AF Journal \ Vol 5. - The Belonging Edition by AnalogFolk

Journal Vol. 5

Welcome In 1967 The Beatles performed on the first ever live global broadcast, watched by 400 million people across 24 countries. John Lennon wrote “All You Need Is Love” especially for the performance. It’s a date logged in the calendar of music and media fans alike, because both the message and the way it was delivered embodied our need to belong. Our need to feel part of something greater than ourselves. Almost 50 years later and that message has endured, while the opportunity for delivering it has evolved beyond recognition. In today’s thriving landscape of channels and devices, brands are capable of, and responsible for, building engaged conversations, tight-knit communities, and impassioned movements – both on and offline. So we’ve gathered our Folk from across the globe to explore how brands can create this sense of belonging in a sprawling digital world. And deliver the sort of brand value Lennon might have got out of bed for.

CONTENTS 8. TO JOIN US, YOU HAVE TO BE ONE OF US 12. USE YOUR DOUGHNUT

RENDS T H C 16. TE THE Y N I E V R 18. LO ARE CENTU SOFT W

22. CHASING CHARIZARD 28. CHARITY APPS 4

AT: THE 30. WECHF SOCIAL FUTURE O WE LOVE S G N I H T 36. 5

NCE 38. SPHERES OF INFLUE LTURES 42. DESIGNING FOR CU

EDITED: NICK MCWILLIAMS, NICOLA CHEESE DESIGN & ILLUSTRATION: JOE GLENISTER

TO JOIN US, YOU HAVE TO BE ONE OF US

ENSURING BRANDS BUILDOFBRIDGES, NOT BURN THEM, TINA CORDES, DIRECTOR STRATEGY AS TECHNOLOGY LEADS US TOWARDS DISPARATE PORTLAND EXTREMES OF CONNECTION AND DISCONNECTION ENSURING BRANDS BUILD BRIDGES, DON’T BURN THEM, AS TECHNOLOGY LEADS US TOWARDS DISPARATE EXTREMES OF Director CONNECTION AND DISCONNECTION TIna Cordes, of Strategy, Portland

It feels good to belong. To be among people you like, respect and feel and feel connected connected to. And while to. And brands whileare brands not people, are notthey’re people,no they’re different. They want nobe to different. liked, respected They want and tohave be liked, people respected connectand with have them. people After all, brands connect are madewith up of them. a group Afterofall, people brands steering are made the ship. up ofAnd a group thoseofpeople want people to belong steering to something the ship.larger And those than themselves. people wantI to mean…who belong to doesn’t? something larger than themselves. I mean…who doesn’t?

CONNECTION VS DISCONNECTION

In the online world, belonging has evolved quickly. With early tools like IRC and List-servs, people shared and consumed information. And with early In theonline onlinecommunities world, belonging like Flickr has evolved and MySpace, quickly. people With early weretools ablelike IRC to have and LISTSERVS, real-time interactions people shared with and groups consumed and individuals. information. We And started with early proactively online communities posting photos, like Flickr checking-in and MySpace, to favorite people restaurants, were ablesharing to have real-time political articles. interactions with And groups then and theindividuals. passive interactions: We startedliking proactively and commenting posting photos, on photos, resharing checking-in to favorite therestaurants, articles thatsharing resonate, political reviewing articles. a restaurant And then the passive after a great service interactions: liking and experience. commenting And on connection photos, resharing is only getting the articles easierthat — resonate, “interaction” reviewing a restaurant is a simple after Like a great and “talking” service experience. can be doneAnd through connection emojis.is only getting easier – “interaction” is a simple Like and “talking” can be done via emojis. But there’s a conflict. Because disconnection is easy too. We block ex-boyfriends on Facebook or turn our Instagram private after Butbirth the there’s of a conflict. child. WeBecause quicklydisconnection swipe left on Tinder is easy or too. “ghost” We block ex-boyfriends on Facebook someone completely, or turn our leaving Instagram a chain private of unread afterand the unanswered birth of a child. We quickly swipe We texts. leftcan on Tinder becomeoroutraged ‘ghost’ someone when a good completely, deed goes leaving “viral” a chain and of unread andone no unanswered knows what texts. to do. We Like can become when a outraged Georgianwhen homeless a good teen deed wasgoes “viral” and no up caught oneinknows an online whatbattle to do.over LikeGoFundMe when a Georgian money homeless donated toteen was caught up in his education. an onlineThe battle anonymity over GoFundMe of the Internet moneycan donated make to connection his education. The impersonal, feel anonymity ofmake the Internet people feel can detached. make connection And so they feel impersonal, act make people–feel accordingly from detached. name calling And so and they taunting act accordingly to straight— up trolling. from name calling and taunting to straight up trolling.

THE ROLE OF BRANDS Which is where brands come in – in this netherworld between connection and disconnection, swinging chaotically between the two. On the one hand, some brands can tend towards disconnection. They broadcast a mask of anonymity across their digital ecosystem. These are the inside-out brands that focus solely on delivering business messages to a wide audience – what we might try to call “1:1 interactions at scale”. But they’re trying and sometimes floundering and seeing what works and what doesn’t.

