Surviving, Even Thriving, in the Era of Consumer Control.
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Todd Copilevitz is the least-likely guy you'd ever find working in advertising. A hard-nosed journalist for more than a decade, he began his interactive career as a syndicated columnist for The Dallas Morning News. With the launch of Dallasnews.com he got the bright idea to launch himself into the Internet.
For more than a decade he's been championing the critical role of content in online marketing. His innovative strategy of blending marketing messages with consumer dialogue has led to ground-breaking work for Nokia, The Home Depot, Hyundai, The Marine Corps, Dr Pepper/Seven Up and AT&T.
Blogs and social networking have been part of the mix for Todd's clients since 2001. In fact they form the cornerstone of his conviction that the future of marketing is in content that consumers want to receive, and not just blasting them with messages. Download Todd's resume Todd on LinkedIn Contact Todd
[by Todd] I don't know what's funnier, Jack Nicholson defending the arrogance of creatives, or the thought of Jack Nicholson actually being a creative. I'd look forward to sitting through those reviews.
I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for bigger logos. And you curse the art directors. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know; that the size of the logo, while tragic, doesn't sell product. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, sells product!
Either way, somewhere there's a client that's damn lucky to have whomever wrote this working on their business.
[by Todd] 3 a.m., Times Square -- Never in my wildest professional daydreams would I have pictured this. (And believe me, I can conjure up some amazing daydreams.) Here I am in the middle of Times Square with a platoon of Marines, producing a new commercial and web site.
Being part of the television production is cool. But that's hardly the thrill. No, I am standing here in awe of my clients' desire to approach marketing in an innovative way that would paralyze most marketing execs.
That's right, I am holding up the United States Marine Corps as a gold-star example of how to market in the 21st century. And if any CMO ever tells you that their company is too conservative to embrace a new way of thinking, point them towards The Few, The Proud.
Let's start with some basics. I work for RMG Connect, which is affiliated with JWT. The United States Marine Corps has been a client of JWT for 60+ years, and that's even though government regulations require that the work goes up for review every four years. RMG Connect handles the direct marketing online and off.
There are a dozen major agencies I know of that split work along these "above and below the lines" tasks. Precious few have figured out why that division should remain on paper only.
Now, consider this marketing challenge.
Your target is the ever elusive 17- to 24-year-old.
Your competition is touting money for college and skills. You? Your offer is 13-weeks of unmitigated pain as a path to the promise "first to fight."
Propensity to enlist is at an all-time low, and the political arena is stacked against you, to put it mildly.
And then there's one more challenge that should send shudders down the spines of anyone who's worked at an agency. Your clients are trained warriors. They are just as likely to be assigned commanding troops in battle, as they are approving creative briefs or wading through segmentation data.
If you ever get such an opportunity, jump, in, as fast as you can.
When it came time to plan a new recruiting campaign there was never a question of whether or not the concepts should have full interactive extensions. The only question was how far out front of the television commercial should the campaign debut online.
And the online elements aren't retooled versions of the TV commercial. Instead the client, expected, and got plans for a web site that stood on its own strategic merits.
While the television crew is following the Silent Drill Platoon across the country, the interactive team is right there, with its own documentary crew. We're talking to Marines, former Marines and average folks about the role of the Corps in today's world.
This is a bold new world for a 231-year-old institution that has held forth that consumers have to earn their way in. Messages were delivered in blunt, typically somber tones. Using the words of others, far outside the chain of command was unheard of. Until now.
Maybe its the Marines ingrained philosophy of adapt, improvise and overcome. Or maybe it is the fact that the command staff in charge of recruiting and advertising aren't burdened with 20 years of building a marketing career by making decisions that won't get you fired.
This morning, under the surreal glow of advertising's mecca, we are filming Marines spinning 10.5 pound rifles. But we're also interviewing a 68-year-old veteran who, though blind, made sure he didn't miss a moment.
We're talking to mothers who have watched their children (boys and girls) grow into Marines, and along the way take their families into lifestyle they never could have imagined, and now would never live without.
And when they're done talking to us, it will all be online for the world to read, copy, and use however it likes. Because the Marines understand that marketing is about a lot more than selling product, or enlistment. It means contributing to the public discourse and respecting the places where your prospects reside.
[by Todd] I admit it, I don't play well with others. <Insert laughing of colleagues, past and present.>
A colleague once told me her underlings feared coming to my brainstorming meetings.
"Your team is brutal. People toss out an idea and immediately everyone is trying to club it like some baby seal."
Bless her heart, it made my day.
