attention industry

caro: Marketing fail: If you’re a product that people drink,...

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:09:03 -0500

Marketing fail: If you’re a product that people drink, please do not include “yellow” and “snow” in the same sentence describing a promotion.

Too bad, because Veuve is pretty savvy as far as digital marketing goes.

Seriously? Yellow Snow? Context proofing is just as important as content proofing.

A Consumerist Manifesto; or Why I Love What I Do.

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:00:00 -0500

Why wouldn’t we define ourselves by our possessions? They are a reflection of our tastes, our personalities, our vanities, our obsessions and desires. They are earned through our labour, shared with our aquaintances, shaped and scarred and stained by our experiences.

I won’t apologize for conscious, careful consumerism, they way I would for wasteful, destructive consumption. Surrounding myself with things that speak to me, that speak for me, is only logical - truth is expressed in subtext, explanations are what we need to spell out word for word, after we’ve already been misunderstood.

It’s the ultimate vanity, the chief arrogance of the artist, that you can only express yourself by that which you create with your own talents, your own two hands. The belief that expression is somehow limited to those with the skills, the talents, the words and images and passion that they can somehow force into life.

We all craft a life out of experience and object. Whether the art of your life is the conversations you have, or the actions you take, you create as surely as the painter, the dancer or the writer.

I don’t have a story for you. I don’t have art in any standard sense. But this is my art - the idea, the shift, the hope that my words can shape actions.

Don’t lecture me about the destructive nature of buying, or wanting and desiring and associating ourselves with the things that speak to and at time for us.

We attach meaning to things, so people can use things to attach meanings to themselves, so that people can tell their story in a passive meaningful way. In the real world, not behind the guise of fiction, behind the protective mask of art that saves us from needing to dissect, address and consider ourselves, the ugliness we can bring.

My things tell a story as surely as my words. And I don’t just write it, I live it, as do you. As do we all.

Bending to Reality.

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:00:00 -0500

I was never more creative than when I didn’t have a schedule. I’d have deadlines, sure, and classes which were of varying importance to attend, but I had to constant, overarching reason to bend the time spent on any given task, per day, to anything other than when the work had to be delivered. And I never missed deadlines, because everything else was flexible.

I miss being able to go on a 12 hour research binge, followed by a 4 hour writing and revision binge, followed by 2 hours of Entourage, 2 hours of sleep, delivering the finished product, and finally another 14 hours of sleep. I have a vast array of reasons why this is no longer a feasible approach to work (mostly working in teams, on large, intricate processes where many people rely on my being accessible) but I miss it nonetheless. I miss being able to disappear into the work, rather than have the work disappear into the process.

I also have a feeling that this type of work, the type I cherished so much, is only possible in a situation like academia, where someone is so closely defining the scope and ingredients of your work that you can be left entirely to your own devices.

I don’t have a solution or suggestion this time. I’m just pointing out one of the inherent sacrifices in working with real world toys, rather than intellectual playgrounds. You need to bend to reality, from time to time, in the real world.

It’s probably worth it. This is no way means I’m not constantly looking for a workflow that mimics the best parts of complete independence, while offering the benefit of working in a skilled, motivated, tightly knit team.

everythingismedia: ronworkman: soupsoup:...

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:49:13 -0500

everythingismedia:

ronworkman:

soupsoup: laughingsquid:

Foursquare Introduces New Tools for Businesses (NY Times)

Do business who operate with traditional loyalty cards (air miles, in-store card, etc) have this sort of dashboard? Would be interesting to compare side-by-side.

Or is the comparison nothing vs this?

If you have information like this, you should be able to leverage the hell out of your existing customer base. Genius.

#blender.

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:04:00 -0500

Rule: The hero is the audience.

[edited on March 9, 2010]

ideasareawesome: BMW motorcycle does the old “pull a table...

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:18:53 -0500

ideasareawesome:

BMW motorcycle does the old “pull a table cloth off a table” trick.

Originality Wins.

Supervillain Lessons #1: Fair Fights are for Idiots.

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:00:00 -0500

I realized on the weekend that you can learn a lot from supervillains. And why not? So many of them are semi-legitimate businessmen, brilliant egomaniacs, dictators who demand perfection, and other things that describe Steve Jobs.

So, I’m starting a new series of posts, Supervillain Lessons, with this point: Fair Fights are for Idiots.

