Posted 10.19.11 by Becky Lang
With the tagline “It’s not for women” and a campaign that acts as a watch dog for girly behaviors like saying “OMG,” Dr. Pepper’s new campaign is actually enough to make me refuse to buy Dr. Pepper. My co-workers said that I was playing into their plot by not drinking it, and that a smart counter-strategy would be to make it the drink of “Real Housewives” or promote the idea that it cures menstrual symptoms.
Since I cannot enact such reputation-destroying initiatives as one single woman, I will still refuse to buy it, because I would simply be driving sales.
This product doesn’t just bother me for its sexism – it bothers me because it’s stupid in so many ways.
1. They missed a simple insight about aesthetics of diet
Good magazine described the can as “gunmetal gray,” which makes it sound like Dr. Pepper put thought into the color. But if they had, they would have realized gray is the color of girly diet sodas.
I associate gray cans with my parents’ Diet Coke, which to my childhood self was a lackluster alternative to regular Coke. The loss of bright and bold colors for a simple gray implies deprivation – the kind of mentality you don’t want to think about when you’re making a healthy choice.
That’s why Coke Zero has been so successful – it looks like a regular soda to the point that I actually have to double check the nutrition label sometimes. Despite being marketed at men, many women like Coke Zero because of this. (And the taste.)
2. The 10 Calorie Area Is Less than Alluring
I haven’t done official research on this, but I don’t see how 10 calories could distinguish a soda as something more exciting than a diet drink. One teaspoonful of sugar has about 15 calories. This means there is less than one in there, whereas most sodas have approximately 9 teaspoons of sugar. It’s not going to taste more like sugar than aspartame.
I noticed that Coke tried to make Vitamin Water 10 its diet drink before finally giving in and releasing Vitamin Water Zero.
The “zero” seems to be an alluring point for both men and women, as it implies certainty over calorie content and impact on health. The 10 in Dr. Pepper breaks down in a bottle, because it contains 2.5 servings and thus 25 calories.
3. This is a “Negative Publicity is Still Publicity” Campaign
A lame 10-calorie soda probably wouldn’t be getting talked about as much as it is right now if it wasn’t so blatantly offensive and crude. But that’s a short-sighted strategy for launching a new brand.
Since I wrote the website for Zeus Jones, it has been hounded into me time and time again that a cornerstone of a brand should be that it is guided by real values that people can connect with, and that its actions express these values more than simple messaging gimmicks.
Starting with a value of sexist inclusiveness is not one that will create an aspirational halo on your product, except that it will become associated with small-minded men. Mature men aren’t afraid to be associated with diet soda anymore.
-Becky Lang
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Posted 10.06.11 by Adrian Ho
I have a long history with computers. I got a Sinclair Z81 for my birthday one year and the 16K ram pack for my birthday the next. I did maths and computer science at college where we learned Pascal on Vax mini computers. My history with computers became intertwined with my history as a planner when in 1992, I started working on my first account: AST Research, a now defunct PC manufacturer and shortly afterwards Sun Microsystems, a now defunct workstation/server manufacturer.
In 1996,I started working on Microsoft and the next year Steve Jobs returned to Apple. By then, Apple had ceased to be relevant – our sights were set on companies like Netscape, Sun and Oracle. Along with most others I assumed that it would be too little, too late. And when the “Think Different” advertising launched, my assumption was confirmed.
I remember asking my colleagues, “How can an ad about what you are, a thing that everyone already knows, change what you think about a company?”
In fact, I don’t think it did. It was everything that came after that changed how we think about that ad.
And for me, it was everything that came after that changed how I think about computers, about technology, about advertising and about marketing.
Goodbye Steve.
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Posted by Becky Lang
A lot of people are cynical about brands. This is easy to forget when you work in marketing, and you regularly stay up till midnight working on a brand’s latest, highly-researched, tested and thought-out campaign.
But what a lot of people, partners or even collaborators often think when they look at a campaign is, “What does the brand get out of this?”
Now, this is not a naive question. Oftentimes brands do get something out of a service they provide. Look at Facebook and Google – while their sites are free and absolutely life-changing, they are getting a lot of data out of them. The benefit for them is clear, but not enough to cancel out our appreciation for them. Beyond just collecting data, many brands are also initiating socially-conscious campaigns to distract from the muck of a recent P.R. disaster.
