I took my 7 year old to see Katy Perry last night. Holy Moly. The whole thing was like a walk through a 3-dimensional version of the Candyland board game from my youth – but even way better because it’s done with 21st century technology!
The woman is a modern marketing wonder. The music is pure bubblegum teenage pop, the costumes deserve their own Tim Burton film and the stage design appears like a modern pinball machine that ate a ‘grow-humungous’ pill.
But what stood out for me was the permeation of social platforms like Twitter, Youtube and Facebook in her show production. And the degree to which she attaches to pop culture, embracing those platforms to build connection with her audience.
Here’s what Katy Perry Did:
She started out with the typical format of ‘the opening act’. Marina and the Diamonds, who I happen to love, put on a mediocre show at best, which disappointed me. But that’s for another post.
But that’s where ‘typical' ended and Katy started to mix it up. Opening Act 2 was DJ Skeet Skeet, helming a 30 or so minute dance party with a set list that included Dragonette, LMFAO, Kesha and more. Clearly a mix board master, he had the 14,000 odd fans on their feet, shaking their bodies fueled by their cotton candied sugar rush. DJ Skeet Skeet closed his set by directing us all to his Facebook page where we could download for free (“cause who doesn’t like free music!” he yelled) his debut remix of John Legend doing Adele’s Rolling in the Deep. I have not been able to locate said free download as yet, but that’s not my point. My point is that Katy Perry had a DJ for an opening act!
Then here’s what Katy Perry did. She posted the Twitter hashtag #TorontoDreams on the big screens. Within seconds, profile pictures and twitter posts started appearing on the big screens. Yes, I sent a post with the hashtag and watched to see my profile picture with my twitter post appear on the big screens at the Air Canada Centre for 14,000 odd people to see! Very cool. And there’s more. So many people were sending posts with the hashtag #TorontoDreams, that it started trending. Random Torontonians, having no awareness that it was the concert hashtag began tweeting about how they want world peace, a huge home, a lot full of fancy cars, or (apparently) to move to Vancouver. The power of Katy Perry.
And here’s the last thing that Katy Perry did. She had a little sojourn mid-concert, which she called her ‘Karaoke Break’, whereby she sang a few covers. And covers of what, you might ask? Well Rihanna’s Only Girl in the World, which was lovely, but then… oh yes, after a prefacing discussion about her favourite videos on Youtube (many of which involve cats it seems), she sang, to my dismay, the infamous Rebecca Black’s Friday, to which my 7 year old knew all the words, to my even greater dismay.
Katy Perry in Summary? Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Popular Culture Tie-Ins, Entertainment Production Goddess. Modern Marketing Wonder. And yes, I loved it all.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Item #48: The Inflection Point Upon Us
Prepared for the Canadian Marketing Association, June 2011
I, like many of you readers, work for a communication agency. Formerly known as an advertising agency. I was ruminating recently about the mountainous inflection point I felt we were in the midst of as communicators. Here is the story:
Once Upon A Time
Once upon a time there was advertising. ‘Advertising’ agencies created television ads, ads for newspapers and magazines and ads to run on the radio. Structured advertising agencies had different departments producing these advertisements, presenting them to a client and ‘putting them on the air’.
Around twenty years ago came the internet and hence ‘the digital space’. It lingered in its formative stage, mainly driving the emergence of e-commerce, for about a decade. Only about ten years ago, ‘advertising’ agencies decided that the internet could be a canvas for advertising. So advertising agencies started developing web sites and digital banner ads. They’d build these websites and banner ads and then ‘put them up’.
Maybe around five years ago, social media came to be. Suddenly all kinds of conversations were being had in the ‘digital space’; shared information was circulating among people without advertising agencies or their clients having anything to do with it.
And then mobile devices came to be which sped up all this communicating and commerce-related activity in the digital space to a lightning fast pace.
A Reality Check
Today, people everywhere - colleagues and friends, moms and dads, students, artists, technology gurus, teachers, policemen, investment bankers and academics – ‘live’ the internet. They access Google dozens of time every day and get their daily news updates online. Photos are shared and commented on via Facebook, Flickr or Instagram. Vacations are researched, planned and paid for online. Moms right now are circulating blog postings about some new organic pasta on the market. Grandparents are Skyping with their grandkids from continent to continent every day. Youtube is an entertainment channel for just about every single person I know, including my 67 year old father. New bands are born every day on MySpace. My mom lives by her iPhone as does my Dad; my niece and my daughter both carry their Nintendo DSi in one hand and their iPads in the other. This is not a minority report tech future; this is today, everyday, for more and more people as part of daily life.
When we step away from the language in communication circles about ‘the digital space’, ‘the social space’, ‘the mobile space’, this is the reality.
And so, The Inflection Point:
For all the decades past, we communication agencies and clients have considered traditional media to be king and digital media to be secondary, not even at queen status, but more so a court jester. I could go on separately about why: it’s cheaper to produce digital media so it doesn’t get as much attention as traditional media which is incredibly expensive still. And we don’t have good impact metrics yet around digital media to PROVE how much it is contributing to communications and brand health in the minds of our audiences.
But this has changed. Now, today, traditional media and digital media sit at the same table. They have rapidly come to be equals. And we communications agencies and clients are waking up to that reality. Brands are being built exclusively in the digital space in many cases. And among the new generation of consumers, traditional media may indeed be falling by the wayside.
Insert panic here.
If you accept that the above is true, because it is - now, today, traditional media and digital media sit at the same table - then what? Communications that happen in the digital, social and mobile space do not function like traditional media. You do not ‘put them on the air’ or ‘put them up’. They are ongoing, immediate and dynamic by their very nature. And this simple reality radically impacts everything.
We have to think about communications today as an eco-system: interconnected, always-on, living, and constantly evolving.
Impact 1: We can no longer think of communications development as projects that follow a straight path, each one in a separate lane, being developed in parallel. We need new ways of working: fluid, connected, nurturing. We need to ‘carry’ communications, constantly. This has radical implications for the mindset and consequently the processes of developing communications, evaluating communications, and maintaining communications.
Impact 2: This acknowledgement that communications is now an eco-system, requires by definition that the people charged with managing those communications understand ‘systems’ and this is not a common capability. Understanding systems means having an incredible ability to see the big picture – how everything is working together – productively, seamlessly, responsively. And yet it also means having an ability to go deep into any singular ‘node’ within the system to maximize its individual role in the system. This is complex thinking.
Impact 3: Communications producers – writers, art directors, technologists, etc… – need to truly work together to create. Which means they need to understand each other’s craft, in order to truly be able to integrate and build off of each other. This is not a skillset that has been nurtured or taught either through the education system or inside agencies historically.
Journey through the Inflection Point:
There is a mountain to climb to be able to really traverse this inflection point. It may seem straightforward, but it is anything but. It requires:
a) The acceptance that the digital space is seated at the table right next to the traditional media space and that the need to adjust to it is urgent.
b) The acknowledgement that communications today are not about ‘putting it on the air’ or ‘putting it up’; communications today are about creating and managing eco-systems of activity.
c) A change in communications agency processes and client review, ‘purchase’ and maintain processes.
d) An upgrading of communication producers skill sets – to foster a better cross-discipline understanding.
Insert easy button.
I, for one, believe that if brands want to continue to have a place in people’s lives in the future, traversing this inflection point is a must-do. Adjust or be left behind seems to me to be the harsh reality. But more optimistically, this required shift in communications could get us to a much better place on so many levels. This shift will get us communications that matter to people; by default that means brands that are engaging in ways that matter to people. And ladder that further to a place where communications (and brands) can be positive contributing forces in the world. This is free market dynamics at work. Best to acknowledge and understand what people want, and deliver it, because it’s those who will survive.
I, like many of you readers, work for a communication agency. Formerly known as an advertising agency. I was ruminating recently about the mountainous inflection point I felt we were in the midst of as communicators. Here is the story:
Once Upon A Time
Once upon a time there was advertising. ‘Advertising’ agencies created television ads, ads for newspapers and magazines and ads to run on the radio. Structured advertising agencies had different departments producing these advertisements, presenting them to a client and ‘putting them on the air’.
Around twenty years ago came the internet and hence ‘the digital space’. It lingered in its formative stage, mainly driving the emergence of e-commerce, for about a decade. Only about ten years ago, ‘advertising’ agencies decided that the internet could be a canvas for advertising. So advertising agencies started developing web sites and digital banner ads. They’d build these websites and banner ads and then ‘put them up’.
Maybe around five years ago, social media came to be. Suddenly all kinds of conversations were being had in the ‘digital space’; shared information was circulating among people without advertising agencies or their clients having anything to do with it.
And then mobile devices came to be which sped up all this communicating and commerce-related activity in the digital space to a lightning fast pace.
A Reality Check
Today, people everywhere - colleagues and friends, moms and dads, students, artists, technology gurus, teachers, policemen, investment bankers and academics – ‘live’ the internet. They access Google dozens of time every day and get their daily news updates online. Photos are shared and commented on via Facebook, Flickr or Instagram. Vacations are researched, planned and paid for online. Moms right now are circulating blog postings about some new organic pasta on the market. Grandparents are Skyping with their grandkids from continent to continent every day. Youtube is an entertainment channel for just about every single person I know, including my 67 year old father. New bands are born every day on MySpace. My mom lives by her iPhone as does my Dad; my niece and my daughter both carry their Nintendo DSi in one hand and their iPads in the other. This is not a minority report tech future; this is today, everyday, for more and more people as part of daily life.
When we step away from the language in communication circles about ‘the digital space’, ‘the social space’, ‘the mobile space’, this is the reality.
And so, The Inflection Point:
For all the decades past, we communication agencies and clients have considered traditional media to be king and digital media to be secondary, not even at queen status, but more so a court jester. I could go on separately about why: it’s cheaper to produce digital media so it doesn’t get as much attention as traditional media which is incredibly expensive still. And we don’t have good impact metrics yet around digital media to PROVE how much it is contributing to communications and brand health in the minds of our audiences.
But this has changed. Now, today, traditional media and digital media sit at the same table. They have rapidly come to be equals. And we communications agencies and clients are waking up to that reality. Brands are being built exclusively in the digital space in many cases. And among the new generation of consumers, traditional media may indeed be falling by the wayside.
Insert panic here.
If you accept that the above is true, because it is - now, today, traditional media and digital media sit at the same table - then what? Communications that happen in the digital, social and mobile space do not function like traditional media. You do not ‘put them on the air’ or ‘put them up’. They are ongoing, immediate and dynamic by their very nature. And this simple reality radically impacts everything.
We have to think about communications today as an eco-system: interconnected, always-on, living, and constantly evolving.
Impact 1: We can no longer think of communications development as projects that follow a straight path, each one in a separate lane, being developed in parallel. We need new ways of working: fluid, connected, nurturing. We need to ‘carry’ communications, constantly. This has radical implications for the mindset and consequently the processes of developing communications, evaluating communications, and maintaining communications.
Impact 2: This acknowledgement that communications is now an eco-system, requires by definition that the people charged with managing those communications understand ‘systems’ and this is not a common capability. Understanding systems means having an incredible ability to see the big picture – how everything is working together – productively, seamlessly, responsively. And yet it also means having an ability to go deep into any singular ‘node’ within the system to maximize its individual role in the system. This is complex thinking.
Impact 3: Communications producers – writers, art directors, technologists, etc… – need to truly work together to create. Which means they need to understand each other’s craft, in order to truly be able to integrate and build off of each other. This is not a skillset that has been nurtured or taught either through the education system or inside agencies historically.
Journey through the Inflection Point:
There is a mountain to climb to be able to really traverse this inflection point. It may seem straightforward, but it is anything but. It requires:
a) The acceptance that the digital space is seated at the table right next to the traditional media space and that the need to adjust to it is urgent.
b) The acknowledgement that communications today are not about ‘putting it on the air’ or ‘putting it up’; communications today are about creating and managing eco-systems of activity.
c) A change in communications agency processes and client review, ‘purchase’ and maintain processes.
d) An upgrading of communication producers skill sets – to foster a better cross-discipline understanding.
Insert easy button.
I, for one, believe that if brands want to continue to have a place in people’s lives in the future, traversing this inflection point is a must-do. Adjust or be left behind seems to me to be the harsh reality. But more optimistically, this required shift in communications could get us to a much better place on so many levels. This shift will get us communications that matter to people; by default that means brands that are engaging in ways that matter to people. And ladder that further to a place where communications (and brands) can be positive contributing forces in the world. This is free market dynamics at work. Best to acknowledge and understand what people want, and deliver it, because it’s those who will survive.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Item #47: Upping-My-Game
I have been lucky enough to meet a few new and incredible people over the last few weeks. An amazing writer and art director team who truly get the new world of communications, an engagement planning guru and another new media strategist who is on-the-pulse and sees beyond the horizon.
It’s been an eye-opening few weeks, confusing and stressful at times. But in this short period of exposure, I realized something. They were upping-my-game. Big time.
And isn’t that a great thing? To have to up-your-game? It is, and I’m excited about it. But I’m also self-aware enough to recognize the other side of the challenge to ‘up-your-game’.
See… when you meet people who challenge you, people who are doing things differently, and differently in a way that you aspire to, well, you can either get energized and rise to the challenge, or it can bring up a bunch of ‘other’ ‘self’ stuff. Truth is, seems like both happen – you are energized and still ‘other’ ‘self’ stuff comes up.
‘The Stuff’:
For me at least, the stuff is all around questioning ‘what was’. I mean if you are suddenly exposed to people who are upping-your-game, then how can you not look back at what you have been doing, up until that very moment, and not feel like it was insufficient, not good enough. This is the ‘other’ ‘stuff’ side of people who inspire you to up-your-game.
‘The Flipside’:
Here’s the flipside, the accurate side. Maybe the side most of you are already all over. First of all, kudos has to go to people who are open to ‘upping-their-game’. Someone smart once said that the smartest people realize how little they know. So, it’s pretty damn smart and confident in my books to embrace continuous growth and development – continuous upping-of-the-game.
And here’s the very likely reality. Upping-the-game is likely not about going from bad to good. It’s probably more like going from good to great, or even, from great to awesome.
So if you are on an awesome-ness quest, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess you are one who recognizes and embraces upping-your-game.
Bring it on. Up-your-game.
It’s been an eye-opening few weeks, confusing and stressful at times. But in this short period of exposure, I realized something. They were upping-my-game. Big time.
And isn’t that a great thing? To have to up-your-game? It is, and I’m excited about it. But I’m also self-aware enough to recognize the other side of the challenge to ‘up-your-game’.
See… when you meet people who challenge you, people who are doing things differently, and differently in a way that you aspire to, well, you can either get energized and rise to the challenge, or it can bring up a bunch of ‘other’ ‘self’ stuff. Truth is, seems like both happen – you are energized and still ‘other’ ‘self’ stuff comes up.
‘The Stuff’:
For me at least, the stuff is all around questioning ‘what was’. I mean if you are suddenly exposed to people who are upping-your-game, then how can you not look back at what you have been doing, up until that very moment, and not feel like it was insufficient, not good enough. This is the ‘other’ ‘stuff’ side of people who inspire you to up-your-game.
‘The Flipside’:
Here’s the flipside, the accurate side. Maybe the side most of you are already all over. First of all, kudos has to go to people who are open to ‘upping-their-game’. Someone smart once said that the smartest people realize how little they know. So, it’s pretty damn smart and confident in my books to embrace continuous growth and development – continuous upping-of-the-game.
And here’s the very likely reality. Upping-the-game is likely not about going from bad to good. It’s probably more like going from good to great, or even, from great to awesome.
So if you are on an awesome-ness quest, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess you are one who recognizes and embraces upping-your-game.
Bring it on. Up-your-game.
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