the above video sets the context for a report released last week by Google and the Boston Consultancy Group, which has some rather interesting findings. the report's key findings are that Australia's media industry is healthy, however it is the Internet that is providing the "shot in the arm" to growth.
it turns out that not only do Australians like their 'new' media world, but in said world where our access to, and choice of, media has never been greater, we’re consuming more media than ever before. so much so in fact that - because we export, essentially, more content than we import - we have a trade surplus in our content that's worth $24bn to the economy.
the report also identified that whilst ad revenues are still (and will be for a while) predominantly generated offline (93% in 2011), its online revenues that are driving more than 50% growth in the sector.
the report came in the same week that the sparkily titled Commercial Economic Advisory Service of Australia (CEASA to their friends) released it's retrospective of 2011, reporting that whilst adspend was down, it "wasn't as bad as previous years" (let it not be said that CEASA can't find a silver lining in a set of figures).
a 1.4% overall drop was the result of (in descending order) online up 17.5%, outdoor up 3.4%, radio up 0.7% (congrats to them all), 2.6% drop in total TV, 9.2% drop in newspapers, 8.4% decline in mags, and a 20.8% drop in cinema. so both reports point to online as doing not just well, but supporting both ad revenues and the overall economy.
so far so 'tell me something I didn't know' ... but the reports struck a chord with a conversation I've been having a lot with clients and agency-type people recently. because the reports only tell a truer picture when you ask WHY it is that online is bucking such a downward trend - and I think that the answer is about innovation.
the engine behind online's performance is now only marginally about penetration gains and faster infrastructure, and a lot more about the increased utility and capabilities delivered via the internet. its not the internet that's bucking ad spend trends and fuelling the Australian economy, its what the internet is doing, and more specifically what we can do with the internet that counts.
Facebook and YouTube have now been joined by the likes of Flipboard and Spotify on the Australian media scene, innovations that have come not from the mainstream but from the fringe. and here's where I see the gap. because its not mainstream media or businesses that are driving this innovation, but new entrants. new entrants spotting an opportunity and innovating into it.
when you think about it, many 'online' platforms should have been invented by existing players, yet most weren't:
the music industry should have invented iTunes
the movie business should have invented NetFlix
the radio industry should have invented Spotify
a magazine publisher should have invented Flipboard
a bank should have invented KickStarter
a dating service should have invented Grindr
and for that matter, a media agency should have invented Facebook
the reason none of those organisations invented the new platform is the same reason the American Railroads went into decline:
"The railroads did not stop growing because the need for passenger and freight transportation declined. That grew. The railroads are in trouble today not because that need was filled by others (cars, trucks, airplanes, and even telephones) but because it was not filled by the railroads themselves. They let others take customers away from them because they assumed themselves to be in the railroad business rather than in the transportation business. The reason they defined their industry incorrectly was that they were railroad oriented instead of transportation oriented; they were product oriented instead of customer oriented..."
Levitt's question from 1960 is even more pertinent now than it was then. what business are you in? once you've answered that you can start innovating around that business, and once you're inventing stuff that gets shared and talked about, you can stop paying the expensive price of not innovating: buying media.
established players, it strikes me, are the least likely to bridge the innovation gap in their category - we should all we working on plans to change that.
and for those of us in agency land the question is more pertinent than for most ... what business are we in? anyone who answers 'buying media' or 'making ads' should turn the lights off on their way out.
"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...
a playing card: your invitation to explore Port Arthur exhibitions and information
upon receiving your entry ticket to Port Arthur's visitor centre in Tasmania you receive one of the above cards. the card is one of a couple of dozen or so playing cards, and each person visiting the site gets a different one. mine was the Queen of Diamonds.
the Queen of Diamonds: my card invites and allows me to take a personal journey through the attraction's exhibitions
much more than a souvenir however, each card invites it's owner to take a journey through the visitors centre following in the footsteps of one of the inmates of two centuries ago, when the port was Australia's second penal colony in then Van Diemen's Land.
each room in the exhibit is tailored to allowing you to exploring a specific journey for your card; a journey that reflects the actual journey taken by a specific inmate in the facility hundeds of years ago. what was their name and where did they arrive from? were they well behaved or not? were they punished or rewarded? did they take on a trade? did they ever leave the facility?
