Riffs on advertising, marketing, media and society. ************************************************************************************************************
We may not be interested in chaos but chaos is interested in us (R.Cooper)
I was wondering this morning whether the WE is powerful enough to initiate the change in the world, to work towards solving the most burning issues in to world. Later on I've stumbled upon this video: Humanitarian Lion that calls all Big Guys to create big ideas about solving humanitarian problems. The rule is simple - one entry to Cannes festival binds you to send another entry to humanitarian category. No billboard or TV spots, just an idea. Great! Let's use our brains to help the world, not only generate growth.
..are jumping into their jeans. Last year we had guys throwing and catching "with their faces" Ray ban glasses. This season - guys who jump into their jeans, I guess it is Levis. They are very agile and innovative. Cool even though concept isn't fresh anymore.
Spreading word is pretty challenging and not easy task. What would you do to spread word? Run naked on the street and shout, give free TV sets or maybe involve cockroaches? Yikes!
ZOO YORK - the skateboard producer - announced "Spread the Word" contest. Participants have to post the video on YouTube showing how to spread the word. Cockroaches get definitely attention.
We get smaller, shift to micro software, ideas, communities, like this new program based on Twitter called Twistori. People write and follow Twitter-like updates focused on 6 emotions, states: love, hate, whish, believe, think, feel. Interesting reading that boosts attention and focus shortage by continuous interruptions on multiple platforms. Niches are being filled up. We share everything anywhere anytime. Life - streams are ubiquitous.
Shelly D. Farnham researched Facebook applications and what determines their success. It is very interesting what he found out - applications that become successful help its users to achieve social goals:
"In reviewing the dominant types of applications, it is clear that most of the applications are helping users achieve social goals such as improved communication, learning about the self relative to others, finding similar others, improving self-presentation, engaging in social play, and engaging in social exchanges via gifts and media. Despite its shifting demographics, Facebook is still very much a social arena in the private, personal domain, not the professional domain."
Being media savvy is really important in the increasingly fragmented and diversified media world. There is no fix solutions and creative ideas must reflect media environment in order to work. It is trivial to say it over and over but we can't make campaigns based on closed communication models that seems to be alive in many advertising agencies. I've attended a couple of meetings where ad agency presented first their great idea and then came up with a couple of slides for media agency - their media recommendation (newspapers and TV), without even giving a thought whether their message can thrive in the given media. Media aren't only about buying advertising space and optimizing reach at low cost. Media are about understanding how and when connect with consumers and establish your brand / message in their lives. Media are about well-thought communication solutions and maximizing your reach via creating social networks or becoming part of them. You can't achieve a success with your great picture and slogan on it that you throw like a bomb on the consumers. Bombs explode and destroy. Media used wisely - connect and build. We, at Vizeum work with connections planning where the starting point is not only collecting consumers insights but understanding human's motivations behind media usage. This is what should drive ideas. Ideas, messages should fit media "personality", otherwise our messages are like bull in a china shop.
"Medium is the message" McLuhan
In my humble opinion, it is not about who takes a lead, it is not about who is more important on the client's partners list. It is about COLLABORATION. Both media and advertising agencies are on the same side. It just makes me sad that we perceive each other as competitors and collect efforts to prove who's better. We should reunite our efforts and talents to create unforgettable and effective solutions. We should get married!'
"... social applications are about consideration, not awareness. Blogs, word of mouth, social networks . . . they're about people connecting with other people. You may resist advertising if your finances are tight, but if your bud tells you that new movie is really worth seeing or that the Gap has the cutest new tops, that's more persuasive than advertising. Basically, in a recession, the consideration phase is more important than awareness -- and that's where advertising flops and social applications succeed." (Josh Bernoff)
RubberRepublic indexed a large number of YouTube videos and counted how many views they had in the first month:
- 70% of videos get at least 20 views - 50% of videos get at least 100 views - Fewer than 20% of videos get more than 500 views - Fewer than 10% of videos get more than 1,500 views - 3% of videos get more than 25,000 views - Around 1% of videos get more than 500,000 views
So think twice before you get an idea of doing "viral" on YouTube, the most popular videos are viewed from 1,000 to 100,000 times more than a typical video. I am sorry to say but 99% are just typical videos.
