Body of Knowledge Leslie Andriese

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BODY OF KNOWLEDGE BODY OF KNOWLEDGE CREATIVE INDUSTRY LESLIE ANDRIESE according to special. the

description

contains all my assignments and insights from this period

Transcript of Body of Knowledge Leslie Andriese

Page 1: Body of Knowledge Leslie Andriese

BODY OF KNOWLEDGEBODY OF KNOWLEDGE

CREATIVE INDUSTRY LESLIE ANDRIESE

according to

special.

the

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Introduction

Creative Industry. After two periods of study-ing the this industry, its’ true definition still remains elusive at times. Of course I have come to understand the meaning and context of the term but it is not easy to give a single-sentence description. It is such a massive umbrella term that it might actually not be possible to give a short description without discriminating half of the topics it covers. That’s why I just like to call it a lifestyle. It is not just about some theories, models, knowl-edge and understanding. No, it is an attitude. It involves a new way of approaching people, problems and your daily routine.

Have I learnt enough to fully comprehend the magnitude of the power of the Creative Industry? No, of course not. But luckily that’s not what minors were called to life for to do. Minors were called to life to enable students to take a quick peek in the kitchen of another study direction or workfield, and that’s ex-actly what I have done with this minor. I have learnt some interesting new theories and it has brought me some even more interesting views. Not everything was equally as satisfy-ing, but then again, when is that ever the case in life.

In this Body of Knowledge special I will share my learning experiences during this period and my view on some of the hottest topics in the Social Media landscape. Social Media ful-filled such a dominant role within this minor that, at times, I couldn’t help but wonder why it wasn’t called Social Media Industry. Fortu-nately I can now say that this general wonder-ing has been replaced with understanding. It simply offers much more options than tradi-tional media. This doesn’t mean that I like it though, but that’s a different question for a different day.

Enjoy the read, I really hope you do.

Leslie Andriese

INDEX

Social Media

Community Building

Word of Mouth

Crossmedia Concepting

Transmedia Storytelling

Workfield Experience

Persona For Bobble

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...Good exampleOne of the best examples that immediately spring to mind when thinking of a company that deployed social media successfully is IKEA. On Facebook IKEA announced that they were going to upload photos of furniture and equipment and that the people could tag themselves in this picture, on the item in question to be exact. The first one to success-fully do this would actually win the item. Consid-ering the fact that Facebook has about 600 million users, it is not very difficult to imagine how quick-ly this news spread amongst Facebook users and thereafter in real life. Through this campaign they managed to establish a dramatic increase in their Facebook friends and created a huge exposure

What I found most admirable of this campaign was that it was such a deliberate and well contemplated choice to use a specific feature of the most power-ful online community in the world. They took a close look at what the most popular feature on the web-site was, tagging, and came up with an idea of how to use it as a marketing tool for their company. The bril-liance of it lies within the fact that IKEA realized that a very large part of their clientele are also Facebook users. It’s a young and fresh product that is easily accessible because its’ pricing that is generally very friendly. If we then add to the equation that, for an organization like IKEA, it’s such a cost-effective way of launching a worldwide marketing campaign we can safely conclude that IKEA will in the future serve as text book examples for marketers worldwide.

...Bad exampleI was able to recall the whole Facebook campaign by IKEA instantly but coming up with a campaign that actually turned out sour, was a bit harder.

Social Media As mentioned in the introduction social media fulfilled a very dominant role within this minor. Even though there are some differences in the level of use, everybody uses social media to some extent. Even my 60 year old aunt recently started facebooking. This hasn’t gone by unnoticed by companies and organizations. They realized social media are the perfect way of communicating with their target audience. However, it is

I attribute this to the fact that I am really not a fan of social media but also to the fact that when a cam-paign fails, its’ lower measure of popularity is kind of inevitable. After searching on the Internet I quickly encountered the a curious campaign launched by Skittles in 2009. Skittles launched a campaign for which they turned their website into a continuous Twitter feed that reels in all the content from Twit-ter at the mention of Skittles. Obviously their goal was to create a big buzz around the brand, and they succeeded. The first couple of days they got a lot of exposure with the website and the fact that they were using Twitter. They got free publicity in the newspapers and got a lot of mentions both online and offline. So far it is a pretty successful campaign so the question “why did it go wrong?” is totally le-gitimate, but I will explain. What it all boils down to is, that despite all of their good intentions and initial efforts, they never saw Twitter for what it really was until it backfired. They failed to see that the abso-lute essence of social media can be captured in one word, interaction. This lack of interaction was very quickly picked up by the audience as they realized that Skittles didn’t implement any means of exercis-ing control over the content on the site. People start-ed to incorporate a lot of inappropriate and foul lan-guage within their tweets with the #Skittles hashtag, all of it appearing on the website. Needless to say that does not generate a very good public image.

