mediation

Making History Personal: How Port Arthur curates individual paths through its content

a playing card: your invitation to explore Port Arthur exhibitions and information

upon receiving your entry ticket to Port Arthur's visitor centre in Tasmania you receive one of the above cards.  the card is one of a couple of dozen or so playing cards, and each person visiting the site gets a different one.  mine was the Queen of Diamonds.

the Queen of Diamonds: my card invites and allows me to take a personal journey through the attraction's exhibitions

much more than a souvenir however, each card invites it's owner to take a journey through the visitors centre following in the footsteps of one of the inmates of two centuries ago, when the port was Australia's second penal colony in then Van Diemen's Land.

each room in the exhibit is tailored to allowing you to exploring a specific journey for your card; a journey that reflects the actual journey taken by a specific inmate in the facility hundeds of years ago.  what was their name and where did they arrive from?  were they well behaved or not?  were they punished or rewarded?  did they take on a trade?  did they ever leave the facility?

I loved this approach for three reasons.  the first is that it takes something that could be quite rational, remote and, well, historic and makes it personal and personalised.  approaching the visitor's centre and its exhibitions from the point of view that someone - a real person - actually went on this journey changes your mindset towards how you approach it.  you are more involved, more connected.  you care more.

the second-reason I love this customer solution is because of how this approach mitigates choice-overload.  it tackles that feeling many of us must be familiar with when you walk into a museum and think... where to start?  and then where?  ... non of this here.  you are presented with a clear path and invited to ignore some exhibits.  this doesn't compromise your visit, in fact it actually liberates it.

but the reason that I most love this approach is the extent to which - explicitly or implicitly - it invites conversation, a point made by Davey too when I was chatting with her this morning.  when a group of people goes through the visitor centre none will take the same journey.  there will be knowledge gaps that the group will fill through discussion and conversation?  where did you go?  who was your inmate?  did you see X?  these gaps, what I call knowledge differentials, fuel conversations immediately after the experience but also, by making the navigation tangible (the playing card) they can also extend into the future.

I hope that Port Arther build on what they have.  mobile and tablet functionality now allows them to take this tailored personalised approach to a whole new level.  you could choose your character in advance and then download the journey with audio that you could listen to on your phone as you tour the centre.  social functionality would allow you to share your journey with your social networks in real-time as you go through the exhibit - or share stories with strangers who went on the same journey.

a playing card.  a simple and elegant thought that added disproportinate value to my visit; and exactly what every experience should be - personal, curated and social.

Digital and OOH collide in Dublin: what happened when Playhouse and Daft.ie turned a buliding into a digital playground

Dancers from Playhouse on Vimeo.

so about to head for the weekend and XFactor but just picked this up on the twittersphere and thought it was a rather delightful thing to end the week on.  from the 24th of September until the 11th of October, Dublin's Liberty Hall is being transformed into a giant 50 metre, low resolution, TV screen.  the best bit - anyone can join in...  members of the public are being invited to create animations that will be displayed on the building as part of the project.

brilliant example of digital spaces and places being amplified in the real world.  echoes of the HBO project but with an added open invitation for anyone to showcase their creativity...

here's hoping that they're investing in amplifying it... desktop applications that show what's going on in real time, lots of YouTubeness, and perhaps some kind of digital book that captures and showcases the best examples.

more of this kind of thing please...  and if you want to get creating then click here.

When a brand in hand isn't enough: why binding experience and sampling together is an opportunity most brands shouldn't afford to miss

grabbing samples at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival; (top) Fraser and me grabbing some Haribo, (bottom) Mark and I on the Dr Pepper

so my good mate Mark this morning sent me thru the above pics taken whilst we were in Edinburgh a few weeks ago.  during my heady couple of days of non-stop show-seeing and jumping around at the Fringe, we stumbled across a couple of brands sampling festival-goers on the Royal Mile.  hence the rather delightful pics above of my good self with Fraser and Mark (who doesn't normally have a moustache but who was in a show and so has at least one good excuse)...

which brings us to the subject of sampling.  when to do it, how to do it and who to do it to.  I guess my brief Edinburgh experiences tell me a couple of things; one - that its essential to get the right people at the right place (no poo Sherlock) but two, that I'm not very convinced that sampling on its own is enough...

to the first point; it was sunny, we were festivalled up, having fun and running around.  in that context both brands were spot on in terms of understanding who they were targeting and why.  a bag of sweets and a can of sugary good stuff were perfect additions to the afternoon.  for both brands, adding their fun-filled good stuff to such a positive and buzzing environment meant that they complemented and were complemented by what was going around the sampling teams.

