Excuse the crappy photo but it did occur to me that the ANZ Bank may have some security concerns about customers taking photos of their teller area. So I was quick.

The photo is quite flattering compared to the actual poster in which Tony Barber looks old and unwell though with good teeth. I know that’s ageist; perhaps the ANZ is targeting older customers who yearn for the days of ‘Great Temptation’. There may be a financial theme there.

The poster trumpets ‘Australia’s most awarded bank’. I’m not sure how they work that out; it doesn’t say over what period of time and it doesn’t say which awards.

Now if it were true, how should the bank promote such a thing? Well. They’ve gone for an ageing quiz show host nursing a trophy engraved with, “Australia’s Most Awarded Bank”.

Where did they get this trophy? I’m thinking it didn’t come from an awards night where they tally up all the results then present the “Australia’s Most Awarded Bank Trophy” at the end. I’m thinking they made it up. Tell me I’m wrong, ANZ. You’ve fabricated a trophy for the purposes of visually representing an unsubstantiated claim. Did you engrave it yourself or just Photoshop it?

If you’ve won any awards, it’s not for ethical advertising. It’s probably for treating your customers like idiots.

Here’s a brilliant television commercial.

Except it’s not on television. It’s a T-Mobile ad showing exclusively on the Internet – 13 million views so far. This is not a small scale viral campaign; it’s a big-budget commercial that will not air on TV. Well actually, it WILL air on TV but as editorial. It’ll be shown on current affairs programmes and panel shows. Won’t cost the advertiser a red cent.

And the television industry should be shaking in their boots. Since the bears were bad, the coolest ads were on TV. The effect of that was to drag up the perceived cool of the medium; the best ads were on TV. But now, for the first time since the 1950s, the coolest ads air on the internet.

Why is this happening? Partly for these reasons: it’s free to advertise, longer ads, less censorship, and the capacity for interactivity, but more because the viewers are responding better to that media. They have invested effort in finding it. They have something at stake.

I recently heard Duane Varan at XMediaLab Perth talking about some of his research.

In an interactive environment, people presented with a difficult choice (choose between watching a beer ad, a cola ad or a niteclub ad) are more invested in their decision and subsequently are more positively disposed towards the ad. It’s the same on the Internet; I’ve found it because I’m clever or I have wonderful contacts. That makes me more receptive to the message. The ads work better on the Internet than they do on TV.

The TV industry is losing ad revenue at the top end of the market. That’s a dangerous trend, unlikely to be reversed. The sooner they get their converged asses together, the better.

I only get it for the ads.

They’re shiny and interactive. Multi-page video. Some ads have a Download App button at the bottom of the screen. Where the advertiser has bothered, the ad format is compelling and it’s more accessible than a web page; less mediated, more touchable. If I were a media company I’d be pricing interactive advertising cheaply; better ads = better publications (if that’s the word).

News Corp’s iPad app, The Daily, is 99c a week/$40 a year. It seems to have remedied a number of the shortcomings of The Australian’s effort; in particular the ability to share articles. The Australian has intrusive old-style display ads. Tacky in comparison but at least it’s Australian tacky.

Editorially, The Daily is no great shakes. Very MOR; a bit like Time Magazine but slightly dumbed down and sexed-up. Articles are very short; it’s not a serious read. An 80 page A5 colour newspaper; I don’t think there’s any breakthrough thinking.

The Daily’s interface is very slick but I sense the newspapers are all struggling with the contest between looking like a serious print publication and working the medium to maximum advantage. Flipboard is an interesting app in this regard.

There’s progress in navigation. The shuffle feature is interesting though too slow. The Carousel is pretty but you get lost easily. My guess is that whoever gets the navigation right wins.

The Daily innovates in the game space but it’s limited. Why they don’t work the game thing is beyond me. Yeah, I know you do Sudoku and Crosswords. What else you got?

AppWatch? Yes, that’s relevant for all iPad users. And a Download It Now button at the foot of every review.

But the ads are the highlight.

In their present form I don’t think these apps are saviours of the newspaper business. When I take my iPad to a cafe it’s loaded with four or five different newspaper apps, some magazine subscriptions, two or three e-books I’m reading, I usually have an online game on the go, I have email, an RSS reader, I browse the web and I do all that social media crap (follow me on Twitter; @brettreasure). So my time spent reading the newspaper app is a fraction of the time I’d spend if I had a printed newspaper in front of me.

There are many competitors out there and lots of free news on the web. There’ll be colossal churn in the subscriptions. Nonetheless, The Daily is an improvement on The Australian and old media are taking the new medium seriously.

Here’s a clever ad for the SBS movie channel.

Unfortunately, it appeared in a brochure promoting the French Film Festival in Perth. You’d have to assume that people who’ve sought out that publication are already reasonably positively disposed to foreign films.

The ‘aren’t you sick of Hollywood films’ angle should be directed at people in mainstream media, not people who’ve already drunk the Kool Aid.

Good creative idea. Not that well executed. Poor media buying and strategy.

I don’t get it. Why aren’t newspapers more excited about QR codes?

These are codes you can scan with a smart phone to directly access a web page. Within a couple of years over 50% of all phones will have this ability. The following video explains it better than I can; you need to watch 2 mins 30 to get the full force of it:

The contrast between static and dynamic content is unavoidable.

Now here’s a whole medium (video) that newspapers ceded to a competitor (television) after WWII in America and in Australia in the late 1950s. Billions of dollars in ad revenue departed print in search of more compelling advertising. But HOLD THE PHONE.

Smart phones now return the video advantage to print because you can scan a newspaper ad (for example) to access the advertiser’s video content. You don’t have to be sitting in your lounge room; you can be at the breakfast table or a coffee shop or an office desk. And print is the ONLY MEDIUM that can offer this. So Australian newspaper companies are right on to this. Right? Right?

In 2009, HBF moved their advertising to hot shop Meerkats. This year the agency killed the pig at the PADC Awards, mostly due to some terrific TV and radio work for HBF.

Smart cookies. But I drove past their prosaic outdoor campaign today and wondered why they didn’t add a little whimsical touch. My version underneath.

Have a look at this official promotional video for Western Australia and then we’ll talk. When I say ‘talk’ I mean ‘rant’.

Tourism marketing in Western Australia is famously abysmal. Look critically at this from the viewpoint of international tourism marketing. What is the positioning of Western Australia as a tourism product? What is it that distinguishes Western Australia from any other tourism destination in the world? Come on; I’m waiting!

It’s a product that doesn’t know what it is. The ad is a case study in poor strategic thinking.

Does the tourism authority think we the only place in the world with beaches and waterways? The only thing to be said in favour of Perth beaches is that they are quaint, reflecting the determination of generations to resist ANY tourism development of ANY sort on even ONE of them. Welcome to 1960.

Why do we have to re-assure people that there are designer clothing shops in Perth? Are we competing with Paris?

Who is the target market for this ad? If it is young people, are they going to fly 24 hours on a plane to drink beer in the Ocean Beach Hotel? “Well honey; it’s Carnivale in Rio or a beer in a pub in Perth. Toss a coin.”

If ‘relaxed lifestyle’ is all we have going for us; NEWSFLASH; that’s an immigration strategy, not a tourism strategy.

If local colour is what we’re selling, for God’s sake, don’t fill up the ad with bland-looking models acting badly. Use REAL people who look interesting. Let’s hear some Australian accents! Americans in particular find Australian accents very engaging; instead we serenade them with insipid guitar music.

Ironically, they’re using Russell Morris’s ‘The Real Thing’ as the sound track and they’ve completely emasculated the REAL version and turned it into MUZAC. The original is a fabulous arrangement which could be the basis for a very strong campaign and HOLD THE PHONE they’ve removed the emotional underpinning of the song; the line that says: “there’s a meaning there for me”. *Bangs head against desk*.

Now what is the only thing in this ad which will be remembered by international viewers? Close your eyes for a minute and pretend you’re not Australian. What stood out?

Kangaroos. The reason they keep putting kangaroos into ads for Australia is that research shows people love them. So, knowing that, do we create wildlife corridors close to the city and promote ourselves as the wild west of Australia? Do we invite tourists onto golf courses where kangaroos hang out? If Kings Park were populated with kangaroos and you could take your pet kangaroo for a hop along the beach, which city in Australia would Oprah be visiting?

Tourism marketing (like just about all marketing) is PRODUCT and BRANDING and not much else. We have neither product nor branding at present. Tourism Australia is absolutely correct to direct Oprah to Sydney, Melbourne and the Great Barrier Reef. They’re brands and Perth is not. How much do you want to bet Oprah will nurse a joey on camera?

Here’s a song about Perth.

Maybe it’s just me. I find myself constantly between the amusing and the effective. Here’s a classic case. Tasked with the job of creating an election leaflet for my candidacy in the Federal Election, I couldn’t resist a dig at the predictability of the election leaflet: Picture of candidate. Vote 1. Australian flag if it’s for the Libs.

