Never get out of the boat

Thursday, April 19, 2012

i am not a consumer [revisited #241]

Perhaps the continual use of the word 'consumers' in circumstances when simply saying 'people' is by far more natural and appropriate - not to mention human - is not just the lazy habit of the unimaginative. Maybe these messages from all quarters that prompt us to think like and be 'consumers' are something more deliberate. More akin to 'priming'?

I came across the following study which appears to shine a light on a very subtle manipulation that successfully influenced behaviour in a group.

'….In their study, researchers from Northwestern University asked participants to imagine that they were one of four people sharing a common water source. In the scenario, there has been a drought, and now there is a water shortage.

Participants were put into two groups. In one group, the four people in the scenario were referred to as “consumers,” while in the other group the four people are referred to as “individuals.”

After being given the facts about each person’s prior water usage, participants were then asked to rate how responsible their own character in the scenario was for the water shortage, whether they saw others in the scenario are partners or competitors in solving the water shortage problem, and how obligated they felt to be part of the solution to them problem (ie, by cutting their own water usage).

Researchers found that participants in the “consumers” condition rated themselves as less responsible, the others as competitors more than cooperators, and were less willing to be part of the solution than did participants in the “individuals” condition.

In other words, simply referring to people as “consumers” rather than “individuals” caused participants to be less generous, accept less responsibility, and to view the others as competitors rather than allies.'

If we agree that there are basically two ways to influence behaviour - to manipulate behaviour or to inspire it - then this experiment clearly falls into the former category. What's very interesting is the simplicity of the manipulation.

Thoughts > Words > actions > Habits > Values > Destiny...

Full article at beyondthepurchase.org

introducing gapjumpers

Over the last 18 months or so I met a number of students from the various Melbourne Universities who are studying or about to graduate from the various courses relating to the advertising/communications business.

The main things they want are intro's to Creative Directors, and a critical eye cast accross their portfolio (or 'book' as is the adland parlance, which as an aside is peculiar in itself inasmuch as it's a fairly elderly concept in this day and age).

In almost 100% of cases one of my main bits of 'advice' - this is a straight lift out of the Russell Davies school - is to do something else, something unique and interesting, on top of their resume and portfolio.

Writing a blog about something you are passionate about, make some films, do some sculpture or whatever.

The point being that every year hundreds of grads pass out of uni with broadly the same background, resume and percieved talent. What is the thing about 'you' - your unique bit of interestingness that means you'll get noticed.

This, of course, is not rocket science.

Interesting-ness has pretty much been subject to the same commodification as 'engagement', and 'social media' and all the rest of it.

What is hard to commoditise though, is commitment, passion and purpose.

Using one's skills for good, going beyond the call of duty, beyond the mundane (because the mundane bar has been significantly lifted in recet times).

There are some new opportunities to up your Elvis.

Enter Gapjumpers.

'What we do for students.

You demonstrate your talents and abilities by answering challenges from brands looking for non-cookie-cutter solutions. If your solution to a challenge is deemed worthy enough, it will earn an endorsement from the brand. This will serve as a significant indication of your skills and a demonstration of your work ethic and aptitude on your resume.

Unlike crowdsourcing and internships, you are in total control, you choose to accept or decline the challenge. All decisions are yours.

What’s not to like about that?'

Addressing directly the graduates dilemma - 'How can you I show that I have what it takes when I’ve never been in a professional situation as an employee to demonstrate my skills and aptitude? Gapjumpers is a new company started by good friends of Never Get Out Of The Boat, Kedar Iyer and Petar Vujosevic. They work out of Santiago in Chile, though their tentacles reach throughout the globe, and are supported by both The Chilean Government and Start-Up Chile - a program to attract world-class early stage entrepreneurs to start their businesses in Chile.

So, students. Gapjumpers are waiting to hear from you, now. Go and do something.

that's entertainment!

The jury here is still out on the new aesthetic, I've not heard a decent enough argument that there is anything of any real cultural significance emerging beyond a kind of stylistic arch-ness and wilful contrary-ness.

The whole tension between humans and machines schtick was pretty much done to the n-th degree by Kraftwerk in the 70's.

Having said that it's been a while since any kind of art 'movement' has been driven by such a intense anti-nostalgia kick so I'm still open to see what develops.

