The most excellent Giles who is the creator of the most excellent Edward Monkton posted a link in the comments section of the Bonfire of the Brands post. But it’s such an excellent link that I thought I had to float it to the top.
Robert Llewellyn (Scrapheap Challenge and Red Dwarf star) is documenting his year of ‘Making Do’ (not buying new stuff) on YouTube. It’s really really excellent. Honest, funny and thoughtfully done. He’s up to episode 16 and still going strong (this episode deals with his struggle with Mac-fan-boy-ism and cheating in his mission).
Here’s episode 16:
And if you want to see the clip that starts it all, it’s here:
A quote that really resonated with me:
I have actually walked out of an electronics store with a plastic bag with a very long firewire in it and I felt really good. I felt like I could really achieve something with that. How tragic is that.
The clips haven’t had as many views as they should have done IMHO. Thanks again Giles for the tip.
I was chatting to someone the other day about whatever had happened to Neil Boorman’s book – Bonfire of the Brands. As I understand it, it’s the process and results of his self-inflicted experiment to give up all branded stuff.
Out-of-the-blue-ish I got a mail today and it appears that his book is coming out very soon. As someone who has a totally 2-faced view of my own consumption of brands I’m looking forward to reading it.
On a similar not I just finished ‘I’m not buying it‘ by Judith Levine, which is about one couple’s quest to give up shopping for a year. An interesting read that made me question just what would happen to me if I gave up buying things. I don’t think I could do it though.
A scaled down, brand-free, version like Neil’s is probably more in line with what I could manage. I’m still too much of an objectophile to give up everything – although when you start questioning everything you soon realise that almost everything we buy carries some brand or another (even the ‘branded shirts‘ that clubs are objecting to these days). I’m interested to see how someone else has managed to get through the minefield, or not.
I love the phrase ‘Dress to Impress’ it makes me immediately understand that this is not a club for me. But the addition of no ‘branded shirts’ is great.
I’m sure that Naomi Klein would be overjoyed that her whole No Logo philosophy has migrated into London Nightlife. But I’m guessing that they’re not checking the labels inside the shirt? And I’m assuming that St Michael and Uniqlo aren’t classed as brands in this case?
This could have been around for ages, but I just saw a banner for it today for the first time…
It’s basically a version of Firefox for people who do a lot of eBaying – it’s basically just a load of extensions for Firefox that have been pre-installed. But it is pretty nicely done. This I thought was clever:
Intelligent Refresh
Your eBay information is updated at regular intervals. The refresh rate is increased intelligently as watching, bidding and selling items near their end time.
I don’t think there’s that many brands who can meaningfully do this and expect people to take it up – apart from maybe creating customised browsers for internal company stuff, which could be really cool…
There’s a bunch of things that people who are just getting into digital always seem to propose at some point or another. I guess they’re things that are part of the learning process. Things that a lot of us have done, and hopefully learned from. I’m not suggesting that anyone is stupid for doing any of these things (I’ve done the majority of them at least once). But I’m hopefully going to explain why they’re not good ideas in most cases.
Of course they’re not deadly. And like all ‘rules’ there’s good reasons to break them. But in most instances these things are not good. I’ve left out the new ‘trendy’ things like Google Earth, SecondLife, UGC, etc. I’m saving those for 7 deadly sins of digital 2.0.
In no particular order…
Tamagotchis
They say: “A game where you have to feed this little character to keep them alive, and you give them stuff, and they do stuff”
You say: “You want to create something based on an obsolete early 90s toy that wasn’t actually any fun? And you’re expecting people who don’t give a toss about your brand of fake-cheese-based snacks to go though a bunch of meaningless interactions for no real reward why?”
Why it seems like a good idea: prolonged engagement, a ‘relationship’, the original tamagotchis had a certain amount of Jap-cool
Why it’s not a good idea: they weren’t actually fun then, they’re still not now, if you’ve created one in the past you’ll find that the involvement rate drops off faster than a D’angostini subscription after issue one’s free binder. And it’s been done lots of times before.
Screensavers
They say: “Let’s make a screensaver”
You say: “When was the last time you installed a screensaver? When was the last time you saw a screensaver on someone’s screen?”
Why it seems like a good idea: screensavers were kind of fascinating when we were younger, at the time they were much richer and more visual than most of the web stuff that was around. They were animated, they had flying windows, zooming starfields, even scrolling text! They’re full screen (so they look a bit like a TV). And the idea of something that’s sitting there in the background, hiding, ready to jump up and surprise you when you’re being lazy has some kind of appeal I reckon.
Why it’s not a good idea: screensavers are a product of a byegone era, people don’t like installing stuff, the only time they actually come to life is when you’re not there. And they’re kind of a beacon that says my computer should be off or at least asleep to save power, but I’d rather show off some fancy graphical nonsense.
Interfaces that look like the tops of desks or tables
They say: “We could make it look like the character’s desk, you can click on a file to read it, if you click on the answering machine you can hear a message… And so on…”
You say: “Oh FFS we can bend space and time and create things that redefine the way that the world works, but you want to use a clumsy metaphor that people are going to have to decompile in order to figure out how to get to a bit of information that in some rare case they might actually want. And it’s not extensible. And besides how many people watch youtube videos of their own adverts in the residue at the bottom of a coffee cup? And it’s not accessible… And so on…”
Why it seems like a good idea: its safe and familiar. Everyone understands atoms and physical things. Lots of people don’t understand navigation, menu structures and information architecture. So it’s easier to ignore them and cling to something comfortable and comforting, like a messy desk.
