More Yous – new Sprint campaign

Just saw this new advertising campaign for Sprint on TV.

The market for smartphones has become much more competitive with the launch of the Apple iPhone on the AT&T Wireless network earlier this year, so competitors have to work harder to get noticed.

Sprint works with advertising agency Goodby Silverstein, who have quite a track record in technology products since they also work for HP and Adobe.

I liked the way they illustrated in the TV commercial that smartphones can demultiply your productivity and that made me quite curious to see how they would leverage this idea in the digital space. So I paid a visit to the site www.moreyous.com.

Nice touch while I was waiting for the site content to download: my mouse cursor suddenly turns into 6 or 7 different cursors.

But after that, things became somewhat disappointing: the promotional site offers a very traditional and dry product picture (OK, you can look at it from all angles) – and a link to the main Sprint site. Granted, this is about selling products but nowadays, consumers react well to a little display of originality.

The only unexpected digital component is an online game that reminds me of Nintendo’s Brain Age, but feels somewhat out of sync (or should I say out of “ActiveSync”) with the idea of increased productivity.

This feels overall like a bit of a missed opportunity. There could have been some interesting ways to engage visitors around the idea of “what would happen if there were multiple yous”.

Maybe you just escaped an online remake of the movie “Multiplicity” with Michael Keaton!

Creative and focus groups = no love lost

In advertising there is something called the “torture test ad”. Usually torture test ads put the product under extreme circumstances to prove its worth. One recent example that comes to mind is the US Superbowl ad for the Toyota Tundra.

Here is a new twist on the genre … the video below is in a way a “negative torture test ad”. It was put together by creatives from the Boston-based advertising agency Arnold, who have opted for this impactful approach to express their disdain of focus groups.

If you want to read more about the authors’ motivations, read the interview on the Influx Insights blog.

It is clearly worthwhile to revisit the role and value of focus groups, and if / how consumers should be involved in the process of creative development.

However I would like to highlight a few things about this video that made me feel uneasy.

When I first saw it, it made me think of Michael Moore’s approach to documentary: a focus on real important issues, but a sensationalist and biased way of presenting things that can defeat the purpose.

Arnold’s creative team chose this Apple commercial by Chiat/Day (nowadays TBWA\Chiat\Day, please note the backslash) because of its emblematic value.

Apple was truly David against the IBM Goliath back then. Their meager advertising budget could only allow for one single airing of the commercial which took place on Superbowl day, 1984. This back-story helped make it one of the most famous TV commercials in recent history. Not to diminish the strength of the idea, nor the inspired cinematography of Ridley Scott.

So now that we have set the original context, here are at least three key reasons why testing this commercial in 2007 is bound to be a misleading exercise…

• Apple and Chiat/Day captured the zeitgeist by picturing an imaginary totalitarian environment. Back in 1983, the George Orwell book played a key part in the media and political conversation. Most people could relate to the meaning of the line “why 1984 won’t be like 1984″. In 2007, the dark environment and the reference simply are out of context and get completely lost.
• The original Macintosh was priced at $2,495 – or a bit less than $5,000 in today’s dollars. This is hardly a product that everyone could afford in 1984, and as a matter of fact it was originally targeting a business audience rather than a consumer one. It would therefore make sense to pay particular attention to how an educated professional would react to the commercial. Obviously not the focus group crowd described as “I’m here for the 50 bucks and the free food”.
• The paradox of this commercial is that it was not intended to be a regular piece of advertising. It was designed as a PR coup, to generate conversations in the press and amongst the audience thanks to the shock factor. Most of the effectiveness of this campaign was because it begged for commentary. It was clearly successful in that regard, and Apple has more recently accomplished a similar feet with the buzz surrounding the launch of the iPhone.

I do agree that research must be used carefully when it comes to advertising. I have seen clients and agencies spend hours and hours scrutinizing insignificant tidbits and findings from preview tests – getting the best research score had become an end in itself, rather than simply a tool to help improve advertising.

I’m not sure that this video is making the right points, but it has however the merit of opening the debate. What is your point of view?

