It’s pretty scary…the stuff of nightmares. Many have attributed the popularity of zombies in our culture to not-so-latent fears about the economy or terrorism, suggesting that these ghouls symbolize a loss of control. It also has been suggested that we see ourselves in these mindless creatures for how quickly our appetites run amok.

I see it as a metaphor for the effect that social media is having on more and more of us every day. No longer able to process information, we rip through new media, biting and chewing and spitting out content, barely digesting any of it. Ravenously we move on to the next. Indeed, barely chewed facts, items and stories pass through us onto the web like offal. Our constant tweets and updates are mere bits and pieces, carrying links like so many worms, each containing the shred of something devoured earlier. Or something like that.

I myself am turning. Last night I tried reading an article in a magazine. I found myself jumping over paragraphs, skipping entire chunks, gluttonous. Unsatisfied, I started another article. Then another. Within minutes I was in front of my laptop lapping up more, more and more! Already an addictive personality, once I taste blood, I cannot stop gorging. The more I feast, the less I retain. A vicious cycle if ever there was one.

Advertising was a major precursor to all this. Having to manage narrative and sell strategy in 30 seconds or less, we in the ad business all become conditioned to making and receiving short-form content. “Nobody reads body copy!”

Implied is the notion that we are no longer doing a good job at listening and learning. On the other hand, maybe we’re doing a terrific job. Remember the Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics speed-reading program? Zipping through pages was considered a great gift, almost magical.

As a species we’ve adapted to a world of streaming content, chewing through it more and more urgently. More channels. More screens. More friends. More, more, more! We are content zombies!

Because, as one of the remaining mortals exclaims during George A. Romero’s remake of his own classic zombie film Night of the Living Dead, “We are them.”

Obviously, then, creating meaningful content (stuff that gets digested) is extremely difficult. Yet, when we do manage to create humanly relevant ideas, it’s ever so satisfying. Like a shot to the brain!

Steffan Postaer is Executive Creative Director of gyro San Francisco

Follow him @Steffan1

He blogs regularly at Gods of Advertising.

Originally published at Ignite Something on the Forbes CMO Network

As every b2b agency will know, the Internet’s innate sharabilility is returning us to a community-focused society that cherishes “we” over “me”. This networked economy affects contemporary marketing hugely. With people more open to building closer connections with brands than ever before, brands must be more human and open to co-creation of the marketing messaging and the product simultaneously with their customers to put the aforementioned honesty into practice. Tapping into the collective experiences, skills and ingenuity of hundreds of millions of people around the world is a complete departure from the inward looking, producer- versus-consumer innovation model so common to corporations around the world. And there are many a b2b agency out there still following in this vein.

Brands need to go beyond loyalty to establish mutually beneficial networks to give customers what they want; otherwise the Internet will allow them to find another route to get what they want. After all, customers are becoming competitors and brands are better off “employing” them by pulling them into their network. Brands are sitting on a bed of emotional human beings eager to be a part of brand creation.

In the summer of 2010, gyro, a global B2C and B2B ideas shop, assembled a group at Hyper Island, the world-famous digital training center in Karlskrone, Sweden, for what we call the gyro Academy, an intense professional development program for our up-and-comer colleagues. We exposed these students to our techniques and tools for ideation and collaboration. The group was asked to select a challenge against which they could practice these tools. They chose “work-life balance.”

Alas, I am not among our youngest colleagues. So, when I came to the session as a mentor, I was gruff and dismissive. “Quit whining! People have been complaining to me for 30 years about the long and daunting hours of the ad agency business. Do you want a job, or do you want a career? This is no business for clock-watchers. It’s a fact of life in the agency business. There’s nothing new about this work-life balance issue,” I said.

Then one of them said, “Oh, yes, there is,” and she reached in her jeans pocket and set her iPhone on the table. “This has changed. It’s attached to me. I cannot disconnect from it.”

It was for us a moment of epiphany; of sudden revelation and insight. It was not as if we had been oblivious to the spread of networked communications and handheld devices, or even how important it was to deliver new forms of communication to reach people with these media. But as people engaged in perfecting marketing communications, it struck us like a lightning bolt.

Work has changed—and people at work have changed profoundly.

