We Know – You Don’t!*

I want full disclosure from my favorite brand product lines as to all that they make–to grant me entry into their digital storehouse so that I know, without a doubt, that I have access to their full inventory.

Am I unique? I used to think so. That somehow I had a weird quirk that made me compulsive, like a miner down by the river stream, sifting through all the minute debris until that nugget of consumer gold appeared. Then I would know, I mean really know for sure that I was getting the most design, the most style, the most function and at the best price.

But now, I’m beginning to recognize that I’m just like any consumer out there. I’m over company catalogs, web storefronts and mailers that don’t give me full disclosure on every possible color way, combo and style. I throw my hands up in defeat and disgust every time I can’t get past what “they” only want me to know.

Take me to you digital warehouse–the really big catalog. I may not spend millions there–perhaps over time, but trust me I’m your biggest fan. Treat me like it without the “pay to prove” mentality and I swear you’ll have one more soldier for any word of mouth campaign you have, you know - the authentic PR that you’ve been craving for.

I’m stoked! The Nintendo Wii product launch is a brand developer/marketers wet dream of a case study. They made a money engine that is no gimmick and is here to serve the public at large.

Where do we start!

• Being first in a saturated market category.
• Tapping into current social concerns: obesity, health and family.
• Addressing consumer apprehension of cost and availability.

Being first. For the console wars, Nintendo saw that being best was not a being a “first” category that they could win. Let Sony and Microsoft figure that one out – and perhaps at their expense (Sony loses money on each console). Nintendo’s pledge was to re-invite the larger public back to video gaming at any age. Sort of like –were all in this life thing together, so let’s play.

This pledge took the form of their new controller. The Wii Remote became a “first” in a category that Nintendo had the ingenuity to invent. That’s smart strategy. Strategy that can roll a thousand PR and news stories on –and you can see it reinforced in their advertising and marketing media.

As form follows function – it may be safe to assume that in the Nintendo boardroom they made a pledge to make gaming fun again for all people – especially for families and groups. This is where the Wii Remote design and game engine really took shape.

Current American social concerns. We can’t really know what went on at Nintendo HQ. Perhaps its just serendipity that has the new Wii Remote & Nunchuk controllers getting consumers off the couch in a fat obsessed America (NYC Bans Trans Fats : Super Size Me : Fast Food Nation : Kirstie Alley).

Every ad and early news release has centered on the product giving us an experience of coming together with loved ones and family to smile, shake and move. Any concerned parent who sees their beloved youth alone and sitting there staring at a screen or feeling a disconnect with the family is going to be motivated to buy a Wii in the hopes that their child’s metabolism will kick in and that they’ll open up and go play well with others.

When we see the ads, the clips posted on YouTube, the Wii Experience website itself, we’re spying on ourselves; like Jane Goodall, monkey see–monkey do. We can’t help but say; “I want to laugh with my friends like that!” The social benefits of the product are highlighted. Not art directed. Not focused on the physical design of the box. Not hyping the spec sheet. Not something artistically new in creative presentation. Every impression serves to remove the barrier to entry and give us vicarious living through fun media presentation.

With the TV ads themselves, someone did get just a hair too creative. Thank goodness they still include the family playing together, and that’s their main focus. The other portion of each ad seems to be like a plug for Japanese social relations and some sort of car ad. Yes we understand that Japanese are polite and will bow when they offer you a video game system at your door. Are those two actors/spokespersons showing up in real life and doing that? –That would be better. Get them doing that on video and YouTube it! Nintendo may come from Japan – but gamers live in a global landscape.

Ok wait –I have to go into the most powerful position Nintendo created for itself –the power of the AND! Consumers are reporting to news media that not only will they buy a Sony Playstation 3 OR an Xbox 360, but that they will buy one of those high end consoles AND a Nintendo Wii because of its low price point and unique playing experience. They have captured everyone.

Who’s Bad? Nintendo’s Bad! Check the rollout numbers. Wii has sold over 600,000 units (and counting) with a promise to ship 4 million units by the end of the year, while Sony has sold anywhere from 175K to 400K with a promise to ship one million units by the end of the year.

