erniesblog

Simplify, simplify

In the last post, I put up a link list to a lot of stuff I've written here over the past three years.  A common theme you'll find, should you read through it, is simplification.  Getting beyond all the inherent confusion to boil down any new tactic to something basic.  It's all about basic human interaction.  Dynamics change, styles change, etiquette changes, tactics change, but in the end, we're still, basically, just conversing with people in a way that we hope they'll like.  Once again, Seth simplifies, and nails it, here.

Technorati Tags:
Advertising  Marketing   Creative   Interactive   Online Marketing Design  Digital Design Blattner Brunner  Ernie Mosteller  BB Digital 

del.icio.us this      

Two out of Three Years: 32 (or more) Things to Read

On Friday, this new piece went up on adotas.com.  Hope you like it.  I wouldn't have used the word "Lure" in the headline, but then, I didn't write the headline. Just the stuff under it.  If you like the post, here's the link to the other stuff I've written for adotas.

I got to thinking about all the stuff I've written about how advertising has changed, and continues to.  Possibly, because last week, I sat in a seminar for two days and listened to two guys tell lots of folks in my agency lots of stuff I've been saying, writing and thinking for a long time.  So I looked at my archives for the first time in forever, and, surprise of surprises -- turns out I've been writing this blog for exactly three years, as of June 23.

The blog started out as an extension of the eBook I wrote - Use A Stick, which, fairly quickly, launched Tangelo Ideas, and eventually led Brunner to think I might be able to bring some more interesting interactive thinking to their party.  Reading back, the book and the early posts are a touch naive, I must admit.  Well, kind of.  It's hard to know, really, how naive, because our perspective now is vastly different than it was then.  Three years is a lifetime on the web.  

I hope you'll give some of the old stuff a read.  As you do, consider two things:  First, they (the early posts, and Use A Stick) were written from a small, startup agency perspective -- a small startup led by a guy who closely observed the mistakes lots of big agencies made in commercial production over the course of 15 years. The book, especially, is -- well, it's a poorly disguised rant.

Second, they were written three years ago, when things we take for granted today were in their infancy, or not even, yet.  If you're reading something that seems really obvious now, take a look at the date on the post. For example, the first "spot" I uploaded to YouTube went up when they were getting 3000 videos a day.  I thought I was late in jumping on the whole YouTube thing then, and said so.  And frequently, now, I think I'm late in adopting some new technology or practice, only to meet with a colleague or a client or my wife, who tells me I might as well be speaking Chinese when I talk about this stuff. Early and late are a matter of perspective, I suppose.

If there are any constants that have held firm in what I've written over three years, they are these:
1.  Ideas rule.
2. Change is constant, and constantly accelerating.
3. Users decide.

Here's a post a friend of mine just Tweeted about that says a lot about point #2.

With that, I thought it would be cool to put up a snapshot, in list form, of the first two years of this (so far) three year project.  There's a short description, newly written, under each link. I only covered the first two years, because, well, I guess I want the newer stuff to simmer a bit more.  Plus, the list was getting long. 

If you like what you read, please, pop into the archives and pick up where the list leaves off -- a year ago, in June 2007.  The writing and ideas seem, at least to me, to get better as the dates get closer to now.  I decided to include a lot of links here, as much for myself, as any other reason.  I personally find lists like these useful to tag, and refer to now and again.  Hope you like it.

Here are 32 posts - the better, more pertinent stuff - from June 2005 through May 2007.  Mostly, but not completely, in chronological order:

Today is the first day of the rest of whatever
First post: The blog in support of Use A Stick.

The only thing you can bet on
References = outdated.  Message = just as current as ever.

Anything is advertising.  Content is everything
Ideas rule.

A Barn Roof, A Tractor Hat, and a Surfboard T-Shirt
New delivery methods - but still, just basic human interaction.

What I've Learned
An article written for somewhere else, but posted on the blog.

Lagniappe
Engage with something extra.  Thoughts of Easter Eggs in all forms of advertising.

Four Year Old Wisdom
Simplify your traditional ideas.  That works best.

Silver Bullet one, and Silver Bullet two
Media Agnosticism coming from a small agency guy, relatively early in the discussion of the subject.

Universal Jerk
Don't be one.  Difficult, apparently, in this business, but doable.

City Brand
Meaningless exercises undertaken by many cities.  Come to think of it, many clients, too.

Keeping Up is Hard
A rant about agencies, the trade press, etc., being behind the times.

