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The Gadget-less Bond

Adam Richardson — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:06:37 -0600

Despite the vaguely technical title, the latest James Bond installment, Quantum of Solace, is almost completely devoid of gadgets.

Gee-whiz gadgets have been a mainstay of the Bond oeuvre, from car ejection seats to lighters that convert into pistols, from watches with lasers to personal jetpacks. But with the "reboot" of the series starting with the last movie, Casino Royale, the film-makers have dramatically downplayed the use of devices as deus-ex-machina methods of getting Bond out of a jam.

I saw QoS last night and the only gadgets of significance that I noted were:

A Minority Report/iPhone/Microsoft Surface type large scale interface featuring multi-touch, gesture- control and magical-connection-with-every-database-and-communication-system-on-earth. In a world where getting a smartphone to seamlessly hand off between GSM and Wi-Fi is fraught with difficulty, this is potentially boffo in a nerdy kind of way. But the whole touch-screen interface thing has already passed into cliche. Gee-whizz factor: 2 out of 5: Doesn't cause dismemberment, seen it before.
Digital cameras: I know, stretching here to find a gadget. There are only 2 reasons these are notable: The magical way in which they transmit photos and voice instantly back to MI6 in England (Eye-Fi card on steroids) and because they are made by Sony. Sony owns Columbia pictures... who made the movie.
Facial recognition software: MI6 demo'd some software for taking the photos off the Sony Corp. digital cameras and recognizing the faces on them despite the fact that they were in a poorly lit avant garde stadium opera. Gee-whizz factor: 1 out of 5: MI6 needs to talk to a certain Crime Scene Investigators department in Las Vegas, Nevada, they've got better stuff.
Ford Edges showed up in several scenes. (Ford was the official automotive supplier for the movie, and owns Aston Martin and used to own Land Rover, who's vehicles also appear prominently, until it was sold to Indian Tata motors last year). The film-makers missed a gadget opportunity by not getting the Edge to dial up a suitable soundtrack using its Sync system while tearing down the narrow streets of an exotic city while being pursued by villains, however.

The film-makers have seemingly confined Bond gadget plot devices to the dustbin of history. Or perhaps they've just decided that it's become impossible to compete with out-wowing real-life technology and they will rely instead on mundane technology and impossible action sequences.

The gadget that I want? The titanium skeletal structure and self-healing epidermis that James Bond obviously has been upgraded with. Or how else would he survive the insane beatings that he receives without so much as a slightly tussled hair and a few specks of blood above his eye? The Italian construction site fight scene is insane: I counted at least 47 points at which one or more bones should have been broken. Yet he walks out of it like the Robert Patrick T-1000 in Terminator 2, completely unscathed and not even breathing hard.

On a related note, here's a Lego animation done to an Eddy Izzard skit about James Bond's gadgets:

Machine-Animals and Soul-Mechanisms

Nick de la Mare — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 20:55:13 -0600

Chris Foss was (perhaps is) a British sci-fi artist. He’s most famous for his association with an ill-fated attempt to make the first Dune film in 1976. It's a shame the film was never made because it would most likely have been classic 70’s cinematic madness and excess (witness Zardoz starring Sean Connery in diapers for comparison). Set to star Mick Jagger and Salvador Dali, with a Pink Floyd soundtrack and H.R. Giger and Chris Foss on deck to provide the vision and set design, you have to imagine it would have been epic.

The illustration is of a spice tug from the film.

Here’s a quote by the director Alejandro Jodorowsky addressing his vision for Dune and view of contemporary technological innovation in general. It's obvious that he's speaking with the perspective of a different time and place, but isn't it a bit of a shame that we're still so often intent on designing the sublime, magic and whimsy right out of our products?

“Dune had to be made. But what kind of spaceships to use? Certainly not the degenerate and cold offspring of present day American automobiles and submarines, the very antithesis of art, usually seen in science fiction films, including 2001. No! I wanted magical entities, vibrating vehicles, like fish that swim and have their being in the mythological deeps of the surrounding ocean. The ‘galactic’ ships of North American technocracy are a mouse-gray insult to the divine, therefore delirious, chaos of the universe. I wanted jewels, machine-animals, soul-mechanisms. Sublime as snow crystals, myriad-faceted fly eyes, butterfly pinions. Not giant refrigerators, transistorised and riveted hulks; bloated with imperialism, pillage, arrogance and eunuchoid science.”

