mediation

Letting a little chaos in: Could understanding unpredictability make us better planners?

so as a bit of a Chrimbo pressie I took up a year's subscription to the BBC's iPlayer offering on iPad.  one of the first things that I got my teeth into was a documentary from a couple of years ago on BBC4 about the mathematics of chaos. a particular passage in the above clip, struck me as of particular interest to those of us attending to an ongoing mission of negotiating - of mediating - the future of media and communications.

jump to 3m50s and you'll hear the following passage:

"the turbulence of the 1970's convinced the economists, as well as the environmentalists, that their faith in large scale prediction and control was just wrong.  they came to accept that they would no more be able to control the economy than the weather.  the era of command and control was over.  but there was a second more controversial part of the mathematics upon which they fundamentally disagreed.

Ruelle and others had found that even very simple systems ... could give rise to highly complex chaotic behaviour; and now as they used these simple systems to explore further, they began to discover the rules of this chaotic world.  they found that the more connected and interlinked systems became, the more likely they were to become chaotic and turbulent, and that the more you pumped the system - the faster you ran it - the more chaotic it would become."

source: High Anxieties - The Mathematics of Chaos, David Malone, last broadcast BBC4 in 2008

anyone currently planning media and communications can't fail to observe the parallel: the more connected and interlinked systems become, the more likely they are to become chaotic and turbulent - and the faster you run a system, the more chaotic is becomes...

we enter a new year with a media and comms planning landscape that is arguably less certain than it was last (and I would suggest that this has been the case for at least the last several years). we have fewer certainties, fewer guarantees of success, fewer empirical rules of behaviour that can predict what our investments and strategies will achieve.

it is not for the want of trying.  Ehrenberg et al at the institute that bears his name - for example - have made huge strides in identifying marketing 'laws' ... for example the double jeopardy law which states that "brands with less marketing share have far fewer buyers, and these buyers are slightly less loyal (in the buying and attitudes)" ... or the duplication of purchase law which states that "a brand's customer base overlaps with rival brands in line with its market share" (source: How Brands Grow, Byron Sharp)

but these rules have more to do with buying behaviour than they have to do with how and to what extent media and communications planning influences that buying behaviour. for every one of Ehrenberg's laws there are multiple exceptions that - depending on you point of view - prove or disprove the immutability of those laws.

multiple disciplines indicate that we are habitual creatures, more sensitive to (for example) loss aversion than that of advertising. and yet we know that communications which are disproportionately awarded / rewarded have a similarly disproportionate return for the brands that invest in them. communications work, and generally speaking the better the communications the better they work.

generally speaking.

which is of course fine, generally.

but the fact remains that while we can all of us mitigate uncertainty (thorough research and exploration; an aligned strategy; integrated thinking; proportionate and focused investment; identification, tracking and measurement of KPI ecosystems ... to name but a few), what we do sometimes seems to be far from an exact science (which is of course part of the attraction)...

but perhaps chaos has not just a key but an increasingly significant role to play. what if we accept that we are no more able to control how media and comms planning affects businesses that we are able to control the weather? ... and what if we accept that an increasingly networked and interconnected media landscape increasingly makes this more not less true?

would such acceptance make us better or worse planners? would it compromise planning or make it stronger? could accepting that there is inevitable chaos in the system provide more realistic and reliable margins and predictions of success? if the only thing we can confidently predict is a degree of unpredictability, perhaps confidently facing up to this reality is the only thing that will truly allow us to move on...

