This week I became a sponsor.

That’s right, I’m now officially one of the moneymen. With a few clicks online, my place was secured as a backer of Wish I Was Here, the Kickstarter-funded movie from Scrubs star, Zach Braff. With a site target of $2 million, this is no small Kickstarter project, but in the scale of Hollywood productions is undeniably at the indie end of the spectrum – more in line with Braff’s debut writer-director-star feature, Garden State, than, say, his last starring role in Oz the Great and Powerful.

And that’s no bad thing. Garden State was a gem of a film: an intimate story framed by some memorable cinematography and a soundtrack that brought a whole new audience to the likes of The Shins, Colin Hay and Frou-Frou.

In a smart move by the team behind the appeal (the script was co-written by Zach and Adam, the brothers Braff), the investor rewards have nodded to their talent for selecting music that really connects with film and fans: for my $20 pledge I’ll receive regular picks from the proposed soundtrack, streamed direct to my computer. Other rewards for those with deeper pockets include tickets to the première (where you can sit next to Braff himself), the chance to name a character or even to have a part in the final movie. It’s a well-constructed page – earnest, honest and funny – but moreover it features a cracker of an appeal video from Zach and pals.

The social buzz around it has made interesting viewing: I pledged my cash in the first $100k group and was amazed to see the gentle rumble of momentum (not to mention *ching* of cash registers) as Braff’s A-list friends, James Franco, Michael J Fox and Courtney Cox, all brought their weight – and, importantly, Twitter followings – to bear.

Before the first day was out, the page had already raised $725,000, and, at time of writing is up to $1.7 million. Not bad in just over 48 hours. There’s bound to be a natural plateauing of investment over the coming week, but with 28 days still to go, it’s likely that the fundraising will exceed all expectations – not uncommon for popular projects on the site.

Empire Magazine tweeted about the appeal, though, for a publication that was a 4-star fan of Braff’s first feature, appeared surprisingly indifferent to the project. Similarly, I was rather surprised by the number of “Why doesn’t he fund it from the $millions he made from Scrubs?” tweetbacks and replies. It was good to see a subsequent interview with Mr Braff on Empire Online by Ali Plumb that gave a little more colour to the story, along with a number of comments defending the film-maker’s right to use this medium to secure funding for his movie.

Let’s be honest, whatever Zach Braff makes through this online appeal is unlikely to be the end of the story; I’ve already described how the Kickstarter model has been used by entrepreneurial souls to demonstrate to the slippery big fish out there that a passionate market exists to support any given product/project/person. It’s highly improbable that there isn’t therefore some form of match-funding scheduled once Zach makes his first $2m – and I can’t believe that this won’t include financial investment from the man himself. The criticism just seems a little unfounded. And it’s not like he’s trying to make Independence Day 2. Although that might be quite fun to watch…

Irrespective of the project, I don’t think that it’s fair to criticise anyone for using Kickstarter to get their dream off the ground – famous or otherwise: in the end any project will live or die on the idea at its very heart. If it’s not compelling or realistic enough to make people part with the requisite cash, then they’ll be part of the 43% of Kickstarters that don’t make it.

Having ‘established’ industry people using the platform may offer would-be investors a greater level of confidence in the quality of the finished article, or even just provide a project talisman to believe in – especially important after 84% of projects funded in 2012 ended up being delivered late. As long as the justification for not using traditional funding mechanisms feels appropriate to you, then what’s the problem?

And if you’re really not comfortable with a millionaire asking for your money then just don’t donate.

Sponsorship was born out of patronage in Ancient Greece more than 2,000 years ago – crowd-funding has simply reduced the reliance on finding that mythical single backer. More importantly, it has demonstrated that this collective power can achieve something greater than the sum of each individual contribution: together we can create synergy.

(There, I finally got that word into a blog.)

By Jonathan Izzard on April 25th, 2013

Tags: Blogging, Celebrity, Default, Digital marketing, Film

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Much of what we do at Synergy revolves around people’s passions, namely how sponsors use them as a platform to engage and communicate with a desired demographic. A well-conceived and sharply executed sponsorship programme speaks volumes for a brand’s understanding of not only its own needs, but those of the consumers with whom it is seeking to connect.

Synergy have already outlined some of the key trends that we feel will be used to create standout activations in 2013, many of which are founded upon the principles of the Social Era of sponsorship, and it is this enhanced interrelationship between brands and consumers that is generating some even more exciting opportunities.

In the past few years, a number of major brands have generated content and campaigns through crowd-sourcing, effectively providing a media vessel to hold their consumers’ creative juices. Where things start to get even more interesting, however, is when brands leverage these consumer passions to determine their very existence: crowd-funding.

Where crowd-funding is concerned, Kickstarter is the facilitator of choice, created in 2009 to provide a showcase for creativity and a simple means for innovators to connect with potential financial backers in order to get their projects off the ground. And becoming a ‘Dragon’ couldn’t be easier: forget the inconvenience of having to sit in a dank basement next to Hilary Devey – just pledge a pre-agreed sum to any given ‘creator’, and if their project reaches its target funding within the specified time limit, it is officially off the ground (at which point the money will leave your bank account).

Each pledge is matched by an investor reward – the more you spend, the more you get back: from simple transactional offers like being amongst the first people able to pre-order one of the finished products, through to the downright frightening – one creator offering to tattoo investors’ initials on his body for cash.

Since its inception, over $214 million has been pledged through Kickstarter by nearly 3 million individual backers – demonstrating people-power beyond compare.

One of the most popular recent projects is the Pebble, a customisable ‘smart-watch’ that blurs the lines between phone and timepiece, which exceeded its original funding target by over 10,000%, raising over $10 million before its project deadline last year.

