Baz Luhrmann is clever

I have been writing recently about thought particles (and here / here).  The concept that ideas can be understood as a type of chemistry.  That a flow of thought particles can be exchanged and remixed between people into new and different forms.

We think we experience the world in absolutes i.e. we see things as they are and feel them as they are meant to feel.  The job of the film maker would therefore be to simply try and recreate the world as it really is in the most accurate way possible - do this and it really will feel like the past, or a different country or a relationship between two people.

What this forgets is that the only kind of reality is our own; it is unique to the individual.  I did not live that version of the past,  may never have been to that country nor experienced that kind of relationship. 

In other words simulating something as it seems to be might not be the best way to communicate how it actually is.

This is where thought particles come in.  For the creative person they are a toolkit of raw materials that can be fused and combined into any configuration they see fit, to transmit a meaningful experience.  It may not end up looking, sounding or feeling like it might have done in real life but could be a far stronger, more captivating, and then strangely somehow more real than pure imitation.

I think that Baz Luhrmann on some level works in this way to create things more compelling than reason would allow.  Instead of trying to copy a story from life he seems to play with the ingredients and mix them into forms that should not make sense.  

For example to understand the past you do not have to have it accurately recreated; this might not tell you anything.  Nirvana may be better for bringing to life the atmosphere of the 19th century than the music of the time itself.

Before I saw him interviewed I thought that his style could be simply a kooky way of seeing the world (similar to Russel Brand,) that looks strange to us because the cogs driving it are out of sync with those of the rest of us.  In other words creative flair.  Having seen him describe the process I now think that its more structured and rigorous and thought through than this.  A good argument for this would be the amount of time it takes to make a film (Australia has been 6 years in the making.)  He seems to be engineering the experience that he wants to create not like an artist but more like a chemist.  What if you wanted to strip down the individual 'particles' of your film from light, to colour, words, landscape, sound, etc... and then think of them only as components or raw materials, taking as little as possible for granted while doing it?  What if then you re-configured them meticulously into the unique personal experience that you wanted to gift to the audience? Then it would be little surprise that you might end up on the project for a pretty long time.  

 

Thought Chemisty in action

When I was young one of my parents favourite shows was LA law. The theme tune was pretty memorable and was composed by a bloke who is apparently the maestro of TV and film scores. According to the book from the last post he had a methodical approach to how they are constructed. In the case of LA LAW the alto saxophone represented that the show was meant to be racy. The french horn was meant to be related to the formality of the legal profession and the heavy backbeat was meant to evoke the intensity and imposing backdrop of LA. In other words it was a formula constructed to carry meaning between the writer and the audience. When we assess any kind of creative output i suppose its this that we are trying to decode i.e. what did the artist want to say with this painting or alternatively what evidence has he unwittingly poured into the picture about his state of mind that we can interpret now that the moment has been fixed in time. Maybe these two scenarios represent the difference between strategy and creativity. One seeks to construct things based on an understanding of the formula and the other gets to the answer more subconsciously or intuitively without every trying to deconstruct the process. Both approaches whether formulaic or organic represent two potential routes to the same end point. In other words could it be that the difference between strategy and creativity is not the output or the function its just the mindset used to find the answer. I never much understood the splitting of the two functions in many types of company - maybe this is why.  

Incomplete things

I've been trying to think of an idea or theme that hangs off the principle that there is an inbuilt incompleteness or randomness to lots of different processes, if only to prove the thinking behind the last post.  

So here goes...

If you think about it deliberate mistakes are what allows life to develop.  If everything was created perfectly then a new or different kind of perfect would be impossible.  Mutations are a good thing to help adaptaton.  

Or think back to chemistry lessons and you will remember that its the atoms that have an extra electron or one missing that are most happy to react and be transformed into something new.

Its not unreasonalbe to expect that culture might work in the same way.  A perfectly rounded story like a fairy tale is far less likely to create a new thought than something more unresolved like a mysterious painting.   

Someone on TV the other day said 'the media abhors a vacuum,' to justify the idea that if there is no useful leads on a big story then the press will naturally end up filling the void with conjecture and hearsay.  I expect that our minds work like this as well.  If something comes with room for interpretation or completion or a bit missing then the natural reation must surely be to close the loop and fuse this open ended structure with the Lego of other thoughts and ideas already there.  This also seems to ring true with modern teaching methods that do not teach facts and absolutes but processes and themes that have more of an evolutionary capability.

