POST DIGITAL

Coke’s new comprehensive “liquid” marketing strategy

The media landscape is a very different beast today than it was even 5 years ago. Then agency-led television commercials dominated how we channel our marketing. The very fact you are reading this here proves that things have changed.  With splashes of Henry Jenkins’ spreadable media concept, experiential marketing, Sir Ken Robinson’s whiteboard execution and Coke’s sophisticated marketing aplomb, the videos take us on a discovery that is as startling as it is revelatory.

Coca Cola have always been at the forefront of innovation. In this video Jonathan Mildenhall, Vice-President, Global Advertising Strategy and Creative Excellence at The Coca-Cola Company is the person responsible for leading global creative vision and strategy for the Company's portfolio of global brands. He explains how Coke will leverage the opportunities in the Post Digital landscape and transform one-way storytelling into dynamic storytelling hoping to add value and significance to peoples lives. 

The challenge of content creation in an enlightening way, reminds us that every contact point with a customernis a point of judgement that should tell an emotional story.  The importance of a content fludity model is also referenced. What is most surprising during the nearly eighteen viewing minutes is how willfully the soft drink marketer peels back the layers of their organization to reveal what’s been working and what hasn’t.

What these videos do is demonstrate is that the world has changed and the largest marketing organization in the world has changed with it. Have you moved from one-way storytelling into dynamic storytelling or from consumer insights to provocations thus potentially adding value and significance to people’s lives.  For those of us who have been building liquid and linked content through transmedia storytelling this is simply refreshing. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Burberry Eyewear Collection Music Videos

Burberry has approached traditional advertising with a great new entertaining spin to introduce its Summer 2012 Eyewear Collection. The fashion brand has teamed up with a selection of emerging British musicians, who have all created a new track for the campaign. The bands are then shown performing the songs in a series of videos, where they also sport sunglasses from the new collection.

 

The project is curated by Burberry chief creative officer Christopher Bailey, and the videos have all been created in-house. Burberry is releasing them weekly on YouTube during April. Three tracks are out so far: shown here are videos for One Night Only, Marika Hackman, and Life In Film.

 

A fourth video, starring The Daydream Club, will be released next week. The tracks are also available for download from iTunes and the bands will headline Burberry showa that will take place on May 3 and 4 in Paris, Milan, New York and Sydney.

 

The Revolution Is Not Being Televised

Did you know that there is a revolution going on in the streets of America?  What started rally cry to 90,000 redeemers, rebels and radicals has turned into a thundering movement that is sweeping across the country. #OCCUPYWALLSTREET has morphed into a full-fledged peaceful movement. 

In June, as our elected leaders played a game of chicken with our unstable economy by manufacturing a debt crisis that would lead to the downgrade of America’s credit rating, the anti-consumerism magazine Adbusters registered the domain occupywallstreet.org. While the majority of American’s watched in disgust as elected official left for summer vacations instead of solving the problems they were elected to fix, an independent affinity group registered occupywallst.org.  This is where the movement’s official site is now hosted.  Not long after the registration of the sites, Anonymous, a hacker activist group, encouraged it's members to flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months. 

For those of you unfamiliar with Anonymous, they were involved in the protests in Tunisia and Egypt.  During the 2011 Egyptian revolution, Egyptian government web sites, along with the website of the ruling National Democratic Party, were hacked into and taken offline by Anonymous.  The sites remained offline until President Hosni Mubarak stepped down.  Anonymous also has ties to Wikileaks, further explaining the sighting of the Wikileaks truck at the protest sites. 

One of the most consistent complaints from the protesters has been the lack of un-biased reporting of the real issues by the mainstream, corporate-owned press.  No one knows if Anonymous plans to hack any U.S. news organizations, but based on past activities, it seems its a real possibility.  Given the recent ridiculing and dismissive nature of Time Warner’s / CNN’s recent coverage by Erin Burnett or even interviews like the ones conducted by the Business Insider, I would not be surprised if Anonymous was already working on a plan.

Corporate-owned media outlets claim that the movement lacks a focus, however if you’ve have watched the content they have distributed or taken part in a rally you would hear three things:

1. The middle of American has realized they can have as much influence as corporations have with the use of technology and social media:  Thus we are the 99% (http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com)
2. “DEMOCRACY NOT CORPORATOCRACY”: Protestors feel that corporations have bought and corrupted our democracy by influencing elected leaders to stand behind policies that hurt the American worker.  They stand for the American workers and are fighting for proper representation in Washington.
3. There is a better way: Protesters hope that their peaceful actions lead to a new social dynamic in America.  Protestors are demanding accountability from a Presidential Commission tasked with ending the influence money has over our representatives in Washington.

