The Hive » Branded Experience

My Sky Status – new travel tool from Lufthansa

Nick Clarke — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 23:38:32 +0000

My Sky Status

Profero New York has just launched a new travel tool for Lufthansa: MySkyStatus™. Free and easy to set up, MySkyStatus sends precise departure, altitude, location and arrival updates automatically to the traveler’s

Facebook and Twitter pages while they’re in the air. MySkyStatus is able to track all flights so travelers of all airlines can keep their global networks updated as they travel the globe. So, not just take off and landing but precisely where you’re flying over and the altitude which you are flying at. Sit back and relax during your long, or short flights knowing that your friends, family, and coworkers are kept in the know. Gone are the times of boring out of office emails!

We hope you enjoy MySkyStatus, and happy travels to you.

Branded iPhone Apps

Luke Farrell — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:58:54 +0000

Art made on an iPhone

The ultimate potential of the revolutionary iPhone was not realised when admirers first lauded its aesthetic appeal. Nor was it appreciated when they praised the power of the hardware that was housed within this sleek exterior. Only now, when looking at the ever-expanding choice of iPhone apps available, enabling the smart phone to become a device that rotates around the user, taking on the function of what the user desires, as a truly customisable phone that can become anything you want it to be, can we appreciate its true capability.

iPhone

The most successful apps are those that use the phones inbuilt software and hardware features effectively i.e. Accelerometer, GPS, Compass, Camera, Touch-screen etc. However, the most successful branded applications are those that seek out the part of the brand that provides an engaging mobile user experience. Carling’s iPint entertained pub-goers with a simple yet fun visualisation that could be pulled out at your local for some banter, whilst Oakley uses the GPS function to create an app that surfers could use as a utility for checking wave height and location, adding to the brand’s product truths of functionality and reliability relevant to the sport.

With the total number of “Active Apps” shooting past the 85,000 mark(and counting) there are a fair share of brands that have dipped into the world of Apps, some offering engaging mini-brand experiences, others offering not so engaging branded experiences. In order to take a snapshot of the state of the branded iPhone app segment, a modestly-sized document with some examples of the latest brands trying their luck at mobile is available here, including our ten pence on just what we think of their efforts.

Branded iPhone Apps

View more documents from Profero.

For a more detailed list, including more on this and other information, head over to Johnny Makkar’s blog at Attention Digital and take a look at his extensive spreadsheet. If you know of any applications he may be missing then help the gentlemen out with some good old-fashioned crowd sourcing.

Uniqlo calender

Daniele Fiandaca — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 18:51:02 +0000

An interesting follow up to Uniqlock (thanks Peter for the heads up). A very simple calendar / screen saver with blog parts link, although with random views of the world going on in the background and an easy to listen soundtrack you can spend hours just watching it. Another example that keeping things simple, but executing brilliantly, will produce some of the best work. Does not quite it the heights of Uniqlock though.

Most Linked…and the demise of Q Scores?

admin — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 13:03:24 +0000

Profero’s co-Founder and CEO North America, Wayne Arnold, this week had a thought-provoking article published in Ad Age. He writes on the declining relevance of Q Scores and generic awareness in the modern communications environment and the real value of being the Most Linked brand.

The article is replicated here:

Move Over, Q Scores
What Matters Today Is Whether Yours Is a Most-Linked Brand
by Wayne Arnold
Published in AdAge: June 01, 2009

Wayne Arnold
As Simon Clift of Unilever made clear at the Ad Age Digital Conference recently, brands no longer have total control of the communications surrounding their products or even the positioning of them. That power is now in the hands of the digital consumer. Ford agrees. It’s just asked 100 bloggers to launch the Fiesta in the U.S.

Every week I read about a campaign headed in that direction. Skittles and Land Rover had their respective Twitter experiments, and while we are yet to find out if candy flew off the shelves and more 4×4s hit the road, I applaud their willingness and bravery in stress testing what I, too, think are the new rules.

