Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

Leo Burnett Worldwide CCO Mark Tutssel sent us this inspiring video today. Jay Denhart also blogged about this from a semantic point of view here a few weeks ago, but I felt like talking about its relevance to the study of human behavior and brand management.

In this TED talk, research Deb Roy talks about an amazing project in which he recorded every word and image in his house, as his newborn son grew to learn how to talk and walk. Every bit of human behavior recorded, tracked. He has also found ways of visualizing this data in interesting new ways, unveiling patterns that may not have been apparent before.

Taking this approach the connected mass media world, he has used the tools available to him to show how people, mass media, content and contexts can be interlinked in 3D models, so that we can observe human behavior in the form of new social and interaction structures.

As a creative agency that has declared people and their behavior as the starting point of all our work (and with it behavioral planning), the sheer amount of MIT Media Lab computing power, long-term research vision and prowess to study human behavior makes me drool in envy. But also, as we move away from the brand era of mass media messaging to the people era of connected experiences, the work of Deb Roy reconfirms that continuous and deep study of human behavior - and the endeavor to create tools that help us understand it - is a worthwhile cause. Simply finding out about people’s attitudes and values, and inferring their preferences, just doesn’t cut it anymore. Rather, not only does behavioral planning unveil new patterns and types of insights that we wouldn’t have seen before, it also inspires us in ways to help brands make a qualitative difference in people’s lives that the tools of the TV and Brand era could never have.

While unfathomably complex to unravel and to look at, behavioral insights are much more substantive than traditional “consumer” insights, as they do not express an inferred interpretation about what people think or say about a brand (and how we then may be able to manipulate their perception) but rather, behavioral insights are building blocks to people’s journey through different product categories that paint a much more complete picture of how they actually live, and what they actually do. In other words, finding out what people say or think isn’t nearly as interesting or inspiring as what they do. Not only because those two things are rarely the same, but, more importantly, because today brand management and creating brand engagement isn’t so much about saying something to people but doing something with or for people along their whole customer life cycle. Observing behavior and understanding the drivers of behavior (as beautifully visualized by Deb Roy) therefore leads to not only to a completely different way of creating communications, but also to more purposeful interactions and experiences that allow brands to play a meaningful role in people’s lives.

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Pretty interesting video on human behavior regarding our tendency to act in conform ways. Human Behavior is so much more interesting than simple attitudes. Always blows my mind.

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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?

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An issue that most vacationers don’t have in mind, is that their tourism indirectly finance the human right violations of the regimes they travel to.

This game reminds a younger demographic (online gamers) of this fact to hopefully learn how to reduce or avoid filling the coffers of dictatorships and how to support human rights. Play it here.

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Here is a great resource for planners when it comes to defining people’s desired response to advertising. Before you submit your work to the client, make sure your stuff doesn’t sound like this:

Things real people don’t say about advertising.

http://tpdsaa.tumblr.com/

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Check out Jeanne Bliss’s article “Shedding legacy practices is key to building great customer experiences” over on RetailCustomerExperience.com.  It’s a great read, and highlights a key strategy that smart marketers embrace: You can’t do things the same way you always have and expect innovation to “just happen.”  You have to be willing to walk away from how things have historically been done, and express your organization’s purpose in the most real way you can, no matter how differently that action requires you to behave.

She outlines a great example of how banking is an industry ripe for opportunity for smart organizations to reinvent customer experiences, and really impress customers. Banks that don’t challenge or change business-as-usual practices can’t differentiate themselves in the marketplace. It’s not hard to come up with a few other industries that could use a rethinking of the customer experience - just think back to the last time a friend asked to ‘vent’ about their experience at an airport, hotel, restaurant, - you name it.

I especially like that she demonstrated that one of the biggest factors in crappy customer experience is a lack of ‘clarity of purpose’ - which is a completely HumanKind view about addressing customer needs.  She advises that clarity of purpose “can unleash the organization’s ability across silos — to make decisions guided by its purpose, its promise.”  This point makes strong intuitive sense, especially when you think about how viscerally the entire enterprise has to embrace a vision for it to be executed consistently across the company.  That’s what we mean when we talk about a brand’s purpose being single-minded - it has to be basic, clear and powerful enough that everyone can embrace it, no matter which department they’re in.

And lest we not be willing to eat our own dog food, Michael Gass over on Fuel Lines writes about how the world continues to rapidly evolve for agencies - and it’s a rare agency working today that doesn’t realize the critical need for shaking things up to stay relevant.  That said, there is not always a clear purpose that the organization can rally behind.

Check out her article, and here’s the interview with CEO Ray Davis where he explains his decision to change Umpqua’s purpose:

So the questions are: What sacred cows do you need to slay in your business, and how can you be disruptive about ‘how things have always been done’?

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With the end of the year past, and the countless Top-10/100/etc. lists gone, the online media machine has turned to predictions for 2011 - offering ‘what’s next’ in terms of digital.

Over on Quora (a social network-style Q-and-A platform that is the latest hot thing in digital itself) there are questions like:

What is the future of interactive advertising?

