From The Head Of Zeus Jones

Via: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jorgeq82/

One of the themes that occupied my mind in 2008 and continues to intrigue me is how things can have a number of different value streams associated with them. You may recall, I wrote that a simple penny coin can have four (or more) different dimensions of value, from its face value, the value of its materials, the cost of its production, and so on.

The point here is that value is not an absolute, it is entirely dependent upon context. Therefore by examining an object from a variety of different contexts you can discover very different scales of value.

I think the same is true for marketing ideas. The best marketing ideas have multiple dimensions of value. The best ideas create value for the company AND the customer. It’s entirely possible create value beyond even these two audiences. Great marketing ideas also create value for shareholders, communities and potentially, the planet.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the area of “Green” marketing. I’m not necessarily talking about big, hairy initiatives, but rather small steps companies can take to reduce their impact upon the environment.

Consider Apple’s (yes I know them again) move to replace printed receipts in its stores with emailed receipts. There are a large number of value streams associated with this one action.

Customers gain convenience and better archiving from having a digital (e.g. searchable) record of their purchase. They also gain an easily shareable (e.g. for expenses or for sending to friends) record of their actions. And then finally, they also get the (small) emotional reward of having helped to reduce litter and waste.

Apple gets your email address, which as many marketers know is a pretty reliable revenue stream. They gain from any sharing of your purchases that you might now be able to do. They gain from the reduction of cost of printing, ink, paper, waste management etc. And they gain by being seen as a company that’s doing its bit to help.

The planet gets…well lets just say every little bit helps.

If marketing is, as the AMA states, an “…an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders,” then emailed receipts qualifies as a brilliant marketing idea on all accounts.

It’s examples like this that have forced me to shift my thinking on what is great marketing and what is a great idea. Where we (me and my partners) used to judge an idea based upon its ability to create a large number of extensions to be a central jumping-off point or platform for a number of different coordinated or coherent activities. We now judge the quality of an idea by its ability to create a large number of value streams.

These two frameworks don’t necessarily have to be incompatible but they often are. In our eagerness to extend an idea into multiple channels or forms, I think it’s increasingly important to ask whether we are we actually creating more value or simply making everything we do less valuable?

As an industry, I also think we also ought to ask why ideas like Apple’s printed receipts aren’t awarded, yet extravagant uses of time, money and resources that (often) generate very little value for anyone but media company owners are?

Wanted to give a big thank you to all our readers and contributors, we’ve been really grateful for all your support over the last year. Have a fantastic holiday and see you in the New Year (hopefully it will bring better fortune than the end of this one).

From all of us at Zeus Jones.

As you may know, we taught a small class for MCAD recently. In addition to having some awesome students visit us every Friday afternoon for drinking lectures, we (me) also got paid too!

We took that money and set a challenge our staff - help us redesign the entry to our space. Turn it from an waiting/lobby area into a harder working space (we’re getting quite crowded in here with only 1 conference room and we need more meeting spaces).

Two of our peeps Chad and Katie, rose to the challenge and presented solutions:

Here’s Chad’s

This is Katie’s

Which would you pick?

I wrote a small piece on social media that is up today on Adweek: here’s a snippet:

“I think it’s almost certain that most, if not all clients, will eventually see the advantages of a do-it-yourself approach to social media. If the effectiveness gains from creating real, person-to-person interactions between customers and employees are not compelling enough, the efficiency gains of being able to invest in long-term assets — people versus disposable ones, campaigns — will seal the deal.”

My thesis is:

• Agencies shouldn’t be executing social media campaigns for their clients
• Social media is much more effective when clients engage in it themselves
• Social media is quickly becoming the primary way companies communicate with their customers
• So what’s the role of the communications agency in an age of social media?

You can read the full article and comment here.

