Content Decoded

A few weeks ago we applauded Burberry with its brilliant foray into social media and branded content with Art of the Trench. Today we chanced upon Gucci’s effort at being “social” and have to relate our extreme disappointment with the end result. Burberry did set the bar very high.

Gucci Eye Web is an ode to its line of sunglasses. (atleast we think it is) but it comes off as a poorly executed idea without any substance to it.

When you enter the site, it asks you to pick a city to explore the nightlife. Upon picking New York, you end up on a flash-heavy page with cliched music and a picture of rotating sunglasses at the center of the page. The sunglasses alternatively feature images of random people – I was hard pressed to understand how those people are connected to the Gucci brand. The site is also confusing: is it about nightlife  ? Or about Gucci sunglasses? If it is indeed about Gucci Eyewear, why isn’t everyone in the “crowd-sourced” photographs wearing Gucci sunglasses?

Here are three reasons we think this Branded Content initiative by Gucci is epic fail.

1. No solid positioning: There is no About page on the site or anything that gives the reader an idea of the purpose, mission or point of the site. Additionally, the directions are misleading. The three-stepped guide at the corner of the page tells the readers they can explore nightlife in particular city with no information about the city or nightlife! Was the idea to explore nightlife via the user-submitted photographs? But even then, how are zoomed in photographs of random people a way to explore nightlife? I can’t tell the difference between the photos from New York or Barcelona. They all look the same.
2. No connectivity: The idea of “connect” on the Gucci EyeWeb is translated as share us with your friends. Gucci’s idea of experimenting with social media is cherry picking the themes they want to explore (let’s do crowdsourcing!) and then add social sharing buttons. This isn’t even Web 1.0.
3. Exclusive does not mean brochures: The site offers users the ability to download exclusive content. Gucci’s version of exclusive content is a brochure with the product information about Gucci sunglasses and a link to the main site. A fashion blog offers more exclusive content than that. We are passionate about content and masking brochures and “saley” content as exclusive is not only in poor taste, but undermines the intelligence of the Gucci customer and brand enthusiast.

This criticism is grounded in the belief that while we commend brands for taking that proverbial step forward with social media, we hold them accountable for their sloppy execution. Had Gucci put a little more thought into this project, it would have been a different story altogether. For a luxury brand such as Gucci, allowing users to interpret the brand with their images is a commendable step towards embracing their fans and opening up the brand. And Gucci certainly gets points for that. But as a luxury brand, Gucci (and any other) is about exclusivity, integrity, heritage and class. While it may seem that most of social media themes (crowdsourcing, massclusivity, transparency, casual-ness etc.) are diametrically opposite of what luxury brands stand for, the real challenge for luxury brands is going to be to figure out how to interpret these social media themes in the context of their own brand.

Burberry’s Art of the Trench has it’s own flaws – for example, how does the site plan on ensuring repeat visits? But the reason Gucci and other luxury brands need to be a little careful with social media-branded content executions is that for every Gucci, there will be a Burberry. – a competing brand that will have executed an idea just a little better. And that has tremendous intangible benefits in social media.

Ideabox is a new feature on ContentDecoded. Every IdeaBox author is charged with coming up with an idea that solves for a current challenge in the business of content.

Rick Liebling is the Global Director of Client Management at  Taylor, a marketing communications agency. In this column, he talks about how crowdsourcing has the potential to bring out the best in journalism. Read on!

It’s a pretty safe bet that ‘crowdsourcing’ will go down as the marketing buzzword of 2009. Agencies are now built on it and marketing types talk about it extensively. As with any buzzword, the meaning starts to become malleable and soon it starts to become a catch-all, twisted to suit whatever purpose the user is trying to support. But when we strip crowdsourcing down and really examine its potential, I think there are some intriguing possibilities for those who create, curate and distribute content. But first we have to understand how crowdsourcing can be used.

I think a real opportunity exists for content producers with a highly passionate and educated audience. A magazine like The Atlantic or Harper’s would be ideal. They have readerships with diverse knowledge and interests who are both passionate and inquisitive. Rather than throwing out a typical, generic ‘crowdsourcing’ challenge, the editors’ of these magazines could tackle complex, global issues and would no doubt receive content for Ph.D.s, rocket scientists, brain surgeons and poet laureates. Imagine what issues a ‘crowd’ like that could tackle. It would be as simple as having the magazine’s editors publish a list of story ideas on the website and having people pitch their ideas and offer their credentials.

