Time Warner is opening a 9,600-square foot media laboratory in Manhattan today, to research and analyze how people consume media and respond to advertising. Viewer-specimens will play games on iPads and watch 3D TV in a faux living room with infrared cameras that record their actions in the dark.
Time Warner and other media companies have always relied on consumer research to see how viewers might respond to new programming, but the intention with this new lab is really to partner with marketers to test how consumers experience and respond to advertising as part of today’s new media landscape. Time Warner hopes the lab’s Madison Avenue location will lure marketing partners into working with them.
So far, some big brands seem receptive. The New York Times quotes L’Oréal USA CMO Marc Speichert:
“As we continue to think about how the media landscape is changing and how to best prepare for it, having a lab down the street is extremely helpful.”
The lab costs anywhere from $50,000 for basic focus groups to $120,000 for research using biometrics. CNN and HBO are on board and marketing executives from MediaVest and WPP’s GroupM have already toured the facility.
This blog has often talked about the tidal wave of Big Data and a macrotrend we call #QuantifyMe, a recent, but persistent consumer hunger for metrics, dashboards, and data about their personal activities. For brands, being smart about Big Data is the next major challenge. In an increasingly quantifiable business world, where technology has become deeply personal, the most accurate consumer engagement and experience metrics remain a sort of holy grail of market intelligence.
Now, Time Warner’s lab can get businesses one creepy step closer. If you are a media-consuming specimen at the lab, a biometric belt and recording device will transmit your heart rate, skin temperature and facial reactions to marketers and researchers, so they can decipher your “engagement” as you watch TV, play a video game, or swipe through a branded iPad app. In other rooms, your eye movements will be tracked and a two-way mirror will be used to look over your shoulder as you browse the web or make selections in a fake grocery store.
Some have raised that Manhattan’s heartbeats and sweat might not represent the best cross section of American consumers. Then again, maybe the new methods are enough to put traditional focus groups and industry research to shame.
The lab is so new, we’re yet to see reporting of any great insights or projects it’s inspired. Ok Time Warner, we’re watching you…
If you are interested, email your resume to us at peoplenewyork@wolffolins.com. Include the job title as the subject and tell us “why Wolff Olins” and “why you” in the email.
Content Manager/Web Editor: Responsible for daily content upload/creation, keep blog, tweets, etc. fresh on the home page, edit content for tone of voice, create/adapt content for web, author/edit marketing content, maintain editorial calendar
Junior Designer for Marketing & Website: Concept and create marketing materials, case study design, image selection for website posts
PR Manager (NYC): Establish and grow relationships with key journalists, proactively pitch WO in the news cycle, respond to media inquiries in a timely manner, prepare briefing materials and provide coaching for media interviews, oversee media training for senior new hires, prepare and deliver CEO and MD profile plans (including speaking, meet & greets), track and coordinate PR launches for client projects, advise and coordinate seniors/principles to deliver profile plans
What’s going to see us out of this economic mess the (largely male) banking population got us into? Women!
That may sound like feminist rhetoric but it’s grounded in solid fact: 85% of all brand purchases are made by women. 88% of mothers in the US (the world’s largest economy) refer to themselves as the household CFO. To take advantage of that immense spending power, companies and marketers alike need to work out what it is that makes women not just like but buy what they have to offer. And the rewards are big if they manage to crack the golden egg of the sale funnel: recommendation - women are passionate advocates for the brands they love, and extensive social networkers (particularly in the West).
But currently there is often a big disconnect between women in real life and women in advertising. The cliches – woman cleaning, woman ruffling child’s hair as she’s cleaning, woman serving up steaming gravy pots to her grubby male family members – come thick and fast. And women – of all ages - can spot it a mile off: a US cleaning brand recently got short shrift from a 9 year old girl on their TV ad: “Dear Swiffer, I think your commercials are totally sexist. There is no good reason why in all your commercials there is a girl cleaning the house with Swiffer.” And a lot of websites aimed at women are no less guilty of stereotyping – laying on the pink, diamonds and cheesy smiles thick.
Women are different to men, but they are also different to each other. It’s ridiculous to suppose you can generalise about what 50% of the population wants. When brands get it right in the lucrative women market, they don’t make assumptions – they make things that are useful and relevant to women.
Take Nike: back in 2006 they re-did their corporate strategy, making ‘women’s fitness’ one of the key pillars of their offer. Since then, they’ve created products and services that are particularly relevant to their female customers – apparel that’s more feminine, creating new ways for their network to connect…and all with a black background. Similarly, LinkedIn researched how women used their service – noticing that they are more likely to connect people, liking to help other women like themselves get ahead – and adapted to suit them more; successfully managing to change their demographic from 79% men 7 years ago, to almost 50/50 men/women today.