Albums, art, comics, consoles, wallets, watches – you name it, there’s a project out there for you to back.

Oh, and crowd-funding is also ripe for having a bit of fun. In an inspired bit of humour, one Kickstarter has opened a project to fund the construction of an ‘Open Source Death Star’. Following a failed petition to the White House for the US to build an interstellar space station that would “spur job creation in the fields of construction, engineering, space exploration, and more”, the enterprising Vader-in-waiting has already raised over £220,000 of their £20m goal.

Along with detailed engineering plans, the creator also includes a thorough FAQ for would-be backers, covering key investor concerns such as:

Although the creator’s stretch funding target is in fact a slightly ambitious £543,000,000,000,000,000 (that’s £543 quintillion), based on the 5% cut of the total fee raised that Kickstarter takes on every successful project, you’d imagine they’re rooting for the Empire on this one.

Why is this all so important though? Well, whilst around only 50% of all Kickstarter projects end up meeting their funding requirements (and many of these have shipped late), those that do will in many cases have a guaranteed market, along with an associated army of interested advocates. If you’ve invested in a product that comes to market, that’s exactly how you feel and, more importantly, act: invested.

Forget worrying about measurement of an ethereal ROI – what could be better than consumers showing enough faith in you that they’re willing to put their money where your mouth is?

So back to the question of sponsorship.

Is crowd-funding something that can really work? Well, it just depends on the kind of dividends you really expect from your investment. Famously, Ebbsfleet United were taken over in 2007 by MyFootballClub.co.uk, who then allowed fans to become ‘owners’ of the club – offering them the chance to be actively involved in areas such as player transfers, kit designs, ad campaigns and ticket pricing. Whether you think this was simply a publicity stunt, Ebbsfleet actually has some illustrious company in fan ownership.

More than 150,000 FC Barcelona fans pay an annual fee of around €150 to be socios (members) of the club, a random selection of whom have the chance to meet with the board and vote on major FCB decisions. Certainly not a revenue stream to be sniffed at, totalling around €22 million.

It will be interesting to see whether the barrierless Social Era offers new opportunities for sponsorship to adopt and apply alternate models of crowd-funding to the mutual benefit of consumer and property.

Potentially a whole new approach to ‘pay as you play’…

By Jonathan Izzard on February 12th, 2013

Tags: Consultancy, Default, Film, Social Media, Sponsorship

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“It’s good to talk,” a wise man once said. Whilst the ways in which we communicate have evolved dramatically since the days of Bob Hoskins’ well-loved ad campaign for BT, the fundamental ethos remains the same: interaction with others is a positive thing.

The options have since widened from talk to text, short messages have become instant, online statuses are there to be critiqued, commented upon and shared, and with the conglomeration of social sentiment or lines of enquiry under a single @username or hashtag, this communication has never been quite so publicly personal.

Heavyweight oxymoron perhaps, but the Zuckerbergian philosophy of perpetually open dialogue has changed the way in which many people treat their day-to-day interaction with peers. From the mundane daily blow-by-blows through to the occasional comedy gold of an acerbic internal monologue, Facebook’s ‘pedestal for your thoughts’ has profoundly altered its users’ perceptions of personal disclosure.

Though Twitter may have taken up the baton in the running commentary stakes, extending the bounds of our influence beyond merely an invited circle of friends, it’s unlikely that it would ever have found the same reception without the training wheels of Facebook’s closed circuit test-bed. Only now you’re not just broadcasting to your friends but the world at large…or whatever proportion of it hasn’t already blocked you. Whether you use the medium as a creator, commentator or simply an interested spectator, one of the most fundamental functionalities of the platform is the access it gives to each of our own individual influencers.

At one end of the Twitter spectrum, for example, you’ll find award-winning comic and unabashed atheist, Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais), whose 3.8 million acolytes can follow and engage in, amongst other things, his regular Humanist musings. At the same time, just a few clicks away there’s His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI (@Pontifex). B16 (as he’s universally not known) may only have tweeted 23 times since setting up his username in December 2012 (I wonder whether he’s linked it to his Lockerz account…?), but has already attracted almost 1.5 million disciples. In what other universe could you anticipate such completely divergent personalities sharing real estate – and, without doubt, followers?

The ability of social networks to help ‘ordinary people’ connect with their idols is something that has not been lost on brands or self-promoters alike, with the most ubiquitous activation of the fan-hero interaction being the ‘Twitter Q&A with…’ – generally using a single hashtag to collate user questions for whomever happens to be responding. With the burgeoning popularity of Google+, yet another dimension has been brought to the table, as invited fans have the opportunity to video conference with the talent in question. Footballers Beckham, Bojan and Barton have all participated – and you can watch Joey/Joe/Joseph’s OM+Vous tchat here.

Unfortunately he’s lost the Franglais accent…

Whilst this certainly alleviates any worries over whether your questions are in fact being answered by a svengali agent or on-message PR – it’s doubtless to raise a new raft of potential issues for those involved.

You need only look at some of the recent Twitter meet-and-greets involving footballers to understand how certain wags (no, not those WAGs) have managed to divert the focus of these sessions away from their original objectives with the odd well-placed barb.

Michael Owen may have rued his decision to allow fans the chance to ask him questions through the micro-blogging site, for him to answer on a video hosted on his website. In archetypal style, @FootyHumour immediately jumped on the subject of the former England striker’s bench-warming capabilities of late, getting the ball trolling with ”Which stadium has the most comfortable bench?”