Oh, we had understood for many years that it was technically easier than ever to identify targets, locate them, reach them, engage them and transact with them; even to spur them to exchange messages among themselves. We understood clearly how technology had changed, but we confess we neglected just how much it had changed them: the people to whom we were marketing.

Being at work is a state of mind; no longer a place or even a fixed period of the day.

The Internet, mobile telecom, social networking and a 24/7 global economy have eliminated the boundaries of time and space that once defined the workplace. Technology has caused work to expand to longer hours of the day and has attached work to people wherever they are.

Productivity-enhancing technology has not served to increase the amount of leisure time we enjoy—quite the contrary. It’s caused work to spill over its banks, flooding more hours of the day and more days of the week—curiously, as a matter of people’s own behavior and choices. Work goes home. Home goes to work. People are constantly toggling between working and “home-ing,”making decisions, personal and professional, at all hours of the day. They master time, rather than the other way around.

People in an @Work State of Mind today are exposed to a constant, multi-point flow of communications from not just customers, suppliers and co-workers, but also from family, friends, would-be friends and network members. They are not only engaged in considering brand messages while at work, but also championing them to their social networks. People in the @Work State of Mind represent a powerful theater for brand communications; perhaps the most powerful. They exert double purchasing power on both their own needs and those of their companies.

Their eyes are on screens: small, medium and large.

They are already in engagement mode.

They are considering solutions carefully.

They are making decisions.

And this @Work State of Mind is a shared state of mind. People today are connected to and communicating with others in the same state of mind. This makes them a switching station of enthusiasm and endorsement channeled toward decision makers and influencers, immediately.

Mining opportunity from the rich vein of the @Work State of Mind requires new methods and models. The model must be much more real-time, agile and even uncontrolled.

It is an approach that must be anchored in anthropology and behavioral science, relying more heavily than ever on understanding human-scale motives and at striking responsive chords of emotion—particularly if people are to be compelled to act and advocate spontaneously on a brand’s behalf.

Mastering the @Work State of Mind promises breakthrough success for marketers, exchanging the mediocre performance of conventional methods for the high performance of programs radically reset to the way people really live, work, dream and prosper.

Gyro is delighted to have at its disposal the amazing resources of Forbes Insights in the ongoing investigation of this profoundly important area of inquiry. This report is but the first of several products to emanate from “The @Work State of Mind Project,” a collaborative marketing R&D project led by gyro that includes participants from business, government, the arts, healthcare, NGOs, academia and entertainment. If you have an interest in sharing in this discovery, we hope you will join us.

Follow Rick on Twitter at @MrBtoB

To read more about the @Work State of Mind, here are two related articles: Who Has Control Over Your Time? and The Boardroom has Been Replaced by the Kitchen Table.

We know executives are busy. That’s not news. But, we didn’t know how and where decision-makers are receiving information. How is it influencing their decisions, and how do they feel about it?

If you are a brand looking to communicate with these people, these are the questions that you need answered. These are insights that are necessary to be humanly relevant in an age of constant information.

That’s why gyro partnered with Forbes Insights to interview 543 top executives. We wanted to understand decision-makers better.

Along the way a clear picture developed. It was a picture that we did not expect.

Contrary to the negative perceptions about being “always on,” this new reality is having a positive effect on people’s work and personal lives.

Ninety-eight percent of executives send work-related e-mails outside of the typical “9-to-5 work week.” Despite this, they said that they feel in control and able to enjoy their personal time.

Only 15 percent said that they struggle to separate work from valuable personal/family time; and 84 percent feel empowered and well prepared to make business decisions.

People no longer feel rushed to make business decisions, instead valuing the freedom and flexibility that this “@Work State of Mind” allows.

We also found that people’s private lives are playing a much bigger role in business decisions. The study shows that more than three-quarters (77 percent) cite personal values as very or critically important to their decision-making.

gyro’s pursuit, as a B2C and B2B global ideas shop, is to understand this @Work State of Mind better than anyone else in the world, so that we can best ignite emotions.

These findings show how today’s independently minded and highly connected executive looks, thinks and feels. See the full study at www.gyro.com/atwork.

We hope this deeper understanding of the @Work State of Mind will inspire you.

