Guerrilla thinking

They are around us.
Everywhere. Once they were smart and young.
Everybody would watch them and trust in them like you can trust a pioneer or a man with a vision.
Those were the times when the web appeared in the world and those who were able to master the first rudiments of the new art were like kings.

They were holding the keys to a new world and brands and companies were standing in line to be sure to take advantage of their knowledge.

But then something happened. 
The knowledge spread like a virus and younger minds hit the market.
A website was not enough. Banners were not enough.
Hell, knowing about TCP/IP, servers and DBs was not enough!!

All they knew now was only tools.  
What in the beginning seemed to be the revenge of the geeks turned out to be their next slavery.
Chained to their own attitudes and skills they were unable to adapt to the new life and trends.
Their shattered dreams weighted too much on their shoulder and eventually killed their humanity and turned them into zombies.
Their human to human interaction is zero. They move around agencies and clients always sad, always complaining, always tired.

Bureaucracy has become their idol. They stick to the rules pretending to be useful.
They lost the vision and hang tight to their chairs.

Don’t be afraid though, they can’t hurt you.
Unless you don’t get close at least.
They can walk sure, but they can’t certainly run.
So keep your eyes wide open and learn to spot them in your company or meetings.
And remember to keep as far as possible from them. 

Wondering if there are any signs to identify them?
Here are some from your beloved and trustworthy guerrilla thinkers. 

#1 - DZOMBIES HATE APPLE (NOT THE FRUIT)

Digital zombies are envious. They envy good old Steve because he made it.
That’s why you will see them going around with their guru face saying everybody that the iPhone is not a revolution or that a mac will be never performing as a pc.
You will hear them explaining an audience that the most successful mobile OS is Android and that it will eventually kill the iPhone.
Of course they will never mention that the whole smartphone market was born BECAUSE OF the iPhone.
Feeling the need to be perceived as always ahead of the market, trying to go back to their glorious past and being looked at as pioneers they will always say the opposite of what the market is saying and people are making experience of.
And this leads us to the second sign for a digital zombie.

#2 - DZOMBIES DISLIKE DIGITAL TRENDS SAYING THAT THEY ARE OLD (BUT ARE UNABLE TO TELL WHAT’S NEW)

Facebook? Twitter? Pinterest?
Old stuff. Something that might end tomorrow.
Since everybody is on Facebook these days, digital zombies will snub it.
And the same can be said for any other huge digital phenomenon.
In many ways digital zombies are to the web what snob musicians/critics are to the music.
The moment anything hits the tipping point and start to become a mass phenomenon, they turn it down.
Too bad they are not able to predict the next big thing.
And when they do they always get it wrong.
Those are the one who told you that windows phones and nokia together would be a threat for the iPhone market. Can you believe it? Windows? Come on… 

#3 - DZOMBIES ARE WORKAHOLICS

Digital zombies haven’t yet discovered that time for ourselves and family is the real benefit.
They like to stay at their desk late. And they love let anyone know.
They share pics of their desk at 7 a.m. in the morning and 10 p.m. in the evening on Facebook and twitter. Most of the times they comment the picture with things like “I love my job”. That is meant to be ironic. But for them it is not. They REALLY love being in the office late and early.
They hang out with co-workers and most of the times have sex with them.
Their entire social life is in the office.
But just don’t misunderstand us. It’s not that they could not do the same job at home with their laptops.
It’s just that they strive to feel useful. They started to be workaholic during the internet boom when they dreamed of becoming millionaires before they 30s.
Now, in their late 30s or 40s, they don’t have anything left.
No husbands or wives waiting at home. Sometimes they got children they will only see in the weekends.
Going back home is not a point for them. They prefer to stick to people like them.
After all we all saw this in the movies. Zombies are never alone.
When you see one be careful, others will follow right away. 

# 4 - DZOMBIES DON’T WANT SMART PEOPLE AROUND 

If you are passionate and smart and happen to deal with a digital zombie always keep in mind that the zombies will do their best to suck the life out of you.
Being lost in their shattered dream, they will discourage any effort to make a difference.
To them, work is an inconvenience and it is useless to give added value or to go the extra mile.
They want their boss and colleagues to think they do. But they really don’t wanna do it.
Clients do not deserve it, market does not deserve it.
They would never cease their precious secret treasures and wisdom to those pigs.
And that’s why they will tell you not to do it.
In their zombie minds, they still hold the keys to the future.
But those keys can be hand over only to some wise insiders.
If you’re too smart and willing to make big things happening, then you are NOT one of them. And they will feel it.
For them it’s a war. They are at war with ignorance.
But in the end it’s just a war against themselves. 

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT DZOMBIES

These are some of the signs that will help you spot a digital zombies.
Of course there are more like their pale face, their brown teeth, their cigarettes always stuck between their lips…
We will come soon with more of them.
In the meantime, if you happen to work for a zombie, there’s only one thing that you can do: find another job.  
Good luck! 

We don’t know what you think about it guys, but QR codes are an epic fail.
At the very early stage of their existence we were all excited to have a way to extended our reality and get deeper information on products, events and anything else.

But that was ages ago.
And at guerrilla thinking we strongly believe they are the past.

Sure, some old-style web marketing wannabe might be excited to sell a QR code campaign to its clients and some of those latter ones might be even more excited to try out what they think is the “next” thing.

