According to What?

 

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei mastered the art of questioning conventions and frames of reference. He literally goes and breaks vases that are thousands upon thousands years old. He wants to provoke and shift our collective paradigms, question our values: how much do we value people over objects?

Going against the grain and breaking our own precious vases has meaning. There’s a certain gravity to corporate communications; a kind of unspoken rule not to smile too much at meetings. No wonder so many brands take themselves so seriously, they become a precious Han Dynasty vase.

Experience design is not about you.

What value are you adding to the world? Steve Jobs famously wanted to “make a dent in the universe”; his concern, arguably, was never to protect Apple. The day Apple becomes about Apple, they are finished. When you protect something, anything — you put yourself on a defensive. That’s no way to grow and move forward.

Make a coffee foam heart.

At some point, and the earlier the better, you’ll start to have fun with your brand and product, and really care about people. You will care enough to make sure your website is usable and accessible, your ads aren’t misleading, marketing isn’t annoying. You’ll care enough to break your own Han Dynasty vase and make coffee foam hearts.

Remember that everything changes. You’re big on Facebook? Facebook is not forever.Whatever tools you have at your disposal, you can choose your own focus. And it better not be “getting more likes”. What if “likes” are the “Facebook pokes” of tomorrow? Would you do communications differently?

“When things get complicated, we simplify by saying ‘what’s best for the customer?’” — Jeff Bezos

Focus on creating value. Focus on people over pixels.

“It’s time for PR to lead” — Dave Fleet

I set down with Dave Fleet of Edelman to ask how PR can help brands tell their stories at scale. Edelman just landed on Glassdoor’s list of best places to work once again, for a reason: here’s a global agency that embracesorganized chaos as a way to stay creative and forge ahead.

So how do you scale brand narratives?

Dave Fleet: We focus on the narrative to help build brands, identify audiences, the story they’re looking to tell and break it down into all the little pieces that play into that story. In many cases, several agencies are involved in crafting the brand narrative — no small feat. It takes interesting, entertaining ideas that translate well across different channels, educate, evolve emotion, and capture people.

How do you come to a shared understanding of what the story is going to be? How do you capture that?

Dave Fleet: One of the things we do with companies — we sit with stakeholders internally and interview them. We look at it from narrative and story perspective, and capture that shared understanding in a document to coordinate our efforts, especially in digital space, where space and timing are of essence.

How do you scale social? How do you maintain authenticity and consistency of narrative across all channels?

Dave Fleet: We work with other agencies on nearly every client we have. Edelman has 1,600 clients. We’re very used to collaborating with other agencies, and we focus on getting that deep understanding of a brand story and the customers’ journey, and good ideas. Sometimes we will have creative tensions, and that is a good thing. In the end of the day, multiagency mix can be a disaster or it can be fantastic. When a client defines clear roles and responsibilities, and doesn’t let agencies go rogue, it can be great.

Edelman is a big agency — but many of the same things apply to small agencies. Doing social at scale is hard, and so we put process in place to help scale happen. The core story and crafting of narrative is not about specific moment in time, it’s not about campaign — it’ll be part of different campaigns and programs. While the creative idea piece might a bit more campaign focused, it stems out of that same narrative.

Is it time for your PR agency to lead your creative?

Dave Fleet: There was a Marketing Mag article on this topic. It’s a good read. In a nutshell, PR agencies can help clients tell their stories in creative, engaging and human ways.

When public relations is about the public, it’s a great focus for an industry and a promising place to be.

As communicators, we often think our role is to relay information. We think, “If only the world knew,” and so we focus our energy, communications and strategy on passing information. We forget that people, for years, have outsourced their factual and informational memories. Because we can. Why remember, when we can look up anything.

Great experience design is about creating memories.

We remember experiences. True brand is measured by the sum of all experiences, positive and negative, that people have with it. Please be conscious of experiences and impressions you’re creating. That’s the first step to the necessary analysis of every single touchpoint of contact, of your overall company’s interface with clients, vendors, employees, competitors.

