Ipa Thesis I Believe The Children Are Our Future

The Future of Brands:

I believe the children are our future

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Contents

1. Introduction .......................................................................................................... 4

1.1 I believe the children are our future ............................................................... 7

1.2 The kids are online ......................................................................................... 10

1.2 The digital divide............................................................................................ 13

2. The new media................................................................................................... 16

3. Communication is persuasion .......................................................................... 19

4. Ideas .................................................................................................................... 21

4.1 Choice paralysis.............................................................................................. 23

4.2 The role of brands........................................................................................... 25

5. Ideas made flesh................................................................................................. 27

6. Traits of the emerging media landscape ......................................................... 31

7. Transmedia planning ........................................................................................ 34

7.1 An audit ........................................................................................................... 41

7.2 Ideas from the future ..................................................................................... 45

7.3 Sony Bravia – A future brand case study.................................................... 49

7.4 New metrics .................................................................................................... 52

8. The future of the industry.................................................................................. 59

9. The future is now................................................................................................ 62

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“The future is already here –

it’s just not evenly distributed.”1

1
William Gibson http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Gibson

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1. Introduction

In which we consider prospection

Prospection, the act of looking forward in time, is a quintessentially human

endeavour. In fact, some consider it the quintessential human endeavour:

“The human being is the only animal that thinks about the future.”2

Dennett has noted that quot;the fundamental

purpose of brains is to produce future…brains

are, in essence, anticipation machines.quot; 3 We

spend much of our time projecting ourselves

forward and we do this to motivate ourselves to

reach towards our desired future, using the lens

of that future as a way to understand what we
Consulting the Oracle at Delphi is a
classical example of our basic human desire
should be doing now.
to look forward

However, we don’t only do this individually; we do it collectively - we are not

only the ape that looked forward we are also the “super-social ape.”4

2
Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert, Page 4
3
Consciousness Explained, D Dennett, http://www.princeton.edu/~stcweb/html/pope02essay.html
4
Herd – How to change mass behaviour by harnessing our true nature, Mark Earls, Chapter 1

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Both of these activities are enabled by our

imagination, a blessing of our frontal lobes: we

can imaginatively project into the future, and

enjoy this application of abstraction, or

‘daydreaming’, and we can imaginatively model

the reactions and thoughts of others, and thus

function in multiple, complex, social groups.
The frontal lobe enables imagination
and foresight

Rather than a redundant interrogation of the brief, the preceding paragraphs

introduce concepts that will be crucial when charting the future of brands.

Firstly, the brief is an expression of the industry’s collective desire to steer its

own path into the future: as Alan Kay said, the best way to predict the future is

to invent it. We can motivate ourselves by imagining less pleasant tomorrows, of

eroding relevance and margins, and thus engage in prudent, prophylactic

behaviour.

Secondly, imagination is the defining faculty of communications. As an industry it

is the source of all the value we add to our clients’ businesses as it allows us to

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create ideas. It is also the realm in which these ideas operate and that realm is

projective and collective.

It is only by exploring how ideas function, how ideas such as brands can

influence or create behaviour and culture, and how this is changing in the face of

a new kind of consumer, that we will be able to explain that the future of brands

is, quite literally, in the hands of the kids.

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1.1 I believe the children are our future

In which we examine the titular proposition and consider the pitfalls of

prognostication

Although phrased as an ironic tautology, the fact that the children are our future

establishes a crucial distinction: the kids are different, in a very specific sense,

which is why communication thinking has to evolve. Except that evolve may be

exactly the wrong word, as it implies an incremental change over time.

Oscar Wilde said that after 25 everyone is the same age. By the same token,

everyone under 25 is different. I believe a generation has risen since the

emergence of the Internet that is fundamentally different in the way in which it

consumes, manipulates and propagates ideas and that the way that brands

express themselves must change in response to this new kind of ‘idea consumer’.

Any attempt to look to the future is usually flawed. When we project ourselves

forward, the imagined results are always tainted by our present feelings – we are

unable, imaginatively, to feel any different. You can easily prove this to yourself

by going shopping twice, once when you’ve just eaten and once when you are

hungry, and comparing what you take home.

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This has also been the case throughout the history of futurology. The bias of

presentism ensures that the novelty of the future is always underestimated.

Examples of this abound5 and it leads to thinking that extrapolates from the

present and makes things bigger.

This extrapolation, if we look to the population as a whole, in statistically robust

national research, will lead us in a similar direction when looking at the future of

brands. The power of television advertising has eroded, but it still functions

much as at ever has.

However, if we look to those under 25, we see not incremental but qualitative

shifts in behaviour. The generation gap has never been wider, because kids can

control their own experiences of ideas in a way the generations that grew up

before never could.

Therefore, the form that ideas such as brands must take in order to be

successful must change.

We will demonstrate how this shift in behaviour will affect the future of brands

by addressing the following:

5
“Heavier than air flying machines are impossible.” Lord Kelvin, the most lauded physicist of his day
quot;I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.quot; -- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
See http://www.anvari.org/fortune/Famous_Last_Words/ for dozens of more examples

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The new active idea consumer
•

