Marketing Archives
The messed-up world of hiring advertising agencies.
I just got done reading The Big Short, which is the third book in my personal series of trying to wrap my head around how we managed to so fundamentally screw ourselves over (Gillian Tett's Fool's Gold and Andrew Ross Sorkin's Too Big to Fail). Out of these three books I've taken away two important lessons: First, when evaluating risk, make sure you understand the worst-case-scenario and take it into account and second, incentives explain almost everything.
Of course neither of those ideas are terribly new, and some folks would argue agains the second with behavioral economics (though I don't actually think they'd argue that incentives explain almost everything, but rather that often we just don't understand how people are going to react to those incentives).
But I don't really want to talk about finance, rather I was left thinking about the incentive structure in my own industry: Marketing. Like any industry you have two sides: Buyers (brands that are looking to advertise) and sellers (agencies that are looking to provide their services to brands for a fee). The buyer, theoretically, is looking for something simple: To sell more of whatever it is they sell. This, as with most explanations, is over-simplified, as there could be any number of potential motives for choosing to advertise, but at the end of the day almost all of them eventually get back to selling more stuff.
The sellers price, in a perfect market, would reflect the potential quality of the product (piece of communication) they can deliver against the buyers objective. This leads to two major issues. First, there is no real way for agencies (or the marketers that pay them) to understand the effectiveness of their own campaigns, which leads directly to the second problem, that opacity in effectiveness creates a pretty serious market inefficiency: One side having a whole lot more information than the other (which leads to exploitation).
Eventually that lop-sided information flow leads to an over-emphasis on brand rather than actual ability to deliver results, which gets me to the whole point of this little diatribe: Agencies are more incentivized to build their own brands rather than that of their customers. Sure there are safeguards against this, mainly long-term agreements that agencies covet. But the problem is that even those "long-term" relationships tend to last at most two-or-three years. While there are certainly a few long-term relationships around the business, the vast majority of work being done these days is done with the express understanding the whoever's doing it is unlikely to be doing it three years from now.
What's funny is that this is the exact inefficiency that advertisers so covet, making it all the more surprising they wouldn't recognize the same issue when it's happening to them. By that I mean, in a category (say toothpaste) where the vast majority of the public has no understanding of how effective one product is compared to another they come to rely on brands (this is pretty much the premise of marketing). Ultimately people end up making their decisions based on a bunch of factors that speak to just about everything but whether it will do the job it says it will do.
So I guess what I'm wondering is whether the industry recognizes this? I know everyone in the agency world goes through phases where they wonder whether any of the work they do really has any purpose, but how come there aren't more folks on the buyer-side (clients) who are demanding that the incentive structure change to better reflect (and measure) effectiveness. I have to assume it has to do with a general industry belief that we'll never get there, but there are lots of places on the way to there that are further along then nowhere.
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Tags: advertising, agencies, economics, incentives, marketing
Just a few thoughts on the hubbub around some of the big rebrandings of late.
The Tropicana and Pepsi rebranding has created lots of buzz around the old blogosphere, mostly with people hating on the new logos and accompanying materials. As I have both read and had conversations about both over the last few days, I thought maybe it was worth getting all my thoughts down here.
To start, I mostly think debating logos is a dumb exercise. I mean, it's fine, but logos and brands do not exist in a vacuum. No one is seeing the Pepsi logo without any other context (they are in a store, reading about it in a newspaper, seeing it on a billboard, etc.). It's never ONLY about the logo.1
So why, then, is there so much hubbub around them? Well, I've got a few thoughts on that as well (some hypotheses and others from actually working with clients on logos). First off, I think the biggest reason companies rebrand themselves is that they actually want to prove something to themselves. They, as a company, are feeling like they've fallen out of touch and a rebranding is seen as just the solution to rally the troops and get them feeling like the company is really committed to the change they're all hoping for. Honestly, does anyone really think that consumers are walking away from the new Pepsi brand and advertising coming out of it that Pepsi all of a sudden is anything more than sugar water? (Doubtful.)
What's more, the hubbub is pushed along by the large media buys and PR pushes that happen in parallel (after all, what's a rebranding that no one knows about?) All of a sudden the new logo is in your face all the time and people start to comment on it. Do I think any of this has any real impact on the sales of the product? Not really. I mean, I think blanketing the world with advertising does, of course, but whether someone likes your logo or not doesn't.
