The document discusses ideas that spread widely through social sharing. It introduces the concept of "Ideas You Love to Share" which are ideas that thrive in today's networked age due to people's ability to connect and influence each other through recommendations. The document contains principles for creating ideas that people will want to share widely with others.

2. Brands don’t sell brands anymore, people do.
Welcome to the Ideas You Love To Share book.
It’s a guide to creating ideas that thrive in our Networked Age.
Where we connect with more people than ever before and trust each others’
recommendations far more than those of the media.
Where advocacy is the lifeblood of brands and, therefore, people the most
powerful medium of all.
That means the most powerful ideas of all must be:
Ideas You Love To Share.
In this book, you’ll find eight principles to guide you in creating Ideas You
Love To Share.
And six examples of terrific Ideas You Love To Share we have already created
around the world; see the films at www.mindshareworld.com/what-we-do/
idyl2s
We hope that you find this book useful and entertaining.
And, of course, one that you will share.
Enjoy.
George and Graham
Global Heads of Invention

3. 4 PRINCIPLES
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4. The new math: 1+1=62,500
The neocortex, our ‘grey matter’, governs all the higher order functions
unique to humans.
It is the same size now as it was 250,000 years ago.
Sometime between that date and 50,000 years ago, humans began creating
art, music and complex tools.
We began bartering and exchanging between communities.
We started playing games in our leisure time.
And we started telling stories around campfires.
In those days, everyone was a creative: artist, craftsperson, storyteller,
musician, comedian, teacher.
And media was just what happened between people.
All media was social media.
Only in the last two hundred years did media become a one-way experience.
Books, newspapers, radio and TV made us temporarily believe that media
was something that was created by professionals for us normal people to
passively consume.
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5. Their rise was prompted by the increasing urbanisation of humanity. As June Cohen, Director of Media for the TED organisation says:
When traditional, close-knit rural communities splintered apart and people “The tools are new, but the behaviours come naturally...the rise of social media is actually
found that the shift to urban life offered individualism and isolation. a reprise, a return to the natural order.” 1
These ‘old’ media filled the void. Our social circle now is no longer based on people’s proximity to us.
How is this connected to the magic number of 62,500? As Marshall McLuhan predicted: we live in a global village.
Scientists have found that late Stone Age settlements only very rarely And because we are more connected than ever before, the 250 people we
exceeded 250 people. know are one very quick step away from a further 250 people.
This number defines primitive group sizes. One click away in fact.
Small enough to allow social bonds to be developed and maintained, but Suddenly each and every one of us is only two degrees of separation away
large enough to allow genetic diversity within the group. from 62,500 people.
And because for all but 200 years our neocortexes have only had to And it means that the right kind of message will spread further and faster
remember the names and faces of 250 people, this number has become than ever before.
hardwired into our DNA.
And that is why people are the most powerful medium of all.
In these primitive villages word spread around the whole group like wildfire.
As soon as someone told a story or a joke everyone knew about it.
As soon as a new tool or a new song or a new game was created, everyone
knew.
And now, in 2010, the invention of digital social media has brought us full
circle.
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6. 10 11

7. “When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets
another one.”
(Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosopher and Classical Philologist). 2
They say the only creatures that will survive a global nuclear war are
cockroaches.
They’re wrong; ants will survive too.
Lots and lots of ants.
And they’ll be eating the cockroaches.
Because ants are the most successful species on Earth.
They’ve been around for 130 million years.
Ants started farming, by harvesting fungus in their nests, 50 million years
before humans.
A few square acres of the Serengeti contains as many ants as there are
humans in the world.
The secret of their success is that they are tremendously adaptable.
They respond incredibly quickly and effectively to new situations, whether
opportunities or threats.
Scientists call them an ‘adaptive self-organising system’.
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8. To our human eyes, it seems like a complex hierarchy. In the same way that your friends direct your online behaviour.
With the queen ant in charge of everything. Sending you and trails of people to YouTube clips or viral jokes.
But their system is a bottom-up intelligence. Like ants seeking out a lavish picnic.
Each individual ant is not fantastically clever, but collectively their It’s no wonder internet crazes gain massive momentum so quickly: the herd
behaviour is highly intelligent. instinct, the hive mind, is in control.
It means that ants can accomplish complex engineering feats and allocate Ants do not have fixed roles in their system.
resources with tremendous efficiency.
A soldier becomes a nest-builder then becomes a forager then a farmer
Given enough interactions and the right rules, the whole colony is capable of depending on the needs of the collective.
a great deal more than its component parts.
In the same way that internet users might be a content creator on one site, a
There is wisdom in a crowd of ants. content viewer on another and a commenter on another.
They are a perfect metaphor for how the internet organises its users. Ants take their ‘instructions’ from a pheromone signalling system.
Ants explain how Wikipedia has harnessed the world’s global brain and Think of these messages as different types of advocacy: directing and
organised its knowledge. shaping the wisdom of the crowd.
How Amazon is able to recommend books you’ll be interested in. It’s the way Ideas You Love to Share work.
And how Twitter buzz accurately predicts Hollywood box office grosses. We need to listen to and understand the hive mind.
Ants follow ‘local’ rules, often taking their learning from their closest To create the right stimuli that energises the hive mind into advocacy.
neighbours’ behaviour.
Because when we shape the wisdom of the crowd we harness its power.
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9. 16 17