They speak without listening, pumping out content they want us to consume rather than what we want. Like Victoria Secret promoting their new bralette line by assuredly declaring “No padding is sexy now”, much to the annoyance of women who need or want padding and completely contrary to their previous campaign messages. They convince social platforms to work better for brands than for real people (I’m looking at you Facebook and Instagram). Or buy up existing communities (likely for the mother lode of data they offer) while crossing their fingers that the transition goes smoothly for the members of that community. Like Adobe’s purchase of Behance, or Random House acquiring Figment, or Amazon getting their hands on Goodreads. I’m crossing my fingers too, especially as a long-time Goodreads member.

There are brands that have succeeded at making connections. They connections. exist authentically They exist authentically online. And by online. “authentic” And byI don’t mean “authentic” that they I don’t onlymean have that our best they interests only haveinour mind, bestor they’re acting interests purely in mind, altruistically. or they’reI acting mean that purely they altruistically. do all the things I brands mean that do –they selldo things, all thetalk things about brands themselves, do – selland things, ask for data talk about – in anthemselves, honest andand mutual ask for fashion. data –There’s in an honest no wizard hiding and mutual behind fashion. the curtain. There’s And no by wizard beinghiding open and behind providing something the curtain.inAnd return, by being brands open canand connect providing more something meaningfully. in return, brands can connect more meaningfully. These are the outside-in brands that provide useful services for their customers to do something they know they love, like Nike+ and the running and training communities. Or to do something they know they don’t love, like H+R Block partnering with Airbnb to help hosts figure out how to file their taxes, or Lowe’s producing the most useful Vines, Fix in Six.

They tell their brand and product stories in ways that entertain and excite us. I ran home from the gym to watch Felix Baumgartner jump from the stratosphere above the New Mexico desert, because that’s the type of thing that only Red Bull could pull off. Full disclosure, I cried when he landed, safe and sound. They give us what we want and need: helpful tips, coupons, early VIP access, exclusive content, and membership perks. Sephora has generated a loyal following by listening, reacting and surprising their community with everything they could want when it comes to makeup and beauty products.

CONNECTION IS HUMAN It doesn’t matter if it’s on a social channel, at an experiential event, or for an integrated campaign, brands connect more meaningfully when they listen first and speak later. With the demographic and psychographic data that brands have access to, as well as advanced social listening tools, hearing what people have to say can come easily. We need to turn down the noise and make sure we’re listening to the right things that will help uncover a human truth. Speaking is when it becomes more complicated, because connecting on a human level always is. We have to ensure that brand KPIs and long-term visions work alongside (rather than against) a point of real, authentic connection. That’s how we lose the mask of anonymity and ensure brands swing away from disconnection and towards true connection.

Ali McKnight, Associate Creative Director, London

What do Johnny Cash, Mog the Cat and Arvo beer all have in common? Doughnuts. Not making sense yet? Bear with me. Cast your mind back to the halcyon days of 2010… The IMF is bailing out Greece, the Winter Olympics is doing whatever it does in Whistler and Vancouver, and (more relevantly to this article) somewhere in the internet thousands of people are drawing pictures of the late, great, ‘man in black’ as part of the Johnny Cash Project*. But why? Well, obviously it’s because of a doughnut. Or rather a ‘Doughnut Idea’. An idea with a hole at its heart, a hole that screams out for people to pop their finger** in. A hole so perfectly shaped for your audience that they feel like it was made specifically for their finger. So how do you go about creating one of these tantalizingly holey ideas? An idea so holey that it has a doctorate in Holeyness from the School of Holes and Doughnut Sciences at Oxford University?

The key is to find a common love, passion, interest (fanaticism if you will) between your audience and your brand… and utilize (exploit) it to give your audience a sense of ownership and belonging around the project. The Johnny Cash Project tapped into people’s adoration of the artist alongside their personal creativity, further incentivized with the allure of Internet ‘fame’ if your illustration made it into the final music video.

Mog the Cat was the finger-shaped hole in Sainsbury’s ‘The Storytellers’ Christmas campaign last year. Where parents could submit videos of a bed-time reading of the Mog the Cat book with their children. It drew on a parent’s passion for reading with their children, their love of Mog The Cat, and their inability not to share cute clips of kids online. All this was further galvanized by the joint payoff of featuring in an alternative TVC and raising awareness of Child Literacy through a Save The Children partnership. Arvo beer used a doughnut to launch their brand. They knew that Australians love beer and having an opinion, and let them have an opinion about what their next beer should taste like. Simple but effective. Each idea had a hole that needed passionate people to fill. A doughnut waiting for a finger. That’s why people love a doughnut. But why should brands? I asked a strategist: • Active involvement in your brand creates emotional engagement with your brand – this can be invaluable. • Participants feel personal ownership of the idea, making them more likely to share it – helps your organic reach go stratospheric. • Provides an authentic way to integrate into a community – Papa don’t preach, he participates. So how does one bake said ‘Doughnut Idea’? The key is in understanding your audience, finding your insight, and remembering above-all that ultimately people really don’t care about your aerosol/ liquor/shampoo/chain-of-kale-juice-bars.

