Hee-Haw Marketing

The Big Ol' Idea

2013-02-26T08:59:30-07:00

Only some ideas are big - big enough to cross boundaries of media, partnerships, screens, and audiences. Big enough to spin off 1,000 smaller ideas that can all work together in a cohesive way.

So let's take an example. What if you had the idea to chop up every Schwarzeneggar movie scream and put it into one video. That would be super. So someone did it.

But then you took that idea to a community manager, an offline agency, a media company, the client, the fans - what do they do with that idea? It's limited. You can take the video and place it in pre-roll. You can share it. You can talk about it in a status update maybe. But there's not all that much to add.

But what if you had expressed that idea one level up? The Supercuts meme takes movies and television shows down to their essential ridiculousness to expose the cliches or shared techniques that exist within them. When you frame it that way, everyone gets to play. You could get this.

Or this.

That's often the difference between big, integrated ideas and stuff that just does a single job. One gives everyone the freedom to create, the other does not.

So - let's talk examples.

American Express - Create a Black Friday for Small Business

Levi's - Reinvigorate a city by putting its residents back to work

You can think of these ideas as gardens. They define both boundaries and fertile territory where other ideas can grow. American Express could have just made the small business tools and Levi's could have just made the tv spot about a fictional steel town getting back to work. And that may have done a job, but it probably wouldn't have spurred as much participation or conversation either.

Even when we do stay solely within the digital space - more often than not, things tend to work better when it's big enough to become a banner ad, a series of social updates, an influencer program, a website, a video and on and on. If all you can do in each of those spaces is tell people that this other thing exists somewhere else, your idea will limit the content teams, social media teams, bloggers and whoever else wants to help it spread.

This isn't always about good ideas or bad ideas. Sometimes our ideas need to be big, programatic, expansive, and sometimes they need to be very specific. But it's important that you understand the difference because even the smaller ones should be additive at the core.

So putting it together - go for ideas that give room for others to play. Infuse them with borrowed elements from music, art, tv, film, fashion, books, memes and magazines to gain attention and make them feel familiar for the audience. Marvel at how awesome you are.

Working Out the Big Idea

Pull out a sheet of paper. On the top - write "The idea." In a few words, write down the basics of the idea.

Below that - you could write this:

Banner ad:

YouTube video:

Facebook status update:

Blogger outreach:

Tumblr:

Then beside each one (and feel free to add other channels) - write down a related idea that would fit with the big idea at the top. If the only thing you can think to do is to tell people about the big idea or you have a slew of hackneyed, unworkable nonsense - might be time to think bigger.

Why Celebrity Matters, Part 2

2013-02-23T08:42:34-07:00

Here's part 1 in case you missed it.

Simple, not simplistic.

Simple messages are more likely to be remembered and shared. Which is why most briefs have "one key thing." It's also why trying to game the brief by adding a double entendre or a two-pronged one key thing makes it exponentially more difficult to use.

Pay with a tweet is easy to talk about. A mobile application that is a social network within a game that measures the speed of your car and gives you points to move up and down levels and and and - not so much. And things that are hard to talk about don't get shared.

As we build increasingly complex digital things - a website, an application, a community, a campaign - the imperative for the easily explainable idea becomes only greater. If you want to sell big ideas, you have to give clients the tools to sell them to their teams and the audience the tools to sell them to their friends.

But there's a tension - simplicity without nuance is boring. And boring things get ignored, too. So while our ideas need to be simple and shareable - each of them need to be packed full of interest generating elements. Or reasons for me to pay attention. And that's where cultural connections matter most. They help our audience identify who it's for and how it can be used.

Mr. Porter

Given the nature of the site, the big idea is the brand itself. Let's call it 'Classic style for refined men.'

But the site isn't only a rack of clothes. It's full of little content ideas that help me decide if what they sell is for me. So if I'm a lumberjack or something, the whole site would feel foreign. The interviews, the style advice, the profiles of old-school dapper celebrities, they all work together to help me know whether this is something I should stop down for or not. The content never distracts from your purchase, but helps to subtly explain it.

