Think. Story. Experience.

Jack Morton, 2010 the year of experience brands, and some more Google love

I recently wrote about Google's collaboration with Russia's Trans Siberian Railway. Now check out this Google Maps/Earth project with Madrid's Prado art museum. 

What Google is doing, both in its own right and in collaboration with third-party organizations, is truly defining what it is to be an experience brand...a brand which holds up the experiences it creates for its customers and communities above everything else, and which holds true to that commitment in everything it does.   

There is an inherent Google-ness in everything it touches...from Gmail to Google Wave to Maps and Earth to the simplicity of its core search interface. 

Google is proud of what it does and what it stands for, and unafraid of the simplicity at the heart of its search story (just check out their 2010 Super Bowl spot for evidence of that). 

My company, Jack Morton, has just kicked off a year-long discussion about experience brands...what they are, how they work, why they will dominate in the future, and (crucially) how to build them. 

Access the new Jack Morton experience brands white paper and the video series from here. 

No need for slogans

Read this great piece by Simon Barnes in the Times of London today on the Vancouver Winter Olympics PR disasters.  

The simple (and simply true) point he makes is that names and slogans can have a huge impact. In this case, 'branding' a fund to support Canadian competitors has damaged the Olympic movement and the Canadian brand. 

For me, it's just another sign of marketers and communications professionals running wild, with little thought or insight, doing damage in the name of being creative. 

It's so rare to see something genuinely creative and new

Here's a great example of something totally simply and yet totally inventive.

A brilliant example of an online brand experience...for Russia's Trans Siberian Railway.

Amazing. Inspired. Simple.

Brands should be respectful acquaintances, not forward friends

A few years ago, my wife and I stayed at the Landmark Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hong Kong. 

It's a seriously stylish property and remains one of Hong Kong's more design-forward hotels. It's expensive, aspirational, premium...you get the picture. 

So....why, exactly, would anyone think that I would want to become a 'fan' of this hotel on facebook? I ask because I received an email inviting me to do just that. 

Not only is that horribly forward gesture for a place I have stayed once. But facebook...are they sure?!

I guess that the digital gurus at the Landmark think that I will want to parade my worldly status, increase my social capital, by making my fandom of their hotel public. 

But I won't. And, in the process they have just ensured  that I will tell all my friends that the once stylish Landmark has now gone tacky and mainstream. 

If I were advising the Landmark, I'd be trying to help them find ways to keep in touch with former guests in a relevant, respectful way. And I'm pretty sure that setting up a facebook group would not be how I'd start. 

Or is it just me?

An app is for life

If 2008 was the year of "We need to be on Facebook.", and 2009 was "Oooh, what about Twitter?", then 2010 is likely to add a third tired and tactical digital mandatory..."We need an app!". And, between all the iPad buzz and articles like this in the New York Times, the incessant chatter already begun.

Not that there's anything wrong with apps. After all, we're all going to have apps for phones and mobile devices, apps for normal computers, apps for TVs, and (soon enough) apps for everything from bedside clocks to fridges.

But as marketers we just need to remember one thing...apps are for life. Not 'for life' as in forever (although one sign of a successful app is that its use-by date might stretch beyond its first week of novelty). No, when I say 'for life' I mean for living...for real life...for offering some utility or enhancement to how we want to live our real lives.

A good app changes how we do stuff for the better, or helps us do stuff we previously couldn't (but always wanted to). A pointless app encourages us to do something we never wanted to do just because we can. Needless to say, 99 per cent of marketing-driven apps fall into the latter category. Which means that most app marketing in 2010 will be as pointless and annoying as the Facebook and Twitter marketing of 2008 and 2009.

Used well, apps are brand experiences. Enhancing ones. Valuable ones. Insightful ones. Used badly, they're more clutter. Hmm...