The Irrational Truth

August 5, 2010 by Chris Colbert · View Comments 

I Second That Emotion
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All major decisions in life are made emotionally. It’s a statement once made by Bob Minihan, Holland-Mark’s ECD during the late 90s. And it’s true.

Who you marry, who you hire, the job you take, the house you buy — emotion is the central driver of the decision. For all of our fixation on the rational, the functional, the tangible, at the end of the day it’s feeling that brings people towards our brands, gets them to stay, and prompts them to come back. Now there’s a role for the rational stuff, for the facts, they’re just secondary to the need for visceral engagement. And if you want proof regarding the power of emotion and the supporting role of proof, two different but affirming bits of research.

The first is a University of Michigan study referenced in a recent article by Joe Keohane at the Boston Globe. The research asserts that when people are presented with facts that refute their belief about something, the absolute proof actually makes them believe what they believe more absolutely. Oh my. It turns out that we hate to be wrong more than we value the truth. The emotion of losing is simply anathema and we will override all logic to avoid the feeling. Double oh my. The study and Joe suggest that this Maslow-motivated psychology (neurosis?) also makes us willing to accept bad information, facts we fundamentally know are not true, if they support our beliefs. Makes you realize why people don’t seem to care about the quality of user-generated content as source material and the lack of fact-checking behind it (including this post I suppose…).

The second study referenced a while back in Scientific American reveals that when people meet other people (or brands) for the first time they subconsciously assess two things, in this order: warmth and competence. Feelings first, then facts. In our brand strategy work we extend that construct one step: emotion, facts, emotion. You are attracted by what you feel, you seek facts to confirm those feelings, and then you move forward with those feelings as the overriding context for your relationship/association with the brand.

All of this points to the need/opportunity to position your brand and engage emotionally. Regardless of what you’re marketing and who you’re marketing to, the doorway you want to offer into your brand should be emotionally crafted. Emotion motivates, facts validate.

Think about it. Or don’t.

Posted via email from holland-mark posterous

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The Real-Time Web Is So 5 Minutes Ago

May 25, 2010 by Mike Troiano · View Comments 

Twitter’s mind-bending growth pretty much made 2009 the year of the “real-time web.” ReadWriteWeb seems to have launched the meme in May. BusinessWeek was on board by August, and by December Pete Cashmore was calling it a trend to watch on CNN.

So what is it? According to Wikipedia:

The real-time web is a set of technologies and practices which enable users to receive information as soon as it is published by its authors, rather than requiring that they or their software check a source periodically for updates.

It’s pretty much the stuff on the web that reflects what’s happening right now. Think conversation vs. voicemail. IM vs. e-mail. SNL vs. 30Rock.

The fascination with all things now is a renaissance more than a discovery. It used to be that all we had was “real-time” (or, as it was known back then, “time”). The invention of media gave us the ability to time-shift certain experiences: to capture moments in words, then pictures, then audio, on film, and now in wholly immersive 3-D experiences.

When the Web was born we thought about it as a means to access the world’s knowledge – like a great oaken library packed with information and dusty owls. Today it often feels more like a bustling student union: a cacophony of content, conversation, and commerce where each participant clamors for more attention than they’re willing to provide themselves.

While I’m glad to have the real-time web today, I’m equally glad the frenzy to celebrate it appears to have reached its apex. In most cases there’s just more value in reflection than there is in instantaneous response. While it’s sometimes interesting to know where your friend from high school had lunch, it’s often more useful to stumble across a really thoughtful restaurant review, or even a great recipe for Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble.

In a way the real-time web marks the integration point of the Internet with our real lives. Now that we’re there, I hope we can all just get on with the business of trying to contribute something of value to one another.

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The Shelf Life of Relevancy

May 4, 2010 by Chris Colbert · View Comments 

Woolworth's entrance
Image by toml1959 via Flickr

Twenty years ago the shelf life of relevancy was at least a good ten years. If you had a product or service offering that carried even a mildly distinct and relevant value proposition it was virtually guaranteed to produce healthy profits, loyal customers, and decent top-line growth for a decade or more. Polaroid’s shelf life was seventy years. Pan Am’s even more. Hell, Woolworth’s lasted 118 years. Now much has been written about how and why brands die so let’s not tread that well-trodden ground. My point is that the times literally have changed; the shelf life of relevancy is down to years and maybe even months. Any marketer that thinks that some combination of intellectual property, brand value, happy customers, price advantage, etc., serves as long-term competitive insulation is most probably naive and on the verge of getting their clock cleaned.

