Internet usage is sky-rocketing throughout the Asia-Pacific region, obviously making the growth of social media the fastest in the world, as you’ll see, it’s not all about Facebook, but it still leads the way across the region, at least for now. This is a nice collective Infographic from Burson-Marsteller.
The social media statistics cover the most popular social networks in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam at a top level, but also lists a few basic internet statistics per country, like the total number of people connected to the internet and the top 5 visited websites…
Make sure you save this post for later, I’m sure you’ll need to reference these stats at some stage in the future! (Thanks Alex/Carly)
Related Digital Buzz Posts:
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
An FB invasion w various tribes trying to ward it off? Infographic: Asia-Pacific Social Media Statistics | Digital Buzz Blog
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Sharp insights on McLuhan@100. From The Guardian: Thanks, Marshall, I think we've finally got the message...
'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.
via guardian.co.uk
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.
via 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.
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.
via adage.com
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."
via adage.com
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.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Can A Foreign Ad Be Relevant Locally? | Campaign Asia Blog - Thanks for the mention, Roger Pe!
CAN A FOREIGN AD BE RELEVANT LOCALLY?
By Roger PeDoes creativity have a citizenship? How far can a good idea travel? Can foreign campaigns transcend borders and appreciated in places other than their own? Can a local ad do the same?
Way back in the 50s, Philippine media, had already acquired some sprinklings of foreign flavor. Hundreds of years of Spanish rule and largely being Americanized afterwards, these influences helped shape what is Filipino pop culture today.
America gave us a great fill of imported shows on television. We, too, feasted on Uncle Sam’s tv commercials like Marlboro, Nike, Levi’s … to kids teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony, Coke.
From the 80’s, 90’s, to the last decade, we grew up not only with American brands but knew others as well: Rolls Royce, Armani, Volvo, Louis Vuitton, Sony, BMW, to name just a few.
Colonial? Maybe it’s about time to drop the word. Progressive thinking? More like it. We learn from the world, the world learns from us. Afterall, that’s where the world is heading and being too insular isn’t exactly a good mindset for business.Long before the upheaval that changed the world’s advertising landscape, multinational ad agency networks in the Philippines have already pushed the globalization process, airing foreign-made ads to enhance their brands’ global presence.
Symbiotically and though not as frenetic as other foreign brands, the Philippines has also made inroads, going regional, even global in some markets, using true-blue Filipino concepts.
So what’s the big noise in using a foreign ad in local media? Let’s listen to the experts, local and foreign, of course, but let’s pause for a commercial break:
“FALLEN ANGELS”
Seven pretty and sexily clad angels portrayed by world-famous fashion models Adewole Bretty, Sara Samson, Josipa Jankovic and Magda Klebanska, drop one after the other from heaven with a loud thud creating a raucous.
In the town plaza, they stare at a gorgeous, innocent young man with sexual innuendoes. The song “Sexy Boy” by “Air” sneaks in and the ‘seduction’ unfolds.
An angel suddenly smashes her halo to the ground. All others follow in succession. Viewed as strongly suggesting public sex, a comment on the web sees it as “right at the point when public sex is about to begin.”
For sure, the Bartle Bogle Hegarty London-made tv ad would make the catholic church blush, and the bishops, the ones who also balked at a seemingly innocent local tv ad recently, would have none of it on Philippine tv.
Sacrilegious? Judge it for yourself.
“It is just a tv commercial, for Christ’s sake. The device is figure of speech to dramatize consumer benefits,” a local copywriter fumes.
The creative idea behind the ad was to show that Axe’s new variant Excite is so good that when you spray it, women can’t control themselves.
CREATIVITY WITHOUT BORDERS
Asked online, via Skype and social media, ad people from across the globe sent in their nuggets of wisdom:
Multi-awarded tv commercial and film director Sockie Fernandez, says: “It really depends on the ad and insight of the material. If it resonates with me then I may enjoy it but if not, I may not connect with the material inspite of its excellent production values.”