In other words development comes more easily when things are not fully ressolved which is why if you were designing a system you would leave a few pieces missing before passing it on to the next person.   

More blurred line thinking...

Integration is something that planner types love to talk about and I’m probably one of the worst. Having said that its one of those ideas that can seem to rule the world when applied in big blurred lines to more interesting things than communications.

For example researchers of the brain and how it produces conscious experience have started to think of it as a process that comes about from the integration of all of the major areas and the connection between them. I think of it like one of those transparent jelly fish where there is a constant flow of circulating pulsating lights – as long as the flow keeps going between all parts of the structure then consciousness keeps getting produced.

If integration processes are fundamental to our orientation to time and space then it is probably a good way to understand lots of things.

Sunday I was running but trying harder than this to keep up with the In Our time podcast hosted by Melvin Bragg. It was about how mathematics had had to step back from its quest to know everything in absolute terms via a movement to create a set of immovable laws. The realization was that even in pretty simple sets of numbers there were paradoxes that could not be resolved.

If I am honest I don’t really know that much about what they were on about but I do know that the implication was that Maths had to make do with an incomplete understandings of things.

Later I went to see the new Cohen Brothers film. Like most of their films I came out not knowing that well how much I liked it as so many of the traditional rules and reference points about stories were missing. I had to make do with an incomplete understanding. But then in this case I think it was the point. The film portrayed people from different strands of society seemingly bouncing off each other in incoherent and chaotic ways as if there couldn’t really be design for the way that any of it worked out.

In between these two chaotic sources of words and pictures that were swirling around together in my head I listened to Evan Davies' podcast which was about the psychology of the money market as part of the diagnosis of its current dysfunctional behavior. My understanding was again incomplete and I stopped listening in places but I think I get the main argument that the random factors inherent in the market system allow us to know little more than it will go one way or the other – in the long term the rest is chance.

So today the world seemed to be telling me in different ways that there is in everything an un-accountable element that can’t be weaned out of even simple numbers.  Three incomplete experiences that each in their own way conveyed the fundamental incomplete nature of things. They had each been separate and out there until now when they were all fed in to one integrating process in my head. I am pretty sure that no-one else had all of these in all of the same contexts and even if they did they would definitely have been different to the sum total of every other experience that had gone in before.

Therein is the potential for a new original thought to be re-circulated back into the process. The integration and blurring of experiences is the construction process of new ideas.

Not that I have any yet but I’m working on it : )

Designed to sell

Something that tries to do one thing but that actually causes the opposite effect should not really happen that often you think about it.  Its ironic... literally.  It s a bit of a balls up to have to explain to someone that the measures that you introduced didn't have the desired effect.  Nor did they have any other kind of positive effect.  In fact the only effect they had was the exact and total mirror image of what you set out to achieve.  Its does not make for a good story.

In simple terms why does this happen?  You could put it down to trying to hard.  If you really want something to happen then chasing that alone would actually preoccupy you from spending time and effort on the things that were most likely to be productive towards that goal.  

A good example would be that it takes men at least until they are 25 and possibly later to realise that getting really drunk is not necessary the best way to attract women.

You can draw the same parallel in art.  The harder you try to create a commercial success the less chance you have of creating a master piece.  Most of the worlds greatest and most valuable art first changed hands for a pittance.  

To some extent the same is true of marketing and business.  The more directly that you try and  chase sales the more this goal becomes difficult to attain.  The most successful companies are often the ones that are led by a bigger strategic or personal vision rather than by following the market blindly in the pursuit of immediate sales success.  But this is a difficult position to uphold in a meeting where you have to convince people that you need to take on a big new cost or turn down a big new contract not because you know that this will work best in the long run, but that you think it just might.  If you own the company you can do it; or if you are given the same kind of freedom.  However most kinds of corporate entities don't work like that.

The only answer that i can put forward to encourage the kind of bravery and counter intuitive thinking is a strategy that is so well ingrained and articulated that it would be unthinkable to shift off course just by a little.  Every company needs to know its purpose or reason for being with as much conviction as any personal vision that an individual might have.  Once you have this you would need to stick to it even until the point that it seems to be leading you in the wrong direction.  If the company purpose or reason for being is a good enough one then this logic says it should come good in the end.

