Magical Marketing.

There's a magician/illusionist involved here, so we know it's a trick and it's pretty easy to work out how it's done. Like most magic, it's based on false assumptions. The trick works and impresses because the illusionist knows the assumptions we'll make and ensures that we make them.

Efective marketing should also be based on knowing the assumptions your customers will make. Advertising agencies call these insights. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't. But, I'm not sure the analogy should be taken all the way. Here, the patsy knows he's been fooled, yet doesn't mind because he went in expecting that to happen.

In some categories, specifically those with a fashion basis, customers are relatively happy to be "tricked". Fashion, however, is fleeting. If your product/service is less transient, I think it's probably acceptable to exploit customer assumptions in pursuit of giving them greater satisfaction, but I don't think that justifies deceiving them. That's where marketing gets its bad name. Any thoughts?

Inside Out Or Outside In?

Interesting that the cover asks "Can America withstand the world's thirst for oil?" rather than consider the unsustainable reality of one country consuming 25% of the world's oil as the source of the problem.

Marketing is not just about looking outwards. Even if something changes in your external environment/market/category, you should never forget to look within.

Nike's Retail ID.

This is the interior of Nike's 1948 pop-up store in London. It's one of five aroud the world that will exist for the next couple of months. Hidden away in a side street far from the regular retail haunts, it is fiendishly difficult to find and relies solely on word of mouth for traffic. So it's no surprise that it was empty when I arrived mid-afternoon on a weekday. There, however, the similarities with Nokia's flagship store ended.

Physically interesting, it's a mix of footwear gallery and specialist retailer, but the thing that really marked it out were the staff. All of them interested and interesting. Excited by the design and technology that surrounded them. Keen to inform, explain and opine.

I was sorry to have to leave. I will return. The whole thing made me think about Nike more than ever before and in different ways than perhaps was intended. But that's what retail spaces should do. Isn't it?

This Accident Blackspot Sponsored By.

Well, maybe it's obvious that the pole of a street lamp is just gold-plated attention-space that's crying out for some media.


But, having zoomed out, you can see why it struck me that that the locals must be pretty good drivers to be able to focus on the three lanes of traffic decelerating on the hill that leads to a major intersection at the centre of this town, absorb whatever message was placed there and avoid an accident. How long, I wonder, before some transgressor or victim sues the advertiser for distracting them while driving?

I can see the superficial appeal to insurers, garages and undertakers, but when assessing the location of one's promotion media, it's probably important to think about impact in terms of more than just effectiveness.

Cool Britannia?

A media guide accompanied London's eight minute presentation that took place during Beijing's closing ceremony. It apparently declared that one intention was to show that London is “the coolest place on the planet”.

As one commentater observed, the mere act of claiming to be cool is an infallible indication that you are not. Marketers should remember that and also be aware that this applies to all adjectives, not just being cool.

Presentation Hell.

Geeks can create great things - like the Minority Report style touch-screen system from which the application above was derived. But, so often they seem to have problems when they try to suggest a commercial use for it because they focus on what can be done rather than what people would want to do with it. I said this in Geek Marketing 101 over two years ago but it seems these guys weren't listening.

Every presentation expert and bored-rigid audience member could tell them that the last thing anyone needs is a tool that encourages data-filled powerpoint slides. But that's what we have here and, worse still, they don't even make the effort to show a real presentation. Instead they choose to align their product with bad presentations.

Yet, the visceral reaction one has to the original technology is one of marvel and joy. That's what's so great about it and that's what should be the focus of any commercial exploitation of it. It shouldn't be about the technology and it's amazing that such brilliant people can't see that. Or realise that they have incredibly boring voices.

Marketing Or Misrepresentation?

Yahoo's home-page chooses to list Olympic nation in terms of total medals won where everywhere else has given priority to gold medals. So, to this point, China lies ahead of the USA. Except in Yahooland.

If your argument isn't totally convincing, should you still make it? Or should you assume that you will be found out?