is right – TED is the role model for media companies of the future. As someone who doesn’t own a television but spends a fair amount of time online, I was curious to learn more about Chris Anderson’s (curator of the TED conference) point of view on one of TED’s new tentacles: Ads Worth Spreading. Anderson explains how advertising is failing, that attention is the great scarce resource and its value has to be rising. He says that quantity of attention (eyeball hours / clicks / demographics) is not necessarily the right metric by which to measure success, but that it is intensity we should be interested in – that focused high attention, leaning forward not slouching backward. Introduced as a competition, the winners were announced earlier this week. I’ve watched three so far (Savory Institute, The Topsy Foundation, and Girl Effect) and what strikes me is how these short spots so elegantly exude a combination of compassion, education and solution. It’s the power of a good creative brief, in this case: media built on passion. As Chris Anderson says: “passion is a proxy for potential’. I love that.
Of course any time I see the word passion, especially in the context of media and communications, I think of The SHIFT Report’s Sustainability Passion Index. If passion is a proxy for potential and The SHIFT Report research is designed to gauge the North American populations’ passion levels surrounding sustainability issues – it would seem we’re in a good place. A place from which to drive and support the cultural shift to sustainability by helping brands understand where that passion lies in relation to brand awareness, lifestyle choices and connection with sustainability issues (personal, social, spiritual and environmental).
Ads worth spreading, most definitely.
