Protesters Exposing T&A

Ah, spring! When young protesters' minds turn to naked activism!

PETA is in the news, as always, with protesters in various stages of undress attempting to raise consciousness about animal cruelty, whether it's the sale of glue traps at Lowe's hardware stores in the States, foie gras at Selfridges store in London, England, or bullfights in Croatia.

As a social marketer, I can't ignore PETA's success in getting their message in front of a large global audience audience. Controversy gets attention. Even when the approach gets them banned from the Super Bowl:


'Veggie Love': PETA's Banned Super Bowl Ad

But the question I have to ask myself is, are they really accomplishing their goals? Here in Canada, we're keeping PETA particularly busy with the public brutality of our seal hunt. To try to stop it, the organization is calling for a boycott of Canadian maple syrup (which will only affects a small cottage industry of eastern farmers whose only crime is making trees bleed), making fun of Canada's 2010 Olympics logo (which just got them in legal trouble for modifying the rings), and speaking out against the Governor General for eating raw seal heart with the Inuit (although she seems to have endeared herself to many Canadians through the act).

I'm pretty sure that any bad publicity PETA stirs up, however, is all (vegan) gravy to them since it's pretty clear that their real goal was never social marketing at all, but is just a massive recruitment campaign for young, impressionable activists.

"Real" social marketing, in my view, is about giving people the information they need to make informed and realistic lifestyle changes for their own good and the good of society. While PETA conveys these messages when you actually read their various communications, their tactics speak a different language: shock and awe.



These kinds of ads are what we call "preaching to the choir"; they are unlikely to get old ladies or debutantes to keep from buying fur, but they do appeal to activists who want to see someone stick it to "cruel" businesses and consumers. To the mainstream, they just continue to ghettoize PETA and its supporters as a hysterical fringe movement that sees animals as nothing less than (or even greater than) humans.

At the same time, a veritable army of celebrity spokesmodels use their star power or other... ummm... "assets" to attract concerned young women desperate for attention (link is GIS result containing gratuitous public nudity) — and young men desperate to hang around with young women who are desperate for attention. They even have a contest for "sexiest vegetarian" that attracts teenage girls hungry for media exploitation.

I'm sure PETA will continue to find new recruits to replace the ones who move on, to make headlines around the world, and to cause their volunteers to get sunburnt in delicate places. They'll even make the occasional PR victory against a company through sheer embarrassment.

But will they ever convert masses of mainstream meat-eaters to lifelong vegetarianism? Cause a sport fishermen to cast off their hooks? Get the Inuit to stop hunting seals?

You tell me.

Predatory CSR? Or do I just need more coffee?

Just a short post today. Read it during your coffee break.

I was on my way to work this morning, and decided I needed more coffee. So I got off the bus two stops early to go to Bridgehead, my favourite ethical coffee chain.

But before I arrived there, a young woman was in my face offering "FREE STARBUCKS COFFEE!":



Not only was the coffee free, but it was offered as a corporate social responsibility outreach to garner donations to the Children's Wish Foundation, a truly heart-rending charity that grants dying children's last wishes.

Nothing wrong with that, eh? Except for the location: smack between Bridgehead and Second Cup, Starbuck's major Canadian competitor (besides Timmies, that is!):



Am I just way too cynical this morning, or is Starbucks the cynical one? Because to me, this looked like run-of-the-mill predatory marketing hiding behind a worthy cause.

Hey! I'd probably do something like this for one of my clients, too, but it still elicited a comment from the guy serving my coffee at Bridgehead. "We do it every day, but whatever", he said, referring to Bridgehead's well-known commitment to environmentalism, sustainable third world economic development, and fair trade.

Maybe I'm just overthinking this, as someone who knows what goes on in the boardrooms. After all, the booth was located on a busy downtown corner on the westbound Transitway. (Although it could have easily located on the busy eastbound, a block north.)

Oh well. I hope the wish people raised good money for a great cause, despite the rain.

Fortified with Tolstoy!

That's true! I have enriched my blog with a direct quote from Tolstoy's War and Peace! So now you won't just learn about advertising issues by reading this post, you'll become expert in Russian literature as well!

What, you say that you find my claims hard to believe? Why, just this morning I used shaving cream enriched with shea butter, and my skin already feels rejuvenated! (Yeah, I know it's girlie; my wife buys it.) Then I had some juice containing extract of the latest superfood, acai berries, and I can feel the antioxidants coursing through my veins!

