Dove's 'The Ad Makeover' campaign allows women to replace ads promoing low self esteem with something a little more positive
John Hammond: You're right, you're absolutely right. Hiring Nedry was a mistake, that's obvious. We're over-dependent on automation, I can see that now. Now, the next time everything's correctable. Creation is an act of sheer will. Next time it'll be flawless.
Ellie Sattler: It's still the flea circus. It's all an illusion.
John Hammond: When we have control again –
Ellie Sattler: You never had control! That's the illusion!
From Jurassic park (1993)
a rather interesting debate is being had over a rather innovative campaign from Dove in Australia. playing out across the fine pages of B&T is a discussion about the relative merits of a campaign that allows women to replace ads that encourage low self-esteem (shut up, we've all seen them) with one of eight encouraging messages, which you can share across and beyond your personal networks.
the bit that's causing the debate is that you can select facebook keywords that you feel describe other women who you think should see the ad that you have selected. You and Dove making-over Facebook one demoralising ad at a time, but in doing so you replace - presumably - ads that would have otherwise been there.
so, obvs, this is really smart thinking. on message for the campaign and for the brand - with innovative and relevant use of the Facebook advertising platform that empowers people to engage with a brand thru media on their terms. fans all round then? no so much ...
Nick Keenan, department head of implementation planning and investment at MediaCom has commented that "It's very innovative but I think it serves Facebook and not the advertiser ... at the end of the day I'm not sure what kind of surety it gives to other advertisers that are doing things with Facebook."
this most awesome use of the word 'surety' kicks off a real battle between Keenan and chief executive of media agency Fusion Strategy, Steve Allen
Allen: "that's "phooey ... this is the new today ... the new era for advertising and the internet is the first line of that."
Keenan counters that "that's completely naïve ... how do you plan a schedule for that?"
back to Allen: "it's like serving up Porsche ads to people in wheelchairs, it does more damage than good"
even Mamamia.com.au's Freedman chips in: "The idea of empowering women to create their own advertising landscape is a disruptive one and that always translates to the kind of cut-through required when talking to women in a very crowded market."
as entertaining as all of this is (and it is), it reminds me of one of the key reasons that I started and continue to write this blog. we live and work between two worlds; our media past and our media future. the debate being played out is between stalwarts of those two worlds, as the language used suggests.
Keenan is arguing that people's actions will disrupt bought media impacts. like leaving the room in an ad break to make a cup of tea, or turning attention down to the tablet when the ads come on?
Allen argues that people know what brands they know and only want communications from those brands ("you are better off allowing consumers to select what they want, rather than to try and force them into things. Your impact is going to be much more valuable if they are people that want to know about your kind of product or brand. They are going to be receptive to it") ... which one could argue, and I would, leads to a rather myopic experience of brands and media.
for my twopenneth, its a debate about control, and the illusion that we ever had it.
media schedules are amazing things. I really mean that. to an experienced practitioner a brilliant schedule can sing. it can tell stories and decribe audiences and ideas and phases and roles of media. it can articulate behaviours and pinpoint the most intricate nuances of what a planner is seeking to achieve.
but a schedule can never control what people consume. that, to paraphrase Ellie Sattler, is the illusion. a schedule may be the sheet music but it needs people to play it. this is the illusion that we have, or indeed ever had, control.
that illusion is the great trap of applying 20th Century media planning in a 21st Century media landscape. Facebook isn't like TV, and within a few years TV won't be like TV either. the rules may not have changed as radically as Allen suggests, but they have changed.
we're all of us fighting a war for attention, kudos to Dove for developing such a smart weapon for getting it.
all quotes from 'Ad industry in flap over new Dove app article' on B&T
disclamer: I don't work for Unilever or Dove but I did pitch for their business last year and enjoyed the process very much
so I've been roused from a bit of a blogging famine (not self-imposed) by the surfacing of a rather remarkably brilliant bit of storytelling on two fronts by The Guardian. on one hand, the above is (nice one BBH) a wonderfully articulated ad showing what journalism looks like in the second decade of the 21st Century. the second element of storytelling however relates to The Guardian product itself - and this is where it gets a lot more interesting...
