While browsing the web yesterday, I came across this great campaign idea (which seems to be the brainchild of Sapient Nitro’s Annie Chiu). It’s simple, memorable and prompts people to partake precisely in the type of behavior which drives the Nike brand (all for less than the cost of a billboard). Exactly the kind of witty stuff I’d like to see coming out of agencies more often. Kudos!

If you’re a regular on my blog, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve just done a complete redesign. I figured there was no better way to start the new year. I hope you enjoy it! I tried to make the new space as sleek and intuitive as possible. I’ll also try to update the rest of my site [about me pages, etc.] sometime soon. I’ll keep you posted when that’s all done. I’ve been rather busy lately [which explains the lack of recent posts]. Hold tight, I’ll try to put some fresh stuff up soon. In the meantime, feel free to follow me on Twitter. I try to share/post interesting tidbits there on a regular basis.

Yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg (Founder of Facebook) and Sheryl Sandberg (COO of Facebook) gave a great interview on the Charlie Rose show. They discussed everything from the company’s history to how it goes about recruiting top engineering talent. Anyways, early into the interview, I started thinking about the impact that facebook has had on the web and one particular segment stuck with me.

While listening to Mark talk about his college years (and how at the time, he never thought he’d play such a critical role in enabling social connections on the web), Charlie Rose proposed that Facebook had become “a personalized web within a web”. Zuckerberg responded by saying:

“I think it’s shaping the broader web. If you look back for the past 5-7 years, the story of social networking has really been about getting these 800 million people connected, so that they can stay in touch with all these people who they care about, and get them signed up for facebook and all that. But, if you look forward for the next five years, I think that the story that people are going to remember 5 years from now, isn’t how this one site was built, it was how every single service that you use, is now going to be better with your friends.“ – Mark Zuckerberg

I felt like that line perfectly crystallized the situation. In the broader context of the web, Mark’s actions weren’t/aren’t solely valuable because he managed to create “this one site” that connected people. Rather, they were/are valuable because “this one site” ultimately forced the web to focus on its users. FB helped “shape the web” into a more user centric environment.  It (alongside other social services) is making the web less about the technology and more about the people.

Feel free to check out the hour long interview on the Charlie Rose website. Interesting stuff, as always.

Here’s a snippet of a great comment Lawrence Lessig recently made during a panel discussion about open innovation at MIT’s recent ‘Networks Understanding Networks’ event. I believe it exposes some fundamental truths about the nature of innovation, and as a by-product reveals some of the areas of fragility of the innovation process. Lessig’s career has of course been largely dedicated to educating people about these ‘areas of fragility’ (thus effectively protecting them as a firsthand consequence).

“My former colleague Mark Lemley wrote this wonderful little piece about nanotechnology and mid way through the piece, he kind of remarked in passing that: if you think about all the fundamental technologies of the 20th century (computer hardware/software, biotech technologies) all of those fundamental technologies were either by accident or intentionally FREE [ Note: as in 'unconfined by IP' as opposed to 'of no monetary cost']. So, they tried to patent the computer; the patent office rejected it. Software was not considered protectable in any effective way for most of the 20th century. Watson & Crick certainly didn’t want DNA protected in any effective way through IP. So these fundamental technologies were FREE and ON TOP OF THESE FREE TECHNOLOGIES, people innovated, and they got intellectual property FOR THE INNOVATIONS ON TOP.” - Larry lessig

This is definitely something to think about as he later goes on to remark that this approach to innovation, appears to have dissipated/lost favor in the 21st century (thus possibly harming our ability to innovate in the long run, but more importantly, potentially impinging upon our future ability to reap benefits from inherently beneficial innovations.)

Good Stuff!

