One of my favourite movie characters has to be Donald Sutherland’s Oddball from the 1970 classic Kelly’s Heroes. His message was simple and it predated Oprah and the avalanche of self help mumbo jumbo from the 80s and 90s… think positively and everything will work out. Oddball could teach our marketers a thing or two for sure… far too much negativity our there at a time of great opportunity.

It’s a buyers market so if you’re a brand looking for more bang for your marketing buck then sport sponsorship is teaming with opportunity.

Sponsorship by its nature develops over time and a well serviced property can create serious momentum for brands if leveraged effectively over a three, five or ten year partnership.

That being the case I believe that now is the ideal time for buy in. There’s value to be had all over Irish sport and in five years time when we’ve clawed our way out of this economic mess then the brands that took a leap of faith will be sitting on well matured, highly effective sponsorships.

The fact remains that from a brand perspective, we still need to connect even in the bad times so “knock it off with them negative waves” and start to think (or get advice!) about a long term investment in sport sponsorship.

For those of you too young or unenlightened here’s Oddball and co in action…

Author: James Wynne is Director of Sport at Slattery Communications

Up to this morning the Tiger Woods “scandal” is still considered fair game for the tabloids and even made a front page again yesterday… Here’s a suggestion, maybe it’s just me, but is it not time that we all get over this?

Or maybe a better question, why do we demand that our sports stars be such wholesome super humans in the first place? “Morality” clauses in endorsement contracts? Crikey!

Until this saga began in late November all we heard from Tiger was whether or not he was “bringing his A Game” into a tournament… how the knee was holding up… Tiger’s “Focus”… A record breaking, Major winning machine of a man… Boring really unless you’re a golf nut.

So it turns out he has flaws and a personal life in turmoil… Hallelujah! He might just be human like the rest of us!

Sponsors that have abandoned Tiger Woods as a result of this are simply naïve… Nike and EA have stuck by him and rightly so – it shows commercial street smarts…

The fact is that Tiger will return, he will prevail and chances are he will beat Jack Nicklaus remarkable record of major championship wins so, for sport’s sake, let’s allow him to do that.

Here’s a timely reminder of why he’s the greatest…

James Wynne is Director of Sport at Slattery Communications

The opinion poll on the web site of France’s leading national newspaper ‘LeMonde’ (lemonde.fr) reveals the telling judgement of the French people on the outcome of last night’s nightmare in St. Denis. Over 85% of readers say that their team does not deserve to go to the World Cup finals next year.

In my lifetime France has been a beacon for great football… Euro 84… World Cup 98. France herself has experienced awful injustice as in 1982 when a horrible professional foul by West German keeper Harald Schumacher on Patrick Battiston went unpunished and effectively ended France’s World Cup dream.

It’s a nation brimming with skilful inspiring players from past and present… Platini, Zidane, Dessailly, Anelka, Ribery, Vieira, Blanc… the list is endless. Based on recent evidence if you are a fan of French football it’s fair to say that you deserve a lot better…

…better than not topping your qualifying group and suffering the indignity of requiring a last minute seeding decision from on high to assist you in your play off plight…

…better than having one of your great heroes of 1984 now placing his administrative size 12s firmly on the heads of the smaller football nations…

… and of course better than having your star player and global icon of fair play become the subject of such international disgust and ridicule following a blatant cheat to secure your World Cup berth…

Henry is no Harald Schumacher but the end result is the same for Ireland and so is the sentiment towards French football from the rest of the world. I wonder when people Google Thierry Henry in years to come will the first paragraph of the citation mirror Schumacher’s by referring to being remembered most for a shameful incident that stopped a country and a generation of players from fulfilling their World Cup destiny… A privilege that Henry has been handed once again…

Author: James Wynne is Director of Sport at Slattery Communications

So this weekend we host the French soccer team and the Wallabies in Croker in less than 24 hours…  Our sporting cup runneth over…

The success of Irish rugby is undoubtedly the sporting story of the year and the Irish soccer team are back to the brink of World Cup qualification.  It’s where we as a sporting nation feel we belong…

One thing we’re inclined to forget is that (as a “friend” said about me on my wedding day) we’re punching well above our weight.

Lets have a look… a country with the population of Greater Manchester has beaten all comers in European rugby – a Grand Slam, Heineken Cup and Magners League.  That’s picking from a tiny pool of top class players by comparison with other rugby nations. 

At the top of the decade, beating England at Lansdowne to stop them winning a Grand Slam in 2001 was enough to satisfy our appetite for ‘success’.  Now we expect to beat the auld enemy every time and be doing so on our way to our own Grand Slam!

Despite falling short of expectations for almost a decade in International football, the arrival of Mr Trapattoni has reignited our sense of entitlement to a place at the World Cup table of nations!  Sure enough, here we are on the brink once again. Has anyone looked at the team sheet?  Three world class players?  Four maybe?

