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First Person Top 5

2013-03-25T14:16:00.001+00:00

#1 Biting Elbows - 'Bad Motherfucker' (Insane Office Escape 2)

Biting Elbows - 'Bad Motherfucker' (Insane Office Escape 2) from Ilya Naishuller on Vimeo.

#2 "Portal No Escape"

#3 "What's in the Box"

#4 "Alive in Joberg" – what "became" District 9

2013-02-26T14:36:00.001+00:00

Martin Weigel's (W &K Amsterdam) brilliant and sobering presentation delivered to the IPA's 44Club, a 'tale of humility and indifference'. (Via only dead fish.)

How to (not) Fail from Martin Weigel

What if money was no object?

2012-12-17T00:43:00.001+00:00

Ask yourself. What would you do with your life if money was no object? An amazing lecture from the late Alan Watts.

Chromebook for everyone / taitastic

2012-11-21T10:43:00.001+00:00

Love the super simple 'user contribution' aspect of the Google Chromebook 'For Everyone' campaign.

https://www.galleryforeveryone.com/

Just an image and a couple of words
Pattern really easy to understand "For ...." [you say what]
Lots of example immediately visible to nudge herd-like motivation
Aligns perfectly with the ATL film http://youtu.be/S95J5BowMmk

How Not to Fail by Martin Weigel, W+K Amsterdam

2012-10-18T09:45:00.001+01:00

Fantastic presentation "How Not to Fail" by Martin Weigel, W+K Amsterdam

So much to like in this brilliantly provocative presentation. The two slides with the greatest 'noddy dog' moments were:

Slide 54: "Mass reaction is more important than mass participation". It's a very real argument you hear daily. Do many campaign ideas having a completely unrealistic assumption and perception of participation. That's the lesson from the Redbull Baumgartner space-jump, Cadbury spots & stripes and so many participation focused campaign ideas that in reality don't work in the way their were conceived and sold. It's a huge risk to predicate the success of an idea completely on mass participation.

Slide 89: "Our task is not nurturing enthusiasm but overcoming indifference". Again, it's such a common situation for a client to think that a mid or low budget earned-only campaign is an easy way to build connections with people who are completely detached from the brand or product. If a social campaigns has reach asa primary objective, it's lunacy to remove bought media completely from the mix.

Some great comments on the original post, with a link to "Swimming in the shallow end" by BBH planning icon Jim Carroll.

2012-09-29T18:29:00.005+01:00

Monopoly Clone Wars Edition - Rules / Rule Book

Get yours at Amazon
Special Edition you can build settlements and cities in place of the classic houses and hotels, and optional Star Wars rules add even more excitement
This Star Wars-themed game turns the classic Monopoly board into an exciting real-estate Clone War
Travel around the game board buying, selling and renting properties based on the Star Wars The Clone Wars animated series
Scenes from the Clone Wars TV series add more excitement to the overall game experience as players sell, buy and trade planets

BlackBerry 10 Touch - New Campaign

2012-09-28T09:22:00.001+01:00

Can't wait to see what Lady Gaga, JK Rowling, Ridley Scott can do in 24 hours with a blackberry 10 - awesome!

Poke Creative Day / Matt Jones from BERG

2012-09-27T17:24:00.001+01:00

My short notes from the presentation.

Berg is about "Making cultural things that make life more interesting"

Their product realm:

For the home
Delightful
Works for you

BERG like things that are mainstream, cheap, mundane - inexpensive reach

Early History:
2009 Map Projections "Here & there" : Art Prints
2009 Ojito : die cut view master
2011: SVK Warren Ellis, Matt Broker, SVK UV torch
2006: Availabot : USB Puppet (Presence component)

Making Availabot was hard…was'our Sputnik'
Why? It's expensive and slow to mass manufacture mass connected products
The Stack: application, presentation, session, transport, network, data link,physical
AND Shenzben : design for manufacture

NEVER again do we want to deal with complexities of design of manufacture

Recent other Smart products:
2005 : Nabaztag
2009 : Glowcaps (complex medicine routines)
2011 : Nest Thermostat

Litter Printer
Gives you a miniature personal newspaper
Launch partners are ARUP, foursquare, Google, the guardian and nike
Recent Hack-day = daily origami animals
But there will be an API A Trojan horse for BERG CLOUD

BERG CLOUD will lower the cost and speed of making new products.

BERG POV : Products are avatars for services, channels for media, things that people connect around.

