Consommacteurs v technocrats

I learned a new word this week consommacteurs. It’s the French for consumers who are also actors, or even activists, the millions from the YouTube generation(s) who don’t just consume but also create, who don’t merely partake but take part, and who don’t so much buy brands as use them.

Then yesterday I experienced the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona, the biggest annual mobile-phone trade fair. This was a sea of unsmiling men, the technocrats who are quietly changing the world. As one of them said, in a couple of years as many people will have a mobile as have a toothbrush. It’s an incredible new power in people’s hands, opening up commerce on an unprecedented scale: another speaker claimed that whenever an emerging economy installs a mobile network, GDP goes up 5%.

In their own way, these billions of phone users are consommacteurs too, using mobiles as a way to take part in the world to get work, do their banking, share photos, even (as in Burma) expose injustice. And at some point soon, these consommacteurs will become even more powerful shapers of the world than the Barcelona technocrats who made it all possible.

15 February 2008, posted by Robert Jones

Poker’s new face

Stereotypes are hard to break. In the case of brands, it can be even harder. All too often, you see a company whose business has evolved to such an extent that their original brand is no longer relevant. It is important to have a vision of the future – of where the market can and may go, so that the brand is flexible enough to evolve as the company evolves. The more controversial the industry, the more important this becomes. A case in point is the online gaming industry.

A few months ago, I was unexpectedly introduced to the world of poker. I trod cautiously, nervous that I was entering a world of smoky back rooms frequented by middle-aged men with names like ’Texas Dolly’ and Dave ’The Devilfish’ Ulliott. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The 2007 World Series of Poker (WSOP) tournament was won by 18-year-old Annette Obrestad from Norway who walked away with over £1 million. And if you look at the winners of the WSOP in the last few years, you will see that a new breed of poker players is emerging. They are young. They could be Vietnamese or American. They could be academics or accountants. They could be women. The number of entrants in the WSOP main event has grown from around 800 in 2003 to over 8,000 in 2006. In the United States poker is now the third most watched sport on cable television.

This phenomenal rise in popularity is not restricted only to tournaments. Last year, the London Business Forum held a seminar about the similarities between poker and business; and Harvard Law School launched an initiative to promote poker as an educational tool. The world has finally discovered what poker aficionados have long known – poker is a game of skill. You have to know whether to call, raise or fold. You need to know how to calculate your pot odds, and you have to manage your bankroll. It requires a grasp of mathematics and psychology.

Much of this rapid growth in popularity has been fuelled by online gaming companies. You can play from the comfort of your home, whenever you want, for as long as you want. The two biggest obstacles to the adoption of poker – learning and an intimidating environment – have been removed. Poker now represents over 20% of the $20 billion online gaming market, making it the most popular game of the industry.

As poker has clearly become respectable and mainstream, it presents an interesting challenge for online gaming companies. The leading online gaming brands began as start-ups in offshore tax havens, often employing tacky ad campaigns. Today, they are publicly listed companies with management teams, accounts and operations to match those of respected blue-chip corporations. However, to the public at large, they still carry the stigma of ’gambling companies’, complete with erroneous images of questionable accounting and unsavory executives.

As the appeal of poker continues to grow, the challenge for online gaming companies is whether they will be able to make the transition to mainstream entertainment brands just as their most popular game has done. In the long run, the ones that do will be the ones that survive.

12 February 2008, posted by Ayesha Malhotra

Governance not guidelines

The face of brand management is changing for ever. Global brands have begun to recognise that in an era of Facebook and YouTube it is no longer possible to control every aspect of a brand and that, moreover, there is a growing need to adapt and metamorphose to connect more successfully with changing markets and cultures. Brands of the future need to engage with people on their terms, and integrate their world more directly with other brands and their consumers. Clearly this has a huge impact on how a brand needs to be managed.

80s and 90s ’best practice’ for brand management drove for regimented visual uniformity (following the mantra that a consistent appearance implied a consistent experience), controlled by explicit identity guidelines and a ’logo cop’ attitude. This approach, championed by major global consumer brands like Coke in the 70s, misses the mark today as it leaves no room for flexibility – and ultimately the focus on the logo detracts from caring enough about the content.

Brands of the 00s have to work harder than this. They have to know what they stand for well enough to confidently allow interpretation and adaptation, so that they can build the relationships they need to stay relevant. This apparent freedom implies complexity, which will need to be managed more dynamically. Best practice going forward will rely more on governance than guidelines and market representative co-creation than centre direction.

An example of this approach is McDonald’s who recently adapted the famous ’Golden Arches’ to create three options tailored to suit the different needs of each of its key markets – an adaptation that was supported by a ’free to air’ toolkit including templates and assets for the 30,000 restaurateurs and suppliers who use the brand day-to-day, making the transition easier and creating a platform for ongoing review, co-creation and control.

Other interesting brands leading the change are London 2012 and (RED), both of which were created specifically to interlace and merge their brands with others. The complexity of implementing this day-to-day for London 2012 across many partners is managed through a clear governance process, supported by a full -time resource and a dynamic approval and briefing toolkit.

For businesses who currently ‘do’ brand management through a 250-page logo manual and the occasional row over colour, the change of tack might seem daunting. But – particularly as we all know that guidelines really don’t get read until there is a problem – effective brand management in the 00s quite simply needs to be smarter than this.

31 January 2008, posted by Miles Perkins