Google goes for fame; the apes return; and back-to-front Time Inc
Google wants to achieve brand fame – but funny how it doesn’t use online channels to do that, writes Dominic Mills. Plus: orangutans induce anger and a lesson in obfuscation from Time Inc.
As anyone who lives in the analogue world will have noticed last week, Google has been dominating the media – in ad terms anyway – with the launch of its new Pixel phone.
It has cover-wrapped Metro and the Evening Standard; bought extensive pages in other national press; taken slots in high-profile, high-audience TV shows; and booked billboards everywhere.
Amazon is doing much the same to promote its products, whether it’s for the Echo, Prime or Fire.
In old-school language, Google is mounting an advertising road block. Only a hermit or a digital zombie – whose eyes and attention are focused 100% on the screen – would be unaware of Google’s actions.
Ok, perhaps I exaggerate about the digital zombies: they surely would have seen some online ads for the Pixel. Who knows? In my online life in the last seven days I’ve seen some paid-for search (albeit only because I was looking) but absolutely no display. Others I asked reported the same.
For some in the old media world, this would be an opportunity to take a swipe at Google and its fellow GAFA peers. “Look,” they might say, “here’s this digital giant claiming it wants all your ad pounds, and yet even it uses print, TV and outdoor. They say one thing and do another.”
Here, for example, is the latest attempt by YouTube to wrestle away TV budgets. It’s impossible to say, but I imagine the TV budget for Pixel far, far, outweighs the YouTube budget.
[advert position=”left”]
Indeed, I know there is nothing that frustrates old-media (I use the term loosely) execs as much as the way advertisers so willingly swallow the Google and Facebook lines, allocating budget blindly and with scant regard for the objective measurement and analysis that they provide in spades and of which the ‘twins’ provide none.
But they can go round shouting about hypocrisy as much as they like. Advertisers will turn a deaf ear. Better, I think, to focus on two linked areas in order to shift thinking.
One is fame. Neither the Pixel nor the Amazon products will have universal target markets. All will favour some demographics of market segments. But hitting those is less important than simply being famous, all the more so for the launch of new-to-market products like Pixel, Fire or Echo.
There’s plenty of evidence and thinking to support the arguments for fame. The best-known is Professor Byron Sharp’s work on how brands grow. This is ably backed up by assiduous mining of the IPA Effectiveness Databank by Peter Field and Les Binet. If you want a shorter, punchier summary, then try reading Charles Vallance of VCCP.
And one way to kill off a brand’s chances of achieving fame is to use media that is susceptible to adblocking – i.e. digital. You simply can’t adblock a newsbrand coverwrap, a billboard or, to a lesser extent, TV.
So here’s the mantra agencies need to drum home to their clients – and which, incidentally, Google and Amazon have taken to heart: What do we want? Fame? When do we want fame? Now.
Oh no, the return of the apes
The attempted break-out by London Zoo gorilla Kumbuka has focused attention on our simian friends.
And guess what? They’re back in adland twice over, both times courtesy of a&eDDB.
First up, we see the return of SSE’s pet CGI orangutan Maya, who has a baby called, coincidentally, Pixel. Maya is not universally popular.
This time round Pixel – and I am not joking here – is used to flog a boiler rescue service. If the use of Maya was deeply manipulative, this plumbs new depths.
What’s her role in the ad? Well, it’s all about care. Maya cares for baby Pixel just like SSE cares for your boiler. Horrible. I feel the bile rising in my stomach as I type this.
Sticking with the apes, a&e has a press ad for some super-whizzo version of the VW Golf. The car stands on its own as the ape slinks away stage right. I think it’s meant to be an analogy with evolution.
I see it as a coded message linked to the emissions scandal. VW is admitting that the apes were running its emissions testing regime, and now, not before time, they’ve been banished.
World-class obfuscation from Time Inc
I initially ignored this headline from Time Inc: “InStyle UK set to relaunch as digital first brand“.
(And by the way, writing as a nit-picking hyphen fascist, if you’re going to use ‘digital first’ as a compound adjective, then it needs to be hyphenated. You’d think a publishing company would know that.)
After all, how many times have we heard publishers lamely repeat this, as though they were the first to discover it – topped perhaps only by “we’re going to be a mobile-first brand” – ? So why would I bother to read it?
Er, no. It turns out that, far from going digital-first, InStyle UK is going digital only. Big difference. Once you’ve chopped print, there’s only digital left – OK, apart from the odd live event, but they don’t really count.
I have no strong feelings either way about InStyle dropping print. If that’s what it needs to do, then fine.
But why obfuscate? I can only conclude that Time is somehow embarrassed by this, stuck deep in its heart to the now-outdated notion that to close down print is an admission of defeat, a bit like clinging to teddy.
It isn’t. It’s a recognition that the game has, and is moving, on. InStyle is by no means the first publishing brand to do this, and many more will follow. Forget the old; embrace the new.