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Those of you who've read the book will know that I use the Bard from Bolton's act as a metaphor to explain how co-creativity does and should work in business. Lots of other examples in there.
Got a seminar I'm doing shortly so wondered if anyone has any more uptodate personal or professional examples to share?
Thanking you...sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-la
Do something worthwhile with your planning talents and energy - not just another resegmentation of the Pickle Market.
Join us here and have ago at the latest brief - you got a week...
Great thoughts coming out of New Orleans Polygamous Marriage gig.
A number of the key protagonists from the San Diego AAAA Account Planning gig (at which readers might remeber I got so excited) were there and doing their thing again, but with some new spins. Gareth's posted both a typicallly fine review and his own presentation.
But if you read nothing else, read Adrian (Zeus Jones) Ho's post here. Made me even more convinced than my wittering and blogging around this theme (or both as a chum suggested the other day).
Our job is not about sending messages or creating relationships or any of the bollocks that still dominates the world of 'advertising' and marketing communications (and as the Silicon Valley guru, Regis Mckenna points out, too much of what used to be marketing is now "communications"). Too often communications seek to simulate and fake the interest that companies, products and services are missing. Or distract from the very obvious lack of interest.
No, it's much more about doing things, baking in the interest otherwise faked and then suggesting and encouraging consumers and employees to do stuff together around this.
I hate to say it but it's a lot more like art.
Both the public spectacle thing (that Russ and I have separately written about recently) and also in the not transmitting-a-message-now-isn't-that-frustrating kind-of-way...("Question 1. Discuss the primary and secondary messages that make Beethoven's 5th or Picasso's Guernica such groovy-f******s. Extra points will be awarded for a correct decoding of the the heirarchy of information and the reason why for each message") Art is interesting because it doesn't have a message. When it does, it tends to be less interesting than when it does. Indeed the message of an artwork is not the point of it. Ditto (double-ditto) with marketing stuff.
No, it's becoming clear that our concerns are changing and with them our jobs: to make things that folk do stuff ('interact') around and - as with the now infamous "Doris' crack" at the Tate Modern - to make their own meaning. Together.
No, our future is all about verbs: what we do, which gets them out there to do stuff. With and to each other.
And not about adjectives or nouns. Or messages. Or claims. Or information. Or things.
The sooner we all get this, the sooner the advertising and PR world (messages and media channels to send them) will seem like something worth bothering with again.
So write it out a hundred times...
And make a wish.
Interesting action by the "Pro-lifers" in the UK recently, whatever you think about the issue of abortion and its legality (please, no silliness - my point here is to record the tactics as an attempt to change mass opinion and the legal frame for mass behaviour).
First, they seem to be switching objective from achieving and outright ban to reducing the time-limit (note Polly Toynbee's comment on the logic Archbish of C's recent contribution:
"Either abortion is murder - which some think - or it isn't, which 83% think in a new NOP poll. So are a few murders OK with the archbishop, and if so, how many?")
Second, within this, they seem to be pursuing this strategy by creating uncertainty around the status quo by highlighting how the architects of the pioneering legislation (such as the decent man pictured) underestimated the number of procedures which would arise.
Now - again - whatever the rights and wrongs of this legislation - what strikes me here is how surprised we are that a 40 year old estimate of the impact of the legislation proves to be inaccurate with the passage of time (and if we didn't find it surprising they wouldn't be using the tactic).
Like so many of our attempts to predict the future impact of our actions on our behaviour and that of our peers, it's unlikely ever to be that precise: human behaviour is complex and thus hard to predict (particularly over decades) even without changing the rules by which we allow each other to live. Certainly the straight line causal links loved by reactionary journos and politicos alike are unlikely to be true: this does not lead to that and changing this by no means ensures that other thing.
And yet, when we legislate - against hoodies and their dark broodiness hanging about our shopping streets, against "the flood" of immigrants apparently heading this way, to protect us from terrorists or to reorganise healthcare provision - we always act and talk with excessive and inappropriate confidence as to the likely outcomes.
