DEVELOPING AND IMPLEMENTING CREATIVE STRATEGY – PLANNING WITH AN EYE FOR WHAT’S NEXT.
All businesses evolve. Trends pass, technology eases some tasks and complicates others, economies shrink and grow, and new markets emerge – while others disappear.
Businesses adapt accordingly, or they fade away.
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"video" clothing & holographic projections - future marketing and media design challenges?
Over the past 20 years, I’ve had the right-place, right-time advantage of being at the center of some of the most iconic brand transformations, product introductions and technology shifts in the media and entertainment industry. Working for a series of innovative branding and design firms put me in a front row seat, then on stage, and eventually in the conductor’s chair for cable channel launches, identity overhauls and high-profile commercial campaigns. I’ve been on board for countless equipment and software “firsts,” and navigated through waves of techniques, methodologies and theories before they were scrapped, replaced and then scrapped again.
Change has been, and will always be, at the heart of this industry.
Media and entertainment design, packaging and promotion are, on a very basic level, window dressing. A big part of what we do is to take our product (channels, shows, news, events, movies, music, etc.) and display it in ways that catch the attention of passers-by on the busy, worldwide, multi-platform sidewalk.
From a strategic perspective, that dressing is also the visual representation of market insight, research and forward thinking that comes together in one big, dimensional and tangible brand message for the viewer.
The broadcast media industry, of course, is changing again. Companies are now contemplating the best way to negotiate with consumers whom, thanks to the internet and social networks, refuse to accept their news and entertainment served up in traditional formats or on set schedules. While the basic structure of movies, television shows and video hasn’t changed substantially, the way they’re watched has.
This latest digital / cultural / behavioral / distribution upheaval is still playing out. And, as traditional media companies cobble together and solidify their responses to it, a new crop of competitors is free to wade into the mix with tailored-from-scratch solutions that nimbly straddle both old and new. And, viewers continue to do whatever works best for them.
Before Facebook, Google and YouTube, et al, web-based businesses mostly competed for hits with gimmicky graphics and print & broadcast advertising – acting like traditional media companies, only with online distribution. It took the “dot com” bubble to burst, and a little ingenuity to happen, before the real potential – the social connectivity – of the web could emerge and take hold. Now that the web has stepped out of the shadow of its older siblings, traditional media companies are scrambling to evolve their businesses to deal with the competition.
Digital-vs-traditional content and its distribution, packaging, promotion and market share woes are only the beginning of the story. As much as the internet has morphed into the business, entertainment and communications juggernaut that it is today, it’s still just an awkward teenager with plenty of growing to do.
Further, we’ve barely begun to see what advances new hardware might usher in. Who says, for example, that developers of consumer products must remain confined to the limits of rectangular film or video aspect ratios just because that’s what works best for television or the printed page?
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Which brings us back to change and adaptation.
On a recent episode of The Office, the paper and office supply company Dunder Mifflin introduced its latest offering, the Sabre Pyramid, a tablet to end all tablets. Weighing in at a substantial three pounds, this triangular titan also comes with sexy accessories, including a battery pack and memory booster to supplement the device’s “50L” capacity.
It’s a wonderfully snarky jab at the keystone cop response by every other non-iPad tablet manufacturer in the market right now (the jury is still out on Kindle’s Fire). A comparison, though, could be made to much of traditional media’s response to the challenges brought on by digital platforms and an entirely new consumer paradigm. We’ve watched the music industry flail for years, printed newspapers and magazines near extinction and even highly successful “new” companies bumble ridiculously with their digital strategies – can you say Netflix?
Apple’s iPad and i-everything success comes from being willing to go in completely new directions, then, from lining up great products behind impeccable design and marketing. Easily enough said – and, based on the examples above alone, not so easily done.
A good starting point, however, for media companies and their marketing teams, would be to embrace the potential of future technologies and focus less on how to control the havoc they may wreak on existing business models and strategies.
Recycling and reacting solely to what the other companies are doing will always be an outdated plan.
© Markus Horak, 2011
You may also be interested in the following posts:
> Designing For An Alternate Reality – All Aboard The Transmedia Train
> Six Tips for Hitting a Design Brainstorm Bull’s-Eye
> The Skinny on Briefs – How to Write Creative Direction for Designers
>> IN MOTION – Archive of older posts
Filed under: Advertising, Branding, Business, Creativity, Culture, Design, Motion Tagged: brand strategy, Branding, broadcast design, entertainment design, marketing, media brands, media design, promotion Image may be NSFW.
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