I was really getting on well with this Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics – Take 1 from Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence Blog. It seems to have some decent principles that make sense whether I’m wearing a blogger hat or a marketing hat (which is nice). They’re asking for comments and are going to refine the thing (and, by the sounds of it, share the refined version at the end) which is great. But then I got to this bit at the bottom:
While you don’t need to use your name in commenting, please identify yourself as a blogger and/or as an agency representative. Also, feel free to repost the current draft of the Code of Ethics on your own blog and solicit feedback from your readers (just give us a link back so we can follow the conversation too!). If you have any questions, or want to share an opinion privately, please feel free to contact me at kaitlyn.wilkins@ogilvypr.com and Alison Byrne Fields at alison.byrnefields@ogilvypr.com
For some reason it just made me feel a bit icky. I’m not really sure why. I just got a massive whiff of PR-ism. It’s like they’re trying to make sure that feedback and opinion can be ‘looked after’ in the correct way. What they’re asking for is totally fair and reasonable and I’m sure I shouldn’t have a problem with it at all.
Does anyone else get where I’m coming from? Or am I over-reading again? Or maybe I could just never openly like anything that was posted on a blog called ‘360 degree digital influence blog’ ;-)
[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:
It basically means that you can never really be wrong.
It means that you can get away with nothing ever being properly finished. In the olden days people would just ‘fess up and admit that they’d not had time to do the work, deadlines would get pushed and the work would get done and go out a bit later.
It means that you can trick clients into doing bad stuff. “Oh go on… We’ll just do it as a test, if it works we can build on it. If not we can always sweep it under the carpet…”. I’ve alredy sat in some meetings where it feels like people are practically calling each other ‘chicken’ for not doing something preposterous in the name of beta.
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.
I’m not going to try and sum up the discussion, I can’t, it’s too complicated. But there’s a few things that leapt out at me:
Regardless of what I think about the arguments I can’t help but like David Weinberger. There’s something about his manner and his enthusiasm that just make me warm to him. Keen just comes across as being smug and patronising.
You almost get the impression that he’s playing the cartoon baddy. Look at him. I can’t help but think he’s based his character on Simon Cowell. Black t-shirt, Hollywood-anglo-baddy accent, same haircut…
Playing the web-sceptic, as he does, is not an easy thing to do at a conference like this and there’s a couple of points towards the end where it almost feels like he wants to say “OK OK I’m wrong about some of this stuff, I’m just trying to construct a counter argument to make people think a bit (and selling lost of copies of my book while I’m at it)”.
But people are right to challenge him. A lot of what he says just sounds a bit silly at times. For example, his view that the control and ownership of mass media has historically been for the good of everyone and that it’s ultimately a meritocracy.
Even though it’s long at 50 minutes it’s really well worth a watch. You’ll get to hear plenty of interesting things about authority, media, knowledge, information, power, talent and other such big important things.
This is a tough, slightly reflective post to write.
It’s very much a brain dump, the start of some thoughts rather than anything resolved. I’m hoping that some of the smart people out there on the internet will add to it and help these thoughts to develop…
There’s a lot of chat about what we’re all doing right now. How the agency of the future might work. What the roles in that agency might be. What it’s going to produce. What it ought to produce (in a world where making people buy more disposable stuff is a bad thing). And so on.
So in a world where we don’t know what we are now, let alone what we’re going to be next year, how can you possibly make a call on the kind of people you need to hire. Which means that we’re all seeking flexible multi-skilled people who are going to be useful regardless of how things change.
Coupled with this there appears to be a general perception of a skills shortage. I’ve been having conversations with all kinds of people (mainly in the ‘agency’ world, but not exclusively), and everyone seems to be saying similar things. Namely that all of the really good people seem to have their own game going on. They’ve either started their own small companies, or they’re freelancing and living the life that they want, on their terms. (Or they’re heading that way fast and using their next jump or two as an experience-farming exercise). Which means that it’s quite tricky to get them to come and work for wages in a company.
