the merrier, the more | notes and comments of an aware creative

Moving on

2010-04-19T07:09:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed that this blog doesn't really get updated as much as it should. The reason is mainly that I don't like Blogger.com that much and that I spend most of the time online sharing and exchanging on Twitter.

But now I give blogging another try using Tumblr. Check out my new blog at http://www.florian-engel.com. On this blog I will only publish articles every now and then but if you follow my new blog it will cover pretty much everything I publish and share online ;-)

So give it a go and visit www.florian-engel.com

The age of ad-blocking

2010-02-14T05:13:00.000-08:00

It's really quite ironic that people who spend a lot of time in certain places do everything they can to block out ads. Especially online it's pretty easy by now to simply get rid of every banner ad showing up - you can even block out google ad words by default. I really love it...

Using Firefox there are a number of addons that enable you to gain full control over your screen. Quite obviously it's harder to block out billboard ads in public space. But our brain does a good job in focusing.

Most people don't even look at billboard ads - which doesn't necessarily mean that the message is not perceived and processed. But I'm pretty sure that most people would wear special ad-blocking glasses if they were available. Those could just replace ads with nice colorful pictures.

So - the point I'm trying to make is - do you really want people to hate your ads? Do you actually want to annoy them wherever they go? If you don't please just stop mainstream advertisement. It doesn't work well anyway and it upsets people.

It's not....

2010-01-21T08:41:00.000-08:00

Believe me, the reason I didn't blog for so many weeks is not...

...that I have a lack of motivation.
...that I don't think this blog is important.
...that you folks aren't important to me.

It's much more simple. I've been so busy with our agency website that I couldn't spend a minute on other websites. So far we only finished the german website(www.more-onion.at), but the english one is on the way - so stay tuned!

A few Non-Profit Web videos

2009-11-26T10:54:00.001-08:00

The creators either have seen too many splatter movies or they rely on the shock-effect - you never know ;-)

Another Greenpeace video - somehow they really manage to publish good videos at least once a month...

And finally peta has managed to produce a video that is not sexist at all. Congratulations. It even shows a stereotyped family with irony.

It's all about the weather...

2009-11-04T04:57:00.000-08:00

Talking about the weather is the number one smalltalk topic. But have you ever thought that even the work of an advertising agency can be depended on the weather? Sometimes it is.

Working for "die umwelberatung" we came up with a few ideas for a foto-shooting. Everything seemed to be quite usual - and all together really a normal task. For the shooting we needed some dry leaves, some nuts, a few chestnuts and grass.

It was only later that I realised that it's been raining for 3 days. So now the floor of our office is covered with newspaper and on top of it leaves, seeds and branches. The foto shooting is postponed to the day when everything is dry enough - but the weather wont stop us ;-)

Who needs leaflets?

2009-10-29T09:59:00.001-07:00

In case you don't know I live at Vienna (which is in Austria). You can live here for more than a decade without ever noticing a large protest. Especially universities here used to be (compared to other countries) very calm and the government could do pretty much anything they wanted.

When it comes to internet usage people would argue that a place like Austria simply isn't ready for digital campaigns yet. After reading lots of messages and updates on Facebook yesterday I decided to join the protest last night to show some support for the students. Since I was half an hour late I didn't eve get to see the university building because the crowd between me and the starting point of the protest was about 15.000 people strong.

As if that wouldn't be surprising enough today was the first time I really followed some conversations on Twitter of people who life here. Pretty close to information overload I followed the hashtag #unibrennt(which means “univerity on fire”). From that point onwards I realised that you could follow several live video streams to see the squatted rooms and you could even take part in discussions through twitter. Aside that several Facebook groups got more than 1000 members just over night, the trade unions declared their support for the students and the blogosphere will be stuffed with blogs on this topic by now.

I really had to think about “the wisdom of crowds”-theory because I haven't seen such amazing online campaigns happening here in Vienna before. The PR work is great, you can fill newspapers for several weeks with images that are available and if you want to be up to date all you have to do is go online. This student movement really has everything – online petitions, blogs, websites, twitter accounts, twitter hashtags, facebook groups, facebook fanpages, live video streams, photo-groups, online interviews, spontaneous online stunts, other videos, and on and on.

So do you really think this campaigns needs billboards or TV ads? Or probably a leaflet? I don't think so. If received so many text messages yesterday personally inviting me to the protest that this should be considered as the beginning of internet power in this tiny country.

By the way, the traditional media is struggling to keep pace with the online crowd.

Blog action day - no way out?

2009-10-15T00:13:00.001-07:00

Today is blog action day. If you are looking for a powerful example of interactive advertisement you just found one. All over the world a huge amount of blogs is participating in this yearly event.

This year's topic is climate change and we created a little ad for today. Our friend at osocio.org is so kind to co-publish it.

Most ads we found so far only pointed out how terrible the impact of pollution is using fear to make people take action. So we wanted to create something that helps people to realise how crazy it is to not take action.

Feel free to use this ad, do whatever you want to with it or just steal the idea. We really don't mind ;-)

the merrier, the more

2009-10-06T04:24:00.000-07:00

When I first heard an advertiser use the saying: "The more, the merrier" I totally agreed. It seemed logical that it's always better to have more money, more exposure and put up ads on more places.

After some time I started to doubt. Is it really the budget that makes a campaign succeed? How come that some companies and non-profits spend very little on campaigns and get lots of attention. Simple. Advertisement is not linear - it's complex. That's why I strongly believe that quality matters over quantity.

You can reach a few million people - but using the wrong method will only annoy them. You can certainly also spend millions of dollars on campaigns that simply suck. Good quality work can spread for free - through the word of mouth.

The rules also counts speaking of connection to people. If you have a few thousand friends on myspace or you sent some direct mailing to a couple of million households you're not exaclty going to have a close relationship with those people. They also won't have a real relationship with you. Having a few people who are dedicated to your thing - real fans - is worth much more. Again quality over quantity.

After all I named my blog "the merrier, the more". Don't get me wrong - big budgets are great. But with a different approach you could get more out of them. Even a free music festival would be a better investment than oldschool billboards, seriously.

To get the design of the blog merrier I'm working on it - please give me another week ;-)

switching blog domain

2009-10-02T06:36:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone!

I'm just about to set up a blog where I - from now onwards - will post. I'm moving away from "advertising hints" to "the merrier, the more". The reason for this is that I'm currently in the process of a redesign and my blog truned out to be mostly notes and comments on advertising.

People sometimes expected "hints" only but my blog is not a ad-helpline for anyone looking for advertisement hints. On my "new" blog you can read comments, notes and reviews on advertisement, campaigns, communication, ideas, activism, socially aware projects and ads seeking to fix the world.