Why the shift to active consumption is a discontinuity, which has
•

created a digital divide

What a medium is and how this has changed
•

What communication is
•

What ideas are and what makes them successful
•

o Function

o Form

What kind of ideas brands are
•

How the form of a successful idea is dictated by its context
•

What the new characteristics of successful ideas are
•

What this means for communication planning
•

What these ideas look like
•

Why this requires new success metrics
•

What the implications are for the structure of agencies
•

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1.2 The kids are online

In which we establish that the young have grown up digital

We now spend more time than ever consuming media. This year, Americans will

spend 9.5 hours out of 24 with media, the seventh increase in as many years

and by far the most time spent on any daily activity.6 The young are the heaviest

consumers of media and, since there are a fixed number of hours in the day,

they have outstripped previous generations by consuming multiple streams

simultaneously.7

They “consume their media very differently to the rest of the population,” 8

consciously meshing media together. They are also digitally inclined: “Young

adults (16-24) have embraced new technologies to a far greater degree than the

general population, while they use the more traditional media of television and

radio considerably less.” 9 The Internet is the most used and most important

medium for youth 10 and using it has led to the breaking down of traditional

6
Communications Industry Forecast, Veronis Suhler Stevenson http://www.vss.com/pubs/pubs_cif.html
This covers all forms of mediated content including broadcast, mobiles, gaming etc.
7
It’s a Broadband Life. Yahoo / Mediaedge CIA Summit Report
8
BBC Commissioning Research
http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/marketresearch/audiencegroup2.shtml
9
The Communications Consumer, Ofcom Report
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/cm/overview06/consumer/
10
Truly, Madly, Deeply Engaged, Yahoo! / OMD Summit Report

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media boundaries: for youth “all media is digital”11 as they increasingly use the

same devices to access content traditionally reserved for discrete platforms.

‘I regularly use the Internet to…’ (% strongly agree/agree)
50%
44%
45%
40%
32%
35%
28%
30% 25%
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
To read newspaper To read magazine To watch video clips To listen to radio
articles articles stations

The internet is used to consume other media content, blurring the boundaries between them.
Source: I-Level/IAB/RAB Media Conjunction Study

What’s more, they don’t just consume media, they also produce it. One third of

14 to 21-year-olds have created online content.12

These factors are indicative of a seismic shift in the

way in which young people consumer media. They

mix and blend, surf channels and create their own

because their relationship with media is active rather

Time Magazine Person of the year is YOU, “for
11
EIAA Mediascope research report
seizing the reins of the global media”
http://advertising.microsoft.com/uk/ResearchLibrary/ResearchLibrary.aspx?Adv_ResearchReportID=218
12
Guardian / ICM Poll
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1586639,00.html#article_continue#article_continue

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than passive. For the first time in history, a generation is in control of how it

experiences ideas and they are constructing their own mediascapes, individually

and together. The needs of humanity remain the same but they are combined

with entirely new behaviours; we are “running with the rapid feet of new

technology, yet carrying the same ancient and unpredictable human heart.”13

13
Convergence Marketing: Strategies for Reaching the New Hybrid Consumer, YorramWind and
Vijay Mahajan, Pg XIII

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1.2 The digital divide

In which we argue that the shift to active idea consumption is a discontinuity and

meet the Massive Passives

In 2001, a challenge issued to the American educational system introduced us to

Digital Immigrants and Natives:

Today's students have not just changed incrementally from

those of the past, nor simply changed their slang, clothes,

body adornments, or styles, as has happened between

generations previously. A really big discontinuity has taken

place. One might even call it a quot;singularityquot; - an event which

changes things so fundamentally that there is absolutely no

going back. This so-called quot;singularityquot; is the arrival and rapid

dissemination of digital technology in the last decades of the

20th century.14

Interactive communication technologies have fundamentally altered the way in

which thinking patterns developed in the generation born since their widespread

14
Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, Mark Pensky, from On the Horizon, NBC University Press
http://www.twitchspeed.com/site/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-
%20Part1.htm

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adoption. Rupert Murdoch popularised these terms when he used them as the

basis of a speech:

”A new generation of media consumers has risen, demanding

content when they want it, how they want it, and very much

as they want it.”15

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lynetter/322112273/

When looking to the future, we need to consider how the digital generation

responds to ideas and what the nature of the paradigm shift that has occurred is.

However, for the medium term, the communication industry needs to consider

the fact that there is a now bimodal consumer base. For some we need to

consider the brave new quot;world of platform-agnostic content [and the] fluid

15
Speech by Rupert Murdoch to the American Society of Newspaper Editors
http://www.newscorp.com/news/news_247.html

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mobility of media experiences”16 but the majority will continue to operate much

as they ever have. Having grown up with an essentially passive relationship with

media, the shift to becoming an active consumer of ideas is neither likely nor

desirable.

So when planning for mass market brands today, we need to keep the Massive

Passives in mind, but we shall leave them here as a remnant of the present and

continue our journey in the future.

A segmentation of the bimodal base for media consumption, from the IBM report
The end of TV as we know it: A future industry perspective, showing the slight shift towards controlling their own
media experience that the Massive Passives, consumers who have grown up in a passive media culture and have
a primarily passive relationship with it, are projected to make by 2012. It is important to note that they will not
reach levels of control over their own media experiences that the younger generation have already achieved by
2005.

16
The end of TV as we know it: A future industry perspective, http://www-
935.ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/ibvstudy/imc/a1023172?cntxt=a1000062&re=endoftv

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2. The new media

In which we establish that a medium is a vector for ideas and suggest that

interactive is different

The adoption of digital technology in the late twentieth century triggered a

number of rapid changes in the nature of media, but before we begin to look at

them we need to agree on what a medium is.

As with a great deal of the key terminology of commercial communications

[brand being the other major culprit, which we will look at later], a medium is a

poorly defined concept. This is partially due to the narrowing of its meaning that

came from the appellation of media agencies, which unconsciously began to

establish the idea that media referred to the five traditional broadcast channels

of brand communication; partially due to confusion with the broader concept of

the media and probably in some measure due to confusion over the word being

in the nominative plural [which we must assume is what led to a debate entitled

The Battle of the Mediums at the Media 360 conference in 2005. No one

channelled the dead. Magazines won].