But that doesn’t matter. Apart from those constantly living in the past year, people living and acting in the market today have to know (if they don’t know yet) that QR codes are not worth the money.

And here’s why.

1) GOOGLE SEARCH IS THERE AND READY IN YOUR HANDS

whatever a QR code can give you when you scan it, can be found in google.
Providing a good keyword to your clients on the pack and writing “google this” beside it will do the job perfectly and will be way much easier for them to be done.
QR Codes were cool, but that was before actual smartphone and google-performant devices. Geo-localized apps and mobile google search actually killed QR codes reason to be.

2) TWITTER HASHTAGS CAN DO BETTER

why would you wanna put a QR code on your pack when you can put an hashtag (#) and getting twitter users to look it up and contribute on the go?
The space you need to place the cryptic code can perfectly fit a twitter logo with the #.
And this one (as much as the keyword mentioned above) is even more rememberable than a the code (which actually does not reveal anything at all)

3) MOBILE VISUAL SEARCH IS WAY MORE INTUITIVE AND POWERFUL

the 2 points above refer to an action that you as a brand can take to give your clients the chance to deepen their knowledge of your product.
But is that really necessary these days?

Many smartphone will soon embed Mobile visual search functionalities.
Google is doing pretty much for this and its introducing this slowly to the market in order to improve it and go massive.

It’s called Google goggles. And here’s how it works.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

Why would people want to open an app, scan a code and get to most of the times crap content?
QR codes are not rewarding. Neither in terms of what they deliver, nor in the way they do it. They were a good idea 10 years ago. But technology and people have changed.
And the possibilities now are way beyond them.
If you really want to connect a place, a product, a window, any item and make it work as a real-world-hypertextual-link you’d better consider other options that are closer to people’s habits and expectations.

Read More

In some ways the mayan were right.
2012 will mark a turning point in the recent history of mankind.
Ever since 1984, desktop and then laptop computers have been a significant part of our daily life.
Most of the people in their late 30s still remember being excited in front of their first computer and being fascinated by their first “portable” computer some years later.
At that time, the dream of carrying our personal digital belongings with us was still a… dream. With a 3 GB storage and 16MB ram your digital life could not be that much extended.

With the growing of storage and CPU capacity, things changed so much that thinking of what a computer experience could be only 10 years ago makes us laugh.
And that’s a good hint to unveil what the future might be holding as far as devices are concerned.

One thing is for sure. 2012 will be the year that will change everything.
Acccording to Morgan Stanley, mobile connections will surpass desk/laptops ones. The web experience will have to adapt more and more to this trend. And so will have to advertising. 

But what does this mean? Here are some tips to go mobile in 2012.

1) BEING MOBILE DOESN’T MEAN YOU ONLY HAVE TO ADAPT YOUR WEBSITE TO IPAD/IPHONE SPECS

Sure. When the world’s gone mobile, you really want people using apple devices to read your website and you want to adapt your content for them. And that’s right. But that’s not enough.
A readable interface is what people expect on your website as a minimum requirement.
If you don’t match that, stop reading this post and go back to school right now.
It takes more to be mobile.

2) MOBILE USERS MOVE AROUND.

For stupid this consideration may seem, it is a vital one for your mobile approach.
The freedom from lap and desks got your brand in people entire experience.
Night and day. Every moment and anywhere.
The information you provide people will have to be more and more geo-located and relevant to their actual experience.
If you are a B2C brand your mobile site/app should provide people the chance to check where to buy your goods or how to exploit the surroundings to have the best experience out of them.
Be WITH your target and empower them with relevant and useful experience in the place where they are and you will not fail.

3) INTEGRATE WITH DEVICES TOOLS AND FEATURES

The more you are able to integrate people mobile experience with the features of their device the more chances you have to hit the spot and be remembered.
This means i.e. providing information on a product on shelf through the device camera and then save those pictures as a shopping cart list, or anything like that.

Yes. This is painful for your business. Yes it requires IT integration, commitment and budget effort.
And no, you can’t dispense with that. If you want keep on having a mobile version of your website. But that won’t make any difference for your business.

4) PROVIDE ADD ONS TO THE DEVICE CAMERA

Ever since Nokia introduced the very first camera phone, people have never stopped being attracted by this feature. We all want to snap souvenirs of our best or worst moments of everyday life.
If you want (and you have to) go mobile in 2012, just don’t forget this.
Apps like hipstamatic and instagram clearly outline that the more you are able to empower users with visual effects/filters for their camera, the better.
And this doesn’t have to be connected to your business.
You might consider to gift buyers of your products with hipstamatic free downloads, or exclusive film rolls/filters collections or create your own app with filters and ability to share pics on people favorite sharing platforms. 

It does not matter how you choose to do it. Ride the wave of camera frenzy and connect it to your brand in a mobile perspective and you will not fail.

That’s it folks. More tips will come soon. Stay tuned.

Here we are again.
Every time we hear advertising people talking they are always complaining.
They miss the good old times, when zillions rained out of nowhere in their pockets and the only effort required was to create a nice tv ad.

They complain now. They say clients haw shrunken budgets.
And they even decide to invest part of it in stupid web campaigns!
How can they betray the good old tv for such an evanescent medium?
The web is for kids and nerdy guys. People don’t click on banners and likes don’t move a thing when it comes to driving people to stores.