The Internet Industrialist, Matt Jones from BERG from Poke on Vimeo.

5

2012-09-21T11:31:00.001+01:00

Dan Deacon Smartphone App trailer

2012-09-18T09:18:00.001+01:00

Interesting app synchronizes all the phones in the room, turning you and the rest of the audience into the light show and sound system for the concert!

It doesn't require a live connection, so I assume it must work off sound cues.

2012-09-10T15:33:00.003+01:00

Enjoyable lengthy rant against social engagement gurus:

Engagement Vs Interruption from engagementvsinterruption

2012-08-31T17:32:00.001+01:00

Destinations need to make good videos:
68% of Travellers watch travel-related online videos and, of those, 70% are choosing a destination.

2012-06-26T15:28:00.003+01:00

A recap of 100 beautiful slides from the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity 2012

100+ Beautiful Slides From Cannes Lions '12

View more presentations from Jesse Desjardins - @jessedee

2012-06-22T16:45:00.003+01:00

Brilliant deck from Pon Kattera, Senior Interaction Designer at RG/A

'New approaches for designing in the responsive age. Includes a responsive web design case study and review of nascent techniques responsive designers are using to build the future web.'

Design Process in the Responsive Age

View more presentations from Pon Kattera

"Connected Personal Objects" by odopod from Planning-ness 2012

2012-06-21T09:47:00.001+01:00

Planning-ness is described as an "un-conference" for creative thinkers who want to get their hands dirty. Each session is half teach and half workshop where participants put the presented ideas into action. This year a two-day, two-track event was hosted at the Annenberg Community Beach House in sunny Santa Monica.

In the odopod session, they mapped the ever expanding Internet of Things landscape, broke down the “anatomy” of connected objects, and described how personal connected objects have the ability to encourage new behaviours, even increase human potential.

Connected Personal Objects: Getting Intimate with the Internet of Things

Guthrie Dolin also shared the output of the workshop session:

Connected Personal Objects — Planningness 2012 Workshop Output

Interactive TV vs. Second screen

2012-06-01T13:09:00.001+01:00

The second screen is a far more interesting open playground for advertisers and content producers than the niche of interactive TV. Nicely constructed deck from Mindshare nailing the argument from a viewer insight angle. It's a POV echoed Dr. Montpetit, a deep thinker in this space, was has worked on these idea since 2001 at the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics.

“You’re going to interact with the content on your TV, but with another device”

For a brief overview of her thinking on the more promising ideas out there in read this interview by JWT intelligence.

Future of Connected TV Mindshare

View more presentations from Mindshare

#37 Go On tour - First Time by EastPak

2012-05-24T10:26:00.001+01:00

#37 Go On tour

"When was the lasttime you did something for the first time?"

Beautifully executed campaign challenging people do something for the first time.

Similar in concept to an idea W+K did for Nokia called "Carpe Diem" An app that challenged people to do something different every day. The actual tasks are really similar to the ones in the EastPak campaign. e.g. Hug someone, say hello to friend, smile at a stranger. The W+K tasks came from a collaboration with the 'school of life' people. Funny, W+K spent so much effort making a dedicated app, web site, facebook page etc - ALL of which is now down. I always wonder why brands can't keep these things alive.

Screngrab uploaded to flickr by ubermore.

2012-05-18T13:59:00.002+01:00

Great and massive presenation packed with great thinking by John Willshire (@willsh) from the IdejaX conference in Croatia.

Watch out for:

Slide 55: "Accountants drift to the top"
Slide 75: "With this ad, sadden us, you will"
Slide 114: "The internet is biased towards fact."
Slide 162: "You have to want to make a difference."
Slide 192: "You are an operating system"

The Future of Marketing: Make Things People Want or Make People Want Things?

View more presentations from John V Willshire

Altimeter's Digital Influence Report

2012-05-17T11:22:00.002+01:00

Great report from Alimeter on the theory and practise of digital influence containing some good models and excellent case studies.

