My white and pink trainers hit the pavement, and suddenly my senses were heightened – the incessant chattering from the housewives gets louder; the pungent smoke from the roads gets thicker. And with every step I took my skin swelter, taunting my lack of fitness.

Perhaps coupled with my initial frustration which led me to take a run – this is all too much to take.

In moments like this, music is my default ally.

If music were a person he would be a very difficult person to read – elusive, slightly manipulative and very persuasive. Every word he said resonates and every note he sang strikes me at my very core. His rhythm loiters within my subconscious, nudging my every step. I cannot decide who has the power in this relationship – is he relevant because I perceive him to be? Is he controlling my pace or am I using him as a pacer?

He jolts me into world of my own, in which I can mould everything in the way that I want it. Nevertheless under his manipulative words, of course.

I tend to say this more often than I wish I have not – “It’s nice to be in a bubble.” Escapism tempts me relentlessly, but I know sometimes you need to feel pain to feel alive.

That’s why I plug myself out.

… do you think we’ll make it?

I’m standing still – disillusioned and cynical, watching others chasing for the unmeasurables.

‘What do you want?’ you asked me. I don’t know what I want, but I know what I don’t want.

I’m letting it go – not because I don’t want it, but because I don’t know what I want. When do you know and would you ever know?

So I’m standing still.

It has been a couple of crazy weeks at work, apparent with my virtual hibernation. I have a few burning topics I’d love to write about, but for now, here’s just a quick post.

I have always liked MacDonald’s, after all, it tastes great on a micro-scale and according to Thomas Friedman, it prevents conflict on a macro-scale . Plus, for a global food chain its consistency in brand image is amazing, and look how far they have gone since they launched their first ad in the 1960s:

Ronald was originally blonde, had an EVM (aka Extra Value Meal) as headgear and a white cup for nose.

Ronald 2.0 – looking less like a scarecrow.

Friends who had traveled with me knows that I make it a point to visit MacDonald’s when I’m overseas, sort of to have a constant for comparison across foreign destinations. The pic above was taken during my holiday in Thailand, a sure visual proof of Mac’s extensive glocalisation efforts. Glocalisation takes on an even more interesting form in Japan, one of my favourite destinations. Here’s one of their adverts, where Ronald becomes Ronaldbella with much better make-up skills:

You can also find a male version of the ad as part of the campaign if you do a quick search on YouTube.

And lastly, also from Japan, a highly annoying viral ad which I find myself strangely addicted to. Watch it if you are willing to spare 5 mins of your youth.

この広告の「ララル」を話したマクドナールさんは、MSNのEmoticon になる。すごいね。。。

About 5 years ago when the term ‘Metrosexual’ gained in popularity, we saw an almost immediate race by marketeers to target this particular group of effeminate males, which was and may still is, an increasingly profitable segment especially in the personal care category. ‘Feminine’ products like moisturisers, haircare and even cosmetics, are marketed with a masculine twist, which imo can be epitomised by JPG’s range of ‘aesthetic enhancers’ for men.

Dark and mysterious, with captions kept to a minimum. The Japanese and Koreans may be exceptions but that's a topic for another day.

Of course, these are really old news – let’s bring in a new perspective. While I am not really sure if gender is an indeed an illusion, gender-specific products are definitely concepts constructed by society. Having seen efforts to market female products to men, can it work the same way then: marketing ‘masculine’ products – such as beer, stout, sports cars and cigarettes – with an additional element of femininity targeting the fairer sex?

Maybe not. Now beer can be really interesting as an example for illustration.

Given Datamonitor’s report on female beer consumption (here and here), it is not difficult to see that creating a group of female brand loyalists to your beer brand or establishing a new brand targeted at the females can potentially be a really profitable idea.

It’s really simple, right? Launch a new brand of beer with a ‘fruity’ taste in a shiny sleek pink packaging, followed by subsequent introductions of new beer variants with ‘feminine’ tweaks such as strawberry/cherry/chocolate-flavoured beer.

WRONG. Or rather, these efforts are not likely to lead to the intended female audience.

Creating a beer with ‘girly’ infusions is simply targeting females who, do not even drink beer in the first place, and who, would very much trade any flavoured beer with sweeter alcoholic alternatives.

