Vintage Revolution
Pay attention to the conversation about the present and future of the marketing and communications industry and you will enter a literal storm of ideas. Change is the premise, what worked in the previous decade is out today, as McLuhan said, “if it works, it’s obsolete.”
Pay closer attention and you will note that some of the new ideas begin to resemble the past. Just like fashion seems to be cyclical (e.g. skinny pants in the year 2006), marketing and communications might be secretly entering an age of reconciliation with some of the ideas that prevailed in its recent past. Russell Davies wrote about it last week, referring to the similarities between marketing 1.0 and marketing 2.0 and pointing out to a refreshing piece of research from Dr. Robert Heath that seems to be driving the discussion in a different direction (3.0 maybe?), focused more on the delivery of the message than on the message itself: “In advertising, it appears to be the case that it’s not what you say, but the way that you say it that gets results.” Or should we rather say: The medium is the message.
On the same day of Russell’s post, Scott Bedbury (former marketing executive from Starbucks, Nike – also author of A New Brand World), gave a keynote speech at Yahoo!’s “Engaging Advocates Through Search and Social Media” conference at The New York Public Library. The focus: “Achieving Brand Leadership in the 21st Century,” which ironically reinforced old-school brand-focused thinking peppered with new ideas in the brand advocate arena.
Bedbury’s lesson can be summarized in the view that remarkable brands are the result of “relevancy, creativity, and emotional connection.” His recipe to achieve this “remarkable” status requires a mix of brand connection with something “timeless and meaningful,” rooted in a great product or service that together with the brand represent a set of “values and promises” compatible with the audience’s heart. Emotional connection at its best, which ratifies at some extent Heath’s findings but from a different angle related to what you say rather than how you say it.
Emotion seems to be at the core of most schools of thought that seek a viable alternative to business-as-usual in the marketing and communications industry of the present. Emphasis on what you say rather than on how you say it or the contrary might not make a lot of sense when considering that the emotional connection that we are looking for is constrained by the attention economy in which what we say must be welcomed by means of actual, tangible value.
The logic of emotional connection makes sense and is valid as long as its mechanism includes something of value for the people at the other end. This is amplifying the meaning of (corporate) social responsibility to a whole new level, driven by the forces of the market, specifically by people with (media) options. Recognizing that the attention of any individual has value is probably a good place to begin revisiting all the good old thinking about emotions, regardless of whether you focus on the medium, the message, or both (can we actually separate them?).
Here is Nike’s “Revolution” spot which Mr. Bedbury used as an example of a piece of creative that contributed to Nike’s Air Max enormous success almost a decade ago. Nine years later Nike's revolution feels very different: It's Ipod-compatible.