Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

To err is human. But we really hate being wrong, right?

Kathryn Schulz spent five years of her life studying how we react to being wrong. Or better yet, how often we assume we’re right when we have misunderstood the signs around us.

It’s brilliant work, and in the latter part of her talk, she outlines some of the dangerous assumptions we make when we are challenged on what we believe.  When someone doesn’t think we are right, we first assume the opposition is just ignorant, and needs to hear the truth from us. If that doesn’t work, we assume they are morons, and can’t grasp what we have learned. If all else fails, we assume they are evil, since they have heard the truth, and are intelligent enough to understand it but are choosing not to agree. Sound familiar? Rather than reconsidering our position, we are much more likely to decide to attack, which makes being wrong (or, more accurately, believing that we’re right) a source for much cruel treatment in the world.

But there is beautiful symmetry to this behavior as well. While we resist being wrong, we love our books, movies and games to mislead us with plot twists and surprise endings. In the abstract, and in fantasy, and the stories we tell ourselves, we recognize the essential humanness being wrong, and embrace it. It pulls us in, because we all share it and can relate.

In the coming week, I challenge you to do 5 things differently to take advantage of the new perspective being wrong can give you:

1. Strike up a conversation with someone who has a different political affiliation from your own. Examine the assumptions you have made about their views (and their sanity or goodness).

2. Think about the last big argument you had. What ideas were you not willing to reconsider? What about the other person?

3. Take a look at the competitor to your Brand and think as if you were them - what would they say is wrong with your Brand and its view of the world?  Are you a stubborn Brand?

4. Find a piece of your Brand’s story where you can reverse the plot, and make a new discovery because of being wrong.

5. Take a fresh look at your consumers.  What data are you ignoring because it doesn’t fit with what you believe to be true about them?  What if you were wrong?  How could you find out?

Be wrong a little this week. Or at least consider the possibility!

Via TED

Living in our always-on connected lives we sometimes forget how powerful it can be to make a connection with our neighbors.  We exist day-to-day making constant virtual connections with people from all around the world.  But some of the most powerful Social Media we can interact with centers around our neighbors and local communities, like when a New Orleans artist named Candy decided to find out what aspirations were hidden in the people on her block.

It was an abandoned house in her neighborhood that inspired Candy Chang to get the community talking. She turned the side of the building into a giant chalkboard where pedestrians can complete the phrase: “Before I Die I Want To…”

On her website, Chang says that the project “transforms neglected spaces into constructive ones where we can learn the hopes and aspirations of the people around us”.

Chang has continued to check back since the launch of the project, and take more pictures of the messages added to the chalkboard over time (check out her website for more stories and pictures).

The statements range from “learn French”, to “beat some sense into you”, to “understand” and “be OK with not understanding”.  Looking at the handwritten answers to her simple question forms a fascinating picture of what is important to the people in her neighborhood.

It’s wonderful to see a project that is both personally- and community-focused, where the idea is all about getting everyone to participate together as a group, but doing so by sharing something as personal as a life objective.

I find that sometimes when marketers ask for participation, the activity ignores the fact that the person is both an individual and a member of a community (or many communities).  If you want to design powerful sharing opportunities that truly move people to action, you have to consider a few questions:

1. Why should I care? Is the activity something that benefits, enlightens or helps the person doing it?  And the purpose has to be clear here, because unless it connects with something pretty important, people won’t feel moved to take action.  Remember, the chalkboards premise is “Before I Die”, not “Before Something Unimportant Happens”.

2. Do you care? Ultimately I want to feel that the idea comes from an honest place, and that I can believe that you really want my participation (not just to sell me something).  The artist showed that she really wanted the feedback by the design, scale and commitment she showed to the project.  Can you do that?

4. Have you done your homework? Have you given me a way to participate and offer me the tools I would need to contribute in the best possible way?  She didn’t assume that every walks around with a marker. Her choice of location, site, and materials all point to a considered effort to gain a community response.

