Digital Connections

Proper physical stuff, like darts!

Earlier today I read a great post by Russell Davies and subsequently watched his very interesting "Printing out the internet talk" at Lift.

Thought provoking stuff as Russell talks about the value of physical things over virtual things that live behind a glass screen.

"Physical things will always feel more valuable to us because that's what we're used to, that's what engages our senses. Even though ebooks are massively more convenient, usable and useful than paper ones, that lack of embodiedness nags away at us - telling us that this thing's not real, not proper, not of value"

Apart from making me want to use the Twentieth Century Fox theme tune in my next presentation, it made me reflect on my recent purchase from those wonderfully creative chaps at "We Are Nation". Which was a Facebook Like Button Stamp - a great idea that brings an online action into the offline world. You can buy the stamps here ...

 

Stuff like this really brings it home that Facebook has a great cultural foothold, when it starts to infiltrate the physical world.

All of this stuff is good, interesting and thought provoking. However, a quick browse through Google Reader brought this to my attention from Gizmodo.....

 

.. and its quite frankly bollocks. A virtual game of darts using an iPhone and an iPad - what a complete waste of time!

The last time I played darts, we played for over five hours and had a cracking night chatting and laughing...

..all goes to show that you can't beat proper physical stuff from the real world!

Great World Cup SMS Infographic (c/o O2 & Wired)

Building on my England World Cup infographic post from last Saturday, here's another England / World Cup infographic. 

 

Taken from an interesting article from @NateLanxon at Wired magazine, showing SMS usage around England's World Cup games - perfectly illustrated in infographic form. (If anybody gets a higher res version please nudge me).

During England’s Group C matches, O2 users sent just over 75,000,000 text messages - with usage peaking at 4k-5k texts immediately after England's goals.

Sport is inherently social and its best served live and with shared real time experiences, it’s all about “The Power of Now”. First choice mode of carriage for major sport is always on TV, sharing and analysis then happens on the most convenient platform, in this case mobile. As a gregarious and social race, we instinctively and immediately want to share our appreciation of the “awesome” with our closest friends.

(On the flip side SMS traffic looks highest during England Algeria - but I think we can put that down to boredom)

Marketing In The "Non-Place": Airports

The last 10 days have been pretty hectic, and culturally diverse.

It started with a best friends wedding at The Landmark Hotel in London; followed by a 4/5 day planning session with the Emirates marcomms team in Dubai, and topped off with family time & a quintessentially English Saturday at the “The Henley Show”.

Without doubt, a week full of contrasts.

Sandwiched in there, were 4 hours spent in “non-places” .....  airports.

“If a place can be defined as relational, historical and is concerned with identity, then a place which can not be defined as relational, or historical, or is not concerned with identity will be a non-place”.

Marc Auge (French Anthropologist)

This eerie yet strangely beautiful video by Aaron Meyers helped clarify how much of a “non-place" an airport is.

I just wish that I’d understood the “non-place” 4-5 years ago when I was planning and writing creative briefs for Bacardi-Martini’s travel retail / duty free work.

The airport is devoid of cultural symbols. Apparently, it lacks codes which can be interpreted as "national" or "ethnic" ones. It objectivates freedom and equality - virtues of individualism. At the same time, the airport may function, for the traveller, as a kind of catharsis: The moment one passes through immigration into the departure lounge, one is removed from the impediments of society: Once there, neither the tax collector nor the family can reach you. You are a free individual.

(Døving, field notes)

A non-place requires non-marketing and by default non-briefs. An airport’s duty free shopping area is the Room 101 of marketing communications, a place where bland briefs rule – cultural identity is negated – oversized logos are king – individualism and cultural identity are left behind in the pursuit of mass global brand appeal.

Privacy: Just A Thought

On the day when a court ruled in the Nightjack case that "blogging is public activity with no right to anonymity", it's just worth pausing and reminding ourselves about the user generated surveillance system that we've created.

Not only have "digital natives" sacrificed their right to privacy by endlessly posting images on Facebook, but bloggers who blog in online anonymity have sacrificed the right too.

This surely cannot be good for freedom.

Timeless Marketing Classics: Helge Tennø

Helge Tennø: Strategic Director and Digital Planner at digital agency Screenplay in Oslo, Norway.

Helge gives us a review of the book which introduced him to planning and to this day still provides him with great value.

Jon Steel: Truth, Lies and Advertising (1998)

When I was given the opportunity to work as a planner I was the first one in the agency and had no senior planning department or planner showing me the ropes.

