Saint Blog

Met up for a coffee with the interesting chaps at Six to Start this morning.   And while sipping Americano in the Italian restaurant in their basement (no shit) I found myself thoroughly engaged by what they had to say.  To summarise, to think about gaming and the behaviours that it exhibits within the boundaries of only a traditional game would be fundamentally missing both the point and opportunity that this promises us.

When we look at successful games, what we’re really looking at is successful engagement.  This has been the case for thousands of years.  Think of all the successful games in the world, from Chess to Sonic to Call of Duty and Farmville, and the ‘game’ itself is almost secondary.  What is of utmost importance is that the user is taken on a journey that engages them through entertainment, challenge, social connectivity, story telling and reward, and a game lacking in these pillars isn’t really a game at all. And most importantly of all, there needs to be a point to participation.

Sound familiar?

But what really interested me about this game philosophy, is how it can be applied to non-games, how can we achieve great levels of participation in ‘things’ by engendering in them the ideals of gaming.  When we’re developing the latest campaign – be it in a traditional form, interactive form, or transmedia – how can we treat it more like a game, make it challenging, rewarding and entertaining for the participant.

After all, we could all be doing something else, right?

www.sixtostart.com

Interview with Dan Hon, formerly of Six to Start - http://bit.ly/9O53zY

Fantastic recent TED talk on the game layer – http://bit.ly/cRkr3C

by Mark Sng & Zaid Al-Zaidy, Saint @ RKCR/Y&R 

Classical marketing has always been fond of useful mnemonics. Acronymic devices from our AIDAs to our SWOTs to our PESTs have given us a way of structuring strategic considerations, variables and ideas. Of course, probably the most famous and ubiquitous of all is the 4Ps of marketing.

At Saint, we wanted something just as simple that applied to engaging an audience in the age of digital. We wanted a way to distil the inherently complex and fast-moving landscape of human and corporate relationships in a million-channel environment into a topline playbook that reminds us of the key components for any engagement strategy. We wanted to create a structure that looked to the enduring truths of human interaction rather than the specific technologies that might be in vogue at any point in time, so that corporations have the strategic confidence to invest in a rapidly evolving space.

So without further ado, please let us introduce you to the 4Cs of brand engagement; Conversation, Culture, Collaboration and Compensation.

Conversation:

This has been the most seismic shift for ad men and brands to adapt to – understanding that brands are most powerful not when they exist in beautifully produced TVCs and pithy advertising slogans, but when they form part of the stories their consumers are telling.

 This first, most vital C is about the need for brands to listen to, participate in, stimulate and in some cases facilitate conversations. We believe the iconic brands of the future will act more like a person than a corporation, empowering their own employees to engage in micro-conversations with consumers wherever these may be taking place.

Culture:

So brands must, more than ever, exist in conversation. This means that simply having a ‘positioning’, a set of key messages and an endline is not enough to get consumers to understand and buy in to your brand (arguably this has always been the case, it’s just more visible now that conversations are stored online).

Instead, branding must be viewed within the context of multichannel touchpoints, some of which are ‘owned’ by a us, many that are not. The only way to create the kind of consistency of meaning for a brand in this environment is by defining and continually demonstrating what a brand stands for. Understanding how you translate what your brand stands for for a variety of situations is absolutely key, because people don’t form their opinion of brands via the advertising they see.

Of course, to get this right is not just a marketing endeavour but will have organisation-wide ramifications, but starting with a communications strategy is a great first step.

Collaboration:

However brand culture isn’t something that can solely be defined by marketing departments and ad agencies. The strongest brands allow their consumers to co-own and co-create this culture, and this C is about the need to try to drive not just attention but also participation in order to really connect. The meaning of a brand means much more when framed through personal experiences –  and the best way facilitate this is by getting our audience to join in.

Giving consumers a sense of ownership over the brand and its assets not just deepens engagement but is also more likely to breed advocates and evangelists.

Compensation:

Last but certainly not least is the need to make sure we reward our audience for their time and attention. With the decreasing focus on interruptive styles of communication it becomes foundational to think about the “what’s in it for them” question – and base any tactical execution on real consumer value.

Whether this value comes in the form of entertainment, utility, a platform for self-expression, information or monetary, brands really do have an obligation to ensure their marketing has a reason for being in the eyes of the consumer.

So there are Saint’s 4Cs of brand engagement – hardly prescriptive but we hope helpful at highlighting the key areas to address in order to encourage users to love your brand. 

Below are the vids from last month’s Facebook Developer Garage. I was asked to come and talk from an agency perspective. So, although a little underprepared, I duly obliged.

There was a good cross section of people in attendance and I met some really interesting players from the field of social media. I was particularly impressed with the talk that followed mine from Mat Clayton & Chris Thorpe. Which is surprising because it had been billed in a way that suggested that there would be some sort of head to head between me (representing agencies) and them (representing all the people who are frustrated by agencies). Luckily, most of their gripes do not apply to Saint (because we are not typical of other agencies) and they were extremely impressed by the thinking that we demonstrated. Indeed there were many similarities in our presentations. PHEEEW!