McCann Worldwide New York, Senior Vice President and Group Creative Director Marco Cignini, says: “It really depends on the brand and the market in which you’re considering airing the spot. Some markets translate quite easily. Some definitely do not. It’s always best to create a spot tailored to a specific market but being what the economy is these days I can understand why brands would try to capitalize on the savings. If the idea is simple and smart it will usually carry across cultures.
Hongkong-based Creative Underground ECD Sherri Maxwell has this to say: “A foreign commercial in a local market will most probably only work if it deals with universal human truths, global humor or insights that transcend culture. I always liked: “Think global, act local.”
It is definitely possible, but the person creating the commercial, needs to have a proper temperament. If the person creating the commercial is too rooted in their own culture, then their ideas will always go through that cultural filter. A goal of a television commercial is to reach audiences and deliver branded message. Print could probably achieve that a bit easier.
It also depends on the brand. Coke or Nike for example, they still maintain their brand essence, yet in every market globally they adapt a bit if needed. The concept of drinking, for Coke or playing soccer, for Nike are activities that happen globally. The flip side of this discussion, is that I think if you really want to reach an audience you need to speak their language a bit, become somewhat culturally relevant, but also weave in the brands philosophy. You many need to find commonalities regionally which is being done. Now local brands becoming global, that is an interesting challenge and here in lies the difference between the two. Red Bull is a perfect example of this, a Thai brand, that is now a successful global brand, but look at what they needed to do to become that.
I think there will always be room for failures in this area, if the strategies are not solid nor the creative concept well executed,” Maxwell points out.Brand Mentors President and CEO Willy Arcilla, enumerates the good and bad side of using foreign ads: “Good, because it is cost-effective, consistent, provides foreign cachet and leverages on global best practices. Bad, because it lacks local relevance, discourages local creativity and employment.”
Newly hired JWT Hongkong Executive Creative Director Sylvester Song says: “It really depends on what your brand stands for. A luxury brand trying to create a premium brand image or lifestyle, it makes a lot of sense to be running foreign commercials rather that recreating them locally. Sports brands like Nike and Adidas frequently create global campaigns that ran in all markets with great success.
I don’t really see any negativity or disadvantages of running a foreign commercial in a local market. Ok, so maybe dubbing foreign talents in Cantonese language is laughable but seriously I think at the end of the day, I do believe that a universal idea transcends boundaries, races and cultures. And yes, even if it ran in Kazakhstan!A recent example I can think of is a Cadbury commercial which was quite a hit when it ran in Hong Kong a while back ago. It features two white Caucasian kids doing a funny eyebrow dance. The idea is universal, so is the humour and that’s all the relevance you really need,” Song says
Leo Burnett Manila Associate Creative Director Don Mangente says any foreign commercial with a clear message can be easily understood by anyone. He finds Axe “Falling Angels” tv ad great because it’s idea is universal.
“A global ad helps you if your brand is known and used worldwide and you want people to experience the same communication wherever they are,” says
Trackworks Chief Marketing Officer Bing Kimpo.Rafik Belmesk, Strategic Planner of one of Canada’s biggest ad agencies, nails it on the head: “It depends. On the one hand, the local market card is massively overplayed by some agencies for obvious reasons. In the end, ideas are ideas, and the good ones often translate pretty well.
So in those cases, yes it can, and will be very good for a brand.
