ouroboros

Jean Pierre Raynaud, spacepot, 2008

Sent from a damn fine Nokia device

What's more fun than answers? QUESTIONS!

I was asked to identify the typical questions an interactive strategist seeks to address when grappling with how to solve a particular client's business problem.  These were the ones that came immediately to mind:

(1) What is the consumer journey through the idea and how does that experience evolve over time?

(2) Vis-a-vis social media, how is my brand ALREADY ENGAGED in this space (twitter feeds, websites, CRM efforts, social media outreach)?  What permissions do we have, and how can we leverage existing social capital?

(3) What are the CURRENT conversations around my brand/objectives (e.g., on user-powered customer service sites, via google/baidu results, on social nets, etc.) my campaign will be wading into?  Are their clear issues that need to be tackled/addressed, or opportunities to meaningfully participate?

(4) What are the conversations I want to have (or hope to inspire) and where will they be most effective? 

(5) Traditional planning sets a goal of defining a brand's 'voice', but generally it's applied to mass communications.  Interactive planning asks "what is the brand's voice when it speaks one-on-one?"

(6) How do we dynamically engage in conversations with consumers (e.g., will the brand reply directly to queries and posts?  Will an agency partner? What is the approval time for replies? etc.),

(7) What is the technographic profile of my target (what devices do they use, how do they use them, how do those devices/experiences mesh/complement with real world activity, etc.)?

(8) What does success look like (e.g., traffic, leads, buzz, conversation density, buzz, etc.) and how will it be measured?  Has the client bought the RIGHT success metrics?

(9) What is the "value" the brand provides the end user in return for their attention/engagement (e.g., social/economic/entertainment)?

(10) How are we facilitating peoples' ability to SHARE their brand experiences with friends?

(11) How am I "findable" (e.g., what links to me? How are we playing SEO to optimize visibility? What will people looking for us type into Google? etc.),

(12) How is the idea participatory?

--- not an exhaustive list, but does this adequately cover the big points?  Please let me know your thoughts...

GoogleWave meets Pulp Fiction

'oregon journal'/jelly generation

Sent from a damn fine Nokia device

'oregon journal'/jelly generation

Sent from a damn fine Nokia device

W+K+Schmidt+Birkett+N900+OneDotZero = fun

As part of our effort on behalf of the Nokia N900, W+K London partnered with computational designer  Karsten  Schmidt and software architect Gary Birkett in conjunction with OneDotZero to demonstrate what happens when

per Birkett:

“we are using a 3 inch display to try to control a 70 foot display”. Based on the N900’s accelerometer, the software uses an interface that takes movement data from the handset and sends it to the projection app, created by Schmidt."

Conference Call Creep

Two people talking.  Then five people talking.  Two in the room + one on polycom + one on speakerphone + one on skype.  Favorite?  When the virtual people accreted gradually via technology battle lag to be understood.

Mobile Weapon?

Connectivity: harbinger of a Tech-enabled Utopia?  Pain in the ass?

A connected world, the thinking goes, is an empowered, informed and an enlightened one. 

Of course, we've had a few World Wars since the telegraph and telephones were invented, so jury's out.

But fine, if connectivity is good, well then, mobile connectivity, is, well...it's like Utopia plus. 

Because while connectivity gives us show times on Fandango, mobile connectivity will both save the world and level it.

"The World is Flat"-ter Thomas Friedman's OpEd piece "The Land of No Service" in the 16 August 09 NYT describes a trip to the Okavango Delta in Africa, where there is little wireless connectivity.  He writes: 

"like it or not, coming here forces you to think about the blessings and curses of “connectivity.” “No Service” is something travelers from the developed world now pay for in order to escape modernity, with its ball and chain of e-mail. For much of Africa, though, “No Service” is a curse — because without more connectivity, its people can’t escape poverty."

And he may be right.

Because if you want to get out of poverty, you need to be able to save money.  And on a continent (!) where less than 20% of the aggregate population even has access to a bank account, that's a challenge.

