This is the reason I get so excited about innovation, its unplanned, unexpected and often ludicrously funny

re-Chatroulette. There is a huge storm of Daily Mail style angst building about this site. (it twins random web cams, with hilarious results) Including a Newsnight debate that came across as a Chris Morris/Brass Eye style parody. But in all this outrage about the morals of the country. I really think these commentator's are missing the point. Tim Malbon of Made by Many summed it up best I thought;

"...It was brilliant to be reminded of how subversive and mad the Web is. In our increasingly settled, sanitised and locked down Web era Chatroulette is a timely warning to us all that we must hold on to the crazy stuff, because what it really represents is the Internet’s culture of freedom and culture of innovation..."

News sites currently awash with stats on this, but From Read Write Web has a neat set of quotes= In December 2009, Chatroulette had 500 users. Today, just four months later, the site sees 1.5 million daily visitors. That statistic alone is enough to inspire investors to beat down the door of its creator, Russian high school student Andrey Ternovskiy. "the purest form" of the Internet and its userbase, and "a great way to kill time," one of the most common uses of the social web. (Muhammad Saleem, authority on engineering virality) "I've frequently described it as a box of game pieces with no rules. Users are invited to create any kind of experience they choose given a simple set of constraints. It's inherently viral, addictive, imaginative and essentially human"



We get around

Back in October we made a short demo film for Harman International. (produced by the excellent Th1ng.co.uk) The film was a demonstration of new sound synthesis technology developed in conjunction with Lotus engineering. The aim being to demonstrate how electric cars of the future could be made safer by emitting various sounds to alert pedestrians. I just did a Google search on it to find the film has made its way onto over 60 web sites, weirdly its had some of its most views on the Pistonheads web site, I never took those TVR boys for being keen on hybrids

Farmville or why we're diffrent from the Americans

Came across an interesting stat with regards Facebook breaking the 400 million user barrier last month. On both sides of the Atlantic a prime driver has been the playing of Sim type games like Farmville. Both US and UK players are manily proffesional women. However the age differences are really telling. Average of 31 here in Britain and +55 in the States

Farmville Explanation
View more presentations from Philip Slade.

General Election warming up (in a one sided way)

Well so far, apart from the Tories most of the pre-election communications have been rather dull and unremarkable. The Conservatives on the other hand are proving to be such a gift to the spoofers, HERE, and HERE you almost can't wait for their next mind boggling missive. Some of the regional David Cameron supporter groups have taken to Flickr with (unintentionally) hilarious results, really no spoof required.

Big Potatoes a manifesto for innovation

An interesting view on the current debate about innovation (i.e. there isn't any) A group of writers (Norman Lewis, Nico Macdonald, Alan Patrick, Martyn Perks, Mitchell Sava and James Woudhuysen) have published a paper called: Big Potatoes, A new 14 point Manifesto for Innovation. I really like the insight that the Great Depression saw real innovations from companies that have gone on to be durable brands of the new century; Nestlé, Penguin Books, General Electric and Texas Instruments. But so far the credit crunch has seen almost the opposite level of thinking.

"..The Big Potatoes Manifesto is call to arms: for leadership and risk taking, for accepting failure and unexpected outcomes as the necessary and inevitable path to success, for bold and ambitious experimentation and an end to the instrumentalist short-termism which has institutionalised a culture of limits..." MORE

  1. Think big!
  2. Go beyond the post-war legacy of innovation
  3. Principles, not models!
  4. In praise of ‘useless’ research
  5. Innovation is hard work
  6. For success, expect lots of failures
  7. Regard chance and surprise as allies
  8. Take risks
  9. Innovation demands leadership
  10. Innovation is every body’s responsibility
  11. Trust the people, not regulation
  12. Think global, act global
  13. The spirit of innovation knows no limits
  14. By, with and for humanity

Change is good

I feel energised by change. Doing the same as before has never held great appeal, even when you are not quite sure where change is going to take you. What you do know is that its going to be different and maybe involve a bit of work getting things right. Yesterdays launch of the Apple iPad is very much a case in point. The web is teetering on melt down so many people are expressing there opinions as to its potential success or failure. There are some extreme Luddite comments filling the forums, pick any, or start HERE with the Twitter stats. Even if against all the odds it does turn out to be a turkey -this century's Newton. The fact is they tried, Apple have taken a huge step in thinking. It is this ambition for change that I so like. Sure version 2 or 3 of the iPad are going to be way better, and the price will be half its current $800, particularly the school friendly Wi-Fi only $499 version.

