Never get out of the boat

Tuesday, September 04, 2012

beer chase

I would be slightly disingenuous if I did not state that the following sticks in my craw somewhat, but Clems' new Carlton Draught spot, 'Beer Chase', is great.

However, if I was going to be picky (yes, I am) - and this was something I used to repeat during my time at the agency over and over - then I would pick on the following.

If one is making a movie, and therefore giving life to a story, then there's a lot of other stuff that needs to be considered.

Until there's a better word to describe this process then we are stuck with the term 'transmedia storytelling'.

If people connect with the content - and they are, at the time of writing the clip has racked up 1.8million views on You Tube - then it's a massive missed opportunity to not create a bigger story world.

For instance.

Who are these characters?

How did they end up in America?

What happened to the money?

What are the other concurrent narratives?

The spot ends with a point to the Carlton Draught website, perhaps this will be where more of the narrative is revealed? Nope.

For the previous Carlton Draught film 'Slo-Mo', I fought to have #carltondraught hashtag on the end, this was a new idea back in 2010 which has become the norm.

A #beerchase tag to prod for conversation would have been more appropriate than pointing to a static website where there is no extension.

While I was at Clems, Draught's long standing agency, we often mused that Carlton Draught had the potential to truly transcend the beer category and could be viewed more as an entertainment brand, one for which the beer was really a marketing mechanism for the overall cultural brand.

Like a Converse perhaps?

It's a cool bit of film, funny and bang on for the brand and no doubt an award certainty in the film bucket but I still believe there's a big opportunity for Carlton Draught to be a bigger iconic Australian brand if only they could be broken out of the category mindset.

Sunday, September 02, 2012

always be closing the nylon curtain

I've no truck with so-called guilty pleasures.

I honestly don't have time to pretend to like stuff that I don't care about for the sake of some irony or fear of seriousness.

I'm deadly serious about music.

Like Keith Richards said, it's about discernement.

Knowing what the shit is, and what isn't the shit.

I love the first four or five Billy Joel albums. Maybe even six.

They are most definitely the shit. He never became big in the UK really until 'Uptown Girl', but his best stuff predates that.

Check out this interview Billy did with Alec Baldwin for WNYC's 'Here's The Thing'. The two of them riffing off of each other like a Long Island version of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon.

Even if you're not a fan I guarantee you'll hear him differently afterwards.

Alec Baldwin is the shit too. If only because he's responsible for one of the finest 8 minutes or so of cinema history in GlenGarry Glen Ross, as the salesman with balls of steel.

Always. Be. Closing.

Billy also knows a thing or two about what's important to the artist, or communicator who wants to connect an audience.

Friday, August 31, 2012

friday for a change, a little more nothing

In any given market or category, at any given time, a customer - or customers - have at least three options.

They can buy product X - your product, product Y - a competitor's product.

The third option, and by far the most popular option, is the option to do nothing.

the loch ness monster bias

We're familiar with the idea that none of us 'thinks as much as we think we think'.

It would also appear that we don't even see as much as we think we see.

Our thanks to Faris, who posted this Transport for London info spot from 2008 that demonstrates the idea of 'change blindness'.

'Change blindness' one of those little cognitive traps that shows the inherent flaws in how we process visual information.

'Whodunnit' is clearly a close relative of this 1998 study by Daniel Simons and Daniel Levin called 'The Door Study' in which a participant fails to notice when the person he is talking to is replaced by someone else, clearly demonstrating the phenomenon.

There's a full academic paper available; 'Change Blindness Blindness: The Metacognitive Error of Overestimating Change-detection Ability' if you are inclined to read more.

I'm reminded of what we doctors call 'The Loch Ness Monster bias'. Roughly translated this means that rather than rather than using the maxim 'I'll believe it when I see it' we would be better advised to note that we will, 'see it when we believe it'.

Monday, August 27, 2012

lost in the supermarket

There's an old adage that goes along the lines of 'there are no low interest categories only low interest brands'.

I'm not sure I subscribe to this point of view.
Most everyday categories are pretty low interest and most brands in those categories are too.
Simple brand recognition and habit are probably the biggest influence.

A tale of terror I am oft to recount is about the time when we had just arrived in Australia and ventured to the supermarket to purchase some sundries.

Washing powder being one of said items.

The terror of being confronted with what seemed like a hundred options and not having the first clue who any of these brands were is one that I still makes me shudder.

All of a sudden I had to actually think about a decision that should have been more or less automatic.

And sadly no amount of critical thinking was going to help me.
I had to take a punt.

Yes, big purchase decisions are perhaps somewhat determined by how we feel about brands, but so too are everyday choices to a certain extent.

Without simple 'recognition', then making a selection is hard. I had never 'heard of' any of these brands.

In case you are wondering, I went with FAB using another shortcut. They had the largest shelf presence (a proxy for popularity) and were neither the cheapest or the most expensive.

On the subject of soap powder, it was nice to see that the oldies are still the goodies, as Jarrah have sort of revived the Daz Doorstep Challenge for their tea/coffeee alternatives, with Dame Edna doing the Danny Baker part.

bust out the shack and hit the track

Most of you will know I'm a big fan of the Boss.

To be fair, I came around relatively late, probably in the last 5-6 years. But I agree with Joe, Bruce sounds great on a dark and rainy morning in England, he's also always great on a spring morning in Victoria and on the road up to Melbourne.

From a validation point of view, I'm pleased that Joe was also a fan.

There's a quote often attributed to Bruce that has been useful sometimes when looking at marketing communications problems.

'You can go from doing something quite silly to something dead serious in the blink of an eye, and if you're making those connections with your audience then they're going to go right along with it.'

Pic HT to MusicRuinedMyLife

Friday, August 24, 2012

arnold layne

This is a curious spot for Toyota out of Japan.

