When I were a lad in advertising, topical ads were all t’rage.

Responding quickly to take advantage of an opportunity presented by something in the news was a win, win, win situation.

It made the agency look proactive, engaged, interested in the eyes of the client.

It made the brand team look good in the eyes of their business.

It made the brand look good in the eyes of consumers.

I remember a couple of days after the 1987 hurricane, Volvo ran a black and white press ad featuring a press photograph of one of their cars that had been hit by a falling tree. The occupants had emerged unscathed, reinforcing the brand’s reputation for safety.

Brands such as Heineken and Durex clearly had contingency budgets ringfenced to allow for this kind of activity.

More recently the same topical principle has been applied to this bus-back execution…

That’s the ‘traditional’ approach to topicality.

But what does topical advertising look like in 2010? Maybe a little like this?

During the extended cold snap of January this year, we noticed a few people on Twitter talking about the fact that cans of IRN-BRU left in the car overnight had frozen solid.

So we created WillMyIRNBRUFreezeInTheCar.com, a simple, single-function, topical microsite that answers its own question.

The site was conceived and built in an afternoon. It cost less than £x (where x < you think), including purchase of the domain.

The user simply selects the predicted overnight temperature in their location using a slider device and the site tells them whether their IRN-BRU is at risk via a series of randomised, amusing responses.

We then waited (not very long) for the next cold snap and promoted the link via IRN-BRU’s Twitter account.

In next 36 hours or so we generated just under 750 unique visits, and some very favourable qualitative response.

No doubt we’ll have a few more opportunities to further promote the site before the end of winter, next time hopefully with an offline PR ‘booster rocket’.

Expect to see more of this down-and-dirty, low-cost, do-and-learn style of topical/tactical digital activity over the coming months.

Social channels thrive (nay depend) on social content or social objects as they’re commonly referred to.

And clever, brand-relevant, topical content is as good a route to generating social objects as any.

People are pesky.

So it says if you click on the ‘People’ button in the affectionately named ‘amoeba’ flash panel on our homepage.

They are pesky, not just because they have too many shoes. They are pesky because they have a habit of surprising you and confounding your assumptions.

At Blonde we embrace this peskiness by talking to people. We talk to as many people as we can as often as we can.

And they never fail to surprise us. For which read that we always learn something useful.

That something might be a huge insight that unlocks an innovative strategy. It might be a smaller insight (for instance that b2b audiences are no fans of locked pdf documents), responding to which allows our clients to appear more thoughtful. As often as not it will be a reminder that we need to get our heads out of the emerging technology clouds and get our feet back on the average Joe ground.

Take a look at this video if you want to see just how far we can get our heads up our own bottoms if we insulate ourselves in an early-adopter world of Buzz versus Twitter blog posts and such like. It was produced by Google and asks a simple question of normal people – ‘What is a browser?’

In the recent past we have spoken to classical musicians, breast cancer sufferers, energy advisors, record company execs, independent financial advisors, journalists, high net worth individuals, social entrepreneurs, runners, higher education managers, internal stakeholders from several clients, and a whole range of ordinary folk of various shapes, sizes, backgrounds and locations.

Every conversation has been useful, having a direct impact on strategy and/or execution.

As it says on our homepage, ‘People are pesky. Everything we do is for them.’

Primary research to understand the people associated with a brief sounds like an obvious thing to do, but it can be inconvenient to the agency and/or the client that is in a blinkered hurry to use the latest technology.

We are huge fans of Forrester’s people-first approach to digital planning, and their Social Technographics model.

Understanding people’s relationships with technology (by asking them) ensures that your digital strategies are underpinned by the truth rather than wishful thinking.

GUEST POST

This post was kindly written by Andrew Ingle. Andrew is a freelance copywriter with whom it has been a pleasure to work. He is a gentleman, a craftsman and a true pro. He can be contacted at copy.writer@btinternet.com. He is clearly passionate about writing for websites, and one day he may even get around to writing his own.