The movement’s core message, which is often lost in AdBusters anti-consumerism message, is that 1% of the population has profited wildly from the last 20 years and the other 99% have seen zero.  Special interest money has corrupted our system.  That's not sustainable.  It's not fair.  And it's not the America that 99% of Americans want.  If this is a democracy, those numbers should matter.

 The Art & Symbols Of The Movement

There is a ton of art that has begun to emerge and define the movement. You can visit http://www.occupytogether.org/downloadable-posters/ to view the latest in protest art. 

You may have also seen images of protestors wearing Masks. Those are Guy Falkes masks. This is a disguise used by members of Anonymous to protect their identities and brand their activities. Guy Fawkes was part of a plot to overthrow the king of England in the early 1600s and his character was made popular in the comic book V for Vendetta. 

A Growing National Movement
As protesters and citizen journalists share their stories in Zuccotti Park (near Wall Street), Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Chicago and other cities across the country, we have recorded a groundswell of conversations and interactions taking place online. There are daily additions to the URLs who are covering and enabling this revolution.  You can visit http://www.occupytogether.org/ to get in on the local action in your area.

We are people of Substance.
We are supportive and sympathetic to the protesters.  They are showing enormous courage in the face of seemingly all-powerful institutions.  They are being arrested, maced and harassed without the protection of a free-press.  They are mocked, laughed at and even toasted with champagne from high-price balconies and yet they remain peaceful. 

I encourage you to visit a few of the movement sites I have listed below. Judge the movement and its message for yourself.  You may find that you are part of The 99%.

• Twitter Hastag: #OccupyWallStreet
• Occupy Wall Street
• NYC General Assembly
• Occupy Together
• We Are The 99%
• Photos on Flickr
• Adbusters #OccupyWallStreet
• Take The Square
• US Day of Rage
• Occupy Wall Street on Facebook
• Occupy Wall Street on Twitter

Watch live streaming video from globalrevolution at livestream.com

 

Additional Information Sources:

• Did the Advertising Industry Spark the Occupation of Wall Street?
• 'We Are The 99 Percent': Stories Of The Great Recession's Victims
• 20,000 Protestors To Occupy Wall St.
• Nobody Can Predict The Moment Of Revolution
• october2011.org
• 15october.net
• OccupyTV 

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on: digital+marketing

Seven months ago I left Madison Ave.  For years, I preached and practiced, award-winning digital, social and direct methods with the biggest brands on earth.   In the early part of 2009, while working on a new business pitch I observed a disturbing truth. Madison Avenue could not figure out how to make money (profits) at developing ideas.

The combination of antiquated customer research methods, fear, “tried and true channels” and disparate media planning groups seemed to be just a few of the issues that were quickly walking business out the door of digital, direct and advertising firms up and down the street.

A sad fact is that the once great story-selling Mad Ave firms have all become  channel specialists.  They had depleted their planning departments of insightful talent and replaced them with data experts and social media ninjas.  Don’t get me wrong, data is very, very, very important – but the analysis and synthesis of the data by conceptual craftsmen who create relevant ideas is even more important and what seems to be lost art form. 

While they were flipping channels and chasing bright shiny new digital toys, they lost the importance of relevant customer and cultural insights.  Furthermore, we were now in competition with a once friendly face.  The media companies.  Content creators like MTV, Disney and AMC whose audience insights were vast. They also had begun producing brand campaigns for clients that delivered far more reach and relevance than that 30-second ad could produce on its own.

In 2010, one-by-one, the dominos began to fall.  The market changed, the service economy retracted and marketers began asking “What’s the ROI on this agency of record relationship?”. Instead of getting the basics of what made this industry great, some had specialized so much that they had become tactical units with a VERY narrow way forward.  If this scenario sounds familiar, let me know.

Over the last eight months, I have spent my time working directly with a number of big brand CMOs, big box retailers, industry journalists, VCs, data & social start-ups, media companies, politicians, employment analysts and handful of agencies that are winning new business.  There is a new need and an empty seat at the strategic and creative table. It could be yours.

