My top 10 posts of ‘09

As 2009 draws to a close I thought I’d recap with a list of  the top 10 posts (according to you guys) that gained the most traffic on my blog. It seems the posts you guys tended to navigate towards were those that were about how brands should behave in the new media environment when trying to engage youth in conversationas well as learnings from the world’s best youth brands.

Here are the 10 posts (in terms of site traffic) in  2009 for those that haven’t read them.

1. Nike: We don’t do advertising , we do cool stuff (by far and away the most popular post of the year)

2. Levi’s ‘Go Forth’ – Inspiring Generation Optimism

3. Youth want TRIBAL IDEAS – tips on creating a movement

4. Youth are Cyborgs

5. 10 Principles for engaging Teens

6. 10 Observations on how the best youth brands behave

7. Why Red Bull is the world’s best youth brand

8. Youth marketing is about Culture Creation

9. Experimentation is the new Engagement

10. Brand Ecosystems and Participative Branding Comms Model

My top 5 youth ideas for 2009

Well I’m about to log off tomorrow for 2009, back Jan 6th. It may be a little quiet around here for a while. I’ve got some cool ideas that I’ve been working on the past months that will be breaking in early 2010, so I lookforward to putting them out there and seeing what people think.

 It’s been a great year, I hope you’ve found my insights into youth marketing, planning,  social media and Gen C interesting. In my time off I’m going to be thinking about how I get my book on Youth Tribes going, as it’s such a morphing space, but I’m excited about getting into all the different youth subcultures in Australia and understanding their differences and universal commonalities.

For a bit of fun, here are my  5 favourite youth ideas/content deliveries of 2009:

1. Red Bull Project X – Shaun White Secret Halfpipe (clear winner) – Creating a secreet halfpipe for Shaun White to practice new tricks in…in a word AMAZING. RB are the kings of creating mythology around their brand and deliver the storytelling ina simple yet inspiring way. They know that they are far more than an energy drink brand, they are a youth entertainment media brand. No one ‘creates culture’ like RB.

2. Burger King Whopper Sacrifice – brilliant idea which fucked with the establised codes of culture by getting people to ’scarifice’ friends to show their love of the Whopper. It’s so brutally simple and engaging. Just when everyone though FB was about adding mates, Crispin turned things on it’s head and made the world go into sacrifice mode.

3. Levi’s ‘Go Forth’ - superb job of creating a new manifesto for Levi’s and making the  ’Original’ brand position mean something for American youth. This brand idea did a great job of tapping into Generation O (Optimism) which is sweeping across America right now and capturing a relevant mood of global youth.

4. Sprite ‘Reality Remixed’ – Green Eyed World - truly social idea with great follow factor, following the breakout year of a pop hopeful,  Katie –  which in the world of music marketing is absolutely rare…fantastic consumer engagement via the youtube series and Facebook connect interaction, awesome use of technology to make the idea truly social

5. DC Shoes ‘Gymkhana’ videos  – the series of Ken BLock ‘gymkhana’ videos are a youtube phenom, makes the brand feel so authentic and cool when you see KB burning around trailer parks doing tricks in his WRX. DC shoes are smart, they entertain their true believers and the rest flock towards them

Some other cool things that have been quite innovative in engaging youth:

- Fiesta Movement – innovative way to launch a car, try sparking a movement by giving 100 cars away to kids to drive around for a few months…created deep engagement with ‘agents’ and the car was the backdrop to the storytelling. They’re shifting into getting fans to ‘create the 2011′ advertising which worries me, but lets see what happens.

- Halo 3 ODST:  - love a great little ARG which sent Canadian gamers on a trasure hunt across Toronto for VIP access to the launch party…they engaged the true believers and the game sold out like hot cakes.

- V Australia 4320LA (Well done Sudeep and Nick K) – smartest use of ‘Twitter’ for a campaign, although the return leg of 4320Sydney wasn’t as engaging.

- Coke Expedition 206 - sheer scale and audacity of the idea of taking 3 20 somethings around the world for a year to spread ‘Happiness’ in 206 countries is cool…whether there is follow factor is yet to be seen

- Gatorade ‘Replay’ – clever doco created by Gatorade in the US..getting two high school football teams from the 90’s who are super fierce rivals to replay a drawn match. Captivating content and an authentic role for product which is rare in branded content these days, without it feeling forced.

