The Future of Brands:
I believe the children are our future
I believe the children are our future
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Contents
1. Introduction .......................................................................................................... 4
1.1 I believe the children are our future ............................................................... 7
1.2 The kids are online ......................................................................................... 10
1.2 The digital divide............................................................................................ 13
2. The new media................................................................................................... 16
3. Communication is persuasion .......................................................................... 19
4. Ideas .................................................................................................................... 21
4.1 Choice paralysis.............................................................................................. 23
4.2 The role of brands........................................................................................... 25
5. Ideas made flesh................................................................................................. 27
6. Traits of the emerging media landscape ......................................................... 31
7. Transmedia planning ........................................................................................ 34
7.1 An audit ........................................................................................................... 41
7.2 Ideas from the future ..................................................................................... 45
7.3 Sony Bravia – A future brand case study.................................................... 49
7.4 New metrics .................................................................................................... 52
8. The future of the industry.................................................................................. 59
9. The future is now................................................................................................ 62
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“The future is already here –
it’s just not evenly distributed.”1
1
William Gibson http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Gibson
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1. Introduction
In which we consider prospection
Prospection, the act of looking forward in time, is a quintessentially human
endeavour. In fact, some consider it the quintessential human endeavour:
“The human being is the only animal that thinks about the future.”2
Dennett has noted that \"the fundamental
purpose of brains is to produce future…brains
are, in essence, anticipation machines.\" 3 We
spend much of our time projecting ourselves
forward and we do this to motivate ourselves to
reach towards our desired future, using the lens
of that future as a way to understand what we
Consulting the Oracle at Delphi is a
classical example of our basic human desire
should be doing now.
to look forward
However, we don’t only do this individually; we do it collectively - we are not
only the ape that looked forward we are also the “super-social ape.”4
2
Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert, Page 4
3
Consciousness Explained, D Dennett, http://www.princeton.edu/~stcweb/html/pope02essay.html
4
Herd – How to change mass behaviour by harnessing our true nature, Mark Earls, Chapter 1
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Both of these activities are enabled by our
imagination, a blessing of our frontal lobes: we
can imaginatively project into the future, and
enjoy this application of abstraction, or
‘daydreaming’, and we can imaginatively model
the reactions and thoughts of others, and thus
function in multiple, complex, social groups.
The frontal lobe enables imagination
and foresight
Rather than a redundant interrogation of the brief, the preceding paragraphs
introduce concepts that will be crucial when charting the future of brands.
Firstly, the brief is an expression of the industry’s collective desire to steer its
own path into the future: as Alan Kay said, the best way to predict the future is
to invent it. We can motivate ourselves by imagining less pleasant tomorrows, of
eroding relevance and margins, and thus engage in prudent, prophylactic
behaviour.
Secondly, imagination is the defining faculty of communications. As an industry it
is the source of all the value we add to our clients’ businesses as it allows us to
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create ideas. It is also the realm in which these ideas operate and that realm is
projective and collective.
It is only by exploring how ideas function, how ideas such as brands can
influence or create behaviour and culture, and how this is changing in the face of
a new kind of consumer, that we will be able to explain that the future of brands
is, quite literally, in the hands of the kids.
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1.1 I believe the children are our future
In which we examine the titular proposition and consider the pitfalls of
prognostication
Although phrased as an ironic tautology, the fact that the children are our future
establishes a crucial distinction: the kids are different, in a very specific sense,
which is why communication thinking has to evolve. Except that evolve may be
exactly the wrong word, as it implies an incremental change over time.
Oscar Wilde said that after 25 everyone is the same age. By the same token,
everyone under 25 is different. I believe a generation has risen since the
emergence of the Internet that is fundamentally different in the way in which it
consumes, manipulates and propagates ideas and that the way that brands
express themselves must change in response to this new kind of ‘idea consumer’.
Any attempt to look to the future is usually flawed. When we project ourselves
forward, the imagined results are always tainted by our present feelings – we are
unable, imaginatively, to feel any different. You can easily prove this to yourself
by going shopping twice, once when you’ve just eaten and once when you are
hungry, and comparing what you take home.
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This has also been the case throughout the history of futurology. The bias of
presentism ensures that the novelty of the future is always underestimated.
Examples of this abound5 and it leads to thinking that extrapolates from the
present and makes things bigger.
This extrapolation, if we look to the population as a whole, in statistically robust
national research, will lead us in a similar direction when looking at the future of
brands. The power of television advertising has eroded, but it still functions
much as at ever has.
However, if we look to those under 25, we see not incremental but qualitative
shifts in behaviour. The generation gap has never been wider, because kids can
control their own experiences of ideas in a way the generations that grew up
before never could.
Therefore, the form that ideas such as brands must take in order to be
successful must change.
We will demonstrate how this shift in behaviour will affect the future of brands
by addressing the following:
5
“Heavier than air flying machines are impossible.” Lord Kelvin, the most lauded physicist of his day
\"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.\" -- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
See http://www.anvari.org/fortune/Famous_Last_Words/ for dozens of more examples
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The new active idea consumer
•
Why the shift to active consumption is a discontinuity, which has
•
created a digital divide
What a medium is and how this has changed
•
What communication is
•
What ideas are and what makes them successful
•
o Function
o Form
What kind of ideas brands are
•
How the form of a successful idea is dictated by its context
•
What the new characteristics of successful ideas are
•
What this means for communication planning
•
What these ideas look like
•
Why this requires new success metrics
•
What the implications are for the structure of agencies
•
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1.2 The kids are online
In which we establish that the young have grown up digital
We now spend more time than ever consuming media. This year, Americans will
spend 9.5 hours out of 24 with media, the seventh increase in as many years
and by far the most time spent on any daily activity.6 The young are the heaviest
consumers of media and, since there are a fixed number of hours in the day,
they have outstripped previous generations by consuming multiple streams
simultaneously.7
They “consume their media very differently to the rest of the population,” 8
consciously meshing media together. They are also digitally inclined: “Young
adults (16-24) have embraced new technologies to a far greater degree than the
general population, while they use the more traditional media of television and
radio considerably less.” 9 The Internet is the most used and most important
medium for youth 10 and using it has led to the breaking down of traditional
6
Communications Industry Forecast, Veronis Suhler Stevenson http://www.vss.com/pubs/pubs_cif.html
This covers all forms of mediated content including broadcast, mobiles, gaming etc.
