ERROL'S BLOG

New Did You Know? from Xplane - convergence and how the internet is changing our lives

via PSFK.

A big conservation landmark from a baby elephant at Taronga Zoo

 

I'm delighted to say that this video is the sixth most viewed on Australia's YouTube today. 

It features Thong Dee, an Asian Elephant, and her new baby elephant that was born a few days ago at Taronga Zoo, in Sydney. Please pass it on, spread the good word and help some important conservation work get done. 

This is a first of its kind in Australia - the birth is a massive milestone in the Taronga Zoo Conservation Society's plans for conservation. There are only around 34,000 of these animals left in the wild. 

Taronga Zoo wants people to get involved and help them in their conservation efforts in any way they can. I've had the immense privilege of working with some of the people at the Zoo. They're wonderfully inspiring folk who care about doing the right thing by their conservation goals. The atmosphere there must be incredible. 

It can't be underestinated how a big moment this is in an enormous lot of effort by many very committed and passionate people over a long period of time. It's a magical thing too, being a time and a signpost to great possibilities. 

If you want to help Taronga and its conservation efforts, go to the Taronga Zoo website and find out more, or if you can, go and visit the Zoo, take in the atmosphere yourself, and talk to someone there about what you can do. Thanks for passing it on if you do.

Free film about our home planet - Recycle, reuse, and reinvigorate our appetite for doing the right thing by the planet

This is a talk about free film called 'Home' released last week on World Environment Day. 

There are some stunning images and some poignant commentary in this talk by it's creator, Yann Arthus Bertrand. It's completely copyright free. 

Plus see a fascinating study of people across the world at 6 billion others, another project by Bertrand as part of the goodplanet.org site, a non-profit environmental organisation he founded.

A wonderfully generous gesture.

Stand for something against the intolerable status quo - give fans assets - start and feed a movement

In this talk at TED, Seth Godin adds weight to the argument that push marketing has had its day – he’s promoting the idea of tribes (the title of his new book) as being the way to go for brands in the connected world we are in.

He suggests that social networking technology has helped tribes form easily around niche interests and galvanize themselves into creating change - sometimes on a world scale.

He gives examples of how change can happen from Al Gore to Tom Shoes (in the interesting places column on this blog).

Status quo challenging ideas from leadership thinking, that become stories or big ideas that a person or a brand stands for are necessary. Then its harness tribes to create a movement and create change individuals couldn’t achieve by themselves.

But thanks to these times of internet connectivity, it seems like power to the fans of ideas that create a better way, is gaining on the power of the mass mindset.

Another good case in point of the influence of the internet and the power of social networks, is in this two minute extract of a talk given by Scott Thomas, which I found on at Coolhunting.com. Scott designed the Obama's digital campaign. Instead of just having people ordering campaign merchandise online, people were able to download Obama branded assets so they could create merchandise of their own.

Net result; Obama's vision of getting people more involved in the political process is achieved - and from involvement comes committment.

 

Here's an image from Seth Godin's TED talk.

Accidental influentials - an interesting theory on how ideas travel in social networks in the Web 2.0 world - the size of a Forest Fire has little to do with the spark that started it, and more to do with the state of the Forest - and other things

This is something I found last year that I think is still relevant when thinking about Web 2.0 successes and strategies.

The idea is that if the network permits the spread of the idea, then virtually anyone can spread it. It's from research by Duncan Watts and colleagues at Columbia University which is an important development on Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point theory of key influential individuals being the ones marketers should seek out and influence to influence others.

Perhaps so called 'influentials' are still ones we should find, understand, enlist in co-creation and help us resonate ideas for brands, because they may be best placed to resonate an idea across networks of their own, but perhaps we would increase our chances of success if we spend more time and effort on making sure the network itself is 'idea-ready'. Like on a tight drum skin, a slight tap can make a great noise, but if the skin is loose, a big sound can still be made, but it takes a lot more effort.

