Posts tagged marketing

“It is truly the first sunrise of the next phase of your life.” - Day 1 of retirement. 

Retirement. For 74 million baby boomers in the US, the prospect of retirement is quite real. If you think about it, the decision to retire after a lifetime of working is a significant one to make. It’s new life. A new beginning. For some, it’s even a second chance. For most, it’s a leap into the unknown. It therefore raises many questions in people’s minds. Do I have enough money to live out the rest of my years comfortably? How do I know it’s the right time to retire? What will my friends and family think of me? After a lifetime of being defined by what I did for a living, who will I be after I retire? It’s clear that retirees have many tensions, anxieties, hopes and dreams.

Unfortunately for advertisers, retirement is a topic that lacks immediacy. Droga5 and Prudential (a financial services company in the US) saw an opportunity to illustrate the tensions of retirement in a new advertising series. The series considers four retirees one at a time, in mini documentaries – Each on their very first day off after a lifetime of working.

The campaign is brilliantly executed and beautifully captures each of their stories of transition from their ‘old life’ to their ‘new life’. It’s emotionally moving. But not the sappy, artificial way we are used to seeing in advertising. The spots feel real. Each of the retirees admit some of their deeper fears and anxieties they had about their decision. Even some of their regrets they’ve had in life. For those frightened by retirement, it’s admissions of fallibility like these that will make the series seem honest, real and authentic—and Prudential, by extension, worth trusting.

We all want to be young. But what’s it like being one of 300 million youth in China?

‘We All Want To Be Young in China’ is a film created by enovate, China’s leading youth insights company.  It was made in response to the popular youth culture video ‘We All Want To Be Young’, released last year. It’s an inspirational, 3-minute crash course on one of the most important consumers in the world today: the Chinese youth.

Today’s Chinese youth are quite interesting and unique. This is because youth in China aged under 30 were born under the one child policy, which means they were brought up in world with centralised attention, wealth & pressure.

Although youth culture in developed countries (i.e. USA, Australia) began in the 1950s and 1960s, it wasn’t until China opened it’s doors to the world in the late 1970s, that a youth culture began to emerge - One that is still evolving today.


Life with no ‘off switch’A few weeks ago, I attended a networking night that was organised by Monash University’s marketing student society. I was there representing the strategy & planning agency that I work at. The idea behind the event was to allow students to speak with people from various marketing backgrounds in order to gain an insight into the many pathways that a career in marketing could take them down.I really enjoy going to these events, and not because of all the free food and alcohol! What I love is being able to provide some real world, no-BS advice to the students. I remember how lost I was when I was finishing uni. So unsure of where I wanted to go with my career. Even though it’s only been three years since I graduated, there are so many things that I know now, that I wish I’d known back then. It’s nice to be able to pass on some ‘wisdom’ to the next generation. You get asked all sorts of questions when you’re at these kinds of events. There was one question that really made me think - “What does it feel like to be a planner?” This was my answer:Being a planner feels like you’re living without an off switch. You’re always ‘on’. It means that even when you’re not in the office, you’re mind is still in a constant state of ‘awareness’. This is because, as a planner, you’re trying to understand people and what motivates them. Why do they do the things they do? What makes them tick? What are their hopes and dreams? What are the tensions in their lives? What’s keeping them up at night? It’s the reason that we do research - To help us find the answers to these difficult questions. It helps us to understand consumers better.While research is a powerful tool, it doesn’t always give us all the answers. But that’s the great thing about planning – The people we’re trying to understand are all around us. They’re waiting for the train to take them to work in the morning. They’re sipping lattes in cafes. They’re in bars, sinking beers after work. They’re everywhere! And that’s why planners need to observe, observe, observe! Planners need to notice the beautiful little moments that happen around them every day. The things that others would generally ignore. Planners listen in on conversations between a group of people while they’re ordering their morning coffee. They notice the items people are buying at the supermarket checkout. They watch how people use and interact with certain products. They do this because they know that insights can come from all kinds of places - Not just from focus groups.Being out there in the real world, interacting with the very people they’re trying to understand and influence provides planners with a broader frame of reference from which they can begin to connect the dots in the seemingly disconnected ideas. So for all you budding planners, give it a try! Get in the habit of being aware when you’re out and about. You’ll see that over time it will become second nature. You’ll always be ‘on’.So, open your eyes and ears to the world around you. You never know what you’ll find..