Trends for 2009: Radical Transparency

Tim Leberecht — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 18:30:33 -0600

Now that Barack Obama has appointed YouTube as his “Secretary of Video,” as CNET comments, it raises the question what does Generation O’s new transparency mean for businesses?

At first sight, well, it means danger. The airlines British Airways (BA) and Virgin Atlantic recently experienced that first hand. The Economist reports that several crew members were fired after making derogatory comments on the airlines’ Facebook forums about safety standards and passengers. The staff gushed about cockroaches on board the planes and shared other juicy details that -- if true -- were less than flattering for their employers. Public relations experts such as Aedhmar Hynes from Text 100 were quick to point out (in the Economist article) that online transparency can only be as radical as its regulation is regimented and that employee empowerment needs to go hand in hand with employee education.

Yet Hymes’ recommendation sounds like radical transparency that is not quite so radical, and may run counter to the very notion of transparency. Moderated radical transparency, so to speak, is as oxymoronic as, say, risk-averse hedge funds. So does this episode mark the beginning of the end of radical transparency? Not so fast. It’s all a matter of managing expectations. For starters, it is worth acknowledging that radical transparency can have radical implications. In fact, collateral damage should almost always be assumed; it is part of the game. If you’re not willing to take that risk, don’t take it! But note that in most cases (unless you’re a military defense contractor, the CIA, or another organization that needs to respect strict legal requirements), your customers may then assume you have something to hide. And, if you’re perfectly honest, that’s probably the case, no?

Airlines and other travel industry companies are especially vulnerable when it comes to bad PR because the perception of their service is so critical. Customer expectations are high, and every little interaction -- and there are hundreds of thousands every day -- is closely scrutinized. See Untied, the customer forum for rants about United. Airlines are also impacted by variables that are often beyond their control, at least partly. Remember JetBlue’s winter storm fiasco in 2007? The brouhaha around BA’s and Virgin Atlantic’s Facebook woes does not make for a case against radical transparency; rather it highlights an inconvenient truth: airlines – as well as the majority of service brands – are radically transparent by the very nature of their business.

If flight attendants complain about unpleasant passengers, then it reveals a bigger issue at stake that transcends the sole PR dimension: Radical transparency may bring out the skeletons in your closet. If the bond between your customers and your brand is just a bit flawed, you’re not only facing a PR issue, you’re facing a fundamental issue at the very foundation of your brand promise that can severely threaten your business. Staff members who think not so highly about their customers are the problem, not the fact that they are sharing their opinions on Facebook. BA and Virgin Atlantic did the right thing, and it was not a “fiasco,” as the Economist labeled it, but rather a cleaning of the system. Exposing black sheep among your personnel may hurt in the short term but can serve as a real benefit to your brand in the long term. When your business is in the service industry, those ticking reputation bombs need to be dealt with anyway. Promoting transparency is a valuable concept to preempt them and, well, promote the truth. It will come out anyway, sooner or later. And then radical transparency is not a strategy but the only real option left.

All that being said, reputation protection is only one side of the equation, and it is the defensive one. As much as radical transparency can underscore that you have nothing to hide, it can also highlight that you have a lot to show. In this respect, it presents a huge opportunity for marketers. Dave Balter, founder and CEO of the word-of-mouth marketing firm Bzz Agent, made a compelling case for corporate transparency in a recent interview with the Harvard Business Review: “(…) Companies put rules into place to hide their ideas. They think the rules give them control over people and markets. But that’s totally untrue today. There are so many communication routes that you can’t possibly control the information flowing through them. Furthermore, attempts at secrecy prevent the company from making use of those information flows. You can’t always foresee the benefits of letting ideas out into the world, but they often far outweigh any harm that may result.”

