IDYL2S book

Brands don’t sell brands anymore, people do.

Welcome to the Ideas You Love To Share book.

It’s a guide to creating ideas that thrive in our Networked Age.

Where we connect with more people than ever before and trust each others’ recommendations far more than those of the media.

Where advocacy is the lifeblood of brands and, therefore, people the most powerful medium of all.

That means the most powerful ideas of all must be:

Ideas You Love To Share.

In this book, you’ll find eight principles to guide you in creating Ideas You Love To Share.

And six examples of terrific Ideas You Love To Share we have already created around the world; see the films at www.mindshareworld.com/what-we-do/idyl2s

We hope that you find this book useful and entertaining.

And, of course, one that you will share.

Enjoy.

George and GrahamGlobal Heads of Invention

4 5PRINCIPLES

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The new math: 1+1=62,500

The neocortex, our ‘grey matter’, governs all the higher order functions unique to humans.

It is the same size now as it was 250,000 years ago.

Sometime between that date and 50,000 years ago, humans began creating art, music and complex tools.

We began bartering and exchanging between communities.

We started playing games in our leisure time.

And we started telling stories around campfires.

In those days, everyone was a creative: artist, craftsperson, storyteller, musician, comedian, teacher.

And media was just what happened between people.

All media was social media.

Only in the last two hundred years did media become a one-way experience.

Books, newspapers, radio and TV made us temporarily believe that media was something that was created by professionals for us normal people to passively consume.

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Their rise was prompted by the increasing urbanisation of humanity.

When traditional, close-knit rural communities splintered apart and people found that the shift to urban life offered individualism and isolation.

These ‘old’ media filled the void.

How is this connected to the magic number of 62,500?

Scientists have found that late Stone Age settlements only very rarely exceeded 250 people.

This number defines primitive group sizes.

Small enough to allow social bonds to be developed and maintained, but large enough to allow genetic diversity within the group.

And because for all but 200 years our neocortexes have only had to remember the names and faces of 250 people, this number has become hardwired into our DNA.

In these primitive villages word spread around the whole group like wildfire.

As soon as someone told a story or a joke everyone knew about it.

As soon as a new tool or a new song or a new game was created, everyone knew.

And now, in 2010, the invention of digital social media has brought us full circle.

As June Cohen, Director of Media for the TED organisation says:

“The tools are new, but the behaviours come naturally...the rise of social media is actually a reprise, a return to the natural order.” 1

Our social circle now is no longer based on people’s proximity to us.

As Marshall McLuhan predicted: we live in a global village.

And because we are more connected than ever before, the 250 people we know are one very quick step away from a further 250 people.

One click away in fact.

Suddenly each and every one of us is only two degrees of separation away from 62,500 people.

And it means that the right kind of message will spread further and faster than ever before.

And that is why people are the most powerful medium of all.

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“When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.” (Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosopher and Classical Philologist). 2

They say the only creatures that will survive a global nuclear war are cockroaches.

They’re wrong; ants will survive too.

Lots and lots of ants.

And they’ll be eating the cockroaches.

Because ants are the most successful species on Earth.

They’ve been around for 130 million years.

Ants started farming, by harvesting fungus in their nests, 50 million years before humans.

A few square acres of the Serengeti contains as many ants as there are humans in the world.

The secret of their success is that they are tremendously adaptable.

They respond incredibly quickly and effectively to new situations, whether opportunities or threats.

Scientists call them an ‘adaptive self-organising system’.

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To our human eyes, it seems like a complex hierarchy.

With the queen ant in charge of everything.

But their system is a bottom-up intelligence.

Each individual ant is not fantastically clever, but collectively their behaviour is highly intelligent.

It means that ants can accomplish complex engineering feats and allocate resources with tremendous efficiency.

Given enough interactions and the right rules, the whole colony is capable of a great deal more than its component parts.

There is wisdom in a crowd of ants.

They are a perfect metaphor for how the internet organises its users.

Ants explain how Wikipedia has harnessed the world’s global brain and organised its knowledge.

How Amazon is able to recommend books you’ll be interested in.

And how Twitter buzz accurately predicts Hollywood box office grosses.

Ants follow ‘local’ rules, often taking their learning from their closest neighbours’ behaviour.

