fog melt

2012-02-22T21:27:00.002-08:00

Designing for impact: Stark Design’s real-world sustainability game

2012-01-30T17:09:00.000-08:00

Digital engagement programs have lots of advantages and a major downfall: they’re easy to ignore.

Web sites and apps can generate huge interest when they’re fun or remunerative – think LEGO’s iPhone photo app or the wildly successful Pepsi Refresh Project. But they can languish when people have mixed feelings about what you’re selling: energy conservation behaviors, for example, or uncomfortable facts about climate change. Do a Google search on “energy conservation game” and you’ll find a graveyard of digital programs that never really took off.

But a new initiative called REALiTREE, which uses massive out-of-home displays to engage the public in climate health, might be a better model. REALiTREE, which is still on the drawing board, is designed to mobilize real-world communities with a life-size projection of a tree that would appear in city centers like Times Square or Trafalgar Square.

Tamagotchi-like, each tree’s “health” would fluctuate based on nurturing from its community in the form of tweeted facts about climate change, reductions in local energy use and Foursquare check-ins at green businesses, for example. The list of inputs isn’t final, but the idea is that positive actions would bring out green leaves and blue sky; negative inputs would brown the leaves and darken the sky.

REALiTREE was just short-listed in the PSFK Gaming for Good challenge, which tasked design firms with creating games that support the goals of Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project. “It's a tool to steer the conversation about climate change and make it a real conversation based on fact,” says REALiTREE creator Daniel Stark, of Stark Design in New York.

REALiTREE will have a companion app, but Stark says it’s the towering physical presence that won over judges like Gore and activist marketers Alex Bogusky and Robert Schuham. “I feel like this thing has to be a physical manifestation for people to really play it," Stark explains. "If you’re walking through a city square and see something that disrupts your day, you’re more likely to pay attention.”

By focusing on specific communities, REALiTREE may be able to address some of the truly vexing challenges of energy conservation marketing:

It could reach a broader, more mainstream audience because it gets in front of every passerby – not just the self-selecting enviros who might download a green app or join a Web community
Since each REALiTREE is local, many people will find it more relevant than a far-flung global initiative
REALiTREE leverages social norming – the idea that people are more likely to participate in something when they see people around them doing it. In other contexts, social norming has proven more effective at encouraging sustainable behaviors than environmental, or even financial, motivations.

As a concept, REALiTREE has some of the power of the very cool Green Cloud (Nuage Vert) project in Helsinki, where a pair of installation artists projected a green laser show onto the smoke of an electrical plant smoke stack. The green cloud could be seen for 10 km, provoking a local conversation about energy waste and mobilizing thousands of people to reduce their energy use.

Stark says he took his inspiration from a real-world project in Brighton, England where volunteers on one street – Tidy Street – were given home energy monitors to help reduce their energy use. An artist was hired to paint an unfolding infographic on the street tracking their progress. Participants cut their energy bills an average of 15%.

There’s a truth at the heart of these successes that’s worth paying attention to: while energy is very much a global issue, for many people, the meaning resides closer to home. Neighbors share the same resources, use energy in similar ways, bond over the heat and the cold and gas prices and outages. Just being neighbors is, of course, a powerful bond. Social norming studies have found that the more people have in common with each other, the more likely they are to join in a collective energy-saving effort.

REALiTREE isn’t going to convert the apathetic. But for people who are open, a little nudge from their homies might provoke some action.

REALiTREE is just an idea right now, but the Stark team is doing the legwork to make it happen. Among other things, they must find a sustainable technology for projecting the tree – that’s a mandate from Gore, says Stark, who is investigating everything from solar power to pedal power.

Stark must also assess the feasibility of getting real-time energy use data from local utilities around the world.

Other design challenges that come to mind:

What’s the ideal mix of inputs to get people engaged without making the tree’s mission confusing, or muddling the visual impact? How can multiple inputs be clearly conveyed, both visually and in explaining REALiTREE’s mission?
What are the pros and cons of locating REALiTREE in visually busy, tourist-heavy spots like Times Square? Might a different type of locale be more efficient in terms of the media buy and in leveraging a sense of community?
What’s the strategy for keeping REALiTREE fresh, so it doesn’t become visual wallpaper? What’s the strategy for keeping the conversation fresh?
When gauging progress, is there a way to measure the quality or effectiveness of the REALiTREE inputs (tweets, for example), rather than focusing on quantity?

