Starship Articles
September 20th saw hundreds of thousands of people in Australia turn out in a massive climate strike, joining millions around the world. Speeches kicked off at 2pm and the march began around 3ish, with schoolkids supported by a variety of adults, including many businesses that signed on to the strike under Not Business As Usual. There was the usual hilarity from the climate deniers in power over in the Liberal Party, including Liberal MP Craig Kelly, who hilariously opined that “The facts are, there is no link between climate change and drought. Polar bears are increasing in number. Today’s generation is safer from extreme weather than at any time in human history.” This is a ridiculous statement in many ways, if only because there’s no logical connection between Kelly’s polar bear index, drought, and climate change. Polar bears are quickly losing their traditional habitat thanks to receding ice from climate change, bringing them into increasing conflict with people. And given that several extreme weather events happened recently — including the Category 5 Hurricane Dorian, among others — and are happening more frequently… actually, why are we even trying to logic people like Kelly? You know he’s wrong. Trust the science.
That being said, the bitter reality of having a government of climate deniers in power has played out over a host of frustrating developments, from the ongoing Adani matter and the fracking nearby to the weird matter of the controversial Great Barrier Reef fund. It’s frustrating to see the two major political parties in this country agree that coal is still necessary:
And even as Swan says Labor must risk an unpopular policy, he defends Senator Penny Wong’s response to pleas from Pacific Island nations: No, she told them, an ALP federal government would not ban new coal mines.
“Coal is not the only issue in town,” Swan told ABC radio on Thursday. While we did need a rapid transition from fossil fuels, he said: “The truth is Australia produces about 4 per cent of the world’s thermal coal. If we’re going to reduce emissions in Australia, 19 per cent of our emissions come out of the transport sector.”
Talking down the impact of Australia’s coal will not put Labor on the right side of history. Australia’s domestic and export fossil fuel emissions now account for 5 per cent of global emissions but current coal, gas and oil developments could increase that to 12 to 17 per cent by 2030, according to study by Climate Analytics.
Frustrations aside, we’ve got to do something about climate change, right?
Beyond Straws and Veganism
Boycotting plastic straws and going vegan will not save the planet. 70% of the world’s greenhouse emissions generated since 1988 have come from just 100 companies:
ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron are identified as among the highest emitting investor-owned companies since 1988. If fossil fuels continue to be extracted at the same rate over the next 28 years as they were between 1988 and 2017, says the report, global average temperatures would be on course to rise by 4C by the end of the century. This is likely to have catastrophic consequences including substantial species extinction and global food scarcity risks.
While companies have a huge role to play in driving climate change, says Faria, the barrier is the “absolute tension” between short-term profitability and the urgent need to reduce emissions.
There are some things you can do about that. Voting in government representatives who aren’t beholden to fossil fuel interests is a good start. Switching your energy purchase to green power companies, like Powershop’s Green Power packages, can help — and get your friends and family to switch too. Fly less: flying is probably your biggest contributor to your personal carbon footprint. Buy less fast fashion, use more public transport. Buy fewer disposables and fewer plastics. Install solar panels, if you have a roof that you own. And sure, eating less meat probably helps. These gestures are small, though, compared to what companies do and what governments decide. Pressure your governments to commit to a zero-emissions target. If they won’t, organise and protest, vote them out. Support an environmental charity. Even small things help.
There’s probably going to be another climate strike near you soon. Consider attending it.
Climate Change and Advertising
Companies can work on their own to try and help the world into a zero-emissions, low waste target. We have some thoughts here. The ad industry hasn’t been immune to pressures. Via AdNews:
Australia’s advertising industry could take a stand and lead the world, says David Ritter, CEO of Greenpeace Australia Pacific and the author of The Coal Truth (UWA Publishing, June 2018).
“Fossil fuel use is the number one driver of global warming. Any business that supplies the coal, oil and gas industry with commercial services is implicated in driving the climate emergency,” he says.
“The time has come for the advertising industry to say ‘enough’. Any advertising firm that takes work from the coal, oil or gas sectors is doing PR for the greatest threat to life on earth.
“Instead, the advertising industry in Australia could take a stand and lead the world, using all the skills of public communication to help shift us on a path to wise stewardship of our shared home.”
According to the 2018 Edelman Earned Brand study, 64% of consumers buy on belief. As environmental consciousness grows, brands — and agencies — that commit to a greener, more renewable future will emerge at the head of the pack. It isn’t just about biodegradable packaging or having a carbon offset. It’s not just about having the right kind of messaging. It’s also about committing to green initiatives, be it charities or getting involved at a political level. With many governments in the world either gridlocked at a policy level, beholden to fossil fuel interests, or just plain denying the truth, companies and people getting ahead on their own might be the best way forward. Good luck to us all.
In the lead up to the trash fire that was the 2016 US elections, there was a rash of conspiracy theories about the Democrats and Hillary Clinton that were spread around by conservative media and trolls. Some were somewhat believable–like the one where she was supposedly Very Ill With Some Unnamed Illness, after footage of Hillary, a 70-year-old lady, was shown looking a little frail on film at one point. Some, you’d think, were just so batshit ridiculous that nobody could unironically believe they were real.
Or so I thought.
On October 2016, just before the election, a white supremacist Twitter account claimed that the NYPD had found a Democratic satanic paedophile ring that was being run out of a pizza parlour called Comet Ping Pong. You’d think that a conspiracy like that would be too funny to be taken as anything but a joke, yet further conservative “news” sites soon claimed, among other things, that the NYPD had raided Hillary’s home and that the raid was confirmed by the FBI. Over a million messages used #Pizzagate in 2016. The theory was soon picked up by various far-right activists and even ended up on the pro-Erdoğan government newspapers in Turkey. There were serious consequences for the restaurant: harassment and death threats. Bands tied to the restaurant were abused, as were similar restaurants in the same area, and businesses with similar names. Despite being widely debunked by news organisations, the matter came to a head early December 2016, when a man holding an AR-15 walked into the restaurant and started firing. No one was hurt. When arrested, the shooter said he’d decided to investigate Comet Ping Pong after seeing the matter brought up on Infowars, a far-right conspiracy site whose owner is currently being sued for defamation after driving harassment to the parents of children killed during the Sandy Hook mass shooting (he claimed they were just child actors). Despite people like Jones having to retract their statements and apologise to the owner of Comet Ping Pong since, a small fire was set at the back of Comet Ping Pong this year.
It’s easy to dismiss things like this as stuff that only deranged people will believe, but I’ve seen similar conspiracy theories spread by people closer to home. My college-educated corporate parents, for example, still spread the occasional fake news link over the family chat, which my brother and I have to instantly pounce on to debunk. There are also smaller conspiracies, debunked by science but still considered to be widely true by everyone (e.g. that Yakult makes any sort of real difference to your digestion). With disinformation rapidly poisoning the world and making people distrust everything they read on the news, how can we avoid getting scammed, stay true to the truth, and avoid adding to the mess?
Fake News and Advertising
Mea culpa. Advertising is sadly responsible for spreading a lot of dangerous untruths in the world, lies that ended up broadly corrected often only after lawsuits. Take the whole furor over cigarettes, for example, which ended up in tobacco advertising being banned in some countries, including Australia. The industry still doesn’t publicly accept that smoking causes lung cancer. False and misleading advertising isn’t allowed in Australia – recently, Heinz was fined $2.25 million for misleading advertising by the Federal Court of Australia:
In its initial proceeding against Heinz, the ACCC alleged the company made false and misleading representations, and engaged in conduct liable to mislead the public in relation to the nature, characteristics and suitability of its Little Kids Shredz products. These included statements claiming the product was ‘99 per cent fruit and veg’ and that the food was ‘nutritious’.
At the time, the ACCC pointed out the products contained upwards of 60 per cent sugar, a far greater ratio than an apple, for example, which is about 10 per cent sugar. Its actions followed a complaint made by the Obesity Policy Coalition about food products for toddlers that made such claims when they in fact were predominantly made from fruit juice concentrate and pastes which had much higher sugar content that raw fruit and vegetables.
Being truthful in advertising is more important than ever now, in a world where there’s usually a lot of competition in any market or industry. Brand trust is paramount. If customers stop trusting your brand for any reason — and being lied to is a huge one — they’d move on, and it’d be hard to win them back. A few tips:
- Be careful. Research any statement many times before you make it. If there’s even a possibility that it might not be accurate, don’t make it.
- Or use careful disclaimers. Have legal check your wording.
- If you do get something wrong, own up to it immediately, with a real apology. Not a non-apology.
- Commit to being as honest and as transparent with your customers as you can be. They’ll appreciate it.
- Add value to their lives. If it’s information – be accurate. For anything else – try to be respectful.
Countering Disinformation
Fake news often spreads through social media. In the Phillippines, where Facebook is free but internet isn’t, this has had consequences: the election of President Duterte:
Two years after the launch of Free Facebook, Rodrigo Duterte mounted a presidential bid, casting himself as the tough-on-crime, anti-elite Everyman ready to bring back jobs and order. Posts about Duterte, full of memes, propaganda, and outright libel (one opponent, now in prison on a dubious drug charge, saw a fake sex tape circulate on Facebook with her in it) did extremely well on Facebook, as nearly any inflammatory content does. When Duterte said he would dump the bodies of executed drug dealers “into Manila Bay, and fatten all the fish there,” the post immediately went “viral, viral, viral,” bragged one of his two social-media directors.
