Roots

An exploration by Chris Quigley and Raul Lansink into open source brands / brand participation / brand co-production . . . or whatever you want to call it. We 're not quite sure what to call "it", and one of the main objectives of this blog is to discover just exactly what "it" is.

Monday, March 20, 2006

Ugly is good

It's true - ugly really does sell. According to recent reports online dating site Plenty of Fish is raking in $10,000 a day from Adsense revenue. And the key thing about Plenty of Fish (apart from its free) is that it's about as well-designed as the M25 (not very).

This little nugget follows on from an earlier point I made about the old brand order being replaced by the new. Functionality rules and design comes a less effective second. This is particularly relevant when considering the BBC's recent poor excuse for a social-music idea they call Music Cube. Be overwhelmed and waste precious time creating your own visual music identity to discover the whole process is mostly pointless . . .

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Getting it all wrong

Flicking through a back issue of New Media Age I came across an interesting feature about user-generated content and how Levi were embracing this new phenomenon in their latest campaign - "Antidote".

The article was written back in September last year, so the article was pretty spot on about hyping up user-generated content - as this was around the time when the likes of Google Video and YouTube were starting to fly.

What wasn't so spot on was Levi's digital agency's approach (Lateral) to making the most of this so called new phenomenon work for the brand. By all accounts Antidote is an incredibly good example of how to get brand participation completely wrong.

Levi's main mistakes lie in conceptual, technological and fundamental cultural issues. Conceptually Levi's idea is based around a fairly "closed-wall" approach. There's no - let's help make sh*t happen for anyone who wants it. It is more of a pick and choose approach, which if you're wanting to generate a grass-roots following then you'll just end up pissing the grass roots off.

Technologically Levi's have completely neglected to take into account the idea of mashing-stuff up and facilitation. Instead of creating a platform that brings together the best bits of the web (Flickr, Google Maps etc.) Levi's have pushed out a mediocre Flash-based solution. It looks nice - but functionally is a real turkey.

And finally from a cultural perspective, Levi's just really don't seem to get how to match their brand values to the new "P generation" - where young people want control. Levi's talk about their cultural brand heritage of being all grass-rootsy and wanting to empower people, however their Antidote campaign shows how this is all a bunch of brand lies.

The scary thing for Levi's is that unless they loosen up and really embrace the concept of brand participation from real people, then their brand is going to continue slipping into history.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Rosie's dilemma

I remember my father once telling me that big business is small business with 00000's. Of course when he shared this sage piece of business advice with me I shrugged my shoulders in a teenage "wot-eva Dad" kinda way - as any son would. I am, however, increasingly seeing his point of view, and dare I say it, he was right!

Yesterday I was out in Brixton and popped in for some lunch with my friend Rosie - who runs a small Deli just off Cold Harbour Lane. Whilst tucking into a handsomely sized cheese and salami ciabatta Rosie told me about her business dilemma: a bigger shop had become available round the corner, and she was considering moving because this meant she could open later and seat more people. The question she was trying to answer was whether the increase in space and better position would result in greater revenues to off-set the increase in rent, help her grow the business and make her happy (most important of all).

The first thing I suggested she did was look at her existing business, and work out how to make the most of what she had already. Often it's very easy to ignore the now, and look to the future for answers. Interestingly, when we started looking at her existing business one of the key issues she identified was the impact she (personally) had on business. She explained how people generally came to Rosie's Deli for the "Rosie Deli experience" and at the centre of that experience was Rosie. When Rosie wasn't working, she lost custom and revenue - as punters weren't getting the full Rosie's experience.

This close alignment with Rosie, the cafe and revenues would obviously be a massive issue if she took on a bigger Deli - meaning she would need to open later so as to generate greater revenues, and ultimately meaning longer working hours (and less fun).

For me this was a really interesting insight into brands working at the coal-face. Everything Rosie was telling me was massively relevant to everything we've been discussing in this blog. When we dug deeper into what made Rosie's Deli a success as a brand, a number of small be significant elements of brand participation came to light. For example Rosie has a row of hooks behind the Deli counter where regulars can hang their mugs (with a name tag). People love this little touch apparently, and more and more people have been asking if they can have their mug (and name tag) behind the counter. Why do they like it? Because they feel like they are part of Rosie's - because they are, in a small way, participating in the brand.

Following all these wonderful insightful nuggets it became clear what Rosie needs to do: maximise brand participation activities, whilst at the same time extricating herself (personally) from the brand. She needs to create ways in which people can participate in the Rosie brand, and create surrogate brand devices that replace (in part) Rosie herself. By doing this, Rosie's Deli could remain the same Rosie's Deli with or without the lady herself . . .

Really excitingly Rosie's already (hours after our chat) taking her first small steps to increase her brand participation activities by making "Rosie's badges" for her regulars to personalise!

So next time you're in the Brixton area, I suggest you pop into Rosie's Deli order a ciabatta and make your very own Rosie's badge . . .

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Adland joins in

Seems as though adland has finally caught up . . . Publicis this week announced the launch of Denuo their new innovation shop set up to help the giant network catch-up with the things we've been doing for the last couple of years . . .

I can only think that this is a good thing, as it shows greater acceptance amongst the marketing community of new tech-based communications techniques - such as brand participation. Which means no doubt their 12 bright new things who are heading up the agency will be sniffing around the blogosphere for some nice juicy tips . . .