We’re contributing over at the pocketgame blog, so crossposted below is my latest post all about social games:

Hello pocketgamers. Like my esteemed colleague Mark Earls, I’m definitely not a game designer. Or a game expert. Though I love games, gaming and most of all, plain and simple play. Stuff that’s just fun to do.

Stuff that’s fun to do together. Lots of games are great fun by yourself, no question, but playing with other people adds a whole other dimension.

Games have always been a social activity – and it’s awesome that more and more digital (console, mobile, computer, whatever device you choose to play on) games are becoming increasingly social, allowing you to play with – or against – both friends and strangers.

The term ‘social games’ has come to refer to social-networked-enabled web-based games, like Farmville or Scrabulous – which are absolutely ace, but it’s a bit of a shame to think of such a narrow meaning. Any game you play with other people is a social game – such as those illustrated in this fantastic infographic illustrating the history of social games from game designer Jon Radoff

And of course, you’ll notice when you look at this image that loads of these games aren’t ones that require loads of technology. They’re real life games, played with real physical things, with real physical people. And there’s something pretty magical about playing with your mates right there and then, together. Sure, you can all be sitting in the same room playing Xbox, and that’s ace. But it’s also pretty ace to be able to play a casual, pick-up game, that doesn’t require a shedload of specialist equipment, something you can just pick and play with, for that spontaneous moment of fun.

And wouldn’t it be just brilliant if that something was something you could, say, fit in your pocket…

I’m really excited about seeing what you all come up with. Let’s play!

Digital technology is ace. The post-digital world is hugely exciting.

But sometimes what you really really want is world 1.0 – physical stuff. Doesn’t need to be internet-enabled, internet-of-things real stuff. Just real see-it and touch-it and take-it-home-with you physical stuff.

Now, I love me some online shopping. Most of the time I’d be happy not to have to schlep round the shops, and the more I can order online the better.

Except when I don’t.

Sometimes you really want goods you can touch and take home with you. And a real person you can talk to.

We all know that certain categories are always going to demand a physical retail presence, no matter how much their online sales may also flourish.

But with a physical store presence comes the assumption that you’ll be able to choose a product, buy it there and then, and take it home with you. Especially if the store in question also has an online presence – if you wanted to get the product delivered, chances are you’d have ordered it online. Obviously within reason: just because John Lewis sells sofas in-store doesn’t mean I expect to take it home with me.

But take electricals. We wanted to buy a telly. Ideally we wanted to choose one in-store and take it home with us there and then.

Except we couldn’t. No matter which big consumer electricals store on the big soulless retail park in Tottenham we went into, not one had a TV we could take home. You could only order for home delivery – and in any case they’d then advise you to go online to make your purchase to get the online-only price. The shop purported to be a shop, but really it was just a physical window to an online store.

So we went home, sans telly, and ordered it online.

On the day it was supposed to be delivered, it was chucking it down with snow. The country had ground to a halt. So understandably, we thought our delivery might be held up or cancelled.

So I thought it would be prudent to call up and find out if the delivery was likely to be affected by the weather. Except that there was no way I could do this. The automated system didn’t want to deal with any queries that didn’t fit into its allocated boxes. There was no way I could actually speak to an actual human being. I even tried the sneaky ‘press 0 to bypass everything and go straight to an operator’ trick, but to no avail. The system was fully automated and tough luck if you had a query that didn’t fit into the questions it was set up to answer.

As it happened, the delivery van arrived and we got our telly. It’s brill. Its HD goodness is fab for games and blu-ray. Lovely stuff.

But buying it wasn’t. Sometimes we just want a physical shop where we can buy what we went in for, instead of having to wait in all day for a delivery which will obviously right at the very end of the delivery slot.

And sometimes you just want a real human being to speak to about a query. Going through an automated system to get there might be a pain in the arse, but as long as you can get to someone who might be able to help you, it’s just about bearable.

Amazon is said to be considering establishing a high street presence, to allow customers to collect bigger items such as TV and PCs rather than have them delivered (along the lines of the totally awesome Argos reserve-and-collect system). Amazon have denied this rumour, but as more and more high-street retailers shift their business online, it can’t be just me that’s missing the retailer of old where you could actually take the goods home with you.

It’s a salutory lesson that although the digital world is fantastic, and all the shiny new opportunities it presents are exciting and open a wealth of doors, it’s crucial for brands not to forget about the importance of physical experiences with real live human beings.

(cross-posted to the WARC blog)

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science, founded by Suw Charman-Anderson and named after the pioneering Ada Lovelace – widely regarded as the world’s first computer programmer, and described by Charles Babbage as the Enchantress of Numbers (as well as the star of Sydney Padua’s incredible The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage web comic).

Along with over 1500 other bloggers, I’ve pledged to write about a woman in technology that I admire.

Brenda Laurel is a designer, researcher and writer who focuses on interactive narrative, human-computer interaction and cultural aspects of technology. She’s described by TED as having been part of ‘several major revolutions in the way humans use computers: virtual reality, interactive narratives and gaming’.

