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Posts tagged ‘Marketing’

Nov 23

Slow the Pace and Still Play the Ace: Motörhead goes acoustic for a beer commercial

A whiplash can still be just as powerful even when the force it is delivered with is done so with less vim and vigour. 

Over here in London there has been a commercial running for a couple of months. It is for Kronenbourg 1664. The stars of this commercial are not the golden pints of this French lager.  No, the real stars of this commercial are Lemmy and Motörhead (well, and Lemmy’s warts, close-ups and all).  

The craggly and cagey old bastard and his mates were convinced to take their metal classic, The Ace of Spades, and slow it down to a taught and sinewy acoustic version…and it works. You might want to hold on tight as Kronenbourg puts the marketing spin on how they picked the band for this:

On October 4th 2010, we took Lemmy and his band Motörhead to a French bar. Here, inspired by the laid back atmosphere and a slow, cold Kronenbourg 1664, they played their legendary manic song, The Ace of Spades, at half the normal speed.

If you have access to Spotify, you can listen to the slowed down version of Ace of Spades at http://bit.ly/K1664Spotify and check out our Spotify playlist of great slowed down songs at http://bit.ly/K1664Playlist

That is a compliment, right? You want to project, laid back and slow, so you pick a raging, seething, glass-eating beast and you tame it…with nylon strings. Fuck it…this isn’t selling out. Nothing is sacred anymore, anyways. 

I think the song works best with the visual. Here is the 90 second commercial and then a four and a half minute “making of” the commercial. Both are worth the time it takes to watch.  

90 second

Making Of

Sep 12

8 Comments

Always Leave a Witness: One vote for letting the EP live when the industry kills off the album

Have you seen the TV show “The Wire”? I just started watching it in August. I had never seen it before. I don’t watch much TV. Never have. I lived alone in my own bachelor-pad the late 90′s and early 00′s and never had a TV. Music was my thing and still is. While everyone else was watching “must see TV”, I was listening to one bow-down album after another. Hell, yes.

I have been sucked in by The Wire for all it has to offer: the characters, the acting, the story lines and the soundtracks. The unapologetic, unabashed, unrelenting honesty is jarring and compelling. If you haven’t seen it, and you should, look out because I’m about to talk dirt on it.

Omar

Omar: EP lover.

I just finished episode four of the fifth and final season. “Butchie” has just been killed by Stansfield’s thugs. When they killed that poor blind bastard Butchie, they let one of his muscle-men live. The thugs told muscle-man that he was to tell Omar every gory fucking detail about how they killed old Butch. This is a time honoured literary tradition of creating legend by leaving one behind.

When I saw this go down I immediately thought of The Album. The Long Player. The LP. Pity the poor LP; The industry can’t kill it off quick enough. What was once a badge of honour for a musician is now the industry’s albatross.

“What the fuck have you done for me lately, eh LP”? What…?

I feel for the LP. It has been contorted to into concepts. It has been the victim of gluttonous, over-stuffed double-album hell. For years it has been the industry’s trojan horse to get singles inside the consumer’s walls.  

Look out LP, because the industry has sent in the thugs. 

The LP got a bum deal. If they are in fact going to kill the LP, I for one hope they let the EP live. Actually, they need to let the EP live. If they are going to put the long player in a deep grave, we need to have a historical account of what it was, what it offered and how it was unjustly killed dead in it’s grooves. 

I am not about to bore you with a history, so…a very long story, very short: 

With the 78 (SP, “Standard Play”) and the 45 rpm, the single was the thing. Singles were the fertile ground for LPs. Why sell one song on one platter when you can sell ten songs on one platter for more money? Then the EP (“Extended Play”) joined the party. Originally they were singles compilations or album samplers. They shared size and speed with 45 singles, but they were packaged up in different fashion as vehicles to promote the new album or as bonus material. When it all shook out, Singles ruled the charts, Albums became major statements and marker’s in an artist’s career and EPs were the booby prize.

Music business boomed.  People wanted more. Artists created more. The industry sold more. Scarcity was king and the labels were it’s queens. 

