brands

After the crisis, the reckoning

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How businesses treat their employees during the Covid 19 crisis will lead to a reckoning – a very bitter one if times get hard. A famous poster, headlined “What did you do in the war daddy?”, was designed to shame men into volunteering for the army during world war one. It could be adapted in our time for bosses- “When the pandemic struck, how did you look after your workers?”

We will learn who the good guys and the bad guys are at some point in the next couple of years (or even right now- given the speed of social media at outing the clothe eared or arrogant) Personal reputations and brands will be destroyed or enhanced.

In the 2008 crash,  RBS was nationalised by the UK government because it was about to go bust – with horrible consequences for personal finances. CEO Fred Godwin, poster boy of red in tooth and claw acquisitive capitalism, changed status from captain of the universe to vilified pariah in a just few days. Looking back on 2008, remarkably few people lost their reputations, but that was because we found it difficult to work out who the guilty people were (such are the opaque complexities of modern big finance)

This time it will be different. We can all see that Spurs ( for example) have decided to furlough  their back room staff whilst paying in full the wages of their multi-millionaire players.

Media are different – 12 years on from the crash of 2008, social media are even more widely used and the bad guys will be outed quickly. Gary Lineker, a prolific tweeter, has pointed out how grotesque the Spurs decision looks.

The unpredictable factor is how bad things will get over the next months

Many workers are only one pay check (or freelance fee) away from debt – because over the past decade or more wages have stagnated. Now they have nothing to fall back on and without funds the consequence will be widespread poverty and desperation that conjures up images of 1920s great depression. The atmosphere could get very bitter indeed.

This crisis will produce many more Fred Goodwins. And good guys too – Eddie Howe, manager of Bournemouth, was the first manger to offer to take a pay cut. His fast and generous action will stand him in good stead.

But it is already clear that the likes of Daniel Levy ( of Spurs) and Mike Ashley ( of Newcastle FC) think that they are immune from public backlash. They will, i believe, be proved wrong. Let’s hope so.

 

Why politicians get so angry about Dominic Cummings

I am becoming one of those people who shouts at the TV screen.

(I suppose it was inevitable – it comes with age along with hair sprouting unattractively from ears and nose and busy eyebrows. I haven’t developed the full Denis Healey – but i can see the direction of travel).

My ire is aimed at the commentariat who come on Newsnight, who seem to be mostly in a state of moral outrage. Cue plenty of pomposity and posturing about what the government does from groping to proroguing parliament – and in particular Dominic Cummings.

Cummings is often presented as an evil genius. He is not – he is just an advertising strategist with an effective communications idea.

If Newsnight was to invite branding and advertising experts onto their sofas they could lay it out more analytically for the viewers. But they tend to prefer journalists who are good at understanding todays headlines (and the nerdy details of today in parliament) but poor at the techniques of developing a long term brand positioning. Besides Journalists of the BBC type tend to look down their noses at Adfolk.

This is a pity because advertising strategists are not prone to either moral outrage or bien pensant snobbery. Rather, they deal with people as they really are and work back from there. Lets try that then:-

Start with human truths

People are not much interested in the arcane details of how parliament or the law works. They are busy. In their personal lives they have to go to work and get stuff done.

All Cummings has done is to spot that this is how people feel. He ( via Boris) uses parliament as a stage to confirm that it is an odds with how most of us have to behave to get through our lives.

He has done this through classic, brutally simple, brand positioning thinking that has three characteristics 1) a positioning that is easy to remember 2) that boxes in ( or “depositions” ) the competition and 3) (important this) is rooted in a widely accepted truth

The simple positioning: The tories will deliver on the will of the people

De-positioning the competition as: A confused group of interests that can’t get anything done except frustrate progress

The truth: Three years on from the vote parliament has stopped progress.

My point here is not – is this right or wrong? Just- is it effective? It is and that is why Cummings is hated. (He is also shy-is my guess- and given to covering this up with a carapace of aggression – which does not help)

Can The Labour Party mount a counter communications strategy ?

