Samboy needed to re-launch their iconic brand of chips back onto the Australian market after years in the wilderness under foreign ownership.  One of their promotions involved a $10,000 prize for the person getting the most users into a Facebook group with "Samboy is Back" in the title. Nothing particularly ground-breaking there really, but something happened that Samboy or their PR team probably didn't count on.  They got hijacked by Kimberley Evans, a Facebook user and Samboy fan who found an easy way to motivate a group of followers - by being self-less.  Her group was titled;

Samboy is Back - JOIN NOW TO WIN $10,000 FOR THE RED CROSS BUSHFIRE APPEAL

In seven days, Kimberley's group went from zero to 120,000 members and easily took out the competition.     The lesson here is that social media is never going to be predictable, and there's just no telling what your audience is going to do with your stuff once you've  put it out there.   Sometimes though - it will be simply remarkable.

This clever print campaign for Stihl hedge trimmers caught my eye, not only for its clever storytelling but for the fact that it could easily be used as a metaphor for not only the general state of our economy, but for many individual industries and for that matter businesses too.  
Stihl - what aren't you seeing
  I mentioned in an earlier post that current economic and political constructs were no longer performing. It seems to me that the sooner we stop letting these failing systems and processes hide the opportunity or insight that lies beneath them, the sooner we will be able to devote our collective energy, enthusiasm and talent on building something new. As command and control models continue failing to deliver innovation, passion or results, the challenge now falls squarely to us as individuals.  If you've been looking for opportunity - now is certainly your time. The Kinko's story (at least in its early years) is perhaps one source of inspiration.  Paul Orfalea the founder of Kinko's embraced a joint venture approach to growing his business.  Local operators not only had permission to innovate, it was actively encouraged.  Key learnings from each of his stores were then picked up by Paul and communicated to every other store in the group.

I just go from store to store, see what they're doing right and then tell all the other stores about it.

By adopting a culture of experimentation and continual improvement, Kinko's quickly put distance on every other competitor in their marketplace.  Anything less would have relegated them to a me too player in a very competitive category. As advertisers reduce spend and agency revenues fall, we clearly have a choice.  Either resign ourselves to a recessionary environment and take a completely defensive outlook on things; or recognise the opportunity we now have, to break the rules and really shake things up - for both ourselves and the clients we work with. If we are to accept this challenge, if we are serious about change, the first question we must learn to ask is - what aren't I seeing?   Don't leave any stone unturned, don't accept any previously regarded "truth".  Challenge everything, and listen really hard to your customers by being wherever they are. And enjoy the ride...

It's hard out there right now, no question. In many ways though, it feels as if we are talking ourselves deeper and deeper into a problem.  Our fascination with this recession has become akin to the morbid appeal of a motorway wreckage.  And the more we focus on the wreck, the less attention we give to the road ahead.

Yesterday we conducted a creative workshop with one of our key clients.  As part of this process we took a look at our favourite adverts, both old and new, in an effort to distill out what makes a great idea.  One of those adverts was this standout campaign from Budweiser, launched in 2001.  

In the eight years that followed, America entered into some of the most turbulent times in living memory.  Many Americans couldn't understand what had become of their country, and the rest of world was at best bewildered, at worst engaged in war. Towards the end of last year, the boys from the Bud commercial were back on air, but with something a little different to say.

And that brings me to the title of this post.  In my mind, the difference between recession and depression is the ability to recognise that the situation is temporary. Financial markets are cyclic, much like every other system on the planet.  We have not reached a final destination, we're still very much on the ride. There will be a return to prosperity, there absolutely is a way forward and if we can lift our sights back towards the road ahead then we'll all be in a better position to take advantage of the numerous opportunities that are certain to make themselves apparent. Put in place the necessary strategies to manage, look out for the people around you, make good use of your social and professional networks and above all else, keep looking forward.

