TDC In The Nude

The former Danish PTT, today TDC, has introduced middle age nudity as part of their future corporate branding. That may be a good idea, and then it may not be such a good idea.

The provoking concept links in fine with even more provoking Danish commercials Danish Mother seeking Father  of Child, and the quite recent Hit the Bitch PSA. Both of these campaigns needed to go into hiding shorty after introduction.

According to local newspaper, BT, the strategy behind the new series of commercials is to level with the customer. Claus and Britta have already a considerable fan group on facebook, and are more popular there than the Danish prime minister. If that counts.

Are these people really in the nude as it seems intitially? No, they’re not. That are dressed up in nude costumes. If not you might have noticed that the man, Claus, is played by a woman, and (what else) the female, Britta, is played by a man. Actors are well known Peter Frödin (Britta) and Kirsten Lehfeldt (Claus).

Barebones will follow the TDC campaign and have a critical look at it. The question is if this type of branding by nudity works beyond the level of media attention, and facebook fan groups?

Stay tuned for more bare news on Claus and Britta ….

Agency: wdp, Denmark.

Danish Mother Seeking Father of Child.

When you have seen this movie give it a thought.

This is actually a commercial done by advertising agency Grey for the official Danish tourist organization Visit Denmark. Believe it or not, its aim it to pursue tourists to come to Denmark on vacation. Free the Dane In You they state on their English website.

The hidden, but somewhat problematic story, is that Denmark is a free, liberal and tolerant country. (Not all foreigners will agree to that). However, if you buy the message, you might get severely drunk in a bar one night and have free blond sex as an extra. You will not remember much of it though. Maybe that is the real benefit here.

The girl’s name is not Karen, it is Ditte. She is an actor. She does not have a son, and was paid to do this job as a blond young mother. Even the accent is good. The viral advert  has done really well on You Tube with more than 800.000 viewers in a few days. I am sure that there will be more. Read more faking facts here.

The point is that you cannot be sure that even this is the truth, can you?  Since you will never know when the lies ends and the truth begins. If it begins. Actually this could be an advert for the Swedish tourist authorities to have people come to Sweden. Sweden is in the same corner of the world anyway, so if you get drunk enough you may actually forget to get off the plane, hit the wrong road, or take a fake taxi. Probably you will not even remember.

If this starts to get you a bit dizzy make a quick decision: go to Norway in stead. It is the same direction coming in from most places of the world. Drinks are much more expensive than they are in Danish bars, and it is of no use lying about it. Likely, you cannot afford to get that drunk. Besides the girls are better looking.

And who knows, you might even become a father :-).

Seriously: This Danish tourist advert is not even barely the bones, if you know what I mean. Read more here if you want to check it for efficiency. The advert blunders on The Simple Truth from the CET Checklist.

You may want to read this post as well. Just to do some benchmarking. Maybe the best commercial ever made?

Before you Free the Dane In You, give it a good thinker.

Good luck with it.

Creatics – Reclaiming A Word for Barebones.

    

Creatics in Action. Berlin 2008. (c)

Many years ago I invented a new word.

The word was creatics. It was a combination of two other words; the word creativity and the word tactics. If you google creatics, you will find reference to a series of articles, that I wrote in the mid eighties. Unfortunately now, the series was written for a Danish periodical, and thus written in Danish. If you read Danish the series is, in other words, already there for you to read.

You will find that the word later have been taken up by other people. Can’t blame them since it is a good word, but they use it in different contexts. Or in no context.

I will now reclaim the word creatics, and make use of it as a name for a new barebones theme. My intention is to rewrite the articles for barebones, but with the changes and adaption necessary to make a better fit for the barebones communication project. There will be some changes, but not that many. The concept will stay intact.

The main mission with the series of articles was to establish the fact that having an idea, is not something that fall from heaven, but a process that you can learn and learn to deliberately work with in generating new ideas. 

Why is this relevant on a blog on efficient communication? For two reasons:

The first reason is, that in communication creativity plays an important part if you want to stand out from the flow of communication that is all ways surrounding you. Being it voices, noises, images, tactile communication and other forms.

The second reason is, that I find that creatics and phenomenology goes well together. You know, that I have started a barebones theme on phenomenology here on the blog. That theme has, so far, only one post in it, but there will be plenty more. The first post is: phenomenology: what is intentionality?  I can see from the blog statistics, that this post is pretty well read, which is a motivation for speeding that blog theme up a bit.