But when you can’t look at anything a brand does without asking this question, you’re thinking too small. The best brands are not merely transactional with their customers. They don’t approach a charity they’re working with and say, “You scratch our back, we scratch yours.” They know that reputation is its own reward, especially in a time when success can be determined by what the masses are saying about you on the Internet.
A better thing to ask is “What does a brand become by doing this?” Whether they’re getting something out of their actions or not, better brands do something because it will make them a better brand.
I’m often surprised at how often even the media is still stuck on the old question. This Fast Company article is absolutely perplexed about why CNN would buy smart iPad magazine Zite and not use it just to push CNN content forward. Similarly, they were shocked when AOL created a similar product called Editions, which promised not to favor AOL content. The writer even refers to it as a “remarkably unselfish product.”
It never occurred to the writer that AOL and CNN would simply want to have useful products that help people’s lives in their portfolio, without any ulterior motive. If AOL ever dies (I know you’re balking at the thought), it can’t hurt to have something with social relevance under your name to concentrate on instead.
Sure a lot of brands are growing so they can have incestuous relationships between their many products. But the importance of earning trust is catching on, and we have to start appreciating trustworthy brands instead of assuming all brands have nothing but the worst motives.
Posted 10.03.11 by Becky Lang
There are a lot of campaigns out there right now to bring awareness to the growing income gap in this country. The stat that 1% of our population controls 40% of our nation’s wealth has been circulating for awhile now, and more and more people are coming together to visibly represent the other 99% of the nation. But how that’s portrayed is important – and worth some thought.
A Reddit comment was circulating the Internet yesterday begging people who participate in Occupy Wall Street to wear “a polo and khakis.”
As they put it:
You’re going big here, dress it. Tomorrow, Polo shirt and Khakis.
Why? Because you need to get the right-leaning equivalent of me on your side. I’m 35 right now. I understand where the hippy thing comes from. I get it as well as a guy who’s 35 can. My Counterparts do not. They think you are scummy druggies on welfare and when they see on tv a bunch of people who they think are S.D’s on W, they root for the cops to hit you again.
While this is interesting, it’s a peripheral route to persuasion that has to do with nothing but visual cues, failing to make a convincing, direct argument, which is what really changes minds.
Another growing movement is for bloggers to take pictures of themselves holding up handwritten notes explaining, as a unified mass, how dire the situation is on an individual scale.
Compelling, but not exactly motivating. As Jason Striegel down the ZJ table pointed out, “This kind of smells like death. Why don’t they show how many unused skills they have instead of going for the pity vote?”
As we’ve all learned from the guilt-motivated messaging of many charity infommercials, they’re more likely to make you change the channel than take action. Representing things as endlessly dour gives the impression that no matter what you do, you’re basically just throwing pennies into a well.
People are calling my generation “the lost generation” because we were hit so hard by the recession. But in my opinion, my peers understand the realities of the internet-fueled economy like no one else, and know how to use technology to promote their skills in whatever they studied in college that isn’t providing many jobs now. As Jason suggested, why not show what the 99% is capable of by getting together and applying all those dormant skills to larger projects? The thing is – this is already happening all around me. Many of my friends put in around 20 hours/ week on passion projects or working with a creative collective. Branding the overwhelming majority of the country is a strange task, but I think it should start with showing what people are capable of, and what they’re already doing.
Posted 09.28.11 by Becky Lang
People have long been bemoaning the Internet because it has a curious way of making intellectual property monetarily worthless. They want to blame young people for disrespecting copyright law and feeling entitled to get everything they want immediately, without spending any money. And while we all might be a bunch of torrenting delinquents who can’t wait six hours to watch Breaking Bad and need to see it NOW, these complainers are missing the bigger picture.
From an economic standpoint, it makes sense for creative property to be free on the Internet. People inherently know that e-verions of things are worth a lot less (if anything) because the marginal cost of production is zero, the cost of distribution is zero, and books, albums, photos and images are infinitely reproducible. Slap a watermark on it, scare people with a lawsuit, but the people are going to nab things for free regardless.
The Internet is a curious world away from the world of objects, which have monetary value. It’s a world of free things that easily replicate. This offers creative people a benefit even better than money – the ability to grow your reputation and make people aware of your ideas, all over the world.
I run a website that gets substantial traffic but makes me no money. In fact, I pay small hosting fees every month. When I think of what I want to do with it next, I keep thinking of more ways I can expand on our content and grow our audience, all of them by making more free content on the Internet. There is something addictive about making free media and having it consumed by a larger and larger audience.
