A few thoughts, musings, ramblings and other things from MediaCom people...

QR codes put to good use

Underrated and often misused, QR codes are always seen as a bit of a joke by both our and industry digital experts.

Therefore I love it when someone uses them right. Well almost.

On 13 April 2012, the spanish rail service teamed up with book publisher Random House to place posters on the exterior of the central carriages of ten services traveling between Vallès Oriental and Baix Llobregat. Each poster encourages commuters to join the ‘reading train’ and once inside, interior posters provide riders with a selection of 40 book titles from which the first chapter can be downloaded via their respective QR codes.

As well as seeking to improve the literacy of residents using the train service, the scheme also serves to publicize works of literature, while readers are also entertained during their commute.

A good idea. However, just imagine that they linked this to iBooks or Amazon to allow passengers to download or order, and it would have been truly brilliant.

Source: Springwise.com

AdTech 2012 Keynote - Collaboration In A Digital World

Christopher Erb delivered the first keynote for AdTech 2012. He gave us some insights on how EA and the gaming industry are doing. Well, the gaming industry has seen incredible growth, not surprising given the fact that from 200 million gamers on EA products (across PlayStation, Xbox and PC games) in 2001, their consumers grew to 1.5 billion, using a wider range of platforms (playing on consoles, mobile, social platforms and even in browser). Christopher Erb mentioned that EA forecasts to gaming industry to be worth $115 billion US by 2015. For the largest electronic entertainment company (EA), this is a pretty good omen. To harness this important growth and stay on top of their game, EA’s mission statement is to “create connected experiences that ignite the emotion of sports”. Their focus was on delivering a connected and global experience across each platform, whilst providing a tailored experience for each screen. In “connected”, you can read “online”, “across all electronic devices” but also “social”.

So how was this translated into the company’s games and advertising strategy?

EA has designed its offer to suit a global marketplace and make their games available to play at any time on any device from your TV to your mobile, including your computer, your portable console and your tablet. They are very focused on providing a “never off” and social gaming experience to their consumers. This is because they believe, like a lot of people in the advertising industry, that giving consumers all the opportunities possible to play and share anything about their product is the key to their continued growth. It is hard to disagree with that. You’ll tell me “a little less conversation, a little more action”, and you would be right to. Here are a few examples of the advertising and product development lead by EA in 2011:

SSX & Red Bull

Working on the launch of the latest edition of SSX, EA and Red Bull partnered as Red Bull was launching at the same time a snowboarding movie entitled “The Art Of Flight”. Embedding the other brand’s content on their (both very dynamic) social media platforms, the brands were able to create interesting interactions between the game and the movie. The in-game content was impressive, with gamers allowed to embody the movie’s characters and play on the slopes featured on the movie before its theatrical release.

FIFA 10 and Coca-Cola

During the development of the FIFA 10 World Cup, the developers had an idea for an ambitious and unique feature: What if you were able to kick the winning goal for your team, relive that moment that changed everything? Or even maybe change the course of history yourself? They wanted to make the real world cup games available to play just hours after they finished… And as a free service! EA Games made this possible (financially) by offering Coca-Cola sponsorship of the feature. The Coca-Cola Zero Story of the Finals was born.

Madden NFL 11 & Doritos 

EA Sports was able to create a few games within Madden NFL 11 in 3D, an offer that could be quite exciting for gamers. This special feature was not advertised and hidden within the game. Months after the release, the company announced that bags of Doritos products would be sporting a code that will enable game owners to download the Doritos 3D mode (with the classic pair of red/cyan 3D glasses included in the bag). The gamers discovered a new and different feature of the game!

To give users the best experience possible whilst keeping within costs and avoid the price of their games to sky rocket, EA Sports has taken a collaborative and sponsorship route. An interesting strategy that has its obvious advantages: When you want to allow your consumers to play anytime and everywhere, whilst keeping cost down or giving away content for free, collaboration and sponsorship is definitly a great solution .

Christopher Erb added that collaboration is not limited to the digital world as they have been developing retail stores in airport, where people can play as well as buy local teams’ paraphernalia. They have also created sports bars in some of the Carnival Cruise Lines boats, giving passengers an occasion to watch sport as if they were in their local pubs as well as play EA games.