He won handily, and his rule has been brutal. At least 12,000 people have been killed during Duterte’s crackdown on drugs, and hundreds of thousands of Filipinos have been jailed, many of them opponents of Duterte himself. Meanwhile, his social-media team has actively worked to bring in social-media influencers to prop up Duterte’s regime (think Filipino versions of social-media creatures like Mike Cernovich, Laura Loomer, or Jack Posobiec) working closely with the Duterte administration — sometimes directly on the government payroll — to spread fake stories such as a deposed Supreme Court justice was caught attempting to flee the country. Meanwhile, news sources seen as unfriendly to the Duterte campaign have increasingly come under fire, including banning all reporters from an outlet from the presidential palace.
While a system-wide application of fake news like that can only be countered either at an institutional level or a paid organised level, here in Australia, where the internet is uncensored and freely available, it’s possible to safeguard yourself against fake news. A good rule of thumb is, if something feels even slightly unbelievable, Google it before spreading it. Sites like Snopes.com will help you figure things out in a pinch. Sometimes, even if it’s believable, Google it anyway. Before you spread any information, especially news, find a credible site. Read articles linked to statements before retweeting or sharing them – often, snappy 140-280 character Twitter analyses of an article sensationalise it, and key details can be misinterpreted or left out. If you get things wrong, fess up quick. Everyone falls for fake news now and then. Clickbait articles are designed to be highly readable, designed to appeal to and convince you of an idea. In other words, they’re often forms of very good advertising in their own way. Surely by now everyone knows not to completely trust what they see on TV or on social media. You’d just need to apply the same cynicism toward information in general.
We’ve become increasingly time-poor, increasingly addicted to social media, with a tendency to take our news from these platforms. I get why. Facebook’s algorithms are built to show you things that it thinks are in your interest. Information spreads so fast on Twitter that if I hear a rumour of something happening, like a rally in Melbourne CBD, I often check Twitter first because news organisations are unlikely to update anywhere as quickly. Social media can be good for spreading real news, too — I was in a recent talk by Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson, who said that Twitter saved his life. During the Ferguson protests, his platform gave him so much visibility and connections that it was an invaluable part of organising the movement. The Hong Kong protests are highly visible online, and are organised through Telegram.
The platforms are only part of the problem. The trolls will always be there, and as long as their methods keep working, as long as only a tiny percentage of them ever face consequences, they’d keep on churning out fake content for their own purposes. The best we can do is to either approach everything we read online with a healthy grain of salt (a fistful of it, if it’s seen on social media), or to delete everything and live off-grid somewhere in the wilderness. Some days, that’s tempting.
In this fast-changing, crowded day and age, brand experimentation is essential. It’s not just about changing parts of a brand’s messaging, look & feel, or advertising — it’s also about trying out new or different platforms. The process can be a little hit and miss — I laughed when I saw that L’Oreal created Snapchat lenses — but having content spread out across unexpected touchpoints does pay off: L’Oreal has been repeatedly named the world’s most powerful cosmetic brand. In an interview with Google, L’Oreal mentioned:
Whether you’re a global company like L’Oréal or a smaller brand, testing new ideas or tools takes investment and resources. That’s why anything that we test has to be something that we think can really make a difference at scale. This isn’t about looking for shiny objects, this is about taking big bets on things that we think will really help achieve a wider business goal, then seeing whether or not we were right.
To make sure that we’re staying on track and getting the biggest bang for our buck, every test has to have what we call a “learning agenda”. That’s where we outline what questions we’re looking to answer, what new insights we’d like to uncover and the steps that we’ll take to get there.
To take a page out of L’Oreal, this means:
- Having an overarching goal for your marketing: whether it’s to get X number of quality leads a month or to get Y number more visits to your site. Having a definite set of Key Performance Indicators in mind will keep your strategy on track.
- Don’t be afraid to try new ideas or new tools, even if it takes an investment.
- Anything you test should be potentially able to help you reach your overarching goal.
- Have a set of ideas that you need confirmed or answered. Is X your best target audience for your product? Is it being sold in the right way, at the right place? Should you expand?
Brand Experimentation on Different Platforms
If you’re above a certain age, or not particularly into social media, you probably aren’t familiar with TikTok. It’s currently one of the most popular social media apps on the planet: in September 2018, it had more monthly installs on the App Store than Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat, and was downloaded more than a billion times that year. Tiktok is, basically, a video-based social media platform for sharing and creating short lip-sync, comedy, and talent videos. You might have seen its influence in the rise of the biggest song right now on the charts: Lil Nas X’s smash country trap hit “Old Town Road”. Prior to gaining mainstream success, it built its popularity through memes on TikTok. This eventually led to the song rising through the Billboard Country charts, only to get struck off for not being “country” enough, igniting a furore about inclusiveness in country music (Lil Nas X is young, black, and queer). A remake that included Billy Ray Cyrus has been on a record-breaking run on the charts and is currently Billboard’s longest-running #1 song ever.
This success might not have happened without TikTok. The app is a second iteration of the now-defunct Musical.ly, which was a similar app launched in 2014 by Chinese entrepreneurs Alex Zhu and Luyu Yang. It was acquired by a Chinese tech company, Bytedance, and merged into TikTok (called Douyin in China). It’s now available in 150 countries, in 75 languages. While TikTok is still finding its legs as a commercial platform, the Director of US Marketing, Stefan Heinrich, was a popular figure at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. Via FastCompany:
“Part of the reason TikTok has taken off is that things move in trends,” he says. “People have been in a perfect, manufactured world for a while, where they have to live up to expectations and ideals. Now it’s about real life. Real people. It’s getting a window into someone else’s life, with surprise and delight. And because it’s content-driven, not connection-driven, you see people you wouldn’t normally see, outside of your traditional circle.”
The app doesn’t currently have a broad paid advertising business, though brands and organizations—from Chipotle to the UN to the San Diego Zoo to the NBA—have signed up and are creating content, as individual users, not official advertisers. Given its revenue potential, that won’t last long. TikTok does have an ad-tools platform in beta being tested by a select number of agencies right now, but for the moment Henrich says they’re simply working to connect brands with their community of creators.
Brands should consider TikTok ads or TikTok influencers if they’re marketing to a young user base (16+), have social media and video content as a core part of their strategy, and are focused on entertainment, reach, and engagement. Relatively untapped platforms like TikTok would mean that your brand’s marketing would be more visible than usual, since you aren’t competing with as many brands for attention in that space. Just like L’Oreal, brands should try new platforms (if it fits their aims and target audience).
That aside, there’s much that brands can learn from TikTok itself. The concept behind it isn’t new–it’s pretty much Vine 2.0 as a social app–but the way it’s taken off in such a massive way indicates that often, the ticket to success is equal parts luck, identifying an unfulfilled niche, and having a brand that strongly appeals to a large section of the market. There’s nothing marketing can really do about the first bit other than try to help it along, but experimentation can definitely help you find your niche and perfect market.
Messing with your Messaging
Messaging isn’t just the copy that goes with your brand–it includes how your brand portrays and conducts itself over varying touchpoints. This could include packaging, imagery, even the tone of customer service. Does it fit your brand guidelines? (Dare we ask: do you even have brand guidelines?)
Experimentation can also include testing the messaging in focus groups before the campaign is released to the public at large. This is the safest way to have a good indication of how a campaign will be received, but it’s not a set-in-stone indication. We usually recommend it to customers who can afford the budget for testing.
According to comScore, about 54% of digital messaging goes unseen by consumers. To get heard nowadays among all the noise, you need a strong message and strong content that’s relevant and accessible to your target audience. Are there alt tags? Subtitles? Does your video work with the sound off? Is your message memorable, and isn’t unnecessarily detailed or convoluted? Experimentation will help you determine whether your message is working, or help you find and tweak it until it does. You can do that by carefully testing different offerings over a period of time, and doing monthly audits to check which gave you the most value in terms of engagement or leads.
Need more help? Curious to know more? Get in touch.
It’s Tuesday afternoon in the office. There’s a disbelieving exclamation from the creative department: “Jeremy Renner had an app?”
Yes. Jeremy Renner had an app. He’s the actor best known for the archer guy in the Avengers, whose main purpose appears to be mysteriously surviving one apocalypse after another despite just being a vanilla human, while inexplicably being the best archer in the world even though he’s clearly unable to use a bow right. Renner developed an app that has since been described as Instagram but for Jeremy Renner fans (Rennites? Renneristas? RenHive?) called Jeremy Renner Official. It’s every bit as bizarre to me to imagine as it is to write this for you. In any case, Jeremy Renner Official trucked around quietly for years and was made by EscapeX, a startup company that makes self-contained apps for stars. These apps were naturally going to be filled by superfans of said stars. Via Wired, which interviewed EscapeX after the incident:
The 500 celebrities—in many cases, an admittedly generous description—who have launched apps through EscapeX have no suppressive algorithms to fear, and options aplenty to monetize. The Renner app, for instance, gave fans the option to purchase “stars,” which vaulted users to the top of some sort of leaderboard of Rennheads. (In his statement announcing the shuttering of his app, Renner declared a refund for anyone who had purchased a star in the last 90 days.) Other celebrity apps deploy a subscription model, or charge extra to unlock bonus features.
