Kev buries ETS with smoking headline grabber

Kev. Come on.

We know you want to get less people smoking.

But since when did smoking, the ultimate symbol of coolness and rebellion, become less attractive when the Government tries to restrict it?

Sure. Raise the tax on cigarettes. You've done that today, sending the tax on cigarettes up by a whopping 25%, an average of $2.16 for a pack of 30. And we know from basic economics that this works. Whenever prices go up, there is an inverse relationship to the number of people consuming.

But Kev, while you're at it, why not raise the price of hospital treatment for smokers suffering from smoking-related disease? After all, why should the rest of us jealous lot stump up the cash for someone in hospital who's spent their life rebelling and looking cool.

We could have done that if we wanted, but we decided we'd much rather spend our time looking dowdy and boring reading books.

As mentioned on the 7pm Project last night, a brand of cigarettes called Death were popular a while back (black pack, skull and crossbones), while illegal drugs come in all manner of unbranded paper or plastic wrapping.

(Not that I'd know this from personal experience of course - AER Head being a wholesome early-rising athlete.)

But what this points to is something the fag companies know: packaging aint gonna make fags shift slower. In fact, Imperial Tobacco have already come out and said that there's no evidence to suggest that the brandless pack will decrease consumption.

However, there is a serious issue of how those who choose to smoke will be able to differentiate between brands. How will Tara Tarlungs or Gary Gangrene know which stick gives them a sense of prestige and film-star-like qualities, which one is the cheap, basic smoke for smoking alone, which one is the brand they trust to keep them looking rebellious and cool?

Kev, these are big questions for a smoker, and you're making it really difficult for them to choose their method of slow suicide.

In related news, some 'think tank' has claimed that your changes Kev will also lead to tobacco companies making expensive compensation claims for having their property acquired. So what? Stick sellers have admitted they're not going to be losing smokers, so clearly the compensation required is related directly to what something is worth.

Which, according to Imperial Tobacco is... well... nothing.

And if it came down to differentiation, about how to make one stick different from another stick, there's plenty left to change. What about the classic shape, colour and size? They've been pretty uniform until now. What about the fag boxes? Until now, consistent. What about the way shops display them, or the colour of the smoke?

Even something as subtle as the colour of the filter on a stick would be enough for a consumer to be satisfied that he or she has made the right choice.

So really, everyone's blowing smoke up their own pipes. By brandless packages, Kev's taking a vote-winning swipe at the big bad tobacco companies, in full knowledge that taxes are his real weapon of effectiveness. Plus, as my old mate Nathan Bush of BCM in Brisbane intelligently points out, it's a great way to bury bad news - like the scrapping of the emissions trading scheme.

On the other hand, you have tobacco companies crying foul, yet in the full knowledge that branding change will merely lead to yet another round of clever publicity-generating adaptation.

In its simplest terms, what we have here is:

• the power of addiction plus subversive, fragmented advertising practice
• versus
• the power of price plus shock-tactic advertising strategy.

Traditionally, the Government concentrates on the bottom two, and as I've said before, has some way to go to make it's advertising campaigns truly effective.

If I were you, Kev, I'd take that $27.8m you're going to spend on anti-smoking campaigns and think much more carefully about the value you'll get while the planet burns. I'm all ears.

Smoke gets in your eyes. And so does lardy cheese-pea arteries.

Darned cigarette ads.

Listen up advertisers: Your target audience is anyone who smokes cigarettes. The best way to reach them in a meaningful way is through cigarette packets. When they light up, they get to see disgusting images and horrible captions that tell them they'll die a horrid death. It's about as targeted and timely as Google!

And you know what else? Everyone watches TV and views billboards. If you put an ad on there, you're showing disgusting images and horrible captions to everyone. I don't know what the stats are but you could have 60 or 70% of people viewing who don't smoke.

Plus, this 60 or 70% don't smoke didn't sign up to this. Switch it off, please. I'll buy a pack of cigarettes if I want to see this stuff.

