Pet Rocker

Pet Rocker

Originally uploaded by ewePixelMonger

I was checking out the photos from the Family Arts Festival for this year on Flickr because I wasn’t able to attend, but I really wanted to. I found this image of the singer from Pet Rock and it reminded me of how much I enjoyed hearing this band play when I attended the festival in 2006. I really love it when people get together and do a thing they have a passion for – and these kids have got it.

Yesterday, at the University, on the little cement stage next to the student union, a rock band was playing some great songs. On the second day of school, their noise filled the center of the mall and they drew a huge crowd of listeners. It brought tears to my eyes – as things like that often do – for the sheer beauty of the art itself. For the passion and practice, and for the enthusiasm of the musicians as they jumped around on the tiny stage. Pet Rock reminds me of this awesome motivation. Also, they rock!

The reason some things never change

Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.
– Bertrand Russell

Though I don’t know when this particular quote was penned or said, the person who said it, Bertrand Arthur William Russell, lived from 1872 to 1970. This is a good saying – it still applies and is sticky today. It also explains why some things and people just don’t change.

What if you have a great new idea? There’s always one person who won’t buy into the idea because of ‘the way it’s always been done’ or ‘but you just don’t do that.’ It’s because of their existing convictions which may or may not be well-placed. The nature of people is to question something until they understand it, then after that, they question it no more. They have their idea, and there it stays – they’ve learned everything there is to know about that specific subject or task. The way to put them into questioning mode again? Disprove one of their convictions.

It sounds easy, but it isn’t. These types of convictions, these comforting convictions, are stuck deep in the mind. They aren’t always things that will just float to the surface in polite conversation! Look for patterns in the responses to questions and try to think of a bigger paradigm that always gets hinted at, but never fully revealed. That’s the conviction. Many times they’re related ideas about how a process works or why something exists in the way that it does. Sometimes they’ve been created to fill a knowledge gap the person had. At a party when you’re trying to impress someone and you can’t remember what step comes between 1 and 3, generally you make something up, right? And once you’ve repeated that response enough times it becomes stuck in your head, an inextricable part of 123.

See if you can figure out which part of the story was filled in. The easiest way to do this is if you’re not an expert on the subject being discussed, because that way you can question everything. Then look it up later and figure which step was faked. This is the one you need to disprove.

It’s probably worth mentioning now that the person might have a real dislike for you after you’ve disproved their paradigm. In essence it’s taking their idea and burying it under the correct idea. They don’t like that because they’ve spent so much time with that old idea anyway. It might be burying their best friend!

If they don’t like you, maybe at least they’ll learn to like the new idea you gave them.

Why you’ll love this post

This post has information about ad campaigns; why they work, what elements can relate separate executions, and a few easy ways to make sure your campaign is tied together. I don’t know if you’ll love it or not; but I’m posting it anyway.

The Campaign

Campaigns usually consist of one major message promoted in all media for a set period of time. The message might be about new initiatives, changes, promotions or special events. In order for consumers to get that message, they need to hear it or see it a few times so they remember the brand as well as the promotion. This awareness is important to any company because the user knowledge of the brand will strengthen future campaigns as well.

Campaigns work well if:

1. The same message is communicated across media
2. There are enough media channels for the target market to be exposed a few times
3. They are well-executed taking the target market’s communication preferences into account

They tend to get annoying and flop if:

1. The copy is repeated, over and over, word for word
2. There aren’t enough media channels to be effective; there’s no result
3. The message is poorly constructed and it means nothing to the target audience

An integrated campaign

Has anyone seen the latest Starbucks signage about their merchandise? It’s simple, direct, full of detail and well-designed. I wish I had a photo to show you, but soon I’m sure you’ll be able to see for yourself in your local Starbucks retail store.

It’s a little card, placed neatly on a stand in front of or next to the merchandise it’s referring to. There is a header at the top stating the product that reads “Why you’ll love this mug.” What follows are not bullet points (gasp!), but a concise, meaningful paragraph describing the benefits of the product. This small piece is more effective because it’s supported by store signs and colors.

This execution is selling the benefits of the product. That usually works well, but it works better when it’s part of a larger campaign that creates a need for that information.