Have a great Christmas/Hannukah and Happy New Year  and am hoping one of my ideas make it onto this type of list of innovative youth marketing ideas/programs.

Principles of Transmedia Storytelling

Watched an interesting lecture by the ‘father’ of transmedia storytelling, Henry Jenkins, author of Convergence Culture, who recently returned to MIT (he’s now at USC) to speak to students about the 7 principles of transmedia storytelling. You can find the full 50 minute lecture at his blog  here, but I’ve summarised some of the key points I took out of it.

Essentially ‘transmedia storytelling’ is cross platform entertainment where each media touchpoint makes its own unique contribution to the story and the audience/community is encouraged to engage with the story and remix it to help influence the outcome of the story. In terms of brand communications, there has been quite a few famous ‘transmedia’ ideas, most notably the ARG’s (Alternate Reality Games) used to launch moves like The Dark Knight, or McDonald’s ‘The Lost Ring’ ARG associated with the Beijing Olympics. There’s also been Audie’s ‘Art of the Heist’ and numerous others. I’ve always been fascinated by ARG’s just because they generally ask people to play an active role in the outcome of the story, and what’s ‘on screen’ is only part of the story.

In a nutshell here are the 7 principles of transmedia storytelling which Henry spoke about:

1.       DRILLABILITY

With transmedia narratives it’s about ‘depth of engagement’  – you have to create a story arc that allows people to deep dive into it’s complexities and uncover nuances. This makes it far more engaging for the true fan as they have a reason to keep coming back.

 2.       MUTLIPLICITY over CONTINUITY

Most traditional advertising communications speak about ‘continuity’, but in fact the success of transmedia storytelling comes down to ‘multiplicity’, where people are encouraged to have different perspectives on characters. A great example of this is Batman, in terms of all the comics, anime and cartoons, there are always slightly different perspectives on the character which make the franchise ever more appealing and contextual to youth.

 3.       IMMERSION/EXTRACTIBILITY

For me, the most interesting part of great transmedia ideas are when elements are taken out of the story and put into the real world which enable deep immersion by the consumer. Brands that are driving digital scavenger hunts like for HALO 3 ODST are doing well at building extractability within their ideas so the consumer id engaged beyond their computer screen or mobile.

4.       WORLD BUILDING

The story created is just the beginning, what really matters is what happens in ‘their world’ – how people interact and taken on what fans have gathered. Think Pokemon, which has over 200 characters to collect or the complex relationships between all the X-Men characters . In essence people want to map the stories of these characters and take joy when brands take them on a journey.

5.       SERIALITY

Sounds really obvious, but seriality is a critical component of a transmedia narrative. A series of instalments drive both anticipation and speculation of what will happen next with the idea, resulting in deeper engagement for the individual.

6.       SUBJECTIVITY

Transmedia ideas typically work best when people can uncover a ‘backstory’ or secondary characters within the mix who have or will influence the outcome of the story. So in the case of ARG’s, people want to know the lead in and reasoning behind what’s happening. It comes down to people’s fascination with mythology and a world where people are constantly interested in hearing different points of view and comparing them.

7.       PERFORMANCE

This principal should really be called REMIX, as it’s all about fans bring the content into their own world and putting a spin on it, it’s about crowdsourcing and reconstructing the narrative. The Hunt for Gollum story is a perfect example of fans creating this narrative as a prequel/backstory to the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

As a youth marketer, there’s alot we can learn here, first and foremost is that brands today need to think about how their brands story unfold over multiple touchpoints as well as how the colletive remixes that story along the way. Nothing should ever be set in stone, what we do as marketers is START SOMETHING..hopefully a conversational in culture that can then unfold and be remixed in culture.

Sprite’s ‘Green Eyed World- reality remixed by Facebook community

I’m really liking this idea by Sprite called ‘Green Eyed World’.  It’s obvious part of this brief was to create an authentic role in grassroots music for youth. Instead of making a TVC, they created a social music series built in real time, following an emerging artist, Katie Vogel for a year on youtube, with her fans being able to interact with her via Facebook connect. The idea was called ‘reality remixed’ and it’s got loads of follow factor. It has produced 4 seasons with 13 episodes, I’ve watched 3 of them and they’re not too bad.