Get Up's 'It's Time' Ad gets on TV: How grass-roots movements are reversing the broadcast < conversation model

breaking news courtesy of @mrbenjaminlaw of twitter fame (thanks Benjamin and Mimi), suggests that the above rather excellent and marvellous ad for Australian marriage equality has secured enough funds to be broadcast on national TV this weekend.

the GetUp! campaign website notes that "this weekend, delegates at the ALP National Conference will be voting on whether to make it their policy to end marriage discrimination. This video has already reached nearly 1,000,000 people -- but a national TV campaign this week would reach double that again, and really put the pressure on!"

mission, it would seem, accomplished.  the ad will air over coming days in Sydney (Channels 9/10), Melbourne (7/9/10), Adelaide (9/10/SBS), Perth (9/SBS) and Brisbane (SBS).

what's interesting from Mediation's point of view (personal agenda aside) is the total reverse of the media model.  from "fund an ad on broadcast TV > start conversation and debate > affect change" to "distribute content online > galvanise support and fundraise for broadcast > affect change" ... the goal remains the same, but (1) the conversation comes first and (2) broadcast becomes an end-point not a starting point.

interestingly broadcast becomes that end-point funded by the grass-roots community - TV not as passive distributor of message but rather an active signal to decision-makers that enough people care enough about this cause to fund its deployment in a broadcast public forum.

it's important that this ad is on TV.  it's important because of the signal it sends to said decision-makers, but also because it will ensure the important message that it contains reaches people who - because of the echo-chamber effect of some online networks - wouldn't otherwise see it.

online networks have brought powerful, timely and positive changes to how we communicate - but broadcast retains it's potent ability to reach all of us.  and, thanks to the efforts of GetUp! and its supporters, it is all of us who will be reminded that It's Time for mariage equality this weekend.

this weekend a grass-roots community is, for one minute and fifty six seconds, taking TV back ... and our TV is the better for it.

The game of the movie or the movie of the game?: The opportunity of choosing the immersive over the immediate

"Several years ago in the video game industry the big buzz word was "transmedia".  it was a term that was coined for original worlds and properties that spanned multiple venues, from the game to the TV series to the movies to the books. everyone was aflutter with this idea; these mega properties were going to dominate the entertainment landscape and change how we consume media.

flash forward to now and it's clear that very few studios were ever able to pull off this "holy grail" of world development. budgets skyrocketed and very few wanted to take a gamble on building a new world. Ubisoft, however, pulled this off with Assassin's Creed, and they did it with flying colours.

let's face it - we live in a digital and connected world. a distracted world. there are always multiple things vying for our attention, be it social media or mobile devices. in this era creatives need to craft games and worlds that gamers "marry" not ones that they casually "date". there are numerous ways to accomplish this, but one of the best ways to do it is to make a game world that is so extraordinarily deep that it takes an army to sort through all of the facts and details. the world of Assassin's Creed is one that is easy to get into but can take years to fully understand and appreciate."

Cliff Bleszinski - Design Director, Epic Games

it's strange reading the above commentary outside of a media planning text, the parallels are so similar as to be striking ... "buzz word was 'transmedia'", "change how we consume media", "a digital and connected world. a distracted world" ...

Bleszinski's comments were written for the prologue to the Assassin's Creed Encyclopedia, a beautifully designed hardback book included as part of the Animus Edition of Assassin's Creed Revelations.

Ubidoft's unboxing video of Assassin's Creed Revelations Animus Edition and images from the Assassin's Creed Encyclopedia: careful, spoilers alert

that games now come with encyclopedias may be news enough for some readers, but the fact that Assassin's Creed does (in fact there's an audio CD and a short movie in the Animus too) bears testament to just how evolved some game worlds now are.

evolved, and big business.

a Guardian article last week reported that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 had set a five-day worldwide sell-through record, with sales of more than USD $775m.  it went on to comment that "the number also far exceeds the opening revenues from any movie or album release in 2011 – the biggest film of the year, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, made $202m in its first five days. It is likely that Modern Warfare 3 will join the select group of £1bn-grossing entertainment properties by Christmas."

some digging courtesy of the same article notes that DFC Intelligence puts the 2010 global games industry figure at USD $66bn, whilst the LA Times puts the 2010 global cinema box office figure at USD $31.8bn and eMartketer estimate recorded music revenues at USD $35.1bn.  games win.  by a long shot.