In a way, the Internet makes karma real. Anthropologists have studied the power of gossip and reputation, showing that people actively reinforce one another’s reputations so that they can treat them accordingly. If you act nice, you get real social rewards. In early humanity, sharing your meat might make people more likely to baby sit for you. Now, not putting ugly pop-up ads on your website might make people trust your content more. Karma, or getting rewards for being “a good person” works better when society has the tools to reinforce and communicate someone’s reputation. The Internet is the greatest tool yet for doing this, which has completely changed branding (that’s another story), and also made it possible to reap substantial social rewards for giving your creative content away for free.
I’m not saying that writers and creative people should just keep writing for free until they’re poor. But what we need to realize is that by giving away our creative efforts for free on the Internet, we are building social karma and gaining an audience that will make our ventures into the world of profitable objects (or ticketed events), much more successful.
For example, my boyfriend is in a band that has until now given away their albums for free. Their current one is Radiohead-style pay-what-you-want, a move he only wanted to make when he felt they had built up sufficient “karma” to make their listeners want to give them money. They make their money from playing live shows, but also – like most bands – from merch. What people like him realize is that if your project has social currency, people will want to pay for the physical objects surrounding it, like T-shirts.
It occurred to me recently, when he created, produced and started selling a Lynx T-shirt, that by being in a band he had accidentally learned how to become a clothing entrepreneur. That’s what’s cool about getting into the world of making free content on the Internet. You get so into DIY culture that, just to get by, you end up learning a bunch of extra skills.
How does this apply to agencies like Zeus Jones? It’s common for agency employees, who are some of the most creative people around, to have lots of side projects that they are making for free, just for fun. Because our day jobs pay our salaries, there’s even less pressure for these projects to monetize. Lately I’ve been inspired by projects like Paravel’s “The Many Faces of …” website. Not only is it cool, but it probably helped their agency gain a ton of attention.
Making something for free is contagious for a reason – it pays off in many other ways.
-Becky Lang
Image by Joseph Kuefler
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Posted 09.26.11 by jskuefler
There was a time when all we as creatives needed to do was write a pithy line or fashion a clever (or contentious) concept. Our job was to give culture something new to consider, a new idea to believe in. We said. People listened. If we were successful, people repeated. In those days we were the world’s orators. But saying isn’t enough anymore.
The world is full of wall post, tweets, memes and community conversations. Culture is creating enough new ideas without our help. Entire platforms (Twitter, Tumblr, WordPress, etc. The list is infinite.) are dedicated to streamlining an individual’s ability to add to the ever-growing pile of stuff. In many ways culture is doing our job for us; culture is creating. I don’t think the same can be said about design or strategy (feel free to correct me in the comments if you disagree…I’m making this up as I go), and it’s hard to react when culture is just so damn good at it. Some of us have responded by trying to one up them with manufactured memes and even more clever cleverness. This isn’t an indictment of those tactics because some are damn smart in their own right. I guess I see a different role for the creative to play.
The problem now isn’t an absence of culture; the problem is too much culture. It rebuilds and redefines itself so quickly. I think the creative needs to stop trying to create culture and start trying to corral and curate it. Yes, we still need to write or name or give whatever we create some flair, but why stop at the skin of something. Personally, I spend more time thinking about how I can create tools, environments or processes that help to bottle up all of the passion and energy that is already out there.
I suppose now is the time for specific examples…
For tactical things like banner ads, we go as far as turning over all of the creative asset creation to the community. Headline writing? Yep. Photography? Yep. Decisions about which design options are the most emotional? Yep. In these situations, our job as creatives is to repackage the best content the community has to offer and give it a little context. Crowd-sourcing? Sure, I guess. But why try to say what the community is already saying? Or create photos that replicate real life when we can show real lives? This process is incredibly efficient, and (in our experience) performs very, very well. Sure, we don’t get to slap ourselves on the back for being the clever ones at the party, but we do get to bring the funny ones to the party…We think that is pretty cool.
When creating entire digital campaigns we don’t lock ourselves away in “creative isolation.” That’s a romantic notion that just leaves us smelling strangely. More concerning is the fact that that process assumes the creative is always right. Rather, we begin with something central to the brand like a core belief or set of principles that drives what they do. If that isn’t available, we begin with the clients. We work with them to concentrate their passions into a creative concept. In either situation, we aren’t starting from scratch. We are just turning what already exists into something more…powerful or succinct.