I'm switching the domain name on Monday - so please don't be shocked if it's suddenly gone ;-)

you can find it under http://the-merrier-the-more.blogspot.com from then onwards...

the digital revolution

2009-09-25T06:36:00.001-07:00

And for those who are not sick of it - a lovely video that tells it all ;-)

Our approach to advertisement

2009-09-15T01:20:00.000-07:00

Finally I get to do some stuff with Prezi. We opened our gates today and I made a little presentation on our approach to advertisement.

Our website is www.more-onion.com

So where does Advertisement and Communications go?

2009-08-28T08:29:00.000-07:00

Noone knows. But this is the time to experiment, try things, be crative and to be nice.

The Future Of Communication, Marketing, Media and Everything

View more presentations from Balazs Lovenberg.

costumer support - get satisfaction

2009-08-21T04:44:00.001-07:00

Why only support the costumers? Are companies really only there to support those who actually buy their products? In most cases you have to call annoying hotlines, wait ages to have an email answered and then the answer usually isn't exactly satisfying.

Non-profit organisations need some kind of support too. For example, I sent an email to amnesty international asking for some data on their advertising spending to be able to write a blogpost on their great strategies. That was about half a year ago. Sound familiar?

In comparison to that you can check out the new wwf homepage - they've integrated one of my favorite online services: get satisfaction. It's simply cool. You can post questions and have them publicly answered, you can give feedback, send messages, rank posts, rank companies, post ideas for improvement, etc.

It's basically the kind of crowdsourcing tool every organisation should be using. By the way, the forum of our future agency is already online. Drop us a line, ask what ever you want to know or share your ideas!

"And make sure it's cheap!"

2009-08-07T05:38:00.000-07:00

No matter what, right? Print advertisement, which is still the biggest part of advertising spending, can be quite cheap. Thanks to globalization you can save at least 30% of the printing costs.

It's easy - all you have to do is find some big printing company producing in Asia and you're in. "Over there" (which seems to be invisible in your daily live) the printing plants don't really have to care about pollution. I guess it's just because people in those places don't enjoy nature and also don't care about their health.

Those printing companies will also make sure you don't have to deal with workers or probably even upset human rights organisations. They'll do it for you. But don't even bother thinking about it, as long as it's cheap.

But the most enjoyable part is still to come - it's less expensive to ship brochures a few thousand kilometers to Europe than to pay someone who lives next door. But never mind, since it's so cheap to print we'll just make a brochure telling everyone that we're so humane and totally agree with the new eco wave.

Caution: may contain irony.

Keep it up and it will grow

2009-07-21T06:57:00.000-07:00

At the moment I get reminded pretty much every day that modern advertisement is a lot about something simple: keeping the volume up. Sure you shouldn't annoy people with direct messages they don't want to receive. I was ask recently via a direct message of twitter for a donation - I said no thank you, provide me with content.

I'm talking about being so unique and always up to date that people enjoy listening to your story - even go to your website just to read your latest news. But what should they read if you are not honest with them and really telling the story of your doing.

Having said that I'm going to tell you why my blog wasn't updated for a while. Here in Vienna (Europe) we are currently setting up an environmentally aware advertising agency with a dedication to civil justice called "more onion". Our aim is to help building campaigns for social change. We are going to open our gates on Monday, August 31st and you can take part in our opening events.

Aside the fact that you're going to be able to play around with our website trying to find the easter egg you could make this day a bit special and help us raising awareness about the fact that advertisement in our world mostly tries to force people to consumerism. We are different.

If you have an idea on how we could spread the word together for positive change in the world just let us know - and to end this blogpost I want to use our (until now totally secret) claim: "Let's grow change".

Ads don't suck that much?

2009-07-17T01:16:00.000-07:00

Neal who read my very first blogpost "advertising sucks?" was so kind to send me a recently published study apparently showing that "consumers" (I think they're talking about people) in fact trust advertisement. Yes - they even enjoy it!

Since you're reading this blog I guess you look at ads every now and then because you're interested in them. But do you really think that people enjoy being exposed to around 500 advertising messages per day? When watching TV (I don't do it at all) do you really watch ads and afterwards think: wow - that was pretty informative?

I don't think so. And regarding the study I miss quite a few details. For example, I couldn't find any detailed data on the process how people actually answered the question. How were people chosen for the study? I don't think that people who hate advertisement would volunteer for research that helps the industry...

And after all the results of the study don't exactly convince me that people (especially in Europe) like advertisement. 51% "Don't trust [TV advertisement] much at all" and 50% "dont't trust [print ads]". Huge success right?

Day of action as a tool

2009-07-17T00:11:00.000-07:00

Today I'm taking part in the "Bloggers unite for human rights 2009" action day. For me that's not only a chance to show how easy it is to organise such an event in an online environment but also to promote human rights.

You probably heard of rape, censorship, slavery, torture, war, random killing, authoritarian governments, police violence and oppression. What most people don't notice is that it's not happening in some countries that we don't even know the name of - it happens right next door.

Can you remember that guy who was beaten to death by the police just because his skin was too dark for their taste? Ever heard of the fact that about 3 out of 5 women have experienced sexual abuse? These are cases that happen all the time - they're just as normal as going to the supermarket buying products produced by children in China.

So what do you need to do for a day of action like this? Just think about the opportunities you have. You can create a small campaign site explaining the basics and linking to every other place on the web that has to do with it. Bloggers unite let's you upload a whole "event" with pretty much everything you need. A little Facebook Cause will enable you to collect donations and using twitter, a facebook fan-page as well as a blog should be standard by now anyway.

Alright, let's face it. The video for the day of action didn't exactly succeed but you can also see that it wasn't a big afford. If you don't have a lot of money I would still think it's good to have one. Even if it looks like that:

When push fundraising puts me off

2009-07-16T05:57:00.000-07:00

The agitator posted a text on "pull or push" using a great quote of Jeff Brooks

"...I have to tell you, as a donor, I am increasingly resistant to the"push" tactics that have been inherent in the direct response mentality. Reality is, that as younger donors come on stream (who knows when?), they want to be in control and they will turn you off more quickly than their Boomer or Civic predecessor donors.
The question in my mind is, will charities be able to transition to a "pull" strategy to transition to more engagement tactics than interruption tactics? It’s a difficult transition. I’ve been struggling with this myself, but I think we’re going to have to become far more clever as marketers of our mission."

The funny thing is, that I'm one of those young donors he's talking about. If you're trying to get in my way when I'm walking down the street, use a little bit of rhetoric, don't really listen when I say "no!" and not even back off when I start swearing then you're stuck in the last century.