Which led on to my favourite enquiry for a striker with time on his hands, @greglarmouth asking, “I’m expecting a parcel on Thursday, would you be able to sit in for me while I’m out? I have Racing UK & ATR & my sofa’s leather?”

Big brands are not immune to this either: adidas’ recent Steven Gerrard Q&A found the #AskStevieG hashtag taken over by a number of cheeky rival fans, with questions for the Scouse legend including:

I’m not suggesting that the adi moderators actually let these questions slip through to Stevie, but the important thing to remember is that anyone following the aforementioned hashtag would have been able to read (and possibly be inspired by) these not-quite-so-serious Qs for Mr G to A.

A number of similar (and identical) tweets were thrown at Gareth Bale on his recent Twitter chat for Spurs – probably reflecting worse on the tweeters’ plagiarism than on the Welsh wunderkind himself.

But it’s not all bad news…

One of the most interesting exchanges I’ve recently followed involved film director Duncan Jones (son of David Jones, otherwise known as David Bowie), whose debut feature Moon screened on the BBC over Christmas. Both a critical success and a personal story (Jones tweets prolifically under @ManMadeMoon), the film explores themes of loneliness, identity and self-discovery – amidst a lunar setting and with an appropriately stellar lead performance from actor Sam Rockwell.

Undoubtedly proud that his work was showing on the Beeb, Jones – who is based in LA – conducted a live conversation on Twitter whilst the movie played. This was perhaps the ultimate director’s commentary, with Jones candidly responding to followers’ questions and revealing some genuinely fascinating insights into the film-making process throughout.

The conversation developed further, with Clint Mansell, the composer of the film’s haunting soundtrack, chipping in on particular subjects. If that wasn’t enough @iamclintmansell also brought prolific tweeter Irvine Welsh (@WelshIrvine) into the wider fray, given he is currently scoring the the movie adaptation of the Scottish writer’s novel Filth.

As with any foray into social media, you need to know what you’re getting into – both for an individual or a brand. It’s not just your voice, opinions or frequency of communication that matter – it’s also your audience. As a footballer you will inevitably divide opinion amongst rival fans (even tweeting for the National Team, I’d wager), whereas expressing defined views on politics or religion will undeniably generate a counter-point.

You’ve just built a wall on which the bored, dissatisfied or just plain witty will inevitably scrawl. Moderation and filtering will only get a brand or individual so far before the main unanswered consumer Q becomes “Why am I following them?” @RickyGervais will happily laugh, debate with or block such contributors, whereas His Holiness doesn’t have the same freedom as a figurehead to interact when #AskPontifex delivers questions such as:

Maybe he just needs a better communion manager.

By Jonathan Izzard on January 15th, 2013

Tags: Ambush Marketing, Celebrity, Communications, community, Default, Digital marketing, Media, Social Media, Sponsorship, Sponsorship consultancy, Twitter

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With Team GB’s first gold medals won, national attention is naturally focused on GB’s Olympians. So this seems like the perfect time to reveal our analysis of brands’ GB athlete endorsement strategies, and to unveil our latest Synergy infographic - Synfographic - to the purpose.

We’ve looked at a group of 45 brands using current and former Olympians and Paralympians. The group comprises:

- Global and domestic sponsors of London 2012

- Major GB sport sponsors which aren’t London 2012 sponsors

- Other non-sponsor brands leveraging athletes in their marcomms

This revealed a total of 404 individual agreements and, if taking into consideration athletes such as Jessica Ennis or Louis Smith who have multiple sponsorship deals, endorsement of 267 unique individuals.

It is worth noting that whilst we have factored in Lloyds TSB’s support of athletes across GB via the organisation’s Local Heroes programme, the figure of 404 agreements does not take these numbers into account. Similarly, neither do the figures quoted incorporate Visa’s sponsorship of the Team 2012 programme. Both these programmes are based on the brands creating or sponsoring group athlete support systems, whereas we wanted to analyse brands’ strategies for individual endorsements - brands that have taken on the challenge (and the risks) onus of selecting, contracting and activating individuals, many several years ago, as part of their London 2012 campaigns.

Risk versus reward: over half of the endorsed athletes have qualified for Team GB and Paralympics GB. 

Whilst you may not be surprised at the dominance of athletics amongst endorsees, the Synfographic does demonstrate that there’s a healthy range of sports sitting beyond the usual suspects, reflecting the diversity of the Olympics and Paralympics.

Men’s deals outnumber women’s by 234 to 170, but the two most popular individuals for sponsors are both women –  Victoria Pendleton and Jessica Ennis. The two most popular men? Louis Smith and Sir Chris Hoy.

Looking at the brands, it’s striking that the seven Tier 1 London 2012 partners are the heaviest endorsers, with 244 agreements in total, an average of 30 per partner, massively outnumbering any other sponsorship tier. Interestingly, non-sponsor brands are the next biggest endorsers, with 91 deals in total, despite the IOC Charter’s Rule 40 restricting leverage of these individuals during Games-time, which has recently been challenged by several US athletes.

One of the major successes in terms of athlete selection has been BMW’s London 2012 Performance Team*. This is a programme that began with the BMW UK’s central sponsorship of 27 athletes, both past and present, and evolved into a dealer-by-dealer support system for local London 2012 hopefuls. The result: BMW and MINI athletes now form 11% of the entirety of Team GB.

The main questions now are which sponsor has backed the most winners, and who’ll be the post-Games winners in the endorsement stakes. After yesterday’s heroics and today’s headlines, Bradley Wiggins is sure to be at the forefront. Let’s hope that Team GB and Paralympics GB produce many more over the next month or so.