Indeed, in the brave new world of always-on social media, companies may need to share everything about their business, including complaints, profit margins on particular products, and specific corporate strategies. And they may increasingly turn to proprietary channels to do so, bypassing traditional media and becoming media companies themselves. Add to that the fact that customers “own” and manage brands and not companies, and it is time for a fundamentally new concept of “brand presence.” Proactive radical transparency can not only become the mandatory platform for authentic, trust-building interactions with all stakeholders (or “brandholders”) but also open a new avenue for marketers who understand that effective marketing needs to be conversational and open-sourced.

So, here’s an audacious future vision of what radical transparency in corporate communications could look like. Taking social instant messaging one step further than existing formats (such as the micro-blogging service Yammer that applies the Twitter model to the enterprise -- “what are you working on”?), companies could make their live email correspondence public. Let’s call it Reality Email. An open and interactive email feed may propel knowledge-sharing and collaboration but also an ongoing conversation that customers, partners, and media worldwide can join. Remember the “Cluetrain Manifesto”? “Markets are conversations” -- and so are organizations and brands. Reality Email would take this literally literal. Companies “going public” with live-email might create a powerful new marketing broadcasting channel for brand-building in the new age of radical transparency. Does this sound radical? Perhaps. Will it happen? You bet.

Event: Awareness Campaigns in the Networked Age

Tim Leberecht — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 22:55:41 -0600

Demos, the UK-based “every democracy” think tank, is putting on an interesting event in London this week (November 18): How to make news and influence people: Media and journalism in the network age will discuss "the new politics of images" and "what kinds of news and photo-journalism are emerging to connect people with politics."

The event, held at London's King Cross Hub, will gather a salon of experts to examine the making and implications of James Nachtwey's XDR-TB’s awareness campaign, a much acclaimed example of visual storytelling and a winner of the TED Prize 2007. Panelists include Charlie Leadbeater, Author of We-Think; Charlie Beckett, Director, POLIS, LSE and author of Supermedia; Amy Novogratz, TED Prize Director, TED Conferences; and Alfie Dennen, Founder of We're not afraid, Moblog and XDR-TB 'Find-me.'

Event details: http://www.demos.co.uk/events/demostedevent

Disruptive Realism

frogs on the road — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 18:39:28 -0600

Associate Creative Director Dave Hoffer has coined a new term: Disruptive Realism. After discussing some examples in this video, he was inspired to elaborate.

I've had a number of conversations about this since the video was posted and I realize that the video doesn't give a really conclusive definition.

Disruptive Realism is an expression presented in an everyday context that disrupts peoples perceptions about different things. Expression can mean many things and it a way it's art but it's also much more expansive a term than just art.

Banksy's graffiti looks real enough that you might do a double take looking at it. It draws you into the content which is disruptive...like a little girl flying a refrigerator kite in New Orleans.

The other two examples are even more non-conventional than the word Art implies. Most people hear the word art and they think of a painting in a museum. Because Bruno Taylor's work is an experience that involves physical designs like the swing set in the bus stop, the viewer is no longer viewing, they're interacting and the videos he takes of people enjoying the installations are, in fact, part of the art. So this example is difficult to define, but definitely real and definitely disruptive.

Improv Everywhere is one part performance art and one part massive, crowdsourced goof. People get together (often strangers) to collaborate on a kind of a joke on the unsuspecting and unknowing non-participants. In a way, it's almost an anti-terrorism...Humorism? But again, very real and very disruptive.

In the case of the fake NY Times, I would say that absolutely, it's Disruptive Realism and if the issue's headline was that the wars are over, then it's a hopeful message, which is a very good thing.

Another example a friend pointed out to me was Reverse Graffiti, where Paul "Moose" Curtis (awesome middle name by the way) "makes pictures by cleaning." He goes on to say that reverse graffiti is also commentary in that he can't "not tow the environmental line" so his art is disruptive in that he says that people walk up to it and realize that his work is dirt removal and that the world is "really, really dirty." If that ain't reality and if that ain't disruptive then I don't know what is. Hopefully viewers are moved to clean more and ride their bike to work because the art is a very visceral represesentation of how nasty pollution is.

Yet another example was Orson Welles's 'War of the Worlds' radio broadcast, which was meant as entertainment and likely a commentary on how evolution had been twisted into Social Darwinism (which is an interpretation of the HG Wells book on which the broadcast was based.) Regardless of its intention, the broadcast caused mass hysteria. An excellent example of Disruptive Realism.

