Modern brands that really get what lives with people today already know they should be authentic if they expect consumers to engage. Modern brands know they should go beyond the promise and proof what they stand for.
But consumers are smart. Just as much as people were wary of brands (s)talking through old skool mass media, people are still on their guard when brands act. Brand behavior is not about getting your act together, but it's much more about defining what you stand for and making sure it fits your brand character. People aren't stupid, they know when you are greenwashing. They know when you are trying to gather personal information to spam their facebookpages.
This presentation contains a very insightful quote: "Remember, consumers don't judge authenticity based on actual behavior but, rather, the intention behind it."
More than making onlineadvertising. More than making Facebook apps. It's about 'getting it'. Getting the modern world. Getting modern consumers. Getting modern business. Bevahaving in a non-stupid way. It's a way of thinking about things. Being interested in how things work. Not just what's in them. Having a go at making things better. Just having a go.
Wise words from Albion. Found them via the long tail here.
Couldn't have said it better when trying to explain the difference between online and digital to more traditional minded marketeers.
Tom Himpe's is thinking exactly the same thing we're saying to our clients when we talk about "Building brand beyond the promise" so we thought we'd share his brilliant presentation here.
I've been reading and following Clay Shirky since 2000 on his blog shirky.com and the Many2many blog on social software. As a professor at NY University, he's one of the most innovative thinkers on the impact of the digital revolution on society. His recent lecture at the web2.0 conference in San Fransisco is a beauty. No slides, just a carefully building up of argumentation, spiced-up with anecdotes and little jokes. Enjoy:
This is the presentation that venture capital firm Sequoia Capital gave to the companies it's funding, three days ago. A couple of hours later, the presentation was already "leaked" on slideshare.
Although there are no big scoops inside, the presentation manages to counter two popular beliefs related to the current crisis. One being the belief that the current crisis can be traced back to a single cause, the other is the belief that most startups won't survive the credit crunch. For the correct answers, have a read...
Being in communication and advertising these days is both a thrilling and a frustrating experience. Let me start with the frustrating part. Our job has become frustrating because the tools with which we used to work are turning more and more useless. We used to work with mass media, commercial breaks and reaching broad audiences through piggybacking on one of the media that is reaching those groups. Today we simply can't do that anymore: Media consumption is shifting dramatically, there are thousands of media channels that all serve a fraction of the potential reach and the more power people have to choose valuable content, the more impatient they get with interrupting content (such as the ads we used to make for them).
Because I've been very disloyal towards Boonbloggle lately, I want to make it up with a very interesting image from David Armano's blog. It was forwarded to me by our good friend Miel, the man who is evanelizing the world with new goodness from Microsoft.
Yesterday Simon and Amaia, managing partners at Attentio.com treated the Boondoggle strategic team with a workshop on conversation tracking and on how to extract intelligence from online conversations.
...as proven by this very inspiring TED talk by designer Stefan Sagmeister. Basically he thinks there are two ways to design around hapiness: displaying hapiness and evoking hapiness. The last category is design that is made to get you laughing or smiling. This is very similar to what we refer to as our "Beyond the Promise" approach to communication: marketing a brand through proving, acting and engaging, in stead of shouting through advertising. Why telling what you are if you can actually show the world what you are. Sagmeister uses some brilliant Beyond The Promise examples: design that evokes hapiness. Aspecially the NY subway stickers are awesome.