EA Sports strategy is rather simple: focus on collaboration and partner with signature brands to increase brand awareness outside the category. They are slowly turning into a lifestyle brand, a similar strategy adopted by sports brands like Adidas and Nike. With the ever increasing population of gamers and the number of platforms they can be reached on, this is definitely a smart move. From that strategy, Christopher Erb shared three key learnings that lead the EA brand where it is today: Value is crucial, content is king and collaborations are powerful.

It was good to see a brand strategy designed specifically for this brand. We are in a situation today where brands have a tendency to jump on the bandwagon for social or mobile. EA took a step back and realised that some things can be harnessed in a bigger overall plan: EA Sport’s was to bank on collaboration to create value and great content for their consumer. The rest came naturally.

An overall interesting keynote however, and it seems like a consistent critic about AdTech keynotes,there was nothing really thought provoking or ground breaking about Chris Erb's talk.I did find a few of these examples to be rather inspiring and will hopefully help some consider more advanced collaborations with other brands to bring better value and content to their consumers.

Marine

A Note on Christopher Erb:

As VP of Brand Marketing for EA SPORTS, Christopher Erb is responsible for driving strategy and marketing for the EA SPORTS brand. Christopher oversees a cross-functional team that focuses on consumer marketing, licensing, and brand partnerships. In addition, his team is responsible for partnership activation across franchises within the EA SPORTS label including Madden NFL, FIFA, Tiger Woods PGA Tour, NHL, NBA, NCAA, SSX and Fight Night.

He shared a few stats that could be of interest:

Note: This is American data.

- Gamers spend 55% more time watching entertainment than the average population.

- 90% of video games have a stronger opening day than movies

- 60% of people played video games in the last six months (comparatively 53% went to the movie)

- FIFA 12 sold 11 million copies globally; it was the biggest launch in the history of sport video games.

- Madden NFL 12 sold 90 million copies worldwide

- In 2011: 3,023,047,635 games were played for a total of over 140 billion minutes of gaming time.

- 53% of people played daily, 40% played weekly and 89% played more than 20 hours a week.

- The average EA Games’ user is 27 years old (vs. 31 years old industry average).

AdTech 2012 Keynote - Why We Tell Stories

I was looking forward to Frank Rose’s keynote, I heard very positive reviews about his book and the fact that he was a contributing editor to Wired made it even more appealing. The theme of his keynote was “Why We Tell Stories?” and he was to give us some insights on storytelling. I am going to put it out there: reviewing my notes, I felt like it was an interesting keynote, the problem was his lack of stage presence and the fact that he was quite an average public speaker… This could have been fine, except if you are going to talk about storytelling! It was a rather disappointing experience.

Rose went through the history of storytelling, from defining clearly the concept of content (anything that contains information, really) to the loss of control that content producers experienced over time. A while ago, the entire broadcasting industry had to fuel a very simple equation: Input=Content, Output=Behaviour. Advertising was also A lot easier: you explain what a product is for and what its USP is, and people will buy it and use it in this very particular way. It was a mechanical process. We all saw the same story. There were a few critics, mostly by San Francisco techies or in movies like The Stepford Wives, nothing very worrying. The change came with technology.

To me, this was a interesting thought, it was pretty obvious and I cannot believe I wasn't more conscious about it. We, consumers, took control over content the moment we had a remote control in our hands or bought a VCR. We could avoid certain pieces of content, advertising included. We took control. The aftermath of that was impressive, and we started to see  amazing advertising creations appear. Ads like CP+B’s Subservient Chicken for example. From consumers taking control, content evolved to a position of co-creation.

Another important thing is that losing control and resorting to co-creation was, according to Frank Rose, also a way for advertisers to harness the emotional part of storytelling experienced by consumers. Surprisingly enough, this was engrained in all of us, because to understand content and stories, we have to “feel them” ourselves. Now that is an interesting discovery! It came about thanks to an experiment on monkey’s brains. During a break, a scientist ate an ice cream and the nodes on the monkey’s brain (which were left on by chance), showed that the monkey was accessing the part of his brain responsible for eating and food. He was recreating the event… To understand it.

This explained how we create meaning and understand stories: We simulate it in our brains. This is a key concept to understand how to engage consumers in the stories we tell. The story, its meaning and its impact is not only made by content creators but also by their consumers. Rose illustrated this with the example of the Lost TV series. This is why Lost was so popular, the way the story unravelled and how it left the viewer thinking and guessing for answers, unable to recreate the full story to give it meaning was one of the most engaging way to tell stories ever created.