The Sorry State of the US Car Industry

Adam Richardson — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 14:10:33 -0600

I’ve been mulling for a few days about writing a post about the current sorry state of the US car industry, thinking about the $25 Billion proposed “bail-out”, the crashing sales, and even the crazy proposed merger of GM and Chrysler. But Thomas Friedman at the New York Times has pretty much written it for me, so go ahead and read it.

How could these companies be so bad for so long? Clearly the combination of a very un-innovative business culture, visionless management and overly generous labor contracts explains a lot of it. It led to a situation whereby General Motors could make money only by selling big, gas-guzzling S.U.V.’s and trucks. Therefore, instead of focusing on making money by innovating around fuel efficiency, productivity and design, G.M. threw way too much energy into lobbying and maneuvering to protect its gas guzzlers.

I’ll just add a few things.

Toyota will Become Number One

My prediction is that Toyota will move up from it’s #2 slot to be the #1 manufacturer by the end of 2009. Their sales have been impacted by the current economic crisis, just like everyone else, but not to the same degree as GM.

And Toyota’s product portfolio is much more diverse and better protected against parsimonious spending. GM’s is far too heavily skewed toward large, expensive gas guzzling trucks and SUVs, and its small and inexpensive cars are fewer in number and not as good as Toyota’s (with a couple of notable exceptions such as the well-received Chevy Malibu and Cobalt). That doesn’t bode well for riding out a combination of tight consumer spending and credit, and still relatively high gas prices.

GM and Chrysler Merger: Huh?

In what universe does the merger of GM and Chrysler make sense? Both companies are in terrible financial shape with the same combination of huge cost structures and poor sales. In fact, Chrysler’s product portfolio is even worse than GM’s: even more skewed to SUVs and big trucks, and its lower end and smaller cars have received universally terrible reviews. For example see Dan Niel's pummeling of the Chrysler Sebring, or this article about some recent flops from Chrysler.

All of Chrysler’s hot cars are largely irrelevant in a spending-constrained environment: Viper, Ram pick-up, 300, Challenger. Its bread-and-butter minivan has been eclipsed by offerings from Honda and Toyota.

And a merger would almost certainly result in large numbers of lay-offs as the companies have massive duplication of product lines, production capacity, vendors, and staff. Unless the unions force them to keep the manufacturing workforce, which would just compound the fixed costs problem. Speaking of which…

Plenty of Blame to Go Around

The prospect of a bailout, whether it’s for banks or car companies, makes me queasy. I’m no laissez-fair free marketer, far from it. But the disparity between the logic of bailing out companies that are “too big to fail” and not helping people with comparatively tiny mortgages (or small businesses) who are “too small to care about” is just too disturbing in its hypocrisy. The management of car companies have squandered innovation for decades in favor of lobbying favors, as Friedman points out, putting them in their now perilous position.

But the unions have played their part too, providing a level of cushion for their workers that no other industries have, and in the process helping drive the hand the feeds them into the ground by forcing unsustainable cost structures (health care, retirement benefits, endless unemployment support). A bailout would just encourage that co-dependency and let everyone off the hook rather than calling them to the carpet for it and forcing them to change. Undoubtedly a reset of the compact between automakers and unions would cause massive pain for the near term, but in the long run it would get the industry back on its feet. And without it, they’ll just be back in this same position in 5-10 years.

Open Studios & Network Effects

Robert Fabricant — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 08:43:52 -0600

Perhaps the most remarkable talent that Jan Chipchase showcased in his talk last week (I promise this is my last post on the subject) was his ability to create powerful community-based organizations on the fly in some of the least likely environments - urban slums in Ghana for example. While this started out as a SWAT activity to support rapid immersion and research, with Open Studios he is making his pop-up organizations much more visible in the community (which raising some interesting branding questions which I will cover in a later post).

