New Objective: Instigate Interest

Across a number of different things I have observed and thought about lately. Ive started to try and bring a lot of statements that different people or specialists in the industry have made. Simon over at here be monsters recently commented on a post about social currency I wrote. He's comment was that 'content isn't king. Conversation is king and content gives us something to say.'. I do love how everything we do in marketing has to be king or the death of or something more dramatic than that. But it got me thinking. Creative agencies say content is king, media companies say channels are king, social media experts say its all about the conversation. So what is the role of brands and its agencies. I think its as simple as 'instigating interest'

The image above is of a Times ad that I saw at a tube station in London. Its a style that seems to be popping up more and more for media owners. Like the (at the time) quite ground breaking 'Discuss' campaign from AOL and Grey that addressed dramatic topics. The Economist has had some quite ground breaking ads over the years by addressing interesting topics. But what I have truly taken from these is that it is about instigating an interest for an individual to do more. By instigating the interest we can stop telling and drive people to action. This could be driving people to a website, driving people to question the interest further, build on the information we have put forth, drive a conversation with another person or many.

This can be across a whole bunch of spectrums. comparethemeerkats is about an instigating interest into a funny character... it drives people online to watch outakes. To be his friend on fb. To talk about how funny it was with friends (if I say 'ooohh bouncy' to the guys at work again I think they will hit me).

The times have instigated interest across all their recent ads with somewhat contraversial comments around topics. This might drive people online to get a greater understanding or dicuss it with a friend.

So lets stop worrying about who is king and find some interests that we can use with our audience to instigate some action for our brand

Changing our Objectives Part 1

uploaded on flickr by herbalcell.com

A few weeks back some of my colleges went off to a conference to present under the title 'the future of communications planning'. There was some interesting stuff we are doing in ethnography and different mind games that we utilise with different groups of people. Also the role of digital and the changing landscape. But I felt that we needed to go back quite a bit and start at the beginning. The future starts today with the changing of the simple things.... like the objectives.
I have been obsessed with something Russell Davies brought up a while ago saying we should always be in Beta. Constantly developing and getting better each time. Nothing is ever a finished product.
I have then combined this with some different information I have seen on brand advocates which all came together in a great presentation from Paul Marsden from Brand Eugenics that the guys at the Economist sponsored that came into the agency the other day. He commented on how P&G have created Beta products and testing them with people. Then using the people to help better develop the product. Then utilising them as WOM influencers which makes complete sense. I think this is an example of how we have to start to change the standard client objective that the likes of TV bring to the table. Its not about building your cover fast. Its changing from

Everybody to Know =>First to Know

Being apart of the process makes people more involved and driven to tell other people about the product or service. This has been the case with some recent enthographic and other style groups we have started to run. The people involved have called us afterwards and have asked to stay involved or have told us how they have explained it to their friends. Also there are particular people who love to know first. These people tend to spend a lot of time with media and are what Paul called 'Infowhores'. I believe Faris is the ultimate example of this, as are many people out there writing blogs. You could see this in the campaign that Amelia utilised for O2 targeting some of the bloggers for the launch of the cocoon phone.

So here is the first change in objectives. Who is the first to know....... cause they might tell everybody for us. Which will be cheaper than a TV ad to do so