You got it

The first most of us heard of Lewis Road Creamery chocolate milk was when television news told us we couldn’t get it. It was the marketing phenomenon of 2014 – the product everyone seemed to want without a single paid ad in mainstream media.

So it’s something of an irony that the brain behind the milk is 90s advertising guru Peter Cullinane, former head of Saatchi & Saatchi and the man who helped bring us enduring campaigns such as Telecom’s Spot, the Fernleaf Butter family and the laconic Mainland Cheese guy.

Four months after its spectacularly successful launch, the chocolate drink still disappears off shop shelves so rapidly it’s routinely sold out, despite Lewis Road increasing production from an initial 1000 litres a week to 33,000 litres. Many marketers have tried to deconstruct the campaign to understand what made it fire, but Cullinane says it defies logical explanation. He describes it in terms of the so-called black swan theory – a surprise and unpredictable event that’s often wrongly rationalised with the benefit of hindsight.

Cullinane drove the marketing through Facebook, but says that wasn’t by choice. He simply didn’t have the $300,000 it would have cost for a television blitz – nearly 10 times what he spent on Facebook-based videos and promoted posts. “It wasn’t a decision taken lightly, but I was writing the cheques. I couldn’t have launched Lewis Road 10 years ago – the money required would have been of a completely different magnitude using traditional media and a standard business case.”

So should this make traditional media – particularly television – very afraid? Cullinane says no. “Everyone has latched on to social media. It has a role but it’s not a panacea – and it’s especially not a panacea if the product itself doesn’t have some sort of extraordinary news value in its own right, and 99% of the products out there are neither new nor particularly newsworthy.”

Key to the Lewis Road message was the collaboration with an iconic New Zealand brand, Whittaker’s, which has more than 300,000 Facebook followers. Lewis Road had just 7000 before the chocolate milk launch. It now has 72,000.

But social media in general, and Facebook in particular, are a great leveller, says Cullinane, and if the product hadn’t been any good, that would have been quickly reflected online. It’s why Spot the dog (named to promote the Services and Products of Telecom) probably wouldn’t have worked today. “What the Spot campaign was able to do was make up for a pretty ordinary product. It was a compensatory thing. But now if the product isn’t good, people will hear about it really, really quickly.”

The ability to build a conversation with his customers – he’s dubbed them “the Roadies” – through Facebook, allowed Cullinane to turn the supply disaster into a marketing masterstroke. Instead of a near-riot of dissatisfaction, thwarted customers – always addressed by their first name in messages from Cullinane or his offsider, another ex-Saatchi account director, Angela Weeks – were surprisingly grateful to be told personally why they couldn’t get their precious milk, or which shops to queue at and when.

 

 

OH, THE HUMANITY

Cullinane’s Facebook foray was financially forced upon him, but at Auckland ad agency Contagion, the digital and social media habits of potential customers are examined in almost forensic detail. Husband and wife team Dean and Bridget Taylor (ex Saatchi & Saatchi and DDB) launched Contagion as a digital and social media agency in 2010. That meant understanding that customers were no longer just listeners and watchers, but also commentators.

“The internet has brought a voice to consumers,” says Contagion’s social media expert Tom Bates. “What that’s meant is that the power has shifted a long way away from brands, back to the consumer. So with Facebook, your branded content won’t go anywhere if people don’t believe it and aren’t engaged with it.”

Increasingly, like Lewis Road, brands are building a strong social community online before advertising elsewhere. Food company Tasti, for example, had a lengthy online campaign that asked followers to nominate Kiwi icons ahead of its animated “Tasti bar” TV ad with an adapted soundtrack based on OMC’s How Bizarre. Followers whose suggestions were included were named in the credits when the ad premiered on Facebook days before its first TV airing, resulting in hundreds of “shares”. The campaign saw Tasti sales grow 35% in two years.

