Above you can see the promise made by Virgin Media on their website. Below you can read about my experience and how it differs from the above. I know Virgin Media is new, and I know it’s bound to have teething problems. But there’s only so far that excuse can stretch…
One of the things I really didn’t want to do with this blog was turn it into my own personal soap box for airing vendettas about bad experiences. But I’m going to have to make an exception this time.
However, I am going to keep my bitching ‘off the front page’. If you want to read more about why Virgin Media have really shot themselves in the foot with claims regarding any level of customer service you’ll have to click to read more…
Written from the perspective of someone who seems to understand and enjoy ‘cybersex‘, this article explains the limitations and problems with sex in SL. Not being someone who really understands or enjoys the practice myself I think I can at least grasp some of the core issues here.
To my mind emotional stuff like this either needs to be real or fantasy (i.e. based in conversation and imagination). I find the grey bit in the middle: being represented by a clunky pixel-cluster making crude (in both senses) gestures really odd. When you add in the fact that whole chunks of the mating process can now be bought off the shelf it makes it even more strange…
I had a meeting with a prospective client yesterday (I hope she doesn’t mind me posting this, I am keeping it anonymous). And in our conversation she said that she wanted their site to be ‘fizzy’, at first I almost laughed, then as we talked, and I thought about it, there’s nothing wrong with wanting a fizzy web site – unless you’re a soft drinks company in which case you should be fired ;-)
She was using the word fizzy to describe something that other people would have described as dynamic, visually engaging, wankword, cliche, etc. It was really refreshing (damn, see what’s happened now!).
I’m guessing that the digital world suffers from briefing cliches more than some other areas. I think it’d be great to try living without e-cliches for a bit and replacing them with words like fizzy (where appropriate).
And I’m not going to bang on about it too much, but it reminds me of a conversation that I’ve had with a few people recently about online privacy and identity.
Sophie has mentioned to me a couple of times that I don’t credit her in my blog, and it’s true, but for good reason. Not because I’m trying to be a blog-swinger and attract chicks who read geeky blogs. Or because I’m trying to pretend that everything I write about is mine, mine, all mine. But because I don’t think that it’s right to ‘put’ someone online who doesn’t exist there already. I have no qualms about mentioning bloggers, or people who are active participants in online communities, or even people who are relatively googleable. But I’d never want to be responsible for ‘creating’ someone online. Even relatively anonymous Flickr postings can lead to all kinds of strange happenings.
The MySpace hit is just an extreme example of what happens when you get spotted in the wrong places online.
The one time when I have posted about someone who didn’t really have an online presence is when I blogged about my friend Olly who sadly passed away, I had a strange feeling that there would be people who knew he was tragically ill but may not have heard of his death. And sure enough there were a significant number of Google searches for his name that lead people here, resulting in a fair few emails from friends and acquaintances. Receiving those mails and dealing with them felt like an incredible responsibility and made me even more aware of the power of talking about people online.
“Why don’t we let people get involved. Give them a way to upload their short movies / photographs / demo-tracks / homages to our product / ideas / knitting patterns / kazoo melodies / etc. They can win prizes.”
“Would you do it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, would you upload something?”
“Um, yeah, I guess so”
“Would you…? Honestly…?”
“No… But… Um… Well… It’s not really aimed at me is it…?”
“So you wouldn’t, but they will right?”
“Yeah, it’s what they’re doing isn’t it?”
Whenever you have an idea, or someone else has an idea that requires participation, just ask them (or yourself) one very very simple question: “Would you do it?”. You may not be the target audience, but you’ll know, deep down, if what you’re suggesting is right.
A response from the Agency.com camp regarding the Subway video. It’s basically saying: “we did it, we got people talking, that’s the whole point”.
I’m sure the debate will rage on around whether this is just a good piece of post-rationalisation and speedy ass-covering. Or a cunning master-plan that was in place from the start. (As an aside, if it’s the latter I think there’s a much better way of presenting this, a making of the behind the scenes video perhaps? Showing the point at which the decision was made to target the advertising community maybe?).
On their site ‘Jeff’ is quoted as saying:
“They made this for ad people to watch, think about, talk about, and spread. And that’s what we’re doing”.
But did they? I thought the whole point was that it was a video for a Subway client. Or is that all part of the subterfuge as well? Maybe they made a 5 minute boring ‘meet the team video’ and sent that to the client too? Along with a pitch based around:
“See how much noise we can generate with one video clip within the (online) advertising community, imagine how much noise we could make with 5 clips and a decent budget within the food eating community…”
If that’s the case then maybe they come out of this looking like genii…
But, based on the original premise (as we, the audience, were shown it): “we need to create a video for a client” (a private piece of communication), “let’s put it on youtube” (a very public communication channel). I think the naysayers were right to pound this tactic for it’s apparent naivety. (An interesting conversation starting tactic maybe?).
