Think of me as Evil or Do No Evil?

The one that got away

In the 1997 movie L.A. Confidential there is a scene in which Kevin Spacey’s character, Sergeant Edmund Exley, recounts the tale of ‘Rollo Tomasi’, the name he gave to the unidentified street criminal who killed his father. In the film, Rollo Tomasi becomes synonymous with the idea of the one that got away.

I was reminded of this when reading ‘Think of me as Evil: Opening the Ethical Debates in Advertising’ published last month by the Public Interest Research Centre and WWF-UK.

The report takes as its starting point a typically hyperbolic comment by my friend Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy, in which he states that he “would rather be thought of as evil than useless.”

I couldn’t help but think that a more accurate subtitle for the report would have been ‘Reopening the Ethical Debates in Advertising’, because as the authors Jon Alexander, Tom Crompton and Guy Shrubsole acknowledge, these issues have been discussed over the last 50 years ever since Vance Packard published his famous critique of advertising, The Hidden Persuaders.

In this latest contribution to the debate, the authors argue that ‘modern advertising’s impact on British culture is likely to be detrimental to our wellbeing, and may well exacerbate the social and environmental problems that we collectively confront.’

To its credit, the report sets out the evidence in a reasonably balanced way, but what I found striking was the fact that the entire discussion failed to make any reference to the world’s largest advertising company. This is a company that claims to do no evil, but has grown several times larger than WPP by creating what is possibly the most efficient advertising model ever. Of course I’m talking about Google.

You could argue that Google doesn’t deserve this distinction because it is not the creator of the vast amount of advertising it serves to us everyday as we search the web, but that would be to miss the point. Google has revolutionised the advertising industry by democratising it.

In the world before Google, in order to reach customers, a business had little choice but to engage an advertising or marketing agency of some description. This was (and remains) a costly business best suited for those with deep pockets.  Google changed all this by providing businesses with a direct means of targeting potential customers very precisely and quickly, for as little or as much as that business was prepared to pay.

The net result is that Google’s technology has generated far more adverts than any ad agency on the planet, netting billions of dollars in profits for itself in the process.

Yet the word ‘Google’ doesn’t appear on any of the report’s 60 plus pages and there is only a passing reference to the impact of ‘Online search engine technologies and the information stored by social networking sites and webmail services’.  This is a testament to Google’s ability to act as a Hidden Persuader. It presents itself as a technology business with a mission to provide free access to information, but as someone once wisely said, “if you’re not paying for something, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.”

The genius of the Google is not just its ability to serve ads based on search queries. The Pay Per Click (PPC) model effectively sells users to advertisers. Unlike Spotify, there is no ad-free model on Google search.

Google is by no means alone. Its model is now the industry standard for online businesses and is being replicated by Facebook and Twitter among others. But the fact that Google has escaped being tarnished by the same brush as the advertising industry demonstrates that for now at least, it really is Rollo Tomasi – the one that got away.

Footnote:

On 24 November the RSA hosts an Advertising Association Debate - ‘Advertising in society: what’s the deal?’  Unsurprisingly, Google is not represented on the panel.  

Who’s been sleeping in my Tumblr?

The brands that are missing out on the emerging social network

October 21^st 2011 was a big day for Tumblr. It became the first blogging platform to host President Obama’s blog, launching his social media campaign for re-election in 2012.

Obama’s choice (clearly influenced by socially savvy members of his campaign team) brought Tumblr to the attention of the world’s media, including those who had not previously come across the network or had assumed it was only a place to share funny photos of cats. However this attention is long overdue.

In June of this year the network founded in 2007 by David Karp surpassed WordPress in the total number of blogs, breaking through the 20 million mark. It now has over 33 million and rising.

Nielsen’s State of the Media report on Social Media for Q3 2011 highlights Tumblr as the ‘Emerging Social Network’ citing the trebling of its US audience over the last year.

In the UK its growth has been impressive too with 7.5m unique visitors, 5.4m of whom visit in an average month. London in particular seems to be in love with Tumblr.  Its residents make 1.6m visits to sites in the network. Only San Paulo in Brazil has more Tumblr fans.

Given that Tumblr’s UK audience is more female (52%) than male (48%) and many of its users are in the much coveted demographic of 18-24 year olds, it’s not hard to see why some brands, particularly in fashion and publishing, have been quick to jump onto the network.

Vogue, Life and Vice have all developed Tumblr sites as have many fashion brands. DKNY is a notable example having recently ported their ‘Notes on a City’ to Tumblr following on from the success of their ‘DKNY PR Girl’ site.

The Economist, The Washington Post and IBM have set up Tumblr blogs too, presumably hoping to earn kudos from a younger ‘edgier’ audience than they might usually attract. I’ve even set one up (for much the same reasons).

What is more surprising is the number of brands that haven’t caught on to it yet. I was pleased to see that Bing (a client of mine) has a fully functional Tumblr site, but was amazed to find that Google.tumblr.com is a blank holding page that appears to have nothing to do with the company itself.