Hurdles 
What's new to you is positively radical to your clients.

Sociology
Naïve in articulation, but most of the core truth I believe.

Lead, follow, whatever
Don't do what everybody else is doing

Boiling it Down
Get to the essence of the communication.

Who Are You
The tyranny and absurdity of traditional advertising job titles, as they relate to new ideas.

(another) Boil it Down
Must have forgotten the first one.  Or felt I hadn't made the point.

Peaceful Coexistence
How pro made might always have to play nice with consumer gen.

Corrals, Pole Barns, Fried Chicken
Destination sites versus the 2.0 concept of multiple entry points.  Content as a draw.

In Whose Interest?
The user rules.

Primer
Definitions of stuff, with focus on brand.

Manifesto-y Thing
I might not say it this way anymore, but I still think this stuff, pretty much.

Exactly
Just a quote I never want to forget, and that all ad creatives should read.

Technicalities
Pro vs. user gen - a quality discussion.

Ideas Now
Ideas have plots now.  They're not just presentation boards.

10K t-Shirts
Common mistakes made by people with good intentions.

Blue Curtains
Common mistakes made by agency creative people with good intentions.

Keep Up
Change is constant, and fast.

In Praise of Imperfection
Perfection is the new normal. Yawn.

Expensive Doesn't = Good. Good = Good.
Production value can only get you so far.

Sociological Shift - Why it's not another channel, and why the channels are changing the way they are.
The title pretty much says it.

Technorati Tags:
Advertising  Marketing   Creative   Interactive   Online Marketing Design  Digital Design Blattner Brunner  Ernie Mosteller  BB Digital 

del.icio.us this      

Brunner

We've changed our name.  Here's the official release:

Blattner Brunner trims name; expands ownership.

Pittsburgh—As of June 16, advertising agency Blattner Brunner will be renamed Brunner, and its digital marketing group, formerly bbdigital, will be renamed Brunner Digital. The change both acknowledges chairman and ceo Michael Brunner’s sole ownership for the past 5 1⁄2 years, and also allows for new, broadened ownership going forward.

Simultaneously, Scott Morgan, Mary Kay Modaffari, and Petra Arbutina will make partner, becoming the agency’s only other stakeholders besides Michael Brunner and, formerly, co-founder Joe Blattner, who sold back his shares in January, 2003. Mary Kay Modaffari, previously evp dir. of account management, is promoted to the new position of evp Pittsburgh managing director. Morgan and Arbutina retain their same titles: president and
evp contact strategy, respectively.

Michael Brunner states: “Our agency is fortunate to have had the benefit of Scott’s, Mary Kay’s and Petra’s dedication and commitment over the years, and I am proud to honor their contributions by making them, officially, my partners. I am also excited by what I believe this agency can further achieve under such a team of leaders. Although I enjoyed ‘flying solo,’
now is the right time to make this change. The combination of internal growth and the extraordinary fragmentation of the ad/marketing universe both say to me that future growth will depend on a broader skill-set than I alone can provide. I am thrilled to have found three dynamic partners from within our ranks.”

Since 2003, under Michael Brunner’s direction, agency billings have increased from $76 to $200 million, and staff from 73 to 200. The client roster now includes several national accounts with billings over $20 million each; in 2003, there were none over $5 million. The agency has opened offices in Atlanta and Washington D.C., and, since 2006, been on both Adweek’s and Ad Age’s Top 100 U.S. Agencies.

Local News Note:
Brunner will remain in its present location, 11 Stanwix St. The building’s new owners have committed to significant upgrades to the property.

Brunner (www.brunnerworks.com) is an independent advertising and marketing services firm with offices in Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C. The agency provides advertising, digital, direct, public relations, and design services to clients that include American Bankers Association, Atlanta Bread Company, CONSOL Energy, Cub Cadet, The Dow Chemical Company, GlaxoSmithKline, GNC, Philips Healthcare/Respironics, and Zippo.

Technorati Tags:
Advertising  Marketing   Creative   Interactive   Online Marketing Design  Digital Design Blattner Brunner  Ernie Mosteller  BB Digital 

del.icio.us this      

Customer Satisfaction by Design

Here's a new post I wrote for the BBdigital blog.

