Gigantic

Brands Must Now Become Media.

The headline of this post is taken directly from the third page of Gigantic’s credentials presentation.

It’s the cornerstone of our approach to narrative branding. Our philosophy is that brands have to “program” the media that revolves around them — much like a television network programs itself. And most importantly, all creative work needs to be developed as “content” — with an eye toward multichannel distribution.

Lately, we’ve been seeing some great reinforcement of our philosophy popping up in discussions around luxury brands.

A recent New York Times article, by Alice Pfeiffer, titled “Editing as a Brand Investment”, makes a strong case for why this approach can be a powerful one for a brands that are willing to think a little differently. The whole article is summed up nicely by this quote:

“Why spend €40,000 a page to advertise in Vogue when, for the same amount of money, you can publish an entire magazine?” asked Alice Litscher, a professor in fashion communication at the Institut Français de la Mode in Paris.

Meanwhile, over at Mashable, in the wake of the smashing success of Burberry’s recent fashion week efforts, Lauren Ludvick offered a great piece titled “Burberry’s Evolving Role as a Media Company” — her quote from Christopher Bailey, Burberry’s Creative Director, is a wonderfully modern take on the idea — and speaks directly to the role of social media:

“A brand is not just about product, it’s about experience as well, and experiences need to come from the center of a community,”

We’re thrilled to see this kind of approach find adoption and results — it’s a big part of how our team solves problems for forward thinking luxury and lifestyle brands.

Who is the Hero?

Lately the role of narrative in advertising and branding is getting a lot attention. This is a natural progression as brands struggle with the need to create content and conversation in the digital world instead of broadcasting a benefit driven message through the airwaves. Social media, games, and digital experiences all seem to make more sense when driven by a story.

Earlier this year, I began screenwriting. Like many who endeavor to accomplish this, I had an idea for a story that I felt just needed to be told. The experience led me to a few realizations: story is just as important to brands as it is to film, stories have always been one of the most important way humans communicate, and all stories begin in the same place — with a hero.

So, this post is all about asking the question, “Who is your brand's hero?”

Many brands will try to convince you that the brand itself is the hero. The recent work for Allstate, starring Dean Winters as “Mayhem” is a great example of this. Mayhem rears its ugly head and Allstate saves the day.
 

 

Sometimes the benefit takes on the role of the hero. Benefits are usually abstract, so fictional characters come in handy here. Work for Old Spice, Captain Morgan and Dos Equis all rely on characters that embody the qualities of the product benefits to fill the role of hero.
 

 

Casting the people who use the product as the hero is another popular approach: Smart, savvy, and cool families drive a Honda.
 

 

Sometimes the customer is the hero. But the customer is not the end user. Hallmark is great example. “When you care enough to send the very best” is a message all about making the person who gives the greeting card the hero.
 

 

If you have other approaches or thoughts about narrative and brands, please share.

And if you’re interested in writing a movie script, I highly recommend working with the team at Script Pipeline. They are incredibly talented people with an amazing track record.

—Bernard Urban

 

Is the USP dead?

It seems that the long-tail conversation coming out of the ad community’s analysis of the Super Bowl spots is all about strategy.

First, let me say kudos to any brand or agency that had work run during the game. It’s a big accomplishment to be part that tradition and for sheer participation, I sincerely tip my hat.

That said, my immediate reaction to the work was to ask: “Is the Unique Selling Proposition dead… and whatever happened to advertising creative based on benefit?”

In my opinion, without naming names, you could take the logo off most of the work and shuffle them around and still end up with a spot that made literal sense for another brand. I thought the Chrysler spot was for Cadillac and still have the Bud spots confused with the Doritos work. I felt like every brand was claiming to be coveted by aliens, to revive deceased ancestors or somehow play a role in a series of epic Hollywood-style explosions. The work was insanely high on production value and sadly low on Unique Selling Proposition.

Without a sound strategic underpinning, three values that most modern advertising claims to perpetuate can’t manifest themselves:

Relevance
Brand Equity
Authenticity

I don’t think I am alone in this sentiment.

Peter Krivkovich has a similar take over at AdAge. And this comment hit home with me from a Facebook post on AdFreak’s  “Battle of the VW Ads: ‘The Force’ vs. ‘Milky Way”

“…I don’t give a crap who sang the song ‘Pink Moon’ … point being it’s the idea behind the commercial. I prefer the Milky Way Cabrio ad because it brings out the advantages of actually driving the vehicle… The Darth Vader ad is cutesy, just sort of sells Star Wars.”

Today, Ed Cotton has a post on Influx about The Brief. He’s asking some great questions, that -- I have a hunch -- may be in part inspired by yet another Facebook conversation which he and I commented on, discussing the seeming lack of strategy behind the Emniem/Chrysler spot. In his Influx post, Ed cites Jon Steel’s book “Truth and Lies in Advertising” – a book that I think a number of agency folks should be ordering from Amazon sooner than later.