Bullshits. Of course they are.
And behind them lies the worst thing that a man working in the communication and advertising industry can face: fear.
They fear what they just can’t understand.

But if they looked at our times from a different perspective, they could find some peace of mind. The web is not killing traditional advertising. 
For at least 3 good reasons. Here they are. 

1) GOOD CREATIVITY AND PASSION ARE ALWAYS A MUST-HAVE

Being users essentially people, all of the messages that a brand or product conveys on a digital arena will always have to be thought, visualized and told in the most creative and engaging way.
Of course some technicalities will be (and actually are) still required but good creative talent and will to evolve will be sufficient to do the job.

2) VIDEOS ARE STILL THE MOST ENGAGING WAY TO TELL A STORY

Watching is easier than reading. And people are lazy, also on the web.
Videos will always be the best way to reach them and touch their feelings.
The many possibilities the web has to offer can grant even more and innovative ways to develop campaigns and tell longer stories than what we can do in tv-broadcasting  mode.

Again, you gotta learn these possibilities and how to exploit them. But if you do, your video story telling skills will do the job perfectly.

3) WEB AGENCIES SKILLS ARE NOT SUFFICIENT TO UNLEASH THE POWER OF THE WEB

This may seem a paradox, but we think it’s totally true.
As we just said, the web expands the possibilities of traditional advertising to the maximum. But that’s true if you know how to tell a story, if you know how to build it up and get it to touch your target’s feelings and wallets.
And this is not about coding or implementing.
Coding and implementing are necessary things, but the core of communication is a creative idea.
And web agencies are not used to think and generate ideas. They can be excellent at making it viral, getting it to go around the web and empower it with tools to put it in the hands of users.
But building the story requires storytelling abilities that they just don’t have.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

Rather than counterposing ATL and Digital, creative agencies should try to understand that the 2 skills must be integrated as much as possible.
Digital folks should understand that they have a lot to learn from ATL creatives, and those latter ones should exploit the knowledge of tools and technicalities that digital folks have to deliver a creative message in the best way.

This might seem expectable, but if you step into some advertising company you will clearly notice it is not.
ATL and DIGITAL coexist as 2 different entities and sometimes disrespect each other.
There is no faster way to failure than this.

The 2012 adv agency should be REALLY media neutral, not just tell the market that it is. It should be able to convey a great creative idea in the best way, no matter what the channels are. And we really mean it.

So please agencies managers and creatives, stop complaining and start acting.
Start getting digital people and ATL ones in the same rooms. Start to raise down walls and barriers. Ban “digital” and “ATL” from your dictionary and train your people to think of ONE SINGLE CHANNEL: human experience.

Stop proposing to the market with an ATL brand and its little “fresh”, “young” digital son.
This is so 90s… The fact that you still have a digital agency and an ATL one clearly outlines that you are unable to have a full, single, complete and organic view of communication.

Think about it. And then take your decisions.
At guerrilla thinking this is what we do. And it always works.

 

 

Here we are again.
Every time we hear advertising people talking they are always complaining.
They miss the good old times, when zillions rained out of nowhere in their pockets and the only effort required was to create a nice tv ad.

They complain now. They say clients haw shrunken budgets.
And they even decide to invest part of it in stupid web campaigns!
How can they betray the good old tv for such an evanescent medium?
The web is for kids and nerdy guys. People don’t click on banners and likes don’t move a thing when it comes to driving people to stores.

Bullshits. Of course they are.
And behind them lies the worst thing that a man working in the communication and advertising industry can face: fear.
They fear what they just can’t understand.

But if they looked at our times from a different perspective, they could find some peace of mind. The web is not killing traditional advertising. 
For at least 3 good reasons. Here they are. 

1) GOOD CREATIVITY AND PASSION ARE ALWAYS A MUST-HAVE

Being users essentially people, all of the messages that a brand or product conveys on a digital arena will always have to be thought, visualized and told in the most creative and engaging way.
Of course some technicalities will be (and actually are) still required but good creative talent and will to evolve will be sufficient to do the job.

2) VIDEOS ARE STILL THE MOST ENGAGING WAY TO TELL A STORY

Watching is easier than reading. And people are lazy, also on the web.
Videos will always be the best way to reach them and touch their feelings.
The many possibilities the web has to offer can grant even more and innovative ways to develop campaigns and tell longer stories than what we can do in tv-broadcasting  mode.

Again, you gotta learn these possibilities and how to exploit them. But if you do, your video story telling skills will do the job perfectly.

3) WEB AGENCIES SKILLS ARE NOT SUFFICIENT TO UNLEASH THE POWER OF THE WEB

This may seem a paradox, but we think it’s totally true.
As we just said, the web expands the possibilities of traditional advertising to the maximum. But that’s true if you know how to tell a story, if you know how to build it up and get it to touch your target’s feelings and wallets.
And this is not about coding or implementing.
Coding and implementing are necessary things, but the core of communication is a creative idea.
And web agencies are not used to think and generate ideas. They can be excellent at making it viral, getting it to go around the web and empower it with tools to put it in the hands of users.
But building the story requires storytelling abilities that they just don’t have.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

Rather than counterposing ATL and Digital, creative agencies should try to understand that the 2 skills must be integrated as much as possible.
Digital folks should understand that they have a lot to learn from ATL creatives, and those latter ones should exploit the knowledge of tools and technicalities that digital folks have to deliver a creative message in the best way.

