Scarcity, secrecy, exclusivity. Three words that don’t exactly reflect the transparency and freedom of information that brands are supposedly striving for in a social age. But that’s also the reason that they can be so powerful in triggering emotional impact and peer-to-peer conversation when they are used well.
Last week, a friend of mine invited me to volunteer for something called YMBBT. Armed with no more information than an address in the West End and a time for that evening, I was slightly nervous that I had signed myself up for some dubious Soho debauchery. When a quick Google search revealed nothing except for the fact that YMBBT stood for ‘You Me Bum Bum Train’, my anticipation – and anxiety – understandably increased.
For those of you who haven’t heard about YMBBT, well – the first rule of YMBBT is that you don’t talk about YMBBT. All I need to tell you is that it’s a highly sought-after interactive theatre experience run almost entirely by volunteers who, like me, don’t really know what they are volunteering for. And when I say highly sought-after, I mean sought-after. 80,000 applied for just 1,000 tickets during its last run, all without a clue what they were signing up for.
The absolute secrecy of the whole enterprise is key to its success. Counter-intuitively, explicitly asking people to restrict the nature of their word of mouth drives word of mouth like wildfire.
YMBBT is just one of several examples of brands that know the value of cloak and dagger. We’ve talked before about how pop-up shops harness people’s desire to uncover unconventional retail gems before anyone else.
Secret Cinema is another fantastic example. Paying over the odds to see a film you may or may not like in a location that may or may not be anywhere near you sounds bizarre in a world of hyper-personalisation, convenience and tribal passion groups. But it sells out every time precisely because it subverts those trends. Sometimes, not being pandered to makes you respect a brand or experience very much indeed.
Of course, exclusivity taps into very basic human drives. We’re herd animals – we enjoy inclusion and being privy to something special, and those emotions can quickly be converted into loyalty and advocacy. We want people around us to know we’re part of this magical experience, both to bond with our fellow participants and to badge our selves with a sort of ‘in the know’ cool.
Of course, not every brand lends itself to this kind of ‘popularity through secrecy’ approach, especially those that can’t rely on the impact of the live experience. Practical, non-experiential and non-luxury items such as say, household cleaner, rely on candidness, transparency and cold hard facts to make their product stand out in a sea of competitors.
But Apple is proof that you don’t need lots of stunts to make consumers feel special. Its carefully – some might say anally – controlled flow of information is absolutely key to the cult. The ultimate Generation Y brand, Apple doesn’t have a blog, Twitter account or Facebook page.
Yet by revealing so little Apple all but guarantees that every announcement it makes is met with fevered global excitement and advocacy.
So how might you be able to drive demand with a bit of social scarcity? What assets, information or experiences might you be able to withhold, tease or stagger to generate that sense of privileged camaraderie? Don’t forget: silence can be one of your most powerful tools in harnessing word of mouth.
1000heads has been involved with the phenomenon that is Like Minds for two years now, and anyone who has attended one of their conferences, summits, immersive workshops or networking events will understand why.
Like Minds isn’t your average self-congratulatory, all-talk-no-action social media echo chamber. The organisation, led by the charismatic, down to earth double-act Drew Ellis and Scott Gould aims “to create a platform where participants can join fellow like minds in order to inspire one another and make those ideas happen, all on a level that is accessible both financially and structurally.”
Which means an emphasis on action; no bullshit; getting out of London; and on garnering insight from a huge range of thinkers and innovators from all sorts of backgrounds and specialities.
This year’s autumn’s conference, ‘Innovation + Opportunity’, takes place in a couple of weeks on 19-21st October and we’d love to see you there.
In June 2010 I headed to Helsinki to take part in a Like Minds Conversations event, speaking at the Nokia-sponsored conference on augmented reality and then heading to a villa to develop a social strategy for the Finnish tourist board.
This year, we’ve got a packed schedule – on Wednesday morningI will be presenting a keynote on ‘Graveyards vs Maternity Wards, or Culture vs Creativity’; on Thursday afternoon we’re running a word of mouth immersive workshop, before our CEO Mike explains why ‘Conversation is the Media of Now’; and on Friday morningJames takes the floor with ‘The 5 Word of Mouth Moments of 2011.’
We’ll be speaking (and listening) alongside some extraordinary talent such as Rupert Turnbull, Publisher of Wired UK; Craig Hepburn, Global Director of Digital for Nokia and John Bessant, Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Exeter University. And, knowing Like Minds, there will be plenty of laughter, eating, drinking and late-night-epiphanies as speakers and attendees alike explore Exeter, swap ideas and get to know each other as friends.
A couple of Saturdays ago, on June 25th to be precise, I had the great pleasure of attending Cybermummy.