Ok, his words and opinions from here on in….

If, in the short walk from pub to pad, the hot-totty you picked up at the bar changed appearance, attitude and sex, you’d have the right to feel a tad worried. Cheated even.

Then why is it that so many agencies and their clients are apparently unperturbed by the fact that customers are reading web copy that bears little or no relation to the ad that sent them to the site a millimoment before?

If the ad is cheeky and chatty, the website copy should be cheeky and chatty too… Isn’t that common sense: a branding basic from ‘The Ladybird Book of Marketing’? Seemingly not.

Sharing the blame

Where does the fault lie? It could be that the digital agency has failed to see the wisdom of investing in writing talent. Or worse still, the client has written the copy. (Sadly, neither of those is unheard of, and will be the subject of Whinge No.2.) But, more often than not, it’s all down to a lack of communication in our communications industry.

In this connected, networked world of ours, it’s bizarre to see such a gulf between the agency that writes the site copy and the agency that writes the ads directing prospects to the site. There’s little or no connection. Step beyond the landing page and any tone that the original ad possessed goes walkies.

And no, of course, this isn’t true of all sites (or of all agencies and all clients). But unless your standards are depressingly low, it’s undeniable that good web copy is the exception rather than the rule. And good web copy that’s consistently on-brand, hitting the right tone of voice from one end of the map to the other, is as rare as rocking horse poo.

Nobody is immune

Just before writing this, I took a link to a famous drinks website. This brand is one of my favourites, with a lovingly developed tone of voice that makes me smile at least once a year – usually at Christmas.

Designwise, the site is charming and witty (as it should be). But, once you’re all loaded, the tone changes. The site loses its voice. The writing is dry, repetitive and overlong. It’s everything the brand wasn’t before I got on the site, but is to me now. What a shame.

Surely it’s in the interests of the client and their above-the-online agency to ensure the digital copy is on-brand and on-promise? The site is where everyone gets to see – and prove – ROI: it’s where conversion takes place, data is gathered, sales are closed. It’s not just important. It’s frigging vital.

Making the marriage work

What’s the solution? Well, a single agency doing the whole shebang is one answer. A Jack of all trades. But that’s not always possible or desirable; unless you’re pretty sure the in-house talent is evenly spread across all the agency’s offerings.

So, assuming there’s more than one agency involved, it’s got to be client-led. The client is, after all, responsible for these arranged marketing marriages. And only the client has the clout to get all those egos toeing the line.

The client has got to insist – from day one of the contract – that their agencies talk, meet and work together on a regular basis. So very regular that the usual preening, point-scoring and political positioning of most inter-agency meetings (we’ve all been there) doesn’t just become foolish but untenable.

Channels of communication must be permanently open and used. Briefs must be shared. And systems and positions must be set up to ensure that the terms of this relationship are adhered to. All parties must invest in it.

And if agencies really have their client’s interests – as well as their own fragile reputations – at heart, they’ve got to be ballsy enough to tell it like it is. That without this kind of relationship, they simply can’t be as good as they could be. Indeed, as Dave Trott never said to me, “nobody can work well in a vacuum, unless they’re called ‘Shake ‘n’ Vac’.”

Of course, this sort of creative cohabitation doesn’t just apply to copy. It applies to every facet of any campaign that requires the input of more than one agency.

No excuses

It’s all very irksome for the client, because it means more work, and probably greater cost. They might even have to stay in the office until 6.15pm. But the resulting ROI will prove the effort worthwhile.

On the flipside, it may not make an iota of difference. If, after everyone has been properly informed, consulted, included, briefed and generally loved-up, the copy is still tummy-rot, then it’s okay to flourish the waggy finger of disappointment in the red faces of those responsible. Clearly the fault lies elsewhere. Exit Whinge No.1. Enter Whinge No.2…

A few clicks on from another excellent Mashable update and we’re demonstrating and debating our own variance in social behaviour with chat show style banter on Google Buzz. Here’s the discussion thread…

Following an email around the office this morning, investigating what our individual thoughts were on Google Buzz, I received a few pretty cynical responses. To be fair, many people are still recovering from Google Wave: asking where and what now?