The idea is also to give the semifamous a safe space of self-selecting super-stans. Instagram has well over a billion monthly active users; some of them are bound to say mean things. On your EscapeX oasis, though, you can bask in, and profit from, unfettered adoration, even in your lowest moments.
Do people actually need an entire app to prop up their egos? If there’s a demand for it, why not? Besides, it’s hardly going to be the most weird thing that a celebrity has done. By all accounts, the app was pretty lively, with its own community drama, even before the Incident that got Renner to shut it down: for some reason, EscapeX had neglected to make it hard for people to impersonate Renner in the community. You can imagine what sort of trash fire this created, what with people starting to post ‘as’ Renner and talking about porno, among other things. This is why nothing good survives for long on the internet. Soon, the app was no longer a fun space where Renner’s superfans could wait to be told Happy Rennsday on Wednesdays (this was also in fact an actual thing) and it had to go.
That being said, the whole Jeremy Renner Official saga has a few teachable lessons for brands:
- Trolls will get to anything: In this day and age, it’s probably better not to put anything participatory out online unless it’s carefully moderated. Or it will go very wrong. Fast.
- There’s an app for that: An app could conceivably be made for any brand out there. If there’s the money for it. Whether it serves an ROI, however, is another thing altogether.
- The app has to be carefully designed. Assume that the worst could happen, and stand by to fix it if it does.
- People will still download apps that are relevant to their interests.
Some Good APPles
There have been cases where brand apps have gone viral. Here are some of the ways:
Offer Free Stuff
When I was in design school, one branded app spread like wildfire. It was Clemenger BBDO’s Hungry Jacks app. After launch, it hit over 265,000 downloads, was in the top spot for apps for days, and in the top five apps for a month. Those are huge results for a branded (read: not social media or a game) app.
For those non-Aussies who are wondering Burger King in Australia, which was renamed to Hungry Jacks due to corporate shenanigans that are too long to detail in a single blog post. You can read about it here though if you’re really curious. The Hungry Jacks app urged people to “Shake & Win”. All punters had to do was take themselves to a Hungry Jacks store, open the app, and shake their phone. The app also included things like nutritional information and calculators and such, but face it, the reason why it was downloaded so much was because of the promise of free stuff. In particular, free chips. You can look at all the social analysis from pundits about how the app gave people a constant reminder of Hungry Jacks and pushed them to go to a store and so on, but let’s get real. If free chips weren’t in the equation, we’re not sure that people would’ve downloaded the damn thing, which had an interface of brushed steel surfaces and red plastic textures.
Make It An Annoying Necessity
Free wifi in Changi Airport is only available if you find and acquire a coupon from one of their goddamned kiosks, request for an access code through SMS (a data-gathering trap that hardly ever rewards you with said code in time for you to leave the efficient airport) or download the app. This requires a lot of preplanning, given many visitors might not be aware of / visit Changi enough to pre-download this app. Similarly, SingTel’s HiApp is pretty much the least annoying way you can top up HiCards, the popular SIM cards sold to visitors. Forcing people to download your goddamned app in order to access a service that could be easily rigged up to a proper website is not the best way to go, in our opinion, but it’s one way to go about it. After all, it’s not as though there’s a feasible alternative to Changi airport in Singapore.
Make it Actually Useful To Your Audience
In July 2017, the guitar brand Fender released the Fender Play app to critical praise. Via Guitarworld:
Developed over several years with considerable assistance from music educators as well as the developers of successful education apps for other endeavors, Fender Play allows users to choose their own path, including the songs, genres and instruments they want to play, learn at their own pace and track their progress. Bite-sized video lessons enable users to comprehend and master skills very quickly, and most users are able to play their first riffs within the first 30 minutes.
“With Fender Play anyone can pick up a guitar and start learning,” says Fender Digital General Manager Ethan Kaplan. “You don’t have to drive somewhere to take a lesson or have someone come to your home, which is very convenient, but it’s also a good supplement to lessons. Most people view lessons as a chore, but with Fender Play we’re promoting playing guitar as a fun lifestyle, which makes it a lot easier to keep people interested in playing.”
The effort that went into Fender Play was extensive. Mary Keenan, previously with Leapfrog and boasting an extensive background in online and digital education, assembled a diverse group of counsellors from the USC School of Music, UCLA, Cal State Fullerton, Musicians Institute, the Berklee School of Music and more to help develop the app’s curriculum.
“We also took a close look at trends in online learning as well as educational strategies,” says Kaplan, “like achievement-based learning and micro-based lessons, which are small lessons that are much more effective than longer lessons. We also got input from instructors that we hired to provide the on-camera content.”
It also provided access to an online community of Fender fans, access to instructors, and to Fender staff. As of the time of this article, the Fender app is on the favourite picks for the App store, and has been called the most comprehensive online guitar tuition course available. At $10USD per month, the app provides Fender with a continuous revenue stream, with 60,000 users as of 2018 with projected growth to 100,000 by 2019 with an aggressive marketing push.
Make it Fun
IKEA Push is IKEA’s fun augmented reality app:
This app allowed people to “virtually place true-to-scale 3D models” in your home, using your phone or iPad. Operating pretty much as a really high-tech IKEA catalogue, the app is beautiful, fun to use, and is sure to trigger an IKEA visit in its users’ near-future. It was an evolution of the company’s previous attempt at an app. Via Wired:
For Charny-Brunet, it was absolutely critical that the Place app didn’t just give a vague idea of what a piece of furniture would look like in a room, but came as close as possible to the real thing. “It’s about reducing the risk that’s inherent with any home improvement you make,” he says. Through a combination of room scanning and 3D modelling, each piece of furniture in Place is almost perfectly in proportion with the real world.
It wasn’t just the look of the furniture that had to be right, but the sound. When a piece of furniture lands on the floor in Place, it lands with a little thud and a touch of haptic feedback. Those thuds were designed by the Swedish sound studio Plan8, who recorded the sound of a foley artist hitting a wooden board and then edited them so they fit the size and weight of the piece of furniture being dropped in the app.
Making use of IKEA’s vast in-house stock of 3D models, the app was a critical success. It was the second most popular ARKit app in 2018 – an achievement, given that most ARKit apps are games. While IKEA Place is no longer the only AR app of its type out there, the app ties in to its core business in a fun and accessible way.
In Summary
Looking to create an app for your business? Keep in mind:
- Do you really need one? Apps are expensive things to create, and getting people to download a brand app can be difficult.
- Do you have a “hook” or incentive for people to download your app?
- Do you have the budget to push it into the world with some targeted marketing?
- Do you have a specific need in your business that the app will address, vs a well-designed website?
All these should be preliminary considerations for you before you get into the app business. Still interested? We can help you out. Get in touch.
When I first played Kingdom Hearts, I was still in uni. I wasn’t expecting much. It’s a game where you play a kid with huge shoes, big spiky hair, and unrealistic clothing called Sora. Sora wields a “keyblade”, and goes on adventures with Donald Duck and Goofy through different “Disney/Square Enix worlds” such as the world of Hercules etc. Which you fly to on a gummi ship. I know — it sounds ridiculous to me even as I’m typing it. Despite all odds, though, Kingdom Hearts turned out to be an unexpectedly entertaining game. The combat system was fluid and challenging without being annoyingly difficult, the storyline was extremely earnest (read: for kids) but coherent enough to tie the weird storyline together, and most of all — I kid you not — the gummi ship system was incredibly fun. The ship you build is fully customisable, and gummi ship space was fun to navigate.
That was in 2002.
As the game got bigger and more complex, Disney began to add in more and more of the franchises it owned.
In this year’s game, there was Toy Story and Monster’s Inc, on top of the wildly popular franchises of Frozen and Pirates of the Caribbean. I’m surprised they didn’t add worlds like Coco, Finding Nemo, and Moana. Or Star Wars, or Marvel. Playing through Toy Story beside Woody was a strange feeling, in between “I still can’t believe they own Toy Story” to “Why Toy Story 1 and not some newer Pixar property?” By far the biggest Disney flex in popular media so far, however, is probably that one scene in the second Wreck-it Ralph:
This was meant to be a funny/triumphant moment in the film, but I mostly just found it scary. How much popular culture does Disney now own? What would this mean for entertainment in general in the future? Needless to say, this wariness isn’t exactly a popularly held opinion. When Disney finally ate 20th Century Fox for $71.3 billion, the news was greeted with joy from fans — despite the mass job losses that ensued and the inherent problems in creating a monopoly this big. X-men was now part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe! Magneto could meet Captain America! Nevermind the implications of Disney now owning the lion (king)’s share of pop culture. Star Wars, Pixar, X-Men, MCU, hell, even the Simpsons. The Mouse just needs to buy DCEU and Harry Potter to consolidate its dominance.
And it will. Maybe someday it will.