For our purposes, a medium can be considered a technology for storing or

transmitting ideas – these are principally made up of language, text, sound and

audiovisual imagery, although increasingly diverse iterations of these vectors are

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beginning to develop – ask yourself if a game or an event sits comfortably in

these categories?

Hyper-fragmentation was the first effect of digitisation. It’s been discussed

extensively before and so we shan’t dwell on it, but it is important to consider as

it begins the journey towards consumers controlling their experience of ideas:

fragmentation leads to choice and choice requires volition and action.

Media fragmentation since 1700. Numbers of available media channels on the vertical axis is plotted against
time on the horizontal. We can clearly see the rate of fragmentation accelerating to an almost vertical incline as
digitisation increases the available bandwidth of media until it is virtually limitless.
Source: Millward Brown

With the emergence of interaction, a host of new cultural behaviours began to

develop that changed the way people dealt with ideas – media changed from

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being passive to being active. Once ordinary people were able to take control of

the means of production and distribution, what had once been the mass media

became the media of the masses.

The important aspects to consider when looking at the media landscape are the

behaviours it engenders, not the technologies themselves. There are distinct

behaviours, changes in the way ideas are consumed, that have been brought

about by these technologies.

In order to demonstrate how the changes

have in turn changed how ideas are

consumed and propagated, we need to

establish how ideas worked in a pre-digital

culture. We need to understand what

communication is, what made ideas

successful before, how this applies to

brands, and then look at how this has

changed since the filing system Tim UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Tim Berners-
Lee, inventor of the world wide web.
Berners-Lee invented changed the world.

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3. Communication is persuasion

In which we suggest that all communication is persuasion

“Go ye...into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature”17

The communications industry concerns itself with a specific subset of

communication. Communication in its broadest sense can be defined as any

means by which “one mind may affect another.”18 This covers language, art, and

all human behaviour.

Commercial communication can be described as the “dispersion of persuasive

symbols in order to manage mass opinion”.19 However, this persuasion element

is in fact embedded in the notion of communication.

Humans have an inbuilt desire to spread their own ideas. There are compelling

anthropological reasons for this. We pass on our ideas in order “to create people

whose minds think like ours”20 because this delivers an evolutionary advantage:

there is safety in numbers.

17
Mark 16;15
18
Recent Contributions to the Mathematical Theory of Communications, Warren Weaver
19
Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication, John Durham Peters, P.11
20
Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert, Page 215

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Any time we communicate anything to anyone, we are attempting to change the

way their brains operate – attempting to change the way they see the world so

that their view of it more closely resembles our own. Almost every assertion –

from the abstract notion of a deity to giving someone directions – attempts to

harmonise the receiver’s beliefs about the world with the transmitter’s.

All communication could therefore be understood as persuasion, rendering the

idea of ‘hidden persuaders’21 either nonsensical or absolute, depending on your

point of view. Even when stating a fact, you are attempting to make someone

believe you. Every communication interaction is structured to optimise its

persuasiveness – the form, language and structure of this paper is a specific

attempt to make you, the reader, agree with the ideas that are being proposed –

and that structure needs to be tailored to the audience:

quot;If you wish to persuade me, you must think my thoughts, feel my

feelings, and speak my words.quot;22

If we are to understand how to successfully persuade in the future we need to

think the thoughts and speak the words of the young, but first we need to

establish a criterion of success and then anaylse what has allowed ideas in the

past to become successful, in order to then demonstrate how this is changing.

21
The Hidden Persuaders, Vance Packard
22
Cicero, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicero

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4. Ideas

In which we look at what ideas are and establish what success is

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

Turns them into shapes, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name23

Ideas are specific thoughts triggered in the mind, the desired product of any

communication interaction. Due to the objective of commercial communications

– to influence mass behaviour, usually purchase behaviour - the sort of

successful ideas we need to understand are ones that establish themselves firmly

into the collective consciousness, propagate themselves and influence behaviour

as they go.

The oldest and most successful idea in history provides a perfect example of how

ideas worked in a linguistic culture. The principle of reciprocity, also known as

The Golden Rule, is a fundamental moral principle found in all major religions

and cultures in almost exactly the same form:

“Treat others as you would like to be treated.”24

23
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare
24
This maxim is often attributed to Jesus Christ but is in fact much older, recorded at least as far back as
500BC in the Analects of Confucius, Chapter 15, Verse 23

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Its prevalence is a clear indication of its hold

on the collective and, as the foundation

underlying every major religion, it is hard to

envisage a more potent agent of behavioural

change.

Like many of the ideas that have stuck 25 for

thousands of years, The Golden Rule is

aphoristic. Proverbs are the oldest class of

successful ideas, nuggets of wisdom that

transcend centuries and cultures: versions of

the proverb “where’s there’s smoke, there’s

fire” have appeared in more than 55

languages. 26 The success of these ideas is
The Golden Rule is the founding
principle of all major world religions
driven partially by function and partially by form. and is expressed in almost the same
form in each

25
The middle section of The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell is called “The Stickiness Factor” - ideas
that stick are more likely to propagate and effect change, although Gladwell never examines what makes
ideas sticky as this is beyond the scope of his epidemiological analysis of culture.
26
Made to Stick, Chip Heath & Dan Heath, Pg 12

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4.1 Choice paralysis

In which we see that the function of successful ideas is to save us from decisions

Choice is paralysing. We believe that we want the freedom to make our own

decisions but giving us a choice makes us anxious and leads to seemingly

counter-intuitive behaviour.

