mediation

An opportunity not to be missed: what Tiffany Shlain's 'Connected' means for brands as the internet transforms us and our world

so last night, thanks to Disco Davo (thanks Disco), I was lucky enough to be amongst a cinema of people gathered to watch an Aussie-first and unique screening of a movie called Connected: An Autoblogography about Love, Death & Technology.

organised through social media club sydney in conjunction with AMP's AmplifyFestival, Tiffany Shlain's (@tiffanyshlain) film is a narrative on how the internet is fundamentally changing us, interspersed with a personal account of a year in her life.  the result is a fascinating polemic on the nature of our interconnectedness as a species.

much was well-trodden territory for this blog ... but there were two aspects I hadn't heard before that I found particularly interesting.  I hope that Shlain won't object to me sharing here...

one, Shlain described how in her father's book 'The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image' he made the connection between how the invention of the written / printed word had coincided with the rise of men in social, political and commercial circles.  he argued that this was because the written word is processed by the left side of the brain, which is more male.

last century's 'iconic revolution' (Shlain's term) - which saw imagery and images became a more predominant form of communication - coincided with increased predominance of females in society.  images are processed by the right side of the brain which is ... more female.

the interesting conclusion is that the internet, with it's heady mix of words and images, is processed more of less equally by both sides of the brain, and is therefore a mass-communication channel that isn't biased towards one gender or the other...

the other aspect I found fascinating is how the brain and our body chemistry is predisposed to both connectedness and the pleasure hit we get from the stream of information on the internet.  when we connect, we release oxytocin - which evokes feelings of contentment, reductions in anxiety, and feelings of calmness and security.  Wikipedia notes that 'many studies have already shown a correlation of oxytocin with human bonding, increases in trust, and decreases in fear' ... so the more we connect, the less anxious we are, and the internet allows us to feel more connected than ever before...

dopamine is released when we experience something pleasurable, and encourages us to keep performing the action ad-infinitum (as there's no diminishing return from dopamine).  Shlain's interesting observation is that - as dopamine is released when we get a 'hit' of new information ... we are becoming addicted to the internet (or more specifically the infinite content that it gives us access to)

if you get a chance to catch the movie I urge you to do so ... it's a fascinating and beautiful experience.  and it left me thinking about the role of brands and advertising in Shlain's interconnected and interdependent world.  from one perspective advertising and media fuelled the worst of the excessive consumption society that is now placing sustained pressure on our environment...

...but on the other I can't help but think that Shlain's hypothesis presents us with a clear opportunity, an opportunity defined by a simple question that I can't shake.  in an inter-dependent world where billions of people increasingly connect, communicate and coordinate as communities, why do we continue to so readily seek to engage with individuals?

in an inter-dependent world, the only thing that matters is shared agendas and communities of interest.  and more specifically, what matters most is an opportunity for brands to fuel - rather than interrupt - their interconnectedness and interdependence.

its utility, but its more than that ... its potentially brands becoming a key and fundamental part of a dopamine and oxytocin-fuelled revolution in how we live on earth...  it's tantalising enough to warrant asking what you would want of the brands with which you work?  ...  for them to be part of humanity's next giant leap, or reconciled to history as part of the iconic revolution that for a while so influenced our culture and behaviour?

Marketing Movies, or not: how three Austrlian Movies failed to market themselves

Ryan Kwanten in Griff The Invisible: invisible by name, invisible by nature

Robin has pointed me in the direction (thanks Robin) of a really interesting article in SMH describing how three Aussie movies failed to connect with local audiences, resulting in a dire performance for home-grown movies at the box office.  what really surprised me though was that if I hadn't have read the article, I'd have no idea that any of these movies even existed.