Yes I am a Mac fan and I can't wait to use one, But more than any of that what I feel invigorated by is that here are a bunch of people for whom the option of a better Netbook or Kindle was never going to be good enough. Change is good.

Neat debates currently rolling.

Two ongoing debates have caught my eye at present. The first relates to my last post below. The air brushed David Cameron. Not only is the web now awash with versions of it, but you can now download your own poster builder app HERE. Brand Republic have a good discussion on the subject HERE. Not least becasue the Labour Party appears to have adopted one of them as an official poster HERE - a really new move in UK politics.

Next, the Pepsi; Super Bowl Vs Social networks campaign. Some very good thoughts and ideas about measurement (or lack of it) HERE. Plus quite a few neat asides about brand building with fuzzy logic.

An election of commuincation

I know I get excited by the smallest things, but the up coming general election in the UK is really going to be something. Not for all the reasons of potential regime change, but the cascade of communications. The very nature of the state of politics in the UK at present means fractural opinions are being considered.

The main parties being so frighten of an original or different view. Even mainstream press are considering the whitterings of the nuttiest blogger as light relief from the blandness of central office party line. I quite warm to Gordan Browns inept PR skills, his advisors attempt to lighten his image are so ham fisted its got to be some kind of massive double bluff, surely he can't really be that way? If David Cameron does become PM at least we should get some decent satire from the left at last. Those of us who remember how good comedy was under the last Conservative government know that really British humour only works when we moan about stuff, as for music,  protest and anger songs have only ever worked under the Tories.

Social networks. The lack of American style fund raising will probably mean we won't see the cleverness of the Obama style social network activity. I would be surprised however if we don't see some pretty heavy weight SEO spending. What Obama did with Fox news misinformation so Labour should do with Cameron's media chums, However and its a big however. The modern Labour party is a world away from common sense and logical actions.

Humour

The early rounds of tit for tat ads are shaping up nicely. I do hope we'll see more of this. The ones shown on this page are all from the excellent Beau Bo D'Or

 

The power of Trendwatching.com

(I orginally posted a version of this on t7F blog)

 Trendwatching.com have tracked how their December 2009 predication briefing for 2010 has been picked up and spread around the world. Following the ripples bended or morphed by global cultural and social conventions. This is a great illustration of the power of  good content. I am amazed at how many brand owners still don’t see the opportunity this presents. The letting go of your stuff. Allowing it to be past on, customised and reapplied. More importantly is the creation of content specifically designed to be passed on. Content that has an open end, that demands comment or addition. It is the Lego theory of marketing. 

kidbrick@flickr.comClosed worlds are becoming fewer and fewer. Thinking that your new campaign is just a Lego starter set with the customer in charge of a huge box of extra bricks should be the 2010 attitude

Everything aimed via mobile devices needs to have this element built in. The Apple iPhone App store would be nothing without this type of thinking. Toady’s launch of the Nexus One from Google should herald a widening of the idea of endless stories.

In Management Today, Tom Savigar of The Future Laboratory covers a similar area but applied to social media technologies. he labels this ‘Free range’

Everything a brand puts out is just a stage in that products narrative, if it has value users will take it on. The obvious flaw being thin or dull content that sits motionless. Be interesting and your customers will be interested.

A year of change, no more paper POS

There is alot to get excited about in 2010. Leaving aside the forthcoming: iSlate, Winter Olympics, General Election and World Cup. The world of marketing communications is facing so many cool opportunities.