Converse // Wall to Wall Toronto

Converse adds the nudges at the bottom - Music, Basketball, Skateboarding, Style - each a reminder, I am for you. The shoes protect your feet - the music, the art, they infuse it with style. The communications aren't just a way to sell more shoes, they are as much a part of the product as the rubber or the canvas.

Pop Secret Labs // Movie Cards

Earlier this year, Pop Secret launched Pop Secret Labs to use technology to make in-home movie watching more social. Each idea is designed to reach a specific audience or community - a Chrome application for the tech folks, then they've made partnerships with Someecards and OKCupid, reaching out to those that have already shown an ability to connect large audiences.

In each case, the core idea of the brand or the campaign uses smaller ideas to create the world it should live in. They are the connective tissue from the function of the thing to its meaning. When done properly, they make our ideas no less simple, but provide much richer, contextual experiences that give the audience a reason to pay attention.

This is often where campaign microsites and utility for utlity's sake applications consistently fail. While creating an airbrushed stereotype of our audience, we strip the reality, the nuance, the humanity from them. We create a fake world for our audiences instead of a rich world that reflects the one they actually live in. It's in this area that digital shops have the most catching up to do. Even the most technologically interesting solution will fall flat if it remains barren and disconnected.

In short -

If you want to make and sell big ideas, make them easy to talk about and share.

If you want people to watch or participate, use references to create familiarity, context and invite attention.

All for now. More to come.

Why Celebrity Matters

2013-01-16T10:29:05-07:00

We talk a bunch about making stuff, but we spend much less energy connecting that stuff to what our audiences are already doing, reading, watching or making themselves. So let's start getting after that.

Stick with me here. It looks long, but at least there are lots of fun videos and stuff.

Why does celebrity matter?

Sometimes they lend credibility. So if I need to sell a tennis racket, maybe I'd want Monica Seles as a spokesperson. Or if it was 1995 maybe I would. Because she is great at tennis, so she must know something about rackets. Just like 4 out of 5 dentists recommend Crest, and they know more than you about teeth, so better to take their advice.

Or second, they have existing communities. When I attach myself to Jay Z, I'm not just buying him, I'm buying what he represents to the people who listen to him. So he may sell Pepsi or American Express, two products he has little special credibility in. Except maybe that he's rich and has awesome taste buds. Either way, the line is way less clear than she plays tennis so let's give her a tennis a racket.

You could think of Jay Z as a publisher himself, not all that different from Rolling Stone or GQ. So when you bring him in, you're effectively buying space in the mind of his audience. Or at least occupying the same space.

But there is a bigger thing happening here than just credibility or attention. Mostly we're buying familiarity.

Now - think about your own social circle. How did you get to know them? Probably some sort of commonality. Maybe you went to the same school, or you work with them, or you were at the same show, whatever. That commonality provides the basis for a conversation. And that basis gives you leeway to explore other interests you may have in common. Might be music, books, political leanings or even a worldview. You make connections with others because of all the ways you're the same.

The same goes for how you connect with brands. We tend to favor those that seem familiar. People usually choose things that they know over change, even if the new thing is better. I could spew some psychological mumbo jumbo here, but suffice it to say - creating a sense of familiarity matters a lot whether you're meeting someone new, chatting up a potential client or trying to get someone to buy something. So all those associations you pack into the things we make also amp the likelihood someone will use it, trust it, share it or frankly - just give it a chance, which is half the battle.

So a few examples.

Adidas - Star Wars Cantina

A weird one to be certain, but think of all the little snippets of connections they're using here, creating a world where Star Wars geeks, fans of Snoop Dog and club DJs can all play. All in a style natural to the thousands of remixes that appear on YouTube. And all brought into the Adidas universe. We can argue of how effective it is, but it certainly provides lots of reasons for people to stop down and give it a watch.

Toyota - The Force

Keeping on the Star Wars theme, here's Toyota's Super Bowl spot from 2 years ago. Pretty brilliant connection between a feature and, well, the enterprise.

But let's focus on the year after, where they continued to expand their cultural tapestry, starting with the teaser for last year's super bowl spot.

