This is a link to a piece of work that involves a love song hidden behind a sixty foot scratch card type surface, used as part of an interactive exhibit in London, created by Melissa Mongiat and others. I found it about a year ago via a Wallpaper magazine featuring the designer. A bit of googling, and my curiousity being grabbed by both the exhibit title, and the website being called milkandtales.com, took me to find something quite enchanting, childlike and fantastically wonderful.
The title of the exhibit is called 'Hidden Love Song'. It was done as part of the Royal Festival Hall's 'Keeping In Touch' project. It's a great bit of people engaging with creativity, to create something quite special and unique. It would be great to see more of this kind of thing from brands applying sensitivity and art in their communications.
In a world where mentos mints and diet coke bottles get to be performance art ads by whim of an imaginative mind or two, surely more invention and original thinking is not only called for, but actually very necessary for brands to be more interesting in their conversations with consumers.
I've categorized this under 'not enough time to be bland' because for me it is a big watch out for brands. The opportunity for brands to step up to the plate on having a big idea and being imaginative about how they bring it to life, will always be there - the Royal Festival Hall could have spent the money on a poster campaign, or maybe a tv ad about what was on there, but they did a sixty foot, old tech, interactive, music playing, scratch card instead. This was an ad people had to touch, feel and be moved by, it delivered intrigue and provoked stories and wonder. Importantly, it was a metaphor letting people make their own meaning from it, and not a lesson, and it had an idea to be true to, not a demographic to connect with, in mind.
If it were branded, it would have conferred a great deal of joy and optimism on the brand associated with it. It would probably have made the brand feel like a positive thing to listen to, probably giving the brand thought leadership kudos, challenger brand and innovative thinking points too. I suspect it would have made people a little more interested in finding out what was on at the Royal festival Hall as a result too.
The power of a sticky, innovative and inspiring idea arguably makes the RFH's direct marketing or the Sunday papers' listings ad's job a lot easier, and it probably makes those, and all other channels in play, marketing their offer, more effective too. But of course this chaotic synergy of brand behaviour is not something traditional marketing approaches are used to measuring, so a 'too hard to do' or 'not what we do' attitude often means support for the non-traditional is kicked into touch. Great. That means bravery still wins, and the imaginative few agency/client partnerships are the ones that will be the leaders. But, not so great, in that the bar doesn't get raised higher very quickly, and mush in the middle bland brandedness continues to be what most of us get.
These sorts of magical things get to happen where there is a belief that doing interesting things in culture is innately a good thing to do, and those that excel at it are those who believe that inspiring and innovating is mission critical for their business success.
There's a great quote by organisational ecologist Michael Hannan which says, 'Natural selection only works on available diversity'. Technology is making product functionality advantages pretty small and short lived, and people are putting more value on innovation and inspiration from brands as both badges of belonging, and beacons of clarity in confusion. This means the iconic success stories will be more likely to be found in the brands who are most obsessive about being interesting, genuine, innovative and inspiring in their thinking and doing.
In another post, I've mentioned P&G going for inspiration and emotion, rather than functional and rational messaging and marketing approaches, for sound business reasons and making a success of it. That and this piece of art-meets-communication is the stuff marketers need to be inspired by to rethink and enliven models and processes to produce magic of their own for their consumers. If they are not amongst the leaders in shaping and pioneering marketing behaviour, in the current cultural appetite for genius, brands better be in the early adopters group at least, following inspired bits of public engagement like this. Staying in the mass middle ground of the herd of usual marketing behaviour, or getting too late to the game, will mean having to shout loud and compete on price in the blur of sameness - end result is a low margin, high risk game.
For most it's 'do what we know' high measurability, low risk, high traditionality. For some it's 'heck we'll try stuff, and we must, otherwise we'll be as boring as them'. I suspect both sides will be adamant about their way being the best way, and have numbers to prove it. Perhaps its more about faith.
Melissa Mongiat was one of Wallpaper's breakthrough designers for 2007.
This a screen grab from the website.
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