Nike, W+K and the Art of the Montage
By · CommentsA friend and colleague recently posted the Nike spot titled Courage to his Pinterest page. It got me to thinking about Nike and the art of the montage spot.
Nike and advertising are basically synonymous.
Advertising and montages can be considered synonymous too.
However, good advertising montages are another story. They are typically an anthem spot with a familiar celebrity’s voiceover trying to talk about how whatever company is so valuable or how valuable you are to whatever company.
The reality is most of these spots suck.
Unless you’re Nike. And then you get guys like me paying homage to W+K and Nike for their omnipresent greatness and ability to so consistently create great montage spots that deliver on the brand promise and make me want to “Just Do It.”
With that, I deliver my top five favorite Nike montage spots.
“BEFORE”
For anyone who has played competitive sports, you know everything about this moment.
“COUNT”
This is for the new Nike Fuel band. I’ll be taking the stairs from now on, thanks.
“COURAGE”
This just might make you believe that there’s an athlete in all of us.
“BETTER”
My better is better than your better. Yes, Ladainian that would be correct. One commercial would vault Saul Williams into the public spotlight and end up being a favorite workout song on everyone’s iPods.
“PIANO”
This spot gives me goosebumps every single time. Without fail. It speaks to the elegance of sport and I love it.
Jinx, I owe you a soda?
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The other day my 8 year old daughter and I said something at the exact same moment. She laughed and said “Jinx, I owe you a soda.”
I laughed but then thought, wait, “Isn’t it supposed to be, jinx buy me a Coke?”
Is this an uh oh, moment for Coca-Cola? Is there a cultural shift going on right now among my children’s generation where generally middle class parents are less likely to feed their children fast food, soda and sugary fruit drinks. Where we actively buy things that at the very least don’t have high-fructose corn syrup or are organic.
The mere fact that the Corn Refiners Association has a commercial campaign attempting to legitimize high-fructose corn syrup with the line “sugar is sugar” should be telling enough.
Perhaps even more frightening for Coke is when your name starts to slip from the lexicon of an innocent multi-generational game played among kids.
What Steven Spielberg and Steve Jobs had in Common
By · CommentsIn any sort of filmed medium there’s this thing known as “continuity.” This is when for example you see a scene with a glass of water that is half full. Pan away and pan back and the glass is full. Or there’s a painting on a wall in one shot and it’s not there in another.
This means that scenes were edited from different takes and no one paid attention.
For film buffs, it’s well known that Spielberg could give a rat’s ass about continuity. He argues that if you notice whether or not a glass is full or empty means he’s done a lousy job making a film.
I would argue that in this way Steve Jobs shared this trait with Steven Spielberg although he may not have known it.
Take the iPad for example. When it came out people complained (mostly techies) about it not having Flash. I think Steve Jobs knew that it didn’t inherently matter. Once a user has the device in their hands the overall experience trumps minor flaws.
It’s not to say that we shouldn’t fix mistakes if we can but perhaps not being afraid of a minor flaw in deference to the overall user experience is more important.
Food for thought?
I’m back!
By · CommentsHello bloggersphere. Yes, it’s been quite some time since I’ve penned something here. It was a busy end of summer and for those of you that don’t know I’ve started a new gig as SVP, Director of Account Services/Operations for the advertising agency UniWorld Group. It’s a tremendous opportunity and I’ll share more about that in time.
“Shut The Front Door!”
By · CommentsThe other day I posted a query on Twitter.
The question was, “Will someone please tell me why ‘shut the front door’ is the biggest runaway phrase right now?”
Moments after I sent the tweet, a gentleman replied that he had just heard it on the TV show Castle. And when I replied asked but why has it become so popular and why now? He replied, “a polite alternative I guess.”
It appears he’s not so off. To take it a step further, where did it start and why?
The phrase has yet to garner a page on Wikipedia but has earned a place on UrbanDictionary.com as a “more publicly acceptable and FCC-friendly version of S.T.F.U. originally coined by Buckethead on WJRR Radio” which broadcasts out of Orlando, FL.
I first noticed the phrase from the Oreo Fudge Creams commercial and naturally when writing this post went to YouTube to embed the link (above). The delivery and timing in the Oreo commercial is stellar and the first time I heard it I laughed out loud. But since then the phrase has been in the TV show Castle, the movie Bad Teacher and a host of other TV shows. And of course wouldn’t know it, someone on YouTube has kindly edited together a series of clips of it being said and the enterprising individual is making t-shirts with the phrase.
