Robin of Shoreditch wants your money
Leave a Comment » | 3,684 views | 0 Comments » |
Faris Yakob is the chief innovation officer, MDC Partner, holding company of ad agencies including Crispin Porter + Bogusky and kirshenbaum bond senecal + partners and the former EVP Chief Technology Strategist at McCann Erickson NY.
The 100 Brands Project from Robin of Shoreditch on Vimeo.
As the video above admirably explains, ‘Robin of Shoreditch’ is an anonymous group of creative outlaws looking to take from the rich and give to the poor.
The rich, in this case, are the top100 brands in the world, as measured by brand value according to WPP’s BrandZ study.
The poor are the people of Haiti, who are struggling to rebuild one of the poorest counties in the world, following the earthquake that killed 250,000 people and made another 1,000,000 homeless.
When confronted with the desire to help in some meaningful way, these creative advertising types decided to do what they do best – create ideas for brands. So they’ve put together 100 ideas, one for each of the most valuable brands in the world, each one expressed in a short video.
The outlaw element comes from how they are ‘charging’. Having created the ideas for each brand, they then sent an invoice to senior marketers and executives at each company, asking for one ten millionth of the supposed brand value for the idea.
So, let’s say you are Google, the most valuable brand in the world, and your brand valuation [according to BrandZ] was $100,039 billion. The fee would be $10,003.9
All fees collected by Robin will be given directly to the Disasters Emergency Committee’s Haiti appeal.
From a marketing point of view, there are a number of compelling things to consider about Robin of Shoreditch. Robin and Little John are very clearly of the web. Their identity is distributed across a number of platforms, and re-aggregated on their ‘website’, which serves only to link to their other online presences, using each platform for what is best at. The videos are on Vimeo, their blog is on Tumblr, you can like them on Facebook, and follow them on Twitter. Their accounting department has been outsourced to JustGiving, the charity donations website.
Distributed identities, not destination websites, are the future, or rather the present, of brands in digital spaces.
The ideas are being released week by week, to create a calendar of content.
Regular, ongoing communication from companies is gradually eroding the idea of ‘campaigns’.
The email they sent me was polite and pleasant, addressed me by name, apologised for the interruption, asked for my help, and provided background to the story.
The dominant grammar of social spaces is, well, social. The amount of social media outreach I see that presumes that the blogger should be grateful for receiving a new advertisement to propagate, and provides no personalisation or depth or added value for readers, is disheartening.
All of which, alongside the actual ideas being ‘sold’, provides a compelling portfolio and marketing programme for the ‘anonymous’ creatives involved.
But beyond the activation itself, there is, perhaps, a larger point being highlighted by the Merry Men of East London. Brands have historically been considered in terms of personalities. Ever since Stephen King [the planner, not the author] pointed out that people naturally anthropomorphise products, overlaying personality traits on to them, and forming attachments to different brands because of some kind of affinity to those traits.
The radical transparency the internet has forced on companies means that these traits are created by the totality of what the company does, not simply what it says. If brands seem to espouse a point of view, then all the actions of the company must reflect that. And, increasingly, that’s going to mean doing good things for customers, society and the world at large.
Because, in essence, what makes brands valuable, are their values.
Oo-De-Lally, Oo-De-Lally, Golly what a day.
[At the time of writing, no brands have paid the ‘invoice’ from Robin.]
farisyakob.com
@faris
Posted: May 11th, 2010 | Author: elen.lewis | Filed under: Digital | Tags: brand values, brands, Faris Yakob, haiti, WPP | Leave a Comment »
Leave a Reply