This one isn't typical at all. The girl is popular TV person (reality shows, music TV). The video is for the Cancer Organization.
US Society has gone along way in terms of their interest reflected in Google top searches. Year 2001 was dominated by fear after 9/11 attacks and Americans were looking for finding answers about their future. From Nostradamus through World Trace Center, anthrax to Taliban.
1. Nostradamus 2. CNN 3. World Trade Center 4. Harry Potter 5. Anthrax 6. Windows XP 7. Osama Bin Laden 8. Audiogalaxy 9. Taliban 10. Loft Story
But 6 years after, in 2007 Americans seem to have forgotten about their fears and embraced technology and super powers. Humanity powered by technology rules....iPhone has taken over people's mind along with social networks.
1. iPhone 2. webkinz 3. TMZ 4. Transformers 5. YouTube 6. Club Penguin 7. myspace 8. Heroes (NBC) 9. Facebook 10. Anna Nicole Smith
Those are two completely different pictures of society, its concerns and interests. Is this the way human evolution powered by Google is taking us. Social objects seems to be taking over, are we really entering into post-human phase?
Dove vs. Axe (Lynx) ... which beauty standards Unilever is actually fighting for. Great campaign for Dove, but then completely different approach on Axe. You can't afford nowadays to be hypocritical...in the name of money. It pisses people off.
I have been sitting at focus groups with teenagers yesterday and I was pretty surprised with their advertising awareness. It was pretty exciting to hear them talking about ads and what is catching their attention. Today, I've got from my friend at Dist the link to great videos with girls explaining while ads got a flip.
I am pretty reserved to hearing people's rational analysis of ads, but those girls had very insightful comments. The whole series of videos just showed how detached from their customers advertisers are. Behind some rational words, real gems were hidden - precious insights like those two:
Videos are done by 3iying, which is an all Girl Creative agency, based in New York City, a think tank working to make better ads, products and media for other girls. Good intiative and we should watch and listen very carefully what they have to say.
Sony Bravia sets the new standards for advertising. Advertising isn't the sales pitch any more, it is not pushing the message "color like no other". Advertising is just an end product. What is fascinating is the whole process of creating advertising and hype around it. This is another example of the advertising as content (I wrote a couple days ago about FirebrandTV). People may hate advertising, but they love entertainment. Content that is King is alive and kicking. See the latest behind the scenes video on Bravia's website It shows how those cute bunnies were made.
Btw I love the black and white pictures of New York.
Dove continues their showdown with beauty category. They've released next video. Great work again. They dare to stand up, have a clear meaning and challenge the whole category they are operating within. They take social responsibility. It is great and I could wish they reduce their traditional media spend to leverage the promise - their concern for healthy beauty perception among children and teenagers that are especially vulnerable.
One brand bummers are advantage of other brand. Apple can feel it on their own skin. I must admit, I'm pretty surprised following the development of iPhone bummers. I was sure that Apple nailed it and had the passion and respect for consumers but the latest actions they've taken prove something different:
- kind of monopoly practice - making an exclusive deal with one mobile operator AT&T.
- price drop of the iPhone by $200 - it is great news but not after you got the ambassadors of your brand to stay in line for a few days and pay full price of $600 (I can almost hear Steve Jobs saying: "You Geek Suckers!" )
- war with hackers - unlocked iPhones become useless after software update ("He, he, suckers again")
- the new update removed also all 3rd party applications and ringtones ("You play only with toys I give you")
What about being open, what about collaboration and nourishing the most powerful of relationships a brand can get - it is ambassadors? It seems like a silly mistakes and makes me wonder whether Apple has some bigger plan. But I hardly believe it.
Some brands like Nokia are just turning Apple's bad publicity into their advantage. They've already placed posters all over New York. Clever.
