speaking in clicks

[June 22, 2010]

[This post reflects the state of the sites discussed at the time. The issues raised are still relevant to the discussion of consumer-facing pharmaceutical advertising in the US.]

Considering how many constraints brands face as they try to pitch pharmaceutical products to consumers, the temptation to fall back on a combination of merchandizing and benefit-listing is understandable. As evidenced by zyrtec.com on 6-22-10, there’s no doubt a line of logic running something like this: The brand, having positioned itself offline with the “Love the Air” campaign can and should go straight to the point online, selling direct and selling hard.

As I see it, there’s an inherent problem in expecting consumers to keep one campaign approach in mind while viewing another. With no reference to the offline campaign beyond a tagline resting passively beneath the logo, the only message a site visitor actually encounters is “Get our product now: It’s reasonably priced and has benefits.” Especially in light of the panel to the far right reading “Important news about the recall of certain Zyrtec^® children’s products,” I can’t help thinking this home page offers, on balance, a negative user experience.

That’s not to say Zyrtec shouldn’t duly report on recalled items. But it’s especially in bad times that an overriding, branded message is so important. As it stands, there’s nothing here to soften the blow or keep me from wondering if a drug that’s bad for kids is likely to have unacceptable risk factors for adults, too.

Despite this, the page design presents a cheery, candy-colored surface sheen that looks good enough to eat. If the intention is that a simplistic, inviting look is all that’s needed to carry a product with a major PR crisis on its hands, I see this as a major miscalculation.

I suppose some of this “bare bones” thinking has its source in a misinterpretation of consumer research. Believing that consumers don’t like “promotional” language and just want the facts, the brand walks away from branded communication and goes right to hard sell. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I have a hard time seeing an orange button labeled “BUY NOW” as anything other than promotional.

Good vibe here…
Of course, in digital space, one communication strategy is never far away from its polar opposite. Without changing product categories, claritin.com speaks in a completely different voice. It does so, you’ll notice, by doing nothing more than carrying over its existing offline thematics. Whether by accident or design “Clarity” is Claritin’s brand message from the product name on up. Sidestepping nagging regulatory concerns about invalidated claims, the message “Live Claritin Clear” grows directly out of a 30,000-mile view of the product’s end-benefit.

Now, I hasten to point out that clariton.com is nobody’s exemplar for high-concept advertising. It simply demonstrates how an ordinary, garden variety concept can shape an effective message. Notice how little this has to do with the actual headlines which could have come out of the headline chapter of “Copywriting for Dummies.”

What was needed here was not a “writer” but a Creative with a eye and an ear for subtext. Also notice that the impact of this message has nothing to do with any kind of wordplay, double-entendre or pop-cultural reference points. It works because it is, in a word, clear.

…lack of buzz there.
As a parting thought, notice how stubbornly nasonex.com ignores decades of experience with consumer marketing to present a home page that wouldn’t have been out of place in a women’s magazine from the early ’60s. At first blush, you might reasonably expect the ad to be for dog food or the ASPCA.

OK, I get it, the product helps with pet dander allergies. But what if I had come to the site having seen the long-running TV campaign that focuses on pollen allergies? Now, I promised myself I wouldn’t get all exercised about the “retro” checkmark graphics, so I won’t. I’ll just put in a congratulatory call to Professor Ronald Mallett at the University of Connecticut.

In my next post, I’ll offer some concluding observations about pharma advertising, as I try to assess the potential to strike a “new deal” between brand managers, regulators and advertising professionals.

[Jiune 18, 2010]

[This post reflects the state of the sites discussed at the time. The issues raised are still relevant to the discussion of consumer-facing pharmaceutical advertising in the US.]

As everyone living in some quadrant of the communication industry knows, one person’s clarity is another person’s muddle. That this has as much to do with expectation as it does with demography, is perhaps less obvious.