Was it strategy at work here? Was it just good timing? There are many, many, factors in an international product launch –no duh! But we can look back and say “Wow, good job, there’s something to take note of here.” –Tools and strategies that any campaign has the opportunity to utilize, especially if your product or service is a “first” or “leader” in its category. A good product with a good mission made for great PR and communications with the advertising serving to reinforce what newsgroups and peer networks were already reporting –Fun!

I want one!

(Story image from Nintendo Wii site.)

This came out back in ’04 (PBS Frontline: The Persuaders), you remember then – right? Very worthy of watching if you have not done so and really worthy of re-watching to remember this: Advertising campaigns and brand strategy based around how your ad-agency sees the world (pursuit of industry recognition awards, creativity and ephemeral imagery) and not how your consumer relates and operates in the world (consumer benefits) will fail and blow your 12 million dollar advertising budget mmmmmm every time.

You can watch the entire 90-minute episode online here. Enjoy. BTW–Emotional Branding is so 2004!

The recent launch of the Sony Playstation 3 has left some disturbing feelings with me. Especially the reports of violence and consumers exposing their health to freezing temperatures for a product that has no games that fully utilize its new engine gaming core. It shouldn’t have happened the way it did.

I’ve been asking colleagues what they think of the situation and the typical response is that –“it was all planned to build demand!” –kind of the typical “corporations rule our life” mentality. Well, in fact, corporations are made up by people not evil overlords, just sometimes insensitive idiots aka morons and nerds, who when they F*up the effect is large.

For some reason Sony had to push the Playstation 3 into our lives right now. Christmas season you say – nah! Europe’s not getting theirs till spring ’07. Think about it for a second. The demand and cult of the gaming world is so huge, dream up any inappropriate date for its launch and it still would have sold like hot cakes. Go ahead; think of THE bad date in America –you know I’m right!

So for all you strategic planners out there, if the launch date couldn’t be changed, and they still knew that only 175,000 units could be shipped for that day, what might have been an appropriate “brand experience” solution to help with this effect? Think preparation for hurricane Katrina.

Sony has enough speed and power to have given away for FREE to all who were waiting in line:

• Extra warm Playstation 3 branded polar fleece blankets.
• Playstation 3 branded knit caps
• Voucher for two free games, due to the fact many of these people in line were losing hours at work earning wages to pay rent for where this Playstation was going to reside.

What this would have done is generate positive PR and news coverage as Sony the “humanitarian provider” for those who are supporting the brand with their lives in the freezing cold amongst roving gangs of thugs waiting to mug, stab, tazer and shoot them. Such an effort may have counterbalanced all the negative experiences and news coverage. Talk about video game art imitating life. Sounds like a new game title: Sony Product Launch –Will you survive!

Question: What level of impact did the stories about violent Playstation 3 launches have on the average non-gamers mind in swaying their Christmas purchasing choice? I think Nintendo Wii may be the default winner coupled with its lower price point and to some extent the same goes for the Xbox 360.

Hmmmmm, let me think now. It’s 2006, right? All of this could have been done online. People physically going to stores hoping for a product that doesn’t exist beyond 150 units per outlet –why couldn’t everyone just pre-order online and get a number? Don’t tell me it was for the excitement and the experience. I personally don’t like getting stabbed. People lining up for stuff is so very last century!

Final note: Sure the craziness of the shortage created news coverage and free publicity. But couldn’t have the topic of the news been positive rather than negative? If Sony had a “first” with a unique product, couldn’t they have created another “first” in how the product was launched and delivered as well as a “first” in customer care?

If “they” (intended youth market of your brands initiative) don’t know what you’re talking about, how will your well crafted message possibly get understood?

Well, now you can sleep at night! Say it all, and in style, with Urban Dictionary - the online verbal assault that grows by the minute, cataloging in the wiki style every aphorism the urban terrain can sling out.

Links:
Urban Dictionary: http://www.urbandictionary.com
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Dictionary
Amazon: Urban Dictionary: Fularious Street Slang Defined
Mac Dashboard Widget: http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/reference/urbandictionary.html

There has been a brilliance in the visual arts for some time now. It occurs for me when two previously separate but conjunct ideas are married by their manifest forms. But I see a possible danger for societies exploration, growth and range of expression when the content sources or results are too nostalgic and shallow in their pop culture in references. Brief limited commercial ideas merging with brief limited commercial ideas leads to an instant “Wow!” but then what?

