Loving this experiential/produciton facility that You Tube has created in LA for YouTube creators to jam on new content ideas. The vid speaks for itself, they are taking it to the next level. Very cool.
Our latest piece of content announcing Selena Gomez signing up with adidas NEO. Well done team Iris.
Google have just launched there first ARG (Alternate Reality game) called Ingress to be played on Android Smartphones. You have to request an invite to play. It’s a global mind control battle that pits you against others around the world, all via your smartphone. It’s about mind hacking, something called Niantic. Looks super cool and another example of how Google are leading the way when it comes to creating immersive brand experiences that involve consumers across all screens. An amazing participation branding example showcasing the strengths of the Android platform and I can’t wait to get involved
A little thought piece I wrote for Adnews here on my views on what it takes to be a great participation brand in todays social economy. See below:
There are a lot of marketers on both client and agency side talking about the death of branding, marketing and strategy. Kevin Roberts most notably leading the charge. Plenty of conversation has been generated promoting the ‘don’t think, just do it’ approach at Cannes and Spikes Asia this year. This kind of thinking led to the vast microsite graveyard and I don’t buy it.
We still need good brand strategy and big thinking. We just need to change the rules by which brands are imagined and behave.
The most loved and effective brands are an intrinsic part of culture – stimulating interest, involvement and advocacy without constant media support. We call them participation brands. Unfortunately in Australia, 80% of brands create disposable interactions, let’s call them passive brands.
Participation brands put participation at the heart of the brand experience – not as an add-on. They involve customers, stakeholders and fans through immersive and interactive initiatives allowing people to join in, connect, converse, co-create and advocate. They create a gravitational pull enabling them to outsell without having to necessarily outspend their competition.
Rather than being closed, static systems defined by generic words on a brand onion, they’re open, dynamic, evolving and collaborative systems embedded into the operational DNA of the organisation.
Being a participation brand means operating at the speed of culture, not the speed of research. Being in a constant state of beta mode and letting each and every person leave a bit of their DNA on an idea.
A word of caution though. Participation branding isn’t just doing ‘more digital and social’. Genuine participation brands think content, context, experience and conversations not just how many screens you can get on.
Participation branding doesn’t mean trying to get everyone to get deeply involved at all times. That’s unrealistic. Understanding different motivations for participating and sharing ideas is critical. Being useful, driving belonging, promoting achievement, enhancing one’s status, rewarding and recognising my contribution.
So how do you start behaving like a participation brand? Where do you start? Asking these six basic questions is a great starting point:
1. What’s our PASSIONATE PURPOSE that makes the world better?
2. What are we doing to PROTOTYPE new business models, new initiatives, and new ways of consumer interaction?
3. What games are we asking people to PLAY with us and the community?
4. How can we help people PROPAGATE their story whether they’re advocates, adorers or the passive massive?
5. What’s our 365 day PRESENCE PLAN mapping when, where, why and how people want to participate with us? How can we be ‘Always on’?
6. How are we PIVOTING to ensure we stay ahead of culture and relevant to our communities’ needs and interests?
So who’s doing it well? Of course the titans and icons of Nike, Adidas, Coke, Apple, Johnnie Walker, Heineken, Google, Red Bull, Mini and Lego all have participation baked in.
What about Australia?
Recent campaigns like Google ‘Build with Chrome’, ‘Share a Coke and a song’, ‘The Perfect Lager Project’ for Arvo beer, ‘BYO Cup Day’ for 7 Eleven, ‘Mobile’ Medic’ for the Australian Defence Force and our Christchurch ‘Discovery Stream’ and Adidas NEO ‘Find my Gold Shoes’ Bieber collaboration – all initiatives with participation baked into the DNA of the idea. All with amazing results.
So, no I don’t think we’re living through the death of marketing, but rather an amazingly exciting time for brands. It’s time for planners to leave our ivory towers, dump Google as our primary source of insight, banish our brand onions and get involved with the real world. It’s time for strategy to participate.
Proud of this little participation program our team put together for Adidas’ new teen fashion label NEO and their collaboration with Justin Bieber. If you’re a Belieber, then you’re gonna go nuts over the ‘Find my Gold SHoes’ contest here that’s live on Facebook. Big ups to Adi team at Iris Worldwide.
We’re well into the era where brands are playing the role of cultural curators. To manage all the info overload and noise, it’s great to see brands like Mulberry in the UK curating cultural content in a way that’s as equally beautiful as it is useful. Inspired by and created to support the UK government’s GREAT Britain campaign, it’s an amazing curation of what makes GB Brilliant. Check out Brilliant Britain, a great example of a brand playing a bigger cultural role in society that’s both meaningful and highly engaging. Well done.
A piece of content I wish I’d created. Great piece of youth marketing by Smart, for their FourTwo. Awesome inspiring use of skateboarders Kilian Martin and Alfredo Urbon to get urban Gen Y’ers to desire their wheels. Simple message, powerfully delivered & totally shareable. Goes to show you don’t need to bombard with features to engage. Thanks to my old colleague @aj_lockhart for the shout.
Really proud to see the launch of our Christchurch Reimagined campaign to get Australians travelling back to Christchurch, NZ, post Earthquake
Check out the 3 episodes of Mayor Bob Parker making a shout out to his Aussie cousins.
Nice to see Channel 7 news in Australia pick up the story as well.
This is supported by our ‘Discovery Stream’, click here to check it out. In a bid to get them back to the city, Christchurch needed to replace the images of devastation, with images of the beautiful, ever-evolving city that it now is. The Discovery Stream provides Christchurch with an ongoing digital platform that crowd-sources and broadcasts the city’s tourism experience in real-time. Using #ChCh tagged uploads from Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, it provides potential tourists with a window into the city.
Change the rules, not the game: principles for participation branding
Excited to be presenting at Spikes Asia 2012 in Singapore in a few weeks on ‘Participation branding’ and the principles we see at Iris Worldwide that drive brands forward in the social economy. I’ll be running a forum with my Regional Strategy Director colleague Paul Gage (@gagey501) from our Singapore Office and two of our awesome regional clients Amit Dasgupta from Adidas and Andre Khoo from Heineken – both whom are doing some great work in the participation space. If you’re in Singapore, come along and check it out, guaranteed to be interesting 
Attention Bloggersphere: I’ve just put in an entry for the 2013 SXSW Interactive festival in Austin, Texas with my fellow Regional Planning Director APAC at Iris, Paul Gage @gagey501 and we need your vote. Please click on the link below and vote for us if you find the idea of ‘participation branding’ through the lens of youth culture interesting.
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/1895
Here’s the spiel:
Put your money away Granddad! Building a successful brand with youth comes at a price, but its currency is participation. The rewired brains of tomorrow’s teens will only buy into brands that are cultural from the core and redefine how hey interact with people. This is ‘participation branding’ and it’s how business now needs to think. Participation brands have involvement hardwired into their DNA – from small scale programs to long term platforms. Involving youth in extraordinary content, experiences, conversations and communities will be essential ingredients to move them to produce, play, propagate and play for your products, services and ideas. In this talk we’ll explore the 5 principles of participation branding and also give you a glimpse of what participation branding will look like in the future – by sharing how our global client partner adidas is preparing for the 2020 Olympics.