According to the World Bank, 90% of Kenyans, 85% of Liberians and 95% of Tanzanians operate without access to banking services.  Enter services like M-PESA and Wizzit, providing the ability to "bank" and micro-transact remotely.

Each market is unique - M-PESA started in Kenya, Wizzit is operating in South Africa - and M-PESA Kenya has seen substantially higher adoption than Tanzania's M-PESA (read here for a CGAP paper on just this topic). 

But despite scale, replicability and market variations including "country demographics and cultures, market structures, business models, and strategic implementations", these experiments are being carefully monitored.  Mary Kimani, in "A Bank in Every African Pocket" writes about Wizzit’s South African mobile banking pilot operation, and quotes Mohsen Khalil, the World Bank’s director of global ICT:

"If this model works in South Africa...the World Bank will help the company expand coverage within and beyond the country. We may be looking here at . . . the most effective way to provide social and economic services to the poor.”

Hopalong Selebalo - an intern for ISS in the Organized Crime and Money Laundering Programme - quotes Brian Richardson,  Wizzit's CEO and MD, on the advantages of mobile banking in an ISS paper entitled 7 May 2009: Mobile Phone Banking in the South African Economy.  The key positives:

• the safety of not having to carry cash around
• the absence of risk of account closure for inactivity, which enables people that do not have a regular income to do banking
• lower costs, partly because there are no transaction-by-transaction fees
• saving of time by avoiding long distance travel for banking
• flexibility, in that users can change markets by making small business-to-business transactions immediately and reliably, and
• facilitating popular participation in the economy, which ultimately is positive for the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

Selebalo, despite the risk of abuse and money laundering via mobile, posits that "mobile banking could increase national rates of saving, increase incomes and boost the resilience of the economy. At a broader level, it could improve taxation, and encourage reinvestment of money that is currently not in effective circulation."

OK.  OK.

But can it help us win the "information war" going on in Afghanistan right now?

Maybe. Thom Shanker, in his 08.16.09 NYT piece "U.S. Plans a Mission against Taliban Propaganda", begins with a note that the Obama adminsitration acknowledges that they are "engaging more fully than ever in a war of words and ideas" in rural Afghanistan. 

And the proposed solution involves both (a) FM stations to combat pirate stations the Taliban has been operating - in some cases off the back of roving donkey carts - and importantly, (b) providing cellphone service.

How can cell coverage turn the tide?

“The ability to communicate empowers a population,”  said Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, NATO’s director of communication in Kabul. “That is a very important principle of counterinsurgency and counterpropaganda.”

Giving folks cellphone coverage gives them access to independent (read: non-Taliban) information sources.

"In southern Afghanistan, insurgents threaten commercial cellphone providers with attack if they do not switch off service early each night.

That prevents villagers from calling security forces if they see militants on the move or planting roadside bombs; the lack of cellphone service at night also hobbles the police and nongovernmental development agencies.

And the kicker?  Despite the fact that mobile-enabled transaction will inevitably help finance terrorism (and probably already have), according to Shanker:

"Expanding and securing cellphone service has the additional benefit of assisting economic development, officials said, as it could provide wireless access to banking systems for those who now must travel long distances for financial services."

But back to Utopia.  Or at least Wikipedia's definition of Utopia:

"a compound of the syllable ou-, meaning "no", and topos, meaning place. But the homonymous prefix eu-, meaning "good," also resonates in the word, with the implication that the perfectly "good place" is really "no place." 

Hmmm.  Given how effectively mobility has enabled us to "be" anyplace and noplace, connected to the big world and disconnected from the immediate, maybe Utopia IS the right analogy.

Weapon and Savior?

A "good place" that's "no place"? 

Mobility is transforming both society and culture.

And...oh wait - hold on.  I need to talk this call.

Lego Bricks It

NYT's Andrew Newman reported today that Lego prohibited the makers of the Spinal Tap "Unwigged and Unplugged" tour DVD from using a two-year-old stop-motion animation video of "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You" (below) created by Coleman Hickey that they had been using on their tour.