NOTE: What do I know? I'm still trying to get my head around the relational aesthetics thing that DB introduced me to some 4 or 5 years ago.

'Relational aesthetics takes as its subject the entirety of life as it is lived, or the dynamic social environment, rather than attempting mimetic representation of object removed from daily life...'

And I'm pretty sure that Weavrs is mixed up this this too.

Anyway, I'm not sure which bucket this falls into but the Scotland Yard 'wanted' app called Facewatch ID, which invites people to view and share CCTV images of petty crime suspects in their area by inputting their postcode on their smartphone or iPad struck me a being something.

It's a peculiar 'gameification' of neighbourhood watch. Spot a suspect, press the face and type in a name. Only those wanted for minor crimes such as shoplifting or anti-social behaviour are featured, it's amateur hour, or like the local, mobile and (anti) social multi-screen version of Britain's Got ASBO Talent.

'The police are seeking to identify the following individuals in respect of ongoing investigations. The individuals pictured are being sought as both persons of interest and witnesses to crimes. No inference should be drawn that any person pictured is wanted by the police for criminal activity. Facewatch Limited has been provided with the images by the police forces identified with the images and is undertaking this service on behalf of such forces.'

Of course there's always been the magnetic attraction between art and the criminal underworld. This is perhaps just our karaoke culture version.

Friday, April 13, 2012

bleacher report lifts the lid on the glasgow r*ngers debacle

There's a common notion that Americans don't 'get' football. They even call it soccer.

This is not a fair assessment, the game is a huge participation sport over there, particularly with women.

Similarly here in Australia - it's the biggest participation sport, but the pro game has never quite taken off as a spectator sport.

But back to America.

One thing the American's do 'get', very well, is the BUSINESS of sport.

I'm going to quote large this chunk from an article by Daniel O'Connell in Bleacher Report, the US's 4th largest sports media site with 25+ million monthly readers, concerning the debacle around the Glasgow R*ngers FC situation.

Yes, as an Aberdeen supporter I'm biased. There is no love lost between the supporters of the respective clubs.

But it's interesting to see that amidst the kerfuffle it takes a US sports journo to step back at the situation, take a wide view and then call it absolutely correct.

Here it goes...

'Consider then the curious case of Rangers Football Club. The most successful club in Scotland, they have won the Scottish title 54 times and claim over 100 first-class honors in their history. They attract the second-highest attendances in the SPL and their fan base probably provide the majority of the viewing public for SPL matches televised on Sky Sports and ESPN.

Despite this, Rangers is in trouble. Since the club was taken over by Craig Whyte in May 2011, they have not remitted any of the taxes due to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) in Pay as You Earn (PAYE) tax and National Insurance Contributions (NIC).

Under previous owner Sir David Murray, the club operated an Employee Benefit Trust (EBT) scheme from 2000 to 2010. This is a scheme whereby employees are paid (and taxed on) a very small percentage of their wages. The remainder is paid into a trust, which then gives “loans,” to the employee, which are non-taxable and never repaid.

This is perfectly legal, but the key word is “trust.” The employee must “trust” the employer to ensure they are paid, “loans,” from the trust. Contractual payments absolutely cannot be made through the EBT. Evidence has emerged in the public domain which suggests that Rangers players were assured in writing that they would be paid from an EBT, and that they would never have to repay the money.

HMRC maintain that the payments made to Rangers players in this period were contractual in nature, and therefore taxable. They have presented Rangers with a bill for £24m in unpaid taxes, and £12m in interest. Should the First Tier Tax tribunal find in their favour, a further penalty will be imposed, which could see the final bill reach as much as £75m.

Since at least 1999, when a similar tax dodge was operated (Rangers admit this and have committed to paying £2.8m to HMRC), Rangers has therefore used non-payment and evasion of tax to give the club a financial and sporting advantage over every other club.

That’s not all. As Rangers has made payments to players which were not included in their contracts, the players involved were not correctly registered with the national association, and so ineligible. The accepted sanction for fielding of ineligible players in soccer is for the match to be recorded as a 0-3 defeat.

Since 1999, Rangers has won the Scottish Premier League seven times, whilst fielding ineligible players whom they could not have afforded to pay if they were not avoiding making tax payments on their wages.

