I heart context

One of the major pitfalls in digital marketing is the me-too-ism syndrom. Brands/marketers see something fresh and original, someone smells a trend and usually about a year later you see brands asking people to user-generate their advertising. When audiences, social media and technology are taken out of context the result is 99% lameski beat (Iain demonstrated this point in his splendid talk on Radiohead)

Recently we saw too many mixers and mash-up tools that no one really wants to play with so this little playground was so fun to play with. It’s from the fantastic Eclectic Method, the London based trio of video remix / mashup artists. They’ve recently done Don’t Stop video for innerpartysystem and created a superbly easy to play with (just play with numbers and letters on your keyboard) and highly addictive mash-up application that allows you to create your won version. Best time-waster of the week.

Too bad they didn’t go all the way and allowed you to embed your creation. Luckily dear readers, you don’t have to bear my spastic-licious remix and go straight to make your own one.

When things get personal

Have you ever got an email / phone call from a random advertising creative director asking you to watch their new TV ad and ask your mates to watch it as well? Probably not.

Perhaps it’s because ‘digital’ or social media marketing still needs to prove itself, or maybe it’s because we ‘live’ the conversation and it feels natural for us to tell the stories or our creative work?

But there are too many cases (myself included) where we go out of our ways to promote the work we do for clients which occasionally turns us to online PR whores and/or free media agents and that’s not what we are being paid for.

There is nothing wrong with being proud in your creative work and self-promoting it, but in many cases I’ve seen recently you start loosing the sense of who is the real owner of the work. You read about the work in blogs and blog comments and emails and while it does good job at helping the story get out there, it also detaches the work from the client/brand.

That brings me to another related point. When traditional PR people use their contacts to promote their clients it is usually exchange between mediators or media owners (I’ll get you into the papers etc); it’s all done behind the scenes and you understand the value transaction - there is nothing personal.

In online PR this can easily go wrong. If brands are keen to engage in real conversations with real people they should go and do that themselves or at least give the impression that they are doing so. When social media consultants become the carriers of the conversation, they risk loosing authenticity and context for their clients.

I’m interested to hear more views on this one - what do you think?

The new unchained guide is here

Not that there was anything wrong with the previous one as far as I’m concerned but The Unchained Guide just relaunched with even better looking website. It is packed with independent goodness and new features including the fantastic unchain heros.

What I mostly like about this website is their refreshing take on independent shops. When other ‘activists’ are usually talking about independent, non-chain retail there is a always a pitiful emotional baggage as if they were polar bears or something. Unchained is stepping away from the ‘preservation’ positioning and celebrates the best shops in London because there are simply better in every aspect than the chains.

Check it out - it’s ace

(I’m going down to Shop at Maison Bertaux who knows I might bumped into Alexa)

Make something people want to have

Thank you herdmister for starting this discussion I’ve been thinking about for a while now.

There seem to be almost obsessive fixation with the idea of influence in the brave new world 2.0.

If only we will out-reach to the right influencers they will help us take our product/service/brand to the masses. But influence is the wrong holy grail or at least only half of it.

I blame Malcolm Gladwell. Such a simplistic view of human behaviour is true perhaps only in the world of fashion - get Kate Moss or Paris Hilton to wear the most hideous thing and you most likely see blind influence in action. But not so for the majority stands of life.

Simply put, if your product sucks, or to be more precise if your product isn’t brilliant enough, you can get all the influencers in the world, they probably won’t make it for you. I hate myself for using that example but did Apple seek any influencers to help them get the iphone out? Nope. They’ve created something so great that people want to have, to adopt, to own.

Make something brilliant that people want to adopt, to mimic, to emulate and suddenly the idea of influencers seem far less crucial.

Read more from Duncan Watts here

I heart CrappyCat

I just came back from an amazing holiday in amalfi (Italy) and the only thing that cheered me up from my amalfi blues was this little awesomesque animation . It’s got heaps of charm that reminds me of Poke’s unlimited project for Orange.

CrappyCat (go to the interactive theater)

great stuffffff

Cheers .mt

London from above at night

If you never came across the Big picture blog from Boston.com drop anything and put it on your RSS feed now. Made of vibrant oversized photographs telling news stories in a way that makes the cliche one picture worth etc like a huge understatement. Whether you need a reassurance in the beauty of the world or alternatively a proof of how insignificant we are this blog is where you’ll find it both.

It’s absolutely stunning.

Here is a quick one from the London from above at night series.

Fontastic!

Here is something so nicely done I want to hug it. Interactive creativity can go wrong some time but if done right and tight and within context it turns into endless source of fun and delight.

Remember cock-a-doodle? or this little gem? and the Pollock of course…well, Fontpark is very much the same - it let’s you play and draw and create with fonts. And all the little touches make it stunningly beautiful.