As my man Howard Gossage*** said – “Nobody reads ads. People read what interests them, and sometimes it’s an ad.” Luckily we now live in a digital age where our access to data has made finding what actually interests a specific group of people much easier. So, you’ve got your brand, you know your audience, you’ve worked out what common interest unites the two. All you need now is a beautifully simple, creative, and engaging way of bringing those elements together in an award-worthy piece of work. That’s where the Creative Department comes in… But to be honest we’ll probably ignore it all and do a pretty thing we thought of in the pub.

* Don’t know what it is? Google it. ** Read ‘user participation’ *** Seriously, make sure you Google him. Better still, read Steve Harrison’s book about him.

2017 TECH TRENDS INFLUENCING BEHAVIOUR CHANGE

INSTANT ENCOUNTERS

Apps and services are bringing strangers together Thanks to the immediacy and efficacy of mobile dating services like Tinder and Grindr, people have become more open to meeting complete strangers. Bad news for protective parents but good news for the host of apps and services finding other ingenious ways to connect strangers in real time.

MASS MINGLING

Geo-location-led technology is bringing people together en masse Agoraphobics better be on high alert. We’re going to see an explosion of apps, services and games that harness location data to bring crowds together around a common goal or event.

CROWD CONTROL

Uniting crowds of people to control the experience Innovative tech is being used to bring people together by giving them control of event environments or even the entertainment. In some cases that experience might not even happen unless people are socially connected.

MENTOR FIXING Services that find people a mentor

Everyone’s trying to project the perfect life on Instagram – it’s a vicious circle of narcissism that has made us hungrier than ever to progress and improve in all aspects of life. Social mentorship start-ups are helping people do that with personal mentors who advise, motivate and inform. 17

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The renewed importance of human input as we grow ever more reliant on analytics and automation -------------------------------Ben Hourahine, Strategy Partner, Sydney

Jennifer Null has a problem. She cannot exist in a database. Poor Jennifer is rejected every time. We are in the business of connecting people. People to brands, products, movements and social causes. In the software century and an age of automation, how these connections are made deserves some exploration and attention. So what is love in the Software Century? 18

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The marketing industry is awash with talk of complexity, automation and the daily leaps of new marketing technology. Traditional industry thinkers are struggling to talk their way out of the woods and marketers have an expanding remit that is now exploding by the day. What’s really driving this change is the ability of software to reconstitute all aspects of life. From the post-war world sprang the device age with household revolutions like the dishwasher and the microwave changing the game. We have now entered the Software Century where algorithms can now help find our perfect partner, predict our music taste and improve our health. The focus has moved from the device and onto how we work across them. Software’s impact on marketing is profound and it is actually a brilliant time to be in an industry exploding with innovation. The introduction of software into the marketing toolbox gives us incredible power and ability. We are now applying data science with our clients to segment, target and trigger communication based on incredibly sophisticated interactions across channels. We are currently working with one client on the cadence rhythm of when you change your bed sheets for example.

Being sophisticated with automation and programmatic software, however, is not simply about making the software smarter. For as a wise man once said, “a fool with a tool is still a fool”. Automation is excellent at effect replication, for example. When we observe a number of factors leading to a desirable outcome, we can replicate this process very efficiently to ensure we are optimising any marketing effort. The causal relationship needs to be understood in the first place though and ironically in today’s world it is even more important to understand emotion-based brand interactions. What ultimately drives decisionmaking and human judgement is critically important to creating connection and ultimately brand love in the software century.

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Scientists have been running a very interesting robotics test for a number of years which gauges the ability of a robot to interact with a human being. In the experiment the robot is tasked with passing a hot cup of tea to a human being and so far the robots have failed. What the engineers have discovered is there is an incredibly complex set of visual, emotional and trust based interactions hidden in such a simple task. Multiple non-verbal, sense and movement cues create a trust exchange that invisibly communicates, “yes, this is really hot, but trust me, you’re safe to accept this’ and in return “OK, I trust you, this connection is genuine, so I am going to ignore the danger and take the tea from you”. Getting a robot to truly participate in this process has become a bit of a storm in a teacup. The learning for us is that what appears to be a very simple transactional exchange – passing a cup of tea – is actually a detailed emotional exchange at heart, or more accurately it is an intertwined combination of both. This is the crux of the brave new world we are entering into, and the irony of it is that automation is going to present us with more questions about human drivers and emotional decisionmaking, not less. In other fields this is known as the automation paradox. The paradox being that the introduction of automation actually increases the need for human input (and in this case understanding). This is a bigger topic for another day, but the next time someone tells you that they are going to be replaced by a robot you can tell them that occupations with increased computation have grown twice as fast as those without since the 80’s .

I recently spoke with some leaders in the field of programmatic media buying and I asked them what was keeping them awake at night. Their response was the same: “we need more understanding of what causes and drives consumer decisionmaking, not just the marketing effects”. Once we have the strategy we can optimise it and create rules-based systems, but if we don’t understand the deep human drivers that create brand connections, replication and optimisation is useless. Indeed optimisation in this instance can even be dangerous, because if an automated system contains an error it will keep replicating that error until it is fixed or shut down.

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So this is not just about debugging software to ensure a CRM system doesn’t assume that Jennifer Null’s surname is a blank entry field. We of course need to make sure people don’t become a ghost in the machine of transactional advertising, but we need to move beyond the man vs machine model the media put forward. The right approach is to allow the software we are building to work hand-in-hand with human insight models in order to truly create effective brand connection in this new world – brand love draped over the framework of analytics and automation. To put it simply, future marketing models will be an interesting mix of strategic science and creative magic. Left and right brain working together. Joy and delivery in perfect harmony. Understanding when you need to change your bed sheets is one thing, but you need to love me enough to share your bed with me in the first place.

