I’m looking forward to seeing where this goes, mostly because it’s not just another UGC competition. They have really thought about what happens before and after the thing that a lot of marketing peeps probably focus on and that’s the competition bit.
Why do I like it? It takes an interesting position. It’s aimed at an audience capable of creating content that the rest of its actual audience will find interesting. It then becomes Diesel’s next catalogue. And not just any catalogue, it’s a music video catalogue.
We spend too much time thinking about the ad, the event, the email or the Facebook group and not enough about what happens before and after we create it. I don’t believe that thinking of communications as a bunch of single moments leads to interesting communications. When you scratch beneath the surface Diesel’s Be stupid campaign is more than just a UGC competition.
I don’t blog that much about work stuff but in this instance I’m going make an exception. This week I started at Ogilvy as the new Digital Strategy Director.
It took a lot of soul searching to leave one of the best digital specialists in Amnesia Razorfish, but my heart says convergence is where it is getting interesting. Here’s to a blurry 2010
I love this allegedly authentic Military manual from 1943. It essentially describes how to plan and implement a rumour during a conflict. Now I’m obviously not saying we should start lying to people but it talks a lot of sense relating how our ideas spread.
Stuff like this is enlightening in that a lot of things people believe to be new and revolutionary in communications isn’t in fact new, it’s just been forgotten or drowned out by years and years of manipulation and unhelpful chatter.
We have probably reached the point where we think: ‘Hang on a minute, social business design integration or a blogger outreach strategic programme makes no sense, let’s start again and put our common sense hat on’.
Here are some of my highlights from a document supposedly written 67 years ago
I’ve mentioned it before but the concept of marketing to networks rather than targeting audiences hasn’t really become common place just yet. The world is obviously rife with various campaigns in Facebook and on Twitter but by understanding how they work it will change the way you approach everything from research, product development and also communications.
Mark Earls looks like he is getting close to a new research method around understanding the more insightful ‘We’ rather than the misleading ‘Me,’ but a couple of really simple things have come to my attention that highlight my point.
The first is Groupon, a website that offers a different product everyday at a low price. The catch is you only get it if enough people commit to buying it on that day. The second is from Dell who has already reported making $6m from Twitter alone. It’s called Dell Swarm and is essentially bulk buying. The more people you get in your group to buy the same product the lower it is.
If you think about it this could change a host of marketing tactics, even the lowly bribe or give away. Instead of starting with a big round the world trip in a Winnebago, you just have enough for push bike that you have to pick up from Skeggy (no offence to the people of Skeggness). The more people that enter, the closer you get to the big prize. It completely changes the way a group works together and how the giveaway spreads. Traditionally there’s no incentive for me to invite other people to sign up for a giveaway as it actually reduces my odds of winning. In the ‘We’ giveaway the odds might get worse but the reward goes up if I get other people to take part.
Think about Obama, he was all about the ‘We’ and not the ‘Me’.
After a well earned break I’m looking forward to 2010 as the year that we stop trying to rationalise marketing and put things in neat little and might I add ownable boxes.
You only have to look at the products being exhibited at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas to see how blurry the lines between TV, Cinema, Web and Mobile are going to be this year. Here’s just a few examples:
I’m really, really hoping that 2010 will see some innovation in research methods and technology, so it’s nice to see this ‘Everyday Lives’ ethnography app just launch for the iPhone already. I haven’t given it a spin yet but I’m not sure the features quite warrant the features just yet. I’ll keep you posted. You can download it here.
Nothing better than some intelligent reflection to finish the year. Spur by Redscout (hosted on PSFK) has recently produced a series of vids from smart people talking about the role of planners today and in the furture. Really good stuff.
The reason I love working in digital is because it’s about people. That sounds contradictory to some I know, but it’s the truth. Technology has made us more social, smarter and more efficient than ever before. It’s given people the opportunity to do stuff rather than just consume stuff. And most importantly ignore brands that are being irrelevant and uninteresting. That’s been the reality over the last year, poor brands have been found out and the best ones flourished.
Which leads me to network theory (and the point of this post, sorry for the rambling prelude) is probably the most interesting thing I’ve been trying to get my head around in the last 12 months. I certainly don’t pretend to be an expert but it adds some rigor and science to a subject filled with a lot of hot air.
I also hate to break it to some people but social network theory has been around long before Mark Zuckerburg was a glint in his Dad’s eye and it’s also not about things that only happen online. Without getting too scientific I’ll just provide the main links for further reading in 2010, if you haven’t done so already in 09.
The maximum flow problem. This is something you can’t fix, but it’s good to know what we are doing wrong.
If you are on an International Flight with Qantas and can’t be bothered to read you all this you could watch this.
After reading, or watching all of this, you will probably find out a few things in time for next year.
- How ideas spread are just as important as where they are seen.
- Facebook and Twitter are the tools that networks of people use, not networks themselves.
- Social networks exist on and offline- All networks are different
- Media is connected and not complimentary to one another.
- Your research and the way you segment are probably flawed
- You are spending too much in paid media
As the saying goes, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. But unfortunately this year has probably delivered the reality check that some of the hardened traditionalists needed. The key things that need shaking up as I see it are the big game changers – the way we operate, the way we think and the way we measure. If we get that right, next year will be a walk in the park.
It’s not about starting to use Twitter or creating an iPhone app. It’s the areas we all know that need changing, they just get put in the too hard basket. Undoubtedly there will be some blood, sweat and tears, but it’s increasingly becoming necessary. So the problems as I see it are…
Models
Clients and their agencies need to reorganise and recalibrate themselves around people and how they actually behave and interact with brands in the 21st Century . First of all we need to scrap silos that don’t talk to each or pump one message out into several channels. We need a bunch of multiple coherent ideas that can be achieved by creating more converged doing roles. Let’s get excited and make things.
In my opinion many roles in agencies and within marketing departments operate in isolation and aren’t about doing, they are more about managing and controlling. We need a lot more Chief Culture Officers, Conversation Economists, creative technologists and Experience Designers
Madness
This one is aimed more at agencies, although brands need to take some of the blame as they believe a lot of rhetoric that comes from them. But essentially no single agency has the right to own an idea or relationship. As we increasingly encroach on each other’s territory due to the convergence of media, it’s going to be the survival of the fittest, not he who shouts loudest. As Amelia Torode recently said, or was that Tweeted: “The best idea is the one with the biggest impact.”
The next point is our problem with binary thinking. We see things too black and white and it’s always a case of yes or no. What about the grey area in the middle where real life actually happens. No single media channel is better than another, they’re different and much more powerful when complementing each other.
Measurement
I’ve mentioned this before, but essentially you are what you measure. In an increasingly social and hyper connected world why are we still using broadcast metrics to evaluate our performance? Let’s face it, in the major markets of the world digital is not only here to stay, it is used by the majority rather than the minority. We need to measure accordingly rather than hiding under rock hoping it will go away.
Due to the penetration levels reaching a high level we can begin to understand how people are actually behaving rather than things being projected. Take this recent stat from ComScore – ‘8% of users make 85% of the clicks when it comes to display advertising’. Now I have no reason to believe that the same isn’t true for TV. Think about it, only 8% of your projected reach is probably watching an ad break and that is being generous. The answer isn’t to spend millions increasing the frequency (this is a poor argument from agencies and publishers to protect revenue) and use that as a brand effect metric, but engaging the other 92% with stuff other than ads, then adapting the metrics accordingly.
The next post in this series of rambles is going to be on marketing to networks, I think.