* Full disclosure: Synergy is BMW UK’s London 2012 agency

By Jonathan Izzard on August 2nd, 2012

Tags: BMW, BOA, Default, London 2012, London 2012 sponsorship, London 2012 sponsorship consultants, Olympic sponsorship, Olympic sponsorship consultants, Olympics, Rio 2016, Rio 2016 Sponsorship, Rio 2016 Sponsorship Consultants, Social Media, Sponsorship, Sponsorship consultancy, Sponsorship consultants, Sport, Synergy, Synfographic, Team GB

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Channel-hopping after Chelsea’s extra-time Champions League win over Napoli, I discovered Alien, the 1979 sci-fi horror classic showing on E4 HD.

One of the best genre movies of the past half-century, it still remains a touchstone for well-plotted tension and character-induced claustrophobia. On top of this it also has peerless design credentials, with its brilliant juxtaposition of the organic and the man-made in a dirty, decrepit vision of the future.

Not having been old enough to experience the movie at the cinema, now, in beautiful high definition, I’m confident that this is the best I’ve ever seen the film look. Such a crisp sheen makes it hard to believe that it’s really 33 years since Ridley Scott brought HR Giger’s xenomorph to the big screen, with the express purpose of scaring the bejesus out of cinemagoers everywhere. However, with the series’ original victim, John Hurt, having just received the 2012 BAFTA for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema, I guess it’s not just me that’s feeling old.

Aside from the somewhat diverting fact that man’s worst enemy was rather incongruously sponsored by man’s best friend (Cesar, the dog food-peddling West Highland Terrier), the film left me thinking about how much cinema has changed over the past third of a century – in particular, the way in which we are served and, ultimately, consume film.

With pressure on summer blockbusters’ anabolically-enhanced shoulders to recoup and exceed their production budgets – and thereby justify future investment in an inevitably lucrative sequel, prequel or threequel – the focus that studios put on the relentless media junkets preceding every major release is almost understandable. Any movie needs to wash its face, but these bad boys need to exfoliate, cleanse and moisturise too. The most recent example of this is Disney’s latest megalith, John Carter. Originally entitled John Carter of Mars, heavy focus-grouping saw the execs drop the Martian reference after it was deemed that this might…well…alienate any sci-fi haters out there. This may seem drastic, but given that the film needs to make $250m in order to simply break even, maximising your audience – even if that now includes a few disgruntled/confused rom-com fans – probably makes sense.

In spite of garnering largely inoffensive reviews, the film is already anticipated to end up being one of the biggest box office flops in history, especially considering the incremental $100m Disney spent on its marketing.

Let’s be honest though: the formal studio media push is rather like the tip of the iceberg in a James Cameron film – more or less the last thing people see before the movie’s big sink-or-swim moment…albeit supported by a fuller campaign somewhere beneath the surface. In today’s connected world it’s all about building audience anticipation in the months, even years, before a movie’s release, the bigger the scale, the greater the interest: fan forum gossip, illicit on-set photography, leaked scripts and concept art, inadvertently-revealing IMDB cast lists and, of course, the ubiquitous studio-sanctioned teasers.

I’m actually a big fan of the latter – when done well, that is. The Cloverfield teaser poster was a brilliant example of sizzle before the steak, as mentioned in a previous blog.

The idea of generating excitement by releasing a controlled set of production shots, a cryptic poster, or even a mini trailer is definitely a solid means of maintaining buzz around a long-lead production, and even guaranteeing a portion of its opening weekend gross. Peter Jackson unveiled a collection of on-set videos over a year before the release date of his adaptation of The Hobbit and Christopher Nolan showed the entire first six minutes of The Dark Knight Rises to select IMAX audiences the autumn before its summer opening. Indeed, wrapping multiple elements into a bespoke viral campaign – encompassing both online and offline touchpoints – has seen success for several major releases in the past few years. The Dark Knight was one such triumph, its ‘Why So Serious?’ viral campaign (along with a mesmerising performance from the late Heath Ledger and the bankability of the Batman franchise) making it the fastest movie ever to hit $450m at the US box office. It took less than a month.

Quality input: quality output. My concern is rather more about those films where the studio really hasn’t understood the delicate balance between show and tell, enthusiastically, or often greedily overstepping the line between sating and saturating their perceived audience. Fundamentally, how much information constitutes TMI (too much information)?

Anyone who’s seen the recent set of trailer releases surrounding this summer’s Avengers movie (or Marvel Avengers Assemble as it has been incredulously re-titled in the UK, to avoid any confusion with Steed, Peel, Purdey and pals) is going to be in little doubt over what they’ll be seeing come April: Thor! Hulk! Explosions! Costly CGI! Jeremy Renner with a bow and arrow! An inevitable second instalment! 20 million views in two weeks confirms that this is scheduled to be THE summer blockbuster.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with going into the cinema knowing what you’re going to see, but I still think there’s ground for a little mystery, a few elements of surprise, some opportunity for the film to shift gear. Clearly, there needs to be enough quality and underlying substance from which to draw without simply relying on a well-publicised set-piece, barnstorming one-liner or big, twisty reveal. Being able to view trailers and studio content whenever we want online makes holding something back all that more important. It’s the same story with brands trying to carve out their own piece of the marketing pie, as in some cases there are really only so many quality morsels to go around.

Which brings me inexorably back to the genius of Ridley Scott. His new film, Prometheus, starring the likes of Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace and Idris Elba, is the latest production to get the full viral treatment. Set in 2083, 40 years before Alien, the movie is not a direct prequel but is said by the director to “share Alien DNA” – a comment alone that caused multiple nerdgasms amongst the fanboy community. In the two months after its release, the teaser trailer had over 8 million views on YouTube.

