Never get out of the boat

a war we have to win

2012-01-20T13:16:00.001+11:00

On the off chance that even just one person who may read this is not up to speed with the implications of SOPA and PIPA, and has not been exposed to the clip above; if you are that person then please spend 15mins at some point to watch this video shot during the week at the TED offices.

Clay Shirky explains the real effects and the threat of the proposed legislation.

Of course, the details of the shutting down - and arrest of key staff - of file sharing service Megaupload, by US agents earlier today gives a clear indication of why this is an international issue, not simply US legislation.

'None of the defendants are American citizens, and the site was mainly operated from Hong Kong. But the U.S. government was able to go after them — without SOPA or PIPA in place — because Megaupload used Internet hosting service providers located in Virginia, processed payments using U.S.-based Paypal, and worked with an online advertiser based in California.'

There's also an opinion piece written by Shirky in The Guardian to read from which the below is an excerpt.

'...the law would apply not just to actual copyright violations (the nominal goal of the law) but to any site that was "facilitating the activities" of copyright infringement, a term nowhere defined but vague enough to include mentioning the existence of such sites, which is enough to make them findable. Like a fast-spreading virus, the proposed censorship moves outwards from the domain name system, to include any source of public web content in the US.

If the phrase "any source of public web content" seems like a dry detail, substitute the name of your favourite web publisher: you. The US is, for the moment at least, the world's premier host of sites that support user-generated material – Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Wikipedia, Reddit, on and on. And under the proposed law, every one of those sites would have to take steps to prevent publishers, which is to say people, which is to say you, from helping anyone find out about the existence of sites the US media firms don't like. And since the law doesn't require a private company to provide any advance notice before the blacklisting, these sites will be forced to spy on their users, in advance and all the time, to make sure you are not talking about sites media firms in the US do not want you to talk about, even if you are not a US citizen.

Sopa and Pipa are, quite simply, an attempt to create a privatised form of international censorship, and because the censorship would have to be nearly total to be effective, they would have a profound and chilling effect on any form of public conversation among ordinary citizens. It would render the internet a place where the only content to be seen or heard or read is produced by professionals, with the rest of use relegated to the role of pure consumption.'

can you count, suckers?

2012-01-20T08:52:00.001+11:00

Anything that kicks off it's pitch with Cyrus from the Gramercy Riffs, gets my vote.

Part of the Make It Count campaign — Life is a sport. Make it count - the NikeFuelband is a Nike+ extension, a rubber bracelet worn on the wrist during exercise and sports activities to measure 'steps, calories, time & Fuel metric'.

It syncs with your iphone and also integrates with social flavour of the month Path, to journal your daily activity.

HT The Kaiser

unique talking point

2012-01-19T08:42:00.001+11:00

While I'm not a data geek by any stretch a couple of things were interesting about some of the top line data that emerged around the Golden Globes TV coverage in the US and it’s impact on brand mentions within social networks.

Firstly, in spectacle terms, the NFL match between Giants and Packers pipped the Globes as number one socialtv (sic) show on Sunday with over 1.5m social mentions by circa 950,000 unique authors.

The Globes came number 2 with 1.1m mentions from a smaller but more active group of 492,000 unique chatterers.

Twitter activity is said to have peaked at 6,162 tweets-per-second.

In terms of ‘traditional’ ratings again the 'football' was way ahead the Globes, which only picked up at 8pm once the match was over.

7pm.
Fox: NFC Playoffs - Giants vs Packers (40.1 million viewers, 14.3 rating among adults 18-49)
NBC: Golden Globes red carpet (7.4 million, 1.9)
8pm.
NBC: The 69th Annual Golden Globe Awards (16.8 million, 5.0)
Fox: Football overrun/The Simpsons (15.7 million, 6.8)

And AdAge reports that check-ins on GetGlue tripled vs last year, though the Globes ended up 4th, behind Nikita, Big Bang Theory and Fringe for the week.

Globes check-ins would most likely be real-time rather than shifted, it should be noted.

So in the Globes chatter...

Top 5 brands in social mentions – with the top contextual mentions within:

1. Prada – 42% ( predominatly Zooey Deschanel’s dress)
2. Dior – 22% (Charlize Theron 34%, Milla Kunis29%)
3. Gucci – 15% (Jessica Alba 23%]and Salma Hayek 36%)
4. Vera Wang – 4% (Sofia Vergara 55% Naya Rivera 36%)
5. Marchesa – 3% (Lea Michele 62%)

Versace will probably be be disappointed that they didn’t chart despite dressing Angelina Jolie.

Interestingly among the top ‘linear’ sponsors Loreal and Swarovski (and others ) also did not get so much as a peep in terms of buzz/wom despite the famous ‘goodie’ bags and buying 30second spots that started at $400,000 a pop, and upwards from there.

Perhaps a case of 'because you're (not) worth it'.

One could infer that from the unique talking point perspective, being on the red carpet and integral to the content was the smarter media spend?

Check the AdAge article and follow the links around.

Also a fuller analysis from Lost Remote.

needle: fan sourcing sales

2012-01-19T08:25:00.001+11:00

In theory, Needle would be about taking customer advocacy to the next level, by partly 'fan-sourcing' both the sales and customer service platforms for online businesses.

Needle claims to be able to tap into an existing fan base, train it up to be able to sell your product or service, and then allows them to do it online from wherever they are.

They say:

'Customers want to know how your product applies to them. They want their questions answered live by an expert who speaks their language, and whose suggestions they can trust. Trained experts on the Needle platform engage customers by asking qualifying, relevant questions, such as "How will you be using this product?" and "What kind of other accessories do you already wear?" A Needle chat offers the equivalent of having a personal shopper giving real-time reviews and recommendations to your customers based on rich, interactive dialogues.'

I'm inclined to file this in the same drawer as alternative customer service channel Insidr, which we featured in December, and indicative of a genuine trend developing.

Another one to keep an eye on.

via Springwise.

flogging a dead horse

2012-01-13T07:31:00.000+11:00

This is so much post of the week, and even an early contender for post of the year, that I am simply going to quote it in it's entirity.

From the always wise, and now slimline, Jonathan MacDonald who's recent weight-loss success has also apparent side effect of further sharpening his, already incisive wit and insight...

Tribal wisdom of Dakota Indians: when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, your best strategy is to dismount.

However, in business and in Government, more advanced strategies are often employed such as:

Buying a stronger (and more expensive) whip.

Changing riders.

Appointing a committee to study the horse.

Arranging trips to other countries to see how other cultures ride dead horses.

Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.

Reclassifying the horse as living-impaired.

Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.

Harnessing several dead horses together to increase efficiency.

Providing additional funding and/or training to increase dead horses performance.

Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horses performance.

Declaring that the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than some live horses.

Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.

…and of course:

Promoting dead horse to a supervisory position.

construire une architecture de l'impossible #vaccinesvideo

2012-01-13T07:21:00.002+11:00

I missed this at the end of last year, but it's such a nice simple idea that it's worth a mention, even if I'm late to the party.

Fans of the Vaccines were asked to tag their Instagram photos taken at the summer music festivals with #vaccinesvideo, the pics were then sucked into the vaccinesvideo.com site and then edited together with some band footage to produce the video for their song 'Wetsuit'.

And a top tune it is too, by the way.

Apart from the fact that it's a terrific execution of viral 101 - the fans will share the video with their friends because THEY ARE IN IT, it also tickled my current obsession with situationist ideas, and drew me back to this nugget on ceativity from artist/author/provocateur Jamie Reid.

'...the challenge to the modern artist is not just to create, but to use what has already been created. This would seem to be a reduction or a narrowing of the scope of modern art, but it isn't. To find a way of using what has already been created - and there is a lot of all kinds of things that have been and continue to be created by this wasteful society - to say something that is really new, you have to widen your field of awareness to the point that you can see what is NOT being done, and what COULD BE done, with these creations'

Top marks to Anomaly London for another construire une architecture de l'impossible...

It's up for a One Show Award too, so best of luck.

a 'viral' masterclass from the bbc #bowie

2012-01-10T07:49:00.002+11:00

Contrary to misinformation peddled by many self annointed social media experts there is no 'formula' for viral video success, however there are some recipes that will give a piece of compelling content the very best chance of being spread.

The previously long-lost clip below of Bowie and the Spiders doing 'Jean Genie' on Top of The Pops from 1973 being case in point.

In simple terms the clip contains the main elements the originator needed to ensure at least some spreadability.

1 - It's a piece of content that groups of people with a shared interest want to see, but have not previously had the opportunity to do so.

2 - The provider of the piece of content was, initially, the single source of the content.

3 - The back story to the piece of content was interesting enough to be part of the idea.

So it goes that retired 69 year old ex-BBC cameraman John Henshall had retained a copy of the footage he shot using his own designed Telefex Fisheye lens, while the BBC had wiped the original tapes from 1973 (as was their unfortunate habit back in the day - many hundreds of hours of BBC archive stuff is gone forever).

Henshall found the tapes in a proverbial shoebox in the attic and presented the lost gem to the BBC at the tail end of last year. It was broadcast on Wednesday December 22nd on BBC2, this being the first time it was available to view since the original Top Of The Pops show in 73.

The lessons are clear.

1. Identify the groups of people who are most likely to want to hear/see/spread the idea.

2. Figure out if this is the kind of information these groups are gagging for.

3. Find out what the groups already have and whether the new information plugs a gap that needs filling.

4. If you can answer all of the above get it out there and watch the groups do the heavy lifting.

Notice the use of 'groups' plural. A point to note is that there is not one-single instance of the clip on YouTube, there are several.

The clip was ripped and posted online by many different Bowie fans, each initially serving a small group of other connected fans in the first instance. The clip was then shared from small group to small group via various blogs and Facebook updates and tweets.

Understanding the structure, connectedness and actual needs of the networks in which you want to plant ideas is much more important than looking for individual so-called influencers to repeat a story.

Anway here's Bowie, Mick and the Spiders walking on snow white, in full fisheye glory.

merry christmas from never get out of the boat

2011-12-22T09:28:00.002+11:00

This will most likely be the last message posted here this side of Christmas, so thanks to everyone who's read, shared, commented, tweeted, liked and +1-d throughout the year.

And also thanks to all the rest of the blogosphere and twitterati who's links and thoughts I've waded through and magpied the nuggets.

Three special shout-outs for services beyond the call go to..

Marcus Brown
Mark Earls
and
Johnnie Mooore

I was tempted to post The Fountains of Wayne's 'I want an Alien for Christmas' in honour of the impending 2012 paradigm shift and the mass awakening - all at once - of the entire human race, however that would be a bit too cheerful so I've stuck with tradition and gone with The Fall...

Thanks again for your eyeballs in 2011, see you after the jump.

Eaon

the case for real customer insight

2011-12-21T16:28:00.000+11:00

Tweet of the week, and possibly the season itself.

This sums up exactly the problem facing Australian retailers.

The problem being that the vast majority don't even have a scooby what their customers problems really are.

They, in fact, don't have it all wrapped up.

For fuck's sake marketers, NO, I am not "stuck for gift ideas". I am stuck for *time* to shop for my own, superior, ones.
— Reuben (@reubenacciano) December 21, 2011

Full marks to The Garden Doctor for the wit in retort, but it should have come from Myer or Jones, if they were listening.

@reubenacciano stuck for time to shop this Newtonmas? Try our patented time dilator, only available last week from a store relative to you.
— The Garden Doctor (@thegardendr) December 21, 2011

On the listening note, it's also worth pointing out that for many brands, social listening is little else than a sub-affliction of Mott The Hoople Syndrome, in as much as they only listen for mentions of themselves, by name or their category and competitors.

Imagine the rich pickings for companies that listened properly for customer problems that they were in a unique spot to fix?

the myth of the 'influencers'

2011-12-21T11:24:00.000+11:00

Here’s the thing.

This keeps coming up, so just to be clear on what is and isn’t correct it’s worth considering this.

There's a lot of false assumption and BS that tends to fly about ‘seeding’ and ‘bloggers’ and ‘online pr’ etc with regards to the 'influence' this supposedly has on behaviour.

Kiss this:

The alleged ‘influencers’, or ‘the few’ if you’ve read The Tipping Point are documented as consisting of, at most, 10-15% of any given population.
These 'influencers' are the so-called opinion-leaders in any given category or sphere.

These ‘influencers’ are thought to initiate up to, and at most, 25-30% of the conversations about brands in any category or sphere.

While these people do have some influence, granted, it's a danger to overestimate that influence.The web has thrown up a large number of self-annointed influentials, with large twitter followings or blog readership.

This really the equivalent of celebrity endorsements.

Or like broadcast advertising, and conventional PR (ie 'publicity').

It's useful up to a point, in as much as it can help with 'branding' the thing and contributes to generating awareness and other such high level brand measures.

However, it's the people not recognized as ‘influencers’ - ie the ‘nobodies’ - who will still account for starting 70-80% of the conversations which contain brands.

And a massive chunk of that happens offline, by the way...

So, that 70-80% of conversation that actually has real influence in terms of decision making and adoption of behaviour is originating with us, the ‘nobodies’ and happens with the people we go home to, or work with or socialize with.

Instead of looking to the idea of ‘uber-influencers’ to help our ideas spread we should focus activating small connected groups of close relationships that are connected to the idea in some form, from the outset.

The people who actually influence our behavior are usually the people who are closest to us., both emotionally and by simple geographic proximity.

We’re also know via the sensible end of neuroscience and behavioural/social science that most decisions are made unconsciously, without critical thinking (even though we think we are thinking).

So even getting celebrity tweeters, or mommy bloggers to publish facts or product information en mass would still have limited value.

Don't confuse influence with popularity.

What we need is stories that will spread though small interconnected groups.

If you want a one-two-three in marketing terms, this is about distributing emotional cues as the triggers (orchestrating) and then engaging in the resulting situations (as direct agents) to draw others (spectators) in to become participants.

- See last weeks post on Hurricane Bawbag, for how this works for real.

We 'do' then 'think'.

In reality we are all influencers.

And 'nobodies' are the new 'somebodies', as Guy Kawasaki puts it.

The myth of the uber influencer whom everyone looks up to and follows is just that.
A myth.

For more on this stuff check what KellerFay, the Word of Mouth Research and Consulting Firm, say.
It's well worth having a dig about in here for the nuggets.kellerfay.com/category/insights/

And also ask Santa to pop 'Grouped' - by ex-Googler and now Facebook Social Researcher, Paul Adams - into your stocking.
The principle hypothesis of Grouped being that the web is being rebuilt around people, and from which I've pulled one or two stats and notes for this post.

natural selection and social learning

2011-12-20T07:02:00.000+11:00

It's worth spending the 30mins or so with this talk by Mark Pagel, Professor of Evolutionary Biology and Head of the Evolution Laboratory at the University of Reading.