the article ends however by observing that total reach of cinema far exceeds that of games, and comments that "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is big, that's for sure, but as a mass cultural event, it still has a looooong way to go" ... the fact that this observation is disputable aside (include social and casual gaming and there's plenty of examples of games with scale and 'cultural event' status - Angry Birds anyone?), the difference between movies and gaming audiences is a reflection of the difference in the type of content/context between movies and gaming.

movies are inherently lean-back, immediate and assessable. games (casual and social aside) are inherently lean-forward, immersive and require time, effort and energy. it's no surprise that the former has a bigger audience footprint than the latter, but that the latter generates significantly higher revenues per head than the former...

what's interesting from a media planning perspective is the choice that it presents - ask yourself what context/content we in the advertising and communications industry generally create?  is it lean-back, immediate and assessable ... or lean-forward, immersive and demanding of our time and energy.  advertising was born and grew up in the mass-broadcast era - its no surprise that we predominately not only produce in movie-mode, but have extensive metrics and marketing theories (Byron Sharp anyone?) to prove its validity.

and yet we know we have to move on.

we take our content and we re-purpose it.  we're media and channel neutral, we create experiences and promotions and we socialise and innovate around our movies.  we create the games of our movies.

and in doing so we're missing a huge opportunity.  because Assassin's Creed and games like it don't create games from movies (that would inherently limit their scope - search for 'successful movie-based game franchises and you'll see what I mean) ... Assassin's Creed creates movies from games, and more specifically, from an imagined world in which that game is set. they start, always and every time, with an immersive and lean-forward content/context - after which spinning out lean-back immediate content is childsplay.

the point is that we have a choice.  stay as we are - create in movie mode and spin out the immersive and engaging game stuff off of the back of it ... or we can decide to more often start in gaming mode.  what world do we want to create?  what are it's rules and stories and mythologies? (all brands have them - we just don't think of them in these terms) ... then how do we create lean-forward, immersive and rewarding ways into our worlds?  and then, and only then, how do we create content - of thirty seconds or three hours duration - that expands the penetration of our worlds, and of our brands, via more immediate and assessable means.

it's harder to do.  it's expensive to fund.  it's difficult to measure.  and it takes longer to produce.  but that's our choice ... and as anyone who has ever completed a game will tell you - it's more than worth it.  speaking of which...

The hate of expectation: Why we judge next more harshly than now, and why we need to stop

we watched and discussed the above case study (or a version of it) at our weekly plannery-type meeting a few weeks back.  whilst the tone of the discussion was generally positive, there was a nagging persistent line in the debate that went along the lines of "we've been here already, seen it before, done it now, enough already, time to move on" ...

and it kinda bothered me, because here we have a brand that, rather than resting comfortably in the knowledge that it is generating awareness through sponsoring a property, is investing time and energy in using that platform to create experiences that can more deeply engage and entertain us.  and there's a very real danger that our response is: "meh" ... would we really rather that they had done this?

would we really rather that Skoda had invested time and energy in thirty second ads that they could broadcast at us with the intention of interrupting us?

or what about this effort for Yeo Valley from Blighty that broke a few weeks ago in the first live X-Factor final...

on the UK's apparent emerging yogurt wars (who knew) - of which this above is no small part - JVW makes an interesting point in a post on his Smithery blog:

"...on a slightly more thoughtful note, I think it’s part of a slightly worrying, one-dimensional train-of-thought in agency land; the push for the ADVERSPECTACULAR, the greatest song and dance show it’s possible to put on in thirty seconds ... (Although better in sixty.  Though, actually, it only really works as a ninety…)"

JVW's valid point is that the entertaining ante can only be upped so much before we all collectively explode in a blast of entertainment on-upmanship that destroys us all.  but surely efforts to entertain, or educate, or be useful or create experiences - as opposed to just reach or interrupt us should be applauded?

