Influx Insights Weblog

hyper-media overload

Influx Insights — 2010-02-15T16:37:39Z

The problems associated with a saturated media landscape is something I have talked about for years on this blog. As media expands especially in the digital space, this problem has the potential to get out of control. Media owners are hungry to expand into the mobile ad space, but appear to be using a degree of judgement before moving to fast into one of the most personal and intimate of all media environment.

However, Keiichi Matsudafor appears to be pretty concerned about the potential for things to spill dangerously out of control and express this brilliantly in a video that imagines a typical early morning kitchen experience in the not too distant future.

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

Posted by Ed Cotton

kevin smith ushers in a new era of crm- from v.i.p. to s.i.p

Influx Insights — 2010-02-15T11:58:56Z

The Kevin Smith debacle on Southwest gives us a glimpse into a new future of customer relationship management. In the past, companies would have had procedures to cope and manage the treatment of VIPs.

Obviously, whatever processes Southwest had in place clearly failed, but given their positioning, it's possible they did not have such a thing. It's also likely that if another VIP had the same experience, the impact might not have been as strong.

Kevin Smith's social media savvy and 1.6 million Twitter followers made him a dangerous person to mess with.

While much has been stated about social media strategy and policy and how to deal with crisis, I haven't seen a single example and suggestion for how do to deal with a situation like Kevin Smith's.

Apparently, it's not in the social media expert's playbook.

Could this signal a new era in customer relationship management as the S.I.P. (Socially Influential Person) becomes just as important as the V.I.P.?

This leads to whole load of challenges.

How would companies identify S.I.P.s?

How would you know if S.I.P.s are your customers?

How would measure the influence of S.I.P.s?

How would you try to keep S.I.P.s happy?

Would you worry about the balance of power?

Expect to see lots of presentations on Slideshare about this topic in coming months.

Posted by Ed Cotton

the best communication ideas of 2010 will lie in the intersection between digital and physical

Influx Insights — 2010-01-31T18:06:08Z

Foursquare j ust announced a partnership with Bravo Television for a few seconds it did not compute, but I went deeper to see what the deal was all about. It's really smart as it offers Bravo a chance for deeper engagement with its audience.

"Of course Bravo is going to put the full power of their network behind the partnership, promoting Bravo’s Foursquare hooks in TV spots. The NBC-owned cable network also plans to use Foursquare for sweepstakes, awards, and other viewer incentives. They’ll even offer Foursquare tie-ins to Bravo advertisers, which will likely come in the form of coupons for viewers to cash in at the advertisers’ venues."

Bravo is keen to be part of the next big thing to go mass, but the communication opportunities here are impressive. Fans of shows will have the chance to follow in the footsteps of their television heroes and get to participate in branded contests.

It's a great example where the virtual world is being unleashed out into our geography thanks to the mobile internet.

On the other side of the coin lies the physical screen and the opportunities that it offers for interaction. Here we've yet to scratch the surface with the possibilities that exist for layered communication on high tech out of home panels and the opportunity for play.

Last month I was fortunate enough to attend the Decode exhibit at London's Victoria and Albert where I saw artists experimenting with this technology. As you can see from this short video of Body Paint by Turkish designer Mehmet Akten, it shows how a very simple idea can be deeply engaging.

The growing physicality of technology and the merging of digital and physical spaces will be a key communication theme for 2010 and some of the best ideas this year will be in these spaces.

Posted by Ed Cotton

magazines on iPads will just be like GQ's latest iPhone app

Influx Insights — 2010-01-31T16:03:12Z

While Apple's iPad has been the subject of a lot of attention ranging, from ridicule and mixed reviews. The spin suggested the iPad would usher in a new era for those in the publishing business by creating another medium for consumers to experience print.

However, the promise suggested by Apple's demos and a number of flashy publisher initiatives is that this new experience is going to be better than a web site, and more satisfying than reading a newspaper or a magazine.

The dream being sold is how our magazines are going to be turned into immersive multimedia experiences (see the Sports Illustrated demo below) where the user takes a joyride through a stream of beautifully designed content and can dig deeper on topics and experience multimedia to their hearts content. While all these seems technically feasible, the big question is who are the publishers who can afford to develop this content on a daily, weekly or even a monthly basis?

It's easy to imagine a scenario where excitement drives the creation of great first iPad editions that succeed in seducing new subscribers into magazine franchises at significant premiums to current subscription rates. However this will not be sustainable because the economics won't map out and the result will be falling quality standards and subscriber discontent.

The other way of looking at this is through the application lens, where new entrants will come into the publishing space from a completely different direction.These new entrants might find better and more interesting ways of serving up content than the publishing incumbents.

It's likely magazines will never be able to afford to realize the "Sports Ilustrated" dream and instead be forced to fight it out in the App Store with hundreds of thousands of competitors.