Yeah, it's a load of crap. But people keep buying into the latest trend in botanicals, and manufacturers keep adding trace elements of it to their products. It's all a big charade, but regulators have had a hard time enforcing advertising claims about the efficacy of these ingredients.

So, why does the marketing work? The answer lies in what social scientists call "essentialist thinking". In layman's terms, this is the belief that there is an irreducible "essence" in things that makes them what they are, beyond being the sum of their parts. It's the principle behind homeopathic medicine, which "is generally defined as a system of medical treatment based on the use of minute quantities of remedies that in larger doses produce effects similar to those of the disease being treated". In products, it's the idea that any amount of a "magic" botanical substance can have a significant effect.

To a scientists, "natural" versus "artificial" is a meaningless distinction; everything in the world can be expressed as a sum of its basic components, no matter where they come from.

But most of us are not scientists. We're homeopaths. We want the latest miracle cure from Mother Nature, even if it's a total scam. After all, it couldn't hurt to try, could it?

I'm an adman, and I understand the need for consumer products to innovate. I just wish consumers themselves would take a dose of skepticism with their daily ration of hype.

But I've ranted enough for today. How's your Tolstoy education doing? I hope you benefited from the 0.5% War and Peace content I added to today's blog. It's from Chapter 19. It's my first line.

Wiener envy

As the recession wears on, consumers are starting to embrace cheap food again. As a result, the humble hot dog is making a comeback.

Of course, demand fuels competition, and the big news on tubesteak marketing right now is the false advertising suit Sara Lee has launched against Kraft for saying that the former's Oscar Mayer Jumbo Beef Franks have been "proven" to taste better than that latter's Ball Park franks in a vaguely documented "national taste test":

According to Sara Lee, "The suit claims Oscar Mayer is presenting a taste superiority claim against the entire line of Ball Park branded hot dogs - this is both false and misleading to consumers. Such claims contain an unclear and inconspicuous footnote in very small type that also falsely implies that more than one variety of Ball Park franks was tested."

"This is a weak attempt by Oscar Mayer to mislead millions of consumers with false and inaccurate claims. Simply put, we believe that these untrue statements are all a bunch of bologna," said Chuck Hemmingway, brand director.

Bad puns aside, it's interesting just how seriously this affront is being taken, considering the subjective nature of the claims.

Personally, I think that Sara Lee is just jealous of the massive viral campaign Kraft has used to penetrate the social media.

For example, Oscar Mayer's YouTube group has generated an enormous consumer response. By tapping into American consumers' endless hunger for Internet fame, the campaign manages to collect great moments of awkward modern Americana like this:



The beefy new franks are also targetting the mommy brigade, featuring in blogvertising like momstakeonthings.com:

"Hot dogs and summer just seem to go together – whether at baseball games, backyard barbeques, or just as a quick and easy dinner before dashing off to camp, practice or the pool. But they can be a much healthier mealtime option by choosing all-beef franks, and Oscar Mayer’s Premium Beef Franks are the best tasting ones that I’ve come across."

Kraft/Oscar Mayer is fuelling its social media efforts with a huge weenie giveaway, handing out a million dollars worth of hot dogs last Wednesday in advance of Memorial Day Weekend.

It's interesting to note that the other wiener in the battle, New York's classic streetmeat Hebrew National, has avoided the controversy. Instead they played to their base, giving away 45,000 hot dogs today in Times Square.

I doubt my family and I will be joining any of these big brand sausage fests over the summer, though. To be honest, industrially-processed meat kind of grosses me out. (Did you see that "Meat International" site? Eeeewwww.) I'll keep getting my hot dogs hand-made by a local master in Ottawa's Byward Market. At least I know where that sausage has been.

Coming to terms with Social... WHAT?!?!?

I've been doing social marketing for years. This is what it is:

Social Marketing is "the application of marketing technologies developed in the commercial sector to the solution of social problems where the bottom line is behaviour change." It involves: "the analysis, planning, execution and evaluation of programs designed to influence the voluntary behaviour of target audiences to improve their personal welfare and that of society."

(Courtesy of Health Canada)


This year, I'm really getting into social media. Here's what that is:

Social media describes the online tools that people use to share content, profiles, opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives and media itself, thus facilitating conversations and interaction online between groups of people. These tools include blogs, message boards, podcasts, micro blogs, lifestreams, bookmarks, networks, communities, wikis, and vlogs.

