PJA Blog: The Complex Brand

Microsoft Digital Media Solutions has put together a very amusing video that captures the ‘hit the middle’ mentality of traditional advertising practice very well. Check it out here. This is an interesting take on the BtoC mentality (note the dig at broad, vague personas toward the end of the spot), but invites a different response for the BtoB buyer. I see a banquet table setting, with advertisers and content sponsors and thought leaders with links to a business sposoring a meeting with two buyers, six influencers, a dozen information-gatherers, and a few last-minute drop-in guests who are a surprise to everyone at the table but have mysterious veto powers granted by who-knows-who. I’d be interested to hear the perspective of anyone working in the BtoB space about how true this video is to their world. Thanks to Jade for pointing out this video!

I attended a couple of lectures at the Boston Public Library this past week, sponsored by the Boston Athenaeum, on the topic of the future of libraries. The question at hand: will the library continue to serve as the record-keeper for humanity? One of the lecturers, Tom Augst of NYU, noted that the critical nature of libraries is that they deliver the ‘felt experience of the humanity of culture,’ and do a much better job at socially gluing our communities together than ‘the functional autism of supposedly interactive media.’

The reference had me smiling to myself given the froth of buzz (or as one speaker nicely coined it, ‘these gurus as they bray’) about social and interactive media. For all its community-building properties, a lot of practitioners tend to operate alone, at arm’s length from the world, rolling over in bed at the crack of dawn and logging on, as Garrison Keillor noted recently, rather than traditional ‘old folks’ who actually venture outside for a newspaper and see the world. (more…)

One of the tools we use to define and understand demographics is the Persona. For interactive media the Persona is most valuable when it reveals not just where someone is consuming information, but how and why they use that information to make a buying decision. The shift from traditional demographic data to user-centric, information gathering Personas is a large part of what helps our teams develop brand experiences that engage an audience in a dialog about their particular needs. The end result are campaigns that foster a level of trust and brand association that moves the sales process.
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