The first Finnish Carrotmobbing event was held successfully in a bar called Juttutupa (“Chatter Lodge”, freely translated) this weekend. The event grossed over 6000€ in extra profits for the participating bar, and half of that will go to investments to make the bar more energy friendly. All in all, the first Carrotmob was a resounding success.

What I think has been missing from all the articles on Carrotmob is the WHY, as in why this kinds of things appeal to people. In a very short time, Carrotmob Helsinki’s Facebook group has attracted nearly 5000 members, a remarkable feat. But what drives people to initiatives like this?

Every now and then you will read politicians cry out that young people are no longer interested in politics (as it’s defined) in Finland and that this is a “crisis” of epic proportions. Just today Finland’s main newspaper Helsingin Sanomat reported that “in 2030 under 50% of people will vote in county elections”. Not only is that an asinine prediction to make 12 years in advance (what did they do, draw a regression line from the current voting numbers? did these people also predict the rise of 1960s radicalism in the mellow 1950s?), but also so missing the point. What most politicians and other pundits fail to realize, that it’s the definition of politics that’s in crisis, not the youth.

Being politically active means more than just getting of the couch every two years to drop a piece paper into a ballot box. I think it’s astounding that the Baby Boomers, who themselves were so rebellious and active in shaping their way of doing politics (especially in universities), fail to see that younger generations want to find their own way of political activism – just like the Baby Boomers back in their time. Why should they get to be rebellious and daring in politics, where as “we” have to follow the path they laid out for us? Today’s youth engage in politics via graffiti, squatting abandoned houses, buying ethical products and donating to organizations like Amnesty International or Greenpeace, and spreading “causes” on Facebook. Members of Generation Y, the Internet generation, see the world’s problems as global, and the three major Finnish parties can’t provide credible answers in this regard. Also, special interests and consensus politics don’t really appeal to young people, who obsess over authenticity and idealism.

Of course, the powers that be are also doing a great job of alienating young people on issues they DO care about in modern politics. Tommi Uschanov had a great accord in his provocative book “What’s wrong with the Left?” (In Finnish) how a total lack of understanding and involvement in copyright and proposed internet censorship legislation (I won’t go into details here but let’s just say that it has been rather awful) left many young people feeling even more disconnected and outright disregarded in preparation of the laws. Also, keep in mind that Baby Boomers are by far the biggest generational segment in Finland and they are grossly over-represented in parliament, so it’s no wonder topics that concern young people don’t pop up too often.

All of this of course leads to a fair amount of tension and cultural fodder for counterculture. The youth have always rebelled against the establishment, but the way the establishment has failed to understand how young people are reshaping the way politics are made and disregarded the young in issues important to them has only made this tension stronger. This is where initiatives like Carrotmob strike a major nerve: they don’t have ANYTHING to do with party politics, they are authentic and accessible.

Of course, pretty much immediately after the first even was over the murmurs started that the it wasn’t “done right” (the participating restaurant used the money on new coolers, does that count as green?) or that the event got too much hype. Like I said, it’s damn hard to do politics with a group of people that are obsessed with authenticity.

I must admit, I’m not personally a fan of the idea of saving the world through consuming MORE, which in many ways this is. But I guess Carrotmob does a lot more good than harm.

Still having trouble with editing the templates. WordPress keeps complaining that I need to make the files editable, and as I set the read/write rights properly, the blog just freezes. So I have to keep it on pretty much default settings. That’s why you have that “your ad here” below the first post. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna start advertising anytime soon.

I’ll probably try to modify the CSS file on my computer and just reupload it. But not right now.

UPDATE: Okay, everything is the way I like it now.

I uploaded my Master’s Thesis, called A CONCEPT ANALYSIS ON MODERN BRANDING – Defining Key Concepts in Mind-Share, Emotional, Viral, and Cultural Branding, to my server. It’s 124 pages all in all, and it received the grade 80/100 from the Helsinki School of Economics’ marketing department (read: a good grade).

Why should you read the thesis? Well…

• if you think brand managers can totally control their brands, then you need to read this thesis
• if you think consumers are in total control of brands, then you need to read this thesis
• if you want to know what should you take into account when your brand matures and why, then you need to read this thesis
• if you want to understand why advertising constantly keeps losing its power and what you can do about it, then you need to read this thesis
• if you want to know why people driven brands seem to succeed where as more resource-rich and bigger brands are faltering, then you need to read this thesis
• if you’re want to know why forgetting about making money for a while might be the best business decision you’ll ever make, then you need to read this thesis
• if you want to know what Viral Branding REALLY means, and what it means for your business, then you need to read this thesis
• and above all, if you think that a “brand” is just “value added to a product”, then you DEFINITELY need to read this thesis

And as a teaser, here is the main finding of my thesis, communicated as shortly as I possibly can in visual format:

Enjoy, and please give feedback and challenge my ideas, if you dare!