Personally, I think the brief still lives, it’s just that the number of people who know how to write an effective brief based on insights are few and far between in the modern ad agency. —Bernard Urban

Holiday 2010: The Dollar Is More Valuable To US Shoppers Than Ever

That’s good news for top brands and great products.

Pundits talk about how stressed Americans are about the future, and that’s true. Yet one outcome that may be good news for premium brands is that the U.S. dollar itself—due to its real or perceived scarcity—is very valuable to consumers right now, and they want to spend it on things they think have real value. A recent Nielsen study showed sales of high-end Greek yogurt trending up, not down, in this recession. That’s because if a consumer thinks  money is scarce, the last thing they want to do is waste it on a bad experience, even as it pertains to yogurt. And that’s equally true on higher-ticket items, which is why the very desirable iPad is going to sell very well this season.   

The downside of how valuable the dollar is to consumers is that they don’t want to spend it on credit card interest payments. The AP-GfK poll on consumer debt shows that more than ever, consumers are planning their spend so that they can afford to pay either in cash or as soon as they get their bill. But we’d argue that means that there will be less impulse purchasing and more budgeted spending. If so you’d expect to see more research behavior, and indeed, Yahoo reports that online shopping is up more than 900% right now—we think that’s people doing lots of homework before they get their wallets out. In this environment, it’s good to be the leading brand, and especially to have built a great online reputation.

—Victoria Else, Director of Strategy, Gigantic

All Content is Not Equal.

Just over the horizon, beyond publisher’s recent popular tactics of Paywalls and Apps lie more strategic approaches to evolving publishing into the 21^st century.

Content as Brand.
This might be a difficult idea to grasp in a world formerly dominated by the celebrityesque personas of editors, writers and photographers. However the time has arrived for publishers to re-build their titles as strong cross-platform brands. Why?

Apps and Paywalls themselves are a primary reason. If parity content can be found in other venues for free, the value of a brand needs to justify the cost associated with implementing these tactics.
What drives brand value for publishers? Based on our recent research: both trust in the quality of the content and expectations for a superior experience. Publishers are in a position to build upon this legacy with a superior reader experience, because readers expect that familiar resources can provide them with increased value.

Content as Experience.
Because of the trust they create, strong brands provide a foundation for experience. Advocates of free content cite its ubiquity and short shelf life, ignoring the value of content that is kept and savored.  Great publisher brands have a big advantage there. Yet, the opportunity to shape a more valuable brand experience around content remains largely untapped. Again, according to our research, preferred user experience can be driven primarily with personalization and added dimensional value.

Imagine being able to select only the cable channels you view in your cable package. Or the ability to only see automotive advertising when you are in the market for a new car. Or imagine logging in to a Condé Nast portal where you can personally tailor your Vogue experience to include: the September issue delivered on high quality paper and custom bound, with the balance of the year’s issues streamed your iPad, a curated shopping experience at Neiman Marcus and tickets to the Fall Shows at New York Fashion Week. A self-selected, year-long, Vogue-branded experience that you’ll gladly pay significantly more than $1 an issue for.

Too good to be true?
Sound overwhelming, if you’re a publisher? We think it’s the future and one example we can point to is luxury publisher Monocle. Aside from a suite of free iPad apps (both print and video), it’s flourishing as online digital content, a premium printed publication and a curated shopping site. And it has highly successful retail stores in London, Hong Kong LA, Tokyo and New York. These experiences drive interactions and value for users. Of course, though, this kind of experience can only be effectively built on top of a well-developed brand. 

 

Facebook Fanatic or Raging Narcissist?

Beyond personal branding, Dunbar’s number and the mobile phone pictures of the crème brule you ate last night lies the realm of the new social media narcissist. It seems we’ve entered a new age of narcissism—where blatant self-promotion on social media sites has become standard behavior. Psychologist, Mike Leary argues that social sites, like Facebook provide opportunities for well-adjusted people to unleash their inner narcissist. Leary notes that “[Facebook] is a self-presentational vehicle. It's a little bit like advertising.”

Ironically, this trend comes at a time when brands are attempting to evolve to a more human, engaged and caring tone within the realm of social media. Certainly everyone has a reason for partaking in social media; whether it’s to promote a personal or profitable brand, to stay connected to friends and family or simply remind the world how awesome you are.

Maybe it is time ordinary people take a different cue from brands and work on figuring out how to be more, well, human?

Photo from State Library of New South Wales, via Flickr. Blog post contributed to by Cassandra Morello, Gigantic Intern.

