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12/07/10

Chris, Vin and the consultant's paradox

“Only the farmers have won. They remain forever. They are like the land itself.
You helped rid them of Calvera, the way a strong wind helps rid them of locusts.
You’re like the wind, blowing over the land - and passing on.”

Have you watched The Magnificent Seven recently?

I did, late on Friday, for the first time since I was a teenager.

Maybe it was because it was a Friday, and my head was still full of work.
But this time I saw it less as a western remake of a Japanese classic, and more as an allegory of the consultant’s essential paradox.

(I’m not saying it was written to be that - just that was how I saw it…)

The plot surrounds a Mexican farming village which, sick of having its hard-grown crops regularly appropriated by a gang of bandits, employs the services of seven hired guns to drive them away.

But the story is about how these supposedly hard-bitten mercenaries end up going emotionally native, raising their commitment to the defence of the village well beyond the level of the merely professional.

This baffles both the bandit leader (“You came back - for a place like this. Why? A man like you. Why?”) and ultimately the surviving guns themselves, who upon departure muse ruefully on how, yet again, the clients have ended up getting so much more gain from the pain than they did (“Only the farmers won. We lost. We always lose.”)

I hear you brother.

For the inevitable paradox of the hired gun is that to effectively be one, you can’t actually care - but unless you do actually care, you can’t be an effective one.

If you don’t put your heart as well as your talents into the mission, the mission won’t be successful.

But if you do, then you’re a fool, because it’s never actually your mission.

Ay caramba…

05/07/10

Objects in the rear mirror may be closer than they appear

One Monday afternoon sometime in 2001 I found myself sitting in a tracking study presentation in Waltham, Massachusetts.

The atmosphere was tense, as the researcher was about to reveal the latest twists and turns in the battle for top spot among internet ‘portals’.

Had Yahoo’s recent advertising burst paid off in terms of unaided awareness?
Would Alta Vista cement the gains in usage and preference posted in the previous quarter?
Might there be signs of a revival from Excite@Home?

The marketing team at my client, Lycos, was particularly on edge.

Through some pioneering search technology and the use in advertising of an animated black retriever as a metaphor for how it worked, Lycos had jumped out early in the Great Race.

Among the cognoscenti the whisper was that it was a much better search product than Yahoo! - and, that if it stuck to its guns, the world would soon see this too.

But the Lycos management had decided that there was no money in search - no, to appeal to advertisers one now had to be an online network, offering a range of specialist sites under a unified Lycos banner and encouraging surfers to dwell within its ‘gates’.

And as went search, so did the dog - despite his popularity among consumers, the luckless critter had been found unfit for new purpose, and dumped.

Would the data vindicate the decision?

Fortunately, it appeared that all broadly was well.
In terms of awareness and usage, Lycos had gained a couple of percentage points.
Excite and Yahoo! had traded a place or too here and there, while Alta Vista’s surge appeared to be stalling.
All told, it looked like business as usual among the heavyweights.

There was though just one more thing, the researcher said, to which he wished to bring our attention.

A new brand had appeared on the survey for the first time.
It had an odd name, but its last month usage was already at 5% and the signs were that it was growing fast.
Would the audience care to take a closer look at its numbers?

‘No, don’t bother’ came the reply.
‘It’s far too small.
Let’s stay focused on the big boys.’

In 2004, Lycos was sold on for $95.4 million - just 2% of what Telefonica had paid for it four years earlier.

God knows where Alta Vista or Excite might be now, but certainly nowhere that matters much.

And the new kid with the odd name?

Well, let’s put it this way - its share of global search is now a lot more than 5%…

02/07/10

Bubble World

Helpful new evidence for those trying to persuade their clients that only bold outdoor/window display messaging will get noticed…

As talking/texting/e-mailing while walking becomes the norm, psychologists at Western Washington University wanted to better understand the effect that doing so has on people’s awareness and observation of what’s happening around them.

So they employed a brightly coloured clown on a unicycle to ride up and down all day past pedestrians who were simultaneously engaged on their mobile, and then asked them whether they had noticed the clown.

75% had not.

If people won’t notice a living, breathing, unicycling clown, what chance is there of them noticing your brand message, unless it’s seriously engaging or entertaining?!

23/06/10

Truth in advertising

This was the Cape Times’s take on Monday morning…

Are they just being nice?

Or is it a demand?

Perhaps they wrote it two weeks ago, and weren’t minded to update it?

Or do they know something about this afternoon’s game that we don’t?

Please, please be the latter…

14/06/10

It's not just overclaim. It's UK overclaim.

If you’re - for any reason - musing this morning on the UK, over-confidence and international football tournaments, then this could be your moment to revisit the high water mark…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTJTE7pLD2M

Listened to it recently for the first time in years, and time has only added to its glory.
(And to that of the keeper’s haircut.)

Of particular magnificence is the paean about halfway through to the manager;

“he’s our Muhammad Ali, he’s Alistair McLeod".

Shouldn’t the ASA have got involved?

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