They stuck with Star Wars bit by having a dog choir barking the Imperial March, but added a throwback to the most annoying Christmas song ever made. The extra touch of the dogs resembling the characters just gave another nice angle to talk about.

But then it gets more interesting with the spot itself. Starts pretty basic with the cute pup. But then we pull back into the Star Wars universe in the middle of a meta debate on which spot was better - a conversation that would happen across millions of households only seconds later. Maybe a little weird, but packed with cultural currency.

Hospital for Sick Children - Pain Squad

Video-centric examples tend to be the easiest to explain, but sometimes a bit harder to follow into the digital space. So think of the Pain Squad mobile application. Maybe it wins at Cannes without the Rookie Blue and Flashpoint integration, but I doubt it.

Nike+ Fuel Band

The invention of the Nike+ FuelBand sucks up all of the attention, but it is the world Nike, Wieden and R/GA crafted around it that elevated it from just a cool thing for runners and tech geeks to something of more interest to a much wider audience.

How did they launch it?

With this-

Counts

And this-

A Day with Nike+ FuelBand

Or this-

A Day with Ndamukong Sug

This one was super interesting because they used football player Ndamukong Suh, but also partnered with Path, introducing a whole new community. And setting up a relationship with SXSW.

Or this-

Connecting to the Portland music community and introducing a new use case.

Oreo

The simplest example is this single post from Oreo. They could have just put up another video of you dipping your Oreo into milk or something, but instead - they chose to play in the real world.

The status of products are often derived not from their function, but from their cultural viability. The voice-over, the music, the style of the shoot, the actors, the language you use, all of it - creates a playground of opportunities and a cultural shorthand for the brand. Every choice is a chance for the brand to say - I like this thing, so do you, so now we can have a chat.

By now, you've probably figured out that this isn't really a post about celebrity. It's a post about common references. That can be a meme, a phrase, a book, a song, a band, a youtube video, a media property, stylistic element or even another brand. Sometimes it's overt and sometimes it's more subtle - but packing these elements into our products builds the connective tissue that gives it a punch that an unknown voice actor or a custom-made song could never supply.

So how often do we play with these elements? How often do we think of these audiences and question - what do they watch, read and play with? What stuff comes across their newsfeed? What do they talk about in line at Starbucks? And how can we take all of this cultural noise and use it to make our stuff more meaningful.

None of this is new. But it isn't structural to how we assemble our work. And it probably should be. Our baseline job might be to create another action, to provide better experiences, to get someone from point a to point b - but all of that works better and harder when you make the cultural stuff that matters to our audience work with you rather than trying to fight it, or worse, ignore it.

Anyway, more to come. Then we'll get into method.

A version of this was cross-posted on Core, the internal engine of Twist Image

Good Stuff From the Internet

2013-01-12T09:01:29-07:00

It's not complicated, it's just hard.

"Lots of things are like that. They're not complicated. They don't require brilliant, innovative strategies, they're just hard. They require more work and more effort and than anyone might reasonably expect. The best managers create organisational room for that to happen."

Saying No to Crap. A Resolution.

"All that effort, all that ingenuity, all that inspiration, all those years perfecting one’s craft, all those long hours, all that Powerpoint, all those conference calls, all that feedback, all those brilliant rationales, all those missed school plays and cancelled dates, all those postponed vacations, all those lovers never loved, all those bedtime stories never told, all those plans postponed, all those dreams on hold, all those promises broken, all those interests never pursued… To produce crap?"

Be Wrong as Fast as You Can

“The Big Fear,” Jacobson writes, “is that times will get so hard that you’ll have to drive five or six nights a week instead of three. The Big Fear is that your play, the one that’s only one draft away from a possible showcase, will stay in your drawer. The Big Fear is thinking about all the poor stiff civil servants who have been sorting letters at the post office ever since the last Depression and all the great plays they could have produced. The Big Fear is that, after 20 years of schooling, they’ll put you on the day shift. The Big Fear is you’re becoming a cabdriver.”

