The content agenda

Is content king or is conversation king?  Debate!

It's a sporting joust I enjoy regularly with some of my digital buddies. You can play it from a variety of angles, but if it comes down to would I rather be stuck on a desert island with someone to talk to or something to talk about (to myself) I'd take the person every time.  Wearing my professional hat though, "content" is definitely something constantly on my agenda.

Most brands have now (finally) recognised that just collecting fans like a kleptomaniac serves little purpose, and it's a lot of effort +/ or money to spend to then allow to languish unattended and unloved.  So, with that context, undoubtedly content is the fuel for the conversational fire, and preferably content that's interesting, varied and added to regularly, if there's any sort of generated / earned media aspirations involved.

Embracing new models to translate the strategic into something that actually gets made isn't always easy for organisations used to just briefing 30" TVCs either, nor being smart about distributing the content and maximising the visibility thereof. Content influences conversation, which increasingly influences search and the circle rolls on...

There are brands out there who are doing a good job, some on a small scale whilst they learn,  (I like the work Nastro Azzuro are doing) and others on much bigger scales, experimenting, failing fast and learning as they go.  I liked this infographic on content via Mashable. Worth checking out.

6 minutes worth spending on branded entertainment c/o Coca Cola

Call it AFP (ad funded programming) or BE (branded entertainment) as you wish, but here's a stunning piece of animation from Coca Cola as part of their Happification series. Take that as praise indeed from someone that's worked in the industry and knows a thing or two about quality production values. Maybe it's my inner industry nerd but I was rather disappointed not to find any credits on the end.  Nevertheless, nice storytelling, composition and animation and a pleasant way to spend 6 minutes of distraction, that will no doubt engender positive feelings towards the brand and I don't even like drinking the stuff!



AFP & BE are both terms which are increasingly being bandied around by clients and agencies at the moment, but there still seems to be far too much hot air and not enough commitments made.  There are many many marketers who frequently can't see beyond a 30" or 60" commercial, ignoring the talent of the many many uber creative little production companies out there (and some of the bigger ones too) that can make a lot of great content for very reasonable money considering it's value stretches way beyond the average wear-out life-cycle of product related advertising now that we live in a multi-media multi-platform long tail world.

Sure, 6 mins of high quality scripting, storboarding, composition and animation / post production won't come super cheap but divied up across a brand with a worldwide presence it's tantamount to peanuts.  I see so many times that company structures from a pre-digital mass age crippling opportunties. Such a shame.

Being useful - a content framework

I did rather like this content framework from the Jess3 crowd.  The fact they started the path to purchase with "bored at work" tickled me.  If only I had chance for that.

Click to enlarge

To participate or not to participate that is the question

Brands are beginning to realise that shouting at people via advertising is going to be less and less effective (in many cases). Oh dear, dilemma. It hurts to change the habits of a lifetime! For agencies too, hence the link to Amelia's very cool post on the future of advertising.  The smart bunnies out there have realised or been advised that they need to start curating or facilitating culturally or contextually relevant experiences that deliver advocacy and an always-on trail of hopefully positive left-behind user generated content about that experience. Super.In reality that all means that I'm seeing the next client bandwagons rolling towards me at a pace.

Social media? Pah, we did that last year.

If only I could draw.   I can't,  so words will have to do.

Participation. Content production.

It's not new thinking, but they are becoming the new buzzwords as the client requests roll in more and more frequently. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing. BUT before everyone gets over-excited, it's worth taking a step back and thinking about what motivates consumers to participate, what's the value exchange, and where does your brand fit in the grand scheme of a consumer's busy daily life?

If the value exchange is right, they'll take part, if it's not, they won't or will do so to a lesser degree. Take me personally as a case study:  I got involved with the Orange WinterWarmer Twitter fun over the last few days (see earlier posts), - new case study material was enough to make me take part actively. It wasn't because I am a huge brand advocate of Orange. Far from in fact,  based on a previous experience. The effort involved in participating & recording what happened was easily outweighed by the value and benefit of an interesting story to tell my past and future delegates.

I have a much better opinion of Eurostar, who did actually eventually listen & respond to a problem I had with them last year, yet despite being willing to re-post their latest "lamest excuse" participation based initiative on Facebook (which I have), there's no way I have enough motivation or time to actually get involved.  Making a video in the day and half time limit is just an ask too far relative to my perception of the chances of me winning some Eurostar tickets. (Not that I think the idea behind it is necessarily a bad one).

So with that relative scale of involvement levels in mind, before you go rushing off brainstorming content ideas against that just-in brief,  I would urge you to read a great post from the talented gang at Made by Many, because I've been teaching and preaching this stuff for ages and as they've nicely written it up its inefficient to re-invent sliced bread.

Once you've done that go and read this interesting post from BBH labs (that links to another one worth reading too) on the subject of collaborative consumption.

Then, as I'm aggregating useful and interesting things to read, sit down with a cup of tea and read Wired's recent piece on social commerce.

After which, move on from cups of tea to something stronger and put the pieces together in your head before you even start to tackle another comms planning brief.  I bet the output will be different.