PREPARING FOR MASS ADOPTION OF AUGMENTED REALITY TECHNOLOGY AND HOW IT CAN AUGMENT REAL-WORLD BRANDS

Rick Smith, Senior Creative Technologist, London In 1999, Nintendo launched the first UK entry in their colossal video game franchise: Pokémon. Along with the video game, the franchise dominated young attention spans everywhere by releasing TV shows, wide-release movies and of course huge amounts of merchandise; including a trading card game. This trading card game was probably one of the biggest fads to have existed on the playground and produced a sort of mass hysteria for most kids that grew up around it. After it died down, I didn’t think I’d experience that sort of thing again. I was wrong. You shouldn’t underestimate the power of nostalgia.

As I’m sure you are aware, this past summer has been dominated by parks full of people swiping upwardly on their phone, roving bands of wannabe gym leaders looking for the next ‘lured’ Pokéstop. The only change in the mass hysteria between the first big Pokémon wave and this one is that age didn’t seem to matter. In fact, it was probably more advantageous if you were an adult as you didn’t have a bedtime and could pretty much go anywhere you wanted in your hunt for rare Pokémon (as long as you weren’t trespassing). At one point Pokémon Go had more daily users than Twitter and more engagement than Facebook; it seemed like everyone was playing.

In an attempt to capitalise on this huge user base, brands and marketers were quick to pander to these new adult Pokémon trainers and started to offer rewards for visiting their establishments while playing Pokémon Go. Rare Pokémon were promised, lures were activated and even discounts according to your Pokémon Trainer ‘level’ were advertised. But it was hard to actually do anything worthwhile as a brand, such as turning all of your establishments into Pokéstops, as Niantic (the game’s creators) were keeping very quiet about how any of that worked.

We didn’t have to wait long to find out why as come the Japanese launch of the game, it was revealed that Niantic were partnering with McDonald’s to turn every single one of their restaurants in Japan into a Pokégym. While official figures haven’t been released, a McDonald’s spokesperson has said that the partnership has been very successful for their brand. In fact, it could be the most successful form of locationbased advertising ever produced. This should come as no surprise, as the game has been the most successful AR (Augmented Reality) application in recent history and has been exceptional at getting people to visit places they rarely go to. Being able to control the locations of these, and thus the movement of these players, is an absolute dream scenario for brands and couldn’t have been cheap! There has been another example of this type of location based AR marketing, and it comes courtesy of Snapchat. Last year saw the expansion of Snapchat’s filters platform, where users can overlay graphics on to their snaps, into something they call GeoFilters. As the name suggests, these are filters that are specifically available only in certain locations. These GeoFilters are user-created and technically quite basic – they’re essentially a small PNG image, so nothing too impressive. Nonetheless,

this hasn’t stopped marketers getting involved, despite Snapchat charging for using GeoFilters with a brand logo. Snapchat has also been allowing companies to release sponsored Lenses and GeoLenses, their AR video filters which are far more technically impressive, but are of course harder to produce and more expensive. A lot of notable brands have experimented with these GeoLenses and GeoFilters including: Hollister, Starbucks, McDonalds and Disneyland. Many of these companies are finding that these Snapchat campaigns are valuable in reaching out to a younger audience, improving their brand awareness with them, but they are not necessarily attracting people to their locations in the same way that Pokémon Go marketing has. That’s not so surprising since the Pokémon experience attracts users to these locations with the promise of obtaining something they can use permanently, whereas the Snapchat GeoFilters and Lenses model augments the users experience while they are at the location. Once the user is no longer there, the filter or lens is unusable.

If we were to run with this idea, for locationbased AR applications to be successful in attracting people to certain places, they need to offer something less ethereal. This could be a utility that the user found so useful that it would work its way into their daily routine (think CityMapper), or could be as simple as an enticing offer. Recently we have been exploring the idea of using AR technologies to influence the movement of people around a shopping mall. The idea starts with offering a utility to the user by replacing the standard shopping mall map with an AR-guided interface. Using a smartphoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s camera, you can overlay directional instructions to the user in a real-life setting, but you can also overlay other relevant information to the user such as stock level information, crowd-sourced reviews of products, or special deals and offers. This is pretty well trodden ground, but by combining this utility with the tracking of these users within the shopping mall (using Wi-Fi distancing techniques, or Bluetooth 4.0) you can start to build a picture of the movement of these people within the building and then start to send offers or product recommendations to specific devices and nudging them to visit less explored parts of the mall. 26

This is a powerful application of AR for brands – choice architecture. Or, influencing where people choose to go. That’s what Pokémon Go did for McDonald’s. And as we begin to see new device advancements in the area, with Google’s Project Tango devices (already in some developer’s hands) and Snap’s Spectacles, we’ll be seeing plenty more brands trying their hands at it in exciting and innovative ways. Hopefully by then I’ll have finally caught a damn Charizard too.

