UNforgettable
I wanted to come out to Nat King Cole singing unforgettable …
This presentation is about why we all need to work harder at “unforgettable” in our marketing worlds. Hopefully this will provide tips and insights about how to be remembered in our careers and our campaigns
The presentation is a mixture of my own thoughts and stories and many others I heard or read. I’d love to say they are all my own thoughts, but I’m not that clever, and I’m still honing my skills
Ok to start with I’m going to paint a little bit of a bleak picture, but don’t worry it’s not all doom and gloom and I really hope that the start of this presentation motivates you to do some of the things at the back of this presentation
So I’d like you to cast your minds back to when you where little and your teachers asked you wanted to be when you grew up?
Your hands shot up, and the words astronaut, fireman, or ballerina may have been spoken
You had a grand vision for yourself
The famous artist, the great explorer, the hero
But then something happened …you grew up, traded in childish dreams for something a little more realistic that utilized you job “skillset”.
But you did establish yourself a solid reputation
Competent. Reliable …. Forgettable
Forgettable is the Curse of competence
It is only human nature, but you should worry about it and before I explain why this is built into us I’d like to talk to you about a study where several people were asked to pick out an food item from 2 shelves, at the same time their brain patterns were being measured.
Shelf one had lots of different foods to choose from
Shelf two had the same foods but also a favorite food that the participant had previously stated
Above their is a very active brain, and a slightly active brain
Which brain applied to the shelf that had the favorite on?
Answer: Inactive brain, why…. Because the subject did not have to think, they took the easiest route and intuitively went for what they knew and picked their favourite.
This is a discussion about system 1 and system 2 of our brains
System 1 – operates automatic and quickly, with little or know effort – system one is our default
System 2 – allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it
Let me give you another example 17 x 24 even when we have to use system 2, we use then use heuristics (a method of breaking it down the task, to try and ease our cognitive load i.e. we’ll try to break down the answer down)
Answer 408
We are inherently lazy we will always default to system 1, the easy route, this is not only a problem for us trying to better ourselves but it a bigger problem when trying to connect with an audience who is lazy, if the message is too hard to understand they will probably switch off.
Lots of content
In 60secs: 700,000 messages sent via Facebook – 72 Hours of video uploaded
90% of worlds data created in the last 2 years
Speed of adoption Google+ 10million users in 16 days
If you take video uploads of the Harlem Shuffle it was in and out of fashion within about a month
The technology advantage has had it’s day
There’s no advantage anymore to being social like there would have been 5 – 6years ago
People are filtering more – 86% of viewers watching pre-recorded television always fast forward through the commercial breaks
And due to the amount of content being produced and media multitasking our attention span has dropped to 9 seconds – golf fish
Well like an explosion it leaves us with very little, hard to be competitive both in our careers and our businesses in such a noisy landscape
72% of people who buy Pepsi also drink Coca-Cola
50% of all knowledge about a brand is held by just 20% of it’s buyers
80% of brand buyers know little or nothing about that brand
The number 1 reason people follow brands on social is offers
So lets recap
We are inherently lazy
We have a serious lack of attention (especially in the digital medium) which lets face it is the way it’s all going now
There is a shit load of content (mostly crap) out there
People don’t give a shit!
SHIT!!!
Our biggest task today is over coming apathy
those people who are just indifferent about us and our products and services …
this is now the point that you’re all looking down thinking, christ! how the hell am I going become unforgettable we.
That’s is the end of the bleak picture
What follows, are some of the ways we can become unforgettable, it’s by no means all the ways, but I do hope these inspire you
Example:
3 agencies were asked by an islands tourist board to get more visitors to the island, the island was situated just off the mainland but had see a decline in visitors year on year at peak times.