10. “The content or message of any particular medium has about as much
importance as the stencilling on the casing of an atomic bomb.”
(Marshall McLuhan, Philosopher) 3
Marshall McLuhan has been described as a ‘media prophet’, ‘genius’ and
‘revolutionary’.
In 1964 he predicted the global village in which we now live.
He used phrases like ‘information overload’ long before our 24/7 media
culture took root.
That’s why Wired magazine call him their ‘patron saint’.
And placed a quote of his on their masthead for over ten years.
But he is best known for coining the phrase:
“The medium is the message.” 4
McLuhan was right: the medium is more powerful than any specific content
that appears on it.
For example:
They thought video would kill cinema.
But the 120 year-old medium thrives.
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11. Because a trip to the cinema is about so much more than the ‘content’. It’s why an Idea You Love To Share could be a book, song, game, TV
programme, an app or an event.
It’s an event, a treat, a date, a Saturday night out.
And that’s why Ideas You Love To Share are ideas that begin and end with
What is a ‘popcorn’ movie? media.
It’s content defined by the food you eat.
Clearly the content is subordinate to the experience: the medium.
Twelve times as many people read The Guardian online in the UK than buy
its printed version.
Do these people suddenly agree with The Guardian’s left-liberal political
views because it is free?
Or do they view its content differently because it is online?
Because the medium changes their opinion and experience of the content.
Surely the real power of television is that the average person in, say, South
East Asia spends a fifth of their waking lives watching it.
Or, as the idiot savant Joey Tribbiani of Friends said:
“You don’t have a TV? What’s all your furniture pointed at?” 5
Everything has the power to communicate.
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12. 22 23

13. “Dude, dolphins are intelligent and friendly.”
“Intelligent and friendly on rye bread with some mayonnaise.”
(Kyle Brovlovski and Eric Cartman, South Park) 6
It’s been an extraordinary year for one ordinary small-town American
elementary school student.
With his friends he formed a hugely successful wrestling federation in his
backyard.
The next week his father convinced the populace of their town that they
all had to wear bed sheets and ride llamas, as an antidote to the global
economic downturn.
A month later he was nearly accidentally drowned by Al Gore in a cave.
The next week his friends created a Facebook profile for him, fearing that he
was missing out.
Soon he had nearly a million friends whom he didn’t know and found it
impossible to delete his profile.
The death of Catcher in the Rye author JD Salinger prompted him to write a
far more controversial book.
Far from being banned in schools as he intended, it was declared a
masterpiece and topped the bestseller lists.
Perhaps you’ve heard of him.
24 25

14. His name is Stan Marsh. They parodied films, spoofing Lord of the Rings, The Passion and Twilight.
And he is a character in South Park. They’ve tackled news events no other show would go near.
The TV show that began as a video Christmas card in 1995. Able to explore issues of religion, race, drugs, celebrity and politics just
when the furore of media interest is at its highest.
That video Christmas card became one of the very first viral internet videos.
They turn sacred cows into hamburger.
And it contained the core of South Park’s success which continues today.
So it’s no surprise that these self-proclaimed ‘equal opportunities offenders’
It was completely rooted in popular culture. are constantly making headlines around the world.
Connecting to popular culture is so important to its creators that they And that every episode creates an immediate buzz all over the internet.
changed the way TV shows are produced to ensure they could incorporate it.
That’s why a cheap-looking, scatological, surreal cartoon starring 8 year-
It takes one week to create an episode of South Park, compared with 9-12 olds on a niche cable TV station airs in over 100 countries.
months for other animated TV shows.
South Park has become part of the global conversation.
In fact their episode on the election of President Obama aired the day after
the actual event. And helps to fuel it; taking it to new heights.
As co-creator Trey Parker says: The show’s success demonstrates the huge value of understanding and
connecting to popular culture.
“Anytime we read anything remotely interesting we try to think how we put it in the
show.” 7 A vital dynamic that drives every Idea You Love To Share.
They’ve lampooned hot video games like Mortal Kombat, World of Warcraft
and Guitar Hero.
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15. 28 29