One of the beauties of creatics is that if you search for something, and you search hard enough, that something will, after a while, come to you in various shapes and/or forms. For many months I had the idea of elaborating on the creatics for this blog. And this is what happened less then two weeks ago: I was ordering a couple of books by advertising wizard David Ogilvy on Amazon. When I order books there, I always have a look around for other complementary titles that could have an interest. And this title popped up: “A Technique for Producing Ideas”. Written by James Webb Young. As the price was fair, I ordered that book too.

And I have read it. That was the specific incident that pushed me to elaborate on creatics on this blog :-).  James Webb Young phrase two important things about how to get ideas: “First, the formula is so simple to state that few who hear it really believe in it. Second, while simple to state, it actually requires the hardest kind of intellectual work to follow, so that not all who accept it use it”.

If you would like to go ahead on your own, please read this book. The subtitle could as well have been creatics. It is only 48 pages long, so you will read it in no time at all. If you are an advertising woman, or and advertising man, you will appreciate, that the foreword is written by another advertising guru: William Bernbach.

Do I have a photograph for this post? Just to make it a bit livelier? And maybe to make a silent comment to the words? I might have. I’ll insert a photograph later.

Later: I am sure that you have seen the photograph by now? Your task is to figure out why I have chosen this particular photo for this text. And what the photograph does to the text by just being there :-). 

And by the way; The word creatics is hereby reclaimed. 

Eazyinternet – Master or Disaster.

No reason to make a short story painfully long.

It’s Sunday and I have just finished paging through the Sunday paper finding a 12 pages colourful insert from mobile operator 3. “It’s good to be 3”, they say.

Hey, I am in the marked for this product, whatever it is, so I better read the insert. Interest increasing as there is a picture of my almost new laptop on the front page: a silver shining and attractive MacBook. Or so I thought.

Reading the visual at the insert’s front page, there is a picture of the MacBook, and in the left, low corner a product shot of the mobile router that the insert is all about. Three downsized men in science fiction uniforms are placed  on the MacBook’s keyboard and watching a house take off into the air.

Main visual element is the MacBook, and the hand carrying it on its  fingertips. This hand is wearing a black glove, and you see that the person is wearing a black jacket. Gloves connote “lack of intimacy”. Black gloves connote, or is often a symbol for, “stealing” or “burglary”. Things that are not meant to be shown in the open. 

The black gloves are the carrying visual element in the rest of the insert, and that is what confuses me. What is the product involved here: an easy way to the internet, or is it an insert for a security firm having introduced a mobile security device preventing burglars to get away with my MacBook? Or the stuff on it. The most negative pictures are shown at pages 2 and 3 of the insert, where two pair of black gloves work on two Mac keyboards, strongly connoting that they are trespassing to forbidden information on the computers. 

For a time I really didn’t know what was the message was since the visuals were so confusing. The intention of the promotion seemed to be one, and the visual execution of that intent quite another. I had to read through the whole insert to find out about the product. The promotion have nothing to do with security. It is a promotion for an easy way to the internet using the 3 mobile router. 

Well, these guys could have fooled me.

I could run this insert thought the CET test to see how this promotion falls out, but I will not. It is not necessary, since the visual execution should  not have left the drawing table at the ad agency in the first place. You will only get bits and pieces of a proper CET analysis. The promotion fails on at least three checkpoints. Here they are.

1. One Unified Impression.

 Evaluation Scale: -3***-2***-1***0***+1***+2***+3

The is no unified impression in this promotion. It falls apart though a conflict between ease of mobile internet, and connotation of the black gloves.

I rate -3.

3. Visual and Verbal.

 Evaluation Scale: -3***-2***-1***0***+1***+2***+3

The text says one thing, and the visual quite another. No consistence between visuals and verbals.

I rate  -3.

4. The Simple Truth.

 Evaluation Scale: -3***-2***-1***0***+1***+2***+3

Is this is a simple, easy to understand promotion? No, it is not. First and overall impression is that this piece of communication could have be done much better by being less complicated. and with fewer conflicting connotations.

I rate -2.

Since the idea is that if only one of the checkpoint in the CET checklist is rated below zero, the advertising/promotion in question is up for revision. Back to the drawing table or to the brainstorming room. This promotion from mobile internet from 3, you might even have to take a step further back.

Conclusion:

Not good, not good at all.

