Several days ago I was mighty pissed off with Space Property Agents at Paddington in Brisbane. Since my gripe doesn’t make for scintillating reading I’ll spare you the details. Suffice to say after several weeks of poor service, inaction, lies and getting no joy (despite flagging my concerns with the Principal of the business early on) in absolute frustration I did what any self respecting new millenium man would do:

I turned to the Internet and tweeted.

Now I only have a modest 247 followers on Twitter. But within 5 minutes my tweet  had been retweeted 4 times. Doesn’t sound like much does it? But wait…. I was curious so I did some investigation of the total number of followers each of the retweets equated to. I was astounded.

Within 5 minutes the potential for 247 followers to read my gripe increased to 16,684 people. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s remarkable.

Now I know the impact of this pales in comparison against some of the high profile social media ‘consumer-action’ case studies that are widely published, but it nonetheless demonstrates that as consumers we have more power than ever to communicate the positive or negative experiences we have.

Perhaps its time to update the old adage ‘Buyer Beware’.

Kevin Moreland is a Partner at BCM

I get very excited the first time I see one of ‘our’ commercials on TV.

The countless hours that go into creating a new campaign – the market research, competitive analysis, talent selection, soundtracks and supers – all dissolve in those first few seconds of victorious recognition: when finally it appears on my humble home TV. Hooray!

And it’s not unusual for clients, who have been just as much a part of the campaign journey from conception to birth, to be as excited as I am when their ad hits the market for the very first time.

We’d be forgiven for thinking that the rest of the world shares this enthusiasm, and that all that’s needed is to upload our new ads to our company websites to generate a flurry of tweets and posts about our new campaign.

But analytics data tells us that this approach rarely generates any real consumer interest. Why?

Well, as much as we’d like the case to be different, the lives of our consumers don’t actually revolve around our brand, and that they may not be quite as enamored when our new commercial hits the airwaves as we are.

The challenge is nothing new and the rules are still fairly simple: Speak to your audience with a message suitable to the environment you find them in.

For QUT… a university for the real world, it was about delivering a unique brand promise in a way that went beyond simply making their TVCs available online. Let me explain.

Every day hundreds of videos are uploaded to you tube, showing tricks, hoaxes and questions about authenticity.

Enter Real Not Real. An entertaining online challenge that invites you to make a call on the authenticity of a series of (potentially fake) videos.

Your skill at picking a real from a hoax is scored against the scores of others who’ve done the test before you, and your ‘Realness Percentage’ calculated.

Just before you spread the word to your friends and family, you’re challenged once more – to get a real dose of reality: QUT’s three commercials.

A university for the real world has certainly been a powerful differentiation for QUT. And creating a channel to deliver this in a brand new way, taps into a truth about a web-savvy, interactive-literate audience.

Check out Real Not Real and see how you fare. And if you like, pass it on.

Rebecca Tame is an Account Manager at BCM Brisbane

Thank you to everyone that attended our What Next event in Brisbane this morning – we hope you found it entertaining and insightful (and enjoyed the chocolate brownies as much as we did).

For those that weren’t at our presentation today, the topic of the event was ‘The 5 Essential Ingredients and Methods of Brand Spread’.

As promised, we have posted a copy of today’s presentation onto slideshare that we have embedded below – please feel free to share with colleagues in the true spirit of Brand Spread!

Scott Esdaile is the Social Media Manager at BCM

Stephen Fry has over half a million followers on Twitter alone. He is a self-confessed manic depressive with a sub-mania for Apple products and all things computerate. He’s very good with them, hence the half a million followers interested to know where on 55th street in New York he had dinner and with whom.

He wrote a nice little piece on his blog called “Office Slavery” - I quote a few snippets below:

I don’t think I need explain how much I love the world of tech. I love the software and hardware and firmware and wares of all gradations on the digital Moh Scale in between. I love smartphones and watches and ebooks and media players and social networking services and maxiblogs and miniblogs and microblogs. I love audioboo and audiobooks. I love earphones and earplugs and visors and touchscreens and MUDs and HUDs and apps and apple and applets.

And yet. Oh and yet…

Most mornings I have to get up unfeasibly early just to keep my head above the rising tide of emails, direct messages and voicemails that have flooded my various inboxes. For two hours I reply to these and fiddle and faddle and fossick and finagle. This morning it’s been four hours and I’m still owing at least fifty responses. I am not alone in this. It might be that I have more to get through than most, but I’m sure there are others with even heavier caseloads to deal with.