The content itself isn’t that amazing, but what’s really interesting about this idea is how they cleverly linked in all the social media platforms and created a REAL TIME interaction method for the community to really get up close and personal with Katie V and her journey. The integration of Facebook connect along the journey has been brilliant and you can help her decide what to do, the whole way. The community helps create the outcome of the story, it’s truly an interactive brand narrative.  This is what creates the ‘follow factor’. It’s done very well, with 2.5m views on youtube.  My only criticism is that Sprite as a brand doesn’t really add that much value to the user experience, it’s in the background, which is maybe enough, but I would have pushed for more integration into the brand narrative.

‘WannaMe’ – the better digital version of my real self.

WannaME culture/Facebragging- uploading the best version of yourself to Facebook

We all know that social media has turbo charged our connections to each other and the conversations we have, this is particularly prevalent when you think of Gen C. The last few weeks I’ve been talking to quite a few 16-21yr olds here in Sydney about their ‘digital life’ and what’s become more and more obvious, is this concept of ‘WannaME’.

WannaMe (a rip off of an Aussie slang word, Wannabe), is when young people build digital personas on Facebook and other social networking sites which show the absolute best parts of their lives. Call it Facebragging, showing off, call it what you will. It’s all about how they meticulously craft their online personas to share with the world, i order to ensure they pass judgement from other members of their tribe.It’s about creating the best version of yourself – as we all know perception equals reality.

Belonging to a tribe is and always will be a primal need for youth, but now we’re seeing youth needing to constantly upload pics, show that they’ve been invited to the right parties/concerts, be seen wearing the right clothes, hanging with the right crowd. It’s all a part of their desperate need to fit in and this competitive pressure to be in the know is overwhelming alot of young people I spoke to. It’s like the 1980’s ‘cool kids’ phenomena all over again, where you were either in or out based on how you dressed. Now it’s just dimensionalised in real time.

When you talk to these teens, you realise that the pics they’re uploading from music festivals, parties, make up about 10% of their life, but on facebook, it looks like they are uber social, connected and little party animals. One guy I spoke to even said he pulls out old pics from last summer and posts them if he doesnt have anything good to contribute to the conversations happening. So they are re-using old versions of their social life to ‘keep up with the Jones’ if you will.

The WannaME culture that has been charged by social technology has definitely also made youth more extroverted. What was unacceptable to share with friends is now completely acceptable, and Aussie kids are trying to one up each other on facebook. Boys are uploading pics of them doing risque sporting tricks eg: jumping off a bridge illegally, whereas girls are being more and more provocative with how much flesh they show. Psychologists talk about the need to highlight the  ’social risk’ in communications when you’re trying to change a certain ingrained behaviour eg: drinking driving, smoking, drug taking etc. Now it seems that this social risk is being celebrated online.

WannaME culture is permeating through pretty much all youth subcultures, it’s not just the rich urban indie kids, it’s across the board. More than ever young people are carefully crafting their digital personas and brands need to understand this mindset in order to engage with them. Thoughts?

Aussie music festivals and tribes

Great little presentation from Sally on the Australian music festival scene. Last summer she went to a whole heap of festivals and captured the key vibes of each.

Festivals have become really important to Aussie youth, primarily because it is something they all use to create their own identity and as a form of self expression. It’s a chance for them to escape the rules and restrictions of the everyday and express themselves through dance and social interaction.  Whether you’re a festival rat who is addicted to the music, or a kid who just goes for the social scene and chance to dress up, it all comes down to a statement of belonging.

It’s impossible to classify all the youth tribes that have been born out of music genres and festivals. Over the past few years we’ve seen the emergence of the INDIE KIDS, as there’s been a move away from techno and hard house, toward more indie electro sounds at major festivals. The reality is even within ‘indie kids’ there are man different variations of dress, lifestyle, even they way the speak, based on what there other music interests are. So it’s all about fusing and mashing music and festival tastes together so you’re seen as fluid and up to speed with the latest. Even more traditional ‘rock’ festivals have seen an increased number of indie bands and indie electro acts in the lineup. However, don’t ever try and box a kid in and say they’re just an ‘indie’ or rock chic. According to Erica, you can be a rock chic who likes a side of hip hop and a dash of pop.

It will be interesting to see which festivals rock this summer in Australia and whether we’ll see an emergence of a new youth tribe born out of a specific festival.

