Clare Townhill

A Change of Direction

For a while now I've been becoming increasingly jaded with agency life. I left ad agency life 8 years ago to work in digital agencies. Like so many who make this transition my reasons were predicated on creating things of real value and utility. The hard truth I've come to accept is that I haven't really ended up making anything of value to anyone apart from the brands I've helped prop up with online brand comms masquerading as digital services. There is a well trodden saying in the marketing community: 'Nothing kills a bad product quicker than good advertising'. The great skill of the traditional advertising creative team was to take a product, try to find a special or unique thing about it (there often wasn't anything different or special about it), and spin a human narrative of entertainment, emotion and desire complete with some succinct, clever copy. This is the great craft of advertising - wrap a dull/crap product in layers of emotion and creativity in order to create desire. The sad truth about digital agencies, even the very best of them like R/GA, is that 90% of the time the products that clients bring you to promote are still inherently flawed and undifferentiated. Beautiful layers of interaction, experience, service, social sharing etc wrap these products in a very similar the same way that advertising does, but underneath all these layers there often exists a fundamentally crap product, the semblance of value disappears once you get the the product. Control of product development in companies doesn't sit with the marketing teams therefore agencies aren't generally involved in the product until the proposition stage. Bad product is something I simply couldn't get close to fixing as long as the majority of my clients are in the marketing function of businesses.

Enter Fluxx, and a new chance for me. I'm trying to set up a Product Lab that will work with CTO, CIO and other business owners to catalyse ideas into products. A shortage of idea isn't the problem for businesses (see this post) surmounting the day-to-day processes, and bringing ideas into being is. By running methodologies of manufacturing combined with the creative lab process perfected by PAL for writers and film makers, Fluxx Labs will develop products in tandem with clients and end-users to deliver new products to deliver real value to people and new streams of revenue for businesses. I've been working on the proposition for a few weeks now, and meeting Fluxx clients. I'msurprised how many clients have already expressed an interest in this way of working; the trick now is to prove the methodology by putting it into practise. 

Little yellow blobs on the line

 

See the little yellow blobs in motion here

'The yellow blobs are, of course, tube trains. The fact that they're moving across the map indicates that this is, as near as dammit, real-time information about their positions on the network. And it's public data: you can sit at your computer in San Francisco or Accra and know how the trains on the Central line are doing just now.

How you react to this provides a litmus test for determining where you are on the technology spectrum. If you're of a geekish disposition, then what Matthew Somerville and a couple of his friends managed to do in a few hours with the train data and the application programming interface (API) provided by Transport for London will seem like a thing of beauty and a joy for ever.

If you're a non-technical person, then Mr Somerville's live map will strike you as an example of leading-edge uselessness: undoubtedly clever, but of no practical use to you and me. Of course it's important that Transport for London knows where their trains are at any given moment, but it's of little interest to anyone else.

If you're a securocrat, ie an employee of the UK's vast security establishment, then Mr Somerville's map will give you the heebie-jeebies. After all, you will argue, Osama bin Laden may be sitting in his cave in Pakistan at this very moment, monitoring the trains on the Central line on his iPad. And so indeed he might. The fact that being able to do this would be significantly less useful than having some devout followers in actual tube stations will not bother you unduly, because being a securocrat essentially means viewing the entire world and everything in it as a possible threat to national security.

If on the other hand, you believe that digital technology has the potential to refresh democratic institutions, then you will see the live tube map as a significant development. This is not because Transport for London is a democratic institution but because it shows what can be done when data is released to the public in a way that makes it not just useful to civil society, but usable by it. The last few years have seen a vigorous campaign – led by our sister-paper, the Guardian, by the way – to persuade public authorities to provide public access to the data that they routinely collect and store in vast databases. After all, so the slogan goes, "Free Our Data" – we paid for it, so we should be able to see it.'

John Naughton - The Observer

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jun/27/transport-for-london-live-tube-map

American Apparel Bashing

Quite the done thing of late:

An artist in New York has taken to producing some close to the bone artwork of his own to complement the neo-teen pornographic style of the official campaign:

It's the latest wonderful piece by the fake American Apparel ad artist, this time featuring the head man himself looking even creepier than Woody Allen did. For the uninitiated, over the past few months, a NYC prankster has created several bawdy two-color parodies of AA ads complete with real ad headlines. Here, the artist commemorates Lovey Dov Charney being named "retailer of the year" at the recent Michael Awards for the fashion industry—time to get wet! Dildos have featured prominently in Dov's business success; he apparently pays off some of his models with them in lieu of a decent day rate. How's that for figuratively fucking the talent? 

