The presentation looks at themes underpinning digital strategy. Needs a talking head to explain several of the slides.

1. Themes underpinning digital branding
MACE Congress 2008
Patrick Collings
Sagacite Brand Agency
Stellenbosch
15 - 17 October 2008

2. 5
Themes

3. The flow, not the contours
The art of gliding
15MB is the new 15 minutes
Our virtual reality
Reassembling the fragmentation

4. The flow, not the contours

5. from mainframe to desktop to internet

6. internet explorer rapidly losing ground to firefox

7. myspace sharing social networking with facebook and others

8. mainstream media battling bloggers

9. traditional blogging sharing space with micro blogging

10. altavista was king before google, will cuil manage to dent the colossus

13. understand where your market is
going and why it is going, but
appreciate that the vehicle for getting
there will probably change

14. The art of gliding

15. you are not inyou think you are
control
even when

16. GM’s Chevy Tahoe SUV
video clip of user generated tahoe “commercials”

17. today, everyone can be a director

18. video clip of user generated polo “commercial”

19. collection of guinness ads

20. video clip of non-sanctioned guinness ad

22. “... they have to keep on consistently building their
brands equity so that when a potentially damaging
piece of communication does filter out into the
world, their brand is strong enough and their
consumers are savvy enough to understand its
source is the public domain.”

23. your brand does not
need you to be online
others will put it there

25. invisible

26. small

27. 7 Guidelines

28. watch it

29. increasingly need to be there

30. empower

31. engage, or not

32. integrate

33. don’t fake it

34. don’t box the demographic

35. 7 = soaring + gliding + influencing

36. accept the loss of complete control
and become part of the experience
and conversation

37. 15MB is the new 15 minutes
video clip of ad men employment ad
ipod photo by Вася Артёмов (http://www.flickr.com/photos/78518472@N00/2274202900/)

38. as a society we are
becoming more visual
“video beats pictures beats text” - trendwatching.com 2008 report

39. what sort of numbers are we talking about

40. five billion
videos serves each month by youtube
44 percent
of all online video consumption
in the U.S.A.

50. embedded video clip of instructional video

52. what about the news media

58. news media is promoting video offline
south african media organizations developing
plans with vide as an integral offering

60. 4 Guidelines

61. you have to be seen

62. integrated part of brand
communication

63. parts are greater than
the whole

64. must entertain

65. we will increasingly tell our brand
stories in video and need to weave
our brand inextricably into the frames
of the video

66. Our virtual reality

67. video clip of sony home virtual world

68. aren’t these just
video games

69. 1 players create their own stories
2 players build their own worlds
3 players own what they built
4 players sell what they own

70. By 2011, 80% of active internet users
will have an avatar
Gartner Consulting

71. your kids
probably
already
do

73. webkinz
clubpenguin
zwinky
neopets
imvu
barbiegirls
gaia
habbo
redlightcenter
kaneva
second life
unique US visitors in Sept 07, in millions

74. the
virtuality of
second life
introduced
the reality
of avatars
to adults

75. they came
from september 2006 to june
2008, the number of second life
members grew from 800,000 to
14,000,000

76. they played
during the same period the
number of simultaneous second
life users grew from 10,000 to
65,000

77. 1,000,000 to 2,000,000
they paid
in the space of 18 months the
average value of transactions per
day on second life went from
$500,000 to between $1m and
$2m*
* Figure estimated

78. 32 45 32
average age % females avg hours pm

79. US 187,000
Europe 160,000
Japan 29,000
Brazil 27,000
Canada 17,000
Most Active Avatars in SL by Region - December 2007

80. great virtual land rush
philips c|net adidas mercedes
bmw dell mazda microsoft reuters
sony bmg vodafone l’oreal ibm mtv

82. what went wrong

83. brands rushed in
they didn’t look right or left
attempted to conquer
rather than integrate
failed to realize virtual is
not the same as physical
brands stumbled

84. life goes on

85. what should brands do

86. understand how brands operate
in branded entertainment
natural integration into the story line

87. understand how brands operate
in social media & networks
multiple conversations and loss of control

88. understand how brands operate
in user-generated content
unsanctioned content, mashups and fragmentation

89. some guidelines

90. 1 be aware
2 see virtual worlds as evolving stories
3 don’t try conquer, immerse

93. 1 be aware
2 see virtual worlds as evolving stories
3 don’t try conquer, immerse
4 treat virtual worlds as petri dishes

94. innovate and produce multiple options

97. avatars are
escaping
their virtual
worlds
photo by Esprit de sel's (http://www.flickr.com/photos/esprit_de_sel/2596849895/sizes/l/#cc_license)

99. of 23 million and counting

100. 340
m i l l i o n
accounts

104. 4 Questions

105. how close will people
and their avatars track
one another in brand
consumption

106. which one will be the
greater influencer on
choice of brand

107. will avatars become
brand ambassadors

108. what will determine
legal right to ownership
of an avatar

109. “One of the things our grandchildren will
find quaintest about us is that we
distinguish the digital from the real, the
virtual from the real. In the future, that will
become literally impossible. The distinction
between cyberspace and that which isn’t
cyberspace is going to be unimaginable”
William Gibson

110. Reassembling the
fragmentation
photo by INTVGene (http://www.flickr.com/photos/intvgene/370973576/sizes/l/)

112. video clip of the modernista Web 2.0 website

113. 1 Observation

114. brands must exist in the parts as
much as they do in the whole

115. For ongoing coverage of and commentary on brands in the
digital arena please visit the Brand Architect blog at http://
www.collings.co.za/
Thanks to Tyler Reed for introducing me to the quote
“15MB is the new 15 minutes”
Patrick Collings
patrick@sagacite.co.za
+27 (0)83 616 0967