 November 6, 2008
Remember the third place? Digital Millennials are the first real post-PC generation; their smart phones are not only their primary digital device but some would say their primary means of discovering what it means to be a social being. For brands, millennials’ perpetual connectedness via mobile phones and social networking profiles has been their most salient trait for about five years. Facilitating and being part of this perpetual connectedness was a brand’s route to relevance. But another millennial trait is about to usurp simple connectedness: their collective location awareness—and the importance they ascribe to place as a marker of self (yes, just as brands endeavor to be). Mobile phones once again are the technological driver of this generational trait, but only those that are location-aware (thanks to cell tower triangulation and GPS). These phones and their geo-applications, along with cyber cartography—the constitution of information-rich up-to-the-minute digital maps of astounding physical accuracy, mean that brands have to put themselves on the map, literally. Why? Because the more accurate and personally useful digital maps become—with the help of anyone willing to geotag their photo or geoannotate a place—the more people expect them to constitute a complete “mirror world,” as the gamers call it. Brands must recognize that there are consequences to being left out of this mirror world. As web surfing gives way to world surfing, brands have to be at the right places at the right time. Most important, they have to be part of the Fourth Place. After home (first), work (second), coffee shop/athletic club/church (third), the Fourth Place is a fusion of virtual and real, a spontaneous hot spot created by people oscillating between digital co-existence in a geo-annotated space and the heightened possibility of suddenly meeting up—at a store, nightclub, park—in the real world.
October 29, 2008
 Life is back from the dead. And Marilyn is forever.Tagged as: O.P.E.N., digital millenials, engaging, networked, social webPosted by: Nita Rollins Life Magazine is a brand colossus, in many ways the quintessential Boomer brand. Defining photojournalism in the 20th century while also defining the 20th century, its portraits framed the ahistorical absolutes of courage, despair, charisma and power as much as the persons of a certain historical gravitas. The viewer’s pursuit of accidental revelations of character kept all those modernist literature-stoked latent/manifest dichotomies in productive tension. I know because I used to sit spellbound before the stacks of Life my cousin had collected in his post-Harvard hovel. With my two-page spread-sized memories intact, and an avowed deference for the tradition of the defining public image—in stark contrast to the people’s indefatigable showcasing of social networking candids—I am the perfect witness to a Boomer brand entering the ecosystem of the open web. It’s not Life’s digitization per se that makes this an interesting transition for a brand twice defibrillated in its 64-year history—we barely raise an eyebrow over Google’s all-in-a-day’s-work project to digitize the world’s books, for heaven’s sake. It’s the letting loose of Life’s curatorial authority, its single-photo storytelling precision, into the jungle of laissez-faire cut-and-paste social web content that begs for commentary. The ‘coming soon’ web site promises over 10 million photos will be made available for viewing, or, as parent company Time put it: “…the most important collection of imagery covering the events and people of the 20th century…[will be] available for free for personal use”—at least, for viewing and sharing. More than 97% of the collection has never been seen by the public. Such an inconceivable darkroom trove of “outtakes” (albeit by the likes of Alfred Eisenstaedt, Margaret Bourke-White and Gordon Parks)! What could be more appropriate for our era of flourishing amateur photography and citizen journalism than converting Life’s vault into an editorial roundtable, a photographic piñata? Unsettling, perhaps, for its Boomer devotees who remember when larger-than-Life was hard to come by? (Winston Churchill as a screensaver—really?) But probably, ultimately, exhilarating for all comers. That is, if Life truly adapts to the digital channel. And from what I’ve gathered, the revenue model is strictly 20th century—mainly advertising-based. (As Time also owns Getty, site visitors coming to look and learn will be exposed to the latter collection and might buy.) Based on the advance press, there is but one concession to the social web’s intensely OPEN relationship with images—you can create Flickr-style personal collections. There are ways to counter the constant battering of our journalistic institutions (hint: they’re digital), and, in this instance, to drive cross-generational traffic to Life.com. (Yes, this begs for a post on washingtonpost.com.) For Life, in my opinion, the most important of these is a social platform for storytelling, the kind that would enable community voting on the best photo/journalistic albums—those with stirring commentary that keeps history alive. Kodak has an employee blog that has done wonders for their place in the imaging community, as they like to call it. Limited edition downloads of Life covers for poster-size printing wouldn’t be a bad idea either, even if I did steal it from the current collaboration of Absolut and fashion designer Helmut Lang. For all those copyright-minded among you, there are always the Creative Commons alternatives. Quite simply, more exposure, more usage=more life for Life.com. To make sure I’m not blindly enthusiastic about this digital brand makeover of Life, particularly as an Engaging and Networked brand, I conducted some quick research of a certain person who has graced Life’s covers several times, and who is the very definition of iconic inexhaustibility (if you don’t believe me, read American Monroe: The Making of a Body Politic). Has the social web tired of Marilyn Monroe? Can icitizens find enough to do, interactively speaking, with the silver screen goddess? Does she make sense any longer to digital millennials, for whom continuous virtual self-presentation precedes self-knowledge? Are you kidding? 16,738 thought to upload some version of Marilyn Monroe on Flickr. Metacafe has 144 largely homemade Marilyn Monroe videos. iStockPhoto has several Marilyn impersonators doing their best to keep the subway breeze blowing up her white pleated dress, figuratively speaking. And Google says Marilyn Monroe matters to someone 13,400,000 ways. I found a particularly appropriate cultural artifact trolling around someone’s personal Picasa photo album: Marilyn Monroe coaxed once again into life through a collage of Life’s covers.