I Will Show You The World
This year, the Lion King’s live-action remake became the highest-grossing animation of all time, along with being the ninth highest-grossing film of all time. It was pretty much the same as the original, except with Beyoncé and some slight changes to the cast. Despite the uncanny valley part at the beginning, I actually rather enjoyed it. Just like how I enjoyed the mediocre Avengers: Endgame film, or the very average Aladdin live-action, or the kinda eh Spiderman: Far from Home. That’s the thing about empire. Sooner or later you get used to it. Isn’t it better to have some content than no content?
The problem is in the type of content that gets produced, now that Disney is the Master of the Universe. Via the Guardian:
It’s an almost cartoon-like demonstration of alpha-capitalism: diversity and differentness mushed together into a great big monopolistic blob. With each acquisition, the stakes get higher, as do the profit-opportunities – and, I predict, the numbers of ass-covering executives who will feel less and less inclined to take risky chances on new and different types of film from new and different types of film-maker.
It also has an impact in the way films are now experienced. Via the Atlantic:
The merger essentially confirms that a new age of entertainment has dawned in Hollywood, one where simply releasing blockbusters in theaters isn’t enough to give a company a healthy profit margin. As my colleague Derek Thompson wrote in 2017, Disney’s acquisition of Fox is its first shot in the ongoing streaming wars—a sign that the company is building an arsenal to take on Netflix and any other tech giant that’s muscling into the entertainment business. Disney is getting ready to launch its own subscription streaming service, Disney+, and the Fox assets will pad out that library nicely.
[…]
Disney and Netflix offer the two clearest visions of Hollywood’s future. The former is a media company that’s as old-fashioned as they come, trying to make movies that will pull audiences en masse to the theater. The latter is a tech company that’s largely uninterested in the theater business but has won subscriber loyalty by offering a wealth of viewing options. As the cinema business continues to evolve, perhaps only the biggest films will survive as in-theater experiences, with streaming becoming an equally profitable venue. By adding Fox, Disney has gained ground in that second sphere, but other studios could get left behind in the race.
It’s not so bad yet. At MIFF this year there was a host of diverse, interesting, small-budget films that were screened to mostly booked/packed film theatres. Festivals like Cannes and Tribeca still celebrate creative filmmaking. But it’s often hard for people to see small films unless they’ve caught them at a festival. Not even the number of hipster cinemas in Melbourne screen everything, only the most acclaimed indie films. Films that won the Palme d’Or and such still do get screened at mainstream cinemas, but for everything else, you can either catch the film at MIFF or wait for it to come out on Netflix.
It’s only going to get worse. R-rated films, for example, don’t fit into the Disney brand. And it’s already having trouble spacing out its content, as now it’s just competing with itself:
Disney is already having trouble spacing out their plethora of films and franchises across the calendar in a manner that will give each of them a fair shot at financial success; Dumbo will release in late March despite being completed in time for a late 2018 spot – it was only pushed back to avoid clashing with Nutcracker & The Four Realms and Mary Poppins Returns. And, generally speaking, Disney doesn’t release all that many movies. In 2019, they’ll only have around nine titles in theaters with major releases (not including Fox properties soon to fall under their umbrella). Compare that to Universal Pictures, who will have 15 titles come out this year, while 20th Century Fox has 13 titles scheduled for release in 2019, including the repeatedly-delayed X-Men: Dark Phoenix and The New Mutants. With that studio about to be consumed by Disney, the release schedule as we know it will be completely revamped. And that probably won’t be a good thing.
[…]
If Disney only has to compete with themselves for box office supremacy, then they have far less incentive to produce more or varied content. The Disney model of content is already one with surprising limitations. After all, this is the studio that has built a decades-long sustainable brand without releasing R-rated movies. These historically came under a different studio name like Touchstone, and so it’s unlikely they will entirely kill such Fox films post-merger, but they perhaps won’t be a priority, particularly if they’re bigger budget efforts such as the Alien movies. James Mangold, director of Logan, was one of many to express concern that the merger would limit such storytelling opportunities since they don’t fit with Disney’s brand.
With a huge share of the market, Disney can now enforce its already unprecedented demands on cinemas:
One way the schedule will be completely changed is in how it will affect movie theaters. Unlike most studios, Disney demands a far larger cut of ticket sales for their films and are also the strictest in terms of the conditions they impose on theaters, both independent and multiplex. For example, Disney demanded a massive 65% cut of domestic ticket sales from Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Typically, studios ask for between 50 – 60%.
Other than new films, Disney has also started block Fox’s backlog of films from second run theatres:
Not a surprise, but Disney's blocking of Fox's backlog of films from second-run/indie theatrical showings has begun. No more Aliens, Die Hard, Planet of the Apes, Butch Cassidy, Big Trouble in Little China, etc. at your local revival house. https://t.co/dt2RQr8i8x
— Bill Mudron (@mudron) August 27, 2019
Looks like the future’s in streaming, a handful of indies, or blockbuster fare — watched in huge cinema chains. Fun.
The Empire Strikes Back
When the Copyright Act was enacted in the USA in 1790, copyright duration was only 14 years, renewable for another term of 14 years if the author was still alive at the end of the first term. The law changed gradually over time, allowing for longer and longer terms, but it was only when copyright on the Mickey Mouse character was set to expire in 1984 that Disney started seriously lobbying in the 70s to have the Copyright Act changed. As such, when I was studying copyright law, we used to not-so-jokingly call it the Mickey Mouse Law — because it worked. According to the Art Law Journal:
In 1976, Congress authorized a major overhaul of the copyright system assuring Disney extended protection. Instead of the maximum of 56 years with extensions, individual authors were granted protection for their life plus an additional 50 years, (which was the norm in Europe). For works authored by corporations, the 1976 legislation also granted a retroactive extension for works published before the new system took effect. The maximum term for already-published works was lengthened from 56 years to 75 years pushing Mickey protection out to 2003. Anything published in 1922 or before was in the public domain. Anything after that may still be under copyright.
With only 5 years left on Mickey Mouse’s copyright term, Congress again changed the duration with the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. This legislation lengthens copyrights for works created on or after January 1, 1978, to “life of the author plus 70 years,” and extends copyrights for corporate works to 95 years from the year of first publication, or 120 years from the year of creation, whichever expires first. That pushed Mickey’s copyright protection out to 2023.
[…]
Not everybody has been happy about these changes due to our inability to use old work to create new artistic works. One author noted that we are “the first generation to deny our own culture to ourselves” since “no work created during your lifetime will, without conscious action by its creator, become available for you to build upon.”
The Empire has until 2023 to figure out how to change the law again — but even if it doesn’t, the copyright that expires is on the original black and white, gloveless iteration of Mickey Mouse as seen in Steamboat Willie. The modern version with the gloves and the red pants expires in 2025 — and Disney will probably still contest the matter with litigation. Disney’s aggressive use of litigation to protect its copyright and its repeated tendency to change American copyright law to suit its own purposes has a damning effect on popular culture and creativity. As the biggest juggernaut remaining in entertainment, its clout has only gotten bigger.
I still look forward to Disney/Pixar/LucasArts/MCU films. I watch many of them on premiere days. I buy the merch, play the games. Yet the more ascendant the company gets, the more depressing the outlook for film and popular culture in general. Massive monopolies like this will only get bigger, more hungry, play safer: we can only hope that something will change. All hail the Mouse.
Ask people what they think about advertising, and chances are, if they’re not in the industry they’d probably answer in the negative. Which, okay, can be well-deserved. Television messaging can be annoying. There’s a reason why adblockers are catching on, why some people prefer to record free-to-air TV so they can fast-forward through ads, why people pay for Spotify Premium to listen to music ad-free. Ads can be incredibly annoying. Worse, Australian TV ads can be extremely strident: there’s nothing that makes me reach more quickly for a TV remote than someone yelling at me through the screen that their carpets are super cheap. Or that annoying Coles jingle about prices being down. Cthulhu curse whoever wrote that jingle — it’s probably stuck in my brain forevermore. Which might be what they were looking for.
The Good
Annoying as ads are to people in general, ask anyone what their favourite ad is and they can probably name something offhand — probably faster than they can name their favourite movie, song, or book — and can probably tell you exactly why it’s their fave as well. That’s because ads are really very short films that can be cut down into 15, 30, or 60 second versions, and as with any short film, they can be extremely effective if they convey the right story, with the right script, in the right way. Think of a tv ad not as a piece of moving newspaper print, but as a very small film that must convey a certain message to your preferred audience, in a way that will stick in their mind, and that hopefully won’t put them off your brand.
It doesn’t have to follow basic story structures, and given the time constraints, it likely won’t. With that in mind, conceptual ads with no traditional storylines, no traditionally spoken scripts, but with a great song and imagery will also work. This is my all-time favourite ad, Discovery Channel’s “I Love the Whole World”:
As a piece of advertising, it works. The song is catchy, the imagery is amazing. Running at a minute long, the ad doesn’t cut down that well (though it’s possible), and only a channel like Discovery could make an ad like this without running into massive costs. That being said, it’s a perfect message — in this case, a great song — that runs through the whole ad, tying every popular Discovery show at the time together. It’s extremely shareable, people will watch it through to the end, and possibly rewatch it again on their own.