He has a number of hypotheses around the notion of natural selection in genetics as it sits alongside social learning - the peculiarly human trait.

Pagel points to direct comparison between social learning as driving idea evolution - we copy people that we see as being successful in some way, we copy ideas that seem to be good, and adapt and improve upon them - and then natural selection, having driven genetic evolution in a more random fashion.

This is of course, pretty interesting for the advertiser and marketer in understanding how we make decisions, and also adds another angle to the post-idea world notion we discussed just the other week.

Here's an excerpt from Pagels diatribe.

'Do we know the answers to the most important questions in our lives? Should you buy a particular house? What mortgage product should you have? Should you buy a particular car? Who should you marry? What sort of job should you take? What kind of activities should you do? What kind of holidays should you take? We don't know the answers to most of those things. And if we really were the deeply intelligent and imaginative and innovative species that we thought we were, we might know the answers to those things...

And if we ask ourselves how it is we come across the answers, or acquire the answers to many of those questions, most of us realize that we do what everybody else is doing....

...our capacity for social learning, which is responsible for all of our cumulative cultural adaptation, all of the things we see around us in our everyday lives, has actually promoted a species that isn't so good at innovation...maybe we're not as creative and as imaginative and as innovative as we thought we were, but extraordinarily good at copying and following.'

There's no embed code for the video so jump over to edge.org for the full video and transcript.

social influence and hurricane bawbag

2011-12-15T09:43:00.002+11:00

What a delight to comment on a textbook classic case of the spread of a 'viral' idea principally via social learning/influence, shared cultural context and the fact that the carrier of the idea was the 'product' itself, if you like.

That it originates from Scotland makes it a double bonus.

I'm talking, naturellement, about Hurricane Bawbag.

Bawbag, is the label afforded to the particularly bad storm in Scotland, that peaked on the 8th December, who's 160mph winds closed schools and businesses and caused havok across the country.

For those from a sheltered upbringing Bawbag is West of Scotland slang for scrotum.

The nuts and bolts have been well documented elsewhere so I'll not dwell, but suffice to say the hashtag #hurricanebawbag was reported as trending globally on Twitter, while in the UK the shorter #bawbag also (more pragmatically) trended.

Even local government were in, Stirling council wrote on their twitter feed, “All Libraries are closing up at 1 o’clock – see Stirling Council Website for details #scotstorm #HurricaneBawbag”- though the tweet seems to have now been removed from the stream.

The national Scottish newspaper The Scotsman were also happy to join in, tweeting..

Police extend travel warning to 9pm bit.ly/tpQfw0 #weather #scotstorm #hurricanebawbag
— Scotsman (@scotsmandotcom) December8, 2011

(Note: I just wanted to test the 'embed tweet' thing on the new twitter)

Within hours t-shirts bearing slogans like 'We beat Hurricane Bawbag' appeared for sale online, along with a dedicated Twitter account and Facebook 'fan' pages, alongside the almost obligatory twitter meme #ReplaceSongNamesWithBawbag ('Don't you wish your bawbag was hot like me!')

At their King Tuts gig in Glasgow on 13th December 2011, the band 100 Monkeys asked their audience to suggest a song title and they would make it up as they went along.
The audience replied in unison 'Hurricane Bawbag'.

Bawbag can help us remember a few key lessons on why an idea spreads.

- Firstly, viral is an effect or outcome not a ‘thing’ (most important rule).

- Everyone is an influencer (2nd most important rule)- this idea spread through small, tightly connected groups gaining momentum and scaling exponentially with each new connection, through it's own steam it became so big that mainstream media had to notice it.

- An idea will be spread principally because the spreaders want it to spread.There's value for the spreaders.

- There's room in the idea for people to add their own bit to the story.

- The idea resonates or represents something that's already in the culture.

- Some people are in, some are out.
(hearing an English newsreader unwittingly say 'bawbag' on the 9 o'clock news would, of course be the comedy moment of the year).

Perhaps my favourite anecdote, and the one which best demonstrates the point, on how and why things spread comes courtesy of The First Post, who report the following conversation on a tube train in London, in which a daughter was trying to convince her mother that the storm was indeed called 'Bawbag.

“Why would they call it that?” asked the mother.

The daughter showed her video on her phone and the front page of The Metro free newspaper and replies...

“If everyone starts calling it that, you have to call it that.”

i am not a consumer: part 2276

2011-12-09T16:02:00.001+11:00

Here's another gratuitous and completely unnecessary use of the c-word.

This time Mumbrella, reporting on the otherwise smart Steal A Banksy situation devised by Naked for The Art Hotel chain.

'The Steal Banksy challenge will see consumers attempt to get their hands on a signed print of the subversive British graffiti artist’s No Ball Games.'

Watch your thoughts because they become your words.

Why are hotel guests here labelled 'consumers'?

What's wrong with 'hotel guests'.

Yours sincerely,
P. Dant.

a spectre haunts the creative imagination part 2

2011-12-09T14:30:00.001+11:00

We've talked about Beaudrillard here before, the brittleness of systems.

'Systems are inherently brittle and retain authority only as long as we treat them as having authority', he said.'But once you lose the fear of systems, or conventions, the status quo, they lose the hold they have over you.'

In other words existing models do not represent reality; they are simply our constructs.

Not surprising when we understand how our unconscious brain observes, soaks up what's going on around and gives cues to the rational brain, fills in the gaps and tells us what we think.

Hence the notion that we don't think, nearly as much as we think, we think.

The vast majority of what we think is thinking, is actually stories made up by the non-conscious part of the mind.

And of course, the stories we believe most are the ones we tell ourselves.

But that's ok. This is where ideas come from. Great ideas.

Someone sent me this article from The New York Times, in which academic Neal Gabler laments the dearth of 'big ideas' in contemporary culture.

He has some points but spoils it with some fairly standard Luddite internet-bashing schlock.

'Social networking sites are the primary form of communication among young people, and they are supplanting print, which is where ideas have typically gestated'.

This is plainly incorrect, as demonstrated one of the most interesting and powerful ideas emerging in recent times being the notion of the Gutenberg Parenthesesis.

In which digital/social/mobile culture - in a way - is a return to an uncontained, non-linearity that was core to human societies in the ages before industrialization, mass production and, in particular, the invention, by Gutenberg, of the printing press.

Gabler's fear is a 'post-idea world — a world in which big, thought-provoking ideas that can’t instantly be monetized are of so little intrinsic value that fewer people are generating them and fewer outlets are disseminating them.'

I'm more optimistic than that.

'Marx pointed out the relationship between the means of production and our social and political systems.
Freud taught us to explore our minds as a way of understanding our emotions and behaviors.
Einstein rewrote physics.
More recently, McLuhan theorized about the nature of modern communication and its effect on modern life.
These ideas enabled us to get our minds around our existence and attempt to answer the big, daunting questions of our lives.'

However, I do concurr with the notion that 'there is a vast difference between profit-making inventions and intellectually challenging thoughts'.

As there is a difference between creativity and simply wacky or gimmicky ideas.
The difference is in the value they create rather than the value they extract.

So the social media experts who point at Farmville's multi million turnover as the great success story are missing the point.

On that note, there is clearly something awry with a culture that- in all seriousness- produces things like this without the slightest hint of irony.

For dummies, you say?

'Farmville for Dummies' found via @umairh

insidr

2011-12-09T08:29:00.001+11:00

There's an inevitable-ness about this service that is both wonderful in it's inventiveness and yet frightening in as much as 'has-it-really-come-to-this'.

Insidr.

'Rewriting the rules of customer support.'

Connect directly to real people who have worked in big companies and are willing to help when the company can't or won't.

They say “We started INSIDR because we feel helpless when we have to call customer support. We decided to find a better way – that relies on real people and not company politics – to solve the problem.”

Not only that, the potential to lift the lid on customer services practices that we all suspect to be true , yet have no proof, can only be a good thing.

In the office the other day, we discussed the one whereby an customer service person says 'thanks, I'll add a note to your account about that' followed by some typing noises.

Are they really adding a note to my account?

Or just tapping the keyboard?

If indeed they are adding a note, what does it say?

I never get to see the note, anyway.

Does the note say 'annoying douchebag, get rid of him as quickly as possible.'?

What kind of flakey data is being generated about me, that I will never see?

Story via Techcrunch.

And thx to ProjectVRM mailing list.

connect with fans #783 G+ edition

2011-12-01T11:17:00.001+11:00

I'm becoming more convinced that the jewel in Google+'s crown is the Hangout functionality.

In fact the more that sections of the geek-o-sphere proclaim the imminent death of Google+ the more I'm convinced that there's a long, long way to go yet.

Here's two ways musicians have used Hangout's creatively to connect with fans.

Check out Black Eyed Peas before, during (on stage, behind the band, looking at the crowd in Central Park and the NYC skyline) and after the show.

And to demonstrate that it works small as well as big, singer-songwriter Daria Musk has built up a sizeable following from a grass roots level by being an early mover in the space.

Like Bill Drummond said...

The technology comes first, then artists mess with it - in ways the engineers never imagined - and new things come out the other end.

It goes wide and goes deep.

BEP HT to Tommy.

it's advertising year zero (movin' on up)

2011-11-30T07:55:00.001+11:00

Following yesterday evening's session at 474Labs, our internal agency learning and sharing group thingy - in which Mark Earls kindly beamed in from London at the unholy hour of 6.30am, to talk to us about some of the ideas from his new book 'I'll Have What She's Having' - there's probably only one song to play to wrap up the experience.

Before we get to that, I have to say that increasingly I'm leaning towards the feeling that we are in the midst of a year zero type situation in this advertising business.

Year zero inasmuch as the vast majority of the received wisdom and the-way-we-do-things-round-here needs to be erased, rewound and start again from scratch.

Here's what I'm talking about (and this is all covered in Mark's ouvre)

- How many of the decisions we make day-in day out are independent, rational (ie thought) choices versus those that are emotional, social and sensed?

- Is the real role of advertising about constructing messages to try and effect 'persuasion' on the individual or is it more about creating ideas and meaning that can be shared?

- In this context who exactly is 'the' consumer? Or even 'consumers' plural. We are people, and what interests us most is other people.

- Is changing behaviour about telling or getting 'consumers' to do what we want? Or is it more about demonstrating behaviours we want to encourage and creating situations or interventions which amplify those behaviours and involve people in positive activities that facilitate positive copying?

- Should brands and companies focus on creating meaning, with purpose, and serving the social needs of their customers, rather than targeting, impacting and penetrating and otherwise waging war on them?

- Are we, agencies, slaves to the big idea and big strategy when in fact:
the big idea is: there is no big idea

- Is lighting lots of small fires, making little bets and fanning the flames of the things that take actually a much better plan?

These are pretty disruptive ideas for this industry to handle.

This means stopping in it's tracks any briefing that contains anything that infers 'what we want the consumer to think'.

It's year zero. No antecedents. The end of all the past and the beginning of the future.

Massive thanks to the Herdmeister for his time and wisdom, cheers fella.

I was blind, but now I see...
You made a believer, outta me..

the long tail

2011-11-28T07:54:00.001+11:00

Somehow it is quite refreshing to search for a song online and find it completely unavailable through fair means or foul.

Despite the Long Tail and the ubiquitous-ness of digital music there are a few tracks that are still hard to find in any format around the web.

One of those being this classic performance of 'Sweet Gingerbread Man' by Sammy Davis Jr.

One of the rare occasions when the 'cover' version is better than the original.

From what I can glean this tune appeared on Sammy's 1972 album 'A Portrait of...' and is currently unavailable in any format. I had to settle for this clip a kind soul had posted on YouTube.

Innovation being often born out of neccesity I have discovered that ripping the clip out of Youtube as mp4 allows one to burn the file to CD as audio using Toast, which meant I was able to add this to my happy monday morning compilation for the car journey to work this morning.

social media marketing doesn't work

2011-11-23T08:13:00.001+11:00

This is the phrase that will be echoing round many corporate marketing departments this morning in the semi-aftermath of the #qantasluxury debacle that unfolded on Twitter over the past 24 hours.

Of course that's only half the sentence.

Social media marketing doesn't work...WHEN YOU DO IT WRONG.

That is the complete statement.

Qantas never seem to learn.

While some poor junior PR person or intern will be getting it in the neck, it's the top of the chain that need firing for getting the absolute basics completely and spectacularly wrong with this twitter promotion.

It's not that they particularly need to keep quiet or hide from the many and varied cultural and industrial relations shitstorms they are in the middle of. I'm sure many would like explanation.

It is however a classic case of Mott The Hoople Syndrome and CC Bloom Fatigue in which the hapless Qantas have made the fundamental, delusional error of imagining that the conversation is exclusively about Qantas themselves, pimping gimmicky promotions and not about helping solve the problems and generally taking an interest in the things their customers care about.

For a brand principally in the service space this is tantamount to insanity.

See also Eaon's Law of Marketing Inequality.

UPDATE:
'We have a virtual monopoly...they have to fly with us'

Thanks KT.

UNHATE

2011-11-18T13:48:00.001+11:00

Charlie nails it today in his assessment of Benneton's UNHATE intervention.

'Pretty much every government and right wing paper absolutely hate this advertising.

They pretend they seek peace and reconciliation but it's alien to their psychology and so they hate us humans for laughing and having strong feelings about peace and love.

Beware those who don't hug, laugh or love art and even sometimes cry.'

Plays to the same criteria we've mentioned here before...

Know which side of the bed you are lying on.
Decide what you are FOR and AGAINST.
Stand for something your customers care about.
Something that matters.
Find out who's IN and who's OUT.
Have a philosophy first, strategy second.
Have a mission not simply a proposition.
Agitate.
Create situations.
Pick a fight.

And we're always up for a bit of détournement, round here.

'Boredom is always counter-revolutionary'.

ray kurzweil

2011-11-18T07:28:00.001+11:00

Ray Kurzweil was in town for the Creative Innovation Conference, I never made it along but was prodded to check his TED talk on the 'singularity' etc from 2005.

He's normally careful to predict far enough into the future to not be called out. There's a couple of tips here for 2010 that haven't quite made it but it's all entertaining and feasible none the less.

all you need to know about innovation

2011-11-03T15:53:00.002+11:00

A hobby of mine involves editing the word 'consumer' out of power point presentations and replacing that word with people, customers, constituents and suchlike.
This is one small way of practicing a small form of mindfulness (the foundation of innovation).