Take booze (if the last two weeks were not enough) iPhone apps are showing the way to a whole new way of communicating the subject. With permission based services, pretty soon most drinkers will be able to be spoken to at point of purchase, whether ontrade or off. I keep banging about augmented reality, the over laying of digital information with real world locations. But this and other developments in location based services will change everything by 2012.

The trick is for brands to offer consumers real value and not rush into AR or Apps just because its new. The Stella Artois bar finder is a good example of a top idea rushed out far too soon. Some where between the richness of content in Diageo's malt matcher crossed with the AR capabilities of William Grants Spirit Shelf would be very neat. Especially if you could add social functionalty like a twitter finder or bar capacity into the mix. The app market changes by the day so all links to itunes/blackberry/Nokia app stores.

What's intriguing is once a consumer starts using the application and agreeing to hear and see what a brand has to say (in exchange for further content) Thats when paper POS really becomes redundant. I really like the Smirnoff backed Time Out guide to London as an example of the early days of this technique. 

For the drinks industry with all its legal and social issues. These new channels offer real detailed segmentation. The fact the NHS have a rather neat consumption tracker app is also a sign this channel will be key.

Another bit on Augmented Reality

I gave a series of talks about augmented reality just before Christmas. The BBC have just published a neat round up of a few coming innovations in this area.  The key point in all this talk of a brave new world of AR tech is that ownership of devices that can handle AR is still very small and wont break the 50% barrier untill well into 2011. The forthcoming iSlate from Apple and GPS enable digital cameras will broaden the base of users away from just phones. That said any brand owner not taking note of these developments is being very foolish.

"...AR is a technology that allows data from the web to be overlaid on a view of the physical world.

Although a relatively small sector at the moment, analyst firm Juniper Research predicts that AR will generate incomes of $732m (£653m) by 2014..." - Jane Wakefield BBC

I still feel that creatively we are only just scratching the surface of what AR can really do. There is a real challenge to agencies and brands alike to fully come to terms with the concept of virtual and real worlds overlaying each other.

The Prostate Cancer Charity

Ok so it did take the best part of a month to get going but the Mo has arrived! Pictures HERE.

This really itchy and frankly low rent porn star look is all in the interests of a very good cause, raising funds for The Prostate Cancer Charity. Last year over £14 Million was raised from 173,000 Mo growing men.

Hopefully you will find time to sponsor me as well. Link to my Mo page HERE.

Either way, happy Monday to you all (its just stopped raining)

We don't do ambiant

I have always said that what we do is create waves. If you are too cautious the waves won't be big enough for people to see. Once you start a wave you must be prepared for it to reach something or at the very least rebound. Trouble is so many agencies produce work that hesitates as if afraid to cause a ripple. Steve Henry has written an excellent bit on this subject. He describes the effect on the agency Albion when they let the viral 'Slap Nick Griffen' free across the web. Details HERE.

"...And the agency was threatened with physical violence, which was why the door was locked. Now for me this is EXACTLY what a great agency does. Get stuck into culture, have an opinion, have a great creative idea, and get it out there fast. And make sure to stir it up. Using the wonderful world of social media. I'm getting sick of saying this, but 90% of advertising goes out there and does nothing at all..."

Privacy in the age of disclosure

Lots of chat at the moment about the true effect on consumers of normalising social media behaviour.

I have a short bit in my Augmented Reality talk I have been giving, but found this by Dr Norman Lewis, seen on Spiked  "...One of the most confusing things about the question of privacy, and what makes it so elusive today, is that it is far from evident how people regard their right to privacy, or how these attitudes translate into day-to-day behaviours.


The concept of privacy, once merely thought of as the right to be left alone, has been transformed as we have become more information-oriented and as digital technologies have come to ensure that almost everyone now has a ‘digital fingerprint’. The question is further complicated by the fact that, in recent decades, the boundary between private and public has become blurred. A new age of disclosure has emerged where reality TV and social networking sites now represent the ‘private’ face of public scrutiny..." (rest HERE)