Widgets and identity

The Chinwag event last night on "Media Widgetized"* was well attended by people from startups and big technology brands alike. The panel all had interesting and informed things to say, and Steve Bowbrick was a funny and effective Chair. Two good writeups of the content of the debate are here and here.

For readers who don't know what a widget is, take a look at the first writeup link above for a choice of explanations and a picture of some widgets.

My identity angle: widgets enable us to track, interact with and remix diverse information-based "stuff" (weather updates, stock prices, mini games, our social network profiles etc.) within the unifying framework of our own online personas, both public (blog, public start page etc.) and private (desktop widgets, private start page etc.).

Widgets are as much about performing our identity superpublically as they are about witnessing the world through the filter of our identity (i.e. our preferences and interests). Which is precisely why the commercial world is at once desperately keen to leverage widgets to extend the reach and resonance of their brand, and yet also petrified of their potential for disrupting and subverting that brand.

A notional example: would McDonalds want a Big Mac mini game widget placed ironically on a high-traffic blog documenting that company's role in the ongoing destruction of rainforests? I think probably not. It will be interesting to see how masters of big media marketing like McDonald ("I'm loooooving it!") cope as the web encroaches increasingly on their branding comfort zones.

One thing's for sure, though: widgets are conspiring to make the process of brand identity evolution a whole lot more fluid, transparent and predicated on authentic engagement and relationship by the brand with its community. And that has to be a good thing.

*"Widgetized" spelled with a z for search engine optimisation, seemingly—though quite why Chinwag prefer to get the attention of Americans and Australians at the expense of us Brits who are the ones likely to attend their events I'm not entirely sure!

Yahoo and Google try to out-Green one another

This kind of tussle for the technology behemoth Green brand identity high ground can only be a Good Thing. : )

Sound branding

Noel Franus writes about "Building Brand Value Through the Strategic Use of Sound":

Most organizations have relied almost exclusively on the sense of sight to communicate who they are, what they do and why they matter. Pirates have their unmistakable skull-and-bones flag. Nearly all religions have their own unique symbol. And today, practically every brand on earth has its own visual identity. Other senses are rarely part of the equation.

Yet sound has unquestionable potential in creating impressions. Consider the sonic snippets in your life—imagine Chariots of Fire or Rocky without music, a PC commercial without that Intel Inside bongggg, or a Harley-Davidson hog without its expertly calibrated tone. Sound triggers recall and reactions. And much like good visual or industrial design, it also has the ability to convey value and strengthen brand reputations.

Forward-thinking brands are catching on. In this first of a two-part series based on my co-presentation at the “Gain” conference last October, we introduce the practice of audio branding and identity – the intentional use of music, sound and voice to create a connection between people and organizations.

The full post has some great examples of the use of sound for brand identity enhancement. As a musician and identitologist, this topic fascinates me. Music has the ability to resonate with us on so many levels. The "food of love", indeed!

Kettle Chips—a product identity perspective

Charla and I love Kettle Chips—they are an indulgent pre-dinner snack we occasionally treat ourselves to when a long week in the city has pummeled us into submission. Once opened, the whole contents of a large bag invariably disappears within ten crunchy minutes.

Kettle have been the leading premium potato crisp brand in the UK for some years now, but they haven't rested on their laurels one bit: they are always coming out with some new flavour, complete with evocative title and expressively-designed wrapper. The flavours are usually delicious, and when they are less than that, improved versions are often forthcoming pretty quickly. Kettle Chips also strike a friendly yet respectful tone in encouraging customer feedback—I get the strong impression that the company is run by people who are genuinely passionate about creating amazing crisps.

So what's not to like? Well, nothing at all, but I do have a hopeful observation about Kettle's product identity and branding to offer them.

While the titles and wrappers of each flavour are boldly differentiated from one another, the flavours themselves are far less so—while each tastes great, it does so in a way that is far more similar to the other flavours than it is different.

The pack of the Mango Chilli flavour, "Angry Fruit" (pictured above), proclaims: "the chilli takes time to arrive, but when it does you'll know!" Well, not really—the chilli is really very mild. There is a mismatch, a disjunction, between the pack's promise of a wild and challenging tastebud adventure and the actual soothingly familiar and pleasant crisp experience of perfectly crunchy, salt-savoury-with-just-a-hint-of-something-exotic munching. It's a bit like searching for a barely-perceptible note of cinnamon or aniseed in a delectable high-class dark chocolate ganache that is far too refined to shout out its differences from the others in the box.

Kettle, be bold—have the courage of your branding convictions and give us chillies that burn, limes that bite, and mangos that sweeten us! Let the identity of your crisps, so brilliantly captured by your marketing department, shine through the humble potato itself. Take us on the daring crispy escapades you promise us, and you will have (at least two) loyal customers for life.