THREE SMASHING CHARITY APPS Giving back has always been an ongoing conversation in society. Now mobile apps are making it easier than ever to become a philanthropist with just a couple of taps. Here are three charity apps catching our attention.

SHARE THE MEAL This is a very easy-to-use app from the UN helping you donate meals to starving children. Once you’re logged in, it invites you to donate by showing profiles, pictures and information of the cause. It shows you the progress of your efforts and how they stack up against those of your Facebook friends. Simple gamification encouraging you to keep donating.

CHARITY MILES It’s a simple but powerful concept. You simply take advantage of a physical activity to generate donations. Once you’re into the app it will let you create a profile or quick start. Then select the charity of your choice and start running or walking. It also has built-in $1 donations when you donate a photo to support a cause.

DONATE A PHOTO FOR CHARITY For every photo you share through Donate a Photo, Johnson & Johnson gives $1 to a cause you want to help. The app encourages you to share one photo a day with your friends while helping contribute to a cause you think is worthwhile.

WECHAT:

DISSECTING THE FUTURE OF SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS – CHINA’S WECHAT – TO INFORM LONG-TERM SOCIAL STRATEGIES Summer Yang, Strategy Manager, Hong Kong

If you’ve recently spoken with someone from China, they might have mentioned WeChat. They might have bragged about how easy it is to stay connected through the platform. The truth is, they weren’t needlessly bragging. WeChat plays a dominant role in their daily contact with the world, from morning to night – and the connection is not limited to social networking. It is a hub for all internet activity and a platform through which users find their way to other services. From chatting with friends, to brainstorming with teammates in group chat; from paying for goods at physical stores to settling utility bills and splitting dinner tabs; from ordering taxis and food deliveries to making hospital appointments. Yep, you can access almost all your service needs without ever leaving the WeChat universe. Compared to the West, China’s social media landscape is highly fragmented and rapidly evolving. What was popular two months ago might not even exist now. WeChat’s ambitions have been stratospheric, and they have delivered against those ambitions with a drive and pace unrivalled by anyone in the social landscape. As a result, WeChat has taken China by storm in the space of only two years. A ‘super app’, as some call it, WeChat now has 806 million monthly active users, increasing 34% year-on-year, according to Tencent’s 2016 Q2 results. For Chinese mobile internet users, more than a third of their browsing time is on WeChat. A typical user accesses it ten times a day or even more. And it’s still growing. Some believe that no innovation from China can be called original: Baidu was the copy of Google, Alibaba follows the Amazon blueprint, even WeChat’s big brother QQ owes much to ICQ. But the rise of WeChat is no copycat story; it’s a true trailblazer. Back in 2011, Tencent sensed the mobile internet trend and challenged its team to design a smartphone-based messaging app. That’s how WeChat was born. Its first mission was to shift messaging away from boring, straightforward, text-based SMS to more expressive, entertaining and immersive forms of communication that were more enjoyable and simple to use.

To achieve that, WeChat introduced playful functions and elements. Shaking your phone to find people near you, tapping to send audio messages, files of funny emoticons or gifs and photo sharing through WeChat moment. Through these simple functions, WeChat created an all-in-one social communication ecosystem that provided innovative new ways to connect, communicate and share. For many emerging social platforms, getting the first wave of users is the big problem. However, WeChat was born with a silver spoon in its mouth. Many Chinese people grew up using QQ – a PC-based messaging platform also offered by Tencent. With over 800 million register users, QQ provided the perfect launch pad for WeChat to take off. With a simple one-step sign-in, QQ users could easily transfer their entire profile over to this new app. And a new mobile-led era of 24/7, 360 connectivity was born. WeChat didn’t call it a day once they’d delivered the nation’s number one social platform. Continuously evolving around users’ needs, WeChat has exploded and grown into a holistic platform with various functions that bring together messaging, social communication, e-commerce, online payment services, gaming, and more. It’s the one app to rule them all. WeChat knows exactly how to identify user mindsets and needs, and rolls out services and functions that benefit them. One of the more successful ‘stunt features’ WeChat introduced was the Red Envelope. The giving of moneyfilled red envelopes is an annual tradition of Chinese New Year that places importance not only on the value of the money inside, but the message it carries. During the 2014 Chinese New Year, WeChat users were able to send virtual Red Envelopes with money and a greeting to friends and family. But in reality it was a scheme to lure new users onto its mobile payment system. Behind the veil of a user-friendly feature, it was wildly successful. Since then digital Red Envelopes have become a tradition, and at the same time prompting tens of millions of mobile users to link their bank cards to WeChat, opening the floodgates for other on-platform purchases. This is a notable achievement given the high risk of cybercrime in China. WeChat negated that risk by rolling out a function that pulled on the heartstrings and provided real value.

Jumpstarted from there, WeChat quickly rolled out more payment services to stay ahead of their competition – a money transaction service and offline cashless payments. While a truly cashless economy is still on the horizon in the West, thanks to WeChat the Chinese are living it now. They can make regular purchases directly though the app, making cash and credit cards redundant day-to-day. It is the best example yet of how WeChat is shaping the future of not only social media but also consumer behaviour. The strengths of WeChat are unarguable. Its continually growing user base, those users’ dependency on the platform and the frequent and market-leading platform innovations.