Around the same time, fans were treated to the start of the movie’s creeping online viral activity. The team behind the campaign have opted to mine the rich – and, to date, notoriously murky – history of Weyland Industries, the nefarious organisation at the heart of the Alien canon, where it is known only as ‘the Company’. This has been done via its ‘company website’ – effectively a centralised drip-feed of teaser nuggets for ‘interested investors’.

One of the nicest pieces of content included on the site is an incredibly appropriate tie-in with an existing commercial brand, TED, as we are introduced to the company’s visionary founder, Sir Peter Weyland (played here with villainous ambition by Guy Pearce) at his own TED talk, in the year 2023. Viral rule one: tease but don’t tell.

Whilst this new movie may see Ridley Scott revisiting a universe he helped create, it’s worth pausing a moment to savour the original Alien trailer – a clip that teased before the concept was even formalised: no dialogue, no voice-over, and quite resolutely no alien. There’s not even any background music, unless you count the unsettling noises that crescendo to a dead silence and one of cinema’s most notable tag-lines “In space no one can hear you scream”. Genuinely eery.

The full trailer for Prometheus, went live on 18 March, accruing over 4 million views in just three days…and the viral campaign rolls relentlessly on. Great Scott, it’s going to be a big summer.

By Jonathan Izzard on March 21st, 2012

Tags: Advertising, Film, Sponsorship

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Memorabilia. The ultimate demonstration of fully committed fandom, right? Now I’m not talking about the typical million-odd replica shirts sold each year by Manchester United; I don’t even mean the larger share of these that sell featuring a certain Wayne Rooney’s name and number on the back; no, I’m talking about the real up-close-and-personal stuff: Botham’s bat, Pele’s Pumas or Tiger’s tee-peg.

You name it, someone out there will probably try to buy it, sell it, or, in the case of OJ Simpson, nick it. Allegedly. So what’s the fascination with collectibles, and why will ordinarily sane people part with extraordinarily daft amounts of money to own them? To me it’s about either possessing a tangible part of your hero, a slice of sporting history…or, and this is where the big bucks come into play, both.

In terms of sporting collectibles, baseball rules the roost; from the $10,000 spent by chewing gum maker Curt Mueller on a piece of spent gum from Arizona Diamondbacks Luis Gonzalez, to the ball struck by Mark McGwire for his record-breaking 70^th home run in 1998 – bought by comic book creator Todd McFarlane for a staggering $3.05m. Especially staggering when you consider the record was subsequently tainted by McGwire’s admission of steroid abuse during that season…the baseball shedding two-thirds of its auction value. Less home run, more own goal.

But if you think that sports fans have the market cornered (as well as signed, framed and independently authenticated) – think again. It’s the movie buffs that really know how to splash the cash to get their hands on a piece of Hollywood heroes or history.

In 2008, a miniature TIE Fighter model spaceship from the original Star Wars movie sold for over $400,000 and Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber made almost a quarter of a million dollars. Surprisingly though, in the memorabilia stakes, chic overcomes geek, with Audrey Hepburn’s Givenchy dress from Breakfast at Tiffany’s selling for just under $1million and James Bond’s gadget-filled Aston Martin DB5 going for $4.1million.

What, might you ask, has any of this got to do with marketing, per se? Well, if you need to ask, then you obviously haven’t seen the recent Nike Mag campaign.

For those of you not aware, Nike Mags were the futuristic sneakers worn in Back to the Future II by hero Marty McFly when visiting Hill Valley, year 2015. For a quick reminder…

The self-lacing, self-illuminating hi-tops went on to become the most sought-after movie footwear since Dorothy Gale’s ruby slippers, whilst creating veritable product placement lore for their creators, Nike.

Many have crudely tried to repeat the trick, most notably Will Smith’s Converse-obsessed lead in I, Robot and, subsequently, the Puma-wearing inhabitants of The Island. Given that each member of the latter’s identically-shod population is, in fact, an irretrievably doomed clone of a corporate paymaster, you have to think that Puma really should have read the script before involving themselves.

What sets Nike apart from the aforementioned brands is that the trainers worn by Michael J. Fox’s character were simply an ‘ain’t-it-cool’ vision of the future for the movie’s teenaged audience, appropriate to Nike’s own brand trajectory; they weren’t linked to part of a specific marketing campaign, and were categorically not made available for purchase by their makers.

Until now.

Hot on the heels of Total Film’s 2010 ‘Future Day’ hoax, forums were buzzing earlier this year with the rumour that Nike had taken out a patent on an ‘automatic lacing system’. Nike sneakers with power laces on their way? Not quite, but an ingeniously timely tease nonetheless.

In fact, the Oregon-based sporting superpower had finally chosen to make film buff dreams a reality, by producing a limited run of 1,500 pairs of ‘2011 Nike Mags’.

With illuminated LEDs that can be recharged after a long day switched on in their display cabinet (as though anyone is actually planning on wearing these) the 2011 models are, in fact, not of the self-lacing variety. This is rather unsubtly explained courtesy of the movie’s co-star, Christopher Lloyd – AKA Doc Brown – in the video below, where it becomes clear that said technology will only be available in 2015 (the year he and Marty visited in BTTF2), and that the DeLorean time machine has erroneously brought him to a point four years too early.