 

Status Anxiety

I have read/heard a lot recently about status anxiety without actually getting around to the book of the same name.  To my understanding this can be summarised as the innate unhappiness and insecurity that goes with the pursuit of modern notions of success symbolised in things like a big car, or a big impressive sounding job title.  Maybe its a coincidence or I'm noticing it more but one article or book on the subject seems to lead to the next.  This ranges from recent best sellers like 'Affluenza,' back into the history the human mind like Fromm and Jung.  

I think it was on Faris' blog that it was discussed that the point of communication is to make people a little happier than they were before.  This is also not so far from the ideas in 'The Experience Economy' that say that we have now gone beyond commodities, goods and services to a point where smart companies create differentiation by creating scintillating theatrical experiences out of the shops, staff and other components that make up their business.  But as symptoms such as status anxiety would suggest happiness is not as boundless as capitalism. If you buy into the research presented in 'Affluenza' you see that the more westernised and the more commercialised the country the more likely it is that the people who live there will live a life disconnected from a real authentic joy of life.  Markets like China are emotionally on the crest of a wave on a promise of the riches of capitalism but are just a few points on the curve away from the US or the UK towards this trend.  In other words its not working.  The saying goes that if it ain't broke then don't fix it and anyone with a different POV about the best way to organise a way of life would struggle (even harder) to get any traction whatsoever for a different approach if this was not true.  

So while we are suffering a slow decline in our mental health and well being, and the financial markets that underpin it are suffering a more chaotic form of madness perhaps it is time for some calm reflection.  One approach to treating physiological problems is to treat the illness as a malfunction or an alien intrusion that needs to be forcefully removed in order to restore health.  Perhaps a more enlightened way to look at it is to see the behaviour as a useful alarm bell that reveal clues about how to redress the more fundamental problem that lies underneath.  

There is currently a growing commitment from many different types of business to change the way they do things in order to make them more sustainable in the future.  But i can't help but think that the starting point should not be exactly the same product aimed at the same person for the same reason, but now made with magical new techniques that mean that the process is not harmful.  If you were starting from scratch you would not end up there. Instead you would start with some more basic question like... what can we make/do/produce that will make people the most happy which, if all this thinking is right, would lead to entirely different outcomes.  Cracking what these are would be the next industrial revolution (by a different name.)

Counter intuitive thinking and a $1000 incentive to quit the company

It is not very often that you hear the company where a person works described in a really enthusiastic and positive light. This could be part of the national cynicism of the British but I’m sure its pretty universal. Its one of the few bastions of a sense of community feeling to be able to share in the berating of the place where you work on a par with things like reality TV contestants.

So what if your company started to offer you incentives to leave. If you really meant all of the moans you'd take them up in a shot. Otherwise you would have to start to admit that actually you have got it pretty good and on balance its where you want to be.

Zappos, which for people outside the US is the Amazon of shoes, offers all new recruits $1000 to leave after they have completed their initial training (from an interview on the HBR ideaCast.) And as the company has been growing so has the amount offered to quit. The result being that the people who stay do so after interrogating and renewing their conviction, and the one’s that don’t have the desire or the energy leave the company with its full blessing and something to tide them over while they think about their next move. It makes perfect sense knowing that one of the big problems with big companies is the lower concentrations of motivated and passionate people than in small companies.  However I had to hear the explanation before I fully agreed and understood. Therein is the problem because anything that needs explanation to sound sensible is always going to struggle in the modern company where ideas have to survive based on only the partial attention of all the people necessary to carry and execute them.

It’s a far harder sell to get people to implement the opposite of what seems to make sense rather than the obvious. Even less so in consumer facing decisions such as brand communications which often come from outside partners who have even more incentives to put simplicity first. There must be plenty of instances where the opposite of what seems to make sense is a much better option…

i.e.

-Grown-ups telling young people not to do things like smoke and drink usually has the opposite effect. Wouldn’t it be better to do something like brand them as brilliant fun for the ‘sad’ and middle aged.

-The hard sell also puts up barriers rather than takes them down… why not communicate how hard your product is to find or make your audience go to special lengths to get hold of it.

