Month: July 2009

  • Cocooning 2.0

    A mix of technology and economics occurred in the 1980s which saw consumers spending much more time in a world of their own at home. This was driven by the video recorder and cable television in the US, it sank traditional cinemas and encouraged the film industry to fight back with the multiplex. We became more depraved as porn moved from grubby cinemas to your living room. Sociologists and marketers called this phenomena cocooning. In reality cocooning never went away, it evolved. For cocooning 2.0, instead of NICAM, VHS and Betamax you have DVD, DSL, social networks and BitTorrent.

    I think that technology has moved the unreality bubble that cocooning creates, allowing consumers to screen themselves from society interacting through the screen rather than face-to-face from the home to also on the move. What got me thinking about this was a conversation with my Dad.

    Conoco Texas map

    My Dad has been driving since the early 1960s. In his first (and only) new car, (as having a family screws your disposable income) he used to have an assortment of petrol company maps and an Esso tiger soft toy which he hacked so that its eyes flashed in time with the indicator lights. My childhood and young adult experience in a car was with jagged mosaics of petrol company maps that I tried to fold neatly and organise in his cars, until I got tired of the whole process and introduced him to the AA’s series of atlas. Its harder to make a mess with a well-bound book.

    Rave machine

    My Dad is finally selling the ‘rave machine’ (a Volkswagen LT35 turbo diesel camper van which served me well as a comfortable base for diving and going to raves / free festivals). I  was clearing out a mass of petrol company maps that he no longer used and putting them all in the recycle bin. He didn’t want to move the maps over to his present car since he is the proud owner of a GPS navigation unit that my Mam had picked him up from discount supermarket Aldi. I realised that the amount of interaction that service station staff and local populace would have with my Dad now he had gone digital would be hugely reduced as he paid for his diesel at the pump with a built-in card reader and never now ventured into the office unless he wanted to feed his Fisherman’s Friend addiction. There was no longer going to be that kitchen sink drama played out as him and my Mam would argue about asking for directions from a local person any more.

    My Dad’s move to a GPS device made me realise that we cocoon ourselves from society around us on the move as well as in our home:

    • How many people use their mobile phone or check their email whilst waiting for a friend in the pub?
    • How many people use an iPod or play a game on their mobile phone when on public transport? It is interesting that the first Walkmans came with two earphone sockets for shared listening, whereas the design of Apple’s earbuds would make you think twice about sharing your listening experience with someone unless they were really close to you
    • How many people have used Google Maps on their phone rather than asking someone for directions?
    • Iceland and other supermarkets have been delivering groceries for a while, meaning that you don’t have to interact with your local community in the shop any more

    Apart from having an online supermarket shop, I have done all the activities listed above. And that’s mainly because my fridge freezer is a bit small rather than any great desire to chat with my neighbours over the tops of our wire supermarket trolleys. My smartphone goes beyond location-based services to provide me with a location-based reality bubble.

    Cocooning 2.0 is about shutting out society in the real-world even as we interact more closely with our trusted communities through online means. Thinking about some of the utopian ideas that I heard from Castells speaking the other week, I am curious to know what does this mean for the civil society in the longer term as we become disconnected and can’t relate?

    I am sure that entrepreneurs will already be thinking about the future market full of potential for ‘authentic’ experiences even as we willfully ignore them on our front door. When you think about your local independent coffee shop, Starbucks or private members clubs like The Hospital isn’t part of their attraction about providing an ‘authentic’ community experience?

  • Social web looking backwards and forwards

    I was asked about where I thought social media was going a number of times over recent months. So with that in mind I thought I would throw a distillation of the questions that I have been asked out there and solicit answers from the community. I have put my own responses in italics.

    What do you think that the biggest challenges have been in social media up to now?

    Agencies that don’t get the ‘new’ non-linear multi-channel nature of storytelling, in which storytelling has moved to a multi-way engagement process. Storytelling is becoming less and less of a linear process which you can complete the boxes and then roll-out. From TV dramas like CSI in which non-mainstream plot devices move a story rattling through time and space to digital communications which allow a narrative to be atomised, entered-and-left at any point and remixed by the audience.