The lesson given by Frank Rose’s keynote was simple enough: We need to leave room for the audience, in everything we do, to be part of the story.I thought there was a few interesting examples that made us look back on story telling and understand the cultural impact of some discoveries. However, we did not really learn anything new. "Storytelling" seems like a popular concept, and I think we have pretty much understood the mechanics of it. It does not mean we consistently tell good stories, but I think we may have had enough of it as a keynote subject.

Marine

A Note on Frank Rose:

Frank Rose is an authority on the future of media. In his new book, The Art of Immersion: How the Digital Generation Is Remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the Way We Tell Stories, he argues that we are seeing the emergence of a new form of narrative that's native to the Internet in the same way the novel is native to print. Understanding this new narrative is critical to anyone in marketing, advertising, entertainment, or journalism. Frank gained his perspective as a contributing editor at Wired and a contributing writer at Fortune before that. His earlier books include West of Eden, about the mid-‘80s power struggle that saw Steve Jobs ousted from Apple, and The Agency, a multi-generational saga of loyalty and betrayal in Hollywood.

Ninemsn Digital Conference 2011

A note for all who weren’t able to attend Wednesday’s Ninemsn Digital Summit this week…

Ninemsn’s digital summit on Wednesday brought with it its annual plethora of interesting speakers, including Rob Campbell Head of Planning W&K, Shubu Mitra, Director Connections Planning Effectiveness and Productivity, Coca Cola, Jeff Benjamin CCO Crispin Porter and Bogusky and Jeffrey Cole who we were lucky enough to hear at MediaCom today.

A lot of Do’s were said about digital but importantly this year there seemed to be a lot of Don’ts too as the world and its marketing people become almost obsessed with ‘doing cool digital shit’ and lose sight of why they are doing what they are doing and the problem at the heart of the business issue. Arguably the shiny world of digital and the towering sequoia of social media cloud our focus and vision of the wood. We really need to think about how digital can solve the problem, not ‘just do it’.

Bake digital in. So. Ask ‘how can digital address the problem?’ and look broader than just consumption habits (If JK Rowling had observed reading habits her book would have been a page long).

A lot was said obviously over the course of the eight hours but a few topline thoughts resonated most strongly for me:

• Don’t confuse quantifiable data with effectiveness, just because we have results doesn’t mean it’s right.

• Be meaningful not sociable. If you say to a client you’ll have 10,000 nutcases liking you on Facebook it’s not entirely the greatest desired outcome look at Lionel Ritchie’s clay head on FB with 10,000 fans.Stand for something.

• Be culturally provocative. Nail a tension point in people’s lives... The Whopper Sacrifice. Great communication is arguably emotionally led. And a sub point but almost a point in itself - Create culture not technology.

• There was some nice stuff from Coca Cola who have established a strategic approach for marketing communications called "Liquid and Linked". Everything Coca-Cola does will be both "liquid" and "linked" as the company tries to forge ever-deeper connections with consumers.
  
  "Liquid and Linked" is a strategy that places a new emphasis on dynamic storytelling to connect with people across multiple connection points.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTGqub4sLZI

Their 70/20/10 model is an interesting one, committing 70% to low risk content, 20% in innovating in what they know works and 10% on high risk ideas which might fail.

A few obvious ones but none the less worth hearing:

• Without insight we have nothing.

• Your first 15% is your first 90%. A lot of the time you get the crux of the campaign or solution in the first 15%, the rest is just tweaking

And I just like this..

http://socialtimes.com/jell-o-jiggle-it-dancing-jell-o-on-iphones-ipads_b80602

Emily Fairhead-Keen

Major advertisers realise the value of content

Over the last few years, media and digital agencies have attempted to move into the content arena, producing content at arguably lower prices than their traditional creative agency counterparts. This content has generally found its way online via social media seeding strategies hoping to pull in views, or landed on a clients web site never to be seen again.

An article posted on Advertising Age yesterday explained that  Sony US have recently done something that will have creative agencies shaking in their boots. They have aired a 30-second ad simply cut down from a long form web video created by Break Media for Sony in the series finale of "Jersey Shore"

Sony liked the original, long form web video, that portrays the hazards of running out of "skips" on your music subscription service and got Break Media to create a 30-second cut.

Critically, they  failed to inform their creative agency they were going to swap it in as a TV spot during the finale of "Jersey Shore," so 6.6 million viewers saw a shorter verison of this video a few weeks ago.