-By selling sex to men to promote a product like deodorant (aka LYNX,) you are essentially part of the problem that stops young men getting what they really want i.e. attracting and affirming the behaviours of the kind of men who put pictures of topless women on their wall. Wouldn’t it be better to be the kind of brand that helps men appreciate that if they really really like women that much then would it not be much better to avoid doing things that repel them like giant images of Carman Electra in their uni flat. This may not seem counter intuitive to most women but to the 18 year old male and the marketing director it might well be.

The glory of the irrational

It’s a bit of a contradiction that the things that I find most captivating in culture are the ones that should never have happened.

As someone who works in strategy it is quite often easy to see the insights and read the motives behind the things that you see around you from ad campaigns to party political manoeuvres to public art. Generally the logical path that strategic thinking guides you down will land you in a territory that you can read retrospectively and learn to expect the outcomes prospectively. Ironic then that the most interesting things, to me at least, are those where it appears like there was some kind of strategic malfunction or mutation so that what you are seeing logically should never have come about because it just shouldn’t work. It’s even better when the outcome clearly does work. Does this mean that a strategy free project has a better chance of producing something special? Maybe in the chaos there will be lots of costly misses but the hits will be more original and culture changing.

My view would be that this is not the case. Instead I would look at it the other way round and say that if something does work in its execution then there is always a reason. The people who created it may not have fully appreciated this for themselves, more likely they were just living it out. As an example an artist such as Picasso or more likely still a band such as the Beetles could probably not have explained at the time why their contribution was so important as we can now. But these reasons why, are real and can be decoded. This may be done very badly or the theory develop over time, but still there is somewhere a truth about why something had the effect that it did.

If this truth is out there when we look back in hindsight then it must also be possible to seek it out in advance and act according to what you think it must be. That’s what any strategy should be looking for. The fact that so often the strategy gets it wrong or worse still seems to net out in the same ‘seemingly’ logical place as every other attempt is not a problem with the ambition and is instead just human error. Being ridiculous for the sake of it, or different from anything else, or exactly the opposite of the likely strategic response, could all be good recommendations. If they could be justified against all the insight and information available they could justify a freakish offspring that confuses or amazes or stands out from the general order of life. In an environment where it is getting harder and harder to be heard and people more and more adept at demoting things of low importance from conscious view, its not a bad line to take. So here’s to the sublime in the ridiculous.

Above is my first example. In a world that acts upon the intellegence of the lowest common demoninator and that shys away from every possible issue or threat that someone raises in a meeting, the chance of getting a piece of public art signed off that is based on a chaotic confustion of traffic signals in the middle of a round-about should never have made it to fruition. But happily it did.

Brand friendships... sweet or sour?

I think brands working together to create their own stories could be a bit of a threat to traditional advertising in the future. The thing is that a great meeting of companies can create mutual benefits and its own news where, in the best examples, very little communication is needed. You can do much of it virtually for free. And as they say in groups of three one always gets a left out. I can see how this might be the agencies who have until now been the owners or at least champions of brand value creation capabilities. Think apple + Nike which is a great example of 1+1= 3,4 or even 5. So what would be the rules? Can it work out for just any brand pairing and lead to consumers seeing the value?

A friend of mine sent me a link damning the launch of Opera Mini (web browser but shrunk down for mobile phones,) which was launched via a partnership with Mini. He is a cynical journalist so I thought I would give it the benefit of the doubt. On the surface there is a natural fit between what they want to say to people i.e. 'small and cool,' but actually there is nothing in common at all in the user experience i.e. web browsing on your phone is probably an arrestable offense if making a call gets you three points and a fine. It sits as close to the surface as you can get but has nothing more to offer up.

Whereas another example that I found recently which on the surface seems ridiculous, sits perfectly as a brand partnership when you boil it down.
Poetry publishing and Breakfast cereal..? Now there's lateral thinking. After a number of consecutive years sitting down day after day to read the same ingredients list, the same nutritional data, and the slightly varying antics of an advertising character relic, how refreshing or even enlightening it would be to wake up to better appreciation of poetry. And all this in one of the few moments where you are contained and rooted enough to give it whirl.

So then what would the learning be?

Choose your friends by starting with the consumer experience that you deliver, and then ask whether or not this new introduction would in itself add to or enhance this experience. If not then you won't create additional value, you will just create hot air and no balloon. Mini-Opera (unless I have missed something,) is an example of this. And while you are at it you could look at pretty much any marketing decision you make through this lens!