7
It’s a Broadband Life. Yahoo / Mediaedge CIA Summit Report
8
BBC Commissioning Research
http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/marketresearch/audiencegroup2.shtml
9
The Communications Consumer, Ofcom Report
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/cm/overview06/consumer/
10
Truly, Madly, Deeply Engaged, Yahoo! / OMD Summit Report
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media boundaries: for youth “all media is digital”11 as they increasingly use the
same devices to access content traditionally reserved for discrete platforms.
‘I regularly use the Internet to…’ (% strongly agree/agree)
50%
44%
45%
40%
32%
35%
28%
30% 25%
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
To read newspaper To read magazine To watch video clips To listen to radio
articles articles stations
The internet is used to consume other media content, blurring the boundaries between them.
Source: I-Level/IAB/RAB Media Conjunction Study
What’s more, they don’t just consume media, they also produce it. One third of
14 to 21-year-olds have created online content.12
These factors are indicative of a seismic shift in the
way in which young people consumer media. They
mix and blend, surf channels and create their own
because their relationship with media is active rather
Time Magazine Person of the year is YOU, “for
11
EIAA Mediascope research report
seizing the reins of the global media”
http://advertising.microsoft.com/uk/ResearchLibrary/ResearchLibrary.aspx?Adv_ResearchReportID=218
12
Guardian / ICM Poll
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1586639,00.html#article_continue#article_continue
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than passive. For the first time in history, a generation is in control of how it
experiences ideas and they are constructing their own mediascapes, individually
and together. The needs of humanity remain the same but they are combined
with entirely new behaviours; we are “running with the rapid feet of new
technology, yet carrying the same ancient and unpredictable human heart.”13
13
Convergence Marketing: Strategies for Reaching the New Hybrid Consumer, YorramWind and
Vijay Mahajan, Pg XIII
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1.2 The digital divide
In which we argue that the shift to active idea consumption is a discontinuity and
meet the Massive Passives
In 2001, a challenge issued to the American educational system introduced us to
Digital Immigrants and Natives:
Today's students have not just changed incrementally from
those of the past, nor simply changed their slang, clothes,
body adornments, or styles, as has happened between
generations previously. A really big discontinuity has taken
place. One might even call it a \"singularity\" - an event which
changes things so fundamentally that there is absolutely no
going back. This so-called \"singularity\" is the arrival and rapid
dissemination of digital technology in the last decades of the
20th century.14
Interactive communication technologies have fundamentally altered the way in
which thinking patterns developed in the generation born since their widespread
14
Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Mark Pensky, from On the Horizon, NBC University Press
http://www.twitchspeed.com/site/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-
%20Part1.htm
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adoption. Rupert Murdoch popularised these terms when he used them as the
basis of a speech:
”A new generation of media consumers has risen, demanding
content when they want it, how they want it, and very much
as they want it.”15
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lynetter/322112273/
When looking to the future, we need to consider how the digital generation
responds to ideas and what the nature of the paradigm shift that has occurred is.
However, for the medium term, the communication industry needs to consider
the fact that there is a now bimodal consumer base. For some we need to
consider the brave new \"world of platform-agnostic content [and the] fluid
15
Speech by Rupert Murdoch to the American Society of Newspaper Editors
http://www.newscorp.com/news/news_247.html
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mobility of media experiences”16 but the majority will continue to operate much
as they ever have. Having grown up with an essentially passive relationship with
media, the shift to becoming an active consumer of ideas is neither likely nor
desirable.
So when planning for mass market brands today, we need to keep the Massive
Passives in mind, but we shall leave them here as a remnant of the present and
continue our journey in the future.
A segmentation of the bimodal base for media consumption, from the IBM report
The end of TV as we know it: A future industry perspective, showing the slight shift towards controlling their own
media experience that the Massive Passives, consumers who have grown up in a passive media culture and have
a primarily passive relationship with it, are projected to make by 2012. It is important to note that they will not
reach levels of control over their own media experiences that the younger generation have already achieved by
2005.
16
The end of TV as we know it: A future industry perspective, http://www-
935.ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/ibvstudy/imc/a1023172?cntxt=a1000062&re=endoftv
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2. The new media
In which we establish that a medium is a vector for ideas and suggest that
interactive is different
The adoption of digital technology in the late twentieth century triggered a
number of rapid changes in the nature of media, but before we begin to look at
them we need to agree on what a medium is.
As with a great deal of the key terminology of commercial communications
[brand being the other major culprit, which we will look at later], a medium is a
poorly defined concept. This is partially due to the narrowing of its meaning that
came from the appellation of media agencies, which unconsciously began to
establish the idea that media referred to the five traditional broadcast channels
of brand communication; partially due to confusion with the broader concept of
the media and probably in some measure due to confusion over the word being
in the nominative plural [which we must assume is what led to a debate entitled
The Battle of the Mediums at the Media 360 conference in 2005. No one
channelled the dead. Magazines won].