Personally, I've just gone from watching pavlova on Masterchef to some kind of grey cheese being squeezed out of an aorta. Who is planning these ads? Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall? Bear Grylls? Armin Meiwes?

Where I used to work, before it went bust and we all ended up on the dole, our starting point with any campaign was with our target audience.

It wasn't enough to say X company wants to say Y, so let's make Y really funny and/or pretty and/or repetitive so it sticks in people's heads.

See, most clients want their fair spoonful of ROI. But they generally don't want to serve up their ads like an all-you-can-eat buffet cos it's costs too much to serve people you're not targeting.

The other problem with the all-you-can-eat campaign is that, while it's really loud and annoying and everyone remembers it, no one ends up loving you or your product. And, importantly, they don't make purchasing decisions based on it.

The reason is that you don't know enough about the ideas and beliefs of your target audience, and you haven't tailored your advertising to what they want to hear. People outside your target audience couldn't care less, while your target audience are cheesed off because you haven't worked hard enough to show them you know what they're after.

What the Cancer Institute NSW have done is produced an ad that not only is an amalgamation of a heap of old ads (cheap) but:

1. Isn't solely about cancer
2. Isn't targeted at smokers
3. Is so offensive it's flagged on YouTube.

but

4. Is on Australian TV all the time.

Who's paying for all this? Donators like me?

Getting there ugly - welcome to my world

I don't suppose I have a great deal in common with the Chairman of WPP, Sir Martin Sorrell. But I had to laugh when I saw his comment about 2009 being a year when clients 'got there ugly'.

Sir Martin, sir, welcome to my world.

For me, sometimes it's all I can do of a day to restrain myself from penning an irksome letter to some of my clients, and sign it off with 'Irked of Bellevue Hill'.

You see, what irks me (see, I'm getting there) is the number of Australian organisations that are happy to 'get there ugly' in recruitment comms, while spending a fortune on their consumer brand. For one such client, the disparity is incredible.

Client X (as we shall call them) are a big name. They have recently spent a fortune on a heap of wonderfully creative ads on billboards, adshels, newspapers, and so on. I'd love to show you copies of these ads; their agency has done a great job in creating that warm, fuzzy feeling about an organisation that in reality is totally irrelevant to the vast majority of the population.

But the thing is, their recruitment advertising is hugely inconsistent. We've done some great work for them, even won some international awards for the ideas we brought to their largest recruitment programme.

But most of what they do in recruitment is boxy, text-heavy, uninspiring and - well - outdated. Why the difference?

Well because they are so big, bureaucratic and process-driven, some departments actually feel they need to preserve the status-quo rather than take any steps to improve. Where we have made improvements, our contacts have had to have been brave enough to come on the journey, damn the consequences. And they've often had to field the spears afterward.

So my question is, why the battle?

For the eight years I've been working in employment marketing/recruitment advertising, I've been party to a crucial insight. That a brand exists in an organisation's people.

Employees are an organisation's mouthpiece, they are the ones who live the values (whatever they may be) and they provide the foundations for whatever product, service or innovation that company is famous for.

But when most organisations recruit, they segue straight through values/culture straight onto technical skills. They could explain a whole lot more about their culture, and attract a lot more of the people who would live their brand, if they only looked harder at the employment messages they put out there.

A strong, tight, integrated advertising strategy that makes people feel something will help an organisation attract more of the right people, and in doing so save money through increased productivity from hiring people that fit.

Isn't it about time employers started thinking about their potential employees like customers?

Atlassian - if I could critique for a moment

Yesterday, I went to the fantastic Open House at Atlassian (feature pictures are owner-entrepreneurs Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar, both 29).

Atlassian are an amazing growth story. And recently, they have been making waves in the recruitment industry, by taking a firm approach with recruiters, and a word-of-mouth campaign to influence software developers to head their way.

