See the difference – gimmick or revolution

I’ve been reading a bit recently about See The Difference, a new web venture nicely summed up on Bryan Miller’s blog. Essentially, it is a new charity aggregator which promises to revolutionise the charity market through it’s use of video to recruit and feedback to donors.

I think it will fail for 2 reasons:

Some are making comparisons with Kiva. But there is a fundamental difference between this venture and other already existing charity aggregator sites, such as Global Giving. Kiva facilitates the interaction between individuals. The old addage is as true today as ever. People give to people. People do not give to projects. They don’t give to “funds”. They give to make a difference to people. Kiva knows this and does this very well. Charity aggregators haven’t done this very well so far, because they focus on aggregating projects – not on aggregating individual need.

Secondly, video online isn’t new. Other charities are out there already using it to excellent effect telling their stories in real time. Charity:water, child’s i foundation and learnasone are all using video to tell stories direct from the field. They’re broadcasting their message across multiple platforms of twitter, facebook, blogs and other social media. They don’t need See The Difference. All it could ever be to them is an expensive shop window, but looking at the success of charity:water, charities can do perfectly well without this extra layer getting in the way.

Skittles go social

They may be disgusting balls of sugar and food colouring but Skittles have really embraced social media with their US site.

The home page is a twitter fall-type page which shows real-time comments from people about Skittles. The product listings page takes you to the Skittles Wikipedia entry. Videos takes you Skittles on You Tube. Photos takes you to Skittles on Flickr.  Click on “friends” and it takes you to the Skittles Facebook fan page.

This is simultaneously innovative and boring.

It is innovative because it relies on minimal marketing spin and really puts social media at the heart of the campaign. It leaves no where to hide and puts users at the forefront of the experience – their comments, input and connections are truely driving this campaign.

However, coming to this cold, I find the lack of narrative a bit of an issue. Without any thing driving a story it just seems to be a collection of different bits of the internet being dragged into one place without a purpose. It’s not pushing me further along a narrative with Skittles, it’s just like a directory listing.

Maybe I’m being too harsh. I haven’t seen the offline campaign so don’t know how this site fits in. Also, FMCG always find it difficult to offer added value online. Their online campaigns normally stretch to a flash-heavy site with some sort of mini-game. If this is just a small part of a big ATL campaign then this might work well – encouraging people to simply talk about/interact with the campaign and the brand to multiple the offline impact. If this is the case then it might work well. However, I do think that Creme Egg have done digital cross platform campaigns better in the past (though this year’s campaign is looking a bit lack luster).

Congratulations must go to Skittles though for having the confidence to do this.

A load of rubbish

The Guardian today reported that Lady Greenfield, professor of synaptic pharmacology at Lincoln college, Oxford, yesterday told the House of Lords that social networks like Facebook risk “infantalising” the minds of the next generation of adults, creating a generation who can’t interact with people in the real world, who become obsessed with flashing screens and anonimity.

She said:

If the young brain is exposed from the outset to a world of fast action and reaction, of instant new screen images flashing up with the press of a key, such rapid interchange might accustom the brain to operate over such timescales. Perhaps when in the real world such responses are not immediately forthcoming, we will see such behaviours and call them attention-deficit disorder….

…a much more marked preference for the here-and-now, where the immediacy of an experience trumps any regard for the consequences. After all, whenever you play a computer game, you can always just play it again; everything you do is reversible. The emphasis is on the thrill of the moment, the buzz of rescuing the princess in the game. No care is given for the princess herself, for the content or for any long-term significance, because there is none. This type of activity, a disregard for consequence, can be compared with the thrill of compulsive gambling or compulsive eating…

…[we are] enthusiastically embracing [the possible erosion of our identity through social networking sites]. [these site errode where the virtual world] finishes and the outside world begins…perhaps the next generation will define themselves by the responses of others…[social networks provide] constant reassurance – that you are listened to, recognised, and important…[real world conversations are being avoided and are] far more perilous … occur in real time, with no opportunity to think up clever or witty responses and require a sensitivity to voice tone, body language and perhaps even to pheromones, those sneaky molecules that we release and which others smell subconsciously.

[She fears] real conversation in real time may eventually give way to these sanitised and easier screen dialogues, in much the same way as killing, skinning and butchering an animal to eat has been replaced by the convenience of packages of meat on the supermarket shelf. Perhaps future generations will recoil with similar horror at the messiness, unpredictability and immediate personal involvement of a three-dimensional, real-time interaction.

First of all, Greenfield appears to confuse several issues in her attack, between social networks and computer games. Whilst it is probably true that being shut away in a room constantly engaged in any single, solitary activity with little interaction with other people will result in a socially stunted individual, this is not what social networks are for. The clue is in the name – they are social. They are there for social interaction, the polar opposite of Greenfield’s attack.

So to Greenfield’s fears that social networks will actually make people interact differently and leave them unable to operate “real world” relationships. I think this is rubbish as well. Primarily, social networks strengthen real-world relationships. People use social networks to augment their existing friendships. To keep in touch with people they may normally lose contact with, or to rekindle old friendships. These friendships are based in the “real world” so they miss this anonymity.

