advertising, cinema, content creating, engaging, marketing, praising, social media-ising

Scott Pilgrim vs. The Expendables vs. Eat Pray Love vs. The World: lessons from Hollywood on content, sociability and adding value

it has been many moons since Mediation bemoaned Michael Bay's tirade against Paramount's marketing for the dire Transformers 2. you can relive the magic of those crazy days here, but the point of the post was that advertising can't turn a bad product into a good one…

we all have instant access to what the world knows. we can research, reveal and review products and services in a second. no one takes a punt on anything anymore – why would you when everything has been reviewed and rated by the crowd… we don't rely on the promise of a glitzed up poster any more.

I made the point that some of the best marketing stories emerge when communications are a natural extension of product. and that no one knows this better than movies… Transmedia storytelling via the The Matrix, Cloverfield's Mystery Box marketing, The Dark Knight's Vote Harvey Dent ARG to name a few.

the last few weeks have continued the theme of the best of marketing initiatives emerging from Hollywood. the above is for Universal's Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, an adaptation of the comic book series. the whole marketing effort is pretty much text book. there's an incredibly immersive iTrailer (you can put an i in front of anything these days) above, leading to an awesome website which – via its socialrama – is social to the extreme and which actively encourages remixing of the marketing material to propagate content and word of mouth.

the Scott Pilgrim movie website, or is it a comic book? or a mash-up of both?

the socialness of Scott… a plethora of ways to share and engage across you nearest available social network

other recent marketing efforts have continued the innovative theme… this glorious 'Call To Arms' trailer for The Expendables directly takes on the competition that is Julia Roberts' Eat, Pray, Love …

the trailer observes that the likes of Twilight, Sex and the City and now Eat, Pray, Love, are taking over the cinema, and that this is men's last collective chance to take cinema back. it makes the delightfully honest observation that the place to see The Expendables isn't "off your torrents but in a f***ing theatre (where violence belongs) …if this loses to Eat, Pray, Love you don't deserve to be a man" – in the spirit of the movie, no punches pulled then.

The Expendables also brings us a genius innovative use of YouTube, following in the giant footsteps of Wario's Shake It and Cadbury's Round YouTube videos.

Hollywood seem to be learning fast. illegal file sharing and the rise of better-than-cinema home entertainment (where you can enjoy movies sans other people talking and on a sofa) continue to threaten box-office revenues. Hollywood need to innovate to keep people in cinemas.

but there's a further interesting angle on all of the above examples of Hollywood entertainment… in that they all start to slash the required marketing budget. they all take advantage of the studios' owned and – predominantly via activation in social networks – earned media.

it's not unusual for a $150m movie to have a marketing budget of $100m+ … anything that the studios take off their marketing budget goes straight back to the bottom line. movies also have the double advantage of being content rich and very topical, there's a new and shininess which adds to their social appeal.

movie marketing is increasingly getting that marketing isn't about ensuring that as many of the target audience as possible are aware of a movie, rather its about creating value for enough of the right people and encouraging them to propagate your message. the implicit promise… that the product you buy will live up to the marketing, is made explicit by marketing that adds value to a movie's audience before they've ever entered the cinema.

slash your marketing budget via content and sociability that adds value to potential customers. sounds so easy that anyone could do it right? so why aren't you?

applicationing, conversing, realtiming, sharing, social media-ising

Bringing the Reality of Deepwater Home: how ifitwasmyhome.com is utilising GoogleMaps and RealTime data to fuel conversation and action

on April 20 an explosion on the BP operated Deepwater Horizon oil rig killed eleven crew members, sparking not only a significant environmental incident, but – increasingly – a new case study on how interested parties can bring pressure to bear on governments and organisations.

like The Guardian vs. Trafigura last year, the ongoing BP Deepwater Horizon situation is fueling emergent possibilities and rules of engagement on how different groups and organisations engage and influence each other, of which the above is a great example…

it's a GoogleMap of Sydney and the surrounding area, with the current extent of the Deepwater Oil spill super-imposed on top. it makes real the extent of the spill, which – if it was here in Sydney – would stretch from Newcastle in the north to Wollongong in the south, and from far out to sea in the east to far beyond the blue mountains to the west. it's all courtesy of ifitwasmyhome.com the original page of which shows the extent of the spill in it's actual location.