So, after all the hype and fervour, how can I get hold of a pair, you ask? Well, unfortunately you’ve already missed the boat: the entire lot were auctioned off over a 10-day period on eBay in early September. Although bidding started at $0.99, over-excited demand amongst collectors and scalpers alike saw standard prices kick off at around $4,000. Who pays $4k for a pair of slightly ugly-looking trainers? Well, no one, it would seem. The first pair actually sold for the princely sum of $37,000 to one Patrick Chukwuemeka Okogwu – that’s Tinie Tempah to you and me. His PR or Nike’s…it’s hard to tell.

But never fear: Nike’s ruse was all in a very good cause (besides fleecing a few overpaid musicians). It turns out that the brand had partnered with the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, all profits from the auctions going direct to the organisation.

Nike (with a little help from eBay) capitalised on the perfect storm of memorabilia-hungry Back to the Future fanboys, obsessive boxfresh sneakerheads and understandably fervent supporters of the Parkinson’s research projects – raising $5.7million in a mere 10 days. This was doubled to $11million by the ubiquitous Google, whose co-founder Sergey Brin has pledged to match donations to Fox’s foundation until 2012 to the tune of up to $50million.

Nike has demonstrated just how far ahead its thinking is from its competitors’ in respect of memorabilia, limited edition wares and product placement (even retrospectively). And who’s to say that the ‘2015 Nike Mags’ won’t be released to the general public in four years’ time anyway?

They’ve hit the sweet spot between collectible and commodity, and through the nostalgic lens of one of the most popular movie franchises of all time, have delivered a lesson in slow-burn brand marketing.

But coming back to the crux of the argument, people will do anything for their own part of an image, an icon, a moment or a man – heart over head, irrational and absurd. As Huey Lewis once put it: that’s the power of love.

By Jonathan Izzard on October 4th, 2011

Tags: Brand marketing, Celebrity, Charity, Content, Default, Digital marketing, Film, New Product Development, Viral Marketing

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What Happened?

The beginning of the month saw the release of a selection of free content for the popular iPhone app, Hipstamatic, from the team behind one of this summer’s movie blockbusters, Cowboys & Aliens.

Hipstamatic, for the uninitiated, is a retro-inspired camera app that allows users to customise the lens, film, flash, and even camera ‘case’ they use when taking photos, with the output being some unique and genuinely memorable images. Synthetic, the company behind the app, states that it took inspiration for the product from the Hipstamatic 100, an ill-fated analogue camera that failed to trouble the market back in the 1980s. It has been alleged by a few wags that this backstory is in fact nothing more than gentle hokum: a self-perpetuated viral myth designed to imbue what is effectively a piece of imaging software with a little more retro heart.

Either way, the app has without doubt been an unqualified success: it’s clocked up around 2 million downloads since its release at the tail end of last year, was voted ‘App of the Year 2010’ by Apple themselves, and was even used by photographer Damon Winter in a New York Times cover story on the war in Afghanistan (which rightly sparked a photojournalism vs photography debate).

On top of this, with the App Store selling additional lenses and film – for users to combine to produce a myriad of effects – Synthetic has an generated an ongoing revenue stream driven by curious and creative users looking to further tinker with their iPhone photos.

So where does downloadable content from the soon-to-be-released sci-fi western fit? Well, the idea is relatively simple: a push message to owners of the app offers two new lenses, as well as a Cowboys & Aliens camera case. Whilst the case itself is little more than a branded visual rooted in the movie’s steampunk influences, the lenses themselves, one of which is designed to simulate an alien POV, for example, are definitely of greater value.

Why we like it?

I’m not saying that I’m now planning, without further encouragement, to rush out and see Cowboys & Aliens on the day of its release – I mean, that’s one dreadful film title – but I’m unashamedly using the free lenses in my day-to-day photography. This is an interesting spin on content provision: it’s not a one-hit wonder, a tactical traffic-driver or even a piece of compellingly sticky website content – it’s a ‘gift that keeps giving’, providing already-loyal users added value to an iPhone app they already legitimately love…which is no mean feat.

And this isn’t the first of this kind of branded content deal: in June Nike released a lens, two film stocks and its very own branded case. A rare example of Nike as follower rather than leader, it is less than clear what the sportswear giant’s motivation for involvement is, beyond a branded presence in the hands of creative young people.

Whilst neither of these could claim to be the ground-breaking partnerships for Hipstamatic, you couldn’t exactly call them a shot in the dark. This activity signposts the trajectory for stronger and more relevant co-ops that will offer greater terms of engagement with Hipstamatic’s userbase, convince a wider audience to buy into the analogue revolution and, crucially, say something a little deeper about the partner than “brand X is offering a free Hipstamatic lens pack…that’s cool”.

By Jonathan Izzard on July 26th, 2011

Tags: Default

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What happened? To coincide with the release of Limitless, the new thriller starring Bradley Cooper and Robert DeNiro, Relativity, the film’s production company, commissioned a smart and differentiated viral campaign encompassing digital, outdoor and, well, digital outdoor media.

Why we like it: As a movie whose premise revolves around NZT, a pill that allows anyone taking it access to the full 100% of their brainpower (and the consequences thereof), it is perhaps appropriate that the film company should have demonstrated a bit of lateral thinking in its marketing.

In the States, where the stakes were naturally highest for the movie, the tease began in earnest a month prior to its release with a video created and seeded by Thinkmodo, the New York-based viral marketing outfit. The team produced a piece of footage where a young tech-geek demonstrates how to hack the digital advertising media in Times Square.

Whilst this video hit the Internet hard, with over 2 million views, the execution was later criticised for its very casual link to the movie itself. Only at the very end of the clip do you see the hacker interrupting the official trailer for the movie, or by following the click-through discover that he managed to achieve such feats after taking NZT.