I only know people who worked for "push" fundraising companies - not a single one who actually donated. Pull is simply the new way to go.

Sex, Stereotypes and advertisement

2009-07-10T00:24:00.000-07:00

This morning I started my day with this article and thought it's time for a little blog. There are two perspectives - the way to look at it as an advertiser and the way to look at it as a politically aware human.

Does sex sell? Does sex not sell? Is it fine to show stereotypes in ads? If it actually does work to "generate sales" through using stereotypes and sex - why does it work?

Probably because we are brought up in a world were kids are forced into stereotypical thinking, you see billboards all over the city that suggest the same and after some generations everyone thinks it's always been that way.

Actually, it doesn't matter if you look at this issue from an advertisers perspective or not because advertisement does trendsetting - it's not as if you could choose to not have an impact. So, if you produce advertisement that suggests a view on sex where men are strong, self-secure and violent while women are objects that only have be "sexy" and innocent then you support violence against women. If you show "pretty" women with eating disabilities people think that's normal and guess what. Many women are going to suffer from eating disabilities just because you made them believe that a women is "pretty" that way and that the only thing that matters about women is their outer appearance.

The funniest part is that most advertisers claim that their advertisement works. When talking about values that are communicated through their ads you're likely to hear that they don't have that much of an impact.

Since this issue is not debated a lot on a serious level we're considering launching a blog only about sexist ads an their impact. Anyone in? Please leave a comment...

advertising vs. mud?

2009-07-03T00:39:00.000-07:00

An inportant part of being a responsible advertising agency is to think about the impact your ads have on society. This impact starts with stereotypes that harm health and psychy, continues with environmental disasters and ends with total consumerism.

While some advertisers are trying to make sure that even sand and plants carry the brand messages of car-producers and sportswear giants others develop sustainable ways of tagging.

Hold on, is tagging advertisement? I believe the nature of advertisement as such is to communicate. So why not tag? Mud tagging (invented by the author of this blog is a sustainable way for activists all over the world to promote their cause. It's not always the brightest colors that draw attention, it's the brightest ideas.

the new agency is a search engine?

2009-07-02T13:14:00.000-07:00

Did you know that about 80% of all websites are accessed through a search engine? What does that mean?

The AdAge reports that recently more people start to get the idea of Search Engine Optimisation. Barely anyone types domains, so they also don't land on your homepage. Usability online is more important than anything else - even more important than flash (caution: this is irony). Does that mean the advertising industry is slowly adapting "pull" strategies and no longer tries to push people to consume?

No. Most advertisers are still trying to work online with "banners" and offline they sell TV ads and billboard placements. But within the industry there folks who're not sure where advertising agencies will go in the future - is there a need for agencies?

If you ask me, there are many things you can do better than your agency. You're probably surprised to hear this of an advertiser, but agencies really shouldn't write your blog. Online campaigns can have a framework built by an agency but if online folks realise that the whole social media action is run by someone else than you they're going to get the feeling that they're not important to you. People like it if you care about them. That's something the advertising industry needs to learn, otherwise a lot of people are going to need a new job...

The Store selling "hope"

2009-06-23T01:52:00.000-07:00

Through the Osocio Blog I just came across a pretty interesting action. The Red Cross Portugal opened up a store - just like any other shop in a mall - with the only difference that they sell "hope". People can come along and "buy", which means they can support the organisation with a donation.

So, why is this innovative? Pretty simple. If you do something like that people get confused, it's a bit provoking and you access another "frame" with your non-profit cause. That leads to word of mouth - "Hey, do you already know of that store that sells hope?". If stories are suitable for word of mouth the media likes it as well. In this specific case they also used a lot of "normal" promotion, although I don't believe that this kind of advertisement lead to it's huge success.

Mozilla's strategy to learn from

2009-06-12T04:02:00.001-07:00

I'm a fan of the Mozilla Foundation. What I like about them is not only their amazing open source products but also their approach to marketing. Have you ever seen a TV ad or a billboard of Mozilla?

Like most non-profit organisations the Mozilla foundation is based on the enthusiasm of people who actually want change - in this case change of the web. Such an idea with some good marketing can compete with huge businesses like Apple, Micosoft and Google. So here's the strategy Mozilla could win a Firefox-share of 22.51% of all Internet users with low-budget and big competition.

The core strategy of Mozilla is "pull". They are not trying to bombard people with ads, they manage to turn users into real fans so that they put up ad-banners for free. Since all of the products are open source Mozilla can have their fans actually help developping the product. This is certainly something every company would benefit from because the product is released by a few thousand people who have contributed - not only ten. It also matters because the result is usually very satisfying since everyone can give feedback and/or develop it. For those Mozilla has their own online-platform (Mozilla Labs). For everyone enjoying firefox they've created an online portal to spread the word(Spread Firefox). At the top of it anyone can design their costum firefox t-shirt at the Community Store which results in great designs, free advertisement and some fundraising aside.

Acording to this article Mozilla had a "word of mouth" strategy in place when releasing the Firefox. The first network (note that I'm talking about networks - NOT target groups) they managed to reach were campuses. With the CampusReps Initiative they made a small but strong network aware of firefox and from there the message could spread by itself.

You can also clearly see the "word-of-mouth" strategy in the useage of words such as "organic browser". It's genious. Their newest campaign - to promote the release of Firefox 3.5 - is another interactive one. Users can upload little videos to promote the speed of the new version.

Advertisement: Potentially Misleading

2009-06-10T06:20:00.000-07:00

There's been a study released that 98% percent of all "green" product labeles are "potentially misleading". Reading this article made a few new product labeles pop up in my mind. What kind of impact is this going to have?

Sure, there are some people who firmly believe what some company sticks on their products ("tested", "green", "only 1% toxic", etc.) but whenever someone does a bit of research they will find out. If people find out that a company lied to them or told only half of the story, they get angy. What does that mean to non-profit campaigns?

Simple. Get people passionate about something you really stand for. If a fan of your organisation would be upset knowing the salery your CEO gets then you are not honest. Your recent advertisement may have little labeles on it telling people that their donations are save. Certainly the salery of your CEO doesn't exactly tell how you handle donations, but still: your fans would be upset. But in fact they are the key to your success. Fans are happy to do some actions, support you actively, spread the word and even defend you in front of others. They are worth more than any advertisement campaign and cannot be bought with any budget.

Help each other out!

2009-06-08T08:51:00.000-07:00

Competition here, competitor there - but what's that all about? Certainly we have to know who offers similar things than we do, and yes it's good to know what these people are up to. But have you never seen a road with 10 shops that sell similar things - everyone pretty happy with it?