This might seem expectable, but if you step into some advertising company you will clearly notice it is not.
ATL and DIGITAL coexist as 2 different entities and sometimes disrespect each other.
There is no faster way to failure than this.

The 2012 adv agency should be REALLY media neutral, not just tell the market that it is. It should be able to convey a great creative idea in the best way, no matter what the channels are. And we really mean it.

So please agencies managers and creatives, stop complaining and start acting.
Start getting digital people and ATL ones in the same rooms. Start to raise down walls and barriers. Ban “digital” and “ATL” from your dictionary and train your people to think of ONE SINGLE CHANNEL: human experience.

Stop proposing to the market with an ATL brand and its little “fresh”, “young” digital son.
This is so 90s… The fact that you still have a digital agency and an ATL one clearly outlines that you are unable to have a full, single, complete and organic view of communication.

Think about it. And then take your decisions.
At guerrilla thinking this is what we do. And it always works.

 

 

The more we watch ads and web campaigns running around, the more convinced we are that marketing people and agency creatives have gone nuts.

It must be the crisis, but brands have lately become frantic and tend to oversell their goods pushing agencies to say whatever needed to sell.
On the other hand, agencies have completely lost a sense of ethics. Their high payrolls and desperate struggle to survive got them bent over. They sometimes try to say “no” but then they soon go back “yessing” and doing what “the client” (to be pronounced with a serious and dramatic voice) is asking for.

Lies, lies, lies or unsaid things. Everywhere. Now more than ever.
Smoke in the eyes of customers. 
When they don’t succeed in having them bored beyond belief, they try to trick them.

After all it’s not their fault. This is the way communication has always played in the past.
In an ever-growing market you could get people to believe they needed a useless thing to sell more. You actually should it. 
When the economic time is running fast and money is all over (such as in the widely celebrated fabulous 80s) the market has the power to get your desire in its hands and make it grow.

And the more you pay and buy, the more you want. Because you can and you earn a lot of money.

But I am sorry to tell you my dearest reader that these times are over.
It’s happening right now. It’s like an awakening.

People are getting more and more aware of things and personal needs and wills.

Deceiving won’t work anymore. And this is not just a crisis of advertising economy. It’s the crisis of an entire civilization, of an economic model, of a way of life.
In many ways we could say that the beast of the market has started to eat itself.
For many reasons.

Here they are.

1) PEOPLE WANT VALUE FOR MANY

no more frills guys.
With less money in our pockets, we tend to calculate our small to big investments and try to understand the real benefit a purchase can give to our life.
What once was a necessity is not anymore.
In a recent survey of more than 2,800 college students and young professionals in 14 countries, Cisco found that more than half said they could not live without the internet. They rather dispense with their car than an Internet connection, whenever forced to choose between the two.
We want that every single dime we put in a thing is worth the effort it takes to earn it.
And being worth does NOT mean that I have a cool thing to show to my friends, but that I have an item that’s adding significant value to my daily life.
The promise you make in an ad is the most important thing nowadays. It’s always been. But if in the past your creatives could afford not to care about it and play on cool ads to get people to buy, they can’t do it now.

If you don’t say WHY I should buy and give me a clear view of the benefit I could have once I do, you are failing. Now more than ever.
Sure, you have to do it in the most engaging and entertaining way, but you have to do it.
 

2) BRANDS ARE NAKED

That’s it. If 30 years ago you could say whatever you wanted to sell and basically sleep good at night, now the nightmare of a blog, forum or video is going to haunt your dreams.
It is time to be honest. To say what your product really is.
And if you think the way it is is not enough, then it is time to evolve, to change the product.

Yes. The taboo of untouchable crap products we have to lie for is gone.
No matter how much you get your agency to lie to the audience, they will find out the truth. And they will expose it to the all world.

Trust you good Guerrilla thinkers, you are naked. And you can’t pretend anymore to have a six pack under your label. If you want to say that you will have to work out.

3) LIFE IS MORE AND MORE OPEN SOURCE

Jeremy Rifkin prediction was right.
We are heading to a world where people will not possess things but rather use them.
Bike and car sharing services are a clear example of this.
I don’t need to own a means of transport, I can pay for that when I need one.
And the same can be sad for technology, houses, and daily things in general.
As the time goes by and this crisis affect all of us, we are starting to believe that we don’t really need what we have, things.
We need what things can bring to us, we need to use them and therefore we don’t have to buy. We can share.

Sharing is spreading from the web to the real world.
People are starting to share many different things and have also begun to share time.
This goes even beyond Rifkin idea. In its model we would pay to rent our lives and access what we would need. And that was the prediction of a very popular web evolution that goes under the name of cloud computing.
But what’s happening instead is that in real life we are also starting an open source life model, where we share pieces of our lives and get some from the others to build our experience.

In the experience we share with others there are also our thoughts and ideas about brands and products. What we think of a product contributes to generate a universal shared vision of itself.
That’s why we say that understanding that your brand is naked is so important.
Crap will be crap. And no advertising idea will fix it.
Because the journey people share is much more powerful than the lies you can tell them. 