(Courtesy of Brian Solis)

Apples and oranges. And yet, while it's not that surprising that the public gets these two terms mixed up (they're both "social" after all), I'm constantly amazed how many career marketing professionals still need to sort it out.

Even the Googles do nothing to dispel the confusion. Here's what a search of "social marketing" turned up on Google news:

1. "Is social marketing mostly hype?" SmartBrief - ‎May 21, 2009‎ (an article about social MEDIA)

2. "Research and Markets: What Marketing Executives Need to Know About Social Networking: Understanding Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn & Other Opportunities " Earthtimes (press release) - ‎May 18, 2009‎

3. "Word-of-Mouth Marketing Evolution" Forbes - ‎May 21, 2009‎ (this one's actually about buzz)

Clearly, we need to straighten out the difference between message and media. To compound the problem, social marketing clients, with big hopes for reach and shrinking budgets, are increasingly turning to social media to shape behaviour.

A couple of years ago, the biggest confusion for social marketers was the fact that many of their campaigns were actually corporate social responsibility campaigns. (That's why we invented the "Social Issues Marketing" category for our agency, to erect a tent where they could both live together in harmony.)

Today, social marketers are saddled with a marketing specialty that sounds like a new media plan. And a social marketing client can use social ads on social networks as part of a social media plan, then bring in corporate social responsibility partners from the private sector as part of their campaign to improve society.

What can the industry do to sort it out? Come up with new terms? I'm open all weekend for suggestions.

Take the pickle out

As a career social marketer, I really believe in what my clients are trying to accomplish. At the same time, I feel it's my duty to help them understand the realities of their target markets' world. For example, "preaching to the choir", or appealing to extreme activists while alienating the general public, can be a waste of good media money. Or even worse, a barrier to mainstream change.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the fine balance between educating the public and overplaying your message. Partly because I see this ad during every morning's transit commute:



Let me be clear that this is not a cheap shot at the worthy cause of preventing stroke, or even at the agency that created the campaign. I'm sure they're all very determined to help Canadians reduce the salt in their diet.

But "Sodium kills 30 Canadians each day"? That's kind of hard to swallow.

I checked out the web site, looking for the research behind the claim. In short, it's this:

* Excess sodium raises your blood pressure.

* Optimal blood pressure is less than 120/80 mmHg.

* A blood pressure of greater than 140/90 mmHg is the clinical definition of hypertension. One in four adults in Canada has hypertension.

* Reducing your blood pressure by just 10/5 mmHg by lifestyle change or medication reduces your risk of heart failure by 50 per cent, stroke by 30 per cent, heart attack by 15 per cent and premature death by 10 per cent.

I have to assume the 30 people killed are actually the reverse of the 30 people who will die of heart attack, stroke, and related premature death today who could have been saved by reducing sodium. But beyond downloading and reading the academic PDFs and doing math (I was told there would be no math!) as lazy consumer I remain unconvinced that salt will be directly responsible for 30 people dying today.

Of course, I also have to admit to myself that death stats on smoking may be derived much the same way. And that's a hard comparison to make as someone who has campaigned hard to reduce smoking rates. (Truth be told, my personal focus is on secondhand smoke around children and captive audiences, which also has to do with human rights.)

Of course, death statistics are rarely isolated to one cause. It's hard to control variables for heavy smokers, since their high-risk behaviour and socio-economic factors come into play. That doesn't mean that a decrease in smoking won't save lives. Quitting, cutting back, and keeping it out of other people's lungs will still have a powerful effect.

With salt, it could be that the highest consumers are also living off of fast food, which is also full of fat, sugar, and not-nutritious filler. Plus they may also be inactive, overworked, or just plain uninterested in their own health.

For example, the linked article on "salt and obesity" cites a study with this conclusion:

The authors conclude that the increased intake of salt, through its effect on thirst, has lead to an increased intake of high-energy beverages, which has in turn remarkably contributed to the increase of obesity in the United States.

...which is the sugar problem once again.

I guess lifestyle issues will always be complicated. And just as with any health issue, the dangers of salt has its detractors.

So why does this campaign bother me? Is it because the health issue about salt is not yet on my radar? Because salty foods (homemade and artisinal, mostly) are a lifestyle sin that I'm just not willing to give up? Am I a hypocritical skeptician?