At the end of the day I think the biggest thing a logo does is help consumers categorize your brand/product. Is it cheap or expensive? Is it trustworthy or not? Of all the examples in Brand New's worst logos of 2008 the one that sticks out the most is WGN's redesign. To me at least, that logo looks like something that comes from a half-assed television network. Can you imagine NBC or CBS ever having a logo that looked that amateur? No. The logo informs your opinion of the brand (at least if you have no other information about it). Do I think Xerox's redesign actually changes much? Not really. Most of the world already has a perception of Xerox and that won't change a great deal from a little bit of extra round on the edges.
Finally, I leave you with a point I made about the Tropicana redesign. In rebranding themselves they managed to make their packaging look more generic. While the design community freaks their collective shit about this, it may be a great thing for the brand with the economy the way it is. Think about it: If people pick it up, thinking it's the store brand, and then get to the front of the store, they're pretty likely to buy it. Who knows if this will work or not, but the point is that you can't disconnect the business from the design. After all, nobody would ever approve the cost of rebranding (think about all the stuff that needs replacing) if you don't think there's going to be some return on your investment.
1 Just to give a quick anecdote, I had a bunch of people ask me to add a logo for their either yet-to-be-formed or relatively obscure company to Brand Tags. My answer was always no for a simple reason: Brand Tags is measuring brand perception, people need to know about you to have a perception. If they are just looking at some logo they've never seen before their honest reaction would be to blow it off because they've never seen it before (the majority) or be curious to find more (the minority). Of course, in a context like Brand Tags it would actually be a different option, people would comment on some portion of the logo. They'd say something about the color, the shape or even whether they liked it or not. The thing is: This is completely useless information. No consumer will ever be asked to judge a logo. That just doesn't happen.
Update (2/11/09): In response to a comment (and to clear it up), I wanted to add this: "I was definitely not implying design doesn't matter (or even that branding doesn't matter). Just that you can't look at either in a vacuum."
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Just a bit of a brain dump on the topic.
It might be selective, but it seems to me like online display advertising is a hot topic at the moment. I've got a whole big post in my head about the whole thing, but instead of writing it now I'm just going to throw a few interesting points from other folks your way.
First off, Brian Morrissey writes: "Advertisers, I think, are questioning the entire notion of buying bits of real estate on the periphery of content. It's just not that enticing - and with good reason. Despite all the studies showing banner ads increase search conversions and do some to lift brand metrics, consumers don't seem to care."
I think Brian is right on here. The economy is a good excuse for what's happening, but it's not the root cause. Who wants to live on the periphery of content when you can make yourself part of it? Back in November I wrote, "Maybe the answer is that advertisers need more variations on their creative. What I mean is, I think part of the banner blindness problem (and this is all speculation without any data behind it so take it with a grain of salt) is that we're all trained to recognize when something doesn't belong and, in the case of the web, to ignore it. Banners tend to be a different color, font and they move all around, add in the fact that they sit along the edges and they're just too easy to quickly spot and dismiss. But once in awhile someone like Apple comes along and does some fancy custom unit where they pay attention to everything including getting the NYTimes.com typeface right. That kind of stuff must make more of an impact than your run of the mill banner, no matter how cool it might be. Right?"
So that's one thing agencies can do, but Brian also ends the post with a good point from Harvard Business about publishers: They "need to think more like marketers and, like it or not, mesh advertising with their content." Precisely.
Okay, onto the next point, this one from Terry Heaton, "There's no incentive to change. When your life is based on broadcast and print CPMs, the only ad model you see is, well, CPMs." This is on both sides of the coin (both publisher and agency). Things are still all about scale (even more than ever now that media agencies are increasingly moving away from models based on taking a cut of spend). I've said it once and I'll say it again, the web works best when it's not used as a scale medium. Sure, it works sometimes (Barbarian Group is responsible for one of the more famous successes), but the more consistent and long term solution is to build great experiences for a very specific group of people, plain and simple (and scalable, actually, just not scalable in the same way a television buy is). [As a side note, scale is a problematic word since it's thrown around as a hard number (does it scale?) but has very different meanings to everyone. For whatever that's worth.]