_________________

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS: 

Of course there are many more things to say about this.
But these 3 key points will help you (we hope) to refocus your expectations and vision of the future of your brand.
Don’t keep on deceiving. Understand that the awareness and reputation of a brand are becoming more and more universal and that disappointing one may these days mean disappointing ANYone. Do it and you will not fail.
 

The beginning of the end for advertising industry was best described in the famous video “the last advertising agency on earth”

In the video you found many reasons why the traditional approach of advertising agencies is wrong. 
It’s all true. 

But us Guerrilla thinkers believe that there are some more reasons why advertising agencies as they are can’t make it in a long term.

Here they are.

1) AGENCIES HAVE QUIT BEING CREATIVE AND HAVE BEGUN ADVERTISING

Let’s get rid of this: the point is NOT about advertising.
Advertising agencies are failing because they have stopped being CREATIVE.
They have quit creating and have started making ads.

Most of them carry the name of real innovators in the advertising field. 
Would Leo Burnett and Bill Bernbach live today do you think they would accept to confine their incredible minds in the territory of tv ads, banners or Facebook apps?
Don’t you think they would invent new ways to get people to the store or even new ways for people to buy? 

In someway we think the true heirs of those great mentors are people like Steve Jobs and Marc Zuckerberg. 
Have you ever wondered why Facebook or the iPhone were not invented in a creative agency? Could any of the existing invent and propose to a client anything like this?

What creative agencies must understand is that if you don’t get into the business bringing your FULL creative talent and just sit there and create ads, you are just like any other monkey on the market. And when a monkey dies you might shed a tear, but you go right after at the pet shop and buy a new one to do the design for you.

No. Creative agencies must go back to their roots and create. And get deeply into their clients’ businesses not just to tell them how to sell but also to help them to create and innovate.

And this lead us to point number 2.


2)  AGENCIES RARELY THINK. THEY EXECUTE.

Let’s clear this too: the market has NOT changed. It IS ever-changing.
By the time it takes for you to read this article, some guy from Illinois or Delaware might have just invented the new big trend on the web.

And agencies? They keep brainstorming.
Agencies are too slow in seizing market changes because they are too focused in creating advertising campaigns. But those advertising campaign suffer from a lack of market updates and in the end are boring, repetitive and self assuring.

There is nothing more important than “research and development” within creative agencies. How can you create if you can’t think?

The primary task of creative agencies should be thinking and not photoshopping, time sheeting or meeting reporting.
Sure, you may say that this requires time, and that this time is not paid. 

But you are wrong.
It is paid.
It is paid in culture, in heritage, in satisfaction of your employees.

And It will be rewarded by real success.
And with success clients will follow.

3) AGENCIES DON’T HAVE ANY AMBITION TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE

If the primary task of creative agencies is that of thinking, their primary goal should be that of making a difference, conquering an identity, pave the way to people’s hearts and minds. Be awesome!

As long as agencies managers keep on lowering their expectations and focus only on revenues not a single agency will ever distinguish itself from the rest.
Sure making money is important. But that can’t be the main agency goal.

Sadly, these days 99% of the agencies pursue money instead of creativity.
Agencies are run by business school guys who very often have no idea of what is creative thinking.
They think in numbers.
How did this happen? How could we cease all of this power in the hands of money makers completely forgetting the pleasure and passion of our work?

These questions lead us to the following and last point.

4) AGENCIES ARE TOO BIG AND HAVE TOO MUCH COSTS

If you have been working for some time in the advertising industry you are most likely to be familiar with huge buildings, corporate cell phones and cars and more fringe benefits. For decades advertising professionals have  been rewarded for their job in many different ways. It was a time when money flew out of the cow in a never-ending stream and being an “agency man” was cool.

But then it all changed and creative industry began to lose its charm. The dam of events prevented more money-milk to stream to the offices and advertising managers started to understand they needed to cut some “useless” costs.

But even if big advertising agencies try to lower their payroll, that it is not SO easy to be done and could not be an option.

You might wind up having a team that’s unprepared to carry the weight of more work on its shoulder and/or be even more unable to innovate.

The more you cut because you focus on making money, the less money you happen to make because you don’t have enough people to handle even simple delivery. In other words, agencies are now in a catch 22.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

Creativity no longer lives in advertising agencies. At least not in all of them.

The bigger the worst.
More people = more costs and more anxiety to pay people salaries and subsequent need to cut and wind up not to be competitive anymore.

Please agency managers make a choice.

Decide for quality. 
Decide to take the steering wheel of your agency and lead it to the seven seas.
Get the people working for you to be proud of what they do. Demand the best and only the best from them. Don’t stop until you are absolutely sure that you’ve gone far beyond the extra mile.

Don’t just do what your clients ask or say.
Remember that they know how to make chicken but you know those who eat them and, most important,  you think.

If you don’t, please start thinking, looking, watching, learning.
It’s the only way you have to survive not only in the market, but in life.



 

That’s it.
It’s all in the title.

We had the chance to talk to some of our fellow Italy-based GTs a couple of days ago.
Frustration was all over the air. 
The web in Italy is failing. Not used to its all potential. 

Here are the answers to the question: why are Italian companies failing on the web?

