What happens to the average person who sees a great online display ad, doesn’t want to click on it, but wants to remember it and refer to it later? The person who goes off and does something else / gets distracted and by the time they’ve come back to their computer, has completely forgotten the name of the brand in that cool, whizzy ad they saw earlier? Well, they’ll probably do a few things:

• Remember the category and do a search on that category
• Go back to the website they were on and refresh the page a few times, hoping that the ad reappears
• Do a general search for words that might bring up the ad
• Get annoyed and do something else

None of these actions will benefit the brand with the cool, whizzy ad, because it’s highly likely that they haven’t created a search adgroup that references any memorable qualities from the online display ads. But when post-impression (when someone sees an ad, doesn’t click, but goes to the brand website at a later date) to post-click (when someone sees an ad, clicks on it and goes to the brand website immediately) conversion ratios average at 95:5, why wouldn’t you? Why wouldn’t you give people who want to find you a helping hand?

For everyone’s talk of banner blindness, good creative execution in any format, even the dreaded 468 x 60 banner will make people stop and have a look. Whether or not they click, is a different story. Clickthrough rates have been decreasing, to the point where a CTR of 0.30% is considered ‘good’. Given this, it would be silly to use CTR as a primary metric and it would be an uphill battle to rely solely on post-click conversions to deliver a positive ROI.

Yahoo have put together some very interesting research on ‘digital memories’, which says that 76% of the women and 75% of the men surveyed cannot remember anything relying on memory alone. Both sexes rely hugely on sending information to themselves as a memory aid, with 60% of men and 66% of women sending emails to themselves. Interestingly, there are people who are taking photos of ads (14% of women and 23% of men) in order to remember them.

So what’s the solution?

According to the Yahoo research, “men are different to women with their opinions to ads; improvements to advertising would make them think more highly of internet ads whereas women would feel less frustrated.”

Wouldn’t it be so much easier if we gave people the tools to remember online advertising within the ads themselves? Some brands are already doing this, but they seem to be few and far between. Just as media owners are adding sharing tools alongside the ubiquitious ‘send to a friend’ CTA at the bottom of (almost) every piece of audio, video and text content they release, advertisers should be doing the same.

Should we start adding a ‘send this to me later’ or ‘remind me later’ to ads? Should ads be ‘bookmarkable’?

What do you think?

*image courtesy

We’ve established 10 principles of social media, written them up and will be posting them on our respective blogs next week, to kick-off the conversation and get feedback. The IPA are also putting together a blog that will pull all of this chatter together based on the way things have been tagged (or by magic as I like to think of it.)

All of this great thinking, talking and sharing will then feed into an event the IPA are putting on on 6th October, which I urge you all to attend if you can.

Be social! Have a look at each blog next week and join the conversation.

1. People not consumers – Mark Earls

2. Social agenda not business agenda – Le’Nise Brothers

3. Continuous conversation not campaigning – John V Willshire

4. Long term impacts not quick fixes – Faris Yakob

5. Marketing with people not to people – Katy Lindemann

6. Being authentic not persuasive – Neil Perkin

7. Perpetual beta – Jamie Coomber

8. Technology changes, people don’t – Amelia Torode

9. Change will never be this slow again – Graeme Wood

10. Measurement – Asi Sharabi

There are some really fantastic women working in our industry, women like Tess Alps, Philippa Brown, Farah Ramzan Golant, Helen Calcraft and Amelia Torode. These are senior-level women who are setting an example, speaking out and showing that’s it’s possible to get ahead in a male dominated industry and still be fabulous, fiesty, smart and most of all, themselves. These are fabulous female role models for women wanting to do big things in media and advertising.

But yet, we still doubt ourselves. Generalities aside, but you very rarely hear men uttering any of these classic lines: “This may be a stupid idea but…” or “I may not know what I’m talking about but…” or “I’m not sure if I deserve that payrise, but…”. Stop apologising! Say what you want and take control of your career.

Groups like WACL and She Says are fantastic places to get career advice, support and to meet like-minded women in media and advertising. Every year, WACL put on an amazing one-day training forum called Gather. They invite speakers like Stevie Spring and cover a variety of topics like improving your influencing & persuading skills, motivating yourself & others and bravery.

Last year, I heard some great pieces of advice that I’ve carried with me ever since.