Speaking of scale, there's a flip side to this situation. In January Fred Wilson wrote about super cheap CPMs. His prediction for 2009 was that "display advertising will get so cheap and the tools to target it will get so good that it will be shown that it can outperform search." It's an interesting one. When the media space gets cheap enough, it doesn't really matter what the click-through rate or anything else is. That's why spam works after all (some incredibly small fraction of those spammed has to actually act on it for the ROI to work out). Of course this kind of flies in the face of everything I said before, but hey, who's counting? The issue of course with super low CPMs is that it's hard to make a lot of money off them if you're a publisher (well that and really crappy banner ads hurt your brand as a publisher). But anyway, it's a different way of thinking about online advertising. (And honestly, the biggest thing that needs to happen is we need to stop thinking of it as advertising altogether. It's so different than print and television. But again, I am not here to talk about semantics.)
And yes, I understand that there is more to online display than click-throughs. But again, the branding stuff requires people noticing your creative, which gets me back to my earlier point about doing stuff that looks more like it belongs on the page.
I think that's pretty much it for now. Sorry about the random nature of this post, just had a bunch of different stuff I wanted to get out there.
For good measure here are two more things to read on the topic: One from Adweek.com and the other my friend Clay explainig the similarities between birth control and online advertising.
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There's a lot of chatter out there, how do you know when to listen and when not to?
This one's been germinating for awhile now. About a month ago I was having drinks with my friend Matt and he made a point I hadn't heard before about the election: "Sarah Palin's handlers let the chatter get to them." Basically what he was saying is that if they had really been good at their jobs they never would have let her go on with Katie Couric and that the only reason they did is because everyone (media talking heads, DC folks) was saying that you can't have a VP candidate that doesn't do any interviews. But who says so? Who makes the rules?
Now I don't know whether I agree with the hypothesis or not, but I think it nicely frames an issue which seems to be coming up more and more lately (thought its really not new). In some ways its related to Alan's Nascar Blindness (the ad industry's tendency to miss out on that which they can't see) but in the opposite direction. This is actually about paying too much attention to the chatter and losing site of your goals. In the case of Sarah Palin, it seems safe to say that her role was to sure up the base of the party (I don't even think that's a controversial statement at this point). So if that's the case, what do you get out of putting her on with Katie Couric other than the potential for harm?
Take another example, those Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld Microsoft ads (video for those that missed it). Immediately, online folks started ripping at the flesh of Microsoft and their agency, Crispin Porter + Bogusky. (The most ridiculous thing I read was from Information Week and suggested "The effectiveness of brand-driven advertising died about the same time Seinfeld hit syndication." That's so dumb I'm not even going to bother with it.) Now, according to Gizmodo, "there's even more of an indication now that Microsoft aggressively cut the Gates/Seinfeld spot production short, canceling the shoot for a fourth spot just three days into production. The spots were intended to be part of a running series with up to 12 planned spots conceptualized. Now it's unclear whether or not we'll even see the last spot air, let alone Seinfeld come back for a reprisal."
But why? It couldn't have been because the ads didn't get attention: As AdAge pointed out, the Seinfeld/Gates ads were getting 14x as many views per day as the new "I'm a PC" spots. What's more, that same article points out that much of this came from all the chatter online and "The Seinfeld/Gates ads had more adjectives in them, while comments in PC ads had more nouns, suggesting a more emotional response to Seinfeld/Gates ads." Now my argument from the start is that the goal of Microsoft advertising right now is to reposition/humanize the company. From my original Seinfeld/Gates post:
Anyway, let me get to my point. I think there are a lot of problems at Microsoft, most of which can't be solved with advertising. For one, it won't solve the fact they put out a dud in Vista is something they're not going to fix with an ad campaign (OS 9 ring a bell??). However, what it can start to do is make people think about Microsoft in a slightly different way. It starts to soften the company around the edges. As I wrote in an IM to Alan earlier today, you can't just jump from super-nerd (Microsoft's perception) to cool guy (Apple) without at first rolling up your sleeves. The ad humanizes Microsoft by making one of the world's richest men seem like an every day guy.
It's precisely those emotional comments that the ads should have been aimed for and seemed to have succeeded at. So why did they drop it? Well, my theory is that it's because a bunch of people with blogs and such started talking about how they didn't like/didin't get the ads. Lots of people were saying that Microsoft needed to respond and listen to what the consumer was saying, but I call bullshit. In a quote for PRWeek I explained, "Other than the Super Bowl, how often do people talk about ads? Microsoft should let this play out. I think there are times to listen to everyone and there are times not to listen to everyone... the people talking about this may not be the audience for this ad. They may not be talking to early adopters." And I stand by that.