The future for traditional publications on tablets has to be more "application like", than "issue like".

I hate to burst anyone's bubble, but I don't believe we are going to get the sizzle of the Sports Ilustrated demo, it's much more likely we will be looking at something like the latest GQ iPhone application.

Posted by Ed Cotton

the internet 20 years on

Influx Insights — 2010-01-31T15:23:48Z

The BBC has decided the web is now worthy and has made it the subject of a detailed documentary series, The Virtual Revolution, that explores its origins, evolution and examines the implications of the technology for society.

It's a highly ambitious, well-researched and thoughtful look at what 20 years of the web means for humanity. This is the perfect time to take a look back and project forward because we are on the cusp of massive expansion as the developing world comes on board in leaps and bounds.

The series is narrated by Dr. Aleks Krotoski, who aside from studying the implications of the internet for the past 10 years, is also a member of The Guardian's crack team of technology journalists.

The first program in the series examines the idea of the web as the great leveler and leaves no stone unturned in it's quest for answers. Most of the program is filmed in the Bay Area and includes interviews with local luminaries-Stewart Brand, Mark Zuckerberg, Andrew Keen, Chad Hurley and John Perry Barlow.

The big theme here is one of revolution and counter-revolution which is explained by the adoption of the internet by late 1960s and early 70s Bay Area radicals, fueled by hope from the Summer of Love and looking for a space where their ideals could be realized, a space that turned out to be The Well.

The program concludes that despite all the hippie driven hope for true openness and utopia, the reality today is very different with a handful of new media brands that have taken and co-opted control.

Krotoski finds an interesting contrast from the ideals of 60s radicals to 2010, where there is basically one online store, one social network, one search engine and one online video network.

Despite the potential doomsday scenario of limited control, Krotoski hopeful thesis is that the beauty of the internet is its state of constant flux, which simply put, means those who are in control today, are very likely not to be in control forever.

Posted by Ed Cotton

twitter needs more than the limited oxygen of buzz

Influx Insights — 2010-01-27T10:16:12Z

Twitter might be the brand with optimum buzz at the moment, but it's not enough to take the brand to the next level.

With Twittergate last July, a number of sensitive documents were "stolen" including one that defined the company's mission which is "to be the pulse of the planet".

Judging by some of the latest data, the brand is some ways away from this mission and from capitalizing on its potentially giant valuation-

40% of accounts have never sent a Tweet

80% of Twitter users have Tweeted fewer than 10 times

Only 17% of accounts sent a Tweet in December 2009

It's obvious that you don't need to send Tweets to be able to experience and enjoy Twitter, but it certainly adds another layer of engagement.

Perhaps developers can take the API and create dumbed down clients that encourage more participation, but I would suggest Twitter now needs to start communicating.

Given that Square has the same founder and this is a brand that's currently not just generating buzz, but it's also using web celebs/angel investors, like Kevin Rose to tell a deeper story (240k views on YouTube), it would be smart for Twitter to do the same.

I am not suggesting a multi-million dollar ad campaign, but some content that helps dimensionalize the power and fun of Twitter to a broader audience.

Posted by Ed Cotton

Look!- HP also has a tablet

Influx Insights — 2010-01-26T11:08:23Z

While the tablet frenzy is reaching epic proportions and everyone seems to be looking at Apple, HP does not want to let it's efforts slip by unnoticed because it does have something interesting to say...it has a tablet and it's very cheap!

However, the company has a fun way of going about things, it's almost as if the brief was "How can we be as un-Apple as possible?" and they went and produced a YouTube film that is a snoozefest.

One would think given the attention around tablet computing, that they could find a more dynamic and imaginative way to tell their very interesting story.

Posted by Ed Cotton

gaming is changing and how

Influx Insights — 2010-01-26T10:58:46Z

There's a nice piece on All Facebook that takes us through a history of the various incarnations of the Farmville game from it's earliest days in May of 2007 to today.

Farmville, Zynga's game wasn't launched until June 2009 and has grown rapidly to reach 10 million active daily users by August of 2009 and onto 27 million where it stands today.

It demonstrates how building on people's existing ideas can be a succesfull formula, but more than that, it shows how gaming is evolving from high powered consoles to social experiences. The Wii showed us the power of social gaming in a physical context, but Farmville shows us how mass social gaming can truly become a phenomenon.

Disecting the elements that make Farmville such a success would be a lesson in how things become social and something a number of brands could learn a lot from.

Posted by Ed Cotton

the future of the magazine

Influx Insights — 2009-12-17T12:21:22Z

Great work from BERG (a UK design consultancy) that investigates the potential future for magazines. I like the way they acknowledge an understanding of the two forms of "reading"; one that's more visual and the other that's true reading.

