Contagious ideas by PSST : spreading 2.0 innovation (editor = jérémy dumont, strategic planner, france)

The Level Tunnerl (installation in MEXICO CITY)

Do you remember the last time that you were really drunk  - drunk to the point of stumbling around semi-conscious, blindly groping at the walls in some desperate attempt to make sense of your surroundings? No? Good  - us neither, although that might not mean that it didn’t happen, just that we can’t remember it. This was however, the first thing that sprung to mind when we heard about The Level Tunnel project, starting its world tour in Mexico City today.

In all fairness, this is not as perhaps implied, some kind of glorious drunken-stupor simulator but in fact a unique nomadic installation created by designer Hussein Chalayan to emphasise the multi-faceted sensory experience of drinking LEVEL Vodka. The 15 meter-long, 5 meter-high tunnel immerses the visitor in complete darkness (aided by a rather snazzy-looking pair of swimming goggles-come-sunglasses) playing on the supposed heightening of the other senses. As you walk through the installation, music from flutes made out of Level bottles is played and scents of the ‘super premium’ vodka are temptingly wafted about as you feel your way along the soft leather railing. After climbing out at the end, you are then treated with a tasting event. After the world premier in Mexico, The Level Tunnel will spend two weeks first in Athens and then in Paris and will be open to the general public.

If you don’t get the chance to visit the exhibition (the Contagious crew is currently debating a mad dash to Paris for an impromptu ‘tasting session’) then you can always keep abreast of proceedings by checking The Level Tunnel Blog. Written by the team behind the project, this promises to chart ‘the daily twists and turns’ of the tunnel’s various events, as well as documenting the artistic and practical challenges faced in the construction process. In addition, the website also contains films including a Making of and an interview with Hussein Chalayan.

www.levelvodka.com/tunnel

LEVEL Vodka was launched in 2004 by the makers of ABSOLUT and currently competes in the premium vodka market with other brands such as the Bacardi-owned Grey Goose.

Ideas and Popular Vote

Seen in Contagious Magazine

John King, Director of Brand Innovation at Fallon Minneapolis, wonders how the primaries would be playing out if the candidates had spent less on ads and more on action.

The failures of the advertising industry are never more apparent than during an election year. Turn on the television or radio, or click on the Web, and you will see tons of money being spent. But you won’t see many ideas. Budgets continue to be spent delivering messages in the form of ads instead of building ideas in the world. It’s interesting that, in a year in which we have the possibility of the first female or (as looks increasingly likely) African-American president, in a year in which “hope” and “change” are the new vocabulary, that communication models have remained so status quo.

Sure YouTube and Saturday Night Live have added some spice along the way, but remember that the only role the campaign plays in virals like the Will.i.am music video for Obama is to not get in the way. Supporters are creating these interesting elements while campaign budgets continue to be dumped into traditional advertising channels.

The possibility of public financing for the general election on the horizon makes me wonder what would happen if a candidate broke the mold. How would the game change if a candidate took the approximately $85 Million of public financing and, rather than spend it to advertise that he or she were “presidential,” invested it to bring forward ideas as if he or she were already the president?

I know, I know. There is a science to all of this. Political experts are paid expert salaries to build formulas. Ratings, delegates, and super-delegates have been carefully accounted for, and every move is a calculated one. But I’m here to argue that it’s a science based onold truths. Consumers, media, and the world have changed, and the candidate who embraces this new world will have disproportionate returns. By following these three steps, he or she might just be able to turn that $85 million into victory.

Step 1: Focus on action instead of ads.

I watched CNN’s coverage of Super Tuesday. It was an evening filled with complex storylines, intricate competitive situations, and drama. Super Tuesday was made even more dramatic as a series of tornados hit Tennessee and neighboring states, killing over fifty and wounding hundreds. I watched in amazement that night as every candidate managed to pivot their speech to deliver a sentence on the tornados while still getting across their main points. I suppose it was the twister thing that left my head spinning. It seemed so insincere for these candidates—with all their influence, budget, and passion not to mention land armies at their disposal—to reduce a natural disaster to a shout-out in a stump speech.

How different Super Tuesday would have looked if the candidates had spent their budget (or some of it) as they would if they were already president. What would have happened if the Obama, Clinton, or McCain camp had sent a fleet of volunteers in unmarked vans to Tennessee straightaway the regular Wednesday after Super Tuesday to assist in the disaster? Or, if that’s too opportunistic (and shame on us if it is), imagine rather than a candidate running ads to reinforce that they’re pro education, funding a promotional program that delivered new computers to schools that needed them. While this approach may not reach as many people, it works a lot better for those it does reach—influencers.

