Conversations.

About a month ago I started reading Seth's Blog, an insightful and thought-provoking marketing blog.

Reading Seth's Blog has started to change the way I view the relationship between marketing/advertising and audience/consumers.

There are a few truths that I knew to be true before I started reading Seth's Blog:

1) Regardless of how great the marketing or advertising is, if a product or service sucks it will eventually fail. 

2) The 'brand' encompasses more than the logo, it's about how they communicate the brand's beliefs. 

3) Brand communication is moving from being a monologue to being a dialogue. 

Marketing and advertising is about more than how you communicate - it's about how you listen and more importantly what you do with what you heard. 

It's not enough to engage with your audience and to understand how they view and relate to your brand, but you need to be responsive and accountable to your audience beyond the conversation. That is how you create a true dialogue. 

It's all about the feeling.

Tonight I attending a talk on Cannes Contenders/ A Contagious Briefing hosted by Paul Kemp-Robertson (which I highly recommend).  

Kemp-Roberston, showcased some awesome creative (I'm sure most of it will be making headlines next month at Cannes), but he also touched on some key industry trends that groups the best creative together.  

One of the key advertising trends he discussed was empathy marketing - seeing things from your audience's perspective. What this means is being able to understand and place yourself in your audience's position and understand their perspective.

What this come down to is how is the audience going to feel, perceive and react to the creative. Being able to understand your audience will help you target and connect and connect with them. 

One brand, who I think, is consistently able to actually execute empathy marketing is Dove. Last month Dove made headlines with Real Beauty Sketches (Ogilvy Brazil). Now TORKE+CC (Portugal) did it again for the brand. But this time with an emotion packed print ad. 

The Carbon Paper Ad

TORKE+CC

Dove Does It Again

Every time I see a Dove campaign, print ad, or TV spot, I am always amazed by the powerful message they are able to convey.

There latest efforts, The Real Beauty Sketches does it gain.

The Real Beauty Sketches

Purpose of the Internet

I've never thought much about what the point of the internet is. I grew up with the internet, it was something that was always there, it something that was always accessible. While, when I was younger it was accessible in the sense that if we disconnected the phone and hooked up the dial-up connection then we were connected to the internet.

When I first started using the Internet it was a source of information. Granted my pre-teen self was most likely looking up new facts about the latest teen heart throb, but still I was seeking out information. The exchange of information was why the internet was frist created in the 1980s at CERN.

Over the past 20 plus years, the internet has expanded beyond simply share information. It has built an online economy with companies solely doing buisness online, it has also allowed users to document their lives through social media websites like Facebook and Twitter, and it has also become an exchange of arts and culture.

Now,  the internet is a communications tool to share our thoughts, knowledge, interests, and lives with others around the world. Is not longer just for sharing information, but a communication tool that allows us to exchanges thoughts and ideas.  This is changing, not only the way we interact with each other, but the social and economic landscape of the world. The arab spring in 2011 could not have ignited a spark if it weren't for international influence and social networking sites such as Facebook.   

The purpose of the internet extends far beyond sharing information. It is about collaborating to shape the future..

Yeasayer & PSCYVOTV: Digital Scavenger Hunt

This week one of my favorite bands, Yeasayer, did something pretty inventive to create some hype about their upcoming album and to control the inevitable leak of the album online.

Titled PSCYVOTV, standing for Preemptive Self-Commissioned Yeasayer Vorstellung of Track Visualizer, Yeasayer released all 11 tracks from their upcoming album, Fragrant World,  online. Each song was transformed into a video vignette by Yoshi Sodeoka. The videos were then scattered on websites based all over the world. Yeasayer tweeted hints to the videos' location from their official Twitter account @Yeasayer. The videos were available online for 3 days before being removed.

Every music blog, magazine, and Yeasayer fan were taking about this scavenger hunt. It was a fun way to engage with fans and create some buzz about their upcoming album and tour, while allowing Yeasayer to be the first to share their new music with fans.

Well done Yeasayer!

Pinterest.com

This year Pinterest has dominated talk in the marketing world as the new up and coming social media network.The site has gained popularity and has received considerable attention.

I've been using Pinterest  for a few months now and, until recently, I was not impressed with how companies were interacting with users on the site. But over the past month I've come across a few companies who are successfully leveraging Pinterest for marketing purposes.

The Canadian fashion company Joe Fresh is using Pinterest as a forum to post pictures of their lastest items and press clippings. Overall, this is not innovative and, this type of activity, would be expected of any company attempting to leverage Pinterest for marketing purposes; however where Joe Fresh differs is the the board "Joe Fresh, Oh Orange!" This board consists of pins relating to the company's signature colour - orange. This board showcases the brand's personality and displays their high fashion and trendy items.

The online fashion community Polyvore allows users to explore, create, and share the latest trend all over the world. Polyvore has a Pinterest account, but what is really interest is that through the site users can create pins of their favorite items, or full outfits, and pin it on Pinterest. This allows users to share their favorite items with other Pinterest users. But where Polyvore really differs is that these pins link back to the Polyvore site where users can then find the purchase information for the items.

For many companies, Pinterest is an unexplored frontier. It's new and there are many unforeseen possibilities and challenges ahead; however, by using boards to showcase brand personality, like Joe Fresh, and use it to increase sales, like Polyvore, then any company can leverage Pinterest to engage key targets and successful increase sales. 

Getting back in the swing of things.

This year has brought may new and exciting challenges. I've been working on finding the right balance and I hoping this results in me making more time to post about all the great ads, marketing initiative, and social media campaigns that I find interesting and exciting!

But for now I will leave you with some videos from my favorite digital campaigns. The campaign is or Method cleaning products and feature great music and fun visuals. Method has really taken a step forwards since launch this new campaign which focuses on "Clean Happy".

ENJOY!

Method: Clean Like A Mother 

Clean Happy Anthem