I wrote a post back in August celebrating recent marketing initiatives for Scott Pilgrim and The Expendables.  initiatives that weren't necessarily expansive nor expensive.  just smart ways to market and communicate the existence of a movie to a relevant audience.  movies and spoilt for (rich) content that they can use and deploy to engage and nudge an audience into attending.

marketing seems to have been a non (let alone second) thought to the movies that failed to cause a stir last week.  Griff the Invisible (above), The Reef and A Heartbeat Away all seem to have relied solely on being in cinemas to encourage viewing - which is simply no longer enough (if it ever was).

there's simply too much distraction now.  too many other options.  too much to distract you from the planned cinema trip on the off chance that there's something on that you'll be up for seeing.

making movies means marketing movies.

at it's worst this means investing in a commodity media buy to get the trailer in front of as many people as possible (this will usually take the form of a TV campaign although for super light TV viewers for me a jot of outdoor will help too).  but at it's best this can mean creating marketing that becomes an extension of your movie.  AI and The Beast anyone?  or Dark Knight and Why So Serious?

perhaps if marketing was seen as a storytelling and engaging extension of the movie product, it would be higher up the agendas of people who make movies.  perhaps if marketing wasn't a bought (and relatively expensive) commodity buy it would be invested with the same creativity with which the movie was made.  perhaps if these movies had been intelligently marketed they wouldn't have all vanished without a trace.  perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The Expendables vs. Eat Pray Love vs. The World: lessons from Hollywood on content, sociability and adding value

it has been many moons since Mediation bemoaned Michael Bay's tirade against Paramount's marketing for the dire Transformers 2.  you can relive the magic of those crazy days here, but the point of the post was that advertising can't turn a bad product into a good one...

we all have instant access to what the world knows.  we can research, reveal and review products and services in a second.  no one takes a punt on anything anymore - why would you when everything has been reviewed and rated by the crowd...  we don't rely on the promise of a glitzed up poster any more.

I made the point that some of the best marketing stories emerge when communications are a natural extension of product.  and that no one knows this better than movies...  Transmedia storytelling via the The Matrix, Cloverfield's Mystery Box marketing, The Dark Knight's Vote Harvey Dent ARG to name a few.

the last few weeks have continued the theme of the best of marketing initiatives emerging from Hollywood.  the above is for Universal's Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, an adaptation of the comic book series.  the whole marketing effort is pretty much text book.  there's an incredibly immersive iTrailer (you can put an i in front of anything these days) above, leading to an awesome website which - via its socialrama - is social to the extreme and which actively encourages remixing of the marketing material to propagate content and word of mouth.

the Scott Pilgrim movie website, or is it a comic book?  or a mash-up of both?

the socialness of Scott... a plethora of ways to share and engage across you nearest available social network

other recent marketing efforts have continued the innovative theme...  this glorious 'Call To Arms' trailer for The Expendables directly takes on the competition that is Julia Roberts' Eat, Pray, Love ...

the trailer observes that the likes of Twilight, Sex and the City and now Eat, Pray, Love, are taking over the cinema, and that this is men's last collective chance to take cinema back.  it makes the delightfully honest observation that the place to see The Expendables isn't "off your torrents but in a f***ing theatre (where violence belongs) ...if this loses to Eat, Pray, Love you don't deserve to be a man" - in the spirit of the movie, no punches pulled then.

The Expendables also brings us a genius innovative use of YouTube, following in the giant footsteps of Wario's Shake It and Cadbury's Round YouTube videos.

Hollywood seem to be learning fast.  illegal file sharing and the rise of better-than-cinema home entertainment (where you can enjoy movies sans other people talking and on a sofa) continue to threaten box-office revenues.  Hollywood need to innovate to keep people in cinemas.

but there's a further interesting angle on all of the above examples of Hollywood entertainment... in that they all start to slash the required marketing budget.  they all take advantage of the studios' owned and - predominantly via activation in social networks - earned media.

it's not unusual for a $150m movie to have a marketing budget of $100m+ ... anything that the studios take off their marketing budget goes straight back to the bottom line.  movies also have the double advantage of being content rich and very topical, there's a new and shininess which adds to their social appeal.

movie marketing is increasingly getting that marketing isn't about ensuring that as many of the target audience as possible are aware of a movie, rather its about creating value for enough of the right people and encouraging them to propagate your message.  the implicit promise... that the product you buy will live up to the marketing, is made explicit by marketing that adds value to a movie's audience before they've ever entered the cinema.

slash your marketing budget via content and sociability that adds value to potential customers.  sounds so easy that anyone could do it right?  so why aren't you?