'Watch your thoughts for they will become your words'.

For those who may think this is petty and pedantic, consider this.

In the business of human communications to start off from the point of de-humanisation (consumer), mechanising, robotising from the get-go is not going to lead anywhere.

If the paradigm has moved from production or manufacturing to service then a company's product is now it's people and brand experience is manifested by person to person contact.

Therefore brand meaning comes from quality of interaction.

When did anyone last say to anyone 'I'm going out for a couple of drinks with some consumers' or 'I've got a few consumers coming over for dinner'..

Never. Nobody ever has. It's bullshit.

In a business context...

Thinking - PHILOSOPHY
Talking - COMMUNICATION
Acting - STRATEGY
Habits - CULTURE
Values - PURPOSE
Destiny - BRAND

Brand being what you get. It's the outcome.

the kids are alright? #235

2011-11-03T08:58:00.001+11:00

Don't put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington.

Thx @zeroinfluencer

being digital (or... why digital talent doesn’t want to work at your agency)

2011-10-28T18:47:00.000+11:00

I've said all along that 'being' digital is not about the technology or using every social networking tool or about being anti-analogue, or anything like that.

Being digital is a mindsest. A philosophy.

It involves being good a sharing, being inquisitive, poking the box, being generous, being interested and interesting,about wanting to make things and experiences that have value, that make a difference.

Likewise any agency that wants to 'be digital' should concern itself first with freeing it's mind...it's ass will follow.

Well, If i didn't fall off my chair in amazement at the simple truth of an article in Fast Company by Aaron Shapiro, CEO of Brooklyn NY based agency HUGE.

The article is titled:
Why Digital Talent Doesn’t Want To Work At Your Company..

It could just as easily be:
Why Digital Talent Doesn’t Want To Work At Your Agency..

Here's an adaptation of the meat of the sandwich, I've changed a few bits to suit '...agency' purposes but the point is the same.

'The attributes of a soul-crushing, Sisyphean, anti-digital workplace run deep.

Digital talent won’t want to work at your [agency] if:

Every element of their work will be pored over by multiple layers of bureaucracy.

Even if that’s how the rest of the company operates, it can’t spill into the digital [work].
In a technology environment, new products and businesses spring up daily and a new endeavor can go from conception to launch in a matter of months.
Reining in the momentum will be read as inaction and a clear signal the company isn’t willing to grasp the new way of the world.

Mediocre is good enough.

While [clocking on and off] is attractive to some, it will discourage [those who]
want to be expected to do something great.
[They live and breathe this stuff anyway, it's embedded in their lives]They want to be pushed.
They care about their work.
Their leadership, and those they rely on to [create an environment where they can] get things done, must match their appetite for success.

Trial and error is condemned.

The freedom to try out new ideas allows employees to take initiative, make decisions, and learn from their mistakes.
It also demonstrates an attractive and inspiring entrepreneurial spirit.

Your company is structured so it takes
a lifetime to get to the top

And as such there are no digital experts in company-wide leadership positions. Digital talent--often in their 20s and 30s [and 40's, c'mon] need to see a clear path for uninhibited career development that’s based on merit, not years spent, and that’s beyond the confines of the digital department.
If they don’t, they won’t see a reason to stay with the company in the long term.'

As I said, any agency that wants to 'be digital' should concern itself first with freeing it's mind...it's ass will follow.

Your thoughts?

shhh! I gotta focus. I'm shifting into soup mode

2011-10-28T08:37:00.000+11:00

[NEW YORK] If you thought that connect with fans + reason to buy = business model was the sole property of the music or entertainment world, check this out.

Firstly, last months launch of Get Well Soup from Heinz in the UK - as winter creeps in bringing it's inevitable sick days, Heinz Soup Facebook fans can send Heinz Cream of Chicken (soup for the soul) or Heinz Cream of Tomato 'Get Well Soup' to their sick friends featuring the friend’s name on the label.

I already stated elsewhere that, for me, this was the first bit of honest to goodness, proper use of Facebook as a marketing platform that I'd seen for a long time.

Relevance, Authenticity, Value and Easy to do.

Chuck in personalisation, community and social objects...it's damn near perfect.

Hot on the heels of that, Heinz have pulled off another Facebook masterstroke.

Heinz Tomato Ketchup Blended with Balsamic Vinegar - which uses posh balsamic instead of the basic vinegar, will first be available to buy from the middle of November, but only through the Heinz Ketchup's Facebook page.

It won't be in the 'shops' until March at the earliest.

According to the New York Times, Heinz '...has no immediate plans to advertise the product, [but] has more than 825,000 followers on Facebook, where it hopes enthusiasts will spread the word about the purchase.'

This is how we do it, people.

Connecting with fans?:
1 - FANS LOVE THEMSELVES
Try the new things out with the people who care - those who are 'in'.
If it's going to fly then they will let you know, even if they don't like it they will love you more for rolling with them.

2 - FANS LOVE ACCESS TO STUFF THE MASSES DON'T GET
Make little bets, we don't need to bet the farm on small innovations, but keep it in the family.
Don't let the great unwashed in until the fans have had access first.

Reason to buy?
- PERSONALISATION
- LIMITED EDITIONS
- SOCIAL OBJECTS
- SOUVENIRS

It's ketchup/soup equivalent of the 'tour t-shirt'.
It tells others 'I was there'.

Anyway, The Never Get out of The Boat Social marketer of the year award looks to be heading to Heinz...

i'll have what she's having

2011-10-26T09:07:00.000+11:00

For those of us in the advertising business the prevailing convention is to think about about human behaviour in terms of the individual.

And the objective of advertising being to try and change that individuals behaviour.

So with that in mind this week's recommended reading is 'I'll Have What She's Having' by Mark Earls, Alex Bentley, Michael J. O'Brien.

'I'll Have..' sets out to counter that convention by demonstrating that 'consumer' behaviour is far more social; ergo influence is social (ie peer influence etc).

The book's title is a reference to the famous scene in When Harry Met Sally.

Meg Ryan triumphantly bursts Billy Crystal's bubble - he thinks he can tell real from fake, you know the bit in the restaurant - then a startled woman at another table say's to the waiter the immortal line.
'I'll have what she's having'.

So, in summary, 'I'll have..' would argue that to improve effectiveness of marketing - which is essentially now the spreading of ideas - to focus on trying to influence the behaviour of individuals is ultimately going to be much less rewarding than looking beyond that - to our inherent social nature - and how behaviour is learned by watching, and copying, each other.

And a pretty compelling argument it is too - though not necessarily a popular idea in adland ;) - obviously if you have followed the thread from 'Herd' and 'Welcome to the Creative Age', this is essentially part 3 of the trilogy.

The behavioural science version of Bowie's Berlin trilogy of Low, Heroes and Lodger, if you like.

purpose idea #436

2011-10-26T08:21:00.000+11:00

Another example of purpose-driven branded content worth checking.

'In the film, director David Altobelli tells the story of three boys exploring an empty house late one night. The boys break into a farmhouse that was clearly abandoned in a hurry some time ago. As the three explore the house - and even begin to vandalize it - one boy slowly comes to see that the family that lived there was not so different from his own. He realizes that the house they are trashing could foreshadow the future of his own family's farm and home. A frightening moment in the house sends the boys running back to the comfort of their still-functioning farms.On the soundtrack, Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs covers Willie Nelson's country music classic "Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys."

Get the backstory at http://www.cultivatefoundation.org/

Chipotle Mexican Grill - http://www.chipotle.com – is an American restaurant chain, they have set up The Chipotle Cultivate Foundation which works to highlight the economic hardship family farmers face in the increasingly industrialized American agriculture system.

‘Over the last several years, Chipotle Mexican Grill has contributed more than $2 million to help fund initiatives that support sustainable agriculture, family farming, culinary education, and innovation that promotes better food. This has included such beneficiaries as Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, The Lunch Box, The Nature Conservancy, Niman Ranch Scholarship, Culinary Institute of America, The Land Institute, Veggie U, and FamilyFarmed.org. The Cultivate Foundation will continue with this tradition of giving started by Chipotle.’

My talk at 474Labs yesterday was about exactly this kind of thing, and why generosity, and moving from value-chain to value-cycle is a [better] business model.

VIA CONTAGIOUS

lessons in social marketing from the situationist international

2011-10-26T07:19:00.001+11:00

In his 1967 work La Société du Spectacle (The Society of the Spectacle) leading Situationist, Guy Debord documented his theory of The Spectacle.

In it, he argued, that through mass media, television, hollywood and emerging technologies, capitalism - perpetrator of The Spectacle - was controlling the conditions of human existence.

In effect, the world we see is not the real world but a world we have been conditioned to see, via an onslaught of images.

The Spectacle's audience simply observe the ‘show’ – ie life - as passive spectators, consumers if you like, without actually participating or experiencing it.

Debord saw the only outcome as Alienation.

The Spectacle made us all spectators. Manipulated into substituting material things for authentic experiences and separated from each other.
Passively consuming the image, the spectacle, together but ultimately isolated from everybody and everything.
Debord and his fellow Situationists felt that "if we can explain how the nightmare works, everyone will wake up!"

However, for the lumpen proletariat to wake up they would need to be active participants in the process.
To that end, a tactic of the Situationist International was the construction of situations.
A constructed situation being a ‘moment of life concretely and deliberately constructed by the collective organization of a unitary ambiance and game of events.’

Ironically, as marketers, as ones who in the past have actively perpetrated the Spectacle, through branding and advertising, there are some learnings from the construction of situations we can apply to marketing in the age of social technologies and connectedness.

As a footnote, Debord et al would doubtless be perplexed by the voluntary reification, or self-commoditisation afforded to individuals by Facebook, but that’s another discussion…

So

A situation is designed to be lived by its participants
It’s not just ambience, it’s an integrated ensemble of behavior.

In regard to any type of community building effort it’s important to note that simply amassing vast numbers of fans or followers (ie buying likes) has little or no value.
They need to be activated in some way.

On 15October.net - an online resource for the #occupy situation they say:

'If we want real global change, it’s not enough for you to take to the streets.
You got to make them go out to!

From a content and platform perspective remember that the destination in Facebook, for example, is not the page itself (branded or otherwise) but the news feed. This is where content (or objects, to use Facebook parlance) is experienced.

An object is more likely to show up in your News Feed if...

You and people you know have been interacting with it or it’s creator, recently.

So social context and quality of interactions are the most important factors for Facebook engagement.

I repeat: social context and quality of interactions.

To describe our lesson in achieving this comes I’m paraphrasing notes on the construction of situations first described in issue one of Situationist International from 1958.

Situations require:

1. A temporary director or orchestrator.
The orchestrator is responsible for coordinating the basic elements necessary in the construction of the situation, and for conducting certain interventions.

In social networks, these are the account owners or page admins.

The interventions are simple. Leave no comment unanswered, leave no contribution unthanked and use every opportunity to connect the participants, or constituents with each other.

2. Direct agents
The direct agents living the situation, who have taken part in creating the collective project and worked on the practical composition of the ambience.

The reason that 90% of social media marketing efforts fail is down to one simple factor.

Marketers and their agencies are married to the notion of the Spectacle.
In context of the Gutenberg Parenthesis we mentioned here last week the notion of the Spectale may in fact be pure 'Parenthesis' - part of the 'containment' blip.

[Pre-Parenthesis] Participants > [Parenthesis] Audience > [Post-Parenthesis] - Participants

To grow a community, to grow participation the community needs to be constantly fed, prodded, poked, questioned, invited to participate.
There is nothing disingenuous or inauthentic in using direct agents to agitate.

In fact it’s the opposite.
Why should your customers want to get involved and support a situation that the brand and it’s agencies can’t be bothered to live in?

3. Passive spectators
Passive spectators who have not participated in the constructive work, BUT whom can/should be forced into action.

You should be familiar with Nielsen’s Law of Participation Inequality.
Also known as the 90-9-1 rule.

In any online community:
90% of the community will be passive. They will simply watch, spectate and will not contribute.
They are also known a ‘lurkers’.
In many cases they may not even be fans, particularly if you have employed some sort of bribery tactic to attract ‘likes’.

9% will comment, share and edit/remix/modify content.
Likewise these advocates should be welcomed as direct agents (2)

1% will be the power creators (they will create original content, blog posts, videos etc) – these creators should be developed to become orchestrators (1) wherever possible.

In reference to the earlier statement that simply amassing vast numbers of fans or followers (ie buying likes) has little or no value, the objective of amassing fans is to grow the 9% and the 1%.
The bigger the pie then the bigger those slices will be.

We’re wired as humans to follow what looks like a good idea.

Good ideas are more often than not those which others like us seem to be doing.
In marketing terms this is the antithesis of Spectacle.

In fact, both the opponents and supporters of advertising have one thing in common.Both sides vastly over estimate the power of advertising in affecting behaviour change.On it's own.

But that's another post...

There is no situationist art or situationist music or situationist marketing, but only a situationist use of these mediums.
In this case, can using social technologies as a platform for connectedness and value create situations?

*yes, this is a repost of a previous article, but it fell into the ether a bit. I've reposted it as I used it in a presentation recently and it seemed to make sense...

take this lollipop

2011-10-24T14:18:00.001+11:00

Can't help thinking that Take This Lollipop would have been more creepy with a bit of Jack The Twitter depth...

http://www.takethislollipop.com/

autonomy

2011-10-24T08:45:00.002+11:00

Not a penguin in sight, but perhaps an unofficial anthem of #OWS and related situations?

"It's a thing that's worthhaving (yes i would)
Buys you your life, sir (if it could)
I...I want you. autonomy.
It leaves us all
wondering (and it should)
This awkward something (for the good)
I...I want you
autonomy

Smart observation by Nick Kaufmann in the comments on The Protests and the Metamovement by Umair Haque.

turning rebellion into money?

2011-10-19T13:48:00.000+11:00

[NEW YORK] Fast Company reports that a PR firm representing musician, Penguin Prison issued a press release at the end of last week to publicise his forthcoming single ‘Don’t F**k With My Money,’ which they claim'is already steadily becoming the anthem for [the Occupy Wall Street] movement!'

“CALLING ALL NEW YORKERS & PENGUIN PRISON FANS,” the announcement invited people to join Penguin Prison at the site of the OWS protests as they shot the video for said single.

Penguin Prison, aka Chris Glover ia apparently born-and-bred New Yorker, who's breeding, FC notes, apparently included attending Manhattan's Trevor Day School, which currently charges $36,000 in annual tuition.

