TBWA Europe’s Vice President Innovation Petteri Kilpinen has written a great book. In Finnish. So we asked him to translate the best bits. Get set for The New Gold Rush in six highlights.

1. The golden age of media

The media revolution we’re experiencing right now is so incredible that in 50 years time, people will wish they’d been here. That’s why I compare it to the California gold rush – a time of excitement and opportunity. From social media to smart phones, digital is utterly transforming our lives. In places like Tunisia and Egypt, it has given a voice to those who were powerless. We are witnessing the forced birth of increased transparency among governments and corporations.

2. Richer, faster, easier

Panning for a gold was a long, painstaking process. But today’s digital entrepreneurs can build businesses that might grow in value from thousands of dollars to billions in less than a year. It has never been easier to create or attract value than it is now: what used to take decades is now achievable in only a few months. And the founders of Google and Facebook don’t look as if they come from another world. They’re young guys who had a good idea. If we find that nugget of gold, we could be like them.

3. Globalisation for all

The concept of globalisation sounds all-embracing, but it fact it was the domain of a few giant companies. Since the internet, globalisation is open to everyone. Not only is it cheaper to make your ideas a reality, but it is also cheaper to promote them worldwide. Connectivity will also cause the death of what I call “regional thinking”. Instead of joining forces with our geographic neighbours, we will join forces with those who are more like us. For example, Finland has more in common with New Zealand than it does with France.

4. Knowledge for all, too

If knowledge is power, today power definitely belongs to the people. Thanks to Google and the other search engines, almost everyone has access to limitless knowledge at the click of a mouse. Mobile devices are accelerating this change. Right now there are about 400 million smart phones. In two years time there will be two billion. That means access to an infinite library, anytime, anywhere.

5. PC R.I.P.

Watching television in the traditional sense is beginning to seem pretty old-fashioned. It won’t be long before our TV screens are also our windows on the internet. In fact, I believe that the middle-sized screen – the PC – will gradually disappear from domestic environments. We’ll consume digital media either on big screens at home, or on small screens on the move.

6. Mass brands get personal

Mass communication is not a thing of the past – but it’s no longer the only game in town. Even brands with mass appeal can now build fan bases via Facebook and other social media. Pretty soon, they’ll be able to tailor products and services to specific fans, forging individual relationships. Dialogue with users and a deeper knowledge of peer groups offers rich terrain for a new, improved version of CRM. Consider the example of Skittles in the UK, which has three million fans, enabling it to engage with a mass audience in a non-mass environment.

Editor’s note: We couldn’t let Petteri plug his book without answering a few questions, so we asked him some.

Q. What does all this mean for advertising agencies?

As my colleagues put it during a recent conference, it’s the end of storytelling and the beginning of story building. We’re creating properties that people can play with, explore, extend – even redecorate, if you like. Once we understand our job in those terms, everything becomes clear.

Q. We experienced a gold rush before – the dot com boom of 1999/2000. The gold turned out to be fake. What’s different?

The dot com boom was created by financiers and the stock market. Consumers thought it all sounded pretty neat, but most of them didn’t really understand it, so adoption was too low. The social media revolution is being driven by consumers. Facebook will soon have more members than there are people in China. Even if it turns out to be overvalued, it’s not going away. This revolution is unstoppable.

Q. I get it. So how can I mine gold from social media?

It’s all about CRM. In the old days, CRM was probably the most boring aspect of marketing. It was about gathering data, putting people in boxes and then sending them messages they didn’t want to receive. But on Facebook, customers actually seek interaction with brands. It has become the greatest CRM tool in history. Because of it, CRM has become creative. In fact, CRM is now the sexiest aspect of marketing.

Petteri Kilpinen is Vice President Innovation, TBWA\Europe and heads the TBWA Group in Finland

We all know that sustainability is a good idea, but shouldn’t it became a movement? Have no fear – “sustainism” is here. The word was coined by Michael Schwartz and Joost Elffers (respectively a cultural theorist and a designer) for their new book Sustainism is the New Modernism, which we highly recommend, if only to look cool on the metro.

Subtitled A Cultural Manifesto for the Sustainist Era, the book is mainly about design, even proposing a logo for the movement, but it could just as easily be adapted to commercial messages.

So what exactly is sustainism? A recent article in the International Herald Tribune gave us this handy précis. Sustainism needs to be: “ethically and environmentally responsible; socially and geographically inclusive; collaborative; networked; sensitive to nature; and savvy enough to make the most of: a) leaps in technology, and b) both globalism and localism.”

Sounds like a plan.

Mark Tungate

Check New York Times

McCafé launched today a virtual McCafé advent calendar – a special calendar used to count the days of Advent in anticipation of Christmas. The calendar is a location-based marketing campaign using Facebook Places. Based on McCaféʻs central idea “Alles Gute beginnt mit einem guten Kaffee” (Everything good starts with a good cup of coffee) the campaign rewards McCafé guests in Germany with digital gifts that change every day.

The campaign has been made possible with a location-based service developed by TBWAʻs Digital Arts team in Berlin. The web-service unloqable® makes content available only to users who prove their location via a smartphone or a location-based service like Facebook or Foursquare.

McCafé is the the first brand to use unloqable® as part of its marketing activities. Starting today, all McCafé guests checking with Facebook places in one of over 700 McCafés in Germany will be rewarded with free downloadable digital gifts like animations, films or music.