In the end, I hate calling myself a creative. The name implies some sort of mystical spark. The name belies the way I work and the way I see my friends and colleagues working. And maybe this idea of “curation” is BS – which would be OK by me because this isn’t a manifesto. All I know is that the industry is aflutter with talk of change. Designers and strategists have entire conferences dedicated to the subject. We creatives haven’t rallied with the same sense of urgency. So what about us? How has our position changed? And if it hasn’t yet, how does it need to? I don’t share these examples to shamelessly promote ZJ. Rather, I’m sharing my own experience hoping that anyone out there reading this will do the same.
Your turn.
By the way, I’m Joseph. I’m a creative – and I guess you could say I still do some designing – here at Zeus Jones.
@josephkuefler
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Posted 09.23.11 by Becky Lang
For the last couple months, the dialogue about social media has been kind of depressing:
“Google+ totally rips off Facebook.”
“But they make it way better, and way less invasive. I hate Facebook.”
“Facebook totally ripped off Google+’s best features, but they integrated them better with the social network I’m already using.”
“I hate social media. I’m just going to sit on Google+ reading updates from developer types.”
The best thing we had to talk about was how copying is necessary online, because new features are anyone’s game to innovate. It looked like it was going to be Google+ and Facebook relentlessly spinning off each other’s new minute features.
But then Facebook’s F8 conference happened, and now not only are we excited to listen to music on Spotify together (bye bye Turntable.fm, last.fm and other music services!) and watch “Parks and Rec” with remote buddies, but we also realized that Facebook is more than a social network.
If you haven’t seen Facebook’s upcoming Timeline feature yet, go check it out. Basically, it seems like Facebook asked itself, “With all these people excited for an alternative to Facebook, how do we stay relevant? Do we keep innovating as a social network, or do we look at our other assets, our less talked-about uses in people’s lives?” What we don’t often think about is that Facebook doesn’t just connect us, but it also acts as an effortless archive of our lives, creating a dynamic story that we could never create ourselves.
Looking at Timeline is exciting – another way to understand your life and curate it for others to quickly absorb. But it’s also kind of sad, in that it makes you feel old. Kids who are being born right now are going to have their entire life, from birth on, documented in an emotional and easily-accessible way. I’m only 24, but comparing that to my dusty baby books sitting in my parents’ basement makes me feel like part of a whole different, and more archaic generation.
Awed and philosophical reaction aside, Timeline shows just how agile Facebook is as a brand. We can learn a lot by studying the way it’s changed over the past few years. Unlike many brands out there, Facebook is willing to change what it is, and what it does. Social network, brand/marketing platform, storytelling device – Facebook doesn’t just accept these new roles, it invents them.
If only more companies would think this way. If a challenge is presented to your business, be it a competitor or an increasing lack of demand for your product, adopting this agility can prevent irrelevancy and bankruptcy alike. Look to the larger cultural importance your brand has, and see if there’s any way you can tap into that trust you’ve built to take on a new role and provide something new altogether. What if record companies had thought this way? It beats suing people, at least.
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Posted 09.21.11 by Becky Lang
Lately I’ve become interested in the idea of using one-page HTML5 websites as storytelling devices. You’ve probably seen examples like Lost World Fair’s Atlantis:
But Nike Better World is my main object of study.
Why settle for a free PDF or a hasty about page when you can create a scrolling, moving, mystifying website to do the same thing?
Studying these sites, I’ve realized that there are many levels of storytelling, that go beyond just the writing and design.
Raw code as design and storytelling
Even in the CSS, you can see a lot about the project. It’s interesting to look at the way people arrange their styles and use comments to create structure and organization. The beginning of the Nike Better World stylesheet uses comments to look like the beginning of a real book, creating a table of contents and referring to parts of the site as “stories,” not just divs.
I stalked the creators‘ portfolios for awhile and found their main hub, a place called Thinking for a Living, which features creative writing essays about selected designs. Their HTML has a similar hidden narrative.
In the head of the site, they added a short manifesto:
Part of what’s interesting about these developers/ designers is that they treat their projects like films. Why shouldn’t a website have a table of contents, chapters, stories and credits?
More interactive, but less complicated
When you create a one-page website for a story, it starts to feel like something you can dig into. You can highlight all the text, copy, paste, email, remix. You can hover and watch it change colors. You can click its inner links to navigate around.