For our purposes, a medium can be considered a technology for storing or
transmitting ideas – these are principally made up of language, text, sound and
audiovisual imagery, although increasingly diverse iterations of these vectors are
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beginning to develop – ask yourself if a game or an event sits comfortably in
these categories?
Hyper-fragmentation was the first effect of digitisation. It’s been discussed
extensively before and so we shan’t dwell on it, but it is important to consider as
it begins the journey towards consumers controlling their experience of ideas:
fragmentation leads to choice and choice requires volition and action.
Media fragmentation since 1700. Numbers of available media channels on the vertical axis is plotted against
time on the horizontal. We can clearly see the rate of fragmentation accelerating to an almost vertical incline as
digitisation increases the available bandwidth of media until it is virtually limitless.
Source: Millward Brown
With the emergence of interaction, a host of new cultural behaviours began to
develop that changed the way people dealt with ideas – media changed from
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being passive to being active. Once ordinary people were able to take control of
the means of production and distribution, what had once been the mass media
became the media of the masses.
The important aspects to consider when looking at the media landscape are the
behaviours it engenders, not the technologies themselves. There are distinct
behaviours, changes in the way ideas are consumed, that have been brought
about by these technologies.
In order to demonstrate how the changes
have in turn changed how ideas are
consumed and propagated, we need to
establish how ideas worked in a pre-digital
culture. We need to understand what
communication is, what made ideas
successful before, how this applies to
brands, and then look at how this has
changed since the filing system Tim UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Tim Berners-
Lee, inventor of the world wide web.
Berners-Lee invented changed the world.
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3. Communication is persuasion
In which we suggest that all communication is persuasion
“Go ye...into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature”17
The communications industry concerns itself with a specific subset of
communication. Communication in its broadest sense can be defined as any
means by which “one mind may affect another.”18 This covers language, art, and
all human behaviour.
Commercial communication can be described as the “dispersion of persuasive
symbols in order to manage mass opinion”.19 However, this persuasion element
is in fact embedded in the notion of communication.
Humans have an inbuilt desire to spread their own ideas. There are compelling
anthropological reasons for this. We pass on our ideas in order “to create people
whose minds think like ours”20 because this delivers an evolutionary advantage:
there is safety in numbers.
17
Mark 16;15
18
Recent Contributions to the Mathematical Theory of Communications, Warren Weaver
19
Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication, John Durham Peters, P.11
20
Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert, Page 215
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Any time we communicate anything to anyone, we are attempting to change the
way their brains operate – attempting to change the way they see the world so
that their view of it more closely resembles our own. Almost every assertion –
from the abstract notion of a deity to giving someone directions – attempts to
harmonise the receiver’s beliefs about the world with the transmitter’s.
All communication could therefore be understood as persuasion, rendering the
idea of ‘hidden persuaders’21 either nonsensical or absolute, depending on your
point of view. Even when stating a fact, you are attempting to make someone
believe you. Every communication interaction is structured to optimise its
persuasiveness – the form, language and structure of this paper is a specific
attempt to make you, the reader, agree with the ideas that are being proposed –
and that structure needs to be tailored to the audience:
\"If you wish to persuade me, you must think my thoughts, feel my
feelings, and speak my words.\"22
If we are to understand how to successfully persuade in the future we need to
think the thoughts and speak the words of the young, but first we need to
establish a criterion of success and then anaylse what has allowed ideas in the
past to become successful, in order to then demonstrate how this is changing.
21
The Hidden Persuaders, Vance Packard
22
Cicero, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicero
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4. Ideas
In which we look at what ideas are and establish what success is
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them into shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name23
Ideas are specific thoughts triggered in the mind, the desired product of any
communication interaction. Due to the objective of commercial communications
– to influence mass behaviour, usually purchase behaviour - the sort of
successful ideas we need to understand are ones that establish themselves firmly
into the collective consciousness, propagate themselves and influence behaviour
as they go.
The oldest and most successful idea in history provides a perfect example of how
ideas worked in a linguistic culture. The principle of reciprocity, also known as
The Golden Rule, is a fundamental moral principle found in all major religions
and cultures in almost exactly the same form:
“Treat others as you would like to be treated.”24
23
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare
24
This maxim is often attributed to Jesus Christ but is in fact much older, recorded at least as far back as
500BC in the Analects of Confucius, Chapter 15, Verse 23
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Its prevalence is a clear indication of its hold
on the collective and, as the foundation
underlying every major religion, it is hard to
envisage a more potent agent of behavioural
change.
Like many of the ideas that have stuck 25 for
thousands of years, The Golden Rule is
aphoristic. Proverbs are the oldest class of
successful ideas, nuggets of wisdom that
transcend centuries and cultures: versions of
the proverb “where’s there’s smoke, there’s
fire” have appeared in more than 55
languages. 26 The success of these ideas is
The Golden Rule is the founding
principle of all major world religions
driven partially by function and partially by form. and is expressed in almost the same
form in each
25
The middle section of The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell is called “The Stickiness Factor” - ideas
that stick are more likely to propagate and effect change, although Gladwell never examines what makes
ideas sticky as this is beyond the scope of his epidemiological analysis of culture.
26
Made to Stick, Chip Heath & Dan Heath, Pg 12
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4.1 Choice paralysis
In which we see that the function of successful ideas is to save us from decisions
Choice is paralysing. We believe that we want the freedom to make our own
decisions but giving us a choice makes us anxious and leads to seemingly
counter-intuitive behaviour.
