I often think I am blessed to have been born in New Zealand.
It is a place of great beauty and wonderful character, and while it’s history may be young in comparisonwith much of the globe, both the indigenous people of New Zealand and those who have come after have developed rich traditions of storytelling and ways of expressing themselves.
There is one concept in particular that I have been thinking about in particular of late, a concept encapsulated in the Maori word, Tūrangawaewae.
Tūrangawaewae means a place to stand. It’s history begins with the Maori King movement, but has evolved to be a concept understood by many in New Zealand, communicating a sense of connection and empowerment to a place, a person’s home in perhaps the truest sense of all.
From a brand communications perspective, I think it is often easy to ignore a brand’s tūrangawaewae in telling stories and executing campaigns in the wild. This disconnection saps much of the power of the message, disconnecting it from its most powerful foundations and often robbing it of purpose.
So how can you avoid this disconnect?
Think of fans as your extended family.
Fans of a brand do not pop up over night. They are born out of experience more often than advertising, although great work will always make a difference. Fans investigate your history and will often play a role in its chronicle.
They become an integral part of a brand’s story because of their knowledge and also their passion for retelling your tales to others. Harness this behaviour. Like a family reunion provides an opportunity for sharing stories, filling in gaps and collective dreaming about the future, try to imbue the outreach to your fans with the same type of feeling. Be happy to see them. Listen with respect. Reply with sincerity.
Fans will feel a connection to the brands home as well, when done well, your sense of place will become a part of theirs. Actions, intended or otherwise, that break the connection with a brands sense of place will often be met with hostility, or worse.
Don’t just have a brand position, have a point of view.
I lose track of the number of documets that come across my desk, articulating a brands position at an intersection of social trends, consumer needs or technological visions.
I’d agree that the exercise of establishing a position is an important step in articulating what your brand will become, but for many the process ends there. It seems like many companies these days misunderstand their stated desire to acquire brand love like an Apple. Talking about yourself constantly and unerringly, however eloquent, is a carryover from the days when TV advertising guaranteed an empty warehouse, a full bank account and Old Fashioned cocktails at a mid-morning meeting.
Articulating a point of view makes more sense in a world where social and informal media channels form an ever more valauble part of the mix. A point of view allows a brand to take part in the zietgiest, wrapping product and brand messaging in the relevancy of the now.
If your point of view is rooted in your brands sense of place, this activity will avoid its biggest risk factor, coming across as trite and opportunist.
Make the pilgramage back to your roots.
Many brands have discovered the value in returning to their roots. Be it a repackaging in the livery of yesteryear, or rolling out a spoke/person/muppet/cartoon/character of old, there is commercial benefit in harking back to another time.
The great thing with having an articulated sense of place is that you can travel away from it, visit new places and make new friends.
The key to longevity as a brand is the ability to reatin the sense of connection to it and keep the route back to your place open. Bringing back stories of travel, intrigue and drama will excite the base and give the fans you’ve dragged back a point of connection with your existing audience.
I’m a massive fan of the concept of popup. Be it the restaurant we ran here in Sydney on behalf of our client, Positively Wellington Tourism, or one of my idea’s from running my own agency up in Shanghai (albeit, executed in London), the idea of surprising people in their everyday lives with something physical in an unexpected space is one that obviously connects.
I guess that’s whay I’ve been so impressed by my friend, Jason Chan, and his involvement with one of the most ambitious popup executions I have seen, Greenhouse by Joost.
The Greenhouse started life two years ago, in Melbourne, with a large temporary gallery space nestled into the sharp and hard lines of the then new Federation Square. The project had at its core the concept of sustainability, from materials used in construction, to the re-appropriated jam jars from which you sipped your coffee.
Last year, this time in Perth, Joost once again used a combination of found and sustainable construction materials to build a slightly more compact Greenhouse, with a stronger focus on food and beverage and locally sourced ingredients to match the construction.
Now in the third iteration, Greenhouse once again is providing Joost with a playground for his ideas on sustainable construction living buildings. This time though, the project is not a bespoke build for a single unique location, this time the Greenhouse can travel.
