Gigantic™

The Season for Sharing.

Please remember the homebound elderly this holiday season.

10 Web Trends for 2010 and our new venture: BrandFlux

Mashable's Pete Cashmore recently published a weekly column for CNN showcasing ten trends he thinks will be big in 2010. Here are highlights from three trends that we are particularly excited about:

Real-Time

Sparked by Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed, the real-time trend has been to the latter part of 2009 what "Web 2.0" was to 2007. The term represents the growing demand for immediacy in our interactions. Immediacy is compelling, engaging, highly addictive ... it's a sense of living in the now.

Content Curation

The Web's biggest challenge of recent years is that content creation is outpacing our ability to consume it: "Information overload" has become an increasingly common complaint.

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing was very much a buzzword of 2009, but there's no doubt this transition will continue. The trend, in which data and applications cease to reside on our desktops and instead exist on servers elsewhere ("the cloud"), makes our data accessible from anywhere and enables collaboration with distributed teams.

So why are we so excited about these three? They all align with our latest spin-off: BrandFlux. Part real-time brand monitor, part content curator and collaboration platform, it is a cloud-based solution that gives brands the ability to monitor and understand the internal and external conversation that shapes it. Needless to say, we can't wait for 2010.

Just be yourself.

Last week I was having a conversation with a colleague about how the business of advertising looked so much clearer and direct as it is portrayed on “Mad Men”. We both agreed that dramatic license played a big part in the illusion. Who wants to watch Don work all weekend coming up with snappy jingles for a client? Doesn’t sound like great TV. And certainly, the business is amazingly more complex than it was back then. 

But I also pointed out that back then, brands were smaller and more nimble. Also, in most meetings, agencies were often dealing directly with the only decision makers necessary to get an approach approved— in many cases, directly with the founder or owner of the company. In short, brands were more connected to their roots. They were truer to themselves.

Which reminded me of the best advice ever offered to me in the business: “Just be yourself” —given to me right before a big pitch I was participating in. I recently shared this advice to a nervous friend who had an upcoming interview at CP+B. I told him, that if he tried to be anything different, he’d set a precedent that he couldn’t live up (or down) to. (I'd like think it helped, he’s freelancing there now.)

To me this is a big part of what’s missing today from the business of marketing. We’ve lost ourselves in the shadows of aspiration. Teams on client and agency rosters have ballooned to paralyzing levels. And brands continue to stray from what makes them great in search of quick revenue fixes, while agencies face deep crises of identity as they try to reinvent themselves for whatever is next.

Case in point: Starbucks Via. In my mind, it’s 180 degrees in the wrong direction from the core brand promise: a coffee house that’s a gathering place and social hub for a community. I worked on the global Nescafe account and appreciate what a big deal instant coffee is on an international scale. But I just don’t see Via coming close to having an impact on picking up share in that market.

Sure in the US, instant coffee was once part of the consumer mindset and it may still be in some social/demographic sets, but for a company that put the words “Grande skinny vanilla latte” into the vernacular, a foray into instant seems, well, insincere. What’s next? Starbucks frozen dinners?

I'm not saying brands and agencies shouldn't change and evolve. But to do so without regard or understanding for came before seems desperate and fleeting. You may agree or vehemently disagree, but either way, I hope in doing so, that you’ll just be yourself.

—Bernard Urban

ASMP: Copyright Awareness Campaign

We just launched a campaign for ASMPNY to raise awareness about copyright and photographer's rights.

Watch the video here:

And be sure to visit the site.

Context. It means more.

Webster defines context as: “the parts of a discourse that surround a word or passage and can throw light on its meaning.”

We like to think of context in relation to the parable of the blind men and the elephant. They all encountered different parts of the beast, but had dramatically different experiences. They were all correct in their assessment, yet somehow all wrong at the same time. And truth could only be divined when their collective experiences were aggregated and then contextualized.

You might be wondering about what this means to brands marketing themselves in today’s fragmented landscape? Here at Gigantic, we use context as a touchstone that is part of how we connect brands to users in meaningful ways.

Here are few questions to consider:

• Is your brand creating marketing utility that helps users understand how your product fits into their life at the time when the user needs that utility the most?
  
• Is your brand accessible and participating in the conversations taking place around your brand?
  
• Is your brand monitoring the real-time conversations taking place around it and using that information to refine current strategy and positioning?

 Photo: Adam Foster | Codefor via Flickr

Branded Content = Brand Potential

Back in 2005 (when we were URBANadvertising) we launched a content division called URBANcontent with the sole mission of creating branded content. We quickly were able land work for Vespa, TheKnot.com and MAC Cosmetics as well as CondeNast.

When we changed our name to Gigantic™ we blended those capabilities into our core offering, since we felt that was where advertising was headed. Sure, we may have been a little ahead of the time, but remember we declared in 2004 that blogs would become the future of agency websites. (URBANintelligence evolved into the blog you reading now.)

