Is Dove Pro-age showing signs of aging?

 

I’m starting to think that too many posts from this blog are inspired by AdAge, but in this case I can’t help but refer to it once again.

I’ve long been suspicious about Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty, because it seemed to me:

a) hypocritical: on a corporate level, coming from the same company that positioned Lux with the opposite promise (“makes you beautiful”); but mostly, on a human level, because the correlation between beauty and harmony/perfection lies in our mind and hearts, long before it was promoted by shallow advertising;

b) naive: because no matter how much money Dove had, it’ld be way outspent by all other ads+fashion shows+movies+ Paris Hilton amateur films stating a conventional model of beauty (which, by the way, is closer to our natural expectation of beauty than that of an old, wrinkled woman);

c) conseguently, cheesy and fake (“paracula”, for italians): designed more to make the brand sounds socially correct than to really challenge opinions and grow true consensus

That’s why I’ve always been curious regarding its results, and from what I found out over the past two years or so, the campaign has allegedly contributed to a significant growth, mostly through loyalty (franchise consumers buying more and more Dove products).

According to AdAge, it seems that the recently launched Pro-Age line is not performing as brilliantly, and this offers an opportunity to take a look at the whole brand, and ask ourselves some questions:

1) Was Dove’s recent growth mostly due to the brand (and its social statements) or to appealing products?

2) Is Real Beauty now a cage for Dove, forcing it to launche a Pro-Age product, competing with Anti-Age miracle potions for the favour of women that desperately don’t want to get (look) old?

3) Is this the evidence that the Campaign for Natural Beauty is, after all, a second-best strategy? A well-executed and well-marketed version of the “You’re not ugly, you’re different…” sentences from the old days of Junior High?

Final Burp: Even if the message “Accept yourself the way you are” should have appeal, why would you need a product to do so?

What kind of account planner is under threat?

An AdAge article (yes, same old source) by Alice Cuneo provides a revealing opportunity to spend a few thoughts on what we all mean by “account planners”.

The article opens up with “pity the poor account planner” because these supposedly former rock stars of the ad business are now faced with sharing the spotlight with other kind of planners: media planners, connection planners, channel planners and the likes…

If the point of all this is to state that sharing the spotlights sucks, and we’ld all want to be the unique superstars of the amazing ad world, well… that’s a discussion that would appeal to our ego: which is clearly too big to fit into this blog’s layout, so let’s dismiss the whole issue.

If instead we’re talking real work, then it’s a whole different story, one that forces us to take a clearer look at what ultimately is our job.

Edward Cotton, director-strategy for Influx Insights, says ”A big challenge is being up to date with what’s going on [...] Six months ago, it’s MySpace. Now it’s Facebook.”

 I say: Who cares?

The beef of account planning has always been the content of the message, not the place where this message is delivered. Ok, MySpace is a different place than Facebook, but what really matters to us are the insights behind social network.

The needs, aspirations and behaviour of people are what will enable us to produce insightful ideas: let channel planners tell both us and the creatives if those ideas would be better off on MySpace or Facebook, and what kind of shape they’ld have to take.

Now, I’m obviously being a bit radical here, and we do have to know that MySpace and Facebook are around, and how they work, but that’s because their presence gives us insights into people, and not much because of the opportunities for communication they provide.

On the other hand, we know that in order to deal with the changes that are taking place, more professionals will sit around the table. Edward Cotton again asks:  “How do you [prepare a] brief if there’s 10 on a team?”

My first answer would be: you make 10 copies instead of 2.

My second answer is of course a bit more thoughtful, but it’s not far from that. The whole building and managing of communication will be more complicated, but everything will keep steaming from one relevant piece of idea. And luckily that first relevant piece of idea is most of our job.

Of course we’ll have to work with more people and keep an eye on more activities, but the core of what we do (and what defines our value) will stay the same.

