“One of my passions and one of the things I think I’m really good at is making something really approachable to the point of bringing it around in your pocket.”
- Jack Dorsey, Co-founder, Twitter; Founder and CEO, Square
In my last post I discussed the importance of naming and branding for a startup, specifically related to Square and how Square was almost named Squirrel.
Unfortunately there was no video of that interview between Jack Dorsey and Kara Swisher at the Commonwealth Club. Fortunately however, Jack and Kara sat down again for an interview yesterday at the D9 Conference.
My favorite part of the interview is about how Jack demoed Square for the first time to legendary investor Ron Conway and swiped his AmEx black card on the spot. And Conway was immediately able to check his mobile banking statement for a debit to Jack for $500.
Jack sat down with Kara Swisher to talk all things Twitter and Square. The whole interview was informative and inspiring. However, the highlight was the discussion about the origins of Square. To me, one of the most fascinating parts of a founder's story is the first ideation and naming. There is so much that goes into this and it is vitally important.
Jack relayed that Square was originally named Squirrel. The idea behind it being that the verb form of squirrel, or 'to squirrel', means to store or hide away money -- a fit for their mobile payments service. And their first card reader, instead of the white square, was originally designed to be a wooden acorn. (Another potential name considered was Seashell, since seashells were the first form of human currency.)
The news of the original name Squirrel was known already, however it was revealed for the first time in this interview that the impetus for change actually came about from a lunch at Apple. Apparently Jack was set to have lunch with Apple SVP Scott Forstall when, minutes before the meeting, he saw a point of sale system in the Apple cafe from a company called Squirrel Systems. So he had to change the name and approach. He looked up squirrel in the dictionary and went down the line until he found square and the verb form of square, or 'to square up', which was obviously a great fit. It is hard to imagine Square having the same success that it has without a reader that is so white, minimal and squared off.
Interestingly, apparently this was the same method used to name Twitter. The original name idea for Twitter was 'Twitch' (they were going for the audible sounds your phone makes when you receive texts) and founder Ev Williams pulled out a dictionary, started at twitch, and worked his way down to find Twitter.
It was neat to be in a place where news was breaking and to see it happening in real-time. I relayed the news on Twitter, as did someothers under the hashtag #inforumsf. Check it out to see some other interesting tidbits and quotes from the evening.
It's always great to get a glimpse at a founder's first inspiration for an idea. It is clear to me that Jack is one of the greatest entreprenuers of our generation so I feel privileged to have gotten the glimpse straight from him.
"It’s a film, made by a corporation, where the community that it’s targeted at actually wants to watch it. In fact, they want to watch it so much that they’ll tell other people in the community about. It might be something that’s hysterically funny; It might be something that’s gorgeously beautiful; It might just be ingeniously clever; It might be a big multi-media production or just a single employee talking to a camera, sharing her values and her dreams. We picture them as short as thirty seconds, as long as five or six minutes, and we’re inviting you—the whole advertising community—to dream about these things, to dream what they might be and to submit to us films over the next few months.”
People who know me well know that I love TED Talks. This is one of the reasons.
TED, together with YouTube, has launched Ads Worth Spreading, a challenge designed to inspire advertisers to create authentic and intelligent ads that people actually want to watch, and more importantly, share.
The idea behind the challenge is to eventually have the ads that run after the Ted Talks to be "every bit as compelling as the talks themselves." That is a tall challenge but one that I think can be done.
Creative advertising is spreading. I've written previously about creative advertising in the age of social, with Old Spice and Weiden+Kennedy setting the bar high. As an aside, First Round Capital's play on the Old Spice campaign for their annual holiday card was genius too.
Creative advertising is spreading because marketers are realizing that it takes more than just a print or banner ad to make an impact on a user these days. Marketers now have to go above and beyond in order to resonate with consumers. Anderson does a great job of explaining why that is:
"Simply put, the relationship between consumers and companies is changing. Consumers are more than a mouth and a wallet. We've grown savvier and have access to more information channels to choose from.
We're moving toward a future where advertisers and consumers are part of the same community, sharing ideas and engaging in a learning cycle, together."
Why does the real time nature of this have such power?
Real time is what drives the Internet. New news is what everyone wants to get a hold of. Everyone is a publisher in their own way. Everyone wants to be tweeting or blogging about something that they are first to be in on. What we've done here is blur the lines between things that people don't expect to be able to be done in real time. So that's the surprise, that "Hang on, you're producing these things kind of in real time? How on earth are you doing that?" Every time one comes out and nails it again, it's seen as almost a new piece of news.