This success seems at odds with research recently published showing Facebook’s declining business value to marketers. A brand’s posts on its Facebook page now reach just 4-6% of its followers, unless the content is paid for. Facebook also filters news feeds so that only what it deems the most relevant content for users is displayed, saying it’s trying to reduce the clutter of online content. Of course, it’s no coincidence that this puts more money in Mark Zuckerberg’s already bulging pockets.

But Bates says the key for brands wanting to cut through on Facebook is to create content users want to connect with, by presenting a “human side” to the business. “A lot of corporates have struggled with this. They’ve put a big wall up and spat out a few comms.”

Since its launch in 2011, the video and photo-sharing site Instagram has also had explosive growth – now up to 150 million users monthly – and is an increasingly popular way for brands to spread their message to hundreds of thousands of people at minimal cost. A study last year by US digital think tank L2 found 92% of prestige brands have Instagram accounts, posting an average of six photos a week, with companies also paying influential people with big follower numbers to post images of their products.

Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion.

“Instagram is probably the coolest/trendiest social network for the mainstream audience here in New Zealand,” says Bates. “The likes of Snapchat and WhatsApp are popular for younger audiences but lack the visibility for brands to make an impact at scale because they’re messaging, not open, networks.”

He says brands are using influencers (similar to brand ambassadors or sponsorships), which sees them aligning with people with both similar values to theirs and a big enough reach and having them create content for brands. Radio hosts are frequently involved; Contagion is working with Jay-Jay Harvey at The Edge, for Peugeot.

Consumers no longer want to be told to buy a product, they want to engage with it, says Contagion’s digital planner, Richard Thompson. Perhaps unwittingly, the audience then becomes an online advocate of the brand. “You’re trying to build an army of people online who will reinforce the messages.” But to do that, the content needs to enhance consumers’ lives in some way, to stimulate and entertain them.

It explains why American viral film-maker Casey Neistat – one million-plus YouTube followers, 100 million video views – is considered one of the key influencers for top brands wanting a profile outside the mainstream. His films are quirkily entertaining and it doesn’t matter that we know what we’re really seeing is an ad by another name. In a clip that’s had 13 million views since he uploaded it in April 2012, Neistat turned Nike’s brief to produce a movie for its “Life is a Sport. Make it Count” mantra into a 10-day round-the-world trip. Nice work if you can get it.

Bates points out he’s downloaded a Nike app that helps him keep track of his daily runs. “It’s actually an ad but it’s enhancing my experience and giving me so much value that I say, ‘Yes, I’ll spend 45 minutes a day with you.’ There’s no way I’d spend 45 minutes a day watching ads, but I have this loyalty to Nike because it’s helping me. And when I see a Nike clip online, I’m interested.” He says the company has moved from superstars such as Michael Jordan telling us to “Just do it” to a different proposition – “Enable me to do it”.

 

MOVING TARGETS

What it is that consumers want to do is monitored almost by the keystroke. Technology such as the social media monitoring platform Radian6 allows companies to eavesdrop on our digital searches and conversations on sites such as Twitter and on blogs. You’re still anonymous and it can’t snoop on your private Facebook page, but it’s one more piece of the online profile you develop every time you visit a website. Companies are increasingly using the “cookies” dropped onto your computer when you visit a site to track your return and target you in the ads that pop up when you log on.

The depth and scale of this targeting was graphically shown in Contagion’s Orcon campaign involving Kim Dotcom in 2013. The agency admits it got in just before Dotcom “jumped the shark” and his popularity plummeted.

The company identified two key target clients as potential broadband customers: people moving house and gamers. The latter, says Bates, were historically a loyal base for Orcon, “very tech savvy and very passionate – they can be moved into advocacy quickly if you’re delivering to them”. Gamers were targeted with social activities, videos and advertising on gaming sites, as well as YouTube “pre-rolls”. Potential buyers visiting real estate sites were also singled out, but here, conversions to broadband sales were slower – people typically take longer to find the right house. But the demographic data showed the Christchurch rebuild presented a big marketing opportunity, and in late autumn 2013, the company ring-fenced the city with Dotcom Orcon billboards.

