The title of my contribution was ‘The Conversation Starts From Within’, which refers to an evolution within marketing from message-centric (trying to flog average products & services through flashy and entertaining messages) to product-centric (trying to actually improve products & services, and make them more remarkable, interesting, beautiful or valuable). In other words, an evolution from creating ‘talk value’ despite the average nature of products & services, towards creating ‘talk value’ that is embedded in the products & services.

In a nutshell, I think there are 6 domains which are increasingly crucial in creating remarkable products & services.

The one thing all of these domains have in common, is that they float in between product development and marketing. They are as much about improving the products as promoting them. And as such, they are eroding the importance of traditional advertising. They are blurring the traditional lines between R&D and marketing.

1. (Game-changing) innovation
Ever since the 50ies, companies have been increasing their spend on R&D. Chairmans of P&G and Unilever realise more than ever that breakthrough product innovation is where the key challenge lies. Innovative or remarkable products from recent years (Mini Cooper, Innocent Drinks, iPhone, iPod, Nintendo Wii, Senseo, etc) have been able to break through mostly because of their game-changing nature. The respective advertising campaigns might have given each of those products a good push (Senseo and Nintendo Wii have each picked up an EFFIE Award), the real conversation started from within the products.

2. Digital technology
Digital has changed how brands are created and promoted. We have grown familiar with a whole generation of online brands that have grown without any traditional, pushy advertising. They simply offered us useful & free services. And their best communication and promotion is the constant improvement of their core offering. From Amazon’s recommendation model to Google’s many new products.

Digital technology is not about online banners. It’s not about making traditional advertising clickable. Instead, digital technology is changing how we access and use products & services. Digital technology changes the interfaces between products and their users, from ordering a pizza to reading a newspaper, from checking your bank account to enjoying in-flight entertainment.

3. Eco
The thing with the green revolution is that it’s essentially about products & services: how they get made, how they get sourced, what goes inside them, where they are produced, and how they are distributed. It is not and should not be about messaging or flashy advertising. Which is why ‘eco marketing’ is as much about product innovation or product development, as it is about marketing.

4. Design
In many categories, it has become increasingly difficult to differentiate between products & services through functional claims or benefits. Quite often, design is the most direct and easy way to truly stand out. Products which excel in design have an inherent ‘talk value’. They spread by themselves because of their sheer beauty or user-friendliness. In advertising, planners and creatives tend to make a distinction between a functional promise (sitting on product level) and an emotional promise (mainly created through advertising). Design has the ability to inject emotion back into the product itself.

5. Co-creation
If you allow end-users or outsiders to get involved in the product development process, that becomes a part of the marketing approach. The crowdsourcing model (with Threadless as the most widespread and successful example) is both a new business model and a new marketing model. The many people who co-create products are equally the most ardent advocates for the company and its products. Which explains why Threadless has grown without the help of any traditional advertising, but mainly through converting their co-creators into brand ambassadors.

6. Useful marketing
Useful marketing (aka brand utility) creates useful experiences or services around a core offering. It refers to marketing that is useful in its own right rather than pushy, intrusive or useless. Useful marketing adds value to the core offering, while promoting it and reaching out to people. By creating useful assets that can differentiate a product or service, “useful marketing” is as much about product development as about marketing.

In search of the 5 innovators in the comms industry, i.e. the generation of makers and thinkers who will shape the future, I’ve also posted the question on LinkedIn. This spawned some interesting and overlapping answers. It seems like there are two distinct kinds of answers: the ones that point towards some of the most innovative agencies (recurring names are CP+B, Anomaly, Naked, r/ga, droga5, etc) and the ones that point towards media companies or owners (usual suspects here are Google, Apple, Nokia, Facebook, MySpace, Second Life, etc). The same trend occurs in the many emails I’ve received.

So the question arises: where does the current and future innovation in the industry truly come from? Is it driven by the most innovative agencies around the world, or by the players who are actually transforming and building the future communication platforms?

