contagious X

1. Social Change / xxx

2. Contagious is ten. Welcome...

3. 2 / 3
THE CONTAGIOUS DECADE
A Primer
Log off, lean in and pore over Katrina Dodd’s attempt
at imposing neatly alphabetised order on the chaos of
the Contagious zeitgeist.
WELCOME TO CONTAGIOUS X
Brands for the next decade
Application instructions for this special dose of the
magazine. Side effects may include broad inspiration,
brand bravery and a healthy dose of disdain for the
status quo.
STRENGTH STUDY / Disruption
By Emily Hare
Landscape How can brands make disruption work
while protecting themselves against challengers?
Brand Spotlight Tesla
Opinion Jonathan Mildenhall, CMO, Airbnb
CUT OUT AND KEEP
A brief history of (Contagious) time /
The ten commandments
A crunched-down illustration of the major tech, social
and business developments on one side and Contagious’
non-denominational lessons to live by on the other.
Hang it proudly.
STRENGTH STUDY / Purpose
By Lucy Aitken
Landscape What’s meaningful is magnetic,
and great brands understand their calling
Brand Spotlight Chipotle
Opinion Paul Polman, CEO, Unilever
STRENGTH STUDY / Design
By Ed White
Landscape From decoration to business imperative
Brand Spotlight Apple
Opinion Sue Siddall, partner, IDEO
WHAT WE GOT WRONG
To err is Contagious?
Our role as a handy instruction manual for the future isn’t
as easy as we make it look, ok? But we’re big enough to
admit a few of our mistakes…
STRENGTH STUDY / Experimentation
By Alex Jenkins
Landscape Test, measure and learn in
a rapidly-changing environment
Brand Spotlight Google
Opinion Sir Martin Sorrell, founder and
chief executive officer, WPP
STRENGTH STUDY / Services
By Patrick Jeffrey
Landscape Service design thinking has
radically reimagined marketing in the digital age
Brand Spotlight Uber
Opinion Russell Davies and Louise Downe,
director of strategy and service designer at
Government Digital Service
STRENGTH STUDY / Empowerment
By Arwa Mahdawi
Landscape The tool-makers shall inherit the earth
Brand Spotlight Safaricom
Opinion Ethan Zuckerman, director,
MIT Center for Civic Media
06
31
69
119
129
138
140
77
86
89
99
109
40
47
57
66
68
14
19
28
STRENGTH STUDY / Collaboration
By Georgia Malden
Landscape Better together? Partnerships characterise
today’s high-achieving brand landscape
Brand Spotlight LEGO
Opinion Blake Mycoskie, founder and chief shoe-giver, TOMS
STRENGTH STUDY / Culture
By Dan Southern
Landscape Company culture galvanises employees
and delights customers
Brand Spotlight Etsy
Opinion Dave Gray, author and consultant
FEATURE / Job title safari
As the marketing industry evolves, so does the taxonomy
of its strange and exotic creatures.
INDEX
The brands, companies and people showcased
in this special issue of Contagious.
SMALL BUT PERFECTLY FORMED
Little brands, big thinkers
In each of our past 20 issues, Contagious has
celebrated seven small companies hoping to change
the world. We take a look at some of our favourites
– and add a few more to the ranks.
STRENGTH STUDY / Publishing
By Chloe Markowicz
Landscape Brands evolve from being publicists
to publishers
Brand Spotlight Red Bull
Opinion Tyler Brûlé, editor in chief, Monocle
STRENGTH STUDY / Data
By Chris Barth
Landscape The fine art of surfacing signal from noise
Brand Spotlight IBM
Opinion Vikram Somaya, general manager of
WeatherFX, The Weather Company
FEATURE / The technology boneyard
Explosive digital development has its casualties. Will
Sansom considers those that became cautionary tales.
ANALYSIS / The case study cash-in
Contagious corners the hypothetical market by backing
our case study-featured brands. By Raakhi Chotai.
INSIDER IDEAS
Sex, drugs & Twitter
Will Sansom charts how the collision of celebrity life
and digital media is reshaping popular culture.
NEWS
Contagious brand ideas
From selfless selfies to innovative uses of Instagram
WILDFIRE
Stories plucked from the pop culture ether
AI employees, smart cities and invisibility cloaks
14 28 31 47 69 77 86 insert
CONTAGIOUS X
INSERT

4. Editorial / Ten Years Of Contagious 4 / 5
Contagious was born on the back of a beer mat in a Chelsea pub in
2004. It was a time of ferment in the marketing industry. Mobile was
beginning to get smart, social media was primed to explode and people’s
relationships with brands were becoming a whole lot more interactive.
New media and behaviours meant the audience had run ahead of the
advertiser, so we figured that the communications industry needed a
fresh guidance system to make sense of the immediate future.
Hence Contagious. We wanted to create a platform to explore alterna-
tive advertising ideas, assess the impact of emerging technologies and
champion a greater sense of purpose for brands. Having been part of the
marketing industry for 15 years we both believed the age of broadcast
and monologue could be displaced by an era in which brands provide
people with tools, services and experiences, and use their creative and
financial muscle to effect meaningful social change in the wider world.
This feeling is encapsulated in our name. Contagiousness is in the
stuff that people choose to care about and feel compelled to share. It’s
a spirit and a mindset that reaches beyond siloed disciplines, fusing
creativity and marketing, technology, design and behaviour.
The key landmarks and turning points of the past ten years are sketched
into our Contagious Timeline on page 32 . This magazine has witnessed
the business world’s most tumultuous and exhilarating epoch. The dom-
inant giants – Alibaba, Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter
– have mashed into the trends and movements that have unfolded since
2004: social media, apps, crowdsourcing, the sharing economy, data
explosion, wearable technology and corporate transparency.
But dramatic as this change has been, Contagious will always be
about the immediate future – what we refer to as the ‘first light of dawn’.
Not for us the crystal ball-gazing of those Delphic trend forecasters.
We have always been focused on a very practical future for marketers,
given root by advances that exist right now, today.
Infrastructure has always provided the catalytic stepping stones
for change. The 20th century was defined by mass media and
motors. For our generation, the internet and mobile have been
the new enablers. The next bridge, machine intelligence, is of
an entirely different magnitude and one that Contagious is looking
forward to charting.
Technology, in the shape of websites, search engines, navigational
aids and smartphones, already augments our intelligence. Those who are
better able to deploy such resources are already on a superior plane of
interaction with the modern world than those rare souls still tied to pencil
and paper. The second wave of machine intelligence will be even more
seismic, impacting on sectors far beyond marketing communications
and wider pop culture.
Artificial Intelligence, in all its various forms – from data manipulation
and decision-making, to virtual assistants, sentient robots and connected
devices – has the potential to transform every aspect of society: from
education, employment, health and leisure, to energy, transport, man-
ufacturing, banking and the future of governance.
For all the technological and creative wonder that Contagious loves
to celebrate, there’s no denying that the world has a legacy of ills to
contend with: the environment, wealth inequality, resource depletion,
and conflict being an immediate few.
It’s up to those with ideas, the next Brins and Musks, the thinkers, the
innovators and the inventors, to make themselves heard – and sooner
rather than later. Let’s hope that somewhere, somehow, those urgent
advances, those ground-breaking ideas that will define the next ten
years, are already finding form on some sweaty 3D printer in a bustling
lab, on a battered laptop in a student bedsit or even on a gleaming Mac
perched on the desk of a Contagious subscriber.
When this new dawn comes, Contagious will be watching…
Ten
Yearsof
Contagous
Paul Kemp-Robertson & Gee Thomson
Contagious founders

5. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of Contagious
we are offering 25% off all new subscriptions
Additionally, we’ll give an extra two digital logins with every subscription,
so that key members of your team can benefit from Contagious thinking too.
Place your order at tinyurl.com/contagiousx
Offer expires January 31st
2015.

