ouroboros

LHC 'Doomsday' Suit

file under 'Sweeeeeet'.

slashdot pops this one:

Mar 27, 2008 22:38:00 GMT smooth wombat writes "a former nuclear safety officer and others are suing the U.S. Department of Energy, Fermilab, the National Science Foundation and CERN to stop the use of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) until its safety is reassessed. The plaintiffs cite three possible 'doomsday' scenarios which might occur if the LHC becomes operational: the creation of microscopic black holes which would grow and swallow matter, the creation of strangelets which, if they touch other matter, would convert that matter into strangelets or the creation of magnetic monopoles which could start a chain reaction and convert atoms to other forms of matter. CERN will hold a public open house meeting on April 6 with word having been spread to some researchers to be prepared to answer questions on microscopic black holes and strangelets if asked."

I'm checking into direct flights right now.  Where the hell is CERN?

Verbs-o-fun

Thanks to the magical interweb-o-tron, we now have 'Google','Facebook' - (“I e-mail for jobs, I e-mail my mom,” summed up college student Clonts. “I Facebook my friends.”), and 'Twitter' polluting our verb pool. 

I know many who 'give good Facebook'.

My "Last Word" in Creativity Magazine

Thanks to Creativity magazine, I got to blather at length about my take on "The State of Advertising".  I feel like I should share some of that, but Ben Diggles already blasted me out of the goddamn water for writing overly long posts, so if you want to read the whole thing, you can check it out on Creativity's site.  And here's a shout out to David Burn @ AdPulp for taking my piece and contextualizing it well.

Search + Creative

Had a fun conversation with Adweek's Brian Morrissey regarding W+K's recent search strategist hire.  Brian's been around this space for a while, and during our conversation mentioned a previous article ("Like Honda for Chocolate") in which creative uses for search were discussed.   Ironically enough, back then, a Nike campaign for which W+K developed creative was singled out by a Yahoo exec (Ron, you know I love you) to illustrate the gap between creative and search, and I was thrilled to see how far W+K's  thinking had evolved on that front.  From Brian's latest piece:

"Wieden is not the only creative-focused agency to zero in on search. [other agencies have] hired Web analytics search experts to make sure consumers are able to find it work."

God bless 'em.  But to be clear, our intention in getting into this space is not simply to make sure we don't miss terms related to our video clips, websites or campaigns.  Search shouldn't just be a "Cover-Your-Ass" strategy hitched to your creative train (especially if it's "already left the station" , to REALLY butcher this analogy).

Search must be a strategic + creative tool. 

Strategic: search tells us what people ARE looking for ("database of intentions", per John Batelle), not what they SAY they are looking for; therefore, as a tool to mine insights  (given the right parameters and respecting its capabilities and shortcomings) search can be a remarkably powerful tool; search activity, once a campaign is active,  is a great leading edge indicator of how well the creative is resonating; owning explicit and implicit campaign-related terms is critical; et cetera, et cetera...

Creative: We haven't scratched the surface.  Search's been massively underleveraged as a creative tool, and with new media forms (video and display + text), mobile and place-sensitive search and services,  semantic search seeming finally to be imminent, etc., we believe "search" as an experience is undergoing some pretty significant changes.  Given search's cultural relevance to internet users, we feel it's not something a self-respecting shop looking to emotionally connect can afford to ignore or leave as a media "to-do" for the moments between a realized campaign and the go-live date...

 

CareerBuilder.com video pop

Nice pop from adrants about our CareerBuilder videos...http://tinyurl.com/253voe

Another reason I love the Interweb-i-tron

I can read about what I'm doing WHILE I'm doing it.  Got the chance to chat with Brian Morrissey @ Adweek about Search and Creative...and while we're talking @bmorrissey tweets:

"cool talk w renny gleesen of WK about search + creative."

Damn.  I like that turnaround time.  Of course, "Gleeson" is with an "o", but he was tweeting, for goshsakes.  And he nailed it in the piece.