Maybe it's just the mainstream social marketer in me that feels uneasy with the broad claims of the campaign. I'm not advising anyone to eat more salt. But I'm just not sure telling people that pickles, pizza and pasta (all based on God-knows-what recipe) are deadly poison is really the right approach to changing behaviour. Nor is the deceit some other unrelated campaigners in the U.K. have practised. I always believed that mainstream campaigns should be forthright, credible, and asking for achievable action.

I'm just not ready to take the pickle out of my diet yet. I might even eat poutine again. I'll just do it all in moderation, keep exercising, and try not to panic.

Sleeve Face

"First you put your hands in the water. Then you get the soap. Then you go like this... then like this... then you turn off the water and dry your hands. THAT's how you wash them, Daddy!"

Yes, I recently got a lesson in hygiene from a four-year-old boy. School and Daycare teach him well. In fact, I recently noticed he even coughs in his sleeve, just like our ads for the Public Health Agency of Canada tell people to do:



When I was riding the bus this morning, I saw two different people do it. I call it "sleeve face", after the awesome Internet visual gag movement that we Acartians like so much, we made it into the book.

Even though the mainstream media are reporting that swine flu is on the wane at "ground zero" in Mexico, and the public breathes an unmasked sigh of relief, the virus continues to spread worldwide. This means increased likelihood of mutation and resurgence in the fall. Our work in infection control social marketing may be far from done.

I'm just happy to see people be more aware of the little things they can do to protect themselves, like washing hands, coughing and sneezing with care, and most of all keeping their fingers out of their mouths. (If I never see someone turn the pages of a book with spittle-moistened fingers again, that will be enough!)

Take care.

Generation On-Demand

Our business involves a lot of discussion about demographics, to the point at which my coworkers and I tend to see generational differences wherever we look. Our agency is a classic multigenerational crucible: owned by a classic Traditionalist/Silent Generation husband and wife, senior management driven by Boomers, a handful of Gen-X managers struggle with the uncool idea of being bosses, and the Gen-Y/Millennials forming the advancing ranks inspire and shock us with their fast-track world of confidence and entitlement.

But what about the next generation? Today's kids. My son and his ilk.

Nobody will really know how they turn out for another decade or so, as the first ones come of age. (And even then, my own generation was pretty much written off as a bunch of slackers in the early '90s.) But it's still fun to speculate.

As a parent, the biggest change I see in my son's childhood world from my own is the immediacy and customization of it all. He's four years old, and has grown up watching most of his "shows" on DVD, because he likes to watch them over and over again. He struggles with the idea of a TV show, or a song on the radio, that can't be replayed. (We don't have a DVR yet.) Everything is on-demand.

Contrast this with how my wife and I grew up. She used to cry every time Mr. Dressup ended, because she would have to wait a whole day for the next episode. I still recall, after seeing Star Wars in the cinema, spending hours and hours trying to recreate that movie with action figures, comic books, and even record albums. Without TV rights or a video release, I didn't see that movie again in its entirety until the '80s.

But my son will never know the exquisite pain of waiting for the next release, and relishing the memories of a single viewing. He sees everything on-demand.

Of course, this is just entertainment. How much of their "real" life will be on-demand? School will always impose some kind of structure, but even there children today are faced with lesser consequences for misbehaviour, and individualized lesson plans for their diagnosed specialness. Outside of school, overscheduled soccer moms give up their own lives to drive the minivan from activity to activity, totally focussed on their child's personal needs. And many parents (not us, IMHO) even customize their kids' meals, allowing increasing fussiness as they make each plate to order.

There have been plenty of crusty editorials written about the spoiling of the upcoming generation, but every generation provokes those. What I'm wondering is how — for worse and for better — the customized and immediate world of my son's cohort will influence their attitudes as adults.

I can foresee some even more demanding and impatient individuals entering the workforce in another 15 years. Each of them will want an individualized and accelerated career path from day one, making HR a real challenge. At the same time, they may display a kind of individualism and independent thought that we haven't seen before, because they'll be so totally "empowered" (although I hate that word) by a world that was made to fit their needs. But are we in danger of making them the most selfish adults ever? As the world becomes more crowded and stressed, their individualized needs will inevitably bump up against those of billions of others. Let's hope we instill a sense of respect for others in them, as well as self-esteem.

Anyone have other predictions for "Generation On-Demand"? And how will the Millennials complain about them?

Taking our message to the street

As a Social Issues Marketing guy, I spend a lot of time pondering why people do what they do, how it affects others, and how I can help them make better choices for themselves and their communities.