Whether they’re very right, or incredibly wrong I don’t regret being part of the spreading this meme. I called it as I saw it. I made the t-shirt, and I’ve either helped them look smart (or not). If I’ve been ‘duped’ into being part of this whole thing I’m glad, I’ve been a part of an ‘evolving, collaborative, dialogue driven online experiment’ – and that’s the kind of thing that we should all be doing. Whether I have or not, I guess is still the question.
The great thing about the web is that at some point the full story will come out. There will be winners, there will be losers, but as my P.E. teacher used to say “it’s the taking part that counts”.
In case it matters (and it probably doesn’t), the fact that the domain name ‘whenwerollwerollbig.com’ was bought yesterday doesn’t indicate all that much forward planning in terms of the meme ‘going viral’. But that might just all be part of the plot…
Oh, and I’m pretty sure that the line in the video (as pointed out to me by others) is ‘if we roll, we roll big’. So I corrected my t-shirt yesterday. On the site they feature the old shirt, with the erroneous line on the front. But their domain is “when we roll, we roll big”, so maybe my old t-shirt was right after all. Or maybe we’re all as confused as each other?!?
Ultimately whether this works or not depends on how you measure the value of conversations and noise. I’ve seen a few comments where people have said things like “it’s better that people are talking about you than not”, but I don’t buy that. And I can think of a few examples where brands would probably agree. Coke with their Desai water launch ‘conversations’ in the UK. The noise around Hoover and their Free Flights offer. The awareness driven by Mercedes and their rolling cars. These are much more serious examples than a pitch video on YouTube. But you get my point.
I’m going to stop now. This is way too meta for me.
Actually I don’t. That’s the whole point. Me and London haven’t been getting along all that well recently.
So I thought I’d try a little experiement. To see if blogging about great things in London can inspire me to think more about great things in London. And make me more attuned to noticing these things around me.
Basically, can blogging inspire positive thought.
The project was inspired by a conversation with Russell last week about how blogging can affect your view of the world (in a good way) and an invite to try out Vox (a new service from Six Apart). I started this morning.
Sorry few posts. Hectic week. Going holiday Friday. Lots to do…
I’ve started to use Radio 4 as my alarm clock. I didn’t think it would work. But people talking, gently, as they do on R4, is quite a nice way to wake up. You get kind of drawn out of sleep and into a conversation.
As I was becoming concious yesterday morning I caught this snippet. From an interview with the director of the new Omen horror film. (Due to my 1/2 waking state I’m paraphrasing):
Interviewer: Isn’t releasing your film on 6/6/6 just a cynical marketing gimmick?
Interviewee: Absolutely. Is there any other kind of marketing gimmick? I’ve never heard of a genuine marketing gimmick.
I’m pretty sure he’s wrong. There must be some genuine marketing gimmicks. In fact aren’t all marketing stunts just gimmicks? And some of those are very genuine, aren’t they? Anyone got any great examples of ‘genuine marketing gimmicks’? (The definition of a gimmick I’m using is: “A trick or device intended to attract attention, publicity, or business”, probably thinking more about the tricky side of things).
I first read the article a couple of weeks ago, but got pointed back to it by Russell’s piece about how planners shouldn’t be grumpy just to appear smart which I read yesterday. It reminded me of a conversation that I had with my mum over dinner a few months ago. We were talking about my ambitions (my mum’s good at stuff like that, she’s a very clever lady; she knows a lot about personal development and learning).
I said “I want to be the kind of person that everyone wants to work with, the sort of person that brightens up people’s days”. I think it was because I’d met someone just previously who I not only admired, but also thought “I could work with this person all day every day”.
So we started chatting about what it is that makes someone like this. And for me, it’s a mix of:
Knowing some things (being smart-ish) – if you can offer knowledge people often want to work with you. But if you’re a miserable git and get-off on the fact that you know stuff, you become a bore pretty quickly.
Being a nice person – I’m not pure evil, so I guess that’s a start.
Being infectious – for me this is the really interesting one. I can only comment on this from looking around and seeing the other people who I consider to be infectious. The people that others gravitate towards, the ones who inspire. They’ve generally got a special blend of skill (it’s not always about knowledge) and disposition (usually it’s a type of happy, but I reckon thatapproachability and a willingness to listen is a big part of it too).
So I’m going to try to stay happy and see where it gets me.
Sorry, that was a bit of a self-indulgent ramble. I must be getting the hang of this blogging lark. But it is nice to see other people fighting the corner for happy.
(Interestingly I happened to catch The Apprentice last night. And it was really funny to see that of the two sacked blokes, Sir Alan Sugar commented that he was going to keep in touch with one of them. And It was pretty much just because he was a really nice guy.)
Thanks to Emil for the tip – came up in an IM conversation about originality in ideas.
Update: Song is by GrooveCutters (sorry guys, the track’s just not my thing), and they’re not all that happy about the whole affair; according to Ad-Rag.