Afterwards, I had a pint with Toby Beresford from Nudge and found him to be an very knowledgeable and likable chap.

We will definitely be contacting these guys in future regarding our social media initiatives and I will continue to attend the Facebook Developer garages. I recommend you do too.

Adam Graham Part 1

Adam Graham Part 2

Mat Clayton & Chris Thorpe Part 1

Mat Clayton & Chris Thorpe Part 2

Mat Clayton & Chris Thorpe Part 3

“Social networking and blogging has recently become more popular than personal email, and is growing twice as fast as any of the other four largest sectors (search, portals, PC software and email).” Neilson Media 2009

It’s no secret, nor is it a surprise that brands have been quick to turn to social media in a bid to engage and create meaningful conversations with people online.

Many have done so incredibly well.

However, in the frantic rush to capitalise on the popularity of social networks, most have failed to define a distinct and compelling reason to be in this space… to disrupt and interrupt doesn’t count!

Social media users have very quickly learnt to filter through the saturation of brands and messages, cutting straight to those (friends, and brands) they know, and trust. To become a trusted brand in this saturated space (trust us it’s saturated and also highly unlikely that your competitors aren’t already there), there are a few key rules of engagement.

1. Know where the conversation is taking place, listen & respond

Use tools like Buzz Metrics and Scout Labs to identify where people are talking about you online. Once you know where they are, listen to them, learn from them, and respond if necessary. The open nature of this space means a lack of response shines out and is picked up upon quickly.

It’s far better to actively micro-manage opinion across networks and blogs than it is simply set up a few profiles on Facebook that never get updated.

2. Be worth talking to

OK, so you know where the conversation is taking place, but how do you get involved?

Most brands in the social web bare striking similarities to the ‘dad in the disco’ (at best a little bit embarrassing, at worst can empty the room), however… even the dad in the disco can be popular if he’s buying the drinks!

So be entertaining, exciting, and amazing. Be unique, offer exclusive money can’t buy opportunities, most of all have fun! As long as you respect your audience, you are free to try pretty much anything.

3. Be yourself

Social media is a culture of transparency and honesty that must be embraced. Try to behave less like a company and more like a real person and people will respect you. Saying this

“learning to speak in a human voice is not some trick, nor will corporations convince us they are human with lip service about ‘listening to customers.’ They will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf.” The Cluetrain Manifesto (1999)

If you are a CEO that knows how to blog, do so, even better why not create a network of employee blogs, write about your experiences, what you are working on, what you do in your day to day life. It’s interesting, honest, and endearing.

FINALLY

4. Invite people to get involved

To really engage with people you can’t just talk at them. Invite them to the conversation, think of ways to involve them, and again, listen… Who knows, you may even learn something.

Let’s stop blaming clients for not giving more money and power to digital agencies and start making it easier for them to do so.

Imagine what you could do for a brand, online, with £37m. (That’s the average marketing budget of a UK top 100 company). For a start, you’d have enough to make the brand’s very own versions of not just YouTube, but also Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and eBay – including all the marketing and advertising needed to make them famous worldwide.

So, can digital agencies convince clients to stump up more dosh and invite them to be top-table partners? How can they get to deal with the big bucks, the big decisions and infect the totality of a client’s brand strategy? In a nutshell: demystify, humanise and support.

Step 1: Demystify digital.

Because the digital space is changing so fast, and the possibilities are so vast, it’s understandable clients can be frozen in the headlights. For some clients, digital activity that isn’t a mere translation of offline thinking, is often no more than a hopeful and controlled experiment.

To help clients embrace the full opportunities of the digital world, agencies would do well to agree upon the enduring strategic principles for digital branded relationships. To accompany the 4Ps of classical marketing, should we launch the 4Cs: Conversation, Culture, Collaboration, Compensation. Perhaps that would provide large companies with the strategic framework they need to consistently invest large amounts of money into digital.

Digital agencies need to demystify their worlds. Without this, digital may remain intimidating and the budgets nominal. By showing clients the cool stuff and making it seem more accessible, they can get excited about it too. It’s our responsibility as people who live it, to explain it.

It’s easier to sell in traditional ways of the advertising because they make obvious, everyday emotional connections. Speak the same language when presenting digital.  Don’t blind clients with science. Keep it short and simple. And talking of being human…

Step 2: Get emotional.

Clients find it easier to buy big expensive TV campaigns than big digital ones because traditionally they’ve been taught the alchemy and emotional value of TV (with the bonus of guaranteed reach and frequency).  In stark contrast, what marketers get up to digitally is scrutinised to death via hard metrics like click-through, leaving clients more addicted and excited by return on investment than the huge emotional opportunities for a brand that can come out of a truly involving digital experience. As a consequence, the cooler, softer stuff that brands do invest in digitally is smaller and more experimental.

So, it’s TV business as usual and despite the media-neutral rhetoric of the last 10 years – there are still very few clients and agencies who do big ideas in the true through-the-line sense. Too often they say that there’s no idea until there’s a TV idea. In this world, too much time is wasted using digital as a new media channel where above-the-line messages are forced into standardised banners.

The fact that TV ads needs to be single-minded means they are easier for the client to understand whereas online ideas are more complicated by their very nature and thus sometimes more difficult for them to get their head around.