One psychological experiment gave students the choice between attending a
lecture by an author they admire, who is only visiting for one evening, or going
to the library to study: 21% decided to study. Suppose instead there were three
options:
1. Attend the lecture.
2. Go to the library.
3. Watch a film you want to see that is only on for one evening.
When a different group of students were given these choices, 40% elected to
study – double the number who did before. Giving students two good
alternatives to studying, rather than one, paradoxically makes them less likely to
choose either.27 This effect has also been observed at the point of purchase. A
2000 supermarket study involving choice of jams showed that although more
shoppers were attracted by 24 varieties of jams in one stand, only 3% of them
27
Made to Stick, Chip Heath and Dan Heath
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bought any of the jams displayed. On the other hand, 30% of the shoppers who
stopped by the stand that offered only 6 varieties of jams bought some.28
The supermarket shelf is a source of great choice and, therefore, anxiety
Proverbs are successful ideas because they are helpful in guiding decisions.
Whilst expressed simply, they contain complex ideas that function as heuristic
devices for situational decisions. The Golden Rule is so profound it can influence
a lifetime of behaviour. It is compact enough to be sticky but meaningful enough
to make a difference.
At the supermarket, brands perform the same function.
28
Iyengar, S. S. \"Choice and Its Discontent,\" Hermes,
http://opus1journal.org/others/killerapps/paralysis.html
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4.2 The role of brands
In which we challenge the myth of simplicity
“Things should be made as simple as possible -- but no simpler.”29
There is an accepted notion that communication must be simple. This idea is
reductive and misleading. Whilst proverbs have simple forms, they contain
complex ideas. Cervantes called them “short sentences drawn from long
experience” 30 , a description that equally applies to a well honed brand
proposition.
The myth of simplicity has led us inexorably to Lord Saatchi’s One Word Equity
concept of brand positioning. In 2006 he proposed that in this world of
fragmentation and clutter, brands had to be honed down to a single point, a
single word. A single word without context is both too open to interpretation and
too narrow to be meaningful. Brands have never been simple.
A proverb simplifies choice, is expressed simply but contains complex ideas that
build on what people already know [in the case of the Golden Rule, it relies on
someone knowing how it feels to be treated themselves]. By leveraging lower
level cognitive schemas, they can express higher level ones succinctly. When
29
Albert Einstein
30
http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Discourse/Proverbs/Definitions.html
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expressed abstractly, as in the proverb “A bird in the hand is worth two in the
bush”, they function as generative metaphors, a term used to describe
metaphors that generate “new perceptions, explanations and inventions”.
Similarly, brands are ideas that simplify choices, compress complexity and build
on what consumers already know. They are traditionally compact and abstract,
taking complex notions and packing them down; side-stepping into other
territories to make them more tangible, they enable people to avoid making
decisions from first principles and they take on symbolic associations that allow
us to employ them in the construction of our own identity.
Brands still need to tap into the “ancient and unpredictable human heart”,
providing the same successful functions all the way up Maslow’s hierarchy but
the form in which they will need to iterate in the future will have to change,
because of the way in which the new active consumer consumes ideas through
media.
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5. Ideas made flesh
In which we analyse the form of ideas and determine how this has changed over
time
We have established the underlying function that successful ideas, proverb or
brand, share. However, the forms in which these ideas are communicated are
very different. Aphorisms are specific expressions, ideally suited to propagation
by word of mouth in pre-literate cultures and on into today by the same
mechanism. They are dense generative metaphors, phrased in order to optimise
storage in the mind and spoken transmission – having a consistent and
mellifluous form, they are Homer’s “winged words”, flying from one person to
another.
The form successful ideas take is delineated by the dominant communication
technologies of the age.
Writing and the printing press enabled significantly more complex ideas to
propagate across time and space, but they are still relatively inefficient
technologies for storage and retrieval.
The development of mass media heralded the Golden Age of brands and the
forms that developed then are the forms we still recognise today –
advertisements.
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If a brand proposition is a proverb, an advertisement is a parable: it applies
narrative or abstraction, or both, as devices to bring ideas to life in a memorable
way.
Print advertising developed first as long form copy. Classic print ads, such as
Lemon, rely on body copy to communicate.
However, it is not solely the medium itself
that dictates the form ideas need to take; it is
the context in which they operate.
Thus, following the advent of audio and then
audiovisual mass media, print ads began to
evolve to keep in line with the dominant
modes of idea transmission. Print advertisements now more often resemble
posters, reflecting the reduced levels of attention available. Indeed, the same
executions are often used for both, with long copy reserved for direct response
advertising.
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Stella Artois “Street”, used both in press and outdoor advertising
The form is also delineated by the relative scarcity of the vector – commercial
broadcast time is limited and thus ideas are packaged into 30 second sound bites
on radio and television.
The arrival of the Internet as a dominant communication technology thus effects
not just how ideas are made flesh online, but also how all other channels will be
used. The relative scarcity of media through which to communicate ideas has
begun to vanish and we have an extraordinarily efficient way to store, access
and transmit ideas. Rather than media, in the digital world attention is the scarce
commodity.31 Correspondingly, the way in which people interact with ideas has
undergone a transformation.
31
The Attention Economy, Wired Magazine http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.12/es_attention.html
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Just as the Internet allowed retailers to service the long tail of retail by removing
the relative scarcity of shelf space, so it will allow us to develop the “long tail of
brand-building,”32 creating more complex brand ideas that earn attention, rather
than interrupting it.
“The long tail of the brand. The primary proposition stills draws the hits but lack of scarcity of media and low distribution costs enable
33
the brand to connect every niche idea with its own set of loyal consumers”
32
The Elongating Tail of Brand Communication, Mohammed Iqbal, O&M
33
Ibid.
