What communication agencies & brands can learn from ‘The Wire’

Last week I  was chatting with one of my fellow planners, Cat Collins about things that have had inspired us creatively. She got talking about how the HBO series ‘The Wire’ was an amazing piece of storytelling and that brands could learn alot from this masterful series. So I asked her to do a guest post. Here tis. Thanks Cat, love your work

I believe that The Wire is the greatest work of creativity to have emerged in recent years, maybe even in my lifetime. So surely, there must be some lessons we can learn for our own creative endeavours. Here are 5 observations that I think we would benefit from applying to our work with brands and communications. Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet.

1.       Don’t be scared of scale.

The Wire is epic. It tells the story of the disintegration of an entire city from every angle – education, drugs, the law, politics, the media, industry, families. A lot has been written on the demise of the big idea as communications becomes more nimble and agile. The Wire shows that a big idea, told through multiple, interwoven stories is a very powerful thing indeed.

2.      Don’t underestimate your viewer.

The Wire makes no attempt to make the show watchable. The dialogue is fast and the Baltimore dialect takes a while to understand. The storylines are complex and you have to be paying attention to know what the hell is going on. I’m pretty sure that the Millward Brown scores for comprehension would be abysmal. But it is the effort that you make to step into the world of the Wire which makes it so compelling and makes the reward for watching that much greater.

3.       Tap into big human truths.

I don’t have much in common with a drug dealer on a West Baltimore corner but the issues the show tackles ensure I relate to every character. Love, loss, moral codes, ambition, family, loss of purpose in life – all big issues which strike a chord with anyone on the planet.

4.      Embrace unconventional heroes.

Omar, the gay, black, stick up boy who whistles while he hunts. Stringer Bell the brutal henchman with a mind for commerce. Snoop, the diminutive girl whose bloodthirsty appetite for violence is extraordinary. All too often in communications we fall back on stereotypes and miss the opportunity to surprise.

5.       Be true to your vision.

When David Simon pitched the Wire to HBO he presented a coherent vision of how all 5 seasons would pan out. He knew the characters stories and had a vision for how theses would be played out on screen. Comparing the pitch to the finished work, it’s extraordinary to see how much of his vision he managed to pull off. Next time you pitch a creative idea and then watch it get pecked to death by 1000 ducks, remember why it is worth fighting to keep the integrity of an idea intact.

Has social media influenced creativity in brand communications?

 I’d say the answer to this question is a resounding YES. We all know great creativity when we see it, it’s easier to define what it isn’t than often what it is. For me, it’s when I get that little rush of blood and I think WOW, if only I came up with that idea. For me, creativity has and always will be the ability to simplify and turn the ordinary into something extraordinary. I read an interesting post by Edward Boches recently about ‘Creativity in the age of  Social media’ and I’ve pulled some key thoughts from that post as well as some of my own thoughts and quotes from people I respect in the marketing communications industry.

In todays social media context, brands have to embrace being far more free form in their approach to creativity.  Being agile, adaptive and continually culturally relevant is far more important than being structured and ‘right’. Creativing ideas is about being fluid.  Trends are moving at hyper speed so creativity in the era of social media is about constant experimentation with popular culture, bouncing your brand off different aspects of culture to find fresh tensions and conflicts to exploit. As one blogger put it ‘people becomes fans of culture, not advertising…so cultural relevance is always the key for creativity”

As marketers we may give birth to an idea, but it’s the collective community who sculpt it into something interesting that makes it go viral. Today in the era of social media, ideas live and die quickly, it’s not about the size of the idea, it’s the VELOCITY the idea has through social networks that it’s success should be measured by.