New Zealand's government recently amended the copyright act, the results of which are about to come into effect at the end of this month.  Sections 92A and C of the amended Copyright act establish a seemingly draconian principle of "guilt upon accusation" that places all of us at risk of having our internet connection severed at the whim of a malicious accusation. That's right, no fair trial before punishment, no innocent until proven guilty - just one complaint and your ISP will be forced to cut you off, with the onus falling back to the accused to prove their innocence in order to have their connection re-instated. There have been numerous articles written on this topic so I won't cover the same old ground.  If you'd like some background though, you should start with this site http://creativefreedom.org.nz. What I'm more interested in, is how the concept of copyright has journeyed so far from its original intended purpose to the point where it is now able to have a direct impact on our individual civil liberties. The first copyright act was the Statute of Anne (1710), brought into law in Britain. It was created as an act "for the encouragement of learning". That is, it sought to protect the ability of authors to make a living from their works. This in turn would motivate them to continue to write and aid the flow of ideas and knowledge. So the question on my mind is this - does copyright genuinely create the right environment for furthering knowledge, ideas and learning? George Bernard Shaw once said;

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.

The Statute of Anne along with other more recent pieces of copyright law clearly state their intention to be furthering knowledge and learning i.e. for the benefit of all. However the way copyright legislation is currently being used by big business seems somewhat at odds with this fundamental reason for its existence. My personal opinion is that right now, copyright (along with patents) are both necessary evils.  But if the human race is ever to achieve its full potential we need to find a way to remove our possessive approach to ideas and knowledge.  We need the freedom to take ideas and build on them, without fear of infringing someone's right to stop us. I know I'm being a little simplistic and a lot idealistic but things are changing fast and if we're going to shake things up, then shouldn't we try to do it properly?

A couple of weeks ago plinky.com launched onto the social media landscape.  I guess not surprisingly it came across my desk via Twitter, 2008's social media darling which continues to go from strength to strength. Plinky's something a little different though, it's a blog site, but with a difference.  Each day the team at Plinky post a prompt, a new question or challenge for members to answer and share with each other. Think of it as a conversation starter or in Plinky's words "Inspiration, delivered daily". Today's prompt for example:

Have you gone a day without your cell phone? Isn't it awful? Describe how you you got by (or didn't).

For whatever reason, it's not really my thing.  Perhaps because the prompts are a bit random, or not consistently relevant to me.  I find that I'm not drawn back to the site (even with an email prompt) as regularly as I'm drawn to writing here, or on Twitter. Of course I'm a sample of one, and by all accounts their user base is growing rapidly so it's definitely resonating with at least part of the blogosphere.  And what Plinky did do for me was provide a possible answer to a client problem. A local government client of ours regularly seeks public submissions on all manner of issues.  However the formal submission process seems only to be used by the same group of people and while submission quality is high, volume is low and they're not hearing from all the key parts of the community. So we thought we might try micro-submissions initiated by conversation starters.  The idea being that regular topical questions are posted to the site which the community can then respond to.  No ground breaking use of technology here, we've just realised that writer's block isn't limited to tortured poets.  And that for some, a blank sheet of paper is more of a closed door than a warm invitation. Thanks Plinky!

Early in the 20th century you could make a pretty good living selling buggy whips, but as the marketing textbooks gleefully point out, the arrival of the automobile quickly put paid to that and in the blink of an eye, an industry disappeared. It's often mentioned that had those manufacturers been able to re-frame their businesses they might have had a fighting chance of survival.  

Imagine if they'd seen themselves as "performance tuners" for argument's sake.  Maybe those same companies would still be in business today, competing with AMG, Hamann and MTM. That's a bit of stretch but nevertheless, their failure to pull back from technology centric thinking meant that they didn't see the dead-end until it was too late.

Why am I telling you this?  Because in advertising we have been running the same gauntlet for some time now.  Digital technology has changed the media landscape forever and if we hadn't finally got with the programme, then we too would have gone the same way as the buggy whip manufacturers. But just because we've successfully navigated this first, admittedly large hurdle, we can't afford to forget this lesson quickly.  

