Emotional Rescue

Monday, 15 May 2006 - Montreal, Canada

Presentation Summary

A presentation at the Canadian Marketing Association’s National Convention: From Information Economy, Knowledge Economy, Interruption Marketing (aka the Mass Market), Permission Marketing, the Experience Economy, the Attention Economy… to the ATTRACTION ECONOMY.

From Information Economy, Knowledge Economy, Interruption Marketing (aka the Mass Market), Permission Marketing, the Experience Economy, the Attention Economy… to the ATTRACTION ECONOMY.

Attraction is about moving from irreplaceable to irresistible.

In the Attraction Economy the Consumer is Boss.

Competition, choice and technology have put power in her hands. MySpace and CurrentTV. Yahoo and Google. Rocketboom and Virgin Galactic. This is just the beginning…

Manufacturers and marketers are confused. Consumers are not. There is no convergence battle.

There’s convergence and divergence. An MP3-video-camera- GPS-phone this morning. Dylan on vinyl this afternoon. Da Vinci Code in bed tonight. It’s And / And.

NOTE: Bob Dylan has a new job as a satellite radio DJ.
NOTE: Starbucks is now into movies and books.

Attraction ghosts commodification. It’s now about what she wants when, where and how she wants. If stuff is free, she’ll take it. Wrap it with must-have extras and she’ll pay – because she wants it.

FACT: “Everything is evaluated as good or bad within a quarter of a second of seeing it,” John Bargh, New York University psychologist.

10 WAYS TO WIN IN THE ATTRACTION ECONOMY

1: Revere the Big Idea

Ideas design the future. BTIs across content, context and contact. Ideas big enough and simple enough to be brought to life over time in many or any media.

Don’t worship knowledge. Live for ideas. Knowledge workers have to get out from under information overload and into insight and foresight.

Big simple ideas move entire markets:

• Cirque du Soleil: No animals / No high priced clowns / No 3 rings; no risk – artistry shows and $80 tickets.
• Google: not all WebPages are created equal.
• Wikipedia: free encyclopaedia anyone can edit.
• MySpace: add networking to web expression.
• My idea?!! Someone design a simple all-purpose remote control!!!

Big Ideas are surprisingly obvious. NASA spent millions trying to develop a pen that would write in space. The Russians simply used a pencil!!

2: Drip with Emotion

Commodification has frozen the heat out of brands. Differentiation is beyond reason – beyond efficiency, attribute, benefit, performance, functionality. Tablestakes all of them!!

FACT: Emotion, intuition, long-term memories and unconscious motivations control as much as 85% of our decision-making process. 15% for logic to battle over.

Humans are powered by emotion, not by reason. We live and die for love. That’s where premium value lives. Ideas that burn with emotion.

Neurologist Donald Calne: “Emotion leads to action, while reason leads to conclusions.”

3: Sisomo the Screen

I hope you enjoy the Sisomo book. It’s about what’s Next, It’s about getting to the future first.

Emotional ideas on screen will win. Everywhere!

FACT: 10 years ago the US online audience was two thirds of global internet users. Now it’s less than a quarter.

TV is the heavy lifter in a bigger picture. If TV is dead, we don’t exist. 2.3 billion Households in the world have one. Everyone knows how to use one. People love to watch.

The screen has stepped out of the living room. Into our offices, cars, stores, streets, hands, pockets.

FACT: 60% of us leave our mobiles on while we sleep.

People are spending their lives in and on screens. As they lean forward to work shop and play, screens are morphing. TV is becoming more game-like, mobile phones more TV-like, in-store screens more movie-like – even computer screens are easier to like.

The digital revolution is transforming marketing, entertainment and technology. The energy field is sight, sound and motion. Saatchi & Saatchi invented sisomo as a new word to open this new world.

• sisomo puts the action into attraction.
• sisomo is where art meets science.
• sisomo puts ideas and potent connections ahead of technology.
• sisomo brings screens to life in emotional and compelling ways.
• sisomo brings technology, marketing and creativity together. This intersection is the future of advertising.
• sisomo inspires new formats, characters and ways for consumers to participate on screen. Multi-layered, multi-purpose stories that consumers can be absorbed by, play with, add to, recreate, and spread virally.

4: sisomo with Story

FORECAST : Danish futurist Rolf Jensen: “The highest-paid person in the first half of this century will be the story-teller. The value of products will depend on the story they tell.”

The challenge for top marketers is to move from master story tellers on TV screens, to story magicians on all screens.

sisomo attracts consumers with engaging, compelling stories. “Communications” don’t connect. The story is an ancient, mysterious, timeless art. Story holds humor, music, characters, everything together. Marketers are caught up in technology and methodology. An engaging story well told is priceless.

sisomo inspires new formats, characters and ways for consumers to participate on screen. Multi-layered, multi-purpose stories that consumers can be absorbed by, play with, add to, recreate, and spread virally.