To the outsider, it seems simple. Rangers must be stripped of all honours won during their financial “doping” years.

It goes beyond even this. The President of the Scottish Football Association is Campbell Ogilvie. He has held influential positions with the SFA and SPL over a period of many years, going back to the 1990’s. At which time, Campbell Ogilvie was the Secretary of Rangers FC.

Indeed, Campbell Ogilvie was himself paid via an EBT during his time at Rangers. Both the SFA and SPL have launched investigations into Rangers’ conduct in the years since 1998, but there is no confidence within the Scottish soccer community that they will take any serious steps to deal with Rangers’ wrongdoing.

One thing Rangers cannot escape though, is financial reality. It finally caught up with them on 14th February when the club was placed into administration.

This is a UK legal term which basically means that a court-appointed team take over the running of the company. It prevents creditors from taking legal action against it, and the administrator must take steps to make the company profitable to ensure creditors are paid.

The administrators may seek to arrange a Company Voluntary Agreement (CVA) with the creditors. This requires the agreement of 76 percent of the creditors by value. It means that all creditors would accept a pennies-to-the-pound deal. Once they are paid, for example, 30p for every pound owed, the company can exit administration and emerge debt-free.

If the creditors do not agree a CVA and the company cannot pay them in full, it is then liquidated. All assets are sold off and the proceeds distributed evenly amongst the creditors. As the majority of Rangers’ debt is owed to HMRC, the chances of a CVA are unlikely. It is the policy of HMRC to reject CVA’s.

The most likely outcome for Rangers FC is that they will soon be liquidated. The club will cease to exist. Here’s where it gets interesting. The SPL yesterday published a set of proposed changes to their Financial Fair Play policy.

Amongst them, is a proposal to allow a club, on liquidation, being allowed to transfer their, “share,” or membership of the SPL, to a new company. This would mean that should Rangers be liquidated, their directors, or anyone else who wants to buy their stadium, training ground and players, can do so and be given Rangers’ place in the SPL.

Effectively, this would mean a debt-free company, called Rangers FC, playing in blue shirts at Ibrox Stadium next season, while HMRC and other creditors (Rangers are in debt to possibly as much as £134m) are left with nothing.

One of those creditors is Heart of Midlothian FC, from whom Rangers signed full-back Lee Wallace. They still owe £800,000, which is unlikely ever to be paid. Another is Rapid Vienna, from whom Rangers purchased Nikica Jelavic, whose goals were instrumental in their winning of the SPL last season. Rapid are still owed £1m, and despite Rangers selling him to Everton FC for £5m in January, Rapid are unlikely to ever see their money.

Effectively, the SPL propose to issue a cheats’ charter, and coincidentally I am sure, just as it looks like Rangers are to be liquidated. Nothing like this happened just four years ago when Gretna FC were liquidated.

Rangers FC is in serious danger of being liquidated because they have lived beyond their means for far too long, in the process distorting the market in Scotland.

It has abused the tax system to give itself an unfair sporting advantage over the rest of the clubs in the SPL.

It has bought players from other clubs it could not afford to pay for and had no intention of ever paying for.

And the Scottish sporting establishment, governing bodies and media, want everything possible to be done to facilitate Rangers, who have destroyed the sporting integrity of the Scottish game, escaping the consequences of their self-inflicted troubles.

We can’t allow the money-tap to be turned off, after all. Can we?'

Thursday, April 12, 2012

AR as the 8th of the mass media?

Presumably everyone noticed last week Google announcing it's initial experiments with augmented reality glasses under the codename 'Project Glass'.

I've posted below the video that demonstrates the anticipated capability of the 'device' that shows voice commands being used to send messages, take photos, share to G+, see the locations of friends, view maps, get product information and so on and so forth.

It's been accepted for some time now that the next evolution of computing is likely to be 'wearable'. We've all seen the speculation around wristband iphone, bendy tablets and all the rest.

If, like me, you have a particular interest in the development of mobile technology and how that relates to the promised personalisation of media and the internet I would suggest that you follow the thoughts and writings of Tomi Ahonen, the former Nokia exec, now independent consultant and recognised as the foremost thinker on the present and future of mobile technology and communication.