Watch this then consider this notion of the experiencing self, meaning the here-and-now, moment-to-moment feeling self, and the remembering self , the part of us that reflects on what we have experienced and decides how we feel about what happened.

I'm also reminded of the note that I heard (it was Rory Sutherland, I think) on the efficacy of advertising. There is apparently no correlation between efficacy and the duration.

Whether it's a :15, :30 or :60 is not important as long as the duration can carry the narrative, offer an 'interest' spike and, most importantly - this refers to the remembering self bit just mentioned - an ending.

In old money this might be described as bait-and-switch but it's certainly a 'surprise' and will have other assorted emotions in the mix depending on your worldview.

it's a long way to the top

We visited Melbourne's ACMI (Australian Centre for Moving Image) to check out an exhibit called 'Screen Worlds The Story of Film, Television & Digital Culture'.

Among the things to play with was an interactive touchscreen table thing. Scenes from Australian movies were mapped onto the ermmm.. map.

Mad Max, Hanging Rock, Walkabout etc.

One oddity however was this clip of the mighty AC/DC performing 'It's a Long Way To The Top..' on a truck going through the centre of Melbourne in 1976 with the Rats of Tobruk Pipe Band.

Apparently it's well known round these parts, but I'd never seen it.

Although the boys are globally known as Australia's finest rock'n'roll export I'm claiming them 100% for Scotland.

The Young brothers and Bon Scott were all born in Scotland.

And, fact fans, the singers name was in fact a pseudonym. To his parents he was plain Ronald Belford, his rock god alter ego Bon Scott is a shortened version of 'Bonnie Scotland'.

If that's not Scottish enough for you, then there's a favourite joke that the Aussies like to do which involves singing along with the lyrics of the chorus changed to 'it's a long way to the shop, when you want a sausage roll'.

A clear homage to Greggs the baker.

Happy Friday.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

learn to play with nothing

This will be my last comment on the forget-about-the-tools and focus on the behaviours rant for a while.

It coincides with the Modern Lovers being on heavy rotation in the Boatmobile commute, and the fact that I haven't done one of these pic-quote posts for a long time.

The interviewer asks Jonathan what he still needs to learn, as a musician.

After 'getting along with cats and dogs' and 'playing quieter so as not to hurt children's' ears' he adds...

'And we have to learn to play with nothing, with our guitars broken, and it's raining'.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

blood on the tracks

Certain unscrupulous corners of the advertising world, those on the dark side of the (other) digital divide, are not best pleased.

It appears that Microsoft are sticking to Plan A and shipping 'Do-Not-Track' as the default option in Internet Explorer 10.

Do Not Track is a web privacy scheme that tells online advertisers to NOT collect or use data specific to a user's web activity.

Advertisers can still show ads, obviously, but they would not be allowed to record that a user browsed certain car websites, for example, and then proceed show car ads where ever they go.

While these advertisers were reported to be willing to put up with 'Do-Not-Track', they were only accepting the basis that it was certain to be something that users had to actually enable and activate for themselves.

Thus users default bias would kick in and most would leave the box unchecked, and it would be happy days for the cookie brigade.

The default however is on the other foot as Microsoft further enhances it's nice-ness and new-cool credentials by leaving DNT as the default, a little nudge-eyness towards making the web a bit less creepy for there users.

But...

Of course the small problem faced by DNT is that it's pretty much trust based and not enforcable.

Advertisers need to look for the DNT signal sent and decide to honor it.

Now if you are the kind of advertiser who thinks it's acceptable to creep around after individuals, record their movements and then try and intercept and 'target' them at every corner with 'relevant' ads, and then what's the likelyhood they will honor a DNT request.

After all skullduggery and coercion takes less effort than making products, services and advertising that are so great that people are attracted to look at them and do stuff with them because they deliver some actual value.

no nurse, I said remove his spectacles

I was called by a leading Australian publication the other day to comment on the main Australian political parties usage of social media, and speculate on the influence it may have on the outcome of the forthcoming federal elections.

I gave the topic some degree of consideration and sent them back a thoughtful piece about shared meaning, the ad-hoc nature of communities online and how in the connected world ideas are adopted by groups who find them salient.

I went on to lament the poor efforts of the big two parties to engage in any meaningful way and preferring to simply pushing their desired meaning onto the voters in social networks in the same way that they have done with mainstream media.

I also speculated that the banality of much of the content delivered by the parties was in fact a highly tactical move to bore the electorate to death in order to invoke the inherent status quo bias. In reality we know that this-or-that policy has less influence on voter behaviour than simply whether the candidate looks like they know what they are doing.

Dan Ariely even hypothesised recently that we prefer to elect corrupt or corruptable candidates because government itself is inherently corrupt so the candidate needs to be able to operate in that kind of space.

To the point of the story, they never published any of my comments.

Instead they elected to publish a stream of inane drivel about each party's number of Twitter followers, what an infographic is, and how Julia Gillard once had a hangout on G+ blah blah.

Now I couldn't care less if the use my material or not, but I noticed that I had become a victim of my own biases.

In this case a big bit of the authority bias, with a touch of the representativeness heuristic.

In decision-making, authority bias is the tendency to over value the opinion of someone who one views as an authority or expert.

In my case I overestimated the intellectual level of debate to the same level that I overestimated the 'authority' of the publication.

The reality being that the conversation was happening at such a low level that made Mashable look like New Scientist.

Here's another - and this is one of my favourites - everyday example of the authority bias in action.

A physician ordered eardrops to be administered to the right ear of a patient suffering pain and infection there. Instead of writing out completely the location 'Right ear' on the prescription, the doctor abbreviated it so that the instructions read 'place in R ear'.

Upon receiving the prescription, the duty nurse promptly put the required number of ear drops into the patient’s anus.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

putin lights up the fires

On the day they were found guilty of 'hooliganism driven by religious hatred' and sentenced to two years in jail In Russia, Pussy Riot also release a single 'Putin lights up the fires'. We're reposting the video from The Guardian website as a small gesture of support.

