May
12
This is your brain on screens
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Joe Mandese over at Mediapost has written a fascinating article on “Screens” in general and the effect they have on the human brain.
Much has been done in “neuroscience” with regards to marketing and its effect on the human brain to try and understand human emotional response to messaging. It’s used to make better ad creative and better media choices to enhance the impact of a campaign or advertiser spend. while the tools aren’t generally used in everyday creative work, there are enough studies that are teaching the marketing community how to make better decisions about what we say and where we say it at a higher level to guide our hands.
What I loved about the article is that it actually covers off on supporting a few key things about DOOH screens and content that are important for marketers to understand:
- Emotionally based creative on (DOOH) screens is actually more powerful in connecting with consumers (emotionally) than interactive screens although less “engaging” (I found this fascinating to learn)
- The type of content displayed on a screen is an important variable in connecting with consumers emotionally
- Empathy is a strong emotional motivator in connecting with screen content
- Proximity plays an important role in how we perceive content (this was cool too!)
Joe actually alluded to political content during the article and I had to smile because I have personal experience in this “emotional response”, using DOOH screens, that ties right back to this article:
About 18 months ago, we were involved in some contextual political advertising and DOOH factored in heavily to how they were targeting constituents and voters. One of the plethora of environments we used happened to be Universities….which tend to have more “left leaning” voters based on sheer age. That being said, one of the ads that ended being digitally distributed to the DOOH screens was a bit of a personal “attack ad” on the character of one of the candidates. The ad was DESIGNED to spur an emotional response. To our great delight, the student reaction to the ads on the screens was so strong that the university was overwhelmed with calls and emails about the campaign message on the screens and how the students felt it was inappropriate messaging. The party was forced to take down the ad.
Now that’s creating an emotional response using DOOH! This stuff really works if you use it properly.
When it comes to advertising, much of it is art and I loved this comment on how it affects consumers…although this obviously makes it even more difficult to measure the long term effect of campaigns! From the article:
In fact, it is because we are not aware of some of these sensory effects that they can have such a powerful effect on our brains.
Now if only we could figure out how to use DOOH to actually get people to feel the same way as a loved one getting “shocked” we’d be flying 
(read the article…you’ll get it)
Mar
24
Engaging the crowds on 5th Avenue with DOOH
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Meant to post this back in Jan or Feb but missed it and got busy.
Good (and popular) execution for the TV show the buried life. No idea what the show’s about as I’ve never watched it but they did a media blitz for a bit in NY (and obviously other cities). Check out the vid below and how many people were just standing around and captive. It would be interesting to extend this content into other environments too…you could do great shocking content/messaging…all in near real time.
See the video below on people actually watching and entering things on a big touch screen 42″ keyboard. It’s also streaming content from other locations (presumably) and from the web….all moderated of course
Video:
Sphere: Related ContentDec
18
DOOH Cannibalizing OOH, Print
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Erik from Mediapost wrote what I would consider to be a very “nice” (read: kind) piece on the 17.2% decline in Q3 OOH media revenues.
The realities of today’s DOOH consideration inside of larger media strategies is that, once selected, the money to support the business has to come from somewhere. For the purposes of this post, I will exclude “Digital Outdoor” (e.g. the really bright superboards or Time’s Square digital), which Erik alludes to in the piece, as not included in DOOH in general as it really is a different animal than retail or place based networks.
That somewhere is straight out of the pockets of print and outdoor. Rarely have I seen dollars come in to DOOH from Internet (although occasional) or TV. Money for our medium is being pulled out of print budgets. It also is cannibalizing the existing OOH/Outdoor revenues. Times are definitely turbulent in the Outdoor world, despite some great creative executions by some Outdoor companies and agencies. In some cases, media decisions are being made to completely remove Outdoor from the mix, finding DOOH actually helps fill in gaps in reach and tactics that Outdoor can’t. On the flip side, the decisions to execute media programs these days are made days before launching – not weeks. The 4-6 week lead time required by traditional outdoor firms simply doesn’t fit into some of this year’s media realities. Maybe this is why some folks are saying that the OOH business will be 100% digital in 10 years hmmm?
Dec
17
Top 5 2009 Campaigns From ADCENTRICITY
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Jeff and Chelsey over at ADCENTRICITY have done a good job assembling and commenting on some of the campaigns the company has run through 2009
Thought it was a good list and examples of decent creative and exploration run through 2009 to take a look at. Looking forward to some of the advance use of the medium I expect to see in 2010!