because whilst other newspaper titles have faced a digital-fuelled funding crisis by (delete as appropriate) building pay-walls around existing content / attacking aggregators such as Google / devaluing their brand with ongoing price promotions / bundling subscriptions / creating much-hyped tablet-only titles / add as appropriate - The Guardian has quietly gotten on with doing three things rather well.
one, they've developed genuinely channel and delivery-neutral platforms for their product. two, they've defended investment in content. three, they've introduced and demanded fair pricing for their product.
there are people better qualified than me (The Guardian themselves for one) to comment in more detail about the specifics and implications of these endeavours to their title and the wider journalism category. what interests Mediation is how these three principles apply to brands per se. because those exact things that The Guardian has done so well should be top of the agenda for every brand and client right now.
one - channel and delivery-neutral platforms
for all our talk of bought earned and owned and platform neutrality, we still have some way to go to break the last remnants of the broadcast disruption advert model. 'make an ad and get it seen' is still for too many situations the default option.
our focus should be on a brand's business challenge or opportunity, not on default bought media solutions. channel-neutral is now easily a decade-old idea, and it feels almost retro to talk about it with even a degree of reverence ... but new pressures can fuel flights to perceived safety - flights that more than ever need guarding (appropriately enough) against.
two - investment in content
from podcasts (oh my beloved MediaGuardian podcast) to video to applications and beyond, The Guardian's story is not just one of investing in content, but of investing in content despite a reduction in revenues as digital impacts cannibalised (traditionally more profitable) print impacts. there was no retreat, no back-pedaling, no compromise in the investment nor distribution of content.
here too brands can learn. new models are more content hungry than old ones. in short they require much more than 30"'s worth of content! longer-form video, multi-platform, often generated in real time and in response to a brand's activities are essential if a brand is to capitalise on and exploit the opportunities that new models present. will it cost more? perhaps. will it return more? perhaps? will you get left behind if you don't. absolutely.
three - fair pricing for that content
I'm not suggesting that brands start charging for people to engage with their communications (although Apple seem to do quite well in monetising the best ads they ever made in the form of a retail space that isn't a retail space). rather brands need to acknowledge that for many people the old contract has evaporated...
the contract stated that in return for free content, a brand can interrupt that content as long as they entertain or inform us whilst they do it. for many this simply no longer plays, or indeed pays. The Guardian increasingly, I suspect, relies on a model not dissimilar to an iTunes set-up - simple easy small payments that allow people to access the content they want, when they want it, where they want it. many people are prepared to (micro) pay to do so.
brands face a similar challenge. what are the new contracts you can form with the people with whom you want to connect and engage. what are you offering in return for their attention? value, usefulness, entertainment, information, inspiration? to say that continuing to offer an interuption that communicates what your business believes people should know, hardly seems worth dignifying with a debate.
there's two last things that brands can learn from The Guardian's predominance in their field. firstly, let people in - whether its helping to devour MPs expenses data or teasing people to piece together a story that a super-injunction prevents them from reporting, The Guardian isn't just better by having people be part of the debate, they are - just like brands - increasingly dependent on it.
and secondly, this reporter of fairy tales stands for something. as a brand, as an organisation, as a business, they understand why they exist in the world. they can articulate why the world needs them. and rather than telling people that, they show them...
there is no more powerful navigator for this new world than to have built into your DNA a compass telling you every day in every way which direction to take.
its tempting to say stop the world and ask to get off. to that, I say not by the hair on my chinny chin chin would I want it any other way ... keep up the good work Guardian.