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6. Traits of the emerging media landscape
In which we propose the new characteristics of successful ideas
The emerging media landscape, the context in which ideas exist, is qualitatively
different from what has gone before because it is intrinsically active. Brought up
online, the young naturally construct their own paths through media, branching
hypertextually34 from site to site. It follows, therefore, that the future of brands
is intrinsically participative. There are some additional key characteristics that will
define the form of ideas, and thus brands, in the future:
Convergent: every idea, image, story, brand and relationship will play
•
itself out across the broadest range of channels, requiring a corresponding
increase in the complexity of brand narratives, tapping the long tail of the
brand.
Recombinant: “The remix is the very nature of the digital”35. Normalised
•
via Ctrl C and Ctrl V, a generation has emerged that naturally treat ideas
as themselves recombinant, and as inputs to further remixing.
34
In computing, hypertext is a user interface paradigm for displaying documents which, according to an
early definition (Nelson 1970), \"branch or perform on request.\" The most frequently discussed form of
hypertext document contains automated cross-references to other documents called hyperlinks. Selecting a
hyperlink causes the computer to display the linked document within a very short period of time.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertextuality
35
William Gibson, author of Neuromancer,
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Networked: media technologies are increasingly interconnected, allowing
•
the effortless flow of content from person to person, or increasingly from
many to many, replacing the sender / receiver mainstream media model
of old.
Additionally, the internet has triggered a dismantling of the notion of authority
that is also pertinent to the future of brands. The internet disrupts the notion of
the expert, since all
information is now
accessible to all, and
the increased
transparency it has
brought about has
been accompanied by
an erosion of trust in
traditional authorities, http://www.flickr.com/photos/lynetter/153715927/
such as government, corporations and traditional media, with a corresponding
rise in trust in other people.36 Thus, traditional singular authorities have been
displaced by the authority of the collective.
36
“The Edelman Trust Barometer has shown consistent decline in traditional authority. The 2007 edition
showed that 44% trust conversations with friends and peers while 33% trust articles in newspapers.
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Further, the advent of interactive communication technologies such as video
games has led to a gradual increase in the explicit complexity of ideas embraced
by the young.37
In order to create ideas that leverage these new characteristics, we need a new
model for communications planning in a converged culture.
37
Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter,
Stephen Johnson
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7. Transmedia planning
In which we propose a new model for communications planning and use it as a
live example of a successful idea
In October last year, I wrote a post on my blog38 that outlined a new model for
communication planning. The idea was built upon the concept of transmedia
narratives proposed in Convergence Culture39 combined with Johnson’s
complexity arguments. An edited version of that initial post follows.
Jenkins describes The Matrix as a transmedia narrative - a story that unfolds
across different platforms.
38
http://farisyakob.typepad.com/blog/2006/10/transmedia_plan.html
39
Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, Henry Jenkins
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Rather than there being a film narrative that has spin offs, key elements of The
Matrix story are in the video game, the animations, the comic books. He argues
that few consumers will be able to dedicate the time required to get the whole
picture, which is why transmedia storytelling drives the formation of knowledge
communities - communities that share information – and triggers word of mouth.
Since there are so many elements to the story, every member of the community
is likely to have something to share, some social currency to trade, so
communities form and information is passed around the network.
How then might brands operate in this convergence culture?
The model that has held the industry's collective imagination for the last few
years is media neutral planning. In essence, this is the belief that we should
develop a single organising thought that iterates itself across any touch point -
this was a reaction against previous models of integration that were often simply
the dilution of a television idea across other channels that it wasn't suited to.
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Media Neutral Planning then looks like this:
The point is that there is one idea being expressed in different channels. This is
believed to be more effective as there are multiple encodings of the same idea,
which reinforces the impact on the consumer.
Now let's consider transmedia planning. In this model, there would be an
evolving non-linear brand narrative. Different channels could be used to
communicate different, self-contained elements of the brand narrative that build
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to create a larger brand world. Consumers then pull different parts of the story
together themselves.
The beauty of this is that it is designed to generate brand communities, in the
same way that The Matrix generates knowledge communities, as consumers
come together to share elements of the brand. It generates endogenous word of
mouth40 by giving people something to talk about.
So transmedia planning looks like this:
Alternate reality games are early examples of this form of communication. While
some brands currently lack the depth that this model requires I think that in a
40
In Herd, Mark Earls makes the distinction between endogenous word of mouth, which naturally occurs
within the system, and exogenous word of mouth, which is when brands attempt to artificially cultivate
buzz using agents, such as P&G’s Tremor network.
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convergence culture, this is how converged brands will have to engage with a
new kind of active media consumer. [End of Post]
The idea was then picked up by another blogger, who built on the initial post in a
follow up post that developed the idea further and into different territories.41
From here it gathered momentum and spread among a defined audience – the
communication industry. The original post was voted Post of the Month42 and
was covered by dozens of blogs from around the world. The idea was presented
at the APG Battle of Big Thinking, where it began to evolve into a separate
Propagation
strand called
Planning, 43 based on the second
half of the idea about tapping into
consumers who are actively
passing on brand messaging to
each other. It was featured in a
Campaign magazine article, and
has since been written about in the
trade press as far away as India. India's leading
advertising and marketing portal, AgencyFaqs.com
http://www.agencyfaqs.com/news/stories/2007/03/02/17203.html
41
Transmedia Planning and Brand Communities, Jason Oke, Vice President, Strategy, Leo Burnett,
Toronto, on Fruits of the Imagination http://lbtoronto.typepad.com/lbto/2006/10/transmedia_plan.html
42
http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2006/11/faris_wins.html
43
http://theapg.typepad.com/battleofbigthinking/2006/10/thoughts_from_i.html
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At the time of writing there were nearly 1000 separate incidences of the
expression “transmedia planning” found on Google, a term that did not exist
before the initial post.