I don’t think I need to lecture here how great TED talks are, but this talk was so good and thought provoking that I had to share it. TED talks often manage to engage and create new ways of thinking, but rarely do the speakers manage to flip your entire world view upside down. Michael Pollan manages to do that in just 17 minutes.

I sent the link to my cousin, who’s doing his master’s in philosophy. He said that the whole “man vs. nature” type of thinking is not universal, and it’s mostly a western way of seeing the world. Ancient Greeks divided the world into the laws of “man” and “nature”, or “nomos” and “fysis”. This type of thinking is one of the founding values of our culture: man and nature are at odds. If one thrives, the other must secede. According to my cousin, the Chinese for example see the world a lot more like Pollan explains it: they can’t understand this notion of man and nature being at odds. I find this fascinating.

If you start watching the presentation, I urge you to watch it all the way through. The last 7 minutes are the real revelation. I hope we start seeing farms like that here in Europe as well. And I hope legislators take heed too.

Would you go to a gym that trained these guys?

300 was one of the biggest box office surprises of 2007, grossing over 450 million worldwide while costing only 65 million to make. Critics blasted the movie for being over the top macho, its black and white good guy vs. bad guys treatment and corny dialogue. Fans of the movie loved it for the very same reasons.

One of the basic tenets of cultural branding is that brands (and other cultural products, such as movies) can work as pressure valves in soothing contradictions that plague society. From a cultural branding standpoint, 300 is just another “redemption” movie for us confused and somewhat emasculated modern men who are torn between conflicting expectations as to what it means to be a “man”. 300 provided us men with an ideal male role model to aspire to in these confusing times, a real man’s man but with a touch of softness and idealism. By the way, I believe that the crisis of the “modern man” is the longest running societal contradiction that has been available for marketers since the 1960s. Most societal contradictions span a decade or so, but this crisis has yet to be resolved. The last big movie wave that addressed this contradiction happened in the early 2000s, when Gladiator, the Patriot and the Perfect Storm hit the theaters. At the time, the movies were popular especially among women, as all the movies featured loving father figures that still showed a masculine side when forced to defend one’s family. I remember at the time reading an article in either Rolling Stone or Vanity Fair that “this is the kind of man that modern women want” and I remember the article feeling sort of sorry for men as there’s no possible way most men could live up to these expectations. 300 is a sort of sequel to this societal discussion, but in my view from a male perspective – how men want to see themselves.

300 in itself would make for a good case for how a movie managed to hit a nerve in today’s society, but I want to take this example a bit further. After the movie came out, one of the main questions on everybody’s lips was “how the hell did those guys get in such good shape?” Well, the answer was to be found in a remote private gym in Utah called Gym Jones.

Gym Jones is as Spartan as the soldiers in the movie itself.

Brands become icons in part when they become “props” for myth stories portrayed in cultural products, such as movies, books or articles. Well, Gym Jones got a lot of publicity that linked it favorably to 300, which itself became a buzzworthy topic in fitness circles. The gym itself was as crude and Spartan as the movie itself. Fitness magazines featured the cast and crew’s unorthodox training methods and grueling workout sessions. The gym in many ways embodied the ideals of the movie of sacrifice and manliness. Because of this credible linkage to the movie 300, Gym Jones was already on its way to iconic status. However, brands become even more iconic if they display a certain literacy and fidelity to an ethos or ideal instead of just making money and going for broad based popularity (think Harley Davidson and Hell’s Angels, again). Gym Jones can hardly be accused of being after broad popularity and money, as per their website:

Whoever said, “there are no stupid questions” was wrong. We are not interested in helping beginners, the indolent, or the ignorant. Contacting us implies you have done your utmost to become informed through other avenues and experience. It means you understand Gym Jones is not a mainstream facility using conventional methods to address sport or work-related challenges. Finally, by sending a note you acknowledge understanding that we are not waiting around for it.

Before composing a note please read these statements:

E-mail asking for dietary advice will be deleted.
E-mail asking us to supply an individually tailored training program will be deleted.
E-mail containing the question, “Where do I buy/get/find?” will be deleted.