    Joseph Campbell’s mono-myth concept doesn’t cope with the digital world that well. In PR terms, storytelling has moved from the traditional Hansel & Gretel bread crumbs analogue exemplified by traditional PR thinking leading the journalist by the nose to a desired end-point; to a lego construction brick analogue where the audience can take the story elements and build their own model without your context. Provide them with the elements, be human, be nice, be useful and if possible remarkable. Provide kudos where it is due and be prepared for a kicking if you deserve it.

    Agencies that cling to the old way of thinking, even as they maybe doing digital work: are setting themselves up for a fall. They are in denial of the changes happening around them. These changes won’t happen overnight, but they are happening; just as in the same way that the car replaced the horse and the airplane replaced the passenger liner. It is doing a disservice to their clients, themselves and their employees.

    The second thing that I find frustrating is more of a tactical item, but shows a lack of thought around how people consume media in a personal way and respecting the audience’s attention. I remain unconvinced by many peoples fixation on digital video production, when they grossly under-estimate the power, popularity and utility of images.

    Thinking about video and audio from a technical point-of-view it can be far from straightforward for a blogger to embed on their site, this is dependant on the platform that they are using and whether they have the right plug-in installed on their blogging software. Posting images is much straightforward.

    content vs attention

    Then there is the covenant made with an audience when you present them with content. Video requires our absolute attention, whereas audio allows us to multi-task (drivetime radio). With text or images we can easily scan to see if the content is of interest and listen to other content or nip back and re-visit content easily at any time. 

    What have you found provided the most excitement and hope in social media up to now?

    The first thing that I have found most exciting and has given me the most hope about social media is the innovative ways that people have used social media for good and the way positive communities form. From customers helping each other out in the absence of proper customer support to charitable giving and the formation of communities of likeminded people. In a world that is increasingly cynical, social media has allowed people to connect in a way that demonstrates the best in people.

    The second item that I have found most exciting is the way that it has become not only easier to publish content but also to integrate that content with great services like Google Earth, Flickr and Yahoo! APIs. Its only a matter of time before PR practitioners master these fully.

    Looking forward at marketing communications and PR: what are the greatest areas of concern?

    Practitioners be it marketers, advertising agencies or PR agencies aren’t learning lessons of etiquette and respect fast enough. I have been really concerned about the ins and outs of the recent #Moonfruit campaign. This moral ambiguity is likely to create a vacuum that regulation could quite easily attempt to fill that void.

    If marketers and PR people continue to abuse the trust of audiences then this will ruin the potential of social media for everybody.

    Looking forward again: what offers the most hope and excitement for the future?

    I want to put the development of the web and social media into some context before I answer this question:

    Changes on the web

    Broadly you can think of the development of the web and social media as we know it as having had three acts:

    • Act one is what most people would call web 1.0 where the web was largely a direct analogue of traditional publishing. Media plaforms cost 100,000s to tens of millions of pounds. From a marketing perspective this was the ‘web as brochure’ and if you were lucky an order form as well
    • Act two is the nebulous web 2.0 or web as a platform. And whilst the best examples of web 2.0 are no longer new, the understanding of them from a marketing and communications point-of-view is still incomplete. Partly because of the shift in mindset required between ‘act one’ and ‘act two’
    • The third act that I think we are entering is the web of data or the web of things. Information is contained in small chunks whether its a twitter update, a QR code or microformat like a hCard. And we can see this atomisation taking place even in press releases if we look at the Todd Defren and the SHIFT team have been modifying their social media template over the past few years

    You can see how the attitude of communicators needed to change with these technical phases:

    Changes in online comms


    The parts that I feel most excited about moving forward for the next few years are:

    • Continuing to think about how social media campaigns can still be useful
    • Thinking about how campaigns can be atomised, still be effective and be refined through improved measurement
    • There are some answers that I don’t get yet, which I think will be interesting to explore in more depth. In particular how atomised data and conversations happening across a plethora of channels are going to affect the context of content, and how that will affect the communications function

    What’s the three biggest lessons that you’ve learned up to now?