Stepping up to the plate: the opportunity for brands to save a valuable part of Sydney's media infastructure

running out of time, Paddington's Academy Twin theatre is under threat of closure, image courtesy Sydney Film School

the rise of the multiplex may have brought convenience to the cinema experience but it has done so at quite a cost; both in terms of the price to attend a cinema, but more importantly in the ability to see non-mainstream releases.  small independent cinema allows you to explore the long tail of movie making, to take a break from the populist output of mainstream studios and enjoy movies that challenge, provoke and stimulate.

and so its hard to see as anything but tragic the news today that the Academy Twin Cinema in Paddington is to close after very nearly one hundred years.  there's full and comprehensive commentary of the announcement by Palace Cinemas courtesy of a post on Scott Henderson's Dark Habits blog.  the Sydney Morning Herald article can be viewed here.

but I can't help but think, and suggest, that there's a significant opportunity here.  brand after brand invests in cinema to reach and engage with audiences.  they do so because they view that audience as valuable - be it attitudinally, behaviourally or (though I don't like saying it) demographically - to their brand and marketing efforts.

take for example alcohol brands.  in 2009 - according to Nielsen - the alcohol category spent over $10m on cinema advertising in Australia, over 10% of total media spend in the category.  individual brands have made significant commitments to the channel; Chivas Regal invested $654k in cinema in 2009, Russian Standard vodka invested $344k and Smirnoff $250k.  in all cases the investment represented over 30% of each brands' total media spend - a significant commitment.

whilst the media landscape is evolving sometimes beyond recognition, the fundamental trilogy of components in many ways remains unchanged - the brand, the audience and the media space.  the tools and tactics may change but these pillars don't.  our trade and our skill is in advising brands where and how to invest to reach an audience.

and herein lies the opportunity.  is there a brand out there that wants to invest in a media space not just to reach an audience, but to save that very media space from extinction?  is there a brand in Australia with a commitment to cinema that goes as far as bringing a loved and cherished venue back from the brink.

the (not comprehensive) argument against.  (1) it represents a huge investment in a relatively small audience (2) it's a long-term commitment to a space that a marketing manager may want to move away from as marketing strategies change (3) its geographically limiting

the (not comprehensive) argument for. (1) it demonstrates an overcommitment to a valuable audience (2) it brings consistency to a marketing schedule (3) the potential PR value is huge

besides there's precedent...  O2 in the UK has made an unequivocal commitment to music by redeveloping the Millennium Dome into the O2, and similarly rebranding the music Academies.  the economic case for investing in a media space for the medium to long term must be able to be made.

so here's the call...  who wants to save a bit of media?  could any marketing managers or planners or strategists who think that a brand on which they work could help, please come forward...  your time has come...  and its running out.

Marketing and Movies: why Avatar, for all its three-dimensionality, felt distinctly two-dimensional

so I'm lucky enough to have just seen an opening screening of Avatar.  the movie has been a long time coming and if buzz is anything to go by its set to do rather well.  actually buzz is something to go by...  research by Aegis' ævolve shows a clear correlation between the amount of buzz a movie has in advance of release and the size of its opening weekend.  Google Insights for search, as you'd expect, shows the same thing, very significant increases over the last month or so:

its a big movie for both audiences and those involved but also for Hollywood.  with revenues increasingly moving to DVD and online, maximising revenues in cinema theatres is top priority for executives of studios that are feeling the pinch of a digitised economy more than most.

3D is key to this, and despite criticisms from, well, critics that far from adding to the cinema experience, 3D distracts from the quality of viewing, its a key strategy for maximising revenues in cinemas.  of course it also makes, for the moment, the cinema experience unique.  its normal if not preferable to watch a movie in the comfort of your home with the quality that we've come to expect from a cinema.  plus no one talks behind you and you don't have to cock your head to one side to see 90% of the screen.  3D is currently a unique offering in cinemas, an offering that can be uniquely monetised in cinemas.

in many ways, the technology is the draw of this movie; yet for all its future-facing there's been no sign of the ambitious and 21st century marketing initiatives some of us have come to expect post Cloverfield, Batman Begins and the like.  in fact for all its 21st Century technology Avatar feels distinctly 20th Century in its marketing...  all the opportunities to engage a potential audience up front thru transparency were dismissed, in favour of a publish-and-be-damned approach to make a movie and sell it.

and selling it is what this movie has been all about...  marketing efforts, for all their visibility, demand that you watch this movie rather than genuinely be part of the world from which it derives.  for all its 21st century capabilities there's nothing of the Wachowski in here: no world beyond the world to discover and explore.  and this seems distinctly ironic.  for a movie that cost $500m dollars to create, we surely deserve more than 150 minutes of cinema.  this movie begged for the trans-media but got nothing of the like: in a declined economy, $500m could be easily mistaken as a metaphor for what Cameron calls 'the Unobtanium'.

