Sadness struck the halls of Jack when we learned that Joe Ades, better known as "Peeler Guy," died last weekend. Visitors to New York's Union Square knew him as a street hawker par excellence, whose sales performance was so irresistible, so engaging and yes so experiential that $5 bills rained down like carrot peels... inspiring countless blogs, a 2006 Vanity Fair profile and JACK magazine's own homage to his experiential savvy.

RIP, Joe.

In December a new cultural space in Hong Kong opened up called ArtisTree. The inaugural exhibition was “A Life In Fashion” a retrospective on British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood,
The ambitious show, created by London’s prestigious Victoria and Albert Museum, traced her clothing collections over three decades
Even though some of the clothes are thirty years old, they still have an attitude that resonates. In her earliest period, Vivienne Westwood attacked orthodoxy in fashion, a trait that would remain throughout her career, and her anti-establishment clothing shaped a subculture that continues to influence people to this day.

Continue reading "The Evolution of Design"

We recently worked with the agency 180 to help SONY introduce their new P-series VAIO notebooks to the usually indifferent crowds of NYC. If you're having brunch in SOHO this weekend--keep your eye out for skinny models, carrying chic accessories and looking stoic...oh, and look out for the SONY group as well.

Continue reading "SONY Mannequins hit NYC"

You Tube culture is now pushing traditional advertisers to think differently about commercial TV. While some try to blatantly rip off the You Tube aesthetic with amateur shot video and bad light, some are creating bold experiences that which live on via video sharing sites, and blogs.

Last night I noticed a new commercial for Carnival cruises which shows people in Dallas breaking the record for the largest beach ball; all in the name of "fun." While I enjoyed the commercial, I was mainly struck by their use of experiential marketing to create a TV spot. Carnival repeated the stunt in Philadelphia by trying to break the world's largest pinata.

Continue reading "Commercials go Experiential "

Check out WSJ's coverage of how Sports Illustrated is marrying its annual swimsuit issue with nontraditional marketing to generate new revenue:

This year, about 40% of revenue generated by the issue -- which accounts for about a tenth of the magazine's total annual revenue -- will come from digital and event-marketing efforts. Four years ago, just 4% of the issue's revenue came from sources other than print advertising, executives say.

This quote sums it up: "Experiential marketing," a broad term for efforts to give consumers hands-on experience with products or services, is a growth industry as marketers seek out more ways to draw the attention of the increasingly distracted consumer.

What does a “virtual” mean to you and why are you doing it? What have your experiences been? Go ahead, comment below, you can scroll back up later.

I’m new at Jack. Having just arrived here a month ago to manage the Digital Studio I’ve had a chance to talk with many of our client teams across the offices already. Here are some impressions from my conversations. I’ll be sure to report more later - subscribe to the feed already... ;-)

Defining what people mean when they say “virtual” is a trick. When I first showed up I would talk about virtual events or virtual meetings and people interpreted this as that one moment in time when there may be some live activity or the launch date. While this was not my intent I would have colleagues say: “No, it’s broader, you need to look at the whole experience, the whole engagement.” OK, lesson learned let’s call it a virtual experience or virtual engagement if you prefer.

Now, I’ve been around our industry for a while and the thing that struck me was that while there are a host of approaches from

• 3D Second Life style virtual worlds (not a fan) to


• faux 3D environments that mimic real spaces but take full advantage of the


• more “standard” web approaches like (social) websites

what’s stood out is that in not one conversation was anybody stuck on an approach. The answer is always based in what is the best, most engaging experience for the audience and how do we fully use the tools available in the digital medium and extend them into the real world when appropriate. Experiential marketing no matter where you are - how about that!

Um, yes, the cool aid tastes great...

So, the above approaches are one decision, but as I hinted above you may want to take a step back and look at how the Virtual Experience fits into your overall experience marketing platform. Here are approaches that have been proposed:

• Extend a live experience – Face to face meeting may be crimped now, but even so there are some things you just can’t replace. Maybe you want to focus the live portions on your high value VIPs, maybe you leave it alone. Adding a virtual version of the entire experience or a relevant subset can extend your reach (and monetization opportunities) a great deal. Adding a virtual stop to a road show is another way to capture all those that live in poorly served area or couldn’t make it for other reasons. A number of case studies show at 100% add on, to a good extent from international visitors for whom the travel is prohibitive.



• Replace a live experience – There are a good number of events that may be served well with an online experience. Internal meeting come to mind where colleagues may know each other. For this type of event we’ll want to make sure that the attendee still gets the value of the event & they aren’t just sitting at their desk like they always to. Some great proposals have been sending attendees webcams, a do not disturb sign for their door and arranging for 8:30 AM delivery of special materials for the event to drive attendance and make it feel special.



• Have more of them – These things cost less, there’s no facility and no travel. You may already have some of the content in videos, your LMS and what you need to do is work with somebody (us) to come up with the overall experience to engage your users in a different way that inspires them.