But I think there’s something else at work here. We’re all starting to fish from the same pool of people. Probably because we all need these incredibly flexible and adaptable people. We’re all looking for a few mythical people who have a similar set of experiences and skills.
At Poke we keep having these odd cyclical conversations about a couple of key senior people we’re trying to hire. We’re looking for entrepreneurial, operationally aware, client facing, creatively minded, inspiring, strategic folk with an interesting set of past experiences – oh and they need to love digital which is our specific bit (simple huh!).
The long and short of it is that we’re trying to find creative mini-CEOs. And I don’t think we’re the only ones.
Lots of agencies can probably offer this type of person a job that will keep them challenged, amused and stimulated. But the kind of people that we’re looking for want more than ‘just a job’. But no matter how you wrap it up most roles in agencies are just a job – OK they may end up being a way-of-life or a divorce-inducing quest, but that’s just because it’s an big, important and stressful job.
I think what Anomaly is doing is interesting because (from what I understand) it’s actually got a structure and a remit that would be attractive to this kind of mini-CEO. Even though they’re working on clients’ business they’re actually becoming part of a business not just servicing one, which is an important distinction for entrepreneurial types. But we can’t all be like Anomaly (nor should we be).
So what’s the answer?
I’ve got absolutely no idea. Otherwise I’d be running away with the ball and leaving everyone else scratching in the dirt. But here’s a few thoughts, based on personal experiences:
Collaborate more, employ less. This is an obvious, but very difficult thing to do properly. If all the good people are doing their own little things we should all join together and work as virtual teams for the benefit of all. But it’s just not that easy. There’s loads of blurring and loads of overlap which always causes friction. Friction generally causes problems.
Wear a hat – This one’s for all those multi-skillers out there. Figure out what your real strengths are and stop confusing yourself and everyone else. Admit weakness and failings and try to find other people to fill those gaps. (I really need to heed my own advice here).
Hire brilliant single-skillers – who cares if you’re chief geek hasn’t got the greatest client handling skils. As long as he loves technology to bits, that’s what counts. Someone else can do the other stuff. If you need an operations person, it doesn’t matter that their brogues don’t match the easy-going-trainer-slacker vibe of the rest of the gang – and it doesn’t matter if they’re as creative as a housebrick. As long as they can work with everyone else and they love what they do, that’s the way it should be. I think there’s can be a tendency to try and create a team that all fits into a similar mold, which feels right, but is wrong.
Cast your net wider. Another tricky one. It’s really hard to validate whether or not someone’s skills are genuinely transferable. It’s much easier to look at a bunch of achievements that are directly analogous to what you do. Taking on a proper outsider is a big old punt. But when it works it works brilliantly. But taking that risk on a piece of valuable client business is dead scary…
This isn’t just an elaborately wrapped up recruitment ad. But Poke are always looking out for great people, and if you’re one of those mini-CEO types I mentioned and you’d like to come and work at a very nice digital agency for a while then give me a shout, confidentiality guaranteed. We are looking for someone with a few years experience – sorry juniors, next time :-)
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…
I’m really rather busy right now, so finding time to post is tricky. Plus they’ve taken away the wi-fi on my morning train which is a right old bugger. But I did see 2 things on lamp posts that pricked my interest today:
I’ve got no idea why this interested me. Perhaps because it’s something that conjours up a kind of image of a living hell…
But this I simply love! I like a lot of the things that the Karmarama guys do, but this I liked especially. As an occasional cyclist who doesn’t jump red lights I think this is something that needs to be said. And who would jump the lights after seeing this:
The campaign launched today and they say:
Next time you stop at a red light look out for the latest Karmarama poster campaign: “Every time you jump a red light, god kills a kittenâ€. It’s addressed to all those rogue cyclists giving us proper cyclists a bad name and giving laughing Ken Livingstone an excuse to enforce license plates for bikes and fines for leaving the house.
And of course they know that all you have to do online is mention kittens and you hit the 100x conversation multiplier.
