Moods of Norway with playful PlayStation branding

A short norwegian love story. The trendy clothing brand Moods of Norway has shown daring standard in design and marketing from the very beginning of their brands history. Not least, they have shown a real joy playing with their own brand.
In connection with the release of the brilliant game Little Big Planet, they have transferred this playfulness to an interactive gaming platform. LBA is a long awaited release for game enthusiasts, much due to the fact that players can create their own levels that can be shared with other players. It is precisely that, a game level, Moods of Norway has created.

The distributor of the PlayStation3 has been in dialogue with
Moods of Norway for a long period to find a good collaboration project. Marketing Director Morten Christoffersen at Nordisk Film Interactive (distributor of PlayStation in Norway) notes that this collaboration was a carefully selected choice. "Moods of Norway is perfect for a"less serious" game like Little Big Planet. Their values and the game's content was a perfect fit. There were never any doubt that this was a match made in game heaven."
So how to measure whether such cooperation is a success or not? Christoffersen noted that only after a couple of weeks 1,300 people had played the MoN board and by doing so involved themselves in the brand. (The level takes 6-8 minutes to play through). A number of media outlets in Norway and abroad have written about the cooperation, but this is not where I think the most important value is to be found. The value in taking the customer seriously and show that they want to be present in their daily life is imperative. A typical PS3 player is approaching his 30's and enjoys a good game experience. By providing a free experience to them, brandstories ignites. Stories that can be distributed further. It is rare to see something this close to a perfect and innovative brand collaboration in Norway.
Great to see that Norwegian ad agencies (Making Waves in this case) can make good alternative interactive applications. More of this please!

PlanB did an interview with Making Waves which can be found here if you want to read more about how they made the game level.
However, if you only want to see a movie of it, take a look at this charmer. As you can see. This is in real Moods of Norway spirit.

Well done to both PlayStation and Moods of Norway.

Read more...

Freecording with Canon

How come so many brands seems to do the exact same as their competitors? Canon is positioning themselves away from the competition with their new campaign called Freecording.
Freecording is shooting film with a different perspective than you usually do when you create your home made videos. For the amateur (me being one), it was unusually inspiring to see the films they had made, were Canon showed examples of how shoting with a different angle makes recordings more exciting for both the producer and viewer.


The campaign site makes my desire to film stronger, and it is sparking ideas to create interesting movies by engaging potential buyers of Canon's cameras. Quote from website: Freecording is a method to capture the visual world around us in our own way, with our own style and with our own vision.
What can a marketeer learn from this?
Focus on sharing inspiration and knowledge. It will lead to the engagement. By inspiring the customer to use the product likelihood of purchase increases.
What can we do better than Canon?
Make the content of the website ready for embedding and sharing. Nothing would delight me more than if I could have posted one of the movies here, but Canon didn’t give me that option. Not good.



As Jetblue did with Jetting, Canon has risen over a category fight with this campaign. Instead of pixels, and other technical mumbo jumbo they created a new shooting method. They gave me the opportunity to tell those who bother to listen to me about how fun it is to shoot Freecording style and Canon gave me the tips. Are you making home videos? Why not try Freecording.
Not only was the campaign page easy to maneuver and be inspired by. The banners were also simple and effective in their design. I actually clicked on this banner from a page at online newspage Aftenposten.no.
I liked the discreet but constant placement of the logo in the banner. Logos are not dangerous, they are helpful. They apply info to the recipient on whether or not this is something relevant to his or her daily life. (Under the condition of being a well-known brand that is.)

Do you have a brand where you are one of many? Then ask yourself as soon as possible: What can I do for my potential customers/ users to enable them to talk about me in an inspiring and engaging way? If you do not have the answer to this your future might become highly uncomfortable. Now you're warned.

First time published in norwegian (July 08) at Norwegiasyndromet.

Read more...

Why didn't Polaroid make Poladroid?

A while ago I found a new app on the Web. After a simple innstall it was simply drag and drop images over a Polaroid icon, and after a few seconds a digital version of an old Polaroid picture popped out of a virtual polaroid camera on my desktop.
All the charm and irritations of a real polaroid were there, the frame, the sligthly matte colors, you could shake the image to enable it to develop faster. Good memories ...
This app have 3 000 friends on Flickr, over 300 000 have downloaded it from the official home page and users are clearly excited (1 month after realease).
Here is one of my official releases.

