So I watched the rugby this weekend at a friend’s house, let’s call him Joe. Joe has one of those big flat screen TVs that real men use to watch stuff, but critically, he has it hooked up to a Mac Mini. This allowed us to watch the rugby through the ITV Player (pin sharp), with a Twitter window open, and the Radio 5 Live commentary because the ITV commentary was so woeful. All of this was done from Kuala Lumpur. This is quite an easy system to put together if you know what you’re doing, but it wouldn’t occur to just anyone, because it required the combination of not only the TV and the Mac, but also a proxy server, Twitter, the ITV Player and a high speed broadband. All of these products have long lists of features and benefits, but I’ll bet that not one of the brands involved put all of these things together.

What triggered this thought was watching an ad for Lloyds Bank’s financial planning product that allows you to monitor your finances. In a previous life, I remember the research pointed clearly at the market for this product, not least because people are more likely to talk about their sexual proclivities these days than they are about money or budgeting. People are proud of how little clue they have about their finances and investments, and yet good financial management is such a large part of a happy, low stress life.

But then I thought its amazing how many brands talk about the benefits of their products (the top 2 or 3 most relevant ones if they do it right), but very rarely, if ever do they talk about use cases, which is one of the things you can get to with ethnographic research, where you watch for the way consumers actually use your product rather than the way you think they do or should. 

I’m working on a frequent flyer card at the moment which has a prepaid Visa element. Its just launched at tune2big.com, and one of the major uses cases should be for foreign maids using the card to pick up shopping for their employers, keep the air miles and then fly home for free. We’ll be using social media to suggest this to our audience, but what’s the use case(s) for your brand and how are you suggesting it for your customers ?

It seems banks have a real problem with communicating. Barclays, for instance, has gone through approximately five brand relaunches in the last ten years at least, and their ‘Take one small step’ campaign seems to be resonating with consumers not necessarily because of the tagline or the communication content, but more because of the personality of the ads with Stephen Marchant voice overs. However, their ads over do the playfulness theme for me, and don’t do a very good job of actually explaining the products. Take the offset mortgage ad for example. if people understood an offset mortgage, everyone would have one, but as usual the financial services industry has done itself no favours by using a product name that only makes sense to bankers. The best way to communicate an offset mortgage is through its benefit - that of saving the average customer money by allowing the ‘offset’ of savings against the loan outstanding. It even encourages people to save. How cool is that ! But none of that comes across in the rather odd hour glass metaphor. So the best Barclays can hope for is awareness and maybe a little consideration, but not because of any product in the ad itself. 

So Barclays, great ads but they seem to be more in the realm of sponsored entertainment than anything that’s actually going to increase sales, which surely must be the end game for any marketing team ? Barclays are not alone. Its amazing how banks refuse to talk consumers through benefits and stick rigidly to features. Weird people.

I couldn’t let a day like today go past without some form of comment on the passing of Steve Jobs. Whilst there is no doubt he was one of the world’s geniuses and will always be remembered for changing the world, what is striking about his Stanford Graduation speech is the humility. He could’ve used that opportunity to talk about his achievements (which are many) and urge the graduates to do the same. But he didn’t. His speech was almost all about his human side - Steve Jobs the failure. The university drop out. The founder humiliated and ejected from the board of his own company, and then the very human cancer survivor. The fact is, Steve Jobs was a genius precisely because he went through everything all of us go through and so much more, and yet cam back every time. I’m sure he had his dark moments when he thought about getting a nice corporate job somewhere, but he kept taking the path less travelled, the risky side. I’m sure following his instincts led him straight into the odd brick wall, but they saw him right enough times to make him the man he was, I can only hope I have enough faith in my instincts to take me on the same path, whatever the risks. RIP Steve Jobs, the great human being.

How I hate this ad and yet it dominates my view from my living room window. I have no idea who ‘wrote’ it, but the idea that CIMB get to claim that ‘No one knows Asia like we do’ based on the ‘insight’ that fried rice is a major part of the menu across Asia, I have no idea. What it does say to me is ‘these people are SO very simple, don’t put your money anywhere near them !!’. For those who don’t live here, this ad is posted on the side of a prominent landmark next to a busy road which is usually gridlocked. So not only is the creative a waste of time, but they’ve also wasted a fantastic media space facing a more or less captive audience !

That is all.