In the same way that your friends direct your online behaviour.

Sending you and trails of people to YouTube clips or viral jokes.

Like ants seeking out a lavish picnic.

It’s no wonder internet crazes gain massive momentum so quickly: the herd instinct, the hive mind, is in control.

Ants do not have fixed roles in their system.

A soldier becomes a nest-builder then becomes a forager then a farmer depending on the needs of the collective.

In the same way that internet users might be a content creator on one site, a content viewer on another and a commenter on another.

Ants take their ‘instructions’ from a pheromone signalling system.

Think of these messages as different types of advocacy: directing and shaping the wisdom of the crowd.

It’s the way Ideas You Love to Share work.

We need to listen to and understand the hive mind.

To create the right stimuli that energises the hive mind into advocacy.

Because when we shape the wisdom of the crowd we harness its power.

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“The content or message of any particular medium has about as much importance as the stencilling on the casing of an atomic bomb.” (Marshall McLuhan, Philosopher) 3

Marshall McLuhan has been described as a ‘media prophet’, ‘genius’ and ‘revolutionary’.

In 1964 he predicted the global village in which we now live.

He used phrases like ‘information overload’ long before our 24/7 media culture took root.

That’s why Wired magazine call him their ‘patron saint’.

And placed a quote of his on their masthead for over ten years.

But he is best known for coining the phrase: “The medium is the message.” 4

McLuhan was right: the medium is more powerful than any specific content that appears on it.

For example:

They thought video would kill cinema.

But the 120 year-old medium thrives.

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Because a trip to the cinema is about so much more than the ‘content’.

It’s an event, a treat, a date, a Saturday night out.

What is a ‘popcorn’ movie?

It’s content defined by the food you eat.

Clearly the content is subordinate to the experience: the medium.

Twelve times as many people read The Guardian online in the UK than buy its printed version.

Do these people suddenly agree with The Guardian’s left-liberal political views because it is free?

Or do they view its content differently because it is online?

Because the medium changes their opinion and experience of the content.

Surely the real power of television is that the average person in, say, South East Asia spends a fifth of their waking lives watching it.

Or, as the idiot savant Joey Tribbiani of Friends said:

“You don’t have a TV? What’s all your furniture pointed at?” 5

Everything has the power to communicate.

It’s why an Idea You Love To Share could be a book, song, game, TV programme, an app or an event.

And that’s why Ideas You Love To Share are ideas that begin and end with media.

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“Dude, dolphins are intelligent and friendly.”“Intelligent and friendly on rye bread with some mayonnaise.” (Kyle Brovlovski and Eric Cartman, South Park) 6

It’s been an extraordinary year for one ordinary small-town American elementary school student.

With his friends he formed a hugely successful wrestling federation in his backyard.

The next week his father convinced the populace of their town that they all had to wear bed sheets and ride llamas, as an antidote to the global economic downturn.

A month later he was nearly accidentally drowned by Al Gore in a cave.

The next week his friends created a Facebook profile for him, fearing that he was missing out.

Soon he had nearly a million friends whom he didn’t know and found it impossible to delete his profile.

The death of Catcher in the Rye author JD Salinger prompted him to write a far more controversial book.

Far from being banned in schools as he intended, it was declared a masterpiece and topped the bestseller lists.

Perhaps you’ve heard of him.

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His name is Stan Marsh.

And he is a character in South Park.

The TV show that began as a video Christmas card in 1995.

That video Christmas card became one of the very first viral internet videos.

And it contained the core of South Park’s success which continues today.

It was completely rooted in popular culture.

Connecting to popular culture is so important to its creators that they changed the way TV shows are produced to ensure they could incorporate it.

It takes one week to create an episode of South Park, compared with 9-12 months for other animated TV shows.

In fact their episode on the election of President Obama aired the day after the actual event.

As co-creator Trey Parker says:

“Anytime we read anything remotely interesting we try to think how we put it in the show.” 7

They’ve lampooned hot video games like Mortal Kombat, World of Warcraft and Guitar Hero.

They parodied films, spoofing Lord of the Rings, The Passion and Twilight.

They’ve tackled news events no other show would go near.

