Guerrilla thinking

Advertisers are a bunch of liars.
Their profession is to lie in a legal and indisputable manner.
To convince the audience that black is white. And possibly the best white you’ve ever seen. Their role is to build up a story, a narration that will lead you to believe what they want you to believe.

And it doesn’t matter whether that’s true or not. 
What matters is that lies are told in a way that’s not legally contestable.
That’s what advertisers do. And they all know that. 

But is this still enough? 

At GT we think not.
If you take a look around you, you will see that’s happening. Things have changed and advertisers, or at least most of them, have been stuck in the past.

Truth is the next big trend in advertising, as much as it is in real life.
Times of self fake narration are over.
And here’s why.

1) CONTENT IS STILL KING. BUT CONTENT IS NOT WHAT YOU SAY, IS WHAT YOU ARE/SELL.

Content is still king. But your content is not your advertising campaign.
Get rid of the illusion that you are what you say in your ads.
Ads can’t change what you are. 
Nor can do it a photoshopped picture on your Facebook timeline.
Ads, Facebook pages and twitter accounts should NEVER tell a different version of reality. They should tell you for what you are. 

Because you and your products are what you are. And that’s the content. That’s the simple truth.
Be honest on this.
And if you happen to find out that you can’t, then your problem is not communication better, but it’s making better products or being a better person.

2) LIES ARE PUBLIC

The power of the web is so immense nowadays that lies don’t make it to the next day.
Lying to just increase you revenues or trying to have a better reputation might sort a contrary effect.
Sooner or later your lies will be unveiled and exposed to the public audience.
Want a better reputation? Be a better company, produce better products.
The good side of this is that if you really trash all of your skeletons out of the closet and start being honest and produce really good products, people will know. And tell.

3) POLITICAL CORRECTNESS = BEING DULL

Take position. Be a fan. Say that a thing is good and another one is bad.
People are tired of political correctness, trust us.
What do you appreciate the most? Someone that says what he thinks or someone that hides behind words not to take position?
Whether you are a brand or an individual, be brave. Say what you have to say.
You get what you give. Remember that. And if you give smoke you will get smoke.
Give identity and you will get identities.

4) YOU CAN’T MAKE EVERYONE HAPPY. 

You got friends, acquaintances, clients, family. No matter who you have to deal with.
Forget to make everyone happy. If you try you will get anyone mad at you.
And that’s because anyone will think you are not telling the truth 
Again, be yourself. Express your own identity in a true and deep manner. 
You might not make everyone around you happy around you, but if you do it without insulting anyone and expressing your unique point of view you will certainly gain respect.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

We don’t have to tell you that we live in a global market.
And in this market you don’t need stories anymore.
You don’t need advertising campaigns to create a narration around who you are.
You need identity. You need to express who you are.
You need to say clearly and honestly who you are and what your products are.
Therefore. rather than investing millions in storytelling, you should invest in R&D to have better products or in visual statement of who you are to be shared in Pinterest.
So much for the good tale of the bad product.

2012 is the year when the game change. And you can be in or out.
You are in if you start building a brand identity being clear and honest.
You are out if you keep on fabling.

Which side are you on? 

We are not going to tell you that Pinterest is the “next” web thing.
You already know that.
Everybody is talking about it and people and brands are excited there’s a new kid in town they can play with.
Many of them haven’t done it yet. Some other did.
And there are some lessons we learnt from them.

Before jumping into another “social media” platform, brands should consider HOW they are going to make it. And most important WHY they wanna do it.

1) PINTEREST IS ABOUT VISUAL COMMUNICATION. DO NOT POST BORING TEXT DISGUISED AS IMAGE

One of the reasons why Pinterest is successful is that it’s about scanning and zooming on what we think might be interesting. In a page crowded with stimuli we like, share or zoom on a image.
The reason why we tend to do one of the previous actions is that the image speaks for itself. It’s about a feeling, not an explanation.
Pinterest is much more about branding than selling or giving details. For that you have many other social media options.
And this is even true when it comes to infographics. Do not abuse them.
Keep them funny and short.  