I also want to "walk the walk". We all do at Acart. Which is why we take a little time out of our insane ad-biz schedules to try and set an example for our clients, industry, and neighbours. Sometimes we raise money, sometimes we provide publicity for worthy causes, and sometimes we just get our hands dirty.

And so we ended up out on the street this Tuesday, with gloves, brooms and bags, to clean up the block in front of our office.

It was pretty gross, since we're in the middle of downtown Ottawa, but we didn't find much worse than broken hooch bottles, millions of cigarette butts, and endless Tim Horton's cups. (I had to keep a keen eye out, too, since my 4-year-old son was helping pick up the trash: "Look daddy! I found a white balloon!")

Did we have any impact on our City? Probably not. But for us it was a way to make ourselves aware of where our agency fits into the core community. As we sit up in the Acart Building, creating campaigns to try to help people, there are folks outside scavenging butts for charred tobacco, panhandling, and generally having nothing to do but hang out on the corner. (They watched us clean with a mixture of confusion and amusement.)

Creating effective social marketing requires an emotional commitment on the part of its practitioners. You have to understand your audience, and empathize with them, or you'll end up creating ads that are ineffective, or even worse, that totally backfire.

Our various outreach initiatives may not be changing the world in any measurable way, but for us they're helping provide a more realistic insight into the world of issues around our daily lives, whether its raising bit of cash to help war victims get wheelchairs, or just reminding ourselves that we're all responsible for the state of our community.

Plus, it's nice to get out of the agency now and then.

Space Junk

Back during Ottawa's winter transit strike, I thought it would be fun to set up a satirical Facebook Group documenting my fozen walks to work, the Transit Strike Fitness Plan. Managed to recruit 33 members among friends and family. We had some laughs, the busses came back, and I forgot about it.

Over a year ago, I was deep into my first attempt at blogging. Figuring I should add something useful to the blogosphere, I transcribed my great-great-grandfather's military memoirs into a 150-year-old blog. Kind of a neat idea, and I keep meaning to get back to it. Someday.

How much forgotten content have you abandoned on the Internet? My record is pretty bad. I've been writing web sites and various online stuff for clients since 1996. It's shocking how much is still out there.

I've even come up with my own term for it: "space junk". And just for fun, I submitted it to Urban Dictionary today:

Space Junk

Abandoned Facebook Groups, Blogs, and web sites that float meaninglessly through cyberspace. Named after the tons of Space Age detritus in orbit around the Earth.

"Find any good blogs about John Kerry?"

"Nothing but space junk"

Ironically enough, there are even blogs about forgotten blogs that have since been forgotten. Once great memes that have outlived their usefulness. Yesteryear's political discourse.

So, how much space junk have you launched into orbit around the world wide web? Fess up! Or tell me about some funny ones you've run across.

You don't know where that money's been!

Your mom always told you money was filthy. But this commercial, as featured on boingboing, takes it to a new level. (Warning: Not for the prudish at heart!)



The ad was created by Optix Digital Pictures for German agency GRABARZ + PARTNER.

From the official YouTube link:

"The goal was to create a world completely made out of banknotes and explicit characters that stood for themselves. So we spent many days and nights doing a lot of research finding the right objects such as furniture, buildings, bridges, certain landscapes, clothes, etc.

...

All characters (Lincoln, Mao and the unknown lady) were created as 3D characters in Softimage XSI. Therefore, our designing team engaged in a lot of origami studying. To get used to the technique, we spent a lot of time with uncountable folding sessions. We took dollar and pound notes and folded Origami figures until our hands bled."

Admen love this ad. But will it build Bontrust's business? It's certainly gone viral many times over, but that very success has pushed Bontrust's own corporate site deep down into a Google Search on its name.

Whether you find the sexual explicitness of the ad offputting or hilarious, it shows that you really can still find creative ways to make even the most button-down client more exciting. Too bad it had to come in the middle of a recession. Watching the Dollar, the Pound and the Yuan frolic so freely in the middle of financial Armageddon may be the most perverse thing about the spot.

Advertising in the post-racist era

Yeah, I know we're not there yet. Racism is alive and well all over the world. But I'm still seeing signs of an evolved view of our differences. This viral ad is one of them:



Created by video commandos Rhett and Link, this ad is for real. And it's awesome. I'll tell you why.

