Futurescapes – The deviant culture of ‘what if?’

I have spent the last 30 years of my career looking at evolving and deviant cultures that have helped me create campaigns that differentiate client brands from their competitors and engage audiences in new and memorable brand experiences.

In this case the term ‘deviant’ can be substituted for ‘creative’, ‘tribal’ or ‘network’. They, and I include myself, are individuals or groups that actively work against the status quo and frequently disrupt it by re-shaping it into something new and tangible in an innovative way.

It is the culture of “What if?”

Deviancy is all about moving away from the road well travelled, about being different, it’s the art of looking sideways and the science of possibility that creates edge marketing. This is the reason I chose to move away from traditional media and explore mobile and digital technologies that provide a new conduit to engage and interact with the previously disenfranchised ‘consumer’. The only way for brands to survive into the future is by creating inclusive ‘dialogues’ that blur the line between the ‘them and us’ scenario (The brand and its audience) and focus on amplifying audience and brand participation around an experience where both are role players.

Tactile marketing, research with meaning

Identifying a ‘Deviant Culture’ or ‘Edge Dwellers’ isn’t the same as knowing them. Even online forms and questionnaires will not give marketers the kind of in-depth knowledge needed to connect with, or understand these groups and individuals or the trends they may be part of.

Traditional research such as focus groups and limited reach studies are really only data without consequence. It is out of date before it reaches the marketers. These reports offer little real insight into the ‘who’, ‘how’, ‘where’ and ‘why’ people see and use brands within the context of their daily life.

To effectively connect and engage people we need to take a much more ‘Tactile Marketing’ approach. The mobile phone makes people tactile. It captures what cannot be captured by studies on segmentation, demographics and profiling. Mobile captures people living out loud using tools such as cameras, video, text, IM, social networks, Bluetooth and mobisites.

Used to full effect, mobile tactile research gives real-time insight and knowledge to marketers about how to position their brands in the right place at the right time to the right people. The successful result will be that the audience permits the brand to participate in their lives.

Mobile tactile research is a ‘Dear Diary’ with pictures and video, it’s an emotional and visual map created or posted by people when they are externalising their lifestyle or a trend. These images and words are in the now but originate from an individual’s internal world. This information can tell us much about who they are, what they are thinking and also where they may be going. Tactile research is part observational, part open-ended conversation; it cuts through the clutter of what people think you want to hear and focuses on what they actually say and do. It can also expose social habits and trends that people are reluctant to discuss openly.

The business establishment tend to ignore tactile marketing research as it does not fit with their perception of relevance within the corporate system or accepted metrics of research. The fact is that tactile research challenges the general operating perspectives of commerce and production. The lesson here is that culture eats strategy for breakfast and marketers need to acknowledge that inference and assumption can be fatal.

Crisis or opportunity?

“When a great storm approaches some build walls, others build windmills.”
(Ancient Chinese saying)

Brand advertising and media has never been so exposed as they are today and going forward into the future. Some traditionalists may view this as a ‘new media’ bandwagon statement but that kind of thinking is why the industry is in such flux.

The definition and the principles of brand communication and advertising must fundamentally change as we are now in an age where only 14% of 16 to 28 year olds say they trust brands and 69% view advertising as irrelevant interruptions.

Many brand advertisers do not fully understand the mobile phone medium or indeed appreciate its primary function. The mobile phone and the technologies attached were not designed as a media platform but as a personal communication device so why would anybody want to scale down a banner Ad and call this communication? Agencies typically adapt what they know from existing media channels and move it on to mobile. The justification for this form of brand marketing point of view is based on the traditional advertising gambit of ‘eyeballs’ and CPM. This isn’t marketing, it’s brand suicide. In my book eyeballs are nowhere near as powerful as voice and brands that invade personal spaces will quickly find out to their detriment how viral mobile communication really can be.

Tactile mobile marketing is about asking permission, being relevant, useful and rewarding. Even as more consumers become prosumers, the ‘what’s in it for me?’ question remains as relevant now as it has ever been if not more so, although the type and definition of reward has evolved. Access to information and applications have become currencies and useful. Trial discounts and free offers if relevant can initiate conversation and social comment. “Free” will get you noticed but by itself, it’s not engagement, it’s what happens next that is crucial in building the relationship. Smart brands have chosen to act as facilitators, which means allowing people to speak, and as facilitators they know how to actively listen, how to create environments that stimulate productive conversations and interactions but most importantly they know how to add value to the group. This way brands can empower those influencers who are trusted and in so doing reach out to others.

Successful brands will address tactile mobile marketing and base their creative content, planning and media buying around niche seeding environments of interaction and conversation. Effectiveness metrics and ROI will change from eyeballs, click through and cost per thousand (CPM) to cultivating high value networks and tribes of fanatics to build the brand’s legacy.

In a world of opportunity and uncertainty the Futurescape awaits the tactile marketing navigators.