1. NEW MEDIA IS OLD! (Chris Simon – September 13, 2006)
There’s been a fair amount of coverage lately about how a more open attitude to
creativity is needed and how some channel planners are assuming more of this
role. This particularly seems to be the opinion of people like Naked’s Adam
Ferrier, who seems regularly to attract more column inches of advertising trade
press than even their editors do! So we’re not sure how “neutral” an opinion like
that might be, but a recurring theme of a majority of all the important advertising
conferences this year, has-obviously-been massive structural change.
So it’s very positive that the highly experienced multinational culture is beginning
to re-prove itself as ‘master-of-the-change’ and that it has always had the
resilience to adapt. One such ‘master’ is Mike Morrison, Chief Strategy Officer
across Y&R Brands Australia and New Zealand…..
“There’s an awful lot of ‘lip service’ going on from the so called ‘new model
agencies’ who seem to keep ‘re-selling’ or ‘re-packaging’ their ‘media neutral
planning prowess’ or ability to ‘harmonise creativity across all consumer
touchpoints. They’ve been talking about this for a few years now!” says Mike….
But Morrison’s point is that traditional agencies that have always adapted have,
since at least the late ‘90s been honing their consumer engagement skills
anyway and that a majority of the niche outfits, whilst always positioning
themselves as fashionable are mostly set up or formed by ex traditionalists
anyway!
“We actually don’t call it brand positioning anymore…It’s about brand direction”,
continues Mike….
Morrison does not want to get into a ‘them and us’ argument, but he’s happy to
offer some very real competitive differences on how Y&R Brands tackle making
sense of the media channel explosion and fractured landscape that the world is
currently looking at.
We first came across their ‘Brand Asset Valuator Analysis’ through Y&R's China
Brand Division a year or so back, when we were also considering some amazing
case studies from the likes of Honeywell; alibaba.com; Alcatel; Shanghai General
Motors; Dow Chemicals; Pepsi Foods; General Mills; Fedex; Unilever and many
others. If you take a look at Mike and his Australia team’s website, you’ll see that
the BAV Model incorporates a sample of 350,000 consumers’ behaviour patterns
against 19,500 brands across 44 different countries!

2. All the ‘new agencies’ still suggest that brand modelling looking at a product’s
authenticity and peer-2-peer values or ‘customer empowerment’ is critical, but
we’re not sure that any could offer such a vast history of branding and the ability
to dip in and out of the ‘brand cycle’ as Y&R’s BAV Study does. Today, in much
the same way as a DJ remixes music with elements of old and new, Mike has at
his fingertips a tool that enables real media meshing and the ability to innovate
and evolve brands. Mike has also gone as far as setting up a new ‘Simplexity’
section at his agency where new experiments, often outside of normal working
hours, take place, looking at “meta trends” that combine several trends into
dominant attitudes and behaviours. Mike is not adverse, at these sessions, to
invite new brand innovators and creatives to brainstorm with his own creative and
brand planning teams. There’s a lot of legal and confidentiality sign up involved,
but, overall, this giant multinational is welcoming in the new and not just paying
lip service to identifying audience attitude across multiple media channels. A
couple of areas the agency has recently been looking at are brand-advertising
placement in games, (advergaming) and mobile marketing. They recently called
on the team behind The Bracket Boys and The Bracket Girls new idea that uses
a virtual band – emoticon type metaphor – to integrate brand exposure across a
few channels simultaneously-particularly poster and mobile phone!
Mike Morrison makes no apologies for originally coming from the old school. “It’s
the school of multi-dimensional experience. Creativity is a process. You have to
sift through a lot of bad ideas to come up with good ones. Media consumption is
complex and some great ideas can make it simple. Rather than feeding
consumption with a fragmented idea – go in holistically – with an idea that’s
capable of almost multi-channeling by default”…..says Mike.
Morrison’s academic and ‘practical working’ papers on “Desperately Seeking
Simplexity” and “TCM” (Taking Care of Me) have been recently changed into
client workshop packages and he is fielding requests to take these workshops on
the road….
What Y&R Brands really feel about the new era of integrating all the touchpoints
is that there’s nothing to stop any client selling their content directly to their
customers, on any channel, anywhere in the world. The job of any agency is to
leverage the client’s marketing programme and develop a direct and interactive
relationship with their consumer. They should be developing this direct on
mobile, the internet, magazines and newspapers, fliers, posters, billboards,
websites, CD sleeves, boxed products, radio, TV and games. They should be
recognizing that fragmentation is good, because it enables flexibility to alter
pricing, control the product offering and make people envy their brand!

3. The Brand Asset Valuator certainly seems to offer worldwide authority and Mike
Morrison delivers some powerful local insights! In commenting that advertising is
still a cut throat business, he says that’s the nice bit! He draws attention to an
increasing trend by Australian’s to reduce the amount of stress and clutter in their
lives. He suggests that the current marketing process adds to consumer choice
confusion and that customers don’t want to stand in line, fill out endless forms,
and have to choose from 20 menu items before they finally reach an overseas
call centre with a simple transactional query!
Morrison quotes product examples like Apple’s iMac and MYOB of ‘making
consumer choice easy’ and Google and E-Bay leading the charge of participation
brands and signalling new ways to model these entry points of high brand loyalty
that much quicker through what Y&R refer to as the ‘Adoption Spike’.
For so many years – strategy experts would talk more about ‘positioning a brand’
and it’s now indicated that ‘brand direction’ is perhaps more critical and that
brands should be labelled less as ‘nouns’ and more like ‘verbs’. Mike Morrison’s
key message of ‘brands that do’, instead of ‘brands that are’ is a key component
to most world expert’s predictions of what will keep pace in the new world of
advertising and marketing directions…
New Media is old…We need to get on with making online and offline one. Video
messages and chit chat mobile disposable attitude can work anywhere…..We
see it everyday and everywhere…..Why do you think Big Pond’s playing live
band gigs in Martin Place?….