it's interesting for three reasons. one, it's built and powered by (pretty much) RealTime data. we can see the situation as it is now, rather than retrospectively or projected. the site explains how the data is collected…

"The data used to create the spill image comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA releases a daily report detailing where the spill is going to be within the next 24 hours. They do this by collecting data from a number of sources, including satellite imagery and reports by trained observers who have made helicopter flights back and forth across the potentially affected areas. This data is entered into several leading computer models by NOAA oceanographers along with information about currents and winds in the gulf." source

the second point of interest is how the site is intrinsically social. of course all of the web is social now, but everything about the site is designed to make it adoptable and sharable, with functionality that encourages just that.

finally, it's such an elegant idea. too often we fail to grasp the reality of a situation because it's too remote, too incomprehensible, is too short on credibility, or because its difficult to relate to. this simple and elegant idea takes all of that square on, making the spill as relatable as it can be, in as credible a way as can be imagined. whilst all the time fueling personalised ugc to propel the issue into conversations from which it may have otherwise been absent.

the casebook on how governments, BP, the media and the public interacted and influenced each other throughout the Deepwater incident is yet to be written, but I suspect that when it is, ifitwasmyhome.com will have had a part to play.

broadcasting, converging, social media-ising, social networking, television

Building Social Shells: the trap and the opportunity of NBC’s ‘fan it’ initiative

NBC's 'fan it', which launches today

thanks to Lauren for the heads up that NBC is today launching 'fan it', a initiative that the company describes as a "win-win opportunity that broaden's [our] shows' visibility" … "What better way to spread the word about our shows than with the help of our loyal fans" asks Adam Stotsky, president of NBC entertainment marketing. quite right.

essentially viewers interact with shows and they're rewarded with fan points, and points mean prizes; be they exclusive early access to shows, merchandise, or discounts. you can even win 'big-ticket sweepstakes items', like props from the Office.

there's much to be lauded about NBC's effort. its rewarding fans of shows for being fans of shows, which generates that most potent and valuable of comms properties: word of mouth. but rather than having a WOM strategy that at best involves an occasional email and at worst involves crossing fingers and hoping for the best, NBC are investing in WOM that they can consistently stimulate, interact with, and measure.

but I wonder if it goes far enough, and fear that its doesn't… there's a danger that this is seen as the newest and shiniest way to promote programmes… a bit like this…

old school TV marketing trap, with Social as added-on component

but Social is a different and much more potent beast than conventional advertising… for one, its intrinsically part of the shows that stimulate it. there's no filtering or polishing, no Photoshopping up the best bits; what people generate based on what stimulates then is what gets created and deployed.

for another, there's less control over how much gets created and what the sentiment of it is… conversations and word of mouth can go both ways. NBC would never create an ad saying "this show isn't as good as we thought it was going to be, but stick with it cos its got a great team and some legs yet", but that could easily be the nature of a conversation around one of it's shows in the social space.

and finally – unlike advertising – when social media talks back you can hear it. the many whoops and sighs, cheers and jibes that echo around online conversations (and beyond) as a result of TV shows that we know and sometimes love are there for the social network and broadcast network to hear. what the broadcast network chooses to do with that social networked conversation, with that collateral, is up to them…

I'd suggest that for all these reasons, Social is better seen as a 'shell' which surrounds TV product. a shell which is intrinsically part of the TV product; reflecting, amplifying, and sometimes influencing the content that stimulates it.

new school TV marketing opportunity, with Social as shell which is amplified out

this is the real role of Social Media for TV. NBC have taken a glorious step with 'fan-it', but social is not a block on a schedule to be added on, rather its the prism thru which shows are advertised. and moreover, its the collateral that's there to be deployed online and – increasingly – on-air…

'fan-it' can be a broadcast network-out initiative or it can be social network-in conversation. the choice – and the challenge – may be NBC's, but 'fan-it' remains a brilliant next step – for both networks – towards a new TV media ecology.

debating, internet, realtiming, social media-ising, social networking, user-generating

Elephants and Mountains: notes from MySpace’s Next Chapter of Social Media

and we're off… Tim Burrowes chairs MySpace's Next Chapter in Social Media

there was only one word of the day last week, when MySpace Australia hosted their Next Chapter in Social Media event in deepest darkest Alexandria. that word was Discovery. MySpace is about discovery, and being discovered. and about discovering stuff. "MySpace will be the best tool for Discovery" was the assertion of the social network's International Co-President Mike Jones, who in his keynote speech highlighted projects from the network that are "allowing people to get Discovered".

