Betting on the Come: Advertising While On Fire

It should come as no surprise that clients "go dark" (this is an ad term for stop their advertising) during a down economy. This fight or flight mentality is that of human nature. Not many of us wait around to turn the other cheek. But other clients, brave clients, know that it's always darkest before the dawn and during this time your light will be seen as the way. What?

Meaningful advertising is hard to come by, let's face it. We're more often than not simply trying to convince you that you need something that you most certainly can live without. Often industries such as travel, luxury, real estate, try to keep even keel knowing that if they don't their competitors most certainly will.

In the case of IBM however looked at a much bigger vision. To embrace not only rebranding themselves as innovators but making themselves "human" again. After years of spending millions of dollars to create computers to beat Russian Chess champions, let's face it, IBM was looking a bit grotesque. They not only sought to reconstruct their brand and be more approachable, but literally to be seen as a necessity within the state of a downturn economic climate.  Advertising that prays on the fears of the unknown and how they (insert savvy client) can help make it wonderful once again. If you've got the captail, and the stones, to play at this level you will win in the end.

Trolls: Turn That Frown Upside Down

Well often the community as a whole will take care of the 'trolls' (as they are called), but if your community is not loyal or not strong (active) enough there are a couple of tactics to take:

• "Kill them with kindness." Nothing looks worse for a troll than a company doing their very best to appease his requests.
• Outline the problem in great detail publicly (on Facebook, twitter, etc.) and resolve with as much care.
• If you can always overtly familiarize the troll with product or service.
• If they're being slanderous (privately) extend a very polite and legal cease and desist - he may post it publicly so it's important that you're not threatening in any way.
• Show them your SocialMedia SOP (or create one) and insure them that you're speaking to them honestly.
• Unless completely profane don't remove the posts; it will just fuel their fire.
• Click through to their Facebook profile and go down to the lower left hand corner and "Report/Block This Person" and detail the reason if need be.
• Assign him a "shrink" - this is a social media expert that will work one-on-one with the person to resolve the issue if there is indeed a way to resolve it.
• If all else fails and they've made you a "hobby of hate" you can sue them for "Tortious Interference" - when a person intentionally damages the plaintiff's contractual or other business relationships. This is often hard to prove, but to your credit you'll have had all the posts to reference with digital time stamps. If you can prove a legitimate association to dropping sales or negative feedback during the time of the individual you [might] have a case. 

Though let it be known I'm not an attorney, I'm a superhero.

Part Two: Community Farmer - Attending To The Flock

Starting a community, however, is not as simple as [some] of the below software applications will make it seem. Much like teaching a room full of three year olds, all groups require rules, moderation, goals, expectations, communication, and swift respectful discipline should these aforementioned items not be observed. Most of all, be honest, transparent and inclusive to the group. No one likes a bully, least of all the person in charge. It also helps that you embrace the most active participants that align themselves with the group, its rules and communicate in what you deem as the best way be put put in administrative or moderation roles, easing the burden on you and justifying that your group is not and autocracy.

Here's a quick list:

• Start question threads
• Elicit feedback (remember, you don't have to act on every comment or criticism)
• Grow a spine (you'll need it)
• Respond to criticism rapidly (doesn't mean you have to do anything about it right away, but you do need to respond)
• Acknowledge good communication
• Do not judge; simply be a part of the community and intervene only if absolutely necessary
• Don't censor or edit discussion unless harmful or it falls outside the rules
• Follow the rules; optimize the rules
• Cater to the egos of the group within reason
• Destroy your bullies publicly
• Create themes and programs for discussion
• Listen, listen, listen. The group is not a platform for you to do all the communication
• Make the site visually appealing by advocating user-generated content
• Progressively survey your community (using free tools like http://www.surveymonkey.com/) to insure that your heading in the right direction
• Evolve! Make sure that your content isn't stuck at a dead end
• Hold live events where everyone can meet one another in real time
• Create Podcasts/Stream/Video for the group
• Bring in outside authors, bloggers and spotlights
• Keep a steady stream of like-minded links from google alerts and RSS streams injected in your community
• If you go on vacation, switch servers or do anything to disrupt communication let everyone know prepatorily
• Do your best to respond to all comments
• Be authentic, honest and charismatic
• Be topical
• Have fun

IKEA Kicks Down The Doors Of Mediocrity

While the idea is not revolutionary I do think it's a bit groundbreaking – The ability to customize your furniture design quality. IKEA is no doubt on the forefront of harnessing design talent. They or known for gathering up the best of the best industrial designers and interior designers, beating all the good ideas out of them and releasing them out to the world where they undoubtedly be jaded and bitter.

