Category Archives: viewing

advertising, broadcasting, experiencing, television, viewing

Things I’ve learned about TV ads; courtesy of a Night of the Adeaters

TV ads sometimes get a bad press; often seen, unfairly, as the blind refuge of the creative process.  they're blamed for narrowing creative thought into a pre-determined construct that's allegedly irrelevant in a digital age.

well a night with the Ad Eaters is more than enough to demonstrate otherwise.  what occurred to me last night, as I sat watching several hours of TV ads from around the world, was how perfect the audiovisual short is for communicating a brand – or indeed any – idea.

it's no surprise that the 'TV ad' became the common currency of the advertising agency.  indeed one can't help but think that even in the absence of a broadcast model that reinforced the TV ad construct, the short AV piece would have emerged as the vessel of choice for brand ideas.  forcing clarity, relevance and conciseness, it may come to be seen as the 20th / 21st Century equivelent of the cave painting or Aesop fable.

there was as much joy and pleasure in seeing again BBH's Underwater Love for Levi's (above) or early Smirnoff efforts, as there was in seeing for the first time some of MTV's campaigning work or an Audi ad with a dog chasing a car in the snow…

some other things I learned last night:

  • most of the best ads are for cars.  fact.
  • it's impossible to make a good fragrance ad.  fact.
  • some brands have the right to set agendas and others just don't
  • an audience of ad types loves a bit of worthiness – ads for the UN Development Fund were guaranteed a splattering of applause.  as the lovely Jon A puts it: "the skill of communication is like the skill of swordsmanship: it can be applied in play or in war, for better or for worse".  we collectively aspire – it seems – to do the formers.
  • it's impossible to aggregate ads around a city – "ads set in Paris" just doesn't work as a filter

all in all a very cool evening.  if there's one observation it's that the filtering could have been better.  an evening like that is essentially acting as an aggregator – so Ad Eaters has to work as hard as possible to be the best aggregator that they can be.  not doing so will only undermine future efforts – and contribute to the feeling of watching a very extended version of Tarrant On TV.  only without Chris Tarrant.  and not on TV.

Kudos to the IPA, CBS and Metro for sponsoring, and a big thanks to David at Metro for facilitating…

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experiencing, innovating, social networking, viewing

Cutting thru choice fatigue: How the Secret Cinema and Nokia dictate and curate a unique movie experience

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Thursday lunchtime Mediation received the following message from Secret Cinema: "Lords and Ladies, Dukes and Duchesses, Partisans and Plebians and the Claypool Foundation of Arts.  Secret Cinema in association with Nokia will take place this Friday 3rd of October at 8pm … Dress should be majestic and wondrous for this shall be an evening of wild, wild romance, honey song, long journeys, laughter and dance."

Last night Mediaton therefore duly popped along to Hackney for this month's secret cinema event.  their website observes that "the internet is changing the way way we watch films.  the secret cinema changes WHERE you watch film."

but the event goes far beyond screening in an interesting location.  the movie – which isn't revealed until the very last moment – is explored and teased from the moment you arrive…  key scenes, themes, characters and quotes are all on display in everything from the actors who greet you to the pre-screening entertainment.  it's brilliant.

but the best bit is when the movie starts, and you're sat watching the Marx Brothers' in A Night At The Opera – a movie you may never have otherwise seen, with a few hundred other people who similarly had no idea that was the movie they would be watching.  in a world of choice fatigue, it is a curious joy to have an evening of your time dictated and curated by others.

Nokia do well to be associated with the Secret Cinema organisation and movement.  they also do well to screen a short movie at the event which, rather than being an ad, shows established artists revealing what they would do for 96 seconds.  it's all in aid of promoting Nokia's mobile TV channel capsule 96 and it feels entirely in tune with the event.

if anything, Nokia could be doing more to create associations with the event…  rather than getting an email revealing the location, how much more interesting and intriguing would it be to get content and clues direct to your phone.  sophisticated flash-mobbing making the event even more engaging courtesy of Nokia.

thanks to Eva for the heads up on this, very appreciated.  Secret Cinema was a joy to attend.  get yourself along next month for a bit of mystery.