Or you could do a fascinating themed issue, say on the industrial food complex. Crowdsourcing writers all the way along the journey, from farm to processing plant, truck drivers to grocery store all the way to consumer. Having the reports done by actual participants as opposed to journalists would provide an added visceral element simply not possible otherwise.

Another intriguing use of crowdsourcing would be to take advantage of the diverse geographic base of the readership. This would be ideal for a publication that caters to enthusiasts / hobbyist, where a traditional editorial staff simply couldn’t cover all the stories. For instance, a skateboard magazine written by skateboarders. They’d be able to tell unique, human stories from areas outside the typical spots like Southern California or New York City. Ideally you’d uncover the next burgeoning skateboard scene or discover the next Christian Hosoi.

Regardless, the key is to rethink the true benefits of crowdsourcing and how to use it to your advantage. Doing so could bring out the best of citizen-journalism.

In the Food Special issue of the New Yorker, is a brilliantly written piece on the Michelin Guide and its undercover inspectors.

The Michelin Guide launched in North America around 2005 but failed to drum up much response or sales from the New York population. The Michelin inspectors are under strict anonymity and confidentiality contracts, often not even allowed to reveal their employer and occupation to their families and friends. These inspectors are required to fill out detailed questionnaires and forms about their experience at any particular restaurant, recounting their experience at the restaurant from start to finish, often including lists of ingredients from the food they have.

The reason I bring up this article is to highlight a quote offered by the founder of Zagat Guide, the customer-driven food survey guides run by Nina and Tim Zagat.

“We’ve never believed that there were experts that should tell you what to do…I’d love to know what their (Michelin inspector) training is. Uusally, the experts, for example, the major critics for the major papers, you know what their background is. But this business of making a virtue out of not knowing? I question it. How are you supposed to judge their expertise if you don’t have any idea who they are? “

It was mostly in response to this mystery around the inspectors and as an effort to open up the Michelin process to drive up sales, that they invited the New Yorker reporter to spend an evening with a Michelin inspector and write the piece. Regarding their training, turns out that every Michelin inspector comes from the hotel management, restaurant, or cooking background. Fair enough.

What is interesting to me is this struggle between Michelin and Zagat to drive the market share. It’s not simply a struggle between two competitors, but it’s that of two very different ideologies. If Michelin is elite, Zagat is for the masses. If Michelin relies on a handful of expert opinions, Zagat rates restaurants based on 30,000 + customer reviews. It’s not the question of one being better over another, because clearly a high rating from either is an honor for the restaurants and a major revenue driver.

Both Curation and crowd-sourcing have their pitfalls. Curation is a reflection of one person’s tastes and crowd-sourcing is easy to game, and hence, sometimes difficult to trust. Is there room for a new model that adapts the best of these two schools to create a new, game-changing solution?

We’ll let the market decide. But do share your thoughts! Very curious to hear where you stand.

Esquire Magazine continues to push the boundaries by adding a layer of digital interactivity to its printed product with its current Augmented Reality issue.

With the help of The Barbarian Group and Psyop, the typically one-dimensional Esquire mag now offers a multi-dimensional with cover boy Robert DowneyJr popping out (literally) to introduce the technology to the tune of typography leaping off the page, a funny joke from Gillian Jacobs in its Beautiful Woman feature (come back after midnight and she’ll tell you a different joke), a Lexus ad that highlights new product features and a Jeremy Renner fashion spread.

The Renner & Lexus pieces are most interesting. To quote The Barbarian Group’s Benjamin Palmer, “The fashion spread uses AR to do something you can’t do in the magazine – show you interactive views of the outfit(s) and different clothing combinations in a way you couldn’t do in print. The Lexus ad takes an interesting and complicated pair of technological features that would be difficult to explain with photos and text, and shows you advanced simulations of the technology.”

So, putting all the first-to-market hype aside (and Esquire is old hat to this),the real question is, can adding a layer of digital to print solve the woes of the publishing community and improve the consumer experience?

It’s unlikely that AR will be the solution to the demise of print journalism, but one thing is for sure traditional print as we know it is going to evolve into a more hybrid form. And while some may claim AR to be just another gimmick and a tick in the marketer’s To-Do-List, I admire Esquire’s effort at going where no magazine has gone before to enhance the experience of reading a print magazine through a layer of digital utility, evident in the Lexus ad and Renner fashion spread.