It’s a model that served skateboard brand Vans well. Vans maintained street cred by using marketing dollars to finance skate parks and to film documentaries about the sport. It would be a revolutionary approach for a political candidate to look at communications budgets through the same lens of brand behavior. Certainly advertising would have a role, but you’d be starting with ideas. The real strength of an idea-led approach is that this type of modern brand behavior, with its mix of action and advertising, talks the talk and walks the walk. The communications would truly accomplish something regardless of the outcome of the election. It doesn’t all get thrown in the bin, clicked, or vaporized when the rectangle ends on the flowchart. It’s still there when you’re gone. People, the country, the world are better off that you were there, better off that your idea was there…

Stay tuned for the second half of this article in next week’s Contagious newsletter.

Skype's digital Nomad

Seen in Contagious Magazine

Skype’s campaign for its latest mobile services makes extensive use of social media by road-testing the service via the ‘longest human product demo in perpetual motion’. The measurement magicians at Ryan*Macmillan ran the campaign through their KUDOS social media planning framework to see how it measured up as a piece of marketing activity.

www.rmmlondon.com/archive/kudos-a-planning-and-evaluation-framework-for-social-media-marketing/

The ‘KUDOS’ acronym is a useful way of judging the efficacy of any given social media activity, including the sorts of activities we are beginning to see in the world of politics. ‘KUDOS’ states that a social media activity should involve a brand dispersing some form of Knowledge (this could be anything from share prices to a joke, from a book review to weather reports) which its audience finds Useful and/or Desirable in so far as it helps the audience achieve certain aims. Critically, this Useful and/or Desirable Knowledge should also be Open (in its attribution and in the audience’s ability to access and make use of it) and Shareable between the brand’s audience and their own social networks. The more KUDOS a brand’s social media activities demonstrate, the bigger the impact those activities will have.

Skype has achieved huge success as a free internet calls service, expanding its user base to over 300 million in 28 languages without the use of any traditional advertising. Late last year, the brand partnered with the mobile network, 3, to offer free calls and chat with other Skype users via a mobile handset. This offering was then extended to major handset manufacturers and Sony’s PSP. This saw the launch of Skype’s first major piece of marketing; the ‘Skype Nomad’ (http://share.skype.com/sites/nomad

26 year-old Australian copywriter Rebecca, armed with the brand’s mobile technology, embarking on a 33-day non-stop circumnavigation of the globe. The Nomad must remain in constant motion the whole time, even sleeping in transit. Everywhere she goes the Nomad is using the tools Skype has given her, including no less than four phones, to report on her progress across several social media platforms.

Jason Goodman, managing director and founding partner at Albion, London, the agency behind the campaign, explains: ‘The Skype Nomad is the most interactive piece of work we’ve done this year. We have a live, mobile product demonstration in Rebecca, writing and capturing fantastic content that people are loving on her blog. And Flickr, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook and Dopplr are all playing their part in engaging her community.’

So how are they doing from a KUDOS standpoint? While the campaign makes great use of social media platforms, there could be more Knowledge disseminated about Skype’s products and how to use them. It certainly demonstrates how useful the Skype application is in terms of staying connected on the move – it just doesn’t explain how, making it less Useful in terms of understanding either the features or benefits of the service. It’s too early to say how Desirable the activity has been; the journey began at Heathrow airport on 5th May and at the time of writing the Nomad had 155 members of her Facebook Group (www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=15845330909) and 4,486 views of her video on YouTube (www.youtube.com/user/nomadskype08).

By doing this live and unfiltered Skype is being very Open; By publishing this content in real-time on interactive platforms, the brand exposes itself to public commentary and the risk of technical failure but thereby presents itself as confident and transparent. And finally they are Sharing big time – making extensive use of social media platforms with 353 images on Flickr (www.flickr.com/photos/skypenomad/), regular feeds to locations such as Twitter (http://twitter.com/skype_nomad) and regular use of a blog that is receiving a growing number of comments to each post. (http://share.skype.com/sites/nomad/)

Skype has combined mobile and social media with an accessible, human angle to strengthen its leadership of the internet phone industry and the effort, so far, looks worthwhile. It’s early days so we’ve given them an interim KUDOS score of 33 (out of 50) pending the unfolding of the campaign.

See the full KUDOS evaluation on the Ryan*MacMillan blog: www.rmmlondon.com/archive/get-skype-nomadder-where/ 

And check out the forthcoming issue of Contagious for Ryan*MacMillan’s take on how KUDOS is infiltrating the political front lines.

Social Networking: an acausal connecting principle ?

Seen in Evidencesx's World

An acausal principle. Jung said this about “synchronicity”, years ago, in a book, tempted to penetrate the mysterious ways of…things unexplicated. By artefacts, figures, weird theories, he brings us new demonstration about causes and effects, and most important, effects without visible causes…I was caught and hooked by, walking along the pages of this book, watching around me for nervous reasons. Throughout meaningfull coincidences, I discovered new fields, parallels to classical science of probability. This book changed my life (as many others, I agree…). It’s not all day you can obviously stare things that can’t be, with a logical eye. Things that can’t be observed in normal physics laws, events that are non-caused connected, with the idea that this does not mean that they don’t exist, but probably that they need another angle of vision, breaking away all our uses, and brain organization.