These enticements have prompted many brands to rush onto the platform. And then they approach WeChat as they would Weibo or Facebook. They set up an account, they write an article, they publish it, they wait for those client-delighting engagement stats to roll in. But that’s not how WeChat works. Brands can only reach their current followers – there’s no option of paid support to reach wider audiences. The only way to do that is organically, by shares from current followers. The same principle also applies to content engagement and retention rate. Users will only open and read the post if they are intrigued at first sight. It’s not about what brands want to tell the audience, it’s what the audience wants to be told that matters. Not all brands jumped on the WeChat bandwagon too fast without fully understanding why or how. There are few successful players who managed to cut through the noise and establish themselves as platform leaders. Burberry is one of them.

Burberry revealed its digital innovation partnership with WeChat back in 2014. The partnership allowed consumers access to experience and explore the brand as they never could before, through livestreams of the fashion shows and behind-the-scenes exclusive content tailored for them. But it also helped hero Burberry in the Chinese market as a digital innovator that really understood the market and its consumer’s needs. Of course, not all brands can afford this type of collaboration, but what WeChat intrinsically has to offer is already remarkable. With all the different services and functions the platform provides, brands are able to build stronger relationships with the consumers by better serving their needs. Just to name few examples:

REAL-TIME CUSTOMER SERVICE KLM took on a very practical strategy, leveraging WeChat’s customer service capability to build an alwayson service channel. Customers don’t need to endure two hours of tinny waiting music before a two minute conversation with a customer representative. It’s faster and easier through chats. KLM encourages its customers to reach out to the brand on WeChat whenever they need help and KLM will get back to them within the hour.

WECHAT BANKING China Merchant Bank cooperated with WeChat to take online banking to a whole new level. Once users’ bank cards are attached to WeChat, they can check their balance, pay bills, or even request a loan directly through the chats with China Merchant Bank. This is mutually beneficial – it’s convenient for customers, but also saves the bank money. Rather than sending an SMS to cardholders as a reminder after each payment, the service is completely transferred onto its official WeChat platform.

SOCIAL COMMERCE AND MORE Unlike Amazon or Taobao, the e-commerce experience on WeChat requires little deliberation, starting with content and ending with an impulse purchase. This is what some may call social commerce. This is no traditional shopping platform – traffic directed by the social commerce is extremely targeted, making purchase action the natural continuation of content consumption. More than 10% of the top WeChat official accounts have WeChat stores, and their sales are amazingly high. For start-up brands like Super Salad and Hey Juice, WeChat provides even more than social commerce. Often labeled as internet-based brands, they don’t have any form of offline touchpoints (except delivery). For them, WeChat is their entire brand ecosystem. They can connect with the digitally savvy millennials, then seamlessly bridge the gap between brand awareness and sales – ‘like’ and ‘buy’ is only one click away.

There’s no doubt that WeChat and its continually evolving functions is leading the social channel revolution. It is no longer just a place for posting photos, or updating status to keep others informed. WeChat is like a Swiss army knife, the master of all things. And the future of social media. But if we peel off the fancy coating, what remains at the core are what WeChat values most – users. They only roll out services and functions that add value. And have been known to cut those that are disliked, even the moneymakers. This is the ultimate reason for WeChat’s success, and also one of the biggest takeaways for brands… It’s great to embrace change, but no matter how fast social evolves, brands must focus on the value they’re providing rather than change for the sake of change.

DJI MAVIC DRONE

DJIâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new drone has all the features of higherend drones (obstacle avoidance, 40mph, 4K video recording) but folds up into the palm of your hand and is still cheaper than the rival GoPro Karma system. Good thing, small package. www.dji.com/mavic

MR ROBOT SERIES 2

A TV show about a group of computer hackers trying to take down the largest Multi-National company in the world, or is it?! There hasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t been this much in-office debate about crack-pot theories since the halcyon days of Lost .www.usanetwork.com/mrrobot

SPACE X INTERPLANETARY TRANSPORT SYSTEM

If Jay-Z ever actually took a second to list out his 99 problems, overpopulation and resource scarcity would probably be in the top ten. Luckily Elon Musk’s doing it for us. Alongside Space X he’s recently detailed the Mars colonization project. www.spacex.com

SAGA COMIC

If Romeo and Juliet wandered out of Verona and stumbled onto the set of Star Wars you’d get Saga. It’s a comic about two lovers from warring extra-terrestrial races who struggle to survive with their new-born daughter. On volume 6 now, there hasn’t been a better time to catch up. www.imagecomics.com/comics/series/saga

INTEL PROJECT ALLOY

Another VR headset, but with a twist. Intel’s “Mixed Reality” headset is wireless and has an inbuilt computer so no additional hardware is required. Twist #2: It has a front-facing camera so it can scan the environment, bringing it into the virtual world. Intel are hoping it’ll alleviate people’s concerns about headsets shutting people off from reality.

www.newsroom.intel.com/press-kits/project-alloy

AS IT BECOMES HARDER FOR BRANDS TO BE LOVED WITHIN COMMUNITIES, ARE TODAY’S TASTEMAKERS ALWAYS THE ANSWER? Tal Dekel-Daks, Junior Content Editor & Kate Worthington, Content Editor, London Like so many industry buzzwords, ‘influencer’ is a term that’s bandied around without much concern for a clear definition. The thing is, they exist on a sweeping spectrum – from the superstars of YouTube with millions of followers, to the lowkey brand superfan. So, lesson one: followers do not necessarily maketh an influencer. Instead, influencers can be defined by a strong, engaged community built over time. They have expertise in a content category that has struck a chord with followers and fans (however mainstream or niche they may be). It’s also about the means in which they got there: they are self-built using social channels, marking them out from celebrities (who are famous for something else other than their social ‘brand’).