Why it’s a bad idea: Aside from the stuff above it just is, trust me. Perhaps this imagined conversation between me and Ridley Scott makes it clearer:
Me: Hi Ridley, please will you direct a commercial for me, it’s basically a 60 second spot and it goes like this. We open on the first page of a book. There are words on the page, we need to wait for people to read the words. Then a hand turns the page and we move to scene two. It’s the second page of the book.
Ridley: Silence
Me: It looks like an aged book, there are coffee ring stains on page two.
Ridley: Silence
Me: You still there?
Desktop assistants / characters
They say: “You know the Microsoft paperclip, can we…”
You say: “Stop right there sonny, don’t say another word! Nobody likes the paperclip. The only good thing that ever happened to the paperclip was death. Even Bill Gates hates the paperclip.”
Why it seems like a good idea: being helpful is good. Stepping outside of a web-page and having some form of permanence and ongoing relationship makes sense.
Why it’s a bad idea: people don’t like installing things, they want things on their terms, it’s been done a lot and failed a lot no matter what the sales guys for DeskBuddy(tm) tell you.
A virus
They say: “Could we create an actual virus that spreads our message”
You say: “Why not do it in the real world instead – why not just make a branded version of HIV, there’s more people in the offline world that you can infect”
Why it seems like a good idea: massive unstoppable spread of your message.
Why it’s a bad idea: viruses are not a toy, they are really not good, you don’t want your brand to be associated with not good things, unless you work for evilcorp.
A ‘viral’
They say: “We’ve made this film, can you make it a viral”
You say: “I’m just going outside to suck on an exhaust pipe for 30 minutes – if I make it back I’ll stick it on YouTube for you”
Why it seems like a good idea: we’ve all seen ‘viral’ hits, they’re things that everyone has watched, that have been passed around, loved and genuinely become part of the culture of the web. We’ve not all seen the ‘viral’ wasteland, the thousands of clips that sit gathering dust at the bottom of the ‘exploding heads’ category on YouTube. And because most of us only see the good stuff that works we assume it’s easy.
Why it’s a bad idea: because it’s not easy. Now that ‘viral’ has become a dirty nasty industry full of paid for placements and seeding bungs you need to plan for it from the word go. It’s mostly not really about things being viral at all, it’s just about dark media buying.
Starting a list of seven things and not counting how many you’ve got.
I’m going to open this one up for submissions, anyone got any ideas for the 7th deadly sin? Best suggestion wins a book from my library. Seriously I’ll send a good book to you if you come up with the best suggestion – plus happy to replace any of my ones that are rubbish…
To me this shows exactly how not to approach bloggers to get them onside. I’ve not put in a link to the site, and I don’t want one back from them. But if you do want to visit the site you can figure out the URL from the text above.
Reasons why this is bad:
1. It’s blatantly a mail merged email. And a pretty badly written one at that.
2. It addresses me as ‘crackunit’ – that’s not my name. It’s not hard to figure out my name.
3. Why would I want them to link me to my December 2006 archive?
4. It’s badly targeted. I don’t drive.
I’m guessing that they’ve just done a big search on blogs that mention Toyota (and I talked about a Toyota website, from a craft point of view, last December). What’s ‘interesting’ about this is that it shows how even a bunch of brand enthusiasts (or in this case a for-profit organisation) can muck about with perceptions of your brand.
If I told you there’s a site where you can find out where to get a bit of peace and quiet in London, you might think “What a nice idea”. And it is.
I was dead excited when I read about Noisemapping.org. A government department, DEFRA, have put together the site (granted it’s a few years old, but I’d not seen it till just now). You can enter a postcode or streetname and see where the noise hotspots / coolspots are. So far so good, still excited…
But then you get there. The search is bad. The navigation is bad. The visualisation is bad.
Such a shame. Would be a really nice thing to do with Google Maps. Anyone work with/for a brand that should be sponsoring peace and quiet in London?
I’m not normally all that excited about awards. Having been on the judging side a couple of times you start to see how ‘the system’ works. And to be honest I think that a lot of the work Poke do isn’t really ‘award fodder’. The Webby’s are slightly different. The judges come from a wider base, the entry process doesn’t allow you to submit a jazzy film to explain why you should win. It’s basically just the URL to the site. The judges then have to figure out if, and why, it’s good.
I know that the Zopa win isn’t just down to Poke. It won because it’s an interesting idea (that hopefully we helped to express in an appropriate way).
In many respects it was a dream job for us. We got to work with a brand that had an awesome tone of voice and heaps of personality, as well as it being a proposition that’s totally right for now. And that’s not to mention the team we got to work with…
I’m not saying that working with a startup is easier. It has its own set of challenges: everyone is very close to the brand and has a strong opinion on everything and they work in startup time (i.e. it needs to happen now). But the energy and enthusiasm that an entrepreneurial team generates is really motivating.
Without wanting to miss anyone at Zopa out. Sarah, Justin, Dave, Tom, James, Tim and the sadly missed Richard we thank you all for everything.
Well I finally did it. I finished my list of “10 Reasons that Digital is Better than Advertising“. Which is a personal triumph. It’s the longest sustained thought of my blog so far. Even longer than my ranting about Virgin Media!
Even thought it’s a bit of a personal victory to finish this, I feel a bit like I’ve failed. One of the things I actively didn’t want to happen is that people felt I’ve got something against advertising . I don’t. But someone asked me at lunch the other day why I hate advertising so much. Therefore I didn’t make my point properly. I suppose it was an obvious failing in my titling, although I did try to point out in the intro that this was only for effect.
My lunch companion pointed out rightly that we’re all just doing the same kind of stuff. Basically doing things for brands to make people like them more. Which is very true.
So before the top 10 recap, let’s just be clear: I don’t hate advertising. I just prefer working in digital. And here are 10 reasons why:
