Balancing Functionality with Creativity

I have always figured this to be a huge challenge!

A client brief traditionally moves from the Client Servicing/Account Manager to the Creative Head/Art Director and then onto the execution team in the Agencies.

The Account Managers are mostly hardcore networking and business development people, with good business sense and strong commercial acumen. But they are often a tad clueless about the creative aspects of their business proposals to the client.

On the other hand, once they brief their Creative head to handle the project, most of the "good business sense" is lost on the Creative genius , taking the brief. From hereon, starts a complex conceptualization process, which is an unpredictable mix of the commercial and creative needs of the customer.

I feel, often the end product is either highly commercial or highly creative but rarely an optimum mix.

And this is amply reiterated by the new "Most Effective Advert" category at Cannes. What it indirectly says is, that the most creatively wonderful adverts may be just that, "Creatively wonderful", but not really effective.

So getting the right balance is imperative for any collateral or advert to deliver a robust ROI , and everyone from the Brand Manager at the client end to the Account Manager, Conceptualizer, Visualizer and the entire creative team, need to be trained and sensitized to delivery the balance in full!

Look forward to A Brand New SOCIAL NETWORK: GOOGLE +

Google has finally unveiled Google+, the company’s top secret social layer that turns all of the search engine into one giant social network.

Facebook is huge today and it seemed pretty invincible till the near past. But not any more. It seems Google is all set to topple the proverbial apple cart!

Google+, which begins rolling out a very limited field test on Tuesday, is the culmination of a year-long project led by Vic Gundotra, Google’s senior vice president of social. The project, which has been delayed several times, constitutes Google’s answer to Facebook.

The search giant’s new social project will be omnipresent on its products, thanks to a complete redesign of the navigation bar. The familiar gray strip at the top of every Google page will turn black, and come with several new options for accessing your Google+ profile, viewing notifications and instantly sharing content. The notification system is similar to how Facebook handles notifications, complete with a red number that increases with each additional notice.

SEE ALSO: VIDEOS | REVIEW | POLL: What do you think of Google+?


Until Next time 

Am I just Me? Facebook dilemma

I am a Mom of teenage girls, I am also a CEO of a small Agency, I am a family binder, bringing all members together, I am a "still-perceived-as-young" classmate to many old friends and of-course, goes without saying I am ME. 


But Facebook considers it an integrity breach if I have more than one identity. Which means I cannot actually be the ME I want to be, in my different roles in life. So here is a gaping hole in the Social longevity of an individuals profile on Facebook. It is limiting and confusing.


If Facebook doesn't take note and make provisions , to allow me to effectively manage my various profiles and associated roles, soon someone else will. 


Even for people with relatively quiet lives, Facebook, with all its merits and qualities, still tends to be a place where , no matter how candid the intent, one ends up only projecting confused parts of ones overall personality.


So here is a new niche....any takers??

Neuro Marketing

Human brain is the most complex object in the known universe. Billions of neurons interconnect through trillions of synapses and constitute the densest information network in the natural world.


Marketing is all about appealing to the people, to their minds. Among those trillions of connections are the secrets to Crores of profit. What appeals to the mind? What triggers purchase behavior? How to connect with the sub conscious mind?.....so many questions...Unlock the secrets of the mind, and you possess the code to unlimited profits.

Increasingly, marketers are turning toward brain-imaging techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), in the quest for the Holy Grail "buy button." We call it Neuro-marketing. The brain, however, is reluctant to reveal its code.

A C Nielsen India recently forayed int Neuro Research to help marketeres. Dr. A. K. Pradeep, Chief Executive Officer of NeuroFocus shares an experiment of significance in this direction.

Every new product launch, ad campaign or package design takes significant research, time and resources to ensure success, but not every launch is successful. Suffice it to say that guess work plays a part to determine: Will it grab attention? Will it be memorable? Will it engage emotionally? And most importantly, will it drive purchase intent?

Taking the guess work out of the equation prior to launch is a marketer’s dream, which is now a definable reality with quantifiable results. Just recently the notion was put to the test to see if neuroscience could be used to help a magazine sell more copies. And the results were enlightening.

Clever Covers
In a publishing industry’s first, New Scientist Magazine approached NeuroFocus to test three different cover designs for an August issue of the magazine using neuromarketing. Applying high density arrays of electroencephalographic (EEG) sensors to capture test subjects’ subconscious responses to the three covers, NeuroFocus identified one as clearly superior in terms of its overall neurological effectiveness.

By monitoring brainwave activity across the full brain as subjects viewed the covers, and using eye-tracking technology to identify which specific parts of the cover they were looking at, NeuroFocus was able to measure their immediate, subconscious reaction to the designs.

While all three tested cover designs performed well in the research, the specific design that ranked highest in terms of overall neurological effectiveness scored exceptionally well in emotional engagement—one of NeuroFocus’ primary NeuroMetrics, the others being attention and memory retention (cover design 1 below was the winner). From those primary NeuroMetrics, NeuroFocus derives measures of purchase intent, novelty, and awareness.

 

The August issue of the magazine achieved strong U.K. newsstand sales, making it the second highest selling issue of the year. This represented a 12% increase over the same issue in the previous year—a much higher rate of return than expected for the normally quiet month of August.


A new stream of Marketing & Research, a game changer indeed..

Re-engineer the 4Ps of Marketing

The 4 Ps of Marketing have always been the framework of Marketing. Much effort has been made to redefine the 4 Ps and concepts such as "Probe", "People" etc. have been floated from time to time. But 4 Ps have stayed firm in their place.

But in the new Era, Marketing is essentially about CUSTOMERS. But the 4 Ps are about the Marketing Manager!! Thats a dichotomy now, isnt it?

Bob Lauterborn, James L Knight, Professor of Advertising at the University of North Carolina offers a very different critique of Marketings main framework. He suggests, that the focus needs to be shifted and the needle needs to rest on the CUSTOMER.

So folks, Reengineers your 4Ps into 4Cs.

CONSUMER Wants & Needs in place of Products

CONVENIENCE instead of Place

COST to the customer  instead of Price

COMMUNICATION instead of Promotion

Time to translate the Marketing Tools into Customer Experiences

Good old Marketing channels!!

Found this interesting article, which made me stop in my tracks and reconsider the changing scenario:

Google Inc., which helped popularize the idea of automated ad sales on the Web, has been quietly turning to an old-fashioned tool—phone calls—to compete in the hot market for local business advertising.

The Internet-search giant this year has hired several hundred sales representatives to call U.S. businesses such as spas, restaurants and hotels to promote new advertising initiatives, people familiar with the matter said. The effort includes an office in Tempe, Ariz., with around 100 sales representatives, one of these people said.

This clearly points to the need to integrate the New Media options effectively with what we now lovingly call "The Traditional media". After all , Google is pretty much our inspiration to steadily turn digital, and if they cannot ignore traditional methods of Marketing, its a lesson for our Brand Managers!

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