The Importance of Brand in an Era of Digital Darwinism
Excerpts of an unpublished appendix for The End of Business as Usual… by Brian Solis
Markets, consumer behavior and how businesses connect with customers are all directly impacted by technology.
The increasingly important role of technology, combined with global economic unrest, means a company’s brand is more important today than it has ever been. Consumers, in search of certainty, rely heavily on a brand’s symbolism and significance
Digital Darwinism is the evolution of consumer behavior when society and technology evolve faster than some companies’ ability to adapt.
Babson College cited a rather humbling statistic; “Over 40% of the companies that were at the top of the Fortune 500 in 2000 were no longer there in 2010.”
24/7 Wall St. published its annual list of “Ten Brands That Will Disappear in 2012.” The publication predicts the demise of some of the world’s most recognizable brands, including Sony Pictures, American Apparel and Nokia.
“For me, marketing is about values. This is a very noisy world and we’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. So, we have to be very clear what we want them to know about us.” (Steve Jobs)
The company then looked inward in an attempt to answer the questions: Who is Apple; What does it stand for and where does the brand fit in the world.
“What we’re about isn’t making boxes for people to get their jobs done,” said Jobs during the company meeting,” Apple’s core value is that we believe people with passion can change the world…for the better. Those people, crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones that actually do.…Here’s to the crazy ones.”
McDonald’s is adapting to a new era, creating an experience marked by muted colors, wooden tables and faux leather chairs. And, that’s just the beginning. McDonald’s is pouring $1 billion into redesigning the consumer experience.
Everything begins with embracing a culture of innovation and adaptation — a culture that recognizes the impact of disruptive technology and how consumer preference and affinity is evolving.
If a organizations cannot recognize opportunities to further compete for attention and relevance, it cannot, by default, create meaningful connections, a desirable brand or drive shareable experiences. The brand, as a result, will lost preference in the face of consumer choice, which may one day lead to its succumbing to digital Darwinism.
occupygeorge.com – Money Talk
The Egyptian Revolution used Technology, The Occupy Movement is using creativity and celebrating resistance – and Germany? Germany is still throwing bricks and burning cars… I guess that’s how far we got in terms of evolution. Occupygeorge is a perfect example and this video here about the current civil outrage on WallStreet.
Money talks, but not loud enough for the 99%. By circulating dollar bills stamped with fact-based infographics, Occupy George informs the public of America’s daunting economic disparity one bill at a time. Because money knowledge is power.
Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera
Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera which captures a full spherical panorama when thrown into the air. At the peak of its flight, which is determined using an accelerometer, a full panoramic image is captured by 36 mobile phone camera modules.
Patent pending. More info: http://jonaspfeil.de/ballcamera
A project of the Computer Graphics Group, TU Berlin.
To be presented as an Emerging Technologies demonstration at the SIGGRAPH Asia 2011: Jonas Pfeil, Kristian Hildebrand, Carsten Gremzow, Bernd Bickel, Marc Alexa
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- Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera (makezine.com)
Floating Orchestra by Poietic Studio
The Idea: 19 spheres come to life, as you become a supernatural conductor. Each ball becomes an orchestral instrument that increases in volume as it physically rises. You can create your own soundscape whilst the balls levitate and dance to the music.
This is currently controlled via the touch screen of an iPhone, however, it may soon be naturally controlled with your movement.
Random Hacks of Kindness
What a great idea! (via rhok.org)
Random Hacks of Kindness is a community of innovation focused on developing practical open source solutions to disaster risk management and climate change adaptation challenges. Random Hacks of Kindness was founded in 2009 in partnership between Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, NASA and the World Bank.
Since then thousands of volunteers have worked on applications that are already making an impact. I’m OK, an SMS service that lets people inform their families of their status, was used on the ground during the devastating earthquakes in Haiti and Chile in 2010. The World Bank is piloting CHASM, software for visualizing landslide risk, in the Caribbean. Other apps have received support and interest from governments, NGOs and international organizations around the world.
