ARE YOU BOK ENOUGH?By Elizaveta Senatorova

for Creative Industry minor

1

CONTEN

T

Page 2 Week

2

The rig

ht and

wrong ways

of using

social m

edia

Page 4 Body

Music pro

ject per

sona

Page 5 Work

field orie

ntation

@Creative

Amsterdam

Page 7 Week

3

Cross media C

oncepti

ng

Page 8 Week

4

Community bu

ilding & co-

creation

Page 11 Week

5

Transmedia s

torytell

ing

Page 13 Week

6

Inspirin

g examples

of WOM

Week 2 The right and wrong ways of using social media

A brand that has used social media in the right way.

Levi's has created a social shopping channel aimed at 18- to 34-year-olds. It has partnered with Facebook to introduce a social media tool that lets consumers shop for jeans from the so-cial network. The Levi's brand is one of the first companies to integrate with Facebook's “So-cial Plugins” tool. The platform, powered by Open Graph, allows Levi's to create pages for differ-ent jeans models on Facebook that consumers can “like.” The information about these “likes” will appear in user's news feed. A recommendation widget can be also used to show products to friends.Levi's has also installed a “friend store” on their site, where consumers logged into Facebook can see a list of their friends' favorite Levi's products. This approach is very successful because it totally dif-fers from having a fan page. It is a new customized shopping experience for anyone who fancies Le-vi's and also a nice combination of social networks and social commerce. As the Body Music Com-pany I would definitely activate social plugins on the Facebook page and the website to allow visitors to buy tickets for concerts and songs/remixes. I would also let visitors choose their favourite com-position, vote for it and inform their friends in social networks that they liked it or simply share it.

A brand that has used social media in the wrong way.

A while ago Greenpeace decided to fight against a chocolate-maker Nestle, which destroys rainforests for palm oil and started the whole campaign for which Kit Kat chocolate name was mocked up into Killer on the logo. Some Facebook users have taken it upon themselves to change their profile pictures to the new logo and leave some negative comments on Nestle's page. Some time later Nestle started deleting their comments and informed that if fans use an altered version of the company’s logo as their profile picture, their comments will be deleted. The immediate reaction from fans followed: “Don’t tell us what to do, Big Brother!”; "The fact they're cen-soring the comments and pictures is awful. I had a link removed. The link was to a boycott Nestle fb group, which contained information on the formula milk scandal. I was told putting this on their page was 'spamming'."; "Even a dumb ass company like [Nestle] wouldn't get such an idiot to be their public voice." Nestle replied that the logo is our intellectual property: “This is our page, we set the rules. You don’t like it? There’s the door.” These words became known web-wide the same second as they were post-

ed and Nestle got a lot of negative PR.

Whoever was typing on behalf of Nestle on the Facebook page, he sounded offensive, sar-castic and antagonistic. The problem was not that Nestle was trying to set rules on its Face-book page, but the customer insult. Weather it's Nestle or a music company like Body Mu-sic, not just any manager should be allowed to monitor the page, but the real community manager who minds his manners, knows how to engage people and solve the conflict. Any company that maintains a Facebook page should learn from Nestle’s mistake.

Q u o t e s :

"The fact they're censoring the comments and pictures is aw-ful. I had a link removed. The link was to a boycott Nestle fb group, which contained infor-mation on the formula milk scandal. I was told putting this on their page was 'spamming'."

"Even a dumb ass company like [Nestle] wouldn't get such an idiot to be their public voice," says commenter Helen Constable.

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BODY

MUSIC

project persona

Work field orientation @ CREATIVE AMSTERDAM I was excited to be invited for the CREATIVE AMSTERDAM conference on May 11-13 2011. First of all, it was the first time Creative Amsterdam was organized, so I couldn’t find many reviews on-line and build any expectations; but the programme published on-line was completely breathtaking! True stars (among others, Hans Brouwer (MassiveMusic), Pieter Henket (a photographer of Lady Gaga), Rem D. Koolhaas (Unites Nude), Rob Heilbron (Sapph) were invited to speak at ‘t Pakhuis de Zwijger. It’s a building behind the central sta-tion, easy to reach and with enough space.

The main focus of the event was on the booming storytelling and crowd funding concepts, design and architecture, how Dutch entrepreneurs and creatives do business in China and the US. I was definitely fascinated by the idea to hear more about storytelling and crowd funding.

The project that inspired me most of all and contained both fea-tures of storytelling and crowd funding was THE SOCHI PRO-JECT by Photographer Rob Hornstra and writer/filmmaker Ar-nold van Bruggen. In 2014,the Olympic Games will take place in Sochi, Russia. Rob and Arnold want to document the changes in the Sochi area throughout five years in a form of a photo and film reportage.

