context, content and hill holliday’s new website

Context, Content and Hill Holliday’s New Website

Boston agency Hill Holliday has launched a new agency website that, according to Chief Media Officer Baba Shetty, “gives us enormous flexibility to create scenarios that vary by user situation.”

Already owners of a site that eschewed the typical static brochureware about the company in that it was built around a blog, Hill Holliday has continued innovation with their new platform that “[allows] allowing us to play around with the intersection of web content and user context.”

That is the holy grail, isn’t it?

The digital holy grail at least. The real holy grail, as we all learned from Indiana Jones, is a wooden carpenter’s cup that is buried somewhere in the Crescent Valley along with a whole bunch of Hollywood extras.

An example of what Hill Holliday means by the intersection of content and context is highlighted in AdPulp today, where a custom header greets those who come from the AdPulp site with “We think AdPulpFiction would be an awesome movie. Welcome to Hill Holliday.” And that certainly is an intersection of content and context. But it is also a lot like the greeter at a store in the mall saying something like “that sweater you got over at J. Crew across the way looks great on you. Welcome to the Apple Store.”

Which is pretty creepy.

Content is meaningless without context, a statement that is so true as to be cliché, and a statement that begs the question what context is necessary and correct to give meaning to content.

Knowing what website you are coming from and flagging a note of that is context, sure, but it is doesn’t give the content anymore meaning. It is digital chest-bumping, showing that the technology can do something simply for and getting it noticed simply because of the novelty value. It doesn’t add value to what is on the site. And it is as weird as a store clerk at a mall store having watched you shop the store across the hall.

Which is not to say that one can’t use the knowledge of what site a person is coming from to give context to the content on their site. It is just that it should help determine what content is merchandised.

To use the analogy of the mall, what the store clerk should have done is take the knowledge of what the shopper bought in the other store to arrange his own merchandise or feature a product that is complementary or fills an unmet need. That would subtly make relevant content, making it contextually correct for the state of the consumer.

And that is what will make digital technology more than a party trick.

friday miscellania

Problem Solved
Issue: “Book Price War Leads to Rationing” – headline, The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 30

Solution: “Let’s Terminate Subtitles” – headline, Make the Logo Bigger, Oct. 29

News You Can Use
• “Friends Don’t Let Friends Go Long Without eMail” – headline, AdPulp, Oct. 29
• “Hold Onto Your Hairpiece With Stimorol Gum” – headline, Adfreak, Oct. 29
• “Apply to College Through Twitter” – headline, Brand Flakes for Breakfast, Oct. 29

in praise of prejudice

In Praise of Prejudice

The primary problem with inexactitude of language is that it breeds poor thinking.  An example is the shoddy use of the word prejudice, which has caused it to be overwhelmingly understood as a synonym to racism, sexism, etc.  This bothers me.

Because there is nothing wrong with prejudice, in the properly understood form of the word.

In fact, prejudice is as positive and necessary human trait.

Prejudice as properly understood is akin to the word discrimination in meaning, specifically similar is that there is a positive connotation (and denotation) to each word.  It is good to be discriminating, say, when you have discriminating taste in wine or food.  And it is good to be prejudiced when you are prejudiced against walking down dark, inner city allies full of large men in hooded jackets alone late at night.

Of course, it can also be bad to be discriminating and bad to be prejudiced.  But the words are not absolutes.  At least not when properly understood.

But language correctness never stopped a copywriter.  A new spot for Ogilvy whose key idea is captured in the line “Our prejudices. Our invisible walls. Isn’t it time to demolish them?” makes, if you understand the word, no sense.

Prejudice is necessary (is it really proper to figure out from first principles that perhaps you shouldn’t hire as a babysitter a convicted sex offender?  Well, if you hate prejudice it is because the aforementioned decision is prejudiced against sex offenders).  Prejudice is good (if you were to taste an olive and not like it, you are prejudiced against olives unless you try every new olive because, hey, every olive is different).  Prejudice is important (it is prejudiced to think that 13 year old kids are not mature enough to drive a car, but foolish to allow them to all the same).