WEB 3.0. The synchronistic web

When writing the last post on speechification which is a site that curates spoken word content from around the internet and offers it in a number of downloadable formats, I was thinking about the bigger principle of what this represents. There is something modern about the way that it works by adding a qualitative service to the endless content that is available. It seems to be indicative of a new kind of value that the evolution of the internet ushers in i.e. content is now pretty much free in many cases but to create a special collection of this content that is selected in a very personal way is beyond any functional search tool and becomes a rare commodity.

A few clicks later through John Dodds' site I came to a post that sets out an entire system of these new kind of products called 'Generatives.'

This is the one that pertains to the behaviour of Speechifcation

Findability -- Where as the previous generative qualities reside within creative digital works, findability is an asset that occurs at a higher level in the aggregate of many works. A zero price does not help direct attention to a work, and in fact may sometimes hinder it. But no matter what its price, a work has no value unless it is seen; unfound masterpieces are worthless. When there are millions of books, millions of songs, millions of films, millions of applications, millions of everything requesting our attention -- and most of it free -- being found is valuable.

The others cited included, immediacy, personalisation, interpretation, authenticity, accessibility, embodiment, patronage.

It seems to be happening more and more in the digital space that just when you are thinking about something you randomly find the answer. In this case it did seem quite random but as we set up our own connections better and better and some of the above generative values develop I can see this Synchronistic way that that the internet seems to find you what you are looking for will happen more and more. This is pretty close to a description of what I have read about web 3.0 as the Semantic web. I.e. it will be able to read and understand content and thus make hugely more meaningful connections rather than creating links based on simply matching keywords together . I prefer the synchronistic description as it relates to how it will feel rather than how it works and makes it sound like something to really look forward to.

As for a new kind of generative value in a world where everything else is free - I am going to sleep on that one but it sounds like a pretty big idea!

Increase in numbers who play on the 'Video Games'

I came across this today and found it quite sweet somehow. Its the use of the word 'the' that looks totally out of place. It reminds me of the film tron which was a world where the 'computers' were full of individual people called 'files' which just so happened to look like their 'users,' (just one file per user of course.) I wonder what words we are finding awkward and putting into sentences in slightly unusual ways, that we will look back at fondly seeing almost naivety in how little we were to know that they were going to become such ubiquitous norms of everyday life. My guess' would be that we might find books called;

'How to master the carbon costs' i.e. the idea that we did not equate the carbon cost of every action will seem quaint but also almost blind.

'How to master the virtual worlds.' (I know second life has flopped but when the interface, application, and integration is all sorted I think this will just end up becoming an more dynamic way of accessing the internet.)

Any more for any more?

The WAGS vs Paris Hilton

I was just reading an article in Fast Company where Alex Bogusky (the name that gets dropped from Crispin Porter,) was being interviewed about 'brand fame.' His favourite example of branding genius was Paris Hilton in her ability to stay in the news without bringing anything to the table. The argument goes that as an agency what they look to do is take a brand and personify it a little then make it famous. BBH used to talk about the 'fame factory,' but I think they have dropped it now? I agree that if you don't make news and are just relying on hammering a message using traditional media metrics then you are nowhere, but also that Fame is its own end. As Paris demonstrates perfectly its being seen without substance. I am not sure treating brands like people is a good idea. It sounds a bit fake personal.

My choice would be the WAGS (In-ger-land!) They represent a cultural invention - a lifestyle which denotes a behavior i.e. a WAG is something you can become. They have even helpfully created a video handbook to how you can do this. You could of course argue that this is implicit in the fantasy lifestyle of Paris Hilton but as a lesson for branding the WAG shows us how to invent a lifestyle which could change how people behave and hence consume whereas Paris just shows us how to become a famous person or famous brand but without how to use this to change anything... Or in this case change it back if we put our minds to it.

Reinventing the Medium

Van Gogh suffered his entire life to try and force his way through the outward appearances of life into a new form of expression captured through art. In doing this he started everything we call modern art (FYI I have been watching Simon Schama DVD's.)

I also just caught a moment of Tim Burton being interviewed by Melvin Bragg talking about Van Gogh paintings as an inspiration. There is an obvious comparison in the way that he makes films that reveal themselves in the feelings and atmosphere that they create rather than the stories that they tell (FYI I have just been to see the Sweeney Todd film.)

