As Worldwide CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi I believe nothing is impossible. That’s why I am delighted to join the other authors in this blogging effort to raise money for breast cancer research. My auction contribution: Lovemarks: The Future Beyond Brands. Kia Kaha. Stand Strong
My first blog entry here on BSI is about creation.
Creation in the Age of sisomo
The pace of change keeps accelerating.
Three years ago Second Life and MySpace weren’t even on the horizon. Today Second Life has one million residents and MySpace at least 100 million accounts.
Just 21 months ago the creativity of millions was unleashed by YouTube. From zero to 100 million video streams.
Ten weeks ago the Nintendo Wii was launched. Its intuitive motion interface is showing that fun wins.
This new world demands new language.
Let’s welcome the sisomo revolution at the crossroads of technology, marketing and creativity.
sisomo is the powerful combination of Sight, Sound and Motion on screen.
sisomo is an idea at Saatchi’s core.
A new word that powers our creatives, our interactives, our media thinkers, our planners, our account lines.
sisomo is the great melting pot of creative communications and digital technologies.
Life gets more fun when you think sisomo.
Winning in the sisomo World
sisomo is not about tools and technologies. It’s about people, ideas and creativity.
OLD WORLD ► SISOMO WORLD
Reflective ► Immersive
Technical ► Creative
Armchair ► Anywhere
Lean back ► Lean forward
The idea with the most attitude, personality, authenticity and truth, wins.
Here are six secrets to help you connect with the sisomo generation.
The First Secret is Emotion
When everything is in motion, what’s unchanging becomes more valuable.
People are powered by emotion, not by reason. They want to be listened to, to share stories, to hang out together.
Think Sight, Sound and Emotion.
Our job is to be inspired by what people are passionate about – rather than know everything about their age, gender, education, spending patterns.
Neurologist Donald Calne sums up: “Reason leads to conclusions. Emotion leads to action".
The Second Secret is Attraction
From Information Economy, Knowledge Economy, Interruption Marketing (aka the Mass Market), Permission Marketing, the Experience Economy, Attention Economy to the ATTRACTION ECONOMY.
Our job is to attract consumers, not demand their attention.
The Third Secret is Lovemarks
From products to trademarks, from trademarks to brands. From brands to Lovemarks. Lovemarks are the future beyond brands.
Lovemarks are built on Love and Respect.
Lovemarks inspire Loyalty Beyond Reason.
Lovemarks are owned by the people who love them, not by companies or marketers.
Our job is simple. To help our clients transform their brands.
From Irreplaceable, to Irresistible.
The Fourth Secret Dreams of Screens
The media landscape is shifting rapidly from mass media to intimate sisomo.
FACT: There are more than one billion people online – all connected, creating, searching, playing, shopping. It’s the biggest market the world has ever seen.
Telcos and media must bet billions on which screens and formats will win.
We don’t have to play that game.
Our job is to come up with sisomo ideas that can bring any screen to life.
The uniquely intimate mobile phone is moving up in the sisomo world. Science fiction writer Bruce Sterling calls mobiles “remote controls for life”.
It’s not about repurposing a TV spot for the web or a phone. It’s being inspired by what matters to the people we care about. Consumers.
FACT: More people are entertaining themselves on the Web than buying things.
- Pew Internet Life Survey, 2006
The sisomo generation loves convergence – as long it converges on them. They want technology to stay behind the screen.
The great news?
Clients are stepping up. The more technology options they face, the more they focus – on great ideas that come alive on many platforms.
The Fifth Secret is TV - Still
TV is still the No. 1 global medium and the best selling tool ever. 2.5 billion households in the world have one.
Any creative, ambitious person is drawn to TV. You want to attract as big an audience as you can. With sisomo as your inspiration you can.
Inspiring the most successful technology will be fantastic sisomo with:
More emotion, pace and interactivity.
More live programs.
More local shows, more reality shows.
Many more irresistible program franchises. The packaging of 24 and American Idol are just the beginning.
COUNTER-EXAMPLE: When the producers of the TV show ‘How Clean is Your House’ tried to expand the show to Germany, they had to give up. They could not find enough dirty houses!
- Financial Times
The difference between sisomo on a TV set and sisomo on the internet is not what’s it’s about. It’s not TV or the Internet. It’s and/and.
Mainstream TV shows are on iTunes and Google Video and Amazon and on the Network’s own website.
Our job is to make what people want to watch more engaging, more interactive, more irresistible.
The Sixth Secret? Share the Love
sisomo will animate the future, but consumers will shape it. Consumers are active participants, not passive receivers.
FACT: Product reviews and ratings are the most used form of consumer generated content – and have one of the most direct impacts on purchasing.
- Forrester 2006
The fastest-growing media is one consumers create and share among themselves.
EXAMPLE: Four years ago French rap radio station Skyrock launched a free blogging service. Today Skyblog has 27% market reach and left US heavyweight MySpace in the dust at 5.5%. Sites in Spanish, German and English coming up.
Getting consumers to make ads is table stakes. If GM and Frito-Lay are doing it for the next Super Bowl – it’s mainstream.
A G. Lafley recently suggested it's time for marketers to "let go", "Consumers are beginning, in a very real sense, to own our brands and participate in their creation”.
EXAMPLE: One fan of “24” used Google to create the Jacktracker, a map showing every place the show's hero, Jack Bauer, visits in a single episode. He then analysed whether the trip was physically possible.
- Wall Street Journal
Prove to them that you truly understand them and what they care about.
Our job is to come up with sisomo formats, stories, characters and ways for people to communicate, participate and to explore. To be involved. Creative. Inspired.
The game is changing. Craft is not enough. Breakthrough creativity is grounded in paradox. It’s and/and. Work with two complex opposites at the same time so they enhance each other.
Wind-Up
Let’s develop ideas with clients and champion those ideas together. Let’s generate ideas that have never been seen before, and not back away because they are tough to test and tougher to measure.
We need:
Creative thinkers, dreamers, problem solvers, and innovators … as clients!
Agency creatives who can connect ideas, emotion, technologies with deep consumer desire.
And let’s start now – before it’s too late.
Wonderful, thought-provoking and inspiring blog. I have always been a fan of "lovemarks" and frequently direct clients and prospects to that site to learn about the difference between "brands" and "brands that are loved"--and why this is important.
In our work we help companies create a future that envisions their customers "loving" their products and services to such a point that they do indeed take control of the business by being the best sales force money can't buy.
Posted by: Eli Portnoy (The Brand Man Speaks!) | March 01, 2007 at 11:27 AM
Excellent advice and ideas which bear repeating again and again. I wonder why so many advertising agencies and design firms that I encounter do not grasp these important principles. Its no longer enough to just try to outbrand, outadvertise, and outsell the competition.
You need that emotional connection, that touchy feely hit-'em-in-the-soft-spot stuff that can truly resonate and create a WOM momentum and buzz. You also need to have that WOW element, that differentiating point which makes people wanna do business with you. That in essence is what lovemarks and sisimo is about too I guess.
Posted by: Walter Lim | March 02, 2007 at 09:42 AM
I've never met Kevin Roberts but I have seen him in business interviews and he never ceases to amaze me. I remember him talking about lovemarks that time- the next step after branding now that everyone is into the branding game.
The way he sees the world is really something else and with this new idea "sisomo"- it will definitely spark off some great ideas for both marketing professionals and laymen alike.
Posted by: Kathleen Yao | May 03, 2007 at 04:43 AM