25

May

.com are completely off brand I’m afraid

I’m not really impressed these days by most of the website I go through. The thing that strikes me is the most is that all of them look as if they we re a reskin of their top 3 competitors with some little adds-on.

I see different reasons for that.
1. If you work in digital, you know that in the kitchen, we have defined UX by benchmarked the category and start off a structure that would make sense.
2. Most of the CMS used by the clients are the same for similar sizes businesses.
3. Digital agencies are not always literate around branding and always assume the brand is the logo, the story… but not always an experience.

Example: premium beauty category UK

The result is a tons of .com websites that are completely off-brand, generic and not exciting. Corporate websites became a commodity, and I’m very tempted to say the same is true in social media.

The corporate website is transactional and involves very little benefits for the end user.

Good news is we have lots of work ahead! We can change all that and reinvent the way websites are built by focusing on that unique zone of shared interests between brands and people.

Workshop:
The best way to tackle your website revamp is probably to ask the digital team to meet with the team who designed the offline retail environment and appreciate what is that brand experience built offline is about. And then engineer the website on the same guidelines.

Looking at the underdog also helps because they go with open framework and are much more nimble technology wise, which usually allow them to challenge the conventions and focus on who they are – as a company – and transfer this online.

1 day ago Short URL Comments

About websites/English

24

May

The magic link: branded interactions

I’d like to share some thoughts on building a voice for your brand online. As you know, the entire context is evolving, I was recently referring to the need for brands to start talking with groups and not individuals. Social networks have raised people’s awareness that they are not alone, they are groups.

Facebook made it visible for all, we know want to hangout with our peeps all the time because it’s much more fun.

In that regard, I believe what makes a brand like Nike so successful with Nike plus goes beyond the utility and gaming aspect of it – those discussed by Ajaz Ahmed and Stefan Olander in Velocity.

It comes from the magic link.

The brand becomes the bridge between offline communities that are formed around an interest (whatever location and demographics are). It gives those people a tool to track this interest and to share their experiences among more people like them. It’s very rewarding for them as they become part of a family of people like them.

It’s not about a branded experience anymore but more on delivering branded interactions. No other brand than Nike could provide people that particular interactions, in fact others are trying  hard to catch up with an idea launched like… 5 years before them?

This magic interaction, or link, is converting offline to digital. It’s a branded interaction. It helps stories to be formed and shared, it’s awesome. It never fades out, it can only improve and grow because the more people join the richer the experience is.

Technology makes something impossible in the past possible, it fascinates people. It’s better than unicorns. At anytime there is someone ready to share running stories with me – it allows me to always be connected to what I love and care for.

Take-aways:
What are the offline interests people share around your brand? Which one can you help people to connect around through technology (API, apps or device)?

2 days ago Short URL Comments

3 years from now/About the people/Engaging/English

23

May

Cities: a soil for online networks

We know that targeting people is getting more and more complicated and expensive in mass media but there are not so many other things you can buy to build the reach a brand needs. What if we would think of communications plans based on the networks you identify from the  17 biggest cities in the world?

“While the internet facilitates communication, it doesn’t obliterate that human need to be around other humans. That’s why I think cities consistently become magnets for talent and capital. It’s cities that create great countries.” - David McWilliams (full article here on Google Think Quarterly)

I think that actually that internet is a perfect tool to convert those magnetic places into online communities. The idea is to build on pre-existing offline networks. Remember that the web is just a mirror of the offline world.

Having this idea on mind for a few weeks now, I realized that this is probably what actually Nike+ did. This was probably the magic of it. The chip is actually the layer that has translated an offline network of runners into a digital community of runners. It became the connector that breaks the distinction between online and offline getting everybody together around the activity – the interest: running.

 

 

Take-away:

What is the layer your brand can set up to connect and convert your offline networks into online ones? That sounds like a very exciting idea to me!

4 days ago Short URL Comments

Connection marketing/English/Neat ideas

21

May

There is very little new about the web

Another great talk this past week with the Royal Geographical Society this time, what I really enjoyed was to make connections with the Jenkins’ talk from the day before. Having researchers – read non-marketing people – sharing their views on the web was terribly refreshing. It was about coming back to the true essence of it. We all know that you cannot create a viral video but getting better at understanding how people interact with the internet can certainly help us shape more relevant brands.

