Run on Toast

Data visualisation rules

 

This is a subject getting increasing conversation time on various blogs. One of the consistent challenges is to avoid visualisation for the sake of it.

In thinking about our rule set I like very much Manuel Lima's information visualisation manifesto:

1. "Form follows function
2. Start with a question
3. Interactivity is key
4. Cite your source
5. The power of narrative
6. Do not glorify aesthetics
7. Look for relevancy
8. Embrace time
9. Aspire to knowledge
10. Avoid gratuitous visualisations"

However in avoiding Lima's points 6 & 10 Edward R Tufte is still the authoritative source. Below is Tufte's own manifesto quoted from his excellent book page 13 - the second bullet encapsulates it all really.

"Excellence in statistical graphics consists of complex ideas communicated with clarity, precision and efficiency. Graphical displays should

• show the data
• induce the viewer to think about the substance rather than about methodology, graphic design, the technology of graphic production, or something else
• avoid distorting what the data have to say
• present many numbers in a small space
• make large data sets coherent
• encourage the eye to compare different pieces of data
• reveal the data at several levels of detail, from a broad overview to the fine structure
• serve a reasonably clear purpose: description, exploration, tabulation or decoration
• be closely integrated with the statistical and verbal descriptions of a data set.

Graphics reveal data".

The image above is one of my favourites from his fantastic collection of visualisations - Napoleon's march into Russia. The brown line is proportionate in size to his army as he begins his campaign. The advance of the army is shown across a map of Russia. The black line is Napoleon's retreat with date and temperature plotted - revealing with great articulation the human tragedy.

Addressing wrap rage

It was interesting to see this message on the front page of Amazon today:

As an agency that deals predominantly with service brands, we've been thinking a lot about service marketing recently, and the role of marketers within this area. And also, the idea of always being in beta, a principle raised as part of the recent IPA Social project (you can read the principle written up here by Jamie Coomber, strategist at Poke).

Amazon addressing wrap rage is an interesting example of addressing a customer frustration, and inviting the customers to participate in a shift that may take a while to implement. It's important to remember that our customers can be very understanding of the face that change in massive companies can take time, but at the same time need to see real change in order to believe messaging. This period of delivery will be critical for Amazon, as a customer having seen that message is going to expect some changes to their packaging.

Simple ideas

Sorry I've been so quiet for a while. We've been massively busy, which is a great way to be in the current climate. We've still been keeping track of the latest stuff and will start downloading over the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, we've just come across the London for London campaign.

 

It's a simple premise. Clubs in London ask for a £1 donation on the door this Saturday which will go to charity. I love how simple this idea is. Small donations when a large volume of people are going out, and therefore in a spending frame of mind - and generally likely to be upbeat. The money will be split between Kids Company, Volunteer Police Cadets and 95.8 Capital FM's Help A London Child camapign. I don't know how this will be put into practice, but am looking forward to finding out this weekend. Mental note: remember to carry change.

No logo

Saw an in interesting post over on Influx Insights the other day, about how Freshjive are removing branding/logos from all their products (you can read the interview with owner Rick Klotz here). I always thought that the interesting thing about a lot of luxury fashion is that there is no branding on the outside of the clothes. The kudos comes because fashion people are so geeky that they will be able to recognise who you're wearing by what you're wearing. It's interesting to see a brand taking it further, with no branding at all.

But does this box become a logo of sorts? Pic via The Hundreds

A couple of quotes from that Klotz interview:
"Throughout the years I’ve become uncomfortable with this business of branding and brand identity. I’m not the type of person that buys something for the brand name. I’ve also never done a very good job at creating a captivating identity to our own brand logo." The cynic in me wonders if this just a savvy marketing ploy for a brand that hasn't built a successful reputation as it would like?

"... when I see kids wearing company logos it reminds of people who are trying to be a part of a “tribe” or “gang”, as if they need to be part of something, which seems to go against the idea of individualism in style."

"It’s really invigorating to approach designing a line WITHOUT the constrictions of how the logo is gonna be placed or used on the garments. " Imagine designing an ad without having to consider where to put the logo. Within the market that Freshjive operate in, it's as radical a thought.