1) Just because you haven’t, doesn’t mean that you can’t. There’s a first time for everything and to get ahead, you have to push yourself out of your comfort zone.

2) You can’t cry and whistle at the same time. If you feel like you’re going to cry, try to whistle. You can’t do both concurrently!

3) If you’re not enjoying what you do, be proactive in finding ways to enjoy it. If you can’t, it’s time to find another job.

4) Look the part. Dress for the job you want to be doing, not the job you’re actually doing. Dress for the input you want to give and the image you want to project.

5) Don’t wait to be given responsibility. If you want to get ahead, then take responsibility and show that you are capable and deserving of the job you want.

6) Be brave, opinionated and give up the fear. Remember that you got to where you are right now because of your strength and your ability. Stop being scared and doubting yourself.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

The aim of this campaign is apparently to ‘represent confident young women taking a stand against the pressures of modern life’. What?

All this ad campaign says to me is that Diet Coke want to associate themselves with subversive misogyny and the idea that it’s okay for women to be a little bit mediocre, a little bit behind the curve. What a terrible message. Superman is a cultural icon and represents heroism, virtue, strength and the fight for social justice. What’s wrong with trying to do your absolute best and be a ‘super’ woman?

In an age where girls aspire to become glamour models, reality TV stars and famous being being famous, we need more role models like Paula Radcliffe and Nicola Horlick who demonstrate that you can get to the top of your profession and be a ‘super’ woman without sacrificing your feminity or womanliness. Woman like Margaret Thatcher and Michelle Obama who show that you can be a woman and make your own success, without resorting to taking your kit off for a lad’s mag or flashing your bits to the paparazzi.

What’s your interpretation of this ad?

2) Why anyone would buy the trip to the dentist in a box,  pseudo-cupcakes Candycakes are selling…

…when you can buy these cupcakes (ie. heaven in a box) just down the road in Covent Garden?

Brazen Careerist recently ran a contest asking their community about how blogging has impacted their life. Excuses, excuses, but   I missed the boat on the contest, but the question still intrigued me. Then Mat reached out and asked the community to fill out a survey on why they blog. And then Simon wrote a very thought provoking post on his new approach to blogging.

All this made me realise that it was high time for me to map out some of the reasons I blog, if only to help me map out a sense of blogging direction for myself. When I started this blog back in August 2008, it was purely to help me fulfil one of my objectives at work – to raise my external profile –  and a few of my early posts outline some of the ways I was planning on doing this. But things change.  And my reasons for blogging have changed. This blog was a great outlet for me during my extended jaunt to Canada last year and provided me a ‘home’ to share my point of view on advertising & digital marketing, great things I saw, found & heard, as well as to talk about other things completely unrelated. 

And, you know what?  It’s been nice, this whole blogging lark. I was initially quite daunted by it, but it’s been a worthy challenge. People who take the time to blog and tweet often tend to have very strong opinions and sometimes it’s tough if you have a contradictory point of view, especially when the ‘me too’ folk come along and the voices on the other side try to shout you down. This blog gives me the opportunity to take the time to flesh out my point of view and has led me to conclusions I may not have come to if I didn’t take the time to consider my thoughts. 

I was initially quite sceptical about the power of blogging, but no more. My blog is my ‘home’ on the Internet and has become my soapbox. Reading other blogs, commenting and connecting with those bloggers via twitter, email and in real life has exposed me to so many different points of views, ideas, projects and people.

So six months on, why do I still blog? To share a considered viewpoint on things that interest me, to comment on the world around me, to scope out & try to answer some of the big questions, to connect with people who share my views AND to people who don’t and to respond to issues that I’ve read about in other places. 

Why do you blog?

But what about the recent grads and the people who’ve only been working during the good years – the years where it became normal to expect a lunch at  a top restaurant every week, the years where the jollies were lavish and  plentiful. These are frightening times for them and they’ll be wondering how to avoid being next on the chopping block. 

Neil’s advice about being a ‘Firestarter’ is great and we definitely need more media people putting their money where their mouths are. 

But what else can you do? 

1. Go the extra mile – stop putting in 95% and start putting 110%. Now’s not  the time to be going on the routine 4-hour Friday lunch and coasting through the week. 

2. Build your external profile & work your contacts – get involved with the relevant industry bodies and join a few of the committees. Companies like employees who are out there building their personal brands, because they build their company’s brand on the back of it. 