And yet I regularly talk to marketers and agency folks who still think they can rely on the brute force of traditional mass media, humorous creative or cute animals to promote awareness and favorability and consider their job done. Yes, awareness still offers recall, recognition and familiarity. But now more than ever, it does not automatically mean increased brand value, purchase intent or loyalty.

I’m a believer that broad-scale awareness and favorability in the old sense — represented in marketing short-hand by Q Scores — really don’t matter anymore. An evolution in thinking is required. What is important now is the concept of being the most-linked brand — building brands through multiple, relevant, consumer engagements — often on a smaller scale. The brands that make themselves the most connected today will build more solid foundations and stand taller tomorrow.

Q Scores (the Q stands for quotient) were developed in the early 1960s to calculate awareness of and favorability toward TV anchors such as Ed Sullivan and Johnny Carson. Don Draper and his “Mad Men” colleagues would have bought TV spots against the highest-rated shows. Over time, the panel survey was extended to include sports personalities, products and brands. Many similar measures were devised, and for a long time that’s largely how big ad campaigns have been measured for “success.”

But when thousands of daily media messages have a 99.9% attrition rate, and “we the media” means Twitter revolts lead to immediate changes in marketing strategies, brands must embrace the new realities and truer indicators of consumer engagement. As Ford recognizes, the power has shifted to thousands of small conversations that can to grow to influence millions. Buying the biggest megaphone and shouting in the hope your messages will ring in consumers’ ears is nowhere near as effective as it used to be. Shouting rarely creates conversations.

What can create them is a greater focus on brilliant brand storytelling and content that gives rise to as many relevant and deep conversations as possible, both on and offline — although these happen increasingly in digital media. This mind-set has planning at its core. (Doesn’t everything, you ask? Well, in the digital space, at least, I’m afraid to say unfortunately, it does not.) It involves interrogating product truths and brand values (thankfully, some old concepts don’t change) and data mining and buzz aggregation across the realm of social media to unearth the consumer insights and cultural connections that will inform your strategies.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Wayne Arnold is co-founder and U.S. CEO of Profero, an independent global digital marketing agency and pioneer in the digital space. He has supervised local and global campaigns for clients including Apple, AstraZeneca, CNN, Johnson & Johnson, Puma and Western Union. He also served as chair of the UK’s Institute of Practitioners in Advertising’s Digital Media Group.

It’s about listening more than talking; embracing a community rather than treating it as an audience; thinking about engagements and conversations instead of messages. By doing so, brands create ultimately larger, more connected and equitable footprints through word-of-mouth, two-way storytelling, participation, content sharing and more. It sounds quite simple, but only the most innovative brands and media individuals are making themselves the most linked.

If you’re a runner like me, your interactions with Nike today are more likely to be the Nike Plus website or one of its Running Clubs than a network TV ad. These are brilliant examples of deep consumer engagements, on and offline. Being a runner unfortunately means I don’t get to eat too many burgers, but Burger King’s wildly successful Xbox games, simpsonizeme.com and Whopper Sacrifice Facebook app are evidence of its understanding of the concept. (And by the way, I’m willing to bet that the marketers at Nike and Burger King are no longer too concerned with pushing their brand-awareness measures that little bit closer to 100%.) Will.i.am of the Black-Eyed Peas realized that his value as an artist lay not simply in chart-topping record sales but in distributing a huge amount of free digital content and engaging with his fans in new ways. These are some of the reasons Pepsi and CNN approached him to be one of their musical and youth brand ambassadors, but I doubt he’s at the top of the Q Score charts.

To achieve this marketers should be allocating more budget to planning and funding the best ideas — irrespective of where they come from or where they have traditionally channeled their spend. The best ideas are those that involve consumers, create relationships and empower people to get involved and create and share content. The idea of a campaign having a start and end point is now redundant. It’s a continuous, evolving conversation, so budgets need to be distributed on an annual, rather than campaign, basis. Digital media, content creators, PR and anyone who is a brilliant storyteller will benefit at the expense of mass-media broadcast, print and other forms of traditional advertising.

