What can today's story tellers learn from modern comms agencies (pixel lab 2012)
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
0 likes•444 views
A presentation to innovative content creators at Power to the Pixel's Pixel Lab in Berlin 2012, who are exploring the role of transmedia story telling in their work. Showing how modern media and creative agencies are innovating in the field. (Detailed commentary on each slide in the notes section).
Recommended
More Related Content
Similar to What can today's story tellers learn from modern comms agencies (pixel lab 2012)
Similar to What can today's story tellers learn from modern comms agencies (pixel lab 2012) (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
What can today's story tellers learn from modern comms agencies (pixel lab 2012)
- 1. What can today’s story-tellers learn from modern communications planners? Stephen Stokes, Strategy Director @StephenStokes
- 4. Applying modern story-telling techniques
- 5. As are other modern agencies
- 7. Let’s go back to the 1950s/60s
- 9. Icons, symbols & lifestyle associations
- 12. Post Millennium
- 13. Start of a new perfect storm
- 16. Be honest and more transparent
- 17. Have a generous attitude
- 18. Recognise the need to earn attention
- 19. Do more
- 20. Adopt modern story-telling techniques
- 22. 1. Understand different audience types
- 24. Creators: Make it easy
- 25. Conversationalists: Fresh content to share
- 27. Spectators: Regular content. Same places
- 28. 2. Become a community builder
- 29. Ask: What can you do for your community
- 30. Different approach as community builds
- 31. Create Alliances
- 32. 3. Mine social media for insight & inspiration
- 33. Industry tools
- 36. 4. Operate in real-time
- 39. 5. Understand why people share
- 40. New thinking from Henry Jenkins
- 41. Modification
- 42. Modification
- 43. Modification
- 44. Relationship
- 45. Commentary
- 46. Ego - Badging
- 47. 6. Always take people somewhere else
- 48. Always leave them wanting more
- 49. Exploring new ways to keep attention
- 50. Exploring new ways to keep attention
- 51. 7. Light lots of small fires
- 52. 7. Light lots of small fires
- 53. 7. Light lots of small fires
- 54. 7. Light lots of small fires
- 55. 8. Context is king
- 56. 8. Context is king Time Mindset Company Location Scale Environment
- 57. Environment: Location linked to page in book
- 59. Different scale for different audiences
- 60. Location: Makes victims story more poignant
- 61. 9. Monetise via brands
- 62. Scale helps
- 64. Discerning property. Discerning audience
- 65. Freshness to a well-trodden area
- 66. Association with hope / positive outlook
- 67. New territories
- 68. 10. Keep an eye on the near future
- 69. Today’s advance tech reaching ubiquity 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 2010 2013 2015 H/Hold * Source Futuresource Consulting Ltd/OFCOM/OECD/OMD Indiv 15+
- 70. | The Digital Metronome
- 71. Next generation devices and applications
- 72. Summary 1. Different audience types 2. Community builder 3. Mine social media 4. Operate in real-time 5. Why people share 6. Always take people somewhere else 7. Light lots of small fires 8. Context is king 9. Monetise via brands 10.Eye on the near future
- 74. Stephen Stokes, Comms Strategist & Brand Planner @StephenStokes
Editor's Notes
- So what’s a Strategy Director in a media agency?
- Well up until the early 90s I would probably have been a bit like Harry Crane from Madmen A media guy in an ad agency – at its simplest: recommending to a client which media (from the 3 or 4 available!) a creative idea should live in: which spots are best, at what weight, which day of week, and how different media might relate to each other etc… and then buying them as well Now… it’s more complicated. Choices are wider Client’s own media and earned exposure Context has ben recognised as playing a crucial role (more later on this) We now also generate and create ideas for clients (often content, experience or partnership based) And consult on their brand planning too So our remit is now much broader than in Harry’s day. And although the work is much harder, it’s much more interesting.
- Fortunate enough to work with some of the most dynamic brands in the UK and the World
- Increasingly trans-media ideas: Alternative Reality Games – Supernatural and Killzone 3 Creating our own search to turn a PlayStation gamer into a Nissan racing driver. Which combines events, facebook community, Youtube and a TV show that has been broadcast on TV in over 50 countries around the world! Developing a modern story-telling structure for advertising that became the key component of the creative brief for a client’s creative agency (Renault) Or in Waitrose’s case applying modern story-telling techniques to link together fresh content with the wealth of content they already had around quality food and cooking.