When the old ways begin to give way to something yet to be imagined, we have a choice.  Live in the past or get down to the business of imaging the future.
-- John F. Kennedy

 Today there is an enormous opportunity to not just imagine the future but also take the lead in creating the Post-Digital economy. 

This blog will be dedicated to ideas, insights and people that are making artworks that address the humanization of digital technologies through interplay between digital, biological, cultural, and spiritual systems, between cyberspace and real space, between embodied media and mixed reality in social and physical communication, between high tech and high touch experiences, between visual, haptic, auditory, and kinesthetic media experiences, between virtual and augmented reality, between roots and globalization, between autoethnography and community narrative, and between web-enabled peer-produced wikiart and artworks created with alternative media through participation, interaction, and collaboration in which the role of the artist, the communicator and the agency is redefined.

There is a new exciting future on the horizon.  You just need to know your customers and accept that basic behavioral observations and insights coupled with new collective art forms.  Welcome to the post-digital era.

on: spotify

If you have not seen me in the social media high school halls its because I have a new drug. Me and my peeps are sharing music on Spotify.  This is a service I had drooled over when I saw two of my brit friends with it about a year ago.  If you are a music lover, it's kinda like when the beatles just arrived. Yes - Spotify has come to the US!

 

Right now it's in an invite-only beta phase. They are offering three great services - from absolutely free to paid subscriptions. Here is how it breaks down:

• Spotify Free – the unsurpassed free music service. With an invite, enjoy on-demand, buffer-free access to over 15 million songs on your computer and great social features. Manage your own music files through Spotify, and sync with your cellphone or iPod. Features occasional advertising.
• Spotify Unlimited – all the special features of our free service, but with uninterrupted, ad-free access to Spotify on your computer. All for only $4.99 a month.
• Spotify Premium - the top-of-the-range Spotify experience. Premium gives you access to all the music, all the time. Listen online or offline, on your computer, your cellphone and a whole heap of other devices. Enjoy enhanced sound quality and access to exclusive content, competitions and special offers. Premium costs just $9.99 a month. (That’s the equivalent of a couple of fancy coffees.)

Right now my favorite part of this is being able to subscribe to my friends lists.  I have almost abandoned my iTunes Library.

The part that makes this super interesting is that they are launching in partnership with some of the biggest brands.  Coca-Cola and Sprite, Chevrolet, Motorola, Reebok, Sonos and The Daily are the few I know about. These brands will be launching innovative campaigns in partnership with Spotify in the coming weeks and months. Imagine the possibilites!

If your looking for an invite I have a few left.  Send me your email via this blog!

on: html5

[via Focus]

 

ON: Common Sense

I am sure that if you hear one more person say that they are a "social media expert" you might just barf. Much of our social consumer behavior is not new - its just facilitated by technology. We have been social from dawn of (wo) man.  

David Armano has done a fantastic job in this presentation that calls for common sense. 
  

Social Media Is Dead: Long Live Common Sense.

View more presentations from David Armano.

ON: The Astrotag

What is it?  At first glance you may think it is something out of Star Wars.  I was in the back rooms of Flickr when I heard the term Astotagging. A quick search revealed that it is a new behavior that professional and amateur astrology photographers are participating in.  A “blind astrometry server” is a program which monitors the Astrometry group on Flickr, looking for new photos of the night sky. It then analyzes each photo, and from the unique star positions shown it figures out what part of the sky was photographed and what interesting planets, galaxies or nebulae are contained within. Not only does the photographer get a high-quality description of what’s in their photo, but the main Astrometry.net project gets a new image to add to its storehouse of knowledge.

Introducing astrotags from Royal Observatory Greenwich on Vimeo.

This is one of the coolest uses of Flickr's groups and open API that I’ve ever seen. WOW!

ON: Google Voice

Move over visual voice mail! Google new Voice application improves the way you use your phone. You can get transcripts of your voicemail (see the video below) and archive and search all of the SMS text messages you send and receive. You can also use the service to make low-priced international calls and easily access Goog-411 directory assistance.

Google Voice will be available to existing users of GrandCentral. GrandCentral offers many great features, including a single number to ring your home, work, and mobile phones, a central voicemail inbox that you could access on the web, and the ability to screen calls by listening in live as callers leave a voicemail. You'll find these features, and more, in the Google Voice preview.  Grand Central reminds me of the old Webly virtual assistant application.