That being said, some commercials play on insights and issues that are so peculiar to certain cultures it wouldn’t make sense to air them anywhere else.To summarize, a universal idea will always acquire citizenship anywhere. If it inspires, culturally sensitive, helps improve local production standards, introduce new way of thinking, and make technology transfer useful, it will be embraced and not seen as invading local creativity.
shareshareshareshareshare
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 28th, 2011 at 2:57 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Marketing should be able to push it along. From Forrester: The Mobile Commerce Train: Coming But Not Here Yet
After social commerce, mobile commerce is the most heavily debated topic-du-jour among retailers these days. One thing that both social and mobile commerce have in common is that they are both small. Teeny in fact. Forrester’s Mobile Commerce Forecast, 2011 To 2016, which launched today, shows that retailers can expect 2% of their online web sales (yes, I said web sales which means a minuscule percent of overall retail) to be transacted through mobile devices in 2011. While we also expect mobile commerce sales to grow 40% each year for the next five years, we’re still talking small numbers overall (7% of web sales penetration by 2016). Why so small you may ask. After all, aren’t smartphones changing the way we consume web content? Some things to consider:
- Tablets. We don’t include tablet shopping in our definition of mobile shopping, but the creation (and subsequent explosion in sales) of this device is probably the single biggest inhibitor to the growth of “mobile commerce.” Data that we gathered with Bizrate Insights (to be released separately and soon) indicates that most tablet owners also own smartphones, and many of those people naturally prefer to shop on the device that has the larger screen when given the choice.
- Shopping never leads web behavior. In any list of activities that people do on the Internet, shopping nearly always ranks below things like “reading news” or “using social networks.” Even those activities are not universal among the smartphone set, so it would be premature to expect that shopping would rank high on the list (which it, of course, doesn’t).
- Mobile “shopping” that does happen often isn’t about buying online. When consumers do use their mobile phones in a retail context, it is to look up product information as they are in the midst of researching products in a physical store, or to compare prices, which often leads to a customer demanding a price match, which naturally won’t surface in any mCommerce figures.
So, does this mean that we’re making much ado about nothing with all the focus on mobile commerce? Not a chance. Mobile commerce will transform retail, both because the transparency of pricing will force big box stores to be much better merchants or die and because store associates armed with mobile devices can now do everything from save lost sales to carry a POS device in their hand. And the most efficient retailers won’t even have their store associates doing those things — they’ll have their customers doing them themselves.
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Friday, June 17, 2011
Thanks to Roger Pe for quoting me in this article. Can a foreign ad be relevant locally? | Inquirer Business
Can a foreign ad be relevant locally?
By: Roger Pe
Philippine Daily Inquirer10:56 pm | Thursday, June 16th, 2011 Posted by clopez-->
Does creativity have a citizenship? How far can a good idea travel? Can foreign campaigns transcend borders and be appreciated in places other than their own? Can a local ad do the same?
Way back in the ’50s, Philippine media had already acquired some sprinklings of foreign flavor. Hundreds of years of Spanish rule and largely being Americanized afterward, these influences helped shape what is Filipino pop culture today.
America gave us a great fill of imported shows on television. We, too, feasted on Uncle Sam’s TV commercials like Marlboro, Nike, Levi’s … to kids teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony, Coke.
From the ’80s, ’90s, to the last decade, we grew up not only with American brands but knew others as well: Rolls Royce, Armani, Volvo, Louis Vuitton, Sony, BMW, to name just a few.
Colonial? Maybe it’s about time to drop the word. Progressive thinking? More like it. We learn from the world, the world learns from us. After all, that’s where the world is heading and being too insular isn’t exactly a good mindset for business.
Long before the upheaval that changed the world’s advertising landscape, multinational ad agency networks in the Philippines have already pushed the globalization process, airing foreign-made ads to enhance their brands’ global presence.
Symbiotically and though not as frenetic as other foreign brands, the Philippines has also made inroads, going regional, even global in some markets, using true-blue Filipino concepts.
So what’s the big noise in using a foreign ad in local media? Let’s listen to the experts, local and foreign, of course, but let’s pause for a commercial break:
‘Fallen angels’
Seven pretty and sexily clad angels portrayed by world-famous fashion models Adewole Bretty, Sara Samson, Josipa Jankovic and Magda Klebanska, drop one after the other from “heaven” with a loud thud creating a raucous.
