Few things provoke emotions of awe and wonderment more so than space travel. So it was no surprise that when HP ProCurve was chosen by the European space agency Astrium Gmbh Space Transportation to equip the International Space Station (ISS), Publicis Modem was approached to communicate this unique story to a wider audience.

Insight had revealed that the target market for HP ProCurve networking products responded well to case studies, regarding them as concrete proof of brand credibility and competency. The fact that HP ProCurve’s 2524 switches were the first commercially available Ethernet switches in space, offered a powerful endorsement of HP ProCurve’s reliability and build quality. The campaign would prove the ideal vehicle to continue to close the gap to Cisco in end-user awareness and consideration within the networking market.

Designed to coincide with the launch of the Columbus module carrying the switches into space at the end of 2007, Publicis Modem developed a strategy to bring this story to life, whilst simultaneously offering avenues for deeper engagement. The result was a campaign that stretched across print publications, online, outdoor and mobile channels throughout EMEA. New media may be fragmenting the traditional broadcast landscape, but they provide new opportunities to communicate with consumers.

Outdoor billboards at the key business sites in Heathrow and Frankfurt airports were a key element of the campaign. High quality NASA imagery of the ISS was well suited to the grand scale of the outdoor installations but the engagement didn’t end there. The call to action at Heathrow encouraged users to visit an exclusive mobile site whilst they were at the terminal or on the move. Here they could select their home town and receive the time of their next opportunity to actually see the ISS with the naked eye as it orbited earth. This experience (which relied on the latest NASA flight path data) was designed to both notable and memorable and would likely be discussed with colleagues and friends.

A rich media banner starring an astronaut on a space walk delivered a suite of high quality NASA wallpapers, and a white paper detailing how HP ProCurve switches were chosen for the mission over competitor brands. The landing page itself offered users a chance to see inside the Columbus module and understand better the on board activities that HP ProCurve networks were enabling.

Results from the campaign were impressive, click through rates were as a high as 1.70% and the number of unique visitors to a landing page exceeded those than that were observed in past campaigns.

This campaign was successful because it set out to offer a real experience to the user. Anticipating that this subject matter would provoke an emotional as well as a more rational interest within our target market, the media channels employed allowed the end-user to get closer to the brand and gain a new appreciation of HP ProCurve’s achievement as the first switches in space.

http://www.procurve.eu/iss

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The Acer Aspire Gemstone Blue Notebook Website. “Beauty”, we are told by Acer, “is in the eye of the beholder”. You’re not wrong Acer. It’s more than I want to behold. Glowing bits of neon blue oscillating left to right. An unattractive laptop dancing right to left.

It continues, “…What we see and how we see it determines the intensity of the emotion the image transmits”. Err, ok… In the next paragraph we realise they’re talking about a Blu-Ray Disc^TM. The third paragraph states that this Blu-Ray Disc^TM holds five times the data of a DVD. Finally, in the next paragraph, we are told that it’s the first notebook “to come with a choice of 16:9 screens and 1920×1080 high definition resolutions” (sic). I’m confused, the two proportions have the same ratio which can be primarily reduced to 16×9.

Anyhow it’s all been an “experience that” has left me “breathless”. I think I better take a walk.

http://www.acer.com/gemstoneblue/uk/

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Developing “actionable” insights from reporting has a number of ideas embedded in it and it’s worth exploring these before diving down into the detail if they get developed. The overriding theme of it, when looked at the words actionable and reporting, suggests something that becomes a regular activity – a constant cycle.

When we develop and create something, whether a piece of creative or a programme of activities and launch it out on to the market it’s essential to know how it is progressing – in layman’s terms if it works or not. The answers to that question can be grouped roughly into; if it isn’t working we need to change it, if it is working, could it be working better? In most situations it’s probably a blend of the two - there are aspects that do and don’t work. Fine-tuning or blinding revelation either can make a huge difference to final results of the work.

Insight is a term used frequently in conjunction with creative briefs and often represents the one “universal truth,” or a new way of looking at a problem in order to derive a proposition or idea for the creative team to work with. In this context the Collins Essential English Dictionary definition “the ability to perceive clearly or deeply the inner nature of things” tends to suggest something almost spiritual in nature. In truth, these kinds of insights are very powerful for a creative team to work with because they are often very emotional.