If you’re unaware of this event then it would be good to know that Cybermummy managed to bring together over 400 mummy bloggers at their London-based conference to great fanfare; including praise from Sarah Brown on their power as a community andan article in the Independent declaring their rivalry to Mumsnet.
As I walked through the door and into their space, the professionalism of this event was immediately apparent – a slick registration process, kindly ushers to give directions to much needed coffee and an onslaught of brands and PR vying for the attention of everyone in the central room.
Settling in for the opening keynote (and weighed down with free baby paraphernalia), I chatted to some mummy bloggers and looked forward to a good day of panels and presentations. It was, if nothing else, extremely enlightening. By the end of the day, the only thing I could focus on was how self-aware this community of bloggers is. From monetising your blog, to etiquette instructions for brands engaging with bloggers, everything seemed to close in around one key issue – how mummy bloggers can make their income, and more, from their blogs. This is a new profession for the digital age and, if you’re stuck on how to make your cash, another mummy will come along and help you get started… for a fee.
Cybermummy leaders are keen to point out their power: 10 million page views per month and an increase in number of blogs from 100 to 2500 over the past two years are just some of the statistics they have released to the press. Put that in stark black and white and it’s no wonder brands like P&G, Disney and Lego are scrambling to their side.
But is it setting a good precedent?
In the midst of such a rapid increase in numbers of bloggers, a new focus on monetisation and a community that is more self-aware by the minute, how do you find the right voices for your brand? How do you ensure that your engagement is getting you the right results?
In this over saturated corner of the internet, that’s certainly a conundrum.
Once you start focusing on monetising a blog, once you start manipulating the content to make your blog more appealing to brands, that’s when you start losing your authenticity. That honest and genuine voice that consumers look to for opinions on services and products is suddenly diluted and no longer trustworthy. So in amongst those 10 million page views, how many blogs are still having the same impact on readers?
I asked several mummy bloggers about their own reading habits. In particular, I wondered how they viewed each other’s blogs and if they enjoyed reading them. The overwhelming feedback was that sponsored posts, stories of brand sponsored activities and gifts and PR-fed reviews were an instant turn-off leading many to close their browser window. Where one or two would be okay in the past, now it has become so common place among blogs that it seems even the mummy bloggers themselves are bored of reading them.
So is there an answer?
Perhaps not. But a more considered approach is certainly necessary. The highest number of followers, or the biggest page reach, may not always be the right blog for your brand. Because even though they will amplify your message, they won’t advocate it. They might say some nice things, but they won’t evangelise.
Finding the right place online for your brand is always tricky, and the temptation to throw it out to as many blogs and see what sticks is understandable. True loyalty makes a far more powerful voice and finding those voices is the task. But when you do, even if they have lower numbers of followers and fewer page views, the impact will be greater and their words will be read.
Because there’s nothing more powerful online than a truly authentic, evangelical advocate.
Cannes Lions is well and truly over and, with the Young Lions celebrating their latest win (along with many, many others), it’s time to look back over some of the more leading and creative thoughts that fell out of such an important conference.
Back in part one I promised some thoughts on the Diageo session I attended as well as some overall thoughts and links post-event.
First, Andy Fennell, CMO, Diageo -
Key points and quotes -
Andy talks about his ‘FACE’ values. They are; Flair, Agility, Consumer insight and Execution
When discussing new creative, ask ‘What is ‘the centre of gravity’ of an idea?’
“We need to change our ideas inherently to build participation from the start” – a thought 1000heads has advocated for years
“For rich content to arrive in Africa, phones need to get cheaper or Silicon Valley needs to work out where Africa is on a map.” – contentious!
Speaking of Africa, Andy gave an example of how Guinness arrived in the football-loving continent with their very own football-themed quiz show -
The whole idea, initiated by Guinness (one of Diageo’s sub-brands), started and ended with the drink in question and resulted in a significant jump in sales.
I personally hadn’t seen a brand invent its own TV show before, not least of all one that actually delivered on both an entertainment value (average episode views are upwards of 4m) as well as on a brand awareness and sales front too. Very impressive.
Overall, the Diageo session was interesting as it was a brand talking about their creative as opposed to an agency. Hearing the insights and ways of working behind such a huge, worldwide company inspired plenty of food for thought and served as a reminder at just how impactful television can be when harnessed correctly.
What inspires me now is a figure that was just given on stage that:
“By the end of 2010, the average American will own six connected devices. People in the UK will, on average, own 4.5.”
Unfortunately this stat wasn’t attributed to any source so I can’t validate it [I'll look for the slides tomorrow], however – I thought I’d throw the question out onto Twitter -
From my own collection, I count seven. But fifteen minutes (and 30-odd responses later), I’ve managed to pull together an average of 8.7 devices per person.