1) MOST OF THE PEOPLE IN COMPANIES ARE TOO OLD AND PROUD

Don’t misunderstand us. It’s not a matter of real age. But it is surely a matter of MENTAL age and disposition. People taking decisions in Italy are too often unable to understand the trends and follow the market. They are stuck into their product/brand state of mind and unwilling to think as a consumer.
Even when they pretend to do it, they always universalize their point of view.

You can hear them say: “I would never tweet” , “I don’t use Foursquare”, without understanding that there are many, so many other people that actually would and do.
Rather than getting them to trust their agency, this incapacity plays on their pride and get them up to themselves and ultimately in the position not to understand what is being proposed.

2) NOBODY EVER TAKES THE RISK TO DECIDE ANYTHING

Think about it. How many times have you held a 3 HOURS presentation to a large audience of people in a room and heard right afterwards that they would present that to their “boss” and decide?
In Italian companies (or at least in big ones) only a few people take the risk to decide. The rest of them simply flow from one presentation to the other, unable to even express their own opinion.
You can see that for yourself. Next time you hold a presentation, ask to your interlocutors what they think about it.
If the boss is in the room, you will see that nobody will ever talk before him/her.
And when they do, they will simply go after their boss.
People working in Italian companies are FOLLOWERS by nature.
But how can you expect a brand carried by followers to be a leader? You can’t.

3) MARKETING PEOPLE DON’T KNOW THE DIGITAL MARKET

This sounds funny, doesn’t it? 
When you hear the word “marketing” you might expect that these people actually study, know and deepen their market. But when you face them in a meeting you soon realize they don’t.
Sure, iF they sell, let’s say, coffee they might know many things about coffee but they don’t really never know how the coffee is discussed, loved, hated and connected to their target online.
Never have our Italian GTs found during their presentations to clients someone sitting on the other end of the table able to give them a vision of their digital awareness and reputation and a clear brief of their goals.
“Digital” is a word that means a lot and nothing to them.
Most of them still think that it actually means having or creating a website.
Too many times you can hear them saying silly things like “Facebook is for kids” or “Youtube can’t make money, it will close sooner or later”. 
Truth is that they rarely even have a Facebook account. 
There’s no passion, no real interest.
They read an article in a newspaper and they think they know it all. The problem is that the article is written by another Italian average market thinker who pretends to be a guru but it’s just, most of the times, a jackass.

4) PEOPLE IN ITALIAN COMPANIES LACK IN PASSION FOR THEIR JOB (AND LIFE)

Communicating a brand/product is one of the best jobs you might happen to have.
But you can’t live it as a day by day career.

In order to really succeed and make a difference you must live it as a passion.
You must be curious about people. You must ask yourself questions like: what do they do? where do they do it? And most importantly: WHY do they do it?

This is even more true when you are talking of the digital landscape.
After all, the web is all about passion and love.

But people working in the marketing areas of most Italian companies just don’t get it.
And they really don’t do this anymore. They pay zillions euros to idiot research agencies that will pop out a million slides powerpoint to say nothing that you can easily understand going out in the streets for yourself.

Please Italian guys, stop sitting on the throne of your brand growing a fat ass.
Go out, breathe, listen to the people, get them to talk, use a bus, get on a train, LIVE and watch.
And learn.

That will do a lot more for your work than any research can do.
And you will stop failing.

It is sometime great to just sit down and think of the good old times.

Days when you didn’t have a cell phone or a pager. 
Days when being out of the office just meant to be out of reach.
Days when the the word “urgent” meant “to be done within tomorrow” not “within an hour”.

That’s probably why when the Internet came we all thought it couldn’t be anything harmful.

We thought the freedom we had conquered through the ages had finally come to its higher level. We were excited and ready for a new era.

A time of freedom when we would work at home or anywhere in the world and whenever we like. Being office-free and connected would represent the beginning of true freedom and liberation from an ancient way of living our work.

The most talented among us imagined themselves in the woods or by the sea with a device in their hands able to let them do their jobs in the most efficient way from a distance.

As far as that prediction is concerned, it was true.
Alas, the messianic view of upcoming history was not. Absolutely not.

Infact, never before in history have workers been so much chained to their daily business activities like nowadays.

We are not obviously saying that the web is the evil.
But it is time to look at some facts of our daily work and leisure life and make some considerations.
The web promised we would be more free, we would have more time for our personal life and would be more updated and aware.

Were these promises fulfilled? Were our expectations met?
Not really, not for everyone at least. Here’s why.

1) PEOPLE WORK MORE (IN OR OUTSIDE THE OFFICE). AND THEY THINK IT’S COOL

Nobody can deny this. Ever since the Internet came we work more than before.
We work in the office, on the bus/subway/car to our home. We often work at home.
We work during the weekends at the mountains.
Working late has become cool.
But please, keep in mind that reading your emails on the latest tablet or smartphone may look great and awesome, but it’s always work. 
Next time you send an email with a report/presentation to your boss during a weekend you would be supposed to spend having fun with your friends, take a moment to shoot a picture to yourself with your new 8 MEGAPIXEL camera smartphone.
Look at you: you are a nerd monkey. Sad but true. 

