Appetite for disruption

Rubber Republic‘s Rory Ahern – director of viral hit Bodyform Responds: The Truth – looks at how disruptive marketing has transformed the way brands market themselves forever.

There’s no doubt that technology and technological change have transformed consumers’ lives and the way they communicate with brands, so it falls to marketers to do some ‘future gazing’ to see how their brands can remain relevant in this brave new world.

Indeed the past decade has witnessed the most rapid technological change since the industrial revolution of the 18th century. Gartner currently estimates that there are 1.4 billion computing platforms and devices worldwide and project that figure to grow to 2 billion by 2016. That means PCs, tablets and mobile devices (even wearable tech) are going to become more important, not less, and brands need to keep up.

The rollercoaster ride is far from over and the pace of digital disruption looks set to continue at a dizzying rate, putting brands under pressure to embrace new trends. So how can marketers stay relevant?

Firstly it’s important to note that I can’t stand the phrase ‘disruptive marketing’, and while this is a very dangerous environment for commercial rigidity, I think ‘disruption’ is one of those awful marketing buzzwords: full of energy but with no inherent meaning. It can only explain things in retrospect but offers little direction going forward.

Nowadays it seems there are no rules, everything is ‘disrupted’. Cat-saturated entertainment sites can now lure top editorial talent from Newsweek, a car company willingly puts all its technology in the public domain and a beer producer can raise millions in an oversubscribed IPO via Facebook. But the truth is smart brands have always flourished where there is an acute consumer need or frustration. It’s just now that frustration has never been louder or more explicit.

Perhaps the two brightest examples of smart, disruptive brands in recent months are Tinder and Über. The former has arguably done to online dating sites what Netflix did to Blockbusters, while Über is the current poster child for ‘disruptive business’ with every start-up aspiring to be the ‘Über of XXXXXXX’.

What both brands have in common, indeed a truism of all ‘disruptive’ businesses, is that they identified a very real frustration out of which was born a new product or service. And once tried, it was then made effortless for users to evangelise about that product through their respective networks.

The current buzz around native advertising and viral content is a great example of ‘disruptive’ marketing. Native advertising, i.e. creating branded content that appears in an environment where audiences are actively looking for that kind of entertainment, information and content; the idea being to make a consumer’s experience within a particular environment richer, while not distracting them from what they were there to enjoy in the first place.

This kind of ‘consensual’ engagement is hard to achieve but in my view is the future of brand marketing – an audience should be able to engage with a brand’s content in this way. Not only will they be far more disposed to something that resonates with what they are interested in; but also they are being interrupted and they avoid the associated frustrations that more conventional advertising creates when it stops a consumer from enjoying what they had been doing.

My team and I always start any creative strategy with this in mind – we try to empathise with who might be the most receptive audiences, where they are likely to be watching our videos and how they may then want to share them wider. Increasingly creative partnerships with certain media owners is becoming a great way to launch content and we have some really fabulous partners to work with in this way.

If I was to give a marketer any advice on how viral distribution of content works it be would to first identify genuine audience appetite for the content you’re looking to create. Then approach a leading influencer within that community to work alongside what you trying to make to amplify your idea and give their respective audiences an enhanced experience.

At launch let the blogger outreach/PR do its thing for the first 48 hours, then follow up with any paid promotion and do it with gusto. And always be transparent if you are paying publishers or anyone else for that matter to endorse a brand or product. After that it’s a case of crossing your fingers and hoping that your video is received as it was intended.

When Audi launched their ‘Paintball’ video, pictured, for the new RS4 (I’m afraid the original is no longer online, but it did get over one million views in less than seven days) they invited Shmee150, a prodigious YouTuber within the auto community, on set to document the ‘making of’ and expose his audience to their video.

His early referral undoubtedly helped give the ‘hero’ video the momentum it needed to get the widespread sharing it enjoyed and his endorsement gave it further credibility for other larger and more established auto-sites like Jalopnik/Top Gear/Mashable to pick the story up. His video also remains a legacy of the project despite it having to be removed from Audi UK’s official YouTube channel.

Another case in point is Fiat’s ‘The Motherhood‘ which was conceived specifically for new mums and the candid conversations they were having about parenting online. The first film went properly viral and got all of its coverage through earned editorial and sharing.

Its sequel, ‘The Fatherhood‘, was in part prompted by a request from the Daily Mail to exclusively feature a follow up because the original content had been so successful on their site. This symbiosis between brand and a publisher’s audience must be the prime objective when making creating content for a ‘native’ environment, otherwise it will lead to resentment, distrust and rejection.

Ultimately marketers need to listen to online conversations that are happening or are about to happen before they try to participate (and often it’s the negative conversations that are the most creatively fertile, e.g. ‘Bodyform responds: The Truth‘).

Then they need to work with their partner agencies to create something that directly contributes to that conversation and builds on the debate, theme or trend. Finally marketers need to make it effortless for those who have enjoyed that piece of content to evangelise about it and most importantly share it, with their friends and peers.

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