The most important thing I have taken from both of these examples is that aside from mak-ing sure you interact with your audience, you also make sure that you have looked at your cam-paign from all possible angles. Social media are so uncontrollable and so incredibly unpredictable that you will never know when it will backfire.

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Utilizing The Network EffectThis is perhaps the most obvi-ous way in which a community can be of aid in the building of your brand. According to FIG-URE 1 MotiveQuest the lion share of all content existing within a certain community is provided by only a very small part of that actual community. MotiveQuest calls these peo-ple the Mavens. This is a group of people that have managed to establish a reputation with-in the community by posting and sharing their knowledge and experience on a more than regular basis. By doing so these people have become authorities within the com-munity dictating most of the content and conversations. The rest of the community ba-sically follows whatever these Mavens post and, more often than not, absorb their opin-

Building A CommunityCommunities have been around ever since the rise of mankind. We are not solitary creatures, we have always had the need to be amongst others because of various reasons. Sometimes we are looking for acceptance, sometimes we are seeking recognition and sometimes we just want to so-cialize. Ever since the rise of the internet the term community quickly got linked with internet com-munities online. People with shared interests gathered on a virtual location to exchange thoughts, ideas and lifestyles. Now that we are starting to understand the impact that these communities can have on your brand, many organizations are looking for ways to get involved in this communities. And for good reason because good management of existing communities can succesfully help you build your brand. I have chosed three ways that will enable you to use a community in your favour.

This theory is further strengthened by Bernoff & Li (2008) and lat-er on Brake & Safko (2009), who also stated that most of the content is generated by only a very small group of users in FIGURE 2 (next page).

Figure 1: The Network Effect – Motivequest, LLC

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Figure 2: Bernoff & Li (2008) and Brake & Safko (2009) - Frankwatching 2010

Controlling the Debate By Joining the Conversation

Regardless of what you do as are investing in com-munity building as a company, people will talk about you. In fact, they are already talking about you. This means that, even though it makes sense, the thought of creating a community is therefore an old fashioned thought based on the principles of WEB 1.0. Instead it would be wise to realize that this community (or plural if you prefer) already ex-ists. Including all of its’ members, thoughts, discus-sions, ideas and other content. The thought would be to locate this community and perhaps offer it platforms and facilities to consolidate its activities. This way it becomes easier for you to see what lives amongst your followers and then join the conversation. By joining the conversation you will become able to steer the conversation in the right direction and it will enable you to respond to bad publicity. This way you can make sure that people know your brand for what it actually is and elimi-nate unwanted fiction.

This means that if I were to build a community around my brand, I would have to first identify these super-users and thereafter involve them within my brand experience. If they are the ones deciding the content and the tone of voice during discussion and debate, they are also the ones to get on board and make them ambassadors of my product.

Crowdsourcing

This basically flows forth from previous steps as both previous steps are a prerequisite to success-fully implement crowdsourcing. If you have estab-lished a solid base of customer relations it can be a very wise idea to get these relations involved in deciding the future of your brand. Of course you don’t have to let them decide on important things but by asking for opinions, feedback or for example ideas, you can at least instill a sense of involvement and importance, which is eventually what it is all about. Of course, crowd sourcing can be implement on various levels. You can simply ask for opinions or you could take it to the next level by outsourcing work to your community.

The main reason crowdsourcing is this appealing to me is that it enables you, as a company, to get an insight into what your customer relations are looking for within your brand. These are very valu-able insights since you will be able to play at the needs, wishes and desires living in the community. Strengthening your product, community, reputa-tion and ultimately, your brand.

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WORD OF MOUTH

Let others do the talking

Before I am going to share the example that I have chosen for this assignment I would first like to point out that I was searching for an example of a company/organization that designed a campaign based on the WOM principle and not an example of a company/organization that just reaped the benefits from a WOM campaign that was unintentionally established. I believe this is a crucial difference because we all know examples of companies/orga-nizations that are under the benefit of good word of mouth because they are simply providing a good product or service. Having said that, I will now share my thoughts on an excellent WOM campaign I stumbled upon.