And it’s even possible in the world of consumer electronics. In 2007, Pure Digital Technologies shunned the traditional, male-dominated CE venues to showcase their attractive, pocket-sized camcorder the Flip. Instead they invested in getting arguably the most famous and influential Western women on board as their key advocate: Oprah and her TV crew made videos with the Flip from behind the scenes on her TV show, and posted them on YouTube - neatly demonstrating the useful and fun ways Flip can fit into your life as a an active, ambitious, socially networked woman (and helping to keep Flip at the top of the sales charts on Amazon).
Other brands should learn from these examples. It’s OK to target women. It’s OK to acknowledge that they do things differently. But don’t rely on stereotype – know which women it is you’re targeting and make sure you give them something great to talk about to their friends beyond a feminine colour palette.
What can the business and branding world gain from Eddie Izzard? Aside from any obvious answers, there lies an intriguing connection in the back-story of the comedian’s success. First, Eddie Izzard (Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story) does not perceive himself as being naturally funny. Being a comedian for him is a lot of work. He plans out his ideas, practices his delivery and prototypes skits with small audiences. Only after working on the content, refining the delivery, and sharpening timing is the new comedy recipe tried again on other audiences. Elicited responses again are evaluated, fine-tuned, and re-delivered. The end result is that he has mastered his delivery, the crowd walks away happy, the cable networks get their viewers, and the brand that is Eddie Izzard grows.
Lots of failure + Lots of iteration = Strong brand
Now think about traditional development process. Planning, design, and launch. Launch? Here’s an age-old concept that is being re-shaped in the era of the proto-brand. As social media and technology open up development, co-creation will become the normative process for many brands.
As the speed and quantity of new offers being thrown at us increases, our attention spans become shorter and we’re more easily distracted. In this 21st century business environment, brands cannot rely on the one-liner. People’s considerations are changing faster than ever, in some cases disrupting the validity of our traditional segmentation practices. So, in a world where the only constant is change, how will you evolve your products, services, and experiences? How are you structuring your existing customers and yet-to-be-discovered clients to allow for Eddie’s approach to testing and iteration?
In the world of open, brand is more valuable than ever. More than what you can offer is the outcome of the way you act: trust, equity, and loyalty. Open up to people, and you gain empathy, support, and forgiveness. Close the door to them, tell the same jokes over and over, and soon you’ll be looking at a theater of empty seats.
We plotted GDP against the average GDP growth rate over the last five years to find economies that combine scale with growth, and then combined our analysis with the perspectives of regional experts from each country. From all of this, we think four countries will emerge in the next wave following the BRICs: Mexico, Korea, Turkey and Indonesia. They are strong flourishing economies that have exhibited extraordinary growth in GDP as well as capital markets and consumer demand.
We think these countries’ rising stars and most exciting brands – still unknown to non-locals but with the potential to excite the world in the next few years – are:
From Mexico
Grupo Bimbo is the biggest Mexican food corporation and the largest bakery in the world with brands in Latin America, Europe, China, the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. Grupo Bimbo is growing rapidly making significant acquisitions and expanding its distribution across the globe. As Mexican food continues to gain in popularity worldwide and Mexican brands realise the need to target beyond Mexican consumers, giant companies like Bimbo will move from silent conglomerates to big global consumer brands.
From Korea
E-mart is the oldest and largest discount store chain in Korea with total sales volume exceeding US$ 9.4 billion in 2009. With aggressive new store openings and the acquisition of Wal-Mart Korea in 2006, E-Mart is also the first Korean retailer to advance into China, with the aim of becoming one of the top leading global retailers. As of January 2010, E-mart 127 stores across South Korea and 24 stores in China. Its brand power has always been within the top 3 in the entire country and it now has the ambition to go beyond its retail category.
From Turkey
Vestel has an impressive market share (20%) in Europe’s television-set market and decided to move from OEM to its standalone brand in 2010. It leads the European market in terms of unit sales followed by Philips and BEKO (another Turkish brand), experiencing very rapid growth. It also operates in television components, personal computers, PC monitors and white goods, and has R&D centres in Turkey, UK and Silicon Valley. Vestel is Turkey’s largest exporter, with customers in 103 countries. Vestel belongs to Zorlu Holding, a Turkish conglomerate.
From Indonesia
Extrajoss is a powder type energy drink sold in Indonesia, an Indonesian version of Red Bull. However, it is cheaper and promotes its healthy ingredients (vitamin C, ginseng, etc). It is well established in the domestic market and has appointed Cristiano Ronaldo as the brand’s spokesperson. It started to export to adjacent countries including Singapore and Malaysia.
