Digital Story-telling

April 22nd, 2009 • Ideas & Innovation

Another terrific discussion on BBH Labs blog about the digital narrative:
And here’s my comment.

I don’t think that digital storytelling and the brand storytelling are necessarily divorced from one another. Infact, I’m not sure if a narrative-based digital campaign will be successful on its own. Narrative and a story builds over time. To think that digital can manage that with one campaign, one microsite, one widget is to basically apply the same, tired old advertising-thinking to new behavioral models.

I should share the story of Amul Butter. Amul is one of India’s leading dairy companies. Since the 70’s (probably even before) Amul Butter advertisements (print, billboards etc) have been satirical observations of culture, politics, cricket and bollywood. Yet – tied effortlessly to the brand. This three-decade old archive of advertisements might as well be the best interpretation and elucidation of the country’s pop culture. The consistency, the witty-writing/ creative and the dogged dedication to the narrative have made these advertisements and Amul Butter one of India’s most loved brands. The brand inspires passion, loyalty and patriotism as the new entrants try to bite off Amul’s share of the market.

Amul is not a ‘digital brand’ yet – but it operates in very different markets where billboards are more relevant and pervasive than the internet. But the larger lesson I hoped to highlight by sharing this story is that: the point of storytelling is to evoke passion. And that happens over long-term.

Sharing examples of Charlie-bit-me videos is fine – but thats a one-time hit. When was the time we spoke about the Numa song or the Chinese backstreet boys ? One-time hits fizzle out eventually – everything on the web fizzles out eventually as newwer, shiner, funnier stories emerge. I don’t argue the value of a one-time growth spurt for a brand, but if we are talking about storytelling, lets not look at the web as a as a very in-the-moment/ instant-gratification medium. Investment in new media and its planning should be a strategic long term plan, not a short-term hit. Only then, will we be adding any tangible value. AND creating stories that will be conversed about for years to come.

(Img via Flickr)

Twitter – The end of the begining ?

April 15th, 2009 • Marketing/ Advertising, Social Media

Ben Malbon and team of BBH Labs has an amazing, thought-provoking discussion on Twitter and the future of it.

Here is the comment I posted on the blog: (Read the main post first!)

I think there are two lenses to have this conversation from: a personal lens and a business lens.

On the personal front, I think Maria phrased it the best. Curiosity and Credibility -also lets not forget instant gratification that this medium allows us. From a theoretical POV, I can also argue, vanity and a kind of cultural megalomania (look how funny my tweets are, or how cool the links I share are)
Whatever the reasons, they pander to the very basic human instinct and we respond to them. I think these responses are also quite evident on Facebook (rememeber how everyone had the ‘Places I have visited’ and the ‘Books I have read’ applications installed when the aps first premiered? ) However, on Twitter – the gratification is on steroids! The speed, the quickness, the instant-ness…
I think what Twitter has done, is made us as human beings incredibly self-aware. We have come to realize the power of our words, our curatorial abilities and our personalities – and because it is so easily manifested on Twitter, I think this is just the beginning. As Twitter evolves, we too, will evolve how we use it.

On the business front, I personally think the answer has never been clearer or simpler. I believe that brands and entrepreneurs are coming to accept that perhaps, the only value with investing time and resources on Twitter is that of a direct connection with the customers. Cliched, but I cannot think of a single social technology that has made customer service so incredibly simple or relevant.

As a collective Twitter community, we have also evolved from the obsessive need to gain ‘followers’ and ‘follow’ people back. Infact, now if I see someone following everyone that follows them – they lose a little bit of credibility with me. It goes to show that they are not curating the information they receive – only paying attention to the information they send out.

It is OK for brands to follow / harness only their audiences. They don’t and shouldn’t feel obligated anymore to follow everyone back. The barriers to entry on Twitter are only diminishing – So in that respect – I believe for brands and businesses, this is just the beginning.

No. I don’t think this is the end of the beginning. Early-adopters such as ourselves may move on to some other technology, but that does not mean Twitter has peaked. We early adopters moved on from Hi5 and Friendster – but those networks continue to thrive. Albeit, with a different audience, but they are successful.

Early adopters like us are never the sole/ target audience of any new technology. Also, any new technology takes atleast a few years before it finds who the ‘monetiziable’ audience is and eventually, it evolves into pandering to that audience. More often than not, early adopters are not that audience.

About monetizing Twitter itself – that’s a question I think everyone is interested in watching how and when that will happen.

A fresh new perspective on marketing

April 15th, 2009 • Ideas & Innovation, Marketing/ Advertising

Brilliant!

Agencies in the market for work

April 8th, 2009 • Ideas & Innovation, Marketing/ Advertising

This is where the recession has its upside. Its pushing everyone out of their comfort zones.
DDB West created a snazzy, clever website for a new project “The Rebound Project” positioning themselves as an agency ready for a gaming project. In another instance, this months’ Fast Company issue carries a full-page advertisement (yes print!) by innovation consultancy Fahrenheit 212 making an open bid for interesting projects to work on for free*.

I don’t know if its working for either of them, but I have to applaud their efforts

Highlights from the PSFK Conference 2009

April 7th, 2009 • 4 comments Marketing/ Advertising

I am a few days late but I wanted to compute and think through what I learned at the conference. Once again, thank you to Anjali Ramchandran who very graciously donated me her PSFK Conference ticket. I couldn’t believe my luck and her kindness. Anjali – thank you very much again!

