When Every Thing Becomes Media.

“The message of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs. The railway did not introduce movement or transportation or wheel or road into human society, but it accelerated and enlarged the scale of previous human functions, creating totally new kinds of cities and new kinds of work and leisure. ” (Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, NY, 1964, p. 8)

What McLuhan writes about the railroad applies with equal validity to the media of print, television, computers and now to the Internet of Everything (IoE).  The forerunner of this was the Internet of Things (IoT), which Kevin Ashton described in a presentation to Proctor and Gamble in 1999:

If we had computers that knew everything there was to know about things—using data they gathered without any help from us—we would be able to track and count everything, and greatly reduce waste, loss and cost. We would know when things needed replacing, repairing or recalling, and whether they were fresh or past their best.

In 2007 founding Wired editor Kevin Kelly went about paraphrasing some initial thoughts by Tim Berners-Lee, describing four stages of the communication evolution leading to the emergence of the  IoT.

In the first stage, Berners-Lee identified the linking of computers was the link-up the network of networks, or the internet. The second, he said was the linking up documents and pages or the web. Back then we were at the end of the beginning of the third stage, where data is unbundled and in a form that can be read by any device on the web or what Berners-Lee calls “the World Wide Database”. In the fourth stage, he foresaw a “drift towards linking up the things themselves. You want all the data about a thing to be embedded into the thing. What we ultimately want is an internet of things.”

But now that’s been co-opted  to become the Internet of Everything (IoE). In August Cisco seized on it, claiming naming rights, creating a hashtag and a dedicated domain but also telling anyone who wanted to hear that it will create $14.4 trillion in total value for private companies over 10 years.

Cisco defines IoE as bringing together people, process, data and things to make networked connections and as McLuhan had already rightly identified, with the ability for the technology to turn all that information into actions that create new capabilities, richer experience and opportunity in much the same way as the technologies of the railway, telegraph, sound and cinema did.

And they cite “Metcalfe’s law” courtesy of Robert Metcalfe, well-known technologist and 3Com founder, who described how the value of a network increases proportionately to the square of the number of users. It’s 1 + 1 = 3. Then mash it with Intel co-founder Gordon Moore’s Law and the explosive power of the idea is even more greatly magnified.

In that analysis Cisco say that by 2015 as many as 15 billion devices will be connected, with a forecast 50 billion by 2050. When these machines, this media interact with each other, trading data with little intervention and without our knowledge, it might be safe to say, the IoE will be here.

But my IoE looks like this: computers, handhelds, an IP-enabled desk phone, smartphones and maybe my car but it’s on board computer isn’t connected except at the shop. Oh and then there’s Peter, my local delivery guy, he has a handheld scanner which I try and scribble on. I’m sure that’s connected. Yes, there are chips in some of my credit cards but from where I am right now this is still very much early stage in Ashton and Berners-Lee’s Internet of Things or even Cisco's IoE.

And as a strategist, many of my clients can barely deal with the data they have available now, if they even have it. Yet, the Internet of Everything is going to arrive and they’ll still be trying to deal with stage 3 of Berners-Lee’s communication evolution. More so, we are yet to see how the IoE this will pan out for consumer control where, for the most part, those connected things will be delivering data back to origin points determined by the media creators and not by the users. When this happens, marketing may well become an arm of technology and analytics and their application overlayed by neuro-scientific and behavioral-based brand insight and thinking, media will be everything and it will truly begin to transform our lives.   

Gap And MySpace re:brands in crisis.

One of the problems of rebranding led by high profile logo redesign is that it can expose the  lack of thorough consideration of what the process itself is designed to achieve.

It now seems Gap and now MySpace have fallen victim to the inevitable focus on the pretty picture, rather than the big picture.

While no one would necessarily argue that either companies are suffering. Gap has annual sales of US$9.12b and MySpace is still the world's second largest social network with more than 50m users. However, both have significant brand problems which no logo redesign is going to solve, even if the claim is that this is only one part of a more r/evolutionary path.

In Gap's case, the brand has been struggling with frumpy perception issues for years as its core product has come under threat from more highly attuned brands like HandM, Uniqlo and Zara. It hasn't been helped by falling sales. Same-store revenue at Gap stores fell 1% in September but it wasn't as bad as the 8% drop in 2009.

MySpace has also been similarly blighted. Global revenues are expected to fall by 21% this year, under News ownership its suffered from constant management flux, a falling headcount and Qantcast estimates US visitors are leaving in droves with numbers down by 10m between April and September.

And obviously Gap didn't see anything worth learning from Kraft Australia's painful debacle last year when it crowdsourced its new iSnack 2.0 as the new name for an extension of its popular Vegemite brand. Despite the use of a highly anonymous panel of "brand experts" to vet the process (I suspect they were all internal), the result was a resounding public relations thud and a frank mea culpa from Kraft that 48000 submissions later, the name was axed. Gap pretty much followed the same sad route.

The lesson: unrestrained crowd sourcing of an extremely popular and well known brand is inevitable folly. More so, don't focus on the tactical.

Perhaps Gap recognised this when it posted on its Facebook page what could only be regarded as the beginning of a reversal: “Thanks for everyone’s input on the new logo! We’ve had the same logo for 20+ years, and this is just one of the things we’re changing. We know this logo created a lot of buzz and we’re thrilled to see passionate debates unfolding! So much so we’re asking you to share your designs. We love our version, but we’d like to… see other ideas. Stay tuned for details in the next few days on this crowd sourcing project.”