One psychological experiment gave students the choice between attending a

lecture by an author they admire, who is only visiting for one evening, or going

to the library to study: 21% decided to study. Suppose instead there were three

options:

1. Attend the lecture.

2. Go to the library.

3. Watch a film you want to see that is only on for one evening.

When a different group of students were given these choices, 40% elected to

study – double the number who did before. Giving students two good

alternatives to studying, rather than one, paradoxically makes them less likely to

choose either.27 This effect has also been observed at the point of purchase. A

2000 supermarket study involving choice of jams showed that although more

shoppers were attracted by 24 varieties of jams in one stand, only 3% of them

27
Made to Stick, Chip Heath and Dan Heath

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bought any of the jams displayed. On the other hand, 30% of the shoppers who

stopped by the stand that offered only 6 varieties of jams bought some.28

The supermarket shelf is a source of great choice and, therefore, anxiety

Proverbs are successful ideas because they are helpful in guiding decisions.

Whilst expressed simply, they contain complex ideas that function as heuristic

devices for situational decisions. The Golden Rule is so profound it can influence

a lifetime of behaviour. It is compact enough to be sticky but meaningful enough

to make a difference.

At the supermarket, brands perform the same function.

28
Iyengar, S. S. quot;Choice and Its Discontent,quot; Hermes,
http://opus1journal.org/others/killerapps/paralysis.html

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4.2 The role of brands

In which we challenge the myth of simplicity

“Things should be made as simple as possible -- but no simpler.”29

There is an accepted notion that communication must be simple. This idea is

reductive and misleading. Whilst proverbs have simple forms, they contain

complex ideas. Cervantes called them “short sentences drawn from long

experience” 30 , a description that equally applies to a well honed brand

proposition.

The myth of simplicity has led us inexorably to Lord Saatchi’s One Word Equity

concept of brand positioning. In 2006 he proposed that in this world of

fragmentation and clutter, brands had to be honed down to a single point, a

single word. A single word without context is both too open to interpretation and

too narrow to be meaningful. Brands have never been simple.

A proverb simplifies choice, is expressed simply but contains complex ideas that

build on what people already know [in the case of the Golden Rule, it relies on

someone knowing how it feels to be treated themselves]. By leveraging lower

level cognitive schemas, they can express higher level ones succinctly. When

29
Albert Einstein
30
http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Discourse/Proverbs/Definitions.html

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expressed abstractly, as in the proverb “A bird in the hand is worth two in the

bush”, they function as generative metaphors, a term used to describe

metaphors that generate “new perceptions, explanations and inventions”.

Similarly, brands are ideas that simplify choices, compress complexity and build

on what consumers already know. They are traditionally compact and abstract,

taking complex notions and packing them down; side-stepping into other

territories to make them more tangible, they enable people to avoid making

decisions from first principles and they take on symbolic associations that allow

us to employ them in the construction of our own identity.

Brands still need to tap into the “ancient and unpredictable human heart”,

providing the same successful functions all the way up Maslow’s hierarchy but

the form in which they will need to iterate in the future will have to change,

because of the way in which the new active consumer consumes ideas through

media.

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5. Ideas made flesh

In which we analyse the form of ideas and determine how this has changed over
time

We have established the underlying function that successful ideas, proverb or

brand, share. However, the forms in which these ideas are communicated are

very different. Aphorisms are specific expressions, ideally suited to propagation

by word of mouth in pre-literate cultures and on into today by the same

mechanism. They are dense generative metaphors, phrased in order to optimise

storage in the mind and spoken transmission – having a consistent and

mellifluous form, they are Homer’s “winged words”, flying from one person to

another.

The form successful ideas take is delineated by the dominant communication

technologies of the age.

Writing and the printing press enabled significantly more complex ideas to

propagate across time and space, but they are still relatively inefficient

technologies for storage and retrieval.

The development of mass media heralded the Golden Age of brands and the

forms that developed then are the forms we still recognise today –

advertisements.

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If a brand proposition is a proverb, an advertisement is a parable: it applies

narrative or abstraction, or both, as devices to bring ideas to life in a memorable

way.

Print advertising developed first as long form copy. Classic print ads, such as

Lemon, rely on body copy to communicate.

However, it is not solely the medium itself

that dictates the form ideas need to take; it is

the context in which they operate.

Thus, following the advent of audio and then

audiovisual mass media, print ads began to

evolve to keep in line with the dominant

modes of idea transmission. Print advertisements now more often resemble

posters, reflecting the reduced levels of attention available. Indeed, the same

executions are often used for both, with long copy reserved for direct response

advertising.

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Stella Artois “Street”, used both in press and outdoor advertising

The form is also delineated by the relative scarcity of the vector – commercial

broadcast time is limited and thus ideas are packaged into 30 second sound bites

on radio and television.

The arrival of the Internet as a dominant communication technology thus effects

not just how ideas are made flesh online, but also how all other channels will be

used. The relative scarcity of media through which to communicate ideas has

begun to vanish and we have an extraordinarily efficient way to store, access

and transmit ideas. Rather than media, in the digital world attention is the scarce

commodity.31 Correspondingly, the way in which people interact with ideas has

undergone a transformation.

31
The Attention Economy, Wired Magazine http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.12/es_attention.html

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Just as the Internet allowed retailers to service the long tail of retail by removing

the relative scarcity of shelf space, so it will allow us to develop the “long tail of

brand-building,”32 creating more complex brand ideas that earn attention, rather

than interrupting it.

“The long tail of the brand. The primary proposition stills draws the hits but lack of scarcity of media and low distribution costs enable
33
the brand to connect every niche idea with its own set of loyal consumers”

32
The Elongating Tail of Brand Communication, Mohammed Iqbal, O&M
33
Ibid.

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6. Traits of the emerging media landscape

In which we propose the new characteristics of successful ideas

The emerging media landscape, the context in which ideas exist, is qualitatively

different from what has gone before because it is intrinsically active. Brought up

online, the young naturally construct their own paths through media, branching

hypertextually34 from site to site. It follows, therefore, that the future of brands

is intrinsically participative. There are some additional key characteristics that will

define the form of ideas, and thus brands, in the future:

Convergent: every idea, image, story, brand and relationship will play
•

itself out across the broadest range of channels, requiring a corresponding

increase in the complexity of brand narratives, tapping the long tail of the

brand.