Able to explore issues of religion, race, drugs, celebrity and politics just when the furore of media interest is at its highest.

They turn sacred cows into hamburger.

So it’s no surprise that these self-proclaimed ‘equal opportunities offenders’ are constantly making headlines around the world.

And that every episode creates an immediate buzz all over the internet.

That’s why a cheap-looking, scatological, surreal cartoon starring 8 year-olds on a niche cable TV station airs in over 100 countries.

South Park has become part of the global conversation.

And helps to fuel it; taking it to new heights.

The show’s success demonstrates the huge value of understanding and connecting to popular culture.

A vital dynamic that drives every Idea You Love To Share.

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Why is Mona Lisa smiling? “I imagine that right now you’re feeling a little like Alice, tumbling down the rabbit-hole... I can see it in your eyes. You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he is expecting to wake up...Let me tell you why you are here. You’re here because you know something. What you know, you can’t explain. But you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life. That there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me.” 8

These are some of the words spoken by Morpheus to Neo in the film, The Matrix.

Perhaps they describe how you are starting to feel about this book.

When The Matrix was released in 1999, it was an instant success.

To many people an instant classic.

On the surface the film is a kinetic thrill-ride.

A blend of innovative visual tricks, Hong Kong action cinema and groundbreaking imagination.

That’s why The Matrix won 4 Oscars.

But The Matrix was always conceived by its creators – the Wachowski brothers – as an entire alternate universe.

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A universe expressed not just through movies, but also comic books, video games and Japanese anime.

A universe that could explore life’s most important questions.

A universe that asked: does God exist?

A universe that questioned what it means to be human by referencing Plato’s cave, Descartes’ evil demon and Baudrillard’s Simulacra.

A universe that questions the nature of reality itself by referencing William Gibson’s Necromancer, Doctor Who and the works of Philip K. Dick.

The Wachowski brothers created a rich idea that existed outside the reductive three-act structure of a Hollywood movie.

That is why the Matrix generated such buzz on the nascent mainstream medium of the internet in 1999.

That is why the Matrix continues to stimulate passionate debate there even now, ten years later.

And will continue to do so long into the future.

If you pose questions to your audience, you challenge them and you engage them.

It’s been the mark of great art for centuries.

And great popular culture for decades.

Why is Mona Lisa smiling?

What was Lost about?

Because rich ideas are open to personal interpretation, they provoke opinion, discussion and debate.

And reductive ideas have a beginning, middle and an end.

That is why reductive ideas are rarely as powerful in the digital age: they end.

And that is why rich ideas are Ideas You Love To Share.

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“One good reason to only maintain a small group of friends is that three out of every four murders are committed by people who knew the victim.” (George Carlin, Comedian) 9

Have you noticed how some very smart brands are acting as if they were your friends?

When you first meet them, you tentatively test each other’s boundaries and opinions.

You tell them a little about yourself and they tell you a little bit about themselves.

You tell them about the things you like and they tell you about the things they like.

Pretty soon they get to know what kind of books you like to read, and make suggestions of other books you might like.

They see what films you like to watch on DVD and recommend similar ones.

They don’t always get it right, but even your closest friends can sometimes misunderstand your taste.

One friend emails to tell you that the restaurant you like to have lunch at sometimes has a special offer on this week.

Maybe they text you to tell you that tickets for the big football match you want to see are now available for sale.

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Another friend offers you free concert tickets or VIP access for using a certain credit card or mobile phone.

These new friends are providing you with a real, practical utility.

Very useful friends to have.

Some of your friends are a bit different.

They’re like the social glue that knits you and your friends together.

Maybe you have a mischievous friend who asks you to perform simple and silly dares in exchange for them buying you a burger or a beer.

Or they know how much you love celebrity gossip and send you a round up of who has done what to whom this week.

Or your friend is a film buff always giving you the inside scoop on the latest cool movies.

There are so many different kinds of conversations your friends can inspire when they are socially engaged.

Some of your friends are always doing creative stuff.

They’re always providing you entertainment.

They make their own short films with actors and actresses you like.

Or they make films about subjects you’re really into.

Or they fund songs, or entire albums, or club nights by bands you like.

One friend funds entire art exhibitions featuring the kind of art you like.

And invites you along to the opening.