2) DON’T USE BOARDS AS A NAVIGATION MENU FOR YOUR PRODUCTS

Pinterest is not just another clone of your website. As much as you should never crowd your Facebook page with a zillion tabs reflecting your website content tree, you must NEVER create tens of boards to show how rich and convenient your products are.
Again, this place is more about branding, about conveying an allure, about creating a brand identity through a series of visual inputs to people.

3) INTERACT WITH USERS

Pinterest is always a social environment. Interacting with your followers repinning their pins or liking them, increases the chance they will do the same with yours.
As in any social media context, it is vital not to give the idea that beyond the interface there’s more than just a dead monkey sitting at a desk. 

4) IF YOU WANT TO PROMOTE YOUR PRODUCTS DO IT THE PROPER WAY

If you want to push some of your products to the market and get people to buy them, pin a cool picture of the product and don’t forget to put the price as a badge or a label on to it.
In the pin description use proper keywords and URLs in order to drive your followers to buy. Create seasonal boards for special time-limited offers.
Envolve people through like-to-save money actions.
You repin my pin? You save 5%.
Try, experiment, involve.

5) BE RELEVANT

Give people what they expect from you.
Content is and will always be king. Visual input you propose to your followers should not go too far from your brand essence but clarify it in the simplest way: through an image.

Follow these simple 5 rules and you are on the way to start making something good out of the new web frenzy. 

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.

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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.

If you consider your daily experience, dividing your actions between analogues and digital is pretty hard.
First of all there’s no real definition for analogue anymore.
What analogue actions do you take? Is driving a car analogue?
Is listening to the radio analogue?
That’s why in a previous post in this blog we have invited agencies to banish the world “digital”. Digital makes sense when counterposed to its natural opposite.
But being unable to find any analogue daily experience, talking about digital one is totally pointless.

But there’s even more than that.
In every single presentation we read (and we can assure we read many of them) there’s always a recurring term: “channel”.
In most presentations, media guys show endless power point charts full of numbers and ideas on how to exploit “channels”, pretending to able to predict where and how people use them.
To us Guerrilla thinkers, this is absolutely pointless.

And here’s why.

1) COMMUNICATIONS FLOODED OUT

When this word hit the road of marketing, communication was mainly one-way. People watching tv, reading newspapers and magazines were given ads and communication they could not interact with.
In this “channel” communication flowed from point A (brand) to point (B).
Just like water in a… channel. And that’s where the name comes from.
But once the storm of the web has hit the land of communication, water started flooding outside to go all over.

2) IF COMMUNICATION IS WATER, EXPERIENCE IS THE ISLAND

Thanks to the proliferation of means of communication, the water of communication stopped being channelled in one direction.
Brands now daily flows in it in many ways that reach us from different directions.
In this context we are moving targets, ourself also floating in the water and going our own sweet way. When brands meet us in the water, the experience takes place.
The brands shaking hands with us give birth to the island of experience, where the brand and people meet each other, share, and then board their own ships to go somewhere else. Richer, smarter, more aware one of the other.

3) THE WATER IS VASTE AND ITS MOVING IS NON-PREDICTABLE

In this scenario, it would be pointless to try to govern our ships to go to a specific stream. As a brand, our goal must be that of reaching the most popolous islands to meet as many people as possible
But that can’t be done if we focus on channels. There are many, too many ones streaming to those islands.
We must keep our head up high and constantly watch where people gather together and try to reach that island before the hands shaking is over and everybody is gone.

Monitoring and following people and their path to the islands of experience is what we have to do. Rather than concentrating on pure figures and abstract predictions we should dip our toes in the water and start floating.
That’s the only way to start understanding the flowing of waters.

Ask your media folks whether they could predict Facebook or Twitter success.
They could not.
And they did not tell you to start spending some money there before others did.
And that’s because they are NOT swimming in the water. They watch it from the shore and try to understand it. Failing.

FINAL CONSIDERATION

In a flooded world, you must swim to survive.
You can’t stay on the shore and send paper boats hoping those will reach your target sooner or later.
Dive in, follow people and swim behind them to get to the islands where they share.
Shake hands with them and then dive in again.
That’s the only way to succeed. And this is just something your media agency will not tell you.

Because if they do, you would not need them anymore.