It’ll be exciting to see how REALiTREE develops and what it can teach us about creating meaningful engagement around climate health.

OWS' Secret Sauce: Too Stupid to Know Better

2011-10-21T00:45:00.000-07:00

I spontaneously decided to “infiltrate” Occupy Wall Street San Francisco last week on my way back from a pleasant lunch on the Embarcadero and a meander through the Ferry Building, tasting truffle salt samples and perusing $39-per-pound sheep cheese.

Wandering about the encampment, I noticed a few things…

· Most of the people looked homeless or extremely marginalized– a mix of older street people and dreadlocked young Haight types

· There was a computer station in the middle of the encampment that “occupants” were taking turns powering via a stationary bike

· There was a hard-to-follow ramble on a white board from someone who had consulted the Tao Te Ching and wanted everyone to know its implications for OWS

Much has been made of the naivete of the OWS movement, but I hadn’t understood how not just naïve, but truly marginalized, this crowd was -- at least the Northern California folks. Greenpeace protesters are Capitalist Tools compared to the campers at the San Francisco Fed. And I suddenly got that not just naivete, but deep marginalization, are likely the essential ingredients of Occupy Wall Street. If participants had a modicum of sense or were the tiniest bit invested in the system, they would know better than to try to buck it. They would quite sensibly conclude that they didn’t have a chance, and they would have gone home and eaten dinner, bitched to their partners, watched a little television and tucked themselves into bed.

I’ve been pissed off for decades about the income disparity OWS is protesting. And I was once in a position, theoretically, to do something about it: I was a reporter covering the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington, the body that regulates finance.

Upon starting the new beat, I remember questioning an SEC official about the shocking toothlessness of his organization. I was learning that corporate ne’er do wells rarely had to admit wrongdoing and the fines levied on these massively wealthy corporations wouldn’t pay their CEOs’ butler’s salary. I remember my sense of disbelief when I learned that there was virtually no downside to breaking securities laws. “It’s the best we can do,” given how powerful the firms are, the SEC official told me. There was no political will to do anything more than a wrist slap.

I was too much a part of the system to stand outside of it and raise a ruckus. Instead, I took the path of no resistance: I registered a bit of verbal protest, felt rather angry and, ultimately, sucked it up. I’ve been angry and sucking it up since that day way back in, maybe, 1993. I’ve been voting Democratic and hoping things might get better, but feeling increasingly sick to my stomach as our national economic system has grown more unequal and frighteningly unstable.

But even those who, unlike me, have had the balls to actively protest over the years haven’t been effective. For decades, columnists have pounded their fists, academics and economists have bemoaned, liberal politicians have campaigned and sometimes won on this issue. But it didn’t do any good: our system is still stacked grossly in favor of the wealthiest few.

The problem, apparently, is that we have all been operating within the system --because we are part of the system. We’ve been engaged in “polite conventions that for three decades have produced far more setbacks than victories,” as economist John Schmitt puts it in an astute blog post on the topic. http://bit.ly/nRpomM We’ve been busy eating truffle salt and paying mortgages and messing around with our iPhones.

The Occupy Wall Street people simply don’t get the futility of their effort. They seem to be too busy consulting the Tao Te Ching and riding a bike to charge their communal battery. They’re so stupid that they may actually be accomplishing something the rest of us have completely failed at.

Have to chuckle at this one...

2010-08-18T11:15:00.000-07:00

credit Hugh at gapingvoid.com

The Long Tail of self actualization

2010-07-31T22:16:00.000-07:00

I just happened upon a site called bookshelfporn.com which, as advertised, features a dizzying compendium of book shelf photos. It's books-as-art to the nth degree: book spines arranged as portrait and sculpture, vista-esque views of public libraries, and links to related articles, blogs and tweets about book collecting.

The site itself isn't that surprising (long tail and all that -- every niche has a home on the Web), but most of the photos were reblogged, liked and tweeted at least 100 times -- some more than 1,000 times. That's a lot of book shelf geeks who have found each other on bookshelfporn.

Two thoughts:

The "Long Tail" argument advanced by Chris Anderson in 2003 was primarily an economic one; that value is created when the new Web distribution channel creates a market for a greater variety of products. But it seems a cultural long tail is being created as well: people who like to geek out on niche stuff like garbage truck videos (check it out on Youtube) and book rainbows can find each other, wallow in their topic of interest, and advance their geek tendencies further than ever before.

