Happy New Year from the RAF

Posted on January 6, 2010 by Joseph Mayernik

Well a new year brings new resolutions. That one time a year where we get on our soap box and say “I will exercise more,” “I will eat better,” or “I won’t engage in road rage behavior on 590.” Whatever it is, let’s not forget the New Year is a good time to reacquaint ourselves with our brands we have been entrusted with. To maybe look upon the media plan with fresh eyes, or reconsider the concepts behind your next campaign. Are they solid, or are they overweight and in need of a diet?
So what’s your New Year’s Resolution for your brand?

From all of us at the RAF. Happy New Year and here’s to a prosperous 2010. I look forward to the upcoming events like the 20 Minutes & a Beer event with Chris Lyons on the 19th, and of course the Addy Award show on March 12th!

Joe
Mr. RAF Prez.

20 Minutes & a Beer Recap

Posted on November 25, 2009 by Joseph Mayernik

Last Tuesday, November 17, 2009, Jeff Gabel from Partners + Napier gave a very motivating talk to a packed house at the Tap & Mallet on, “The common constructs of great ideas.” After Jeff’s talk several of RAF members in attendance wanted to know if they could get the list for inspiration. Well, here it is. Thanks Jeff!

Common Creative Constructs:
Work without words,
Combine things,
Use comparative juxtapositions,
Exaggerate,
Convert the benefit to a disadvantage,
Have fun with omission,
Change the perspective,
Change 1 element,
Tell a story,
Alter the product,
Show alternative uses,
Play with words,
Have a few meanings,
Change the medium,
Consider the context.

Now, are there any others you would add? Comment back and let’s see how long this list can go.

Please join us for our next 20 Minutes & A Beer on Tuesday, January 19, 2010.
Chris Lyons presents, “The business of freelance.” Information on us, beer on you.

JOE

10(+) Rules to Live By

Posted on November 19, 2009 by Sarah Hanson

Have you checked out the new “Marketers’ Constitution” which the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) recently unveiled?

Their goal: Make sure the marketing profession continues to thrive and that it contributes meaninfully to society.

Here are the 10 principles they suggested:

1. Marketing must become increasingly targeted, focused, and personal.

2. Marketing must build real, tangible, and enduring brand value.

3. Marketing must become more effective, creative, insightful, and accountable.

4. Marketing must become more integrated and proficient in managing expanding media platforms.

5. The marketing supply chain must become more efficient and productive.

6. The marketing ecosystem—including agencies, media, and suppliers—must become increasingly capable.

7. Marketing professionals must become better, highly skilled, diverse leaders.

8. Marketing must be indisputably socially responsible.

9. Marketing must be unencumbered by inappropriate legislation or regulation.

10. The marketing discipline must be elevated and respected.

Sounds like a good set of mantras to me. I particularly like # 1, 3, 7, 8 and 10. Wouldn’t it be nice if all clients and agencies lived by these simple, yet profound rules? I’d like to add a few:

11. Marketing people need to have fun and not over-think—in order to stay in touch with real consumer behavior, thoughts and motivations.

12. Creativity should be celebrated and revered—it accelerates the connection between brands and consumers.

What do you think? What other “write in” bylaws should be added to the marketing constitution?

Recently discovered on twitter: Lee Clow’s Beard

Posted on November 18, 2009 by Matt Jones

I had just about given up on Twitter for the 2nd time. My tweets have been inconsitent and lame (though not inconsistently lame) and I’ve generally found little value. Though I do know the exact travel schedule of many a branding exec. Which is obviously helpful.

Then I came across Lee Clow’s Beard. It’s a steady flow of insight of the “wish I said it that way” variety. Today’s: “Most people don’t have enough time to interact with their kids, let alone your brand. Respect that.”

Who on Twitter do you find uniquely worthwhile?

Quiet on set!

Posted on November 13, 2009 by Whit Thompson

Coming to you live from Minnesota, where we’ve been in production on 6 new spots for one of our healthcare clients. Shooting and editing is easily my favorite part of my job. You’re finally giving birth to something that (in this case) has been nothing but an idea for months. There’s a confluence of creative energy between agency, clients and crew that you can’t find in any other job. It’s electric, it’s emotional, it’s challenging, and it’s never boring. And that’s what makes it great.

This shoot had several tricky aspects. First, they’re testimonials. I’m not anti-testimonial, because if they’re done right, they work. But I think it’s easier to do them wrong than to get them right. And when they’re wrong, they’re really, really bad. Painfully bad. Bad to the point where they do infinitely more harm to a brand than good. Sometimes, real people have their lines scripted for them, which makes them sound like robots instead of real people. Other times, actors get passed off as real people. Note to agencies and production companies considering this: it never works. Ever. And again, the lack of authenticity is devastating to both the commercial and the advertiser. Charm becomes smarm, and any interest I might have had in what you have to offer vanishes long before your 30 seconds with me are up.

