Talent imitates, genius steals

Transmedia Presentation

2008-07-03T10:25:00+01:00

This is kind of an experiment in distributed presentations.

This deck forms one part of a transmedia presentation [which is, itself, in part, about transmedia planning] - the one I'm giving about now at the WARC Influence conference in London.

One part is the presentation I'm giving live now - it builds on the same foundations as this, but has a different ending, talking more explicitly about INFLUENCE. [I'll post about that later.]

Another part is an article that is in this week's issue of Campaign - it also comes out on Thursday, at about the same time this post will be published, while I'm presenting - which explains the idea and expands on it a bit, with reference to a more recent example.

And this deck is the backbone - it's the alternate ending to the live version.

[It mostly contains ideas that I wrote about in my thesis - so you can read the long hand version here.]

All the elements are different access points into the ideas, and they are all connected, they have different things in them, they let you come to the larger discussion in whatever you want.

I'm not sure if this will work, but I'm hoping it will, at least, be interesting.

Dancing Around the World

2008-07-02T18:39:17+01:00

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Stride Gum paid for this guy to go and dance like this all over the world.

Hell yeah.

Smile.

[Via Em/Boing Boing]

Advertising is the Medium or Distributed Broadcasting

2008-06-30T22:28:19+01:00

Google just announced a deal with Family Guy [and American Dad, but that's basically the same thing] creator, Seth Mcfarlane, that will see Google be the exclusive distributor of his new animated creation.

Google will distribute the short animated clips via the Adsense network, to sites with a relevant audience - it's calling the new service the Google Content Network.

“We feel that we have recreated the mass media,” said Kim Malone Scott, director of sales and operations for AdSense.

Not a small claim - but GCN is certain to cause concern at the A and NBCs of the world.

This mechanism turns advertising into the medium. It reaches a huge, measurable audience, by distributing the content via hundreds or thousands of sites that host Google Ads.

It turns the broadcast advertising model upside and inside out. The content doesn't create the audience to sell it to advertisers - it goes out and finds its audience, via the advertising, using other people's content, that already has an audience.

Or something.

A while back I posited that Google would creep into owning other media to extract maximum value from its ad platform. [It has already released Google TV and Print and Radio Ad networks.]

But perhaps I was thinking about this all backwards. It creates the ad network by aggregating eyeballs from sites all over the web, and that becomes the distributed broadcast medium.

Why own the media, when you can broker all the advertising and content using other media?

Which suggests a different model, a model that America loves - a market.

Enron, the fallen poster child of 90s corporate American, was ultimately a market - an energy market. It didn't make anything - it was the transaction medium.

In fact, it was market crazy. It loved to create trading platforms. It announced a market to trade broadband.

Then it created a market to trade the weather.

[This is true. You could trade finanical instruments - derivatives in fact. Futures. So speculative contracts based the fluctuations of other variables - in this case - THE WEATHER.]

I realise that comparing Google to Enron sounds absurd, at first glance. But it's not. Honest.

[Enron was named Most Innovative Company in America by Fortune Magazine 6 years in a row - Apple holds the title at the moment, but Google is up there, and it won Most Innovative in Fast Company.]

The principle of being the market rather than a supplier or buyer is a sound one. When Enron launched EnronOnline, a web based trading market for commodities like power and gas, it was rapidly adopted by every major energy company in the deregulated US energy market.

That's why everyone loved them so much - suddenly if you wanted to do any business at all in the energy category, you had to do it with Enron.

[Enron used a bizarre and ridiculous accounting system and were very naughty - you can read all about it here.]

[The problem arose because of the way the market was structured - Enron was financially involved in every transaction - in essence you were always buying or selling off Enron - which meant costs were rising over time, as they took on more and more risks, but their revenues looked awesome, when accounted using aforementioned absurd mark to mark accounting, which enabled you to mark future revenues as though you already had them. Anyway, this is getting way off the point. Perhaps this whole Enron analogy was misguided.]

The [rapidly vanishing] point, is that the market is the house [to use a casino analogy] and the house always wins.

[Although this analogy is also flawed - unless you are talking about poker at the casino, where you pay a proportion to play, but the house isn't actually gambling itself. Oh I give up.]

Why own some media, when you can broker the ads to all the media?

After the Influence

2008-06-27T21:52:13+01:00

So I'm going to be at this WARC Influence Conference thing next Thursday, 3rd July.

