The Future Beyond Brands—10 years after

Lovemarks was named one of the ten best Ideas of the decade by Advertising Age magazine. Other outstanding ideas were consumer control, brand journalism, branded utility, crowdsourcing, marketer as media, earned media, Long Tail, Tipping Point and Madison & Vine.

A decade after Kevin Roberts fïrst presented Lovemarks [trustmarks] in the September 2000 issue of Fast Company, when advertising as an industry was already rolling over to go belly up in the wake of consumer behaviour drastically changing and brands were quickly losing respect. Instead of falling into a depression, I let myself be carried in a permanent state of enthusiasm, excited over the idea that my industry would now change for the better. A dire old world brand steward of fortune 500 companies myself, it took forever to reach a true understanding of where we are being taken to and what needs be done for agencies and their brands to permanently innovate and continuously create new meaning for their brand. (An age old myth of a strategy, that of keeping your wife pregnant for the rest of her youth days to ensure her loyalty daunted on me).

First and foremost lovemarks was an idea that did it for Saatchi and Saatchi as a tool for acquiring new business: In September 2006, JC Penney awarded the agency its $430 million advertising account and publicly indicated that decision had been significantly influenced by Mr. Roberts’ Lovemarks book and philosophy.
With the lovemarks effect now being Saatchi & Saatchi secret sauce to the effect of, and according to this Advertising Age interview, the future of Saatchi & Saatchi depends on Lovemarks becoming a Lovemark as much as Saatchi & Saatchi becoming a Lovemark themselves.

 

The future of communications beyond advertising

Research fun and fine with all there was to know delivered by strangers blogging their hearts out and no insights coming from the official press to say the least for my current, so very healthy smallville German location, only last month three big insights finally collided:

1. Prof. Dr. Peter Kruse explaining how easily our brain triggers false conclusions and how the world [research conducted with heavy users only] is being split into two profiles, that of being ‘digital natives‘ and ‘digital visitors‘ by which the state of ‘digital visitors’ exemplifies the state of advertisers at large and explains what is holding our industry back: the unexperienced can’t scholar the increasingly sophisticated and experienced consumer market.
2. A banal, purely practical solution was offered by Gareth Key from Goodby Silverstein and Partners when he coined ‘ideas that do‘, which immediately became my general response for solving all sorts of issues.
3. Desktop revolution stops short from transforming ad industry: No pocket size ad services such as offering digital footprints as a service.

 

 

Call for advertising residents to turn digital natives

15 years after Negroponte’s being digital was first published, digital visitors must now make the leap to becoming digital residents. No digital footprints – no lovemarks.

 

Edmund Choe, Brett Channer, Andy Greenaway, Kate Stanners, Chris Graves, Paul Siburn, Fabio Fernandes, John Pallant, Tom Esslinger, Pablo Del Campo, Steve Back, Mike McKay, Derek Lockwood, Mary Baglivo, Robert Senior, Bill Cohrane, Pedro Simko, Vaughan Emsley, Simon Francis, Peter Hubbell, Richard Hytner, Andy Murray, Milano Reyna, Kurt Ritter, Kevin Roberts, Ian Rowden, Bob Seelert

 

Watch this space as the story unfolds on how to turn Proctor & Gamble’s brands into lovemarks beyond reasoning and gain new momentum for lovemarks and the lovemarks company.

 

 

• Every Day Matters for JC Penny—KR CONNECT
• Every day matters—The inspiration room
• Peter Kruse on networks—What’s next [German]
• nextpractice—Peter Kruse consultancy
• The Evolution of Commitment—graphic courtesy of duct tape marketing

 

To the attention of Günter and Helmut Sendlmeier, and dear friends at McCann Erickson

This is not a first at setting out with ideas that do¹ to win over a powerful brand agency to take on my idea of offering a service on time for the new ad age. Complex right sizing or new silo formations are so old world. Not my thing and way over my head.
My humble idea however can be put to work and work hard and profitable in no time as a service. The real idea is to put the idea to work as a service. You good people may long have a scheme of an organizational mash-up, a bit of Webber Shandwick, a good portion of Future Brand and much of the global roll out powers of McCann/Universal Media. Yet would’nt that call for dedicated silo formation after all? Same here but with a difference. Put it to work as a service and all falls in place naturally. Plain simple, a service is sexy, organisational is the nephew of bureaucratic and a pain even for those who win. What was the idea?