:-)

Social Business Models

Nice little piece in the Economist on the utility of Social Networks and their futility as revenue generators ...aparently, not even Google can monetize the trackless wastes of MySpace :-) In a nutshell, the things social networks need to do to monetize their user bases (and justify their valuations) risk driving away their user bases.  Facebook shined a Beacon on this (sorry, couldn't resist). 

And if they piss off their users, these networks are sitting ducks to be supplanted by something else not driven to make ends meet with advertising...Thunderbird, anyone?

Frontline SMS

W+K is re-branding and relaunching the online presence for FrontlineSMS - see the current, non-W+K site here :) FrontlineSMS is a free mobile messaging communications platform built and run by Ken Banks and used by NGO's worldwide to better lives.  Apparently even the UN has taken an interest in the software because (a) it's free and (b) it allows for rapid prototype/testing.  Here's an excerpt from Ken's blog:

"There's a tendency to think that, as a free entry-level texting solution, FrontlineSMS is only relevant for smaller, grassroots non-profits who are most likely to lack the funds or in-house expertise to develop their own solutions. Over the past couple of years I've begun to see otherwise. As a case in point, this coffee project is being run by the UN. Not the suited, New York-based UN you see on TV, but a field-based team of UN staff and volunteers who simply wanted to try something. All they needed was a simple, low-cost tool which allowed them to rapidly prototype their idea.

...their pilot project is distributing prices from five large buyers to about 150 farmers, village leaders and farmers groups by SMS i...prices are going up for farmers, and the buyers are getting access to more quantity and better quality. Prices are collected via phone once a week and within ten minutes are entered into FrontlineSMS and sent out [to everyone in the program's phones]. The project has been successfully running for several months..."

W+K is proud to be helping Ken develop and support his vision.

Privacy Backwash and Hogwash

I posted a little while ago about the kinds of questions to ask as one ideates interactively.  And I got some feedback asking me whether this stuff was all a little "big brother".   

Which suggests that we aren't in an era of big brother. 

Which we are and have been for some time. 

Imagine - a search engine that can ferret out details from your past you'd thought you'd buried or hidden?  oh right - check.  Or a requirement that you update your status regularly enough to track your whereabouts or mental state from anywhere in the world (oh right we do that VOLUNTARILY through facebook status, twitter, etc.).  Or an ISP-embedded sniffer tracking EVERYTHING you do (Phorm, NebuAd, etc.)?

I mean, c'mon people.  Isn't it funny that we raise the spectre of observation of our tiniest moves as a bad thing, when it seems a pretty good number of folks are happy to twitter about their bowel movements?  Or the bowel movements of their cats? 

The US Government has singlehandedly chosen to redefine 'privacy' while it's citizenry is blogging and tweeting their way to overinflated delusions of micro-celebrity.

Interactivity and its tools erode the public/private distinction, create a globe of consumer/producers and generates titanic washes of digital shadow.  And it creates social change we can't imagine.  Creates opportunities we are just beginning to wrap our heads around.  Perhaps creates the exact kind of interwoven cultural framework we'll need to serve as a bulwark against nationalistic fervor and sectarian tensions.  As a global culture, whether we know it or not, we are wrestling with what interactivity  means.

And we folks at ad agencies?  We help our clients sell products.

PHONES TO OUTSELL TV SETS IN 2008

[shamelessly lifted from textually.org]

Consumers worldwide will buy more multimedia mobile phones than TV sets this year, according to a new report from Research and Markets. [via The Hollywood Reporter]

"The Dublin, Ireland-based firm predicts that 300 million such phones that can play audio and video and browse the Internet will be sold in 2008. Its new report, "Mobile Media 2008: The Third Screen for Entertainment," also found that half the world's population, or 3.3 billion people, now have a mobile phone subscription. "

Big Questions

Had a good time in the PDX atrium today talking about the landscape we are all playing in now. One of the things we talked about were a batch of questions folks could use to approach interactivity and communications.

