I recently did a presentation, with 3 colleagues of mine, for Ericsson employees. Marcom people. It was about storytelling and we basically talked about both uncontrolled and controlled storries. The magnificant campaign for Halo 3 is incredible storytelling of course. Controlled, directed and well thought trought. We all love it, who in the industry doesn’t?
Another aspect of storytelling, or perhaps rather story creating, is uncontrolled. I mean social media, free media. Facebook groups that hate or love your brand for example. Your story is being told/created/added to right there. Get over it. Presentations on slideshare – spreading uncontrolled. Everything is getting more and more transparant and that transparancy will have/has had implications down to product development and quality. Support and contact etc. WoM weighs heavier than any traditional advertising. If you want thumbs up, create a good product. The thumbs up will come, via free media channels and real people. This is not an ad campaign, but it drives sales and brand liking or whatever you want to call it. Clients have a hard time getting that. I mean really getting it.
Now I met with a couple of guys today (one of which was Piers Fawkes who was in stockholm, so we had a quick likemind get together; nice to meet you). I’m going to make the long story short – they have a great idea, soon on the market, that scans blogs and analyses the posts, and posts linking in to posts, from a psychographic perspective. I can’t explain, but fucking awesome. The amount of research that I, and other planners, need to do to get the info they presented is heaps! And it takes time! It was a bit like motivequest but another step, if I’m not mistaken.
Now in order to have an incentive to stop thinking campaigns, I think this tool (and others that will come) is the tracking/measurement that’s lacking. And the research community, that’s talking about what research methods to use in the future will like it. They’re talking about it but not much is happening.
On another note; I wonder how the meaning of the word “friend” will change now that we befriend people online but also defriend them for different reasons. All of a sudden friend is not just connected to an actual person and face as it used to be (or dog or whatever, but flesh and blood anyway). Maybe not at all and I should stop wondering about dumb ass stuff like that.
