Archive for the ‘Advertising’ Category
By Paul Dumouchelle, Management Consultant, ADVISA
Apple’s advertisements for the video calling feature on their latest iPhone have caught my attention. While elusive, the promise of combining a video feed of the person with whom you’re talking via a phone has been around at least since Dick Tracy’s fancy wristwatch. Technology that actually delivers on this promise has blockbuster potential.
Apple had done a good job of focusing on the human element of its technology – a grandfather viewing his newborn grandchild for the first time – a woman telling her mate that she is pregnant (though she describes their efforts at achieving this status as “work,” a term that is at odds with my personal experience). It is this human touch that makes the promise of the technology so powerful. In this disconnected age, anything that brings people closer together has tremendous value.
This makes me think of Aldous Huxley’s “Feelies” described in his 1932 novel Brave New World, one of my all-time favorites. When will Hollywood transcend “moving pictures” to create actual experiences and transmit feelings directly? The recent success of 3D is a step in this direction. Virtual reality devices are another stab at this. Someday, perhaps, we’ll be able to experience love scenes where we feel everything, including the hairs of the bearskin rug on which the movie stars lie, as Huxley described it.
Huxley’s future was largely dysfunctional, of course, but I don’t foresee sinister implications from video calling – it looks like a great thing!
Andrea L. Crabtree
Injecting a sense of urgency into your customers is more important than ever and I will never argue against this time-honored marketing tradition.
By Paul Dumouchelle, Management Consultant, ADVISA
Neal Roberts’ eyes light up when he advocates for more bicycle riding. He speaks from the heart when he describes how “micro-entrepreneurs” are creating new economic momentum in Central Ohio. What is cool in his life today is the way he has integrated these two passions, his professional skills and personal life into a balanced whole.
By Paul Dumouchelle, Management Consultant, ADVISA
Earlier in “The SIG Chronicles” I described how I got involved in the Columbus AMA and wound up chairing the Healthcare SIG. This edition records my impressions upon attending my first-ever Healthcare SIG event.
Part of the fun in taking on any new challenge is the little bit of thrill one gets in experiencing the unknown. Admittedly, the thrill of finding an office in the predawn darkness of Powell, Ohio, on March 25, 2010 isn’t going to rank high on anyone’s list of lifetime memories, but, first impressions do stick with you for awhile. So as I pulled into this new (to me) parking lot it was good to see other marketing professionals arrive at 7 in the morning in preparation for our program that day.
The presentation, “The Day Marketing Saved a Life” by Laura McCoy, VP of Marketing and Communications for OhioHealth, was quite excellent. It focused on a comprehensive OhioHealth marketing campaign whose crowning achievement was the video advertisement of their patient from Ireland who had some vascular surgery on his leg which avoided possible amputation.
The line that stuck with me the first time I saw the ad – and in Laura’s presentation I learned was the result of almost two complete days of filming in Ireland with the patient – went along the lines of “Doctor’s told me I might lose my leg, which was really bad news because I wasn’t done using it.”
Like most creative breakthroughs, that line came about because of outstanding marketing work in framing the strategy and pursuing stellar execution.
What I also spent time doing that day, though, was paying attention to the logistics and teamwork necessary to pull the event off. The registration table at the event is the culmination of advance work involving a web communication team and event administrator, plus leadership coordination of materials and site requirements, plus volunteer commitments to pull the whole thing together at the event itself. Refreshments involve leadership preparation, planning and finally execution in getting up early enough to have stuff ready at the site by 7AM – no mean feat.
Laura’s involvement and presentation, I learned, was the result of months of pre-planning and content preparation. To the casual attendee all this advance work is not visible – all you see is a smooth-running program and thought-provoking communication in an environment conducive to networking with other Central Ohio marketing professionals.
Next in “The SIG Chronicles” – “Planning the Work”
About “The SIG Chronicles:” This blog series records Paul Dumouchelle’s experiences, impressions and insights gained as Chair of the Healthcare Marketing Special Interest Group for the Columbus branch of the American Marketing Association.
Andrea L. Crabtree MS
Anyone who has spent time with young children knows that kids absorb television commercials quickly and thoroughly. Two summers ago, I watched a six year-old play while he repeated a number of television commercials.
He sang all the jingles. He knew the entire script. He had memorized every word.
