Schizophrenic? Or just tired of all the yada yada about the crisis...

(Sorry, only in Dutch... Here's an article posted on the tongue-in-cheek business blog www.925.nl)

‘De Economische Crisis creeert Schizofrene consumenten!’. Adformatie bericht deze week over een onderzoek van BBDO Worldwide. Altijd lachen natuurlijk, mensen voor schizofreen uitmaken.

“De schizofrene consument denkt het een en doet het ander” - zo wordt ons uitgelegd. Uit onderzoek zou blijken dat we als gevolg van ‘de crisis’ ineens onlogische aankoopbeslissingen maken.

Dat de meeste van onze aankoopbeslissingen niet rationeel zijn, wisten we al veel langer: wat we zeggen en wat we doen zijn twee totaal verschillende werelden. Onder ons gedrag liggen complexe patronen, die te maken hebben met onze cultuur, onze religie, onze onderdrukte wensen, etc. Martin Lindstrom schreef hierover onlangs een leuk en lezenswaardig boek: ‘Buyology’.

“Ineens” blijken we sommige aankopen uit te stellen - of zelfs, hemel behoede ons - te heroverwegen! En nu komt de echte bliksemschicht van baanbrekend inzicht: De Prijs Is Niet de Enige Factor die van Grote Invloed is op Onze Aankoopbeslissing! Sommige produkten blijven we kopen, bijvoorbeeld als het een emotionele waarde biedt. ‘No Shit, Einstein!’

Dames en Heren, hiervoor hebben BBDO-teams in 14 landen onderzoek gedaan. Ik zou zeggen: de volgende keer dat er iemand van uw reclamebureau op kantoor langskomt, bied ze een kop koffie aan en maak even een praatje, ze zitten er blijkbaar om verlegen. Dat we in het huidige Bad-News-Bombardement even stilstaan om na te denken wat we ookalweer van dingen vinden, is niet schizofreen maar doodnormaal.

Dat we soms op emotionele gronden iets kopen, is ook niet zo gek. Zelfs op de afdeling transploft weten we inmiddels dat een succesvol produkt moet scoren op de dimensies Onderscheidend, Relevant en Aantrekkelijk.De propositie van het produkt, waarmee je op die dimensies moet scoren, bestaat naast uit technische- en functionele benefits, namelijk ook uit emotionele. (o.a. uitgelegd in “Trading up, the new luxury and why we need it” van De Boston Consulting Group)

Dat werkt ongeveer zo: sluit je ogen en denk aan en MP3 speler.

De mp3 speler heeft een geheugen van 16MB, er kunnen wel 10miljoen liedjes op. Dit is een technische benefit, iets wat te maken heeft met de ‘objectieve’ kwaliteit van een produkt.

Door de software die eropzit, kun je ‘m ook met sensoren in je schoenen gebruiken om tijdens het hardlopen bij te houden hoe je training gaat. Dit is een functionele benefit - het zegt iets over het gebruik.

Nu komen de leukste benefits: de emotionele. Deze mp3speler met software is namelijk een samenwerking tussen Nike en Apple: een van de allergeilste merkenvrijages ooit. Door dit apparaat te kopen voel ik me dus sexy, sportief, winnend, alsmede slim, Californisch en stylish. Noem mij maar schizofreen, maar hier hoef ik niet zo lang over na te denken. “Sterker nog: doet u er nog maar een paar gympies en zo’n mooi joggingspak bij, mevrouw”. Wat nou crisis?

WE NEED A COMMUNITY!

One thing is clear, communities are hot. They seem to be popping up all around us as an increasing number of companies and people have the growing urge to 'start a community'. But where to start?

Last week we attended the 3rd Social Strategy Talk at the Westerunie, titled 'Doe mij een community'. PSV, de Rabobank, a podcast priest and an Obama campaign member shared their experience and knowledge on creating and maintaining a community. Below a little more on the lessons learned.

Hard work

Creating & maintaining a successful community is hard work. It requires good preparation and a clear vision on the purpose & ultimate goal, but it can definitely be worth the effort. As father Roderick said, it took 2000 years of hard work by a lot of nuns, programming in Unix and keeping the IT department of the Vatican going, but in the end "Jesus is a 2000 year old product and still has around 1 billion customers..."

Add value

Although people live in communities by nature, you can't force a community upon someone. Think of the added value for its members, what's their shared goal? Don't ask what the community can do for you, ask what you can do for the community...

Don't reinvent the wheel

As mentioned, starting a community is usually not something you do on the side, it's hard work. And since it's even more hard work to start from scratch -if you can- try to make use of existing communities in stead of reinventing the wheel (and save yourself some money & energy :-)

Content

"I'm here at this congress at the Vatican, but something is going on... all cellphones are ringing and I hear helicopters outside... I think the Pope is dead!" 

If you have anything worthwhile to share, people will be interested. But the hard thing is to keep it this way. Content should always be up-to-date, dynamic and interesting! Keep people actively involved in your content development, match it to their needs, keep it relevant.

A personal touch

The most successful communities have an on-line and off-line aspect. PSV actively makes an effort to complete the on-line brand experience with off-line activities, for example with their yearly kids-day. Part of Obama's success was personal contact combined with new media, creating movement and action among people. So to make your community a success, on-line and off-line, make sure to keep it personal!