My personal ideal regarding racism is that within my lifetime it will be normal to ignore the physical differences between people that we call "race" (as opposed to cultural differences, which are a whole other ball of wax). The categories we have put people into since colonial times are useless and arbitrary. It's time to move on.

But coming to the end of an extremely racist 500 years or so, we can't just pretend the problem isn't there. That's where satire comes in.

For example, way back in 2000, the satirical newspaper/web site The Onion ran a hilarious article titled "Black Guy Photoshopped In". It was funny because this kind of thing really happens. In fact, around the same time the University of Wisconsin at Madison was caught doing exactly that:



This issue is also close to my heart as a Creative Director who works on lots of government and other "politically correct" accounts. Casting models and actors for ads is one of the most uncomfortable things we do, because we spend hours planning out the visible ethnic makeup of people. As my colleague Christopher commented, "we spend so much time thinking about the very thing we don't think we should be thinking about".

You can see some of our solutions in our ads. For example, for Public Safety Canada, we portrayed a multigenerational family with a black mom, white dad, black son, and white grandma. While this was a contrived scenario, what made me feel good about it was that nobody seemed to notice the diversity. That's exactly what we were aiming for. (The fireman has an Asian look, too, in case you didn't notice.)

Another one is our HRSDC "baby" commercial for federal education savings plans. When we had to provide the casting director with notes for ethnicity, we said "Mediterranean". The idea was that if we got a bunch of olive-skinned, ethnically ambiguous actors who looked like a family, we were avoiding the problem of identifying a single nationality. For your reference, mom is Egyptian, the baby is French Canadian, and he grows up Italian. Will wonders never cease! Once again, neither focus groups nor public audiences commented on ethnicity. Considering that Toronto groups are infamous for critiquing the diversity of illustrated storyboards, this was a real win.

Diversity is important, and our job as advertisers is to normalize a more diverse Canada without looking fake. To remind ourselves to be conscious of the fine line we tread (and to avoid Onioning ourselves like UWM did) I created this demotivational poster for my office:

Bring home the bacon

As a communications guy, I was a little disturbed by this article on the CBC site this morning:

"Pork safe to eat despite WHO warning, Canadian officials stress

...

Canadian health officials maintain pork is safe to eat despite comments from the World Health Organization that the swine flu virus could survive freezing and remain in the thawed meat and blood of infected pigs.

...

Earlier Wednesday, the WHO's director of food safety said meat from pigs infected with the H1N1 influenza A virus shouldn't be used for human consumption.

Jorgen Schlundt told Reuters the blood of pigs infected with the H1N1 flu virus might survive the freezing process.

"Meat from sick pigs or pigs found dead should not be processed or used for human consumption under any circumstances," he wrote in an email to the news agency."

There's nothing in the article that wasn't correct, and in fact the article did go on to quote Canada's Chief Veterinary Officer as saying, "This doesn't change anything in Canada. What the WHO is saying is what we do every day, every week, every month, every year as part of our food inspection system."

My issue was the fact that so many people only read headlines, and that headline unintentionally feeds into the misinformation out there already about the safety of pork. And the Chinese government's overreaction as well.

What's easy to miss here, beneath media storm of the day, is that there are real dangers from the movement of meat across borders that have nothing to do with swine flu. First, there's good old mad cow disease. Scientists believe that a swine foot-in-mouth virus outbreak in the '50s was caused by a single smuggled sausage dropped in a barnyard. SARS was traced to the civet cat trade in Asia. The illegal live bird trade could still infect our flocks (and us) with H5N1 influenza. People get caught at the borders all the time. Others slip through.

So where's the advertising angle in this? Travellers' Biosecurity is another safety issue we've addressed for the government with a national print, Web, TV and inflight video campaign. You can see our TV spot (in 11 different languages!) here: LINK

That TV spot was shot in the Ottawa International Airport, almost two years ago. We couldn't shut down the arrivals area, so we just took over half of it while the international passengers passed us by. (Interesting bit of trivia: The customs guy is a real agent, who works part-time as an actor.)

We also addressed the bird flu issue directly, with this ad: LINK


Bottom line: your bacon is fine, as long as it didn't arrive in somebody's suitcase.

The End of Brand Fascism

I'm going to take a humpday break from blogging Emergency Preparedness Week to talk about something else close to my heart: the evolution of branding in Web 2.0.

But first, let me set the scene with a 25-year-old ad:



It's not the brand itself that I'm bringing up for context: it's the tone. Because when it comes to old ways of branding, I feel like social media is the woman with the hammer.

