27 August 2010

loaded copy

Saw an ad on a bus the other day. The copy line was:

“Beach read of the summer”

Although simple, it struck me how much information was crammed into those five words; three words if you remove the non-descriptive “of the”.

“Beach read of the summer” implies:

• That it’s a book (read)
• That it’s popular (of the summer)
• And it even tells you where the perfect place to enjoy it is (beach)

Not quite interesting enough to elaborate on. But reminded me that good copy writing isn’t always witty, it can also just be smart, saying a lot with very few words.

Yes, I know it’s Friday night.

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27 August 2010

canadian convection

To get Americans to consider ‘vacationing’ in Canada, a digital installation was created in New York, surfacing comments/tweets and photography from travellers in real-time.

As a promotional concept, it’s almost very good. But has clear flaws. There are, though, lots of juicy ingredients to the thought and its execution that I feel compelled to discuss. Here’s the video:

The thing I like about it is not its use of ‘social media’. That would be a fairly meaningless statement. What I like is that it is trying to reduce the gap between the audience and the product’s actual value – the product being Canada. A lot of what I talk about in my Free Energy presentation concerns using existing forces (in this case, genuine vacation commentary) and bringing people closer to this authentic energy, rather than create new things (like an ad) that in some ways keeps people distanced from the actual thing itself.

If you buy into my heat transfer metaphor, this concept represents both ‘convection’ and ‘radiation’ value transfer. Convection, because it’s exploiting the currents of real conversation to transmit the value of Canada to others. But radiation, because the installation also needs to act as an ad, broadcasting conversations to people that would otherwise never be seen.

[You could also argue that by reducing the amount of mediation, it's also an attempt to get as close to 'conduction' value transfer as possible, without bringing actual physical chunks of Canada to the streets of New York. Although, not really.]

The execution falls down most – for me – in two places:

1. Too much faith has been put in ‘convection’. Passers by still need to be excited and seduced. The installation still has to act as an ad, ‘radiating’ the value/pleasure of Canada to people across the vacuum that sits between busy commuters and the wall of the installation. But no real effort has been put into aggregating and presenting the data in a really compelling way. It’s just… there. So as an ad, it’s not a good one.

2. Linked to point one, the second flaw is that even if a passer-by takes notice and interacts, will reading what a complete stranger thinks of the salad they’re having in Saskatoon really inspire them to visit? Personally, I don’t have any faith in a stranger’s recommendation of anything. I want to know what ‘people like me’ think of places.

I applaud the effort to bring people closer to the actual value of the thing being sold. But just because we can scrape live data really easily doesn’t mean there isn’t still work to do to make that engaging.

If the creators of this happen across this blog post, please don’t take offence. There are plenty of things I’ve done that I would criticise too. If nothing else, I think it’s a really interesting example that can fuel very useful conversations. Oh – and I’m a dick too ;)

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24 August 2010

self-regulated epicness

Epic Win is an a “to-do list app within an RPG setting”. I excitedly posted about it a few weeks ago, along with some videos that (presumably) inspired it.

With Epic Win, you add items to a to-do list and assign each one an ‘epicness’ value. When you tick an item off (attack it with your heroic dwarf or weird Tree-man) you win those points and your character progresses across a map. This map is a fantastical metaphor for your life of ‘to-doing’, obviously. And you win ‘loot’ along the way; loot being Epic Win’s equivalet of badges/achievements.


I’ve been using the app for a few days now. I’m neither inclined to, nor capable of, writing a thorough review, but I do have an observation or two to share. If you know me or my style of writing, then its touchy-feely-ness won’t surprise you ;)

Naturally, when I started to play with the app, I wanted some immediate gratification, so I added ‘to-dos’ such as “play with Epic Win App”, “show the person next to me the Epic Win app”, “breathe” etc. These tasks I destroyed heroically within seconds and my points quickly added up.

Then I added some genuine to-do items – you know, serious stuff  – and something happened. I started to feel uncomfortable that I had contaminated the experience with my earlier frivolous to-dos. Goddamn it, I had awarded myself 200 points for breathing. By comparison, the ‘value’ of an important email I had to send had been compromised.

I realised very quickly that because the reward system was self-regulated, it meant that the overall value I extract from the app would be down to me. I have often experienced dissatisfaction with things I get too easily; something I wrote about years ago in a post called The Happy haggle upwards. In it I referenced, amongst other things, Radiohead’s decision to let fans choose what to pay for their album, Rainbows and argued that if you cheated them, you cheated yourself:

“Things are worth what people pay for them. And this means to some degree, you control the value of what you consume by how much you decide to fork out.”