It's right by this pub called Black Friar, which I will no doubt go to afterwards. Like around 6 or 7pm or something.

So, we could maybe have a cheeky Beersphere there, if anyone else fancies popping down for a beer.

Is it sunny in London? I'm looking forward to being able to drink outside, they won't let you do that here.

Advertising for Agencies

2008-06-26T17:39:20+01:00

Campaign magazine asked me to write a couple of columns to fill in for Ian, so he could go on holiday.

In today's exciting episode, I point out that media agencies were notable by their absence from Cannes this year, even in the media category, which you'd think they would be ideally suited to enter.

[Although what constitutes a media idea, and how you separate that from a creative idea, is a whole discussion in and of itself.]

My point was though, as I realised when I was doing the Clio judging thing, that entry is almost as important as the idea itself.

Since most of the campaigns are from other countries, as a judge you may have never encountered the work, you have no idea how it resonated locally, whether people loved it and talked about, or simply ignored it.

The entry is all you have to go on - a short form video advert for an agency.

And traditional advertising agencies have quite a lot of experience making short form video adverts, whereas media agencies don't.

[I wonder if you could set up a meta agency, that just made case studies for other agencies.]

You can download the whole thing here.

[It's a pdf but you may need to rename the file and give it a .pdf file extension, as Macs seem to remove them]

In the piece I mention that media agency of the year was awarded to Forsman & Bodenfors, a creative agency. [Second and third place also went to creative agencies.]

But I said they were German, and Beata emailed me to point out that they are from Gothenburg in Sweden.

Förlåt!

Selling Jesus

2008-06-25T21:58:48+01:00

My mate Ahra just introduced me to the work of Jim Riswold, a former W&K creative director, who created some iconic work for Nike, who was diagnosed with leukemia and decided to start making iconic art - as in art made from icons, like Jesus and Hitler. He talks about why here.

He has a great site here, with his own jingle.

I like the strategic planner diagram of Jesus above.

I suspect there is probably scope to create hilarious planning diagrams and models, with or without religious figureheads.

O wait - there is.

Distributed Commerce

2008-06-24T19:35:01+01:00

My mate Neil has just launched Ninjazoo - a t-shirt design website that allows you to design t-shirts [and remix designs others have uploaded] and then publish your shop to social media platforms like Fbook, Mspace and Tpad.

See above for the new line of TIGS branded merchandise [and you thought I was joking] - my TIGShirt arrived today.

This is a great idea for one of the same reasons I love the Orange Balloon Race that's running at the moment-

[Feel free to boost my balloon. His name is Misfit and you can find him here.]

- it understands that the web is the platform and that from here on in, identity is distributed.

Advertising Elegy

2008-06-23T16:53:48+01:00

Who are your heroes?

My heroes are the people from whose thoughts and words I began to construct my own belief system, my world view.

The geniuses I stole from.

[World view is a calque [or stolen piece of linguistic genius] from German. They have this word Weltanschauung. It's a Teutonic concept that is quite useful so lots of languages, and philosophers, have stolen it. It basically means the framework of beliefs and ideas through which you perceive the world, how you parse reality.]

One of my heroes just died.

George Carlin was one of the great stand ups and thinkers of our time.

[If you haven't come across him: rejoice for there is much joy ahead of you should you seek out his work and despair that there is no more of it. However, you may remember him from such roles as Rufus in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. If you have never come across that, there is no hope for you.]

Alongside other charming iconoclasts like Bill Hicks and Kurt Vonnegut, Carlin is one of the people who helped me understand some of the things I believe to be important, who helped me piece together my stolen Weltanschauung.

Above is Carlin's Advertising Lullaby - one of his most famous bits.

[His most famous was probably Religion is Bullshit - check it out here.]

Those of you that know Hicks and Carlin may also be aware that they reserved a significant portion of their hilarious but heartfelt vitriol for advertising.

[Hicks implored marketing professionals to commit suicide immediately.]

For a long time I found this difficult to resolve with what I do.

I would use F. Scott Fitzgerald as my get out clause:

The art of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing thoughts in mind at the same time while still retaining the ability to function.

I believe this is true.

[When someone seems very certain of the veracity of one side of a complex argument, I tend to look nervously for a conversational exit.]

But perhaps more importantly, I think we should consider the extreme views of advertising contained in the words of Hicks and Carlin, the critique of intent and tonality, and allow them to drive us to make it better.