The gym is not interested in making money or making it “big” and they let you know it. It’s not a gym that everybody can get into, but it’s a gym that everybody would WANT to train in. If you look at their training journals, you see that they train like crazy. And if you look at the “knowledge” section of their website, you will learn that they are very uncompromising in their ethos. They aren’t your average “smile while on the treadmill in your David gear” gym. They don’t care if you don’t like them.

Gym Jones fills many of the characteristics of iconic brands: it’s situated in rural Utah, far removed from the commercial and political elites. Its ethos speaks to an acute contradiction in our society (men confused with society’s expectations of them) in a credible and very charismatic way. It has credible linkages to cultural products (300) that bolster its iconic status. But most of all, Gym Jones seems authentic in its championing of a cause. I doubt that the owners of the gym are even interested in broadening their popularity, but that’s the whole appeal behind it.

I don’t think it’s that big of a secret anymore that presidential candidates in the United States (and over here in Europe, too) are managed almost as closely as some major corporate brands, probably even more so. All the top candidates have numerous aides and political strategists who constantly monitor voter reactions and manage their candidates accordingly. Sometimes it works (like with Bush in 2000 and 2004 and Clinton before him), sometimes it backfires (Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004), but it’s something that all serious candidates have to partake in.

Hillary Clinton is probably the most “managed” candidate of the presidential hopefuls still in the running. She has had a mountain to climb in selling herself as a serious candidate with an agenda, and not just being “Bill’s wife”, and she has done so quite successfully. But the thing is, I think her brand management may be going a bit too far, in that it’s starting to put voters off because she is so obviously playing to the crowd. For instance, take this video from the Daily Show:

Douglas Holt has an absolutely brilliant article called “Why do brands cause trouble?”, which sheds some light on the current anti-brand movement (such as Adbusters and why Naomi Klein’s “No Logo” was such a huge hit). Holt argues that brands and marketers in general are in a sort of arms race with consumers. As time passes, consumers become more media-savvy when it comes to marketers’ marketing efforts. The natural consequence is of course that once people realize HOW the marketers are trying to convince them of their products’ superiority, they become more immune to the tactics and eventually start to resent these marketing tactics and companies that engage in them. Or put it this way: once one politician goes for the baby-kissing gag, it will lose its effect each time it’s done over and eventually be resented as an obvious ploy for votes. For example, saturation of old marketing tactics, such as TV and magazine advertising, has lead to the rise of guerrilla marketing and other unconventional media. These media face, of course, a similar fate as TV and magazines as they become more saturated with competition and people become more conscious and simply bored of these tactics. One of the key findings of Holt is that consumers have become very anti-corporate as a result, which I will come back to later.

I think a similar phenomenon is happening in presidential branding. As the Daily Show clip illustrates, people and members of the media are very much aware that Hillary was essentially told by her strategists that she needs to laugh more because she’s considered too serious. Hillary’s not the only one, of course, (I saw a similar clip of Rudy Guliani) but as she was the Democrat front runner up until last week she probably held under closer scrutiny. It goes without saying that all these exposés on presidential candidates’ branding tactics reflect negatively on the candidates, because it makes them seem calculative, inauthentic and power-hungry. Which brings me to my point as to why I think Barack Obama has played his cards right up to now and why his surge in the polls could be due to his campaigning that reads like a good example of Cultural Branding.

As points out in his Cultural Branding theory, iconic brands originate from “populist worlds”, worlds removed from the cultural, political and commercial elite, which gives them considerable credibility and authenticity. If people on the “outskirts of society” accept a brand as a part of their ethos, the brand will seem authentic for the normal consumer as well (think Hell’s Angels and their relationship with Harley Davidson or punk rockers and Converse shoes in the late 70s’). I think Barack Obama qualifies here. His rise to political superstardom started from his great speech in 2004 after John Kerry’s loss, he was sort of “swooped up” into the presidential race, sort of like how a brand can be “discovered” and championed by influential users. He’s also relatively unknown as a freshman politician, where as Hillary is a Capitol Hill fixture and in many ways synonymous with politics. Obama may not be ideal in his populist world credibility, but he’s certainly better than anybody out there thanks to his “untaintedness”.

