Blyk is an invite-only free mobile network. Once you’re on the network you can invite your friends to join. To seed the network we have street teams working at colleges, universities and gigs, talking with people about Blyk and signing them up. We have also put keywords at the end of several videos that are making the rounds on the Internet, like this one by Elin Svensson (you can text WHISPER to 82595 to get your code to join Blyk):
Many people have asked me about these videos and about the design of the Blyk brand identity. Here’s some background on what we’re doing and why.
When we started designing the Blyk brand we took a deliberately “open code” approach. By “open code” I mean, much like in open source software, that there is an initial hard core - the kernel of the operating system if you like - and that we allow and even encourage variation, iteration and interpretation of the brand identity. Our goal is to create the Blyk brand together with our members, to invite them to take part. I believe this is the best way for us to compete with the traditional “pay-for” mobile networks and to build a real emotional tie with our audience. This idea is carried into the illustrative style used in our launch visuals.
The first step was the logo. This consists of an abstract mobile screen containing a typographical symbol called a caret. You’ll see this above the 6 on your keyboard, it means “insert here”, symbolising the fact that Blyk relies on its members’ willingness to participate. Because on Blyk, in terms of relevance, you get out what you put in. The name “Blyk” itself is deliberately recessive; you’ll usually see it somewhere near the logo in a web address, or as part of an illustration, but we won’t be too uptight about it.
With the logo in place we had to generate a visual identity for the brand. Blyk is an “open code” brand, not a “control brand.” I believe that most important brands these days are built on conversation rather than control. Rather than trying to create a brand that was representative of the youth market, the idea was to allow members to represent themselves. It was time for us to hand the brand over to the audience. Our dozen launch brand visuals were created by young artists, chosen through a competition from the London College of Communications, interpreting the logo in their own way.
Since, at this stage, the business model was still a secret, entrants in the competition were given a brief consisting of the logo, the words “play”, “mobile” and “free”. The response was excellent, with enough work to fill a gallery space in Soho. The Blyk team then judged the work democratically and a dozen winners were chosen. This is not a brand identity that will be ever be finished, but one that was designed to evolve and develop over time. So, as well as a cash prize, all the winners began what was to be an ongoing relationship with the brand.
The animations are just the most recent fruits of these relationships, which Blyk sees as integral to its youth credentials. They were produced by the illustrators, with our extended team providing whatever level of assistance was needed to take their concepts to finished animations.
To summarize, the Blyk brand has a few necessarily fixed parts, the logo and the tone of voice for instance. Beyond that, it has a loose recognisable aesthetic. You could describe it as optimistic. You don’t get this by holding three-day long marketing team meetings and having a hundred people policing the brand. What you do have to do is get young creatives together, share with them the hard core and the brand values, give them proper resources and pay them properly, and let them go.
I admit it. I’d been wishin’ and hopin’ and prayin’ that Google would launch some new phone that would change the landscape of mobile telephony. Instead, with the Open Handset Alliance, it seems as though we got a vision and a committee.
Of course, I’m being a bit harsh here. What this alliance is trying to do is really important. Philosophically, they’re saying that the current paradigm is Dysfunctional with a capital D. Without a platform and standards, developers cannot efficiently build software that users want. I couldn’t agree more. It’s simply depressing to think of what creative developments could emerge if only there weren’t so many barriers to interaction. Yet, I’m having a hard time getting my head around why a Google OS is the answer.
There are no standard operating systems in the world of mobile. Microsoft has their mobile OS. Then there’s Palm. And lots of companies build their own OSes with varying options for trying to build software for them: Nokia, Motorola, iPhone, Danger, etc. Some require handset signoff of apps and most require carrier signoff. Even more problematically, it’s just downright ugly to write software for most of these phones. Google wants to change that. And it looks like for some phones, it will. But not all carriers are in. And not all handset makers are in.
So will this actually bridge anything, or will it only introduce another segmentation into the market that makes it more difficult for users to interact with one another?
Right now, honestly, I can’t read between the soft and fuzzy marketing lines to make heads or tails of where things are going. But the Android Challenge will certainly make a few geeks happy.
Drums, please…… The guns are out: iconic Radiohead released their latest album for free with the hope that people would pay something for it. I would call that busker-style pricing. You park yourself on a strategic corner, open the guitar case in front of you, throw in some sad, old coins, and you sing for whatever money is tossed at you…. The Radioheads thought they were proving the industry wrong, I guess expecting that the “goodness” in fans would set a price that would make everyone happy… Apparently, the tops people paid for the album was two quid… most geezers just got it for free and strolled into the sunset.
But the record label has not sat around festering hateful thoughts with a you’ve-been-dumped attitude. EMI has new controlling owners, remember? a private equity fund. For those who cannot read between the lines, these are the guys you don’t mess with… And boy, did it show: EMI has just released a special USB stick containing all of the band’s back catalogue. You wanted digitalised music? Here you go, on a Radiohead bear-designed 40Gb sticky… at £80 quid the puppet…
Now, that’s where I sense they’ve missed the boat. Who’s got £80 quid for old albums that you either (a) you already own, (b) you can buy online for less (c) you can buy for even less on the highstreet (the ones you don’t have)?
Pricing is the mother of all evils where it comes to digital content. What’s the added value to something that is just invisible bites? And here, for back catalogue bites, not even unreleased tunes?
I don’t see the iPhone queues here…
My price suggestion: £45
Why? It’s a ballpark figure that enters the lifestyle pricetag of “stuff I don’t need but I can splash on”. This, in marketing terms, is how we price for this segment of the population: people in their late twenties (the average age of a Radiohead fan) whose average salary allows them to, let’s say, “throw away” a specific amount of money without too much suffering at the bank account level. In retail, you go for volume, specially if you are selling “old catalogue stuff”….
