The fan spins harder and faster online March 19, 2010

This ongoing event regarding Nestle’s Facebook page is an interesting example of the main problem  brands face online: giving control of the brand image, message and other assets to the consumer.

Basically, Nestle warned fans of their Facebook page that if they had an altered version of the company’s logo as a profile pic their comments would be deleted.  A possibly valid point , were it not for the sarcastic and aggressive reaction to user protests by the brand.  This situation offers two very important points for brands and marketers:

1)      If you built it, they will come, and make it their own: The internet and most things in this age of ‘remix’ are all about personal appropriation, mixing, and sharing. Even if you created the Facebook page, the internet is, for all effects, free. Censorship doesn’t work here. If the customer personalized the brand’s assets in a positive way, appreciate it as proof of a personal connection. If you feel the brand is being affected, politely notify your audience. Which goes to the next point…

2)      Don’t fight your customers: the brand will always be Goliath and the consumer David, which kind of sets the stage for the brand losing most, if not all, of public battles. Don’t go on the offensive with sarcasm (much less if you are a brand associated with, among other things, candy and baby food). Brands are expected to behave like anybody else on the internet – that is, they are expected to share and interact positively according to what positive is for the community they belong to.

The fan spins harder and faster online…

The Bottom of the Pyramid November 11, 2009

(originally published on The House of Naked website )

Back in the 90’s few people thought that in Bangladesh, a country where almost half the population lives on a dollar or less a day, there could’ve been a profitable cell phone industry: when Iqbal Quadir was looking for investors in the U.S., one cell phone company executive reportedly said that they were “not the Red Cross.”

Finally, in 1997, Grameenphone started operations as a joint venture between Mr. Quadir, the Norwegian Telenor and Grameen Bank, the pioneering micro-finance entity. It achieved profitability in 2000, and by 2005 the company had 250,000 retailers, 22 million subscribers, and 50 million cell phones. More importantly, it brought connectivity to remote villages, as well as a source of income for women operating ‘village pay phones.’ By 2012 it is expected that close to half the population will have a cell phone, a notable feat in a country that had one of the lowest telephone penetration rates in the world (before cell phones, it was not uncommon to wait 15 years to get a land line).

Bangladesh is not the only example of the rapid expansion of the cell phone. In Africa, mobile penetration was about 30% by the end of 2007 and is estimated to reach beyond 50% by 2010. Countries around the world are experiencing similar growth. Lack of infrastructure – particularly electricity, widespread illiteracy and the fact that these people live on $2,000 or less per year were some of the objections to this kind of venture. Yet, they have all proven baseless, and many companies are now eager to enter the inmense untapped market of those in the ‘Bottom of the Pyramid.’

C.K. Prahalad popularized the term 5 years ago in his book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, in which he outlined how multinational corporations could operate profitably in these markets, stimulating development through commerce, and without engaging in charity. The cell phone is perhaps the best case study because of its immediate effects. For starters, it is accepted that, on average, a 10 percent increase in cell phone penetration helps increase a country’s GDP by .8 percent. Also, the cell phone has come to replace entire institutions: for example, while here in the U.S. we are just starting to pay or make financial transactions using cell phones, this has been a common practice in developing countries for years, cell phone credits sometimes being more valuable than actual currency.

What’s really interesting is how MNCs have moved to cater to these markets: instead of just transferring their products or services from developed countries, they have worked to understand the complexities of these new customers, building products for them. For example, Nokia has a team of anthropologists and designers that visit low income communities around the world to study consumer behavior, and have even opened centers called ‘Nokia Open Studios’ in some of these places, where residents describe, sketch, even test cell phones that are tailored to their needs.

Apart from Nokia, there have been more companies actively courting these consumers. In India, BP engineered a smokeless stove called Oorja that runs on biofuels, looking to replace traditional stoves that run on wood or dung, which are more expensive to maintain and also pose serious health issues. Also in India, the Tata Group has unveiled the Nano, a $2,500 car that offers millions a chance at secure and efficient transportation for the first time.

But innovation runs both ways. Netbooks, fulfilling a demand for inexpensive yet durable and functional laptops here in the U.S., were born as part of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project seeking to provide affordable and effective computing to children around the world.

The market at the bottom of the pyramid is huge: most of the world’s population, around 4 billion people, lives on $2 or less a day. Yet, even with all of the opportunities for companies, it is challenging to enter these markets without clear guidance and a deep commitment to understand the local consumer and work with local partners. Here at Naked we are happy of our past and current work with major brands on projects around the world, actively engaging these markets. We are also proud of their determination to build lasting relationships with these consumers.