Ahonen's 2008 book 'Mobile as the 7th of the Mass Media' is a good place to start, and triggered several lightbulb moments in my own head when I first read it in 2010 (albeit 2 years late to the party) Yesterday Ahonen published a post on his blog giving his endorsement to the notion of Augmented Reality being the next, and therefore 8th, mass medium.

The development of Google Glass is significant as it represents a potential curve jump for a technology - AR - that has been held back or bubbling under for the simple reason (or one of the reasons) that the hardware to support the software has been too clunky or inconvenient.

*Yes, it's hard to believe that we are already looking at smartphones as being clunky...thts exponential for you.

I spent several years at the end of the 90's and early 2000's working with interactive tv, similarly the hardware was not there to support the creativity and innovation, and it is only now that the smart tv platforms are emerging that really lends utility to bring the value to life.

Likewise with AR, perhaps now the hardware platform is starting to emerge that allows the software platform to transcend itself from a gimmicky addition to mobile/portable devices to being a real augmentation to reality/daily life.

Tomi says:

'Yes, AR is cool on smartphones. But that is 'part time' use of AR. What if AR was the first unavoidable mass media channel? The first pervasively consumed mass media? Mobile phones as we know from the 7th Mass Media theory, have unique abilites such as being always connected and being permanently carried. So too will be AR (on glasses) but we don't consume media on our phones in uninterrupted way. The media consumption is in our pocket but we also put it into our pocket, away. These AR glasses by Google will change all that. We are seeing the birth of the first pervasive mass media (that might not be the best term, I have to think about it). So yes, am ready to call it. Augmented Reality is the 8th Mass Medium.'

A valuable technological enhancement or a further step into authentic social life being replaced with a representation?
This remains to be seen.

If Google are on to it then it's safe to assume that the Apple's of this world are also on the case so it's a watch-this-space situation, for sure. For those of us in agency land then it's possibly time to dust off those ditched AR experiments from back in the day.

Here's a recap on the table of mass media with the new addition to the family.

1st mass media PRINT - from 1400s
2nd mass media RECORDINGS - from 1890s
3rd mass media CINEMA - from 1900s
4th mass media RADIO - from 1920s
5th mass media TELEVISION - from 1940s
6th mass media INTERNET - from 1992
7th mass media MOBLE - from 1998
8th mass media AUGMENTED REALITY - from 2010

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

the new radicals

View more presentations from Gareth Kay

Here's a splendid deck from Gareth Kay of GSP which got my vote on Neil Perkin's post of the month feature.

The theme is not new, but it's worth continual repetition.

The world has fundamentally changed in recent years yet the advertising world is still remarkably slow to respond, and what are we going to do about it?

Gareth references John Grant's tome, The Brand Innovation Manifesto, which I have been revisiting lately and also touches on several lean principles which are also currently top of the agenda round these parts.

Good work, chap.

Tuesday, April 03, 2012

don't you ever stop long enough to start?

Keen eyed readers will have noticed a break in transmission from Boat Towers.

I took the opportunity to have the guts of a month off from writing anything as some changes in the work situation afforded me a bit of a break between jobs.

Sometimes a change in one aspect of life is a good opportunity to evaluate some other things, and so I decided to give myself a rest from the sound of my own voice, do a bit of reading and as I had some 'gardening' leave, do a bit of tending to my own philosophical garden and see if my reasons for maintaining this blog still held true.

The good news (or bad news depending on your outlook) is that I intend to stick with my schtick and have determined continue to weave the thread joining punk rock, buddhism-science and un-advertising in these here pages.

Since you asked, on the work front, I've now left Clemenger BBDO and joined Melbourne and Sydney based agency Sputnik, as Director of Innovation.

Although well established in Australia as a 'digital' agency there's a new management team and new direction that has been established over the last 6 months which means we are, in effect, a ten year old start-up - with the appropriate leanings towards the lean and agile there's some exciting disruptive times ahead and I'll look forward to reporting as we go.

In the meantime... Don't stop - give it all you got.

Cheeseboiger!

Wednesday, March 07, 2012

that dangerous age

It's right. When I wake up in the morning it takes time to adjust.

I must be at that dangerous age.

