Influx Insights Weblog

intro film for david plouffe (obama's campaign manager) at cannes

Influx Insights — 2009-06-30T15:49:33Z

Obama's campaign cleaned up last week at Cannes.

Here's the film DDB created that was shown before David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager spoke, at the festival.

Posted by Ed Cotton

hedging makes it's way into marketing

Influx Insights — 2009-06-30T10:58:27Z

Hedging is usually something done by Wall Street to help protect companies against volatile commodity and currency pricing. This tool might now be finding it's way into marketing thanks to a company called Pricelock, who've just done a gas deal for automaker Hyundai. The possibilities are endless; being able to lock in your cup of coffee at Starbucks or even the price of your steak at a local steakhouse.

It will be interesting to see if this idea spreads, given how price sensitive people are at this moment in time.

Posted by Ed Cotton

nurturing 1000 true fans- can brands think like artists?

Influx Insights — 2009-06-30T10:37:44Z

While it seems to be culturally ingrained into our DNA that you need mass scale for success, it's possible that you can find success in the niches. The Long Tail suggests you need have a hit or you risk sinking into oblivion, but we've heard of artists doing surprisingly well utilizing their Twitter bases to auction off band gear, t-shirts and special one-off performances. People making money in a way that few brands or even Twitter itself has demonstrated.

Kevin Kelly has spent some time thinking about this, as is his style and sets the magical number of 1,000 which he believes are the number of fans required to support an artist. He defines them as true fans, which is probably not the same as Facebook fans or Twitter followers.

"Other than aim for a blockbuster hit, what can an artist do to escape the long tail?

One solution is to find 1,000 True Fans. While some artists have discovered this path without calling it that, I think it is worth trying to formalize. The gist of 1,000 True Fans can be stated simply:

A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author - in other words, anyone producing works of art - needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.

A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can't wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans."

While most consumer brands aren't artists, there are clearly some opportunities for brands who can find their niche super fan bases in social media and then offer up unique products and services that are limited only to those super-fans. It's a new way to think about limited edition. We are already thinking about brands as media, so brands as artists, is yet another lens to use.

Posted by Ed Cotton

san francisco chefs re-imagine the mcdonald's menu

Influx Insights — 2009-06-29T11:00:36Z

Last week, Mission Street Food got together with some other chefs in the city to re-imagine the McDonald's menu to raise funds for the Campaign for Better Nutrition.

Here's what they came up with..

Smoked Tofu McNuggets with Ancho Barbecue Sauce and Tequila-Agave Mustard $6

Cactus Fries with Habanero-Lime Ketchup $6

McShaker Salad with Sunflower Seeds, Watermelon and Jicama $7

Filet o' Bacalao Fish with Coriander-Cayenne Slaw $10

McRib Sandwich - Pork Belly and Smoky St. Louis Rib Roulade, Cipollinis and Ancho Cress $12

Mac Grande - Shredded Short Rib and Chuck Patty with "Government Cheese" and Spicy Zucchini Relish $12

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Dulce de Leche Sundae with Hot Mexican Fudge and Chile-Cocoa Pepitas $6

Granny Smith Apple Pie $4 / with Malted Vanilla $6

Bing Cherry Pie $4 / with Malted Vanilla $6

McMission Cookie Box $5

Posted by Ed Cotton

the shift to the real time web

Influx Insights — 2009-06-29T10:16:18Z

SEOMoz Blog conducted a very detailed analysis of the breaking news story around the death of Michael Jackson and concluded;

"The events of Thursday demonstrated that Google is falling behind in the emerging real-time web. It was 3 hours and 17 minutes after TMZ first announced Michael Jackson had experienced cardiac arrest before it appeared as a auto completion suggestion on Google's homepage. In the computer age that is a huge amount of time. It is 3 hours and 17 minutes during which consumers may choose to go somewhere other than Google to get the information they want."

With the conversation happening in real-time it appears the search engines are handicapped by legacy systems and process that can't operate at the same speed as competitors Facebook and Twitter.

There seems to be new divisions of time and new concepts appearing around the notion.

Brands need to be flexible and adaptable to operate across all these new facets of time and must have the ability to respond and participate in "the conversation".