The phrase is obviously intended to show genuine surprise as the contestant from So You Think You Can Dance legitimately is. However, now it seems that the phrase has lost its punchline.
I’m still curious though… why has the phrase taken off with such abundance and has it moved into the mainstream lexicon as a “polite alternative?” Will it stick around for a while or is it already on its way out with its overuse in mainstream media? What if anything might replace it?
What say you?
Germs vs The Three R’s
By · CommentsWatching TV last night and a commercial came on for a Kleenex product. It was a niftily designed box to rest on a towel rack in a bathroom where you might usually keep your fancy cloth towels for people to dry their hands after having washed them.
When I saw the ad and the product, I immediately exclaimed “Why on earth would you need such a product? What a waste! So much for the environment.” Kate would point out that unfortunately we’re at this perfect intersection of having created a virtually irrational fear of germs which goes completely against trying to protect the environment.
She’s right.
From salmonella to swine flu to stomach bugs we’ve become germophobes and in our ever so growing consumption economy far be it from products like Kleenex to Lysol to Purell to not take advantage.
As if to emphasize the point further, when did a sanitary wipe stand become the official “greeter” at the grocery store? Anything we’ve done as far as bringing our own bags to the grocery store has likely been offset by sanitary wipes.
So who wins in this battle between germs and reduce, re-use, recycle?
Pink Toenails
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I’m channel surfing last night and despite about a thousand channels to choose from, not much is on.
I settle on The Daily Show despite the fact that I was fairly certain that it might depress me. Anything to do with “news” these days seems to be inherently depressing. Even making fun of the news.
Well wouldn’t you know it but The Daily Show would deliver.
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate Jon Stewart and all he does to expose the buffoonery that our news media outlets have become and for calling them to the carpet on this little gem.
“TOEMAGEDDON 2011: This Little Piggy Went to Hell” is what this would be dubbed.
The creative director for J. Crew, Jenna Lyons is pictured in an ad with her five year old son, Beckett. The moment seems candid and sweet as the two look lovingly at one another nose to nose. Nothing like a little childhood innocence right? Oh and in the ad, he has his toenails painted pink.
Well that is to say until it hits the media airwaves and turns into this statement of a woman trying confuse her son’s gender identity.
Seriously? WTF is wrong with us?
I have two daughters. They play outside. They get dirty. They dress like princesses. They paint their toenails and fingernails. They also have been known to paint Daddy’s.
Wait. Stop the presses. Get GMA, CNN, the Today Show and FOX news parked outside of my house. OMG, he lets his daughters paint his toes. Oh the humanity. They’ll forever be confused about gender roles because I let them paint my toes and even wore the nail polish out in public. WITH FLIP FLOPS.
Oh dear God. Wait. Now I’m confused. I’m not sure whether to stand or sit to take a leak.
Do wealthy people actually watch Wealth TV?
By · CommentsWe have Verizon Fios as our “cable” provider and there are a myriad of channels to choose from. About a tenth of them I care about.
One of the one’s I don’t really care about is Wealth TV. But nevertheless I found myself watching it one night and I got to thinking… “Do wealthy people actually watch Wealth TV?”
If you go to Wealth TVs web site and peruse their media kit they would try to have you believe that in fact wealthy people do watch Wealth TV. They would have you believe that they are highly educated people who make over “$100,000 dollars a year and have a high household value and are high spenders with elite buying power.” They claim that the typical Wealth TV viewer is “50% more likely to be affluent empty nesters than the national average.”
Pardon, me, but I’m not buying it. Saying it does not make it so.
First of all let’s think about how you define financial wealth. In my mind, someone who is truly financially wealthy basically has what I like to call “fuck-you” money. I’m not even close to wealthy. I like Chris Rock’s definition of wealthy…
“Shaq is rich. The white man that signs his check, is wealthy.”
I once sat on a on a plane next to the guy who founded and owned Body Glove You might recall the neon laden surf brand from the mid 1980s. He sold it for a boatload of money just before neon fad bit the dust. We had a good conversation and he told me something that has stuck with me to this day. He said, “I didn’t make my money off the 200,000 or so core surfers. I made my money off the five million or so wannabes.” Smart guy.
Why doesn’t Wealth TV call a spade a spade and say who their real audience is. It’s the wealthy wannabes. Now that would be some truth in advertising.
