tagged: poke

Strategists like to talk about imperfection. Mostly for good reasons, occasionally because it sounds provocative. But there are definitely a host of arguments for making stuff that is malleable and, shall we say, abusable.

When we did Glastotag – a big-ol’ crowd picture that festival-goers could tag themselves in – a few people inevitably abused the system:

I’m pretty sure that Tony Sutton was not at the top of that pylon. But this abuse of the system is mostly a positive thing. It meant our audience extended beyond those that just wanted to play by the rules. If you give people tools, they’ll screw around with them to suit their own motivations. It’s inevitable. It’s also good.

This month, we launched Pin Me If You Can, a competition mechanic for travel company Contiki. In it users have to guess where locals are in South America and pin them on a map. And guess what:

In this case, I was slightly surprised so many people dropping their pins in the sea, given that there’s a holiday for grabs for a lucky guess (still up for grabs today if you’re interested). But, again, it’s largely positive. I’d like to introduce you to Lance…

Lance is a (made up) user that doesn’t give two craps about Contiki and thinks the whole idea is stupid. [sad face] His younger sister sends him the link but he’s uninterested. So he dumps Sherolin in the ocean and writes on his Facebook wall: “I drowned the bitch!” along with the link.

N.b. I don’t condone drowning or calling people bitches. I was in character.

In this instance, we reach even more people through Lance – even though he hated the idea – and there’s a chance a handful of them will be genuinely interested in the competition and the link may be shared even more. We never would have turned Lance into an advocate for the idea on our terms. Instead, he’s propagated it (I bet his didn’t use that word though) and passionately so, because he found a way to abuse it and make it his. There are lots of Lances out there and they’re useful.

We could have built the system so that it was impossible to dump people in the ocean, but that would be a bit like those stupid long sausage things you get in bowling alleys to keep you out of the gutters. No one wants that.

Make something rewarding enough and most people will use it the right way. But make it ‘abusable’ and more people will find their own way to spread it for you, even if they’re not true advocates. See Henry Jenkins’ thinking on Spreadability for a more interesting, less sweary explanation of this kind of thing.

By the way, if you pinned someone in the ocean by accident, you’re not Lance. You’re Susan. And Susan is an entirely different post.

We found a great copywriter. Then she went to work for Obama. So we’re on the look out again.

Below is a video from our recent Predict-a-chick Easter experiment, in which we challenged people to predict which easter eggs would hatch first. As you can see, egg number 2, Benedict was most enthusiastic to greet the world.

POKE is now looking for its own Benedict. We’re looking for a junior planner, who is ready to work on some very exciting stuff; who is smart, hungry, pro-active and possibly covered in feathers.

They should ideally have about a year’s experience. They should be super keen to learn, comfortable getting their hands dirty with research and enthusiastically support a senior planner. If that sounds like you, get in touch at iwantajob@pokelondon.com. If it’s not you, I would appreciate any help you can give in spreading the word.

Yes, the chick metaphor is a bit weak. But, you know, I had a couple of drinks and it seemed like a good idea. It’ll give us something to talk about in the interview.

We just launched our new website. It’s a beautiful thing, designed and built by beautiful people – none of whom were me, just to excuse my apparent self-praising. You can read about the design over at Katie’s blog.

I was tasked with writing the ‘about’ page, which feels relevant to mention here because my personal philosophies tend, naturally, to be intertwined with Poke’s. It would be worrying if they didn’t.

Agency ‘about’ pages are tricky. They are at once both important and disposable. They have to say ‘something’, but can never say it all. They are adverts, which means they have been deliberated over, which means they can lack honesty and spontaneity. They need to show you ‘get it’, without drowning in the boredom of accepted truths. They should offer a point of difference, without resorting to gimmicks or jargon. They must reflect your credentials but also your culture. And above all they need to not sound like tosh.

This is what I wrote. I share it here in the absence of regular posts and because it’s all part of my general interest in getting things out of my brain and into discussion.

Inevitably, it will still sound like tosh to some people (I imagine our internal tosh-o-meters are all different) but hopefully it also tells a good, honest, interesting Poke prologue. The ‘full story’ is a longer chat over a cup of tea.

Anyway, nothing says ‘about’ better than the site itself. So maybe skip the about page altogether and just have a browse.