5. Will my participation make my world better? Finding new ways for people to mail in boxtops doesn’t inspire action or esteem, and shows that you’re after the individuals attention, not a member of a community.  Find ways to show your dedication to changing the world by eliminating eyesores in my community, cleaning up garbage, making people treat each other better, or spreading moments of joy.

What would you write on the wall?  What’s important to you?

Via Creative Review

Check out the video from 13th Street Universal, where they explain their latest campaign to ‘involve their audience like never before’.  This is one of those promotions that seem to have everything but the kitchen sink thrown in - augmented reality, smartphones, location-based experiences, real-world interaction, scavenger hunt/gaming mechanics and social networking.

I like the tech, and the experience sounds highly engaging, but I’m left wondering: how does this idea achieve any scale?  The depth of experience can’t really be shared effectively with video units like this, and they’re clearly not going to send every potential audience member to Berlin.  Perhaps they are counting on PR coverage to get people to tune in to a more generalized version they’ll release later? Or they imagine that the winners will be influential enough with their friends to spread the word? Or maybe they are only picking winners with high Klout scores?

Via Nick Mendoza’s Dreamstream

Cool stuff being discussed at SXSW in Austin this weekend.  Check out this short video from Mashable showing panelists discussing how people are using social media, specifically Twitter, to interact with TV content.

Panelists included Chloe Sladden of Twitter and Gavin Purcell from Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.  Some television shows have already explicitly included social media mechanics, but many content providers seem to be unprepared for how to structure or approach conversations around their programs.  It seems like their biggest concern is control of the conversation.

Still, none of this should be a surprise.  If you watch Twitter streams during broadcasts, don’t you always see conversations about the content? I know I have to actually ‘unplug’ to avoid spoilers if I’m taping (what a quaint word) a show nowadays.

Via Mashable

In this TED video, Deb Roy talks about how by taping almost everything that is said or done in his his house, he assembled a rich dataset that captured (among other things) deep insight into how/when his son learned words.

Of course, this kind of research can start people thinking that “I don’t want to record everything in my life!” but I think the implications more far-reaching than privacy concerns alone.

More than anything, I’m fascinated about the possibilities of video and audio data mining in order to study human behavior.  The sheer volume of data available through continuous capture lends itself to using regression and other modeling tools to identify patterns that are too subtle for mere observation to pick up on.

1. His presentation shows what is possible in terms of re-creating the real world using very flat-looking tools like overheard video recorders.  It creates new possibilities in terms of monitoring behavior through  truly non-obtrusive means - increasing the validity of the results.  Naturally, I don’t imagine this to be fool proof, as some people might never really ‘get used’ to being taped constantly.

2. The idea of creating a permanent memory bank can be considered to be a family service - allowing families that live great distances from their younger generations to peek into developments (especially major life moments) from afar.

3.  I like the fact that he spent time talking about context for learning.  It is amazing to see the possibility to model both by location and ‘actor’ - i.e., knowing which combinations of people, situations and places encoded new information in his child’s development.

4. Naturally, as a marketer I’m fascinated to understand how conversations can be triggered by interaction with content, whether online or on TV, and being able to analyse how these different media interact with a family has my mouth watering.

Enjoy.

Via TED

CMS Wire has an excellent article about how mobile marketing is changing, and I found one sentence (actually the first one in the article) especially remarkable:

It used to be about “mobile access” but that’s not it anymore. Our portable devices are now access, participation and creation devices.

Ultimately, this little sentence encapsulates what so many marketers find difficult to accept in how technology has changed how they can engage consumers.  It expresses that the consumer expects more than just hearing about your product or service.  Reach cannot be only measure of your success anymore. The consumer today needs more than just access to your marketing message.

The rise of mobile as a powerful communication and engagement channel has some marketers thinking about fixing access, rather than designing the right experiences.  ”Our site isn’t mobile-accessible!  Quick! Make a mobile version!”  Unfortunately this reaction tends to lead to suboptimal design for the mobile user.

