January 2012
MARKETERS, TURN TO HOLLYWOOD! SAYS WHO?!
Just think about all the great feature films, animated movies, and music being produced by Hollywood using a universal language touching millions of people around the globe, inspiring them, making them believe in dreams and encouraging them to think out of the box. Not to mention the power of converting viewers into film lovers for the rest of their lives. Sound familiar? Pretty similar to anything and everything a great brand and its marketers have ever hoped for & worked for.
So how come that Hollywood gets it?! How come they know how to evoke the same, and I mean the same, feelings in everyone and everyone gets it, when global brands are struggling to motivate and evoke emotions in consumers on a global scale. Having said that, thankfully there are numerous exceptions of brands that were able to touch and truly interact with a global audience, winning their hearts and brains over. But by principle I still believe there is a lot to learn from Hollywood, from storytelling, character building and dramatizing to moving images, and executing immaculate and picturesque sights and sounds.
When I'm looking at TV and movie characters who have outlived their original context, making new lives across several fashion, lifestyle and consumer goods categories, with sometimes even greater success, I cannot help but wonder why advertisers, by definition remain more reluctant. Yes, reluctant. Regardless of certain efforts of mind- blowing and over-provoking masterpieces, they produce as those great campaigns’ sustainability fall way behind the sustainable success of any “hollywoodization”
If only advertisers could for once move from the global communications idea back to the global brand idea, and actually believe that finding the WHYS will lead them to succeed in creating the HOWS.
The idea of establishing global brand teams not only focusing on segmentations aiming to collect differences, but creating common denominators out of the segmentation, and leverage these understanding and similarities into contemporary characterization via true and relevant storytelling.
Look at animated movies as an example. < Bare with me > At first glance, by brand definition, arguably THOSE brand teams would have marketed these cartoons to kids and young adults, co-promoted by children products. But thankfully Hollywood got it right and managed to market cartoons across multiple segments, bringing both the young and elderly to the box office, bringing multiple races and psychographics to the counters of department stores, purchasing a piece that resembled the story once told by these cartoons.
Maybe if we could look at segmentation marketing from another angle and not only from its original definition of finding subtle differences as a success factor, but similarities!
Brand developers tend to get lost in the process of hunting differences and gently omit even more powerful similarities which could have been proved right across different segments to reach a common goal and build a story that speaks for all, a story that relates from itself to themselves.
Says who?! Says a guy who loves observing things and sharing them with like-minded individuals, who happen to be readers from different countries with different cultures and backgrounds but have things in common.
PS: Oh and the English-written Hollywood sign which became one of the most recognized symbols in the world that everybody seems to understand. More to come on international names and slogans.
January 2012
CLICKING ON "LIKE" IS THE MOST ANTI SOCIAL INVENTION. SAYS WHO?!
What a great invention, some could say. Saves time and energy and effort. What it does not do is express that you really care. Oh, wait, do you really care?
It's like going for speed dating; do you really care about the others or is it enough that it gives you a rapid joy to express your emotions instantly? Okay, I get it. Clicking on "Like" is a great way of showing your friends on Facebook that you care; that's certainly one way to put it.
But since likes are usually not followed by real conversations, I believe it is one of the most dangerous anti-social accelerators to date which humans have become accustomed to. It is worse than a single tweet, unless they invent a Re-like a like button, which would at least initiate a dialogue rather than a stamped monologue. Imagine the millions of ping-pong signage exchanges in cyber space of "like" emotion signs all being done to pretend we care.
Love you, love you more, love you even more, and oops! You try to comment on a like proposing to meet up. Watch what happens: You will receive a like hit on your great initiative to actually see the person and the dialogue will end. Bitter sweet, right? Bitter since you won't meet, but sweet since he/she appreciated your effort and probably even considered it for one second that was when you received your like hit on your proposal.
So what can we do about it? Shall we do anything about it? Or shall we just let Facebook become a monologue platform for cyber exhibitionism, a sharing and exchange platform for images, drawings, badges, and symbols; a contextualized emotion highway of fast-spaced confirmations of verbally unarticulated empathy. WHY are we doing it? – and I am hoping I am not being too explicit as to trigger a so-called mutual knowledge, killing your preconceived idea that the “hit Like button easy care service” has been only an innuendo between clickers and receivers only without mass recognition of its antisocial consequences.
At the end of the day, clicking only on Like in order to save time & effort will not do one thing to save your real friendships.
If you agree with all the above, it can make you do two things. Or actually, three. You will smile at its triviality and think of your friends for a moment. Then it is up to you to decide if you hit Like on this article or actually take time and comment on it to show that you really care.
PS: I know. I know. I can already hear comments like " it is not that I don't care but, I simply do not have the time to comment on all posts since each could take up at least 3 minutes of my time and I have at least 150 close friends. Now multiply 3 minutes by 150 friends, thta's 450 minutes, which is 7.5 hours which is like having a full-time job as a correspondent. Okay, okay, point taken. But do you really have 150 close friends?! Now you do the math!
Follow me on #twitter: tom_skyler
January 2012
January 2012
January 2012
January 2012
SHAME TO BE SAME. SAYS WHO?!
After posting my last article about the danger of limiting assumptions, many friends called asking for advice. Mainly wanting to find techniques on how to visualize assumptions in a positive way in order not to limit, but encourage, themselves. I had received the same questions about the same topic and was replying the same way to the same people; were they getting the same answers? Not sure.
<The good news is I have been working hard with my best friends, lately finalizing certain positive self-development techniques and schemes, which I will be happy to publicly share this spring. Exciting! >
But, back to the danger of getting "insame". The slide I posted is from the Sir John Hegarty lecture I recently took. It grabbed my attention, making me think how right he was with his statement in general. But the more I thought about it the more I realized that besides being spot on with his assumption, it yet didn’t necessary guarantee the expected outcome - receiving the same answers. Why? Because we are all selfish in many ways, and in order to compensate for our lack of effort and creativity, right before getting the same answer we manipulatively switch on our subconscious translator to interpret the very same answers in different ways, in a way that best fits our actual needs. So we cheat. Yet, again.
Following up on "Please avoid limiting assumptions against us " article, my current post would love to encourage all of you to be creative and to skip the translator, as it's a trans-later, since the trans of joy getting to new discoveries will be missed. You will not only receive an answer you predetermined, but you will also receive a solution which could only confirm past beliefs.
“Creativity isn’t a job, it’s a belief. Without that belief you will never be great“ – Hegarty
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