I loved this approach for three reasons. the first is that it takes something that could be quite rational, remote and, well, historic and makes it personal and personalised. approaching the visitor's centre and its exhibitions from the point of view that someone - a real person - actually went on this journey changes your mindset towards how you approach it. you are more involved, more connected. you care more.
the second-reason I love this customer solution is because of how this approach mitigates choice-overload. it tackles that feeling many of us must be familiar with when you walk into a museum and think... where to start? and then where? ... non of this here. you are presented with a clear path and invited to ignore some exhibits. this doesn't compromise your visit, in fact it actually liberates it.
but the reason that I most love this approach is the extent to which - explicitly or implicitly - it invites conversation, a point made by Davey too when I was chatting with her this morning. when a group of people goes through the visitor centre none will take the same journey. there will be knowledge gaps that the group will fill through discussion and conversation? where did you go? who was your inmate? did you see X? these gaps, what I call knowledge differentials, fuel conversations immediately after the experience but also, by making the navigation tangible (the playing card) they can also extend into the future.
I hope that Port Arther build on what they have. mobile and tablet functionality now allows them to take this tailored personalised approach to a whole new level. you could choose your character in advance and then download the journey with audio that you could listen to on your phone as you tour the centre. social functionality would allow you to share your journey with your social networks in real-time as you go through the exhibit - or share stories with strangers who went on the same journey.
a playing card. a simple and elegant thought that added disproportinate value to my visit; and exactly what every experience should be - personal, curated and social.
the second session of the first day of this week's Festival of Commercial Creativity, Circus, saw Marvin Chow, the Marketing Director for Google across Asia Pacific and Erik Vervroegen of Goodby Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco take us through two very different kinds of creative process...
first up, Marvin Chow, who talked about the marketing of Chrome, and about what happens when creativity meets technology...
declaration of interest - Google are a client of PHD Australia, where I spend a lot of my time
Chow started by making a few points about Google:
one, Google is an engineering company. engineering is part of the culture. Google people like to solve big problems, he cited that driver-less car came from an engineer asking how Google can stop people dying on the roads
Ideas can come from anywhere, for example the search-able maps that helped coordinate the Queensland floods response was conceived and developed by a Sydney engineer who wanted to help
the role of marketing at Google is to bring technology to people. often this is about filling the existing Google pipeline with content, for example the Life In A Day project, an idea that came from Tim Partridge in London. The Life in a day video ... which was created from a bank of 80,000 clips has now been seen by 13m people on YouTube and will have a cinema release later in the year
finally it's about bringing a culture of engineering to marketing. engineers are interested in the responses of real people to the real world. there's no substitute to what real people do in real situations. Google test 6,000 marketing ideas a year. they fail regularly, they fail fast, they fail well - test and iterate people, test an iterate...
given that context, what follows is "the story of how one product can change the world" ... the story of Chrome.
we know, I suspect, one side of the Chrome story, but the other side is just how challenging it's been for Google to gain market share and gain penetration in a market with a significant, dominant and entrenched player.
the first question was why bother? why invent another browser? when Google asked people about browsers, they found that people found browsers indistinguishable from search...
the suggestion is that people see browsing = searching... Chow made the point that "browsers are a lot like Tyres - we know they are important but we don't care or think about them every day"
the last time a browser launched [excluding Firefox presumably] was in 1995. Google's ambition was to bring speed, stability and security to browsing. but how to evolve the browser proposition? ... it's been a long time since 1995 and people do lots more than browsing with their browsers, it's no longer a passive experience; browsers are TVs now (35 hours a video a minute currently being uploaded), they are phones and communication devices (100bn emails and texts are sent daily). this was the new context for the browser and for Google - and how Chrome should drive the web experience forward.
the marketing of Chrome actually began with a comic book, which was distributed in december 2008 to innovators influencers in the web space.