Interestingly, none of the direct agents involved in co-ordinating, documenting and agitating around the OWS situation have seen or heard of Penguin Prison, so were unable to confirm whether the 'anthem' had indeed captured anyone's imagination.

*musical footnote: Anarchy In The UK it ain't, it's a pretty flimsy piece of 80's style syth-pop. link: http://youtu.be/Miu-XOx5Jg0

In fact Justin Hampton, blogger and music journo active in the OWS movement, noted 'f*ck Penguin Prison and f*ck them using this as a means to market their hipster bubblegum.'

It's not just the Penguin, slightly more predictably, corporate rappers Lupe Fiasco and Kanye West have also been muscle-ing in for some borrowed interest.

In advertising land, 'borrowed interest' being the flakey activity of brands of little or no substance scratching around for credibility by sponsoring or otherwise phoney-baloneying around the edges of some sort of cultural activity without providing any value or acting out of any purpose.

I couldn't help but wonder if old Joe Strummer would be turning in his grave...

'The new groups are not concerned,
With what there is to be learned,
They got Burton suits, you think it's funny,
Turning rebellion into money'

femme fatale

2011-10-17T08:16:00.000+11:00

As it would have been Nico's birthday today, and the Velvet's first album has been on heavy rotation in Boat headquarters we'll kick off the week with this one...

'I have never desired to grow up from my world as a child, which is when things are most clear and utopian'.

pre-parenthesis post-parenthesis

2011-10-14T15:31:00.001+11:00

Is digital/social/mobile culture - in a way - a return to an uncontained, non-linearity that was core to human societies in the ages before industrialization, mass production and, in particular, the invention, by Gutenberg, of the printing press?

The concept of a ‘Gutenberg Parenthesis’ – as formulated by Prof. L. O. Sauerberg of the University of Southern Denmark and propagated by Thomas Pettitt from the same university - is a way of identifying and understanding the roughly 500 year period we are emerging from…

‘…during which the mediation of texts through time and across space was dominated by powerful permutations of letters, print, pages and books. Our current transitional experience toward a post-print media world dominated by digital technology and the internet can be usefully juxtaposed with that of the period - Shakespeare's - when England was making the transition into the parenthesis from a world of scribal transmission and oral performance…’

In layperson terms, the natural flow of human communication, customs, legends and storytelling was interrupted by the advent of print and ‘containment’.

Pettitt describes the “imprisonment” of words during this Parenthesis.

‘They were pressed onto pages, stitched up, bound, with stories circumscribed by beginning, middle and end -- so unlike story telling and other kinds of cultural production in previous times, when oral traditions meant dynamically changing texts and performances.’

In essence, and in post-parenthesis times, we are looking forward and seeing something that looks more like the past than the present. An uncontained, fluid, secondary orality, but digitally-powered and supported by super-literacy.

Thomas Pettitt on the Gutenberg Parenthesis from Nieman Journalism Lab on Vimeo.

So what’s this got to do with advertising?

The notion of the advertising campaign that still prevails is straight out of the Parenthesis.

The assumption that an advertising campaign will have a beginning, middle and end.

The assumption that a campaign will be a complete thing, controlled and consistent in message and appearance across every media - static and unchanging – original, individual and autonomous.

Looking at it, the advertising campaign is Parenthical and pure containment.

The reality, of course is that in the emerging post-parenthical culture is the complete antithesis, and ergo the challenge for advertising.

How does it exist in the context of sampling, remixing and re-contextualising?

How does brand planning become adaptive and agile?

In a non-linear digital culture where the past and present exist in the same plane where the even the biggest most powerful brands still have to compete with everything else on the internet for attention?

Where more content is being uploaded to the web each day in 2011 than was produced in the entire history of the internet prior to 2004?

Where access (uncontained) to media is trumping ownership (contained)?

Uncontained footnote:I gotta tell you, I’m into week four of TV detox, (ie no terrestrial or cable/sattelite TV) and have not missed it one jot. We have the BBCiplayer international on the ipad and stuff I’ve downloaded off the net but that’s it. It’s pure intention economy TV.

In post-parenthasis context, I'm joining the dots between these two statements (30 years apart but in close harmony).

Arianna Huffington, of the Huffington Post, who declared recently:
'self-expression has become the new entertainment.'
Why spend hours every day passively consuming the creativity (or otherwise) of others?

Echoing Malcolm McLaren from much longer ago who states that:
'In a DIY Culture there are no commodities'.
The point of The Sex Pistols was not to sell records but to create 5,000 other bands.

Obviously, in it's inherent fluidity, post-parenthesis doesn't have a fixed point in time, different cultures and subcultures have moved out at different times.Advertising, as a concept, may be one of the next to pop out the other side of the blip?

Anyway, that's all for now. Thanks to Johnnie Moore who's been pointing me in this direction...

drucker diptych

2011-10-13T13:04:00.000+11:00

“I have been saying for many years,” Peter Drucker once remarked, “that we are using the word ‘guru’ only because ‘charlatan’ is too long to fit into a headline.”

And my personal favourite...

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

twitter jazz slight return

2011-10-12T09:48:00.001+11:00

'You meet all kinds of cats, on absolutely equal terms, who can clue you up in all kinds of directions'

Absolute Beginners - Colin MacInnes pub: MacGibbon & Kee 1959

sam's guide to doodling

2011-10-11T10:23:00.000+11:00

Todays note is a guest post from planner extraordinaire and demon bassist Sam Mackisack. As a keen doodler myself this resonated. Thanks Sam.

'Nick Cohen recently brought a TED video to my attention, Sunni Brown’s 6 minute talk entitled ‘Doodlers, Unite!’. Because it was emailed direct to me by a guy who’s opinion I respect, rather than posted on Twitter by one of those users who are so inane with their sharing they could be bots, I watched it.

It makes a great case for doodling; I’ve always been an inveterate doodler (even though I’m shit at drawing), so hearing some of the reasons why it can be such a powerful cognitive and behavioural tool is great.

So for a doodler, it’s a nice piece of validation. But for people who don’t doodle, and would like to, I couldn’t help thinking some guidance might be necessary. So here is my super-easy 6 point guide on how to start doodling:

#1. DON’T GET HUNG UP ON LANGUAGE

Words can make good accompaniments to help explain doodles, especially in your personal notebook. But don’t get too focussed on trying to find the exact right language – this is about vibe, not accuracy.

Today's note is a guest post from planner extraordinaire and demon bassist, Sam Mackisack on the art of doodling. As a keen doodler myself it resonated. Thanks Sam.

#2. THERE ARE TWO TYPES OF DOODLES – USE THEM BOTH

In my experience, there are two types of doodles – “directly relevant” and “seemingly pointless”. Directly relevant doodles help articulate and understand an idea that you are discussing or thinking about in the here and now. They’re often accompanied by language. Seemingly pointless doodles may have nothing to do with anything, and are just pretty much fun to do, and keep your hands and the visual part of your brain active in dialogue-heavy meetings. Both are wonderful, and don’t need to be segregated.

#3. MAKE INFORMATION MAPS INSTEAD OF LISTS

I’ve noticed a great number of people use their notebooks to write long, bullet-pointed lists. The flow of these is based entirely on the chronology of a meeting – a pretty unreliable thing at the best of times. So instead of writing lists, try jotting down points at random across your page. Then join-the-dots – soon you might find synchronicities between thoughts, ideas and reminders where you hadn’t seen them.

#4. DOODLE WHILE YOU THINK AND LISTEN

It’s not rude. Honestly. If someone’s addressing you directly, then eye contact is always nice. But the rest of the time, doodling randomly while someone speaks can actually help you process what they’re saying, and find your own way of capturing their thinking. Don’t get shitty if you see someone doing it in a meeting.

#5. DOODLE LIKE A KID

Children are much better at doodling than us. They don’t try and find a reason for doing it - they just do it. So try remembering any doodles that you did as a child or teenager, and bring them back. My first port of call when I’m doodling is usually the skateboard brands and band logos I drew when I was 14. I know them off by heart, and the process of drawing them helps me concentrate.

#6. USE YOUR DOODLING TO HELP CRAFT HOW YOU PRESENT INFORMATION

Oftentimes, your doodling isn’t just doing to make it easy for you to understand information. It could help others as well. So rather than just jammin’ on PowerPoint slides and bulletpoints, try presenting complex stuff by doodle.'

And here’s this guide in doodle form:

we are all weird part 2

2011-10-07T09:09:00.001+11:00

Back in the early 90's I worked as a club dj, record producer and also as chief buyer in a specialist record store.

We sold mainly club music - house, techno, hip-hop, drum and bass, plus jazz and soul and the cooler end of indie rock.

Over time I got to know the taste of many of my customers, most of them were either working dj's or bedroom dj's with a finely honed discernment.

These customers quickly got to know the best times to come into the shop to catch the worms. Saturday mornings first thing there would often be a line forming before I could get to opening the shop. They knew that the boxes of American imports arrived early and they wanted the pick of the top tunes before the hoi polloi got at them.

Of course, bits and pieces of interesting stuff came into stock all through the week. The super keen would be in sniffing around most days at lunchtimes or cooking up ficticious 'work' meetings out of the office and hanging round the shop.

I started making up bags for a few of the best customers as things appeared, then they could come in on a Friday night when we weren't so busy and listen to stuff and buy in a more relaxed way.

Pretty soon I was making up bags for upwards of 25 customers every week.

Because they trusted my choices (I was a dj of repute and credible trainspotter) 9 times out of 10 they took whatever I recommended.

From time to time I'd slip them a freebie or two, white-label promos or limited editions. As I was the buyer, record companies and distributors gave me a lot of promo stuff. To be fair I'd snaffle a few for myself (of course, I had my own dj cred to protect, but one couldn't play everything and I had chiseled out my own particular style and groove - Chicago-style house, DJ Pierre Wild Pitch that kinda thing - so not everything was appropriate).

I hazard a guess that around 20%-30% of the sales of 12" club tunes came from this 'on-approval' process.

Plus I had a number of mail order customers from remote areas of Scotland who I posted out a box of tunes to every week, and they simply sent me back by return anything they didn't want.

Again, 90% of the time nothing came back.

Over time, they trusted my choices because I never stitched anyone up, I gave them fair share of the rare and sought-after imports and pre-releases and gave them a bit extra for free from time to time.

This is a long winded explanation of how I discovered the notion of 'permission marketing'.

I earned the privilege of making purchases on behalf of my customers - or on approval - by being useful, credible and trustworthy, by being interested enough in them to know pretty much exactly what they would want.

In this way I was able to push the volume of sales by finding more product for my customers rather than having to chase customers for the product. (Though, of course, this happened by default as word got round that there was a record shop that didn't sell any shit, and where the staff took the time to offer a proper personal service for the discerning spotter).

So that's my little vinyl segue into this next bit.

I reviewed Seth Godin's latest book We Are All Weird the other week, and Seth sent me in the post the 12" coloured vinyl limited edition edition audio version. I guess it kinda completes the circle. Back in the record shop I never knew what Permission Marketing was, it just seemed like good practice. Years later, reading Seth's stuff, it all fell into place.

Here's the package...

The commemorative stamp...

And the coloured vinyl..

Thank you Seth, this takes pride of place alongside my complete set of Felix Da Housecat's Radikal Fear label from the mid 90's.

deep fried mars bars

2011-10-06T09:23:00.000+11:00

As a Scot abroad a myth that follows one everywhere is around the dietary foibles attributed to the Scottish nation.

Yes, I'm talking about the deep-fried Mars bar.

In the 30 or so years I lived and ate in Scotland I never once encountered this phenomenon.

In fact, the closest thing I've seen was from the quintessentially English Nigella Lawson, who battered and fried a Bounty bar in her TV show.

Imagine my surprise (perhaps not delight, however) at discovering the above pictured culinary offering in my local Fish and Chip emporium in leafy suburban Melbourne...

the technology always comes first

2011-10-05T11:56:00.000+11:00

In the film PressPausePlay, Bill Drummond makes this point.

Electric guitars were invented because the guitar in 30's Big Band's stuggled to be heard above the brass.

Then along came Hendrix et al, abusing the technology and inventing a genre.

Artists never invented oil paint, or the movie camera but they saw the opportunity the technology gave for creativity.

Here's a couple more for you.

The story goes that the distorted 'metal' guitar sound was invented by Dave Davies of the Kinks who slashed the speaker on his Vox AC30, then launched into the riff of You Really Got Me.

The Roland TB-303 Bass Line synth was originally made as a cheap tool for guitarists who wanted bass accompaniment while honing their licks. Only about 10,000 units were produced between 1981-84 and on the surface it looked like a flop product.

Then in the later end of the 1980s bootstrapped DJs and producers in Chicago found that by overdriving and cranking the box you could achieve the squelchy acid bass sound, and a new genre was born.

Again, all examples of the technology coming first, then artists messing with it - in ways the engineers never imagined - and new artforms coming out the other end.

The lesson here for our advertising creatives is clear. To always be embracing new technologies for their possibilities for creativity.

In particular, the possibilities afforded by mobile, as a platform, are almost infinite.

For a simple start, mobile can replicate all previous mass media, and then some.

If I was a young creative type out to make my mark today, this platform is where I would be looking to demonstrate my creativity.

This is the technology I would be abusing, f*cking with, overdriving, cranking and generally poking the box.The tech comes along first then the artist messes with it and creates something new and unexpected.

That's my tip for the day, kids.

get shirty

2011-09-29T13:40:00.000+10:00

Interesting to see that my one of my former employers - Weapon7 in London - have been acquired by AMV-BBDO.

I had a chuckle at this clip, in which CEO (now Chairman) Steven Hess dispelled any misreporting of the details of the deal to the staff in his own inimitable style.

Best wishes and congratulations to Steven, Mark et al.

action time vision

2011-09-29T08:32:00.000+10:00

Following yesterday's mini-rant in which I hypothesised that the statement which declares 'TV plus multi-channel campaigns are more effective than TV alone', in it's structure is simply reinforcing the myth of TV authority and makes more sense by flipping it and saying multi-channel campaigns are more effective if the include TV in the mix, some serendipitous further unravelling occured.

Following the links within Andy Whitlock's excellent post An insight about insight in which he correctly points out that;

'Insights are most exciting/dramatic when we’ve previously been looking at the wrong thing'

As an example Andy pointed to this startlingly simple yet revelatory insight from Mark Sorrell.

'There are a lot of surveys and statistics and sound-bites out there saying things like “The majority of viewers now watch TV with a second screen in front of them...I don’t doubt that the basic numbers are entirely correct ...but the entire statement is back-to-front.The majority of home internet users have the TV on in the background...The internet is usurping the TV as the primary source of entertainment in the home.The TV is still being switched on [but is] suitably ambient...Mostly, it just chunters away to itself, pleasing human noises filling your lounge..

