The digital revolution is transforming marketing, entertainment and technology everywhere. The boundaries between media and advertising, content and products, creator and producer, audience and critic are dissolving. It’s convergence and divergence. And everything is media.
1: Where do you begin?
Start with the answer and work back. And the answer is always people, not technology. What thrills them, attracts them, inspires them.
People are emotional. Neurologist Donald Calne sums up the power of emotion: “Reason leads to conclusions. Emotion leads to action.”
People love to share. That’s why Chris Anderson’s Long Tail tells only half the story. It’s great to find your perfect song or movie. But it is even better to share it – and if a lot of other people love it, better still.
People are taking control. If people are over advertising, why do so many want to make their own? Because they get to be in charge.
Current TV.com taps this desire for brands like Sony, iTunes and Toyota’s Yaris. The best spots air on the Network.
People care. They want to make the world a better place for everyone. They want to be part of something bigger than themselves. Prove to them that you truly understand them and the things that they care about.
2: Create Lovemarks
The answer is people and what drives them. When I put love and business together nine years ago, Wall Street froze over. Madison Avenue had kittens. Fortunately, neither call the shots! Consumers do. They want something beyond benefits, attributes, performance, functionality. Beyond brands. They want Lovemarks. Products to trademarks, trademarks to brands. 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.
•Lovemarks.com has more than 10,000 stories by people from over 100 countries. From flags and shoes to breakfast cereals and beer.
•Lovemarks aren’t just Irreplaceable. They are irresistible.
•Lovemarks can be everything that people care deeply about.
•Inspirational Consumers decide what’s a Lovemark.
The Love / Respect Axis adds perspective:
Low Respect. Low Love. Commodities. The black hole for white noise. Advertising that yells. Spam slams. Online ads contaminated by click fraud.
High Love. Low Respect. Hero today, zero tomorrow. jeans. Shock and awe media. Paris Hilton Channel on YouTube.
High Respect. Low Love. Brands. Stuck on the “-er” words: bigger, better, faster. Search advertising and terminator targeting are here.
High Love. High Respect. Perpetual attraction. Irresistible appeal. Customized, differentiated. Loyalty beyond reason.
3: Accelerate with Sisomo
Lovemarks are animated by sisomo, Sight, sound and motion is the accelerator of the Attraction Economy.
Sight, Sound and Motion have broken free from TV.
For decades TV has been the master of sisomo. It is still the No. 1 global medium and the best selling tool ever. 2.5 billion Households in the world have one.
TV is inclusive. Everyone can use one. People love to watch. Any creative, ambitious person wants to attract the widest audience, Long Tail notwithstanding.
But TV is changing. It is morphing beyond the screen in the living room to screens everywhere. People want a life more engaging, more interactive, more intimate.
The revolution is visual – sight, sound and motion.
Sisomo is what shines through:
•sisomo is on-demand, on-the-go ideas on screen – created by an Oscar-winning director or a kid after school.
•sisomo brings technology, marketing and creativity together.
•sisomo plays across the Family of Screens with idea first, story first equal, technology third!
•sisomo inspires new formats, stories, characters and ways for consumers to communicate, participate and to explore.
4: Be Creative Connectors
Across market and platform, players are jostling for position. Media boundaries are being reconfigured.
Communicators have to orchestrate a network of suppliers, media and technologies. Be creative connectors not directors.
Connect a great idea with strategic partners at multiple scales. Take ideas across technologies and media. Dump silos and egos. Be connected, creative and seamless.
No medium replaces another. Consumers want And / And, not Either / Or.
YouTube is considering whether to publish a magazine. (August 06)
HarperCollins Canada is launching books with sisomo trailers online.
Some brands get it too – Nike and iPod; Levis and Ipod; U2 and Ipod.
Everyone is trying to do this case-by-case. Don’t get lost in the detail. What’s needed are creative thinkers, problem solvers, innovators and sisomagic. People who can connect ideas and emotions, technologies and deep consumer understanding.
Consumers are clear. They want more customized, more personal, more engaging communication. It’s not how a TV spot can be played on the web or a phone. It’s what matters whenever, where ever, however consumers choose.
Yaris tells leading edge sisomo stories that attract the elusive 18-34 year group. The Yaris Campaign combined traditional media, mobisodes and games.
•The sponsored mobisodes offered downloads of original back-story content for Fox TV’s show “Prison Break”.
•In the banner ad games players dueled with their Yaris.
•In this entire campaign, creative and media blur the line.
5: Fail fast, Learn fast, Fix Fast
Be Courageous. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. Pursue failure! Ford Coppola: “It’s not a gamble unless you go all the way.” New communications platforms mean new opportunities – not retrofitting the old. Innovate or die!
•Advertisers want compensation that matches results. We work this way with P&G. Toyota just signed a deal with NBC. NBC must demonstrate viewers were paying attention at the time Toyota’s spots were showing, and give more advertising time if they weren’t!
Leap Before you Look, No one has a bullet-proof model for sisomo. There are very few ways to pre-test sisomo projects. sisomo is moving so fast it’s over before research makes a call.
•Think YouTube. Founded in February 2005 and now part of the global culture, the global flow of information, desires and dreams. They took the ME out of Media.
The big questions are answered by courage, speed and spontaneous recklessness, not metrics. Only one question matters. Do you want to see it again?
Unleash Inspirational Consumers For velocity, unleash the Inspirational Consumer. Word of mouth has always been the most effective form of advertising. It’s timeless, and now exponential. One friend talking with another friend – because you’d rather believe your friends than Brad Pitt!
The Consumer is Boss, networker and medium – and the viral minority are all powerful. Inspirational Consumers are the makers, marketers and sisomovers who fuel Lovemarks.
Consumers may feel starved for time, but someone is behind all those blogs, YouTube spoofs, MySpace profiles. When people are excited and involved, they make time.
Your Challenge:
•Move from Info – Knowledge – Insight – to Foresight. All pre-testing can do is reward the familiar. It’s about what you feel, explore and discover – not what you know and see.
•Reinvent yourselves as sisomo people. Create compelling sisomo stories that people want to watch again and again. Danish futurist Rolf Jensen, “The highest-paid person in the first half of this century will be the storyteller.”
•Believe in Lovemarks. Don’t just think about ROI as Return on Investment. What matters now is a new ROI: Return on Involvement.
Go out and make a difference – before it’s too late.
The Blake Project Can Help: Accelerate Brand Growth Through Powerful Emotional Connections
Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education