By this I mean, no reasonably intelligent person would ever bet the farm on their ability to win a fair fight. You don’t enter an established market hoping that your more-or-less-the-same product will win based on your hard work, or your branding, or your charm alone.

When you launch a new idea, or enter an established market, you better have a secret weapon that makes everyone else irrelevant to the point of mockery. And you better hope that it works quickly.

Because fair fights favour the strongest, richest, most established person. Any disruptive company wasn’t in favour of a fair fight.

All I’m saying is, if you’re going up against Superman, have kryptonite, or stay at home.

The best part about not fighting fair? If you brag about your advantage, the weaknesses of your opponent are made public. If you don’t, you can take them down, unsuspecting.

Supervillain rule #1: Fair Fights are for Idiots.

What You Didn't Learn From The Music Industry.

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 10:00:00 -0500

No one learned from the music industry, which was my worst fear about the whole debacle.

As the first industry to really feel the brunt of the shift to digital distribution, the amount of fear, floundering and failure that we all witnessed from the major labels, the aging executives, and the dying business model made a certain amount of sense. To the people who grew up digital (or the digital kids, or generation y, or ‘us’) a new approach seemed obvious, but we didn’t have the greatest tool necessary for success yet - we hadn’t seen anyone fail.

That said, we’ve seen the decline of the music industry to the point where major labels are more laughable than laudable, and no one seems to be learning. And so, for news, for film, for television and for industries like books and magazines that will be forced into competing in a world of digital distribution in the coming years, here is the short version.

5 Things You Should Have Learned From The Music Industry:

Physical packaging wasn’t your product, it was UX.

Without physical packaging, UX is the manifestation of your product. Apple is (somehow) still the only company that has figured this out when it comes to music - iTunes regularly sells albums to me, and my contemporaries, because it is less work than piracy. It costs infinitely more, the bitrate is not always as high, but buying an album from iTunes is a better experience than pirating one. It just works.

This is why so many companies lose to piracy - a pirated movie, or tv show, has a better UX than the legitimately purchased version. Which, for those of you watching at home, was the same case with CDs. When buying a CD was, cost notwithstanding, a shittier experience than downloading one, people stopped buying CDs.

You have to choose between keeping your rights, or keeping your customers.

I don’t mean this in an ‘information wants to be free’ manner, but instead as a reminder that there is always a trade-off. If you lock something up with DRM, you will lose customers. If you insist that Blu-Ray disc will only play in 65% of Blu-Ray players, you will lose customers. If you try to sell me the same content 5 times, so it will play on 5 devices, you will lose customers.

At the same time, you need to be willing to make the trade in the opposite direction - there are certain rights you should be willing to trade customers to protect, like artistic integrity in terms of the presentation of product, or the choice of venue for performance. Rights does not always mean legal matters.

You make more money from stuff your product sells, than from selling your product.

If you have to pick between selling CDs, or selling tshirts, concert tickets, stuffed animals, vinyl toys, a clothing line, or other branded goods, you would be an idiot to pick the CD, and only the CD. Often, there’s more money in selling things that people will want, if they love your initial creative product. Give away the movie to sell the toys. Give away the crappy, low quality, iphone screen version of your movie to get people in the theatre to see it in epic 3D. Give away your comic on the internet to sell the hardbound signed collection, and give away your book as a PDF so people will buy it from you to put on a shelf, or share.

If you can give away your content at no marginal cost, and then sell something that gains significant value for people who love the content, you should probably stick to that. Especially because the content is going to be available free, anyway.

A lawsuit wins you nothing, except a lawsuit. Maybe.

This ties into the rights point, but needs it’s own clear section - if you sue your customers, they will turn on you. Being treated like a criminal, en masse, encourages behaving like a criminal. Just ask any kid who gets accused of shoplifting one too many times.

Backstory is worth money.

Whether it’s a kickstarter funded documentary, or an open forum where you post pictures of the creative process, or notes, images, etc, backstory will always be valuable, because it leverages an existing connection with the content, and offers the chance to connect with it on a deeper level than is normally available. In addition to offering that deeper connection, it also confers a certain amount of legitimacy, or superfan status.

People will pay for status, but people will continuously and happily pay for the kind of status that displays itself through knowledge, rather than possessions.

Sometimes being an eccentric obsessive is the best marketing...