but to my second point, what was the actual benefit of the exercise?  they got brand in hand but I'm sure there's more to the opportunity than this...  shouldn't both of these brands have been looking to add an experience to the sampling moment that made more of the sample's investment but also more of the person's investment in taking time to sample / experience the brand.

it is in many ways the opposite situation to that of Pot Noodle's (above) effort at last years Festival, where Mother staged a musical (which I wrote about here).  great experience but what about the sampling opportunity?  at the very least handing out pots of the stuff after the show...  but they could have gone further - what about Edinburgh Festival limited edition Pots, or a mechanic that incorporated a sampling experience into the show.

the bottom line is that sampling and experience are increasingly part of the same equation.  but not just in some strategic 'yeah cool lets join it up' way, but rather in an intrinsic, bound together, one can't and shouldn't live without the other kind of way.

a brand on which I currently work is using pop-ups shops to sample some NPD, because venturing into a space which lives and breathes what a brand stands for whilst being offered an opportunity to take a bit of that brand's product with you is infinitely more powerful than being handed it cold in the street...  and when that street in Edinburgh is one of the busiest, crowded and expectant streets in the world, that's an opportunity you couldn't and shouldn't afford to miss.

The Power of Experience: what Brands can learn from the pressures of supply and demand at Edinburgh's Fringe Festival

some of Mediation's Fringe highlights, from topish down - Pappy's Fun Club, Showstopper the (improvised) musical, the 80s Movie Flashback, Wolfboy, Private Peaceful, A British Subject, Picasso and Heyton on Homicide

on one hand an abundance of supply, with limited budgets to communicate, and a desperate need to stand out.  on the other a premium on attention where time si the most valuable commodity and the biggest problem is navigating a plethora of choice.

not a crystallisation of the current media paradigm, but rather a description of the annual Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where this weekend Mediation ended his summer break with a frenetic 48 hours taking in a dozen shows.  from WW1 deserters to 80s movie Flashbacks, taking in on the way a Victorian murder mystery and a musical about repressed teenage sexual tension in which one of the protagonists may or may not be a wolf.

that aside, the Fringe provides us with an interesting microcosm of what in many ways is being debated as we negotiate the future of media and communications.  too much supply, not enough time and or attention, and a desperate need to stand out from a vast crowd of other acts...

some principles did however emerge

• reputation (1).  have one and remind people about it.  in a world of massive choice a reminder of what you've done and why you deserve attention helps a lot
• reputation (2).  acts that were in bigger and respected venues were much more likely to convert.  an hour is precious in Edinburgh and rightly or wrongly an act getting into an established venue is seen as a pre-filter of quality.  choose carefully where people see you
• word of mouth.  create some.  by far and away the most important factor that determined what I saw (after the fact that my friend was in it) was recommendation.  we know this to be true...  don't expect it to happen, make it happen...  set up the conditions - Pappy's Fun Club for example have a diverse digital presence all aggregated on their website.  they make it easy for you to recommend them
• be different.  no matter what the cost.  being right but fading into the background is worthless.  if standing out means taking a risk and / or investing a few dollars then do it and make them count.  in a world of flyers being given a squidgy coffee cup with the name of an act on it was enough to make me remember and want to go
• facilitate engagement.  make it easy for people to find you.  from thinking about what time you want to be on to shouting the venue on communications made a big difference

but above all I was reminded of how powerful a live experience was.  from a play dissecting British Foreign Policy (and occasional apathy) to nationals imprisoned abroad, to a musical made up on the spot based on audience suggestions; the act of creation in a live space is a powerful way to communicate an idea.  we should be more often planning for brand comms to have this potency of live experience.

'Plausible Promise': what Clay Shirky and Eric Roberts can teach us about devising successful big ideas

Clay Shirky opens up his Here Comes Everybody with the story of Evan Guttman, who used social media tools to help his friend Ivanna retrieve her lost phone when the finder - a young lady called Sasha - refused to return it to it's rightful owner.  he makes the observation however that these evolving social media tools (online publishing, forums, wikis, online social networks etc) are on their own not enough...

