brand conflict

AIG could have saved their brand

Dear AIG, Let me tell you how you could have preemptively saved your brand from the assuredly permanent damage it’s just suffered.

All it would've taken was a little balls, and some good old fashioned humility. You could've saved your brand with a lousy press conference. A preemptive strike, as they call it in war. And isn't your brand worth fighting for? Because you had to know this whole $165million bonus thing wasn't going to go over well... you did know that right?

Anyway AIG, here is the script for the press conference that should've been, before you doled out those cushy bonuses. This would have at least given your brand a fighting chance, and maybe even restored a teeny bit of faith in the industry::

“Loyal and patriotic taxpayers of America. It's unfortunate that I have to stand here in front of you today. As you well know by now, the standard practices of our industry are exorbitant and self-congratulatory. We have wronged you in the past, by spending your hard earned money on frivolities that were unnecessary. For our mistakes of the past, we are truly sorry. And moving forward, we plan on being as transparent as possible, with how your money is being spent.

But here and now, we’d like to thank the American people publicly for saving our company, not once, but twice. Thousands of AIG employees still have jobs today because of what you have done, and our ability to be a part of rebuilding the economy remains intact. For this we are truly grateful, and we'll do everything we can to spend the assets we’ve been given in ways that insure success for our future.

And it is on that note that I deeply regret having to make this next announcement…

The contracts that are in place with our employees require us to payout bonuses each year, and those bonuses are fixed. Well, it has come time to deliver those contract-required bonuses, some in excess of $1million. The total cost of these bonus payouts will be $165 million.

We believe very strongly that these bonuses should not be paid, as they represent a violation of the American peoples’ and the government’s trust. But due to the contracts in place with these employees, we are obligated to pay.

However, the people receiving these large bonuses are not obligated to accept them. Which is why AIG is hereby asking all employees to do the right thing for the American people, by not accepting their bonuses. Understanding that this will be a huge sacrifice on the parts of people who have come to expect these payments, we hope it is a sign of good faith that this industry can and should be held responsible for its actions. We will keep the American people apprised of how much of the bonus money is returned to us.

Thank you, and have a nice recession.”

Our Google-y Digital Brain

 

Any Information we’d ever want is available to us at our beck and call. Price of pig in China? No problem. Singer Genuwine’s birth name? Right here. The logical effect of having this seemingly infinite amount of data at our disposal is that as a whole, it’s making us smarter.

But in a world where 30 million people have watched this guy’s videos, nothing can be taken at logic alone anymore. The paradox in having instant access to hordes of data whenever we want it, which should indelibly make us smarter, is that its actually having an adverse effect on our minds (presuming "knowledge" is the measurement of how much information we have stored in our brains, which is arguably the current standard for measuring "knowledge"). The truth is, the glut of information is making us less reliant on our own internal memories (ie. Memory is being digitized). And that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s making us dumber, but it's changing us.

Our brains are adapting to our new environment, just like they have for thousands of years. We’ve conditioned ourselves to utilize the innumerable tools we have at our disposal to do the work for us, and therefore it’s less important for us to remember things that we otherwise would have committed to memory. Knowledge is transient, yet readily available.

The Information Cloud is an infinite Collective Brain, and we tap into it like we’d tap into our own memories. It’s become natural for us to reach for our iPhone or nearest keyboard the second we need to know anything about anything. But the mere knowledge of knowing that it’s there for us, and that it will continue to be there in the future, is the very thing that makes whatever knowledge we learn from the Cloud fleeting and disposable.

Just because we have access to more doesn’t mean that we actually know more (thanks to the iPhone and Google, trivia night is already a joke). But that access gives us insight into our own potential by opening our minds to a world that’s more connected, not to the Internet, but to each other. We’re evolving into a digitally enabled hive mind.

Quantity Culture

Most people would tell you that the creation of the internet instigated the shift in how we consume and create content today. But I think the shift started much sooner than that, and that the real stimulus was made out of cardboard. I think that it all started with the disposable camera.

Out of nowhere in1986, disposable cameras hit the scene. They’re easy to use, cheap, and the quality sucks but who cares. We became snap-happy almost overnight.  For the first time, everyone felt compelled to take pictures of everything. The device was throwaway, so the pictures in a sense became throwaway too, every snap was less meaningful then the one before it. Then digital cameras of course, their effect has been both devastating and beautiful to photography. We take more pictures in one night now then we used to take in an entire month.

Fast forward 20 years and we are now a culture of snippets and snacks in everything we consume, from news, to images, to dialogue, and we’re more prolific because of it. Consider the sheer volume of content that we’ve produced over the past 10 years thanks to the internet and shared voice. Everyone is a creator now (hell, even I am), and the sheer volume makes it all less special. It makes most of it throwaway.

And don’t get me wrong, I think that we still appreciate good literature, good music, and good movies. And I’m not saying that the 80’s or 90’s were anything special from an artistic or content standpoint either. We now just want and expect less from each piece of content we consume, so that we can spend time absorbing more content in general. I can’t imagine that we prefer quantity to quality, but I think that quantity has actually become a new kind of quality. And I think it’s great.