Recombinant: “The remix is the very nature of the digital”35. Normalised
•

via Ctrl C and Ctrl V, a generation has emerged that naturally treat ideas

as themselves recombinant, and as inputs to further remixing.

34
In computing, hypertext is a user interface paradigm for displaying documents which, according to an
early definition (Nelson 1970), quot;branch or perform on request.quot; The most frequently discussed form of
hypertext document contains automated cross-references to other documents called hyperlinks. Selecting a
hyperlink causes the computer to display the linked document within a very short period of time.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertextuality
35
William Gibson, author of Neuromancer,

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Networked: media technologies are increasingly interconnected, allowing
•

the effortless flow of content from person to person, or increasingly from

many to many, replacing the sender / receiver mainstream media model

of old.

Additionally, the internet has triggered a dismantling of the notion of authority

that is also pertinent to the future of brands. The internet disrupts the notion of

the expert, since all

information is now

accessible to all, and

the increased

transparency it has

brought about has

been accompanied by

an erosion of trust in

traditional authorities, http://www.flickr.com/photos/lynetter/153715927/

such as government, corporations and traditional media, with a corresponding

rise in trust in other people.36 Thus, traditional singular authorities have been

displaced by the authority of the collective.

36
“The Edelman Trust Barometer has shown consistent decline in traditional authority. The 2007 edition
showed that 44% trust conversations with friends and peers while 33% trust articles in newspapers.

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Further, the advent of interactive communication technologies such as video

games has led to a gradual increase in the explicit complexity of ideas embraced

by the young.37

In order to create ideas that leverage these new characteristics, we need a new

model for communications planning in a converged culture.

37
Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter,
Stephen Johnson

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7. Transmedia planning

In which we propose a new model for communications planning and use it as a
live example of a successful idea

In October last year, I wrote a post on my blog38 that outlined a new model for

communication planning. The idea was built upon the concept of transmedia

narratives proposed in Convergence Culture39 combined with Johnson’s

complexity arguments. An edited version of that initial post follows.

Jenkins describes The Matrix as a transmedia narrative - a story that unfolds

across different platforms.

38
http://farisyakob.typepad.com/blog/2006/10/transmedia_plan.html
39
Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, Henry Jenkins

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Rather than there being a film narrative that has spin offs, key elements of The

Matrix story are in the video game, the animations, the comic books. He argues

that few consumers will be able to dedicate the time required to get the whole

picture, which is why transmedia storytelling drives the formation of knowledge

communities - communities that share information – and triggers word of mouth.

Since there are so many elements to the story, every member of the community

is likely to have something to share, some social currency to trade, so

communities form and information is passed around the network.

How then might brands operate in this convergence culture?

The model that has held the industry's collective imagination for the last few

years is media neutral planning. In essence, this is the belief that we should

develop a single organising thought that iterates itself across any touch point -

this was a reaction against previous models of integration that were often simply

the dilution of a television idea across other channels that it wasn't suited to.

- 35 -

Media Neutral Planning then looks like this:

The point is that there is one idea being expressed in different channels. This is

believed to be more effective as there are multiple encodings of the same idea,

which reinforces the impact on the consumer.

Now let's consider transmedia planning. In this model, there would be an

evolving non-linear brand narrative. Different channels could be used to

communicate different, self-contained elements of the brand narrative that build

- 36 -

to create a larger brand world. Consumers then pull different parts of the story

together themselves.

The beauty of this is that it is designed to generate brand communities, in the

same way that The Matrix generates knowledge communities, as consumers

come together to share elements of the brand. It generates endogenous word of

mouth40 by giving people something to talk about.

So transmedia planning looks like this:

Alternate reality games are early examples of this form of communication. While

some brands currently lack the depth that this model requires I think that in a

40
In Herd, Mark Earls makes the distinction between endogenous word of mouth, which naturally occurs
within the system, and exogenous word of mouth, which is when brands attempt to artificially cultivate
buzz using agents, such as P&G’s Tremor network.

- 37 -

convergence culture, this is how converged brands will have to engage with a

new kind of active media consumer. [End of Post]

The idea was then picked up by another blogger, who built on the initial post in a

follow up post that developed the idea further and into different territories.41

From here it gathered momentum and spread among a defined audience – the

communication industry. The original post was voted Post of the Month42 and

was covered by dozens of blogs from around the world. The idea was presented

at the APG Battle of Big Thinking, where it began to evolve into a separate

Propagation
strand called

Planning, 43 based on the second

half of the idea about tapping into

consumers who are actively

passing on brand messaging to

each other. It was featured in a

Campaign magazine article, and

has since been written about in the

trade press as far away as India. India's leading
advertising and marketing portal, AgencyFaqs.com
http://www.agencyfaqs.com/news/stories/2007/03/02/17203.html

41
Transmedia Planning and Brand Communities, Jason Oke, Vice President, Strategy, Leo Burnett,
Toronto, on Fruits of the Imagination http://lbtoronto.typepad.com/lbto/2006/10/transmedia_plan.html
42
http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2006/11/faris_wins.html
43
http://theapg.typepad.com/battleofbigthinking/2006/10/thoughts_from_i.html

- 38 -

At the time of writing there were nearly 1000 separate incidences of the

expression “transmedia planning” found on Google, a term that did not exist

before the initial post.