There's no denying this is a very very smart company. Product-wise, culture-wise and peer-wise, it's up there with Google. But it's a very interesting time for Atlassian, since it's starting to reach that size where it stands the risk of losing its close-knit feel. It's gone from one garage to a series of 'international garages'. It's owners are young, innovative and driven, and they're refreshingly informal in communicating what they value.

But, even though this potentially-stellar business is recruiting an extremely sought-after group of people with a $4.5million investment, the one thing they don't seem to have is an advertising strategy.

A glimpse of the future? I for one, hope not.

You see, Google doesn't really appear to have a particularly strong or noticeable recruitment advertising strategy either. But then, they're the seventh biggest brand in the world right now and everyone knows that the hurdles are high to get there - because it's seemingly the best place to work, learn and develop.

(That's not to say that all views about Google are accurate - I'm sure there are many misconceptions out there. But right now those perceptions are not enough to stop Google attracting the best of the best.)

Atlassian are not necessarily wrong in their strategy: it's clearly a choice they've made, a channel they've chosen to avoid, and it may pay-off. I hear they've already attracted a high level of talent, somewhere in the region of 600 shortlisted candidates*, simply by this approach informing people of their benefits, values and culture. Good on 'em I say - much better than the 'post and pray' approach of so many others.

*Please correct me if wrong.

But by not having a clear advertising strategy, they are still only promoting words on a page, as surely as if they tried to sell me a Mars bar by saying it's smooth, chocolatey and sweet. Sure, those are benefits. But that's not enough to give me the impetus to buy it, even less to buy it when a Snickers has nuts in it, and, well I prefer smooth, chocolatey, sweet and nuts.

I digress, but only slightly. What Atlassian appear to be missing is an central 'idea' which leads to a certain ideal set of attitudes, beliefs, and ultimately, behaviours. One thing Google has going for it is a powerful brand identity which is a powerful tool for their recruitment. Ultimately, Atlassian should be aiming to create something similar - when I think of their name, I shouldn't simply be able to list some facts like 'one week's paid holiday before starting'.

Atlassian needs to be assoicated with positive experiences. When I think of Atlassian, I want to feel something about them.

Let's say someone already works at Google (potentially the 'ideal candidate'). What is it about Atlassian that makes them want to leave Google and join them (since surely that must be the aim)? What conscious or sub-conscious drivers tie them so strongly to Atlassian that they'll throw their hat in the ring?

Sure, there are perks at Atlassian. But will the ideal candidate buy the Mars bar, or will they stick with the Snickers because it's got nuts in it?

Once the newspaper has been binned and the last beers from the Open House are drunk, where's the one cruicial touchpoint that acts as a consistent reinforcement of the main messages - a strong employer brand and advertising strategy?

Niche targeting so difficult

Where I work, we're an advertising agency - and we often do our best to target niche groups with relevant and attractive messages for our clients. It's advertising - we're not talking about long-term engagement here - so we need to be targeted, punchy and we need candidates to quickly comprehend the deal.

One of the campaigns I'm working on at the moment requires people who could *quite literally* come from any career background. It's really not about what they've done; it's more about the type of person they are and the attributes they possess.

What we've discovered, is there are certain talent pools that these people appear in, and - without giving the game away - there might be some in Law, some in Advertising, and some in - say - Warehousing.

Anyway, my point is that once we've nailed down these groups, we need to uncover the media these people hang-out in (note: not looking for jobseeking media, we go for the passive market first). So once we've found an array of websites or communities for individuals working in Law, Advertising and Warehousing, we end up with maybe 20 different sites, all of which have marginally different specs for their banner advertising.

Back to the point in hand. Right now, my team is creating 22 different banners in order for us to - well - do our job properly. Isn't this unfair on the client who has to pay for all this development, not to mention the time it takes to coordinate and despatch all this stuff?

I'm calling for universal banner sizes - you can't build a site that advertisers will use without sticking to them. What say you?