Every question doesn't have to have a digital-only solution. They are simply meant to frame some of the unique challenges/opportunities afforded by this rapidly evolving social media and entertainment/information ecosystem.

Here goes nothing:

1. Networked people are out there - how am I inviting them into my idea?

The idea here is that we used to use media networks as channels to send carefully crafted messages...now the people we are looking to reach ARE media networks - interconnected consumers and creators, capable of group forming to global scale. Pug 'Meetups', Myanmar Facebook Groups, Wikipedia, Friends of Tila Tequila, Ron Paul supports and Furries: if the marketing promise of interactivity isn't just a linear acceleration of Word of Mouth (WOM), but more importantly, the ability to locally and globally assemble groups of like-minded folks into spontaneous organizations capable of real impact, how can our idea be strengthened to enable and empower temporary (or long-term) communities of interest and action around it?

2. What am I giving people they can make their own?

As a marketer, I am asking for your time (and ultimately money) to experience my brand. Assuming the brand experiences W+K creates resonate with you, what do they leave you with, besides a memory? How do I allow you 'into' my idea, give you some ownership of your experience with it? Does our interaction generate social currency? Award profile badges, avatar virtua-merch? Facebook/MySpace 'flair'? XBox live points? Am I giving you elements of my concept to internalize, to perpetuate and to advocate? After you experience my idea, how have I enriched you? And if "I've educated you about the benefits of my product" is your answer, waaa waaaaah.

3. How could somebody play my idea?

If we changed our marketing speak and replaced the terms 'consumers' or 'end users' with 'players', how would that change our approach? Games have rules, but the outcome is determined by the gameplay itself...nothing in the rules of any good game allow you to predict the winner, right? So if my latest idea were to suddenly become a game, would it be fun? Would I want to play? NIN's Year Zero ARG made an album release a game. A REALLY COOL ONE. The Coke 'Videogame' spot we did? I wanted to PLAY that game-mercial. Make those rats DANCE. Does my idea let you in, create a powerful and emotional brand experience, and leave room for you to play through to your own personal or team conclusion? What would this look like as an ARG? What would the goals, objectives and metrics for success be? How does someone know when they've won?

4. How do I get my idea to people, not them to it?

How do I bring my marketing marketing mountain to you, Mohammed? Rather than waste money to advertise to you to come to me, how can I use my comm platform to deliver the experience to you? I've got gadgets, widgets, widsets and apps coming out the tuckus. How can I make my brand relevant, meaningful and valuable to you in the places YOU care about/are invested in, rather than trying to extricate you from them with my limited bucks? Putting a crap banner on a shite WAP site doesn't feel like the way to your heart. So what is?

5. How do I get the audience to BE my media, rather than use MEDIA to drive an audience?

What am I giving you in a brand experience that makes you such a fan that you are compelled to share, to become my advocate? How has my respect for you and your motivations allowed me to develop something so meaningful to you that you blog about it, IM about it, post images to Flickr, mention it on your facebook page, in your twitter feed, etc.? Is there a way I can get you to CARE enough to share your experience with others? More than just hoping for good WOM, am I empowering you with a message so compelling and deeply connecting that you would be willing to internalize, personalize and amplify my message? And then am I providing the tools to help you do it? And am I prepared for someone to use those same tools to criticize me? And am I being honest in my motivations, transparent in my intentions? Hells Yeah.

6. Can I use 'where someone is' as part of my story?

With Global Positioning System (GPS) mobile devices, Android, Bluetooth/bluecasting, geo-triangulation (Google, Apple), NavTeq (nokia), the rise of mobile search, the imminent arrival of place-based contextual ads, Geo-caching experiments, Sociallight, yellow arrow, embedded semacodes and SMS shortcodes, ARG's, flash mobs, swarming - can knowledge of 'where the person we are trying to reach is' potentially plus-up the brand experience we are creating? Does my message change when I know you are in cold weather vs warm (which I know by matching weather.com info with your GPS coordinates that day)? Do I remind you to go for a run if I see you staying inside all day?