Today we are excited to share that we are more focused on Branded Content than ever. And it seems the industry is using the recession as a reason to focus on the practice, which we believe is still in it's infancy and a prime ingredient in the future of the marketing mix—from a recent article in MediaWeek:

51% men and 49% women -  mainly aged between 25 and 44, almost one in three (32%) said they preferred branded content to any other advertising. 

As brands become media, the content they program around them will define every aspect of what that brand stands for in the users' mind.

Gigantic™ Branded Content

The "M" word.

There, we said it: mobile. (Bet you thought we were going to say monetize.) Well we’re saying that too. There has been a lot talk this year about monetizing content on the Internet. At the Ad 2.0 Conference, we were there when Barry Diller said:

“I absolutely believe the Internet is passing from its free days into a paid system. Inevitably, I promise you, it will be paid,” Diller said in a keynote discussion opening up the Advertising 2.0 conference held at his company’s futuristic glass building alongside the Hudson River in Manhattan. “Not every single thing, but anything of value.”

While a model for effectively monetizing content on the Internet remains elusive, there is a technological space where fees are already firmly in place: mobile. According to a recent business week article:

“Consumers are increasingly using their cell phones for financial transactions, and users are expected to spend $1.6 billion via mobile commerce this year, according to a new report from ABI Research.”

Most media industry players see this as a problem inherent to the evolution of modern media. But we have to ask as brands become media, how will these issues impact them? And an obvious consideration, is your brand prepared with a mobile media strategy?

Lost in the social media supermarket.

We see a lot of brands rapidly embracing social media. And that’s a great and powerful thing. However, we also see a lack of strategy in planning their approach. Making for some interesting brand presence and confusing mixed messages.

Ultimately, being there is not enough. A brand’s presence needs to be managed around the expectation of the users it comes in contact with and we think in many cases, those expectations follow some traditional marketing definitions.

Awareness—Social media is a great way to build awareness for a new online initiative, increase traffic and build on the effectiveness of existing assets. Do your legacy websites point to your Twitter account and Facebook page? Does your Facebook page push users to other online experiences?

Acquisition—Special offers can be tailored to each medium making for real ROI. It takes a smart approach and a realistic definition of goals. Both Dell and United Airlines are having success in this arena. Crafting an offer and an authentic reason to exist are paramount here.

Loyalty—Education, Utility, Empowerment are all players here. Simply tweeting about your brand’s Rewards Program is not enough. This is an opportunity to build relationships in a true one to one conversation. The first step is listening.

Customer Service—An obvious place to play in social media, it also can be loaded with the most risk. Brands must be prepared to beyond listening and become engaged, truly care and have an arsenal of tools available to assist in correcting issues. Simply bringing a call center script to Twitter is not going to work.

In considering which of these roles, your brand is taking on, you should carefully consider how your brands, online persona is constructed and managed. Is the brand voice of awareness the same one for customer service? For the sake of your users, we hope not.

Life Streamz at You in Real-Time.

We just launched 3 sites that aggregate Twitter feeds into a stand alone web page. The sites cover Twitter users who are holding conversations around: Travel, Food and Fashion. Each site aggregates tweets, pictures linked to the tweets and allows for favoring of the tweets. Additionally, each site has a interactive Real-Time Trend Cloud that allows users to see who talking about a particular subject or trend.

These sites are built around our data pyramid of: Aggregation, Contextualization and Editing. Obviously each site is an aggregation and begins to add context by tracking trends and allowing for favoring. We plan to further enhance how context can be added and will be adding an editor for each site as well. Making each site a valuable real-time resource around each subject.

Why did we build these? We think these sites serve as Proof Points around the following beliefs:

• We believe there are users who can benefit from Twitter content but don't want to be actively involved in Tweeting. These sites will become a new kind of media helping users get a real-time view around each subject.     

• We believe that brands have to think about how to actually become media (as opposed to consume media) as the world becomes more social and connected—and Twitter feeds of brands are an example (in some cases) of the right kind of steps in that direction. Aggregating them allows for a great way to monitor them.

• We believe that the future of Twitter and other real-time media lies within the ability to build off of the API, adding value (context + editing) and users to already existing communities.  

Looking forward to your feedback on these (here or on Twitter) and thanks to everyone on Twitter who helped QC these. And a big shout out to the guys 14Four for an amazing job of programming.

 

Social Media and Luxury Hotels. The Conversation Matters.

A recent article on Hotels Now reports that almost 80 percent of luxury hotel travelers have read a user generated online review and one in three has posted one. This leads to obvious questions for luxury hotel brands about the need to embrace, monitor and participate in social media.

Also of note, "Luxury travelers are demanding less pampering, more entertainment. Intercultural pursuits and opportunities for personal growth, such as shopping at village green markets, practicing foreign language skills and receiving a local gift at turn-down, now surpass the desire to be pampered."

Seems the definition of luxury is changing to reflect the desire to make connections and share experiences, which aligns nicely with the idea of using social media for luxury hotel brands.