Taming the tiger

At the PRiNZ conference today, high points include hearing more about "conversational marketing" from Jake Pearce, who finished his presentation with video about the t-shirt company Threadless Jake's illustration of how success can be built on making people feel as though they are part of the business - they have a stake in it. Threadless is one of the fastest-growing companies in the US. They treat their customers like they belong to a club. Artists submit their ideas for t-shirt designs to the website; winners (decided by voting on the site) get their designs printed plus prize money plus rights to the design for keeps & the t-shirt goes on sale. Artists/customers are welcome in the company's head office. The art / the t-shirts become the marketing. Consumers are also producers here. Roles are blurred. "A design team of thousands....And what are they paid? Nothing!"

Brand trust and loyalty have gone down the tubes. Who do people trust now? Each other, says Jake. Word of mouth advocacy is what sticks. And the kind of people who respond well to so-called conversational marketing are Gen C - the 'influencers'. They want a sense of control. Gen C can be seen here in a video narrator Cody Shuttleworth calls a 'Looksy' - about what his digital world means to him as a 19 year old: "We're creating a documentary about Generation C; the generation of digital creatives who are rethinking the way we communicate. A 'Looksy' is a short user-generated video which answers one simple question: What does your digital world look like?"

Breathe

Hello blog, I'm back. I left you in a sort of cryogenic freeze for a while. Now I find you still here, waiting patiently. Don't deserve you, do I. Let me thaw you out, breathe a fog of words over you. I see it's been almost a year since I left you to fend for yourself. I've shrugged a few monkeys off my back that weighed heavier and heavier for a while. Life returns to something more like normal. The urge to let the words flow in some form other than the bloodless prose of a thesis begins to surge. That's all. I'll be back soon to keep you warm.