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

Posted by Ed Cotton

a transparent geography

Influx Insights — 2009-12-14T17:15:33Z

The geography of data, people and objects is fast becoming transparent. We can now tell where a plane is mid flight, we know how many miles we ran and if we are clever, we can map those miles, we can see exactly where photographs were taken and our cars can be effortlessly guided to our destination by satellites.

Geography has become cool again.

When everything has a chip in it, we will know not just where it is, but also where it's been.

MIT's Trash/Track project is an experiment to show the journey a piece of trash takes.

Icebreaker allows you to track the sheep your garment came from.

Geographic transparency is already an interesting element that brands can add to their utility and it's worth thinking about how your brand might use it.

Posted by Ed Cotton

technologically enabled shouting

Influx Insights — 2009-12-10T12:01:51Z

When technology goes small and more powerful, it creates new possibilities for exploitation by advertising and media entities.

Ideas like screens on magazine covers and billboards that talk to you are now possible, if not yet, mainstream realities.

The latest example is a spirits bottle by Ballantines that gives the illusion of responding like a graphic equalizer to the music in a bar, etc.

While this is purely a point of sale display and not yet real packaging, it gives an indication of what could be possible. Imagine in 5 years when every spirits bottle at the bar has a screen, your retinas will be burning.

The ambient worlds that we once took for granted will rapidly become multi-media, multi-sensory and connected because the phone will talk to the billboard.

Posted by Ed Cotton

lessons from a start-up-slideshare

Influx Insights — 2009-11-30T17:45:55Z

There's some great material in here from a presentation given by Rashmi Sinha, the founder of Slideshare, at the Web 2.0 Expo.

I think this is representative of the type of thinking that needs to be applied when it comes to building things like building brand utilities.

The highlights for me are the following thoughts; the importance of the single idea, execution, speed, sociability, making something you would use, starting with less, watching the metrics, testing with a few, user focus and finding community.

Fast Cheap Barely In Control Web2 Expo

View more presentations from Rashmi Sinha.

Posted by Ed Cotton

who's creative and thoughts on the crowd

Influx Insights — 2009-11-24T15:04:10Z

If the ad business does not understand the new world of conversation, there's nothing like an awards show to get them interest, when egos are at stake, everything changes.

In response, to my last post on the Adweek poll debacle, @bigspaceship pointed me to one of the longest discussion threads in recent memory involving creative people.

Who knew they had the time?

Pulled together and encouraged by Ben Malbon over at BBHLabs, it's amazing to see the enthusisam for the debate from Ben, Ty Montague, Kevin Roddy, John Windsor and a host of others.

While the initial spark to the discussion might have been the Andy's Elect a Jury inititative created by Big Spaceship, the debate touches on a number of key issues around the evolution of creativity and the crowd.

Some highlights:

"If “technology” needs greater representation on this jury, what form should that take? Bloggers? Critics? “Creatives?” There’s a real debate to be had here about who is best qualified to judge the creativity of others."

Kevin Roddy

"Crowd sourcing is still in its infancy, sure, but it seems odd that so many of our debates on the subject seem to stop at the (clearly semi-heretical) use of the crowd. The best experiments surely strike a balance between FRESH inputs from the crowd, with RESPONSIBILITY for decision-making ultimately taken by a few."

Mel Exon

"We also wondered if people who were really active in social media would exploit that and run away with the election. we wondered if we would wind up with a 100% interactive and digital group of judges. That wouldn’t have been a disaster, but imbalance in any direction was something we wanted to try to avoid. The opportunity was certainly there. But clearly that hasn’t happened."

Ty Montague

"I, too, would like to see the award juries evolve to include more than art directors and copywriters and better represent marketing creativity today. At CP B, Technologists and UX designers sit in our creative department and play a huge role in guiding creative strategy and execution for the agency and our clients. I’d like to start seeing more people like Scott Prindle, Executive Creative Technology Director, CP B, John Mayo-Smith, CTO of R/GA, and UX leaders from around the industry appear more often on these juries. And I think that categorization is a good thing. What qualifies as great and effective marketing is changing before our eyes in real-time. And in the digital age, it just so happens that there are more people sitting at the creative table, from producers to technologists to UX designers to interactive strategists. Why wouldn’t the creative people making the work also be the ones judging it?"

Winston Binch

Posted by Ed Cotton

the problem with crowdsourcing

Influx Insights — 2009-11-23T14:41:13Z

When Adweek decided to run dozens of polls to celebrate the end of the decade, they surely could not have been aware of the potential for voter fraud.

While most of the categories seem to be running kinda OK, taking a look at the small agency category and you can to tell things are not quite right, but the small shops are not the worst offenders.

Hardly surprising, but those digital agencies have gotten crazy with power and manipulated the results to such an extreme that a couple of agencies have well over 40,000 votes. I doubt there are more than 40,000 people who ever heard of these shops, let alone prepared to vote for them as digital agency of the decade.

