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Opinion | Features
Got a book in you?
From journos to ad execs and PRs, these days everyone seems to have a book in them. But what does it take to get published and will you actually make any money? In a feature that first appeared in Encore, Brooke Hemphill finds out.Attention wannabe authors. Forget big fat advance cheques and living off royalties. The reality of having a book published today is another story altogether. There are only two reasons you should even consider sitting down at your computer to bash out a manuscript – passion or profile.
Savage counsel
In an article that first appeared in Encore, Chris Savage tackles your career and agency dilemmas in his weekly advice column.Hi Chris,
My clients seem to be demanding more and more from us. At the same time, it seems many of the younger people in our industry simply don’t have the client servicing skills my generation grew up with. How do we instill in our executives some of the good old-fashioned behaviours that would keep a client happy and loyal?
Fake it til' you make it... as an ad agency receptionist
From dressing the part to playing the gatekeeper, Leo Burnett Sydney’s Susie Henry tells us how to make it as the face of adland in a piece that first appeared in Encore.What does a receptionist in an ad agency actually do?
Well, there’s the frantic every-day, all-day stuff of deliveries, courier bookings, doing expenses for directors – always challenging – plus arranging all the travel. But one of my main jobs is counselling the account service people. I also keep up with all sports information to discuss with our sports-loving clients – because who wants to be bored while they’re waiting? And I know how they like their coffee. You need to know everyone – from accounting to HR. I’m also the go-to for all catering and sending flowers.
Whose views skew the news? Media chiefs ready to vote out Labor, while reporters lean left
Most journalists lean left-of-centre, says Folker Hanusch of the University of the Sunshine Coast, in a post first published on The Conversation.Most Australian journalists describe themselves as left-wing, yet amongst those who wield the real power in the country’s newsrooms, the Coalition holds a winning lead.
But while the media’s political leanings will no doubt be debated in the lead-up to September’s federal election, our study has also found other largely unscrutinised biases remain – particularly whose views disproportionately shape the news.
It's time for a new New Wave in the film world
Government funding bodies are lazy and decadent, says industry veteran Michael Thornhill but in a piece that first appeared in Encore, Ed Gibbs begs to differ.I vividly remember the time I first saw Animal Kingdom, David Michod’s breathtaking labour-of-love feature debut. The press screening was half empty, despite the film winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance just months earlier, in 2010. Yet its superb performances, stylistic flourishes and overall polish left me speechless. Could this really be a feature debut, an Australian one at that, I wondered, almost out loud? It seemed too good to be true.
Going cold turkey on an agency addiction
Life is sweet for freelance writer Max Kitchen, but in a feature that first appeared in Encore, he admits his struggle against returning to the agency fold.I’ve never taken heroin. But I suspect if I had, the temptation to try it again would not be too dissimilar to the lure of returning to agency life.
Can sport save Ten?
First there was the Grand Prix. Next came the reported $500m bid for cricket rights, then Ten secured the 2014 winter Olympics. So, can sport save the ailing network? In a feature that first appeared in Encore, Nic Christensen investigates.The television sports rights bidding process is a bit like a game of poker.
Check, fold or bet. Those were the options for the Ten Network last week when it had to finalise its bid for the cricket rights.
Andy Lark: good for the marketing of marketing
I can still remember the first story I wrote about Andy Lark, when it emerged that he was to be the new chief marketing officer of CommBank.
It was immediately clear that Australia was about to meet an interesting marketer, one who blogged and tweeted and thanks to his time at Dell in the US was digitally savvy. Even two years ago, that was a big deal. The fact that he also had a stint in public relations gave him an absolutely intriguing background before he even arrived.
Storming the media barricades - advice for young journalists
This week Mumbrella’s Nic Christensen, who began his career four years ago, gave the keynote address to would-be journalists at the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance’s Student Day. This is an edited version of his speech.Good afternoon, I can remember distinctly the last time I was in this room.
It was 2009 and I was sitting where you are. I’d come to this event, a friend and myself — from memory we sat up the back — and I can remember at the time wondering if I’d ever get a job as a journalist.