It was a clean start, having to jump in and self teach myself the subject and produce an understanding of what I wanted this role to be and do for my agency. I had to start building processes, models, tools and generate ideas. In other words, I needed to learn a great deal in a short time. The book started my exploration through several excellent resources introducing a very complex subject.

Truth, Lies and Advertising gives a magnificent overview and introduction to the field in a non-complex language which is easy to understand for people with a different first-language than English. At the same time I didn't want to copy or fall into a too narrow definition of what planning is, and I felt that Jon Steel's introduction was broad enough to allow for personal interpretations and ideas along the way.

The book still provides valuable insights and works as a resources I routinely check for quotes and ideas. Finding it includes the best introduction and quick understanding of the daily routine and work I do as a planner.

A Collaborative Search for Timeless & Essential Marketing Reads

The digital age has changed the way people read.

Some read exclusively from the screen, island hopping from site to site, and extracting key phrases from each page. And I'm sure that most of us read more from the screen than ever before.

We all have unique reading habits; I love the printed page, almost exclusively read non-fiction/business, and each time I start the final chapter of a book, I plan for my next read.

The advertising and communications industry is incredibly fast paced, and digital marketing even more so. Change is rapid, with new theories being presented at an incredible rate. Given the time it takes to write and publish a book, many books have an incredibly short window of opportunity and relevance before a new theory or trend is published. Only a handful of books withstand our changing times and remain as relevant today as they did upon their first day of issue; and occasionally I look at the date of issue and wonder, "Is it still worth a read? Or have we moved on -- leaving the book dated?"

As is the case with most literature, it's the classics that survive the test of time; books that don't age, books that retain their value and are just as relevant today, if not even more so, than when they were first written.

With the help of the digital planning community, I would like to identify these timeless marcomms classics.

Many are obvious, with Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People" leaping immediately to mind. Equally, it's hard to believe that James Webb Young wrote "A Technique for Producing Ideas" almost 50 years ago- its simple and logical process for innovative thinking proving is just as effective and valuable as when it was first published.

On "The Planning Lab," Russell Davies recently said, "You can learn all the(planning) theory you need to know from "Eating the Big Fish" and "Truth, Lies and Advertising," or a couple of other similar books. Truthfully, there are about two books' worth of theories and stories you need to know.Everything else is experience." Wise words indeed.

It is interesting that Adam Morgan's "Eating the Big Fish" and Jon Steel's "Truth, Lies and Advertising" were published ten and 11 years ago, respectively - both classics that will be just as relevant in another ten years. One could even argue that "Truth Lies and Advertising" has become a "how-to" guide to planning.

Maybe it's his style, but I feel that Jon Steel has written another classic with "Perfect Pitch," with its excellent presentations and creative storytelling that will never go out of fashion.

Kevin Kelly wrote "New Rules for the New Economy" 11 years ago, and in his own words states, "I stand behind my analysis and today, ten years later, I don't retract a single word of the book. In fact, I believe "New Rules"could be released today for the first time and still be extremely useful."Kevin is being far too modest; the book goes way beyond being extremely useful.

I've suggested a few timeless classics, but I'm looking at compiling a more definitive and collaborative list of books that have shaped the advertising and marketing communications landscape and remain as relevant today as on the day they were first issued.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be approaching a few planners and digital marketers to get their views and help in unearthing these gems.

Of course I'm interested in hearing from anyone in the digital community, so if you have a classic that you'd like to put forward then drop me an email (graeme at agencysherpa dot com) with the following:

-     What you consider to be a timeless marcomms classic

-     Why was it relevant then?

-     Why is it relevant now?

Hopefully, in a few weeks' time, we'll have a compilation of essential and timeless classics.

The Internet Of Things: Pattie Maes' Sixth Sense

Some of the talks, most in fact, of the talks on the TED website (or their YouTube channel) are absolutely exceptional.

One of the latest is by Patti Maes at MIT Media Lab, who along with her colleague Pranav Mistry has developed a wearable device with a projector that enables interaction between everyday things and the internet.

That "internet of things", where everything we make contains a sliver of connection is a fascinating area, and we're witnessing the first stages of this

The internet is developing beyond beyond virtual space and establishing itself in the physical world. The internet is everywhere not just on a screen, its in the shoe (Nike Plus), its in the car (Fiat EcoDrive) - both developed by AKQA.

According to futurists, such as Kevin Kelly, almost every object carries the possibility of being connected to the internet. This means that domestic appliances, clothes, books and cars may be assigned a unique IP address, just as both computers and web pages are assigned them today, to enable them to talk to each other.

