Notes From Akash

Introducing a set of sites from Band of Outsiders, a clothing brand I enjoy, using the Blogger platform (not a new launch I just noticed the site). For this consumer and brand advocate this is perfect.

Although Puma is a much larger brand they are behind this site for the Lift shoe, and on the other side of the spectrum in terms providing a rich experience. A few weeks back at work for a project in the concepting / strategy phase I described picking an area such as:

- Content

- Experience

- or Social

And defining why it was right for the core consumer and brand objectives. My hope was this would get the team to think about why and how consumers interact with us and then how it met the marketing objectives before they got to tactics.

Pretty sure it worked and this site reminded me of that process. Sometimes we think we need to be slick and in today’s age you really don’t — you have to be true to the DNA of your brand.

By identifying geography and queries in p2p environments an Israeli professor and his team are indentifying the next hit maker. Thought this was a great insight into using the sociolology of the internet for a specific purpose.

The geographic location of an emerging artist is the key to predicting their success, explains Shavitt. “If an artist has the potential to be successful, people will first start noticing them in the small geographical area where they live and perform.” In fact, a potential pop star will typically enjoy thousands of downloads a day on a local level, while remaining relatively unheard of on a national level. A large divergence between local and global popularity, called the Kullback-Leiber divergence, is a strong indicator of star potential. The algorithm measures the K-L divergence to produce a short list of potentials, of which 15 to 30 percent will go on to reach national popularity within weeks.

Full article from Seed Magazine.

Viral = Result

I’m glad Faris Yakob found the time to write a thoughtful post about this. We explain this almost everyday.

We need to forget about trying to make things viral and begin to understand what people would like to spread and why.

I’ve never been able to articulate the psychology behind spreadable media as well as what Faris writes here:

People do not spread things to spread them. Like so much social communication, it has a social function, both phatic and generous. It operates within a gift economy, where value is generated in transference, not purchase.