TV is the second screen'.

Absolutely spot on. We've been looking at it back to front and as Beaudrillard said 'Systems...retain authority only as long as we treat them as having authority'.

Television is ambient, it's background, it's shared and commands only partial attention.

It's more like radio. A comforting noise in the room that occasionally, sporadically holds our interest.

The internet however (and I'm not distinguishing between devices, mobile means internet and vice versa) is personal media.

It's not about X replacing Y. This has never happened.

There's still books, newspapers, cinema, radio etc. Despite the fact that the mobile platform can in fact replicate all previous media it has not killed them, it's just changed their role.

TV has done a decent job of disrupting itself over the years. Recognising that it is not the focal point any more but simply one of several platforms that deliver content and mesh together is it's current disruption.

Alternative TV.

a spectre haunts the [creative] imagination

2011-09-28T07:27:00.000+10:00

'Systems are inherently brittle and retain authority only as long as we treat them as having authority', according to Beaudrillard.

Hence the old adage 'no-one ever got fired for buying a billboard in Times Square, or no-one ever got fired for buying a 30 second spot in the Super Bowl (or Grand Final).

Is it fear?

But once you lose the fear of systems, or conventions, the status quo, they lose the hold they have over you.

So we hear that multi-channel advertising campaigns are nearly twice as effective as their traditional counterparts.

All good, so far.

However this is often framed as TV plus multi-channel is more effective than TV alone.

Hurrah, say the digital community, recognition for the ghetto.

But this framing is simply reinforcing the myth of TV authority.

How about saying multi-channel campaigns are more effective if the include TV in the mix?

[note: Beguiling tactic...]

But more people are watching more TV than ever before?

Yes. They are watching programmes. The content. That's if they are in fact in the room at all...

Here's another one from JB.

'There is nothing more mysterious than a TV set left on in an empty room. It is even stranger than a man talking to himself or a woman standing dreaming at her stove. It is as if another planet is communicating with you.'

motorcycle emptiness

2011-09-27T10:56:00.000+10:00

Amusing, if ultimately gimmicky, cognitive bias experiment kinda thing from Carlsberg Belgium.

Though 1.6million (and rising) You Tube views tells it's own story.

It's all over the web but my specific finders fee goes to Niklas Lindstrom.

we are all weird

2011-09-23T10:13:00.001+10:00

You know the Dylan line from Tangled up in Blue?

'...Pouring off of every page like it was written in my soul..'

As a serial contrarian and willful misfit in this business of advertising, to say Seth Godin's latest manifesto 'We Are All Weird' resonated is the understatement of the year.

It's a slight return to marketing critique theme for Seth, following the more personal empowerment focus of Linchpin and even Poke The Box.

Seth's vitriol is aimed firmly at the notion of mass as the engine of culture.

'If your work revolves around finding the masses, creating for the masses or selling to the masses [the change] is very threatening'

'Since each market is now a market of one and a market of now, the marketer has no choice but to surrender all pretence to mass'.

We've talked about the notion of embracing divergence over convergence in these pages before.

The thrust of Seth's argument challenges the education system - that which services industry by producing compliant workers - through to government - again perpetrating wholesale compliance - with Ken Robinson-esque pointyness.

'And so the factory-for-the-production-of-normal works overtime to sanitise and corporatise and discipline our kids in to normalcy'

Seth argues that up-close, normal disappears. There is, in fact, no blob of normal, no centre of the curve, just millions of individuals, ad hoc groups and communities that learn differently, think differently and dream differently.

For the marketer? Looking for mass is missing the point. A better idea is to look for the opportunities to co-market with the parts of the market that are most engaged and connected.

Word.

We Are All Weird is the latest in the Domino Project series. A limited edition physical print run, with unlimited digital edition.

I hadn't noticed it happen but I've actually purchased just about every one of the Domino releases.

I'm regressing to my dj trainspotter days! Back in the day as a club dj I had several labels, Relief (from Chicago), Dance Mania (ditto) and Strictly Rhythm (NY) which qualified as automatic purchase material regardless of artist.

New Strictlys? 3 of 'em? Straight in the bag.

The Domino Project is heading that way too.Pressfield? In the bag.Sivers? in the bag.

And as if by magic, We Are All Weird has also been manufactured as a limited edition (of 250) LP (weirdness, natch) in red and black mottled vinyl.

Not for sale unfortunately.

atten-shun

2011-09-22T11:04:00.000+10:00

Attention is your biggest cost
Attention must be earned
Attention does not scale

This triangulation has been the opening gambit of recent presentations I've done.

I've used the Facebook EdgeRank formula as a case in point.

Quality and context of interactions are most important factors in Facebook marketing. Period

With the recent raft of updates to the Facebook NewsFeed alogorithm thingummy it appears that EdgeRank has essentially become more important than ever.

There's a couple of key tweaks to note.

The function to switch between Most Recent & Top News has now effectively gone.Top stories appear at the top of the pile.

Facebook have also factored in the amount of time since a user logged in. The longer one's absence then the more Facebook will filter stories to give you what it deems to be the most interesting things that have gone on since you've been away.

Whereas power users who are in and out several times a day will see more emphasis on recent stuff.

The biggie for me is the little blue corner on each update which indicates 'top story'.

This can be switched on or off by the individual according to their taste.This seems to be introducing another 'edge' into the mix.Alongside 'likes' and comments etc 'mark as a top story' will likely start to appear as a call to action' for brand created or curated content.

A trick Facebook has in all likelyhood magpied from emerging curation/filtering platforms such as Summify and Percolate.

BUT

And I'll quote directly from this analysis from Colin Murphy, of agency Skinny in AllFacebook yesterday on the impact of the changes for brand pages:

'Brands were undervalued in this update in three primary ways. First, Facebook pages weren’t included in the photo display and recent stories updates. With recent stories, it seems like Facebook’s algorithm will favor a “friendship” over a “brand relationship,” meaning brand content won’t show up at the top of a user’s feed. Second, with the updated newsfeed, photos on brand pages won’t look as sleek and big as they do for personal accounts.

Third, and possibly most important, when a user likes content (again, content, not pages) within the Facebook platform, that content will no longer post to the user’s wall, meaning greatly decreased impressions for brands. To clarify, content outside Facebook that is liked will post to that user’s wall.'

Murphy also speculates that Facebook's drive to add more control and customisation for the users over relevance of content in their newsfeed has the double whammy of pushing brands further towards having to pay for visiblity.

Now, more than ever, is no time for Mott The Hoople Syndrome.

SLIGHT UPDATE 14.08pm: On Mashable just a few moments ago Ben Parr announced 'I have seen what Facebook is launching on Thursday [ie Friday], and it’s going to change the world of social media'.

Friday, then.

precision guesswork: TASICT September 2011

2011-09-21T09:20:00.000+10:00

Precision guesswork 2011

View more presentations from eaon pritchard

Here are the slides from my talk at TASICT in Hobart on Tuesday 20th September for those who requested them.

If you enjoyed the session or violently disagreed with anything feel free to leave your comment here.Then jump over to Slideshare to download the pdf.

authentic brand story

2011-09-21T07:10:00.002+10:00

In The New Marketing Manifesto, John Grant noted 'Authenticity is the benchmark against which all brands are now judged'.

Also - in a moment of arch-ness - Seth Godin said in Permission Marketing: 'If you can fake authenticity, the rest will take care of itself.'

I'll take the word from the bird...

UPDATE: Some younger readers have expressed confusion over the 'bird' reference.
Charlie Parker was known as 'Bird', short for 'Yardbird'.
Yardbird is a jazzbo colloquialism for 'chicken', a young Parker is said to have hit a chicken with his car by accident while on tour with the Jay McShann Orchestra, and proceeded to cook and eat the unfortunate fowl later that evening post gig. Fact fans.

skill and inspiration, what a concept!

2011-09-09T15:27:00.000+10:00

If you don't already read Bob @Lefsetz then I suggest you should.

He's the Seth Godin of the music 'business'.I get his email every day (sometimes more) and every one has a gem or two.

I've paraphrased some chunks of one of this weeks mailers here.

As I said, Lefsetz writes about the music business but his pointers relate to every business.

Try this on for size...

"You read "The Long Tail" and believed a new era was upon us, an egalitarian one in which everybody got to play and be recognized, where [digial products] were plentiful and those making it survived financially...but this is untrue.

Consolidation is always lurking.

Happened with record companies. Happened in live entertainment. And it's going to happen [to every business].

But put yourself in the shoes of the [customer]. He's confronted with chaos, he wants someone to make sense of the clutter, and the [companies] who do this will have all the power and ultimately all the money.

Skill and inspiration, what a concept!

It's what listeners want, even though [mediocre businesses] might recoil at the thought of this.

Because it leaves them out.

And with everybody able to hear [about your products or services] instantly, word spreads pretty fast that you're mediocre.

You just can't shove what people don't want down their throats. This is a sea change in advertising, in music. The product leads, it must be intrinsically good.

The only people left out will be the wannabes, who thought it was all going to be easier, those sour grapes individuals who always thought the man was against them.

No, you just weren't good enough.

And you're not going to be good enough tomorrow.

And with good being the main criterion, it's less important what kind of [advertising you do] than your ability to infect people and grow an audience. Anybody can make it. It's about self-starting as opposed to getting a check from a major.

But at the end of the day only a very few will triumph".

Dynamite.

noel gallagher and relational value

2011-09-09T12:31:00.003+10:00

There a basically two concepts of value. Both are correct.
The notion of intrinsic - or inherent value - and that of relational or derived value.

I’ve had a couple of thoughts on intrinsic value in these pages before, but this nugget addresses the relational.

An overview…

A thing has a relational value when its value depends on having a valuer who places said value upon that thing in relation to something else.

Commercial value, for instance, is subject to markets consisting of both buyers and sellers and therefore is totally relational.

Artistic or aesthetic value is also relational, or derived.
Amongst other factors, the canon of the artist or producer is significant.

Which brings us to this statement from Noel Gallagher as he prepares to release his first set of post-Oasis recordings, and shares with us a nice slice of uncanny Manc wisdom on viewing his new work in context to the Oasis legacy.

"Let's say my career had gone backwards. Let say this new solo album had been my debut, and it was my last two records that sold 20 million copies instead of the first two records.

Had this been the case, all the other albums leading up to those last two would be considered a fucking journey.

They would be perceived as albums that represent the road to greatness.

But just because it started off great doesn't make those other albums any less of a journey.

I'll use an American football analogy since we're in America: Let's say you're behind with two minutes to go and you come back to tie the game.

It almost feels like you've won. Right? But let's say you've been ahead the whole game and you allow the opponent to tie things up in the final two minutes.

Then it feels like you've lost. But the fact of the matter is it's still a fucking tie. The only difference is perception."

Noel Gallagher quote comes from this article by Chuck Klosterman in Grantland.

Recap on Theory of Value

Extra special thanks and finders fee to the legend (and erstwhile Liam Gallagher lookalike sort of) that is Petar Vujosevic aka Niko Herzeg.

multi-touch digital displays

2011-09-06T09:34:00.001+10:00

I'm a sucker for these 'future' of touch-screen technology videos.

The technology dovetails nicely into the era of no traffic on the roads, and where everyone at the bus stop is smiling.
Presumably, not unconnected to the fact that they have had the time to make nice vegetable omelettes for breakfast with the family.

Outdoors, if we factor in the law of the brick and the garbage can (I'm in Australia, they don't know what dustbin means), the greatest potential innovation on show here is the unbreakable 'glass' of each screen.

Corning, the creators of this clip, are manufacturers of the Gorilla Glass that is used on over 200 million mobile devices.

(Yes, it's on the iPhone 4. And that's never smashed...)

I'm guessing they haven't quite cracked that bit yet, but when they do...

klout

2011-09-05T11:42:00.001+10:00

One simple reason to not lose any sleep over one's Klout score...

If data is the new oil, it's worth pointing out that it is crude oil.

It needs to be processed and filtered to be useful.

Even after that it's just information.

Data and information become important when turned into knowledge and understanding.

See Jonathan MacDonald's The Fallacy of Accurate Information.
Also my own Influence vs Popularity for a bit of context to this post.

NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL BRANDED UTILITY

2011-09-02T14:04:00.003+10:00

VIDEO: Welcome to Manland

SYDNEY: Ikea is trialling 'MANLAND' for four days this weekend (Father's Day etc) as a men-only play space to hang out in while wives and girlfriends go shopping.

Publicity manager Jude Leon said the idea was modelled on Ikea’s existing child play area, SMALAND.

Ms Leon also said women were given a buzzer to remind them to collect their other half after 30 minutes of shopping.

Free hot-dogs was the clincher, to be fair.

There's a new Ikea opening up the road from our place next week.
We wait...

via news.com.au
see also Ikea Australia

be seeing you

2011-09-02T11:39:00.002+10:00

Voyurl describe their service as 'like a private version of Google Analytics, made just for you and only about you. We wrap up the trends hiding in your online behavior and give that information back to you in easy-to-understand and fun-to-play-with ways. Explore interactive, drill-downable visualizations that reveal interesting insights about how you use the web..'

Voyurl also give the option of installing publishes everything you view in your browser and streaming it in real-time, out in public.

Likewise, you can view the 'clickstream' of others who are sharing share their 'clickstreams'.

Founder Adam Leibsohn said Voyurl is a 'reaction against the kind of "grey market" data-pimping that makes certain people run screaming from the "social web...I saw a lot of white-label apps that were gathering and selling personal data in this really irresponsible way -- people would tell me that they literally do nothing for their users, while collecting all their information behind the scenes. We take that data and turn it around and give it back to you, to improve the user experience.'

Again, another clue pointing towards the further personalisation of media and experience, and the notion of the personal layer that overlays the social layer in post-web 2.0.In clinical psychology, voyeurism is described as the sexual interest in or practice of spying on people engaged in intimate behaviors...so in this case data must be sexy.

One to watch. And be watched.

Finders fee: FastCoDesign.
via ProjectVRM mailing list.

Voyurl beta invites can be requested here.

william gibson

2011-08-30T12:42:00.000+10:00

I must admit to feeling some relief upon hearing this nugget from the Godfather of Cyberpunk, William Gibson.

'I'm anything but an early adopter...in fact i've never been that interested in computers.I don't watch them i watch how people behave around them.'

It's all about the people, people.

