mediation

result! : why setting my alarm for 4:55am this morning to log on to Facebook was worth it to secure my online identity

alarm went off at 4.45, at 5.53 the snooze kicked in and I grabbed my laptop and logged on.  Facebook's countdown clicked away and at zero a simple click of a continue button gave me my username options.  seamless.

as a result I can now be found at http://www.facebook.com/chris.stephenson.  and whilst at twenty past five on a Saturday morning this may not seem like the most earth-shatteringly brilliant thing, I suspect that in the future I'll be glad I woke myself up to secure the little place of the social graph that I wanted for my own.

The scramble to secure our online identities: why I'll be setting my alarm for 4:55am tomorrow morning to log on to Facebook

so as I start this post I have 13 hours, 25 mins and 38 seconds before I have to join a scramble in order to stake a claim on a big piece of my online identity.  at that time - 5.01 (am) tomorrow morning UK time - Facebook will allow users to select, on a first come first served basis, a username for their account.  so that instead of being http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=555836478&ref=name my Facebook web address could be http://www.facebook.com/chris.stephenson.

as a Facebook blog post explains: "Your new Facebook URL is like your personal destination, or home, on the Web. People can enter a Facebook username as a search term on Facebook or a popular search engine like Google, for example, which will make it much easier for people to find friends with common names"

it may be easy to dismiss the move as a marketing stunt, or just another in a series of initiatives that have seen the book evolve its offering over the last few years.  but in a world where our online identities are becoming increasingly important, the username you get may be more important than you think.

in What Would Google Do?, Jeff Jarvis observes how one consequence of online identities is that names are becoming more unique.  indeed many parents are registering the url of their child's name at birth (and some have even decided on a name on the basis of the url being available). in a world where everyone can exist in the same space, diversity of identity counts.

so will I be setting my alarm in the morning to register?  yes I probably will.  there's quite a lot of Chris Stephenson's out there...  from the General Manager of Global Consumer Marketing, TV, Video & Music Business of Zune, to the wrestler ranked 334th by Pro-Wrestling Illustrated 500 in 1997.  I'm neither of those.  I'm me.  and it's important that my online identity reflects that.  looks like I will be setting that alarm - only 13 hours, 6 mins and 53 secs to go...

From theory to practice: the challenge of planning Transmedia

Keith Arem's graphic novel Ascend, for which a game is currently in development

it's now been over two years since Faris bought transmedia planning to our attention in his post of the same name on TIGS.  the theory has been well expounded in the period since then; with a post by Jason Oke at Leo Burnett Toronto which explored the TP concept within the context of a single ad quickly kicking things off.

I'm sure that the idea of TP has cropped up in most media, comms and ad agencies by now...  it certainly has in Mediation's.  but we've yet to see - as far as I can make out - a significant campaign emerge based on TP principles.  the same is actually true of the entertainment industry; in an interview with Games TM magazine(edition 75), Henry Jenkins - the Godfather of TP - concedes that truly persuasive examples have yet to arrive.

they're doing better than us though.  transmedia planning should be everywhere by now.  the theory is familiar and is not only relatively unchallenged, but is offers the very solution to some of the biggest marketing challenges of the moment.  of its many advantages, the primary benefit has to be the extent to which it pays back on the time taken to consume it.  Jenkins goes on to observe that "regardless of the commercial motives behind it, transmedia entertainment done well also provides rewards for fans".

so why is getting the theory working in practice so difficult?  here's some starters for ten...

firstly, the financial investment required.  the reason the best examples of TM largely remain in the entertainment arena (the Matrix, Cloverfield, Heroes, Lost etc) because it takes a significant chunk of investment to develop and then create the content often required.  the commercial models for Fox or Paramount are set up to do this, the commercial models for marketeers often aren't.

but this is a bit of a cop out.  for the cost of making three 30 second ads you can certainly afford to make an episodic drama for online distribution.  and no it doesn't matter if it's not going to go on broadcast TV because those people who consume AV content online are exactly those people most likely to 'get' transmedia narratives...  this means of course that the media budgeting has to evolve just as much as the production pot.

no, the real issues in making TP happen lie much closer to home than 'we don't have the budget' territory.  they are twofold, the first of which is we're bound to the conventions of the media spaces we use.  in the Games TM article mentioned above, Keith Arem discusses the TM principles behind his graphic novel Ascend (the image above).  he observes that:

"if a project requires a 30-minute budget introduction, games can do that, but the medium could just as easily offer six high-budget five-hour episodes to revolutionise the story.  film and television are still limited by rigid series structures and minimum lengths".

advertisers on those channels are bound by those same conventions; conventions we as an industry - planners, buyers and media-owners (and indeed Ofcom) alike need to start challenging.  it's the limitations of the spot model that in many cases is preventing transmedia's breakthrough into broadcast channels; and as long as transmedia only exists online, it's unlikely to capture the imagination of marketeers or the budgets of FDs.

but the final barrier to making TM happen in brand comms is the closet to home of all.  Jenkins notes that TM experiences can "be a source of ... frustration [for consumers] if it's inconsistent, undermines the coherence of the work, or promises insights it never delivers".  Arem's solution is simple: "have a good team of like-minded individuals around you ... my philosophy for all of our projects is to have a core team to supervise all creative and technical aspects of the production.  the main focus of that team is to keep the story and assets consistent, and integrate them with the entire franchise".

I think you know where I'm going with this.  agency structures are lucky if they can do this internally let alone with other agencies, resulting in the presention of a joined up and unified transmedia solution to a client.  not only might different creative agencies have to work to one vision, but that vision has to be molded by the space planned by its media agency, and of course vice versa.

the reality is that as long as the conversation with a client only gets as far as "how big is the pack shot?", both agencies and clients will be bound to a dynamic that not only acts as a barrier to transmedia planning, but actively works against it emerging into the mainstream where it so surely deserves to belong.

Shaking up YouTube: Brilliantly creative use of YouTube courtesy of Wii

click the above picture or here to see some brilliantly creative use of YouTube for Wii's 'WarioLand Shake It' game.  very smart breaking of the conventions of the YouTube infrastructure to bring to life the nature of the game...

in fact it says much about just how used we've come to the left-hand-screen-surrounded-by-other-clickables format that when it starts to fall apart it is really rather unnerving.  and the fact that you can still click on the components of the page once it's been destroyed is just genius.

lovely lovely stuff.  thanks to Daryl at Vizeum for the heads up.

Negotiating the digital divide: why immigrant brands must learn to go native

Natives going to meet the Spanish navy in 1792 (source)

the Pew Research Centre's biennial report into the changing nature of news audiences has confirmed what we've known for a while; that a generation of digital natives are growing up demanding immediacy and plurality of content.  the report described 13% of the US public as 'net newsers'; under 35, affluent, and sceptical of many of the mainstream media's offerings.

it comes hot on the heels of last week's report by Ofcom which confirmed what TGI and CCS have been telling us for a while...  that as our world shifts from one ruled by digital immigrants to one dominated by digital natives, an entire generation are defaulting to multi-tasking their media consumption.

this isn't just behavioural - our brains are physically adapting to enable us to compulsively multitask.  digital technology changes the way we absorb information.  as such - as Lord Saatchi was reported as pointing out in 2006 - the digital native’s brain is physically different; “It has rewired itself. It responds faster. It sifts out. It recalls less.”

the fact that recall rates for traditional television advertisements have plummeted led Lord Saatchi to the conclusion that companies must now be able to sum up their brands in a single word if they are to grab the attention of restless digital natives, but this is to miss the point...

if digital natives demand multiplicity, brands - far from retreating to one-word over-simplification - must give it to them.  both the above reports confirm that TV remains predominant in the media consumption habits of digital natives.  in the UK we're watching more TV than ever; communicating to digital natives doesn't mean abandoning TV as a means with which to communicate; rather it means using it in conjunction with other media channels - specifically the internet.

brand communications need plurality - the notion of what constitutes 'critical mass' within a media channel has to be rethought and replaced with consideration as to what constitutes critical mass across channels.

some may not like this compulsive plurality of consumption - in his G2 column last week, Alexander Chancellor bemoaned a "compulsion to keep in touch" liking it to a "kind of disease".  "Addiction to communication" he comments "seems to me as dangerous as addiction to cigarettes or alcohol".

as hard as it may be for digital immigrants to comprehend, consistent and constant consumption of content is as natural to digital natives as breathing.  both immigrants and brands has better get used to it.

How South Park gave a little love and it all came back to view

pop quiz... what would most brands give to have people say the following about them?

"And in widescreen format, too! Oh God, I just pooped my pants!* This is an awesome gift! Thanksyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou..."