As an organization, TED needs no further introduction here. In some parts of the world however, the organization is not so well known. South America is one of these parts of the world where the organization is not widely known amongst the majority of the public, in spite of its presence in the region. In an attempt to make more people aware of TED they decided to create a very specific marketing campaign. With creativity and inspiration as hallmarks of the organization, TED wouldn’t be TED if they didn’t come up with something special. They launched a marketing campaign that revolved completely around one of the most mundane things in common life, taxi drivers.

They invited a group of 50 taxi drivers to TEDxBuenosAires where they listened to several TED Talks. Inspired they went back to work to share their experience with all their passengers over a week. I think this is an amazing exam-ple of WOM marketing. TED used people that are known for talking a lot and that meet a lot of people every day. Something that is actually based on the same principle as the Creators in the 2008 model by Bernoff & Li.

...Translation to the Bobble Project

I would approach creators on the internet that add new content to the web that matches the intrinsic qualities of Bobble as a product. Bobble is not only a product that adds to a more sustainable environment, it is also a designer product. This means that the same product can be promoted to different people with different values without too much effort. That’s where the creators come in as the spread their word, their opinion. locate creators on different topics and make these people advocates of Bobble.

“As marketers, we love creating campaigns that take on a life of their own, that become distributed and deposited by our top brand advocates throughout their seemingly infinite social net-works. Whether it’s online or not, word of mouth is some-thing all marketers seek, it’s our holy grail.”(Elizabeth Schofield 2010)

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“Nominated for the SpinAwards 2011 inthe category of Best Crossmedia Concept”

CROSSMEDIA CONCEPTING

During this period my project has been all about Bobble, an innovative water bottle. How-ever, for this assignment I have deliberately chosen to look into a different topic than water

bottles. The reason behind this being very simple. I have found some very interesting and exciting crossmedia concepts but none of them where about bottles of water. In the end I

decided to choose two different success stories within crossmedia that are both worth a men-tion, albeit for different reasons.

After researching crossmedia for myself it seems to me that one of the most essential aspects of a good crossmedia concept is the call-to-action*, the mes-sage that is designed to launch its recipient into an orchestrated action onto a different medium or by means of a different medium. Of course there are more critical success factors for creating a good cross-media concept, such as content that commits the re-cipient to the concept, but without activation in the form of a call-to-action, there is no concept. Regard-less of the quality of the content.

After some research on the internet I quickly encoun-tered a campaign launched by AXE. It was launched in 2011 and is nominated for the SpinAwards 2011 in the category of Best Crossmedia Concept**. The campaign was designed to support the launch of the brand’s latest fragrance, Excite, that is claimed to be so irresistible that even angels will fall for it. For this concept, three angels have taken up residence in a luxurious manor where they will wait for perfect man. This manor is rigged with seven camera’s serv-ing as the user’s eyes through which he can follow the angels. Through interactive polls and social net-working the user can get in touch with the angels. To make things really interesting a reward system has also been put in place.

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SEEWHATHAPPENS.COM

The user is awarded halo’s for specific amounts of time spent on the website, purchasing products and sharing content via social networks. These halo’s can be used to unlock bonuses such as camera feeds and even Skype calls(!!). In addi-tion to all of this the user can play music in the villa through services like Spotify and control the Robo-Cam. Every day a Chosen One is invited to visit the angels and try to seduce them by taking the Petrus Test. The one with the best test results will then receive the ultimate reward, a sleep over in the manor. No cameras because What Happens in Heaven, Stays in Heaven.

After looking into this concept all I could muster was WOW. This concept harbors ev-erything that makes for a strong cross me-dia concept. Of course it is only meant for a specific target group, but this does not make it a lesser concept. It uses different media, different technologies and it enables the user to create his own content through different platforms. Brilliant.

Scouring the internet I also encountered simpler cases of crossmedia. These cases involved the use of different media but they didn’t really enable the user to really create his/her own content. Prime example of this would be the Mitsubishi commer-cial during the SuperBowl in 2004. In a 30 second clip Mitsubishi had two cars doing an evasion test on a closed highway where the two cars had to si-multaneously dodge objects thrown at them from two trucks riding before them. The commercial stopped with a classic cliffhanger where two other cars where slid out of the two trucks and assumed a collision course with the evading cars. The mes-sage then said: SeeWhatHappens(.com). Millions of people were launched into visiting the website after seeing the commercial.