Gap North America president Marka Hansen later engaged in further dissembling on Huffington Post claiming that the rebrand came from a desire "to see how our logo - one that we've had for more than 20 years - should evolve. Our brand and our clothes are changing and rethinking our logo is part of aligning with that.

"We want our customers to take notice of Gap and see what it stands for today. We chose this design as it's more contemporary and current. It honors our heritage through the blue box while still taking it forward, " she said.

While Hansen said Gap was "listening" and would continue to take customers on the "journey" and consider their design submissions, the damage to the brand and reputation is already irreversible. Even more laughable now that the new logo has been dumped.

Put simply, Gap recognised there was a problem with the old logo and claims it's doing something about product and stores, but a brand is the sum of all parts. Hansen as a senior executive should know better, Gap needs radical brand reinvention not revitalisation. If Gap has been in a three year turnaround, as Hansen claims, where's the resulting sales? The brand tracker? And more importantly, what's the strategy? It really needs to start with some clarity of brand vision bought out of deeper customer insight as well as a braver sense of brand stewardship. All of which might have gone AWOL at Gap, a fact clearly exposed last week and confirmed when it announced plans to dump the new logo as quickly as it showed it to Facebook.

One would hope MySpace management has been watching Gap's PR tsunami and sees something to learn. It's new logo is not even launched yet. But the conversation has started, MySpace might want to rethink its already creaking credibility.

Transmedia is not new. Transmedia strategy is.

There is a significant opportunity now for a paradigm shift in the development of transmedia strategy for brands.

While there was a mild peak in interest in transmedia and the discussion around transmedia strategy in 2006/7 with the publication of Henry Jenkins' Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide , the buzz died soon died down to be replaced with discussions around narrative exposition and the centrality of the brand story.

One of the problems of Jenkins' critique is that the role of brand has largely been underplayed in subsequent discussions of transmedia. The assumption that brand assets like fictional content, media property and entertainment franchises are so evolutionary that they appear largely ownerless and un-branded, perhaps even disenfranchised by transmedia as well, seems naive. Now with the confluence of technology and brand creating ever more powerful social media platforms, brand owners have begun to realise that significant revenue streams have gone largely unexplored and undervalued, the argument for transmedia strategy now seems unequivocal.

Still brand development and planning continue to remain resolutely in brand strategy and advertising planning silos, rather than in the more convergent disciplines such as PR and social media which now cover "influence" rather than platform-based awareness. All the while the simplification of technology production and wider device access is radically increasing the ability, scale and scope of individual and audience collaboration and co-creation in brand development, it is still rare for brands and the campaigns that follow to embrace more than one or two transmedia approaches, even better still a full and lengthy transmedia strategy.

I believe much of the problem lies in three parts. Firstly, both a disavowal and a general ignorance of the role brand and brand creation has in the development of the transmedia assets. Secondly, the tactical short-term focus most brands have on brand deployment and engagement and subsequently followed by the action of their agencies. Thirdly, this concentration on short term campaign development (linked to agency renumeration and commission structures), replaces the more favourable strategic objective of long term brand equity building.

The above video is a broadcast of slides for my lecture to a Masters class at the University of Technology, Sydney. It is simply an introduction, designed to inform a larger discussion on the emerging role of transmedia strategy in brand and marketing planning.

Some thoughts on transmedia strategy, brands and the future of media planning.

How can brands plan and deliver unified long term strategy, build value and engagement in the message fog created by continually splintering and fractured media and audiences? The answer might be in the new field of transmedia strategy.

A transmedia strategy is designed to create an evolving and "self saucing" brand story through interaction between brand owners and their audiences. A transmedia strategy is contextual and continues the life of brand by permitting constant brand renewal through a process of reinvention and re-engagement. In a transmedia strategy, a brand's core ideology and brand platform has to have been developed sufficiently for brand messages to be coherently delivered to different audiences via a variety of media forms over a long period of time, rather than in the current highly geared campaign format and timeframe. Derived from transmedia story telling with its high profile examples like the multi-storied/multifabled Matrix and Star Wars saga brands, in a transmedia strategy messages have much less need to be integrated as they are independently delivered by a wide variety of media over time but can still contribute to the evolving brand.

Behind transmedia strategy is the idea that a campaign should be seen as less a campaign but more an episode or chapter, executed by discreet media opportunities for the evolution of a brand. Each of these media opportunities - whether they be for brand building or for deliberate interaction - can sit independently but is designed to contribute, over time, to the development of the brand.

Consider it this way: transmedia enables brands to more effectively deliver messages and communicate ideas to its targets and is better able to meet the overall brand aims. Take, for example, a traditional government-funded social marketing-based brand campaign. Most of these campaigns, for all their apparent success, are built around traditional bursts of media and rarely funded more than annually and are often highly television media dependent and here lies the opportunity for long term brand building.

Almost any government funded and long term social-based education program is ripe for a transmedia strategy. That these campaigns prominently emphasise display media such as television, internet advertising, cinema and print is often because of their inherent visibility (politicians like this as well) and well, because the agencies involved are not only better rewarded for this media but still regard it as the most able to deliver core messages to the widest possible audiences, regardless of its effectiveness and ability to create change.

In the case of a social marketing anti-smoking brand campaign such as Australia's long running Quitnow, traditional display media is exclusively used to deliver core messages to primary targets. But sometimes radio, PR, advocacy and now social media can also be more actively being leveraged to deliver actual engagement and achieve behavioral change.

