The Flasher

Belated Birthday Musings

Starting to hit mid life philisophical meanderings of the mind...thought I'd share.

Just had my 39th birthday - that's ok (got a bucket of KFC instead of cake, brilliant!!) - except for the onslaught of accompanying cliches & the really annoying "Single & 39??" online dating ads that have cluttered my Facebook page.
 
My favourite of all is "life is short", meant I assume, to inspire a sudden desire to climb mountains, date unsuitable men or drink myself into an irresponsible coma.

Well here's the thing people, life isn't short, in actuality it can be quite long. We have a myriad of choices & opportunities that needn't dry up at the first appearance of grey hair.

Not meaning to be pessimistic - yes it is short if you stuff it up & miss out on the things that should have been important all along (cue pics of family holidays & puppies). The flipside is, make the wrong choices & you have to live with them for a very, very long time, we're talking decades here kids! Not the bad break up hair do sort of choices, but the big stuff - career, marriage, finances - serious 'live with long lasting consequences' sort of stuff.

The upside is if you don't like the bed you've made for yourself, then you can always strip it back & start again - good for me, not so much for advertisers (you knew I was going there) - here's the lecture:

Brands! Stop & think before throwing your hard earned marketing dollars into the wind. You're meant to be creating relationships - authentic, consistent & in need of long haul nurturing.

With recession on the mind, you no longer have the luxury of saturating the market with a pretty TV ad in the hope that consumers will forget yesterday's wrong doings. (By the way - they never forget, they'll ocassionally choose to forgive).

Yes there are immediate business pressures, yes there is this whole world ecomomic crisis & productivity on everyone's lips - but here's the funny - short term knee jerk reaction, just as damaging as being paralysed by fear - possibly more so.

So, happy birthday me!

Matching Luggage... I don’t get it!

For those not familiar with the term, ‘matching luggage’ refers to advertising campaigns where the same concept is used in a number of different channels. For example, an image from the TV commercial may become the billboard, one of the characters from the commercial may voice the radio spot... and so on. It’s generally used as be a pejorative term, but occasionally I have to stifle a smirk when a client earnestly requests some matching luggage as part of an integrated brief.

 

There are two simple reasons that advertisers like matching luggage. Firstly, it’s often easier, cheaper and faster to execute one concept and then repurpose parts of it for use in different channels. Secondly, there is an obvious appeal to the notion that seeing the same thing in different places will ‘reinforce’ the messaging.

 

There is a slightly more complicated reason that more progressive marketers often don’t like matching lugga  ge.  As media channels become more diverse and functionally distinct (think of the difference between a broadcast TV commercial and an interactive website), it makes sense to do different things in each channel, playing to their individual strengths. That may mean that one concept will live well in broadcast audio-visual channels, but a very different concept will be more effective in interactive text-based channels like SMS. In response to anguished cries from old school creatives about single-minded messaging, the new school tell us that as long as the core idea that lies behind the concepts remains true, consumers don’t need their luggage to be matching.

 

But I digress... I've got a more basic beef with matching luggage. I don't get it.

 

Every day I see ads... on the street, in magazines, online. And I don’t get them. Not (I like to think) because I am particularly stupid. Simply because I don’t watch enough TV.

The catch with matching luggage is that almost invariably the TV commercial is the core of the campaign. It tells the story from which frames, characters, or lines are snatched and shoehorned into other less ‘exciting/powerful/creative-friendly’ media – from bus sides to banner ads. So if you don’t see the TV commercial... you just don’t get it.

I don’t think I’m the only one. I’ve seen lots of ads for Tivo recently, as the time-shifting revolution creeps up on us Aussies. I’m pretty sure Foxtel IQ is going to put a dent in the amount of TV ads people actually see. DVD sales and online downloads (legal and illegal) of TV series continue to climb as we learn to hoard and binge rather than relying on scheduled programming. And at the end of the day, many of us (teens and young males in particular) seem to have better things to do that watch telly.

For more and more Australians, in a fragmented, technology-empowered media landscape, those beautifully crafted little thirty second stories are becoming an anachronism. That’s not so bad – there are still plenty of places to get a message to us unsuspecting consumers. But if advertisers continue to rely on us having seen their thirty second spot, then when we read that print ad, glance at that billboard, or open that direct mail... we just won’t get it.

- Brett

The Art of Equality

Urban or Street Art – the use of the everyday urban environment by artists as their canvas – was for decades (and still is) much maligned by urban management and the art world as an eyesore for all parties that encounter it.