Three shipping containers provide the core of the structure, housing kitchen, convenience and storage. The framing of the two level restaurant and bar fits into these containers as it makes the trek from location to location. Plywood cladding and the plants that literally cover the structure will be sourced locally as the experience unpacks in Milan, Budapest, London and a long list of other prospective locations. The striking herringbone floor of the Sydney expression recently functioned as a set of factory conveyor belts, now cut down to rectangular tiles.
Food wise, local ingredients rule. Flour is milled and bread is made daily on site, using a wood fired oven. Milk arrives farm fresh in a bucket to be processed into cheese and yoghurt. Kegged mineral water forms the basis of house made lemonade and tonic. Cut down brown bottles serve the beer, jam jars the wine and cocktails.
Oil from the deep fryers powers the onsite generator. Local straw bales line the walls as insulators. The furniture all is made from something else, billboard canvas covers the tables. Some folk are calling this the greenest structure on the planet right now.
What all this adds up to, is something very special. It is this unique story that has given them access to the fantastic site on Sydney’s foreshore, with views of both the Opera House and the Bridge. It’s a multi million dollar site that if you were simply flogging a product, it would be near on impossible to secure and would eat up the budget. So unique is the offer from JAson and Joost, Sydney’s Harbour Foreshore Authority has come to the party with funds not fees. London is offering Trafalgar Square, it is quite simply amazing.
How do you build out and idea for a client that gets this type of support? Is it even possible to do?
That’s what will be ticking over in my head for the next week and year.
The Sydney visit of the Greenhouse by Joost last for six weeks, get down there and enjoy it.
The pick up of advertising agencies using proven PR techniques continues with Old Spice guy getting a release to coincide with the single biggest global focusing event. This is a time like no other, a time when people seek out and watch ads purely for their creative merit.
It appears as though the Spice guy is set to leverage the attention create both on and offline by the game, without actually paying the hefty cost of admission for a spot during the game itself. Couple that with the use of Superfan language of the spots released in association with ShakeandBakeGuy last week, plus the gift of superbowl tickets and the longer running spots with Ray Lewis and Old Spice have used earned media to strongly connect their campaign to the world’s greatest paid media asset.
The monopoly of content is well and truly over, and this is very much further proof.
Also, just in case you came here looking for ads that have been aired at the game, I like Audi Best:
And Groupon least, as if Shane Warne wasn’t enough of a low point for Liz Hurley:
I know the game isn’t over and there might be better yet to come, but I’ll let you know if there’s anything else that tickles my fancy. Let me know your take on the ads in the comments, and if you think the Old Spice spot did the trick. Just so you know, it did get played on Today, the highest rated morning news show in Australia this morning.
I think a lot about what it is that makes me so excited by working for a PR firm. As such, I think it all really boils down to a single idea, a shared core competency if you will.
PR is an industry built on an ability to tell great stories.
At our best, we should know the brands we work with so intimately that we can bring our skill set of just frankly being grand at telling stories and crafting clear and understandable communications fully to bear.
It sounds pretty simple really, so what are the things that make the difference?
1) Bring the facts to life, don’t just make a list.
2) Use character to make your story stand out from the crowd.
3) The title of your story will decide if it gets read.
4) Remember that telling stories isn’t limited to the media or journalists, humans love stories and will keep on telling the good ones again and again.
Last week I was invited to talk about brand management in China to a crowd in Auckland.
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It was great to recount some of the lessons I learned in my 5 years up in Shanghai, but I was astonished with how many of the audience who seemed to believe that paying their way into a high value sales channel was going to both guarantee success and protect them from imitators and new market entrants.
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Going to China is simply not enough, you need to tell a compelling story, connect with a viable audience and give them the tools to take your message further. That’s not a simple solution, but if there was one wouldn’t every company, product or brand be doing exactly the same thing?
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If any of you are interested, I’ve uploaded my slides on Slideshare, and embedded them below:
Great piece of thinking and writing from Umair Haque over at the Havard Business Review.