One great piece of advertising last year was Tourism Australia’s Superbowl ad, which ran originally as a “film trailer” for a new Crocodile Dundee movie:
Whoever had this genius idea in the pitch should be given all the awards. The cat was quickly out of the bag after wild speculation on the internet (also, isn’t Russell Crowe a New Zealander?). The actual, self-aware commercial:
The cost of using Australia’s most popular stars aside, the ad worked. It was a hilarious piece of guerilla marketing that showed off what it was meant to show off — the Australian landscape — and promoted it as a holiday destination. Even the “real” ad worked, if only because of Chris Hemsworth’s gift for comedic timing. Even the cringey salesy thing Chris says about how there’s cheap flights to Australia. Comedy tends to stick in the brain, which is why this low (not counting Ricky Gervais’ fee) budget ad for Optus/Netflix works so well:
Optus could’ve shelled out for a flashy ad using film clips, but this — this was so much better. It’s funny. People shared it, often calling it the greatest commercial they’d ever seen. Follow-ons were quickly filmed once Optus saw how well it worked. I do hope Ricky did get paid a “shedload” of money — him and whoever thought of this ad. It’s a prime example of how great “television messaging” often just needs to be a fantastic concept brought across to the audience with great execution. It does not need to be salesy (and if it does, get Chris Hemsworth to do it.)
Or a dog, with this great “Unskippable” GEICO ad that shows you don’t need star power to make an incredible ad:
Made specifically for YouTube pre-roll, the whole point of the GEICO ad was to stop people from skipping past it: with the whole message of the ad in the first 15 seconds and a payoff being an entire minute of the huge dog eating spaghetti. It’s a hilarious ad that quickly went viral, with some people saying they’d intentionally watched it over ten times (see the comments in that video). Again, the concept was the key to people liking and watching the ad to the end, a concept that was translated across a series of different ads.
There was also this hilarious “Your Man” Canadian breast cancer exam awareness ad, which quickly went viral:
Designed by agency john st., the ad, which features a variety of attractive topless men in the hopes of raising more awareness about self-conducted breast examinations, quickly went viral. The Your Man health app was downloaded over 38,000 times. Again, this app had the right message, with the right context, with the right production for the right audience.
For a simple message that just works, there’s also this incredible American gun-control ad:
The ad asks its salient question at the end: “Guns have changed, why shouldn’t your gun laws?” The delivery was fantastic, the concept great, the message simple and powerful. It’s memorable. It works. That’s television messaging at its simplest and finest.
The Bad, and the Ugly
Sometimes an ad annoys me so much that I make a mental note to never buy from it again. There have been a few over the years. Remember that terrible “beach-ready” controversial weight-loss ad by Protein World? Or the racist Dolce & Gabbana campaign? Brands often apologise afterwards, but the damage would’ve been done — particularly for D&G, which lost a huge part of its target market. Bad messaging no longer works. It’s no longer true in this day and age that any attention is good attention. At worst, it can permanently damage your brand.
Terrible messaging aside, there have been ads which weren’t controversial but which still annoyed me enough to add it to my mental blacklist. Like this one, by Clemenger for Perfect Italiano:
My Gods, it’s so annoying. I think this ad was what got me into the habit of muting ads on Australian broadcast tv. The brand bought a lot of ad space Channel Ten in between Masterchef Australia. I used to buy Perfect Italiano cheese before the ad, but now I stick to its competitors wherever possible. There was nothing particularly wrong with the messaging, but the sheer smarminess of the ad rubbed me the wrong way. There was just something weirdly offputting and condescending to me about the so-called “perfect man” in the ad. In comparison, Perfect Italiano’s Gordon Ramsay ad was hilarious:
A more empowering ad that focused on the number of chores that are often designated “women’s work” around the house, it also had a simpler message: perfect Italian meals, no celebrity chef required. It’s too late, though. The one bad ad from 2010 has already moved me to Mil Lel.
Television Messaging — Best Practices
Making TV ads is an expensive endeavour: if only because of the media buy. If you don’t have good television messaging, then you might have just wasted your money. Any message is going to have to have a great concept, fit into your brand’s overarching strategy, and preferably conform to meeting your pre-designated key performance indicators (KPIs). Some things to keep in mind:
- Be respectful. Nowadays bad controversy that leans into racism/sexism/ablelism/etc will not help your brand.
- Have a strategy. That includes having clear KPIs. What are you trying to get out of the ad?
- Be realistic. Unless you’re very lucky, an ad will not push your brand to the forefront of your market overnight.
- Spread your media buy. Don’t just blow it all on TV — there’s also YouTube pre-rolls, Instagram ads and more, all of which might be relevant to your target audience and product.
- Be inclusive. It’s not the 90s anymore.
- Have a good concept. A mere tagline won’t work. Great ads are memorable the way great short films are memorable: they’re punchy, resonate in some way with people, and are well-made.
Any questions? Get in touch.
I stopped watching free-to-air TV long before Netflix even became a thing. It wasn’t just the ads. Other than Masterchef Australia, of which I remain a largely indifferent fan nowadays, there hasn’t really been much on Australian free-to-air TV that grabbed me. I’m not the only one: I don’t actually know anyone my age or younger who watches free-to-air TV. Hell, even my parents don’t watch TV — they have Netflix and ESPN. That being said, I’m keenly aware that I’m in the city-living, hipster, treehugger, brunch-eating, NBN-adjacent, young demographic. When you’re internet savvy and have a decent connection why would you even need television? The news? You can read that up over a bunch of different news organisations if you want to avoid Murdoch bias. Entertainment? You can stream or download that. Sport (namely, the football World Cup) is probably the only reason I might watch TV, and even then, that’s often not free-to-air nowadays.
An ageing audience and the rise of streaming services like Netflix has resulted in a “demographic time bomb”. Via the Sydney Morning Herald:
It’s only the rusted-on 50+ demographic which is keeping the figures from going into total freefall. The 18 to 35 demographic – the next generation of seniors – is looking for entertainment elsewhere. In the first quarter of 2017, Australians watched an average of 79 hours and 30 minutes of broadcast television on in-home TV sets each month – a 7% drop on the same time last year. This decline is accelerating, as the 2016 figure was only a 5% drop on 2015.
The 18-35 demographic is switching off broadcast television faster than ever, and chances are they won’t magically switch back to traditional channels as they get older. After all, it’s not like we’re going to abruptly forget how to login to our Netflix accounts. That being said, according to the Nielsen report compiled for Screen Australia, while broadcast TV is declining, it is still the king of content overall by a long mile compared to video-on-demand (VOD) stuff like Netflix and YouTube:
It also turns out that the “people I know” measure isn’t a great one overall. Surprise! People in the younger demographics do still watch broadcast TV (what the hell are they watching?), and even if they do watch more on-demand stuff, chances are a large number of them watch both — just that they likely watch more VOD than the other.
In other words — while broadcast TV is starting to die a slow death for the younger demographic, things aren’t as bad as they might seem. People do still watch broadcast television. Which means that if you have the budget for it, advertising on TV should still be a relevant strategic consideration.
Isn’t making a television ad bloody expensive?
Well yes. And no. As with everything in marketing, it depends on what you’re setting out to make. Is it a big, splashy, weirdly arty ad? Case in point: almost every car/perfume ad ever, like so:
That’s the full ad, made for YouTube and social media. There are shorter cuts for broadcast TV. That’s the thing that annoys us about “TV or not?” discussions. It isn’t one or the other. If you have a good piece of film content, designed to work both in full and in short cuts, it’ll be fine expressed through multiple touchpoints — not just in broadcast TVC 15s/30s/etc formats but in however long you want online. Great content has further use as stills, as background images for print and digital ads.
Film doesn’t have to be expensive either to work. Dollar Shave Club’s viral ad (over 20mil views on YouTube) reportedly only cost $4,500 to make:
Nosh 404, about a restaurant-rating app, was produced for about $300, and racked up over 600k views:
In many ways, you do get what you pay for. If you’re not willing to shell out money for quality, you can often end up with a dinky ad that’s a waste of everyone’s time. As with any piece of media, in a TV ad you need to be:
- Clear about what you want to do: drive people to a particular product? Raise awareness?
- Clear about the people you want to reach
- Have realistic expectations/KPIs
- Take some risks
- Do some research
A good team can make a budget go a long way. Just don’t expect miracles (and get angry when you don’t get them). At Starship, we try to be as transparent as possible with clients what they’ll get out of a budget when we quote. You’ll know where your money’s going.
What about the media buy?
Media buy is definitely going to be a large part of your budget. Regardless of whether you have a large budget, being tactical about how you spend it is the best way to maximise it. Yes, advertising on free-to-air/broadcast television is going to cost you. You can, however, consider:
- Geographic limitations: is this just a regional product? Do you really need to go national?
- Time limitations: does it really need to air during prime time?
- Television or cinema or both: consider cinema pre-rolls
- Social media: consider pre-roll ads on YouTube or short clips over Instagram etc.
- Consider how many times to run your ad.
- Target interest by show. Do you have a product that would pair better with Survivor? My Kitchen Rules? Bondi Vet?