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partisans queuing outside Hackney Empire

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performers entertain before the movie starts

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our compere for the evening

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actors perform an iconic theme from the movie

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Nokia's trailer for Capsule 96

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performing a piece from the opera featured in the movie

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a silent movie short

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after all the teasing, the big reveal…

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advertising, branding, broadcasting, internet, planning, viewing

Negotiating the digital divide: why immigrant brands must learn to go native

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Natives going to meet the Spanish navy in 1792 (source)

the Pew Research Centre's biennial report into the
changing nature of news audiences has confirmed what we've known for a while;
that a generation of digital natives are growing up demanding immediacy and
plurality of content.  the report described 13% of the US public as 'net newsers'; under
35, affluent, and sceptical of many of the mainstream media's offerings.

it comes hot on the heels of last week's report by Ofcom which confirmed what
TGI and CCS have been telling us for a while…  that as our world shifts
from one ruled by digital immigrants to one dominated by digital natives, an
entire generation are defaulting to multi-tasking their media consumption.

this isn't just behavioural – our brains are physically adapting to enable us
to compulsively multitask.  digital technology changes the way we absorb
information.  as such – as Lord Saatchi was reported as pointing out in 2006 – the digital native’s brain is
physically different; “It has rewired itself. It responds faster. It sifts out.
It recalls less.”

the fact that recall rates for traditional television advertisements have
plummeted led Lord Saatchi to the conclusion that companies must now be able to
sum up their brands in a single word if they are to grab the attention of
restless digital natives, but this is to miss the point…

if digital natives demand multiplicity, brands – far from retreating to one-word over-simplification – must give it to them.  both
the above reports confirm that TV remains predominant in the media consumption
habits of digital natives.  in the UK we're watching more TV than ever;
communicating to digital natives doesn't mean abandoning TV as a means with
which to communicate; rather it means using it in conjunction with other media
channels – specifically the internet.

brand communications need plurality
– the notion of what constitutes 'critical mass' within a media channel has to
be rethought and replaced with consideration as to what constitutes critical
mass across channels.

some may not like this compulsive plurality of consumption – in his G2 column
last week, Alexander Chancellor bemoaned a "compulsion to keep in
touch" liking it to a "kind of disease".  "Addiction
to communication" he comments "seems to me as dangerous as addiction
to cigarettes or alcohol".

as hard as it may be for digital immigrants to comprehend, consistent and
constant consumption of content is as natural to digital natives as
breathing.  both immigrants and brands has better get used to it.

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ad funded programming, advertising, branding, content creating, experiencing, planning, regulating, viewing

Transparency; how Mother’s Pot Noodle has it and MG OMD’s Beat: Life on the Street doesn’t

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on a visit to Edinburgh's Fringe Festival this weekend Mediation was lucky enough to catch a performance of Pot Noodle: The Musical.  created by Mother Vision, the show is a surreal and entertaining hour long advert for Pot Noodle – and it doesn't really pretend to be anything else.  in fact its quite clear on the matter…  its an ad.  it knows it is.  its written in the script.

I couldn't help but contrast this to the recent discussion and debate there's been around MG OMD's AFP for the Home Office.  Beat: Life on the Street was a Sunday night show first broadcast last year on ITV.  the show is now reportedly being investigated by Ofcom amid concerns it broke the broadcasting code requiring that programmes "must not influence the content and/or scheduling of a channel or
programme in such a way as to impair the responsibility and editorial
independence of the broadcaster".

so what we have here are two very different bits of content, each designed to form part of the brand narrative for two very different organisations.  but whereas one has (at the time of writing) a two and a bit star rating on the Fringe website, the other is being investigated by the regulator.  what sent them in such different directions?

well… what divides them is transparency.  Pot Noodle's musical has it, and Beat: Life on the Street just doesn't.

you can't make a programme that's funded by the Government and which is specifically designed to change people's perceptions of a state organisation and not tell people thats what it is and what its trying to do.  that's not smart media planning, its propaganda.

what's such a shame is the strategy from MG OMD is great.  in a video on the site, Head of Strategy Jon Gittings comments that the aim of the the programme was to amplify the real experience the public has with PCSOs, to:

"use communication to recreate [the] direct content that would then go on to increase value [of PCSOs] … we would create virtual experiences that bring PCSOs and the community together"

thats great thinking.  de-branding it is not.  brands have to be explicit about their intent.  whether you make noodle snacks or uphold the law, you have to protect your integrity.  say what you like about Pot Noodle making a musical, they were up front about what they were doing…

as one comment on the Fringe site notes: "I doubt that i'll ever be convinced that branded shows at Edinburgh are
a good thing but i struggle to criticise when i'm entertained as such".

well I doubt that I'll ever need convincing that smart relevant content creation – including AFP – can play a part on many a schedule; but I'll sure as hell won't struggle to criticise it when brands and (worse) their agencies think they can do so without being honest about the communications' intent.