In essence, agencies are merely thriving on whatever is developed in terms of media & technology. They are essentially followers, rather then initiators. So there’s a strong argument that the likes of Google, Facebook and Apple have a more fundamental and long-lasting impact on the future of the advertising industry then any agency on the face of the planet, however forward-thinking or innovative they might be. Strangely enough, there’s only one non-agency person in The Guardian’s top 10 advertising list, and it’s the founder of Google, Eric Schmidt. But there’s a big difference between ‘power’ (what The Guardian’s list is about), and ‘innovation’ (what Thames & Hudson’s list is about). Also, much depends on how narrow or broad you define ‘advertising’. The Guardian’s list already looks much different if you look at the total Top 100 or even the New Media section.

I’ll keep you updated about the final list. In the mean time, further suggestions & names are more than welcome.

For its 60th anniversary in 2009, book publisher Thames &Hudson will publish a landmark publication that “will celebrate a new generation of makers and thinkers who will shape the future. Artists, photographers, architects, fashion designers, product designers, street artists, curators, editors, social observers and academics who are redefining our aesthetics, values and daily lives and pointing the way forward will all be brought together in a single stupendous volume.”

The book will contain 12 sections:

Advertising
Applied Arts and Materials
Art
Building (architecture,engineering,landscape,urban design)
Fashion and Style
Graphics
Green World
Interior and Exterior Environments
New Media
Photography
Street Life
Three-dimensional Design

I’ve been asked to suggest and write about 5 acknowledged innovators for the advertising section. So before I start randomly picking anyone, here’s my question:

Which people do you consider to be the most influential/important innovators in the advertising industry (in broadest sense of the word)?

Would love to hear any suggestions. Let the namedropping begin.

When brands deliver on promise -whether it’s being the cheapest, quickest or healthiest, they tend to make a big deal out of it, reminding customers about their commitment and reliance. But when brands don’t deliver, they tend to remain silent.

Case in point: I took a London-Rome return flight with RyanAir last week. When I arrived in Rome with a delay of about 30 minutes, there was no mention whatsoever of their longstanding brand promise, i.e. being the nr 1 on-time airline. But when I landed on time upon return, there was a rather tacky yet quite amusing trumpet jingle, with a reminder message that they remain the nr 1 on-time airline. I was too late to record the message, but found it here.

Although I think the tacky trumpet is a brilliant and simple device to remind RyanAir passengers about the brand’s commitment to deliver on their promise, they should have an equally simple device when they don’t deliver on promise. It’s an act of humbleness to admit you’re not perfect, and that you’re doing the best you can. And I would have forgiven RyanAir for their delay much more easily.

(stats on the slide above do not show the most recent data, but RyanAir still is the nr. 1 on-time airline)

If there were as many brilliant cases as there were presentations on social media, online advertising would be a whole lot more enjoyable. But once in a while, a campaign comes along that just puts all the buzz words brilliantly into practice. And The World’s First Internet Balloon Race for Orange is such a campaign.

First of all, there’s a dead simple and truly original idea: the world’s first online balloon race. The concept of a balloon race is so inherently connected to a real-life, social experience in our minds, that the creation of an online version is truly remarkable.

Secondly, they have allowed any participant to easily spread and promote their own personal balloon, using a range of widgets for all the popular online hangouts.

Thirdly, the most clever aspect of the campaign is how it involves site and blog owners. Rather than relying purely on bought media space, which would be the easy way, they are asking site owners to become part of the official racecourse by simply adding a widget onto their site. In return, site and blog owners might even get a bit of extra traffic from people stumbling on their site.

Finally, it’s also nice to see that the orange balloony animals are present in retail, and the whole idea ties in with the actual product offer.This is an Orange shop near where I live.

By the way, not sure yet about my flying camel. I found out it has another connotation as well.

Campaign by the lovely people at Poke. See other reviews here and here.