The iPad is Something Else: The Coming Content (Re) Evolution

So here’s our iPad post. Let’s begin with a quote that’s in our BrandFlux presentation which sums up how humans become familiar with and process new ideas:

“When confronted with something new; people often only reference what they already know.”

Naturally, there’s a lot of discussion going on about what the iPad isn’t, how it possibly disables creation and lacks some basic laptop functionalities —all observations based on comparisons to the familiar. So it’s not hard to understand why some of the early content created for it, mimics familiar content formats as well. (Take a look at “Time Magazine’s app, for example.)

Thinking past what it isn’t and envisioning what it could be (and most likely will become) seems more exciting to us. At its heart, it is simply a wonderful content delivery platform. Video, text, photos all served up in a portable sexy package that just works. So while griping about USB ports, cameras and other missing—but realistically forthcoming features—we believe that it’s more important to think about how it’s time for content to evolve. Dramatically.

Love it hate it, the iPad is going to push content to become:

•             More Snackable: Compelling concise bites of sticky content are the future—whether they are free, or behind a paywall, created by brands, publishers or crowds.  Users attention spans are not getting longer, but the need for information continues to grow exponentially. The Executive Summary is the rule of thumb here.

•             More Interactive and Less Linear: Sure a blog post or a tweet with a link or two are more compelling than those without. But what happens to content when what has been primarily a two dimensional experience can become multidimensional?  The GQ iPad app has some great features, but it still feels very linear and was dominated by ads, which also felt linear. We wanted to see more video, things like interviews with writers, behind the scenes peeks, and a navigation that was more browsable and less formal. However, kudos to GQ and Gilt for jaw-dropping, super sharp photography. Any commercial photographer should see the iPad as a potential boon to that challenged industry, finally a screen that rewards photo-professionalism.

•             Connected and Manipulated in Different Ways: What lies beyond cutting, pasting and linking? What lies beyond keyboards and mice? We look to the iPad’s larger touch screen as an impetus to move beyond the limits of the conventional. With this in mind, the device becomes a compelling platform as a Sales Force Automation Platform or Mobile Presentation Tool. It’s a different kind of place to connect users with content and ultimately allow users to connect content in different ways.

As usual, we’ll end with questions about whether your brand or publication is taking these ideas into consideration when thinking about how it is developing content. It’s clear the immediate future will demand more from that content than what is expected of it right now.

 

Stop that train.

Breaking the Clutter.

A decade ago a brand could break the clutter of rapidly fragmenting media with a big spend, a sharp concept or by somehow being idiosyncratic. There was no defined entry point, somewhat of a defined formula and not a lot of downside to getting the message out there. Consumers simply had to exist and messaging came to them. New brands could elbow their way in (remember those dot coms?) and established brands could expand their lineup at will (how many kinds of M&Ms are there?)

The Conversation Begins.

With the advent of social media things are certainly different. In the last 2-3 years there has been a proliferation of “the conversation” as some call it. Some brands have jumped in and are doing just fine. Others have awkwardly stubbed a toe or two. While others—like wallflowers—are sitting on the sidelines, contemplating their departure. Which leads to an interesting question: Are we nearing an inflection point where brands that are late to social media are in danger of being shut out? Of missing the train?

Participation and Overshare.

Breaking the clutter asked nothing of consumers. Conversation requires participation. At what point does it become overbearing for a consumer to participate in multiple conversations with brands? And when? If a Best Buy Twelp Force member helped me with a home electronics purchase, do I still want to fan Wal-Mart on Facebook? Do I need to? Should a car company communicate with a current owner in the same manner to someone who has never driven their product?

Beyond Trust Lies Relevance.

Trust has been pointed to as a big part making a brand relevant to a user in the world of social media. It’s certainly a necessary ingredient in the conducting of a meaningful conversation. But trust was part of the brand experience prior to the rise of social media. Would you buy a car from a manufacturer whose commercials sowed seeds of doubt? Or a soda from a brand whose packaging left you feeling uneasy about the product? No. Of course not. In order for a user to have a meaningful conversation with a brand there has to be relevance. Relevance requires engagement and understanding. It’s out there beyond the free iPod giveaway on Twitter. The newsflash on a Facebook page and the one-hit wonder novelty of a one dimensional iPhone app. Relevance comes from utility based on understanding, timing, and context. Without relevance a brand is just standing on a chair shouting at everyone. or saying the same thing to everyone at the same time. What trust they began with gets quickly squandered.

The Train Whistle.

Certainly many of the questions asked above are easy to answer. It’s the asking of these questions in the process of defining a social media approach and then making an investment in that approach that will be demanding. One thing seems certain. It’s getting harder to find a place on the train of social media. And it’s getting harder to build and keep an audience engaged there and most likely the price of entry is going to follow suit.

HDR photo of Milan Train Station via Stuck in Customs on Flickr.

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