If we learned anything from our recent collective ego trip (the artist formerly known as the Celtic Tiger) it’s that we as a nation should keep our greed in check.  That goes for International sporting success as well… 

Let’s look for honesty of effort and commitment… Let’s look for sporting moments that will last a lifetime… Let’s support our teams every step of the way… Let’s want to be the best and let’s want Ireland to win… but let’s not be greedy people!

Author: James Wynne is Director of Sport at Slattery Communications

From Tweet to Tagline
The advertising guru, David Ogilvy once wrote, “I have a theory that the best ads come from personal experience. Some of the good ones I have done have really come out of the real experience of my life, and somehow this has come over as true and valid and persuasive.”
It seems that this is becoming even more valid now. Despite the turmoil that social media has caused, does some traditional wisdom still apply, even in the disruptive world of social media?
Take this story, Brand Republic  has run an interesting article on how Air New Zealand’s latest advertising campaign was prompted by a customer’s Twitter message.

Tweet about experience on Air New Zealand

Became …

Ad developed from Tweet

It has all the hall marks of truth that everyone can relate to. Airlines have become more impersonal over the last two decades as cost cutting, global recession and yes, Ryanair, have changed the way we fly. But we still value intangible things like the way service providers interact with us. If all else fails, create a personality – something advertisers have traditionally used as a tactic to sell a brand or service via traditional media. Are we seeing transference online?
While social media continues to evolve, and companies look to get closer to their customers via different tools, are we seeing old advertising maxims come back into fashion?  Social Media allows the customer to relate their experiences to a larger audience in an instant.
 In that same instant, advertisers and anyone in the communications business can tap into this and seek inspiration – and a damn good tag line.

cyril.moloney (at) scomms.ie

The IBEC Telecommunications and Internet Federation (TIF) telecommunications forum on Monday 21st Septemberwas certainly interesting.  Having moved back from the UK after ten years in telecommunications there, it was interesting to see what issues exist for the Irish market in terms of getting connected and broadband access nationally.

 The short version is (stop me if you have heard this before):

•  Everyone agrees that they need to pool resources and create a consistent broadband network for next generation access.
• Trouble is no one wants to pay for it in the hope someone out there will fund this.
• Chances are  nobody will do anything
• Everyone will hear the same issue come up next year.

 The benefits are clear; this new network would unlock Ireland’s potential and entrepreneurial base, which according to Dr Ronnie O’Toole of NIB, technology sector sees the highest concentration of start ups and the most likely to develop the Irish Google or Nokia and establish Ireland as a centre for IT excellence and indigenous.

The realities of such a vision does some major obstacles. Minister Eamon Ryan focused on the Irish government being a facilitator to help the operators reach an agreement. No one disputes the need to have this network but who pays for what and who gets access were the sticking points. Eircom’s new chief executive, Paul Donovan kicked off the debate highlighting that Ireland’s operators are not in a position to create their own separate networks. The point was reinforced by on by Tommy McCabe of TIF, who asked how it would be delivered and paid for in the current challenging climate. The debate swung from the government should invest to how the operators needed to front up the money, which Paul Donovan was quick to note that Eircom had invested over 1.1 billion euros in infrastructure and would continue to do this to upgrade fibre, but needed a way to work with everyone else (everyone else contributed an average of 700 million euro). Not everyone was so minded, Robert Finnegan of 3 stated that although they shared sites, they did not see the need to collaborate any further.

Outside during the breaks, there were wildly contrasting reactions as to progress being made or if this was déjà vu. Some of the attendees predicted we would still be in the same situation next year as no one wanted to give ground and risk giving a competitor the upper hand.

I think Lord Carter who spoke put it best when he said that ultimately a ‘deal space’ needed to be put into place where all the parties came together in a relatively risk controlled environment (from my reading, I think that is polite speak for locking everyone in one room until they agreed, but that is just me). In their separate spaces (the telecoms industry, Comreg and the Government), consensus on anything looks unlikely. The problem of procrastination is that the pressure builds as we seek to attract Foreign Direct Investment and our infrastructure is critical particularly with the big bets in data storage and cloud computing.

Will the need to get out of recession and get jobs mean we might finally have the dealspace, or will 2009 be the year of procrastination?

Author Read the rest of this entry »

The Guardian covered a recent high court ruling in the UK which could have broad reaching consequences for bloggers.

Basically, the UK high court ruled that Bloggers did not automatically have a right to keep their identities secret.  The case revolved detective constable Richard Horton – the blogger behind Nightjack blog (now pulled down following a settlement with Lancashire Police), a blog about his experiences in the police force.

Horton prevented the Times from revealing his identity after arguing the paper would be putting him at risk of disciplinary action for disclosing confidential information about prosecutions within the force.