Posted by Ed Cotton

understanding the real cost of making things

Influx Insights — 2009-06-29T10:21:42Z

Modern business has become ruthlessly efficient at producing low cost goods, so much so, it's very easy to ignore the complexities involved in the global sourcing and manufacture of these items.

The Toaster Project by Thomas Thwaites, a student at RCA, is an attempt to come to terms with the complexity. Thwaites takes a $10 toaster and tries to manufacture his version that takes him on an interesting journey into mines, meetings with energy consultants and even smelting iron ore in a microwave.

Step 2, Attempt 2: Smelting Iron Ore in a Microwave from Thomas Thwaites on Vimeo.

Thwaites sums up the real point of the project as follows;

“It seems the need to buy more stuff to save our economy and the need to buy less to save our environment are on a collision course. So, we either have to value what we’ve got a lot more, or spend as much time and effort taking things apart and disposing of them as we do putting them together.”

Posted by Ed Cotton

us soccer defeat causes a bigger spike in web traffic than mj

Influx Insights — 2009-06-26T13:29:04Z

Obviously, when big news breaks people are increasingly going to the internet and the death of celebrity has people not only searching for news, but also for related content around that individual's life. I found it interesting that the news of Michael Jackson's death caused a huge spike in traffic, but, it's still dwarfed by the election of Obama and strangely by the elimination of the US soccer team by Ghana!

Posted by Ed Cotton

augmented championship tennis reality from ibm

Influx Insights — 2009-06-24T11:23:49Z

Here's another example of augmented reality- this time it's for Android phone users and it comes to us from IBM. The idea here is to help visitors to the tennis championships at Wimbledon to get access to data via data layered on top of a viewfinder. It's seems like a nifty idea, but is it really an easier or better experience than something that could be obtained from a regular mobile web experience.

From the users perspective, perhaps it's easier to see that there's an exciting/close match on Court 5 and to discover where that is. Perhaps this could be done by integrating a maps application?

Posted by Ed Cotton

the masking tape artist

Influx Insights — 2009-06-23T12:51:18Z

Buff Diss is an Australian who confuses authorities with his masking tape street art.

Posted by Ed Cotton

coins as a means for interaction

Influx Insights — 2009-06-23T12:44:54Z

Most conversations about interaction these days tend to revolve around the digital landscape. It's especially interesting that the more digital we become the less of a physical connection we have to real money and for many the physical presence of coins has become an annoying obstacle to convenience.

It's therefore surprising to hear that Matt Dent, a 26 year-old graphic designer won a D&AD Black Pencil for a competition entry he submitted to the Royal Mint in the UK.

His coins are not only beautiful, but as Dent explained in an interview there's some real thought gone into the design and in particular, how people could interact with them.

"I thought the six coins could make up a shield by arranging the coins both horizontally, as with the landscape idea, as well as vertically, in a sort of jigsaw style. I liked the idea and symbolism of using the Royal Arms, where individually the coins could focus on specific elements and when placed together they reveal the complete Royal Arms.

I found the idea that members of the public could interact with the coins the most exciting aspect of this concept. It's easy to imagine the coins pushed around a school classroom table or fumbled around with on a bar - being pieced together as a jigsaw and just having fun with them.'

Posted by Ed Cotton

pentagram takes on tobacco packaging

Influx Insights — 2009-06-23T12:31:45Z

With legislation coming down hard on the tobacco industry, its options for marketing are becoming tougher and tougher. Pentagram recently took a look at what this could for cigarette packaging and communication in the future.

Here's one of the pack designs.

Posted by Ed Cotton

the olive garden searches for emotional authenticity

Influx Insights — 2009-06-22T12:10:51Z

There's a good article in Fast Company about restaurant powerhouse Darden. The story talks about how the company is trying hard to re-tool its business to be relevant to a changing American food landscape.

Of particular interest is the section on The Olive Garden where the insight about emotional togetherness helped the brand deliver a benefit above and beyond the food and how the company strives to bring more Italian authenticity to the chain with the establishment of a cooking school in Tuscany and field trips.

"Olive Garden promises "an idealized Italian family meal, whether you're Italian or not," says Pickens. When General Mills launched the chain in 1982, it was an affordable Italian restaurant -- a safe choice, nothing surprising. By the 1990s, it had hundreds of locations, but the menu had grown stale and sales were in decline. "It lost its culinary and cultural soul," says John Caron, Olive Garden's head of marketing.