Creating a need

To get people involved with advertising, you need to create some curiosity. Showing an abstracted version of your product with a strange or mystery copy line can get the audience hooked into your act. Only tell half the story and the listener will want to know the other half. This is essentially creating a need for information related to your brand in the mind of the consumer. In the Starbucks example, I saw the mugs on the display table. I would have just written them off as another new product until I saw the sign. Then I saw that it was on the other stuff too. That made me curious about what all the little signs said. They caused me to interact because of their size – I had to get closer to read them.

Not being repetitive

So you want to communicate the same message in all media, that’s true because you want it to get across. If you just repeat it, word-for-word, chances are your customers won’t relate to it. You must convince them about how the message relates to them, to their situation. If the message is about “our department store is having a sale on Saturday,” don’t just say that over and over again. Show how it will help the customer to attend the sale: saving money, having fun, looking great at the party, buying the right cookware for dinner guests etc. The sale on Saturday isn’t really concrete. The consumer picturing herself serving guests from the bowl she got on sale will come to the shopper more naturally.

How do you know if you’re being too repetitive or if you’re not getting the message across well enough? Ask. Get a small group of people from your target group and ask them to view the campaign. Ask them about overarching ideas they saw or images they felt were effective for them. Ask if this would make them want to go to the sale. Ask what it would take to get them to go to the sale. Then take their suggestions.

A bit of advice

Just because it’s always been this way isn’t sufficient reason for continuing a bad practice.

Put another way: “But we’ve been doing it this way for thirty years!” “That may be so, but we may have been doing it wrong for all those years. Did you ever think of that?”

This is a bit of advice I feel I should write down, just because it seems so obvious to me now. I’m afraid that with age, it won’t be so obvious to me anymore. Maybe if it’s written here, on the timeless internet, I’ll be able to remember how simple it seemed when it doesn’t seem obvious any longer, in my senility.

So many problems can be avoided by simply looking at a problem from another perspective. How do you know if you have been doing it wrong for all these 30 years? Habits do something to the ones who develop them. They tend to cause a sort of tunnel vision. In some cases the habit-bearing people forget about the customers, sometimes they forget about department relationships, and even worse, they forget the vision of the company. In any process, idea, form or product, habits that have been formed over a long, long period of time, never changing or possibly getting progressively worse should be examined in detail with relation to objectives. Here are some evaluating suggestions:

1. Look at your idea, process or product from the point of view of the customer: how will someone feel filling out this form or going through this process? Is it easy for the customer (not to be confused with “is it easy for you?”) How will they describe it; in favorable terms?

This one can be difficult. If it’s too hard to get away from your idea, product, or process, get an outsider. Interview them and really listen to the whole answer, don’t just filter out the parts that don’t fit with your perception of the way things work.

2. Review the post-customer process – the interaction between people or departments to carry out the customer’s wishes.

This needs to be evaluated purely from an efficiency perspective. If there’s one overloaded staff member that’s part of this process, find a way to take them out, split the work or assign to a different person! You’ll save them the stress of an extra responsibility and make the process move more smoothly and quickly. I know it seems obvious, but many times it’s not even considered.

3. Think hard about the logic of your process – do all the steps make sense and are they all in the right order?

It seems that after a problem is thought through once or twice and a solution has been found, that process stays the same for as long as the idea lives. Sometimes that particular process isn’t the best process, just the first or quickest solution the creator arrived at. Make sure this is evaluated objectively.

4. Pare it down to the essentials.

Do you really need to ask for the home, work and cell number? Who uses that and why? You’ll save time for the customer, the people processing the task and yourself in assessing the effectiveness of customer response. You should be dealing with the important stuff. No need for fluff.

5. Ask questions.

The most important thing I have ever learned as a newbie is to always ask questions. Not questions about how to do the thing you’re a newbie at (that would be like asking ‘now where do I click?’). Instead ask why things are done the way they are. Why do the customers fill out this form? Where does it go after we give it to Jenny for processing? Many times, you’ll be able to see errors in logic, fluff or processing simply by asking a childish ‘why’ of every part of the process, idea or product.

Thanks for listening to my bit of advice! You don’t have to worry about taking it too seriously – I don’t have enough corporate experience for people to actually do the things I suggest. I’m not qualified to advise anyone. Still; I hope this nugget helps someone out there in the internet. I want to help, but I also want to remember it!