There's really no reason to not hook up with people who do similar things because you can learn from each other, exchange on news and expertise - you can even collaborate! That's exactly what we are about to do. More onion is an advertising and communications agency dedicated to social change and we will open our gates in August. But we are currently looking for other ceratives, advertisers, communication professionals and web developpers to join the onion network. If you are interested just click on the link and get your application ready! You can also join the onion network's facebook group and the twitter conversation using #onionnetwork.

Newspaper ads and odds

2009-06-03T02:48:00.000-07:00

I just came accross another article about newspaper ad selling. In the US it dropped by -29.7% in Q1. You probuably heard it a hundred times: "print is dying" vs. "print never dies". Still nobody disagrees that we're currently experiencing some sort of change towards the digital and that especially newspapers are having a financially hard time.

Newspaper editors proclaim themselves that they have to face the "online chellange". Rupert Murdoch said it very nicely:
"The peculiar challenge then, is for us digital immigrants(speaking to an audience of editors) – many of whom are in positions to determine how news is assembled and disseminated -- to apply a digital mindset to a new set of challenges." (read whole speech here)

What are those challenges for "digital immigrants" of all kind of industries and organisations? I believe the most important thing that has changed is the position of editors, advertisers and marketers. Before the internet came along you could just sit in your chamber, write whatever you like and everyone read it. Sure, people could write a letter complaining or could ring you up as a company. But nowadays if you don't get out, really make the afford to get in touch with people, get into their networks and have a dialogue going on, they'll either ignore you or think you're arrogant.

The right moment

2009-05-26T06:36:00.000-07:00

Campaigns are not isolated from the rest of society. Neither comapny's advertising campaigns with big funds, nor political campaigns can ignore what's giong on around them. The environment online is pretty important because if e.g. many people "tweet", blog and talk about something it turns into a hype. At this point you can always jump into it and bring in your own message.

The organisation "Brave new films" managed to do so. On the very day (Monday) Starbucks launched an online campaign encouraging people to find posters, take a picture of them and put them online (also see article in NYT) Brave new films released their video about how starbucks treats it's employees. They decideded to take part in the campaign and upload images telling people about the starbucks policies.

The video got 30.000 views on the second day and by now it's on 40.000. The lesson to learn from this is on one hand that you need the right moment to launch your campaign or release your video and on the other hand that you need to be honest. If - like in the case of starbucks - you're trying to promote what you're doing there is no way to get around the online folks. And since the internet is quite transperent it's also transperent what you do.

Consumer penetration

2009-05-18T01:34:00.000-07:00

Yes, just read it again. It's consumer penetration. A very communly used word in the advertising industry. Whenever I hear or read the expression it makes me angry. Finally it made it on my blog - so here's what I think of "consumer" "penetration".

Let's start with "the consumer". If you speak about "the market" and "the consumers" on the market versus "the sellers" that's pretty inacurate. Everyone living in our society is a consumer. Also the sellers, also the advertisers and campaigners. What I really dislike is the approach that you as an advertiser or campaigner try to have an impact on "the mass" of comsumers - it sounds like you are active and the rest of the world is passive. But if you decide to do progressive advertisement and communication - if you really want to change the world - there's no way round the participation of "the mass". These people aren't stupid. So why do some large cooperations and many advertisers pretend that they're not part of "the people"? I belive they're arrogant but that's not going to help them in future.

The second word is "penetration". If you use this word realted to advertisement you will be quite likely to believe that you penetrate "the consumer" with your message. If that's your approach to advertisement people do good to either ignore you or even hate you. Believing that advertisement follows linear rules of "penetration" like AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action) is almost childish. The goal of advertisement and communciation for social chance doesn't need people to be "penetrated" but needs people to be part of the change. The 5th "P" of marketing (Product, Pricing, Placement, Promotion, PEOPLE) is nothing you can decide upon - if you force something on the people you want to speak to they're not exactly going to like you. You are a consumer - what do you think of spam mail in your mailbox every day? Do you enjoy wastepaper? Like to be penetrated by some advertiser?

Networks and the tipping point

2009-05-08T00:42:00.000-07:00

How could it happen, that late at night on the 9th of november 1989 a huge crowd got together to protest against the Berlin Wall? Remember, there was no such thing as mobile phones, the internet wasn't available and you can be sure they didn't use any classical advertisement. The answer is simple word of mouth.

Networks
If you develop a message that should reach a certain group of people, you have to start thinking about networks. It's no longer a "target group" because you don't always know who's part of the network and who has a connection to whom. Think about all the people you know, you have met and you have talked to. Could any market research tell what kind of people those are?

"Real world" networks are invisible quite often while online networks tend to be more transparent. You also have to differentiate bewteen "strong" networks and "weak" networks. A strong network would be your work (you see them every day), your friends (you talk a lot), etc. People you see every now and then or you just meet them in a bar once belong to your weak network. The art is spread the message in both, just do your very personal blend.

Malcolm Gladwell wrote in his book the tipping point that there is a point where a message in networks kind of goes mainstream. It's the point that makes a good book a bestseller, a successful brand a champoin and the point that saves good nonprofit campaign a spot in the history books.

An interesting thing to know about important networks is something called "hubs". These are people who really enjoy talking to many people, they are opinion leaders and they are quite likely to pass on your message as well. Acording to Ducan Watts these hubs are not as important but I think that it always depends on the network and the message.

And how does that fit in with advertisement and communication strategies? Well, just compare a campaign everyone speaks about to some other campaign that never got significant attention. You'll find that the budget is not the differnce - the important thing is wheather the developers thought about social networks and the word of mouth when creating the campaign. Is the slogan and the key message easy enough to quickly tell someone about it? Can everyone share the campaign online with just one click? Is it outstanding enough or just what everyone else does as well?

People, not statistics

2009-05-04T00:52:00.000-07:00

What's the first thing you think about when planning a campaign? If it's statistics you probuably worked for an advertising agency. But something quite a few people haven't discovered yet is that people don't work like computers. That's probuably the main reason why you can't develop a campaign based on statistics and simple data.

The most powerful strategy in communication and advertisement is to always consider "word of mouth marketing". It basically means to encourage people who enjoy what you're doing (your fans) to speak to others about their positive experience and/or to tell them something about you (buzz). If you constantly think about demographic data instead of people you're never going to provide people with content that's worth to be passed on. Usually people also don't exactly get the feeling that you care about them if you only gather simple data and then try to "target" them with what they refer to as "spam mail".

I'll get into more detail for you about word of mouth marketing, it's techniques and the different approaches to it.