Finders fee: Niko Herzeg
Photo credit: Frederick Poirot
Info: William Gibson Wikipedia page

FastCustomer #appoftheweek

2011-08-26T15:41:00.001+10:00

As we all know;

'please stay on the line, your call is important to us'

translated into English actually means...

'We don't give a shit about your problems, everyone in this office is on the other phones flogging our sub-standard product to some other poor suckers, we'll get to you at some point when we've ran out of douchebags to fleece'.

My strategy has always been to call the sales number rather than customer service number, this seems to always get a result, particularly with mobile phone companies and utilities.

Those days could be over...

FastCustomer is an app that waits on hold for you, then rings your phone once a human customer service agent is on the other end of the line and ready talk to you.

App of the week.

HT to Tommy

quickerfeet - couponless local deals app

2011-08-25T15:13:00.000+10:00

Another SoMoLo shopping app, this time it’s an Aussie one.

QuickerFeet delivers couponless deals, available around where you are now, in real time.

From a customer standpoint the appeal is clear; there’s no risk, no data to be given, no coupons, no checking in, no signing up.

From a brand standpoint I still stand by my summation here: Repeat Business vs Loyalty

‘Repeat buyers will keep buying until a better deal comes along.
Loyalty is when your customer will turn down a better 'deal' to keep buying from you.’

However as a tactical thing, used with caution, the low barrier to usage, and no risk of spammage for the user, makes this one to watch.

The slickness and stylishness of the design and interface also adds to the usable-ness.

I’ve got it on my phone now, General Pants, Lorna Jane, AMF Bowling and 1001 Optical are caning it in Melbourne.

advertising's rich tapestry

2011-08-25T08:31:00.000+10:00

I'm currently immersed in Simon Reynolds' latest tome, 'Retromania - Pop Culture's Addiction To It's Own Past'.

The nub of Reynolds' argument is that nostalgia is thoroughly intwined within the consumer-entertainment-complex. To the point that retromania has now become the dominant force in the culture.

He calls the last ten years or so the 'Re' Decade.

Revivals, Reissues, Remakes, Re-enactments and endless Retrospection.

Looking at the internet it's hard to argue against his hypothesis.

YouTube as a repository for grainy VHS rips of bygone times, and even new kids off the verticalisation block like Hipstamatic and Instagram that turn present moments into faux-historical ruins with the touch of a retro filter.

In a tenuous ~~segway~~ segue, I had to share this nugget from chapter one by the (equal parts: brilliant yet infuriating) Julie Burchill, from her NME days, lifted from the singles review pages of circa 1980.

I'm victim to my own Reflective (the lesser of two evils versus Restorative) nostalgia here, I know, however Julie seems to somehow be harking-forward in this statement to a situation that is here-and-now in the philosophical debate over the future of communications in the digital-social-mobile era.

'There are two ways to view music. One is with tunnel vision, which is what I've got. If a record isn't by the Sex Pistols or Tamla Motown...it's just pointless. But how unhealthy, I'm just a cranky old punk past it's prime. But the alternative is just hideous, and it is the only alternative. It is to believe in ROCK'S RICH TAPESTRY.

So many smug saps think they are rebels, but anything that can fit into ROCK'S RICH TAPESTRY is dead at heart'

Perhaps we are now close to the point of a black vs white conversation on how to approach planning and executing communications.

There may be no longer be a middle ground.

To paraphrase another relic, it's time to decide which side of the bed you are lying on.

We have a surplus of information, yet a dearth of knowledge.

We have a surplus of stuff but a dearth of demand.

We don't need more stuff we need the stuff we've got to be better.

The way to cut through the noise and clutter is not to add more noise and clutter.

In the new world of personal media, connectedness and customer empowerment, Permission is the only way forward.

Harking back with talk of a new golden age of broadcast advertising is the stuff Revivals, Reissues, Remakes, Re-enactments and endless Retrospection.

While that may be aligned with the prevailing culture it's a symptom of a mass culture that may have actually run out of ideas.

We need some tunnel vision.

Think what no-one else is thinking and do things that no-one else is doing.

Anything that fits into ADVERTISING'S RICH TAPESTRY may be dead at heart.

trustfabric connect

2011-08-23T16:56:00.000+10:00

TrustFabric Connect is a VRM (Vendor Relationship Management) tool.

This is where we are heading, trust me.

When this becomes mainstream all bets are off.

It's a clean slate. It's start all over again time.

In the world of personal mass media it will be near impossible to reach ‘audiences’ through interruption only.

In the world of personal mass media I program my media.

In the world of personal mass media I own and control my own data.

The funnel is broken, it can never be fixed as customers are more unpredictable than ever before.

Yet customers are demanding more touch points and more interaction.

But on their own terms.

What do we do now?

• Define value from the viewpoint of the customer (sounds simple but it's the hardest bit)

• Identify all the touch points in a buyer journey

• Make value-creation interventions that flow together

• Let customers pull out their own value

While much of this will involve digitally enabled touchpoints the focus is not on emerging technologies per se, but on emerging cultural practices.

(To paraphrase Henry Jenkins)

Exciting, disruptive times we are living through...

Found via the ProjectVRM mailing list.

agile planning by joe strummer

2011-08-22T08:04:00.000+10:00

As it would have been Joe Strummer's birthday yesterday it seems to be the appropriate point to bring him into the agile planning conversation.

Not that I need an excuse to reference the ever-quotable .

'I try and keep an ear out and keep an open mind and enjoy something where I don't know what the hell is going on inside of it. That's what I really get out of it. Because to me it's new. That's what I get out of it. That joyful feeling of you don't know what's going to happen next...'

imagine the band

2011-08-22T07:43:00.000+10:00

As a youngster I made up the same mixtape several times, with several permutations trying to estimate what the 'final' Beatles LP may have been using the best bits from McCartney's solo debut, Lennon's Plastic Ono Band album and George Harrisons All Things Must Pass.

It would have been a corker, for sure.

Knowing also that Lennon/McCartney compositions post-64ish were pretty much written by the individual authors then pasted together or slightly embellished by one or the other, Never Get Out of The Boat favourite and erstwhile acquaintance Go Home Productions has done a decent approximation of what Lennon's Imagine piano riffs and McCartney's Band on the Run words would have produced.

Good to see GHP back after what's been too long an absence...

Also congrats to GHP for helping Weiden Kennedy Amsterdam pick up a Bronze Lion at Cannes, by providing the audio edit with this Heineken film.

agile planning by R.M. Rilke

2011-08-16T09:31:00.001+10:00

”I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

From R.M. Rilke's letters to a young poet .

René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian–Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most significant poets in the German language. His haunting images focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety: themes that tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist poets. - from Wikipedia

the competition

2011-08-12T09:12:00.006+10:00

Here's a few things that the competition don't do.

The competition don't buy your product or service.

The competition don't pay your bills.

The competition don't reccomend your product or service to friends, colleagues and family.

The competition don't write positive reviews.

The competition don't point others to information that help them choose you.

The competition don't leave positive comments on your website or blog.

The competition don't wear your t-shirt.

The competition don't get a tattoo of your logo.

The competition don't want to participate in helping you improve your product.

The competition don't share your content/advertising.

The competition don't participate positively on your Facebook group.

The competition don't retweet you.

The competition don't keep buying you when there's cheaper alternatives.

The competition don't want to connect with other people who support you.

There's probably loads more things the competition don't do.

So why do we spend so much time worrying about what the competition is up to, instead of focusing on serving our customers and supporters better?

if i can dream

2011-08-11T09:22:00.002+10:00

This is probably Elvis Presley's finest moment, his performance of 'If I Can Dream' - the jaw-dropping anthemic finale of the 1968 NBC TV Special.

After years in the doldrums of army service, crummy movies and half-baked throwaway hack-pop ditties Elvis reclaimed his position with supreme authenticity, total relevance ('68 USA was still reeling from Vietnam, Watts Riots, JFK, MLK) and pure soul.

This is my only comment on the thoroughly depressing scenes from London, Birmingham, Liverpool and other cities around the UK this week, and the equally depressing knee-jerk reactionary commentary from sections of the blog and twitter-spheres whom I would have thought knew better.

*As an interesting footnote, 'If I Can Dream' was actually written overnight, at the request of Elvis himself the night before the recording of the show, by Walter Earl Brown as a last-minute replacement for a schmaltzy Christmas number that the Colonel had originally wanted.

Whateveryour religious persuasion, if Christmas is a time for closing one year, lookingforward to the next with hope, faith in the human spirit and some old fashionedoptimism, this song says more about that than I'll Be Home For Christmas, for sure.

Wecould do with bringing a bit of that forward to August this year.

insight lesson from david bowie

2011-08-09T13:49:00.001+10:00

In a 2002 interview around his album Heathen David Bowie expressed his frustration at having to continually (over) explain certain nuances related to the project.

In particular the photo on the sleeve in which his eyes are replaced by fish eyes.

The fish being the secret symbol for Christians avoiding detection in prejudicial circumstances whilst signifying connection with each other.Ergo Heathen.

For those of us who are looking for those signs and symbols in relation to understanding human behaviour, and motivators thereof, as a profession there's a pointer from Dave, with a nod to the escalation of karaoke culture - the prevailing culture in which there is no responsibility, and instant fame/success can be had for little meaningful effort - which was already well underway even back in 2002.

'People are so fucking dumb. Nobody reads anymore, nobody goes out and looks and explores the society and culture that they were brought up in. People have attention spans of 5 seconds and as much depth as a glass of water.'

squirrels are eating your internet

2011-08-09T12:25:00.000+10:00

This just in from Gizmodo.
'Level 3 Communications, a major ISP, has a serious beef with squirrels. It turns out the little rodents have a penchant for chewing through their fiber optic lines. They actually account for 17% of the damages to their 84,000 mile network this year.'

PSFK Future Of Retail Report 2011

2011-08-09T11:42:00.004+10:00

PSFK Future Of Retail Report 2011 [Preview]

View more presentations from PSFK

The PSFK Future of Retail report is worth a look, even in the edited free version.

They identify 10 key retail trends that sit within 3 broad themes – what they describe as Online Expectations Offline Experience, Shopper Know-How and Redefined Retail Cartography.

A fancy way of describing the new buyer journey as it continues to evolve.

The PSFK team spoke to the people behind many projects that are transforming the shopper experience, including many senior retail and brand executives.

Worth a peek, at least confirm what we are already understanding about retail, it's mobile, social and local.

The PSFK report in full is also available to purchase with a versioning strategy au naturellement.

read this before our next meeting

2011-08-04T14:22:00.002+10:00

The latest release from Seth Godin's Domino Project is Read This Before Our Next Meeting by Al Pittampalli.
He's on a mission to change the way organizations hold meetings, make decisions, and coordinate action.

I'm there with you, matey.

He calls Outlook/Entourage meeting alerts 'weapons of mass interruption'.

Here's the manifesto:

The Modern Meeting supports a decision that has already been made.
The Modern Meeting starts on time, moves fast, and ends on schedule.
The Modern Meeting limits the number of attendees.
The Modern Meeting rejects the unprepared.
The Modern Meeting produces committed action plans.
The Modern Meeting refuses to be informational. Reading memos is mandatory.
The Modern Meeting works only alongside a culture of brainstorming.

The Modern Meetings Revolution from Al Pittampalli on Vimeo.

For a limited time, the Kindle edition is free...

really crap trainers

2011-08-04T12:30:00.003+10:00

Some startling insight from Gary, Tank Commander.
Gary is arguing for the necessity of nuclear weapons.

Many companies are essentially using this same rationale for the adoption of Facebook fan pages and Twitter accounts.

Gary is a fictional comedy character, unfortunately business is in real-life.

when is a branded utility not a utility?

2011-08-03T12:39:00.005+10:00

When it's a germ magnet.

The Cottonelle toilet roll cover, tin thing. With a lid one has to have to pop off and on before one has washed one's hands.

The broad definition of 'branded utility' being one of 'improving people lives and creating value for the user and the brand'

This?

They didn't think it through, did they?

HT Bud Caddell

proliferating across the earth

2011-08-03T09:53:00.001+10:00

Nietzsche's philosophy was regurgitated in a manipulated form by the Nazis in their quest for european/world domination.

Slightly extreme analogy but the message of the digital-social evolution of communications is often regurgitated and manipulated to their own grubby end by the never ending proliferation of social media 'experts' that shows no signs of abating.

Of course with the plethora of sensationalist tech blogs and A-list douchebags to pilfer dogma tweets and content from why bother creating your own stuff? Or cultivating your own point of view?

The process goes INFORMATION > UNDERSTANDING > WISDOM
Getting to wisdom is the goal.

To that point it's worth having a timely reminder of this clip from 2007.
This is a public service post as many of today's social media experts would not have actually been around when this first appeared, anyway.

what's up doc?

2011-08-02T16:57:00.000+10:00

I spotted this toy in the doctor's surgery the other day.
On first look I was convinced it was a star-jumping Osama Bin Laden in a red sweatshirt and flares.

Flip it and it's actually Bugs Bunny.

Phew.

gerd leonhard: the reinvention of advertising

2011-08-02T15:50:00.001+10:00

The here and now of advertising explained concisely by Gerd Leonhard in under 8 minutes.
No mean feat. He makes it look easy.
Send this clip to anyone you know who doesn't get it.

the future is thin and bendy?

2011-08-02T10:52:00.000+10:00

'This is the future. Everything is going to look and feel like this within five years,'
says Roel Vertegaal, the director of Queen’s University Human Media Lab and creator of PaperPhone - a flexible smartphone.
'This computer looks, feels and operates like a small sheet of interactive paper.
You interact with it by bending it into a cell phone, flipping the corner to turn pages, or writing on it with a pen.'

'Bend it, bend it just a little bit,
Take it easy, show you're likin' it'

As predicted by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Titch.

shiny objects #2356

2011-08-01T10:27:00.002+10:00

Once again Olivier Blanchard is one voice of reason well worth paying attention to in the world of digital-social marketing and branding and an antidote to the plethora of social media experts/enthusiasts/pro-retweeters.

He has penned a fairly comprehensive assessment of Google+ which I suggest you have a look at, it includes this paragraph of uncommon sense amongst other wisdom.

