'A prophet is not without honour", says the Bible, "save in his own country." This was manifestly not true in the case of Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian cultural critic, who was born 100 years ago last Thursday, and was famous not only in his own country, but also abroad. In fact, he's the only public intellectual I can think of who played himself in a Woody Allen movie.
Film buffs will recall the wonderful sequence in Annie Hall, where Woody and Diane Keaton are queuing for a movie when a guy behind them starts opining pompously about McLuhan's description of television as a "high intensity or hot medium". Allen expresses to camera a desire to have a large sock full of horse manure close to hand, whereupon the guy asserts his right to express his opinion on the grounds that he teaches a course at Columbia on "TV, media and culture", a fact that – he asserts – gives his views on McLuhan a great deal of validity.
"That's funny," replies Woody, "because I happen to have Mr McLuhan right here." He goes over to a flipchart and pulls out the great man himself from behind it. "I heard what you were saying," says McLuhan to the Columbia man. "You know nothing of my work... how you ever got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing." The scene closes with Woody saying to camera: "Boy, if life were only like this."
As it happens, there have been many times in the past few years when it would have been useful to have had McLuhan to hand because, in a strange way, his insights into media seem more relevant now than they were in the 1960s when he sprang into prominence. His big idea, encapsulated in the baffling aphorism: "The medium is the message", was that the important thing about media is not the information they carry but what they are doing to us in terms of shaping our behaviour, the way we think and possibly also the way our brains are structured. McLuhan believed that this had been demonstrated by media that had dominated human society up to the 1960s – starting with print and culminating with broadcast television – and added the twist that TV was restoring the "sensory balance" that had been disrupted by print.
I never really understood McLuhan's views about television, preferring the perspective of one of his disciples, Neil Postman, who argued that the essential thing about the medium was that it had an infantilising effect, a view neatly encapsulated in the title of his wonderful book about the medium, Amusing Ourselves to Death. But McLuhan's insight into the significance of dominant media, expressed in another aphorism – "We shape our tools and afterwards our tools shape us" – always seemed profound and came to seem more and more so as television gave way to the internet and the networked world that we now inhabit.
The past few years, for example, have seen a series of angry and sometimes anguished debates about what a comprehensively networked ecosystem is doing to our children, our politics, our economies and even our brains. We wonder whether social networking might be fuelling political revolution, for example. And we ask if Google is making us stupid – or at any rate whether networked technology is reducing attention spans, devaluing memory and blurring the line between making online connections and forming real relationships. Over all of these contemporary debates looms the shadow of McLuhan, who now seems more insightful than ever.
He retains, however, the capacity to polarise opinion that he always had. Mention his name in polite academic conversation and you invariably see scholarly noses wrinkle in distaste. In part, this is because – although he was an impeccable scholar schooled in a Cambridge English faculty that included FR Leavis, IA Richards and Arthur Quiller-Couch – in his writings on media he affected an aloof, oracular, aphoristic style which enraged conventional academics. He always started his lectures with a joke and invited his students to ponder questions such as the semiotics of an advertisement for aspirin that featured a helmeted, jackbooted, scantily clad drum majorette. This is not the way to win friends and gain influence in academia.
McLuhan's big idea was to spot that the word "medium" has distinctly different meanings. The conventional one is that a medium is a channel for communicating information – which is why much discussion about media up to his time focused on the content that was being conveyed by print, radio and television. But there is another, equally significant, interpretation. To a biologist, a medium is an environment containing the nutrients in which tissue cultures – organisms – grow. Change the medium and you change the organisms. Our communications media likewise constitute the environment which sustains, nurtures – or constrains – our culture. And if the medium changes, then so does the culture. The medium is far more than the message, in other words. In fact, it's all we've got.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Sharp insights on McLuhan@100. From The Guardian: Thanks, Marshall, I think we've finally got the message...
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Sunday, July 17, 2011
5 Years, 3 Conferences & Hours of Talk Later, My Takeaway: To Promote DOOH, Pitch Projects & Ideas - NOT the Medium.
A few days ago, I stood as the emcee atthe 2nd Philippine Forum on Digital Out-Of-Home (DOOH) Media.
It was a fascinating Friday forum. We saw a lot of amazing executions from around the world and some from the Philippines that seemed to have opened the eyes of most participants. Excellent presentations, Lloyd Tronco, Manolo Almagro, Bob Michaels, Ricky Baizas, Christian Besler, Brian Siy, Carol Sarthou and Myrel De Castro.