Life with no ‘off switch’

A few weeks ago, I attended a networking night that was organised by Monash University’s marketing student society. I was there representing the strategy & planning agency that I work at. The idea behind the event was to allow students to speak with people from various marketing backgrounds in order to gain an insight into the many pathways that a career in marketing could take them down.

I really enjoy going to these events, and not because of all the free food and alcohol! What I love is being able to provide some real world, no-BS advice to the students. I remember how lost I was when I was finishing uni. So unsure of where I wanted to go with my career. Even though it’s only been three years since I graduated, there are so many things that I know now, that I wish I’d known back then. It’s nice to be able to pass on some ‘wisdom’ to the next generation. 

You get asked all sorts of questions when you’re at these kinds of events. There was one question that really made me think - “What does it feel like to be a planner?” This was my answer:

Being a planner feels like you’re living without an off switch. You’re always ‘on’. It means that even when you’re not in the office, you’re mind is still in a constant state of ‘awareness’. This is because, as a planner, you’re trying to understand people and what motivates them. Why do they do the things they do? What makes them tick? What are their hopes and dreams? What are the tensions in their lives? What’s keeping them up at night? It’s the reason that we do research - To help us find the answers to these difficult questions. It helps us to understand consumers better.

While research is a powerful tool, it doesn’t always give us all the answers. But that’s the great thing about planning – The people we’re trying to understand are all around us. They’re waiting for the train to take them to work in the morning. They’re sipping lattes in cafes. They’re in bars, sinking beers after work. They’re everywhere! And that’s why planners need to observe, observe, observe! Planners need to notice the beautiful little moments that happen around them every day. The things that others would generally ignore. Planners listen in on conversations between a group of people while they’re ordering their morning coffee. They notice the items people are buying at the supermarket checkout. They watch how people use and interact with certain products. They do this because they know that insights can come from all kinds of places - Not just from focus groups.

Being out there in the real world, interacting with the very people they’re trying to understand and influence provides planners with a broader frame of reference from which they can begin to connect the dots in the seemingly disconnected ideas. 

So for all you budding planners, give it a try! Get in the habit of being aware when you’re out and about. You’ll see that over time it will become second nature. You’ll always be ‘on’.

So, open your eyes and ears to the world around you. You never know what you’ll find..

PASSION OF THE CRAFT: How to Stay Authentic in the Jungle.

Passion Of The Craft is a short documentary coming out later this year. It’s the work of BANDIT, a strategic ideas agency in Copenhagen. BANDIT works with clients daily that don’t understand the real link between the lives of the consumers, and their brand.

Their documentary is about their journey to find like minded individuals who are masters of their craft; in fashion, branding, media, photography, marketing and design. The result is 10 frank and open conversations with 10 influential people in modern culture.

Seriously wicked stuff. Cannot wait to see this.

For updates, go to facebook.com/​passionofthecraft

Heineken knows how to make an entrance.

Heineken’s latest global campaign launched late last year, but it wasn’t until October that it started to get airplay in Australia.

It’s nothing short of brilliant. A cinematic masterpiece! Probably some of the best work I’ve seen in a long time. I guess it’s no surprise seeing as though it was produced by Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam. Anything they touch seems to turn to gold..

If you thought you knew how to arrive at a party in style, think again. The film features a man who demonstrates the ultimate party entrance and focuses on his interactions with all the guests, which are all pretty spectacular. The man is seen charming his way past a gun-wielding oilman, a Russian canary, and a kung fu assassin, before getting his flute out on stage with the smoking-hot lead singer of the Asteroids Galaxy Tour; the Danish band’s latest single, The Golden Age, provides the sizzling backing track to the film.

What I love about this campaign is that it totally plays on the fantasies of the modern male. We all wish we lived our lives with unlimited social and physical potency. We all want to see that look of absolute desire in the eyes of  beautiful women everyday. We wish our lives were as exciting and glamorous as the hero’s life is portrayed in the ad. Men have always wished for that.

