‘Tis the season to be jolly. Yes jolly. With Christmas less than a week away, but most of us still tethered to our desks for a few more days, we want to spread a little joy, mirth and happiness to the world. So we’re bringing Christmas cracker jokes to the masses. Yes, Christmas cracker jokes.
On Tuesday December 21st, we have secured four of the world’s foremost Christmas cracker joke writers* and have convinced them to spend the day in our basement*. During that time they will be responding to your tweets, messages and exclamations by producing – as if by magic (but it’s actually sheer skill) – personalised cracker jokes. For you, for your colleagues, for your mum or for your dog. They won’t mind, they’re really not fussy.
You’ll be able to get stuck in by visiting our special page for the occasion at 1000heads.com/christmascracker, but you’ll have to wait until Tuesday for anything more than a teaser
Keep an eye on our Twitter stream for more info as ever.
We love to showcase the best conversational work being done by brands, and this ad by BMW is no exception. It’s based around the Chinese proverb “Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand” – as good a mission statement for consumer engagement as I’ve heard.
Innovative tech, an inspiring narrative and a collective experience in a real space. Old-school cinema ad plus new WOM thinking equals win, win, win.
Now close your eyes.
(OK, so I tried to transmit a 1000heads logo through the screen, but I’m not quite there yet. Imagine it instead.)
You remember Frank Carson right? Northern Irish comedian, star of Opportunity Knocks and uncle of Trevor Carson bright hope on the Northern Irish goalkeeping scene (currently under contract at Sunderland)? Of course you do. Then you’ll remember his catchphrase ‘It’s the way I tell ‘em’. And Frank was onto something there…
The way you receive a message is often just as important as the content of the message itself. Sometimes it’s more important.
If for example, you want to tell people you have a lawnmower for sale you could stick up a sign in the supermarket. But that isn’t very exciting.
You could dial it up a little then, by sticking your lawn mower on your front lawn with a nice hand painted sign. And that might turn a few heads.
Or you could hire a flock of sheep to crawl through the streets of London followed by a blimp with ‘You could have these sheep, or one lawnmower to keep your grass tidy – I know which one costs less in ongoing vet bills’ scrawled on the side. Same message, different methods.
Now, this is hardly startling stuff, marketers of all types are always looking for new ways to make their message to stand out. But what is often missing from the context, is any emotion. A sense of resonance that brings the content alive in a smart, and engaging way. Sure we can make the sign a different shape, or bigger, or project it on a building, or write it in the sky, or tattoo it on the knuckles of a bus driver, but unless that builds the message and becomes part of the interaction itself, we could be doing more.
A great example of this, is a neat little idea I picked up from Make Magazine…
When you leave a house, especially if you’ve lived there for a long time, it can be a little sad. Sometimes you might want to leave something behind, but not something too conspicuous. So how about a message hidden behind a light switch?
Imagine the moment: you’re doing a little DIY, it’s a lazy Sunday and it’s raining outside. You unscrew the light switch because you want to fit a new dimmer let’s say. As you take it off you see this text, and reading it, you discover the story of someone who lived there before you. Maybe recently, maybe many years ago. Now I don’t care what that message says, you’re going to read it. And you’re going to smile. And you’re going to talk about it.
In a world where we’re constantly bombarded with more and more messages in more and more invasive ways, the discovery of something unexpected becomes all the more precious.
Now, it’s unlikely that Mega Corporation Ltd are going to start putting things on the back of light swtiches, but that doesn’t mean we can’t look at the media we use to promote messages from a much more emotional angle. Discovery, disruption, secrecy, personalisation and wit all have their part to play and when they collide the connection between the message and reader can go even deeper.
Have you seen any great examples of messages resonating in new and unusual ways? Do share in the comments…
You remember Frank Carson right? Northern Irish comedian, star of Opportunity Knocks and uncle of Trevor Carson bright hope on the Northern Irish goalkeeping scene (currently under contract at Sunderland)? Of course you do. Then you’ll remember his catchphrase ‘It’s the way I tell ‘em’. And Frank was onto something there…
The way you receive a message is often just as important as the content of the message itself. Sometimes it’s more important.
If for example, you want to tell people you have a lawnmower for sale you could stick up a sign in the supermarket. But that isn’t very exciting.
You could dial it up a little then, by sticking your lawn mower on your front lawn with a nice hand painted sign. And that might turn a few heads.
Or you could hire a flock of sheep to crawl through the streets of London followed by a blimp with ‘You could have these sheep, or one lawnmower to keep your grass tidy – I know which one costs less in ongoing vet bills’ scrawled on the side. Same message, different methods.
Now, this is hardly startling stuff, marketers of all types are always looking for new ways to make their message to stand out. But what is often missing from the context, is any emotion. A sense of resonance that brings the content alive in a smart, and engaging way. Sure we can make the sign a different shape, or bigger, or project it on a building, or write it in the sky, or tattoo it on the knuckles of a bus driver, but unless that builds the message and becomes part of the interaction itself, we could be doing more.