In the town plaza, they stare at a gorgeous, innocent young man with sexual innuendoes. The song “Sexy Boy” by Air sneaks in and the “seduction” unfolds.
An angel suddenly smashes her halo to the ground. All others follow in succession. Viewed as strongly suggesting public sex, a comment on the Web sees it as “right at the point when public sex is about to begin.”
For sure, the Bartle Bogle Hegarty London-made TV ad would make the Catholic church blush, and the bishops, the ones who also balked at a seemingly innocent local TV ad recently, would have none of it on Philippine TV.
Sacrilegious? Judge for yourself.
“It is just a TV commercial, for Christ’s sake. The device is figure of speech to dramatize consumer benefits,” a local copywriter fumes.
The creative idea behind the ad was to show that Axe’s new variant Excite is so good that when you spray it, women can’t control themselves.
Creativity without borders
Asked online, via Skype and social media, ad people from across the globe sent in their nuggets of wisdom:
Multi-awarded TV commercial and film director Sockie Fernandez, says: “It really depends on the ad and insight of the material. If it resonates with me then I may enjoy it but if not, I may not connect with the material in spite of its excellent production values.”
McCann Worldwide New York senior vice president and group creative director Marco Cignini, says: “Some markets translate quite easily. Some definitely do not. It’s always best to create a spot tailored to a specific market.”
Cignini, whose wife is a Filipina, says it is largely because of the economy. “I can understand why brands would try to capitalize on the savings,” he says.
Hong Kong-based Creative Underground executive creative director (ECD) Sherri Maxwell has this to say: “A foreign commercial in a local market will most probably only work if it deals with universal human truths, global humor or insights that transcend culture. I always liked: ‘Think global, act local.’”
Brand Mentors president and CEO Willy Arcilla enumerates the good and bad side of using foreign ads: “Good, because it is cost-effective, consistent, provides foreign cachet and leverages on global best practices. Bad, because it lacks local relevance, discourages local creativity and employment.”
Newly hired JWT Hong Kong ECD Sylvester Song says: “Coke and Nike, for example, still maintain their brand essence, yet in every market globally they adapt a bit if needed.”
Song believes that “if you really want to reach an audience, you need to speak their language and be culturally relevant.”
According to Song, Red Bull, a Thai brand, is a perfect example. “It has become a successful global brand, but look at what they needed to do to become that,” he says.
Leo Burnett Manila associate creative director Don Mangente says any foreign commercial with a clear message can be easily understood by anyone. He finds Axe “Falling Angels” TV ad great because its idea is universal.
“A global ad helps you if your brand is known and used worldwide and you want people to experience the same communication wherever they are,” says Trackworks chief marketing officer Bing Kimpo.
Rafik Belmesk, strategic planner of one of Canada’s biggest ad agencies, nails it on the head: “In the end, ideas are ideas, and the good ones often translate pretty well. Some commercials play on insights and issues that are so peculiar to specific cultures it wouldn’t make sense to air them anywhere else,” he emphasizes.
To summarize, a universal idea will always acquire citizenship anywhere.
If it inspires, culturally sensitive, helps improve local production standards, introduces new way of thinking, and makes technology transfer useful, it will be embraced and not seen as invading local creativity.
Tags: ad , Advertisement , commercials , United States
Friday, May 27, 2011
M-money (& NFC) finally gets the catapult it long needed. From NYT: Google Unveils Wireless Payment System
On Thursday, the technology giant introduced Google Wallet, a mobile application that will allow consumers to wave their cellphones at a retailer’s terminal to make a payment instead of using a credit card. The app, for the Android operating system, will also enable users to redeem special coupons and earn loyalty points.
Starting this summer, the wallet will be available on the Nexus S 4G phone on Sprint and able to hold certain MasterCards issued by Citibank. It will also hold a virtual Google Prepaid MasterCard, which can be loaded with money charged from plastic credit cards.
