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“As strategists, we often find ourselves doing similar things. We observe patterns of behavior, trends and evolutions in culture, emerging technologies and platforms – and look to find the often-surprising places where they intersect. The combining and recombining of insights helps us continually challenge and validate our ideas.” —
Will Simon, Strategist @ Big Spaceship - April 5, 2011
Trendrr.tv - Social Television Ratings Index -
Launched yesterday: http://trendrr.tv/ - a TV ratings platform that mines social data to create an index of engagement, sentiment & anticipation.
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Exhausted. 10 days at the SXSW Music & Media Conference can do that to ya. Being in the interesting fusion of industries that I’m in, all three festivals (Interactive, Film & Music) were equally as significant for me. [Funny enough: this convergence was a pretty prevalent theme at the conference this year]. Equal amounts of business and pleasure were had – as is illustrated by the following personal metrics:
A visualization of my Gowalla checkins throughout SXSW 2011
While I could write dozens of blog posts about the Interactive and Film fests (I’ll spare ya), a little music commentary seems obligatory. Companies in the Northern US have snow days; banks have Federal holidays; my company has SXSW music days. Once a year, 2,000+ musical artists arrive in our neighborhood for the famed festival, momentarily rubbing shoulders with the Silicon Valley & Madison Avenue elite evacuating the town following the close of SXSW Interactive. Every bar, restaurant, theater, yard, street, bowling alley and power plant in Downtown Austin is taken over by the world’s most prominent musicians playing alongside the crème de la crème of under-the-radar acts. The latter is what the conference is really about — discovering what’s next.
So without further ado, my personal Top 5 Breakout Musical Artists of SXSW 2011:
1. Givers
I’ve never seen an act as platonically unified as this five-some on stage at The Windish Agency’s Saturday afternoon showcase. Their Dirty Projectors-inspired pop music is sonically complex, yet perfectly constructed for an afternoon of dancing in the sun.
Also a part of the Windish day-party, I was tipped off by Thrillist, FILTER, MTV and a handful of other sources about this LA indie rock trio. Spinner referred to them as “the next MGMT”, but I left their show digging them infinitely more than the 2008 breakout artist.
3. Cults
I don’t know what it is about these folks. Recently signed to Columbia Records, I attached to them immediately after they plucked the first notes of “Go Outside” at the [hot, hot, hot] Columbia showcase. Four guys and a gal, Cults not only played an authentic energy-infused show, but were even more fun to hang out with after. Surf-rock? Twee-pop? I’m not sure how to describe them, but count me as a new fan.
4. Oh Land
Beautiful and talented, Oh Land is the electro-pop music project of young Danish (by way of NYC) songstress, Nanna Øland Fabricus. I kicked off my SXSW marathon week with her performance at our client’s FADER Fort by FIAT side-festival — just days after watching her American TV debut on Late Show with David Letterman. Oh Land is about to blow up.
5. Skrillex
I’ve never really gone out of my way to listen to house/electronic music — that is, until October 2010 when I caught Deadmau5’s inspiring sunset performance at Austin City Limits Music Festival. Weeks later, Deadmau5 tweeted about Sonny Moore and his music project, Skrillex. All it took was one tweet to suck me into the dubstep craze. While I saw Skrillex live a month ago, SXSW 2011 seemed to be Sonny’s ‘coming-out’ party. As he opened for Duran Duran at C3 Presents’ famed Late Night Party, the crowd of music industry influencers and celebs (including Kevin Costner & Mischa Barton) caught on. As dubstep slithers its way into pop music vernacular, Skrillex will be the genre’s leader.
Bonus: DeYarmond Edison
Okay, so not a “breakout artist”, per se, but a breakout show. Rumored for over a week, and finally confirmed on the FADER Magazine website on Friday, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon reunited with his college buddies for a once-in-a-lifetime 3-song performance at the FADER Fort by FIAT. (If you don’t know Bon Iver, stop what you’re doing right now and grab a copy of the 2007 masterpiece, For Emma, Forever Ago.) Tucked in between a set by South African hip hop artist Spoek Mathambo and super secret surprise guest, Diddy, Vernon & team silenced the audience with their powerful indie folk ballads. Wow. This half hour defined SXSW 2011 for me.
Hard choices. Thoughts?