Things media and communications can't change #147: why advertising can't turn Transformers 2 into a good movie

oh dear.  Michael Bay probably regrets the memo - leaked to and reported in post on TMZ - he sent to Paramount in which he called the film's print campaign an "abject failure".  telling the studio that "you talk so glowingly about Transformers being the movie of the summer, but unfortunately this has not got to the public ... I have been waiting and waiting for the anticipation of an 'event movie' to make it into the 'public zeitgeist' ... Right now, we are not an event, we are just a sequel, which is very different. There is no anticipation. Remember back to Spider-Man 2 - it was everywhere."

all together now...  "advertising can't turn a bad product into a good one Michael".  I guess that in fairness we used to be able to get away with it; there was less choice, hits ruled the tail, and we didn't always know what we were buying until we'd bought it.

information and knowledge transparency: we all have instant access to what the world knows.  we can research, reveal and review products and services in a second.  no one takes a punt on anything anymore - why would you when everything has been reviewed and rated by the crowd...  we don't rely on the promise of a glitzed up poster any more.

Bay's issue - that advertising can't make people watch a bad movie - is something I think we all struggle with from time to time...  we all of us - clients and agencies alike - want the products and services on which we work to be a success.  we look for the best in them, be it a nuanced intrinsic we can pull out or a genius consumer insight that will activate behavioural change.

situations where brands are divorced from products and services are at best a sticking plaster and at worst a disaster waiting to happen.  perception get's out of step with reality.  marketing (and specifically media spend) becomes an expensive cost of being in business.

some of the best marketing stories emerge when communications are a natural extension of product.  no one should know this better than movies...  Blair Witch and The Matrix brought us Transmedia Storytelling, Cloverfield was a powerplay for The Mystery Box, The Dark Knight's Vote Harvey Dent ARG was genius, even SAW understands what it's really about and has a theme park ride.

there's a reason Transformers 2 didn't make it into the 'public zeitgeist' and it's got nothing to do with it's marketing and everything to do with it not being very good.  I've seen it, it's a really, really bad movie which represents 147 minutes of my life that I'm never getting back; and in an age of radical transparency the best marketing campaign in the world can't change that.

The danger of applying old models to new technologies: why brands need to make the most of cinema's platinum future

Monsters vs Aliens; Hollywood's latest digital offering

Pearl & Dean are hosting their first annual Film Festival today... think presentations interrupted by movies (or vice versa depending on your attitude).  Mediation popped along this morning and heard a couple of cracking presentations.

the first - Peter Buckingham from the UK Film Council - outlined the Council's view of cinema's future.  he observed that whilst "cinema has stubbornly maintained its analogue status", digital technologies would herald a new "platinum age" for the industry.  its predicted (by Charlotte Jones of Screen Digest) that there will be 250 x 3D cinemas in the UK by 2010, up from the 172 on which Monsters vs Aliens (above) launched earlier this month.  a good job too, considering Jerry Katzenberg - who knows a thing or two - has apparently predicted that within 5-7 years all movies will be 3D.

but 3D is only one aspect of cinema's revolution in the making: archive films are proving popular, as are "more obscure films" such as Man on Wire, indeed as Buckingham noted, "the big alternative content success [in cinema] is live Opera".  add to this live sport in 3D (as being trialled by Sky) and the concept as cinema-as-studio (broadcasting the Shine a Light premiere to other cinemas for example) and you get an idea of where cinema could be heading.

at the heart of the UK Film Council's digital cinema vision is community; cinema "in the hands of local audiences", with cinema as "facilitator as well as curator".  Buckingham cited locally produced UGC from schools and collages, Nollywood movies making it big in East London, and broadcasting of events such as Royal Society lectures as further evidence of this "democratisation of culture".