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supplemental:
thanks to Phil who pointed me in the direction of a BBC report on Pot Noodle which includes an interview with the creatives from Mother who devised the thing…

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broadcasting, internet, praising, viewing

How South Park gave a little love and it all came back to view

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pop quiz… what would most brands give to have people say the following about them?

"And in widescreen format, too! Oh God, I just pooped my pants!* This is
an awesome gift! Thanksyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou…"

"It's true! You do love us! This entire website is proving that! And you don't stop surprising us! Thank you for Imaginationland!!!!"

"O.O…..I….I….ILUVYOU"

the above posts are from the South Park Studios website, where (if you're in the US) you can watch all the South Park episodes for free. the site this week added the full, uncensored, directors cut of the acclaimed three-parter Imaginationland for free. all packaged up as a reward for the fans of the series.

the genius of this is twofold. in the short term they're packaging up something that anyone can get, as a reward for the show's fans. because they're fans they'll be on the site, pick it up first, and get the social currency of being able to tell their friends about it.

but in the longer term South Park understands that giving their back-catalogue away for free will encourage and maintain viewing of new stuff. which generates a fair few impacts and revenues for Comedy Central, so South Park can keep getting made. so everyone's happy.

what are your brands doing to demonstrate how much you love the people who consume you?

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broadcasting, content creating, regulating, social networking, viewing

Kate Modern’s no-so-modern Commercial Model

Kate_modernBebo’s Kate Modern will end next month

on June 28th Bebo’s Kate Modern, the online drama broadcast by the social networking site, will ‘air’ for the last time.  the strategy of creating bespoke content for the SN is a solid one; it not only attracts and locks in new users, but adds value through interactivity with content to existing users.

however EQAL, who make the show (and formerly Lonely Girl 15) have suggested that in future they’d like to see more than the 1.5m views the average episode received.  doesn’t sound too bad to me…  whilst a quick scan of the Viral Video Chart  shows that the top 20 virals currently deliver anything between 30,000 and 3m views, a better comparison is with the ‘push’ model of broadcast television, in which an average digital channel would be happy to get 1.5m people to watch an episode.

but the more interesting observation is how Bebo applied such old-school thinking to the commercial model.  A spokeswoman for Bebo (quoted here) said the show was profitable
because of the sponsorship deals it put together with the likes of Orange, Toyota and Cadbury Creme Egg.  but this seems like a missed opportunity…

like any online site / brand, Bebo has to be clear about what it is.  Yahoo’s current woes stem from the fact that they don’t know what they are.  Google by comparison are quite clear.  they’re an advertising company.  Bebo would say that they are a social network, but it could be argued that by being seen to ‘create’ Kate Modern, they confuse this proposition.  they should be the third force of Anderson’s Long Tail – connecting source and demand, rather than part of the first – democratisation of production.

but perhaps the biggest opportunity is being missed by brands, who are contenting themselves with being attached to someone else’s content rather than producing their own.  its Orange, Toyota and Cadbury that should be making Kate Modern (or its strategic equivalent), and using Bebo as a distribution mechanism.

Bebo (or any social network) should be happy to filter content from elsewhere…  and benefit commercially from the audiences it attracts as a result…

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advertising, viewing

The Lynx Effect: Changing a Business without Changing the Business

saw the Lynx 3 ad in the cinema last night.  you’ve got to give them credit…  how do you use communications to double the volume of consumption of your product?  well… you get people to use twice of much of it whenever they do use it.  shamelessly brilliant…

it follows on the heels of previous ads which have visually suggested using the spray all over one’s body – the same tactic being employed; get people to consume more whenever they do use it, increasing frequency of purchase as a result.

a simple communications solution to a key business challenge  …without any elaborate suggestions about how a client needs to fundamentally change their business.  like Lynx that regard…  refreshing!

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engaging, praising, viewing

“The one Cadbury’s didn’t want you to see”, that you really should see

discovered this courtesy of a post by Faris on TIGS.  wasn’t going to post about it but haven’t been able to get it out of my head.  it is so right in so many ways…  positioned as ‘the one Cadbury’s didn’t want you to see’, its a slow-mo version of the suicide cult which formed the climax of this year’s creme egg campaign.

its so totally mesmerising you forget your watching dozens of eggs get smashed to a pulp by their own personal wire on a spring.  and some delightful restraint at the end of the piece ensures that it only hints at it’s marketing origins.  just lovely.