Well, lookeee here…singles are the thing again. This is one big circle-jerk, isn’t it? Damned if the bottom line doesn’t have a mean grip.

Most of this is a result of continued advances in technology: Vinyl > 8-Track > Tapes > CDs > SACDs > MP3s > iPods, Streaming, etc. Advances in technology are a good thing.  As music-fan-idealist, I want advances in technology to support an artists’ creativity, not stifle it by shoehorning it into the lowest common denominator that will support retail sales. 

I like the idea of the LP. I want more than a single’s A Side and a B Side. I want context. I want story. I want nuance. One-Hit Wonderful is not my thing. If the album is in fact “dead” (for now or the time being), I hope they breathe life back into the EP.

The EP is a way to support both the changing commercial medium without compromising the creative message. My reason for championing the EP’s cause is not about selling more; it is about not getting less from artists. Maybe I am a dying breed, but I want more than singles. The EP is a good compromise. An artist could still have a feel or a context in mind for the collection of songs they are working on. They could release them in bunches…as series of EPs over a six or twelve month period. A series of “episodes” from an album. 

(Look out: I’m circling back to my The Wire reference)

What if an album was created and sold to tell a story over a series of “episodes” as a TV show is…like The Wire?  Instead of a bloated fourteen song album, write twenty songs and release four 5 song EPs over 12 months. Build some momentum for the holiday selling season where you can sell infinite configurations of box sets, formats, special editions, etc. This is marketing, people…you can do what ever you want; music fan suckers like me are out there with new ones born every minute. 

I came late to The Wire. Instead of watching it unravel over five years, I’m going to watch it end-to-end in just a month and a half. I bought it in bunches and watched it in pieces and on my own terms/schedule. Can that be done with an intended, purposeful series of EPs. I think so and I would go for it. 

Change the format, the album cycle, the timing, the distribution…change it all up without sacrificing the creativity to the commercial. Each EP release would apease the fastfood, disposable, lowest common denominator music buying culture. The artists still gets to make their statement, albeit with a need to practice a heap of patience. The propensity to stay in tune with the message and to purchase more stuff will increase over this type of slow-burn release. 

There is much opportunity for labels, artists, retailers and fans in this concept. People tune into TV episodes each week. People flock to sequels. People want “the next” all the time (unfortunately it is most often to the detriment of “the now”).

Yes, the EP could very well be the survivor of this LP slaughter. We don’t have to cow-tow to the single. I’m willing to concede the LP, but I’m not ready to give up the premise. Come on labels and artists and marketers…roll with the punches. Use the EP to mix a perfect cocktail of commercial and creative that plays to changing habits and technology. Don’t over think this shit. 

—

Oh, shit. I just watched episodes five and six. Omar is back on the killing trail, but he is letting a few storytellers live. Omar must be a fan of te EP, too. 

Sep 9

2 Comments

Google’s in the algorithm mixin’ up the medicine: Searchterranean Homepage Blues

Lots of talk in tech-land about Google’s new “instant Search“. The New Wizard in town used some of the Wise Old Wizard’s magic and alchemy to bring the new message back home to the people. Forty-five years on and Bob’s master-marketing stroke still turns heads and fixates pupils. 

Here is the Goog commercial. Good play on the concept to get their thin-wild mercury search message across. Note: you must provide your own amphetamines. 

 

Subterranean Homesick Blues is a fave-rave Dyaln tune off of my fave’est-rave Dylan album, “Bringing it all Back Home“. Wikipedia has the historical dirt on this song and how the promo video clip came to be. They also have a rundown of other ways Bob-Wizard’s flipboard wordplay has been used to sell shit (insert Bob sighing here).

The wordplay in this tune is fantastic: Electric-Drivel belching out of Bob’s yelping hole. So many great lines can be found in this song. Do you have any faves? 