Nowadays, no newspaper has money for long-term documentary journalism and field creatives have to overcome a lot of obstacles to launch and promote the subject, which is interesting for them. Rob and Arnold believe in the future of documentary journalism, that is why they have chosen a DIY approach when they self-pro-duce cards, books, exhibitions and the website. No publishers are involved. And indeed, as Rob says: “All starts with a story.”,but who would agree to publish a even a nice story in a completely white glossy cover with no recommendations and summary behind? But that is the whole concept of these guys: it is a documentary story that needs to be read from the beginning to the end. Why would you write what the story is about on the cover as people would already know what it is about? Logical, is not it?

Even though, some magazines might buy the story from time to time, Rob and Arnold realized that the most effective way to collect money is by crowd funding. As guys say: “For the Sochi Project, we want to travel to the region around Sochi at least twice a year for a month until 2014. Each trip costs us approximately € 15,000. Of this amount, around 20% is spent on travel costs, 20% on accom-modation and living expenses, 20% on material costs, 20% on an assistant/translator and 20% on general website, design and pro-ject-related costs.”5

A small exhibition out of the newspaper by Rob Hornstra and Arnold van Bruggen

Gold, silver and bronze bicy-cles for award winners

€ 22,179 were donated in the first year of the project and the sum increased to € 24,506 in the second year. They started with the first and second circle of acquaintances including rela-tives, friends and fellows, and and continued with a proposal to become a Bronze, Silver or Gold donor on their website. As a Gold donor you are asked to donate more than €1.000 per year and “you will receive a special collec-tors’ box for five original prints and articles. For every year you are a gold donor, you will receive a numbered hand-printed image from Rob Hornstra and an arti-cle specially written by Arnold van Bruggen as a gift. After five years you could be the owner of a unique collectors’ item.” Such “tricks” help The Sochi Project develop and build a community of true supporters.

The thing that amazed me most of all was the newspaper idea, when basically anyone can re-ceive a newspaper with photos, some text and the instruction how to turn it into a real wall-paper. In the end, anyone can own a small exhibition.

Two more inspiring presenta-tions were given by Remco de Jong about Favela Painting Pro-ject (http://bit.ly/kmPBlr ) and Ilse Van Velzen about Mobile Cinema in Congo (http://bit.ly/krVzL0). I am sure you can find more information about the lat-ter using any of the search en-gines.

In addition, I wanted to high-light the fact that Creative Amsterdam arranged the OPEN STUDIO NIGHT when students could sign up for the interview or meeting with the representative of one of the creative companies based in Amsterdam to show their portfolio or CV. But apart from students, anyone was welcome to visit these companies to see how they work and ask ques-tions.

To sum up, I would like to say that everything was arranged with somewhat a Dutch ap-proach. To give some exam-ples:

When the website states that the registration is over, you ac-tually can mail or call someone

from the stuff and they will put your name in the list of attendees. Even though, students are not allowed to attend the main lectures (unless they have paid an enormous sum of money for the normal ticket), nobody controls it and students make the majority of the audience “illegally”. The staff will nev-er bother to bring additional chairs from the empty au-ditorium to the one which is completely overcrowded. But you can do it yourself. You can talk to anyone, to any star, any entrepreneur as if you have known him/them for ages. We are equal.

Absolute relax in everything. Technical problems at every lecture? Take it easy!

Me biking from company to company during the Open Studio Night

Week 3 Cross Media Concepting

At some point (in the near past) newspapers and TV stopped playing a vital role in people's lives and new media became their big rival. Then smart minds realized that cooperation between media (on multiple platforms) could help to reach new target groups and expand the business or simply create a new one. One medium might serve better than the other one, and at the same time the combination of it with the third one would just be perfect to maximize the impact of a campaign/idea. NEON is a brilliant example of the print media company which developed a crossmedia concept. NEON is the Germany’s leading youth magazine, an offshoot of the “Stern family”, which is the most widely-read magazine. NEON consists of six sections: Wild World, See, Feel, Knowledge, Buying and Leisure. The target group of NEON is both men and women from 20 to 35. They are mainly educated cosmopolitans. NEON also has a website NEON.de, which reaches 110,000 users every month. It is full of user-generated content on any topic, contributors and readers can easily interact on that platform and get in touch with N E O N's journalists. NEON went even further and publishes the reader’s texts from time to time. Thus, NEON created a great platform where everyone can build his/her own strong ID and interact with other people. They can create their own profile, write blogs, discuss different issues in the forum. As well as that NEON is present on Facebook, Myspace and Twitter. One of the chief editors Michael Ebert said that the online sector increases and it is the whole new market, which gives fantastic opportu-nities to journalism. One of NEON’s goals is to link online to print. NEON magazine and its site complement each other as parts of one brand. Thus, this is a good example of Depending crossmedia concept (it depends on ena-bled media which cannot be separated.) Readers are no longer only consumers but also producers of the content, who form the brand of NEON and become its active supporters. However, NEON readers don't have to be active on all NEON's media platforms: they can simply stick to the one they prefer.This is the way NEON makes their customers loyal – it allows anyone reach the content at the platform which suits them best time/price/interests-wise.