Uninspiring, bland, homogeneous stuff, that’s uncompetitive by next year, that substitutes investment in mega-marketing for aesthetics, craft, and care, that’s toxic to the natural world, that demands a bucketload of debt only to rapidly, inexorably depreciate, that’s subsidized invisibly by society but fights against contributing to it, that’s controlled by heavy-handed, overweening managers with a myopic focus on the near-term bottom line, all for the benefit of tuned-out shareholders with a minimal sense of shared responsibility — it’s easy to see what went wrong with Pontiac. Is it so hard to see why Pontiac might just be a resonant metaphor for, well, the global economy?
Great words, and well worth the couple of minutes it will take you to read the rest of it.
Secondly, I spend a good part of my life wondering about where good ideas come from, so anything along these lines is bound to stop me in my tracks.
Some ideas do take a long time to manifest, I won’t disagree too vigorously there, but as someone who is expected to deliver creativity ‘on demand’ these days, I am a passionate believer in the power of connection in developing new ideas and coming up with sound creative solutions.
A room full of heads might not come up with the single fully formed idea in its allocated hour, but the hunches sure do pile up over time.
If anyone out there wants to share some ideas; I’m always keen, whatever the topic.
It should also be noted that this is an ad for a book. I think that’s brilliant. If this is where advertising is headed, count me in.
The media landscape is, as they say, in constant evolution.
The Slate has just broken into new territory by creating a celebrity interview that is the very definition of a non-exclusive. Jonah Weiner has created an interview with the erstwhile king of hip-hop (no-one tell JayZ) based entirely on his Twitter stream. It’s a brilliant idea and a very amusing read.
The addictiveness of online games is fairly well documented now; the value of keeping players coming back, over and over again pretty obvious to most.
The techniques used to capture and retain the attention of players is usually a carefully guided secret that gaming companies guard with both their physical and legal resources.
As such, I was quite interested by the release of the SCVNGR gamedeck on TechCrunch. As Erick observes, gaming mechanics are popping up everywhere these days, and these logic blocks can be mixed and matched to create something that captures the one thing marketers like me value above almost everything else, attention.
Take a spin through these next time you’re trying to hook people in to a campaign, they can springboard some pretty interesting ideas.
1. Achievement
Definition: A virtual or physical representation of having accomplished something. These are often viewed as rewards in and of themselves.
Example: a badge, a level, a reward, points, really anything defined as a reward can be a reward.
2. Appointment Dynamic
Definition: A dynamic in which to succeed, one must return at a predefined time to take some action. Appointment dynamics are often deeply related to interval based reward schedules or avoidance dyanmics.
Example: Cafe World and Farmville where if you return at a set time to do something you get something good, and if you don’t something bad happens.
3. Avoidance
Definition: The act of inducing player behavior not by giving a reward, but by not instituting a punishment. Produces consistent level of activity, timed around the schedule.
Example: Press a lever every 30 seconds to not get shocked.
4. Behavioral Contrast
Definition: The theory defining how behavior can shift greatly based on changed expectations.
Example: A monkey presses a lever and is given lettuce. The monkey is happy and continues to press the lever. Then it gets a grape one time. The monkey is delighted. The next time it presses the lever it gets lettuce again. Rather than being happy, as it was before, it goes ballistic throwing the lettuce at the experimenter. (In some experiments, a second monkey is placed in the cage, but tied to a rope so it can’t access the lettuce or lever. After the grape reward is removed, the first monkey beats up the second monkey even though it obviously had nothing to do with the removal. The anger is truly irrational.)
5. Behavioral Momentum
Definition: The tendency of players to keep doing what they have been doing.
Example: From Jesse Schell’s awesome Dice talk: “I have spent ten hours playing Farmville. I am a smart person and wouldn’t spend 10 hours on something unless it was useful. Therefore this must be useful, so I can keep doing it.”