And why was this piece of content disallowed?

"We love that our fans are so passionate and so creative with our products,” said Julie Stern, a spokeswoman for Lego Systems, the United States division of the Lego Group, a Danish company founded in the 1930s. “But it had some inappropriate language, and the tone wasn’t appropriate for our target audience of kids 6 to 12."

Cluephone, Julie - 6 to 12 year olds aren't the only ones who love Lego products.  Nor are they the ones, typically who BUY it.  Their parents do.  The same parents, probably dads, who love Spinal Tap.  And loved Lego.  And would have loved to see this little mashup - maybe as much as the Spinal Tap guys themselves, who worked it into their stage show for their recent tour.

Lego is making a classic error.  They don't own their brand anymore.  More than anyone, they should know that - they've been giving their brand to their fans to play with for years, in the shapes of those little bricks and every other shape they make.  And we have played with them - making things Lego never dreamed up, including an entire genre on YouTube of stop motion animation.

Which is of course where my five-year old got his first intro to animation.  through legos.  on YouTube.  Unfortunately it was watching this classic:

When other brands would KILL to get the kind of mashup Lego was just handed (Lego + stop motion + YouTube + SpinalTap Tour + DVD) rolled into a compilation DVD as a free ad for their product to adoring fans, why did Lego kill the fun?

“YouTube is a less commercial use,” Ms. Stern said. “But when you get into a more commercial use, that’s when we have to look into the fact that we are a trademarked brand, and we really have to control the use of our brand, and our brand values.”

Darn, Julie. 

You can't control your brand anymore. 

You can choose who to spotlight though - and Coleman Hickey LOVED you. 

Loved you enough to take the time to build a movie using your product.  So what did the now sixteen-year-old Mr. Hickey have to say about the silliness?

“In a way I’m disappointed that it won’t be forever memorialized in a DVD.  It’s not like I was going to get any money for it, but it’s too bad. Lego has the right to do that, but it’s unfortunate that they don’t have a little more of a sense of humor.”

You nailed it, Coleman.

Fresh PIE

I'm excited about PIE.  Who doesn’t love a good pie?

[PIE's first pie - - sweet, delicious, local Marionberry.  Mmmmm.  Damn fine PIE.]

 

Pie is delicious.  And you get out what you put in.  To a Pie, that is.

Bear with me.

And I believe if you put fun interesting driven people with varied backgrounds, skills and interests into an enclosed location, unexpected things will happen.  So we are doing an experiment in the un-rented retail space inside the W+K building in Portland. 

Portland Incubator Experiment, or PIE for short.  It's called an experiment, because we have no clue  how this thing will net out.

It started with conversations years ago, chance and intentional encounters and a lot of “wow, wouldn’t it be cool if…” rap sessions with people I care about and respect, inside and outside W+K.

And now it’s happening.  And I don’t think anyone involved can really believe it did.  But we’re pretty psyched.

So why hasn’t W+K made a lot of noise about it?  That’s my fault.  Believe it or not, I’d rather talk about what comes out of the space than what MIGHT come out of the space. I am sick of bombastic claims of the “new better different” bilge that agencies crap out regularly.  Show me, I say.  Don’t talk – demonstrate.  

For another thing, it’s not owned by W+K –  PIE is a collaborative that everyone inside will participate in.  Hopefully it will foster interconnections between previously disparate groups and corresponding quantum leaps in thinking.  At very least, it may generate some delicious slices of pie.  Like the Marionberry one we had today. 

And the folks in the space are kicking ass on a shoestring – everything is recycled and easy to break down.  Our partners bring their own mobile devices and computers.  What you do see, if you walk or stop by, we built cheap in under 30 days. 