5: Fill the World with Lovemarks

sisomo is an accelerator to Lovemarks, the future beyond brands. It’s about lives taking over brands.

This is where sight, sound and motion excite mystery, sensuality and intimacy, the DNA of Lovemarks

• Lovemarks have mystery, sensuality and intimacy.
• Lovemarks are built on Love and Respect.
• Lovemarks create Loyalty Beyond Reason.
• Lovemarks are owned by the people who love them, not by companies.
• Lovemarks are more than Irreplaceable. They are irresistible.
• Lovemarks can be everything that people care deeply about. Visit www.lovemarks.com for thousands of examples. Flags, shoes, magazines, breakfast cereals, beer.
• Lovemarks offer huge commercial advantages. We have proof and a unique methodology to measure Lovemarks and emotion.

6: Be a Creative Connector

Account people, media people, creatives and planners are now historical. Creative Connectors are the future. The director / producer model is now a connector / producer model.

The Screen Age is about being a creative connector.

Creative Connectors across media, advertising, marketing, design, entertainment, games, phones, ringtones, activations, instore TV, sound logos, animation, sisomo packaging, you name it.

Creative Connectors of ideas and consumers, insights and brands, time and place.

Everyone is trying to do this case-by-case. Creative connectors inspire loyalty beyond reason across the family of screens.

Only creative connectors give clients unique end-to-end value. The secret is sisomo.

7: Unleash the Inspirational Consumer

The biggest creative force in the world today is the Inspirational Consumer. Traditional marketers call them Influencers, Brand Converts, Fans. The future calls them Inspirational Consumers.

These guardians are extreme. They are the ones who love the brand and fight to turn into a Lovemark. They get there first, tell the story and improve it for free.

NOTE: Muji is launching an international design competition. Anyone in the world can design a new Muji product!!

Wherever you look – Auto / FMCG / Entertainment Design / Media – Inspirational Consumers are creating cars, drugs, movies, games, news, ads, everything!! Firefox and Ohymnews to CurrentTV, WoW and YouTube, they are powered up. No way are they going back in the box. Let them live!!

Interactivity is the new now. All media in 5 years time will be interactive and El Dorado is Lovemarks Online.

FACT: 4 in 10 Americans play video games [AP-AOL Games poll, 2006];

FACT: Canada has the seventh largest Internet audience in the world – 19 million. [comScore Networks, 2006]

FACT: Half of all teenagers in the US have created material for the Web. [Pew Internet Project 2006]

The key is to connect with your brands’ Inspirational Consumers, get them telling and sharing their Lovemarks.

8: Create Theatres of Dream

FACT: Up to 80% of purchase decisions and 50% of brand switching occurs in store.
The store is a huge creative opportunity people keep missing. It’s crying out for mystery, sensuality and intimacy. The challenge is to Lovemark the store, to turn shoppers into buyers.

Pricing there is under siege. Five years ago every retailer was testing price and size formats. Now they’re testing experience-based design. As purchasing migrates online, watch the store transform from trading post to joy centre.

• Supermarket leaders so far. Sunka in Catalonia, Whole Foods. Colette in Paris. Wal-mart in Plano.
• Apple stores: seductive, Kubrickian, low-key.
• Luxury and fashion retailers from Gucci to Louis Vuitton are building signature design stores.

9: Shift the Conversation

Lovemarks and sisomo bring the world in a word.

Find the right language for what you do. The right language creates higher orders of relationship, business, product, service, design, performance. As Alan Webber says: the right language can create whole new paradigms and categories.

Visual language – sisomo language – will be huge. Art and business is the next great partnership. The likes of Takashi Murakami designing products and store interiors for Vuitton and Marc Jacob.

Change the language, you can change the conversation.

Car guys ask each other: “How much metal did you move?” With Toyota: we changed the question: “How much does the metal move you?”

10: Make the World a Better Place

The biggest question in business is what comes after profit? Simple answer: “the role of business is to make the world a better place for everyone. It’s a powerful, provocative, inescapable statement.

Business is the engine of human progress. Marketers steer that engine in the right direction. Gen X-Box will put away the bad guys. They’ll fight for sustainability. All will know sugar is good for cars and bad for kids.

Your job is to leave the world better than you found it.

It’s never too late to do the right thing.

Three take outs:

• Use Lovemarks as a navigator . Create Loyalty beyond Reason. Check out the Lovemarks books and website, home of inspirational Consumers. They can see the future!!
• Use sisomo as an accelerator – a connector, simulator, educator and transformer. It is the two-billion, bright eyed under 18-year olds who will champion the fight for a better world.
• Use inspiration as a motivator – be an Inspirer! Philosopher Dan Dennett on happiness: “the secret is to find something bigger than yourself and then devote your life to it.” Inspiration transforms return on investment into return on involvement – the future of business.