6. Social Change / A-Z 6 / 7
The past ten years have been a glorious mash-up: evolution and
revolution in equal measure, a clumsy but exhilarating waltz into our
unevenly distributed, platform-agnostic and relentlessly accelerating
futures. Before we sally forth into a fitter, faster Unknown, a little orientation
seems in order: log off, lean in and pore over our attempt to impose neatly
alphabetised order on the chaos of the Contagious zeitgeist
By Katrina Dodd
B is for Broadband, benevolent
bearer of bandwidth, the better
to support the binge-viewing of
Breaking Bad. As a basic com-
ponent of our communication
infrastructure, broadband penetra-
tion has delivered benefits above
and beyond our basic old-school
telecoms needs. Described as a
fourth utility after water, heating
and electricity, in 2009 the World
Bank put it thus: ‘Broadband is
not just an infrastructure. It is a
general-purpose technology that
can fundamentally restructure
an economy.’ That was true even
before 2008 became the year of
bravado-and-bullshit-fuelled bank-
ing balls-ups, but possibly even
more necessary in its aftermath.
The letter B has also brought us
BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), an
alternative to clunking, employer-
issued tech; Bitcoin, an alternative
to clunking, centralised currency;
Beacons, a nascent alternative
to clunking, irrelevant marketing;
And BuzzFeed, an alternative to
clunking, text-heavy news and
entertainment (see ‘23 ways listi-
cles will improve your life’, below*).
*This article does not exist.
C is for Cats. Pictures of cats. Cat
memes. Cat videos. Really, though,
the rise of cats is simply the cute,
furry face of the rise of Content in
all its guises.
The creation, curation, circula-
tion and consumption of material
and messages is booming as the
tools of production and channels
of distribution become ever more
accessible. Simultaneously, how-
ever, attention is a resource in
effective decline, no matter how
diligent our multi-screen multi-
tasking becomes. Coming up with
content that can compete on merit
against everything else out there is
exactly as hard as it sounds, and
the brands that are doing it well
are few and far between.
Ten years ago, the ‘C-word’ was
Convergence; at the beginning of
Contagious it was hypothetical,
a talking point. Now we’re living
it: untold functionality and utility
is telescoped into devices that
are seldom beyond arm’s reach,
and the evolution of consumer
electronics continues to be fasci-
nating. Somehow, though, we don’t
seem to have any fewer gadgets:
the ‘Peak Stuff’ story of late 2011
may have been a false dawn. Peak
cats? Nowhere near.
Special mention to the Crowd:
some kind of ‘Many Hands Make
Light Work’ award seems appro-
priate, although more for contri-
butions to art and science than
to marketing. You shall all receive
one millionth of one percent of one
hand clapping. And the gong for
storage is metaphorically awarded
to the Cloud, even if, as the Daily
Mail recently clarified, it is ‘not an
actual cloud’.
E is for the era-defining
Economy, dragged down as
banking revealed itself to be
not so much a system as a sink-
hole, caving in under exponential
entropy and its own preposter-
ous lack of substance. It’s for
Ecosystems, slick, self-serving,
habit-forming, loyalty-locking
walled gardens of blissfully con-
sistent UX. It’s for Empower-
ment, especially in the rapidly
emerging nations (more MINT,
less BRIC) leapfrogging estab-
lished tech infrastructure and
cutting straight to the chase with
mobile. E is for Experience, a
new preoccupation throughout
this industry and beyond. For
Experimentation because we can,
and, more prosaically, for Email,
an era-defining communications
epidemic that even the Emoji has
yet to eclipse.
F is obviously for Facebook, not so much the social network of choice
as an internet-age equivalent of the phone directory: most of us are in it,
and if you’re not, it’s a bit of a statement. Undeniably useful (as sounding
board, stalking apparatus, as authentication/universal login), Facebook
has attained a degree of ubiquity that is now its best defence against
rival platforms. Wherever it happens, though, our online flocking together
is fuelling the uncanny acceleration we feel across so many aspects
of our lives. The simmering culture of Fear, the Filter-bubbles and the
Fan culture: everything from Fifty Shades’ flights of fan-fic fantasy to the
mainstreaming of Festivals feels connected to our increased exposure
to, well, everything.
D is for Disruption. Or should
that be Disintermediation? Or
maybe even Democratisation? The
combination of Digital technology
and hot and cold running Data is
driving the re-imagination of entire
business categories, with music
and publishing the canaries in the
coal mine for other established
businesses trying to weather the
revolution. Distribution is also up
for grabs: if your product can be
broken down into zeros and ones,
there’s the internet. For everything
else there’s Drones and Driverless
cars. But top dog among the Ds is
Design, the discipline and rigour
that’s informing the ongoing over-
haul of our world and the organisa-
tions and objects in it. Design has
become more holistic, a strategic
as well as an aesthetic factor and
increasingly an open and inclusive
process too.
TheContagous
Decade:aPrimer
A is for Apple. The transformation of Apple from technology also-ran
to the world’s most valuable brand has been a defining obsession
across ten years of Contagious. In so many ways the antithesis of open
‘for everyone’ internet culture, the company and its superbly polished
works have established a set of standards for user experience that have
fundamentally altered our expectations of, and relationship with comput-
ers. Bestowing a sense of agency and mastery over our gadgets even
while edging us further away from a true understanding of how stuff
works, the Cupertino corporation has handed us the keys to an expertly
enabled world of communication, community and commerce. A world
that reflects our new normal: where A is also for Always on, for Apps
and Algorithms and APIs. A world that can incubate the Arab Spring
and Anonymous. A world with Amazon and Alibaba in the ascendancy.
And then, of course, there is Android. While Apple’s iOS-running mobile
devices rule the high end of the market, in less than a decade Android
has become the people’s choice, the de facto operating system du
monde. But even with 85% of smartphones shipped this year running
Google’s software, the race to run the world is still a long way from being
over. A is also for alliteration: brace yourselves for B…
Illustrations/AlexWalker,YCN

7. Social Change / A-Z 8 / 9
I is for Image Explosion. If you’re
more Instagram than Internet of
Things, this is for you. At the end
of last year, Yahoo! estimated
that 880 billion photos would be
taken in 2014, 123 for every man,
woman and child on the planet.
Self-contained cameras are fewer
and further between, but combine
smartphones and social platforms
with an exponential rise in storage
capacity, and Lo! a new visual
language is born, and anyone can
speak it. Expertise is not the point:
the ability to shoot and share some-
thing important, or interesting or
pertinent is. The upshot is that pic-
tures have not only helped to define
and document the past few years,
they’ve developed (retro-pun!) into
a kind of social currency and visual
shorthand that fuels and fosters
communication on all levels.
K is for Knowledge, and the
changing relationship we have
with it. Access to information is
a transformative thing. Samuel
Johnson said: ‘Knowledge is of
two kinds. We know a subject
ourselves or we know where we
can find information upon it.’ He
was talking libraries, but the effect
of the internet has upped the ante
by another order of magnitude: a
whole generation, when confronted
with a gap in comprehension or
savoir-faire, reflexively knows they
can Just Fucking Google It. Or pick
up a Kindle. For those who don’t
automatically turn to the internet,
a pitying digital native is usually
on hand with an eye-roll and a
smartphone to help them out.
From Kimye to Kahneman, from
K-pop to Kale, it is getting easier to
know stuff. But it is getting harder
to explain to your kids why school
and homework still matters.
L is for Learning. The acquisition
of knowledge and skills is a long
way from being irrelevant, in fact
it’s booming as people around the
world sign up in their millions for
tutorials, classes and qualifications
of every conceivable type. The
increasing availability of MOOCs,
or massively open online courses,
is offering unlimited participation
and open access to some of the
most respected educators and
academic institutions in the world.
The power of learning has not been
lost on brands and business, and
the proliferation of Labs in recent
years is no coincidence. Test and
Learn, Lean in, think global act
Local and love thy LGBTI neigh-
bours: that’s how it gets better.
(Also, read things that are longer
than a Listicle.)
H is for Hype Cycle, Gartner’s handy graphic tool for mapping the
maturity, adoption and social application of specific technologies. So
we know, for example, that Haptics (aka tactile feedback technology)
are currently climbing the Slope of Enlightenment, while Head-mounted
displays are sliding into the Trough of Disillusionment. Fun, isn’t it? What
if we could measure the ebb and flow of contemporary life in the same
way? Harry Styles: Peak of Inflated Expectations. Hipsters: Trough. In
reality our non-tech hype is measured in Hashtags: at one end of the
human-endeavour spectrum the Higgs boson discovery got the world
talking about physics, topping the trending list on Twitter on July 4, 2012;
at the other, Hacking has made the top ten with depressing regularity.
G is for Google, not only the front door to the internet, but also a com-
pany of global consequence with an ambitious tendency to reach for
the stars (OK, the moon) and fingers in dozens of different digital pies.
But G is also for also for Games of every conceivable stripe. Against
a thoroughly dispiriting backdrop of Globalisation, the GFC, and the
growing Gap between rich and poor, the huddled masses have been
keeping their spirits up with regular doses of racy fantasy epic Game of
Thrones, the most-pirated TV show ever (see also Torrenting). Gaming in
all its guises has also become ever-more pervasive, an under-acknowl-
edged fact thrown into relief with the release of Grand Theft Auto V,
which earned $1bn in three days flat, faster than any other entertainment
product, ever. We also have gaming to thank for the gift that is Gesture-
control: what started with the Nintendo Wii quickly opened up a whole
new world with Kinect, now sensitive enough to track players’ heartbeats
through the pulsing of their skin. But as sophisticated as Gaming has
become, we’re still suckers for animated GIFs.
M is for Mobile. It’s so obvious we
shouldn’t even have to say it. Every
year as far back as we can remem-
ber has been The Year of Mobile,
and yet it never quite seemed to
be true. Can we stop now? It’s
just how we do stuff. It’s becoming
a Meme, but more in the original
Richard Dawkins sense than the
‘I can haz cheezburger’ sense.
Our collective consciousness is
gradually optimising for mobile. It
may take another Moonshot to get
us beyond that...
N is for Netflix, feeding our need
for the next movie, the next episode
and the next season with all-you-
can-eat dedication to our appetite
for more of that thing that we love.
Thank you Netflix. It’s easy to for-
get that in return we’re feeding
Netflix the data it thrives on, from
which it can deduce how better
to serve – hell, even to create –
more of what we crave. There are
other Ns to consider: the impact
of the Network Effect; the rise of
Nationalism; the self-conscious
ordinariness of Normcore; the
not-quite-there-yetness of NFC;
And Thaler and Sunstein’s Nudge
theory, subtly engineering choice
architecture to alter behaviour, to
wit: ‘Nudges are not mandates.
Putting fruit at eye level counts as
a nudge. Banning junk food does
not.’ Which brings us to O.
J is for Justin, Jay-Z, Jobs,
a series of names of varying signif-
icance. Justin Bieber gets a shout
for becoming one of our first, and
most unavoidable YouTube stars,
inspiring a surge in sales of hair
products for young men; Jay-Z
gets a shout for sound-tracking
the zeitgeist and for a preternatural
understanding of branding that’s
allowed him not only to embody
authenticity, but to confer it on a
roll-call of brands – Reebok, HP,
Budweiser, Heineken, Jaguar,
Samsung – without denting his
own apparently bottomless appeal;
and of course, there is – was
– Jobs, Steve Jobs, visionary,
game-changer and a whole other
kind of icon.

