Creative Directors Won’t Buy It

There’s just under 5 weeks til our final portfolio hand in and 7 weeks til New Blood.

Looking at it on paper (well, on screen) it looks like a long time away, but it feels like it’s tomorrow.

I don’t know about anyone else on the course, or indeed any of the courses out there, but I’m feeling the pressure to do amazing, original work. I guess that’s a given.

But in the quest for originality, I think me and Jake have been pushing everything that little bit too far. We’ve gone to extremes to stand out to Creative Directors, rather than to stand out to the public and sell stuff.

It’s a difficult balance, and we dropped it. But we’ve caught it early.

I think we just have to remember that the target audience for every product is different.

We’re not selling to Creative Directors, we’re selling to the public.

Tipping

I’m getting very into behavioural economics. Well, as much as you can without actually studying economics.

I believe it’s incredibly useful for advertisers to have a firm grasp of behavioural economics and this is a view shared by many in the industry including the great Rory Sutherland.

But this isn’t a post about why behavioural economics is amazing.

I just finished reading Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely.

Predictably Irrational explains how most of the decisions we make are completely irrational – something perhaps we already knew. But one thing that it does not explore is tipping.

Tipping from a behavioural economics perspective.

I am clearly not an economist and only have A level psychology so I’m probably way out of my depth, but tipping to me seems to be a very strange and irrational act that is worthy of investigation. Please read this as a disclaimer: I have little or no evidence for any of the claims below, I’ve just been thinking about it a lot.

The only article I found that mentioned it was this “The Implications Of Tipping For Economics and Management” by Ofer. H. Azar ( http://individual.utoronto.ca/diep/c/azar2003.pdf Azar seems to have written a number of articles on tipping from an economist’s perspective, in this one he calls for further research into it from economists.)

To use Ariely’s language, I would argue that tipping is an action in which social norms and market norms conflict.

Tipping is a social norm but it makes no economic sense. The tipper receives no benefit from tipping. While it could be argued that people tip to ensure good service on their next visit, Azar points out that people who visit restaurants only once still leave a tip. This is completely irrational behaviour.

Do people tip differently depending on whether the tip is public or private?

Anecdotally, I have found that people tip the most when they are in a group of friends having a meal. Everybody will chip in a couple of pounds in cash to leave for the waiter regardless of whether the service was particularly good or not. Clearly, this public tipping exerts a powerful influence on the members of the group so that everybody tips whether or not they feel the waiter deserves it.

Is it more important to be seen to be tipping by my peers or by the waiter that I will never see again?

I have found that when restaurants ask you if you would like to add a gratuity on the credit card machine (therefore without the waiter’s knowledge) I very rarely leave a tip.

So I would argue that it is more important to be seen to tip by the recipient of the tip (whom I may never meet again) than by any friends I am with, even if I will never go to the restaurant again.

I think that people are more likely to tip when they pay in cash because they feel the cash goes straight to the waiter, while a card payment goes straight to the restaurant.

Azar suggests that we empathise with our server which is a possible reason why we tip. Perhaps when we look at our waiter we envisage the Hollywood portrayal: the struggling artist or single mother working three jobs. Perhaps we think back to the long record of restaurants counting tips towards the waiters’ wages (now illegal – they must be paid minimum wage).

Indeed, the practice of waiters to sign the receipt with a thank you suggests that they have had success playing upon this empathy.

Tips To Encourage Performance

Ariely conducted experiments on people working for bonuses, which found that the larger the bonus the worse the performance. Therefore it would logically follow that waiters who work for tips perform less well than those who are simply paid minimum wage. But is this actually the case? Conventional wisdom would suggest not. I think it is an area worthy of investigation.

How to encourage tips. 

So, based on my thoughts here I’m going to suggest some ways that restaurants/waiters could encourage customers to leave a bigger tip, regardless of the quality of the service.

1. Include a note with the bill that explains that all tips go to the serving staff.
2. Insist that tips be left in cash.
3. Suggest that the tip be left at the table rather than at the cash register. This will allow customers to remain in a group and therefore make them more likely to tip.
4. Include a “We look forward to seeing you again.” note. I know I said that people tip regardless of whether they will visit again, but it can’t hurt to remind them of the possibility that they might.

So far, pretty standard. Well, how about these.

1. The waiter should remain in view of the table. Not hovering over them but easily seen.
2. A short note from the waiter explaining that he works part-time to fund his writing/art/pregnant girlfriend (delete as applicable). Or perhaps the server should simply drop this into conversation throughout the evening.
3. Never, ever suggest a gratuity or service charge. This will give the customer an anchor which they will certainly come down from. The customer will be thinking, “Well it wasn’t that good, it was only this good.” If, however, you don’t suggest a service charge, the customer will think, “Oh well it definitely warrants a tip.” You want to anchor the tip to the price of the meal, not the size of the service charge. Furthermore, including the service charge on the bill or suggesting a tip with the bill reinforces the act of tipping as a market norm rather than a social norm. Since the customer receives no benefit from tipping, reinforcing it as a market norm will make them less likely to tip.