Brainstorming is all too often an excuse for a half dozen people to bill time to a job without bringing anything meaningful to the mix. Even worse they want to be coddled for the effort.
If you are in a brainstorming meeting, you damn well better bring your A game. That means having at least one kick ass idea. Further, once you toss out your idea there is no back peddling. You are obliged to defend it in the face of all fire until such time as it succeeds or needs to be buried.
You're sitting in that room because a client believes you have lots of good ideas that will improve their business. Their career is on the line. Weak ideas are going to get them fired. Half-baked, pie-in-the-sky crap will get them flushed out of a career. If you don't feel the urgency then you have no business at the table.
So for those who need a way of measuring their work, I offer this series of If-I-Were-In-Charge rules.
1 brainstorming session where you have nothing -- you should go home and reconsider your choice of careers. 2 brainstorming sessions where you have nothing -- you should be fired. 3 brainstorming sessions where you have nothing -- your boss should be fired for not firing you after the second.
For my money the optimum number of people for an idea generation session is two with no facilitator hanging on. Two people that have a vested interest in the quality of the outcome and can switch seamlessly between divergent and convergent thinking until they get to the right idea which they both then build upon.
I can't understate the value of finding someone who can call bullshit to your face and expects you to do the same back for them. I have that relationship with the ECD on my accounts. I've had it with an account director and even the director of development at previous agencies.
A good friend once called it the battle to be the smartest person in the room. I call it a requirement of a successful agency.
[by Todd]I may be a bit late to this one, but kudos to Miranda July for the innovative marketing of her book. The site, Noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com, is a testament to the power of a great idea, even if there isn't design to back it up.
That's right, Miranda is left high and dry with no Flash, no podcast, no RSS, nada. It's just her, a Marks-A-Lot and the appliances in her kitchen. Luckily for Miranda, and us, she has a great mind.
How many times have you seen multimedia behemoths that are all sizzle and no steak? You wish someone was in the room when they were being developed to ask, "So what?"
For her effort Miranda has earned praise across the Net, with more than 17,000 links to her site and enough book sales to push her to #289 on Amazon's best sellers list.
Thank you Darryl for highlighting the effort, but I have to say the WestWayne site is more a reflection of an agency that has just quit trying to master interactive than a stroke of genius.
[by Todd] If you work for an agency, with agency, or hope to do either in the near future, you need to read this. Advergirl delivers a powerful lesson on what it means to be in marketing/advertising. Stripped of pontifications about changing the world or laments about the torrid pace of change, she spells out 11 immutable rules for account people.
She starts and ends with rules that are so painfully obvious, yet so obviously lost on an untold number of our kind.
1) No order takers: If you never say no to your client, you are wasting their money. Your client hired your agency because they believed that you are the right partner for smart, responsive advertising. They want you to push back – tastefully – and make sure they deliver the absolute best product to the market place.
11) Remember: This is the fun part of their day. If you only remember one thing, let it be this: Most of our clients work in political, corporate environments. They sit in meetings. They have enormous binders of documentation. The are forced to deeply understand the personal implications of Sarbanes Oxley. Working with us? It’s the fun part of their day. It’s creative and exciting and engaging. Keep it that way. Invite the client over to the agency. Bring creative people to the table. Have drinks or unexpected appetizers. Bring all the best parts of your job to the meeting. Give you client a well-deserved break…
A couple years back I had the misfortune of watching my agency lose a Fortune 100 account because of its account service. A key client repeatedly lamented over lunch that she believed the account team worked for the creative department, not for her. A short time later millions of dollars went out the door, followed in short order by several dozen jobs.
So here's your homework:
Account people -- learn 'em, live 'em. Creatives and strategy types-- understand 'em, respect 'em. HR types -- teach 'em. Clients -- don't accept anything less.
[by Todd] Every so often my confidence in big brands is renewed, like 3:10 a.m. the other morning. That was when the president of W Hotels accomplished what I thought was impossible, convincing me that his hotels weren't arrogant hot spots packed with a bunch of wannabes thinking they are infinitely cooler than they are.
Well, okay, maybe they are. But at least someone at the top of the hotel chain has a visceral understanding of his brand. The email below (click the link below) captures the story pretty well. But here are the salient facts.
Trip to New York where hotel rooms are harder to find than an solid marketing plan in a Crispin+Porter campaign.
No rooms at Hilton or Marriott, where I have achieved some measure of status in their loyalty clubs. But somehow the W Hotel on Lexington Avenue has rooms. I have a reservation.
Arrive at the hotel at 9:30 p.m. in desperate need of quiet and sleep.