What Makes You… You?
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I’ve been working on this post for quite some time. It’s purely conceptual in nature and I’m unsure of where it will go or even what it means to a degree. It’s just something that’s been mulling around in my brain for a while and I’m trying to figure out if it’s valid or valuable or if I should just move on.
My wife who is my de facto editor for most of my posts said that while she liked the general gist of this post that it seemed pompous. Great, so I’m an asshole. Well hopefully you won’t see this post as pompous but reflect on yourselves and what makes you… well you. Hopefully, you’re not an asshole.
“Human DNA consists of about 3 billion bases, and more than 99 percent of those bases are the same in all people. The order, or sequence, of these bases determines the information available for building and maintaining an organism, similar to the way in which letters of the alphabet appear in a certain order to form words and sentences.”
So where does culture fit into the mix of your DNA? Is there such a thing as cultural DNA? If you google cultural DNA there are several views of what it might be. There doesn’t seem to be any real consensus and it’s a term that seems to be applied to a myriad of things from corporate culture to the content of one’s character and more. I’d like to apply this term to people as individuals and how you’re “defined” as it relates to marketing, advertising, brand choice and purchasing decisions.
In the marketing universe typically we bucket consumers. And we bucket them as simply as possible to ensure that we reach the greatest number of people. Age, Gender, Race, Geography, Household Income. Occasionally we’ll create custom segmentations and create fancy names for those segmentations and it’s all very clever and smart. We’ll do focus groups and ethnographies in the interest of getting to know “you”.
But what really makes you… you?
I like to think of consumers as a little bit more complex.
If you think about it everyone has what I’d like to think of as cultural DNA. It’s the what makes you… you.
I’ll use myself as an example.
I myself would say that I’m defined by at least 20 different cultures/sub-cultures/communities built up throughout my exposure to a variety of people and experiences throughout my life. This would include, Black culture specifically as it relates to the Civil Rights movement, Beat Generation writers, 60s drug culture, 80s preppy culture, 80s punk culture, early action sports culture, traditional sports culture, feminist culture, Italian-American culture, gay culture, Higher Ed Academia, NYC prep-school culture (yes it’s a culture) and so on. Then you throw in things like birth order and family legacy and things get even more complicated.
Put another way one way you could define a part of me is by my design sensibilities. I would say that I’m more “Dwell” then “Architectural Digest”. If I were to try and understand why I would guess that it was most closely related to my grandfather who was an architect who studied under Mies Van Der Rohe. Thus it’s very likely that my grandfathers design esthetic influenced my design sensibilities and in turn to this day influences purchase decisions related to various brands I migrate to.
Now what happens when you take the complexity I’ve discussed and two interesting people end up bearing children, their kids end up amassing the cultural DNA from both of their parents in addition to the cultural DNA they continually amass from external sources and sub-cultures.
And thus even more interesting and complex people are hatched.
So I guess the question is how do we take this and make it useful. Help.
This is an extraordinarily complex post. There are two fundamental themes. The first is the notion of the changing means of how content is consumed. The second theme is that the notion of consolidation or “whole” really needs to give way to the notion of “fragmentation”.
HOW WE USED TO RELATE TO CONTENT
Once upon a time we had three major networks. We came home from work. We watched the evening news. We ate dinner. Then we watched our shows. I literally grew up with M*A*S*H. MASH ran for 11 seasons beginning in 1972. So from about age 5 to about age 13 I would sit with my mom and step-father and watch MASH every week. I honestly cried during the last show.
Other shows I grew up with were “Different Strokes” (8 seasons), “Facts of Life” (9 seasons), “Dukes of Hazzard” (7 seasons), “Fall Guy” (5 seasons), “Magnum PI” (8 seasons) and of course “The Cosby Show” (8 seasons).
Hopefully, you’re starting to see a pattern. We used to “live” with TV shows. They were constants in our lives from season to season. We had relationships with these shows. Whether it was “St. Elsewhere” or “Hill Street Blues” we had prolonged relationships with shows and networks.
For the longest time every network followed a prescribed schedule. Then along came cable where repeats found new life and new audiences (or the same old ones). Then came FOX that started airing new shows when nobody else was. Then the Internet gradually began to turn things on its ear. Yet for some reason in the world of media planning and buying we still have a TV upfront.
