Egg dude + Shot Bunny = Hot Website

If you're an ad agency and you want to not just stand out but you want to do something radically different what do you do? You think at the inter-section and put Convergence to work (merging trends in business, culture and technology in unique ways that allows you opportunities to create remarkable products, services and experiences).

BooneOakley has done just this.  They've taken the idea of marketing, storytelling and YouTube and fused these three ideas, creating something entirely new in the process and have reinterpreted the idea of a 'website'. Check it out below. It rocks!

. . . oh yeah, after watching the one minute clip, click on the 'home' button in the right hand corner and see more of BooneOakley's kick ass site!

For the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels. . .

This ad campaign came out in 1997. At the time Apple was anything but a market leader and Mac users were leaving left and right (hard to conceive that today).  This ad campaign reset Apple's counter and altered the way they engaged the world.

How will you think different?

What makes an idea successful?

The six million dollar question.

Well as any entrepreneur knows there is no silver bullet answer to this question. But what can be said is that there are certain themes that consistently come up with innovators and rebels who change the world we live in.

Guy Kawasaki, one of the most successful venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, has an idea or two about this.

Enjoy!

badda Bing, badda boom

A couple of years back, I read a pretty damn good book called the 22 Immutable Laws of Branding by Al Reis. Now, the book was originally published in 1998, and considering the dramatic changes in the market since then, some of the ideas in the book are dated but many are spot on (even 11 years later).

In the book, the third law is the law of publicity. Mr. Reis says that most of the advertising agencies in this country are committed to the concept of building a brand with advertising - which is, as an approach: doa (dead on arrival). He goes on to say that "Today brands are born not made. A brand must be capable of generating favorable publicity in the media or it won't have a chance in the marketplace."  Now the question is just how do you generate publicity? The best way, according to Mr. Reis, is by being the first brand in a new category.

Hence the problem with Bing.  Google beat it to the punch - as the first (successful) company of search. Since Google first came on the scene in 1998, articles, publications, and blogs have talked about Google until they've become blue in the face. Now with Bing is anyone talking about it? Is it generating any buzz (other than it being compared to Google?) There was no ad campaign (like Bing has) they just came out doing what no one else had done before and people talked and talked and talked about it some more (who is Google, what's a Google, why Google . . .) and in the process a powerful brand was born.

This brings to mind another failure by Microsoft - the Zune.  In this case they were once again following the leader (Apple) after the launch of the iPod.  The iPod generated TONS of publicity because it was the first of its kind. There was nothing in the market like it. The publicity that it received was unreal.

In business you have to play offense.  This means huddling up with your team creating plays and then taking action on the field (looking to score). If all you do is play defense you'll always be reacting to what the other team does. And if defense is your whole game plan when are you ever going to position yourself to put numbers up on the scoreboard?

Just because it's old doesn't mean it's irrelavant

With the advent of CNN in 1980, the birth of the 24 hour news channel came, kicking and screaming into the world. A game changer, it was the tour-de-force that would craft and structure the power and relevance of today's 24 hour news cycle. All and any news within this time frame, has our attention. Once this cycle has passed the news (and the viewers) move onto the next 'new thing'.

During the mid 90's  the internet becomes the power player to begin shaking things up. Then about  ten years later with the popularity of web 2.0 bringing to the fore user generated content (ie. social networks, blogs, wikis, etc), this speed is taken to the next level and attention spans get even shorter. And with the popularity of Twitter rising in the last year or so, anything tweeted over an hour ago is like 'so last decade'.

Often the news and information we get (from online news to blogs, to tweets) it's often sensationalism, entertainment and interpretation. How much of it is based on facts? How relevant is it? What's its connection to other similar ideas out there?  And if any of these questions are important (and they are) what's the significance of facts, relevance and connection?

The significance is that these three words determine our world view. And our world view determines our perceptions and our perceptions determine how we engage the contexts in which we live.

When 24 hour news cycles and today's tweets are what 'matter' without understanding the history and the context in which they exist. . .you miss the bigger picture.  And the bigger picture is where rebels and innovators live. 

One quick example - Chris Anderson in his best selling book The Long Tail expounds his theory about the power and innovation of Amazon, eBay, and Netflix to sell niche products. He then quickly follows up by saying these ideas aren't new at all, and actually date back more than a century and are rooted in the Sear's "Wish Book" (the progenitor of the Sears Catalog) of 1897 (Chris Anderson was named by Time magazine one of the 100 people shaping our world in 2007).

In today's market place the power in creating an innovative brand happens by, as Sir Terence Conran states in John Howkins best selling book The Creative Economy, "knowing the history of things and to be able to see a gap in the market."

So you may want to get off Twitter or step away from your Facebook page and check out a history book.  It just might be a useful innovation tool for you.