For decades, says Thompson, broadband providers have had “street fighter teams” signing up customers. What’s happening these days is simply “digital door-knocking”.

 

A LIFE OF ITS OWN

When the Listener asked the Contagion team to name their favourite television ads outside their own, the question drew only blank stares. “None of us watches TV,” they said.

But even for those of us who do plant ourselves in front of the box every night, there’s another challenge for advertisers: how many of us watch TV without a mobile, tablet or laptop in hand? How do they capture attention that’s routinely divided during both programmes and ad breaks by texts, emails, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other distractions?

Even when we’re tossing cornflakes into the trolley at the supermarket, we’re just as likely to be on a mobile at the same time, says Auckland University of Technology professor of marketing, retail and advertising Andrew Parsons. “People under 30 are operating on 10 to 12 platforms at the same time – one of the big conundrums is how to communicate with people who have all these different ways to connect that business isn’t controlling.”

In-store promotions are frequently stymied because of it, he says. “Look at shoppers going down the supermarket aisle – they’re on the phone, checking email, texting, talking to someone or whatever, and they’re pulling things off the shelf by habit.”

Ten years ago, we were exposed to about 3000 messages a day – now it’s around 30,000. “You really have to appreciate that this whole notion of consumers talking peer to peer is taking over the effectiveness of the ad itself. Those million people around the world who tell me this is the right jacket to buy have far more influence than any advertising.”

It’s a myth, says Parsons, that “viral” social media campaigns mean consumers don’t know what they’re being sold. “They’re very, very savvy and quickly pick up what’s real and what’s not real, what’s paid for and not.”

Companies now have to add value to a brand by explaining how it can make consumers’ lives better. It’s why pet food manufacturers set up web resources for animal nutrition and pet care and hardware stores give online DIY advice. But Parsons says most of the new approaches to communication aren’t getting through to traditional ad agencies. “They’re trying to figure it out themselves.”

David Thomason, head of planning at DraftFCB – named New Zealand’s most effective ad agency of 2014 – agrees. “No one can actually stand up and say they’re an expert in how all these channels work because none of them have been around for more than five minutes. If you look at television, we’ve had it for 60 years and we’ve got really good at every aspect of it. We have to embrace that we’re in an experimental mode and are probably going to be from now on.”

It may explain why advertising spend still tends to be anchored in traditional media – or, as they say in the trade, the eyeballs are moving to desktop and mobile but the revenue isn’t. He says the upside of digital channels is that it’s easier to react quickly to stop messages that aren’t getting any traction. The downside is that although large numbers can be reached, the effect is transient. “What you want to do is keep it going.”

“Keeping it going” means delivering content that gains a life of its own. DraftFCB was behind the high-profile SPCA-Mini “Driving Dogs” campaign and John Kirwan’s depression-awareness series. It also brought “beersies” and “yeah, nah” into local parlance, giving drinkers who wanted to say “no more” an acceptable way to do it.

But though the driving dogs garnered national attention – Thomason thinks they featured on Campbell Live three times – Tom Agee, senior lecturer in University of Auckland Business School’s marketing department questions what, if anything, it did for Mini or the SPCA. “I was on the board of the SPCA at the time and the campaign was funny and clever, but I couldn’t see the value of it. They thought it was great because it got all these hits on YouTube, but I don’t know if it got more donors or more people to go out and get an animal. And I don’t think it did a damned thing for Mini.”

 

COMPELLED TO BE BETTER

US-born Agee, who has worked in and part-owned agencies in Virginia, says one of the most effective ad campaigns of recent years has been Whittaker’s, which has bitten chunks out of Cadbury’s market share in the past four years and become the No 1 most trusted brand, according to Reader’s Digest. Part of its success was thanks to a savvy social media campaign driven by its brand manager, Jasmine Currie.

What social media enables a company or brand to do, says Vaughn Davis, owner of indie agency The Goat Farm, is to get into the trusted “word of mouth” space that was once the preserve of only the people you knew. Until social media came along, “you’d shrug your shoulders and say, ‘We’re not your friends, all we can do is advertise more.’”