So the first order of business is to accept that ugly reality. 

The second is to look the cold, hard truth in the eyes. To candidly examine where the chinks are in your brand armor and/or where the world seems to be heading in terms of buying or not buying what you’re selling. In Clay Christiansen’s oldie but goodie book from 1996, “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” he repeatedly suggests that one cause of leading brands ultimately losing to new “disruptive” technologies is that they aren’t willing to embrace the truth and believe that their leadership position is vulnerable to anything. Some call that hubris.

The third order of business is to un-bridle corporate imagination while giving direct consideration to the equity zone. What does that mean? Visioning, envisioning, and re-visioning are the tasks of hope, of possibility, of what if. But they are tasks that must be mindful of the real equities of the brand vis à vis the trend line of social equity. Most brands forget that point, which is why most line extensions or segment expansion efforts fail. Take Oldsmobile. They tried to go younger when their equities were clearly older. And they were going up against a declining social equity trend line, e.g., their demo was dying off and the new generation wanted nothing to do with them. I hear VW wants to go mainstream, pull away from the kids. Uh oh. 

Which brings me to the fourth order:

Growth may not always be the right goal. In fact fixation on growth may be the recipe for a rapid demise. For Polaroid to have transitioned from silver halide film to digital imaging probably would have required it getting smaller in order to get bigger. Now the shareholders wouldn’t have liked that message much, but look what they ended up with… The other side of it is that perhaps all brands have a fixed shelf life (religions and nation states aside). Can Corporate America accept the concept of “Inevitable Obsolescence”?

The fifth “to do” is to invest in intellectual and analytical rigor. Because even if you’ve accepted the reality, are in eye contact with the truth, and have concocted a lovely vision of your brand’s next incarnation, the devil (or salvation) can be in the details. And again most brands, big and small, are simply not very good at examining the data and the details to validate or invalidate what they’re planning. And once they execute they tend not to be very good at measuring the results of their efforts. Make data your best friend.

These five orders of business represent somewhere between the requisite cultural mindset and a strategic planning sensibility to extend the shelf life of relevancy. Increasing shelf life, or the “time value of your brand,” demands embracing and responding to the truth of it all, in real time and real ways. It’s not hard, but it can be a wee bit uncomfortable. But so can the alternative.

Posted via web from holland-mark posterous

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Hey, Publishers: What about the reader?

April 30, 2010 by caroline b. · View Comments 

The New Yorker
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When I began working at Holland-Mark, my dear friend-turned-colleague Chris Colbert gifted me with a subscription to The New Yorker. An odd sort of gift, but if you know myself and Christopher, you can understand how the gift is appropriate. The combination of opinions, articles, art reviews, and fiction provides ample fodder for conversation, as well as insight into the world at large. Over the last two years I’ve experienced the much discussed “ANYA: Acute New Yorker Anxiety,” a product of lots of New Yorkers arriving more quickly than I could possibly read them, resulting in panic and taking stacks of the magazine on any flight over two hours. A true sign of the times, however, was my recent decision to transition my New Yorker subscription to my Kindle. Every week my issue sneaks silently onto the homepage and waits for me to notice. If I don’t get around to it, it politely archives itself so as not to bother me, or make me feel incompetent. Eventually I get around to reading back issues on the stair climber.

The transition has not been without its problems, though. If Chris wanders by my office to chat about an article, I can’t recall the issue by the cover picture. I have no visual cue as to which issues I have and have not read. If I love an article I can’t tear it out and share it with my mom, or bring it in and pass it around the office. The covers are no longer useful for collaging. The Kindle has taught me to be a true reader. With little to no distractions from the content, I must truly love the content. Moreover, I must believe that the content, and nothing else, is worth the price tag. I pay $2.99 a month to have my New Yorker delivered to me. There are no ads. There is no printing. There is no shipping, hauling, sorting, organizing. Nothing. I pay for a file — the same file as everyone else — to be wirelessly delivered to my Kindle while I sleep.

