Category Archives: user-generating

engaging, experiencing, social networking, sponsoring, user-generating

‘Plausible Promise’: what Clay Shirky and Eric Roberts can teach us about devising successful big ideas

Clay Shirky opens up his Here Comes Everybody with the story of Evan Guttman, who used social media tools to help his friend Ivanna retrieve her lost phone when the finder – a young lady called Sasha – refused to return it to it's rightful owner.  he makes the observation however that these evolving social media tools (online publishing, forums, wikis, online social networks etc) are on their own not enough…

"[social media] tools are simply a way of channeling existing motivation.  Evan was driven, resourceful, and unfortunately for sasha, very angry.  had he presented his mission in completely self-interested terms ("help my friend save $300!") or in unattainably general ones ("let's fight theft everywhere!"), the tools he chose wouldn't have mattered.  what he did was to work out a message framed in big enough terms to inspire interest, yet achievable enough to inspire confidence."

you need what he quotes Eric Roberts with calling, 'plausible promise'.  and it was this idea of plausible promise that occurred to me when I saw the above mastercard ad for The Eden Project's 'big lunch'.  which is – to quote the mastercard website:

"a national initiative developed by the Eden Project to bring the
country together, by asking you to sit down with your neighbours for
lunch in a simple act of community … on Sunday 19th July, the nation will witness the
street party to end all street parties. The organisers of The Big Lunch
are inviting as many of the UK's 61 million people as possible to
simultaneously sit down together, to meet, eat, talk, laugh and feel
hope."

the event – for which there's also a film-making initiative in association with Raindance – has social media at it's heart and is using Twitter, Flickr et al to enable interested parties to organise themselves into action.  but I'm skeptical about the 'plausible promise' of it all…  big enough to inspire interest, yet achievable enough to inspire confidence?

it's certainly big enough, with mastercard's not-insignificant investment behind the above 40" tv ad campaign, but is it achievable?  despite a brilliant and very functional website, will individuals really organise themselves into having lunch with a bunch of people they don't know in order to 'feel hope'?

it possibly most likely that people who already know each other will perhaps drag themselves into action using the big lunch as a sufficient reason to do so; but I fear that this fails on the second of Roberts' requirements.  it's simply not – I fear – very plausible.  any marketers and agencies would do well to check to what extent an initiative they decide to undertake fulfills the two plausible promise tests.

marketing success for initiatives of this type require more than just promise; they need to feel real, achievable.  they need to feel plausible; and I worry that this doesn't.  I hope that the big lunch is a success.  I hope it brings people together, I hope that it makes a difference, and I hope that the time, effort and investment that has gone into making it happen is worth it.

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content creating, experiencing, innovating, praising, user-generating

The Disposable Memory Project: bringing a bit of jeopardy and mystery to a world too full of solutions and answers

Disposable_memory_project a beautifully sunny idea for what will hopefully be a beautifully sunny weekend…  welcome to the Disposable Memory Project, which has the simple aim of telling the stories of cameras left in random places around the world.  the idea is that people will pick them up, take a few photos and pass them on, with the cameras and the photos they hold eventually returning home.

it's a simple, elegant idea for an age when experiences have higher value than things, when social aggregation can be virtual and where narratives aren't predetermined or linear.  I don't know if a brand is behind this, but I bet plenty wish they were.

at the heart of this idea are jeopardy and mystery.  if I leave a camera somewhere will it be found?  by whom?  what photos will they take and will those photos make it home?  there are no guarantees; something that feels exciting and different in a world – and marketing landscape – where amazing solutions vie for our attention and unbeatable answers clamour for our questions.

Mediation finds it more than a little comforting that in an on-demand world where we expect to be able to get whatever we want whenever we want it, some things aren't set in stone.  I intend to join the project and set me own camera on it's way.  I look forward to the uncertainty of its fate, and meeting – through shared virtual experience – some other people on the way.

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content creating, converging, innovating, user-generating, viewing

Video. Everywhere. Always: What we can all learn about P Diddy’s adventures in mobile broadcasting

Free TV : Ustream
the idea that there will ever again be a status quo in media planning has surely got to be abandoned.  technology and interaction are now evolving at such a pace that the challenge is not just how best to use what's out there but firstly to know what's out there.

case in point is Mashable.  for two years it's been creating editorial about the best of Social Media news and views.  and I had no idea it even existed.  none.  so it's a thanks to PAffleck (thanks) who pointed me in the direction – via Mashable – of how P Diddy is using mobile app. Ustream.tv to broadcast his life direct from his mobile to the world.

he's not alone.  loads of people are doing it.  assuming you have a good enough phone (current limiting factor but this will change), you can upload your clips direct to your own broadcast stream.  better than that – if you see something cool you can start live broadcasting it – there and then – from your phone to your mates, or whoever…

I never thought I'd say this, but I guess we all have a thing or one to learn from P Diddy.  if he can do it why aren't brands?  how often are we and the clients we work with creating reasons and incentives for people to engage there and then with experiences that are happening right now in the real world?

it's difficult, but the reality is that we're moving to a world of video being everywhere always.  that's a lot of competition for our precious advertising space.  I for one – no matter how much I sometimes feel I have yet to learn – want to understand this now…  cos the brands that get this sooner rather than later may be the ones that don't just thrive, but survive, in a digital world where any status quo no longer and will never exist.