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Many people join a brand community online to gain access to free content, for fun or just to support a cause.Nowadays brands work hard to attract people who share the same core values, provide useful content to them and inspire fan action. However, Facebook, Twitter and other social media communities entirely differ from broadcast mediums and direct mail, requiring co-creation and a lot of engagement with com-munity members. In return, companies might be happy to get customers with a sense of moral responsi-bility (which produces collective action in times of threat to the community), which are loyal and protec-tive disseminators of the Brand’s story and benefits, who are likely to recruit more brand defendors for the community. Zappos, Dell and Jones Soda are excellent examples of brands who are taking community building seri-ously.

ZAPPOS Zappos has got really big on Twitter. Zappos has a dedicated page for Twitter on its site that's linked to from every other page on the site with the words What are Zappos employees doing right now? Over 198 employees tweet about what they are doing at work and many other interesting things. There is even an employee leaderboard that shows who's on Twitter and how many follow-ers they have. Tony, the CEO, has five times as many followers as anyone else: 1,823,763 Followers. Remarkably, Tony follows 377,814 twiter accounts, too.

Week 4 Communitybuilding & Co-creation

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By using Twitter, Zappos can reach an early-adopter, influencing audience and of course its own em-ployees. It’s a genuine community which engages both customers and employees, letting them inspire each other! http://twitter.zappos.com/

Jones SodaJones Soda has established such a strong brand community that members will do anything to find new experiences with the brand. Initially, the distribution of this soda was limited to those who would really appreciate an alternative to Cola, Sprite or Pepsi. Thus, Jones Soda appeared in places populated by its target audience like surf/skate/music/alternative fashion shops.This limitation allowed Jones Soda to gain unique consumers who were spreading the news about a new rebel soda and creating the community of those special ones who knew where to get the product. There is a photo (created by one of the community members) printed on every Jones Soda bottle. Over 43,000 photos can be viewed and rated on jonessoda.com. Each photo is a unique experience of the fan with the brand.Jones Soda has also launched The Product Rater, which allows site visitors to rate flavours on a scale from 1 to 5 and share their opinion about Jones Soda products. This simple and amazing tool helps the company to understand the needs of its community and get free recommendations from people who buy its products. In addition to it, the site also offers Message Boards which works like a forum with over 37.000 messages posted by community members. And finally, in collaboration with frappr.com, Jones Soda created the Jones Soda Map, where community members can mark their geographical position and see if there are any other Jones Soda Community members around. http://www.jonessoda.com

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DELL

Embracing social media is a huge undertaking, and involves a large investment. Dell didn’t shy away from these obstacles, instead they’ve gone above and beyond, truly cultivating a cross-platform com-munity.They’ve created multiple Twitter handles, a network of blogs, and are very active on Facebook.Dell is also one of the few companies to publicly state that they created a return on investment from Twitter. Apparently, Dell’s social media efforts help create “$1 million in revenue“. Dell Computers has recently announced that it's sales has exceeded $3 million through links from one of its Twitter ac-counts. This is an incredible example of social media ROI! The @DellOutlet (for USA customers) ac-count has more than 1,595,573 followers on Twitter and posts links to discounted computer hardware.

Dell was lucky to combine a listening tool (helping with problems and discovering new business and product developement opportunities) and e-commerce which appeared to be a strong incentive for the online engagement with the brand. In addition, Dell has a separate brand community website http://en.community.dell.com/ .

Week 5 Transmedia storytelling

Transmedia storytelling is the future of marketing. And those who can span across formats and share their expertise will stand out in an age of Digital Relativity. Steve Rubel, Edelman Digital

What is transmedia storytelling? Brian Clark from GMD Studios said: “Transmedia storytelling" is the label for when you're creating the story as the primary storytellers and intending to tell you story across multiple channels.” Lance Weiler defined it as a “storytelling without bounds.”The basic concept of transmedia storytelling is that rather than using different media channels to retell the same story, these channels (including their communities and functions) are used to communicate dif-ferent elements of the story. It works as a puzzle. Each puzzle detail is the interesting self-sufficing story, but if you bring all details together you will see the more complex story. The story is fragmented into dif-ferent pieces and each platform does what it does best with them, so in the end everything is connected.

