Category Archives: Innovation

Why agency sites (mostly) stink, and an announcement…

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Ok. They don’t uniformally stink. If you want to quickly assess the type of work an agency considers “great”, they can be useful. But visit half a dozen. Right now, I’ll wait here.

Struck by the overwhelming sameness? Like a template was handed out at a 4 A’s conference. Right down to the “proprietary approach” and 3rd person bios (“Our clients describe Mike as quietly brilliant. So they’re surprised to learn he fronts a local punk band on the weekends”). I selected two for fodder, one bad and one good:

McCann NY (bad)
I defy you to discover anything relevant about this agency in 30 seconds. Eventually I found the “what we think” section, and have concluded that concealment was intentional (summary: they’re really really open to ideas). And moving links, still, in 2009?

Full disclosure, I used to work at McCann NY prior to emigrating to Rochester. Met my wife there. Loved the place. They are better and smarter than the site suggests.

Crispin Porter & Bogusky beta (good)
In certain circles, it’s very 2005 to openly admire CPB. But when faced with conventional challenges, they continue to think and behave unconventionally. The beta site is the latest example. Video, feeds and news about CPB and clients. Not just the sanitized PR stuff either. So it captures the impact the work is having rather than assessing work in a gallery. Time on your hands? Watch “Brokaw meets Bogusky” video.

Let me know examples you admire, local or otherwise. Love to see more of the good stuff. Or tell me how wildly off-base I am.

And the announcement:
When introducing the new blog team a few weeks ago, I neglected to mention P&N CMO Sarah Hanson. Not a minor oversight. Sarah arrived in Rochester from Boston’s Digitas with a ton of digital experience. More on Sarah here. Look for her to light up the blogoshere later this month.

mj

New Yahoo! Site is Mega Helpful

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I first heard the term mega drop-down from usability expert, Jakob Nielsen. Not sure it’s a technical term, but it refers to hover-over, drop-down navigation extraordinaire that has categories, columns, links and more. It’s super helpful, and it’s a key component of Yahoo!’s new interface.

Mega drop-downs fly out from shortcuts sidebar

Mega drop-downs fly out from shortcuts sidebar

The new Yahoo! homepage sports a “favorites” bar along the left hand side. Icon/links for key areas of interest like sports, finance, facebook, eBay and a dozen or so other topics are included. Here’s the mega part: when you hover over any of the icons, a mega drop-down pops out, with a few key piece of info — stuff you’re most likely to want to see (or at least that’s what the designers are banking on). For example, a quick hover gives you the state of the Dow, Nasdaq and S&P. Place your mouse over eBay, and you’ll see the most-watched items, and a search box. Facebook gives you direct access to your login. True to its original intent, Yahoo! has once again made itself a reason to be your portal.

This is also a brilliant move for advertising, as each of the mega drop-downs has room for an ad… which of course, is targeted to the area of interest. Nice job of combining user benefits with money-making options for the site.

— Andrea Zuegel

Roc Rocks!

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Rochester is home to considerable communications talent. On the heels of yet another successful Addy Award ceremony, the Public Relations Society of America Rochester Chapter celebrated the 20th year of its annual PRism Awards program. The event was held on June 11 at Casa Larga Vineyards.

The PRisms acknowledge the highest standards of performance in public relations. This year’s theme—“Who Says PR Is Easy?”—speaks to the process of making our clients look good while we make it look easy.

Categories are included for web and print materials, direct mail, brochures, and press kits, among others. Both corporate and not-for-profit sectors are recognized in each category. For the very first time, the PRSA Rochester Chapter extended the awards to include social media categories. (With full disclosure on shameless self-promotion, Martino Flynn was honored for its innovative work in two of these non-traditional categories, including “blog” and “blogger relations”). This year’s Best of Show for the Corporate category went to Text 100 for their B2B campaign, “Xerox Takes the Headache Out of Office Printing.”

Individual PR professionals from the area are also recognized, like the CEO of The Year. The Rising Star award is rewarded to someone who demonstrates exceptional competence, skill, and leadership, and has no more than seven years of experience. The Sharleen M. Bruse award goes to a PRSA member with more than 10 years of experience who epitomizes the integrity and professionalism of a public relations practitioner. This recipient is also very involved in community service and routinely help advance the career development of other chapter members.

So congrats to all the 2009 PRism winners. As well, a BIG thanks to everyone in the profession for their contributions that are fostering growth in the field and taking us to new heights.

Don’t Interrupt Me; Do Entertain Me

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12884902_mcd047641May 8th Ad Age carried an article about McDonald’s buying a prime time road block on hulu.com. The idea is to deliver viewers 8 hours of uninterrupted primetime viewing, with no commercials. Instead, McDonalds gets a screen surround that will carry a promotional message about their new McCafé drinks and links to their promotional, entertaining microsite.
Couple thoughts on this: first, I love it. Don’t know about you, but having the choice to click on something that I see in my peripheral vision for an extended period of time is much more effective than being interrupted all the time. And, being a dvr-user, guess what – those interruptions never even reach me. Second, once I’m done watching my show, I’m much more likely to be in a “what’s next” mode, and happily click for more entertainment on a microsite. You’ve now got my full attention.
Seems like a great opportunity, but McDonald’s totally blows it in the execution. The McCafé microsite sucks. I personally love the suggested transformation associated with the drinks (commute, becomes commuté), but the execution is painful. Slow-paced and poorly written, these spots don’t match up to their TV spots at all. The usability is even worse. The only immediate action I can take on the site is to view flavors and enter a sweepstakes. No coupon, the share function is buried at the bottom of the page and is not clear about what you’re sharing. And maybe the most aggravating, is that there are no controls to stop the video while you’re browsing the site.
Can’t imagine the investment here for purchasing 8 hours of primetime ad space – and then they direct people to this? Great opportunity, but this first pass is quickly passé!