She’s an incredible polymath who’s brought together an understanding of both arts and science – her groundbreaking 1991 book Computers as Theatre explored the incredible potential for interactive fiction created by computing technology. She’s worked as a software designer and researcher at some of the most influential Silicon Valley companies of the time (including Atari and Activision) and established herself as a talented entrepreneur through the founding of organisations like Telepresence Research (an R&D company specialising in virtual reality & remote presence), Interval Research (a legendary Silicon Valley think tank studying the connection between tech and everyday life) and Purple Moon (dedicated to producing software and communities to engage pre-teen girls). She describes the book she wrote about the experience of running Purple Moon, Utopian Entrepreneur, as “a guide to doing socially positive work in the context of business.”. The list of awesome – in both the ‘amazingly cool’ and ‘truly awe-inspiring’ senses – accomplishments goes on.

One of the standout pillars of her legacy for me is her focus on game design for girls. Much of her work stemmed from the fact that computer games seemed to be designed squarely by men, for men – leading her to research how and why girls played, their motivations, their mindsets and their values; and how to develop games to meet their wants and needs.

I love that she’s a techie and an artist, a thinker and a do-er, and has refused to be boxed in. She’s been dubbed a “digital diva”, living simultaneously in the worlds of theatre and computers, and in doing so bringing new perspectives on how we should think about the way people interact with products and services, and the way we should design these accordingly:

She brings a fresh perspective to the commonly-thought cold relationship between humans and their machines. She argues for the ubiquitousness of the technology, to the point that it resembles the kind of unity between theatre and audience, where the audience members becomes a part of the action, moving towards a single, united goal. She is also known as a proponent for the socialisation of technology to put it in the hands of ordinary people who find ways of using it to express themselves.

[ courtesy ]

Laurel shares some of the gems from her research in this 1998 TED video – it’s well worth a look:

Thanks Brenda – you’re showing the world how it’s done.

Two years ago I wrote about a corking day talking about games, fun & play with a bunch of super-smart people at GameCamp 08.

The good news is that GameCamp is back for 2010!

It’s a one-day event for people interested in games, and interesting people in gaming.

We believe games aren’t just playthings; they’re one of the most important media of our civilization. Games have reach and power as great as those of video, music or the printed word. GameCamp is a forum to talk about this most powerful medium: how we make it, how we use it, how we can make gaming better, and even how we can make things better through gaming.

It’s an unconference, modelled on the BarCamp series of developer events. Which means there are no keynotes or invited speakers. No PowerPoint. But there will be fantastic discussions and conversations. There are no spectators at GameCamp – only participants.

Thanks to the lovely folks at eBay, GameCamp 2010 will be held at Whittaker House (the home of eBay, PayPal and Gumtree.com) in Richmond, London, on Saturday, May 8.

GameCamp is free to attend, however due to space restrictions, attendance will be strictly limited to 150 tickets. We’ll be issuing several tranches of tickets to give everyone a chance to sign up, so don’t panic if you couldn’t make the first release, there will be another chance to register.

If you want to attend then the first tranche of tickets will be released via EventBrite at noon on Friday 12th March.

For more information see the GameCamp website; for updates as they happen (including ticketing info), follow GameCamp on Twitter or Facebook (NB RSVP-ing on Facebook doesn’t guarantee attendance – you’ll still need to register via EventBrite!)

The event’s being organised by, er, me – as part of a team with the fantastic James Wallis, Mark Simpkins, Philip Trippenbach, Rachel Clarke & Rain Ashford – and we’re hoping to make it even more awesome GameCamp 08.

On a more practical note, we’ve got some fantastic sponsors on board, but as my co-conspirator James noted, we’re still looking for some more sponsors to come on board. If you’re in a position to offer us some funds to cover the cost of, say, lunch and thereby earning the love and admiration of an important & influential sector of the British games community then please drop me or anyone else on the committee a line – katy at gamecamp dot org dot uk).

Get your game on!

[ photo courtesy ]

Whenever we think about brands and brand values, we generally think in terms of personality traits and characteristics we want the brands in question to embody.

And rightly so, because some of the most-loved brands are undeniably human – they’re alive with personality and there’s a real sense of character about them.

I was chatting to the exceptionally smart Justin Basini the other day, and he observed that for many of the strongest brands, their founders are still very much involved in the company. The Apple, Virgin, Ben & Jerry’s, Howies, Innocent and Dyson brands are inextricably linked with the personalities of Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Ben & Jerry, Clare & David Hieatt, Richard Reed and James Dyson. The founders are central – with the unmistakeable imprint of the personalities and the values on which the companies were founded deeply embedded throughout the business. And when the founders are no longer involved, the brand has to replace the founder as the core of the business, to represent what the company was founded to do and shape how it should behave. Which is of course a lot harder to deliver in practice.

Similarly, Mike Arauz posted not so long ago about the role of personal brands of individuals within agencies vs the agency brands themselves – and how far the reputations of CP+B and Edelman are bound up with Alex Bogusky and Steve Rubel / David Armano (and Zappos with Tony Hsieh).

