Betraying ourselves
I found myself in Starbucks this morning, ordering a ‘Grande Cappuccino’, standard behaviour for a middle class white boy working in the media I suppose. This standard behaviour led to an odd feeling, a pang of guilt. It wasn’t always like this. I didn’t even used to drink coffee, let alone expensive branded takeaway yuppie coffee in Canary Wharf – I went to a state school for goodness sake. This is clearly a case of middle class guilt, but, I felt there was also something else going on. I felt that by changing my behaviour, the’ new’ coffee drinking me had somehow betrayed the ‘old’ me. It’s not just an economic climate thing either. Even writing this blog post now, I feel a little guilty, I used to think blogs were for self promoting ladder climbers, but I find myself writing one (take what you want from that).
I think this feeling emerges to some extent whenever we change an established behaviour, we feel like we’ve somehow betrayed our old selves for something else. I suppose this feeling is one of the negative re-enforcers of habit, with the feeling of security that we find in our old ways, working as a positive re-enforcer.
If we want to help people change their behaviour, then I believe that we should focus some of our efforts on elevating the ‘change guilt’ people feel.
Unilever fire Lowe in favour of crowdsourcing – Time for an IP model?
“Unilever is offering $10,000 (£6,087) in a competition to find ideas for its next TV campaign for snack food brand Peperami, using its quirky Animal character, as it decides to drop its ad agency of 16 years and turn to crowdsourcing for creative ideas.”
Interesting article in the Media Guardian today, Lowe have been fired in favour of consumer crowdsourcing of creative work. There’s one interesting catch though, consumers will have to use the Peperami ‘Animal’ character in their concepts. I’m guessing that the character was invented by Lowe and practically given away to Unliever for next to nothing, with Lowe making their money back via billing the hours involved in the roll out of the idea.
Unilever’s “so long and thanks for all the fish” approach is undoubtedly worrying for agencies, but it also presents an opportunity for more beneficial ways of charging for what we do best – ideas. If Lowe had managed to negotiate an intellectually property contract, rather than a fee based contract, they’d be laughing now. A few ways this could work:
- The agency owns the IP on the idea, the Client pays to lease it for as long as they need to, after which the ownership of the idea reverts to the agency
- The agency and Client jointly own the IP on the idea, the agency are paid a percentage of all profits the brand makes whilst the idea is in use, regardless of who is executing the creative
Agencies like Anomaly have been experimenting with this model but it seems like wide scale adoption is a while off.
I’m sure there’s load already written on this, I’ll link to it as I find it.
Society is at a difficult age…
The Brands have worked long and hard to raise Society. First they helped Society recognise and distinguish between objects, they taught Society all the right names, explained how things worked and what they did. As society developed beyond basic skills the Brands began to guide Society in the ways of lifestyle, culture, human relationships and aspiration.
Society grew ever so quickly.
Having grown up somewhat Society now questions the role that the Brands should play in her life, she wants independence, to do things her own way, to learn things for herself. Society now scorns the influence of Brands, despite the fact they bought her into this world and taught her everything she understands. However, every now and again society hits a problem and is happy to accept the security and familiarity of the Brands. Ultimately the Brands know they have to let go, to let Society live her own life. The Brands will have to get used to having a different role in Society’s life, more of a guiding rather than leading role. After all, Society will always need a little love and attention from her favourite Brands every now and again, even if she is all grown up.
The internet of things
Just stumbled upon a product company call Violet, who make very cool internet enabled products that tap into the ‘internet everywhere’ trend, or as Faris calls it ‘interlife’. I think things start to get fascinating when the internet become so ubiquitous is disappears into everyday objects. I suppose internet enabled objects are at one end of ‘internet everywhere’ spectrum, with augmented reality at the other. Below is a product that allows you to create your own RFID tags that trigger specified events:
In his recent TED talk, Kevin Kelly predicts the next 5000 days of the internet. He believes that the next stage of the internet is to expand into the physical world, to give it a body, that everything will become connected. Violet’s use of RFID is interesting because it allows us to bring the connectivity to physical objects that where invented well before the internet was even conceived. This retroactive convergence means we don’t have to wait until the next everyday object gets the internet treatment, we can go ahead and do it ourselves.