If you havent checked out Open Studios, the basic idea is that Chipchase and team turn their SWAT ethnography into a design lab - reaching out to the community in a very visible way to gather ideas as part of a competition. The samples he showed last week centered around a competition to design your dream mobile handset. I have to say I was a bit disappointed in the topic. Seemed like they got alot of cheesy hardware design. Jan was clear the real value was not the designs themselves, but the needs and desires implicit in those designs. But I think he may be missing an even bigger opportunity to create value.

What if they werent temporary (lasting for only a week or two)? what if he used the Open Studios model to identify the most engaged and insightful members of a community and then continued to communicate with them on an ongoing basis? He could distribute free phones to them for this purpose. They would receive free minutes each month in return for answering an SMS survey. This would give him an ongoing mechanism for gathering information about invisible markets at the 'Base of the Pyramid" (BOP) and understanding their evolving needs and habits.

Well that is exactly what Melanie Edwards of Mobile Metrix is trying to do. I had the privilege to work closely with her as part of the Pop!Tech Fellows Program last month. Melanie was inspired by the huge gap in our understanding of even the most basic demographics within these invisible communities. As you are probably aware, there is a huge migration of the world population into urban slums. They are quickly becoming the dominant condition for our global population. In sitting through Jan's talk about Open Studios I was struck by the similarities. Melanie has also been working in the Flavela's in Brazil. But her goal is to put in place a network of local youth to gather demographic data and distribute products and services on an ongoing basis.

There are nice synergies to her approach - corporations are increasingly interested in tapping this growing market as it is somewhat of a green field from a brand perspective (as they have never been marketed direclty to before). By gathering data and partnering with corporations like J&J she is putting these communities on the map. As the value of these new markets grow, so will their ability to get the support and services they desperately need. Or that is the hope.

All right, you can take the cyncial view that opening up slums to sales of shampoo is not exactly virtuous. But many people would disagree. The only way to impact poverty and social issues at scale is to find a way to make money at it. Melanie is developing partnerships to deliver crtiical support services through her network. The best example is an initative that she ran around Dengue fever with J&J. You can read about it in this recent post on Worldchanging. She exposed communities to products but also educated them about health risks and preventative steps they could take to avoid the disease. J&J benefited from exposing a new market to their products related to Dengue. And the community benefited. Pretty sweet! By using local youth she gained access and ensured that the information was delivered in a way that the community would understand. This is an important two-way collaboration in which she is learning as much from her local network as they are learning from her (sound familiar).

This 'Network Effect' is becoming a theme as I talk to social impact organizations around the world. Much of their potential value is stored in this type of networl. Their impact is determined more than anything else by how effective they are in setting up and managing a distributed network within distributed communities. This is equally true for Tevis Howard (another Pop!tech fellow) who is working on a microforestry program in Kenya and Wendy Brawer from GreenMap who I chatted with at a recent Social Entrepreneurship conference at NYU. Effective social entrepreneurs learn quickly that their ability to build networks - and to scale and replicate those networks - is by far their biggest challenge and most valuable asset. Which also happens to be one of Jan's greatest skills..and perhaps his biggest waste.

Witnessing the Obama Effect in China

Doreen Lorenzo — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:49:41 -0600

I was in China when the election was held. I live in a state that allowed early voting, so I voted a week earlier and took off to visit our Shanghai studio and Chinese clients.

It was amazing to watch the election returns in a country with such a vastly different system of government. The people who I spoke with were fascinated by some elements of the election process that we now take for granted: online fundraising, candidate websites, blogs, emails, debates, electronic voting. As our new president was announced, there was a palpable level of excitement the Chinese shared with America, clearly helped by the unprecedented coverage of the election and record numbers of people following the process. Obama is immensely popular, with polls showing that the Chinese would have elected him by a healthy majority. As in many parts of the world, Obama represents a positive change for the Chinese, a new opportunity to build on US-China relations and a chance to help turn around a sinking global economy.

For Chinese and American companies investing in China and beyond, innovation is key to maintaining this enthusiasm and optimism moving forward. Innovation drives new opportunities and enables the creation of jobs, ultimately spurring economic growth. Since we opened our doors in Shanghai 18 months ago, we’ve seen amazing shifts in thinking about innovation in China, and my hope is that the new leadership in the US will only continue to build on this momentum. The reaction I had from a prospective Chinese client the day after the election only made me feel more optimistic. Walking into our meeting, our host and prospective client held up his fist triumphantly and said “Obama!” Enough said.