Technorati Tags:
Advertising  Marketing   Creative   Interactive   Online Marketing Design  Digital Design Blattner Brunner  Ernie Mosteller  BB Digital 

del.icio.us this      

I wonder about online video

Sometimes I indulge in thinking out loud.  Not always a safe thing to do -- but probably a lot safer than thinking through a keyboard.  Nevertheless, that's what I'm doing now.  Thinking and typing (which, probably, is a distant cousin to drinking and dialing, but, whatever.)  I need to.  Because an "I wonder…" has been rolling in my head for a while and I'm wondering if a blog about it will help me firm up an opinion.  Since I'm paid for my opinions, I find it helps to have them.

The "I wonder" has to do with the explosive popularity of online video.  I wonder if I can pinpoint the, or some of the, main reasons for its popularity.  Especially, but not limited to, how it relates to advertising.  I suspect the overall popularity of online video has to do with its unique mix of passivity and control.  I can't think of any other tactic that combines the two the way it does.  So I'm going to think and type, and hopefully you'll come along for the ride.

For one thing, I think I know why online video is popular with agencies -- especially traditional agencies making the transition to digital, and especially traditional creatives making the same transition:  It's familiar.  It's not a spot, but it's like a spot.  Easy to wrap your head around.  Trouble is, make it too much like a spot and it tends to fail.  I think Firebrand showed us (or rather, showed itself what some of us suspected all along) -- people like commercials, just not as much as we think.

So, why do people like online video?  Why the Favorites playlist that defies genre, and includes everything from music videos, to sports highlights, to your kid brother skateboarding into the side wall of the garage?  There's something about the medium itself, I think.

The web is complex.  It's not one medium, but rather a host of disparate media that are held together only by the fact that they're all accessible with a mouse.  People use the web for all sorts of things, ranging from getting the news to researching term papers, finding phone numbers to ordering pizza, communicating with friends, buying stock -- you know how extensive it is.  And sometimes (less than agencies think, but more than most people admit,) people use the web for entertainment.

Remember when the common wisdom said your TV would eventually become your computer?  It's clear now that the convergence is, in fact, happening -- only it's happening in the opposite direction. And what's available on this new thing is, well, a lot more than what is available on the old thing.  But more important than there just being a lot more stuff is the fact that users can be a lot more selective.  Actually, that's an understatement.  They can be, and are, completely and totally selective.  The control that comes with interactivity blows away anything that has ever come before.  Even the most die hard TIVO junky has to admit that.

But…watching video, either on a computer screen or a TV, is a passive experience.  Hit play, it plays, you watch.  Fact is, an awful lot of entertainment is passive.  Movies, concerts, theatre, sporting events -- while some may incite emotional and even physical response, the act of being entertained by these things, is essentially, passive.  You've bought your ticket, or clicked (the remote or the mouse) for the very purpose of allowing someone else to do the heavy lifting while you sit back and enjoy.

So if interactivity is the key to popularity, how come videos with hot buttons an annotations aren't always the hottest videos out there?  I think it's because when users are in "entertainment" mode, there's a certain desire for passivity.  Note  -- I'm using "entertainment" here to mean the mode you're in when you just want someone else to entertain you.  Games are the huge exception to this theory.  Games provide a digital experience that is completely active, even if it's not so, physically.  A different thing altogether. Multiple media held together by a mouse, etc. etc.

In a video, I personally (and I suspect there are millions like me) don't want to click the hot button.  When I do, it ceases to be a video, and starts to become a game.  If I wanted to play a game, I'd play a game.  I want to watch a video.  I want you to make me laugh, or cry, or teach me something.  You have a minute.  Maybe two.  Go.

It's the combination of just the right amount of entertainment (passivity) and choice (interactivity via limitless selection) that makes online video popular, as a medium.  (Content, of course, is the critical thing that makes any given video rocket or bomb.)  More, or less, of either passivity or selection, and you're not fulfilling user's quest of the moment.  She moves on -- because she doesn't want to work that hard, right this second. It's too easy to click to something else.

I suspect (but can't prove) that "Will it Blend?" wouldn't be as popular as an online game.  I think the series hit the sweet spot (great content, lots to choose from, click and watch) that makes, not just a great online piece of advertising, but more elemental -- great online video.

It's not that online video shouldn't, or won't, evolve into something more.  It will and should.  But that something more will be something else.  Which should, in my now less cloudy opinion, leave plenty of room for plenty of things that are fun to click, and sit back, and watch.

Technorati Tags:
Advertising  Marketing   Creative   Interactive   Online Marketing Design  Digital Design Blattner Brunner  Ernie Mosteller  BB Digital 

del.icio.us this      

Restating the obvious -- because it isn't obvious to everyone.