My CNN Interview - "Charting the buzz @SXSW" -
One of the interviews I’ve done this week for CNN at SXSW is now live. Take a look (and keep your eyes open for articles on my other interviews on branded entertainment, data-driven marketing and immersive storytelling in AdWeek & a few other pubs)
SXSW Interactive has officially kicked off… and with a bang! As 30,000+ nerds/gurus/influencers/early-adopters converge in Austin, all I can do is think about sleep. After a month filled to the brim with projects — including launching a new website, mobile website, web app, mobile web app, Facebook app, various large branded entertainment strategies, two interactive multimedia installations, a big party and a handful of other programs — I am just about ready to collapse.
But, alas, SXSW is upon us and dozens of sessions, meetups, parties and meetings are calling my name.
Sleep can wait.
Working at an ad agency can be pretty fun — especially when you have a client like the Jeep brand. Supporting a company with as rich a history and global identity as Jeep presents some pretty significant challenges — though I’ve never felt more accomplished in my career than bringing their engagement marketing and branded entertainment initiatives to life.
And has it made for quite a year (and countless late nights at the office)! We launched TripCast on iPhone (with Android version coming out soon), supported the company’s JEEP TOTAL ACCESS web video series, and contributed to the brand’s thought leadership efforts, just to highlight a few initiatives.
Today, I’m happy to finally present our most recent program for the Jeep brand: Mud U, a mud-slingin’, meme-tastic, terribly-addictive Facebook app. 
This social game was concepted over a year ago and recently found its fit as the core of a larger college-centric engagement marketing campaign. Part Angry Birds, part Elf Yourself, Mud U and the Adventure U portal are helping connect a new generation of drivers with the Jeep brand lifestyle and product line via peer-to-peer engagement and immersive storytelling. It was (and still is) my personal goal for every college student in America to see, smell or step in mud and immediately be reminded of their favorite sports utility vehicle, Jeep.
There’s more to share about this and other projects, but in the meantime, I hope this short preview encourages you go outside and get dirty (or at least head to Facebook and muddy your friends’ profile pictures!)
Whether I am working in the entertainment, advertising, or tech spaces, there remains one tie that binds it all: immersive storytelling. I fuse brands, technologies, performers, screenwriters, venture capitalists, and the like, with audiences — with the intention of persuading someone to take an intended action. It could be to buy a product, feel an emotion, stand up for a cause, flip the channel or share something with friends. You see, there is infinite power in storytelling.
In my most recent blog post, I expanded upon the catalyst of this philosophy — Aristotle’s famed treatise on the art of persuasion, On Rhetoric. As I mentioned, the most effective stories judiciously incorporate ethos (an appeal to the authority or transparency of the speaker), pathos (an appeal to the audience’s emotions) and logos (an appeal built upon logic). It takes a meticulously-refined blend of these three rhetorical devices to encourage a person to take action — and some actions, be it the purchase of a house or the verdict of a trial, are harder to compel than others.
Frankly, nothing is more fulfilling to me than being approached with a challenging problem and developing & implementing a storytelling program that brings an effective solution to fruition. As such, I was particularly entranced by an NPR News story from early January that drew attention to a rather creative approach to one of the year’s most significant political missions.
In less than 10 years, America has reportedly spent over $6 Billion in an effort to assemble a police force in post-war Afghanistan — including the purchase of weapons, construction of police academies and hiring of defense contractors to lead the training of new recruits. Despite the exorbitant price-tag, Obama’s plans haven’t performed quite as well as expected, namely because the country’s citizens collectively have little trust in the Afghan National Police.
Says a recent Newsweek article:
“…in a United Nations poll last fall, more than half the Afghan respondents said the police are corrupt. Police commanders have been implicated in drug trafficking, and when U.S. Marines moved into the town of Aynak last summer, villagers accused the local police force of extortion, assault, and rape.”
Tough problem, eh? And you’re telling me that storytelling can solve this?
Take a listen to the Morning Edition story:
That’s right. A Hollywood-caliber television series, Eagle Four, was developed by a production company in association with the Afghan government with the key intention of turning around the citizens’ negative perception of the country’s security forces. The crime-thriller, in the vein of 24, was actually co-conceived and almost entirely funded by the US government as a piece of new-age propaganda. As the Wall Street Journal describes it, the show follows four elite police officers as they “battle insurgents across Kabul while receiving intelligence tips from computer-jockeying female colleagues back at headquarters.” You read that correctly; two of the show’s four police leads are women, further combatting the rampant sexism within the country’s law enforcement sector. The NPR story mentioned that Eagle Four has indeed played a significant role in changing the perception of the Afghan police force — and even adds that some now see the police as heroes.