8. Social Change / A-Z
Q is for QR codes. The optimis-
tically named Quick Response
Code has been both a blessing
and a curse. Its success in Asia
has failed to herald its embrace
in Western markets where it
continues to be the weakest link
in many a marketing campaign.
Let’s move on. Quantified Self. The
proliferation of sensors, data and
the devices and software to gather
and process a relentless stream
of information has gifted us the
ability to be self-obsessed aware
in mind-boggling detail. QS might
seem, well, selfish, but really it’s the
beginning of quantified everything.
Yes, it is profound and amazing,
just spare us the details, okay?
P is for Privacy. A lot has hap-
pened over the past ten years, but
as blithely as we adopt, early or
otherwise, the shiny gadgets and
devices of the new millennium, we
are still easily creeped-out when
confronted with the tales they
tell on us. Banner ads for stuff
that we’ve looked at – or already
bought! – follow us around the
internet. We’re routinely asked to
sign away our data in language
that obscures rather than clarifies
the reasons why that should be
necessary.
Research by GfK found that
80% of consumers surveyed
wanted more regulation to pro-
tect their data privacy and less
than 40% trust marketers with
their personal data. That’s bad
enough in the smartphone era,
but the more connected our daily
lives become (and Cisco predicts
the Internet of Things will see
50 billion objects hooked up to
the internet by 2020), the more
necessary clear and reasonable
communication becomes. Why is
this not a ‘Purpose’ issue for more
brands? Stay tuned.
V is for video, because although
software may indeed be eating
the world, the world is too busy
watching videos to really give a
damn. Omnicom recently advised
its clients to shift as much as
25% of their TV budgets to online
video, and this year eMarketer
predicted that spending on online
video advertising will overtake
TV ad spend as early as 2018.
From six-second Vines to the
latest ubiquitous viral, Video has
eclipsed Voice-control, Virtual
Reality, Vampires and the curiously
disturbing rise of Vaping and Vice.
It is a Very. Big. Deal.
U is for User, as in User-friendly
and User experience, but also in
the wider sense as in You, the
consumer, now enthroned at the
centre of the business universe
thanks to quotes like this from Jeff
Bezos: ‘Above all else align with
customers: win when they win, win
only when they win.’ It’s worked
for Uber, the ride-sharing under-
dog-turned-undisputed-champion
of transit disruption. In startup
culture, every new venture wants
to be the Uber of something, but if
we had to stand shoulder to shoul-
der with one U-related service
provider it would be Kenya-based
Ushahidi Inc. The non-profit has
grown from crisis-mapping to
providing open-source tools and
software, focusing on innovation
and problem-solving on a social
scale. Genuinely Upworthy.
S is for… (keep it going...)
Selfies, sharing, screens, space,
Snowden
Storytelling, Stuxnet,
Silicon Valley
Second Life, streaming,
Shenzhen, Soylent
Same-sex marriage,
sustainabili-ty
We didn’t start the fire…
O is for Obesity. The World Health Organisation defines obesity as ‘excessive fat
accumulation that may impair health’, a condition signified by a Body Mass Index
of more than 30. According to the American Medical Association, two thirds of the
US population is overweight, with 36% of adults clinically obese. In the UK and
China, a quarter of all adults are obese; in Russia the figure is 23%; Brazil 15%.
The epidemic claims the lives of 2.8 million adults per year, making it the fifth most
common cause of death globally. The Trust for America’s Health and the Robert
Wood Johnson Foundation have predicted that more than half of the US could be
obese by 2030, costing $66bn in treatment and at least $500bn in lost economic
productivity. Gulp. Or should that be OMG? We have less depressing Os: On-demand
(see also Netflix), Open Source, O.Ba.Ma. Occupy. Oversharing. Damn, we were
doing so well… Wait: OK Go! ‘OK Glass...’ Gah.
R is for… Reprise! (to the tune
of We Didn’t Start the Fire)
Rise of the extreme right,
renewables, real-time
Re-views, rolling news, reality TV
Re-cession, Raspberry Pi, riots,
robots,
Rockefellers switch from oil to
cleaner energy
We didn’t start the fire…
T is for TED, and for TED Talks, a theatrical, time-limited
format for spreading ideas with impact – a bit like WikiHow,
but slightly less practical. Twitter performs a similar
idea-and-information dissemination function, but with greater
economy and a lot more Trolling. Ideas don’t have to be
good to spread, though: Tea Party, take a bow. They also
don’t have to be obvious: who’d have thought Twitch.tv, the
internet equivalent of sports TV for gamers, would become
a thing (acquired for $970m by Amazon, beating Google to
the deal)? Ideas don’t have to rely on Touchscreens: feature
phones are transforming lives across the developing world.
And they don’t have to be the brainchild of billionaire Tesla
founder Elon Musk, but it sure does help. For content, of
course, we have Torrenting.
10 /11

9. Social Change / xxx 12 / 13
Welcome to the home stretch…
W is for Wearables, because
frankly, what could possibly com-
pete? Not the wane of Windows.
Not even the wonder of wifi. Not
the diligently updated wisdom of
Jimmy Wales’ Wikipedia, because
we take it for granted and laugh at
it when it’s wrong, even though it is
a marvel of endeavour and collabo-
ration. And not Wikileaks because
even if information wants to be
free, we’re not totally convinced
that it should always get its way.
But everyone loves Wearables,
right? Whether that’s true now is
not really the point: whether it’s
true in the next ten years is way
more important. Apple’s famed
capacity to create new markets
means a lot is riding on the suc-
cess of its Watch.
X is for... Cut us some slack: X is tricky, we’re tired, and all we could
think of was The X Factor and the XPRIZE (which really is spelt like
that, we checked). One is a pitiless singing contest that humiliates the
desperate for easy LOLs; the other is ‘a highly leveraged, incentivised
prize competition that pushes the limits of what’s possible to change
the world for the better’. The best thing is, we don’t have to choose, we
live in a world where these things can happily co-exist. So. Our final
desperate stab at X is a rallying cry to bearers of the XX chromosome:
women. If there is one thing that’s even less evenly distributed than the
future, it’s equality of opportunity, rights and respect for women. Over
the past ten years at Contagious we’ve witnessed a steady building
of efforts to redress the balance in all kinds of ways, some branded
(Coca-Cola 5 by 20), some not (Slutwalks). All chipping away at a big,
but fixable problem.
Y is for YouTube From ‘Yes
we can,’ to YOLO, nothing has
captured or embodied the spirit
of the Contagious decade quite
like YouTube. Now all the world
really is a stage, with no subject
too big, no camera work too shaky,
no moment too trivial to record
and share. And this epic and
yet curiously personal platform
has created a new generation of
players: avidly followed stars of
the small glowing screen, racking
up subscribers in the millions,
viewcounts in the billions and
the kind of revenue that make
their parents feel okay about how
much time they’re spending in their
bedroom.
Felix ‘PewDiePie’ Kjellberg is
currently the master of this oddball
universe: a passion for providing
first-person commentary on his
video-game exploits has parlayed
into 30 million channel subscrib-
ers, a total viewcount in excess of
6 billion, and income north of $4m
per annum. A player par excellence.
YouTube is both the greatest and
most terrifying show on Earth.
Good thing we like to be scared…
...Because Z is for Zombies.
AMC’s premiere season five of The
Walking Dead broke cable records
with 17.3 million viewers tuning in
for a fix of gore, violence and life-or-
undeath struggle. If YouTube brings
us face to face with the world at
its most human, the flipside is our
unsated appetite for tales of the
Zombie apocalypse.
The subject of TED talks and
TV shows, novels and Guardian
think-pieces, zombies are variously
described as a response to the
rise of atheism (novelist Stephen
Marche), a metaphor for consumer-
ism, and ‘always double, a symbol
of failure and success, slavery
and rebellion’ (Professor Sarah
Juliet Lauro). In other words, an
endlessly versatile metaphor for
the overwhelming churn of unset-
tling cultural circumstances and
possibilities that define our lives
now – and an entirely appropriate
response to an era of change like
no other.
We live in interesting times.
Every day might feel like the end of
the world as we know it, but mostly
we feel fine. Ten more years!
THE ADC AWARDS SEASON 2015 IS NOW OPEN
ADCGLOBAL.ORG/AWARDS
ADC 94th Annual Awards ADC Tomorrow Awards 2015 ADC Young Guns 13
Photo:LynnParks

10. 14 / 15Welcome To Contagious X / Brands For The Next Decade
We conceived Contagious X – a celebration of
Contagious’ tenth anniversary – as both a state-
ment of the decade’s influence and a roadmap
to building brands for the 21st century. In this
special edition of the magazine, we’ve set out to
crystallise our thinking over that period and lay
out a vision for the future.
We’ve tried to bring the benefit of ten years
of knowledge to bear on every bit of this issue.
This is graphically portrayed in a timeline of the
most significant changes of the past decade, and
lexically communicated in a set of non-denom-
inational Commandments, both of which make
up our fold-out centre spread. We’ve got an A-Z,
Brands for the
next decadeApplication instructions for this special dose
of the magazine. Side effects may include
broad inspiration, brand bravery and a
healthy amount of disdain for the status quo
By Emily Hare and Nick Parish
fromtheArabSpringtoZombies (page 6), and a
review of how digital-first fame and the dawn of
micro-celebrityhasevolvedpost-Bieber (page 69).
Changing fortunes
As well as harking back to brands that
we’ve featured on their way up, we’ve
decided to look at some of the flops that we’ve
championed in What We Got Wrong on page
86. If dead tech’s really your thing, have a read
of Will Sansom’s Technology Boneyard on
page 66, complete with comments from Benedict
Evans, partner at San Francisco VC firm
Andreessen Horowitz.
For every Kodak, Blockbuster or Lehman
Brothers, there’s a new company waiting in the
wings. Small But Perfectly Formed (SBPF), our
long-running feature that showcases impressive
startups, has moved from community-powered
businesses through app developments to carefully
crafted niche products that have been crowdfunded
on Kickstarter. In this issue, we turned to the
founders of three of our most successful SBPF
companies – Raspberry Pi, GoldieBlox and
BRCK – and asked them to recommend
some new blood: companies that
they think are about to break
through to the mainstream.
Check out their selec-
tions on page 40.
Business and
creative success
We’ve had to restrain ourselves
from snorting in horror when
presented with certain business cards,
so we’ve taken the chance to pull together
some of the most offensive job titles we’ve
come across and then imagine how these
increasingly outrageous superlatives might
manifest themselves in the future. Take a Job
Title Safari on page 138.
We ref lect back on just how success-
ful the brands we’ve featured as case studies
have been over the past decade by creating a
theoretical stock portfolio and tracking their
performance in the market. Our CaseStudyCash
In on page 68, though sadly virtual, showed how
the brands we’ve written about over the years
have (generally) had impressive business success
alongside smart, creative marketing. We suspect a
link. Overall, our index outperformed the control
portfolio by 17%. Now, where are those Bitcoins?
(Having said that, if we had bought one Bitcoin
for 80 cents when we first mentioned them on
Contagious I/O in April 2011, and been lucky
enough to sell at their peak in November 2013,
we’d have turned our loose change into $1,124.)