"It's true! You do love us! This entire website is proving that! And you don't stop surprising us! Thank you for Imaginationland!!!!"

"O.O.....I....I....ILUVYOU"

the above posts are from the South Park Studios website, where (if you're in the US) you can watch all the South Park episodes for free. the site this week added the full, uncensored, directors cut of the acclaimed three-parter Imaginationland for free. all packaged up as a reward for the fans of the series.

the genius of this is twofold. in the short term they're packaging up something that anyone can get, as a reward for the show's fans. because they're fans they'll be on the site, pick it up first, and get the social currency of being able to tell their friends about it.

but in the longer term South Park understands that giving their back-catalogue away for free will encourage and maintain viewing of new stuff. which generates a fair few impacts and revenues for Comedy Central, so South Park can keep getting made. so everyone's happy.

what are your brands doing to demonstrate how much you love the people who consume you?

"The one thing that's the same about every holiday you've ever been on, is yourself"

Amy has pointed me in the direction of a Guardian blog post by Keith Stuart which highlighted the extent to which online gaming behaviour generally bears the same habitualised and routine patterns as the real world.

he cites research from Northeastern University in Boston, MA, that - thru tracking the movements of 100,000 people using mobile phone signals - demonstrated that:

"Human trajectories show a high degree of temporal and spatial regularity, each individual being characterised by a time-independent characteristic travel distance and a significant probability to return to a few highly frequented locations" source

Stuart observes that the same is often true in video games (such as the hotly-awaited Spore in the image above); in his post he comments that:

"It would be interesting, within a realm like WoW or Second Life, or even one of the larger CoD IV maps, to track player movement and match this data to the real-life research. I think there would be correlations. People often make the mistake of thinking games are about complete escapism, but they're not."

I think as comms planners we're guilty of being nervous of planning in the online space because we assume that consumers will adopt a completely new set of motivations and behaviours.  the reality is that they don't.  what's true for Arnie in Total Recall (the title quote of this post) is true of consumers when interacting with brands in the online space.

the internet's greatest asset is also it's greatest challenge - the fact that the canvas is so big and blank...  from ARGs to branded content via character blogs and gaming, there's a world of potential consumer engagement to explore and create.  our media planning experience makes us more qualified than most to integrate online experiences into schedules and communications plans. 

Stuart's post reminds me that we shouldn't forget what we've learned about consumer motivations, desires and behaviours and translate them to the online space...  the canvas has changed but the fundamental rules haven't.  online is not a media channel and it shouldn't equal display and search as default lines on schedules.  brands should go create with the confidence that they're able to more confidently predict online audience behaviour than they may think.

Analogue Politicians in the Digital Age: how YouTube came to Downing Street

back in June of last year I wrote a post in which I quoted Tim Montgomerie who in the Spectator suggested that the next general election will be remembered as 'Britain’s first internet election'.  He notes that “in this new world [of internet communities] the campaign staff of political parties and traditional media will have a much smaller share of power”.  I suggested that both brands and political parties needed to shift from 'send' to 'receive' mode.

either because of my post, or as a result of jibes made by David Cameron that Brown is "an analogue politician in a digital age", Downing Street has just engaged its 'receive' mode.  it takes the form of a Downing Street Channel on YouTube, on which - in the above video - Gordon asks for questions from the YouTube community.

it's an interesting - if clunky - development, and a far-cry from the slickness of the WebCameron site.  but this is part of it's charm.  despite the fact that watching the PM ask for questions like "how globalisation's working?" or "what's happenning to Climate Change?" is a bit like watching a bad audition for Newsround, there is the clear ambition to not only let consumers set the agenda, but to go to an existing community.  this should be applauded; Cameron's site may be slicker, but it's still effectively a walled garden.

what will be really intriguing will be the potential debate that this could start...  Chris Crockers Britney video has been viewed 20 million times and has spawned a plethora of text and video responses.  we should hope that a similar, if less emotional, post from Gordon on globalisation could instigate a similar response.  we live in hope.