Copyranter: Dildo-holding-sextoy

The Cart Whisperer

Five happy minutes in an otherwise dreary morning. This caught my on on the homepage of Technorati, the video intrigued me (a rarer and rarer thing these days). Throwing caution to the wind I clicked and happily landed here at nomoreabandonnedcarts.com the home of Fillibert Liberty, Cart Whisperer and crusader to end the phenomenon of the shopping cart deserted midtransaction. I like this, a lot. I've definitely been known to hit and run on occasion. Making the online cart analogous to a real trolley filled with goods that you just walk away from (and implicitly the effect on the trader) is a very clever bit of thinking. It  goes to the heart of consumer concerns over the safety of their finances and downright fatigue of entering, and re-entering personal details, inventing usernames and passwords, billing addresses, delivery addresses and then worrying about who exactly gets to see them.  The site's 'sponsor' is Verisign. This article from NewScientist about Web 3.0 is a good complementary read.

The Song Box Tour Experience

I spent a bitter-sweet evening at the beautiful Union Chapel thanks to Laura Marling's Song Box Tour. I received my txt ticket and qode a week ago, then an email (I suspect as much to guard against technical hitches at the venue/network issues as to keep the buzz going - in either case I was happy) on Monday evening. A lovely idea, well executed. I hope that this is the future of an industry very much in need of the kind of resuscitation that the Song Box Tour offers.

Laura's Songbox

I'm in love with a girl called Laura Marling and her gorgeous album 'Alas I Cannot Swim'. As a model of how to market in a Pirate Bay free-from-the-network era her Songbox is a lovely idea and experience. I'm probably not explaining this very well so I'll try to show you:

This is what you get for your funds and your trouble: all manner of artsy bits and bobs, a coupon to claim a ticket to one of a number of Songbox tour gigs, and the album, all for the extremely reasonable price of £14.98. How to make your consumer happy and connect them to other like-minded individuals all in one go (when you submit your coupon and gig preference you get given a link to the relevant forum should you want to hook up with other fans).

LauraMarling.com
Amazon: Deluxe Songbox [Limited Edition]

Push and Shout

Apart from sounding a little like a 60's dance craze, Push-and-Shout has been the comms. mantra and M.O. for far too many for far too long (yes I know that this is nothing new of note but tis the month for backward/forward glances). I'm hoping for a year of pull and engage communication strategies; the use of digital/online reputation of a company bears huge bearing on their ability to earn consumer credibility via engagement and enrichment. A recent survey of business reporters also reveals how inextricable the B2B PR of companies is from their social media policy and the digital noise that surrounds them: 80 percent [of business reporters] say they use, or would use, blogs as a primary or secondary source of information for news stories. All this stuff has risen back to the front of my mind as I'm about to start a freelance assignment for the big boys at Lowe-London and Unilever. Planner-sense turned firmly back on ready to enter the beast.

Opodo Done Good

I was really heartened when this arrived in my inbox just moments ago:

To be honest I hadn't even realised that I was receiving unwanted correspondence (I browsed it for cheap winter hols in fact). This is exactly the kind of powershift in the relationship between client and consumer that makes me love the web. They appreciate that they made a mistake; I appreciate that they give enough of a shit about wasting my time to apologise and rectify the situation; I feel much warmer about them; they don't have to worry about me flaming my way through forums/grumbling into a pint.

Learning The Difference Between Useful and Useless

I love the sense of wonder in this article that despite its 'jazzy graphics and a video player' a media company's revamped site failed to delight consumers despite having a whopping five functional links. Luckily Mike Murphy from Facebook is on hand to commiserate and share the company's learnings:

He said the site learned it must "communicate and educate" its users and "take into consideration what the audience is looking for" before launching a product or feature.

So, what we've all learned it that companies need to consider what the consumer needs and wants by getting their input and feedback from betas before launch. Really? D'ya think? Putting sarcasm to one side for just a second, if Facebook, site du jour for young London Marketers and media peeps is still making such basic mistakes in regard to the organisation and functionality of its network one can only wonder at the level of detachment between in other businesses and organisations and their end users and consumers.
Globeandmail: Execs Stumble In a New Media World

The Energy Game

I thought that this was an interesting affiliation for Chevron and The Economist Group. No doubt the  kudos Chevron get far outweighs that/if any that The Economist brand receives. Sadly I suspect money may have changed hands for the honour of hallmarking Chevron's marketing rather than a direct attempt to engage with the issue at hand; the spatial and attention-holding limitation of the game itself also points to this. It strikes me as a great shame that this kind of virtual modelling of pertinent global and political issues e.g. the energy crisis isn't part of the Economist brand's online offering. The intellugence between it's covers is sadly not applied to the uses of the vast richness and potential of digital media. This could be a way for The Economist to connect with the intelligent online audience left cold by the paper publication not to mention an interesting opportunity to apply collective intelligence and thinking to world issues.

http://www.willyoujoinus.com/
Power of Collective Intelligence:
BBC.co.uk article: Think Tanks for Gamers
Why I love bees: A Case Study in Collective Intelligence Gaming