The problem with advertising is that it’s only goal is to get in my way – to act as an obstruction between me and the media I want. Probably because Ad Agencies know by doing that I have to pay attention to their ads. If advertising had a human age and development level it’d be a 9-year old boy. I wonder what that 9-year old boy will do when he realizes that through Media On Demand services like TiVo, Sling Box, Joost, You Tube, TV on DVD, iTunes, et. al. he is being ignored because, despite his efforts, he isn’t obstructing anything anymore. That shiny jewel of media he is standing in front of, blocking while screaming at the top of his lungs for us to buy a new Chevrolet with zero percent down, is being given away for free somewhere else with no gatekeepers or conditions to its viewing. Will advertisers/ing grow up now that they’re faced with the threat of irrelevance?
Sure, the “obstructionist” argument I’m advocating can’t really be taken to the interactive space (unless you’re making a critical statement about interstitials – which I’m not), but I feel that the type of growing up Advertising needs to do to survive in the ATL space needs to be carried over to the BTL space in order for a far more meaningful connection between the consumer and the brand to take place. Let me explain. Some of the most memorable online experiences are the ones where the user is offered something. A service. The service could be only tangentially related to the brand or its core values. What is important is that the experience is “sticky” (and, obviously, it goes without saying that there is an experience there to begin with). It isn’t enough anymore to reach the savvy consumer with a pretty design and catchy copy and have that stand alone in the interactive space. You need to interact in the interactive space.
Building a more whiz-bang, zippy, masky photo gallery of your product (I’m looking at you Motorola Razr 2) just won’t hold my attention anymore either. OK, they’re pictures. Now what are you going to do with them? Did you make some sort of photo-manipulation application right here in the Flash site? Should I be sending them to someone? Submitting my own? Anything? Oh, I’m just supposed to look at them? Next.
Likewise, building a site that acts as one very long ATL commercial doesn’t do it either. The Nokia N800 Internet Tablet campaign comes to mind. It was a very long, very well-made, very cool video that was put online with minimal interaction. A passive experience better suited to the medium of TV, or a content channel on other media serving websites like You Tube. Making a website whose primary purpose is to simply play a video is like using a tank to buy groceries – sure you can do it – but you could also be using it for so much more.
So what is needed is not just more interaction in the interactive space – although that’s a part of it, but more purposeful interaction in the interactive space. What is needed is a brand that understands that in order for any brand to stand out in the interactive space in the consumer’s mind, it needs to be seen as a friend to the consumer. It needs to offer the consumer/user something. A service. Essentially a brand’s interactive arm needs to atone for the sins of ATL, to help dig the brand out of the hole ATL has put it in.
I can think of a few such examples executed by Firstborn Multimedia, that accomplished this. The first was Nationwide’s “Life Moves at You Fast” site where users could submit a special “moment” of theirs in the form of a camera phone picture or digital image and have it displayed in the Reuters board in Times Square. Another was the Ford Motor Company + American Cancer Society, Mother’s Day breast cancer-awareness quilt – where users could send a heartfelt message of strength to their loved-ones (as well as donate to the ACS). And possibly the most successful, the Borders Giftmixer 2000, where users could quickly (and entertainingly) receive holiday-gift recommendations from the vast catalogue of Borders products. There are so many more from all over the interactive spectrum, some that take interactive out of the box of the computer and into other realms. Crispin Porter’s Burger King X-Box game comes to mind as an example of this. Others use installation and the interactive space to work in concert. Whether the final product is entertainment as in the Axe campaign (pranking your friend with a hot letter from a mysterious woman), or an actual service (like shoe-customization on Nike-ID), the point is that there is a final product in the end to be offered.
On a personal note to the CD making the next EPK: Enough with “Cast & Crew Bios”, “Episode Synopsis”, etc. If I want to know what happened in Season 1 I’m going to google it and your little stand-alone Flash site isn’t going to show up in the results. And Cast Bios are only in there because publicists are nut-jobs. Just say “no”. Seriously. More sometimes isn’t more. Distill down the overall creative arc in the movie/show and execute that simply with a high degree of user-involvement. Let interested, tuned-in, turned-on users be your word-of-mouth. But begin with a site that eschews the “usual EPK” approach and does something different. Please.
I think many agencies understand this need. I think they possess the vision to understand what needs to be done, but they lack the will to push back against the ho-hum briefs and say “no” or at least say “not unless we do it this way”. Very infrequently can memorable experiences be created by a limited team with limited time on a limited budget. Its the old triangle of “Fast, Cheap or Well: Choose 2″. In addition, now that iPods play flash movies, iPhones are connected directly to YouTube, xBox has made their SDK publicly available and google and flickr continue to leave their APIs tantalizingly open for mash-ups, the technical skill required to orchestrate this symphony of languages, protocols and delivery methods is becoming harder and harder to master. Therefore it is making the decisions from business leaders that choose the “cheap and fast” approach all that more glaringly obviously driven by quick turnover and high profits because there are so few individuals that, given such a limited project cycle and budget, can pull something truly great out of their ass under those circumstances.
The solution may lie in a simple shift of semantics. Instead of “websites” maybe we should think of the product of our work in the interactive space as “applications”. Maybe briefs should request “experiences” not “communications”. Or the solution may lie in simply being able to command the respect and leeway from your client to craft a memorable experience. I’m also not sure the food-chain as it exists now works either: Client –> Large ATL/BTL Agency –> Interactive Shop, given that by the time the people with the most experience in crafting the final product are involved, key decisions and expectations are already set (there lies the paradox of direct-with-client vs. through-a-larger-agency which is a whole essay for another time). This is NOT some coombaya-lets-all-hold-hands-and-make-it-better manifesto. It’s an argument for why consumers and brands would both be done a service if a few key steps in the process of making interactive communications were changed and the people with the vision and the training were given greater control. I’ll never forget something Jim, co-owner of now-defunct Zowie Media once told me, “You don’t walk into the doctor’s office and tell him his prescription decision is wrong. You shut up and do what he says. He’s the doctor.” I wish he had said that to a group of top Brand-Managers.