So no, there hasn’t been an official press release, and no I haven’t dropped hints in my twitter stream or blog.  Because until people were inside, there wasn’t anything but a neat idea.  Most importantly, the folks behind this and I have also been VERY concerned that people in the space retain their intellectual property.  So I’ve been working with lawyers and management and the folks inside to ensure that no-one loses what they have by participating.

And I’ve always wanted this to be about the people inside and what they do.   Sure, W+K  is involved – I work for them, after all – and yes, I’ve been spearheading it from our side.  But it’s our work that will speak for us, one way or the other.

What’s in it for W+K?  The chance to learn.  An opportunity to help our clients make leaps.  The chance to make participatory digital culture.  And if something really blows up big, we’ll all be happy.

But even if it doesn’t, that’s ok, too.

Because this is about learning.  About failing forward fast with people who understand that in digital culture, you innovate or die.

We have hopes, but no preconceptions. 

And who the heck doesn't love a good PIE?

This is so cool, it must be 37 degrees

OK - so that's a reference to the "perfect pour" temperature of Coke - 37 degrees Fahrenheit - that optimizes the drinking experience to the point you have to sit down to drink it or your brain will explode with pleasure.  And frankly, that'd be a mess, what with the bubbles and all.

I know that because (disclaimer) I have the pleasure to work with Coke.

Read about Coke's "interactive fountain" in Fast Company today.  Touch screen + 46-ounce concentrated flavor cartridge = your perfect Coke.  That in and of itself is pretty neat.

But I like it for two reasons - one that was stated in the article, one that wasn't:

(1) According to the article, "Another perk is the business data the dispenser sends back to Coke's headquarters in Atlanta. The machines upload data about beverage consumption, peak times, and popular locations. Coke can also talk back to the machine, letting it know if a particular flavor needs to be discontinued or recalled and causing it to stop serving the drink immediately."  This is FANTASTIC.  The machines become real-time focus groups and interactive sales terminals.  As long as the info generated isn't left in the hands of the inventory department but rather feeds the broader marketing organization, this has significant implications.

(2) This machine will feed a fundamental behavior intrinsic to Coke's target audience - sharing.  you can't create a witch's brew flavor without the friend next to you asking for "just a sip" to compare to their concoction - and you'll probably see an uptick in sales as people 'experiment' with different flavors.  Expect different flavor combinations (the more esoteric the better) to form fan groups and passion communities online.  Expect #Coke flavored hashtags cropping up on Twitter, etc. etc. etc.

The machines don't just mix flavors, they start conversations.  probably not unlike the ones that mmay have happened at soda fountains.  Even better?  Good-natured arguments.  And THAT is cool.

"My Diet Vanilla Black Cherry Bomb is tastier than Biff's Crap-tastic mix..."

Kudos to Coke for harnessing a technology that speaks to both their heritage (the soda fountain) and their future.  And for turning their product into a participatory experience. 

Win.

Twitter::blogging as USA Today::Monocle

For the long silence. 

For anyone still reading here (Hi, Mom!), I've been having a bit of an internal debate on the value of blogging.  It's resulted in my near complete migration to twitter for sharing insights and info. 

And questioning why one would post thoughts to a blog, or provide links to cool stuff via one, when it's so damn much easier to 'bit.ly' great stuff, punch it out in 140 characters or less and move on, and get the 'social credit' for having done so via the twitter community.

Twitter has become a great medium for the zingy barb aimed at a Retweet.  Many of my friends play Twitter like a game, with RT's and @replies as their scorecard.  And I'll admit - it's pretty satisfying to get a reply or RT.  Human beings want to interact. And a comment-less blog post isn't a conversation.  An RT or an @reply feels more like one.  And so the draw.

HBS tells us less the median for tweets is 1.  Yep, one and done.  Back in 2008, Technorati told us 95% of blogs hadn't been updated in 4 months.  Remember Second Life?  I still think 90% of their registrations were from ad agency jackasses trying to figure it out to sell tot heir clients.  But people want feedback.  They need feedback.  We are hardwired to seek it out.