For all of these type of experiences the content needs to be short and engaging. Forums and other interactive elements are great for engagement. Live chats add that moment in time focus when everybody shows up to ask questions, share knowledge, etc. Live chat across a live and virtual event can form both events into one cohesive one in the attendees mind. Lastly online events can & should stretch over multiple days, no need to cram everything into one day.

That about does it for my first post. I’ll be exploring the bullet items above in the future. We’ve been developing our own take on how to do a variety of meetings, but just trade shows that a number of vendors have done.

Thoughts? Please comment.

I'd like to see more people talking about going virtual and going green. When talk of the economy and shrinking budgets come up, being eco-minded is the first thing tossed out the window as if it were a luxury item. Lots of brands are going digital and I'd like to see the marketing of this trend lean towards this is RIGHT vs. RIGHT NOW.

Good post about making green marketing work.

Despite the decidedly dark tone out there, we at Jack Morton see opportunity in 2009’s top trends. We believe that brands can be more innovative in engaging stakeholders...smarter about spending marketing resources...and more effective in generating and tracking return.

Here is Jack Morton’s quick take on 9 trends to help you build your brand in 2009:

1. Dangle a carrot: Premium content engages from c-level events like CME to NBCU at CES

2. Set benchmarks: Find out how to combine ROI with spending smarter

3. "Feed your tribe": Hyundai married brand and audience..evoking guru Seth Godin's latest tome

Continue reading "9 Marketing trends in '09"

I recently had the pleasure of participating in a panel discussion conducted by Event Marketer entitled: The Incredible Shrinking Conference. The discussion centered on client budget constraints and how agencies are effectively assisting our clients in moving forward in our current economic reality.

There were two main concepts delivered during the discussion. The first is how the utilization of a sophisticated production procurement approach is allowing Jack Morton clients realize much needed cost reductions enabling clients to move forward with their events. The second is how a the use of digital technology to create virtual events will expand and extend the power of the face to face event. Virtual events should not necessarily replace a live event, but should be used to extend its effectiveness and increase its ROI and ROE.

Check out the archive of this discussion--it's free, you just need to register.

Thomas Friedman's column in 18 Feb 09 New York Times tells a great story of some young, entrepreneurial activists on a mission to inspire Indian students to start climate action programs and learn about new clean green techologies (like the solar and battery powered car they drove). Their campaign is a great example of (presumably low-cost) big impact experiential marketing, linking a 15-city tour based out of their cool climate-friendly car, YouTube videos, a Bollywood dance group and of course the ultimate influencer outreach (Friedman). Cool stuff.

Jack Morton's own Matt Jones, creative strategist extraordinaire, will be starring on THE GRUEN TRANSFER, a hit show in Australia where power panelists slice and dice the art and business of persuasion. Proudly representing the experiential camp, Matt is the sole panelist who's *not* in advertising. The Gruen Transfer returns to air (and for those of us outside Australia, to YouTube?) on Wednesday March 18th.

A short note on why.
Most people’s eyes aren’t perfectly matched. One’s usually stronger than the other. In my case, one’s OK and the other’s almost completely useless.

Apart from the fact that I spend half my life squinting at the people around me (for all those people who think I’ve ignored them you have the reason) this poor eyesight of mine causes another problem. I have zero depth perception.

Most people can make snap judgements about the things they see. I have to think around the subject, screw my eyes up and look again, and try to figure out how near or far away it is.
And that’s really what this blog is about. Taking a different view of the subjects we encounter day-to-day through my eyes. Looking at trends and patterns to see if they’re as close as they seem, or further than we thought.
 
Kevin Jackson

This Tuesday I was privileged enough to speak at the Marketing Week Brand Summit, thanks to Michelle and Sherrie of Centaur.
My brief was to speak about brand building in the recession, surprise surprise. But as I worked on my presentation, I started to realise that my story wasn't really about the recession at all. It was about behaviours.
In the end, I talked about my behaviour, the audience's behaviour, consumer behaviour and brand behaviour.
Do I win points each time I say 'behaviour'?

It was a shame really that many of the people who spoke weren't able to stick around and see some of the other presentations. They missed inspiring stuff from amongst others Kristof Fahey of Yahoo, Simon Ainslie of Nokia, Ian Armstrong from Honda, and Stephen Cheliotis, Chair of the Super Brands Council.

But as well as missing some great presentations and compelling speakers, they also didn't get to see just how closely aligned we all were.

That's the thing - behaviour really is everyone's key focus right now. They might not all have made the explicit connection, since they were viewing the world through their own distinctive prisms. But it was clear that for everyone in the brand sphere, it's behaviour that counts. More specifically, tribal behaviour.

It's at this point that I'd like to mention Seth Godin, although I don't know why - he never mentions me. His new book is all about tribes. In it, he unpicks the notion of communal connectivity and the need for leadership and a sense of belonging.

Interestingly, that's what the Brand Summit was. A tribal gathering of like-minded people looking for leadership.
And I'm happy to say I think our tribe is in safe hands.