In our case, we’re using real people, and we’re not scripting their lines. So while we knew we would get some great, authentic stuff on film, we also knew the real work would start when it came time to compress it down to 30 memorable seconds. When real people talk, they don’t do it in soundbytes. I’ve never worked so closely with a script supervisor as I have for the last two days. Every time we heard something we thought we might be able to use, we gave our “scriptie” a nudge so she could mark it and try to get a time length on it. We’re going to have to use her notes and a full transcription of conversations that lasted about a half an hour to find our final edits. Oh, and we still have to maintain a sense of linear narrative to the stories.

(deep breath)

Our people for this campaign were chosen because they’ve lost weight, and a lot of it. One woman we spoke with has lost 198 pounds since 2005. One guy dropped 100 pounds in a little more than a year. We also have someone who lost “just” 48 pounds in a little less than a year. Each person did something unique to take the weight off, but that’s not the part of the story we’re after. We’ve been probing the reasons they got heavy and stayed that way before deciding to make a lifestyle change. Each person had lifestyle barriers to overcome, and each person made excuses (sometimes for years) for why they couldn’t do anything about their weight. Since our people are more accustomed to talking about what they did to lose weight and their results, it’s been a highly emotional process asking them to reflect on being heavy and what they were feeling at that time in their lives. Most of our takes were 20 minutes or longer to allow the conversation to unfold naturally between our talent and our director (thank God for RED CAM). Credit to our clients for understanding that we were searching for audio nuggets like pigs hunting for truffles, which required us to allow our talent to spend a fair amount of time talking about things that we had no intention of using.

So now, it’s on to the edit, where we’ll be cutting :30s, :60s and full-length webisodes. In many ways, the work is just beginning, because there are at least 50 ways we could tell each person’s story. A combination of agency strategy, client considerations, and the realities of what we have on film will determine the final product. With so many variables, I’m actually happy to have a hard (and fast-approaching) launch date for the campaign staring us in the face.

That’s all for now. Stay tuned for more from the edit suite.

getting ready for the next shot

the set

applying makeup to a lieutenant in the National Guard

we heart monitors

Non-Profit Matchmaker

Posted on November 3, 2009 by Andrea Zuegel

An idea has been slowly percolating in my head the past few weeks — partly from personal need as a non-profit board member, partly from need I witnessed at the last Speed Date event. It’s based on the following circumstances:

There is a large community of non-profits in Rochester, most of which do not have staff or money to publicize their services.
There is a large pool of bright-eyed, bushy-tailed arts/communications students in the area that are eager for real-world experience prior to graduation.
Additionally, we have this great service in the Ad Council, that helps non-profits figure out what their messaging is, and some tactical ideas of how to execute. But I always have the sinking feeling that the execution won’t happen due to lack of resources.

So, the percolating idea is that we (the marketing/advertising community) find a way to coordinate student workers for non-profits. I know this is not a new idea, but I don’t know where it fell down in the past. I realize this is not only hooking up workers with work — there will need to be some oversight by a volunteer mentor, to keep the work on strategy. Perhaps this is a rotating responsibility, or one mentor is matched up to each agency.

I’ll be checking in with the Ad Council to see what role they may play, but would love to hear from all of you as to if and how you think this may work.

“20 Minutes and a Beer” Triumphantly Returns with Jeff Gabel

Posted on October 28, 2009 by Matt Jones

A refresher on the premise: relevant topic, local expert, short informal presentation, your favorite Tap & Mallet beverage. What’s not to like?

For November, Jeff Gabel, Chief Creative Officer at Partners + Napier will share his observations on the “common constructs of great ideas”. Jeff is a unique package of big idea, business savvy, and passion for execution. In fact, I recently subjected Jeff to an MRI brain scan, and discovered both left and right sides uniquely well developed and working flawlessly together. Actionable insight yours for the taking. Here are the details:

Tuesday November 17th, 5:30 pm
Tap & Mallet; 381 Gregory Street
$5 non-RAF members, free to members

See you there. Here’s Jeff and I prior to the MRI. When we pulled him out, tube was covered in sketches and post-its.

Jeffs brain scan

Live Breathe Film

Posted on October 22, 2009 by Sarah Hanson

360365logo Yesterday, in accordance with their expanded mission and year round events, High Falls Film Festival launched its new brand: 360|365 Live Breathe Film. With this, the organization is broadening their mission beyond the traditional week-long film festival to include a year round Shorts Contest and New Director Series. All an effort to engage film makers and their audiences in all aspects of independent film making, 365 days a year.