Collusive Influence

2008-06-19T19:56:45+01:00

I'm speaking at the WARC Advertising and Consumers Conference on July 3rd in London. It's all, loosely, about INFLUENCE.

WARC says:

The programme is based on our belief that the old linear communication models have broken down – in today’s multi-media world, no brand owner can rely on winning the hearts and minds of an increasingly sophisticated and sceptical audience which continues to fragment, tag, stop, save, share and skip.

The old marketing mindset of ‘control’ has had its day. Emerging in its place is a new mindset of ‘engagement and influence’.

There are loads of great speakers, like Mark and Toby and another Toby, so it should be interesting and fun, despite my involvement. [Full list here.]

[Mind you, according to George Parker he finds inspiration on TIGS, and I wouldn't argue with him - thanks George, I shall buy you that pint as agreed - I had better think of something inspiring to say now.]

I wonder about INFLUENCE.

I imagine Toby 1 will be talking about OMD's new Influence Planning model - I'm interested to see how they conceive of it.

The thing about influence is that intuitively I feel it only works if people don't think it is working, but secretly want it to. You can't persuade someone to do something they don't really want to do, at least a bit.

Ask a used car salesman. People HATE being sold too - it smacks of coercion, which disrupts our notions of rational autonomy.

But people LOVE having external justification for their own desires. Or a reason to focus their desires in a world of infinite choice.

When we talk about influencing consumers, it seems to suggests that we, the commercial persuaders, exert some power over our targets that make them do things they don't want to do.

But I suspect they collude. They are our partners in persuasion.

[Those of you who have seen Derren Brown influence people to spontaneously commit armed robbery may disagree.

[If you haven't seen it - go watch.]

But he repeatedly points out in his work that hypnosis is basically just getting people to play along. Persuasion requires tacit collusion. It needs to be tacit, otherwise other parts of your brain get involved and shut things down. That's why suggestion works better obliquely. Perhaps the reason that, in all surveys ever, most people think that advertising doesn't work on them is because that's a requirement for it to work.]

Once I work out what I mean by all that, I shall talk about it at the conference.

Do come and say hi.

If you want to.

Save Children with Media

2008-06-17T23:55:03+01:00

Save the Children are looking for a media manager to work on a six week project.

So if you are a freelance media type and would like to help save kids

[and, if you wouldn't like to help save kids, then what kind of media monster are you?]

please get in touch with Rosie.

Rosie Shannon (head of PR): R.shannon@savethechildren.org

Stop Frame Row Your Boat

2008-06-13T19:21:38+01:00

When Famous Rob got a job I think a warm glowing warming glow spread across the Plannersphere.

He just sent me an ad his new employers have made.

[CheethamBellJWT in Manchester - they have a cute website that speaks directly to prospective marketing director clients, in the voice of Alexi Sayle, reminding them of their famously short tenure in the role and the fact that their brand doesn't exist in the INTERESTING part of the world.

I like it. It might be a bit impractical though.

[Maybe not though. I guess if there's a phone number, and a sense of the way they think, what more do you really need? Where does it say agency sites have to do the whole people, culture, work thing? Do CMOs ever really put agencies on the pitch list due to the work on their websites? I doubt this. I retract my impracticality comment]

[Although to get to the phone number you do have to watch the whole thing.]

[Oh but wait - their Google listing has the contact name and phone number, so you don't. Good work.]

Normally, when I get sent loosely disguised press releases concerning new TV spots, I tend to ignore them.

Sorry if you've sent me some, I don't mean to be rude, but they can often be as direct as:

Dear Blog, Post Our New TV Ad. This is eXclusive. To All of You.

which doesn't tend to earn them much attention.

[In fact it seems pretty rude to me. I retract my earlier apology.]

But this was famous Rob so I had a look.

[Traditional PR people spend time building relationships with journalists, understanding their particular focus - should digital social hypermedia PR spambots do any less?]

It seems like a nice enough spot. I don't think it will have the epic global viral reach of the classic Bear Fight, but that's a pretty high benchmark.

So I asked Rob, tell me something awesome about this ad.

It was shot entirely on Digital SLR photo cameras at 25 shots per second.

[A bit interesting.]

The boat was manually moved a few feet and the oars moved for each frame. We used three oars with various bits of blade removed so that they oars would appear to be in the ground.

