The Interest Graph & The Problem With Yelp

Yesterday, my friend Craig sent me a link to an article about Yelp’s plans to IPO in the coming month. While there wasn’t anything too terribly interesting in the article, it got me thinking about the platform. We proceeded to have a pretty solid conversation about the pros and cons of Yelp and why it may or not succeed in the short and long term.

So what do I think? I think Yelp sucks a bag of dicks. Great idea on paper. Not the best idea in practice.

The subjective nature of food combined with 845 million users equals 845 million unqualified food critics who think they’re adding value when they’re really just diluting the platform one pretentious review at a time.

The Fois Gras portion was too small? There wasn’t enough ice in your glass? You weren’t satisfied with your food even though you used a coupon worth $60 that you paid $30 for? Who the are these people? How am I supposed to figure out what restaurant to go to if half the reviews are seething, hateful tirades on the restaurant for not meeting their patron’s every demand and the other half are 4-5 star reviews applauding the very same restaurant for making perhaps the best god damn meal of their lives? I can’t. And I don’t. 

I turn to people I trust. I turn to the people who I eat out with on a regular basis and the people who I know have similar interests and reasonable expectations for how many times their water glass should be filled over the course of the meal. But it’s not always easy to gather that information. I fire off some emails, some skype messages, some text messages and a few messages via gchat. Maybe I’ll get replies and maybe I won’t. It’s hit or miss. But I know I’m not the only person behaving this way.  

PLEASE STEAL THIS IDEA: The solution? Incorporate interest graph. How about a Yelp-like tool for people you’ve identified with similar interests. Maybe it’s a platform. Maybe it’s an app. Maybe it’s both. Maybe the people at Yelp will figure it out and add the idea to their existing platform. The point is, the more people that are using Yelp that I don’t know, the less relevant and the less utility it has for me. And quite frankly, I believe that Yelp is not only doing a disservice to the people using it, but also to the restaurants who are voluntarily or involuntarily a part of it.

There’s an opportunity to leverage behavior like the behavior I mentioned above and build a tool that’s vastly more valuable than what’s currently out there. It’s not about reinventing the wheel, it’s more about optimization; incremental change based on a bit of behavioral insight.

If the growing popularity of interest graph social platforms, platforms that are based around your interests rather than your friends, is any indicator, the idea seems to be working. Look at Pinterest, SpringPad, Get Glue and SVPPLY. They all work by allowing users to build out their personal content collections, then connect with users who have similar interests. It’s too early to tell which platforms will stay and which ones will fall by the wayside but I think they’re all incredibly important to pay attention to and learn from.

At this point, I’ll watch Yelp’s IPO from the sidelines. Who knows what will happen to the company in the future but I’ve got too much faith in the smart people of the world to build something better.

Note: If you’d like to read more about the interest graph check Edward Boches’ most recent write-up. Good stuff.

Audi Makes Progress

I’ve always enjoyed the Audi aesthetic. Even dating back to the 1980′s Quattro. But I really didn’t start to pay attention to what Audi was doing from a brand standpoint until fairly recently.

I remember doing some desk research a few years back and Audi was a brand that came up as a cohort. I think their tagline was something like “Truth in Engineering.” I didn’t think much about it and I wasn’t paying much attention to their communications. But what must have been about 6 months ago I read about the Progress on Powell project. It’s a project where Audi has taken a block of Powell Street near Union Square in San Francisco and constructed public park space where street parking used to be. As Audi puts it, “This is no ordinary public space. It’s a space inspired by the same philosophy of design and innovation that defines our approach to car making.”

And that’s when I started paying attention. Advertising logic had me asking myself why this made sense for an auto maker. I had heard some industry people say, “It’s not Audi’s job to create public spaces. What do these parks have to do with cars?” But the more I followed Audi, the more it all started to make sense. Their new tagline, “Progress Through Innovation” started to take on some actual meaning.

The next bit I saw come out of the Audi camp was the Road Frustration Index. A pretty rad little widget that takes a whole bunch of vehicle-related data including social stats, weather, traffic levels and traffic accidents and correlates it all into this index that gives you a decent idea of how crazy your commute’s gonna be.

And then I see these spots:

Of all the auto makers in the US right now, I’ve got to tip my hat to Audi for not only being a little different, but understanding that without the roads and without the people who drive cars day in and day out, their product wouldn’t exist. They’ve really grasped this idea that a brand needs to be in service of it’s target, to add not just relevance but also value and utility in the way that it communicates to them. But as I’ve started to become an Audi advocate, as an advertiser I was still struggling with the overarching question, “Will this unconventional strategy work?” It’s particularly consistent from a campaign perspective. And public parks?