However, in a landmark judgment Mr Justice Eady overturned the injunction, stating that Horton, whose blog at one time had around 500,000 readers a week, had “no reasonable expectation of privacy”.
“I do not accept that it is part of the court’s function to protect police officers who are, or think they may be, acting in breach of police disciplinary regulations from coming to the attention of their superiors,” Eady added.

Because it is a public format, the court felt that anonymity did not automatically apply. Unlike journalists and the traditional media, the rules of engagement and protecting sources is seen as sacrosanct. As the bloggersphere evolves  will we see it adopt the guidelines already in place by the media on a proactive basis, or will it develop through either legal precedents or mutual understanding?

While this is a UK ruling, it will be interesting to see how privacy entitlements and blogging could be interpreted here in Ireland.

cyril.moloney at scomms.ie

Foreverism – the latest marketing buzzword for now?

 Nine years ago, the Cluetrain Manifesto hinted that the future for brands would be to have a conversation with their audiences.
As Social Networks like Facebook top 200 million active users worldwide and other applications ranging from Twitter to LinkedIn grow, people are leaving permanent information about themselves on the world-wide-web for all to see.
According to Trendwatching.com’s latest report, this is giving rise to ‘Foreverism’. In other words, in our rush for instant gratification, we are now in a conversation with our favourite brands that will never end. The catalyst to all this is the technology that allows us to find, follow, interact and collaborate with anyone and anything. To have this conversation, we are putting out more personal information in the hope we will get into a proper dialogue with our favourite brands
While this is not massively new, what is interesting is that with the rise and rise of Twitter, big brands may finally take the conversation seriously. While they are jumping on the ‘Twitwagon’, newer technology will continue to drive this and brands and consumers will finally talk in a more meaningful way.  On Twitter, Ford,   easyJet,  Dell and Bord Gais have kicked off this conversation in earnest.
Of course the challenge here is to manage the conversation, not just accrue members and followers.  This, they conclude is an issue that brands need to fully understand. You need to address the consumer concern directly, not pass it along to a department or powerless middle management function.
In Ireland, we are already seeing this conversation with platforms like IGO People which has really nailed this concept. Also, Damien Mulley  has some great pointers when it comes to online marketing and adding value to your customers.  This is critical as any brand opening themselves up to a conversation will bear the brunt of pent up frustrations. The key is to move the conversation forward; brands will need to adopt an honest, ongoing and problem solving approach. This will balance the conversation and allow brands to converse, not just wait for their turn to speak.
Author: cyril.moloney at scomms.ie

Experiential was the buzz word for a decade, what now as the budgets disappear?

Marketeers have embraced Experiential Marketing with varying degrees of success over the last decade.  Top of the class were the drinks brands, if you were at Oxegen or Electric Picnic over the last few years, you can’t have missed the great work by brands like Bacardi & Heineken, other non drinks brands who also added to the experience in the music space included O2, Meteor, Nokia and Toyota.  Now, lest you think this is just about music let me quickly point out some of the really nice work in the sports and sponsorship space as well.  Nike’s wall of sound at the Great Race ,O2’s activation around Irish Rugby and Toyota’s online GAA work all stand out in my mind as really effective experiential campaigns where these brands benefitted by building  a rapport with the attendees and fans, both at the events and at via the web at work and at home.

You see Experiential Marketing is all about conveying the essence of brand through a personalised experience.   Its about treating the consumer as an individual and having a one to one with that consumer so s/he gets a better feel for what your brand is all about.

Inevitably, some marketers will shy away from experiential marketing over the coming months and years on the basis that it is a “luxury”, However, some braver souls will recognise the opportunities looming!

You see, in my opinion, consumers have been spoilt with the breadth of experience on offer in recent years.  Take Electric Picnic as a classic example, tons of brands struggling to make a connection.and having to do it super subtly as the organisers did’nt want the brands to “take over”.

To date the average festival goer has been assailed by “experiences” from the time they walk in the turnstile to the time they get home.  Should I sip a Bacardi Mojito in the lively up tempo Latin world of Bacardi‘B-Live or maybe Ill luxuriate with a Hurricane in Southern Comfort’s recreation of New Orleans or just flop on a bean bag in Nokia’s giant Picnic Basket whilst an attractive young person gives me a head massage.  Mmmm, choices, choices, it’s like I said earlier, consumers have been spoilt – call it experiential marketing sensory overload. 

Its all about supply and demand…. Too much of any good thing and the consumer becomes blasé, BUT Scarcity Sharpens The Senses and therein lies the opportunity!

Think about the coming summer,  half the brands will be missing from the festival circuit due to budget cutbacks.  Are you seeing the same clear space as me?  Now is the time to deliver an uplifting experience for your consumer, give something back, show you care,….all that good stuff…clichés are often clichés because they are true…. Anyway that’s just my tuppence worth.  I see opportunities where others see unnecessary expenditure. 