These friends are always entertaining you with stuff that wouldn’t exist otherwise.

Now, the friends we have described are not necessarily your closest friends.

They are quite popular, so they can be friends with thousands and even millions of other people.

They ask you for very little effort in return for their kind gifts.

You don’t have to devote any time or energy to them if you don’t feel like it.

All they ask is that you choose them the next time you are buying something.

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The Internet, the nobel prize winner and the talking cat

Why do some ideas flourish and spread through popular culture while others wither and disappear?

Internet entrepreneur Ben Huh may have the answer.

He is the founder of an online empire of over 50 web sites, which has grown to over 200 million page views per month in less than three years.

Perhaps you have heard of, or visited, some of his sites such as Failblog, Engrishfunny or There I Fixed It.

Ben Huh deals exclusively in internet ‘memes’.

The concept of memes was created by Professor Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene.

He suggested that ideas, like DNA molecules, were in constant competition with each other.

And that in this arms race, the fittest ideas would survive; much as human characteristics are passed down through generations.

The maturing of the web and mobile technology has greatly accelerated this process by enabling people to copy, transmit and mutate ideas with very little effort.

Ben Huh instinctively understands this process.

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It’s why his network starts a new site every week.

To see which ones have the right stuff to become memes.

And those that don’t grow exponentially are quietly discontinued.

By far his most successful site is icanhascheezburger.com.

It features LOLcats: funny pictures of cats whose ‘thoughts’ are expressed in quirky, pidgin-English captions.

The reasons for its success are more easily explained than its strange humour.

People find it very easy to discover.

Sometimes word of mouth inspires them to search online or they read one of Ben Huh’s carefully targeted press interviews.

A friend emails them a LOLcat picture.

Or they spy it on a colleague’s screensaver or desktop wallpaper.

And their curiosity soon turns to compulsion.

Because it’s so easy to get involved with LOLcats.

Not only do 20,000 people a day create and send in their complete LOLcat pictures.

But every LOLcat picture posted on the site has a text box directly underneath, so you can add your own caption if you think you can do better.

And they make it very simple to share your new masterpiece with friends, family and colleagues across the gamut of social networks.

Of course this wouldn’t matter if LOLcats weren’t profitable.

But it has made money since the day of its launch.

Because when you create an Idea You Love To Share, people will act upon it.

You can buy LOLcat T-shirts, greeting cards, calendars, mugs and five books.

Including a LOLcat translation of the entire text of both Testaments of the Bible, which took the site’s users a mere few months to create.

When you create memes as powerful and widespread as this you’ll find you have the unlikeliest of fans.

Like Professor Paul Krugman.

Recently voted one of Top Ten intellectuals in the World.

Who used his New York Times blog to announce to the world he’d won the 2009 Nobel Prize for Economics.

By posting a LOLcat picture.

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It’s all aristotle’s fault

Aristotle created the ideals of logic, causality and individualism, which dominated Western philosophy from ancient Greece through to the Renaissance.

Those ideals have informed a bias in the West to pursue self-realisation, self-expression and self-actualisation.

Unlike Confucianism in the East, this fostered the illusion that creativity comes from individual genius.

The lone artist summoning his muse in splendid isolation.

But a shift is underway in the way the West understands creativity.

Smart observers are now realising how important collaboration and co-creation have been across a plethora of fields of human endeavour.

Across science, art, philosophy, technology, sport and business.

With co-creation, magic happens.

Rap music is full of examples of this magic.

Dr. Dre has collaborated with dozens of different rappers through twenty years of shaping hip-hop and therefore popular culture.

He started with the NWA collective then created the careers of Eminem,

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50 cent, Snoop Dogg and countless others in the course of producing $1 billion worth of album sales.

After all this, he still feels the magic.

After a recent rare live appearance at a concert in Detroit he said:

“Being on the stage with Eminem and Jay-Z was one of the most incredible feelings I’ve felt in a long time. It inspired me.” 10

Co-creation works so well because it allows and encourages the collision of different perspectives.

When Paul McCartney showed John Lennon the lyrics to ‘I Saw Her Standing There’, they read:

“She was just seventeen, never a beauty queen” 11

Of course, Lennon changed them.