These are just some tips you should keep in mind when considering your buy. Naturally, any agency you pick would have more recommendations. Agencies will often also have contacts within the media buy industry and/or at local stations. We often help clients negotiate packages where possible so that they can get the sort of visibility they need. Agencies like us can also often help clients buy “distressed space”, aka ad slots that have to go but haven’t yet been filled so they’re sold for cheap.
In Short
Despite what you may have heard, television advertising remains a highly influential medium. It may not always work for what you intend to do, depending on your brand or product, but when it fits and is managed as part of your overarching brand strategy, it can reach and resonate with a huge audience. The content you make will often also work across digital platforms – it doesn’t have to be one or the other. So the next time someone tells you that tv advertising is old-fashioned and a waste of time… they probably haven’t seen the stats. Want to know more? Get in touch.
Recently a UK leggings brand called Kukubird gained some notoriety over the local news/internet in Singapore. If you’ve ever lived in Southeast Asia and you’re familiar with the local argot, or if you understand Cantonese, you’re probably already laughing. If you didn’t, well. “Kuku” is part of the Cantonese slang term for male genitalia, and in Southeast Asia, “kukubird” is slang for the same thing. Fun thing for a brand to start trending for, isn’t it? The thing is, I don’t even blame the UK brand/the agency that branded them, though they probably should’ve checked Urbandictionary.
This is probably not how the leggings brand wanted to gain traction in Asia. After the news broke, there was some slight attempt at damage control:
so @shvvani DM-ed kukubird uk to ask about their name pic.twitter.com/pkuBNOpZuO
— Sebastian Su (@Sebastian_su) August 16, 2019
TBH, we really doubt they picked the branding on purpose knowing what it meant. After all, local slang aside, Cantonese is spoken by 60 million people in China alone. That’s more than the total population of Singapore, Malaysia, and Australia combined. We recommend that they rebrand, but that’s just us. In any case, terrible and avoidable branding accidents aside, it is possible to gain traction quickly for your brand.
How to Build
A contemporary, consistent brand suite will definitely help to bring your brand together around consistent visuals and consistent messaging. Having a strong brand will help you put your best foot forward in a likely crowded marketplace. Word of advice here – use a pro. Don’t do the in-house thing with Comic Sans and dropshadow – not unless you know what you’re doing.
Where to Build
Building a brand is about building a consistent strategy that grants your brand increased visibility with the right audience, while driving this audience toward a certain goal. More purchases? More donations? More people asking for quotes or going to a place? Whatever your goal is, here are some of the usual touchpoints where brand visibility is built:
- TV: Television is not a dead medium, despite what you’ve heard: but a national TV campaign will be expensive.
- Digital Presence: Having a website is necessary. Having social media depends on your brand, though we recommend it. Responsiveness is key.
- Digital Campaign: Influencers, ads, Google AdWords? Nowadays, you might need to pony up if you want a visible online presence.
- Print: It may suit your brand to run print ads in both traditional mediums (like newspapers and direct mail drops) or something news.
- Outdoor: Billboards? Bus stop shelters? Blanket Southern Cross Station with advertising for a week? All these can be ways of raising awareness for your brand.
- Installations, Pop Ups, Hand-outs: All great ways to push certain kinds of products – esp FMCGs.
- PR: Sponsored content and other forms of PR can be key to pushing new products.
- Other: Publicity stunts, guerilla advertising and more.
Building Your Brand Quickly by Breaking the Bank
In a perfect universe, if you do have a huge war chest to spend on marketing and advertising, it’s easier to build your brand quickly online and offline. Film a great ad. Add someone like Keanu Reeves, or some equivalent A-lister with the capacity to make the things they star in quickly go viral. Carpet bomb your target audience with localised advertising across online and offline touchpoints. Buy a Superbowl ad. Buy product placement in a Marvel film. Pre-roll your ad in the expensive just-before-the-film bracket for blockbusters. Have a funny brand activation in real life. Buy sponsored content in the news. Hire celebrity influencers. Buy out Adwords on Google for your industry and for your rival brands. Do PR, get reviews on magazines related to your brand. The list goes on.
Sadly, we don’t live in a perfect universe, and the morning news reminds me of this every day. If you can’t do all of the above, but you still have a huge war chest, spending it on carefully considered media designed to appeal to your audience does work. A well-known example is the Old Spice “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” series, which reputedly had a media spend in the millions but which rapidly went viral, becoming one of the fastest-growing video campaigns of all time and revamping the brand in users’ eyes.
Old Spice already did enjoy some viral success with its earlier ads involving Terry Crews and weird CGI, but with the Isaiah series above, the brand took off. Viral success is, however, a matter of luck — rather than creating campaigns that are so-called “made for viral”, it’s better to have an intriguing concept AND a good strategy behind it. If the ad goes viral in a way that doesn’t advance your KPIs… it might not have gone viral in a good way.
Going Viral in a Bad Way?
Oh, you’ve seen it. #KimOhNo is only the latest. We have so many stories. Basically, be careful about what you say in your advertising and how you show it. And always be respectful. It’s not a question of being PC (God, we hate that term), it’s good business. If you piss off people so much that your competitors’ brands get a lot of free traffic and advertising from angry people, you’ve just shot yourself in the foot.
No Money? No problem… Sort of
What if you don’t have the money? A smaller budget means having to be more tactical about strategy. Or you could just get lucky. One of the more eye-catching launches of last year was the Lion’s Share, which had none other than Sir David Attenborough himself, who reportedly offered to be part of the campaign:
With the ad by Clemenger Melbourne BBDO, the concept behind the Lion’s Share came from a “eureka” moment for the founder. Via Mumbrella:
Late last year, Christopher Nelius was watching TV when he had something of a eureka moment – and promptly rushed into his colleague Robert Galluzzo’s office to get it off his chest. Animals, he explained, don’t get paid to appear in ads. And in a world where up to 10,000 species are facing extinction every year, with precious little funding to stop it, those appearance fees could be a life-saving revenue stream. “I think you’re onto something,” agreed Galluzzo.
Nelius and Galluzzo helm Sydney-based production company Finch and after a few days’ thought, settled on the proposal that 0.5% of all media spend from campaigns staring animals should be donated to help conservation causes. The pair told friends and then friends of friends in the industry until Andrew Clarke, then global CMO of Mars, promised the confectionary giant would back their proposal but only if they could persuade the United Nations to get involved. “So I wrote to this guy at the UN,” says Galluzzo, talking in a giddy rush on the phone, “and told him I’ve got this idea that will change the world. But I need one hour in person with them.”
And then things went a bit Hollywood. Incredibly, the UN emailed back. Could the pair come to New York next week to pitch it, they asked? They hopped on a plane, made their case, it got approved and then things moved quicker then they could scarcely believe. They were invited to Cannes. The Economist signed up. Clemenger BBDO Melbourne helped turn it into a proper campaign. And then Sir David Attenborough offered to be the frontman. Fast-forward to the end of 2018, and the campaign is already lining up to purchase land, including a jaguar corridor in Belize; Elephant paths in Kenya; and orangutan and tiger habitats in Sumatra.
A great ad doesn’t have to be expensive. One of Nike’s most famous ads is pretty much just a guy jogging down a road:
Or even this New York Times ad:
But those were already extremely well-known brands, you might be saying. Is there an example of cheap TV done effectively for a new or lesser-known brand? Yes there is: Mount Pearl, a tiny Canadian town, recently released an ad that went quickly viral, as it was a hilarious and slightly unscripted rap video:
Lower budget? Completely improvised? That’s when things start getting difficult. We’d say it’d require a very particular sort of product, and it’d very likely need humour, like in this viral cat shelter video shot over 30 minutes that had adoption inquiries jump by 25% after it went viral:
There was also that whole ice bucket challenge thing… remember that? So, yes. If you’re tactical about messaging, approach, and strategy, you can still have a winner on your hands. Some things are definitely easier to market than others – given a choice between making an ad for a cat shelter or an ad for computer cables I’d know what I’ll pick (NOTE: if you do need an ad for computer cables, we are completely happy to work with you).
Some Quick Tips For Building Your Brand
- Have your KPIs in mind (key goals).
- Decide on a budget.
- Have a target audience.
- Think about which platforms are likely to work for your audience.
Want to know more? Or are you a leggings company that might be looking for a new brand name? Get in touch.
I’m in my mid-30s, which means I’m a millennial. Before I buy any product, I look up reviews. Competing brands. Lists such as ‘Best wireless headphones of 2019’ or even ‘Best robot vacuum cleaner’. I’ll often go for a known brand, but if I see a lesser-known brand with good reviews or placed on rec lists, I’d definitely consider it. As with many people in my generation, I don’t particularly feel loyal to any brands. If a lesser-known brand makes a better product, I’ll try it. This doesn’t always work so well — I’ve definitely bought the occasional dud — but as a whole, small brands have a fair go where I’m concerned. As long as they have some level of visibility.
In the age of Amazon and the global marketplace, brands can more easily carve out a niche of their own when they have to. They also face competition from all other online-savvy brands across the globe, all of whom would be offering about the same thing. You’d have to be able to stand out in the global marketplace, and deal with people willing to jump brands to similar alternatives at the drop of a hat. In this day and age, competing with everyone else can feel overwhelming. There are, however, ways for any business to have a workable marketing strategy even on a small business’ often shoestring budget.