The 3 company has probably one of the best products for mobile internet on the market(s). Certainly their market penetration is an indication of that. They have even won several prizes for their technological solution. You really have to work hard to destroy these advantages. Promotion for their, seemingly excellent product, is from this position, no rocket science. No need to do this more complicated, and less straight forward, than it ought to be.

In the promotion, the 12 pages insert in a Danish newspaper, the company certainly do their best to camouflage their advantages. There is a severe clash between intended message, and executed message. Or more academically phrases: connotations conflicts, gestalt closure are obscure and might  be conflicting as well. Expected intentionalities are not met.

You know what? Take a closer look at the front page of the insert, if you get a chance to it. I am sure that it exist in several languages on several markets. The guys on the MacBook keyboard wear gloves. White gloves.

Let me finally excuse, on this visual blog, that I am not able to show you any pictures of the insert. If I could find who the agency was, I would have asked them for permission to use an illustration. This Sunday morning. But I have no idea. Probably a larger international agency.  The insert bears all the marks of an adaption.

In a proper handshake, anyway, I would never wear gloves. And the MacBook on the insert front page is not the new model. Might even be a MacBookPro. Old version.

SAS Commercial: Soft Speaking Excellence.

Yes, this is yet another eminent Danish commercial. Advertiser is SAS (Scandinavian Airlines System) casting the former Danish Minister of Foreign Affairs Uffe Ellemann-Jensen. Soon up for review on barebones. At the moment I am waiting for SAS to give me permission to use one, or more, screen shots from this excellent commercial.

You can start viewing the commercial at SAS’ home page. Or take a look at the extended version  at the same site.

Music: “Bibo No Aozora” af Ryuichi Sakamoto.

……………………………………………………………………….

Other reviews:

Fleggaard Washing Machine.

from bare bones to bare breasts

Speaking about soft tissue.

This morning I read about a commercial for a Danish retailer, Fleggaard. Fleggaard has made an astonishing commercial, which primary aim is to attract Danish males to their border shops just inside Germany. The company sells a variety of products, but this particular commercial is for a washing machine.  And Fleggaard is doing well since the commercial has already drawn 100.000 plus hits on their website. You’ll find a link to the commercial below the picture.

The reason for all the attention is that the commercial shows rows of beautiful women showing off, not their bare bones, but their bare breasts. And that, it seems, is always a good story.

The issue in this connection is this: does attractive naked, of half naked women, sell products? Or do they simply obscure or hide the real message? There are people to support both view, but what is your opinion about this? In general, and related to this particular commercial? TechCrunch labels the commercial “Quite Simply The Best Commercial Ever Made”. Do you agree?

Before you dive into the commercial, please consider this post as barebones notebook post. Let’s have your opinion on the following: do you find resources on the barebones blog, that can help you elaborate on the questions above?   My suggestion is that you  use the following barebones resources to deal with the questions: denotation and connotation, and the barebones CET-system for analysing commercials.

See the movie here.

Screenshot is published with permission from Fleggaard, Denmark.

CET Checklist for Advertisers.

Follow the links to read more about the individual checkpoints.

Is this checklist useful at all? As any other checklist it is, but you need to be aware of the fact that the results coming out of the checklist will never be better than the evaluations put into it. So, if you don’t know much of communication in general, and advertising in special, you may want to start here 🙂

1. One Unified Impression.

Evaluation Scale: -3***-2***-1***0***+1***+2***+3

2. Dominant Mood.

Evaluation Scale: -3***-2***-1***0***+1***+2***+3

3. Visual and Verbal.

Evaluation Scale: -3***-2***-1***0***+1***+2***+3

4. The Simple Truth.

Evaluation Scale: -3***-2***-1***0***+1***+2***+3

5. Product of Consumer.

Evaluation Scale: -3***-2***-1***0***+1***+2***+3

6. The Right Consumer.

Evaluation Scale: -3***-2***-1***0***+1***+2***+3

7. Thoughts Worth Entertaining.

Evaluation Scale: -3***-2***-1***0***+1***+2***+3

8. Connotations.

Evaluation Scale: -3***-2***-1***0***+1***+2***+3

9. Gestalt factors.

Evaluation Scale: -3***-2***-1***0***+1***+2***+3

Good luck with it. If you need a more extensive explanation, please go here.

Introducing the Communication Efficiency Test (CET)

I am sure that 10 is a good number, but in this context the number 9 is even better.