I found the same thing happening with Epic Win. When I allowed myself to gain lots of points for frivolous achievements, it eroded the meaningfulness of ticking off genuine items. It devalued the act of actually getting important stuff done. I quickly regulated myself, stopped adding silly items and started really thinking about how many points certain tasks were worth.

Just to really ram the point home: In order to get maximum value from the app, I had to regulate the cost-reward ratio myself.

This is interesting to me, because the thing that lies at the heart of everything is meaning. Meaning is what we try to create when we make anything for anyone. In a perfect system, the regulation of this meaning can be controlled by the infrastructure of the thing itself, so users don’t need to regulate it at all. But that’s not always possible.

One last lesson: Don’t add ‘make love to wife’ to your Epic Win to-do list. If you do, award it more than 200 points.

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23 August 2010

bizarre samsonite ad at Schipol airport


Copywriter: Samsonite suitcases are REALLY TOUGH – what else is tough?
Art director: Ice hockey players are tough. I saw one kick a puppy once
Copywriter: Imagine if a bunch of ice hockey players were using Samsonite suitcases as hockey sticks! They’re smashing them around on the hard ice but these things are bloody indestructible!
Art director: Whoa! Hang on, that doesn’t really make sense. Maybe we should…
Copywriter: Too late. Emailed it.

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9 August 2010

thank you ma’am

Nice labeling from a coffee shop on Brick Lane. On the left a “White Americano” and on the right a “Black Americano”. Lucky we bought one of each so we could work that one out :)

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9 August 2010

the happening

This post is going to have that awkward ‘haven’t blogged in a while’ feel about it. A bit like a one-night stand after 3 months celibacy.

I discovered fflick a few days ago. It aggregates people’s twitter-film-reviews, surfacing your friends’ ones – and does it very well. The best part is that these ‘reviews’ happen anyway, naturally. So no new behaviour is expected of you. You might know that I tend to appreciate that kind of thing. The people behind fflick sum it up beautifully in this headline on the about page:


You’re already a member – that is one powerful proposition. Boom! (as Sam would say)
If you’re the sort of person that “lives and breathes the web” or other such things, then the idea of aggregating existing behaviours in this way will barely cause you to shrug your shoulders. But for anyone tainted by the heavy brush of the marketing world, this should really be a slap in the face for you.

Many people in the marketing world are still controlled by the culture of ‘creation’ rather than the culture of enabling and aggregating. Personally, I think that using what is already happening is incredibly powerful. It reminds me of one of my favourite quotes in recent months, from an Economist article about ‘re-using’ data:

‘Understanding’ turns out to be overrated.

The point – to contextualise that quote – is that for things like Fflick, it’s not necessary for the creators to understand the nuances of the data, simply that the data exists. Re-channeling existing data is one of the smartest things you can do to create value with practically zero barriers to entry for users. Simply give them a better way of benefiting from what they already enjoy.

This is very much about your mindset. Are you doing things that enable you to say “Hey, join our thing” or “Hey, you’re already a member”?

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3 August 2010

analogue social media: hell yeah

Spotted in the Poke kitchen and a great reminder of why ‘media’ is more fun when it is a two-way conversation. Materials required: 1. Newspaper 2. marker pen. Infinitely better than just the newspaper on its own. Hooray for humans.

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2 August 2010

smashable guitar

Speaks for itself really. I particularly like the ‘coffin’ you send it back in to be recycled.

HT to the lovely

Cakehead

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30 July 2010

poke copywriter sings own words

In an audacious move, Poke copywriter Rebecca Rosier has found a clever way to practice using words and that. She’s only gone and SUNG them. With music. OK they’re not exactly the same words she’s writing at Poke. There isn’t a song called “Welcome to the homepage”. There’s no ballad that ends “I watched a video instead of watching my egg“  But.. ah sod it I can’t be bothered to keep this up. Watch this cover of a Regina Spektor song:

And here’s one of their own:

And if you like those then you should go buy her band, Bim’s album. Do it! Do it. Damn, where’s a persuasive copywriter when you need one?

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28 July 2010

consumers are not monogamous

That isn’t news of course, but I thought this message on Facebook was a nice reminder that ‘social media’ sometimes connects things that brand managers might not like it to. Sorry.

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