Chrome's comic book, distributed in 2008, was drawn by Scott McCloud and can be viewed, courtesy of Creative Commons, in full here
post the comic book Google looked to deliver more scale, and so developed ideas around platform of 'why switch?' ... exploring Chrome's value proposition and product benefits. they experimented and tested different benefits, for example this effort around 'simple'...
made by a small team in japan, this was broadcast in the US and became Google's first broadcast ad. but here's the trick, Google didn't just test 'simple' - they tested a whole range of value propositions and product benefits. and tested them not in focus groups but in the real world. how did they measure success? which ones led to the most Chrome downloads ... real people in the real world remember...
'fast' (rather than 'simple') worked best, and so fast became worldwide creative brief, which eventually led to this...
"The idea of showing Chrome and speed in a different way excited us" noted Chow ... the next iteration of comms was Chrome Fast Ball, which invited browsers to browse the web as fast as you think in a race across the Internet...
the coolest thing - and very Googley - is that these ideas are being crowdsourced from everywhere ... ideas like this one which has since adopted another classic Google behaviour - users being able to generate their own versions of the ad.
two and a half years on from launch and 100m people around the world use chrome. Google seem to be happy, although as the below chart from Wikipedia shows, there's quite a long way to go for Chrome yet.
one of the most innovative areas of crowd-sourced comms for Chrome is Chromexperiments.com ... I'm not going to lie, I don't actually know what these are - the website says that "Chrome Experiments is a showcase for creative web experiments, the vast majority of which are built with the latest open technologies, including HTML5, Canvas, SVG, and WebGL. All of them were made and submitted by talented artists and programmers from around the world" ... I'm not sure that I'm any the wiser :o(
one example of which is Arcade Fire's The Wilderness Downtown - saw this a good while back but didn't connect at the time that this was a Google idea.
Chow's two key messages ... that ideas can come from anywhere, and that it's crucial to experiment and iterate. he stressed the importance of understanding the problem that you're trying to solve, and whilst I'm not entirely that sure his solution - hire an engineer to fix it - is feasible for everyone, the last of his comments is true for all of us ... that "you have to resist the voice inside you that says only you knows the answer" let go of the problem and let the answer come to you...
up next in session two was Erik Vervroegen, who as the recipient of seventy Cannes Lions, is a very creative person indeed. his thesis was that life in agencies is hard :o( ... but don't feel too sorry for the ad agency kids just yet, because it turns out that the result of constrained conditions often produces the best work ... the more problems you have the more creative you have to be...
problem one: no money (but free media to use and a super-tight production budget)...
...which was a problem faced by Amnesty International. the answer for whom was to make this...
of this spot for the Nissan QashQai, where Vervrogen's agency came up with creating an entire fake sport...
McDonald's had no money and no time to combat a recycling message so recycled ads to create new posters...
it's so beautifully obvious in retrospect, but it takes someone to imagine such an elegant solution in the first place. take these examples for Amora Hot Ketchup, the shoestring budget necessitated a shoestring production, which the creative embraces and uses to its advantage...
some of Vervroegen's most creative work is for AIDS prevention charity AIDES who's brief was "nobody knows us and we can't advertise but we want to be the biggest provider of Aids prevention in Europe' ... the solution: target the advertising industry with the magic word 'awards'
if you want proof as to whether or not the strategy has worked I urge you to Google image search AIDES, but here are some of the highlights...
stunning, brilliant work for a client with no money but a lot of balls.
problem two: the impossible brief
Vervroegen quoted the following actual brief from an actual real life client (I'm paraphrasing) "we would like exactly the same ad as last time only this time we want it to work" ... you couldn't make it up. another example was the bread client who said that they wanted to show an entire breakfast table and demonstrate that their bread was the softest. the solution:
Nissan QashQai asked Vervroegen to come up with an ad that showed the car in the urban environment and which showcased every angle of the car. every angle. every. angle. they actually said "think of it as a 45 sec 360 degree pack shot" ... cue this beautifully elegant solution in which a 45 sec 360 pack shot has never looked so good...
Amnesty International want to show the power of a petition. specifically in the background they wanted to show the harshness of torture and execution ... without violence. this poses a bit of a problem, as it's hard to show torture and execution without violence...
problem three: Burnt out creatives
...who feel sorry for themselves and are producing tired work. the solution, observes Vervroegen, is to continue to push the idea. and push and push as far as it will go... for example a brief to show how Mir washing powder 'keeps black strong' let to the obvious place of clothes with budging muscles, which was able to be pushed to these fellas...
another example of pushing a bad idea until it becomes a good one was for a brief for Playstation to show rebirth, the idea for which was this tired (his words not mine) approach...
which was pushed to it's limit and resulted in this...