Arguably this is a new, Web-based path (at least a step or two) toward self-actualization. Certainly the rise of the geek-as-compulsive-hobbyist, as opposed to geek-as-bespectacled-academic, has largely mirrored the rise of the Web.

Second thought is: In the hands of Generation X, every object that used to just sit there is becoming Designed. Books used to books, not art; they were arranged alphabetically so you could find them, not by color to create a new mural for the living room.

Nothing is safe from artistry these days. And hoorah for that.

Ideas win even at the Super Bowl

2010-03-06T23:30:00.000-08:00

Super Bowl advertising plays by its own rules. Entertainment is the objective; insights and ideas aren't necessarily part of the equation.

That's cool; everyone gets that brand-building happens differently on Super Bowl Sunday. Still, it's interesting that the most popular commercial on the 2010 Super Bowl was Snickers' Betty White ad. Maybe it's as simple as viewers loving watching geriatrics get tackled, but I couldn't help notice the importance of a core consumer insight in that ad: You're just not yourself when you're hungry.

The creative was great, mind you -- the basic premise (when your blood sugar's low, you have the energy of your grandma) was a hilarious dramatization of the core insight. And that Abe Vigoda kicker -- what a hoot! Still, I think the reason why that ad cut above the rest was that the core insight was so true, simple and relevant. Who doesn't feel like Betty White when they're hungry? And yeah, Snickers has what it takes to make you feel yourself again.

Contrast that with ads where everything seems to rest on the creative: The E*trade babies, I'll admit I'm a sucker for them. That spunky Budweiser Dalmatian. I enjoy those ads and I'd guess they're doing a good job building affinity for their brands. But I suspect they might work even harder if the creative sprang directly from a meaningful consumer insight.

Today's marketing shocker! An endearing tissue box

2009-09-04T12:06:00.000-07:00

I laughed. I cried. I laughed some more. And then I was finished reading my tissue box.

A new tissue box design by Trader Joe's sports some of the smartest packaging I've seen. It's particularly a standout in a category where the operating design principle seems to be to out-ugly or out-bland the other tissue boxes on the shelf.

It's smart because it effectively amplifies the appreciation we have with this critical nose-blowing tool, but are rarely conscious of... and it probably doesn't cost any more to produce (possibly less) than a mainstream tissue box.

The kitschy retro art work is what brings it to life, but here is the side panel copy:

"I'm there when you're sick. Feel better, tissue."
"I'm there when you need to pick up icky things. Kindly, tissue"
"I'm there when you're sad. Love, tissue"
"I'm there when you run out of toilet paper. You're welcome, tissue"

The top reminds people "Please don't leave me in your pocket when you do laundry" and the bottom panel tells folks that the tissues are recycled and non-chlorinated.

Consumers would love marketing if it were all this well done. And the formula is simple...

- Recognize the nascent emotional relationship consumers have with a basic household product.
- Use packaging as advertising.
- Elevate humor.

In essence, generate connection where before there was only apathy.

Can Facebook help battle addiction?

2009-08-27T12:19:00.000-07:00

Two amazing posts from Facebook friends yesterday -- one who has lost 57 pounds after a lifetime battling the bulge and a second who chain smokes and had gone a week without a cigarette.

The two post appeared a few minutes apart and are from friends who've never met. The slenderizer, Linda, was a very sweet chubby girl I knew all through school. She's now a librarian in Ohio with a couple of teenage kids, and she'd recently become diabetic.

The smoker, Joe, is a college friend who is a ragingly successful journalist and author. He wrote an expose of the tobacco industry and has quit smoking before, but never permanently.

The flurry of posts and comments was amazing -- Linda got almost 30 "You go girl!"s and Joe got 50 "Keep it up!"s. They both seem blown away by the support. The former record number of posts among my FB friends was set by a woman wanting ideas for using surplus zucchini (20 responses).

Just a few years ago, Linda and Joe would have been fighting much more private battles, with mostly the people immediately around them offering support. But the Facebook era changes everything -- and that's particularly interesting in light of a 2007 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine which found that a person's social connections are a huge factor in whether s/he becomes obese or not. (Smoking wasn't part of the study, but I imagine the principal could be similar.)

Researchers who tracked networks of family and friends among 12,000 people in the Framingham Heart Survey found that the chance of becoming obese rose 57% if a close friend became obese and 35% if a spouse or sibling did.

