Tom Wujec stands before the crowd at this year’s TED conference and talks about a tool that restores balance to the team-building process. As he says on his website, the Marshmallow Challenge is a “fun and instructive design exercise that encourages teams to experience simple but profound lessons in collaboration, innovation and creativity.”
But it’s more than that.
The task looks simple: in 18 minutes, teams must build the tallest free-standing structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string and one marshmallow. The marshmallow needs to be on top. And after 18 minutes, it needs to stay there.
The real lesson has as much to do with creativity as with collaboration, as Wujec shows when he reveals who does well and who doesn’t during the challenge. The worst performers are recent graduates of business schools. The best performers are architects and engineers — no upset there. The surprise is that after that group, the best performers are kindergarten students.
Wujec is a fellow at Autodesk, which makes software for the design and engineering community, so he should know about visual collaboration and teamwork. So when he says that B-school grads do poorly because “they are trained to find the single right plan,” it’s time to re-examine the model. Kindergarteners do well because they build prototypes. They experiment. They have fun without latching onto a single solution at the beginning.
No right or wrong, at least not at first. Just an openness to explore the possibilities. Then we turn it over to the engineers. After all, we want whatever we’re creating to work.
Marketers are boldly going where no advertisers have gone before — subtly into the minds of viewers.
With an explosion of media and devices designed to bypass commercials, marketers are integrating their products into the fabric of movies, TV shows and social media sites. That’s not news. It’s the escalation and arrogance that’s taken this contemporary version of the 1960′s subliminal advertising to new heights.
A few examples: In February “American Idol” became the top TV show ranked by product placements when it delivered 102 instances of product appearances over the month, according to Advertising Age. Rounding out the top five are “The Biggest Loser,” “Gossip Girl,” “The Academy Awards” and “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.” “The Academy Awards” squeezed in 57 brand appearances. Top brands for all TV placements included Chevrolet, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Cybex exercise equipment and Apple.
There are several variations of product placement. There’s generic product integration, where characters smoke whether the act is germane to the plot or not. There’s product placement, where the product is a prop, like the case of Canadian Club, where the whiskey received hands on and on-screen exposure in at least four scenes of a recent episode of “Mad Men,” from characters handling a bottle to shots of the product sitting on a counter.
Then there intrusive product integration, such as the time when “Monk” character Adrian Monk told a squad room full of police not to worry about tracking a suspect because “I have a Dell and it’s fully loaded.”
Sports programs are famous for integration, from scoreboards branded by Gatorade to NASCAR racers covered with logos to commercial placements in EA Sports video games. The trend is spreading to social media, where product placement has come to Farmville among other games and sites.
It seems film has always included products as secondary characters. BrandChannel counted placements by 64 unique brands in “Iron Man 2.” It’s a marketing strategy that works, sometimes in reverse: the engagement ring worn by Bella in “Twilight: Eclipse” has become a real product.
You can see a montage of films with prominent product placement on YouTube.
And the winner for the most ubiquitous brand? Apple Computer, which won BrandChannel’s “2010 Award for Overall Product Placement” in its annual Brandcameo Product Placement Awards. (Runners up included Nike, Chevrolet and — no surprise to “Idol” viewers — Ford.) Apple products appeared in more number-one films in 2010 than any other brand — 10 of the top 33 films by box office receipts. In the past decade Apple products have starred in one third of all number-one movies — 112 of the 334 top-grossing films in the United States.
More people say they get their news from the Internet than from newspapers, according to a survey by the Poynter Institute and other organizations. Some 41% of readers say they get most of their news online, besting newspapers as primary sources by more than 10%.
Ad dollars are following the eyes. “Last year marked the first time online advertising outpaced newspaper advertising,” Jolie O’Dell reports at Mashable.
The numbers come from the State of the News Media 2011, the eighth edition of an annual report on the health and status of American journalism. The survey results are drawn from a sampling of more than 2,000 adults in January 2010. The report was produced by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and funded by the Pew Research Center.
The study finds the state of newspapers, and journalism by proxy, is more problematic than other media. In an essay based on study results a trio of writers — Rick Edmonds of the Poynter Institute and Emily Guskin and Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism — predict cultural and economic shifts will continue to batter the medium.
Last year, as other media rallied, advertising revenues at newspaper organizations fell by more than 6% — that after a recession-led drop of 26% in 2009. Print circulation declined by 5% daily. That means more job cuts in newsrooms, which the study estimates have shrunk by 30% in the last 10 years. Despite the declines profit margins remain around 5%.
Unfortunately for those organizations, the survey found newspapers still haven’t discovered how to generate revenue from digital initiatives. Ad revenue increasingly comes from independent networks, aggregators such as Google and social networks such as Facebook. Newspapers also have little control over content and access to reader metrics when companies like Apple deliver their product.
“The clock,” the report concludes, “continues to tick on finding strong supplementary revenue streams as print seems certain to stagnate or decline further.”