A case in point is Lonelygirl15 from a few years ago, who became a Web 2.0 case study after she achieved webwide coverage for apparently no reason other than she hit a community ready and willing to transport her broadcasts across the globe. Arguably, she wasn't that influential herself, but thanks to the resonance potential of the network, she became famous. Similarly the Free Hugs guy, Juan Mann, may have hit the internet fame magic formula of, good content + tuned network = web 2.0 success.

This is one of the ideas listed on the Harvard Business Review's breakthrough ideas for 2007 in HBR ideacast number 29.

Also on this podcast are sections on:

1. New thoughts on marketing brands from Harry Potter - essentially, brands might be more successful if they grow and mature with their audiences rather than segment audiences by age and attempt to talk to
people only of that age - upside is increased loyalty, less likelihood of switching at key ages and lower costs of acquisition of new consumers.

2. 'Conflicted consumers' - an interesting idea that beneath the loyalty figures in most companies, there is a stealth segment of consumers who have ethical concerns about the company and are poised to bolt if a competitor comes along with a more viable alternative emerges - apparently 1 in 4 consumers bought things from companies whose ethical reputation they deemed to poor or very poor but unlike hardcore ethical consumers who go green or go without, they continue to purchase but have a latent potential to be an upsurge of bad word of mouth. Lesson here for me is stay ahead of the ethical trends and take leadership - catch-up or staying with the pace of trend may be going too slow to stay in the game.

3. An observation that people who are political or social conservatives tend to have more children, who in turn have more children, which means consumer culture demographics

4. The folly of accountable-ism is the last idea - the increasing bureaucratisation of morality and how that ends up working against efforts to maintain moral and ethical behaviour in an organisation.

Converse and (PRODUCT) RED doing good brightly

I saw these Converse shoes in a Hype shop window in Bondi Junction, in Sydney the other night. The brand is owned by Nike and it was one of the founder brands of Bono's (PRODUCT) RED initiative launched a few years ago in the US and UK.

The original brands in at the start of (PRODUCT) RED were Gap, American Express, Motorola, Armani and Converse. Gap did some t-shirts - INSPI(RED), was one design I saw pictures of David Beckham and Elle MacPherson wearing in a couple of different issues of mX the free Sydney commuter paper - American Express did a red card for use in UK and USA, Motorola did a red RAZR phone, Armani did some red sunglasses and Converse started their PRODUCT (RED) product line with some mud decorated Chuck Taylors. Apple have joined too offering (PRODUCT) RED bits of the iPod family, but Converse has, it seems, been the only brand to fairly consistently support the effort in Australia with a number of outings to market with new products.

A brand that innovates and gets to market fast and fairly easily might appear to be an ideal partner for a cause brand looking to have a lot of consistent market presence over a long time, with the message being kept relatively fresh. Though Apple may have had their (PRODUCT) RED Nano out for some time, it feels like Converse have been more active in their raising of the charity's profile.

What really caught my attention was the bright and optimistic nature of Converse's brand behaviour in this particular cause minded effort. Given the brand's stereotypical emo associations, the latest red effort could have been a whole lot heavier. It definitely isn't gloomy. It's very positive, rallying almost. It made me think about social efforts that are made, or could be made, by the commercial world again too, so thanks Converse and (PRODUCT) RED for bringing that very worthy but necessary point back into my head.

Prada spring/summer 2008 launch

This is a film called 'Trembled Blossoms' made by Prada to launch their Spring/Summer 2008 collection. The illustrator James Jean also worked on designs for the collection and the catwalk shows.

Apparently, the more alien a model looks, the more likely it is they will achieve super-model status. This takes that to the extreme to a parallel universe of some kind of place of perpetual and beautiful cycles of metamorphosis, much like how some would describe Prada is, as a brand.

Typical of the Prada sensibility and brand ethos, the film is not confrontational, but provocative and inviting, and as irrelevant as it might appear to be, I think the film is a good pointer for brands when they try to break out of traditional ways of communicating. Simple, universal, positively inspiring.

the facebook backlash

I saw this on Howies' t-shirt of the week link. A comment that goes with it on their site suggests people should be out doing something more interesting instead.