For me, it’s a bit different. Google is half my social equation. I have a Gmail account and am also a member of Tech Meet Up, Mobile Monday Edinburgh and Girl Geeks. TMU is a Google group, as is Mobile Monday and for Girl Geeks we organise information around Google Sites. I have a number of files in Google Docs, plus I’m in and out of Google Maps all the time. It’s fair to say I like Google.

Not everybody feels the same though. Here were a few thoughts from other Blondes about Google Buzz, starting with our tech team:

“It’s like twitter, but without any clients and unable to tie into any other of the microblogging/social media things…

It does follow the two people I have set up in googlemail already though.

Sadly, until they create some reason for it to exist my thoughts are:
“Just what the world needs, another twitter-clone.”

Oh it has “like” from facebook, which twitter haven’t managed to add yet.”

The bandwagon of Buzz bitchin’ rolls on…

“If everyone starts using it then it becomes really relevant. Haven’t seen a killer feature yet…

Google have been, shall we say, intermittent in their marketing of services so the jury is out about how big it will become.”

Having said that the current debate (going on around me while I’m typing this) is that if you are a heavy gmail user (I am) then it does appeal -as long as the take up is good.”

And then the rest of the planning team jump in….

“Google Buzz – initial reaction = “groan”.

Groan because as a digital marcomms professional I’ve got no option but to try it out, when my gut feel and the input (via Twitter) from people I trust are telling me that it’s going to be no great shakes.

Groan because I resolved this year to add more depth to my social graph (more emphasis on RSS, blog writing and commenting), and this feels like more breadth. That’s my personal take on the whole signal to noise issue.

Groan because there’s this stool called RSS, and there’s this other stool called Twitter, and I can’t see a valid role for anything between those two stools.

Groan because I only ever use Gmail for opening Twitter accounts. I really really can’t be arsed to have another following mouth to feed.

So I’ll watch with interest how it develops but at the moment it’s not even coming out of the box for me. “

And the tech team is still going….

“It just seems way to complex and unfocused.

Twitter
Share and discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world.

Facebook
helps you connect and share with the people in your life.

Simple. I get it.

Buzz
Go beyond status messages
Share updates, photos, videos, and more.
Start conversations about the things you find interesting.

Try Buzz in Gmail. (why do I have to do it in gmail by the way?)

You lost me at “Go beyond status messages”. Er.. not so sure I get it.

Really bad design as well. I find it really hard to scan. Twitter is so easy to just fly through and pick what’s interesting. Buzz is a mess and feels horrible to read.

Google seems to have forgotten their design roots. A million miles away from one input box to search shit.

Social network app fail.

A lot cleaner in t’iPhone though. Bordering on being useful.”

Before finally concluding…

“My friends are on Facebook (for the most part)
My friends aren’t on Gmail (for the most part) and if they are they’re not updating their status there.

So, for social/picture sharing stuff = Facebook.

I get interesting web/marketing/wotsit links by following people and searching on twitter.
I don’t get that from Buzz (yet, since there’s noone on it)

So for interesting links/finding out what random “famous” people are upto/whatever = twitter.

Buzz is only as good as the people using it – and currently noone is.

I expect it to go the way of Google Lively, to be honest. “

It appears I am the lone voice of Google Buzz support here.  I don’t think this product… this service… from Google is anywhere near complete and of course I’m aware of the privacy issues, which have been flagged up; but I need something that bridges the gap(s) between LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

Social networking online isn’t this simple. I don’t want my engagement with professional communities to be confined to LinkedIn. I want meaningful, human-to-human knowledge sharing, which goes beyond the offering of Twitter and I certainly want a richer experience than Farmville updates on Facebook. I’m not arguing that Google Buzz is the solution, but given the incredible insight Google now has into our online behaviour, I’m holding out for some improvements first, before I search for a conclusion. Here’s to growing out of Facebook and Twitter…

We need a new planner.