I always ask myself of what drove me to social computing…Progress, modernity ? web opportunities ? I had first and always liked social human relations. Why did I have to go to social computing ? I had friends, was on a cloud with family, used to be a classical, polite and perfect business mate with my team, boss, wherever I worked. So why ?

Maybe, it’s like another mystery, as when you live a situation, thinking you already lived, just like forecast the future…I know, now, there’s something else. Invisible, invicible, linked to this former theory ; I hate coincidences, in the way that they don’t exist anymore for me, while this book’s running through my mind. It’s no hell possible, it’s too easy avoiding another possible reality, give up with fear. Some of you will refugee behind religions, others behind chance, doom…coincidences ?

What drives us to social meet, links, read…hazard ? mouth-to-ear ? recommandations ? Anybody has ever clicked on something, prowling along web sites, pages, encounters, with no idea where to go ?

I’m convinced other forces drive us sometimes, in destiny, without having conscience we choose. And that’s an interesting new, for me. Being sure that nothing is sure. That I can learn, hear, be surprised, without having any idea of how it arrived, without any obsession of how many followers/friends I have. Discovering new fields, new goals, make us raise and go ahead. Not living in fear, trust another brotherhood, writing ideas and confront them to bulk, having in mind each thing can take a different path, at each second. Be wrong and be proud of it, to learn from others, and win, like a small mouse, a victory on the black cat. And loop again, begin another story, with new features aliens, unknown people or old buddles…I always ask myself how everything of this, works, and turn round. The earth and creation’s mysteries in some way.

Finally, I didn’t remember how I came to this book, and that’s probably one of the reasons why I loved it. And written into.

“Let’s get us on the wave, carried by winds, flows and destiny, and enjoy it”

Grand Theft Auto 4

There have been more punches thrown in the hype and hoopla surrounding the launch of Grand Theft Auto IV than during the recent Calzaghe-Hopkins fight. Our favourite spleen vent belongs to Jack Thompson. The campaigning Florida lawyer wrote a spectacularly venal letter issued via an attorney but directed at the mother of Strauss Zelnick, - chairman of publisher Rockstar Games’ parent company Take-Two - in which he associates Zelnick with the Hitler youth and accuses him of inciting the murder of policemen and trafficking in pornography and violence. As well as corrupting America’s teenage boys. See Wired for the letter in full: http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/04/jack-thompson-p.html

Whatever your stance on the gaming world’s latest blockbuster release, there’s no denying the title’s ground breaking design, intense detail and complex narrative. Contagious advises you to buy shares in eye balm companies, for there’s going to be millions of heavy bags and drooping lids worldwide over the next few weeks. Microsoft Xbox's Halo 3 shifted a massive $170m in its first day of release last October (going on to earn more revenue than the Bourne Ultimatum) – but  GTA4 looks set to smash all records; leaving Hollywood to scratch a very sore head.

GTA’s expansion as a franchise is an intriguing one. At a time when branded involvement in video games was exploding, the last instalment of the successful franchise (GTA: San Andreas) eschewed all kinds of interactive billboards and background branding in favour of fake brands like ‘Clucking Bell Fried Chicken’. This may well have been because skittish brands were unwilling to align themselves with GTA’s many controversial interactions (killing a hooker for points is positively encouraged).  However, we suspect that the queue for GTA IV may have been somewhat longer, not least because it was set in New York, home of the branded skyline. Still, it’s only Amazon.com

that broke through the barrier, selling tracks from within the games’ radio stations and expanding on their already considerable influence in the music industry.

Stoking the pre-release frenzy, pop-culture blogs went into overdrive when murals were placed throughout New York City with the help of counter culture artists, creating a game of ‘who found it first’ amongst those in the know. Rockstar also launched ‘Social Club’ where gamers can check their stats throughout the game against those across the world and even the ‘100 club’ competition, for hardcore gamers to demonstrate who can complete the game first.

GTA has been scrutinised for its violence for a long time, yet the new release is as self-aware as a slew of recent cinematic efforts focusing on uberviolence in order to criticise it. Here at Contagious, we’re thrilled to see the immersive interaction of the gaming world taking such a front seat. If somebody chooses to spend their time with something, it’s because they want to get something out of it, whether that’s hours of exciting interaction, a degree of healthy competition, or an enjoyably twisted social experiment as they work their way through playing with friends and strangers. Whether we approve of it or not, the GTA franchise is both wildly popular and hugely lucrative. Are there are lessons to be learned for the marketing industry here?
www.rockstargames.com/IV