However, with a transmedia strategy communication tasks and some of the targets can be more precisely and discretely divided between media, rather than looking to, as is often the case, to heavy spend across all media just to ensure TARPs, message spread and often annual budget exhaustion.

Take for example, the Australian Government's long running National Tobacco Strategy. With a transmedia strategy, the strategy aim could now be to create a fully integrated long-term brand play by starting to treat the Quitnow centred campaign as a more fully developed and evolving brand, rather than achieving implementation objectives via tactical and limited campaigns, which is now the case. Though the National Tobacco Campaign’s discreet approach has been highly successful for some of its target audiences, the continuing fragmentation of audience and media no longer guarantees success will be as likely or as easy. These days communication objectives can no longer be met by bursts of high cost but pocketed media activity.

A highly geared campaign emphasis on television spots in these types of campaigns does elicit specific audience actions that may fulfill some campaign objectives, but will it achieve “effective contribution” for the campaign? What is the state of audience fatigue with these messages? TARPs, in my opinion, is a singularly disingenuous measure these days, created when television was media dominant. Television is evolving and is now more suited to developing a character-based narrative for campaigns and not just for awareness raising. For example, the campaign's TV advertising should move away from the wave of “shock-and-awe” led campaigns to develop ad series built on connected family scenarios on smoking and its consequences. Each scenario emphasing life stages or turning/stress points.

With cigarette smoking the most social of habits, what's suprising in this Australian example, is this has not played a more significant part in campaign planning. The role of digital in delivering often low cost measurable target audience awareness, engagement and access to support should be framed within a component social media strategy, that both contributes to the anti-smoking brand like Quitnow but also works independently and alongside complimentary campaigns run by various state organisations and cancer groups. As it is the campaign's leading online property, the Quitnow website is severely underdone and it desperately needs expansion. My to-do list might include a Quitter’s page with first hand stories and opportunities to input approaches and solutions; a Quitnow YouTube Channel featuring the television spots or extended to become episodes; links to a Facebook page and other social media comment badging; deeper and more comprehensive SEO given Google’s new search algorithm ( with the possibility of guerilla tactics like link baiting); Wikipedia links to the archives and all existing Quitnow campaigns; Twitter brand conversations from anti-smoking brand ambassadors as well as a focus on separate non-English Speaking Background and indigenous channel development. In a transmedia strategy all of this is designed to develop the brand's narrative and contribute to more active engagement - something that just won't come anymore from simply calling a telephone number.

Australia's anti-smoking strategy was developed when media consumption patterns and accompanying planning were largely dominated by television and other increasingly redundant display media. Sure it worked then but effectiveness is now acknowledged as diminishing for a variety of reason but with no recent measures available to track audience fatigue and a flagging strategy, I'm left feeling that the "tried and true" approach doesn't cut it anymore. A transmedia strategy can deliver long term brand development and engagement, allows agencies to develop more active and discreet campaign media expansion over time, prioritises audience media use and allocates discriminant awareness and engagement tasks to each media against core brand messages. Media buying can still continue to be driven by TARP, GRP, CPA or any other measure a brand owner might use. Transmedia strategies requires insight, daring and vision and an acknowledgement that social marketing campaigns need no longer be driven by visibility imperatives but by more effective and newer patterns of brand involvement.

DIFFUSION and Lucas make their mark on new Lowy Cancer Research Centre.

DIFFUSION and Lucas Melbourne's work has featured in the opening of the new Lowy Cancer Research Centre in Sydney on May 28 2010.

The new centre features a bold strikeout sans serif word mark incorporating colours from the building’s architects Lahz Nimmo.

The new centre was opened by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, NSW Premier Kristina Keneally and its main benefactor, chairman of Westfield Corporation Frank Lowy.

DIFFUSION principals Stephen Byrne and Monique Defina-Nancarrow and Lucas were responsible for the development of the new centre’s brand strategy, positioning and creative brand development. It was a year long project working with a joint working party between the two institutions as well as key sector influencers and stakeholders.

DIFFUSION strategy director Stephen Byrne and Lucas director Chris Lucas said they were proud to have been invited to develop the “make your mark” on cancer graphic idea - part of the main platform for the centre’s brand.

The $127 million research facility is at the University of New South Wales’ Kensington campus and houses 400 cancer researchers from both UNSW and the Children’s Cancer Institute Australia for Medical Research (CCIA) is the largest in the southern hemisphere.

Enter at your own risk: the real value of social media-based brand engagement.

Let’s be straight. Brand engagement does have quantifiable financial benefits. Increasingly this type of engagement via social media also has quantifiable benefits, it’s just no one knows what exactly they are, yet. So while the latest and only social media study reluctantly admits this, real financial bottom line value is still only partially proven.

By any standard definition brand engagement is an emotional connection or attachment developed during repeated and continuing interactions with a brand. Over time this should accumulate through satisfaction, loyalty, influence and excitement and other factors. Organizations who engage customers to the point where they are moved to a behavioral change do so by creating opportunities for emotional connections through consistent and positive experiences. Social media seems an opportunity for some brands to develop such opportunities, albeit at least turn any negative ones into positive.

However, alongside other media and non-media forms, social media is and should be regarded as just one part of a suite of engagement channels for brands. So, for example, a brand’s appearance or lack of presence on Twitter or Facebook, might harm its perception or level of engagement, it’s just that it won’t hurt if the current levels of engagement are low. And regardless, for some industry sectors it purely demonstrates a rational and logical extension of their core business activity.