We try to stay away from “social media-y” conversations on this blog. But once in a while we come across true gems that actually elevate the conversation on social media.  I came across this fantastic presentation that Tara Hunt recently presented at a Social Media Breakfast. I think with brands focusing more on how to make themselves more “social,” they are paying less attention to the basics of what makes a company worth caring about. Hunt’s premise is based on the differentiation between two insights:

1. Discovery vs. Decision and what drives each of these. (As she sums it up, One may discover a cool new gadget via Tim O’Reilly, but will buy the gadget that is ultimately recommend by our BFF!)

2. Influencers and Enthusiasts. This is a very smart point. Social media strategies have relied far too much on engaging a brand influence who may or may not use the product, and may not even be a fan of the product. Tara offers an alternative – instead of chasing the influencers, build stronger, deeper relationships with your enthusiasts – with fans that are already in love with your brand, using it and talking about.

I highly recommend reading the presentation to gain a fresh perspective on social media.

Earlier this week, thanks to the genorosity of Sandra Blevins from The Brand Collaborative, I was able to attend a brain-sparking, forward thinking panel discussion on “How Design Thinking is the next competitive advantage.”

The panel was presided by Roger Martin (Dean of Rotman School of Management), Tim Brown (Co-founder of IDEO), Bruce Nussbaum (Contributing Editor at Business Week and Faculty Member at Pratt Institute) and Will Setliff (VP Strategy, Insights & Innovation at Target)

I want to talk about some of the larger trends/ themes from the panel. I’m not sure how they directly influence the future of content and digital media but perhaps together we can identify some themes?

1. Design as a process, not a product or a service.- This came up a few times in the discussion. Martin mentioned how business has for a long time, taken a very scientific approach to management. Will Setliff from Target concurred saying how tempting it is to immediately narrow the scope of the problem and figure out a solution to it. Business and even B-schools train us to become reductionists. The pressure on proving everything in advance (hypothesis) inhibits us. Setliff mentioned how he is opening up the process early to provide it a greater context and not immediately narrow the scope. Use a different methodology – broaden the perspective.

The focus is moving towards creating a more deliberate design process. For example, Target now looks more holistically at its data center and keeps a “everything is subject to design” mindset.

2. Education system, in particular B-schools, need a more integrative approach: The crux of the discussion was how education institutions need to better integrate the idea of cultural and design-based thinking into the core. Setliff made a very interesting comment. “We put MBAs (new hires) through coursework that reminds them of their passions before B-School.”

Setliff’s quote of the night: We need a Monetessori MBA.

3. Creating an open learning and working environment: I don’t remember who exactly shared this anecdote. P&G as design-foccused company and a prime example came up a few times. One of the leaders at P&G beleived that people that are not born into a culture of design don’t it just by hearing someone talk about it, but if they experience it first-hand, they become huge proponents of it. IDEO’s Tim Brown concurred and shared how IDEO often involves the client in the process so they can see the impact of design-based thinking firsthand.

We organize education around narrow questions. Roger Martin made an interesting point – why is biology taught as biology ? Maybe it should be taught as biology and engineering together?

A few challenges that popped up were the ones that don’t necessarily have an answer. How do we replicate sucess? How do we develop a narrative in such a way that we can re-tell it with the same impact ? (Its harder re-telling a story than creating a new one) Stewardship of ideas through the organization in a reliable manner?

4. Analysis vs. Intuition: This was the most interesting part of the conversation for me because it acknowledges the room and need for analytical thinking. The power of analytical thinking is that it gives you the skills to ask the right questions. Design thinking, sometimes focuses far too much on the answers. But it is important to sit back and consider, “where does the question come from?” People are drawn more naturally to hypothesis without the willingness to contemplate what the question is.

Setliff shared another example of how once Target did away with it’s rigid employee training manual and gave them the freedom instead to do what they think is right, customer satisfaction overall improved by a few points. “Give the tools to those who use it.”

I was curious to learn if there was a point of intersection between social media/ digital thinking and design thinking and to my question, Tim Brown replied, “Social media reinforces design thinking.” It’s not about warehousing knowledge anymore but using it to operate at scale.

All in all – a terrific evening. Some awesome trends and themes to keep track of!

You can read more about this evening here: Bruce Nussbuam’s blog.

I remember watching the TV reports depicting the fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago. I wonder how the world would have reacted, had we had the ability to share our thoughts digitally.