I attended a lecture last week by double Pulitzer Prize-winning author Thomas Friedman at the British Museum about his upcoming book “Hot, Flat and Crowded, Why We Need a Green Revolution - and How It Can Renew America”. Being involved in environmental strategy for a global brand myself, I was amazed by both the clarity and boldness of the argumentation he laid out. Again, Friedman showed himself brilliant at connecting all the dots. He also showed himself a master of language. Some of the new terms in the book will no doubt become common language. His description of the current state of things as a “Green Party” and his call for a “Green Revolution” is spot on. His renaming of “Global Warming” as “Global Weirding” brilliantly reflects the current reality (see further below).

I would like to share the structure of Friedman’s book as he laid it out, as well as some of the highlights.

Here are some flashes from the introduction chapter, where he talks about the role America could and should play in the green revolution:

“Whether you love us or hate us, whether you believe in American power or don’t, the convergence of hot, flat and crowded has created a challenge so daunting that it’s impossible to imagine a meaningful solution without America taking the lead and being at its best. We are either going to be losers or heroes. There is no room anymore for anything in between. We are either going to rise to the level of innovation, leadership and collaboration that is required, or everyone is going to lose in a big way. Just coasting along, and kinda sorta doing the right things, when they are convenient and easy, and letting the other stuff slip, that is not an option anymore.”

“The simple name for the project I’m proposing is Code Green. What Red was to America in the 1950’s and 60’s, a symbol of the overarching communist threat, a symbol that was used to mobilise our country, to build up its military, its industrial base, its highways, its railroads, its ports and airports, its educational institutions and scientific capabilities, we need Green to be for today’s America.”

The first half of the book is a diagnosis of the unique energy, climate and biodiversity challenges the world faces. The second half of the book is an argument of how we can beat those challenges.

So the first half of the book starts with laying out three major forces:

• Global warming, about the world increasingly heating up
• Global flattening, about the enormous increase in people joining the middle class in every country in the world
• Global crowding, about an ever more crowded planet

This convergence of global warming, global flattening and global crowding are driving five interwoven trends, which he discusses in the five following chapters:

1. “Too many Americans Are Carbon Copies”
About energy and resource supply and demand

We are going from a world of a billion people leading an American lifestyle to a world of 2 or possibly 3 billion people leading an American lifestyle. If we don’t take the lead in redefining what is an American lifestyle, we need two more planets.

2. “Fill Her Up With Dictators”
About petro-dictatorships (from Putin to Chavez)

3. “Global Weirding”
About climate change

Global warming sounds kinda nice. That’s not actually what happens with climate change. What happens is the weather gets weird: the drafts get longer, the rainstorms get heavier.
We’re entering the phase where we no longer know the difference between an act of God and an act of Man.

4. “The Age of Noah”
About biodiversity loss

We’re in the midst of the greatest extinction since the astroid hit the Yucatan Peninsula and wiped out the dinosaurs.
We’re the first generation of civilisation that will have to think like Noah, and think of saving the last two pairs.

5. “Engery Poverty 1.6 Billion”
About energy poverty

There are 1.6 billion people on the planet who don’t have an on-off switch in their lives, who are not connected to a network grid.

To close this first half of the book, and make the bridge to the second half, he makes the point that clean power will for sure become the next big global industry.

“When the world gets hot, flat and crowded, clean power and technology is going to be the next big global industry. It simply has to be. I know that for sure. What I don’t know is if my country is going to lead it, China is going to lead it, Japan is going to lead it, or Europe is going to lead it. […] The single most important competitive advantage will be, as a country or company, the ability to outgreen your competition.”

The next chapter, titled “205 Easy Ways To Save The Earth”, states that the current way in which green issues are tackled by government and companies do not match the scale of the problem.

“Have you ever been to a revolution where nobody got hurt? In the Green Revolution, everyone can win. We’re having a Green Party, not a Green Revolution. […] You’ll know when it’s a revolution when somebody gets hurt.”

In the next chapters, which really are the heart of the book, he goes into more detail about the real revolution which is needed.

“The Energy Internet, when IT meets ET”. This chapter talks about what it would be like to have an eco-system that begins with clean electrons, fed into a smart grid, fed into a smart home, into a smart car, and back.