Jones made the point that 'social' is no longer a USP… every web property has or will soon have social elements as an integral part of their offering. being a network that is social isn't enough. hence 'Discovery', and MySpace's intended positioning as the internet's 'Discovery Engine'. they're nothing if not bold.

Jones discussed a range of MySpace innovations, from allowing realtime commenting on the site to integration with Twitter; and he talked about the site's new AdStream unit, which allows advertisers to "push ads into the stream", the "consumer-activated pop-up" for which delivers "incredible impact".

we have a problem here. well actually we have two.

firstly, the innovations aren't. innovative. my Twitter has been linked to my Facebook for as long as I can remember (which in realtime isn't I admit that long but long enough given the pace of change in social media network evolution). nor is commenting on content in real time revolutionary, to pretend that it is may do more damage than good. ditto MySpace Music's developing an algorithm to recommend music based on what you're listening to. we've been there and we've done that, nothing new is being brought to the table.

the second problem is of more concern because it gives visibility to the mentality behind the direction in which MySpace is going. Jones' comments – that "ads" can be "pushed" and deliver "impact" – is a broadcast mentality, a mentality that has no place as a core proposition within an online social network. while the rest of the comms community discuss engagement, content, utility and ways in which brands can make our lives more intuitive, MySpace find themselves talking about ads that deliver more impact.

there's a disconnect between the MySpace product and the role of brands here… the primary role of brands is not IMHO to fund MySpace. that comes as an important and necessary result of brands engaging with and providing utility for MySpace users. for MySpace themselves not to be leading this intellectual charge should, in the month that saw AOL give up on Bebo, be of concern.

there's a genuine sense that MySpace are playing catch-up. even the acknowledgment by Jones that "sometimes what you Discover on MySpace may not be on MySpace, and we're OK with that" sounds more like the waving of a white flag rather than a confident forging of partnerships to grow, activate and engage the MySpace user-base.

the danger is that 'Discovery' becomes nothing more than an interesting but unownable concept for which product simply doesn't follow through. Jones may assert that "Discovery is the one thing we really have to nail", but the one question that everyone at MySpace should be asking themselves… 'how do we bring utility to how people discover stuff on the internet?' doesn't seem to be being asked, at least in last week's public forum.

I Tweeted at the event #myspaceevent wondering what myspace would have done differently if they could replay the last five years over again?

Tim picked it up and put the question to Jones, who was honest and candid. MySpace couldn't keep pace with its own growth. resources were diverted to infrastructure and sales, rather than product; "for five years they [MySpace] were so busy keeping the site up that they had no visibility on what users were doing". Jones has his work cut out.

wise words from Dan Pankraz of DDB

next up at the event was Dan Pankraz, a Youth Planning Specialist at DDB who gave an overview on Generation C. the content was or should be very familiar to those of us who have been negotiating the future of media and communications for a while, but some solid observations were made:

for the 'connected collective', happiness = being part of the tribe
successful ideas aren't necessarily the biggest but the fastest moving
we need to create stuff for the swarm to pick up and run with
conversations never end
mobiles = social oxygen
82% of young people rely on peer approval for decision making
brand relevance is determined in the moment
online identities are different from our real ones; the online version being the 'wanname'
gen-C are pluralistic with sub-cultures, and avoid perceptions of one-dimensionality

one observation that caused some chatter on the day was a stat from FastCompany claiming that in 9 hours of media consumption, gen-C take in 13 hours of content. personally I thought that sounded conservative – multitasking alone potentially doubles the amount of media a content-hungry gen-C can devour, with their attention span decreasing accordingly of course.

