Coffee Morning Anyone?

How I like the stuff.

Just thought I should point out to any readers of mine - I'm hosting a monthly coffee morning because I miss the chat of the last lot which Russell began.

The first is taking place at Lantana on Friday 13th (eek) of February. Their lovely blog is here, Scrambling Eggs. You can find out more details about it on the Facebook event page, or on the general Coffee Morning group.

It'd be good to see you there. It may get a bit plannerly, but hey - that's not always a bad thing.

Blog/Brand devotion..

I'd like to begin this post by saying a big get well soon to Marcus Brown. Having the foresight to bring a camera along to the doctors, let alone blog about it deserves some respect. I'm not sure I'd have done the same, but this just cements Marcus's legendary status.

Curiously, this also coincided with me reading Naked Conversations (the book's blog can be found here) and learning about the 'rules' for blogging, and how blogging frequently can help businesses put out the fire of negative publicity.

I'd like to extend this belief into more personal thing (touched on by the book). It's quite staggering, when you think about it - blogging voices seem to in some cases to subsume the 'real' or certainly cross over. If any one of my blogging friends suddenly stopped posting for a prolonged period of time, I'd wonder what had happened to them. Yet, with twitter and technology like it, we are now more connected than ever. Indeed, if a blogger was ever struck down with illness, I wonder how many would text twitter before doing anything else.

Becoming this devoted (or mildly insane, in the case of the latter example) would surely have tremendous implications. You'd become what Gladwell calls the 'Salesman' of the piece, inspiring an audience almost on the basis of your relentless blogging. And, as one of the book's examples cites, 'good' bloggers blog once or twice a day. I've resolved to do that, but it's not going well this year. Perhaps I should get a Yo-Yo. I do have a digital camera now though, so more random pictures will be forthcoming.

Going back to the book for a second; it references a chap who was interested (to put it mildly) in Treo's. If blogs can whip up high priests of the brand, think how much your product would benefit. Even entering into a conversation with your consumer would surely help - yes, even the flaming you'd probably receive at some point.

Indeed, this blog was initially begun as a highly self referential online CV. However, as it's matured/become more irreverent/posted about music, I hope it's done rather more than that. I would like to think now it's a conversation with the world, as well as an online record of all my thoughts, even if they aren't always strictly marketing or advertising focused - I have had difficulty reconciling normal situations to marketing or advertising scenarios, unlike Mr Godin. Still, I'm not paid as much as he is and am not published quite yet.

I think I'd feel quite sad to abandon it at this point, although I'm not about to take photos of myself on a hospital bed. Some conversations shouldn't include photos of me laid out - I'll leave that to the drunken Flickr photos.

The road to no regret..

As well as being the title of a Scritti Politti song, it also describes how agencies should feel at the moment.

Sod all this 'advertising is dead, the consumer is king' talk... Yes, the consumer has more power to play with your brand like never before. But that's not to say that this can't be harnessed effectively, or offered up as part of a greater debate. Smart brands are debating with the consumer already, be they HSBC or AOL.

You can certainly make a colossal mess of things this way though, and not every brand needs to enter into a debate. However, much can be said for being the first brand to do so in your category, in much the same way as being the first brand to have a significant voice in your category, much like Innocent.

But again, not every brand can have this sort of voice. So what do you do? Well, by adopting the Bernbach maxim, as shown by Avis:

You make more of an effort. Position yourself as being happy where you are, offering either impeccable customer service, a niche, yet well thought of product. It's not rocket science.

However, keeping a large customer base satisfied is tantamount to . I think maybe only 3 or 4 large brands are able to manage it - the likes of Innoc.. yes, you've guessed it, John Lewis, Audi and probably VW. I'm sure there are others which I'm forgetting in the large brand stakes. Feel free to chip in with other examples..

And this applies to agencies as well. Yes, know about digital, open a virtual agency.. be innovative. But don't forget what you are damned good at, and if that happens to be a ballsy 90 second execution in primetime TV land, then so be it.

The way Campaign and several industry people are talking, you'd have thought advertising is more than content to let PR have all the interesting ideas. Maybe not 80's excess, but 80's ballsiness needs to return to adland.