cubemate | Dan Ng

How [email protected] Is Better at Internet Marketing than Most Ad Agencies

About four months ago, I had the unpleasant need to move my things from one flat to another in London, including an American-sized bed, which I had shipped over here not having done my homework (as most flats in the UK come furnished).

The big, excellent company that had moved me from the U.S. wanted about as much money to move me five minutes away as they had across the Atlantic.  And the thought of hiring a "man-and-van" sickened me to my stomach.  When I graduated from college, I hired two older, very angry, and sweaty Russian men from photocopied posters on the street to move my things from the dorm to the slum.  When the job was done, they extorted another $100 on top of the agreed amount by shouting and slamming their open palms on my furniture.  But that was New York, and that was years before the internet.

This time around, I did what many people would do - I started with Google.  Most of the unpaid search results led to the online equivalent of classified ads in the newspaper.  I got completely useless lists of London moving companies that weren't the right size and in some cases were based as far as Manchester.  When I finally got to a site that had customer recommendations, I was pointed to www.vanandman.com.  A few e-mails and phone calls later, they were hired.

This is a marketing blog, and there is a good reason I'm posting this story, but mostly it's because I promised Gary - the "man" in the URL - that I would.  Gary and his co-worker arrived on time, picked up my boxes and got them on his van expertly.  On our way to the estate agents' to pick up the keys to the new flat, we struck up a conversation.  He asked me what I did for a living, and I told him I work in advertising.

"Oh, really?" he said.  "Then would you mind if I asked your advice about something?"  That had never happened before; getting asked a professional question outside the office is something I imagine happens to doctors or lawyers all the time, but not advertising nerds like me.  I told him that I would help him anyway I could.

"Is there some way that I can get more customers?"

"What are you doing right now to reach them?"  I asked, half-expecting that he had dropped postcards into mail slots indiscriminately, or had bought small space newspaper advertising, because that's what a typical client on a small budget would do.  I was afraid that he might ask me how much the agency I worked for charged for a television commercial (as much as 600,000 GBP), so I cringed, fearing that I'd have to tiptoe around Gary's lack of  knowledge.

Instead, I was faced with Gary's response:  "Well, I've been buying Google search terms for about two years now, but the price keeps going up.  I have a feeling that my competitors are clicking on my link just to drive my costs up."  Gary parked the van to let me out, and dove straight for his Blackberry.  It suddenly dawned on me that the website drove all its inquiries straight to his handheld e-mail.  "And I can't outbid the rest of the industry on the terms I want.  So I've started talking to a company that does search optimisation, but I'm not sure if it's worth the money."

Before I stepped out to fetch the keys, I told him I'd have an answer for him by the time I returned to the van.  I looked at the van again.  On the side was the company name, which was also the web address.  Here I had met a sole proprietor of a business who had embraced the internet completely:  in the branding (company name), the sales force automation (web and Blackberry integation), the advertising (Google Adsense and SEO) and in the loyalty model (recommendations on the site.) 

The question bothering me (besides what else I could possibly teach Gary about marketing) was why a small business with just two people knew more about internet marketing than some big budget clients or big ad agency managers.

I suppose it comes down to how much money you have and what efficiencies of scale you can command.  Making a big television advert can make a difference if you can broadcast it to millions of interested parties.  Without all that media money it won't be very efficient to film it in the first place.  And putting money into sales promotions like coupons only works if you've got sufficient product to move and a short-enough life cycle to see the volume dividends on that original discount.

So I guess it makes sense for small businesses - like Gary's - to adopt high-efficiency, high-speed, high-touch, and high-relevance media first.  It doesn't cost much and it reaches just the right number of people. 

And he doesn't have much choice, either.  Working from the consumer end of the marketing, this is a market where there is low frequency of repeat purchase - usually once every few years - and information is scarce because of the great number of companies in the market.  Search engines like Google are excellent for these sorts of purchasing decisions.  Printed telephone books like the Yellow Pages are transparently paid-for advertising (or worse, just alphabetical) so you can't get a sense for which companies are more trustworthy.  The website I found with the user-generated reviews was far more helpful.  Once I got to Gary's site, I was sold.

Comparing the testimonials on Gary's site to others shows a shrewd mind at work.  It's a blend of celebrities, everyday people, and reviews in newspapers, so whichever sort of consumer you are, you'll find someone you trust on the page telling you to trust Gary.  Furthermore, Gary goes as far as to offer a helpful guide to the pitfalls of hiring the wrong company, which he offers without strings.  He's confident enough in www.vanandman.com's service that he's willing to point out that others won't show up in their own van, on time, or with the right equipment.  That just shows a great understanding of how people feel when they show up at his site.

I got back into the van with the keys to the new flat, and Gary looked at me expectantly.  I told him that he was already doing a  lot of things right, but he should probably stay away from the kind of SEO (search engine optimisation) that he was being offered, which might get him banned from Google altogether (as BMW Germany was, briefly.) 

Instead I told him that he should get more happy customers to write about him on their blogs.  A few intersections passed.