A draft White Paper entitled "Tweet Tweet Retweet" (Download TweetTweetRetweet) by Danah Boyd, Scott Golder and Gilad Lotanon even names the phenomenon of "Ego Retweeting".  Some of the data cited (and yes, the paper leads with a 'do not cite' header):

"Based on 720,000 tweets captured at 5-minute intervals from 437,708 unique users, they found that: 

• 22% of tweets include a URL (‘http:’)
• 36% of tweets mention a user in the form ‘@user’; 86% of tweets with @user begin with @user and are presumably a directed @reply
• 5% of tweets contain a hashtag (#) with 41% of these also containing a URL
• 3% of tweets are likely to be retweets in that they contain ‘RT’, ‘retweet’ or ‘via’ (88% include ‘RT’, 11% include ‘via’ and 5% include ‘retweet’

Based on 203,371 retweets captured from 107,116 unique users, they found that:

• 52% of retweets contain a URL
• 18% of retweets contain a hashtag
• 11% of retweets contain an encapsulated retweet (RT @user1 RT @user2 ...message..)
• 9% of retweets contain an @reply that refers to the person retweeting the post

It doesn't take much thought to zing off 140 characters of self-indulgent crap (exactly the reason many dismissed Twitter in the first place), but it does take time to compose something meaningful. 

We need more ways not just to connect, but to connect with each other.

And we'll migrate to the tools that do it best.

**UPDATE**

Oh thank god there's an ironic T that summarizes this whole damn post.

******

Doing what I can to stay true to the text.

this one's for you, Chris.

FREE (full book) by Chris Anderson

Jeff Goldblum, Harrison Ford and the web nearly die.

"Today was a seminal moment in Internet history. We've never seen anything like it in terms of scope or depth."

"It could go down as the biggest mobile event in history...people wanted to keep tabs on this story, but if you're an accountant you're supposed to be working on your spreadsheet. So they were using their personal cell phones to do so,"

CNN reported a fivefold rise in traffic and visitors in just over an hour, receiving 20 million page views in the hour the story broke...Twitter crashed as users saw multiple "fail whales"...Google Trends rated the...story as "volcanic."

Neda?  Iran?  Iraq?  Sanford?  Korea?

MJ.

But in the midst of the MJ tsunami that crippled the web last week, a fake story about the death of actor Jeff Goldblum (and Harrison Ford) starting making the rounds, requiring public debunking.  It was this site that generated the spoof celebrity death stories - the Goldblum and Ford riffs were spread through social nets, twitter, etc, and became "trending topics" - a near-guarantor of exponential meme proliferation.

Generating templated fictional stories that then index well on search engines and proliferate through social media (impacting organic and paid search results) was the strategy behind W+K's 2009 Silver Cyber Lion-winning "Swaggerize Me" effort for P&G's Old Spice.

As Linnie Rawlinson and Nick Hunt reported for CNN in regards to the fast spread of fake news:  "The Web can disseminate news -- but like any form of communication it can also help us create what we expect to see next."  Or - don't believe what they tell you about Mark Hamill.

W+K @ Cannes

W+K has four entries shortlisted for this year's Cannes Cyberlions.  Work on behalf of Nokia ('Music Almighty' and 'Somebody Else's Phone), Laika (Integrated campaign for the feature film 'Coraline') and Old Spice ("Swaggerize Me") has been highlighted.  And some nice props for our Nokia partner agencies FarFar for their E66 and E71 'Unloader' work, and R/GA for their N-series 'Vine' work.

Alice.com - would you buy CPG's from this old woman?

I know - I was hoping for something else, too.  And if you are looking for Mr. Cooper's August 2009 midwest tour dates and locations, click here.  Or listen to him now while you read.


sooo...was hanging on Mashable, when I came across their positive review of newly launched Alice.com - though a Web Van investor posted a "get serious"-type comment.