2) WORK AND PRIVATE LIFE HAVE BECOME THE SAME

Because people work too much and more than before, they tend not develop their own social sphere and to familiarize too much with their colleagues.
Coworkers became a sort of a family for them and this lead them to spend more time at the office and to share their spare time with them.
Of course they often end up talking about work and in the end… working.
Work and private life mix together, so that the time people would spend for minding their own business becomes extra-non-paid time they dedicate to someone else’s.

4) PEOPLE ARE MORE AND MORE IGNORANT

As said in a previous post in this blog, the wide and infinite amount of information available on the web, got people to think they don’t need to know anything.
Google has the answer.
And people have become to lazy to deepen any subject. And they don’t.
Unless it’s a part of their job, they won’t deepen anything. Simply because they know they could whenever needed. And they could do it in a couple of clicks.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

The web has the power to change our perception of reality and get people together to change the world.
But the way it has been used so far reflects our own attitude and perception of the world rather than our will to change it or improve it.
We let our society eat and adapt the web to an ancient model of living and working.
In other words we think the power of the web is yet to show its full potential.

1) DON’T LIE

Many marketing and advertising people lie.
Because they have been lying for many years. The lied for years to the audience in their tv spot promising benefits and things that their actual products could just not really give.

If you have a bit of history in the advertising market on your shoulder as we do, you’re surely familiar to sentences like: “we can’t say this in the ad” or “actually this product is the same as competitors but costs more”. But this is over.

Or at least brands and agencies can’t keep lying as they did so far. Not on the web.
The power of the web is immense. if you are unable to fulfill with a real benefit the expectations you rise while communicating your brand/product the web will eat you.

That’s why the first and most important rule for a successful digital strategy is to be honest. To be ethical and sell things for what they really are.
Accept discussions and advices to improve.
By doing so you will understand that in a web perspective, your product is under constant scrutiny: you don’t have to look good enough. You have to BE good enough. 

2) DON’T BE MULTICHANNEL IF THAT DOESN’T ADD VALUE TO THE STRATEGY

Having a campaign or a project that is multichannel is cool.
But having a crapy advertising that’s spamming users on their iPads, iPhones, macs, pcs,androids it’s not.
Every channel has its own rules (we will see them in another post) and purposes.
Develop an iPhone app that basically gives you information about a product that you can easily find browsing google on your phone it’s pointless.

An app should make the product somewhat interactive. As much as a digital signage should add more value to your being somewhere outdoor. 
Don’t be anxious.

Think about what you want to do with every channel and how that channel could/should add  value to your customer experience. If it does not don’t activate it and focus on those who do.

3)  RECONSIDER THE ROLE OF MEDIA

Your media strategist will tell you he thought of a very good clustered display campaign. He will tell you that you can be on a main news portal or in a niche website that fits perfectly to your product.

Don’t trust that monkey. Most of the times he doesn’t really know what he’s saying.
And you can tell it by his presentations: hundreds and hundreds of charts, a giant excel to tell you in the end that you must spend a lot of money to generate AWARENESS

Now, what’s awareness online anyways? If you spend a lot in display advertising people will certainly be aware that your exist. But as soon as you stop investing it won’t take long for them to forget. 

So ask yourself what you want to achieve. Is it short-term awareness or long-term relationship?  
Long-term awareness is not an option through digital advertising, unless you plan to keep investing money for a very long time.

But even if you did, there are 2 things to keep in mind:

a) The fact that people are aware that you exist doesn’t mean they have a connection to you. Awareness is good online if it calls to an action, if it involves you in some ways. 

b)  In the digital sphere Too much display-generated awareness also translates as SPAM. Think about it. You are reading your email  or browsing some websites and you keep on seeing the same message… pretty annoying, isn’t it?
When it comes to the web repetition might not just be good for your marketing.

FINAL CONSIDERATION

Follow these 3 rules and apply them to your digital strategies and you will not fail.
Though simple and understandable, they are too often forgotten by “web makers” because they are focused in getting the client to do more and more (and pay more and more). Don’t make that mistake.
A strategy is not a tactic. While the second is more immediate and apparently rewarding, the first takes time to show results but leads to better satisfaction for you and your clients.

These days, when we read a brief about a Facebook activity, we often find in it a specific range of “fans” (or better say likers, being FB pages not FAN pages anymore) to be achieved as one of the main KPIs of the project.

No matter how talented and social-media-expert is the market man of the company that’s sitting in front of us in the brief meeting. This KPI is a giant piece of crap.

Here’s why:

1) PEOPLE LIKES ARE EPHEMERAL.

this is a fact. Most of the times we click like on something that got our attention at the moment, but that does not necessarily means we feel a link to that brand/product or that we want to follow its entire life cycle.

Think about it. When you are walking in the streets and notice a funny dog, a beautiful human being or a nice dress in a store window, you might be willing to show it to the friends walking with you and tell them “check it out!”. But that DOES not mean you are willing to receive information from them in the next years…(unless they come from the beautiful human being…)

2) PEOPLE USE LIKE AND SHARE FOR THE SAME PURPOSES

We just said this in reason number 1: clicking on like does NOT mean you actually want to follow something. For obvious this may be, most of FB users click on LIKE to show their contacts that they appreciate something. Check out your and your friends’ timelines. How many shared pages can you find? People rarely share a page, they like it. And that’s also their way to share it. But let us repeat it once more: this does not mean that they actually have any connection to the brand/product that page belongs to.