unfortunately talk moved on to brands, where the vision is apparently a little more limited in its scope.  producer Phil Streather observed that brands had the opportunity to make ads that made full use of the 3D 'punch'.  why is it that we can't attach some of the "platinum age" thinking to brands?

why settle for ads?  if the vision and hope is that cinemas become locally-centric centres of culture and content, why are we slapping the outdated and outmoded format of an ad on the front of them.  cinema's opportunity is the same for brands...  how can we use these screens as platforms for our points of view on the world?  what could we create and curate for these screens that say more about us than 30" of stuff with an awareness aim.

we're better than this, and if the promise that digital cinema offers is realised, audiences will expect better; platinum brand work for a platinum channel.

Contextualising communications for their media home: why the Orange Gold Spot gets Mediation's vote in DCM's ad-off

to celebrate their new on-screen identity, DCM (formerly Carlton Screen Media) are asking the industry to vote on their favourite ever cult cinema ad.  an panel of illustrious experts has narrowed the list down to ten finalists which you can view and then vote for here.

it's quite a list - everything from Kylie's 2001 jaunt on a red velvet rodeo bull for Agent Provocateur to Tony Kaye's surreal effort for Dunlop in 1994.  the best of the Diet Coke break ads is in there, as is Carling's Dam Busters, some Guinness Surfers and a reworked Bullitt chase with Steve McQueen behind the wheel of a Ford Puma.

but for me there can only be one winner.  in a cinema ad-off, the vote has to go to on-screen communications that have become as integral a part of the modern cinema experience as popcorn and Green and Blacks...  communications that have embraced not just the cinema screen but the Hollywood dream sprawling behind it.  comms that took said Hollywood dream and subverted it to within an inch of it's life - much to our collective amusement.

over the last five years Carrie Fisher, Snoop Dogg, Alan Cumming, Steven Seagal, Sean Aston, Daryl Hannah, Spike Lee, John Cleese, Macaulay Culkin and even Darth Vader have had their projects subjected to the interference of Mr Dresden and co.  the result for Orange is credibility in and associations with cinema that go far beyond the mere placement of an ad.  they own this particular bit of media real-estate in a way few other brands have achieved anywhere, let alone on cinema...

in combination with a BAFTA association and Orange Wednesdays, the Orange spot is the result of a determined focus from a marketing team and associated agencies that demonstrate the power of creating content that is contextualised for the channel in which it's appearing.  the Orange spot could only work in cinema, it's what gives it it's power.  and it's why it's getting Mediation's vote.

Surviving the BFI IMAX's SAW marathon: why too much of something can be just as tough

it was the Spice Girls who observed that "too much of something is bad enough, but something's coming over me to make me wonder of too much of nothing is just as tough"  ...well it's not.  you really can have too much of a good thing.  on Friday Mediation spent an all-night marathon in the company of Saw I thru V.  one night, two beers, three friends, four cans of Relentless and all five Saw movies in one sitting.

it all kicked off at 11pm on Friday night when Mediation and another 300 people gathered at the BFI IMAX near Waterloo.  the next nine hours of our collective lives was spent watching the five movies which collectively are the most successful horror series of all time.

whether I'm just getting too old for this or whether it came off of the back of a busy week, (or maybe it's because the fourth and fifth movies of the franchise are pants in comparison to the first three) it was tough old going.  I confess that my eyelids took over a short way into episode four but managed to rally to make it thru the silliness of the fifth ...and shortly after 9am Mediation emerged blinking into the grey winter light of Saturday morning.

the whole thing is utterly ridiculous of course, but it has to be said there is a genuine buzz when consuming content in the company of others who love said content enough to miss a night's sleep to do so.  a buzz that is heightened - to a degree - by the venue and staff who do their damdest to keep the spirits up and the coffee flowing.

they could do more to make the experience more of, well, an experience - but for that that matter so could brands...  the evening was a great opportunity for an energy drink or vitamin supplement to do some sampling and attach themselves to the experience of the event.

so opportunity missed this time round, but don't worry - the next all-nighter is already planned for May, where the IMAX will be screening all three Lord of the Rings movies in one go.  now where did I leave my detachable Orc-ears?