Brand Noise

Don't let Detroit be erased. Tell its stories.

On Tuesday, a film about the Milton Hershey School was screened at Tribeca Cinema. The director Cynthia Wade and the producing agency ArnoldNYC walked a fine line with their closed wall client to come up with a documentary that would be both compelling and serve the clients' needs. Together, they solved a big problem. They stretched a thin budget, recast client suggestions, and took cameras outside the school walls. Trust and vision let the film meet its mark. 

In Detroit, an even bigger problem needs to be solved: “America’s most struggling city needs to attract business and talent.” To help, Time Inc. invited agencies with Detroit offices to develop campaigns to encourage young and creative people to consider Detroit as a place to live and work. The result? Pretty conventional. Yet, no barriers were placed on the agencies. With skies wide open, why hold back? Has the nature of advertising in general become to create: oatmeal?

Think about it. The problem with Detroit is an American problem, not a regional one. We've been quick to let our cities sink into the sea once they're tarnished. What makes cities work is intensity. To revive their spirit means to conjure up that intensity. 

In Detroit, you have a city that once sold its soul to the auto companies. It couldn't hold onto many of its own. Consider Detroit's Class of 1984. scenarioDNA's own Tim Stock (a University of Detroit high school grad), Majesty Crush's Odell Nails (now a lawyer and with Mahogany in NYC), Philly artist Michael Frechette, NY film maker John Walter who cut his teeth in Detroit on Evil Dead II with Sam Raimi's Renaissance Pictures and Mark Crilley creator of Akiko who went around the world before choosing to settle in an outlying Michigan city, not Detroit. Has anyone ever thought to ask them why they left and how to strengthen bonds to bring them (or those like them) back?

Powerful stories exist within the city, as well as among all the ex-pat Detroiters, who never dress the city down while the rest of us sweep where we come from under the rug. Now that's compelling. There is a dialog to leverage from those ex-pats to those living and breathing within the city limits.

Detroit is a narrative that extends beyond the city and its suburbs. It lives in New York. It lives in Arizona. It lives in LA. It lives in Philly.

Sadly, unimaginative thinking among those charged with pushing the message of Detroit will further erase the troubled city from the states if we don't all pull together. To bring the city back to its glory, all the narrative threads need to be identified, organized and brought together. We can't get bogged down by politeness and mired in consensus. Don't erase Detroit. Tweet your Detroit stories with the hashtag #erasedetroit. (Photo: Abandoned house by smooveb)

You Can't JUST Listen: Give Ogilvy a Break

I've got a question. Why are all of us enlightened social media/Web 2.0 gurus picking on David Ogilvy lately? More than once during yesterday's  Business Development Institute conference on The Social Consumer, David's name was brought up in "then vs. now" scenarios. Yet, in 1962, Time called him "the most sought-after wizard in today's advertising industry." (Maybe David Ogilvy did preach to a gullible public, but at least it was interesting and compelling.)

For sure, now we need to connect; we need to listen; we need to -- ENGAGE (there's that word again). But we also need: the wizards, the curators, the maverick renegades to lead the way. Inspiration never comes by consensus.

Perhaps, Ogilvy's now seemingly heavy-handed method worked then because he knew how to hear without the spiffy tools we have helping us today. I think we're losing sight of the dynamic combination necessary which is ever-more critical now that the gullible war-trodden consumer is gone.

Years ago, I worked for a brilliant editor by the name of Phyllis Sweed (although I don't think at the time I appreciated exactly how brilliant she was). When Ms. Sweed was asked by our publisher to survey our readers to ask what they wanted. Her response was "They don't know what they want." And, as publishers do, he persisted and money was spent to discover that the readers didn't really know what they wanted. In fact, it was more powerful that Ms. Sweed and her crew had developed long-standing relationships meeting and hearing their readers. And always posing the question "What if we did this?" That's what gets a b2b print publication closer to its 100th year.

So let's promise each other that there's always something more inspiring, more provocative to be accepted if it just gets pushed a bit. And stop using David Ogilvy as a scape goat. The man worked for the British Intelligence Service for heaven sake's. I'd assume he knew how to listen first before he slammed it home.

Research /Reboot 1.0

Research /Reboot

View more documents from Tim Stock.

Transformer Generation: Cultural Context Required

The Transformer Generation from scenarioDNA on Vimeo.

We're launching our position statement on the Transformer Generation. The gist is this:

 

For the kids who played with Transformers twenty-odd years ago, the story has fluidly evolved into a tale of open-source collaboration, new globalism, a currency of culture, eBay economics and mash-up. In this new narrative, the impact of technology blurs the lines from urban/suburban and east/west making cultural context more critical now than ever before. The Transformer Generation is a game changer. They won’t become us. They’ll change us.

