Beardyman has a quite extraordinary talent. I saw him at the last Google Retail Conference and he brought the quite corporate masses to their feet. Impressive stuff.
Author: Michael Litman
The social web has created a hyper-word-of-mouth platform that has tipped the balance of power away from brands. As a result, brands are now beginning to realise that engagement is the new communications. In order for a brand to achieve engagement with its stakeholders, it needs to consider the value that their content will deliver, or to frame it from the recipients perspective – what’s in it for me.If the content has high value then not only will the recipient be more likely to engage with it, but they will be more likely to engage in conversation with the brand, compelling them to pass-along the content to their friends because it has social currency.I have identified 5 core types of social currency value; Useful, Entertainment, Monetary, Information and Personal.
Before giving some explanation and examples for each area, it is worth pointing out that they are all channel agnostic, so for example ‘events’ are particularly suited for entertainment. In fact, an event like Barcardi’s B-Live can in itself provide a rich stream of social currency for the digital channel e.g. twitter announcements, flickr photostreams and YouTube channels.1) Useful value is more commonly referred to as brand utilities, so although Nike+ is held up as the ‘daddy’ of brand utilities, there are also a huge numbers of mobile apps that would qualify for this category.2) Entertainment value is more commonly referred to as branded entertainment and it’s interesting to note that typically this is the approach that an ad campaign concept would take. The ultimate proof of social currency is when your content is being remix ed and parodied, as happened with the Cadbury’s gorilla campaign.3) Monetary value is the social equivalent of the conventional sales promotion or PR activity. So it could be a simple voucher like the infamous Threshers’ discount voucher or a competition run in conjunction with an influential blogger.4) Information value, in the form of knowledge and thought leadership, can be produced in various formats e.g. video interviews, slideshare presentations and blog posts (like this one ;). More superficial forms of information, like gossip and conspiracy, can also be adopted.5) Personal value is a particularly interesting currency, as it often provides social currency that is extremely compelling. The global success of reality TV shows, such as Big Brother, and the talent shows such as Pop Idol and X-Factor demonstrate the importance of fame.As the above Venn diagram suggests, there are opportunities to blend various currencies together and if done correctly, produce in a more potent piece of currency. An example of this would be a game (entertainment) which has a leaderboard (fame).It is possible to capitalise on social currency that has already gained momentum by adopting the concept in your campaign – maybe we should call this meme-riding? T-mobile did this very successfully when they rode the flash-mobbing meme with their ‘Dance’ campaign.Key to successfully producing high-value social currency is setting out with the right mind-set at the planning stage and get the right multi-disciplined team together to work on the social currency idea.
Brilliant venn diagram and equally great write up by Steve Sponder.
Yesterday Landon Donovan tore up the right flank of the pitch at the Emirates Stadium and helped his new club Everton secure a draw against my beloved Arsenal. This morning one of the soccer blogs I follow showed this great visualization of Donovan’s impact on the game.
The graph shows Donovan’s completed passes in blue. If you roll across the dots you can see when he passed to which team mate.
The graph is built with the Guardian’s interactive chalkboard which has apparently been around for almost a year. I have to say that I am ashamed that I only found out about this fantastic little tool today. OK, I have been living in the US now for 6 years and I have started to refer to the beautiful game as soccer (mainly because I discovered the other beautiful game of American football). And coverage of soccer in the US media is spotty at best. But that should still not be an excuse for not knowing about this amazing interactive visualization tool.
It uses data collected by UK company Prozone who record all Premier League matches and use that footage to code all data on passes, shots, tackles etc for every player on the pitch. The guardian then build this very easy to use application that allows every aspiring Arsene Wenger (who was one of the early Prozone adopters) to analyze the patterns of the game.
What is probably most impressive about this little application is the ease with which one can share chalkboards with others. This makes it a potentially powerful social media tool. And with most of the coverage of soccer in the US happening on social media, it could be a great tool to educate the US audience on the tactical aspects of the game. Nothing gets America more excited about sports than stats and analysis!
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67 Incredible Typographic Portraits
I won’t link to them all to save you endlessly scrolling but it’s worth checking them all out here without a doubt. Some truly amazing typographic portraits.
A rather fantastic deck this.
Designer Karim Rashid’s latest product aims to make the task of preparing a baby bottle much easier. The Iiamo Go is a self-heating bottle that allows parents to serve body temperature milk to their baby anywhere without the use of electricity for warming. The bottle uses a new patented organic cartridge made of dehydrated salt and water. Milk is warmed by a reaction that takes place when energy is released from the salt becoming re-hydrated.
Rashid wanted to modernize the bottle and bring a new emotional and aesthetic appeal to the product. The bottle is molded from 100 percent BPA-free polypropylene.