(Hester Song) Originally posted August 5, 2010 in ‘Views’
We used to live in a time when making a purchase meant having to visit multiple shops and retailers to attain new goods. Today, with the ease of Internet shopping sites and powerhouse sellers such as Amazon, it is possible to choose from a greater variety of items from one location. In a world where you can get anything you want, wherever you are, how can a brick and mortar retailer compete?
Creating a better reality with storytelling is a powerful way for a company to reach its customers on an experiential level. Providing a meaningful experience for consumers while retaining relevance to the product is paramount.
Leveraging creative initiatives, retail shops can build connections with their consumers. Spotisquare is an example of this. Foursquare teamed up with Spotify to connect venue and retail locations with music playlists. Visitors can make collaborative playlists and share the experience of making music in relation to a place.
Stickybits is a social network in which users attach personalized content to a product barcode. When another member of the network scans the barcode, they see the notes, recipes, tips, photos, and reviews of that item. Retailers are engaging consumers on a more personal level creating stories based on their personal experiences.
A more localized approach to creating consumer connectivity comes from Subway in Japan. The restaurant allows you to grow and harvest your own lettuce, which is then immediately placed on your sandwich. It’s about creating an experience even for objects that are ubiquitous; making the customer more excited about interacting with a product or brand through relevance.
It may be more difficult for physical retailers to compete with larger warehouse-style Internet markets. They can build a sustainable, competitive advantage by engaging consumers to interact with them on an experiential level.
We live in a world where things are changing fast, where the power is shifting from brands to consumers, and where consumer behaviors are constantly evolving. As a brand manager, it’s hard to keep up… The four Ps (Product, Place, Promotion and Price) framework was created in 1964 by Neil H. Borden (The concept of Marketing) and has been widely used by generations of marketers. The four Ps are the parameters that the marketing manager can control, subject to the internal and external constrains of the market environment.
Is the 4 Ps framework still relevant today? Are the 4 Ps still the right concepts to keep in mind when you think about marketing? The answer is yes, more so than ever. The framework helps the marketing manager to innovate based on what matters.
Product: the fact that 75% of new products fail at launch demonstrates that people don’t need more stuff, they need better experiences. More than thinking about products, brand managers should think in terms of experiences. How can the offer be integrated within a social context? How can product delivery build customer loyalty when quality is less and less a differentiating factor?
Place: the Internet opened new opportunities for product distribution. More than a new retail channel, the web represents today an enabler for a new type of transaction. How does the Internet reshape the distribution strategy of your offer?
Price: the severity of the economic crisis has prompted consumers to fundamentally rethink the way they act and consume. Price is probably the burning topic in any brand manager’s head right now. 55% of the people who reduced spending as a result of the recession did it through choice (source: McKinsey consumer research, 2010). How will your pricing strategy reflect the new thrift mentality of consumers? How can you leverage new saving mentalities to innovate on new products and services?
Promotion: promotion represents “the various aspects of marketing communication, that is, the communication of information about the product with the goal of generating a positive customer response” (source: NetMBA.com). Today, 65% of people feel they are constantly bombarded with too much advertising (source: Yankelovich 2009), and 76% of customers don’t believe the claims made in advertising (source: Word of Mouth Marketing Association, 2010). Promotion is still at the core of successful marketing strategies, but tactics need to evolve. How can you create relevant, open and long-lasting conversations with customers?
Don’t think the framework is bad. Despite its limitations and perhaps because of its simplicity, the 4 Ps framework still offers a solid approach to marketing. What represents each of the 4 Ps may have changed, but the framework still invites each of us to ask ourselves the right questions.
On my way to work every day I pass through the W4th St. subway station in New York, where I walk by an installation of Gatorade advertisements. These images depict real athletes as they live some athletic moment of truth. This campaign accompanies Gatorade’s evolved design – a blocky “G” with a lightning bolt superimposed, and block CAPS on labels that scream messages that could have been written by my high-school gym teacher:
They’re DARING you to drink it. You can’t measure up! Why are you even trying?
This bit of brand aggression suggests that Gatorade is seriousness and performance and results in a bottle, and by drinking it you’ll be about performance and results too.
But Gatorade has become just as aspirational as its target customer – both striving hard for health and performance that the product won’t deliver. The drinks pack 50 to 310 calories per serving, and are carbohydrate, sugar, and sodium rich. It’s angling to be tastier than water, healthier than a soft drink, using health, performance and testosterone as a wrapper.
It shows how design, communications, and even product development can become disconnected from the needs of the business and consumer:
Companies need to find, capture, and grow sources of revenue.