The A380 is about to take off

The inaugural commercial flight of the Airbus A380 is next week! The computer rendering above is quite striking – the angle really gives you an idea of how bulky the plane is. I think it will still be quite a shock to see it for real.

As the first airline to fly the new plane, Singapore Airlines has a dedicated A380 site to capitalize on their PR coup. If all goes according to plan, I should fly aboard this plane in less than 6 months – I plan to go to Australia via Singapore in April 2008.

Over the next few weeks, I will post about the airline industry and some of the business model innovations we have witnessed over the years. Watch this space.

Music for the masses

Following my earlier post on the music industry, I came across two very interesting articles on the same topic that I wanted to share. Both are freely accessible and were originally published in Business Week and The Economist, respectively.

The Music Industry – From Retail to Media

A small hiatus on the blog, because of an intense workload over the last few weeks!

I recently met an executive from Warner Music who is exploring new directions in response to the radical digital transformation that has taken the music industry by storm.

After this discussion it occurred to me that there is a parallel to be drawn between the music and media industries. In both cases the most common business model was about combining content production and content distribution. And in both cases, the digital transformation changed the game … distribution came first. Then once the distribution lock is gone, it opens the gates for a lot more people to produce a lot more content. Natural selection based on talent does the rest.

The media landscape is being deeply reshaped in the digital era – these are not breaking news.

Newspapers are losing classifieds revenue to the likes of Craigslist, paper versions of magazines disappear (good bye Business 2.0), radio is increasingly listened to digitally, and network television shows are migrating online.

There have been several examples in the past where content owners clashed with online content distributors about intellectual property – and how to split advertising revenue. Google was sued in 2005 by AFP, a news agency, over copyright issues. The Google Books initiative was attacked by book publishers and authors. Viacom asked Youtube to remove thousands of copyright-infringing videos, following in the footsteps of NBC and CBS.

Back to the music industry. Those companies were used to operate with a retail (e.g. distribution) model and “moving product” (vynils then CDs). Getting airplay and maximum repetition was a means to an end… not unlike advertising, a way to promote record sales.

Now Apple has the upper hand in music distribution – with no serious competition, except maybe the recently launched MP3 download store on Amazon.com.

Look at the 20 most seen videos of all time on YouTube.

Nine of them are official artist music videos, including bands like My Chemical Romance and Linkin Park that are signed by Warner labels. Those hundreds of millions of views are proof enough that music companies own the rights to content that is extremely attractive for online audiences. So are these companies the next in line to use legal action to force Google to share some of its advertising revenue? That’s quite unlikely – old habits die hard. They have always sought artist exposure and were all too happy to get this exposure for free.

Artists have discovered that the Internet is also a way to bypass middlemen, not just for marketing but also for sales. Radiohead has created the sensation once again with their recent announcement, and many bands have jumped on the publicity bandwagon.

Talking of Radiohead – this reminds me of John R., a former colleague of mine when I worked in London. John had previously worked as a talent scout for Sony Music and he liked to joke about the fact that he passed on the opportunity of signing Radiohead!

If you want to read more about artists embracing the digital age, Wired had a fascinating cover story on “the rebirth of music” in 2006.

Can artists do entirely without record companies in the near future? Probably not. After all, the music industry has a proven track record in discovering and nurturing talent. If anything the Internet makes the talent easier to spot. There are many hopefuls posting their webcam musical performances on Youtube like Esmee Denters, Mia Rose or Lamiyah. Audience ratings and comments are a transparent way to assess their growing popularity.

As a conclusion there is some irony in the current situation of the music industry.

When Apple introduced legal music downloads and a robust Digital Rights Management system, the music industry saw this as an opportunity to finally solve the problem of piracy on peer-to-peer sharing platforms like Napster and Kazaa. Yet today, Apple is in such a dominant distribution position that it has become a major threat to the industry.

Google’s stronghold on search is seen as a threat by most content owners. Yet Google is probably the very opportunity for the music industry to achieve its transformation into a media business that leverages an enticing and exclusive content.