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Opinion
No - advertising has not beaten culture jamming at its own game
In this guest post, an activist argues why advertising has not subverted culture jamming - and why Australia would be a better place without ‘visual pollution’At a photography exhibition now on the Sydney Museum last week, a question was put to a panel of experts. Would our cities be better without any advertising. The answer was a resounding “yes”.
This didn’t really come as much of a surprise. After all, the panel were culture jammers – activists who subvert mainstream media, altering the message of an ad to tell a story of their own.
Think popular, not premium: Why the Henry & Aaron 'It's a snap' video went viral
In this guest posting, YouTube’s Karen Stocks says why she thinks CIT’s gory-funny ‘It’s a snap’ ad was a hit.One of this week’s viral hits on YouTube is a science fiction-themed ad for the Central Institute of Technology in Perth. The skit-style video commercial features CIT grads-turned-YouTube stars Henry & Aaron, who magically jump from one CIT department to the next with a snap of Aaron’s fingers. The comedy takes a distinctly darker turn when Aaron’s teleporting skills start going horribly wrong – with gruesome results.
The video holds a couple of lessons for marketers.
Mumbrella360 - call for curated sessions
I must confess that I didn’t enjoy Mumbrella360 last year.
Having staked our credibility and indeed (although I didn’t like to think about it at the time) the company, on Mumbrella360 being a success, the main thing I actually experienced over the two days was a growing sense of relief that it wasn’t shit.
The Woolworths virtual store is not the future of retail. But it is a good PR stunt
So last night I dropped by my local neighbourhood Virtual Woolworths.It’s located at Sydney Town Hall station – conveniently enough, almost directly underneath my local neighborhood Real Woolworths.
As you’ll see from the wobbly iPhone video I shot, it was a relatively lonely experience. But it was Sunday night.
How not to use Twitter: lessons from Qantas and Westpac
The likes of Qantas have a long way to go before getting to grips with social media, argues Axel Bruns.For major brands, the road to social media infamy is paved with what seemed like good ideas at the time.
Just this week, Qantas succeeded in having Twitter suspend the well-known spoof account, @QantasPR, claiming users would mistake it for the real thing.
Is Big W the beginning of the bounceback for Saatchis?
Google may prove me wrong, but in the entire time Mumbrella has existed, and very possibly for my entire editorship of B&T before that, I can’t remember ever writing the headline “Saatchi & Saatchi wins…”
So today’s appointment by Big W is a big deal.
Traditional agencies are driving away their digital superstars with their old ways
In this guest post, Daniel Monheit argues that Australia’s creative agencies will never be able to hang on to digital talentIn 2010 Steve Jobs was invited by James Murdoch to speak at the annual News Corp management retreat. Jobs issued a blunt, critical assessment of what newspapers were trying to do in technology: “You’re going to find it hard to get things right, because you’re in New York and anyone who’s any good at tech works in Silicon Valley”.
And that’s when it hit me. The reason why Australia’s best traditional agencies, working with the most prolific clients and the biggest budgets cant manage to put out anything remotely passable as decent digital work.
Anyone who’s any good at digital works at an agency that actually believes in it.
What does Fairfax's Media's data dump actually mean? And what's going on at ACP Magazines?
Although I rather like stats, there are a few days a year where they become a little overwhelming.
Radio ratings releases offer eight such days annually. Over the space of a couple of hours, the data drops for the five main metro markets. Generally the phone starts ringing within 10 minutes, from station bosses aiming to give their interpretation of those numbers. It becomes a game of keeping them on the line long enough to sift through the data to try to discover the real story you need to ask them about. Within minutes a blizzard of press releases follow too.
In truth, the press releases mostly get ignored in the race to write the story. Then they’re mostly ignored because the story is already written.
And twice a year, a similar exercise surrounds the release of the monthly magazine sales figures,
When the powerful buy into the media, can the media still scrutinise the powerful?
Economist Richard Denniss of Australian National University argues in a post that first appeared on The Conversation that the public needs to decide if it cares who owns the media.The mining industry is used to having its voice heard in Australian public debates, so it should come as no surprise that mining billionaires such as Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer would consider buying up a bigger slice of the Australian media.
While the estimated $20m spent by the mining industry on television advertisements opposing the introduction of a mining tax was the most visible example of the industry’s determination to influence the public it is, in fact, just the tip of the iceberg.
The keyboard warrior of Twitter
In this guest post, NBN staffer Scott Rhodie writes an unofficial, personal view on his experience with a hostile Twitter critic.Last night I had a strange incident. While on Twitter I noticed someone saying that Australia’s NBN is already outdated. I wrote a small note back explaining they were incorrect.