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 13:00:00 -0500

Sometimes being an eccentric obsessive is the best marketing strategy.

[Email marketing from Gil Scott Heron.]

The Death Of Comments

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:00:00 -0500

Blog comments are dying off. This isn’t sad, it’s a natural evolution.

Many of my favourite bloggers, and people, have been reduced to flat out asking people to comment more, in posts, on twitter, and sometimes in conversation. It makes sense, commenting was currency at one point, it was an indicator you’d said something intelligent, conversation starting, insightful or controversial. But I’ve been noticing something of a trend of declining comments, and I think it’s probably a good thing.

Comments are an attempt to corral the conversation, which is generally the worst plan in social media.

The refrain has been coming for a few years now - the brand of the future won’t have a web page, it will have a dozen presences on existing sites, each tailored to the audience that dwells there. I have a feeling this is related to the decline in blog comments - the people who most want to interact with content, use it to start a conversation, or discuss it with the author - they have their own forums.

Blog comments have moved to twitter, or youtube, or facebook, and to our own blogs. They’ve moved to places where we can bring the conversation, and our ideas, to the audiences and friends that we have established individually. When I comment on your blog, I am talking to you, and maybe, if both of us are lucky, the community of people who read your blog on the page where it’s published, rather than in RSS. In realistic terms, other than a means of speaking with the writer, commenting on a blog is putting your words into a corner, and forgetting to tell them time out is over.

When a friend, company or colleague suggest building their own social network, building their own place to host a community and a conversation, I always ask why. I almost never receive a satisfactory answer. Are you going to build a community better than Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn has? Are you going to attract more users than them to yet another service, but this time with such a niche focus that you’re asking them to segment their lives another step further? If your product, your brand, your niche so essential that people will craft another online persona just to interface with it?

If so, we should really go for coffee ;)

And if not, you need to stop trying to own the conversation and the community. You need to start feeling lucky that you get to participate in it, and start figuring out how you’re going to serve it.

Most importantly, you need to stop being disappointed that people are talking about how much they like you in public, rather than waiting until they are inside your living room to do so.

A taste of tomorrow’s post.

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:44:02 -0500

A taste of tomorrow’s post.

aaronwhite: infoneer-pulse:slantback: In Vast.com’s testing,...

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:16:48 -0500

aaronwhite:

infoneer-pulse:slantback:

In Vast.com’s testing, Mad Libs style forms increased conversion across the board by 25-40%. (via LukeW | “Mad Libs” Style Form Increases Conversion 25-40%)

Now that’s kinda clever! :)

When I talk about the importance of narrative, THIS is what I’m talking about. People react to stories, especially when they are part of the story being told.

"For years the hollow claims of every marketing guru who insists that consumers ‘demand authenticity’..."

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:15:08 -0500

“For years the hollow claims of every marketing guru who insists that consumers ‘demand authenticity’ has been neatly debunked by the success of the high-end ‘distressed’ denim phenomenon. Buying jeans whose wear-and-tear is implemented by far-flung factory workers and machinery, according to specific standards devised and overseen by layers of corporate design-management — and in fact paying extra for such jeans, and pretending that this somehow signals rebel style — a capitulation to simulacra-culture so Xtreme it would make Debord giggle and Baudrillard weep”

- Rob Walker on faux-distressing and the Olympic snowboarding uniforms. (via putthison)

Authenticity is a BS codeword for accepted and expected behaviours. Authenticity is when someone you think you know, does what you think they would do in a given situation.

Question authenticity.

Notifications and Pattern Recognition.

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 10:00:00 -0500

I’m obsessed with narrative, so it’s unlikely anyone else thinks this way - but as location based social tools, and mobile status updates become more and more common, my sense of pattern recognition comes into play more and more often.

A simple example: a few weeks ago, a co-worker left the office for lunch. My phone vibrated twice while he was gone, with push notifications from Foursquare letting me know he checked in at a local indian restaurant, and then a high end local sandwich place. I wondered if the lineup had been too long at the first restaurant, or if he’d decided to pick up a sandwich because he was still hungry, etc.

It turned out that the sandwich shop sells excellent hot chocolate, something I was not aware of.