'I caution you against drinking anyone’s koolaid. Shiny object syndrome is a major source of noise on the web these days. Tech bloggers make a good living creating content on their blogs with the purpose of attracting as much traffic as possible in order to make as much advertising revenue as possible (and catch the eye of larger media outlets like Mashable, CNN, etc.) So every tech story they can get their hands on has the potential of earning them stacks of cash. The incentive then isn’t to truly analyze or report (or even wait and see), but to sensationalize every new platform release, from Quora to Google Buzz. There is nothing wrong with it, but just be aware of how the web “thought leadership” and content curation bubbles work. A lot of noise doesn’t mean a whole lot except a feeding frenzy of web traffic and incremental revenue. Right now, Google+ is the big story. A while ago, Google Wave was too.'

in search of excellence - 1 tweet summary

2011-08-01T09:25:00.001+10:00

Tom Peters, in response to a tweet, summarises his tome In Search of Excellence - and his philosophy, in less than 140 characters. 127 to be precise.

"Cherish your people, cuddle your customers, wander around, 'try it' beats 'talk about it,' pursue excellence, tell the truth."

Whilst Seth Godin once said:
'If you can't state your position in eight words, you don't have a position.'
Even Seth would probably give Tom a pass on this one.

i'll pick up something for dinner on the way home

2011-07-25T11:23:00.001+10:00

When is a shop not a shop?
When it's a poster, of course.

'It is the agencies that can think creatively at the intersection of technology, strategy, and consumer behavior, and who aren’t afraid to develop products for their clients, that are best able to produce groundbreakingly effective work today.' - Jay Grey

HT Tommy

getabl

2011-07-25T09:14:00.001+10:00

You ping out a message saying what you want, vendors ping you back with an offer.
It had to happen.

They say...

'GETABL connects you live to your favorite local businesses, at the moment you are looking for something they provide.

You search for your desired product or service and local merchants are notified instantly via text. Merchants can then respond and present their best deal to you. If you like the deal sent, you can simply walk into their place of business and redeem. Its that easy!

GETABL is a patent pending social utility that unlocks real time deal seeking and assistance capabilities for c*nsumers with unprecedented customer acquisition tools for merchants.'

It seems to only work for USA at the moment. We'll be watching this space...

HT Project VRM mailing list.

UPDATE
See also Zaarly,
'It's a little bit eBay and a little bit Craigslist, but it's mobile, real-time, and location-based'

thanks Niko Herzeg

be reasonable, demand the impossible

2011-07-22T11:27:00.003+10:00

I've only just ordered @LukeGWilliams book Disrupt not 30 minutes ago and already I'm getting excited just reading the preview.

'A disruptive hypothesis is an intentionally unreasonable statement...designed to upset your comfortable,
business equilibrium and bring about an accelerated change in your own thinking.

Contrast this with the more traditional definition of “hypothesis,” which is a best-guess explanation that’s based on a set of facts.'

I'm accused of being deliberately unreasonable (as in every day) and my retort is simple.
It's the method.

Be reasonable, demand the impossible!

if it ain't broke (shot by both sides again)

2011-07-22T09:43:00.003+10:00

Last month I wrote about the disruptionistas eternal problem, being shot by both sides.

'Being the scourge of both extreme traditionalists, and also the extreme inhabitants of the social media echo-chamber means one has to beware of being shot by both sides.'

And as if by magic I stumbled on the blog of Luke Williams, Author of Disrupt (Amazon order placed, thank you) and co-founder of Frog Design.

'The attitude, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is the enemy.
It’s the seemingly unbroken aspects of a situation that provide the richest opportunities for innovation. They tend to be the things we ignore, precisely because they don’t change.
It’s more effective to start by identifying something in your business that’s not necessarily a problem, in a place where others wouldn’t expect to look. In other words, think about what usually gets ignored, pay attention to what’s not obvious, and start with things that ain’t broke.'

Innovation or disruption doesn't happen with fixing things that are broken, it comes from propelling things that are already working further up the curve than is reasonable to expect.

there’s a hole in the funnel - redux

2011-07-21T15:29:00.001+10:00

This is a newer version on a older theme - much covered in these pages, natch - the changed buyer journey, and the death of the funnel.
This was written for the newsletter of the Australian Marketing Institute, it's coming out next week I think.

___________________________________________________________________

There’s a hole in the funnel

As marketers we’ve all grown up with the ‘funnel’ metaphor as a framework by which we think about a buyer journey.

Customers, or prospects, would start out at the wide end of the funnel then narrow down their potential choices til a sale pops out the other end.

While we could even argue that this metaphor has never really been that accurate, it’s certainly broken now, in the 21st century.

The major spanner in the works has been ‘c*nsumer’ empowerment, enabled by the internet.

We now have almost unprecedented ability to; research and learn about companies, products and services and then make decisions, often independently of marketing and advertising messages, and increasingly following recommendations of other people like us.

In fact, around 60% of the touchpoints we may encounter on a typical journey now come from sources other than the brand.
And a customer journey that might have taken days or weeks in the past can now happen in a matter of minutes thanks to the mobile web.

Think about your own behaviour.
Have you ever googled a restaurant review while standing outside on the pavement?
Check.
Who do you trust more?
A company’s website or customer reviews on Amazon or Trip Advisor?
Check.

This happens at a stage that McKinsey & Co - in their 2009 report The New Customer Decision Journey - called active evaluation.

When the number of brands your customer is considering actually increases when they start poking about online. This is exactly the opposite of the premise of the traditional funnel, which goes from broad to narrow.

Back to that restaurant. The one you are standing outside gets 3 stars but you discover a five star review for Luigi’s, which you never knew about but it’s just round the corner.

This is the stage when we are intent on purchasing and we are actively researching the product.

Here's where the disconnect happens as much of advertising focuses on 'awareness' and trying to get into the 'initial consideration set' then catching sales at the other end with promotions, coupons and the like.
Yet, 'when the c*nsumer reaches out during their active evaluation stage, companies are not providing the right facts and testimonials that the consumer is looking for'.

This is where having a content strategy and leveraging consumer-driven marketing comes into it's own.

Content strategy is not just about being cute with keywords and SEO, it’s also about thinking like a publisher.

Becoming the leading online authority on your category or teaching people how to make best use of your product or service.

Authentic content makes your brand findable, credible and believable during this all important active evaluation phase, where customers are won or lost.

And when 'two thirds of the influence is from consumer driven touchpoints — word of mouth, talking to friends and family, searching on the internet’, what have you got to say that is worth spreading?

Ask yourself what you are doing to support the whole buyer journey.
Where are the opportunities to amplify the voice of the customer?
Can you create those opportunities?
Which are the touch-points of most influence?
Is your biggest issue simply awareness or is it churn?
Added value experiences for customers are no longer just a nice-to-have. Customers are demanding them. Or else voting with their feet.

So, it's official - there's a hole in the funnel.
People no longer make buying decisions in a linear way.
People turn to peers, friends, and other users for advice above other media.
The potential number of choices increases in active evaluation.
The more reasons (value) you can give customers to stick or prospects to switch, you win.

situations

2011-07-20T09:59:00.000+10:00

Here's something I've written for the Digital Pigeon newsletter. It comes out later this week but I thought I'd give a sneak preview here first....

_______________________________________________________

Facebook lessons from the Situationist international

In his 1967 work La Société du spectacle (The Society of the Spectacle) leading Situationist, Guy Debord documented his theory of The Spectacle.

In it, he argued, that through mass media, television, hollywood and emerging technologies, capitalism - perpetrator of The Spectacle - was controlling the conditions of human existence.

In effect, the world we see is not the real world but a world we have been conditioned to see, via an onslaught of images.

The Spectacle's audience simply observe the ‘show’ – ie life - as passive spectators, consumers if you like, without actually participating or experiencing it.

Debord saw the only outcome as Alienation.
The Spectacle made us all spectators. Manipulated into substituting material things for authentic experiences and separated from each other.
Passively consuming the image, the spectacle, together but ultimately isolated from everybody and everything.

Debord and his fellow Situationists felt that "if we can explain how the nightmare works, everyone will wake up!"

However, for the lumpen proletariat to wake up they would need to be active participants in the process.

To that end, a tactic of the Situationist International was the construction of situations.

A constructed situation being a ‘moment of life concretely and deliberately constructed by the collective organization of a unitary ambiance and game of events.’

Ironically, as marketers, as ones who in the past have actively perpetrated the Spectacle, through branding and advertising, there are some learnings from the construction of situations we can apply to marketing in the age of social technologies and connectedness.

As a footnote, Debord et al would doubtless be perplexed by the voluntary reification, or self-commoditisation afforded to individuals by Facebook, but that’s another discussion…

So
A situation is designed to be lived by its participants
It’s not just ambience, it’s an integrated ensemble of behavior.

In regard to Facebook fan pages or any type of community building effort it’s important to note that simply amassing vast numbers of fans or followers (ie buying likes) has little or no value.
It’s also important to remember that the destination in Facebook is not the page but the news feed. This is where content (or objects, to use Facebook parlance) is experienced.

An Object is more likely to show up in your News Feed if
you and people you know have been interacting with it or it’s creator, recently.

So social context and quality of interactions are the most important factors for Facebook engagement.

I repeat: social context and quality of interactions.

To describe our lesson in achieving this comes I’m paraphrasing notes on the construction of situations first described in issue one of Situationist International from 1958.

Situations require:

1. A temporary director or orchestrator.
The orchestrator is responsible for coordinating the basic elements necessary in the construction of the situation, and for conducting certain interventions.

In Facebook these are the page admins.
The interventions are simple. Leave no comment unanswered, leave no contribution unthanked and use every opportunity to connect the participants, or constituents with each other.

2. Direct agents
The direct agents living the situation, who have taken part in creating the collective project and worked on the practical composition of the
ambience.

The reason that 90% of social media marketing efforts fail is down to one simple factor.

Marketers and their agencies are married to the notion of the Spectacle.
Otherwise known as launch-and-leave, the defining trait of advertising.

To grow a community, to grow participation the community needs to be constantly fed, prodded, poked, questioned, invited to participate.
There is nothing ingenuine or inauthentic in using direct agents to agitate.

In fact it’s the opposite.
Why should your customers want to get involved and support a situation that the brand and it’s agencies can’t be bothered to live in?

3. Passive spectators
Passive spectators who have not participated in the constructive work, BUT whom can/should be forced into action.

You should be familiar with Nielsen’s Law of Participation Inequality.
Also known as the 90-9-1 rule.

In any online community:
90% of the community will be passive. They will simply watch, spectate and will not contribute.
They are also known a ‘lurkers’.
In many cases they may not even be fans, particularly if you have employed some sort of bribery tactic to attract ‘likes’.

9% will comment, share and edit/remix/modify content.
Likewise these advocates should be welcomed as direct agents (2)

1% will be the power creators (they will create original content, blog posts, videos etc) – these creators should be developed to become orchestrators (1) wherever possible.

In reference to the earlier statement that simply amassing vast numbers of fans or followers (ie buying likes) has little or no value, the objective of amassing fans is to grow the 9% and the 1%. The bigger the pie then the bigger those slices will be.
We’re wired as humans to follow what looks like a good idea.
Good ideas are more often than not those which everyone seems to be doing.
In marketing terms this is the antithesis of spectacle.

There is no situationist art or situationist music or situationist marketing, but only a situationist use of these mediums.
In this case, can using social technologies as a platform for connectedness and value create situations?

in the ghetto

2011-07-16T11:59:00.004+10:00

A genuine question for ad agency types.

When is a producer not a producer?
When is a planner not a planner?
When is an art director not an art director?

When they are a digital producer/planner/art director, of course.

Look at the credits on any campaign/project on one of the industry blogs.
There will be a Producer listed and an interactive Producer.
A Planner and a digital Planner, perhaps.

While of course the skill sets are different.
A TV producer and a web producer do different things.
An insight planner is different from a crm planner or a social connections planner.

By that rationale of labelling should we then have interruption planners and interactive planners?
If we have one we must have the other.
Instead we just seem to have the other.

My irk is that the digital is invariably other.
By labelling it digital it's somehow SEPARATE from 'proper' planning.
It becomes secondary by it's otherness.
It's down the totem pole.
It's the little brother or sister.
The add-on after the real planning.
The nice-to-have.
'Lets get the basics right first then do some social'.

This is not a pop at the traditionalists per se.
It's the digitalists that are as much the problem, by revelling in their otherness.

My fellow digerati, honestly, until we figure this out we'll always be in the ghetto.

the boy with the thorn in his side

2011-07-12T07:52:00.001+10:00

One little cultural quirk (I'm reluctant to label it a phenomenon) that's dying out with the uptake of smartphones and the querty keyboard is the art of predictive text poetry.
A friend of mine used to be a practitioner, his process involved writing the original poem with pencil and paper then rewriting it using an old school mobile phone, and accepting whatever the phone decided the words were.

If you've got an old phone kicking about give it a try.
A common predictive replacement would be the one where home is interpreted as good.
'I can never go good now' etc

My equivalent now is to stick itunes on shuffle and allow serendipity to take it's course.
My fellow innovationistas, I'm convinced there's some correlation between brain activity and itunes shuffle.

Like his Mozz-ness was reading my mind...

wheel of concept

2011-07-07T15:23:00.000+10:00

Although this tool has only come to light this week, I am absolutely of the view that certain media agencies have had secret access for the last couple of years - it's the only way to explain the box-of-frogs-chuck-enough-shit-at-the-wall-and-some-of-it-is-bound-to-stick idea generation process that they seem to adhere to.

Go on, you want to... http://wheelofconcept.com/

R.A.V.E ON or how to do content strategy like it's the NEW rock'n'roll

2011-07-07T08:26:00.002+10:00

Here’s some thoughts for the front end on engagement, types of content, and frequency.
This is not exhaustive by any means but this is the bare bones of what we need to be planning.
I'm using this as a base and building upon it.

This is a cut-down version of a forthcoming e-book Eaon’s Law of Engagement on Social Platforms
Working title: RAVE ON.

R – Relevance
The content and message must be relevant to the recipient around what matters to them.
One part of Seth's Permission triple.
Features and benefits may or may not be relevant, a story and shared worldview will almost always be relevant.
Find the story.

A – Authenticity
People are screaming out for some genuine authenticity, not karaoke-culture bullshit.
People are not stupid, they smell phoneyness a long way off.
Keep it real.

V – Value
Creativity is the process of bringing new ideas into existence that have value.(thx Sir Ken Robinson)
How do we make our constituents smarter, fitter, better connected? (thx @umairh)
See also Eaon's (appropriated) Theory of Value.
Give me some substance.

E – Easy
If we want people to interact make it as easy as possible.
Attention is our biggest cost. If it’s too hard to figure out what to do no-one will do it.
True story.

ON – We are ALWAYS ON
It never stops, we can’t ever take our foot off the gas.
Life happens 24-7-365.
Volume is key. Quality is even key-er.
90% of everything else is shit.