I’ve known for quite some time that that the nature of TV shows and the way we watch them has been changing. I believe this to be a geologic change though. One in which we don’t necessarily see it happening. We make minor adaptations but there has yet to be a seismic shift.
That however I believe is coming. I’m not sure what it looks like. I’m not sure exactly when it will happen. Five years? Ten years? That’s where perhaps you can all lend a voice to predict or pontificate.
I believe that we are on the cusp of something and we need a much deeper understanding of people’s relationship with content.
What do we watch on which screen and why? Where does each “screen” fall as it relates to the trade-off of fidelity versus convenience? What is content we share versus content we commiserate about versus content we talk about at the water cooler?
We used to watch shows on a specific night. Now we may DVR a show and watch it on a different night. We may wait altogether and watch a whole season in weeks courtesy of Netflix. We may watch a show one week with friends and the next week online and the third week via a smartphone waiting at an airport.
Nevertheless, networks continue to present shows the same way all the time.
HOW CONTENT IS CHANGING
About a year ago, I watched Ken Block’s second iteration of Gymkhana.
No this isn’t Kurt Thomas’ attempt to extend his 15 minutes of fame and woeful acting skills on the heels of his early ‘80s film Gymkata. I’m talking about the founder of DC Shoes and his foray into the world of rally racing, stunt driving and the next generation of drifting.
Ken Block is a phenomenally intuitive marketer. Certainly as evidenced by his savvy in building DC Shoes into arguably one of the strongest action sports brands ever. Perhaps second only to Burton. Maybe it’s that no one felt comfortable to tell him the rules. Or he wasn’t listening anyway. Whatever it is, he knows right when he sees it.
Gymkhana 1 was originally posted about three years ago and between various posters of the video, it garnered over nine million views. Not too shabby. No doubt it was professionally shot at every level and Ken Block has money to throw at these things. Although, I’m pretty sure he’s mastered the art of OPM.
But then he came out with Gymkhana 2 (22m views). And Gymkhana 3 (25m views).
Nevertheless, while most create :60 spots and hope they’ll find viral traction on Youtube, Ken Block did it on purpose! And I know lots of people will say, “come on, we did that.” Tampax, Dove, Cadillac. Blah Blah Blah. I don’t think anyone has done it as well AND on purpose as Ken Block.
In Gymkhana 2, the video is 7 minutes and 32 seconds. They even call it an infomercial. At the beginning of the video note the following:
Bloody Brilliant.
How many people are choosing to watch your spots?
Now let’s just take YouTube and content as a whole. Consider this from the ADWEEK article by Brian Morrissey about “YouTube’s Stars”.
“The dirty secret of cable TV is audience numbers are often pitifully small, with many programs drawing under 100,000 viewers. That’s not the case for a select group of YouTube creators… The numbers they draw can be staggering. Comic actor Shane Dawson averages nearly 1.5 million views per day, according to video analytics service TubeMogul, and has racked up 670 million views of his videos over two and a half years. The typical YouTube star will average 250,000 views per video. ‘On any given night or day or two, the top 10 YouTubers will have more views than any cable channel,’ says Walter Sabo, a former ABC radio executive who started an Internet talent agency three years ago called HitViews.”
iJustine pictured to the left has more than 1m subscribers. DC Shoes… 79k subscribers.
Take that Ken Block.
“Tremor Media, the largest independent network, reached a deal last week to acquire Scanscout, one of its smaller competitors, in a bold attempt to consolidate the market, and create a scaled competitor to Hulu and YouTube. Separately, Undertone Networks is expected to announce a deal Monday to buy Jambo Media, a video syndication and ad platform. Two weeks ago, Specific Media snapped up BBE, one of the first pure-play video networks in the market… TV advertisers are the ones moving most aggressively into web video, looking to achieve similar goals through it. ‘I think that has been one thing that has been missing for advertisers is the ability to deliver mass reach,’ said Chris Allen, VP-video innovations at Starcom USA. ‘A lot of our clients are married to the reach metric, and TV delivers reach as fast as possible. The only way to achieve that reach online is through a network.’”
Is the :60 spot going away? No.
Does broadcast deserve its dominance and to make all the money? Most definitely not. Arguably, they are the least removed from purchase behavior. Wouldn’t it make sense that I’d be more likely if I was online to then stay online to purchase something as opposed to going from one screen to another to do so?
Are “reach and frequency” dated analytics? Do they truly get at how we consume media and connect to purchase behavior?
