What Tomorrow Will Bring

 

Between all the obligatory prognosticative posts roaming around, it's easy to forget the predictions that are really important. First - now that we've torn him down - it's about time we build Tiger back up. Like Kobe, Britney Spears and a thousand other celebrities, the only thing we like better than the fall is the rise up the other side. This seems to remain true for everyone except for child actors and stars of vh1 shows.

Second, I'll make my first million dollars, mostly by blackmailing Sean for something. Not sure what just yet. 

Third, I'm a big fan of Darren Herman, but proclaiming the death of the branding campaign within the next decade is probably a bit premature even assuming a much better measurement environment. It would require an amazing amount of invasive monitoring that traditional media has been incapable to create (or adopt) and a massive shift in privacy concerns already perked by the passive, anonymous monitoring in web-based media. And last, it assumes that we'll ever fully understand the human brain enough to know why one thing worked and another doesn't. We're pretty damn good at it in the short-term, but measuring long-term shifts haven't been the strong suit of agencies or many clients. So I guess I would say my prediction is that the opposite will happen. Our attention will shift away from causing a specific, momentary response to better understanding whether or not we're succeeding in the often arduous task of shifting behavior and attitudes.

Either way, Darren is a pretty smart guy, so we'll see how it all plays out. 

Fourth, we've spent the last decade (or two) striving for personalization, including more and more specific levels of targeting, me-based content, etc., but we've yet to see just the kind of pay off that the industry sold. Mostly because while our targeting has changed, value propositions for the most part have not. It's mostly a relic of the 360 degree brand sell that we've only personalized on the edges without actually concerning ourselves with the wants and needs of real people. Mostly because that's really fucking hard to do. Okay, that wasn't really a prediction...

But - what the backlash against algorithmic personalization will do is further the trend towards both the tangible and the authentically personalized. Emails are less meaningful than a handwritten note. Websites aren't generally as memorable as interestingness in real life. Experiences matter more. Expect to see something like the Slow Movement happening to digital things. As the amount of things I can't hold becomes more ubiquitous and easily delivered, I value stuff I can touch or things that we're clearly made for me. And, as per usual, these things will be collected and shared in digital forms. An index of my life, so to speak.

In other words, I'll value the things that are an expression of your time spent, not necessarily mine.

So there you go - that's not really a 2010 prediction, but more just a couple things that'll probably happen some day. 

photo via katarina 2353

More Links for You

  

Mind Castle Holiday Card Creative Process

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=8362481&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1

Yale Professor Barry Nalebuf on Creativity

[blip.tv http://blip.tv/play/gtQk6M8KAg]

Wine Labels and Food

"Both expected and actual tastiness ratings were significantly higher for the "California" wine -- despite the fact that the wine bottles had identical, professionally-designed labels from the fictitious "Noah's Winery." What's more, the tastiness ratings for the cheese, which was the same, unlabeled mild goat cheese for everyone, matched the wine ratings. When people thought they were drinking better wine, they also liked the cheese more."

The Internet is Underrated: A note on Activism, Populism and Polarization in the Aughts

 "We live in a complex world and I don't mean to oversimplify this too much. But it seems to me that, rather than a change in underlying sentiments -- that is, more prevalence of quote-unquote extreme, alienated, nonmainstream, populist, pox-on-both-their-houses viewpoints -- what has instead changed is that these viewpoints have become much more visible. And the reason has to do with technology -- to some extent cable news but to a much greater extent the Internet."

Ten Psychology Studies Worth Knowing About

Number one is my favorite, too. 

"If you have to choose between buying something or spending the money on a memorable experience, go with the experience. According to a study conducted at San Francisco State University, the things you own can’t make you as happy as the things you do. One reason is adaptation: we adapt to all things material in our lives in a matter of weeks, no matter how infatuated we were with the coveted possession the day we got it. Another reason is that experience, unlike possession, generally involves other people, and fosters or strengthens relationships that are more edifying over time than owning something."  

photo via yulia

On Worldbuilding (and complexity)

Advertising has been eager to ditch complexity in favor of simplicity, or at least something that feels simple. Whether this aversion to the complex is a habit of the client in buying, the agency in selling or perhaps just a general low expectation of the audience, what we most often do is sacrifice the nuance, the stuff in the middle where most things become interesting.

In Convergence Culture, Jenkins quotes an unnamed screenwriter, "When I first started you would pitch a story because without a good story, you didn't really have a film. Later, once sequels started to take off, you pitched a character because a good character could support multiple stories. and now, you pitch a world because a world can support multiple characters and multiple stories across multiple media."

Worldbuilding is mostly used in reference to fantasy, but I think it’s an interesting way to think about brand things, too.

What worldbuilding can be is a platform for complexity. Mostly because it forces you to no longer talk only about who you are so much as creating a vision for how things could be. Not necessarily some new science fiction reality, but more like regular life, just a bit better.

