KLM's Social Surpise Experiment

Recognising that airport travellers are bored, and will appreciate almost any kindness, KLM deployed a team of people to identify those checking into Foursquare or tweeting about waiting for a KLM flight. The team then nosed around the users' profile a bit and took a stab at giving them a little surprise gift that matched their interests.

Aside from just being a nice thing to do, it also allowed these bored and kindness-starved travellers to tweet enthusiastically about the great KLM experience while continuing to hang around at the airport - a lovely bit of behavioural insight.

(via Digital Buzz)

Boring. It's The New Exciting.

In the middle of a frivolous and gleefully insulting bit of mischief directed at humdrum pop act The Script , music blog Popjustice has inadvertently pointed out the elephant in the room of almost every meeting ever held in the history of marketing, namely that the vast majority of all products on sale today are actually pretty dull. This is in stark contrast to the language of advertising, a flurry of superlatives, hyperbole and giddy, wide-eyed teenage enthusiasm, delivered as if the audience has all had critical faculty bypasses. Instead, suggest Popjustice, why not use inherent dullness, safety or reliability as a positive rather than hiding it like the marketing equivalent of a combover? Aside from the famous exceptions (hello Ronseal), most products are sold using inherently dishonest language.

It's an interesting and amusing irony - an industry so vocal about accountability and transparency is clearly lying through its teeth at almost every turn. A quick and entirely unrepresentative flick through today's Metro sees the following hyperbole:

A gym is 'totally exciting'
As opposed to 'a bit whiffy, underused after the first year but you'll join because you know you'll only feel guilty about cake otherwise'.

Some mobile phones are 'amazing'
You know what, we're pretty much used to them now. Thanks.

An ISA is 'nice'
My gran is 'nice', my dog is 'nice', biscuits are 'nice'... but ISAs? Not so much.

A wireless internet connection is 'unbeatable'.
Again, compared to say, Superman, not so much.

Mobile broadband will apparently make you say 'wow'.
The last person to say 'wow' out loud reached adulthood in the late 1950s. And probably wrote this ad.

All of these claims are patent nonsense, but such is the lexicon of communication between brand and consumer. As consumers, we seem to understand that adverts are lying, that the language they use is riddled with exaggeration, but we just don't seem to care. As marketers, agency folk and media people, we buy into it, rarely questioning whether the next product might not, in fact, be the most unutterably wonderful thing since the dawn of creation.

Which is why a bit of honesty in communications can - depressingly - be so refreshing. It interrupts the torrent of hubris and makes us take notice, having to adjust the filters in our heads to make sure we actually read it right. Coupled with Nikki Gilmour's recent observations on this very blog on the value of kindness, we're seeing a bit of a pattern - in tough times, such old-fashioned ideas of kindness, common sense, honesty, realism and the comfort of our fellows are on their way back.

There's something very miserable about that, but at least it's a step in the right direction. Since dishonesty - or at best, gross exaggeration - is what essentially caused the late unpleasantness, perhaps the marketing industry could learn its own lesson, and start to speak with a clearer, kinder, more honest voice.

The lost art of kindness

I’d like to share with you a truly brilliant essay published in the Guardian Review dated Saturday 3rd January.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/03/society-politics

The article runs to some nine pages so allow me to summarise: kindness is dead.

Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor (just Taylor, not Bradford) put it much more eloquently:

“Most people appear to believe that deep down they (and other people) are mad, bad and dangerous to know; that as a species - apparently unlike other species of animal - we are deeply and fundamentally antagonistic to each other, that our motives are utterly self-seeking and that our sympathies are forms of self-protectiveness.

Kindness - not sexuality, not violence, not money - has become our forbidden pleasure. In one sense kindness is always hazardous because it is based on a susceptibility to others, a capacity to identify with their pleasures and sufferings. Putting oneself in someone else's shoes, as the saying goes, can be very uncomfortable. But if the pleasures of kindness - like all the greatest human pleasures - are inherently perilous, they are none the less some of the most satisfying we possess.”

I believe there is a learning herein for, believe it or not, brands. Yes, brands - the very pillars of capitalism. The economic downturn represents a great opportunity for brands to show some compassion and understanding for their consumers (and store up some goodwill while they’re at it).

‘Nichetributes’ are a great example of how they could do this. The brilliant http://www.trendwatching.com/ coined the term, which denotes attributes/features/additions to existing products, making them more attractive to specific user groups, while at the same time signalling to those users that the brand ‘gets’ it, that it cares. For consumers, anything practical and useful will go down well in these leaner times, while anything that speaks their language will be reciprocated with appreciation and goodwill.

N.B. This trend is NOT about tailoring your advertising message; it IS about tailoring your product.

So, there you have it. Be kinder. If there’s a better New Year’s resolution out there, I’ve yet to hear it. NG