Campaign Culture

In the manifesto I wrote last year, I spoke about the common use of war language in the marketing industry.  So common in fact, that conversations (for example) about, "targeting consumers with shots and collateral in order to penetrate markets," are entirely normal.  Indeed, the bible of the industry is called campaign.  I was reminded about this in a conversation with an FMCG marketeer this week.  He felt one of the big barriers to brands embracing networked marketing is the 'campaign culture' prevalent in many large marketing-led corporations.  When a company is organised to send out huge tsunamis of communication activity around product launch dates, the notion of creating many smaller ripples throughout the year is fraught with problems.  Worse still, when campaign culture is brought to bear in networked media the results can be seriously counter-productive.  Just look at the profile of traffic to Nike's mega Joga project.  Now does that say community or campaign to you?  (Btw, the red line is the one man footy powerhouse Arseblog.)  And what will be the response next time Nike launch a similar project? 

Comments

[Graham Hill]

James

Great post.

The evolution of marketing's military metaphors (try saying that after a few pints) goes deeper than that.

Warfare has gone through three basic phases, each with a parallel in marketing.

The first phase was "Massing", where vast forces were brought together to battle it out with the enemy's massed forces in set piece battles. This is enormously wasteful of resources. This is the world of advertising.

The second phase was "Manoevering", where still large groups were manoevered rapidly to where the enemy was the weakest to gain an advantage. This is not so wasteful but takes an enormous amount of organising. This is the world of direct marketing.

The phase we are in today is "Swarming", where small groups of connected individuals interact continously in swarms to take on an enemy. Simulations at the Rand Corporation suggest that effective swarms can take out an enemy up to six-times larger. This is highly effective but requires giving decision authority to the individuals and letting their behaviour emerge. This is the world of social marketing & WOM.

So there you have it. Sometimes the military really is ahead of us.

If you want to know more, see John Arquilla's excellent "Swarming and the Future of Conflict" book available free at the Rand Corporation at http://www.rand.org/pubs/documented_briefings/2005/RAND_DB311.pdf

Graham Hill

[James Cherkoff]

Thanks Graham, great insight as ever, I'll definitely take a look at that.

[Deirdre Molloy]

Hi James,

Weirdly, this is exactly the point I raised at the last Beers & Innovation Social By Design event on 14th November:
http://www.nmk.co.uk/event/2006/11/14/beers-innovation-social

Taking it a step further, I said the lack of continuity implied by a time-specific campaign not only indicated that brands were working against the very aims of building customer loyalty and retention that they tout so heavily, but also that it treated consumers as disposable (ie, listen to us *now* or forget about it / be a loser).

So it's no wonder that consumer trust and loyalty is diminishing, and people look elsewhere beyond official brand communications for recommendations about what's good, cool, etc and what's not.

Nicholas Roope from Poke commented at the event that the main thing stopping brands from moving away from campaigns is thay they are tied to these timeframes by the planning and buying models of media, which are very embedded. But if these models are wasteful and indeed undermining of the brand objectives, what is it going to take to unyoke media planning and buying from its current practices?

[James Cherkoff]

Great minds eh Deirdre...;-)