[Also a bit interesting. Although I could have guessed that. ]

Once the initial idea was created, our CD remembered a video he had seen that was similar. Instead of doing what most agencies do and copy it; we found and hired the original director Gemma Burditt (just recently out of film school) for her first ever commercial shoot.

[Ah - he got me! Genius Steals but give the people credit.]

Ways of Seeing

2008-06-12T19:45:54+01:00

Noah and I wrote this piece for the new issue of Contagious about visualisations.

It's called Ways of Seeing [this is a reference to an awesome book that my mate Paul lent me that I never gave back called Ways of Seeing. It came out in 1972, was based on a BBC television series of the same name and is amazing: a discourse about the the inherent ideologies embedded in visual imagery.]

In the piece we look at a bunch of interesting data visualisations and quote a blog post by Ed Cotton:

in a data driven world, infographics are the new art

and go on to suggest that visualisations are only going to become more prevalent and interesting as more and more data and metadata is generated by every digital interaction:

In a world increasingly saturated with data, we will all need to develop new ways of seeing.

You can download the whole thing here.

Dreaming of Android

2008-06-10T19:13:39+01:00

[from here]

So iPhone 2.0 is whizz-bang fancy and half the price of iPhone 1.0.

Why?

According to analysts:

Analyst Ken Dulaney of Gartner told us that Apple was clearly going after the cellphone industry's top dogs. "With these announcements today, [Apple is] making a statement they want to overtake Nokia," he said.

He's half right.

As my very smart brother points out - it's because Apple needs to grab market share before Android devices hit:

I'm pretty certain the timing of its release, and the farce that has surrounded it (i.e. leaving mobile shops around the world without stock for many weeks) is in some way related to the threat posed to Apple's dominance by Google's Android mobile platform. As the aware of you might know, this is due for release later this year.

He goes on to explain why it's such a threat - up to now Apple's hardware / software expertise has enabled Steve & Co. to create a device that stands head and shoulders above anything else on the market. Very few companies have deep expertise in hardware and software - technology manufacturers always fall down on the software solution, and software companies find it hard to make kit that anyone actually wants.

But that changes when Google, who are very good at software, comes out with an open source platform for devices manufacturers:

Because a large number of handset manufacturers will be producing handsets using the Google Android OS - it's just a matter of time before they figure out how to get the software/hardware combo right.
[Read the rest here]

Apple's proprietary strategy leaves it open to coopition: Google is betting on an open future.

The more people online, on whatever device, the more money Google will make.

When Timing Plans Go Bad

2008-06-09T22:17:37+01:00

[Thanks to Andy Day]

Naked & Anonymous

2008-06-05T16:58:26+01:00

Naked London had an anonymous art contest and exhibit last week - some lovely stuff came in from all over the agency.

[The above includes people from various creative or strategic or research backgrounds and one is from finance - can you guess which? There may, or may not, be a prize. Probably not. But maybe.]

Say it with me: Creative is not a department!

Kyle and Hass came up with the idea - here's what they said about it:

We wanted to see how well creativity would function when it has to speak for itself, stripped naked of everything but the expression – no title, no statement, no background.

So we briefed everyone who works at Naked London (the strategists, the creatives, the founding partners, even the cleaning lady) to create a piece of original art to be shown in an exclusive, one-night-only exhibition.

The twist was that every piece of art would be shown anonymously and without a title (this would all be revealed in a special online gallery the following week).

Phase two of the project has just gone live and the creators, titles, statements and inspirations have all been revealed.

You simply click on the work to discover the information.

See the work here: NAKED ANONYMOUS

The Physics of Media Have Changed

2008-06-04T23:59:26+01:00

| View | Upload your own

Neil is a very nice man. He's also very smart. This is worth reading.

The physics of media have definitely changed - the forces and elements that shape it are evolving.

There's lots of great stuff in here. I especially like:

So how can I create a community? Wrong Question.

I think the problem is that we often ask or get asked the wrong questions [what do we do with facebook? what kind of widget? how can i create a community? what shall i podcast?]

Media companies need to dramatically reframe how they position themselves. Distribution platform is no longer defining - being a newspaper or a television station is not defining when both create digital content as words and videos; digital content is agnostic, flowing across platforms.

Strong media brands have built in communities - people define themselves in terms of their media behaviours. [I'm a Guardian reader]

The challenge, as Neil points out, is to work out the role of a media brand in a world that's has a superfluity of content.