FirebrandTV has introduced today the multimedia platform with "commercials as content". The best ads will be chosen by a panel of Gen Y. You can not only watch the cool commercials but also within a click you get an access to promotions and you can buy the products. FirebrandTV will also have CJ (commercials jockeys - someone like VJ) "to contextualize commercials as art and guide viewers through the spots, contests and promotions.". It launches 22nd October on three platforms: TV (ION Television Network), web and mobile (through iTunes and MSN)
Investors behind the project are: Microsoft, NBC Universal and GE’s Peacock Equity Fund, ION Television, as well as Adweek, Brandweek and Mediaweek, among others, joined Firebrand at its announcement during Advertising Week at the Paley Center for Media.
This is a great idea of distributing advertising using "pull" methods and combining it with merchandise option. It will be interesting to watch as it sets the new standard for traditional TV advertising. The fact is that people don't hate commercials, people hate being forced to watch the bad and boring commercials. I am looking forward to hear people's reaction to it and see how is it working in real life. I think the sales aspect is very interesting, transferring ad liking into sales.
Power point is ominous program. I've hardly been to any presentation where it wasn't used. I'd count on one hand presentations I've given without power point. I have my set of guidelines I use when preparing presentations: people don't think in words, 80% of human communication is nonverbal, it's what I say matters, not my power point slides. And of course Seth Godin's rules: no more than six words on a slide. EVER, no dissolves, spins or other transitions, don’t hand out print-outs of your slides.
Power point is useful but used in a wrong way can be deadly. Here is just another reason why found at Power Point is bad for brains
Researchers at the University of New South Wales in Australia found the brain is limited in the amount of information it can absorb - and presenting the same information in visual and verbal form - like reading from a typical Powerpoint slide - overloads this part of memory and makes absorbing information more difficult.
Professor Sweller said: "The use of the PowerPoint presentation has been a disaster. It should be ditched.
I have found this new ad. I was disgusted by it. My first I though was: yuck, old burger! Then I discovered it is a commercial for McCafe. It cleared my head, sort of and I understood the concept. But I am afraid, you don't have such a comfort when you place your ad in magazine and an ordinary person runs across it. He / she will be disgusted and will move on. Minority will take their time to find out what actually it is. The idea is very good but execution misses the final touch to make it more appealing and look more like a coffee than old burger.
I have printed the ad and showed it to a couple of my friends (not from advertising business), everyone had the same reaction: "ugh, what's that?! an old hamburger! Gross!"
Aren't you sometimes tired of error messages from Windows system that aren't helpful anymore, but just annoying and wanting you to throw your computer outside the window? In Japan they have found the wonderful solution, they have replaced those error messages with haiku poems. I could imagine they make people smile and ease the fury. I'd love to read one of those on my screen
A crash reduces Your expensive computer To a simple stone.
Your file was so big. It might be very useful. But now it is gone.
The Web site you seek Cannot be located, but Countless more exist.
Chaos reigns within. Reflect, repent, and reboot. Order shall return.
Program aborting: Close all that you have worked on. You ask far too much.
Windows NT crashed. I am the Blue Screen of Death. No one hears your screams.
Yesterday it worked. Today it is not working. Windows is like that.
First snow, then silence. This thousand-dollar screen dies So beautifully.
With searching comes loss And the presence of absence: "My Novel" not found.
The Tao that is seen Is not the true Tao - until You bring fresh toner.
Stay the patient course. Of little worth is your ire. The network is down.
Three things are certain: Death, taxes and lost data. Guess which has occurred.
You step in the stream, But the water has moved on. This page is not here.
Out of memory. We wish to hold the whole sky, But we never will.
Having been erased, The document you are seeking Must now be retyped.
Serious error. All shortcuts have disappeared. Screen. Mind. Both are blank.
Marketing presentations' jargon can be fascinating. Many, many worlds, and almost none meaning. I've tried it myself a couple of times, but sometimes you just simply can't resist as it adds the illusory feeling of sounding professional. In fact the marketing jargon sounds like newspeak and draws attention away from the real problems.
It reminds me of newspeak from communistic times in Poland. It was about saying a lot things sounding professional, serious and lofty but the words carried no meanings. There are lots of fantastic examples from back then. It is almost impossible to translate, but I will give a try: "every day practice proofs that fixed information - propaganda protection of our operating secures access of broad group to shaping the relevant conditions for activation", and so on, over and over again.