Which – aside from a few random cases – is quite telling and raises a few points and questions:
My followers tend to be a bit more tech-savvy/heavy (and would therefore own more devices). Fair enough.
If pushed, would the average person know that their internet radio or their TV is ‘connected’?
In this constantly changing, yet ever more connected world we live in – what challenges will this present to the marketeers of tomorrow?
My point is – the internet of things promises a lot. It turns out that your average Joe’s data is going to be contributing a lot to this also – where are the opportunities?
Have a think on that and, while you’re at it, how many connected devices do you own?
If you’re a regular reader here at 1000heads you’ll know that LikeMinds has become one of our favourite things ever since our first attendance back in February of this year. I’m pleased to say that last week’s event – based around the themes of ‘Creativity + Curation’ – was no disappointment.
Unlike February’s event, where the one key takeaway (for me at least) was the audience-wide understanding of the importance of listening, this time around the lessons were much more broad; touching upon various different subjects, specialisms and industries including; Music, Film, Publishing (traditional and new) as well as other, more thought-provoking pieces along the lines of the impact of social technologies and the much-discussed ‘Big Society‘.
For me personally, the highlights came in varying forms. First, the opening Publishing ‘immersive’ session hosted by Andrew Davies of Idio was rammed to the rafters as everyone came together to discuss the impact of the social web upon the traditional publishing industry. For such a packed event, Andrew facilitated well as the rest of the group swiftly leapt from one area to another covering off not only the real value of brand/consumer relationships (throwing in some real world examples to boot) but also whether or not true curation is just filtering other people’s content.
Second, Chris Carey from the PRS, yes really – the PRS. Chris is an in-house economist for the music industry and he used the patterns that he is paid to spot day-in and day-out, to illustrate the pitfalls in any market of relying on what you think you know. His example of NBC’s mistake of turning off the Gossip Girl stream on their website was a lesson to us all.
And the third and final one (again, that spoke to me personally) was that of Benjamin Ellis. Who, with one phrase, captured the whole audience:
“A fish would be last to discover water”
– and to give that context, I’d spend some time looking over his rather awesome presentation -
1000heads have been running successful events for over 6 years. One of the first we coordinated was back in 2006 in New York. It was at a time when many brands weren’t thinking about involving the community of users in their event plans. We went one better and had the community launch the product to their networks. They were first to touch, play and review. They were first to share.
With most WOM happening offline, much of 1000heads’ work happens in the real world (yes, there is life beyond social media!). Events are important. They bring people together. Tickling the team for their faves, some notable outings include CRUK’s Race For Life, the Tampax Pearl Swishing Party, Aussie’s Angel Miracle Moist events and Sainsbury’s FreeFrom blogger dinner parties. You might also have seen us at SXSW, Mile High Music in Denver or the Tribeca Film Festival. The list goes on…
Here’s our Flickr stream of some of the more memorable pics. Enjoy!
Last weekend 1000heads despatched a number of its team out to a certain convention in the good ol’ US of A.
Admittedly, while we were there supporting a particular client, I also made sure we had time to get into the Austin Convention Center itself and take in some of the more interesting panels and talks that SXSW has to offer.
Yes, but what did you learn?
First and foremost, while a fair chunk of the predicted chatter was indeed about location-based services such as Gowalla and Foursquare, what we found was a very low rumbling about 2010 being the year when companies and brands alike truly harness the power of crowd-sourcing. This piece from Fjord about the iPad cements some of the feelings I already have about it, but also talks about content curation and the knowledge of where as opposed to what.
Hat tip to the guys over at Genius Rocket by the way, good to hear some sense throughout all the noise…
We also learned that SXSW really isn’t as bad as some people say it is. Similarly to other conferences we’ve been to before, the real value lies within the many different opportunities to connect, learn and share… and, with a smattering of smarts, maybe do a small amount of business along the way. Those things themselves are worth the air fare alone.
Africa is a much misunderstood market, but potentially as large as China or India. Computer and internet penetration is extremely low, but cellphones are everywhere. How to tackle communication and social services on a continent where electricity – including charging cellphones in rural areas – is the greatest challenge.
Sadly, the panel was cancelled at the last minute as the key contributor was called away to a personal emergency however, I did get the opportunity to meet the lovely Gaby Rosario who gave me the rundown about how while there are only 65k iPhones in South Africa, there are in fact nearly 45million mobile subscribers. Unsurprisingly, in South Africa at least, the iPhone is not the be all and end all.
But we knew this already, right?
It’s funny, even though the US-based event had such an international turnout, a lot of the content had a very US-centric point of view. The point about the iPhone for example, articulated so well by Gaby just hours before I first started writing this down, was a breath of fresh air against the constant stale wind of how mobile iPhone applications are going to change the world.
