Instead of the usual big-bucks 30” Superbowl spot this year, Pepsi have decided to give $1.3m to good causes. The recent Refresh Everything campaign allowed consumers to vote on who should get what, with the results to be announced on March 1st. Pepsi follows the example of TripAdvisor, who in 2008, had more than a million people vote on how they should give away $1m in their More Than Footprints campaign.


This is a major move for a brand like Pepsi and very different from the usual big budget Britney ad and could be a sign of a shift in society’s attitudes towards advertising. The think-tank Compass published a report this week called The Advertising Effect, which argues that advertising fuels our voracious consumerism, which doesn’t really make us happy. It’s the old AdBuster’s thought, but it’s gaining academic weight: the report pulls together Dr. David Myer’s studies on happiness, as well as work by Prof. Richard Layard and of course Oliver James. There’s also interesting input from organizations such as The Children’s Society.


A factor leading to rising mental health problems is the increased degree to which children and young people are preoccupied with possessions; the latest in fashionable clothes and electronic equipment etc. Evidence both from the United States and the UK suggests that those most influenced by commercial pressures also show higher rates of mental health problems.


Against this background, Pepsi’s decision to ditch their usual Superbowl as looks a progressive move – but will the new approach delivers sales. Such a move challenges all of us to find positive ways to drive sales for our clients. Interesting that all this coincides with some very encouraging comments by PepsiCo’s Chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi talking to the FT about the company’s “license from society”:

‘We’re constantly watching the changing societal trends and looking at the interplay between corporations and societies… [In] Davos, both this year and last, everybody is talking about the new rules of capitalism, [which] are, don’t just think about the company within the four walls of the company, think about your obligations to society.’

The Compass report starts from a marketing-is-evil presumption. They want to ban lots of advertising. That’s just a lack of imagination. The answer isn’t no advertising, but good advertising. The real challenge is to find positive ways to engage consumers, which enhances their lives and builds business for clients.


Thanks to Jon Miller for this story. Jon is visiting a job centre next week.

Business guru and Al Gore speechwriter Daniel H. Pink, started his RSA talk the other week by giving things away. A ham and cheese sandwich to the man in the second row. £10 to a man whom he asks to stand up and plug his book to the webcam live streaming the event. These are both demonstrations of motivation or drive. Most of us believe that the best way to motivate ourselves and others is with external rewards like money. Pink’s premise is that such 20th century carrot-and-stick incentive systems do not work for 21st century knowledge work. Infact, such incentive systems actually make knowledge workers perform worse when tasks require cognitive skills. He argues that the secret to high performance and satisfaction can be found in the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things and do better by ourselves.


Pink demonstated his theory with the following examples:


Zappos.com

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Embrace cosiness and be happy, that is what Monocle magazine are telling us to do with their recent Cosy Index, which challenges angular and sterile aesthetics that have become an architecture norm. Architects and designers may cringe but according to those who know, consumer tastes are changing making people long more for the intimate and inclusive.


Taking the uncertain times into consideration, Monocle argues further that it’s high time to reinstate cosy as a key ingredient for happiness. In turn Monocle supplies a range of cosy credentials for those in search of the warm and fussy. Cities to visits are Vienna for the rich architecture and old school cafes, Kyoto for the intimate cobbled backstreets and great lighting and closer to home there is Rye in East Sussex which gives us whimsical signage and an exuberant antiques market. In slick Monocle fashion JAL’s business class interior and The Tokyo Grand Hyatt gym also makes it into the list, which obviously means you don’t have to ditch your filthy rich habits to be cosy and happy.


Thanks to Paula Bjork for this story.

We all know that most purchase decisions we make are not driven by purely rational thought processes. That generally, we make decisions based on our emotions and then seek to rationalise the purchase afterwards. (Anyone who’s ever spent £200 on a pair of shoes or bought a 50” TV knows this to be true). Which is why planners are getting really excited about the discovery of ‘behavioural economics’ (old-ish hat in academia), which offers empirical evidence into how people really go about making decisions. IPA president Rory Sutherland sees spreading the word as one of his single most important tasks whilst in office. He cites the example from behavioural economics bible Nudge, in which the economist authors came up with a more insightful and successful solution than the advertising agency. Using the concept of “loss aversion”, they created a pension plan where investors signed up for a pension that only deducted money from their earnings when they received a pay rise. By ensuring that the saver never witnessed a reduction in their disposable income, the plan was both brilliant and highly effective: pension contributions among this group increased by 200%. There is no reason why an agency couldn’t have come up with this strategy. We simply need to embrace the power and value of greater human understanding.


We live in a hectic world. Making informed and rational decisions for all purchases is nigh on impossible so we use a variety of heuristics, approximate rules of thumb, and cognitive and perceptive biases to simplify the decision-making process and allow time for all the stuff in life that happens in between buying things. By better understanding these psychological and behavioural shortcuts, we can begin to truly understand how our customers make decisions, help simplify the process, and maximise the impact and effectiveness of our communications.