In July the WetPaint/Altimeter Group released its ENGAGEMENTdbReport aimed at measuring how deeply engaged the top 100 2008/9 global brands were in a variety of social media channels and, more importantly, understand if a higher engagement correlated with financial success. Unremarkably, the study understated one of the key defining aspects of these rankings – that the level of financial success generated by the brands had already put them a top 100 brand. A position not defined by some other event or cause like social media.

WetPaint/Altimeter claimed their study not only measured the level of engagement but also the depth. They evaluated and scored each brand’s engagement in various channels and found the more a brand leverages multiple channels, the higher the level of engagement is (seems to make sense!) Ranking Starbucks as the most engaged brand, with a presence across 11 social media-based channels, they also linked exponential growth in the depth of engagement with continued growth in the channel.

Not surprisingly, it also found engagement differs by industry and with media usage. So the most engaged industries are naturally Media and Technology and the least, Financial, Apparel and Food & Beverage. In addition, the study found distinct target audiences can influence the level of engagement eg. Toyota’s media channels used to promote Prius are different to those used by either Mercedes or Porsche, again this would simply represent segmented buyer behaviours.

But what interested me the most, despite all claims to the contrary, was that the study admitted NO ONE has the data to determine whether there is a direct cause and effect between financial performance and social media engagement. While it claims companies “deeply and widely engaged in social media surpass their peers in terms of both revenue and profit performance by a significant difference”, it also points out these findings don’t necessarily imply a causal relationship between these two but POWERFUL implications, whatever that might mean.

So while it comes as no surprise that one of the least connected brands at 98 was AIG, the world’s most successful brand Coca Cola is tagged as a wallflower and is down at no 51. Go figure the financial relationship there between brand and performance.

There’s nothing particularly revelatory in statements like “a customer oriented mindstep stemming from deep social interaction” generates superior profits thus enabling further engagement investment and a virtuous circle of increasing profits. But social media is, within the primacy of media, a marketing and communications tool for brand engagement in the same way point of sale, packaging, store design, direct mail are.

So how does the Wetpaint/ Altimeter study contribute to the dearth of research on the effectiveness of social media?
1. Social media engagement effectively enables direct and two way communication for the brand. This is new
2. Brand engagement can be better managed and measured via social media
3. The cost and revenues that accrue from this engagement can be directly measured and accounted for
4. Social media is purely digitally driven. Though the by products from which it is derived are not
5. Social media brand engagement is governed by levels of participation in the same way any other engagement is. Active, latent, pro-active etc
6. Social media enables deep and broad brand engagement
6. Digital brands aren’t necessarily social media brands but it doesn’t hurt they are

What the study also reveals is that social media enables brands via this form of agency to quantify the value of the brand engagement and subsequently contribute to brand valuation. The contribution of brand engagement to financial value is already factored in many valuation models but this partition of the contribution is something that can effectively stand alone. We are yet to see how that might happen and who might use this.

So while the WetPaint/Altimeter study contributes to our understanding regarding the level and extent of brand engagement via social media, there’s really not enough evidence here of a direct financial return is not surprising. Indeed page six of the Altimeter report confirms the link between social media engagement and financial performance is not proven. Unlike one of the often quoted quantitative models, the Harvard Business School’s Sears Model, which proves a direct correlation between internal employee brand engagement and financial return in the vicinity of around 20%. .

And another study conducted in June last year for Adobe (not ranked by Wetpaint/Altimeter) by Forrester Consulting developed another model and demonstrated a 66% return. This study examined the total economic impact and potential return on investment companies might realise by increasing investment in engagement initiatives, with an emphasis on using both existing and emerging technology touch points such as social media.

It wasn’t extensive research (200 companies surveyed and six in-depth interviews) but Forrester did use what it calls a Total Economic Impact (TEI) methodology to measure impact. TEI not only measures costs and cost reduction (areas that are typically accounted for within IT) but also weighs the enabling value of a technology in increasing the effectiveness of overall business processes such as customer communication.

Forrester found three main results – firstly, increasing investment in online customer engagement through Internet-based channels improved the efficiency and effectiveness of customer interactions and the customer experience. Secondly, improved efficiency translates to reduced overall cost of sale as well improved internal staff productivity (much like the Sears Model) and thirdly, like the Wetpaint/Altimeter study, improved effectiveness translates to improved top line revenues resulting from higher purchasing frequency and improved customer value. Overall, the value of the ROI around 66%.

However, while the study focused on Adobe products and their introduction as part of a wider technology strategy, it still confirmed one of the main but unproven conclusions from Wetpaint/Altimeter. Those organisations with higher financial returns were those that developed a deep connection with their customers using online channels such as social media, ultimately raising customer awareness and purchase intent. Just ask Dell about its oft cited Twitter experiment.

In a turning bay: some questions on the future of brands in social media.

This is a conversation I had recently on the future of brands and social media with Jenni Beattie, Director at Digital Democracy, a Sydney based digital communications consultancy.

Stephen Byrne: I want to start with some work Forrester did in April last year when they outlined the five phases of the social web. They are:

1) Era of Social Relationships: People connect to others and share

2) Era of Social Functionality: Social networks become like operating system

3) Era of Social Colonization: Every experience can now be social

4) Era of Social Context: Personalized and accurate content

5) Era of Social Commerce: Communities define future products and service

Forrester study found that the technologies will trigger changes in consumer adoption, and brands will need to follow, resulting in these five distinct phases.

I don’t think technologies are going to be the only triggers for new consumer adoption. My view is that the marketing of brands as we know it in a state of flux. What we are seeing, to use a French phrase, is an “eventment”, where for example, social media and technology are combining to mitigate against many of the old marketing paradigms. You only have to look at what’s happening on the agency level.