Mr. Prahalad said: “If we stop thinking of the poor as victims or as a burden and start recognizing them as resilient and creative entrepreneurs and value-conscious consumers, a whole new world of opportunity will open up.”

We say: people are your partners, wherever they are.

Great Planners, Great Thinkers, Great Minds… Great Eyes? August 4, 2009

I am researching the planning / strategic models used in the best ad agencies out there, how effective they are in driving culturally-relevant work, and how applicable they are to the public diplomacy practice. Part of this research deals with studying the actual conceptualization of insight as guided by the agency’s philosophy, or to make it sound smarty-fancy, the epistemology of planners: before asking ourselves which kind of insight and how and where to acquire it, maybe we can also try establish what it should be? In our conversation, Dr. Erica David, Sr. Anthropologist at CP+B, told me how she and her colleagues try to approach insight visually. I don’t think that any planner / strategist can really work a concept without considerable use of visualization, but a visual approach for Dr. David seemed to go beyond trying to use pictures to represent ideas, even using them as complements: it dealt with finding the big idea, in this case the cultural tension of a brand or product, as a visual. From the point of view of modern media and consumer society, heavily reliant on imagery, it only seems natural that a certain visual element could be the principal point of interaction and experience between a brand and a consumer. But maybe the approach itself is important for planners to grasp the big picture?

In his lecture to TED, Tom Wujec explains the many ways in which our brain makes sense of what we see. He covered three major features of this process. First, an area called the ventral stream helps recognize “who” or “what” an object might be: that round thing over there is recognized as a basketball and that other round thing as my little cousin. A second important area is the dorsal stream, which helps you locate objects spatially, allowing you to, for example, navigate your room after turning off the lights without hitting most of the stuff on the way to the bed. Finally, visuals are given meaning within the limbic system, where important functions like emotion, behavior, and long term memory are also handled:  that is why an object may trigger a bad memory which in turn triggers a negative sensation.  Mr. Wujec argues that certain visually-based approaches to working may help us reach more complete insight simply because of the mental meaning intertwined with how we process visuals. ”We make meaning by seeing, by an act of visual interrogation,” affirms Mr. Wujec. A great lecture to watch and get us thinking, literally.

No You Won’t Fool the Children of the (Twitter) Revolution June 17, 2009

Excluding the  bloodshed and uncertainty that the Iranian people are living through right now, I have to confess the excitement I feel at witnessing such an important moment in world politics unfold; of course, this is due in part to us outside of Iran being able to participate in the revolution by following on real time the events on the internet, particularly through Twitter.

In this interesting Q&A, NYU professor Clay Shirky notes that ” it seems pretty clear that … this is it. The big one. This is the first revolution that has been catapulted onto a global stage and transformed by social media. I’ve been thinking a lot about the Chicago demonstrations of 1968 where they chanted “the whole world is watching.” Really, that wasn’t true then. But this time it’s true … and people throughout the world are not only listening but responding. They’re engaging with individual participants, they’re passing on their messages to their friends, and they’re even providing detailed instructions to enable web proxies allowing Internet access that the authorities can’t immediately censor.”

We had seen the effects of cell phone and instant communication as a leveraging tool that promotes transparency, dialogue, and mobilization among activists, but what is going right now is truly distinct in the macro linkage that technology allows for globally. Does this mean that any future revolution will be instantaneously opened to be  the world’s revolution? Maybe, and that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

PUMA Magic April 15, 2009

Puma Lift. from CCW – Lab on Vimeo.

I’m Back March 21, 2009

I have been away two weeks, which doesn’t do good for my career as a blogger. eh.

I was away in Puerto Rico for a week, and recently spent three days covering the amazing ABC PODER Reconciliation Forum as a blogger. I attended very interesting talks, met very sharp people and heard their stories, and even got to chat with Desmond Tutu.

To read my entries,  visit http://reconciliationforum.tumblr.com/

Microsoft’s Touchy Future March 3, 2009

Wow.

For anybody that marveled at the type of display interface seen in the movie Minority Report, this new video by Microsoft will probably provoke a deep thump in the chest along with the feeling of ‘gimme gimme’ a six year-old has come Christmas time.

In this video, Microsoft imagines what the world will be like in 2019.

And you thought playing with an iPhone felt cool.

Video: Future Vision Montage

[ Istartedsomething via VentureBeat ]