2 of the agencies came back with the usual glossy above the line marketing campaigns backed up with a very detailed digital strategies and executions
The final agency sat down with tourist board, and told them to build a bridge making it so much easier for tourist to visit the island
They looked at the bigger picture
They saw the real problem (people are lazy, cannot be arsed to get out of their car, onto a ferry and then carry all their picnic gear)
84% share because it is a way to support causes or issues they care about
The photo is a friend of mine Molly Case (a relative nobody), she was account exec at an agency I used to work at, she’s now a student nurse and as long as I’ve known her been a spoken word artist
She got up and spoke about “nursing the nation”
not only did she receive a standing ovation from the Nurses Congress following the reading
but she has had close to 180,000 views in 6 days and has just been asked for an interview by the huffington post
All for speaking about cause she really believes in
And it not just the little people,
From the day Nike invented a new sole because Coach Bowerman needed better trainers for his athletes, by pouring rubber into his waffle maker.
Nike have been about making athletes better through innovation.
They also believe that everyone has the potential to be an athlete, if you have a body you can run.
They have held true to this thought in everything they do.
I don’t mean physically move people (well unless your Nike) but emotionally move people.
At this point I could talk about how establishing an emotional connection with your audience creates a more effective tie, and chemical imbalances with the brain that produce endorphins and all that psychological stuff (which I do actually find quite interesting). But as marketers we should bring it back to the ROI.
When the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising looked at nearly 900 international case studies, it that showed Emotional campaigns were almost twice as likely to generate large profit that rational ones. So there’s your ROI.
Givers, takers can— and do— achieve success.
But there’s something distinctive that happens when givers succeed: it spreads and cascades.
When takers win, there’s usually someone else who loses.
Research shows that people tend to envy successful takers and look for ways to knock them down a notch.
In contrast, when [givers] win, people are rooting for them and supporting them, rather than gunning for them.
Givers succeed in a way that creates a ripple effect, enhancing the success of people around them. You’ll see that the difference lies in how a giver’s success creates value, instead of just claiming it.
An Brand example
Apple who took the user interface from Xerox, have a closed environment with itunes, pissing off most of the music industry, which has actually delayed them being able to launch a competitor to spotify – everyone is gunning for them
Google who give away so many services for free, have a much more open policy and have a informal motto of don’t be evil – have seen great success in so many areas
A Personal Example
Being here today was down to me giving – I was with a client when I met Graham (the guy behind the Digital Doughnut) who was speaking at the same workshop the client had asked me too come along too, Graham and I both left at the same time, as I was driving I offered Graham a lift to the station and well now I’m here, so nothing to do with my ability to speak
The digital self revolution - Nike fuel band – Data for motivation
The new brands that are succeeding in todays environment are those that using the trends to their advantages
So while most companies are busy measuring the size of their knives or in the case of the picture, their swords (so to speak), you can come along with a more disruptive idea and blow them away
Loic Le Meur a serial entrepreneur and founder of LeWeb one of Europe’s best technology conference speaks about how good marketing is no marketing. He live streams the entire event and then pushes all the video out via social channels, while most conferences are still scared to let the content free.
Air B2B, have disrupted the Hotel Industry – rent your room
Lending club – have disrupted the loans industry – crowd sourced borrowing, have lent over 1.6 billion dollars to date
For the first couple of years that you start out in your careers doing things, making stuff, what you’re doing is not so good,
it’s not that your not trying to do good work and make a difference.
You know it’s not as good as it could be, and you feel that level of disappointment,
but that is good, that’s ambition to do better
But a lot of people won’t get past that phase … they become competent
The people who I look up to and admire both personally and professionally, went through a phase of years where they were not doing good things, they could tell that the things they were doing were not quite good enough
This is a phase you have to go through (it’s a phase I’m still going through now, every now I see a glimmer where work meets ambition but I’m not there yet, it’s not constant enough yet)
And the only way you can get through it is by doing lots lots more of it, put yourself on a deadline to do more of it, until you break free from it and you will finally see your work meet your ambitions
It’s not easy and quite frankly it should not be ….
References: Ira Glass on Storytelling Part 3, Psychology of Sharing NY Times, Give and Take – Adam Grant, Institute of Marketing Science, The impulse panel, Deloitte, Thinking Fast and Slow, wwwboostblogtraffic.com
Credits:
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