The beautiful thing for a site like Quora, is that the answers to this question will alway be interesting and evolving, since innovation never stops, and the future will go on and on.  But if I can take my crystal ball down off the shelf for a moment, I would say that even for just the more immediate future, things will be plenty interesting:

1. We should see the focus on social move to include location and context much more fully.  The rise of location through Foursquare and Facebook Places hasn’t truly hit mainstream yet, even though industry insiders now look at it as almost old fashioned.  Expect to see a lot of Brands doing their “first” in local-social Acts in the coming year, and more and more of these happening right in the supermarket aisle or checkout line.
2. The rise in tablet and touch computing will continue to make digital interactions more pervasive throughout our daily lives, increasing the number of opportunities for Brands to participate, but also increasing digital ‘clutter’.  The challenge for marketers will be deciding what content and experiences are appropriate for these devices, just as they continue to develop strategies around mobile content and experiences (which will be a strong trend in its own right).
3. Now that High Definition/HD is a common option among video content, expect to see that everything will roll out in 3D - and get used to people trying to get you to wear funny glasses to enjoy their content.  Thankfully there are plenty of newer technologies to save us from this fate.  It can be a fun experience if the content is appropriate, but will require careful planning to ensure it doesn’t feel gimmicky.
4. We will see more major themes running through interactive campaigns about “live”/real-time interaction - with celebrity influencers, sure, but also just regular folks, or niche-leaders. ESPN’s John Kosner stated last year that for their properties, “real-time is expected.”
5. Expect to see Brand activities that offer you a chance to become a virtual part of Campaigns for Good/Sustainability/Green/Etc.  Causes and Responsibility will be center-stage for interactive marketing, and although consumers won’t let Brands get away with greenwashing, they do like to know that their favorite companies (and by extension, themselves) are making a difference.
6. We’ll hear a lot about spam filtering as an industry challenge, but I think this is a red herring. Although there continue to be ways to avoid advertising messages, the key criteria for creating engaging experiences that don’t get avoided is relevance.  If there is not a clear purpose for the activity, and a reason for that specific consumer to participate, then it is doomed to be perceived as noise, and should rightly be filtered out.

These are examples of things to consider in terms of what’s on the near horizon, but any predictions should of course be tempered with the knowledge that the majority of digital marketing budgets in the near future will continue to be spent on slightly more traditional activities - good old Display and Search!

What trends do you see as about to go mainstream?

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Great talk from Brené Brown (recorded at TEDxHouston) about empathy, connection, worthiness and what creates joy and belonging.  It’s a powerful speech about how self-caring and worthiness can create authentic and powerful connections with others.

It’s interesting that embracing their vulnerability (failings/errors) came out on the top of her list of the most important traits for the people she profiled.  It showcases that being vulnerable can be a powerful HumanKind trait - and “the birthplace of joy, of creativity of belonging, of love.”  In working with our Clients, we often ask them to place themselves in vulnerable positions - allowing feedback, encouraging co-creation, and being courageous in acting out what the Brand exists to do with people.

How can you be vulnerable today?

Via Brainpickings.org

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Cool PR launch of the First Direct’s Buddy program - which, while the actual service probably won’t last much longer than the promotion hype, it is a wonderful example of technology enabling real offline Human Connections.

Via Adverbox

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Recently the strategy group at Leo Burnett sat down with Mintel to talk about the latest trends that are shaping our world.  We discussed many interesting facts, figures and developments, but one in particular caught my attention.  It was about anger.

Over the last several years, the economic collapse had a profound impact on the world psyche.  In America, people were asked to forgive a number of grave mistakes and missteps made by financial institutions (and other institutions) that caused the evaporation of a considerable amount of wealth, savings and economic stability.  The people did this, with the notion and explanation that those in power and control were making decisions the best they could - that they were not making decisions purely out of self-interest without regard for the future or the common man. The people agreed to quite literally pay for those other individual’s mistakes.

As time wore on, and more facts about the situation surfaced, the mood of the people has become darker, and our collective understanding seems to tell us that there were people who were not playing fair.  And most distressingly, that there are still people not playing fair.   Of course this is nothing really new - unfairness has probably persisted since our origins, but what’s important in the mood now is a sense of anger at the lack of accountability. “I have to play by the rules - why doesn’t everybody?”

We can see several examples in recent events that show this trend to be consequential, such as the trend towards angry outbursts in comments on forums, leading several major internet sites to heavily regulate commenting or turn it off altogether on some stories. The rhetoric of the mid-term elections in the US has reached a fevered pitch, with borderline-violent jabs becoming increasingly commonplace.  A recent news article referenced a fire brigade watching a house burn to the ground, when the owner had not paid the local area firefighting service fee.  Lastly, reports of bullying of young adults with tragic consequences continue to horrify millions every week.

Individual examples may be easy to dismiss as outliers, but I believe this trend is far from a footnote or bump in the road.  Citizen anger is real, on the rise, and consumer outrage is trending higher as a result.

The inclination to attack is every Brand’s fear in social media today, and will shape consumer mindsets for years to come.  So what are Brands to do?  The first step is generally risk assessment, where you look to see how exposed you may be to consumer rage.  Do you have ways for consumers to let you know their concerns, and a way to work to address them?  Are your practices in step with consumer beliefs and values?   Since social spaces are often hit hard when consumers are upset, we help our clients plan and organize themselves to be able to react positively.

However this preparation is only half the battle.  The best defense is a strong offense, which most often is begun by doing a social responsibility partnership or ‘widgets for good’ campaign.

But rather than think about attaching campaigns to social good acts, I believe there are more direct acts to be done (more powerful? perhaps) that can show how a Brand ‘Plays Fair’.

Acts of this nature could include:
- Allowing for consumers to participate in product development or line extensions.
- Offering more transparency in terms of pricing
- Embracing maker culture rather than insisting on ‘I’m the manufacturer and you’re the consumer’
- Soliciting input in terms of relationships with partners, distributors and suppliers.
- Celebrating what other people say about you instead of always saying it yourself.

How else would you like to see Brands play fair?

UPDATE: Simon Mainwaring just posted that Brand-bashing can lead to catharsis - which is an interesting alternative point of view, but I don’t think that Manfacturer Brands will benefit from it.

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