K. J. Dell’Antonia wrote a recent article in Slate describing studies on young children and branding. The article doesn’t suffer from a knee-jerk reaction to the exposure of children to advertising.
There is a nice description of what kind of young children understand branding, how they understand it and how branding could be used to actually encourage children to live healthier lives.
Previously, I could not imagine any advertisement clever enough to convince non-vegetable-eating kids to embrace spinach.
It seems I am probably wrong.
By Paul Dumouchelle, Management Consultant, ADVISA
Creativity is at the core of marketing. The act of defining an offering to an identified market segment through a well-crafted message should involve new thinking every step of way. To foster such creativity it helps to understand the different approaches people take to the challenge, “Boxlessness” is my term for those who not only think outside the box – they live outside the box – many don’t even know there is such a thing as a box!
Boxlessness is a drive for independence, freedom of expression, freedom of thought and a dislike, avoidance and even disdain for “rules.” The “Boxless” person is a ceaseless innovator because they always look for the way to do things differently. Uniqueness for uniqueness’ sake could be their motto.
Boxless people seek and thrive on risk. If it’s been “done before” they want nothing to do with it. If you seek creativity just plug one of these people into the team and stand back!
Involving a boxless person on a team adds a spark of inventiveness but these people rarely want to dig into details. If your challenge involves substantial follow-through and highly-detailed execution you will want to pair them up with others who will provide these qualities to the team.
A primary challenge in manage boxlessness is that the condition does not just apply to the work of marketing – it applies to everything, including the relationship of the boxless person to an organization, their colleagues on a team and their boss. The same drive to avoid rules in the marketplace means a lack of respect for internal rules that groups typically need to function effectively. Providing the boxless person with the freedom they need while maintaining enough structure for an organization to function effectively is a constant tension requiring intense management involvement and support.
Depending on the strength and degree of the boxless drive, a leader can incent appropriate behavior by clearly communicating the consequences of rule-breaking to boxless people. If the consequences are meaningful to them (and mere disapproval is rarely sufficient) then the boxlessness MAY be held in check – but you can expect the boxless person to constantly test the boundaries and publicly ridicule the necessity of rule all the while.
Knowing your own approach to creativity and those of people on your team provides valuable leverage for maximizing the impact of your marketing efforts.
By Paul Dumouchelle, Management Consultant, ADVISA
Creativity is at the core of marketing. The act of defining an offering to an identified market segment through a well-crafted message should involve new thinking every step of way. To foster such creativity it helps to understand the different approaches people take to the challenge, the role impatience plays in people’s work should always be considered.
Impatience is a drive to get things done as quickly as possible. The impatient person starts with the end in mind and looks for the fastest route there – skipping steps and multi-tasking are hallmarks of their activity. If something can’t be done as quickly as they like the impatient person is sorely tempted to abandon the project and move on to the next new thing. They thrive on pressure and variety. The role of impatience in creativity is to generate a hotbed of intensity with ideas flying thick and fast.
Impatient people hate to wait. If your creative challenge requires a methodical process, with multiple necessary steps that build one upon the other, the impatient person may lose interest. To avoid this tendency, create “mini-deadlines” that keep the pressure on and lessen the temptation to stray from the task.
Much of the marketing world revolves around quick turnarounds, high-pressure, and multiple changes made “on the fly.” Impatient people thrive in this environment – when combined with a drive for achieving goals, impatience creates the pro-activity especially valuable in a 24×7x365 competitive marketplace.
Beyond maintaining focus long enough to achieve closure, another primary management challenge with impatient people is negotiating the tension created when mixing them with their opposites – people with patience. Mixing impatient people with patient people creates issues in all areas of work methods but in my experience the biggest issue is communication. For example, impatient people start at the end in communication and this leaves patient people at a loss because they need to start at the beginning so they can view the “end” in context of everything that goes in front of it. Conversely, the thorough approach of patient people leaves impatient people tapping their toes (at least) in frustration as they do anything BUT listen to the meaningless preamble provided by their patient colleagues. Managing these “oil & water” tendencies requires constant coaching to remind the different people about their counterparts’ needs.
Knowing your own approach to creativity and those of people on your team provides valuable leverage for maximizing the impact of your marketing efforts.
By Paul Dumouchelle, Management Consultant, ADVISA
Creativity is at the core of marketing. The act of defining an offering to an identified market segment through a well-crafted message should involve new thinking every step of way. To foster such creativity it helps to understand the different approaches people take to the challenge, the “Perfectionist” is one of these.