...an effort which secured one of Vervroegen's seventy Cannes Lion in the print category. the last example, again for Playstation was around a brief to show the excitement of the Playstation gaming experience and equate it to sexual arousal. here's the obvious sketch...
and here's the pushed execution...
that was it for session two. I'll aim to get session three written up tomorrow...
brilliant World Cup interactive infographic courtesy of Littlewood (or more specifically Littlewood's mate) hosted here... I'm not going to pretend that I'm massively into the World Cup (I'll get excited when we play). I am however going to pretend that I'm massively into infographics and how they can add value to how we absorb and engage with the world...
you can track the entire competition...
or just focus on the upcoming fixtures for your country... etc etc etc...
the point, is that the site - www.marca.com - really takes it's football seriously... and the investment in this little number is a great example of walking the talk, or as I like to put it, evidence-based marketing...
because whilst the application is a great way of navigating your way through the World Cup, its also a brilliant way of marketing... marketing by the best, oldest, and arguably most effective method of communication... yup, word of mouth (or in it's modern guise) word of mouse.
those of you paying attention will also notice that it's very social-friendly too... the Like and Tweet buttons in the top right of the application currently show it having 32k and 5,414 advocacies (couldn't think of another word to go there) across Facebook and Twitter...
and that's a lot of connections and click throughs sparked, not by an ad saying 'Marca likes / does / loves football' but rather through the provision of a bit of evidence that proves it, whilst at the same time making the World Cup just that little bit better for its fans. not a bad day's work for a media brand living in the age of evidence - and not a Rooney ad in sight.
the cover of Daemon Group's calling card; THINK 02 Issue 2
you meet a lot of people in this business, most of whom leave you with a warm feeling, a couple of action points that you promise to yourself you'll do, and a business card. no so the Daemon Group, the day after a meeting with whom, I received a magazine designed, written and produced by the agency.
it's a collection of thoughts and analysis of everything from design concepts to social issues, taking in behaviour and international reportage on the way... and it's a pretty great read.
the stats on social, just one of several articles on the changing communications landscape
the idea of a more personal calling card isn't necessarily new; moo have been providing the best of ways to personalise and add character to your 'keep in touch' collateral... nor is the idea of the company magazine...
but what stand's Daemon Group's effort apart is the sheer commitment to quality... the quality of the not only thinking, writing, and production, but also the quality of contact... the magazine was delivered fresh to my desk the morning after my meeting with Richard, the group's chief executive. the commitment to following up the meeting with me was matched only by the commitment to the collateral delivered.
the two big implications for brands and the planning of marketing communications are clear. one, invest in quality collateral... don't say you're passionate about what you do, have collateral that proves it. don't gesticulate on the quality of your thinking, have collateral that demonstrates it... buying media space that tells people how good / fast / impressive / [insert USP here] you are, is for a time now long gone by...
we live in the age of evidence.
claims, counter claims, and statements no longer cut it. in the age of evidence it's what you do that counts, what you produce that get's noticed. in the age of evidence reputations are built on what you craft and deliver to make your case to the world.
the second implication for brands is to have good, considered connections planning. the too-often used phrase that means, simply, to have a plan for how you create and manage connections with people. Daemon Group's magazine means nothing to me whilst it's sat on their Chief Executive's coffee table. how much of what a brand actually does remains locked up? hidden behind policy doors and content management gates. brands that love their collateral set it free, fueling connections with people...
because that's what the best communications planning, at it's core, is... what evidence can we create that proves the truth about what our brand is and represents; and how can we ensure that the right people encounter that evidence in relevant and meaningful ways?