All the live tweets are accessible here:

Dr Aleks Krotoski PhD

Love when she said “there is very little new about the web”. It is impacting how we preserve and acquire knowledge. It makes things visible; it’s a mirror, a reflection of our desires, wants, needs and fears.

She questions the role of power on knowledge and how we do not really question who is controlling the knowledge and its access in the digital context. The people in Silicon Valley are building tools like Google that help us access knowledge, but who are those people?

Follow her here

We don’t get how power works in the digital world. 

The ability to solve problems is what makes Google so powerful. It provides information in the way you (the user) think. It’s also a collective intelligence. We appreciate more of what it means than what it does.

She suggested cleaning up the messiness of us, because we are in charge of our digital future.

Nick Harkaway.

 I like the idea that the Internet is changing the hierarch of our we disseminate information. In the past people would get news from one place and today we are questioning this authority and we are looking at news from multiple streams of information. The authority of news has changed.

Another nice take-away was to remind us that paper is actually a great technology. Ant today, there is no media that will kill another one, each technology has its own advantages and we let them hangout together.

We end up living in a hybrid mode/world.

Read his book here

Ben Hammersley.

It was a great talk, the thing I would like to share is a something that seems to be quite popular these days. People are questioning their relationship to digital, what does the internet do to our inner life.

We are reassessing what the facebook and other internet tools are doing to our lives. The value it has versus the value we would like it to have.

Brilliant look at our digital time spent that never seems to diminish. I’m quite sure that this is changing, and the notion of digital Shabbat will just keep growing in the next months.

5 days ago Short URL Comments

English/My notes from

18

May

If it doesn’t spread it’s dead – a talk by Henry Jenkins

What a fantastic thing to hear Henry Jenkins talk about his new book and thoughts around “spreadable media”. You can come back to the live tweets of the event here: #digitrans.

Some of the key ideas I found really interesting for brands to understand if they want to better connect with people through digital:

Circulation versus distribution
Circulation is grass root and communities are at the heart of how media is spread (he took the example of the Pepper Spray Cop). Circulation is also shaped today by unauthorized networks and piracy that create value by not being autuhorized. It’s the same for publishers, you have official sources of information versus the non publishers.


Spreading is an activity

It’s a mix of stickiness and it is an act of circulation. The choices we made of circulating or not are informed. He took the example of Kony 2012. They have been producing media and gathering communities for ages. Data from that campaign shown that mid-cities would spread the traffic much more than the traditional big American cities.

The center of influences were actually based on the network of churches and schools.

They were based out of OFFLINE NETWORKS. Which is something I come across quite often these days.

Regarding the terms used in the social mentions for Kony 2012, there are mostly LOVE and LIFE. Each group that takes the news actually builds a frame and a context around the media. People who are circulating things like that are doing it instead of doing political activities. These people are moving towards new versions of civils acts.

More than HALF OF US are part of active acts of circulation.

Sharing is CARING.

The free digital edition leads to offline purchases, it opens new revenue streams. It is an economic disruption, but it is an economic system people prefers, so the existing system must adapt. People now have a seat at this table.

FREE CONTENT also means FREE LABOR
What we realize is that people are happy to do those things for free. It is a fundamental change in circulation that is based on a culture of gifting from people to people. The economic system and remuneration of work is evolving.

The value system is no more the only system. I send you a video of Susan Boyle to cheer you up, because I care.

Circulation is an emotional connection – for those in this system, content is a currency relevant to them – more than money. It creates a warm feeling between each other and justifies the act of sharing and circulating.

The message and the interpretation of it will depend on each community.

Sharing is a creative decision.

That collectively sharing shapes the media collective. Circulating information is being and active part of the community.

We ended the session on this great idea that we should create drillable media content so every community can frame and appropriate a part of it a their currency. This is where I got all existing linking this back to all the #transmedia research that I’m working on. It’s also really interesting to see that the last presentation I shared about targeting communities not individuals was certainly a growing trend for brands to communicate in the digital space.

8 days ago Short URL Comments

Digital Planning/Engaging/English/My notes from

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08

May

A mind Altering Talk on Strategy by Sir Mike Jackson

Sir Mike Jackson shared some incredible thoughts with around leadership and strategy at the APG conference last week.