Why do you think social media and online influencers are so important to business right now?
One of the questions that keeps coming up is people saying, "Ok, this is great, but will it make me buy more Old Spice?" If you look at the comments that are publicly saying, "I'm going to go and try Old Spice after this, I'm going to wear more Old Spice," the groundswell of people saying that they are going to consume more Old Spice, I don't know whether that is true or not, if people are actually going to go to the pharmacy and buy Old Spice, but...
But I bet a whole load of them are going to go into the aisle and take the top off an Old Spice and smell it. People that may never have done it before. That peer recommendation and seeing that real people are actually talking about this, in a way that not only says they enjoy the entertainment, but that there are smart people in these networks making the connection between the content, the product and the experience of the product.
It's just incredibly powerful and we're only just beginning to see how powerful that can be.
Old Spice is on an absolute tear with their current online campaign. Props to Proctor & Gamble for having the cojones to let Wieden+Kennedy run with it. The creative team at Wieden+Kennedy continues to impress (see previous).
The idea behind it is pretty simple. The beefy Old Spice Guy from the TV spots responds to users on Twitter and from elsewhere around the Web with hilarious YouTube videos of TV spot-like quality. The videos then get watched, re-tweeted, Facebooked and otherwise shared out all over.
It's genius in its simplicity. But the execution is what is really impresses me. According to the ReadWriteWeb article on the topic, here's how the videos are being made:
Iain Tait, Global Interactive Creative Director at Wieden ... says that the primary differentiator between this campaign and others is how closely technical and social media specialists are working with the creative team ...
"We brought social media experts right into the creative process," he told me. "In the room there are two social media guys and a tech guy who built a system pulling in comments from around the web all together in real time," Tait says.
"We're looking at who's written those comments, what their influence is and what comments have the most potential for helping us create new content. The social media guys and script writers are collaborating to make that call in real time. We have people shooting and we're editing it as it happens. Then the social media guys are looking at how to get that back out around the web...in real time."
Smartly, part of their strategy is also to reach out to users with a significant amount of social influence. They have responded to people such as Kevin Rose, Ashton Kutcher, Alyssa Milano, and more. Their replies then get re-tweeted by these influencers and seen by their many followers.
Here's one of my favorites, a reply to Biz Stone, the founder of Twitter:
The other key to this campaign's succes I think is the real time aspect of it all. The fact that the team can crank these high quality videos out in real time is just stunning and I think that is part of the fascination. "You mean they responded to a user with 25 followers with a video two hours later?"
The steady stream of content also provides a latest-and-greatest effect, where every time a new one comes out people want to be the first among their friends to tweet or share it.
In what appears to be their last tweet and video, the Old Spice guy says that “like all great things this too must end.”
As it does, I imagine other advertisers will be looking to this as a case study in how to leverage a successful TV campaign into a highly viral online one. As Old Spice has shown here, it can be a very powerful combination.
Old Spice and Wieden+Kennedy have set the standard in the age of social media and real time. And we can only be left in awe of its manliness.
Nike recently made one of the biggest Facebook bets in history.
And it paid off. BIG time.
Nike, in an effort to raise awareness of the brand going into next week's World Cup, launched a new campaign called "Write The Future" with a 3 minute video depicting some of soccer's greats and how their accomplishments and failures on the field affect society and their own lives.
The video features Nike sponsored stars such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Ronaldinho and others. The video also includes other Nike athletes Kobe Bryant and Roger Federer and even a surprise appearance from Homer Simpson.
Using Facebook as the centerpiece for the entire campaign, Nike premiered the video spot on the Nike Football Facebook Page a few days early to give Nike Football fans early access before debuting the spot on TV at half time of the UEFA Champions League final between Bayern Munich and Inter Milan.
Of course, beyond early access, Nike's goal was also to grow their Nike Football fan base on Facebook. On launch day, they had an ad on most users' Facebook homepages prompting them to watch the video. Smartly, they made it so that users needed to visit the Nike Football page and "Like" Nike Football in order to watch the video.
Indeed, according to a recent New York Times article, the ad buy is among the largest in Facebook’s history. But boy did it pay off.
I think this Nike campaign will make for a great case study for other brands. I expect we'll see many brands following suit with this "insider access" approach to social.
Now let's not forget the video itself. This campaign's success speaks volumes to the creative and once again, the creative team at Wieden+Kennedy killed it. They continue to impress. At the time of writing, the has 12.7MM views.
