A tag cloud in my world of strategic planning will reveal something quite improbable. Something Nassim Nicholas Taleb has coined as the Black Swan. Much ado about nothing! What if I were to tell you that everything you do is utterly useless, meaningless, bulls**t! Seriously! How would I make you feel? That’s how NNT has made me feel right about now! Quite improbable but true!
What is so Black Swan about my world? The simple fact that everything we do as planners to simplify or to put it more aptly platonify is not as meaningful or even accurate as I once believed it was. We get it wrong at so many levels. A lot of what I do simply put is baloney (or faluda from where I come from)!
So what am I going to do? I could choose to be the ostrich or I could choose to be the Black Swan! The highly improbable planner who fails even harder trying to change the game! The probable outcome but this is what I will do. Will you do the same?
Prediction is not possible. Deal with it. Those hypothesis we try to confirm. Seek to be proven wrong! Fight the confirmation error. Yes my sole motto from now would be to proven wrong. I want to be told I was wrong the next time I do research. Try not to make sense of things! OMG! How am I going to do without that. We go through so much research and have to “craft” that illusive insight – Narrative Fallacy (or Fraud to put it bluntly). The best in my world are the ones with a point of view and creating a story around it is the art that sticks! Is there a better way! Not quite sure yet. The things we don’t hear, don’t find out about in a research – the problem of silent evidence. Basing our strategies on the little evidence we get is what we do! This is not getting any better is it! A whole of lot of modeling, mapping, scenario planning is ludic fallacy at play. It all looks hunky dory on paper but it is far from what goes on in the real world or so says NNT?
Skeptical. That is the point. NNT would be proud. But don’t just stop there. Be empirically skeptic. That’s what he is. That’s not what I am though nor will be anytime soon. I may not have the luxury to empirically prove my point of view. But I do know what I need to do and I am not quite ready to tell you! Yet
How do you tell a vanilla story in a way that is fresh and surprising? Use an analogy. Their power is undeniable. From the oldest religious to modern day pep talk analogies are a great way to make a point. Advertising is all about making a point and in most cases than some, the point is not new. How many times have we seen a food brand claim taste, a beverage brand claim refreshment and a telecom brand claim value. It usually helps to focus on a specific feature to begin with, mix it up with an analogy and you could end up with something great. This is what Clear – an internet services provider in the United States has done to communicate two features of it’s offering. One is for “No Data Limits” and the other is for “No Contract”. Both features are not new to the industry but their agency’s creative team have come up with some very human, everyday analogies to make their point. Check out the two ads below:
Ever heard of Vitamin Waw! It is an extremely potent rare form of vitamin found only in certain parts of the world. It can be a life saver, a game changer, can give you wings like the ones that not even Red Bull can match. Great thing about it, unlike other vitamins you can never overdose on it. The more you have this power pill the stronger you become. It is magical dare I say. There is just one problem though. It is only available in Saudi Arabia to a minority of the locals and it is not for sale! Acquiring Vitamin Waw takes a lot of effort, sometimes years. Having the good fortune of belonging to a certain lineage does allow automatic access to this magical elixir but that is about it. People who live in Saudi Arabia see it’s power manifest everyday, they may not consciously know what it is but they are certainly a witness to it’s impact.
Wonder how the improbable just happens. Stories we all hear everyday of people circumventing the law to do things deemed impossible . Yup you guessed it, it’s all the power of Vitamin Waw. For the vast majority I am probably not making any sense but all my fellow residents of Saudi Arabia have certainly heard of “wasta” and the colloquial term ‘Vitamin Waw’. Bit of an anti-climax I suspect? You were expecting more than this. Well here it is. We all know about the power of “wasta”. It is both powerful and unique. This post is about the “why?” Where does this phenomenon of “wasta” come from? What is so unique about Saudi Society that breeds this?