I also found a Marilyn Monroe image rarely seen (perhaps never before published?) on Flickr and will leave you to contemplate both its hold on the viewer and the icitizen comments that follow.
October 15, 2008
Take a look at the image above…it’s a screenshot taken by Xbox Live gamer Dragunov765 while playing Burnout Paradise, a very popular driving game for the Xbox 360. Yes, that is a paid in-game advertisement displaying an Obama for President campaign message. From the New York Times: “Are political ads in video games a good idea? In terms of eyeballs, I’d have to say yes. Roughly one-third of American households own an Xbox 360, Sony PS3 or Nintendo Wii. In terms of effectiveness, Brandweek recently detailed a survey undertaken by its fellow Nielsen Games division in which 11 percent of gamers said they bought a brand after seeing it advertised in a game.” The article goes on to say, “of course, buying a brand of shoes or soda is a totally different prospect than buying a politician’s brand in the polling booth.” But you have to give the campaign credit for knowing their audience segments and reaching them where they spend their time. In case you are wondering, here is what the McCain camp is up to. September 28, 2008
 Open Up the BackchannelTagged as: O.P.E.N., digital millenials, engaging, networked, social webPosted by: Dan Shust
We have been seeing similar experiences sprout up for the debates and other select events, but why not just open the backchannel permanently? Let us chat while we watch, participate in fun competitions, etc. I’d love to see the major networks get behind an idea like this. What a great way to enhance the viewing of a live sporting event, episodic drama, etc. It could even make a really horrible show fun. (Remember MST3K?) Advertisers would love it because chatting encourages live viewing (the anti-DVR?). Additionally, they could collect some very interesting user opinion data surrounding their ad campaigns. What do you say NBC, ABC, CBS, HBO? Open up the backchannel and I might even watch Knightrider. August 11, 2008
On occasion we find ourselves in client meetings with a very senior team shouldering a very inconvenient burden: convincing their CEO that the digital medium is not inert and uninvolving—that its ads are more than insinuating party crashers, that its Flash-fangled web sites don’t pale in comparison to 3-D store shopping, TV ads, magalogs, or even digital OOH advertising. “The web can’t make shoppers fall truly, madly, deeply in love with us. Period.” Thus speaks the CEO who knows from retailing—the merchant prince with skeptical eyebrow arched over all things dreadfully, dully digital. Yes, digital diehards, pioneers and recent converts, doubts persist about the web’s potential to involve us emotionally in a brand. If the argument were entirely without merit, rebuttals would hardly be necessary. But most of us don’t say “deeply moving,” “wildly inspiring” or “irresistible” quite as often as we’d like about our digital brand experiences. Most of us aren’t able to say, “That brand feels like me” often enough online. Hence the rise, one could argue, of consumer-generated content that makes the brand over in our own image. Brands that do make the emotional connection often employ humor, and among digital millennials, humor is king online, particularly sarcastic, knowing, parodistic, low-brow humor—emblematic of both the generation’s marketing savvy (they’re in on it) and the emotional peculiarities of a life lived virtually (and a private life lived publicly). Sarcasm and parody, after all, put some distance between “us” and “them,” don’t they. Music will dramatically change the emotional timbre, if you will, of the web. So will the continued rise of brands demonstrating corporate social responsibility—particularly those using the power of video to spur activism. But let’s give the devil’s advocate his due. A very thoughtful post by Sean X Cummings about the deeper emotional impact of the TV spot vs. the online banner ad, Is Digital a Hopeless Medium?, draws a series of sharp contrasts between the individual viewer/user’s respective psychological stances while online or watching TV. Online engages the cognitive cortex, TV the limbic system—allegedly the older, less understood part of the brain involving emotion, memory, learning/motivation. Though I’m unaware of any scientific proof of this argument, it seems at least superficially accurate. My rational drawbridge is down, in the way one says “my defenses were down,” when I’m watching a movie (or Mad Men) on TV, which makes it easier for emotions to cross the moat. Cummings also argues that digital is a “learn forward” medium, chiefly informational and individualistic whereas TV is a “lean back”, communal entertainment medium. Again, these assertions seem generally true, leaving the very communal and limbic MMORPGs aside. Leaving aside digital millennials’ constant connectivity and the digerati’s microblogging and lifecasting, which also seem inarguably if strangely communal to me. Leaving aside networked brands that are either transforming “traditional” online advertising into social media marketing or dramatically decreasing spend on straightforward interruptive ads because they recognize the web’s colossal community impulse. Leaving aside as well the imminent full-video web, which will make distinctions between so-called entertainment media like TV and informational media like the web (and first, second and third screens) superannuated. OK. Leaving aside quite a bit. Still, Cummings’s argument seems to contain a kernel of truth. An intuition, perhaps, about how difficult it is to describe, assess, appreciate the virtual community when members haven’t (yet) fleshmet. (I’m reviving this term because it’s deliciously, well, corporeal, and contrasts nicely with the hyperreal online.) It does seem a propitious moment to introduce a digital experience far, far from the banner ad that Cummings spends considerable energies critiquing. A digital experience emphatically limbic and communal, that springs from the living web—and all that it implies. Inert and uninvolving? Not for me, baby. August 8, 2008