As we build up to the first days of President Obama, we can be forgiven for feeling that there has been a tangible change in how politics works.

The UK mobile operator, Orange has published a report into how the UK political machine needs to move away from its traditional rituals and embrace the online community to reach and inform on policies. The report highlights how digital media has infiltrated almost all aspects of our lives, and is beginning to become more influential in the way we live our daily lives.

It might be easy to dismiss this as US or UK puff, but President Obama’s 2008 campaign use of new media transformed how voters and supporters could access information and policies and feel closer to the candidate. It also showed how online and traditional media now need to be considered in a holistic way – and has given rise to “Inline Communications”. We have seen how online communications have transformed online communities into real votes and have made the difference when it came to the US presidential campaign. Even President Nicolas Sarkozy, is a well acknowledged advocate and user of online communications (he uses Digg to ferret out key voter questions, which he then answers both online and in the French media).

Perhaps the Irish government and the Irish body politic need to look more closely at this. The Orange report concluded that politicians should use online communication both to engage, and listen to their constituents concerns. The online world could not only serve as another channel to communicate, it could enable them to rapidly get feedback on policy or gauge public sentiment on any range of issues. Given recent reactions to issues ranging from the medical cards to the creeping nationalistion of the Irish banking system, this channel could not only serve to inform, but to monitor and address voters’ real concerns in a calm and measured way, rather than having to hear these concerns on Joe Duffy and being on the back foot.

With Lisbon 2 on the horizon, it might be worth taking six tips from the Obama campaign?

1. Create a campaign brought to you by “you”:
Obama’s campaign focused heavily on the personal touch, making its theme all about “you” and not “I”. Over three million people donated personally to ‘team Obama’, many of whom gave less than $100. This powerful personalisation mobilised the masses to get the vote out whereas, John McCain, who claimed not to use the ‘net’, subsequently lost a large majority of the under 30 vote.

2. Go to them wherever they are:
Social Networking as a political channel in Ireland may seen ludicrous: the audience is too young, they are disconnected from the ‘real world’ or elitist and excluded Joe the Plumber, Again, Obama proven them all wrong. By setting up an online presence on both large social networks – such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, but also niche networks such as LinkedIn,– he expanded his potential audience and expanded his reach to communities across a wider social landscape. Again, this is a powerful medium that politicians and communication campaigns have yet to be effectively on such an epic scale.

3. Listen as much as talk with social media:
Irish politicians have their websites, but for the most part list their biography, their views on issues and some press releases. They are missing a huge opportunity here and while some politicians to prefer the sound of their own voices more than those of their constituents and supporters, Obama’s clever use of social media not just to talk to supporters, but to talk with them saw him garner good ideas and suggestions even made the transition from social media supporter actual policy.

Address myths and rumours head on and quickly:
The first Lisbon treaty saw rumour and half truths dominate public consciousness. All politicians and PR practitioners should get into the habit of learning from other peoples mistakes’, and that’s exactly what team Obama did.

The campaign knew that misinformation must be responded to quickly and forcefully before it escalated and spiraled out of control. By utilising fact checking microsites such as www.fightthesmears.com fact and www.healthplanfacts.org to detail policy specifics, electorates were able to check their facts and team Obama were able to set the record straight, ensuring that there was always an equal dose of accurate information to cancel out the negative content. They also used search advertising as a rapid response tactic by buying up negative phrases such as “Barack Obama birth certificate” or “Barack Obama is a Muslim,” which clicked through to a page that debunked the myth and gave details on his Christian faith.

Use video:
Referendums and national elections are never cheap, but are dwarfed by the inconceivable amount spent in a super-states such as the US, particularly where advertising is concerned. This is where the online video sharing facility, YouTube came to play a substantial role, providing Barack Obama with over 14,548,809 hours of free advertising; the equivalent of $46 million.  Not only were millions users tuning in to watch ‘The Obama song’ but also viewing footage of live events, creating mini documentaries and circulating campaign ads that never aired on American television. Essentially, these served as rapid response messaging ads for online and TV news consumption.

Build a mobile campaign
As we all know, the surest way to kill of a message or idea is to call hundreds of people (and it is probably illegal) with a scripted message read in the same tone as someone reading mart prices. Mobile messaging has been seen as as the next big thing in personalising campaign messages and targeting individual households. Team Obama managed to compile a mobile phone database of over 3 million phone numbers which acted as valuable tool in the swing states, and can continue to be a useful communication tactic for the new Administration.

While it is easy to be dismissive and think this does not apply, you risk cutting yourself off from the very people you need to hear your message. It is our role to communicate, but also to listen and learn and where necessary adapt.

Cyril Moloney