“The show is trying to overcome people’s distrust of the police by portraying the police as ‘protectors’.. The United States Embassy provides funding for the program to encourage a dialogue among Afghans about the role of the police in society and their growing capabilities.”
One of the producers goes on to note that during the shooting of the first season he heard a real Afghan policeman profess to his comrades that “we have to be like Eagle Four.” And as nearly half of the country reportedly watches television regularly, it is reasonable that this comparatively small investment illustrates a likely weapon of change within similar regions undergoing rapid transformation.
Not to be crass (as bringing order to a war-stricken country is no small feat), but this scenario simply represents the current global marketing landscape. Immersive storytelling is what drives action. B2C, B2B, C2C, G2C matters not. People make personal and business decisions based on emotional, logical and idealistic appeals.
Sometimes it takes putting something in a wholly different perspective for it to make sense. While I am not out fighting wars today, the principles of rhetoric remain the same. The pen is mightier than the sword, eh?
(Check out this amazing New York Times behind-the-scenes photo essay of Eagle Four)
Names, logos and slogans — sure they’re important, but do they move product? I’d bet that a large majority of advertising professionals don’t focus their day-to-day attention on answering that question. The business development execs at the agencies are begging for case studies, but the creative directors respond by delivering them beautiful pictures with gripping headlines.
However, we all know that marketing is not so black-and-white. The beautiful pictures might drive sales. Factual case studies might not be the most compelling brand proposition. So then what does drive action? Marty Neumeier distills it best in his whiteboard overview, The Brand Gap: “A Brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service or organization.” Neumeier’s ‘unified theory’ of brand-building identifies every person within the modern business as a creative strategist, that is, every one must solve problems creatively.
I’m certainly not going to expand upon the oft-taught “marketing mix” or the “Four Ps” concept, but decade after decade, the balanced combination of Aristotle’s logos, ethos and pathos has come to be the only comprehensive secret sauce within marketing.
At the ADDY Awards last night, I saw a plethora of pretty work — print ads, billboards, broadcast spots and even a few digital & mobile properties. Gigantic global brands collectively shelled out hundreds of millions of dollars for the creative portfolio pieces showcased in that theater. The ads were pristine; no pixel was left untouched by drop shadow and the sweat of dozens of retouchers and production artists. But were they effective?
Only cold, hard data can tell us. (And while I am not sour about the Awards — after all, I left with a Gold ADDY in hand! — I think that the days of ‘pretty for pretty’s sake’ are close to over.) When will someone establish an marketing industry award show for proven-ROI?
But the times, they are a-changin’. The graphic designer and webmaster roles are rapidly being replaced by art directors and interactive developers. The problem-solving-heavy ‘strategy’ is being layered on top of execution. (I should add that I am increasingly seeing so-called strategists and gurus in the advertising arena — and all too often they lack the ability to ‘put their money where there mouth is’ and actually execute on a project.) Strategy without execution is worthless. Execution without strategy is worthless. They must be fused. Excel and Photoshop go hand-in-hand.
Norwegian marketing visionary and brand planner, Helge Tennø, makes a similar point, though defines it as a fusion of old and new advertising methodologies.
Old advertising is all about creating the right anticipation, making sure the participant has the best possible outset before the experience, coloring both the usage and the reflection.
New advertising is about the experience, creating it, particiating in it, adding additional experiences to enforce and diverse the brand. New Marketing is all about the experience.
I say that effective marketing is a result of numbers (strategy + analytics) and imagination (creative + technology).
Tennø says that it is a result of of anticipation and experience.
How about we fuse our two approaches? Or is that just a re-definition of Aristotle’s aforementioned modes of persuasion? Ah well, no idea really is new. I just hope that next year’s ADDY Awards will feature a bit more meat on top of all of the luster and shine.
Preface – On Trends & Top 10s:
It’s somewhat funny – I still have a browser window open from early-January featuring ~20 tabs of ‘Trends of 2011’ and ‘Future of Entertainment/Digital/Social Media/Mobile/Video’ articles. Amongst those awaiting my attention are editorial pieces from All Things Digital, Mashable, Techcrunch, NewTeeVee, Wired, Gartner and Fast Company. As they know so well, these Top 10 list- & buzz word-heavy articles are both highly consumed and shared content – and quite often used as “I told ya so…” ammo pitted against rival publications that claim to be more influential or future-facing.
