Hello, my name is Simon Glover and I suffer from i-besity. In other words I am an information addict. I have over 500 emails in my work inbox waiting for my attention – most of these are newsletters and reports I’ve opted to receive from various experts – my Gmail account is storing 4,800 articles, under 102 labels – most of which I haven’t read but I want to read. I subscribe to 322 blogs via Newsgator, get seven magazines delivered at work, five more to my home, and there’s more information available in a single edition of my Sunday newspaper than would have been available in my whole lifetime, was I born in the 19th century. On top of this, my lifestyle seems to offer less time than ever before so I’ve nurtured a desire to do at least two things at once: reading while watching TV; surfing the web while cooking; emailing while walking. Yet somehow I’m troubled by a lack of focus, by a lack of fulfillment. As I gather more options, somehow I also want less – less resources but more fulfilling ones, perhaps. I want the best information and the best thinking. I want to cut through. David Shenk coined the term ‘data smog’ to describe the conundrum that many of us are experiencing. In the Basex Survey 2008, one of the world’s foremost knowledge economy research and advisory bodies, information overload was highlighted as ‘Problem of the Year’. Information overload lowers employee efficiency and overall productivity and has been identified as a key challenge for companies that operate in the ‘knowledge economy’. The cost of unnecessary information-related interruptions is estimated to be $650 billion per year in the US alone, factoring in reduced productivity and throttled innovation. The same problem extends into the commercial battle of the brands, which are today faced not only with fraught competition from corporate rivals but also with a new agenda set by consumers themselves. An agenda that is the result of i-besity. We call this ‘The Social Consumer Manifesto’ and it is founded on an evolving but basic set of principles, including: I want to have a say I want to help shape things that I’ll find useful I don’t want to do business with people who don’t know their business I want to buy things on my schedule, not the brand’s I want to do business with companies that act in a transparent and ethical manner I want to know what’s next. We’re in partnership…where should we go? Consumers have more choice than ever before and are in a controlling position in terms of being able to opt in or out of the brand messages to which they choose to respond. Brands have their work cut out, now more than ever [duplicate of ‘than ever before’ above?], in cutting through the crowds to reach a receptive audience. The last five years have seen a massive rise in the implementation of integrated communications – through which a creative brand idea is now expected to successfully and simultaneously transcend all the communication platforms to which consumers are exposed –but, while still a growth area and in its relative infancy, there seems to be a serious disconnect between this tactic and the issue of i-besity. If the consumer is now savvy enough to see through a brand’s marketing activity, and is also overwhelmed by the information available to them, isn’t bombarding them with more marketing messages at every possible point destined for failure, or at least serious revaluation? Brands are achieving effective cut through in a number of ways by employing very specific methods, media and channels to promote their products and provide unexpected and memorable experiences. To support its ‘Good Things Should Never End’ campaign in the UK, telecoms brand Orange chose a media-focused approach with its The Unlimited webpage – a never-ending strand of online rainbow that guided the user down the page. No matter how far you went, there was always something different to look at, something else to do, something to download, something to play. In this case, the web was the medium chosen to promote the brand’s unlimited call packages and generated real ‘talkability’ and differentiation from the competition, through groundbreaking use of a familiar media channel. Meanwhile, the mighty Apple naturally took a more product-focused approach for the launch of its iPhone. With it’s foundations rooted in an internal engineering brief to explore the use and application of touchscreens, the final package was marketed as a multimedia device that begins to bring together a holistic lifestyle solution, through a set of interests and group of hardware and software applications. For Apple, cut through is achieved as much by creating reliance on a set of products for every minute of our lives as it is by revolutionary product design and clear, simplistic communication. And on a pure, unadulterated, creative level, Cadbury avoided any literal reference to chocolate in their recent ‘Gorilla’ television ad. The abstract visual feast showed a gorilla, deep in concentration, playing the drums to a Phil Collins track – followed simply by the Cadbury logo and the tag “A Glass and a Half Full of Joy”. It created massive hype around whether it would successfully put the brand back on track following a salmonella scare and subsequent loss of profits. It did – the company saw a 5% sales lift in 2007 and attributed much of this to the cuddly gorilla it had chosen as an unlikely brand mascot. And the advert has so far been viewed well over 1.5 million times on YouTube alone. Our agency has been lucky enough to evolve alongside the rise of integrated communications strategy. Today we exist in the undefined space between design and advertising – using our training in industrial design and architecture as creative problem solvers within the broader world of communications. The exploration of design as a problem solving technique (and its place within the world of advertising and marketing) is something we talk about with clients a lot. Design is a powerful tool to create difference and therefore aid cut through. Whether from a product, architectural, graphic or fashion background, all designers are trained to create engaging dimensions with the end user. So therefore it is only natural that something slightly different should happen when you put designers at the forefront of the brand process and give them a marketing or advertising problem to solve. We believe the divergent thinking that designers instinctively employ encourages imaginative and effective solutions for clients that truly make waves in the overcrowded marketplace. The methodology that brands should take onboard when aiming to deliver genuinely effective messages in the marketplace can be summarised by three key considerations. Here we illustrate each one with a case study from the ODD archives. 