When this is done in HTML5, it starts to feel simple rather than complex. There’s no Flash player needed, no text made out of images. It’s all part of the same fabric.
Free
Unless you somehow put a paywall on a 1-page site story, it’s going to be free. Anyone can access it at anytime, and there’s something democratic and cool about that. For brands, having your story be free is a given, but for publishers, that’s going to take more convincing. Then there’s the question of perceived value – are people more likely to read something if they pay for it? Probably. But they’re also more likely to read something if it’s beautiful, and unlike most stories they’ve ever seen.
I think in the future we’re going to see a lot more brands opting for one-page sites like Nike Better World, at least as part of their marketing.
What do you think?
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Posted 09.19.11 by Becky Lang
When I heard about Netflix’s DVD service splitting into Qwikster, I had two thoughts:
1. I don’t care. I only stream anyway.
2. What a dumb name.
I figured everyone had the same general opinion as I do, except for people who don’t like to use the Internet enough to watch TV on it. But after a long chat about it with my co-worker, Jason Striegel, who feels the opposite way, and examining the thousands of angry comments on Netflix’s Facebook page, I started to get worried.
You see, I love Netflix a lot – to me it represents an instant, portable archive of media that I can use to wind down after a long day. But to Jason, it represents something entirely different. As he put it, you don’t get anything in the mail but bills and ads. The red envelope sends people happiness.
Netflix is a strong brand. People like it for making their lives easier and more fun, and even marketers love it for the smart logic behind its business model and website. Now, it’s getting horrible publicity as people accuse it of swindling them and doing so in a two-faced way.
I do think getting rid of the DVD service is inevitable. With competition like Redbox, coupled with the fact that eventually discs will become more and more obsolete, it seems like a forward-looking move. But the problem is, we’re not quite there yet. Look at the recently shut down streaming video rental service Zediva. Companies just aren’t ready to have their content available to be streamed out at a low price.
Part of what this whole controversy reveals is just how greedy and afraid of change many media companies are. They can still make a lot of money syndicating their content on ad-packed cable channels and charging $3 1-day rentals on iTunes. They’d rather do that than work with Netflix, which is trying to evolve media consumption to be more democratic and simple than ever.
But that’s not going to be sustainable for them. Once the generation of kids who grew up with smart phones takes over the economy, they’re going to have nothing to do with it. They’re used to instant, accessible media, and they’ll have grown up in a time when musicians give away their music, writers are broke and more and more movie theaters are shut down in the bad economy. The growing mentality is that media is no longer about rich celebrities fueling rich companies – it’s about people scrapping by to create original, interesting content that they distribute themselves online.
As Jason put it, “Someone should start a new studio. In this studio, all movies will be available streaming online at the same time as they hit theaters. Studio goes straight to consumer and takes all the profit. Consumer gets no ad bullshit. Great films, and cheaper subscriptions. Everyone wins, except middle men.”
That is the company of the future, and the kind Netflix will be working with, if they can get over this brand catastrophe.
-Becky Lang
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Posted 09.16.11 by Becky Lang
From a copy standpoint, branding is changing. What distinguishes a brand is less about a clever slogan and more about back-and-forth dialogs with consumers and publishing interesting content.
As a journalist, I’m lucky to be entering the industry in a time when editorial skills are more important than ever. Here are other reasons why I think more journalists can succeed as copywriters:
Journalists understand deadlines
News teaches you how to scramble. It teaches you how to be alert for ideas and turn them around quickly. Miss deadlines in a newsroom and you get fired.
Journalists always do research
The idea of writing anything without doing background research is foreign to journalists, who have sourcing and credibility drilled into them by editors shaking their heads disappointedly over cubicle walls. That teaches you to be genuinely interested in what you’re writing about, and to always seek out different perspectives, backgrounds and ideas. Yes, we will translate this methodology to writing about hand soap.
Journalists fact check
Putting something inaccurate to print makes journalists very sad. Because of this, we think about the reliability of our statements and the implications of sloppily committing an error. This makes us quite lawyer-friendly.
Journalists think about style
Most newspapers follow A.P. style, so journalists quickly have to learn simple rules of consistency and efficiency. It’s 1 a.m., not 1:00 AM, for example. We shall edit the copy on your coupon with the same mundane rules in mind.