Children love reflective shiny colorful surfaces and materials – I do too – maybe I am still a child. So it was time to make a baby bottle a wild interesting sculptural colorful animated object so the baby actually gets excited about being fed.
[via dezeen]
via psfk.com
Firstly, here’s an interview with Adam Brown, Head of Social Media @ Coca-Cola.
About that social media policy, it’s only 3 pages. It doesn’t have to be 100 pages long and cover every last point under the sun. It should be an addition to existing company policy–you don’t need to start from scratch.
As Coca-Cola introduce their Social Media Policy:
Every day, people discuss, debate and embrace The Coca‐Cola Company and their brands in thousands of online conversations. Coca-Cola recognizes the vital importance of participating in these online conversations and are committed to ensuring that they participate in online social media the right way. These Online Social Media Principles have been developed to help empower the Coca-Cola associates to participate in this new frontier of marketing and communications, represent our Company, and share the optimistic and positive spirits of our brands.
Interesting to see are the 10 “Principles for Online Spokespeople” Coca-Cola has created:
- Be Certified in the Social Media Certification Program.
- Follow our Code of Business Conduct and all other Company policies.
- Be mindful that you are representing the Company.
- Fully disclose your affiliation with the Company.
- Keep records.
- When in doubt, do not post.
- Give credit where credit is due and don’t violate others’ rights.
- Be responsible to your work.
- Remember that your local posts can have global significance.
- Know that the Internet is permanent.
All in all Adam Brown has set a nice standard within one of the most loved companies in the world
Download the full policy here: Coca-Cola Online Social Media Principles
Treehugger reports on an intriguing cell phone concept design that’s powered by sugar. Daizi Zheng’s mobile phone runs on a battery that can generate power using soda, or any other kind of sugary liquid. It’s unique idea, and a potential solution to the environmental problems that come with disposing traditional batteries.
Zheng explains:
Through my research, I found that phone battery as a power source, it is expensive, consuming valuable resources on manufacturing, presenting a disposal problem and harmful to the environment. The concept is using bio battery to replace the traditional battery to create a pollution free environment. Bio battery is an ecologically friendly energy generates electricity from carbohydrates (currently sugar) and utilizes enzymes as the catalyst. By using bio battery as the power source of the phone, it only needs a pack of sugary drink and it generates water and oxygen while the battery dies out. Bio battery has the potential to operate three to four times longer on a single charge than conventional lithium batteries and it could be fully biodegradable.
via psfk.com
via Treehugger
Taken from ‘At the Top’ on the 124th floor of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the tallest building in the world.
Photos courtesy of Alisdair Miller
via thenextweb.com
Play the piano on YouTube! It’s an interactive video by Kokokaka.com.
Wallpaper*’s excellent City Guides to London, Berlin, New York, Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Los Angeles, Milan, Rome and Tokyo are now available as iPhone apps. The Berlin one is currently a free download; the others are £2.39 each.Via Notcot.
Useful deck this.
Producers don’t own any media any more. This mashup of pop from 2009 is testament to that.
This is rather lovely. A genuine stand out piece of advertising from McDonalds. Compelling enough to make you want to stick around to the end to see what happens. A steam machine was built to fit inside a bus shelter and the free coffee message is only readable when the steam machine is activated by the end user. Very cool.
Below is reblogged from Andrew McDonald
Have you lost your camera recently? Mislaid it somewhere in a national park? Left it in a taxi? Dropped it in the gorilla pit? Anyone can be a victim of the thoughtlessness and/or sleepiness that can lead to Camera Loss.
‘How can I prevent Camera Loss?’ I hear you ask, wishing I’d get to the point. Well, you can’t prevent cameras from getting lost, but you can do something so your camera can be found very soon after it has vanished.
All you have to do is take some photos – which you never delete from your camera – so when someone finds your camera at the bottom of the gorilla pit they are able to locate you and return the lost property to its rightful owner.
To illustrate just how you can safeguard your camera from the crippling effects of Camera Loss, here are the pics that this rather amusing chap always keeps on his camera.
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Lovely NASA satellite pic of Great Britain..
Evian’s Roller Babies is the runaway commercially branded hit having been watched (at latest count) over 30 million times, making it the 5th most popular YouTube video of 2009, and the most watched commercial/ad/whatever you want to call it.
I forget where it was now but one person made a comment that went something like this..
“Beyond measuring the cute factor, can the client actually measure and attribute a boost in product sales to this effort? If so, I’d love to know how they’re measuring it.”
I liked their thinking. But at the same time I think that’s discounting a lot of the great work that has evidently been put in. So let us postulate a bit more about what made it so successful after you’ve had a look at it yourself if you haven’t already.