Had an interesting conversation this morning on aligning business success with doing the right thing. The debate was between whether increased government regulation is required to prevent businesses from getting us in to the kind of mess we’re in now or whether there are ways business success can be better aligned with behaviour that supports, rather than weakens, the overall economy. I proposed a (possibly naive and Utopian) view that a number of simple things could allow this to happen: warning extremely simplistic analysis follows.

• First: increased transparency on every level. In a world where we can all see what everyone else is doing, it’s harder to pursue obviously selfish goals in plain sight.
• Second: increased measurement and increased linking of disparate data. I wrote about this a while ago, but I think that our ability to measure everything and see the non-obvious consequences of our actions will begin to shift our behaviour. If bankers had been staring a dashboard that showed the true impact and risk of their loans it’s possible that they may have paused for a bit before writing that next sub-prime loan.
• Third: improved data presentation and visualisation. To me this goes hand in hand with increased measurement.

I think it’s certain that if all were combined and anyone could look at the true consequences of continuing to write bad loans there would have been far more voices against continuing than there were.

Clearly, there are some interesting marketing applications to this kind of thinking. There are lots of situations where we want to align lots of people’s behaviour towards a common end. The illustration above suggests that this can be done by creating an open, democratic and transparent landscape where we are all able to see each other’s progress (or lack of) and where we can all quickly see the impact of our actions on everyone else. Better and more clearly articulated here on a daily basis.

However, I think that this also raises an interesting political dilemma. An approach like this wouldn’t appeal to liberals who favour government regulation because it looks like the worst of free-market capitalism. Neither would it appeal to conservatives who would see this as an invasion of privacy. It will be interesting to see where the new administration falls on this issue.

As a final act of Holiday cheer we are pleased to offer everyone a last minute stocking stuffer: a custom designed Zeus Jones font. “Hand of God” was hand-forged in the Zeus Jones workshop by the incredibly talented Celeste Prevost. Whether you are a Scandinavian death metal power trio, or an executive presenting at a power lunch, Hand of God makes a bold statement and lends a sense of omniscience.

Download Hand of God at http://share.zeusjones.com/handofgod

Brad hosted a screen printing party to make our official ZJ holiday gift boxes. We also ran off a bunch of posters from Celeste’s cool artwork. Check it out.

Just got back from Sao Paulo, where I spoke at the Brazilian version of the AAAA account planning conference. I was invited along with Gareth as one of the “Gringo Planners” and honestly had no idea what to expect. However, I was absolutely blown away by the generosity, enthusiasm and energy of the planning community down there. IMO this conference put a lot of the other recent conferences I’ve been at to shame, and it was planned within less than one month! Speakers were drawn from the client world, designers, researchers, as well as cultural speakers like a famous blogger/comedian and a couple of very well known podcasters. You can check out the details here on a translated version of the official group blog, and follow along on a translated version of the twitter feed too.

I was especially inspired to be around a planning community that is looking to the future and eager to learn and figure out what’s next instead of bemoaning the past as is all too common here. I think that the future of planning - if there is one - will come from somewhere like Brazil. not from the US or UK.

The other thing that really impressed me was the adoption of social media, especially Twitter, in Brazil. Someone showed a chart from UM that shows Brazil leading the world in social media adoption and it was pretty evident at the conference. There was some fascinating chat happening on the official Twitter feed and I am pretty sure there was even better stuff happening on back channels.

All in all I left really energized and will definitely be following what happens there closely. Many thanks to our hosts: Ken, Daniel, Caio, Paulo and Joao. You guys are awesome!

My contribution was this presentation about my two biggest failures as a planner and the cases that made me realise that I needed to do something different with my life.

Up until about six months ago I was an avid World of Warcraft player. I didn’t play everyday, and certainly not every hour of my free time like some people do, but I played enough and was good enough that I saw much of the end game raiding content that only the most serious players see.

Then I got burnt out and decided to quit. 

I sold my level 70 Paladin character, Zeusjones, for $325. Officially, selling a Warcraft character is against game policy. So what you technically sell are the hours you’ve invested to level a character. Selling him was my first big step towards quitting. A few months after I sold him, I cancelled my account. 

