Lunch over IP

Creativity is on the wall

So you walk down the street and suddenly the wall to your left starts sprouting flowers, drawings and other animations. You slow down to watch closely, and the animations slow down, too.

That's because you're controlling them. Although you may not realize it immediately, motion sensors and a camera have locked on to you and given you control over the interactive wall. That's how a new street-level ad by software maker Adobe works. The interactive wall, 7 feet (or about 2 meters) high and 15 feet wide, is part of a campaign to market Adobe's new Creative Suite 3 software package (which includes well-known programs such as Photoshop). It has been installed these days in New York's Union Square -- look for it along the wall of the Virgin Megastore building -- and, according to a NYTimes story (from which we borrowed the picture) it will soon be recreated in London:

The line at the bottom of the wall is actually a slider that moves with the controlling passer-by, unleashing more -- or less, depending on the movement -- creative juice (see it in action via this Gizmodo video).

Similar interactive walls, a mix of technology and art installation, are not new. However, this is possibly a first in a very busy street (and indeed, the movements of people in the background also affect the animation). When you walk by it, as we did today, it is not self-evident that you or one of the other pedestrians "control" the animation: it takes a moment, also because there is no visible explanation of how the wall works. But that may actually be Adobe's intended effect: people stop, wonder, talk, try to figure out, touch the slider (but that's no touch-screen), jump in front of the camera to see if it has any effect. In a word -- the current magic word of advertising -- they engage.

TED2007: Conference interstitials

During the TED2007 conference (which took place last week in Monterey -- see all my posts on it) some of the best ads and commercials of the year are traditionally shown as "interstitials" between sessions. Here are two that have been shown this year. First, an Indian tale:

And here the colorful follow-up to one of last year's videos:

Reversing roles, FC Barcelona pays its "sponsor"

This is unheard of: a world-class football (soccer) club that pays to put somebody's logo on its players' jerseys. That's Spain's FC Barcelona, Europe's reigning champion, which is donating US$ 1.9 million per year to UNICEF over the next five years and will start displaying the UN's Children Fund logo on the players' chests - the übercoveted place where other clubs put the brands of the highest bidder (Manchester United-AIG: 25 million US$ a year or so; Chelsea-Samsung: 18; AC Milan-Bwin: approximately 13; etc) and where Barcelona, in its 107-year history, had never put anything but its own emblem. And those are the chests of some of the world's best - and most admired by kids - players, such as Ronaldinho, Messi, Eto'o, Zambrotta. Barcelona's engagement in favour of UNICEF will include actively supporting anti-AIDS campaigns in Swaziland and providing aid to children orphaned by it. While remaining a sport club and a business (its stadium can hold 98'000 people), FC Barcelona is showing once again that it's more than that. Go Barça!

Re-branding a country

In this week's L'Hebdo (a Swiss French-language newsmagazine) French economist Guy Sorman has an interesting op-ed piece about "country branding". He doesn't actually use this concept, but that's his topic. Many countries are working on "re-branding" or "repositioning" themselves, including the strongest and most loved/hated national brand of them all, the United States (but also Canada, Estonia and many others).

The process can be implicit (observe the current revival of national pride and positive image-building of Germany, thanks to the football World Cup) or explicit (the UK ran a significant research project on this a few years ago). When explicit, pretty much all of these efforts include a strong element of jettisoning ballast: of getting rid of stereotypes and clichés and of classic images and mental associations that, most "re-brander" seem to believe by tacit agreement, hinder progress. And of replacing them with new, fresher, future-oriented, designed ones. Sometimes this goes overboard: for a short moment, a while back, Estonia considered re-branding itself "e-stonia" (as in "e-business" and such) to underscore its intention to become a beacon of the digital future...

Sorman takes the opposite view. Certain countries can count more than others on positive stereotypes and preconceived views to sell their products and promote their culture, they say, and they should use them without worries. Excerpts (he wrote this for a Swiss magazine, but the argument applies to all countries):

From the distant and near past, countries have inherited images and stereotypes: the French were frivolous, the Swiss slow, the German serious, the Americans shrewd and the Chinese astute. (...) The globalized world remains a virtual universe of cultural images. If we transfer that to the economy, you're really in trouble when you don't have any image at all. To sell something when your origin does not evoke anything is as difficult as to sell a product without a brand. (...) This "cultural value" serves large globalized countries well. A French company that sells luxury goods has no need to explain why it sells luxury, nor even justify its prices and profits. A Swiss company would find it easier to navigate the financial, insurance, machines, pharma and tourism industries. These products and services are preceded to the market by Switzerland's reputation: precision, discretion, seriousness, cleanliness.