This is not to say it was a wasted journey, not by any stretch. Seeing people I haven’t seen since September ’08 – made it even more worthwhile. Being introduced to new faces through old friends and connections – given that 1000heads now has French, Canadian and US offices – again, also made it extremely beneficial.
Of course, working out there, meeting clients and competition winners… the list of how awesome it was just goes on.
Would I go back? Yes. Every day I was up at the crack of dawn to catch an early morning panel, be it on community building, crowd-sourcing, social media, blogging, mobile, neuro-science marketing… (no, really).
If the SXSW selection panel had picked someone to speak, it was (mostly) worth a visit.
Improvements?
Well, I’d still want to see a more clearer grading system for each session (like Vero mentioned the year before), and I think I could/should definitely speak about something at the next one.
Maybe my lucozade travels; staying mobile and connected ’round the world. Tips and tricks for the global traveller…
The session, entitled: New models for Social Networking: Can Advertising Support Growth? kicked off in earnest around 11:30 with representatives from Goojet, Do The Green Thing, Advent Partners and Google all taking part.
That’s me over there on the far right. This panel session, the first of the day, was briefed as follows:
What does it mean to engage an audience? How do you use social networking sites to advertise your business? The advent of social media has dramatically altered how people interact with each other. We will explore what this means to traditional business models, and how companies have responded to these developments to reach new audiences.
And so on.. The theme itself wasn’t a new to me having recently presented on the subject (or something similar) at New Media Age but then again, what I had to say wasn’t to be the focus.
Stephen Webb, Head for Technology Clients, Google UK DSO
Having never moderated a panel before it was quite exciting to be taking charge of such an esteemed bunch of industry leaders. I had definitely seen a fair few sessions like this in my time – so I knew exactly what not to do. Believe it or not, it really is a fair old challenge; trying to balance not talking too much yourself with not letting the panellists get too wrapped in in their own respective agendas… as well as trying to keep the audience as engaged as possible. It can get tricky.
However, to all intents and purposes it seems I didn’t do a bad job, but – as I said before – this is about the panellists.
When asked if social networking could indeed support growth in the advertising sector, the panel were unanimous in their disagreement:
“Not in the current model…” said Paul, “..advertisers need to change tact..” agreed Andy “New businesses are out doing it for themselves…” finished Guillaume, who also went onto explain that the model of advertising in France is so utterly painful when it came to anything TV based – “Months of planning for a slot that you might not even want in three months time!”
Here are some more key quotes -
“Purposeful communities will be where the money can be found” – “Remember, volume doesn’t change the human experience” – “Who wants to pay for content today?” – “Interactions speak louder than words”- “an pages (a la Facebook) is more like relationship marketing than traditional campaign based advertising” – “If you can’t interrupt people anymore, then you will have to rely on the quality of your content to get attention” – “The internet isn’t a network of computers – it’s a network of people who happen to use computers”
Pleasingly, the overall theme of the 30mins we had taking questions was that brands and advertisers need to be MORE HUMAN in their approach to engaging with EVER SMARTER consumers who won’t just lap up the first thing that’s put in front of them.
Whether you’re a new mobile startup like Goojet or one of the largest corporations in the world, like Google it would seem contextual and conversational engagements are at the forefront of everyone’s minds.
Hat tip to the smart guys and girls at the LBS Tech Club for organising. You can read all of the output from the day over on the LBS live tweet page.
In the meantime – how are you being human in the way you engage?
You know consumers are getting smarter, right?
“Social Media Week conferences take place simultaneously in multiple cities around the world. The aim of each event is to advance the use and understanding of social media in the corporate, public and non-profit sectors.”
From New York to Berlin, San Francisco to São Paulo and Toronto to London, across the globe people are coming together to ‘explore the profound impact that social media has on culture, business communications and society at large’.
There are a couple of other events going on Friday morning, including Reputation Online’s ‘Crisis Management‘ session as well as a special Social Media Week Tuttle Club. However, having seen how quickly the tickets for these events have been snapped up, we think there might be scope for one more thing..
So if you’re free and fancy joining us – you’ll be made to feel very welcome indeed.
The Social Media Week Digest does exactly what it says on the tin; by Friday morning at least some of you would have all had the chance to catchone of the aforementioned fantastic events and this end-of-the-week gathering is your opportunity to come together and share stories, anecdotes and generally catch up on some of the interesting things you’ve seen and done.
Come drink some coffee (on us) and have a chat about where we’re all headed next.
Tickets aren’t mandatory (get yours here), they just help us keep an eye on numbers etc…
See you Friday!
Thanks to ICA London for the super last minute providing of the venue, I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of the place very soon.