In the end I guess my point is that there are times to listen and act upon what you've heard and times to listen and respectfully ignore the feedback. As a small example, I've been asked a ton of times to add logos to brand tags for companies that have just started/don't exist yet. Every time I've declined because I've explained that the site is about measuring brand perception and that if you don't exist yet, you don't have a brand perception. What these people want is for consumers to give them feedback on their logos and I basically just think that's useless. What are people going to tell you? That your logo is too blue? The reality of the situation is that logos, like brands, don't exist in vacuums and people's feedback on your logo without holding your product or seeing it on the shelf is pretty much 100 percent useless (unless you're missing some giant thing like you're selling mens deodorant and your logo is pink with flowers, but some basic testing/a decent design firm should clear that up).
Commercials are different that products. If your product is hurting someone you've got to do something about it immediately, if your commercial is offending their sensibilities think carefully whether anything really needs to be done. Brands need to ask themselves, is this the a vocal minority speaking or are they actually a reflection of our target?
Sometimes too much listening is a bad thing.
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Some thoughts from a panel on digital marketing strategy.
It's been awhile since I had an explicitly marketing post, so I figured I'd write a little about what I talked about yesterday at the Boards Summit on a panel called "Spread the Good Word". While the panels' description was kind of odd ("The Big Idea? All well and good, but unless you get it out it there to consumers, it's worthless. New media platforms, fragmented outlets and ADD consumers mean that digital strategy is taking an increasingly crucial place in agency thinking. Hear from some of the digital world's top strategists as they discuss how to get your creative to go global.") it ended up being a lively discussion and a good old time.
There were a few specific things that I figured I'd bring up here, since you'd probably all enjoy them (some are more interesting than others, and it's all from memory as I couldn't really take notes).
- Beforehand Faris and I were joking around about how we would answer "what is a big idea?" in case it came up. The answers we came up with were: The internet, people talking to other people and moving images. Folks seem to be really into all those things at the moment. While we were kidding, it did strike me that this was a damn good answer.
- Success requires starting out by understanding what a client wants to accomplish. Without that it's really hard to judge your ideas. (This is something I talk about a lot at work. It's really important to dig in and understand the context of the assignment before digging in.)
- Justin talked quite a bit about the need for marketing to be additive, which I think it quite a nice way of describing things. This is something we talk about a lot at The Barbarian Group (and something I brought up on the panel) but basically the internet is the place we all live these days (well all of us geeks anyway). People are passionate about the internet in a way they were never passionate about television (people were passionate about television shows). If you are passionate about the web you don't want to junk it up with a bunch of crap in the same way that you wouldn't throw spaghetti on your floor at home (I've used this analogy to describe why I think people clean up Wikipedia entries as well). Anyway, thinking of how you can be additive to the web is a great way to put it.
- On that topic, I specifically think additive is a better word than utility. Unfortunately, utility has come to mean something very specific for people (think Swiss Army Knife) despite the fact that it's an economic term meaning the relative satisfaction from consumption of goods.
- Faris talked (and I might be slightly butchering) about how television is all about scarcity and therefore the advertising is what allows you to receive your entertainment without paying for it. The internet, on the other hand, is digital and has an unlimited spectrum, therefore the traditional value exchange where attention is exchanged for content doesn't apply quite as cleanly. What's interesting to me is that while the web is infinite, any specific site is limited by what it can create (unless, of course, it is aggregating other content). The reality of the situation for the New York Times or other large media sites, is that what they've done online for the past 10 years is not really any different than what they've done offline. While the actual publishing/printing is now free, the cost of producing content is costly and scarce. That is, until they start to tap into their audience/the rest of the web. This is happening on a limited basis now with some citizen journalism sites and comments on mainstream media sites, but is interesting to consider (not that I think the current model works particularly well). (Wow, I went off track there ... sorry.)
- The internet is not a channel. The internet is a series of channels. What's more, Facebook is not a channel. When a client asks, "should we be on Facebook?" at this point it's a bit asking like, "should we be on the internet?" in that there are hundreds of ways to "be on Facebook" ranging from free to expensive and some may make more sense than others.
That's what I can remember for now. I guess I mostly remember what I talked about. Maybe Faris and Hashem can fill in a bit more.
Update (10/25/08): Another thing I've been thinking a lot about and mentioned on the panel is the idea that the web is an awesome giant social experiment and that we need to stop worrying about whether we like things or not and start thinking about why it's interesting. Twitter, I think, is a great example of this. Whether or not you like the service, you have to be fascinated by the behavior that comes out of it, right?