Pankraz shared a plethora of examples of who's out there doing interesting stuff in this space… broadly aligned along three pillars; Collaboration, Purposeful Platforms and Play…

on Collaboration: "agencies talk too much about the tools and not enough about how brands can be more social and what content they have to share" … "the best brands allow people to morph ideas" … "do stuff with and for gen-C not at them" … gen-C are not a destination and can't be targeted, rather they are a partner in production.

Kypski's One Frame of Fame Project encourages all of us to be in their music video, which us updated every hour based on contributions from, well, anyone…

attracting 14 million unique visits within 8 weeks, Draft FCB Stockholm's campaign for Sweden's TV licensing body allowed anyone to create a video clip where anybody could be the hero of the clip…

on Purposeful Platforms: Pankraz cited Coke's Expedition 206, for which three ambassadors take a journey to all 206 countries where Coca-Cola is sold, interestingly thats 14 more countries than are represented by the United nations…

on Play: "…a key marketing paradigm to engage audiences", Pankraz described Cabbie-oke, DDB's project for Telstra which see's Cabbie-oke cabs offering free cab rides every weekend; so all you have to do is belt out a tune for your free ride…

he described RedBull as "probably the most playful brand in the world" citing their 'secret halfpipe' project for Shaun White. they do what great brands – in Pankraz's view – should all do: experiment with and create popular culture…

in short, its not what you say, but what you do that counts. Dan blogs here.

SMO joke – Nicole Still gives the advertiser's perspective

the final speaker of the afternoon was the enigmatic J&J's Pacific Digital Director Nicole Still, who gave a candid walk through ten principles she works to at the company:

never, ever, censor… "deleting comments is not an option"
be ready for SMO (Social Media Outbreak); that thing that happens when someone replies or responds to what you've put out there. she encourages J&J marketers to just try [something new], admitting that "for companies like J&J, Social Media is like the dentist; it means well but it causes great anguish"
every brand has a right to be there [in the social space]
develop a parallel brand to deploy into the social media space – for example Neutrogena is building a OLS (one less stress) brand to deploy into the social space
prioritise and define the role of each social media channel
use a combination of paid, earned and free media (Still cited a recent campaign that split investment 75% paid, 20% earned and 5% owned, and suggested that for an investment of c.$1.3m she'd expect to generate c.$3m of total 'media')
harness alpha-influencers on third-party sites
practice on Facebook (who don't charge to have sites) – remember that "people don't take on individuals, they take on corporations" (ie always respond individually)
measure what matters: the number friends you have doesn't. 50% of the people who visit the J&J site 'fan' it. she has five key metrics: sales, reach & freq, awareness, cost effectiveness and engagement
sometimes, its about presence not participation. sometimes, just being there is enough

in the discussion after-wards, Still made some surprising comments about the client / agency relationship. "from J&J's standpoint, its the responsibility of the [digital] agency [to monitor the social space]" … "at a global [big brand] level, it shouldn't be brought in house" … and finally, "we take responsibility for training the agency". this last point in particular was interesting, Still admitted taking what is a reasonable and responsible position in ensuring her agencies are delivering what she and her company needs. ultimately "you have to give people ownership in the space to be incredible successes or colossal failures". refreshing indeed.

in the final panel discussion I asked about the elephant. the big grey one. there. in the room. there. behind you… "Australian marketing invests relatively less than equivalent digitally-enabled countries in online. PWC have stated that "traditional media 'owns' the market in Australia for a long time yet to come". so why is Australia lagging behind and what would the panel like to do to help it catch up?"

for Pankraz it was about better learning: Australian clients have had a bad education from agencyland – we need to better educate the market about digital.