The mobile wallet will work at any of the 124,000 merchants that accept MasterCard’s PayPass terminals, which take contactless payments, and more than 300,000 merchants outside the United States. The wallet is powered by a technology called near-field communications, which is incorporated into a chip in mobile phones and sends a message to the terminal sitting on merchants’ counters.
“Eventually, you will be able to put everything in your wallet,” said Stephanie Tilenius, vice president for commerce at Google, at a news conference on Thursday.
That grand vision will take a while to come to fruition. Various players have been working on mobile wallets for years, but they have not gained traction because the companies have not been able to agree on how they would be paid or who would control the wallets. Mobile phone carriers, banks, credit card issuers, payment networks and technology companies all have a stake in this battle.
With its wallet, Google will make money on “Google Offers” — advertising deals from local and online businesses that are sent through the phone. Like Groupon, Google will collect a fee from participating retailers every time a person redeems a coupon. Citibank will collect the same fees as it would in a traditional credit card transaction.
It may take a little while for the Google Wallet to be fully functional across the country. While Google has worked with more than 15 retailers, like American Eagle Outfitters, Bloomingdale’s, the Container Store and Jamba Juice, they all need to upgrade their payment terminals. When they do, consumers will also be able to store and redeem special deals with the wallet. Merchants in New York and San Francisco are expected to be ready this summer.
Once the retailers’ technology is in place, consumers will be able to wave their phone at the checkout counter and, in one swoop, discounts will be applied, loyalty points will be awarded and the payment made. Someday, Google said, when consumers enter the store, their phones may serve up a list of items they recently bought, and offer them related discounts.
The wallet app itself will require a PIN, as will each transaction. The payment credentials will be encrypted and stored on a chip, called the secure element, inside the phone. The app itself will be free to users.
Google emphasized that the wallet would be open to all businesses and invited other banks, credit card issuers, payment networks, mobile carriers and merchants to work with it.
“I expect that other payment networks and other banks will join this effort, though in some cases it will be a hedge strategy they employ along with their own mobile payment initiatives,” said Charles S. Golvin, an analyst with Forrester Research. “Since these payments utilize the same underlying business model as cards today, there is not significant disruption risk for these players.”
Google is also working with First Data, which processes payments and will serve as the wallet’s “trusted service manager,” ensuring the security of the transaction.
If the phone was stolen, the credit cards inside could be remotely disabled. Consumers would have the same “zero liability” for unauthorized transactions made with their phone as they would with their plastic cards.
Eventually, Google said, its wallet may be able to hold much more than credit cards and loyalty programs, including car keys, theater tickets and airline boarding passes.
But access to all of those items will still require a fully charged phone. If the phone battery dies, even Ms. Tilenius of Google conceded, “I think you need to use your plastic at that point.”
via nytimes.com
Saturday, May 21, 2011
This post from GigaOm sums up the NEW news well: Curation, Verification and News as a Process
As part of a “social media summit” this week, the BBC posted an overview of how its user-generated content desk handles reports from the field — verifying and curating them in much the same way that Andy Carvin of NPR has been doing for the past few months during the upheaval in the Middle East. As I’ve written before, there is a growing need for this kind of curation, but there is also the need to start looking at news as a process and not as a pristine, finished product.
While many media outlets have web editors who track reports on Twitter and other social media, the BBC is unique (as far as I know) in having a special desk that sits in the middle of the newsroom and pulls in reports from Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and anywhere else it can find information. The desk staffers then try to verify these reports, and some of the ways they do that are fascinating. In a sense, they are trying to do CSI-style forensic analysis in real time, by checking things such as:
- looking at weather and shadows to confirm that the conditions shown fit with the reported date and time of a photo or video.
checking the accents and language in a video or other report to make sure that they are consistent with the location, using BBC staff who speak those languages. verifying locations against maps of a region, and cross-checking images against known images from that location. Andy Carvin has also talked about how he sees verification as being a big part of his job in curating Twitter feeds from people in the trouble spots he is reporting on — feeds that are made up of people he has hand-picked because they are reliable in some way. Whenever a video is posted that purports to be of an attack, or reports of government leaders or high-profile individuals killed, Carvin spends a lot of time trying to get confirmation from others in the region or other reliable sources.