Google is by no means alone. A search for many of the world’s top brands using their .Tumblr.com addresses brings up some surprising and sometimes shocking results. Nike, Adidas, Microsoft, Samsung, and Apple all appear to have people sleeping on their Tumblr’s. I find it hard to believe that any of the brand custodians or legal departments would be pleased about this. In the case of Coca-Cola, I imagine they would be horrified to see what is being displayed in their name. I can therefore only assume that these brands haven’t woken up to Tumblr yet. Like the proverbial bears in the story of Goldilocks, I don’t think they’ll be too happy when they do.

Although some brands are rushing to snap up their own top level brand domain names despite the costs involved, it seems extraordinary that so many have failed to register their own name on Tumblr, which is free and is fast becoming the social network to watch.

I expect this will change in the coming months, particularly if Tumblr continues its growth trajectory and builds insight tools for brands and marketers. When this happens, I imagine a few heads will tumble.

Notting Hill braces itself for the 2011 Carnival as Google turns to Grime

In a few hours time Europe’s largest Carnival will take to the streets of Notting Hill for the 45^th time. However it’s not just the poor weather forecast that has worried people this year. Coming so soon after the UK riots, some local residents and businesses in Notting Hill are preparing for the worst by boarding up their houses and shop fronts.

They’re not the only ones who don’t want to get caught out. During the widespread looting that followed the riots, there was some criticism of the police for not keeping up with how rioters were using communication technology such as BlackBerry’s BBM network to coordinate attacks. This time around the police refuse to be caught napping and have already made preemptive arrests, based in part on their monitoring of social media.

While the Mayor Boris Johnson’s call for the Carnival to ‘help heal wounds’ caused by the riots was lampooned by some on Twitter, many of the comments last night were from people hoping that the event will pass off peacefully, or those too worried to attend because they feared trouble themselves.

Google turns to Grime

Meanwhile last week Google released an advert for its Chrome browser featuring Jamal Edwards, the just turned 21 year old rising star of the UK Grime scene who launched his own TV channel, SB.TV and has his sights set on becoming a future media mogul.

The ad, made by the London agency BBH, was apparently produced ‘way before the trouble’ started on the streets of Tottenham, but nonetheless it must have made a few Google Executives nervous given its focus on the UK’s black urban culture, which has been blamed for causing the riots, most notoriously by Historian David Starkey. In my view, Google’s potentially controversial choice of subject matter was no accident.

In Search of Street Cred

One of the loudest advocates for Google’s new social networking platform Google+ is the founder and former President of MySpace, Tom Anderson. In a recent article, he argues that Google+ is destined for success, and draws parallels between its launch and that of other social networks such as MySpace and Facebook.

Of Twitter he writes:

“When the 140 character wunderkind launched in 2006, it was only used by tech nerds. Just one community, that knew each other by name, if not in person. Then John Mayer signed up. Now there was two communities. The tech nerds, and the John Mayer fan club. Then there was Diddy. Suddenly Twitter was of interest to people who liked hiphop & rap. One celebrity at a time started to build sub-communities on Twitter. And make no mistake, Twitter went out and recruited them. Like Facebook, they realized that to gain scale in the social networking space and take mind share from others, they needed to target sub-communities.”   

It would seem that Google has learnt that lesson. By making a hero of a young, black, up and coming entrepreneur, they are following in the footsteps of brands like Nike and Adidas who have long understood the benefits to be gained by associating with urban cool.

Google+ “not broadcasted enuff for us cool kids”

I did a bit of digging around to try and try out what types of people have been joining Google+. Perhaps unsurprisingly the early adopters were largely male geeks from the US. There is an Urban Technorati Google+ group and the odd Hip-Hop celebrity (Snoop Dogg and the UK’s Tinie Tempah). But from what I could tell, the cool urban kids aren’t flocking to the service in droves just yet.

Using my own connections, I also did a bit of primary research via BBM to see how many young people on that network had opened a Google+ account. Only one person responded positively, suggesting that Google has some work to do.  Google+ is “not broadcasted enuff for us cool kids lol to no about it” was one response I received. If the latest advert for Chrome is anything to go by, it looks like Google plans to change that.

However, engaging with an urban audience can be tricky. As BlackBerry makers RIM discovered during the riots, being the brand of choice within this demographic could land you in hot water on occasion. But to ignore them is to risk being left out in the cold entirely.

As this year’s Notting Hill Carnival hits the streets, the eyes of the media will be watching closely to see whether urban youth culture is still too hot to handle.

31/08/11 UPDATE: Fortunately, this year’s Carnival came and went without a major outbreak of violence. The Guardian reports that arrests were only slightly up at 245 compared to 243 at last year’s event. Considering that around 1 million people were expected to attend the festival, this figure is remarkably low. For comparison, 138,000 attended this year’s Glastonbury music festival but there were 123 arrests made – a significantly higher ratio.

It seems that the massive police presence played a role in keeping the crime figures down. But the remarkable photograph of a youth fleeing the scene having stabbed someone in front of a line of police officers shows that for some, the threat of arrest is no deterrent.

This kind of behaviour is almost impossible to comprehend without understanding the mentality of some of the youths on the streets today. It is described in gripping detail in the book Hood Rat by Gavin Knight, and may well be the topic of a future post.

However, like many people, I’m relieved that the Carnival on the whole brought out the best of London.