“She was just seventeen, you know what I mean” 11

Lennon and McCartney harnessed that mixture of sweet and sour, of innocence and sin, to conquer a generation.

There’s plenty of evidence of co-creation’s dynamism in other fields too.

You might think of Steve Jobs as lone genius entrepreneur.

In fact Steve Jobs is the ultimate serial co-creator.

Creating Apple Computer with Steve Wozniak, he spoke the language of engineering when they were inventing.

With John Lasseter at Pixar, Jobs took a crash course in the economics of movies.

With industrial designer Jonathan Ive at Apple, Jobs micromanages every stage of product development.

And his partnerships reflect the zeitgeist when he created them.

With Wozniak, they capitalised on affordable microchips to create the personal computing revolution.

With Lasseter, they used CGI and processing power to revolutionise animated storytelling.

With Ive, they harnessed the internet to revolutionise the distribution of entertainment.

These examples have inspired our principles of co-creation.

To harness the powerful collision of different perspectives.

By creating dynamic teams consisting of a media professional with creative flair and a creative practitioner with commercial skills.

A team whose thinking has no boundaries.

52 53IDEAS YOU LOVE TO SHARE

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“Better to be deprived of food for three days, than to be deprived of tea for one.” (Ancient Chinese Proverb)

The Chinese have been drinking tea for over 4,000 years.

Tea is considered one of China’s seven essentials of life; alongside firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy and vinegar.

Tea culture is used to apologise, celebrate, show respect and express thanks; tea connects family gatherings, commemorates weddings, and is drunk with dinner.

Not an easy place to sell coffee.

In fact, per person, the Chinese drink 3 cups of coffee each year.

Nescafé’s task was to create a coffee culture where none existed.

To embed coffee into everyday Chinese life.

And convert a nation to Nescafé’s unique brand of stimulation.

We spotted a surprising opportunity and seized it.

Coffee drinkers were highly educated, white-collar professionals.

And potential coffee drinkers were students.

Soon to be highly educated, white-collar professionals.

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The present and future drivers of China’s world-leading economic growth.

They are united by a powerful cultural dynamic.

Capitalism.

With all the fast-paced, non-stop energy of an emergent business environment.

An environment better suited to coffee than tea.

We found that our frequent drinkers, the white-collar professionals, were curious about the correct behaviour for office life: their generation is creating China’s office culture and making it up as they go along.

While students are deeply curious about the world that awaits them after graduation.

An insight which gave us our Idea You Love To Share:

Office culture comes alive with Nescafé.

We found the perfect TV format to explore modern Chinese office life.

Camera Cafe, originally a French TV format, revolved around a coffee machine in an office.

The show was reinvented for China.

We made the show into an online format to capitalise on our audiences’ media preferences.

We created new characters, making them more inspirational.

We created new storylines, reflecting modern Chinese office life.

And different Nescafé products inspired many of these storylines.

Not only did our show gain over 12 million views, but it also gave us a great platform to involve and engage our audience.

First through funny polls about common complaints, office gossip and stories covered in the show.

Then our audience could chat and connect to each other via online bulletin boards.

Hundreds of thousands did.

Best of all, we converted our audience to coffee: those who watched four or more episodes were 300% more likely to buy Nescafe than those who hadn’t seen any.

The number eight is considered very lucky in China.

The word for eight in China sounds like the word for ‘prosper’ or ‘wealth’.

Will coffee become the eighth essential of Chinese life?

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“I know god will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish he didn’t trust me so much.” (Mother Teresa) 12

On 7 September 2008, the US Treasury rescued the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Company and the Federal National Mortgage Association with a $200 billion package.

Known as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the two entities insured almost half of America’s $12 trillion mortgage market.

Their failure would have been a global catastrophe.

One week later, high-profile insurance underwriter AIG was rescued by the Federal Reserve with a series of loans totalling $182 billion; AIG then lost $62 billion in the last quarter of 2008.

To America’s longstanding safety concerns over terrorism, a new cultural force was emerging:

Financial Armageddon.

It was against this disturbing background that American Family Insurance wanted to emphasize its positioning as ‘trusted advisors’.

American Family is a regional insurer whose offering can’t compete on price as their national competitors do.