The Double-Edged Sword of Hoxton Hotel's £1 Room Sale

so I've just bagged a room at the Hoxton Hotel  (the £17m establishment opened in 2006 by Pret founder Sinclair Beecham) in their sale...  a quarterly event which this time round offered 500 rooms at £1 and 500 rooms at £29 to the first to book them online from noon today.  the sale lasted 19 minutes.

as expected, online demand at the booking engine was high and much page refreshment was required before I finally got to the booking.  others didn't make it...  a friend messaging online commented on the frustration being felt (and verbally articulated) around his office.

these frustrations were acknowledged by the Hotel's General manager David Taylor, who in an online statement after the sale commented:

"The booking engine once again struggled to keep up with the huge number of people trying to book rooms ...  We are sorry if you were not successful, We are sorry of the booking engine stalled on you, We are sorry that not everyone could be a winner"

and that's the problem with sales like this, the CRM fall-out can be painful.  the website experienced 500,000 hits in the 19 minute duration of the sale, with only 1,000 'winners', that potentially leaves 499,000 disappointed potential customers.  but there's a flipside...  boy is there a flipside.

using the lowest standard room rate of £59 as a base, the sale cost the Hotel £44,000 worth of income.  but to recoup this income Hoxton has (only) to sell 746 rooms it otherwise wouldn't have done.  so of the half a million hits they received today, they only have to convert 0.0015% of them to get the money back.  which shouldn't be too tall an order at all.

but money aside, the sale is delivering across a number of other key metrics.  I'm willing to bet the quarterly spikes in the below Google Trends result for 'Hoxton Hotel' is driven by their quarterly sales.

added to this increase in website traffic is the surge of new email addresses and mobile phone numbers to their database (I surprised myself at how much personal information I was happy to throw at the website when the clock was against me), and of course the word of mouth effect that this generates...  I found out about the sale from a friend, who found about it from his friend, who in turn found out about it from his girlfriend who was already on the database.

it's one hell of a sales promotion that can generate this kind of response whilst almost certainly paying for itself...   a double edged sword it may be, but I'm sure it's one that this Hotel is more than happy to wield.

Balancing Individuality and Mass-Culture in the evolution of Content and it's Consumers

Rocketboom describes itself as a three minute daily videoblog covering everything from top news stories to quirky internet culture.  alongside peers like Diggnation and BoingBoing, it's one of a breed of short sharp audiovisual pieces made for peanuts and distributed for free via the internet.

in the emerging AV ecology, these elements stand out principally due to the consistency of their presence...  much internet AV content (the vast majority of YouTube's real estate for example) is what the Hollywood movie industry would call 'nonrecurring phenomenon' - the one off's and unpredictable quirks that populate the long tail of internet content... everything from a crying Britney fan to the Star Wars kid.  it's unfiltered, it's popularity determined by the wisdom of the crowd.

Rocketboom and it's peers are different.  they're consistent in both their presence but also their point of view on what and how they aggregate content, and as such become destinations in themselves.  they're building fan bases; aggregated audiences of subscribers ...and it's in doing so they are creating a new breed of media brand: a interim format between the long-form (TV) show and YouTube's clip-culture.

it's an interim format with dilemmas that in many ways mirror those of it's principal audience of 16-24s.  a recent report by the future foundation's nVision describes the contradiction in how this group - on the one hand - consumes and relies on mass culture, but on the other craves individualism and self-expression...

"One of the reasons behind this predilection for mass culture is that young people have less experience when it comes to consumption choices; they often use mass market products as a short cut to quick and easy decisions.  They are also strongly driven by the desire to fit in with their peers and choosing fashionable mass market products can be an easy way of doing this.
 
Young consumers are also, conversely (and indeed perversely), keen to be seen as individuals and consumption is a key way for them to express their personality … In this context, while mainstream hits will continue to appeal to young people, they might not always loom as impactfully  they used to do. Marketing becomes harder, must become more individually focussed as a result."
(source nVision report, March 2008)

the parallels between the Rocketboom format and it's audiences are startling  ...a survey cited in a Guardian article by the recruitment company CareerBuilder asked employers what they thought the differences were between workers over and under 30 years old.  the main finding was that younger employees communicate through technology rather than in person.  the same can be said of Rocketboom; it's a format that thrives on the back of the technology to create and distribute cost-effectively...

both Rocketboom and it's consumers define their individuality by seeking-out and adopting what's different before anyone else...  but both - ironically - rely on conformity to mass-cultural rules and the credibility - through shared understanding of meaning - that it brings.  will one inevitably give way to the other?

it's easy to forget how intertwined content and consumers are...  a generation of digital natives are, by virtue of their media consumption, determining the very nature of the media they consume.  and as this generation grows throughout the population, Rocketboom and it's present and future peers will find themselves pulled into the mainstream along with them...