Lessons learned:
- You only have one chance to make a first impression…make sure it’s authentic, and
- Don’t EVER spend $100 million on promoting a CHARITY.
Archive for the 'Communication' Category
Chevy and the Internets II
Published April 6th, 2006 in Communication, Branding and Ambiguity. 0 CommentsFrom the NY Times article:
A spokeswoman for Chevrolet, Melisa Tezanos, said the company did not plan to shut down the anti-S.U.V. ads.
“We anticipated that there would be critical submissions,” Ms. Tezanos said. “You do turn over your brand to the public, and we knew that we were going to get some bad with the good. But it’s part of playing in this space.” (emphasis mine)
OMG Ch3vy w4s teh p0wned, but n0w th3y 4re teh r0xx0r!
Seriously. Well-played.
Chevy and the Internets I
Published March 31st, 2006 in Communication, Branding and Ambiguity. 0 Commentsand this definitely won’t be around long…
But if they do, and Chevy is able to laugh at itself, then I think the company will end up with a lot more respect and a stronger brand - isn’t it very “American” to be able to roll with the punches?. More likely, they will remove the contest all together and pretend it never happened, which will only make the hole that they are in (at least brand-wise) deeper.
Note to Chevy: You can’t force cosumer-generated brand love.
This phenomenon raises some interesting questions about an open-source branding model with companies that do not already have a solid, devoted following. How much control over your brand do you give to the masses? What happens if the result is not all positive? Are there steps a company has to take before it can go to an open-source model?
Overall, this was a bold move by Chevy. Not a lot of companies would even consider hanging themselves out like that. As I mentioned above, Chevy has the ability to make this potentially negative situation into a brand-building experience where they can reposition themselves to lessen their arrogant and bumbling appearance. However, that probably will not happen, and they will continue to erode their brand with the American audience.
They were so close!
Published November 30th, 2005 in Communication, Branding and Non-Profit Branding. 0 CommentsBoingBoing has been following the exciting development and implementation of the One Laptop Per Child project and they came across another company - AsiaTotal - that wants to give FREE laptops to the developing world (OLPC laptops are $100). However, unlike OLPC, “the [AsiaTotal] machines’ keyboards are lined with hotkeys that take their users to sponsors’ retail websites.” There are also some other major design flaws that limit usability, networking, and expandability.
I was initially incredibly excited, because the headline on the BoingBoing article read Free, ad-supported PCs for the developing world? and that had me thinking that private-sector companies had signed on to sponsor the OLPC project, perhaps realizing the publicity and reputation boost would be unbelievably good for brand image around the world.
But no…of course not. Instead what has happened is another incredibly short-sighted and downright ignorant move by businesses and marketers who just don’t get it. AsiaTotal is basically selling people into commercial/economic slavery, and they are selling this point as a sponsor benefit! From the AsiaTotal webpage:
“For the Sponsor, particularly lead sponsors such as a country’s telecommunications companies, the potential is immense. Not only will Sponsors benefit from a huge new market, but the social responsibility and impact of being involved with iT cannot be underestimated. Not to mention the fact that sole ownership of a hotkey ensures a level of brand loyalty that you could only dream about.” [emphasis added]
This kind of branding practice is absolutely unethical…and yet this business model was so close to being something that would be applauded around the industry. Take the One Laptop Per Child project for example - affordable, well-designed machines that will no doubt help developing countries & people for $100. Combine that with a large, global company (or any company for that matter) like Starbucks (because I’m writing this in one right now). To provide 10,000 computers for developing nations, Starbucks only has to put down $100,000…chump change for a corporation that size. Starbucks, in turn, gets a massive amount of brand currency - good repute - that will no doubt increase the sales of frappuccinos world-wide and ensure a level of brand loyalty that AsiaTotal could only dream about. Stick a Starbucks sticker on each laptop sponsored and there you have it. While a person initially receiving the laptop might not make enough in a year to buy a peppermint mocha, their children or children’s children will likely be better off and remember the investment made in their community.
This business model is similar to the sponsorship system found in international football (read “soccer” for most Americans). Sponsors benefit teams, which in turn benefit their communities and sponsors through reputation. In the OLPC example, the same model applies - sponsors benefit organizations, which benefit communities, and the reputation boost comes from the act of social investment. This is the model that I’ve been working on for disaster response and preparedness as well as open source branding. It’s viable, proven, and jives with the current thinking on branding & globalism. However, based on the AsiaTotal example, it looks like there is still a lot of convincing to do.
Branding is all about having a nice conversation, and we all know that in order to have a nice conversation you have to listen.