- Jay-Z Decoded. Partnership between Jay-Z and Bing! Launching Jay-Z’s new biography Normally with book launches publishers give out sneak previews Here: Every page was published on posters near to the street or place relevant to that page in the book. And if there we no posters there, the agency improvised with new ambient media. I am Playr is an online interactive game where someone can live the life of a footballer in England. Both on and off the pitch. Making decisions such as training, which boots to wear or which girl to go home with after a night out! This is treasure hunt for Lady GaGa fans in Starbucks ALS: Project – took 10 terminally ill sufferers – Exposure through PR: illness / get to know the 10 sufferers. Advertising released when someone dies
- But why are we now adopting principles behind these new techniques?
- A perfect storm started in 1950s/60s America... 50’s/60s Affluence. Move to suburbia. People needing to know how to live this new life. Especially status. New mass, affordable broadcast media, especially TV The start of Big Box Retail. Big Walmart-type grocer and retail outlets. High Attention to brands – new and interesting High Attention to advertising High reach Low competition in-store Helped build some of the biggest brands still around today
- Adding meaning and value to brands
- Some of the most successful were short condensed stories. Often beautifully crafted. Often inspired by culture and the best content makers of the day. Coke: A peace-anthem for a post-Vietnam America, nursing its pride.
- Apple’s 1984, inspired by Blade-runner (and of course George Orwell) A lot of skill in creating condensed short-form stories that add meaning and value to brands. These approaches or variations of them are still around and arguably being deployed successfully today.
- But….
- Decline in Trust in brands (Especially their character. E.g: Enron, Banking Crisis. No Logo era) (But also competence. Bottom end and own label getting much better – the concept of “good enough”. Expectations “transfer” across categories. Rise of digital: Fragmentation, Search (find out – links to Trust), Social media Start of what the Economist has called: The Third Industrial revolution Where they have highlighted trends where digital is redefining manufacturing: Bringing manufacturing of highly specialised goods and services back to Europe and North America, Such as through Crowd sourcing, Personalised products and Total robotic build, light out manufacturing.
- All this has meant…. E.g: P&G: All their brands now have a purpose to touch lives and improve life …to do it everyday in different ways …and therefore make a difference. E.g: Using the Olympics as a vehicle to thank mums
- Gatorade: Historically at the heart of American Football Created a series where crucial high school sports matches are replayed 15 or so years later – by the same players – all coached Live events (20,000+ attendance) TV programme Back story Online content Online community building
- M&S were charging more for bigger bras !! Quickly admitted their mistake – turned it to their advantage! Matched prices and gave short-term discount
- Low cost festivals at a time when festival prices were getting way too high. And gave away as much as your want ice-cream!
- Meaning brands have recognized the need to “Do” more…
- …and the need to adopt modern story-telling techniques
- So here are 10 opportunities that we think are relevant to modern story-tellers.
- Audience is really important to us! We do a lot of analysis such as who is buying, who’s buying competitor brands, who are the potential audiences. Are there any influencer audiences? Etc… Quantitative studies and Qualitative studies to find further consumer insight
- Difference audiences are engaging with content and ideas in different ways. This is a Forrester Ladder – grouping people according to how they behave online. Obviously people overlap across a number of these groups. We need to then acknowledge our audience’s behaviour and what motivates them and then work with this behaviour not against it.
- We need to understand who these people are and what motivates them. E.g: For Creators, how can you help them create something which makes them look cool to their peer group. E.g: Kaizers Orchestra – release a song in sheet music format before it came out - to let Creators make their version and share it with their friends / peers. But try to make it easy for them to do – otherwise you may find only a handful of people create.
- Some brands like Waitrose take the approach of having a tight community of core Conversationalists (E.g: 60,000 Likes. But… 11,000 participating! – amazing conversion). So need to think about this audience and what they want – likely a key approach is to ensure they have lots of content available to then share.
