There's a snake in mah boots

I’ve never been a huge fan of westerns.

I don’t know why. I guess the setting never really appealed to me. Maybe the landscape of the old west wasn’t as much of a draw to the younger version of me as the notion of barrelling down the Death Star trench. I had no understanding of the freedom it represented – the lawlessness and the excitement. I grew up in a bungalow in Wigan, a million miles away from Cowboyland.

All that’s changed now. Well, since I’ve been playing Red Dead Redemption anyway.

I’m not saying that I now know just what life in the old west was like, due to me simply playing a game, but I’m starting to see why kids are expected to like “cowboy stuff”.

The multiplayer version of Red Dead Redemption is great fun. It contains all the iconic elements of life as an outlaw, without any of the boring stuff, like eating or resting or having to face the law if you shoot someone. I realise this semi-review arrives a good few weeks after everyone else’s, but it’s finally starting to hit home just how appealing the cowboy life can be.

The game world affords a similar sensibility to the old west, in that there are no real consequences for your actions. You can choose to help, befriend or shoot anyone or anything you happen across. And in an online multiplayer world where strangers inhabit the same space as you and your friends, this presents so many opportunities for fun, it’s unreal.

Last night I rode out across the plains of New Austin with three friends in my posse. We chose a simple mission and headed across land to our destination, only to find a group of other players had already arrived before us, intent on taking the loot we wanted so badly. What followed was an astonishingly enjoyable massacre that saw us ousting the bad guys, taking the swag and riding off into the sunset.

I never left my comfortable seat, but I had a storming time with a bunch of friends, playing a classic role in a guilt-free environment. Finally, I understand why the old west is such an enticing prospect.

I walked out the room last night with a little bit more of a swagger in my step.

©2010 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

Marketing is similarly hasty in its willingness to take advantage of each change in weather, be it an oncoming storm of football fever or the potential break in the clouds offered by a long awaited election.

Here is something which unites us all, it seems to say, something we can all talk about. And look how switched on to the national mood we are. You might think all we do is sell crisps but really we are your friend and as such we can take liberties with your time by striking up a conversation.

Much akin to a stranger sat on the bench next to you who decides to try his luck with a line about how long term weather predictions have us suffering through a rainy summer before offering us advice of a handy umbrella shop (owned, incidentally, by his brother), the eager Marketeer will stop at nothing to catch your interest.

So it is we have had every form of product sold to us on the strength of a weak “vote now” campaign and so it will be that the World Cup will be drained of any effectiveness as products rely upon our dumb willingness to buy anything from anyone provided they have a fine line in football related conversation pieces. This lawn mower is a like a game of two halves you say? Adorned with a flag even? By the cup, I’ll buy one and visit your store again.

It may be that certain topics hold a common interest for many people. But it also true that they make for short term conversations and fair weather friends.

©2010 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

Crowd sourcing is directed from a brand manager or agency creative.

And that’s an important word: directed. The Doritos campaign was directed and the ‘public’ did as they were told, expressing themselves beautifully, wittily but doing so in a controlled, managed, directed way.

When a client approaches a number of agencies to request ideas in the form of a pitch it is, in essence, crowd sourcing ideas from a limited pool of creativity. The advantage an agency can have over others (and the public) is experience.

Each agency can draw upon its experience to respond by building a compelling argument as to why their ideas are better, regardless of whether their ideas are, in fact, actually better. It becomes a game of personalities in which ideas are judged on what is likely to win with the client rather than succeed with the consumer.

Collaboration, on the other hand, is freer, more open and more targetted at the end result. The process is fluid enough to change according to that end result. What might be perceived as key selling points are open to change under the process of collaboration.

Personalities are focussed on producing something that works for the consumer rather than satisfying a predefined brief.

Collaborators, removed from the competitive process, are focussed upon pooling resources and figuring out how to get the best results (and even agree how those results ought to be measured).

It’s all part of forging a great relationship with the client and, whilst I accept that crowd sourcing has a certain energetic pleasure, it’s in the relationships that effective work will be produced. The energy offered by crowd sourcing is akin to the enjoyment of a pub wit. It’s fun at the time but makes very little impact in the long term and social marketing has to be about the long term. It has to be about the relationships over the casual acquaintence otherwise there is no depth, no substance and no loyalty.

Society functions effectively in true, deep rooted communities.

Not crowds.