So our job is less about finding the USP and more about creating environments in which our audiences thrive. Which means we should be spending more time finding what better means and the context by which that better matters.

So still good to simplify the vision. But we need to be prepared to embrace complexity in just about everything else.

Time for Search Neutrality?

 

I've argued in the past that Google shouldn't be penalized for creating a monopoly on search. All done through better product and consumer preference. But this editorial from Adam Raff in the times did at the very least give me pause.

"Today, search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft’s new Bing have become the Internet’s gatekeepers, and the crucial role they play in directing users to Web sites means they are now as essential a component of its infrastructure as the physical network itself. The F.C.C. needs to look beyond network neutrality and include “search neutrality”: the principle that search engines should have no editorial policies other than that their results be comprehensive, impartial and based solely on relevance."

"Another way that Google exploits its control is through preferential placement. With the introduction in 2007 of what it calls “universal search,” Google began promoting its own services at or near the top of its search results, bypassing the algorithms it uses to rank the services of others. Google now favors its own price-comparison results for product queries, its own map results for geographic queries, its own news results for topical queries, and its own YouTube results for video queries. And Google’s stated plans for universal search make it clear that this is only the beginning."

Now, if I argue that network neutrality is necessary to keep the infrastructure of the web ripe for innovation, and we agree that search is structural to the internet, wouldn't the same rules apply here?

photo via dunny

In the World of Interesting

The Best Documentaries of the Decade

I vote for Man on Wire. Fantastic.

A Digital Magazine Concept

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=8217311&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=ffffff&fullscreen=1

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

Star Wars Uncut

Another lovely piece of Stars Wars fandom. Probably not the same cinematic experience of the Hunt for Gollum, but probably much more charming. Yes, I did just manage to use Gollum, Star Wars, Lovely and Charming in the same sentence.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=6788001&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=10d1f2&fullscreen=1

Star Wars: Uncut Trailer from Casey Pugh on Vimeo.

Core Principles of Transmedia Storytelling

 

The Death of Uncool

"We’re living in a stylistic tropics. There’s a whole generation of people able to access almost anything from almost anywhere, and they don’t have the same localised stylistic sense that my generation grew up with. It’s all alive, all “now,” in an ever-expanding present, be it Hildegard of Bingen or a Bollywood soundtrack. The idea that something is uncool because it’s old or foreign has left the collective consciousness."

Women and the Model T

"As the historian Clay McShane argues, these views were intensified by a deep sense of male insecurity brought about by the mass-production system, the deskilling of manufacturing, and the shift of men into less “manly” white-collar work. Men also felt threatened by increasing education and employment for women. These factors redoubled male efforts to wall off the space outside the home as their own. Men traveled to that domain. Women did not."

That's a lot of bits

The average American consumes 34GB of content and 100,000 words per day. And we wonder why most things we make are quickly forgotten.

Culture is Communication

We’re losing our lazy Sunday afternoons on the couch.

The Economist throws more cold water on the Long Tail. Or at least makes the case that a little moderation should be used when proclaiming the death of anything. The blockbuster is alive and well. The Long Tail is thriving. But it certainly sucks to be left somewhere in that hazy middle.

The absolute hits on the billboard charts? Kicking ass. But number 300-400? Yeah, don’t worry about that.

100 million dollar movies continue to carry the studios while the mid-tier flicks receive less and less support.

The biggest hits of network TV have held much of their audience, along with a varied array of niche cable networks. But that middle? Not doing so well.

So Sunday afternoons – no longer a great time to catch up on episodes of The Munsters. (Unless you’re a fanatic for 60’s pop Franken-humor. Then maybe there’s a station for that. But if that were the case, the Munsters might then actually be prime-time. But I digress.) But by now, we’re far too full of things to fill up our attention to deal with stuff we only sort of want to read, hear or watch.

As Rob Faxon, head of EMI music publishing said, “People want to share the same culture.”

It’s rather interesting, we have this odd dichotomy of searching for shared experience while satisfying our own inclinations. We often use all this content like we use the weather, filling our empty spaces with valuable communication. But while we’re seeking out shareable things, we’re more and more indulgent in our individual preferences.

And maybe that’s what our media consumption is reflecting now. We’re collectively finding the balance between what is shared and what is ours. And that renders a big swath of culture, largely found in mid-day time slots on local channels, unnecessary now. We don’t need things that merely fill up personal space, we need things that bring us together or things that precisely fulfill what we want. Anything else is just wasting our time.

 An addendum to this:

This (from the same article) might get you thinking, as well

“Perhaps the best explanation of why this might be so was offered in 1963. In “Formal Theories of Mass Behaviour”, William McPhee noted that a disproportionate share of the audience for a hit was made up of people who consumed few products of that type. (Many other studies have since reached the same conclusion.) A lot of the people who read a bestselling novel, for example, do not read much other fiction. By contrast, the audience for an obscure novel is largely composed of people who read a lot. That means the least popular books are judged by people who have the highest standards, while the most popular are judged by people who literally do not know any better. An American who read just one book this year was disproportionately likely to have read “The Lost Symbol”, by Dan Brown. He almost certainly liked it.”