Online mentions of “transmedia planning” total almost 1000, as tracked by Google

The author of Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins, Director of Comparative

Media Studies at MIT, then picked up the idea and posted about it on his blog,44

where he further developed it:

Will transmedia planning make a lasting contribution to

contemporary marketing theory? It's too early to say. As an author,

I am delighted to see some of my ideas are generating such

discussion. As someone interested in marketing my own intellectual

property, these discussions are themselves a kind of transmedia

branding: after all, the more people talk about my book, the more

people are likely to buy it. I don't have to control the conversation
44
http://www.henryjenkins.org/2006/12/how_transmedia_storytelling_be.html

- 39 -

to benefit from their interest in my product. The key is to produce

something that both pulls people together and gives them

something to do. In that regard, the book may have had greater

impact on the discussions of branding because I didn't fill in all of

the links between branding and transmedia entertainment, leaving

the blogosphere something to puzzle through together.

Agencies have begun to implement the idea for clients, and Mark Earls

has asked to incorporate it into a forthcoming MRS paper.45

Transmedia planning is being consciously
implemented by agencies around the
world

45
Email to the author, dated 16/01/07

- 40 -

7.1 An audit

In which we validate the new characteristics of successful ideas

Transmedia planning has successfully propagated itself and elicited behavioural

change. An analysis of the idea will help substantiate the proposition that the

characteristics of the emerging communication technologies define the form of

successful ideas.

The idea is convergent – whilst initially iterated in one channel and one place, it

has spread into print and presentation, and the idea itself concerns convergence.

It is openly recombinant – it is assembled from other ideas, which lend it

credence by opening up the authority from the individual to the collective.

Further it has been contributed to, modulated and passed on by interested

parties. In a digital culture, “ideas need other ideas to tell them what they

mean.” 46

It is networked – its propagation relied in the first instance on a single to some

transmission, from which additional nodes rebroadcast it out further and further

into their networks. By putting the diagrams up and allowing them to be

46
The Future Just Happened, Michael Lewis Pg. 143

- 41 -

repurposed under a creative commons license,47 the idea gave people the tools

to easily propagate it.48

Blog posts that use the diagram to
propagate the idea…even if they don’t
necessarily agree with it.

47
The Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative
work available for others legally to build upon and share. The organization has released several copyright
licenses known as Creative Commons licenses. These licenses, depending on the one chosen, restrict only
certain rights (or none) of the work.
48
Cuttings above can be found at the following URLS:
http://www.influxinsights.com/servlet/ShowComments?id=1007 ,
http://whistlethroughyourcomb.blogspot.com/2006/10/transmedia-and-knowledge-economies.html ,
http://interactivemarketingtrends.blogspot.com/2006/11/transmedia-planning-my-arse.html

- 42 -

We can hone our success criteria into a list based on the characteristics of

participatory ideas:

1] Converged – or transmedia - ideas that spread complex concepts across

channels in the same way the young consume media, not reiterating the same

thing endlessly in different ways. Narratives such as this are interesting enough

that consumers reach out towards them, and thus they don’t rely on interruption

media, though they may use it as a channel.

2] Recombinant and iterative – both in content, drawing on established ideas,

and in form, allowing recipients of the idea to modulate it and pass it on. To use

Jenkins’ words, it “pulls people together and gives them something to do”

because it isn’t a complete text - there are spaces it opens that others can

explore. By relaxing control, individuals can modulate the form of the message

and therefore have a vested interest in its propagation.

- 43 -

Lynette Webb, Futures Director of Isobar, picked up the Jenkins comment on transmedia planning
and turned into a presentation slide.
http://blog.futurelab.net/2006/12/key_is_to_produce_something_th.html

3] Networked and collective – reaching into the collective for authority, not

relying on single authorial voice, and empowering the collective to propagate the

idea further, using their own media. “The less control a company has over its

marketing message, the greater its credibility.”49

49
The Economist, 31.05.05

- 44 -

7.2 Ideas from the future

In which we highlight some examples that leverage these characteristics

A number of successful brand ideas of recent times can be seen to exhibit some

or all of these characteristics.

Alternate reality games, like Audi’s Art of Heist and Sega’s Beta7 are transmedia

ideas – they break down the story into different elements and push them out

into different channels. The Mini Robot created a form of interactive fiction to

kick start the development of an urban legend. Based on a character named

Colin Mayhew who, hoping to make roadways safer, starts building a humanoid

robot from parts of MINI Coopers, and was brought to life through films, via a

fictional book launch, through a web ring of sites that seemed to validate Mr

Mayhew’s existence, conspiracy sites countering the story, press insertions, and

finally through consumer generated sites around which communities developed

to piece the story together.

- 45 -

Crispin Porter & Bogusky’s Mini Robot Campaign was an interactive transmedia narrative

The rise of the recombinant can be seen in ideas such as Trailer Trashing, re-

editing film trailers to change the nature of the plot, and Web 2.0, the

foundation of which is the atomisation of data and open standards that allows

users to build ideas on top of others, mashing up their own data into Google

Maps, for example.

Brands have also embraced the remix. Old Spice gave consumers the tools to

remix one of their commercials50, and Mountain Dew produced a viral teaching

you how to make your own mash ups51.

50
http://www.whensheshot.com/
51
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4uyN5rQbbU

- 46 -

www.whensheshot.com allows users to remix an Old Spice ad, utilising a sequencer to arrange film
and sound clips, and then send it on.

Seeking out collective authority is perhaps the most salient and discussed

development in brand communication this year – it’s called User Generated

Content and is currently being leveraged by brands including C4, Coca-Cola,

Chevy, Sony Pictures and pretty much everyone else.