He is quite an incredible character on his own, witty and charismatic, I’m glad I saw him on a stage.

Here are some of the thoughts he shared with us: “the team needs to be led”, pulling people together around common purpose, they need to be united.

  • What’s the problem?
  • What’s the course of action?
  • What do you do if it goes wrong?
  • What do you must do? 

Analysis is persuasiveness.
The analysis of the situation is critical to lead to a correct strategy.

In a military context, failure is not an option.“Be the best” doesn’t exist in the army as it does in marketing.

You need to go from A to B and to achieve so you have three elements in your hands:

  • ENDS: what is the purpose, the objective.
  • MEANS: what you have to do it. Time, Money, Arms… all these are your means.
  • ART: the art of leadership and communication. From one brain to another brain, the information needs to move as clearly as possible,  everybody should know what they have to do and feel an ownership for their part of the job.

When defining your strategy, map all the different courses of actions with the pros and cons. Make decisions. Debate when a decision is made is a waste of time.

“I wanted to check my own thinking”
When you’re stuck, ask others some questions to help you refine your analysis and strategy.

18 days ago Short URL Comments

English/My notes from

04

May

Companies should embrace their beta version

I’m reading AKQA’s founder book on Velocity at the moment. I’ve yet to come to the end, but I like this idea that companies need to learn from tech companies in their capacity for adaptation and reactivity.

Which brings me to another point regarding strategy inspired by the talk Gen Sir Mike Jackson gave at the Worlds Collide event.

It’s fascinating how strategy in advertising is about building A plan. THE PLAN, only 1! 1 Strategy, 1 year.

I suspect this is coming grom the old days of advertising where the plan was linked to huge media investments and TV production that took ages to go into the market and etc.

But, this is not relevant anymore.

We should get better at proposing a plan B and start writing a plan C as soon as B is in progress. We should write strategies where this go right and strategies where things go wrong.

Those plans should not be vague options but instead they should result in a realistic set of actions that is easy to implement if plan A becomes obsolete.

Building up this adaptability in your advertising (in your company) means that you need to track the market closer, outside of the sales indicators, to actually react to the market much faster. Hence, the crucial role data capture and analysis will play in the future.

This means to me that companies, and investors, should embrace the idea of always being in a beta version of something. Just like facebook, Google, Apple… They aren’t stuck into something, they do things, they react, which help them generate lots of conversations as well.

This is not possible to work with one PLAN as it used to be. However, building a company capable of embracing velocity is certainly the best thing for markets to invest on.

23 days ago Short URL Comments

Connection marketing/English

03

May

Hey brand! Your consumer IS now the group.

Talk to us

24 days ago Short URL 1 Comment

Connection marketing/Digital Planning/English

15

Mar

A framework for transmedia communications

This presentation provides a framework for the implementation of transmedia brand communications.

It rapidly drives us to the conclusion that transmedia not only offers a huge potential to build a sustainable paid-owned-earned communication mix but actually to also transform your marketing operations at large.

A framework for transmedia communications

73 days ago Short URL Comments

Connection marketing/English

14

Mar

Social media is dead, welcome social compagnies!

Image

I recently renamed this blog as I truly believe this connection people and brands have built over the last 3 years is the start of something much bigger. Advertising is being challenged but above all I think it’s the way people and companies interact together through brands that is changing.

Have you noticed the number of people around you who wants to “change the world”? Well, if I was involved with a big multi-national company right now I would think about it twice. Consumers express their wish to change things, they realize they do have an impact on earth, employment and resources scarcity when they
consume products. But they have never been made aware of all the consequences that were involved and they want to change that. They don’t want those nasty consequences, most people want to be nice and fair to each other.

Companies cannot function without people’s input anymore, as it does impact their communications and therefor, sales. That interactive connection digital has established now goes beyond communications, it’s not social media anymore, it’s a social company.

Younger generations have brands in their minds since they were born, the culture of mix and co-creation is established, and the creative process social media has enabled isn’t going to stop. It’s our role to understand it and turn it into an asset.

People’s influence now goes beyond the impact they have on communications:

Are you ready?

73 days ago Short URL Comments

Connection marketing/Engaging/English

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