Still challenged the question, citing The Best Job in the World as an example of great thinking coming out of Australia, a country which many companies want to be a testbed for innovation and marketing thinking.

only Rebekah Horne tackled my elephant, commenting that because there are no agreed metrics or online currency in Australia, traditional media is seen as less risky; less risky for agencies to recommend, and less risky for marketers to buy…

it was quite the appropriate comment from the Managing Director and Senior Vice President International of MySpace. Horne must know better than anyone the mountain MySpace now have to climb, but its perhaps no different from that which all of us negotiating the future of media and communications have to climb. MySpace may not have the answers to what the Next Chapter of Social Media looks like, but from here it looks like they're the ones who are creating a forum for the asking; and finding the answers is required learning for MySpace and the industry alike.

sampling, social media-ising

The most personal of experiences: how a Mystery Box, Facebook and an Envelope are combined to deliver so much more than a sample

so I was plugging into RealTime, as you do, earlier on today and a few tweets popped up from people saying that they'd been chosen. I like being chosen for things; its one of those gloriously self-affirming things that makes you feel good and accepted and safe and therefore at peace and happy. its a human thing.

anyway… I clicked the bit.ly and found myself looking at the above mystery box. and a rather glorious mystery box it is too.

I've written about Mystery Boxes before, I love them and there aren't enough of them in what we do… they're what JJ Abrams describes as "infinite possibility, hope and potential" … he says that he finds himself "drawn to infinite possibility and that sense of potential, and I realise that mystery is the catalyst for the imagination … what are stories but mystery boxes?"

and this must be a good mystery box, because when the site asks me to connect with Facebook I do so without hesitation. actually I do that a lot more now, I'm finding that I'm starting to click Connect at the drop of a hat… Zuckerberg and his 'end of privacy' could be nearer to winning the battle for the internet 'aggregator of aggregators' than I realise…

anyway… clicking on Connect starts a video which ends up with me looking at myself. and my friends. on lots of screens. in a video that until a few seconds ago didn't exist.

now this isn't new… applications have been doing this for a couple of years now. but there are a few noteworthy things about it… one, its beautifully done; the most elegant and clean of experiences. two it can be spread like lightening both before and after the experience; with Twitter bringing up front then Facebook the rear of the journey. finally its gloriously tangible… the fact that (if I lived in the States) I'd be expecting an envelope to arrive on my door adds a very RealWorld element to what would otherwise have been a cool online experience.

its a shame it has to stop there really… I can't help but think that
it would be a brilliant way to start an ARG …only when the envelope
arrives does the game begin. and the game could play out on Facebook
because you're already plugged in. oh its all good…

advertising, broadcasting, social media-ising, television, viewing

Message for Chrysler: the 1980s called and they want their marketing model back

NBC's SuperBowl broadcast cash cow; could the last marketer out please turn off the lights (pic sourced)

news this week that Chrysler has caused quite a stir by 'snapping up' one of the last remaining ad spots in the Superbowl. 'Chrysler' you say, 'the Chrysler that got bailed out by the American taxpayer to the tune of $13.5 BILLION last year?' … yes, the same.

I am, in a word, stunned. stunned that an advertiser that had just been bailed out by the American taxpayer could decide that blowing something in the region of $100,000 per second on a 60" TV ad is in any way shape or form the right thing to do. when oh when are people going to get that broadcast advertising is neither efficient nor effective at selling things. McKinsey, if you remember, did a really cracking bit of research that went a long way to proving that consideration isn't a funnel and doesn't work like that.

I'm not suggesting that advertising (ie one-to-many 'adverts') isn't good at doing things. it really is. it's very good at (1) communicating new news, (2) getting people talking about your brand and (3) it's very good at validating purchase decisions. but none of these are relevant for Chrysler; who in this move have only succeeded in getting people talking for all the wrong reasons…

Ad Age quote one commenter as saying that the move is a "slap in the face to every American taxpayer … This is Chrysler's way of saying 'Thanks for saving us, but now screw you, America. We're gonna use the money to pay for some Super Bowl ads".

a spokesperson for Chrysler- quoted in the same article – comments that "The Super Bowl is one of the most-watched TV programs of the year, not only for the football game but for the creative advertising … It provides an efficient platform to make a statement, set the new brand-positioning and reach the maximum number of viewers in comparison to traditional advertising … It would be more costly to achieve the same number of viewers in traditional media placement and ensure the high viewership attention span that the Super Bowl delivers."

I'm sorry but the 1980's called and they want their marketing model back.

its a statement from a company marching backwards: "efficient platform to make a statement", "set a new brand positioning", "in comparison to traditional advertising", "high viewership attention span" … I really am at a loss for words.

