Leo Burnett - Cultural Fuel

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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

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Fun video of an interactive window installation concept for We Are the Superlative Conspiracy.

Interactive Display Window Concept from Gustaf Engström on Vimeo.

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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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It is an initiative of London’s Metropolitan Police to create awareness among young people about the danger of carrying weapons. “Choose a different ending” is an interactive video in which the viewer decides what happens next, they decide what to do and how will it end, either you live or die.

Check out the video and take the right decision.

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…doooooooooooh:-) not new but kinda cool!
some smart guys say smart stuff about it here

have fun.

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South Korean car giant Hyundai launched an interactive microsite through San Francisco-based Goodby, Silverstein & Partners to promote the new-look Genesis Coupe.

Pro racing driver Rhys Millen hurls the car around a test track and the users can experience a white knuckle test-drive by switching between multiple camera angles, taking screenshots to store in an online gallery. An editing facility enables users to drag and drop clips into sequence to make a personalised film.

Hyundai also introduced its Assurance purchase promise: ‘Buy any new Hyundai and if in the next year, you lose your income, we’ll let you return it’.

See in www.edityourown.com

in: Contagious Magazine, nº18

It’s a really cool user-experience

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Google launched their SearchWiki last week, and caused quite a stir in the blogging community.  It’s not really a wiki (as comments left are not editable), but it allows for unprecedented user control over search results.

Users can leave comments on websites returned as search results (and therefore on the Brands themselves) and move search results up or down in the list as they wish.  As initially launched the results and functions were only available to signed-in users.

Watch Google’s description here.

It was discontinued a few days later, but the implications are very interesting from a marketer’s perspective.

In the short time it was active, spammers added links to their websites to other, more popular addresses, the posted comments could not be edited (again, not very wiki-like) and users found that they could not  opt-out of viewing the searchwiki results along with the content that they requested.  (Several of these behaviors were not called out in the Google description of the function.)

The points for marketers are clear.  Perhaps this experiment did not succeed, but a form of it is likely to make a return.  Users will (and some say must) continue to gain control over their digital experience, and create their own experiences.  Given this cultural fuel, how will marketers participate?  Search engine optimization must evolve to include real reasons for users to include an organically presented result. Sponsored search links may radically decrease in terms of effectiveness.  Those that do not take an active stance on managing their own reputations online will continue to be at the mercy of (possibly) vocal minorities, and their silence can equal guilt in the mind of the digital shopper/surfer.  Below is an example of a possible future entry (from www.readwriteweb.com):

I don’t think this is the last we’ll hear about this kind of user empowerment.  And marketers will have to stop thinking about search results as ads and start making them Acts.

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Who needs a smartphone that does everything if you can have a digital assistant that does all the heavy-lifting for you?

Enter Dial2Do - the service that gives you a handsfree productivity tool that is only a phone call away.

Using it you can:

• Send email
• Send text messages
• Record reminders
• Send updates to Twitter or Jaiku stream
• Play internet audio content

I love this kind of service!  Why isn’t it offered from a company who needs to “own” productivity?  Or memory?  Or Safety?

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With tough financial situations everywhere, and things not looking to improve anytime soon, more and more marketers will be tightening spending and looking for ways to stretch marketing Euros.

A recent post on Ad Age (http://adage.com/mediamavens/peterson.html) showed that Procter & Gamble Co.’s Randy Peterson has focused on research that shows a surprising level of search activity around package-goods categories and branding impact for search ads, even if clicks are relatively sparse.

Mr. Peterson says he’s found a way P&G can enjoy a scale advantage in search — by treating it as one of the few truly global media for a company with two dozen billion-dollar global brands.

“Usually, in media, we look at it on a country basis,” Mr. Peterson says. “If you buy a TV ad in one country, you don’t really want it spilling over into [another] and paying for that. [But] with search, you can have one system that works globally … doing keyword analysis in country A and with little or no effort reapply that in countries B through Z.”

…

“Seventy-one percent of consumers expect us to be there in the search-results page,” he says. “If you’re not there, it’s like not being on the shelf at the store. They think if you’re not there, you’re not a leading brand.”

Another big advantage for P&G in search is feedback that can create continuous improvement in marketing pitches, sometimes dispelling preconceived notions about what words have meaning for a brand. “You can see what keywords are driving the most results,” Mr. Peterson says, “and you should be trying to win against those words.”

How much time and attention do we place on making sure that the search experience for our consumers is supporting and encouraging the user?

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