Another key aspect of Cultural Branding is that a brand needs to convey a sense of “purpose” other than the obvious of making money to retain their iconic status. This relates heavily to the anti-corporate attitude I mentioned earlier. People love to attack big brands (sometimes unfairly) when they engage in activity that they deem not supporting the brand’s “ideal” or even profiteering. Similarly, I think that a presidential candidate needs to show that he/she is in the presidential race not only because of some selfish, power-hungry motif. Vanity Fair had a great piece on the media’s perception on Al Gore in the 2000 election, in which the writer, Evgenia Peretz, argues that Gore lost in part because he looked like…

“[a] wonk so desperate to become president he’ll do or say anything, even make stuff up. It complemented perfectly the other son of a politician [Bush] running for president: irresistible frat boy who, when it came to the presidency, could take it or leave it.”

Similar rethoric can be found in this election, regarding Hillary Clinton, from Obama himself:

Sensing what he calls the “fierce urgency of now” – a line borrowed from Martin Luther King Jr – Mr Obama contrasts his motivation to be president with that of his nameless rival. “I am not running for president because I believe it is somehow owed to me or because I think it’s my turn,” Mr Obama says. “[I am running because] I believe we are on the cusp of building a new majority in America.” The applause spills over into whoops of enthusiasm.

I think that most political strategists have failed to see that because of their overtly image-obsessive tactics have been exposed, much like advertising tactics of old, people are more likely to ignore them and react negatively to them. It’s a time for authenticity and “underdogs” who speak in a rebel’s voice, as Holt puts it. Barack Obama has managed to avoid the lens of pundits like Jon Stewart for now, but as he’s become the clear front runner, he’s bound to be scrutinized more and he’s also bound to lose some of his challenger appeal. But to me it feel that Obama’s team has been micromanaging him less, unlike Hillary’s team, which makes him more authentic, and as it seems, more iconic.

There are some pretty cool trends in this field, for example Wi-Fi coming to cameras and other gadgets via cheap memory cards and of course Nokia is making moves towards this field with their acquisition of Naviteq. Also, geotagging seems to be working on Nokia phones now (got the link from Ville), so look for more from Finland’s big blue in this field.

I have no doubt that hyperlocal information is very much in our immediate future, but what I’m not so sure about is we’re going to act in this future once we get there. The Wired article to me reads as a typical techie’s wet dream where the human factors of such technologies are completely ignored. Most scenarios about hyperlocal information describe people wandering around cities while constantly being delighted by a nonstop push of information on restaurants or shops through their mobile phones. While I think some people might even enjoy this in some instances, I think traveling is about discovery and searching for unique experiences.

Brandchannel had an excellent article on the upcoming trend of exclusivity in social networks, which is well worth a read. Those of us who’ve been on Facebook longer than three months probably agree with the notion that once the gold rush to the site started, the place just hasn’t been the same anymore. You get invites to the dumbest of causes or applications (trust me, I’m guilty of sending out a few!) from friends and now most of them get the “ignore” reaction immediately. Sami N described that “Facebook apps are in general the 21st century equivalent of direct mail”, which I think is very accurate. I read a study for my thesis called “Dynamics of Viral Marketing” (which I can’t link here, sorry) that shows how rapidly word-of-mouth loses its effectiviness once the network becomes too active in its recommendations and if the network is not “tight” enough, meaning the connections between its participants are not meaningful enough. It’s a scary thought, if word-of-mouth goes, what’s left for marketers? Walling your social networks and getting to pick your friends are gonna be key in the future, or at least getting to organize your friends into different clusters with different access.

So how does this relate to hyperlocality? Well, unless the suggestions you get from your mobile phone display some sort of exclusivity, I think they are going to be ignored. I mean who wants to “discover” a shop that has been discovered by pretty much everyone? People don’t come home from New York and rave about their visit to Macy’s, it’s about the small boutiques in Brooklyn and the like. Some people might make a point of it to check if a café or small shop is NOT geotagged before patronizing them. So unless companies like Nokia manage to build some sort of exclusivity to the hyperlocal recommendations you get, I think their potential will not be fulfilled.

As Ville so eloquently put it in tonight’s Open Coffee, in the future people are going to be willing to pay for NOT being connected. If hyperlocality and social networks in general are driven by technology instead of human behavior, I’m afraid that his need for disconnectedness will hit us faster than we might think.

Record labels have always been the center of gravity in the industry – the locus of power, ideas, and money. Labels discovered the talent, pushed the songs, and got the product on the air and into stores. The goal: move records, and later, CDs. “The labels were never in the business of selling music,” says David Kusek, vice president of Boston’s Berklee College of Music and coauthor of The Future of Music. “They were in the business of selling plastic discs.”