We experienced a surge of inbound interest in the last quarter of 2009 and were fortunate enough to convert more than our fair share of the opportunities that presented themselves.

We’re also benefiting from year-on-year organic growth as existing clients place a greater emphasis on all things digital.

So we’re hiring.

We canvassed opinion here about the kind of person that we’re looking for, and the aggregated response is the recruitment equivalent of asking for the moon on a stick.

So here are the must-have qualities, minus the long tail of nice-to-haves.

1) HIGH-CONCEPT THINKING

A brief comes in from client x. It gives some details of their market, their brand, their audience and the issues they want some help with.

It doesn’t take you long to come up with some outline strategic thoughts, maybe a couple of headline themes that you could hang a pitch off, some clever ideas for channel strategy, and some interesting creative starters.

We want the intuitive leaps to go with the planning rigour.

We want a ‘Sherpa’ who can guide the creative process and occasionally deliver the ideas themselves.

A client once said that a really good planner is the only person he’d move his account to follow. Could you be that important to a piece of business?

2) LEADERSHIP

No, we’re not looking for a head of department, but we are looking for someone that can lead pitches and big presentations.

The way we’re growing we need to be on our A game in several places at once.

3) TECH-SAVVY

Our planning philosophy is rooted in the idea of people first. For a given audience what is technically desirable?

That said we need a planner who is also au fait with what is technically possible.

If a client asks, ‘Can that be done?’, you need to know the answer without having to phone a friend.

We’re doing interesting work for interesting clients, and we independently muck about with our own projects on a regular basis. We’re based out of London and Edinburgh. There are 25 of us, but we’re also part of a large marketing services group. So there’s a start-up vibe but we also have some very interesting friends in areas like co-creation, RoI analysis and media planning who can seamlessly slot into the team when required.

If you’re interested please get in touch via the email form on the contact section of our site. No agencies please.

(Image borrowed from hdurdle).

We need a Senior (or aspiring Middleweight) Interactive Designer for a 9 month contract at one of the UK’s most progressive digital marketing agencies.

This is a rare opportunity to get one foot inside the door of Blonde. First and foremost the right candidate will be a passionate and inspired digital designer, able to take a digital brief from concept through to completion with an outstanding portfolio to back this up. A solid understanding of web technologies / trends is a must, with Photoshop & Illustrator skills a necessity along with good Flash skills. Any motion graphics and 3D experience is beneficial but not essential.

We’re looking for the best emerging talent to work in our Edinburgh office.

If you think you fit the bill please send your CV and examples of your top 5 pieces of work to info@blonde.net.

This contract starts at the beginning of March. No agencies please.

The trouble with the Internet is it’s become too darn accessible. For every digital work of art, there’s an optimised-to-the-max site bumping genuine articles out of search engine listings, re-routing traffic to unhelpful destinations and making a fair amount of cash on the way. There’s no craft here anymore… right?

Shortly before Christmas I went to see my friend Alan at the Gallery of Modern Art*, who had very kindly offered to give me a tour around the conservation studios.

The tour consisted of four main areas: paper conservation, the mount cutting studio, lining and framing and the painting conservation studio. Rather ignorantly I’d never really given much thought to the conservation of historical works of art and had, pretty much, just taken it all for granted. The education on restoration was fascinating… like taking a pinhead sized sample of paint, casting it in resin, cutting the block into slices and then taking a section to put under a special microscope to view the layers of paint, so the painting can be restored authentically and flawlessly.

Look here’s a photo taken on my trusty iPhone:

The conservation studios at the Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

What also made an impression was the painstaking dedication each team had to their part in the restoration process.

Their crafts.

A painting that needed restoration was given the time and attention it deserved; it was finished when it was finished and no deadlines were imposed to hurry the work along.

