Spotting bushfires and helping the lonely feels more virtual than reality
Increasingly, agencies and advertisers are turning to tech 'prototypes' which get either limited runs or never see the light of day to shift product. But as the seriousness of real-life problems they address escalates, Mumbrella asks if this is really the future of marketing?
There is a curious and growing trend in the world of advertising, taking prototypes and launching them with all the fanfare of a fully proven, ready to buy product.
A product that doesn’t exist, or is so limited in its availability it may as well not.
Medibank hopes to alleviate loneliness with VR devices
In the past they have been campaigns aimed at consumer products – in the last couple of years we’ve seen weather predicting pegs and internet interrupting pepper grinders flogging washing powder and pasta sauce – harmless enough.
But what concerns me is the recent spate of offerings purporting to pedal products and prototypes as solutions to life threatening situations and issues where there is genuine despair.
This year Grey Singapore pedalled hope with its I Sea app, claiming to crowd source the hunt for refugees and help co-ordinate rescues. The scam won metal at Cannes before the agency finally handed the award back admitting the app was vapourware.
Saatchi’s idea of a mobile phone driven emergency beacon network marketing Toyota is great in theory, but the government is never likely to release the valuable phone spectrum to make it real.
Last year VML’s Blackspot Beacons proved another idea so far ahead of its time, the client never even signed off on the award entry.
And earlier this year Samsung launched pocket Patrol, an augmented reality app supposed to help people spot dangers in the surf such as rips using their phone – it works on only two beaches in Queensland.
This week, in the course of a couple of hours, two of Australia’s best known brands announced they were alleviating the loneliness of long term hospital patients and spotting bushfires before they got out of control.
Medibank announced it was bringing “Joy” to the lives of those in hospital with virtual reality devices which would allow people to immerse themselves in a colourful world surround by storytelling friends – and, for some reason, a dog.
A video released to support the initiative showed people laughing and commenting in amazement as relatives delivered the Google Daydream VR devices to their bedsides, the idea being to alleviate the loneliness of long-term patients.
The video is also being used to urge people to visit loved ones in hospital.
On the face of it, it’s a wonderful, uplifting story of transporting the old and infirm from their hospital beds using cutting edge technology.
Elsewhere the NRMA announced a network of smoke detectors dotted through the Australian bush, sniffing the air for tell tale smoke long before the flames take hold, giving firefighters a head start and protecting communities.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS4xc9RZrcQ
If only it were true.
On both counts these are campaigns aimed more at earned media and earned awards than promoting anything more than a prototype. They pedal false hope.
Ad agency B.B.E admitted there are just four of Medibank’s ‘Joy’ devices spread throughout the country and no word on when there will be more. Even the content is locked away, available only to those who, doubtless having queued to get into a hospital bed, must now queue to escape it virtually.
So Medibank, with a profit of $416m last financial year, has so far splashed out for just four of the Google Pixel phones costing $649 a piece, with Google throwing in the Daydream viewer for free.
Intriguingly, Mediabank’s marketing director was being offered up for interview until Mumbrella asked if the campaign was a stunt, at which point her diary suddenly filled up.
The NRMA’s FireBlanket is Clever Buoy goes bush. A prototype that is so early in its incubation it hasn’t even earned a whole number yet and is only at stage 0.3.
The current version has a smoke sniffing range of about 15 kilometres, so it would take a little less than half a million of the devices to cover the 91% of the country that is bushland.
If it were to cover the 10% of the population living in bushfire prone areas that number might drop to around 46,000.
It was an idea cooked up by the NRMA and M&C Saatchi’s innovation department Tricky Jigsaw and is now being validated by the CSIRO’s Data61.
There is no rollout date for the concept and a spokesperson for the NRMA admitted it may not even move past prototype stage.
But that matters little, because Joy and FireBlanket have already served their purpose, garnering acres of unquestioning earned media for Medibank and the NRMA.
On both counts these are ideas with merit. But they are just that: ideas half formed, narrowly delivered and a lifetime away from being real – certainly for those facing a summer of bushfires and those not unlucky enough to be locked away in one of the four hospitals.
The FireBlanket campaign is backed by videos with fancy graphics showing how it will cast a net of safety over communities and pinpoint fires and the direction they are travelling.
The Joy video is filled with old folks looking amazed at what they are seeing – not because of the content within, I’m willing to bet, but because it is likely the first time any of them have been exposed to VR.
They’re impressive looking case study videos which will get them a long way with international award show juries which are time-pressed and ill-equipped to query how many of these things are actually in existence.
Ad agencies and marketers are desperate to be seen at the cutting edge of innovation, but that edge seems to be increasingly focused on awards and earned media, not real stuff. Can award entries for Joy and FireBlanket be far away? AWARD just extended its entry deadline to December 15.
Agencies and their clients are now dabbling in life and death issues. No one is offering to cure cancer yet, but at this rate it surely can’t be far away.
Perhaps the time has come to bite the bullet and introduce a “prototype” category at award shows and award the ideas for what they are, rather than the outcomes for what they are not.
Yes, Pepper Hacker became a real thing (albeit a giveaway of just a couple of thousand) and Clever Buoy continues to receive government research funding as the idea is developed.
But weather predicting pegs and emergency communication beacons tucked into Landcruisers are still the stuff of dreams.
False hope and snake oil. Is this really the prototype for advertising in 2016?
I completely agree with your article Simon, agencies like M&C are hot air generators for ideas designed to win creative awards vs. having a genuine impact in the world. I worked at an agency who services OPTUS and the client said to be verbatim “We have no clue what to do with “Clever Buoy”, and that “it is winning at award shows but no-one within OPTUS takes it seriously”. This raises the central issue in the industry, what value are we actually creating for society?