Advertising Age's headline was that "you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't" – their reporting suggesting "Don't advertise, you don't move product. Advertise, you get hammered for wasting money" … I'm sorry but in this case Chrysler are just damned. damned because they have. they have wasted money, they have taken a lazy way out, and they have ignored the new paradigm of marking and communications that has evolved around them over the last decade.

Pepsi decided that they wouldn't be damned if they didn't. the company that spent $142m on SuperBowl advertising between 1999-2009 (source) have decided that they'd rather invest the money on something a little more meaningful than lining the pockets of Madison Avenue's Bad Men. Pepsi are marketing by investing in the people and projects that people think are worthy of investment. Pepsi get that ad money isn't there to 'sell' stuff. it's there to get people talking about your brand, because what you're doing is worthy and meaningful and acting as though you give a damn about the people that you want to buy your products. and full credit to them.

in the slow painful death of the broadcast sales model, it's the existence of events like the SuperBowl that will allow its last standing defendants to cry "it works … we can shout at people and claim 'our brand believes in freedom, or choice, or in the human spirit, or technology or whatever we think will most differentiates us from a competitive set that we create in order to validate our investments and people will believe us and they will buy and it will be awesome".

but if the reaction to Chrysler's move tells us anything its that the long held contract between advertisers and people who buy stuff may be starting to show more than a few cracks. people are realising that thereare other ways to be marketed at than to be shouted at by a company who can spend $100,000 a second on an advert. sure the model and it's contract will hold, probably for a good while to come, and Chrysler seem happy to throw their dollars at it. but I'd rather be one of the first ones to get out and taste the fresh air than be the last one to turn out the lights. what you do, I guess is your call.

brand extending, creating, realtiming, social media-ising

It’s a crazy world, but I wouldn’t have it any other way: me and a pair of limited edition adidas’ that I was never destined to own

its a beautiful Friday evening in Sydney, but before I head out for a few drinks for Zaac's birthday, I'd like to tell you a story. its a story about a great brand, and about how the world of communications works now; but more than that its a story about me and a pair of trainers that I will never now own. and why thats OK.

it begins last Saturday, when Size sent an email to their mailing list. on that list was my friend @fraser201 who, upon seeing that contained in that email were some of the most amazing trainers he'd seen an a good long while, forwarded the email on to me. he knew I'd like it, you see two of my favourite things in all the world are trainers and Star Wars. and there on the Size email were those two things. together. in one place. Star Wars limited edition trainers. and they were glorious.

so I turned to Google and got a few results from Star Wars and various trainer sites, but notably saw a result from @adi_originals. so I promptly hit TweetDeck and fired off a Tweet to adidas, and heard back almost immediately…

@adi_originals re StarWars collection, awesome stuff!! when are the orange Xwing hightops hitting Sydney? and where can I get them?

@cwstephenson The Skywalkers will be available at our Sydney Originals store. Give them a call: http://ow.ly/URy3

following their link, I got to their Town Hall Originals Store website and placed a call. the wonderful Chrissie picked up. she explained that there were strictly limited numbers and that they'd go on sale on a first come first served basis on Friday. in the diary Friday morning went and I did the polite thing and sent a Tweet back to adidas:

@adi_originals nice one, thanks – looking forward to picking up some Skywalkers on Friday http://bit.ly/7yNUGw

and so the week passed. and when I wasn't working or going out or up to no good, I was thinking about a limited edition pair of adidas Star Wars Stormtroopers, and tweeting about them to @fraser201 and @willsh. Friday morning, this morning, couldn't come soon enough.

I however, could have come considerably sooner. too late, I was. I simply got there too late. by the time I got to the store there was already a queue and as, one by one, people entered and left the store, the limited editions, one by one, left the store with them. very soon there weren't any left for me.