Boredom is always counterrevolutionary.

Friday, August 17, 2012

don't care

I'm reading Dan Ariely's book 'The Upside of Irrationality'.

In the early chapters he uses a story from the 1995 film First Knight starring Richard Gere to illustrate how motivation can affect performance.

The same analogy works for agencies and clients when we want to develop truly great advertising moments.

Gere's character Lancelot is an expert swordsman, who offers a sparring service to the locals where he works.

They pay a few coins to test their sword skills against the master.

Lancelot then opens the game up a bit by offering a small fortune to anyone who can beat him.

Along comes an enormous blonde geezer, who looks like he has the chops to win.

After a pretty hectic bit of metal bashing Lancelot disarms his opponent.

'How did you do this?' asks the befuddled and defeated chap.

Lancelot replies with three lessons.

And these are the lessons for us

1. Observe your opponent [customer] and learn how he moves and thinks.

2. Wait for your make or break moment [your moment of truth] and make your move.

The student nods in agreement. He's getting it so far.

Then Lancelot comes in with point three.

3. You must not care if you live or die.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

shake it up

Not sure this totally qualifies as a nudge, but it beats a billboard any day.

In order to receive the communication there is something one has to do, thereby becoming a bit more involved.

Considering that many NFPs have difficulty shaking themselves out of the we-just-do-direct-mail habit, props are due to Ogilvy Sydney and Parkinsons Disease not-for-profit, Shake It Up Australia.

you need hands

We're loving this British Heart Foundation spot for hands-only CPR (no kissing!) featuring Vinnie Jones.

Full of little story-based hooks (pairing the hard-men with the camp Bee Gees soundtrack is a masterstroke - calling attention with a 'surprise'), a splash of the old representativeness heuristic and a nice nudgey bit of chunking (call, push, stayin' alive) to make a potentially terrifying and confusing situation easier to 'know' what to do without having to think.

Top marks.

[Yes, it came out last year so I'm a bit late, put it down to southern hemisphere lag]

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

handbags and gladrags #lossaversion

So it goes that the pain of paying an extra fee for checked bags when you arrive at the airport is exasperated by the fact that you have already had to fork out for your ticket and so the additional cost of your luggage fee adds up as two separate losses.

Although the cost would be roughly the same one feels less aggrieved when paying for both at the same time on booking the ticket.

It's one loss.

So, two losses separately are more painful than if they were joined together, and likewise two gains separately are more enjoyable than when they are experienced together.

One little nudge to offset the pain of a loss is to bundle in a small gain following the original loss.

This is also know as the 'silver lining' effect.

Car dealers that offer 'cashback' as part of the deal know this.

In fact if one wants to dive deep into behavioural economics then go spend a few days in a car dealership, those guys have been practicing many of the principles for years, they just didn't have a name for it.

However my intuition tells me that the people who put up this sign need to do a bit more work on their subtleties....

hedonic boosts part 2

Legend has it that the website banner ad was born on or around October 27, 1994 with HotWired.com, and among those first hosted ads were placements from Volvo, AT&T,and 1-800-Collect.

In those early days click rates could be anything up to 80%.

Fast forward to today when an industry average is something closer to 0.05% and a campaign result of anything above that number is call for a party.

I'm all for the maxim that in order to achieve success one needs to learn to love failure but there comes a point...

One description of what psychologists call system justification bias tells us that '[its] effects are exacerbated when people are under psychological threat or when they feel their outcomes are especially dependent on the system that is being justified'.

Such is life in agencies.

In the interim perhaps we should be thankful for those 0.12% hedonic boosts, and keep making those banner ads.

Monday, August 13, 2012

the adoption paradigm

The old paradigm was 'targeting' - the new paradigm is 'adoption'.

To those for whom the message relevant, it's all good.

They adopt, then then they tell everyone else.

It's a simple equation.

My friend Harshal Gajria pointed me to this ad for the Mumbai Mirror newspaper - 'I am Mumbai' - and we wondered if perhaps all this pro-social, cultural critique, emotional advertising is getting too much.

In the old paradigm one would possiblly answer 'yes'.

In the new paradigm we can summise that - in fact - it's the only way.

Friday, August 10, 2012

it's about the behaviours, not the tools

It's surprising that in 2012 there is still so much focus, effort and money spent on trying to work out how the deployment of social media technologies and tools will impact on the performance of marketing strategies.

Every week there's another Pinterest webinar or 'how-to' leverage Linked-in conference.

And countless articles speculating and instructing about this or that of Facebook and Twitter.

However the important thing is working out what's important.

Social media tools have been adopted principally because they allow us to do stuff we've always liked to do, easier and with more people.

We share things...
Talk about things...
Create our art...
See what others are saying, doing and yes, buying...
We can argue, agree, copy...
We can demonstrate how smart, connected or philanthropic we are...

What's actually important is getting a hang of people - and how they behave - to inform, develop and implement strategy.

Somehow this insightful cartoon that I found in an old Dr Feelgood tour program from something like 1978 seems to nail the problem.

Anyone can pick the guitar, plug it in to the amp and make a noise.

And many companies and brands are doing this.

Not many are making us move like Wilco and co.

It's about the people and behaviours, not the tools.

Thursday, August 09, 2012

hedonic adaptation

As if by magic, I had just began to understand this idea of hedonic adaptation.

We get used to things and novelty wears off.

We get used to ourselves too, so a process in which the repetition of small positive experiences - rituals, if you like - such as doing some exercise, just putting on a happy face or pulling on your Levis, can actually have a long lasting effect on our general well-being.

Behaviour shaping how we feel and think.

We want to feel good about ourselves and so we use stuff that makes us feel good about ourselves.

