Life is digital – in Canada, we spend almost 50 hours per month online - more than 30% of our total leisure time. While information access (usually via Google) still reigns king, social networking sites are set to eclipse in 2010 - winning in time spent and number of visits. When life is digital… what are people doing in their digital lives?

Human insights

What are your customers doing in their digital worlds? What shortcuts and tools are they using to navigate the digital world? What do they care about, and how can you curry favour (and a positive brand image) by acting to facilitate progress on their digital/life/personal goals? What ARE their digital/life/personal goals?

These are just some of the questions to be asked and answered when thinking about human insights as they relate to digital strategy. Smart questions lead to smart answers. Contact me: I’ll quickly tell reveal right digital questions to ask to meet your objectives.

Human insight thinking: Identity

I think identity is one of the most exciting topics in digital. With more and more people spending big portions of their lives engaging with others online, our self image is increasingly defined by our digital representations. In contrast with the digital personas of the past (divorced from ‘real’lives), the reality today, for many, is that digital identity is ‘real’ identity. This has very interesting implications when you add in other trends mobile, viral and ease of multimedia content creation. Here’s a quick look:

Identity and mobile location based social services like foursquare and twitter allow self broadcasting anytime, anywhere. Further, digital (virtual) identity can be tied back to the real world with location sharing. It is commonplace to report back in real time to friend networks about an experience currently in progress. Practical example for brands: the success of failure of a movie is now strongly tied to real time reviews

Identity and viral - In a world of digital identity what we share defines who we are - are you a person who forwards funny cat videos to friends? Maybe it’s the most insightful news of the day, or a call to action on an important social issue. Brands can leverage this phenomenon by creating content that people want to associate with their own identity, they will share it with like minded friends, and you might have a viral hit on your hands. Bonus idea: if identity determines what gets shared with friends, we have a massive content filter that is based on identity. How can we use that? How can we change identity values?

Identity and easy content creation start with cameras on phones, cheap and fast video editing, and web apps for co-creation; then add mobile, viral and you’ve got a perfect storm that generates millions of creative expressions daily. People don’t take pictures to store in dusty photo albums anymore, they take them with the knowledge that they can immediately share with hundreds (or thousands) of people. Their content defines them: “Who am I? I’m the girl in the picture”

Experience

Leo Burnett – built into briefs and client strategy communications, digital artifact distribution guidance
Dog and Pony Studios – in product design, client sales pitches, and viral SEO
AType Studios – fundamental strategy, guiding principles
Experience It – in simulation design, participant instructions

References

Internet statistics: eMarketer, Canada Online: Users and Usage, October 2009; Econsultancy, Market Data: Internet Statistics Compendium, October 2009.