Once upon a time people laughed at cable as a network contender. ESPN, 24 hour sports. It’ll never work. FOX could never take on the Big 3. 24 hour news? Don’t be silly. 24 hour weather? Please!
Is Comcast/NBC really that big of deal? Not really in my opinion.
Fragmentation is the world of today. Whole is the world of yesterday.
No matter how big Comcast/NBC make themselves, the reality is that when it comes to content, they are hardly the only game in town.
References:
McCracken, Grant “Chief Culture Officer: How to Curate a Living Breathing Corporation”, 2010
Maney, Kevin “Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On and Others Don’t” 2009
IMDB
What Makes Great Ads Great?
By · CommentsLast year following the Super Bowl I wrote a post about what happened to Volkswagen? It was in response to a tweet from Marty St. George the CMO of jetBlue following VWs lackluster Super Bowl spot. The ad was mildly entertaining but hardly that compelling. It got me wondering about what makes great advertising, great.
As if to emphasize this even further, recently I had an interesting interaction with my 7 year old daughter. I was reading “Beezus and Ramona” to her. Despite there being a recent movie about these two precocious sisters, the reality is the books are pretty old. In this passage there was a reference to one of the most famous Alka Seltzer commercials. I read it as if from the commercial, “I can’t believe I ate that whole thing.” When we finished the passage I asked her if she’d like to see the original commercial, fairly confident we could find it on YouTube. We found it and my daughter would laugh hysterically reenacting it over the course of the next several weeks.
Husband: “I can’t believe I ate that whole thing.”
Wife: “You ate it Ralph.”
Husband: “I can’t believe I ate that whole thing.”
Wife: “Take two Alka Seltzer.”
As she laughed to herself, it dawned on me, this was a great ad. Iconic even. But why?
I think in this case it was less Ralph and more his wife. A subtlety that just worked.
As I did with the original VW post I think it’s important that we need to provide a simple rating system for the quality of ads.
I think it might look something like this. Let’s consider this a spectrum in which generally a lot of the same companies generally hover in the same area.
Legendary/Iconic is just that. It’s designated as once in a lifetime… we talk about it for generations. Think DDB’s VW “Think Small” ads, Arnold’s “Driver’s Wanted”, Alka Seltzer’s “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing”, Apple’s “1984”, Coke’s “I’d like to buy the world a Coke”.
Great means it stands out in the category and continually performs well and is stylistically imitated. For example Apple’s “Mac vs. PC” ads now being imitated by T-Mobile stand out in my mind. Another example would be Target. It’s really hard to say the impact Target’s brand ads have had on the industry let alone on their partners brands. Target has been amazing at nurturing its own brand while leveraging iconic brands.
Good means it basically does its job. And let’s not forget, the company and product have to stand behind the work. Generally successful ads here are incumbent of being a part of a larger campaign. For example I would put Hyundai in this category. Individually wouldn’t say any of Hyundai’s advertising is all that memorable. As a part of their entire marketing effort they’ve obviously done a pretty stand-up job.
Honorable Mention means it’s functionally decent break-even advertising. The sort of advertising that speaks to knowing 50 percent of your advertising works but not knowing which 50 percent.
Much like wealth in our country the greatest ads occupy the top one or two percent.
When I wrote the piece about the VW ads of yore, I wrote it because that’s what we were used to from VW. We were used to Legendary or at least Great. Even when campaigns weren’t great, they flirted with great.
But what makes great ads great? In my mind, there are a few things and they largely rest on the following:
- The Idea
- Suspension of Disbelief
- Casting
- That little something or certain moment
The Idea – First and foremost the best ads are generated from a good idea. At its foundation, it should go without saying that any great ad is borne from a fundamentally good and sound idea.
Suspension of Disbelief – Just because you’re dealing with 60 seconds, 30 or even 15, doesn’t mean that the rules of suspension of disbelief don’t apply. It becomes harder to suspend disbelief when you’re presenting “real life” moments. Humor is probably the most effective way to enable people to suspend disbelief. The problem is that humor which while certainly subjective still relies on two critical things. The first is timing. The second is delivery.
Consider the Sony ads with Justin Timberlake who treats them more like an SNL skit than an ad. He’s genuinely funny and allows the absurdity of any moment to disappear.