I’m confident the ad will get more cut-through than the average flyer. It’s more likely to be read. The risk is that people will decide the Sex Party aren’t taking things SERIOUSLY. It’s quite a big risk because the Party is already ‘out there’ by virtue of its name and platform.

On the other hand, it’s not a style of advertising the competition can use because it’s very difficult to get anything satirical through a committee. They just take themselves too seriously. The Sex Party doesn’t like committees because they remind people of things other than sex.

Cheeky, irreverent advertising doesn’t always work. Fuck it. Life’s short.

I’ve just authored three ads for the Australian Sex Party. Click the photo to see the full ad or the text links below the photo for versions II and III.

What to say to your Labor mates

What to say to your hippie friends

Advertising should fit the personality of the brand and the Australian Sex Party doesn’t take itself quite as seriously as the established parties. Not expecting the other parties to use humour all that much so it stakes out territory and appeals to those who find the adversarial thing a bit of a drone.

In those millions of pre-election conversations about to occur in workplaces and homes, very few people will put their hand up and say “I’m voting Sex Party”. We’re reminding people here that nobody sees who they vote for in the final analysis.

We’re also doing two other things in the ad; visually legitimising a vote for the party by showing a Sex Party vote on a ballot paper and we’re explaining that socially enlightened people are under-represented in parliament. If parliament is to represent average Australian values, we need to offset the current pre-dominance of religious, socially conservative politicians. Let’s shake things up a bit :p

A brief overview of perhaps the least understood marketing concept: positioning. It’s what you need to get clear on before you start advertising.

Imagine you’re a wealthy business person and your birthday party is coming up. You’ve decided to book a comedian to perform for your friends and you can afford any performer in the world. Who do you choose? Maybe you come up with a short-list of people you think are equally funny: Billy Connolly, Woody Allen, Tina Fey and your next door neighbour, Tim, who does amateur stand-up.

I put it to you that you have a clear mental picture of where each of these people sit in the comedy landscape.

Who would you choose if your friends were mostly Jewish psychologists? Who would you choose if they were mostly people working in politics? If they were mostly blue collar workers? Each performer occupies particular mental territory in your comedic imagination. That territory is their positioning. Connolly is positioned strongly as ‘outrageous’ and ‘irreverent’; Allen ranks for ‘sophisticated’, Fey ranks for ‘sex appeal’ and ‘current affairs’.

Probably you’re unlikely to choose Tim because you recognise that in the minds of the audience he doesn’t have a profile. He hasn’t established a positioning in the market. He might be as funny as the rest, but for the important attributes of ‘famous’ or ‘credible’, he doesn’t rank.

We build up these mental pictures of where people sit in relation to everyone else – different people stand out in different areas.

Same applies to business positionings. What marketers try to do is mark out mental territory and make that territory as proprietary as possible. Because if our positioning is powerfully clear, it will jump into the mind of the consumer easily.

Some positionings are more valuable than others. A surgeon would rather be positioned highly on ‘technical expertise’ than ‘lives close by’. So choose a positioning that is meaningful to your target market.

Pick the absolute most concise positioning. If you are trying to position your widget as ‘convenient’, ‘value-for-money’ and ‘long-lasting’ you’re going to confuse the market. Be single-minded. You don’t have a $50 million budget. (And even if you did…)

In all cases we’re trying to latch onto territory that we can own. Territory that becomes identified with your brand and no-one else’s. It’s hard to own the positioning ‘quality’ if everyone in your industry says they are the best quality. And they probably do. Choose something that you can own and take into account your budget and your competitors’ budgets. You might want to own ‘convenient takeaway’ but you probably can’t match McDonalds’ budget.

Bind the positioning to your brand name so that when customers think of that positioning, they think of your brand. If you are the top-of-mind product you are likely to get the first phone call the customer makes.

Can you successfully communicate that positioning in your advertising? If you’re saying ‘better quality finish’ than your competitors’ furniture, you’d better make sure the finish looks better in your photography than theirs.

Finally, your positioning should reflect who you are as a business. If your advertising says ‘reliable’ and the customer experience is not that, you’re in trouble. If their experience with you reinforces what you’re promising, you’re unusual. People will talk about you. Otherwise you’re just another bullshit artist. I mean advertiser.

Summary
1. Choose a positioning that is majorly meaningful to your target market.
2. Make it incredibly concise. One idea. Three words. That kind of concise.
3. Make sure you can own the positioning, given your competition, your budget and your advertising message.
4. Make sure your positioning is a reflection of the experience you actually deliver.