I’m not convinced that I need Pownce (yet), but I did like their error message:
I wonder if they’ve got clearance for the image use?
if you’ve got a web business these days you need to have a great error page. I bet most brand consultancies haven’t cottoned on to this yet. Next time I see a branding presentation I’m going to raise it…
This started out being a silly moment in techno post. But it’s grown into something far more important. Something that trend watchers and marketeers around the world have to pay heed to.
It started with this clip from Malaysia:
A few things things I noted:
1.These Malaysian guys seem to have a fresh new dance style that’s evolved purely from playing Dance Dance Revolution
2. It sounds like the music they’re playing is a hard level of Dance Dance Revolution
3. There is no Dance Dance Revolution machine in sight
4. The clip has had nearly a million views!
But the I noticed that I’d opened up some odd portal to a new dimension of music, dance and culture! And I found a bunch of videos that seemed to talk about Hardstyle, Hardjump and Jumpstyle. 3 slightly different parts of seemingly the same subculture. I’m not going to try to explain what the bits are because I’ll get it wrong and one day a Jumpstyle fan might find this page and make me look like a tit ;-)
And the more I looked and watched. The more I realised that I’ve discovered the Parkour of the noughties. All that free running is so over. And you need loads of fancy buildings to jump off. And its dangerous. And it doesn’t have a music scene attached to it.
And you don’t have to be out and about to do it. Look Jumpstyle at home:
But you can also do it with a friend and it becomes Duojump. Now they really do look like 2 skilled DDR players… Or is it like a Gabba Riverdance…
And you can do it with 3 people!
Or if you’ve got a few mates you can all do it together!
And it appears they’re teaching it in schools – to groups of kids!
It’s become so big it’s spawned it’s own remixes and stuff – check Jumpstyle Borat:
So now you’re tuned into the latest global youth craze you’ll be wanting a how-to guide right? Of course, YouTube can provide (thanks to Patrick Jumpen, one of the stars of Jumpstyle):
And for those of you who are more into studying from the sidelines don’t forget to check Wikipedia – the page on Jumpstyle is the most informative. It has a list of different sub-styles as well as some useful links to some of the top dudes in the scene.
But of course, like any great trend, there are the nay-sayers, those who want to kill a beautiful thing before big brands have sponsored it and generated reveue out of it. Boo to them. Sites like http://www.fuckjumpstyle.com/ are demanding the end of jumpstyle. How could they. Well they say:
We all know it. Jumpstyle sucks. At the beginning it was fun, but now it’s just too commercial. I know it, you know it.
Jumpstyle begun in Belgium. The dance is now known in almost whole Europe. Now, it’s trying to take over whole America. Do you want to stop jumpstyle to take over America? Do you want jumpstyle to die? Do you think jumpstyle is too commercial? Do you think: FUCK JUMPSTYLE!?
God damn. It’s sold out before I even started!
I’d love to do a documentary on the whole scene. If I could make films. Of course some of my comments above are a bit tongue in cheek. But if you hunt around YouTube you’ll see stacks of clips with millions and millions of views. It’s a very real scene, which lots of kids (in parts of Europe and Asia mainly by the looks of it) seem to be totally into. So who am I to say it’s a silly moment in techno?
Or does everyone in the world know about Jumpstyle and I’m the last one to hear? Damn I hope not…
One of the things I’m trying to do differently this year (not a resolution as such) is to avoid reading the trashy free papers that come as part of the commuting package. I’m pretty sure their particular brand of reporting-lite has infected my brain and made me much less likely to self-flagellate after reading pieces about pop-tarts’ handbags. So I’ve started reading other things, like books and newspapers that you have to pay for.
And thank heavens I have, otherwise I’d never have known about Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Helicopter String Quartet. From an article called Sublime – or ridiculous? The art of noise in today’s Independent.
You can see it being performed in 1993 in Austria right here:
Karlheinz, who sadly died last year, is reported as saying:
“I had a dream: I heard and saw the four string players in four helicopters flying and playing. At the same time, people on the ground seated in an audio-visual hall, others standing outdoors on a large plaza… When I woke, I strongly felt that something had been communicated to me which I never would have thought of.”
That’s the kind of creative process I like.
I enjoyed this interview with him. But I still can’t tell if he’s a genius or a nutjob. And I still don’t think I could actually listen to any of his compositions for fun, but it’s interesting to see him composing using sketches and grids that look to the untrained eye quite a lot like modern music production software.
And if you’re still interested in Stockhausen, this remembrance piece from the Guardian from a few weeks ago has some interesting anecdotes from collaborators and friends.
I almost can’t bring myself to write about Facebook. Everywhere I go I overhear people talking about Facebook. From people in the street on their phones talking to people about how they’re going to Facebook them to arrange a night out, to press articles about the modern etiquette of FB, it’s impossible to escape. So much so that I’ve even heard of drinking games where if someone mentions FB they get forced to drink a shot of death-booze.