Finally, he asked, "What's a blog?"  I was so glad that he asked that, as I was starting to think that my mates at work were trying to pull a prank on me; maybe he would have pulled up his own blog on his Blackberry and shared his moblog entries. 

But I did finally have something that I could help him with.  More favourable blog entries would increase his search engine ratings.  Ten words into my explanation, he interrupted me to ask me very deliberately , "Will - you - write - about - us - in - your - blog?"  By this point we were both laughing.

Without further ado:

I whole-heartedly recommend www.vanandman.com for removal in and around London.  Gary and his team are punctual, uniformed, friendly, and professional.  The van was clean, and all my things arrived in good shape, having been carefully handled (and in the case of the large items, wrapped) by the www.vanandman.com team.

Afterthoughts

This one's just for planners and serious adgeeks.  Sorry.

In his post about Colin Drummond's speech at this year's American account planning conference, Russell Davies raises some interesting points about post-rationalisation.

Post-rationalisation does get a bad name, particularly when it's used to justify ineffective creative work.  I'll argue, however, that it's the expedience and cynicism of making something defective appear not so - not the act of post-rationalisation itself - that is the problem.

I'm going to go one step further and say that post-rationalisation should be a part of the conversation between creative work and strategy.  It's not just acceptable, it's vital. 

I've seen the other end of the spectrum:  planners who refuse to engage creatives when the work doesn't match the brief.  They don't even bother looking at the work to see what's working; instead, you'll hear hard-line criticism:  "it's off-brief" or "we need another route".

If there's time, post-rationalisation should happen more than once in creative development.  The brief, ideally, should be thwarted by a startling creative leap, followed by strategic sharpening that should change the direction of the creative.  There's a military maxim - "no plan survives battle" - and similarly, no brief should survive creative development.

I'm convinced that agencies that create great work find the time for these conversational detours.  That time is found when people working there feel strongly enough about doing what's right to spend late hours on the account, collaborating, disagreeing, and developing; the client and agency budget extra time in for chaos; or, more than likely, a combination of both of these.

Last week on a pitch, the potential client wanted a strategic summary of the creative work.  The urge would have been to e-mail the summary directly to the client without creative review and then it really would have been the cynical and expedient sort of post-rationalisation that everyone hates.

We started by taking a brief from the creative teams, and then a junior planner and I took our notes and divided the ideas between us, trying to find what was best about each. 

If you've ever tried to do this sort of thing, you'll know it's a bit like tracing perspective lines over a Renaissance painting; you might reveal a structure that you hadn't seen before, or indeed a structure that the creative teams themselves hadn't seen before.  (OK, not a painting by a Renaissance master, maybe, but at least one of the poorly executed ones where you can still see the perspective lines.)

When the summaries were done, they were sent back to the studio, where they sparked some more creative changes, and only then did the whole thing get produced into a slick booklet for the client.

In the end, the answer isn't always what was expected, but isn't that the reason clients hire us?  Otherwise they could create a more predictable business process in-house that could be cost-managed better. 

And if we're not here to get involved with creative work, then aren't we just brief-writing monkeys?  On those days when things are bad, I often think about dividing a dartboard radially into the Seven Strategies so that briefs could write themselves, leaving more time for blogging, ummm, I mean tracking study analyses.

Money for Nothing?

Agencies can't fire cheap clients and walk out of speculative pitches.  Or can they?

My friend Noelle Weaver of SS+K writes in AdAge about the ongoing and intensifying problem of getting paid for creative work.  Agencies have done speculative creative and strategic pitch work for decades, but now crazy marketers, Noelle notes, are asking for real, implemented work at little or no cost to them.

Of course this is unfair but there may be a way we can turn this to our advantage.  CP+B, for example, recently struck up a deal with Haggar (the people who invented slacks) where CP+B got a stake in the company in return for their work.  If the brand does well, the agency does well.

I think that it actually does our industry good to be setting our ideas free; we just need new ways of making money from them.  Our trade works because of its competition of ideas.  Without competition spurring invention and culling out the bad ideas, we'd never see the next "Think Differents" or "Subservient Chickens".  Competition inside creative departments and against other agencies is what keeps the communications industry valuable to the business world.  Try getting creative ideas from management consultants (who are paid for their expertise and their methodical processes)!

But the biggest case for not asking for money upfront for pitches is that the the world at large is changing the way it pays for ideas.  Content of all sorts is floating around for free on the internet.  The stuff that does best is then deemed worthy of fandom, and it's fandom that pays.  That file-sharing music download might make the artist money if a fan ends up buying the CD with the bonus video and free poster.  But the point is that content must be free first and the best stuff - the stuff "worthy of their devotion" as Matt Groening of Simpsons fame has said - rises to the top.

That should sound familiar to those of us working on pitches, big and small.  It takes a leap of faith to be creative.  You have to believe in yourself and the quality of your work.  And then you have to believe that the client you are looking for is out there, and will love your work enough to pay you.