Audi and Klout (an online influence indexer) have created a page that gifts its special socialites with a free wallpaper
last week saw another step towards community and existing-customer-based comms planning becoming the predominant way through which brands can connect with audiences. PSFK carried the story that Facebook is to launch VIP areas for brands. the article notes that:
"Brands on Facebook are going to be able to reward loyal customers with VIP areas and rewards. The new and exclusive pages help brands find the people who influence others in their shopping habits and what they like. Once inside these filtered pages, users will gain access to prizes and be able to interact more directly with companies." PSFK post June 23
it's the next in a logical progression towards brands and marketers having significantly more one-on-one communications with their existing Very Involved People (or VIPs). I posted in May about how a combination of owned then earned media was increasingly becoming the primary means through which some brands connect and engage audiences. far from limiting the extent of a brands potential connections, it can create a far more meaningful and engaging dialogue with VIPs and then the wider circles that they in turn influence.
and all this is increasingly measurable. Klout (the partner working with Audi to deliver the above example) is just one example of platforms that are increasingly able to measure who influences and is influenced by whom. that brands will become fully-incorporated members of this dynamic is inevitable.
the watch-out ... another increase in the power-base of Zuckerberg's already powerful platform. whilst it makes sense for brands that can't deliver this through their owned media to lease some media real estate from facebook, the ideal is surely to have a red carpet of your own. that way you build the community, own the platform on which the community is based, and aren't at the mercy of changes in the tenancy agreement if facebook decides to change it.
the questions for brands are clear: who are your VIPs, and where are you laying out a carpet for them?
Got a big idea that you want to bring to life? Create a plan, share it and make it happen with help from the PlanBig community
so the lovely and awesome Zaac posted a link to my wall of the above effort from Bendigo and Adelaide Bank. it's called PlanBig and, in it's own words, its...
"... a way for people to get together to make things happen and make a difference. We [Bendigo and Adelaide Bank] believed that there was some real value in giving people the chance to come together in one place to talk about ideas, share inspiration, offer advice or help make things happen for themselves or someone else. PlanBig brings together the experiences, knowledge and expertise of people with different skills from all walks of life and all ages to help each other get ideas kick started."
it's a delightful and instinctively attractive platform, which elegantly ticks a range of boxes including - amongst others - socialisation, co-creation, crowdsourcing and gamification. it also has a elegant and seamless execution that connects with the Book and other social platforms... the badges-as-reward effort has been borrowed from FourSquare, as has the Book's Like concept (in fact the functionality is a bit like a social network functionality greatest hits, which isn't a bad thing - better to use functionality with which we're familiar ... makes it more, well, functional).
as the site observes, "Bendigo and Adelaide Bank feel so strongly about helping people realise their dreams, they’ve been doing it in local communities for over 150 years" ... so this platform is just a natural extension of a brand proposition that's been in market for over a century.
it's also another example of the owned and earned media combo (note the absence of bought media) to create (1) utility (2) meaningful connections with a community of people and (3) content ripe for the amplification - if even a few of these ideas get big it will be marketing gold-dust. all of which makes a great deal more sense to me than buying a shedload of ads telling people what competitive lending rates you have.
this genuinely feels like a brand / product extension with sociable and marketable assets built in from the ground up. it's a communication for people, by people, and its infinitely better for it. good on 'em.
yesterday saw the birth of Lustable - a site designed to be the ultimate companion for online shoppers. partnering with five of Australia’s most highly regarded fashion and design bloggers, the site aims to be a living breathing online shopping resource profiling the web’s best kept fashion secrets and is designed to be the ultimate companion for online shoppers.
describing the site, Adrian Christie of PayPal Australia commented that “Lustable celebrates the world of online fashion, covering everything from up-and-coming young designers, to fashion sites that offer great value – like free shipping and seasonal sales”.
I should say at this point that I'm breaking my first and most important rule of blogging in writing this post. I am for the first time writing a post about a client of an agency at which I currently work. I'm breaking the rule because Lustable makes a very valuable and necessary point about the future of brands, and specifically the diversification of the identity of brands...
there are examples aplenty of the diversificaton of brands, the goal being to grow and engage with new audiences - some of these are very tight (think UK telco O2's creation of the The O2; an engagement space with an identical name to that of it's parent brand) ... but increasingly, brand extensions are differentiating from their parent companies. so diverse that they become wholly new offspring of their parent brands, with their own identities and behaviours and affiliations.