It was only four years ago and then as now getting a job was ultra competitive but I’m not sure there was quite as much media ‘doom and gloom’ as there is now…
Paywalls will help fund campaigning journalism
In this guest post, News Limited’s group editorial director Campbell Reid responds to the views of ninemsn’s Hal Crawford that the company’s push into metered paywalls is about data rather than dollars.Hal Crawford is both right and wrong in his article which argued that our digital subscription plans are all about the data.
Fake it 'til you make it... as a features editor
Cosmo’s Kate Leaver tells us how to bluff it in her job in a feature that first appeared in Encore.What do you do, as a features editor?
Really, play with words and ideas all day. At any one time, we’re working across three issues of the mag – getting one on its way to the printers, pooling all the words together for another, and planning the issue after that. It’s busy but it’s a pretty magnificent process.
Savage counsel - JFDI
Hi Chris,I run a medium-sized agency that is doing pretty well. As the leader, I am finding my workload just seems to go up and up. I am struggling to stay motivated and particularly to tackle the bigger and tougher challenges I have to face every day. How do I keep up the energy when there just seems so much to do? How do you do it?
Productive, successful executives are those able to consistently tackle difficult and big challenges. It’s a constant struggle for me so I know how you feel. How do the successful leaders do it?
Q&A with Brett Clegg
Brett Clegg, group director – business media, Fairfax Media, in a Q&A that first appeared in Encore, on the journo who refuses to work with him – his wife.Who is the most powerful person in Australian media and why?
Hard to go past Rupert Murdoch. He controls the single largest and most diverse portfolio and is intent on leveraging its scale (and, of course, influence). He’s an innovator and his will to win is obvious to all.
The experiential experience
Anyone can throw up a tent in a high-traffic area and harass the general public, but what does it take to pull off an effective experiential event? In a piece that first appeared in Encore, Matt Smith investigates.A television commercial can easily be muted and ignored, but try ignoring a purring, squirming cat in your arms. That was the experience awaiting passers by in Sydney’s Martin Place in October last year when Mars Petcare built Whiskas Kitten Palace.
The News Limited paywall isn't about revenue. It's about data
In this guest post, ninemsn’s editor in chief Hal Crawford argues Fairfax Media and News Limited’s new paywalls won’t draw much revenue, but will generate data. And they’re late to the data party.When I first learned that ninemsn’s major digital competitors Fairfax and News Ltd were going to introduce paywalls across their mainstream properties, I was excited.
Every obstacle thrown in the way of their audiences is an opportunity. People hate friction and anything that makes life difficult on a rival site is a chance to get them on yours.
Your audience is stoned
In this guest post, Tom Donald reckons advertisers should wake up to the fact that their audience is often high on marijuana.
From Cheech and Chong in the 1970s through to recent Judd Apatow films, we all recognise there’s a cinematic genre best enjoyed under the influence: “stoner movies”. And we all know that most music genres – from jazz through psychedelia, metal, hip hop, house and electronica – sound best when your mind is altered by booze, blunted by weed, or tweaked by a chemical substance.
Yet we never openly talk about ‘stoner ads’, which is curious as they are some of our industry’s most successful.
Think about the most talked about, viral, socially shared, creatively awarded, and Effie winning advertising efforts of recent(ish) times:
● Old Spice Guy
● Cadbury Gorilla
● Kia Soul’s Hamsters
● Budweiser’s “Whassup?”
● Burger King’s “Wake up with the King”
● Toohey’s Extra Dry “Tongue”
What do they all have in common? They’re ads that penetrated popular culture precisely because, when viewed three sheets to the wind or three tokes towards Zion, they blew your mind.
“Oh wow… that tongue is hopping down the street, bro…”
They were stoner ads – good when sober, but brilliant when blotto. And to get talked about, shared and become part of the cultural fabric (even if only for a moment) you have to be brilliant.
I’d argue that much of the success of viral YouTube clips is explained by the stoner effect, too… but that’s another matter.