6. Blissful Productivity
Definition: The idea that playing in a game makes you happier working hard, than you would be relaxing. Essentially, we’re optimized as human beings by working hard, and doing meaningful and rewarding work.
Example: From Jane McGonical’s Ted Talk wherein she discusses how World of Warcraft players play on average 22 hours / week (a part time job), often after a full days work. They’re willing to work hard, perhaps harder than in real life, because of their blissful productivity in the game world.
7. Cascading Information Theory
Definition: The theory that information should be released in the minimum possible snippets to gain the appropriate level of understanding at each point during a game narrative.
Example: showing basic actions first, unlocking more as you progress through levels. Making building on SCVNGR a simple but staged process to avoid information overload.
8. Chain Schedules
Definition: the practice of linking a reward to a series of contingencies. Players tend to treat these as simply the individual contingencies. Unlocking one step in the contingency is often viewed as an individual reward by the player.
Example: Kill 10 orcs to get into the dragons cave, every 30 minutes the dragon appears.
9. Communal Discovery
Definition: The game dynamic wherein an entire community is rallied to work together to solve a riddle, a problem or a challenge. Immensely viral and very fun.
Example: DARPA balloon challenge, the cottage industries that appear around McDonalds monopoly to find “Boardwalk”
10. Companion Gaming
Definition: Games that can be played across multiple platforms
Example: Games that be played on iphone, facebook, xbox with completely seamless cross platform gameplay.
11. Contingency
Definition: The problem that the player must overcome in the three part paradigm of reward schedules.
Example: 10 orcs block your path
12. Countdown
Definition: The dynamic in which players are only given a certain amount of time to do something. This will create an activity graph that causes increased initial activity increasing frenetically until time runs out, which is a forced extinction.
Example: Bejeweled Blitz with 30 seconds to get as many points as you can. Bonus rounds. Timed levels
13. Cross Situational Leader-boards
Definition: This occurs when one ranking mechanism is applied across multiple (unequal and isolated) gaming scenarios. Players often perceive that these ranking scenarios are unfair as not all players were presented with an “equal” opportunity to win.
Example: Players are arbitrarily sent into one of three paths. The winner is determined by the top scorer overall (i.e. across the paths). Since the players can only do one path (and can’t pick), they will perceive inequity in the game scenario and get upset.
14. Disincentives
Definition: a game element that uses a penalty (or altered situation) to induce behavioral shift
Example: losing health points, amazon’s checkout line removing all links to tunnel the buyer to purchase, speeding traps
15. Endless Games
Definition: Games that do not have an explicit end. Most applicable to casual games that can refresh their content or games where a static (but positive) state is a reward of its own.
Example: Farmville (static state is its own victory), SCVNGR (challenges constantly are being built by the community to refresh content)
16. Envy
Definition: The desire to have what others have. In order for this to be effective seeing what other people have (voyeurism) must be employed.
Example: my friend has this item and I want it!
17. Epic Meaning
Definition: players will be highly motivated if they believe they are working to achieve something great, something awe-inspiring, something bigger than themselves.
Example: From Jane McGonical’s Ted Talk where she discusses Warcraft’s ongoing story line and “epic meaning” that involves each individual has motivated players to participate outside the game and create the second largest wiki in the world to help them achieve their individual quests and collectively their epic meanings.
18. Extinction
Definition: Extinction is the term used to refer to the action of stopping providing a reward. This tends to create anger in players as they feel betrayed by no longer receiving the reward they have come to expect. It generally induces negative behavioral momentum.
Example: killing 10 orcs no longer gets you a level up
19. Fixed Interval Reward Schedules
Definition: Fixed interval schedules provide a reward after a fixed amount of time, say 30 minutes. This tends to create a low engagement after a reward, and then gradually increasing activity until a reward is given, followed by another lull in engagement.
Example: Farmville, wait 30 minutes, crops have appeared
20. Fixed Ratio Reward Schedule
Definition: A fixed ratio schedule provides rewards after a fixed number of actions. This creates cyclical nadirs of engagement (because the first action will not create any reward so incentive is low) and then bursts of activity as the reward gets closer and closer.