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Whilst the scepticism towards these sorts of projects is expected (and in some of the examples provided above, somewhat justified), that NRMA FireBlanket is actually a good idea. If it passes CSIRO feasibility, then it may be something the governments could implement at scale, saving lives and dollars.
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Great article Simon.
Spot on.
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good work keeping the pressure on Mumbrella. Everytime a campaign like this is published and awarded, we celebrate mediocrity and abuse of client trust. In the long run, a business and an industry can’t survive on either.
@Antony – sure it is a good idea, but im sure Saatchi will be entering it into awards shows in April, rather than in 5-10 years if and when it is implemented. And once they win they’ll never speak of it again.
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@keep digging. Maybe you’re right, but an idea this potentially good shouldn’t be overlooked just because the creative accolade system is not to everyone’s taste.
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As a long time Medibank prisoner…I mean customer…the only “joy” I want from them is the return of a stay in a private room when in hospital (having sneakily removed this from policies without making customers aware until they wake up in a ward full of people).
How about…”This Christmas, we’re putting the privacy back into Private Health Insurance…” That one is for free.
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Honestly. As an ad agency person who is surrounded by these ideas all the time and has countless meetings about how to win more awards – I find these ideas embarrassing
Everyone associated with these ideas should be completely ashamed of themselves. Don’t promote it until it’s real. Or you’re just promoting a storyboard.
Pepper grinders and pegs – who cares. But when saving lives becomes a scam opportunity then it sickens me.
How can these people sleep at night. It’s embarrassing.
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Rather than a prototype category, why not introduce an innovation effectiveness category? Might mean a touch more effort goes into taking things beyond the prototype stage – effectively channeling the pursuit of metal for large scale good.
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If M&C was producing outstanding work for it’s major clients, then perhaps this would be seen in a less skeptical light. But they’re not, the work is consistently mediocre – particularly for NRMA.
M&C, Leo Burnett and JWT need to stop chasing awards and get back to the real business of advertising.
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Agree with all of the above. Don’t forget about Brainband by Leo Burnett – the device that will put an end to all rugby player concussion.
Prototypes are the shiny new award trinkets that agencies are creating because they are : tech, PRable, cause related so they tick a lot of boxes.
And in the case of this latest one, it had already been done by a Spanish agency, so it will be curious to see whether they pursue it as they won’t be winning any metal. Methinks it will quietly go away.
http://www.generalibirdhousealarm.com/en
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… how can you hope to have a shred of credibility when you say ridiculous things like “91% of the country… is bushland”.
Was there a small bushfire in your pipe when you wrote this article?
Australia is 70% semi-arid, arid or desert. Those terms mean no bushland, bucko.
Sorry, start again.
And next time, try not to smoke the rage and bitterness you’re peddling.
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Hi “Sorry but Simon”,
You appear not to have read the very next sentence that notes the 10% of people living near bushfire-prone areas – a figure used by the NRMA itself. Yes, I talked about the 91% of bushland (based on a range of government studies) which is a patently ridiculous number – hyperbole if you will – but that is the point. I’m simply calling bullshit. In 2009 173 people lost their lives in the Black Saturday bushfires. Real people, real lives, real tragedy. When FireBlanket is real, then it should be celebrated. But right now it is a PR device being used to garner free publicity to sell insurance policies.
Simon – Mumbrella
… It’s a real prototype going into further testing. It’s announced as a “prototype / project” everywhere it appears, so there is no so-called “bullshit”: it’s not claiming to be a finished working product.
So in your wizardly mind, should no product ever announce a prototype? Not even Google’s self-driving car or Tesla’s battery?
They did and others will keep doing so. Why? ‘Cause they get more funding and attract 3rd party interest for testing, more prototyping and, eventually, rollout.
This is just the way innovation works.
I call “bullshit” on you. You just have a very obvious personal axe to grind.
It’s obvious to many of us
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it’s clear you thought “91% of Australia… is bushland.”
There’s no allusion there at all.
FireBlanket doesn’t say that.
You did.
Pretty ridiculous mate.
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I’m with Simon. Utter bullshit.
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Please keep calling this stuff out. Perhaps also hold clients equally accountable ie Follow up every 6-12 months on how the prototype is progresssing.
Clients will be less accepting of these ideas if the negativity starts to put individuals associated in the spotlight.
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I’m not with Simon.
Eat this “scam prototype” news:
https://cdn.ampproject.org/c/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/38262877
This is why you should announce a prototype. Publicity = attention = investment = R&D = rollout.
Not announcing is stupid.
As is this article.
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Who cares? I just didn’t write the same moniker in the Name box every time. Cause it’s boring.
Like FireBlanket, I wasn’t pretending to be more.
That’s your paranoid grind-axe.
Which we all “note”, Simon.
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So Simon, are suggesting that agencies should just “stick to making ads” and not dabble in innovation, new methods of communication, or helping large business innovate in ways that align with their business? Should R/GA have stuck to building websites and banner ads rather than create a “scam” app for Nike+ back in 2006? Should agencies leave all New Product Development to internal client teams, and make sure that marketing and media teams, who have some understanding of business and customer issues, don’t get involved?
Whilst I completely understand the issues around scam ads, to bundle up and write off all innovative devices and activities that come from marketing and communications as desperate attempts to win awards with scam products is a little bit of a “baby with the bathwater” approach. Most businesses need to pursue some sort of digital innovation and transformation agenda, and some of the talent within agencies is well suited to assisting with this. It would seem a little short sighted for Mumbrella to be suggesting that agencies should just “stick to their knitting” of traditional advertising approaches, rather than innovate.
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