Jenni Beattie: I believe the marketing of brands as we know it has fundamentally changed. Today consumers expect to have a say, be able to feedback and make a mark on a brand. This can be as simple as using review features on websites to user generated content such as naming a brand.

After spending time in digital market research, you can see how the social web is impacting that discipline. In the past it was very much a parent-child relationship with the researcher asking a very set question and the respondent answering. Today, more interactive forms of research such as online community research are taking place with a more ‘organic’ flow to the questioning i.e. the participants driving and forming part of the research. Good examples of innovative research can be seen from international companies such as Fresh Networks and PeanutLabs.

SB: In the final phase Forrester projects consumers will rely on their peers as they make online decisions, whether or not brands choose to participate. Socially connected consumers will strengthen communities and shift power away from brands and CRM systems; eventually this will result in empowered communities defining the next generation of products.

I’m not sure if I accept this phase. It’s like the worst effects of crowdsourcing and consensus politics. I don’t think we’re going to get an entirely technology driven brands, as Forrester’s analysis implies, but there is certainly some dramatic changes occurring with regards to consumer empowerment and in terms of brand preferences.

JB: There will be an increase in consumers defining products and services. Online branded communities created by Dell, Starbucks and P&G are already helping give customer feedback and in turn helping to define the future products and services.

A good international example of innovation and consumers defining brands was when The Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) of the USA awarded Kettle Foods, Inc. one of the two 2008 Awards for Innovation and Creativity. Kettle Foods, Inc. won the award for its “People’s Choice” campaign. The campaign combined “consumer interaction, PR and R&D into one program. According to the press reports the company has had than 11,000 new business leads, more than 7,000 new flavour suggestions, and 75,000 unique Web site visits all for a low cost investment”

As far as power shifting away from CRM systems I don’t believe that to be the case. CRM will reinvent itself, Gartner refers to this as Social CRM. Gartner analysts say “There’s operational CRM, analytical CRM, and now there’s collaborative or social CRM”. Today CRM budgets are looking towards more social applications such as Twitter that are at the coal-face of customer service.

SB: Right now there seems to be a lot of confusion between social media and the definition of community. The idea of community is right now as fairly elusive one and is being bandied about like it’s some sacrosanct term. Community built around consumption is, for me fairly transitory. It reminds of an unruly mob during the time of the Paris Commune. We’re not going to get a whole lot of sense out of this right now.

Then there’s these dire warnings coming from people like Forrester, that brands will be excluded from consumer choice because somehow they are now being defined by communities and no longer by the brand owners themselves. I think this is both disingenuous and untrue. Forcing brands out of their hands via social media created communities is only part of the story. While even as early as 2005 Tomi Ahonen and Alan Moore warned marketers, in their prescient work Communities Dominate Brands, that if they didn’t cut loose the shackles of the traditional advertising agency and TV network model they would lose their brands. I’m seeing many of the same warnings again this year, particularly in the wake of the great financial crisis. But what real, if any, changes have we seen to this paradigm? No brands have fallen by the wayside because they didn’t have a social media strategy or because they continued advertising in traditional media.

JB: Brands may not fall by the wayside as such but brands will become stronger because of their consumer engagement strategies. For example, the well known Dell Hell scenario certainly impacted on that organization negatively but by engaging with the community they have come back stronger and more relevant to their client base. If they hadn’t done that who knows where that organisation will be.

Some brands come to social media like Dell in a ‘reactive’ fashion knowing they now need to engage with consumers due to a negative event/issue. Other brands initiate the online engagement strategy ‘proactively’, understanding it will add value to their knowledge base, understanding the client better, product development and customer service.

SB: Ahonen and Moore predicted the consumer and their connected communities, would select the products and brands that are engaged in the most relevant dialogue with them. Somehow this would become the centre of a new modern and sustainable marketing model. While I think there are some massive shifts occurring, I don’t think we’re quite there yet with this because I’m not sure anyone understands these kinds of ROIs yet.

JB: First of all, it is important not just to focus on ROI but measurable goals and each company will have varying goals. Social media marketing is typically a long term investment so to set short term ROI goals is going to be difficult. Setting ROI for a specific short-term campaign is more logical i.e. we spent X dollars taking this campaign to the market place and X dollars in sales. There are many intangible benefits from social media marketing such as increased loyalty from customers, insights and R&D innovations and better customer service many of these are hard to equate with a dollar value.

There is a balance when setting ROI expectations. Many social media audits have an AVE advertising value equivalent metric assigned. This stems from the AVE metric that the public relations industry used but discredited about a decade ago saying it was simplistic and backward looking rather than useful for future strategic planning. Unfortunately, just as in the traditional PR world many c-level execs still want the $ figure and so in the social media marketing world the metric is still used but with some hesitation.

SB: There’s already a view that Web 2.0 and pervasiveness of new community archetypes make demographics dead, but I don’t see this is as too different to these axiomatic definitions of community.

JB: If companies were using demographics as the only avenue for ‘understanding ‘ their customer then, yes demographics are dead. Companies need to have a relationship with the customer rather then simply put them in isolated boxes. Let’s face it boomers today don’t act like middle-aged people years ago – times have changed so the context for those demographics has to change as well.

As far as using demographics to reach consumers via social media marketing, that is still relevant but rather than just understanding income levels and postcodes we need to understand how they relate online and what sites they are using. We need to understand their technographic profile. For example, women 55 plus and men 55 plus operate differently online understanding this will mean you can engage with them more effectively.