Apart from it being more interesting to alter and interfere with the medium than to simply add to its body of comparable content, there must be other benefits. Well change the medium and culture can change with it; the two are part of the same system. Then you can start to work it back the other way. In other words to think about a change in culture you can think about the right change in the mediums that shape it to bring it about.

"Prada doesn’t do participation"

That’s something that I have heard a few times, (not sure why it tends to be Prada that gets selected,) as the example of a luxury brand that proves the rule that the conventional branding model of shaping an aspirational out of reach image is alive and well. The implication being that the new school collaborative kind of model is either a fad, isn’t to be trusted, or works in some situations but is not for everybody. As far as I can tell there are a four ways to assess this if you assume that a) Prada does not do participation marketing and b) this is something that serves them pretty well as they are generally successful.

1- Nor should it. As soon as it does then the distance, exclusivity and special-ness of the brand becomes dilute and less well… Prada
2- The new type of brand is made by communities and collaborative techniques is right only for the new school brands but the old school brands should stick to what they know and what has made them successful till now.
3- It varies by category. Some categories are driven by image and in these aspirational advertising is still the order of the day. For everyone else consumers can and should take centre stage.
4- Collaboration is universally the new currency and even though there are multiple currencies in circulation at the moment the older image driven approaches will become less and less effective

My tendency is to be warmer to the descriptions further down the list though as ever there is no certain answer. I can’t help thinking that the collaborative approach is just the new market situation and therefore affects everyone.

So the task is to find your place in the new landscape. And everyone’s place would be different. For high fashion maybe it would not start by asking ‘how do we come off our pedestal and start to take our lead from what consumers say and want to do by way of getting involved,’ that would not sit very well. It would probably start the other way round and stem from the brand view of the world.

A good starting point would be to think about all of the potential exclusive experiences that the brand could possibly deliver. The better these experiences were the more likely people would want to get involved. I watched a programme once about Haute Couture where it showed the treatment that the top fashion houses have given to its best customers over the years e.g. hand painted sketches of individual new pieces with samples of the materials attached were hand delivered.

I’m sure a modern day equivalent would be pretty easy… i.e. famously the man from Prada delivers individual photo prints of the new collection, is essentially a creative piece of Direct Mail. The select group of people that receive this special treatment amongst a whole host of others would be as useful an ally as the communities that fuel any of the new school inclusive brands.

Customization Workshop

I have become a bit addicted to customization sites (not buying them always, January and all,) and I'm pretty chuffed with the results... but then I would be.

PUMA even lets you choose the materials and has the strongest idea behind it - a 'mongolian shoe barbecue.'

Vans is more simple but cheap $50 would buy you ether of these!
There must be a little business idea in the notion that everyone wants bespoke but not everyone is creative. A customization destination could bring all the brands together, offer a tailoring service, allow people to rate designs before they bought (MTV presented a trend towards every purchase being pre-approved by the social network to avoid mistakes,) a gallery and special guest designs. Someone else will have to judge if I should be offering my services or using the service myself!

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Nicked this presentation from think small. It gives the argument that a lot of people seem to be talking about for DOING stuff rather than SAYING stuff. The agency that created the presentation only think about communication as a physical application. I am all into the theory but the challenge I would say is to show where it fits in the great client marketing production!

Planners can make Movies II

MOVIE CONVENTION
- Reflective of existing trends i.e. if there is a new technology like 'computers' then films will reflect back on the trend i.e. films like Tron and the Lawnmower man. In the same way traditional advertising will pick up on a trend like skateboarding and latch on.

PLANNERS PERSPECTIVE
- We (brands and agencies) seek to bring about new trends and lifestyles that fit in with our products i.e. Reebok famously invented a new way to work out with the step system. Bisto tried to get us back around the table for meals once a week, Super-clubs created a whole new going out trend.

The first is a mirror, the second is an idea. We can relate to the first but the second captures our imagination. Could a film not define a new lifestyle idea and then build outwards from there?

e.g. the mods and the rockers are a cultural trend where youth groups split off - an imagined modern day fork between existing youth culture trends could be an interesting idea to investigate.

If you believed a film could affect real outcomes you would probably need a more positive spin on youth invention. Our culture favours the young, what would be the sequence of events and ideas that flipped this coin towards culture pointing up to old people rather than down to spolit teenagers - it already happens that way in some parts of the world!