Cola - busted myths re-busted

You don't have to follow the world of advertising closely to be aware of the recent furore created by a Coca Cola advertising campaign.

The campaign featured a famous Australian character actor, Kerry Armstrong, under a "Motherhood and Myth-busting" headline. In the ad, Coke attempted to bust some of the urban legends about Coca Cola, including the fact that it rots teeth, makes you fat and contains large amounts of caffeine.

No need to go back over the wrongs around this campaign (I mean, when did the Coca Cola brand start being about a soft drink?), but a recent news story on the BBC charted some of the realities associated with excessive consumption of cola.

And it really serves to highlight the problem of the 'myth-busting' ad.

That's because, while drinking Coke in moderation (and in conjunction with a balanced diet and good oral hygiene), is unlikely to lead to major problems, this ad is akin to positioning cars as irrelevant to global warming ("Go ahead. Use your Hummer. It's those big factories that are the main problem.").

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) agreed, with ACCC Chairperson, Graeme Samuel stating:

"Coke's messages were totally unacceptable, creating an impression which is likely to mislead that Coca-Cola cannot contribute to weight gain, obesity and tooth decay."

When you have "tens of millions of people in industrialised countries drink[ing] at least 2-3 l of cola per day" then you've got a problem. Coca Cola want people to consume, but the reality is they need to know that Coke does not provide the nutrition of a piece of fruit or a handful of nuts - and is something to be consumed rarely, not commonly.

Where have all the thinkers gone?

You know, being a settled Pom over here in this fantastic country, some things really make me seethe.

I can put up with the laid-back attitude. I'm at home with blue skies. I can just about cope with the endlessly enticing beaches. But I simply can't fathom the way this downturn is being managed by employers.

The way I see it, a downturn like this is part of healthy economic cycle. Businesses should look to come out the other end (note to employers: There will be an end to the downturn.) leaner, meaner and more innovative. Markets have shifted, so they need to adapt, take stock and come up with new ideas. So where are these ideas coming from? Their employees?

Working for an advertising agency, we trade in the business of ideas. But are employers listening to us, mulling it over, and thinking of ways to make it work? No. They're restructuring and cutting costs. I repeat: Restructure. Cut costs. Duh. Duh. Same. Same. Who told them that this was the only way to justify HR's existence in a downturn?

In the olden days of advertising, an advert served as a rather pleasant notice: This is my product. It's rather nice. I think you should buy it.

As competition increased, new ways were developed to increase sales: This is my product. It's rather nice. It's has certain features that are better than other brands. You should stick to buying my product.

Times marched onwards, and advertising starting selling ideas: Buy my product and become the person you want to be.

In Australia, many employers are still placing recruitment advertisements like rather pleasant notices. They pay lip service to terms like 'employer branding', but don't invest in the areas that they will, eventually, need to. Let me make it clear: People will still want to work for a certain organisation because of their beliefs about them - and how closely this matches their desires of who they want to be. And employers still need to work hard at reinforcing the messages that accurately reflect them. Want to be seen as innovative, forward-thinking, young, vibrant, quirky? Go work for Virgin.

I'm not saying to employers: "Hey! You! Keep advertising or the future targets won't know why they'd want to work for you!" (although this may be the case).

What I am saying is that the businesses that come out of this downturn in the best shape, will be those that continue to attract more of the right people for the right reasons. The reputation employers have built will continue to decline the less their message is repeated and the less control they have over the ideas and beliefs people have about them.

So here's my rallying cry to employers: First, look to the people at your organisation. The people who have chosen to work for you. The people who believe that your organisation says something about who they are. These people are your spokespeople, your advocates, your evangelists.

Engage them, inspire them, encourage new ideas. Get them to talk to others, and share their experiences about why they work for you. In times of downturn, look to ways to build a fortress from within.

And talk to recruitment strategy experts to help you do it. Don't just react to every cost-cutting measure.