Junior

by Thomas Kemeny

  Step one is knowing that. Now you’re ready to do digital.

  STATIC OR SIMPLE ANIMATION ADS. THE TINY THORNS.

  These are the low-end of web. Because of the extreme size and space limitations there’s very little you can do. Clients love them because they’re cheap. Websites love them because they load super-fast so they don’t screw up the main user experience. Creatives fucking hate them. If you’re allowed some movement, and this goes for all digital ads to some extent, ensure the end frame makes sense on its own. You only get a few seconds of auto-play. Placing the message or an interaction at the end means that users have time to mess with it if they want to. If it’s static, just think of it as a billboard or print ad, except that people can click instead of you needing to include all of the info right there.

  RICH-MEDIA BANNERS:

  AS PLEASANT AS SHIT CAN TASTE.

  The term rich-media means you have way more options open to you. Get specifics, but you can assume you can do pictures, videos, experiences, and more. Rich-media also means there’s a backend available where you can load in information (like local weather, traffic, or anything from a database). It’s best to think of these as tiny interactive screens where anything can happen. Many rich-media units have become mini, low-budget TV spots. You have no audio unless people turn it on, plus people can interact, but it’s TV.

  READ COPY ALOUD.

  When you’re writing copy for banners or for Instagram/Facebook videos, or anywhere someone needs to read copy in a timed space, it still helps to time it out the way you hear it. If there’s a pause before the punchline, have the punchline visually load after a pause. If you wonder how long a line should be up, read it aloud. That’s how long. Timing is still everything. If the jokes hit at the right points it can lift a simple idea into a better idea.

  ZOMBIE NO WANT.

  Mindless digital ideas are some of the best digital ideas. They get the most engagement and a fair amount of click-through as well. Make it something you can fidget with, tap, or mouse over without thinking.

  If you’re not doing a brilliant execution that will change the world then go all the way down to dumb. Follow the “light as a feather” rule; if it’s any more difficult than lifting a feather, most people won’t do it.

  …AND THEN THE AD INFLUENCES THE STUFF ON THE WEBPAGE!

  You might think nobody has thought to do this, but they have. It’s not original and it’s a logistical nightmare getting the rights to all of the content on a page. Or you’ll have to make fake content to fill the page and that’s just stupid because it’s still not that interesting. Plus, you’re getting in the way of what people want to be looking at. Unless the thought is earth-changing, keep searching for the idea.

  DEATH MAKES A CLICKING SOUND.

  Ever since “punch the monkey,” people have no faith that clicking won’t take them away from their current page. If the ad requires a click or tap to engage, you will lose people. Try to make as much happen as possible without someone else needing to do something.

  In the same realm, if your digital ad requires sound to work, you’re kind of screwed. Most sites and apps won’t allow sound without interaction or clicking, which, as previously stated, is death.

  THE LEASH WE ALL CARRY IN OUR POCKETS.

  Apps make it into a lot of presentations but rarely into the real world. They are complicated, involve coding, and people have to choose to download them. Which means you then have to advertise the app. To which the client will think, “Hey! If you want to advertise something, how about the product I’m paying you to advertise?” Mobile is a great platform because more and more people look at it over anything else, and the ubiquity and functionality of it opens up tons of opportunities. But if you’re making an app, it has to serve some brilliant, genuine utility or be such a great gimmick there’s no way users won’t download it. If you think of an idea that successfully does that, stop reading this, quit your job, and go make that. If not, you’re better off finding ways to work within existing mobile platforms and channels.

  INSTAGRAM, FACEBOOK, TWITTER, SNAPCHAT. BY THE TIME YOU READ THIS, TWO OF THOSE WILL SEEM LIKE I’M BEING FUNNY.

