Why Red Bull Sponsoring Felix Baumgartner's Space Jump is a Branding Master Piece

Red Bull's rise as a global brand is phenomenal. It created singlehandedly the energy drink category and rules it in over 160 countries around the world. A great case of Blue Ocean strategy in a business that many thought would be the playground of Coca-Cola and Pepsi for years to come. Red Bull seems to be able to apply their own slogan 'Red Bull gives you wings' perfectly to their own business. In an almost perfect orchestration of sponsoring extreme sports that are adventurous, fast paced or downright dangerous, Felix Baumgartner's jump from the edge of space fits completely.

Or does it? Interestingly enough Felix was taken into near orbit by a helium balloon slowly rising for nearly two hours. Getting out of the cabin came across as a needlessly long and tedious process. When he finally made through the hatch, having no wings he plunged back to earth, exceeding the sound barrier in the process and landed after only 4 minutes. Where were the Red Bull wings in this process? Felix speeding down made me think about the story of a certain Icarus and has hand-made wings.

From a Brand perspective this whole thing should have been the other way around. Felix  should have been catapulted to 39 kilometers altitude in some crazy plane, preferably of some obscure Russian brand. Then we would have seen him whizzing down in a space suit with wings that would unfold once reaching the earth's atmosphere allowing him to slowly glide back to earth while being followed by a helicopter or flying camera.


But so much for the Wings in Red Bull's Brand slogan.

Of course the whole Jump from the Edge of Space is a great fit with the Red Bull brand, I would even say a Branding Masterpiece. The world records that were set or broken will stay for a while to come and will be associated with the brand's extreme-sports image. Red Bull's wings do apply to dare-devil character of this event and today you wouldn't be able of another sponsor that would remotely have the means and the Brand story that Red Bull has.

The big surprise to me though was that only 7 Million people followed the jump live on the web on YouTube. I have not seen any other 'eyeball' statistic so I am really wondering, did only 7 Million people watch this fantastic project? I hope not. 

For the other Millions who missed this fantastic stunt, here is the Red Bull Stratos website.

Message to Nokia: Stop Featurism - Start Experience Branding

The iPhone5 vs. Lumia 920 infographs keep popping up on the web and more specifically on Facebook. Whether directly driven by Nokia or not, the comparison of the Camera quality, the touchscreen sensitivity or the wireless charge feature, show that Nokia and its community are still thinking that more features mean a better product, a better user experience and ultimately Brand loyalty. But to beat the iPhone at its game there's more at stake than a choice of device colors.

Its no news to most of my blog readers that the iPhone5 beats the Lumia on all accounts is its eco-system. If you set-up your iTunes account properly in combination with Apple's cloud service, migrating from any iPhone to the iPhone5 is fairly painless, although some major 'fxxx-ups' have been reported.

Yes, we know by now that the new Apple Maps is not what it should be, not by far. With Apple openly apologizing and suggesting the use of other Map apps I'm not sure whether this is the first of more blunders to come in the absence of Steve Jobs or just a temporary bump on the roadmap (pun intended).  This interesting article sheds some light on Apple's changes under Tim Cook.

Whatever it is, none of these Apple problems will stop them from having the better integrated user-experience with music, apps and media available over one coherently designed platform.

Lumia in yellow anybody?

With the Lumia 920 Nokia will have a device on offer with a number of sleek features (and colors!) but there's not much of a consistent eco-system coming with it, at least not at first. So for now the Lumia 920 is a device, heavily leaning on a Windows Brand feature, its UI and less on Nokia's Brand values which is, as far as I can remember, about 'Connecting People'.

This won't change much when Windows 8 is rolled out and Microsoft, who all of sudden discovered User-Oriented Design and seems to be winning back some of its mojo, gets its eco-system act together. Because the question remains, where does it leave Nokia as a Brand in this equation? Their focus on hardware and features, instead of offering a compelling experience in line with the Brand values, is not the right way forward. When it doesn't integrate deeply in a user's life, it will not be a sustainable offering against the competition.