16. Why is Mona Lisa smiling?
“I imagine that right now you’re feeling a little like Alice, tumbling down the rabbit-hole...
I can see it in your eyes. You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because
he is expecting to wake up...Let me tell you why you are here. You’re here because you
know something. What you know, you can’t explain. But you feel it. You’ve felt it your
entire life. That there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s
there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you
to me.” 8
These are some of the words spoken by Morpheus to Neo in the film, The
Matrix.
Perhaps they describe how you are starting to feel about this book.
When The Matrix was released in 1999, it was an instant success.
To many people an instant classic.
On the surface the film is a kinetic thrill-ride.
A blend of innovative visual tricks, Hong Kong action cinema and
groundbreaking imagination.
That’s why The Matrix won 4 Oscars.
But The Matrix was always conceived by its creators – the Wachowski
brothers – as an entire alternate universe.
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17. A universe expressed not just through movies, but also comic books, video And great popular culture for decades.
games and Japanese anime.
Why is Mona Lisa smiling?
A universe that could explore life’s most important questions.
What was Lost about?
A universe that asked: does God exist?
Because rich ideas are open to personal interpretation, they provoke
A universe that questioned what it means to be human by referencing opinion, discussion and debate.
Plato’s cave, Descartes’ evil demon and Baudrillard’s Simulacra.
And reductive ideas have a beginning, middle and an end.
A universe that questions the nature of reality itself by referencing William
Gibson’s Necromancer, Doctor Who and the works of Philip K. Dick. That is why reductive ideas are rarely as powerful in the digital age: they
end.
The Wachowski brothers created a rich idea that existed outside the
reductive three-act structure of a Hollywood movie. And that is why rich ideas are Ideas You Love To Share.
That is why the Matrix generated such buzz on the nascent mainstream
medium of the internet in 1999.
That is why the Matrix continues to stimulate passionate debate there even
now, ten years later.
And will continue to do so long into the future.
If you pose questions to your audience, you challenge them and you engage
them.
It’s been the mark of great art for centuries.
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18. 34 35

19. “One good reason to only maintain a small group of friends is that three out of
every four murders are committed by people who knew the victim.”
(George Carlin, Comedian) 9
Have you noticed how some very smart brands are acting as if they were
your friends?
When you first meet them, you tentatively test each other’s boundaries and
opinions.
You tell them a little about yourself and they tell you a little bit about
themselves.
You tell them about the things you like and they tell you about the things
they like.
Pretty soon they get to know what kind of books you like to read, and make
suggestions of other books you might like.
They see what films you like to watch on DVD and recommend similar ones.
They don’t always get it right, but even your closest friends can sometimes
misunderstand your taste.
One friend emails to tell you that the restaurant you like to have lunch at
sometimes has a special offer on this week.
Maybe they text you to tell you that tickets for the big football match you
want to see are now available for sale.
37

20. Another friend offers you free concert tickets or VIP access for using a Or they make films about subjects you’re really into.
certain credit card or mobile phone.
Or they fund songs, or entire albums, or club nights by bands you like.
These new friends are providing you with a real, practical utility.
One friend funds entire art exhibitions featuring the kind of art you like.
Very useful friends to have.
And invites you along to the opening.
Some of your friends are a bit different.
These friends are always entertaining you with stuff that wouldn’t exist
They’re like the social glue that knits you and your friends together. otherwise.
Maybe you have a mischievous friend who asks you to perform simple and Now, the friends we have described are not necessarily your closest friends.
silly dares in exchange for them buying you a burger or a beer.
They are quite popular, so they can be friends with thousands and even
Or they know how much you love celebrity gossip and send you a round up millions of other people.
of who has done what to whom this week.
They ask you for very little effort in return for their kind gifts.
Or your friend is a film buff always giving you the inside scoop on the latest
cool movies. You don’t have to devote any time or energy to them if you don’t feel like it.
There are so many different kinds of conversations your friends can inspire All they ask is that you choose them the next time you are buying
when they are socially engaged. something.
Some of your friends are always doing creative stuff.
They’re always providing you entertainment.
They make their own short films with actors and actresses you like.
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21. 40 41