Rethinking Fundraising

2009-04-28T01:29:00.000-07:00

Along with the internet the communication & advertising world has changed. For non-profit organisations that means to change fundraising as well because it's closely related to the overall communication strategy. When fundraisers spend their day in the streets trying to get new donors they can either be annoying or appealing. Either it's "pull"-, or "push"-strategy (here you can find a blog entry that explains "pull" and "push"). The internet is just the same - either you pay for banner-advertisement and try to push people to make a donation, or you place yourself where potential donors will be looking for you.

The online world makes it easy to find a cause that you're dedicated to. Once you've found that cause you can share the link with others, you can embed videos promoting the cause, you can blogg about it, you can tweet it, you can digg it, there may be Widgets for use, free banners to put on your website and you may pass it on via email. This way a donation of a single euro/dollar can lead to a million - you certainly need to enable the your fans to pass it on though. It's obviously not enough to put up a Facebook Cause and expect the millions to come.

As a non-profit organisation you can use existing online communities and networks to get in touch with people and feed them with news and background info on your issues. By now, you don't even have to create the page for donations yourself. Here are some platforms and communiites that enable people to donate right to the cause they want to:
Facebook Cause
Causecast
SocialVibe
Change.org
Care2

It's easy to set up a page, the hard thing is to promote it. People need to be passionate about you and your cause and you need to keep people tuned. A good example for online fundraising is Charity: water. They raised 61.205 dollars using their Facebook Seite in an effective way.

Here you can listen to a podcast about online fundraising and social web work for non-profit organisations I've come across that is very interesting.

"viral" and it's impact

2009-04-22T06:05:00.000-07:00

Last night Greenpeace published a video online for earth day. Funny enough, recently some advertising folks claimed that TV is not dead and that TV ads are still very important. Reaching 38.003 and the top ten youtube charts within the first two days of launch this video is a great example of how you can reach peopel without paid placement.

Sure it would be fun to watch this amazing video on a large cinema screen. But considering the costs of placement, the social web is really the only solution! Greenpeace uses this video to collect email addresses for further campaigns and you can sign up here.

A great site to check out the "viral charts" is this.

Advertising vs. truth and earth day...

2009-04-22T05:35:00.000-07:00

Happy Earth Day everyone! I'm taking the change of this special day to blog about something that tends to upset me a lot. If you're trying to greenwash your image just because it's earthday and that seems to be a good possibility to get some publicity you have to consider that people aren't stupid.

When doing advertisement, communication, pr, and social networking don't think that you can take on fake identity. Nowadays research is really easy (search engines) and if someone discovers that what you're doing is simply greenwashing the message is quite likely to spread and have a negative impact.
For your non-profti campaign this means that you should be totally honest, you should do whatever you can to aviod mistakes when it comes to statistics, numbers, etc. and that you have a plan for crisis management if something goes wrong.

A recent example of greenwashing is acampaign of Dell. How can computers and harddrives, that are produced in China, shipped a few times around the world, made out of materials like plastic and metal be green? I suppose Dell doesn't know themselves.

Just type "greenwashing" into Forestle (a green serach engine) and you'll see what I mean. Here are some examples:
Don't be fooled
How greenwashing works
Greenwashing is a dirty business
How to spot greenwashing
The greenwashing spy

Branding against brands?

2009-04-21T06:26:00.000-07:00

What does branding mean? Can someone create "a brand"? Should activists and non-profit organisations have "a brand"?

Well, first of all "a brand" cannot be "made". It only describes the impression people have of you and your activities. If they see a poster of your orgnaisation, they will automatically link it to other information and things they know, heard and red. When someone is speaking about "branding" they usually mean to develop a concept and certain guidelines on how you would wish to be seen, perceived and what you wish to be linked to. It's not only about having a logo, it means being unique, easy to recognise, closely attached to your core message and easy to be linked with information people already have. Multi-national companies like shell spend millions trying to make sure people like and recognise them. This specific example is great, because shell is known for rather funny takes to improve their image (fighting climate change as an oil company? - yeah right!).

We need brands, to fight brands!

If we're planning a campaign to fight an oil company (just to stick with the example) we should think about branding as well. You can divide your branding guidelines into:
visual concept ("Cooperate Design")
action concept ("Cooperate Behaviour")
and communication concept ("Cooperate Commnication").

Having such guidelines makes your daily work easier, helps your campaign in pretty much every way! There's hardly any way to get around profssionals in these areas, since e.g. the development of a logo by itself is a highly complex process. Usually there's much more going on behind the scene than you would expect (research, subconscious impact, etc.).
Certainly, not every campaign can afford that. Make sure you at least get the most out of, if you happen to do it yourself!

TV ads are great, right?

2009-04-15T10:37:00.001-07:00

Recently a study showing that most Americans still watch TV instead of watching movies online was used to show how important TV is for advertising. What does that mean?

An average advertising agency would certainly recommend producing TV-commercials because it's an important way of communication. In fact the study does not show how many TV-watchers actually watch ads. How do you watch TV? Do you go to kitchen and have a snack while the ads are on? Do you quickly zap through the channels to find one without ads? Are you annoyed by ads on TV?

Think about it. An average TV has enormous production costs and even higher costs when it comes to placement. At the same time people may not even appreciate your ads because they just want to watch their favourite movie.
When comparing it to online video-campaigns one of the most important differences is, that you can start a dialogue with people interested in your issue. Along with that the placement is for free and you even have the chance to embed links. Others can embed your video as well and this way it can spread.

Your choice.

New ways to go - flexible and polarizing

2009-04-03T00:51:00.000-07:00

When I say, that it's always risky to try something, no one has ever done before, most communication managers, campaigners and advertising folks will nod. That's the reason, why most advertising and communication is still the same as in the last century (except the design). But it's never possible to predict exactly what impact a campaign is going to have.

Yes, there are quite a few things that can be considered, sure there is some research that helps and yes it's possible to do some test before actually launching a campaign. I personally think, that it's better to be polarizing than to be just "accepted" by everyone. So if you have the choice between a radical or provoking campaign and an idea that hardly anyone is going to mention I'd rather choose the first one. Sometimes it's actually those, who speak out loud against the campaign, who really give it the last push to worldwide publicity.

To show you what I'm talking about, there are two products that have been advertised in the most terrible way and were still spread by the word of mouth. All kinds of "experts" were simply puzzled by this story:

This product actually sold 4 million times, had it's own Fan Parties and evolved to a cult item. Don't worry, I'm certainly not telling you to do the same kind of advertisement for your campaign - that would be stupid and quite likely end up with a mess. Rather, I want to encourage you, to try new ways of advertising and communication, be totally original, and just see what happens. If you've lost your fear to try new things you'll also find it easier to adapt your campaign if it goes wrong. It's better to try something new, be flexible and find out that it simply doesn't work, than to waste a lot of money with old-school advertisement and hope that it turns out to be a hype like "the blanket with sleeves".