With the well documented rise in popularity of certain urban artists within the media, one would not be mistaken to think that now the grittier end of the art world was now the preserve of Sotheby’s auctions and those with wads of cash to spend.
 
Thankfully the urban and contemporary art world doesn’t agree, with the inclusive nature of urban art still being reflected in the ethos of a number of new urban art initiatives. 

The Street Art Awards are a not for profit celebration of the best street art produced in the last 12 months, as nominated, and voted for by the public, providing the forum for emerging artists who are appreciated by many, but may not receive the attention they deserve.

Make Art Public (MAP)– is a collective that utilises unused advertising billboards to curate exhibitions of contemporary artists across several Canadian cities.

The brilliance of this idea is that not only does it utilise unsightly vacant media inventory but transforms the space into a huge awareness driving distribution network for new home grown talents, whilst promoting the consideration of the arts and culture into everyday society.

Thankfully the inclusive culture of urban art is still pervasive within the upper echelons of artists too, as by now 1,000 Londoners will be the owners of Adam Neate pieces, following his mass distribution from dawn to dusk through the city’s streets a week ago.

Neate has always distributed his art within urban environments for people to discover, and even though pieces of his now sell for bundles, the democratic access has endured.

Think about it - a bin-man in London could find and enjoy a piece of Neate’s work that the Sotheby’s squad would pay a year of his wage for. Brilliant.

Migrant Memory

When you arrive in a foreign city and walk into your hotel room, what’s the first thing you do…?

I unpack, others might make a call home, plug in their computer, turn on the telly to see what’s on, or scavenge through the mini bar for a familiar snack. The interesting thing is that at some point early on, we all make a connection home.

‘Home’ was the topic of Nudiversity this month, but more specifically how we make a sense of home when we’re away from it.

Claire McEwan, who recently finished her thesis on the topic, researched four Bosnian women, who fled the violent conflict within the former Yugoslavia in 1992. Her interest was in how each of the women has gone about re-making a sense of home in their new home, Australia.

Concepts of home and place from an anthropological perspective used to be geographically fixed. Now however, it is much more fluid. Claire argued that home can be any space that you make familiar, be it the photographs you hang up, the comfort food you cook, even the way you fold your clothes and nestle them in a hotel room closet. It’s up to the creativity of the individual.

Some brands have cushioned onto the idea in a simple way, like Sofitel’s MyBed. A luxurious bed that supposedly gives you a sleeping experience like the one you’d have if you were at home.

It challenged me to consider all the things that make me feel at home and how I can apply that to others. It’s all the mobile qualities - the card trick you know like the back of your hand, the musical instrument that you keep close in times of sadness and that old time favourite movie you still laugh at whenever you play it. They’re all distant memories, not forgotten. Memories that we draw on and interact with when we want to establish a sense of place or home.

If there is a role for a brand to play here, first it’s about understanding that there are many products people look for and interact with that give each individual a sense of familiarity and comfort. Second, it’s about realising that the richer understanding may lie in identifying the things that are transportable, that we take with us, savour in our memories and pull out when we’re ready to create a place called home.

If only Sofitel could get my real bed next time…!

The Obligatory Election Post

Regardless of the outcome, has any US election been as entertaining to watch unfold?

 

Here are a couple of things that have made it really interesting:

 

- A candidate that has finally re-engaged younger voters with the political process after decades of indifference:

Younger voters (18 -29) provided Mr Obama the majority of his margin in the first presidential nomination victory in Iowa and are tipped to provide him a win in the state in the election (Iowa was a republican state in 2004)

 

- The engagement of large scale influential cultural movements:

 

Hip Hop culture which has been focussed upon the trappings of fame for far too long has become politically aware again, with scores of Obama ‘mix tapes’ circulating on the internet by influential DJ’s and artists editing their own tracks to spread the message for example Black Sheep and their 1991 hit ‘The choice is yours’

 

 

- Even greater opportunity to connect and activate potential voters amongst social and influential circles; Facebook (launched 2004) & Twitter (2006)

 

- Remixing culture of classic love (Obama) / hate (Palin) figures to engage audiences coupled with the access to mass distribution mechanics (email); Obama gets rick rolled, Obama and McCain - Dance Off!

 

- Increase in broadband speeds - enabling the access and discussion of election content amongst a greater number of people

 

What changes in communications might we see when we reach the election campaign of 2012?

 

As the integration between tools available on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter and mobile devices become increasingly intertwined, will the mobile device become the key connection device for Mr Obama’s re-election campaign?  ;)