Harnessing the Power of the Collaborative Economy

This article is a repost of an article I wrote for Tribal Worldwide's Smoke Signals
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
While technology is often thought of in terms of benefitting the individual, a recent rise of the collaborative economy landscape is changing things. Now, the greater issue is not just about the individual, but the benefit to the greater community.

One particularly interesting aspect of the collaborative economy is the emergence of mobilizing technology for shared problem solving. Cameron Sinclair’s Architecture for Humanity and Open Architecture app, both focus on proactive social innovation and ideation to improve the lives of people, globally. No longer is the goal restricted to how we can benefit ourselves but rather, what we can do to benefit the entire community.

But, it does not stop with ideation.

Products too have the ability to take the power of technology beyond the individual. For example, adidas’ Nitrocharge, “Power Pitch” harnessed game playing energy for the pitch-side lighting. Similarly, Soccket by Uncharted Play is a regulation-size soccer ball that converts kicks and headers into off-the-grid power. Two hours of play can produce enough wattage to light an LED for at least one night. By harnessing passion, people have the ability to extend their energy into the greater community.

Implication: As our ideas around consumption change, so do our ideas around the importance of goods. However, a bigger question still exists: In an economy of sharing, how do the needs of purchase and consumption change? How do businesses themselves adapt to meet this model? Only time will tell.

Learn more about this changing business paradigm in Wired.

Wearable Technology: A Behavioral Revolution

Wearable technology is fast creating a world in which technology is no longer an add-on. Instead it is literally attached to us. It is embedded in our lives, generating and mining data in a way that is useful and functional, both for us and for marketers.

It is no longer uncommon to see people wearing smart watches like Pebble or tracking their fitness with armbands such as UP and Nike+. And, Google Glasses are a regular topic of conversation whether it’s a skydiving tech demo or Jon Bon Jovi’s keyboardist wearing them live in concert.

The data we actively generate define who we are in the digital age and how to best reach us for marketers. This data includes stats on how far we run, what we eat and our sleep patterns. It also includes geotagging and the trove of information we upload to social media.

All of this data is going to play a much bigger role in our lives, both in terms of the benefit from the technology we wear and the ability of companies to meet our needs when, where and how we need them met.

Wearable technology is already evolving beyond just the “cool” to the beneficial:

• Smart Diapers by Pixie Science, out of New York, detects possible urinary tract infections, kidney dysfunction and dehydration via infants’ diapers. It transmits the information directly to a physician via a smartphone app. The diaper has a small patch on the front, containing chemical agents that have different reactions depending on which proteins are present in urine. If the levels are abnormal, the color on the patches changes. At the end of each diaper use, a parent uses his or her smartphone to take a picture of the QR code-like patch which is analyzed by the accompanying app to determine whether the baby has a UTI, if the kidneys are healthy, if the baby is hydrated, and, even detect Type 1 Diabetes; thereby providing valuable information about a baby’s health. 
• The FIDO project through Georgia Institute of Technology is developing wearable technology that aims to improve communication between working or assistance dogs and their handlers. The dogs communicate with their handler or owner by biting or tugging on sensors fitted into their collar or vests. The sensors activate either audio commands that handlers can hear in their earpiece or visual commands that appear on a head-mounted display. 
• Finnish start-up, Uniqil, announced a new technology last week that allows customers to buy products with their face. All customers do is present their face to a camera in a store that uses their device and the transaction is processed. 

The idea of objects we use benefitting us has the ability to take the power of technology beyond the individual to the larger community. For example, adidas’ Nitrocharge “"Power Pitch" harnessed the in-game energy to generate the energy for the pitch-side lighting. And, Soccket by Uncharted Play is a regulation-size soccer ball that converts kicks and headers into off-the-grid power. With it, two hours of play produces enough wattage to light an LED for at least a night.

It’s clear this is only the beginning. In the future, it seems likely we will have devices that second-guess us or make intelligent connections for us. It is not farfetched to imagine that this will help marketers to microtarget even more. The next logical extension is to leverage things we already take for granted, such as Amazon recommendations, and send them to our devices to help make purchase decisions based on our preferences.

Wearable technology’s evolution is not only changing our behaviors, it’s changing our relationship to the world.

Why Brand Experiences Matter

This is a repost of the latest article I wrote for Forbes on the trend of experiential branding.
________________________________________________________

This year I made a promise to myself. Each week I would try something new that expanded my view and forced me to step out of my comfort zone in some way. In other words, I would become a collector of experiences. At first I started small, trying out new restaurants and then I moved into bigger things. I learned to surf one week. The next week I had dinner with a Buddhist monk in a Buddhist monastery. I tried out capoeira. I had my astrological chart read. I went to a saloon jazz club on my own. Each experience expanded my view and helped me grow as a strategist and a marketer.