What a time to be alive!

Christoph Becker is ceo+cco of gyro, the global ideas shop.

At the Financial Communications Society summit in New York City on April 11, a group of experts discussed the topic: “Baby Boomer…or Bust: How to Market to and Influence the 50+ Consumer.” Participants included the Lincoln Financial Group, BlackRock and J.P. Morgan. They asked the question: “Why is it that some marketers have such a hard time talking to the boomer generation?”

Boomers have protested, broken glass ceilings, and have worked their tails off for decades: yet, many marketers are saddled with incorrect stereotypes about what it means to be over the age of 50. According to the panelists, here are the five most common misconceptions that marketers have of baby boomers:

-They aren’t tech-savvy. False. This generation buys more Apple products than any other age group (because they can afford them). Boomers go online just as much as 18- to 39-year-olds, and are early adopters of new technology. They have Facebook accounts, go online shopping, blog, and own smart phones—especially women. (The next time you walk into a Brookstone, look around; you’ll see the majority of customers are over 50.)

-Older people aren’t cool. Can you say Anna Wintour, Madonna, and Bono? They define cool and make today’s younger “it” girls and boys look pathetic.

-They don’t spend. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Unlike their parents who survived the Depression and saved every penny, baby boomers are spending big. On average people buy 13 cars over a lifetime; about seven of those are purchased after the age of 50. The average age of an American Express card member is 57 years. After years of working and putting kids through school, paying loans, and building their nest eggs, baby boomers want to enjoy the fruits of their labor. Lincoln Financial Group, for example, has figured out that this generation works hard and plays hard. It doesn’t paint retirement as some end-of-life stage, rather it sells products that are relevant for today’s extremely active Boomer generation and gives them control of their future.

-They see their “golden years” as a time of relaxation. False: Eighty percent of people age 50 years and older, say that they plan to work well past their 60s if possible. They know they are going to live longer and have to budget accordingly.

-They are loyal to brands. Wrong again. Boomers are not as loyal as their parents were. After all, they have watched the cereal aisle go from five to 100 brands. Many are risk takers and adapt to change fluently. If the ’60s  taught us anything about this generation it’s that baby boomers like to experiment and question norms.

In many ways, we know this generation better than any. It’s time we start communicating better with them.

Melissa Pitts is a marketing intern at gyro. She blogs regularly at Newstaco.com, FlamingTortillas.com and Americas Quarterly.
Follow her at @mpittsm

Originally published at Ignite Something on the Forbes CMO Network

Women are almost completely responsible for Pinterest’s success—according to Inside Network’s AppData. In fact, 97 percent of the site’s users are women.

Women trust recommendations from Pinterest more than any other platform, per BlogHer’s annual study on women and social media. Eighty-one trust Pinterest versus Facebook (67 percent) and Twitter (73 percent).

Why? Because women trust other women in their circles more than anyone else. As a result, 47 percent of women bought something based off a recommendation from Pinterest where as only 33 percent bought because of a recommendation on Facebook.

It’s no surprise that brands have been jumping on the Pinterest bandwagon in troves and have seen their followers grow over night. Many products are getting more exposure than they ever could on Facebook and Twitter, and it’s relatively easy to see why.

To sum it up, here are four reasons why Pinterest is superior to Facebook when targeting women:

1. It is simple, clean and fuss free. This makes browsing delightful and easy: two main components to marketing success. Because of Pinterest’s visually appealing layout, consumers just see a picture with very little text. Facebook on the other hand is very word heavy and can turn off potential consumers.

2. Marketers have an open window into consumers’ interests. They can easily see a gold mine of information on potential customers. For example, an interior design marketing team can see who is influential in the ‘home decor’ section. They can then start following and see what trends people are repining and liking.

3. It’s relaxing. Pinterest creates a curated experience for its users in a fairly anonymous way. No constant updating of feeds, no overload of people’s lives. On Pinterest it’s about enjoying your hobbies—not having to like someone’s status or wish anyone a Happy Birthday. It lets users share experiences in a negative-free zone, briefly comment and move on without the weight of Facebook etiquette.