In my experience, many people’s reception of content is driven powerfully by expectation. If they decide to watch, say, a funny movie, they’re ready to accept humorous thoughts and presentations. Those same people may have trouble accepting humor in any other context, especially a pharmaceutical ad campaign.

For that sector of your audience, using humor to sell prescription drugs could be a risky proposition. A consumer driven by expectation will have trouble changing gears. But what’s a traditional advertiser, much less a 21st century engagement strategist going to do? Risks aside, humor is a powerful way to break down barriers to acceptance of the New and the Different.

Maybe a comparison of two different uses of humor in pharmaceutical advertising will help bring clarity’s fine line into sharper focus, at least where it concerns humor.

Wholesome, light, inoffensive. 
The current Web presence for the diabetes medication Actos illustrates one way humor might help visitors grasp the details and feel motivated to mention the drug by name to their doctors. In the marquee, cute animated characters personify different internal organs and biochemicals. Clicking them brings them to life, upon which they share their part of the larger diabetes story.

This is a wholesome, mainstream and gentle kind of humor, one part Toy Story, one part Pokémon. Just as important, each one speaks only briefly and conveys a single, concrete packet of information. It’s also worth pointing out that this colorful presentation carries no “associative baggage,” in that nothing that happens here can make our minds stray off topic.

Universality derailed.
By contrast, consider the much-discussed campaign for the sleep aid Rozerem, which I gather met mixed reviews on a number of fronts. In purely creative terms, the underlying thought is, as I see it, absolutely brilliant. The umbrella theme “Your dreams miss you,” is a perfect illustration of the difference between creative copywriting and mere typing—precisely because it was not “written” but arrived at by astute observation.

Yet judging from the digital chatter about the campaign, I see it touched a nerve, the wrong nerve at that. You don’t have to dig very deep into “The Conversation” to see what I mean. Some of the comments revolve around the very idea of using dream imagery. Considering the long tradition of “dream sequences” in major films, I find this incomprehensible. That is, until I remember what I said earlier about the impact of expectation.

“Insomnia’s a serious topic,” says one sector of the audience, “are you making fun of me with your edgy humor?”

People, one learns, are touchy about the things that affect them directly. Yet, despite this campaign’s mixed reviews, I don’t think we should conclude that the use of humor in pharmaceutical advertising is now “dead in the water.”

There are, however, a few things to take away from this experiment. For one, the creative choices may have been too narrowly focused. Abraham Lincoln is, after all, one of this country’s most iconic historical figures—especially in the idealized form he takes on in statuary and currency.

Even this sympathetic portrayal of a kinder, gentler Lincoln, creates for many, I’ll wager, uncomfortable cognitive dissonance. In a similar way, the connotations surrounding the talking beaver are, to put it mildly, a tad too dense for the context. Sure, it’s a striking image, but not one likely to evoke much sympathy. That the most familiar TV spot in the campaign also skewed 100% male may also have had an impact on its appeal.

Perhaps also, the sheer multiplicity of images is simply too distracting or, just as important, too seductive. Despite my genuine enthusiasm for the creative impulse behind this campaign, I have to wonder if, by implication, it promises too much. For those, like me, who respond to it positively, is it so entertaining as to blunt my critical judgment of the medication?

Rethink the process, not the ideal.
Not that any of this discussion nails the issues down at one end of the spectrum or the other. These are decisions that need to be made on a case by case basis for every campaign. Great creative results from a process, not a mechanical snapping together of “best practices.” It would be very detrimental to the future of pharmaceutical advertising—and consumer engagement in general—if the Rozerem campaign were to become the poster child for Marketing Anxiety (“Don’t let this happen to your next campaign”).

You need only look at an example at the extreme other end of the spectrum to see how the issues at hand are far from cut and dried. At Avandia.com, the rigid display of horribly retouched head shots studiously avoids engaging the imagination in any way.

