John Winsor

The End of Branding As We Know It (revisited)

I was rereading some of my old posts and found this one. It appeared here February 7, 2005 and was an excerpt from Beyond the Brand, which I wrote in 2004. I was surprised that, with all of the radical changes that have happened in the last 4 years how much the marketing world, that it still seems to fit.

People today expect the ability to co-create and lead innovation, forcing companies to devise creative solutions to be competitive in this new bottom-up age. Such an environment creates opportunities for companies who are creative and intimately listen to the cultures they are involved with; joining forces with other creatives including artists, journalists, filmmakers and musicians to create new ways of expression and creation. The resulting products that demonstrate a real understanding of their customers and the context of their customer’s lives will be successful. Instead of thinking globally and acting locally, the successful philosophy will be to think locally and act globally.

In the vast middle of the market, people will continue to treat brands as resources. These people do not have the time or the energy to be proactive in developing their own, relevant products. Instead, they will allow their peers to do most of the heavy lifting in creating new cultural materials – and then adopt those products as their own. Brands that connect with people’s imaginations, that inspire, provoke and stimulate, helping them interpret the world that surrounds them, will be successful. Brands that are able to make the transition to provide honest, original, cultural materials, offering space for co-creation will win. Proactive people will carefully weed out and broadcast those products, and companies, that they do not trust. Many companies have already discovered that being good corporate citizens can be good for their brands. In this new era, it’s the creative citizens of a community – the people and the brands – that will help companies survive by co-creating from the bottom-up.

Is This the Future?

Andrew Keen: Web 2.0 Is Fucked (The Next Web 2009) from Robin Wauters on Vimeo.

Andrew Keen lays out an interesting, albeit alternative, vision of where communications is going in an interview with TechCrunch.

The Power of Pirates

I wasn't sure what to write about today so, I thought I'd turn to Twitter. After asking the crowd, Thomas Dooley and Ginger Conrad suggested Pirates. Thanks, guys. Pirates are cool. And, with the use of digital tools all of us are becoming Pirates. Matt Mason, Author of The Pirate's Dilemma explains:

The Crowdsourced Orchestra

I've been really fascinated by how crowdsourcing and mass participation is changing the speed of everything.  Here's a great example: the YouTube Symphony Orchestra. 

After announcing the orchestra, Google received 3,000 submissions from musicians all over the world. The finalists come from over 30 countries, six continents, and play 26 different instruments. After holding auditions in December You Tube announced the finalists last month, the  has now released the first product of its efforts. Google invited all the finalists to come to New York, where they have been preparing for tonight's performance at Carnegie Hall under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas, the Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony. Video from tonight's event should be available on YouTube tomorrow.

What's the Opposite of Crowdsourcing?

It's Custom. I had a chance to spend the afternoon with Mau at the Nike ID Studio in their 21 Mercer Street shop. It's really cool to sit down in a quite room and design a pair of shoes with a designer. While Nike started their studio program a while ago, high-touch, custom designed products are will continue to thrive in today's market.

Trends always seem to go in two directions at once. In this case, towards more mass participation, Customer Made (crowdsourcing) and towards Custom Made (individual customization).

At the far end of customization is Nike's Airforce One Bespoke. Check out Mayor's version of Nike's AirForce One Bespoke. The Bespoke program is invite only and booked out through June.

How are you cutomizing your products?

Will Agencies Suffer Death by 1,000 Cuts Through Crowdsourcing?

I've been excited lately to see that the idea of crowdsourcing has caused such a stir. You know a paradigm is about to shift when lines start getting drawn in the sand. When I was writing about co-creation in Beyond the Brand back in 2003 I couldn’t even imagine how the open source movement would radically change so many businesses.

Currently, a lot of emotion surrounds the subject especially in the marketing, advertising and product design worlds. Below are a few of the things I’ve been hearing lately with some of my thoughts on each.