Generally, no people is happy with the images and associations attached to it: the French would prefer to pass for serious; the Swiss for sharp; the Americans for distinguished; the Chinese for reliable; the German for stylish. But, while all efforts in this sense are of course legitimate, says Sorman:

Swiss companies would be foolish not to play to these preconceived notions. (...) The cultural added value that's represented by this reputation is worth much more than any ad campaign. Businesses have a key interest in cultivating their national image when they have a positive one, in the same way they cultivate their trademarked brand. (...)

Sorman's full column (in French).

[tags: Guy Sorman country branding Swiss]

Mediarena: The value of links, the strength of ideas

Swiss media group Goldbach staged today its Mediarena conference in Zurich, an annual event convened to discuss developments in electronic, interactive and mobile media. Klaus Kappeler, the CEO of Goldbach, gave a compelling intro speech (more of a demo, actually) combining web, video, live VoIP videoconference, Internet radio, games, and more, stressing how broadband is a game-changer ("the Internet is shifting from being a medium to becoming a platform").

Then Norbert Bolz, a philosopher and media specialist from the Technology University of Berlin, took the stage. In a book a few years ago he famously said that communication in our society is a replacement for religion: "Religious communication has given way to communication as religion". He built on that by suggesting that the beginning of the 21st century is defined by four megatrends: communication and mobility (what he calls "linking value") and well-being and spirituality ("spiritual added-value"). "Communication and mobility are the characteristics of a world defined by high productivity, pressure, speed. By offering the capacity to communicate from everywhere with everyone in the world, they represent concrete freedom".
What is linking value? "If I ask you what keyword better defines this early 21st century, many among you would probably answer "network". And what's the key success factor? "Links" - the link is more important than the thing", he said. He recalled Mark Granovetter's thirty-year-old insight about the strength of weak ties. "Ties between people can be strong or weak, but Granovetter demonstrated that weak ties are more important and critical. That has something to do with the structure of modern society: more info-exchange happens through weak ties than through strong ties".
On that basis, "today's entrepreneur is the person who can leverage networks and spot "holes" in them - and fill them by creating new links. That's embodied for example in eBay's virtual marketplace or in the "marketing of preferences" practiced by Amazon" (the "personalized suggestion" feature on their website).
This being a conference about media, Bolz only spent a few words on the other megatrends, well-being and spirituality: just to say that those are the trends towards "limiting" the pressure to be productive, "optimize all that has do to with our body" (well-being) and tie products increasingly to a philosophy (fair trade, organic food, etc).

Roger Fasnacht, the CEO of Swisslos (the Swiss national lottery), put his company forth as an exhibit of how a traditional business is shaken from the foundations up by the new media/network landscape. The overall Swiss lottery/sport betting/casinos market is worth about 2 billion Swiss Francs: a big sum, but today that's less than the revenues of a single international online betting site such as BetAndWin (2 billion euros). The new competition comes from everywhere: Internet, mobile (SMS contests etc), television, etc; "the market structure is changing, the customers' behavior is changing, and even their needs - people want to try their luck but also be entertained". That has pushed lotteries (&al.), not only in Switzerland, towards quick and quicker innovation cycles and new channels, including attempts to claim their space on the web - Swisslos' new gaming portal is here. A surprising bit of data: the average age of those playing lottery online in Switzerland is 43 years, compared with 40 for the buyers of traditional lottery tickets.

