Never get out of the boat

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.