4. Brands have found cool ways to use it. Martha Stewart Living and Kate Spade are pinning like crazy with overwhelming response by adding more than 19,000 and 34,000 followers respectively. Kotex even has bragging rights for hosting one of the first Pinterest campaigns. The brand found 50 “inspiring” women in Israel and looked at what they were pinning on Pinterest. Then, Kotex sent the women a virtual gift. If she pinned the gift, she then got a real one in the mail that was based on something she had pinned. The result: success—nearly 100% of the women pinned and commented on their gifts.

All told, Pinterest has brought women together online in a way never seen before and tapped into an extremely influential consumer market without even trying. In many ways, this makes Pinterest genuinely more appealing than Facebook and far more trendy among women consumers who get the picture.

Melissa Pitts is a marketing intern at gyro. She blogs regularly at Newstaco.com, FlamingTortillas.com and Americas Quarterly.
Follow her at @mpittsm

Originally published at Ignite Something on the Forbes CMO Network

After the financial turmoil of the last few years, we learned that Americans yearned to feel in control of their lives again. Lack of trust in institutions and a sense of insecurity about their futures fed this desire. This insight was the seed of our “You’re In Charge” creative platform.

Americans are optimistic by nature, and despite all of the economic turmoil of recent years, 72 percent of Americans are still optimistic about their futures and 68 percent are optimistic about their financial futures, according to our MOOD (Measuring Optimism, Outlook and Direction) of America survey. Whitman Insight Strategies polled 803 adults late last year to uncover these findings, which also revealed that 66 percent of Americans feel in control of their lives.

While others in the category seemed to be drawn to using fear in their advertising, we felt the time was right, given these empowering and inspirational insights, to try a new, more optimistic approach.

On launch day, our new campaign promoted everyone to chief executive officer of his or her own life. Someone we call the “Chief Life Officer.” It recognizes the fact that our lives are in many ways like businesses. We’re in charge of making big decisions, managing finances and keeping employee morale positive. We are chief  401(k) officers, chief turkey-carving officers, chief tuition officers, and chief I really need a vacation officers. Whoever you are, the main message we wanted to get across is that you’re the boss of your life, and Lincoln Financial is here to help you “Take Charge.”

Our Chief Life Officer campaign, created with gyro New York,  is bringing a very different message to consumers because it inspires them by showing them that they are in charge and that they have the tools necessary to build secure financial futures.

Optimists are realists. They take charge of things they can control; they don’t worry about the things they can’t. The Chief Life Officer (You’re In Charge) campaign we created with gyro New York celebrates the richness of life and drives people to take action.

Jamie DePeau, corporate chief marketing officer at Lincoln Financial Group in Radnor, Penn.

Originally published at Ignite Something on the Forbes CMO Network

Being creative requires far more than original thinking.

Being creative means that your idea needs to be able to be executed and produced. It needs to engage, be humanly relevant and ultimately drive the response that’s expected of it.

Being creative means knowing how your mind works and how to spot and best capture those flashes of genius. How many of us keep a moleskin note pad or sticky notes by our beds, just ready for when inspiration strikes?

Coming up with creative concepts that aren’t bound by existing thinking is an important aspect of ideation, but the world is full of Walter Mitty-like characters whose ideas are never really strong enough to go anywhere. Moving from the ignition point of an idea to making it happen and pushing it live across the world requires far more than the idea itself.

We’re all competitive when it comes to who has the best idea, be it a hidden trait or an overt characteristic. Competition drives us, it’s a good thing, and it’s pervasive in our society. However, one of the reasons team sports are so popular in our culture is that they provide individuals with the opportunity to compete and cooperate at the same time. At gyro, we believe nurturing an inclusive culture where both competition and cooperation can thrive provides the best setting for being consistently creative.

We have actively embraced creative collaboration. To be creative and innovative is everyone’s responsibility at gyro, not just the creative department. Solving modern business problems in an ever-changing digital landscape requires a team that’s equipped with a mind-set as eclectic and well connected as the world itself. There’s no room for creative apartheid anymore. Anyone can come up with an idea, at any place, at any time.

So whether you believe it’s possible to be consistently creative or not, one thing’s for sure: Great ideas require something far more precious than original thinking alone. They require teamwork.

Peter Davis is executive creative director at gyro Manchester.