all of which begs the question... why does Lustable exist? why has PayPal - which is an established and trusted brand in its own right - invested the time and effort to create a whole new and differentiated brand? what would be so wrong with paypalfashion.com.au? it seems rather counter-intuitive to create and invest in a brand that's not your own. a worst case scenario exists in which that investment delivers no payback to the parent's brand ie the strategy is actively mitigating ROMI.
the reason Lustable exists, as I see it (I wasn't involved in planning it's inception) is for the simple reason that it needs to exist. the opportunity to aggregate and stimulate a community of online shoppers is, for obvious reasons, high up on the agenda for a brand like PayPal; but PayPal isn't necessarily in a position to aggregate and stimulate an audience around fashion.
it would, for a host of reasons, be a leap too far. much better to reach out to existing experts in the field of online fashion shopping. much better to amplify their voices. much better to invest in conversations that they will have with existing and new followers of their sites and online spaces.
Lustable can aggregate an online fashion community in a way that PayPal couldn't. it can have credible and transparent conversations, and stimulate that community, in a way that PayPal couldn't. in this regard Lustable is a brand intermediary - a site designed to reach out to and engage with an audience more efficiently and effectively that PayPal ever could.
is it a risk? yes. but the greater risk is choosing to either not engage with an audience or engaging with an audience in a sub-optimal and ultimately inefficient way.
what Lustable is evidence of is a direction of travel for brands into polyfaceted creatures. as platforms for engagement (a word I choose very deliberately over reach) proliferate, the ability of brands to spread themselves ever thinner becomes more difficult and tenuous. think about the number of successful branded TV channels? OK ... think about any successful branded TV channel? the reason it's hard is that brands don't necessarily stretch that far - multiple facets are required and called for.
all of which of course requires new and emerging specialisms. Lustable was created and deployed by social media agency We Are Social* - who's expertise in this space was necessary to ensure that the project was developed and implemented as effectively as possible. as brands become polyfaceted so too do the specialists and skills that marketing folk need to surround themselves with...
all of which begs another question - who is the brand guardian? fortunately that's easy ... people are, of course. people who use PayPal, and now people who engage with Lustable. Lustable creates new associations and connections between people, and a brand that was brave and sensible enough to give birth to a wholly different creature. a brand brave and sensible enough to understand that PayPal and Lustable are greater than the sum of their respective parts.
disclaimer: PayPal is a client at PHD Australia, where I work. I was not involved in any of the discussions or planning that led to the execution of Lustable. * PHD Australia shares offices and the more than occasional glass of wine with We Are Social, who have developed the Lustable strategy and concept for PayPal.
it has been many moons since Mediation bemoaned Michael Bay's tirade against Paramount's marketing for the dire Transformers 2. you can relive the magic of those crazy days here, but the point of the post was that advertising can't turn a bad product into a good one...
we all have instant access to what the world knows. we can research, reveal and review products and services in a second. no one takes a punt on anything anymore - why would you when everything has been reviewed and rated by the crowd... we don't rely on the promise of a glitzed up poster any more.
I made the point that some of the best marketing stories emerge when communications are a natural extension of product. and that no one knows this better than movies... Transmedia storytelling via the The Matrix, Cloverfield's Mystery Box marketing, The Dark Knight's Vote Harvey Dent ARG to name a few.
the last few weeks have continued the theme of the best of marketing initiatives emerging from Hollywood. the above is for Universal's Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, an adaptation of the comic book series. the whole marketing effort is pretty much text book. there's an incredibly immersive iTrailer (you can put an i in front of anything these days) above, leading to an awesome website which - via its socialrama - is social to the extreme and which actively encourages remixing of the marketing material to propagate content and word of mouth.
the Scott Pilgrim movie website, or is it a comic book? or a mash-up of both?
the socialness of Scott... a plethora of ways to share and engage across you nearest available social network
other recent marketing efforts have continued the innovative theme... this glorious 'Call To Arms' trailer for The Expendables directly takes on the competition that is Julia Roberts' Eat, Pray, Love ...
the trailer observes that the likes of Twilight, Sex and the City and now Eat, Pray, Love, are taking over the cinema, and that this is men's last collective chance to take cinema back. it makes the delightfully honest observation that the place to see The Expendables isn't "off your torrents but in a f***ing theatre (where violence belongs) ...if this loses to Eat, Pray, Love you don't deserve to be a man" - in the spirit of the movie, no punches pulled then.