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Just some thoughts on the new Microsoft ad campaign.
So a whole lot of people around Twitter and blogs seem to feel quite strongly about this new Microsoft spot starring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates. After Twittering, "I thought the Seinfeld/Bill Gates Microsoft ad was kind of funny ... Am I really the only one on the planet that feels that way?" I got responses like "did nothing for me. more importantly, what did it do for Microsoft?" (that's almost perfectly representative of all but one response). So rather than trying to respond one-hundred-and-some-odd characters, I figured I'd write up a few thoughts.
First off, judging advertising, especially without any eye to the effect of the campaign on the business, is purely subjective. Like any taste, take my opinions with a grain of salt. I found it kind of amusing. I mean, the richest (or second richest or third richest, whatever he is now), making fun of himself in a commercial is funny to me.
With that said, though, I'd point to the strategic impetus for the spot. Microsoft doesn't need to build a brand, they need to rebuild one. There's no awareness problems with Microsoft, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone in the United States who hasn't heard of the company, or at least their most popular product: Windows. That moves this advertising into a new realm: Repositioning.
What are they repositioning themselves from? Well, funny you should ask, I just happened to have built a little tool that attempts to answer just that question. Here are Microsoft's top ten brand tags: microsoft, crap, computer, shit, crash, vista, bill gates, monopoly, pc and sucks. Now of course, these tags are a bit biased, as brand tags skews a little more geek (though not much) than the general public. But anyway, let's assume they're pretty accurate. We can throw out "microsoft", as that doesn't mean much (you could argue something about ubiquity I guess). Then there's the negative adjectives: crap, shit, crash and sucks (I'll leave monopoly out of that for the moment, since it's also a fact). Finally you've got some associations, specifically "vista" and "bill gates" (very interesting that Windows didn't make the top). Interestingly enough, for those who took less than 5 seconds to come up with their tag, the three most popular are computers, evil and windows (in alphabetical order).
Anyway, let me get to my point. I think there are a lot of problems at Microsoft, most of which can't be solved with advertising. For one, it won't solve the fact they put out a dud in Vista is something they're not going to fix with an ad campaign (OS 9 ring a bell??). However, what it can start to do is make people think about Microsoft in a slightly different way. It starts to soften the company around the edges. As I wrote in an IM to Alan earlier today, you can't just jump from super-nerd (Microsoft's perception) to cool guy (Apple) without at first rolling up your sleeves. The ad humanizes Microsoft by making one of the world's richest men seem like an every day guy.
If nothing else, though, all this debate has meant nothing but good things for Microsoft. People are arguing about their ads instead of talking about how much Vista sucks.
Also, not for nothing, but I find it very amusing that a bunch of advertising pundits who are always arguing for clients to take their word for it and not include all that messaging about this and that are complaining that this ad hasn't explained enough. But hey.
Anyway, this is all very much my opinion. Feel free to leave yours. Also, I don't plan on doing this very often.
Also, if this isn't interesting at all, feel free to ignore it. I kind of got more and more bored of writing it as I went along and might have half-assed it a bit towards the end. My apologies.
Update (9/5/08): Really smart post on the ad by Gartner's Andrew Frank (via David Card). He nails it with this: "Here's something I picked up a long time ago at an ad agency that worked for another large technology company: high-tech branding is not about end users or IT decision-makers, it's about the shareholders. And it's not about changing their minds about Microsoft's products, it's about changing their hearts and their instincts about what kind of company Microsoft is and where they're headed (and hence what kind of investment they are)."
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They are graduating so let's think about them
It's time to think about young people and what they mean again. So says the media, from what I gather. However, I'm noticing a change in tone around this subject this year that has got me thinking.
Where a story a few years ago about Millennials entering the workplace (then with a front edge barely pushing 25) included some fresh observation and (cautious) optimism, this year seems to be telling a more combative and cynical story:
"It's graduation time and once again we say 'Stand back all bosses!' a new breed of American worker is attacking everything you hold sacred."
Those words came from Morley Safer in his intro to the recent 60 Minutes report on the Millennials. The segment then dove into some dialogue that didn't paint a very pleasant picture:
Morley Safer: Take me through some of the do's and don'ts about how you must speak to this generation of young workers.
Expert: You do have to speak to them a little bit like a therapist on television might speak to a patient.
Add to this the little debate going around a few weeks ago triggered by the Radar post titled "Generation Slap: They're naive, self-important, and perpetually plugged in. This is a call to arms against Millennials."