“The Stone Age Didn’t End Because We Ran Out Of Stones” (it ended because people were incentivised to build bronze tools) talks about the need for strong and bold intervention from governments.

“If we do not have a clear price signal from the government, we are never going to trigger the scale of innovation we need in order to address this problem and build that energy internet. Because the key problem is that we’re replacing something that is already there.”

The one but last chapter is titled “China for a day, but not two”.

“We need a president who will set the regulations. Everybody will cry and scream for a month, and then the whole eco-system will adjust and we’ll take off on this journey.”

The concluding chapter is titled “A Democratic China Or A Banana Republic” (banana standing for “Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything”, as they say in the utility business), which outlines the ultimate choice America (and the rest of the world) is facing.

“We will either do the right and the hard things in a democratic way and launch a real Green Revolution, or we will build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything when it comes to green power. There is nothing in the universe quite as powerful as 6 billion minds wrapping around one problem.”

Curious to see if this book will have the same impact or success as his predecessor, “The World Is Flat”. Let’s hope it will.

Hear him speak about some of these issues in this NY Times video.

I had the honour of being a judge at the D&AD Awards recently, in the ambient category (one of the categories where no awards were handed out, sorry for that). Every morning of the judging period, there was a short presentation on the what, how, why and who of judging. On the ‘who’ slide, D&AD recognised there was a “growing army of freelancers” out there, which they increasingly wanted to involve in the judging process. It got me thinking about the growth of the freelance army in ad/marketing country.

The growing number of roaming ‘guns for hire’ has to do with a few things:

• increasing number of start-ups (at their highest level for 20 years in 2007), in search for cheaper and more flexible solutions than the traditional agency model
• the need for more specialists in a changing industry (from web designers to game developers, from sustainability experts to mobile marketing experts)
• agencies embracing more open agency models, involving ‘outsiders’ as a way to guarantee fresher thinking to clients (Adam & Eve is a recent example of an agency who has embraced this principle)
• people increasingly looking for a better work/life balance

What is interesting to witness is how this growing freelance army is finding ways (both online and off) to organise themselves, and make the most of their collective brain. These are some of the initiatives I’ve come across which seem to be riding this wave, finding various ways for free-riding individuals to join forces (sorry for the London bias, but that’s where I happen to be based):

There’s the Jelly initiative, which seems to be spreading across the globe: people from various backgrounds working alongside each other, whether it’s in somebody’s house or in other spaces. The London Jelly is still very fresh, only 7 people so far (ao Tony Sephton from web design agency Hype London, graphic designer Christopher Riding, Dan Pegine from Honesty Box, social media & collaboration expert Lloyd Davis).

The Purple List is PSFK’s online community of trends and innovation professionals, spread across the globe. Their sales pitch goes like this: “There’s no longer a need to find inspiration from the other side of the world by hiring a big local agency - simply contact a member of The Purple List.”

The Tuttle Club (named after the movie Brazil’s Harry Tuttle, the ultimate freelancer) holds a Social Media Café every Friday morning at the Coach & Horses in Greek Street, Soho, W1D 5DH. They’ve also started a wiki listing all the free and open spaces in London, “where smallish groups might congregate to do something, like talk, understand things better, make plans, organise other things.”

Behance Network is a free platform for the world’s leading creative professionals. They enable users to form groups (”circles”), to gather around interests, share content, get feedback.

Meetup enables real gatherings of like-minded people. Time described it as “a convenient, non-threatening way to connect to other people who share similar interests and live nearby.” Some of the more popular marketing/innovation-related groups are the London Creative Enterpreneurs, Minibar (for the web 2.0 geeks & freaks) and The London Graphic Design Living Room

The Hub offers office space (& much more) to social entrepreneurs. They are, in their own words, “an incubator for social innovation. We offer membership of inspirational habitats in major world cities for social innovators to work, meet, learn, connect and realise progressive ideas.” They’re based in London, Johannesburg, Rotterdam, Bristol and Sao Paulo. I visited the London space recently and it looks like a great environment.

There’s probably plenty more, and plenty more to come too. So happy to hear about any other related initiatives.