Zooming out, the refrain was coming to me loud and clear, if we plan to take this medium forward - as individual businesses and as an industry - we must stop thinking that it is already a veritable medium that is understood and appreciated the way TV, radio and print are; instead, we must allow it to earn its merits a step at a time.
For now, we must pitch projects, campaigns and ideas - NOT the medium itself. We just can't afford to. Not yet, at least.
It seems that thinking of DOOH as a medium pre-supposes a few things: 1) that we know what we are selling; 2) that media-buyers and advertisers know what they are buying; and 3) that there is an agreed-upon currency or valuation system that allows both parties to perceive that they are coming to a fair transaction.
Based on my experience, I'd say these three pre-suppositions are not present at this time - on an industry-wide scale that it.
Which leads us to the recommendation to pitch projects / campaigns. Why? Because they have objectives of their own, and a timefame for achieving them. Projects / Campaigns do not necessarily rely on having industry measures such as Opportunity-To-See (OTS).
Instead, they have defined project / campaign objectives, which at the end of the run, may be judged to either have been met or not.
It was very interesting that several resources recommend that DOOH be tied-in to its more accountable cousins - Web and mobile. These siblings will certainly be able to produce clicks and hits that can make the numeric case for DOOH. Of course, the metric can be as plain as say... a 30% increase in surrenderees from para-military insurgents, as one of the case studies / examples below will show.
DOOH at this stage seems so enamored with technology, that we need to pull back and ask what all these new-found capabilities and facilities are for.
At the end of the day, we may do well to take a cue from the learnings of mobile. It's no longer so much about the phone these days, but the apps.
Let's pitch an idea, then round up the DOOH tools to execute it. Advertising is about the audience - the advertiser or media buyer listening to our pitch. Let's ask them what they need, come up with a plan, then harness DOOH tech to achieve that.
"A carpenter isn't buying a drill, he's buying a hole."
Some of the amazing projects / campaigns that blew our minds:
http://gizmodo.com/5302856/anti+abuse-bus-stop-ad-only-batters-women-when-nob...
http://www.facebook.com/nidofortified.ph
10 Must See Projection Mappings Video Showcase. From Squidoo.com.
Projection Mapping seems to be a hit these days, as it is able to turn an OOH execution into a public spectacle. Here's a showcase of some of the work done in this area.
15 Examples of Creative Out-Of-Home Advertising
At last Friday's Philippine Forum on DOOH, a number of
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Great move. Agencies should think sales, not just ads. From AdAge: Yum CEO Challenges Agencies to Help Boost Business
David Novak, the chairman-CEO of Yum Brands, is on a mission to lift sales at the restaurant company -- the parent of KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut -- and is challenging his ad agencies to do their part.
According to multiple people familiar with the matter, Mr. Novak has circulated a memo to the company's lead creative agencies, calling for a "brainstorming session" that will involve its three main ad partners: WPP's Ogilvy & Mather and Interpublic Group of Cos. siblings DraftFCB and the Martin Agency.
-->David Novak
People familiar with the memo said Mr. Novak expressed discontent with the company's U.S. business results compared with its international growth, and asked for agencies to assess the causes and come up with solutions. Solutions may include anything from untapped consumer trends to operations suggestions to innovations in the fast-food category. Mr. Novak is also understood to have inquired about what could be done on Yum's part to help improve the creative work.
DraftFCB works on Taco Bell and KFC; Martin handles Pizza Hut; and Ogilvy & Mather handles pieces of Yum's international business. Just this week Ogilvy won the Taco Bell account in India without a review. (Taco Bell in India had been handled by WPP's JWT.) Ogilvy also works on KFC in India.
Despite Mr. Novak's missive, the company insisted to Ad Age that its agencies are safe and that no review process is in the offing for any of the brands. "We are having a strategy session with our agencies together to discuss our business opportunities," said a company spokesman. "All will be in the same room together and we are not having a creative or agency review."
It is, of course, daunting for agencies to be seeing one another's presentations to Yum executives. People familiar with the matter said Mr. Novak has in the past called on agencies to offer ideas on the business side of things, but the idea that they can view one another's presentations of those ideas is new.
Yum's U.S. unit is not growing at the rate the company's international business is. The company's U.S. division in 2010 had same-store sales growth of 1% -- driven by growth of 8% at Pizza Hut and 2% at Taco Bell, and offset by a dip of 4% at KFC. And while 2010 international same-store sales were flat, same-store sales in China grew 6%.
