Creative Matters

Today's Creative Presentation

June 15, 2009 9:22 AM

By Meg Moody, Associate Creative Director, The Halo Group

So you’re a butcher. Or a baker. Or a candlestick maker.* And you’re questioning your creative presentation-—are you using the right media elements to build your message and develop your brand? But you’re inundated with options and choices and articles proclaiming, The new trend is here! It’s sweeping the world. It’s the new obsession with preteens, teens and post-teens.

You start to ask yourself, “what is a post-teen?” and make a note to google Wikipedia for the definition of post-teen just as your phone rings ... and it’s your ad agency, or your marketing guy or your kid, for that matter, singing the praises of the next new thing, which happens to contradict the article you just read about the previous new thing... You sigh, and mutter, “too many things, too many channels, far too complicated.”

But rest assured, there’s a small secret that communications folks would like to keep on the down-low: The basics are the same. There are just a few new ingredients. And so this brings us to cookies...

Cookies aren’t too complicated are they? No. Never. They are delicious. And consumable. And easily made into a metaphor for today’s creative presentation.

In your basic cookie, let’s say chocolate chip, you’ve got butter and flour—print media. You’ve got sugar—radio. You’ve got eggs—outdoor. Baking soda—sponsorships, and chocolate chips—television and product placement. You used to have to decide the simple ratios, cream the butter and sugar, add your dry ingredients and pop them in the oven. And if you were really adventurous, you chose dark chocolate chips instead of milk (gasp!)....

But today, you’re bombarded with candy-covered chocolates, chocolate chunks, sprinkles, coconut flakes, peanut butter, oatmeal ... in the guise of interactive site buyouts, banners, sponsorships, ambient outdoor ... Twitter, Facebook, YouTube...

Today, a new monster cookie** has been created, leaving you to decide which ingredients will come together to make the best creative presentation.

Well, it’s really pretty simple. When you boil it all down, today’s creative presentation is the same as it has been since the dawn of time. It begins with your message-—what do you want to say to your consumers? Are you chocolate chip, are you sugar, are you peanut butter or are you oatmeal? Then, decide which ingredients will best enhance that message.

Look at your ingredients-—your various media options—as a way to give your brand some personality, some texture and a flavor that makes it stand out from the competition.

Use your ingredients purposefully. Use interactive site buyouts to talk to very specific groups of people-—Twitter to make a direct connection with consumers who have already opted in, Facebook to build a virtual community around your brand and ambient outdoor to put your brand in the middle of actual community.

While the recipe can get a bit complicated, the good news is that most of today’s media options are quantifiable, trackable, justifiable, customizable, targeted and if by chance you don’t see the results you might be hoping for, they’re easily changeable.

The good news is that if you begin with the basics, if you begin with your message, you can have some fun with the ingredients to make the best darn cookie on the market.

* The Halo Group realizes that you may not be a baker, a butcher or a candlestick maker.
   But there are nuggets of wisdom still to come, so we do hope that you will continue reading...

** In case you’re curious, Monster Cookie: 1/2 C flour
                   4 tsp Baking Soda
                   1 lb Brown Sugar
                   1.5 tsp Vanilla
                   2 C Sugar
                   6 Eggs
                   .5 lb Butter
                   1.5 lb Peanut Butter
                   9 C Oatmeal
                   1lb of any kind of candy you’d like

                   Cream butter and sugar, add eggs, vanilla and peanut butter,
                   fold in dry ingredients followed by candy.

                   Bake 10–12 minutes at 350.

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The Mercurial Marketing Mash-up

May 4, 2009 9:04 AM

By Tim Woods, Executive Creative Director, The Halo Group

To market a company or product in the 21st century, we can no longer rely simply on the single benefit of a television spot, thrown like spaghetti on a wall to reach the masses. We need to combine the best ideas of print, television, interactive, and other tactics to connect to our customers in interesting and relevant ways. It’s taking this mix and match approach to marketing to survive in this mash-up culture we now inhabit.

So then, what is a mash-up? In its simplest form, it is creatively combining elements from different genres, cultures, and categories to create something new. The mash-up was a term coined first when DJs began taking digital music files and mixing them together, stripping away the vocals from one track and adding beats and riffs from one or many songs to create something entirely new. Some say DJ Hellraiser was first when he artfully blended together The Strokes and Christine Aguilera.

