28 October 2009 | Jonathan Villet

Denise Bostrom, scriptwriter and director for OneWorld Communications, writes about the risks of screenwriting. She’s taught the subject for ten years at San Francisco City College and SF State University. “Check your ego at the door” is the sign that hangs in her classroom. Check her article Screenwriting 101 Or Reconsidering the Ruby Slippers in CineSource Magazine.

Her most recent video production at OneWorld Communicaitons was a series on clinical therapy for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) experienced by our country’s soldiers.

No Comments

30 August 2009 | Jonathan Villet

One can read a good description of Cognitive Dissonance, a core concept in social psychology and consumer behavior, on Wikipedia. But experiencing how its author Leon Festinger proposes the theory in his 1957 book, The Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, is to experience firsthand the creativity of the scientific method and the originality of a fine mind. Festinger maps his discovery in plain language: describing empirical experiments of the effects of decision-making, forced compliance, exposure to information, and social support. The theory demonstrates how, upon experiencing dissonance between two elements of knowledge or experience, we strive to be consistent, make sense, in short, reduce the dissonance. The theory can systematically albeit subtley describe, explain, and perhaps even predict many of our opinions, perceptions and behaviors. And Festinger conjectures in a careful fashion about its import to understand the effect of mass media, group identity, and the process of mass phenomena.

However I’d like to learn more stories of using its principles in marketing or social marketing to bring the concept more alive.

Source: Africa Within

Apparently in the 1950’s theorists argued that a more powerful approach to racial desegregation in the US could be achieved through increasing cognitive dissonance by forced compliance rather waiting for attitudes to change gradually over time, in short, force people’s behavior and attitudes will follow, the opposite of prevailing wisdom. Forced desegregation would increase everyday experiences in common between people of different races (schooling, being neighbors, dining, shopping, etc.), These experiences would conflict with stereotypes associated with prejudicial opinions, generate dissonance between the two perceptions (stereotypes and actual experiences), and trigger people’s built-in need for dissonance-reduction, to relieve the tension by better aligning the two. That is, opinions would change. It’s described briefly in an article Back to the Future: Retrospective Review of Leon Festinger’s “A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance” by Prof. Elliot Aronson.( The American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 110, No. 1 (Spring, 1997)  page 130, requires academic log-in unfortunately.)

There’s also an article by Aronson describing an experiment to promote water conservation wherein the arousal of dissonance was more effective (recognition of hypocrisy) than simply exposing people to messages: The Social Animal .   

Hopefully there are many more practical examples out there with which to become more adept with using the marvelous insights of dissonance arousal and reduction.  Some day I’d also like to explore ties between the theory and observations of consumer behavior and psychology such as cognitive biases (e.g., buyer’s remorse, confirmation bias, framing, misattribution), heuristics (such as anchoring, availability, escalation of commitment), branding / marketing concepts (such as spreading activation, affect regulation), and the art of nudging (see the Nudge Blog.)

No Comments

23 April 2009 | Jonathan Villet

Twitter is one of those wonderful ideas that makes no sense on paper. What possible use could the world get out of mini-blogs limited to 140 characters? And yet, by now we all know someone who had no idea what Twitter was a few weeks ago and is now all over it, with a handful hundred followers and multiple posts per day. And the phenomenon that will be Twitter hasn’t even really started yet. Michael S. Malone points out that Twitter still has “only” less than 30 million users in the US:

That means we are still at the tail end of the early adopter phase for Twitter. The real social breakout – 100 million U.S. and 500 million world-wide users and all of the social transformations that will come in their train – has not yet occurred. Remember the frenzy surrounding eBay when just about everybody you know started buying and selling on it? It’s going to be like that for Twitter six months to a year from now.

Be that as it may, Twitter’s already made a splash in the “everyday” world of politics and commerce. Probably the most famous use of Twitter to date is President Obama’s announcement of his victory in the presidential elections this last November. The presidential tweeting didn’t stop there, of course. Check out this video chart of Twitter activity from the day of Obama’s inauguration.

Like most technology, however, Twitter is ideology-neutral. While Obama reduced his use of Twitter to get his message out, his political opponents have also embraced the social media darling. The Tea Party movement is using Twitter to organize and advertise their protests, share tips, and track media attention. One could almost describe Tea Party protests as flash mobs in slow motion.

People are also exploring the commercial possibilities of Twitter. Dell’s VP of Communities and Conversations, Bob Pearson, boasts 25,000 followers to his company’s 80 different Twitter accounts. Of course, it’s not just about attracting eyeballs. Mr. Pearson also claims to have moved more than $1 million in merchandise via Dell’s Home Outlet Twitter group. Meanwhile, Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, is personally leading his company’s Twitter strategy with 130,000 followers to his personal Twitter account.

It’s not all smooth sailing through the social media waters for corporate giants, however. Time Warner recently reaped a whirlwind of controversy and antagonism on Twitter when they experimented with bandwidth caps on their broadband internet service. The latest word indicates that the company has abandoned such plans for now.