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advertising, social networking, user-generating

Two bits of communication, one voice: How British Airways is demonstrating local knowledge thru Social Networking site Metrotwin

BA_Metrotwin
"British Airways flies hundreds of thousands of passengers between New
York and London every year. So it feels right for us to be backing
something genuinely useful for people living in and traveling between
NYC and London" …is the elegantly simple reason that BA give for creating Metrotwin; a social networking site that twins New York with London and treats both cities as a single online community.

at the heart of the site is utility – classic aggregator territory here – with the site aiming to recommend only "the ten best places to drink coffee" and suchlike.  Metrotwin’s
recommendations come from locals, bloggers and online communities based
in both cities but can be reviewed and rated by everyone.

speaking at the Social Networking World Forum (social networking must have come of age – they have a world forum, though its not in Cannes so a bit to go yet) in London this week, Chris Davies, digital marketing manager at BA said that this and another social networking site from the airline had "challenged
the perception of the brand" and made the airline seem more "up to date and
exciting".

I'm not sure I'd go that far.  but the site is clean, simple, brilliantly designed and – most importantly – really single-minded about what its there to do and why BA is doing it.

I was going to do my usual "it's not joined up – they need to be amplifying their online content with broadcast" line, but I think the (presumably deliberate) separation between Metrotwin and the broadcast campaign that BA has been touting (the 'do what a local does stuff) is totally right.

two very different strands of communication from BA.  one generated by users, the other by the good people of Kingly Street.  one is digitally-centric whilst the other is broadcast-centric.  but what unites these two bits of communication is local knowledge.  do they need to be seamlessly integrated?  no.  they need to come from the same place, with the same brand voice; each living in – and making the most of – its own media world.

that said, I do hope that BA and agencies are using Metrotwin content in the online advertising.  it would be a shame to see such great user-generated digitally-centric content siloed in the site – get it out into online spaces, show the web what you're up to – cos its all good.

thanks to Hanson for the heads up on this.

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advertising, blogging, branding, broadcasting, content creating, converging, engaging, listening, planning, regulating, researching, social networking, user-generating

Fighting the Future: reaching a rose-tinted concensus at the IPA 44 Club’s Future of Advertising in a Networked Society

A short history of marketing from jabi on Vimeo.

the rather lovely above video – by jabi – neatly sums up the collective dilemma of how brands, marketers and, specifically, agencies address the challenge of social media.  the issue was the topic of discussion last night at the IPA 44 Club's inaugural event of 2009:
The future of advertising in a networked society.  quite the session it was… here's the gist:

part one – report findings

  • social media = the online tools and platforms people use to share information, thoughts, opinions, content etc
  • problems is that brands are "crashing the party rather than hosting it" (Russell Davies)
  • many brands are experimenting but not getting traction in the area
  • we need a model of comms that reflects 'ME' as opposed to 'brand'
  • a model that's about conversation and participation rather than interruption and engagement
  • a model that incorporates David Armano's thinking about 'influence ripples'
  • Johnny X by Dare is a cracking example
  • which succeeded in concentrating the feeds into and out of it's online space (64% of upstream and 84% of downstream feeds came from 10 sites each)
  • planning social media should focus on targeting the few, that demonstrate: (1) expansiveness (propensity to chatter), (2) popularity (propensity to filter and target) and (3) reciprocity (likelihood to act)
  • network size is predictable, as is network flow, as is circulation

part two – agency survey

  • brands in a socially-networked world are more responsible for creating and disseminating the right information – brands should be more discretionary in what they produce [Mediation found this less than substantiated and at odds with Clay Shirky's comments at the MGEITF this year on filtering in a content-abundant world being after the fact, ie produce then allow the network to filter]
  • the way to reward brand advocates is not through financial incentive
  • the industry disagrees on two areas: (1) that advertising principles are the same in a networked society and (2) that social media behaves in a fundamentally new way
  • it is believed that most revenue is up for grabs in content creation, then data & insight, then market research & insight gathering (amongst others)
  • these new revenue streams represent £11bn of additional revenue opportunity, with another £5bn potentially
  • …which would be (exactly!) enough to meet the £16bn shortfall in industry revenues by 2016 predicted by the IPA's Future of Advertising and Agencies report of two years ago (£16bn = the difference between the IPA's 'Central' and 'Consumer' Scenarios)

part three – the discussion

I won't bullet this because it's getting late and you had to be there, but this was the better part of the evening with discussion ranging between philosophy of brands in a social media space to the (inevitable) measurement and accountability of such activity.