And if you work in ‘the business’ it’s also impossible to escape the avalanche of clients who desperately want to get their stuff onto/into Facebook. But why? What’s the big attraction? Here’s some thoughts:
Distilling down the Facebook story you get to a few things that really really excite marketeers:
But most importantly of all (for marketing people) Facebook has virality at its core. Every time someone does something their friends get to hear about it.
It’s almost like someone installed an ‘auto send to friend’ function onto the Internet.
Let’s face it this is what we’re all looking for isn’t it? Every time I enter a competition rather than me having to enter my friends email addresses to let them know that they should play too, higher powers decide that they ought to know and makes sure that they do (of course people can choose to turn this stuff off, but we all know how lazy ‘people’ are).
I was lucky enough to have a meeting with someone from Facebook last week and I think they’ve got an amazing pitch and I think that their description of Facebook as a social utility rather than a network is very smart. And actually very accurate and much more extensible than the notion of a social network.
If you look at the way that behaviour is changing you could imagine some people using Facebook as a replacement for email. Applications like Facebook really could (for some kinds of people) be a better fit for their communication needs than email (and IM and text messaging for that matter).
But when you start thinking about Facebook vs Email it takes you to an interesting place in marketing terms. The excitement and hype around Facebook isn’t a million miles away from the excitement around Hotmail when it first came out. Everyone was crowing about how viral growth of hotmail and it’s amazingly effective ‘sent from Hotmail, get your free account now’ signature line.
And pretty soon we started to see mainstream consumers using email to talk to each other and sharing things (even sometimes adverts!). So we tried to get involved. Creating email marketing campaigns, emailable ads, sticking ‘send to a friend’ on everything, and for a while it worked. And it’s still working for some people.
But I don’t think I ever recall a client, even at the height of global .com idiocy, asking for a ‘Hotmail campaign’ and deciding to ignore everyone else who had a different kind email account.
In a nutshell Facebook isn’t the magic answer. It’s exactly what they say they are, it’s a social utility. And the winners will be the people who understand that. The ones who are sympathetic to and respectful of what social utilities are, what they do, and why people use them.
Facebook is a set of amazing tools that we can all use to connect and communicate. Then once you’ve formed those connections the possibilities are vast. A bit like the Internet then, except for a bit smaller, a bit more organised and a bit more manageable (3 things that also make it appealing to marketing types).
I really hope that Facebook continues to thrive it’s a great thing. They just have to make sure that bad marketing doesn’t ruin it for everyone.
I suspect this one’s going to run and run. But I’d love to hear what everyone thinks…
Some more things worth reading…
As per normal Hugh manages to say, in one business card, what it’s taken me hundreds of words to express…
And definitely worth reading what Matt Dickman has to say about Fram (Friend Spam) over at Techno//Marketer.
Oh and this group about Facebook invading privacy is pretty hot right now. That’s the blessing/curse of social utilities if people don’t like things you hear about them pretty quickly too…
Jib Jab – US peddlers of funny animations and stuff (my description not theirs) have just raised another $3m in funding from VCs – in total they’re reported to have raised $6m.
Read/Write Web have more on the story. I found myself nodding at this bit:
While this was supposed to be the beginning of the era of user generated video – the reality shaking out is more complicated than that. Specifically, advertisers are just not comfortable with the brand risk inherent in user generated content. That is changing slowly and it may continue to over time – but there’s likely to be a huge market for shops like JibJab long into the future. Likewise, video tools are now commodities and it’s all about the content you’ve got in your video service. Professional content is good, professional humor is great, say investors.
One thing worth noting about Jib Jab though is that they’re not a video production shop. If you look deeper into what they do there’s quite a lot of interactive innovation in there too. Don’t forget about making things interactive. Just porting a load of short form video-making skills online is only going to take you so far (in my humble opinion). Oh, and they’ve been very savvy in terms of getting commercial sponsorships and stuff as well.
Right now you can’t move in London without seeing some kind of ad for Nike Supersonic.
According to the blog spam I got the other day:
“Nike is launching an exclusive invitation only event for 3,000 people in London to push their pace through the sound barrier with Nike+ Supersonic. 1,000 runners and 2,000 of their guests. One night of music fuelled speed.
On the night of 17 November 2007 at a secret London venue, London’s fastest 1,000 will sprint a floodlit 1K course, cheered on by 2,000 of their mates, ending with an invite-only, exclusive gig.
Contenders compete for tickets at four weekly 100m speed trials across London throughout October, starting on the 12th in Finsbury Park. Each trial will feature live DJs, athletes, celebrities and Nike gear. The fastest 1,000 runners from the trials will get the opportunity to compete with two guest passes.