Journalists are used to being edited
We don’t turn in writing that we’re so attached to that we will tantrum if it comes back with edits. The editorial process is all about sending it back and forth until you get it just right. We’re used to making changes quickly without getting sore about “changing our art.”
Journalists understand the grind
The agency lifestyle is extremely hardworking; all-nighters happen regularly. Journalists are also used to this hyper-competitive environment, and have probably spent a night running barefoot in the midst of a riot, gathering quotes and then arranging a story for the next day’s issue.
Part of the reason I decided to go from journalism into marketing/advertising is because the journalism world is terribly unstable right now. Not only were there no jobs, but if I got one, I’d be thinking, “This will be fun until the publication folds in two years.” Lots of talented, eager journalists are out there looking for jobs. Next time your agency’s hiring, keep in mind that their skills might be more what you need than you think.
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Posted 09.15.11 by Becky Lang
Every so often, something cool will go down in the Zeus Jones parking lot. We might grill up some ribs (vegan ones too!), converse with our alien pals about keeping TV-snatchers out of the office, or just plain sit around and hipster watch. Tomorrow, we’re doing something special, and we want you to stop by.
Our clients at Muir Glen are itching to share hundreds of their limited-edition Reserve Tomato Kits, and they want our lot to be the giveaway locale. That means if you visit, you can grab a free Reserve Kit and have the tomatoey goodness you need to make organic pasta, pizza or even bloody mary mix for your weekend.
The deets:
Friday, September 16th from 10 a.m. – 3 p.m.
Zeus Jones, 2640 Lyndale Ave. S, Mpls
Remember, we have a limited quantity, so get yours while supplies last.
In case you’re not familiar with Muir Glen, here’s a bit of background. They’re an organic tomato brand from General Mills’ Small Planet Foods portfolio. Their tomatoes are grown in Sacramento Valley, CA., which just happens to be the country’s prime tomato-growing region. They’re doing all sorts of cool stuff to make an ideal tomato product – and trust us, the results are delicious. Even our moms think so.
The Reserve Kit that you get to take home is a selection of canned tomatoes that includes their limited-run, hand-picked line of only their most premium fruits.
So drop by this Friday and bring your grandpa, your babysitter, your babysitter’s boyfriend – whomever! There will be a sampling team outside ready to give you a free Reserve Kit.
Happy … eating!
-Becky Lang
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Posted 08.29.11 by Becky Lang
I was in the Dairy Building at the Minnesota State Fair this weekend, and all any of us could smell was meat. Right at the tail end of the line for ice cream was the beef booth, which looked straight out of the late ’80s. In a firm, all caps font it read, “Beef. It’s what’s for dinner.”
What does that phrase make you picture? To me, it sounds 100% masculine, like a workaday dad demanding that he come home to rare-cooked burger. The font and rhythm of it make me picture someone pounding their fist on the table, like a gavel. This firm, manly-man feel is definitely dated, especially considering the context of our increasingly ethical eating habits.
A bit of background – The “Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner” branding was created by the Leo Burnett Company in 1992. It was funded by The Beef Checkoff, an organization that collects money from agriculture producers and uses it for research and marketing. (“Got Milk?” is the product of the same type of checkoff organization.)
Seeing how eating habits have changed tremendously in the past 20 years, why hasn’t beef’s marketing worked harder to recontextualize it? Let’s think about what that context would be.
Hating on beef
Beef has gotten a lot of bad PR that this branding doesn’t really acknowledge. Films like Food, Inc. have pointed fingers at the cattle industry for causing everything from increased salmonella to excess pollution, not to mention plenty of heart disease.
Still loving beef
Nonetheless, beef has managed to successfully enter today’s foodie industry. Nostalgic eating is hot right now, and American food has gotten all kinds of gourmet makeovers. For those who want to eat for the earth, free-range cattle let them enjoy beefy dishes with less guilt.
But you knew all that, right?
So why doesn’t beef’s branding acknowledge any of this? I took a look at some of Beef Checkoff’s websites, and the one that gets closest is Explorebeef.org, which aims to connect the industry back to family farms. While this connection might be somewhat of a stretch, the layout and language of the site feels slightly more modern.
The problem with “Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner” might be a problem with the way checkoff organizations work. Old checkoff marketing was mostly about coming up with a clever slogan that would stick in people’s heads. That just doesn’t cut it in the days of research and Internet-savvy customers. To connect with them, brands have to modernize and show that they are guided by their own values, and based on action. That’s hard to do when you’re speaking for tons of disparate producers.