The effect was achieved - to blur the reality and cover the lack of knowledge or understanding. In the world of communication, newspeak is tempting.
Now you don't even have to work hard to find yourself to compose newspeak power point symphonies, you can use Marketing Bullshit Generator. Enjoy and "recontextualize efficient communities"
I've learned during my study a lot about statistics in combination with philosophy. My favorite professor who taught in methodology of sociological research always told us - numbers are what you say they are. It is true. Numbers are very flexible, they seem to be objective as they are perceived as hard facts. Numbers describe the reality which we can control. Numbers remove the randomness. What I've also learned was the inevitable need for observing the individual's experiences and ideas. Researchers should study reality as a social actors (subjectively - understanding people's motivations), not as an independent observers (objectively - understanding people as numbers). The truth is that you can never connect with a number. You hear lots of people in media and advertising business claiming that people comes first to add afterwards: we can reach 75% of target group. And so what? 75% can translate in many things depending on what we want to say. But it doesn't say anything constructive, it doesn't help us to lose any communication challenge or neither takes any closer to people (target group as some call them).
I have seen a couple of examples of the numbers tyranny in the pursue of explaining reality. For me it looked more like manipulation and completely lack of understanding of what's going on. This week, there were released to surveys about the use of digital and traditional media in Denmark. First of them, conducted by Explora, focused on the 15-24 years old and the conclusion was: This is a myth that you can't reach young people via TV advertising. Explora found out that young people spend 84 minutes on watching TV and only 11 minutes online. Here comes the best - they measured only 136 Danish websites!! How on earth can you draw any conclusions on youth Internet usage based on 136 websites? Numbers show only the part of reality.
Another research covered the new media usage compared to the traditional media amongst "the early adapters" and was conducted by Danish national TV station TV2 and ACNielsen. The conclusion was: the young people with high interest in technology has still high consumption of traditional media. Research responsible at TV2 believes that the increasing usage of the new media and internet don't decrease the time spent with traditional media, there is no cannibalization. So far so good. The early adapters spend in all 9 hours and 32 minutes daily consuming media (150 min. with TV, 233 min. in front of computer, 35 minutes with other media like game consoles and mp3). I read the article once, twice and I couldn't find anything interesting except some numbers. I didn't learn anything new about media usage.
I wonder why none of the research didn't cover multitasking issue that makes it possible for many to extend media time into 9 hours. None of research come up with the slightest attempt to understand HOW people use the media. Would it be to uncomfortable for the traditional media?
It is so ignorant and one sided picture of reality presented by those two research. I don't believe TV is dead. It is not, the way we use it changed and those numbers don't tell anything about it.
It almost cliche to say it over and over again: People are first, data are second. Still, it is hard to live up to this sentence, as we are attached to the old media world order. As long as we don't change the terminology and become more curious to see what lies behind the numbers, we will stand still in one place. The world will pass by.
Lately I was keeping it low with blogging. They say silence is golden. Yes, it is, but don't exaggerate with all that golden bling bling. Silence is good from time to time as it encourages observation. The observation is good before you draw any conclusions about surrounding world.
I followed the discussion about blogging vs. Twitter going on for a couple of weeks.The interesting about the whole discussion is the urge we have for making revolutions. We can't just use both blog and twitter as complimentary tools in communication. No, we desperately want to replace them. We strive for making revolution, for introducing new things and putting our fingerprints on them.
We are talking about visions, future, and ideas thinking in linear ways. Surely, the world is changing, the new things happen all the time, but they aren't linear. We tend to believe we moved from A to B, from Blogging to Twittering and then we expect we move from B to C - who knows maybe it could be the silence stadium.
The fact is that our life is a pulse. Pulse is not linear. It is like pendulum we go from A to B and return to A. It is like in the trivial saying: the history repeats itself. We always return to the same or similar places convinced that with every movement we have discovered something new, that we've changed reality. Yes, there are changes but they have rather evolutionary character - evolution fills the gaps where there is an opening.
