Forum 2011: July 5 2011

WaikatoLink Technology Analyst Hamish Kay summarises his experience of the SODA Digital Industry Forum 2011. 

Nidhie and I attended the SODA (http://www.sodainc.com/) Digital Industry Forum on Tuesday 5^thJuly in the Wintec Atrium in Hamilton, New Zealand. There were 2 key points of focus for the day. The first was on building a brand story to transform your business and the second was on intelligent cities and communities and how Hamilton and New Zealand can move in this direction. Television sensation Kay Gregory MC’d the day with Brian Richards, the brain behind brands like Orca, Icebreaker and Steinlager Pure, providing several highly informative keynote sessions which the day was structured around.

 After a moving opening kapa haka performance from Te Iti Kahurangi, SODA Chair Dame Cheryll Sotheran gave her opening address. Topics covered included the challenges of being a small isolated nation and that NZ needs to be aware of the future and adapt rather than continuing to do what we have done. She emphasised the importance of spotting new trends and capitalising on these. She also said that business clusters need to be in value chains rather than just similar businesses doing similar things. Clusters would be a recurring theme throughout the day.

You can find out more about the event on Twitter, I was among several people using the #dif2011 hash-tag throughout the day.

KEYNOTE SESSION 1

Brian Richards first keynote session was on the power of stories. This was all very dramatic and themes including Polynesians navigating using the stars, the bubonic plague, were mixed with David Bellamy’s vision of “Moa’s Ark” and Brian used Rudyard Kipling to describe New Zealand as the “lost, loneliest, loveliest land apart.” Key messages included:

NZ needs to stay away from process obsession and focus on value rather than volume. This felt particularly orientated at our ag/hort industries as there were later references to turning farmers into foodies
Silo thinking, our current widespread inability to see wider picture
Collaboration and the formation of “digital tribes”. Don’t try and fly solo. “It takes a whole village to grow a child.”
Brand memorability is all about consistency
The 4 dimensions of a Brand. The message was that these are all implicit, but ultimately the vision and culture can be used to drive the story and inspire the design.

o Vision

o Culture

o Design

o Story

Marketing needs to target as many of the target audience’s senses as possible. Apparently that doesn’t mean people should be licking WaikatoLink however.
4 Pillars of brand equity

o Differentiation

o Relevance

o Esteem

o Knowledge

Brian’s method is centered around the Brand Pyramid.

At the base of the pyramid, brand attributes are the functional characteristics of a company that differentiate their products and services. We were told to limit it to four attributes that outline our brand’s capabilities. These attributes are intended to be as unique to your business as possible given the sector you operate in. Apparently Fonterra have managed to pick just 4 attributes and with such a diverse range of activity taking place at WaikatoLink, Nidhie and I struggled to pin WaikatoLink down to just 4.

The middle of the pyramid contains values. These are the desired customer perceptions that motivate customers to purchase your brand. They are also the internal drivers that motivate your staff to deliver the brand experience.

At the top of the pyramid is essence. This is the single organising idea for the brand. To gain recognition, these messages should be delivered in a manner that is unique to your brand, with a story the audience has never heard before. The essence is intended to be as succinct as possible using metaphors if able to. It is intended to be intriguing and tap into the audience’s sense of curiosity.

JULIE HARDAKER

Morning coffee was followed by a talk from Hamilton’s mayor about the future of Hamilton.

Julie’s vision for Hamilton: “become a smart city in every way and everything we do”

Specific examples of this included:

Water meters and increased focus on water conservation
Building regulations reducing carbon emissions
Solar panels feeding energy back into the grid
GPS enabled public transport to enable more effective trip planning
Smart-grid roading to determine and direct traffic flows
Wi-fi in public transport
Advanced parking systems

Julie was selling us her brand story for Hamilton and looking to gain the buy-in of the many businesses in attendance that were in a position to assist with this vision.

SMART CITIES

This was followed by a pre-recorded video conference involving Brian Richards, Cheryl Reynolds, Bill Hutchison (Chairman, I-Canada Alliance) and Martin Stewart-Weeks (Director of Business Internet Solutions, Cisco).

Bill presented first and we saw another pyramid, this one was called the High Level Elements of an Intelligent Community: The 5 Layer Open Architecture Model.

At the base of this pyramid was place: buildings, ports, waterfronts

On top of this sat infrastructure: communications, roads, rail etc

Next came collaboration ecosystem: innovation, creativity, community, animation, faciliatation, social network

Then solutions: Health, education, government, safety, community, arts, commerce, traffic, environment

And on top sits life: Live, learn, work, play

Bill commented that in the 60’s, Boston was even more of a hub for technology companies than Silicon Valley. They had a broad range and size of companies from all levels of the corresponding value chains, but where they fell down was that there was no interaction and communication between these companies whilst the Silicon Valley workers were constantly talking about what they were doing and spawning collaborations and startups all over. Within clusters such as Ruakura’s innovation park, there needs to be strong communication between the companies there to help foster growth.