M&M successfully uses humor to suspend disbelief. One of my favorite spots as of late is the one where M&Ms characters are in the kitchen cabinet throwing things at this guy who’s simply trying to get his pregnant wife a “snack”. He tells the M&Ms to “get in the bowl.” One of the M&Ms fires back the most common of childish comebacks, “You get in the bowl.”
Another successful use of humor is with the FedEx ad where a group of staffers are looking at a map of the world and one of them is supposed to put a pin where China is. He doesn’t know where it is and tears down the whole map to avoid being “outted”.
As such with humor, casting becomes so important. In general it’s a very little moment, a split second that makes it or breaks it and that’s usually as a result of good casting.
When you’re not using humor and presenting truly real moments the challenge becomes one of sincerity. Now you’re in a position where it has to be believable. Generally the best work in this realm comes from clearly understanding the brand. While Disney has lost some of its “magic” in my mind, its motivation is still to be thought of as truly the most magical place on earth. Or take Folgers’ spots. I’m fairly certain Folgers’ motivation in their ads is to make you cry. But in order to pull this sort of work off, it has to be sincere. Not about the coffee but about the moment.
All this being said perhaps though what is most important for great ads are two things. A collective will. And brave clients.
I won! (a brief interruption)
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Ok. So my next post is supposed to be on what makes great ads great. I’ll get to it, I promise but for now I’m tooting my own horn.
Grant McCracken hosts this thing called the “Minerva Contest”. They are in my view intellectual compare and contrasts on topics that are seemingly similar but not. The contests may be intellectual bragging rights but I’ll take it. The task is as follows here. It was on the difference between PBS’ “Antiques Roadshow” and The History Channels’ “Pawn Stars”. I’m honored to have won the most recent Minerva Contest. Below is my entry. Enjoy.
“When apprised of this intellectual compare and contrast of Antiques Roadshow versus Pawn Stars my initial inclination of those who watch either show or participate was that the primary difference would be in level of educational attainment. Immediately there’s a snob factor when you think about a distinction between the shows.
After a conversation with a producer of Antiques Roadshow, Sarah Elliott, I came to believe I was over thinking it a bit. Or at least I couldn’t find any hard evidence to support my hypothesis.
What I discovered was that while the shows could be seemingly similar, the core differences with the shows really have to do more with the nature of each show.
According to Ms. Elliott, “Antiques Roadshow is filmed over the summer. We visit six cities and travel with about 75 or so professional appraisers. Each event attracts some 5000 to 6000 attendees and sees appraisals of 10,000 to 12,000 items in a one day event. We produce 18 original shows and two compilation shows for a total of 20 shows each season. It’s a pretty well-oiled machine.” About her Anecdotal observations Ms. Elliott continued, “In my 11 years working on the show I can honestly say that it truly attracts the widest cross-section of America imaginable.”
Your price of entry into an Antiques Roadshow event is an item to be appraised and generally the item is legitimately believed to be antique.
Although as Ms. Elliott said, that she’s come across the “widest cross-section of America imaginable,” that’s not the focal point of the show. That’s an unintended outcome arrived at as a result of an object. When producing Antiques Roadshow she noted that they make the “object” the focal point. As far as the appraiser or person with the object being entertaining is almost purely a matter of luck.
The most important distinction about Antiques Roadshow is that there is no buying or selling of items on Antiques Roadshow. Thus motivation becomes an important factor. Once an item is appraised on Antiques Roadshow what the individual does with that item is then up to them.
In some cases clearly people will likely look to sell/auction the item but in many cases the item’s sentimental value outweighs the financial value. In one episode a gentleman has a Civil War era canteen appraised that was a gift from a dear friend. The appraiser estimated its worth at around $5000 whereupon the gentleman says, “I guess I better keep it in a secure place then.”
With Pawn Stars motivation in almost all cases is financial. There is a financial need or want. A person enters Gold & Silver less concerned about the item’s integrity and more concerned with the cash transaction. Or put this way, they’re only concerned about the items integrity in relation to its dollar value.
To further this dynamic there is often a level disappointment on Pawn Stars because every item the Harrison family comes into contact with they evaluate from the perspective of how much they can in turn sell it for. This means people often leave unable to have made any money.
While both shows are “reality” TV shows, Pawn Stars is produced as such and built around the dynamics of the family. This exposes a few things most notable it seems to me is pride – both generational (wanting to make Dad proud) and individual (wanting to “win” by extracting the most profit). There is also the element of risk. In many cases you see the Harrisons taking on an item, having it restored and hoping they can make a profit on the item. One could equate the Harrisons to stock brokers or traders.