Subsequent to this, and arguably more importantly, the film company also created a faux campaign fronted by Bradley Cooper himself as the literal face of NZT. In a great pastiche of companies like Vitabiotics, whose Wellman advertising for herbal pick-me-ups is a global phenomenon, Mr Cooper stars in both print and TV creative.

The coup de grâce was media buy that placed the campaign’s print creative directly in the eye-line of those people used to seeing

The fact that its stated side-effects include “psychosis, amnesia, homicidal blackouts and death” is a cheeky nod to the film’s own plot trajectory.

Not only is it great to see the creative use of outdoor media – when did you last spot a movie poster on the inside of a Tube? – but it also showed a genuine consideration by the film’s marketing team as to the potential for their assets (namely the film’s star) to deliver into a content strategy beyond that of the typical Photoshopped poster.

What’s more, as a movie starring ‘That guy from The Hangover‘ and Robert ‘please let this not be another turkey’ DeNiro, this is also a campaign that drove a degree of critical reappraisal from the very quarters that might otherwise have ignored it. Having hit #1 at the US Box Office, and taken $80million to date, it looks as though the team at Relativity may have been on NZT from the start.

By Jonathan Izzard on April 20th, 2011

Tags: Advertising, Film, Synergy Loves, Synopsis

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During a 5-hour traffic delay on the way to the Ryder Cup, two Synergists entered into a debate about the greatest Sports Marketing Innovation of the last 50 years. What started in the back of the car, turned into our own private mission to find the answer. We invited suggestions from the public, debated the merits of each suggestion, invited guest bloggers to put their case forward and finally put the resulting short-list to a vote. And according to you, the biggest Sports Marketing Innovation of all time was Nike’s deal with Michael Jordan.

The deal went beyond mere endorsement and created a product line purely around the player, whilst defining the relationship between corporate organisations and sports stars. According to Charlie Brooks, the communications director of Nike “…It has helped define the way the Nike brand, and the industry overall, has behaved ever since in terms of sports marketing and creating athlete signature products…”

It’s staggering, if the stories are to be believed, that Jordan originally didn’t even want to meet with Nike execs to cut a deal. The company’s association with MJ created a brand in Air Jordan that generated some of the most memorable advertising creative in recent years, with ‘Wings’ still one of the most popular posters ever printed. Almost a decade since he last played, the Jordan brand has grossed over $1 billion in sales, representing around 5% of Nike’s total revenue, with the “Jumpman” adorning the shoes of kids for whom Jordan has only ever been a YouTube myth. Wouldn’t you want to be a part of that?

So, there is no doubt that we found a worthy winner…but at Synergy, that just triggered the next question. What next for superstar endorsements? Is this still a winning sponsorship strategy?

From the earliest days of advertising, the stars of the day have been employed to strengthen the promise of a brand. Whether it’s the testimonial of actress Lillie Langtry for Pears Soap, or that of US President William McKinley for his Waterman pen – both before the turn of the 20th century – we’re not talking about a new art, just one that has evolved over time.

That said, apparently, using a celebrity doesn’t guarantee success. According to research carried out by US-based firm Ace Metrix, in 2010 almost 15% of advertising in the US involved celebrities, at an estimated cost of $50 billion. And of that number, nearly 20% of commercials indexed negatively versus the advertising norm. With four out of the top five culprits from the world of sport, several UK publications suggested this as sounding the death-knell of deals for major sporting names like David Beckham.

Of course, this is partly explained by the fact that two sporting superstars for whom 2010 had hardly been a year to remember, featured heavily in this list: Lance Armstrong was accused by his former team-mate Floyd Landis of taking performance-enhancing drugs, whereas Tiger Woods, well, you don’t need me to tell you about his 2010. What this demonstrates is the height from which an icon has to fall, even if, in the case of Armstrong, the pedestal is still structurally intact.

The fact is that consumers are now a savvier bunch and it is easy to pick out where a celebrity is simply a hired hand lending stardust to a brand.

Looking at the advertising that best resonated with US consumers last year, we can see that celebrities need to bring an authenticity that is impossible to manufacture. Oprah Winfrey’s traffic safety campaign represented three out of the top four strongest performing creatives. A very ‘Oprah’ endorsement. George Clooney, another celebrity with integrity, unquestionably plays his own smooth self in Nescafe’s commercials, although it’s definitely more than just an address to camera. Turning this on its head, Kevin Bacon’s commercial for Logitech (where he brilliantly plays a Kevin Bacon-obsessed superfan) is in no way a Bacon endorsement of their specific product, but a means of connecting the brand with humour and charm often missing from the category.

This is where sponsorship begins to play a greater role for companies looking to connect with a consumer, a market or a movement. It’s about a brand in alignment with an individual. What develops is a symbiotic relationship where brands have as much to gain as they have to lose…arguably more.

Nike, of course, has since repeated the trick with Tiger Woods. Why didn’t Nike cut Tiger loose last year? Well, whilst his behaviour disappointed fans and sponsors alike, there’s no denying that he represented a longer game to the sporting giant. And his relationship with Nike is deep and authentic. Prior to Woods’ endorsement of Nike’s golf range in 2000, Nike owned approximately 1% of the global golf market. Following Woods’ signing, Nike Golf acquired approximately 4.5 million customers and in 2008 posted revenues of $648 million – a direct result of the Tiger who came to tee. Estimates suggest that even the 100,000 or so consumers that left the brand in the wake of his extensive indiscretions never actually defected to a competitor, impacting instead a net loss on the golf industry as a whole.

So, authenticity is key. In an attempt to find it, a new avenue has been explored by brands over the past couple of years: offering the celebrity more than just cold hard cash, but a job.

