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How to kill a cultural icon…

January 22, 2012 By Dan Thornton Leave a Comment

There’s a classic Bill Hicks routine which states that as soon as you appear in a commercial for a product, you are removed from the artistic cannon forever. And I struggle to think of a time when applying that role would have caused me to miss out on something particularly great – although the age-old tradition of celebrities popping up in seemingly random adverts in countries like Japan mean they may be some examples.

But what happens when the stars aren’t human, but characters in a story which has become immensely popular and adopted by millions around the world with their own passionate interpretations and fandom? OK, so we should probably be used to this by now, judging by the way this particular story has been used, exploited and hollowed-out for every possible revenue stream, but still…

So the character whose entrance into a rebel ship inspired fear and nightmares in generations of people is now a middle-management consultant to a chain of average computer retailers.

And then this happens…

If you remember all those strange people around the world who declare themselves as a Jedi whenever a census appears, a reasonable percentage of them aren’t doing it entirely as a joke – there’s enough evidence online of the Jedi mindset being compared to a more recognised religion. Without debating the merits of each religion, this is essentially like seeing the head of whichever version you follow decide to start pimping themselves out for commercials.

I’m done with Star Wars…

I don’t remember the first time I watched Star Wars, but I do remember a friend actually having a film projector at an early birthday party to screen The Empire Strikes Back. And whilst my collection of toys was sold by my father without my knowledge when I was a teenager, thus destroying a potential retirement fund, I’ve since discovered that my Star Wars lunchbox still survives in a dusty corner of the garage. And I do have the original trilogy on VHS just so I could show my son that Han fired first, just as it should be.

But that’s balanced with the fact I don’t expect every piece of entertainment to be an artistic statement, the history of merchandising and utilising the Star Wars world to extract every last penny from it, and the fact various adverts have appeared in the past with some of the characters – I’ve discovered Yoda apparently also picked up a cheque for a Japanese advert a while ago, like so many other stars.

I’m in my 30s, I’ve worked in the publishing and entertainment industries for 10+ years, and I know how all this works – and yet I feel a sense of loss with the resignation. One of the guiding stories of my childhood, which I wanted to share with my son as he grows older, has now lost any magic it had. It’s no more meaningful than whichever animated feature will be on the side of Happy Meals next month.

Marketing with listening and meaning:

If you’re one of the growing number of companies embracing the approach of standing clearly for a defined purpose, then you might believe you’re above this risk.

And if you’re just in the business of churning out a product, perhaps an unexciting one, then you might believe it doesn’t matter.

But the important thing is that I don’t think George Lucas and everyone else involved had set out to make a serious artistic statement which could spring into a belief and support which has last 30+ years. He made some films, and realised that there was more money to be made around them than directly from them – particularly pre-VHS, DVD and Streaming.

The meaning and experiences came from the people who watched,shared, discussed, and believed – would you know if the same thing was growing around your brand? Are you not only monitoring but paying attention, analysing, listening and shaping your future in that context?

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Why don’t Facebook fans like us anymore?

March 21, 2011 By Dan Thornton 5 Comments

Some interesting research coming from ExactTarget, including this, picked up via SeventySeven.

It’s an interesting summary of the reasons people have unfollowed Facebook Pages, with ‘The Company Posted Too Frequently’ at 44% of unfollows, and ‘My Wall was becoming too crowded with marketing posts and I needed to get rid of some of them’ at 43%. There’s some mixed messages in there, as acknowledged by ExactTarget’s full report (Available in exchange for an email address and worth the download), as 24% didn’t get enough deals, whilst a different 24% thought posts were too promotional.

So what’s a brand to do?

The need for a clear content strategy:

The thing I’d have love to have seen in the report would be examples of pages cited for each reason. For instance, the 17% who found content too chatty – was it a brand that was being uncharacteristically chatty? Or one you’d have expected to be more informal?

And were people Liking pages which they presumed would be offering constant deals only to find out that it was a publicity broadcasting tool, or a conversational approach? Were they mistaken or being misled by something? Is it wise to try and aim for a middle ground and attempt to please everyone all the time?

It’s something that becomes less of an issue on Twitter – multiple profiles can each target different areas, with plenty of examples of accounts which purely publicise deals, and profiles from the same brand focused on customer support (e.g. Dell).

