Fishburn Hedges

30.11.2011

I attended the fantastic iq2 if conference last weekend, which featured talks on a range of topics, from the future of sleep to creating sustainable architecture in Antarctica. However, the highlights for me were views on current and future marketing trends, and considering how these could be applied to the work we do at Fishburn Hedges.

Paul Kemp-Robertson, co-founder and editorial director at quarterly marketing and technology magazine Contagious, gave a thought-provoking talk entitled “Brands and the Economics of the Free”. He eloquently described our industry’s past mistake of viewing the audiences we are trying to reach as “voracious machines” of consumerism, which resulted  in marketing strategies more suitable for robots than people.

But he argued that there has been a fundamental shift in the marketer/consumer dynamic as internet usage has grown. Gone are the days when marketers and PRs were the all-powerful influencers of consumer behaviour. The democratic power of the internet has meant that it is no longer fashion editors setting trends. It’s the so-called “voracious” consumers,  blogging, tweeting and consequently pushing marketing and PR professionals to respond to their needs.

There’s no longer room for the marketers’ monologue – it’s dialogue or nothing. Consumers expect to be engaged and the companies that refuse to do so will quickly fall behind.

Kemp-Robertson pointed out several recent successful marketing and PR campaigns – the customisable Heinz Soup tin for which people were willing to pay a premium; the Electrolux campaign to raise awareness of plastic in the sea; and most notably, the Levi’s “Go Forth” campaign, in which the clothing company poured money into the regeneration of Braddock, an ailing American town. It funded a library renovation and tried to drum up interest among businesses  in operating from Braddock. All the while, Levi’s documented this journey on a very successful YouTube microsite.

The Levi’s campaign in particular is interesting as it blurs the boundaries of a marketing campaign. It combines elements of marketing, PR and corporate social responsibility not just to tell a story, but to give the audience a chance to make their own story. The role of the company becomes more one of content aggregation and funding than all-knowing dictator. Due to the new state of power enjoyed by our erstwhile audiences, Kemp-Robertson believes it is inappropriate –  and even inaccurate – to use the word “consumer” to describe these people.

This was a constant theme in discussions about marketing and brand engagement throughout the conference. Matt Jones, of London design consultancy Berg, cited writer JC Hertz’s view that when writing a design document, every instance of “user” or “consumer” should be replaced with “player”.

Chris Sanderson, co-founder of trend forecasters The Future Laboratory, echoed this view, saying that we now live in a “design, download and do it yourself” culture. This is true of everything for the modern “consumer”, from how they engage with politics to how they interact with brands.

As an industry, I think we’d do well to start thinking of our audiences as “players”, to imagine, when creating content, what’s in it for them. What’s their incentive to engage with our companies, our clients? Of course, that’s just a starting point. If Sanderson’s predictions are correct, businesses will begin to change their entire organisational structures in order to allow consumers the room to bring their disruptive ideas and innovative thinking to the table.

Here at Fishburn Hedges, we try to embrace disorder, and roll with the punches in an often unpredictable industry. With the changing nature of these anarchic, collaborative and opinionated consumers, however, it seems that we may have to come to terms with even greater disorder  as the modus operandi of business.

http://www.iq2ifconference.com/