As for me, I’ve been working with a channel planner based in London and our roles were pretty clear: I was in charge of the “what”, he was in charge of the “where”. Of course the “where” influences the “what”, but that only happens at a later stage (ie. creative execution)

On the other hand, it’s amazing how many different views people have on strategic planners, to the point that they should be endangered by pretty much anything: blogging, channel planners, and maybe global warming will come up as our next big threat.

Perhaps the reason for such an undefined idea of what we’re supposed to do is that “planning” doesn’t mean much, and “strategy” even less so. Or maybe it’s that planners are usually schizofrenic dudes with loads of different interests. Or that our work is built upon crossroads: between creatives and account handlers, between advertisers and consumers, between visionaires and researchers…

Whatever those reasons may be, it seems that communication getting more complicated is actually providing a chance for us to stick with what we were originally meant to do. Come up with relevant ideas that can be a fertile seed for communication. Period.

Final Burp: are strategic planners confused with channel planners because they both rely on research? If that is so, what happened to generating powerful ideas as the true essence of our job?

Is the epidemic of viral to be arrested?

AdAge is reporting results from a research by sociologist Duncan Watts that might challenge the growing faith in viral marketing.

Professor Watts is pretty much claiming that even if influencers may be particularly effective over otheer people, they are only able to do so to their immediate neighbourhood, and not much beyond.

This has spurred a wild controversy between supporters of buzz theories (namely Malcom Gladwell’s Tipping point) and others who have been waiting a good decadeto call it well-marketed nonsense.

As to me, I’m surprised by how easily the web is being flooded by passionate, yet meaningless arguments (yes, I’m thinking at blogging vs planning…)

It’s not a matter of qualitative theory vs math. It’s a matter of common sense.

Throught human history word-of-mouth has always worked, and it has done so depending on the subject of communication, the cohesion of the community and the means of communication.

Today there’s not doubt we have more means of communication. We can even pretend that we are more cohese.

So the subject of communication is key to how relevant buzz can be, because it implies how interesting the message is going to be, to how many and what people it will relate to, and how easily it can be transmitted from one to another.

Common sense tells us that a service like Skype can benefit greatly from viral, whereas in the case of goods with low involvment (toothpicks?), products aimed at little-networked consumers (dentures?) or complex messages it’s a little less so.

And in general… Viral for niche marketing: very good. Viral for mass marketing: less good (but growing steadily).

Final Burp: Viral is pretty much like a side dish. There’s cases in which it can be enough for a whole meal, but most times it needs to be served with a main course (even though the latter may be less tasty)

From communication experts to idea factories

A couple days ago I was talking with a creative director about how we have often found ourselves giving away ideas and tips to our clients about potential new products, or improvements of old ones: though most of these ideas get lost along the way, sometimes they eventually become financially-relevant products, and all we get out of that is a handshake. If we’re lucky, a “thank you, we’ll not pitch you for a while…”

Fastforward 24 hours, and I stumble upon this article from AdAge, listing a number of agencies that have been addressing this same issue in the most obvious way: by becoming marketers themselves.

They develop and market their own proprietary ideas, thus evolving from consultants to entrepreneurs: from “communication experts” to “idea factories”.

 The first implication of all this is quite immediate: money. You need lots of money to finance your ideas, develop and market them, before you can see any ROI. But if you do see a ROI, is much more rewarding than current agency fees.

The second keyword is risk: entrepreneurial risk. Agencies have always been preaching brave risk-taking, but have never really been keen to take any risk themselves.  We still hang on to the same structure and business model of the last many decades.

Speaking of that, what kind of structure can support such a business model? Most likely one with a few selected talents and low fixed costs. Which is pretty much the opposite of the agency structure of today: very high fixed costs (lotsa people), but real talents have been fleeing our industry for years, in search for better opportunities and, well, more money.

I’m still gathering the thoughts, but it seems one of those topics worth tracking.

Final Burp: if agencies start succesfully marketing their own products, will clients quit saying that we can’t fucking sell, and we just don’t get figures?