human traffic

I was working on something the other day where the key job to be done was to "drive traffic" to a certain site. It suddenly struck me that some of the terminology used in marketing is a bit, well, aggressive really.
Of course traffic in this case actually means people.

A collection of unique and beautiful human beings with feelings and passions summarised with a dry collective term used mostly negatively to describe too many vehicles on the road.

So instead of traffic, why not people?

And then the word "drive" which in this case almost implies we are bundling people to a destination against their will (and to before we "drive" them we target them, hit them, blitz them etc) and suggests that people are just reluctant passengers neither expecting to or wanting to have any say on where they end up.

Shouldnt we really be guiding, encouraging, inspiring even?

"driving traffic" v "guiding people". This might be semantics but they make a hell of a difference to how we behave.

plane silly?

There's an article on the MediaGuardian site at the moment which I would link to if I wasn't writing this on my blackberry. Anyway, a company called ad-air are selling adspace on the ground alongside flight paths at airports. Ads can be up to 5 acres in size, copy can be changed every year and the ads will run at 30 international airports. Inevitably and slightly depressingly the story is full of sales puff and terms like "business travellers", "ABC1 demographic", "81%", "clutter free" and "unprecedented scale". A classic interruptive piece of unaccountable bad old media, just aching to be filled by one of those faceless corporate companies who so enjoy rugby metaphor ads (see below).

If anyone takes up the space, I'm willing to wager that they very possibly have a small penis.

Tut Tut Toshiba...

I think I will allow myself one more bad corporate rugby ad from the economist this week.

"in the heat of the game, a players ability to anticipate the run of play triggers an explosive chain reaction within the whole team...Toshiba shares this tactical and unified vision of the game of rugby. Every day we explore new avenues and apply an innovative strategy to develop products, which bring advances to television, photocopying, mobile phones and airconditioning"

Does anybody actually talk like this? Bland corporate advertising which assumes that people are robotic clones spouting management talk.

"Good morning, here's your weekly shortlist"

I'm sure that producing a video for vendors distributing the new shortlist weekly magazine was probably meant well and seen as a good way of communicating with staff.

Starts off with a massive lie "so often I choose to take a newspaper because of the way it's presented to me" and goes fast downhill from there. Zero integrity, zero honesty and unspeakably patronising. I love this clip.

prompts on a train

My last post has made me think about something we should do for itv. Why don't we do a deal with SouthWest trains so that every commuter service out of Waterloo features a little 30 second announcement on what the best thing to watch on ITV that evening is. The guard would have to read it out probably but they can make it clear that ITV are paying for this to help subsidise train fares (as passengers we have to put up with enough announcements as it is so one more won't make any difference and as it could change every day might be quite welcome for bored commuters). What ITV get out of it is a last minute prompt reaching several thousand potential viewers, nearly all of whom are going home and many of which are probably light viewers. It would have to be executed in a way that doesn't irritate passengers and genuinely adds value but this is probably just an executional twist. Must look into this idea a bit more.

morning drinking

Every morning (and indeed evening) on South West trains the "on board steward" makes an announcement inviting people to part with the best part of a day's wage in return for something from their ropey refreshment trolley. It's only a small thing but the script they read out is exactly the same all day and makes no allowance for daypart. So when I get the 6.24 train in the morning (and lord knows I love that train) within minutes I am informed that the trolley is selling "a range of beers, wines and spirits". Now given that the loud speaker announcement is just someone talking I think this is a pretty bad failure to understand your audience's mindset (maybe the people getting on at Haslemere are party animals and filling their boots but I haven't noticed) and a real wasted opportunity for Southwest trains to create a bit of empathy with their passengers. Basic stuff really but the small things matter.

rugby world cup. is it.

One of the more depressing aspects of the rugby world cup (apart from the sheer predictability of almost every result and the fact that only about 9 nations play the game seriously) is the horrendous use of "rugby is just like business" metaphors from virtually every faceless corporate business / banking brand out there. You know the sort of thing I mean. An image of a scrum or a line out with actors caped in mud and headlines saying things like "success comes from a winning strategy" and "by working together we find the path to success" I'm making these up now but "teamwork and dedication create winning solutions" that sort of thing. Always executed in broadsheet sports sections, the economist or slightly vulgar massive signs at eurostar or airports. I know that rugby has a desirable audience for a lot of brands but I have to say that some of the stuff popping up around this tournament is very wobbly. Swap one companies logo or indeed comms strategy for anothers and I don't think anyone would notice. It's just all so predictable and a bit dull. Not unlike the tournament itself then...

not more northern rock surely?

Just reading some Jeremy Bullmore and he brilliantly sums up my argument far better than my ramblings below

"in this new and open commercial world future prizes will go not just to those who make the fewest errors - but also to those who recover, apologise and make amends most gracefully. There is ample evidence that a brand that takes corrective action quickly and sympathetically will not only be forgiven but may well, as a result, find itself even more thoroughly trusted"

between northern rock and a hard place

UPDATE – Northern Rock are in the papers today (Tuesdays) with a page ad from the Chief Executive saying sorry, thanking staff and reassuring customers. But the horse seems to have well and truly bolted because they just haven’t communicated effectively.

it's all gone a bit northern rock

So northern rock are seemingly in a bad place. I thought this was all a bit exagerated but in a cab earlier I saw a long line of people lined up outside a branch and presume not many of them were there to open new savings accounts...

And its got me thinking, what does all this tell us? Thought I'd offer up a few thoughts on this below.