Of course we inherently know this, without necessarily knowing.

So marketing and advertising that provide customers with 'hedonic boosts', little reminders of the feelings that we had when we first used a product, for instance, can be super effective.

That's one of the simple insights here.

And a brand’s attribute associations are stronger when we view ourselves as having as having those personal attributes.

What I can't get my head round is that after many years of being the 'digital' guy, the communications that I'm getting most excited about these days are not digital ideas at all.

Monday, August 06, 2012

we all scream for ice cream

This spot from Little Babies Ice Cream out of the US is great advertising.

It's pure emotive thus highly memorable and, of course, talk-about-able and shareable.
Not a USP in sight, simply an unsettling, surreal mixture of fear, surprise and disgust.

Considering most other ice cream advertising goes after the happiness angle it's doubly surprising.

The makers clearly know this, hence the tag line 'ice cream is a feeling'.

Top marks.

Thursday, August 02, 2012

sunk cost fallacy

I have a hunch that the team on this account are double agents working covert for the other 3 Aussie banks on a mission to systematically destroy the CommBank brand.

I can't embed the ad 'Bomb Hoax', it's now been removed from YouTube, but it can still be viewed over on Campaign Brief.

Suffice to say it's the latest instalment of a campaign that just when you thought it had hit its dumbest point, it keeps on getting dumber.

From a psychology point of view one can only summise that this is a classic case of 'sunk cost fallacy' or 'escalation of commitment bias'.

This is the phenomenon whereby people or an organisation will justify increased investment in something, based on the cumulative prior investment and despite evidence clearly suggesting that the cost of continuing the decision now outweighs any anticipated benefit.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

blackadder and behavioural economics

I recall an anecdote from a conversation several years ago with representatives of the late, and much lamented, COI - the UK government's policy objectives and public services marketing body which sadly closed it's doors for the final time in the early part of 2012.

The agency I worked for at the time were assisting the UK Department of Health on a number of initiatives including some of the anti smoking activity.

The COI were early champions of much of the thinking that we now broadly associate with behavioural economics and were therefore right on the ball with recognising that the dominant paradigm in communications theory that placed disproportionate importance on the notion that independent thinking and rational decision making were the principle influence on the choices we make was not 100% correct.

While those factors are often significant in short-term decision making - I choose brand x baked beans because they are on special offer - they do not explain longer term behaviours, much of which are far more affected by how we see others behave, habits we've formed and our general inability to compute things like financial costs and benefits.

Anyway, research material that COI provided us to inform the work we were doing with DoH indicated that the frightening messaging on cigarette packets intended to make people think about stopping smoking (smoke these and you will die etc) was in fact having a somewhat opposite effect.

The COI psychologists were becoming concerned that the results indicated that these warnings were actually more of an encouragement to smoke because the emotional response was more akin to an 'excitement' that one would attribute to activities such as bungee jumping or other extreme sports.

Essentially extrinsic factors overpowering intrinsic motivations.

I did a short talk last night to the members of the Institute of Analytics professionals and used the following example from Blackadder to add a bit of flavour to my argument that the data industry can best complement the creative industry by concentrating effort on finding the right information and helping us all continue to qualify and quantify at least some of the following matters, because it's all there in the data and patterns.

- How other people's behaviour affects our own
- How and why habits are formed
- Fundamental motives (survival, reproduction)
- Why we are bad at simple sums

Captain Blackadder:
You see, Baldrick, in order to prevent war two great super-armies developed. Us, the Russians and the French on one side, Germany and Austro-Hungary on the other. The idea being that each army would act as the other's deterrent. That way, there could never be a war.

Private Baldrick:
Except, this is sort of a war, isn't it?

Captain Blackadder:
That's right. There was one tiny flaw in the plan.

Private Baldrick:
Oh,what was that?

Captain Blackadder:
It was bollocks.

I used Professor Kahneman's 'bat and ball' experiment on the crowd.

Remember this was 150 or so analytics professionals, data geeks and mathematics heads.

A bat and ball costs one dollar and ten cents to buy.
The bat costs a dollar more than the ball.
How much does the ball cost?

Just about everyone nodded when I asked if ten cents came to mind.

So the idea that independent thinking and rational decision making are the principle influence on the choices we make has one tiny teeny flaw.

It is complete bollocks.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

notes on insight

Those of you who know me will also know that it takes very little persuasion to get me to stand up on a stage ond pontificate about this, that and the other in our world of communications conundrums.

I'm not a pro by any stretch but give it a good go.
The more I do it the better I get, one day soon I'll have it down so stand by for that.

On the occasions when I've been on a roll, I'll often chat with delegates and audience members afterwards and (though not as often as I'd like) sometimes they will leave me with a handshake and 'thanks for the insights'.

Of course, I'm happy to accept these thanks but I feel like I should say 'thanks but there were, in fact, no insights in what you just heard'.

There will have been stories, some facts, many observations and even more opinions but not necessarily any insights.

I say this because we should be mindful of not undermining the term 'insight' in our work.
Real insight is a rare and precious thing, and should be valued accordingly.

Here's one of the the best descriptions of insight that I've encountered.
A good benchmark by which to evaluate whether something is, in fact, insight or simply observation.

[That's not to say observation isn't valuable but it's a step in the process to uncovering insight]

'Insight is the act or result of apprehending the inner nature of things or seeing intuitively'

(I'm not sure where that definition comes from. Point me if you know)

For us communicators we should understand the goal of insight.
Insight informs how we identify highest level emotional need in any given situation.

How to uncover insight?
These five steps are a good place to start.

1. Ask difficult questions. Most of these start with 'why?'
2. Look below the surface.
3. Reframe stuff (TV is the second screen, for example).
4. Trust your 'gut', your instinctive self. Under-think it.
5. Observe acutely and understand your own and others behaviours.