"[social media] tools are simply a way of channeling existing motivation.  Evan was driven, resourceful, and unfortunately for sasha, very angry.  had he presented his mission in completely self-interested terms ("help my friend save $300!") or in unattainably general ones ("let's fight theft everywhere!"), the tools he chose wouldn't have mattered.  what he did was to work out a message framed in big enough terms to inspire interest, yet achievable enough to inspire confidence."

you need what he quotes Eric Roberts with calling, 'plausible promise'.  and it was this idea of plausible promise that occurred to me when I saw the above mastercard ad for The Eden Project's 'big lunch'.  which is - to quote the mastercard website:

"a national initiative developed by the Eden Project to bring the country together, by asking you to sit down with your neighbours for lunch in a simple act of community ... on Sunday 19th July, the nation will witness the street party to end all street parties. The organisers of The Big Lunch are inviting as many of the UK's 61 million people as possible to simultaneously sit down together, to meet, eat, talk, laugh and feel hope."

the event - for which there's also a film-making initiative in association with Raindance - has social media at it's heart and is using Twitter, Flickr et al to enable interested parties to organise themselves into action.  but I'm skeptical about the 'plausible promise' of it all...  big enough to inspire interest, yet achievable enough to inspire confidence?

it's certainly big enough, with mastercard's not-insignificant investment behind the above 40" tv ad campaign, but is it achievable?  despite a brilliant and very functional website, will individuals really organise themselves into having lunch with a bunch of people they don't know in order to 'feel hope'?

it possibly most likely that people who already know each other will perhaps drag themselves into action using the big lunch as a sufficient reason to do so; but I fear that this fails on the second of Roberts' requirements.  it's simply not - I fear - very plausible.  any marketers and agencies would do well to check to what extent an initiative they decide to undertake fulfills the two plausible promise tests.

marketing success for initiatives of this type require more than just promise; they need to feel real, achievable.  they need to feel plausible; and I worry that this doesn't.  I hope that the big lunch is a success.  I hope it brings people together, I hope that it makes a difference, and I hope that the time, effort and investment that has gone into making it happen is worth it.

The Disposable Memory Project: bringing a bit of jeopardy and mystery to a world too full of solutions and answers

a beautifully sunny idea for what will hopefully be a beautifully sunny weekend...  welcome to the Disposable Memory Project, which has the simple aim of telling the stories of cameras left in random places around the world.  the idea is that people will pick them up, take a few photos and pass them on, with the cameras and the photos they hold eventually returning home.

it's a simple, elegant idea for an age when experiences have higher value than things, when social aggregation can be virtual and where narratives aren't predetermined or linear.  I don't know if a brand is behind this, but I bet plenty wish they were.

at the heart of this idea are jeopardy and mystery.  if I leave a camera somewhere will it be found?  by whom?  what photos will they take and will those photos make it home?  there are no guarantees; something that feels exciting and different in a world - and marketing landscape - where amazing solutions vie for our attention and unbeatable answers clamour for our questions.

Mediation finds it more than a little comforting that in an on-demand world where we expect to be able to get whatever we want whenever we want it, some things aren't set in stone.  I intend to join the project and set me own camera on it's way.  I look forward to the uncertainty of its fate, and meeting - through shared virtual experience - some other people on the way.

Japan Car at the Science Museum: how Japan's car manufacturers are imagining a networked future for our cars

a trip to the Science Museum on Friday saw Mediation and colleagues visit the Japan Car exhibition.  described as an exploration of the car as a 'mobile cell', the exhibition shows how Japanese car design reflects the 'soil and the spirit of Japan'.  click thru for the exhibition's Flickr and YouTube sites.

one of the most interesting aspects of the exhibition was said exploration of car as mobile cell;

"The future will bring more than individual drivers each controlling a single car.  cars will become parts of whole transport systems integrated with the surrounding city.  the essence of a car us already shifting from its drive train to its information systems ... The concept of cars evolving into moving urban cells is visualised by portraying cars as blood corpuscles flowing through capillaries."

the concept is captured in this video from the exhibition, which shows visual representations of traffic volumes and traffic flows around central Tokyo; generated from GPS signals continuously transmitted from several thousand cars.

"the cars are seen to be circulating, radiating out from the central area near the Imperial Palace just like red blood cells traveling around the body through a network of blood vessel centred on the heart".  its a very new way of examining how the nature of the network will come to predominate how we communicate - both passively and actively - with each other.

how long before cars get their own social networking system?  our vehicles constantly transmitting data about where they go and how they get there to their Facebook equivalent?  what will they learn from each other?  and what will we learn from them?

great exhibition, which the manufacturers don't seem to have capitalised on in a wider marketing perspective.  perhaps these things are just better left to exist in isolation; another element to be added - by consumers - to their brand molecules (as theorised by John Grant in After Image).  then again, Mediation can't help but think there was an opportunity (missed) to take the great contents of the exhibition to a wider - broadcast - audience.  press partnership anyone?  ...anyone?

