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