The race is on…
Like many of you, I chuckled a little at Ed’s posting the other day around Adidas wanting its own Nike+. Immediately (and probably completely unfairly) images flashed in my head of very concerned sports marketers pounding their fists and very harried advertising executives throughout Europe all rushing off to try to deliver the NBT (Next Big Thing). But what is it that they’ll deliver – what will be THE IDEA that wins the pitch.
I haven’t seen the brief Adidas issued but I’m going to go out on a limb here and hazard a guess that it asks for one or more of the following:
(p.s. if you’ve seen the brief you can just say yes or no in the comments anonymously and no one – but me – will be any wiser)
1. It should be useful, an example of marketing as a service/brand utility
2. A technology-based idea
3. A platform to build a community around
4. Deep integration between product and marketing
5. A platform to build other marketing activities upon
6. A sustaining – not campaign specific idea
7. With the ability to generate extensions across multiple media
8. An idea that leverages core Adidas brand and product equities
(I’ll declare victory if I get 50% right)
If this is indeed the brief, it feels like a perfectly reasonable request. In the right hands this ought to inspire a brilliant idea. One that might very well compete with and even surpass Nike+. However, IMO it’s not really what Adidas should be asking for.
We’re an industry (client and agency alike) obsessed with bright shiny things. We want big budget, high profile “pieces” to display on our expensive shelves or flat screen monitors. Things that we can send into awards shows which will make our peers gasp and turn green. This was fine when the fashion was “branded content” or “viral” but it doesn’t work quite so well when it’s marketing as a service or branded utility that you’re after.
To me, marketing as a service is an operating philosophy – not a deliverable. It’s a school of thought around how business success and customer care/acquisition can be achieved. One shouldn’t deliver branded utility as a part of an integrated campaign or even as a campaign per se; instead there should be a commitment to work being useful into the heart of everything that’s done. This is as true of the agency side as it is of the client side. Once you embrace this as the way you’ve decided to go to market, it’s not about issuing or working on a brief. Instead it’s about a holistic approach to doing business.
I think Nike understand that, but I am doubtful that either Adidas or the agencies it briefed do. I’m sensing the start of utility-washing (the marketing as a service version of greenwashing) which seems to be sweeping through the industry which will undoubtedly generate a backlash. Let’s not make being deliberately un-useful something we aspire to.