Have a go, it’s FONT-a-delic

Doctor, my ambient intimacy is broken

Unless you’ve been on the moon last week (or 50ft under waiting for the end of the world) you must have read this thoughtful meditation from NYT magazine on Twitter, Facebook, ambient intimacy and so called awareness tools. It’s a good read, especially for people who don’t use these tools.

The article tells the story of how ‘awareness tools’ have created a whole new class of parasocial relationships (ambient intimacy). Those peripheral people (weak ties) in our network that we follow online and tweet by tweet getting a glimpse into their lives. But it fails to address an increasingly common problem of handling the parasocial and the social, the weak and strong ties in one place. The one thing that is missing from this article and where I believe the evolution of social networks and awareness tools should be heading to, is to help us get back lost context(s).

[Note: if you are one of those people that thinks there is no problem whatsoever to share every bits of your life with hundreds of people, most of them you don't even know the below reflections are not for you. you should read this instead]

In our offline social relations there are natural, inherent order, priorities and hierarchy that are predicated on our common and shared perceptions of acquaintance, closeness, intimacy and friendship. These formed over time and are always context based. A study-group college friend that became a close friend as the year progresssed. People I’ve met while traveling and now IMing occasionally. Blog buddies. Ex colleagues that used to be fairly close but now have faded out. Friends of friends, gym buddies, the women who does my hair, family, bosses, neighbours, my thesis supervisor, high school mates I haven’t heard from in years….

These people used to have a clear place and role in my life. My relationships with them are defined by context. There are (or were) time and place and form for these relationships, or simply put, there was a clear context to all of my strong and weak, close and remote relationships and these contexts are now somewhat gone.

Take a look at the map of my friends on facebook clustered under 9 categories and believe me I had to work hard to reduce it to 9 categories. And if I wasn’t so lazy I’d create a more accurate visuals that will show the overlaps between these categories (some of them are not mutually exclusive, of course and people can be in more than one category).

All of these people are now my ‘friends’ on facebook. All in one flat, context-blind place - in addition to 25 people I don’t even know. At all.

During the rush-to-befriend period we all befriended practically everyone we know who is on facebook. And we’ve sent and accepted friends invite from blog buddies, industry people, aspiring planners, cousins and who not (obviously the more ‘popular’ you are, the more people you don’t know ask to be your ‘friends’)

And now something is flawed.

This problem became clear and acute to me when Thalia, my baby girl was born 6 weeks ago. For a start, I have far less time now for skimming and filtering through the people I’m really interested in what they have to say and those I don’t and the truth is that the former are significantly smaller than the latter (I’m interacting with no more than 20% of my facebook friends). Secondly, suddenly I found myself torn between my wish to share all the amazing things that I’m going through with those I feel comfortable to do so and the decision to keep things private because I just don’t want to share it with the majority of the people that are my facebook ‘friends’. Whats more, some of my very best mates still live in caves and are not on facebook/twitter.

So my facebook experience is broken. Don’t get me wrong. I like the idea of facebook a lot. But I started to dislike what have become of my facebook. It has become cluttered and meaningless. (The situation with Twitter is much better as it’s still rather niche and I’m following/followed mostly industry colleagues - context is far clearer)

Now that our online and offline lives are fully intertwined we need more and better tools to organise the online. These tools must better reflect the dynamics and contexts of our offline social lives. As much as there are natural organisation, contexts, priorities and various degrees of friendships offline, we should be able to have these online as well.

So far these tools are merely cosmetics like the top friends or circle of friends applications - these allow you some visual organisation but don’t give you control over information you share/accept.

Currently, the customisable privacy setting on facebook allow you to choose between your network, friends of friends and friends only. But that is only half the solution as it treats ALL your friends as equal. What I have in mind is a facebook tool that will allow us to regroup / organise our facebook friends and easily control the things we want to share with and accept from our different friends and acquaintances. A tool that will help people regain context of friendship on facebook without the need to resort to two different profiles (public and private).

What do you think? is it just me or are other people feel that there is a need to better reflect the different levels and qualities we have to our offline social relations?

Spam is the new Ulysess(?)

My spam comments increasingly read like they were written by James Joice (click to enlarge)

I really like the idea of spam as the new literary form. Someone should somehow recognise these aspiring writers and help them find their voice. I’m thinking of spam reading evenings in local bohemian pub

Martin H is dark and genius

Following on from my previous post on children fantasy drawings made real let me take you now to a different world altogether…

This portfolio website is the f***ing nuts. Martin Hughes’ (yup,the dude from wefail) dark and haunting portfolio is crammed with so many gems you just can’t stop exploring his artfully twisted world even if it feels at times like he kicks you in the stomach…

Swallow the pills your own risk

Close
E-mail It