By Alice Korngold, Co-Editor, Giving Thoughts, and author, A Better World, Inc.: How Companies Profit by Solving Global Problems…Where Governments Cannot, and Jean Case, CEO, the Case Foundation Created in 1997 by digital pioneers Jean and Steve Case, the Case Foundation invests in people and ideas that can change the world. The Foundation is particularly […]
Sony used over 1500kg of multi-coloured glitter in its latest explosive commercial for BRAVIA 4K HDR TVs. Watch as an enchantingly grand, derelict old building comes to life, bursting with bright white balloons, the ad crescendos into an incredible multi-coloured glittery explosion
The ad perfectly encapsulates the beautiful detail of Sony’s new BRAVIA 4K HDR TV range and the brilliant colour reproduction. “More Brilliance. More Beauty.” is the mesmerising ad’s strapline
A mixture of drones and handheld video cameras were used so that viewers could experience the colour explosions in clear detail
For the soundtrack, Sony collaborated with UK singer-songwriter Tom Odell to re-record Cyndi Lauper’s famous track ‘True Colours’
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Sony launched a new advertising campaign which showcases the incredible picture quality of its new range of Sony BRAVIA 4K HDR TVs. These TVs give you the best possible picture quality whatever you’re watching, the smartest user experience with Android TV, and are stunningly designed.
Shot in 4K, the ad made by American director Andre Stringer, together with DDB Berlin, brings to life a forgotten, derelict casino in Romania using 4000 balloons and over 1500 KG of glitter in the visually enchanting setting.
Opening with a single white balloon entering an empty building, the casino gradually fills with balloons and mesmerises onlookers before the balloons explode in a cacophony of colour as glitter cascades around the casino.
By using a combination of different shooting methods and angles, the ad sets out to capture the brilliance and beauty of 4K HDR through the juxtaposition of pure white balloons and the glorious colour of the glitter, culminating in a stunning explosive climax.
As well as the TV commercial, the campaign will encompass cinema, VOD, digital, out of home and point of sale to convey the core message, ‘More Brilliance. More Beauty’ and celebrates the exceptional colour, contrast and detail delivered by the new range of Sony 4K HDR TVs.
The accompanying key visuals were shot by high-speed photographer Fabian Oefner who attached a noise sensor to the camera shutter, so that it triggered every time a balloon popped, helping him to achieve incredibly detailed and striking images.
Shuhei Sugihara, Head of Brand and Product Communication, Sony Europe, says of the advert: “Whether through our products, or through our marketing, our company’s philosophy is to satisfy people’s curiosity.
“Our new TV commercial continues BRAVIA’s legacy of adverts. From balls, bunnies and flower petals to balloons and glitter – Sony has always used striking colour and visual beauty to showcase its range of televisions. The creative direction of this footage was based on the same idea and we hope viewers truly feel something from this beautiful image, which uses a million glittery details to truly demonstrate the difference our 4K HDR TVs provide in terms of colour, contrast and detail.”
In true Sony tradition, music was an important consideration and given the nature of the commercial, Sony worked with Tom Odell to create a haunting new version of Cyndi Lauper’s classic track “True Colors” renamed as “True Colours”. The music licensing division of Sony Music was involved for the music and artist consulting as well as the song production in high resolution audio. True Colours will be released as a single on all relevant digital platforms on September 30th.
Mr Odell said: “When I saw the advert I thought it was beautiful. And I love Andre Stringer’s (director) work, so was keen to be involved. True Colours by Cyndi Lauper is one of my favourite songs, and it was a joy to sing it and put it to the picture. The lyric has always struck me as one with a very unique message; to be yourself and to be proud about it. In that spirit, I hope you love it as much as I did recording it.”
Alice Bottaro, Creative Director at DDB Berlin explains: “Shooting this commercial required weeks of preparation and a lot of effort from special effects and production design partners. Glitter is a very challenging element to work with, even more so because we wanted to show the particles in all their detail and brilliance. We’ve also been very lucky to get such a beautiful location: during the film, you really experience how the glitter turns this abandoned casino into a place full of colour and life.”