Gartner published research on what they call Generation V (virtual) indicating that the generation isn’t defined by specific demographics but by the way they use technology i.e. a behavioural categorisation. Elements of this categorisation incude accomplishments, how they build and share knowledge and their preference for different media channels.

Let’s not throw out the ‘baby with the bathwater’ demographics are not dead but demographic elements need to be relevant to social media marketing.

SB: One of the things I am seeing is the built around the question of measuring influence in social networks and communities. I’m not sure if brands are really measuring this and how much use, if any, they are making of influence metrics.

JB: There are a myriad of ways to measure influence in social networks and the impact of social media marketing. Normally there is a mix of qualitative and quantitative measurements.

To set your measurements you need to set your marketing objectives and relate the metrics to those. For example, if you want to raise awareness of a new product or service attention metrics such as the amount of views of your content are important if you are after sales metrics than you need to look at actionable clicks rather than just views.

I like to break the metrics down into Visibility Metrics (i.e. getting seen) and Engagement Metrics (what people do once they see your content site). So, for example. engagement metrics would include items such as links shared, comments on blogs etc.

SB: I don’t think we’re really in a position to say that brands and companies without a social media strategy are going to find that customers will go elsewhere.

JB: Yes, It may not be quite as apocalyptic as that but recent research looking at brand relationships has shown that on average they are 15% stronger for digital consumers. Even products such as motor fuel and hair care (as shown below) can be impacted favourably by engaging with the consumers online.


Some brands will have more synergy with social media marketing than others. A good example is the non-profit area, where there is already a lot of passion and energy around their company or cause. For example, the United Nations Refugee Agency recently launched their Causes page on Facebook. They reached 50,000 members in just under seven days, raised just over $50,000 and boosted their Facebook fan page to 20,000 fans.

Having said that even brands that you would think would have less ‘talkability’ in social media such as tax (think H&R Block) have done well using social media strategies.

Let’s not forget that while some may think that social media marketing is radical and very new in reality Doc Searls and David Weinberger (the founders of The Cluetrain Manifesto) were spouting social media marketing many years ago.

SB: One of the problems is how social commerce is really going to work. Given the growing failure of traditional advertising in almost all media forms, the real question now is how are brands going to be sold in the future.

Before your eyes: how our media use is a history of screens.

A short history of screens.

1. Around 1600 the camera obscura is perfected. Light is inverted through a small hole or lens from outside, and projected onto a surface or screen, creating a moving image
2. Mechanisms for producing two-dimensional drawings in motion were displayed in public halls by devices such as the zoetrope, mutoscope and praxinoscope were displayed in the 1860s
3. The development of the motion picture camera allows individual component images to be captured and stored on a single reel, "motion pictures” are shown onto a screen for an entire audience in the 1880s
4. The first commercially made electronic television with a cathode ray tube is manufactured by Telefunken in Germany in 1934
5. The first call on a hand-held mobile phone is made on April 3 1973
6. Apple Computers introduce the Apple II, the world’s first personal computer in 1977
7. Mattel introduce the first handheld electronic game Auto Race in 1977

According to the results of a landmark consumer media consumption research study released in March, it comes as no surprise that our dedication to screens know no bounds.

The research, commissioned by the US media measurement company Nielsen Media and its US Council for Research Excellence, followed 372 Americans in two full days of live media observation.

It was was designed to simultaneously observe and measure media exposure, life activities, locations for media use and where people spent their day. The mass observation study took place in six geographically disperse cities across the US. The final sample included 952 observed days and over three-quarters-of-a-million minutes of observation. A not insubstantial study.

The study found we spend on average, 67 percent of our total daily media time with live TV screen-based media (including DVRs, DVDs and games), about two minutes a day watching video via the Internet, and only a fraction of a minute watching mobile video. Even among 18-24-year-olds, the average amount of time spent watching live TV (209.9 minutes) surpassed even computer screen time (169.5 minutes).

If, as the study identifies, our total concurrent media consumption across all forms of media runs to eight and half hours per day, it also confirms our lives are now more tuned to screen time than first thought.

The research shows concurrent media use and exposure is almost the same for all age groups, media choice so rapidly changing that computer-based activities have replaced radio as our number two media. US consumers now spend on average two hours and thirty-three minutes on a computer, but only one hour and 49 minutes with a radio.

Contrary to current thinking, young demographics are not the biggest consumers of media. While the average adult spent 309.1 minutes watching live TV and 14.6 minutes playing back programming via DVR, the biggest consumers of media were in the 45-54 demographic or what the study called a “digital boomer.” Digital boomers spend nine and half hours per day using all four screens (TV, computer, mobile and out-of-home such as kiosks) compared to eight and half hours for all other age groups.

One of the most interesting findings was that on average live TV users were only exposed to roughly an hour a day of advertising and promotions. If proven by subsequent studies, this debunks much of what is claimed around the level of brand message exposure per day (at around 3000). As most live television advertising runs at 15 minutes per hour or so, on the basis of figures quoted in the study, these should be two hours on television alone or around 240 messages on live TV at 30 seconds per message). What’s difficult in this measure was “exposure” remains undefined and so do they mean a viewer actually watching advertising or just appearance? My assumption is they are defining it as active participation. For example, during the live TV commercial breaks people were observed shifting their primary attention to media such as print, phone and computing. This data seems to prove a widely-held but strongly debated view that consumers are avoiding most of advertising in programming when they view live TV. The long held view that consumers still “follow” a brand message as they shift from one media to the next also seems to be questionable.