Brands that teach
What do people most want in the information age, information I suppose. The old world of the blue-collar worker has all but disappeared, knowledge workers now represent the biggest single economic group in many developed economies.(1) In this new world, education becomes a continuous development process as we try to ensure we are equipped to play our role in the economy. Many developed economies have a knowledge deficit, with the number of skilled jobs outstripping the number of tertiary level educated adults (2) . Governments have reacted by significantly increasing education spend. (3)
“Getting more young people skilled and into higher education has never been so important for our country’s future and the health of the economy as a whole.” (4)
Whether through Open University styled further education programmes, ‘teach yourself’ materials, or through ‘Brain Training’ games, more people than ever are also educating themselves as part of an ongoing process. This even extends to our leisure time:
Number of types of leisure activities with an educational bias undertaken in the last 12 months, January 2009. Base: 1,537 adults aged 15+ Source: Mintel Reports: Edutainment in the UK, March, 2009
A role for brands in this new epoch will be to impart useful knowledge to their consumers. Some brands are already active in this area. Apple holds technology lectures at its stores, when you buy an Apple laptop you get a cool product but also access to knowledge resources that could aid your personal and professional life. In 1998, the Shell Oil Company ran a campaign that provided drivers with life saving knowledge of what to do in dangerous driving situations, such as a high-speed tyre blow out. Whilst Shell may provide practical knowledge other brands provide what Trendwatching call ‘Status Skills’, i.e. skills and knowledge that provide social status. The jewellers, Tiffany’s, provides knowledge of how to buy gold, pearl and diamond but also provide guidance on sophisticated cultural etiquette such as formal dinner parties.
Finally, brands can also teach skills that are neither professional or status related but fall into the ‘hobby’ category. More and more people are spending more and more time (and money) on pursuits that have no pay off other than satisfaction, i.e. hobbies, Seth Godin provides a great post on this here.
Strong brands like Apple and Tiffany’s can extend that expertise beyond their intrinsic product knowledge to provide life developing knowledge to their consumers. What knowledge could your brand provide to consumers?
Part of a broader essay, which can be found here.
[1] Those in managerial, professional and technical occupations represent
35.5% of the US workforce and a further 24.8% work in sales and office roles.
CIA World Fact Book, 2008 data (www.cia.gov)
[2] Education at a Glance 2008: OECD Indicators, www.OECD.org
[3] Education spending rose in all OECD countries, on average by 19% between 2000 and 2005 alone, representing a 1% average increase in government budget. Source: Education at a Glance 2008: OECD Indicators, www.OECD.org
[4] David Lammy, UK Higher Eucation Minister , The Guardian, 31st March 2009 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/mar/31/university-applications-record-high)
The role of brands during technology revolution
Jeremy Bullmore points out that you really appreciate the value of good branding when it is completely absent. In the attached video Bullmore talks about why the savings market is in a mess which is interesting in itself but he also suggests that the role of brands should be to explain complicated things in a simple, consumer friendly way. In a world that seems to get more complicated by the second there seems to be an increasingly important role for clear, strong brands that can help explain things.
This is almost a return to an industrial revolution era of branding where technological advancements in packaging and production led to a massive proliferation of new products and categories. The role for a brand in the first half of the 20th century was to explain what the product did and to help people understand how to use it. If we are indeed going through a digital revolution (as apposed to the industrial one) a role for brands could be to help consumers navigate their new world.
When misunderstanding can be good
We all seem to go to great deal of trouble to make ourselves properly understood by others, especially in the workplace. However, thinking back, it seems that whenever I’ve been credited with a particularly large ‘lateral leap’, a general misunderstanding has often been the cause.
I’m a little dyslexic and often read things the wrong way round, substitute or miss words, and decide my own endings to sentences. When preparing for exams I was always encouraged by teachers to ‘read the question’ at least three times, and then another three times, just to make sure I was answering the examiner’s question and not one that I had made up. Every now and again I’d spend an hour writing an exam answer, and re-read the question one final time before writing my conclusion, to find that I had in fact completely ignored what the examiner was asking. This normally resulted in a bit of a kick-bollocks-scramble approach to make my conclusion link my irrelevant answer to the examiner’s question. However bizarrely, it was on these occasions that I received my highest marks, by answering the ‘wrong’ question I seemed to have displayed a degree of lateral thinking and been awarded for it (Rory has a great post about solving the problem the ‘wrong’ way here). I’ve managed to repeat this level of misunderstanding/lateral thinking a few times now, it even seems to have worked well in interviews.
My rather longwinded point is this, misunderstanding others can result in truly creative results, it allows us to redefine the problem and in doing so reach a solution. Why don’t you try the following next time you get stuck on something:
- Increase your chances of misunderstanding by not paying full attention to the things that could be getting in the way, e.g. the creative brief, the research debrief, the Client’s problem or objectives
- Increase your chances of being misunderstood by being a little vague
NB. The objective is to subtly misunderstand the problem, not to ignore it completely, to get the wrong end of the stick as it were, not a different stick altogether, you know what I mean…
Disclaimer: Employing these tactics may result in your career going down as well as up.
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