Who says your brand needs a big ol' web site? Evidently Skittles has realized that media everywhere applies to their brand.
The collapsible application allows you to scurry around the social networking pages and groups that skittles has set up.
This seems like a great way to organize your "earned" media. While this may be the future of the web for brands who are not transactional destinations - the execution has left out an important social component. Sharing. too bad that the app does not let you post it, embed it, or share a link to it.
Hurray for skittles! I think that this is a good way to redefine your brand by the conversations that people are having about you.
The film industry has finally caught on that there is more to promoting their content properties than launching a branded widget or throwing up a MySpace community. If you want to create a real fan, involve them in storyline and blur the line between the story and their reality.
This is exactly what Hollywood has begun doing. Lets start with the site for the film 2012. A faux group called the Institute for Human Continuity is focused on
ensuring the existence of human life after Earth is decimated by a
series of events foretold by the Mayans. The Institute has several possible
disaster scenarios outlined and links to survival guidebooks --
including one detailing how to survive a tsunami.
Visitors to the
Institute can sign up for the IHC Lottery, which offers people across
the globe an equal chance at living through the year 2012. I love this approach because it is what Hollywood does best. Ahhh!!!! (sign of relief) The message and the medium sharing an idea and space in a viewer's life.
Shhhh... I hear something. (my RSS feed-reader acting as a glass pressed against a thin wall) It's a Armano's conversation about A Moment of Truth for Digital Agencies. The candid post spurred an observation about our entire industry. Agencies still live in the "service" economy. Visit an agency site, lots and lots of TALK about "conversations agencies". Seems like an oxymoron when you read their case studies and capabilities and they show desperate :30-second spots, websites, widgets, landing pages and emails. They may have changed logos, redesigned their web sites, started blogs
and re-thought their approaches but they are still servicing clients
who don't understand what it takes to deliver a real conversation. Why is this?
I think there are a five factors driving this.
Old definitions of Brands remain. Our clients who sell products or services have forgotten that a Brand is what consumers think and how they feel about their products. The brand is my perception of the human characteristics consumers have given your product after becoming aware of your relevance. Great brands play on our emotions and facilitate our existing passions. Brand managers are really product managers. We the consumer are the "Brand" managers.
Control issues. Most companies as well as brand and product managers are over protective of their images and don't want you to own their brands. They want you to buy their products, but they are unwilling to let go and listen to something besides their business school text books.
Social relevancy. Do you have something interesting to say? If you want to want to have a conversation you need to know a little something about what's important to me.You should want to be provocative. If you want to sell me something you need to tap in to my desire to have a relevant conversation with me. Most products miss this one entirely.
Fear of standing for one thing and not everything. Most companies fear outside opinions. The point of marketing is to provoke a response. So what if my product says something that people do not agree with? It's important to have an opinion and to take a stand. You may actually learn something. If you stand for fitness, what about your product facilitates that fitness? What "brand" of fitness do you stand for? If you stand for everything you will be a nothing. No one, no product and no brand can be everything to everyone.
Bad listening skills. Some marketers and creatives have not stopped to listen. The research is out there. The passions are in constant evolution and people are talking in public so that we can measure their interests. In the conversation economy the quiet listener and inquisitive spectator is the most an important asset.
The vast majority of product companies out there suffer from one or all of the above. They too are still doing business in the "service" economy. What they are missing is that consumers have been bombarded with constant one-way yelling for far too long. That one-way yelling has reached the point of mass cynicism. Breaking through requires insightful connectivity no matter the medium.
There are a few products that have begun to create amazing conversations worth following. Pepsi, Dove, Flip Video, Nike and Showtime offer a great learning opportunity for marketing organizations.
Real conversations require courage. You have to grow a pair. Decide what your going to say to consumers and be proud and consistent. You have to take a stand and be prepared to lead. Be prepared to be criticized, learn from that criticism while staying true to the core of the idea and never accept failure. Look at the evolution of Showtime. The minute they decided to create original content that stood for something different - viewers followed and created tribal villages.
Conversations require social relevancy. Be contemporary and of the moment. People create movements products can facilitate them. In America today we are the cusp of a new day. A rebuild. What will your product or service bring to that party? Look at Pepsi. (need i say more?)
or Flip Video. Flip has managed to be socially relevant through the constant innovation and putting their product at places that have social relevance. I look forward to seeing them yield emotional insights from their partnerships with YouTube and Facebook. Those insights should lead them to a more emotional tapestry of conversations.