I Love it when a plan comes together

DUTCH CREATIVE (AND) INDUSTRY LEADERS RUB SHOULDERS AT AMSTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FASHION WEEK


This week sees the 10th edition of AIFW - a platform to put Amsterdam on the fashion map, launched (almost) exactly 5 year ago. The official show schedule starts tomorrow night with the Fortis Opening Soiree, but a number of ambitious young designers make use of 'empty' slots in the schedule by showing 'guerilla-style'. Tonight, Antoine Peters showed his AW09 collection, titled "I'm With Stupid".

I've had the pleasure of co-organising all 10 editions of AIFW from its inception, and will be standing down this saturday. Tonight was a great pleasure: world-famous designer Marcel Wanders giving a standing ovation to Antoine, and just a few heads down the front row, famous stylist Ruud van der Peijl and Bank Honcho HJ Stuyling rubbing shoulders.

This is exactly why we started AIFW - to connect the disciplines in Amsterdam's funky creative industry scene and bring together stakeholders from across the creative-commercial divide.

Like Hannibal Lecter used to say: "I Love It, when a plan comes together..."

www.amsterdamfashionweek.com

DOWNLOAD >5 NOW!

In November last year, we informed you about the 'Inspiration Book' called '>5' that we created together with XS4ALL. The book carries 26 visions on the future of the Internet: real stories written by people with very different backgrounds. The book was launched on the FIFI congress on 28th of November. 

Initially the book was for XS4ALL business clients only. However due to the many positive reactions, it was decided to make it available for everybody. 

SO HERE IS THE GOOD NEWS: it can now be downloaded from the FIFI website.  

So I would like to invite you to go there and push the download button. Then all you have to do is sit back and enjoy all 26 stories! And... don't forget to pay attention to the inspiring lay-out and visuals that complement each story. Each visual was found on the Flickr website and relates to a certain key-word in the text - very 2.0, don't you think? 

Enjoy the read!

YOU THINK PEOPLE LOVE APPLE NOW? WATCH THEM SCREAM 25 YEARS AGO

You can find Steve Jobs' first big presentation from 1984 online. Hear the crowd soaring. When we at Fronteer talk about smart brands, we talk about Apple (sometimes). The thing is, this brand is built in a quarter century. It was carefully constructed and nurtured over the years.  

When you have people screaming for more at your first real introduction, and 25 years later still... what can we add to that?

We found the link at TechCrunch

INNOVATION: WHERE EAST MEETS WEST

A while ago one of the experts in a Rooftop session dropped a question "So all people are connected... and then what?" It seemed quite bold at first, but he actually was so right, asking for the reason WHY you would want to be connected, why would you want something... just for the sake of wanting it?

It got me thinking about the role of asking 'why' in the innovation process. As a child you were always asking why? why? Just to get a grip on things and try to understand things. And even though I still ask this question quite often, I noticed that you often stop asking this and just deal with a situation as it comes along. But how wrong can you be!

A well known Japanese business scholar, Ikujiro Nonaka, has some interesting reasoning behind the importance of asking why when it comes to innovation. It all has to do with the 2, probably familiar, types of knowledge that exist: explicit and tacit knowledge (also called episteme and techne, Aristotle). Episteme or explicit knowledge is about knowing WHAT & HOW. It's concrete, measurable knowledge that we can learn from a book or by (individual) training. Something we're particularly fond of in the West. We assume that this is more accurate and reliable, and we just looove information to be measurable and reliable...

In Eastern cultures people embrace the techne or tacit knowledge, which is about knowing WHY. It's based on personal awareness & feelings, a subjective interpretation of situations. It's about knowing why you do or feel things in a specific way. It cannot be universalised or measured scientifically. It grows through experience and is inseparable from the human being who possesses it. Uhhh, freaky...

So in Western cultures we just like to know WHAT the problem is and HOW to fix it. Not wasting time on figuring out why there is a problem and if it's even necessary to fix it at all. But only the tacit knowledge puts the explicit knowledge in a context, something that is quite crucial in innovation... It's the interaction between expertise (knowing what) and experience (knowing why) that makes it possible to evolve, create knowledge and truly innovate. When you find the way to combine this Western and Eastern thinking, you will eventually know the right steps to take.

This only leaves us with the question how to realise this interaction...(since we still like the explicit 'how to' steps, right?). Lets try this:

1) Create a comfortable environment

2) Invite people that dare to ask why

3) Create an open dialogue where why is not a dirty word

4) Always keep in mind the 'so-what'

5) Start sharing knowledge & experience, start to co-create!

CUTE CUTE CUTE

Japan is the country of Kawaii - meaning cute (amongst others). Doing some pretty serious retailing research in Japan we found out that even grown up businesses are heavily influenced by this miraculous little word. 

Women determine what is bought and what not. Men get pocket money. Cars, food, travel goods, clothes,  anything really, bought by women. What do women want? Colour and pretty curves basically. This means that entire categories have to adopt to this and that foreign brands have to be well aware of the impact it has on their ranges. This combined with a very strong hype culture makes doing business in Japan tricky to say the least.

In our specific research - travel goods - we found a market dominated by a few players well aware on the might of the retailer and consumers. Double or Nothing is the game. Once you're in, you're doing well. Once you're out, you're out for good. Quality problems? Say by to the brand. Not cute? Same deal. Made in China? Rather not. Luggage brands that did well managed to please everybody: curves, colours, coolness and country of origin. 

What did we learn? Interviewing in Japan is tiring - try to sit in the same hot blue cubicles for days on a row - but Japanese are actually open for business. The ones that have stamina and try to do everything right have a pretty good chance to actually making it out there.

And, don't forget to bring 'stroopwafels'!