“The” story of 2007 in the music business was of course Radiohead releasing their album “In Rainbows” basically for free on the internet (honorable mentions go to Madonna for leaving her record company for a promoting agency and Prince giving his album for free on an UK tabloid mag). Riku (head of MySpace Finland) tipped me that the latest issue of Wired had a great interview of Thom Yorke and David Byrne (from Talking Heads) which tells how the ploy eventually went down.

These quotes especially struck me:

Yorke: In terms of digital income, we’ve made more money out of this record than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together, forever — in terms of anything on the Net. And that’s nuts. It’s partly due to the fact that EMI wasn’t giving us any money for digital sales. All the contracts signed in a certain era have none of that stuff.

Byrne: I’ve been thinking about how distribution and CDs and record shops and all that stuff are changing. But we’re talking about music. What is music, what does music do for people? What do people get from it? What’s it for? That’s the thing that’s being exchanged. Not all the other stuff. The other stuff is the shopping cart that holds some of it.

Yorke: It’s a delivery service.

Byrne: But people will still pay to have that experience. You create a community with music, not just at concerts but by talking about it with your friends. By making a copy and handing it to your friends, you’ve established a relationship. The implication is that they’re now obligated to give you something back.

Byrne: You’re valuing the delivery system as opposed to the relationship and the emotional thing… [talking about record labels]

Yorke: You’re valuing the company or the interest of the artists rather than the music itself. I don’t know. We’ve always been quite naive. We don’t have any alternative to doing this. It’s the only obvious thing to do.

A lot of great stuff there. I’ve been juggling this idea as to how “should” a band or artist make a living in the future. For one, I think free downloading is something that cannot be beat, so you might as well give the music away for free. So how do you make money? Simple: concerts. I’m not talking only about Chris Anderson’s vision of free music and expensive gigs, but also selling the music from the concerts as soon as possible! Think about it: a gig ends, the lead singer yells on the mike that “this gig will be available for download on our (MySpace) site in two hours!”. People then can go home and download the show for a fee of, say, 2$ (or free with the code from the admission ticket!). The key here is speed: after a great concert people want the gig as a souvenir so the can relive it and play it to their friends (and brag about being there, of course).

Speed is also important because as I already mentioned, it’s going be pirated anyway so you need to make that quick buck from those who are impatient to download it. Also, I know that having the gig online two hours after a concert is quite fast and that it’s impossible to have the gig remastered, but there’s a catch here: those who downloaded the “raw” version of the gig can download the remastered version for free once it’s online, everybody else has to pay a premium. I’d imagine that a moderately successful band has at least 50 concerts per year. Sell the music after every gig to your most adoring fans and it adds up to a lot of money. If you want to make money in this economy, you better be selling an experience, or at least a souvenir from an experience. And I haven’t even discussed selling the videos or photos from the gig. I’m sure that you can come up with other souvenirs from the gigs that have value to the fans.

Technology firms are waking up to the new realities of the music industry as well. Wired recently proclaimed that the Zune is a better deal than the iPod thanks in large parts to its music store, which has subscription based downloads. Also, sharing music with your friends (via the horribly named “squirting” feature) is pretty cool, and is more in tune with the new realities of the music industry. If I were Microsoft, I would reward anybody who “squirts” a lot of music (sounds disgusting, doesn’t it?) to their friends by giving them more credit for downloading. It’s basically free radio airplay from a band’s perspective. BTW, I don’t know if Microsoft is doing this already, my apologies if they are. I know that the record labels get a small share for every Zune sold, at least. Nokia recently announced that some of its new phones will become prepackaged with music from Universal Music, plus a free one year subscription to the Nokia Music Store. So I guess that solidifies this as a trend now.

So I guess this is where we are going: music given for free and more emphasis put on concerts (with higher ticker prices, I’m guessing) in terms of making money and experiential value. My personal guess is that we will start seeing revenue models for music stores that are reminiscent of Poker Sites: lots of “free money” up front, bonuses for frequent users and those who invite their friends and more innovative pricing models instead of the old “buy one song or entire album”. My guess is that music stores will try to lure people into more expensive subscription models by offering some kind of exclusivity, whatever it may be.

Like it said in the Wired issue from last year, this is great time to be a music fan. But I’m sure that is a great time to be a music entrepreneur as well.

And oh, this is the route that we most often take on our power walks:

That’s me looking over Ruoholahti in the southmost spot of the island. Seurasaari is such a great spot for relaxing walks.