But first-quarter U.S. same-store sales declined 1%, with an increase of 1% at KFC, flat sales at Taco Bell and a decline of 3% at Pizza Hut. International same-stores sales grew 2% in the first quarter, with China growing 13%.
In Yum's first-quarter earnings release it noted: "Taco Bell began the year with strong sales momentum and grew same-store sales 4% in the first period of the quarter. However, due to false claims made about our food quality that resulted in negative publicity, we saw a significant reversal in sales trends."
Although a lawsuit leveled against Taco Bell for allegedly serving fake beef was withdrawn, franchisees have been vocal about their dissatisfaction with their agency. An April memo from the Taco Bell Franchise Management Advisory Council (Franmac) detailed 14 grievances the franchise council had with the business operation of Taco Bell, including the desire to reassess DraftFCB's work on the account.
At the time of the Franmac memo, Taco Bell CMO David Ovens told Ad Age: "We are very pleased with our longstanding agency partnership and have no plans to make any changes, as we're completely focused on building the business."
Martin's Pizza Hut account appears to be relatively stable as well, given that the marketer recently consolidated digital and social-media marketing, along with the standing creative account, at the Interpublic shop.
Yum in January announced it was selling A&W and Long John Silver's in an effort to focus on aggressively growing overseas as well as growing sales in the U.S. on the three remaining brands.
The company will release its second-quarter earnings at market close today.
Saturday, July 09, 2011
If they can't work WITH you, work ON them. From AdAge: Showtime, OMD Build Foursquare Marketing Promo
Here's how brands can finally breakthrough the bottleneck that is Foursquare's new business department: Build an ad program on the platform itself.
For Showtime, Omnicom's OMD built a check-in program without the help of the hot startup by plugging into its data hose, the Foursquare API.
To promote the July 15 premiere of reality series "The Franchise: A Season With the San Francisco Giants," OMD Ignition Factory group partnered with Major League Baseball to create a billboard display that dispenses baseballs, some signed by Giants, when people check in on Foursquare at the MLB Fan Cave storefront in Manhattan. For those who automatically share their Foursquare posts to either Twitter or Facebook or both -- which accounts for roughly a quarter of people on Foursquare, according to OMD's Trevor Guthrie -- a show ad and tune-in message is automatically sent to those social-media accounts.
While OMD tapped a Foursquare tutorial, the project was built largely independent of the startup, using its publicly available API.
"There have been some independent experiments, working off our API, to do things like this," said Foursquare Director of Business Development Jonathan Crowley. "But for a media company and MLB to create this kind of experience, I've never seen anything like this before. It's an amazing display.
He cited examples of big brands using Foursquare to drive incentives and deals, but programming an action through the Foursquare API is new, aside from a couple of local and international campaigns: Earlier this year, a German dog food company tasked consumers to walk their dogs and check in at billboard ads that were programmed to release treats. Another more local example, he noted, is a recent party in Brooklyn with a door that guests had to unlock by checking in on Foursquare.
"Enabling us to do this with a billboard in New York is actually enabling us to reach out to other people outside of New York with the franchise message," said George DeBolt, senior VP-media, promotions and partnership marketing at Showtime. "When I had to sell it to the CMO -- he doesn't like us to spend a lot of money on small tactics -- I said it may seem like a small tactic but it has a viral element that's really big."
The undisclosed cost was also likely a selling point. MLB, which is as invested in the new show as Showtime, owned the billboard space so placement was free, and use of the Foursquare API was free. The only real cost existed in production of the digital billboard, via the help of vendor Monster Media.
Why aren't more brands using the API in this way and why did it take so long for the first ones to get on board?
Mr. Crowley explained that the concept of location-based platforms is still new for most big brands and it's taken time for Foursquare to make the API more accessible and user-friendly. "Like all new technologies, it takes large brands some time to get comfortable understanding the value of these platforms and how to leverage the user base. Now, there's a ton more exciting stuff they can do with our location data. As Foursquare has become more mainstream, they're excited to start experimenting with our API."
Monday, July 04, 2011
Beyond the billboard: The future of out-of-home advertisements - Holy Kaw. (Thanks @leahbesajimenez)
The traditional billboard is getting a face lift. The advertising game has had to adapt to modern technology in other portals, and now out-of-home advertising isn’t far behind. Digital billboards are just the beginning; be prepared for multisensory and personalized ads whenever you leave the house. We explore what you can expect in the infographic below.
(Click on the infographic below to learn more.)
Via Column Five for BuySellAds
Like infographics? So do we.
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