Memory distortion

One of the greatest challenges communications professionals have is creating memory distortions, or illusions that something happened when it didn’t. That things aren’t black when they are. Friends, that sort of spin is very hard to do and nearly impossible to do right. Focus on what works and work on being great at what you do, instead of covering up the smell of decay with perfume.

Build a brand that’s strong enough. If you aren’t actively creating great experiences, that gap will be filled by someone else. Flashmobs will do it for you. Your competitors will define you. You will be defined, whether you want it or not. How do you want to be perceived? What do you want to be known for?

Creating great experiences is not optional anymore. It’s not enough to just feed me information.

Information must be fresh or marinated, sliced open, chopped, cooked to perfection and plated to be transformed into experience.

Know your brand’s overarching meta-story. Align your communication, marketing and business development efforts with your brand’s core, and your goals as an organization. The rose blooms because it blooms. Innovate and forge ahead, not because you must, not because everyone else is doing it, but because that’s who you are and how you work.

***

Communications as Experience Design.

I’ll be doing a series of posts on why good communication equals experience design in the coming weeks. I have arrived at this understanding in my professional life, and it seems to be important enough to share.  I believe that communication can benefit organizations, when it’s done with clients/consumers in mind. When you truly align your business goals, your marketing and communications, traditional, digital and mobile, you win. I’ll start with this post, diving into some communication theory and how it applies in the real world.

Let me take you by the hand and, hopefully, show you where to look among the garbage and the flowers.

Brands are stories.

Every successful brand has a story – a meta-narrative, an archetypal plot that defines it. AdWeek counted seven, just recently. Whether you realize it or not, your brand’s meta-narrative has a huge effect on every decision, from marketing to business, because it sits deep in the very core.

Case studies: Tim Hortons, Starbucks, Nike, Apple, and BuzzFeed edition.

Strong meta-narratives help everyone in the organization make choices. Whenever your organization is about to pursue a new direction, announce a new product, start a campaign or simply comment on something that’s in the news, ask yourself, how does this micro action support the overarching meta-narrative? Or, more simply, is it in line with your brand and what you stand for, what you represent.

• Tim Hortons sending children to summer camps supports the brand. Tim Hortons sponsoring hockey teams and other local programs supports the brand. Tim Hortons introducing a new dark roast beverage – first time they did this since 1964 – supports the brand how exactly?
• Starbucks partnering with New York Times so the customers can access digital content for free supports the brand. Starbucks collaborating with designers Alice + Olivia for new tumbler designs supports the brand. You can tell they really are having fun with their brand at this point. Starbucks introducing wine and beer to their stores is Starbucks carefully walking a line.
• BuzzFeed, which started as a popular destination site, famous for listicles, memes and cats, is rapidly expanding in new directions, like taking a bold plunge into longer-form, investigative reporting. Master-narratives can and do evolve. I can’t wait for them to hire a Fashion Editor. Would make so much sense, as this would be in line with their brand and meta-narrative of visual as the new social on steroids.
• Nike FuelBand embodies the Nike brand mission, which is to help you be the best athlete you can be.
• Apple. Who doesn’t remember the 1984 ad? What about Think Different? The misfits, the rebels. The crazy ones. I don’t know if they still fit that brand narrative, and I can’t wait to see how it evolves. If I had to guess, it’d be ‘the cool and glamorous ones’. We shall wait and see.

Know your meta-story and, as Tara Hunt recently wrote, embrace your only-ness, your uniqueness.  We know about the power of stories in shaping beliefs. As communications and marketing professionals, we must make sure all the stories we craft and experiences we design every day don’t clash with the overarching brand story. That’s when we stop making sense. You don’t want to do that.

Most importantly, lets just have fun with it all.

We have many truly important jobs-to-be-done. Can we, as digital communication pros, designers, coders, marketers, and anyone else spending time online, do so more responsibly? And if we are to be feeding into this distraction, can we still help one another get our collective jobs done?

My experiment: hacking memes for #HoHoTO

I decided to try and turn this sorry state of affairs on its head. I thought, why not hack the power of memes, of those cats, Honey Boo Boo, twerking, and all this GIF fun for good, to raise awareness of more important things in the universe.