On this epic anniversary, traditional media is taking second place to social media, with Twitter successfully capturing a global sentiment.

Twitterwall displays Twitter messages which are using the hashtag #fotw on a virtual East Side Gallery. The aim of the project is to share thoughts on the fall of the wall as well as to focus on “which walls still have to come down to make our wold a better place”. The page was blocked in China after nearly 2,000 web users in the country left messages on the wall.

To prevent spam, users can only post up to five messages a day. Additional camera icons on the wall can be clicked to view some of the 1,000 huge styrofoam dominoes painted with messages of peace by students, celebrities and politicians, which were toppled on Monday’s nights celebrations.

What I love about Twitterwall  is the graphic of the with the overlying images and text, which literally wraps the wall with human sentiment. So much like Berliners wrote messages on the Berlin Wall decades ago, people from all over the world are now getting to write their own messages on this social media Berlin Wall.

Looking to the future, I predict more free-standing web destinations that will mash a live twitter feed with other content forms to tell a story in the format that does it most justice.

I chanced upon Art of Trench this evening while surfing Facebook and instantly fell in love with the site. It’s not only visual candy but also solidifies and endears the brand in my mind. When I think about Burberry, I immediately associate it with the classic trench coat. And who better to commemorate teh trench coat than Burberry itself?

The Art of Trench coat is a lesson in sartorial elegance and how it translates on the web. Visual poetry! In addition to accepting user photos (wearing the Burberry trench), Burberry has commissioned a handful of famous photogs including The Sartorialist, to add to this photo essay of sorts and celebrate the trench coat. This is one of the better branded content efforts I’ve seen in a long time. Hats off to Burberry.

MTV News experimented with a different approach in packaging its content by offering up their long-form text stories and videos into smaller, blog-like entries with provocative headlines. Result? The News section drew 3.5 million unique video viewers compared to the 2.5 million from the last year and nearly 10million streams compared to 5.3 million streams last year. (3rs quarter numbers)

For example, in the past, an interview with someone like Jay-Z might have yielded a 1,000-word story, “But there might be a totally fascinating nugget in paragraph six. Now we make it its own piece.”

The same approach is taken with video, the idea being to provide users more opportunities to discover content. “Our users live in a search and social universe,” said MTV News, vp, Ben Wagner. “So this is about more, shorter and faster.”

“Short-form online video consumption is exploding, but there’s still a lot of confusion among marketers over which ad formats deliver for brands without compromising the user experience,” said Nada Stirratt, EVP of digital advertising at MTVN. “By exploring the viability of new ad products around short-form online video, Project Inform provides the type of insights crucial to creating the innovative, custom solutions that this marketplace needs.”

The result has been a flood of new users and traffic. During third  quarter 2008, the section averaged 2.5 million unique video viewers and 5.3 million streams. During this past third quarter, the section drew 3.5 million uniques and nearly 10 million streams–increases of 40 percent and 88 percent, respectively.

Have you heard of any other networks or media properties experimenting with short-form content successfully?

eBay Cook Banner Ad

When it comes to grabbing people’s attention online, banner ads have never exactly had the easiest job. But, things are starting to heat up for the skyscraper, leaderboard and rectangle.

San Francisco’s Goodby Silverstein & Partners has put rich media banner ads in the “content spotlight” in its recently launched “Come to think of it, eBay,” campaign.

Tasked to reinvent eBay’s image from the place to go for flea market finds to a destination for everyday purchases, Goodby uses banner ads specifically targeted to areas popular among eBay users, such as cooking, fashion and music, to bring to life eBay finds curated and demonstrated by experts. Rather than simply “broadcasting” the message through text and visuals, the ads, like this in-banner cooking show starring San Francisco chef Mark Sullivan, who makes Moroccan spiced chicken from start to finish, actually demonstrates the benefits of eBay shopping and brings them closer to something they actually care about – cooking. During the cooking lesson, users can click on the items in the ad and be taken directly to an eBay site where they can purchase the items.

Kudos to Goodby for its series of banner branded utilities, which have successfully transformed the boring banner ad into an engaging content-driven eBay interaction.

P.S. As part of its campaign for users to really experience that power of the eBay marketplace, eBay is moving from the virtual to the real world this holiday season, conducting a 12-city tour with a Mobile Boutique, as well as a pop-up retail spot in Manhattan to showcase the breadth and depth of items found at the online site. Check out eBay’s Holiday microsite to learn more.