Recently, the Wrath of the Lich King expansion pack came out. Among Warcraft players, this was a highly anticipated event. I didn’t pre-order it. I didn’t have the date marked on my calendar, or like others I used to play with, schedule time off work so I could level my character(s) to the new level cap of 80 as quickly as possible. The launch date for the expansion passed uneventfully for me. 

Then the IMs and phone calls started. 

Everyone I used to play with in the game wanted to let me know how great the expansion content was. They regaled me with detailed descriptions of how cool it would be to ride together on mechanized mounts and battle with siege engines. One of the people I played the most often with put it simply: “All I’m gonna say is, remember how much fun we used to have?” 

So I caved in and bought the expansion. And I discovered a few interesting things.

First, there is a new “organization” in game called D.E.H.T.A., which stands for “Druids for the Ethical and Humane Treatment of Animals.” An obvious P.E.T.A. spoof, D.E.H.T.A. is a group that penalizes you in a certain area of the game if you kill the innocent creatures that are running around. 

Many of you will recall that a year and a half or so ago we here at Zeus Jones released a viral Warcraft video in which an imaginary group called T.E.T.A.A., or Toons for the Ethical Treatment of Ambient Animals, lobbies World of Warcraft players to stop the slaughter of the innocent creatures running around in the game. I can’t say if Blizzard, the creators of Warcraft, were influenced by the video, it could just be coincidence. If they were inspired by our video, I think that is awesome. 

One of our goals at the beginning of Zeus Jones was to influence pop culture, and even though Warcraft is far from pop culture, its been around for about five years and is around 10 million players strong. If someone from Blizzard reads this and can comment on the origin and inspiration for D.E.H.T.A., I would appreciate it.

The next thing I discovered was related to online identity. After installing the expansion, I quickly proceeded to the new area of the game with my level 70 Hunter. Until I sold Zeusjones, my hunter was what was referred to in the game as an “alt.” An alt is an alternate character who you spend less time playing. Many people play alts when they are bored with their main character or just want to try out some of the other character classes in the game. 

However, my alt had become my main, and he wasn’t named Zeusjones, which I found out messed with all my friends heads. It turns out that for many of the people I’d become friends with in the game, I was Zeusjones. A few of them told me, “I don’t care I’m still going to call you Zeus.” One of them started calling me by my real name instead of my new character’s name, which no one every does in the game. That even weirded me out.

So after discovering my Warcraft identity was firmly entrenched as “Zeusjones”, I did the only thing that I could. I got a new main.

I paid to transfer a character that I had left discarded on a sever I no longer played on. Then I paid to rename him Zeusjones.

I felt a collective sigh of relief from my Warcraft social network. I was greeted with lots of “He’s back!” Strangely the reception I thought I would get when I renewed my account didn’t actually come until I’d taken the extra step of renewing my old identity as well.

We see more and more in the news these days about the seriousness of people’s online identities. People are charged in Scandinavia for theft from and harassment of people’s online personalities. A couple in the U.K. who met and got married in Second Life are now getting divorced because she caught him having sex in the game with another person. Who better to understand that virtual cheating is really cheating than someone who forged their relationship in that same virtual world in the first place?

So am I glad Zeusjones is back? You bet. It is fun. It is like it used to be. At least for now. Who knows what type of character Zeusjones will be in his next incarnation? Maybe even an Alliance character.

Nah, I’d rather fight than switch.

It’s been a tough year for everyone. We know that many of you are likely to buy fewer gifts this Holiday season, which makes finding the perfect gift that much more important.

That’s why we’ve created the Zeus Jones Holiday Gift Guide. All the staff at ZJ scoured the internet to find unique and interesting gifts in order to help you appear more insightful, more hip and more thoughtful.

We hope you find the Gift Guide both entertaining and inspiring.

Happy Holidays (and Happy shopping!) from everyone at Zeus Jones.

http://gifts.zeusjones.com