A great example of this, is a neat little idea I picked up from Make Magazine…
When you leave a house, especially if you’ve lived there for a long time, it can be a little sad. Sometimes you might want to leave something behind, but not something too conspicuous. So how about a message hidden behind a light switch?
Imagine the moment: you’re doing a little DIY, it’s a lazy Sunday and it’s raining outside. You unscrew the light switch because you want to fit a new dimmer let’s say. As you take it off you see this text, and reading it, you discover the story of someone who lived there before you. Maybe recently, maybe many years ago. Now I don’t care what that message says, you’re going to read it. And you’re going to smile. And you’re going to talk about it.
In a world where we’re constantly bombarded with more and more messages in more and more invasive ways, the discovery of something unexpected becomes all the more precious.
Now, it’s unlikely that Mega Corporation Ltd are going to start putting things on the back of light swtiches, but that doesn’t mean we can’t look at the media we use to promote messages from a much more emotional angle. Discovery, disruption, secrecy, personalisation and wit all have their part to play and when they collide the connection between the message and reader can go even deeper.
Have you seen any great examples of messages resonating in new and unusual ways? Do share in the comments…
Here at 1000heads we aim to be thought leaders in the word of mouth industry by pioneering new research, creativity and strategy; challenging assumptions about what WOM is; and using innovating influences to improve our work from psychology, sociology, anthropology – hell, even theatre, literature and gastronomy.
However, we’re keenly aware that to most of the population, word of mouth is still a rather baffling thing to ‘do for a living.’ So sometimes we like to get back to basics and present some simple education around what the approach is and why brands should care.
One very popular creation in this vein has been our What is WOM? infographic which you can download as a PDF - or email us for an actual full-sized poster to stick on your wall.
And if you liked that, you might like this: a neat little WOM 101 deck presented at this year’s WOMMA Summit and designed to help you explain the importance of WOM to your boss, your colleagues, or even your mum.
If you have any questions about word of mouth, however basic they may seem, do post them in the comments below and we promise to give you jargon-free, down to earth answers anyone can understand.
For the record, I’m a reasonably good health insurance risk. I eat lots of vegetables, I don’t smoke and haven’t been in an ambulance for at least 18 months. I’ve even avoided the obligatory Christmas cold.
Question is, who’s listening? According to the Wall Street Journal, British insurance giant Aviva are.
“Insurers have long used blood and urine tests to assess people’s health – a costly process.Today, however, data-gathering companies have such extensive files on most U.S. consumers – online shopping details, catalog purchases, magazine subscriptions, leisure activities and information from social-networking sites -that some insurers are exploring whether data can reveal nearly as much about a person as a lab analysis of their bodily fluids.”
Interesting – and a potential chance for people to game the system. If I was seriously ill, would I mention it in my Twitter feed? As fellow ‘head Thomas pointed out on his blog, the observer effect is ever-present in online word-of-mouth. Equally though, if I was setting out to deceive a life insurance company, it wouldn’t take much to be economical with the truth on a health questionnaire.
So what are Aviva testing out with people’s social data?
Firstly, they assume that their current medical-based model is correct. This may be their first error as described by Kaiser Fung. Then they map all of the marketing variables against these medical records and derive correlations. Just like a credit-rating agency, they apply these known correlations to decide how to classify new applicants.
How does this approach differ from best practise in social media analysis for brands looking to engage with their consumers?
Let’s compare two scenarios. Based on the data:
1) Who should insurance company X reject for a health insurance policy?
2) 1000heads are inviting 100 people to take part in a trial programme. Who should we invite?
For question 1, let’s say that for every 1000 applicants insurance company X identify 3 bad insurance risks and falsely identify 7 more as bad risks.
Why might insurance company X be prepared to accept these falsely assigned bad risks? It’s all a question of economics – if the overall risk of the group of insured people is reduced by enough, then the falsely rejected are negligible. After all, there are no perfect methods for these things if we don’t want our insurance to cost a lot.
But for scenario 2, we are looking for a small number of people to include in a small activity, rather than a small number to people to exclude from a large activity.
This means that any systematic errors completely overwhelm the overall picture. If we engage people, we aim for 100% of them to respond positively. Clearly if 7 out of 10 of them have been falsely identified as having the right interests, we will have a problem. On the other hand, it may well be easier for a community exec to choose people objectively from such a shortlist than by avoiding robots entirely.
What do you think about the ethical implications of what Aviva are doing? Let us know in the comments below.
You may have seen on the news that the government has commissioned Reg Bailey, Chief Executive of charity Mother’s Union, to chair an independent review into the commercialisation and sexualisation of childhood in Britain. Part of the review will involve looking at the impact of social media, brand ambassadors and “online marketing to children” in accelerating the process.
We’ve always been known for our very strong ethical stance on word of mouth, so it’s been great to discuss this with BBC Radio 4, who are going to be considering the review on World at One.
We recently produced a big piece of research for a media client on teenagers; we participate in academic debates around digital and kids; and our family brand specialist Carrie spends her time investigating the most effective and ethical family WOM strategies, so we feel we have a pretty good grounding in the issue.