7. Will they love our idea enough to protect it?

How are you inspiring people with your mission, then empowering them to help fulfill it? Will you let them take you in a direction you hadn't expected? Wikipedia, eBay and Flickr have achieved the successes they have because they each provided people a clear value proposition (social, monetary, etc.) and a shared platform/social contract to which 'members' adhere adhere. But more than simply follow the rules, the inhabitants of these communities often take it upon themselves to manage and police the properties. Educate and induct the newer members. They've adopted these platforms as their own - and in many cases staged group revolts and happenings to protest corporate decisions. How is your idea not just living during your current campaign spend, but laying the foundation to live well beyond it?

These are just a few questions we use to approach a challenge interactively - I'd love to hear anymore questions folks have found to be constructive.

Jelly's Interactive Jam

Jelly wows the crows with his human beatboxing.  What's particularly noteworthy about this image is that a lot of W+K'ers are actually sitting in the lower seats, which is an indicator of the gravity with which we consider any human beatboxing effort. 

***Sob***

Thank you, Icanhascheezburger.com, for understanding my pain.

Immersive Worlds (Hold onto your hats)

I had the opportunity to catch up with Ken Brady, gadfly and immersive world guru-type fella.  Now for a lot of  folks, conversations about immersive worlds goes 'Second Life' fast.  Between them, Hipihi, and metabirds, you cover a lot of ground.  And miss a lot.

Oh - and you lose everyone.  I mean c'mon.  Walk into a marketing department and say 'Second Life' and you may as well be selling Dutch tulips.  Or plague bandages.  Or dead, really stinky animals.  Or barf.

So for those of you who class immersive worlds somewhere near "Klingons vs. Furries Bowling", Ken had some interesting insights.  And there's even a chance to win a prize somewhere in this entry.  Like at the end.

Back to Ken.

I asked him to share four important things everyone should know, here's the knowledge bombs dropped:

1. Everything you learn now will change in two weeks.  Ken knew thirty new platforms in various stages of development, each with a range of strengths and weaknesses.  The platfrom-specific knowledge from an experience in any would, he suggested, have the shelf life of sushi.

2. Fast retreat = Community Backlash. In other words, don't treat immersive world brand experiences like campaigns with a hard start and finish.  The social contract of entering an immersive world requires a real community engagement (read: committment) to earn the respect of the in-world inhabitants.  Hence the creation of the SLLA - originally formulated to resist marketing incursions (including "shooting" people entering SL American Apparel stores, though of late they've taken a political stance seeking in-world political rights...)

3. Own the IP and/or 3d models built to support your in-world efforts - otherwise you'll need to rebuild them the next time you need them.  Also, the models may (and this is a big 'may') be cross-platform compatible, so while you may need to re-stretch some polygons, don't pay twice for the wireframes/skeletons if you don't need to...

4. Engage communities on their terms, not yours. A brand conversation in Gaia online (e.g., 'The Last Mimzy') versus a Second Life dialoge are different experiences entirely.  Before you can relevantly message or "plus-up" an in-worlder's experience, you gotta know what makes the eco-system tick - what are the goals, rewards and social currencies (explicit and implicit) built into or minted in those locations?  How do you enhance what's going on and provide real value?

As we talked, we also discussed the role of a community manager/virtual brand manager in virtual space, and the outsourcing of marketing functions by real world brands to virtual world teams.  This gets real interesting real fast.  To whit: Brand management as classically understood in the command and control systems of CPGs has to evolve to community management. 

With IP dissemination in virtual space (literally and figuratively) control is effectively gone.   (This is the irony of "UGC" - if your brand  is relevant to people, there is UGC around it.  The choice isn't whether it makes sense, the choice is how to engage)

So you can fight the loss of total brand control in interactive space, or leverage it.

