One of the new features Facebook is currently playing with exploring is the Open Graph API that will allow webmasters to deck out any website with the tools previously reserved for Facebook fan pages. The API will extend Facebook Connect while being easier to implement.
From Facebook’s perspective, this move will strengthen its position as your one-stop gateway to the internet as well as lay the groundworks for a potential advertising network. For the user, it may not change all that much (except add to the confusion of your average non-geek onliner who thinks of their GMX webmail interface as “my internet”).
For brands … well. Of course, if you believe in the branding power of custom URLs, having that AND Facebook’s full feature set would be nice. And if your business model is in web-based services, content or ecommerce, driving traffic to your own site(s) is vital. But do I see the likes of Coca-Cola or Pepsi doing the full-stop u-turn to reallocate social marketing budgets to build a plethora of branded microsites? Erm. And even then, I wonder which of Facebook’s features are really intersting for owned media. Probably not the kind of applications that allow custom designs, discussion boards or payment within the limits of a Facebook page. Maybe tracking and analysis features - if they integrate well with or fully substitute existing free or commercial solutions.
From a marketing point of view, I don’t think that as long as Facebook is a relevant medium, brands can do without their own page. A social marketing strategy is very much an embassy strategy. If you want to communicate with people, you can wait till they come to you, but it’s better to have a premanent representation wherever they are - and to make sure you welcome them in and make them feel at home. And this includes Facebook as well as Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, wer-kennt-wen and any other place where your people hang out.
As more pressure is put on marketers and their agencies to do more with less, some of the most interesting opportunities for connecting with people come not from creating marketing campaigns, but finding new ways of creating value for consumers outside of the delivery of marketing messages. This situation is an exciting new charge we feel today in our agency, as we look to find creative ways to have Brands participate in society with our consumers. It’s not just reinventing ourselves as an advertising agency, but actually reinventing this reinvention into our begin a whole new kind of partner for our clients and their business.
Razorfish recently grabbed such an opportunity in their participation of a venture with Citigroup and Microsoft - linking content (in Citi’s case consumer data), with computing power (in Microsoft’s case) to create Bundle.
Interesting and inspiring - and I can’t wait to see where they go with this! It also raises some fascinating questions in terms of what an agency model should be when the output is not a creative asset, but a business strategy, or even a new company. I have had the chance to work on some projects like this with our clients, and I can honestly say it is as challenging and eye-opening as it is rewarding. Check out the Bundle beta here.
Kind of related to the previous post about Peter Kruse, now Rishad Tobaccowala reminds everyone how the digital age has brought on the need to look for talent in a different way. It’s builder talent. I love this sentiment because it strikes at the core of how I would define the difference between traditional thinking in communications versus the new thinking. You don’t just need people who are talented at saying something, but rather building something that delivers experiences for people.
So-called creative agencies which are not emulating this strategy will be left with an aging workforce that will try to be good at saying things that no one is interested in listening to.
We rarely post stuff that’s German, except when we find Peter Kruse Gems like this one: on the obsession of trying to manage something that isn’t here yet and trying to make intangibles tangible.
I had just read this article about marketers not sure how to take advantage of Location-Based Services, specifically ones that are Social-Network based, and one of our Account people popped their head in my office to ask “What’s up with FourSquare? Is it worthwhile? And is it significant for Marketers?”
Good questions all. Foursquare allows you to “check in” to locations and awards badges for different user activities. The Article correctly states that some restaurants and bars are already embracing it, but the activities and offers are still in early days. Note the offer from Wow Bao in my building below:
Yeah – it’s a freebie offer, but I find it interesting that there is such a conversation about “is this interesting for marketers” and “how will marketers use it” – since it should make sense to pay attention to if you’ve got at least some of your audience that uses these kinds of things, and you’re worth having a relationship with in the first place (which, granted, is a big question for some marketers).
Here’s why: think about why restaurants and bars already jumped on the bandwagon. They have to develop relationships with their customers – they don’t have a choice. They don’t have a retailer that will put up POS material, or vast amounts of online ad spend (generally), and most of the places I’ve seen don’t do TV. For them, the relationship with the person in that establishment is everything, and finding new ways to prolong and enrich that relationship is the key to their success. For them the only question would be “why would I not get involved?”
Now I’m looking back over the last 12 months and thinking about the times I’ve mentioned doing something like this for a marketer, and thinking “You know what? My Client needs to break out from the shelf, their target is pretty well-connected digitally, they are not always getting the POS attention they want, or always deserve, they want more engagement, and since their relationship with the consumer is everything for them as well … so Why not?”
Bonus topic for further conversation: How different would the strategy for the marketer be from what they use for Facebook and Twitter?
Keiichi Matsuda is studying for his Masters in Architecture at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London. He is a member of Nic Clear’s Unit 15, who use film, animation and motion graphics to generate, develop and represent new architectural and spatial possibilities. He has created this awesome video “as part of a larger project about the social and architectural consequences of new media and augmented reality”.
It is very interesting to see how architecture goes together with new media types. via
Advertising’s leitmotif of the late 00’s and into the 2010s appears to be the not-so-slow shift of ad $$ from ATL to Online and, eventually, Social Marketing. The effects are already tangible, with newspapers closing down, large scale events losing funding and the current of placing content behind the pay wall.
Now Pepsi is making a splash with its Refresh Project: USD 20m, originally pencilled into the budget under “Super Bowl” will be spent on a CSR initiative with a strong Social Marketing drift.
I love the elegance and simplicity of the site and especially the way Pepsi sets down the ground rules for what appears to be a no-nonse grant project, without coming across all German and bureaucratic.