Somebody stop the crowdsourcing..Snickers just don’t get it

I said a few weeks back if I saw another youth brand going down the crowdsourcing route and getting young people to make ads for them, I was going to lose it. Well, I just saw on Twitter that Snickers in the USA are doing exactly that, trying to get youth to make ads for them. This is so lame.  As part of the Tell The Snickers Story campaign through Poptent, they are asking people to make either a 30 second TVC or a 30 second viral for the chance to win $5k. This is just ridiculous on many levels. Firstly, why differentiate between a 30″ TVC and viral content.  Viral is what happens to an idea when people want to share it, it’s not an end in itself. Secondly, Snickers are probably the 50th brand to do it this year. Ben & Jerrys, Doritos are a few brands that have done it, there are countless more. Unfortunately what it tells me about Snickers is that they have no clue how to use ‘collaborative creatity’ to engage young people. The reality is, a couple of hundred young film makers will put together some random content, 2-3 of them may be remotely interesting, but most likely none of them will gain any traction at all. Just like the Doritos ‘Make us an ad’ idea. No traction whatsoever wiht youth.  I’m just getting really annoyed with brands who think that by getting young people to ‘make their’ ads’ they think they’re involving youth in the brand. I’ve said before brands need to think of youth as ‘partners in production’ – the thing with this view is that you have to have an idea first that youth can play with, remix, create their own story. Leaving them to do all the work for you, is just down right lazy. Epic Fail Snickers.

First look at Project X – Shaun White’s secret halfpipe

 

Hot off the press, here’s the second video released by Red Bull showing Shaun White’s private halfpipe – part of Project X.  Don’t need to say much about it, apart from the fact that it’s such a killer idea and everyone I know who’s heard about it is WOW’ed by it. Red Bull are drip feeding the content over the coming months in the lead up to the Winter Olympics, keeping his competitors and fans salivating for what new tricks he will release onto the world.

Youth Interview with Greer- team WOW finalist for Coke Expedition 206

I wrote a post a few days back on Coke Expedition 206. They’ve got 3 teams of 3 people, one team will be chosen as Happiness Ambassadors to travel around the world for a year in 2010 spreading happiness in every country Coke is sold in. It’s a global expedition on Coke (excuse the bad pun).  It’s a cool idea that really only a brand like Coke could pull off. I was lucky enough to get in touch with a fellow Sydney-sider Greer, who is one of the finalists in  team WOW who are currently in second place with 38% of votes.  She’s got some interesting perspectives on Happiness and why the expedition will be valuable to her (if her team wins). So vote for Greer in Team WOW. Here’s some thoughts from Greer on the Expedition, Happiness, youth culture and what she stands for.

Tell me how you got involved in Expedition 206?

I was lucky enough to be on the mailing list for Lonely Planet suppliers as I had sold them a travel video about Italy. When Coke put out the call for applicants they did it through companies/agencies who would be able to find people with relevant experience for the project; it was not private just targeted. The initial job application did not state the company that you would represent, it was very secretive. It was not until the final 18 were invited to go to Atlanta for a week long selection process did we find out that is was Coca-cola. I, along with 17 others spent a busy week in Atlanta. We did team building exercises, filming expeditions, under pressure video editing as well as psychological testing. On the second last day, we found which which 9 had been selected as finalists and who was in which team. We then had approximately 24 hours to film and put together our promotional videos, when I finally got on the plane home you can imagine how exhausted I was! It was a roller coaster experience. we got to know that other 17 people very well and formed some great friendships. When we found out who was in the final 9 and who had not made it, it was bitter sweet. Happy to be included but also thinking of your new friends who had not been selected. Having 18 talented people to choose from I am sure the decision about the teams would have been very tough to make.

Team WOW from Coke Expedition 206

What does ‘happiness’ mean to you and why do you believe it’s important for global youth?

I am happy when I am content with the things I have happening in my life and I am able to just relax & enjoy them. Everyone suffers pressures whether it be from work, family, peers or themselves and I think happy people are the people who can accept or ignore those pressures and just be content with who they are. This is a tough concept for youth as I know when I was a little younger I was constantly aspiring to be, have or do something other than what I was, and that can make it harder to enjoy the ‘here & now’. Of course it is still important to have goals and work towards them but smell the roses along the way and live in the moment not in the future.

 Is there a ‘happiness’ issue/crisis?

I believe happiness has always been and will always be an important issue. It seems to be a simple concept but in fact it is very complex. It is not just about enjoying happy moments but also about living in a happy/positive state of mind. Being happy does not need to depend on your economic situation, and I think by being able to ask people in so many countries from so many walks of life; will give us a great understanding about what truly makes people happy.