That being said the idea around This Is My KEA is pushing the boundaries on personalization. The website gives you the ability to pick from dozens of top designers work and then have that work put on a preselected number of furniture pieces. What's more industrious of them is their willingness to extend the offering to all designers. Much like threadless does for their social design aggregate. Will they do as threadless has done and allow voting of top designs or for an upcharge allow one offs? That remains to be seen. I'm sure if the monetary model makes sense they'll do just about anything. Clever little Dutch pixies.

Ordinary 2 Extraordinary: Conceptual Connections

The consumers mind is sharper than ever. They have the ability to process, filter an delete content faster than ever before. So what can you do as an advertiser to combat or embrace this? Make the common place something conceptually special. When's the last time you felt compelled to switch garbage bags brands? When's the last time you felt like you had to jump out of your seat and check a URL that you just saw on TV? The key (as plainly as this sounds) is taking things that you do every day, apply story and shift the vision. Take for instance the following three ads:

This series of ads was some of the shining examples of what can come out of storytelling in thirty seconds. It takes the mundane life of the avergage business professional and turns it into something not only compelling, funny but motivates you to compare your current situation to it. When's the last time you felt like you would debate your car with $100k Mercedes? You wouldn't because you can't. That's why they sell that product in reverse –– exclusivity, removal from the pack and engineering. So be care to how your applying your connections.

But when you're talking to the other 95% you need to emotionally connect to their real lives. Here's some questions to help quickly find those nuggets:

1. When you sit with your friends what do you bitch about?
2. What would you change about the products/services that you use; or job that you do?
3. When working what is the consistent gossip, problem, issues and or situations you find yourself in?
4. What makes these situations? (e.i. – meetings? staff changes? executive hierarchy?)
5. If I were King/Queen I would?
6. Can parallels be made in what you do with unrelated concepts? Example: someone stole my food from the break room refrigerator –– could be a high-tech diamond heist in Germany. A bit of a stretch but you get that model.
7. When you make light of your situation in what context does it fall? What make it funny and how (if at all) is it resolved?

The risk an advertiser needs to take is how granular are they willing to be with the concept to the demographic. Everyone wants their ad to connect to everyone alive but that's foolish and ultimately ineffective. In a world of spoon feeding directions to users we've tend to forget that the audience can think for themselves.

Addictive Advertising

There's very little advertising that's worth its salt anymore. We see so much of it and we're so good at filtering it, it's nearly impossible to "stick" to your soul. How do we touch the audience anymore? What will change behavior? Can you really create the tipping point anymore? This is a popular topic when ad geeks culminate and discuss what's good, bad and ugly. What's harder even still is putting creative arms around hard issues like Public Service Announcements (PSA's), health issues, disaster and ANYTHING that personally touches one's family.

Which brings me to Montana's Meth Project (Anti Methanphetamine campaign) called "METH – NOT EVEN ONCE." Very little effects me in advertising and almost nothing haunts me. That all changed when I saw this work:

I invite you to suffer through all the television here.

So what makes powerful advertising? Well you can look at this body of work and say "well it's all shock value", but is it? The fact of the matter we can't handle work this big mentally and we push it away praying that they never effect us – but it can. We can be robbed, we can abuse an illegal or LEGAL (OTC) substance, we can have a friend commit suicide, we can suffer from depression or have your child's best friend die in a drunk driving accident – or worse (God forbid). We have to except that candy-coating all work is not necessarily in the best interest of the audience.

Given that this is the case here is a hardcore punchlist that can get you started:

1. It has to make you feel SOMETHING agonising or hit you from personal moments in your past
2. It has to effect you personally, attack the family is the quickest way to get attention
3. It has to effect the audience financially and structurally
4. It has to beg the question of 'HOW DO I FIX THIS?'
5. It must create urgency
6. It must strip down what is MOST important to the audience: children, family, home, friends or lifestyle