I, too, find myself frequently being sucked in by the 140-character teasers and persuaded to open the unabridged article, but I’m starting to become increasingly numbed by them. Why do these lists have merit? How can these reporters predict the future? Has anyone actually found a way to quantitatively valuate these trends? Ironically enough, I am guilty of sharing my “trend” viewpoints in client meetings, at industry conferences and on Twitter – and they have more-often-than-not been perceived as fact by the audience. I’m currently leading a team that is developing a platform that quantifies (mines, analyzes and visualizes) trends [more on that in a week or two!], but in the meantime, I am going to focus on “calculated-predictions” instead of “trends”.
A Prediction I Can Endorse
Back in October, I was sifting through my Entertainment RSS feed searching for some inspiration for an upcoming emerging tech project when I stumbled on Mark Suster’s brilliant article “The Future of Television & The Digital Living Room.” A long-time influencer of mine, Mark is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur-turned venture capitalist (early-stage technology, to be exact). The article particularly spoke to me – not because it was particularly gripping, but rather because it presented the future of entertainment as a fusion of technologies, behaviors and original content. I’ve shared my endorsement of this approach in the past, but the more heavy-hitters I see on the bandwagon, the more I am convinced that an industry revolution is imminent.
I suggest you read the article in full, but for the sake of brevity, his key topics of significance:
It’s hard to disagree with most of these points. It’s even harder to ignore the fact that the entertainment financing, production, distribution, delivery, consumption, and monetization landscape is migrating up the coast of California. In 2011, Silicon Valley controls the business, but it’s certainly not too late for Hollywood to make a mutually advantageous compromise.
Graphic via Filmz.rus
I’ve been approached three times this weekend with questions on the topic of “transmedia”. The buzzword has found its way into my lexicon, and as if I’m speaking in foreign tongue, my friends, family and colleagues frequently solicit further definition. Typically my response is as such:
Transmedia is platform agnostic storytelling. It is a strategy-driven process. At its core, transmedia strategy is constructed by pinpointing the appropriate medium(s) for the development, distribution and monetization of a story, most often accomplished by examining the target audience’s behaviors, the available technologies, the breadth of immersion and intended top-level objectives.
Academic definition aside, the transmedia approach has driven the entertainment business for some time – and is now finding a rightful home in the marketing and advertising realms. Take Batman. What started as a minor character in Issue #27 of 1939’s Detective Comics has emerged as a global franchise. Batman eventually received his own comic book, followed by live-action and animated television series, a succession of box office-breaking films, and video games & merchandise galore. There are immersive theme park attractions, books, radio dramas and even an [ultimately cancelled] staged musical version. 70+ years of cohesive cross-platform storytelling has made a simple piece of IP an incredibly valuable cultural and commercial asset. Good stories just can’t linger in a single channel. Smart businesses won’t let them.
Video: A pretty comical fan-generated trailer for “Batman: The Musical” featuring demo recordings of the original concept production.
Was it the story or the profit potential that drove the Batman brand expansion? Likely both. As such, I find it important to be driven by both. As they say, the story is paramount – without it, there would be nothing to profit off of. As a transmedia producer, it is my responsibility to ensure the fidelity of the story (and to make certain that it is deployed on different mediums for reasons beyond ‘economies of scale’, but rather to tell a fully captivating story.) Likewise, I focus an equal amount of attention to the business of storytelling. Financing, production, distribution, marketing, monetization and data analysis are perhaps collectively more vital to the welfare of an entertainment property than a well-written manuscript.
As mentioned earlier, businesses are increasingly finding content to be more effective a sales tool than traditional ‘brochure-ware’ tactics. Psychology plays a big role here; purchasing decisions are often made via a combination of emotional and logical appeal. How better to usher a prospect through the funnel than through the mediums in which they are already engrossed? Mobile, web, television and film brand integration, live events and video games all serve as viable channels to captivate the audience in a brand or product story. Multiply this appeal by the power of 360° immersion – surrounding the audience with a connected story across multiple platforms – and it’s easy to recognize the value of the transmedia approach.
Some do it better than others. I plan to strengthen the transmedia revolution as new platforms emerge and we collectively develop ways for stories to become even more pervasive. I have a feeling (well, an aspiration) that eventually the transmedia concept won’t need explanation.
2011 is the year… I can feel it.
It seems that Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook Places have started a movement. Not just a geo-social movement, but a temporal-social movement. To most, the phrase “check-in” is currently equated to the broadcast of one’s current location, though that soon could change.