I'm grateful that in a complicated world, which sometimes seems to move faster than I can keep up, a magazine landed on my desk to remind me how elegantly simple it all really is. the challenge isn't to keep up with a changing communications landscape; the challenge is to remember that you can.
oh, and there's an article on Mr Potato Head too - who doesn't love that...
its a beautiful Friday evening in Sydney, but before I head out for a few drinks for Zaac's birthday, I'd like to tell you a story. its a story about a great brand, and about how the world of communications works now; but more than that its a story about me and a pair of trainers that I will never now own. and why thats OK.
it begins last Saturday, when Size sent an email to their mailing list. on that list was my friend @fraser201 who, upon seeing that contained in that email were some of the most amazing trainers he'd seen an a good long while, forwarded the email on to me. he knew I'd like it, you see two of my favourite things in all the world are trainers and Star Wars. and there on the Size email were those two things. together. in one place. Star Wars limited edition trainers. and they were glorious.
so I turned to Google and got a few results from Star Wars and various trainer sites, but notably saw a result from @adi_originals. so I promptly hit TweetDeck and fired off a Tweet to adidas, and heard back almost immediately...
@adi_originals re StarWars collection, awesome stuff!! when are the orange Xwing hightops hitting Sydney? and where can I get them?
@cwstephenson The Skywalkers will be available at our Sydney Originals store. Give them a call: http://ow.ly/URy3
following their link, I got to their Town Hall Originals Store website and placed a call. the wonderful Chrissie picked up. she explained that there were strictly limited numbers and that they'd go on sale on a first come first served basis on Friday. in the diary Friday morning went and I did the polite thing and sent a Tweet back to adidas:
@adi_originals nice one, thanks - looking forward to picking up some Skywalkers on Friday http://bit.ly/7yNUGw
and so the week passed. and when I wasn't working or going out or up to no good, I was thinking about a limited edition pair of adidas Star Wars Stormtroopers, and tweeting about them to @fraser201 and @willsh. Friday morning, this morning, couldn't come soon enough.
I however, could have come considerably sooner. too late, I was. I simply got there too late. by the time I got to the store there was already a queue and as, one by one, people entered and left the store, the limited editions, one by one, left the store with them. very soon there weren't any left for me.
I'm not angry or pissed off. I guess I'm just a little blue. somewhere in and around Sydney there are limited edition adidas Stormtroopers being worn, or admired, or stored in a safe, but none are being worn or admired or stored in a safe by me.
please don't feel too sorry for me. there's more where they came from. the first transport may have gotten away but battle will recommence in a month's time... the prize? these little puppies...
but thats not the end of the story, because towards the end of this morning the following popped into my Twitterfeed:
@cwstephenson What did you pick up? May The Force Be With You: http://ow.ly/WDgu
adidas remembered. not just that I was interested in their products but that I was planning on getting some this morning. four days after our Tweet exchange - an eternity in a world that's converging into RealTime - they remembered and sent me a message. perhaps its just me, perhaps I was feeling needy, but I find that pretty remarkable.
play my story back again... here's how it went down: a retailer sent a mailer out which was forwarded to me via someone in my network so I searched then tweeted, then tweeted some more, then went to a store and missed out but then received a tweet which contained a link to the below rather amazing ad which I clicked on and watched.
the ad came last.
after all the product development, partnership building, new news generating, social networking and direct communicating, I watched an ad. and ad designed not to make me go and by something. quite the opposite. an ad as an affirmation. a validation of the journey that I'd just been on. "thats why I love this brand" is the response it so deservedly earns.
because in all of that story, in all that maelstrom of communications and connections, at no point was any media bought. at every step along the way it was earned; earned by a brand creating something that in the end I wasn't even able to buy.
its a crazy world, and I wouldn't have it any other way. good weekends all...
so last night I spend a brilliant evening jumping around to Big Black Voodoo Daddy & Black Joe lewis and the Honeybears at the Becks Festival bar (above). its all part of the Sydney Festival, which opened on Saturday with Al Green performing to about 200,000 people in the Domain.
but here's the thing - I had to buy my and Jonathan's (hi Jonathan @jonnyp) way into Big Black Voodoo Daddy et al, because all the tickets had been and gone months ago when they were first released. it seems to me that there for a city the size of Sydney the festival just doesn't seem BIG enough... there needs to be more stuff, more to do, because the demand is currently far outstripping supply. ...and thats the thing about supply and demand - the more there is of something, the more we want of it:
Induced demand: When supply shifts from S1 to S2, the price drops from P1 to P2, and quantity consumed increases from Q1 to Q2 [source: Wikipedianess]
I love the counter-intuitiveness of this. the more you create of something the more people want it. the problem however is that at the same time the value of the commodity goes down - but only if the commodity in question is homogeneous.