Transmedia storytelling will be extremely actual in the future as it allows everyone to immerse, partici-pate and experience the story and its environment from a different angle (media platform) which suits the person best. The story can be told with the help of text, audio, images, video and make customers more loyal by letting them taste different pieces (aspects) of the same delicious cake (story). This helps to find the target groups of the story perfectly and attract not only the initial/existing target audience, but also the new one.

Several months ago I was an intern at Philips and participated in creation of one of the most successful transmedia projects ever – Nigel&Victoria. Nigel and Victoria is a romantic comedy from Philips in 6 epi-sodes, which is told with the help of Youtube, Facebook (both the global Philips page and Nigel&Victoria page) and Philips Live. PHILIPS also activated the on-line application on Facebook and is working on the one for mobile phones now. In addition, dozens of newspapers and on-line magazines were enchanted by this project and wrote/published videos about how the comedy was screened, what the actors felt like, so all followers had a chance to see behind the scenes. And the most devoted ones could even participate in a contest arranged by Philips to become the new Victoria or follow the movie stars on Twitter.

The important aspect of this project is that all media are connected/linked between each other and that the most dedicated members of the community can become part of the project and influence it. The story is told in 6 episodes, but the approach of presenting them on different channels is different and conse-quently attracts different people. All pages are connected to Youtube, where people have the chance to watch all the series. The Facebook community actively discusses what will be in the next episode and de-bates about what they like about this or that Philips product presented in the episode. Photos and videos from different castings are also available on these pages. Whereas, the global Philips page just publishes the story of each episode as text and provides the link to the video.

Now Philips is busy preparing the second season of the movie and the story will go on. But the viewers will be as able to enjoy each episode independently as catch up with the whole story (due to the small introduction of the prior context in the beginning of every episode and some text that explains what the situation is under the video.)

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You can find more about the project here:

http://live.philips.com/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhrwbEJqyks http://www.facebook.com/NigelandVictoria?sk=app_57675755167

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Week 6 Inspiring examples of word-of-mouth marketing

Searching for inspiring examples of word-of-mouth marketing, I remembered the great stories of Mole-s k i n e and Ben & Jerry's.

MoleskineOnce I saw a nice notebook on my friend’s table and asked what company produced it. She w a s truly surprised with my questions and said: “What, don’t you recognize Moleskine? It’s famous all round the world, because all creative and artistic people want to have it. That’s why it is kind of expensive. And a century ago different writers, travelers and artists like Vincent van G o g h were using them for their creative ideas and sketches.” Surprisingly, more or less the s a m e story was written on Moleskine’s website when I decided to look this company up, and t h e n I found a small brochure with the history of the company inside the first Moleskine n o t e - book I bought. And I must admit that the nice story behind the brand (a history of art-ists and big thinkers) seriously influenced my decision to purchase this notebook. Moleskine’s w o r d - of-mouth marketing has long-lasting effect as this great brand story leaves room to explore and discover and provide a bit of mystery. Moleskine acts really smart to exploit associa-t i o n s which are conjured up in people’s minds when they hear “Moleskine” (like travelling around the world, being an intellectual) and develop more stories around the brand which could be later told from fans to new fans word-of-mouth. Moleskine visualizes the new stories, so it can reach even more people. T h e s e are nice examples: http://www.moleskine.com/about_us/news/reading_collec-t i o n . php http://www.moleskine.com/about_us/news/sense_the_place.php

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Ben & Jerry’sThe other example, which came to my mind, is a real “viral” word-of-mouth effect of Free Cone Day by Ben & Jerry’s, which an annual event held between late March and early May, when ice cream is given away at Ben & Jerry’s stores for free. Over one million free cones are given away each year! And many of the people who got the free ice cream just heard about Free Cone Day just a day before from their friends on-line or simply on their way to work from a random ice cream eater.

Such a campaign to give away free tickets to the concert which is held the same day or free promo CD’s could create some buzz around Body Music and attract more people to the concerts and to become part of the on-line community.

As we can see, great word-of-mouth campaigns can be both short and long term; but only stories which are human, simple and clear and don’t overpromise can be retold endlessly. I suggest that Body Music could create such a word-of-mouth campaign. Since Asia is one of the target markets of Body Music and DJ’s are doing really well touring in Indonesia and nearby countries; Body Music could try to create some media buzz about two cool Dutch DJ’s who conquered Asia with their crazy house music. It is a true fact, which is unfortunately not used by the company yet in any of its messages. If this exotic story would stand behind the brand name, many people would retell it to their friends and create brand awareness.

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Free Cone Day in Stockholm, Sweden

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