Follow Peter on Twitter @digitaldavis.

Originally published at Ignite Something on the Forbes CMO Network

1. It’s all about the packaging. In his unveiling of Katniss and Peeta to the world, Cinna took a negative and turned it into a positive. Given that they were from District 12 (the poor mining district), Katniss wondered if they were to be dressed as miners or stripped naked and covered in coal dust. Instead, he made Katniss “the girl who was on fire,” right down to the synthetic flame of the headdress. Yes, when you’re competing against 11 other products on the global stage, it helps to be the one that’s on fire.

2. Don’t be afraid to flaunt your talents. Within a company, marketing can get lost in the mix if it isn’t communicated properly to everyone (the CEO, the CFO, IT, everyone). That’s why it’s good to remember that if you’ve got the skills and your peers are ignoring you, make them notice. Or shoot right at their heads just like Katniss, who unleashed an arrow straight at the Gamemakers’ table, skewering an apple that sat before them in a pig’s mouth and pinned it to the wall. Your message needs to be communicated loud and clear, just like hers.

3. Don’t be afraid to make your own rules. Today it’s Pinterest. Yesterday it was Facebook. Who knows what the next hot marketing channel will be. Marketers have more opportunity than ever to share their brand with the world. This means taking risks, experimenting and making up new rules as they go. (SPOILER ALERT) Like Katniss and Peeta, who threatened the Gamemakers with their poison berries, marketers need to consider drastic measures as the media mix continues to evolve daily.

4. You’ll never survive without your sponsors. Let’s call this one the homage to Rush Limbaugh. It’s one thing to be edgy and a challenger brand, but you still need to be likable enough to have supporters (or, in his case, sponsors). Otherwise, you will end up like Rush or Belvedere vodka—left trying to explain and coping with lost revenue. Katniss and Peeta received several gifts from their sponsors just in the nick of time. None was more important than the medicine Katniss received to save Peeta and herself.

5. Make sure your message is humanly relevant. Katniss deliberated with Haymitch as to how she should handle her debut interview. How would she portray herself to the world? She opted to tell the truth about her family and her sister Prim, whom she loved dearly. Today more than ever, it’s important to be humanly relevant. It’s too easy to be numb with all of the messaging thrown our way. Consumers want to feel emotion. They also want someone or something to root for— make that your brand.

Kenneth Hein is director of North American marketing for gyro, the global ideas shop

Follow him @KennethHein

Originally published at Ignite Something on the Forbes CMO Network

He gives plenty of texture around the comment (how agencies overcompensate for various deficiencies by stressing digital, etc.), but one can take the comment at face value and still glean plenty, especially in the wake of Steve Jobs’ recent passing.

From day one, Jobs understood how much technology depended on the human touch, figuratively and literally. And that if there were a one-word catch-all, it wouldn’t be “digital” but rather “design.” And design, Jobs said, was not merely how good something looked but how well it worked.

To him (and for us), digital was more than just tools but extensions of our limbs and imaginations. Not hardware and software. Lifeware! Sight, feel and now voice are the operating principles that drive Apple. Not “technology solutions,” a phrase, like the word digital, that couldn’t sound more inhuman if it tried.

Oh, the irony! For the last decade or longer, we marketing geniuses have gone great guns trying to bolster our digital creds, doing everything in our power to look savvy, often at the expense of working savvy. We learned the hard way that flashy microsites were likely meaningless to our clients’ businesses. And hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube often meant winning a popularity contest without any prize. We realized that brands aren’t social just because they’re on Facebook and Twitter. And so on …

The costs have been tremendous—to us and to our clients. But make no mistake, because clients are as culpable as we are. The clamoring for digital came from all corners. I’d argue that social media (another techie term) has exploded the myth of digital, reminding us tweet by tweet that people are and always will be living, breathing human beings; in other words: analog.

However painful the learning curve, this is good news for those of us toiling in Ad Land. Agencies are at their best when we put ideas before clients and, dare I say, technology.

Steffan Postaer is Executive Creative Director of gyro San Francisco

Follow him @Steffan1

He blogs regularly at Gods of Advertising.

Originally published at Ignite Something on the Forbes CMO Network