 

¹Gareth Kay, Director of Digital Strategy, Goodby, Silverstein and Partners.

 

Digital footprints as a service brings conventional branding faster to the market at a fraction of the costs and is 100 per cent measurable

 

How long will a client have to wait before she gets to see the brand solution from Future Brand? Half a year, maybe less? With digital footprints expect feedback from the marketplace after two weeks so you can make adjustments and improvements in a real time fashion based on hard facts and statistics. Contrary to conventional branding, where idea are prefabricated upon notion and heavy market and consumer research, digital footprint takes all stakeholders (agency team/client team/consumers) on a come natural step by step walk on the wild side where problems are solved when they occur and new ideas are integrated as they introduce themselves. An organic, natural evolution and selection consistently accompanied and guided by real time statistics.

 

Client profits. Agency invests.

The agency invests their enormous brand expertise and will cut short on market research and consumer tests. Results become available as the conversation (communication) unfolds. Adjustment take place just as momentarily yet improvements are implemented more consistently.

New York City strategist Ana Andjelic states why digital marketing so efficient: “I don’t care about why people do things, i care about how they do them.” Find her post here.

 

 

 

Brand Advocacy

A consumer who discovers a brand by herself will likely claim ownership of her discovery thereby becoming a brand advocat. She then sets forth with recommending her discovery.

 

Motivation

It’s the thirst for knowledge we are born with, Possibly the most powerful motivation of all. Why? It allows us to survive. By learning we become capable of doing. Why this motivation has no mentioning in Abraham Maslow’s ‘Theory of Human Motivation’, I don’t know perhaps Maslow need rewrite his paper.
Google has taken our thurst for knowledge serious. Google’s tremendous world success was built on this motivation.

 

• Illustrations courtesy of Laura Barnard. © 2010 Laura Barnard All rights reserved.

 

 

What are digital footprints?

Snail trails left behind by brands on the internet

A sticky streak of lube remains forever sticky as ever increasing search inquiries spit out results on the internet. We are at and beyond 10 billion core searches per month by Americans alone. Regardless if we care to know, consumers let Google do the dirty work for them. Consumers get their smarts from snail trails left behind by brands. This goes way beyond the first impression conventional advertisers have leveraged so very well for the old world. And yes, the first impression hardly fails even in our new world. The increasingly sophisticated consumer however longs for more. Much more. She wants to continuously discover reasons to believe in the brand and she insists on discoveries of her own.

 

Consumers get their smarts from snail trails left behind by brands

This is great for all stakeholders involved yet likely overlooked, the consumer who has discovered a brand on her own needs not be lured into purchasing the product or service, it has long been obtained by her. After all it is her discovery, hence she sets forth to recommend her true and tried discovery to others.

 

Digital footprints as a service

A sexy scalable offering turning the snail trail into a blossom scented flowery trail of daisies & daffodils will make a world renown company for its conventional branding skills such future brand appear in a new light and have people admit: “sure smells like teen spirt.”

 

The public craves for fresh ideas, and a service which delivers on the promise of a systematic approach for achieving and maintaining a respectable reputation for brands must be brought to market by Future Brand and the McCann Worldgroup in less than a month. A service offering is rolled out more efficenty and with greater effect than the organisational and oh so old world approach with which my beloved Munich siblings Günter and Helmut Sendlmeier would fall short with. Digital Footprint as a service for fortune 1000 clientele is available immediately and will be put to use in an organic, evolutionary step-by-step roll oujt. Clients will profit by continuously creating new meaning for their brands with digital footprits.