The study now ranks computer-based time as the number two media category after live TV. Including web use, email, software and internet messsaging, computing time exceeded broadcast radio average duration by 40 per cent. The study suggests computing has now replaced radio as the number two media activity. Radio is now number three and print number four. Print covered major US newspaper and magazines with use around 22 to 41 minutes per day. Claims for the death of print are no longer an exaggeration.

The Council for Research Excellence study shows our typical daily media consumption goes beyond TV to a growing prevalence of new digital screen-based channels. One of the by-products is the finding that suggests we may actually be seeing far less advertising than first thought. Indeed, high levels of media exposure and our attentiveness to advertising may be seemingly unrelated and those oft cited high levels of advertising exposure, possibly no more than a frabrication by media planning and advertising agencies.

While the screen and our fascination with the images upon it have been around for centuries; the variety of screen-based communication channels, our use of their content continues to expand and grow at speed.

Portions of this blog were originally published in the Times of Malta's Technology Sunday supplement on Sunday 24 May and in Marketing Magazine Australia on Tuesday May 26.

DIFFUSION branding new Lowy Cancer Research Centre.

Shameless plug but here's our latest press release:

Strategic branding agency DIFFUSION have been appointed to develop the brand strategy for the new Lowy Cancer Research Centre.

The $127 million research facility is being built at the University of New South Wales’ Kensington campus to house 400 cancer researchers from both UNSW and the Children’s Cancer Institute Australia for Medical Research (CCIA).

It will be one of the largest dedicated cancer research centres in the southern hemisphere and Australia’s only fully integrated adult and childhood centre.

DIFFUSION strategy director Stephen Byrne said the agency was excited with the appointment, given the Centre’s important work and international reach.

Brand priming or why Reidel glasses make wine taste better.

What makes wine in a Reidel glass taste better? Is it because Reidel is called “The Wine Glass Company” and it claims its glasses make wine taste all the more better than any other? How come a Tiffany diamond engagement ring set the benchmark for all others? And why do people queue for the latest release of the Apple iPhone, when they wouldn’t for any other phone? Does brand exposure influence a wider range of behaviours than we previously thought? Can exposure to specific types of brands and their associate brand messages really unconsciously influence our behaviour?

That’s the inference from a Canadian study Automatic Effects of Brand Exposure on Motivated Behaviour: How Apple Makes You "Think Different", which explored whether our unconscious can be so primed by exposure to certain brands they can create automatic and predictable behaviours and performance.

Published early this year by the University of Waterloo in Ontario Canada and Duke University in the US, the study looked at whether the generally accepted priming effects applied to our social behaviours can be applied to consumer behaviour and how brands can influence this. If so, can so-called brand primes shape our behaviour and how do they does this happen?

Priming occurs when mental constructs are created around or by a particular situation. For example, it’s been well documented that exposure to the “elderly” can often cause behaviour we have already hard wired around this stereotype: so people who have been primed “elderly” may walk more slowly and display poorer memory than those who haven’t primed. Traditionally Most behavioural priming research hasfocussed on activating such these constructs via exposure to related words. If you prime someone with words related to “rudeness” they’ll probably behave rudely.

It is already accepted that exposure to brands can shape consumer decision-making. One US study found that consumers exposed to low-end brand names such as Wal-Mart chose products of higher value but lower prestige in contrast to those people who have been exposed to high-end brand names such as Barneys New York. Another found that as the frequency of exposure to a brand increases, so too does our tendency to choose that brand (this is not the same as frequency of message or frequency of advertising). Yet most research has been limited to exploring the consequences of brand exposure for subsequent brand or product choice. Does the impact of brand exposure end with purchasing decisions or can it actually extend to behaviours unrelated to the products the brand represents? In other words, so if words and exposure to certain people can cause people to behave rudely or walk more slowly, can brands also evoke both cognitive and motivational effects?

Much of the psychological value we get from brands appears to come from their ability to help fulfill our personality and identity. In representing desired personal qualities such as sophistication or manliness, brands such as Tiffany's or Jeep are goal-relevant in nature, symbolizing our aspirations and unattained goals. In particular, some brands may come to represent "be" or ideal-self goals (e.g., to be sophisticated), which describe people's aims to improve themselves. Just as exposure to certain role models such as people who represent success can inspire certain goal-directed actions, so too should exposure to brands that symbolise success at a given goal. Through associations with desired human qualities, goal-relevant brands can trigger these ideal-self goals and shape behaviour. For example, Nike is associated with traits such as 'active' and 'confident.' These characteristics are generally seen as positive, so the brand plays a motivational role, symbolising a desirable future and an ideal self.

Brands are often linked to our personality traits in the same way symbols or representations of people can (i.e.Virgin is a young, fun out-there brand and if we use a Virgin product therefore it may represent who we think we are). Brands can also be symbols of aspiration, representing desired personal qualities such as sophistication or power (Bentley versus Maserati) and brand-priming may well motivate performance-based behaviour. The study wanted to know whether these types of behaviours actually do result from priming by brands.

In a series of lab experiments, the researchers had subjects look at a screen that displayed a series of flashing numbers and kept a running tally of the results. Interspersed between the numbers were subliminal flashes of Apple or IBM logos. The same subject group was then asked to perform a creativity-measurement task, in which they were asked to come up with as many uses as they could for the common house brick. In many replications of the experiment as well as with control groups, the researchers found that people exposed to the Apple brand not only came up with more uses for the brick but that these were also more creative than those exposed to the IBM logo or no logo at all. In effect, Apple made you more behave and think more creatively.

