The Digital Tipping Point: The Future of Branding and Social Media

I attended a conference in Sydney yesterday called The Digital Tipping Point: The Future of Branding and Social Media.


That we have reached a digital tipping point is abundantly clear. IBM has already proclaimed that there will be more change in the next 5 years than there has been in the past 50 years, thanks to digital technologies. User time spent on social media increased by 43% in 2008 compared to 2007 (Pew Internet and American Life Project). Facebook has over 220 million members worldwide. Niche interest based networks are rapidly proliferating.

The future of branding and social media, on the other hand, is less clear-cut - or at least, success is not evenly distributed. MySpace, for example, has had much more success in monetising its offer than Facebook. To some extent this is a reflection of the different uses of these sites, Facebook being about connecting with friends and MySpace about discovery and fame.

But, as a rule of thumb, social media are more successful at carrying brand messages if they were designed to do so from the offset. Otherwise, established communities tend to react against the introduction of commercial messages because it feels to users as if the space they have taken ownership of is being invaded by an uninvited third party.

A growing number of emerging sites are both consumer centric and fiercely commercial, leveraging the insight that consumers are happy to use and manipulate brands to their own ends, be it self-expression or getting support for their passions.

Venture capitalist Brian Garrett, MD of Crossout Ventures, pointed out some new players: Social Vibe, Loopd and Flipgloss. While they may not be delivering great numbers yet, in terms of consumer eyeballs, these new models show commercial promise.


With companies placing greater emphasis on meaningful CSR, e.g. Kraft's "Give 6 Meals to People in Need" campaign, Social Vibe helps people get brand sponsorship in suppport of their causes. Brands, such as Colgate, provide artwork which people post to their blogs or social media profiles in support of their cause. The more views the profile gets, the more money Colgate and Social Vibe donate.

Extreme sports social network Loopd lets brands "sponsor" members - through providing branded stickers and discounts. The budding skateboarder feels like a sponsored pro, while brands get free viral marketing and an e-commerce channel.

Flipgloss is an intriguing proposition. Noticing that most glossy magazines don't migrate online very well, the developers set out to create print advertorials specifically for the online space. Instead of using small images and crowding the web page with text, Flipgloss has big muthas of images - looking just as delicious as the cover of Vogue. It then uses overlays (hover your mouse over sections of the image and contextual information appears). By clicking on these overlays, people can access information on where to buy products, or even buy directly. Flipgloss is not just a site, it's a widget which people can post to their own profiles.

It's now much easier to get your brands on to social networks, thanks to Adknowledge, which describes itself as a social applications ad network. Marketers can thereby take advantage of the thousands of applications that have already been developed, such as video applications. HBO, Neutrogena, 3 and Coldplay have already done so.

Adknowledge's President is Brett Brewer, the Co-Founder of MySpace, who knows a thing or two about social media marketing.

Oh, and he predicted that by 2015, the last major metropolitan newspaper will fall.

Life isn't 'real' without brands

Advertising has been regarded as a manipulative influence, a 'hidden persuader'. Some went so far as to say that advertising created a distorted reality in which people were forced to lead inauthentic lives. Now brands are part of the social fabric, part of our collective social memories. They belong as much to consumers as to marketers.

Branded properties have become social particles, which people use for communication and self-expression. Once oxymorons, 'authentic consumption' and even 'caring consumption' have become acceptable contradictions. In other words, 'I shop, therefore I am.'

The bad news for marketers is they no longer own their brands. But, on the upside, brands have more opportunities than ever to enter consumers’ lives, provided they're ‘real’, that is, in context. Instead of interrupting conversations, brands need to be interesting enough to be part of the conversation, which isn't easy if you're a FMCG product. But any brand can generate interest, it may just have to swallow its pride and take a bit part in the story it creates. The trick is to integrate in a relevant way, so you're not creating entertainment for entertainment's sake, but also selling product.