 

Be sure to learn more about digital footprints and how to make them work hard for global brand networking agencies and their fortune 1000 clientele early next week.

 

• Cityscape illustration courtesy of Laura Barnard
• Future Brand announces major European expansion
• Chris Nurko
• Chris Nurko quits SapientNitro for return to FutureBrand
• Future Brand
• Fashion Faces Future Brand Germany introducing yalook.com

 

Claudia Langer and Alex Bogusky are both advertsing celebrities in their own rights.
Claudia Langer has jump started and abandoned one of Germany’s outstanding start ups, the boutique agency .Start in Munich, while Alex Bogusky has jump started and has apparently only recently abandoned CP+B, one of the best creative shops in the US he co-founded.

 

 

A lovely strategic consumption alliance

Claudia Langer has been driving Utopia toward ever increasing popularity, an aggregator fostering the growing community of strategic consumers, while Alex Bogusky is turning the tide, trying to get his hands around something I understand to have similar aims as does Claudia’s active pursuit in helping us consumers to make the right choices with strategic consumption, thereby driving the industry to making available more appropriate products by means of sustainability and transparency for what we opt to purchase.

 

Alex Bogusky At Turning The Tide from BAYCAT on Vimeo.

 

• Utopia Way to go
• Feels like social wealth
• .start
• interone now owns .start
• cp+b Crispin Porter Bogusky
• Picture of Alex Bogusky courtesy of crussado

 

Word of an upcoming Pfizer pitch once roamed through the corridors of beloved McCann agency without ever hitting any desks. I also fondly recall having read of an unsucessful pitch by one of my hero ad men. A good story with great social media potental long before the term was coined. Alas, today I have a much more practical reason for keeping Pfizer products in reach…

To raise money for straightening out the leaning tower of Pisa and have the event sponsored by Pfizer , the story goes.

Pfizer however eventually rejected the story… It was far to early for anyone to grasp the enormous influence word of mouth should have gained just years later. At the time facebook, twitter where no household names nor did they exist. Agencies and clients will grasp social media in 2010.

A few days ago, my Berlin lady friend, Katharina Biebrich sent me a photograph of her wearing the cashmere scarf I had Burberry on Kuhdamm sent to her house as a wedding gift. I was absolutely taken by her beauty and couldn’t help but stare at the picture on my screen. Make some time for wasting is never too bad an idea, hence I opened her picture in Pixelmator, removed the background and dropped in an outdoor background of my small towns perfectly square castle. The red sandstone goes well with the purple of the scarf. While at it, happily puttering in the quiet of the first Christmas day, I couldn’t get the movie Avatar out of my head, so I did a second version turning the poor girl’s skin blue while keeping her eyes in her natural chestnut colors rather than swapping her eyes with the green eyes of the original avatar from the movie I saw the other day. At the same time I googled movie reviews and came across a synopsis describing Avatar as action movie with an equal dose of romance.

Action & Romance led me to Pfizer and I was happy to find myself working on a Viagra ad years after the Viagra pitch never landed on any ones desk the first time around.

Right now, I trust Viagra and Avatar to be a perfect match. Even though Alvin and the Chipmunks snuck by Avatar on Wednesday to take the pre-Christmas box office with an impressive $18.7 million, leaving Avatar behind with $16.4. What is more important though, Avatar is not only a big enough movie by means of reach, it will stick for a long time with increasingly influential target groups such as gamers and nerds. Besides Avatar takes Viagra right into the family living rooms of main stay customers around the world. The dads and their equally important mummies and kids.

By hooking up with Avatar, an enormously becoming opportunity has presented itself to Pfizer for Viagra is comfortably being moved from pharmaceutical to commodity status. The coming out of Viagra. Be it as testimonial campaign or as high and dry certification campaign (buy the real viagra). The lever appears powerful enough to fight back on perhaps the worst issue Pfizer is facing: a high impact campaign fighting counterfeits.