And:

The computer revolution that has set us all free has actually come close to enslaving us. Executives who once relied on secretaries to do their typing and their admin now have to do it all themselves. They even have to get their own coffee and pinch their own bottoms.

Read the whole blog or, alternatively, have your secretary print it out for you. Oh yeah, no secretary. Oh well.

Bill Bristow is a Partner at BCM

Sitting in the 3 Store at Bondi Junction trying to get a dodgy wireless modem sorted out, it struck me there was something wrong with this picture as the dumbstruck shop assistant was hung up on by technical support for the 4^th consecutive time.

This also coincided with the fact that I had just demolished a third latte in the space of about an hour and was starting to act like an angry hornet looking for someone to sting.

Then it dawned on me, what will the future of on-premise retail look like?  Will I have to deal with incompetent shop assistants 30 years from now, or will I be served efficiently and without fuss by a humanoid robot like Sonny from I, Robot?

Face it, the customer service experience is changing and thanks to RFID and barcode technology in the not too distant future we’ll be able to simply point and click at a coat someone walking past is wearing and have an onscreen menu pop up on our iPhone with the brand, colour, and size options – as well as an option to purchase now.

Some savvy retailers are also capitalising on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to add value to the whole customer service experience.

Take the world’s largest consumer electronics retailer Best Buy Co, for instance, who have recently launched Twelpforce an online service that encourages hundreds of their employees to handle online customer service enquiries via Twitter.

The mechanic is simple, customers simply ask any product related question on Twitter, and a specialised team member who has opted in for the subject matter or product field relating to your enquiry answers.

I’m hoping it’s not just me, but the appeal and benefits to the consumer of such a system will far outweigh any initial teething problems that such a system encounters.  Not only will you not waste your time dealing with a member of staff who so obviously does not know the answer to your query (sorry Karl!), but you will also benefit from getting feedback from the right specialist person immediately the first time round.

What’s the appeal to the retailer you may then ask?

I would suggest that for a market leading retailer like Best Buy there are several.  Namely, they can maintain a competitive advantage in an increasingly cluttered and ubiquitous market where millions of dollars are spent each year to find that much sought after point of difference.

They can radically improve the overall customer experience, without even mentioning improving efficiency and reducing the cost incurred from lost sales.

And most importantly, they can exhibit to their customers that they understand the new world order, appreciate their ever changing demands, and that the brand practices what it preaches.

The chief marketing officer for Best Buy, Barry Judge espouses:

“The old paradigm is you open your doors and hope someone comes in.  In the new world, you can go out and find people that are talking about technology and what they’re interested in buying, and be generous with your knowledge. And hopefully if you’re generous and knowledgeable, people will come and buy.” 

So in parting, raise a glass to the forward thinking guys at Best Buy and the new world order.  I for one would do the same but have just realised even though it’s lunch on Friday and the sun is shining outside we have a Facebook training session with Anthony so I might just have to settle for an iPint instead.

Simon Jarvis is a Group Account Director at BCM Sydney

Tuesday saw Kyle and Jackie O return to their breakfast slot on 2DayFM. The show no doubt received one of its highest ratings ever as people tuned in to hear what they had to say about that stunt gone wrong.

How did it rate? We’ll never know. Unfortunately radio ratings don’t allow us to measure shows on an individual day by day basis in the same way TV does, it averages ratings over a survey period.

That got me thinking about some of the other figures I’d like to see from the media, like sectional readership in newspapers. The papers have this information, yet they won’t release it to the public… and I can only think of one reason for withholding that data – the numbers don’t paint a good picture for individual sections and releasing them would reduce the likelihood of selling space at the rates they currently charge.

Recently there’s been debate regarding publishers providing newspaper and magazine circulation figures on a per issue basis. Once again the information is there but publishers won’t release it.

What will it take for us to gain access to such data?

Perhaps if all advertising agencies grouped together and commissioned their own research on things like individual section readership and day by day radio listenership, it would then create a benchmark for agencies to plan against.  If the media didn’t agree with these findings they might be forced to finally release their own data which they’ve been so secretively guarding.