Continuing from posts found here and here
“For years, I’ve wondered how most of the world ignored the Holocaust even though they knew terrible crimes were being committed against the innocent. How could people be so callous and unresponsive? I have contempt for such people. And then I realized with a chill that our time has been marked by events of incomprehensible brutality and evil, and I have done almost nothing. … I am embarrassed by the possibility that another generation will point at us and say, ‘How could they have been so callous and unresponsive?’”
The more we learn and model how cultures respond to emotion during disaster, the more we can effectively help those in need. Why emotion and culture? Simple: Are people rational when disaster strikes? No, of course not. Yet for some reason, the planning for disaster response expects the opposite. The Katrina disaster put this error in planning in sharp relief – the emergency planners did not account for much of the behavior that happened before, during, and after the event.
They did not understand the culture – A culture in which some people had cars and places to go while others had only their houses, if anything; a culture where communities rely heavily on word-of-mouth, where rumors travel quickly. They also did not understand the phenomenal impact of emotion on this culture. The media understood it, and exploited it to boost ratings (I found it so odd that news crews – vans, helicopters, cameras, lighting, etc. – could get in and out of NOLA with ease, but emergency personnel could not) The emergency planners also did not account for the effect of emotion on their personnel either. Fear and hysteria became so out of control that police officers left their posts, first-responders simply did not go in to some areas of the city, and security personnel were told to shoot-to-kill and were hyped-up for some kind of Mad Max shootout. I remember watching soldiers delivering food with their guns up, ready to fire, and Lieutenant General Russel Honoré, who DID understand the culture but was brought in to the situation late, was yelling at them to “put those damn guns down!”
This is why the disaster after the disaster happened. The people involved in planning expected that certain things, like everyone evacuating and/or taking shelter, would simply happen. Then, when these expected things did not happen, people on both sides – citizens in need of help, and those in positions to help them – were gripped with emotion (fear & hysteria) which was spread by the culture and the media.
In the most basic terms…this was a communication problem. And how do we solve the problem? By being able to understand cultures and emotions. So, what kind of person knows about communication and its relationship with culture and emotion?
That’s right, designers…I’m looking directly at you.
Exposure: Media Food Web
Published October 31st, 2005 in Communication, Branding and Ambiguity. 0 Comments
If the last graph was the ecosystem map of media, then this is definitely the food web. It’s interesting to note the relationships between the producers and the distributors and how the distinction is becoming less obvious.
_
* Happy Halloween!
I’m finding more every day! This one rocks my socks…
“Agent-based conception of disaster events: modelling human actors as rule-driven, simultaneous interactions within networks, as both affecting environments and expressing rules differently as environments change.”
Emergence Notes (via Easily Distracted)
OK, so we can use emergence to emulate known, studied phenomenon like a tree or swarm behavior in bees. And we can also use the algorithms devised from these emulations to build unknown things, like the most effective NASA radio transmitter for a satellite based on a tree algorithm or a FedEx package managing system based on an ant algorithm. These things have been done, and they are unbelievably awesome.
But, what would happen if we were to use emergence to emulate and create known and unknown conceptual phenomenon - i.e. emotions, ideas, experiences, cultures, etc?
Would we develop algorithms for emotion - a rule-based articulation of love, hate, or indifference? Perhaps we could create new experiences that we could have never conceived, but are still able to understand because they evolved from other ideas and experiences. Emergent Aesthetics gives us this framework of creation and understanding. Imagine, a Turing machine for Brand Experience.
Open Source Branding: Another Example
Published October 29th, 2005 in Communication and Branding. 0 CommentsGrant McCracken proving that the best parts of conferences are not the actual workshops and events, but the coffee hours in between and the cocktails afterward…
“Marketing instruments and vehicles must grow more interesting and sophisticated. Pirates, jolly green giants, dough boys, these are no longer enough. What we want now are more fully realized creatures that invite the consumer to enter into acts of co-creation and self completion.
The funny thing is that if we do our jobs, the creature leaves the brand and enters the culture. Now marketers are like any other culture creators, except that, unlike the creators of the Simpsons, say, they seize the marketing opportunity at the beginning instead of the end of the creature’s life cycle.”
Story time 14: Sophie, marketing goddess (via Grant McCracken)
Exposure: Media Intersections
Published October 24th, 2005 in Communication, Branding and Ambiguity. 0 Comments
I made this in an attempt to gain understanding on the changing media-scape that envelops our daily lives. I’m not sure exactly if I’ve accomplished something, but it sure looks pretty…
Continue reading ‘Exposure: Media Intersections’
Recent Comments