Why do you think ‘happiness’ is so important for global youth culture?

I am not an expert, but when you hear stories about youth suicide and depression; it does make me very concerned. As youths our lives should, in theory, be less complicated and more carefree than adult life, but so many youths to not have a healthy state of mind and do not enjoy their younger years. In privileged societies such as our own it would appear that we are less content with all we have than those in poorer countries who are content with far less. I think it is very important to address this and help show youths how to be happy with less and how to be content with themselves.

 

Team WOW trying to become Happiness Ambassadors

How is it that two Aussies made the final 9? What do you think it is about Aussie youth that make us ‘happy’?

I can’t be sure how they picked us, though I think what appealed was our sense of humour and easy going nature.  Australians, generally speaking are a culture of people who are always ready to have a good time but we are also hard working. Internationally I think we are well liked by most other cultures; travelling, I never had a negative response towards Australia.

What’s your life mantra?

 My mantra is not very fancy, its very simple. It will all work out, one way or another. When ever things don’t seem to be going to plan, I just think ” Ah well, its going to work out somehow.”

Why do you think your team deserves to win over the other two teams?

 I’m not sure if its a matter of deserving it more, but I think our team is best suited for the trip. We will live in each others back pockets for 365 day to survive that you need to have the right personalities. I am very driven and love to be busy so I will adapt well to the hectic schedule of the trip. All three of us have high energy but also know when to buckle down and focus. We also have the perfect skill set between us; EZ (Erin) is the writer of the trio, Brendan and I both of plenty of video experience and we are all experienced using online technologies and blogging. I studied digital media at COFA and have technical knowledge as well as a creative eye. Aside from our skills we are all genuinely nice people. Working together so far we have all been under a lot of pressure and we have proven we can make quick and sensible decisions together. We all contribute and compromise to work together as a team. Being a prima dona on this expedition will just not work.

Complete these sentences…

I believe in…what goes around comes around

I am inspired by…people who rise above their circumstances.

I hope..to always be happy and enjoy my life.

I hate..feeling like I am wasting time.

I care….about other peoples feelings.

I wish….that’s a tough one because I wish can be something almost unattainable… I wish there was no war

My friends…are all important to me.

My dream….is to be able to live my life creatively, without feeling trapped by circumstance or finance.

The link to vote for our team is :  http://www.expedition206.com/TeamWow.aspx

And our facebook page is:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Team-WOW/169501557448

Coke Expedition 206- Happiness Goes Around

Expedition 206- happiness going around the world for 3 Happy Ambassadors

Hip Hip Hooray, finally a truly big idea from Coke that celebrates their brand essence of ‘happiness’ in a culturally relevant and interesting way for global youth. I say finally, because the last great thing I saw from Coke was ‘Happiness Factory‘ – sorry guys. They’ve created a killer idea here.  Coke have recently launched Expedition 206 ‘ happiness goes around’. It’s essentially a global expedition to find and spread ‘happy’. Coke are sending a team of 3 ‘Happiness Ambassadors’ around the world to 206 countries over 365 days to find out what happiness truly means to people and to spread optimis – this team is chosen by the public of course.  I like this idea as  it’s trying to contribute and spread some positive love throughout the world. It’s a social idea that will no doubt have a strong following. It also taps into an evergreen global youth need – the thirst for adventure.   Look, ‘Happiness’ as a territory has been done to death by many brand’s, but only Coke can truly take a leadership position on it and there product genuinely delivers on it. Tapping into the positive pyschology trend has worked for many brands and Coke are probably the only global brand that could be this off.  For me (so far from what I’ve seen) , this is a great idea, average execution. They’ve pretty much copied the entry mechanic of ‘Best Job in the world’ and thats fine, stick with something simple that works, the only real difference is that with Expedition 206 it’s about choosing a team of 3 pre-selected 20something’s.  What they are doing well is leveraging all of Coke’s big sponsorship properties in 2010, eg: Winter Olympics  and FIFA World Cup – so the winning team will no doubt be promoted predominantly at these events. After watching alot of the videos of the entrants and what the teams stand for, I guess I was hoping for a little more, but it’s got me enaged enough to want to find out which of the three teams in 2 weeks gets voted by the public as the Happiness Ambassadors.  Well done Coke for spreading the happy.