This “just the facts, ma’am” approach says nothing more than that Avandia is approved to treat diabetes, in other words, exactly what a “proactive seeker” would have known going in. In the absence of any conceptual frame work, the prospect of navigating through page after page of medicalized marketing material is even more daunting than usual.

In my next post, I’ll take a look at the way a unifying theme can, without breaking the rules, give users a motivating frame of reference from which to explore and evaluate drug benefits and features.

[June 15, 2010] 

[This post reflects the state of the sites referred to at the time. The issues raised are still relevant to the discussion of consumer-facing pharmaceutical advertising in the US.]

To wander through the dense thicket of digital pharmaceutical advertising is to experience an exhilaration akin to what Charles Darwin must have felt on his many expeditions. What a fascinating array of oddities, spread out far and wide to occupy every possible demographic niche!

Disease state by disease state, the diversity is staggering. Stopping off at the island of Cholesterol, we can explore its craggy coastline with every assurance we will encounter some amazing evolutionary adaptations: strange, exotic and even a little disturbing.

There, on the right: An full-grown Crestor home page. At once, we see its characteristic use of chameleon-like defense mechanisms. Unlike the showy plumage of the male Lipitor we’ll discuss in a moment, the Crestor uses subtle ploys to make itself blend in perfectly with the surrounding Web environment. So much so, I defy any but the most highly trained eye to distinguish it from a majority of other pharmaceutical sites or, for that matter, from a trade industry site.

Hello? I’m over here…
Notice how it avoids the observer’s eyes, distracting potential predators with a revolving display of disconnected statements. What an evolutionary quandary. One would think, in such a remote region of the Web, engagement would be any species’ primary tool for survival.

Further, since Crestor is merely one among many Cholesterol medications, we might reasonably expect the site to lead with a simple, framing statement, something—anything—that might make consumers, worried about their cholesterol levels, want to read on.

Instead, the curious explorer is met with news of a new FDA approved indication. Here’s what’s so very odd about this. Notice the link at the top: “For Health Care Professionals.” We might reasonably assume that, therefore, the page in front of us is meant for the general public.

What excites my scientific curiosity is this simple question: In what way is a consumer untrained in medicine able to evaluate the significance of an FDA indication?

Taken at face value, the statement “FDA approves new use for Crestor” is meaningless. Further, despite the fact that this is one of the site’s main lead-ins, users must click through to the next page to see what the fuss is about.

…the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved CRESTOR^® (rosuvastatin calcium) to reduce the risk of stroke, myocardial infarction (heart attack) and arterial revascularization procedures in individuals without clinically evident coronary heart disease but with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) based on age (men =50 and women =60), high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) = 2 mg/L, and the presence of at least one additional CVD risk factor, such as hypertension, low HDL-C, smoking, or a family history of premature coronary heart disease.

Excuse me, but how does this help anyone? Even for an experienced naturalist this is a bizarre case of consumer-facing advertising that does not, in fact, face the consumer. Or at least, only a consumer armed with the latest edition of the Merck manual.

One last observation before we move on. Note the colorful display of anatomical graphics depicting a clogged artery. In one of nature’s most amazing instances of bio-mimicry, this graphic is a near perfect likeness of the canisfervenschiliensis, commonly known as the North American Chili Dog.

Moving past the Lescol XL site on the right, a true evolutionary throwback with its static, low grade images and insufferably generic messaging, we might just catch up with the swiftly moving Lipitor dead ahead. Quiet now…

Really? I’m scared out of my mind
and you want to click on random boxes?
Here, in an amazing example of dominance display, the male Lipitor unfurls an unending stream of message boxes. Yet in keeping with one of evolution’s many ironies, the messages utterly lack differentiation, as they roll past consumers in a random display.

Was it for this, Mother Nature, that Web sites have spent millions on SEO consultants—just so consumers must hunt and peck to find the information they need? It’s conundrum worthy of a National Geographic special.