Get Real

Today, for the majority of youngish people, it’s almost inconceivable to have a world without brands, to the extent that when social media company Bebo, excluded brands from the online TV show Kate Modern, viewers voted that brands should be shown, provided they were in context and hence ‘real’.




Express Yourself

With or without corporate consent, consumers manipulate brands for their own self-expression. One instance of this is customisation. By allowing people to personalise their trainers in its origami-themed Mexico 66 online store, Onitsuka Tiger helps customers experiment with fashion design to develop their own take on the brand.

Companies are developing new products with consumers, not through traditional, stilted research methods, but more organic discussion. Chase Manhattan began a dialogue with US students on Facebook to find out how they would use a youth-targeted rewards-based credit card. Discovering that they gave their points to charity, the bank created a Facebook credit card, the Chase +1 Student MasterCard, which facilitates donating through ‘Karma points’.


Show you care

The Chase MasterCard illustrates ‘caring consumption’, which has become a convenient way to change the world, without compromising on your lifestyle. It’s the premise of JWT’s Change The World 9 to 5 campaign, which empowers people to make a difference, through making activism seem less daunting.

No matter how thoughtlessly you consume, you can still care thanks to a campaign for the Belgian League for the Blind www.ablindcall.be, which leverages the fact that we’re all prone to making accidental calls when our mobiles aren’t locked. Mobile users are being encouraged to add the 'A Blind Call' telephone number to their contacts list. Every time they make an accidental call on that number, a donation is given to the charity.


Branded entertainment

Advertising and entertainment have blurred to the point where people increasingly don’t distinguish between the two - it's all part of life. It’s not that they don’t know when they’re being marketed to, it’s that they often don’t care. Provided they’re being entertained or given something useful, they’re happy to take on board branded content, from advergames, such as adidas' OriginsFestival, a game that lets you create your own ideal music festival, to branded social applications, such as the Sprite SIPS character on Facebook.

OriginsFestival


While consumers may not distinguish between advertising and entertainment (when it's good), brands clearly need to maintain the distinction between entertaining and selling and they must get the balance right.

The branded microseries Sunsilk's Lovebites integrates the product into an ongoing drama. There are plenty of other opportunities to convey product information, e.g. via the website, or traditional advertising, but if you want to create engaging content, people's lives are usually more interesting than shampoo.

Burger King's upcoming Buger King, The Movie likewise creates drama around flatmates, who happen to live above a Burger King restaurant. Whether or not this will fly, after years of shoving flame grilled whoppers under our noses, has yet to be seen. The company's previous foray into entertainment - the leftfield Subservient Chicken, which web users could command to do their bidding - was undoubtedly popular and demonstrated the 'have it your way' strategy, but its effect on sales is less clear. Personally, any company that lets me take control of a guy in a chicken suit, is a winner in my book. But that's just me.

Subservient Chicken


When corporates use people powered media they tread a fine line, open to criticsm that they're hijacking an environment they don't understand. By engaging audiences in co-creation they can avoid such criticism. Nike’s Chain, part of the Joga Bonito campaign, had football fans film and post online footage of their own ball skills. The only condition was that the ball had to enter the screen on the left and exit on the right. When the clips were put together, they created a chain linking people across continents and cultures – a perfect instantiation of the beautiful game.

Joga Bonito


Social Particles

Brands and branded entertainment properties have become ‘social particles’. What consumers share with their friends, through their social, real-life and mobile networks says something about them. Branded material can enhance their social standing. Being the first to pick up on a new viral campaign or widget, or being the top scorer amongst your mates on a branded online game, confers status.

Brands have become integral to life, but this comes at a price. There's much more competition. If you’re an FMCG brand and you think your competitive set is FMCG, think again. It’s the universe of all things entertaining, useful, fun, or thought-provoking.

If you're a brand that doesn't lend itself to laugh-out-loud entertainment, or deep and meaningful self-expression, where do you fit in - above, below, within, or to the side of consumers' lives - and how and where do you create drama? Is your product really the most interesting thing? A relevant, supporting role in a good movie is better than the starring role in something no one watches or cares about.