If anybody else has any other examples of the "Internet of Things", then please... share ...

Paradox of Choice: The Greater The Choice The More Intense The Paralysis

This weekend my wife and I decided to plan a family weekend away – “Let’s grab some early spring sun in Southern Europe”

So, on Saturday night I went online and began to search. Yet 4 hours later I was no closer to finding our flights, hotel, or even destination. Despite having the tools to book any hotel on the planet or jump on any flight, I was in paralysis – the choice was overwhelming.

Booking a holiday has never been easier, but equally it’s never been as difficult.

Too much choice wasn’t a problem when I booked my first holiday. As a teenager, a group of us would walk into a travel agency …

 “Hello, we’d like to grab some sun for one week in July please?”

“No problem lads, here are a few options”

“Perfect, we’ll have that one”

Economists have generally assumed that the greater the choice, the more likely we are to find a product that meets our needs.

What I experienced was the flip side of The Long Tail. A long tail that was so damn long that I couldn’t find what I wanted. The number of options available to me was essentially infinite. Everything was online in front of me and the next source of alternatives was just one mouse click away. A scenario illustrated particularly well by Schultz & Friends in this humorous animation.

In the end, I just walked away, we still haven’t decided where were going. In fact I’d be far happier to walk into a travel agent and have 3 options put in front of me. I’ve since found out that I’m not alone. Barry Schwartz of Swarthmore College and Mark Lepper of Stanford University have both conducted studies and reached similar conclusions.

Mark Lepper conducted experiments in supermarkets in which they had tables displaying several varieties of jam. Shoppers were given a sample and a discount voucher which they could use towards buying jam. When they displayed thirty types of jam, only 3% of shoppers actually used their vouchers and bought jam, but when they had only six types on display, although fewer people took samples, 30% of shoppers bought jam.

Similar results were found with pension plans. The more plans offered, the lower was the probability of people making any choice; they would walk away without any pension plan.

According to Barry Schwartz, the author of “The Complexity of Choice,” I am a “Maximizer”

“A “Maximizer” wants “the best” – the best vacation place, the best restaurant, the best stereo, best job. And in order to find the best, you need to evaluate every possibility, otherwise how do you know it’s the best? And of course the whole point is that with a trillion choices out there, examining every possibility is just not possible. It produces a sort of paralysis of indecision, exhaustion, huge amount of time spent choosing and then finally you pull the trigger and you pick something, and there are still dozens of things you haven’t considered, so you imagine that you could have done better if you’d looked a little longer.”

An abundance of choice puts us into a state of near paralysis, in looking for the “perfect decision” we spend way too much time over what is a relatively low involvement decision.

Schwartz goes onto describe three effects. The first effect is with all these options to choose from, people end up choosing none.  The second effect is that if people overcome this indecision and paralysis and choose, they may choose badly.  And the third effect is that if you overcome paralysis and manage to choose, and you manage to choose well, you’ll be less satisfied with what you’ve chosen if you’ve chosen from a large set than if you’ve chosen from a small one.

Oh dear…

Tonight, I am going to make a choice, I’m going to bite the bullet, make a quick decision, book a break, and get on with my life.

One Nation Under CCTV

Ever since Banksy "decorated" The Post Office on Newman Street, I make a point of walking past if I'm in the area.

The irony of Banksy painting directly under the CCTV cameras makes me smile. Whilst working at Mustoes/The Oven I used to count the number of CCTV cameras that would "catch me" as I would get my lunch.

Whilst CCTV is seen by many as a major invasion on privacy, it pales into insignificance compared to the privacy that a new generation of internet users are voluntarily forfeiting. An entire generation (under 30's?), who appear not to value their own privacy in the slightest.

Facebook now contains over 10billion photos, many of which are revealing party pics voluntarily posted along with a host of other information such as mobile numbers, schools, addresses etc. Such postings seem to demonstrate a lack of respect for their own privacy

Pre internet, kids got hammered and made tits of themselves safe in the knowledge that a headache later the memories of the night would fade away. The internet however has a very long memory, and posted photos will available for years to come.

I just wonder how teenagers will feel about these "party pics" in the future, how many careers will be damaged, or cut short through an exposed Facebook or MySpace profile. What happens when this generation have children of their own? … Will they want their Facebook, Bebo, or Myspace pictures to be revealed to their children? A lot of data, pictures, and information is being shared online

There’s a need for greater awareness about the value of privacy here, we’ve created a digital generation who need to be educated about privacy, and the impact of losing it.

More...

When CCTV meets Facebook ...