Storyful and curation
Mark Little, the founder of a curation tool called Storyful — which allows journalists and others to collect videos, photos and other content easily about a specific topic (in much the same way that a similar tool called Storify does) — says that his staff of curators take much the same approach that the BBC’s user-generated content desk does, in trying to confirm reports and videos that claim to be from a particular spot. They also:
- review an uploader’s history and location to see whether he or she has shared useful and credible content in the past, or if they are a “scraper,” who passes off other people’s content as their own.
use Google Street View images to help verify the locations in a video or photo. monitor social-media traffic to see who is sharing the content and what questions are being asked about it. But what’s interesting about the Storyful founder’s post about this process is that he admits that sometimes he has posted things when he wasn’t sure whether they were correct — including a photo that he posted during the floods in Queensland, Australia that showed a crocodile in a parking lot. As he says in his post: “It was too good to be true, so we decided to drop the image into the social media conversation around the floods. Suddenly, we were part of a furious debate about crocodiles in Australia,” which ultimately proved that the photo was a fake. Carvin says that he also uses his network to check the veracity of reports, because he knows they will know more than he does.
Crowdsourced fact-checking
There are no doubt many mainstream journalists and media observers — including some at the BBC, who were critical of Carvin’s approach to Twitter reporting during the social-media summit — who would see this kind of approach as reprehensible, and argue that reports of any kind shouldn’t be posted on Twitter or anywhere else without verifying them. But others (including me) would argue that what Little did was a sensible way of approaching the new real-time nature of news reporting: in other words, post a report and say that it is unverified, and see if anyone can help you verify it.
Little calls this the “human algorithm,” and I think it’s a necessary step in the future of journalism and media. If anyone can report, and anyone can function as a journalist, then we need everyone to be able to help confirm and verify reports like the ones Andy and the BBC are getting. That’s not something a single person or even a group of editors at a specific outlet can do in real-time. Media analyst and journalism professor Jeff Jarvis has talked about the need to look at the news as a process instead of a finished product that is turned out at a specific time and in a specific format, and that is something more media outlets need to come to grips with.
In a sense, this is no different from the approach that news wires have taken in the past: a report comes in, it is fact-checked as much as possible and then it goes on the wire, and when it needs to be corrected, an update goes out. Twitter is becoming the real-time news wire for the world, and we need people who can make use of it as such — more people like Andy Carvin, as entrepreneur Bernard Lunn argues in a recent blog post. And we need new attitudes about how we look at journalism as well, now that everyone is doing it.
Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Luc Legay
Related content from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):
via gigaom.com
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
A refreshing, real world take on how old & new media can co-exist. Forbes chief's digital approach should be mimicked - Telegraph
He was then quickly hit with the following questions: why bother launching a print edition? Why not just launch Forbes Europe as an app and website? Shouldn’t the first time Forbes enters Europe in its 100-year history, be digitally, to mark the web age?
Without missing a beat, a cool and collected Forbes said: “How you deliver information does not have to rely upon one platform. Most of the content on Forbes.com is not from the magazine. Print allows you to delve into a story in a more thorough way than online. Online allows you to amplify the story and spur on another print story.
“Each of these platforms is different but each has its own unique characteristics for conveying information.”
What is the main reason for Forbes’s confidence? He revealed that digital revenues from Forbes.com now account for 50pc of Forbes magazine’s total revenues, having successfully sold advertising at a premium rate and attracted 19 to 20 million unique visitors per month.
Forbes said that the company may experiment with paywalls and micro-payments in the future as it was important to have a “hybrid model”.