So, which concept could we then say is the best? To be honest, I can’t really tell as it completely depends on the angle from which you look at it. When we compare both cases as described above we can safely conclude that there are different lev-els of crossmedia concepting. The AXE case clearly being at a far more sophisticated level than the Mitsubishi case and ,judging from that perspec-tive, I am tempted to say that the AXE case is the better of the two as it is far more complete. The Mitsubishi case however, despite its’ lower level of

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TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING

transmedia Storytelling has some very strong re-semblances with crossmedia. Both make extensive use of a wide variety of different media to get a message across. There is however a crucial differ-ence between both terms. Within crossmedia all of these different media are used to send out a mes-sage and to initiate a call-to-action, but it is gen-erally a re-worked version of the same message. The end goal is more often than not to attract as big of an audience as possible. transmedia on the other hand also uses this variety of media to get a message across, but the story generally progresses with every switch of media. This means that differ-ent kinds of media tell a different part of the story, each of crucial importance for the narration of the complete storyboard as it was designed/written during the development of the campaign. Another important element within transmedia Storytelling is that the user actually becomes a participant, or even a player, within the story.

I believe the reason why transmedia is the future of storytelling, is twofold. First, the development of new technologies is simply making it possible and feasible for transmedia to develop in that direction. The rise of new technology offers us new platforms to incorporate in our storytelling. Each specific platform with its specific characteristics and func-tions. At the same time all of these new technologi-cal platforms are getting more interwoven with our daily life. Think about the smart phones, all of the different apps you can now run on your phone and mobile internet.

Second to the technological development, I believe that we will always have the need to tell stories and play, the two essential aspects of transmedia. Telling stories is something that we have been doing for as long as we have been around, think about the wall paintings in caves made by the ancestors to the human species as it is today. Or what about the Homo Ludens, or the playing man, as theorized by Johan Huizinga in 1938. He stated that everything in modern day society stems from the ultimate need for people to play. This theory underlines the statement that transmedia is the storytelling of the future as transmedia turns followers from spectators into participants.

Make ‘em play your message

The Art Of The HeistOne of the best examples of a successful transme-dia storytelling concept over the past few years is definitely Audi’s The Art of The Heist. Not only did this campaign meet every single requirement of transmedia storytelling, it also was a huge hit in the United States. To provide you with a clear understanding of the concept of this campaign a short description of the project is given on the next page.

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Audi at a big convention in the US. Instead of the car they put the above sign on their booth

Audi’s “The Art of the Heist” Campaign Launched with Stolen A3Source: Audi of America

Auburn Hills, Mich - Audi of America recently launched an innovative advertising campaign called “The Art of the Heist” for the all-new Audi A3 premium compact car. The new campaign, crafted with Audi’s long-time advertising partner McKinney+Silver, creates an evolving “new-fashioned thriller” which started with the theft of an A3 at the Audi Forum on Park Avenue in New York on April 1st (www.StolenA3.com).

The story develops into a narrative involving Nisha Roberts and Ian Yarbrough who are racing for their lives as they are being pursued by a pair of hit men. Ian’s tearing across America in a stolen car, the key to unlocking the mystery behind one of the biggest art heists ever planned. Now Nisha has to find out who’s behind the scheme. To complicate matters, Nisha has attracted the attention of legend-ary game designer Virgil Tatum. Virgil has set his eyes on a prize of his own - Nisha and a video game based on the adventures of Nisha Roberts and her company, Last Resort Retrieval (www.LastResortRe-trieval.com).

Audi introduced the campaign using multiple platforms, including unique opportunities for live partici-pation by followers at events across the country, as well as the traditional forms such as a television commercial (30 second spot), newspaper, magazine, billboards, online banners and a microsite (www.audiusa.com/A3). Additionally, wild postings and blogs are being used to inform the public about the thriller.

Results to date have proven the effectiveness in this kind of marketing approach: More than 200,000 people became involved with the search for the stolen A3 in a single day. As a direct result of the campaign, online buzz for the A3 has grown by more than four times as a growing number of consumers are now participating in the thriller.

