Social Psycho: a fascinating experiment

I was giving a presentation a couple of weeks back talkin' bout entertainment, when a lad at the back made the comment 'apart from Tourism Queensland, which was largely international in terms of entrants, Australian's don't seem to have much of an appetite for getting involved in user generated content campaigns'.

There's plenty of evidence to the contrary. In other words, Australians are watching stuff, making their own, and talking about it. This can only mean that clients and agencies are failing to ignite interest from audiences.

I've said this before, I think there is a genuine interest in experimentation, but a lack of creativity, bravery and importantly an effort to understand the relationship between people and the environment. This has got us stuck in a rut where Doritos, Subway, Toshiba, Samboy and Nissan are the norm, and Six Beers of Separation is the exception (it's early days so we haven't yet seen them really take off but it's a much more interesting concept).

But here's one I'm really excited about. I'm completely intrigued, involved and plotting my part in this new creative commons project. It's called Social Psycho and in truth, there is not a brand in sight.

It's the brainchild of one Marcus Brown from Munich - storyteller, stirrer and tweet reader.

As the video above suggests, Marcus has unearthed a cracking premise:

What would happen when someone who had access to the personal data of hundreds or thousands of people completely lost it and became unhinged? What would happen if that said person was extremely web savvy, had accounts of facebook, twitter, friendfeed, blogs and knew their way around Google maps etc.?

Social Psycho is a work of fiction that intends to build on this terrifying idea and I'm inviting you to get involved. It's my new project. Although I will be mainly writing and developing the main character of the story, you are invited to develop sub-plots and characters in order to build stories of your own."

Marcus has set up a Google group and is inviting us to take on a character or help develop the story in whatever way we like - via blogs, videos, twitter etc. There are already some curious discussions and sinister ideas bubbling away on his murderous stove.

It's a project created by Marcus, with our help, and all for the princely sum of time and occupied minds.

Get involved. Experiment. At your peril.

And brands, take note.

Six Beers of Separation launches on Youtube

I wrote about this a while back, but the Tooheys Six Beers of Separation series is now up and running on Youtube.

Full episodes are coming soon, but check out the trailer below - if it doesn't make you thirsty, the top notch production values and a strong premise suggest it will be an interesting watch.

Coraline: building a beautiful story

Have a look at this beautiful looking film Coraline. Directed by Henry Selick, and based on the novel by Neil Gaiman, Coraline was released in February in the US. 

It's the first feature from animation studio Laika. The film looks to be a masterpiece of stopmotion animation - everything you see on screen has actually been handcrafted.

Laika is Phil Knight's post Nike plaything (he bought Will Vinton Animation Studios and renamed it Laika) and he tasked Wieden + Kennedy with marketing the company's first feature.

The campaign looks to have been both well crafted and respectful of its audience (both in terms of the marketing and the film itself).

One of the really cool things they did was send out 50 one off boxes to some key bloggers. Each of the boxes was handmade, totally unique and contained bits and pieces from the set. Who wouldn't want to get their hands on one?

You can read about the W+K story here and check out some of the artwork, or watch a delightful little trailer they've produced for the campaign.

HT @carlmoggy

Content: what role should a brand play?

On Wednesday, I was part of a That's Advertainment panel discussion at AIMIA's V21 conference in Melbourne. I have to admit to really enjoying the experience of tossing around thoughts with three smart folks in Christy Dena (cross media storyteller and University of Sydney PHD student), Matt Houltham (Publicis Digital) and Frankie Ralston-Good (Naked's Melbourne MD). I thought it was a pretty vibrant discussion that happily bounced us around the brand entertainment space.

One thing that really resonated with me was an analogy Frankie used to illustrate the different ways that brands can utilise content to engage audiences. She argued that we're still applying old world thinking to new ways of doing things without necessarily "understanding that eco system and the role a brand should (versus could) play in that scenario".

Here is an excerpt from thoughts Frankie shared at the conference (inspired by a previous conversation she had with Brett Rolfe)

What we actually need to do is to think in different ways about brands and our interactions with people. As an example, imagine our consumers as a group of mates sitting around a camp fire sharing ghost stories. As a brand, how do you get involved? Are you a newcomer that sits down and joins the conversation? The fire that keeps everyone warm? Perhaps even the space in which everyone sits? Are you actually the story that is being shared? Or could you be the memory of the night's events that gets passed around and repeated in the days that follow?

If we don't develop new ways of looking at content, its creation, its consumption and distribution we will continue with a hit or miss approach. We know how badly things can go when brands and their advisors pick the wrong place to be. And if I may return to my camp fire, we should always consider the understandings and beliefs consumers currently have about us before we do anything. If a stranger turns up in the middle of a wood, and starts talking randomly about ghosts we are more likely to reach for a weapon than invite them into our tent.

p.s Thanks to Debra, Karla and Kylie from Ish Media for putting together an entertaining panel and awesome video presentation

brand entertainment: a bit of a stink?

I was in a meeting last week and someone mentioned they think brand entertainment in this market still has 'a bit of a stink around it'. 