This may not be the answer given the cost such research would command, but just taking what could be compared to a United Nations stand and hoping for the media to come clean won’t achieve much either. If the figures were to their advantage they would have already released them.

Is there anything we can do to increase transparency in the advertising space we purchase?

Martin Durek is a Planner/Buyer at BCM Sydney

Each year, it’s reported that about 70,000 Sydney-siders pound pavement from the city to Bondi in the world’s biggest fun run.

What they don’t mention is how many of the rest of Sydney’s population are affected by a rather powerful condition called City to Surf guilt.

There are hundreds of thousands of people for who the City to Surf is simply a regular pre-Spring reminder that they’ve once again failed to get off their arse and get fit.

These people will always need excuses and if ‘the need to get fit in the privacy of your own home’ can be one, then so be it.

That’s the thinking behind this full page press ad we ran for Radio Rentals’ fitness equipment.

It was conceived and put together in a couple of days and ran for an unprintably cheap price in the Sun Herald on the day of the run (thousands of free copies were handed out in Bondi too).

We thank a good and fast acting client and will be keeping our eyes peeled for further topical opportunities.

Geoff Reid is BCM Sydney’s Creative Director

Would you pay to access mainstream news content online? There has been an enormous amount of discussion about this topic in the wake of the announcement by Rupert Murdoch last week that News Corp will start charging for consumers to access its news sites globally. Bear in mind that the announcement was made on the same day that News Corp posted a $US3.4 billion loss for the year to June 2009, so the man was obviously hurting!

Overwhelmingly, the response from consumers on blogs and forums, including those on News sites, has been to ridicule the whole notion. Typical was one comment from Alan Gilbey who said -

“Now let’s see. Delete bookmark. Navigate to different news site. Create new bookmark. Rupert who??”

Murdoch’s argument is that “Quality journalism is not cheap,” and that “An industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalising its ability to produce good reporting.” A fair enough point of view when you consider it from his perspective.  In fact, the digital revolution is in the process of transforming journalism and fundamentally changing old business models.

Major aggregators of news content, such as Google have been largely held to account by publishers for jeopardising the future of quality journalism by providing free access to news content to sell advertising.

The major point that the 78 year old billionaire media mogul is missing is that the Internet is not merely just another platform to deliver news, it is in fact an instrument of transformation where the consumer is in charge.  We get to decide what we access online and how we share it with others, and if we don’t see value in what you are offering, we’ll simply engage with someone else who suits us better.

For most of my adult life I’ve been a fan of Rupert Murdoch, but the heyday of publisher controlled media is well and truly over. It must be hard for a 78 year old to accept, but the horse has bolted and there is no return to the “good old days”. Newspapers are most at threat, but all mass media is undergoing a technology enabled, consumer lead transformation.

There’s no way I’d pay for general news online, what do you think?

Jo Stone is Head of Channel Planning & Integration at BCM

It will come as no surprise that a blog entry discussing brand damage is tackling the issues that the NRL has encountered this year. Let’s face it – negative headlines about rugby league have been a weekly occurrence.

Alcohol, drugs, domestic violence, pub brawls, public nudity, police investigations and much more have kept rugby league on the front page for all the wrong reasons.

Before the first game had even kicked off a Manly player took a swing at a club sponsor and offended his daughter at a pre-season function. Things only got worse when the player chosen as the featured face of the 2009 season campaign, Brett Stewart, was caught up in a serious off-field indiscretion. That campaign material was scrapped as a result. Not long after that the media personality promoted as the 9 Network’s face of the game for 2009, Matthew Johns, was the focus of a career ending Four Corners report into team bonding group sex.

Since then a procession of inexplicable incidents has followed with some players warned or fined and in a few cases contracts torn up.

It’s interesting to think about these issues from a traditional marketing perspective. That is, with the NRL as the master brand that relies on the clubs and the players as the sub-brands to deliver its ‘product’. As with any other brand architecture model you would expect the sub-brands to behave in a way that is consistent with the aims of the master brand.

At BCM we often talk about the brand bank. When an organisation or individual displays behaviour that enhances people’s expectations of what the master brand stands for they make a deposit into that bank. However when they do something that damages the brand they make a withdrawal.

NRL CEO David Gallop and his team have a bank that’s seen some pretty significant withdrawals in 2009. Poor old Mr Gallop must answer every phone call with trepidation these days.