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Influencers can persuade their audience to take a positive (or negative) view of your brand through their network. Research shows that 92% of us turn to people we know for referrals above any other source, and in a recent Twitter study, users trusted influencers nearly as much as their friends. Who needs friends when you’ve got influencers? In a nutshell, influencers are seen as more approachable, trustworthy, and authentic than their celebrity counterparts. They strike the balance between relatable and aspirational. So as a brand, strategically partner with a carefully selected influencer and you’re onto a winner. But how do you do that?

KEEPING IT REAL

Consumers are not naive. They are increasingly aware that Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube stars are paid to endorse products (and even more so now that the F.T.C and the I.A.B requires that influencers disclose when something has been paid-for by a brand, using labels such as #Ad and #Sponsored). By and large, they trust that the people they follow on social media are making a considered decision about the brands they will work with. A savvy influencer will only endorse or work with brands they genuinely feel an affinity with, for they know their audience can sniff out a bogus piece of content a mile off. Their aim is to be as authentic as possible, because that’s how they’ve grown their loyal following. A smart influencer won’t be in a hurry to throw away years of work cultivating their loyal following just for a fat paycheck.

FINDING ‘THE ONE’ The crux of the issue is finding the right creator and slotting into their narrative. Some brands hope that they can blindly partner with Zoella, gaining access to her 11.1millionstrong YouTube community, or assume that throwing some money at a sponsored product post will magically grow their business. But an ill-fitting match makes for bad content and an inauthentic experience for the fans, which can lead to a swift click of the unfollow/unsubscribe button. It’s lose-lose-lose; for the brand, for the influencer and for their audience.

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Unfortunately there’s no Tinder equivalent for influencers. So searching for a well-fitted match requires a little elbow grease. It’s about looking beyond the follower count, instead finding the influencer that’s most aligned to your brand values. Look at the quality of engagement – how are followers interacting within these communities? There’s a lot to be said for thorough research and gut instinct here – something that simply can’t be wholey replicated by short cuts such as influencer outreach tools. For a more authentic influencer campaign, there are several questions we ask when deciding who to approach: Is this person the best spokesperson for your brand? Does this person already follow or interact with your brand? Would your brand’s product or presence make sense in their life?

FINDING ‘THE ONE’

Despite their robotic-like ability to create regular content, influencers are people, not machines. So there’s no blanket rule for working with them, but we think of influenceragency relationships as long-term partnerships that go beyond the transactional. Partnerships should always be built around a threeway benefit for all involved; brand, influencer and audience. It’s crucial to allow influencers to act as co-creators and be present at the idea stage. Instead of approaching these creators asking for something specific to be posted, it should be a collaboration – otherwise you risk content that feels compromised (turning off your audience in a matter of moments). And like all good relationships, there has to be mutual trust and respect. This way, the brand story is stitched into a narrative the influencer is already telling, making their community more willing to listen, more willing to enjoy, and more willing to engage. That’s how we handled Malibu’s award-winning ‘Best Summer Ever’ YouTube campaign #selfpromotion.

RISING STARS

Perhaps the most exciting influencer territory right now is that of the ‘low’ and ‘mid-tier’ influencer. These are the talents on their way up, the ones untapped by brands with channels not yet saturated by sponsored content. They’re likely to be open to working with brands as they look to boost their own following and personal brand. Many will be unsigned by talent agencies, making their own rules, which will often mean brands get more bang for their buck. With these influencers, it needn’t be all about cold hard cash – ask them what you can do for them. It might be that you can come to a value exchange by other means. Strike up a relationship with one of these emerging voices and get it right, and who knows, it could lead to long-term collaboration and a loyal partnership for years to come, even as their influence grows. And you were there first.

RECIPE FOR SUCCESS What we should all remember when collaborating with influencers is, ultimately, it’s not about the brand; it’s about the end user. Are people enjoying your content? Is it useful or entertaining? But of course, the burning question brands will want to know is ‘how do you measure success?’ It’s important to define success before you start, choosing your objectives, relevant indicators and metrics upfront. Keep in mind it’s all about the audience demographic and the community that you want to reach –shares, mentions, referral traffic, and increase in follows on brand channels (from the people that matter to your brand) are amongst the metrics you could look to include. Avoid the temptation to look simply at reach. Influencers shouldn’t be thought of – to put it in agency parlance – as an ‘easy win’. As the landscape of influencer/ brand content is set to become ever more saturated, it’s even more important to use influencers intelligently and with careful consideration. Otherwise, you may end up with content that sticks out like a sore thumb, rather than thumb-stopping content.

THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND USEFUL EXPERIENCE DESIGN IN AN ERA OF GLOBAL DIGITAL PROPERTIES

Petter Ottoson, Head of Experience Design, London Imagine one successful platform, one website, with a worldwide audience. For any business with eyes on an international market and for any of us digital industry grunts, a templated, single-source global reach makes for an exciting proposition. Right now, over 45% of the world’s population access the Internet in some way. That’s twice what it was six or seven years ago. That provokes the confidenceboosting thought that when this article is published online, it has a theoretical audience of over 3.3 billion people. That’s more readers than J.K. Rowling ever amassed. And the trend is only going to continue – the uptake is increasing with every passing year (Internet users, not my fanbase). And with Facebook and Google both testing innovative Internet provider tech, we’ll reach a tipping point soon.

So an international brand will soon have a truly international online audience. Truth be told, I’m not expecting 3.3 billion people to read this. But at the least I’m expecting everyone who does to be able to understand it, and navigate the magazine it’s printed in or site it’s hosted on to find further content. Regardless of their background, and regardless of where they happen to live. But how do I make sure that they can do that? How do we communicate with all these people using only one website or interface? The key is understanding the cultures we’re addressing, and putting this understanding of culture to work by letting it influence our design process and decisions.

Besides the living organisms that convert pasteurized milk to yoghurt during fermentation (thanks Wikipedia), ‘culture’ is the ideas, customs and social behaviour of a group of people – everything from libraries to record labels, philosophy to body modifications. It seems culture is basically a lot of stuff; all of which, with the possible exception of the yoghurt, seem to relate to what people think, feel, make, or like in a certain place and time.

“Culture is the social production and reproduction of sense, meaning and consciousness.” - John Hartley But how do we pinpoint culture? How do we understand and attempt to classify culture in order to inspire successful, global designs for the people within it? To simplify for the purposes of this article, we could regard a specific culture as a series of traditional, inherited, common arrangements and practices within

a certain geographic region. A national culture, for example, is intended to be the shared values within a region or nation. But simplifying it to this degree requires the culture to be generalizable, clearly identifiable, and geographically stable. And sometimes that’s not the case. Within cultures we’ll find ‘subcultures’, or cultural formations separated geographically. These interlinked but geographically remote cultures are what Marshall McLuhan labelled the Global Village back in the 1960s – groups of geographically distributed people, strung together by media and information technology, in a world that is at once shrinking and expanding. Within this shrinking and expanding world, preferences are still created, specialisms developed, and smaller identityforming clusters moulded. These groups are sometimes, perhaps rather annoyingly, called ‘tribes’. For the sake of my own clarity and sanity, I’m going to quietly ignore tribes in this article by considering them cultures as well..

Interface design and user perception of interfaces are matters of preference, of personal taste, and will vary from designer to designer, and from user to user. There are, however, commonalities in these preferences, and many of those commonalities can be traced back to the cultural belonging of the user. One way to observe this preference disparity is by comparing successful, thoroughly user-tested websites developed locally for markets where the cultural bias differs. We can start with a few well-known Asian websites, like Japan’s Rakuten, South Korea’s Naver, Taiwan’s Rutenor or China’s Sina. When you compare them with European or American websites in the same field, it becomes impossible to miss the differences.

So successful platforms are designed differently for different cultures. The assumption follows that itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s possible to generalise (to a degree) on certain interface preferences based on the geographical culture of a particular user. Culture, therefore, can act as a bounteous treasure chest of preferences â&#x20AC;&#x201C; preferences in regards to the information presented, the density of it, the amount of verbal and visual exposure, colour schemes, and even the layout and patterns that we use to guide navigation. These preferences will influence how people behave when interacting with any digital interface. And we need to take this into account when we design global platforms and products.

Density

A generalised chart intended to show differences in approach to interface design on a semi- global scale.

East-ish

West-ish

Integration Verbality

Density - Task Orientation These variables indicate the comparitive density or mass of an interface, and the relative task orientation of the product. Verbality - Visuality Visuality

These variables denote the emphasis on visual content and the emphasis of verbal content within an interface.

Constellation Intergration - Constellation Task Orientation

These variables demonstrate the likelihood of intergrating multiple features onto one platform, and of splitting services into multiple, single, task driven entities.

Don’t get me wrong – there’s nothing to say one global interface won’t work well across borders and across cultures. But we can dramatically increase our chance of success by adapting the interface to suit cultural user preferences and meet cultural needs. To suit preferences and meet needs, localisation is key. Many localised global websites will encourage a user to identify their country before accessing any of the content. For the more future-facing, automatic geo-location will do it for them. But so often this only impacts contact details, product prices, currencies, and language (if you’re lucky). In its truest form, localisation – this cultural customisation of the digital – should go further than that. By knowing our users, knowing their location, and understanding their culture, we should be able to localise and personalise their experience further. And by building for cultural preferences we can help users understand and enjoy a platform or product.

So what does all this mean? It means research. Nothing worth doing is ever easy – I’d never really understood that saying until now. The hard graft is testing concept prototypes and solutions with actual users. Actual users who are representative of the cultures you’re interested in talking to. Those learnings can be used to make solutions that work and continue to work. With these testing-based insights into your target cultures, you’ll be able to move beyond the superficial localisation of languages and currencies, and tailor not only content and images according to cultural tastes, but also the information architecture itself. And that, in brief, is how you move from designing for markets to designing for cultures.

AnalogFolk.com #TheAFJournal

November / 2016