Whether it’s Dove asking their consumer to make their next ad 52 or Nokia

seeding new handsets to bloggers53, this activity is an attempt to overcome the

erosion of trust in conventional, singular authorities by reaching out to the

collective for their blessing, and leveraging the media of the masses in the

52
http://www.dovecreamoil.com/
53
http://blog.experiencecurve.com/archives/nokia-sending-phones-to-bloggers

- 47 -

process. They are no longer a target audience; they are our ‘partners in

communication’54.

Intermediaries have already sprung to leverage this collective creativity in a commercial way.

Zooppa is a new company that handles live briefs for clients and opens them up to consumers.

www.zooppa.com

54
Propagation Planning, Ivan Pollard, Campaign Article

- 48 -

7.3 Sony Bravia – A future brand case study

In which we demonstrate how this new model has been put into practice

This thinking has already begun to be implemented within Naked, most recently

on the campaign surrounding the launch of the Sony Bravia television

commercial, Paint. Working with a team consisting of clients, Fallon, Freud, Tonic

and OMD we carefully planned, orchestrated and executed a campaign to turn

the television commercial into a transmedia idea, leveraging the power of the

collective and the recombinant.

Different channels were loaded with different information and the process of

making the film was opened up to interested parties in a way that added intrigue

to the commercial.

- 49 -

News of the director was leaked to the press, as was the location of the shoot to

the local media.

Press clippings of information leaked in advance of the shoot

People were thus invited to participate from the outset, attending the shoot,

capturing it on cameras and camera phones, footage which then went straight

onto Flickr and Youtube, two of the pre-eminent propagation platforms.

Consumer shots of the filming of the Paint commercial were posted to photo sharing site Flickr.
http://flickr.com/photos/53786020@N00/

- 50 -

By building a transmedia narrative around the commercial, and dripping

developments online, a specific attempt was made to engage people in “an open

and transparent conversation with the brand.” 55 Bloggers responded well and

built up anticipation for the ad.

Numerous blogs picked up on the leaked material and used it as the basis for discussions

The film was first released online and then screened on television, consciously

catering to the differing needs of youth and the Massive Passives. Online, the

assets of the film were made available for remixing. The campaign was

transmedia, recombinant and collective. But was it successful?

55
David Patton, Senior VP Marketing, Sony CE Europe

- 51 -

7.4 New metrics

In which we propose new behavioural diagnostic metrics to evaluate the success

of new ideas

In order to determine the success of these new types of ideas, we need to create

some new metrics to add into the traditional basket. There are two classes of

measures tracked in relation to communications: evaluative and diagnostic.

Ultimately, all measure of success need to demonstrate a return on marketing

investment to the bottom line. However, it has been recognised that “advertising

payoffs can seldom be demonstrated in the short term.” 56 The value of

marketing is only accurately reflected when it is considered an “investment in the

long-term health of the brand”.57

Most measures tracked by agencies are diagnostics that are confused with

evaluative measures. Since the total contribution marketing makes cannot be

demonstrated in the short term, even with regression analysis to help untangle

the solus effect on sales, advertisers began to analyse intermediate measures to

understand what effect communication was having on the mental brand equity

of consumers, as this can give “indications as to the future profit trends”58 and

provide inputs into strategy, unpicking how communication shifts perceptions

56
Is your Advertising Working? C McDonald P.8
57
Ibid.
58
Measuring Brands and their Performance, CIM
http://www.cim.co.uk/mediastore/Brand_eGuides/eGuide7.pdf

- 52 -

that lead to changes in purchasing behaviour. The confusion arises when

objectives are confused with diagnostics – shifts in these “magic numbers” 59

become stated objectives.

Cognitive measures tracked by survey all suffer the same flaws: they require

consumers to tell us what they think and they analyse individuals and aggregate

data to give an overall picture. Even ignoring that “the gulf between the

information we publicly proclaim and the information we know to be true is often

vast”60, attitudes can only be used to “predict behavioural intentions, rather than

actual behaviour.” 61 Perhaps more importantly, “individual tendencies do not

necessarily extrapolate to group behaviour.”62

Studies have shown that image measures tend to correlate to previous rather

than future behaviour. Whilst they may give an indication of predisposition, they

ignore what may be the most important drivers of purchase decisions: collective

perceptions. Behavioural economics indicates key drivers of purchasing include

other people’s behaviour - people do things by copying others. 63 Earls has

posited that “the most important characteristic of mankind is that of a herd

animal.”64

59
Marketing Payback, (Demonstrating Success), R Shaw & D Merrick
60
Freakonomics, Levitt and Dubner, P. 84
61
Belief, Attitude, Intention, and Behavior: An Introduction to Theory and Research, Fishbein, M., &
Ajzen
62
Critical Mass, Philip Ball, P. 395
63
Behavioural Economics, New Economics Foundation
64
Advertising to the Herd, Mark Earls

- 53 -

It has been shown that a single word-of-mouth interaction can overthrow the

entirety of pre-existing brand effect on purchase intention.65 Brands do not only

influence consumers directly but by introducing a “persuasive influence into the

network”66: the more virulent the brand, the greater the number of transmissions,

which is a measure of collective brand salience. This transmission is often the

result of certain individuals, known as “super-spreaders.”67

68

In an age when half of all consumers actively avoid advertising,69 another newly

relevant measure is approaches to the brand or accessions.70

65
Decision Watch UK, MRS Conference Paper, P. 6: “Gary had been considering purchasing a Toyota
Rav 4 and liked both the look and styling. The price was also within his budget. However, just before
purchasing he saw a vague acquaintance of his driving one in the village and asked him how it was, Gary
said “ apparently he wasn’t that happy so I went off the idea” The extraordinary power of WOM became
obvious”
66
God, Galileo and Google, W Collin, Campaign supplement
67
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assortative_mixing
68
Chart from Connected Marketing: The Viral, Buzz and Word of Mouth Revolution, Elsevier, 2005
69
54% of consumers agreed that they try to resist being exposed to or even paying attention to marketing
and advertising, 69% said that they are interested in products that enable them to block, skip or opt out of
being exposed to marketing and advertising, Source: Yankelovich Omniplus.
http://www.magazine.org/Advertising_and_PIB/engagementguide.pdf
70
the act of coming near; approach. http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=accession