The old rules don’t apply any more.

The original article can be found here:

http://adage.com/cmostrategy/article?article_id=137016

Please do leave a comment if you agree or disagree.

MINI iPhone App – OPENNESS

Enzo Annunziata — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:43:04 +0000

We are delighted to announce the launch of the new MINI iPhone application, OPENNESS

The app is part of the latest digital MINI activity to promote the new MINI convertible, Stay Open, and something completely different from the run-of-the-mill motoring iPhone applications available within the iTunes Store

Drivers of convertibles are more open to new experiences so the MINI Openness mobile application encourages users to explore the unexplored and try new things. By downloading the application, users will have access to an off-beat guide to the UK’s major cities, including London, Manchester, Birmingham and Edinburgh and over 400 unusual and spontaneous experiences: from getting a Brazilian to attending a Mexican wrestling match with fetish cabaret, joining a literary salon to jumping on a coach to an unknown destination.

Here are a few quick words on what the application does:

When launching the app on your iPhone, based on the level of open-mindedness you choose, the app will provide you with the most adventurous things to do, either closer to where you are or in a specific location (the app supports two geo-options: ‘Find My Location’ and ‘Insert Location’)
The application also has a built-in Google Maps API, where you can find the venue or the exact location for each single ‘open-minded’ experience
If the experience chosen doesn’t tickle your fancy, you can choose amongst many others, simply clicking on NEXT.
Also, if you are not really sure on how adventurous you feel, a simple shake of the iPhone will provide you with a random experience.

The wider digital campaign, Stay Open, is supported by online banner activity, also centred on openness and spontaneity.

You can download OPENNESS simply clicking here!

Let us know what you think!

Profero Thumbs/Up – Radiohead Nude/Remix

Enzo Annunziata — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 14:21:46 +0000

Brand: Radiohead
Initiative: Nude Re-Mix
Markets: Global
Dates: April 2008

Background
Radiohead are an English alternative rock band from Oxfordshire whose international fame didn’t arrive until the launch of their third album in 1997, ‘OK Computer’, which has been acclaimed as a landmark record of the 1990s. After a major fall-out with one of the biggest record labels worldwide, EMI, in 2007 Radiohead independently released their seventh album, In Rainbows, originally as a digital download for which each customer could set their own price, later in stores, to critical and chart success. Radiohead have sold approximately 30 million albums as of 2008.

Challenge
After a groundbreaking marketing initiative with the ‘pay-as-much-as-you-want’ album launch, what could Radiohead do to once again connect with their fans but at the same time promote their music in a new creative way

Approach
To promote the new single NUDE far from any promotion involving their already acclaimed album, Radiohead decided to give their fans a platform to re-mix the new song and create a new ‘entertainment-movement’ around sharing and creation of original music content

The Idea

Users could download from iTunes all the stems from the single NUDE, including bass, voice, guitar, strings/fx and drums for $5.99
Once downloaded, you could mix them in any way you liked, either by adding your own beats and instrumentation, or just remixing the original parts.
Although the Apple Garageband software was not required to remix the songs, if you purchased all five ’stems’ from iTunes during the first week they were available, you’d be sent an access code to a GarageBand file ready to open in GarageBand or Logic. (Smart partnership here to demo the programs)
Once mixes were completed, they could be uploaded within the new RadioheadRemix website dedicated to the initiative – where the public could listen and vote for their favourite remix
Also, users could create a widget allowing votes from their own website, Facebook or MySpace page to be counted as ‘mix votes’ back on radioheadremix.com.