[Full disclosure: My agency did the rebranding and creative work for them. But, I had no role in the project.]

It’s interesting and exciting to see how polarizing the local press and reaction to the news has been. Perfect, quite frankly, for something as provocative as the celebration of independent film-making. Read the comments on local news sites and Twitter and you’ll see things ranging from “LOVE the new name/logo” to “another sign High Falls is dying” and “what’s 360|365 supposed to mean?”

Hmm. The core audience is independent filmmakers and their audiences. It strikes me these aren’t people who like to be spoon-fed ideas. A branding and mark that takes a bit of thinking seems right up their alley (and yes, film makers provided their input and evaluation, according to people who worked on the project).

Another observation: The formula of [insert location] Film Festival definitely conjures up the idea of a week at a great location (Tribeca, Sundance, Toronto for instance) sitting in theatres watching provocative movies. It doesn’t convey the full immersive experience which 360|365 will be providing to the independent community not just in Rochester but online and around the globe, all year long.

Personally, I think it’s exciting that a Rochester-based organization is stepping up and trying to broaden engagement with the global independent film community. And that it sparks a controversial discussion appropriate to independent film.

And we’ll be right back …

Posted on October 15, 2009 by Whit Thompson

Been watching a lot of baseball on TV recently, it being the playoffs and all. Been seeing a lot of commercials over and over again, too … it being the playoffs and all. I like that there’s new work out, and some of it is pretty good. I just wish there was more of it to go around. Either that, or we need cool new ideas to get us through the inning breaks, like a “yo mama” contest between the managers. Tell me you wouldn’t stay tuned for that.

Bottom line? I don’t care if it’s the best spot I’ve ever seen in my life. Show it to me 20 or 30 times a night for a week straight, and it’s gonna start to suck. Am I the only one who thinks a media buy the size you see during the playoffs would support, if not demand, multiple executions for a campaign? How does this not happen?

Here’s a helpful Playoff Baseball Advertising Formula, humbly submitted:
staggering # of time slots / limited # of brands / minimal # of executions = burnout

My thoughts on the work from Round One:

I want to like the Blackberry ads more than I do. Maybe it’s the weird cover version of “All You Need is Love”. Maybe it’s that I only get to see the Blackberry actually doing something in, like, two edits of a 60-second spot. Maybe it’s the fact that I feel like I’ve seen this idea a million times before. Whatever it is, I wish it wasn’t a :60.
Staying with the handheld device category, I have fewer problems with the myTouch work, other than the exquisitely uninspired product name (which I mentioned, incorrectly, in my last post). I like the SNL veterans ensemble (note to Chevy Chase – the one character you seem to know how to play was funny in the ‘70s, funnier in the ‘80s, a lot less funny in the ‘90s, and is now just excruciating). I like the music, too, but I have to wonder what Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam’s price was to sell out. Wouldn’t have expected that one. The first spot with Phil Jackson and Jesse James is also good, but they’re both pretty much saying the same thing: “See? Different apps in motion? White psych? The name? We’re just like Apple!”
But speaking of Apple, they don’t always win. I’m not usually a huge fan of trying to call out a competitor’s advertising your own work, but the spot from Verizon taking on AT&T Wireless and the iPhone is great. They take direct aim at the iPhone’s singular competitive weakness – the painfully underwhelming 3G coverage from AT&T – and crush it with a payoff line that delivers a nice, big “eff you” to iPhone and its advertising: “There’s a map for that.” Love it. You sank my battleship.
I’m not sure, but I think there’s a new George Lopez talk show coming on TBS. What happened, folks? Have a bit of time left unsold? Do you have anything ELSE to promo? Please? Isn’t there an upcoming re-run of “The Office” or a “Family Guy Weekend” you can tease me with? No?
The new Marines stuff is pretty cool. Awesome editing. In fact, I do believe a Jay Advertising old boy named Justin Baum is currently working on that business down in the Atlanta. Go, JB!
Like the Bing work, too. Great theater, meaningful payoff. The first time I saw it, I wanted to back it up so I could watch it again, but I correctly assumed that it would re-appear soon.
This is probably worth its own blog, but can we talk about the Arby’s media strategy? I can get on board with a bookend strategy that shows me two spots at either end of a commercial break. Two different spots. Arby’s runs the exact same spot at either end of the break, and it’s a teeth-rattling retail number targeting everyone looking for four roast beef sandwiches for five bucks. I’m sure they have a good reason for the strategy, but I sure wish they’d produce a companion spot. They can’t be that expensive.

Round Two starts tonight. Fox coverage joins the party tomorrow. Here’s hoping for some great games. And new spots.