200.000 people involved in one day. That’s a big number, even for a nation as big as the United States. This number only grew bigger and bigger because of the media coverage this campaign got and the fact that people could actually participate in the narrative. It was designed as an alter-nate reality game that included live events for real life participants of the game. Some of the participants actually received an ex-tra mobile phone in order to be called into action to do things in real life. The objec-tive of the game was to piece together six pieces of information stashed in six differ-ent Audi A3’s.

I was already amazed after the crossmedia campaign done by AXE. Can you imagine how I am feeling now?

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WORKFIELD EXPERIENCE

Creative Amsterdam 2011 – Student sessionsThis period I visited the Creative Amsterdam Conference at Pakhuis de Zwijger. Creative Am-sterdam was a conference to share experiences and inspiration with peers and entrepreneurs from the creative industry. As a conference it can be compared with events like PICNIC, it’s just much cheaper. With the event the organiz-ing parties wanted to show how much talent and creativity flows from The Netherlands. The focus of the event was on the success of leading Dutch creative entrepreneurs operating outside The Netherlands.

One of the features of the conference were the free student sessions that were also hosted during the conference. Even though it’s cheaper than PICNIC, tickets are still too expensive for students. During these student sessions I went to see a few speakers. Two of which were interest-ing enough to use for my reports on workfield orientation.

...Favela PaintingThe first speaker I went to see was no other than our very own Remko de Jong. He came to tell us about one of the projects he is involved with, Favela Painting.

Favela Painting is a project that uses art to intervene in the favela’s of Rio de Janeiro, Rio’s slums and most deprived areas. In collabora-tion with the local youth, two artists from The Netherlands are working hard to transform the slums into colorful pieces of art. Of course this accomplishes the obvious by making the areas look better but this project does so much more than that. It gives the residents of the slums back some pride. They are much less ashamed of living in the slums because their neighborhoods are suddenly subject to positive media attention. Another effect of this project is that it give the youth involved something to do and helps them develop some skills and qualities. They don’t feel used and neglected, but proud and appreciated.

What I thought was most inspiring about this project was that it proved that beautiful things can happen in the most unexpected of places with something as simple as paint. Of course it involve a lot more than just a few buckets of paint, but it does indicate that a more creative approach to resolving conflicts and problem can very effective and valuable.

Creative Amsterdam 2011

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...The Sochi ProjectThis project was something completely differ-ent than the Favela Project. It does not have anything to do with improving the quality of life within a certain area and it most certainly does not involve any paint. In fact, this proj-ect involves a completely different part of the world. Sochi.

Sochi is where the Olympic games will be held in 2014. There are a lot of controversies in the area concerning the Olympic games and it is said that there has never been an area host-ing the Olympic games that contrasts more with the grandeur of the games. Sochi is also home to a large national park so the Olympics have caused quite a stir in the region because contractors simply use the Olympics as a way to get their hands on this beautiful land.

The contrasts and controversies have caught the attention of Rob Hornstra, who is a pho-tographer, and writer/filmmaker Arnold van Bruggen. They were so intrigued by Sochi as an area that they have decided to document the five years of construction preceding the Olympics .

In all honesty, I thought it was the most bor-ing 45 minutes of the entire day. He was a dull speaker who couldn’t manage to keep me inter-ested and I didn’t find the topic very interesting. There are so much more places in the world that is full of controversy and contrasts than Sochi. I mean, how can you say that Sochi is the area that contrasts the most with the glamour and grandeur of the Olympics when we have just recently seen the Summer Olympics in Bei-jing? Of course, every single one of these area’s need people like these to tell the story other-wise we would never be aware of the places in question. That brings me to the one thing that I thought was really great about this project. They are doing it all on the basis of donations and are not getting paid for their work. When the work is done and published they will also refrain from putting their names on the covers of their work. They are doing it purely out of the conviction that this story needs to be told and don’t want anything else to interfere with the story. How can I not respect an attitude like that?

All in all I enjoyed attending the conference. I do think that it would have been much more interesting to see the speakers in the regular program but that was just too expensive. There was however an opportunity to attend the main program because Remko offered us a ticket, but I didn’t want to accept that ticket knowing I could only attend one out of the three days. It was interesting to see how the creative industry has the power to change. It can open doors by approaching situations from a different angle than just the financial one. The term Creative Industry was still a bit vague to me but this con-ference helped me add some color the picture.

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PERSONA FOR BOBBLE