1) People love a crisis (and love a queue) - it reminded me a bit of the petrol crisis from a few years back. You see a long queue and are very tempted to get into it. There is also a real sense that time / money is literally running out. Shows how brands have such success with limiting supplies of new products / tickets.

2) People are incredibly conservative / cautious with their money - quite obviously. Maybe I don't have enough savings (any?) to appreciate what it means to people to potentially lose a large chunk of cash but loads of experts and the govt have all reassured people. Effectively each person in the queue was saying "I am incredibly conservative, I'm not risking losing anything, I don't trust the govt and northern rock to sort this out". Makes you appreciate how important reassurance and stability are for many brands and many people (and explains how Volvo ever sell any cars)

3) Social movements are incredibly contagious - especially physical ones. I have no idea how many of Northern Rocks customers have actually withdrawn their money but just physically seeing them lined up outside was incredibly compelling. I suppose there could only have been 30 people lined up outside the branch but as a symbol of what that represents it was significant.

4) People will respond - I've worked with many brands where the obvious consumer barrier seems to be disinterest, irrelevance and apathy. You start to wonder if this is a reflection of consumers in general and whether increasingly its just getting harder to motivate people to do stuff. But this shows people will very much get off their arses and do something if you can make it important / compelling enough for them!

5) For God's sake do something!
Where is Northern Rock's crisis management strategy? Where is the PR? Where is the announcement ad in the press? (have I missed it?) where is the interview with the chief exec on youtube? Where is the mobilisation of social media? (because people have already demonstrated that they are incredibly interested in this and willing to seek information out). Where is the response frankly? What is their strategy? You can imagine if this happened to a brand like Virgin Branson would be on the news within minutes reassuring everyone.

Latest is that shares are down 42%. I'm very tempted to buy some. But I'm obviously far too conservative...

History of Youtube

http://youtube.com/watch?v=x2NQiVcdZRY
Just because it might be useful one day.

blogs on a train

Well if this works it will represent something of a minor personal breakthrough. My first blog entry from the blackberry. The chap behind has a carling and a packet of dry roasted. The woman in front is reading about the twins from big brother in heat and the 2 chaps to my left are doing some work bitching. Get over it chaps, its the weekend. They are talking about "go live" dates and "having an escalation on my hands" "there is now no contingency". What is it about the corporate world that turns what were probably once young dreamers into people who say stuff like "he does make inflamatory statements and I'm going to have to dial in on Monday and say to Malcolm that he has to let Barney direct that he can't escalate things to david painter directly"? Will have to make posts from train more interesting in future or stop doing them...

Audi TV - why?

http://tv.audi.com/

Now I know that audi TV is not new news by any means and has been going for a few years but I've been giving it some thought today in the context of a bit of thinking I've been doing on something else. Audi TV is basically what it sounds like - a TV channel (broadcast 24 hours a day on Sky Channel 884 and also streamed online on the URL above).
Now I have nothing against the production values particularly and you can see the logic behind it - we are a premium brand, our audience don't watch much tv but want good content, we can provide a lifestyle link to the brand, it's innovative yabba yabba (in fact I actually met the chap from BBH who runs Audi TV a year or so ago at an ITV function and he was very bright and very charming although I can't remember his name).

Anyway my issue with it is simply - why? Why do it? Does it really satisfy a consumer need / want? Isn't it just something that Audi have invented to meet their own marketing needs rather than the needs of their audience? Because while I can see what's in it for audi I really can't see what's in it for people / customers?
Don't people actually want audi to make good cars rather than content?
It's fine for brands to move into new areas in my view if (a) the product is brilliant and / or (b) there is likely to be genuine demand for it from people. For me audi TV doesn't deliver on either level really. Fundamentally the concept of audi TV assumes that audi's customers and potential customers have time in their lives to consume this content (when in reality they are probably some of the most time starved people around) and also that it's going to be of such good quality that people spend time with it. Judge for yourself on the link but I don't think so. It's hard enough for media brands with all the talent and budget in the world to engage audi's audience. Slightly arrogant for audi to assume they can do it in my view.

Clearly I have no record of how well audi TV is doing in terms of ratings - someone might surprise me and say it's doing loads of ratings, the audience loves it and it can be proved that audi have sold loads of cars off the back of it. But I'd be very surprised...

what's this got to do with the AA?

Oh yeah, I meant to mention in the previous post why this blog is called what it is - it's basically a reference to me using the AA as a case study to back up pretty much every argument I ever make. Makes a change from innocent smoothies I suppose.

Why are we here?

not in a metaphysical sense, but why am I doing this? Seeing I'm working on the assumption that not a single other human being is reading this I will anyway just outline for my own benefit what I intend to do with this blog. I've started one or two blogs before I think but can't remember passwords / urls etc and besides had no real idea what I was writing about.

My intention with this is to do a few things.
1) Write about comms / strategy / stuff that's loosely work - I know there are millions of blogs doing this and I probably won't do it very often what with having work to do but anything that is of interest to me I will stick up here.
2) Write about general stuff that interests me - whatever that is, and I'm not sure yet but just general stuff
3) Use it as an ideas hub - "ideas hub" sounds incredibly pretentious but what I mean is just to use it as a portal to write down some ideas that pop into my head and immediately disappear again. I figure that if I have them all in one place I might revisit them if they're any good (not sure)
4) See if I can write stuff on the move - I spend a lot of time on South West trains and quite often think of things or want to rant and I might try to do it on here.

So this might work. Or this might be my only post. In which case, thanks for reading. If indeed anybody is. (note to self, must develop better blog writing style this is way too random)