3) ADS ON FACEBOOK CAN BOOST PERFORMANCE BUT NOT QUALITY

FB ads campaigns can increase your total amount of fans. And this can be reached spending peanuts compared to what brands are used to spend in banners, or worse, tv ads. That’s because of the platform ability to segment users’ interests and lifestyle and to be relevant in proposing the ads.
Alas, this powerful ability is also a major threat to a successful FB strategy. 
Infact you might happen, as it did to us, to have 30.000 likes a day on your page to then discover you have little interaction. Or, even worse, you might happen to notice that every time you post anything on your wall you lose fans.
How is this possible? For reason number 1 and 2.
Facebook ads maximize visibility to a target of people that will have some interest in what you’re trying to sell but they ultimately won’t change the fact that LIKING is not being really connected or interested.

FINAL CONSIDERATION

Facebook was born to connect people. And infact the new “subscribe” interaction adds a lot of value to this logic. I can now twitter-like “follow”  someone and/or decide to make friends. But if we compare this with the relationship I can have with brands there’s a missing factor in the equation:

FRIENDSHIP : SOMEONE = LIKE : BRAND 

SUBSCRIBE : SOMEONE = X : BRAND

Somehow at guerrilla thinkers we think that this will have to be solved in the very next future, maybe when FB headquarters will decide to give a twist to the fan pages layout and turn it into awesome timeline style pages.
In the meantime someone made predictions on how those timelined new pages could be.
Check it out.

Is it just us Guerrilla Thinkers or do you also think the web is getting kind of boring?

Don’t misunderstand us, we don’t mean that there is no relevant content or things to read/play and/or be entertained.
It’s just that sitting in front of a screen with a million options turns us not to really want any of them.

When you know you could be watch any movie in a click, or find any article, any news.
Learn any language, see any place in the world… then you happen not to want to do anything.

The paradox of the web overflow of information is that we are less interested in deepening anything because we know we might do that in a second if required.
The total and immediate availability of information causes the loss of interest.

Maybe is the lack of discovery. After all we were all born to search the world.
Ever since our beginning, mankind has struggled to survive and to find the resources needed to face its daily life.
Every day has always been a challenge to survive.
This is a mark in our DNA we can’t erase. We always need to be challenged and this need gave birth through the ages to our science, art and, in the end, culture.
The web and GooGle flatten the need to discover.

On the other hand the web is getting bored because it is not changing.
It is not like saying that the impact of the internet hasn’t changed the lives of billions of people.  It’s just that your Internet experience today is not much difference than it was 5 years ago. Think about it: no big changes at all.
Sure, you might just argue that web 2.0 demonstrates that the web is evolving.
But it is exactly the contrary.
The social media so called ‘evolution’ clearly outlines that the web is not changing at all.
It shows that the web is becoming a platform, a standard.
Rather than moving, it is becoming more and more still. 

This is a common phenomenon for any technology. It was like this for cars, tv, radios and planes.
Take cars for example. In the beginning there were many different ideas about how to develop them, but then one standard emerged and ever since the whole car industry became something to be taken pretty much for granted. And in the end boring.
Apart from side kicks car industry keeps on adding to our car experience (such as radio, satellite navigation, mp3s reader and so on…) a car is basically…. a car. 4 wheels and an engine that take you from A to B.

And that’s the web. A place were you can find whatever you need.
A platform where you can share and send anything. And so what?
Not really a “wow” feeling when you read it like this, right?

Truth is that the 30/40 y.o. generation saw it coming and it really changed the way they lived their lives. But that thrust is over.
Younger generation will see it pretty much as we see cars today. Something you need to accomplish your everyday tasks. Nothing more.

If your work requires a minimum web oriented thought, you certainly happened to hear or read the word “usability”. 
Whenever it is time to create a new website, intranet or web app, someone from your own company or from another agency will pop up and say the magic word “usability”. 

A little of them seriously know what they’re talking about though.
Many so called usability experts spend their entire existence trying to convince clients and co-workers that spending ages thinking about where to place a SUBMIT button is worth money.

Truth is that it is not.
Usability made perfect sense in times when people were not accustomed to digital interaction. Making things simple by defining a standard was certainly necessary.
Any website started placing corporate logo on top left corner and create content that could be easily read from left to right.
Defining a standard surely helped to convey a common and shared set of knowledge.

But as it usually happens, with the growing awareness and penetration of the web, people started to get used to digital interfaces and this basic set of knowledge evolved and became a common heritage among people using interfaces.

A deeply understanding of usability is so widespread that the most successful pieces of software are made by people complete unaware of any scholarly criteria of usability.Take the appstore most successful apps. Do you think any of them were made by asking a usability expert how to create their interfaces?

We are not obviously saying that studying HCI (Human and Computer Interaction) makes no sense at all anymore.
But with the advent of touch devices this common heritage of knowledge is becoming so much shared among users that this whole branch of study should, we think, start from scratch.

That’s why our guerrilla thought for today is that keeping the old “usability” approach in such an evolving and people-owned scenario makes little sense these days.

If a million people buy an app coded by a 19 years old guy from Iowa and find it perfectly usable, maybe our usability gurus should start to think how to evolve their knowledge and adapt it to the evolution of the market or, maybe better, considering other options for their careers.