Today is the day the iPhone goes on sale in Britain. It can’t go unmarked. I almost expected to see a Google doodle, there has been so much anticipation. A small queue set up camp outside the Regent Street Apple Store yesterday, undaunted by the foul weather and prospect of paying a minimum of £899 for their phone (£269 purchase price plus a minimum O2 contract of £35 for 18 months).
So what is it people are buying?
- A beautiful object, sure.
- A chance to be ahead of the pack, yes.
- Functionality they need? Ah, maybe not but we’re not talking about need here: this is a luxury item, and when did most of us buy just the functionality we needed? Indeed the phone’s a little impractical in some ways (note the Phone Finger accessory you can buy to protect your phone display from smudging).
- Notwithstanding the smudging, a product with usability at its core. Certainly it’s both promoted and endorsed for its usability.
And for those lucky enough to find it in their Christmas stocking there will be something more. There’s a link with the personalities that have now become part of Apple’s marketing message: Steve Jobs, of course, and designer Jonathan Ive. Unlikely celebrities, but celebrities they are. If you can have one of their phones you can also have a bit of their success.
This is a very specific element of Apple’s marketing which, perhaps with the exception of the fashion industry, I rarely see elsewhere. In the UK, John Brown, former CEO of BP had a similar status; so did the late Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop; for James Dyson the halo became a little tarnished with his decision to manufacture outside the UK. The dotcom boom brought flashes of celebrity (I’m thinking, for example, of Brent Hoberman and Martha Lane Fox of LastMinute.com). Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page probably sit alongside Jobs; I think the jury would be divided on Bill Gates’ relationship to Microsoft’s market.
I’m not sure Steve Jobs would relish a parallel with Donatella or Miuccia (ironic given his determination to appear publicly only in t-shirt and jeans, and when his elegantly understated products are among the few acceptable to no-label advocates). But as Apple raises the bar for phone/PDAs, providing an experience that many want to share, there’s no doubt that those doing so are also succumbing to the cleverly packaged glitter of a star entrepreneur.
I meet Arin and Susan last Friday at the British Film Institute in the Southbank. We are in a seminar organised by the BFI called “Power to the Pixel”. If you are not a young twenty-something from the US, or do not watch indie films, this combination of names will mean zilch to you. If, on the other hand, you are an Internet savvy Britonnian (I think I just invented that word) into shortfilms, you’ll have heard about their opera prima“Four Eyed Monsters” and the storm it created across the pond. Both filmmakers, tired of being refused a distribution deal even when their film was getting press and audience recognition at festivals, decided to “throw the toys out of the pram”. Arin & Susan took it to the web and called their audiences to arms by orchestrating theatrical releases across the nation, thus by-passing distributors. This is the one where two young things take over one of the most Jurassic industries these days - film distribution, and beat it ruthlessly over the head with the weapons of choice: the Internet, mobile texting, a social network of worldwide fans (and their emails and postcodes!)
“Four Eyed Monsters” is the typical film school final year project, beautifully shot at times and with a sweet script showing good quality story telling…. but expect no Oscar or BAFTAS nominations here. What grabs you about the filmmakers and their product is the way they marketed it through an array of channels: the web, mobile and guerrilla stunts on the streets. At the BFI seminar, I could feel the fear predating the soul of every distributor present in the room… The puzzled look of disbelief in every filmmaker witnessing their multi-media presentation, as Arin & Susan’s wizardly knowledge of technology+cum+marketing proved to be more and more awesome. Filmmakers, the ones who brought you James Bond and his futuristic gadgets, tend to produce mobile phones out of their pockets that look like they’ve been through the 90 degree washing cycle. To them, words like podcasts, myspace, and flickr are as removed from their world as designer clothes, hair grooming and healthy food on set…
In “Four Eyed Monsters” Arin and Susan recreate their love story through videotaping themselves, together or individually. The takes, scripted or unscripted, become their life, their struggles to release their film theatrically, the quest to achieve… All this on the web became their communication channel with their audience, a whole nation of youngsters who resonated not just with the film itself, but with the marketing medium used to promote it. Fans of the film spread the word throughout their networks and some even helped the filmmakers achieve theatrical releases even in the smallest, honky-tonk towns.
If you want to know how frustrating the film industry is, seventy per cent of cinema seats in the UK go unsold on a weekly basis. Shocking, you may say. The average number of viewers to a given theatrical session is seven. In Arin and Susan’s case, up to seventy people watched their film online concurrently. Not only the audience tuned to the web to watch the three chapters of the film, but it co-created …. (ah, the magical behaviour that every brand aspires their customers to do).
Audiences posted back videotapes of themselves talking to camera, pouring their souls, venting their frustrations, finding the Arin & Susan story the proof that they, sitting in their bedrooms, were not the only ones wanting to connect to another human being, not just wanting to live an extraordinary life through technology, drawings, quirky notes on post-its… but also knowing how to react to such channel of communication. This is where the purchase price of myspace begins to make a whole-lotta sense and when de-centralised networks of motivated individuals can take over the Pilsbury Man (Ben & Jerry’s leap to corporate fame) or make a young doctor from Izmir the guest speaker at Oracle’s Christmas party in 1999…
Blyk is a mobile product coming to an audience that thrives the visual medium. And Blyk is betting on the power of attraction of visual images as a communication element. In today’s society, younger and younger people are shooting footage on videocam to later on load it up onto myspace & co., podcasting from their bedrooms or getting their songs on iTunes. Does this sound like your idea of social chaos? Or more to the point, are you aware of how strong technology is empowering young people to control marketing itself these days….?(!)
They may seem like monsters to you, if your business is challenged, I would agree. But I must warn you this is going to get bigger, and will do my best Poltergeist little voice to announce to you: “They’re heeeeeeere….”