Pre-registration for trials, videos, ring and alert-tones can be downloaded at www.nikesupersonic.com which will continue to be updated with more information for the next couple of months.”
For me, another great example of Digital Agencies sucking at blogger relations. Nothing personal.
I’d had a word with myself about not writing negative things about campaigns and only writing nice things. But being as I got a horrible piece of blogger outreach only a day or two after my post, I feel like I’ve been given permission to comment. And comment I shall. (I’ve tried to be as balanced as I can).
What I like about the campaign is their use of MySpace. Setting the microsite inside MySpace does some good things. It makes it connectible and commentable and sits it inside a ‘relevant’ social network.
Unfortunately the microsite is nothing more than a big flash movie with not much to it. A very nicely produced flash intro. Really very nice. But it does feel a bit, well, shallow. Oh and there’s some downloads.
They’ve also done a great job of getting it ‘out there’ (aside from the impersonal and heavy handed blogger stuff). But even that seems to have worked given the coverage they’ve got. Being a big sexy brand like Nike means you can get away with a lot…
But the online stuff isn’t bad. It’s what’s missing from the campaign that I feel a bit funny about. I’m not sure if this is supposed to be a replacement for, or an evolution of, Run London. But to me it feels like neither.
Like many people I’m a big fan of Run London and lots of the stuff that was done around it (especially some of the online and mobile things). But what made Run London brilliant was the sense of empowerment and the fact that it was based around an insight and an event that ALL runners could feel inspired by.
Supersonic feels really ‘elite’. As a rubbish runner it has no relevance to me. I don’t want to go and turn up to an event and fail. Nobody likes to fail, and I’m guessing that only people who think that they’re good enough to run 100m very fast will bother to turn up.
Even the design feels ‘elite’. Using light graffiti and moody effects makes the whole thing feel a bit ‘techno sphincter’ (sorry that’s a phrase one of our clients brilliantly used to describe that macho matrix-esque design aesthetic)
Maybe there’s reasons why mass participation isn’t the objective this time around, but the whole thing leaves me cold. A real shame when the Run London stuff had me all warmed up.
Lots of style. Odd substance if you ask me.
Marc Ecko, he of ‘Tagging Airforce One‘ fame, has come up with another big noisy stunt.
He’s bought a baseball for 3/4 million dollars. It’s a controversial baseball. It’s the ball that was hit by some dude (Barry Bonds) who got 756 home runs (which is a record). But rumour has it he’s on ‘roids so there’s lots of debate around the legitimacy of the record in the US.
So Ecko has a newsworthy baseball. And in his words he’s going to “democratize the ball”. Basically visitors to http://www.vote756.com can vote for what they want to happen to the ball.
So far 1.5m votes have been cast. And lots and lots of people are talking about it, online, in the press, on TV, and all the other places that people talk about sports (and marketing and culture).
The San Francisco Chronicle report:
“He’s stupid. He’s an idiot,” Bonds said. “He spent $750,000 on the ball and that’s what he’s doing with it? What he’s doing is stupid.”
And they go on to say:
Bonds’ issue with Ecko was not that one of the three choices on the 756-ball ballot is sending it to Cooperstown branded with an asterisk, an implication that his record is tainted by alleged steroid use. Bonds merely suggested the guy could have found a better use for three-quarters of a million large.
I’m not so sure. As the guys over on the Fallon Planning Blog rightly point out, $750,000 don’t get you all that much coverage in the US. And the website looks like it costs peanuts.
Based on the number of votes cast, let alone the PR impressions that he’s had across the US (and the wider world). That ball wasn’t such a stupid investment after all… (But as Igor just pointed out to me Mr Ecko could have tried to do something actually good with the money like cure AIDS, which is true also…)
Normally I’m a bit hurried or hassled going around the supermarket, but on Saturday I decided to have a bit of a wander and look around the shelves to see what caught my eye. I even bought some of the things I thought were interesting. Here they are.
I’ll start with something I liked just because it looked lovely. It’s a classic bit of packaging that was just too nice not to have in the cupboard.
Next comes a limited edition product…
I don’t know if I want my beans bigger? Maybe I’d like them smaller? But any kind of Baked Bean innovation is good in my book.
After that I spotted these Chupa Chip Relax lollipops – they’re really small and in a box about the size of a pack of fags.
But it’s only when you flip the box that you realise that they’re lollys to help you stop smoking. They’ve even got an NHS stamp on them. They say:
“Chupa Chups Relax can replace the hand to mouth action lost when stopping smoking”
Which reads almost like if you stop smoking you get some kind of arm paralysis. But I’m sure that’s not the point.