Labour now is too introverted and bound up in its own internal battles and bureaucratic structures.  It used to be good at communications strategy in the Blair/Campbell era- but both these men are now so hated The Labour Party  cannot learn from them.

Corbyn and MacDonald look and sound like machine politicians of the pre Blair era.  And in their attempt to fight Cummings they have fallen back on old, and distinctly retro, campaigning techniques. They have, late in the day, come up with a simple strategy. But is it any good?

The simple positioning:  We are the real representatives of the people

De-positioning the competition as: “posh boys”  or the rich elite  or a conspiracy of the rich elite ( an idea proposed on Newsnight by Paul Mason)

But a really good communications strategy has to have the ring of truth about it to take root and have longevity. This one -apart from being a throwback to the era of smoky rooms, long sideburn and flared Trowsers- doesn’t. All political parties have posh folk. Far from hating Eton, labour front benchers like their children to go to elite fee paying schools.

As for Mason’s conspiracy of the elites: this is a desperate attempt to re-present some city folk, who are shorting the pound,  as something more sinister. Conspiracy theories have a long and disreputable history and are almost always the product of a fevered imagination.  This one is not going to fly.

Try “the truth well told” instead

What should Labour do?  Try something truthful. Truth is the bedrock of a really good strategy. “The truth well told” is a good way to think of an effective strategy. This is what journalists often miss – as they tend to think of adfolk as people who hoodwink the public

The truth is that Brexit is a really complex and there is no “getting Brexit done” –  even if  the government gets an agreement through, it is just the start of years of negotiations. Without a deal – even more negotiations. We will be locked into an endless depressing cycle that will most likely lead to the breakup of the union. That is a really sad and unnecessary future.

I would start there – start calling it as it. The public will respect you for it

 

 

 

 

 

What will Facebook do next ?

Scandal ! ( click/share), Shock ! (click/share), Outrage !!( click/share), Anger !**! (click/Share)

This is how Facebook grew its audience very fast and sold lots of ads over the past few years. It became, as the jargon has it, ” a publishing platform” and exercised the minimum possible control on what got posted lest it cool down all that profitable posting. I expect that Zuckerberg will still try to pull off this strategy in regions of the world where regulators & policymakers are not sharpening their pencils ( i.e. most of the world outside of USA and Europe). It is easy money.

Zuckerberg wanted all the revenue but little of the responsibility that came with being a publisher. Facebook now employs armies of people to check what goes up on its platform because, as we now know, he got into a lot of trouble for being so lax. But it won’t work: Facebook is now so huge this effort resembles the fabled king Cnut who went down to the beach and instructed the tide not to come it.

Facebook will continue to get into trouble

Facebook will continue to get into trouble, no matter how much tech’ and how many people are monitoring content. Zuckerberg will be dragged blinking into the spotlight and will look bad under scrutiny. High minded platitudes about “connectivity”, “community” and “free speech”, that play well in California, will look increasing empty.

Go WeChat

Facebook will shift focus from social networking amongst large groups of people to private messaging between individuals and small groups ( like Messenger, which it owns, and WeChat in China) for two big reasons

  1. Avoiding responsibility. Facebook cannot be held responsible for what is posted, (especially if it is encrypted and they cannot see it), just as BT cannot be held responsible for people making abusive phone calls to each other or scamming.
  2. Generational change. My children rarely use Facebook and prefer messaging between small groups and individuals. It is the way things are going

How will Facebook make money ? 

Private messaging is largely incompatible with being interrupted by ads. So, expect Facebook to evolve into a kind of all purpose utility – making money from e-commerce and financial services. Facebook will innovate and buy up companies in these areas.

Zuckerberg does not have to imagine what this will look like, as WeChat got there a few years ago – this vid, which is worth a view, explains how. Posted in 2016 it is probably already out of date

 

 

 

Why all marketers should get out of the office more

A show all marketers should see is Martin Parr’s photos at the National Portrait Gallery

If only to see the original artwork for the excellent “Oneness” idents for BBC 1, a  fine example of that classic thing – a great creative idea executed in a fresh way.

The idea – like the best ideas – is uplifting and inspiring. “Oneness” is about the joy of  getting together with like minded souls who share the same passions,  and how this dissolves differences between people through shared experiences and common humanity. It is also an timely idea- a big spirited riposte to the narrow mindedness engendered by Brexit

But there is another lesson. It is difficult to create something fresh and distinctive by sitting in your London office and just doing data analytics.  Martin Parr travels all round Britain looking, really looking hard, and capturing the sheer diversity and quirkiness of people.

We used to call this “insight”. A vital stimulus to ideas that I fear might not come from staring at a screen.

Don’t get me wrong. I used to work at Google and I know how rich data analytics can be. But if everyone is using the same data to “optimise their message” then all the work will start to look similar.

Parr’s work for BBC 1 is a reminder of what you have to do to be fresh and different.

Get out of the office and look really hard at people and how they live

 

The psychological trick all politicians should know

What do all the following have in common ?

Love it or hate it (Marmite)

Probably the best lager in the world (Carlsberg)

and this famous ad for VW:

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They are all highly successful examples of the pratfall effect   

which is this:-

Displaying weakness increases empathy and like-ability.

Imperfection and making mistakes are the stuff of our daily lives – and so we are more likely to identify with the person or brand that says, well, I am prone to error too.

The real-life sense of contingency in the word “probably” makes Carlsberg’s line effective. If the line had been -” The best lager in the world” that would be  merely boastful and unrealistic – the sort of thing that a pompous corporation might say rather than  tongue in cheek line that you might hear in a bar

Perhaps some errors are too big to admit, which might explain why Tony Blair won’t do so about WMD and the Iraq war. His god complex stops him from doing so. He is never never wrong. (Nor is Jeremy Corbyn – another man with a god complex)

But it might also explain why people are not prepared to listen to Blair about Brexit – even though he is the most coherent politician on the topic I have heard so far.

 

 

 

The uses of behavioural economics- a primer for those new to it

I have spent about a decade working on the application of BE to behaviour change/running courses on it ( since doing work for UK govt via the late lamented COI). This piece (published first in Aurora) offers a basic briefing on its application to communications.

Key thought in a 100 words or less: we delude ourselves, because we are able to develop verbal arguments, that we are mainly rational/considered in our decision making. Yet much of our thinking is fast, instinctive and informed by visuals rather than words. You can see the results everywhere- not least in the high value that brands place on developing instantly recognisable visuals (The insurance market is probably the most extreme example).

For practitioners (rather than academics) I have two must read book recommendations :- 1) Decoded by Phil Barden and 2) The Choice Factory by Richard Shotton ( the first of these has the best summary I have read of Daniel Kahneman great book Thinking Fast and Slow

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Calling all brand owners, take back control!

Programatic trading of media is clever automated technology that is spawning (AI enabled) services which will automate the creation of ad messages as well – more efficiency and cost reduction then. (This does not matter a lot as most ads- online- are fairly formulaic response/offer type stuff already)

But Programatic also attacks one of our most important beliefs in brand building – that it matters where you are seen not just what you have to say.

Stripping communication of its context is not good from a psychological point of view – we know that the human brain has evolved to notice context ( see Kahneman et al). Indeed all judgements that we make about people and brands are contextual.

Brands are now being drawn (by the lure of cost effective sales) into an online version selling out of the back of  a van on a rainy trading estate. What to do ?

Well two answers

-When buying programmatic, cost effectiveness can’t be the only metric – a smarter programmatic is needed that controls for quality too. Brands need to demand this – and not merely the reassurance that they will not appear in some tawdry click baity site ( or worse)

-Control your own context by becoming a publisher online. This difficult for brands and not for everyone. This piece (just published  in Aurora) explores how, why it is difficult and some of the insights into how to do it well from a really useful new book by Laz Dzamic ( declaration of interest- i worked with him at Google)

 

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