Thanks to Dan Broadwood. Dan can’t smell in France.

M&C Saatchi is the latest agency to recognise the importance of being represented in South Africa, setting up shops in Johannesburg and Cape Town, Campaign reports. South Africa is not only the continent’s richest nation, but is also seen as the gateway to its economic awakening. “South Africa is growing in strategic importance for agency networks and for advertisers,” says Graham Warsop, group chairman of The Jupiter Drawing Room, South Africa’s largest homegrown agency. Next summer’s World Cup hosted by South Africa is also thought to benefit economics in general and the marketing comms industry in particular. Though there are still the obvious racial and corruption obstacles to overcome, combined with the issue of talent shortage and faltering broadband system, new brands are piling into the South African market, agencies have a better balance of black staff, and are beginning to stand out at international awards.

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If your 2010 resolution is to spend more time with your family and closest friends, you may want to forget your virtual world friends and consider ‘digital suicide’, with help from Suicide Machine. Known as the Digitas of the virtual world, Suicide Machine allows those who are fed up of being poked, tweeted at, and linked to on their social networks to remove all trace of themselves online in just a couple of clicks. The process takes a total of 53 minutes, rather than the 9 hours it would take to do manually. The user is visually navigated through their network to view all traces of their digital self – friends, photos and messages, being erased. Watching the delete process forms the cliché of seeing your ‘digital life’ flash before your own eyes. After that, the only trace of one’s virtual existence is the testimonials on the company’s website. Facebook have banned the use of the service on their site, but Suicide Machine are exploring ways of getting around the blockers and appealing for support from fans of the service. Interestingly, one of the main reasons consumers opt for services such as this is because they grow to despise their digital self.

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A report just unveiled by think-tank the New Economics Foundation (nef) has found a robust way to calculate how much someone should be paid in relation to the value they create to society. It uses a series of measures including economic return, environmental impact, and knock-on effects for societal wellbeing. The report questions whether pay reflects the true value of different jobs and shatters some of the myths used to justify high pay. Tax accountants are said to be the most destructive, destroying £47 of social value for every £1 they create. Waste-recycling workers on the other hand, generate £12 for every £1 spent on their wages. In the case of advertising executives, the report calculates the cost to society of over-consumption. The authors quote the economist JK Galbraith who argued that advertising created socially and environmentally wasteful “wants” where needs have already been met.

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What if when we bought products, the choice was taken away from us and we were given the product the expert thought best? That’s the theme of Hipstery a new T-shirt store online. Their manifesto reads, ‘Life is increasingly loosing mystery to the encompassing world of technology and an endless desire for knowing’. Rather than choosing your T-shirt design, they choose one for you, basing their decision on a survey of seven questions. The faces behind Hipstery, who prefer to be known as ‘scientists’, say they are experts in picking the right T-Shirt for you, ‘With over 10 years experience in the t-shirt industry we combine our knowledge, contacts and superior style to create the Hipstery’. A thought provoking retail model, it would be interesting to see all kinds of retailers take this approach to selling us products, experts in their field prescribing what is best for us based on what we told them. It would certainly put surprise and mystery back into our lives. Whether it would work out or not, Hipstery T-Shirts will definately be on our Xmas list.

There has been a rising trend in both brand and cultural experiences that create an alternate reality in the real world. The famously good Secret Cinema experiences, promenade theatre like Punch Drunk and Blitz Parties are all evidence that we are enjoying wholly immersive experiences. “The way we dress, the food & drink, the venue, music and interacting with actors all blur the lines between real and fictional world to create an alternate reality”, says Mother’s Sara Tate. Secret Cinema’s recent screening of Bugsy Malone was like stepping back in time. Whilst it would be easy to say that this trend is born out of the recessionary times the trend has been growing for 4 or 5 years. “I suspect its born out of the creation of parallel realities in the digital space”, says Tate. “The freedom, sense of adventure and entertainment that people have become used to in video games & digital worlds are now spilling over into real world behaviour. Why dress your avatar when you can dress yourself up like a gangster and live life like your are in the 1920’s for an evening”.

Will climate change be an issue in next year’s election? It’s unlikely. The green movement failed to make it an issue last time and this time round looks like even worse. Why? Firstly, HSBC’s Carbon Confidence monitor shows a fall in concern about climate change in the UK – down from 26% last year to 15% this year. This figure is also much less than developing countries like the BRICS, prompting an excellent rant on Alistair Campbell’s blog. Is that because [people in developing countries] are more used to weather driven destruction? Or because they have not fallen victim to the ‘not bovvered’ syndrome which says instant gratification belongs to the individual and any long-term problem belongs to somebody else?

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