Need convincing that a large chunk of your TV viewing audience is under the influence? According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 78% of Australians aged 12 and older self-reported to drinking booze in 2010, most of them on a weekly basis. 15% said they used illicit drugs in 2010, mostly marijuana. (Self reported data is notoriously unreliable, and my guess is the real figures are higher than what people will admit to a researcher. Further, cut the data 18 years and above and the percentages likely go up.) Where is much of this booze and weed consumed? Flopped on the couch at the end of a long day in front of the telly. Your audience is stoned.
Most advertising “insights” are banal, generic, concoted for a casestudy, or made up as a post-rationalisation to sell creative. They’re intellectually worthless and often creatively useless. But knowing your TV audience is intoxicated – and developing creative and planning media with it in mind – is both true and creatively helpful.
Yes your target audience might be “lean-forward early adopting social sneezers who watch TV ads surrounded by their social graph and use brands to badge to potential partners how shagable they are”. But here’s a better place to start: They’re stoned!
Appeal to that mindset and you’ll cut through. They’ll remember you. They’ll talk about you. They’ll share you on Facebook and Twitter.
If you’re with me on this Yellow Submarine ride, “the audience is stoned” insight means the key question for getting to great work is to ask yourself, WWJAD? (What Would Judd Apatow Do?) Then go from there…
Tom Donald is planning director at The Works
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Comments
25 Nov 11
12:41 pm
Never a truer word spoken methinks! I plan to use the WWJAD approach on my next consumer targeted project!
25 Nov 11
1:22 pm
Mad article man *smokes blunt*
25 Nov 11
1:34 pm
is it April 1?
25 Nov 11
2:05 pm
This reminds me of that KFC campaign from a few years back: “Get the munchies”
On reflection stoners probably make up a significant portion of their clientele!
25 Nov 11
2:11 pm
Priceless!
25 Nov 11
3:06 pm
The insight that dare not speak its name.
25 Nov 11
4:03 pm
You sir, are a fucking genius.
25 Nov 11
4:23 pm
By programming to males of a certain age demographic, digital channel 7mate, inadvertently created Australia’s first stoner channel IMHO. Ads on this channel should reflect this reality.
25 Nov 11
4:37 pm
ahhhh, reminds me of the 1st time my mum asked me if I was on drugs. I just answered: “It takes one to know one”
25 Nov 11
4:51 pm
Nice to read a bit of fantasy every now and then.
Your article induced the phantom munchies for this reader, but unfortunately the ‘insights’ that lead to your supposition worked as the neutralising agent.
Plenty of research around how viral works. But thanks for the ride!
25 Nov 11
8:29 pm
Oh Agency people….. God bless you for casting aside reason, measure and the actual sale of a good and grasp at straws like this….. I do at least find that your quest to get closer to the audience novel….. But the guesswork continues. Just give business people sound strategy based on actual understanding rather than more bubble boy style guesswork……. Nice step in the right direction.
25 Nov 11
10:46 pm
Thought provoking. Great article.
There are not enough mind expanding things in advertising – this is one of them.
26 Nov 11
1:44 pm
Wow Tom you are really brave to say this out loud ; )
26 Nov 11
5:08 pm
Gold. Give this man an agency
26 Nov 11
8:00 pm
Thank you for the kind words and critique. Both appreciated.
(I should go on record as saying I’m not a pot-head. Don’t abuse the stuff daily, or even weekly. Rarely monthly. And I meant “stoned” to include booze, too. Further, the piece was tongue-in-cheek, and I hope it’s taken as such… A “Friday Fluffer”…)
That said, I now realise there is one serious point that underlies it. And it’s one that Ferrier and others who approach planning from a psychology and behavioural economics POV might appreciate. It’s one that challenges most market research (which is mostly methodologically bankrupt, yet we continue to do it… but that’s another story) and the way most marketers and planners think about their target audience. But it’s very simple: Context is everything.
What do I mean?
We assume the “insights” about target audiences uncovered by demographic analysis and traditional market research techniques are relevant and useful for developing effective marketing communications. But behavioural economics (and other stuff by folks like Mark Earls, Duncan Watts, and Nassim Taleb amongst others) reveals that who we are and how we respond to things is entirely dependent on the moment we are in. Right here. Right now.
But traditional market research – focus groups, phone/online surveys, panel data – is entirely divorced from situational context. No one watches/reads/hears advertising in a focus group room, or while on the phone or online answering a survey.