Of course, detailed dissection of each of these sites would reveal many pockets of informative data. But that’s exactly the point. The time it would take a worried consumer to comb through this messy pile of articles, charts, and tables is unacceptable. Consumers with a medical concern would do far better to put their research hours into finding a good doctor within their insurance plan—a monumental task by any standards.

Certainly, if the goal of such sites is to build consumer advocacy by “adding value” they can’t be counted as successful. That’s because they fail to grasp the mindset of a worried consumer. In the wee hours of the morning, afraid for their health, only a rare person would find comfort in consulting such an ungainly mass of “facts, advice and helpful tips.”

[June 11, 2010]

As anyone knows who gets within 15 feet of consumer-facing pharmaceutical advertising, the challenges are daunting. Between mountains of Federal regulation, inescapable scientific data and the humbling responsibility of communicating risk factors, pharmaceutical brand managers and the ad agencies they hire have very little wiggle room.

Add to that the distrust expressed by some Americans for drug companies and you quickly realize you have a tiger by the tail—though decidedly not the cute fuzzy kind that has helped other consumer brands reach out to audiences for decades.

And that’s another aspect of the problem. While creative development of concepts for pharmaceutical brands needs to be aware of the underlying principles of standard-issue consumer advertising—including the standard issue “out-of-the-box” variety—any direct transfer of those principles to prescription products is very ill-advised.

Why? Because without the unfettered freedom to promise something, even something ephemeral, traditional advertising has very little to work with. Tony the Tiger can scream “tastes Grrr-ate!” with no compunction, even if not everyone would agree. But the crux of the biscuit for pharmaceutical products is the strict avoidance of unsubstantiated medical claims.

Given those constraints, does that mean pharmaceutical advertising is doomed to mediocrity?

Clichés even clichés would be embarrassed to use.
Based on casual observation of the industry’s gigantic annual ad output, I’m tempted to say “yes.” After all, you reap what you sow. If the main ingredient of your creative strategy is the avoidance of regulatory sanction, you can only produce a steady stream of deadly material. Think for a moment of the medium’s basic visual and situational vocabulary:

• Genial physicians in lab coats, stethoscopes around necks, regardless of specialty
• Childishly simplified anatomical diagrams, guaranteed not to shock anyone into
   thinking they actually have internal organs—much less a body
• Problem face/Solution face head shots
• Satisfied patients “getting back to the important things in life”
• Happy babies and/or exuberant puppies
• Animated graphic metaphors or mascots (budget permitting)

In this Bizzaro World of happy face consumerism, the avoidance of controversy has led the vast majority of pharmaceutical advertisers to fall back on an age-old formula: “Get this now, it’s good.”

Message on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
Trouble is, laboring under the strict ukase of regulatory watchdogs, the formula’s signature message becomes, no pun intended, somewhat crippled:

Were we to advise you to discuss this product with your healthcare provider, your healthcare provider may consent to incorporate it in your treatment regimen, based on your specific medical history and current state of health. Only your healthcare provider knows if the potentially life-threatening side-effects of this medication are significantly outweighed by its benefits—whose mode of action we don’t necessarily understand.

Clearly, something is out of joint.

Is there a cure for chronic mediocrity in consumer-facing pharmaceutical advertising? Only your regulatory board knows for sure. Yet some pharmaceutical advertisers do manage to reach out to consumers with a motivating message. How do they do it? As I’ll try to show in the next few posts, part of the answer lies in forging a true emotional connection—by giving consumers more confidence in their ability to help manage their own treatment in simple, straightforward ways.

[July 9. 2010]

Why would anyone visit your site?

Having found your URL on a search engine, with StumbleUpon or PopURLs, by IM, SMS, Skype or face to face, in a “doomed” print medium or somewhere tucked away in social space, why would anyone give it more than a blink?

It can only be because of content. The very first thing that catches someone’s eye has to rivet their attention. Like the people you love to hang out with, its very presence must enliven, cheer, entertain or move you.

And like your favorite people, a Web site needs to be fresh.