We avoid engaging directly with kids – we see the ethics as simply too fragile. Our age limits are 16 for trials and 18 for events, and whenever clients approach us to talk about reaching out to children through word of mouth, we help them find alternative routes through communities, parents and schools.
This is equally, if not more successful – we’re targeting the purse holders after all, and kids simply aren’t ready to develop long term brand advocacy. What they experience at a young age may set up many of their future loyalties, but in that case we’ll help brands simply listen to what they want, and then work on their product development, packaging, retail strategy and so on to ensure that they’re offering is so damn great and relevant, the kids will love it enough to want to continue to use the brand now and then engage with them directly when they grow up.
This isn’t to say we outright condemn any word of mouth directly targeting teens – Random House’s Random Buzzers Teen Community for books is a nice example of a carefully moderated campaign. It’s just the way we choose to approach it.
Word of mouth and social media events remain vibrant in Paris on the run up to Christmas. Recently I had the pleasure of participating in one of two panels organized by L’Atelier (@AtelierNetwork, a BNP Paribas subsidiary). The aim was to stay aware of disruptive innovations in business and technology and how to stimulate conversation around them – a perfect fit for 1000heads.
In the first panel, the speakers included myself; Antoine Sire, Global Head of Communications at BNP Paribas; Nicolas Bordas, President at TBWA France and author of “L’idée qui tue” (a book on disruptive ideas); Philippe Gérard, Inter-Enterprise Training Product Manager at Cegos; and Pierre Chappaz, Founder at Wikio & Kelkoo
Me with the contributors on the first panel – photo credit @Fadhi’Live
The place (and the use) of social media within business was, predictably, heavily discussed. Most of the largest French companies still block access to social networks, highlighting the importance of getting focused on a cultural and behavioral acceptance first. At the end of the day, when done well, spending time on social networks is a long term investment in gaining knowledge and competitive advantage, building connections, and even shifting sales.
Two main concerns emerged for the companies attending : the issue of brands ‘losing control’ of their reputation and image, and the need to put an authentic (and human) touch on each interaction.
A few obvious lessions have been learned when it comes to guiding employees in their social interactions without limiting them. Once it has set clear goals, a company need to have have flexible and evolving guidelines. Although there needs to be a strong ethical consensus, employees need to be empowered to learn, adapt and yes, even make mistakes as they progress.
Unscripted messages, spontaneity in communication style and trust are important components to succeed.
This test and learn approach was widely agreed to be the best. Iterating and feeding collective knowledge capital is vital for an active learning organization, so everyone must share their discoveries of what works and what doesn’t on an ongoing basis.
Nicolas Bordas of TBWA shared the story of a company splitting their employees into two content-creating teams : proactive and reactive. This is in fact an approach we have used for years at 1000heads – not by splitting teams but by helping clients clearly define their social content and engagement as proactive or reactive to ensure an even mix of the two.
Another important point is that personal branding shouldn’t exclude the less visible employees, if they have the inclination to participate. The challenge is to be both inclusive and strategic; to create an internal consensus about external engagement.
I am currently knee deep in Christmas present buying for my two kids. They still believe in Father Christmas – even my 10 year old son, who screams with mirth at the incredulous idea of the Tooth Fairy, but has never questioned the existence of an old man who manages to get around the globe in one night with the help of six reindeer and a luminous nose.
Looking at their carefully penned letters to Santa, almost all requests are branded – as you would expect from today’s brand savvy tweens. The usual suspects are there – Barbie, Nintendo, Haribo, and so on – what you might expect to be traditional ‘family’ brands – but there are some surprises too. Since our trip to Paris, my son has decided to get into photography. On his list: ‘a NIKON camera.’
My daughter has plumped for ‘A Hotel Chocolat Giant Slab’ (yes, really.)
But it got me thinking.
When I began my job at 1000heads, my role was to develop our business with family brands. I assumed these to be brands who by the nature of the product itself, or the chosen strategy, were targeting parents: snack foods, leisure brands, toiletries, games, retailers. Four months down the line, and I now see my role completely differently, and that’s been driven by starting not with the brands – but with the conversation.
There are 17 million families in the UK, with an average of 2.4 people in each. That’s nearly 41m of every age (not even including grandparents) who are opinion sharing or making purchase decisions about absolutely everything, and doing it within the context of a powerfully emotional and influential environment.
Is Aston Martin a family brand? It is if the father asks his sons if they like it.
Is Selfridges a family brand? It is if the teenage daughter wants to visit the new shoe hall.
Is Sony a family brand? It is if a grandfather recommends a Handycam when their first baby is born.
Of course a brand needs to be single-minded with its proposition, and its target market may not be identified by their familial role, but many will have a partner and kids who may sway that purchase decision. We believe that brands who listen to the family conversation, understand the dynamics, and put in place strategies to help shape that conversation will always have the edge – however niche they are.
Now, more pressingly – do you think I can get away with a Vivitar V5015 and a Cadbury’s stocking?
We’ve always been known for 
