Will Lego be the Next Blockbuster?
Posted: February 17, 2015 Filed under: English | Tags: Brands, Change Management, Consumer, Digital, Gaming, Generations, Organizations, Technology Leave a commentBillund, Denmark. It was autumn 2010 when the head of innovation at Lego stepped into Jørgen Vig Knudstorp’s office, CEO at Lego Group. He discovered an emerging Swedish studio, Mojang, that was basically making a virtual construction platform (note the term platform vs. game). The first platform of the kind was released more than 15 years ago (with the Doom WADs), so this was nothing new. Even Lego had produced their own “sandbox” in 1998, the Lego Creator. But this new game had something else, a community of contributors, almost unlimited user generated content, some secret rules for object crafting that were not directly exposed by the studio in any tutorial, and the ability of playing online within the same world between users. Oh, yes, and some skeletons, monsters, spiders and zombies wandering around. Read the rest of this entry »
The Next Big Disruption in Retail (and no, it’s not iBeacons)
Posted: February 13, 2015 Filed under: English | Tags: augmented reality, Consumer, Experience, Google, Microsoft, Mobile, NFC, Retail, Shopper Marketing, Smartphone, Technology Leave a commentSmart shopping is around the corner, much has been written about the extended possibilities of digital interaction within physical stores, leveraging on mobile and other technologies such as iBeacon or NFC.
Microsoft recently announced, through a concept video (a must see) their HoloLens. A very interesting release since just a week before Google announced they were stopping to sell their similar product, Google Glass. Same product? not really. Google took the wearable path, and this generated much controversy not only because the cost (to be a wearable), but because of the uses of the product, which limited it to be an additional screen to your phone (the same as a watch could be). Microsoft, on the other hand, has played the augmented reality game, which is not new at all, but which gives a great twist into the uses of the product. Read the rest of this entry »
7 Reasons Why Great Content is Not Enough
Posted: December 23, 2014 Filed under: English | Tags: Advertising, Brands, Campaign, Communication, Consumer, Content, Empathy, Marketing, Social Media Leave a comment
2015 will be the year of many interesting things, one of them it’s content. Since advertisement effectiveness is every year lower, “Content” is the word used now for the information delivered by the brands that is more than a simple ad. The objective of any content strategy is to generate a deeper link with consumers and provide spaces of conversation with the brands and between them. Content that can be shared, viralized, and shared again for the pride of the creative agency that produced it. But remember, very few ideas are powerful enough to be self viral, and if the content doesn’t work, brands, not creatives, are paying the price of failure. Read the rest of this entry »
The one single question for your advertising agency
Posted: October 27, 2014 Filed under: English | Tags: Advertising, Brands, Business, CMO, Common Sense, Communication, Consumer, Empathy, Marketing Leave a commentThis weekend I saw a video shared in Facebook, about young people having a great summer experience and, by the way, eating ice creams. It was very well produced (although it reminded me to other similar ads from the beer category), actors were nice and fresh, it looked fine, the claim copy was creatively very powerful. I would congratulate the agency’s creative director, I’m sure he or she was aiming to win some prize at any creative festival. The problem, I didn’t see how that video would help them selling more ice creams. Yes there was a promo behind so you could go on a trip trip with your friends, but definitely they didn’t need the video for that.
Advertising should aim to change consumers behaviors: consider if they don’t know, try if they haven’t done before, buy more if they are occasionals, advocate if they’re regulars. It’s a quite simple funnel (how to influence consumers is, on the other hand, quite more complex since the path to purchase is anything but linear)
Agencies need to reshape to a new integrated model, but CMOs and their teams do also have to provide the right briefings. The better the briefing is, the better chances are that the creative concept will hit bull’s eye (this isn’t new). Most briefs include information about the product and its value proposition, about the target, about the brand. But many times briefs lack business objectives. What do you want to achieve with the campaign? Is it awareness? is it sales? How much? This is important as creatives tend to justify their work with emotional attributes linked to the brand. But even if the business objective is pure awareness, creating a brand personality or narrowing the gap with the consumer, there is a final business objective that needs to be fulfilled. Let’s assume you created the perfect brief, with your business objectives well defined, and your agency brings back a concept. What would be that one single question to ask?
The one single question is WHY?
Why a consumer, after being impacted by the advertisement should change his behavior in order to meet your business objectives. If the business objective is clearly defined in the brief, the creative agency should be able to answer this very simple question. And that question should be in the heart of every creative as a sanity check, proving himself his/her Consumer Empathy.
This is not against creativity, it’s neither against emotionality. The answer doesn’t have to be rational if the business objective is not rational, but they have to be aligned. We’re not asking to explain a concept (which by the way, should be self explanatory) we’re asking how the creative thinks his/her concept is going to modify the consumer behavior in every single step of his/her decision journey, because that should be the real aim of a campaign. Don’t you think?
Constant Change Ahead 