Jan Chipchase: Designing Design Research

Robert Fabricant — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:32:24 -0600

There is a long list of specific insights that Jan shared about how he 'designs' his research expeditions. These have been covered elsewhere in bits and pieces. I thought I would highlight some of my favorites:

1. Integrate Local Teams:
Most of his research involves a combination of a few nokia colleagues and a local team - that need to cross HUGE cultural and economic barriers. He placed special emphasis on the need to rapidly integrate these teams. A lot of this is motivational. He sets huge store in establishing a sense of equality from the start - everyone eats, sleeps travels in the same manner. He likes to rent houses or small hotels that the team can take over within the community. This has posed some risks on occasion, such as a recent trip to favelas in brazil. But in most cases this model seems very strong and worth applying even if you are not traveling so far. See if you can find an alternative to the embassy suites next time you are doing a set of in-homes in Omaha. Some place with some common space.

2. Establish Boundaries:
This is a crucial for a guy like Jan. He is interested in so many aspects of social life. Where do you draw the line? Establishing boundaries is not just important for the team, but also for the research participants. He showed some 'Day in the Life' examples in which he documented a very deep and intimate portrait of an individual over the course of 4 hours and ~ 800 pictures. Your subjects need to sense that there are boundaries. One effective technique that he has developed is to provide each subject with a copy of everything that was capture - images, notes... This provides an automatic check on the research team as they know that the subject will see everything that they captured. A nice / ethical check & balance on a process that has inherent imbalances built into it.

3. Think Outside the Project:
He looks at each trip as a chance to gather a wealth of data, much of which does not fit the parameters of a specific project. My guess is that his blog / speaking engagements provide a nice rational for this. But the truth is that you dont get too many opportunities for this kind of rich social immersion in a slum in Ghana. So capture as much as you can - and index the notes / photos before you split. He hinted at the fact that they complie all their research into a common repository to mine later. And had developed a rich taxonomy for this data. But I couldnt pin him down on whether that was really the case.

4. Take a Breather:
Research is intense. Jan offered some nice suggestions for how to pace things so that you do not burn out before synthesis. He tries to map out the trip so that each of the researchers has a down day to reflect. In most cases they dont take these days off, but it allows for some reflection and redirection before you finish. Smart! Also he tries to grab a day for himself at the end of each trip to ride around on the back of a motorcycle and shoot pictures around the community. Seemed like that was the best part for him. And we all benefit from the results on FuturePerfect. He also tries to build in a 'spa' day or two - some kind of retreat - to pamper the team as they head into synthesis.

These recommendations do not apply to every research practice, particularly when you are not in-house. We talked about the challenges around synthesis in particular. We all know that synthesis is the most valuable stage, and Jan builds in signficant time for synthesis after each trip. But for consultants like frog it can be hard to communicate why we need two weeks, and not two days, to get our thoughts together. We joked about a 12-step process for synthesis. We need to break synthesis down into a set of tangible activities that we can communicate to clients so they get it.

Unfortunately, Jan didn't provide any answers for that one. Maybe next time. Fortunately I tagged him as a speaker at CHI in April 2009. So get me your questions as I will have a second chance to pin him down.

The Marketing of a President

Tim Leberecht — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 22:17:08 -0600

“Motivating the committed outperforms persuading the uncommitted” (Seth Godin)

Now that we have a President-elect Obama, it’s time to reflect on how this was possible. The web is full of thoughtful analyses that examine Obama’s victory as one made possible through state-of-the-art marketing -- from Tomi T. Ahonen’s “For a We species, a We president: Yes we can,” to John Quech’s “How Better Marketing Elected Barack Obama” in Harvard Business Online, to Seth Godin’s "Marketing Lessons from the US Election," to the NY Times and, of course, the all-inclusive, behind-the-scenes “How He Did It” account in Newsweek.

