Huxley Quayle von Blog

Measuring the effects of social media

Follow the link below to watch how Sea World in San Antonio used social media and the internet to augment and bring forward the launch of a new ride. They started by getting enthusiasts of roller-coasters involved all over the country and then fed them and other people on the net with lots of great content before the ride opened.

Upon launching the ride, exit surveys of guests showed that more people became interested in the ride through the internet than through their advertising.

Lots of great ideas for social media campaigns, and lots of ways to measure the effects of the social media campaign.

http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2008/03/gntv-making-a-s.html

A website anyone with a conscience should visit.

www.nanhikali.org

I got this from Scott Goodson at Strawberry Frog today. Breaks your heart to learn about the plight of young Indian girls. Take a look and do what you can to spread the word and help out.

HQvB becomes Canada's first ad agency to commit to becoming carbon neutral.

At Huxley Quayle von Bismark we believe that it’s not only important to be good at what you do, but to be good at how you do it.

Part of our commitment to be a better agency is to adopt an aggressive environmental and sustainability policy. As corporate good citizens we are taking action to ensure we cause as little environmental impact as possible as well as reduce then neutralize our carbon footprint.

We are working with a leading innovative organization called ERA Ecosystem Restoration Associates. Since we are committed to doing our part to address Climate Change ERA is a perfect fit as their carbon offset program, EcoNeutral, offers multiple benefits to the planet.

The many co-benefits of restoring ecosystems includes reviving animal and fish habitat, improving flood control and water filtration, restoring the natural beauty of the landscape, generates employment as well as offering a carbon benefit.

Together, with our clients, we will be creating powerful ideas that get people involved in brands. And at the same time, we'll be creating a better place or our children

Highlights of Our Commitment

• We will reduce by storing files electronically, and whenever possible, presenting ideas digitally rather than cranking out tons of paper.
• We will only be buying office supplies that are made from 100% recycled material.
• We are committed to reducing our carbon footprint by:
o Riding our bicycles, taking transit, or carpooling to work.
o We’ll be giving preference to food-service suppliers who source locally.
o Our office has big windows, so we’re turning off the lights during the day.
o We have cut down on printers in the office, making due with one, networked machine.
o We are using new technology to meet face-to-face with our clients online more often, saving on driving back and forth for meetings.
o We are switching our lighting to CFL.
o We are purchasing stainless steel coffee mugs to reduce the mount of paper coffee containers and water containers. Chris Hall has committed to only drink water from his commemorative 2005 Masters’ Beer Cup.
• We are working with industry leaders to support carbon-offsetting projects in Canada and around the world.
• We are committed to working with suppliers who are also environmentally conscious. Those who have a viable sustainability plan will be given preference in our bidding system.

A Breakthrough Offer

We’re willing to put our money where our earth is. In order to encourage advertisers to join us in this cause, we’re offering a 10% eco-discount to clients who have a viable sustainability plan. These funds will be directed to carbon offsetting projects in Canada and around the world in the name of the client.
So now, it’s not only good business hiring HQvB, it’s good for the earth as well.

The future of marketing. Although we think it's the present.

This is a great powerpoint presentation about where marketing is heading and what we as creative people can do to be there.

It's a lot of pages, but it only takes a few minutes to go through. It's well worth the time.

Download whats-next-in-marketing-advertising-1206247156803190-3.ppt.pot

Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies List

Funny that only one advertising agency made the list, Anomaly from NYC. What I did like was that like us, Anomaly has flat fees and eschews commissions, timesheets and the other trappings of the old-fashioned dinosaur agencies.

Anyway, for the entire list, go to:
www.fastcompany.com/magazine/123/the-worlds-most-innovative-companies.html

If you're as interested in sustainability as we are, check out this blog

www.changereport.com

There's tons of news from the environmental front and lots about green marketing. I especially like the article from Japan about saving the forest by wearing a bra that has a built-in chopstick holder. Nothing says sexy like pointy breasts that reek of the morning's sushi. Mmmmmm.....

You can also get a Change Widget that launches all their latest news on your desktop.

Anyway, lots of cool stuff in the Change Report, but please, if you like an article, don't print it. That'd kinda' defeat the purpose of the whole thing.

Are "ad campaigns" dead?

Until recently we lived in an oligarchic media world where a few TV networks ruled the roost. News came from newspapers, usually only a couple general ones in most markets. There was no internet. No YouTube. No facebook. No world of 500 channels, no Tivo, video on demand, Apple Television, Blackberry’s, iPhones or satellite radio.

Advertising then was about creating one-way messages aimed at a target audience. The notion was to pinpoint a single audience of 25-30 year-old single females with post-secondary education and household income of $75,000 +, or 18-24 beer drinking males in urban centres, and create a singular message born out of an insight into their behavior. If you had enough money, you’d create three, or a campaign, executions of the same singular idea to keep things fresh.

In order to maximize the amount of times the audience would be exposed to the message, advertisers and agencies negotiated large buys at the beginning of the year, and then they’d hammer the message home time and time again.

And while there are now 500 channels, and the internet has surpassed broadcast tv in terms of time spent with per week and over 67 million people are on Facebook, ad agencies are still planning campaigns and media as if we still lived in the old world.