this is the great opportunity for something like the Sydney Festival - you don't make it bigger by making more of the same; in order to protect value you need to produce more of the different. more venues, more spaces and places, more 'differentiated scale'. in this the festival can learn much - and a big thanks to a heads up from @Fraser201 on this - from adidas and Star Wars... yeah, I know...
in December of last year adidas announced the creation of an originals range inspired by the Star Wars universe, its been trending up ever since:
there's three very smart things about this, the second two of which relate to really brilliant understanding of induced supply. the first thing to say is that in no way shape or form will adidas ever have to spend a penny in broadcast advertising of this range: its existence will be all the marketing collateral they need. but thats not whats really interesting about what adidas are doing.
I had a quick conversation with the lovely Chrissie at the Sydney Originals store this morning, who informed me that the range isn't all being released at once, rather its being phased over three months. thats the first smart way of increasing supply without compromising price; phased supply over time.
secondly, not all lines will be equally available - some of the lines will be general release and fairly easily obtained, but others will be strictly limited, some down to two pairs of sneaks per store. thats the second smart way of increasing supply without compromising price; variable availability. the entry levels for demand are different - individuals with heavy demand will invest more time and energy than those with lower levels of demand but the value equation for both will be similar.
both the Sydney Festival and adidas' Star Wars range can teach communications a thing or two too: imagine that the theory of induced demand applies to bought media... an increase in the volume of advertising impacts has resulted firstly in a fall in the value (real or perceived) of brand communications and secondly, an increase in the demand for brand communications... advertising has gone from the Immortal to the Immediate:
from the Immortal to the Immediate; Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling (top) took four years to paint, current economics wouldn’t favour its commissioning today. Banksy’s Tesco Flag (bottom) took a little more than four minutes
it couldn't be less about doing a few things well; fewer bigger better needs to be thrown out with the noughties. rather its about doing lots of things well enough. on which I'll let you enjoy the awesomeness of the below... they're on phased release from now till March, form orderly queues please...
Nick Dickson pointed me in the direction of this lovely little video which tells the story of how Boondoggle brought music to the web for their client Axion. whilst I'll let the video speak for itself, its worth considering for a moment the elegance of the creative solution...
I've talked often and at at times at length on a theme of "we media and advertising people got this amazing thing to play with called the internet but we screwed it royally by applying 20th Century broadcast thinking to what was a two-way engagement platform, etc" ...what the above bit of creative thinking shows is a beautifully crafted way of doing what we should be doing... bringing utility to the web
as I type this I'm listening to some tunes courtesy of the joy that is Spotify, an ad by Diesel has just done a similar thing - I caught a snippet about how they've created a branded radio station on the platform to showcase new music. thats utility too. and its a brilliant thing.
all this reminded me of the Windows Apple banner wars from a while back, and whilst the efforts of Apple were an attempt to creatively use the space that is the banner / sky, its still an ad.
the gig in a banner concept goes a simple but crucial step further... by being there on users' not advertisers' terms, its adding value to my time on the internet - not distracting me from it. it deserves every one of the five Cannes Golden Lions it picked up.
so about to head for the weekend and XFactor but just picked this up on the twittersphere and thought it was a rather delightful thing to end the week on. from the 24th of September until the 11th of October, Dublin's Liberty Hall is being transformed into a giant 50 metre, low resolution, TV screen. the best bit - anyone can join in... members of the public are being invited to create animations that will be displayed on the building as part of the project.
brilliant example of digital spaces and places being amplified in the real world. echoes of the HBO project but with an added open invitation for anyone to showcase their creativity...
here's hoping that they're investing in amplifying it... desktop applications that show what's going on in real time, lots of YouTubeness, and perhaps some kind of digital book that captures and showcases the best examples.
more of this kind of thing please... and if you want to get creating then click here.
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