  It’s easy to think that a brand’s goal with social media is to get lots of followers. Naturally, you’ll want to repost cute and funny stories, just like your favorite influencer does. It works for them; it must work for you. You’ll be tempted to think the brand tone is less important than being liked and talking like digital people talk. But people already have cool people to follow. They don’t need a brand for that. It’s infuriating to people when companies they’re trusting with their hard-earned money talk like they’re about to post a cover song on YouTube. Let the brand be the brand. Keep everything in the same brand voice you’ve worked so hard to cultivate across everything else. Find ways to be likable for being that.

  FOLLOWER ME OFF THIS CLIFF.

  Think of people with lots of followers as tiny little TV channels. They are great if they choose to talk about your product unprovoked, they’re ok if you pay them to talk about your product in the context of what they do, they’re robbing you if you’re paying them to do what they’d do anyway because they’re “influential.”

  Influencers can definitely give your brand a kick in the ass if you have compelling content that you want them to share, and they can be huge allies if they support a program you’re doing, but they can also be bonfires of cash that would be better spent elsewhere. Think about where they ft into the grand scheme of the brand instead of using them as a crutch to relevancy.

  IF IT WAS EASY TO BE FAMOUS, WE’D ALL BE JERKS ALREADY.

  Rather than try and use the latest features of whatever new social channel is in charge, think of general ideas that get people sharing. At least once a year you will be asked to come up with an idea that costs nothing but has the impact across social media of an atomic bomb. That’ll be the whole brief. Just a “breakthrough” and “viral” idea about the brand. There will also be an idea done within the last year that every brief will point to that proves it can be done and that it’s so simple. Just do the same thing as that one successful idea in a $220 billion industry that resonated despite all the odds and only cost $50k to make. It’s statistically not that likely, but it does happen. The interesting fact about a lot of those big hit ideas is that they never come from a brief to make a big hit idea.

  But it’s not all up to chance. There are some general ways to know if something at least has the potential to go viral.

  Here are a few of those ways:

  It’s for a good cause.

  If it’s doing good in the world, or at least talking about doing good in the world, more people are willing to put their cynicism on hold and share something. At least fewer people will outright shut it down.

  It’s controversial.

  It’s questionable, not universally loved, on the edge of social acceptability, or even a step too far. This one is tricky, because if you push it too much you might not like the attention it’s getting. Ideally, you’re just on that line where something is controversial enough to share, but not controversial enough that any reasonable person would actually be offended by it.

  It’s supported by a celebrity.

  Famous people get photographed taking out the garbage, and garbage isn’t that far off from most advertising. If the idea has a celebrity in it, it will get a certain base-level amount of attention. The less expected the role of the celebrity, the more views you can expect. An action star singing a love song will get more views than an action star in an action sequence in most cases.

  METADATA IS…WAIT, KEEP READING, IT’S NOT BORING

  There are two types of metadata: structural and descriptive. For the purposes of marketing you only need to worry about the descriptive part, the metatags. When you make a website, Google, Facebook, and co. would love if you provided some info about each page. It’s basically what you want people to see when you appear in a search result: the search words you think yo
u should be associated with, and the images and words that appear when people share you out to social pages. Metadata isn’t visible on your site, but it’s there when people are trying to find you. This is how most people will see you, if you have a successful viral campaign, and is the part of the conversation you can control.

  SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO) IS…WAIT, KEEP READING, IT’S NOT BORING.

  Just like everything else in the age of new media, there’s a battle between the engineers wanting the tech to be objective, the business side wanting to bring in sponsor dollars, and marketers trying to game the system to not have to pay those dollars as often as possible. Search is the first battle-field. Think like a person trying to find you. Not the words you think represent you, but instead the words you think your ideal target is most likely to search for, especially when looking for you. Are you unique enough and specific enough that you will be the only one to come up? The more common the words people search for, the less likely you’ll pop up and the more likely you’ll need to pay to stand out. The more common the words, the more expensive it gets. For example, if you’re working for an organic juice company, you likely can’t afford “organic” or “juice,” but if they’re the only juice company that uses some obscure rainforest fruit, you can put that fruit, or that fruit plus “organic,” in the metadata and pay for Google search results on it. Or if the company has a unique and trademarked name that people will definitely search for, you can use that. It’s actually a form of creative writing, except that the tone of voice is your customer and the scene is them doing Google searches.