Look at it this way. How many times have you started a conversation with someone you Digg with one simple question:

“What’s new?”

Now you might see this as just another example of ritualized speech. But there’s more to this particular routine phrase. More than a placeholder, it expresses one of the core values of any long-term or intimate relationship—the delivery of fresh, inviting and invigorating stimulus.

Artificial intelligence.
And while I believe this same criterion applies equally to communications in all media, I see it as especially critical in digital space. That’s because, in digital space we have the first practical application of rudimentary artificial intelligence on a wide scale.

It speaks to us with colorful images and moving words, it shares its experience openly, without holding back. It makes us laugh, cry, get indignant or feel triumphant—and more and more we’re wearing it close to our hearts.

However you frame it, the composite effect of digital space is of a living, sentient organism, a rare, tangible example of real synergy. As such, the unstated expectation your users bring to your site is that they will be greeted by a vibrant, engaging and deliciously unpredictable personality. In other words, exactly the kind of person you want to be with as often as possible.

A character you care about.
If you’re with me so far, you can easily see how the vast majority of online properties utterly fail in this respect. And while much of this has everything to do with abysmal design and technical protocols—including browsers and display modules built to conflicting standards—the real reason people click away is incompetently produced and infrequently refreshed content.

Perhaps when the www was new, it was exciting enough to get a Web site up and running. After all, those early sites had hypertext links and everything. But at its current stage of evolution—and the current evolution of audience expectations—a Web presence anyone’s going to spend time on cannot afford to be static.

Like the dawgs you hang with, a Web presence lives or dies on the strength of its editorial calendar of emotional and psychological deliverables. “What’s up, what’s shakin’, what’s poppin’, what’s next, what’ve you heard, did you hear this, did you see that…” are all part of the banter your Web site needs, to engage your audience in a real give and take.

Creativity and talent: It’s not just for pitch meetings anymore.
But none of this can happen by accident—and you certainly can’t get there by importing canned design templates or subscribing to a clipping service. You have to invest as much creativity and talent as goes into the merest TV sitcom or D-List talk show.

There, daily or weekly, if we return at all its for what’s fresh. “What’s the wacky delivery guy, who used to be a wacky bus driver, gonna do now?”—we have to know and —“What will Tyra shock me with this time?

Crow all you want about the superiority of new media, but in this respect, those last century throwbacks have got it all over us in this crucial respect. They know the only way to keep people coming back is to lead with a distinct character and keep working the changes over and over again until the underlying concept achieves its full potential.

Can you say that about your Web presence?

[June 8, 2010]

Let’s try to be realistic.

Your trade association, your cause, your advice column, your e-merchandizing gambit, your news organization, your fashion outlet, vehicle line or soft drink empire—whatever dingus you want to hawk online has a lot of competition.

The competition I mean doesn’t come from ”the other guy.” That’s small potatoes in an oil-drenched, jobless recovery in which property values are down, the euro is drowning in debt and the cost of doing business in Chinais on the way up. Let me be the first to remind you: In a climate like this, more people are shopping price than brand.

Yeah, I know about Apple taking the lead from Microsoft, killing the Kindle and “restructuring the mobile industry.” But that’s only because Apple has tapped into your real competition:

The unbelievably dense array of entertainment, pseudo news, “user generated content” and Reality, that now weave through your audience’s consciousness all the live long day. Even if the market rebounds that’s one trend very unlikely to change.

“Got a nanobyte’s bandwidth” asks the desperate digital marketer, “to hear my asset-rich multimedia sales pitch, enabling you to share a story, a poem or a song?”

An audience distracted by an interrupted diversion…
“Dude, I’m busy,” says the earbud/human hybrid your customer mutated into sometime after 2001. “Tom Cruise is dancing with Jennifer Lopez, pelicans are covered with oil—and pirated episodes of TV shows tempt me to break my copyright vows.”