The Results

Overall the website received 6,193,776 unique visitors
2,252 was the number of mixes submitted
461,090 votes were casted
1,745,304 was the final number of track listened by the end of the campaign
The single was sold incredibly well that “Nude” was Radiohead’s first entry in the Billboard Hot 100 in twelve years.
The initiative was so well received that the English band is ‘doing it again’. With only $0.99 cents to buy all 6 of the stems, they have started a second remix contest, this time for their song “Reckoner”

The Learnings

Cut down the barriers / Initiatives like this where content creation is solely up to the consumer, barriers to entry must be particularly low. Make it as simple, appealing and rewarding as possible and your consumers will give it a go.
Don’t leave me out! / Establishing a solid relationship with your core audience is always a must and your initiatives may sometimes only include this group. However, when barriers to entry are pretty low and the campaign is talking to a broader audience you may potentially reach new acquisitions from users who may have never been interested in your service or product (in this case your music)
Stay truthful to your objectives / If we analyze the results, ‘only’ 0.04% entered remixes and 28% listened to the song. Although this may sound low 0.04% isn’t so insignificant when it’s 2,252 mixes. Because the ultimate objective was to solely bring attention to their single outside of the context of their already previously promoted album ‘In Rainbows’, the success is in the 6 million people who engaged with the song in any way, and that enough people interacted with the site in some way to influence their networks and generate a viral growth for the site.
Create timelines and ‘Virability’ / You should always structure your campaign/competition so that you give a set time for usership to build and grow – set deadlines, sharable tools and different phases to a concept are going to give enough time for people to bond with the idea and for words to spread ‘virally’

Profero Thumbs/UP – Walkers ‘Do Us A Flavour’

Enzo Annunziata — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 16:24:31 +0000

Brand: Walkers
Initiative: Do Us A Flavour
Markets: United Kingdom
Dates: July 08 – May 09

Background
Part of the PepsiCo family, Walkers is one of the UK leading brands in the Snack Food industry primarily producing potato crisps. In the past few years, because of their limited product selection and more competitors entering the market with new different flavours, they had to try and expand their product range to defend a strong market share.

Challenge
How can Walkers Crisps retain their market share when rival brands are producing competitive flavours and offering new and original options for a highly demanded FMCG product?

Approach
The brand decided to differentiate themselves from their competitors with the choice of introducing new flavours to their ‘main offering’ without producing another premium range (ie. Sensations), therefore not compromising their retail price.
However, because with product development it’s extremely important for any brand to listen to their consumers and obtain insights into their trends, who would know best which flavour to introduce into the market if not your own customers?

The Idea
In July 2008 Walkers launched their biggest, boldest and most innovative multimedia campaign to date called ‘Do us a Flavour‘. The idea was to give power back to the consumers and ‘capture the heart of the nation’ inviting the public to create the next great flavour of Walkers Crisps.

The campaign was structured on 3 stages:

Submit your flavour (July 08 – Nov 08) / Users were invited to submit ideas for a unique flavour together with a picture of what inspired them to do so. They could enter the competition either through the web, by mobile or by post. To enter via the Walkers website, consumers simply had to enter their flavour idea, contact details and upload the image of what inspired them. The process was the same to enter via mobile; consumers were provided with a number to send an MMS to (picture message) with exactly the same details. Every entry was then provided with a link (e-mail or WAP link) giving the opportunity to forward this to a friend and for others to vote on their flavour.

Choose 6 final flavours and test them (Nov 08 – Jan 09 ) / Although a voting system was implemented within the website, 5 celebrity judges were chosen to select the 6 final flavours to test into the market. The finalists were:

Choose the Winner (Jan 09 – May 09)/ At this stage it is totally in the hands of the nation to vote for their favourite new official Walkers flavour. The flavour which receives the most votes from the public via Walker’s website by 1st May will remain on sale, while the other five will be discontinued.