Good, stimulating, thinky stuff!

Friday UPDATE: Well it's 4 hours before the competition closes, there's 12 videos contributed. So following the wisdom of an article I read recently about picking the seemingly less attractive options, chances are you stand a higher chance of winning because  there's likely to be fewer entrants you can do pretty well. Had I had the time to make the video and could galvanise all my various networks to vote my chances of winning would actually be reasonable. The most voted for currently has 1.6k votes.  As ever with these things, if you can get someone sociable and influential to enter and then garner their own networks to leverage then your message gets spun out without you as a brand doing much at all. It's a formula I've seen time and time again now, - think Walkers do us a flavour or the best job in the world campaign by Queensland Tourism. It's simple and it works.

Super-share me

A Yin and Yang post.

The first because it made me laugh, (and cringe), because I do still see far too many "I want a viral" type requests, and anyone that knows me passably well, knows that   "THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A VIRAL" is a soap box I will shout off ad infinitum. "A viral": Noun. No no no no no.  Interesting, relevant content can be transmitted virally (adverb) but that's it.  So bear this image in mind from a very from a fab collection of ad industry insightful mickey-takes.

 But, granted, given that the un-enlightened masses with limited knowledge of the parts of speech still insist on using "viral" as a term for good content that has resonated and found broad reach, here's a grab (find the interactive version here) from Unruly Media's Viral Spiral charting the increase in sharing and reach of the big, popular pieces of video content 2006 to 2010.

Having seen such rapid rise in broadband penetration over the last 4 years, and with it the pain removed from video streaming; and, the rise of social sharing platforms like Facebook and Twitter the growth in numbers is hardly surprising.  You can compare and contrast someone else's view of the big hitters of 2010 from a brand perspective here.  It's always useful to have these stakes in the ground to refer back to in what I was amused to see referred to as internet archaeology last week. Err, did you mean history?

So for my own internet / digital time capsule purposes alone, here's a look at the web in 2010 in numbers. No doubt I'll be tickling that one with a mouse, or gingerly touching a screen in a year or so, whilst digging for stats.

Logo-tastic

I tripped over this fab animation short featuring more logos than you can shake a stick at a few weeks ago but only just around to sharing it.  Makes some subtle but great points about how brands are just part of our daily lives, and that in the course of an average day we might have brief encounters with more brands than we care to realise.


Logorama from Marc Altshuler - Human Music on Vimeo.

But just remember that when planning digital activity for your brand that it's that brand-rich context the consumer naturally lives in.  Whatever you create is going to have to be damn good for them to want to engage with you any more than fleetingly. Be useful. Be relevant. Don't patronise them with product benefits.

 As per my last post on April Foolery, think about what little gestures / associations you can harness that shows your brand in a positive light based on context and insight. Light touches can work just as well as huge full blown big campaigns in providing a brand nudge in a consumer's life.

Evaluating digital propositions the KPMG way

This KPMG tool designed to help you evaluate the strength of your digital idea's value proposition has been sitting on my "tabs to read" radar for a week or so now but I am glad I finally got around to playing with it.

Useful to have many of the many metrics you should consider stacking your idea up against in one place.
Not all of them will be relevant to every proposition, but it was food for thought I considered worthy of sharing, so here's the link to the working version for you to play with. 

Remember, that as is so often the case with ideas in the digital realm, it's choosing the right combination of ingredients, that are the secret to a successful recipe.  Too many and your offering becomes flavour overloaded, too few it's too bland and dull, too many expensive ingredients and the number of diners who can afford the dish drops.  Sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes it's not, it depends on your objectives.

Digital alchemy is a dark art but ask yourself some sensible questions, and base your answers on your knowledge of who you are trying to engage with and you stand a chance of making the "specials" board and then letting the diners rave to their friends and come back for more.

Nice image I found from Bristol restaurant the Olive Shed via Bing

Evaluating ideas & creativity

I love this model from information is beautiful,  who have also just released this very interesting looking book called the Visual Miscellaneum.

Great food for thought / model to twiddle and overlay your ideas on to to sense check. It's the nicest visualisation I've seen  that I can apply what I call my recipe & ingredients list for evaluating content ideas against.

Catchy Tunes & Bands in Banners from Malaysia

Apparently I'm a bit behind the page and the notion of Banner Concerts was pioneered last year via a Belgian Bank called Axion.

They built sets that were scale models of traditional ad formats, streamed live music performances into banners in situ and then  encouraged X-Factor style interaction and voting for favourite acts.

Nice. Who said financial services always had to be dull?  Here's a short video that brings the initiative to life:

As my friend Faris says, Talent Imitates, Genius Steals. So applause and compliments to the originators of this Malaysian mash up of Banner Concerts.  The winner will be announced on November 21st 2009.

Meanwhile this cheesey but incredibly catchy pop song has been playing every time I've opened Firefox for the last week.  But if you can't be bothered to go over to the campaign page, here's the video on YouTube.