“Not that you didn’t pop right up in Google with a snappy lead-in and the reassuring words ‘Official Site.’ But just then I got an IM with a tinyURL pointing to Scarlett Johansson kissing Sandra Bullock at the MTV awards. After that, the phone started vibrating and I kind of lost track of time.”

Given that level of distraction, I question the wisdom of building and maintaining massive web sites. Does that monumental wall of bland content blocks really command attention?

Now, if marketing ran on logic, the people who googled you would be interested enough to click through and shoot the breeze on your back porch. Logic? If your customers’ browser histories could speak, they’d tell you time online is actually driven by entertainment, gossip, titillation and a whiff of scandal.

Where does that leave brands with a practical product or a serious issue to promote? Well, I’m not saying people researching Parkinson’s disease, for example, want to be greeted by Stewie and Brian. But maybe you need to think in a more dimensionalized way about how your audience’s internal life affects their ability to absorb your message.

…and when you raise the curtain?
By the way, do you have a message, a clear value statement that sums up why anyone should hang out with you online? Trust me, you need to be more specific than “Knowledge is Power and Hope is Everything.” No reflection on your sincerity or unstinting dedication, but:

Any thought your customer can get just as easily
from a Chinese-American fortune cookie doesn’t
qualify as a usable marketing message.

Not that “Made to make your life better” works much harder for Nissan. Think about this for a moment. You’re actually asking customers to take their mind off Scarlett Johansson, just to revel in your clumsy merger of “Ford Explorer: Built for the way you live” and “Wal-Mart: Save Money. Live Better?”

Get it, “made” and “make?” Are you down with the syntactic thrill of a truncated parallel construction resulting in a near pun?

Let’s try to be realistic.
No matter how “optimized” your site may be, once you hook your customers up with Google, all you’ve done is plant them in their seats. Selling happens only after the curtain goes up—and the opening number had better be a riot. Otherwise…what’s that?…iPhone 4? See ya…

[June 3, 2010]

YOU CAN:

upload your photo, share your story, sign up for the newsletter, subscribe to the newsfeed, friend your friend, update your status, comment on your friend’s status, tweet, retweet, watch the video, upload the video, update your settings, stumble upon, check this out, check this out, check this out, check this…

OR:

• Picnic in an open meadow (laptop optional)
• Rage against idiots
• Paint a memorable landscape
• Drive 1074 miles for a cup of coffee and a slice of ricotta cheesecake
• Spread the word about AIDS to everyone who thinks it’s cured in the U.S.
• Teach a child to ride a bike, write a story, or build a birdhouse
• “Get ahead” by helping someone else get ahead
• Stay away from ridiculously addictive substances
• Start a 520-day simulation of a flight to Mars

[June 1, 2010]

At any given moment, what brands can achieve through advertising is limited. You can use market research to find your customers’ tickle spots. You can analyze click through rates, count eyeballs, measure engagement time or assess the relative “viralality” of your message.

But you can’t sell what isn’t there.

I suppose the main reason many brands advertise at all is to pick up the slack between their products’ actual value and the perceived value they’d like to charge for. And yes, there are millions of dollars made each year selling products that promise but don’t deliver.

Of course, when word gets around, the company loses market share (at the very least), so what’s a brand to do?

Whatever you do, don’t blame the ads. Their only function was to get people excited enough to buy. After that, the real advertising takes place at the kitchen table, where it always has. It happens when a satisfied customer advocates the product to family and friends offline. Not in social space, mind you, but in real time, off-screen, no 3-D glasses required.

That’s something focus groups can’t change. The most a focus group can tell you is the optimum location for your smoke and mirrors. Nothing ever sold big unless it had the kind of value that large communities of people could get behind. And since I’m sure no one finds that a revelatory statement, I’m kind of perplexed that the social media wave continues to knock marketers off their surfboards.