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broadcasting, converging, praising, viewing

Build then advertise it, and they will come: how the iPlayer delivers and relies on BBC’s platform-neutral offering

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news that the BBC’s iPlayer delivered 42 million downloads in the first quarter of 2008 confirms the success of the BBC’s online offering [source: MediaWeek].  it doesn’t come as a surprise.  the player is simple to use and easy to navigate, and crucially the streaming option allows you to dip into programmes without the drawn-out drama of downloading and saving to your hard-drive.

it marks the most important of what is a range of moves to ensure platform neutrality of the BBC’s offering.  hot on the heels of it’s Virgin Media and iPhone deals comes the news that BBC will be joining forces with Wii to deliver it’s content on Nintendo’s home entertainment system.

the strategy is as spot on as you can get as we approach digital switch off.  Henry Jenkins in Convergence Culture introduced us to the notion that it’s not technology (and applications) that’s converging but rather content.  we’re consuming converged content on our terms across a range of platforms to suit our needs.  brands and other advertisers could learn a thing or two.

that said, you can sympathise with the criticisms of commercial broadcasters, especially those beyond page one of the EPG.  the BBC – despite the fallout of it’s current restructuring, has investment to spare in developing the iPlayer – it’s remit to digitise the nation being a keystone of it’s license fee settlement.  they are in an enviable position, being a broadcaster that knows what you have to do is one thing; having the investment to make it happen is quite another.

of course the other benefit of being a big broadcaster is being able to cross-promote your platforms.  the iPlayer is as reliant on the eyeballs delivered by it’s more established parent as the parent is on the 15-34 reach delivered by its new offspring.  and the BBC trumped it again here.  their penguin trailer on April 1st was just class.  enjoy.

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broadcasting, content creating, internet, viewing

Balancing Individuality and Mass-Culture in the evolution of Content and it’s Consumers

Rocketboom describes itself as a three minute daily videoblog covering everything from top news stories to quirky internet culture.  alongside peers like Diggnation and BoingBoing, it’s one of a breed of short sharp audiovisual pieces made for peanuts and distributed for free via the internet.

in the emerging AV ecology, these elements stand out principally due to the consistency of their presence…  much internet AV content (the vast majority of YouTube‘s real estate for example) is what the Hollywood movie industry would call ‘nonrecurring phenomenon’ – the one off’s and unpredictable quirks that populate the long tail of internet content… everything from a crying Britney fan to the Star Wars kid.  it’s unfiltered, it’s popularity determined by the wisdom of the crowd.

Rocketboom and it’s peers are different.  they’re consistent in both their presence but also their point of view on what and how they aggregate content, and as such become destinations in themselves.  they’re building fan bases; aggregated audiences of subscribers …and it’s in doing so they are creating a new breed of media brand: a interim format between the long-form (TV) show and YouTube’s clip-culture.

it’s an interim format with dilemmas that in many ways mirror those of it’s principal audience of 16-24s.  a recent report by the future foundation’s nVision describes the contradiction in how this group – on the one hand – consumes and relies on mass culture, but on the other craves individualism and self-expression…

"One of the reasons behind this predilection for
mass culture is that young people have less experience when it comes to
consumption choices; they often use mass market products as a short cut to
quick and easy decisions.  They are also strongly driven by the desire to
fit in with their peers and choosing fashionable mass market products can be an
easy way of doing this.
 

Young consumers are also, conversely (and indeed perversely), keen to be seen
as individuals and consumption is a key way for them to express their
personality … In this context, while mainstream hits will continue to appeal to
young people, they might not always loom as impactfully  they used to do.
Marketing becomes harder, must become more individually focussed as a result."
(source nVision report, March 2008)

the parallels between the Rocketboom format and it’s audiences are startling  …a survey cited in a Guardian article by the recruitment company CareerBuilder
asked employers what
they thought the differences were between workers over and under 30
years old.  the main finding was that younger employees
communicate through technology rather than in person.  the same can be
said of Rocketboom; it’s a format that thrives on the back of the
technology to create and distribute cost-effectively…

both Rocketboom and it’s consumers define their individuality by seeking-out and adopting what’s different before anyone else…  but both – ironically – rely on conformity to mass-cultural rules and the credibility – through shared understanding of meaning – that it brings.  will one inevitably give way to the other?

it’s easy to forget how intertwined content and consumers are…  a generation of digital natives are, by virtue of their media consumption, determining the very nature of the media they consume.  and as this generation grows throughout the population, Rocketboom and it’s present and future peers will find themselves pulled into the mainstream along with them…
 

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