1. Unexpected connections Over the past few years the ‘Generation Why’ sub-brand has dramatically improved perceptions of Oxfam among a younger audience, but qualitative research still revealed a number of shortcomings. Therefore a new communications strategy, identity and creative approach to their youth marketing was developed and first seen throughout the majority of UK music festivals during 2007. Audiences are often over-challenged with demanding imagery from charities, so the aim of this campaign was to demonstrate that Oxfam is accessible and help a younger audience to discover more about the charity at their own pace, and at a time that wouldn’t interfere with their lives: ‘Live your life, change your world’. The campaign took shape by mixing and matching a range of fun and youth-relevant words and icons. For example ‘ROCK OR RAVE’ – it doesn’t matter if you love rock music or rave music because either way you can still be into Oxfam and change the things you care about. The notion of unexpected connections between the audience, the brand, its competitors and their messages helped to create cut through by telling a serious story using fun and accessible creative cues. 2. Participation not intrusion After a successful launch of the groundbreaking Nike iD Studio footwear customisation service online, Nike went on to open studios in Paris, New York and Tokyo, followed by its first UK high street boutique inside Nike Town, London. The brief for the project was to put Nike iD high on the London agenda and make it an aspirational destination but, for the promotional campaign, not a penny was spent on traditional advertising media. Instead, the focal point of the activity was about participation. An exclusive invitation pack was sent to 50 of London’s key celebrities, but the main investment to replace traditional media was in the build of three large-scale street cubes placed in high-traffic locations around London, for a two-week period. They featured short films and animations of real customers and the shoes that they made – updated live from the store. In addition, the cube contained 12,000 unique coded invitations that were distributed in a Bluetooth lottery captured by passing mobile phones, giving the public plenty of opportunities to book in for personal appointments at the store. In its very nature the Nike brand is about participation, but now we see that the notion of advertising can be transformed by user-generated content and participation – where consumers are positively interacting with a brand before purchase, even before walking into the store. 3. Advertising as a service Typically, the Sony BRAVIA brand is experienced in high street dealerships, conflicting with its original and award-winning advertising and products. Following the success of its ‘Balls’ and ‘Paint’ TV adverts, and increased exposure on television and outdoor media, Sony wanted to introduce a further non-traditional communication platform to amplify its ‘colour.like.no.other’ proposition. The solution was a temporary hospitality and showcase venue that would allow trade and consumers an opportunity to trial products and experience BRAVIA in a new and unique way. The Colour Rooms, designed and built in two locations – a disused railway arch in Shoreditch and a former power station in Berlin – were available for dealer events, product launches and private parties. Each venue featured a bar, stage, meeting areas, luxury cinema room and state-of-the-art AV equipment. Events hosted at the London space included a ‘Later with Jools Holland’ live music show for TV station Channel 4 and a late-night audio-visual experience with radio DJ Gilles Peterson. The spaces reflected BRAVIA’s production values, design ethos and commitment to innovation. First and foremost the space was about hero-ing a product range but, more than this, it was about the manifestation of BRAVIA as a service, not just an audiovisual product. * Returning to The Social Consumer Manifesto, one of the key points to note is that consumers don’t want to be recipients of advertising pitches unless they are genuinely relevant and add something more that just knowledge of the product marketed. This is clearly what shines through in the most successful integrated campaigns of current times. The final point on the manifesto talks about partnership between consumer and brand. There are no spectators anymore. It’s all about encouraging participation and companionship – about providing service and experience, not just product. Premium car manufacturers are already starting to do this quite successfully: BMW transforming the factory style collection of cars into a bespoke, dreamlike experience through their (less aptly named) Event and Delivery Centre in Munich; or Mercedes’ post-sale ‘random acts of kindness’ such as the Dream Drives guide which recommends the ultimate open-road scenic locations to enjoy the car. The same happens at a more mainstream level too, such as mobile phone operator O2 offering its customers priority access to chill-out zones at festivals, or London radio station Kiss providing listeners with a Time Out style guide to the city. In this way, we start to see how brands can effectively gain rite of passage past the crowds and the noise, evolving their messages to become beneficial, relationship-enhancing resources: branded concierges; sommeliers of choice; connoisseurs of consumerism. As the Social Consumer Manifesto states: I want to know what’s next. We’re in partnership…where should we go?