I'm not angry or pissed off. I guess I'm just a little blue. somewhere in and around Sydney there are limited edition adidas Stormtroopers being worn, or admired, or stored in a safe, but none are being worn or admired or stored in a safe by me.

please don't feel too sorry for me. there's more where they came from. the first transport may have gotten away but battle will recommence in a month's time… the prize? these little puppies…

but thats not the end of the story, because towards the end of this morning the following popped into my Twitterfeed:

@cwstephenson What did you pick up? May The Force Be With You: http://ow.ly/WDgu

adidas remembered. not just that I was interested in their products but that I was planning on getting some this morning. four days after our Tweet exchange – an eternity in a world that's converging into RealTime – they remembered and sent me a message. perhaps its just me, perhaps I was feeling needy, but I find that pretty remarkable.

play my story back again… here's how it went down: a retailer sent a mailer out which was forwarded to me via someone in my network so I searched then tweeted, then tweeted some more, then went to a store and missed out but then received a tweet which contained a link to the below rather amazing ad which I clicked on and watched.

the ad came last.

after all the product development, partnership building, new news generating, social networking and direct communicating, I watched an ad. and ad designed not to make me go and by something. quite the opposite. an ad as an affirmation. a validation of the journey that I'd just been on. "thats why I love this brand" is the response it so deservedly earns.

because in all of that story, in all that maelstrom of communications and connections, at no point was any media bought. at every step along the way it was earned; earned by a brand creating something that in the end I wasn't even able to buy.

its a crazy world, and I wouldn't have it any other way. good weekends all…

internet, predicting, realtiming, social media-ising, targeting

Staring into the Infinity of Now: the challenge of living in RealTime

the Untempered Schism [source] …the Doctor ran away, The Master went mad, I just keep staring at the Tweets and clicking on the links as they hurtle towards me

I have seen my future – it is TweetDeck on a SmartPhone – and it terrifies me. I fear that my life will not be the same again.

it all started when earlier in the week I got round to downloading TweetDeck to my laptop, and lost the following two hours, and several hours since, jumping to links as they were delivered into my live feed. it got me thinking about how much the way I consume stuff has accelerated over time…

I used to communicate pretty much exclusively asynchronously; if someone called me and I wasn't around they called back later or just didn't call at all. but then things started speeding up, first with email and mobile phones, and then with RSS (which I never really got used to) and now Twitter. at the end of this acceleration phase I now find myself plugged directly into stuff as it happens; I'm living in RealTime, my communications are predominantly synchronous. I'm not alone. in a brilliant post, Jim Stogdill describes a similar experience…

"Email was the first electronic medium to raise my clock speed, and also my first digital distraction problem. After some "ding, you have mail," I turned off the blackberry notification buzz, added rationing to my kit bag of coping strategies, and kept on concentrating. Then RSS came along and it was like memetic crystal meth. The pursuit of novelty in super-concentrated form delivered like the office coffee service … It was a RUSH to know all this stuff, and know it soonest; but it came like a flood. That un-read counter was HARD to keep to zero and there was always one more blog to add … From my vantage point today, RSS seems quaint. The good old days. I gave it up for good last year when I finally bought an iPhone and tapped Twitter straight into the vein. Yeah, I went real time."

the problem with staring into the infinity of RealTime is that your attention levels drop through the floor. there's only so much attention to give, and as the density of the communications coming at me has increased my ability to stay focused on any one thing has declined.

Richard of Sydney-based Now and Next calls is Constant Partial Stupidity. in a great post on his trend spotting site, he describes some of the symptoms of CPS…

"…how about your inability to remember multiple passwords, with the result that getting money out of an ATM at weekends has been turned into something resembling the national lottery? Or what about phone numbers? What is your home telephone number? Many people no longer have a clue and it’s not simply because they use a mobile telephone. This is the brave new world of too much information and not enough functioning memory"

my attention is increasingly focused on staring into the infinity of now, with the result that increasing amounts of my attention are being diverted to now, and away from my past and futures.

the history of my life since 19th February 2006 is contained with 5,150 gmails, all search-able in seconds. I don't have to remember anything, so I don't.

