands that have invested in a truly arresting voice.  Typically, their social media efforts are a mixture of platitudes, harmless observations and @answers dripping with well-intentioned banality. Granted, Brooker, Herring and Carr all push the boundaries to certain limits, and brands have reputations to manage.  But these same brands manage to approve the creation of advertising campaigns that are just as provocative and arresting as their social media voice should be. They need to develop a voice that is invested with the same brilliance and power as an ad campaign. Only this time, you add spontaneity. If that terrifies you, then it’s good confirmation of how things have changed. In terms of great examples lighting the way, it’s all a bit limited. Aleksandr_Orlov from Compare The Meerkat is only one I can think of, but I’d love to have some more voices to listen to.

So the recommendation is simple. Talking isn’t enough. Brands should actually pluck up the courage to write something involving, human and compelling. And for heaven’s sake, write it well.

Profero Sydney has recently launched a new campaign with Universal Music to promote Canadian artist Anjulie and help break her into the Australian market.

Based on the premise that seeing an artist live is the best way to get punters excited about a new music artist on the scene, we have developed a campaign for Anjulie that ignores the boundaries of geography and distance to give Australian’s a live music experience of an up and coming star.

From July 6th, visitors to the <http://www.anjulielive.com.au> site will be able to discover who Anjulie is as an artist, download tracks, get their VIP concert ticket and share their experience with friends via social networks such as Facebook and MySpace. August 3rd will see the launch of Anjulie’s “online concerts”- fans will be given a live music experience and see Anjulie perform songs from her upcoming album online. “Gigs” will be on twice daily and will have a unique theatre and stage simulation as well as allowing fans to communicate with each other via an innovative “whisper” feature, just like being at a real concert.

Nice article in Mediaweek by Simon Clift, CMO of Unilever (sorry – just catching up with some reading). Particularly like the closing quote:

What rapidly becomes clear is that this internet thing is bigger – and a whole lot more interesting – than the simple task of finding the successor to TV advertising. We are ushering in a new era of marketing and brand development that I find a scary – but ultimately thrilling – prospect.