How it Works
RHoK works by bringing together experts in development and volunteers with a broad set of skills in software development and design. The goal is to produce practical open source solutions to development problems. Events give the community an opportunity to sprint on projects, but the community continues to collaborate around the year.
RHoK Highlights
The RHoK community grew rapidly in 2010, with volunteer-organized events taking place in 26 cities around the globe, over 2000 registrants and resulting in 120 distinct projects worked on.
Björk’s new album is interactive
Biophilia is an iPhone/iPad release of Björk’s latest album created in collaboration with Scott Snibbe and her longtime design collaborators M/M (Paris). Comprising a suite of musical pieces and interactive artworks, Biophilia is released as ten in-app download experiences that are accessed through a three-dimensional galaxy, the album’s theme song Cosmogony. The first single Crystalline, is now available, others soon to follow. (Read more)
Björk Biophilia app intro narrated by David Attenborough.
Remarkable Interview of HORT Founder Eike König
Remarkable interview of Eike König, the creator of a multi-disciplinary creative hub & playground named HORT in Berlin.
He talks about design, education, play and more. Plikums.lv got a chance to meet & talk with Eike König during his visit in Riga where he was invited by Latvian Art Directors Club to tell a little bit about his work and design.
Gold! 14 Actors Acting – Great Web Special by NYT
I know 36 hours are like a month on the internet, and this here is a bit older but a real keeper. Beautiful and intriguing films. From New York Times Magazine Hollywood Issue “14 Actors Acting”. Shot by Solve Sundsbo. The New York Times photography feature has won a Gold Cube for photography at the Art Directors Club global awards held in New York.
The fifteen actors are Javier Bardem (Biutiful), Lesley Manville (Another Year), Jesse Eisenberg (Solitary Man, Holly Rollers, The Social Network), James Franco (127 Hours), Chloë Moretz (Kick-Ass, Let Me In), Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone), Natalie Portman (Black Swan), Robert Duvall (Get Low), Annette Bening (Mother and Child, The Kids Are All Right), Anthony Mackie (Night Catches Us), Noomi Rapace (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest), Tilda Swinton (I Am Love), Matt Damon (Green Zone, Hereafter, True Grit), Vincent Cassel (Mesrine: Killer Instinct, Black Swan), Michael Douglas (Solitary Man, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.
A.O. Scott provides the introduction…
“It goes without saying that acting is a matter of discipline and craft, and that what the best performers do is always subject to analysis, criticism and argument. They say their lines, hit their marks, suffer through retakes and rehearsals, and they trust that an artisanal collaboration with writers, technicians, directors and other actors will somehow yield a work of art. But acting is also an art by itself: alchemical, mysterious, at times almost magical. A person transforms into someone else — a dancer, a Texas Ranger, a wife exiled from her native country, a young vampire, a former militant, a mogul in old age — and in the process reveals something basic and essential that is his or hers alone. In the past, we have invited the year’s great performers to be themselves for the camera and, on video, to talk about what they do. This year, we asked them to do it: to show us — in a few gestures and with a few props but without dialogue or story — what acting is. And here they are, striking some of the classic attitudes of cinema, turning their bodies and faces into instruments of pure, deep and enigmatic emotion. You will, of course, recognize them immediately and admire their grace, daring and skill. But you also may be startled to see how thoroughly themselves they are in the midst of pretending otherwise.”
Gaming to re-engage boys in learning – Ali Carr-Chellman
Ali Carr-Chellman spells out three reasons boys are tuning out of school in droves, and lays out her bold plan to re-engage them: bringing their culture into the classroom, with new rules that let boys be boys, and video games that teach as well as entertain.
And a new study found evidence that video gaming turns wicked ‘sick’ and gamers to be pathological players according to standards similar to those established by the American Psychiatric Association for diagnosing gambling addiction.
Interesting to follow these new developments if you think of “play” as one of the top key trends of the decade. And seeing the gaming industry being the fastest growing industry worldwide.
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