There are indeed some very local customs and habits that play a big role in driving this way of life. Those habits may be shared by other Arab cultures but there is clearly a Saudi aspect that is unlike any other. It is this deep offline social networking that locals engage in that equates if not takes precedence to their close family ties. Just how close are these engagements? If a sister is getting married on a day of this special ‘networking’ day then the brother will have no choice but to miss his sister’s wedding. That’s right! It’s that important and it happens every week on a pre-fixed date for life. It’s not something limited to older men from the upper strata of society either but it’s a custom that is prevalent across genders and ages. College going kids for example will have their own networking rituals played out at a sisha cafe or on chalets near the beach on weekends for example. Women too will strictly follow their meeting rites exchanging thoughts from anything mundane to the not so ordinary. The real value of these meeting rituals is in the strength of the connections that are nurtured over the years. Imagine a high-profile businessman meeting regularly with a similar group of entrepreneurs, senior government officials and in some cases a member of the royal family and doing so to a level where all family matters, business goals and challenges are completely known to everyone in the group. If each member values this connection to a point that they commit to it like they would to a blood relative then you can imagine the strength of this connection. Speaking to some locals I learnt that these commitments demand a huge emotional investment as everyone tries their utmost to keep up with both the happy celebrations and the sad events of each connection. The rewards are obvious but they don’t come easy. Knitting such close ties to a network of twenty or so people at a very deep level gives them immense power in the society to get things done. With each family member having their own network the combined effect means for a certain level in society these individuals can pretty much get anything done. In a world which is just learning to capitalize on the strength of weak ties through online social networks here is a culture that has been doing it for centuries and these are no weak ties here either. They are equal to the strongest ties any individual could have.
At DDB we are really focusing on “Social Creativity”. Our goal being not just to connect people with brands but people with people. A concept known as “six degrees of separation” coined by Frigyes Karinthy states that every one of us is connected to another in just six steps. Today it has inspired a whole new thinking in science known as ‘network science’ and it has been proven that we truly are connected to each other in just six steps. However, if the same study were done in Saudi Arabia those steps maybe fewer than six despite the fact that the penetration of online social networks is much lower here than most developed economies.
So what does this mean for marketing? For one this is a unique insight into Saudi culture. The power of these networks can have a huge impact on brand building especially stakeholders as we experience it in our day-to-day business. The impressions and feedback from these networks can be a bigger influencer to a decision-maker than what conventional research might say. Also as we work to unleash Social Creativity in the online world globally there may still be room, at least in Saudi Arabia to use the power of these offline networks to build brands by encouraging participation, play and pass on!
Welcome to 2012! As with every new year this year too brings with it new hope and a plethora of new year resolutions that unlike yesteryears would not be forgotten right after they are carved in stone…err…on a tablet I presume. Something tells me they too would meet a fate that is rather expected, almost certain I dare say. Well this post is about the unexpected. On a personal note Incito Mentis is now two years old. I personally did not expect to come this far. It’s been an enriching journey that I sure hope to continue with in the forseeable future, God willing. Unlike last year when I covered some of the key lessons from my first year of blogging this time around I am going to cover my personal favorites of the year from three categories – Insights, Ideas and Technology. These are the same three areas that I most often write and think about. This post is the first of three posts and is going to cover “Insight of the Year”.
Before I can begin I have to admit that we have a problem. A problem of definition. What is an insight? It’s like one of those many topics in marketing that have as many definitions as the marketers themselves (including the ones who think they are marketers…lucky for you since you are reading this post I believe you are NOT one of them). Questions like ‘What is Marketing? What is a Brand? How do you define Activation? etc.’ all fall under this elusive area for which there is NO ONE right answer. Adding to the confusion I too, a self-proclaimed insight expert, would define an insight as ‘the discovery of an underlying truth’. In the context of my work in brand communications this would be mean “the discovery of an underlying human truth”. Now that we have the definition out of the way (so I think!). Let’s look at what I discovered this year that would be my pick for “Insight of the Year 2011.” No nominees just one clear winner. This is not the Oscars or is it!?
Well I live and work in Saudi Arabia and have been doing so for the last 6 years. As an expatriate working in this region it has been very hard for me to make sense of Arab culture and Saudi society. In 2011 the dots seemed to connect, as a wise man once said, and I came to discover a very unexpected truth about Saudi Arabia and it’s people. Saudi Arabia is a “Land of Paradoxes”. This seemed like that one one thing that explained much of their observed behavior if not everything. Saudi Arabia is not a land of grey but a land of distinct blacks and equally distinct whites. In other words for every observed behavior there is most likely an equal and opposite set of behaviors to be seen that would contradict everything that was known prior to the fact . As a reader of this post, it would be fair to weigh in a heavy dose of skepticism to this theory. Platonified reductionism does not necessarily lead to a fresh insight but personally I have found this idea very unexpected and unique to Saudi Arabia.
Try it for any observed behavior in the kingdom and a paradox would be equally true. I have attempted to capture this theory in a keynote presentation. You can check it out here. Subsequent posts to understand Saudi culture have further added to this belief, also captured in another post here.
Hope you enjoyed reading this! I would love to hear your point of view on the subject even if it contradicts my own! After all, this post is all about paradoxes to begin with.
What happens when sports marketing meets Web 2.0? You get content that spreads like a forest fire blazing through the web. It is apparently random and insanely awesome!
Sports is a youth passion that brands often leverage on to using the celebrity status of sporting giants to connect with their audience. Pepsi for one has been famous for its endorsement deals with all kinds of sports celebrities. In the old world of one way communication these stars would be used from anything like a TV commercial to being the face on a billboard. But what does sports marketing look like in a web 2.0 world? Like everything else on social media it’s all about content. However in the context of sports marketing there are some differences. Looking at best practices I sense at least one such pattern, a structure that can inspire others looking to create branded content in the sporting domain. I am calling this tactic ‘Random Greatness’. Check out these two videos below to see what I am talking about – one is for Gillette using Roger Federer and the other is for Pepsi using David Beckham. Awesome stuff!
What is common about them? They both seem obviously random and insanely awesome! I believe there is a strategy to create content like this. It is not as random and obvious as it may seem. The question is how can YOU go about creating content like this? I have tried to distill my thinking into three key points:
Star Power: Having a good dose of celebrity is the pivotal starting point for creating ‘random greatness’. Celebrities command more attention over anything they do compared to similar acts of superficiality undertaken by a non-celebrity. Since this is about about leveraging an investment in a sports celebrity to begin with the only thing to think about here is the level of star power. More power means more fans and therefore the probability of the content going viral is proportionately increased. So if you represent a brand with big sports stars lined up you are already half way there.
Showmanship: Stars are revered for many reasons. Some for their good looks while others for their personality. Sports celebrities more often than not are held up high on the pedestal of fame for their showmanship, the sheer skill they exhibit in their game. Jeremy ‘Linsanity” Lin for example has become an overnight sensation not for anything but his prowess at the NBA. While creating ‘random greatness’ this is the other key point. Fans love to just see their stars and if they get to see them in all their glory doing what they do best than THAT is the ultimate treat. ‘Not only do I get to see my idol but I see them being awesome!’
Authenticity: This is the final ingredient to creating ‘random greatness’. Everything up to this point was about greatness – the power of the star and an opportunity to see the awesomeness of their talent. The randomness creates the WOW! Factor because it adds authenticity to the whole setting. Both the examples have a very backstage, behind-the-scenes type of feel that gives the impression that these acts of greatness were purely coincidental, just happened by accident but luckily there was someone with a camera recording that moment in high definition. Right!
There you have it. My recipe for creating great content if you are a brand with a sports celebrity in your stable. Now only if I had a client with whom I could cook something like this with! Any takers?
What is so Black Swan about my world? The simple fact that everything we do as planners to simplify or to put it more aptly platonify is not as meaningful or even accurate as I once believed it was. We get it wrong at so many levels. A lot of what I do simply put is baloney (or faluda from where I come from)!