Despite that conundrum, checkoff programs do have a utility, especially when it comes to research. Better branding for beef might not be able to convince people that the beef industry is helping society, but it could at least update to be useful to today’s consumer. How would you rebrand beef?
Posted 07.26.11 by Becky Lang
Yesterday I wrote about the current trend of brands creating editorial websites, and gave a few high-level tips for finding an audience. Let’s consider this a part two – approaching the actual content.
I feel like at this point I should say what perspective I’m coming from. Mostly, I’m approaching this as a reader. I’ve been reading magazines my whole life, and I’m pretty honest with myself about what I will and won’t read. Sure everyone wants to think that they love the long-form pieces in The New Yorker every month, but do they finish them? Just the idea of getting through a New Yorker makes me stressed out. I’m also approaching this as someone who has started an editorial site, and has constantly monitored what people respond to.
Here are my basic tips for creating editorial content that the average joe will actually read:
1. Keep it short
You probably guessed that was coming, huh? There’s a lot of content on the Internet, and if people click through and see seven huge blocks of text, they’re going to have a sudden flash-before-their-eyes sequence of all the funny YouTube videos and short Gawker posts they could be consuming instead. Format the content into small, digestible pieces that telegraph where the article is going.
2. The author matters
When I start to really love a publication, and read it regularly, I start to care who the authors are. I start looking for their articles, and wondering what they think of different subjects. It’s worth spending some time “branding” your authors so people get to know them using bios, pictures or click through bylines. Beyond that, having guest authors that people are familiar with can really draw in an audience.
3. Be telegraphic
People should understand exactly what they’re getting when they click on an article. Back in the print days, you knew about 3/4 of the way through a magazine that you were going to get a feature story about the person on the cover. It didn’t matter what the headline was. Online, these cues don’t exist the same way, and it’s necessary to be clear about the content in the headline. Pro tip: People love top ten lists. They just do.
4. Visuals matter
I love magazines because the articles come in all sorts of formats that stress visuals. Share the space with photos, infographics, charts and more.
5. The community can create content too
This is a big lesson learned in the last few years. People will visit a site that features content they’ve co-created. For example, a local alt-weekly posts pictures of people out on the town every week, meaning that people visit to share pictures of themselves. Using a brand’s Facebook community, you can easily find the content you need to let your customers become authors or photographers. Hold contests, invite visitors to share tips and stories, and actually make editorial content out of their contributions. As much as they might enjoy an author, they’ll love seeing their own content published even more.
6. Entertain, but also teach
Sure content can be funny or cute, but as a brand, you have the potential to create content that will educate people. Think DIY: What can they do themselves that they hadn’t imagined doing before? Empowering them to create something themselves is surprising and refreshing when coming from a brand.
Soon we’ll live in a world of branded online magazines. Let’s at least make them good!
-Becky Lang
Posted 07.25.11 by Becky Lang
A few months ago, David Carr wrote about the trend of fashion brands becoming their own editorial outlets, citing examples like Mr. Porter, which employs the editor of British Esquire, and the Gilt Groupe, whose Beta version of Gilt Taste now has some hard-hitting articles. Of course this makes sense for fashion brands, who’ve been not-so-quietly pulling the strings behind women’s magazines for years, but editorial content also makes sense for any brand that wants people to visit its website. Just look at Burton’s new homepage. I don’t snowboard, but I actually want to spend some time there.
Creating editorial content means that brands have to shake off their marketing hats a bit – this is a journalism game. As a journalist myself, I’ve thought a lot about merging these two worlds, and these are my basic guidelines:
1. Trustworthiness is key
First of all, a major tone change has to occur. Customers are used to brands speaking in the imperative voice (“Relax tonight with our margarita mix!”) while being generally straight-forward about the quality of their product, as well as their intention to make you buy it (“This is America’s favorite summer movie! See it this weekend.”). This doesn’t fly on an editorial site. It has to be clear that your first motive is to entertain and educate visitors, and not just in how great your product is. In order to gain trust, you need to make it lifestyle-centered and full of real information, not something that seems recently conjured up from your market research lab. For example, “10 Tips for Taking a Better Polaroid Shot” beats “Why Polaroid’s Technology is the Future.”