Virtual worlds, dealt with attentively and respectfully, have the potential to become crowdsourced brand forums where you can learn a lot about how your brand could better meet the needs of virtual customers and advocates - and the lessons learned there may well feed real world conversations as well.

Leveraging the power of those spaces means participating relevantly in the communities themselves and being a part of conversations around your brand - aiding and enabling, or correcting as needed. 

How's that sound: "Brand guides, not brand managers."  Nice 2.0, 2.5 and 3.0 ring to it.

Or you can just bowl with Klingons and Furries.  But remember you gotta dress the part.  Who knows - they may even love you for it.   By the way?  disturbing number of SL sex forums with Furries.  One innocuous Google search netted this gem.   Jeepers, people.  I'm not saying, just sayin'.

Thanks to KenekeB for posting up a whole gallery of images from what looked to be a heartwarming communal gathering in ATLANTA.

Special Prize Opportunity:
First five people to post a mailing address in the comments section (if you don't want to go public, email me at renny.gleeson@wk.com) get a real world copy of the "Girls of Second Life" calendar. 

No, I'm not kidding.

Agencies and Brands

The argument about which agencies or brands "get it" or don't when it comes  to interactivity is a red herring.  I've said before and I'll say again, no one "gets it".  "It" is an rising tide, a cresting wave, a raging river or full-blown ocean.  A sea change.  And putting a stick into the sea to take it's measure is futile.

We can see trends, but what's important is not the answers.  Because those will change in days. Minutes.  Seconds.

What's important is the questions.  Are you asking the right ones, and are you asking enough of them?

With apologies to the soon to be dead Gerald Zongo

Gee.  I wonder why interactive marketing gets a bad rap sometimes.  Well, here's two from to today.  The first - perhaps the banner with the clearest and stupidest call to action ever, and the most recent genealogic descendendant of the <blink></blink> --> <a> click here </a> --> this bilge:

I'll tell you who's ass I'd like to kick: the creative director who greenlighted this crap.  It's virtual vomit splashing up against the side of your page.

Next, email marketing chum munching example #1 : the Burkina Faso shuffle.  Honestly - someone must be clicking this crap for it to still be circulating.  And that irritates me more than the letter itself.  But you know what?  Maybe this one is FOR REAL.  Maybe it WAS.  MAYBE I AM ALREADY RICH, even as I blog.  And like an email Bullshit-satva, I've returned to the land of the poverty-stricken and grammatically and syntactically disadvantaged to help rescue you.  As my friend Gerald Zongo is fond of saying, "good Stuff regard this is Honestly".  But that's Gerald for you.

And as he notes, I am putting him at great personal risk by publishing this letter, but I think the family of the victim of the ghastly motor accident should know what 'ol Zongo is up to:

Date:	Thu, 13 Mar 2008 12:39:30 +0200
From:	"gerald zongo" <gerald_zongo@walla.com>
Subject:	Your kind attention needed.

Hello Dear,
This mail might come to you as a surprise and the temptation to ignore it as unserious could come into your mind but please consider it a divine wish and accept it with a deep sense of humility.

I am Mr. Gerald Zongo, the manager in charge of Auditing department of Bank of Africa (B.O.A) Ouagadougou Burkina Faso in West Africa, with due respect and Regard; I have decided to contact you on a business transaction that will be very beneficial to both of us at the end of the transaction. 

During our investigation and auditing in this Bank, my department came across a very huge sum of money belonging to one of our deceased customer who died on Feb 29th 2002 of a ghastly motor accident and the fund has been dormant in his account with this bank without any claim of the fund in our Custody either from his family or relation before our discovery to this development.

Although personally, I keep this information secret to enable the whole plans and idea be Profitable and successful during the time of execution, the said amount is Twelve million four hundred thousand United States dollars(US$12.4m), as it may interest you to know, I contacted you to be my partner and person to be reliable and capable to champion a business of such magnitude without any problem. 