David Allemann, the head of ad agency Advico Young & Rubicam in Switzerland, and Caspar Coppetti, their strategy director, discussed in a double act the "do-it-yourself" future - the democratizing of communication, as moderator Jana Caniga called it.
"What has been happening for over a decade now is the conquest of the public space by the masses. Starting with the first talk-shows in 1992, when "normal" people started showing up on TV, through the many BigBrother-inspired "reality show" formats, to the most recent wave of shows based on the idea that there is a hidden talent in each of us (The Apprentice, Germany seeks the Superstar, MusicFarm), to self-production of media" - cases in point being self-made young music stars such as the Arctic Monkeys in Britain or Next Big Thing Really in Germany. "We went from mass media to media for and by the masses" (examples they mentioned: Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube, videopodcasts, online games, MySpace - they called the latter "the poetry book of nowadays" - and its Swiss counterpart, Youths.ch). "Trust is also shifting from the "experts" and from the corporations to the "peers", to people like you and me - think for example of the success of product-reviews sites".
Now: what's the meaning of all this for marketing? Will this bring forth a democratization of marketing? "We're moving from marketing dictatorship (key factors: money and strength of the message) to marketing democracy (key factors: strength of message and understanding and leveraging the collective intelligence)". Allemann and Coppetti are just putting a different label on the "from one-to-many to many-to-many" concept, but they underscore a key point: "ideas are becoming more important than money". In this environment, ideas "from people" can reach cult status (example: 6pack, a local TV program in Holland, or Honda's Choir commercial, a typical case of "viral" communication - the video is so amazing that it was forwarded from friend to friend). But the "democratic principle of marketing" can also backfire - as when Chevrolet invited people to develop a spot for their new Tahoe SUV, giving them footage and other matierial, and got this (picture right) and this.
They closed offering 5 shifts marketeers should operate "to survive in this new landscape":

• from focusing on one person to focusing on groups and their interactions (from consumer psychology to consumer sociology)
• from "attention depends on the size of the budget", to "attention depends on the strength of the idea"
• from buying one's way into the media to being a guest there (from invasive to subtle)
• from a possessive attitude towards the brand to accepting that the brand belongs to the customers
• from "wait and see" to "act and create".

Asta Baumöller, the head of TV channel VIVA Switzerland (a competitor to MTV), spoke of trends in visual language. Actually, after saying that "when everyone is speaking about a trend, that's generally a sign that the trend is on the way out", she just showed a compilation of VIVA videos.

The afternoon session started with the presentation of the Crossmedia Award, an annual prize for the best usage of crossmedia strategies in advertising by Swiss companies. The winner was Mammut, a maker of online clothing, for their "Mary Woodbridge" campaign - the fictional story of a 85-year-old British woman (picture left) who "wanted to climb Everest with her dog", presented herself in videos ("mockumentarys" that got very good viral traction), started asking (through e-mail and classified ads and more) for sponsorship and advice, found herself with a fan club, got hints and tips from mountaineers in online sports forum - and got asked whether she was mad - and more. The whole thing turned into a guessing game, until it was revealed that it was a fiction. (The campaign was designed by agency Spillmann/Felser/Leo Burnett).
Swisscom took second place with their "Beck&Bondi" campaign - the communication-driven lives of the Becks and Bondis, two families of four - while the Lovelife public campaign for HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention was third.

André Sonder, new business director of IGA in Berlin, spoke about in-game advertising. His starting point: we live in a world saturated with advertising messages; a growing number of people "protect" themselves from ads - opting out, "screening out", etc; getting to a target group is increasingly difficult; campaigns have reached the point of diminishing returns. André's suggestion: "let's go into new worlds", those of games. He stressed the importance of emotions in building up brand affinity and showed examples of ads dynamically built into games (car races, golf, mobile games, kids' games) and "virtual" stores located in synthetic worlds. "Let the gamers work for you", he said.

Then came Barbara Artmann, CEO of Künzli Swiss Shoes, a traditional shoemaker known for the five-bands sport and leisure shoes (they're in a legal dispute with K-Swiss, which originally was launched by Künzli's American distributors but is now asking them to give up the five-bands design). Barbara was not here to talk about that, but rather to discuss the value of the "Swiss" brand. She described its emotional content, its legal status, the values associated with "Swiss" or "Swiss made" (quality, precision, trustworthiness, etc), the other associations (mountains, banks, chocolate, watches), the positioning of "Swissness".
The brand "Swiss" works best when it matches the values associated with the country and the strengths attributed to local production, she said. Swiss olive oil would not fly - olives in Switzerland? But, she said, "I'm wondering whether we are not misusing our brand by applying it to things that don't belong, by producing too many "Swiss fake" stuff". She mentioned as examples Juvena skin care and Alprausch streetwear. Both sell themselves with the "Swiss" label but, she said, have little to do with the values and images normally associated with Switzerland (and Juvena's products are actually made in Germany). Her message was that while they may be successful, their presence "pollutes" the "Swiss" brand (my summary).

OK, we are getting to the end of the day and it's time to go give my speech - on "Blogs, newsrooms and other paradoxes". (UPDATE 19 May: the audience said that my speech was good).

[tags: Mediarena crossmedia]