Fallon Brainfood: Inspired By Kittens

Fallon Brainfood: Trends, ideas, opportunities, and thought leadership for our brands. Brainfood is a monthly presentation lead by the Fallon Insight Group. Where We’ve Been in 2008: Virtuality // Design For All // China Rising // The Social 10 // The Mobile 10 What’s Next in 2009: Return of the Hero // Fast-Acting Brands // Generosity // The Dirt on Green // The Viral Vanguards // The Social Enterprise // Alternate Reality Gaming Missed previous Brainfoods? Go to http://www.slideshare.net/group/we-are-fallon

Five months later a groundswell ensued, seemingly overnight. • 4,762,374 Video views across YouTube and Yahool Video • 95,000 Blog mentions • 6,400 Tweets • 1.5MM Google Search citations • 28 Traditional News mentions Copyright ©2009 Fallon Worldwide. All rights reserved. Source: Google Blog Search, BlogPulse, VidMetrix.com, TweetVolume.com

In this Brainfood session: We’ll Discuss Five Lessons To Apply When Developing Conversational Ideas for Our Brands By Dissecting The Forensics of a Conversational Idea: What happened that enabled the “Kittens…” success? And Separating Copyright ©2009 Fallon Worldwide. All rights reserved. Strategy from Serendipity

The “Kittens” video posted in September 2008, but it was on the evening of February 8, 2009, when Al Kelly began “working his networks” that views began to soar. Feb 9, 2009 Copyright ©2009 Fallon Worldwide. All rights reserved.

Among Al’s 800+ Facebook friends—mostly ad industry professionals—some friends whispered in the ears of influential bloggers. 40K Visitors Daily 1.3MM Visitors Monthly Copyright ©2009 Fallon Worldwide. All rights reserved. 571,891 Visitors Monthly

Those influential bloggers drove the early awareness and views of the video. The groundswell was ignited. Fueled +18K views Fueled +50K views Fueled +16K views Copyright ©2009 Fallon Worldwide. All rights reserved.

Implications of “Thundercats, Ho!”: Never underestimate the power of the network. ≥ View your corporate organization as a network. (Could be 10. Could be 1,000. Could be 1,000,000.) ≥ View every individual in the organization as a network to tap into and then figure out ways to tap into these individual networks. ≥ Consider it the obligation of everyone in the organization to nurture their networks and tap into them when a groundswell needs to happen. Copyright ©2009 Fallon Worldwide. All rights reserved. ≥ Outreach to bloggers and influentials beyond your network, too.

YouTube’s “slippy” embed code was replicated and reposted on 700+ blogs, thus rendering the entire Web a “macrosite” host for the video. Copyright ©2009 Fallon Worldwide. All rights reserved. Source: VidMetrix and Youtube Insights

@RainnWilson endorsed the video to his Twitter fanbase of +96K, who re-tweeted and catapulted the meme to #3 “most discussed” on Twitter in a single night. Copyright ©2009 Fallon Worldwide. All rights reserved. Rainn Wilson aka Dwight Schrute of NBC’s The Office Source: Twitter Search

Implications of Take Me Please: You never know where the social media fire may get lit, so be generous with the matches. e Enabl ≥ Encourage theft of your idea. ≥ Build ideas that play well in “slippy” content venues (like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook). ≥ Allow people to steal liberally to echo your content on your behalf. ≥ Be promiscuous. Get beyond your microsites. Copyright ©2009 Fallon Worldwide. All rights reserved.

Over 50 user-generated mash-ups sprouted. “New news” was garnered daily creating over 319K views, which renewed interest and views of the original video. Source: Vidmetrix, YouTube Copyright ©2009 Fallon Worldwide. All rights reserved.

Implications of Talk to Strangers: Recognize that the new influencers at The Social are the nerds, the weirdos, and the fringe elements who command the attention of millions. ≥ Get beyond your comfortable industry cohorts. ≥ The most influential communities dance on the thin line of moral decency, correct spelling, and good taste—and this is why they’re popular! ≥ Celebrate and showcase the mash-ups and imitations. They love you, man, so love ’em back. ≥ Loosen up, dude. Really. Copyright ©2009 Fallon Worldwide. All rights reserved.

The Implications of Be Interesting: The Social does not celebrate the bland or the grey. Go bold or go home. ≥ At The Social, “interesting” often translates to: “silly,” “stupid,” “weird,” or “outrageous.” ≥ But, corporations tend to be more comfortable with the “witty” or “humorous,” rather than the “stupid” or “weird.” ≥ Stop taking yourself so seriously, Dude. ≥ If you want conversation about your brand, then give folks something Copyright ©2009 Fallon Worldwide. All rights reserved. to talk about.

Decades of TV commercial production trained us to maniacally pursue glossy perfection. On YouTube, people don't necessarily care about our gloss. Copyright ©2009 Fallon Worldwide. All rights reserved. In fact, the raw imperfections make this video endearing, fresh, and vital.

Implications of Perfectly Imperfect: Web audiences sometimes forgive and expect some imperfections in exchange for timeliness, authenticity and Beta technology. ≥ At The Social, “perfect” can sometimes be “imperfect” by traditional TV standards ≥ Perhaps less energy on a single overly produced \"perfect\" idea that may fail at The Social… ≥ …And more energy on enabling the idea’s dispersion, the idea’s timeliness, and the beta testing of more social ideas. Copyright ©2009 Fallon Worldwide. All rights reserved. ≥ Building a winning conversational idea for The Social is more art than science - fail fast(er), fail cheap(er) - then optimize. ≥ Bad ideas aren't made any better because they’re built expensively.

Some actionable lessons to apply to our brand ideas: 1. “Thundercats, Ho!” Rally your networks 2. Take Me Please Enable “slippyness” of your contents 3. Talk To “Strangers” Embrace the Social Web’s fringes 4. Be Interesting Embrace your edges 5. Perfectly Imperfect Copyright ©2009 Fallon Worldwide. All rights reserved. Widen our classic standards of perfection

Let’s continue the conversation on our blog. Share ideas that inspire. FALLON PLANNERS (and co-conspirators) are freely invited to post trends, commentary, obscure ephemera, and insightful rants regarding the experience of branding. http://fallontrendpoint.blogspot.com

Fallon Brainfood: Inspired By Kittens

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Notes on slide 1

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