22. The Internet, the nobel prize winner and the talking cat
Why do some ideas flourish and spread through popular culture while others
wither and disappear?
Internet entrepreneur Ben Huh may have the answer.
He is the founder of an online empire of over 50 web sites, which has grown
to over 200 million page views per month in less than three years.
Perhaps you have heard of, or visited, some of his sites such as Failblog,
Engrishfunny or There I Fixed It.
Ben Huh deals exclusively in internet ‘memes’.
The concept of memes was created by Professor Richard Dawkins in his 1976
book, The Selfish Gene.
He suggested that ideas, like DNA molecules, were in constant competition
with each other.
And that in this arms race, the fittest ideas would survive; much as human
characteristics are passed down through generations.
The maturing of the web and mobile technology has greatly accelerated this
process by enabling people to copy, transmit and mutate ideas with very
little effort.
Ben Huh instinctively understands this process.
42 43

23. It’s why his network starts a new site every week. But every LOLcat picture posted on the site has a text box directly
underneath, so you can add your own caption if you think you can do better.
To see which ones have the right stuff to become memes.
And they make it very simple to share your new masterpiece with friends,
And those that don’t grow exponentially are quietly discontinued. family and colleagues across the gamut of social networks.
By far his most successful site is icanhascheezburger.com. Of course this wouldn’t matter if LOLcats weren’t profitable.
It features LOLcats: funny pictures of cats whose ‘thoughts’ are expressed in But it has made money since the day of its launch.
quirky, pidgin-English captions.
Because when you create an Idea You Love To Share, people will act upon it.
The reasons for its success are more easily explained than its strange
humour. You can buy LOLcat T-shirts, greeting cards, calendars, mugs and five books.
People find it very easy to discover. Including a LOLcat translation of the entire text of both Testaments of the
Bible, which took the site’s users a mere few months to create.
Sometimes word of mouth inspires them to search online or they read one of
Ben Huh’s carefully targeted press interviews. When you create memes as powerful and widespread as this you’ll find you
have the unlikeliest of fans.
A friend emails them a LOLcat picture.
Like Professor Paul Krugman.
Or they spy it on a colleague’s screensaver or desktop wallpaper.
Recently voted one of Top Ten intellectuals in the World.
And their curiosity soon turns to compulsion.
Who used his New York Times blog to announce to the world he’d won the
Because it’s so easy to get involved with LOLcats. 2009 Nobel Prize for Economics.
Not only do 20,000 people a day create and send in their complete LOLcat By posting a LOLcat picture.
pictures.
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24. 46 47

25. It’s all aristotle’s fault
Aristotle created the ideals of logic, causality and individualism, which
dominated Western philosophy from ancient Greece through to the
Renaissance.
Those ideals have informed a bias in the West to pursue self-realisation,
self-expression and self-actualisation.
Unlike Confucianism in the East, this fostered the illusion that creativity
comes from individual genius.
The lone artist summoning his muse in splendid isolation.
But a shift is underway in the way the West understands creativity.
Smart observers are now realising how important collaboration and co-
creation have been across a plethora of fields of human endeavour.
Across science, art, philosophy, technology, sport and business.
With co-creation, magic happens.
Rap music is full of examples of this magic.
Dr. Dre has collaborated with dozens of different rappers through twenty
years of shaping hip-hop and therefore popular culture.
He started with the NWA collective then created the careers of Eminem,
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26. 50 cent, Snoop Dogg and countless others in the course of producing $1 Creating Apple Computer with Steve Wozniak, he spoke the language of
billion worth of album sales. engineering when they were inventing.
After all this, he still feels the magic. With John Lasseter at Pixar, Jobs took a crash course in the economics of
movies.
After a recent rare live appearance at a concert in Detroit he said:
With industrial designer Jonathan Ive at Apple, Jobs micromanages every
“Being on the stage with Eminem and Jay-Z was one of the most incredible feelings I’ve stage of product development.
felt in a long time. It inspired me.” 10
And his partnerships reflect the zeitgeist when he created them.
Co-creation works so well because it allows and encourages the collision of
different perspectives. With Wozniak, they capitalised on affordable microchips to create the
personal computing revolution.
When Paul McCartney showed John Lennon the lyrics to ‘I Saw Her Standing
There’, they read: With Lasseter, they used CGI and processing power to revolutionise
animated storytelling.
“She was just seventeen, never a beauty queen” 11
With Ive, they harnessed the internet to revolutionise the distribution of
Of course, Lennon changed them. entertainment.
“She was just seventeen, you know what I mean” 11 These examples have inspired our principles of co-creation.
Lennon and McCartney harnessed that mixture of sweet and sour, of To harness the powerful collision of different perspectives.
innocence and sin, to conquer a generation.
By creating dynamic teams consisting of a media professional with creative
There’s plenty of evidence of co-creation’s dynamism in other fields too. flair and a creative practitioner with commercial skills.
You might think of Steve Jobs as lone genius entrepreneur. A team whose thinking has no boundaries.
In fact Steve Jobs is the ultimate serial co-creator.
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27. 52 IDEAS YOU LOVE TO SHARE 53