Hey, you think Woody was Bob’s only influence early on? Think again:

http://listen.grooveshark.com/songWidget.swf

The original Bob Uber-Take:

And while we are at it, here is a funky, extra-staccato version of SubTerHome Blues from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers:

Aw, shit. Why not, eh?  While you are here we might as well get it twisted on right with another legendary museum piece: Jimi’s take on Like a Rolling Stone. The intro to it is worth the price of admission: “…I’d like to bore you for about six or seven minutes… that’s his grandma over there (?!)…”

Jimi. Shit…

Nov 29

“Nobody loves me but my Mother” (…and she ain’t jivin’ neither, B.B.): How my mom got her thirty-seven year old son a job

Momtattoo

“I come home last Friday, talk to the landlady and told her I lost my job 
She says don’t confront me. An’ so I best have my rent next Friday 
An’ next Friday come, I didn’t have the rent an’ out the door I went”.
- John Lee Hooker, “House Rent Boogie”

Fortunately for me, that day never came; I never got put out on the street by my lady.  Since moving to London from Sydney in September, I have been in the unemployment line. Unfortunately, it is a very popular place to be…all over the globe. 

We moved to London based on a promotion my wife received from her company.  This meant me having to resign from my job back in Sydney. We make moves relative to the big picture; there is no such thing as sacrifice when it comes to making sure we are in the best position to succeed and enjoy our lives together.  Moving to London was a no brainer for many reasons. 

This is third time I have resigned (and we have moved) based on my wife’s career opportunities. My career has become this collection of experiences in a few different countries: The States, Australia and now, London.

Last week I got a job. Not just any job, but the one I wanted in a direction that I wanted to take my career. 

Not bad. Three months in, and in the worst economy the UK has seen in some time, and with

a switch in industries…I found me a gig.  

So why am I feeling a bit sad as I type? Because I don’t get to continue to write on YUD anymore, that’s why!  YUD (www.yourunemployeddaughter.com) is a blog run by a friend of mine. I have written a few posts for her blog where she talks about being unemployed as a New Yorker.  If you want to catch up on my previous posts for YUD, you can do so here:
If you don’t want to read those and are the kind of person who just reads the ending to books, just go to the last post.  Here you go:

(Have a listen to this song before reading the rest of this story. No, really…you need to listen to it)

That’s right B.B.: Mothers don’t jive…

…at least not when it comes to their sons. I’m no mama’s boy, but I sure felt like one last week: my mommy just got me a job.

Yes, Yuddites, it is true. I had to rely on my mom (once again) to save my ass. Time and time again throughout my life my Mom (I call her “Ma”) has been there to support me.  There may have been times when I pressed my luck and tested her patience, but Ma always did right by me.  

Living in London, I usually call home to the States every other week. You can bet the last dollar from your unemployment checks that my job search will come up in conversation. Parents never stop worrying about their kids (unless you are a cold hearted, irresponsible set of dumb-asses like Ballon Boy’s two winners. Idiots). I knew only their best interests were on display, but as an unemployed person, the worst question to have to answer is: “how’s the job search going?”

There is really just one way to answer to that question and you have only two options to choose from: “good” and or “bad”.  When you are jobless there is no inbetween. Oh, we try and make ourselves feel good about it with half-assed responses about “great interviews” and “real potential with that one”, but it is all a load of shit. No job is nooo job. 

The last time I spoke with my parents. My mom didn’t ask me how the job search was, but she did ask me why I hadn’t used one of her contacts she gave me. Ma had given me the name of a friend that is a senior VP of HR for this company.  To be honest, I looked at the helping hand as my mom just trying to be nice. Shit, if the Taliban were looking to hire, she’d pass along my resume if she thought it would help. 

Finally I relented and decided to get in touch with her contact.

What do you know…the Old Gal pulled through. I’m sorry I ever doubted you, mommy. 

The woman I spoke with in the US passed off my resume to her counterpart here in London. After a few email/phone conversations I found myself neck deep in a series of interviews. At the end of the final interview, the person who I was speaking to asked me “how do you know [the HR contact back in the States}?”  Maybe it was me, but I thought I noticed a bit of a smirk crawl across his face when he asked me that question (did he know?).