for me a kind of rose-tinted consensus was reached; consensus that went along the lines of:

  • marketing has always been about great social networking, the challenge is the same – getting the right content in the right place, its just that…
  • (1) people power is more potent (we have 500 networked connections not 50 disparate ones) and (2) we need to react to the context our message are in rather than control the context our messages are in
  • it's brilliant because we can react to real people in real time in the context of a real conversations
  • social media isn't a bolt on, it has to be woven into every brand touchpoint
  • brands need to behave differently, and understand that their relationship with consumers is – to consumers – much less important than consumers' relationships with other consumers

so in a nutshell social media is great because it's as old as the hills, better than the disruption model, measurable …and there's a freak-off big commercial opportunity for the brands and agencies that get it right.

I just don't think that it' that easy.  our industry is woefully
unprepared for the future.  there's some brilliant thinking and debate
going on, but the commercial models, joined-up industry measurement
systems, and marketing best practice principles – from a 'what works'
as opposed to a 'self-regulatory' point of view – just aren't moving
fast enough.

most importantly, not enough consideration was given
to the integration of broadcast and social media.  they're not going to
exist in isolation and broadcast media is going nowhere. iTunes didn't
kill CDs and Amazon didn't kill Waterstones.  social media certainly
won't kill mainstream broadcast media; the same mainstream broadcast
media that in the vast majority of instances provides social media
users with the content they comment on, pass on, or reappropriate for
their own ends.

the other interesting question is how the
behaviour of digital natives will evolve…  we're familiar with the
media 'hubs' that are the current crop of adolescent's bedrooms;
they're multi-tasking away across ten devices and infinite bits of
content.  but what happens when they grow-up?  how much of their social
media behaviour will they take with them into adulthood and how much
will they replace with the aggregated broadcast consumption of their
parents?

we live in interesting times; and I guess we wouldn't have it any other way.

one last word, I urge you to read JVW's post
about the event and specifically his debate on how the IPA can use social media
to get their social media report into more people's hands whilst not
impacting on revenues.  a pleasure and a joy.

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content creating, designing, engaging, experiencing, gaming, social networking, user-generating

What brands can learn from Superstruct’s invitation to fix the future

you are officially invited to create and explore the world in 2019. but be warned, it's not going to be pretty.  the Institute For The Future has developed Superstruct, an ARG that aims – with a massive number of players' help – to chronicle the dark future they predict for us, then help them fix it.

"With Superstruct IFTF introduces a revolutionary new forecasting tool:
Massively Multiplayer Forecasting Games (MMFGs). MMFGs are
collaborative, open source simulations of a possible future. Each MMFG
focuses on a unique set of “future parameters,” which we cull from
IFTF’s forecast research. These parameters define a future scenario: a
specific combination of transformative events, technologies,
discoveries and social phenomenon that are likely to develop in the
next 10 to 25 years. We then open up the future to the public, so that
players can document their personal reactions to the scenario."

its a fascinating concept.  taking the ARG to the next level and using Surowiecki's Wisdom of Crowds to capture and identify our most likely (and most successful) responses to multiple 21st Century threats.  you can join the simulation and watch videos outlining the 'superthreats' we face on the Superstruct website.

brands could learn a lot from this endeavour.  at it's most basic, the IFTF – thru Superstruct – is encouraging a community of people to engage with an idea.  that isn't a million miles from what most advertisers want people to do – only they generally use advertising to convey the idea.  and are then a bit vague about how people can get involved; other than buy stuff of course.

but if a brand really wanted to break the mold.  if a marketing team really wanted to explore and communicate something in which they believed by creating a platform thru which a community of people could genuinely engage with the idea, the brand and each other… they could.  think how much more powerful M&S's Plan A campaign would have been if they had engaged with a massive community of people to explore ways to make sure we didn't have to resort to plan b.  think how much more traction you could get by using media to communicate the project and report its progress.

the risks are huge.  you have to be radically transparent; but most brands have to be radically transparent already.  if you get it wrong no one will care; but if you get it wrong now people can filter your messages out.  you have to be hyper-creative; but creativity has never been more important.  you have to rely on people pro-actively and constructively contributing to the platform; but people demonstrate time and time again that this is something they're increasingly comfortable doing.

and if the risks are huge, the rewards are greater.  get it right and you not only engage an audience in something your brand stands for, but your brand may even make a bit of a difference…  as well as creating affinity and customer value – and therefore revenues – on the way…