Here's the little story I'm picking up on: Millennials have reached critical mass in the workplace (front edge 27ish now), are exerting some real power and influence on business and culture, have more like-minded folks coming in behind them that amplify their perspectives, and now, according to some folks, it's time to get defensive.
I'm bit hesitant in the first place to draw this type of line between "clashing generations," because I don't think there is actually a line, and the differences that exist tend to be exaggerated. I agree for the most part with Anastasia's thoughts on the matter: that young people aren't fundamentally that different from other generations. I think a lot of what we hear about young people is reactionary hype.
But I do think a key dynamic at play here might have to do with something that Adrian at Zeus Jones wrote about awhile back on how what we call the digital divide is really a human values one, not a technological one, since "technology shapes behavior which shapes thinking." It's worth reading the values he lays out (open, supportive, optimists, value the process, reject authority etc). Seen this way, the 60 Minutes piece seems more about a clash between digital thinkers and non-digital thinkers. Maybe the so called problems employers are facing with challenges to authority and strong attitudes on how to do things better is actually just that: a better approach.
That leads me to the observation Clay Shirky makes near the end of "Here Comes Everybody" -- that many of the examples in his book feature young people because they are "...taking better advantage of social tools, extending their capabilities in ways that violate old models not because they know more useful things than we do but because they know fewer useless things than we do."
In this complex story of who this generation is and what they mean, I think the biggest (and most exciting) point is missed if we don't look at everything through the lens of the changed digital communications DNA that they are the leaders of. The great upside to this, as Shirky points out, is that all generations benefit. The way young people operate and the tools they use spread everywhere. The new ways they are organizing themselves will spread everywhere (I'll be surprised if the biggest, most historic story this year is not about how young people organized themselves to vote in their choice to the White House). I think this is a healthier way to look at the situation. We can be excited that we can work and collaborate with a group that brings a fresh approach to communication, among many other things.
Chet Gulland lives in NYC and works at Anomaly.
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What those behind the camera think about when they create their brand
Is this my brand?
On Valentine's Day, a former student opened fire in a Northern Illinois University classroom, killing five students, injuring sixteen and eventually taking his own life. I was on campus when it happened. This was my lightning strike, my Eddie Adams moment, albeit on a much smaller stage. My paper, the Daily Chronicle in DeKalb, Ill., was inundated with entreaties from media outlets wanting to feed off of our coverage. I kept on working for the next few days posting pictures and contemplating how my coverage of one tragic event would be more well known than the combined popularity of a thousand county fairs. It appeared that my brand was tending toward the tragic (I'd almost been crushed by a monster truck in August).
Photographers at newspapers this size are generalists--meant to cover anything and everything and do it quickly and well. But as a photographer and a writer in today's multimedia-crazed newspaper business, being good at everything sometimes means that you're good for nothing. As the furor died down from the NIU shootings, I confronted the fact that perhaps my brush with exposure had not furthered my journalism brand as much as I had imagined.
For all intents and purposes, a photographer's portfolio Web site is their brand. These sites run the gamut (In a relative sense as most photographers are not programmers as well) from accomplished shooters who worked their way to the world's hotspots largely without help from a major newspaper such as Chris Hondros to my former colleague Adam Gerik's proto-confessional photo blog. But if our brand is our Web site only, then it would seem to follow that the top 10 results for "war photographer" or "freelance photographer LA" could essentially corner the market. Metadata trumps hard work and killer documentary skills.
But that would be a fallacy. For all the change that the Internet has brought to photography, it has not changed certain universal truths. Scott Strazzante is a staff photographer at the Chicago Tribune. A past winner of the Newspaper Photographer of the Year in 2000, Strazzante has worked his way up the ladder by being a hard worker and a good marketer. Though he has been shooting since 1987, he does not yet have a portfolio Web site of his own. Despite this, his recently-published series on the encroachment of sprawl into rural Illinois took off via a convergence of buzz on listserves such as APAD and webzines such as PDN with the physical pages of the Trib and National Geographic.
"The one thing that the Web has done is devalued photographers. Now magazines go into Flickr and steal photos. Even though there are more outlets, it has really handicapped photographers because there's much more supply than demand," Strazzante said. "The top one percent will be fine. The kind of middle-tier photographers who haven't quite found their voice yet, they're the ones who are really going to suffer. It's almost become like society in general where it's going to be a greater divide between the rich and the poor. It's going to either be the super-talented or the people who are willing to give away their work for free."
