I think that this may just edge out my tried and true Where the Hell is Matt video for this week’s MBA presentation (new slides currently underway) on social/digital media. But the big question that we all must ask ourselves – is why can’t marketers capture the joy and the personal storytelling that makes this so compelling?
I think the recipe has something to do with the use of P-L-A-Y as a framework for storytelling, a hint of social judgement and a dash of Auchterlonie Effect for good measure.
Is it possible to do this sort of thing as a marketing exercise at all? I think so. Greg Verdino even gives us five tips to have our own dancing man moment. But you do need the right angle. You need the right audience. And you need the courage of a lion to sell it in. And perhaps by then, the moment has passed.
I’m thinking I might try something along these lines myself. Let’s see if it can fly.
In marketing when we talk about “engagement” with an audience, what we really mean is that we want to create an emotional attachment with each and every person who comes into contact with our brand. This is challenging, because each and every person is different.
There are, however, a number of things that we can do to reframe the experience of our brands. Fundamental to this is understanding the “like me” aspect of human behaviour. It works in two ways:
Public image – we mark our belonging in the world by performing (living our lives in public) our allegiances over and over again. This is a continual external manifestation of who we want to “be” and is shown in the clothes we wear, the car we drive, the places we go and so on. It is the mark of the tribe.
Self image – our internal identification where we appropriate behaviours, brands, celebrities, music and a million other cues from the external world. These are then processed and internalised before being incorporated into our public image.
Of course, there are massive overlaps and interplays between these two aspects (and I am describing a simplified model of identity), however, it is also a useful way of understanding what Mike Arauz calls desire paths:
… we often mistake chaos for randomness. It isn’t. Underlying random events is Desire as an organising principle. What this means is that we seek out, attract and are attracted to things that gratify our desires. And in the process we unconsciously order our world and make decisions and choices that obey the laws of desire – not the laws of logic. It’s why we buy things like Alfa Romeo cars and Ducati motorbikes – not because we are smart, but because we feel compelled to.
Perhaps it is the emotional interplay between the self and public image that is really what we mean by the term “personal brand”.
But what happens when these two elements are out of alignment? What happens when our self image is at odds with our public image? What happens when what we say is betrayed by what we do?
Natalie Tran, the creator of CommunityChannel – Australia’s most subscribed YouTube channel – has put together this sketch parodying the judges of the reality TV show Britain’s Got Talent. This short piece explains exactly this phenomenon – from the celebrity point of view.
But the fascinating story – and one which Britain’s Got Talent is exploiting so well at present – is the way in which contestants are, through the show, bringing their public and self images into alignment before our very eyes. It happened with Susan Boyle. And it has happened again with 10 year old Hollie Steele.
It is classic storytelling. We have a beginning, middle and end. We have a challenge or opportunity, a hero and certainly a villain. There is a climax, a transformation and, of course, catharsis. More importantly, for the Britain’s Got Talent brand, it generates tremendous emotional connection with an audience. There is plenty that non-entertainment brands can learn from this sophisticated approach to storytelling – but the most compelling aspect is that it starts with ONE person – and without that one person, the rest fails.
The most pervasive aspect of living in an online, socially connected world is not identity –- but the traces of our identity that we leave with every click of the mouse. For every time we visit a website, download a PDF, leave a comment, buy a song or write a blog post, we leave something of ourselves behind.
In the 1960s, Jacques Derrida described a trace as the “mark of the absence of a presence” – which is precisely what happens to our digital “selves”. We are socially connected, operate in a sense-and-respond mode, exercise social judgement and all the while, leave our presence in places where “we” no longer exist. For all intents and purposes, the social web is Deconstruction made manifest.
I touched on this idea in The Evanescence of Social Media, but it also permeates much of my thinking here around social media, branding and identity. For whether we realise it or not, we increasingly live our lives in public –- over-exposed, unwittingly open, unknowingly tagged, tracked and accounted for -– our fragmented digital identities playing out a larger, uncontrolled version of our selves in a digital Pythagorean twist. You see, in the same way that social media demonstrates that businesses no longer have control over their BRANDS – it also shows that WE no longer have control over our own representations.
One of the uncomfortable truths that social media is hoisting upon us is that the clear separation between our personal and professional lives that most of our parents enjoyed during their careers is now nothing more than an illusion
The problem is not so much that WE inhabit these online networks, but that our traces can be interpreted out of context -– taking on newer realities, being reconstituted and recombined in ways that we did not anticipate. But this also has benefits, even if the risks may be random and powerful. For one thing, it allows for ambient intimacy (a term coined by Leisa Reichelt) – where the reader of a blog post, a Twitter message, Facebook update (or viewer of a Flickr photo or YouTube video) etc interprets this communication as a real-time, in the moment emotional connection. This fosters a sense of knowing and understanding in the reader -– creating the bonds of relationship:
Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible. Flickr lets me see what friends are eating for lunch, how they’ve redecorated their bedroom, their latest haircut. Twitter tells me when they’re hungry, what technology is currently frustrating them, who they’re having drinks with tonight.
And while this can be seen as “too much information”, for others it can provide a real window into the lives of those that we care about. The big difference of course, is that this ambient relationship is completely opt-in –- it is information that is pulled, not pushed. If we choose to, we can “unsubscribe” from our friends’ updates with the click of a mouse.