Wow. Here it was, right in front of me: a true Moment of Truth. I figured that if I was going to work with this guy, I might as well tell him how I arrived in his office. Why not, right? “The truth is easier,” as my old pal Hunter S. Thompson used to say. 

We talked about this before, Yuddites. In an interview, if you can’t be yourself, if you can’t speak your mind, if you can’t give them the “true-you”…what the hell are you doing there in the first place.

So I told him, just like this: “my mommy”. 

I filled him in on the rest of the story about how she and my mom were friends. We both had a good laugh over it. He even called me a “momma’s boy”.  Humility is cool. 

So what is the moral to this tale about how I got my job?  Never underestimate a contact or lead. At any given time, sparks can strike where you least expect them to.

Oh yeah, there is another lesson: Mother does knows best

Good luck, Yuddites!

p.s.  I found it very ironic, if not scary, when I saw this recent story on the Huff Post.

Sep 17

This brands in your land, but not in my land: how brands & packaging influence my purchase decisions since I moved to London

I remember the day we landed in Sydney, Australia in March 2005.  We (my wife and I) were in our hotel room staring at each other in disbelief that we had just moved our life to the other side of the world.  We knew no one. We had never been there before. All up, we were very far from home and all things familiar. 

This wasn’t a bad thing, mind you.

After we got done with our staring and head shaking, we laid two big, wide-eyed smiles on one another and set out to explore. We were hungry so we went to the corner store to grab a few things to put in the fridge. I got there and…more staring…I hardly recognised one brand on the shelf. 

Yes, the stalwarts were there: Coca-Cola, Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and Kleenex to name just a few.  But what the hell was all that other stuff?!  I wanted to grab and go as I normally would, but my decision became much more laboured and confused.  Where were all the brands I knew, loved and trusted? Back home, stupid. 

I have always loved to go to grocery stores. I am a design and packaging freak.  I love to see when both come together in an engaging way and provide me a significant utility. I do the grocery shopping in our family.  I like to see what is new on the shelves, what has a new look and what new tricks has someone taught an old brand. 

Similar to when I moved to Sydney, I now go to the grocery stores in London and gaze out amongst all of the unknown-brand-madness and try to make sense of it all. I’ll give you one example.

My wife and I were at Waitroes, an upscale grocery store in South Kensington.  They have a high quality prepared hot food selection as well as refrigerated/packaged prepared foods.  We were in the soup section which has many, many products/options: organic, low fat, lottsa fat, “veggie pots”…you name it. 

Being a stranger in a strange land with all these strange brands, we defaulted to three criteria to choose from: appearance (brand & packaging), health and “flavour”.  The first two were the traffic lights and roads signs…which direction should we go?  Once we solved that, then heath & flavour options were very much similar across the board.

(We didn’t stand there and draft up a criteria.  This is what we did as a knee jerk reaction)

There were three brands we looked at.  Please remember that I have no history with these brands at all.  I am just going on first impression. Also, I am not going to touch on price since we were in an upscale joint and expected to pay a premium.

Cov_garden

The first one was called “Covent Garden Food Co.”.  The first thing that I noticed was the container. It was closed. I could see what was inside?  What does the consistency look like?  Can I see some of the ingredients that claim are in there?  Or is this going to be like a bag of chips…more air than product in the bag?

Secondly, the images of the vegetables and other ingredients are drawings…caricatures of the real thing.  Why?  Personally I want my healthy, from the earth ingredients to be as real on the outside as they claim to be on the inside. 

Verdict: No chance. For the first timer, you can’t hide everything behind packaging and drawings before you’ve earned my trust.  Hey, it might be the best tasting soup there for all I know…but, it didn’t have me at hello.

Farmers_hero

Next up: Waitrose’s own private label, “Farmer’s Hero”.  Ah, now we are getting some place. The packaging invites me in to see all of the ingredients that it says are in there.  Now, this brand and product is talking to me.  I can have an open conversation with my potential dinner, rather than get the cold shoulder from the previous packaging. 

We had only been in Waitrose for a few minutes, but we liked the place.  This being a Waitrose product helped sway us.