11. 20 / 21
Play to win
Let’s not forget the main event.
Contagious has always been valued for its case
studies, but for this special edition we decided to
mix things up and focus instead on what qualities
brands need to exhibit to succeed in this day and
age. To that end, we’ve selected ten key brand
strengths to make up the meat of the magazine.
We landed on these specific traits based on an
analysis of all the brands, creative work, trends
and ideas we’ve covered over the past few years.
So, when the editorial team weighed it all up,
what were the topics, themes and ideas that
Purpose
we’ve seen brands using to their advantage? We
decided on Disruption, Purpose, Publishing,
Data, Design, Experimentation, Services,
Empowerment, Collaboration and Culture.
Each strength is divided into three parts:
Landscape, Brand Spotlight and Opinion. The
Landscape section discusses how the strength has
developed over the past decade. The Spotlight
then explores the brand that best exemplifies
that strength.
We’ve used this opportunity to showcase and
dig into standout companies. Some we’ve fea-
tured previously but felt worth revisiting, such
as LEGO, Chipotle, Safaricom and Red Bull.
Others we delved into for the first time, like
Tesla, Etsy, Uber and Apple.
Of course, the best brands are multi-talented,
but to keep things focused we decided to home
in on the one aspect of their winning approach.
Finally, each section gives the last word to
an external expert. We’ve tapped into our
smartest contacts, folks who are pushing the
industry to evolve in new and previously unim-
aginable ways, and asked them to share their
knowledge with you. Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of
WPP Group, discusses experimentation. Blake
Mycoskie, founder of TOMS, gives his take on
collaboration. Acclaimed journalist, entrepreneur
and publisher Tyler Brûlé shares his thoughts
on content and publishing. Unilever CEO Paul
Polman tells us why purpose is so vital to the
FMCG business. And Jonathan Mildenhall, chief
marketing officer at Airbnb, considers disruption.
We’ve had a fun, but strenuous, time compiling
this issue for you. We hope it’ll take an hon-
oured place alongside the rest of your Contagious
collection, and serve as an important reference
and companion as you help your company build
on its strengths in the new year.
Welcome to Contagious X / Brands For The Next Decade
Disruption
ExperimentationPublishing Data
Culture
Empowerment
Services
Design
Collaboration

12. Strength Study / Disruption
Disruption
A startup’s success relies on coming from
left-field and disrupting an established industry,
or creating an entirely new one. But how can
big brands make disruptive tactics work
and protect themselves against the threat
of being rendered obsolete?
By Emily Hare
Illustration
/M
attC
hase
Of course, when you’re playing a choose-your-
own-adventure game on one of the hottest
social networks around, it’s not obvious that
one of its business objectives is to defend
market share. It’s the type of information that’ll
only surface if you interview BBH Singapore’s
engagement planner, which is exactly what
we did when we featured the campaign on
Contagious I/O.
Input / Output
Contagious I/O covers the Inputs and Outputs
of some of the most innovative and creative
marketing in the world: from the client brief,
through to the results of each campaign. Its
purpose is to find out how and why brands are
creating new, game-changing marketing and
with what success.
So for Chupa Chups’ Get Lolli campaign,
we dug into the brand’s challenge in the mar-
ketplace and discovered that it had no direct
lollipop competitors. However, as engagement
planner Lindsey Cummings explains, ‘When
you walk in to a convenience store, anything
around the counter is competition because
it’s an impulse purchase. So Chupa Chups
is competing with Skittles, with chocolates,
with mints.’
Another Input of the campaign was the
research into the target audience. ‘We did a
lot of in-depth interviews with teenagers from
across the world and then conducted con-
sumer journey mapping,’ outlines Cummings.
Promotional Feature
Lollipop
learningWhat’s not to love about Chupa Chups’ latest
campaign? It’s got it all. Lollipops! Instagram!
Defending market share!
‘We studied their emotions during different
points in the day – we looked at what their ten-
sion points are, how they feel and what devices
they use at different parts of the day.’
Understanding device usage at different
times was key to the decision to execute on
Instagram. ‘Chupa Chups was only active on
Facebook, which really is not the best place
for us to be if we’re trying to talk to teenagers,’
says Cummings. ‘Instagram is mobile-based,
which is perfect when targeting teens on their
commute home from school when they’ll be
checking their phones all the time.’
Inspiration, organised
We know that your teams will find inspiration
from a wide range of sources.
But inspiration that:
• can be filtered by brand, product category,
media type, age group, country and business
objective
• includes effectiveness results and exclusive
interviews with the people who created the
campaigns
• can be searched, bookmarked and turned into
a collaborative workspace with colleagues
• features multiple full-screen images and videos
for use in presentation decks
Well, that kind of inspiration is pretty rare.
We call it Contagious I/O.
Find out more: talkturkey@contagious.com

13. Strength Study / Disruption 20 / 21
D
isrupting an established and – let’s face
it – often complacent industry is an artful
practice generally pulled off by brave,
creative and gutsy brands. And the rewards are
great: just think how Apple created a new breed
of music ecosystem and consigned stacks of CDs
to history. Look at how Dollar Shave Club took a
6% volume share of the US razor cartridge market
with its value subscription shaving proposition. Or
consider the apparent ease with which Amazon
became your go-to location to check prices and
buy more or less anything.
Michael Dubin, CEO of Dollar Shave Club,
defines disruption in business as ‘an idea or a
business model that produces a significant or
resonant and widespread change in an established
way of doing things’. The main factors that
provide a fertile environment for the majority of
these disruptions are recurring themes through-
out Contagious X: rapid technological change,
connected consumers, the rise of ecommerce and
digital distribution.
Taking a disruptive approach marks a refusal
by businesses to be content with incremental
enhancements and a desire to establish a business
that is fit for the future.
Flash points
Jean-Marie Dru, chairman of TBWAWorldwide,
encouraged the advertising industry to embrace
this attitude with his book Disruption, published
in 1996. Dru explains: ‘It started as a methodol-
ogy for creating room for growth for our brands.’
Disruption is a strategy that TBWA continues
to pursue, running disruption days for clients to
help them come up with new ideas and safeguard
against rivals. Dru continues: ‘It’s entering new
categories, creating new business models, thinking
differently.’ Though regarded as predominantly
negative when he started to use the word in the
early 90s, Dru now says: ‘All our clients, in all
companies, are much more open to breakthrough,
innovative or disruptive thinking. They don’t
always do it, but they like to think about it at least.’
Author and Harvard Business School pro-
fessor Clayton Christensen brought his theory
of Disruptive Innovation to a more mainstream
business audience in 1997, with the publication
of The Innovator’s Dilemma. Christensen’s theory,
developed to explain how personal computers
disrupted the mainframe computer market,
demonstrates how established companies can
slip from dominant positions and how a new
product or service can gain a strong foothold in
the marketplace. More recently, The New York
Times Innovation Report, published in March
2014, warns of the dangers of ignoring these
entrants who often seem innocuous at first. ‘Over
time, disruptors improve their product, usually by
adapting a new technology. The flash point comes
when their products become “good enough” for
most customers.’ This leaves businesses with a
dual problem: how to put their own disruptive
strategies in place, and how to protect themselves
from new rivals.
Successful startups
When you imagine a disruptive company, it’s
probably a startup that is not encumbered by legacy
systems, and is armed with a killer insight into
its marketplace and potential consumers. And it’s
probably staffed by hipsters with a reception area
that you’d be happy to call home. However, just
as renowned author and management strategist
Peter Drucker defined seven sources of innova-
tion or opportunities in his book Innovation and
Entrepreneurship, there are a variety of ways that
companies can disrupt their competitors or burst
into a marketplace. These range from the product
or service itself right through to distribution, retail
and creative opportunities, leading to successful
executions that are generally better, cheaper and
simpler than existing rivals.
Signature assets
Dollar Shave Club nailed price, attitude, distribu-
tion and, memorably, product when it launched in
2012 with a viral video featuring CEO Michael
Dubin boasting: ‘Our blades are f**king great.’
Dubin says: ‘Guys are really frustrated by the
price and experience of buying razors when they
go to the store. By understanding that problem
really well, we were able to provide a solution that
was incredibly simple, easy to use and affordable.
The way we brought that to life, through great
user experience online, empowered our success.
And, of course, we developed a signature social
asset in the video that people forwarded around
to each other so that people could tell that story.’
The original video’s view count is now close to
17 million and Dollar Shave Club passed the
1 million member mark in September 2014.
Creating an entirely new product or service
can potentially cause the greatest disruption
in an industry, or even launch an entirely new
category, but it’s also the hardest to conceive and
convince consumers that this is something they
need. Mobile payment system Square is one such
business, offering a solution that allows people
to make and receive card payments thanks to a
device that plugs into a smartphone. From there,
Square has expanded to offer a full point-of-sale
system, competing with more developed in-store
hardware solutions. Since it launched in 2009, it
has received almost $600m in funding, although
it must now look to challenges from Apple and
PayPal in order to protect its business.
Compelling creativity
Disruption comes in different shapes and sizes.
How many brands do you know that would be
happy removing their logo from their product,
for example? Coca-Cola’s Share a Coke campaign
originated in Australia in 2011 and has now
printed more than 1,000 names on Coke bottles
and cans in lieu of the brand’s distinctive logo.
Initiated via Ogilvy & Mather in Sydney, Share a
Coke has been the brand’s biggest local-to-global
campaign in decades. It was recently credited
with boosting sales in the US by 2%, reversing
11 years of decline in the country, according to
The Wall Street Journal. After the debacle that was
New Coke, disruptive creativity is a strategy that
allows brands such as Coca-Cola to reap some of
the rewards of disruption without altering their
existing product or introducing something new.
Self-sabotage
Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, has instilled a dis-
ruptive approach throughout the organisation.
In an interview with journalist Stephen Levy, he
said: ‘As a company, one of our greatest cultural
strengths is accepting the fact that if you’re going
to invent, you’re going to disrupt.’ Amazon’s
relentless willingness to rip it up and start again
shows the mark of a truly disruptive company –
one that is not afraid to potentially undermine
its own products and services in its quest to build
the business. It disrupted its book-selling roots by
launching a digital reading device. It jeopardised
content sales by embracing rentals, through its
purchase of Lovefilm and the introduction of
the Kindle Lending Library. And its one-off
delivery charges were thrown into question with
the launch of Prime’s subscription model. These
all point towards a longer-term goal of a locked-in
customer who sees Amazon as the go-to option for
the best, easiest and cheapest purchases or content.
Know your limits
Often, startups have no option but to take a
disruptive approach when they’re trying to gain
a foothold, but is there a way that established
companies can ensure they don’t fall into the trap
of only making incremental changes? Cesar Brea,
author and founder of marketing analytics firm
Force Five Partners, believes: ‘To be successful
at disruption-driven strategies, if you don’t have
scarcity you have to manufacture it yourself.’
3M does just this by setting itself the target
of generating 25% of its revenue from products
developed in the past five years, for example.
On the flip side, Brea counsels that compa-
nies can avoid being disrupted themselves by
gathering ‘continuous feedback from the market
about whether or not you are actually solving
your clients’ needs’. He says: ‘The trick is to be
As a company, one of
our greatest cultural
strengths is accepting
the fact that if you’re
going to invent, you’re
going to disrupt
Jeff Bezos, Amazon
ruthlessly objective about meeting those things
and not looking for confirmatory evidence.’
Adding value
Disruption today isn’t so much a strategy as a real-
ity, and one that forces businesses to both protect
themselves from competition and look around for
new opportunities. Relentlessly paying attention
to your customers and solving their pain points
isn’t enough, however. You also have to focus on
faint signals that may, in time, become a serious
threat. This is a daunting task, but one that mar-
keters are ideally placed to facilitate. To ensure
that the company remains relevant, marketers can
serve as a conduit to share customer feedback with
the wider business, and ensure that information
is distributed and issues are dealt with.
Marketers can combine their knowledge of
how people are using new technologies and plat-
forms with an awareness of the company, placing
themselves in a position that is integral to busi-
ness growth. This understanding gives them the
chance to add value through incremental changes
based on customer feedback. It also means they can
come up with something genuinely disruptive that
people had no idea they wanted... but subsequently
can’t live without.
Dollar Shave Club:
CEO Michael Dubin’s
viral video praising its
razor blades was a
memorable launch for
the company in 2012,
with views currently
amounting to 17 million

14. Strength Study / Disruption 22 / 23
Brand
Spotlight
Tesla
In creating electric vehicles
that are desirable not only
for their environmental
credentials, but also
their speed, safety and
style, Tesla’s founder Elon
Musk claims his place
alongside Henry Ford in
turning the automotive
industry on its head
T
here aren’t many people who would
attempt to launch a best-in-class elec-
tric car while simultaneously getting a
commercial space venture off the ground. But a
voracious appetite for establishing new, disrup-
tive companies runs in PayPal co-founder Elon
Musk’s blood.
The 43-year-old co-founded Tesla in 2004
(along with Martin Eberhard, Marc Tarpenning,
JB Straubel and Ian Wright), and serves as chief
executive of a company determined to bring
electric vehicles to the mainstream. Since then,
Tesla has forced the rest of the automotive industry
to sit up and take notice as it disrupts not only
what people expect from an electric car – up until
now some kind of glorified milk truck – but also
shakes up established practices in manufacturing,
retail, design, safety and marketing.
As Tesla’s vice-president of communications
and marketing, Simon Sproule, explains: ‘Tesla
took a fresh look at the auto industry and said:
“What are the parts of the auto industry that
consumers really don’t like? What are the changes
that we can make to improve the experience?”,
and then set about doing them.’

