Powzot

Monday I was lucky enough to find (via all the great people I interact with on Twitter every day) a fantastic post over at Lateral Action about brainstorming and it’s merits as a creative tool. A lot of us had a fantastic conversation about creativity and it’s place in business as far as it comes to brainstorms. Well, it turns out Mark (the original post’s author) thought the conversation was worth bringing into it’s own post. (And he sent me a really nice email to let me know he had done it and used my comments, which is a first. Thank you Mark, you are a true gentleman.) You can check out the original post here, and the new post here. I highly recommend joining in, the people here really know what they’re talking about.

Last week was my local NPR station’s semi-annual pledge drive. For those not familiar, they spend a week interrupting all their programing every 15 minutes to talk to you about giving them money for 10 minutes. It’s not a model I feel has a lot of merit, but they and PBS seem to be sold on it. I bring it up though because last week they ran a promo with one of the nationally syndicated show hosts. He ran a spot on his show (apparently, I didn’t hear it so I’m assuming here) asking for people to turn in their friends and family who listen to NPR but don’t pledge. It’s a fun idea and breaks up the local DJs asking me for cash. So, “what’s your point?” you may be asking. Well, that spot had a nugget of gold in it, and it appears they’ve ignored it even though they produced it.

The spot went more or less like this: Ira Glass (the host) calls this girl who has turned her mother in for not pledging. After some set up from the daughter the mother is put on the phone. Ira questions the woman about why she’s listened for a decade and not given them any money. She doesn’t know. He asks her if she’ll pledge now. She says yes. He’s shocked. Totally blown away. He sums it up like this “If we had just called you 6 years ago, you would have pledged?” Her response was simple. “Yes.” He remains to be shocked. I am also shocked at what I just heard and what I hadn’t.

The listener, the one they’re trying to get, the one who listens but never gives money just gave them the answer… and they continued to keep doing it the same old way. The pledge campaign has some number of volunteers sitting at phones, waiting for people to call. Why not do a campaign where you set up a phone call with your listeners, and have a conversation with these people? Ask them to go to the website and set up a call time. Send out a post card with the web address. Talk to the people, discuss the programs they love, and why they love the station. Instead they’re still using the old “We talk, you listen” model… and they spend 7 days doing it, annoying their listeners by cutting into their programs to ask for money. Taking away the value of NPR for a week in an attempt to fund it.

This model can apply to anything people are passionate about. Your fans want you to succeed, and they want to share their love for your product, so let them share. As we continue moving into the 21st century the old models of one way communication in advertising are becoming less and less effective. The space is becoming more and more cluttered and it’s getting easier and easier to ignore what advertisers are demanding of us. But people love to talk about something they love. No matter if it’s NPR or Sharpie markers, and when you let them do the talking suddenly they’re much more interested in listening to you.

Tom Martin wrote a fantastic article on this subject last week. Check it out at Positive Disruption by: Tom Martin, I highly recommend it.

I’m an Interactive Art Director by day (… and by night too I guess, since I freelance in the night time). What that means (at least right now) is that most people spend a lot of time asking me about web sites. Microsites, (Macro?) sites, blogs, yada yada yada. More and more I’m amazed when I ask people (CEOs, VPs, Marketing Managers, other designers, the list goes on) the very simple question, “What is the point of your/our web site?” and they don’t have a clear answer. More often than not the answer is somewhere between lead generation and “I don’t know.” My follow up is this, “Why do you expect people to come to your/our site then?” The last time I checked I didn’t ever have a blast being a lead for some company to sell to me later. (Maybe it’s just me)

My point is this. The days of “We have to have a website so we can be on the web!” are long gone. Your online product brochure is going to draw fives of visitors a day if that’s you’re answer. The web is too vast now. There are over a billion people on the web today globally, but to get a piece of that huge audience you have to engage them. They’re not looking for you unless you’re already big, and then they aren’t sticking around if you don’t offer them something for their time beyond product specs and a chance to get your junk email.

The internet is the new TV or Radio. Way back in the day some genius ad man decided the best way to sell his client’s soap on this new broadcast-thing (it was radio at the time) was to give the customers a show his ads could appear in and around. Thus the soap opera was born and also the model for most radio and TV as we know it today.

So what’s your Soap Opera 2.0? What’s you’re answer to the simple question “What is the point of your website?”

Note: This was not the post I was originally working on, but after an afternoon listening/watching the Obama inauguration and thinking about the implications of it all, I decided to write this instead. Please note that this isn’t a political blog and I have no intention of it being one, but this seemed like the right time to write this post.

Today was a day of change (even if you don’t believe it was a day of Change™) and with it will come the waterfall effect across all sectors of the economy. So where does it leave us, the happy citizens of Adland? We’re in the middle of a huge number of changes and I think its time we change our response to all of them. In the face of: shrinking advertising budgets, declining readerships, ultra-fragmented media, over saturated DVR happy consumers and a new “crazy” generation (my generation) who demand they be included in marketing conversations we know the old solutions don’t work.

So we say we’re going to change (some of us even attempt to Change™) and we go back to the drawing board with the same old people and have the same old conversations about the our same old change. Sounds like a recipe for success, right? We need to throw our same old change out the window and embrace some new change (or even Change™ if that’s your thing). We need to take these bad times and turn them into innovative times, where we find real new ways of advertising on budgets that are less. We need to embrace innovators regardless their “industry pro” status. We need to listen to our growing consumer base that is demanding we talk with them and not at them. This goes for marketing managers, account people, strategy people, creatives, CMOs and mail room workers.

Its not just a change in Adland, its a change in business as a whole, brought to you by Adland. Change that will “add value” to our clients and more importantly their customers. Change that will answer the accusations that Adland is a drain on business budgets with a strong “Not so fast”. Change that will be measurable in sales, RIO, and whatever other statistics that are demanded by the number people. That’s Change™ I can believe in, how about you?

Welcome to Pow Zot! This is the first entry so it’s probably going to be longer than most, just fair warning. A few stray thoughts before I get into the mission statement-esq part of the post: 1) Please let me know what you think about any and all of this. Conversation is one of the biggest reasons I started this. 2) If the page design changes slightly it’s because I’m still tweaking it, trying to bend Movable Type to my design will  Ok. Down to the meat of it.

What is Pow Zot!? Quite simply it’s yet another advertising blog (yeah, quite a USP huh?). Like the graphic says, it’s “Advertising by the Millennial Generation”. Why? Well because (at least for now, it’s changed a few times in the last few years) I fall into the Millennial generation and I am an Advertising Designer (no, that’s not my official title, but it’s the most accurate description of what I do.) I’m fascinated by advertising. I love it. I know it’s weird, but I do. Strategy, copywriting, art direction, all of it is so fun! I decided to start Pow Zot! to start some conversations about marketing/advertising/communications on the internet and in the “digital age” as well as to share my thoughts and insights on the industry, as a “Millennial”.

I’m working on the first real post, but I’m so exited to get the template working and the site running that I wanted to get something up. So please, feel free drop me a comment with your thoughts on the design, future direction of the blog, or whatever. I’m excited about jumping in. Until the next post.