“Not one [business] model fits all [media],” he said. “There are numerous hybrids out there. There needs to be lots of experimentation to see what works for particular brands.”
But for the moment it sounds like premium digital advertising coming together with a premium web audience is proving economically beneficial.
However, what was really interesting was Forbes’s take on preparing his media company to weather the disruptive power of the internet “tornado” six years ago, when Forbes.com was first created. And considering he, like many others, has warned that all industries, large or small, need to gear up for the same step-change, it is an approach worth noting.
He revealed that Forbes approached its digital extension as a new business; treating Forbes.com as a “start up” which was to behave as a total separate entity. The team were housed in a different building and reported directly to Forbes, in order to avoid it becoming a subordinate product.
Moreover, Forbes totally rejected what he sensed was the way his print journalists used to look down on the digital hacks as though they were from a “trailer park”. He says those 'non-forward-thinking types’ have now exited Forbes Media and will soon leave every other organisation if they don’t embrace digital.
The company also has a clear tablet strategy; it only launching apps which pick out themes from the magazine’s content, such as investment, and provides useful tools centred around those topics – rather than reproducing the magazine in app form.
The two sides of the businesses - print and online - were then united in 2009.
Such fresh thinking and the prioritising of digital media by a 100-year old company should be applauded and mimicked.
I am not advocating that all businesses should or even can take out a separate lease on a new building to house their digital squat team. But prioritising it to such an extent that it is given 'start-up’ status and a direct line into the chief executive is the way to go.
It is also really important to focus on making sure a company’s culture is correctly adapting to the new people and fresh approaches the digital era can usher in.
It may have been a jokey aside, but Forbes’ description of the poor treatment of digital journalists at the hands of the print ones, is sadly often the case in many industries, as people are typically creatures of habit and judge things against their own skill-set.
The answer is not to look down or dismiss the importance of digital within any enterprise if a business or an individual is to survive, never mind thrive. It is tool up and keep on learning.
Because, if you don’t, you never know when digital will suddenly turn around and bite you. Facebook, for example, has just been exposed for hiring a PR firm to spread a smear campaign about Google in the US press. Sadly for them, all of Burson Marsteller’s (the WPP-owned PR firm in question) correspondence was saved by the blogger they targeted to spread the stories about Google on email – and then published on the web and passed on around the globe.
PR firms may have been spreading bad things about rival clients for decades, but journalists never had the web before upon which to publish the whole digitally archived affair.
The internet can demand an era of greater care, transparency and most importantly a culture change.
And it is this crucial change of mindset which produces different digital ideas at 100-year old companies like Forbes Media, that allows businesses to stay profitable and keep on producing an updated version of their best product – online or off.
via telegraph.co.uk
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
W/out a killer app; ex. transit tix, PH telcos should do the same. Italian operators launch m-payments platform - GSMA
Five of Italy’s largest operators have joined forces to launch an online payments platform that will allow mobile subscribers to pay for digital goods using their mobile devices. Telecom Italia's mobile arm TIM, Vodafone Italy, Wind, 3 Italia, PosteMobile and Fastweb will provide digital content providers and their customers with a shared standard that converts mobile phone numbers into so-called “client authentication keys” allowing phones to pay for online digital content and services, reports Dow Jones Newswires. "The joint launch of this initiative opens the door to m-commerce for all. A secure and open system based on a device in extremely widespread use," the companies said in a joint statement. Some 46.6 million Italian mobile users will be eligible to use the scheme, which will also work via PCs and tablets.
According to research by PwC Advisory, which advised the operators on the initiative, the platform will serve Italians that are reluctance to use credit cards online. Some 90 percent of transactions in Italy are still settled in cash, compared with an EU average of less than 70 percent, the firm said. The global market for mobile payments will be worth approximately US$500 billion by 2014, the operators said in a statement. The Italian scheme is similar to the ‘Buystar’ initiative between operators Orange, SFR and Bouygues Telecom announced recently in neighbouring France.
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