“Social media is where brands are equal to people. You don’t get any more online cred for being Coca-Cola, Spark or Vodafone than you do for being some teenager in a bedroom in Tauranga, so there’s an equality there. And there’s a threat that suddenly all your media weight doesn’t count for as much as it used to.”

In the first 200 years of advertising, says Davis, “it was all about walls – finding a great big wall and a lot of coloured paint and writing your slogan on it. The bigger the wall, the more colourful the paint, the more compelling the message, the more stuff you’d sell. The change that social media brought was it put windows in the walls. Your company, your brand, your process and your product used to sit largely behind the wall, but now everyone on the outside can see everyone on the inside. For the better companies it means accepting that everyone can see into the heart of the business and it’s compelling them to actually be better, which I think is fantastic.”

Davis, who created the popular BNZ “Let’s get together” piggy bank ads as executive creative director at Y&R, says the new marketing model is for traditional advertising to come last. The old model was “great in its day – you spent a heck of a lot of money making amazing ads people loved. The new model is putting time and effort into doing stuff people want to tell stories about, and if there’s a place in that for an ad, also do that. It’s a reversal.”

A recent example was the campaign The Goat Farm did for Invivo wines, using UK talkshow host Graham Norton. Invivo not only sent Norton free wine – which he and his guests now drink on the show – but flew a chilly bin of Marlborough grapes to the UK for him to trample. The grapes were returned to Auckland and limited-edition Graham Norton’s Own Sauvignon Blanc was born.

The resulting publicity – another spot on Campbell Live and four pages in Norton’s new autobiography – was priceless and the cost relatively low. “If you wanted to get that sort of media attention and make and run ads, you’d start with half a million [dollars].” With the airfares and Davis’s fee, the cost was a fraction of that – Norton’s payment was a 1% share in Invivo. The old-school ad alternative? “We could have just done a billboard saying Graham Norton drinks Invivo wine.”

 

 

TO SKIP, OR NOT TO SKIP

Ah, the billboard. Despite being one of the oldest tools in the adman’s kit, apparently it’s still a goodie. Even the digitally savvy group at Contagion used them in the high-tech Orcon advertising, with Bridget Taylor dubbing them “stature advertising”. “People believe that if they see you on telly and billboards you’re a big and successful company.”

They were also the centrepiece of Special Group’s campaign for 2degrees business mobile featuring “likeable entrepreneurs” Al Brown, Kate Sylvester, Dion Nash and Geoff Ross. Billboard and outdoor advertising seems to be growing in influence, says Special Group partner Michael Redwood, because you can’t switch it off. It’s now the only medium “you can’t fast-forward or avoid” in a transformed media landscape.

“Twenty years ago, there was almost novelty value in a third TV channel. In those days, if you had a 30-second ad on One News and a full page ad in the Listener, you pretty much had New Zealand reached. Advertising was quite simple because you had a captive audience.”

He says ad budgets are increasingly being spent on Google, to ensure a brand or business appears in the top few search finds. “They can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on it, so almost by stealth Google has become the biggest media company in the world.”

The internet age has also made our fingers quick to skip. Redwood says when comedian Rhys Darby fronted 2degrees ads tailored for YouTube and television on demand, the first five seconds of the script had him saying, “I know what you’re doing, this is good, don’t skip, don’t skip”, to counter people looking to hit the “close” window. “Normally the figure for on demand consumers watching an ad [right] through is 8%. We got it up to 11% and that was a big cause for celebration. I said, ‘So pretty much only 89% of people really resented an ad before the programme they wanted to watch.’”

But Redwood says though “everything has changed, nothing has changed”.

“The business is still about talented people with clever strategic thinking, great storytelling, great craft and execution through the right channels. The fundamental thing that isn’t changing is that in any kind of ad, you have to be relevant to who you’re talking to, interesting, memorable and persuasive. And that’s exactly the same as it was.”

 

Hit and miss

Prefer to skip the ads on television? Listener technology columnist Peter Griffin tells how.