So as much as prejudice can be bad, as it surely can, prejudice can also be good.

And demolishing prejudice is the last thing that I would ever want to do.

the rise of the amafessionals

The Rise of the Amafessionals

Since the Middle Ages when guilds were all the rage, groups of people in every profession have done what they could to raise the barriers of entry into their profession. It is simple self-interest to do so. The fewer people who could ‘officially’ call themselves, say, alchemists or doctors or lawyers or journalists, the less the competition and the higher the prices they could charge. Tests like the bar exam or guild fees or educational prerequisites are examples of barriers to entry that self-selected professional groups have erected.

They would reason that the high barriers to entry were critical for things like quality assurance or public safety.

And maybe some good-hearted people meant that, too. But by restricting the supply of professionals able to meet demand, they were also raising their own wages. Which was a nice little bonus, don’t you think?

In some cases the barriers to entry were technological. Journalists, as an example, were protected from full competition because of the high costs associated with production and dissemination of the written word. Newspapers and magazines were the only career path, that career path demanded certain education, had only a few job openings and restricted both who became a journalist and what journalistic voices were heard.

Then the internet came along.

oh facebook, why can’t i quit you?

Oh Facebook, Why Can’t I Quit You?

At no point during the development and evolution of the internet did anyone, I am sure, think that it would come to this: Facebook accounts for 25% of all United States page views. You did not read that wrong. Fully 1 out of every 4 pages that an American-based browser pulls up is a Facebook page.

By point of comparison, Google gets approximately 8% of all page views.

While Google still leads in total visits and monthly unique visitors, their lead is being whittled down precipitously.

We are all advertisers now.

That, really, is the primary function of Facebook. Advertising for yourself.

If you think about your own Facebook page, meticulously groomed with just the right amount of personal information shared, profile pictures strategically chosen, tagged pictures of you managed daily with weeding out of the ones that don’t quite show the image of yourself that you would like to project, it is an ad campaign for yourself. And, whether consciously or not, you are your own Brand Manager.

And, with 25% of all page views hitting Facebook pages, I hope you’re a good one. You need to be.

bacon me crazy

Bacon Me Crazy

When I think of all of the things that I want to do with my short time on the planet, reading a fast food company’s Twitter feed just isn’t one of those things. Nor is my idea of fun blasting random messages about my love of bacon – and I do love bacon – to the ether.

Though I does give a modern answer to Thoreau who, when told that the telegraph allowed a man in Maine to talk to a man in Texas, asked “but what would they say?”

Well, Henry, they would talk about bacon.

thursday miscellania

Look On The Bright Side
“The Recession is Over Today” -headline, Tribble Ad Agency, Oct. 29

Are They Hiring?
“Stop Global Warming! See Nude Models!” – headline, Adrants, Oct. 29

“OMG! Newsflash! Agency Launches with New Model!” – headline, Adrants, Oct. 29

But Did You Get A Number?
Esquire Flirts With Digital Reality – headline, Wall Street Journal, Oct. 29

what would you say to a celebrity?

What Would You Say To A Celebrity?

What would I say to a celebrity? Nothing. Celebrities are less interesting that a brisk discussion of typical hemlines on men’s pants, an exposition on oil-based paint and my aunt’s Twitter feed all rolled into one. So I would skip on the chance to talk to a celebrity.

Unless it were Eva Mendes, who I would ask out on a date.

And yes, I know her relationship status and I just don’t care.

under new management

I have always liked the Daily Biz, both the blog and the man behind it.  Primarily the man behind it.  But, even assuming that I’m not a minority here, blogs aren’t rated on the Charisma-Power Index or Liked-By-People Metric of the writer.  If they were, this blog might be in better shape.

It’s not. It’s in bad shape. Because it is rarely updated.

That is where I come in.