- For critics – give them something exclusive, before everyone else. E.g: An exclusive preview. E.g: Ultimate Recruit for Killzone 3 launch targetted at the hard-core gamers – the ones who write reviews, have blogs, work in the industry. We created an ARG for them to play which involved playing a preview of the game before it came out. Of course we needed to ensure what was in it for them to take part and share. For this initiative it was the potential status of high achievement in the ARG and a money can’t buy prize of firing the gun from the game over the net in a live shooting range.
- Spectators look at regular content in the same spaces. Compare the Meekat is a transmedia example of something that started with a TV ad (For an insurance comparison site called Compare the Market) that has evolved to include online mini-films, a best selling book (3rd highest at Christmas a few years ago!), a regular twitter feed and even a promotional toy! So the star of the ad’s twitter stream offers regular entertainment to those who are fans of the idea and the character
- Simple thought: think of your audience as a community and or part of other communities Become a community builder around your idea…
- Ask not what your community can do for you as what you can do for your community… (Value Exchange). Nike: 10K races Nike + - tracking runs Nike Grid – adding gaming elements into running Nike Fuel band
- You need to treat your community differently according to it’s size. Very different: 1-10 10-100 100-1000 1000-10000 10000+ Morphsuits 1 Million fans on Facebook All sold via Facebook Early on created their own content Later compiled the best of user-generated content
- Find friendly “communities” that you can partner up with. What can you do for them? Link stories? Here’s an example for MAG – Sony PlayStation Game Brought two different (and competing communities around different gaming magazines) in a head to head Big Event Big prizes and big kudos for the winning team In reality, both were winners and other gaming communities that didn’t take part missed out
- There is a wealth of data and insight out there that you can use to seek inspiration for your idea. Either at its inception or as the idea evolves over time.
- We use social media tools and more in-depth qualitative analysis to find insight and inspiration around our ideas. Before or during. Social media monitoring tools such as Radian 6. Here’s “Vampire” as an example. You will find that different people are saying different things in social media around your idea or subject matter. For example: For us: Working with an upmarket food brand. In the past communications would be broad, gravitating to the mean audience and mean subject matter: E.g: quality recipes for dinner parties. Now we can understand interesting sub-audiences and potential trends such as those interested in resurrecting past British recipes. Or those interested in turning their homes into a restaurant one evening a week. There will be loads of diversity within your community – therefore look at the finer detail…. And create content or evolve your idea accordingly…
- Here is Kony 2012 Lots of interesting things going on: 2 Big ones: Church (around Love and Jesus etc…) Students (around wanting to change the world) Sub ones such as dance, music, sports, photography…
- Here is map of the different online networks or clusters of connections for the people talking about KONY 2012 Regional hotspots represent the good few years working on the ground– church groups, students, NGOs, dance groups This might be interesting to see where your biggest fans are and therefore evolve the idea accordingly….
- Linked to this and these tools is the concept of operating in real-time… Previously: launch and leave Now: Fluid, evolving, adaptable ideas based on insights uncovered in real-time Being able to react to positive as well as negative things going on around your idea…
- Here’s the “Mission Control” room for Gatorade ! There will be a time (if it doesn’t exist now!) when brands will have a team of people working around the clock (maybe in different time zones) There are already examples of things that have happened to brands over the weekend when reacting on Monday morning has been too late!
- Previously brands might react to tactical events a few days later in National press or radio! (By that time the opportunity has gone!) Now it should be more like in 5 minutes! Old Spice: Very successful TV ad, launched in the Superbowl. Extended onto online content including real-time Twitter responses. So consider: How is you idea being received over time… How the idea react and evolve QUICKLY !!!
- People want to send something on because it means something. Henry Jenkins is starting to talk about the reasons why a piece of content might be shared, commented on or modified (His new book Spreadable media is out in Jan 2013). We shouldn’t think of a piece of content on its own. We need to think about what additional meaning might be attached to it when it is shared. What the context might be.
- Modification (I’ve done this. How creative am I?)
- Modification (I’ve done this. How creative am I?) Note how I’ve also acted in real-time in the presentation as last night Spain won the European championships and within a few hours this “John Terry” meme had evolved to include it.