The new social media and the new technologies aren't anything revolutionary new. They are just the result of technological development we have been experiencing though the last decades. The core behind social media isn't anything new. The social media, communities, tools whether they are old-fashioned (photo albums, phones, letters, neighbours gatherings in the backyard, etc.) or modern (blogs, Twitter, Flickr, etc) are grown up upon the same human need - need for being with other. The modern social media forms are just more powerful. The human needs are empowered as never before. The traditional photo album wasn't accessible to so many, as the photo album on Flickr.
Exchanging the old media or tools with the new ones will not generate a change. We should move away from linear thinking and begin to feel the endless pulse of human life. We need to learn to combine and cooperate. We need to navigate within complexity.
"Throughout the universe, then, order exists within disorder and disorder within order (...) Just as in the timeless image of yin and yang, we are dealing with complementaries that only look like polarities. Neither one is primary; both are absolutely necessary." (M. J. Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science)
Blogging and Twitter are just two different tools that are suppose to help us to communicate, transmit our meanings, build networks, find like-minded peers, etc. The complement each other. None of them is better than other. They just fulfill different needs for people in different states of mind. After all SMS didn't replaced telephone conversation.
"It's not to sell something to person A. Instead, at least right now, it's to get person A to encourage person B to buy/do something. That's often viewed as a nice after effect, a bonus or an extra. I think, though, that it might be the entire point of the exercise."
Marketing is just about a simple question: is your product / service so cool, so exciting, so remarkable, and so fantastic that people will want to tell everyone they know about it? Seth's view on the key point of marketing takes us from audiences to communities, moves focus from reach to the tipping point. It makes marketing a conversation with consumers, that is based on trust and respect. The conversational marketing should be the natural reaction on the increasing ad avoidance, increasing number of consumers who find traditional advertising annoying and the technology developments that empower consumers. Especially when we know that for 68% the most credible source of information about companies is "a person like me" (only 20% in 2003), according to Edelman's 2006 Global Trust Barometer.
It is about changing focus from selling to creating cascades of conversations among influential people who will influence other influential people who will influence other influential people, and so on.
I've spend the afternoon and evening watching focus groups - hours of listening to people rationalizing everything and showing their common sense. Then I've seen this. It was great come back to the world of emotions. WoW! What a great movie. It is a sequel to Coke Happiness Factory. This is story about passion and determination behind Coke delivery. It is all about making people happy. I like the Lord of the Rings twist. Excellent peace of work. It will make you smile.
I admire Sony Bravia for their great buzz strategy around their commercials. Fabulous idea. It started with Balls, afterwards came Paint with blog with updates on progress of making the spot. Now the new idea, this time Sony Bravia is going to take over New York and make spot called PlayDoh. You can already follow the updates on Twitter and the shoot site is ready. Simple idea of getting much more from the commercial, creating the brand story so many are willing to take over and write about it and talk about it. Before ads hit TV screen majority has heard about them and ads become something enjoyable to watch because they have the stroy. It is not just another spot. Good example of intersection where social media meets traditional media.
comScore published the results of study on the expansion of social newtorking sites across the world.
The data shows huge growth of sites like Facebook or Bebo. The numbers confirm that hype aout social networking that has been present in blogpshere for some time, translates into millions of real people visiting the social sites. It is interesting to look at the numbers but they aren't enough and they don't tell us anything about social networks. The numbers don't tell what lies beneath. They don't answer crucial questions why and how. They don't get us any closer to understanding. The number of users isn't sufficient when we talk about measurment the new social media. What constitutes the popularity of those sites isn't the number of visitors. We hear so much about changing world, about new rules of marketing, or death of marketing but still we are stuck in the world of old metrics that are applicable for traditional top-down communication. It will be hard to change the way we work and communicate with consumers, when we don't change the way of thinking and begin to measure to achieve understanding. The new words and fancy terminology will not change the way we act and think. It'd rather happen the other way, together with the meaningful shift in thinking, solutions finding, the new words will arrive.
Now it is Facebook, I was invited to join. Of course I did it, as I was curious about recent hype around it. I have send some invitations to make some friends there (sorry guys for bothering you), so I didn't feel too lonly and could look around what other's use Facebook for. When I was browsing I got a strange feeling of being overwhelmed. I thought about all those available applications, the amount of informations, groups, contacts, blogs ... Isn't it too much? And this morning I read a comment by Sobleizer to a post Jason Calacanis being fed up with Facebook:
"I’ve been on Facebook, what, about six weeks? I have more than 4,000
friends [...]"