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content creating, user-generating

How Orwell reminds us that blogging is just a new way of doing an old thing

Orwell_diary
we talk a lot about new behaviours and emergent trends in our industry.  so much so that we sometimes tend to forget the distinction between the behaviour and the motivation behind it.

take blogging.  the number of blogs in existence is debated in the tens of millions.  we think of it as an emergent behaviour.  it's not.  it is merely a new way of fulfilling a fundamental human need.  to communicate to the world.  we're reminded of this by the Orwell Prize who are – in a wonderfully 2.0 way of delivering pre-digital content – publishing George Orwell's diaries as a real time blog seventy years after they were written.

in the welcome to the blog, Peter Davison writes:

"In a curious way, reading what Orwell jotted down so informally as
events occurred, domestically and internationally, seventy years ago
will be far more intriguing for readers than when they are faced with
slabs of print.  Next year I hope very much that it will be possible to
mark the weeks running up to the outbreak of the Second World War … as an appropriate reminder of the awful events of what will then be seventy years ago."

whilst the need to capture and share our interpretations of the world is as old as culture, a digital world does offer significant advantages…

firstly, in a pre-digital age blogs (or diaries) would be unlikely to be published.  now we all publish by default, we're all broadcasters now (as Clay Shirky observed at the MGEITF this year "we're now in a world of publish then filter – all the filters are after the fact").  secondly, because everything we publish is tagged, the outputs of our collective interpretations begin to self-organise.  a blog isn't an isolated entry but instead an integrated part of a global conversation.

but these relatively new plus-ins to the conventional diary aside, the blog is just a new way of doing we very old thing.  every generation thinks that they invent something for the first time.  not so. 
what each generation does is develop the new technology that allows them to
fulfill fundamental human needs in new ways

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content creating, user-generating

How Creating Pictures with Wordle Makes Content More Consumable

Mediation_wordle

this is what the content of this blog looks like when it's pushed thru Jonathan Feinberg's Wordle application.  Wordle is a digital toy which generates word clouds based on any string of text you put into it; words that appear more frequently have greater prominence.

not only do the images look great, they also demonstrate the usefulness of a visual image in absorbing information.  our brains are much better at consuming and processing visual information than text…  a glimpse of the above immediately conveys the content and most pertinent themes of the musings on my blog than any scan of the text would.

this could be a great way for companies, brands and even government to convey in a glimpse long bodies of text – for example company reports or even white papers…  not as a replacement for the publication of those documents (!) but as an interesting and compelling way to introduce someone to the content and themes before they start reading the document proper…

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content creating, user-generating

There’s Radiohead’s version; and then there’s everyone else’s version

RadioheadRadiohead are giving anyone the chance to create their own version of the bands video for their latest release House of Cards.  the video was made using structured light to create three dimensional images.  but anyone can download the data  – courtesy of Google – from here, manipulate it, and share the results of their efforts on a YouTube group created for the project.

its essentially an open-source video – anyone can down load the data from which it was made and then make their own version.

James Frost, who directed the video, comments that “In a weird way [the
project] is a direct reflection of where we are in society. Everything
is [computer] data. Everything around us is data-driven in some shape
or form. We are so reliant on it that it seems like our lives are
digital”…as quoted in the Guardian

in a digital world everything and anything can be remade all the time.  nothing is set in stone.  nothing is ever fixed, or finished for that matter.  there is no definitive version of anything; only this version.  which becomes your definitive version is yours to decide.  its a fun world to be in.

here’s Radiohead’s version:

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content creating, gaming, user-generating

Spore’s Creature Creator: creativity has never been so fun or addictive


so I’m addicted already.  only an hour playing with Spore’s Creature Creator and I sense the precious few hours I had remaining this summer evaporating.  its a beautiful bit of software, allowing you to create and then test out creatures in a habitat – their mating calls, dances, moods and attacks.

its round one of Will Wright’s Spore, due for release in September.  the game will see you navigate a species from single cell being to galactic conquest…  and EA have pulled a blinder…  one of the key elements is the Creature Creator, software that’s integral to the game as it allows you to design the species you’ll be taking care of – and EA have given it away for free.

a whole couple of months ahead of the game’s release a key component of it free to download from the game’s site…  a million creatures have already been created (a video of my own little contribution – furdock – is above and a little pic below).  the creativity you’re afforded is staggering, and the hardest part is coming up with a name for your little fellas…

Furdock

its one thing to play the neat trick of getting millions of people addicted to a core element of your game before its even released.  but it’s quite another to make sharing those creations so simple and intuitive.  if this nugget is anything to go by, Spore will be a genuine milestone; not just for gaming, but for the whole of popular culture.

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