1. Spec Work is Bad - I'm not sure I fully understand all of the hot feelings about the "spec work" issue. That's a bridge that other industries, like photography, have already crossed. Sure, there are lots of photographers that still get hired to do photo shoots. But, today the market is becoming dominated by amateur willing to do work on spec and put it up on stock photography sites like iStockPhoto.  Other creative businesses will follow. A good friend and respected graphic artist told me a few days ago that the only people that seem to be offended by the idea of spec work are mediocre at their jobs. His point is that he uses contests, like those run on Crowdspring, as a way to keep sharp. It's not a substitute for the work he does for his clients but it’s a fun place to play around. Plus, he reminded me that does a lot of spec work in the pitch process.

2. It’s Unethical – While this is closely tied to the first point, I can’t quite figure this out. Is the act of soliciting ideas from the general population unethical? Are the sites that have been set-up for contest-based collaboration unethical? Are the people participating on those sites unethical? It feels to me this idea is being promoted by folks who’ve already made it in their respective fields. It’s a bit of “Close the door behind us, and don’t let anyone else in” attitude.

2. It's Only Freelance – Yep. I agree. But, if you’re a very talented and live in a place like Perth, Australia, and want to participate in pushing their work to a global audience, how do they do it without moving? While crowdsourcing is freelance it unshackles the need to be in a certain place in order to participate in the design and advertising industries. Creativity grows as people connect and participate in a deeper dialogue. It doesn’t matter if it’s digitally or physically.

3. Work Will Suffer Because Clients Don’t Know Good Work - Sorry to be harsh but they’re the customer.  If they want to pay for bad work, so be it. It’s hard to find good clients that buy good work. That’s what everyone wants.

4. It Will Only Work for Small Stuff Like Logos – With any emerging field the smallest tasks are the ones that are replaced first. Sooner or later, the tasks become more complicated. Watching the projects posted on Innocentive things are trending this way. Also, as more clients start using crowdsourcing and trust the results they’ll be willing to experiment with more complicated assignments. The shift will accelerate when crowdsourcing starts being used as a source of creative material that is shaped by creative directors and delivered to clients as part of a larger strategic platform.

The big question is how much will it affect the marketing, advertising and product design businesses. Like it or not, it will usher in radical changes.  I started my career as a journalist and have always been fascinated by the arrogance of my fellow journalists as the looked down upon lowly bloggers. All kinds of arguments were made about how blogging would never effect the fourth establishment. Yet, look around. While newspapers stuck their heads in the sand the world changed. Instead of engaging the crowd to participate they allowed an industry to start and grow without them. Now, as journalists wake up from their delusions of grandeur they have found out they’re too late.

The bottom line is that great ideas come form everywhere.

The only question is, will agencies wake up from our own delusions or will they suffer the same fate as their print media brethren?

I hope this provides you with some food for thought. I’d love to hear what you think.

The Future of Innovation

Alice Rawsthorn penned a wonderful piece, entitled Reinventing Innovation in the New York Times yesterday. Here's an excerpt.

A recent recruit to the endangered list is “innovation.” Once hailed as a panacea, it has been so diminished by hyperbole that it risks seeming irrelevant. (“Transformation” is the fashionable favorite to replace it.) Yet just like “design” and “contemporary,” “innovation” is losing credibility as a word at the very time when it is needed most urgently.

As the economic and environmental crises deepen, there is a growing recognition that many aspects of our lives need to be reinvented. Politicians routinely call for the “redesign” of society, and urge businesses to “innovate” their way out of recession. This readiness to embrace change — even radical change — coupled with advances in science and technology, is unleashing a stream of innovations.

It's worth a read.

Does Twitter Really Matter?

Like many others in the marketing world, I've been interested in Twitter lately. I'm trying to figure out if it matters. Sure, it's great to engage in stimulating conversations. Likewise, I've found that it's been a great tool while writing BakedIn. I can post a quick question and get some great responses in a matter of minutes instead of a few hours.

This week I taught three different marketing classes at the University of Colorado. I was talking about how CP+B was trying to figure out social media and its marketing implications, like everyone else. I asked the students who used Twitter. Shockingly, only 1 in 70. Not only that, only 1/3 of them had even heard of Twitter.

So, are we just talking to ourselves or early adopters, ahead of the curve?

Update: I just got a note from a journalism professor at CU. She said her classes are all using Twitter as a tool. Interesting. Maybe Journalism students are a further along the curve than business students.

Love to hear your thoughts.