©2010 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

And one comment struck me above all others.

Publishers tend to forget that not everyone accesses their campaigns online.

It’s an easy thing to forget.

Publishers, developers, creatives, writers, we all share one thing in common: our working days revolve around easy Internet access.

And whilst we are all video conferencing, instant messaging, twittering and browsing our customers and our audiences might be hard at work in classrooms and factories, call centres and ticket offices, earning their pay and looking forward to relaxing with friends during their leisure tine.

Internet usage, despite its rich experiences, may be crammed into brief periods before bed or at the weekend. Decisions on new purchases, be they books or games, cars or holidays, may be made in the cracks of their lives as they share their hopes and dreams with colleagues or flick through a lunchtime magazine or casually browse a bookstore on the way to buy a sandwich.

Just as I am sometimes surprised how few of my clients keep a Twitter client open behind the multitude of email windows and spreadsheets, so too am I surprised how easily I forget the real lives of others.

These lives are not impoverished by their lack of eighteen hour exposure to the bells and whistles, news and opinions of a life lived online. No. These lives are simply filled with different priorities and different processes and as we seek to make our information available to them we would do well to walk where they walk and pause where they pause.

©2010 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

I keep on banging the choice drum. Boom, I say that the more we are exposed to choice the less choice we end up with. Boom, I say the more open markets are the fewer the shops end up operating them and now Boom, the more personalised our choices become the less we deviate away from them.

Watching Virtual Revolution on Saturday this concept was summed up (brilliantly and effectively) by Douglas Rushkoff as he explained how decision engines worked (the technology behind Amazon’s recommendation features amongst others). He ran through a programmatically logical structure of how the more we were presented with “people like you also bought” the more we became “people like us”.

It’s along the same principle of seeking out like-minded people to work with and be friends with.

I get the bus each morning. At 6:20 there aren’t many people in my village who do. In fact, generally speaking, there are five. Three of these people get on at my stop. Including myself. So, sociable being that I am I took two years to say hello to the other two. One is a postman, the other a cellar man. I didn’t realise pubs had people starting work at that time of a morning but apparantly they do.

Over the years we’ve enjoyed our ten minute chats. Much like Twitter, these shared moments build up into something far more than just a nod and a comment about the weather. Insights are gained, personal details shared and views occasionally (and tentatively) expressed.

The views aren’t always something I’m comfortable. Sometimes they are at the opposite end of the political fence where I sit, quite comfortably, knowing I am right in all things.

At one time it would have been enough to force me onto a later bus.

They hooked me, however, with their bonhomie. Many silent moments, a furtive nod of hello and a lifetime of isolation were banished simply by the two of them being nice. By showing an interest in my life and in sharing theirs.

I’d never have found them if I’d done a search for bus companions and been recommended like-minded people to share my journey with.

Now my bus buddies and I ignore what we have in common and celebrate our differences. If there were a search engine that told me what was different, even what I might hate – well I’d try that.

©2010 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

At Head First we pursue work where we can make a difference; where we know that our ideas would be appropriate. Sometimes this takes us outside the games industry and the usual response is “where’s your relevance?”. I never struggle to find an answer.

I say something like games brings everybody together. To which I am told that the client isn’t a gamer.

I don’t believe them.

Everybody is a gamer.

They might not consider buying Modern Warfare 2 or Bioshock 2; they might not even own a “games machine”; but they are gamers.

The rise in what is commonly called social media has gaming built in as standard. Look at your friend’s Facebook updates and a game won’t be far away, clearly VW understand this.

Games unite people. Games teach people and games blaze the trail in terms of user experiences and technical accomplishments.

And if everybody is a gamer then it follows that there are certain elements they have in common; certain elements that can be used to reach them.

VW’s boast centres around the fact that their promotion had been downloaded over four million times. The “revelation” of their claim is supposed to be that all this was achieved without spending a penny on media. However, when you understand the power of gaming the revelation, however brilliant, isn’t surprising.

©2010 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

This year they are getting talked about more than usual. Normally I read about which movie trailers played but this year Google ran an ad which made it into the mainstream press; dragging everything else behind it.

Google’s ad was pretty nice; whimsical and confident and with a simple message – namely search is a fact of life. As brands become increasingly switched on to the social side of commerce this positioning resonates.

What stood out for me, however, was the number of ads that were content to essentially waste time and money. Go Daddy drew lots of ire but, subjective views aside, at least it threw in the facts of the product.