The Credits:
AD AGENCY: DDB Berlin
CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Alice Bottaro
COPYWRITER: Chiara Chessa
ART DIRECTOR: Jacopo Biorcio, Alan Dindo
EXECUTIVE CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Gabriel Mattar
ACCOUNT DIRECTOR: Jemima Jordan
PRODUCER: Jens Mecking, Marcus Wetschewald
CREATIVE AGENCY: Myles Lord
CLIENT SERVICING: David Barton
DIRECTOR: Andre Stringer
POST PRODUCTION HOUSE: nhb studios Berlin
PRODUCTION COMPANY: Tempomedia
In 1973 Colonel Steve Austin was an astronaut who suffered severe injuries in the crash of an experimental spacecraft he was piloting for NASA. Arriving in the trauma center on the brink of death, doctors believed they had a chance of saving him, but only if they performed a series of radical surgeries never attempted before. Using unproven technology that had never been tested on humans.
The plan that emerged was desperate, hurried and well ahead of its time. They would rebuild him, replacing his right arm, both legs and left eye with bionic implants. Natural would meet artificial. New would merge with old. If successful, the transformation would save one life and push medical science beyond its known limits.
Could it work? They had to try.
For many hours Steve’s fate swayed from the edges of life to death and back again. Uncertainty was the only constant. Then, at dawn of the third day they had the answer. In near disbelief, the weary team of doctors witnessed medicine’s miraculous leap forward. Steve Austin would not only survive, he would become the world’s first bionic man. Possessing new abilities that far surpassed human norms. He was better than he was before. Better, stronger…faster.
Dramatic transformation on the hit television series The Six Million Dollar Man was never intended to serve the modern marketer or make a marketing point. Until now.
Often, radical events are required to push us into the mandate of change. Change as we know is not popular and few embrace it easily as the grasp of the familiar is just too tight. Even as disruptive marketing forces loom.
Unlike Steve Austin’s fictional circumstances, the change required of brands today is very real. It is all around us and at odds with many comfort zones. Brands must become better, stronger…faster to earn a place in the future.
Courage, commitment and strong leadership are needed to navigate the uncertainty of change. The following six insights will help you succeed in what can be a very dramatic journey…even one against all odds.
1. Change Leadership: Abandon Yesterday
The first step for a change leader is to free up resources that are committed to maintaining things that no longer contribute to performance and no longer produce results. Maintaining yesterday is always difficult and extremely time-consuming. Maintaining yesterday always commits the institution’s scarcest and most valuable resources–and above all, its ablest people–to nonresults. Yet doing anything differently–let alone innovating–always creates unexpected difficulties. It demands leadership by people of high and proven ability. And if those people are committed to maintaining yesterday, they are simply not available to create tomorrow.
2. Brand Transformation And Fear
What holds brands back from innovation and market leadership is the same element that holds people back: FEAR! As a species, we humans fear change. We can’t help our natural inclination for safety and security. It’s wired into the lizard brain at the base of the skull. We fear taking risks, making mistakes, not meeting plan, looking stupid. It’s far better to fit in, go with the flow, be safe and not freak out our fear-based bosses.
3. Strategically Pacing Your Brand For Change
Marketers struggle sometimes to pace brands to the speeds of consumers. There’s a tendency to believe that everything must change, change, change – and that brands that aren’t always adding or shifting will lose attention. All the talk of innovation and customer impatience fuels that. The reality is something different. Buyers need brands to be familiar and interesting, not one or the other.
4. Evolve Or Transform: 17 Brand Factors
No business these days can just sit pretty. But the extent and nature of changes confuses many. Brands evolve. Or die. But they must also retain something of what consumers know. Or they fade. So which is more important? And how should a brand act, when?
5. Ten Brand Keys For Persuasion And Change
So often it seems to me brand owners hope to bring about change rather than planning to bring about change. They see persuasion as an awareness issue rather than as a behavioral issue – often because they regard their product as the obvious choice that somehow, miraculously will spark a “road to Damascus” moment as soon as consumers encounter it.
6. Changing The Brand Culture – To What Purpose
Around 70% of large-scale change programs fail to meet their goals – and a key reason for that, according to Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini, is that organizations cannot resist managing the implementation of change rather than looking for ways to psychologically and systematically embed it. In effect, the authors suggest, most change programs are too late, too self-serving, too autocratic and too engineered to succeed.