Regular female beer drinkers, however, are most likely to already have a preferred brand and like the taste of the brand that they have been drinking. They know how their beer tastes like and there is no need for a entirely modified ‘feminine’ version (maybe with the exception of zero-calorie beer but can I also say that the fear of calories is hardly feminine anymore?). Additionally, the image of beer as a male-only product also serves to set boundaries for the competitive female who yearns to be treated as equals, thus increases the appeal of beer.

At this point, some may ask – Why waste efforts in targeting females then, when I can simply market to males and in turn appeal to the females simulataneously?

Not exactly wrong, however the potential increase in sales from brand switching has been neglected.

There are several research articles (e.g. here and here) that had suggested truth in the hypothesis that highly relevant ad messages eventually lead to purchase activation, either directly by correlations or indirectly under certain conditions or interacting factors such as brand awareness and brand choice. With this, and assuming with the broadcast of a highly relevant ad, one should expect considerable levels of brand switching behaviour given minimal presence of rival brands in the mediascape with the same target audience.

A word of caution though – this is probably more applicable if the beer brand is already established in the men’s market, which is undoubtedly still the main market for beer.

And while advertising to men still often focus on reemphasizing their masculinity, the ladies may be more than ready to embrace their inner male alterego. As for myself, I’d definitely love to try a beer positioned for ‘Girls who work like a man’, ‘Girls who play like a man’ and ‘Girls who drink like a man’. Bring it on!

Now that I have passed the phase of being a newbie where everybody is still very much helpful to you, I am starting to really understand how frustrating it is to be desperately chasing for work to be done by someone else, especially when one is in no position at all to confront an experienced person.

In circumstances like this, receiving an immediate follow-up note saying “Will take a look and get back to you” can definitely bring much assurance.

I once had a brief contact with this lady by a fluke in my uni days as I needed a favour from her and till today, I couldn’t help but feel respect for her and be really impressed with her level of responsiveness.

She replied to all my emails under 5 mins, and would call instantly if she was uncertain about anything. Even though half of the time she was too busy to deal with my requests immediately, she will always follow-up with a note to let me know that she understood my email and will get back to me asap.

It’s no rocket science why she is so young and so successful in her industry.

This is exactly what I have set out to do for myself, but it is getting really difficult and I’m breaking. And I’ve started to wonder – does she ever break too?

Someone at work told me that if I were to ever feel lost or overwhelmed with the amount of information I have, I should always turn to my basics.

Plodding along the steep learning curve of being constantly exposed to new analysis tools and getting bogged down by ‘important and neccessary’ administrative/procedural work, I realise being unafraid to turn back to basics is one of best advice I’ve received.

In less than 2 months into my new job, I was definitely super fortunate to be given enough freedom to try out actual analysis, get my hands wet and even had a chance to have a splash around in pools of data. It was very instinctive for me to hastily jump into the most impressive looking tool and trying to make sophisticated insights out of it.

Delving into a pile of almost-a-hundred slides and thousands of data points without any aim or vision in mind, you can probably guess where I ended up – a whole lot of wasted work hours and not anywhere close to a tight, consolidated research story. Instead, I winded up with one too many random points scattered across one too many charts which spells incoherence with a capital ‘I’ across the pres as a whole.

I looked back upon my past projects in uni and in past competitions, albeit not as much complexity and data volume, I highly doubt my inability to produce coherent insights. The additional knowledge I’ve so quickly acquired in the past month turn out to be a total distraction from the very basic skill I have picked up from my education – “What are your objectives?” is the question.

So basic, yet it did not occur to me, which is really baffling and really induces me to give myself a good mental bashing up.

So today, I will pen down the basics, just in case they don’t occur to me again.

1. Do a quick desk research to find out latest trends, news and background about the category and market in study.
2. Have a mental idea of what recommendations were previously given to client, if any, to provide at least some continuation.
3. Framed in the client’s perspective, pen down the most pressing issues to be addressed given current trends and last quarter’s insights. If still lost – try SWOT or Porter’s 5!
4. Turn to current data and get a general holistic overview and summarise big picture.
5. Finally – the most difficult – making sense and relevance of insights in the current timeframe with the issues to be addressed.

May not be the best way, but it will do for now. Perhaps one day when I look back at this post I may realise how naive I was, and that would be really fun!