Hollywood seem to be learning fast. illegal file sharing and the rise of better-than-cinema home entertainment (where you can enjoy movies sans other people talking and on a sofa) continue to threaten box-office revenues. Hollywood need to innovate to keep people in cinemas.
but there's a further interesting angle on all of the above examples of Hollywood entertainment... in that they all start to slash the required marketing budget. they all take advantage of the studios' owned and - predominantly via activation in social networks - earned media.
it's not unusual for a $150m movie to have a marketing budget of $100m+ ... anything that the studios take off their marketing budget goes straight back to the bottom line. movies also have the double advantage of being content rich and very topical, there's a new and shininess which adds to their social appeal.
movie marketing is increasingly getting that marketing isn't about ensuring that as many of the target audience as possible are aware of a movie, rather its about creating value for enough of the right people and encouraging them to propagate your message. the implicit promise... that the product you buy will live up to the marketing, is made explicit by marketing that adds value to a movie's audience before they've ever entered the cinema.
slash your marketing budget via content and sociability that adds value to potential customers. sounds so easy that anyone could do it right? so why aren't you?
on April 20 an explosion on the BP operated Deepwater Horizon oil rig killed eleven crew members, sparking not only a significant environmental incident, but - increasingly - a new case study on how interested parties can bring pressure to bear on governments and organisations.
like The Guardian vs. Trafigura last year, the ongoing BP Deepwater Horizon situation is fueling emergent possibilities and rules of engagement on how different groups and organisations engage and influence each other, of which the above is a great example...
it's a GoogleMap of Sydney and the surrounding area, with the current extent of the Deepwater Oil spill super-imposed on top. it makes real the extent of the spill, which - if it was here in Sydney - would stretch from Newcastle in the north to Wollongong in the south, and from far out to sea in the east to far beyond the blue mountains to the west. it's all courtesy of ifitwasmyhome.com the original page of which shows the extent of the spill in it's actual location.
it's interesting for three reasons. one, it's built and powered by (pretty much) RealTime data. we can see the situation as it is now, rather than retrospectively or projected. the site explains how the data is collected...
"The data used to create the spill image comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA releases a daily report detailing where the spill is going to be within the next 24 hours. They do this by collecting data from a number of sources, including satellite imagery and reports by trained observers who have made helicopter flights back and forth across the potentially affected areas. This data is entered into several leading computer models by NOAA oceanographers along with information about currents and winds in the gulf." source
the second point of interest is how the site is intrinsically social. of course all of the web is social now, but everything about the site is designed to make it adoptable and sharable, with functionality that encourages just that.
finally, it's such an elegant idea. too often we fail to grasp the reality of a situation because it's too remote, too incomprehensible, is too short on credibility, or because its difficult to relate to. this simple and elegant idea takes all of that square on, making the spill as relatable as it can be, in as credible a way as can be imagined. whilst all the time fueling personalised ugc to propel the issue into conversations from which it may have otherwise been absent.
the casebook on how governments, BP, the media and the public interacted and influenced each other throughout the Deepwater incident is yet to be written, but I suspect that when it is, ifitwasmyhome.com will have had a part to play.
thanks to Lauren for the heads up that NBC is today launching 'fan it', a initiative that the company describes as a "win-win opportunity that broaden's [our] shows' visibility" ... "What better way to spread the word about our shows than with the help of our loyal fans" asks Adam Stotsky, president of NBC entertainment marketing. quite right.
essentially viewers interact with shows and they're rewarded with fan points, and points mean prizes; be they exclusive early access to shows, merchandise, or discounts. you can even win 'big-ticket sweepstakes items', like props from the Office.
