digital brand strategy | mace 2008

Themes underpinning digital branding

MACE Congress 2008

Patrick CollingsSagacite Brand Agency

Stellenbosch15 - 17 October 2008

5Themes

The flow, not the contours

The art of gliding

15MB is the new 15 minutes

Our virtual reality

Reassembling the fragmentation

The flow, not the contours

from mainframe to desktop to internet

internet explorer rapidly losing ground to firefox

myspace sharing social networking with facebook and others

mainstream media battling bloggers

traditional blogging sharing space with micro blogging

altavista was king before google, will cuil manage to dent the colossus

understand where your market is going and why it is going, but

appreciate that the vehicle for getting there will probably change

The art of gliding

you are not in controleven when you think you are

GM’s Chevy Tahoe SUV

video clip of user generated tahoe “commercials”

today, everyone can be a director

video clip of user generated polo “commercial”

collection of guinness ads

video clip of non-sanctioned guinness ad

“... they have to keep on consistently building their brands equity so that when a potentially damaging piece of communication does filter out into the world, their brand is strong enough and their consumers are savvy enough to understand its source is the public domain.”

your brand does not need you to be online

others will put it there

invisibleinvisible

small

7 Guidelines

watch it

increasingly need to be there

empower

engage, or not

integrate

don’t fake it

don’t box the demographic

7 = soaring + gliding + influencing

accept the loss of complete control and become part of the experience

and conversation

ipod photo by Вася Артёмов (http://www.flickr.com/photos/78518472@N00/2274202900/)

15MB is the new 15 minutes

video clip of ad men employment ad

as a society we are becoming more visual

“video beats pictures beats text” - trendwatching.com 2008 report

what sort of numbers are we talking about

five billionvideos serves each month by youtube

44 percentof all online video consumption

in the U.S.A.

embedded video clip of instructional video

what about the news media

news media is promoting video offlinesouth african media organizations developing

plans with vide as an integral offering

4Guidelines

you have to be seen

integrated part of brand communication

parts are greater than the whole

must entertain

we will increasingly tell our brand stories in video and need to weave

our brand inextricably into the frames of the video

Our virtual reality

video clip of sony home virtual world

video gamesaren’t these just

players build their own worlds2

players sell what they own4

1 players create their own stories

players own what they built 3

By 2011, 80% of active internet users will have an avatar

Gartner Consulting

your kids probably alreadydo

barbiegirls

webkinz

clubpenguin

zwinky

neopets

imvu

second life

gaia

habbo

redlightcenter

kaneva

unique US visitors in Sept 07, in millions

the virtuality of second lifeintroducedthe reality of avatarsto adults

from september 2006 to june 2008, the number of second life members grew from 800,000 to 14,000,000

they came

during the same period the number of simultaneous second life users grew from 10,000 to 65,000

they played

in the space of 18 months the average value of transactions per day on second life went from $500,000 to between $1m and $2m*

they paid

1,000,000 to 2,000,000

* Figure estimated

32average age

45% females

32avg hours pm

US

Europe

Japan

Brazil

Canada 17,000

27,000

29,000

160,000

187,000

Most Active Avatars in SL by Region - December 2007

great virtual land rushphilips c|net adidas mercedes

bmw dell mazda microsoft reuters sony bmg vodafone l’oreal ibm mtv

what went wrong

brands rushed inthey didn’t look right or leftattempted to conquerrather than integratefailed to realize virtual is not the same as physical

brands stumbled

life goes on

what should brands do

in branded entertainmentnatural integration into the story line

understand how brands operate

in social media & networksmultiple conversations and loss of control

understand how brands operate

in user-generated contentunsanctioned content, mashups and fragmentation

understand how brands operate

some guidelines

see virtual worlds as evolving stories21 be aware

don’t try conquer, immerse 3

see virtual worlds as evolving stories2

treat virtual worlds as petri dishes4

1 be aware

don’t try conquer, immerse 3

innovate and produce multiple options

photo by Esprit de sel's (http://www.flickr.com/photos/esprit_de_sel/2596849895/sizes/l/#cc_license)

avatars areescapingtheir virtualworlds

of 23 million and counting

340m i l l i o na c c o u n t s

4Questions

how close will people and their avatars track one another in brand consumption

which one will be the greater influencer on choice of brand

will avatars become brand ambassadors

what will determine legal right to ownership of an avatar

“One of the things our grandchildren will find quaintest about us is that we

distinguish the digital from the real, the virtual from the real. In the future, that will

become literally impossible. The distinction between cyberspace and that which isn’t cyberspace is going to be unimaginable”

William Gibson

photo by INTVGene (http://www.flickr.com/photos/intvgene/370973576/sizes/l/)

Reassembling the fragmentation

video clip of the modernista Web 2.0 website

1Observation

brands must exist in the parts as much as they do in the whole

For ongoing coverage of and commentary on brands in the digital arena please visit the Brand Architect blog at http://www.collings.co.za/

Thanks to Tyler Reed for introducing me to the quote “15MB is the new 15 minutes”

Patrick Collingspatrick@sagacite.co.za+27 (0)83 616 0967