Some thoughts on what creativity in the era of social media is all about from some industry leaders:

ABILITY FOR OUR BRAND STORIES TO BE TOLD FOR US

“It’s not the stories we tell, it’s the stories we get others to tell for us” Edward Boches

THE DEMOCRATISATION OF CREATIVITY

“In the age of social media, creativity has both an acid test and genuine advocate in one place. Good work is embraced and gathers momentum and the bad stuff dies on the vine very quickly. The important thing to understand is that the brand, creative director or client’s voice is just one of many now and all have an equal share in the destiny of great work! “ Sudeep Gohil. Partner, DROGA 5

ERA OF SPARKING AND PARTICIPATING IN INTERESTING CONVERSATIONS

“Creativity in the age of social media is about sparking and participating in conversations. Success is making something go viral. Ideas must not only be great stories that want to be shared but are also shareable. In this new age, creativity has been UNSHACKLED. No longer does the elite own it; it is now a commodity. It’s what you do with it that counts “ John Winsor, Partner, Victors & Spoils  Author  of ‘Baked In’

LETTING PEOPLE ‘PLAY’ WITH YOUR IDEAS, BEING OPEN SOURCE AND ALWAYS IN BETA MODE

“In the past creativity was solid and stagnant, you created it and people reacted to it. Now you create it and it can evolve, continue, be built upon, torn down, remixed. The creative process in social media isn’t something that ever ends”  CC Chapman, Creative Director, Campfire NYC

THINK ABOUT HOW YOU CAN SPARK A CULTURAL MOVEMENT AROUND YOUR TRIBE

THINK VERY CLOSELY ABOUT WHAT YOUR BRANDS ‘FOLLOW FACTOR’ IS…WHAT WILL KEEP THEM ENGAGED AND ENSURE YOUR IDEA ISN’T DISPOSABLE

EMPOWERING TRIBES TO CONNECT WITH EACH OTHER OVER COMMON GOOD, CREATIVITY TODAY IS MORE ABOUT COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE SOLVING WORLD PROBLEMS

Just some thoughts, certainly there are other viewpoints, just putting some stuff out there I found interesting.

‘Baked In’: some great thoughts on how to ‘bake’ marketing into your product

I’ve just finished reading ‘Baked In’ by John Winsor and Alex Bogusky from one of the world’s best agencies, Crispin Porter + Bogusky. John was kind enough to give me the opportunity to review the book prior to official launch.

What a great read. As many of you know, I write a lot about Generation C – and some of the key dimensions of Gen C are their need for Co-Creation, Collaboration and Control over brand stories. Brands today need to engage their ‘communities’ in all aspects of business and this book brings it to life with some great examples. In a nutshell it’s about the blurring line between product and marketing – the need to ‘bake’ marketing into your product.  This book is short, sharp and easy to ready with some great case studies and examples from Crispin clients.  It’s the book that keeps on giving as every chapter has a twitter feed associated with it so you can join in a conversation ecosystem that’s created by readers of the book. The guys are practising what they preach when it comes to stimulating conversation within communities.

 

Baked In by Winsor and Bogusky

 

 

I’ve pulled out some of the most interesting statements/points of view in terms of how brands can ‘bake’ marketing into their product innovations and stories:

• To be successful a brands story must connect with a LARGER CULTURAL CONVERSATION that’s happening

• The MIDDLE IS TO BE AVOIDED by marketers at all times

• Every product has a story, the JOB OF MARKETING IS TO MAKE IT SING

• CREATIVITY IS LIKE ANTHRAX, extremely potent, hard to distribute, so to ‘weaponise’ it is to find out how to distribute it quickly and widely

• Real innovation comes from the POWER OF RANDOMNESS

• Culture always wants to change, especially pop culture, WHAT’S THE CULTURAL CONVENTION YOUR BRAND CAN FLIP?