Miso, Tunerfish, GetGlue and Philo are a handful of digital applications that allow consumers to “check-in” to TV shows. But people have been sharing their real-time entertainment viewing habits for years now on Facebook, Twitter, and IM, right? The key difference: now there is a central repository for TV sharing (well, multiple really).
On the perspective of consumer-value, these services can be quite useful as a personal metrics tool, a community development and conversation portal, and a recommendation engine. Like Last.fm, which “scrobbles” music listened to on iTunes, mobile MP3 players and on the web, Miso and the others have the capability of tracking the programming a certain person is viewing, analyzing their historical consumption behaviors, and delivering them TV content that correlates with their taste profile.
If adopted universally, though, the real value is for the TV networks. If you know me personally, you are likely familiar with my aversion to the current television ratings system (Nielsen). The prevailing audience measurement platform has many, many flaws — and cable providers have done little to fix them, be it DVR tracking or incentivized market research. If Miso became the de facto consumer tool for sharing daily TV consumption, this could perhaps replace Nielsen and offer deeper, more dynamic demographic, psychographic and behavioral data.
And doesn’t advertising drive the bulk of TV monetization?
If there’s one direction the advertising industry has headed in, it’s the adoption of more targeted and measurable initiatives — allowing for smarter spending of brand marketing dollars. It’s no doubt that the financier of modern Television (Madison Ave.), will also buy into the consumer TV check-in revolution. It’s only a matter of time…
A brief video from Slebisodes for those of you who’d like more background regarding the space:
I’ve never thought of JWT to be a truly forward-facing advertising agency, but something tells me my perception is a bit off. As soon as I saw they had a “Director of Trendspotting”, I knew they were doing something right. After all, developing breakthrough campaigns for Macy’s, Ford, Johnson & Johnson, Kellogg and Nokia takes some creativity and market intelligence.
I always tell my clients that I am not just a creative director and transmedia producer, but above all, I’m a cultural anthropologist. You see, it takes a finger on the world’s pulse to be able to effectively appeal to one’s emotional and logical disposition.
JWT seems to share this attitude — releasing its annual ‘100 Things to Watch’ report — featuring their predictions for mass changes in technology, behaviors, politics, markets, and even music throughout the next 12 months. While debatable, this presentation is worth every bit of an hour of your attention:
I’m sitting at my neighborhood Starbucks right now, trying to knock out work that I’ve neglected throughout my short holiday break — though I’m having trouble concentrating due to the brassy barista chitchatting with each and every skinny latte-sipping patron. Headphones in and I’m still having trouble focusing on the open Word doc on my laptop screen outlining an upcoming presentation on the intersection of Mobile, Social and Data.
Alright, so I suppose it’s not the barista. Starbucks — I only have your brilliance to blame. I activate my Wi-Fi, open a web browser, and find myself automatically routed to Starbucks Digital Network, what appears to be an exclusive digital entertainment and news destination only accessible via a Wi-Fi connection at Starbucks hotspots. Proximity marketing at its finest.
Sure, it’s a landing page that I can easily bypass, but at a single glance I am immersed in content that appeals to me… for FREE!
“Read books by top authors — free”
“Inspiring free films while at Starbucks”
“Download a new free Pick of the Week song or video”
I begin clicking around and sure enough, I’m taken to a digital bookshelf of first-rate novels, documentaries, musical compilations and magazines to peruse. Starbucks’ very own curated entertainment library — both a valuable amenity for the coffee shop patrons and an alternative monetization platform for Howard Schultz’ ever-capitalizing empire (via paid placement of entertainment properties, ad sales and data capture.)
Think Foursquare and Gowalla define the geolocation revolution? Think again. Exclusive location-based content is the future. Some consider it the next generation of narrowcasting; I feature it in my recently-formulated engagement marketing approach — what I call ‘Captive Attention Engagement’. Why market to consumers when and where their attention is already occupied by something more important? I’d argue that one could have a more immersive (and participatory) brand experience if they were in a quiescent, unstimulated state. Airplanes, airports, doctors offices, trains, the beach, checkout lines, coffee shops. Valuable locations with a high potential for audience activation.
As traditional billboard-style ads lose effectiveness, Madison Avenue continues to panic while the answer remains right in front of them: incentivized engagement. We continue to be bombarded with case studies touting the high effectiveness of branded content distribution and audience participation in the social media and mobile app arenas.
Innovate to differentiate. Develop Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or GPS-enabled content. Create new channels to build brand affinity or to sell product. Drive activation when the consumers have the capacity to be captivated. Starbucks did.