28. “Better to be deprived of food for three days, than to be deprived of tea for one.”
(Ancient Chinese Proverb)
The Chinese have been drinking tea for over 4,000 years.
Tea is considered one of China’s seven essentials of life; alongside firewood,
rice, oil, salt, soy and vinegar.
Tea culture is used to apologise, celebrate, show respect and express thanks;
tea connects family gatherings, commemorates weddings, and is drunk with
dinner.
Not an easy place to sell coffee.
In fact, per person, the Chinese drink 3 cups of coffee each year.
Nescafé’s task was to create a coffee culture where none existed.
To embed coffee into everyday Chinese life.
And convert a nation to Nescafé’s unique brand of stimulation.
We spotted a surprising opportunity and seized it.
Coffee drinkers were highly educated, white-collar professionals.
And potential coffee drinkers were students.
Soon to be highly educated, white-collar professionals.
54 55

29. The present and future drivers of China’s world-leading economic growth. We made the show into an online format to capitalise on our audiences’
media preferences.
They are united by a powerful cultural dynamic.
We created new characters, making them more inspirational.
Capitalism.
We created new storylines, reflecting modern Chinese office life.
With all the fast-paced, non-stop energy of an emergent business
environment. And different Nescafé products inspired many of these storylines.
An environment better suited to coffee than tea. Not only did our show gain over 12 million views, but it also gave us a great
platform to involve and engage our audience.
We found that our frequent drinkers, the white-collar professionals, were
curious about the correct behaviour for office life: their generation is First through funny polls about common complaints, office gossip and
creating China’s office culture and making it up as they go along. stories covered in the show.
While students are deeply curious about the world that awaits them after Then our audience could chat and connect to each other via online bulletin
graduation. boards.
An insight which gave us our Idea You Love To Share: Hundreds of thousands did.
Office culture comes alive with Nescafé. Best of all, we converted our audience to coffee: those who watched four or
more episodes were 300% more likely to buy Nescafe than those who hadn’t
We found the perfect TV format to explore modern Chinese office life. seen any.
Camera Cafe, originally a French TV format, revolved around a coffee The number eight is considered very lucky in China.
machine in an office.
The word for eight in China sounds like the word for ‘prosper’ or ‘wealth’.
The show was reinvented for China.
Will coffee become the eighth essential of Chinese life?
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30. 58 59

31. “I know god will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish he didn’t trust me
so much.” (Mother Teresa) 12
On 7 September 2008, the US Treasury rescued the Federal Home Loan
Mortgage Company and the Federal National Mortgage Association with a
$200 billion package.
Known as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the two entities insured almost half
of America’s $12 trillion mortgage market.
Their failure would have been a global catastrophe.
One week later, high-profile insurance underwriter AIG was rescued by the
Federal Reserve with a series of loans totalling $182 billion; AIG then lost
$62 billion in the last quarter of 2008.
To America’s longstanding safety concerns over terrorism, a new cultural
force was emerging:
Financial Armageddon.
It was against this disturbing background that American Family Insurance
wanted to emphasize its positioning as ‘trusted advisors’.
American Family is a regional insurer whose offering can’t compete on price
as their national competitors do.
Instead, AmFam agents build a relationship with their customers by giving
personalised advice and understanding their needs.
60 61