And importantly, the same report also indicates that ‘unliking’ a page doesn’t mean that people won’t buy from the company – ’63% of consumers said they were as likely or more likely to purchase something from a company after ending their Facebook relationship.’

Some conclusions:

Often said, but still rarely accepted is the fact that ‘Likes’ really aren’t that important as a metric. Obviously it’s nice if the figure is going up, but the engagement on the page, engagement with individual messages, and important off-site metrics such as referrals are far more relevant.

And secondly, when you’re setting up, using, or revising your Facebook page it’s important to set a clear role for it within an overall content/marketing strategy for your brand. Do you want to encourage sales? Customer service? Conversation? You’ll always get a mixture of responses, but if you can provide some clear messaging and singposts to show what the purpose is, and keep it consistent, you’re more likely to be found by people that want that aspect of your business above the others.

Thirdly – I haven’t spotted anything in the Facebook Pages Terms that actually limits the amount of pages a company could operate. Perhaps the profile rules and a hangover from websites has meant that we’re artificially limiting ourselves to one aggregated Facebook Page for a brand or company, when we could potentially be using distinct pages for different purposes?

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Filed Under: Content Marketing, Facebook, social media marketing, social networks Tagged With: best practice, brands, facebook fanpages, liking, messaging, tips, why fans unlike

Misunderstanding cigarette branding…

November 22, 2010 By Dan Thornton 2 Comments

The UK Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley has suggested cigarettes should be sold in plain packaging, as ‘the evidence is clear that packaging helps to recruit smokers’.

Sadly for those who want to prevent smoking, he appears to be talking cobblers – as suggested by the fact the previous Government ditched the same plan two years ago due to a lack of evidence to that effect.

What’s happened is that there’s a misunderstanding of the role of branding in cigarette smokers.

People encourage other people to start smoking.
Branding and People influence which particular product someone smokes.

Removing branding won’t make any difference to the amount of people trying smoking. It might make a difference in the number of cigarette companies, but the spread of cigarette smoking is largely spread by encountering other people that smoke and being influenced by them in some way. There’s a handy chapter in The Tipping Point on the triggers for smoking, quoting examples of being influenced by people who were seen as cool, and also smoked. The basic hypothesis is that some people who smoke happen to be cool, and therefore smoking is perceived as cool (Rather than smoking making someone cool – the reality is that it makes people smell of tobacco, wheeze when they’re running, and end up dying earlier more often than if they hadn’t smoked – but as a smoker for over 10 years, I already know this).

Cigarette by SuperFantastic on Flickr (CC Licence)

So why do tobacco companies spend so much on marketing, and finding ways to place their brands in your eye, despite cigarette advertising bans?

The first cigarette I ever tried was a Silk Cut Ultra Light – and yet for 10 years I’ve smoked Marlboro. I’m not sure it’s a coincidence that Ayrton Senna drove a Marlboro McLaren, Wayne Rainey rode a Marlboro Yamaha, and I actually suffered through the feature film ‘Harley-Davidson and the Marlboro Man‘. Given the choice, I’ll pay a slight premium for the familiar taste and amount of nicotine, plus the branding and image etc. But if that brand vanished tomorrow, I’d find another one in the time it took to run out of cigarettes. The fact is that in the past I’ve bought John Player Specials (JPS Lotus, JPS Norton), and Rothmans (Rothman Honda in the Wayne Gardner era) as fall-backs which have no relation in taste or nicotine levels.

Image via Wikipedia

I’d reveal a more effective way to tackle smoking, but unfortunately there’s a limit to how long I can write about the topic without nipping outside for a cigarette…

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Filed Under: Advertising, Branding, marketing Tagged With: Advertising, branding, brands, cigarettes, marketing, restrictions, smoking, teens, unbranded packs

Find the most popular tweeted brands on Twitter quickly

November 2, 2009 By Dan Thornton 2 Comments

If you want to find the most popular brands on Twitter in terms of mentions, you could spend some time setting up various monitoring systems. Or you can just go to TweetedBrands and see which 50 companies are getting the most mentions in any one day.

It’s simple and effective for a quick overview, and each mention number links to the appropriate Twitter search.