Bonus points for adding the human touch and showing support for the local farmers (hey, this is marketing, right?). If this was the U.S., there would have been a botoxed, fake chested, collagen infected blond rubbing that lettuce up and down the inside of her thighs on that label. Not a bad thing, I know…but not the right brand image here.

Verdict: I’m getting hungry

Veggie_pots

Lastly, we looked at “Veggie Pots” from “Innocent.  Now, if this brand had the same packaging as the first we looked at, it would have no shot. This product needs the clear packaging to show off why it thinks it is different and why you should buy it over “normal” soup. 

The veggie pots are a variation on a theme. Innocent says not to buy a soup that has been blended up into soup-y broth base. You may want something with a broth base, but that has actual chucks, hunks and leafy bits of the actual ingredients. A novel idea that had me thinking that would fill me up more than a simple-r soup.  

The package here is good, the branding…not appetising at all.  If I could not see the ingredients and had to rely on this branding, I wouldn’t have looked twice.  Boring and uninspiring. Not a reflection of the product at in my opinion.

Verdict:  The product better not taste as bland as the creative work. 

So what did we decide?  Option #1 was out for both us.  We liked Options #2 and #3…the food looked good and worth the spend. It came down to heath and flavour; which brand would hit the sweet-spot combo for either of us.  

I chose the Farmer’s Hero and my wife chose Innocent’s Veggie Pot. We decided that we would each try the other’s brand choice later in the week. 
_____

If you put something on the shelf, treat the packaging and design as a welcome mat. A welcome mat can serve two purposes:  It can send a message to new visitors and/or it can welcome back old friends.

Welcome_mat2

If you put something on the shelf that tells you how good everything inside is and you don’t show them, you run the risk of not inviting people into a trusting environment.  

Go_away

_____

And another thing: #1

In one of my previous job back in the States, I had the opportunity to utilise a (then) new packaging material to launch a new product I was working on.  The process was the now familiar shrink wrap that so many brands use today. An outside company had presented the material to our operations team.  The head of that team asked us (the marketing department) if any of us had a use for it.  Being a huge advocate of “non-conventional” and risk taking, I jumped at the challenge. 

I got it done, but it wasn’t easy.  I had to overcome many internal and external issues to get people to see the value and utility the brand could derive from using it…even though it meant a significant capital investment.  It was a risk; the bigger risk was playing it safe. 

I did a quick search and found the actual product I designed.  Apparently it won an award. Nice. 



Welch’s multipack could be a first

“Since it unveiled a new 24-count fruit juice package, what could be the first shrink-wrapped multipacks for cans of fruit juices, Welch’s, Concord, MA, reported a 15-percent unit-volume sales increase. The attractive pack, also a first used by Welch’s, includes a 3-mil, extruded low-density polyethylene shrink-film wrap [that was] reverse-flexo-printed in 8 colors…” “The new wrap creates a billboard effect on-shelf with eye-catching graphics designed by Welch’s showing cans of the juice varieties surrounded by the respective fruit ingredients they contain. Adorned with the Welch’s logo and a grape and green color scheme, the results immediately communicate the package contents to consumers, the company says.

Designed for warehouse clubstore sales, the shrink-wrapped package that replaces what PD hears was a labor-intensive film-wrapped tray-pack, contains eight 12-oz cans of three different juice blends – Grape, Fruit Punch and Orange Pineapple – and is designed to shrink in the right places without distorting. Once converted, the film is legible, colorful and informative, displaying its various consumer messages on all panels. Welch’s goal for the new packaging strategy, it says, was to differentiate the pack from competitors and boost sales. The new pack is apparently meeting the goals.”

Article taken from Packaging Digest, Sept. 2002.

 

 

And another thing: #2

 

Seth Godin is one of my favourite current authors and marketing masters. Paraphrasing a statement in one of his books, Seth says,  ”sometimes safe is the riskiest option of all”.  Here is a video where Seth talks about design and risks.  It is 16 minutes long, but worth the watching. 