When Dobie Gray sang about being in with the in crowd in 1965, could he have imagined how mobile devices would turn the world into one big high school?
First there was messaging and texting, which allowed you to send your thoughts to a single person. Then there were location-based services like Foursquare, which allow you to broadcast your location to whoever will listen.
The latest to join the my-business-is-everybody’s-business trend is Beluga, a service that allows you to message groups of friends, all at once. You can transmit photos to the group without having to send individual messages. And you can spot their location on a map, eliminating the need to constantly check their availability.
Beluga is a cross-platform rival to Kik, GroupMe and Blackberry’s BBM. Whether it catches on is anyone’s guess but attendees at the uber-hip SXSW music and digital festival in Austin, Texas this week are burning up the wireless space about the service. Clue number two: Beluga’s been acquired by Facebook.
Writers and other creatives might want to use these services to extend their existing marketing tools. One application for group chat is your informal ambassador’s program, that coterie of friends and fans who evangelize for your brand. You might use Beluga to give the group some visibility, along with the cachet of exclusivity—join the group and be the first to receive information and invitations to private events.
Who knows, you might get to run with the in crowd. Or relive high school, one of Dante’s nine circles of young adulthood.
If you’re a creative who wants to market your work, comScore knows where to find your audience. They’re on Facebook.
Social media continues to attract more viewers and advertisers, according to comScore’s report “The 2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review.” Nine out of every 10 U.S. Internet users visits a social networking site every month, accounting for 12% of all time spent online in 2010, the digital measurement firm reports in the whitepaper. Facebook leads the pack of sites that receive that traffic with nearly 154 million unique visitors last year.
Advertisers have followed, serving up 4.9 trillion display ads, an increase of 23% over 2009. Social networking publishers delivered 34% of those ads, up 11% over the previous year.
Creatives interested in marketing their work on a shoestring might want to follow the trend. As they say on Wall Street, don’t fight the tape.
Ever since Bernard Silver and Norman Woodland invented the barcode in 1949 business has worked to turn objects into information. The recession in advertising, the migration from print to digital media, consumer preference for mobile devices—all have accelerated the trend toward digitizing the physical world.
Enter the QR, or quick response, code. What looks like a stamp, a maze or a square hieroglyph is really a portal to a new world of information-rich advertising. QR codes allow people with cameras in their smartphones to load websites just by pointing the device at, say, a magazine ad that carries the code. They function like hyperlinks on websites, taking readers directly to the information they want.
It’s more than the latest online fad. The technology just might help authors connect with an elusive audience.
Specialty publications are among the first to adopt the technology. The October issue of This Old House is loaded with codes. And not only in the ads. The editors are using the little squares for contests, access to how-to videos and requests for literature—techniques authors might adopt to publicize their work and promote their brand.
Trade publications are embracing the technology, too. Last month Randall-Reilly’s trucking division sent an email to media buyers announcing a program to allow readers to “unlock access to multimedia content.” Consumer publications are also rolling out programs. A recent issue of People featured a QR code in an ad for Panasonic. Why not publish the codes in any printed collateral used to publicize your work? You can track the responses, analyze the data and reach out to new audiences with targeted messages on the device of their choice.
Our agency joined the movement last week when we designed a QR code for a social media platform I helped to create. Printed on postcards that we’ll distribute at a tradeshow next month, the code will lead smartphone users to a blog that highlights trends in the industries in which our clients compete.
Try it yourself. Download an app like QR Reader, hold your smartphone up to this screen and visit the site—all without having to key in a lengthy URL.
The very technology that threatened to destroy print is enabling it to reach new readers. As the economy recovers and mobile devices spread, writers can use that knowledge to turn dead wood into dynamic sources of data . . . and revenue.
First we had cavemen sitting around the fire telling stories. Then gossips and reporters. Then came chat and blogs and we cycled back to citizen journalists.
With the rise of social media we now have citizen publicists. Like volunteer journalist, they want to speak their mind. When they listen, they want to hear what their peers are saying, not just the company line. And through the really big amplifier called the Web they can have an outsized influence on our work.
As creatives, we want to reach them.
Our agency regularly counsels clients who want to join the social media wave but are afraid of getting swamped. There are too many networks and monitoring them is a time-sink. So for those clients who want to dip a toe into online communications, we’ve developed an approach called the Social Media Platform that allows organizations to engage their audiences as well as publish their ideas.
It’s a perfect fit for artists, photographers, writers and other creatives who can’t afford a publicist.
Here’s the strategy: Organizations need to monitor and influence what people are saying about their brands. So do creatives, with the added task of promoting their work far and wide. We social media because that’s where our future editors, clients and benefactors hang out. With a social media platform we can harness the power of peers, asking influentials who like our work to spread the word. The social media platform is no substitute for a full-blown marketing campaign that uses advertising, direct mail, media relations and microsites. But it offers creatives a turnkey operation that allows them to join, monitor and influence the online conversation.