Perhaps the trouble with Digital is it the ease at which work can be replicated. We always seem to be in such a hurry to get work out, because if we take too much time, there’s every possibility that somebody else will get there first. But if we get there first, what if somebody trumps us with a better solution? It’s exhausting!

Perhaps the thing about craftsmanship is that it’s actually very difficult to copy.  It is indeed a fine art of a finely tuned skill and genuine creative talent. In the context of digital marketing, finely tuned skill and creative talent might even be defined as “Brand”; that intangible blend of characteristics, where there is a unique and original strength in the sum, but virtually no value at all in the parts. Digital marketing becomes a craft when it appears to seamlessly meet the demands of an audience, without the audience having to explicitly communicate anything at all… without an audience knowing it’s an audience. I would argue Google, Amazon and Facebook are examples of companies which pursue digital craftsmanship.

This reminded me of some questions that were recently asked in an EEC talk by Alexis Ohanian from Reddit, essentially enquiring what distinguished those individuals and companies which made substantial amounts of money as start-up ventures and…. Well, those which didn’t.

I think this brief post by Seth Godin sums up the case nicely:

“Craftsmanship

Find a calling and then deliver.

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.’” – Martin Luther King, Jr.”

Inspired.

* Thanks Tim.

User engagement is the outcome of the experience.

This is an interpretation of a wonderful talk from Jesse James Garret @ UX week 2009.

Big news yesterday. Forrester introduced a new category of social behaviour to their Social Technographics model.

Welcome the “Conversationalists”.

Full details of the rationale behind this addition can be found in the Forrester Groundswell Blog post. But the new category has been introduced to recognise the rapid fire, short format status update posting that is epitomised by Twitter and which is now a major part of life on Facebook.

The Conversationalists take their place on the second from top rung of the Technographics ladder as shown below.

Some of the initial commentary has focussed on the positioning of this new behaviour category on the ladder, contending that its relative importance is currently being overstated. (Check out some of the comments on this post on the We Are Social site).

But I think there are bigger issues.

We are huge fans of, and subscribers to, Forrester. And we actively use the Technographics model in planning comms strategy for most of our clients.

Thus far, the model has been very easy to explain. Each behaviour category, from Creators to Spectators, does exactly what it says on the tin. Simple, intuitive, and precisely descriptive.

And, equally important, up until now none of of the various behaviour categories overlapped. People overlapped, in that one person could exhibit more than one of the behaviour types, but the behaviour types themselves were discrete.

The Conversationalists moniker is not so straightforward. For two reasons.

1) It is neither single-minded nor precisely descriptive of the behaviours it claims to encapsulate.

2) It describes a behaviour type that overlaps with at least two of the existing categories.

Let’s look at each of these issues in turn.

Is Twitter a “conversation”?

For some people it might be. But the people whose Twitter streams are a constant flow of @replies are the exception rather than the rule in my experience.

Twitter is a lot of different things to different people. That’s why it is not easy to explain to the uninitiated. Sure there are sporadic outbursts of conversation but certainly in “our” world it is primarily an information/content/ideas exchange. And “conversation” doesn’t accurately describe the nature of that exchange.

The short format status updates of Facebook and Twitter allow you to do similar things. In fact some people annoyingly do exactly the same things at the same time on both, simultaneously posting the same content, verbatim, to both streams.

But, for most people that I’ve spoken to, the whole tone and purpose of Facebook is very different to that of Twitter, even if the status update functionality is similar.

“Conversation” is probably a more accurate description of what happens via Facebook updates.

And that brings us onto the second issue of overlap.

“Conversation” is also an accurate description of what happens in the comment threads of many blog posts. And, in a more lowbrow manner, in the comment threads that accompany YouTube videos.

So there is significant overlap between “conversing” and “commenting”.

To a lesser degree there is also overlap between “conversing” and “creating”, to the extent that regular micro-blogging can be construed as content creation.