Instead, AmFam agents build a relationship with their customers by giving personalised advice and understanding their needs.

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AmFam gives its customers peace of mind not a piece of paper.

AmFam customers rank their family and its protection as their top priority, so our Idea You Love to Share was:

AmFam: One of the family.

Our audience were busy, working mums.

Once the kids were in bed, the internet provided their information, entertainment and social network.

It helped them share and find information, stay in touch with friends and watch their favourite shows and video clips.

To make AmFam a part of this precious ‘me’ time, the brand had to compete as engaging, quality entertainment.

For putting a human face on serious times in a serious industry, there could be only one answer: a sitcom.

A natural fit for AmFam was NBC, the network with unrivalled comedy heritage, with shows like Seinfeld, Friends and The Office.

We co-developed characters and storylines to create a digital comedy series called In Gayle We Trust.

As writer/director, we hired Brent Forrester, veteran of The Simpsons, King of the Hill and The Office.

And to play Gayle, Elisa Donovan, a comedy actress famous for numerous TV roles as well as Clueless and A Night at the Roxbury.

With working mom Gayle as our relatable heroine, we dramatised the AmFam difference with warm, human and funny storylines over 20 episodes.

We showed how AmFam’s focus on personal relationships created feelings of trust and safety in contrast to its cold corporate competition.

AmFam is worth the small price premium.

We showed how AmFam’s dashboard camera makes teenage drivers more safety conscious.

There were newlyweds, new parents, highly-strung pets, a hypnotist who needed liability cover and an egomaniac plumber worried about identity theft.

AmFam had a policy and an understanding ear for them all.

We both entertained and persuaded our audience of AmFam’s benefits:

74% of viewers said that ‘In Gayle We Trust’ was ‘better than some TV shows’.

And viewers were 37% more likely to purchase AmFam products.

Family: The one thing America loves more than a bargain.

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“Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.” (Albert Einstein, American Physicist) 13

Humans are not rational beings.

We don’t always act in our own best interests.

Especially when it comes to calculating how our current behaviour will impact our future health.

And India has a particular issue with its health: it’s the cardiovascular disease capital of the World.

The World Health Organisation estimates that 60% of the world’s heart disease patients are Indian.

The pace of economic change in India and its effects on people’s lifestyles is having severe consequences.

The culprits are many.

A richer diet containing more meat; an increase in more stressful and deskbound jobs; a cultural reluctance to exercise.

Quaker Oats can help; they contain whole grains that can reduce cholesterol and other risks to heart health.

A terrific brand benefit.

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But this information would fall on deaf ears in India.

Because, culturally, Indian people judge their health on the most readily available evidence:

‘Do I look healthy?’

But Indian hearts are older than Indian bodies and faces look: their hearts’ biological age is greater than their real age.

This cultural insight became our springboard.

The Indian people needed to realise true health comes from within.

India needed a social and cultural revolution on a national scale.

Our Idea You Love To Share was born:

India’s healthy heart starts at breakfast.

A national movement needs a national mouthpiece.

The Times of India was approached and became an enthusiastic supporter of our campaign.

The Times of India is the world’s biggest English-language newspaper with over 14 million readers.

We encouraged them to provoke debate with incendiary articles dramatising

the crisis facing the country.

To a buzzing background of national debate, we asked them to inform and educate readers on ways to improve their Heart Health.

To accelerate our growing momentum, we had them provide daily advice, recipes and exercises as part of the Heart Health crusade.

Thus we ensured readers were not tempted to return to old habits.

The campaign also needed to get Indians to commit to action.

So Apollo Hospitals, India’s foremost cardiovascular experts, were recruited to design the Quaker Heart Health Test.

A comprehensive and engaging online tool, the Quaker Heart Health Test soon went viral across both the internet and mobile.

Over 168,000 Indians took the test in four months, with 73% of them reporting a positive behavioural change due to the initiative.

This new army of Heart Health crusaders were mobilised via regular emails, while newly created apps for mobile and widgets for the internet enabled further new recruits.

The campaign generated very healthy results with Quaker Oats volume sales up 74%.

Quaker Oats has made a real difference to the health of a nation.

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“I saw you in my dreams yesterday, suddenly you became real.” 14

It’s tough being a teenage girl.