It’s easy to be impressed by the beauty and intriguing nature of the following image, but one truly needs to read the account of it’s creator to fully comprehend the complexity of what (s)he is currently staring at. On the surface, it looks like a gorgeous visualization of Facebook users around the globe. Nevertheless, this isn’t exactly the case. While reading Paul Butler’s account of how he went about creating this piece (while interning at FB), one quickly realizes that this is far more than just a picture or map of Facebook users. It’s a truly mesmerizing data visualization that roots itself in one thing and one thing only: our human propensity to continually expand our social circle! You know that saying “we are social animals” which first emerged in greek philosophy, but has been reiterated in multiple ways by countless people ever since? Well this is that…visualized. The image is rather captivating and ably reminds one of just how social we were, are and have become as a species. (Check out the high-res version of the image in Paul Butler’s post. Enjoy!)

Facebook Data Visualization by Paul Butler (intern on Facebook’s data infrastructure engineering team)

This week, Gareth Kay, director of brand strategy at Goodby, Silverstein and Partners, has been writing a fantastic set of posts (1 a day) about the value of small ideas in advertising. These posts are a welcome departure from the omnipresent belief that advertising needs to focus on finding big ideas, driven by big budgets. Here are a couple particularly memorable quotes from his various posts. I strongly encourage you to read through them all. It’s really fantastic stuff by one of the most talented and forward thinking strategists in the industry.

1- “Big problems don’t require big solutions. ” In fact “big behavioral change can occur through small actions”.

2- “In his book ‘Little Bets‘, Peter Sims talks about how great companies stumble upon  greatness. It comes from experimentation and learning from placing little bets rather than ponderously trying to birth perfection.”

3- Build long ideas. The long idea is a brilliant thought first articulated (I think) by Jon Williams of Grey.  It’s a better objective than the big idea. They’re created by a stream of small ideas. It creates participation and realizes that the launch of the campaign is, in reality, the beginning.”

4- ”It’s about making communication products, not communicating a product”

His series of posts can be found on his blog (http://garethkay.typepad.com) with the first one being: Think Small, dated May 13th. Enjoy; they’re well worth the read and in my mind do a pretty awesome job at challenging the notion that only big ideas can win big.

“It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.” – Isaac Asimov

Did your last marketing solution take cultural momentum into account? In simpler terms, did you ponder the fact that the ecosystem in which consumers live (and in which your ‘solution’ will be delivered) may change significantly mere months down the line?

If you think about that the next time you are trying to ‘connect’ with consumers, you’ll probably end up doing things differently!

Over the past few years, there’s been a lot of talk about ‘viral videos’. In fact, when discussing marketing strategies, it’s not uncommon to hear people say things like: “I’m going to make a few viral videos” or “the best solution in this case is obviously to go viral”. They talk about these videos as if they were a genre that was readily defined by a certain set of characteristics in content, budget, production value or form.

Such airy statements prove that most people really haven’t understood the essence of the viral video. So, let’s make this clear once and for all: your video isn’t viral just because it’s shaky, poorly lit and cheaply produced. In fact, viral videos aren’t something you can make! You can only beg for them to happen. The term defines not the content, but rather how its spreads. Here’s the point: your video will only be viral if it connects with people in truly relevant and meaningful ways. Just start focusing on producing content that people can truly relate to and one day, your stuff will maybe go viral. Until then, take Faris Yakob’s (chief innovation officer at MDC partners) advice and stop using the term. Few people have expressed this idea more clearly than he has. So here you are. In Faris’s own words:

“Let’s all agree to stop using the word viral. It’s an unhelpful metaphor that is confusing us. Viral is a thing that happens, not a thing that is. There is no such thing as “a viral.” The metaphor suggests something is self-propagating, when what we actually mean is that lots of people are choosing to spread it around, for their own reasons. Focusing on what those reasons are is going to be a lot more helpful.” - Faris Yakob (@Faris)

A few days ago, TED (famed for it’s ‘ideas worth spreading’) announced the winners of its “Ads worth spreading” challenge. After reviewing more than 1000 submissions, they narrowed the selection down to 10 winners + 14 finalists and announced them  at TED2011. While some may be skeptical of their choices, one clearly sees that it was largely about the salience of the message rather than the brilliance of the visuals; although some are rather stunning. Since TED features ads after its famed TEDtalks (rather than before them) it seems evident that this selection was about finding advertising that was worth staying on to watch.

