Telenot Commercial

Telenor’s overall marketing concept this season is that they want to help and support you. Hardly an USB position,  but fair enough. Telenor is trying to trick you into one of their stores where the staff can act as gods/guides to the complicated world of telecommunication. How to set up Facebook on your mobile phone, for instance? Fair enough even here, and I am sure that this is a relevant message for some.

But why make a simple message like this more complicated than it really it? I consider their last commercial on the Danish market as an expensive, confusing and artistically blown out example of how you muddle a basically good idea. My 2P. It hardly moves anything. Least of all market shares.

I might do a proper  CET (Communication Efficiency Test) on this commercial. Yes, I think I will.

Please take my wording here as a result of first impressions. That might change after a test.

Read more about Telenor Danmark.

What is Grey Zone Advertising?

The Cure. Copyright 2010: Knut Skjærven.

Let’s continue the talk about advertising.

Advertising, as defined here, is a special branch of communication and not something different from it. Advertising can, and should, be treated with the barebones resources made available on this blog.

So, that is just what I will continue to do. I will also move back to the Danish telco project for this particular blog post.

The three companies I am investigating are TDC, Telenor and Telia. Why address telcos, you may ask? The answers to this question are simple. Here are a two of them: The area is highly prolific, and intensely competitive. That goes particularly for the Danish market since it is considered pretty mature and a rather small one.  The three main companies mentioned are sweating for arguments to increase and/or to protect market shares.

Follow this link for more good reasons.

You may remember that I some time ago lay the foundation for a backbones bases view on advertising. I talked about Red Zone, Blue Zone and Grey Zone Advertising.

In this post will I will ask the question: What is Grey Zone Advertising? And I will try to answer it. At least indicate an answer.

I have suggested that we split advertising three ways: First there is Red Zone Advertising (Above the Line Advertising), secondly there is Blue Zone Advertising (Below the Line Advertising) and then barebones introduces a third form of advertising Grey Zone Advertising (Beyond the Lines Advertising).

These three forms exhausts the area. All company activities, in any form whatsoever, are activities within one or more of the three zones mentioned.

The first two zones are familiar to most dealing with advertising, but the third one is not. Normally activities that you find in the Grey Zone area would not be considered advertising at all. But it needs to be accepted as advertising as it is a type of activity that promotes services and products for a company just as strongly as Red Zone and Blue Zone Advertising do. In some cases Grey Zone messages may even contradict and overrule what is stated in Red and Blue Zone messages.

Let’s take the case of TDC CEO, Henrik Poulsen, who apparently acts as a Light Master in one of the company commercials from late 2009.(See this post). The commercial operates in two zones: The first zone is Red Zone. The  second zone is Grey Zone. Let me explain: It operates in Red Zone since it obviously is a commercial for a specific TDC services. In addition it operates in Grey Zone  since CEO, Henrik Poulsen, has chosen to cast himself as the Light Master standing on top of a ladder in the opening scene of the commercial. Casting himself in that role effects the basic message of the particular TDC service. The effect could be good for business, it could be neutral for business or it could be bad for business.

Let me take this a step further: If Henrik Poulsen is a person well perceived by the audience his appearance in the commercial may be taken as a sign of courage, playfulness, and youth and thereby effect the TDC service positively. On the other hand, if Henrik Poulsen is not well perceived his appearance might effect sales and image negatively.

Most likely the result here is zero since none would ever suspect the head of a company the size of Danish TDC to act as Light Master in one of his own commercial. And the scene is very brief, indeed. Could be that Henrik Poulsen will simply not be recognized as the CEO of one of the largest Danish companies: TDC.

You have ONE question. I sense that. Why do I want to call Grey Zone Advertising for advertising at all when it is not generally recognized  as such? And what a good question that is. Once again the answer is simple: If you don’t label it as advertising you will tend to overlook the fact that is works like advertising for the company, their products and services. That’s why. You will most likely work out of focus, blindly. If that’s what you intend feel free to pick another name for it . Many do.