I've been working in branding for about 14 years. I understand the traditional approach of absolute control over your positioning, message and image. And to a large extent, those things are still important basics.

But there's a different thing happening now, and it's one that not all businesses are comfortable with. It's conversation. The free exchange of opinions and ideas.

This challenge probably sounds familiar to agency and client peeps alike. The idea of having to manage an ongoing conversation with your audiences, in real time, and opening yourself up to criticism and even rampant trolling is terrifying. It takes time, money, and most of all commitment.

But, from my point of view, one-way, micromanaged branding is no longer a wise strategy. Millions of people can be out there talking about you, or issues that relate to you. If you don't actively join the conversation, you're like the coworker who skips going out for drinks after work: if you're not there, you're going to be talked about even more. (And perhaps not in the most positive light.)

The other thing to consider is that brands really are like people. The reasons for this are buried in our psychology. We're evolved to read and understand other people, and as a side-effect we anthropomorphize objects, organizations, and other inanimate things. We guess their intentions, and we decide whether we like them or not. There's no escaping this.

All this to explain why your brand needs "personality". Traditionally, brand personalities were developed through market research, insight and strategy, then set in stone for a time. There was ongoing PR and CRM, to be sure, but brand evolution came in fits and starts.

Today, your brand has the opportunity to be more lifelike than ever before. If you can find the champions within your organization to engage in an authentic conversation with fans, critics and even enemies, your brand can become a better "person" — confident, honest, and open.

Think of it this way: How do you feel about friends or public figures who disregard or even stifle all criticism? Does that give you confidence in their point-of-view, or does it come off as insecure or dishonest?

Taking criticism is never a problem. It's not being able to take it that's seen as weakness.

Now, please feel free to criticize me in the unmoderated comments below:

An actual advertising emergency

Blogging Emergency Preparedness Week was something I had been planning to do as part of promoting our work for Public Safety Canada, but I can't let the coincidence of the swine flu epidemic pass me by. Especially since it's now in Ottawa.

You see, we're actually working on the crisis communications for the Public Health Agency of Canada, creating ads like this in your local paper:



These ads are part of a strategic readiness plan that we have been involved in for some time. The Government of Canada has been planning its social marketing along with other measures for dealing with pandemic flu since the avian influenza scares of a few years past. What's important now is to get authoritative, factual information about infection control in peoples' hands (literally!) to counter the mass hysteria that's burning through the social media.

One great tool for us so far has been Google AdWords, reaching people as they search for more information.

This is an important time to be a social marketer, so rather than blathering on about advertising insights today, I'd just like you to get the facts.

Please visit fightflu.ca for the latest information on H1N1, don't panic, and take care.

We've got LeFever...

...and the only cure is Preparing a Family Emergency Kit in Plain English (click link if video cuts off):



As Emergency Preparedness Week continues, I'm going to blog about how we've been involved in the social marketing around safety and security.

As part of our 72 Hours emergency preparedness campaign for Public Safety Canada, we had the pleasure of working with Lee LeFever to create the Government of Canada's first bilingual Common Craft instructional video.

For those unfamiliar with Lee's work, he and his wife Sachi create videos with paper cutouts and "plain English" voiceovers that explain just about everything in the simplest way possible. They're a Copywriter's dream. One of the most popular videos, "Twitter in Plain English" has been viewed almost a million times and was featured on CNN Money.

Our involvement on the Family Emergency Kit video was to provide input on the English script (mostly to keep in on-brand and within government messaging standards), adapt the script into French (always a challenge because French tends to be longer) and produce the French version in Montréal. I ended up Tweeting the production, and Lee was cool enough to respond.

This project was great new territory for government advertising, as they haven't had a great deal of success going viral in the past. By attaching themselves to a known commodity with a true public service message (and as part of an overall campaign), they've made progress reaching people in the new Internet.

Unprepared for the tinfoil hat brigade

Today is the first day of Emergency Preparedness Week across Canada. I'm a bit of a boy scout about these kinds of things already, but this year I'm paying particular attention because I worked on the Government of Canada's 72 Hour Emergency Preparedness campaign.

You can watch the TV ad here: Link.

I'd like to embed a YouTube link, but we can't post the ad there due to talent rights. I did, however, search to see if anyone had bootlegged it. And that's what I was truly unprepared for.