So I decided to hack me some memes for #HoHoTO, a fundraiser for the Daily Bread Food Bank in Toronto, because there needs to be more to life, to the internet than entertainment for entertainment’s sake. Join me!

My newsletters are GIFs!
Neiman Marcus, Printstagram, io9, NYT, and The Guardian

Neiman Marcus sent me a newsletter I didn’t even have to click through, or scroll down to see everything there was to see – new DVF dresses, literally flashing before my eyes, in perfectly timed transitions. That whole newsletter was a complete GIF.

Printstagram sent out an announcement about turning Instagram pics into holiday cards – great idea and yes, illustrated by a GIF.  Even their landing page is a giant GIF, quite beautifully done.

And it’s not just newsletters. Many sites still lead with a strong image – Medium is a good example – and, while that’s a bit of a standard, I’m now seeing some sites using GIFs as header images.

Not to mention the infamous NYT Snow Fall project and the latest Guardian interactive on Snowden. Both do brilliant things with animation.

Is TV the future of Internet?

Over the past four years, the percent of adult internet users who upload or post videos online has doubled from 14% in 2009 to 31% today. There’s no denying that moving images are more captivating and awe-inspiring than text and static photographs. There’s a reason we moved from print to huge Hollywood flicks in 3D.

Internet was supposed to be different. Yet for so many of us watching videos and gifs on our screens internet becomes essentially a passive user experience, where our “engagement” is akin to switching channels on TV. Click. Press. Glide. Nothing on.

Is TV the future of the Internet? What do you think?

Yes you can. Yes you can have fun and help the world all at once.

Every year for the last five years, I played for the team that organized HoHoTO, a holiday fundraiser for Toronto’s Daily Bread. We started it in 2008 when the recession hit, as a way to bring the tech/startup community together during tough times, and as a way to give back.

So yeah. Guess what, the need for HoHoTO and giving back has never been more acute than it is today. 1.6 million Canadians used a food bank last year, and that’s 23% higher than in 2008, when the economy collapsed.

Wait. Let me repeat that.

Mark December 19th on your calendars, people, and come to HoHoTO.

HoHoTO is a fantastic party fundraiser for Toronto’s Daily Bread, where bubbles float in the air, people dance like they just don’t care, buy beer for strangers, and make new friends – helping the world suck a little less.

Lex’s first meme caption all for #HoHoTO

You dance, hungry people eat. Tag your cat tweets, pics and memes with #hohoto, cause why not. The more people find out about the party, the better! Here’s that perfect moment of joy when you realize you actually have a reason to Instagram your cats and your food, cause every time you tag your posts with #hohoto, you help spread the word that hungry people need to eat and deserve our help. Ride the fun wave, and help others.

It feels good to do good. All the cool kids do it! Well, you get the idea. Now, why not hack a meme! Tag it with #hohoto. It’s so fun, I just might make a Tumblr next.

Finding and creating memes to caption is fun, and http://www.quickmeme.com/caption is as good place to start as any. Pls remember to tag your meme with #hohoto! Caption those cats. Cause cats are the future!

Why do we still do HoHoTO, after all these years? This is why.

Meme captioned by @gisuck

And no, you can’t turn this off. Because, advertising.

Update: Apparently, you CAN turn it off in a Twitter app, just not on desktop. So your experience depends on the interfaces to Twitter that you’re using.

I can only hope marketers of the world will take this opportunity to break new ground and create amazing visuals that I will want to see. What can I say? We may still learn to communicate with images. Meanwhile, as a digital comms strategist, I’ll be recommending this to you:

Choose your images wisely. Your rough guide to Twitpics and common sense.