By the way: What on earth is Henrik Poulsen doing on top of that ladder in the first place?

All for now. Have a good weekend . TGIF.
……………………..

For more posts in the telco project, visit telco basecamp.

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Welles, Hitchcock, Poulsen or None?

It does not have to be that serious all the time. So here is a quiz. In fact, the first barebones quiz ever.

Question: Who is the Light Master on top of the ladder in this 2009 commercial from Danish telco TDC?

1. Is it Orson Welles, who often casted himself in his own movies? Remember Citizen Kane – the best movie ever made?

2. Is it Alfred Hitchcock, who made it his trade mark always to take a minor role in his movies?

3. Or is it simply the young CEO of TDC, Henrik Poulsen, taking time out to entertain the film crew and casting himself as a Light Master in this commercial from late 2009.

4. Sorry, none of the mentioned persons fit. It is someone else.

Let’s have your barebones vote below .

For more on barebones telco project, please go here.

Mrs. Robinson.

“Here is to you Mrs. Robinson”. You are welcome to sing it. I am sure that you know the song from way back. Simon and Garfunkel it was who wrote and performed it for Mike Nichols’ Oscar winning film”The Graduate”.

If you have seen the movie, or read the story, you will know that it is about a middle age woman having an affair with a much younger man. Excellently played by Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffmann. Way back in 1960 something.

Another Mrs. Robinson turned up this week. I am sure that you know that one as well. Mrs. Iris Robinson, a well-known Irish politician, admitted to have had an affair with a 19 old friend-of-the family’s son. She later provided him with a 50,000 pounds loan from two local developers to help him set up his own business.

Her husband, Mr. Peter Robinson, who just happened to be Northern Ireland’s First Minister did not know about this, he says, but nevertheless he temporarily stepped down from office yesterday leaving Northern Ireland in a political turmoil.

Not good for Northern Ireland First Minister Business. Not at all good.

To be continued … (-:).

While you wait for the continuation, you may rest your soul by listening to this alternative version of the song Mrs. Robinson.

Good luck it.

barebones’ telco project

Photographers. Copyright 2009.

Barebones have been looking for a company, a couple of companies, a highly competitive environment on a national (local) marked to use as a specific case to investigate, and possible show, what benefits a barebones approach to a prolific communication area can have. We have now found such an area and have started researching it.

The case will be around the high-end telecommunication industry on the Danish consumer market consisting of three providers: Telia, Telenor and TDC. (Triple Tee).

The reasons why this area is interesting are, among other things, the following.

1) The Danish marked is reasonably small and therefore possible to oversee.

2) The number of players are limited.

3) The competition among the three main players are hefty.

4) The penetration of telco based products are among the highest in the world.

5) Customers are highly educated and critical.

6) A barebones approach to the area, due to the specifics of the Danish marked, is likely to have an international interest.

7) Ownership, strategies and markets tactics are very different in the three companies mentioned (more on this later).

What, then,  is a “the barebones approach”?

A barebones approach to the area includes all that you normally find in a traditional “marked analysis” as a prerequisite to a marked address, and thus to market communication.

Add  to that three things:

First, we go a step further in that we will look for a proper reflection of strategy, tactics and overall market conditions in the expressed marked communication e.g. commercials, print advertising, online marketing, etcetera.

Second, the project will be bases on the barebones toolbox and resources, in which traditional tools for market analyses occupies but a tiny corner. This will, hopefully, bring forward new aspects of market communication, and establish spaces for future planning, and implementation in the competitive arena.

Third: the stress will be on specific communication and not the planning of such communication. The first, normally, being a weak link.

There are, however, certain modification that needs to be made. The investigation and analysis will be based on open source material. This means that we rely on what spokesmen from the three companies have said or indicated. We look at websites, read interviews and press material, etcetera.  In addition, we look at what the companies have executed through other venues of market communication e.g. different forms of print advertising, commercials, social groups marketing, etcetera.

We mirror that against what the companies have stated in their e.g. visions, mission and strategies as we find these stated and explained, for instance, on their websites. All companies have extensive web sites.