Thoughtful and strategic marketers know that mobile is not just about access, there are 4 other steps to take in order to have mobile as a strategic element in your marketing plan.

1.  The Person - Yes, we always start with the user.  What are their behaviors?  What devices are they depending on, and what are they doing with them?  How are the steps on their journey helped or hindered due to the products, information or services they are using?

2.  The Purpose - What do you exist to offer or do?  Why would a person desire to participate with you? Linked to the first step, you have to know WHY WILL THEY CARE?

3. The End Game - If they participate with you, what can they gain?  And linked to this element is the step of planning how you will be able to measure the participation that you garner from your supporters.

4. The Structure - Where and with what will they participate?  In this step you start to get a good idea of the overall shape of the idea.  This phase also requires knowing if there are already great platforms out there to utilize, like a smart partner or existing application that can help bring easy functionality to whatever you’re creating.

5. The Access - OK, it is a consideration.  Just not the only one! You have to know what the experiences will feel like across the various devices that they may have access to.

And if it looks like the first 3 steps are not unique to mobile campaigns, you win the jackpot - they’re not.  Any use of mobile as a delivery channel should start rooted in the Brand, not the channel alone.

So - looking at mobile elements of campaigns you’ve seen, who do you think has taken a strategic approach?

Via @cmswire

Need a quick fix with some facts about global mobile use?  This slideshow is almost 5 months old and still a great resource.

Enjoy!

Pepsi is teaming up with Instagram to crowdsource new limited-edition can designs for their Brisk brand. By tagging pictures with #briskpic in their Instagram app, users will enter their image into the contest and be featured on BriskPic.com.

The can design winner will be announced at South by Southwest 2011 in Austin, Texas in March.  Frank Gruber over at Tech Cocktail interviewed PepsiCo’s Jamal Henderson in NYC at the Brisk25 Summit (I know, how did we miss that?) for the inside scoop:

I think it’s a good execution - giving users a chance to be a part of the brand is nice, but attaching it to a popular platform that people are already playing on and expressing themselves is what raises the level of participation for me.

Via Tech Cocktail Via Marina Molenda

Collaboration is human. We like to take part in shared experiences and then talk about them. Debate/dissect them. Remix them. Come to shared agreement about them. These are core elements of how we share experiences.

And yet - many digital experiences seem to be more like echos - call and response, but mostly asynchronous, especially if you’re looking for a real person, instead of a script. And when you think about where you spend your ‘connected’ time is it mostly in isolation? It seems we spend most of our time online doing something alone, or reaching out for information, but not getting live feedback from a person, or groups of people.

Image by ChrisL_AK on Flickr

Why is this?  Is it purely that no groups of people are ever in the same place on the internet at the same time?  Is it the fact that most computers only ’seat’ one?  Why are their so few places for live digital interaction outside of instant messaging/chat and texting (which, while relevant for younger audiences, are not typically a mass behavior). Is it a new preference we’re only understanding now because of the new tolls we use to communicate?  Are people actually afraid to have a ‘live’ experience online?

As Web 2.0 took hold, the expectation grew that Brands should offer the chance for feedback from users, but very little of it is in real-time.  Or really even close to real-time.  And having groups able to give feedback and discuss or even manipulate something together is almost unheard of, outside of alternate reality worlds like SecondLife (which are, shall we say, not as relevant as one would like to a mass audience).

Think about the tools you use for work - like Word, Powerpoint and Excel.  Until the latest Office release with Sharepoint built in, there were few ways to work collaboratively on these documents without emailing them around.   Google and Xoho Docs gave us this power from the start, but are not as widely used. Some others are listed here.  But these are really all about productivity.  Where are real collaboration tools for consumers?

We have seen several recent campaigns where timeliness of response is a central part of their appeal, like the Old Spice Guy, or Wheat Thins’ Crunch Is Calling commercials with their van deliveries or Edge Shave Zone’s Anti-Irritation campaign.  The fact that the response comes quickly (ok - sort of quickly) is what makes them cool.  But still these examples are not about collaborating, as much as responding.  Think about what a difference in quality there is between those campaigns and the experience you have watching the SuperBowl and talking with your friends while you see the ads.