15. Strength Study / Disruption 24 / 25
The only way to cause
other companies
to change their
behaviour is to impact
their bottom line
Simon Sproule, Tesla
Packing a punch
So how best to impress the doubters? First: with
the car itself. Tesla’s Model S combines slick
design and impeccable safety features with an
impressive electric engine. At the same time it’s
extremely economical. Last year the Model S
was named Motor Trend’s Car of the Year, the
first time an electric vehicle has claimed the
prestigious award, beating rivals including the
Porsche Boxster, BMW 3 Series and Lexus GS.
Tesla set out to prove, as Musk said at the
Model S’s launch, that ‘an electric car can be truly
better than any gasoline car,’ which he believes is
a critical step towards the widespread adoption
of electric vehicles and sustainable transport in
general. The luxury Model S achieved a perfect
5.0 NHTSA safety rating, and the 85kwh version
of the vehicle can accelerate from 0-60 in 5.4
seconds. It has a maximum speed of 125 mph and
a range of more than 200 miles. And that’s on
top of its environmental credentials and cheaper
running costs.
Giga-plans
Prior to the Model S, Tesla produced the Roadster
sports car from 2006-2012. And it is adding new
vehicles to its fleet in the coming years. The X,
launching in 2015, is similar to an SUV. The
cheaper model 3, due to hit the streets in 2017,
will be about 20% smaller in size than the Model
S and will cost in the region of $50,000-$65,000,
according to Sproule.
The dual-motor Model S (known as the D),
announced in October, will be Tesla’s most
powerful vehicle yet. The car includes autopilot
hardware, tapping into data from radar and
ultrasonic sensors to enable active breaking
and self-parking. With access to the driver’s
calendar, the car can even pick him or her up at
a given time or location. Forthcoming software
updates should mean that self-driving Teslas
become a reality in the next few years.
The cars are manufactured in the US, and the
fact that so much of their construction is under
Tesla’s control is part of the business’s strength,
according to automotive industry analyst James
Albertine, vice-president at Stifel Equity Research.
Albertine notes that this approach contravenes
the automotive industry’s modus operandi. ‘What
Tesla has done, in contrast to traditional original
equipment manufacturers (OEMs), is in-sourced
or developed in-house roughly 75-80% of its entire
vehicle production process. That’s basically the
inverse of a traditional OEM. That is the most
fundamentally disruptive element, because that
is what’s going to drive profitability, ultimately.’
Tesla recently announced it is constructing The
Gigafactory with Panasonic. Set to open in 2020
in Nevada, the factory should produce 500,000
Lithium Ion batteries a year. Sproule explains that
this should help make the cars more affordable,
as well as provide the business with an additional
revenue stream. He says: ‘The cost will be 30%
or more lower than the current battery packs that
we’re producing.’
Employee ecosystems
By placing its showrooms in high-footfall
locations, such as shopping malls, Tesla took a
disruptive approach to how people actually buy
their cars, building on the easy access to informa-
tion that digital provides. This is particularly clear
when compared with America’s standard (read:
excruciating) car-buying process of browsing and
bartering on an out-of-town lot, before being
pressured into driving off in a car that might
be in the wrong colour or with a slightly larger
engine than ideal. Tesla stores typically feature
display versions of the Model S, a Design Studio
where people can select paint, fittings and extras
for their car, plus a touchscreen experience where
customers can learn about the benefits of driv-
ing electric vehicles and Tesla’s technology and
book test drives. The car can be configured and
ordered online either in-store or from home, and
then tracked through its production and delivery
process. Tesla’s retail network also sells the Model
S second-hand, which lowers the price point and
gives a wider range of potential customers the
chance to get their hands on the vehicle.
Tesla has been able to establish its own retail
network and online sales platform thanks to its
lack of legacy franchise agreements. Hyping up
the disruptive elements of this approach, with
transparency around costs and the opportunity
to deal directly with Tesla employees rather than
a third party is, Albertine says, ‘engendering a
very different sort of ecosystem that will play into
the evolution of the auto dealer, the auto service
model’. In the dominant logic of the automotive
industry, where massive dealership networks are
ultimately the manufacturer’s customers and
determine which cars sell, this model stands apart.
Electric experience
Electric cars still have some way to go before they
hit the mainstream. In the US, electric vehicles
made up just 0.67% of those sold in the year to
May 2014, from a total of 8.1 million, according to
the Energy Policy Information Center. However,
that represents a 35% increase compared with the
previous year.
Demand for Teslas is high, and customers are
prepared to wait two to three months to get their
hands on the car. Tesla has built up desirability
around the vehicles by creating positive experi-
ences throughout the purchase and ownership
process, ranging from door handles that emerge
from the car as you approach, right through to a
carefully constructed customer service strategy,
including an eight-year and unlimited mileage
warranty on the Model S battery. The cliché of
a slick car salesman in a cheap suit couldn’t be
further from what a Tesla buyer encounters.
Sproule explains: ‘It’s a relationship-based
marketing approach. It’s not just us shouting about
the car and the brand. It’s about inviting people
in, getting them to experience the car.’
He adds: ‘Most people have still not driven an
electric car. So there’s a basic level of experience
that you want people to have. When people drive
an electric car, they’re like, “Wow, this is a really
special experience.” So it makes a lot more sense
for us to build our marketing around experiences.’
Open approach
Tesla’s interactions with its customers in-store,
through services, owner events, factory visits and
over the phone and email, provide the company
with the chance to listen, and respond to queries.
Sproule says: ‘We get unfiltered feedback, and
we get a lot of it. We’re directly connected to our
customers and they’re telling us what they like
and what they don’t like, and we’re planning long
term.’ This feedback has played a key role in how
Tesla vehicles have evolved.
Tesla’s desire to be a positive force for change not
just for its customers, but also in the automotive
industry, has led to it taking an open approach,
offering its API and patents to the world. Sproule
explains the company’s motivation: ‘The stated
aim of the company is to encourage electric vehi-
cle development. If we hold back and keep our
patents to ourselves, we are effectively restricting
the evolution of the business.’
Faster horses
While Tesla is starting to make sizeable waves in
disrupting the automotive market, it still has far
to go before it achieves its audacious aims. It first
turned a profit in May 2013, but electric vehicle
sales at major manufacturers still make up less than
1% of their total. Developing consumer demand is
crucial in terms of both growing Tesla’s business
and encouraging rivals to mount a challenge that
will help the entire marketplace to grow.
The way Sproule sees it: ‘The only way to cause
other companies to change their behaviour is to
impact their bottom line.’ He continues: ‘If other
Tesla’s Model S was
named Motor Trend’s 2013
Car of the Year – a first for
an electric vehicle