The Blake Project Can Help: Accelerate B2C and B2B Brand Growth Through Powerful Emotional Connections
Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education
FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers
Learn when and why customers convert on mobile and how you can better capitalize on these moments.
There have been several recent polls in 2016 stating that public opinion doesn’t trust the media anymore. The feeling from the population at large is that the media doesn’t go deep enough, it doesn’t ask more complex questions and it doesn’t put enough emphasis on four areas important to consumers: transparency, accuracy, timeliness and clarity.
With the explosion of media fragmentation in the past few years, especially with the rise of podcasts, social media and new forms of content that didn’t exist a mere five years ago, many are decrying lower standards for journalism. This means when opinion-pieces aren’t labeled as such and native advertising exists in the form of an op-ed, people start to look away from the institutions they have trusted in search of greater meaning.
Trust is our main barometer in life. If you don’t have it you won’t last very long in a world being measured more by quality of network and reputation than size of wallet or revenue per share.
Brands can learn a lot from this scenario. For one, brands don’t emphasize any of the above four areas as important in their world. They are essentially blind spots. Yet consumers value that information more and more. Starting with transparency, too many brands don’t talk about how their products are made or how they may exploit people or the environment in the process of making those products.
Second, many feel they can skirt being accurate with how they position their product and company. But in a world where information is abundant, how long will it take people to find out they are lying?
Thirdly, timeliness on innovation hurts many companies who would rather protect legacy business models than find the future. This is why I root for disruptive upstarts all the time in the business ecosystem. While their innovation may not be beneficial to people’s livelihood’s and displace workers, they are trying to provide solutions that big companies are simply trying to sweep under the rug and pretend don’t even exist. Being customer-centric sometimes means innovating at the expense of your business model.
Finally, brands are terrible with clarity of why they exist and what they represent in the larger world. Remember Simon Sinek’s famous quote when thinking about the lack of clarity of so many brands: “People don’t buy what you do, people buy why you do it.”
My hope is that brands and the people who work at them don’t fall into the media trap that currently plagues that world. While the media may think it is immune from extinction, they should learn quickly from what affected the music industry in the late 1990s before they continue down a path of irrelevance. The best way for brands to navigate this new normal is to avoid the blind spots and the dangerous thinking that there is immunity from what plagued disrupted companies, and realize they could be next.
Learn more about how to keep your brand relevant in the 21st Century in my new book Disruptive Marketing.
The Blake Project Can Help: Accelerate B2C and B2B Brand Growth Through Powerful Emotional Connections
Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education
FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers
Content marketing is a waste of time if it doesn’t generate leads for your brand. Learn how to make your content work harder with these handy tips.
TED Residents Susan Bird, Torin Perez and Che Grayson from our first cohort of TED Residents. Photo: Dian Lofton/TED
On September 12, TED welcomed its latest class of the TED Residency program, an in-house incubator for breakthrough ideas. Residents spend four months in the TED office with fellow brilliant minds who are creatively taking on projects that are making significant changes in their communities, across many different fields
The new Residents include:
At the end of their session, Residents have the opportunity to give a TED Talk about their ideas in the theater of TED HQ. Read more about each Resident below:
Kevin F. Adler is the founder of Miracle Messages, a social venture that uses short videos, social media, and a global network of volunteers to reunite homeless people with their long-lost loved ones. His goal is to serve 1% of the world’s homeless population by 2021.
Zubaida Bai cofounded AYZH (pronounced “eyes”) seven years ago to bring simplicity and dignity to women’s healthcare worldwide. Innovations such as her Clean Birth Kit in a Purse are saving and changing the lives of the world’s most vulnerable women and children.
Formerly a career diplomat, Miriam Bekkouche‘s current work combines the latest in neuroscience and behavioral psychology with ancient traditional wisdom. She is the founder of Brain Spa, a coaching and consulting company that explores what mindfulness practice can bring to global problems.
Jordan Brown is a digital health professional who is developing a platform to promote the use of virtual reality and immersive video games in healthcare. In 2014, he founded MedPilot, which tackles the challenges of rising consumer medical costs.
Angel Chang is a womenswear designer working with traditional hand-woven textiles of ethnic minority tribes in rural China. She is taking what she’s learned about indigenous crafts and applying that knowledge to make the fashion industry more sustainable.