The Rise of Digital Influence

View more documents from Altimeter Group Network on SlideShare

The Altimeter report sets out a range of high level metrics to use when building a measurement framework for digital influence. Interestingly, they're really close to the traditional metrics of PR and marketing. They were nicely summarised in another great post from Dan Armano on his Logic and Emotion blog:

Brand Lift/Awareness — Benchmark where the company is now in social networks, and set goals to improve brand awareness and reach.
Brand Resonance — How often is your business discussed in the social web today? Define how resonance will keep your business top of mind and to what extent can be driven through influence programs.
Reach Through Advocacy and WOM — Existing advocacy and WOM initiatives can be designed to influence customer behavior and decisions.
Sales/Referrals — Through special offers and promotions or exclusive incentives for engagement, brands can drive leads, sales, and referrals.
Sentiment/Shift — Negative or indifferent perception can be shaped toward positive or favorable views.
Thought Leadership/Authority — Tapping into the communities of expert individuals can help your brand tap its social capital to contribute to the stature within the community you hope to earn.
Demand — Invest in demand creation through exclusive programs and intentional outcomes.
Trends — Changing behavior is possible once you understand what it is today, how you see it evolving, and identifying the right people and value to help you get there.
Audience — Investing in the size of your community and its quality is a function of design and purpose, and its value grows through strategic alignment and engagement.

Isobar #CreateLondon NFC Hackathon with O2

2012-04-02T11:35:00.000+01:00

Isobar Create London was a 34-hour 'hackathon' in March 2012 challenging designers and developers to innovate using Near Field Communication (NFC). Around 65 people from 5 countries attended to make up the 20 teams that went head to head for kickstarter funding and range of great prizes.

What is NFC?

NFC is the technology used in the London's oyster travel card. It allows short-range contact-less secure communication between devices. Being able to 'tap' and connect promises to revolutionise the way we use mobiles. NFC heralds an era of true one-to-one marketing as the mobile will seamlessly encompass all stages of the consumer journey in a single touch point. The types things you might tap for in the future:

Payments: credit, debit, stored value, transit
Transactions: offers,movies, events, boarding pass
Access: keys , gym member, treasure hunt, puzzles
Loyalty: rewards, punch cards, collecting
Identification: goverment issued, student id, medical id, membership etc.

Most experts agree that mass adoption is some distance away, between 2 and 4 years in terms of payment. NFC is a rare but existing feature in today's handsets. Nearly all the main handset manufactures are planning to include NFC in a far greater range of devices in 2013. Many believe the tipping point will come if the Apple iphone 5 includes NFC. But payment isn't the killer app because NFC doesn't offer retailers any significant benefit over what already exists.

The Hackathon

We gathered at Shoreditch Studios and were given BlackBerry and Android handsets with NFC capabilities, a pile of NFC tags, and the support of experts from Google, Kovio, O2, Proxama, Isobar and BlackBerry. The presentation by Brendan Marry of Google, although stat-tastic was particularly good. (1 in 4 people use their mobile in the bathroom!)

The event was very well organised with an unending array of talks, experts , snacks, treats and entertainment. Best snack must have been the delicious Blood Orange Sorbet on the Sunday afternoon. Most memorable moment was an astonishing 'mentalist' magician gaffer-taping his eyelids...

The supplied Proxama TouchPoint Platform was particularly easy to set up and get running It proved straight forward to get a working demo using the system. More complex was the 02 Bluevia API platform, which provides a series of hooks for developers to include messaging, user information, location and advertising in applications.

The 34 hours turned out 17 working applications that were judged in series of 3 minute pitch-offs.

My team pitched a demo we called "Schau". The idea was that you 'bump' your phone when in a retail environment to set up a 'Pinterest'-like shared shopping scrapbook with a friend. So rather than sharing with your social graph, you share and compare with a buddy in the same environment.

Update: An called Pair just launched with a similar idea of more 'private' sharing. Pair is "an app for just the two of you. BB together when you're part by sharing Texting, sharing videos, photos, sketching together."

The Winners

Setting up for the 3 minutes pitches

Team: Rollercoaster for Themepark App

Idea : Combined entry, ride access, access and wallet on your phone
Prize: Kickstarter funding from 02 BlueVia

Team: Blue Butterfly for Tap-to-wifi

Idea: Lets venues offer Wifi in one touch from an NFc tag
Prize: Kickstarter funding from 02 Proxama

Team : Ying Yang for 'Total Event'

Idea: An application that allows real-time sharing of accurately geo-tagged photos in a large sports venue.
Sponsor: Adidas / Sports
Prize : Champion league tickets

Team: We're Appy for 'PillIt'

Idea: Helps people take the right medicine and the right time - and gamifies the usage.
Sponsor: Kellogg's / Retial
Prize : A years supply of cereal (awesome!)

Team: New Found Comms for 'Street Screen'

Idea: A series of NFC enabled outdoor posters demos.
Sponsor: Visa / Finance

Event Take-out

It was fun to learn and play with the technology in a team. I really enjoyed pitching at the end of the weekend. A pleasant surprise was how personable, helpful and enthusiastic the support teams were, and I particularly enjoyed talking to the 02 team.