- 54 -

The emergence of web analytic tools enables agencies to measure both

transmissions and accessions– not all occur online but effects measured on the

web aren’t restricted to it. Google is a “barometer of cultural interest” 71 and

research has shown that online transmissions are a powerful influencer of brand

perceptions and purchase behaviour.72

Returning to the Bravia example, we can utilise a basket of metrics to determine

its success. Blogpulse73 enables us to track transmissions:

Blogpulse shows a clear spike in conversations about Sony Bravia during the key month of the
campaign.

71
What happened when Honda started asking questions? IPA Effectiveness Award Gold, 2004, Stuart
Smith
72
40 million US consumers changed their minds about brands as a result of online information. 60% of
those consumers then switched brand at purchase, whether that purchase had been made online or offline.
Source: Dieringer Group: American Interactive Consumer Survey
73
www.blogpulse.com is a tool for tracking the content of weblog posts. Each post that contains the
specified brand or term is considered a transmission.

- 55 -

Google Trends74 enables us to track accessions75:

Google Trends shows a similar surge in accessions over the campaign period

Opinmind76 shows that transmissions were overwhelmingly favourable - more so

than mentions for “Sony”:

74
www.google.co.uk/trends
75
Search engines are one of the key channels through which consumers seek out brands. As Google
dominates the search market, tracking the number of Google searches gives a clear metric to establish
trends in accessions.
76
www.opinmind.com, a tool that measures mentions of the brand in proximity to positive or negative
value statements and shows the results as a percentage split.

- 56 -

In addition there were:

168 separate uploads on YouTube
!

19 remixes
!

Hundreds of thousands of online views77
!

655,000 web mentions78
!

49,744 links to the Bravia-Advert site
!

So the communication has driven a substantial number of positive transmissions

and accessions, it was modulated and propagated by the collective – but did this

translate into financial return?

“Strong sales of BRAVIA LCD TVs contributed to the TV business as a whole

being profitable for the quarter.”79

Sony’s share price has risen by 40% since the campaign began.80

77
It is difficult to arrive at a complete number as the film has been posted multiple times on dozens of
video sharing sites. The most popular versions on Youtube have received well 100,000 views each.
78
Tracked on Google “Sony Bravia Paint”
79
Q3 FY 2006, ending 31st December 2006. Results available here
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/financial/fr/viewer/06q3/
80
Share price risen from approx $37 at campaign launch to $53 now. Whilst share price responds to any
one of an infinite number of influences, the Bravia campaign was the highest profile Sony communication
campaign in that period. http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=SNE&t=1y&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=

- 57 -

By measures of both effect and effectiveness, the campaign has generated a

positive return in short term sales, collective brand salience, favourability and

shareholder value.

- 58 -

8. The future of the industry

In which we propose a new model for an ideas agency

An industry that developed in the age of passive idea consumption will need to

undergo a similarly seismic shift in order to successfully connect brands to active

idea consumers.

The agency of the future will need to be built around the value of ideas. Whilst

we have always dealt in ideas, “we have allowed the emphasis, the value, and

the fundamental business model of our industry today, to shift away from ideas

and to focus predominantly on execution.”81

The new agency model needs to move the value away from execution and back

to ideas. This will require us firstly to find new ways to value and monetize the

intellectual property we produce and secondly to outsource the production of

these ideas. This will refocus agencies on their core product – ideas – and allow

us to respond to the rapidly changing communication technologies by recruiting

experts in any field.

Increasingly, this will shift how we work towards the model of film making,

constructing bespoke teams to solve client problems, with ideas companies at

81
Change the Model, Change the World, Keynote Speech, Future Marketing Summit, 2007, Scott Goodson,
Founder and Chairman, StrawberryFrog

- 59 -

the heart of a hub and spokes model, such as the one proposed by Scott

Goodson at the Future Marketing Summit:

A ‘hub and spokes’ model, with partner suppliers working around a core idea company

The process needs to be collaborative and iterative at every stage. Ideas don’t

flow in one direction, and suppliers will be able to advise agencies on what is

possible and what will work in their fields. An understanding of the active mode

of idea consumption will have to underpin the development of these ideas, as

they accommodate complexity, tap into the long tail of the brand, and equip

themselves with propagation mechanisms.

- 60 -

The rate of change in communication technologies is going to increase over time

and the only way for agencies to keep up is to outsource production to

specialists, just as production companies currently make films.

Futurology Group What’s Next plots the future of innovation. From products that are almost a
commercial reality, such as electronic ink, to the far off emergence of replicators and web 4.0

Technology will continue to drive changes in the way ideas are communicated.

While the Passive Massive will remain with us for the medium term, the impact

of developments thus far will continue to spread. The impact of developments

just around the corner is difficult to imagine.

quot;We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and

underestimate the effect in the long run.quot;82

82
Roy Amara, past president of The Institute for the Future

- 61 -

9. The future is now

In which we entrust the future to you

As Gibson pointed out, the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.

Young people today have grown up with digital media and thus they have an

intrinsically participatory relationship with ideas. They need to be catered for

differently than the Massive Passives and transmedia planning is a new model for

creating ideas that will engage them. By looking at how young people are

consuming, remixing, producing and propagating ideas today we can chart how

brands will operate in the future and begin to change how we create ideas

accordingly.

Word Count: 6,988

- 62 -

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