Mobile Herd

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Zoning out media noise, can less mean more?

There's a thought provoking post over at Fresh Creation about what happens when we turn down the media noise around us.

As part of an experiment where he took up meditation for six months, Dutch designer and copywriter Martijn van Osch also cut down his media consumption to the bare minimum - a scan of one news website a day, two magazine subscriptions, taped documentaries or films and the unavoidable exposure to billboard and ambient advertising.

That's not completely cutting yourself off from the world, but it's a drastic reduction nonetheless. Especially for someone who works in a sector where the received wisdom is that taking in as much media as possible helps you in your job.

Martijn's conclusions suggest that the opposite could be possible as well. Having to rely on your own senses, the company of yourself and that of other people, can actually foster creativity.

Among the five lessons he learned, two involved having a more positive outlook thanks to no longer hearing a constant drum-beat of bad news. He experienced more in his day to day life, and had to find useful ways to fill the extra hours that were suddenly at his disposal (at his reckoning 2 and a half).

Martijn is not suggesting that the media is a bad thing, rather he wants to raise awareness, "so more people will start to regain control of (a part of) their life and start creating / doing whatever they think will really add value to their and others’ lives."

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Pick up your pavlova

Over in New Zealand, Kiwibank makes a lot out of the fact that it's exactly that - 100% Kiwi owned (the brand strap line is "it's ours").

So much so that they've played on the rivalry that exists between New Zealand and its larger neighbour to launch an online game.

One that links into a supposed glut of Australian owned banks in New Zealand, it prompts you to stop an "invasion" of Australian bankers by chucking pavlova (a dessert apparently invented in NZ) at them.

A fun viral it's got some nice little touches - for example the bankers running onto the beach in their suits and briefcases and the chants of 'Aussie, Aussie, Aussie' in the background. It's also fairly different to what you'd normally see from a financial institution.

You can find the game here.

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Playboy investigates virtual knock-offs

One of the more unusual reports to come from Second Life is CNN's report (picked up by New World Notes) of virtual playboy staff checking out fakes in the online world.

According to New World Notes, "Voluptuous managers Kimberly Laughton and Kattatonic Yates" are "showing up in full regalia at sites advertising knock-off Playboy items, and scrupulously taking notes."

Despite the slightly surreal mental image that this brings up, intellectual property in virtual worlds is a big deal. For example, last year one report cited the fact that there were 16 outlets selling Ferrari cars in SL, despite the fact that Ferrari has no official presence there.

And the biggest victims are usually SL-only retailers rather than established real world brands - people who make their living from selling virtual products in the world. Which prompted some of Second Life's more established product designers to join forces in an in-world ad campaign to highlight content theft.

Second Life competitor There.com in fact makes a lot out of the greater brand control it offers corporates. Along with the fact that you won't have to worry about your launch party being interrupted by flying penises.

Photo - Micala under a creative commons license.

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If in doubt, just make up a new social group!

The Future Lab posts on something that's sad, but true, in PR. If in doubt, come up with an acronym that allows you to pretend you've just invented some new social group, and voila!, watch the coverage roll in.

Future Lab uses loans and pensions company Liverpool Victoria as an example, and its press release that 66% of the over 50s fear poverty in old age. But there's more, these aren't just poor old people. Oh no, they are FREDS (face retirement earnings doubts). Meanwhile the Observer talks about the "Baby Losers" who are poorer than their parents.

Other examples: The white vin man (as opposed to the white van man) and the alpha socialiser.

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Big Brother is watching

To launch Big Brother Australia, bluetooth transmitters were placed at bus shelters around Perth. When someone stood within range, they received a "I''m watching you" message on their mobile, followed by programme info 30 seconds later.

Agency: Marketforce, Perth. From Ad Goodness

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Sumo Subaru carwash

Ad by DDB Toronto, music by Electric Six. But...."Japanese SUVs just got a little sexier"?!