Proposal Fail - Watch MoreFunny Videos 

This is by no means the first time this has happened, but it's refreshing to see a global player like Sony look at the assets they have, and leverage the best of them to communicate a key consumer benefit.

 

Augmented Reality in the real world

Great example from Mindshare London for Lynx

Foursqure Recommendations launch - one to watch

Do you ever find yourself wondering what's next for the web? In our line of work we're often asked about The Next Big Thing.

I think the next big stage in the development of the web isn't going to be about building entirely *new stuff* in the same way Facebook was new. It's going to be about taking stuff that already exists - all the disparate data points we've been quietly aggregating over the last decade through billions of uploads, status updates, profiles and, latterly, checkins - and doing something profoundly human with it.

For example Foursquare today revealed details of it's new Recommendations product. This is one to watch for a couple of reasons.

What is it?

Essentially, in the same way as Google answers this question:

"What web page should I look at for information about my interest?"

..and Facebook answers the question:

"What is going on in the lives of my friends?"

..this is Foursquare's bid to be our solution for questions like this:

"Where should I go today?"
"What should I eat?"
"Where should I meet my friends?"
"What should I buy?"

..so is potentially huge in commercial terms.

How does it work?

With ~7.5m users and ~500m checkins amassed over the last 24 months Foursquare is estimated to have data on 10m bars, restaurants, stores and other venues worldwide. All this feverish data gathering means Foursquare know who's been where, when, with who and what they thought of it. This is a lot of data.

Taking the behaviour and recommedations of other users, Foursquare will recommend results - an organic coffee on the North Shore? A bar with harbour views in Manly? It's all there.

So what's at stake?

Right now we live in a world where the majority of us wouldn't dream of starting our web journeys without the Google search box. We've quietly reached a point where we'd be lost without it. In the last decade this behaviour has become second nature, and Google has become BrandZs most powerful brand in the world. From scratch.

 

So, web journeys start with Google - up for grabs is the same opportunity in the real world; what piece of technology becomes indespensible when we step out the front door?

Make no mistake, this is Foursquare's bid to make sure it becomes Recommendations. 

 

For marketers this is another in a series of moves toward a world of where everyone who steps over the threshold is a potential mystery shopper. It also dovetails with another trend - new technology is increasingly being plugged back into real life. Anyone interested should some reading around "the internet of things" and related discussion - this is the realisation that, sooner or later, everything is going to exist in cyberspace. But that's another post.

For now, more than anything, projects like this represent the first few tentative steps down a very interesting road indeed. Every year we're chronicling more and more of what happens to us, in greater fidelity; the technical barriers that keep the interesting bits of data apart are crumbling.

Mat

Online test driving taken to new level

Courtesy of Ad Age, I just wanted to share that Mitsubishi have created Live Drive to enable people to use an interactive remote control to literally drive the new 2011 Outlander Sport in a closed course in Southern California.Takes digital integration to a new level.

A QR code finally put to good use!

 
In July 2010, Calvin Klein posted a large QR code across two billboard locations in New York City to mark the launch of the Calvin Klein Jeans Fall 2010 collection. The billboards featured the QR code alongside the call to action: 'Get it Uncensored'. Passersby who used their mobile smart phones to capture the QR code were then shown a 40-second ad featuring model Lara Stone.

And for those of you who are now desperate to see the ad, click on the following link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvWaw3YFY70

Happy viewing

James

The Tyrrany of Apple

I am impressed with the way that Apple manage to portray their brand as a corporate outsider with a plucky under-dog image.

They manage to do this in the face of all the evidence that their products provide. Through the iPod, iPhone and iPad they are creating some of the most closed and controlled devices on the market.

When the master of controlled media Rupert Mudoch says

 “I got a glimpse of the future last weekend with the Apple iPad.  It is a wonderful thing,” he said. 

“If you have less newspapers and more of these … it may well be the saving of the newspaper industry.”

this isn't because he believes it's enhanced the user experience. It's because it gives control of the content and the access back to the media owners where the internet gave it to the people.

The App Store is totally controlled by Apple so anyone wishing to produce software for their products requires their blessing.

HTML, Linux and even Android are platform neutral languages and operating systems. Allowing people to innovate with software and devices and produce low cost solutions for people.

Apple is big, controlling, old business disguised in a hip, cool wrapping.