And I’ve saved the best for last…
“Make mine a Builders” – a new tea brand. Which actually has lots of buildery stuff on the box, including this:
So they’re donating money to help people get into building. And helping you to find good builders.
But if you visit www.makemineabuilders.com you’ll see that it’s not just a box decoration thing. They actually worked with builders to formulate a blend of tea – and one that brews in 20s, so you get more time for teabreaks… It looks like the product is the brainchild of Elmwood Design. I don’t know why I like it, I just do.
[Please note: none of the brands mentioned here have ever done anything like this (as far as I know), it’s a purely fictional story of an imagined future from my slightly fuddled brain]
Imagine if last night everyone who worked in the wider world of marketing all drank from the 2.0 Kool-Aid. We’d all be fucked and the world would be more rubbish…
What we used to call ‘ad breaks’ would become a bunch of signposts driving us to somewhere where we can ‘get involved’, ‘have our say’, ‘tell someone what new chocco-weety-bix should be shaped like’, ‘find out how to get to NappyStock this Saturday’ or ‘create a new ad’ (or being as ads don’t exist any more the call to action would have to be something like: ‘create our next participatory engagement experience’).
Then after the ‘call to participation break’ we’d get to watch lots of (interactively enabled) branded content. Perhaps an episode of NotLost (TomTom’s never ending drama about a bunch of people who are going somewhere).
Or ‘My House Is Cleaner Than Yours’ a new self-help/gameshow hybrid where people compete to make their house the most sanitary, this week the Cillit Bangers from Dagenham vs the Mr Sheenies from Wakefield.
Alternatively ditch the TV as literally hundreds of other people have done over the last year or two.
TV off, what now? Xbox game? Tomb Raider VI – Lara in search of cheaper car insurance (well the game was only £4.99, what do you expect!). It’s a quest that’s jam packed with ‘real world stuff’. Billboards full of user generated content (Tomb Raider V had advertising billboards, but that’s just not ‘realistic’ anymore). And products are neatly integrated into the gameplay (use Pantene’s 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner to get Lara in-and-out of the shower and back to her mission in double quick time). But unfortunately you get stuck at the first doorway, Sheilas’ Wheels have trapped Lara in a conversation about some new no-claims bonus for adventurous chicks. You’ve got no time to get into this now it’s bedtime, and besides you’re a man playing a woman in the game, so unless you want in-game car insurance for your female character… Oh hell, it’s all a bit confusing.
You shut down the Xbox, vowing not to visit the gate of Sheila ever again.
It’s not the first time today that you’ve been tricked into a ‘dialogue’, in the good old days you used to have to deal with thousands of marketing messages a day. But that was fine. You’d learned how to filter those out: iPod + staring into the middle distance seemed to do the job. But now everyone wants to have a bloody conversation. You haven’t even got time to talk to your friends let alone your toothpaste (which you didn’t really choose anyway, you only bought it because it was on 3-for-2 at Boots).
You manage to brush your teeth without getting into a discussion with aforementioned toothpaste and climb into bed. But not before setting your ‘Alpen wakey-wakey-yodel alarm’ on your mobile.
Sorry I got a bit carried away with my little 2.0 world, and I could go on (for far too long). I just wanted to hint at a vision of a Marketing 2.0 future that’s more depressing and more worrying than what we’re living right now. I often think about it when I see brands out there doing wholly inappropriate things like trying to engage in conversations that no-one wants to be part of, creating nuggets of branded utility that solve fictional non-problems, and so on…
The problem is that all of this can be justified using one of the most compelling of 2.0isms – the ‘always in beta’ mantra. Not only is it massively compelling (and commendable) as a principle it’s also incredibly dangerous when put in the hands of evil.
Used in the wrong way:
I can just imagine smart kids all around the world telling their teachers: “No miss, I really have done my homework, it’s in beta…”
Of course I really love most of the principles of Marketing 2.0, I just wanted to make the point that with much power comes much responsibility. Oh, and it might not be the solution for everything.
Music strategy and comms agency Frukt send me a lovely email every month called Brands | Bands | Fans which is a top snapshot of the way that brands are ruining music. Or in some rare occasions doing something that’s actually quite good.
The newsletter has a blog (or is it the other way around?) which can be read here: http://www.brandsbandsfans.com/.
But I quite like getting the newsletter, as it makes me laugh sometimes, from today’s mail:
XM, Virgin Megastores, Myspace, Smirnoff and MTV all win kicks in the head for launching a further stack of battle-of-the-bands competitions this week. Someone do something interesting will you? Dare I suggest that non-expert marketing agencies who suggest this well trodden path as somehow ‘cutting edge’ would do well to pick up the phone and call FRUKT. We do this for a living… we can help you. We can make you a better person and give you confidence and make you really different and exciting. We can.
A tough bit of salesmanship. But they make a valid point.