Here’s a bit of a guest post I did for the chaps of Ale 2.0. It’s about social media, George Orwell and pubs. Read more over there.

I was struck by an analogy I read today where someone likened a brand having a social media strategy to a brand having a pub strategy. In principle, the analogy is okay but the main problem I have with it is about scalability.

Spotify playlist featuring Beirut, Bowerbirds, Vetiver, Jesca Hoop, The Dodos, if that’s your thing.

http://bit.ly/EZKC7

I’ve just come across this little peach of an insight about the general public’s awareness of the ‘browser’ concept. Apparently, very few people really know what the word ‘browser’ means. I love this because it corroborates my belief that no matter how clear, simple, relevant, engaging, interesting, entertaining, usable or smart you believe your communication or interactive media is, the end-user will always destroy it for you in a heartbeat. Which is why you need to get people destroying your ideas before they grow so that you can get on and create something that really does make sense to the people you want to interact with.

Incidentally, this was a project by Ji Lee, Creative Director at Google’s Creative Lab, who have just started an account on Twitter.

Credit: Flickr karacanal

Jenny Holzer, the contemporary artist, famous for creating aphorisms such as ‘THE ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE’ is not on Twitter. She didn’t start tweeting in May 2007 with ‘ALL THINGS ARE DELICATELY INTERCONNECTED’ and she has little intention of starting up her own account. Yet her political and social truisms from collections such as TRUISMS, FIRST IMPRESSIONS and PLEASE CHANGE BELIEFS are appearing frequently from an eponymous Twitter account.

It should come as no surprise that Holzer isn’t about to sue Twitter. The nature of her work means that it is constantly emblazoned across t-shirts, flashing in LEDs, printed on paper shopping bags in Japan and scribbled in notebooks without her permission. After all, each truism is a blueprint which can take many forms across many different media. The form is rendered in speech, in bits and bytes or in spraypaint on public walls. Holzer is the engineer who designs the memes, and the general public are the conduits for distribution of those memes. After all, she would be a hypocrite to decry the reproduction of her work when they are so inspired by society in the first place.

Imagine a gritty, futuristic science fiction series spread out across TV, cinema and the web. And imagine being able to make comments about the story line, suggest twists and turns in the plot, invent complex sub-plots, introduce characters based on your friends, set scenes you’ve had in a dream or simply give constructive criticism to the makers. And imagine the most talented writers and directors of our time weaving all of this together into a dramatic symphony of sight and sound. And finally, imagine your involvement as easy as sending a tweet or updating your FriendFeed. Sound good? Well, this is what Ridley Scott Associates and Ag8 has in store for you with it’s new “open media franchise” Purefold.

The theme is ‘What does it mean to be human?’ and is set 2 years from now and will continue right up to 2019, the year in which Blade Runner was set. Although it shares the same themes as Blade Runner it will not be a prequel to the film due to licensing restrictions.

What is perhaps the most arresting thing about this concept is that it will be released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license. This means it can be ripped, ported, mashed, re-shot, re-told or fried with mung beans and served with bacon providing you do so under the same license and credit Purefold accordingly. It is exactly this form of social open-ness which will allow this idea to thrive.

Brand Agenda

The shorts are paid for by brands. Ag8 work with advertising and marketing agencies to devise ways in which a brand can weave it’s product into the plot. This won’t be just product placement, brands will pay a fixed fee for the making of an episode which may or may not turn out to be a success. Their brand may appear in some futuristic form and may allow brands to road-test or prototype new concepts. Ag8 will have no problems funding the shorts and is already in agreement with agencies such as Aegis, Naked Communications and WPP.

Crowdsourced Inspiration

This isn’t really user generated content, as such. It isn’t fully created and produced by users, it is informed, inspired and sparked by user commentary and it’s fed back into the community and can be legally re-used but the community.

Many have criticized that it’s a ‘design by committee’ approach, which it isn’t. There is a distillation process, a bit of refining and then it’s shot by very talented directors. There’s no automated bot that picks up the most talked about idea and there’s no voting. It’s simply monitored by some very clever people who are good at spotting interesting little insights and ideas.

Going Transmedia

To begin with, there will be a series of 5 - 10 minute shorts which may pop up anywhere, however, once momentum begins and brands start to pour more money into the venture, it may be that the story line is carried through to cinema or TV.

Each of the films, movies and other bits of content act as threads within the same story. The only thing they have in common is the story line. This is the fundamental concept behind transmedia storytelling. Now, that concept is alien to most of us but Ag8 co-founder David Bausola goes one step further by adding an additional dimension. Purefold mines the idle chatter of the masses and funnels that into a refining process. The chatter might be direct advice about the story line, vague inspiration or simply references which are completely unrelated to the story but offer intriguing or diverting inspiration.

Talking with David 6 months ago, he said “This idea is like a big ball of string which needs to be unpicked”. It’s certainly complex but the open licensing principle, the incredible directors and the immensely creative potential of crowds should ensure the success of this very daring project.

In his book ‘Ten Faces of Innovation‘, Tom Kelley, General Manager of legendary design firm IDEO described The Cross Pollinator as someone that takes knowledge and understanding from one area and mixes it with another to create a dramatic and inspired new creation, or thereabouts. It seems that incredible things happen when you put someone with a deep understanding of ancient civilisation together with a pediatric psychologist. Well, it appears that another legendary creative force Weiden+Kennedy has created a new department in which wizards and racing car drivers can crack briefs for Lurpak together in perfect harmony and get paid £1k a month for the privilege.

Sounds more ‘mitigate risk’ than ‘embrace failure’.

Here’s quite a folky spotify playlist I put together on a lonesome Saturday night. I started putting together a little graphic in PhotoShop before I realised I’m crap at PhotoShop.

http://bit.ly/shootingsuns

Mike.

Made me laugh.

Yahoo! Welcoming Google to Twitter

I have a confession, I like to pay for music. I know it’s odd. People tell me all the time, “Why don’t you just get it off limewire” or “I’ll lend you the CD and you can rip it”. Every time I’m offered a CD of an artist  someone just ‘knows’ I’m going to love, I always hope they’ll forget to give it to me.

I just cannot help it. I was brought up an honest boy and I like to pay people a fair price for good work. I’m not some kind of mug that doesn’t understand how not to get fleeced. I just like to pay for good music. That’s how the economy works, of course it would be great if Radiohead worked in World of Leather and made their music for fun or The Streets actually made a healthy living out of touring but that’s just not how the world works. Some people can’t or don’t want to tour. And people need to get paid to do their stuff.

And I know there are more of us. Other people I know have mentioned the same sentiment. I’ve actually heard people say it out loud in public. It turns out there are lots of people that actually enjoy paying for music. I’m not alone.

Now, in the business of marketing, this kind of thing is called an ‘insight’. It’s that golden nugget of truth that advertisers need to make their advertising work. Without an insight, you’re actually just making announcements, your not really doing advertising as such, you’re just telling people things they may or may not want to hear.

Now, the RIAA are that demonised body that have been getting plenty of bad press for lynching children for downloading Kanye West off of Bittorrent. In the UK we have the BPI, which is equally clueless about how to deal with the ‘problem’ of downloading music without paying. Now, neither of these parties would recognise and ‘insight’ if it climbed up their bottom. They employ archane DRM mechanisms, use scare tactics and bend the arms of ISPs. Now, this is costing them a fortune. And funnily enough, advertising can also cost a fortune too.

At some point soon, someone is going to spend a fortune paying very cool famous personalities (not actual musicians though) that it simply is not cool to listen to music without actually putting some money back into the system.

If only. We’ll see.