A similar principal may be at play in weight loss, the study's authors surmise. NPR quoted a key researcher as saying that for anyone who wants to lose weight, "you really need to get your friends and family involved in the process." (Link)
Now Joe's and Linda's friends -- dozens of them -- are involved in their processes. I've no idea if Facebook support will ultimately make a substantive difference in their private battles, but it's fascinating to think that it could. And one more example of how social networks might be harnessed for meaningful change.

Do video games seed long-term brand value?

2009-08-25T13:53:00.000-07:00

Just came across a very interesting post from an MBA student, Taylan Kay, about the value of marketing via video games.

While games are typically used for short- or medium-term selling or branding, Kay makes the case that they are also a great way to seed brand preference among young people that can be reaped years down the line.

He argues that a collateral impact of playing games is deep knowledge about different brands of muscle cars, for example, that might play into adult car-buying decisions.

An interesting thesis, but I'm not quite ready to make the jump. Unless a marketer has unlimited funds (and if so, then what the hell -- go ahead and market $80,000 cars to adolescents), does it really make financial sense to invest in a target audience many years before they buy?

In my experience, some childhood brands remain well-liked into adulthood and some don't -- the difference is whether the brands have remained relevant through evolving product development, company development (do I like the company or not?) and marketing in the intervening years.

Many products and brands from childhood simply seem a bit goofy and dated by definition -- the world evolves so quickly. That's unlikely to change in this ever-more-fast-paced, technology-dominated era; look at how behind-the-curve MySpace now seems. The hotter the brand, the more painful the flame-out.

It's too quick of a leap to say that being highly relevant and cool to a kid automatically translates into adult preference... I see childhood brand preference as merely a reference point that may be either positive or negative to an adult. What's truly important is that marketers keep their brands relevant to their audience year after year, month after month, day after day.

Here's a link to Kay's thought-provoking post:

http://thesellinggame.blogspot.com/

Why a 3-year-old hates advertising

2009-08-17T11:55:00.000-07:00

My son's unvarnished hatred of advertising started at age 3: "Mom, where's my show? I want to watch my show! I don't want to watch this AD!" He's furious at the intrusion of content he has no interest in. And I'm frustrated that my industry essentially conditions people from birth to hate it.

I understand the economics of paid programming, but still: Shouldn't advertising be a little smarter than to teach people to hate advertising?

Some ads are fantastic, of course -- both engaging for consumers and effective for brands. Great spots can get hundreds of thousands of replays on YouTube and good ones can elicit at least a smile. The problem is the great, blah bulge of ho-hum ads that are simply to be waited out until our show comes on.

The second problem, of course, is media buying -- the too-frequent, too-long intrusions into our favorite shows. How I long for the British model -- ads that are (broad generalization, of course) reasonably entertaining, don't insult one's intelligence, and media buying that doesn't undermine the entertainment experience.

Realistically, I'm not certain either problem is fixable on these shores. Our broadcast media-buying model and creative standards won't change much until they stop making money for their sponsors.

What I take heart in is the power of digital to raise the bar for marketing communications. There are two reasons for this:

1. It's consumers' choice, by and large, to engage with digital content or not. It's almost as easy to click away as it is to stay on any given Web page, so quality control is built in. The benefits of engagement must exceed the costs, or the communications will fail.

2. Interactive communications give brands a chance to do more than talk about themselves -- with a little creativity and engineering, they can provide extremely useful utilities to people. Whether it's Pedigree dog food's shelter cams or Dove's unmasking of the beauty industry or Visa's sponsorship of young peoples' ideas for changing the world, digital is a medium that lends itself to elevating the conversation.

One day, in the not too distant future, perhaps every brand will use digital programs to do some good in the world -- in a way that is authentic and meaningful for its consumers.

The digital future of marketing has the power to undo the damage of past mediocrity.

Nike branding empowers gals with thighs

2009-08-17T10:42:00.000-07:00

I'm a fan of Nike marketing in general, but particularly their marketing to women. Nike has a rare ability to create ads for women that feel authentic, instead of coming across as a fictionalized account of women churned out by some advertising industry machine in desperate need of reprogramming. I always feel empowered by their work instead of stereotyped or bored.

So it was inspiring on a recent visit to the Nike store in San Francisco to see that Nike is even branding pant fits in an empowering way -- slimmer fits are "Be Fast" and "Be Bold," regular fit is "Be Strong" and loose fit is "Be True." Even the gal manikins are super-buff -- no Barbie dolls here. Be true to your thighs, no matter what size, ladies!