Trends underpinning digital brand strategy

Patrick CollingsSagacite Brand Agency

Cape TownDecember 2008

by Atzu - http://www.flickr.com/photos/atzu/2860423758/sizes/o/in/set-72157606029559521/

i am a digital immigrant

8trends

The flow, not the contours

The art of gliding 15MB is the new 15 minutes

Our virtual reality

Reassembling the fragmentation

Talking to the listener

Always informed everywhere

The third screen

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

traditional newspapers abandoning the presses for the web

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

Talking to the listener

photo by Oliver Wilke (http://www.flickr.com/photos/counterxattack/2827812861/sizes/o/)

just because you built it does not mean they will find it

it’s a big universe out there

1.5bn | 0.3%

internet users and the percentage from south africa

51m | 10%

internet users in africa and the percentage from south africa

12m | 0.03%

active blogs and south africa’s contribution

340m | 0.5%

global blog audience and percentage reading south african blogs

the closed ecosystembeware

they may not find you as you intended them to

blogarticle

rssfeed

bloglink

facebookapp

digglisting

audience

1

3

2

and if they find it, it does not

mean they will listen to you

many / little

few / much

if content is king, then relevant content will rule empires

but, mostly, it is about having a conversation

to talk to your audience you need to understand where they are “listening”,

what they are willing to hear and listen to what they have to say

The art of gliding

you are not in controleven when you think you are

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

invisibleinvisible

small

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

ipod photo by Вася Артёмов (http://www.flickr.com/photos/78518472@N00/2274202900/)

15MB is the new 15 minutes

video clip of ad men employment ad

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 billionvideos serves each month by youtube

44 percentof 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 offlinesouth african media organizations developing

plans with video as an integral offering

4Guidelines

you have to be seen

integrated part of brand communication

parts are greater than the whole

must entertain

speaking of entertainment

brandedentertainment

the future is inside, not around the edges

growth, and projected growth, in product / brand placement in america in usd billions

we will increasingly tell our brand stories in video and need to weave

our brand inextricably into the frames of the video

The third screen

photo by Drinksmachine (http://www.flickr.com/photos/drinksmachine/284991196/sizes/o/)

9.5% | 96%

the third is first

0

750

1,500

2,250

3,000

1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010

1 12 88

729

2,058

3,000

projected growth in mobile phones worldwide (in millions)

behind the numbers

with us 80% of the day

92% daily use

a personal statement

more than a phone

photo by Mike Rosales (http://www.flickr.com/photos/bullish1974/473425242/sizes/l/)

but...

90% of US users don’t want mobile marketing72% of US users are annoyed by the idea

however they don’t mind if

it is entertaining

it informs

they are in control

if your digital strategy doesn’t have a mobile component then you need to ask

whether you have a digital strategy. if your digital strategy only has a mobile

componet then you need to ask whether you have a digital strategy

Our virtual reality

we have been preparing for virtuality for some time

Jean Baudrillard (1929 - 2007)

in ourphilosophy

in our literature & films

our children brought virtuality homeour children brought virtuality home

we trade incurrenciesthat we neveractually hold

we immerseourselves inthe game

second lifeintroducedthe reality of virtual worlds tomany adults

video clip of sony home virtual world

virtual worlds were the next evolution of the internet

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

they came

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

they played

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*

they paid

1,000,000 to 2,000,000

* Figure estimated

in may 2008 over 59,000 people had a positive linden dollar flow, up from 44,600 in september 2007

they profited

32

45

North America Western Europe Far EastAustralasia South America Other

great virtual land rushphilips c|net adidas mercedes

bmw dell mazda microsoft reuters sony bmg vodafone l’oreal ibm mtv

what went wrong?

limited understanding + flawed strategy + rushed implementationis always going to end in tears

life goes on

but is itgoing anywhere...

Photo by Tom Olliver (http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigfez/360937737/sizes/o/)

google kills virtually thousands

thoughts on the future

1virtual worlds are a nascent technologyand may evolve with our children

unique US visitors in Sept 07, in millions

barbiegirls

webkinz

clubpenguin

zwinky

neopets

imvu

second life

gaia

habbo

redlightcenter

kaneva

2recombinant subset of

games and social mediaunlikely to escape the gravitational pull

video games match the connected community of virtual worlds

increasingly video games are embracing user generated content

$34bni n d u s t r y w o r l d w i d e

0

225

450

675

900

2006 2007 2008 2009

829

665

502

346

In-game ad revenue (in millions)

virtual worlds will be a subset of gamesprediction

thesame applies to social media

3we use virtuality to enhance our reality

society has discover a new layer to its existence

4avatars are escaping their virtual worlds

of 23 million and counting

340m i l l i o na c c o u n t s

video clip from beowulf

Ray Winstone

John Malkovich Anthony Hopkins Angelina Jolie

“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

Always informed everywhere

video clip of wikitube

geographic reality

augmented reality

user opinion

building on the potential of qr tags, iphone and android are advancing the

concept of always informed everywhere

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

Reassembling the fragmentation

the very nature of internet content is that it exists in parts

recombinant culture

fractal branding

video clip of faris yakob on recombinant culture

whether we like it or not, remix is here to stay

fractal branding embraces the reality by building the brand

communication into the parts

video clip of the modernista Web 2.0 website

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

A bit like playing chess

photo by Chai Dealo (http://www.flickr.com/photos/chaidealo/706692402/sizes/o/)

The tail doesn’t wag the dog

photo by Ninja Poodles (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ninjapoodles/479254139/sizes/o/

For ongoing coverage of and commentary on brands in the digital arena please visit the Brand Architect blog at www.collings.co.za

Thanks to Faris Yakob for his great insights and thinking which help provide the background for the development on my fractal branding model.

Photos are taken from Flickr under a creative commons licence. Thanks to Oliver Wilke for permission to use the crowd shot which introduced the sections titled “Talking to the listener”

Patrick Collingspatrick@sagacite.co.za+27 (0)83 616 0967