In the absence of anything of any significance to impart on this fine Tuesday, I'm simply posting this superb new direction from Mr Paul Weller. Still rocking and as relevant as ever in 2012.

Thursday, March 01, 2012

the route to everything

I learned a little Japanese phrase some time ago. It was described to me as a simple process by which to achieve anything in life or business or whatever.

Kyo-chi-gyo-i. The route to everything.

Kyo is Goal. Chi is Wisdom. Gyo is Action. I is the resulting status.

In business terms Objectives>Insight>Strategy>Results

Starting with the 'why' rather than the 'what' or 'how'.

Not in the fluffy Simon Sinek sense, but knowing what needs to be achieved from the get go.

This, of course, highlights the most common mistake in 'strategy'. Confusing one's 'Kyo' with one's 'I'.

Confusing the objectives with the outcomes.

Confusing the 'being' and 'doing'.

A roundabout way of coming to todays topic of the relationship between culture and strategy, and a fantastic article by Shaun Carr of innovation consultants Bulldog Drummond in Fast Company.

Excerpt: 'Step inside of any company, no matter the size, stage of development, or level of success, and the culture is either driving the strategy or undermining it. To exist in the first place, a company must have a clear purpose, a deliberate intent, and a directive or set of ideas that it uses to pursue a clear goal, but it's the people who have to execute it. There is abundant evidence in every industry that the best-laid plans (or strategies) are derailed, suffocated, or eaten by cultures that either don't understand or straight-out reject the intent. And this, in turn, slows, sucks the life out of, or sabotages the implementation or execution of the company's strategy.'

The full article can be found at fastcompany.com, but for those of a dot point persuasion Carr has also summarised his ten key points in handy list form.

1. Strategy drives focus and direction while culture is the emotional, organic habitat in which a company's strategy lives or dies.
2. Strategy is just the headline on the company's story--culture needs a clearly understood common language to embrace and tell the story that includes mission, vision, values, and clear expectations.
3. Strategy is about intent and ingenuity and culture determines and measures desire, engagement, and execution.
4. Strategy lays down the rules for playing the game, and culture fuels the spirit for how the game will be played.
5. Strategy is imperative for differentiation but a vibrant culture delivers the strategic advantage.
6. Culture is built or eroded every day. How you climb the hill and whether it's painful, fun, positive, or negative defines the journey.
7. When culture embraces strategy, execution is scalable, repeatable, and sustainable.
8. Culture is a clear competitive advantage.
9. Culture must be monitored to understand the health and engagement of your organization.
10. Strategy and culture both require the clarity and power of brand to bring them seamlessly together.

Culture is either driving the strategy or undermining it, but either way the culture is integral. I'm not sure it eats strategy for breakfast but it's there in the canteen queue.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

cash from chaos

Coming briefly back to the trad vs digital agency debate, of which I shared some views on last week.

There was some negative response from the digital community around my musing that 'brand agencies are best placed to win' in the winner-takes-all game for the digital communications future.

To recap, I said that brand agencies are best placed, should they choose to be.

At the moment, on the whole, they appear to be choosing not to.

So the game is wide open.

The agencies that win will be the ones who adhere to the following criteria, as described by Tom Peters in 1988 and still as valid today as they were back then.

Does your agency (of whatever flavour) provide...

• The best in quality and service
• Enhanced responsiveness and flexibility in its operations
• Continuous and rapid new product development and innovation,
• Diversification and new market exploration.

Tom adds "Excellent firms don't believe in excellence - only in constant improvement and constant change. That is, excellent firms of tomorrow will cherish impermanence - and thrive on chaos."

Surprisingly aligned with Malcolm McLaren's worldview...

'I always feel more comfortable in chaotic surroundings. I don't know why that is. I think order is dull. There is something about this kind of desire for order...that drive out this ability for the [agencies: EP] to become a really exotic, amorphous, chaotic, organic place where ideas can, basically, develop.'

marketing lesson from Psycho Paul /please RT

In series 3 of Ideal, Psycho Paul wants to get the use of Moz's flat for a kidnapping.

'Are you in, or are you out?', he repeats incessantly over 3 episodes until Moz finally has to aquiesce.

Eventually Moz is in, of course.