From Ad Goodness

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Rem tene, verba sequentur

With a sister agency in Cape Town, we naturally take an interest in the South African ad / PR scene to the point of having had two SA agencies design the Cowshed (Hello Computer) and Cow (Room 13) websites.

An interesting piece of ambient activity comes from The Jupiter Drawing Room, a Cape Town / Jo'Burg consultancy that uses the motto Rem tene, verba sequenter - grasp the subject and the words will follow...how true.

To promote CSI, The Jupiter Room put up crime scene evidence bags containing a blood-and-mucus soiled mallet, rope and stiletto on street poles.

According to Cherry Flava, "It's nice to see an agency pushing the creative ambient envelope in South Africa and doing something with a real WTF-factor in a generally bland 'lightbox' dominated space."

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Links of the day

Some links to stories that appeared on other blogs:

The bigger the monitor, the more work you do. So says the Wall Street Journal

If you use a design agency with more than 20 or so people, one pundit claims that the work won't be great.

Look no hands! Thanks to De Montfort University you can now control your character on role-playing world, World of Warcraft with your eyes.

Creepy website - man Babies. A site where Dad’s heads are photo shopped onto kids bodies and the other way around.

En Garde! Put the burgers on and have a duel while you wait with this special BBQ sword.

What are you doing later this morning? Ten:15 wants you to send in and upload a photo of whatever you are doing at 10:15AM.

Looking for a new job? Practice the firm handshake. The higher the handshake mark, the more hireable you are according to boffins at the University of Iowa.

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Paint that shit gold

Is the name of a website for hip-hop group Atmosphere, developed by Colle & McVoy in Minneapolis (US).

Once on the site you can graffiti tag any other site on the web - from Downing Street, to Facebook, to Hilary Clinton (pictured) to the Whitehouse - using spray cans and stencils. All while listening to tracks from the new album.

Attention spans online aren't always great, so this is a good way to keep the ears focused on the music, while the mouse and keyboard get to work elsewhere. The finished results can then be uploaded and viewed on a gallery on the site.

From Ad Goodness.

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Sony grass car

To highlight the fact that it's offsetting all carbon emissions from company travel, Sony in Australia created a grass car that was displayed in various locations around Sydney.

Developed by Saatchi & Saatchi Australia, originally spotted on Directdaily.

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Building your personal brand via blogging

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Katie Chatfield of Get Shouty spotted this presentation from Trisha Okobu, "disruptive innovator" from ebay, all about ten steps to building your personal brand via blogging.

Trisha Okobu uses the site she edits as a hobby - US top three fashion blog Omiru - as a case-study to illustrate the ten steps, which include:

1 - Pick a topic that's uniquely you

2 - Stand for something real

3 - Be newsworthy

4 - Be awesome

5 - Create a stoplist (of things that are stopping you)

6 - Build real relationships

7 - Meet people in person

8 - Make it easy to spread the word

9 - Create community wherever you go

10 - And be patient

OK, there is a bit more to it than that. In fact the presentation is 300+ (digestible) slides long!

It's a definite must read though for anyone interested in building any kind of brand - via a blog or otherwise - online.

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Photobombing

From Buzz Feed's Tech Buzz comes Photobombing - intentionally turning up in the back of other people's pictures, something that apparently needs to be done at just the right time and with just the right expression.

More examples in list of the day.

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Women make friends online, men collect contacts

This is according to data management and search firm Rapleaf, which trawled through 30 million profiles of people with at least one online friend on social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Flickr, and LiveJournal.

Looking at people with between 1-100 online friends (so called social networkers), women had on average 62 friends and men five fewer - 57. For people with 100-1000 friends, men had on average 172 and women 185.

According to the report, "Men are less likely to spend as much time nurturing relationships as they are acquiring relationships from a transactional standpoint.

"Spending less time on a social network but transacting more equates to having roughly the same number of friends as women, who spend more time on social networks, but are busier sustaining relationships."