This is a silly little example, but thing about the tendency that will comes into play here - the human need to turn incomplete information into some kind of clear picture, something that supports our worldview, despite the lack of certainty inherent in these assumptions. When we aren’t around, we exist in the digital ephemera, tweets and posts and status updates and notifications. This collected information is always an incomplete picture, and yet it offers enough that assumptions are made. The next meaningful step in marketing might not be analysis and interpretation of this information, but instead hijacking the tendency to interpret, and using it to lead people toward assumptions that drive desired behaviour.

Imagine ‘renting’ the presence of a person online. Not sponsored tweets or posts, but acutally paying someone to ‘drive’ their established profiles, checking in at locations, mentioning behaviours (but not specific brands) and generally establishing the lifestyle and brand associations of potential customers, waiting for them to make the final connection to the product themselves. Would this work around government rules regarding disclosure? Would it be feasible for government regulators to prove otherwise?

This sound sinister, but it’s not much more than using game mechanics to drive behaviour (and a slight hint of the hyperreal). And because it’s based on incomplete intepretation, the argument can be made than anyone influenced is doing it to themselves. So do we worry about trusting each other, or about trusting ourselves to only identify valid patterns?

rcoleman: “Why Piracy Works” (via davehyndman:) Just so true....

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 09:48:45 -0500

rcoleman:

“Why Piracy Works” (via davehyndman:)

Just so true. Boggles my mind why the end experience of movie watching is far better with pirated content than with paid-for content.

gelgels:

“Why Piracy Works” via i.imgur.com

I’ve been saying this for years - as long as Piracy has a better UX than paid content, no one wins.

Pack Dynamics

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 10:15:18 -0500

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about pack dynamics. Similar to the way wolves have a hierarchy, behaviour is dictated by position, or perceived position, in the group. What makes this interesting to me, is the difference between explicit hierarchy (seniority, job title, etc) and unspoken hierarchy (popularity, reputation, intellect, etc.)

Status has to be respected, as it directly impacts the decision making / approval process. At the same time, leadership in working groups often follows a different hierarchy than official position. The tension between who is in charge, and who is identified as a leader socially, creates a potential for conflict that limits the openness of official leaders, and the efficacy of unspoken leaders.

In purely social settings, pack dynamics lead to conflict in jockeying for position. Insults, actions, and risks are often informed by a belief that the outcome will be a shift in pack position - a transition from beta to alpha, for example. While this is complex enough in a friendship, it is much moreso in a professional setting, where the quality of work, or risk involved in a strategy can be impacted by a single individual fighting to shift their role.

Social position, and the power available with it, is often a greater motivation than income. In addition to social influence, it also promises respect.

In terms of manipulating behaviour, hijacking the innate desire to maintain, or shift to, a leading position in your “pack” is something to watch. It’s important not to see this as a purely masculine motivation, or a desire for respect alone. Pack dynamics are inherently about being part of a team, and identifying leaders, guiding forces. I think anyone can relate, to some degree.

Embedding part one of a video series as an ad? Brilliant. If I...

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 11:42:24 -0500

Embedding part one of a video series as an ad? Brilliant. If I don’t want to see it, I hit pause. If I don’t know about it, the audio gets me to scroll down. If I like it, I can watch the whole thing without navigating away from the content I’m currently reading.

It doesn’t hurt that it’s (another) blunt force documentary from Vice, which almost always guarantees my attention.

evangotlib: creativead: kels3y: great advertisement....

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:30:12 -0500

evangotlib:

creativead:

kels3y:

great advertisement. smart.

Simple is win.

evangotlib: laughingsquid: Best Buy E-Cycle Billboard Features...

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:12:51 -0500

evangotlib:

laughingsquid:

Best Buy E-Cycle Billboard Features Letters Made From Recycled Electronics

Awesome.

Subtext is often the best way to send a message.

An Unfinished Post.

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 23:21:55 -0500

I’m an english lit geek. This informs my point of view on pretty much everything.

It’s taught me that people are stories. If you understand narrative, understanding people isn’t that much of a stretch.

This is probably why I think of marketing as being about plot points. Everything is a decision made by the storyteller (or the consumer) to communicate something about the character, the plot, the narrative they’ve constructed for themself.

Thinking of it this way, rather than use cases or demographics or badge theory, makes it a hell of a lot easier to plan around human behaviour.

We’re slaves to our stories, and it’s impossible for us to resist constructing them with ourselves in the lead.

[I never finished this, and started writing it weeks ago. I’m posting it now, rather than deleting this fragment.]