We think it’s time to rethink this notion. And we think it presents a huge opportunity to advertisers.

First of all, recognize that your brand doesn’t just appeal, or interact with one “demographic”, but that it could fit into several different sub-cultures, or communities, in different ways. And while your brand should have a core set of values, and a personality, just like you or me it can communicate and interact with different communities of people in different ways, as long as it stays true to itself.

Secondly, it’s time to realize that you can use the fragmented media world we live in to your advantage, because it let’s you get closer to core groups of people who share similar interests and values – subcultures. They in turn use their social networks to get more like-minded people involved. And you can do this for the same, or less, than you would have spent blowing your budget on traditional campaigns.

So your brand can then become about being inclusive, rather than exclusive. It can be more relevant to more people, which drives ROI.

To achieve this nirvana, advertisers and agencies have to rethink how media is bought. Many large advertisers, especially here in Canada, are still buying the bulk of their media at the beginning of the year in order to enjoy cost savings. But then they and their agency are locked into a course of action that can result in nothing other than a traditional campaign, with at best an online “component”.

However, rethinking the whole notion of what a campaign is and how a brand can be built can result in much higher savings because the money spent on expensive traditional media is lessened greatly, just to get the ball rolling, or not at all.

Which is why we think we can do with 5 or six bucks what most agencies need ten to achieve.
And that’s what we call Return on Involvement.

Impressionist photography makes a social statement

I ran across this site for Chris Jordan photography. On it he has an exhibit called "Running the Numbers
An American Self-Portrait". He takes every day articles such as pop cans, tooth picks and the like and uses them to make very artistic and impactful statements about our effects on the environment and certain statistics in society. Worth a look. Could be great creative inspiration.

www.chrisjordan.com

HQvB says "no" to dogwalkers. Not here. Not ever.

"Big agencies typically have big paying clients that they can do groundbreaking work for. Instead they are "rummaging around in the gutter".
Dirty Little Secrets, Marketing, March 24, 2008, pg. 14, by Paul Ferris, Executive Editor

We think it's about time somebody spoke up publicly about the dearth of award show freebies created by Canadian ad agencies, otherwise known as "dogwalkers". It's the advertising industry's equivalent of the doping scandals rocking the sports world.

They seem harmless enough. Free ads done for small, or phony clients that allow agency creative departments to show their mettle.

But it's getting way, way out of hand these days. And the ones that pay for it are the clients. They pay for it through high fees. After all, the people making those dogwalkers are paid well, especially if they win some awards for them. And since traditional agencies' profit models are based on selling time, somebody has to make up for the time spent on freebies. And how do you think traditional agencies get the money to pay for the production and media placement of these "campaigns" for clients who have no money? Government grants? We think not?

Clients also pay in terms of energy, resources and passion that is re-directed away from their business to the dogwalker's freebie, which leaves people with less time to focus on their paying clients.

Then consider that when you ask a photographer or director to do a dogwalker for free, they expect to make that contribution to your agency's reel up somewhere else. You guessed it, they make it up on a paying client's next project.

Now factor in the money the spent on entering these dogwalkers into award shows, (a single Cannes entry is well over $1000) and the time it takes to prepare the entries for every show, all of which have very specific and very different formats.

Add up all the above and I think you'd be staggered as to the amount of money, time and energy that goes into the self-indulgent award show freebies. It's literally hundreds of thousands of dollars at some agencies.

Most important perhaps, is that this practice instills a belief in agency people that you can't do great, breakthrough work for paying clients.

It's disgusting. And it has to stop.

But like doping in sports, the incentive to win awards is too high for agencies and creatives to stop on their own. All agencies want to be on the Agency of the Year list, and that takes awards. Creatives want to make more money, get promoted and lengthen what can be a short-lived career. That also takes awards.

So they cheat. And like in the doping scandals, since everyone is doing it, they feel they have to as well.

Apparently even the Chairman of DDB doesn't have to ability to stop his own agency from continuing this practice, even though he spoke out publicly against it.

Here's the truth. There are only two kinds of people who can put a stop to this. The first are agency principals like the partners here at HQvB. We put it in our charter as we started the agency. No dogwalkers. No phony ads. Ever. Sure everyone should do the occasional pro-bono for a real good cause. But for the sporting goods store down the street? No.

Our belief is that the best agencies in the world do their best work for their paying clients. Here in Canada often it's the opposite.

The other people who have the power, and perhaps more so, are clients. Agencies wouldn't exist without clients. In a service industry the customer is always right. And if the customers say "no more" than believe me, it will be heard.

We think clients should go a step further. We would suggest making your agency sign a contract that one of the criteria of you working with them is that they cannot do dogwalkers, upon punishment of being fired. To make it a bit easier, we've enclosed a downloadable contract right here. Ironically, we're giving it to you for free.

Funny enough, if you go back twenty years, award shows were filled with ads from paying clients. The work that won awards on any given year was the best work for paying clients.

As it should be.

We say stop the doping. Stop the dogwalkers. Let's all get back to doing our best work for our best clients - the ones that pay us.

Have some fun with us on Facebook

You can become a fan and have some fun with HQvB on our Facebook page. We'll be updating with news, photos, cool videos and just plain old fun shit. Log into your Facebook account and search Huxley Quayle von Bismark and blammo, you're there.