Of course there is also product insight, category insight, business insight and many others. But key to uncovering these is starting with 'why' not 'how'.

Friday, July 06, 2012

disbelieving is hard work

So, last week I gave a short talk for AIMIA to the assembled agency digerati, at KPMG's auditorium up in Melbourne CBD. The theme of the morning was 'Digital Agencies of The Future'. Here's a synopsis of the key points I hoped to communicate.

2012 was a record year for Australian Agencies at Cannes.
59 Lions were awarded in total, that's up from circa 40 or so last year and about 45 the year before (also the previous record).

Interestingly, Australian agencies recieved precisely Zero Lions in either the Cyber (what a ridiculous name for a category btw) or Mobile categories.

There's two ways to look at these statistics.
Either we as a nation are useless at digital advertising.
Or
Single channel executions are a thing of a bygone age, and it's only integrated campaigns and activities that actually matter, anyway.

I'm on the side of the latter.

But...

Among the many Australian integrated efforts that did well, GPY&R's Mobile Medic which picked up Lions in 3 different categories, Naked's fantastic 'Steal Banksy' effort which took out a Gold in PR and even CumminsRoss's Agassi films pulled a Bronze in brand ed content, NONE OF THESE THINGS WERE CREATED BY DIGITAL AGENCIES.

Next I showed a lovely picture of a chicken and avocado sandwich.

'Digital agencies, this is your lunch'.

The bad news is that the advertising agencies are coming to eat it.

In their delusion the BDAs think they can do what you do, digital agencies.
They can't.

BUT they are better at convincing the clients that they can, than you can.
And that's your problem.

Listen.

As far as the big ad agencies, the media agencies and - most worryingly for the digital community - clients are concerned...

Digital = production.
Digital equals = making what you are told to by the big boys.

Brothers and sisters, you are in the ghetto.
This ghetto is a creation of your own minds, and if you don't get out of it soon I fear for the future of your agencies.

'Once you have accepted a theory and used it as a tool in your thinking, it is extraordinarily difficult to notice its flaws. If you come upon an observation that does not seem to fit the model, you assume that there must be a perfectly good explanation that you are somehow missing. You give the theory the benefit of the doubt, trusting the community of experts who have accepted it.'

'In mixed gambles, where both a gain and a loss are possible, loss aversion causes extremely risk-averse choices.'

(Both quotes via Daniel Kahneman)

Of course, it appears a mixed gamble.

But according to McKinsey, this year...
- 67% of digital agencies think they have strong strategic capability
- 16% of their clients agree

That should be frightening.
What are you going to do about it?

Wednesday, July 04, 2012

the man in the chair

Apparently, the below is one of the best known, and most oft quoted examples of advertising advertising.

Not so for me, I only came across it last week as I plough through The Intention Economy, the latest book from Doc Searls, of Cluetrain and Project VRM fame.

Created for The McGraw-Hill Business Publications Company in 1958, 'The Man in the Chair' ad is revered as one of the most effective and influential works in the genre. In a 2012 context, there is still much to be gleaned from its message.

I don’t know who you are.
I don’t know your company.
I don’t know your company’s products.
I don’t know what your company stands for.
I don’t know your company’s record.
I don’t know your company’s reputation.
Now, what was it you wanted to sell me?

Doc says:
'The true lodestar of advertising has always been the customers.
This is why the [McGraw-Hill] ad was so important. It was a signal sent by McGraw-Hill to advertisers on behalf of its readers. It spoke of the company’s relationship with those readers and said to advertisers that it stood on the readers’ side.
It demanded substance, relevance, and earned reputation from its advertisers. It said relationships were possible, but only when customers sat with companies at the same table, at the same level.'

What this ad is about resonates with me when placed in the context of the great digital divide - ie, on the one hand, the school of advertising - online in particular - that favours the hyper-targeted, 'personal' and data-driven tactics that are manifest in the near subterfuge of cookies, surveillance/tracking and all manner of 'behavioural' targeting.

And on the other the approach that favours strategies that contain content, usefulness, values-based communication, involvement, storytelling etc to name but a few. Where salience (ie visibility, sharability) and social proof are the drivers.

In many ways being objective about the value and values of good advertising one could surmise that - for the most part - our industry is still often short of the mark and has perhaps lost its way compared to one humble, yet somehow futuristic, b2b print execution from 1958.

Friday, June 08, 2012

The technology always comes first: part 2

I'll be interested to watch Xbox Smart Glass develop.

Unveiled at E3 2012, it's, indeed, a pretty smart next iteration on multi screen interaction for gaming but i can also easily envisage some equally smart people picking up on this technology as a platform and doing something with it for any form of entertainment, and advertising of course...

Don't get hung up on the Microsoft guy's slightly hammy presentation.

Remember kids...The technology always comes first.

Then the creative people come along and make something with it.

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

HT TMac

Wednesday, June 06, 2012

empire state chicken burger

Andy Warhol’s influence on culture and of course advertising continues to be apparent.

There’s plenty written on this subject so I’m not going too far down that rabbit hole, but there’s two examples from the advertising world that I’ve noticed this week, one fairly explicit and other less so.

Firstly ‘Which Warhol’s Warhol’s’ is a challenge for guests staying at Melbourne’s Art Series hotels. The winner get’s to go home with a genuine $20,000 Andy Warhol print providing that they can pick the ‘real’ Warhol from one of the 10 ‘Warhols’ displayed in the hotels between May and August.

The other 9 are forgeries created by art forger Tony Tetro.

I love this idea.

Perhaps more than any other artist Warhol’s pieces are social objects – conversational in nature both from a subject point of view (what is or isn’t appropriate content for ‘art’ – death, disaster etc) And from an objective view point. His industrial methods of production and low-touch involvement in the production process itself.