Here's one, for example. A lower quality copy, but otherwise unaltered. However, it was the context imposed by the poster that really threw me off:

"Ask yourself - why would the canadian government be putting out this commericial - not to mention at the end where there is a big bang outside - say like a nuclear device??? (I realize that its thunder, but its the idea) And everyone turns as if - oh -sh*t - it happened...

God help us..."

I was informed, while working on this campaign, that no matter what the government tries to do to help people prepare for emergencies, someone will always react with "OMG!!! What are they not telling us?!?!" But I was still amazed when another YouTube search brought up this gem of paranoia:

"Canada has recently started a new advertising campaign to ensure that Canadians are prepared for an emergency. They call it the 72 hr response. This is a very heavy campaign and considering we the public aren't expecting anything ... what is it that the government is preparing for?
This coincides with a threat on Fox television from their media that "maybe the US should invade Canada" ..."

Easy on the foil there! Our ad was also noticed in the States by something called the "National Terror Alert Response Center" which is a little over-the-top, but at least they got the message.

I guess there's no escaping misinterpretation when the government advertises, but as someone who actually creates and writes government ads, I can tell you that there is absolutely no ominous backstory or subtext to this spot.



(That's me bothering the director, Yan Lanouette-Turgeon, while he was having a snack.)

Like every other government social marketing campaign, this one was developed based on research into how aware Canadians were about their role in emergency planning. The emergencies they want to prepare people for are mostly natural disasters, which are common in Canada and quite diverse.

It was precisely because of this diversity that we chose a power outage caused by a storm as our "symbolic" disaster. Thunder and lightning are easy to portray in a 30-second video, and everyone can relate to the situation, no matter where they live. (As opposed to floods, forest fires, earthquakes and other events that are more regional.) The creative team at Acart developed several different scenarios to use as ad concepts, but we kept coming back to the stormy blackout as the easiest to comprehend. These concepts were focus tested, and the one you saw is the one everybody understood and liked.

It's interesting to see how a viewer can analyze the details of the commercial. We really do put a lot of work into production, and no word, action, prop or set is there by accident. However, most of the effort we put into the details is about ensuring that the emergency kit contents were accurate (but generic), that the house and story were average enough for anyone to identify with, and that the production quality was high enough for people to suspend their disbelief and get absorbed in this family's story for 30 seconds between hamburger and car commercials.

Government advertising is many things, but it is never purposely cryptic. (That's just the accidental outcome, sometimes, when too many people are involved in approvals!) The 72 Hours spot was one of the most straightforward public information campaigns I've done for the government, and it was for that reason that we were able to produce a nice, professional TV spot. There's just no need to look any deeper for motivation than that you should be able to look after yourself for the three days or so it can take first responders to set up emergency services in any disaster.

Don't get mad...

Caught an interesting press release from the Canadian Labour Congress yesterday:

The Canadian Labour Congress wants to know why CHUM-FM is refusing to play an ad to promote awareness about Canada's unacceptably high workplace death rate.

The ad, nicknamed "Its Not Funny" was produced to promote information about the fact that over 1,000 Canadians died because of unsafe working conditions last year. It features the voice of a man who is outraged at the situation, nothing obscene, nothing slanderous, nothing that comes remotely close to pushing any boundaries. However, CHUM-FM has refused to put it on the air.

You can check out the ad for yourself right here: MP3

The CLC was the only source I could find online for comment from the stations:

"The excuse we were given was that people will tune out because they don't want to hear outrage on the radio, which is beyond ridiculous because that's the bread and butter of many talk radio stations"

They have a point, there. When I think of radio today, in my head I hear the unwelcome outrage of shock jocks and shameless pundits. Having listened to the ad in question, I don't see what could possibly upset radio listeners who endure hours of early morning DJs.

But I may have found some clue as to the particular sensitivity of CHUM listeners to on-air negativity in this user comment:

larsh (Apr 30, 2009 @ 06:09PM)

I am personally tired of the Dr. Marla Swine Flu updates on the morning show. 4 days in a row is uncessary! I know you are trying to calm people, but I think you are creating fear instead. (Do you really need DAILY updates?). I personally like to hear discussions about "lighter" topics when i am driving in the morning. The traffic is stressful enough!

Yes, let's stop worrying about staying on top of a rapidly-growing global health crisis because traffic is already so difficult to deal with. Just like it's too upsetting to hear a guy get angry about the thousands of Canadians who die from unsafe workplaces when you could be laughing about Britney's stripper pole.

That's just sad. I think we need to get our priorities straight.