Sphere: Related ContentDec
15
DOOH and Real-Time Data
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Great post on Ad Age on how real time data will make a more comfortable world.
I’ve said for some time that Digital OOH is the “Physical Manifestation of Digital” and we will become central as a medium to extending online programs, driving education and facilitating interaction on a one-2-one, data driven conversation level for brands and between consumers.
If you think you’ve seen what Digital OOH can really do, you ain’t seen nothing yet….as more and more money comes into the DOOH medium, new, better and cleaner content and technological capabilities will emerge making the medium stronger and increasingly relevant. As Anderson states in the article:
“Connecting remote data to people and things in real-time will lead to a series of exciting new devices and applications. Possible examples: real-time comparison and recipe-driven shopping, facial recognition (in social spaces) linked to bios, self-guided tours by phone, voice-queried information about your personal environment. Many of these are technically proved out today, but they will start to emerge as an exciting and brand new trend in applications in 2010.”
You don’t have to BE the conversation in today’s world….you just need to be part of it…
Sphere: Related ContentDec
4
Media up….Except Print
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Interesting article on Fitch’s forecast on the future of media and spending patterns.
TV’s back in bold (at least until DVR utilization reaches 50%). Newspapers are down and not coming back anytime soon….mainly due to fatigue with the medium and advertiser allocation of print $s towards exploration into other, newer mediums.
http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=140834
Sphere: Related ContentNov
13
Active Recap on Recent DOOH
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It’s been an active period in Digital OOH recently. Obviously that has left me without a ton of time to actually say anything intelligent recently (although that may be a more predisposed condition more than anything)
That being said, some other folks have been busy recapping recent events including the OVAB show, Ad:Tech, The Digital Signage Show, the ANA Masters of Marketing, Media Innovation Awards, etc. It was great seeing folks at all of these and reconnecting.
Jeff, Graeme and team have got a number of recap posts up on DOOH over on the ADCENTRICITY blog. The Daily DOOH team and Haynes have also got pieces. So I personally have nothing interesting to say right now but thought I’d point you at some people who do:
Sphere: Related ContentOct
3
Godin and the Impact of Change
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Mitch Joel’s twitter post keyed me to a talk given by Seth Godin almost 2 years ago. The video itself is focused on how Seth has used various tactics to create conversations with and between his audience (or sell his 10 best selling books over the years if you’re a cynic). I recommend you watch it for a few reasons:
- Seth is a great author and speaker and always provides interesting insights
- I loved how he starts off his talk relating the lack of wants for monks to use change because they’re busy and like how they’re doing things now. While Seth was talking about the publishing industry, it just as easily relates to the media business – People don’t want to start to use a better mousetrap if they don’t have to and will let you go your own way until it becomes either a threat or beneficial to them.
- As he says in his talk, the powers that be aren’t incented to be catalysts for change in any business – that’s YOUR job. As smart as the folks are in ANY business, there is rarely a real incentive at the top to innovate or do a core job very differently. This means that it’s up to the folks who are effecting the change to….
- ….prove it. Prove that your way of doing things is necessary and better than how I’m doing things now. This is just as true in media…more research and metrics programs anyone? results?
- Lastly, in listening to all of the strategies and tactics Seth has used over various books, he made mistakes – as you inevitably will when you innovate or “try stuff”. He learned from those mistakes and improved on them and came out with a better model. In media, I would relate this to some of the work I did in online advertising in the late 90s. There were online campaigns we did that were abject failures for our clients…some of them large banks or telecommunication companies. But we didn’t stop pushing use of the medium nor did my clients shy away from identifying mistakes and improving and going back out to try it again and they became more and more successful the further they got into the medium. Mistakes are allowed….the first time
There is one part, about half way through that I believe in sooo much. He discusses a test he did with a book he wrote called the “Dip”. The test was to write a blog post about HIS new book and the same day write a post about a friend’s book. That day he sold 3 times more of his friend’s book than his own. Why? because people assume that if he is writing about his own book, he’s “advertising” whereas if he is writing about a friend’s book, it must be because he really likes it and it’s worth buying.