It also reminded me of the classic scene in Glengarry Glen Ross, in which Alec Baldwin's character, Blake, strides into the local sales office and gives a short sharp ales lesson to the under-performing real estate agents.

ABC. Always be closing.

The lessons, however, are clear. If you don’t ask, you won’t get.

If you don't ask the local weed dealer if you can use their flat for a kidnapping, he won't suggest it to you.

If you don’t ask to be the keynote, it won't just be given to you.

If you don’t ask for the lead article, it won’t just be offered to you.

If you don’t ask for the $XXX,000 salary, it is not just going to be there on the table.

If you want your readers to retweet something or post to Facebook or Pinterest, then ask them to do it for you.

Find out who's in and who's out.

Then you know where you stand.

Also, once someone has committed to doing what you've asked they will want to live up to their promise for the sake of their own reputation and integrity.

In Dan Zarella's Heirarchy of Contagiousness he points to his database of tweets, compiled in order to crunch the most retweetable words or phrases.

Surprisingly, numbers 3 and 4 on the most retweeted list are 'please' and 'retweet'.

So, if you don’t ask, you won’t get.

Now please retweet...

Friday, February 24, 2012

it aint where you're from, it's where you're at

Yesterday I did a talk for AIMIA, the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association, in Sydney.

The theme of the seminar was to look at 'digital' agencies of the near future, what new skills are needed, new technologies, new philosophies etc.

On the panel session at the end one delegate seemed less than satisfied with my answer to one of his questions.

He asked for our predictions as to what the digital communications/commerce land scape would look like in 5 years time.
I answered by stating that the 'future' will take care of itself based on how we respond to the opportunities right here and now.

Remember, we have several of this countries biggest bricks and mortar retailers who cannot yet even offer a simple online commerce solution, never mind anything else.

The notion of the 'future' is often a cop-out. An excuse to not act now, but to put off acting til later. Later often never comes, because tomorrows future then looks different to today's.

There are only two mistakes one can make in any endeavour; not going all the way, and not starting.

It's a mindset, it's where you're at.

There's no excuse to not start. And Seth agrees.

'If you're in Kibera, are you too far from Silicon Valley to write an app?
If you live in New Zealand, are you too far outside the mainstream music world to perform a hit song?
What about an author who lives 3,000 miles from New York?
The magic of our new form of communication is that it's no longer one-way.
If you consume an app, you can write one.
If you can read a blog, you can publish one.
If you can grab an ebook, you can produce one.
The center has nothing to do with geography any longer.
The center is a state of mind.'

Friday, February 17, 2012

i second that emotion

I was reasonably happy to add my signature to brainjuicer and herdmeister's cheeky valentine's card to Millward Brown, following their apparent turnaround in recognising, officially, that emotion plays a more important role in long term branding, 'memory' and recall.

In short, how one 'feels' in response to a brand orchestrates what one 'thinks'.

MB point to the findings of a report by Peter Field entitled 'The Link Between Creativity and Effectiveness' (IPA, 2011)- a study of IPA Effectiveness, Effie and Cannes Lions Awards winners which reveals that ads don't need to persuade to be effective but they do need to trigger emotionally.

You can read about it here.

BUT...

I've seen Peter Field's presentation and while it's fairly entertaining and he's crunched the numbers I'm still slightly nonplussed due to the single-channel nature (ie film) of the examples quoted and researched.

As brands increasingly become things that we 'use', and the myriad of new ways by which a brand can be 'experienced' increases to place so much faith in a brand 'film' - a fairly blunt instrument.

Brand experience being the sum total of all interactions, there are many more emotional micro-touchpoints that can influence on how and what we feel.

So fair play to MB, but let's open up the debate to brand activities beyond one channel.

Thinking in straight lines will keep us going round in circles.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

ghetto blaster

About 12 different individuals either emailed, tweeted or otherwise prodded me towards an article on Mumbrella yesterday, so I figured it must be of interest.

The article entitled 'Traditional agencies are driving away their digital superstars with their old ways' is an argument from digital agency strategist Daniel Monheit around how Australia’s 'creative' (ie big advertising shops) agencies will never be able to keep digital talent.

Here's his nub.