And then there’s the bizarre case of Skittles. Embracing social media, they turned their home page into a Twitter portal, allowing their fans to post whatever they liked. At first, it seemed to be a real marketing coup. Eventually, however, it turned into something more like Lord of the Flies as the seedy underbelly of the ‘net made its presence felt. The Twitter feed was buried. Now, before you can even get to the website, you have to input your age in a form and you’re warned “SKITTLES® isn’t responsible for what other people post and say on these sites. Click the box below to acknowledge that you know SKITTLES® isn’t responsible for that stuff.”

Which brings us to the still-unfolding drama of Domino’s Pizza. Recently, a video popped up on the web showing reportedly unhygienic hijinks in one of their stores. Attempts to deal with the problem quietly were swamped by the reaction on Twitter and other social media channels. Domino’s current strategy is to take the PR fight directly to Twitter, opening their own account. The jury is still out on Domino’s, but the verdict seems pretty clear on the potential of Twitter.

Photo Credit Incase Designs

6 Comments

23 April 2009 | Jonathan Villet

We held a focus group of women in our office last week – a few were on the verge of homelessness. Their spirit and enthusiasm was so positive despite the low income, now getting lower these days, and underlying desperation. I watched them talking through a one-way mirror (they knew people were observing the session) but the separation felt non-existent. The emotion of their everyday situation coming through the glass. We held the group to better understand their perceptions of 211, the information and referral telephone help line for anyone wanting to know about community services. We are creating a more effective brand and marketing strategy for 211 with the United Way and other 211 service providers so that more people use the free service.

No Comments

23 April 2009 | Jonathan Villet

“Paper or plastic?” was the usual question at grocery stores before San Francisco banned plastic bags. Now nothing’s said while the heavy duty paper bags are filled, unless you’ve brought your own. Too few people do. “Paper, plastic or personal?” is the idea posted on the Nudge blog, to not so subtly tell bag-less shoppers – “hey Bozo why didn’t you bring your bag?” In SF sans plastic that’ll become “Gotta bag lady?” causing affront: “Bag lady? You callin’ me a bag lady?”, or “Gotta bag man?” causing “Yeah it’s my bag, man!” and other wit to die for. We don’t know where this might end. “I’m a bag person” in personal ads or “seeking bp ns sbm”. Well maybe fewer paper bags, less trees will be used. Happy ED !

No Comments

23 April 2009 | Jonathan Villet

Environmentally-friendly pest control is getting traction due to… marketing! People like “green” but doubt it’s effective against bugs. Au contraire! It has been for a long time, called Integrated Pest Management (IPM). But IPM never infested the popular mindset. Now we’ve got “GreenPro Certified — Eco-Effective Pest Control” a new brand for a national association of bug fighters to spread the word. It’ll encourage companies to adopt these green practices, hopefully be promoted by environmental organizations and make consumers more comfortable trying this approach.

See the new logo here http://www.owcom.com/npma1.html.

3 Comments

23 April 2009 | Jonathan Villet

Last week two classmates and I at Haas Business School gave a class presentation analyzing whether or not the Raytheon Company should have expanded its conglomerate by buying an electronics component distribution business back in 1975. I’ll bet that sounds exciting? Actually it was. It’s called Vertical Integration: companies buy others which either supply them or use their products in manufacturing or to distribute. They buy for lots of reasons, some smart, some fallacious. They want to keep instead of pay the supplier’s mark-up (Raytheon bought a lot of components from suppliers, as well as making components itself). That’s a fallacy because even under the new management that mark-up is needed to carry out the business. Or as our professor likes to demonstrate, taking a dollar from his wallet and putting it in his shirt pocket. “Am I any poorer? Any richer? No.”

They buy other supplier or customer companies to better coordinate production and distribution flows, reduce leakage of private information, reduce the possibility of being “held-up” by powerful vendors or customers because there’s lack of competition, and reduce the cost of negotiations and contracting with vendors and customers. All good reasons! But none applied to Raytheon because it is actually a conglomerate of businesses which couldn’t use these benefits. These businesses operated on their own, fairly independently. On top of this, if Raytheon bought this type of business, Raytheon’s present competitors wouldn’t either supply or buy from it. They wouldn’t want Raytheon to know their information, or trust Raytheon to treat them fairly. So we recommended against the acquisition of the new business. We made a good decision for a multi-billion dollar business. Will we do it for real someday? By the way Raytheon is a big weapons manufacturer. But whether it’s iPods or missiles “it’s just business”, right?

No Comments

26 March 2008 | Jonathan Villet

OneWorld Communications received top advertising industry kudos, the Gold ADDY Award, for the creativity of its “Telephone Soap Opera” television campaign, from the Greater San Francisco Ad Club on March 20, 2008.

The agency created the winning campaign with humorous soap opera scenes to encourage people to overcome the frustration of managing their telephone services in today’s increasingly complex telecommunications environment. The agency produced the television spots, as well as radio, print and transit advertising, in English, Spanish, Mandarin and Cantonese adaptations for Calphoneinfo, a service of the California Public Utilities Commission.

“Thousands of consumers have called in response to the campaign so far,” said Jonathan Villet, President of OneWorld Communications. “Cutting through the clutter with creativity and strategy to engage with consumers continues to be our strength as an agency.”

The campaign was originally broadcast in the Fall of 2007 and is now being repeated for additional months in 2008 across California. The work can be seen at www.owcom.com/digital.html.

No Comments