Have you noticed that when you zoom through the ads at 30X speed using your MySky remote, they still make sense? That’s the crafty advertising industry adapting to the rise of ad-skipping by making two minutes of ads digestible in 15 seconds.

There is a way to miss the ads entirely, but you’ll have to get inventive and the most popular viewing options are closed to ad-skipping. The popular MySky box offers manual ad-skipping that requires you to tap the fast forward button and rely on split-second hand-eye co-ordination to hit play just as the programme resumes. The Freeview system works with dozens of digital video recorders, but Freeview-certified recorders have removed the automatic ad-skipping functionality.

A number of TiVo boxes are still kicking around and they too require you to play fast-forward roulette, though TiVo has a great skip-back feature that assumes you’re not fast enough to judge the end of the ad break and sends you back a second further so you don’t miss the show.

Some non-certified Freeview DVRs and older models from brands including Panasonic have a function that allows you to double tap your remote button to leap forward 30 seconds or a minute, thereby missing a swathe of advertising. But as Freeview outcasts, they may not have access to the Freeview electronic programming guide and may not auto-retune themselves. Buy carefully when opting for a non-certified DVR.

Watching TV with a tuner on your PC, you can use Windows Media Centre, Microsoft’s TV-viewing software, to set the ad period you want to skip. However, Windows Media Centre also lacks the official electronic programming guide you get with Sky and Freeview.

The other options available with PC-based media recorders get more obscure and technical very quickly. Streaming websites TVNZ On Demand and 3NOW typically play an ad at the start of a programme and often one partway through too, much less than what you’re exposed to watching the networks’ broadcast channels.

But the easiest way to avoid adverts whether using MySky, Freeview or a stand-alone DVR is to start time shifting – watching your favourite shows outside their live broadcast slots. Record the 6pm news and start playback at 6.20pm to avoid the most ad-heavy hour. You’ll still need a mean trigger finger to avoid overshooting the ad breaks, but in my house we’ve turned it into a game – the loser has to make a fresh brew.

In ads we trust?

Measuring the impact of ads and marketing online and in social media is an inexact science, as recent research shows. In December, the Association of National Advertisers in the US released a study that revealed computers being remotely operated by hackers accounted for nearly a quarter of all viewings of digital video ads worldwide – a fraud that could cost advertisers US$6.3 billion globally this year.

Nielsen’s latest Trust in Advertising report, which polled nearly 30,000 people in 58 countries in 2013, found consumers were more trusting than they were in its 2007 study. Nearly 85% of respondents cited word-of-mouth recommendations as the most influential and 68% said they trusted consumer opinions posted online. Trust in advertising on branded websites increased nine percentage points to 69%. Ads on television and in newspapers and magazines were the most trusted forms of paid advertising, ahead of billboards and radio ads, with text ads on mobile phones coming in last. TV is still the front runner for delivering marketing messages, based on ad spend, but Nielsen said “earned” advertising (endorsements by a third party) was empowering consumers to be advocates for their favourite brands.

The magic touch

Funny ads have always been telly favourites – BASF’s “Dear John” was deemed the best ad of all time in Fair Go’s November awards, with Specsavers’ aerobics ad topping the 2014 offerings. But here are some other winners selected by our industry experts:

• ASB’s Goldstein series. Says The Goat Farm’s Vaughn Davis: “It’s a really good example of a brand resisting the temptation of change for change’s sake and having a fresh idea every year.” He also gives a nod to Telecom’s “Keeping in touch”, featuring the father and son at the family bach over the years.


• The Milky Bar kid. “Still one of the best ever,” says University of Auckland’s Tom Agee.


• The “ghost chips” road safety ad. AUT’s Andrew Parsons says it was one of the most effective ads in recent times. “All the metrics showed it was effective with the age group it was targeting; they saw and remembered the ad and the message.” But in doing so, it may also have unwittingly promoted a harmful message, “that it’s okay to drink so much that you’re completely wasted, so long as you don’t drive”.

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