So it was a nice bit of validation when I read THIS article yesterday on Adweek that praised Audi’s CMO, Scott Keogh, for finding some success with their new strategy. Sales are up 23% over the previous year and the German auto maker seems to closing in on BMW and Mercedes at a pretty decent rate. Of all the numbers we use in advertising to measure effectiveness, the meaningless click-thru rates (IMO), the impressions, etc., the number that counts is the bottom line. Here’s to hoping Audi continues to challenge the status quo and succeeds in doing so.

Insight & Baseball

Lots of listening, learning and thinking these past few weeks. @suburb and I attended the PSFK Conference in San Francisco and flew out to New York the following week for the 4A’s Strategy Festival. So many great conversations, ideas and fresh thinking from lots of great people.

But it was during a workshop with Farrah Bostic about Lean Planning (slideshare) that I really began to question the creative brief. Hard. And then this tweet by fellow planner, Stuart Foster, got the gears turning some more:

“Learned a ridiculously important thing as a planner when it comes to briefs: Singles don’t exist; it’s either a homerun or a strike out.”

Does it make sense that we, as planners, are relying on hitting home runs every time in order to produce great work? If the only way you scored in baseball was by hitting home runs, games would be incredibly boring and more than half the team wouldn’t even have a shot at putting points on the board. The truth is that, in baseball and in planning, you’ve got to come to terms with the fact that no matter how hard you swing or how perfect your form, you’re not going to hit a home run every at bat.

When you think about it that way, it’s only natural that any planner feel a little uneasy.

Because most of the time, we planners spend weeks upon weeks researching, conducting interviews and focus groups with people we’ve deemed a member of our target, researching some more and then carefully trying to distill all of that information down to a single core message that will, in a perfect world, make our creative team shit their pants and say, “YES god dammit! This is IT! THIS is what we needed in order to make great work!” And then everybody high fives and pops bottles and amazing iconic work starts materializing before our eyes.

But any planner who’s ever delivered a creative brief to a creative team and watched as they all grumbled to themselves knows that that perfect world scenario, that home run, just doesn’t happen every time.

The process is flawed. We spend weeks trying to distill all this complex information into a nugget of mind blowing, home run, shit in your pants insight and the truth is that it’s just not always gonna happen. Like in baseball, no amount of HGH can guarantee a jack every time the batter steps into the box. So what do we do?

The answer: we sacrifice bunt, we single, we dig in and try to cram that ball through the gap between second and first base, we steal, we work together with our base coaches and every other player on the team and we do whatever the fuck we can to make sure that runner comes home. It’s a strategy. It’s not always a pretty strategy but what’s important to remember is that whether you’re a planner or a baseball player, the goal isn’t to hit home runs, it’s to win games.

Winning games means the insight still needs to be good, but it may not always be mind blowing. It may not always be singular. And it needs to come fast and hard. It doesn’t take weeks to get to, it takes days and, in an ideal world, hours.  We don’t need weeks of time and research to be catalysts for great work. We just need to be scrappy, we need to be smart and we need to be agile.

Below is a piece of work that was done by Samsung and gaming nerd/YouTube sensation, FreddieW. It takes you through Freddie’s morning commute as he gets ready for work, straps himself with weapons and hijacks a few cars on his way to the office. It’s garnered 9MM+ views, almost 90K likes and 1400+ comments. Love it or hate it, what struck me about this video was that it likely didn’t come from weeks of research. It likely didn’t come from a home run brief with a single core message. There’s a good chance that there was no brief at all (WHAT?!). It came from a few solid pieces of insight and some empathy (singles and sac bunts) strung together to create something that hits home with gamers in the millions. Whether you’ve played Grand Theft Auto one time or you have the Liberty City game map hanging on your bedroom wall, there’s something in this video you can appreciate.

Like Farrah says, the system is flawed. We’re too dependent on the process. We’re too dependent on home run creative briefs. In fact, we’re too dependent on the brief, period. It’s not always easy, but my goal is to continue questioning our methods as planners. I want to cut out the shit we don’t need, the stuff that doesn’t do us any favors, the stuff that hinders us from being agile. I want to keep thinking about how we can make great work without needing 3 months to figure it out.

At this point, I’m focused on winning games, not hitting home runs.

I say “College Football,” you say “Oregon Ducks”

The Ducks are officially relevant. Not just in college football, but, more importantly, outside of college football.

It felt good this morning when I went to the AdWeek homepage, scrolled a bit and saw the above photo of Kenjon Barner smack dab in the center of the page. It’s an AdWeek article about the NFL lockout driving broadcast deals for college football. While interesting, what I found even more interesting was that somebody at AdWeek thought, “I need a college football image to go with this story.” And they went with the image of Barner.

Not to jump to any conclusions, maybe they just grabbed the first image they found.

But maybe, just maybe, they put “college football” and the Oregon Ducks together because the Ducks have risen to some kind of national relevancy, even outside of the college football industry. Maybe when the author, Anthony Cupri (as far as I can tell, not a UO alum), thought about college football, he thought about the Ducks. Not Alabama, not USC, not Texas, not even Auburn. The Ducks.