Darden turned to research. "The key consumer insight was that people missed the emotional comfort and connectivity that comes with family," says chief operating officer Drew Madsen, then the chain's head of marketing. "People come to a restaurant for both physical and emotional nourishment. The physical is the food; and the emotional is how you feel when you leave."

Olive Garden executives began tying everything to this mythical Italian family, adopting the tagline, "When you're here, you're family." New locations were designed to suggest Italian farmhouses, with a large family-style table, modeled on one in a Florentine trattoria. Then executives formed a partnership with actual Italians: Olive Garden's Culinary Institute of Tuscany (CIT). It was a "stroke of genius," says Dennis Lombardi, a veteran food consultant. Eleven times a year, the company sends 14 top employees, many of whom have never set foot in Italy, to spend a week in an 11th-century village in Tuscany and learn from Sergio and Daniela Zingarelli, a husband and wife who operate a restaurant, winery, and inn. The couple and other local experts expose the Americans to everything from how olive oil gets pressed to how to layer flavors in a Bolognese sauce. The Olive Garden employees buy fresh vegetables at a market in Florence and prepare a multicourse Italian meal. "It's like getting into Harvard," says Pickens. "It's not, of course, but you know what I mean." Since 1999, some 850 employees have attended CIT; 80% of them are still with the company.

There are also what Caron calls "ideation trips" to CIT, during which chefs work in local Tuscan restaurants. They have come back with dozens of ideas that have served to expand and update Olive Garden's menu. Gone are the days of puzzling hybrids like Italian nachos. Today, many items on the dinner menu carry a CIT logo, designating that they were inspired by a staffer's experience in Italy.

These experiences -- and menu items -- provide an authenticity that's rare for a chain. Take risotto, an Italian staple that made its way into Olive Garden only two years ago. In a pilot program at a small number of restaurants, diners were initially tepid. As attitudes changed, the test kitchens took on the preparation challenge; risotto requires 20 minutes to cook, longer than customers are willing to wait. Chefs eventually found a more expensive variety of rice that could be cooked most of the way through in advance, finished off just before serving, and still retain the desired taste and texture. Risotto is now part of a CIT-inspired entree designed to entice more adventurous diners who might not have considered Olive Garden

While The Olive Garden might be the furthest from many people's perception of an authentic Italian experience, it's clear that the brand has to compete on a mass scale, by finding an emotional connection and pushing its employees to be educated, gives it a better chance of success than its major competitors.

Posted by Ed Cotton

can brands be transparent, approachable and immediate?

Influx Insights — 2009-06-23T12:02:39Z

Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter gave a talk at the 140 Characters Conference held recently. He made it clear from the outset that Twitter is about three words; approachability, transparency and immediacy.

It's a nice and simple distillation of how brands need to behave in this new environment.

The reality is to achieve this most brands have a mountain to climb, one that's been built out of hundreds of years of established corporate culture, process and lawyers.
Breaking through all that is going to be tough.

This is not just about a policy for dealing with Twitter, but re-thinking the whole of your communication. Unless it's holistic and deals with the realities, it's likely to fail.

The shift from campaign to conversation is a radical and one that requires way more than half measures.

Posted by Ed Cotton

the atlantic on the economist's point of difference

Influx Insights — 2009-06-23T11:38:57Z

Interesting to see The Atlantic write such a flattering article about The Economist and the current state of the newsweekly business. The discussion revolves around the recent changes and re-designs at Time and Newsweek, who are both hoping to drag their publications to new found success in an otherwise dying print market.
The Economist is the one shining ray of light that everyone now wants to emulate, but The Atlantic does not believe this is possible because The Economist possess one thing these other titles lack.

"The secret to The Economist’s success is not its brilliance, or its hauteur, or its typeface. The writing in Time and Newsweek may be every bit as smart, as assured, as the writing in The Economist. But neither one feels like the only magazine you need to read. You may like the new Time and Newsweek. But you must—or at least, brilliant marketing has convinced you that you must—subscribe to The Economist. "

In the end, it's all about the brand.

Posted by Ed Cotton

airline uses data to create a brand experience

Influx Insights — 2009-06-23T11:27:32Z

An amazing example of a brand using data to create an experience. In this case it's Lufthansa in its brand academy in Frankfurt.

Posted by Ed Cotton