Come on - 4.000 friends?! How on earth can you call 4.000 people for your friends.
Robin Dunbar proposed in 1990s 150 to be the maximum number of people with whom any of us can maintain a social relationship; maintain meaning: hold in mind, have feelings for, keep track of. Others claim it is only 70. This is simply the physical limit our brains have. There is the huge gap between 150 and 4.000, and our brains couldn't change within such a short time. Evolution takes centuries, as it happens vertically - from generation to generation. Besides our brains were developed 250.000 years ago! There were no computers at that time. What happened then that we have so many "friends" (I'd rather call them contacts) and claim to be able to hande it? There is defenitely huge social value of having lots of "friends", it is the sign of our popularity, and that's what we hunger for - being appreciated. Social media, all LinkedIn, Facebooks, twitters, and so on, enabled us to become really popular in the style of old mass media stars. I think the heavy social media users don't storage all their cotacts in their heads, they use simply social media as virtual storage space. Everytime they need to fullfil any need, they look up in their social life hard drive and choose the person that it is the best for it. The friends/contacts are being activated physically when needed. It is smart, but still overwhelming for me. I guess I will take Facebook with small steps.
I was just thinking about the humans' susceptibility to emulation of social behavior. The easiest experiment is at the zebra crossing. Red light is on (make sure first there is not traffic and any possible danger near you), you begin to go over to the other side, people will always follow you. It is very simple experiment, but it shows that we act instinctively. We follow the herd. Our brain makes us to move and follow others without any rational thought about how dangerous it could be.
We follow the group convinced that it must be good and accepted behavior when others people act the same way. Besides it saves us time to make decisions ourselves, it is kind of shortcut. The same phenomena we can observe on the tram in the video below. Just watch the young guy, how his surprise turns into engagement. No matter how strange it is what others do, it must be OK if they do it - social proof.
This is promotional video of Polish agency Artegence that works with building communities - excellent and clever spot that shows in a simple way what they are good at. They have also superb website - available in English as well.
For the last couple of weeks you couldn't hear too much about Second Life in media. Apparently, SL hasn't live up to its hype. I was skeptical from the beginning about companies investing money and opening their virtual offices in SL to earn money. And today I read in Danish newspaper (Politiken) that companies begin to leave SL.
I guess there are too major problems with SL
1) The lack of users - the numbers Second Life gives as the number of SL users are the number of profiles. The truth is most people never come back again.
2) Companies have no idea how to act and interact in virtual reality of SL. For most companies SL is just another advertising window.
I guess there is also the third problem with users itself. Virtual reality is very new concept for us and we have no idea how to behave and how we can use the new space we have available. Plus there are still technological obstacles.
I do still believe Second Life is good and important but we need to explore the virtual reality more in order to understand its nature and become wiser on how to use it. The mix of traditional opt-down models, traditional advertising techniques and Second Life isn't the best in the world and can't bring any spectacular results (Danish Red Cross raised only 10.000 DKK from February 2007 ... I bet they still haven't earned home investments they made to create their HQ in SL)
Stop measuring and calculating, just try to understand in the first place. Understanding delivers better ROI.
Second Life has become the media celebrity lately, everyone is talking about SL, so many companies throw $$$ to opening their virtual stores / offices there. SL become crowded, unfortunately not with people (3,6 million accounts opened but only 250.000 people revisited SL within 30 days since the last login and there are maximum 20.000 people at the same time) but with companies.
Nic Mitham has recently made a brand map of Second Life that gives the overview over the major companies existing in SL. I find it interesting the way companies are places on the outskirts of the SL and form the circle. Is it an attempt to try to separate itself from competitors?
(Click on the picture for bigger view)
While companies are rushing into virtual territory, the recent survey from Komjuniti revealed that 72% Second Life users (“avatars”) are disappointed with the activities of the companies in SL. Moreover "over a third of them were unaware of the branded presence and 42% said they thought it constituted nothing more than a short-term trend, lacking durable commitment from the companies. Just 7% consider that it has a positive influence on brand image and their future buying behavior."