Lets take over the movie business

Seems like a reckless title but its not without precedent. A while ago I watched a documentary called ‘the men from the agency,’ which tells the story about how advertising transformed itself from being a basic marketing function into mass market wonderland of glamorous brands and lifestyles. It then went on to tell the story of how the main protagonists had learnt so precisely how to amaze, entrance and engage an audience through their skill in making great advertising, that they would be able to remake the conventions of film making and create blockbuster movies instead of blockbuster ads; people like Ridley Scott and others. These days many people in the industry still believe in the blockbuster TV spot in the same way as these soon to be film makers did in the 70’s and 80’s. But a lot has happened since then (e.g. web 2.0) and so many other people believe in a totally different starting place. So imagine if we were to apply some of these new rules to the film business which arguably is stuck in a bit of a rut. For example, our current starting place is not to sit down and write the script of a TV ad. My little knowledge/guess work about the film business tells me that people probably wouldn’t think to start anywhere else than to sit down and start to write the script.

So planners think they have nailed a shed load of new principles as they refer to advertising; now over to Hollywood and to try their hand at the movie business. Would they be able to do the same thing as the 'men from the agency,' and unlock the key to a new way. If only they weren’t all introverts! Or maybe instead they will turn their attention to something of more substantial importance like the need for green ideas as per John Grants blog and latest post.

In the mean time here is a first stab at going all Hollywood...

A film starts with the convention of the plot first. I’m pretty sure that from this basic outline, there are a number of rounds of discussions before the film gets made around the potential audience that it will attract.

We as (consumer centric) planners start first with the consumer experience that we are trying to deliver above even the story itself. Traditionally a film would investigate a theme such as becoming an adult and leaving home and all of the trepidation and excitement that goes with it, by telling us a story about somebody going through it. A (consumer centric) planning perspective would be to think about how to bring to life the experience, my own experience, of this coming of age process. So for example, if the defined audience was a teenager of the 80’s, the music would be a journey through the emotive and angst ridden tracks of that era even where this was not necessarily in tune with the era or even the plot. The style and content would itself mature within the duration of the film. Cultural references relevant to the experience of the time would run throughout even if they seemed out of context with other elements.

(Incidentally I think Baz Lurhman films already contain some of these kind of elements I.e. Shakespeare meets MTV)

More to follow...

New Years Resolutions

1- Get my blog up and running and start using it regularly. This one speaks for itself (getting other people to read it regularly may take longer but you have to start somewhere)

2 - Only watch pre-recorded TV - Whenever I read about people who have found great success in a particular field, one thing that they seem to have in common is that they watch very little television. If I'm honest TV ends up being a pretty unrewarding thing to do in the evening. If you only watch stuff from the hard drive of a digibox then you are effectively saying the only things you will watch are the ones that you are bothered about enough to tape in advance. This is relevant to the context of this blog because it means that the TV ad has ceased to exist as a way of marketing to me when you factor in the FF button. I know a news presenter who does not have a TV. I'm not sure if there are any contradictions in this but for a comm's planner it just adds a personal example of the belief that brand communications are going to have to work harder than taking advantage of people's evening laziness to get through to them.

3- Do an audit of my carbon footprint and come up with a plan to reduce it over time. This is a personal and a professional one. Personally it makes sense that if you acknowledge that there is an issue to address and that you are part of the problem, then not doing anything about it is not really a comfortable option. But one of the main triggers of 'why now,' is that I want to become more involved in defining and growing sustainability products and services for my company. The first step of doing this has to be a personal one. One of the themes that will emerge through-out this blog is the idea of blurred lines; between brands and everyday life, between companies and brands, between brands and consumers etc... This is an early example of this as showing the blurred lines between personal and professional life. The natural question that springs to my mind here is this:

Why if for green marketing you have to look to your personal behavior and conduct first before you go and make recommendations to other people and companies, does the same truth not exist for any other type of marketing?

For example as per resolution number 2, can I really make a recommendation about an interuptive advertising solution when I myself choose to avoid advertising whenever I can. And if I don't want advertising from a brand what do I want? I think if we asked more of these kind of questions then everything would seem a lot simpler. Anyhow I will post the results of the green audit just to show how bad my starting point is I expect! Hopefully this will make me feel able to post sustainability examples and ideas and feel like part of the solution. While at the same time take part in what many people are saying is going to be bigger than the internet in its impact on business.