The Outcomes

As of January 2009 the 6 new flavours have been introduced into the market for consumers to decide which one ‘tickles their taste buds’ the most. All 6 finalists have received £10,000 with the final winner to receive £50,000 plus 1% from sales’ profit.
At the launch of the campaign, Walkers was expecting a maximum of 250,000 entries to the competition. As of October 2008, the website had received an astonishing 1.2 million flavours’ ideas
In June 2008, Walkers.co.uk received 20,000 Unique Visitors. Not surprisingly, between August and October 2008 unique visitors went up to 440,000
The campaign was so successful that every single ATL creative activity (Press, TV and Radio) was inspired by the online initiative and driving traffic to the competition online.

The Learnings

Digital at the core of the Integrated approach / Digital interactivity is and has played a key part in all three stages of the nine month campaign. To be voted, users could share their links with their peers; packaging and offline campaigns were driving traffic to the website and inviting users to vote through TXTs and IVR (Interactive Voice Response) phone service. Let’s give an end to the era where digital was simply the last thought!

It’s all about MY experience / The integrated approach to their communication was totally aimed at providing the user with a ‘Unique Walkers Experience’. From submitting the ideas to voting and buying the new product – it’s all about the interaction between the consu’ME’r and the brand

‘Win their hearts, win their minds’ / The aim of the campaign was to ‘touch the heart of a nation’ giving power back to the consumers. What it’s generally defined as ‘emotional marketing’ is often one of the best ways to impeccably reach your consumers

Involve your consumer with NPD / New Product Development becomes particularly effective when in the hands of your consumer. With Walkers this was done live with thousands and millions of customers continuously interacting with the brand.

The Brand Bubble

Nick Clarke — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 12:10:49 +0000

Brand Bubble – John Gerzema and Ed Lebar (By Patrick Collister)

Gerzema and Lebar both work for Y&R and the book is a plug for Y&R’s BrandAsset Valuator, alias BAV. In short, the book argues that consumer “top-of-mind awareness, trust, regard and admiration for not a few but thousands of brands” are dropping. And “in essence, they’re concentrating their passion, devotion and purchasing power on an increasingly smaller portfolio of special brands.” This, they write, is a big problem taking shape. “In 2006 Fortune magazine conducted a survey indicating that 72% of the Dow Jones Market Cap is now intangible. Accenture estimated that intangibles accounted for almost 70% of the value of the S&P 500 in 2007, up from 20% in 1980.”

In other words, brands are of increasing value to stock markets at a time when most are of diminishing value to consumers. The Henley Centre has studied the erosion of brands and in 2007 the Carlson Marketing Group found “in 2000, four in ten consumers showed a genuine preference for…one brand, but that dropped to one in three consumers in 2001 and crashed further in 2007 to less than one in ten consumers feeling committed to a single brand.”

One reason: there’s too much advertising.

James Surowiecki in “Decline of Brands” wrote in 2004: The average American sees 60% more ad messages per day than when the first President Bush left office.”

It’s not that consumers are exhausted by it but that “Brands have blurred into a sea of sameness.” Choice has become overwhelming. So, 160 million phone numbers in the US are on the “do not call” list; 43.6 million households have some form of PVR to edit out the ads.

Furthermore, and crucially, most advertising today is dull and uninteresting because, as the authors put it, “many companies confuse risk avoidance with risk management.” Today, people want to see brands being courageous. They want brands to stand for something other than just making the directors filthy rich.

We can’t trust brands

Meanwhile, the trust we once had in brands has been badly knocked. Naomi Klein’s “No Logo”, Neil Boorman’s “Bonfire of the Brands” and antiadvertisingagency.com all attract big and sympathetic audiences. Brands we love get gobbled up. I used to insure my car with Eagle Star. It is now Zurich. Norwich Union is becoming Aviva. Brands we thought were here forever have gone. Like the Halifax, Bank of Scotland.

Enron was named America’s most innovative company for six years on the trot. Then we found out they were fraudsters. Thomas the Tank Engine, made in China, contained lead which could (and did) harm children. We all know politicians lie and why should marketers and brands be any different?