To have the chance of being taken more seriously, digital agencies should be less concerned with gimmicky technological firsts and more concerned with forging a closer emotional tie between the brand and its consumer. Clients could help too by granting agencies more artistic license and by showing willing to take a creative leap of faith – just as they do when a film director makes a script their own.

If agencies were more clearly able to describe the emotional ambitions of their ideas (as well as the commercial value of them), they might be able to earn a larger slice of the pie. It’s time to get emotional online. When was the last time a piece of digital brand content brought a lump to your throat?

Step 3: Help clients let go.

Digital agencies ask their clients to relinquish their brand control when control is what a client’s culture is all about. Most companies are still genetically engineered to manage risk i.e. to try to predict and control the outcome of all their activities.  It’s like telling a climber to let go of his rope because you’ve switched off the gravity button.  Clients need to know it might hurt a bit, but we need to prove that the pain of the fall is worth the gain. So, we can’t force clients to abdicate control, but we can help them to influence their consumers in a new way.

There’s no such thing as control on the web, people are talking about brands online regardless. So if clients don’t get involved, it’ll solely be those views that represent them on the internet.

The beauty of online is that you can ‘fail’ quickly and cheaply.  You can instantly learn from those mistakes and turn them into valuable knowledge.  Testing and collaboration are ingrained in the online culture.  By showing you are listening and acting, the very people who criticise you can become your biggest advocates.

The opportunity is there for digital agencies to help clients deal with real life one-to-one conversations, to harness the groundswell and respond to every single tweet or blog post.

So there we have it. That’s how the digital industry will accelerate its journey up the food chain. Either way, it shouldn’t be too long til we have a permanent place at the top table. And of course one day we’ll own the bloody restaurant.

But hell, that’s just what we think. What about you? Let us know here on the blog

Adam Graham & Zaid Al-Zaidy

nice site collating peoples mixtapes given to them by ex’s, along with the story behind them, back when love was a warm and fuzzy feeling. some good tunes too:

cassette from my ex

I am regularly impressed with the people at Penguin UK for their willingness to embrace new ways of telling stories. First there was their wiki-book experiment A Millions Penguins that invited mass-collaboration to create a slightly schizoid tale.

Then came We Tell Stories – a project that took six respected authors and challenged them to add dynamism into traditional writing through the use of social media and twitter, googlemaps and live online writing sessions.

So I was impressed again when I noticed a number of blank covered books in my local bookshop that invites readers to create their own cover designs for classic stories. Perhaps less geeky than their previous experiments, but the first (as far as I can tell) that marries their traditional publishing business with a experience co-creation concept. The project, called My Penguin, invites readers who have created covers to share their work online to sit alongside celebrity efforts from Beck, Razorlight and Ryan Adams. Sweet.

And if you get bored designing book covers why not design a tshirt for Boxfresh and win stuff (judged by the Boxfresh community, natch).

I used to promote a club night, and as part of our marketing, we’d get tshirts printed up, usually to be wrapped tightly around a lithe young PR girl (hey, hate the game, not the player).

There would be a substantial minimum order (unless you wanted to pay £100 for a single shirt) and it would take about 3 weeks (picked up from the printers, not delivered).

Which is why German company Spreadshirt seems that much more amazing to me, both a guy-who-likes-tshirts and as a digital planner.

So, first as a guy-who-likes-tshirts. Once signed up, the site sports a very simple web interface where you can create your own products. You pick which shirt (or hoodie / handbag etc) that you want to use as a foundation, then upload a design (or simply type text) to make it your own. You can then sell these designs on your own webshop, choosing your own commission (and therefore the final price to the consumer). There’s no minimum order, so I could use my shop to make one-off designs for me and my friends. Or I could sell my designs on the Spreadshirt Marketplace and try and make a few bob with my designs. Blimmin ace.

For a planner, this is like a lovely web 2.0 Frankenstein’s Monster. It’s experience co-creation meets social media meets crowdsourcing. Spreadshirt also pay users for their user-generated content via advertising displayed each user’s shop, a trend that we’re likely to see more and more of as UGC begins to attract real traffic (and therefore ad revenues).

Experience co-creation requires consumer involvement in order to create product or service – Spreadshirt provide the basic materials, leaving users to be creative. These created products by their very nature have social currency. If I make a tshirt, I’ll want to tell people about it, as it’s mine and says something about who I am (mine says ‘it would be rude not to’ btw). My friends will visit the shop, maybe buy a tshirt, and probably in turn want to set up a shop to create their own products.

Designs that are popular across the Spreadshirt network are then sold as top picks on the company’s Marketplace. Or users can chose to keep designs private, and create short runs as small as a single tshirt.

So with giants like Nike and adidas offering mass customisation services (Nike Custom and Mi adidas), is this what’s next for apparel? Well, Spreadshirt is more a manufacturing and logistics company than a clothing brand, so it’s unlikely we’ll see a big player surrender all design responsibilities over to the hoi poloi. However for one-off campaigns (like adidas’ adicolor), this could be a way to allow consumers to feel real ownership of the brand.