Arguably the most successful proponent of this is adidas with their appointment of designer Stella McCartney as its creative director in advance of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. An appropriate relationship that, suitably leveraged, will provide adidas ample reward in 2012, but, critically, one based on her skillset and day job. Need to demonstrate an ability to actively shape their employer’s brand and bottom line, whilst still connecting with the target consumers. Jamie Oliver and Sainsbury’s, Kate Moss and Topshop, Dr Dre and Monster headphones – all examples of motivated individuals working to deliver tangible value back to their paymasters.

In a slightly more worrying turn of events, the role (or rather title) of creative director provides an opportunity for companies to steal genius (or perhaps more realistically, borrow talent) from a heavily focus-grouped ‘next best thing’.

Intel has shown the world that it likes (black eyed) peas with its chips, having signed up the ubiquitous Will.i.am as their own ‘director of creative innovation’, where he plans to work with scientists and researchers to “collaborate and co-develop new ways to communicate, create, inform and entertain”. Well, if it keeps him out of the recording studio, I’m all for it.

Mr i.am’s work placement comes hot on the heels of icône du jour Lady Gaga, who in 2010 announced she had bagged a role at Polaroid as the brand’s creative director. Here she was “fairly involved” in merging the company’s two mainstays, cameras and sunglasses into (wait for it) a pair of camera sunglasses. One might suggest Ms Gaga was chosen by Polaroid as a 1980s throwback with the ability to deliver an instant reaction, but there’s a definite risk that they have instead simply secured a cheap imitation that fades after prolonged exposure.

It is clear that giving a celebrity a job is no guarantee of authenticity. In a world permeated by the insidious creep of celebrity wannabes and casually eroded by salacious A-Z list gossip, ambivalence is a perfectly understandable reaction from consumers to all-star overkill. Similarly, people believe in sports stars – they are heroes to fans young and old, and as such have a duty of responsibility that for many is beyond their reach.

Celebrity endorsement can still be a winning strategy. But the rules are very clear: without authenticity a brand will simply shed its celebrity skin.

By Jonathan Izzard on March 17th, 2011

Tags: Advertising, Brand marketing, Default, Golf, Music, Olympics, Sponsorship, Sport, Synopsis, Team GB, Television, What's the Greatest Sports Marketing Innovation?

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Anyone watching Newsnight this week may have caught the interesting feature on popular design website Information is Beautiful. For the uninitiated amongst you, the site is the brainchild of David McCandless, who describes himself as “an independent data journalist and information designer…interested in how designed information can help us understand the world”.

With nods to the seminal philosopher and statistician Otto Neurath, whose motto, “words divide, images unite”, led him to design an icon-based language to express quantitative information, Information is Beautiful presents a fascinating series of visualisations, a distillation of democratised data, if you will. In a world where we’re constantly struggling under the weight of statistics, news, opinion, video – not to mention a healthy measure of total junk – McCandless questions whether there’s a compelling means of simplifying, and in some way better understanding the constant stream of facts and figures routinely presented to us by the media.

This mission led to one of IIB’s most famous designs, The Billion Dollar-o-Gram, an exercise in quantifying the unquantifiable: I mean, what does $1billion really mean to anyone?

It was inevitable that this project would attract the attention of the media, with sites such as The Guardian’s Datablog providing a ready outlet for data and stats with a journalistic hook, that can be represented in a new and appealing way.

Mr McCandless’s appearance on Newsnight was certainly a little different, as you might expect, with host Kirsty Wark and guest, respected designer Neville Brody, critiquing McCandless’s previous assertion that visualisations had the potential to offer new insights into the politics of the world around us.

The debate’s well-worth watching, even if it involves the somewhat unjust intellectual skewering of Mr McCandless by the Brody-Wark duo, whose main argument is that designs such as those found on IIB, whilst beguiling and attractive, are likely to oversimplify the deeper issues behind the information from which they are drawn. We might feel slightly cleverer, but we aren’t necessarily any better informed; the designs are knowing, without necessarily imparting knowledge.

It was an awkward paradox for McCandless, as, by the nature of his work, he is bound by the information he illustrates, restricted to those nuggets that lend themselves to visual representation, however clever or imaginative the resultant images are.

Interpretation is all important, with IIB less about blind acceptance than mental stimulus: if it forces you to find out more, it’s achieved a goal.

Other examples of this include the excellent online resource Wordle – a word-cloud generator, which can quickly deliver images like…

Whilst certainly a valuable tool in linguistic sifting, it’s hardly something upon which you’d base an entire opinion. Instead this presents us with a means of examining the patterns in a complicated world, rather than explaining them.

Similarly, the online project ‘We Feel Fine’ – also referenced in the Newsnight report – is a resource as alluring as it is technically impressive. Scouring the global social media landscape every 10 minutes for any posts starting with the words “I am feeling…” or “I feel…”, the output is a demographically configurable snapshot of sentiment. Emotion trending, perhaps. The organic, transient and in many ways fickle nature of social media updates questions this as a means of truly tracking the mood of a nation, but it certainly offers food for thought.

There’ll always be a précis, a Cliffs Notes, an elevator pitch or edit to help us cope with today’s crowded and clouded data-stream – the impetus on us is to question, examine the bigger picture, ensure that visualisations such as those of David McCandless serve as cues to curiousity. It’s not just a design, but an invitation to explore the numbers, opinions, testimony, photos and history surrounding an issue, all accessible via a few extra clicks of the mouse.

Information might be beautiful; integration is essential.

By Jonathan Izzard on August 17th, 2010

Tags: Design, Media, Online communities, Social Media, Television

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