The major problem for SL users is the insufficient customer care and opportunities for interaction with companies - the two most important factors and the basic reason for existence in place like SL.
It seems like companies feel the urge to be present in the SL but have no reason for being there, have no clue or plan how to act in SL. One should believe that the reason for company entering SL is to build a community around brands and interact with the consumers. Apparently it is not the way consumers feel.
I spent a lot of time in SL and I've always been skeptical abut the SL frenzy in business world. There is nothing wrong with SL itself, even though it seems to me as the ghost ship, the world with fantastic building but not too many people. SL is a wonderful world, the virtual scene that opens door to the new experiences and ways of communication. However many companies misunderstand that and see it mostly as the new area for the exposure of their ads and products. I guess we, both consumers and business need to understand first how the virtual worlds are relevant to us, what do they mean and give us, how we can use them before we fling into using them without having any goals or plans how to use it. I do believe in SL as the huge innovation and research space at the moment. This is the exciting place for gathering insights, observing and understanding humans interactions and testing products or ideas.
There is no need to get hasty and make the wrong decisions. It can affect companies negatively, as they don't live up to consumers expectations and needs. They way companies act in SL reminds me about the bad traditional marketing where ads are developed and broadcasted on TV without even spending a minute on understanding consumers, without even thinking about any kind of research.
It is better to take it slow and put resources into decent research. SL is great and important so better use it wisely.
You can read more about companies in SL here and here
Duncan Watts has found out through the computer modeling that Tipping Point may not be as easy as Malcolm Gladwell sees it, as "even if the influentials are several times as influential as normal person, they have little impact beyond their own immediate neighborhood" what makes creating the cascades of information difficult. But it'd mean they never influence other influencers that can influence their network and extend the reach of message. On the other side, I think it is difficult to define influencers and evaluate to what extent the viral effect is the result of their 'hidden persuasion' and to what extent is the result of others' conduciveness to contagion.
Just take the extremely popular YouTube video. It's close to have 10 millions views on YouTube. It is silly, it is hilarious. The question is - does it need the influencer to spread and create viral effect or is it just network that is open and receptive to this type of message? What makes prairie dog so popular?
Can we at all predict human behavior, and design viral actions? Or are humans just to complicated and the factors playing role in social behavior and actions endless and impossible to define? I think human networks are dynamic and nonlinear systems, they are sensitive to conditions that trigger given behavior. It makes them random and difficult to predict, as we aren't able to analyze all factors that play role. Human behavior is impossible to measure.
If you'd take the video to pretest it, what do you think respondents would say. They would shrug their shoulders and say it is stupid, maybe funny but nothing special (I tested it). But bang, in reality we got 10 million people who watched it and asked others to watch it by sending links, posting the video on blog...
Sometime ago, I have read an article in the IHT an article about 3G telephony. There were billions dollars spent on "third - generation" licenses, in the pursuit of the "technology oriented" consumer, who was suppose to use without limits many features 3G telephony has to offer: email, Internet, video calls, music, videos, just name it. 3G were suppose to become our mobile window to the world. But the truth is that most people use their cell phones just as they did in 2000 - to make calls and send text messages. They use their phones to communicate with their peers.
So much money has been invested in promotion of the 3G services but it didn't get the people to run to stores and book plane tickets and have a video chat with mother over phone. Why? I guess it can be a good example of lack of consumers insights and understanding the relation between humans and technology. Apparently the world isn't ready to put the everyday matters and connections into a small phone. The companies missed the important part of "user experience" .
‘When we talk about the “user experience” the main emphasis is often on an individual’s experience with a particular technology. Even with a purported social technology, for example a social networking site, we still tend to create for the individual’s interaction with the site (how does someone find their friend, how do they access this site easily from a mobile device).
However, designing for sociability means thinking about how people experience each other through the technological medium, not just thinking about how they experience the technology. The emphasis is on the human-to-human relationship, not the human-to-technology relationship. This is a crucial difference in design focus. It means designing for an experience between people.