32. AmFam gives its customers peace of mind not a piece of paper. And to play Gayle, Elisa Donovan, a comedy actress famous for numerous TV
roles as well as Clueless and A Night at the Roxbury.
AmFam customers rank their family and its protection as their top priority,
so our Idea You Love to Share was: With working mom Gayle as our relatable heroine, we dramatised the
AmFam difference with warm, human and funny storylines over 20 episodes.
AmFam: One of the family.
We showed how AmFam’s focus on personal relationships created feelings of
Our audience were busy, working mums. trust and safety in contrast to its cold corporate competition.
Once the kids were in bed, the internet provided their information, AmFam is worth the small price premium.
entertainment and social network.
We showed how AmFam’s dashboard camera makes teenage drivers more
It helped them share and find information, stay in touch with friends and safety conscious.
watch their favourite shows and video clips.
There were newlyweds, new parents, highly-strung pets, a hypnotist who
To make AmFam a part of this precious ‘me’ time, the brand had to compete needed liability cover and an egomaniac plumber worried about identity
as engaging, quality entertainment. theft.
For putting a human face on serious times in a serious industry, there could AmFam had a policy and an understanding ear for them all.
be only one answer: a sitcom.
We both entertained and persuaded our audience of AmFam’s benefits:
A natural fit for AmFam was NBC, the network with unrivalled comedy
heritage, with shows like Seinfeld, Friends and The Office. 74% of viewers said that ‘In Gayle We Trust’ was ‘better than some TV
shows’.
We co-developed characters and storylines to create a digital comedy series
called In Gayle We Trust. And viewers were 37% more likely to purchase AmFam products.
As writer/director, we hired Brent Forrester, veteran of The Simpsons, King of Family: The one thing America loves more than a bargain.
the Hill and The Office.
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33. 64 65

34. “Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.”
(Albert Einstein, American Physicist) 13
Humans are not rational beings.
We don’t always act in our own best interests.
Especially when it comes to calculating how our current behaviour will
impact our future health.
And India has a particular issue with its health: it’s the cardiovascular
disease capital of the World.
The World Health Organisation estimates that 60% of the world’s heart
disease patients are Indian.
The pace of economic change in India and its effects on people’s lifestyles is
having severe consequences.
The culprits are many.
A richer diet containing more meat; an increase in more stressful and
deskbound jobs; a cultural reluctance to exercise.
Quaker Oats can help; they contain whole grains that can reduce cholesterol
and other risks to heart health.
A terrific brand benefit.
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35. But this information would fall on deaf ears in India. the crisis facing the country.
Because, culturally, Indian people judge their health on the most readily To a buzzing background of national debate, we asked them to inform and
available evidence: educate readers on ways to improve their Heart Health.
‘Do I look healthy?’ To accelerate our growing momentum, we had them provide daily advice,
recipes and exercises as part of the Heart Health crusade.
But Indian hearts are older than Indian bodies and faces look: their hearts’
biological age is greater than their real age. Thus we ensured readers were not tempted to return to old habits.
This cultural insight became our springboard. The campaign also needed to get Indians to commit to action.
The Indian people needed to realise true health comes from within. So Apollo Hospitals, India’s foremost cardiovascular experts, were recruited
to design the Quaker Heart Health Test.
India needed a social and cultural revolution on a national scale.
A comprehensive and engaging online tool, the Quaker Heart Health Test
Our Idea You Love To Share was born: soon went viral across both the internet and mobile.
India’s healthy heart starts at breakfast. Over 168,000 Indians took the test in four months, with 73% of them
reporting a positive behavioural change due to the initiative.
A national movement needs a national mouthpiece.
This new army of Heart Health crusaders were mobilised via regular emails,
The Times of India was approached and became an enthusiastic supporter while newly created apps for mobile and widgets for the internet enabled
of our campaign. further new recruits.
The Times of India is the world’s biggest English-language newspaper with The campaign generated very healthy results with Quaker Oats volume sales
over 14 million readers. up 74%.
We encouraged them to provoke debate with incendiary articles dramatising Quaker Oats has made a real difference to the health of a nation.
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36. 70 71