there's much to be lauded about NBC's effort. its rewarding fans of shows for being fans of shows, which generates that most potent and valuable of comms properties: word of mouth. but rather than having a WOM strategy that at best involves an occasional email and at worst involves crossing fingers and hoping for the best, NBC are investing in WOM that they can consistently stimulate, interact with, and measure.
but I wonder if it goes far enough, and fear that its doesn't... there's a danger that this is seen as the newest and shiniest way to promote programmes... a bit like this...
old school TV marketing trap, with Social as added-on component
but Social is a different and much more potent beast than conventional advertising... for one, its intrinsically part of the shows that stimulate it. there's no filtering or polishing, no Photoshopping up the best bits; what people generate based on what stimulates then is what gets created and deployed.
for another, there's less control over how much gets created and what the sentiment of it is... conversations and word of mouth can go both ways. NBC would never create an ad saying "this show isn't as good as we thought it was going to be, but stick with it cos its got a great team and some legs yet", but that could easily be the nature of a conversation around one of it's shows in the social space.
and finally - unlike advertising - when social media talks back you can hear it. the many whoops and sighs, cheers and jibes that echo around online conversations (and beyond) as a result of TV shows that we know and sometimes love are there for the social network and broadcast network to hear. what the broadcast network chooses to do with that social networked conversation, with that collateral, is up to them...
I'd suggest that for all these reasons, Social is better seen as a 'shell' which surrounds TV product. a shell which is intrinsically part of the TV product; reflecting, amplifying, and sometimes influencing the content that stimulates it.
new school TV marketing opportunity, with Social as shell which is amplified out
this is the real role of Social Media for TV. NBC have taken a glorious step with 'fan-it', but social is not a block on a schedule to be added on, rather its the prism thru which shows are advertised. and moreover, its the collateral that's there to be deployed online and - increasingly - on-air...
'fan-it' can be a broadcast network-out initiative or it can be social network-in conversation. the choice - and the challenge - may be NBC's, but 'fan-it' remains a brilliant next step - for both networks - towards a new TV media ecology.
and we're off... Tim Burrowes chairs MySpace's Next Chapter in Social Media
there was only one word of the day last week, when MySpace Australia hosted their Next Chapter in Social Media event in deepest darkest Alexandria. that word was Discovery. MySpace is about discovery, and being discovered. and about discovering stuff. "MySpace will be the best tool for Discovery" was the assertion of the social network's International Co-President Mike Jones, who in his keynote speech highlighted projects from the network that are "allowing people to get Discovered".
Jones made the point that 'social' is no longer a USP... every web property has or will soon have social elements as an integral part of their offering. being a network that is social isn't enough. hence 'Discovery', and MySpace's intended positioning as the internet's 'Discovery Engine'. they're nothing if not bold.
Jones discussed a range of MySpace innovations, from allowing realtime commenting on the site to integration with Twitter; and he talked about the site's new AdStream unit, which allows advertisers to "push ads into the stream", the "consumer-activated pop-up" for which delivers "incredible impact".
we have a problem here. well actually we have two.
firstly, the innovations aren't. innovative. my Twitter has been linked to my Facebook for as long as I can remember (which in realtime isn't I admit that long but long enough given the pace of change in social media network evolution). nor is commenting on content in real time revolutionary, to pretend that it is may do more damage than good. ditto MySpace Music's developing an algorithm to recommend music based on what you're listening to. we've been there and we've done that, nothing new is being brought to the table.
the second problem is of more concern because it gives visibility to the mentality behind the direction in which MySpace is going. Jones' comments - that "ads" can be "pushed" and deliver "impact" - is a broadcast mentality, a mentality that has no place as a core proposition within an online social network. while the rest of the comms community discuss engagement, content, utility and ways in which brands can make our lives more intuitive, MySpace find themselves talking about ads that deliver more impact.
there's a disconnect between the MySpace product and the role of brands here... the primary role of brands is not IMHO to fund MySpace. that comes as an important and necessary result of brands engaging with and providing utility for MySpace users. for MySpace themselves not to be leading this intellectual charge should, in the month that saw AOL give up on Bebo, be of concern.