Packed lobby, one person at counter, rooms not ready.
Room is a piece of crap unworthy of any mainstream hotel standards.
Pissed off, unable to sleep, I find the president's name and email address in coffee table book on the desk.
I write a letter, at midnight, to an email address that is tens of thousands of hotel rooms.
Let's be honest here. I was venting. At most I figured I would hear from some marketing drone a week or so later. Things got interesting less than a minute later when I got an auto reply from Ross Klein's mailbox.
I will be out of the country on business June 4th - 7th, with limited access to e-mail and voicemail. For immediate assistance, please contact the following individuals...
Curious, an auto responder on a marketing mailbox. Then my BlackBerry went off at 3:10 a.m. I know this because it was impossible to sleep in aforementioned room.
From: "Klein, Ross" [[email protected]] Sent: 06/06/2007 03:10 AM To: Todd Copilevitz; "Baten, Ed"; "Edmundson, Tina"; "Manoukian, Vera" Subject: Re: From a miserable room in your hotel
Dear Mr. Copilevitz,
I am sorry that I am not currently in NY to handle your urgent issues personally. Certainly your experience is not exemplary of our W standards or aspirations within the arena. While we are aware of some of the issues of the W NY as it prepares for a head to toe renovation, this room should be out of service and our service is inexcusable.
There is no way we could accept that you pay for this experience either in currency or emotion. The team in New York will comp your stay and work on offering you other accommodations either within the property or at another location. I will follow up as the time zone allows. Kind regards, Ross
Ross A. Klein | President | Luxury Brands Group 601 West 26th Street, Suite 830 | New York, NY 10001 212-380-xxxx | 212-367-xxxx | [email protected] | www.whotels.com
Okay, I am impressed that the president of W Hotels wrote back, perhaps even more so knowing that he was in Europe at the time. But that is not what makes this so interesting. Read this line from his letter carefully.
There is no way we could accept that you pay for this experience either in currency or emotion.
In currency or emotion... How's that for an understanding of his company's relationship with its customers? Amazing. I have heard a dozen different takes on building brands and the brand promise, the brand equity, blah, blah, blah. Never before have I heard anything as succinct or powerful.
Needless to say, when the president of the chain speaks, things get done. Night #2 was much nicer. But in that one brief email Mr. Klein took a tired, pissed off critic of his company and turned me into a guy who really wants to believe that Ws are something different. And I'm willing to give them another try.
Mr. Klein, thank you.
(Click the link below to read my email to Ross Klein.)
[by Sunni] At last week’s SMC Dallas meeting, we discussed social networking and politics (attendees included Tony Wright, Jake McKee, Lauren Vargas, Blaine Collins, and Blake Poutra). I thought it would be worth elaborating on some of my comments, especially since I know Todd would find this interesting (and worth some mockery: anyone want the over/under on how long it will take him to post a smart-ass comment?).
For starters, here’s some background:
In elementary school, when I begged my parents for an Atari, they went out and bought a Commodore 64 with a cassette deck. This was my introduction to computers.
I started using email on a daily basis in 1994, usually to communicate with professors about assignments.
I also started instant messaging in 1994, using the "finger" and "talk" commands through Telnet. I'm sure this sounds pathetic, but let's take this in context -- our campus had a wired computer in almost every dorm room. The quicker you learned the "finger" command, the easier it was to slack off while writing that 20-page research paper on gender roles in Roald Dahl's short stories...
By 1997 I was citing web sources in my thesis paper.
I have lived in three states in the past 10 years, and I keep in touch with my family through e-mail and instant messenger (my mother and father have taken to IM like fish to water).
What should the above facts tell you about me? Well, aside from the fact that I may or may not lean toward the nerdly side, it should tell you that my familiarity with computers and networking in general predisposed me (before I was even aware it existed) toward a career in the internet industry. Here are more tidbits:
My main form of communication with loved ones is electronic, which could explain a somewhat unusual familiarity with social networking sites (considering I graduated from college close to 10 years ago). I share photos with my family over Google and Flickr, and I would love to set up a JotSpot when/if that tool comes back.
Because I'm keeping up with three different regions for news information, I also rely heavily on the Internet as my news source. I use Google News Alerts to keep up with specific subjects, then tune to local news sites for quick snapshots of info. I also watch local news stories on the web sites for those specific news stations. My first stop of the day, however, is news.google.com, which gives me quick hits from all over the world. The amount of news I consume on a daily basis can be staggering.
While I’m more Generation Y than Generation Wired, I represent the cusp of what’s to come.