Google as "the Internet"

Seamus McCauley muses on "Google" as synonym for "the Internet" (click the link for a nice bonus photo illustration!):

I've been wondering for a while how it came to pass that "Google" became visual shorthand for "the Internet" amongst advertisers.

The current campaign for Thomson holidays exhorts holidaymakers to use "our Google Maps" (which turns out to be a slightly customised version of what is very clearly Google's Google Maps). Mobile phone companies in particular, when they started wanting us to know that we could access the web on our phones, showed us phones with Google on them. Here's another one.

So I'm intrigued by the sudden cultural shift implied by Nokia's latest online ad for the N800 (left), a phone with Internet access, majoring on the BBC website and Flickr and MySpace and Wikipedia without a mention of Google. "Take the Internet to new places", it says. Or, in other words - not just Google search.

Google has an incredibly powerful brand (BBC) that for the last couple of years has been semiotically synonymous with the Internet. Assuming, not unreasonably, that advertisers are on the cutting edge of understanding cultural significance, that psychological dominance of what people mean by the Internet may be coming to an end as consumers are considered able to accept more nuanced symbols of the web.

When millions of people identify your brand with the Internet itself, you know you have a decent business. Whether or not Google can continue to convince the masses that they are "the Internet" will play a huge part in determining their future fortunes.

However, it's also intriguing to note that the growing privacy concerns around Google provide them with the inverse challenge of convincing people that they are not too omniscient for their users' comfort—when striving for omniscience kind of goes with the territory of trying to be "the Internet". This would seem to pose Google with something of a strategic and branding conundrum.

There's money in that there identity—we just don't quite know where yet.

[also left as a comment on Seamus's post]

Complexity and risk in branding and life

Grant McCracken writes about complexity and risk-taking for brand marketing:

What we want are brands that invite our involvement and then reward it. Involvement takes complexity and the willingness to open the brand to a variety of interpretations...

Much like with interpersonal relationships, really. Rewarding relationships always entail the risk of messiness and vunerability.

Speaking at chinwag live: dark side of social media

I have been invited to speak at the chinwag live event on June 19 in Soho, London. The topic is the "dark side of social media":

Despite the hype there are downsides to social media - virtual problems are invading our real lives, or is it vice versa..?

Identity theft, scurrilous accusations, libel, stalking, scams and even violence. Social media, once hailed as the great new "Naked Conversation" where the planet would talk to itself in a spirit of open debate and companies would 'crowd source' fantastic new products, is starting to turn sour.

High profile bloggers like Rachel From North London and Kathy Sierra have been stalked online. Teenagers are finding out the downside to having a MySpace page as cyber-bullying takes off.

Brands are finding that their carefully crafted marketing campaigns are being remixed and mashed-up in a way they never intended. Political sites are swarmed with negative comments. Comment spam is hampering open debate. Splogs are stealing content. Social Media is turning out to have a very unsocial dark side. What can be done about it?

Can an online code of conduct have a hope of succeeding? Will freedom of speech be affected? How can organisations prevent their interactions with social media from backfiring? Chinwag Live: The Dark Side of Social Media will look at all these questions with a panel of experts.

Lots to get our teeth into, then; it promises to be a pretty lively debate!

Netvibes Universe—personally branded portals

Sam Sethi reports on the new Netvibes Universe:

This afternoon Netvibes will announce the launch of Netvibes Universe, allowing users to create highly customized versions of Netvibes and publish them for public access.

Netvibes has created 100 or so branded versions for the launch - users will be able to create these in about six weeks. In addition to making the page public, publishers can also highly customize their Universe page by adding their own CSS and HTML.

This sounds like a pretty powerful way to re-aggregate the web through the filter of your own identity, in terms of your personal interests and "brand". I shall experiment with interest...

Fast Food: Ads vs. Reality

Found via Andy Sack:

Fast Food: Ads vs. Reality

Each item was purchased, taken home, and photographed immediately. Nothing was tampered with, run over by a car, or anything of the sort. It is an accurate representation in every case. Shiny, neon-orange, liquefied pump-cheese, and all.

I don't think this was the response intended by the blogger of these images, but I really don't know which one is more repellent to me. So there is at least some kind of branding consistency across the two, from my perspective. ; )

Soulful brands

YoSushi! founder Simon Woodroffe, talking to entreprenologist Steve Parkes on the Flying Startups Podcast:

"The brands that people will trust in the future are the brands that haven't been designed by advertising agencies; where the soul of the people who are behind them actually come out in that brand."

Indeed. As customers, we are more and more looking for the identities of the people behind the brand to shine through the identity of the brand itself.

It's called authenticity.

Cate 2.0

Grant McCracken reckons that Cate Blanchett is a good role model for companies, because (it is said that) she is:

• transformational and fluid
• open
• filled with contradiction
• uncontrolled at the core
• elusive
• ambiguous

Sounds like Ms Blanchett is a bit like Web 2.0, then. ; )