We didn't get any disruptive innovation ideas, and if we had, I doubt they would have won. You could have come away from the event thinking that NFC is really a frictional-less QR code that works. But QR-codes can't remember and NFC can. No one seems to know what to do with read/write nature of the technology. It was easy to imagine how easy it will be to transform an environment into an interactive space. The real challenge is thinking how the collective interactions of a group could add value to an experience, like the winning idea for sports events.

It was amazing how easy it was to take a sticker and make an object suddenly part of the internet and to easily initiate interaction. The interesting stuff won't be payments but how other objects, for example cars, use this technology.

Partners & Sponsors

Tech Partners Isobar O2

Tech Sponsors Bluevia Blackberry Samsung Google Proxama Kovio

Media Sponsors Guardian, Contagious Magazine, Clear Channel, Posterscope

Related Posts
A Winning Idea by Tom Evans, School of Communications Arts 2.0
Brands view hack weekends as way to grow NFC adoption (New Media Age)
Isobar O2 / Isobar Create London (Contagious Magazine)
Mobe hackathon contest spits out Wi-Fi-by-bonk app wonder (The Register)
Create London #NFC Hack day for mobile (Androidbloke)
Isobar Create London NFC Hackathon (London BlackBerry Developer Group)

The future, Siri, voice and pets

2012-02-06T17:17:00.004+00:00

Siri, the voice driven intelligent assistant feature of the Apple iphone 4S reminded me of video we made back in 2000 for British Telecom Cellnet. We were asked to envisage what a future 3G interface might be like to support their spectrum bid. Inspired by Hall 9000 and StarTrek, we assumed the spoken word would be the way to interact with the hand help computer in the future. The video was made for Tui and a close collaborator was Neil Wilson.

We brainstormed lots of user scenarios, but the client was locked into thinking that the mobile was primarily a business tool. The video focused on scheduling, travelling to meetings and making presentations, but we managed to drop-in some mobile behaviours that we thought would be common place in the future.

So what did we get right?

The scenarios maybe humourless, but they’re not a million miles away from the Siri launch videos.

A voice assistant for the core features - dairy, alerts, contact etc.
Question and answer dialogue to complete tasks based on context
Commerce enabled through a mobile ‘wallet’ (I believe that's coming soon to iOS)
Messaging working across devices and platforms e.g. telematics integration
Maps and location being critically useful

What did we get wrong?

A Leviathan scroll wheel menu rather than multi-touch
Applications extending functionality
Video working well over 3G (... but sold as a key speed benefit during the spectrum auction!)

The Intelligence Assumption

Our basic assumption in the video prototype was that the phone would act like a concierge or human-like assistant. After hearing Matt Jones talk at the “In Progress” event, (staged by ‘It’s Nice That‘ magazine) maybe that premise is a promise too far. Maybe it is wiser to aim for experiences that connect robots and autonomous services in a way that engineers simpler emotional empathy rather than human-like intelligence. Examples of these types of not-so intelligent connectors to the real world are Little Printer, the learning thermostat and Cryoscope haptic forecaster.

Siri is still in Beta

However, a voice interface does provide the seductive potential to expose and unify services. Outside of America Siri still breaks easily.

Siri is hopelessly crippled for most of the world because it cannot link to maps, directions or local search. The disappointment felt is really similar to the feeling at the first iphone launch. Jobs said Apple would never allow third parties to develop for the iphone. There were a few bundled apps, and many of these, particularly messaging, had many flaws. AS history played out, the iphone's most powerful differentiator is the application ecosystem.

Siri is the 'doing' ecosystem

Perhaps ‘Siri’ is distined to become a new type of ecosystem that lets you command your phone to ‘do’. There will be an API, where businesses and brands will have a way of directly interfacing and extending into the underlying lexicon, actions and language. Interflora may have an app, but it’s far more interesting to be able to act upon the verbal question “Send my Girlfriend some flowers tomorrow”. Siri could become a doorway to a mirade of actions and third party datasets. This is already appearing in a range of 'cracked' usefulness.

Google must see the same thing, and many observers think this is the reason for recent unification of Google privacy polices. Currently in development, Majel will make it possible to offer the whole spectrum of Google’s confusing array of services via voice on android.

Will Siri get good enough?