Forum

After some elaboration on the Toronto waterfront project which Bill is heavily involved with, there was a further discussion of smart cities with Bill and Martin logging in live remotely through Ectus (a highly successful piece of software that originated from the University of Waikato) and the local panel consisting of Cheryll Sotheran, Mark Flowers (CEO, Wintec), Brian Richards and Julie Hardaker.

The discussion topic was “What does Hamilton need to do in the next 5 years to win the international intelligent community award?”

Key messages throughout this discussion included:

Change can’t just come from leadership, needs full participation from community too
There’s a lot of talk going on, let’s just get on and do it
Keep it simple
Articulate excitement, adventure and risk. We’re currently too risk averse
Target community group leaders and let message filter down
Organise without organisation – set things in motion and step back

KEY BRAND MESSAGES

Brian Richards then gave another talk focussed on creating a brand message. This used the case study of Steinlager Pure as a basis. Topics covered included:

Marketing used to be all push & little pull. It’s mostly the opposite now
The predicted increase in use of tablet PCs accompanied by the decline in desktops
Don’t sell an item, sell an outcome
Consumers trust each other as much, if not more, than traditional sources of information
Success stories used:

United Breaks Guitars (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo)
Nike customises shoes (http://nikeid.nike.com/nikeid/index.jsp)
Serato (vinyl simulation)
Important to understand rhythm of consumer

20:20 PRESENTATIONS

After lunch during which we were serenaded by a robot band (yes, I’m not joking http://www.thetrons.co.nz/) we had 10 presentations in a row of a maximum 6 minutes 40 seconds (I guess that’s 20 x 20 = 400 seconds?) with a fairly loose theme.

Highlights included:

Martin Stewart-Weeks reiterating the change from market push to market pull
Rob Heebnik from Gallagher Group talking about their focus on “Brilliant Simplicity”, creating products & services that couldn’t be any easier for the end user
Wayne Atwell from Bold Horizon: the further afield a market is, the less effective traditional media is
Stuart Inglis from NetValue: It’s faster to ship 40TB of data in a suitcase on hard drives from Hamilton to San Francisco than it would be to send it through the network
Chris Gardner from Waikato Times: A brand story has to pass the booze test, you should be able to tell it at the pub
Per Admek from SODA: Interesting relevant groups formed in San Diego:

CEO Strategy Forum
Springboard
Young Innovators Programme
Frontiers in Science & Technology

STORY REFINEMENT

Brian’s last talk was to inspire a story to be written that introduces your brand story. He lead into this with:

Comparisons between Elizabeth Taylor (Sass & Attitude) and Gwenyth Paltrow (bland & would prefer mineral water)
No room in life for a bland brand
Giapo Icecream (http://www.giapo.com/blog/manifesto/)
Malcolm Gladwell’s law of the few:

Maven’s – information source
Connectors - networks
Sales people – ambassadors

Hairdressers as influencers in the community – talk to 8 – 10 families per day
Denis Diderot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diderot_effect) - brand image and customising things around to match that image
Dream result: you don’t sell, they buy from you
More emphasis on simplicity and consistency
Gaining brand rememberance: order and structure plus imagination and creativity = memory recall

Brian closed with the following inspirational gem:

“Some days you’re the pigeon and some days you’re the statue”

FURTHER LESSONS

Many of the ideas covered can be applied not just to WaikatoLink but to specific technologies and even events, initiatives, ideas and beyond. It can be as simple as incorporating a story into an introduction of a technology to a potential collaborator or developing a full on marketing campaign and brand around a company. At the end of the day, it is about influencing by getting buy-in to your story/cause.

The brand pyramid is more complex than it first appears, particularly the essence, and we realised that careful consideration of alignment with WaikatoLink’s existing well thought out operational strategy needs to be made before we commit to any of the outcomes. The results of the workshop we developed are just drafts for now and we have allocated time to refine these so that they can be incorporated into WaikatoLink’s e-presence and beyond, specifically through the website and social media channels.

There was a strong focus on creating intelligent communities and discussion of how a city like Hamilton can move forward. A lot of the messages discussed above regarding this could just as easily be applied to other situations including companies, partnerships, innovation ecosystems.

I found the most valuable tool for me of the day was not something that anyone had said directly, but it was certainly implied. That was to place yourself in the position of the target audience and think about how they would react to your brand and message. This will be a valuable approach moving forward, once again, not just within marketing but in all aspects of business.

Forum 2011