Conversations require deep insights and simple observations. The need for psychological and sociological insight still remains. Listening to what people are saying is just as important as watching what people are doing. This is the key to making sure you are talking to the right people. Take a look at Nike. They decided they were going to be a fitness company instead of a shoe company. They have used technology, fitness tribes, and the power of peoples individual fitness needs to continue to innovate year after year.
This one is evergreen as well as the conversation that started the ubiquitous drive for marketers to try and replicate this "lightening in a bottle" viral hit. What I love about this example is that it not only uses insight, it continues to be socially relevant as well as courageous. Dove continues to strive to do the right thing for woman despite the critics.
Now that we have a few examples of conversations that have created brand movements we should strive to look at what we need to do to be change agents for our clients and agencies.
Which companies and or agencies have managed to create a real conversation? Which companies have done it all wrong? And during the downturn who will use conversations to connect people with their products?
This is a great video created by ad agency Scholz & Friends. The animation details the dramatic shift in the marketing reality over the last 100 years. What I love about this video is that asks an important question that we should be asking of the brands we work with. “Don’t you have something interesting to say?"
After years of “crafting messages” to appeal a mass
consumer market many brands have lost their ability to do or say
anything interesting. Te products and services that will survive the conversation economy will be companies that stand for
things more meaningful than just promoting the consumption of their
products.
Kid Rock teamed up with Dale Earnhardt Jr. for the a new National Guard promotion "Warrior".
Kid Rock wrote the new song, 'Warrior', that is the featured song in the campaign.
They used epic director James Mangold to shoot the videos. (Mangold has done Walk The Line and 3:10 To Yuma) Make sure to go to the site and download the song!
Two years ago when I was working with MTV on a project for Hershey's at Spring Break in Cancun, I articulated why people would watch the realty based web-cast Ice Breakers Watch, Whoa & Vote. I said "We will all some day have our 15MB of Fame and the brands who facilitate it will win."
One year later, in a meeting an MTV exec quoted me back to me in presentation on Widgets. Then my client, the Dibs brand used it has the headline of their site when we launched the Dibs Film Fest. (my humble opinion was they should have used another headline as I thought that it was not consumer speak - it was marketing speak... or was it??? seems to have lured consumers to participate in the Dibs Film Fest)
As time has passed the idea - which was a take on Andy Worhal's line - seems to have caught on. I would love to know what brands you think are doing a good job of facilitating fame. And if you have your own brand leave me a comment so I can celebrate your celebrity as well!
Definition: A tribe, viewed historically or developmentally, consists of a social group existing before the development of, or outside of, states. (Source: Wikipedia) Marketing To Tribes - We are all trying it.
At the center of most tribes is a passion for a shared experience. This is no different from Social Networking. Marketers will continue to try to market within Social Media and some will fail, some will learn and some will find the right tribe. When a Brand finds the right Tribe they will win the popularity contest we call "Tribal-Share".
As I spoke about last month, I have been working on a campaign for Nationwide Insurance. This campaign purpose is a pure acquisition play. The assignment was straightforward. Make the product a hero! Make those phones ring and create blazing click trail of online trial of quotes.
We started with an insight that, in these trying economic times, people are switching insurance to save money on their car insurance. Then we combined it with our clients unique way of selling insurance which equates to a customized policy designed to meet your needs.
In the end my team of N@TCH playas came together to launch a great DR (direct response) campaign!
Its has been a while since my kids have watched Sesame Street... But they did. I am still convinced that Rebecca and Rachel learned the alphabet from the cast of characters designed to teach via entertainment. So when I returned from vacation to find a press release about the new Sesame Street site in my ON:InBox, my interest was peaked to see how the geniuses at the Children's Television Workshop approached digital engagement for kids.
Not much has changed. Their TV success has now transitioned and converged for the generation who lived converged lives. Preschoolers online is their target and they do amazing job creating an engaging educational content for kids. The new SesameStreet.org, is a meaningful
interactive experience that takes their best practices and content and expands them in ways that most have not thought about before.
The site was designed for both parents and their preschoolers (the primary audience) without the typical use of toggling between content. They are both addressed, instructed and entertained in the same interface. The use parent tips are smart.
The 2 years of ideas, research and $14 million dollars later, SesameStreet.org lives up to its brand of education for pre-schoolers like no other site I have seen.
Photos from the road, the day, the meetings and a few ironic random finds. Catch up with me on my adventures! This is a visual time line of my life ON: The Road.
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