The real question is whether Siri will actually succeed. It’s bad enough to make you just give up. Sending the voice recording to the cloud for interpretation introduces a very annoying lag. It has a very high error rate. Even the activation gesture of raising the phone to your ear doesn’t work reliably. On top of these usability issues, there is a human reality that, for some reason, it’s really embarrassing to dictate misunderstood commands to your phone. It took my whole walk from the British Film institute to the millennium foot bridge to successfully dictate one SMS message.

I believe these usability problems will be solved in time, and linking third party services to pet-like 'intelligence' in the cloud will transform the perceived usefulness beyond dictation. If I were to make another mobile ‘future’ video today, I’d focus on the 'Internet of things' and how the mobile works with the cloud of semi-intelligent connected objects that will fill our future lives.

onedotzero / wow + flutter 11

2011-11-24T10:13:00.006+00:00

onedotzero is a motion graphics film festival in London presenting the world’s most innovative audio-visual work. It returns this year to London's BFI Southbank from 23-27 November 2011. The opening show was Wow + flutter with a selection of 35 shorts from up and coming new talent.

I definitely preferred those that had a stronger sense of narrative. My pick of the films:

3D No glasses by Jonathan Post

I assumed it was a fantastically funny spoof, but does it actually work?

Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Computer Virus

A great story in 'info-graphic' style. Again, I loved the feeling it created around wondering how true it might be.

Breakfast Interrupted

A beautiful juxtaposition of order and chaos. There seemed to be a trend toward the hyper-real slow motion, and maybe because there was so much animation, truly real stuff of this film seemed to be far more compelling.

Onedotzero has lost all arts council funding, so if you are in London and want it to continue, try and attend to add your support.

Catvertising gets it 100% right

2011-11-16T16:02:00.002+00:00

In the week that Sapient Nitro shot themselves in the social media foot with "Idea Engineer", I thought it would be great to be positive and celebrate that sometimes people get it 100% right when they tackle the tricky task of advertising themselves. My current favourite is Catvertising by Canadian advertising agency John St.

Nearly as good as their equally brilliant take on the award video genre 'Pink Ponies'.

Vitamin talent : Ad Agency Bloodline

2011-07-11T15:25:00.013+01:00

The Ad Agency Bloodline by vitamin talent
Interesting agency hall of fame info graphic from Vitamin Talent.

Listed Agencies (sorry if I've missed any):

Agency.com, AKQA, Amalgamated, Anomaly, Arnold Worldwide, BBDO, Big Spaceship, BSSP, Cramer-Krasselt, Crispin Porter & Bogusky, Critical Mass, Dare, David & Goliath, DDB, Dentsu, Digital Kitchen, Digitas, DraftFCB, Droga5, Euro RSCG, Fallon Worldwide, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, Gotham, Ground Zero, GSD&M, Havas, Hello Design, 72 and Sunny, Huge, IDEO, Jung Von Matt, Luck & Company, JWT, La Comunidad, Leo Burnett, Lowe & Partners, MDC Partners, Mekanism, Mindshare, Modea, Mono, Mother, MRM Worldwide, Ogilvy & Mather, OMD, Omnicom, Organic, Pereira & O'Deal, Publicis, R/GA, Razorfish, Rockfish Interactive, RPA, Saatchi & Saatchi, Sid Lee, Starcomm Mediavest, Taxi, The Barbarian Group, The Eleven Agency, The Richards Group, Tribal DDB, Universal McCann, Venables Bell, Whittmanhart Interactive, Wieden+Kennedy, Wolff Olins, Wong, Doody, Crandall, Wiener, WPP, Young & Rubicam.

Google Trailer 'Zero Moment of Truth'

2011-07-08T14:49:00.002+01:00

ZMOT The message is now a conversation.

Google has started to play the research as PR game by re-spinning some good, but not exactly groundbreaking, thinking about the new purchase journey. Very similar to the heavily research backed "The consumer decision journey" in the McKinsey Quarterly (2009, Number 3). Both pieces of work put real weight behind gut instincts you might have had, and I'd recommend anyone in marketing to watch the video. Essentially, it places the role of 'search' in the research phase of choosing products. More significant is the influence of social media at this point in the consumer journey.

ZMOT is that moment when you grab your laptop, mobile phone or ipad and start learning about a product or service (or potential partner) you're thinking about trying or buying. I'm sure you know what I mean - you probably do web searches like this every day.

Download Google’s free marketing strategy ebook 'Winning the Zero Moment of Truth' from here.