This confirms other research - and something that marketers increasingly need to be aware of - that the dominant group online isn't spotty teenage boys. But young women.

Photo - Inju, under a creative commons license.

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Adidas Football

Recently I had a dig at German ad blogger The Kaiser for suggesting that the London creative scene was being overtaken by that in Germany. That might not be true. But substitute the words Germany for Amsterdam, and it could well be.

Two recent efforts by two Amsterdam agencies for the world's two leading sports brands deserve a look. 72 and Sunny used Madonna's husband and that well known Mockney Guy Ritchie to do a film for Nike. And 180 Amsterdam has produced a series of shorts for Adidas in the run-up to Euro 2008 (the European football / soccer championships for those outside Europe).

The Nike film is a very blokes in pubs effort. The Adidas ones are more human, and cleverer. In the films, teams from the micro-states of Andorra, San Marino as well as the Isles of Scilly (off the coast of Cornwall, England) are profiled, after which superstars like Kaka, Lionel Messi and David Beckham come and coach them.

Further films will then be made over the spring / summer charting their progress. You can see them here at adidas.com/football.

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Video sharing sites that pay

With Internet metrics firm Nielsen predicting that video sharing is going to drive social media in 08/09, Cool Tools has a list of sites up that pay for your films and virals. The original list was put together by Scott Kirsner, editor of website Cinema Tech, six months ago, but by and large it still holds true.

21 different video / film sites that pay are listed, including:

Atom. "Get seen / get paid." If users and producers like what they see it might even end up on parent company MTV.

Metacafe. 20,000 views gets you $100 (£50), 2 million views would net you $10,000 (£5,000)

Current TV. Strictly speaking not a video sharing site, but the Al Gore created Internet / cable / satellite station in North America, UK & Ireland and Italy, that takes part of its output from ordinary viewers.

Interestingly enough, this includes VCam - viewer created ads - major brands sponsor the slots and viewers fill the space on their behalf (a recent example was mobile phone network 02). If it's aired on current you get paid £1,000 ($2,000), while if it appears elsewhere you receive £25,000 ($50,000).

Australian site si-mi. You upload content, that's then sold by the download (which means it has to be pretty damn good!).

Finally there's Brandfame. A fairly innovative form of product placement, this is a service that matches brands with amateur film-makers, who offer to place products in their creations that are then uploaded onto YouTube, Vimeo et al.

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Sync your music to your step

An application you can download for either your ipod touch or iphone, synchstep connects "the music in your head to the music in your body." Basically you start walking and the programme chooses the music that matches.

According to AdLab, "Somewhere, an ad mind is thinking: "Great! Now we can play an ad variation that corresponds to the natural rhythm. Gait-optimization."

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The Point

In Monday's elevator pitch slot in the Guardian's PDA blog, the School of Everything (which matches people teaching skills to people who want them) founders were asked the usual question of where they would invest £10 million ($20 million).

Their answer was The Point, because: "It's basically a way of getting groups of people to do things together. You can sign up to pledge your support or money and a campaign gets 'activated' if it reaches its target. Check out the project to raise enough money to put a giant banana in geostationary orbit above Texas, but also imagine how revolutionary it could be for making a real difference locally."

A look through the Point's site shows that it does have loads of potential for fostering net activism. Essentially, you choose a cause that you want to promote, and say that if X number of people (a tipping point) join you something will happen. Not surprisingly, a lot of it involves pressuring businesses to take some kind of action on something.

The national ones have relatively little traction (1 million people to boycott Walmart in response to worker healthcare....234 members) probably because most national and international causes have existing campaign groups and web campaigns.

But where it comes into its own is, as The School of Everything guys say, on a local level.

For example, a campaign to pressure a Dunkin Doughnuts in North Carolina to give its leftovers to the homeless has a target of 50 members and currently has 31 signed up. Meanwhile San Francisco State University has to repair the front door to its dorms, or else 25+ people will create a queue and individually complain one by one in the relevant office.