Small Businesses and the Reason for Being
We always ask any business that comes to us for advertising / marketing work what their reason for existing is. Is it because your product is cheaper? Made ethically? Made in Australia? Recyclable? Do you support charities or a cause? Not every business has to have an easily-voiced reason for being, but having one that is laudable will make it simpler for you to stand out in your marketplace. People nowadays like to pick brands that align to their principles and lifestyles. Besides, why contribute to the recycling crisis in Australia if you don’t have to? Being seen as a more “green”, or more “ethical” company doesn’t drop you in the back of a hipster shop in South Melbourne nowadays.
If you have absolutely no reason for being — or can’t figure it out by yourself — get in touch. We’re always happy to consult with customers and help them find their place in the market. Chances are, however, you have some inkling. Why did you go through all the trouble of setting up your business in the first place? You must have seen some niche that you could fill. Amplify that, adjust, and put out the word. Unless whatever you’re doing is so wildly different that you have no competition, you’re going to need to be different. Especially if you can’t fork out the cash for a splashy launch or ongoing visibility marketing.
Small Budget Marketing and Other Stories
‘Traditional’ advertising is kind of a funny term nowadays. Technically, it refers to things like TV advertising, radio, outdoor (billboards etc) advertising and such. Fun as these things are to create, we recognise that our clients usually need some degree of digital advertising — depending on their product or service and the message they want to get out. The type of advertising or marketing you use is going to depend on your target audience and on your budget. The fact remains that a lot of businesses — big and medium — have a small budget for marketing and advertising. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, businesses that do less than $5 mil a year in sales and that have a net profit margin of around 10-12% should be doing about 7-8% of their gross revenue in marketing. Naturally, this varies by industry. Via Deloitte:
Consumer packaged goods spend the most on marketing percentage-wise:
This isn’t a big surprise, particularly for FMCG. If you’re a brand in this category, you likely already know how important it is to have up-to-date packaging, multiple touchpoints, and an active presence online and offline where people can be exposed to the existence of your products. Even brands that have a seemingly out there concept (coffee skincare anyone?) can, with a robust online presence, become a viral brand. Via CoreDNA:
Franky Body’s founders Jess Hatzis and Bree Johnson started this unique beauty brand when Johnson’s husband and co-founder of the business, Steve Rowley, noticed a number of female customers at his Melbourne-based cafes asking for the leftover coffee grounds to use as an exfoliator. With a small investment of $5,000, they created a single product, their coffee body scrub, and started to sell it on social media platforms – with no marketing budget.
Here’s what has happened since their launch in 2013…
They’ve grown an Instagram following in excess of 690,000 followers
Their website attracts over 80,000 visits a month (Similar Web)
Their branded hashtag strategy has generated over 100,000 user images
They’ve sold over 2 million body scrubs in 149 different countries
They cracked yearly revenue of over $20 million in 2017
You don’t have to be a cool new hipster skincare brand to go viral like this. And as you can see, the initial investment doesn’t need to burn up your budget. Frank Body began by identifying a nice market (Millennials and Gen Zs) and creating a very particular product (coffee-based ethical body scrub). They created memorable copy and products that their audience could identify with, and branding / an online presence that fit with their audience’s lifestyle.
They also created two hashtags for their audiences to tag themselves with (#letsbefrank and #thefrankeffect), incentivising people to use the tags with prizes. Their content doesn’t change much in terms of image choice and messaging. In other words, they’ve been successful with a small budget because they’ve been smart about how the budget has been used. They’ve had a clear focus, a clear market, and a clear strategy that they stuck to.
Don’t Panic
One of the worst things you can do when running a campaign — especially a small campaign — is to panic. Traction will take time to pick up. While you should have processes for testing, for identifying problems, and for adjusting to any problems that might crop up, throwing the strategy to the ground and running around like a headless chook if the results aren’t what you’re looking for will only hurt your cause. Some things that people do when they panic:
+ Changing the goalposts / KPIs halfway through a campaign: this will just waste the money you’ve already put into the campaign.
+ Suddenly overhauling all creative: this will be jarring to your competitor. Barring an issue with the creative (an error? it was insensitive?), stick to your guns.
+ Stapling on stopgap measures that can often make things worse.
Want to know more? Get in touch.
I’m at a Networx function, sipping a beer and chatting with Frank Chamberlain, who writes for this esteemed publication regularly. We’re talking about the pitfalls of penning a piece without a decent brief, when I notice to my right a woman who is staring at me.
Being a well-brought-up boy, I put my hand out and we introduce ourselves. As soon as our names have been exchanged she asks me ‘What do you do?’. (I’d never start off with that question.) I say ‘I’m not sure, it depends what the time is and where I am’. She blinks, like I’ve kicked her in the shins. Then asks me ‘What does Starship do?’ (I’m wearing a name tag, much as I hate them.) I say ‘We’re an advertising agency’. She says ‘That’s it?’
So I stupidly play her game. I ask her this, which is a big mistake. “What does XXXX do?” (She has the name of a big headhunting firm on her lapel. Of course I know them.) She says “You don’t know? We’re a recruitment firm!” I say (third mistake) “Oh, I see”. She asks aggressively “What do you mean by that?” I know what I want to say but hesitate, searching for the right word.
“I’ve always found personnel people to be, ahhh, what’s the term? (I desperately think of plays, Oscar Wilde……) A bit earnest…’
“Earnest. You think I’m earnest?” (whites of eyes showing). “Would you say that if you knew I was the new marketing manager?” She says like she means “Hey, I’ve got a big budget and you better be nice to me, because all you ad guys want it.” And she storms off because I’ve been so offensive. Not exactly a new situation for me.
I didn’t mean to be rude, but there you go, in her mind, it’s obviously a major sin to not take yourself seriously.
Frank smiles, shrugs his shoulders. I sip another beer and wonder why people think their careers so matter so much, instead of just trying to enjoy themselves for their own sake. Why they literally live their job. So with the intention of making damn sure you know why you’re doing what you’re doing instead of selling drugs, bad legal advice or second hand houses, below I’ve cobbled together a list of the ‘professions’ (I use the term lightly) you could have done instead and why you’re better off where you are, in career nirvana.
In order to not appear too discriminatory, I’ve listed them alphabetically. And in case you’re wondering, I’ve interviewed at least one member of each of these professions, to get the running on what’s the real perception from the inside. They’re all very necessary, except perhaps tax lawyers, so I don’t really want to insult their members, but be warned. This is an article which will offend anyone who isn’t a marketer, so don’t show it to your friends unless you’re sick of them.
Accountant
I had to start with the worst one first. Someone who thinks the word conservative means business-like. ‘Personality’ used as a contraceptive. People who make bankers look exciting. A profession filled with people who are so money-oriented they studied how to track it. And look backwards? They spend their life with their eyes firmly locked on the rear vision mirror. Accountants don’t know how to generate money, only know how to find where it’s gone. Even then they have the cheek to think they can manage businesses because they read Balance Sheets all day. That’s like a traffic speeding cop telling you because he sees people go fast all the time he’s by definition a good driver. The accountant is the enemy of the marketer, in the same way the pet door is the enemy of the fat cat. Something to squeeze past on the way to a good time.
Architect
7 years studying how to create unique living environments, 3-dimensional art, getting the physics, engineering, dimensions exactly right for a nirvana space where people can just ‘be’ in a pleasant existence, only to be told by a pimply kid doing work experience at the local Council they won’t approve it.
Artist
Yes, you get to drink and take drugs all day, slap some crap on the wall and make out you’re brilliant. The madder it is, the better you are. But if you ain’t into flagrant self-promotion, you starve.
Banker
See accountant, assume they have all the money and want all of it back, with interest. Plus want to charge you mega bucks for doing anything complex, like taking your own money out of your account. Then recognise that’s the good ones.
Builder
To be told what colour tiles, where they want the stove, why the window has to be double-glazed all day long, drives builders nuts. A good honest profession where you can clearly see what you’ve achieved in a day has its merits, but with many a downside too.
Chemist
Scores well on the public trust factor (we’d be pretty stuffed if they didn’t – imagine going to the chemist for Disprin and getting Heroine) but as boring as bat shit for the chemist themselves. Yes, you do get to meet lots of people who wander in the door, but the same four walls, day in day out? The same piece of carpet to stand on while you dish out the pills? No wonder lots of chemists start to tickle the till. Wouldn’t you take a sniff of something to make your day more interesting?
Chiropractor
Saving people from pain is a noble calling. But because the doctors and physios see them as a threat, Chiro’s are relegated to a position close to tarot card readers by many of the more conservative public. And this after 7 to 10 years of intense training. I ask you?
Dentist
Spend your time looking down people’s mouths all day, squinting, trying to see what’s going wrong behind a back molar. When the buggers have had garlic sausages for lunch…. And almost everyone you talk to can’t talk back (a mouth-full of instruments and suction tubes). No wonder they are all nutty. Nice people, overqualified, overpaid, but generally, quite mad.