'...[digital talent] don’t last six months in traditional agencies. They suffocate, or are crushed under the weight of endless banner campaigns and microsite rollouts based on print ads. Their brilliance, ingenuity and ambition goes unnoticed in the opulent shrines dedicated to 30 second spots, catchy jingles and 10% commissions.'

Despite notionally agreeing with much of his schtick I'm compelled to say that I still feel that the 'brand' agencies are best placed to be doing the great digitally driven work, should they choose to take the opportunity.

At the moment they still have the budgets, the weight in terms of resource and the brand nous.

The issue is that many 'digital' agencies have is a 'tactical' focus rather than a 'strategic'.
The brand agencies have the instinct to think at a higher level.

It's all there for the taking for the big agencies but yes, I agree that there is the problem of mindset.
It's no use cramming digital talent in at the bottom of the pile, the change has to happen at the very top.

As an example, the recent restructure at JWT North America (the oldest ad agency in the world, remember) that saw Jeff Benjamin, the ex-Crispin Porter + Bogusky interactive creative director join as Chief Creative Officer, and Mike Geiger, formerly chief digital officer at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, has been named as President, Chief Integration officer, JWT North America.

So it is happening.

For the rest of us, yes there is the temptation to feel undervalued or undermined, but we have a mindset issue too.

Here's an excerpt from a piece I wrote in July last year, In The Ghetto, which seems strangely relevant to this conversation.

My irk is that 'the digital' is invariably 'other'.
By labelling it digital it's somehow SEPARATE from 'proper' planning or 'proper' creative.
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 stuff.
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.

Thursday, February 09, 2012

not making tea [cc @servantofchaos @robertc1970 ]

A stellar looking line up for Day One of Digital Advertising World, in Melbourne in April.
The right-dishonourable Robert Campbell esquire, the Servant of Chaos, Gavin Heaton, and my humble self on the same bill.

Despite the notes on the brochure can I just add that I shall not be providing morning tea, nor making any sort of exhibition of myself.

Friday, February 03, 2012

appointment to tweet part 346

According to Fast Company, Twitter exec Adam Bain predicts that at least half of Super Bowl XLVI ads will contain a Twitter hashtag.

They say ‘If last year was the year that ads started incorporating Facebook addresses into their creatives, this year--at least this Super Bowl--might be the year that hashtags reign supreme.’

Tags to watch out for will include Coca-Cola's #GameDayPolarBears and H&M's #beckhamforhm.

The hashtag drive is part of a Twitter sponsored activity called Ad Scrimmage.

'...ads can compete to see which gets the most buzz in the week following the game. The system builds on previous voting programs Twitter has developed for shows like X Factor. Fans vote by tweeting and directing their followers to the custom ad gallery on the Super Bowl website. Ads that get the most votes move to the top of the list, and the winner gets a free Promoted Trend on Twitter.'

Good to see USA catching up with us at ClemengerBBDO in Melbourne.

We've been tagging Carlton Draught spots with #carltondraught since back in October 2010, of course... ;)

The same time that we coined the phrase 'appointment to tweet'.

HT Andrew Pascoe

Friday, January 20, 2012

a war we have to win

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?

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

Thursday, January 19, 2012

unique talking point

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

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.

Friday, January 13, 2012

flogging a dead horse

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

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.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

a 'viral' masterclass from the bbc #bowie

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.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

merry christmas from never get out of the boat

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

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

the case for real customer insight

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

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'

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.

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. Because the effects of influence only reveal themselves after-the-fact then 'nobodies' can quickly appear to be influencers. Which they are, of course, it's just their influence is nearly impossible to predict in advance.

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.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

natural selection and social learning

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.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

social influence and hurricane bawbag

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.”

Friday, December 09, 2011

i am not a consumer: part 2276

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

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

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.

Thursday, December 01, 2011

connect with fans #783 G+ edition

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.

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

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

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..

Monday, November 28, 2011

the long tail

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.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

social media marketing doesn't work

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.

While some poor junior PR person or intern will be getting it in the neck, it's the top of the chain that need called into question 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, and not about helping solve the problems and generally taking an interest in the things their consumers care about.

This is what a service brand has to do.

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

Thanks KT.

Friday, November 18, 2011

UNHATE

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

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.

Thursday, November 03, 2011

all you need to know about innovation

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

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

Thx @zeroinfluencer