37. “I saw you in my dreams yesterday, suddenly you became real.” 14
It’s tough being a teenage girl.
You want to fit in, to belong, and to be accepted.
But you want to be individual, to stand out, to be accepted for who you are.
And most of all, you want to be popular.
What if you could be friends with the coolest, most exciting girl in the whole
country?
She blogs about all the latest fashions, new movies and gossip; topped
Facebook’s 5,000-friend limit shortly after creating her account; and sang
with the nation’s hottest singer, becoming a pop star herself.
In Turkey, that girl is Kita: a pop star with substance in a world of shallow
celebrity.
Only Kita is a 3D animated hologram created by Mindshare for Kotex.
Kita leveraged an important cultural dynamic: when your life is lived mostly
in the digital world, your definition of a ‘friend’ changes.
In the Femcare sector, where brand switching is rare, a new product launch is
a huge challenge.
So instead of just attempting to get girls to bond with Kotex’s new brand,
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38. Kotex Young, we developed Kita three months before its launch. Augmented Reality print ads let girls copy Kita’s dance steps.
Kita was the perfect best friend: relatable yet aspirational. Naturally, the next step in the fairytale rise of a celebrity is a lucrative
product endorsement.
Just like every teenage girl, Kita had a crush on a pop star.
Kita would only be endorsing Kotex Young.
Her Facebook page had lots of pictures of Keremcem, a hunky Turkish singer.
Kita starred in all Kotex Young’s TV and print advertising, and featured on
She wished with all her heart she could one day sing with him and be a all its packaging.
celebrity too.
Then she announced her first-ever public appearance: a live concert with
We made her dream come true. Keremcem.
Following Dreams, their duet, told how they came to be singing together and Yes: a live pop concert starring a 3D hologram.
revealed more about Kita’s character.
Only fans that SMS texted in two Kotex product codes could get tickets to
It stayed at number one in the Turkish pop charts for five weeks. the concert.
Magazines carried Kita posters and Kita stickers. Results were spectacular.
In the vast amounts of free media coverage following her success, Kita 94% of young girls said they liked Kita.
publicised her new online karaoke competition.
Kotex Young is now 15% of Kotex’s portfolio, driving volume share up 30%
She encouraged the 1.5 million girls who read her blog to enter. while decreasing their competition’s share by 9%.
Over 25,000 girls submitted videos of themselves taking Kita’s place and Kita made it a little less tough being a teenage girl.
singing with Keremcem in the Following Dreams video.
They told their friends to log in and watch: well over a million did.
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39. 76 77

40. “It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for something you are not.”
(André Gide, Author) 15
The truth is out there.
The global conversation buzzes inexorably all around us.
In our connected social media world, companies can’t get away with bad
policies, bad behaviour or bad customer service.
So when your company excels in these areas, it’s worth shouting about.
First Direct has always been a different kind of bank.
Its openness, honesty and employee empowerment carved a strong brand
reputation as simply the best customer service in the financial sector.
But in 2009 the competition was catching up and people were beginning to
doubt the First Direct difference.
And First Direct wanted to recruit new customers.
Their current customers loved them: they were the most recommended bank
in the UK.
The traditional response would be to simply tell consumers this.
But there had been a meltdown of public trust in financial institutions, so
traditional advertising would be met with scepticism.
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41. Instead we harnessed a powerful cultural force: the global conversation. The maps began as a shareable widget on social networks.
We broadcast people’s unvarnished truths against a background of rampant Then we asked for further honest opinions on firstdirect.com/live.
mistrust.
Then we brought them into the physical world.
First Direct customers were already talking about the bank on Twitter, in
forums, chat rooms, blogs and social networks. Our maps ran as live digital advertising on London Underground platforms,
next to departure boards in train stations and food courts in shopping malls.
We would bring these clandestine comments into broad daylight.
Anywhere people congregate with time to spare.
They would be our ‘advertising’.
Where our public opinion barometer would inspire further debate and create
We would show, not tell, the people of the UK the First Direct difference. new discussions.
Warts and all. The medium became the message.
The good, the bad and the ugly. This groundbreaking initiative transformed both the attitudes of prospective
customers and First Direct’s business.
A bank so transparent that it let its customers tell the complete and
unvarnished truth? The proportion of the UK who described the First Direct brand as ‘really
different’ rose by 10%.
An idea people love to share.
Prospective customers became 240% more likely to respond to First Direct
We mined all the online mentions of First Direct and created a real-time offers.
feed of what customers were saying.
And First Direct gained 7% market share among consumers considering
We created a visual representation of these comments. switching bank accounts.
A dynamic map of all the emotions and opinions around First Direct. Honesty really is the best policy.
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42. 82 83

