Postcards
From
SXSW
c-k.com
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Storytelling In a world of
shorter-than-ever attention spans, truly good storytelling makes the difference. And we don’t just mean two minute Super Bowl spots with flawless narrative. We mean brands creating truly compelling content that does more than merely advertise a product. Companies having their own stories. And creating platforms for their customers to share their own stories. Consider how Tiffany & Co.’s True Love Stories allows people to contribute to a storytelling platform that supports the brand even without the purchase of a product. Challenge: How can you build a system that invites fans, friends, customers and the keepers of the brand to tell compelling stories that inspire action? *Inspired by: Does Your Product Have a Plot?

Sharing Shared content accounts for
10% of internet traffic. It adds a new dimension, endorsed, to the paid-earned-owned media mix. Most panelists agreed on three fundamental pillars of share-ability: emotion, utility and entertainment. But how can we tell if content passes the compelling test? One panelist suggested: W.I.S.T. As in, Would I Share This? A simple question to ask ourselves about our creative ideas and content plans. Challenge: What content have you created that compels people to share? How can you make more of it? Which of your work should have been put through the W.I.S.T. test? *Inspired by: The Power of Visual Storytelling *W.I.S.T. coined by Charlie Wollborg, Curve Detroit

Passive Location-Based Apps Unlike years
past, there was no single digital darling stealing the show with this year’s SXSW crowd. But a category seemed to emerge: passive location-based apps. Mobile “serendipity makers” like Highlight and banjo use data from social profiles of both existing and potentially new connections; pinging users re: opportunities for interaction based on location or shared interests. The jury is still out on whether these apps will be too creepy for the general marketplace, but being alerted whenever we were near a friend amidst a crowd of 10,000 people wasn’t the worst thing in the world. Challenge: How do your clients’ customers use this technology and where might your brands, products and storefronts fit in?

The P2P Marketplace Peer-to-peer commerce
is a rising trend. Sites like Zaarly, TaskRabbit and Airbnb enable people to connect directly to exchange money, goods and services. This environment lets customers focus on finding a great deal, capturing second-hand retail value and in most cases, bypassing a brand’s own point-of-sale completely. Challenge: How should brand builders embrace or insert themselves into this type of commerce platform? How might traditional approaches need to change to be/stay relevant in this marketplace? *Inspired by: The Airbnb of Anything: The Growth of P2P Markets

Fostering Creative Serendipity In order
for a chance moment to result in something great, organizations need to be structured in a way to allow accidents to turn into discoveries. It’s how a pharmaceutical company researcher can accidentally discover artificial sweetener and create a multi-billion dollar industry. Or an unexpected answer in a focus group can uncover the key to a groundbreaking marketing campaign. When creativity accompanies a chance encounter, could it be the foundation of your next product/campaign? Challenge: How can marketers position themselves to make these discoveries? What environmental/cultural factors contribute to engineering serendipity? *Inspired by: Engineering Serendipity to Instigate and Delight and Get Lucky: Putting Planned Serendipity to Work

Which is more important: how
it works or how it looks? There is a great need now for agencies to successfully pull off more complex digital projects and campaigns. But with these types of projects, who takes the leadership role? Like anything else, it probably won’t succeed with too many cooks in the kitchen, so perhaps the brief should be boiled down to one fundamental question: which is more important – how it works or how it looks? If looks win, do writers and art directors take the lead? If functionality wins, do UX or interactive directors take the lead? Challenge: How might a recent or current digital project have benefitted from stepping back from the brief to ask “Which is more important? How it works or how it looks?” How might the team need to shift priorities or leadership? *Inspired by: Rise of the Interactive Director as Creative Lead

Big Data Visualization The industry
is mesmerized by big data. Quite simply, there is so much information available that we need to find ways to make it understandable by creating better visualizations. Visualizations that have intent and impact, that can change behavior, that can lead us to discover things in our data we didn’t even know we were looking for and ultimately communicate and incredible amount of information. Through utility, beauty and creativity, we can put information in the right place at the right time. And as marketers, we need to find ways to make this practice useful for brands and their customers like Progressive’s Snapshot usage-based insurance tool or the Nike+ Fuel band’s instant, behavior-altering feedback to its users. Challenge: How are you presenting data to your clients (or customers), and how might you benefit from exploring alternatives to do so in a more visual way? *Inspired by: Intent & Impact: How Visualization Makes a Change and Data Visualization and the Future of Research

Photo Fascination Are pictures really
worth 1,000 words? The way photo sharing has woven itself into the typical social sharing experience suggests at least that many. People are becoming better visual storytellers through the use of apps like Instagram. There are 14 million photos in the Library of Congress and more than 500 million just on Instagram. Visual life streams create opportunities for brands to be intimately woven into a consumer’s story, a coveted piece of media we can’t outright buy. Challenge: How do we help our brands become worthy of visual life streams? Are you currently monitoring how your brands are already being woven into visual life streams? *Inspired by: Is Our Photo-Madness Creating Mediocrity or Magic?

Curate vs. Aggregate The power
and popularity of Pinterest suggests that content curation is here to stay. But it’s more than just hunting and gathering. Curation consists of purposeful personal choices, collections made through one’s own unique aesthetic and even moral lens. Aggregation, however, can be done by machines as an automated process to fill certain category requirements. As marketers trying to discover how to make their stuff fit naturally and beautifully into curated environments, it’s important to understand this distinction. Challenge: How can brands create meaningful collections for customers, fans and skeptics? *Inspired by: The Curators and the Curated

Be Likeable As an agency
with a mission to “Make friends, not ads.” we always aspire to help our clients truly embody friend making. Obviously, an important part of that is how to interact online. These seven simple rules can be the foundation for friend-worthy behavior online – in every sense of the word. 1. Listen first and never stop listening 2. Responsiveness is not a choice 3. Provide value (yes, for free) 4. Share stories (social currency) 5. Inspire customers to share stories 6. Target smarter 7. Consistently deliver excitement, surprise and delight Challenge: How does your brand rate against these criteria? What more could you do to make your brand more likeable, online and off? *Inspired by: Likeable Social Media