If we were to deconstruct the commercial, why has this become the most watched branded ad of 2009 and what is it about it that could be then replicated to anywhere near similar success levels?
Well, it’s a bit of fun isn’t it. You watch it and get that cutesy, fun, smiley and warm feeling. It has a backing track that lends to the fun, remember it did pretty well for Honda aswell in the Cog. (Reacquainted myself with the ‘making of’ here.) But then, in this case, you could just as easily have the backing track with nothing compelling in the forefront so credit where credit is due. I just don’t make enough of a link to Evian from the ad. It doesn’t make me want to go out and buy water, Evian water. Much like I’m not going to go out and buy a Honda tomorrow in fact, even though the financial investment and level of decision making associated to the two are complete polar opposites thus there being more chance of me buying Evian.. (Ok, bad comparison.)
I like the ad purely on the merit of the ad, in fact, I don’t think it sells enough what it is actually linked to. But maybe that was part of the trick. Maybe that’s why it did so well. People will share it as a piece of content because it is so subtly branded more than if Evian was plugged all over the place from start to finish. It loses its value as a piece of content if overly branded.
So the question that is left hanging over my head after thinking about and writing this is should brands now be concentrating less on what they are actually trying to sell and from an online perspective at least, be creating content that is watchable, entertaining and shareable in order to sell more of X. Again I think of the Cog ad. And which brings me back to what the commenter asked at the start of this post. Did Evian sell more water? Did Honda sell more cars? Did this achieve the goals set out from the off? What were the goals? I don’t know actually. On any of the above but it’d be good to find out more though to quench my curiosity.
The online integration is however, pretty fantastic and extends the life far further, another contributing factor to its success. Evidently, this was all very cleverly planned and executed.
It isn’t simply a video that has been put up on YouTube and forgotten about. There’s tonnes of content around the video. Some really brilliant stuff like teasers, interviews, wallpapers, where to listen to and download the music and of course, the obligatory Facebook fan page. This isn’t one of those all too familiar cases when a client thinks that by doing some kind of online video to promote something that it is going to automatically go viral. Yes, the dreaded v word. A sterling effort then.
What do you *feel* when you watch the ad? A compelling urge to buy Evian? An enjoyable feeling of escapism for a few minutes? I think i’m with the latter camp. Share the love.
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Mini Cooper Boxes in Amsterdam.
A rather wonderfully executed guerilla campaign by Mini Amsterdam featuring packing boxes in prominent locations around Amsterdam. They are promoting something that you probably wouldn’t know about or be interested in but this brings in to the forefront, a 99€ a month finance deal which is available on the Mini Cooper. Taking a fairly run of the mill offer, like a finance plan and making it part of something compelling. Lovely.
Here’s a few images and videos to illustrate.
(and here’s my fave..)
Now perhaps somewhat of a TED classic, this is definitely worthy of your time, the video that is. Rory is not only someone with a deeply ingrained wealth of knowledge and experience, but I think he’s truly emblematic of our time. Why? Well, along with all that, it would seem he maintains a curiosity for this new world we live in and an enthusiasm to try out all the new tools that have sprung up and become part of every day life. In this TED talk he mentions amongst other things, the skills and creativity involved in creating intangible value, and that’s an important one, especially with social media, creating value that you can’t touch. I like the musings that advertising isn’t getting people to buy stuff that they do not need as much as it is getting people to value what they already own. Fascinating stuff.
“We need to appreciate what we already have, rather than agonising over what we don’t.”
A point is also made that many of life’s problems could be solved by “tinkering with perception”. Isn’t that what we’re all trying to do with all these creative, groundbreaking projects on behalf of bold / brave clients? Challenge perceptions, push the boundaries, reach new heights? The Diamond Shreddies are a perfect case study, where something so simple to everyone (in hindsight) as flipping shreddies on it’s side resulted in raising sales by 18%. Truly remarkable. We’re told that the traditional shreddies is old and boring (below) whilst being shaped as a diamond instantly makes them ‘better’, ‘more flavourful’ and ‘crunchier’. Astounding. It’s the same shreddies but the perception we are being sold is of these new experiences to be had with the Diamond Shreddies. And we believe them. Hence why sales rose.
Of course, I digress. There was some criticism of the points Rory made here and then furthermore in the comments.. but I got bored of the arguing and going round in circles in the comments but hey, it’s encouraging some debate and thought around the subject isn’t it.
Close to 100 comments here also, on TED, mostly wildly cynical and dismissive but isn’t it great when Rory himself pops in, says hello and silences a few critics. Truly brilliant.