advertising

Leading Hotels of the World – Marketing Conference Presentation

by RobertKCole on May 17, 2011

It was an honor to be invited to give the closing keynote address for The Leading Hotels of the World 2011 Sales, Marketing and Distribution Conference at the Kameha Grand Bonn in Bonn, Germany.

Leading Hotels of the World members understand luxury travel

Challenge: Identify a group that better understands the needs of luxury hotel guests than members of The Leading Hotels of the World

The topic of the presentation was Deconstructing Distribution – It’s all about the Customer with a focus on the customer, the channels and the future.

Setting the scene, the luxury hotel industry continues to recover from its steepest decline on record that unfortunately coincided with a period of momentous technological advancement – particularly mobile and social media that have significantly empowered consumers.

As a result, hotels and resorts target a changed guest, armed with access to information and backed by a network of trusted advisers – both corporal and virtual. The hotels also face an impossibly complex variety of distribution channels that have expanded into social networks and location-based services. continue reading →

Tagged as: advertising, Apple, customer relationship management, customer service, hospitality, hotel, luxury, marketing, mobile, personas, resorts, social media, statistics, technology, travel, trends

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Mastering The New Five P’s of Marketing – Tom Patty on How Not to be a Casualty of the Revolution

by RobertKCole on November 3, 2010

In the mid 1990′s, Tom Patty, President and World Wide Account Director for Chiat/Day, the hottest advertising agency of its time, authored a superlative treatise on the urgent changes necessary for marketing to be viable in times of dramatic change.

Casualty of the Revolution
Creative Commons License photo credit: ScaredyCatPhotographer

Don't be a Casualty of the Revolution. The travel industry should have been listening 15 years ago. Apple was.

He even addressed the topic to the travel industry when he presented the keynote address at the 1995 Travel and Tourism Research Association meeting in Bal Harbour, Florida. His target? Marketing’s venerable Five P’s:

  • Product
  • Price
  • Packaging
  • Place
  • Promotion

If you were thinking there were only Four P’s (excluding packaging) you are really out of touch. The Four P’s were introduced as the key elements of the marketing mix in 1960 – times have changed… your business school really should have invested in new textbooks.

If you happen to be a bit more cutting-edge, you may even subscribe to the concept of adding a Sixth P – People – to the mix. (This has been an integral component for social computing strategists.)

Fifteen years ago however, Patty proposed that a completely new approach to marketing was required to shift from a product orientation to a brand orientation.

He highlighted four key factors necessitating the need for marketing revolution -

  • Globalization of Competition
  • Real-time Technology
  • The Demand for Agile Management
  • Changing Economic Structures

Those issues sound a lot more like 2010 than 1995.

So, with the 2010 PhoCusWright Conference‘s theme “Chaos Calls, Navigating the New,” there is no better time to revisit Patty’s wholly original and still relevant case that the New Five P’s should be:

  • Paradox
  • Perspective
  • Paradigm
  • Persuasion
  • Passion

After successive acquisitions, site updates and the passage of time, the original Chiat/Day website and Patty’s inspirational document has seemed to have eluded Google’s extensive index.

As a public service, the document has been recreated in its entirety from an old printed copy from my files. Hopefully the document will provide marketers with a renewed vision of the future – not just from a 1995 perspective, but one that may be even more applicable in 2010. continue reading →

Tagged as: advertising, customer relationship management, history, innovation, insight, marketing, strategy

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Big Brother in 1984 Apple Macintosh Ad was Steve Jobs!

by RobertKCole on July 12, 2010

To be clear, I am not an Apple hater. My history with Apple goes back to a time before many of you reading this were born. The company’s foresight and design prowess have always been a source of inspiration and personal admiration.

Morphed Photo shows Big Brother from the 1984 MacIntosh ad is actually Steve Jobs from the future!

Morphed image provides conclusive proof that Big Brother from Apple's 1984 Macintosh launch ad is actually Steve Jobs from the future!

In college, the Apple II changed my life. It was soon apparent that accounting homework and the pressure on teaching assistants to grade final exams and enter semester grades would never be the same with VisiCalc’s spreadsheet and database capabilities.