16. Strength Study / Disruption 26 / 27
Opinion
Do the ‘wrong thing’
Takeouts
Be your own threat / Imagine
your worst case challenger and
work out how to meet that threat.
Strive for excellence / Tesla’s
vehicles excel in terms of
design, safety and desirability,
as well as in their environmental
capabilities.
Focus on the customer /
Incorporate customer feedback
into your development plans and
think about what they might want
in the future.
Push for more / Constantly
look for ways you can increase
not only your business capacity,
but grow the entire marketplace.
Disruption has historically surprised consumers. I don’t think anyone
could have predicted what impact the iPhone would have – not just
on the mobile phone market, but across industries ranging from
cameras to gaming – when it was launched in 2007.
Nowadays, consumers expect and demand that the brands they
love surprise them and be one step ahead of what they need. ‘Why
can’t my watch do more of what my fitness tracker does? And if
it’s not going to, then I’m going to move away from my loved watch
brand to something that does.’ Disruption is becoming normalised;
it’s becoming expected.
Doing the right thing
I can’t think of an industry not touched by technology. Technology
has turbo-charged disruption, lowering barriers to entry and making
it possible to scale new ideas quickly because of the way in which
our world is now so interconnected. So why are so many established
businesses not waking up to the opportunities and the threats?
Classic companies that fail often do so because they were doing
the right thing. And if you do the right thing forever it becomes the
wrong thing, because you fall out of sync with consumers. Kodak
is a brand that did the right thing, but although it was doing the
right thing for Kodak, the world around it had completely changed.
Companies need to be constantly challenging themselves: ‘What
is the wrong thing for us to do right now?’ Because answering that,
in the long term, could be the right thing. I love how the mobile
operator Three is disrupting the mobile industry in the UK through
moves like abolishing sky-high roaming charges or not charging
extra for new 4G services.
Bake it into your business
With six months now under my belt at Airbnb, I can honestly say
that I have never before worked in such a dynamic and fast-paced
environment. And one where seeking to disrupt the status quo truly
runs through the DNA of the company.
Take our brand evolution, unveiled during the summer, where we
introduced a new marque for Airbnb, the ‘bélo’. Here we did the
unthinkable according to marketing and trademark norms, by also
launching Create Airbnb, a website where our community can adapt
the symbol and make it their own. Disruption for Airbnb is not just
about changing the way people travel, it is also about changing the
way we do business.
Several multinational businesses look for disruption in their
annual planning, and they’ll apply it in their business model,
marketing strategies or even in creative executions. Conversations
planning the next calendar period will quite often ask explicitly:
‘What are we disrupting and what are we going to get in return for
that disruption?’
Established companies have models to encourage disruption,
Coca-Cola has its 70/20/10 model, for example. Seventy per-
cent of investment is proven, 20% of investment is innovative
off this and 10% is new ideas that have never been done before.
When you’re being reviewed at the end of the year in those kind
of companies, the review starts with ‘and what did you do in the
10%?’ Because organisations know that the 10% will find
new markets, find new ways to market and find new ways to
apply disruptive creativity. And it’s through the management
of that budget that organisations learn to feel comfortable
with disruption.
If you can’t disrupt your product, your category or your business,
you can always disrupt creatively. Take Old Spice. Everything about
the category stayed the same, everything about the packaging
stayed the same, the only place that the brand manager had to
disrupt was through the creative, and it has been done brilliantly
and the brand has done it consistently. As a result of that, it has
earned a disproportionate share of market for that brand.
If you’re not failing, you’re not going to innovate
Tech-based organisations have an advantage in using disruptive
business strategies compared with more traditional organisations,
and that’s because failure is part of the process, and investors
expect certain technology initiatives to fail. Management teams
see failure to be a by-product of learning at the organisation. They
believe that you’re not pushing the organisation far enough and
fast enough if you’re not occasionally failing.
In some of the more traditional sectors, I don’t think the manage-
ment teams understand what to do with failure, and are certainly
less confident declaring it to shareholders.
Business is a scary but exciting place to be at the moment.
Nothing is sacred, nothing protected. Disruption is not just about
finding a new product or revenue stream; for some companies it
will be about survival. And for that reason, it needs to flow through
every aspect of the business.
manufacturers see business going from their cars
to our cars then they will figure out a way to try to
stop that. And if consumers are saying “we want
electric cars”, then every car company in the world
will produce electric cars.’
Tesla’s dominance is growing, with a market
cap of over $35bn, more than half of General
Motors’ market value, despite GM having an
annual revenue that is 50 times greater. In 2010,
Tesla became the first car manufacturer since
Ford to launch a public share float, when it raised
$226m. Its share value has grown more than
1,000% in the past four years, topping $250 at
the time of writing.
Albertine has predicted that Tesla shares
have the potential to hit $400 in the foreseeable
future. ‘Short term, the next two to three years, I
don’t think there’s anybody that can touch it,’ he
says. However, he believes that a clearer picture
will develop over the next few years in terms of
demand for electric cars, how well Tesla’s retail
infrastructure and service strategy is established
and the total construction costs of the Gigafactory.
For Sproule, keeping one eye on the future and
staying in touch with consumer demand is vital
for Tesla’s continued success: ‘The kicker of any
business is not just to give customers what they
want today, but to give them something that they
realise they want in the future.’
And the mark of a truly disruptive approach?
When your next project could potentially derail
your last. Founder Musk is working on the
Hyperloop, a conceptual transportation system
that will whisk people between LA and San
Francisco in just 35 minutes, and has the potential
to disrupt Tesla’s own business model.
Jonathan Mildenhall, chief marketing officer at Airbnb, argues
that companies need to ensure they’re not so preoccupied
with doing the right thing that it becomes the wrong thing

17. Contagious 1 / Editorial 28 / 29
‘The current climate
is bewildering and
disorienting. But for
those who like a challenge,
i represents a landmark
opportuniy. Depie
the tumult, advertising
remains one of the mos
effective ways of gaining
an unfair advantage over
the competiion... Paul Kemp-Robertson, Contagious issue 1 / December 2004
The fites, mos flexible
agencies are already
riding the revolution.
It’s time to abandon
the rules, invent a new
language and focus on
those non-invasive ideas
that have created a two-way
dialogue between brands
and their believers.’

18. 2004
• Facebook launches
• Burger King’s
Subservient Chicken
campaign receives
20 million hits in its
first week
• Gmail launches on
April Fool’s Day
• 30 St Mary Axe
(The Gherkin) is built
in London
• Super Size Me released
• Last episode of
Friends airs
• Issue 1 of Contagious
is published in London
2005
• Google Maps goes live
• YouTube launches:
the first video is called
‘Me at the Zoo’
• Titanium category
introduced at
Cannes Lions
• EBay buys Skype
for $2.6bn
• Live 8 takes place
throughout the world as
part of the Make Poverty
History campaign
• Facebook.com domain
name bought for
$200,000
• Alibaba Group takes
over China Yahoo!
2006
• BP Deepwater Horizon
oil disaster
• Buy-one-give-one
company TOMS
Shoes is founded
• The Human Genome
Project completes
its sequencing of
chromosomes
• Twitter launches
• Google buys YouTube
for bargain price of
$1.65bn in shares
• Al Jazeera English
launches
• OfficeMax’s Elf Yourself
campaign runs for the
first time
2007
• Steve Jobs announces
the iPhone
• The IPCC concludes
climate change is
caused by humans
• The Simpsons’
400th episode airs
• Charlie Bit My Finger
goes viral on YouTube
• Street View debuts
on Google Maps
• Mad Men starts
• Amazon releases
the Kindle
• WGA writers strike for
greater digital royalties
2008
• AOL buys Bebo
for $850m
• Apple launches
the App store
• Google Chrome debuts
• T-Mobile announces
the G1, the first
Android phone
• Spotify launches
• Obama election shows
A/B testing has made
it to the political arena
• Global online population
hits 1 billion
• MySpace peaks at 75.9
million monthly unique
visitors in the US
2009
• First Bitcoin transaction
• Compare the Meerkat
makes UK insurance
interesting
• Uber launches
• Tencent announces
$1bn in 2008 revenue
• Michael Jackson dies
• The Chrysler automobile
company files for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy,
closely followed by
General Motors
• James Cameron’s
Avatar is released,
marking a breakthrough
in stereoscopic film-
making
2010
• Old Spice introduces
Isaiah Mustafa to the
world
• Tesla raises $226m
in the first car IPO in
50 years
• WikiLeaks drops more
than 90,000 internal
reports about the war in
Afghanistan from 2004
to 2010
• Instagram launches
• Habbo Hotel reaches
an 8.7 million monthly
average users peak
2011
• Wikipedia is
ten years old
• Charlie Sheen goes
off the rails
• Two billion people
watch the UK’s Royal
Wedding
• Osama bin Laden killed
• Microsoft takes
over Skype
• The Oprah Winfrey
Show ends
• Occupy Wall Street
movement begins in
New York City
2012
• Nike launches FuelBand
• Facebook buys
Instagram for $1bn
• Google unveils Glass
and announces
Google Now
• Facebook reaches
1 billion monthly users
• Red Bull Stratos
• Dumb Ways to Die
• Gangnam Style
becomes the first
YouTube video to
reach 1 billion views
• A monkey in a winter
coat roams an IKEA
alone
2013
• Vine launches
• The power goes out at
the Super Bowl, Oreo
triumphs
• Dove’s Real Beauty
Sketches goes viral. It
is the most successful
video ad of all time, with
165 million views
• Google unveils
Project Loon
• World’s first lab-grown
burger is eaten
• Snapchat spurns $3bn
bid from Facebook
2014
• Facebook buys
WhatsApp for $19bn
and Oculus Rift for
$2bn
• Alibaba flotation raises
$25bn in IPO
• Airbnb valued at $10bn
• Tim Cook announces
the Apple Watch
• China overtakes the
US as world’s largest
economy. Adjusted
for purchasing power,
China’s GDP overtakes
US GDP by 0.2%
2015
• Excess heat from
devices is recycled
• Electric car ownership
reaches 1 million
worldwide
• Personal biometric
scanners for online
banking
2016
• Sea levels will have
risen by one foot since
1986
• Spacecraft Juno finally
arrives on Jupiter
• Spacecraft Dragon
V2 takes astronauts
to International Space
Station
2017
• Facebook dies
out completely
• Smartphones have
a sense of smell
• Personal devices allow
you to touch and feel
virtual objects
• Digital tastebud
implants encourage
healthy eating
2018
• Nearly 1 million minutes
of video content cross
global IP networks every
second
• The number of devices
connected to IP
networks is nearly twice
as high as the global
population
• Robot insect spies
are in military use
• Drug created to
prevent obesity
2019
• High-resolution
bionic eyes on sale,
customisable by size
and colour to suit
every face
• The total power of all
computers equals the
total brainpower of the
human race
• Glasses for the deaf
convert words into text,
and music into images
• The first human-robot
couples emerge as
simulated personalities
become more lifelike
2020
• A $1,000 computer
will have the same
processing power as
a human brain
• Humans wear devices
that record and file all
their conversations
• There are 50 billion
connected objects
2022
• Military drone market
worth $82bn
• Downloadable 3D
printable fashion
designs are
commonplace
2023
• Copyright on Mickey
Mouse expires
2024
• People regularly
upload their brain
to a computer
• First manned mission
to Mars is launched
2025
• Teleportation enters
testing phase
• Solar is the primary
source of energy
• Electric air transportation
takes off
• DNA mapping at birth
allows diseases to be
identified
A Brief History of (Contagious) Time: Bebo to Bitcoin to Bionics and Beyond
Illustration / Jim Stoten. Future predictions are absolutely not our own. Sources include:
BBC Future, Cisco, Elon Musk, Erik Eckholm, Futuretimeline.net, IBM, IHS Jane’s, NASA,
NBC News, Princeton University, Ray Kurzweil, Thomson Reuters, Touro Law Review

19. Typography / André Beato, YCN
You don’t always have to reinvent
the wheel. It’s easier to play to an
existing behaviour than to change
or create a new one. When seeking
engagement, it pays to collaborate
– so don’t be afraid to co-opt
existing platforms and services.
Turn people into media. Cede
control. Buy into the mass, but
play in the niches too. Your
audience is powerful and vocal
– invite them to influence your
brand’s direction and behaviour.
Test & Learn. Devote a percentage of
your production or media budget to
experimentation. Be optimistically
curious: failure sucks, but instructs.
Always.
The original Contagious mantra ©2005. Use marketing to
generate compound interest: if someone invests time and
energy into the content, services and experience your brand
offers, is what you’re giving back of increased value?
Reputation is a future micro-economy.
Data is a manifestation of the lives of living,
breathing people. Treat it with respect.
Don’t be flashy: technology should serve
creativity, not the other way around.
Sometimes the world needs
brands to act like NGOs.
Dare to question your
assumptions. Embrace dissent.
Don’t ask why, ask why not?
The best answer may be
180-degrees away.
Ten steps to brand bravery
The best advertising isn’t always advertising.
Be consumer-centric: ease the friction, solve
the pain points in the customer journey.

20. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of Contagious
we are offering 25% off all new subscriptions
Additionally, we’ll give an extra two digital logins with every subscription,
so that key members of your team can benefit from Contagious thinking too.
Place your order at tinyurl.com/contagiousx
Offer expires January 31st
2015.

