Storytelling and Brands

In my last post I put some conversation on the table about advertising needing to re-invent itself and discussed how Lacta Chocolate jumped into that new arena. It was a great campaign, as it echoed the sentiments that Lee Clow speaks about (which I had written about previously) in terms of brands being about culture and not just advertising.

So yesterday I came across the video below and really liked what Lee and Alex (Alex Bogusky of Crispin Porter + Bogusky) were saying. Being the giants they are in their field, what they discuss and mention should definitely be noted.

From my end three ideas they discussed stuck out for me:

• The brand conversation use to be a monologue now it's a dialogue.

• People can now interact with brands.

• Brands have to find out who they are and begin telling their story.

Good stuff! Enjoy the video.

Chocolate Love

Over the past month one of our most visited posts has been Lee Clow's next revolution should be your revolution. With over 2,100 page views in the last month alone, and hits from South Africa, Bahrain, Greece, India, the UK, and Brazil, I'm wondering if it's getting so many page views because of the basic message: traditional advertising needs to re-invent itself. It needs to become more than just advertising. It needs to become culture. 

Hmmm, I wonder. . .

Regardless, unless you've been under a rock, in a dark cave, in an uninhabited corner of Siberia, then you're well aware of how the internet has dramatically impacted  the business world, especially in the realm of marketing and advertising (particularly with print media).

So with the market changing it becomes necessary that you adapt or become extinct.

Kraft Foods has recently jumped into the realm of creative advertising with their Lacta chocolate bar in Greece. They crowdsourced a 27-minute branded-entertainment film, involving the audience in everything from writing the story to casting the film and styling the actors. Some even popped up as extras in the finished film. And in a down market for chocolate bars, Lacta's sales are growing.

Created with OgilvyOne Worldwide in Athens, the "Love in Action" campaign started with a series of traditional TV spots inviting people to submit their own personal love stories, one of which would be made into the movie. In response, people posted 1,307 love stories.

The winning story was about a musician and a new army recruit who meet on a train journey. Online polls decided casting (full screen tests were put up online), the characters' names and even what they wore.

A total of 11,500 people registered and voted on pre-production decisions, and some were invited to be extras in the film. Updates were posted on Facebook and Kraft's blog during the two-week shoot.

The film attracted a 12% share of viewers and was seen by more than 335,000 Greeks on TV. In the first few weeks online, the film was viewed 150,000 times and attracted more than 20,000 fans on Facebook. And the song featured in the film became a hit.

Ladies and gents, in the new economy, customers aren't just consumers they are also producers. Welcome to the new business world order. . .

Now in my post with Lee Clow, I mention how he believes every brand touch point needs to be treated as if it were an opportunity to seduce an audience (and what's more seductive than love?). He also says, "when advertising is done well, I think it can become a part of our culture. When it's done badly it becomes visual pollution.

Well not sure if Kraft heard Lee's message on this, but they have definitely captured culture.

Bravo Kraft, bravo.

The architecture in technological storytelling

For Morgan Stanley's home in Times Square, Imaginary Forces (IF), in collaboration with architectural firm Kohn Pedersen Fox, created a highly cinematic digital membrane that provides silent glances into the company and its inner workings.

In my last post I discussed the idea of the kinetic brand. Brands in motion. Brands that are dynamic. Brands on the verge (of re-defining what brands are). Brands that should be fluid, agile and constantly evolving, and when designed well, feel the same, but don't necessarily look today, like they did yesterday.

The post was inspired by my friend Tali Krakowsky, who, believe me, has a bright, bright future. This past February I took a jaunt out to the west coast to hang with her and a few other good friends.  It was a great trip with lots of relaxation, discovery and learning.

Just yesterday Creativity Magazine announced her new venture. 

Experience designer Tali Krakowsky has launched her own venture, Apologue, "dedicated to the creation of immersive storytelling environments."

Krakowsky, who blogs for On Design, had previously been Director of Experience Design at Imaginary Forces and, later, WET Design. Israeli-born and Hong Kong raised, Krakowsky studied Communication Design at Parsons School of Design and has a Master of Arts from UCLA's School of Architecture.