Mashable worries that, commendable as it may be, this “campaign” might not be as (cost-)effective as the next escalation in the Pepsi/Coke Super Bowl ad face-off: “the company could wind up spending $20 million on philanthropic causes (which is to be commended), without getting the benefits of a buzz-generating ad campaign.” But by taking the funding for Refresh from a supercharged American cultural and advertising icon such as the Super Bowl, Pepsi made sure to leverage the secret weapon of Social Marketing: earned media. Mashable’s qualms only add to the free media buzz.
I know that there have been some iphone apps like this for a while now, and they will get better, but I think it will only really take off when the platform wars go to another level.
Most people have some natural fear to pick a platform based on capabilities like this - since they are afraid that they will end up with “Betamax” - or the losing technology in a format war.
For sure - marketers would love to pick this kind of functionality up and make great experiences for their consumer with them, but many will also be hesitant, until they know that a significant installed base can enjoy them. Who’s feeling brave? Let’s get going!
via: Nico Nicomedes on the TechCheck GoogleWave. Thanks Nico!
Not really news to most of us, but don’t y’all love to say “I told you so”: On his recent Ad Age Post Garrick Schmitt goes into the theory that User Experience Professional (and some other smartypants) have been preaching for the last 15 years or so: experiences, not messages are what brands should focus on.
For example, 65% of U.S. consumers report a digital experience changing their perception about a brand (either positively or negatively) and 97% of that group report that the same experience ultimately influenced whether or not they went on to purchase a product from that brand. In a nutshell, experience matters. A lot.
Schmitt mentions Red Bull, Virgin America, Uniqlo and Guinness as great examples of brands that spend their money in creating a qualitative difference in people’s lives that ultimately make a bigger impact than expensive advertising messages.
I can’t help feel like having to say “Duh,” but then again, anyone who so convincingly preaches to marketers is a brother-in-arms to me.
Ultimately, it comes down to creating acts (not ads) that are based on people and their behavior, defining a human purpose for the brand, allows people to participate, and in so doing, makes the brand popular (at Leo, we love alliterations). Being able to plan and create for experiences (functional and emotional ones alike) is the key business to be in.
Recently, say over the last years or so, planning and strategy has gained sex appeal. Lots of clients are all about “insights” these days and seem to have developed quite a hankering for that one inspirational bit of information that can transform business ideas, product ideas, marketing innovation ideas. Oh.. and, I almost forgot: communication ideas. Meanwhile, the agency landscape seems to be filling up with a formerly less commonly heard title: Chief Strategy Officer.
So, understandably, the trade press comes out with articles entitled “Is strategy the new creative?”.
But what does this really mean? I believe a headline like this is a great eyecatcher. But really, it is written that way to make you look. Strategy is not the new creative. It’s simply that the definition of strategy and creative and how both have to work together has changed.
However, what the headline really does, too, is to ignite a conversation. And conversations, or rather making sure that people talk about your brand and brands themselves are part of those conversations is what is actually behind the fact that the definition of strategy and creative has changed.
In a communications landscape where marketers have begun understanding that people aren’t interested in your messages obviously the old form of creative product, i.e. the delivery of ads, is losing importance. Or, at a minimum, ads need to be complemented with different creative products that provide context-relevant experiences, content and participatory elements alongside before they can be effective again.
Arguably, before strategy and creative were seperated, creative directors or account people did the strategy. Now it looks like everyone has to do strategy and creative. Why?
Having moved from the brand era to the people era has not only increased the need for agencies to offer a different or extended creative product, it also forces agencies to change the way they work to achieve the delivery of idea platforms that work channel-agnostically. Agencies have been offering full-service for decades, but in siloes and all services and creative executions tied back to the might big brand idea.
The most apparent differences of doing creative work now vs before is what happened to team structure and process: the traditional art director / copywriter duo who was responsible for “the big idea,” and represented the creative fulcrum of the agency, now has to live with the fact that the team responsible for creative output just got bigger. In order to deliver idea platforms that work in all channels, it does not suffice to come up with a “communication idea” and then adapt it into channels. You have to have ideas about experiences, content, functionalities, technologies and the brand’s product or service itself. Also, to be creative for those kinds of deliverables you need to do more than call your brand planner for some “consumer insights” about people’s attitudes: you need behavioral insights, channel insights, technology insights, experience insights. As a result, you need more people adept at a lot of different things to get the job done. And yet another result is that you need to completely step away from the linear process of research -> creative -> production. Your process needs to iterative and co-creative, from writing the brief to coming up with little ideas that tie into one idea platform instead of just one big-ass communication idea.
So, in order to accomplish all the above, you need someone to keep provide a bigger sandbox for everyone to play in. And guess who stepped up to the plate for that one? Strategists. Being that “sandbox provider” means that the traditional research and briefing job of a strategist has become much more about actually staging the discovery experience of the whole team and making that experience visceral. In a way, the frame in which an entire team of art directors, copywriters, concept developers, content strategists, social media strategists, interface designers, technologists, motion designers, experience planners, and brand planners tries to solve for a communication-, brand-, business- or product issue has to be staged and stewarded. To me, this doesn’t mean the strategist also has the creative ideas, but it means he provides the environment in which it happens. This means that strategist can’t sit in their office and pump out a creative brief anymore and that’s it. It means that they have to become a part of the creative process itself. And vice versa, creatives being part of the discovery mean they have to think a lot more about insights, as well.
So it doesn’t just look like everyone has to do strategy and creative. This is the way it has to be. In fact, if you do things right, you could also ask “Is creative the new strategy?”
To me it looks like after a long hiatus, you have to get ready for strategy and creative to move in together again. Just don’t let the strategist pick the furniture.
A little clip here on how strategy (and to me creative) has to move beyond the world of communications).