As a result of having spent the majority of my adult life firmly entrenched in learning, researching and collecting news and information on the internet, I find that I am fairly disassociated from any sense of locality. My connection to my current city of residence is tenuous at best, even with the solid network of friends I've managed to build (It doesn't help that I do not plan on living in Dallas for the rest of my life). I have voted in local elections, but hardly with any regularity, and rarely do I fill in more than a couple of lines on any given ballot. This is not lethargy on my part -- I take the time to get to the voting location, I take the time to read up on the major issues -- and it's not quite apathy. I DO care, but because of my submersion in the world of internet news, my understanding of politics and issues is heavily slanted toward a national scale. If it's not covered by NPR, The Daily Show, or my favorite local blog, I won't know about it.
And here, finally, is the point of this post: I'm going to be following this year's Dallas mayoral race very closely for the first time in, oh, ever to watch this guy. Dubbed the "MySpace Candidate" by Esquire, Zac Crain has wholeheartedly embraced the social networking approach to politics (great article from Cardiff J-School here). While this is a common method in national races (see Barack Obama's site, which Blake nicely calls to task for being a clunky copycat), this is a pretty rare tactic for a local race. While Zac may be young, inexperienced, and a former music critic (gasp!), he has accomplished a feat rare among his associates: He has managed to find me where I live online and has put his message in front of me in a manner that is befitting of the medium -- succinct, well-written, and with a snazzy logo. Zac uses the Internet as a tool, not just for disseminating information, but for finding and connecting with his constituents in an effective manner. In the coming new age of politicking, visiting the ice cream socials to sit with the families at the picnic tables and shtump about values ain't gonna work. Candidates have to find the new "neighborhood" gatherings -- and those are moving to the Internet. Show me a candidate that is comfortable in that forum, and I'll show you the "youth vote."
Do I think Zac will win? Not sure just yet. My instinct says "no," but that doesn't mean his race won't be important. If it gets me -- and others like me -- interested in the future of this city that I have chosen to live in for the time-being, then he's won a pretty big battle.
[by Sunni]Speaking of the technology-induced media shift and the general lack of skills in emerging media channels, let me point out a new club that has been organized "for the purpose of sharing best practices, establishing ethics and standards, and promoting media literacy" around this crazy new channel called "social media": The aptly-named Social Media Club. Founded by Chris Heuer in the summer of 2006, SMC now has events and meetings in dozens of cities, including -- you guessed it -- Dallas!
The second SMC Dallas meeting is tomorrow night at the Rapp Collins Worldwide offices in Las Colinas. Based on the experience of the first meeting, it will be a good time to sit around with other like-minded individuals and say really astute things like, "Is everyone except us stupid?" And, "Why doesn't [insert corporate entity here] get it?"
In all seriousness, the only way the understanding of social media on a corporate level will match the growth of social media on a consumer level is through education. While I regularly try to educate the corporate masses by attempting to beat knowledge into their noggins with the subtlety of a jack hammer, I have a feeling a "lead by example" approach might be a tad more valid. So all of you social media addicts out there -- please find an SMC meeting near you and attend. Share your knowledge, listen to others, then pass it on (via Flickr, YouTube, 43things, whatever).
[by Todd] Account planners, help me out here. What does it mean when your client thinks it's doing great delivering critical services, but the customers have a vastly different view? Technical explanations aside, I'd call it big trouble.
So it was with great fascination I read a recent report from Forrester called Help Wanted: 21st Century Agency, a rather brutal assessment of how advertising agencies are doing living up to their client's expectations. Let's start with this little nuke from the introduction.
Agencies believe that they play a critical role in marketing success, but
marketers see things differently. On aggregate, agencies score a dismal Net
Promoter rating of -21%.
Innovation and technology are at the core of the dissatisfaction, according to the report. Agencies think they're rocking the house with innovative thinking and executions. Clients think they suck.
Take a look at the chart. There's a 40-point gap between what agency execs believe and their clients believe. Even more stunning, agency leaders thought they were doing a better job at delivering Internet advertising solutions than TV. Damn, that must be some high-grade stuff they're smoking
In fact, marketers view advertising agencies as least competent among service
providers to deliver marketing technology. In the midst
of this technology-induced media shift, marketers realize that agencies:
Lack skills in emerging channels
Overstate their role in marketing success
Must be held more accountable for results
At the risk of sound self-promoting, the report highlights the rise of customer centric marketing. Maybe that's because those of us "below the line" have been forced to justify our budgets from the beginning. I wonder if that arcane division of agency work will be erased swiftly when the gods of brand advertising are forced to labor among us mere mortals.