I am going to anticipate what is going to come when I have written the last couple of posts on advertising fundamentals set forth by Horace S. Schwerin and Henry H. Newell in their book Persuasion in Marketing. As I have stated plenty of times I urge you to get this book and pick up this research information directly from the source. The fundamentals are the result of extensive testing based on more than 50.000 ads and commercial. I am not saying that this is the whole story there is, certainly not, but is a good basics if you want to avoid big blunders in advertising.

You need, of course, to add a dash of campaign strategy, lots of creativity and originality to get things working for you. And you will better off if you bring a couple of bare bones to the party as well. So that is just what I am going to suggest to you in setting up a basic check list for your future expertise as an advertiser. Or as an advertising consultant. You will be surprised how well this is going to work for you.

You may ask, is this really necessary. Do I need a check list for this. Well, I leave the answer to you, but before you speak it out, take a local tour in the magazines, in the newspapers, on the commercial television canals, that you have access to. Look briefly, or less briefly, over the ads and commercials that demands your attention. I have done that, and what I see produced from even highly estimated ad agencies, does not impress me. Not all of the time anyway.

Using the CET checklist will secure you against possible pitfalls. Expensive ones, even. Particularly if you are the one paying for the game.

So here is what I am going to do: I am going to let myself be inspired from the arguments from Schwerin and Newell, and I am going a couple of barebones to the list, which will bring me to the number of 9 (nine). These is going to be 9 separate checkpoint in the CET checklist, then. Right?

The CET check list:

1. One Unified Impression.

2. Dominant Mood.

3. Visual and Verbal.

4. The Simple Truth.

5. Product of Consumer.

6. The Right Consumer.

7. Thoughts Worth Entertaining.

8. Connotations.

9. Gestalt factors.

How to use?

How do you use this check list? Basically anyway you want, but my suggesting is you give each checkpoint a stretch from minus 3 to plus 3 so you have some room to mark your evaluations.

Could look like this:

1. One Unified Impression.

Evaluation Scale: -3***-2***-1***0***+1***+2***+3

You will do that for each of the checkpoint in the CET checklist I just introduced. I will have the full checklist made ready for you in later post, but there is enough for you already here to get you down to work.

Crash Criteria:

As you see the evaluation scale have a red area and a green area. The span from -3 to 0 is the crash area (left) , and the span from 0 to +3 is the non crash area (right). Just like the traffic light: red you stop and green you walk.

Here is how I suggest you use it. If, to the best of your ability, you find that a certain checkpoint not fulfilled in the add or the commercial, you rate it on the red side of the scale (minus something). If you find the criteria fulfilled you rate on the plus side of the scale.

Crash criteria are: If even one of the 9 checkpoints are evaluated to the red area you crash it, you dump it, you don’t pay out.

Pretty tough?

You may argue that this is a pretty tough test. Only one checkpoint in the red and then you dump the whole thing? Could we say, mayby, two or three in stead? No we could not. It is not possible to half or even partially pregnant.

The argument for this toughness is that the 9 checkpoint are weaved together. You will find, that if you down an ad or a commercial on “One Unified Expression” you will probably experience that it fall apart on many other checkpoint, as well.

Fourth Advertising Fundamental: The Simple Truth.

You may not connect “truth” to the world of advertising at all. And maybe you should not. It has always been accepted by conventions that advertisers, and advertisements therefore, are allow to bend the truth a little. To be interesting, to be persuasive, to be competitive. To catch and hold attention.

However, there is one truth that you don’t want to bend: the simple truth. Meaning “the structure and order of a persuasive message should be a simple as possible. As far as structure is concerned, this means leaving out all extraneous elements”. (page 165).

Simple as that. Cut the crap and leave out the fat.

Again the example is from the world of commercials. This time not for toothpaste or cars, but for a cold tablet, a medical. You know, a tablet you take for not getting cold (it that possible?).

Schwerin and Newell tells the story about two different commercials trying to tell the story.

The first execution contained only three scenes: a) a man walking in the rain passing a billboard for the product in question; b) he enters a store, sniffling a bit, and is advised to buy an item of the brand; c) he is then seen well and happy again. End of story.

The second version is much longer, consisting of 7 different scenes. A much more complicated structure and argument.  

The measured difference between the two in terms of preference change was clear. The simple version of the cold tablet commercial worked twice as good.  