“Pawning” is believed to have existed for more than 3000 years, its history rooted as a means of banking
From an article by Vonda Shines the history of pawn shops, “The word “pawn” comes from the Latin word ‘pignus,’ which means to pledge. The principle of pawning is simple. Someone has an item of worth against which they’d like a monetary loan. A pawn broker accepts it as a pledge – or collateral or pawn – in exchange for money. If the loan isn’t repaid according to its terms, the pawned item is offered for sale to the public.”
However, you rarely see the Harrison’s enter such a contract. Of course that would add an entirely new and complicated dimension to the show. Nevertheless, the character of the Harrison family still comes through clearly in the art of the transaction.
Consider this passage from a book called “In Hock” by Wendy Woloson.
“Pawnbrokers and their staff are not unlike bartenders or beauticians, whose relations with their clients are at once both professional and personal. For many the place plays a special role in both social and economic aspects of their lives.”
Antiques Roadshow originally began on the BBC a mere 31 years ago and in the US, 13 years ago via PBS. This means the show has weathered economic ups and downs.
According to the Simply Hired web site, their most recent Las Vegas trends data shows “Las Vegas, Nevada jobs have decreased 41% since April 2009.” Thus it stands to reason that the Harrison family’s Gold & Silver might see some brisk business these days. One would wonder whether given that we’re at one of the worst economic lows in our nation’s history if that has an effect on Pawn Stars success or even viability.
In short, the difference between the two shows is simple yet robust. One is about the thing and the other is about the people.
References:
Woloson, Wendy. 2009. “In Hock: Pawning in America from Independence to the Great Depression”
Roath’s Pawn Shop, “History of Pawnbroking” – http://www.roaths.com/pawnbroking.htm
Sines, Vonda ”The History of Pawn Shops” – http://www.helium.com/items/1445253-history-of-pawn-shops
SimplyHired.com – http://www.simplyhired.com/a/local-jobs/city/l-Las+Vegas,+NV
Interview: Sarah Elliott, Producer, Antiques Roadshow, December 8, 2010″
My Jerry Maguire Social Media Moment
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Consumers and marketers have had what I’d call an “understanding” since the dawn of time. A quid pro quo as it were. You the consumer will accept a degree of marketing and salesmanship in exchange for a quality item or service of sorts.
Since consumers aren’t really the easiest bunch to please and can be a bit leery, marketers have had to resort to a mix of surprise, delight and entertainment to woo us. We are accepting of this to a degree. For marketers, the number of mediums in which to communicate to consumers has grown seemingly exponentially. Social media has become but one of those mediums.
With the advent of the Internet and expansive growth in technology came this thing called social networking.
Us as consumers would find refuge in such a place. It would be where we would begin to part with disruption marketing. It would be a place for us to network on our terms, to exchange memes, to showcase our intellectual or professional prowess, our banal activities, pictures of our kids on the beach or of us in a video getting stuck in a drier. Whatever it was, it was ours to engage with as we saw fit on our terms on our time.
Yet something happened. What was supposed to be ours became theirs.
The second we attributed analytics to it we missed the point.
The “Accidental Billionaire” Mark Zuckerburg instead of defending us, the 500 million people he quite literally owns, he now barters.
A friend of mine once equated Facebook as a TV channel, “where I can see what my friends are doing whenever I want.” At 500 million people, it’s more than a channel, it’s a network (as in television). But just like most networks they’re equally as perplexed about how to ensure their ability to deliver effective marketing to its audiences which is of course largely the basis of its valuation.
Do we blame investors? Of course they seek monetization but should it be at the expense of the relationship with the consumer? It’s impossible to imagine Facebook ever going the way of the dodo but Facebook’s valuation as I’ve said is based largely on the backs of 500 million people and how much advertising revenue can be extracted from the company.
This is why I love Twitter, if for no other reason than Twitter seeks to wait as long as humanly possible to decide on monetization. They seek to find a balance between monetization and consumer experience. LinkedIn I believe successfully did the same thing.
Instead of looking at Facebook and discussing what’s going on behaviorally with how we communicate with one another or our relationship with privacy or lack thereof, companies see 500 million people and think dollar signs.