there's a genuine sense that MySpace are playing catch-up. even the acknowledgment by Jones that "sometimes what you Discover on MySpace may not be on MySpace, and we're OK with that" sounds more like the waving of a white flag rather than a confident forging of partnerships to grow, activate and engage the MySpace user-base.
the danger is that 'Discovery' becomes nothing more than an interesting but unownable concept for which product simply doesn't follow through. Jones may assert that "Discovery is the one thing we really have to nail", but the one question that everyone at MySpace should be asking themselves... 'how do we bring utility to how people discover stuff on the internet?' doesn't seem to be being asked, at least in last week's public forum.
I Tweeted at the event #myspaceevent wondering what myspace would have done differently if they could replay the last five years over again?
Tim picked it up and put the question to Jones, who was honest and candid. MySpace couldn't keep pace with its own growth. resources were diverted to infrastructure and sales, rather than product; "for five years they [MySpace] were so busy keeping the site up that they had no visibility on what users were doing". Jones has his work cut out.
wise words from Dan Pankraz of DDB
next up at the event was Dan Pankraz, a Youth Planning Specialist at DDB who gave an overview on Generation C. the content was or should be very familiar to those of us who have been negotiating the future of media and communications for a while, but some solid observations were made:
for the 'connected collective', happiness = being part of the tribe
successful ideas aren't necessarily the biggest but the fastest moving
we need to create stuff for the swarm to pick up and run with
conversations never end
mobiles = social oxygen
82% of young people rely on peer approval for decision making
brand relevance is determined in the moment
online identities are different from our real ones; the online version being the 'wanname'
gen-C are pluralistic with sub-cultures, and avoid perceptions of one-dimensionality
one observation that caused some chatter on the day was a stat from FastCompany claiming that in 9 hours of media consumption, gen-C take in 13 hours of content. personally I thought that sounded conservative - multitasking alone potentially doubles the amount of media a content-hungry gen-C can devour, with their attention span decreasing accordingly of course.
Pankraz shared a plethora of examples of who's out there doing interesting stuff in this space... broadly aligned along three pillars; Collaboration, Purposeful Platforms and Play...
on Collaboration: "agencies talk too much about the tools and not enough about how brands can be more social and what content they have to share" ... "the best brands allow people to morph ideas" ... "do stuff with and for gen-C not at them" ... gen-C are not a destination and can't be targeted, rather they are a partner in production.
Kypski's One Frame of Fame Project encourages all of us to be in their music video, which us updated every hour based on contributions from, well, anyone...
on Purposeful Platforms: Pankraz cited Coke's Expedition 206, for which three ambassadors take a journey to all 206 countries where Coca-Cola is sold, interestingly thats 14 more countries than are represented by the United nations...
on Play: "...a key marketing paradigm to engage audiences", Pankraz described Cabbie-oke, DDB's project for Telstra which see's Cabbie-oke cabs offering free cab rides every weekend; so all you have to do is belt out a tune for your free ride...
he described RedBull as "probably the most playful brand in the world" citing their 'secret halfpipe' project for Shaun White. they do what great brands - in Pankraz's view - should all do: experiment with and create popular culture...
in short, its not what you say, but what you do that counts. Dan blogs here.