Why pull and not push?

2009-03-21T08:09:00.000-07:00

When thinking about communication concepts there are basically two ways to go. Either - like it used to be in the 20th century - you try to communicate as much as possible to the "target group" using all kinds of expensive media like TV, Newspapers, Billboards or direct mailing. So consumers were "pushed" to buy or in non-profit terms were "pushed" to take action and donate.

The other way to go is to "pull". It means to have something to offer that people enjoy being fans of - just like a famous musician. I'm sure you know a musician that you enjoy so much that you check on news about him/her every once in a while, listen to the newest demo recordings and you want to be the first person to buy an album. Your non-profit organization could be the same - you just sit there, do your job and people come along being really passionate about what you're doing. If you don't take care about your fans and only use one-way communication you're not going to get there though.

Why "pull" is more ethical

People get annoyed by advertisement. That's why my mailbox has a sticker saying "NO ADVERTISEMENT" and why I don't go back to websites that use pop-ups. Billboards are also not exactly appealing to me, neither are screens in the public. People (especially in cities) experience a total overload of information just because of advertisement. That's way people sometimes even get annoyed with companies and organizations that use these kinds of media. Just think about what you do, when the movie you're watching is interrupted by an ad. Hardly anyone really watches TV spots and online banner blindness is the same phenomenon.

Why "pull" is ecological

Think about the tons of paper in your city that are designed, printed, delivered to your mailbox and put right into the bin. In the best case the paper is even mixed with various chemicals to be "more appealing" which results in a low quality when the direct mailing is recycled. Putting up billboards is not good for the environment either. The ink gets washed off by the rain, for the paper you need to cut down trees and the visual pollution is incredible.

Why "pull" is effective

When speaking of effectiveness you calculate how straight forward you achieved your communication goal. What do you think is more effective: if people, bloggers, journalists and fans are waiting in front of your door just to be able to get some info about the newest campaign or if you write a press release and publish it on hundred sites hoping that it's interesting enough? Certainly you're not going to be able to do this from the first day on - but that's a good goal to reach isn't it?

Why "pull" is more efficient

To know how efficient a campaign is you consider input and output. A campaign that's based on bought media like TV, billboards and newspaper ads is going to need a budget of at least a few 100.000 euros. To measure the output is quite hard because you cannot look at the effect of a campaign without considering your other activities. Still - if you only use free media placements (like online platforms, social media) and "PR" the input in terms of money can't possibly be higher than the output even if only a few hundred people get your message.

The word of mouth

One of the key factors is to get the people to talk about you. The word of mouth - especially in combination with the internet - is the most valuable thing for your pull-strategy. People enjoy talking about positive experiences, interesting news and revolutionary things. Have you ever recommended a restaurant? Have you ever told someone an awkward story? People trust each other more than organizations and companies. That's why other people talking about you is much more personal. Apple has it's own fan-communities where they just go on and on about "how great" apple is and any of these people is willing to also convert you to buy a mac! Mac-Fans gather in front of the Stores just to be the first ones to buy a new product (like it was with the release of the i-phone). That's exactly the way people should wait in a line just to volunteer and donate to your non-profit cause.

How you can "pull" the audience?

- Get the dialogue started, no one-way communication (Interactive advertisement, Social Media, Interaction with fans, Open dialogue for everyone)
- Care about your fans (Why not a Fan-Festival for the good cause?)
- be different than everyone else (Why not take the bike to the next meeting?)
- Count on the word of mouth (Social networking, give people stories to pass on)
- use the internet wisely (Social media, platforms, free placement)
- Mass-media only for free, please (Internet, PR)

Social Media and online advertisement - an overview for non-geeks

2009-03-19T03:17:00.000-07:00

There are quite a few good guides around for social media usage and web-advertisement. This one is specifically for non-profit organisations and campaigns and it explains why and how to do online advertisement.

Why is the online world especially important for non-profit campaigns?
Non-Profit projects need people who are really dedicated to the issue - they need fans, who love to spread the message. Usually non-profit campaigns aren't very well with finances either - online it's all for free. It only takes your motivation, time and afford.

Online it's all about:

- interacting with people (social media, blogs, micro-blogs, video-blogs, comment sections, etc.),
- being found by people (Search Engine Optimasation, Bookmarking),
- getting the message out (blogs, Fotostreams, video-blogs, Podcasting, etc.),
- building up a number of followers/fans and (Through RSS-Feeds, other Feeds, micro-blogs,etc.)
- keeping in touch with them (through being interesting enough and also interacting).

So, what kind of tools should you be using?

- a blog
- a micro blog
- a photostream
- a fanpage
- a wiki
- a vlog or video page
- other social media profiles
- a podcast

Blogging

A blog is total standard by now - if you don't have a blog you don't exist. Through blogs you can share your expertise, show your point of view and back it up with other resources, tell news and do what you think people are interested in. You can set up a blog within a few minuets for free on those pages:

Tumblr
Blogger
Wordpress
Typepad

Here you can find some guides to blogging (they're not objective though ;-):
total guide to blogging
Idiot's guide to blogging
a teacher's guide to blogging

A micro-blog

Micro-blogs are great to keep in touch with people, share links and news with just a few lines. The most famous example of microblogging is certainly twitter - you really should be on twitter, and you can start with following me. Just pop in and see how other people do it. You'll get the hang of it pretty soon - just do what you'd like to be done to you...
A new service is a bit aside mainstream and still in the "beta" but seems to be pretty powerful and is called Blellow. You can also add me here.

You can certainly also use normal blogging services as mirco-blogs, they are just not linked up in a way like twitter is. Quite a few other social media pages have an integrated micro-blog service (e.g.Facebook)

Photostream

Photostreams are there to share photos of what's going on and tell news and stories through images. Most Photo-Services also include the possibility to embed the photo for others, so the message (image) can spread. Just upload your images, tag them with your
key words.

Some photopages to set up a profile:
Flickr (which can be used for videos as well)
Photobucket (not very user-friendly)

Fanpage

On a fanpage you simply write what your project is about and what you’re aiming for. At the moment fanpages on Facebook are a great opportunity to combine a few social media tools like a micro-blog with a fan-page. You should certainly also link all your profiles to each other and the fanpage should include links to all other ways of getting in touch with you. Other ways of getting a "fan"-page is that you build your own website which is certainly more powerful (not instead but in addition). That will also be expensive though if you're not into web-development yourself. If you still want your own website choose a content management system (CMS).