Strazzante cites Vincent Laforet as an example of a photographer who has branded himself successfully. "He started out basically a sports photographer," Strazzante said. "Now, if anyone at a huge publication in America wants an aerial style, Vincent is it. He's made his name with creative aerial photography. He's now created a niche where he is the guy to go to for aerial photography. He's done that by being a great businessman in addition to being a great shooter."
In today's newspaper market, it sometimes feels as if the chances are better that you'll be laid off than receive a decent-sized raise. David Zentz is a 29-year-old photojournalist at the Peoria Journal Star with an impressive track record of high-profile internships and clip-contest wins under his belt. In a good to fair market, he would likely be at a major metropolitan daily at this stage of his career. But as it is, he has been bought out by the new owners of his newspaper, GateHouse Media, who have been slashing expenses through voluntary buyouts across its properties since purchasing nine Copley properties last year.
Don't cry for Zentz, he has a plan. Los Angeles beckons and a career in freelance commercial and editorial photography awaits. The only problem? How to create the DZ brand.
"No one should ever market themselves as a generalist because it devalues your voice," Zentz said. "I can shoot everything, but I want clients to know what my interests are so I promote myself and market as more of a specialist in documentary and hard news. I'm trying to figure out how to create multiple brands."
"You can look at photo magazines and you'll see Paolo Pellgrin, Alex Webb. You can see their stuff and recognize it right away or at least say it looks like something he would have shot. People do work over years to consolidate their style and concentrate their portfolio to a specific thing and that will bring them more work."
Style then, is brand. Chris Bartlett knows that first hand. Bartlett has been shooting still life in the fashion and beauty world for 20 years, primarily editorial and some commercial work.
"There was a much wider middle ground in which to swim and there was a greater array of photographers who were not particularly hugely distinguishable from each other who were all capable professional photographers," Bartlett said. "To take a nice picture took more skill than it does now. What has happened is that the bottom has risen up because it's easier to come up with a competent photograph. The middle area, where people branded themselves but not really distinctly, that marketplace is sort of eroding and people with a combination of very clear style and brand plus a good business sense are carving out a little niche for themselves."
The practical applications of this hits right where it hurts. Bartlett recently did an estimate for a job he is shooting next week based on previous work he had done for the client 10 years ago. They came back and said they wanted his price to be about 60 percent less than his bid. His competition? The in-house digital studio.
"The rub here is that the art director wants me to do it because he likes the way I treat the subject matter but the money people are saying this is what we're going to be," he said. "It's up to me to compromise my rate to get the job or stand my ground and say 'I won't do it for less than that.' It won't be done to the level it would be done with my original estimate because I have to cover more ground in less amount of time to make money. That is a pretty familiar scenario."
The irony is that there is a lot more potential for money because of the wider audience, but everyone is expecting that work to be done for free. In order to compete for the jobs that pay good money, strong work is key. When you mention a photographer's name, Annie Lebowitz or Robert Capa to use two examples, an image has to pop into your head. People need to know that if they're spending the money, they're getting a certain treatment.
So, then, is my one picture that made it around the world my brand? I tend to believe that it's not. For one, few if any photojournalists have been hired based on one picture. Iconic images can catapult careers, but being good in today's newspaper, and commercial, markets doesn't always mean that you'll get the job. Thus the paradox of being a more attractive job candidate when you're cheaper and younger than when you're better and more seasoned. Bottom line concerns aren't making brands less relevant, but they are making most photographers' stake less valuable.
Eric Sumberg is a visual journalist and writer (For one more day) in DeKalb, Ill. On Saturday, he will pack his life into his car and head to New York to transition into the next phase of his life.
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Tags: Brands
Another entry talking about brand tags. Sorry, but that's pretty much all I've got on my mind.
So it's been 12 days since I launched brand tags and it's been an amazing ride to say the least. As I write this I'm at 600,000 tags (whizzed right by 500k yesterday), a number so large I'm having trouble comprehending it. As I mentioned in my last entry it's been keeping me incredibly busy. I've been trying to answer all the emails sent through the site (now in the thousands), which has led to a few very late nights.
Anyway, I just wanted to continue highlighting a few lessons I've learned so far and also some of the more interesting commentary I've read about the site (at some point I plan on compiling all this into a proper entry/article). Also, an apology to all of you for ignoring this site for the last week and a half. I'll be back, I promise.