This blog is officially under new management. It is possible, nay, likely that the beloved founder will continue to write. But because he can hardly be classified as a realiable blog updater (and because it is easier to jump in and take over a blog that has as least a baseline of readership than to start fresh, and I like the easy way out), I am jumping in.

And shaking things up.

The blog is named The Daily Ad Biz. And that is what it is going to become: a daily survey of what is going on in advertising. It will be fun, I promise.

And if it’s not, the founder will continue to post at his typical desultory rate. So there is a little bit of something for everyone.

Welcome to the new Daily Ad Biz.

using advertising to disprove economic theory

One of the cornerstone thesis of economics has been the theory that human beings are, by nature, rational people. This theory has been under attack by many modern economists, who in addition to looking at the wild risk taking (albeit government demanded and subsidized – ladies and gentlemen, let’s put a hand together for Chris Dodd, Barney Frank and the current Congressional leadership!) and the gullibility of those who fell for the easy and consistent returns of con men like Bernie Madoff, have new studies that show people to be less than rational in their economic decisions.

Frankly, I am surprised that it took so long to figure that out.

And I don’t mean that in a flip way, as if as mere advertiser like myself would have the economic and mathematical tools available to conclusively disprove Rational Choice Theory based only on current events.

I mean that it is very obvious that people are not balancing costs against benefits of purchase decisions in a reasoned or dispassionate way. And again, this is not meant in an informal, “can you believe idiots pay thousands more for a hybrid and think it’s cost effective because of marginally better gas mileage” or “why do people who just use a computer for the interney buy a more expensive Mac” way. I mean it seriously.

What is my evidence, you ask? Advertising. Specifically, television commercials.

Now that you are done snickering, I will continue…

This realization came to me while watching Mad Men, while thinking how quaint it was that their ads made rational, long form, persuasion-based Unique Selling Proposition-style arguments.

And I realized that we don’t sell arguments these days.

We sell an image.

And in one way, we can’t help it. Because a television commercial is, by its very nature, running on television, its form is an image. Or, rather, its form is thirty seconds of very quickly changing images that demand of the viewer a strict attention not to ideas and arguments, which require sequential, logical and abstract thinking, but to image. And because they are focused on image, the viewer is not responding sequentially, logically or abstractly, but rather emotionally, intuitively and simply to the holistic feeling that the image gives them.

And if the image meshes with them in those ways, especially emotionally (as we have all heard Creative Directors tell us), they buy in.

Beyond the inherent irrationality of an image as compared with a written word as the form of reasoned argument, the specific images of commercials are particularly unreasonable. Because those images, the ones that are working so hard to create emotion, are working to create religious-like devotion.

The very fact that brands have to have a social media strategy, that thousands of people will ‘friend’ a brand like adidas on Facebook, will put an Apple Computer sticker on the back of their car, will tattoo a DC Shoes logo onto their forearm…it is complete, illogical devotion. There is no reason behind it.

These are companies that make money by selling people things. And the people love them.

These are companies like any other company in the world, many selling barely differentiated products. And people judge each other based on the labels on their clothes. The cars they drive. The type of soda they drink.

Because people emotionally identify with the religious-like symbols and storytelling of brands.

And so television commercials are finely-tuned to use images and emotion to build up brands as idols. Which is anti-Reason. Because feeling is irrefutable. Those commercials do not require sophisticated judgment to assess and compare to other brands. They require the mere capacity for emotion.

People buy feeling. They do not buy considered argument.

If even advertising has abandoned selling by approaching a person with argument and reasoned discourse, then undeniably the weight of private enterprise is in agreement with the contention that people are essentially irrational. Private enterprise doesn’t do anything that is not profitable, at least not for long (or if not under government duress). If ads that presented products in a way that demanded the analytical and comparative skills that comprise rational judgment were to sell better than typical modern flash, advertisers would make them. But they don’t. Because they don’t.

And so is Rational Choice Theory disproven.

Cue Nobel Prize in Economics.

See you bitches in Stockholm.