Let the (digital) games begin!Tagged as: O.P.E.N., creative, digital millenials, engaging, iCitizen, mobile, networked, new consumer journey, on-demand, personal, retail, social web, technology, trendsPosted by: Dan Shust
Here are my podium picks: Bronze Medal: McDonalds “The Lost Ring” In March 50 bloggers received a mysterious package in the mail. It contained an Olympic poster and a ball of string that, when unraveled, revealed a web address. Thus began “The Lost Ring” an Alternate Reality Game (or ARG) that is currently being played in 7 languages across 100 countries. The players work together to hunt for clues to solve an ancient Olympic mystery. Immersive gameplay leads them to websites, blog posts, wikis, podcasts and even Twitter. 4 million people and counting have visited the launch site. Silver Medal: Lenovo “Voices of the Olympic Games” In an attempt to bring attention to a variety of less mainstream Olympic sports, Lenovo has given laptops and Flip video cameras to 100 athletes. (No other compensation is being provided.) Their only direction was to tell the rest of the world about their Olympic experience. Their blog posts are revealing, touching and sometimes humorous. Mainstream media will blast us with Phelps, LeBron, Kobe and Torres, but Lenovo’s athlete bloggers allow us to partake in the “common” Olympian’s experience. Gold Medal: NBC - Digital Coverage In 2006 NBC streamed one hockey game live form the Turin Winter Olympics. This year the network will stream over 2200 hours of live coverage and 3600 hours of on demand video will ultimately be available. Their custom video player is ground breaking, allowing the user to enjoy such features as closed captioning, expert commentary even for less popular events, integrated trivia, picture-in-picture and a “control room” view in which you can enjoy up to 4 live events simultaneously. NBC’s coverage also includes a robust mobile web site, text messaging, e-mail alerts and mobile video. So, there are my “Digital Olympics” medal winners. Each effort is game changing in its own way, but just imagine if they were all on the same team. When you do, you can almost see the future… July 20, 2008
Radiohead Opens Up a House of CardsTagged as: O.P.E.N., creative, digital millenials, engaging, iCitizen, technology, trendsPosted by: Dan Shust
They created the video by acquiring real-time data via a 3D scanning system from Geometric Informatics, and a Velodyne LIDAR. High tech stuff indeed, but what happened next is what makes this video experience truly cool and O.P.E.N. The band released the entire data set of the video for free to anyone who wants it. The data can be explored interactively or, by using freely available software, you can create your own version of the video. Of course, a YouTube group has been started for people to display, discuss and share their work. Performing artists like NIN, and RadioHead understand the power of The OPEN Brand. Who’s next? July 11, 2008
If you are looking for content for that new iPhone, consider subscribing to Pop17. Video journalist Sarah Austin covers internet celebrities—people who become famous (by choice or by accident) online. In true on-demand fashion, her vlog is available on just about every platform imaginable, so you’ll never need to miss her analysis of the cultural phenomena of internet celebrity. What’s this mean to marketers?
July 8, 2008
Location, Location, LocationTagged as: digital millenials, engaging, iCitizen, mobile, new consumer journey, retail, technology, trendsPosted by: Dan Shust Well, it is a very big week for a lot Apple fanboys (and girls) out there. The new 3G iPhone hits the stores on Friday. The faithful will start queuing up anytime now (if they haven’t already). Sure, the new iPhone is a bit sleeker and a lot faster, but that isn’t what makes it an important new device. What makes the new iPhone significant is that it STILL delivers the absolute best mobile phone user experience available—and the addition of a built-in GPS makes the iPhone truly location aware. The next generation of location-based applications currently being developed for the iPhone (and yes, other mobile devices) is going to blow minds and change the way we interact with each other. Friendspotting/meetups, citizen reporting, fitness tracking, impromptu group buys and location based ratings/reviews/tagging…it’s only the beginning. Mark your calendar. July 11th ushers in the “Location Aware Era.” Where are you? June 26, 2008
 VS PINK Winning Facebook Popularity ContestTagged as: O.P.E.N., digital millenials, mobile, social webPosted by: Kelly Mooney
Through its Facebook Page, PINK excels at all four quadrants of our O.P.E.N. framework, creating an experience that makes it easy for PINK fans to get closer to the brand they love (On-demand), gives them a sense of belonging (Personal), entertains them with digital goodies (Engaging) and, of course, connects them with other fans (Networked). While the experience has cool perks, like a Flash feature to get fans’ attention at the top, and a mobile opt-in they can do right from the Facebook Page, PINK is popular because it’s impressively relevant to young women in the collegiate set. PINK has radical appeal because it’s focused on getting its merchandising right–and creating a center of gravity online and off. |
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