Behind the Scenery

"Baum believed that a window should "arouse in the observer cupidity and the longing to possess the goods". Before him, and the set-pieces he photographed for his magazine, most shopkeepers regarded their windows as simply places to cram with as much merchandise as possible. Baum, though—having lived, and performed on stage, by candle, oil lamp and gas jet—gloried in the potential of electric light, installed in many store windows after the high-voltage World’s Fair of 1893. And he understood that, in this new world of material plenty, goods alone had lost their primary appeal. A better idea would be to sell a powerfully lit, yet edited fantasy, every article of merchandise auditioned and few chosen—except at Christmas, when too much was never enough."

Jerry Seinfeld Intends to Die Standing Up

For Seinfeld, whose worth Forbes estimated in 2010 to be $800 million, his touring regimen is a function not of financial necessity but rather of borderline monomania — a creative itch he can’t scratch. “I like money,” he says, “but it’s never been about the money.” Seinfeld will nurse a single joke for years, amending, abridging and reworking it incrementally, to get the thing just so. “It’s similar to calligraphy or samurai,” he says. “I want to make cricket cages. You know those Japanese cricket cages? Tiny, with the doors? That’s it for me: solitude and precision, refining a tiny thing for the sake of it.”

Doppelganger Series by Francois Brunelle

Liberalisms

2013-01-09T07:18:34-07:00

Walter Russell Mead:

"'Liberal' and 'progressive' are two of the noblest and most important words in the English dictionary. They describe essential qualities of the American mind and essential values in American politics in a country born in reaction against oligarchy and concentrated autocracy. They sum up in a nutshell what this country is all about. A liberal is someone who seeks ordered liberty through politics—namely, the reconciliation of humanity’s need for governance with its drive for freedom in such a way as to give us all the order we need (but no more) with as much liberty as possible. In this sense, liberty isn’t divided or divisible into freedoms of speech, religion, economic activity or personal conduct: Genuine liberals care about all of the above and seek a society in which individuals enjoy increasing liberty in each of these dimensions while continuing to cultivate the virtues and the institutions that give us the order without which there can be no freedom."

Now this is a conversation worth having. What exactly is the future of liberalism?

I don't agree with the whole article. Mead tries to break down the barriers of right versus left, but things get muddled when you call the size of government a "blue" issue given the growth under both Democratic and Republican control. And characterizing Tea Partiers as a reaction to taxation without a guarantee of a safety net sounds more like wishful thinking than reality. Beyond that, it paints a pretty stark picture of where things are and why the notion of liberalism is in dire need of an update.

There is a liberalism emerging today that tends to focus a bit more on outcomes than ideologies and cherry picks from both the traditional right and left. It has a laissez-faire attitude towards social differences and a favoritism towards market-based ideas. This class believes a social safety net and open education are needed to create equality of opportunity and a conservative approach to the environment is probably more pragmatic. Militarily, 'speak softly, but carry a big stick' seems a more effective use of power than just frantically waving around the stick.

Markets are best at keeping costs low while spurring progress, regulations work when they secure fairer competition rather than enshrining entrenched interests and the safety net is a mechanism to create the structural stability people need to change jobs, start businesses and climb the economic ladder. Reduced spending doesn't necessarily mean reduced services, investments aren't the same thing as costs and defense is still viewed as discretionary. The question isn't big versus small, tax or no tax - but bringing the right toolset given the nature of the problem.

"Americans want to believe that all four goals work together: that defending their security, promoting their prosperity, preserving their freedom and equality and fulfilling their global mission are all part of an integrated package and worldview—and that the commonsense reasoning of the average American can understand the way the pieces fit together. They are, in other words, looking for more than a set of unrelated policies that accomplish certain discrete goals: They want those policies to proceed from an integrated and accessible vision that meshes with their understanding of traditional American values and concerns."

The future of "freedom through order" won't be fought between big government Democrats and economically small government, socially conservative Republicans. Who knows where the parties shake out. The challenge ahead is to bring durability in a belief system that unites the mix of these ideals, then chart a path that doesn't rely on traditional party structures to disseminate them.

Anyway - read the article.

photo via Michael Ignatieff