 

When brands hit the high-street: How National Geographic made their brand manifest in spectacular fashion

I learned three things in a jump into central London yesterday.  one, that Uniqlo doesn't do gloves.  two, that the recession has yet to hit Abercrombie & Fitch, the till queue for which was a good twenty-punters long.  and three, that National Geographic have opened a rather amazing store on Regent Street.

National Geographic are not the first (and they won't be the last) media organisation to open a branded retail space, but they're certainly in line to be the one that opened the grandest.  its 20,000 sq ft across three floors sells everything from bug spray to the latest technology in exploration gear, but that is just the start.

the store also aims to provide an absorbing learning experience through interactive visual displays as well as an auditorium to host film screenings and public lectures.  it's an amazing space, and one that will go towards funding the Society's aims, as copy in the store explains:

"when you buy at the National Geographic Store, you're helping launch new expeditions across the world.  thanks to your help, projects we've helped fund have uncovered the Inca city of Machu Picchu and the wreck of the R.M.S. Titanic.  today the Society supports more than 500 expeditions and research projects a year" (source: poster in National Geographic Store)

it is certainly opening in interesting times; as an article in Retail Week observes, the store is likely to be the last major opening Regent Street (and indeed London) will see in a while:

"Retail pundits will tell you that Regent Street is a thoroughfare filled with brand flagships where having a presence is rather more important than making money. This may be so, but in recessionary times the tendency to let the eye stray towards the bottom line is more tempting than last year."

which is a shame, because it's exactly this kind of initiative, exactly this kind of engaging brand innovation, that is most likely to future-proof a brand.  as a focus for PR efforts, as a destination, and as a source for new news and sparks for word of mouth, the National Geographic Store is everything an interactive and engaging brand experience should be...

...an experience grounded not in the necessity to sell, but in the discovery and exploration of why that brand pertains to exist in the first place, and what that brand's point of view on the world is; the concept and idea of that brand made manifest.  everything, in short, that a retail space in the early 21st Century should be.

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?

Things I've learned about TV ads; courtesy of a Night of the Adeaters

TV ads sometimes get a bad press; often seen, unfairly, as the blind refuge of the creative process.  they're blamed for narrowing creative thought into a pre-determined construct that's allegedly irrelevant in a digital age.

well a night with the Ad Eaters is more than enough to demonstrate otherwise.  what occurred to me last night, as I sat watching several hours of TV ads from around the world, was how perfect the audiovisual short is for communicating a brand - or indeed any - idea.

it's no surprise that the 'TV ad' became the common currency of the advertising agency.  indeed one can't help but think that even in the absence of a broadcast model that reinforced the TV ad construct, the short AV piece would have emerged as the vessel of choice for brand ideas.  forcing clarity, relevance and conciseness, it may come to be seen as the 20th / 21st Century equivelent of the cave painting or Aesop fable.

there was as much joy and pleasure in seeing again BBH's Underwater Love for Levi's (above) or early Smirnoff efforts, as there was in seeing for the first time some of MTV's campaigning work or an Audi ad with a dog chasing a car in the snow...

some other things I learned last night:

• most of the best ads are for cars.  fact.
• it's impossible to make a good fragrance ad.  fact.
• some brands have the right to set agendas and others just don't
• an audience of ad types loves a bit of worthiness - ads for the UN Development Fund were guaranteed a splattering of applause.  as the lovely Jon A puts it: "the skill of communication is like the skill of swordsmanship: it can be applied in play or in war, for better or for worse".  we collectively aspire - it seems - to do the formers.
• it's impossible to aggregate ads around a city - "ads set in Paris" just doesn't work as a filter

all in all a very cool evening.  if there's one observation it's that the filtering could have been better.  an evening like that is essentially acting as an aggregator - so Ad Eaters has to work as hard as possible to be the best aggregator that they can be.  not doing so will only undermine future efforts - and contribute to the feeling of watching a very extended version of Tarrant On TV.  only without Chris Tarrant.  and not on TV.

Kudos to the IPA, CBS and Metro for sponsoring, and a big thanks to David at Metro for facilitating...