We forget about what’s important about social media. And shame on us for even conceiving of the term. It’s about “social” and us marketers being so high and mighty attempt to rob you the consumer of the “social” aspect and consider it a medium, where we can what? Not contribute to the conversation but interrupt the one you’re having. Gee, sounds a lot like TV.
Over the past few years people have used the buzzword of this being the “social economy” when the reality is we should be calling this the era of the listening economy. If only we’d actually do it. Facebook recently mined our status updates for memology. But honestly did anything useful actually come out of it other than HMU (hit me up) is the new BRB (be right back)?
Facebook has become a place of information overload. Whoever knew the brilliance of brevity in 140 characters?
Perhaps, just maybe if we would actually listen, we might find ways to contribute to conversations. This is yet another reason I believe Twitter continues to thrive. It’s a place where not only do people exchange memes but people are inherently nice. You post a tweet seeking advice about something in Paris and someone in Sheboygan, WI offers up a solution. It’s a place where you’re essentially listening first. The ones that shout the loudest on Twitter seem to get tuned out the most and much like television advertising or banner ads fade into the background.
“’The goal is to give an 8-year-old the ability to browse cultural trends throughout history, as recorded in books,’ said Erez Lieberman Aiden, a junior fellow at the Society of Fellows at Harvard. Mr. Lieberman Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, assembled the data set with Google and spearheaded a research project to demonstrate how vast digital databases can transform our understanding of language, culture and the flow of ideas.”
I’m of course well aware that there are myriad of research companies that mine “conversations” and customer comments.
Consider this comment from David Gehring in a comment to a blog post called the “Death of Market Research” by Forrester’s Tamera Barber.
“Additionally, we’ve recently been diving into social media market research using tools like NetBase’s ConsumerBase product to analyze the qualitative values found in the amalgamated ‘conversation’ happening online about our client’s brands and shows. When these “non-traditional” data sources are approached with a thoughtful hypothesis and the same scientific rigor as our more traditional research efforts, we are able to derive some very powerful insights. And these insights translate well into strategic as well as tactical brand and product strategy.”
Perhaps we’re on the right path.
It seems to me, if we take time to listen and observe what social media means in a cultural context then maybe we’ll find better ways to monetize the medium in a fashion which allows for a happy co-existence.
Your thoughts?
Our Relationship with Content
By · CommentsMy next three posts are going to be about our relationship with content primarily with respect to marketing.
The first will discuss the mistakes we’re currently making with social media, the second will discuss what makes great ads great and the third will make the argument that our TV is by no means what it used to be.
With that that, here goes nothing.
What Happens when Good Design Crosses the Chasm?
By · CommentsRecently I was fortunate enough to watch a TED talk which featured a designer named Emily Pilloton. Emily Pilloton is a pretty impressive young woman. She wrote a book called Design Revolution about 100-plus objects and systems designed to make people’s lives better. “At age 26, convinced of the power of design to change the world, she founded Project H to help develop effective design solutions for people who need it most.”
“In February 2009, Pilloton and her Project H partner Matthew Miller began working in Bertie County, North Carolina, the poorest and most rural county in the state, to develop a design-build curriculum for high-school kids, called Studio H. In August 2010 they began teaching their first class of 13 students.”
In my view there is a considerable shift going on culturally in the United States with consumer choice and it has largely to do with our expectations of design.
A lot of people would view America as lagging behind places like the Europe (Netherlands/Germany) when it comes to design but I firmly believe that this is gradually changing and it’s as a result of people like Emily Pilloton.
However I think it’s also as a result of companies, like Apple or Target. Some would argue that Apple’s market capitalization is an example of how thoughtful design can affect the bottom-line.
The other example I provided was Target. Often, I will use a Target vs. Wal-Mart analogy to help clients try to understand the types of their customers. An example would be Citibank is to Target as Bank of America is to Wal-Mart. Target has differentiated itself among big-box stores with design. Target even has a discussion of their “Focus on Design” on their website.
Target changed the perception of the big box store forever and arguably its ads are stylistically some of the most imitated by far. Target however is remarkably mainstream but has brought good design to Middle-America with its product selection (think Mossimo and Method).
Perhaps you can help me… What does the effect of good design say about our standards culturally and the impact and expectations on choice? Do companies like Apple or Target have that much of an effect on our overall design sensibilities? Are we better because of them? Can design in fact change the world as Emily Pilloton asserts? Does it take a confluence of things to help us evolve our relationship with design to see where else good and effective design can be applied? What are your thoughts?