While I had some previous experience “re-purposing” (OK, hacking) my high school’s career computer to play Hewlett Packard Football on the University of Washington mainframe, that was only accessing a comm link and spoofing a password. With the Apple II, I got my first experience in social computing by recoding the binary tree game to guess fetishes instead of animals.

Apple made microcomputers both useful and fun. I became an Apple fanboy in 1979. continue reading →

Tagged as: advertising, Apple, Google, innovation, technology

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Love Australia; Sorry – Hate the Commercial

by RobertKCole on June 1, 2010

NOTE: This post was originally written as a comment to a Tnooz story on the Tourism Australia There’s Nothing Like Australia television commercial. Due to the large number of video links – some of them to truly great ads, I decided to post it here (as well as expand the content a little) to make the video viewing a bit more of a single window affair.

Sorry Australia
Creative Commons License photo credit: Dave Keeshan

I love pretty much everything about Australia. Their idea for a user-inspired campaign was genius. Too bad the ad was simply annoying.

The genesis of the ad was terrific – part of a clever promotion / competition that had over 30,000 photo submissions to date from Australians providing their favorite vacation memories.

Tnooz felt the ad was being intentionally ironic in an attempt to gain viral traction. I can wholeheartedly agree with Tnooz that the ad is ironic. Unfortunately, based on some of the quotes I have read from the advertising agency and Tourism Australia officials responsible for its production, the irony was unintentional.

Matt Eastwood, DDB national creative director, is quoted in Australian media publication Mumbrella stating: “The TV spot is unique in that we go back to some of the iconic locations that have not featured in Tourism Australia’s advertising in a while, such as Uluru, the Twelve Apostles, the Gold Coast and the camels on the beach in Broome.”

Eastwood added that they chose to write a song for the ad because of the “universal appeal” music has with people, regardless of whether they are from an English or non-English speaking country.

Mumbrella also quoted Chris Brown, DDB group MD, saying: “The ad not only shows the depth of what Australia has to offer, as a new and exciting experience, but through research we realized it was also important to capture the welcoming nature and warmth of the Australian people.”

Tourism Australia’s managing director, Andrew McEvoy, was quoted by

On paper, it should have worked. But it didn’t. continue reading →

Tagged as: advertising, australia, tourism, travel

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Best TV / Video Ads of the “Noughties” (2000 – 2009)

by RobertKCole on December 18, 2009

The original plan was to write a blog post on the best travel video / television advertising of the past decade. While there were a few clever travel ads (the Virgin Atlantic “Upper Class Suite” independent spot and the Air New Zealand “Nothing to Hide” campaign immediately come to mind) they were not in the same league with the best offerings from other industries.

So instead, here are my picks for the best single advertising spot and best advertising campaign created between 2000 and 2009. Hopefully, the travel industry will gain some inspiration and raise their game in the coming “teens” decade. As there is not clear agreement on a name for the past decade, let’s just call them the “noughties.”

Handi Wrap
Creative Commons License photo credit: Pink Ponk

Stratos and Dove prove that original creative, strong narrative and expert production can effectively differentiate commodity products.

What defines a great video ad? There are fundamentally three simple requirements regardless if it is on television or spreading virally online :

  1. It breaks through the clutter – it needs to be memorable.
  2. It evokes an emotional response – it makes the viewer feel something
  3. It creates goodwill for the product – viewers remember the brand

Good production values, solid acting and a bit of originality never hurt either.

Comparing a single advertising spot to a multi-spot campaign is not really a fair comparison. Each may be designed to accomplish different objective. While each ad undoubtedly must stand on its own merits, a quality campaign requires the additional dimensions of thematic alignment and consistency of execution. To present the best of both genres, I have picked the best single advertising spot as well as the best multi-spot campaign of the last decade.

Both of my selections promote products that could be easily described as generic commodities. However, each ad admirably differentiates its respective brand from the competition. The travel industry can learn a lot from these ads – they engage and inspire the viewer on an emotional level. There are no aggressive proclamations of product features, competitive price points, or legal disclaimers. Each ad embraces humanity; addressing the motivations of the protagonists and their interaction with their respective environments. continue reading →

Tagged as: advertising, best practices, marketing, television, video

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