Sometimes conversations are easier online. You can take three days to think up that witty response. But if it makes your friends laugh, is that so bad? Also, because you still have day-to-day contact with people, then you maintain these skills.

Secondarily, social networks are used to form new relationships and links. Anonymity can be a problem here, but I think Greenfield really underestimates the medium. There are places where people may exagerate their personality, or invent a completely new one. But these tend to operate in spaces where anonymity/fantasy are the rules of the game. People accept this and they work within these parameters. This isn’t so different from offline role play, make believe, amature dramatics. Crucially, I would say that these fantasy interactions take place in spaces where fantasy is the norm - it is a different world.

Your carefully crafted facebook profile saying your a spy with an Austin Martin and a taste for martinis is soon going to be blown when that person from work asks to be your friend.

Labour tries to emulate Obama

I saw this yesterday and was going to blog about it then but got caught up in other stuff last night so didn’t get round to it. Now other people have started to blog about it I thought I better get cracking – don’t want to be left behind.

Right. Labour have launched Labourspace - hot on the tail of Labourlist – another part of their attempt to do social networking and “be part of the conversation” (or whatever marketing bollocks their consultants told them).

And in true labour fashion it’s crap. I’m not going to go over the look and tone as Dave Briss has covered that off. My main problem is with the strategy. Essentially, what they’ve made is a popularity contest, a sort of X-factor for people who have a minor gripe and too much time on their hands.

This site will not reinvigorate the political process or encourage a whole new generation to engage in politics. It’s too simple and too narrow in scope – much like tfl’s attempt at a social network.

The new wave of political engagement is being driven by sites like CtrlAltShift – Christian Aid’s Youth network. Here there’s a blend of online and offline, content creation, participation and action. Most importantly, there’s a clear cause.

What most people seem to forget when discussing Obama’s campaign is that there was a clear cause with a specific goal over a definied time period. It was something that people could get behind because they could see measureable progress. From this, the engagement and the action naturally follow.

That’s what political engagement is lacking in Britain (and not just in the digital sphere) – a clear cause.

A digital obituary

Following the death of Tony Hart recently there has been a lot of condolences and remembering going on in the media and online. An outpouring of grief probably isn’t the right phrase, but a fond remembering is probably better. He obviously touched a lot of people’s lives.

The Guardian’s coverage - a selection of videos from Youtube and setting up a flickr photo gallery - got me thinking about obituaries in the digital age and how people will start to remember you when you’re gone.

People leave their foot print everywhere online, in increasingly media-rich ways. Tony Hart has benefited from a (crudely executed) video obituary because he was on TV.

However, as more and more people create content in various places, they are leaving more evidence of their history and contribution to the digital world every day. In the future, as platform convergance becomes the norm and your content is gathered together into one place it will be easier for people to see your personality – your life – in just one place.

There may even be a move for people to rewrite history, by editing their life online before their death, so that they can have the obiturary they want.

But – how static is this content? What happens when someone presses delete?

Meerkat Madness

This has passed me by a bit, but it seems that everyone has been going Meerkat crazy with a campaign for compare the market.

It stems from this TV ad:

What I really like is the dedication to detail. The meerkat site really works (and you can compare meerkats until the cows – or mongooses – come home) and the Aleksandr – the star – has a presence on twitter and  facebook ( the success of this has been dampened a bit because they set it up as an individual, got 3,000 friends then had to take it down and set it up as a fan page because the Meerkat isn’t a real person).

What really impresses me though is that they’ve kept up the tone and style of the ads right across into both twitter and facebook. The copy is good and lively – just right for the medium. Also, there seems to be active, regular updates which really pays off in these spaces.

Whether it’ll sell more car insurance though, is a bit debateable in my opinion.

Thanks to Scamp for the tip.

Valley of death

I was lucky to attend a presentation by the ever-great Alan Clayton. One of the things he mentioned was “The Valley of Death“. The Valley is the gap between changing demographics on an organisation’s database following a rebrand. Here’s my child-like drawing:

Chart showing the danger area in a rebrand

The chart shows time (the x axis) against the volume of an audience. The black line is the current audience. The orange line is the new audience. The pink area shows the gap between the two – the period when you may be floundering as the old audience drops away but the new audience hasn’t come in, giving money or buying products, to replace it. The trick for marketers is to make the valley as short and painless as possible. But how?

Well, for me the answer is social and digital media.

Social media lets you connect with your new audience quicker. As in any new relationship you need to get to know each other. You’re not at the stage where you can fart in bed and leave the milk out with only a mild telling off. You need to get to know them. What they like. What they don’t. When it’s ok to not pick your dirty pants off the floor. How do you get to know this?

Well, talking to people and spending time with them usually helps. And with social media you can do this. Join the conversation with your new audience. If they don’t talk back to you, try again but in a different way. Ask them what they think. Get their input. It’ll avoid costly mistakes – such as spending massive amounts on developing offline materials, only to put them in the bin when you find that you haven’t quite got it right.

What’s better – if you do this in enough places and with enough people you’ll have a ready-made audience who feel like they’ve got a stake in your brand. Ready-made brand advocates.

In the future, the brands that perform the best during a rebrand will be those that spend the time talking to people online. Who knows, the valley of death may be a think of the past!