Some of my favorites (featured below) include: Dulux’s let’s colour project which I blogged about a while back (produced by Euro RSCG) as well as Chrysler’s Born of Fire (by Wieden+ Kennedy). I encourage you to check to other ones out as well. Enjoy!

By now, most of us have heard of the new Ipad 2, which was released earlier today. It has been cooking up a storm in the blogosphere for some time now and both bloggers and analysts have been keeping busy by trying to predict its new features or market impact! While there is nothing wrong with this per se, many analysts tend to micro analyze the situation and eventually loose track of the trends in the industry as a whole. Thus, while everybody continues talking about the Ipad 2, I’d like to take the opportunity to take a step back, and discuss the Amazon Kindle.

About two years ago, John Walkenbach a Microsoft excel guru was one of the first people to notice that the Kindle’s price had been dropping at a consistent rate since its release. As Kevin Kelly recently put it in a blog post of his own: its price has been lowering “almost on a schedule”. Walkenbach went on to remark that should this trend continue, the Kindle would essentially be free around July 2011. Since then, several have concurred with his hypothesis. With the summer of 2011 not too far away, this raises some significant questions for the Ipad or any other product competing for some e-reader market share. As Mike Auraz, strategy director at Undercurrent put it on Twitter: “The Kindle doesn’t sound so bad compared to the iPad…if it’s free”

Kindle Price Forecast according to John Walkenbach

While many analysts have hopped onto the Ipad bandwagon and called it a winner, I urge them not to preemptively jump to any conclusions. A fulfillment of John Walkenbach’s hypothesis would readily dismiss the numerous analysts that believed that the Ipad would be a ‘Kindle Killer’. In fact, it would most probably have some dramatic effects on the e-book market, increasing e-book consumption (and Amazon revenue) exponentially and assuring Amazon a significant lead as an e-reading platform-note my use of the term e-reading platform rather than tablet. One can also suppose that this would compel many publishers to back Amazon energetically. While it is certain that the Ipad will continue doing well (and it deserves to as it is a pioneering product) I don’t think the Kindle will be disappearing anytime soon!

In fact, should things unfold according to Walkenbach’s predictions, I believe this would drive a systemic shift in the tablet/e-reader market. We would once and for all stop lumping e-readers and tablets into the same product category. There would be an e-reader market dominated by Amazon (and fueled by publishers) and a tablet market dominated by Apple (fueled by apps & programmers). Tablets would be perceived more as computers (that can also read e-books) and e-readers would be perceived for what they truly are: book-reading devices. I personally think this shift is long overdue, because as Steve Jobs proved (once again) today: with applications such as Imovie or Garage Band, the Ipad is much more than an e-reader!

While I remain doubtful that the kindle will ever become completely free (as in 0.00$ and absolutely no costs attached), it might very well attain some form of what Chris Anderson described as “20th century free” in his book Free: the Future of a Radical Price. In other words: some form of agreement that the retailer will provide the product freely if the consumer agrees to certain terms. One of Anderson’s examples of this phenomenon was 20th century disposable razors: the consumer would receive the disposable razor freely and then have to purchase his own blades. A more contemporary example to think of would be cell phone plans (as Kevin Kelly discusses in his post), where one has to sign up for a significant period to get a free phone. Thus, as Anderson points out, it’s really about “giving away one thing to create demand for an another”. In Amazon’s case, distributing the Kindle freely would enable it to generate enormous growth and scale in its e-book sales (thus compensating for the fact that it distributed the technology freely in the first place).

Kevin Kelly suggest that they might propose to give the Kindle freely if if the consumer agrees to purchase X number of e-books. Michael Arrington from Techcrunch thought it could be a plausible gift for their prime customers only. When discussing the subject with a friend, he suggested that they might choose to provide it freely to people that sign up to specific book clubs or packages. While all of this might never happen, one thing remains sure: a continued downward adjustment in the products price would definitely help it gain valuable e-book market share. What do you think? Does the strategy make sense? Is it realistic, utopian or delusional? As always, your thoughts, comments and feedback are welcome!