It's an interesting case to follow. If you take away the brand and the logo, you are left with just the product. What to do you to your product to make it desirable?

Originality is overrated

This rather lovely Jim Jarmusch quote was floating around the internet a while back, and is pretty spot on in terms of creative inspiration.

I was reminded of it when I came across the rather brilliant Copyc*nts blog. For the unitiated it basically names and shames marketers who 'borrow' their ideas by outing the sources.

If the main gist of the Jarmusch quote is that we can't help but borrow, but creativity is the progressing of these ideas, then maybe in advertising we are a little too lazy. In defence of advertising, the only people who are really indignant about this 'creative borrowing' are other advertisers, who wished they'd borrowed it first.

I suppose the question is 'do we need to be more upfront about our sources?'. It was quite interesting watching the reaction the 118 247 advert (yes, that again) which, for those that didn't know, reworked an old Weebl song called Magical Trevor. After the campaign launched the Weebl community were enraged because they felt we'd ripped off his song. As we'd actually worked with the guy behind Weebl, the community was easily placated.

We talk a lot about the importance of brands being open and honest, but do advertisers need to be too?

Big Brother or Marketing People Want?

The news that the BBC is to use behavioural targeting on its global websites outside the UK (Marketing Week 27.04.09) is an important milestone for this (relatively) new and highly controversial technology for 2-reasons...

1. It is seen as a key enabler to commercialising their websites
2. If the ultra-cautious BBC are happy to adopt it should your company be doing the same?  

  
Behavioural targeting uses knowledge of the websites you visit to serve you more relevant online advertising. It is seen as a crucial technology for both ISPs and web owners to monetise their sites, and to revitalise online display advertising.

It's controversial because of privacy - do you want your web-surfing habits to be tracked and used in this way? The answer is of course - it depends! If it is genuinely useful then yes. There is a distinct generation gap in the attitude of those consumers (often younger and social-networking literate) who understand the value of sharing their personal information.

BT got is spectacularly wrong last year in its test on the Phorm behavioural targeting platform. Rather than invite customers to participate in a beta-test (Google style) it picked customers randomly. Whilst their anonymity was assured the customers in the trial did not appreciate being selected without permission.

Online display advertising is at a bit of a crossroads - despite comprising 19% of online advertising expenditure in 2008 (IAB) the effectiveness of this media is coming under intense scrutiny. Network buys have become the norm where you pay for impressions but are blind to the web sites you might end up on with the organisational risk and wastage that entails.

On a more positive note the combination of behavioural targeting and the interactive display formats that are increasingly available promise greater customer relevancy and a better branded experience - potentially moving from the interruptive to the genuinely engaging.

If this sounds to you a bit like the cookie debate of 5-years or so ago - you'd be right - using much the same technology. Whilst consumers are beginning to accept that cookies are useful for improving their internet experience there is a way to go to win the debate on highly targeted advertising. 

Brand and digital media owners need to demonstrate to consumers that they can use behavioural targeting responsibly to genuinely deliver marketing people want. The IAB's good practice guide is an excellent place to start.

WOW marketing

I liked this quote from Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos in the latest issue of Contagious. The future of marketing is big.

Marketing Revisited, Part I

I have now been back in the world of marketing (and Rapier) for two months after a 4 year absence (if you ignore a few freelancing stints). When I first left Rapier I carried on reading the marketing press and keeping abreast of things, but gradually one tends to drift, especially when doing something completely unrelated (in my case, a PhD in medieval art history). As a result, coming back has let me have a bit of a fresh look at the whole picture: what has changed, what has stayed constant and what it feels like to be on the outside of the marketing world. Below are some initial observations (more will follow in the coming weeks).

 

For one thing I was frightened to realise how oblivious to marketing it is possible to become – something that was completely new to me. I came to the UK aged 12 from a world without advertising (Communist Bulgaria) and I was fascinated by it because it was a novelty. I actually fast-forwarded the film to get to the ads. The fascination eventually led to a career in marketing, so I never had a chance to become oblivious. But having thrown myself into something new and notoriously all-absorbing in recent years it suddenly happened: I stopped opening DM, my mind would filter press ads and posters and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen a TV ad – the latter being partly due to increasing dependence on TV on demand (how many students stay in to watch their favourite show on telly in the evening!?). For me this was a new, surprising and temporary situation, but for most people it must be a life-long experience. How frightening!