This means that the profiles and archetypes we build of our audiences or segments have no understanding of who those people are at the moments in which they consume the ads.
All of this leans towards the importance of ethnography (in all its guises) which is not new news to planners. Why? Because only ethnography will reveal that a more useful insight (from a marketing communications POV) about your audience than anything you can derive from demographics or what they’ll tell you in a survey or focus group, might be that they’re stoned at the time they see your ads. (Or similar.)
Long story short: More ethnography and more hard data about actual behaviour (as opposed to reported behaviour) and less lazy reliance on focus groups and surveys.
OK… where’s the bourbon…
26 Nov 11
8:14 pm
I make it a personal rule to . . . never be stoned when shopping or driving.
Also I never act upon wish-lists concocted by my brain in the wee small hours.
However I realise it is not the same for most Australians, who do indeed seem to have a completely different agenda.
28 Nov 11
1:26 pm
Hire this man.
29 Nov 11
8:42 am
yes, love all those ads, sober and tanked. Have I bought any of those products as a result> Nup, zip. Advertising industry is so far up its own clacker its completely lost sight of what its supposed to be doing.
29 Nov 11
12:22 pm
@Woody: You’re making the micro to macro error. (Projecting from a small sample – yourself – onto the world.)
Advertising is supposed to be about selling products, right?
And the best evidence available suggests ‘stoner ads’ are very effective at moving products:
Old Spice sales are through the roof.
Gorilla caused a demonstrable rise in UK chocolate sales.
Awareness for Soul is up, and US perceptions of Kia changing with younger people.
Whassup? entered the cultural vernacular – what more can you ask for? – entrenching Bud’s status as the King of Beers and the beer for no-bullshit best mates.
Tongue positively impacted the Extra Dry brand awareness and sales.
And CP+B’s Burger King work improved the fortunes of the business for a while (until McDonald’s woke out of its stupor)
Based on that, I’d say ‘stoner ads’ are entirely focused on what advertising is supposed to be doing: selling stuff. And they do it better than most…
29 Nov 11
1:03 pm
This marks the official start of the silly season…
30 Nov 11
3:20 pm
I don’t know what to say… can I have some stoner products to then view the ads, to see what I think?
30 Nov 11
3:49 pm
Next time I run groups to evaluate comm’s I just might put out a plate of special cookies….
Actually I have had the odd stoner or two in my groups over the years come to think of it
30 Nov 11
4:01 pm
How does 15% of people saying they used illicit drugs at least once in 2010, mostly marijuana, lead to the assertion that audiences are often stoned?
The assertion is baseless without an understanding of the frequency of use.
30 Nov 11
4:58 pm
I didn’t write the byline.
I meant “stoned” in the broadest sense: booze, weed, drugs, whatever – under the influence. Hence the link to this – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_intoxication – from the word “stoned”.
Chill “version”. Have a bourbon. Or a blunt. It’s nearly Xmas.
1 Dec 11
8:51 am
Tom your on fire.
Love it. Keep challenging the everyday.
1 Dec 11
3:09 pm
sure, but try taking this insight to the client and let us know if u get sign off. a good ad is a good ad whether ur high or not. that will remain the angle even if one day society’s flimsy taboos on the topic are finally lifted.
2 Dec 11
9:36 am
Izzard (tangentially) on the difference between stoner films and non-stoner films.
http://youtu.be/TjC3R6jOtUo
6 Dec 11
2:51 pm
Pretty much on the money with context. (Which was the actual point of story.)
I’m a cognitive scientist who does research into decision making and we have the same problem. Conducting research in the lab may give very convincing results and insights into people behavior however the real challenge is getting data from the field when people make the same decisions. In recent years the area of naturalistic decision making has grown and one of it’s aims is to take into account the the external and contextual effects that occur in the real world as opposed to the highly controlled and sterile conditions of the lab.
Putting electrodes on people in the mall and shocking them as they shop is so much more insightful (and entertaining) than in the privacy of a lab..
12 Dec 11
3:38 pm
http://devastatingexplosions.com/
Need I harp on any further…