Other brands weren’t so ambitious, relying instead on the media spend to impress the viewers. Why spend money on creative if all you are doing (from a semiotics perspective) is showing the company logo? Indeed, if no message and no values are conveyed then thirty seconds of a logo would not only be cheaper, it would arguably be more memorable also.

Advertising, of course, is the opportunity to be more than memorable. It offers the chance to inform as well.
And in these times, when buzzwords such as “social” and “conversation” are in such free-flow, what better form of dialogue is there than a contructive one?

©2010 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

Talk about saving for your own funeral. Maybe they will get June Whitfield to front the ads.

I’m only half joking. The iSlate is just the pinnacle of where tech has been headed these past few years; someone was bound to do it sooner or later. It’s just that Apple are perfectly poised to deliver the technology wrapped neatly into the consumer dream.

Because that, it seems to me, is what Apple trades in. Unlike Microsoft, Apple don’t deal with computers. It’s all about the consumer dream. Name another hardware manufacturer, be they HP or Sony or even the affordable semi-pioneers such as Asus and you have a collective that deals in computers, in technology.

Not so Apple. Cupertino asks what we dream of as consumers. The answers are brought to us courtesy of the technology but it’s the concept we buy into.

So how can we hold Apple in anything other than the best of regards?

Like Google, their image is one of purest ‘cool’ – if cool were a commodity worth billions and capable of keeping us in a blissful state of perpetual purchasing.

And the Google analogy isn’t accidental or merely convenient either.

Both companies are currently engaged in activities that have far reaching and potentially damaging consequences for freedom. They show us, in dramatic tones, just how far out of touch our notion of the Nation State really is. We may gripe about unelected officials being handed authority but really it is Google, Apple and, to a lesser extent even Amazon that we should really be examining.

In the pursuit of creating the ultimate in companion devices, Apple are aiming above the heads of Amazon and Google. A single device upon which we can buy books, films, music and games is a fine old dream as far as consumer dreams go but it comes with provisos attached.

Controlling the gateways to these entertainment hubs is more than just savvy business, it’s a political and economic wakeup call. The iPhone has stimulated enormous activity in development circles and led to Apple’s latest $3.3 billion dollar profit. I’ll just qualify that; first quarter profit. That’s a great achievement and the global economy must be, to no small extent, thankful.

But what longterm damage is it doing? What affect will it have on bricks and mortar retail? Unlike the threat of Internet shopping, Apple have created a system by which there need be no rival shops.

Their proprietary approach means that each of those 2 billion Apps we’ve all been busy downloading (and happily agreeing to call Apps) have been downloaded through Apple. There can be no competition to sell them just as there can be no competition to put them up for sale; even the type of application on sale to us is tightly controlled by Apple.

Of course that’s not to say it is only Apple doing this. There is competition, of a sort. Amazon is trying to control the way in which we access books – an aim which could now fail thanks to Apple who want the whole publishing pie. Google too, want in on that and it remains to be seen who will win out. Google are interesting because they have the veneer of open source to make us believe their motives are somehow purer. The recent spats over the book agreement reveals a different side.

But why does it matter? We have to buy our books, our music, our pleasures somewhere don’t we?

We do. We also need to work somewhere. Imagine a world devoid of high streets; where there is no HMV or Waterstones. A great world perhaps but they have, between them, mopped up the choice we used to have.

Independant stores are a dying breed, concentrating the hunt for jobs into fewer and fewer hands. The benefit to local economies dies with them and it’s not so much of a stretch to see a world, ten years hence, where the big shops are just online. At best.

We’ve been here before of course. The Industrial Revolution has lessons to learn from in this regard of the dangers of concentrating power in too few hands.

But we survived that, right?

Maybe.

Huge areas of poverty, inequality and unemployement followed the Industrial Revolution and it gave rise to the concept of the sweatshop, whether it be in a factory or across an entire continent. Once we allow our consumer desires to be our needs then little stands in the way of making that a reality. Once we allow Apple to be the one stop shop we ease the way for any measure which can streamline that process even further.

It doesn’t stop there either. We have already seen Amazon withdraw books for sale after they’ve been bought, reaching into the digital home and removing a publication (ironically it was 1984) from the Kindle (remember that?). Can that ever be a good thing? It’s an activity we surely associate with repressive Nations.