At the recommendation of Chris, I went into my archive to read an article in last week’s New Yorker titled Publish or Perish: Can the iPad topple the Kindle and save the book business? Written (well) by Ken Auletta, the article explored the burgeoning relationships between Apple and the various publishing giants, desperate to be saved from their current state of existence. Amazon is vilified for its efforts to offer content to consumers for the low price of $9.99. Maniacally, or perhaps egomaniacally, Jobs stands at the front of the proverbial masses, assuring them that Apple will not allow this to continue. Amazon will be beaten into submission or be abandoned by publishers. The iPad is here. Content can now cost more.

As I’m reading the article, on my Kindle, I’m getting angry. If a hardcover book costs $25, a 50% markup, and a paperback $10-$15, how does it stand to reason that an invisible book would cost equal to either? Production has been all but eliminated. There is a litany of explanations about the math and the reasoning, but it’s a thin veil, under which lies a very simple truth: in the absence of a need for a physical vehicle for content, publishers are even more irrelevant. These inflated price tags are nothing more than conspiratorial handshakes among friends desperate to band together to save their waning equity.

The content, and only the content, is now the only value. I cannot share my books. I cannot write in them. I cannot pass them on to a friend or put them on my shelf. No longer will my books act as functional decor. When I’m done reading my book it is archived. Out into space it goes, where I will likely never see it again. I won’t be selling it on Amazon or Half.com. The book was worth its content and the impact it had on my life. And that is all.

So what is the value of the content? And what value does the publisher hold for me now? The value of a marketer?

Posted via email from holland-mark posterous

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Reflections on Ad Club Magazine Day

March 23, 2010 by The Team · View Comments 

A couple of our folks went to Magazine Day last week (put on, in part, by The Ad Club) to get a better idea of what’s taking shape in the to-be-determined pub world. Keeping up with the changes in this space has been daunting of late, as the magazine industry oscillates between resignation and glee like a bipolar diabetic. It’s important, though, as our clients – including a range of monthly publications, many of which are already preparing to adapt to these burgeoning interfaces – expect us to be on top of the latest and greatest.

There’s no limit to the uncertainty and theorizing about the future of printed media. Newspapers are scrambling to hold value, magazines are trying to predict the manner in which readers will want to engage with their content – even our clients in the education sector are grappling with the value of their print materials. While the questions are many, it seems, at least at Magazine Day, that the optimism about the possibilities imparted by new technologies, namely the tablet, is doing its part to keep the focus on meeting consumers’ needs with relevant, engaging solutions.

Our publication designers shared the optimism, concluding that embracing this new dimensionality of “print” would ultimately lead to more dynamic content, more thoughtful design, and a more strategic approach to design. Here’s what a few of our designers had to say:

“The exciting part for me and my fellow print designers is that designing for the tablet – which can be done within traditional design software – will allow us to create new user experiences that combine the depth and excitement of web graphics with the rich, visual texture of a traditional magazine.

There will be pop-ups, drill-downs, video, multi-layered info graphics, scrolling content, clipping, and so on. The traditional spread will become a playground of information. And the best part is that you choose whether you want to play or just take a good old-fashioned scroll through the content. Oh, and this content, it was said by Chris Anderson of Wired, will become the most measurable content in history.”

Another designer commented:

“What’s even more impressive is how [tablets] manage to keep a tie to their print counterparts, while offering new capabilities such as pop-up boxes, video, and multi-layered explanatory graphics. These additions not only give the reader a broader sense of the topic at hand, but also offer the magazine designer the new challenge of finding the most compelling way of presenting information.

As a print/publication designer for the majority of my career, what I wanted to hear was that print magazines are fine and will continue to be so for years to come. What I didn’t know is that what I would hear was far more exciting and would leave me looking forward to the future of magazines.

To see what they’re talking about, check this out:

VIV Mag Interactive Feature Spread – iPad Demo from Alexx Henry on Vimeo.

We’re of course curious as to what this all means for the future of what we used to call “an ad.” So what do you think?

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The Last Advertising Agency on Earth

March 22, 2010 by Mike Troiano · View Comments 

Funny-scary. Like Scream.

The Last Advertising Agency On Earth from FITC on Vimeo.

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