The Future's Bright, The Future's Social

Robin Wight,

President, Engine

Brands only exist because they help

consumers make buying decisions without using too much brain power

Your brain doesn’t like changing its mind

R RL L

a) INITIAL b) PRACTICED

Practised tasks are easier for the brain to do than novel tasks

Source: The Executive Brain Frontal Lobes & the Civilised Mind – Elkhonon Goldberg

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33%

27%

19%

9%

What car did people think the yuppie drove?

Behaviour Change

Attitude Change Behaviour Change ?Attitude Change

Brain science has taught us that it’s normally the other

way round: behaviour change leads to attitude change.

The mind changer:

Now With Added

From ToBeing with them for the journey

Telling people where to go

Be a companion

Reduced negative

comments about

Renault's

customer service

from 53% to 16%

Protecting Renault’s reputation for potential purchasers

21 top UK style

blogs hosted

bespoke Next pop up

shops reaching

260,000 readers

Working with bloggers to drive sales

Social PR

8 million

people in

4 days

The Future’s BrightThe Future’s Social

And it always has been

Why the average person has 130 friends on facebook

Source: Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language, Robin Dunbar

The evolution of ‘mobile grooming’: scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours

Language devolved to help us bond in the groups of 150 we had developed to

survive when we left the jungle and became two-legged humans

The ‘friendship gap’ that facebook filled

Ancestral villages:

neo-cortex group of 150

Cities (from 4000BC)

limit us into groups of 25

Our genes invented the web and the mobile phone to give us back our neo-cortex groups of 150

‘An animal’s behaviour tends to maximise the survival of the genes “for” that behaviour, whether or not the genes happen to be in the body of the particular animal performing it.’

Richard Dawkins

‘The Extended Phenotype’

Extending the reach of the genes beyond the body of the animal

Beaver Dam Mobile phone facebook

Two thirds of conversations are on social topics.

And women ‘gossip’ four times as much as men.

For good genetic reasons.

The next step: from social media to social consumption

From personal ownership to social ownership

‘Collaborative Consumption’

“350 hours a year having sex. 420 looking for parking”

The Big Society will be delivered via ‘collaborative consumption’ as well as the re-invention of volunteering

iamcreative.org.uk is a new model where everyone wins: altruism a bonus not a motive

Self interest rules ok!

Creativity boosted for kids with little effort from

overstretched teachers. And partnership with Business

Chance to capture the thinking of creative young people for

your brand and engage them in it at a formative age

Emerging high-status activity of volunteering that only needs 3-4 hours a month as it becomes

a ‘must do’ for Creative Industry people. Not having it on your CV will be a drawback

in trying to get a new job

Schools Brands Mentors

The Future’s Bright.Technology is making us human again

Thank you very much for your Continuous Partial Attention