Meanwhile all the arrangement to put claim over this fund as the next of kin to the deceased, get the required approval and transfer this money to a foreign account has been put in Place and directives and needed information will be relayed to you as soon as you indicate your interest and willingness to assist me and also benefit your self to this great business opportunity, In fact I could have done this deal alone but because of my position in this country as a civil servant and we are not allowed to operate a foreign account and would eventually raise eye brow on my side during the time of transfer because I work in this bank.   

I will not fail to inform you that this transaction is 100% risk free, on smooth conclusion of this transaction, you will be entitled to 30% of the total sum as gratification, while 5% will be set aside to take care of expenses that may arise during the time of transfer, while 65% will be for me, please you have been advised to keep "Top Secret" as I am still in service and intend to retire from service after we conclude this deal with you. 

I will be monitoring the whole situation here in this bank Until you confirm the money in your account, and ask us to come down to your country for subsequent sharing of the fund according to percentages previously indicated and further Investment, either in your country or any country you advice us to invest in and all other necessary vital information will be send to you when I hear from you.  I suggest you get back to me though my private email address  geraldzongo004@yahoo.fr 

As soon as possible and also include your personal phone/mobile and fax numbers for easy communication. 

Yours faithfully, 
Mr. Gerald Zongo
The manager in charge o [sic]
Auditing department of Bank of Africa (B.O.A)
Ouagadougou Burkina Faso

Zongo, you're a dead man.
 

Traveling can be sweet...

...or a real pain in the ass.  Christian Laniosz tracked down a sweeeeeeet tool called "Seat Guru", an online tool you can use to check out which seats are the best by plane - and which ones have power outlets.

So I'm not at SXSW, but I am on the road.  And here's a nugget: travel adapters are a SCAM.  They always look like crap, cost a bloody arm and leg, and they never last.  Pictured below is my hearty dependable, never-used RODEX adapter that I just pulled out of my bag.  Apparently, putting my bag IN THE OVERHEAD BIN subjected the little piece of garbage to stresses beyond any envisioned by the manufacturer, who was apparently too busy cackling at my stupidity and wiping their bottom with my shekels to worry about Quality Control. 

I am currently also pissed about the on-air, onboard power adapter (the "Empower", for "empowered to rob you f-ing blind") I mean - what the hell is with charging $114 for AN ADAPTER?  When you are traveling your ass off, sipping infrequent juice from the now practically hidden airport power sockets (which when you find them often have so many freaking things plugged into them it looks like the Griswold Family X-mas is in town) then getting buck-whacked to plug into specialized sockets feels...wrong.

Interesting social media challenge.  Connected, well-off audience (biz travelers) with a clear need (power up sources in airports) and a champion (Wired) Fail to create any real solution.  Over at Gadget Lab, Mark Mcluskey suggested an AirPower Wiki - he even set one up over @ one-minute wiki (created by Microsoftie Jeff Sandquist) - but other than conjecturing about it on AirPower Talk, the page has degenerated into spambots posting bullshit Xanax come-ons.  [note: some of the most prolific "commenters" on this blog are spambots, too]

Why?

Marketers take note:  even clear cases with a valuable demo and a clear need may not take off.  So please don't post video mash up tools.  I don't f-ing care.

On a related note, ever wonder how many things you can plug into an electrical outlet before it catches on fire?  Yeah, so did I.  Not many.  And apparently, if you see fire spewing out of the outlet, you're screwed because the insides of your walls are ALREADY ON FIRE, Holmes.

Typical airport socket overload.
Courtesy Electrical Safety Foundation International

Koffie Huis 'de hoek'

It's no SXSW, but hell.

Irritating

That you can't get to Typepad from China.  Or Tumblr.  I could post crappy pictures, but couldn't get in.   Spent the week in Beijing and Shanghai.  Lot to talk about.  But here I am in SFO about to miss my flight.  More to come.

i'm not so hungry anymore

Liana Chang @ Nokia Beijing

w+k + nokia + beijing

weiling, beijing

w+k beijing

cctv tower going up