Example: kill 20 ships, get a level up, visit five locations, get a badge
21. Free Lunch
Definition: A dynamic in which a player feels that they are getting something for free due to someone else having done work. It’s critical that work is perceived to have been done (just not by the player in question) to avoid breaching trust in the scenario. The player must feel that they’ve “lucked” into something.
Example: Groupon. By virtue of 100 other people having bought the deal, you get it for cheap. There is no sketchiness b/c you recognize work has been done (100 people are spending money) but you yourself didn’t have to do it.
22. Fun Once, Fun Always
Definition: The concept that an action in enjoyable to repeat all the time. Generally this has to do with simple actions. There is often also a limitation to the total level of enjoyment of the action.
Example: the theory behind the check-in everywhere and the check-in and the default challenges on SCVNGR.
23. Interval Reward Schedules
Definition: Interval based reward schedules provide a reward after a certain amount of time. There are two flavors: variable and fixed.
Example: wait N minutes, collect rent
24. Lottery
Definition: A game dynamic in which the winner is determined solely by chance. This creates a high level of anticipation. The fairness is often suspect, however winners will generally continue to play indefinitely while losers will quickly abandon the game, despite the random nature of the distinction between the two.
Example: many forms of gambling, scratch tickets.
25. Loyalty
Definition: The concept of feeling a positive sustained connection to an entity leading to a feeling of partial ownership. Often reinforced with a visual representation.
Example: fealty in WOW, achieving status at physical places (mayorship, being on the wall of favorite customers)
26. Meta Game
Definition: a game which exists layered within another game. These generally are discovered rather than explained (lest they cause confusion) and tend to appeal to ~2% of the total gameplaying audience. They are dangerous as they can induce confusion (if made too overt) but are powerful as they’re greatly satisfying to those who find them.
Example: hidden questions / achievements within world of warcraft that require you to do special (and hard to discover) activities as you go through other quests
27. Micro Leader-boards
Definition: The rankings of all individuals in a micro-set. Often great for distributed game dynamics where you want many micro-competitions or desire to induce loyalty.
Example: Be the top scorers at Joe’s bar this week and get a free appetizer
28. Modifiers
Definition: An item that when used affects other actions. Generally modifiers are earned after having completed a series of challenges or core functions.
Example: A X2 modifier that doubles the points on the next action you take.
29. Moral Hazard of Game Play
Definition: The risk that by rewarding people manipulatively in a game you remove the actual moral value of the action and replace it with an ersatz game-based reward. The risk that by providing too many incentives to take an action, the incentive of actually enjoying the action taken is lost. The corollary to this is that if the points or rewards are taken away, then the person loses all motivation to take the (initially fun on its own) action.
Example: Paraphrased from Jesse Schell “If I give you points every time you brush your teeth, you’ll stop brushing your teeth b/c it’s good for you and then only do it for the points. If the points stop flowing, your teeth will decay.”
30. Ownership
Definition: The act of controlling something, having it be *your* property.
Example: Ownership is interesting on a number of levels, from taking over places, to controlling a slot, to simply owning popularity by having a digital representation of many friends.
31. Pride
Definition: the feeling of ownership and joy at an accomplishment
Example: I have ten badges. I own them. They are mine. There are many like them, but these are mine. Hooray.
32. Privacy
Definition: The concept that certain information is private, not for public distribution. This can be a demotivator (I won’t take an action because I don’t want to share this) or a motivator (by sharing this I reinforce my own actions).
Example: Scales the publish your daily weight onto Twitter (these are real and are proven positive motivator for staying on your diet). Or having your location publicly broadcast anytime you do anything (which is invasive and can should be avoided).
33. Progression Dynamic
Definition: a dynamic in which success is granularly displayed and measured through the process of completing itemized tasks.
Example: a progress bar, leveling up from paladin level 1 to paladin level 60
34. Ratio Reward Schedules
Definition: Ratio schedules provide a reward after a number of actions. There are two flavors: variable and fixed.