In the "I-can't-believe-anyone-would-do-this-but-hey-the-offers-aren't-half-bad-and-shipping-is-free" category, Alice.com offers some interesting tools, a decent product selection for launch, and lets you both buy your regular CPG purchase items direct (w/ free shipping via UPS) and/or set preferences and receive (email) reminders on when to restock. 

blah blah blah.

But one feature really stood out for me: the way alice.com uses coupons to create value and urgency using three variables - # of personal uses each coupon afforded, the offer expiration date, and the remaining number of available uses for the offer.  See the sample below on Old Spice:



Amy Jo Kim would be proud.  If you haven't seen her presentation on putting the "Fun in Functional", it's worth a read:

Putting the Fun in Functional

View more OpenOffice presentations from amyjokim.

conspiracy thought #42: when it wakes

<wtf>

I'll go back to advertising in a second, but humor me:

We increasingly use technology to externalize our inner life, and in so doing become an interconnected web of socio-cultural dendrite/axon linkages across social nets and microblog tools, newly capable of collective/connective action.  These micro-thoughts accrete to an outsourced 'collective unconscious' in the cloud - the new "reservoir of the experiences of our species."

Buddhist thought calls the dichotomy between inner and outer, between self and other, 'maya', or illusion. 

So what if we aren't individuals, per se, but in reality, 6 billion neurons, creating linkages and meaning for a mind that's slowly waking up with each new neuron that connects to the whole?  The world coming on line, connecting, a being shrugging off sleep in geologic time?  And when Jormagundr finally releases his tail, we're just an intergalactic Willy Loman with a meeting to make? 

Or that our new/accelerating interconnections aren't creating something new, but unleashing/unveiling something very very old?

And when it wakes, we go back to just being a billion bizarre little neurons in a greater consciousness?

"In the mythology of the Aztecs...the present fifth epoch is called Nahui-Olin (Sun of Earthquake), which began in 3113 BC and will end on December 24, 2011. It will be the last destruction of human existence on Earth. The date coincides closely with that determined by the brothers McKenna in The Invisible Landscape as “the end of history” indicated by their computer analysis of the ancient Chinese oracle-calendar, the I Ching. The Mayan calendar comes to an end on Sunday, December 23, 2012"

Or will someone hit snooze for another millenia or two and give us a shot?

</wtf>

alright, alright, I'll go back to looking for a brand using twitter well.

and reading Perry Bible Fellowship comics.

Qik in Iran

Twisualize this:

So I get pinged by Tim Nudd for an Adweek interview via twitter for #tweetfreak on the subject of 'availability'.

then twitter went down.  poetry.  Hopefully its because of the postponed maintenance to help Iranians tweet their streets, but still funny.

At the same time as these shenanigans, Kara Swisher wrote a great piece on Twitter as the Forrest Gump of International Relations -  some choice bits:

"...Harvard University Professor Jonathan Zittrain said: 'It is easy for Twitter feeds to be echoed everywhere else in the world. The qualities that make Twitter seem inane and half-baked are what make it so powerful.'

Zittrain was being quoted in a New York Times piece today about the use of Twitter by those protesting the election results in Iran, as other means of modern mass communications–such as email, Facebook and texting–got blocked.

In other words, Twitter is so simplistic and silly that it is a perfect digital tool to overthrow a government–which is kind of makes the trendy microblogging service the Forrest Gump of international relations.

While not always reliable, masses of people chattering away has always been the most fluid way in which news has been disseminated and received. Although much of that can be mundane and borderline idiotic, one cannot deny its impact.

What one can deny, though, is the hype that inevitably follows in the wake of every one of these breakthrough technologies like Twitter.

That’s a mistake, because it is how the tools are used by people, more than the tools themselves, that should be the focus."

Nice, Kara!

wei?

wei?
Originally uploaded by theshanghaieye

nice...this one off flickr.

ATM'S that make me laugh

Few and far between, but this one at a Chase caught my eye.

Brick Lane, London

Commercial Street, London

Great Eastern Road, London

How can't 5 + 1 = crazy delicious?