Earning your place at the table…
The only thing a social space does is post intimate public opinions online. It posts them, but cannot create them. Does anyone believe people weren’t talking about products and brands before the word “tweet” took on a double meaning? Wasn’t it always our goal to generate buzz—away from the radio, the TV, the mailbox, the billboard and the store display?

To create that kind of buzz you have to start at the product development level. You can only sell what people actually want to buy. Not redundantly, a product people want is also the product most likely to sell. Great, signature ad campaigns can sometimes “create demand,” transforming a ho-hum item into an object of intense desire. But nothing sells like sale-ability:

Coke sells because it actually tastes good.

And the more globalized our economy becomes the more absolute sale-ability will be the benchmark for success. It only makes sense: The amount of competition in every conceivable product category is growing faster than anyone can track.

…or strumming the air guitar?
In this world, more rounded and global and 3-D than ever, what brands need to answer is one simple question: “Is this something people actually want?” My question, you’ll notice is not: “Can this product make a successful entry as a parity contender in its market segment at a competitive price point?”

Instead of statistics, your product development needs to revolve around fulfilling a need. Can your product generate kitchen table advertising based on its real, functional value? Because it’s only when you grasp that value, not to mention believe in it, that you can craft a platform to sell it on.

Otherwise, it’s like pulling teeth to “move the needle,” no matter how many apps you program, coupons you print, sweepstakes you stage or action movie placements you achieve. From that perspective, I think there’s a greater need than ever for ad agencies to stop acting like vendors and go back to their roots as consultants.

Even if your motto is “Serve the Client,” it’s clear it serves no one to spend millions, just to sell air-guitar benefits. That’s why brands need ad agencies to help them keep new product development grounded in hard reality. We can’t sell airy, non-existent benefits, but we can help you develop products meaty enough to warrant word-of-mouth at the kitchen table.

[May 28, 2010]

In America, people like feeling up to date. Few things endow us with the glow of self satisfaction like following an inovative trend. In my experience, this same impulse toward innovation-chic fuels lots of decisions made by marketing managers and, sad to say, many creatives. As an outgrowth of this impulse, the quest for innovation can take on a life of its own.

Given the green light by a client, creatives are so driven to “stay on trend” that we often forget to ask a critical question: Is our client ready for innovation? In the excitement of the moment, there’s a tendency to drop everything and start riffling through trade publications for inspiration:

“Dude,” says the eager-to-please creative, “we can totally reskin that app and we’re good.”

Talk like that, while hapless in its own terms, reminds me of the “steampunk” science fiction genre, which reskins computers and atomic power as products of Victorian culture. While such stories are sometimes entertaining, they’re always completely improbable. In the real world, culture and technology evolve together.

In a similar way, you can’t introduce “high-tech” creative strategies into a project unless it aligns with your client’s marketing culture. To find out if the creative approach you want to pursue is compatible with that culture, take a close look at your client’s recent campaigns.

Find their ground level.
If your client has been content to “push product” with limited time offers and a chorus line of micro-branded product features, they’re probably not ready for their OneShow moment. Additionally, if their digital footprint consists solely of a hyperlinked sales circular, you have a lot more work to do before they’ll let consumers co-author their brand narrative online.

No matter that your agency’s stock and trade is edgy-edged envelop pushing. Move too fast and the dire day will dawn when your client contact announces, “We need to take a step back.”

What’s happened? You’ve inadvertently violated your client’s marketing culture. If the CEO is only concerned with selling more product, it’s no use selling consumer engagement to the VP of Marketing.

“And by the way, how much is this social stuff going to cost?” the incredulous exec exclaims, banging a final nail into the coffin.

In short, it’s the hard-sell/soft-sell debate, swept into the vortex of changing times. And a vortex it is—so much so that many clients are clinging tight to the nearest tried-and-true tree branch, just hoping they don’t get sucked in.

Not long ago I dealt with clients who had never even considered the possibility of updating their perfect Web copy. Fine people, really, but I knew from the start we couldn’t get them to Web 2.5 in one step. It would be a long road ahead until they might finally grasp that marketing has changed forever. I found myself at their ground level, explaining that copy was more than a stream of features, benefits and “strong calls to action.”