Barebones will conduct content analysis of company communication and position each campaign, or other marked communication, in communication grids. Such positioning will possible reveal communication gaps. e.g. empty spaces for future telco communication.

And barebones will do more along these lines.

Why this effort? What’s in it for barebones communication, you may well ask?

Well, barebones sees it this way: Since it is the first time we execute an extensive barebones communication analysis to a specific and focused area, methods and models are not clearly defined from the start.  These will only emerge during the unfolding of the project, and will thus be new territory for barebones as well. Methods and models will be reusable for future analysis of a similar kind. That’s what in it for barebones communication.

By the end of the project new ways of market analysis will have emerged.

How are we going to present the material? We will not present it in any tradition way. We will present it the barebones way. There will be no final reports or executive summary.

The presentation will happen as we go along. This means that you need to follow the posts related to this barebones’ theme. We may collect relevant posts at a blog page, as with barebones puzzle, at a later stage. All relevant posts will be tagged: barebones telco. You will be able to find all theme posts by hitting this tag in the tag cloud. But you will need to sort posts, structure them, read them and understand  them on your own.

Does this mean that barebones communication will turn into a Danish telco project for the next many months? No, it will not mean that, but there will be some triple tee posts (Telia, Telenor, TDC).  Evidently.

Good luck with it. Remember to stay tuned

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The photograph, or the people in it, has nothing to do with the theme in question. It is there for its own, or symbolic, sake only.

Ladies Here We Come.

One of the most talked about Danish commercials in 2008 was Fleggaard’s commercial for a washing machine. Promoted mainly by bare breasts.

Titled by one if the best barebones captions that years: from bare bones to bare breasts. Now Fleggaard has done it again, but this time aimed at women. “Ladies here we come”.

Apart from the gender difference in the two commercials, there are other differences too. Try check this new Fleggaard commercial in the Communication Efficiency Test (CET), and see how it falls out. Something like this. Your turn.

You could also go behind the scenes of Fleggaard’s latest commercial, or take a look at all the provocative commercials from one site. You need to state that you are over 18 to watch them. Click the link “se filmen” on the right hand side of each commercial to get them rolling.

Fleggaard operates just over the border from Denmark into Germany having large groups of customers from Denmark every day. The company is a successful Danish retailer. As his location, so his commercials: just over the border. People seems to enjoy them.

Good luck with it with the commercial entertainment from Fleggaard.

TDC Nudity Updated.

TDC in the Nude.

That was the caption on a post submitted not long ago here on barebones. Danish advertising big spenders, TDC, the used to be Danish PTT, launched a new television campaign with a middle age couple, Claus and Britta, as the main characters. Both in the nude, and in television prime time.

For the surprised viewer it later turned out that the two actors, Kirsten Lehfeldt and Peter Frödin, weren’t nude at all, but cleverly adapted to nudity by wearing expensive “skin costumes” making them only look nude.

Anyway, the campaign did the trick. Claus and Britta gathered a substantial fan club on Facebook in no time at all. Cleverly set up, and nursed by TDC, it brought in more than 20.000 supporters during the first months making it even more popular than the Danish prime minister, as one Danish daily reported (and that was even before Copenhagen COP15).

According to TDC’s marketing management, the company wants to level with the customers, and sees the campaign as the bearing element in a revised marked communication strategy. TDC Marketing Director, Tomas Pietrangeli, explains that he wants to bring TDC back to basics. He wants to get rid of all marketing access messages starting by stripping people of their clothes. Seems then, that TDC in the Nude is a strategic concept, and a marketing idea, that will entertain us for a while.

TDC in the Nude, which is the barebones label of this campaign, is not without conceptual challenges, but I will leave that discussion for now. This post then in just a simple update on TDC nudity.

Be our guest, and let Danish Britta (actor Peter Frödin, male) roll around in her pilates excitement. Certainly this is a radical idea for an old phone company. With this campaign TDC is leaving the main competition on the Danish marked, Norwegian owned Telenor, and Swedish owned Telia, in the backseat for a while.