Which basically means that much of our system of targeting in the ad industry might need some rethinking. If we’re making ads for mass, but focusing towards the high purchase incident target – way may actually be designing ourselves into that unfortunate middle.

Oy.

Article via Noah. Photo via yyellowbird.

Very Large Jackets

There are rarely opportunities that come along nearly as sweet as this one. It's officially official. I'll be joining some of the smartest people I know, Leigh, Sean, and the rest of the team at Twist Image, working from the Toronto office. I'll refrain from going on too long about personal stuff, but I'll just say that I'm insanely eager to get to work with these folks and even more I can't wait to share with you the absurdly cool stuff this company is up to.

The DVR is Good for TV Advertising (rates)

To hear the NY Times tell it, the "DVR, Once TV’s Mortal Foe, Helps Ratings.” Well no shit.

"The reason is not simply that more households own DVRs — 33 percent compared with 28 percent at this point in 2008 — helping some marginal shows become hits. It is also that more people seem content to sit through the commercials than networks once thought."

And they go on to say:

“Against almost every expectation, nearly half of all people watching delayed shows are still slouching on their couches watching messages about movies, cars and beer. According to Nielsen, 46 percent of viewers 18 to 49 years old for all four networks taken together are watching the commercials during playback, up slightly from last year.”

Well now I’ve heard almost everything. Nearly half the audience isn’t fast-forwarding through the commercials, and this is what success looks like.

You might also take a look at the Tivo numbers I posted earlier, too. Good indication that the more people like a show, the more likely they are to record it and watch later. Those also tend to be the shows with highest rates of commercial fast-forwarding.

I guess when you’re looking over at your shoulder at the boys and girls in the newspaper industry, you’ll take anything you can get.

More Stuff from Other Places

Ad Avoidance Trivia

Ilya gives a fantastic rundown of the different ways we've tried to avoid ads.

Mobile web may be big. I dunno. Just guessing.

Some nice stats from the Opera browser. Combine that with data usage on the AT&T network. Get ready for some growing pains, peeps.

The New Era of the Network Service

"So-called “network services” like Facebook...and Twitter will soon dominate the web, rather than “information services” like Google and Yahoo."

Sean Parker's Web 2.0 Summit Presentation http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=21539640&access_key=key-l5utm6l92h424cnfiyj&page=1&version=1&viewMode=slideshow

The personality paradox

Jonah Lehrer points out the basics of the fundamental attribution error, which I think has lots of interesting insights into how branding works. We don't tend to think of personality traits like aggressive, courageous, generous, whatever - to be an issue of context. But of course, perception and reality don't always match. Also seems to jive with what the economist called the "halo effect," or the assumption that if someone is good at A, she'll also be good at b, c, and d.

Is Mexican Coca-Cola better?

"The company principally imports the Mexican version to appeal to immigrants who grew up with it and draw nostalgia from the packaging they remember. Online you’ll find Mexican Coke cultists offering tips about tracking down grocers who serve a primarily Latino clientele. Surely this is part of the fun — nobody wants to be a snob on behalf of a product that’s easy to obtain."

The History of Hacking meets the History of Social Media

Last but not least...

Bogusky gets out of the Ad Business

"Unless you’ve been living under a copy of Ogilvy on Advertising lately you’ve noticed with a combination of curiosity, and perhaps dread, that every day what we do becomes more like the movie and television business. For some of you the lines may have blurred between what you do and the publishing business. And if you are on the cutting edge you find yourself spending time harnessing games, industrial design, architecture and interactive apps to help build our clients’ businesses.

It’s no coincidence that we find ourselves spending more and more time in these disciplines. These are our sister professions. All of us sharing a common industry. Advertising, movies, music, television, publishing, architecture, industrial design and graphic design."

Wait...they're putting what in the sky?

Apparently, given a couple earlier freakouts from random ambient advertising in big cities, we get to see staff emails like these that somewhat expose the absolute ridiculousness of the whole thing.

Subject: Skywriting Alert

This is a special message from the Downtown Emergency Response Team.

The ABC network is utilizing skywriting planes to create large red “V” patterns over major U.S. cities. ABC is organizing the promotional event to publicize a new alien invasion themed television series called “V”. It is reported that “V” patterns will be flown over cities such as New York and L.A. and the skywriting will be done at multiple times per day until the “V” series launches on 11/3/09 @ 8:00 PM. ABC has released a list of cities where the skywriting will take place, however the network has not identified specific locations where the skywriting will occur. October 27 - 12:00 p.m. Dallas, TX

photo via jesape