Attention in social media is transient and fleeting.
Strategising for outcomes from one tweet or post is a one way ticket to palooka-ville (it has worked but there's a huge chunk of good fortune when that happens - it's not the rule)
And always ON-POINT. Never compromise our point of view on the world.
We need to work out who’s in and who’s out.

Engagement...

1 – Who?
Nobodies are the new somebodies – we have no idea of the sphere of influence of individuals (thx @guykawasaki)
Treat everyone as VIPs.
Every passive fan converted to active is a win.
We are banking karma for later, every somebody was a nobody once.

2 – When?
Cultivate the relationships, even when it seems like there’s no immediate value (see point 1 bullet 3)
Leave no comment unanswered...
Leave no kind word unthanked...

3 – Speed?
People are used to crummy mediocrity from brands.
Just by being fast to respond we have a point of difference.
Speed doesn't kill, lack of speed kills.
Get on one, matey.

Types of content...

1 – WHAT? - Use every piece of media available.
Facebook – the currency of Facebook is pictures and video, these get the most comments and likes.
Facebook – invite contribution, ask the community to help compile lists (team of the week, best bits of movie dialogue etc etc) etc
Twitter – the currency of Twitter is links – Build the brand with context by pointing them at the right stuff that matters (thx @guykawasaki, again)

2 – REMEMBER WHAT FANS LOVE!
NUMBER ONE - THEMSELVES...
ACCESS TO STUFF THAT THE PLEBS DON’T GET...
TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED...

3 – SELL THE STORY/THE DREAM
People are not stupid – they know what beer/toilet paper/tuna is.
Sell them WHY we do what we do, NOT WHAT WE DO.
The market for something to believe in is infinite (thx @gapingvoid)

Your thoughts, comments and criticisms would be appreciated.

Overall foresight and inspiration Jonathan MacDonald - the Communication Ideal - thanks.

the irefutable law of disruptive innovation

2011-07-07T07:46:00.000+10:00

Optimisation improves the performance of existing products, services and structures along the lines of improvements that the mainstream will value.

Disruptive innovation, however, will more often than not often have characteristics that staus quo may not want, probably won't like or even be prepared to accept. In the beginning.

Eventually you win.

Ghandi image courtesy of facevectory.com

brand activation lessons from the first 30 seconds of Anarchy in the UK

2011-07-06T08:18:00.001+10:00

Testament to the notion that it is possible to deliver a complete brand story in 30 seconds (or less)...

00.00 - 00.05
RIGHT NOW…

Disruption or what.
The past is history, the future's a mystery, but today is a gift - that's why we call it the present.
Wise words from Kung Fu Panda.

Within the first few seconds of Anarchy in the UK we are irrefutably embedded in the present.
There are only 3 time frames. The past, the present and the future.

This opening statement clearly positions the work in the here and now.
This is not retro or futuristic, this is now-ism.

The most important thing is working out what’s important.
The important work is the work being done right now.

Already I'm starting to get what this is about.
As Pete Townsend famously said 'This is actually happening'.

OK, let's go...

00.06 - 00.21
I am an Antichrist…
I am an Anarchist…

Start delivering the key idea right from the off.

To this day this is still arguably the most powerful couplet EVER delivered in a pop song. A nation of 12 year old kids, with the bed covers pulled over their heads listening to John Peel, confronted with this opening statement, were captivated from the beginning.

A bold statement of purpose - an IDEA.
This wasn't about product features or benefits.
This wasn't 'I am a different kind of pop singer from the ones you may be used to'

It was about the STORY.

An ORIGINAL story.

The words Anarchist and Antichrist had never appeared in a pop song before...EVER.
Never mind within the the first 20 seconds.

And already the brand story is filtering out the believers versus the non-believers.
By this stage you are either IN or OUT.

00.21 - 00.30
Don't know what I want but I know how to get it
I wanna destroy passerby

Now comes the activation part.
We know now what we are supposed to DO.

The enemy has been identified.
The passer by. The passive consumer, the lumpen proles.

Within 30 seconds we know WHERE we are in space and time, WHY we are here and WHAT we are supposed to do.
The interactive element.

Anarchy in the UK is a situation, an IDEA we are invited to participate in.
There's bias for action.

It's uncertain - we don't know what we want - but that's what makes it interesting.
The sense of possibility.
This is AGILE - working without a map.
Testing a hypothesis, responding to change as it happens.

And the next day, at school, a quick look around the playground and YOU KNOW JUST BY LOOKING who else had the same moment, under their own duvet, with their own radio, the previous night.

30 seconds of noise on a tinny transistor radio that changed everything.

That's the power of an IDEA.

what's in a name?

2011-07-04T08:09:00.001+10:00

What's in a name? In many cases, particularly for the small biz, a memorable brand name can be one of your biggest assets.

If there's not much money around to spend on marketing then an instantly memorable, repeatable and google-able name can have a disproportionate effect to findability.

An unique ownable brand name can often allow you to own the search results.
It's also unlikely that potential customers will confuse you for someone else.
This is what I sometimes call Echo-and-the-Bunnymen syndrome.

The person in the van in front of me in this pic has taken some of this on board, I guess, but has stumbled on one key factor.
If I don't know how to pronounce the name it makes it a helluva lot harder to remember or repeat.
I don't know whether this is some esoteric Francaise-ism (pron: ee-strays) or if he/she's asking us not to stress (pron: why-stress?) about our waterproofing situation.

Either way, I'm not sure if I'll remember him/her when I need my waterproofing and coating (whatever that is...but that's another topic).

window display of the week

2011-07-04T07:48:00.001+10:00

I was tempted to title this post Society of The Spectacle but I'll save that for another time.
Here's the window display from EyeGallery on Toorak Road.

There's two main reasons why this is great.
1. The Optitians convention is to talk about two-for-one frames, free sight tests or designers - features, service or price etc.
Instead EyeGallery talk about the other things, the things a customer actually cares about.

- Sunglasses are for looking cool
- Regular specs are for looking smart.

2. You know exactly what EyeGallery are about AS A BRAND by the display.
- They poke fun at Margaret Thatcher and George W Bush, whereas they think Marylin Monroe, Twiggy, Bob Marley and Jim Morrison (out of shot, sorry) are cool.
- The Warhol-esque imagery style also adds to the cool factor.
- And Uncle Bert is obviously cool and smart.

Spec-tacular.

the best time to tweet

2011-06-30T14:03:00.004+10:00

We answer today's burning questions.
When is the best time to tweet?
Some interesting stats in the Twitter section of this chart by Social Media Graphics.

The biggest spike of retweet action - 6% - occurs around 5pm every day, optimum tweet rate is between 1-4 tweets-per-hour and the greatest Twitter CTR spikes at mid-day and 6pm.

As we know, statistics rarely tell the whole story.

In reality the answer is somewhat more fundamental.

The best time to tweet is when you have something interesting to say.

how to have a viral video hit?

2011-06-29T07:29:00.003+10:00

We were commissioned by the Melbourne International Film Festival to make some short promotional films in the run up to the 60th annual Festival, which kicks off on 21st July.

One of the films The Potato Peelers has been a bit of a runaway 'viral' success going from zero to nearly 300,000 views in less than 48 hours.

The Potato Peelers takes the mickey out of the (wrong) notion held by some cinephiles that Eastern European films, in this instance Polish, are a bit grim.

How to have a viral video hit?
Sadly, there's no silver bullet I can impart.
Despite opinions to the contrary I would stand by the view that it is nigh on impossible to strategise for a viral hit.

You can, however, have brilliant writing (thanks to our own Nick Kelly) and beautifully crafted execution.

And looking at the You Tube stats and comments reveals that the the Poles themselves have a fantastic self depreciating humour - on a par with Scotland - as the bulk of the views and comments have come from Poland itself.

Viral, as an effect, being subject to the natural selection of interesting.

Over thinking it, leads to only one thing...mamy przejebane.

shot by both sides

2011-06-28T13:34:00.001+10:00

In the quest for enlightenment extremes of self-indulgence on the one side and self-mortification on the other are not advised by the Buddha. Thus the recommendation, as described by the Noble Eightfold Path, is often called the Middle Way.

Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration.

Notice there's no specific mention of Right Facebooking and Right Tweeting (though these are covered as subsections of all of the above).

For the new marketing provocateur this, however, presents another problem.
Being the scourge of both extreme traditionalists, and also the extreme inhabitants of the social media echo-chamber means one has to beware of being shot by both sides.

What's so funny 'bout Simplicity of Purpose and Coherent Actions (sic)?
Channels take care of themselves.

I wormed my way into the heart of the crowd
I was shocked to find what was allowed...

what makes you unique?

2011-06-28T09:44:00.002+10:00

Jerry Garcia on strategy.

'We did not merely want to be the best of the best,we
wanted to be the only ones who do what we do”

fluff

2011-06-28T09:05:00.002+10:00

I'm unashamedly re-posting an entire paragraph from the recent McKinsey report on The Perils of Bad Strategy, as it's the most incisive comment on the prevailing mediocrity I've read in recent weeks, and further testament to the Law of Marketing Inequality.

'A final hallmark of mediocrity and bad strategy is superficial abstraction—a flurry of fluff—designed to mask the absence of thought. Fluff is a restatement of the obvious, combined with a generous sprinkling of buzzwords that masquerade as expertise. Here is a quote from a major retail bank’s internal strategy memoranda: “Our fundamental strategy is one of customer-centric intermediation.” Intermediation means that the company accepts deposits and then lends out the money. In other words, it is a bank. The buzzphrase “customer centric” could mean that the bank competes by offering better terms and service, but an examination of its policies does not reveal any distinction in this regard. The phrase “customer-centric intermediation” is pure fluff. Remove the fluff and you learn that the bank’s fundamental strategy is being a bank'.

Simplicity of purpose over scared insights, indeed.

you are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge

2011-06-27T16:13:00.001+10:00

Straight outta adland crazy motherf*cker named Eaon P,
From the gang called Plannaz With Attitude,
When I'm called off, I got blogged off,
Squeeze the twitter and strategies are hauled off,
You too boy, if ya tweet with me,
The suits are gonna hafta come and google me,
Off yo ass that's how I'm goin out,
For the punk creatives that's showin out,
Clients start to mumble, they wanna rumble,
Mix em and cook em in a pot like Tumblr,
Goin off on a agile planner like that,
With a deck that's pointed at yo ass,
So give it up media,
Ain't no tellin when I'm down for a YouTube,
Here's a strategy to keep ya dancin’,
With a klout rank like Chris Brogan,

New Buyer Journey is the tool,
Don't make me act the social media fool,
You can go branded content, no maybe,
I'm knockin suits out tha box, daily,
Yo weekly, monthly and yearly,
Until them dumb motherf*ckers see clearly,
That I'm down with the capital R-O-I,
You can't Google+ with me,
So when I'm in your business unit, you better duck,
Cos Eaon P is agile as f*ck,
As I tweet, believe I'm data,
But when I come back, boy, I'm comin straight outta Melbourne...

Damn, that shit was dope.

friday diptych: oscar wilde on mediocrity

2011-06-24T13:39:00.000+10:00

Doing what you believe is right or doing the thing that will be popular are markedly different.
For a start, the popular thing has already been done many times, that's why it's popular.

And popular ideas are only popular until the new popular thing comes along.
And that's now, popularly, about every five minutes.

Unpopular ideas touch a nerve, they are controversial, go against the grain, they zag.
In fact, unpopularity of an idea is often directly proportionate to it's interestingness.

The problem with doing what's popular, is that nearly everyone else is doing it too.

As it's Friday have an Oscar Wilde diptych for your powerpoints:

'Popularity is the one insult I have never suffered...
...to be popular one must be a mediocrity.'

bruzil

2011-06-23T09:32:00.003+10:00

It was great to see Scotland lift a trophy in Europe this week.
The 'Bruzil' campaign for Irn Bru picked up a Gold Lion at Cannes in the Media category.

See all the project elements over here.

Obviously I'm biased, but there's real lessons here about:
- The power of cultural significance in ideas that really connect.
- Estabishing your authentic core story and staying true to it.

Or how having a purpose idea allows a fizzy drink to represent a nation's hopes and dreams (a bit).

Congratulation to The Leith Agency and PHD North.

Filed under Never Mind The Proposition.

return of the mach

2011-06-23T09:06:00.003+10:00

Machiavellianism is the term that psychologists use to describe the act of deceiving and manipulating other people for one's personal gain. It's also one of the three personality traits referred to as the dark triad, alongside narcissism and psychopathy.

Unfortunately, working in advertising I wouldn't know anything about that.

I was also pretty sure until recently that Niccolò Machiavelli, was a midfielder for Inter Milan.

Minor personality defects aside the Mac did have a cute repertoire of one-liners, this one being of particular interest to the innovationista:

'He who innovates will have for his enemies all those who are well off under the existing order of things'

That's probably a bit brutal, but testament to the difficulty in effecting necessary and timely change where, on the surface of things, nothing appears to need changing, and in fact everything looks pretty good.

The apparent total flop of the Blackberry Playbook (and it's implications) being case in point.
RIM could have cleaned up years ago but for whatever reason some people chose to snooze, and ultimately, it looks like they are going to lose.

inspired by a timely tweet from @erinyasgar

eaon's law of marketing inequality part 2 : xbox NUads #dumbdumb

2011-06-23T08:15:00.001+10:00

This here is one of those strange paradoxical anomalies, if there are such things, that arise from time to time.

It's the latest advertising 'innovation' from Xbox Live Advertising - voice and gesture based interactive ads. They call it NUads (ka-chow) - that means Natural User Interface Ads.

Potentially interesting technology described with extraordinary and excruciatingly DUMB examples that lack any understanding of why and how people share content or are likely to interact with each other and/or brands.

I stopped counting the number of 'this is really cool' mentions after the first minute.
Sorry mate, its not cool at all.

I'll leave you with a piece of one of the (almost universally scathing over numerous pages) comments left on YouTube from the Xbox Live fans...

'Wow, I can not believe I will be able to consume ads in such a unique way. I'm so glad I am paying the 50 dollars a year to receive an ad powered online service. Statistically we would like more ads!!!!'

See also Eaon's Law of Marketing Inequality

how to be interesting

2011-06-22T16:59:00.001+10:00

Take a tip from Patti Smith.

'I haven't really changed at all since I was 11. I still dress the same. I still have the same manners of study. Like when I was a kid, I wanted to write a poem about Simon Bolivar. I went to the library and read everything I could. I wrote copious notes. I had 40 pages of notes just to write a small poem. So my process hasn't changed much.'

To be interesting, be interested.

Thanks The99Percent.