Some popular open source CMS:
Joomla!
Drupal
Typo3
Plone

Wiki

Having a Wiki is like having a book published about yourself. Just that it's better. Simply create an account and get started. People can edit your entries, post comments and start discussions around it. Awesome!

A Video-Blog/ Video Profile

Video blogs become more and more popular these days because webcams are cheap and often integrated in laptops. If you have a webcam you're 5 minutes away from becoming a video-blogger. With a video profile you can comment videos, post videos, get in touch with other video-bloggers and rate videos. On YouTube, the largest platform online, you can have your own channel as well.
If you do an action somewhere around or you take part at a protest - just get a little video-camera and film it. With a little bit of editing it's all done - free promotion on the web. Just be aware of the fact that watching videos is much more time consuming - so make sure that videos are not the only way to get the information you're communicating.

Resources about Vlogging:
VlogBlog

Video-Pages:
YouTube
Vimeo
Seesmic
Blip.tv

Other social media profiles

Myspace is loosing followers but it's still a good tool. It has an integrated blog and a micro-blog, you can upload photos/videos and share them and people can add you as "friends" similar to facebook.

There are also a few platforms like Linked in where you can create groups, exchange contacts etc. I believe it's always worth registering at any page because this way you ensure that nobody will get your username. Other people can cause quite a bit of confusion and damage your online identity.

Meetup is a great tool that was used for the election campaign of Obama as well and seems to do an awesome job for non-profit organisations. You can easily created a group, spread the word and give people the possibility to join you.

Digg is a platform that you should be using. The idea is that you can set up a profile and "digg" a submission of someone (can be a video, foto or news article). You can also have friends on digg and "shout" at them to e.g. pass on one of your submissions. If you have a few hundred "diggs" (so people who say "I like it" and who clicked on the "digg" button) it will get the attention of other people and so on. There's been an enormous amount of traffic coming from digg -that's why I've even integrated the digg button to this article ;-)

After a few months you will be still finding some more new social media sites and I've only listed a few big ones here. Just keep watching out of new trends and sites.

Podcasting

To make a podcast you basically need a microphone and you need to be a good speaker. That's it.

Some guides and tipps:
How to Podcast tutorial

Free pages to open up a podcast:
My Podcast
SwitchPod
PodBean

Search engine optimisation

This is the most important part for your website, if you have one yourself. There are many resources online how the whole thing works. Some of it is good, other stuff is terrible but here you can find a simple list that I like.

This is just the beginning - if you have something to add please comment....

Agencies way behind

2009-03-16T02:29:00.000-07:00

There's just been an international study released regarding advertising agencys and their problem catching up with the 21st century media. I knew that hardly any agencys actually understands that the time for old-school advertisement is over, but that only 4% belive that Search Engine Optimisation and E-Mail lists makes sence shows me that the real world is usually more drastic than my imagination. Only 33% of all agencies actually do have a blog - which doesn't mean that it's worth anything. (With me it's the other way round - I don't have an agency yet ;-)

I already wrote in my german blog about a little interview with the most important german agencies but this study actually prooves my point. Since the interview is in german I'll summ it up for you:

German Advertising Agencies see their future in digital media
They all believe that their future business will be mainly digital - that's the way to go. P.es. Michael Bohn from Chairman Vivaki points out that they are going to get into "Social Targeting" and similar.

What's so funny about this interview?

Well, none of them ever mentioned, that new media is about a dialogue. It's not the kind of advertising those people are used to. Putting up a poster or showing someone a TV-spot makes them to "consumers" of the information. The internet and the future advertising concepts are about the dialogue. Sure, you can handle social media with a robot that adds other people on a regular basis and you don't have to get in touch with anyone - but everyone is going to dislike you for being fake.

Get over the past, join the future. Noone wants to be passsive!

Tick, tick, tick goes the clock

2009-03-15T05:53:00.000-07:00

I just watched this video and I though that it's pretty interesting.

This video is minimalist and really effective.
They've used children in this little video because most people respond to "their innocence" (by the way, they aren't innocent ;-). The "tick, tick,..." is used to create some pressure and to communicate the urge of action.

If you want to make a little advertising spot for your project or campaign - this video shows, that the main thing you need is an idea that cuts right through!

There are lots of creative tools out there you can use, especially when time is short ("tick, tick, tick,..."). I enjoy this one:

Take a piece of paper (landscape.
draw a table on it with two or three lines and 4-5 columns.

In the first column you make a quick scratch of your ideas. Then you pass the paper onto the next person. He/she simply looks at your ideas (they may need explanation though) and does another scratch in the next column with ideas that are somehow related to the first ones. If you keep passing this sheet to each other you will have - depending on how many columns and lines you've chosen - quite a few ideas. It's really funny if you have 3-10 sheets at the same time that keep coming and going until you have THE idea.

It also works with groups!

Public-Relation and Advertisement

2009-03-10T05:43:00.000-07:00

For those of you who are new to advertisement, marketing and public relation - there's something like a never ending debate going on between PR-agencies and advertising-agencies: "What is more important? PR or advertising?". Most big advertising agencies also offer PR as a little service aside.

First of all let’s have the basics explained. Advertisement (from an old-school perspective) is there to communicate directly to the “target audience” at the most effective and efficient way using a variety of media. Public Relation (PR) experts communicate to journalists, bloggers and other people who may spread the message.

Studies and research have shown that when building a brand PR is usually more important. In fact PR is also just as important as advertising when the brand is already in place but that’s something advertising agencies don’t want to accept.

I think that PR and advertisement will become more or less the same in future. Advertising has changed so much over the past 10 years that it needs to be totally re-though. Conventional ads (posters, TV commercials, magazine ads, online-banners, direct mailing, etc.) are not cost-efficient any more and people rather get annoyed by the overwhelming amount of ads they are exposed to every day.

The internet has changed advertisement and PR at the same time. Advertisement strategies had to change because internet users aren’t interested in just consuming anymore. PR changed because the number of blogs started to shoot up and there are quite a few examples of blogs being much fast in publishing than p.ex. a newspaper or magazine.

This means, that journalists started to actually do some of their research in the Blogosphere. Blogs are also relevant to online promotion and advertising. So are blogs PR or advertising? Who cares, just get over it. Social media is totally new concept and I think advertisers AND PR-people have to get into it in order to stay up-to-date.

I believe that an advertising campaign should include PR, social media and the people’s involvement otherwise it’s not worth anything. Same thing counts for a PR-campaign as well. Nowadays advertisement and PR should build brands that pull people to get involved, instead of pushing them to just act like they were told.

Considering costs and budget PR is usually less expensive than large scale advertisement. It’s also much more credible if you read an article about something than if you look at a billboard. On the web it’s the same thing – people will believe a blogger much more than a company’s website.