I care a lot less that Skoda are following in Mini's gamification footsteps than I care that a dozen other car brands aren't trying to connect to me on my terms.  and I care a lot less that Yeo Valley are pushing the envelope on entertaining us than I care that a hundred other FMCG brands aren't.

a discussion with the awesomness of Nicola prompted her to make the smart observation that we have higher expectations of the different.  we expect more from the new.  we demand better from the alternative.  and we judge the next infinitely more harshly than we judge the now.

part human nature, part the position media planning finds itself in as we settle into the 21st Century and part the pressures imposed by the collective jizz-fest of international awards ... the danger is that we quite simply and quite wrongly carry a weight of expectation of brands and planning that tries to do different.

we let a thousand really quite average communications pass us by every day without a whimper, and mutter 'meh' at the next iteration of doing different.  when we should be celebrating...  every breakout, every brave investment decision, every do different, every 'no one's done it this way lets go', every sledge-hammer taken to category grip conventions, every 'why didn't we think of that?' and every 'why not' not 'why' should be a badge of honour for our industry.

the weight ... the hate, of our collective expectation should be directed not at the brands that try to do different, but at those that don't.

here's that other yoghurty adventure should you be interested in taking sides in those yogurt wars ... really though, the yogurt wars - yogurt brands are at war, just with each other and all, but still, who knew!?

If you're going to sponsor something, don't hold back: lessons on commitment from Air New Zealand and the Rugby World Cup

I was lucky enough to jump across to Auckland last week (for meetings, I wasn't that lucky) where it wasn't hard to notice that there was a small rugby competition in progress.  aside from the obvious signs - like Steve Rider standing at the bar or Lawrence Dallaglio's MacBook popping up on my shared drives - it was impossible to avoid the advertising making us aware of various brands' sponsorship of the event.  it fact it was harder to spot a poster that didn't relate to the rugby world cup that to spot one that was.

all of which is well and good.  a host of brands have invested in attaching themselves to one of the best sporting competitions in the world, and quite rightly want to leverage that attachment and investment.  but here's the rub.  the tyranny of clutter.  oh how it mitigates and compromises and diminishes the value of our collective investments.

the fact is that to effectively leverage any sponsorship now, you have to create a crucial step between the sponsorship and the advertising.  you have to create something that amplifies and justifies your connection, and talk about that.  telling people that you're a sponsor with a nifty copy line simply doesn't cut it any more.

no one understands nor activates that better than Air New Zealand.  of all the brands that fought for my attention with their rugby world cup efforts, none stood out or cut through more than Air New Zealand.  I wasn't alone ... the subject of what they had done to amplify their association came up more than once in conversation and not by me.

the above is the in-flight safety instruction video.  it's not going to win any oscars but it doesn't have to...  it demonstrates an absolute commitment to the cause and leverages the connection to the RWC through the most credible of symbols - the All Black players and coach themselves.  I see and lot of in-flight videos.  I watch very few.  I watched this one again online afterwards.

in addition an entire aircraft has been liveried in black to activate the sponsorship (see below) and the interior furnishings on the plane have been given an All Black makeover for the occasion.  the planning for this alone must have been years in the making - short term response planning its not.

some lessons:

dominate and disrupt your owned media  don't hold back.  plan and think ahead about how you can radically disrupt the media you have at your disposal.  what can you create in-store or in branch?  what can you do to alter your web presence or DM or eDM mailings?  use your staff and people as part of the message - involve them in what you're creating.  and bring what you've done to life through content so that you can...

allow word of mouth to do at least some of the amplification  yup use broadcast media to amplify your innovation but don't over-rely on it.  socialise the content around what you're doing and encourage sharing.  it doesn't have to be amazing quality, just good enough.  more good content is better than just a little awesome content.  content is fleeting and disposable these days; invest accordingly people.

utilise credible symbols to leverage your investment  if you're putting hard earned dollars into a sponsorship make sure you get more than badge-ing rights.  if you're sponsoring a tournament get access to the home team.  if it's a media association leverage journalists or on-air personalities and co-create content and platforms with them that communicate the relevance of your association.