Or, perhaps they just prefer to keep their clothes on in these cold, copenhagen winter months.

The TDC campaign is handled by People Group, Denmark, and executed by prestigious Wibroe, Duckert & Partners, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Just Brilliant: Be Your Own Hero.

Sometimes commercials can be just brilliant. Watch the commercial found at YouTube, or make your own version here. Be your own hero. English version.

Entering The No Man’s Land of Advertising.

Jumping In. Copyright 2009: Knut Skjærven.

First day of the new year. What is going to happen on barebones communication in 2010? As so far as this is, and should be, predictable, the idea is to move closer in on advertising. To enter the no man’s land of advertising. And to do so with the barebones toolbox in hand.

That said, updates and continuations will progress on all barebones themes; semiology, gestalt psychology, hermeneutics, phenomenology, et cetera, but advertising will get special attention in 2010. At least in the first half year.

The reason is that advertising seems to be in particular need of such an attention. I know of no other area that is so slow and so reluctant to accumulate research results, utilize trends, incorporate experience from successful advertising campaign, or simply to acquire the ability and willingness to move ahead. I many cases it is simply a question of doing a better job for the clients.

David Ogilvy once said that we know a lot about what work, and what do not work in advertising. Creative people must learn to use that knowledge. Add to that the more general resource areas laid bare on barebones communication – this blog. There is really a lot of available information to work with. Let’s see it used.

I may also add that most respectable, high-profile areas that I know of are addressed by competent critics. Take the speeches by Obama, take the COP15 in Copenhagen, take a new album by U2, take an opera in Milano, take the design of a new BMW, take the fireworks on New Year’s Eve. Take the work of Sebastiao Salgado. Take almost any professional area that you can think of. All of these professions have, for good and for bad, group of critics around them. The critic’s roles are to view and review, to analyze, describe and interpret, to comment and commend, or, stated in other words, to go into dialog with “the object” in question. And the people behind it, and in front of it.

This very seldom happens in advertising – if at all. No group of proper critics seems to exist. I know of no such groups or even individuals tending to this task. If you know of such groups, then please tell me, and I will be happy to retract these words.

Advertising seems to be a fenced in area ….. protected on the on the one hand by those who make advertising (the agencies), and on the other  hand by the advertisers. This protection is not made out of bad will since is should interest no one, but it is made worse by the lack of serious attention by possible stake holders, among them the critics.

No wonder that the popular saying is that half of (some) budgets are waisted. That will hardly do it in all cases.

Barebones communication will look into this no man’s land of advertising. Barebones will start taking advertising as a proper object for criticism. As if it was an opera in Milano, an album by rock group U2, a speech by Obama, a COP15 in Copenhagen, or a new model  from BMW.

Barebones will do so by, among other things, using resources already available on the barebones blog. Hereby, I indicate that future reviews will not only be based on The CET TEST (Communication Efficiency Test). This test will be among the tools used, but reviews will not be limited to that tool only. Barebones will also challenge advertising strategies and tactics when this is found proper and necessary for criticism.

Please be aware that the word criticism, in this context, does not imply that verdicts are doomed to be negative. This is not so. In this context, criticism properly executed may well end in appraisal for good work done.

What criticism will mean, however, is casting a critical eye on advertising campaigns, on agencies and an advertisers. Stay tuned, because this may very well happen to an advertising campaign quite near you.

Welcome to barebones communication 2010.

Probably Not That Good For Business.

TDC Stumble Upon. Screenshot.

Barebones is now on StumbleUpon.

Not by its own merits I am afraid, but because of Claus and Britta, the nude couple populating TDC’s recent brand advertising campaign. Someone stumbled upon TDC In The Nude, the barebones post written about 2 weeks ago. TDC is  the used to be Danish PTT, and now the major telecommunication company in Denmark.

The post was added to the pornography topic on StumbleUpon.

What can I say? It’s a wide world out there, but pornography? I’d rather have it photography.

Probably not that good for business.