So what to do?  Well, the answer lies in another trend.  In some recent research about DVR viewing, it was uncovered that DVR viewership was down in some younger segments, and it was determined that it was because of that group needing to experience the event/show live, in order to participate live with their friends and avoid any spoilers.  So both the time-aspect and popularity of the content changed their behavior from what it might otherwise be - delayed viewing - to live viewing so they could use social networks and text messaging as an immediate channel for collaboration and connection.  This finding creates an insight that drives how we design content and experiences for great community collaboration: the centrality of having a well-known Time, Place, and Reward.

Time: clear deadlines/happy hours/times to tune in

Place: obvious platforms where all/most of the people who share the passion will be

Reward/Goal: a shared community value (social currency) attached to the participation

By creating engaging Acts that include a powerful mix of Time, Place and Reward drivers we can encourage engaging experiences in a variety of ways:

1. Facebook - Since almost everyone is already on there anyway - why not there?  The sheer number of things you can do on Facebook continues to grow (including chat), and it may well be the SecondLife of the moment.  Their recent roll out of their partnership with LiveStream allows for multiples of interactions at the same time, although true dialog has not yet really taken hold there.  Why not add a platform that enables real-time community discussion for a Brand?  Or crowd-creation of content that connects the people together while they are creating it?
2. Online worlds - We shouldn’t count them out just yet.  Don’t forget that Farmville still lets you go ‘live’ a friend’s farm, or down to the local i-pub.  The key here is to match the Brand’s purpose to the community’s task when they enter the alternate world, which can get pretty murky outside of gaming worlds, which we’ll get to in a minute.
3. Tablets/kiosks/media tables - One possible vision for Microsoft Surface could have been to allow for more than one ’seat’ at the computer.  IPads and other tablets are still mostly used as one-person devices, but their very portability does encourage some level of ’show and tell’.  As retail stores find new ways to allow for more engagement, they will be looking for ways to encourage shoppers to share and build experiences in-store that deliver value, and although a majority will be available on their mobile phones, there are still opportunities to allow for shared experiences that can impact sales.
4. Gaming platforms - Wii, Xbox and now Kinect are great examples of being able to place ourselves in a world with others, easily and with a maximum of impact.  Again, all that is needed is a clear purpose for participation that aligns with the Reward/Goal the gamers have.
5. Hosted ‘projects’ - Prezi, the zooming presentation software, is an interesting example of a digital experience that not only allows collaboration, but gives it a personality with little avatars zooming around the page for each collaborator.  Yeah - it’s kind of second-lifey, but the cool thing there is that it’s really _about_ the collaboration on something - a presentation in their case.  This idea about interaction should be examined further.
6. Interactive toys - When we think of how digitally wired many toys are these days, we should remember that Mom may be there with her kid at the same time, and finding something for them to do together could be an emotionally-charged moment.
7. The family car - same premise as #6, but this time with a few possible other players.  It’s great that the car of the future can read you your tweets, but why can’t it do something more for the whole family than just one person?
8. Your site - With Facebook reportedly preparing a commenting function to be rolled out across 3rd party websites, could this (or other products like Convore) bring more dialog and collaboration to your site?  If not, you can always examine where most of the conversation will be happening, and plan how to engage there.

How would your Brand participate in this kind of collaboration? And what could you do if everyone could be in the experience at the same time?

Rainn Wilson, best known for his role as Dwight on the Office (and his hilarious Twitter account), has released a book, titled Soulpancake (also the title of his website - which is also really good).

The book looks to be superb, an inspiring romp through his take on creativity, life and everything in between.

I’m thinking this should be required reading for Planners.  And if you haven’t browsed his website, then what are you waiting for?  (My current favorite creative challenge is writing your autobiography in 6 words.)

Via: Brainpickings.org