On the 28th May Networx bought together some of the leading thinkers around creating engaging triggers for conversation. These included;
· Adam Ferrier; Founding Partner of Naked Communications
· Joanne Jacobs; COO of 1000heads
· Rob Belgiovane; Founding Partner of BWM
So why should we be listening to these people? Here’s a couple of cool campaigns they worked on:
· Adam Ferrier presented on ‘Steal Banksy’ for Art Series Hotels, more information at artserieshotels.com.au/stealbanksy. For this he scored himself a Gold Effie, and a Gold Lion.
· Joanne spoke on the ‘Are you smarter than John?’ campaign for F-Secure, check it out at besmarterthanjohn.com.
· Rob expressed frustration at always coming back to this campaign, but it always comes back to ‘Keeping the rabbits out of China’ for Telstra Bigpond…
So then what did they talk about? There were a few key ideas explored:
Insight and Brand…
You need to have insights about the actual behaviour you’re trying to change, and the context in which ithis behavious occurs. Mine for insight around key emotional triggers; e.g. patriotism (Qantas’ ‘I still call Australia home’), your children’s education (‘Rabbits in China’), etc.
Here’s a thought – conversations are only around life experiences, or life aspirations. Not your brand! You simply need to create the context for these conversations. What the brand thinks of itself is essentially irrelevant, it’s what people think of the brand that matters!
Ideas and brainstorming…
Try presenting your ideas in video! In advertising today there are short attention spans, we need to maintain attention! If you’re bored by your presentation you need to know that it’s your fault, not the Client’s, nor the product’s. Be interesting, and find your niche.
When you’re generating ideas ensure you get out of the problem! Also; don’t brainstorm with the people you currently work with. You will learn to predict their answers, and the amount of truly original content generated from each brainstorm will drastically decrease the more you work with them.
In the end just remember; having an idea not fly is a natural accompaniment to find what idea will fly.
Virality…
There’s only so far you can push your idea. If it hasn’t taken off within a week then there’s something wrong. But don’t write it off as a bad idea, and throw it out! You should have pre-prepared levers and mechanisms in place which you can engage to shift the focus, or drive of the campaign. Just because it hasn’t taken off, doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea!
Here’s a classic quote to think about when trying to create ‘virality’; the biggest predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. I.e. people love videos of cats.
An interesting example – “Come on Aussie, come on!” was a campaign for World Series Cricket that went viral before virality existed! The essence of why this went viral has not changed.
A couple of ideas to look into moving forward…
· mindtools.com – helps you brainstorm, with some great tools for facilitation
· Brainjuicer – check out halfway down this page to find out why ads go viral; http://www.brainjuicer.com/html/stream/webinars
http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/2006/bigpond-great-wall-of-china-rabbits/