  PLEASE TOUCH THE ADVERTISEMENTS.

  Experiential marketing is any branding idea that people can physically touch, visit, or see in the real world. It includes events, installations, parties, performances, theaters, sampling, items, programs, and anything else that you can walk into or that lives outside of a paid media space. The key word in all of this that you might’ve missed is that it has to be a branding idea. A party with a logo is definitely an experience of sorts, but is it marketing? This chapter is about this old tool that is growing in popularity, with brands being smarter about what an experience can be and what it can make people feel.

  BIG, SMALL, OR MULTIPLE.

  There’s something visually stunning about warped scale. A building is boring, but a shrunken building is interesting. A thumbtack is boring but a giant thumbtack is interesting. A piece of paper is boring, but a million pieces of paper are interesting. There’s probably something to seeing exaggeration that reads as important to our monkey brains and makes us notice it. Regardless of the reason, it gives your mind a nice tickle and looks great in photos you share to social media.

  STEP-AND-REPEAT. IT’S IN THE BORING NAME.

  Step-and-repeats are those backdrops you’ll sometimes see at award shows that are covered in the logo of the event and the logos of all the sponsors. The intended basic premise is that you get your most influential guests to stand in front of it and take their photo. All with the hope that people will see the logos and get warm feelings about the brand because of it. This makes a lot of huge assumptions. One is that fans will seek out the photo in the first place. The people a brand wants to photograph are people who are photographed all the time. That means there are probably photos of them doing just about everything, including making out with somebody they shouldn’t be. Which means the photo of them standing in front of a wall covered in logos is low on the list of photos people want to see. But their superfans might seek them out; you know, the ones that make dolls from their hair. Then you’d be making the second huge assumption, that this obsessed fan will look beyond the celebrity they’re obsessed with, whose hair they have made a doll out of, and look to the wallpaper behind them with a magnifying glass and think, “Wow I love that brand for making a wall for people to stand in front of,” while stroking their celebrity hair doll.

  MAKE A GUEST LIST SO EXCLUSIVE YOU WOULDN’T BE ON IT.

  A party is only as good as its guests. If there isn’t a mechanism in place for invitations, nobody will show up to the party or take part in the program. You can work directly through a PR company, or you can go rogue and play the who-knows-who game in the office. You can also tap the client for their connections. There are three basic types of guests: 1) Paid guests: these are typically celebrities, people with draw, massive social presence, and throngs of people who follow them. They can be part of the reason press show up or they’ll be their own press because of their number of followers. 2) Unpaid VIP guests: these are your influencers who have an interest in the theme of your experience as well as press whose job it is to write about your brand category— essentially people whose job it is to be there. 3) General public, the people who will set the vibe and fill the space with bodies and make the story authentic; they’re the wild card in all of this. An experience needs the right mix of all three for the experience to be successful. If it’s all celebs, the experience becomes about them instead of your product. If it’s all influencers, then the experience has no heart and it’ll come off as hollow and self-serving. If it’s all general public, nobody outside of a small group of people will know it ever happened.

  ALCOHOL IS THE GLUE THAT GETS YOUR GUESTS DRUNK.

  The press likes to drink. Influencers like to drink. Most of your target audience will like to drink. If your event goes into the evening hours, people will be surprised if there’s nothing to drink, and then they will leave to find booze. You’ll also have to watch that you don’t overserve people (technically it’s a legal liability, but it’s also just annoying) and if you have drinks you will also want to seriously consider food, even if it’s just small bites. You’ll want to absorb that booze so guests don’t end up telling you how much they love you man, I mean really love you man. It’s a sobriety test balancing act. One drunk person can ruin an entire night and trash what took you months to plan. A bunch of sober people can do just about as much damage. Simple rule: have booze if people are there for longer than an hour, have food if people are there with booze for longer than one hour.