There is, however, a second definition from the same dictionary “a penetrating understanding, as of a complex situation or problem” which I think casts a subtly different light on insight and suggests something that is more analytical. In this context I think it works better as a definition to explore what we mean. This is especially true today with the transparency of the digital landscape where there are huge amounts of data available.

A good starting place to make sense of this mass of data is to go back to your objectives and your understanding of the customer. Developing “user scenarios” can help you arrange the data into something that is more readily digested. For example, client A has a web site that sells televisions and currently collects a range of measures from their web reporting tools and their sales team. They could use 2 basic scenarios to describe customer activity, A) people researching and looking for product information B) people looking to buy. These two activities will have a different interpretation of the most basic data - page views, visits, and duration of stay to inform us of the different behaviours.

In most instances there are a wide range of performance indicators at hand and no single metric points to an insight. It’s only when we have done something with it to build a picture that it becomes useful. For example looking at monthly visitor figures on a particular site there was a seasonal trend with nothing unusual. The visitors were then split out into to first time visitors and repeat visitors – showing a very small number of repeat visitors. When media spend was added to the same line graph there was a direct correlation between that spend and the first time visitor count.

The insight from this was that the site was completely dependant on media spend for traffic. Any change in spend directly affected traffic and hence sales. The response was to look at what would drive return visits and reduce the reliance on media spend. Both the interpretation of the data to derive the insight and the decision on what action to take relied on the experience of the people involved. In essence the metrics can only do so much, the rest is up to us.

At Publicis Modem we’ve undertaken a number of analytical exercises to gain insight into a campaign or programme of activity. The great thing about digital is we don’t have to wait long until we can start looking at the data and developing insights. For normal campaigns we strongly advocate reviewing traffic drivers (banners, search etc) with our client and media partner within the first 2 weeks in market. This allows us to highlight any underperformance, monitor it and then act on before too much inventory is wasted. Moving the inventory while the campaign is under way is one of the great advantages of digital.

Better results are what we all aspire to. To help drive better decision-making we need good insights driven from our data and reporting in a timely manner – i.e. “actionable”. It’s something we’re passionate about, and ready to talk to you about how we can help.

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Are you worried that your product is becoming just another commodity? Another screen to watch, another black box to help with office work, or just another service amongst a list of others? In a seminal work entitled The Experience Economy
B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore argue that if you are competing solely on the basis of price then you’ve already been commoditised, and businesses that give customers something back in the way of experiences are not only more successful, but can also charge a premium for the privilege.

So why is it that a cup of coffee in a trendy high street café costs almost as much as lunch these days? The answer lies in the way that brands such as Starbucks have created a total experience, going beyond the simple cuppa we used to get in the local café to creating an event that they can then charge admission to experience.

In their book, Pine and Gilmore talk about five ways of marketing a product. Moving from a commodity business, which charges for undifferentiated products, to a goods business which charges for distinctive tangible things, to a service business, which charges for activities you perform, to an experience business, which charges for the feeling customers get by engaging in it. To finally a transformation business which charges for the benefit customers receive by spending time there.

Let’s take the journey of the humble coffee bean to show how brands have been able to exploit the value of experiences. If you are a commodity business then you probably just sell unbranded coffee beans to customers. Moving on from that you might process the beans and sell them pre-packaged like Nescafe. If you are a service business then you’re charging to make people cups of coffee, but that’s probably all you do, think of your local café or sandwich bar. If you’re an experience business then you’ve created a comfortable space where people can linger, meet up, read books or simply relax while they drink their coffee. Now we are in Starbucks territory and not only is the experience better for the customer, the business can now charge a premium for it. A transformation business is the natural extension of this in that the time spent in said Starbucks now offers you even more lifestyle experiences. One of the latest examples is a joint venture between Apple and Starbucks to let customers buy music tracks that they hear in the coffee shops via iTunes, enabled by Wi-Fi internet access provided by joint ventures with ISPs.

So we’ve moved from selling coffee beans to what Starbucks call the third space, a place that you spend most of your time in outside of home and the work place. From a commodity to an experience that ultimately transforms the relationship between customer and product.

