Reach and Frequency, be damned

I used to work with Microsoft and sometimes joked that they didn't actually need to advertise at all. They just needed to do lots and lots of focus groups with the media budget. They could talk to the same number of people, it might cost a bit more but the behavioural shifts would win me an Effie before you could say boo.

Anyway, that's one alternative media strategy.

Another is to stick your ads on YouTube and hope that vast droves come and watch.



This is a little video of some peoples' stick puppets singing a song about Harry Potter. Juan Cabral is nowhere to be found. Just look at the number of views. 37 million and counting.

Why? Perhaps because the subject matter is close to the hearts of the audience. Perhaps because its not branded. Perhaps because its genuine and not slick. Brands take note. If you stick stuff on YouTube to get the audience hyped before the ad airs, make sure it's more interesting than a sock puppet in someone's bedroom.

Are Penguin the new Innocent?

OK I must be the last one in the world to put all the pieces together.

We've all been blogging and writing presentations and brand models that unpack, deconstruct and reassemble Innocent in the minutest detail.

But I think there's a new kid on the block. One that doesn't have a planning guru (that I know of) at the helm, but a brand that really gets the new world of marketing.

And it's Penguin.

I've just received the Clay Shirky book to review and blog - (thanks Rachelc for the image) and in so doing, the distributed web presence created by this marketing tactic becomes a living case study for the book's main tenets.


But it's all the other stuff, separate but coherent that makes it pure planning gold. They just do all the stuff we spend our lives trying to persuade 'brand' marketers to do.

I think all my digital strategies are going to look a little bit like this in future.

Times for a new brief?

Somewhat in response to Richard's essay on the Naked Brief, I do think it's funny that we all defer to pretty much the old standard creative brief. I think your basic brief is very good at leading us to a focused, simple advertising idea. Usually really nice on telly.

But we also wax lyrical about the need for advertising that is interesting, that is 'worth' people's time and attention, that is truly useful, and is the latest part of a brnad story (or narrative).

I'm guilty of both of these things, by and by.

But do we need a brief that places 'this' piece of advertising in the overall story arc of the brand, that understands what people will find useful, and where the output is likely to be a behavioural construct rather than an ad? A brief where the proposition is a value exchange?

Wouldn't ad agencies trying to be digital agencies need something like this to break down their traditional (or schizophrenic) view of how comms work these days?

By the way, the image is from my flickr set, and has about 700 views - it's of a brief from the US that formed the basis of our brief at work. It's pretty traditional.