I plan in the now too… if I wanted a Playstation game (its XBox these days) I used to do my research in magazines and online – my attention was on the future. now if I'm passing a shop I can check the reviews there and then, make the decision not in the past but in the now.

my world is collapsing into RealTime, and as a consequence my attention is being pulled away from my past and possible futures. the implication for brand communications planning is obvious: the past and the future become irrelevant. unless a brand is active in the moment, in RealTime, then they may as well not exist at all.

applicationing, broadcasting, content creating, converging, innovating, social media-ising, television, viewing

Fulfilling its Social Potential: Why TV could very well be the comeback kid as media emerges from the recession

the established institutions of 'old' media were always going to take the hardest hits as the combined effects of a global advertising slowdown and a digitising media economy came to bear. such seems to have been the case. according to Warc's latest Consensus Forecast, 2009 TV revenues in the States will fall 10.9% yoy versus total global ad spend yoy decline of 10.5%. more substantial 2009 decreases in TV are anticipated in the UK, France, Germany and Japan.

looking forward to 2010, TV could very well be the area of media that not only emerges most strongly from the recession, but charges out guns blazing leading the brigade of other media behind it. the same Warc report suggests that marketers in two-thirds of the sample are intending to devote more revenues into TV next year, with Brazil, China and India up by more than 11%, the US by 1.8%, and France by 1.3%.

in fact whilst advertising revenues have declined throughout the recession, there seems to have been limited disruption on the quality of networks' output. new offerings, such as the US's FlashForward or Australia's Celebrity Masterchef have emerged and more than held their own. and whilst it could be argued that reality TV has more than shaped current TV output globally, it hasn't stopped the likes of Glee and Modern Family making their mark.

but despite strong content and a return of ad revenues in 2010, viewing will surely switch online right? well no necessarily so. this week also saw a report from the UK's Enders Analysis arguing that the scale of the VOD market has been overplayed, and that by 2020 the overall national UK average of VoD viewing will be 5%;

"and at these levels, and after taking into account the lower tolerance of interruptive advertising in on-demand programming, non-linear VOD services are unlikely to have a significant impact on commercial spot advertising revenues during the next 10 years … the traditional linear broadcast TV model continues to work well in terms of reliability, simplicity, ease of choice and ability to deliver popular programming with mass appeal"

but all this is without taking into account the phase shift that could and should happen with TV in the year ahead. 2010 could be the year that TV genuinely goes social… as the Guardian observed in a cracking data-fueled article on Jedward's storming of the Twittersphere;

"Every Saturday and Sunday night, Twitter is exploding with real-time boos, back-pats and reactions to the show's performances. It's a re-imagining of the old-media watercooler ("Did you see The X Factor last night?") in live, online space ("Omg jedward are through!") – and it could point the way to the future of TV…"

as Gary Hayes, a former development producer for the BBC who now lives in Sydney and blogs rather awesomely here, points out:

"we now know when our attention is required, especially those inciting moments when emotion or serendipity may be possible. So with these two things happening there are a growing number of services trying to glue the two – either bringing the TV to the back-channel or layering the back-channel ‘over’ the TV" (source)

hayes has aggregated a whole host of services, either existing or in development, that are bring TV to the social space and vice-versa. here are three of my favourites (all sourced from Hayes' original post):

EpiX has high-profile backing from the likes of Viacom, Paramount, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios and Lionsgate. it's a platform for viewing content online, but specifically you can invite your mates to private screening rooms and interact with them… ITV if you're listening, X-Factor was made for this…

another favourite (and another example of the increasing warmth between and cooperation by the Gates and Murdoch organisations) in the shape of X-Box and Sky who have teamed up to make the latter's content available on the former's entertainment console. but the basics of the streaming aside, the really interesting bits are when the TV screen pans back and your in a room with your and your mates' avatars. representations that you can support, deride, encourage, laugh at or ask questions of. real social interactivity in real time with real people…

there's a full video of a presentation that Xbox product manager Jerry Johnson gave to paidContent:UK here – jump to 5 mins 40 secs to get the social bit:

finally, on the mobile front there's tvChatter, a iPhone application that allows you to connect TV content to the Twitterstream relating to that show in real time. you can follow Tweets from everyone or just from people you follow. and if you're not sure what to watch, you can see which shows are generating the most interest and check them out:

this is exciting stuff. and I'm not pretending for a second that its anything new: we've been talking about, SMSing and debating TV for years. but never have we been so connected to so many people we know in real time to do so. never have the conversations about the TV we love been so prevalent and so accessible. I hope then that 2010 isn't just the year that TV sees a resurgence in revenues, but also the year that TV finally gets social… we will never look at our screens in the same way again.

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