    • Goals: always strive be nice, be human, be useful and try to be remarkable in your campaigns
    • Consideration: the cost of content is not only about the monetary cost, but also non-monetary economics: attention and ‘whuffie’. You shouldn’t make a video because you can, but because you are providing the target audience with something which they will find useful or remarkable. The richer the media, the greater the burden of responsibility the communicator has. If you want consumers to respect your brand, respect their time and attention
    • Attitude: stay curious, stay hungry 

    I will tag Stephen Waddington, John Kerr, Doug Winfield, Jonny Rosemont and Adam Parker.

  • Herbivore man + more news

    Herbivore man

    FT.com: Korea’s white van man is a herbivore“Herbivore man is a dandy metrosexual with an abhorrence of martial arts. He has no qualms about ordering wine or soft drinks instead of Korea’s fiery spirits, de rigueur among the old guard. Dried-fish woman is an impeccably dressed model employee, but after work she just wants to lounge on the sofa in a track suit, watch television and munch on dried squid. Both are rebels from Korea’s crippling and prohibitively expensive treadmill of education, marriage and family, hailed as the be-all and end-all by the taciturn older generation. As consumers, they lavish money on their free time, buying DVDs, furniture and comfort food. In a society that prides itself on being collectivist, they are suspicious loners. Herbivore man is particularly distasteful to the macho fathers and grandfathers whose values were forged in Korea’s agricultural and highly militarised past.” – Herbivore man likely didn’t benefit from the explosion of the chaebols, instead herbivore man has seen the likes of Samsung strangle opportunity

    Design

    Not Your Daddy’s Longboard | Fast Company

    Economics

    Economics: What went wrong with economics | The Economist 16th July 2009

    Lending binge | The Economist – interesting Chinese economic statistics and analysis

    How to

    Airport travelators actually slow passengers down – New Scientist (July 18, 2009) – Something to bear in mind when navigating around an airport.

    Ideas

    The Meteoric Rise of the App Store

    Japan

    JeanSnow.net — The Otaku Encyclopedia – everything you wanted to know about manga, anime and more

    Trends in Japan » Tokyo Girls Collection Fall 2009 – great article on the brand diversification strategy of Tokyo Girls Collection. Their last event attracted over 23,000 in-person attendees. Interesting the way that they have expanded into health & wellness.

    Luxury

    Burberry and the Next Big Brands to Come From the East | The Green Room | Fast Company

    Media

    Twitter is not for teens, Morgan Stanley told by 15-year-old expert | Business | guardian.co.uk – it amazes me how the media industry was blown away by this, given that there are lots of sources which already have the same content as this ‘revolutionary’ research note

    Stephen Fry Admits He’s a BitTorrent Pirate | TorrentFreak

    Online

    FT.com / Technology – Yahoo renews vow to fight Microsoft – yeah right. Bartz has already put the white flag up the pole in Sunnyvale with the search deal and her comments about the Yahoo! China deal.

    Software

    Why Google’s Chrome OS Is Not in Your Future | TechWatch | Fast Company

    Does Social Networking Breed Social Division? – NYTimes.com

    Digital Evangelist: All that is wrong with the US view of mobile

    Daring Fireball: Microsoft’s Long, Slow Decline – not sure that it is a long slow decline. Microsoft has moved to being a value company like GE or Caterpillar rather than being a growth company like Google. Apple has always positioned itself as a popular but premium product company. Discussions around the Daring Fireball post over at Hack News flagged lots of interesting points both for and against.

    Web of no web

    Mobile augmented reality: Reality, improved | The Economist

    Wireless

    Six in 10 companies plan to skip Windows 7: survey | Technology | Reuters

    HK green light for fixed-mobile portability – but the telecoms companies will fight this tooth and nail

    Digital Evangelist: Confusion over the Handset market