‘Which Warhol’s Warhol’s’ plays to both of these conversational elements, and is inherently high in involvement and experience. It’s almost impossible to encounter the ‘campaign’ and not have something to say about it.

Art Series Hotel Group CEO Will Deague is also reported as saying that the other purpose of the intervention is to stimulate discussion and debate around the production of replica art and it’s impact on working artists.

This is a great example of creating a bit of culture first then advertising the idea.

As opposed to an advertising idea.

Which segues neatly into the next example.
The current advertising for ‘Hungry Jacks’, the Aussie Burger King.

But firstly some notes on one of Warhol’s most noteable journeys into the film medium.

Officially, the only way to see the Andy Warhol’s 1964 film Empire, an epic eight and a half hour stationary shot of the Empire State Building in New York is to borrow a copy from the MoMA.

It has never had any distribution on video or dvd, nor is it available online. Any screenings that happen are usually in museums or galleries.

The film itself has no script, and other than the Empire State Building itself, no characters (if one discounts the momentary flashes of Warhol and cinematographer Jonas Mekas as reflection in the window of the Time-Life building from which the film was shot) and, of course, no traditional narrative.

In effect the movie is more an academic exercise in the medium of film rather than anything that is meant to be ‘watched’ in the traditional sense.

The only narrative events are more like non-events - a twinkling light at the top of a nearby building marks the passing of time. According to Warhol, the point of this film is simply to ‘see time go by.’

Despite being a movie that few people have ever seen it’s one of Warhol’s most iconic works.

The Hungry Jack’s ‘Nothing naughty about it’ ad for its ‘chicken’ burger range has also certain Warholian characteristics. But is closer in nature to the Empire movie in it’s unintentional celebration of the banal.

The spot is based around it’s own non-event, a rock chick eats a chicken burger, turns into a ‘nice’ girl to the horror of here rock band mates.

The observation here is that, like the Warhol ‘forgeries’ this ad is an advertising forgery.

It’s a facsimile of advertising.
For all intents and purposes it has all of the appearance and stylistic attributes of advertising.
It looks and behaves like an ad.
It has a message of sorts.
A look and feel.
Some logos.
A notional ‘audience’.
A ‘gag’ of sorts (like a gag except not funny)

But it’s somehow empty.
A replica.
It’s not even trying to be an idea.
Devoid of any inspiration or insight - it's pure construct. It’s a pure excercise in the stylistic conventions of advertising without actually being advertising.

Warhols famously, and somewhat archly said ‘If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, there I am. There's nothing behind it'.

To that point the only thing more banal than the Hungry Jacks campaign is the commentary around it that arose yesterday on the industry blogs.

This is not a rant against TV advertising, by the way.
Film is still the greatest storytelling medium. Provided you have a story.
Compare Hungry Jacks to the Proctor and Gamble film 'Best Job' for the 2012 Olympics.
Then let's have a conversation about values, inspiration and insight.

Monday, May 28, 2012

[review] can't/can: talkin' loud, sayin' nothing.

Following its seven day 'teaser' run up, the 'Can't' campaign revealed itself on the weekend and, as just about everyone who was paying any attention predicted, was indeed the relaunch/rebadging of the Commonwealth Bank.

CommBank binned their longstanding agency partner, San Francisco based Goodby Silverstein & Partners, back in February and 'Can't/Can' is the first major effort from M&C Saatchi Sydney who won the account back for Australia as it were.

Whilst every man and his dog in the advertising biz has a view on the executional merits of the relaunch I thought it might be interesting to have a look through a brand innovation lens and chuck in a couple of other thoughts on the overall position of the thing.

Still pretty much the defacto word on brand innovation is John Grant's tome from 2006. The principle hypothesis behind the need for brand innovation being that the nature of communications has fundamentally shifted in the connected age in one simple way.

- From: targeting messages at passive audiences

- To ideas being adopted by (or co-created with) groups for whom they are relevant.

Despite the hoo-ha the 'Can't/Can' campaign is firmly embedded in the former, as we shall see.

The build up of 'Can't' existed initially through the use of prominent billboards with the message 'CAN'T' and the url whatiscant.com.

Should a viewer be tickled by this the idea was further extended at the website with further oblique 'Can't' messages.

As the week progressed other 'Can't' stunts emerged such as lollipop ladies with 'Can't' on the end of their sticks and a truck with huge letters spelling 'Can't' driving round iconic landmarks in Sydney etc.

If this is starting to sound familiar then yes, you are on the right track.
It's an almost tactic-for-tactic replication of the NAB 'Break Up' intervention from 2011.

More on that in a minute.

On the web the @whoiscant twitter bot seemed to be present in various twitter streams including conversations around The Voice tv show and the rugby, again inserting #cant into the streams with various degrees of relevance, mostly thin.

On Sunday the message then switched to 'Can' with a fairly contrived twitter 'reveal' and a 60sec video fronted by actress Toni Collette reciting a poem 'An ode to Can' reputedly penned by M&C Saatchi around the word 'Can'.

The similarity to 'Break Up' from a tactical viewpoint is very apparent. What 'Can't/Can' principally lacks, however, is an IDEA.

Whilst 'Break Up' took a stand alongside banking customers against the industry, an idea that people could get involved with, 'Can't' seems to be CommBank navel gazing and deep in Mott The Hoople Syndrome territory (ie talking about themselves, to themselves). There's plenty of 'image' but precious little 'innovation'.

The whole campaign hangs off a single consistent 'message' but there's little involvement.

For an idea to spread the intended spreaders need to want it to spread.
If no-one knows what it is, then it's chances are significantly hampered.

Indeed the principle spreaders of 'Can't' were firstly Heritage Bank, then Greenpeace and also ANZ Bank who all newsjacked 'Can't' for their own purposes.