So what does this mean for marketers? Well simply put, to be successful and beat the competition in an ever more commoditised market we need to think about how we can deliver experiences that go beyond the marketing messages that people simply see. Could a joint venture with another provider help deliver that better experience as in the case of Apple and Starbucks? Can we use digital to enhance the experience that you currently give consumers? A notable example of this is Nike+ the joint venture with Nike and iPod. Or can we use a campaign to let people engage with the product, brand or service through a unique experience? As in the case of Publicis Modem’s campaign for HP Personal Palmistry.

At Publicis Modem we are interested in generating experiences rather than messages. Because we understand that it is the value of the experience that determines the value of the brand in our world today, we have to go beyond the marketing message.

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As much of our PSG work focuses on creating demand for HP products, it was refreshing to be approached to do a brand awareness campaign, specifically targeting the youth segment in the fast emerging MEMA (Middle East and Mediterranean African) region.

The strategy behind the project was to bring the brand closer to 18-25 years, to cause a positive impact to brand perception. The idea was to develop a music competition site which facilitated users to participate in a way that suited them and which encouraged self-expression thus reinforcing the Computer is Personal brand.

As we had a lack of actionable insight into youth perception of the HP brand within this region it was clear that a secondary objective should be to capture such insight to inform future campaigns.

Publicis Modem developed an online banner campaign, taking over music and entertainment channels on Yahoo to target and drive youths to a microsite where they could listen, vote and upload their own original music into the competition. 5 finalists from each of the four participating countries were asked to perform at a live event in their country which was streamed live and simultaneously on the 4 participating country microsites.

The audiences at the live event voted for their country winner and the 4 country winners received a video banner campaign driving to their profile page on the microsite.

As part of the campaign Publicis Modem put together a measurement strategy including weekly reporting on web analytics plus an Awareness Consideration Preference survey to measure against the key campaign objective.

In total 79,638 users visited the 4 sites more than once which exceeded our expectations. The average click through rate from the banner to the microsite was 0.72% a fantastic result when compared to the industry average 0.20%. Weekly reporting enabled us to shift media inventory quickly from non-performing sections of Yahoo to high performing sections. 11.41 mins was highest “Average time spent per visit” in a given week, this as one might expect was achieved in the week prior to when the voting closed and there was a flurry of activity on the site.

The highlight ratio of unique users to page views was 11:1 which, given the site has only 6 pages tells us we had compelling content and tools (and shows size isn’t everything after all). A whopping 635,005 tracks were listened to, 232,722 votes cast against 313,870 registered votes, a 74% success rate which is good considering users were asked to confirm votes via email. A total of 753 original music files were uploaded against 3,009 confirmed registrations, despite the drop off from intention, 753 original music files is priceless content.

The ACP survey revealed a positive view of HP prior to exposure to the campaign, HP scoring high against competitors and higher than Apple on quality and equal in terms of design. Over 80% already owned HP PSG products, the majority being notebooks.

Response to the advertising was really positive and in general participants said that the competition improved their perception of HP as a brand: “HP normally seems plain and boring; this introduces another spontaneous side to the HP brand”. The campaign is a case in point for how we should look to create ideas that move advertising beyond messages into experiences, or as we refer to it creating value exchange. It also shows the benefit of centrally managing country campaigns from a measurement perspective.

https://www.designyourpersonallife.com

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The line. Some were above it, others below. After that they went through it.

These days you can take a rubber to that line. Most campaigns have to converge on that essential digital element where a one-to-one dialogue with the customer can take place.

The Army Pathfinder Campaign is a good example. Add to that, it won a BIMA, a Campaign Digital, an IMIA and an NMA Effectiveness. If you happened to see one of the TV spots (there was also press and radio) you’d be left with a cliffhanger and a voiceover that said, “this film continues at armyjobs.mod.uk”. After going online and watching the complete film you’re invited to “discover more about yourself with the Army Pathfinder”, a quick psychometric test. I turned out to be a highly cultivated natural born leader, who likes good food. They seemed to like me and I felt this to be a fair assessment. So I was tempted to interact further to find a suitable job, only I’d lied about my age.

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As a new comer to Publicis Modem I was keen to have a little surf through some blogs and have a look at what people were saying about some of the brands we work for. While on social book marking site Digg.com I came across a story which read “Jay-Z, HP’s star endorser,uses a Mac”, low and behold there is a picture of Jay-Z and Beyonce sitting on the sofa with matching Apple Macs. The caption reads “Jay-Z and girlfriend Beyonce seem to be Apple fans. No surprise there: Plenty of musicians use Macs. What is surprising? Jay-Z was in one of those Hewlett-Packard “hand” ads last year touting HP laptops. At least Tiger Woods actually wears Nike. Catch the ad after the jump.” 1660 people have dug the story, it’s had 40,000+ views and 290 comments.