create a return path for sales  create breadcrumbs back to retail or sales channels so that interest and saliency can be easily activated into return on investment. can you create a unique offer around your sponsorship?  how you create a path to sales by showcasing your goods or services?  once again, Air New Zealand's YouTube channel is a lesson in how to do just that...

above all don't think that telling people you or your client is a sponsor will be enough.  too much clutter.  too much noise.  too much convergence on the same message.  you'll get lost.  or at best you'll win a phyrric share of voice victory that cost you more than it returned.

will all this cost more?  you bet your sweet pretty ass it will.  you may need to do less overall and focus investment on fewer bigger better projects ... but it's more than worth it.  don't hold back, if its good enough to sponsor its good enough to invest the time and energy in making the sponsorship count.

full declaration: Air New Zealand are a client of PHD Australia, where I work.  I'm breaking my first and most important rule of blogging by writing about a client, but it was just too good an effort not to comment on.

Tactical Smactical: Smart Relevant Tactical Planning on Apple's Big Day ... Courtesy of Nokia

getting tactical - Nokia's takeovers which appeared across a range of titles today

thanks to Kate M who pointed me in the direction of the above earlier today; a great example of smart, relevant and appropriate tactical planning.  no futurology, no zappy whizz bang interaction or engagement strategies ... just a simple straight-forward ad for the Nokia N9 in dominant spaces on the day of Apple's big (?) announcement.

whether or not Nokia knew the iPhone 5 was going to be an iPhone 4S is irrelevant - even with a more talked about iPhone model the placement was a smart move.  the fact that Apple announced a 4S today makes the planning all the better...

the alignment of The Age's 'Spot the Difference' item alongside the Nokia ad speaks for itself.  future-gazing and predicting and innovating and challenging are important, but I was happy for the reminder that there is - more than ever - a place in our world for smart planners who spot and create credible cut-thru tactical placements for brand communications.

Cookie and Stream: How a re-targeted ad for NIB officially killed the segmentation

oh hello cookie

perhaps its because I'm a digital immigrant (first email send 1995 aged 18) but I'm still sometimes genuinely surprised and more than a little delighted at just how good our industry has become at what we do.

yesterday I was nosing around the NIB website looking at health insurance options.  I went there, by the way, as a result of word of mouth (thanks Nic) - about which the soon-to-be-released book Brandwashed by Martin Lindstrom will observe that "ninety percent of brands recommended by [a WOM experimental family called] the Morgansons were purchased by every person who entered the family's sphere".  we truly buy because of what other people buy.

but I digress.  the point is that I was on the NIB website and started a quote but didn't complete the application and happily moved on with my life.

until today.

when I was served with an ad for NIB whilst watching a YouTube clip (entirely, I may ad, unrelated to health insurance) ... and exclaimed to twitterpod II and beyond that "I've just been re-targeted".

which is a pretty stupid / obvious / unnecessary thing for a media planner of ten years to observe.

but exclaim I did.

the fact that NIB had furnished me with a cookie then streamed an ad right at me (frequency cap of three - I checked) still filled me with a pride that what we do not just awesomely works but, more importantly, is finally delivering on the long-held promise of a segmentation of one.

because the point is that I’m not in an NIB segmentation … or at least I certainly wasn’t targeted in the first instance as one (I sought them out).  digital media allows me to be in a segment of one – a segment called ‘Chris in Sydney who clicked but didn’t follow through for a quote on 27/9/11’.

the promise of digital planning is not just the volume (there are, according to Mashable, currently 17,031,375 of these segments in Australia alone*) but that these segments aren't discrete.  they are networked.  and that means that they're not segments at all.

they're nodes.

at the moment I need to manually tell my network that I interacted with an ad for NIB, but that's becoming - certainly for the super-sharers - a passive process.

and for high-interest categories that means that not only do you not need a segmentation, but that you have the potential to instigate hundreds of super-relevant networks around an idea or piece of content.

networks that self-create and spread, from nodes just like ‘Chris in Sydney who clicked but didn’t follow through for a quote on 27/9/11’ ... like I said, you can't help but be just a little bit delighted by that.

you can also be delighted by this ... enjoy ...