The day kicked off with an amazing panel on Rethinking healthcare. My most important learning from this panel? Simplify complex problems using design and information. I wrote in more detail about this particular panel here.

The next talk, Ghosts in the Darkness, by Celestine Arnold, was perhaps my favorite and the most illuminating talk of the day. Celestine chose a very interesting topic – the representation of minorities in video games, social networks and virtual worlds. Throughout her talk, I wished I had a tape-recorder because I wanted to remember everything she was saying. Her talk centered around how most video-games are created for and cater to a very white market and about the stereotypical representation of minorities in the games. Her deck is not yet online but I’ll be sure to share it.

Next up was Kevin Slavin of Area/Code: Best quote of the day came from him, “Mobile is an ecosystem that cell phones happen to be a part of”
Slavin made some incredibly thought provoking comments about the relationship we have with inanimate objects. ‘All objects are living things and have a sou. We are headed into a world where entities have a physical presence and a digital presence.”

The panel on sustainability with Sarah Beatty (Green Depot) Simon Collins (Parsons) Ryan Jacoby (IDEO) and Matthew Lusk (Hecho Inc) highlighted how the conversation around sustainability has evolved. Collins summed it up in the very beginning of the discussion, Sustainability is not a destination, it is a journey. What I took away from this panel was that sustainability comes down to intelligent design (designers) and intelligent choices (consumers)

The most fun I had was at the Open to Change panel with panelists John Geraci (outside.in) Scott Heiferman (Meetup.com) Avner Ronen (boxee.tv) and Domenico Vitale (www.pic-nyc.com)
This panel focused on how creators and the community come together to develop new thinking and make ideas happen. Nothing new learned, but just re-affirmed my own believes and faith in the power of the community. It’s fantastic to see entrepreneurs like Avner Ronen spending much of his time building the community around Boxee. I particularly enjoyed an anecdote he shared: Boxee has a wiki set up and Avner made a note on the wiki about an upcoming pitch with Hulu and its content partners. In no time, Boxee fans and its community had written and provided insights into the pitch document that Avner later took to Hulu. Hail the community!!

The only drawback of this panel was that instead of allowing the panelists to speak, the moderator answered the audience questions! Also, he talked more than any of the panelists. :S

And as a delicious finish – Wooster Collective’s, Marc (also my boss!) and Sara Schiller, talked about street art and basically, why tweaking the public space is so infectious. They shared a terrific compendium of public art photographs from their own archives. “We used the internet to celebrate an art form that was only being discussed as vandalism by traditional media.”
So why is tweaking the public space so infections? Marc says, “It is site-specific, allows the city to become a collaborator, adds context and meaning and most importantly – becomes personal and intimate.” The ephemeral quality of street art is what makes its impact so profound.

Piers and team – congratulations on an amazing job with the conference!

Re-inventing Healthcare

April 3rd, 2009 • 5 comments Ideas & Innovation, Marketing/ Advertising

The PSFK Conference yesterday was kicked off by a very interesting panel on re-inventing healthcare and innovations in the industry. I have many thoughts on what I learned at the conference and so I’m breaking it up in several posts so that I can focus and collate my thoughts on each of the big ideas and not just regurgitate it.

Richard Fine of Help Remedies has a very interesting idea. Help Remedies products are stripping apart the frills of medicine packaging and bringing it down to its purest levels. Fine made some good points about the packaging, the upselling and the choices that pharmaceutical companies package up to gain a larger market share on simple products like acetaminophen and band-aids. Now, you cannot not love the packaging and presentation of the Help Remedies products – it stands apart and it makes a point.

But what disappointed me was the total lack of dialog or questions around the bottom-line and the business model. Innovation in design is not the answer to curing the health industry of its woes. It is a part of the answer. Help Remedies sells its 12 tablets of simple acetaminophen for $6. And they sell 8 surgical band-aids for $6. As compared to a Rite-Aid tablet pack that sells 100 tablets for $5.95 or 80 band-aids for $3.99.

Now the obvious question is, do I simply want to look cool by buying a better packaged drug or do I want value for my money? And I think the answer to this is also very obvious. Screw the packaging, give me more value for my money.

At the presentation, Fine mentioned that their products are currently being sold at top hotels (Mondrian) museums and elite boutiques. See the full list of venues here.

My contention with this idea is not that their products are sold and currently cater to an obviously design-conscious, upper strata of the society. It is OK that this is their business model. But my problem is with the idea that when presenting to a creative crowd, do not just highlight the creative/ differentiation and the positioning. The panel was about altering the way we think about medicine -and the way we think about heatlhcare or medicine or anything for that matter cannot be divorced from the business of it.

Perhaps the responsibility of illuminating both sides of the coin lies more with the moderator of the panel than the actual speakers.

Now I don’t own a business or have never run one. So I am sure that there is a reason why a simple product like theirs is not competitively priced. Manufacturing, Distribution, Formulations – perhaps Help Remedies CANNOT afford to sell their products for a more competitive price, but the point is – talk about it! Don’t underestimate the intelligence of a creative community by not addressing the business implications and challenges of actually trying to change how we view an industry.

Just my opinion.