Snap Shot City: Duel

2008-06-04T16:03:04+01:00

My lovely mate Anne is once again putting on Snap Shot City, as part of the urban game festival Come Out and Play, for your delight and edification this weekend [in NYC].

o 7th June 2008 for Come Out & Play, NYC.
o 27th June for Hide & Seek, London

Anyone with a digital camera and internet access can sign up to play and then spend the day exploring your city, finding the extraordinary in the quotidian.

This year London and New York are being set head to head in duel to end the rivalries of these two great, solipsistic, cities and bring them closer together.

[Metaphorically. Actually they move further apart by a few inches every year, geology fans.]

So grab a camera, some mates, sign up here and come out and play.

I'll see you there, snap shooting my new city.

The Future is Balloon

2008-06-03T17:36:26+01:00

The future may no longer be bright, but it is still fun, thanks to the irrepressible Poke people, who have once again made a lovely thing for Orange.

The World's First Internet Balloon Race - with prizes and games and such as the balloons fly from website to website - Iain explains it all here.

TIGS has signed up - look at the balloon raccoon floating at the bottom right of the page - and welcomes careful balloon animals.

What I love about this idea is that it pulls together buzz elements - let's make a widget! - in a way that actually makes me want to install it. As Iain points out - sure it will drive traffic, but it's also FUN.

It's naturally distributed, using the web as a gamespace. It's social and personal. It gives you a reason to maintain a conversation over time, as your balloon travels from blog to blog collecting points and that.

And there's a relevant incentive for the PAYG consumer base - a holiday for you and your mates in Ibiza.

I've always loved the idea of balloon races: letting them go and hoping some kid in another country finds them and send them back. Of course, nowadays, you could just GPS tag them and see where they all went.

Like Poke did to the bull.

And The Winners Are

2008-06-02T23:11:14+01:00

[I'm back.]

[I've missed you.]

[Parenthetically, it would seem.]

[Anyway.]

I wrote this thing for Media Magazine about what trends emerged from the Content and Contact Clio Category [try saying that fast five times. Be careful of the Candyman though].

There were a few things that jumped out: marketing people pay for, user involved content, doing GOOD THINGs, and the Shibuya district of Tokyo.

The point I was trying to make was:

As communication evolves, things that don't fit in elsewhere hint at how the industry is developing - mutations are, after all, the key to evolution.

You can read the whole thing here.

The winners have been announced - have a look here.

Once I get some time, I'll try to focus on a few campaigns and explain why we thought they were generative mutants.

[PS - has anyone else noticed that the new typepad CMS seems to leave big line breaks?]

It's Better to do Nothing than Not to do Anything

2008-05-26T22:29:04+01:00

[From here, because I've haven't got my camera lead]

I'm currently expending my cognitive surplus with the help of the critical technology of the industrial revolution.

[OK - it's not gin, it's cachaca, but you get the idea.]

In the essay, Clay Shirky talks answers a television producers challenge about active online media, like World of Warcraft, or Wikipedia:

"Where do people find the time?" That was her question. And I just kind of snapped. And I said, "No one who works in TV gets to ask that question. You know where the time comes from. It comes from the cognitive surplus you've been masking for 50 years."

And of course, I agree. I spend a lot of time talking to people about the shift from passive to active consumers. Active consumers are different. If they aren't involved, they are interested.

[His anecdote about the 4 year old looking for the mouse for the TV captures this perfectly.]

It's the same challenge that people tend to make when thinking about immersive brand experiences, transmedia ideas or ARGs or anything complex that requires a lot from the people we hope to influence.

And that's the point - if there aren't the gaps, if there aren't things for them to do, they aren't interested. Of course there are levels of involvement, not every rabbit hole needs to go all the way to Wonderland.

But everything should have gaps for people to fit into.

[Russell used to call this leaving room for the mouse in the mousetrap - good advertising has always asked the reader to fill something in.

Actually, let's go back - all good idea transmission requires this. Duchamp and Barthes both understood this - the act of creation is only completed inside someone's head.

But now that co-creation of meaning is externalised, the tests is literally constructed collaboratively. Death of the author - long live the authors! Death of the brand - long live the brandtags!]

So I was thinking about all this, inspired by this post by Bogdana that reminded me of Shirky's principle of participation:

And I'm willing to raise that to a general principle. It's better to do something than to do nothing. Even lolcats, even cute pictures of kittens made even cuter with the addition of cute captions, hold out an invitation to participation.