This “emergence of brilliance” is when something you’ve seen in one context, say a utilitarian object, a movie, or a piece of clothing merges with another object from another separate and well known context. They have a connection that was not seen before but aided by the artist in their coming together. So the skill we are after in this particular expressionistic from becomes the skill of mixing disparate contexts and forging a treaty in the middle.

It is possible to see that the end result becomes like a child born of two parents. Then, after a while, this child is free to marry with another context, because over time it has become a context unto itself. The child is free to become something new or its own when it can shed, or be perceived without its personal or cultural history attached.

So with the Storm trooper/Kiss Helmet image done by Bill McMullen (visit his website: www.billmcmullen.com) – if you didn’t know either of the two sources or “parents” from which they came, you could begin to ask or envision “What are these characters capable of?” “Where are they going? “ “What do they do?” etc. They can be even so free as to invent their own mythology and personal history bearing no relation and totally devoid of their sources (Kiss, Star Wars) to their somewhat actual inception.

If we scan through pre-industrial art, what is its brilliance? Say in ancient Greece, was there brilliance when they placed their mythology in pictorial form upon the surface of their jugs and cups? Was there wit occurring at Stonehenge or in the armor plating of Roman foot soldiers?

A question for designers: “What really matters to you – what needs propagation?” Will art of this nature cease to be witty? Is “witty” only relevant to the industrialized, time based world where nostalgia can be married to the future? It can be said that, “What really matters” is relevant to the particular group or target audience being addressed.

Like they said in the Belief video (see links) – “Just because you saw it for the first time, doesn’t mean it didn’t exist before.” If you do see “it” for a first time, then what relevance does “it” have? Is it innovative? New? Does “it” require the history of its sources to be seen as cutting edge?

Grabbing someone’s attention is only the first step in genuine communication (not that all your communication has to be genuine – but I measure my life by being clear with others). A danger has occurred on the mass level where that “flashy pop expressions” are all we have come to expect or know! A reference to a reference to a reference and the true source never known let alone one having a direct and intimate experience with that said source.

Let’s marry contexts but not just with pop references. The intention being, making relevant and useable ancient, universal and world culture knowledge and wisdom here in our biological domain and its veins of commerce and communication.

Links:
Bill McMullin

Belief Video: Chain Reaction

As entrepreneurs and campaign designers it would be to our fault and supreme disadvantage to assume that the assigned market of whichever description or sector is saturated and cannot bear to accommodate innovation or exploration of any kind. To enter into a venture with a defeated tone or meek apology for existing will bare the most meager of fruits unequal to the material and human expenditure invested.

Grab your battle-axe and chop wood. Plug you rears if you have to. Not for one millisecond do you let in doubt nor defeat. They have no place in victory nor originality. We share this world. Have your say. Decree it! Make your conscious mark – “I was here and I saw it this way!”

Perhaps your project or product direction is not firm and you have not committed yourself to action. No achievement or outcome can be fully known or explored by mind alone. Only upon commitment to action will the full experience reveal itself. Move! We are doing this! Observation is not action. Remember this.

Instead of needing vast amounts of time that exceed the point of now and into an undetermined future to accomplish a project or solution – why not somehow make use of the shared lateral experience of all human beings on the planet right now… What?!!

If every human of our current estimated 6.5 billion world population were somehow networked to dedicate and contribute one minute to a problem or project you would end up with approximately 12,367 years of cumulative insight and solutions. Here’s the math: 6.5 billion humans dedicating each one minute is 6.5 billion minutes divided by 60 (to get hours) divided by 24 (to get days) divided by 365 (to get years) equals 12,366.8 years.

If we gauge how much technological progress has occurred in the past 100 years just think how much we could make in 12,367 years and to know that that 12,367 years of human experience is only one minute away!

See also:
Population World Clock
Distributed Computing
Grid Computing
WIE Collective intelligence

Need the inside scoop on why certain makreting campaigns will tip and catch fire. Just in case you haven’t heard or read any of Malcolm Gladwell’s work - start here. No matter what you do in the world, we are biolgy - biology made with specific parameters and functional limitations. How we percieve dictates what we recieve.

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

It would take too long to blog about the amazing evolutionary approach this book takes. A necessary companion in developing cities, places to live and ways of making a living together - one where all participants play vital roles and are celebrated.

Beyond Civilization : Humanity’s Next Great Adventure