Why is this important to Digital OOH? I’ve discussed in the past how advertising/advertisers have to be a PART of the conversation in today’s media circus and not BE the conversation….i.e. you yelling about your own products is going to fall on deaf ears. You using other peoples comments from various sources IN one of your ads adds credibility. Check out twitter to see who is speaking about, say, Orbit Gum. Sure, there’s some raunchy/weird comments in there, but Orbit customers are generally extolling how much they love it….BY FLAVOR!
So how powerful would using some of their commentary be in an ad in an environment and screen like this:
Right when they get into the store? Using digital conversations on digital screens where products are bought or where conversations are relevant and beneficial to consumers?
We’re finding lots of interesting tidbits of successful DOOH ad use in ways like this and it’s helping to push that “prove it” mentality Seth mentioned.
Sphere: Related ContentSep
25
Downed Screens Hurt Us All
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Sigh…this type of thing disappoints me. Again, a bad picture from my crappy camera phone but this is a Digital OOH Taxi topper that just went by my office.
Seeing any screen crashed like this is worriesome and does not promote confidence in the space as a whole. One of the major complaints from agencies about the DOOH medium is that they go on tours and screens are down repeatedly for campaigns they’ve purchased.
While many work very hard to keep their properties up and try to be as responsible as possible, even being up 90% and overdelivering on campaigns is still off by 10% on the audience they are targeting which is 5% too much – minimum. The media game is a fairly harsh world of “drive for perfection”. I know others have addressed this before but I needed to bring it up again given I just saw this.
We need to strive to keep all screens up at least 95% of the time…it’s a tough standard but one we need to live for if we’re to build ongoing credibility as a medium.
Sphere: Related ContentSep
21
P&G Likes Path-2-Purchase Concept
Filed Under Advertising, Digital Signage, digital ooh | Leave a Comment
I’ve been harping on for some time now about how media is no longer “Couch to Store” and that media and creatives needed to start looking at connecting with consumers on the path-2-purchase and at the “point-of-purchase”. See past links here:
- July 30 – http://www.robgorrie.com/2009/07/30/why-agencies-should-care-about-shopper-marketing-and-the-path-to-purchase/
- Mar 19 – http://www.robgorrie.com/2009/03/19/satchi-x-agrees-path-and-point-of-purchase/
- Sep 19 – http://www.robgorrie.com/2007/09/19/the-path-to-digital-signage-success/
there are more but that’s a start.
While P&G doesn’t call it the same thing I/ADCENTRICITY does, it has its own name for the way in which you need to consider creative and media executions when trying to speak to the consumer: Store Back
store back is meant to be “a mind-set,” not another process in a company that already has plenty. But it’s also clear the mind-set could have a substantial impact on process, elevating the role of shopper marketing to also become a creative gatekeeper. “It means you have to have the end in mind when you’re coming up with the [marketing] idea,” she said. “If it doesn’t work at the store, it’s a miss.”
As Andy Murray from Saatchi & Saatchi X notes:
Andy Murray, CEO of Publicis Groupe shopper-marketing agency Saatchi & Saatchi X, said he sees store back elevating the role of shopper marketing at P&G and elsewhere. “It will bring more shopper-marketing insight work into the upstream ideation process,” he said.
He’s sometimes seen initiatives where Saatchi X “has to do some rework to make it work at the store level, and we can probably eliminate that by having better insights about the store built into the front end.”
It’s easy to tack on a shopper-marketing component to most ideas, such as through an adaptation of an ad that runs on in-store TV or a packaging blurb. But store back is supposed to be about ideas designed from the start to resonate with shoppers.
Interesting how this whole shopper marketing and shopper insights stuff is being driven in at the agency level on all fronts.
Many in traditional media have a very hard time wrapping their heads around this whole concept, preferring to stay with what they know. Shopper marketing, digital and anything that helps facilitate it are coming in strong. As Andy also says:
“Search advertising is shopper marketing done online,”
The keys to why these changes are coming on so strong can be read in the Ad Age article, but the highlights are:
- PERCEIVED ROI IS UP
- SHOPPER-MARKETING DEPARTMENTS ON THE RIS
- CONVERGENCE WITH DIGITAL
- CONVERGENCE OF CONSUMER AND TRADE BUDGETS
- CONVERGENCE OF CONSUMER AND SHOPPER RESEARCH
- RETAILERS TAKE CHARGE
I recommend reading this article several times…very good insight and Coke and P&G are pushing hard for this type of approach and if you do business with P&G and don’t buy in to the concept of end-to-end creative and media plans, you’ll understand why business with them doesn’t get won as often
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