Sadly, adulthood never really turns out to be so glamorous and we find ourselves yielding to the never-ending, numbing and constricting responsibilities of everyday life..

Heineken has created a myth for men to buy in to. A myth that by drinking their beer, they too can live out this story of social and physical potency. It might sound like a stretch, but that’s simply how iconic brands work. They find cultural contradictions in society (desires, tensions and anxieties) and develop myths or stories that provide some sense of relief for those desires, tensions and anxieties. Consumers therefore relive the stories when they consume the brand’s products. If none of this makes sense, read Doug Holt’s How Brands Become Icons. He is a genius and his book has totally changed the way I look at advertising and branding.

I must admit, this campaign totally worked on me! And I consider myself a very cynical person when it comes to advertising. That’s what happens to you when you work in marketing for a while. I’ve never really been a Heineken drinker. I’ve always considered them to be too mainstream. Too mass produced. Too commercial. Instead I prefer craft brews made by smaller, local manufacturers. Wow I sound like such a hipster! But after watching this ad a few times, I did find myself ordering a Heineken or two (or three) while I’ve been out on the town, wishing my night would somehow become as exciting and glamorous as the brand’s myth.

My thoughts on Dr Pepper Ten - “No Women Allowed”

 This campaign for Dr Pepper has been making a lot of noise online in the last week – And not the good kind of noise.

A bit of background info. According to research conducted by Dr Pepper, many men between the ages of 25 and 34 are not completely satisfied with the taste and image of diet soft drinks. They’re not ‘manly’ enough. 

Dr Pepper’s response to this insight is Ten. Ten has calories and sugar, unlike Diet Dr Pepper. Instead of the feminine tan bubbles on the diet can, Ten is wrapped in gunmetal gray packaging with silver bullets. And while Diet Dr Pepper’s marketing is generally women-friendly, the ad campaign for Ten goes out of its way to eschew women. I mean, just look at the tagline, “Not for women”. Not exactly subtle. They’ve even launched a Facebook page for Ten which can only be accessed by men.  

It’s important to remember that Dr Pepper Ten is not the first diet soft drink aimed at men. Coke Zero and Pepsi Max have more than successfully positioned themselves as manly drinks. But Dr Pepper Ten’s ad campaign is the first to be so overt about courting men who want a soft drink with fewer calories.  

The ad features muscular men in the jungle battling snakes and bad dudes. The soldier in the ad yells “Hey ladies. Enjoying the film? Of course not. Because this is our movie, and this is our soda. You can keep the romantic comedies and lady drinks. We’re good.” It looks like a scene straight out of Tropic Thunder.

Going by the noise it has made online, the campaign has clearly pissed off a lot of women. Dr Pepper’s Facebook page took a serious beating, with a large number of female users posting their disgust on the brand’s page. I really don’t understand their logic of promoting their sub-brand by being overtly sexist. Especially when a significant portion of Dr Pepper’s customer base are probably female. Why would you piss off your own customers? Why would you damage the brand like that? It’s okay to position a diet drink towards men. But couldn’t they have said it without the sexist ‘jokes’ that aren’t really that funny anyway?  

The fact that the campaign is offensive isn’t even my biggest annoyance. What really bugs me is that it’s lazy and completely unoriginal. I hate it when the strategy is just so in-your-face like it is in this campaign. I mean, they’re just so blatant with the whole ‘not for women’ thing. And why do they say “just ten manly calories”? Putting the word manly in front of calories doesn’t make it sound more masculine. Most men don’t count calories anyway. 

This campaign had the potential to be amazing. They could’ve produced something clever, original and creative to promote a new product. But instead, they took the easy way out by using hyper-masculine imagery and a dash of sexism to ward off the ladies. Real smooth.. 

We all want to be young.

Another wicked movie for all you young planner/creative types to check out. The movie “We All Want to Be Young” is all about today’s young generation and is the outcome of several studies developed over the past 5 years.

The movie was created by BOX1824, a Brazilian research company specialising in behavioral sciences and consumer trends.

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