Yet Obama’s victory is not only a victory through marketing, it is also a victory for marketing, for the profession as a whole. It restored America’s political capital but also America’s reputation as the spiritual home of marketing. It proved all those wrong who asserted the end of American brands and branding in general, and it has given more ammunition to marketers who passionately believe that smart marketing can indeed change the world. And so it goes that I am not only a happy American this week but also a happy marketer.

Every history of marketing must also be a history of America – see the TV-series Mad Men – and one might even posit that America’s history is a history of marketing. Seth Godin describes it this way: “The lesson that society should take away about all marketing is a simple one. When you buy a product, you're also buying the marketing. Buy something from a phone telemarketer, you get more phone telemarketers, guaranteed. Buy a gas guzzler and they'll build more. Marketers are simple people... they make what sells. Our culture has purchased (and voted) itself into the place we are today.” Arthur Miller put this more optimistically when he said: “America’s biggest asset is its promise.” The same can be said about marketing.

“Change we can believe in” is the motto of each and every transaction between a brand and its consumers

The Obama campaign leveraged its promise with maximum effect: “Change we can believe in” is the motto of each and every transaction between a brand and its consumers. Buying or buying in always implies the expectation of a positive change -- a change in someone’s well-being, household, and financial situation or at any other levels of Maslow’s pyramid. But with “Change” as the ultimate promise and “Hope” as the ultimate motivation, the Obama campaign didn’t just generate leads, it created believers. The seven million names on its lists (email addresses, mobile phone numbers, Facebook and MySpace pages) represent a staggering 11 percent of the approximately 64 million votes the President-elect received. The loyalty of these supporters is of long-term value. Tomi T. Ahonen writes: “The Obama presidency can continue to engage with this active part of his core supporters, return to them at the re-election bid, and even use this support base to help in the elections of his successor in 2016 (assuming Obama is re-elected in 2012).” And in fact, Obama and team are not wasting any time and launched a new site, change.gov, right after the election to keep in touch with existing and new supporters during the transition.

All of this illustrates the power of community and provides further evidence that identity trumps utility. A great brand is one that diverts attention away from itself and towards an even greater purpose. That’s exactly what Obama did for the Generation O, which was in it to make history and be part of a movement, a new "we species” with Obama as its first we president.” Combine this political tribalism with an unprecedented level of open-sourced participation, and you have a powerful collaborative platform that outperforms that of any opponent. Obama won because his supporters were more passionate, more dedicated, and more engaged. And it didn’t hurt that he was a candidate they loved.

But what makes the Obama campaign truly unique is how it complemented its open community nature with remarkable on-message rigor. While large components of the action were decentralized, the campaign headquarters provided the central discipline needed to align them when necessary. For the most part it was not, and it felt as if an unwritten code, an impressive self-discipline had ensured notable collective focus and the absence of any drama on the trail.

Disciplined Decentralism

This “Disciplined Decentralism,” as you might call it, is the major takeaway for marketers from the election. It was the foundation of a nationwide (and even global, if you consider the “moral” vote from non US-citizens around the world) campaign that became the first in an age of audience fragmentation to succeed in not only raising maximum awareness for a hitherto unknown brand, but also bringing about radical behavioral change. It has restored the American soft power overnight, as Joseph Nye noted, and it has also rebuilt marketer confidence. Can we marketers orchestrate social media, amateur content, and crowdsourced platforms with utmost message discipline on a large scale? Yes, we can. Can we reconcile authenticity and consistency? Yes, we can. Can we combine traditional broadcasting ads with low-fi video clips without diluting the message? Yes we can. Can we be our own media channel and bypass media without alienating them? Yes we can. Can we design campaigns that cultivate the small in the big and the big in the small, in other words, campaigns that use direct marketing (phonebanking, fundraising) but use them bottom-up and not top-down? Yes we can. Can we be hyper-targeted and still be inclusive and reach out to everyone? Yes we can.

Marketing for the people, with the people, and by the people

Obama has radically altered the marketing playbook, and the astonishing rise of the brand Obama is a template for all marketers from this point on: Weaving together data and human intelligence, collective wisdom and individual charisma, strategic calculus and enthusiasm, the Obama campaign has reestablished marketing as marketing for the people, with the people, and by the people. When charismatic leadership meets organizational prowess meets community, the result is marketing that is truly presidential.