We were talking in the context of television and in a way I think he's right.

What do you think?

Harnessing social media flash-fads

Into the Wood series part #2. Brett Rolfe - colleague, friend and inspirational t-shirt guy - imparts some wisdom on the topic of flash fads

Flickr: thenoodleator

Alright, who's old enough to remember 'All Your Base Are Belong to Us'? Back in 2001, AYBABTU was one of the first 'internet memes', fads based on creating, sharing and remixing content around a specific idea or theme. Since then we've seen everything from dancing hamsters and leet-speaking cats to Diet Coke+Mentos cocktails and the comeback of the most exciting and dynamic musical genius of recent times.

Digital media and the internet have provided us with easy means to make our own digital content and remix content from other sources. The advent of online communities and social networks has dramatically increased the ease with which we can share this material.

These technological facilities have fuelled our passion for participative fads. Driven by the desire to share rituals, to have a sense of belonging and purpose (however transitory and apparently superficial), we seek out new social content and forms of social play. The speed with which we can discover and exploit novelty has increased with each new form of social technology, compressing the adoption curve until we now move from inception through cool to lame in a matter of weeks if not days.

The integration of creative facility with social connection in digital platforms like facebook, MySpace and flickr allows anyone to spark a social fad that might be picked up and spread to social circles far beyond their own. Some time back it became all the rage to tag inanimate objects as your friends in facebook. More recently flickr and facebook have become home to a plethora of fake album covers created based on a simple random process. If you feel the urge to share a little something of yourself, you might alternately like to upload a photo of the books you keep beside the bed.

The important thing about each of these flash-fads is that not only are they interesting to participate in passively (are people actually still reading Nicholas Negroponte, at bedtime no less?), they are almost as easy to participate in actively. Perhaps the most challenging thing is to identify those things that have not yet climbed to the dizzying heights of fad-dom, and predict which have the qualities that will capture the imaginations of thousands of followers. In a recent glimpse into a facebook profile (hi Greer!), I stumbled across a remixed Mr Men graphic where you can tag each character as one of your friends... I'd never seen it before, but watch this space.

These faddish spaces provide a rich, fertile territory that is reminiscent of Barthes' notion of a ‘writerly text’, constantly open to interpretation and engagement. It is little wonder, then, that they are so appealing to communications professionals looking for vectors through which to deliver brand meaning. Those who remember cherishing their Coke yoyo will appreciate how powerful a tool these trend-based vectors can be. But what role can (and should) a brand play, in this environment? Where are brands welcome (and even invited), and where will their involvement be perceived as intrusive and unwanted?

There are perhaps three different points that a brand can become involved in a flash-fad, determined by what point the fad is at when the brand engages. Asking which point a brand should become involved is an important question, as different brands have different appetites for innovation. As Grant McCracken discusses in ’Flock and Flow’, some brands thrive on the cutting edge of trends, others are more at home with the mass consumption of the late majority. Misunderstanding the nature of a brand, or leaping onto a flash-fad at the wrong point can be detrimental to the image of the brand and its relationship with consumers.

For most brands, the most obvious approach with flash-fads is 'jumping on the bandwagon', getting aboard a fad-in-progress, and riding the wave to mass popularity. The challenge here is timing and brand fit - if you can locate a suitable trend, the window of opportunity is often narrower than marketing departments need to deploy a campaign. More ambitious is creating your own fad, wading into the murky social waters and sparking your own outrageously successful participative trend. History does not record the many (many) failures, but examples like Burger King's Simpsonize Me show that it can be done.

An interestingly post-modern twist is the option of critically re-interpreting (or remixing) a trend that has already moved through the innovation cycle. Public imagination was captured by Improv Everywhere's mass performance happening Frozen Grand Central. The act was clearly the inspiration for the less-than-inspiring promotional stunt for the launch of M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening in Australia. That effort felt derivative, and in every way 'less' than the original. A much more engaging spin was T-Mobile's tongue-in-cheek dance commercial which remixed and responded to the original in an innovative and imaginative way.

With the creative and connective power of digital technology only likely to increase, it seems inevitable that flash-fads will become more common, faster, and more highly refined. The rewards for brand successfully engaging with these trends are real, but they are limited by the difficulty of meshing with unpredictable social mass behaviour, and ultimately by the speed with which such fads will fade from social consciousness.

Brett Rolfe is the Digital Communications Director at Naked Communications and writes his own blog at www.digitalstrategist.com

User generated campaigns are only as good as the ideas behind them

Recent campaign launches from Samboy, Doritos, and Subway have stimulated quite a bit of chatter about the merits and downfalls of this style of campaign. Accusations of boring, lazy creatives, and scoring bigger agency resourcing budgets have been some of the criticisms levelled here.

I think these examples show a willingness to experiment, and to try something different.

But at the end of the day, this style of campaign is only as interesting as:

1. the idea itself - how compelling is it? what value does it offer?

and

2. the people you engage

and

3. the way you enable their involvement

and

4. the way they respond

Using social media isn't interesting. But ideas and people are.

Remember the whole world is your creative department. But give 'em something interesting to play with.