And their response? The lovely gentleman (whose Twitter profile says: ‘Father of 5 kids, Loving Grandfather of 10 Grandchildren,and 2 Great Granddaughters. love to give heaps to Pollies and Poofters’) said to me: “Go and lick Gillards C*** out U commie Prick”
What's in a name?
In this guest post, Moensie Rossier wonders about the power of names for brands and marketers.
Brands have been having a bit of fun with names lately, not to mention a fair bit of success. Interbrand just named a headhunting firm Cloak & Dagger. And ‘Share a Coke’ showed how much power there is in a name.
The Coke campaign effectively short-circuited the usual mechanics of communication. It undoubtedly stroked people’s egos. But, I believe, its success stems from the fact that it directly and automatically affected people’s behaviour, rather than doing so indirectly by shaping attitudes.
Best ads from Super Bowl 2012
The Super Bowl is all done and a team from North America won. But as well as some sort of sporting event, it’s the world’s biggest advertising showcase. See the best of them right here… and please tell us what you think.
How to debunk media myths
In this post, UWS’s Ullrich Ecker, John Cook and Stephen Lewandowsky argue that cognitive science can help PRs form strategies in managing media misreporting.
A growing cohort of commentators has bemoaned the descent of contemporary political “debate” into a largely fact-free zone.
How about simply focusing on what consumers want?
In this guest post, Peter Mountford argues that brands should think more about what is really going on for consumers
Who here is hoping their favourite brand of toilet paper is going to be organizing a flash mob on their way home from work today?
What the Optus web copyright victory means
In this analysis first published on The Conversation, RMIT’s Marita Shelly examines the implications of Telstra’s defeat over the online rights to the AFL broadcast deal
This week’s Federal Court ruling that Optus customers are able to view sporting matches minutes after they are streamed live without breaching copyright is a landmark decision that alters our understanding of copyright law, and has significant implications for the AFL’s broadcasting rights deal.
NAB’s Break Up campaign changes tack to focus on honesty
NAB’s ‘Break Up’ campaign has changed tack, with the launch of a series of social experiments to test the honesty of Australian consumers. The idea is that Australians are essentially an honest bunch, so deserve an honest credit card to match.
The series of stunts called ‘the Honesty Experiments’, were orchestrated by Clemenger BBDO Melbourne and Will O’Rourke, the production company which includes The Chaser’s Julian Morrow, Craig Reucassel and Dominic Knight on its roster.
In the stunts Australians were filmed in three different scenarios to reveal their honesty.
The first was a coffee vendor who gives the wrong change:
The second involved a dropped wallet.
The third involved a man with leaky pockets.
July 13th, 2011 at 9:40 am
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Comments
13 Jul 11
9:45 am
ha, an honesty experiment from a bank!
13 Jul 11
10:19 am
This is one of the best bank campaigns that i have seen. Extremely enjoyable and thought provoking. Makes me slightly more proud of being an aussie.
I do wonder if these ad are working for them tho.
13 Jul 11
10:48 am
Brilliant, just brilliant.
13 Jul 11
10:56 am
Very cool.
13 Jul 11
11:01 am
So this is what that story about “a study on Australians’ honesty” on the 8:30am news was about… nicely played.
13 Jul 11
11:06 am
Australian’s are an honest bunch, but trying to link that kindness to a corporation that has nothing to do with someone simply being nice is absurd.
13 Jul 11
11:18 am
This is such a fantastic campaign. I have nothing to do with it, but wish I did.
It makes the ANZ and Westpac work look embarrassingly poor.
13 Jul 11
11:31 am
Great stuff indeed, witty, nice insight, nicely executed, more please.
13 Jul 11
11:48 am
Excellent! True consumer-centric work. The trick is whether the NAB product people can overcome the intricacies and complications of bank-land and now deliver on the ad promise with a genuinely “honest” credit card. If they can, and follow up with with other no bullshit consumer friendly banking products, NAB deserves to be no1. It’s not rocket science!
13 Jul 11
12:03 pm
Best work from a bank in a long time.
13 Jul 11
12:12 pm
I do like the idea, and very much applaud them for trying it. Hopefully it works. Getting a bank linked to “honesty” though is a very large hurdle for the campaign, but well worth the shot.
13 Jul 11
12:13 pm
Hello. For the record these spots and the original NAB Break Up campaign were directed by The Glue Society, another creative group on our roster.
13 Jul 11
12:15 pm
Hat’s of guys. This is great! That Batista is a classic… “When did you decide you had that condition”. Top work!
13 Jul 11
12:27 pm
Great campaign and very similar to the Fun Theory by Volkswagen. Great positioning and excellent execution.
13 Jul 11
12:39 pm
Brilliant! Very clever indeed. I think this will definitely win more hearts than the break up campaign
13 Jul 11
12:39 pm
nicely executed and plays on the patriotic nature of many.
13 Jul 11
12:40 pm
What’s an honest credit card?