TED Residents Jeff Kirschner and Kunal Sood at TED HQ, New York, New York. Photo: Dian Lofton/TED
In his doctoral studies at Cornell University, Abram Coetsee studies the intersection of museums, new media and graffiti. Currently, he is curating a 3D digital reconstruction of 5Pointz, a New York City landmark until it was destroyed by real estate developers in 2014.
Sharon De La Cruz is CEO and Creative Coder of the Digital Citizens Lab, a design collective with a focus on civic technology. Using play as a fundamental tool, Sharon and her team create resources for educators that can meet the needs of historically underserved children of color. Their primary product, “El Cuco,” is an interactive digital comic built to teach children code logic.
As a oud player, Hadi Eldebek has toured with Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble. As a cultural entrepreneur based in New York City, he is collaborating with his brother, Mohamad Eldebek, on two projects: GrantPA, a platform that helps artists find and apply for grants, and Circle World Arts, a global network of workshops that connects artists, audiences, and institutions across continents, languages, and traditions. Mohamad plays percussion and has a master’s degree in neuroscience.
Trained as a visual artist, Danielle Gustafson launched the New York Stock Exchange’s first website in 1996. For the next decade, while serving as a digital-strategy executive in financial services, she also (literally) moonlighted as cofounder of the NYC Bat Group. She now advocates for broader awareness and study of bats, and believes that the smartphone may be the most important conservation tool of the 21st century.
Shani Jamila is an artist and a managing director of the Urban Justice Center. She creates pieces and curates public programs that use the arts to explore justice, identity and global engagement.
Brooklyn-based filmmaker, eco-activist, and futurist Shalini Kantayya uses her work as a tool to inspire audiences to action. The mission of her production company, 7th Empire Media, is to create a sustainable planet and a culture of human rights through imaginative media.
Francesca Kennedy founded Ix Style after seeing Lake Atitlan, in which she was baptized, contaminated and overrun with algae (“Ix” is the Mayan word for water). The company sells huarache sandals and fashion accessories made by Mayan artisans in Guatemala, and then donates a portion of every sale to providing clean drinking water for local children.
TED Resident Second from the right is Francesca Kennedy working with her collaborators from Ix-Style ar TED HQ, September 2016, New York, New York. Photo: Dian Lofton/TED
A backpacker-turned-bartender, Jeff Kirschner is a serial entrepreneur with a love for storytelling. His latest venture is Litterati, a growing global community that’s crowdsource-cleaning the planet, one piece at a time.
Lia Oganesyan believes in the power of virtual reality to foster community. Previously, she co-published DARPA-funded research that assessed how soldiers with PTSD responded to virtual human therapists. She is now building VeeR Hub, an online marketplace for virtual reality content creation.
Marlon Peterson is president of The Precedential Group, a social justice consultancy. He is a gun violence prevention strategist, writer, and now media maker.
While maintaining her fulfilling career as a healthcare and life-sciences executive, Susan C. Robinson is exploring how the natural expertise and unique skill sets of people with “disabilities” may be reframed–and how businesses can thrive while pioneering new standards for diversity and inclusion.
Kunal Sood is the founder and CXO of X Fellows and cofounder of NOVUS, which recently hosted a summit at the United Nations that explored using exponential technologies and innovation to achieve the 17 UN Global Goals. He is writing a book about exponential happiness.
Artist Rachel Sussman created “The Oldest Living Things in the World” (see her 2010 TED Talk here). Her current work includes a massive, handwritten timeline of the history—and future—of the space-time continuum (at MASS MoCA through April 2017), a sand mandala of the Cosmic Microwave Background (Oct. 28 to March 5, 2017, at New Museum Los Gatos), and a 100-Year Calendar, which she will develop during her TED Residency.
Elizabeth Waters is a neuroscientist and educator working to enrich and expand science education. Her school-based research projects engage students in rigorous, purposeful multiyear science experiments. In her K–12 curriculum for the Bronxville, New York school system, kids will collect, analyze and interpret data on water quality in the Bronx River over the next five years.
