Off on my holidays so I will be doing my best not to go anywhere near the Internet for a couple of weeks. See you soon people
Monthly Archives: September 2009
Switching off for a couple of weeks
Posted in Uncategorized
CSI Creator launches first digital novel
I love it when old stuff gets mashed up with new stuff. Essentially at various points in this new book by Anthony Zuiker, you are given a code to enter on the website level26.com. The code ‘unlocks a cyberbridge’ that then gives you access to 3 minutes of motion picture footage providing more depth to the story and the characters.
The full trailer here looks pretty neat too.
HT to DigitalBuzz
Posted in Transmedia
Involvement thresholds
I love all the following words…participation, interaction, experiences and even engagement. They’re more helpful and they must be good because you hear them at every conference, in every blog post and tweet, but what you don’t hear that often is the context or the practical implementation.
For every great case study held up as a shining example there is probably 100 hundred that have failed. I’m not bagging the terminology we just don’t spend enough time talking about the different kinds of participation, interaction, experiences and engagement.Hence many more failures than necessary.
For example my view is that Insurance can’t emulate a movie release because people aren’t generally a) as interested and b) as willing to give up as much time and effort. That’s not to say that they both can’t be involving, they just are in different ways.
Take Comparethemeerkat.com and Why So Serious, the former is almost sit back, snackable piece of light hearted entertainment, the latter is time consuming and truly participatory. In my opinion these have been successful because they understand what people might be willing to do in the context of its brand. Like pain, different people have different thresholds when it comes to brands and their communications. Its unlikely Mastercard would be tattooed on someone’s back, although some freak probably has having said that.
It’s also worth noting that these brands have also spent some money promoting themselves in mass media as well as through social. Not everything captures the media attention like the Best Job in World.
I know it seems obvious but it feels like brands make the following mistakes;
- They believe that everything has the same levels of social capital
- That people want to be your closest friend without it being earned
- That the majority of people want to give up time and energy to promote your product
- You don’t have to spend time or money on mass media communications, it will spread organically through networks
Definitely more swirling around in my tiny heed on this but it’s a start
Posted in Comms thinking type stuff, Strategy
Brand Extortion and the end of obscene profits for brands
At the iMedia Summit earlier last week, Jeffrey Cole, Director of the Center for the Digital Future gave an insightful presentation about the future of media and brands. One of the main comments to stand out was his belief that brands and businesses shouldn’t expect to make as much money as they used to from people. In fact he went as far as saying that many companies should feel lucky that they got away with extorting customers for so long.
Using the music industry and album sales as an example, Jeffrey said that of the 400 he had brought over the years he probably only wanted 2 or 3 songs off each. Thus paying a hell of a lot of money for extra music he didn’t need.
This is obviously more than just a case of technology or the web making things leaner, quicker, or personalised, it relates to people’s expectations. We are essentially experiencing a realigning of values and attitudes towards brand’s and their advertising.
You could go as far as saying that brands should deal with the fact that they might not make as much money as they used to and actually invest money in activity that doesn’t directly equate to a monetary value- almost selling without selling. Tough one to show in the annual report but that does bother Joe Public. I’m not quite sure where this ramble is going but it was an interesting thought worth noting.
8 Bit Trip
A bit of a lazy post, but one for the digital scrap book of awesome things on the Internet machine. Man I loved Karate Champ
HT to @adtyler
Posted in Inspiration
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