3. Anticipate your client’s needs before they need them – exceed their expectations and delight as much as you can. 

4. It’s easy to do the easy thing right now – challenge your clients  and show them that the easy thing isn’t always the right or the most profitable thing to do. 

5. Show how you’re making a contribution to your company’s profit sheet – think about ways to build income from existing clients. Retaining clients is just as important as winning new business right now.

6. Look for ways to make your company or even your role more efficient – step back and take a wider look at things. Question whether everything you do is needed and whether or not it adds value. 

7. Find the opportunity – keep an eye on what your competitors are doing and what media owners are up to. The short-term market is especially fertile and now’s the time to flex your negotiation skills.

Seriously though, what is the digital equivalent of a jingle? The jingles from my childhood still stick in my head and when I heard them used again in TV & radio ads when I was back in Toronto, they had the same resonance. So while Scamp suggests that “while you & I may remember tons of jingles and slogans from our childhood, the adults of tomorrow won’t. What sticks in their heads is more likely to be the visual extravaganzas of Cog, Balls and Gorilla,” I don’t think this is true. A short piece of music with catchy lyrics has the power to connect on an emotional and rational level. Take this example for Canadian pizza chain, Pizza Pizza 967-1111, this one for Fabricland and the still ubiquitous Sleep Country Canada jingle. 

The ultimate power of all of these jingles were that they hardwired the brand into consumers’ minds through sheer repetition. It’s simple, but it works. 

Art and creative directors seem to believe there’s a certain absurdity to the jingle and that it’s no longer relevant to today’s audience. I think they’re missing a serious trick. It often takes something very simple to connect consumers and I think we as an industry often get wrapped up in the idea of bigger and better when Occam’s razor would often do.  But I digress.

Does anything online have the same emotional resonance on a mass level as a jingle? Certainly digital platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace have captured imaginations on a grand scale but is there an advertising related equivalent? 

Are there three digital equivalents to jingles?

1. Brand related meme (ie. Elf Yourself)
2. Avatars (ie. the dog or paperclip avatars in Microsoft Word)
3. Branded utility (ie. NikeID, Talk To Frank Messenger Bot)

But I still don’t feel satisfied with this and I suppose that this isn’t a question that automatically generates a simple yes / no, black / white answer. 

Would love to hear thoughts on this.

Patience Is A Virtue

The last month has been one big waiting game for me. Waiting for information, waiting for people to get back to me, waiting for documents and letters come through the post, waiting in telephone queues. Waiting, waiting, waiting. 

I’ve always been a slightly impatient person, but I’ve noticed over the past few years my impatience has gotten much worse. As a case in point, I’ve already stopped to check my emails and Twitters three times since I started writing this. And I can say with absolute certainty that living in an on-demand world, coupled with working in media has made my impatience even worse. Clients asks for things asap, which means I ask for things asap and everything starts to feel like a dire emergency. You see how this impatient behaviour can easily spill into my personal life. 

While I was mulling this post over, I started to think about all things that I don’t have to wait as long for as I used to. Want to see a film before it’s come out on DVD? Buy a pirate version or find a Torrent online and download it. Want to hear the latest single from your favourite artist? Download it on iTunes and then use your favorite music service to find all the remixes. Waiting for a friend to get back to you about something? Don’t wait, just text / poke / IM / email / ring them on their mobile. 

Living in a Western hyper-consumerist, as soon as possible society, I’m always slightly thrown when I leave the UK and venture further afield, even if it’s only to France and see how differently things operate. But on holiday, there’s a certain pleasure that’s derived from waiting and recognising that there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. But back at home, even the smallest things now invoke hair-pulling, bile-inducing fury.  Hearing that something is going to take approximately 10 days causes the most stress when you know that you need it NOW NOW NOW. 

Patience has been defined as the state of endurance under difficult circumstances. Are we so used to having everything on-demand, so spoilt, that the slightest hiccup makes us throw our toys out of the pram? The answer is most likely yes. And the next generation are going to be even worse.

I’m most excited about Meals - dinner, great chat and potentially some new friends. They’re providing everyone with an easy to follow conversation menu, which is quite twee but fun – hopefully this will help people get past rubbish small talk and straight into interesting conversation. 

Take a look at their blog: http://theschooloflife.typepad.com/