What say, we give it a break for a bit? What say we acknowledge that things are harder than they seem?
John's being doing some good thinking recently on the Social Object idea.
In particular, I like his challenge to the otherwise utterly brilliant Hugh Mcleod: social activity is the glue and the engine of social networks; social objects can help stimulate/facilitate social activity but they aren't the heart of most social networks.
One way of seeing why this is important is to consider what most folk interested in Word of Mouth marketing are measuring: the WoM behaviour that derives from their own actions rather than the rather bigger and more important Word of Mouth that was there before (what an economist might call "endogenous" word of mouth - generated by the system alone not by the influence of any external factors). It's part and parcel of our assumption that it's what we marketing bunnies do that shapes the world...it's hard to shake this self-importance off, isn't it?
That said, think the Social Object idea remains our best description yet of not just how New Marketing Communication works but also of the old stuff (Smash Martians, anyone?)
PS check out the - super slim - Mark II version of the Hughtrain here
Just got to say how much I love Madrid airport, designed by Richard Rogers. Bold, brilliant, old and new, steel, glass and wood. No wonder it won the prizes.
Just wish it had a Tardis to whisk me back home in a jiffy. After all, I may not be an architect but I am (in my mind, at least)...The Doctor
and it's Friday night already.
Where's the BBC Special Effects team when you need them?
Have been working on an interesting project recently which tries to use creative comms in a very different way from how we normally do, based on social object theory - making interesting things to interact around (at least, that's what I've been doing).
3 thoughts:
1. how hard it is to make social object communication if you hang on to the idea that marketing communication has anything to do with transmitting messages/information from brands to consumers. It just drags you back to channels and pipelines and stops you thinking about how people interact around what it is that your'e doing (even thinking about what consumers might say to each other is a distraction as it still involves information and memory and the full kitbag of individualist psychology).
2. far better to think about our job as being to create experiences or spectacles even, like the Sultan's elephant which brought London to a standstill last year. This is a bit like Zeus Jones' idea of making the marketing part of the brand experience. And while we're on the subject, advertising needs to be an experience worth bothering with.
3. And thinking of elephants and spectacles, I've been coming back again and again to the thought that the best of modern marketing is like the circus parade: a whole host of experiences for an audience which they then re-use (as the content for what really matters to them of social interaction with their peers). The parade should stir up excitement and enthusiasmos - it should in itself be someting good to do together - but that experience should stimulate further social interaction. But the parade is not a military control-freakery thing: it's a tumbling, self-organising (up- and down-)scaleable experience. Seeing a clown buying cigs is just as impactful and surprising in its way as the full-on marching band thing. But perhaps, and more importantly, the circus doesn't take itself too seriously (though they do know how to part us from our money).
Any thoughts?
Update: check Russell's take on all of this. Honest, I hadn't seen this when I posted originally
Big shout out to creative genius C at Digital Digressions for introducing me to the joys of Lego Youtube. More herehere and here and here. See what you started, C!
Oh, and in case you didn't know, they're pioneering co-creation in toyland.
A former girlfriend once suggested that men - me included, no, me specifically - would be prepared to watch any sport on TV - particularly if they can do so with other men. Today's discovery is international beach cricket. What worries me is that people have paid good money to gather together and watch it live. And drinking so much beer that they're doing it all again this winter...
Oh, yes, I'm watching a repeat of the Jan 07 series on Sky. Loser, like the lady said.
Mark has a great post on procrastination in the creative process (and the difference between procrastination and incubation). He points out that incubation is very different - it is bookended by hard, hard work...
Go here to see what Dilbert says about procrastination in the workplace (and yes, it's not good - though I love the "smell of doom" notion).
Now, back to those presentation notes. Where was I?
Mark Earls: Herd: How to Change Mass Behaviour by Harnessing Our True Nature
Mark Earls: Herd: How to Change Mass Behaviour by Harnessing Our True Nature
"Like Malcolm Gladwell on speed" The Guardian
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