Firestone made tyres that burst; Ford made cars that crashed; Mercedes made a car that fell over; Nestle conned West African mothers into stopping breast-feeding and buying their milk powder when it was not better for them to do so. In China, they have poisoned milk powder.

And the banks…

Is it any surprise that consumer expectations of (most) brands are so low. The trick, then, is to meet their expectations – and their hopes. To share their values and encourage them to share yours.

Become irresistible

Irresistible brands create “envy, lust and badge value. They are provocative and daring while pleasing and reassuring. They let people feel good about themselves.” They keep refreshing their meaning and they have a point of view that goes beyond profit making.

Irresistible brands rise above categories and redefine their own markets.

Thus:

Axe has 3.6 times the level of ‘energised differentiation’ to other deodorant brand

Dove has 1/6 times the pricing power

eBay has 3.2 times the emotional commitment

iPod has 2.5 times the emotional commitment

Orange has 1.6 times the preference

Management consultants argue that innovation is the key to differentiation and success but they always pitch it as being operational innovation. It’s more than that. Brands “must be constantly moving and shaped by…consumer change.” The search for movement explains “why consumers love blogs, dashboards and widgets – tools that help them track movement and spot winners. They help each other through websites like Tripadvisor.com, where 6 million consumers post reviews…while FlyerTalk posts 4.5 million reviews of the airline industry.”

A brand’s integrity is a critical factor.

So, when Apple dropped the price of their iPhone from its $599 launch, they reimbursed the early purchasers the difference. Incidentally, Apple’s share price went up (while RIM’s – Blackberry – has been going down.)

JetBlue stranded hundreds of passengers in a winter storm and then went public with an apology and refunds and promised to make sure it didn’t happen again. Tesco has a baby club, which is more like an au pair than a supermarket. And when NBA star Stephen Marbury launched Starbury sneakers at $14.98, you couldn’t help noticing that they cost 1/10th what a pair of Nike’s would set you back.

The craving for creativity

Creative invention and creative work are known to be drivers of economies. People have seen old, dead towns brought back to life by creative industries. In the UK, creative businesses are responsible for approaching 10% of the overall economy employing 2 million people. Creativity is inspirational and we admire creative people, and creative brands, because they “produce a positive vision of human existence, which brings added meaning in small or even large ways to our lives.”

People want to get involved because it makes them feel happy…and young. But being playful is becoming more important as “the road to happiness through material; wealth is starting to look like a cul-de-sac.” Creative brands offer people the “perception of a more interesting future.”

Participants

People want to be heard and to be a part of what’s happening. They blog and vlog, podcast and twitter. This is the media of the young.

“If you need proof the old world of media has been turned upside down, note a recent survey of users of Bolt Media, a youth networking site, which found that only one out of three users was able to name even one of the four US TV networks.”

26 million blogs are read by 57 million in the US.

In China, there are 42 million bloggers.

Category blogs are becoming important – and CEOs now have their own blogs while forward-thinking brands seed product samples with bloggers to create buzz.

Brands can emerge and get established via MySpace – the Arctic Monkeys.

Radiohead sell their music from their own site and have a YouTube channel.

Why is this important? Because “consumers trust each other more than they trust brands.” People will, moe often than not, believe a complete stranger. Thus, Kryptonite bike locks were claimed, and believed, to be unpickable until one guy posted a video of him picking a lock with a Bic biro. It took 8 days for the company to respond by which time it was sayonara for Kryptonite.

Participation means “At Nike.id.com our digital strategist, Mike Lundgren, was able to design his own shoes with the “Nike” logo turned into Mike.”

Participation is Doritos getting people to make their ads for them, with the best shown during the Superbowl.

Just as we now have personalised control over our television through Sky+ etc, we want personalised control over our brands.

Social networking

These sites are where people share knowledge and opinions and can alter the fortunes of people, companies and brands.