And a couple of very outlandish ones.

1. When we use tokens instead of cash, it doesn’t really feel like we’re spending money. Ariely proves this in Predictably Irrational. Therefore, restaurants could ask customers to indicate the amount they would like to leave as a tip in tokens, the value of which could then be added to the bill and paid for on card.
2. Perhaps a digital copy of the bill should be brought to the table on a tablet device. In one column a stream of comments from satisfied customers and the tips they left should be included.
3. Have you ever been to a Coyote Ugly bar? Every time the tips reach a certain point the barmaids ring a bell and do a performance. This kind of incentive is probably out of place in a restaurant but something similar could be implemented. A glass of wine for everyone in the restaurant if the tips reach a certain point? This wouldn’t be advertised but the incentive would spread via word of mouth.

Conclusion

If you’ve stayed with me this far, thanks. I’ll just reiterate that I am not an economist and I am not a restauranteur. I am sure that a half hour chat with a waiter would reveal some simple and effective ways to elicit bigger tips from customers.

I should also mention that if you want to avoid irrational tipping you should just view the situation as a market scenario, you are not receiving anything from this transaction, therefore you should not leave a tip.

Let me just finish by saying that I blog part time and receive no funding for my Master’s degree. I look forward to your next visit to my blog. Any tips will be shared between the author of this blog post a picture of whom you can find here. 

D&AD Nomination

I’m massively pleased to announce that the idea Wina and I had for Pitch & Sync has been nominated for a D&AD student award.

Fingers crossed that it’s good enough to win that Student Pencil!

You can see our work here. 

Talking To The Hairdresser

Talking to the hairdresser - a cause of social anxiety.

Going to the hairdresser is a stressful experience. On top of the worry about whether or not they’ll mess up your hair, you have to deal with the dreaded small talk.

A lot of people find it awkward, not knowing what to say, finding the hairdresser prying into their private life. But they worry that if they can’t make small talk, they’re not a sociable person.

Think you’re alone in this? Look at  this thread on a social anxiety forum. And this one on Yahoo Answers. There are plenty more like it.

As one commenter says, hairdressers should be able to deduce whether you’re talkative or not and respond accordingly.

But maybe some hairdressers are just pushy, possibly thinking that they’ll get a tip if they’re talkative? Or maybe they’ll get shouted at by their boss for not being sociable enough with clients?

Either way, I think I have a solution.

Have you ever been to one of those “traffic light” nights in clubs? I haven’t, but here’s the concept.

Everyone takes a different coloured badge on entering the club.
Red: Not interested in anyone, don’t even bother.
Orange: I could be interested, try talking to me.
Green: Definitely game. Come talk to me.
It’s an effort to stop unwanted guys hitting on girls that aren’t interested, and a way for guys to quickly tell if they’ll get anywhere.

I propose implementing this system in hairdressers.

It can be as simple as a badge on the gown to indicate to your stylist whether or not you want to engage in conversation.

It would save a lot of awkwardness and social anxiety.

It could even be expanded to an app.

Imagine an app whereby you set your willingness to engage with hairdressers, shop assistants etc. The shop assistant can then look you up when you enter the store and immediately see that you are “just browsing”.

A shopper who desperately wants assistance might cause an alert on the  appropriate shop assistants’ app, so that they avoid the awkwardness of trying to attract the attention of a busy assistant or worse, the wrong assistant.

You might decry this as technology getting in the way of proper human interaction. But I would argue that it simply removes irrelevant and unwanted interaction, leaving only meaningful interactions in your life.

The Shortcomings Of A Copywriter

It’s 1am. I’ve got that insatiable urge to write and I know the reason why.

This morning we got our latest campaigns back from our tutors. While overall I did well, there were some negative comments about a lot of the body copy I wrote that have been nagging at me all day.

It seems strange to admit that when I’m trying to make a career as a copywriter. After a lot of thinking about it, I reckon that these specific passages caused concern because of mismatched of tone of voice. But my thinking revealed to me a broader set of weaknesses.

I feel a lot of pressure from the industry and I’m not even in it yet. We’re routinely told, if an ad takes longer than 4 seconds to get, it’s not worth having in your book. CDs just don’t have the time.

If an idea we come up with doesn’t work solely as a visual, or as a headline/visual combo, and it needs a little bit of body copy to explain it, I feel like I’ve failed.