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.

 

 

Let us GT be very clear on this.
We sick and tired of hearing about “creative couples” or “creative directors”.
And that’s because most of the times what you actually happen to deal with behind those fancy titles is people wearing a professional “creative” badge but totally unable to deliver a serious and engaging creative thought.

It’s not their fault.

For decades, creative schools and academies yearly chummed out young professional wannabes that hoped to break the rules of communication just because they had read some books and listened to some former academy student telling them a bunch of banalities. They felt so cool, they felt so creative. 

Sad to disappoint you young creative-wannabes, but you can’t learn to be a creative.
Either you are, or you are not.
And here’s why 

1)  CREATIVITY IS AN ATTITUDE

Creativity is a category of soul, a disposition. An attitude you surely can improve but cannot acquire reading no book or listening to anyone.
For hard you may try, you can’t learn to be creative.
You sure can learn to do the homework and deliver some nice and neat creativity.
You can learn to use photoshop and to speak some good creative slang.

But being creative is totally another thing. It requires intelligence and the unique ability to be able to think like consumers. To feel what they feel and to build up a message that’s right for them.

2) THERE IS NO RIGHT OR WRONG METHOD TO CREATE

You know, everything you can learn on books, working in an agency or by listening to “cool” teachers 5 to 8 years older than you in a very expensive advertising school is somehow a method, an approach that’s supposed to help you being creative.

Nothing could be so wrong. 
Because creativity is a disposition, it couldn’t be more personal. There is nothing anyone can teach you about your special and unique way to express your creativity.
Sure, you might wanna learn the tools, but when you happen to  meet people who think they can shape up your own thinking to help you grow, kick them in the face and go away.
Never in history anyone’s thoughts that have been shaped by someone else have made any difference.

Go your own sweet way. If you’ve got what it takes, creativity will spring out naturally.
If it does not, then opt for another career.

3) CREATIVITY IS NOT A CAREER, IT’S A VOCATION 

Being a category of soul, creativity is not something you abandon or reject because you can’t make a living out of it.
And viceversa. You don’t choose to become a creative director (whatever that label means) because of the money you could make. 
You choose to be creative because you have something to say to the world.
It’s like a fire within that you can’t keep inside without being burnt.
It’s a mission, a way to get rid of your inner demons and colors that would not let you sleep at night otherwise.

Don’t you ever trust someone playing a creative role in any context if you can’t see a sparkle in his eyes. Don’t you rely on his job if you can’t feel he’s doing it for mere passion and for a sort of a higher reason.
These people will stop in front of problems, visions, budgets, people… creatives will not.
Others will come to a compromise between what’s best and what’s feasible.
Because they are not really creatives, they are executors, politicians of creativity.

But if you got creativity screaming within, any obstacle, any objection won’t be able to stop you. You will keep on pushing to achieve the best.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

Dear clients and agencies if you are looking for 100% creativity that rocks and burst in the sky of history and market, seek for talented, passionate thinkers who do what they do not just for the money but to be proud of it. Not just to make you happy but to make themselves happy.
You will fight with them, sometimes you will not understand them and maybe regret you did not choose the same old monkeys to do the job, it’s true.
But you persist, you will touch the fire of real creativity. You will burn your fingers with passion and vibrant souls and will find out how beautiful and incredibly exciting communication can be.

Look for real creatives. They might have chosen the wrong road and now be account, staff managers, financial controllers or programmers.

After all Steve Jobs didn’t wear a creative badge, did he?
Should we look at history through the lens of simple facts, he was a nerdy guy dirtying his hands on meaningless pieces of hardware… But would you say he wasn’t born to be a creative?

Don’t be trapped by roles. Seek the right people and find them wherever they are.
That’s what we do at guerrilla thinking. And trust us. It makes a lot of difference. 

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.
 

Most of non-Italian readers don’t know what we are talking about.
But the story we are going to tell is a good-to-know one  for anyone who aims to work as a professional in the creative industry.

Let’s start with the facts. 
Fiat (in case you don’t know a.k.a. major italian automotive brand) has just released a new campaign that plays on the good feeling of being Italian to tell Italians they should spend our money to buy a new car.
You can find it with english subtitles here.