• EXPLOITING CULTURAL CONFLICTS and tensions is the key to big ideas, use them as levers to create change (this is where the boys at Crispin continue to set the standard in terms of cracking culturally interesting ideas)

• Live your product. service to FIND TRUTHS AND INVERTED TRUTHS

• Always allow members of your brands community to take self guided explorations of your brand

• Brands built on INTUITION are more likely to be disruptive and adapt to a rapidly changing environment

•  MINE YOUR BRAND’S HISTORY for interesting stories

• Steal from other categories to innovate

• Focus on OPEN COLLABORATION

•  STORIES and the ability to share them are what make us human

• Great product names are essential to design – bake in names that mean something in culture eg: MINI, Flip, Red Bull, ipod

• If possible, innovate to CREATE AN ABSOLUTE – don’t bother communicating if you are ‘faster’, ‘lighter’…ER’s are meaningless

Thanks John for the chance to review ‘Baked In’ some great stuff here for marketers who are looking to engage people in the new marketing environment.

‘Influence’ Communications Planning

If the buzz word of marketing in 2008 was PARTICIPATION, the new area marketers need to subscribe to is INFLUENCE communications. Influence communications is marketing to not only the individual, but their network of peers that surround and influnce them across social platforms. We now know that for youth, decision making is a team sport, they use web 2.0 technologies to completely dictate most of their brand interactions..from what shows to wear, what brands to engage with, what parties, clubs to go to..they are constantly seeking the influence of their mates for tribal belonging.

In the process of trying to INFLUENCE collectives of youth, marketers need to do the following things:

1. LISTEN

Monitoring of customer conversations with each other online  – all about measuring the buzz around your brand

2. STIMULATING

Stimulating conversations in culture and participating in them, so the brand community has something to talk about..via forums and communities. If there’s nothing to talk about, you’re dead

3. ENERGISING

Make it possible for brand enthusiasts to help spread the word via ratings.reviews, social media apps they can pass on to friends

4. SUPPORTING

Enable customers to support each other via customer support communities..eg: Nike Bootcamp

5. EMBRACING

Help people work with each other to develop ideas to improve products, brand experiences. Invite consumers in to help co-create the brand, think of it like Open Source Branding.

So overall, marketing to the community, not the individual, ensure you’re listening to what’s happening culturally around your brand, then stimulate interesting conversations for people to get involved with…then ensure you foster those conversations and make it easy for the conversation to live beyong your marketing spend. Lastly, you need to understand that Open Source Branding – letting consumers to help co-create your brand assets leads to deeper levels of influence within the brand community.

Youth are NOT a target audience, they are Partners in production

Marketers need to stop thinking of youth as their ‘target audience’.  This description treats them as a destination point for marketing messages and assumes they live in isolation of each other. In reality web 2.0/ social media platforms have made youth remarkably connected and the way in which they discover, process and share information and content has changed dramatically. Forget target audience and trying to talk to individuals. Think about what ‘COLLECTIVE’ you can interact with and inspire – they are all about belonging to a group and now rely absolutely on that collective for which brands to engage with.  Todays youth are obsessed with remixing content and need to be treated as your partners in production and distribution of ideas – think of them as ‘message carriers’ – your biggest media asset.

Young people appreciate brand narratives which build and involve them across different touchpoints, not just linear one dimensional ads. This requires us to stop thinking about marketing communication programs as rigid structures – the future will all be about flexible ‘open source ideas’. It’s difficult, but you need to plan for content you don’t create. Like the fact that people may rip off your ads on youtube or create facebook fan pages, or blog negatively about your ideas. You need to be able to embrace this type of community feedback.

Our job as marketers is to spark conversations in culture around topics of interest relevant for youth, then allow for collectives to jam on it and send it on.  Savvy brands tell interesting and engaging stories which zig and zag across multiple media platforms but are built around a common theme which creates cultural capital amongst youth collectives.

Audi, Lexus, BMW, Mercedes Benz Brand Positioning

Luxury Car Brand Positionings

A deck I wrote which basically looks at the brand positionings of the four major luxury car brands – Audi, Lexus, BMW and Mercedes Benz. I love cars, so had great fun in test driving them all and putting this perspective together. For the record, I’m happy with my little R32, but will be stepping up to the M3 soon…