"We expect our physical spaces to seamlessly embody basic technologies, including electricity, lighting and phone lines," says Krakowsky. "We demand that our cars be intelligent enough to know how fast they're driving, how much fuel is left in the tank, and when there is an internal malfunction. While a decade ago a mobile phone was just that, today we presume that our mobile devices will deliver real-time access to all the data in the world. And still, our architecture remains analog and silent. In the very near future we will place the same kind of demands on our spaces."

Krakowsky says she founded the company "to facilitate the creation of places that speak to an emerging generation that has a different relationship to the world" and says the applications of experience design - for brands as well as museums, real estate developers and architects – are limitless. "Retailers can offer consumers highly directed and curated shopping experiences while learning about how their stores and products are being used. Amazon has learned how to do this but there is noting in physical architecture that does this kind of work with data."

Congrats Tali! I'm definitley looking forward to a Cnvrgnc + Apologue production, hopefully in the not-to-distant future. . .

Below are a couple more cool examples of her work while she was at Imaginary Forces.

For the HBO Store in midtown Manhattan, IF and Gensler designed a fully immersive media experience. Seamlessly integrating LED, LCD, and projection technology, the space became a platform for highly choreographed HBO-based show

In celebration of post-war New York art, the Prince of Monaco commissioned a show in the Grimaldi Forum in Monte Carlo. Projecting content onto eight giant weather balloons, IF, in collaboration with architect Greg Lynn, re-imagined the cinematic experience for the architecture gallery of the exhibit

The Kinetic Brand

In 2006 I attended the first annual Global Creative Economy Convergence Summit where I heard Dan Pink speak for the first time and I was introduced to his seminal book A Whole New Mind. In it he discusses why right-brainers will be the rulers of the future.  His book explores the six senses that the landscape of the new economy would demand: Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, and Meaning.

One year later In 2007, I would stumble across my good friend Mike Bonifer's blog, entitled "GameChangers." (he would later release his incredible book, of the same name). The blog was awesome and after discovering that he was the publicist for the brilliant movie Tron as well as the producer for the Toy Story website (the first website ever for a major motion picture), I knew I had to reach out to him.  In our conversations, Mike always brings the point home: in order for organizations to be agile, creative and even thrive in the 21st century, they can no longer follow the scripts of the industrial age. Improvisation will be the true competitive advantage.

A hop, skip and a jump, two years into the future,  I would, in a very cool way meet my friend Tali Krakowsky,  a brilliant and ferocious thinker. As former Director of Experience Design at Imaginary Forces and Wet Design, as well as a founding member of the 5D conference, Tali is pushing the envelope at the intersection of storytelling, new media and physical environments. She is on the cutting edge of business, technology and culture.  A couple of weeks ago she wrote an incredible article discussing how most brands are static and two dimensional in a world where people, customers and audiences are multi-faceted and diverse. My interpretation of her observations would be, if the marketplace were a football game with a lively and energized crowd (the customers), and what the teams on the field (the brands) each do, is run only one kind of play, the entire game. Boooooo. . . what a rip-off!

In today's market folks, whether you're right-brain thinking, improvising, or storytelling with new media, you need a kinetic brand. An identity that walks, runs, inhales, exhales, stops, assesses, regroups, sprints, jogs, thinks, entertains and if we're lucky, might even make us breakfast in bed (now that would be sweeet).

How brands existed yesteryear ladies and gentlemen, is dying.

Apple gets it. Pepsi, which ditched its Superbowl Advertising for the first time in 23 years, for its social media campaign, gets it and  Innocentive gets it. Their belief is in the "power of open innovation, bringing together creative minds to create breakthrough solutions that touch every human life." Now that's kinetic!

In today's market, where things are radically changing, we need, beauty, empathy, creativity, passion and ideas with value, that speaks to who we are. 

We need kinetic brands.

Brands that are poetry in. . .

The art of business. . .the business of art