 

Interestingly there was one channel that didn’t lose my attention and that was the cinema. Seeing the ads remained part of the pleasure and I would drag my husband panting and cursing to get there on time for the start of the ads. This made me think about context and about advertising as entertainment. If you could only get consumers to perceive watching, seeing, reading advertising as a pleasure, you’d be onto a winner.

 

Then something annoying happened.  A number of cinema commercials appeared that I found profoundly infuriating and that made me annoyed with the whole lot of pre-film ads! It hasn’t quite made me want to skip them (to my beloved’s regret), but it’s hard to love any of them, even the good ones. Can bad advertising adversely affect a whole channel? And is there anything the marketing industry can do about it? These seem like pretty important questions to ponder.

 

 

 

Death of a Salesman

It is rumoured that Capital One the credit card company is to drop direct mail from its acquisition marketing mix in 2009The company spent c£6m in 07 (14m items) with 86% directed at acquisition, placing it mid way in the Top 100 direct mailers according to Marketing Magazine. In 06 they were ranked number 2.

(As an aside another credit card provider, MBNA headed the charts in 07 spending £35m to send 78m pieces 63% of which were focused on acquisition. However, even this is a 22% decline on 06) Why are Capital One pulling out of DM for acquisition activity? Sadly I suspect the reason is less to do with corporate responsibility regarding the environment or the public's intense irritation with junkmail of this kind but instead a simple commercial calculation - it simply no longer pays to do it. Does this mean the death of acquisition direct mail, a reliable cold-call salesman for the last 20-years? I think it does but direct selling couldn't be healthier. The direct battle for customers has simply shifted from the door mat to the Google search box with the direct marketing budgets following. Again from Marketing Magazine's 2008 review Capital One were ranked 4th in the "Top 100 online advertisers" spending c£14.7m in 07 up from 39th the year before. The IAB's analysis supports this. In the first half of 07 internet advertising spend increased by 41.3%, whilst direct mail declined by 6.3%. If acquisition direct mail is to survive it needs to be integrated far more effectively - driving customers online. Sound obvious? Maybe. But in my experience your average marketing department struggles with the organisational alignment to achieve this as well as the holistic measurement required.

Matt

Free Phone

Mobile phones have been threatening to emerge as a serious personal advertising platform for sometime. Unlike your TV and PC you carry your phone with you at all times, usually switched on, and at least 95% of us have one. However, it wasn't until the iPhone and its contemporaries that the mobile internet was really shown to be a viable consumer experience.

"Push" strategies are relying on targeting mobile advertising by amalgamating demographics and location data. Therefore, you can push a BMW advert to a man, over-35 within 2-miles of the Twickenham dealership. Inevitably such push activity comes with the usual concerns over privacy.

The opportunities for 'pull" strategies are much more powerful in creating real customer engagement and word of mouth. The iPhone's ability to download apps and the open-source nature of these has facilitated viral marketing such as Carling's iPint which turns your iPhone into a virtual pint.

Now we have Blyk, a free mobile phone network for 16-24 year olds. For allowing advertising Blyk users can obtain free text messages and calls. For someone who has worked in the telco sector within the last 10-years it takes a while to get your mind round the fact that the business model can be subverted in this way. Yet even a year or so ago you would have been laughed at for giving away a PC (even the basic spec e-books from the likes of 3) with a mobile broadband contract. Clearly it pays to be open-minded!

My question is this. We know consumers are getting even more expert at filtering out unwanted advertising messages. With a advertising models like Blyk will its users simply learn to screen out the advertising as a necessary encumbrance to accessing the services they want? Sounds familiar doesn't it? Whereas with the model exemplified by the Carling app the opportunity for true consumer engagement and word of mouth is much greater. We just need to figure out how to measure their impact on the bottom line of the businesses we support.

Matt