Most recently the superstar of the recent State of Origin series, Greg Inglis, faces domestic violence allegations and has been stood down by his club for bringing the game into disrepute.

In any other year Inglis would probably have featured prominently in the NRL’s campaign promoting the upcoming finals series. Not surprisingly that campaign will not focus on any specific players this time around. The risk is too high.

You have to think that the NRL is very lucky they have such a strong product in the game itself. It continues to rate well and ground attendances are good. But many sponsors have already scrambled to distance themselves from being associated with the grubby headlines and some clubs will do well to retain their sponsorship arrangements.

Of course the future of the game is the kids. In the wake of the Inglis incident schools have threatened to drop rugby league from their sports programs. You have to wonder how many mums will be keen to sign little Johnny up to emulate the deeds of his idols if things keep going this way. And the NRL brand has plenty of competitors vying for Johnny’s time.

It must be said that these incidents aren’t limited to rugby league players but the media and general public now expect that if there’s a negative sports story it’s probably about rugby league and that is no doubt a worry for the NRL.

So again, looking at this from a marketing point of view, FMCG operators rarely persevere with sub-brands that are on the nose with customers. But they will look to change a non-performer in some way, especially if it still has the potential to generate huge revenue when it performs properly. The clubs that are most successful in 2009 are those that have changed their culture to reflect family values and cleaned out the players most likely to cause problems. If you like they’ve updated their brands and deleted product lines.

Unfortunately it seems there are still plenty of other clubs and players who appear to be accepting of the sort of behaviour that will continue to make big withdrawals from the NRL brand bank.

This must be incredibly frustrating for the NRL. The initial decision on how to address bad behaviour remains with the clubs. The NRL has to walk a fine line and only steps in when the clubs don’t respond adequately.

If you were reliant on a string of sub-brands performing at one level but damaging your brand at another what would you do? Wait for the next inevitable withdrawal from your brand bank?

Alan Kewley is an Account Director at BCM Brisbane

For those of us who work in advertising we’re living in world that is morphing and reshaping almost before our eyes. A decade ago describing what advertising was, was a pretty simple task.

For a start it hadn’t really changed all that much in the preceding four or so decades. Sure we’d got smarter at targetting and experimenting with research techniques; we had improved access to social commentary to uncover trends to help increase a brand’s relevance; and yes, improved technology meant that the magic of special effects allowed for more ooh-ahhh moments. But all this change could be filed under ‘manageable evolution’- the fundamentals remained pretty much intact.

Advertising (save the occasional under the table cash for comment) was the sponsored stuff that filled the ‘cracks-between-the-content’ on our TV screens and in our printed publications etc.

But in a world of media fragmentation, where it’s not only harder to reach consumers, but harder to keep their attention, the rules of engagement are irrevocably changed. Consumers are savvier. They see many of the old techniques as ‘blunt instuments’.

So what does this mean for agencies and what we do?

The once manageable evolution is quickly turning to revolution. The old paradigm is quickly being blown apart. Technology in the future means a single solution could be an unshapely morphing and blending of part brand activation/PR/stunt/experiential/e-commerce/social/traditional media etc etc etc (you get the idea).

The chameleon nature of modern media is having a profound impact on the way in which we plan, create and execute campaigns. Media convergence and consumer acceptance of it means it’s time to redefine what we do and how we do it.

Fortunately what hasn’t changed is that clients want ideas. Ideas to solve problems. Ideas to deliver a competitive advantage. Ideas to get the cash register ringing. It seems to me that more than ever both agency and client need to be open to possibilities.  We need to be agile. We need to creatively join the dots to deliver clever, innovative solutions.

In the future, successful agencies must work well beyond the stock standard TV campaign, with a bit of radio or online thrown in.

Getting traction will mean creating ideas which are novel and engaging. Consumers will need to see value beyond the obvious brand or product messaging.

They will look for added value in communication – whether delivered through entertainment, through added utility, by delivering social currency, topicality or social esteem. However these extra layers are achieved, at the risk of stating the obvious, setting out to find a more engaging solution is the first, and arguably most important step to finding them.

When agencies look at a brief, it’s incumbent upon them and their clients to do so through the lens of innovation and exploration.

Advertising 2.0 is here.

To borrow from Dr Spock “It’s advertising Jim but not as we know it”.

Bloody exciting if you ask me.

Kevin Moreland is a Partner at BCM