It starts with a question: how many italies do we know? And then on with the many rhetorical sentences: the one of young people seeking a job, the one of colorful traditions and bla bla bla.Needless to say the ending will be that Panda is the expression of the Italy we like.

Apart from wondering how much money this company spent to air a prime time tv ad that last 1.35 minutes on National TV broadcasters, we think the all creativity is wrong and here’s why,

1) THE PAYOFF IS LAME

After telling us that every day in Italy some people wake up and put passion in what they do, the ad come to the conclusion that we are what we do. 
THE THING WE MAKE, MAKE US.
Wow, thanks Panda.
This even original than the story of people working with passion. Never heard it.
Like there have not been a zillion places where we have read things like “you are what you wear” or “you are what you eat”. 

And just F.Y.I. Panda, every time we did, we thought this was a bunch of lies.
The things Italians do, don’t make Italians. You might have a monkey job and be an unacknowledged genius.

So, unless the new panda can fly or throw rockets or laser beams from its tail, well chill out. You’re just making a car. And making a car IS a monkey job.

2) TOO MUCH RETHORIC CAN BE A BOOMERANG ON THE WEB

Yes you are Italian. Yes, Panda it’s the best of the sunshine country.
You can say that. But before you do you’d better be sure that no one can Google Fiat and easily find out that it produces a lot of cars in production plants located outside Italy.
Kragujevac and Tychy are two huge production plants located in Poland and Serbia.
So much for the best of italy working with passion… don’t you think?

This is the typical arrogance of brands that simply ignore the fact that nowadays people have easy access to every possible information.
Sure you gotta touch their feelings and, hell yeah, entertain them. But not by saying things that can be smashed back to your face.
If you do, you lose twice.

3) THE CAMPAIGN IS CRAP ON THE WEB

Dear Panda, we do understand that you spent a lot of money to bother Italians during their night shows telling them how cool they are and how they want this car because it’s a mirror where they can see the best part of their country. We truly do.
But maybe you just don’t know that people use web as an alternative to tv sets.
Maybe you don’t know that in order to succeed you have to entertain people also in the digital landscape. You didn’t know, did you?
Please don’t say yes. If you do you should explain to us the reason for this 

Attracting people on a website with a very cool and pixar-style cartoon is only cool if the interaction of the game you propose to them is something more than what you could better do on a Nintendo 64 more than 10 years ago.
This web tail of the boring campaign is even more boring.
Come on… “catch me if you can” means that I have a game where I must (wow!) find the words connected to the Panda and watch a pixelated giant-headed man running on the screen? You could do better Panda.

A 14 half blind apps developer could have done better. We’re sure.
Not to mention that in our century, dear Panda, you could have used social media web to interact with people… but we’ll tell you more once we get our ass on our DeLorean and travel back in time to the 80s. That is when you probably jotted down this project.
You should have just left in that drawer and asked someone from 2012 to think one for you.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

There’s no story, just glorification of italian people from a brand that produces its cars abroad and have planned to become more and more American in the future.
There’s no communication strategy for all the touchpoints that gets your message to people in 2012.

Epic fail.

 

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.

Some of us guerrilla thinkers were having dinner a couple of nights ago with some top-of-market agency guys and we were debating whether mobile Apps will sooner or later replace websites at all or not.

In other words the question was the usual one: is the web dead? Will mobile apps and content definitely kill any effort to build up our own multiple and various little world in the web galaxy? Are we doomed to a future when in order to check, watch, buy anything we will have to download or worse BUY an app?

This latter question is pretty important because what many journalists, critics and guru never point out while discussing the possible scenarios is that the difference between apps and what we call “free web” is that while a website is open, free and search engine friendly, apps are not.  Yes most apps are free but they are downloadable from a market you access from specific devices.

And you gotta pay for them. You can’t just enter a public place (hotel, school, bar, restaurant…) and use their pc to check things on your apps, because in order to do that, you gotta have them right there in your little, cool, smart, fashion phone.

Think about it. That’s mainly why very popular apps like instagram are now trying to reverse the same experience and content you have in you device on a pc-level experience.

To be device-bound has been the main force of the apps, but this is also the most important threat to the growth of their business.