Microsoft forced more or less all Hotmail users to migrate to an Outlook branded interface. This is, according to some internal sources at Microsoft, one of the steps towards a thorough harmonization of its consumer brands. Only if that happens any time soon will Nokia stand a chance luring some users towards their smartphone products, specifically among those who are currently on BlackBerry for professional reasons. Why? Well because a strong and streamlined eco-system will help convincing potential users to make the switch. The question here from a Branding perspective is still how Nokia will remain visible in an otherwise Microsoft branded eco-system. But maybe it would be good if they can survive by selling more hardware in the first place.

I am currently keeping a close eye on how the IT-community is picking up Windows 8 and what the speed of migration here is. Once small, medium and large companies have adopted Windows 8, switching the workforce to Windows Phone mobile devices will make sense. With Apple remaining weak in the mail and calendar applications space, there's a real chance for the Nokia-Windows tandem to gain serious traction at the expense of BlackBerry and Android and ultimately, also at the expense of Apple if they keep committing Map likes gaffes.

Focus on smart not on phones
Strategically it is actually refreshing to see how Nokia starts playing the role of the underdog. They finally seem to understand that being small and agile has an advantage. When also  having the immense pressure of potential failure in the next few years on their shoulders, smarter thinking starts popping up. 

I would sincerely welcome Nokia as a player that drives Windows 8 devices forward. They have to start thinking eco-systems though and the opportunity could be in the small and medium sized business space on the one hand. On the other side I think that there's an opportunity in creating solutions that would integrate with user's daily lives. With the upcoming surge in connected household appliances Nokia could think of solutions that embed their devices through a clever eco-system, e.g. a dedicate platform, in their daily activities. When you think about their credo 'Connecting People' than this concept would make total sense.

Why don't they focus on a phone that takes their own Maps experience to the next level. Much like Apple made iTunes indispensable for iPhone, Nokia Maps could integrate so well with the Lumia devices that you want to use it since it improves your life for particular use-cases you tremendously. Out of the box thinking, or really getting rid of the whole box altogether is required here. But whether Nokia's leadership is in the right place to got there? 

So far there's little sign of Nokia going in that direction. In a recent interview with cnet Stephen Elop says even 'We'll spend to break through', the question remains: spending it on what? In the interview it is clear that one more time they focus on hardware. But its like selling Ferrari's in Africa. There's no infrastructure there to enjoy such a car to its full potential. 

Maybe there's a small guerrilla group somewhere in Nokia House driving this change, completely under the corporate radar. That this can result in great changes is what we've seen at Audi with the Quattro concept. If not then all the spending in the world is not going to connect Nokia to reality and it will remain the burning platform as described by Stephen Elop in his first internal memo he sent at the start of his tenure as CEO.

Nokia is on my radar-screen in any event.

MV

Social Media Monitoring @Dmexco 2012 & Generation World

The Demexco Digital Marketing Exposition and Conference in Cologne is already a week behind me and I finally have the time to write a quick update. First and foremost this event is indeed about marketing and less about branding. Even though in today's business environment branding and marketing converge as a result of the growing importance of digital, the majority of the exhibitors are players in the digital marketing service area. From SEO and SMO, via 'classic' email marketing, web-analytics to online video and media placement, the most important players, start-ups and even corporates in these areas where there. Yet there are two topics which caught my eye which are relevant to Branding. Social Media Monitoring and David Sable's Keynote about 'Generation World'.

Watch your Brand

Marketing Dashboards for website statistics and analytics are common tools in marketing today. Whether developed in-house or sourced from an external supplier, they've become the digital equivalent of a plumber's pair of adjustable spanners. With the rise of Social Media a need has risen to monitor discussions, messages and tweets that concern a Brand. 