Non-Profit ways of web-advertising

2009-03-09T03:17:00.000-07:00

Non-profit organisations and open source project always have to deal with the same problem. Private companies simply have a bigger budget. It's also much easier to sell a product than to raise awareness about a complex issue.

These are reasons, why non-profit organisations have to have even better ads and strategies. Using social media such as facebook, you-tube, flickr and twitter should be absolute standard. If you really believe that what you're doing is great and you actually offer people something that's worth joining you'll succeed on the web.

Mozilla Firefox is probably the best example for a total success beating commercial products like internet explorer, safari and chrome. I've never seen a TV-commercial of them or large billboard advertisement but they produced lots of funny as little spots. And guess what - they've all had about 30.000 hits.

Here's a little example:

The odd flash-intro

2009-03-08T10:08:00.000-07:00

Recently I've come across a very interesting fossil on the web. Funny enough, it was the homepage of an advertising agency (GreenAd) using the claim "keep up with technology" where I found a flash-intro at the start-up of their site.

Well, first of all - where does this flash-intro thing come from?

Old-School advertisers believe that literally throwing ads, at what they call their "target group", is going to lead to people totally identifying with a certain brand. TV is usually the agency's favourite media choice because with film it's possible to annoy TV-watchers using sound and moving image at the same time. That's the reason why those kind of people went online and started to do the exact same thing they were used to do all the time - just in a totally new media and with even more annoyed people not watching.

In general, people using flash for everything obviously don't understand how the web works. Navigation is supposed to be usable (that's why they call it web-usability) and not fancy. A great example for showing off with flash but rather chasing visitors away is another homepage of an advertising agency - this time "Leo Burnett". (http://www.leoburnett.com/)

At least they were kind enough to make a little menu at the bottom that works ok. It's just amazing how obvious old-school advertisers ignore that the world is changing - Especially the advertising world and the online-world.

So, please if you don't want people to push the skip button every time they're trying to gather information from your homepage, just don't do to much with flash - search engines can't work with it propperly, it takes ages to load and it's a mess altogether.

Viral and Environmentalism

2009-03-06T02:35:00.000-08:00

I think the internet plays one of the most important roles regarding advertisement for social issues like environmentalism. You don't need a lot of money to make a little movie and as it used to be the quality of the video is not the most important thing. To have a video go viral you need...

1) an awesome idae that is really worth seeing,
2) some way of recording
3) the flexibility to also accept if it doesn't go viral

The last point is probuably the hardest. You cannot controll the "virus" once you've let it go - it may just entertain a few of your friends or it can totally exceed your expectations. That's something people in the advertising industry have troubles learning. So if you're flexible enough, go for it...

here's a little viedo that's on it's way through many blogs:

Advertisement and Anchors

2009-03-06T01:00:00.000-08:00

A technique that is used in communication and in advertisement is called “anchoring” in psychology. It is a basic method our brain connects information with. Whenever you think of e.g. a cow your brain automatically calls up all the information stored about cows and related to cows. Depending on the intensity of the “anchor” and the frequency you have perceived and recalled the same thing an anchor can bring strong or weak associations.

If you e.g. got attacked by a cow when you were a child this seems to be a pretty strong negative anchor. Looking at the package of chocolate you used to eat every day with a smiling cow on it is a positive anchor.

How does that affect advertisement?

Well, if you look at a billboard three times the message will make it all the way to your long-term memory connected to all the information stored about other adverts, your personal desires and the brand itself (Certainly a few other things determine this process as well). Also if you just had something to eat and it came right out of some supermarket, and you have a bite and you really enjoy the taste, you love the feeling on your tongue…
This will lead to an anchor in your brain being set: “this specific product makes me feel good and I like it”. Every time you do that again it will make the anchor stronger. It’s just the same when you’re not buying a product but if you are trying to make people think about a certain issue. Every word and image recalls other things in the brain. If you p.ex. are about to put a poster together for a campaign you should check what the image and the message you’re using may be linked to in the brains of the folks you are trying to reach. This is a pretty hard task and if you haven’t thought about whom you are specifically trying to reach it’s even more work.

The problem with anchors is that once they’re set it’s much harder to undo them. This is probably one of the reasons why majority of western society is hardly able to think into a different direction and take responsibility themselves. You perceive so many messages every day, they get linked up in your brain, processed and stored making it hard to question dogmas and reflect the way of living.

Your goal should be to help people to associate progressive movements with something positive. Throwing molotov cocktails may be effective for destruction but it also leads to an anchor in people’s brains that the “left-winged-radical-punk-treehuggers” only suggest to destroy everything. That’s a tuff thing to be associated with when you're intending to do serious work.

Advertising sucks?

2009-03-05T06:23:00.000-08:00

Whenever I come up with the word "advertising" people start giving me odd looks. It's pretty obvious that most advertisement is created in order to gain more profit - at any cost. This is the reason why hardly any advertising agency p.ex. cares about their role in enforcing stereotypes.

Still, to advertise basically means to communicate. If you ever produced a leaflet, put a little video online or you explained your point of view to someone personally – that was advertising. Everyone does it. The question is how you do it and what you are trying to reach. I want to use this first blog entry to explain the basics of communication and advertisement.

Where does manipulation start?

When speaking about manipulation most people get a little fright. They think of being brainwashed and forced to do something they don’t want to. But perception and processing of information is what our brain does and what comes out creates a certain desire or believe. So everything that comes into your brain and is processed in some way manipulates you – no matter if you agree or not.

Since communication is always manipulative in one or another way the key questions are how we communicate, what we’re aiming for and why we communicate.

How should we communicate?

You can decide which methods you are willing to use for communication and which you are not willing to use. If you produce a little video and something goes up and down, and then back up again viewers are going to follow it – the result is that their head moves up and down just like if they said “yes”. This is an example of a method you can use to “help people like it” (this is an example of euphemism ;-). If you are prepared to purposely use methods that communicate subconsciously is your decision – although one should be aware of the fact that you cannot not-communicate. There’s always a subconscious part of the message as well.

You can also choose which way of communication you want to use. Dropping letters and leaflets into people’s mailboxes is not exactly good for the environment (in 90% of the cases they are being dumped right away) and it annoys people.

Certainly the available resources restrict the possibilities anyway – but good advertisement is not done with a lot of money, but with good ideas and strategies. But issues like this are worth a whole blog by themselves so I’ll leave it for later ;-)

What are we aiming for and why do we advertise?

I personally do not advertise for private companies because don't want to support consumerism. So my aim is not to help other people generate profit instead supporting social campaigns and organisations. If you campaign for a good cause – why not advertise? Why not make the most out of your little resources?