8.05.09 :: These days social media is bigger than MJ’s funeral coverage, and rightly so. A brand can actually participate in a two way conversation with it’s fans easily. All it has to do is find people that have a reason to talk and nurture that relationship. This is usually done by soliciting feedback, providing a forum or topic to discuss. But what do you do when your audience was born way before the age of the status update? The same thing. Take a look at one of our current direct mail pieces for Walker Place, a 55+ community in Minneapolis.
Working along with the team at Walker Place, we established the idea that their residents were active and their ‘retirement was not tired’. We knew we had to create a piece that would allow resident prospects to embrace retirement and share this thought with others. So, we created a simple 6×9″ sheet of stickers with quippy sayings seniors could use to show their and Walker Place’s vibrancy. (My personal favorite is “I don’t feed pigeons.”) What resulted was a piece that allowed a community to rally around a cause (active retirement) and share this thought with others (with stickers). This mailer outperformed all our expectations drastically (some people even showed up to their tours wearing stickers), so needless to say the team at Walker Place was pleased.
But, what does this mean? Well, it still means an original idea, with the right medium and a great client can make an impact. It also means you don’t have to be online to be a brand people talk about (though it does help). You simply have to have the right message executed well. Too often this simple truth is neglected when we are constantly bombarded with million dollar marketing buzz words, bloated creative and, dare we say it….sameness. So, before all else, embrace simplicity.
6.24.09- If you’ve been following this blog, you’ve probably noted my fascination with e-paper. Well, a group of students at Art Center shared my interest and created a site and a series of videos that demonstrate how a new newspaper might work at Beyond the Fold.
As you might guess, the first question people might ask is: Why waste your time thinking about this before we can do this? Well, aside from the aesthetic halo this brings, I think the it offers us some practical advice. Since the days of DaVinci and the helicopter, we have always come up with more human and organic solutions when there are no technological restrictions. Why? Because it is our daily experiences that we try to improve. We are not slaves to machines or guidelines.
The same goes for solving any brand problem. We must think what is ideal before we think what is real. Start with: “In world filled with only possibilities, what and how do I want people to interact with my company?” After you have this, bring in the code, the legal copy and the sizes, but never forget your ideal solution (or least how it feels). After all, any reality can be beaten with enough imagination.
We have recently seen a dramatic shift in the definition and responsibilities of friendship. According to Time Out Chicago, we are more likely to call people our friends without really defining them as real friends. Some sites like Facebook and Twitter have made friendship equivalent to replying to a status update. And even Dentyne is telling us to how to treat our friends:
But, in an era where online social networking is the norm, how do we find the set of people who’s opinions we trust the most? And how does this effect what we buy?
Well, there is a fair amount of research on the subject of online word of mouth referrals amongst friends and it all centers around two things: 1.) A referral by a past customer is one of the most trusted pieces of online communication and 2.) The Dunbar Number. According to this concept, a human being can sustain relationships and communicate with about 150 people. Ironically, this is the average number of friends users have on Facebook. These 150 people make up a person’s referral circle, the people we receive information from (commercial or otherwise). Yet only 26% of these 150 will actually be called ‘real friends’ according to the aforementioned article in Time Out.
So, do we only trust these 39 people who we call our ‘real friends’? Well, a local artist/teacher, Maria Scapelli, might be able to shed some light on that with a project called Peoplescape 365. Essentially, Scapelli set out on a mission to make one new friend a day for a year either online or offline. Her topline conclusions: 1.) she only kept about 10% as ‘real friends’ 2.) almost all of these people she met in person. So, based on these loose numbers, we might be able to say a person is only able to maintain about 30-40 real friendships and that these relationships are mainly forged by face-to-face contact.
Does that mean we don’t trust the remaining 110 people in our social circle when they say a Samsung TV is a great purchase or buy a book recommend by Legend457 online? No, of course not. But when it comes to making a brand something we love to a point of passionate irrationality (see Lovemarks), one might assume we have to talk to these 30-40 people (among other things). If we don’t, we are simply just providing purchasing descisions not life long loves.
4.16.09 :: The fate of the daily newspaper has been the talk of the town for some time now. Here in Chicago, The Sun Times has filed for bankruptcy. In Minneapolis, their daily is discussing reducing itself to a once a week publication and the Seattle city newspaper has gone entirely online. The reasons are the same– newspapers do not have the ad revenue to compete with the ad dollars and real time news found on the web.
While reading The Reader (a local Chicago indie paper) on my way to work today, I discovered a simpler reason why the newspaper is failing: you have to turn the pages. On any given day, you will see plenty of people hold a coffee and bag in one hand and a newspaper in the other. To continue reading a story, a messy ballet of appendages and items ensues that eventually results in someone using their mouth as a third hand.
So, what happened that the newspaper became cumbersome? Well, we’re busy. In fact, Americans still work the most per week out of any country. And we’re mobile. We now change jobs more, travel more and demand information sooner. (Thank you, Al Gore and the Interwebs!)
So, I would argue the mere design of the newspaper is failing. It wasn’t the business model or the ROI, it began with a product that simply did not keep up with our new nomadic lifestyles. Proper design takes into account it’s user and the environment. Reference the iPod, iPhone and the Amazon Kindle who all knew ease of use with one finger is paramount. Even Yoplait figured this out with one handed yogurt, GoGurt. The newspaper failed to recognize its user’s experience. Save the NY Times, which can explain itself.