Does it tell you that you’d be better off saving up before making a purchase?
Does it tell you that buying $500 jeans won’t make you cooler?
13 Jul 11
12:45 pm
Very nice.
Does this mean NAB are going to stop raping us with their standard credit card rate of 19.74%? Plus an annual fee for the pleasure of paying that 19.74%?
No? It doesn’t?
Didn’t think so.
13 Jul 11
12:55 pm
So, let me get this right, does the first video (the coffee cart one) teach us that even when people treat us like shit we’re still prepared to pay their prices and won’t seek to take advantage when the opportunity arises?
What possible lesson could a bank learn from that…
13 Jul 11
1:00 pm
Great campaign. Its simular to a campaign I wrote about in May for Honest Tea. You can see that video here:
http://bravoexperience.com/hon.....n-america/
Honest Tea set up a social experiment to see which city in America is the most honest.
13 Jul 11
1:09 pm
I like the idea but linking back to a bank that has such hefty profits doesnt fit. They should have saved the money on the ads and cut their Credit Card interest rates and be a little more honest with how much profit they make from their customers.
13 Jul 11
1:14 pm
Love it!
13 Jul 11
1:49 pm
Is this and the Break Up idea a campaign then or just a tactical execution with neither having any synergy with the overall brand promise, first I break up and now I’m honest
13 Jul 11
2:18 pm
Ok so this ad basicly says that even thought we are getting bad service we will still stay with the same company. I got bad service at the NAB and now I deal with a lot friendlier bank!!!
13 Jul 11
2:53 pm
Great campaign – for Clem’s. At the end of the day it’s still a big bank out to make record profits for their investors no matter how much smoke they blow up our ass.
13 Jul 11
5:22 pm
Thumbs up NAB. I may actually think about switching from ANZ.
13 Jul 11
5:30 pm
All NAB work is all very nice. But has a used by date equal to the next CPI rate rise. After that happens, and it can’t be far away, all this wonderful work will be a long distant memory because NAB will be one of the big four again.
All this is cute, but from a strategic sense, hopelessly narrow-sighted
13 Jul 11
8:23 pm
As an observer of various marketing blogs it’s interesting to witness continuing disbelief at NAB marketing claims….’it won’t last’….’what about the profits’….’wait till the next RBA rate rise’…etc.etc.
Maybe NAB is on a truly differentiated path. Maybe they mean what they say and as an organisation they truly want to change.
Worth considering don’t you think?
They’ve been at this for a while now after all and the well-publicised results speak for themselves.
Anyhow, more great work from NAB. Well done them and well done Clems.
13 Jul 11
8:24 pm
As an observer of various marketing blogs it’s interesting to witness continuing disbelief at NAB marketing claims….’it won’t last’….’what about the profits’….’wait till the next RBA rate rise’…etc.etc.
Maybe NAB is on a truly differentiated path. Maybe they mean what they say and as an organisation they truly want to change.
Worth considering don’t you think?
They’ve been at this for a while now after all and the well-publicised results speak for themselves.
Anyhow, more great work from NAB. Well done them and well done Clems.
13 Jul 11
9:05 pm
Snap! I work at another bank – we have missed the mark. We forgot the customer centric and single minded delivery. Us in banking face into the marketing challenge everyday of over coming all the negative comments above. But this serves its purpose and does it extremely well. I’d say take a bow Nab marketing.
13 Jul 11
10:58 pm
Call Adpolice – clearly “inspired by” Honest Tea
14 Jul 11
9:16 am
I only hope this inspires other banks to be more customer focused
14 Jul 11
9:25 am
The NAB credit card products are different from other banks in this way
* No overlimit fees
* Late payment fees reduced to $5
* Payments to your card are applied to balances attracting higher interest rates first (eg if you have done a cash advance)
* Balance transfer amounts are charged at the purchase interest rate after the balance transfer rate period has ended.
Because of these changes NAB customers have saved bucket loads of dollars.
Seems far more ‘honest’ than other institution credit cards.
Yes I work for NAB, very proud too.
14 Jul 11
11:23 am
i’ve never understood this and maybe you can enlighten me Kelly from NAB – why the hell do credit cards have late payment fees? isn’t that what the exorbitant credit card interest rates are for?
you can fiddle around the edges all you want but until a bank overhauls the entire corrupt system of bad service and BS fees and charges, these “clever” marketing campaigns will be little more than window dressing.
14 Jul 11
4:50 pm
the most insightful thing said about the NAB campaign is this:
Comment from Alan Smith, Associate Director Corporate Communications at Altium:
Clemenger BBDO is confusing the orchestrated dumping of a message into social media channels as public relations,
assuming that this adjunct to their mainstream media spend on advertising passes the PR test. What is missing is
engagement from the audiences they seek to influence. There’s no conversation that I can see. Their premise and rationale
remain rooted in classic ad‐speak: buy the space and shout. That they haven’t actually had to buy the social media space
hasn’t stopped them from shouting.