And then we have the overlap between Conversationalists and Joiners. Joiners maintain a profile on a social networking site and/or visit social networking sites. Conversationalists update status on a social networking site.

In fact Conversationalists actually feel like a subset of Joiners, exhibiting a particular aspect of Joiner behaviour and doing it at least weekly rather than at least monthly.

All this matters to us because we actively use the model to influence communication strategy. We frequently conduct primary research to create bespoke Technographics profiles for specific audiences.

For instance, we found (perhaps not surprisingly) that people on the UK Hip Hop dance scene indexed through the roof against high-end Creator behaviour. Being able to categorise and quantify this gave us the confidence to create a community hub that largely depended on user generated content.

Hitherto, constructing questionnaires and research methodologies to generate bespoke Technographics profiles has been relatively straightforward because none of the behaviour categories overlapped. If we are to embrace the Conversationalists, this will be more tricky henceforth.

This is a hot topic right now.

Mr Murdoch has created more than a bit of a stir with his comments about Google and the ownership of content. This interview with Sky News in Australia is worth watching. It’s 37 minutes long but well worth finding the time for.

It [monetising content] became a hotter topic for me as a result of a conversation with a content provider.

And hotter still as a result of the confluence of a couple of blog posts that I read subsequent to that conversation.

The content provider is The Daily Mash, the UK’s biggest satirical website.

I met up with Paul Stokes, one of the founders of the site and ex Business a.m. client, for a couple of drinks and a chat.

And it was interesting to hear him talk about the monetisation of his content. His site publishes a steady stream of high quality, highly amusing, unique content to a large, loyal, high quality and growing audience.

He also has an open-minded and creative attitude to generating opportunities for brands to engage with that audience. But it appears that getting traditional media agencies to think beyond variations on the display advertising theme isn’t as easy as it should be.

That really chimed with me. Blonde has picked up a couple of really interesting clients recently, based purely on their desire to explore more innovative approaches to achieving online objectives than clickable rectangles (banners). A desire to explore that clearly wasn’t being serviced by existing suppliers.

There is a structural obstacle at play here for any agency whose business model is based on taking a cut of money spent on paid for media. For more and more clients the emphasis is shifting away from bought media to owned and earned. Paying for space is becoming a last resort in digital channels.

Enter this post by Norwegian planner Helge Tennø.

He talks about a book called Business Model Generation, which contends that there are three basic models for business : customer relationship businesses, product innovation businesses, and infrastructure businesses.

Helge argues that “media” has allowed itself to become an infrastructure business in a world that requires it to be developing customer relationships.

“I would suggest media position itself to the relationship business, and be selling completely different, more scarce and more valuable products to brands. What I would like to see is a change of business model focus. From infrastructure destruction, to creating valuable relationships – providing new and interesting products for brands to sponsor in order to increase the value being created between media and the participant.”

That quote from Helge is a pretty good description of the direction in which Paul would like to take The Mash.

We also talked about the potential opportunities afforded by mobile applications.

The Guardian’s iPhone app sold nearly 70,000 downloads at £2.39 each in its first month and is being touted as a potential £2million annual revenue stream.

The Viz Roger’s Profanisaurus application is also apparently doing well at £2.99.

Then on the way home I read this post from Bud Caddell, which contains an idea for an interesting alternative model for monetising content.

Bud suggests a model that is based on rewarding subscribers for sharing your content. The greater the degree and reach of sharing, the greater the level of subscription discount. So loyal subscribers are happy, accessing great content at a reduced price. And you’re happy because you’ve recruited a highly engaged and cost effective sales force to recruit new subscribers on your behalf.

Sorted!

Or maybe not based on this final post by Andy Sernovitz – “Nobody wants to talk about something if everyone is talking about it”.

It’s all about maintaining the perceived value of your content. In Bud’s sharing model the subscribers are very important to business growth. But they also need to feel important, and that means restricting the supply. Think Spotify or Google Wave invitations.

To be continued…