I love the notion of content and digital display working hard together to deliver engagement. Smart.

Rich pickings from the digital treasure trove

BIG digital treasure find courtesy of Google / Ad week conference this week. A veritable banquet of food for thought.

Yes, there's 80+ slides, but it does a great job of a round up of cool, quirky, interesting and inspiring things that have been done via Google, Android, YouTube and API's.

Well worth a look. Then a ponder about what sort of spins and twists you could put on any of those ideas or technologies to make them work for your brand.

Ongoing happiness thanks to Fiat 500C

Yup, as predicted in my original post about the Fiat 500c Happiness playlist on Spotify, 2 months later I'm still regularly listening to it, albeit I've also recently added some other "shortcuts" from Sharemyplaylists.com. I'm also looking increasingly fondly at the Fiat 500's I see around and about and whilst changing my Mini is on the cards, trading it for an even smaller boot really isn't practical so it's just going to have to be unrequited love, for now at least.

They ended up with 2498 submissions to their playlist (double click it and then double click within Spotify, & get in touch if you are in a Spotify market and would like an invite) which is not bad for a week long campaign. Then, having got people to engage with them, thumbs up for having twigged the importance of follow up in relationships. They emailed me just a few weeks later about their BIG SMILE event. Sadly I was away and couldn't make it, but they've been smart enough to put photos up on their website:

Then yesterday, I got a tweet announcing the voting is open for the Fiat 500C Top 50 feelgood tracks. More ongoing reasons for me to engage with the brand (I duly voted of course).

Shortcuts within shortcuts. Makes a huge amount of sense given Spotify's recent release of the iPhone and Android app. I'm looking forward to adding the Fiat 500C top 50 happy tracks playlist soon.

Bitesize is good on mobile. Especially given the purported short-ness of battery life for iPhone 3GS.

I'm looking forward to my next Fiat 500C smile-instigator.

Fancy Dress Fest

It's fancy dress music festival time with Bestival taking place on the Isle of Wight this weekend.
Photo credit to: louise-taziva via Flickr

For those of you going and who haven't quite got your outfit sorted, maybe you should take inspiration from this fun if gimmicky plaything from my buddies at Cartoon Network: Scooby-doo yourself.

Design Icons:the Tube Map

The first diagrammatic map of the Underground was designed by Harry Beck in 1931. It has become a design classic. Clear, easy to understand. Iconic. Which is perhaps why there are so many variations on it. I recently wrote about a mash-up that put pubs in relation to tube stations. Very handy.

Well, I've just come across this version which Vodcaster created based on the 250 best movies, as voted by IMDb.com users on the 19th of June 2009.

Sharing the easy way with Posterous

I tripped over Posterous via my friend and designer-buddy Mark a while back. It's great: easy-peasy to set up and use, a parking space and platform to share the interesting things you find on the web, ideal for those that don't have time or can't be bothered to set up and maintain a blog via Blogger, TypePad or Wordpress.

Set up your own personalised space in all of the time it takes to send an email, get given a unique email posting address and that's it you are off. Share your content just by emailing it, or easier still, add the Posterous button to your browser.

Too easy.

Mark posted an interesting thought on the originality of content. Check it out.

Music mash up

I've stumbled across a miscellany of interesting or quirky pieces of content this week. All of which I've been pointed to via personal recommendation (i.e influenced by people I trust). In one case someone I know, in another by someone I follow on Twitter because they have an interesting point of view). See, it does work!

I'm not quite sure what to say about this first piece of content. It's a collaborative music and spoken word project enabling you to compose you own music 2.0 piece via interacting with a selection of music / word related videos pulled from YouTube.

Go play

Then, mad as a box of frogs, is this site which if nothing else will hopefully serve to convince you that you should never let your creative ideas be limited by notions that the technology isn't there to deliver it!

Last weekend I ended up with a song lyric challenge that was driving me nuts, but happily was resolved speedily with a bit of help from Lyricrat. Bookmark it.

Kick back and smell the coffee

Thanks to a leaderboard that appeared over my inbox this morning, I've found a lovely example of a brand that understands how they can use digital spaces to build positive associations around their brand without having to bash the consumer over the head with a brand message based on product attributes.

Carte Noire coffee have built this site which features a series of short video clips of 3 well known actors reading passages from a variety of novels, classic and modern, and in so doing encouraging consumers to a) spend time with their site and b) building the association of kicking back and indulging yourself with their brand.

Nice. Full marks for tying in display advertising to deliver drive to site too. I suspect there's probably activity in other media as well.

Right, I'm off for a coffee and to spend some quality time with the not terribly ugly Dan Stevens from The Line of Beauty, whilst he reads me a passage from Middlemarch. Maybe next time I buy coffee it will be Carte Noire.

Brilliant mash-up

I just came across this fantastic mash-up via a Tweet from a friend of mine: The London Underground map updated with the designer's favourite pubs on in relation to each station.


Brilliant! Now could someone do a mobile app for that please? The London Underground tube map app is already one of my favourite / most useful apps, but add pub suggestions to it...pure gold!