Here is a relevant bit of the video transcribed for you:

Design is free when you get to scale. And the people who come up with stuff that’s remarkable more often than not figure out how to put design to work for them. Number two: The riskiest thing you can do now is be safe. 

Proctor and Gamble knows this, right? The whole model of being Proctor and Gamble is always about average products for average people. That’s risky. 

The safe thing to do now is to be at the fringes, be remarkable. And being very good is one of the worst things you can possibly do. Very good is boring. Very good is average. It doesn’t matter whether you’re making a record album, or you’re an architect, or you have a tract on sociology. If it’s very good, it’s not going to work, because no one’s going to notice it.

http://dotsub.com/static/players/portalplayer.swf?plugins=dotsub&uuid=641b49c0-2967-4075-83ad-6a4893d3d9be&type=video&lang=none

Sep 4

1 Comment

Gonzo Management: The not so fine line between influence and emulate

Close to three weeks ago I left my job. My team and co-workers had a bit of a send-off ceremony for me. People gathered in the cafeteria, they played a slideshow of photos (backed with Johnny Paycheck’s, “Take This Job and Shove It”…nice touch) and they gave me a beautiful framed portrait of Sydney’s famed harbour.  


A good friend (now ex-boss) said a few words as well. In the course of him telling stories he talked about my personal style of work and how I make things happen.  


He touched on something I hadn’t thought of. He talked about how I had seemingly made myself part and parcel of all the major initiatives that I had launched internally for my brand.  Literally, I was the face of everything that I did.  It wasn’t just the “initiative” that needed to be completed, it was “Judd’s initiative” that needed to be completed. 


In some cases I would have a simple piece of creative worked up with me in it to have a bit of theatre around what I was trying to do.  Rather than be a stale, “same-old” roll out, I would try and give it some life.  This always generated more support and dedication to the desired outcome.  It was simple to do and it had great effect. 


Here is a sample of one of the simple posters I made up for the second phase of an internal initiative. 

D

But it wasn’t just a goofy movie poster parody that garnered all the support.  What really made this work was my lunging into it head first and seeing it through. Being showy for showy’s sake doesn’t work.  It is transparent.  When people can see through you and don’t feel that you are supporting them with equal dedication to the task that you are asking of them, they find something more worthwhile to focus on.  

When I heard my friend speak about me in this way, I instantly thought of one of my heros: Hunter S. Thompson.  

One of Hunter’s bits of wisdom, is to “never try and be like anyone else”.  I agree.  I don’t desire to emulate anyone of my heroes. I am influenced by them thought.  The line between influence and emulate is not a fine one in my opinion.  

When you try and emulate (or equal) someone, you are set up to fail.  You can’t be anyone else.  You can only be yourself…but your self can be influenced by others. 

Hunter (wether he liked it or not) created what has come to be known as Gonzo Journalism. A quick wikipedia reference give us a formal version of what that is:  

Gonzo journalism is a style of journalism which is written subjectively, often including the reporter as part of the story via a first person narrative…it often uses personal experiences and emotions to provide context for the topic or event being covered

Without knowing it…or trying to do it…I was applying Hunter’s influence into my work/my personal style. I was acting out my own personal Gonzo Management.  The idea of this was exciting to me.  In his best of works, Hunter made himself an integral part of the story. The story could not be written without a healthy dose of Hunter in it.  Not that Hunter stole the spotlight, but he helped shine it on the messages and the meaning…first hand.  In hindsight, this is what I was doing. 

This is influence in action.  I did not set out to emulate Hunter.  That would have resulted in failure. If I did, the emulation of Hunter would have been my focus and not gather

ing the necessary support to be successful in

our common

goals.  

Influence is you with a twist.  

Emulate is you trying not to be you.  People follow you’s.

_____

A side note:

I am a hands on guy.  Not hands on in a “control freak”, but hands on in the sense that I am willing to do the hard-yards with you.  I’m passionate about what I do and I like to get involved.  I also crave and give autonomy whenever possible. You can’t lead from the middle of the pack, but you can lead by example. 

 

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