Online mentions of “transmedia planning” total almost 1000, as tracked by Google
The author of Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins, Director of Comparative
Media Studies at MIT, then picked up the idea and posted about it on his blog,44
where he further developed it:
Will transmedia planning make a lasting contribution to
contemporary marketing theory? It's too early to say. As an author,
I am delighted to see some of my ideas are generating such
discussion. As someone interested in marketing my own intellectual
property, these discussions are themselves a kind of transmedia
branding: after all, the more people talk about my book, the more
people are likely to buy it. I don't have to control the conversation
44
http://www.henryjenkins.org/2006/12/how_transmedia_storytelling_be.html
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to benefit from their interest in my product. The key is to produce
something that both pulls people together and gives them
something to do. In that regard, the book may have had greater
impact on the discussions of branding because I didn't fill in all of
the links between branding and transmedia entertainment, leaving
the blogosphere something to puzzle through together.
Agencies have begun to implement the idea for clients, and Mark Earls
has asked to incorporate it into a forthcoming MRS paper.45
Transmedia planning is being consciously
implemented by agencies around the
world
45
Email to the author, dated 16/01/07
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7.1 An audit
In which we validate the new characteristics of successful ideas
Transmedia planning has successfully propagated itself and elicited behavioural
change. An analysis of the idea will help substantiate the proposition that the
characteristics of the emerging communication technologies define the form of
successful ideas.
The idea is convergent – whilst initially iterated in one channel and one place, it
has spread into print and presentation, and the idea itself concerns convergence.
It is openly recombinant – it is assembled from other ideas, which lend it
credence by opening up the authority from the individual to the collective.
Further it has been contributed to, modulated and passed on by interested
parties. In a digital culture, “ideas need other ideas to tell them what they
mean.” 46
It is networked – its propagation relied in the first instance on a single to some
transmission, from which additional nodes rebroadcast it out further and further
into their networks. By putting the diagrams up and allowing them to be
46
The Future Just Happened, Michael Lewis Pg. 143
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repurposed under a creative commons license,47 the idea gave people the tools
to easily propagate it.48
Blog posts that use the diagram to
propagate the idea…even if they don’t
necessarily agree with it.
47
The Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative
work available for others legally to build upon and share. The organization has released several copyright
licenses known as Creative Commons licenses. These licenses, depending on the one chosen, restrict only
certain rights (or none) of the work.
48
Cuttings above can be found at the following URLS:
http://www.influxinsights.com/servlet/ShowComments?id=1007 ,
http://whistlethroughyourcomb.blogspot.com/2006/10/transmedia-and-knowledge-economies.html ,
http://interactivemarketingtrends.blogspot.com/2006/11/transmedia-planning-my-arse.html
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We can hone our success criteria into a list based on the characteristics of
participatory ideas:
1] Converged – or transmedia - ideas that spread complex concepts across
channels in the same way the young consume media, not reiterating the same
thing endlessly in different ways. Narratives such as this are interesting enough
that consumers reach out towards them, and thus they don’t rely on interruption
media, though they may use it as a channel.
2] Recombinant and iterative – both in content, drawing on established ideas,
and in form, allowing recipients of the idea to modulate it and pass it on. To use
Jenkins’ words, it “pulls people together and gives them something to do”
because it isn’t a complete text - there are spaces it opens that others can
explore. By relaxing control, individuals can modulate the form of the message
and therefore have a vested interest in its propagation.
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Lynette Webb, Futures Director of Isobar, picked up the Jenkins comment on transmedia planning
and turned into a presentation slide.
http://blog.futurelab.net/2006/12/key_is_to_produce_something_th.html
3] Networked and collective – reaching into the collective for authority, not
relying on single authorial voice, and empowering the collective to propagate the
idea further, using their own media. “The less control a company has over its
marketing message, the greater its credibility.”49
49
The Economist, 31.05.05
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7.2 Ideas from the future
In which we highlight some examples that leverage these characteristics
A number of successful brand ideas of recent times can be seen to exhibit some
or all of these characteristics.
Alternate reality games, like Audi’s Art of Heist and Sega’s Beta7 are transmedia
ideas – they break down the story into different elements and push them out
into different channels. The Mini Robot created a form of interactive fiction to
kick start the development of an urban legend. Based on a character named
Colin Mayhew who, hoping to make roadways safer, starts building a humanoid
robot from parts of MINI Coopers, and was brought to life through films, via a
fictional book launch, through a web ring of sites that seemed to validate Mr
Mayhew’s existence, conspiracy sites countering the story, press insertions, and
finally through consumer generated sites around which communities developed
to piece the story together.
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Crispin Porter & Bogusky’s Mini Robot Campaign was an interactive transmedia narrative
The rise of the recombinant can be seen in ideas such as Trailer Trashing, re-
editing film trailers to change the nature of the plot, and Web 2.0, the
foundation of which is the atomisation of data and open standards that allows
users to build ideas on top of others, mashing up their own data into Google
Maps, for example.
Brands have also embraced the remix. Old Spice gave consumers the tools to
remix one of their commercials50, and Mountain Dew produced a viral teaching
you how to make your own mash ups51.
50
http://www.whensheshot.com/
51
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4uyN5rQbbU
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www.whensheshot.com allows users to remix an Old Spice ad, utilising a sequencer to arrange film
and sound clips, and then send it on.
Seeking out collective authority is perhaps the most salient and discussed
development in brand communication this year – it’s called User Generated
Content and is currently being leveraged by brands including C4, Coca-Cola,
Chevy, Sony Pictures and pretty much everyone else.