There’s no doubt that the advertising has cut through, and I happen to think that it’s a well‐thought through strategy that
hooks everything together. But the editorial coverage has been about the campaign, not the actual benefits to the bank’s
customers.
Away from media relations to a broader public relations comment, this is more difficult to measure from where I’m sitting.
Maybe lots of NAB customers have contacted NAB to congratulate them on the new bank account structures and fees. If so,
that would be a justifiable PR measurement and a credible claim for success.
But in that Clemenger BBDO claims $5 million of earned media on one day, I doubt it. They have clearly not realized that
public relations measurements are no longer couched in some sort of advertising spend equivalent, as this is. Their measure
of success stops here. How are they calculating such a figure, if social media channels are free?
What’s more credible is the increase in new business from people opening NAB accounts, but of course no‐one can quantify
which bit of the integrated communications had the most effect.
This is a great example of an integrated communications program. Some of the other entrants might be regarded as PR
programs, and certainly seem to be devoid of any advertising (shouting) effects.
14 Jul 11
7:24 pm
Great ad! Makes me want to sign up with NAB
15 Jul 11
8:54 am
Sven, that commentary was about NAB winning the PR Grand Prix – from a PR professional bitter that an ad agency had claimed the prize.
Some of his commentary is valid, a lot of it is horseshit.
If you’re disputing the earned media value may I direct you to the Cannes awards reel (available publicly). The volume of earned medai gained by the campaign is insane.
As for inspiring comversations with customers take a look at NAB’s social media channels. You’ll find plenty of Break Up inspired discussion taking place there.
And finally (although there’s lots more I’d like to say but will keep it succinct) the campaign has directly attracted over 225,000 new customes to NAB. Is that enough quantification for you?
Take your ill-informed ‘cut and pasting’ elsewhere Sven and accept that NAB are on fire.
15 Jul 11
10:37 am
A round of applause for NAB as it is about time a bank was more customer orientated than revenue but after leaving NAB 7yrs ago I would not go back, the memory of poor service, ridiculous fees and account stuff ups is still there……
15 Jul 11
4:48 pm
8.54am you could do with less defensive vitriol and more attention to detail – perhaps even some cutting and pasting. I’ve lost track of the number of letters left off words in your ranting post. I can assume that literacy is not a pre-condition to employment in whichever part of NAB or its agencies you work.
Rather than impress us with breathless hyperbole and unsubstantiated assertion, would you care to provide some actual numbers? Show us just how ‘insane’ the results are. Regurgitating press releases doesn’t impress anyone.
I’m so glad you mentioned the 225,000 customer switching figure. I saw this on an outdoor ad the other day. Aside from the fact that you can’t attribute the decision to change banks to any one factor (or did you poll the customers yourself), the claim does beg the question – is this figure gross or net of those switching out of NAB? Given that customers switch banks every day for a myriad of reasons, the only figure that counts is an increase in net switched customers compared with a previous corresponding period. To quote an absolute figure is misleading in the extreme. Which, i suppose, is why you used it.
18 Jul 11
9:40 am
Do it in Dandenong or Broadmeadows…. lets see then
18 Jul 11
2:15 pm
Saw the coffee vendor spot on air last night. Love it! Noticeable, relevant, memorable. Part of great brand advertising especially in bank land. ANZ take a leaf from their book (the Simon Baker spots are AWFUL). And Westpac’s talking heads aren’t much better. Do they think they can bore me into liking their brands?
18 Jul 11
6:26 pm
I LOVE these ads! Whether NAB’s credit card rate rips you off is irrelevant, the point of advertising is to lure and entice, not to report to a freaking ethics council. Suspect the coffee cart one is just testing how accustomed Australians are to getting bad service…
9 Aug 11
12:53 pm
I work at a competitor and I must say, I really, really like these ads. Not just as a a marketing person (I love how clean and single-minded these are) but as a consumer who is sick of trying to decipher meaning from ads (ANZ anyone!?)
Alas, the focus at our organisation is on squeezing as many messages as humanly possible into one execution, and then promptly achieving zip. Oh well.
Even our legal team here think the nab ads are excellent, which, given the calibre of said individuals hardly constitututes a compliment. However, that aside it’s actually great that you aren’t being handbraked by ensuring the ad is ‘legally’ compliant at the expense of delivering a solid, strong customer message.
I never thought I’d say this, but well done NAB, this campaign is well, well deserved of the industry’s praise. It’s excellent.
11 Aug 11
2:09 pm
It’s smart. Instead of chest beating about how honest they are, NAB proved how honest we all are and then offered us a product worthy of us. It redefines feelgood in advertising.