Not only simplicity of the structure is important. So is the order of things. Schwerin and Newell, in their book, refers to a test done with different order formats. One of the most popular formats is “before and after”. Here is the way they describe it: ” X is at a disadvantage because he does not use the product. X uses the product. X is better off”. This is called the normal order format.

Other formats are: reverse order, extended normal order and simultaneous. I am sure you can guess where this is leading; the more simple structure, and the more simple order, normally gives the more persuasive message.

If you need to go in details with these studies, please consult the book and its references. All you need as a reader of this blog, however, is to remember that simple makes better, and you handle simplicity through message structure and the order of things.

It is very easy to remember. Try training it the next time you see or read an advertisement, or a commercial that attracts your attention.

Other posts

You’ll find the other posts in this series on advertising fundamentals, below. If the post title is linked, it means that the posts have been submitted, and that you will get to it if you follow the link. If the fundamental is not yet linked, it means that that the post is not there yet. So you need for have a little patience.

First Fundamental: One Unified Impression.

Second Fundamental: Dominant Mood.

Third Fundamental: Visual and Verbal.

Fourth Fundamental: The Simple Truth.

Fifth Fundamental: Product of Consumer.

Sixth Fundamental: The Right Consumer.

Seventh Fundamental: Thoughts Worth Entertaining.

For an overview of the whole section please go here.

If you want to go for the book making your learning curve steeper and faster, here is the Library Thing information on it. You’ll get the full information here as well:  Persuasion in Marketing, The Dynamics of Marketing’s Great Untapped Resource, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1981.

Third Advertising Fundamental: Visual and Verbal.

The third fundamental to deal with is visual and verbal. 

And again: It should not come as a surprise to anyone, that this third fundamental links closely to the other fundamentals.  It is not a third fundamental in terms of something entirely different from the the first two. It’s another side of the same coin. An added aspect.

In a commercial, a good idea is to check if it contains the same message sound turned off. Simply block the sound and describe the message. Then turn up the sound and describe the message once more. If you, roughly, don’t get the same result, you may have some revising to do.

Visual and verbal need to be coherent and stick together? In what way?

Don’t tell, show!

First of all, research seems to stress that it very important that support your message actively: don’t tell, show.

Schwerin and Newell mentions two different commercials they did for a shockproof wristwatch. The first commercial “was a straight stand-up pitch by an announcer, interspersed with occasional static shots of the the watch and superimposed legends”. That commercial did a very poor selling job, says the two authors.

And they continue: “The second commercial showed the product on the wrist of a sculptor who was violently hammering away at a block of marble with mallet and chisel”.

And guess what: In terms of selling the second commercial did much better than the first commercial by far. Measured by Schwerin and Newell it did SEVEN TIMES better.

Not at odds

Is does little good if the visual is at odds with the verbal, says the authors. SCR tested two commercials for a toothpaste. The message being that the toothpaste leaves a clean and fresh taste in the user’s mouth. The first version showed a white row of sparkling teeth, and a speaker told the story. The second version showed the same set of shining teeth, but this time the commercial included” a misty balloon effect surrounding the words CLEAN BREATH”.

The latter commercial worked better, and in terms of recall of the message it worked twice as good as the first one.

Not at the same time

Again, don’t try do to too many things at the same time. I will not work. Trying to get someone to respond to more than one message at the same time seems to destroy impact. Schwerin and Newell refers to a case where a car commercial flashes the words “fasten your seat belts” at the same moment as a speaker asks the audience to see the local dealer. It did not work. ” …. the consumer becomes emotionally paralyzed because he can respond to only one stimulus at a time and he is being confused by two simultaneous alternatives”.

Other posts

You’ll find the other posts in this series on advertising fundamentals, below. If the post title is linked, it means that the posts has been submitted, and that you will get to it if you follow the link. If the fundamental is not yet linked, it means that that the post is not there yet. So you need to have a little patience.

First Fundamental: One Unified Impression.

Second Fundamental: Dominant Mood.

Third Fundamental: Visual and Verbal.

Fourth Fundamental: The Simple Truth.

Fifth Fundamental: Product of Consumer.

Sixth Fundamental: The Right Consumer.

Seventh Fundamental: Thoughts Worth Entertaining.

For an overview of the whole section please go here.

If you want to go for the book making your learning curve steeper and faster, here is the Library Thing information on it. You’ll get the full information here as well:  Persuasion in Marketing, The Dynamics of Marketing’s Great Untapped Resource, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1981.