*online population of Australia

Living This Branded Life: The Opportunities and Pitfalls for Brands as Facebook leads the charge on branded verbs

the evolution of the brand as demonstrated by adidas: branded products, adverts, content, conversations and now living

in the beginning was the thing.  and so that we could determine origin and provenance of the thing, there was the branded thing.  very soon after that businesses wanted to tell people about their things so they made ads, which were often of 30 seconds duration.  in time this branded content became as long as a movie, or even a permanent experiential space from which you could buy the product.  and then, at some point near the start of the 21st Century a curious thing happened.  brands went a step further and started branding our lives.

social media and brands go together like cookies and cream.  its impossible to discuss one without the other.  and so it was no surprise that amidst all the announcements of gestures and timelines and apps at facebook's f8 developer conference - one of the biggest questions to emerge is what does this all mean for brands?

a cracking summary by Lucio Dias Ribiero of social media agency The Online Circle on Mumbrella noted that there are three main developments: (1) gestures - from now onwards, developers will have the power to create their own buttons (2) new apps - a new breed of social applications and 'lifestyle apps' which allow users to ‘read, watch and listen’ to media and (3) timeline - a scrapbook of your life as captured and curated by the Book.

Ribiero notes that the changes will allow brands to build their own customised buttons, and describes the significance the changes will mean for targeting:

"now that users can share what they are consuming (videos, news, music) through media partner applications, marketers can get mentions and give them wider distribution through sponsored stories – a new kind of behavioural advertising ... These apps present brands with a completely new way of targeting Facebookers. Depending on what sort of content users are consuming, ads can be filtered and served accordingly" [source]

the implications of this are far from insignificant and go much further than targeting.  by allowing brands to create customised buttons, facebook is leading the change on allowing brands to connect with and attach themselves to what we're doing in an unprecedentedly tangible way.

and facebook are far from alone.  in fact (of all people) Aussie broadcasters are all over this ... it's hard to describe how much better Q&A is with the incorporation of observations that arrive in the studio via #qanda, but this week also saw Nine launch a live voting platform for WWOS that - via Vodafone's Viewers’ Verdict Vote - allows viewers to take part in on-air discussions:

WWOS's Vodafone's Viewers Vote

and Leckie's dramatic presentation last week included the announcement that SMG Red will be soon launching a mobile app / online platform that will allow viewers to check into programs - encouraging interaction with on-air content but also in conversations that extend beyond the content.  and brand-funded, SMGRed-hosted community that will be rewarded for interaction.

a branded life indeed.

to which our very last reaction should be surprise.  our lives have been well and truly branded for at least half a century if not considerably longer...  yet this is far from a challenge, we are at the threshold of the age of utility.  a wave of usefulness is about to crash over us, and I for one can't wait.  no, the challenge - God love 'em - is for brands...

because if the world wasn't complicated enough, it just got a whole lot more so.  post-f8, if you're in charge of a brand,  you have to ask yourself if you want a branded facebook app that - via customised buttons - will allow people to share what they're doing via you and your brand's app.

of course for some brands this is easy.  if you're a brand with a clear idea of why you exist and what activities, interests and passions you want to stimulate in the world its rather straight forward.  if you're a brand with a clear ideas of what to be in your next ad, it's almost impossible to answer.

ah, plus ça change ... and yet a gloriously simple question for brands remains: with which verb does your brand want to be associated?

Thinking Beyond the Horizon: Why imagining the world in 2016 is more important and necessary than ever

2016: Beyond the Horizon | Mark Holden from PHD Worldwide on Vimeo.

it's just after the joke about swallowing two micro chips for breakfast, that Mark observes that 1.2 billion are now socially networked, and are connected through technology in powerful and disruptive ways.  this is 2016: Beyond The Horizon - and it's PHD's view and perspective on how the world and our industry will change in the next five years.

re-watching this talk, uploaded to coincide with the launch of the 2016 book (available on Amazon with all proceeds going to Unicef), reminded of why this blog is called MEDIAtion.  its called MEDIAtion because it's about negotiating between two sides of a war.