Example: kill 10 orcs, get a power up.
35. Real-time v. Delayed Mechanics
Definition: Realtime information flow is uninhibited by delay. Delayed information is only released after a certain interval.
Example: Realtime scores cause instant reaction (gratification or demotivation). Delayed causes ambiguity which can incent more action due to the lack of certainty of ranking.
36. Reinforcer
Definition: The reward given if the expected action is carried out in the three part paradigm of reward schedules.
Example: receiving a level up after killing 10 orcs.
37. Response
Definition: The expected action from the player in the three part paradigm of reward schedules.
Example: the player takes the action to kill 10 orcs
38. Reward Schedules
Definition: the timeframe and delivery mechanisms through which rewards (points, prizes, level ups) are delivered. Three main parts exist in a reward schedule; contingency, response and reinforcer.
Example: getting a level up for killing 10 orcs, clearing a row in Tetris, getting fresh crops in Farmville
39. Rolling Physical Goods
Definition: A physical good (one with real value) that can be won by anyone on an ongoing basis as long as they meet some characteristic. However, that characteristic rolls from player to player.
Example: top scorer deals, mayor deals
40. Shell Game
Definition: a game in which the player is presented with the illusion of choice but is actually in a situation that guides them to the desired outcome of the operator.
Example: 3 Card Monty, lotteries, gambling
41. Social Fabric of Games
Definition: the idea that people like one another better after they’ve played games with them, have a higher level of trust and a great willingness to work together.
Example: From Jane McGonicgal’s TED talk where she suggests that it takes a lot of trust to play a game with someone because you need them to spend their time with you, play by the same rules, shoot for the same goals.
42. Status
Definition: The rank or level of a player. Players are often motivated by trying to reach a higher level or status.
Example: white paladin level 20 in WOW.
43. Urgent Optimism
Definition: Extreme self motivation. The desire to act immediately to tackle an obstacle combined with the belief that we have a reasonable hope of success.
Example: From Jane McGonical’s TED talk. The idea that in proper games an “epic win” or just “win” is possible and therefore always worth acting for.
44. Variable Interval Reward Schedules
Definition: Variable interval reward schedules provide a reward after a roughly consistent amount of time. This tends to create a reasonably high level of activity over time, as the player could receive a reward at any time but never the burst as created under a fixed schedule. This system is also more immune to the nadir right after the receiving of a reward, but also lacks the zenith of activity before a reward in unlocked due to high levels of ambiguity.
Example: Wait roughly 30 minutes, a new weapon appears. Check back as often as you want but that won’t speed it up. Generally players are bad at realizing that.
45. Variable Ratio Reward Schedule
Definition: A variable ratio reward schedule provides rewards after a roughly consistent but unknown amount of actions. This creates a relatively high consistent rate of activity (as there could always be a reward after the next action) with a slight increase as the expected reward threshold is reached, but never the huge burst of a fixed ratio schedule. It’s also more immune to nadirs in engagement after a reward is acheived.
Example: kill something like 20 ships, get a level up. Visit a couple locations (roughly five) get a badge
46. Viral Game Mechanics
Definition: A game element that requires multiple people to play (or that can be played better with multiple people)
Example: Farmville making you more successful in the game if you invite your friends, the social check-in
47. Virtual Items
Definition: Digital prizes, rewards, objects found or taken within the course of a game. Often these can be traded or given away.
I am the Creative Director at Hill & Knowlton in Sydney.
I've worked in a few different parts of the agency world and ran my own shop in Shanghai for a while, launching super premium products into the world's largest marketplace.
I am fascinated by what's coming next, how new networks offer a company like H&K the opportunity to flex our earned media muscle and deliver great work for the clients we work with and the brands they breathe life into.
I write about campaigns that work and some that don't, from Australia and around the world. Sometimes the world of social media will hold me in its sway and occasionally I'll just post something that inspires me and hopefully you as well.
Please comment, I'll respond to as many as I physically can.
I often think I am blessed to have been born in New Zealand. 