“The ad achieved a 70% level of awareness in Asia.”

How can this statement be meaningful or helpful in evaluating the success of your campaign? I started thinking about research benchmarks this week. I’m not too sure if there’s a term that refers to that, but oh well.

Research benchmarks would refer to statistics/numbers that reflect the industry standards or the current situation of the marketplace. These benchmarks will help in the analysis of survey results in determining if, in this case, the 70% level of awareness is high enough.

With “level of awareness” as an example, such benchmarks could be in the form of:
1) Expected level of awareness set by the marketing team
2) Level of awareness achieved by previous campaign
3) Level of awareness achieved by direct competitor in the category
4) Average level of awareness achieved by competing ads in the region

Many concerns came flooding in my mind as to the accuracy of the benchmarks as well as the difficulties and costs involved in trying to estimate the industry averages. Firstly, how would you decide on which average to use as a benchmark? Should industry averages be time-specific? Region-specific? Target market-specific? Or product-specific? Secondly, how do you go about creating an industry estimate? For example, to determine the level of media awareness of a certain TVC, do you look at gross rating points or the survey results for “Have you ever seen this TV ad?”?

In this case, if conclusions drawn upon market research have to be substantiated with comparisons against industry standards to be meaningful, the market researcher in me feel jittery about realising how difficult it is to estimate the industry standard. In what other ways can market research be useful then?

Update: Had most of the questions answered.. thanks to all =)

Something caught my eye today, in fact, it demanded attention more than just from my eyes.

That something was an outdoor ad for Hugo Boss’ new fragrance for men.

You see, being a consumer in the attention economy, I have been numbed by the huge clutter of outdoor print ads where bold captions and images of overt sexuality no longer surprise me. The Hugo Boss Pure fragrance ad, however, made itself very difficult to miss, by teasing the shoppers with the actual scent lingering in the air. Note to sales promoters at fragrance beauty counters: Throw away those tiny perfume paper samples and just spray the scent in the air!

Such a subtle tactic, yet provoking such a powerful ambience. Which led me to rethink about outdoor advertising. One major advantage outdoor advertising has over almost all other media was its ability to create an atmosphere, an experience – which I would like to call it Ambience Advertising.

And to create a powerful experience through Ambience Advertising was to draw the audience through all 5 senses – provoking visuals, intoxicating scents, captivating music, temptations on the physical skin and wat the hell, why not give the audience something to eat as well to arouse their tastebuds! Hugo Boss’ Pure outdoor ad scored a fantastic 4 out of 5 for reaching out to the human senses – a powerful print image (as shown above), an arousing scent, the soft hypnotic echoes of the background music and the tickling of water trickling down the shopping mall’s urban wall. All of these were shoved right into the faces of the passing shoppers, inviting them to experience not only the aquatic power and elegance that Pure represents, but also the extravangance and avant-garde fashion that the brand Hugo Boss stands for.

If coffee and fragrances can be marketed as experiences, so can brands. If you can create a distinct ambience for your audience to experience what your brand stands for, why not?

Despite the Axe/Dove controversy about conflicting brand messages under the corporate Unilever brand, one of my favourite campaigns has always been Dove’s campaign for real beauty. I am sure consumers, Dove users or not, still remembers the classic Dove Evolution ad even though it was launched 2 years ago.

Imitation is the best form of flattery and in this case, Foster Farms, a poultry company in California that claims to offer fresh, locally grown chicken with no added hormones, steroids or artificial enhancers, uses a similar ad execution to send a message about society’s perception of natural chickens! There are many other parodies of the dove campaign but I think this is really witty, appropriate and absolutely in line with their usual way of communicating with the consumers using humour.

Here it is!

Another Foster Farms ad from 1996:

I may be a little late in this, however the idea is pretty new to me.

And no, I’m not refering to those parasitic advertisements that hijack Websites.

Parasite Advertising is coined by mleak from flickr, where corporate and brand logos are painted on live insects and before releasing them back into the wild.

Pepsi

Adidas

FedEx

Nike

I’m not too sure if I will inch in to take a closer look at any of those crawlies if they appear in my vicinity, let alone try to make out what brand it carries on its back.

It could deliver contextual marketing though, if cockroaches are branded with the Shieldtox logo…hm.