So what does this mean for HP? Well the interesting thing is, that if you look at the comments generated on the blog apart from the put downs and obvious digs at Microsoft, the debate is quite constructive. Some say that it’s reasonable for someone who endorses a product to not exclusively use it. The most interesting discussion is about the relative virtues of Macs versus window machines. Those points of view stretch from those who would use nothing but a Mac to those who use both and those that say that a PC can do everything a Mac can. So in many ways we have a situation where people are talking about how PCs are personal again, which is exactly what HP want to say about their machines.

So it seems that any article however negative it may appear on the outside can spark a useful conversation. Various opinions can be expressed and interestingly you will have advocates (potential promoters of your product) and detractors. Advocates are your strongest allies in dealing with criticism, they tend to be loyal customers of your products and in the battle for hearts and minds are your most important.

So what’s the best approach to grow your advocates and answer your detractors? You could do nothing and let the conversation find a natural balance, but this may result in the equivalent of sticking your head in the sand if the topic of discussion is particularly damaging. The best thing is to listen to the conversation and respond to it accordingly. So who are the best people to respond to criticisms of your brand? Well firstly you should be by providing a space where customers and prospects can talk to you and where they can talk to your loyal advocates.

Google, social book marking sites, blogs and forums give people access to all the conversations about your brand, good bad and ugly, so the key thing is to start aggregating peoples’ comments where you can recruit advocates to your cause and let those conversations happen in areas where you can listen, act and respond to people’s ideas. This partnership with advocates and detractors can foster better understanding between all parties, grow your advocates and help answer criticisms. You’ll also be surprised that your critics can often be the ones who help you come up with better products and communications. People that are vocal tend to want to be listened to.

At Publicis Modem we understand the importance of helping you listen to the conversation, understand what is being said and develop strategies to help you harness the power of advocates. We have a 3 point plan to help you do this.

1. Noise audit to monitor the conversations around your brand

2. Recommendations to develop strategies to help your brand respond

3. On-going optimization and measurement to keep you in the conversation

So if you are interested in joining the conversation do get in touch.

I couldn’t resist giving the last word to Jay-Z. Looking on another book marking site, Reddit, is a rumour that Jay-Z and Apple are to launch a record label. So is Jay-Z playing with Apple to? As I said before, there are always two sides to every story.

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Measuring a campaign is a bit like writing Christmas and birthday thank you letters to relatives when we were younger. It was something we knew we should do, saying “thank you” was important and helped secure the passage of another present next year. It was also something we knew mum and dad would hound us about, but it was to be avoided at all costs. Why? Because it was boring!  The reality is, I think, that more of us ended up writing our letters than have measured campaigns we’ve run. Not measuring our campaigns, like not writing letters,  may mean we end up missing out.

Using the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) definition of marketing – “Marketing is the management process that identifies, anticipates and satisfies customer requirements profitably” – they relate the activity of marketing back to profitability. This view – profitably - is one that more companies are expecting to see through Return On Investment (ROI) at a campaign level. This is good business sense and as marketers we can do our bit for the greater good of the company. For me, it is one that we should take to heart, but with the following caveat: in some cases a long term view on profitability may need to be taken if, e.g. you are driving awareness of a new brand in the market. 

Look beyond profitability and there are 2 other clear reasons for measuring every activity we do; 1. Did we succeed or fail? 2. What did we learn? These 2 relate back to the notion of a learning curve, which for the most part - as Homo sapiens – we pride ourselves.  If we do the same thing over and over again without ever knowing if it is delivering a positive or negative result, we could be called mad. So first thing’s first, let’s determine whether or not it was a success. Measurement is not the only piece in this particular puzzle, you have to have a clear articulation of what you set out to do in order to have something to measure. So clear, measurable objectives are key. Second, if we choose to repeat the exercise, it is invaluable to understand what worked and what didn’t work last time, i.e. if we’re going to do it again, then let’s do it better!