• Images are visual communication, and therefore a big part of your brand. Choose better, cleaner images that align with your brand and help you communicate your message. Spend that extra few minutes and edit your images in Photoshop – even very minimal editing can make a huge difference.
• Yes, your images can be ads. Why not create special ads for Twitter, or if you must repurpose, please consider the size of the pic display. Or else, the Knix curse (see that illegible ad above) will get you.
• If you must use text, less is more. I’d suggest using Twitter character limit as a rough guide and avoid jamming more than 140 characters into your copy. Don’t know about you, but I could barely read the Knix ad above, let alone be excited to participate in whatever it is they’re selling. I have no doubt we will see more of this. Set your bar high. Consider mobile. Consider user experience and give your images and ads better context.
• Instagram does not get this special treatment and does not display in people’s streams. This may be a good thing in the long run, for both Twitter and Instagram.
• Don’t be boring. There are plenty of boring images out there. Do better, and I’ll RT.

When in doubt, ask yourself, are you Pinkman or Knix? What would Steve Jobs think?

BuzzFeed-isation of Twitter is coming to the future near you. And more filters and ways to easily edit photos on the go, because, let’s face it, it’s pretty bad out there. That said, I’m signing off Twitter for today. I think it’s that really gross food pic I just saw that did it to me. Ugh.

P.S.: Twitter, you start reminding me of Blackberry. Remember how much people loved Blackberry keyboards? Sometimes, keeping it simple is your best strategy. I knew this had to happen to you at some point. Visual web is here and now. BuzzFeed, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Instagram got serious pull. However, I still think you should’ve tried to find a better balance between your visuals and your text. Let Medium be your inspiration, and simplicity be your guide.

In case you weren’t following my every move online, I got some news for you. I joined the awesome team of people on a mission to bring Maker Faire fun to Toronto.

And on the weekend of September 21-22, we did it! 2013 Toronto Mini Maker Faire took place in Wychwood Barns, which was a beautiful venue and worked especially well on Sunday, when we had both indoor and outdoor space. 4000+ people came out, including many families and young kids, who told us they’ve never even seen a 3D printer before.

My personal Maker Faire highlights included a twitter typewriter, 3D-printed chocolate, trying on a robotic arm, liquid nitrogen ice-cream, toy hacking, robot battle, soldering and lock picking workshops, extreme knitting, R2D2s and the abundance of great robots of all shapes and forms, including my favourite robot of all time – LOVEBOT, and 3D printing, 3D printing, 3D printing.

I am a Lovebot

Maker Faire is..what exactly?

Maker Faires are an incredibly interesting beast. They’re both nostalgic and futuristic. I won’t be surprised if someone 3D prints a gorgeous retro car, for example. It’ll probably have some sort of solar element to it, and will drive as directed by your mind. Or, there was this bio-lab on wheels. A very cool, neatly organized and fully functional bio lab, organized and compartmentalized in such a way as to fit on a bike. Yes, really.

If you could 3D print your own car, or make your own phone, would you? 

Maker movement is more than just people making stuff, though that part is awesome, too. It’s people taking back production and product innovation. Asking questions about how things work and why they work this way, and learning by doing. Discovering new ways of looking at things that only come to those who question everything, and then go and make things happen.

Arguably, few of us make anything anymore. Do you make your clothes? How about your tools, like your computer or a phone? Did you build your house, or at least helped design it? Some of us hardly even make our own food anymore. Maker culture is the world’s answer to these questions, and a sign of an even bigger shift to come – from mass-manufacturing to sustainable manufacturing on-demand. In a weird way, it bridges technology and humanities. Maker movement sprung out of our collective deep enthusiasm for ideas taking physical shape, and having real impact. It’s that David vs Goliath story all over again, and well, who would you be rooting for?

Toronto Mini Maker Faire a creative success – CBC

Maybe that’s why Toronto Mini Maker Faire turned out such a success. 4000+ people, many great sponsors and community partners, and supporters like @doctorow who wrote about our little Faire in Boing Boing. Toronto Star showed up and did not one, but TWO stories. TVO made a documentary, and is producing an episode on maker culture as I type. CBC called our Faire a “creative success”, and there seems to be no end to kind words from all over.

Guess what! If you’re reading this, you’re invited to come to the next Toronto Mini Maker Faire. If you’d like to help, let me know and let’s do a coffee.