Whether it’s Dove asking their consumer to make their next ad 52 or Nokia
seeding new handsets to bloggers53, this activity is an attempt to overcome the
erosion of trust in conventional, singular authorities by reaching out to the
collective for their blessing, and leveraging the media of the masses in the
52
http://www.dovecreamoil.com/
53
http://blog.experiencecurve.com/archives/nokia-sending-phones-to-bloggers
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process. They are no longer a target audience; they are our ‘partners in
communication’54.
Intermediaries have already sprung to leverage this collective creativity in a commercial way.
Zooppa is a new company that handles live briefs for clients and opens them up to consumers.
www.zooppa.com
54
Propagation Planning, Ivan Pollard, Campaign Article
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7.3 Sony Bravia – A future brand case study
In which we demonstrate how this new model has been put into practice
This thinking has already begun to be implemented within Naked, most recently
on the campaign surrounding the launch of the Sony Bravia television
commercial, Paint. Working with a team consisting of clients, Fallon, Freud, Tonic
and OMD we carefully planned, orchestrated and executed a campaign to turn
the television commercial into a transmedia idea, leveraging the power of the
collective and the recombinant.
Different channels were loaded with different information and the process of
making the film was opened up to interested parties in a way that added intrigue
to the commercial.
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News of the director was leaked to the press, as was the location of the shoot to
the local media.
Press clippings of information leaked in advance of the shoot
People were thus invited to participate from the outset, attending the shoot,
capturing it on cameras and camera phones, footage which then went straight
onto Flickr and Youtube, two of the pre-eminent propagation platforms.
Consumer shots of the filming of the Paint commercial were posted to photo sharing site Flickr.
http://flickr.com/photos/53786020@N00/
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By building a transmedia narrative around the commercial, and dripping
developments online, a specific attempt was made to engage people in “an open
and transparent conversation with the brand.” 55 Bloggers responded well and
built up anticipation for the ad.
Numerous blogs picked up on the leaked material and used it as the basis for discussions
The film was first released online and then screened on television, consciously
catering to the differing needs of youth and the Massive Passives. Online, the
assets of the film were made available for remixing. The campaign was
transmedia, recombinant and collective. But was it successful?
55
David Patton, Senior VP Marketing, Sony CE Europe
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7.4 New metrics
In which we propose new behavioural diagnostic metrics to evaluate the success
of new ideas
In order to determine the success of these new types of ideas, we need to create
some new metrics to add into the traditional basket. There are two classes of
measures tracked in relation to communications: evaluative and diagnostic.
Ultimately, all measure of success need to demonstrate a return on marketing
investment to the bottom line. However, it has been recognised that “advertising
payoffs can seldom be demonstrated in the short term.” 56 The value of
marketing is only accurately reflected when it is considered an “investment in the
long-term health of the brand”.57
Most measures tracked by agencies are diagnostics that are confused with
evaluative measures. Since the total contribution marketing makes cannot be
demonstrated in the short term, even with regression analysis to help untangle
the solus effect on sales, advertisers began to analyse intermediate measures to
understand what effect communication was having on the mental brand equity
of consumers, as this can give “indications as to the future profit trends”58 and
provide inputs into strategy, unpicking how communication shifts perceptions
56
Is your Advertising Working? C McDonald P.8
57
Ibid.
58
Measuring Brands and their Performance, CIM
http://www.cim.co.uk/mediastore/Brand_eGuides/eGuide7.pdf
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that lead to changes in purchasing behaviour. The confusion arises when
objectives are confused with diagnostics – shifts in these “magic numbers” 59
become stated objectives.
Cognitive measures tracked by survey all suffer the same flaws: they require
consumers to tell us what they think and they analyse individuals and aggregate
data to give an overall picture. Even ignoring that “the gulf between the
information we publicly proclaim and the information we know to be true is often
vast”60, attitudes can only be used to “predict behavioural intentions, rather than
actual behaviour.” 61 Perhaps more importantly, “individual tendencies do not
necessarily extrapolate to group behaviour.”62
Studies have shown that image measures tend to correlate to previous rather
than future behaviour. Whilst they may give an indication of predisposition, they
ignore what may be the most important drivers of purchase decisions: collective
perceptions. Behavioural economics indicates key drivers of purchasing include
other people’s behaviour - people do things by copying others. 63 Earls has
posited that “the most important characteristic of mankind is that of a herd
animal.”64
59
Marketing Payback, (Demonstrating Success), R Shaw & D Merrick
60
Freakonomics, Levitt and Dubner, P. 84
61
Belief, Attitude, Intention, and Behavior: An Introduction to Theory and Research, Fishbein, M., &
Ajzen
62
Critical Mass, Philip Ball, P. 395
63
Behavioural Economics, New Economics Foundation
64
Advertising to the Herd, Mark Earls
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It has been shown that a single word-of-mouth interaction can overthrow the
entirety of pre-existing brand effect on purchase intention.65 Brands do not only
influence consumers directly but by introducing a “persuasive influence into the
network”66: the more virulent the brand, the greater the number of transmissions,
which is a measure of collective brand salience. This transmission is often the
result of certain individuals, known as “super-spreaders.”67
68
In an age when half of all consumers actively avoid advertising,69 another newly
relevant measure is approaches to the brand or accessions.70
65
Decision Watch UK, MRS Conference Paper, P. 6: “Gary had been considering purchasing a Toyota
Rav 4 and liked both the look and styling. The price was also within his budget. However, just before
purchasing he saw a vague acquaintance of his driving one in the village and asked him how it was, Gary
said “ apparently he wasn’t that happy so I went off the idea” The extraordinary power of WOM became
obvious”
66
God, Galileo and Google, W Collin, Campaign supplement
67
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assortative_mixing
68
Chart from Connected Marketing: The Viral, Buzz and Word of Mouth Revolution, Elsevier, 2005
69
54% of consumers agreed that they try to resist being exposed to or even paying attention to marketing
and advertising, 69% said that they are interested in products that enable them to block, skip or opt out of
being exposed to marketing and advertising, Source: Yankelovich Omniplus.