Doctor
Take some of the highest I.Q people in the country, have their parents push them into a high paying job that will come in handy when Mum and Dad are old. And it’s great to brag about to friends ‘Yes, John’s doing medicine at Melbourne’. Then stick them in tiny rooms, with bad light, get them to see lonely little old ladies all day. Doling out aspirins. Pay them shit per person, so they have to race through their diagnoses. What a waste. The smartest people in the country operating as distribution systems for chemical companies. Bored out of their minds. We’d be better off to train nurses to go on those diagnoses web sites and get the Doctors doing something better with their time.
Engineer
I could be an engineer. You get to invent things, design things, improve things. They are invariably decent people. Virtually un-recognised in Australia, this is a career that has merit and deserves respect. But gets bugger-all salary unless you’re at the very top. Also involves a lot of study in your chosen area and that could be tricky for a dummy like me.
General Manager
We need them. Many of us are doing their job already without knowing it. The work is as varied as Paris’s love life and you can control the lives of all around you, so it has a lot of plusses. But the down-side is a lack of focus, a lack of expertise and the sad fact that accountants often think they should be in this key role of business without any ability in the calling at all. General Managers vary incredibly in quality. They can be the worst entrepreneurs or the best. The worst marketers, or the best. There’s not enough training being undertaken at graduate level. I think most MBA’s should be spending their time doing General Management, instead of wanting to be experts at something. You could move to GM, many marketers do. But you’d spend a lot of time doing accounting or buying widgets, which you may not like.
Head Hunter
Called Slave Traders, Meat Marketers or worse behind their backs, and treated very politely to their faces, ‘cause head hunters can tip you into a good possie, or ruin your chances for one, many personnel operators can’t help taking life way too seriously. If you spent all day weighing people up or selling through your ability to sum people up, either way, you get judgemental and start not to see the funny side of anything. Especially when you’re trained up to the eye-balls, in what people who have no idea think is business ‘best practice’. I know head hunters who couldn’t laugh at their own funeral. There are some talented marketers trapped in headhunting companies, but they do bugger-all marketing, really. The bosses don’t believe in spending money and what do you say about a product (people) that obviously is always different, and when it goes wrong, it’s never your fault, but you have to wear it? Would you want to be one?
Journalist
Here you have highly entertaining, intelligent people. Interesting folk, drinking themselves to sleep because some bastards a hundred years ago allowed what is arguably Australia’s most powerful profession to be subjugated by rogue robber barons. Now there are only three or four sizable employers, so (outside of the specialist magazines and podcasting) you have few options and an awful union/class-based system under which to work. One decent, but despondent place is the ABC, where because it‘s starved of funds and not listened to by the public, you only earn a pittance as a journo. The rest, (while some are great organizations, with fantastic people working with you) ruin your career and your headspace. Many of these places force their main asset to sully itself like an old man shitting himself on the bus. Due to the need to attract audience numbers, they get involved in fostering plain bad entertainment (Big Brother, Biggest Loser) And what about the shoddy shock and sensationalistic pseudo-journalism that passes for news from News Ltd? The profession you study/enter, if you have the highest of moral drivers, is often the business you work in with the lowest morals of the lot. Irony? No wonder they drink.
Lawyer
While they may spend their time making up laws and hence control our lives and the rule this country, lawyers do so with a smug belief that they, and they alone, know what’s right. And they spend most of their time in battles with other lawyers. They can’t both be right. Usually, the kid at school who didn’t win the fights, they now fight all the time, as dictated by the adversarial system under which they operate. When they are uncertain if they’ll win, they go out and find more rules, often delving back centuries. And they out-right lie. Yep, they make good money, but have to struggle through a traction-like professional system; spending years as slaves to the partners. We as marketers have it one up on the lawyers in another respect too. The law is controlled by public opinion in the main, particularly legislation. And we can control public opinion.
Nurse
My heart goes out to the nurses, under-paid, caring, close as you can get to we sticky humans and they do it all the time, day and night, anything you can imagine, they have to do. With gusto and determination and pride. And our system ignores them. Treats them like second-class medical staff. Along with their even more down-trodden assistants, they are undermanned, under-appreciated and under-resourced. The system is overburdened, their lives are drenched with forms, the tedium is palpable and through all that Nurses have to be absolutely exacting in their delivery of medicines and co-ordinated like a machine to save lives. They are exhausted, depressed and leaving in droves. Would you want to be a nurse?
Physiotherapist
Close to nurses are physios. Less stressed and a great career if you like spending time helping people. Can live anywhere if you speak the language. Get to mix with sports stars. You’d have to like touching people I guess, (that rules out most of the lawyers) but generally, I can’t really knock being a physio.
Pilot
Can you imagine spending more than 10 years paying a fortune to fly and taking all sorts of exams? Being responsible for the lives of hundreds of people? But there’s a lot of up-side. Travel all over the world, have great accommodation. Get to wear snappy suits and a cap, whacko! Set up a spouse in several cities. Party yourself stupid for days at a time in exotic locations and go on holiday almost free. But with auto-pilot, between taking off and landing, you are bored to tears. You have to work for some real bastards, it gets highly political in the admin side, and the pressure not to fuck up (ie. smack into a mountain and kill the lot) is something you and I will never know.
Politician
The most sucked up to is also the most hated. I challenge you to think of any role more derisive. The pollies separate us. Tear at our psyche and our belief in truth and fairness. They cause great rifts in our society and do so for personal gain. But that power is at a terrible cost. Think how you’d feel being Kevin Rudd or Peter Garret at a Liberal convention? You are under people’s skin; changing the very fabric of their existence, on the one hand doing good for a few, on the other tipping the balance the wrong way for some others. Pollies are treated like Gods, but would you want to stand in a line and agree with stuff you didn’t for the good of the party? And invariably once you’re with a party, you’re with them the whole way. A marketer could do well to join. God knows they need better marketing of some pressing issues. But would you still be a marketer, or could you say they are all, already marketers?
Priest
I’ve listed the profession Priest to cover any religious role. I had many years of being indoctrinated by them. Nice people, but full of shit. Sell something I had no confidence in? I’d rather sell tobacco; at least you know for sure it’s certain death.
Public servant
Closely reined in by the politicians is their arch-nemesis, the servant of the public. Unelected, brimming with ultimate power and usually stuffed full of brains, the bureaucrats are an interesting bunch. Sometimes actually paid quite well, they must struggle through a system that would kill you of tedium, but thankfully awards profile, like ours does. Always being asked to fix something by everyone you meet, (like a doctor for our society, some are asked to fix a culture issue, others asked to fix the roads) many of my public servant friends invent other jobs on social occasions; a medico, a bikie drug smuggler, occasionally a Jedi Knight.
Real estate agent
Spend your days showing people through houses. Yes, you get to drive snappy cars and wear nice suits, but that’s it for the fun aspect.
Stock broker
Selling second-hand shares is slightly more fun than second-hand houses, as you can promise great returns and you can knock up all sorts of statistics to make it seem like you’re not really gambling. And you can sell one lot of shares to another of your own clients if turnover looks a bit iffy this month. And did I mention the nice suits and boozy lunches?
Teacher
You get good holidays. But could you stand there, spending days at a time trying to keep unruly, badly brought up kids quiet while you try to get them to absorb something they don’t appreciate, no matter how vital it might be for the rest of their lives? And get paid shit money for it? I’d rather jump.
Vet
Deserve sincere praise for what they do to look after those in our community who can’t look after themselves and can’t explain how they feel. I respect the specialists – horse, dogs, cattle etc. But I question the expertise of the general vet. I doubt the ability of anyone to be able to know much about a wide range of animals (birds, fish, lizards, cats?) when we can’t find decent generalist doctors for people who are much good, and we’re only one species. How much would a vet in Brighton really know about Gangrene in Galahs or Guatemalan Geckos? So you’re giving advice on something you know nothing about, much of the time. Sounds like a lawyer telling you about advertising.
Zoo keeper
See vet, assume almost no income. Dress up in a natty Steve outfit and perform like a trained seal for the public most days of the week. Glamour? I’d like to be the keeper of the eagles, or the panthers, for a week-end.
Marketers
What is good about being a marketer, you already know. The variety, the power, the pay, the intellectual interest, the moving sea of challenge living inside a competitive chess–game. But we have an image problem. We are not treated with the same respect as many of the above professions. Doctors, lawyers, pilots, engineers (the list goes on and on) all rank above us in public opinion, public respect. And we spend our waking hours in charge of public opinion. It’s beyond a joke.
Our profession must start to stake its claim as a complex balance of science, art, competition and calibre. I’m sick to death of being in the one profession that has absolutely no respect for itself. We have no visible promotional efforts made by our leadership. There are no CPA, AMA, ADA, Master Builders promotional campaigns going on for us. No TV ads. No public relations effort. No real public pride-building done for we humble Marketers. I beg you AMI, ASMI, AMSRS, DMA, fix it. One of you, please fix it. Or get together like grown-ups and do it jointly, but fix it.
Make us not just personally proud of what we do (many of us can only brag to head hunters and pissed colleagues) but please make us acknowledged for what we do, by our public. I’d be more than happy to contribute to the campaign.
Even the Free to Air TV stations run their own promotions. Why can’t we? Couldn’t we lean on the media? Surely they owe us something, we’re the bloody decision-makers, aren’t we?
Article originally published with Marketing Magazine. Updated August 2019.