TED Residents Elizabeth Waters, Abram Coetsee, Kevin Adler at TED HQ, September 2016, New York, New York. Photo: Dian Lofton/TED
In the ever-changing world of brand marketing, the most volatile position is right at the top – the Chief Marketing Officer. Over the years, the role of CMO has been the subject of much scrutiny and introspection. If the “buck stops here” for the CEO, the “buck gets going” thanks to the efforts of the CMO. And that always gets everyone’s careful attention in the boardroom.
Only The Strong Need Apply
Neil St. Clair observed “CMO” is “the most dangerous title around.” No doubt, most CMOs would agree. Estimates of average tenure range from 28 months (less than a coach in the NFL) to a little over 6-1/2 years. Better than the average life expectancy for most CEOs, but hardly destined for a corporate anniversary watch. Indeed, it’s the toughest job in the toughest business of brand marketing. And it keeps getting tougher.
Survival Of The Fittest
Many long for the days when all a Chief Marketing Officer would do was, well, marketing. Mark DiSomma asked in “CMO TO CEO: The Next Generation of Brand Leadership” if the role of CMO would continue to evolve. Just two years later, we can answer a resounding “yes” … and the evolution hasn’t stopped. As Mark quoted Ad Age, CMOs will continue to require “vision, results and leadership.” But in today’s digital and dynamic competitive marketplace, the CMO will need so much more to survive and thrive.
Marketing That Means Business
As St. Clair noted, a “reexamination of the role” is warranted because today’s average CMO must be above average when it comes to wearing many hats. According to him, they must know four things extremely well to succeed: Marketing, the competition, content creation and business engineering (meaning setting the stage for new business development). Hence, St. Clair’s contention that the more accurate title for the position should be changed to “CMBDO” (Chief Marketing & Business Development Officer).
You Can’t Save Your Way To Greatness
But as so often the case, CMOs will be challenged by budgets dispensed by their counterpart CFO. As a friend and CMO would point out, “You can’t save your way to greatness, but you can save your way out of business.” As a rule, no one in the C-Suite is as aware of the cost (and value) of creating the big ideas required for the future than the CMO. Optimistically, we are seeing a small increase in marketing budgets across the board, with an average slice of about 7.5% of revenues. However, one of the most stressing parts of the job is fighting for the funds to drive the ideas you just fought for.
Building Trusted Brands Is Key
Valuable insights about the role of CMOs and the state of brand marketing were revealed in the August 2016 The CMO Survey produced by Deloitte, the American Marketing Association and the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. This survey of 427 marketing V.P. level or higher executives acknowledges some shared opinions: A guarded optimism about the economy, a ramping up of competition, a propensity to invest more into existing markets and a growing priority to build “trusting relationships” with customers.
Trust in the brand is everything. It retains brand loyalists and inspires brand advocates. It is a potent defense against challengers and a platform to expand.
Being The Voice Of The Customer
All of that is pure brand building, facilitated in large part by the CMO’s ability to do two things: Smartly dissect and analyze customer data and wield social media effectively. No wonder the The CMO Survey predicts the budgets for analytics will increase 68% in the next 3 years. And no wonder the top three spots on the CMO’s to do list are brand, advertising and social media. Why wouldn’t they be? Of everyone sitting around that boardroom table, the only one that speaks for the brand’s customer (who is in essence “owner” of the brand as we all know) is the CMO. And many, many times it’s a woefully unappreciated position.
As Peter Drucker once observed, the two most important things any company does are innovation and marketing. The rest of it is just overhead.
The Simple Truth
It is important that the business world realize the simple truth. After it’s all said and done, only the CMO speaks for the brand. Only the CMO represents the customer. Only the CMO sees the trends and knows where the ship should be steered. And only the CMO can create and fight for the ideas that move their brand in the right direction.
The Blake Project Can Help: Accelerate B2C and B2B Brand Growth Through Powerful Emotional Connections
Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education
FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers
Alice Korngold, Co-Editor, Giving Thoughts, and author of A Better World, Inc.: How Companies Profit by Solving Global Problems…Where Governments Cannot Given the extreme distress facing our communities due to racial injustice, and calls for “truth and reconciliation” to address our nation’s history of slavery and its legacy, companies and their foundations face this question: […]
*reSET is the only Connecticut organization to receive the U.S. Small Business Administration for the Growth Accelerator Competition Award, announced by President Obama on August 4th, 2015.