What about authority? I read Esquire because I think the writers are talented and know what they’re talking about. It helps to create equity in your authors by showing they have above-average taste and understanding of the lifestyle.
2. Update frequently and regularly
I have friends who run a blog that they update once a day, and over just 8 months it has grown tremendously and is now syndicated on a major website. Updating once a day is fairly doable, effort-wise, although a brand’s need to put everything through legal can, admittedly, slow down the process. If this isn’t possible, it’s at least important to let your customers understand how often you’re updating. If someone’s engaged with your content, a regular schedule trains them to check back to see what’s new, which is the key to repeat visitors.
3. Social media (duh)
This is probably obvious by now, but social media works wonders for drawing people in. Throw a Facebook “Like” button at the bottom of every article (that’s how newspapers and blogs do it, so putting it elsewhere might seem “brand-ish”), and Tweet the occasional post as well. Just don’t link all your services to create automatic, non-human-feeling updates that occur too frequently.
4. Integrate products subtly
Visitors to your site are interested in your products, and editorial content helps you weave them into your site in a way that provides engaging context and doesn’t oversell. Mr. Porter does this beautifully by, say, writing an article about bowling and suggesting clothes to wear on the lanes at the very end. A “related products” sidebar lets you keep an article content-centric while helping customers find what they’re looking for.
This was a fairly high-level guide to creating an editorial site. Producing engaging content is a whole other game. I’ll try to write some ideas about that this week, as well as thoughts on the reverse of this article – how working in marketing helps me as a journalist/writer.
Please leave your thoughts or questions in the comments.
-Becky Lang
Posted 07.14.11 by Becky Lang
Bekah Smith, Engagement Planner
Background:
I have spent the past couple of years focused on our growing family. We just had our 3rd child in February, our daughter, Isla, who joins her 2 big brothers, Owen and Luke. So, as we get used to life as a family of 5 – we are looking for a new house and hope to move soon.
I studied Public Health in college actually. I thought I wanted to be a nurse and had thoughts of being an advocate for the elderly – but it just didn’t seem as interesting once I graduated. So, I got a job as a receptionist at an advertising agency and it stuck. 12 years later, I am still living agency life.
My last job was a Media Supervisor, where I planned and bought all types of media for clients like Best Buy, United Airlines, Chamilia.
Where can we find you on a Saturday off?
You will find me at the cabin. Enjoying the beach/lake with my husband, Ryan, & kids and a cool drink in my hand.
J.P. Martin, Strategist
Background:
I spent the last year finishing up a graduate degree in brand strategy at the Brandcenter, and last summer I worked at TBWA/Chiat/Day in New York City. Before that, I studied Architecture at Ohio State University. I come from a goofy family … we have a million inside jokes and we’re all movie fanatics – most of our holidays end at the movie theater.
Where can people usually find you on a Saturday off?
Exploring Minneapolis’ neighborhoods on foot, or, as soon as my dad delivers my graduation present to Minnesota, by bike.
Dan Horan, Creative
Background:
I spent the past year at Miami Ad School here in Minneapolis studying to be an art director. I finished my first year before the classes got repetitive and the freelance work got interesting. In undergrad, I studied business leadership/management and studio art. My most recent “job” was running a local fine wine shop. As for family life, I’m married, with no kids and a very spoiled dog.
Where can people usually find you on a Saturday off?
Anywhere near the water: Sailing, kayaking, swimming, floating or just sitting and reading.
Elias Martinez, Creative
Background:
I spent the last year with an ad agency in Louisville, KY. When I wasn’t working, I was touring bourbon country with my wife and enjoying time with our son at one of Louisville’s many parks. In college, I was a journalism major and later switched to visual communications design at New Mexico Highlands University, a small school in my hometown of Las Vegas, NM.
Where can people usually find you on a Saturday off?
Well, for the past few months I’ve spent every Saturday obsessing over creative samples, working on test projects, building ‘about me’ presentations and bugging my friends for testimonial videos. Now I’m house hunting, packing up my family’s considerable amount of stuff and things, loading it all onto a semi truck and getting ready to move cross country. It’s all good though. This is just preparation for all of the awesome stuff I’ll be doing with my work week once we arrive in the Twin Cities. Thank goodness I have a really understanding family that supports me in all of that.
When things settle down, you’ll find me out exploring the world with a camera slung around my neck, a two-year-old perched on my shoulders and my wife at my side. We’re excited to start checking out the Midwest.
-Becky Lang