Consequently 'Can't' was therefore a fairly static notion, other than one directional messaging dressed as stunts there were no dynamics or currency to speak of. The lack of agility by either the bank or the agency left it wide open for more nimble competitors or agitators to ambush.

'Experience' was also limited, bearing in mind again that no one really knew what the idea was about.
There was nothing to DO. We were somehow supposed to THINK first, which is a serious strategic miscalculation in this day and age.

How 'authentic' is the idea? It's hard to call on that one, we shall see as the the rebrand manifests itself over time. The actual policies and practices of the bank will dictate that one.

In terms of 'culture' versus advertising then one has to say that it's been 100% an advertising construct, and not a particularly smart one. It's not difficult to imagine the entire campaign being built from the award video submission outwards. Maybe that's just the cynic in me.

Though in fairness one could summise that 'Can' is the germ of some positive value-driven story, whether it will inspire people to take action or bears any resemblance to a truth that CommBank will live and breath remains to be seen.

Overall it seems to be a case of talkin' loud, sayin' nothing, however.

Friday, May 25, 2012

winning the story wars

Here's a inspirational clip, it's a promo for the book 'Winning the Story Wars' by Jonah Sachs.

The message is that 'Brands that tell value-driven stories can change the world'.

We've been believers in the Purpose Idea round here for some considerable time, so this is more fuel to the fire.

Sachs's mantra is Be Interesting, Tell the Truth and Live the Truth.

Contrary to popular opinion the proliferation of social media tools and digital platforms does not make marketing in the connected age more complicated.

No matter how many logo splattered charts and info graphics may suggest so.

It's actually very simple.

Inspire people to take action with positive value-driven stories.

App of the month: PEEK *exclusive sneak peek

PEEK is an iPhone app that allows it's user to share photos that self‐destruct in 30seconds, and are protected from full screen capture and copying.

The encrypted pictures are viewed in what Peek calls 'torchmode'.

This means the entire picture is never fully visible, the recipient literally only gets a peek through the 'mask'.

To play, simply capture or select a photo from your phone's albums, send the encrypted pic via MMS or email, and Peek will unlock the photo for the recipient for 30seconds so they can have a look.

The great thing about PEEK as an idea is that it obviously exists in response to an existing behaviour. Whatever one may think about the sensibleness of that behaviour, it is clearly a something that is going on. It is difficult if not impossible to enforce any legal measures that prevent private communications from being misused and making it onto dubious Tumblrs and so on, the next best thing is to make it safer.

Because images are never uploaded to PEEK's server they stay between the sender and recipient.

PEEK makes it somewhat safer to play, for those who arre of the inclination, and keeps things private.

Have a peek at PEEK.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

value propositions

I've been in a number of discussions on the nature of value propositions lately. In the agency this debate has been principally fuelled by our current obsession with all things lean and subsequently the ideas of lean godfather Steve Blank.

In a recent article Blank has pointed to the idea that there are in fact only two fundamental value propositions (ie the 'why') available to any brand, company, product or service.

These are:

1. It solves a problem. It is functional.
Things like electricity, toothbrushes, washing powder or paracetamol tablets would often fall into this bucket.

or

2. It fulfils a human social need.
Human social needs being things like entertainment, connection, friendship and so forth.

Blank argues, and we agree, that the functional value proposition is clearly the lesser of the two in terms of creative potential.

Having a purely problem solving value proposition is also risky, for instance, though not exclusively, for the fact that if Brand Y comes along and can fix the same problem cheaper or faster then Brand X is vulnerable.

Then competing on price is a race to the bottom, particularly if Brand X is also competing on scale.

Whereas there is a huge market for companies that can fulfil social human needs. Facebook, Zynga, Google, Nike, Virgin, Vogue or Manchester United etc etc are testament to this.

As a lens this is useful for quickly evaluating the nature of advertising campaigns.

Which brings me to this current campaign for erstwhile iconic Aussie workwear brand Hard Yakka.

I've noticed this poster over the road on my drive to work over the past couple of weeks and it's irked me but I've not been able to pin down exactly why, but here goes...

The line 'Jeans you won't wear out' seems to me to be so mundane and functional in it's 'value proposition' that I've been scratching my head to see if there's some irony or something that I am just simply not 'getting'.

The double whammy is the kinda subtext which is that - not only but also - you will not wear these denims 'out', in non building site situations such as social occasions, either.

So not only is the value proposition purely functional and commodity but it also goes one step further and negates any potential social fulfillment, or even simply further utility, by imlpicity stating 'problems' that the product will not solve.

I'm all about pragmatism but this strikes me as dull in the extreme.

Of course, the alternative extreme is 'liquid linkage to big fat fertile spaces' but for a 'genuine' brand like Hard Yakka one has to mark this card as disappointing, unimaginative and generally must work harder.

Hard Yakka is a former client at my previous agency, so think of this as tough love.

Wednesday, May 09, 2012

the commercial benefits outweigh integrity?

Slightly saddened by the total crushing mediocrity of the miserable quote below from Kilmarnock chairman Michael Johnston regarding the Glasgow Rangers situation.

As a recap Rangers have come a cropper and been under administration since February following the can of financial mismanagement worms being opened and revelations appeared detailing how the club used non-payment and evasion of tax to obtain an unfair financial and sporting advantage over every other club for at least the last 10-12 years.

Rangers future is still in limbo following the collapse of a take-over bid from American trucking 'tycoon' Bill Miller. Miller had planned a transfer of the club's assets to an 'incubator' company ( a 'newco') while 'issues relating to the existing business are resolved, with the intention of combining the two concerns at a later date' (ie: never)

By rights any newco would be stripped of SPL status and would need to apply for a vacancy in the SFL (the lower divisions body) and then play their way up from the Third Division.

However the integrity of the sport does not seem to be top of the agenda in the boardrooms of SPL member chairpersons.