Perfectionists’ creativity centers on a drive to define an “ideal” solution that meets objective criteria for excellence. They never rest until all the details are identified, arranged and polished. Masters of adaptation, they will take ideas proven to work in one arena and transfer them to the current challenge. Digging into available data, understanding all the nuances of the scenario and crafting an approach most-likely to succeed is their specialty.
Perfectionists are cautious and really hate mistakes. If your challenge involves a truly “new-to-the-world” situation in which no precedent or standard of excellence exists, a perfectionist may be stymied due to this aversion to risky recommendations. In today’s world of instant access to information, however, there are very few marketing challenges where a perfectionist cannot access a model or a case study that will inform their approach and lead to productive results.
One of my clients had a perfectionist creative director and she found his work quite “edgy” and she was surprised when I described risk aversion as a common trait of such people. I encouraged her to ask him about the inspiration for his ideas the next time he presented a concept that struck her as new and bold. She explained that her approach to creativity included ongoing research about winning ideas from advertising competition around the world. Her innovation was to adapt an idea from this research to the challenge at hand – resulting in a creative approach that was new, fresh and exciting in the eyes of my client, and the market in question.
Managing them can be difficult at times because perfectionists have a tendency to be stubborn – after all, once you’ve crafted the “perfect” recommendation how can it be improved? Any change from perfect can only make it less perfect!
Perfectionists are especially valuable contributors to any group effort where you need someone grounded in facts and details to provide perspective and input in problem-solving and plan implementation.
Knowing your own approach to creativity and those of people on your team provides valuable leverage for maximizing the impact of your marketing efforts.
By Paul Dumouchelle, Management Consultant, ADVISA
Creativity is at the core of marketing. The act of defining an offering to an identified market segment through a well-crafted message should involve new thinking every step of the way. To foster such creativity it helps to understand the different approaches people take to the challenge, the “Analytical Approach” is one of these.
The Analytical Approach relies on logic and separating or reducing elements to their most basic level. This is a problem-solving mindset which looks at the various factors involved in a marketing challenge as pieces of a puzzle with the focus then being on figuring out the one best way all the pieces fit together.
One dimension that is shortchanged in this approach is that of emotion and feelings. If you’re in a market segment where emotions are critical to success, either in the product/service itself or in the communication content, then you will want to complement your Analytical creativity with approaches that tap into the world of emotions.
Creativity that relies on the Analytical Approach is especially well-suited for strategic challenges such as new product development, repositioning and segmentation. People employing the Analytical Approach will often prefer to work alone or at least have clear “ownership” of their turf regarding the business.
Managing them can be difficult at times because they have such strong confidence in the value of their own ideas that they discount the contributions of others. They believe their own ideas are best so when trying to direct them in a particular way you are well-served to frame the discussion in such a way that they will come to your point of view on their own.
This same stubborn belief in their own ideas also means they are especially well suited to pursue entirely new areas and create “new to the world” concepts. As you can guess, many entrepreneurs come from the ranks of people employing the Analytical Approach to creativity.
Knowing your own approach and those of people on your team provides valuable leverage for maximizing the impact of your marketing efforts.
Andrea L. Crabtree MS
Tragedy highlighted much of the celebrity world in recent weeks with the passing of former teenage stars. Happily, a very different kind of story emerged in the past few days to provide fodder for water cooler chats across the country.
Lindsay Lohan is suing the E-Trade folks over one of their baby commercials and she is asking for a cool $100 million dollars in damages.
If you do not already know about the lawsuit, you might remember the boyfriend-stealing/milkaholic baby named Lindsay from one of the many baby-themed E-Trade commercials. Lohan’s attorney asserts that her client is recognized on a one-name basis like Oprah or Madonna and, thus, the lawsuit.
Really, it does not even matter if you remember the commercials or even if you agree with my friends and me that the lawsuit is ludicrous. (We all agree that, in all the times we have viewed the commercial, we never once thought of Lindsay Lohan.) There are two important marketing side notes to this story.
E-Trade is probably overjoyed with the free publicity (lawsuit notwithstanding) and Lindsay Lohan believes she has branded herself so thoroughly that she has joined the ranks of Oprah, Madonna and Elvis.
Only in Hollywood.
(Or a New York courtroom.)