And that’s just what can happen to existing publications. It’s not a work of fiction that deciding what can and can’t be published in the first place has terrible ramifications.

Much applause has been given to the return of the bedroom coder. With the iPhone we saw game development break away from the huge coding conglomerates that had built up around the walls of the super publishers. The bedroom coder was back and that meant more power, more control and ultimately more money in the hands of the craftsman. But this is somewhat misleading. Because where is the self-publisher? The sole coder has full control of his own vision, up to the point when Apple becomes involved. Then it is judge and jury time. You’ve funded yourself, you’ve been creative, they say. Now it’s time to accept our payment terms – no negotiation, no choice. And that’s if we decide your creative vision is appropriate and in line with ours.

Again, we’ve seen this before. Apple aren’t reinventing the wheel, merely tightening the reins. Walmart has come under frequent fire for using it’s commercial position to dictate content to artists.

So are Apple switching on Skynet here?are we witnessing the end of control and the demise of the Nation State?

Yes.

There is, however, the chance that it will fail.

The open standards of the world wide web could be the only challenge to the monopolization of data. As long as Apple keep a web browser as part of their devices the opportunity for new ideas to seep through because anybody can publish on the Internet. Any ideas, any music, any games can all be delivered free to air through the old WWW.

But even the Internet is beginning to look a bit too unwieldy, a bit too big. How much longer before we’d rather use the Amazon App than the Amazon website? How much longer until our research is done within a single, cleverly cross-reference App with access to every book available through Apple? How much longer before it’s just easier and less confusing to altogether skip the Internet as we understand it today?

In the end we tend to take the path of least resistance and maybe that’s the problem. Who will step in whilst we get swept along? Will we see a repeat of the anti-trust suits that marred Microsoft’s rise to dominance in the 80s and 90s and in which case will they be fought on a national level or will we see the emergence of the World State in a bid to counterbalance the power.

Whatever happens with the iSlate, iPad or iTablet – we shouldn’t just suck it and see.

©2010 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

Should he stay or should he go?

This blog has bumbled along for long enough. We’ve covered all the really juicy bits from campaign work to design to reading and cooking. Along the way we’ve had a discussion with Dave Trott about Twitter and looked at the future of print and the importance of the idea. Nothing, no corner, no stone, has been left out in the first year of the blog.

And yet something is missing.

So it’s time to kill off a major character.

And we need your help to do it.

Because that’s what we do now isn’t it? Ask ask ask. Or rather we tell people we are asking because it’s all about social marketing these days, which means conversations and for that we need feedback. We say we will do what you want.

It’s as if the concept of the social conversation has supplanted simple, good ideas. As if the only way to lead is from behind. As if creativity must first be tested and endorsed before it can be valid.

I’m reminded of all those ads which tell me my teeth are my own so I should brush them my way. Or my bank is my own so I should invest in it my way. Or that I should drink, eat, smoke and murder in exactly the way I should want to. Because I’m in charge and these helpful toothpastes/snacks/axes are there for me to use any way I want to.

The ads fall over themselves to not just include us but to follow us and agree with anything we might say.

I know they are my teeth but I won’t brush them my way, I’ll brush them the way a dental expert has told me to. Because that makes sense.

There used to be ads which led the way. Which set trends alight and had us all slapping people or chanting a mantra.

They pushed a good idea.

And people respond to a good idea.

When it comes to advertising, make your own decisions and lead the way. Your way.

©2010 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

The offending phrase came about during a conversation about, well, conversations. It must have been one of those days because only hours earlier I’d read several blogs all orbiting around the same topic. Maybe it’s like suddenly being attuned to adverts for baby products just hours after “an accident”.

Who knows.

All talk of “conversations” in marketing makes me look to my wallet. Like being doorstepped, it is a term thrown about far too easily and attempts to convert us all to the cause of “social marketing”.

The “conversation” people have a cause. A social cause.

They believe that marketing MUST change. That it MUST turn away from the old pagan ways and embrace the conversation.

Some issues certainly require such conversations; political parties would be well advised to start a few with voters – and actually be interested in the other side of said conversation. Toilet paper manufacturers however, well, I’d rather you didn’t talk. Just pass it through the door please. All I need to know is are you selling tracing paper or will your product do what I need it to.

The proposition is simple: I have a product that I think you’d like. Please buy it.

Answers on the back of the cheque.

©2010 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.