Themes underpinning digital branding

MACE Congress 2008

Patrick Collings
Sagacite Brand Agency

Stellenbosch
15 - 17 October 2008
5
Themes
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 control
even 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
invisible
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
 15MB is the new 15 minutes

video clip of ad men employment ad

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

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 billion
videos serves each month by youtube

44 percent
of 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 offline
south african media organizations developing
plans with vide as an integral offering
4 Guidelines
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 avatar in second life
video clip of sony home virtual world
aren’t these just

video games
1 players create their own stories

2 players build their own worlds

3 players own what they built

4 players sell what they own

By 2011, 80% of active internet users
will have an avatar
Gartner Consulting
your kids
probably
already
do
webkinz

clubpenguin

zwinky

neopets

imvu

barbiegirls

gaia

habbo
redlightcenter
kaneva

second life

unique US visitors in Sept 07, in millions

the
virtuality of
second life
introduced
the reality
of avatars
to adults
they came
from september 2006 to june
2008, the number of second life
members grew from 800,000 to
14,000,000
they played
during the same period the
number of simultaneous second
life users grew from 10,000 to
65,000
 1,000,000 to 2,000,000

they paid
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*
* Figure estimated
32 45 32
average age % females avg hours pm
 US 187,000

Europe 160,000

Japan 29,000

Brazil 27,000

Canada 17,000

Most Active Avatars in SL by Region - December 2007

 great virtual land rush
philips c|net adidas mercedes
bmw dell mazda microsoft reuters
sony bmg vodafone l’oreal ibm mtv
what went wrong
brands rushed in
they didn’t look right or left
attempted to conquer
rather than integrate
failed to realize virtual is
not the same as physical
brands stumbled
life goes on
what should brands do
understand how brands operate
in branded entertainment
natural integration into the story line
understand how brands operate
in social media & networks
multiple conversations and loss of control
understand how brands operate
in user-generated content
unsanctioned content, mashups and fragmentation
some guidelines
1 be aware

2 see virtual worlds as evolving stories

3 don’t try conquer, immerse

1 be aware

2 see virtual worlds as evolving stories

3 don’t try conquer, immerse

4 treat virtual worlds as petri dishes

innovate and produce multiple options
 avatars are
escaping
their virtual
worlds
photo by Esprit de sel's (http://www.flickr.com/photos/esprit_de_sel/2596849895/sizes/l/#cc_license)
of 23 million and counting
340
m i l l i o n
accounts
4 Questions
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
Reassembling the
fragmentation

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

video clip of the modernista Web 2.0 website
1 Observation
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 Collings
patrick@sagacite.co.za
+27 (0)83 616 0967