You want to fit in, to belong, and to be accepted.

But you want to be individual, to stand out, to be accepted for who you are.

And most of all, you want to be popular.

What if you could be friends with the coolest, most exciting girl in the whole country?

She blogs about all the latest fashions, new movies and gossip; topped Facebook’s 5,000-friend limit shortly after creating her account; and sang with the nation’s hottest singer, becoming a pop star herself.

In Turkey, that girl is Kita: a pop star with substance in a world of shallow celebrity.

Only Kita is a 3D animated hologram created by Mindshare for Kotex.

Kita leveraged an important cultural dynamic: when your life is lived mostly in the digital world, your definition of a ‘friend’ changes.

In the Femcare sector, where brand switching is rare, a new product launch is a huge challenge.

So instead of just attempting to get girls to bond with Kotex’s new brand,

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Kotex Young, we developed Kita three months before its launch.

Kita was the perfect best friend: relatable yet aspirational.

Just like every teenage girl, Kita had a crush on a pop star.

Her Facebook page had lots of pictures of Keremcem, a hunky Turkish singer.

She wished with all her heart she could one day sing with him and be a celebrity too.

We made her dream come true.

Following Dreams, their duet, told how they came to be singing together and revealed more about Kita’s character.

It stayed at number one in the Turkish pop charts for five weeks.

Magazines carried Kita posters and Kita stickers.

In the vast amounts of free media coverage following her success, Kita publicised her new online karaoke competition.

She encouraged the 1.5 million girls who read her blog to enter.

Over 25,000 girls submitted videos of themselves taking Kita’s place and singing with Keremcem in the Following Dreams video.

They told their friends to log in and watch: well over a million did.

Augmented Reality print ads let girls copy Kita’s dance steps.

Naturally, the next step in the fairytale rise of a celebrity is a lucrative product endorsement.

Kita would only be endorsing Kotex Young.

Kita starred in all Kotex Young’s TV and print advertising, and featured on all its packaging.

Then she announced her first-ever public appearance: a live concert with Keremcem.

Yes: a live pop concert starring a 3D hologram.

Only fans that SMS texted in two Kotex product codes could get tickets to the concert.

Results were spectacular.

94% of young girls said they liked Kita.

Kotex Young is now 15% of Kotex’s portfolio, driving volume share up 30% while decreasing their competition’s share by 9%.

Kita made it a little less tough being a teenage girl.

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“It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for something you are not.” (André Gide, Author) 15

The truth is out there.

The global conversation buzzes inexorably all around us.

In our connected social media world, companies can’t get away with bad policies, bad behaviour or bad customer service.

So when your company excels in these areas, it’s worth shouting about.

First Direct has always been a different kind of bank.

Its openness, honesty and employee empowerment carved a strong brand reputation as simply the best customer service in the financial sector.

But in 2009 the competition was catching up and people were beginning to doubt the First Direct difference.

And First Direct wanted to recruit new customers.

Their current customers loved them: they were the most recommended bank in the UK.

The traditional response would be to simply tell consumers this.

But there had been a meltdown of public trust in financial institutions, so traditional advertising would be met with scepticism.

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Instead we harnessed a powerful cultural force: the global conversation.

We broadcast people’s unvarnished truths against a background of rampant mistrust.

First Direct customers were already talking about the bank on Twitter, in forums, chat rooms, blogs and social networks.

We would bring these clandestine comments into broad daylight.

They would be our ‘advertising’.

We would show, not tell, the people of the UK the First Direct difference.

Warts and all.

The good, the bad and the ugly.

A bank so transparent that it let its customers tell the complete and unvarnished truth?

An idea people love to share.

We mined all the online mentions of First Direct and created a real-time feed of what customers were saying.

We created a visual representation of these comments.

A dynamic map of all the emotions and opinions around First Direct.

The maps began as a shareable widget on social networks.

Then we asked for further honest opinions on firstdirect.com/live.

Then we brought them into the physical world.

Our maps ran as live digital advertising on London Underground platforms, next to departure boards in train stations and food courts in shopping malls.

Anywhere people congregate with time to spare.

Where our public opinion barometer would inspire further debate and create new discussions.

The medium became the message.