Of course designing for an experience between people doesn’t mean ignoring the interaction with the device, but it calls for taking something else into account. That “something else” is often another person or people. How do we, as developers of communication technologies, make the communications more interesting, more exciting and more stimulating for the receiver? How do we help our users meet the needs of the other people in their social network? How do we create a shared experience that is equally compelling for all participating parties? When we begin to think like this, we truly start to think of designing social software, social applications, social media.’
We are not only belong to a herd, one of our biggest needs is to belong to a herd. The belonging need can be used in many different ways, for example in 'crowdgaming'. It may sound ridiculous but you can get a crowd of people sitting in cinema to act as joysticks.
Idea was created by SS+K in collaboration with Brand Experience Lab for msnbc.com. The idea is groundbreaking - there are motion sensors placed in movie theater that tracks people movements and control the game. It is fascinating to see the herd in action when all people join the fun and become 'crowdgamers'.
Talking about gaming, I've also find this video - from Japan TV. It is also some kind of crowdgaming, there are no technological gadgets, just people and some bricks. It is called 'human tetris'. It is pretty entertaining. There is something surreal in the Japanese TV shows.
The need of belonging is stronger that the fear of being / acting ridiculous.
YouTube is great. It is fantastic source of insights about the people and their lives. YouTube is kind of focus group on steroids. Instant insights into people lives. What always amazes me is the people's creativity and the endless need of exploration and creation. YouTube brings plenty of fascinating stories. This is the new source of information for me, it lets me to follow with what's hot, what's not trends. It is other dimension of visual sociology - YouTubelogy.
Today when I was catching up, I've found this video. It is great piece of job. Sound of skateboard, movement and good beat = great video. Something that has a potential to become a hit amongst skateboards and other free riders.
Pernille asked about the future of media planning and the presence of the right people in the business. This is a very broad subject and it makes us to face the questions about the roles media planners wants to play in the world of communication. Media agencies aspire to be the communication agencies but it demands the different mindset. It demands people who are curious and open-minded. People who are willing to explore the unknown and challenge the clients. People who are story-tellers and aren't afraid of the new ideas. But most of all it is all about enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is the most important asset people should have (not only in work but also in life) as it brings out other positive features, curiosity, creativity and the will to challenge and change things. We can learn media planners how to plan media, we can learn them all about communication, etc. but this is just knowledge that isn't worth too much without engagement and the willingness to explore the world and to challenge the traditional media agency way of thinking.
Confidence is about you - enthusiasm is about your subject
Confidence is about you (again) - enthusiasm is about others
Confidence is impressive - enthusiasm is infectious
Confidence is certain - enthusiasm is creative
Confidence is serious - enthusiasm is fun
Too much focus on confidence makes people being serious and professional, but to awake your audience attention and to 'take them with you', you need to be enthusiastic. Being enthusiastic about subject shows you believe in the things you are saying, it shows you are engaged. It makes you trustworthy!
In my eyes most of media planners sets confidence in the first place by hiding themselves behind big numbers, serious research, hundreds of power point slides with charts and bullet points, but it is not enough to become the architects of communication. In order to achieve that you need to be like this little fellow is enthusiastic about such a small and silly thing - ice cream.
I remember reading McLuhan for the first time at university, many years ago. It was incredible journey to see how ahead of his times he was. Fascinating thoughts and there is still a lot we can learn from him. The global village is reality and we need to understand how to live in it.
Lately I have run across the movie on YouTube with the clips of interviews with him. And I liked the best the last minute when he says that many of us fear to stand in the frontline. We prefer to stick to the good, old times, just because it's safer. These words are so actual. We fear the new things, we fear the challenges the new media order brings. Even though we want to be different and creative, and earn lots of money by getting people to buy our products and services, we still prefer to believe there is the link between GRPs and advertising awareness. But such an attitude doesn't bring us any closer to the success.
We don't have to be ahead of our times, it is enough to live in the present.
UPDATE!
One brand bummers are advantage of other brand. Apple can feel it on their own skin. I must admit, I'm pretty surprised following the development of iPhone bummers. I was sure that Apple nailed it and had the passion and respect for consumers but the latest actions they've taken prove something different:
