Brand magic.  Jessica Greenwood, an animated and highly popular speaker, lead us through brand magic- check her out on video.  

Levi and FedEx offer two illustrative examples.  The FedEx site, www.experience.fedex.com, marries real world data with a visual representation of the globe; allowing users to visually see data from many different pivot points such as money vs happiness or population densities. 

The Levi Company was interested in getting back to its roots.  It was attracted to a town, Braddock, PA; once vibrant industrial town, lost a lot of its thunder with the collapse of the steel industry.  The mayor found himself finding new ways to bring life back to Braddock.  Levi was in a similar scenario and wanted to reinvent themselves and get back to their roots.  They wanted to use Braddock to showcase their jeans as “ready to work”.  They chose the hard working town, that pride themselves with work, and used the citizens as the anchor; the models. In return they donated money to help the revitalization efforts in Braddock.

Jessica also said that campaigns need to be playful.  “The quickest way to change people’s behavior, is to make things fun”. It makes complete sense and I liked the examples she showed.  They were new, they were creative, and they were engaging. 

Jay-Z and Bing. Jay-Z wanted to attract the youth.  But how do you attract the youth to a book?  His new book, “Decoded” was released to the world by placing pages throughout the world where the event (written about) actually took place. Users could read physical excepts at these locations or could compile the entire book online using a series of clues.  www.Bing.com/Jay-Z.

Kulula airlines in South Africa was trying to find a way to break through the clutter of ads during the World Cup.  Not part of their creative strategy, they took a fun and playful approach as a response to an order from Fifa.  Their ad used football and South Africa in “unofficial” World Cup ways.  Fifa ordered that they stop the ad which brought much attention to it.  What did Kulula do?  Re-ran the ad, and playfully replaced anything related to football or South Africa with something very similar (pointing the changes out to the consumer):  rugby ball instead of football, person doing the hokey pokey and “not playing football”, etc. Very funny. 

Jessica closed with 4 key pillars which enable Brand Magic:

  1. Audio Visual Experience
  2. Interactivity of Internet
  3. Localization based technology; mobile
  4. Real world experiences

Before your campaign goes out the door, does it resonate with these ideas?  This is what turns observation into insight.

She asked us to be brave and mistakes; “It’s what moves us forward”.  

A great session.

Thanks,

Scot