This groundbreaking initiative transformed both the attitudes of prospective customers and First Direct’s business.

The proportion of the UK who described the First Direct brand as ‘really different’ rose by 10%.

Prospective customers became 240% more likely to respond to First Direct offers.

And First Direct gained 7% market share among consumers considering switching bank accounts.

Honesty really is the best policy.

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“There is no excuse, you have a digital camera: go out and shoot your film.” (Sir Ridley Scott) 16

On 24 July 2010, hundreds of thousands of people across the world picked up their cameras and recorded their lives.

They filmed their triumphs and their tribulations.

From the massive to the minute and the magical to the mundane.

Their families and their friends.

Most of all they recorded the joy of simply being alive.

The film project was called Life In A Day.

Life In A Day was made possible by LG Electronics and YouTube.

Together we set out to harness one of the dominant cultural forces of our digital age: user-generated content.

And created the biggest commercial crowdsourcing initiative the world has ever known.

It was an extraordinary project.

YouTube wanted to celebrate their unique place in the world.

Only they capture the world’s hopes, dreams and aspirations every second of every day.

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For LG, it was an opportunity to deeply engage the world in its philosophy: life is better with technology.

Technology brings humanity closer together.

Technology makes us more curious about the world around us.

Technology enables us to share our diverse perspectives and experiences.

LG call it ‘Life’s Good’

We saw the chance to show the world that ‘Life’s Good’ is real and tangible.

To ensure every story in the world could be told, we delivered cameras to the four corners of the globe.

From the Amazon rainforest, to the Australian outback, to the tribes of the Serengeti to the war-torn villages of Afghanistan.

Within days the Life In A Day project had received over 80,000 entries from 197 countries.

The project’s success was no surprise: YouTube alone delivered over 6 billion views promoting Life In A Day.

Three for every single man, woman and child on the internet.

Of course there were also countless blog posts, tweets and Facebook discussions about Life In A Day across the internet.

Alongside this, for 3 days, Google homepages around the world invited everyone to participate.

Serving tens of billions more views.

The closest a brand has ever, perhaps will ever, get to advertising on Google’s homepage.

From the 5,000 hours of footage, Oscar-winning director Kevin MacDonald and Hollywood legend, Sir Ridley Scott crafted an extraordinary portrait of the life of the world.

A 90–minute film condensing all the richness and diversity of human life on Earth on a single day.

It premiered simultaneously at the Sundance Film Festival and on YouTube and was described by Wired magazine as “provocative, gorgeous and deeply moving”. 17

With 38 million views of the Life In a Day YouTube channel so far, this is a film project that will never be forgotten by all those who have seen it and contributed to it.

A unique and timeless record of the human experience, made possible by LG.

Life’s good when technology brings us together.

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References

1. June Cohen, Director of Media, TED organisation, EDGE.org World Question Center, 12, 2010

2. Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosopher and Classical Philologist. 1844 – 19003. Marshall McLuhan, Philosopher. 1911 – 19804. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, published 19645. Joey Tribbiani, Friends, Series 9 Episode 23 “The One in Barbados (1)”, 20036. Kyle Brovlovski and Eric Cartman, South Park episode 2, 19977. Trey Parker Co-creator South Park National Public Radio “South Park celebrates 14

years of fart jokes”, March 24, 20108. Morpheus, The Matrix 19919. George Carlin. 1937 – 200810. Dr Dre interviewed by MTV USA, reported on 1st October 2010.11. Beatles: Please Please Me. Released by Parlophone on 22 March 1963.12. Mother Teresa Founder of the Order of the Missionaries of Charity 1910-199713. Albert Einstein American Physicist. 1879-195514. Kita and Keremcem, Following Dreams (translation), 2010.15. André Gide, Author 1869 – 1951)16. Sir Ridley Scott July 2010 http://www.youtube.com/user/lifeinaday17. Wired Magazine. Jason Silverman 27 January 2011. Review: Crowdsourced Life in a

Day Captures Thrills, Emotions. www.wired.com/underwire/1022/01/life-in-a-day-review/

CONTACTS

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Graham [email protected]

MindshareCentral Saint Giles, 1 St Giles High Street

London, WC2H 8AR, UKwww.mindshareworld.com

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