The web is important.  At least that's what I hear. 

Ad dollars are moving to the web.  It's generally recognized that "consumers" (also known as people) spend more and more time on the web, gathering information, buying stuff, being entertained, etc. etc., and thus, agencies have to pay close attention to the web, and have to make stuff for it, and learn more about it, and all that. 

Pretty much the consensus.

But people aren't only on the web.  They're other places, too.  They watch TV, read magazines, get the mail, listen to radio, drive in cars, go to malls and baseball games and movies, and occasionally pick up a newspaper.  So it's good to make stuff for those places, too.  In fact, it's good to make stuff that crosses media boundaries, and integrates across those boundaries, based on an idea that doesn't have anything to do with delivery mechanism, but, in fact, is media neutral.  Again, that's the word on the street.  And I don't dispute it.  At all. To do so would be silly.

Here's the thing, though:  The Web is the thing that matters most.  That's obvious.

Really, almost painfully, obvious -- to anyone who works in digital.  Ditto for many, if not most, of an entire generation who are coming of age in the workforce.  But,  incredible as it is to me and probably you (because you're reading this blog, I'm assuming you're relatively, if not completely, net-centric), the idea that the web is, or at least will be, the single most important medium -- by a long shot -- isn't obvious at all.

Granted, it's important enough now, in everyone's mind, that it's in every marketing mix.  That's true.  But fairly constantly, I find myself in conversations that prove to me that clients, agencies, the media -- lots and lots of people, many positioned to make strategic and tactical communications decisions -- haven't quite grasped the concept yet.  And it makes me crazy, sometimes.  Then I remind myself that, for pretty much everyone, it's always easier to see the Now than it is to see the Next.  And I also remind myself that sometimes you have to act in the Now, regardless.  I come to my senses.  But, still.  The Next isn't far away.

Yes, right now, for many, the web is just another medium.  Growing in importance in the overall media mix, passing other media right and left, but essentially, just one of many tools.  It won't always be that way.  Because no existing medium has the capability to engulf all the functions and attributes of all the other media like the web.  And because because the web is really still in its infancy, and because the web is growing in scope, importance, and capability at something close to light speed -- saying, "It won't always be that way," is the same as saying "it won't be that way much longer."

To those of us who are net-centric, the shift has already happened.  Some time ago, the web, for me, became the source for pretty much all the information I consume.  News, research, entertainment, how to get to that new Mexican restaurant, what's up with mom and dad -- pretty much everything.  I used to say I only watch TV for live sports.  Now I watch live sports via the web. 

While I may be in the minority for people my age, the web-usage description above is pretty typical for anyone not that much younger than me.  And there are a lot of them.  And contrary to many opinions I encounter, they're not kids.  I'm frequently in discussions about the tech-savvy of any given client's potential customers.  Frequently, the perception is, only kids are tech-savvy -- responsible working adults only understand email.  But, then, there's this:  In 1984, Apple introduced the Macintosh, and thus began the era of computers in schools. (I know, Apple was never the only computer in schools, but I think it's safe to select 1984 the beginning of the massive push to equip every school with some sort of machine).  So, figure that by 1989, pretty much every 5th grader in the country knew what to do with a mouse.  If you were in the 5th grade in 1989, you're 29 now.  You're not a kid, you know how to use the web, and you do.  For everything.

When you understand that the web (or some future thing that the web will evolve to) has, or will have, the capacity to supplant pretty much all other existing media by delivering exactly what they deliver -- only better, because it's in a user-selectable, on-demand fashion -- then you understand what the web is becoming, and in some cases, has become.  It's the hub around which everything else evolves.  The medium that matters most.

I want to be clear here -- I didn't say it's the only thing that matters.  I said it's the thing that matters most.  There's a big difference.  Just like color photography didn't make drawing or black and white photography go away, the web won't make all the other media go away (though newspapers might not be recognizable someday.)  It's still critical to deliver media neutral ideas, and to make spectacular things for traditional media.  It always will be.  But. But, if you're still looking at the web as something that is nice to have in the mix, rather than the anchor for all the other media participants in your plan, you're not planning for the future.  That, to me, and to more of your customers than you think, is obvious.

Technorati Tags:
Advertising  Marketing   Creative   Interactive   Online Marketing Design  Digital Design Blattner Brunner  Ernie Mosteller  BB Digital 

del.icio.us this