Which is where marketers like the one that Noelle cites have got it wrong (particularly the one who thinks that her brand will bestow something magic to the agency's reel, and should get her work for free.) They need to understand that in an American (Pop) Idol world, even William Hung makes money. 

David Elsewhere - that guy who can pop and lock all his joints - was a viral video star first, but Volkswagen had to pay him dearly to make Gene Kelly breakdance.

The creativity business is more lucrative than ever; just ask John Wren or Sir Martin Sorrell.  Marketers who think otherwise will get what they deserve:  crap work and no brand fans.

PSFK Off Outdoor Advertising

Piers Fawkes writes in "Urban Spam, Our Thoughts" that there is a new scourge upon us - as coined by Russell Davies - of "Urban Spam".

The problem is, of course, that the phenomenon of outdoor advertising is not new, and it's not much of a scourge.  We've had the sort of ambient media that Piers rails against for decades now, with agencies like Kirshenbaum and Bond even writing books on the subject.  And to set the record straight, advertising was scrawled on the walls of the marketplace in ancient Pompeii.   Outdoor advertising is, for better, or worse, a healthy part of civilisation.  As long as there is commerce and free speech, there will be some combination of the two visible on the streets. 

You have to scratch your head at PSFK's stance on advertising.  On the one hand, they sponsor marketing awards that celebrate some outdoor events - such as Qwest's ConQwest, which I was a part of putting together.  On the other, they label all of it meaningless monologue and warn us that agencies will be punished by some unseen wrath for our sins.

Do they really want an end to all interruptive advertising?  Just because it's on the internet doesn't make it a dialogue; Google Adwords are more relevant and less obtrusive than most adverts, but are interruptive advertising nonetheless.  And who says we want a conversation with everything in the world anyway?  Some things in our lives are rightfully transactional, like the morning commute, or paying for diapers at the convenience store; in those situations, the less interaction, the better. 

I'll argue that there is room in a company's communications for both interruptive and interactive forms.  Even PSFK.com runs advertising along its sidebars for its own products and for agencies like Anomaly.

In the accompanying video, the PSFK crew want to shock us with all the irritating and indecent things that are being done on the street. 

The video shows some Adbusters types painting over and hijacking billboards.  I think there is different point being made by these people; it's not that they want better advertising - it's that they want advertising out of their lives altogether.  In other words, they don't want a dialogue or to be more initimate with a brand.  What they want is corporations taking less - not more - of a role in their lives.  A corporate blog or a Flickr photostream is going in the wrong direction for the adrebels of the world.

I can't help but think that the repulsion that the video hopes to incite is a prudish one.  There's a lot of ads for lingerie stores and condoms in the video, which expects you to be outraged at the thought that these sorts of "dirty" products are out speaking on the street.  That seems a bit judgemental.  If people in countries other than the U.S. don't have a problem with selling sex in outdoor advertising, then why should we?

The only argument I will agree with is that it's often a waste of money to try and bombard customers at every possible opportunity.  The lesson here is mainly economic and not moral.  It just costs a lot to get people's attention with these sorts of outdoor spectaculars.  But there's no reason to blame the medium for the faulty messages from agencies (or for the bad media plans). 

I think of executions like TBWA's Vertical Football for Adidas in Tokyo.  It was engaging, effective, and fun.  Is that "urban spam" too?  Some guidance, please.

Carjacking Parkour

Another example of Volkswagen trying to use cultural signs directly to move metal.  I'm not sure this one works as well as the Jackie Chan commercial from China, but it is still fun to watch. 

The question has to be whether Parkour is still current enough for this kind of direct cultural hijacking, having been used in one Luc Besson film from 1997, another in 2004, and in more than a few commercials (particularly this one for Nike.)  Maybe in Brazil it hasn't been overdone yet.

Jackie Chan and a VW Minivan

This very well-produced Chinese commercial for the Volkswagen Caddy van follows a familiar Asian advertising format of celebrity endorsement and product demonstration. 

The film does a very good job of getting across the Caddy's multiple capabilities - telegraphed with title cards in case you missed them - and does so with a little cleverness and fun; when's the last time you saw "more cargo space" illustrated by a motorcycle jump? 

Naming it "Caddy" probably transliterates well into Chinese, and I'm guessing it references the golfing habits of  the new Chinese business culture.

Welcome to the Blog You'll Never Read

Paddington Basin Blues, originally uploaded by dknNYC

Apologies if you've somehow stumbled onto this inaugural posting to cubemate.  We can't promise any cutting edge marketing ideas for this blog, or even posts on the latest communications media.  You'll find those things elsewhere.

The hope is that people will find cubemate a useful place to discuss intersections of business, culture, economics, and the communications industry.

My name is Dan Ng and I just happen to be the first author here.  In between continents and cultures, I will be posting intermittently; I'm off to Miami for further exploration of advertising's account planning bowels. 

Soon, hopefully, there will be other authors joining me here.  If you would like to post or have any questions, please send me an e-mail.  I'd love to hear from you.