As marketers, it is important for us to be able to empathize with multiple, diverse audiences. We need to understand their mind-set, their goals, their challenges and their lifestyle in order to shift perceptions and to help our clients’ brands resonate. In other words, we need to connect to our target audience’s lifestyle in a way that fits into their natural behaviors. Here are some recent strong examples of connecting target audience interests to brand experience in unexpected industries:

• Sephora Sensorium recognized the need to connect the importance of scent with the value of tactile experiences. The “pop-up” museum set in the fashion-oriented meat-packing district of Manhattan mixed education and entertainment in an appealing manner for their fashion-conscious key target audience.
• To promote itself in reality life, online glasses retailer Warby Parker launched the Warby Parker Class Trip, an old yellow school bus retrofitted as a Warby Parker show room and taking a six-month cross-country road trip to nine cities. The pop-up shop is decked out to bring the brand and its vintage-inspired mode of transportation with a contemporary twist aesthetic to life for their hipster target.
• Aloft’s Play and Stay campaign connected their guests’ love of music, their passion for discovering new talent, and their excitement for live performances with emerging music talent. The campaign enabled Aloft to further solidify the brand’s image as a brand that “gets” and celebrates the lifestyle of their guests through helping them explore music and find cool new artists.

Connecting these dots is necessary for marketers to generate brand engagement and ultimately, loyalty. This approach remains especially important among harder-to-reach targets. For example, adidas needed to address the fact that sales of running shoes in France among its hard-to-reach target demographic of 14-to-19-year-olds were down. Through research they learned that not only did this target not like to run, but they were also so uninterested that they weren’t even trying on the shoe and were definitely not purchasing them. However, they also learned that this was an audience that loved action movies. Traditional ad campaigns weren’t resonating, but an out-of-the-box experience might. Partnering with Sid Lee, adidas realized the need to connect this love of action movies to the young audience’s Climacool shoes and created an experience that gave teenagers in France a reason to run — by making them the hero of their very own Mission Impossible-esque adventure. And the results show the success of focusing on the experience: adidas saw a 500 percent jump in Climacools tried during the campaign. Here's the case study video:

So whether it’s adventure or astrology, it’s important for marketers to expand the brand experience. The only way to do this is to develop a real understanding of the target audience. So what are you planning on doing first? Maybe it’s time for that skydiving lesson, ceramics class or trip to the Cézanne exhibit.

My favorite soccer advertising campaign of all time

I'm a huge soccer fan and love advertising. So, needless to say, the World Cup is my favorite event. Every four years, I not only get awesome soccer but I also get awesome ads connected to the game. This year we got the amazing Nike campaign, Write the Future. While I'm energized by this campaign (I do think it is one of the top ones), I have to admit that I do not think it is the "best" soccer campaign ever created despite all the coverage claiming that it is.

The best soccer advertising campaign I've seen is the Adidas +10 campaign. This campaign was created for the 2006 World Cup, before the idea of social media and audience engagement were as popular within the advertising/marketing community. What makes this campaign great are two specific things. First, it is inspirational. Everyone can relate to the two kids who are playing a game and imagining their heroes are playing along with them. They get to choose their team, not just see these stars playing on a TV screen. They are the captains, not the followers. The stars of this ad are Jose and Pedro and the stars these ads usually focus on are the sidekicks. The +10 campaign taps into the imagination of the "everyman," unlike the Nike "Write Your Future" campaign which focuses on the dreams/aspirations and outcomes of the superstars. To quote 180 Amsterdam's co-executive creative director, Andy Fackrell:
“The Adidas commercial for the FIFA World Cup is based on our own childhood memory… After watching a football game, we used to run outside, recreate our own teams and re-play the match we had just seen. We tried to make every little kid’s dream come alive – getting to pick your own team and being able to choose from the world’s biggest football stars!”

Second, it was the first campaign I remember tapping into the now popular idea of audience engagement. The +10 idea was open-ended enough to function well in the new media space in 2006: video shot exclusively for web, asset downloads, UGC video sweepstakes, blogs, integrating meaningfully with the MySpace community (definitely still a huge player in 2006). They truly maximized on content distribution and user-generated content to enhance the grassroot aspects of the campaign.

Here are some quick screenshots of the interactive site (courtesy of The World of Advertising blog) as well as one of the TV spots. The +10 Adidas campaign was an integrated global advertising campaign including global and local versions for TV, cinema, print, outdoor, point-of-sale, public relations and online.

I want to be part of Teamgeist

It's already fairly apparent from earlier posts that I love soccer. I also openly admit I love almost all of Adidas' soccer campaigns. So, it is not exactly a shock that I instantly fell in love with the latest advergame for Adidas.

The game which also serves as a graphic novel is called: Teamgeist. (Teamgeist is the name given the ball used at the FIFA World Cup 2006 in Germany.) Teamgeist invites players to partake in the story of German football team Die Manschafft's jersey. In the intro to the game, Die Manshafft is stripped of its identity. From that point forward, it is the player's goal to help the team recapture its three World Cup stars, thereby reclaiming Die Manshafft's identity. Here's the intro in German (you can watch it in English here):


In general, I'm not a huge gamer (sure, I liked the Oregon Trail and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, but I never really moved past that) so I wasn't sure if I would find Teamgeist engaging or easy to navigate. It manages to be both without being so simple that someone who is a gamer would become easily bored. The graphics and videos are stunning and the story is compelling.

The site also features an interactive graphic novel with an augmented reality component. In addition, the campaign includes a blog with all the making of the videos as well as a twitter account.

This new Adidas campaign was created by North Kingdom and is in partnership with the German Football Federation.