Be realistic.
Trust me, I understand: Taking baby steps doesn’t jibe with the self-image of an iPad-toting, Kazuki-ObyO-shuffling, goji-berry-munching advertising guru. But as long as your agency has booked a client with a radically different concept of marketing than yours, you’ll have to be realistic.

That’s because, despite your concern with engaging consumer audiences, the first audience you must engage—after your own CEO/EVP Creative/SVP Account/SVP Strategy—is the client. To sell your clients even one new idea, you’ll need to understand their marketing culture down to its last holy worship word.

Otherwise, you’ll find yourself in the unenviable position of being both 100% right and 100% wrong. So please, before you get the creative team in a lather about boldly going where no agency has gone before, make sure you’re not trying to sell radial tires to a corporate marketing culture that’s only just invented the wheel.

[May 25, 2010]

Considering the intense competition to capture people’s attention online, it’s no surprise we continue to furl our brows over the “user experience” equation. Remember, your Web presence is not only competing with others, it’s also going toe-to-toe with every other life distraction.

Certainly, anyone who clings to the vanishing distinction between “phone” and “computer” feels these distractions even more acutely. Add to that “the office,” “TV,” your partner (or your anxiety about not having a partner), your kids, your health or whatever schedule your stomach is on—and the odds of a Web page holding your attention plummet quickly to single digits.

That is, unless the digital space you’re in offers an experience you value. This kind of user experience has little to do with how well you can navigate the navigation or comment on the comments. This is the total experience, analogous to the satisfaction you can get offline from shoving a quarter in a jukebox and letting the music wash over you.

What? You’re visiting a site that doesn’t let you do anything? That’s a prescription for disaster. Without something to get engaged in right away, you’ll sooner click than stick.

Stop building…
To a great extent, the problem of maintaining interest online stems from the way many digital properties are conceived. Despite the Web 2.0 hype, sites continue to be conceived of as buildings made to house content. If your audience is clicking away faster than you can say “mxyplyzyk,” it may be because your paradigm is out of date.

Now that social space offers so many opportunities to upload, share, post, comment, repost, crosslink and download, a more accurate analogy for a 2.0 Web site is a broadcast channel. As a channel, the emphasis is not on how the site is built but on what it delivers. After all, part of the appeal of Facebook is anticipation: What snarky, joyous, revelatory, practical or whiny post will you read next?

In light of that, the emphasis on a majority of Web pages is all wrong. In this environment, the only reason for launching a site is to broadcast your brand. And like an offline broadcast channel, you need a steady flow of fresh, original material that sets your site apart as a brand. A stream of third-party information is not enough, even if it’s regularly updated.

…and start channeling.

Like the Thursday night comedy monopoly that NBC now barely hangs onto, or the Monday night comedy monopoly CBS would now like to claim, your Web presence has no reason to live without offering something people can’t get anywhere else.

If you’re an herbivore, it might be a Quinoa tabbouleh salad. If you’re carnivore, it’s a…well, I don’t know where to begin. Whatever you crave, the Web presence delivering it is the one you want to interact with. The others will crouch, shivering, neglected in your Favorites for all eternity or appear as one of the 516,000 results that turn up through the magic of Google.

It’s no good reposting the same chili recipe Americans have already been making with condensed tomato soup for generations. That is, unless your site also offers, say, clever brain teasers users can mull while they prepare that recipe for the 1000th time.

How can you tell if your targets will click or stick? Ask what your Web presence does for them. Unless the content does something for, and preferably to, your customers, just toss it out. It doesn’t matter how much your client paid for that content five or even ten years ago.

Because until we move away from warehousing pre-existing video, text, tools or widgets—and make a real commitment to creating experiences for consumers—the planned celebrations for the next digital era will just have to be postponed.