If all the content is in the cloud, application should be in the cloud as well, not JUST to be downloaded but to be used for free And that’s basically the web.

A popular device apps will more and more require a fully functional and device-indipendent version of itself or in the medium distance its run will be over.

Of course the opposite is also true. And Facebook is a good example.
Out of a web platform they have created a mobile app to grant users a seamless FB experience while on the go.
Why shouldn’t the opposite be as much necessary for any appstore or android market popular app?

Why can’t I take advantage of let’s say cool hipstamatic filters or photo collage cool effects on my mac as much as I daily do on my iPhone?

Unless we believe that in the nearer future people will be using a single smart mobile and appstore-bound device throughout their daily experience of work and leisure, it is really important to find a good answer to this question. Are we absolutely sure that in the nearer future tablets and smartphones will kill desk/laptop navigation?

But there’s one more thing (oops, that sounds creepy, doesn’t it?): the content of the apps is vertical, whereas the web is horizontal.
When I browse an app (on a device I bought and that’s the only thing that lets me access that, as said above) I browse a barb wired little world. Any connection to other sources of information, other content requires my smartphone to pause, switch to another application (most of the time a WEB browser) and in the end break a stream of thoughts, emotions and interests that brought me to that place.

While clicking on a link in a browser to another website doesn’t change my experience of using my device, switching from an application to another one seriously gets people dizzy and can have serious repercussions on your business.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

In order to maximize APPS, market leaders should improve the way apps dialogue one with the other and make the browsing and hypertexting among them easier and seamless. On the other hand they should be also consider to release the same apps experience on the web, to make it accessible from any device I want.

Until that moment (that could be actually closer than we think) websites will keep on being competitive and demand their right to exist and apps will be mostly dedicated to geotagged services and infos.


 

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.

Google Plus is failing. No matter how much money they put into it. It just won’t beat Facebook. 

Here’s why:

1) LACK OF REASON WHY

Why would someone that has a Facebook profile need to have a google + one?
For how hard we try we just can’t find a single valuable reason.
Now ask yourself why would anyone who does not have any social profile prefer Facebook against G+. Because everybody is on Facebook. They started collecting users before 2006. And they did it in the most interesting place: US College.
Now you get on the platform and bang!
In seconds you get connected to most of the people you know. Neat.
Why would you change or worse handle a second social profile?
And this leads us to the second reason.

2)  BAD TIMING

Starting a social media platform in a market that’s so crowded and has already very huge player (such as Facebook, Twitter but also V-Kontakte in Russia or Orkut in south America) means not to understand that you are just late. Brin and Page, you might a be geniuses at creating algorythms, but take it as it is: you can’t always win. The ship is gone. And you are the one who’s swimming behind it trying to get on board.
And this leads us to the third reason.

3)  G+ IS NOT SEXY AT ALL. 

Nobody wants to date the follower. Everybody wants to hang out with the leader.
And this is even more true when the follower mimics the leader.
Google plus is a mere copy of Facebook. And yet there is no added value, it is worse than the original.
And it looks very much a place for nerds and/or tech savvies.
Not certainly the kind of place you go for fun. 

4) THE INTERFACE OF G+ IS UGLY AND NOT EASY TO UNDERSTAND

You may think this does not count as a good reason. But you are absolutely wrong.
When you land on Facebook for the first time you have a feeling everything is in its own place. On the other hand, when you land on G+ you have a feeling there are too many things to check, click and look. G+ looks a lot like a shallow parody of Facebook you wouldn’t expect from Google.

5) THERE ARE NO GOOD REASONS FOR TIME SPENDING

One of the reasons why FB has a lot of time spent on its pages it’s because there is a lot of additional content to interact with (games, app…) apart from friends timelines.
Even though G+ is trying to copy FB in this approach the amount of possibilities in the hands of users is still too little to attract more users.

FINAL CONSIDERATION

Google plus is something in the middle between Facebook and Linkedin but without a specific soul or mission. It is not enough to create a social network. And create it mimicking the most successful one is NOT an option for a place called Google.

At Google they have a lot of resources and should be trying to invent something new rather then trying to reinvent the wheel.