So, without any further ado, some thoughts in no specific order:
- I mentioned this last time and I wanted to highlight it again. Iteration has been the key to keeping the momentum going. I've answered hundreds of emails, made around 50 tweaks based on feedback and commented on 30 or 40 blog posts. I don't know what kind of difference this has made in the end, but I've got to assume it's helped. Keeping a site like this going takes a lot of work (I've been adding logos a few times a day). As marketers, I think sometimes we forget how much work it can be when it's out of sight (someone else is working on it). Anyway, it's not easy.
- It's been really interesting to see where traffic is coming from. Here are my top 5 referrers in order: Google (mostly traffic from Google Reader), AutoBlog (they just wrote about it yesterday and already passed every other referrer, just goes to show you where real traffic is), The Future Buzz (Adam's entry almost made it to the top of the Digg World & Business section), Seth Godin (he was one of the first big links) and WSJ.com. What I find interesting about that list is that it's fairly non-geeky all things considered (number 6, for the record, is Consumerist). Anyway, the audience certainly leans towards tech, but it hasn't been exclusively uber geeks.
- Yesterday I added an orderly view which was actually the recommendation of Kevin Kelly. Getting to email back and forth with him was one of the thrills of this project. (I'm a geek, I've admitted this before ... and just for reference, here's the Wired Magazine cloud.)
- Here's some of my favorite commentary about the results: Gems Sty, View from the Bottom, Matt Griswold [dot] com, Hubspot, Coilhouse and BlogLESS (whose design I also find quite striking. I haven't had much time to sort through and think about the results myself, so reading other people's commentary has been great.
- With that said, here are a few interesting things I've noticed: Some people confuse Audi's rings with the Olympics, people remember Hitler created Volkswagen, Hanes should try and hold on to Michael Jordan, EA Sports is Madden, people don't like their phone companies.
I think that's it for now. Like I said, I will return to regular blogging at some point soon. Thanks so much to everyone for all their support, comments, blog posts, twitters, links and general good will. It's been awesome.
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A few quick notes on a whirlwind weekend for brand tags.
So far brand tags has been my most successful project to date (or at least fastest pick up). Since letting the world know about it on Friday I've gotten over 77,000 tags. It's also been on the del.icio.us homepage, metafilter and, most recently, Seth Godin gave it a shout out (including many others).
Anyway, I thought I'd share a few lessons, observations and other notes from the weekend:
Iteration
The first thing I realized was I needed to iterate on the fly. Immediately I realized a few things in the backend weren't working perfectly and fixed them on the fly. I also added a few features as ideas came in (specifically a game where you guess the brand based on the tags and a search engine to allow you to see all the brands tagged with a specific word. The other thing I did was keep track of where people where coming from so I could filter out tags at some point if I wanted to.
Feedback
This was another big one, in addition to adding things and making things work a little better was trying to listen to people's feedback and add both features and logos. A bunch of people asked for an easy way to see all the brands, which I added quite quickly. In addition I've gotten a ton of brands from people, which has both made my life easier and helped get the word out further (many people asked for the brands they work for/on and I'm sure they shared the results).
Unfortunate Words
It's becoming apparent that as more people come, more unfortunate tags are turning up. I had to decide whether to censor pretty early on and decided not to (expect for spam ... when one person adds the same word over and over again). This has all been one big experiment and I'm doing the best I can with it, but I can't do it all. I figure I can always filter things out later if I need to.
Twitter to Get the Word Out
Twitter has been a huge source of traffic for the site. I'm not sure what more to say about that, but it's been a great way to communicate with people on the fly and let them know as I hit milestones (number of tags, number of brands, etc.)
As the day goes on, I might add some more to this list and in the coming days I will try to go through some of the tags and give some of my thoughts (so far I think my favorite is how many people tagged Beijing 2008 with "tibet".
Also, any other feedback, suggestions or anything else are welcome. Thanks so much to everyone for making this such a success.
Update (5/12/08): As a side note, I've gotten a ton of email as a result of this. If you've sent me email for this or anything else over the last week or so and I haven't responded yet, I apologize.
Update (5/12/08): Wow, been a huge day for the site. Up to 110,000 tags. Links from kottke (a bit of a blogging hero of mine) and ReadWriteWeb. Anyway, thanks again to everyone for the links, emails, twitters, etc.
Update (5/13/08): Just got picked up by Wall Street Journal. Hot damn.
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