The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

Great post about the power of emotion, genuine insight and creative strategy. Driving pet ownership was an inspired idea but aren’t optus Australian, not Singaporean?

No one would ever do that Andy … at least not to your face, ha!

Thanks for the nice words guys – first of the year – and to answer your question Pete, Optus are an Australian telco however they are owned by Singtel – Singapore’s largest telco company.

Oh, and the agency we had to work with/against when developing this creative strategy for Optus, was our dear friends at M&C Sydney … who, as I am sure you can imagine, I don’t have much to do with, despite the companies involvement with Sunshine, ha!

An interesting, insightful and thought provoking post today Robert. I hope 2010 is full of them.

Best wishes for the year ahead to everyone.

You should make the CEOs, of all the companies whos marketing directors rejected your ideas, read this blog and come for a public debate.

I remember when we were working on that telco project and you suggested the brand might attract a higher proportion of animal lovers and I thought you were mad.

They might not have gone with the idea but you managed to convince them to drop big dollars on researching it so you must count that as some sort of result.

By the way I now think it’s one of the coolest strats I’ve heard. Cool post.

You thought I was mad did you Baz?

You kept that very quiet … I’d call you a wimp but I want a free iSlate. I will be getting one won’t I? I’ll swap you for a Nexus. 🙂

To be honest Niko, I can’t remember all the details – the doco will be around somewhere – however I do know that when we looked at their data and research, the animals from their ads were highly recalled and when we did some exploration into this, we found the language used to describe the behaviour/look of the animals in the communication was much more emotive, thought-out and articulate than both general advertising, telco’s and the Optus mobile service.

I think that’s when I started to think there was something quite interesting in the relationship between animal and customer – far more than just being a brand icon – but I could be letting my brain fool me.

I’ll ask Terri to did out the file and see if there’s any ‘boring bits’ that might be of interest to you – otherwise just email me and we can discuss anything about it away from the maddening crowd, ha!

I know what you mean John but I have an issue with any brand claiming they can ‘own’ something. I know I’m being pedantic – however there’s too many marketing people who come out with statements like that and actually believe it can happen … with my favourite being a Coke meeting in Atlanta many years ago where I was told “we want to own freedom”. Classic.

Whilst the strat was to encourage pet ownership so the emotional bond that would develop could possibly be transfered to the telco via their animal based ads – we had ideas that made this have greater relevance, appeal and longevity to the Australian mobile market as a whole.

And whilst I appreciate it could be copied by a competitor, I would say the cost to do this given the brands ‘by-association’ credibility with animals, their distribution network, their network/innovation and our proposed injection of more developed ‘brand voice’ into their comms would mean it would be hard for a brand to justify &/or achieve – at least in the short term.

By no means were we suggesting they just do this and then sit back and enjoy the influx of animal loving customers – however the telco category is one bereft of emotion, meaning and human elements [which is strange given they are the things that make their product ‘work’] and so we felt as a foundation, it was interesting – especially as evidence pointed to this already being a driving force to customer aquisition.

At the end of the day, anything can be copied – it’s how you create and why you create that can make the difference … which is why Apple could talk about a product they had no heritage in making and was still not due for 6 months and yet effect the share price of the 4 major mobile manufacturers.

My previous comment published instantly! I have to go and lie down now.

You’re learning.

Why haven’t any of you clever hunky guys said how cute the puppy and cat couple are? They’re totally yummy and worth much more attention than your silly business talk. 🙂
Happy 2010.
Jemma x

There are too many comments for me to add anything of value so I won’t try.
By the way, I am neither clever nor hunky, perhaps that’s why I find the animals cute.
Speaking if cute, my baby now laughs, so bollocks to your animals anyway

OMG it’s so adorable!