And I wondered if I was wasting my time, sitting doing nothing, staring at the sea.

But then I remembered something that my mate Ivan once told me:

It's better to do nothing, than not to do anything.

User Involved Content and the Taste of Brands

2008-05-16T19:19:25+01:00

A campaign for Shreddies in Canada introduces the new diamond variant to consumers in real focus groups held in Toronto.

It's pretty funny - especially if you've ever done any qualitative research - and is another example of what J Vulkan dubbed User Involved Content while we were going through the Clio entries.

There has been a groundswell of real people captured on camera in ads - reality advertising if you like - abandoning high production values for the gritty authenticity of gonzo film making.

The Whopper Freakout works on a similar principle - hidden cameras capturing genuine people being deprived of their Whopper - as does the new Pizza Hut ad, where restaurant patrons are served Pizza Hut pasta.They claim to like it even more once they are told it was deliverd by Pizza Hut.

And, in the film above, one of the subjects expresses a taste preference for the diamond shape Shreddies.

Silly - it's the same!

Except: what if it's not?

I've been reading Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. It illustrates the fact, that we intuitively know but that classical economics refuses to accept, that we aren't rational beings. We make decisions that are seemingly irrational, in the same way over and over again, because of how our brains are hardwired: anchors and priming, emotions and social context all interact to change how we choose.

One of the things he highlights is the power of expectation to alter experience. He describes a replication of the famous Coke/Pepsi taste tests, done with the subjects in an MRI to record how their brain is processing the experience of tasting the drinks.

We all know how it works - in blind taste tests, Pepsi usually wins, but when the brands are revealed, people prefer The Real Thing [TM].

And, according the experiment, it's because that the experience of consuming branded sugar water is different - the Coke brand activates different associations in the memory and emotional parts of the brain, which contribute to the consumption experience.

Which means that, when you drink a Coke, a part of what you are tasting is the brand.

Clio and Wave and The Littlest Hobo

2008-05-15T17:32:05+01:00

I'm going to be moving around for a while.

[Not quite as much as the Littlest Hobo but I felt I had to use the theme tune because no one in New York seems to remember this seminal, landmark show of my youth]

I'm heading down to the Clio Awards in Miami tomorrow - I'm helping to explain our decisions in the Content and Contact category on Saturday morning.

[Short list is here - all worth having a look at]

And then I'm heading down to Brazil to speak at the Wave Festival in Rio - about being beta and the internet and brands and that.

Do come say hi if you'll be at either.

After that I'm going to be on holiday for a bit - so TIGS might be quiet for a couple of weeks.

Brand Tags

2008-05-09T22:08:48+01:00

Noah has just created Brand Tags - a site that allows you to tag brands with whatever words you associate with the brand and then converts the brand into a weighted tag cloud of associations.

It nicely demonstrates the socially constructed nature of brands and their inherent multiplicity of meaning - putting the one word equity idea firmly to rest.

Google TV Ads

2008-05-08T23:01:28+01:00

Google TV Ads extends the Adwords platform into TV [it also does print and radio].

It allows you to plan and buy a TV schedule based on station and daypart and so on.

Or it will create an optimised TV schedule for you based on your desired demographic.

You can then buy TV like you buy Adwords, setting daily impression and budget targets, and monitor your delivery, getting results the next day.

If you don't have an ad, it connects you to the Google Ad Creation Marketplace, which connects advertisers directly to production companies.

They are currently offering to reimburse you for ads created through the marketplace, up to the cost of $2000.

At that budget level they clearly remained focused on the long tail of advertisers, lowering the entry costs of using mass media.

But one day disintermediation is going to call into question the need for advertising agents to perform many of the tasks detailed above.

Metablogging

2008-05-08T20:12:52+01:00

Campaign Magazine asked Richard, Scamp, Ben, Neil, and I to have a big blog up to blog about blogging.

They wanted to know why we do it, among other things.

Here's what I said:

O blogging how do I love thee - let me count the ways.

I blog because it makes me think. The blog needs constant feeding, so I need to keep thinking and reading and making things up.

I'm constantly looking to make connections between disparate things, to package them up into posts. Finding patterns. Or creating them.

It's a place where I can think unfettered and get feedback on what comes out, from people who I know are interested in the same sorts of things, otherwise they wouldn't bother.

It's writing but it's not solitary.

It's a place where I can do whatever I want with words.

You can see the rest of the rambling here.

[Or you can download the orginal article here. ]