Consumers need something that appeals to taste and is healthy. They’re smarter about what they eat, interested in wellness, are better informed, and will ultimately see through claims that aren’t genuine.
The world at large needs better and easier ways to achieve a healthier reality.
There must be a sweet spot between what the world requires, and what Pepsi has to achieve as a business, that doesn’t require re-skinning Gatorade as something it’s not. To do it, business and brand have to lead what’s innovated, designed, and ultimately communicated.
Imagine the customer loyalty and affinity that could come, and the impact on sport, wellness, and overall public health were someone to innovate for the results that advertising in the health drink category promises…
I just read Clay Shirky’s book – Here Comes Everybody. In it he makes a great point that being ‘professional’ brings with it an inherent bias and unwillingness to see change.
He quotes the example of professional journalists missing the racist comments by former leader of the House Trent Lott, which eventually led to his resignation. For these journalists, it didn’t fit within their existing structures and concepts of ‘newsworthiness’.
Instead it was ‘amateur’ bloggers who picked up on the comment and sparked furious debate about what he’d said, and then an investigation into what he’d said in the past.
I couldn’t help but think about this in the context of marketing and brand building. For years marketers and their agencies have defined themselves as ‘communications professionals’ and yet the mechanics of communications, much like the mechanics of journalism, are changing radically and permanently.
If we lock ourselves into the idea of being in a communications profession, I think we risk massively underestimating both the pace and nature of change in the world around us.
In a world where image no longer defines reality, but instead reality is increasingly driving image, anyone thinking of themselves simply as a communications professional risks being left behind.
Instead, I think we need to open our minds and begin thinking of ourselves as brand amateurs, where brand is a system of mechanisms – experience, innovation, culture, communication, conversation, creativity etc.
Rather than being locked into a single mechanical construct, this frees us to focus more on pursuing a business vision – through whichever means is most important, and irrespective of whether it is about communication or not.
![ALL DIFFERENT, EACH UNIQUE
What’s going to see us out of this economic mess the (largely male) banking population got us into? Women!That may sound like feminist rhetoric but it’s grounded in solid fact: 85% of all brand purchases are made by women. 88% of mothers in the US (the world’s largest economy) refer to themselves as the household CFO. To take advantage of that immense spending power, companies and marketers alike need to work out what it is that makes women not just like but buy what they have to offer. And the rewards are big if they manage to crack the golden egg of the sale funnel: recommendation - women are passionate advocates for the brands they love, and extensive social networkers (particularly in the West).But currently there is often a big disconnect between women in real life and women in advertising. The cliches – woman cleaning, woman ruffling child’s hair as she’s cleaning, woman serving up steaming gravy pots to her grubby male family members – come thick and fast. And women – of all ages - can spot it a mile off: a US cleaning brand recently got short shrift from a 9 year old girl on their TV ad: “Dear Swiffer, I think your commercials are totally sexist. There is no good reason why in all your commercials there is a girl cleaning the house with Swiffer.” And a lot of websites aimed at women are no less guilty of stereotyping – laying on the pink, diamonds and cheesy smiles thick. Women are different to men, but they are also different to each other. It’s ridiculous to suppose you can generalise about what 50% of the population wants. When brands get it right in the lucrative women market, they don’t make assumptions – they make things that are useful and relevant to women. Take Nike: back in 2006 they re-did their corporate strategy, making ‘women’s fitness’ one of the key pillars of their offer. Since then, they’ve created products and services that are particularly relevant to their female customers – apparel that’s more feminine, creating new ways for their network to connect…and all with a black background. Similarly, LinkedIn researched how women used their service – noticing that they are more likely to connect people, liking to help other women like themselves get ahead – and adapted to suit them more; successfully managing to change their demographic from 79% men 7 years ago, to almost 50/50 men/women today.And it’s even possible in the world of consumer electronics. In 2007, Pure Digital Technologies shunned the traditional, male-dominated CE venues to showcase their attractive, pocket-sized camcorder the Flip. Instead they invested in getting arguably the most famous and influential Western women on board as their key advocate: Oprah and her TV crew made videos with the Flip from behind the scenes on her TV show, and posted them on YouTube - neatly demonstrating the useful and fun ways Flip can fit into your life as a an active, ambitious, socially networked woman (and helping to keep Flip at the top of the sales charts on Amazon).Other brands should learn from these examples. It’s OK to target women. It’s OK to acknowledge that they do things differently. But don’t rely on stereotype – know which women it is you’re targeting and make sure you give them something great to talk about to their friends beyond a feminine colour palette.
[Amy Norman & Jean-Yves Minet]](http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/wolffolinsblog/1544375216/1/tumblr_lbqfk5uBrL1qzj1ct)
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