What has made mashing up a current cultural phenomenon is technology. It’s easy to mash-up music, video, fashion, design and put it on the web. Now, like many ideas in this age of information, the mash-up has spread like wildfire. There are movie trailer mash-ups (The Shining as a comedy), web app mash-ups (Flickrvision), news mash-ups (Digg), data mash-ups (using Google Maps and overlaying other data like Starbucks locations). The list goes on.

The next logical question becomes, how then can this mash-up philosophy be used in business? Converse is a good example. To celebrate their 100th anniversary, Converse wanted to acknowledge personalities who bucked the status quo; remarkably, many individuals, both figuratively and literally, could all be connected by their love of the Chuck Taylor sneaker. To further that idea, besides creating a website, Converse commissioned three disparate and commercially successful artists to write, produce, and perform a song. Converse became a catalyst of creativity, because of the uniqueness of its product, and because of its joy in the core identity of its hipster individualism. The facts back up the idea — visits to the Converse website resulted in thousands of downloads of the song, not to mention the radio airplay and the public relations garnered from the unique and groundbreaking partnership of Converse and the musicians.

How can mash-up ideas work to reimagine products in other categories? The entire category of fine china, for example, needs to examine how it is talking to people and make china more relevant to customers who are shying away from luxury goods and no longer see dining at home as a formal affair. The Halo Group would recommend dismantling old ways of thinking about eating and turn every meal into entertainment. Begin by giving customers the ability to collect, over the course of their lifetimes, customized sets of china, allowing them to mix and match in whichever fashion they desire. Mash-up music, menus, and party recommendations should be part of the brand experience.

New creativity is always born out of the old. It is the blend of what is and what has been. Mixing different ideas isn’t a new concept; consider the Reese’s peanut butter cup. No longer can companies dictate how their products can be used. It is truly up to the customer. It’s an important shift to note. So when you think of your brand, don’t be afraid to put it in a blender.

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The Next Big Idea is the Little Idea

April 9, 2009 4:09 PM

By Guy Sealey, Creative Director/Digital Strategy, The Halo Group

Each with unique circumstances, there are many reasons why a brand doesn’t evolve to take advantage of new market opportunities. It may be that the brand lacks clarity of vision or is just unwilling to defy category convention. It may well be it is looking hard for the “Next Big Idea” and missing the one right in front of it. Brands need to know why they are missing opportunities and analyzing them is a good thing. But, seeking out the easiest opportunities may be more useful.

In the old days — circa 1994 and before — brand communication with the world consisted of brands telling consumers who they were, what they stood for, and how the consumer should use their product or service. Consumers were more or less left to decide if they believed the brand issuing the edict or not, and that was the end of the dialogue. Brands told consumers what to think. It was a one-way street of communication.

That all changed with mobile phones and the internet. Suddenly, a second lane, one that challenged the one-way street of brand communication, was opened up. This second lane is the lane in which consumers control the brand through discussions between themselves in the interactive space. It is also a lane in which consumers tell brands directly what they are thinking.

This lane represents the biggest opportunity for brands: LISTENING and WATCHING what is being said about them, and then REACTING directly to the online chatter. The internet represents one huge feedback loop for the brand that is paying attention. No longer does a brand have to solicit surveys from consumers. On a daily basis, a brand can follow what consumers want and expect from it and then not only modify its messaging, but also change its behavior accordingly. It can make incremental improvements to either its service or product offerings based on what customers actually want.

Look at the online shoe seller Zappos, for example, and how it expanded on what it sells. The redesign of their user interface in 2008, and the expanded categories (like small electronics and cookware) are based on the company’s mind-set of finding out what the customer wants and then figuring out the best way to deliver that. CEO Tony Hsieh has said that Zappos has branched out based on what its customers would like to see from them. “If they say, ‘I wish you would sell this because I just had a horrible experience somewhere else,’ we’ll look into it.”*

In another example, Apple, notorious for not using public mediums to get feedback about its products, has recently done just that. The company conducted online surveys about Apple TV among that product’s users, partly to understand what can be changed about it, but mostly to better understand how to build more consumer interest in the device. Apple’s next big breakthrough for Apple TV may come from user feedback, either in the form of product updates or in terms of the user group understanding.

A brand can also quietly and smartly enter its customers’ dialogue in tweets and blog postings from Facebook to Ning. This is where the next big idea lies, indeed, the big idea, which is really the incremental changes that a brand makes in response to what its customers really want.

(see Apple article: http://www.edibleapple.com/apple-conducts-survey-about-apple-tv-asks-users-for-input/

*Margaret Kane for CNET newsblog April 18th, 2008 http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9921188-7.html

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