http://www.magazine.org/Advertising_and_PIB/engagementguide.pdf
70
the act of coming near; approach. http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=accession
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The emergence of web analytic tools enables agencies to measure both
transmissions and accessions– not all occur online but effects measured on the
web aren’t restricted to it. Google is a “barometer of cultural interest” 71 and
research has shown that online transmissions are a powerful influencer of brand
perceptions and purchase behaviour.72
Returning to the Bravia example, we can utilise a basket of metrics to determine
its success. Blogpulse73 enables us to track transmissions:
Blogpulse shows a clear spike in conversations about Sony Bravia during the key month of the
campaign.
71
What happened when Honda started asking questions? IPA Effectiveness Award Gold, 2004, Stuart
Smith
72
40 million US consumers changed their minds about brands as a result of online information. 60% of
those consumers then switched brand at purchase, whether that purchase had been made online or offline.
Source: Dieringer Group: American Interactive Consumer Survey
73
www.blogpulse.com is a tool for tracking the content of weblog posts. Each post that contains the
specified brand or term is considered a transmission.
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Google Trends74 enables us to track accessions75:
Google Trends shows a similar surge in accessions over the campaign period
Opinmind76 shows that transmissions were overwhelmingly favourable - more so
than mentions for “Sony”:
74
www.google.co.uk/trends
75
Search engines are one of the key channels through which consumers seek out brands. As Google
dominates the search market, tracking the number of Google searches gives a clear metric to establish
trends in accessions.
76
www.opinmind.com, a tool that measures mentions of the brand in proximity to positive or negative
value statements and shows the results as a percentage split.
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In addition there were:
168 separate uploads on YouTube
!
19 remixes
!
Hundreds of thousands of online views77
!
655,000 web mentions78
!
49,744 links to the Bravia-Advert site
!
So the communication has driven a substantial number of positive transmissions
and accessions, it was modulated and propagated by the collective – but did this
translate into financial return?
“Strong sales of BRAVIA LCD TVs contributed to the TV business as a whole
being profitable for the quarter.”79
Sony’s share price has risen by 40% since the campaign began.80
77
It is difficult to arrive at a complete number as the film has been posted multiple times on dozens of
video sharing sites. The most popular versions on Youtube have received well 100,000 views each.
78
Tracked on Google “Sony Bravia Paint”
79
Q3 FY 2006, ending 31st December 2006. Results available here
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/viewer/06q3/
80
Share price risen from approx $37 at campaign launch to $53 now. Whilst share price responds to any
one of an infinite number of influences, the Bravia campaign was the highest profile Sony communication
campaign in that period. http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=SNE&t=1y&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=
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By measures of both effect and effectiveness, the campaign has generated a
positive return in short term sales, collective brand salience, favourability and
shareholder value.
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8. The future of the industry
In which we propose a new model for an ideas agency
An industry that developed in the age of passive idea consumption will need to
undergo a similarly seismic shift in order to successfully connect brands to active
idea consumers.
The agency of the future will need to be built around the value of ideas. Whilst
we have always dealt in ideas, “we have allowed the emphasis, the value, and
the fundamental business model of our industry today, to shift away from ideas
and to focus predominantly on execution.”81
The new agency model needs to move the value away from execution and back
to ideas. This will require us firstly to find new ways to value and monetize the
intellectual property we produce and secondly to outsource the production of
these ideas. This will refocus agencies on their core product – ideas – and allow
us to respond to the rapidly changing communication technologies by recruiting
experts in any field.
Increasingly, this will shift how we work towards the model of film making,
constructing bespoke teams to solve client problems, with ideas companies at
81
Change the Model, Change the World, Keynote Speech, Future Marketing Summit, 2007, Scott Goodson,
Founder and Chairman, StrawberryFrog
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the heart of a hub and spokes model, such as the one proposed by Scott
Goodson at the Future Marketing Summit:
A ‘hub and spokes’ model, with partner suppliers working around a core idea company
The process needs to be collaborative and iterative at every stage. Ideas don’t
flow in one direction, and suppliers will be able to advise agencies on what is
possible and what will work in their fields. An understanding of the active mode
of idea consumption will have to underpin the development of these ideas, as
they accommodate complexity, tap into the long tail of the brand, and equip
themselves with propagation mechanisms.
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The rate of change in communication technologies is going to increase over time
and the only way for agencies to keep up is to outsource production to
specialists, just as production companies currently make films.
Futurology Group What’s Next plots the future of innovation. From products that are almost a
commercial reality, such as electronic ink, to the far off emergence of replicators and web 4.0
Technology will continue to drive changes in the way ideas are communicated.
While the Passive Massive will remain with us for the medium term, the impact
of developments thus far will continue to spread. The impact of developments
just around the corner is difficult to imagine.
\"We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and
underestimate the effect in the long run.\"82
82
Roy Amara, past president of The Institute for the Future
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9. The future is now
In which we entrust the future to you
As Gibson pointed out, the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.
Young people today have grown up with digital media and thus they have an
intrinsically participatory relationship with ideas. They need to be catered for
differently than the Massive Passives and transmedia planning is a new model for
creating ideas that will engage them. By looking at how young people are
consuming, remixing, producing and propagating ideas today we can chart how
brands will operate in the future and begin to change how we create ideas
accordingly.
Word Count: 6,988
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