Someone should point them to the principles of Lean Startup, in particular the chapters about finding a sustainable business model. About learning quickly what works, and discard what doesn't.

The SPL staus quo may on the surface seem to be a product with great features (of which Rangers FC may be asuumed to be one) - but you have to figure out if there is a market for it. Declining attendances and lack of perceived competition due to the domination (by fair means or foul) of Celtic and Rangers, may indeed point to a model that was clearly broken and not actually sustainable.

Kilmarnock chairman Johnston is quoted on the BBC Sport website thus:

"[SPL] Members see the commercial benefits of having Rangers, even as a newco, the clubs are mindful of a sporting integrity aspect but the commercial benefits may outweigh that."

Mindful of sporting integrity? My arse.

Mr Johnson and the other SPL member clubs would de well to heed the old adage 'If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything'.

If Johnson's view is shared by the other member clubs then the race to the bottom for Scottish football has just kicked in another gear.

Monday, May 07, 2012

eu estou sempre soprando bolhas

I remember reading recently, and being somewhat surprised to say the least, about the popularity of long lost east-end bootboy combo - and West Ham United crew - The Cockney Rejects, in Brazil, of all places.

Apparently Stinky Turner and the boys are the toast of Torcidas organizadas, and West Ham tops are de rigeur in the punk rock clubs from Rio De Janeiro to Sau Paulo.

This phenomenon may or may not be connected to a web application called Demand It! from Eventful.

Demand It! users can 'demand' events, (eg concerts by now obscure east-end Oi-sters) and if they enough support can be galvanised, then they can bring these events to their town.

It's a simple VRM-esqe notion, meaning the fans get what they want by pulling together, reducing the risk for concert promoters (who may, or may not even be involved) and meaning that bands outside of the mainstream (whatever that is in 2012) can find their audience, wherever it may be.

Eventful founder, Brian Dear explained to Fred Wilson aka AVC:

'I remember US bands shocked to discover they had throngs of fans in distant places like Finland and Uruguay and Japan, and so they'd go tour there because it turned out their Demand it! numbers in those places were big enough to get gigs that would be profitable.'

Wilson himself remarks at the end of the article:

'With the Facebook IPO on everyone's mind, the topic du jour seems to be valuations, revenues, and profits. But the most impactful thing about social media is not the dollar value of these platforms, it is the people power of them.'

Venha sobre vós ferros.

which agency knows the 'brand' best?

One of the conundrums when making the switch from big agency land to small agency land is realising that the business development boot has landed squarely on the other foot.

In my big agency days I quite happily trotted out the following statement to clients who's account was with said big agency [me], but whose heads were occasionally being turned by the advances of smaller boutique or specialist agencies who had a sniff of one or more parts of the client's marketing budget [them].

'We [big agency] understand the brand. Why would [client] risk handing over any part of the marketing to [small agency]? They don't get the brand.'

The reality of this statement, looking at it now from the challenger viewpoint rather than the incumbent viewpoint, is that it is utter tosh.

If the brand manager and the big agency are the only parties who 'get' the brand, who 'understand ' the brand, then clearly they have not been doing their jobs properly.

If they had been doing it properly then everyone should understand the brand.

Everyone should be clear on the values, meaning, purpose, image and voice of the brand.

If they - brand manager and incumbent agency - have been doing their jobs properly then there can be no doubt about what the brand idea is, so the door would therefore open for any agency to have a valid point of view on how those values, meaning, purpose, image and communications should best be expressed.

In this scenario then, it's clear that best relationships, people and then best strategies and ideas should win.

For [big agency] to claim that the criteria for keeping the account is that they are the only agency to really understand the brand, is the best case I've heard for them to be fired, immediately.

Friday, April 20, 2012

KIT social program guide

It was just over a year ago that we launched Twelevision here in Australia, while I was at BBDO.

It was our minimum viable product experiment in matching social data to the TV guide, and worked pretty well.

Suffice to say the game has changed in 12 months and the new KIT Social Program Guide or SPG, is in all likelyhood shortly to become the daddy of social tv applications.

Built on the same insight that led Twelevision - that people rely most on social data and influence when they are figuring out what to watch - the Kit SPG takes it up a few levels.

The SPG has also cracked the conundrum that would have been integral to Twelevision 2.0, the ability for advertisers to seamlessly sync their TV ads with an experience on the handheld device.

A nice little feature is the ability to also sync your friends comments into a timeline that matches the content so that the experience is not ruined by spoilers when watching in a time-shifted mode.

The clip is narrated by our good friend, and Global Lead Analyst at Kit, Mr Alan Wolk.

Obviously I'm double pleased to report on the Kit SPG as it has been made by Kit Digital, and Sputnik - where I work- are a division of the Kit Network and so it's in the family.

a cheap holiday in other people's misery

Unbelievably there are over 2 million (possibly even up to 4 million) men, women and children trafficked across borders - and within their own countries - every year.

These people are bought, sold and transported into slavery for sexual exploitation, sweat shops, child brides, circuses, sacrificial worship, forced begging, sale of human organs, farm labour, domestic servitude.

That last quote comes from STOP THE TRAFFIK - originally set up as a 2 year project in 2000 but now grown into a full blown international movement dedicated to bringing about the end of human trafficking.

This clip is from Amsterdam's red light district, where every year thousands of young women who think they are going to the 'Dam or elswhere to work as dancers end up doing something rather different.

This is a splendid and effective piece of détournement - a variation on a previous media , in which the newly created one has a meaning that is antagonistic or antithetical to the original. The original media work that is détourned must be somewhat familiar to the audience, so that it can appreciate the opposition of the new message.

The silence at the end of the clip as the spectators, even in their own passivity, have been forced into realising they are not in fact spectators but participants is eerie.

A stunt that that incriminates its audience - they are participants even though they imagine they are not.

It's moments like these that show the potential power of advertising as a force for good.

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!