- Obviously for brands this area means risking people subverting your idea. So it’s not for every brand.
- Here is an example of the same piece of content which might be shared, but for different reasons and with a different context. Relationship (this has a specific meaning between us)
- Commentary (This is my opinion on this)
- Ego - Badging (Look at what I’ve found how cool and I?) And we know that badging is an important motivator as recent research suggests: 45% reason like a brand on facebook to show of to their friends… and 38% do so because it helps define their identity…
- We probably value attention more than you (as it’s so hard to earn)…. Therefore we are exploring more and more ways to keep it… Now it’s follow us on facebook at it’s most basic level, Or it’s recently #this such as Nike’s #makethefuture around the last World Cup, or play the game, QR code, search for this or even augmented reality… I
- PT Barnum had a mantra of always leave them wanting more. This was in an era when entertainment was a mass scarcity. This broadly no longer applies! Now – 72 hours of content uploaded to Youtube every minute. And it’s Free. Once we get attention we want to try to keep it.
- Here’s the result of using augmented reality to enhance a press advertisement. For Waitrose, who have a wealth of content, every piece of content references something else…
- Here Channel 4, one of the UK’s main TV stations rain a world premiere of the Ridley Scott's 'Prometheus' in the first break of a high profile programme. Viewers were then asked to comment on what they thought of it on Twitter. A selection of Tweets were shown in the following ad break. This one spot produced 25,000 tweets. 1 in 90 people who watched it Tweeted. So always be thinking of where to take your audience and investigate new and interesting ways.
- Here is some interesting thinking from chap in the States called Duncan Watts. He protests against the theory that ideas spread mainly due to a few special people (The Influencers). He argues that there is a large element of randomness at play. So the answer is to spread risk across a wider range of content rather than put all emphasis into one! You can then add fuel to the ideas that are starting to do well…
- Red Bull do this on a large scale, creating a vast array of experiences in the world of Extreme sports. Only a handful resonate with more mainstream audiences.
- Here’s the Old Spice Guy idea again. Here 180 different short videos were made in 2 days. Some became big hits, some less so. So potentially…. “Test” out in social media in someway Eg: Publish First chapter / write a book over twitter / get feed-back from community / “Seed” an idea in social media Create video short / Seed characters (twitter? Or other communities?) Try stuff out and see what starts to take off.
- The context a piece of content is experienced in is crucial for our planning….
- There are 6 key contexts that media agencies work with: Time and Moment – including time of day and calendar moments (including creating own moments such as Jack’s birthday for Jack Daniels) Mindset – what mood people are in Company – shared media consumption (e.g: for Disney resorts in increasingly rare shared family programming) or more personal one-to-one environments for something more personal or private Company – who we are with – whether family, friends, peers, fellow members of a community (of interest) or a large group Location – increasingly more important with mobile targeting Scale – this means big or small Environment – From glossy and glitzy for fashion brands to grubby and underground for brands that want to appear more edgy
- This is Jay-Z and Bing’s Decoded idea I talked about earlier. A large part of the campaign ran on posters. The context of choosing posters on locations relevant to individual pages in the book was very powerful but the context of using non-traditional formats such as the bottom of the swimming pool in the Miami’s Delano Hotel not only brought attention to the idea, but gave it more credibility. After all “if a cool hotel in Miami is in on the idea then it must be a cool idea”.
- Here, the context of timing is crucial. I mentioned this idea earlier, but by releasing the ad straight after this person died (with their prior permission) made the content even more poignant.
- Here for the Supernaturals ARG we created for Living TV, the different scale of the media used had a different effect on the content being shown. So for more niche more specialist audiences we would have used “smaller” scale media to show that this content was just for them. For more mainstream audiences we used the likes of broader TV spots.
- Here. This is a digital idea that overlays on top of the Stumbling Stones project which has placed 32,000 “stones” in places near to where holocaust victims once lived. The digital “layer” shows information about the victims via location based services such as Google Maps. By reading the life of one of the victims right next to where they once lived (and quite possibly where they were taken away) makes what happened to them more real and makes their story even more moving.
