Creatives Ford is calling our names! Join the Fiesta / Movement! Ford is looking for an elite crop of drivers to take the wheel: people
with a strong presence on the web, an ability to craft a compelling
story through video, and a hunger for adventure. You can use your own YouTube account to get in the game!
Ford is asking you to create a 2-5 minute video explaining why you
deserve the opportunity to become a driver and participate in the
Fiesta Movement. All you have to do is upload your video to your YouTube account, add the tag
fiestamovement and submit the link through the Fiesta Movement site.
I love that drivers will receive monthly secret assignments from Ford Mission Control that will
take you to places you’ve never been, to meet people you’ve never met,
and to experiences you’ll never forget. The consumer generated media is created when the drivers bring their friends
and followers along for the ride. How cool is it when a brand facilitates an adventure?
If you are chosen to take the journey each car comes with free gas, free insurance, and full concierge service for the duration of the vehicle’s six month stay.
The site is well designed. Fresh simplicity combined with the cool "Barack blue" highlights that call attention to the new Web 2.0 functions are at the forefront of the new Presidential brand. More importantly, I noted that it was 508
compliant as required by law. Organic has reported that jQuery 1.2.6 was used for all the key wiring. What I love is that our government now offers multitudinous RSS feeds.
This looks to be the beginning of a more transparent government. I look forward to following the Presidential blog. Sadly there is no way to comment on the posts. Lets not forget that there will be Presidential Tweets. For those of you who noticed...Yes, right after Obama won on Nov.4th he quit tweeting at http://twitter.com/barackobama. According to my democratic sources you can now follow our digital President at the following accounts:
If you have wondered why I have been infrequently posting ON:Anything, its because I have been busy working with my team and Wunderman client, Nationwide Insurance, to create the 2009 Nationwide / NASCAR campaign.
It has been a journey that has been well documented. Full of
team photos, insights and a few fun stories that I look to share after
the launch of the campaign.
Creative leadership is more than having the right idea.This week I realized its about empowering the people around you to take action and play in concert with you. It is being a conductor of a great orchestra. Like the first time I saw Sir Ken Robinson speak this was an enlightening moment.
A conductor's power is to make other people powerful, and to awaken them to the possibilities of their potential. It's showing, not telling. It plays back to one of my favorite Shakespearean quotes "Action is eloquence"
Vanity Fair is one of my favorite
Pubs. There is not a month that goes by that I do not study the art and read it cover to cover. When I saw that VF was going to begin porting over their content to online video, it was not at all a as surprise asnewsstand sales of magazines fell 6.3% in the first half of 2008.
One hopes that they convert more of their interviews and content to video. (no, not so we can see what Maureen Dowd looks like w/o the her war paint) It would be nice to see Annie Leibovitz style video make s splash and raise the level of art seen in web content.
Finally a some good news for The Great Depression '09: Mad Men is coming back! It just would not be right if they left on that intense scene between Peggy and Pete? WOW!
Weiner, a former writer for The Sopranos,
originally signed on for peanuts when AMC picked up his drama about the
Madison Avenue advertising business in the 1960s. That original deal
only ran for two years and after the second season wrapped last October
he let it be known that he wanted more money before he'd re-sign.
This is fantastic news. I suppose that Mad Men would have gone on (it was picked up for a third season
by AMC), but it wouldn't be the same without Weiner. Now everyone can
breathe a sigh of relief, get back to work, and make sure those
episodes debut this summer as planned.
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?
Twitter posts were burning the moment that an eyewitness reported the dramatic details of the downed US Airways jetliner in the Hudson. Instant transparent News. At about 2 minutes in to this video the plane comes into view.
The Coast Guard and National Transportation Safety Board posted this eye-opening video to its YouTube channel showing the emergency landing of a US Airways flight in the Hudson on Thursday. Word-of-mouth has never been so powerful. Our technology has put the power live mass distribution in your hands.
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.