Hyper-targeting is a game-changer.

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Introducing the magazine for the totally selfish.

Ever been reading a magazine and wish you didn’t have to skip through all the crap? You know, the articles that no one with a pulse reads. Mine Magazine, a collabo between Time Inc. and Lexus tailors all the articles in the publication directly to you. Essentially allowing readers to focus in on what they care about and tune out the rest.

Choose 5 of your favorite magazines, answer a few behavioral insight questions, enter your mailing address and you’re done. In 2-4 weeks your custom made magazine will show up on your doorstep piping hot and ready to be read instead of skimmed.

I received my Mine this week. The Lexus ads using variable-data printing are compelling almost to the point of being creepy. But I love that.

Hyper-targeting individual consumers could be a game changer. It’s clearly a more cost-effective way to know exactly who’s listening to your message.

Big ups to p+n intern Dan Taylor from RIT for digging this one up. He rocks.

UPDATED: In response to Scott’s comment, I thought it was only fair that I share one of the other variable-data ads in the same issue of Mine. See below.

Lexus Ad in MINE magazine
mine21

The Barbarian Group’s Adventure

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“Holy crap! I’m really glad someone is working on that!.” That’s the response The Barbarian Group (TBG) hopes to elicit from visitors to the GE adventure blog . It details behind the scenes action at client General Electric. Works like this: TBG goes on field trips to discover cool things GE is up to, and posts the experience. A simple premise that offers lessons for our industry:

1) Territory shmerritory – TBG is a digital agency. But here’s a partial list of other organizations that could have credibly proposed and delivered the idea: GE’s employee communication team, PR agencies, ad agencies, media agencies, a motivated summer intern. If you recognized that GE had cool things in the hopper and you could tell stories, it was your idea to pitch. Oh, and you’d have to know how to open a WordPress account.

2) Git ‘er done – I love that they started this without knowing precisely where it might take them (according to recent coverage). If the basic premise is sound, get started and learn on the go. To paraphrase General Patton, a good plan executed now is better than the perfect plan next week. He actually said “violently executed”, but I’d leave that out of the strategy brief.

3) Don’t wait to make an impact – By blogging this way, TBG is doing the research they would have done anyway to create a larger campaign. The campaign is still coming. They’re just making the “discovery” process public, and maybe getting more ideas from readers along the way.

One criticism. Better yet, let’s call it a question: Is the blog’s impact on the reader lessened by having an outside company telling the stories? I might rather hear from proud GE employees directly. You can tell me if I’m nitpicking.

Matt Jones

I want a young man with a good income

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Ok, I personally don’t.

What I mean is that many companies want to—and have always wanted to—reach relatively affluent young men. It’s the golden demographic. Guys with disposable income that they readily spend on beer, gadgets, and shower gel that they hope will have hordes of women chasing them down the street like something out of A Hard Day’s Night.

(Maybe that isn’t the best example. These young guys probably don’t understand the phenomenon of women chasing Ringo down the street…On second thought, do any of us understand women chasing Ringo down the street?)

And where do you find all of these guys? In front of their computers on that productivity-killing Thursday and Friday in March, watching basketball. Pretending to work.

It’s likely that as viewing continues to move from TV to every other conceivable mobile device, more and more advertising will follow. And perhaps the first two days of March Madness, where men everywhere watch games online, will eventually replace the Super Bowl as the ultimate advertising event.

“Marketing Madness” if you will.

If it does, with the personalization made possible for the Internet, a guy goofing off in Rochester will see ads for Genesee, while a guy wasting his boss’s money in Philadelphia will see them for Yuengling.

But some things never change. No doubt we’ll all still have to watch Bud Light commercials that aren’t really funny.

Small agencies rescue the country

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Can small agencies help us out of the recession? Alex Bogusky thinks so, based on their capacity to behave entrepreneurially in a way big shops can’t. Here’s a quote from his AdAge article:

The reality is they (small shops) can do things for their clients the big monster shops can’t. With fewer people and less overhead, they offer the nimble and fast approach to problems a lot of nascent brands need.

I’m not sure small agencies can make a meaningful impact on economic recovery. But I do believe they are the key to strengthening the ad industry. The ability to develop great ideas and act quickly on them is the critical advantage in our business, and it’s only going to grow in importance.

As someone with a happy history in a couple big agencies, I can tell you that “nimble” is not in the employee handbook. In many ways, we’d have been at a disadvantage going up against a small agency in a pitch. Thanks god clients weren’t smart enough to invite any.

Anyone with a stake in the Rochester ad business ought to feel great about this. Because you put nimble to work every day.

Matt Jones

What’s your pepperoncini?

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Something crosses my mind every time I get a pizza from Papa John’s.

I’m just fascinated by the fact that with every single pizza, they include a pepperoncini pepper in the box.

I know, I know…the marginal cost of this is probably a penny per pizza- but it goes a long way for me as a marketer.

It reminds me why they are different, why they are better. It brings their brand promise to life. It says to me, “You ordered pizza, we delivered more.”

So, it makes me wonder- what little things can you do for clients and customers to add value and remind them why you are different, why you are better. Because it’s the little things like that which make a brand unique and excite people.

It makes me think, what’s my pepperoncini?

What’s yours?