Made by Polaroid? Nope. Poladroid is created by a single frenchman, just for fun. So why didn’t Polaroid make Poladroid? Because Polaroid made unique cameras not interactive toys.
Today we know that it is not the technology itself but the content technology let’s us create, that increasingly controls a product's success or not. iPhone is a good example of exactly that. Polaroid is not.
Polaroid has in decades built up a fangroup that gets increasingly less time for the brand in their everyday hustle. But imagine if it was possible to install an application on your computer where you could pick out existing photos for "polaroiding".
So a frenchman saw the need, but Polaroid themselves could have taken this further. The first part (the application) could be free (as it is now). Development of actual images could have a charge. Intriguing possibility isn’t it?

If one Frenchman was able to get 300 000 Mac heads to install the app (PC version was in Alpha when this was published), think how many millions users the Polaroid corporation could have activated. As an example. 1 USD per image, 3 images on average per customer, 5 million people. 15 million USD. Good additional business if you ask me.

So why is restructuring so difficult? Why are we so good to see the dangers of change instead of the possibilities? Why do we first cut the innovation budget in periods of decline. "People, we must focus on the core product. Tough times demands serious acting. Stop being playful. "
Analysis would not reveal the need of a Poladroid app. Companies are generally built to further refine what it has already established as solid products and that generate steady income. Professor and author Clay Shirky claims that

"the transaction cost for companies is too high to allow the individual accidental brilliant idea to grow".

Hence, they (companies) select security and a economic framework that doesn’t vary too much (either up or down).
Before this post tangles itself up in all sort of theories let’s move on. In tough times you need to make tough choices. Tough choice is not to re-run the TV ad that did not work in the previous campaign, twice as often in the next. Tough choices is not to put yourself closer to what competitors are up to. That is whipping the, at best, half dead horse. It’s not going to become a winner anyway.

Perhaps it is appropriate to ask if the corporations we work for is set up to create a "poladroid"?

Hewlett Packard (HP) shows continuing signs that they applaude playful and different ideas. Or what do you think about Tabbloid? Choose your RSS feeds, select a delivery method and frequency, and HP delivers hot off the press RSS announcements in PDF. Caring people those HP folks. Easy to print to an HP printer? Indeed. Maintaining a need for printers and helping people at the same time. Good thinking. Poladroid thinking.

Read more...

Why would you visit Oslo?

Who visits Oslo? Head of Tourism (Visit Oslo), Tor Sannerud, is skeptical to promote Oslo to young tourists. He claims the city is too expensive for young travellers, so he don't want to promote the city to a younger demographic. It is therefore pleasing to inform that the Internet has once again revealed perceived public opinion to be at best, biased.
As an active user of the travel community TripAdvisor, I was curious to take a look at my own city, Oslo, and see what other travellers thought of my not so elegant city. (TripAdvisor is the world's largest community Web site for travelers where you read other's experiences travelling the world).
In the picture below you see a list of the most popular attractions Oslo has to offer.



My personal hangout, Cafe Mono, on top of the list!? Rock bar of the year a few years ago, but being so unique that even foreigners see this as a Must experience was a bit of a surprise.
So in grave journalistic spirit I scooped down to Mono (perhaps for a glass as well..) and asked if they had a lot of visits from abroad. Indeed, the bartender claimed it to be in periods insanely many of "those foreigners". Even the well respected SüdDeutche Zeitung had dropped in to make a serious story on the bar. (It is a dark, no frills bar with excellent rock music).
Travel Guru Jens A. Risnæs said the following in an interview in Aftenposten (Norwegian newspaper) in July 2007. Youth are tomorrows former of the general opinion. In order to improve our reputation abroad, we need young people to come here. Why don't the tourist board acknowledge this obvious fact?
Risnæs is onto something. But will Head of Tourism Tor Sannerud and his colleagues listen to the existing storytellers? There are many who clearly has enjoyed the small unique experiences in Oslo. But you don't see them sitting outside the Viking Ship Museum asking retired Germans about what is good or not in Oslo. And unfortunately that's the storytellers Visit Oslo listens to.
So what can marketers learn from this? The answer to whom your potential customers is will not be found in selected surveys. In the same way as not finding the answer to whom the next major artist will be by reading the tabloids. If Steve Jobs used Visit Oslo's tactic, the iPhone would have ended as a what if exercise.
Internet is a great tool for marketers to listen to customers. The question is if you know where to listen. Visit Oslo would see new opportunities if they gave the forum at TripAdvisor a visit. Do you know where to listen for feedback on your brand on the net?

Published in Norwegian at Norvegiasyndromet in February 2008

Read more...