Unloqable® is a web-service that offers location-based accessibility of digital content (music, pics, coupons, codes, etc). The objective is to make this content available only to users who can prove their location via a smart phone or a location-based service like Facebook Places or Foursquare.

Digital content is stored on the Unloqable® server with a web based management tool. The management tool is the heart of Unloqable®: it offers the possibility to set up campaigns, to edit existing campaigns or to evaluate campaigns from a statistical point of view.

In addition to simply setting up a campaign using the combination of a digital content with a geo-data, there is also the possibility to constrain the campaign time or quota basis. For example, some content can be rendered “Exclusive” and accessible only for a specific number of times before expiring.

Users are notified about the existence of a campaign either actively – in nearly real-time by so-called “Checkins” – or passively via e-mail, fan-pages or ads.

The notification contains a link to digital content that has to be unlocked through one of the above-mentioned mechanisms.

In an absolut world New York’s Time Square would not be cluttered with advertising but would be the home of amazing art. This is how the IN AN ABSOLUT WORLD campaign was launched in 2007. Now this vision can become reality with your help. Check out the Times Square to Art Square (TS2AS) project, get involved and help turn all billboards on Times Square into art.

But even better, this is not only about donating to support the foundation it is about sharing your ideas for New York’s most famous square. So the initiators ask: “Do you have a clear idea on what Art Square should look like?” And invite you to upload your Art Square on the website.

For any comments or suggestions, send an email to Ulrich Proeschel.

It is not about what you say, it is all about how you behave. How a brand lives with its audience makes the difference, DUDES FACTORY has everything in place to become big.

Introduced this month DUDES FACTORY has already become a role-model for a new creative label in the universe of fashion, art and design. Berlin based DUDES FACTORY is set up for ongoing change to entertain their audience.

No wonder that they constantly reach out to connect and collaborate, both with different artists but also with their audience. The designs from the invited artists build the raw material for their customers to get active in the DUDES FACTORY LAB. The two dudes behind the label, Arno and Heri, developed their own online software that allows everybody to remix and individualize DUDES products.

Check out the fun website. Enjoy brilliant street art. And experience a very new way of designing your unique shirts, hoodies and skate boards. Based on the work of great artists but you combine, change, make it yours.

And don’t forget to become a fan on facebook.

In a recent conversation in Berlin, Stefan Schmidt, Creative at large Europe at TBWA, talked briefly about the relationship between creativity and marketing.

I believe that we could easily enhance the effectiveness of even our most traditional marketing tools.

All classically-trained marketing personnel have to do is ensure that the craziest people from the marketing department are working with them. Or better still: urge the creatives not just to work, but to play with traditional marketing approaches.

Examples like ABSOLUT, Nissan and Apple show that when right-brain people can get their hands on everything –packaging, pricing, distribution, product design, website architecture – the success of these brands seems unstoppable.

Every point of contact between a brand and its audience is media. That’s why everything should be treated in the same inspired, artful manner as the most established communication methods. Like advertising, for example.

If you have any comments or suggestions please email Stefan Schmidt.

TBWA’s top creative says brands must resonate emotionally across media or face the consequences.

A year ago, Lee Clow gave up the title of Chairman and Global Creative Director of TBWA Worldwide and designated himself Worldwide Director of Media Arts. In his first major interview since adopting the new role, he explains why brands must take an emotional approach to communications.

Lee warns that brands face becoming “irrelevant” or even “the focus of online contempt” if they fail to express a consistent identity every time they come into contact with consumers, whether it’s via advertising, packaging or the store experience.

“Finding the disruptive idea for a brand, which usually comes out of its emotional centre, and which we call the ´brand belief`, is the first step to creating a powerful multimedia brand”, he explains.

It used to be very simple.

Brands did advertising: they talked at people; they bought television commercials and held you captive. Now they must interact with their audience in a multifaceted but coherent way.

Everything a brand does is basically a medium and a message. And it needs to be true to a simple, single-minded idea. Using the example of Apple, Lee observes: “There isn’t a single thing Apple does that isn’t a message that confirms or reinforces how you feel about the company. I often tell people that the best ad we ever did was the Apple Store. We do great TV commercials, we do wonderful billboards, but you walk into an Apple store and you’re now immersed in a brand that’s going to change your life.”

“If you buy a product, even the process of opening it becomes a brand experience,” Lee emphasizes.
“Think about any brand that you like; any brand that you spend time with; any brand you go online and check out. It’s usually a brand that has touched you from a number of different points. Because it’s true to its character, you like and admire it. You actually want to go online and find out what’s going on, or if you drive by a billboard it reinforces how you feel about the brand.

“Successful brands are not cold: they have a soul, a character. But thanks to the power granted to consumers by the internet, brands that betray their characters risk getting slapped around”, says Lee.

“The reality of the new media world is that if your brand does not have a belief, if it does not have a soul and does not correctly architect its messages everywhere it touches consumers, it can become irrelevant. It can be ignored, or even become a focal point for online contempt. This insight lies behind the expression Media Arts. You are studying the science of how to bring brands to market. But I think you’d better keep your intuition, your instinct, and your emotional compass intact. Because the emotional centre, the belief of a brand, has to inform its behaviour, and this can’t all be done with the left side of the brain.”

“Ultimately”, concludes Lee, “You’re going out into the media world and creating something that I call art, it happens to be the art of communication. It’s storytelling.

“Great brands have a story, our job is to tell them.”