21. Purpose
An ever-growing number of brands are investing
in a meaningful approach to their marketing
communications. This strategy goes beyond
traditional CSR and attempts to impact on the
wider world, not just immediate stakeholders
By Lucy Aitken
Illustration / Matt Chase

22. Strength Study / Purpose 32 / 33
Power Sleep:
Samsung’s app is
helping fund cancer
research by tapping into
the processing power of
mobile phones
T
he concept of brands taking on some of
the biggest problems faced by the world
used to be an unusual one. While many
corporations’ CSR departments support NGOs
and charities, the idea of connecting shareholder
value to a broader system of values has advanced
over the past decade and is now fully formed as
opposed to embryonic. Indeed, Edelman’s Trust
Barometer indicates a declining confidence in
governments and a growing faith in business.
‘Businesses must now lead the debate for change,’
urges the 2014 report.
This is partly due to technology helping to
enable brands to be in places that were formerly
off limits. Optus, a telco in Australia, now helps
detect sharks in the sea with its Clever Buoy initi-
ative through M&C Saatchi Australia. Samsung,
created by Cheil Worldwide, is helping to fund
research into cancer cures with Power Sleep, an
app that crunches data, using the processing power
of a smartphone while it charges.
There has also been a shift in corporate culture
towards greater transparency, collaboration and
thinking beyond the balance sheet. What does
your company stand for? What will its legacy be?
What is its purpose? And despite there being a
healthy amount of cynicism around connecting
the words and worlds of ‘marketing’ and ‘meaning’,
don’t underestimate its significance for people
entering the industry. As Tim Lindsay, CEO of
D&AD and chairman of The Gate Worldwide,
wrote in The Guardian in August: ‘Younger
people are more demanding of their employers
and workplaces when it comes to having at least
some “purpose beyond profit” in their professional
lives. There’s a natural and inbuilt momentum
for change.’
Challenging the status quo
A handful of brands have a clearly defined pur-
pose. Over the past ten years, we’ve covered a
range of impressive social enterprises – including
TOMS shoes and Sir Richard’s condoms – that
have purpose baked into their business model.
Patagonia also deserves a special mention for
questioning our rampant consumerism with its
Common Threads Initiative. But the companies
that have truly impressed us are those that have
challenged their own status quo, scrutinised their
supply chains and made some difficult decisions.
Multinational companies like McDonald’s are
heavyweight enough to bring their many suppliers
on board and persuade them, through initiatives
such as ‘Our Journey Together. For Good’, to
make important changes that have long-term
significance. Intel, meanwhile, has developed
and launched conflict-free microprocessors,
responding to demand for more ethically produced
consumer electronics, particularly smartphones.
Amsterdam-based Fairphone, meanwhile, was
overwhelmed with orders for its ethically produced
smartphone and, to date, has sold 55,000 handsets.
People want to feel good about the brands they
have in their lives. Some 91% of global consumers
are likely to switch brands to one associated with
a good cause, given comparable price and quality,
according to a 2013 Cone Communications/Echo
Global CSR study. In other words, no one wants
to look in their wardrobe or their fridge and
feel uncomfortable about how specific items got
there. But as well as addressing their own issues
and cleaning up their acts, brands need to make
it easy for people to do their bit.
French supermarket chain Intermarché, through
Marcel Paris, created a whole new revenue stream
when it offered misshapen fresh produce in an
initiative called Inglorious Fruit and Vegetables.
The produce, which would otherwise have been
wasted, was sold for 30% cheaper than its more
aesthetically pleasing equivalents. Across the
Channel, the Sainsbury’s Value of Values cam-
paign shows that you can enjoy reasonably priced
bananas and be assured that they’re Fairtrade, or
know that the fish you’re buying is sustainably
sourced. Even though cynics might suggest oth-
erwise, people care about this stuff.
Purpose ǂ sustainability
But a purpose doesn’t necessarily have to
entail sustainability. In July 2014, online
accommodation booking service Hotels.com
petitioned the US government to guarantee paid
vacation days for all American citizens with
its Vacation Equality Project. Amex’s Small
Business Saturday, via Crispin Porter + Bogusky
in Boulder, created a new shopping day in the
run-up to the festive season, where Americans
were invited to patronise local businesses. The
concept started in 2010 as a one-off, but the
following year, the US Senate declared Small
Business Saturday an official day, cementing it
as a permanent fixture in the calendar.
Play to your strengths
There’s also a lot to be said for identifying your
strengths and playing to them. So instead of
dusting off the chequebook after a natural disas-
ter, what else could your business contribute that
might make a difference? Look at what Toyota did
with Meals Per Hour following Hurricane Sandy:
it applied the principles of Kaizen – improving
work practices through continuous incremental
change – to great effect with the relief effort so
that families who were relying on food parcels
months after the hurricane were fed and received
their parcel more promptly.
Singaporean telco StarHub, with DDB Group
Singapore, has introduced an initiative where
mobile subscribers can donate their unused
data, minutes and texts to local charities every
month so that people with illness or disability
who rely on care-givers can benefit from access
to mobile phones. StarHub plans to give 500
beneficiaries 80 minutes of talk-time, 300 SMS
and 1GB of data each month for a year. More
brands should step up in this way: it costs StarHub
very little to redistribute something that’s already
been paid for. Meanwhile, Toyota’s Meals Per
Hour effort made much more of a statement about
the Toyota brand and working culture than any
traditional brand campaign or corporate website
ever could.
Power brands
So how are things going to develop in the next ten
years? There will no doubt be growing numbers of
evangelists and just as many cynics. Advertising
can’t save the world and it’s naive to suggest it
can. However, the business still attracts some of
the best creative and strategic brains around, and
purpose is on their to-do list. You need only take
a look at the Young Lions winners from Cannes
over the past few years to see that.
There’s a definite first-mover advantage here: if
you’re the first consumer electronics brand to push
for conflict-free minerals in your product range, or
the first fashion retailer to offer complete trans-
parency in how your clothes are manufactured,
there’s a clear reputational benefit over dragging
your heels and having to be whipped into shape
by government regulation.
And the benefit to balance sheets is clear: The
Stengel 50, a joint project between Millward
Brown and former global marketing officer of
P&G, Jim Stengel, ranked the world’s 50 fast-
est-growing brands between 2001 and 2011,
releasing results in 2012. It clearly showed that
brands which had a higher purpose outperformed
the S&P 500 by 400%. ‘I wanted to prove that
maximum profit and high ideals aren’t incom-
patible but, in fact, inseparable,’ said Stengel.
Take AmEx Small Business Saturday as a case in
point. A total of $5.5bn was spent as a result of the
initiative in 2012. That’s the kind of power that
brands can wield. What could yours do?
Inglorious Fruit
and Vegetables:
Intermarché created
a new revenue stream
and cut down on waste
by selling misshapen
fruit at a discount
If you’re the first fashion retailer to
offer complete transparency in how
your clothes are manufactured,
there’s a clear reputational benefit

23. Strength Study / Purpose 34 / 35
Brand Spotlight
Chipotle
W
hat does sustainability mean to
you? Images of wind turbines and
winsome children? Sunny skies and
rolling oceans? While many brands over the
past ten years have made huge strides with their
sustainability policies, there’s often a disconnect
when it comes to communicating those efforts
beyond the boardroom. That’s why Chipotle, the
US burrito chain, stands out. For the past two
decades it has been busy promoting the benefits
of sustainable over industrial farming – all while
serving up a mean burrito. What’s more, over the
past few years, it has spawned some incredibly
moving and memorable marketing. And all of
it as far removed as possible from the clichés
listed above.
Bucking the trend
Chipotle founder Steve Ells bucked a trend
when he opened the doors of the first Chipotle
restaurant in Denver, Colorado, in 1993. This
fast-food eaterie had no plastic furniture,
styrofoam packaging or microwaved food.
Instead, there was an open-plan kitchen where
customers could see their food being prepared
right in front of them. While we’ve grown used
to that level of transparency in food preparation –
almost to the point of coming to expect it – back
then it was a radical concept.
Right from its inception, Chipotle set out to
change the way people think about and eat fast
food. And it has been phenomenally successful
while doing so. In 2013, year-on-year revenue
increased 17.7% to $3.21bn; net income was
$327.4m, an increase of 17.8%; and the chain
opened 185 new restaurants (its current total
is 1,650). For brands that continue to believe
that purpose and profit are mutally exclusive,
Chipotle’s consistent growth over the past two
decades is persuasive evidence to the contrary.
Chipotle has been one of the loudest voices in
the good food movement. Ten years ago – when I
was part of the team working on the very first issue
of Contagious – Morgan Spurlock’s SuperSize Me
was released, chronicling one man’s downward
spiral into obesity as he stuck to a fast-food diet.
Now barely a day goes by without the O-word
being in the news, or a food safety or animal
welfare story hitting the headlines. Consumer
behaviour is changing: McDonald’s announced
in October that global revenues fell by 5% in the
third quarter, while Chipotle’s cap is $20bn.
There’s much interest taken in where our food
comes from, behaviour that was brilliantly par-
odied in the comedy sketch show Portlandia. A
couple in a restaurant obsess so much about the
provenance of the chicken they’re about to order
that knowing its name, breed and even seeing
a photo isn’t enough for these super-sensitive
beings: oh no, they abandon their table to visit
the farm in person.
Putting integrity first
Signage in Chipotle’s restaurants communicates
the company’s Food With Integrity mission
as ‘Our commitment to finding the very best
ingredients raised with respect for the animals,
the environment and the farmers’. Visit the com-
pany’s Food With Integrity website and you can
see exactly what this means in terms of livestock
and the wider world.
Transparency plays a big part here: if Chipotle
can’t purchase naturally raised chicken for some
reason, it lets people know. This allows diners
the choice of opting for an alternative menu
option if they want to prioritise their ethics
over their appetite. If a brand wants to align
itself to a higher purpose, charting progress and
highlighting obstacles are vital. People don’t
expect perfection, but honest communication
never goes amiss.
Chipotle has always had a clear mission:
promoting the benefits of sustainable farming,
one burrito at a time. And for any naysayers
who consider purpose and profit to be
awkward bedfellows, Chipotle’s impressive
and consistent growth proves otherwise
Back To The Start:
animation showed
the plight of a farmer
struggling to balance
business with ethics
Content, not commercials
Unlike many brands that have struggled to identify
and then communicate their purpose, Chipotle
has always had a clear mission. However, for a
long time, it struggled to find an agency that
understood it, earning it a reputation as some-
thing of a problem client and a serial reviewer:
by 2010, it had been through five agencies in six
years. So when it hooked up with the corporate
arm of talent agency Creative Artists Agency in
Los Angeles – interestingly, not a ‘traditional’
agency – it didn’t set out to do ‘advertising’, but
rather to find arresting ways to tell its story.
Building brand ethics
The first work from CAA Marketing was a touch-
ing two-minute animation, Back To The Start,
directed by Johnny Kelly via Nexus Productions
in London. It documented the epiphany of a
factory farmer who no longer wants his livestock
to be pumped up to the eyeballs with hormones
and packaged into boxes. Given that 300 family
farmers in the US walk away from their land every
week, this film helped to explain their struggle
to balance business with ethics.
The powerful short film, sound-tracked by
country music legend Willie Nelson covering The
Scientist by Coldplay, left audiences misty-eyed
while at the same time delivering a hard-hitting
message about industrialised animal production.
Awards juries loved it. Among other accolades in
2012, it picked up two Grand Prix at the Cannes
Lions: one for film, and the first-ever in branded
content and entertainment. The latter also recog-
nised CAA’s entire Cultivate Programme, a multi-
faceted platform including a loyalty programme
rewarding knowledge, not spend, and a ‘food,
ideas and music’ festival.
A digital-first media strategy optimised Back
To The Start: it made its debut on YouTube and
then to 21 million Facebook fans, leveraging the
combined social media fan bases of Chipotle,
Willie Nelson and Coldplay. Through paid-
for downloads of The Scientist on iTunes, it
raised funds for FarmAid and for the Cultivate
Foundation, which has contributed more than $2m
to help fund initiatives that support sustainable