While it's fun to laugh at the inside joke of agencies trying to scam a win through slightly unethical means, it raises a couple of questions about the crowd.

1. Just how much do we trust the crowd?

2. Don't they always have the potential to get out of control?

3. Can we rely on them?

Anyone looking to use the crowd ought to be consider these questions and plan accordingly. Failure to understand this and to be able to implement measures to manage trust and control and you could be in serious trouble. It seems like common sense, but sometimes we are just a little too trusting.

Posted by Ed Cotton

influx interview-jamie berger- art director/advisor- cranky pressman

Influx Insights — 2009-11-11T12:37:21Z

I've been interested in following the re-emergence of the craft movement as people start to shift away from technology to using old machines and making things by hand.

In September, I was fortunate enough to hear Jim Sherraden of Hatch Show Print talk about his letterpress shop in Nashville.

By a strange co-incidence, an art director I used to work with in London, Jamie Beger, is now in Salem, Ohio helping advise his brother's letterpress business, Cranky Pressman.

I exchanged emails and here's the interview.

1. What took you into the world of letterpress?

In 1984 my brother Keith bought a old local print shop business in Salem, Ohio, a small town in what had by then already become part of the rustbelt area after many of the heavy industries that were once around shut down in the 1970's. This was unfortunate timing, because 2 years later in 1986 the first Apple computer was launched and completely changed the graphic design business by the early 90's. Printing operations everywhere were hit hard and it was even worse in a little place like Salem. He struggled but managed to keep the business going somehow. It was crazy because Apple computers were hugely expensive back then as well. He paid over $10,000 for his first Mac setup at the time and that was nothing compared to what a modern printing press would have cost him.

I lived in New York and London while all this was happening but would see how difficult things were when visiting. By the time I moved to Chicago in 1999, he had all but given up on the place. I had a feeling though that this new internet thing might solve part of his problem with location and actually suggested to him that he get rid of everything he had that even resembled something new, apart from the computer, and focus on producing letterpress printing for the creative industry. No copiers, no offset printing and no local customers who would be better off at the copy shop down the road. He ended up selling some of his small offset printing machines to a company that shipped them overseas to developing countries. Luckily my hunch was right and the rise of computers and the internet not only opened up a new nationwide market for the shop, but I believe also brought on a renewed interest in old traditional crafts.

The old machines were the coolest anyway. So I am actually an art director who began working pre-digital revolution and more of an antique appraiser and advisor to Keith the real Cranky Pressman.

2. Why do you believe there’s a resurgence of interest in the old technology?

I think today’s renewed interest in old technology as an escape from the computer and digital din that dominates people’s lives. It is a modern day equivalent to the Arts and Crafts movement at the end of the 19th Century when artisans turned against the ugliness being churned out by machines of the industrial revolution. Now old technology seems beautiful, tangible, comforting, often flawed and more human. It is easier to relate to than a computer.

3. What are you hoping to do with Cranky Pressman?

We’d like Cranky Pressman to become the creative person's own little artist’s letterpress studio. It’s a jobbing print shop that doesn’t sell design work but focuses on helping designers, art directors and agencies produce projects for their clients. The idea is to build an online community and creative space where customers will find the tools needed to create original work. Print in general may have some problems but as long as attractive images, along with endless graphic techniques like folding, perforating, die-cutting, embossing and binding can be applied to a piece of paper we believe it will remain a relevant medium.

For those with experience, old fashioned, ink-on-paper printing is pretty straightforward, but it can be alien and daunting for younger creatives only familiar with computers and CMYK. Cranky Pressman wants to teach people how to use traditional letterpress and binding techniques to make anything they can imagine. At the same time we also plan to build a range of simple imprintable packages such as business cards, calendars, folded cards, envelopes, booklets, folders, packaging, coasters and other practical formats that are easy to use to create affordable letterpress printed pieces. These will be displayed and available to order online along with other graphic techniques and options such as various styles of perforation, stitching, cutting and other finishing. Like an art supply store, we see a range of information, services and materials that put creative possibilities in the hands of the user.

Once the online printery and bindery are well equipped we plan to introduce related products and services based on other old technologies . The physical shop itself is full of weird old stuff that is actually quite useful if you know what to do with it. We hope eventually to make the online shop much the same.

Fusing together the old and new may be our biggest challenge. Right now we don't have much of a marketing or website development budget to speak of so are basically hand setting everything ourselves using existing frameworks available through online tools and services. Our online and marketing presence is sort of makeshift and improvised but somehow appropriately similar to actual handcrafted printing work. It is an exciting way to work but we don’t really know exactly how things will turn out. We figure with old technology and equipment built to last forever while modern technology becomes cheaper and more available all the time, the two may eventually meet at some happy place in the middle.

Posted by Ed Cotton