I used to think that it was a war between two factions - the old guard (The Empire) who want to maintain the status quo and defend existing business models, and the new media (The Rebels) who disregard existing business models and structures, imagining and building new ways to reach, engage and involve people in new, more innovative ways.

it was a compelling mental image of the situation, the Zuckerberg and Page/Brin-shaped Rebels taking on the Murdoch and Packer-sized Empire.

but I think I was wrong.

the war isn't between two factions.

everyone wants to evolve and prosper through change.  we all of us want to adapt and take advantage of the opportunities of a life lived, as Telstra would say, in full colour.  no, this is not a war between factions - rather it is a war between times...

the war we are fighting, and in which this blog MEDIAtes ... is a war between the past and the future.

a past that traps and conforms us.  a past that forces pragmatism, and comforts us with sentiments like 'that is how its done' and 'don't worry it works like this'.  a past that not only stops us changing, but stops us wanting to change.

but change isn't something that happens to us.  rather change is something that we make happen.  and that's why 2016 is so important...  if we are to change, if we and the brands in our collective care are to prosper, then we need to imagine, articulate and understand where we are going.

and change accordingly.

this is the ambition of 2016.  this is the promise of PHD.  this is why I am on board.

we are all of us Rebels, we have only to choose to rebel.

me being on board...

Of Promise and Production: Lessons for Telstra in Saying versus Doing from Dulux and Coca-Cola

bright shiny and new: the revamped Telstra ad that broke this weekend

much has already been said of Telstra's re-branding effort, which manifested itself over the weekend in print and on TV.  it's all bright, shiny and new, and doesn't look very Telstra at all ... which I guess is rather the point.

I love it.  it's optimistic, bright, clean, modern and very disruptive.  the copy is actually genuinely really uplifting:

today is amazing. connect with almost anything and anyone from almost anywhere. got something to say? boom ... the world can love it. hate it. ignore it. whatever. stop and smell the roses you purchased online from the shop you just liked. because its never been like this before. it's life in full colour. and it's amazing.

it's also much more than a marketing sea-change.  as the below video points out - it's extending into every aspect of the organisation - from the vans to the identity badges...

it's this piece of communication that's much more interesting from a connections perspective.  the inclusion of things like identity badges gives it just a slight sense that it's meant as much for internal as it is external consumption; a communication to Telstra's staff explaining what's changed.

it's as though we're listening in on a private conversation between an organisation and its staff - and it feels a lot more genuine as a result ... if its an accident then its a happy one.  if its deliberate then it's smart, and the opportunity is to go a great deal further.

much of the conversation on Mumbrella's comment thread has debated the value of a revamped brand identity when the product and service fails to match.  but as Mumbrella's indefatigable Tim Burrowes commented in an opinion piece on the site, the product does seem to be improving.

the challenge though, starts now. as the VO towards the end of the second video above observes, "we're doing all of this to help us show all Australians just how amazing connected life can be" ... the promise of a life lived in full colour isn't the same as demonstrating to actual people in real and simple terms, what that means.  the promise can't remain unfulfilled; the bright, clean, modern and disruptive packaging can't be wrapped around an empty box.

of course if Telstra are really smart, then they'll go the step further of actually making life more colourful for Australians ...  what is Telstra's similarly colour-inspired version of this?:

it's a subtle but key mental shift: don't just promise something - produce it.  don't just promise more colourful lives, use your marketing investment to help produce more colourful lives.  the reach and awareness will come for free and will be more credible because the real conversations and voices of Australians will help create it.

it's what Dulux have done with their promise of colour and its what Coca-Cola, with the recently released content below, have done with Happiness.  you can't help but think that the people who created this asked themselves "what would Pixar do?" ... and it's the better for it.