SMO joke - Nicole Still gives the advertiser's perspective
the final speaker of the afternoon was the enigmatic J&J's Pacific Digital Director Nicole Still, who gave a candid walk through ten principles she works to at the company:
never, ever, censor... "deleting comments is not an option"
be ready for SMO (Social Media Outbreak); that thing that happens when someone replies or responds to what you've put out there. she encourages J&J marketers to just try [something new], admitting that "for companies like J&J, Social Media is like the dentist; it means well but it causes great anguish"
every brand has a right to be there [in the social space]
develop a parallel brand to deploy into the social media space - for example Neutrogena is building a OLS (one less stress) brand to deploy into the social space
prioritise and define the role of each social media channel
use a combination of paid, earned and free media (Still cited a recent campaign that split investment 75% paid, 20% earned and 5% owned, and suggested that for an investment of c.$1.3m she'd expect to generate c.$3m of total 'media')
harness alpha-influencers on third-party sites
practice on Facebook (who don't charge to have sites) - remember that "people don't take on individuals, they take on corporations" (ie always respond individually)
measure what matters: the number friends you have doesn't. 50% of the people who visit the J&J site 'fan' it. she has five key metrics: sales, reach & freq, awareness, cost effectiveness and engagement
sometimes, its about presence not participation. sometimes, just being there is enough
in the discussion after-wards, Still made some surprising comments about the client / agency relationship. "from J&J's standpoint, its the responsibility of the [digital] agency [to monitor the social space]" ... "at a global [big brand] level, it shouldn't be brought in house" ... and finally, "we take responsibility for training the agency". this last point in particular was interesting, Still admitted taking what is a reasonable and responsible position in ensuring her agencies are delivering what she and her company needs. ultimately "you have to give people ownership in the space to be incredible successes or colossal failures". refreshing indeed.
in the final panel discussion I asked about the elephant. the big grey one. there. in the room. there. behind you... "Australian marketing invests relatively less than equivalent digitally-enabled countries in online. PWC have stated that "traditional media 'owns' the market in Australia for a long time yet to come". so why is Australia lagging behind and what would the panel like to do to help it catch up?"
for Pankraz it was about better learning: Australian clients have had a bad education from agencyland - we need to better educate the market about digital.
Still challenged the question, citing The Best Job in the World as an example of great thinking coming out of Australia, a country which many companies want to be a testbed for innovation and marketing thinking.
only Rebekah Horne tackled my elephant, commenting that because there are no agreed metrics or online currency in Australia, traditional media is seen as less risky; less risky for agencies to recommend, and less risky for marketers to buy...
it was quite the appropriate comment from the Managing Director and Senior Vice President International of MySpace. Horne must know better than anyone the mountain MySpace now have to climb, but its perhaps no different from that which all of us negotiating the future of media and communications have to climb. MySpace may not have the answers to what the Next Chapter of Social Media looks like, but from here it looks like they're the ones who are creating a forum for the asking; and finding the answers is required learning for MySpace and the industry alike.
so I was plugging into RealTime, as you do, earlier on today and a few tweets popped up from people saying that they'd been chosen. I like being chosen for things; its one of those gloriously self-affirming things that makes you feel good and accepted and safe and therefore at peace and happy. its a human thing.
anyway... I clicked the bit.ly and found myself looking at the above mystery box. and a rather glorious mystery box it is too.
I've written about Mystery Boxes before, I love them and there aren't enough of them in what we do... they're what JJ Abrams describes as "infinite possibility, hope and potential" ... he says that he finds himself "drawn to infinite possibility and that sense of potential, and I realise that mystery is the catalyst for the imagination ... what are stories but mystery boxes?"
and this must be a good mystery box, because when the site asks me to connect with Facebook I do so without hesitation. actually I do that a lot more now, I'm finding that I'm starting to click Connect at the drop of a hat... Zuckerberg and his 'end of privacy' could be nearer to winning the battle for the internet 'aggregator of aggregators' than I realise...
anyway... clicking on Connect starts a video which ends up with me looking at myself. and my friends. on lots of screens. in a video that until a few seconds ago didn't exist.
now this isn't new... applications have been doing this for a couple of years now. but there are a few noteworthy things about it... one, its beautifully done; the most elegant and clean of experiences. two it can be spread like lightening both before and after the experience; with Twitter bringing up front then Facebook the rear of the journey. finally its gloriously tangible... the fact that (if I lived in the States) I'd be expecting an envelope to arrive on my door adds a very RealWorld element to what would otherwise have been a cool online experience.
its a shame it has to stop there really... I can't help but think that
it would be a brilliant way to start an ARG ...only when the envelope
arrives does the game begin. and the game could play out on Facebook
because you're already plugged in. oh its all good...
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