 

Go to the site.

http://www.transformergeneration.com

 

Download the press release.

http://tinyurl.com/n3srk7

 

Army is Watching Twitter

Recently, Wired’s Noah Shachtman first blogged that the Army’s 304th Military Intelligence Battalion report details three Twitter scenarios:

1. Terrorists use phones with Twitter to relay real-time updates of troop movements in order to coordinate an ambush.
2. Terrorists use cell pics and tweets to coordinate the timing to explode a device.
3. Terrorists follow a soldier’s tweets and use Twitter to obtain logistical information.

A ZD Blogger put it this way: "Twitter is just communication. If it didn’t exist, terrorists would use plain SMS. Or whatever. In a perfectly secure world, there would be no communication."

From our perspective, the key is to understand the power behind the networking and its underpinnings...Twitter today, something new tomorrow. That holds true for military ops, as well as any other brands. The future is filled with opportunities for grassroots movements to gain global reach--which should be a good thing, but there's always another side. It's a study in behavior. You can build stop gaps in, but human nature is to work around it. The issue poses a deeper mindset issue.

Data Visualization Opens Eyes

At an experimental  Web site, Many Eyes, (www.many-eyes.com),  users  can upload the data  they want to visualize, then try sophisticated tools to generate interactive displays.

“The great fun of information visualization,” said Ben Shneiderman, a professor in the computer science department at the University of Maryland, College Park, “is that it gives you answers to questions you didn’t know you had.”

Read the whole story.

Apps: It's not the Quantity. It's the Quality.

Facebook took a step toward standardizing the wild world of Web metrics by switching its engagement rating for applications from reporting daily usage to measuring monthly active users...The goal is to help developers focus on "longer-term engagement" and show them "the number of users who visit [their] application over a longer time frame than just one day."

Read more.

(Photo: Me and my 542 bestest friends.)

BRIC Seeking Entertainment

Nielsen shows that entertainment-themed websites are the most popular with mobile Internet users in the growing Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) mobile markets. This stands in stark contrast with the more mature American and European markets, where information and news draw the most mobile Internet browsers.

Read more.

scenarioDNA grows context planning with mDive suite of research tools

I wanted to share our announcement about our upgraded suite of mDive mobile research tools.  We are very excited about the ways we are integrating these into our planning work.  Drop us a line if you have any questions.  You can learn more about the tools on our site at http://www.scenariodna.com.

New York, NY (July 7, 2008). No time like now has demonstrated a need for change in the research tools that we rely upon. Successful brands thrive on the nuances leveraged by pockets of influence, rather than the momentum formerly only gained by mass market appeal. Instead, today’s newly influential groups of consumers follow their passions in unique ways rather than what’s expected of them.

To understand them means to find the drivers that underlay their passions, and to be wherever they are. “To that end, when we looked for a technology partner it was critical to find one that was ready to ebb and flow with consumers as readily as we were,” says Tim Stock, managing director, scenarioDNA. “We found that expertise and flexibility in Neighborhood America.”

To define the ideal consumer narrative and see where a brand can authentically cast itself (or not) requires new immersive research techniques that underscore consumer mobility. The fact is, the mobile phone has become the most immediate and personal way to connect with consumers, no matter where they roam. Mobile communication, used alone or in conjunction with an online social network, can stimulate a deep connection to a consumer’s world.

The mDive suite of tools conceived by scenarioDNA and powered by Neighborhood America allows for that immersion, helping clients zero in on social networking and communication issues. “Without question looking at behavioral patterns now establishes a strategic foundation for the future,” adds Stock. The mDive suite of services includes:

1. mDive™ Mobile Panel -   custom panels engaged weekly or semi-weekly via mobile surveying
2. mDive™ Bluetooth  -  invites panel participation via strategic Bluetooth locations
3. mDive Trends™ -  custom or omnibus panels covering Green, Luxury and Entertainment
4. mDive Generations™  -  custom or omnibus panels covering Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y
5. mDive PushToPoll™  - an add-on cellphone widget for panel members of ongoing studies

Retooling Virtual War to Help Heal

(from the New Yorker) Currently, the Department of Defense is testing Virtual Iraq—one of three virtual-reality programs it has funded for P.T.S.D. treatment, and the only one aimed at “ground pounders” in six locations, including the Naval Medical Center San Diego, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in Washington, D.C., and Weill Cornell Medical College, in New York. According to a recent study by the RAND Corporation, nearly twenty per cent of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans are suffering from P.T.S.D. or major depression. Almost half won’t seek treatment. If virtual-reality exposure therapy proves to be clinically validated—only preliminary results are available so far—it may be more than another tool in the therapists’ kit; it may encourage those in need to seek help.  Video  Read full article