Now, it could totally be the former. But I’d love to think it’s the latter.

Go Ducks.

Stop Making Ads. Start Making Things.

Nothing totally new here but it’s definitely worth sharing. Credit goes to Edward Boches over at Mullen for making me aware of this project.

As I’ve been reading all the discussion from people like Gareth Kay, Edward Boches and others about “Thinking Small” and “making communication products, not PowerPoint,” I’ve become a pretty dedicated believer. So when I read Edward’s post yesterday about Skype in the Classroom and Made by Many it was another one of those “holy shit, yes, THAT (pointing at the computer screen)” moments. It’s just a perfect example of where I’d like my thinking to be and what I’d like to be doing.

Made by Many started with a pretty simple business problem: How do we get more teachers to use Skype?

And an “Advertising Agency” might think, “Alright, we’ll create an awesome campaign that talks about why Skype is such a great teaching tool.” Maybe they’d talk to some teachers and write a brief that would probably turn into some kind of landing page or microsite and display ads that would run in places where teachers are likely to hang out online. Because they’re an “Advertising Agency.” They make ads. And sometimes ads are all good and great and you can measure click-through rates and it’ll get the agency paid. But I always think, “What has a microsite or display ad ever done for me?” There’s gotta be something better.

Which is why Made by Many doesn’t make ads. They make things.

As Edward puts it so nicely:

“If you’re a software company (or a design thinker) it never dawns on you to create an ad campaign.  Instead you focus on building something worthy of being advertised. Which is exactly what Made by Many did.  Sure they started with the premise that more teachers need to learn about Skype and how or why to use it. But they quickly discovered, through lots of interviews with teachers, that familiarity wasn’t the problem at all. Teachers already knew and loved the service. They simply needed more people to Skype with. So what did Made by Many make?  A directory that invited teachers to post the subjects, topics or projects around which they wanted to connect with other teachers or experts.”

To build on what Edward is saying, not only do I think you should focus on building something worthy of being advertised, you should focus on something that actually, for lack of a better term, adds value. The focus should be on making something real that people can actually use to improve their situation or solve the problem at hand. And that’s exactly what’s been done here.

What strikes me about the project is that, many times, those of us who work in advertising agencies have a hard time thinking about how to make things that aren’t ads. Our minds immediately go to print, outdoor, online, etc.

Made by Many made a fancy directory. They didn’t make Avatar 2 in 4D. It’s a directory. 

It didn’t take crazy advanced technology or big words or some shit that we don’t even know about yet. They asked questions, they uncovered a bit of insight and then they figured out how to get teachers using Skype, not how to create an ad campaign to get teachers using Skype. It’s not always easy, it’s something I struggle with on a daily basis. I’ll be the first to admit that thinking about tangible things is harder for me than thinking about ads. 

Last year, a former director of mine, in an attempt to persuade me to leave the advertising industry and move to the client side, said to me, “You can stay in advertising if you want to make ads.” That’s just the kind of thinking that we need to do away with. It’s just wrong. Made by Many and Skype however, are 100% right.

They Say a Recession Improves Creativity

Cut & Paste 2009

Cut & Paste – Design in competitive context.

Until today I’d never heard of Cut & Paste, essentially a Photoshop competition open to designers around the globe. Armed with a Mac Pro, Wacom display/tablet and CS3, competitors are given a time limit and a criterea for a design piece. Best piece wins. I guess I love that Cut & Paste brings graphic designers to the forefront. Design isn’t always transparent, especially when brands are involved.  The designers themselves tend to get left out of conversations, replaced by a dialogue about the brand itself (“Gap” changed it’s logo or “Apple has a new website design).  Here they are the conversation.

Awesome format and a great way to see these designers in their element.

iPhone Experience

Context: Basically, back around January of 2009 I bought an iPhone 3G. I was fresh out of college and I was (and still am) trying to understand why people buy certain brands. I knew that there was this feeling in my gut that led me to the iPhone. This is me trying to describe it:  

“Referring back to brand experience, the differences between the Blackberry and the iPhone are obvious the second you cut the iPhone’s shrinkwrap.  Just opening the iPhone’s box gives new users a good feeling. The product is packaged tightly but efficiently. Everything is where it should be, no foam, no big instruction booklet, just your phone and a bit of warranty info nestled beneath the cradle, headphones, charger and USB cable. Even the packaging feels sturdy, just like the phone does. Things are placed where they should be, so that the user can start using rather than reading. And using makes the consumer feel good.

The bottom line: The product that makes a consumer feel good will always win out. And when a brand is attatched to those emotions, it has the ability to live within the lives of consumers, not in their pockets. A good brand lives and breathes and occupies real space. It knows how to connect and re-connect again and again.”

Even today, I don’t think I was far off…