Over the past two years a number of suppliers and start-ups popped up to address this need. At the Demexco I could only find three serious contenders, one of them being IBM, the other two being TalkWalker and Brandwatch. 

IBM presented a Dashboard based on their Cognos software suite. In a discussion with the sales guy I quickly discovered that they are trying to sell this to the big corporates in Germany. Their challenge there is that they are perceived and probably behave, as a technology provider. Something which is confirmed by the design of their dashboard, the graphs and their selection of parameters. 

Brandwatch had a very nicely looking dashboard which makes a lot of sense for Brand Managers. Their platform can crawl in a couple of European languages and comes across as a fairly mature product with a nice front-end and a website where additional information is available in the form of eBooks and "how-to's".

TalkWalker was probably the best solution for Brand Managers I've seen. Their platform has an easy to grasp interface with intuitive parameters. The nice part about their story is also that they are actually more in the data gathering business and have started to develop the analytics that transforms the data into meaningful indicators. The front-end was actually developed in-house so they can present their data and analytics services better. They claim that their data-set can even look 2 years back in time and can crawl in 50 languages in 49 countries. There platform is also targeted at agencies and research institutions. They are right now very well placed to help Corporate organisations to adopt Brand Monitoring and learn how Social Media Brand Monitoring can be used to improve Branding and how it can contribute to improving Corporate Image and Corporate Design strategy.

Learning by doing

But no matter what the technical solution offers the effectiveness of these platforms depend on how one sets up queries around themes, keywords and combinations of keywords. These then need to be transformed in Brand specific indicators which help Brand Managers to understand what's going on. How these indicators are defined is something each Brand has to learn over time. Finally a Brand needs to decide if certain indicator values require action and what these actions should be.

In any event it is clear that Social Media Brand Monitoring is here to stay and that enterprise tools are available to start this Learning by Doing process.

David Sable's Generation World

The Keynote speeches at Demexco offered a few highlights too, one of them was certainly David Sable's keynote where he explains his Generation World vision. Generation World is about how demographics are changing and globalisation is changing our relationship with brands. It explains why segmentation for marketing purposes in the classic sense is therefor less effective than ever before.

Today we see consumers of over 50 skateboarding and using iPads, something which teenagers are doing as well. Globally we see convergence of consumer behavior around globally available borderless services. In short we see that we are borderless, ageless, more connected but also more siloed.

In this landscape Brands are more and more important as anchor points. At the same time Brands need to understand that consumers are better prepared to choose and they choose based on how a Brand fits their needs. He illustrates this with Uniqlo as a Brand that has a collection that's suitable for a very broad audience of all ages and for both sexes. At the same time American Apparel has understood that their audience is aging and uses therefor senior models for their marketing and advertising.

Consequences of this Generation World are:

- We are in constant Beta, specifically when it comes to digital services.

- Access is the new ownership. In other words I want access to music or books, I don't necessarily need to own them.

- We are craving "Pre-Digital" experiences, like e.g. exchanging recipes and sharing experiences around food they ate. 

- Global resonates locally. We see that global products and services are localized an example that he illustrates using McDonalds and their localized products such as the McVeggie and McFallafel burgers.

He ends with the recommandation to rethink the boundaries of a Brand's audience. 

Generation World is an inspiring vision although I would say that certain assumptions are changing already for the digital native generation. Craving Pre-Digital experiences e.g. is something that digital natives probably see different. For this generation the boundary between digital and real-life is no longer there. Digital experiences are as real as real-life experiences, which means that Brands should be very careful in distinguishing between these two when targeting today's teenagers. Or actually they can use this to their advantage. More specifically this means that conversations on Facebook are as important as a face-to-face meetins if not more important.

This then finally connects the first topic, Social Media Brand Monitoring, with David's speech. Brands should be part of the digital natives generation while being aware of the impact that the Generation World concept has on their Branding and Marketing efforts, knowing that digital conversation are of growing importance.