So, does this mean that online friends aren’t really friends? This has been (at least) partly blurred by Facebook’s appropriation of the term Friend as a form of membership status – but in an effort to bring some consistency of thinking around this, Mike Arauz has developed the spectrum of online friendship. This spectrum feels quite linear but it does capture the essence of the progressive nature of online interactions and relationships.
However, the traces of our identities left behind by various cultural productions (whether writing, image or video based) add a level of complexity. What this means is that you may find someone moving from passive interest to active interest by reading and interacting with content that you produced two or three years ago. “You” may no longer BE the same person that you were in 2006 -– and yet, the immediacy of your cultural artefacts continue to tell the story of “your self” as though it was hermetically sealed and protected from the ravages of time.
The consequence of this could well be the impetus to constantly pro-create ourselves in the instant by updating our status, sharing our thoughts and ideas and advocating for our communities. So paradoxically, tools such as Twitter which were developed as a way of handling the speed of life, contribute to the sense of acceleration. It may well be that we are barrelling head-long into a future where the very nature (and rules) of friendship requires revision. We may well end up in a world that looks
It may well be that this life of delays, rewrites and echoes is closer to the dystopia shown in Josh Harris’ movie, We Live in Public. As Faris Yakob points out, while disconcerting, this vision of the future has become reality – at least for some parts of ourselves.
UPDATE: In an almost textbook illustration, John Johnston points out this post by Nicholas Carr from March 2007. I would have commented on it, but his blog no longer takes comments.
I remember seeing this great piece of advertising a couple of years ago. I may even have written about it here on my blog (but just cannot find it). If you have not seen it yet, it was created for the Argentine political campaign of Lopez Murphy in 2006.
This idea has been taken and adapted for a competition. Now, rather than discussing politics and vision, The Lost Generation prompts us to rethink what it means to be part of a generation entering adulthood in the first years of the 21st Century. Some excellent copywriting and storytelling (via Garr Reynolds and Carl Moggeridge).
Palbasha Siddique is the girl with the beautiful voice from the soundtrack to the hugely successful Where the Hell is Matt 2008 – the video of Matt Harding dancing around the world (which I wrote about here).
The amazing thing about this music is that whenever I hear it I am filled with deep emotion – sometimes making me feel joyous, sometimes tearful. And while I do not understand the lyrics, it seems that there is a great deal of communication happening at a deeper level – sub-language. Part of this is to do with Palbasha’s spine-tingling performance; part is the way the music by Garry Schyman surges like a tide; but I always thought there must be something more. The lyrics for the song Praan are taken from the poem Stream of Life by Rabindranath Tagore (Asia’s first Nobel Laureate) – and as it turns out, the poem is about personal submission to the power of peace:
The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.
It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.
It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow.
I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.
For her 18th birthday, Palbasha has decided to create a non-profit foundation – MinneBangla Foundation which is dedicated to raising funds for Bengali orphans. It sounds like it is very early stages, but you can contact Palbasha via email to join the foundation. In this video she speaks about her plans for the foundation and then sings Praan – and even though the sound is a little patchy, it still manages to send shivers up my spine.
Kris Hoet shares this video from Microsoft's Office Labs group showing what the business world might be like in 2019. There are plenty of ideas jammed into two minutes.
While you are watching it, I would suggest asking yourself "what does this mean for my customers". Think about what these types of changes mean for the way that we interact with one another. You might be suprised at what springs to mind!
Many businesses ask whether there is value to building or participating in communities. But this is, in my view, fundamentally the wrong question. After all, the communities are already in existence – people of like minds, with common interests, fascinations or even passions gravitate towards each other. They find a sense of purpose. And they talk about you, your business and your brands whether you want them to or not.
Now, I don’t want to flippantly claim that return on investment is unnecessary – but I do want you to consider HOW you view your business ecosystem. And rather than calculating the return on investment that you want to make, try to determine the COST of irrelevance.
Online communities, if well considered, managed and supported can transform many business processes. And because they are fundamentally human, they unleash creativity and innovation in unpredictable ways. But, really, we know this already – we have been tapping into our personal networks for years (for sales, leads, new jobs etc) – the real opportunities come with the scale that comes from digitising these networks.
But don’t take my word for it. Listen to the participants of a vibrant community. This short video on SAP’s Business Process Expert community demonstrates the diversity, value and robust nature of communities. Wouldn’t you just love to have people speaking about your brand in the same way?
Normally, I would say, it's the advertising (ok that was a cheap shot) … but this spot from Hulu may just change my mind. (Oh, and of course there are ways of viewing Hulu in Australia.) Courtesy of Karl Long.
From a single creative impulse, a legion of additions, modifications and transmutations can spread in minutes, hours, days and weeks … What this means is that our ideas are constantly in a process of reinvention.
So when it comes to creating great marketing content that will be talked about, shared and spread across the networks of our lives, the challenge is to isolate the promiscuous idea – and then to set it free. This is where insight and clever planning can help. But it must also be build into the EXECUTION of your projects.
That’s why I love this interactive YouTube game. It may not be fancy … but imagine the possibilities for marketing your products or services. Imagine how, with some tweaking, that this concept could tell the story of your brand. As Wisey explains, it is both addictive and the potential is huge. I think my friend Todd Andrlik with his penchant for video will really get a kick out of it.
Paul McEnany has a nice writeup of this fun flash-mob style piece of advertising. I would have loved to be there. In fact … I would love to see something similar here in Australia.
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