43. “There is no excuse, you have a digital camera: go out and shoot your film.”
(Sir Ridley Scott) 16
On 24 July 2010, hundreds of thousands of people across the world picked
up their cameras and recorded their lives.
They filmed their triumphs and their tribulations.
From the massive to the minute and the magical to the mundane.
Their families and their friends.
Most of all they recorded the joy of simply being alive.
The film project was called Life In A Day.
Life In A Day was made possible by LG Electronics and YouTube.
Together we set out to harness one of the dominant cultural forces of our
digital age: user-generated content.
And created the biggest commercial crowdsourcing initiative the world has
ever known.
It was an extraordinary project.
YouTube wanted to celebrate their unique place in the world.
Only they capture the world’s hopes, dreams and aspirations every second of
every day.
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44. For LG, it was an opportunity to deeply engage the world in its philosophy: Alongside this, for 3 days, Google homepages around the world invited
life is better with technology. everyone to participate.
Technology brings humanity closer together. Serving tens of billions more views.
Technology makes us more curious about the world around us. The closest a brand has ever, perhaps will ever, get to advertising on Google’s
homepage.
Technology enables us to share our diverse perspectives and experiences.
From the 5,000 hours of footage, Oscar-winning director Kevin MacDonald
LG call it ‘Life’s Good’ and Hollywood legend, Sir Ridley Scott crafted an extraordinary portrait of
the life of the world.
We saw the chance to show the world that ‘Life’s Good’ is real and tangible.
A 90–minute film condensing all the richness and diversity of human life on
To ensure every story in the world could be told, we delivered cameras to the Earth on a single day.
four corners of the globe.
It premiered simultaneously at the Sundance Film Festival and on YouTube
From the Amazon rainforest, to the Australian outback, to the tribes of the and was described by Wired magazine as “provocative, gorgeous and deeply
Serengeti to the war-torn villages of Afghanistan. moving”. 17
Within days the Life In A Day project had received over 80,000 entries from With 38 million views of the Life In a Day YouTube channel so far, this is a
197 countries. film project that will never be forgotten by all those who have seen it and
contributed to it.
The project’s success was no surprise: YouTube alone delivered over 6 billion
views promoting Life In A Day. A unique and timeless record of the human experience, made possible by LG.
Three for every single man, woman and child on the internet. Life’s good when technology brings us together.
Of course there were also countless blog posts, tweets and Facebook
discussions about Life In A Day across the internet.
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45. References
1. June Cohen, Director of Media, TED organisation, EDGE.org World Question Center, 12,
2010
2. Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosopher and Classical Philologist. 1844 – 1900
3. Marshall McLuhan, Philosopher. 1911 – 1980
4. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, published 1964
5. Joey Tribbiani, Friends, Series 9 Episode 23 “The One in Barbados (1)”, 2003
6. Kyle Brovlovski and Eric Cartman, South Park episode 2, 1997
7. Trey Parker Co-creator South Park National Public Radio “South Park celebrates 14
years of fart jokes”, March 24, 2010
8. Morpheus, The Matrix 1991
9. George Carlin. 1937 – 2008
10. Dr Dre interviewed by MTV USA, reported on 1st October 2010.
11. Beatles: Please Please Me. Released by Parlophone on 22 March 1963.
12. Mother Teresa Founder of the Order of the Missionaries of Charity 1910-1997
13. Albert Einstein American Physicist. 1879-1955
14. Kita and Keremcem, Following Dreams (translation), 2010.
15. André Gide, Author 1869 – 1951)
16. Sir Ridley Scott July 2010 http://www.youtube.com/user/lifeinaday
17. Wired Magazine. Jason Silverman 27 January 2011. Review: Crowdsourced Life in a
Day Captures Thrills, Emotions. www.wired.com/underwire/1022/01/life-in-a-day-
review/
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46. CONTACTS
George Michaelides
george.michaelides@mindshareworld.com Mindshare
Central Saint Giles, 1 St Giles High Street
Graham Bednash London, WC2H 8AR, UK
graham.bednash@mindshareworld.com www.mindshareworld.com

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