Here’s how it works: The platform is an integrated collection of social media networks and tools. It includes the major social and business networks—Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, SlideShare and YouTube—but has room for numerous sites, forums and communities. At the heart is a white-label blog without branding for an independent look and feel. With the blog creatives can manage reputations, disseminate key messages and establish expertise in the market—this might apply more to non-fiction than fiction writers. Creatives who’ve already built a reputation can use the platform to solve issues before they become wide-spread problems.
There are six parts in the process of establishing a social media platform:
Create. We start with a blog hosted on an independent site. Posts and comments radiate from the blog to the major social and business networks. The system notifies the blog administrator each time someone from the outside posts a comment. For your peace of mind, comments can be approved, edited or deleted before anyone on the ‘Net sees them. Tools: WordPress software, web host.
Listen. Tapping into the online conversation about our brand is essential. Specialized search engines allow us to listen to what people are saying about our work. PR people call it reputation management. Tools: Social Mention, Google Alerts, Gmail to verify social network accounts.
Contribute. Based on your expertise, you can contribute original text, slides, photos and video. Crowdsourcing allows you to obtain feedback on work. You can even use your network to float ideas for future projects. Tools: those listed above.
Publicize. Blogs are like parties. You have to invite the right people to achieve critical mass. We start with the internal audience, your friends and business associates, and add editors, writers and bloggers in traditional and digital media. Tools: LinkedIn, Twitter.
Monitor. The conversation is ongoing. The monitoring needs to be, too. But checking multiple sites dozens of times a day can get crazy. A dashboard can simplify the process: Tools: HootSuite, TweetDeck.
Evaluate. You’re not a major corporation. The goal isn’t to fill spreadsheets and generate charts that dazzle but yield no useful information. We measure the volume and tone of comments but take everything with two grains salt. Tools: Twitrratr (Twitter rater), Twendz (Twitter trends), Tweet Level.
Does the system work? Yes. Our agency is seeing a good adoption rate from editors and bloggers as well as retweets of original material. Why does it work? Because it leverages three potent forces in our society: the shift toward digital media, people’s desire to hear recommendations from peers rather than companies and journalists’ need to discover leads rather than waiting for pitches.
That’s almost as good as telling stories around the campfire.
Peter Krainik has a word for those who would separate marketing and PR functions: don’t.
The founder of an organization for chief marketing officers, the CMO Club, Krainik believes CMOs need to align marketing and PR/corporate communications if they want to defend and build their companies’ brands and reputations. The rise of social networks makes it mandatory.
The statistics aren’t encouraging. Only 23% of CMOs have lead responsibility for employee communications on products, services and messaging, according to a survey of 129 CMOs conducted by Hill & Knowlton. Some 66% have lead responsibility for media relations but only 55% have overall responsibility for blogger relations. Most (70%) do not have an active employee-engagement program (read brand ambassadors).
Krainik thinks CMOs need to address that disconnect.
“Marketing and public relations have overlapped, thanks to the explosive growth of digital communication that created an unprecedented level of transparency between businesses and their audiences,” Krainik writes. “The result is that brand reputation and brand image have become intertwined; the synchronization of the two is more critical than ever.”
Consider us the lucky ones. Most of our clients understand the need for a strategy that encompasses both marketing and communications. So does the agency, which allows copywriters and PR pros to flow across departmental boundaries. Copywriters run projects that include public relations components while PR pros write copy for collateral and advocate for employee ambassador programs. The process is driven by the clients’ marketing and communications functions and supervised by the agency’s account executives.
It’s not a typical arrangement but it works. And that’s what counts.
Mickie Kennedy has an interesting post this morning about writing books for their media-relations value. To summarize his thesis, even in a digital age the printed work can give you credibility and a reputation as an expert in your field. I learned that first-hand when the company now known as Sanofi Pasteur US hired me to write a book about the organization’s rise from horse farmers to suppliers of vaccines to the world.
While the company paid for the first printing of The Spirit of Swiftwater we arranged the second printing with a university press just itching to publish a business book. That attracted the interest of several thought-leaders in the industry. I knew we’d struck gold when one of the world’s most influential virologists, a doctor who’d been working with WHO to contain bird flu in Asia, visited the company and accepted an autographed book.
Those of you who know me know that I live to write large-scale works that appeal to a wide audience. I think there are several reasons why an executive or an individual would hire a writer or a ghostwriter to create one of these: to promote the organization or the person, or to be more altruistic, to leave a legacy. I often tell the story of Marco Polo and his travels along the Silk Road. His father and uncle made the journey years before they took the young explorer yet few people know their names. Every kid who’s splashed in a pool knows about Marco. The reason is simple: Marco wrote about the journey.
If you’re fascinated with an elegant tool for marketing, or just a fleeting moment of fame, I have a few resources for you, including two documents that detail the rationale, project scope and budgetary outlines of a book-length project. You can download Brand New Day and Making History from this website.