Quit being lazy, people, and mash your own damn content

This is only the beginning:

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

As data becomes more portable (thanks to standardizations like XML), there will be less reasons to actually visit sites like they're literal destinations. We say that sites are "virtual," but right now they're really not. They exist in and of themselves, and they are comprised and bound to their own frameworks. The future will be truly virtual, and sites will be boneless, comprised entirely of soft and re-arrangeable real-time data. Ubiquity is a big step, but it's only the beginning. Just wait. Your completely malleable and personalized internet is coming, and soon.

Give 'em what they expect, or else.

For a zombie to live/die a successful life/death, his basic animal instincts must trigger very explicit sets of expectations, or sets of rules that the Zombie blindly follows. For example, after breaking and crawling through the window of a house at 2am, a zombie expects there to be a human or three on the couch watching re-runs of MASH. This is an expectation necessary for zombie survival, and is born of years of experience of biting and eating people.

So on the rare occasion that a Zombie stumbles into a window, and is greeted by empty furniture and an angry guard dog who will cause him nothing but trouble, the Zombie instinct unconsciously asks itself; "Is this in line with my expectations? Did I expect to be greeted by this mean dog?"... If the answer is no, then the Zombie will leave back out the window from whence he came, and move on to the next house unsatisfied and even hungrier than before.

In this way, your Consumer is like our Zombie, except possibly less hungry, and with slightly different motivations. Consumers have expectations as well, and while less primal, are equally as unconscious as those of a Zombie. It is our job as responsible advertisers to set those expectations when directing a Zombie Consumer to an online experience.

Be it a microsite, blog, facebook, YouTube, or any other digital destination that I don't even know about yet; your ad must clearly communicate either conceptually or literally or both, exactly what the consumer should expect when he gets there. And then deliver on that expectation loud, clear, and quickly. For example, if you tell him that you're digital destination is going to help him find a widget, then don't make him find a widget himself when he gets there. Do it for him.

If you don't do this, then the consumer will leave, unsatiated and pissed off that his expectations were not met. Consumers are no different than Zombies, give them what they expect, or they'll never come see you again... or they'll bite your head off.

* For the above metaphor to work appropriately, you must first agree that getting bitten by a Zombie is a good thing.

ZOMBIE ATTACK DEATH PROBABILITY CALCULATIONS

Your clients love viral, they just don't know it yet.

Let’s just say, hypothetically, that you would like to film a guy setting his face on fire with kerosene for 20 seconds before dousing him with ice cold arctic spring water, in order to demonstrate the cool feeling you get when using the new Gillette Splash Aftershave, hypothetically.

But hypothetically, let's say that you're hitting a bit of a snag. You have to do something about that pesky client, the last person standing between you and your childhood dream of setting another man’s face on fire. Aside from including a fact-based viral projection chart or two (see below), which is a must, It will help to have prepared a few rationale arguments to what will surely be your client’s concerns about this really fun idea.

FACT-BASED VIRAL SUCCESS PROJECTION CHART EXAMPLE


First, the client will tell you that her target doesn’t watch viral videos. Your client is wrong. Everyone wants to watch a man get his face scorched off, and everyone will want to send it to at least a small group of other friends who also have the internet. There isn’t a single category I can think of where viral wouldn't work. Try me in the comments if you dare… I dare you.

So once you’ve encountered and thwarted this knee-jerk client reaction, you must quickly move to more convincing viral sales tactics. It is very important that for the next 5 minutes, you don’t let the client speak. Bludgeon her swiftly with the following irrefutable evidence that her viral video will successfully make her needle move.

1)    In YouTube, keywords and “related videos” hold the answers to most of your problems. While the user is watching our man get his face scorched off, at least two of the other recommended videos on the page should be direct ads for Gillette. I know it sounds "un-ethical," to "fix" the Recommended Results for something that's supposed to be completely objective, but we're not politicing here, we're advertising. Treat these other videos on the page as you would a banner campaign. 2% click-through to the other videos should be considered a success. But don't tell the client that, always set her expectations really really low. In order to help guarantee your success, tell her you're aiming for closer to .5%.

2)   The second key to your viral’s client approval is paid search and paid media. Anytime your video is posted on a blog or site that’s a member of the Google ad network or has relevancy-based banner placements, your video just being embedded on the page will trigger those paid placements about the new aftershave. In addition to Google Ad words, have prepared a list of sites and blogs that you plan to buy paid media on that are most likely to embed your video. If you don't think there are any sites that will embed your video, then take $10K of the production budget and bribe a few editors.

*The advice above actually working for you is entirely contingent on your viral idea being really awesome.

This will be a long-term commitment

Brief Intro?
Being an expert blog reader, but a novice (and that's being kind) blog writer, I've struggled for the past 5 minutes with exactly how a blog is started. It seems that my favorite heroes of the digital free-press have all deleted, or at least hidden their early days. I can hardly blame them, but they left me nothing to copy.

Brand Conflict. Jumping Right In.
As we try to push and prod the new digital era into a vernacular that it doesn't belong, I can't help but think that advertising has it all wrong. Brand Conflict is, or will be, about that constant struggle between unabashed branding and providing utility, what it means to innovate relevantly, and my ambiguous and constantly changing views on how everything's going to come together (Hint: It's going to be complicated, and there will be lots of bluetooth headsets, probably worn by cows)