24. Strength Study / Purpose 36 / 37
Content is a more effective tool to pique
curiosity than traditional advertising. The
idea is to bring people into the conversation
through something that is first and foremost
entertainment, secondly says something
about us, and thirdly that is designed to
spark conversation
Chris Arnold, Chipotle
agriculture, family farming, culinary education,
and innovation that promotes better food.
Back To The Start continues to attract views
on YouTube and, to date, has been viewed more
than 8.5 million times. ‘The reason why it seems to
resonate with people is because there’s an elegance
to the storytelling,’ Jesse Coulter, co-chief creative
officer from CAA Marketing, told Contagious.
The Scarecrow
A 2013 sequel, The Scarecrow, also wowed jurors
at Cannes, and scooped the 2014 Grand Prix for
PR and Cyber. This time, the animation starred
a scarecrow working at Crow Foods Incorporated.
American singer-songwriter Fiona Apple’s cover
of Pure Imagination plays in the background while
the sad scarecrow witnesses horrors like a chicken
inflating after being injected, and a melancholy
cow shivering inside a metal box. The scarecrow
decides enough is enough and starts cooking
with freshly grown ingredients. The film, like
its predecessor, is both compelling and hopeful.
It’s been viewed 13.4 million times.
Coultersays:‘Fromtheoutsetweknewwewanted
to continue in animation, as did Chipotle. We
thought it was a great medium for the stories we’re
trying to tell and for the worlds that we’re trying to
create. It allows us to tackle complex issues in a
way that makes them more approachable, rather
than taking them on directly in live action. It
became the opportunity to build a vision for a
different part of the campaign.’
Scarecrow: the game
Accompanying The Scarecrow was a free iOS
game, a 3D platform-jumper that sought to bring
to life the pro-sustainable farming theme of the
film. Our eponymous hero aims to free confined
animals, serve wholesome food and dodge robotic
crows. Downloaded 450,000 times, the game
included a buy-one-get-one-free offer at the
burrito chain, designed to drive footfall and sales.
Farmed and Dangerous
Having successfully experimented with short-
form branded content, in January 2014, Chipotle
launched a four-part comedy series, Farmed and
Dangerous, which appeared on US streaming
service Hulu. The show centres on a nefarious
company called Animoil that wants to increase
cattle production by feeding cows petroleum pel-
lets. An activist, Chip, petitions to stop the firm.
However, despite its comic intentions and
satirical nature – including exploding cows and
over-the-top villains – Farmed and Dangerous
angered some farmers. One agricultural blogger,
Ryan Goodman, urged the chain to ‘go talk with
the farmers and ranchers that you are attacking…
start a dialogue and let the conversation come
from both sides of the plate to learn where our
food comes from.’ Another blogger, The Foodie
Farmer, cited US Department of Agriculture
statistics that claim 97% of US farms are family-
run, exploding Chipotle’s ‘myth’ that our food is
produced by industrial agriculture.
The Scarecrow: sequel
to Back To The Start
scooped the 2014
Cannes Lions PR
Grand Prix

25. Strength Study / Purpose 38 / 39
Opinion
Ethics at the heart
of business
Almost every aspect of the world we know is changing. Rapid pop-
ulation growth, the digital revolution, lack of global governance in an
increasingly interdependent world and stress on the environment are
just some of the factors causing business to operate in an increasingly
volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment.
We have created prosperity, but too many are still being left behind.
As we should know from nature, a world not in balance will ultimately
be rejected. The latest progress report on the Millennium Development
Goals shows that 1.2 billion people are still living in extreme poverty;
2.5 billion people lack access to adequate sanitation facilities; one in
five children fail to make it to the age of five; and global greenhouse
gas emissions continue to rise.
Gridlocked political process
While the human and environmental logic for change is overwhelming,
the political process is gridlocked. We have the financial resources
available, but money is lost on perplexing subsidies, geopolitical conflicts
and wars, or inefficient bureaucracy. That means the role of business is
important: business creates jobs and livelihoods by producing solutions
to complex problems, and can have an enormous impact at scale by
capitalising on its partners and stakeholders.
Indeed, business can be part of the answer, but it has a responsibility
to do it right. To succeed it must come out of the grip of short-termism
and self-service. Business needs to put itself, first and foremost, at
the service of society, not just shareholders. At Unilever, we strongly
believe that business should give and not take from the societies and
environments on which it relies in the first place.
Crisis of ethics
What we have experienced over recent years is not so much a crisis of
capitalism, but a crisis of ethics. Initiatives like the Blueprint for Better
Business can help by providing the right guidelines for businesses to
put purpose and sustainability at the heart of their operations and earn
the trust of those they seek to serve in the first place.
Trust in business was at an all-time low after the 2008 recession. The
2014 Edelman Trust Barometer suggests that business is recovering,
having made demonstrable strides in transparency, supply chain and
product quality. There is now an opportunity for business to demonstrate
its longer-term commitment to change.
Long term thinking
At Unilever, we are backing words with action. We have aligned
management incentives and invested heavily in R&D and people to
build our pipeline of innovations and our organisation for the long term.
In addition, we have moved away from quarterly profit reporting. Since
we don’t operate on a 90-day cycle for advertising, marketing, or
investment, why do so for reporting? In 2010, we launched the
Unilever Sustainable Living Plan (USLP). Some doubted our abil-
ity – and my state of mind – when we set out our ambition to grow
the business but in a completely novel way – totally decoupling our
growth from environmental footprint and increasing our positive
social impact.
The USLP is driving innovation and growth, reducing costs, increasing
engagement and making Unilever a preferred employer. It is helping us
create brands with purpose, connecting meaningful solutions with the
needs of everyday consumers. Domestos is helping to improve access
to basic sanitation; PG Tips and Lipton are supporting sustainably
sourced tea; Knorr works to source key ingredients in a sustainable
and traceable way through a network of landmark farmers, and Dove’s
Real Beauty mission promotes self-esteem. All these brands facilitate
a movement for change.
Small actions = big difference
Nonetheless, I challenge you to ask yourself: do people really care
about this enough to change their buying behaviour or even their
consumption pattern? Consumers can be schizophrenic. On one
hand, as citizens, we value responsible brands and products. On the
other, as individuals, we make buying decisions that are often incon-
sistent with our role as citizens. That’s where Project Sunlight comes
in. We launched this platform in 2013 as a means to engage directly
with consumers on our sustainability. Through Project Sunlight, we
want to motivate people to live sustainably by taking small actions that
make a big difference.
Using our size and scale to pro-actively transform markets is not only
right but also exciting. However, we can’t do it alone. That is why we’re
working with others in partnerships like the Tropical Forest Alliance,
the UN Scaling Up Nutrition Initiative, the World Business Council for
Sustainable Development Action 2020 programme and the New Vision
for Agriculture. Through these types of transformative partnerships we
can drive change at scale.
And yet this is still not enough. We need the right long-term framework
and we need more companies to join us on the journey. Fortunately, more
are. The key will be greater transparency in all we do and enhanced tools
of integrated reporting, including for environmental and social capital.
It will also help to identify the free-riders, those unwilling to join and
take responsibility. Finally, we need governments to create appropriate
frameworks for sustainable economic growth. If we get this right, we
can mobilise, scale and make a real difference.
Values Integration
Chipotle doesn’t talk about product integration,
preferring the term ‘values integration’. Chris
Arnold, the chain’s director of communications,
says: ‘Content is a more effective tool to pique
curiosity than traditional advertising. The idea
is to bring people into the conversation through
something that is first and foremost entertain-
ment, secondly says something about us, and
thirdly that is designed to spark conversation.’
Worthy and worth watching
Other brands – even in Chipotle’s category –
are making huge advances in sustainability.
Takeouts
Make purpose a priority /
Purpose, business and marketing
should all form part of your
brand’s holistic strategic direction.
All brands could have a more
meaningful agenda, so identify
what your brand could do to make
a difference in the world. Even if
talking about it isn’t right for your
brand, you should embed it in how
you run your business.
Collaborate / Identify partners
who will help you achieve your
purposeful objectives through
collaborations and alliances.
Locate NGOs in countries where
you’re looking to grow your brand
and learn from their experience
and insight.
Be transparent / Set goals and
regularly report on your progress
on as many channels as possible.
If you haven’t fulfilled an objective,
state why.
McDonald’s, a one-time investor in Chipotle,
has brought its suppliers on board with its sus-
tainability objectives and, like Chipotle, publishes
its progress, rewarding those suppliers who help
it to achieve these objectives. However, unlike
Chipotle, McDonald’s has chosen not to build its
communications strategy around its sustainability
efforts. For Chipotle, its purpose, business and
marketing strategy are all centred on the same
thing: for ALL food to be sustainably sourced,
delicious and affordable.
It’s tough to be worthy and worth watching:
Chipotle proves that brands can be both.
Paul Polman has been CEO of Unilever since 2009. Under his leadership,
Unilever has a clear objective: to double in size while reducing the company’s
overall environmental footprint and increasing its positive social impact
Farmed and
Dangerous: four-part
comedy series, which
appeared on streaming
service Hulu, angered
some farmers