That feeling of failure infects the body copy I write. I don’t like it, I don’t want it there. It needs to be there but it reads as if it shouldn’t. I don’t like it so I don’t work on it. I don’t check it to see if it fits with the tone of voice, to hear that it sounds like the audience speaks.

I take my eye off the ball.

It’s something that won’t happen again.

I spent the afternoon with the D&AD Copy Book. It reignited my sense of craftsmanship in copywriting. It revealed to me my weaknesses. Too often I throw down the first words that come to mind, maybe giving it a quick tweak, and then hide behind defenses like, “It’s raw this way.” and, “That’s just how people talk.”

I forget that every word must work as hard as it possibly can to carry the idea.

I forget that something isn’t perfect when there’s nothing left to add, but when there’s nothing left to take away.

I will not forget in future.

The Train Campaign

So, last Monday, I got a train from Truro to Brighton. Some six and a bit hours.

This was a good chunk of the day, so I wanted to do something a little more productive than usual.

So the night before I conceived The Train Campaign. An effort to get London ad agencies to set me a brief to complete on the train, and then talk to them about it once I got to London.

Ok. Full disclosure.

Of the 5 agencies/CDs that got in touch, only one actually suggested a brief. That was 72 And Sunny – a very good, but very California-based agency.

Still I did a brief.

My website hits went right up.

My website hits reached nearly 100 on Monday.

I started conversations with Dave Trott, Nick Farnhill, Now, Anomaly and 72 And Sunny.

And, Rory Sutherland favorited my tweet! Man, it was worth it for that alone.

As for the campaign I produced, I’m very happy with the mobile app. The interactive banner ads and the AdWords campaign need a little work. And the print campaign… well, I’m happy with the headlines. But they could do with a visual I think. It’s gonna stay in my book for now. I’m proud of the thinking. But a few tweaks are needed.

The Train Campaign… I think if I’d given people more notice before hand, I might have got more of a response. So maybe I’ll try it again, if I ever have another 6 hour train journey.

Or maybe I’ll up the ante, and do it on my morning 26 minute journey to uni!

You can see the campaign I produced here or as a PDF account of the campaign. 

Getting Students To Read i

This is a brief for this year’s YCN awards from i.

We would like to engage with a younger audience, specifically students, to make i the most read newspaper amongst the student market, as well as significantly raising our circulation.

In addition, we want to build a student community and have in-depth engagement/interaction with this market.

This is, in my opinion, a good brief.

But for the first part at least, I don’t feel that it needs advertising.

I think i can become the most read paper among the student market, and significantly raise it’s circulation, by doing something much simpler.

We simply negotiate with university halls of residence to include a subscription to i in the contract.

A new student can, of course, opt out of the subscription when they sign the contract.

But a 9-month subscription (the standard lease for a hall of residence) would cost £34.

That’s about a 1% of the cost of their halls.

We’d be offering students a quality newspaper, 6 days a week, for less than £4 a month.

I don’t think that many students would opt out of that.

And, the brief claims that once someone has tried i, they love it and will buy it again. So the students are likely to continue their subscription beyond the termination of their halls contract.

And with most students reading i, I think that the student community that the paper seeks to build, would build itself.

So while it might be a little odd for an advertising student to suggest a solution eschewing the need for advertising, I feel that this is the most elegant answer to this problem.

Do The Kind Of Work You Want To Do

When I’ve received advice about putting together a book, it usually includes the following: 

Include the kind of work that you want to do.

With that in mind, my two entries to the D&AD awards are a good reflection of the kind of work I want to do. One digital and one ambient. 

I can’t show you them due to D&AD’s rules. But I’ve got everything crossed! 

Pleasant After Effects

I started learning After Effects today and was so proud of my baby steps I wanted to show the world!

ADverbs on Facebook

Timeline? Yeah I’ve had that since they announced it. So I’ve had a while to get used to it. And I like it. I do.

The News Ticker? That took some getting used to. But you know what? It works.

The number of times in the last few days that I have read newspaper articles that my friends have read is phenomenal. I find it really hard to find the time to sit down and read a paper, or watch the news, or look at news sites. The newspaper apps and their social content are revolutionising the news for me. And if you reach one person…

It’s the headlines that still grab me – I don’t care which of my friends have read it. Putting that headline in front of my eyes is making me click. And Facebook are introducing new “gestures”. Lightweight actions. So right now people like brands. Or read an article. Soon, they’ll be drinking a Bud or hiking a trail.

It’s going to be a golden age for copywriters. The apps that are supplying the gestures need only intrigue the audience to get a click. That moment of “WTF? I have to see what this is about!”

Imagine snaffling a bag of crisps.
Quaffing a chardonnay.
Savouring a brandy.

There is going to be a verb revival!

Can you think of any great ones?