As digital marketers we have to stop framing conversations using technology.  We speak of banner campaigns, email campaigns and even more strangely, viral campaigns as if they are somehow more meaningful than buggy whips. They're not. Like the buggy whip, their day will soon come, quickly replaced by something better or more in tune with our audience.  

We can't let creativity be constrained by 720 x 90 pixels or page size limits. We have to give ourselves permission to re-focus both our attention and energy onto the real problems and looking beyond technology for the solutions. Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that mastery of these tools isn't important, just that they should never be the starting point for a conversation.

Perhaps because my affair with writing or love of music has never ended in any meaningful commitment, neither has ever driven me to the levels of creative angst discussed in this truly uplifting TED talk. However, like anyone who ever attempts to create something, frustration is never hard to find. Author Elizabeth Gilbert takes a captive audience on an inspiring ride through the creative process. Watch Elizabeth Gilbert

Back in 2004, a good year or so before the launch of YouTube a short piece of video known as Numa Numa went viral.  First uploaded onto newgrounds.com, in the three months following its release it was watched 2 million times on that site alone. Follow the YouTube link above and you'll see it's now logged over 25 million views in the past two years.  The full background on this story is on wikipedia.

Numa Numa is often credited as being the first viral video, however there are examples that definitely pre-date this and strangely, some of them are actually brand created. I'm specifically thinking of a series of BMW adverts for the M5 released around 2001, that's four years before YouTube hit the scene and three years before the Numa Numa phenomenon.  And back then, you really had to try hard to spread media, especially down here in New Zealand.  Broadband penetration wasn't too high and these weren't exactly small files to be emailing to your friends, but they got around nevertheless.

This one's probably my favourite and like the rest it adheres to one of the key tenets of spreadable media, put entertainment first - the product takes a back seat, well kind of.  Watch, you'll see what I mean.

I'm going to risk being labelled a fanboy for mentioning Seth Godin twice in as many days but was just sent this 12 minute interview that is really worth a watch. The interview covers off a broad range of topics including building a tribe, creating a cult product, permission marketing and even our individual responsibility to act as true leaders in the name of  positive change . His comment on choosing between being a wandering generality vs a meaningful specific made me smile.  Could possibly have been chagrin though.

Seth Godin's recent post "grave new world" got me thinking about the role of creativity in business.  Working in agency land, where a long time ago we turned creative from adjective to noun, it's the lifeblood of our business.  However it's not often that we give ourselves the free reign to think of solutions to problems beyond our advertising mandate. In Seth's post he states:

Creativity demands exposure to market needs, and insulation from market fears. Give it some time to work, some support, some breathing room. That's when creativity has a chance to change the game.

Now more than ever, we need to be exercising creativity in order to navigate a rapidly changing economic and social landscape.  The old rules have been on notice for a while now, and over the past few years we have seen power and control move away from brands, corporations and even governments, back into the hands of ordinary mortals like you and I. We've helped create new superstars from among our own number, forced business and government to adopt far greater levels of transparency and started exercising our individual voices on a global stage. Our philosophers and thinkers can once again be heard, and ideas without the bonds of legal constraint are being spread for all to share and modify.  

Check out Faris Yakob's posts on recombinant culture to understand how this is specifically working for smart digital marketers. Our existing political and economic constructs have backed us into a corner which only Big Thinking will extricate us from.  As marketers, I believe the challenge for many of us over the next few years will be an internal one.  We need to re-frame how we think about virtually everything, our customers, our brands and the tools we use.  We can't take anything for granted and we can't afford to stop learning.   Through impeccable timing, it seems fate has delivered us with the technology necessary to navigate our way through this recession and other fundamental global problems.  I believe that creativity, together with unity of purpose, will provide us the key to unlocking the solutions.