  TAPE IT UNTIL YOU MAKE IT.

  The second you get access to the venue you will be using for an event or installation, get out some measuring tape and masking tape. Use the tape to map out the entire setup, at least based on your first instincts or to match any blueprints you’ve laid out. You’d be surprised how often this is the first time you discover issues, like doors that wouldn’t open all the way because of an obstruction, or segments of floor that are crooked or warped to the point that you can’t put anything on them. You’ll also notice that the blueprints the venue gave you were way off and that the 10-foot wall is only 8 feet and 4 of those feet are in front of a fire exit that can’t be used.

  OH LOOK, ALL THE DETAILS THAT FELL BETWEEN THE CRACKS.

  Ask about bathrooms (1 for every 50 people minimum). Splurge for the nice toilets, because people have a surprisingly good memory when it comes to toilet quality and cleanliness. Ask about air conditioning, not just that they have it, but that it’s strong enough if the place is filled with hundreds of people dancing (you might have to bring in additional A/C). Mind the exits, because even if your venue is enormous you might not be allowed a lot of people because there aren’t enough exits. Don’t plug anything into an outlet unless your electrical person says you can (you might overload and blackout your entire venue because you didn’t know the delicate balance everything was in), be nice to everyone because they’ll save your ass at some point. Think about the line out front and what you’ll do for people who can’t get in. Make sure nobody passes out in the heat or freezes in the cold. Have a VIP line, a General Admission line, and no line at all for press because they should feel special. Make sure somebody can manage the different photographers/videographers who will be on site at one time. If you don’t like something, change it. Lift with your legs.

  SEE YOU TOMORROW AND EVERY DAY AFTER.

  Experiences are hundred-sided Rubik’s Cubes and you’re the ha
nd turning them all. They’re a puzzle made of guests, builders, artists, videographers, photographers, musicians, PR, caterers, cleaners, sound engineers, lighting tech, PAs, and security, at its simplest. You are the central point of opinion. If any of those pieces aren’t in the right place it’ll mess the rest up, so keep an eye and ear on everything. Get a walkie-talkie. Production companies who typically do events can handle a lot of this, but then you’ll lose a bit of oversight. Stay involved in conversations, be interested, make decisions and communicate them to everyone who needs to know so there’s no confusion.

  PLAN TO FAIL AT LEAST ONCE.

  No theater would ever open a play without a dress rehearsal. You won’t want to open an event without one either. Invite friends and family, agency friends, people who want you to succeed. If it doesn’t work with them, you’re in trouble. Bring them all in and treat it as if it were an official day one. Ask people to tell you what they thought, look for mistakes, pressure test it, try to break it. If everything goes perfectly, you’re lying to yourself. If your friends are all smiling and kind, then it went terribly awry and they’re being polite. You can’t possibly know what it’s like until it’s open so you can’t possibly have thought of everything.

  THREE MILLION’S A CROWD.

  Even if your experience took place in the largest stadium in the world in Pyongyang, North Korea (which is not a good location for an event, just FYI), every seat filled, you’d still only physically reach 150,000 people. Which in straight reach in the advertising world is terrible. For reference, the 3o-somethingth season of Survivor has around 8 million viewers per episode. What you don’t get from TV is deep engagement and long-term interaction with the brand. You rarely, if ever, get notable people giving your TV commercial credibility, but you will with experiential. You’ll also get press attention beyond the traditional advertising publications. There’s a human interest in an experience that doesn’t exist in traditional advertising. Get the right people there and you can have a two-hour conversation with them, changing the way they see the brand. If you can have powerful advocates, the rest will follow and you can have a major impact on brand perceptions.