Digital Brand Strategy | Mace 2008

Themes underpinning digital branding MACE Congress 2008 Patrick Collings Sagacite Brand Agency Stellenbosch 15 - 17 October 2008

5 Themes

The flow, not the contours The art of gliding 15MB is the new 15 minutes Our virtual reality Reassembling the fragmentation

The flow, not the contours

from mainframe to desktop to internet

internet explorer rapidly losing ground to ﬁrefox

myspace sharing social networking with facebook and others

mainstream media battling bloggers

traditional blogging sharing space with micro blogging

altavista was king before google, will cuil manage to dent the colossus

understand where your market is going and why it is going, but appreciate that the vehicle for getting there will probably change

The art of gliding

you are not inyou think you are control even when

GM’s Chevy Tahoe SUV video clip of user generated tahoe “commercials”

today, everyone can be a director

video clip of user generated polo “commercial”

collection of guinness ads

video clip of non-sanctioned guinness ad

“... they have to keep on consistently building their brands equity so that when a potentially damaging piece of communication does ﬁlter out into the world, their brand is strong enough and their consumers are savvy enough to understand its source is the public domain.”

your brand does not need you to be online others will put it there

invisible

small

7 Guidelines

watch it

increasingly need to be there

empower

engage, or not

integrate

don’t fake it

don’t box the demographic

7 = soaring + gliding + inﬂuencing

accept the loss of complete control and become part of the experience and conversation

15MB is the new 15 minutes video clip of ad men employment ad ipod photo by Вася Артёмов (http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/78518472@N00/2274202900/)

as a society we are becoming more visual “video beats pictures beats text” - trendwatching.com 2008 report

what sort of numbers are we talking about

five billion videos serves each month by youtube 44 percent of all online video consumption in the U.S.A.

embedded video clip of instructional video

what about the news media

news media is promoting video offline south african media organizations developing plans with vide as an integral offering

4 Guidelines

you have to be seen

integrated part of brand communication

parts are greater than the whole

must entertain

we will increasingly tell our brand stories in video and need to weave our brand inextricably into the frames of the video

Our virtual reality

video clip of sony home virtual world

aren’t these just video games

1 players create their own stories 2 players build their own worlds 3 players own what they built 4 players sell what they own

By 2011, 80% of active internet users will have an avatar Gartner Consulting

your kids probably already do

webkinz clubpenguin zwinky neopets imvu barbiegirls gaia habbo redlightcenter kaneva second life unique US visitors in Sept 07, in millions

the virtuality of second life introduced the reality of avatars to adults

they came from september 2006 to june 2008, the number of second life members grew from 800,000 to 14,000,000

they played during the same period the number of simultaneous second life users grew from 10,000 to 65,000

1,000,000 to 2,000,000 they paid in the space of 18 months the average value of transactions per day on second life went from $500,000 to between $1m and $2m* * Figure estimated

32 45 32 average age % females avg hours pm

US 187,000 Europe 160,000 Japan 29,000 Brazil 27,000 Canada 17,000 Most Active Avatars in SL by Region - December 2007

great virtual land rush philips c|net adidas mercedes bmw dell mazda microsoft reuters sony bmg vodafone l’oreal ibm mtv

what went wrong

brands rushed in they didn’t look right or left attempted to conquer rather than integrate failed to realize virtual is not the same as physical brands stumbled

life goes on

what should brands do

understand how brands operate in branded entertainment natural integration into the story line

understand how brands operate in social media & networks multiple conversations and loss of control

understand how brands operate in user-generated content unsanctioned content, mashups and fragmentation

some guidelines

1 be aware 2 see virtual worlds as evolving stories 3 don’t try conquer, immerse

1 be aware 2 see virtual worlds as evolving stories 3 don’t try conquer, immerse 4 treat virtual worlds as petri dishes

innovate and produce multiple options

avatars are escaping their virtual worlds photo by Esprit de sel's (http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/esprit_de_sel/2596849895/sizes/l/#cc_license)

of 23 million and counting

340 m i l l i o n accounts

4 Questions

how close will people and their avatars track one another in brand consumption

which one will be the greater influencer on choice of brand

will avatars become brand ambassadors

what will determine legal right to ownership of an avatar

“One of the things our grandchildren will ﬁnd quaintest about us is that we distinguish the digital from the real, the virtual from the real. In the future, that will become literally impossible. The distinction between cyberspace and that which isn’t cyberspace is going to be unimaginable” William Gibson

Reassembling the fragmentation photo by INTVGene (http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/intvgene/370973576/sizes/l/)

video clip of the modernista Web 2.0 website

1 Observation

brands must exist in the parts as much as they do in the whole

For ongoing coverage of and commentary on brands in the digital arena please visit the Brand Architect blog at http:// www.collings.co.za/ Thanks to Tyler Reed for introducing me to the quote “15MB is the new 15 minutes” Patrick Collings patrick@sagacite.co.za +27 (0)83 616 0967