These experiments measured and manipulated qualities of priming but this new research demonstrates that brands can also serve as sources of unconscious performance-based behaviour. Recent theory has it that brand primes initiated goal-directed behaviour only when those brands were associated with qualities desired by the individual i.e. I want to be more creative (Apple) or I want to be more active (Nike) Meaning a brand can affect your output and, in the case of Apple’s brand, it may make you think and work more creatively What these findings may also enable us to predict is when the various types of priming effects occur and what the behaviours are likely to be.

In blind taste tests even the best Reidel glasses, as well as they are made, don’t actually make your wine taste any better than say a $10 glass from Target. Apple’s iPhone looks and performs well but it does is no better on a benchmarked performance basis than a Blackberry Bold or a HTC Touch Diamond. What these brands and so few others have has been able to achieve is what these researchers do indeed prove – regardless of the efficacy of a product or its service attributes, the prospect of superior performance can be primed and can directly our purchase decisions.

Brand priming might help to explain why brand promise is no longer going to be enough; the point of difference is going to have to be buried deep in a brand’s DNA. The saliency of a brand can no longer just be determined by more dominant operational and visual attributes but by triggers that prime our unconscious.

This is a longer version of a blog which originally appeared in Marketing Magazine on November 5. http://www.marketingmag.com.au/blogs

What drives Booz's brand analytics tool?

Booz&co have ventured into the small but under-estimated brand valuation market with the launch of a brand vitality assessment tool designed to help failing brands redefine themselves..

The announcement comes off the back of Millward Brown's recent alliance with Brazil’s leading brand valuation consultancy, Brand Analytics, designed to complement its Optimor evaluation and measurement products in the South America market.

It also signals the tendency for global brand and business consultancies to merge strategy and engagement with valuation and analytics off the back of increasing client demands for transparency and justification in spend.

In the latest issue of Strategy and Business, Booz&co cite the success of revitalized brands like Abercrombie & Fitch, Johnnie Walker, Olay, and Ford’s Mustang as evidence that the success or otherwise of brand revitalisation and brand extension has been traditionally driven by "instinct and an appetite for risk".

Booz claims its new tool kit provides "data-driven analytics" to minimize the risk associated with these kinds of decisions. Called the Brand Vitality Assessment (BVA) and sounding much like Y&R's Brand Asset Valuation (BAV), it says it examines every aspect of a brand including communications strategy, pricing and the state of its competitors to reveal how much life is left in the name.

Booz's BVA is supposed to help companies "identify latent value — or the lack thereof — in their product portfolios before deciding what to do" or in other words, what the brand equity is. No surprises here and hardly different from their competitors.

Booz's BVA process is based on a brand having what they describe as "residual strengths" such as brand associations, the potential for or meaningful differentiation on at least one purchase driver and basic distribution infrastructure to support the revitalization.

It uses four related evaluations that incorporate consumer (where hoping that B2B hasn't been ignored here) research to create a holistic and data-driven view of how the brand is currently performing in the marketplace.

The evaluations seem fairly qualitative rather than quantitative and Booz is unable to cite any examples of what kind of measures are actually made and what kind of data is produced. Further, they don't provide any evidence of any brands they have worked with that have employed quantitative measures but apply only market share figures as demonstrations of how the process works.

The four evaluations appear almost entirely qualitative. They are:

1. The Purchase Funnel Assessment (PFA) is just another way to evaluate the purchase decision process and from DIFFUSION's experience this is generally qualitative as it relies on customer assessment from awareness to point of purchase.

2. The Brand Equity Review (BER) is designed measure residual brand equity and loyalty within the target customer segment. While it might identify the brand’s attributes, one would think these would be known and those attributes which have been eroded or been rendered irrelevant by competitors, again this seems more qualitative measure.

3. Competitive Dynamics Assessment (CDA) is a look at which competitors are taking away market share, why, and how easily the problems could be rectified.

4. Value Proposition Check (VPC, I suppose) analyses the brand’s benefits including marketing communications and pricing. It includes standard brand attributes and benefits check built around the functional, emotional and expressive against consumer, competitor, and internal perspectives. Nothing new here.

Booz's so-called Brand Vitality Potential (let's call it BVP and not sure how it snuck in) is the final evaluation, where the "cold hard facts, as uncovered by the previous four analyses, come into play". I guess this is where we might see some numbers.

Booz says the BVA is "not a panacea for tired brands" but that it offers is "a rigorous, data-driven approach to deciding a brand’s future" except we don't know what the real data is except it's all qualitative.

Booz could do well to state whether any other quantitative measurements are being used such as total market shares, sales by segment against overall PE ratios and how these are applied by the BVA. What scoring tools will be used? How will one tool be used against another? What are the weightings? If any?

More importantly, how will the assessment be reported and by whom and within what framework, particularly from the point of view of brand stretch and brand extension.

Then there are the issues of brand redefinition, activation and engagement, which follow on from such work. Booz and for that matter few other consultancies, have little capability or experience doing this kind of work despite talking about it and claiming it. The article cites no projects they have worked on this area, just suppose sos.

That there are so few consultancies and their clients who have undertaken these kind of complete lifecycle projects following a brand valuation, says much about the the general market wlllingness to understand the process behind brand creation and to make the actual investment required to revitalise dormant brands as it does about the abilities of the consultancies they use. The one's who have done it and been successful have obviously understood this from the outset.

Image courtesy of Chronicle Books.