At the moment the site is only six months old and 95% of the campaigns seem to be US focused, but if it grows it could well become a home for grass-roots consumer action. And thanks to the Internet a relatively small number of people can cause a lot of fuss in a way they wouldn't have been able to 10 years ago, and all from the comfort of their own homes.

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Davey dancing on Vimeo

This is genius. From Vimeo, the Davey Dance-BLOG.

Armed with a Canon PowerShot and an ipod, "Davey" picks a song at random and improvises a dance. This started last year when the guy traveled around Europe and it's carried on now that he’s back in the States.

A simple, clever and funny concept. It's one that works well on Vimeo given it's fairly high bitrate and resolution compared to other video sharing sites, as well as the higher quality content that users upload onto it.

We’ve posted Davey’s ‘Katerine – 100% V.IP.” at the Louvre / Paris here, while on our sister blog we’ve used ‘Sister Sledge – We are Family’ filmed in Madison Wisconsin.

We're currently building our own channel on the network, and will be using it to showcase our work to potential clients in future.

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Forget the MBA, I'm playing World of Warcraft instead

The May issue of The Harvard Business Review has an article on why multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft could be suitable management training grounds.

It covers an eight month study where academics and researchers attached to consulting firm Seriosity worked with IBM in looking at whether flexibility and the ability to manage changing teams from a variety of backgrounds and even geographical locations make these games the ideal places to hone leadership skills.

According to the authors, “the organizational and strategic challenges facing players who serve as game leaders are familiar ones: recruiting, assessing, motivating, rewarding and retaining talented and culturally diverse team members, identifying and capitalizing on the organization’s competitive advantage; analyzing multiple streams of constantly changing and often incomplete data in order to make quick decisions that have wide ranging and sometimes long lasting effects.”

To those who aren’t among the 50 million worldwide who play them regularly, multiplayer online games differ from social virtual worlds like Second Life and Entropia Universe.

Second Life for example is exactly what it says on the tin, a 3D grid where you adopt the persona of an avatar (from Sanskrit of god’s incarnation), and can shop, make friends, build stuff, own land, even get married if that’s what you want - but there is no goal or aim to it. Online games are also 3D and real-time, but they have goals and missions which you use to earn points and currency and move up the gaming hierarchy.

Typically the games have either a sci-fi (Eve Online, Stargate Wars) or a medieval / fantasy (World of Warcraft, Everquest) theme. Each generally involve you being part of a team or guild with 20+ members, and engaged in tasks such as raiding another team's castle, or stealing some of their possessions.

The researchers found that "leadership in online games offers a sneak preview of tomorrow's business world." Here's why:

Leadership demands speed. An hour in a virtual world is not like an hour in the office. Things that take weeks in real life, happen in hours online. A World of Warcraft battle plan the researchers observed took less than a minute to formulate, even though it involved ten players.

Risk taking is encouraged. "Failure, instead of being a career killer, is accepted as a frequent and necessary antecedent to success."

Leadership roles are often temporary. Leadership by and large isn't a formal position, it's a task. The best person for each job is usually chosen to lead, rather than it being some sinecure.

"The idea of temporary leadership is often alien to most business organisations. Companies usually identify people as leaders early in their careers....that model may not work well in the future.

"Beyond the obvious benefit of matching an individual's expertise to a challenge, treating leadership as a temporary state can empower employees to volunteer to lead, and thereby can unearth previously overlooked talent among the ranks."

The benefits? IBM, which commissioned the original study, surveyed 135 managers who also played multi-player online games. Three quarters said that the lessons learned could be applied to enhance leadership effectiveness in a company, while almost half said it improved their leadership capabilities.

Finally, "digitally enabled environments and techniques could increase productivity by making many aspects of work simpler, less tedious and - dare we say it - more fun. That wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing."

Photo from 'Prince Mik' under a creative commons license - shows World of Warcraft fans at the anime expo.

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