- Brands want to associate themselves with or create the right kind of content. So… it’s worth thinking about how you can work with brands and what you can offer them… and what they could offer you without compromising your integrity. One thing to keep in mind though is that in most cases a brand should have some kind of “link” or reason why it is associating itself with your content area. E.g: A grocery brand doesn’t have much of a link to football, but it does if it wants to promote healthy living (and eating or course) for young kids. (Assuming that a key part of its involvement comprises of encouraging or facilitating kids to play football).
- Scale helps. Big Brands often want to associate themselves with big (and established) content properties. But Nissan brought something to the party. Their involvement meant extra content such as a graphic novel could be created.
- Demonstrating authenticity is key for most brands these days, showing people that they are true to what they say (or allude to) what they are. In many cases this means demonstrating authenticity to a core interest group (and getting their support too). So for Levis in the Go Forth campaign they went back to their “pioneering / hard work ethos” roots but did this with US hipsters who are often seen as leaders and key commentators in fashion. Going back to the Gatorade idea I presented earlier, this was about creating authenticity with the American Football community, showing that Gatorade was a brand that “belonged” to it, not just one that has “badged” it. So if you are thinking about which sort of brands to approach to get involved in your idea and content, its worth thinking about which brands (if any) your content can help build authenticity for (and do they need this authenticity). It’s then worth thinking about how involved should they be. Do they just “sponsor” the idea, Do they become involved in it, or do they get involved with a certain (or new) element of it.
- Some brands (especially ones that are low interest) sponsor high quality content / art. They do this for a number of reasons. First, it’s where their (hard to reach) discerning audience are and what they like or admire. Second because the values and “associations” of the content / art “transfer over” to the brand. And third because often these brands have a history of supporting the arts (and often have charitable funds set aside for such activity). In this incidence it is unlikely that the brand would want to be involved within the project, but more to be seen as a supporter of it. So… if you have a project that is discerning and might attract a discerning audience, it’s worth considering which brands might want to sponsor it.
- Another opportunity is if you can offer something new and fresh in an interest area that has become saturated with brands (Major sports, especially football, film and modern music are probably the best examples). Some brands, especially those “at the heart” of this interest area will be looking for new and exciting ways to innovate. So I am Playr is a good example where Nike (along with Redbull, Alfa Romeo and Ginsters) got involved.
- And think about the “outlook” of your project before trying to match it with brands. Many brands now are trying to appear more human but within that have a positive outlook.
- And finally, some brands are looking to be the first to be involved in new territories (and they are hard to come across!). In the UK, the broadcaster SKY wanted to sponsor a sport (as subscriptions to their Sports channels are a major revenue driver), recognised that cycling is the biggest participation sport in the UK and didn’t have a major sponsor, so created Skyride – events in major cities and towns where people could get together and cycle through a designated route that is free of traffic whilst exploring the city along the way. So whilst some brands will not be receptive to getting involved with your project, the more adventurous may see opportunity in being involved in a new territory.
- We normally try to avoid making speculative precise predictions as we don’t like to be proved wrong, the main trick of futurism is to predict what has already happened but very few people are aware of just now…
- We are tending towards ubiquitous broadband and smarty phone penetration, PVRs and games consoles in the majority of homes. Kindle Fire out in Sept in UK This means for you … More opportunity on its way. With new audiences too. Two screen will be becoming increasingly important for us.
- Three exponential laws: Processing Power, Bandwidth and Sharing. Moores Law (Co-founder of intel): the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years. (said this in 1965) Nielsons law’s is based on the exponential growth of bandwith. That is grows by 50% every year (Your smartphone in 2015 will have roughly the capacity of todays laptops. The iPhone 6s of 2015 will easily be your core media concierge, transmitting hd to your TV set Finally with Zuckerbergs : Every year people are sharing twice as much content as the year before So by 2015 we can expect to see 8 times as much stuff being shared than we do today. So again… the near future will be really exciting for cross-media projects. Video is likely to be more predominant, and sharing of content will become more frequent, with wider audiences.
- Projection phones Phones with the functionality of the likes of Nike’s Fuel band Ultra thin TV screens Even now – apps that help you choose your dream!! Might become more of a reality sonner than you think!