So what should we be measuring? Well, we’ve already discussed the financial angle. We need to be profitable and ultimately that means trying to gauge how much revenue has been generated by the activity v. how much was invested. Working out the investment is easy, tracking sales and revenue is not always so straightforward. It can be complicated by the length of the buying cycle, whether it’s a direct or indirect sale and many other factors.

Within the marketing activity or campaign itself we can measure the effect on our customers in 2 ways – through their behaviour and their attitude. Behavioural measures are most suited to direct response campaigns, where we look at how many customers we contacted or touched, how many responded (e.g. by sending in replies, going online or telephoning a call centre) and whether or not they took our offer. For example, in a classic online banner ad and landing page campaign, we would track ad impressions, clicks (measuring the click through rate), landing page arrivals (measuring the drop off rate) and then those that completed the call to action. 

Attitudinal measures are most suited for brand and advocacy campaigns where you need to understand how the customer perceives the brand and what motivations they have around it.  What’s important is the effect the campaign has had in changing attitudes, so we need to establish what they think before starting, as well as measuring their views afterwards.  Typically these are carried out as surveys and are more intensive to collect and analyse.  But the line between the two (attitudinal and behavioural) is not black and white, e.g. in brand activities, behavioural measures looking at time spent engaging with campaign assets are very useful (e.g. average time spent on a web page or interaction rates for rich media banners).

To sum up – we should always be asking the three basic questions – Did it work? Was it profitable? What would we change next time? Using financial, behavioural and attitudinal measures we can answer these questions for every campaign, to ignore them is surely a form of madness!

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According to Sir Tim Berners-Lee the first phase of the revolution was about connecting computers into a network - The Internet. The second phase was about connecting documents - the World Wide Web. The next stage will be about connecting people and things in a Giant Global Graph (or social graph). In the second phase you simply read from the web, which is why there was an explosion of brochureware websites. Now we can write to the web which is why there has been an explosion in user generated content. However in both phases the consumer is in charge, which is why brands are feverishly re-assessing how they do things, building more and more things for this cyberspace workshop. The most successful are the ones that become useful - brand utilities, or entertaining, branded content providers.

Most brands now have multiple websites, which is a good thing, but most still think of digital as if it was still in the Read Era, and see it as a channel where you develop assets, such as banners and landing pages and then throw them out into the dark matter that is cyberspace, and then quietly forget about them. These assets would have been traditionally produced two steps after the TV and press advertising, and one step after the direct mail pack - then we’d be asked to make the idea work in the digital channel. In the Read/Write Era this type of thinking is not sustainable. It denies the obvious. This is the time to change this routine.

When you want to buy insurance, a new gadget, go on holiday, or buy some new music, you might first hear of the product in front of your TV but you then go straight onto the web to Moneysupermarket, Engadget, or Tripadvisor, or Amazon respectively to read the reviews, and check stuff out in more detail. When you want to complain about Starbucks you can now make it famous by complaining on YouTube. When you want to sell an old car or bike you go to Ebay. The web stretches across everything now, and needs to be central in not only acquiring new customers, but retaining them, and growing their value to you.

Digital must now be developed first. The Cyberspace workshop is where you tinker, and experiment to turn your brand into a utility, and cement it into the life of your audience. Your TV and DM increasingly become about advertising your online utility. The role of digital is broader than any other communication type.

However let’s not forget that digital is not the only tool in the toolbox that you can use. TV still has the ability to make an idea famous quickly, and direct mail still has the ability to have powerful one-on-one communications. However, when you add digital to this mix and create optimised integrated experiences, you create something truly powerful. But the digital must be based around advertising as an experience that aims to solve real life problems, rather than disguise these problems, and it should be designed to talk to your audience across the whole span of the lifecycle.

In traditional media we generally ask what message should we creatively communicate? But in digital we should rather ask what should our communications be DOING? Do, not say, is the mantra of the next stage of digital. Thinking in pictures and words is still central, but we should now stop thinking of cyberspace as a canvas but rather as a workshop where we roll our sleeves up to help our audiences. That’s the role of digital: helping audiences make the world wide web useful for them. But don’t see this as charity, see this as the price of entry.

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A few months ago we met talented artist Sunil Pawar. Sunil’s work is inspired by his music background and this is echoed in his loud and bold, graffiti-art style. He uses spraypraints and acrylics to create graphic and abstract effects. Last week we went to see his most recent paintings which are currently up in Flawless&Co, New Bond Street. They have an edgy street vibe and we love them!

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