Facebook seems to believe that in an ideal world, everyone would love to share everything they do. Everything they read, watch, listen to, do, think…..The fact is privacy means I can enjoy doing things without having them assessed and potentially commented upon by others. There are things that I do every day (and things I don’t do) that I’m not ashamed of, but I’m not necessarily that proud of either. Everyone has ‘guilty pleasures’ hidden somewhere in their iTunes account. If anything, some of the most annoying people in the world are the ones who believe their music taste to be universal and something that everyone would share and subscribe to if ONLY they knew about this indie band or that thrash metal. I think its that need for privacy that will be the natural brake on Facebook’s new features.

So while the markets crash around our ears, Facebook has announced a new set of changes which basically make it easier to share more of your life with more people. There is no doubt that the features are cool and creative, just like many of the other features Facebook has launched before. However, I’m wondering whether Facebook are starting to outrun the needs of the many of their users. I’m constantly being accused of oversharing across social media - not in a ‘too much information’ kind of way, but just updating and sharing stuff on Facebook a bit too much. That leads me to suspect that my circle of friends are relatively private with everything from their location to the music they like to listen to. Facebook seems to be betting that there is some form of latent need to share and show everything with the world. There is no doubt that that need exists for a segment, but I do think that Facebook, purposefully or not, is starting to position itself at the ‘sophisticated’ end of the social media industry. Having been a user since 2008 I’ve seen the various changes they’ve made to things like the feed, and factored them in to my use of Facebook. Goodness knows what a Facebook newbie or amateur would make of the interface these days, with so much going on, and so many different buttons to press, never mind how proud or otherwise you might be of the music you’re listening to or the movies you’re watching. 

So, I’m sure these changes will make sense for a large number of the population. The question is, will it appeal to a large enough and profitable enough segment for Facebook to make money from it ?

I’ve just been reading one of the many articles out there that STILL seem to need to be written to make marketers aware of the opportunity in social media. There’s so many of them around I can only assume the billions that Facebook is seeing right now represents the very tip of the revenue iceberg for them….although…..

This article was talking about the importance of engagement with consumers and how authentic responses were important, showing the human side of the brand. Of course this is important and a key benefit to social media. However it does make me wonder how many ‘engaged’ consumers brands really have, and how many they could possibly deal with. If cut through is an issue because of the sheer number of messages a given consumer is exposed to in a given day, it is highly unlikely they are going to have the time or inclination to ‘engage’ with all but a VERY small handful of brands, and even that is likely to be for some negative trigger like customer service.

So my conclusion is by all means use social media to engage with customers and that should be one of the benefits of the channel, the opportunities are far richer in terms of highly targeted messaging to name but one.

Having critiqued someone else’s article of course, I have to put something out there myself about which I’ll think and publish soon to a world on tenter hooks, I’m sure !

I was reading an article yesterday on personal branding, and there was a heavy emphasis on writing stuff that gets you and your expertise noticed by people in your area of expertise. Clearly there’s a lot to be said for this and in this day and age its so much easier to do this than ever before, but one is faced with the same problem that every rband has - how to cut through the clutter ? I think the first stage is to find the right forum(s) for debate and comment. LinkedIn is a good one with all of its groups and discussions, as well as writing a blog like this every day. For anyone in the brand marketing arena reading this, what discussion groups and forums do you regularly engage in ? Have you found it useful ?Do you integrate this with your Twitter discussions too ?

This is superb, not just because its entertaining, but its built around the idea of the nasty surprise. An excellent ad which is sure to go viral.

There is no way that Facebook can maintain the momentum of the last few years, but equally, they seem to be adding all sorts of features which are starting to look like a desperate attempt to find some direction. Just today I’ve seen three articles referring to them as ‘likewarm’ and ‘the next MySpace’, but perhaps the best article compares them to Yahoo! - great in their day and hugely influential, but now, 15 years later, waning but still highly profitable. I have a feeling this is Facebook’s destiny. Not as ubiquitous as it is today, but certainly becoming a part of our every day lives. The tragedy would be if the likes of Zuckerberg and Sandberg allow their vision to be clouded by the legions of stakeholders they must be gathering right now, taking them off in all sorts of directions. Perhaps the best thing about this company, thought, is Zuckerberg and his attitude to money. He’s already said that he intends to give most of it away like BIll Gates before him which is borderline unamerican, but may actually be the saving grace which allows him to build something other than a huge personal fortune, which would truly make him one of the great men of our time.