I’ve often argued that one of the things that ‘makes’ YouTube is its community. But I’ve just been looking at the comments around one particular clip and wondering just what kind of community it is.
It’s less like a close-knit rural community with a sense of pride and an annual entry into the ‘Best Kept Village’ competition, and more like a run down inner-city estate where people are happy to drop litter and mainly stand around on corners shouting abuse at people. Where rather than feeling compelled to do the right thing out of a sense of civic responsibility the justice is doled out by deleting comments and banning (the online equivalent of ASBOs).
Here’s my evidence:
Here’s a recut version of a scene from Monty Python with Darth Vader dubbed into it. Add some light sabres and you’re pretty much guaranteed to flick all of the buttons going in geek culture (it’s had 950,000 views so it’s doing something right). Those views have generated just under 800 comments so far.
And here’s a selection of the comments under the clip:
There’s a load of posts trying to get people to spread spam all over YouTube by re-posting a junk message, then tricking suckers into closing down their browser by pressing a certain key-combo:
its not a chain letter! its kinda scary at first but it really works!! paste this message into 3 comments and press ALT F4 and your crushes name will appear on the screen!!! its soo wierd
Here’s a lovely piece of ascii art that two people (or one person with two IDs) have posted in quick succession to show their appreciation for the clip:
Then aside from that the comments are all just banal:
fuckin funny vader voiceovers
Or people just mouthing off using a kind of sub-English language:
wow, i could never have thought of a worse way to destroy two perfectly good series. Good job, freaking idiot.
u destroied the movie u mother fucker
And there’s plenty of people asking how it was done:
i lovwe it so much but how do you make it so realistake with the lightsaber
But the thing is, even when someone is making a semi-serious point or asking a question nothing ever turns into a conversation. It’s all just people lobbing rocks into a bottomless pit. Maybe that is a kind of community. But, given the lack of social interaction that’s going on I wonder how important some of this is for the YouTube experience. Certainly the actions of the wider community in terms of rating, view counts, etc. are important for floating good content to the surface. But does this high noise, low signal, chatter actually help anything?
It’s a tough one. Once the ‘rot’ has set it and the comments are just full or rubbish, it’s difficult to attract quality comments (personally I’d be scared of some 12 year old ripping me apart with his superior spelling and mastery of homophobic slander). But at the same time the ability to comment like this is obviously fulfilling some kind of function for a chunk of the audience.
There’s a whole bunch of stuff that makes online audiences great. They’re immediately measurable. You can see how they heard about you. You can see what things they’re searching for in order to find you. If people are talking about you it’s easy to see what they’re saying. If you fancy it you can even get into a proper 2-way-conversation with them, imagine that!
And because the web has historically been much more of an active medium than a passive one it’s much easier to get people involved with what you’re trying to do (if you’re engaging them on the right terms). It’ll be interesting to see how this changes in over time. As the web becomes a medium that delivers more of our traditionally passive entertainment forms will user involvement go down? Or will it go the other way round and traditionally passive entertainment will become ‘activated’ as it goes online? Early signs would seem to suggest the latter, which is a good thing.
No discussion of online audiences would be complete without a mention of numbers. And it’s true that the amount of people that you can reach with a piece of online activity is generally going to be smaller than you can achieve with a TV ad stuck in a couple of relatively cheap spots. But even the best TV media targeting is going to give you heaps of wastage and perhaps most worryingly ‘dead eyeballs’. With good online activity you can guarantee that people are interested and engaged (by the way I’m not counting banner ads or other interruptive online advertising here, they screw up my argument).
I quite often also hear people playing the niche card. About how it’s all very well using online for young male audiences but it’s not mainstream enough. And maybe on the surface that’s true. But it shouldn’t be. I just think we’ve not been working hard enough to do great stuff for 55 year old women.
I thought it’d had all been sorted out after my last set of ranting.
But it would seem not. I’ve now been cut off. Or at least TV and phone have, broadband (oddly) still seems to be working. As before I’m not going to let this rant pollute my main blog, so you’re going to have to click if you want to read more.