MySpace, “were it a country, it would be the eleventh largest in the world.” Nearly half its users are over 35. Then there’s Facebook, Cyworld in Korea, Habbo Hotel in Finland, and so on. They allow people to define themselves to the world. To create their own personalities and possibilities.

As Julian Saunders of the Joined Up Company has noted – your Facebook page encourages you to express yourself as a brand.

Brands that can start conversations are the winners here. But, crucially, they must be honest. Stealth marketing and dissembling online can (and will) get brands into big trouble. Remember the outcry when Ask Jeeves tried to put out a supposedly “grassroots” message about Google taking over the world? It rebounded badly.

For agencies, the new landscape is intimidating because, in terms of media planning, only a couple of years ago it would never have occurred to you that iTunes, eBay, YouTube and MySpace would all offer opportunities to engage with people. This speed of change is daunting to all but the brave.

Social media, and the conversational landscape, is changing the rules about where, when and how people engage with advertising and they are not only changing the business models for companies, but also the skill sets required to be a successful marketer. As A.G.Lafley has put it, marketers must “learn to let go.” They must learn to listen, to be fast-paced and to be continuous. They must learn to experiment. “Too much time is spent thinking about what a brand is rather than what it can be.”

For a perfect example of forward thinking, look at Barack Obama, an outsider who ended up in the White House. He used easy-to-create personal pages for social networking, blogging tools, RSS feeds, extensions to Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and Flickr as media not to mention SMS messaging, branded ringtones…

Everything is media

Your business model is media – so the Co-Op is known for its ethics

Happy employees are media – John Lewis

Corporate behaviour is media – IKEA

Your product s media – Louis Vuitton handbags

R&D is media – NikeiD

Creative brands understand this. Brands like LEGO, which for years made plastic bricks for kids. Then the world changed and kids spent less time playing with bricks and more time online. So LEGO created Bionicles, with online videos, books and comic books to enhance the experience of their real toys. Then they created Mindstorms, robots that were connected to your compute, and now there are competitions, and brand fans who constantly talk to each other about what they are doing and what the company is doing.

This new world of marketing is about inviting people to personalise and customise their experiences. “It’s no longer effective to stake a claim to a perpetual territory and defend it through repetition. Instead, the best way for a brand to own a position is to be constantly dynamic within it.” That may mean behaving differently at different times with different customers and collaborating rather than persuading.

So it’s no wonder so many marketers don’t really want to know. The new order means we all need new skills and, like the brands we work for, we need to be constantly changing and learning to adapt just to keep up. But invest that energy and the rewards are potentially huge.

A copy of this article also appears here

Profero Thumbs/UP: Fiat 500

Enzo Annunziata — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 13:30:46 +0000

Brand: FIAT
Campaign: Fiat 500 re-launch
Markets: Italy and UK focus (Europe)
Dates: July 2007 – January 2008

Background
Fiat 500 is one of the most iconic cars in the world whose last production series was during 1975. In 2007, on the steps of the new BMW MINI and the VW New Beetle, FIAT decided to re-introduce the small city-car into the market. Because the 500 belongs to the Italian cultural heritage, the car deserved and needed a bold and memorable come back – not only in the Italian automotive industry but on a global level

Challenge
How does Fiat re-introduce an iconic city-car into the market, in a really innovative way, into a highly competitive market category (MINI, NewBeetle, Smart…)

Approach
The product is mainly targeted to young-at-heart professionals and city-car drivers with a spirit of fun and adventure. Taking into consideration that this audience is very active online, the brand wanted to create something where both online and offline media techniques would play an important role together, involving the target audience right from the start.

The Idea
Months before the car launch, FIAT introduced the slogan ‘Fiat 500 wants you’ where everyone was directly invited to be part of this ‘new iconic movement’.
To try and nurture a meaningful relationship with potential consumers the whole product launch was in people’s hands.
The audience was asked to

Help with the design / 500 days before the launch (yup that’s more than a year) FIAT invited potential buyers to submit ideas to a website on what accessories they would have liked to see in the new Fiat 500
Submit ideas for the advertising launch campaign / Art Students and the general public were asked to submit ideas online for the advertising campaign with two final ideas to be chosen as the official billboards for the product launch.
Create the official Fiat500 mascot and Logo / They could download an online brief where FIAT was asking to submit designs for an official Mascot to truly represent the new Fiat500

Also,

During the UK launch party at the BA London Eye, visitors were asked to jump into a Fiat 500 and customize their own models for the chance to win the new car and other prizes – sponsored by MSN. The entries were showcased online and the head of exhibitions at the London Design Museum got to choose the final winners

During the Italian launch, the audience was using touch screen technologies to create their own models to then have a chance to see it displayed in 3D using a new high-tech holographic innovation. Customers were also able to print their customized models and buy the car straight away at the party.

Last but not least, to attract new families they launched a competition in Italy aimed at pregnant mums. To win the new car, mums had to enter the competition if they thought their babies would be born on the same day of the Fiat 500 launch

The Outcome

70,000 cars sold in Italy in the first month with Fiat500 awarded ‘Car of the Year 2008’
8,000 were the accessories’ ideas submitted by the general public. More than 100 accessories are now available to choose from and 500,000 ways to customise your Fiat 500!

3,300 advertising ideas were submitted to the website but only 2 were the winners – One chosen from a professional panel, the other voted by the 500 online community. Both ideas have been succesfully used for ATL and BTL campaigns

More than 600 Mascot and 1,000 logos were submitted. The winner was Dante.

Nearly 4,000 mums applied from all over the world for the chance to win the Fiat500 – Only one was the lucky mum to receive the Fiat500 Baby Boom edition giving birth exactly on September 15th. However 50 other mums from all over the world were selected to receive a tailored FIAT mum-gown .
In Italy the launch of the 500 was huge, so huge that this iconic Italian car grabbed the headlines of every newspaper and dominated TV motoring shows for so long that conventional advertising buying simply wasn’t needed. More was spent in online media in markets outside the core market than would have ever been considered at home.

The Learnings

Keep your audience involved from the start / By creating tangible involvement, you’ll generate real participation and as result strong PR and WOM around a campaign.
Stand Out / Be experiential with your creative ideas and don’t be scared by risky PR stunts. Using innovating technology will only get people talking about your brand!
Spot the difference! / Adjust your marketing mix to fit the market needs. Even if the offer, the demographic and the brand positioning are consistent across your markets (in this case Europe), look out for the differences in market structures and audience expectations – These can demand totally different approaches.
Have something for everyone / Sometimes your target audience may have different clusters. You may find a single proposition which is appealing to each one of them but you may retain a bigger chunk of the pie tailoring your marketing initiatives to different audiences.
Keep your communication alive / The official Fiat500 website (500 wants you) is a place where users are always invited to do more and be engaged with the brand. Every so often a new initiative is launched (locally or globally) to always keep the communication fresh with the different clusters of their audience (youngsters, artists, mums, young-professionals…).

Dear Mr. President – PEPSI

Enzo Annunziata — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:48:59 +0000

Really liking the new initiative by PEPSI

The site is called ‘Dear Mr. President’ and people are invited to upload personal videos for the 44th Elected US President Obama. The website is backed up by loads of celebrities, amongst who Eva Longoria and Lady Gaga

It’s a very simple idea which I am pretty sure did not have much thinking behind, although thumbs up to PEPSI to take advantage of the right moment to create such initiative, as a matter of fact the brand is definitely going to get loads of attention because of this

The YouTube channel ‘Refresh Everything’ is actually very well designed too. You can see all the videos uploaded by the users and a Google map to check which are the most active communities.

Also, Tumblr was the chosen platform to allow the shy ones to simply send in recommendations about the future of the United States, pretty well thought I’d say

We should wait and see what Coca-cola is going to do next…