It’s about people. The individuals in question are charismatic, confident and decisive with what Justin has pithily summarised as ‘heart, vision, ambition and human understanding’. The key bit being human. And there’s a big difference between human-sounding attributes detailed in a brand pyramid / onion / molecule / insert branding model of choice and real human values.

Values aren’t supposed to be the result of an academic exercise, attributes that are carefully detailed in brand guidelines (that invariably contain more about the prescribed typeface and logo, how a brand should outwardly appear, than the way its people should behave, what the brand should actually do) – and then languish thoroughly unloved on brand managers’ desks.

They’re supposed to be the maxims we hold dear, the principles that guide how we behave in everything that we do.

Those brands whose founders are still involved demonstrate the difference that living and breathing those values has. It’s clear that it’s do-able.

So what excuse do the majority of brands, who behave in such a thoroughly un-human, un-personable way, have?

[ photo courtesy ]

There’s no rulebook about how we should and shouldn’t be using the social tools that are increasingly becoming a central part of our digital lives. The way we use them is self-defined – we make it up as we go along, and habits change and evolve over time. Twitter’s infamous retweet function was recently implemented as an official feature, but it wasn’t originated by Twitter, it developed organically amongst users, and only integrated into the Twitter.com functionality once its use had become widespread. Facebook is having to work out its terms of use as users decide how they want to use the tool – are extremist or defamatory groups an expression of freedom of speech or an unacceptable usage of the service?

If it’s not clear cut for those who run these services, it’s even less clear what the rules of engagement are for the users. We use them how we want, working it out as we go.

But our own ideas of how we can or should be using social tools can vary immensely – and the lack of rules of engagement can be exasperating.

The public / private sphere, for example. Many of us use different networks for different purposes. For me, the asynchronous follow functionality of Twitter means I’m happy to follow people I don’t know (either online or in real life) and vice versa. For LinkedIn, because being connected to someone implies that I know and respect someone professionally to such a degree as to want to be associated with them – with the subtle hint of endorsement – I don’t connect with randoms unless I know enough about them. My Facebook account is private because I only use it for sharing and keeping in contact with real-life friends (and also because I can’t control what photos of me other people may post, and I don’t want personal photos of drunken nights out to be made public) – so I don’t ‘friend’ randoms. Same for Foursquare – I don’t want anyone but people I know and trust in real life to know where I am, so if I don’t know you, I’m not going to add you as a friend on Foursquare.

And it drives me up the wall when I get random strangers trying to ‘friend’ me on Facebook or Foursquare. It shouldn’t. They don’t know my personal preferences for social networks. But in my head, it’s perfectly obvious. If I don’t know you, why do you want to know where I am? And why would I be OK with you knowing where I am?

And even once you’ve got past who you do and don’t ‘friend’, then you get to what’s an acceptable way to use the service. The number of ‘No I don’t want your stupid application‘ groups shows that lots of us find the way others choose to use the service utterly infuriating.

[who actually does want to be a Zombie?]

Same goes with Twitter. There are no rules for how to use Twitter – there’s no right and wrong. But we all have our own personal views on what we deem acceptable and what’s not.

Meg’s post ‘A list of things that will get you removed from my Twitter list‘ is a great example of this.

I’m the same. Certain things drive me barmy. Re-tweeting yourself (egotistical self indulgence). Autoposting your blog posts to your Twitter feed (I have an RSS feed). Saying ‘please RT’ (if it’s good I’ll RT it, if it’s not I won’t). Constant self promotion (see RT-ing yourself). Autoposting your Foursquare location (see autoposting blog posts – if we’re Foursquare friends I’ll already know where you are. And if I turned pings off it was for a reason. I can’t turn your bloody Foursquare tweets off without unsubscribing to your entire feed).

But that’s just my own preferences. I’ve got no justification for getting riled at people when they break my ‘rules’ because they’re not my rules. They’re not rules full stop.

And other people have very different views. Where I find auto-tweeting blog posts excruciatingly self indulgent and bordering on the spammy, other people have observed that it annoys them when people don’t tweet their blog posts, as they rarely check their RSS reader and they like using their Twitter stream as pseudo-RSS feed. (To get round this one I set up a separate Twitter account for this blog so that those who want to get my posts auto-tweeted can, but my regular followers who don’t aren’t spammed every time I publish a blog post).

When there are no rules, we have to work out what’s acceptable by ourselves. And given that we can’t always agree what we find acceptable from our own friends, it means where brands are concerned, a further degree of caution is required. We’re more forgiving of our friends breaking our unspoken and unofficial rules – less so of brands.

There’s no hard and fast way to avoid pissing someone off. But the credo of ‘don’t be an asshole’ and ‘do as you would be done by’ helps.

[ photo courtesy ]

The below post is cross-posted from the newly launched WARC blog, where I’ll be posting the occasional ramble – nothing remotely groundbreaking here for regular readers, but musings I thought worth raising for the WARC audience:

It’s interesting, isn’t it, that the holy grail for marketers is engagement – to build meaningful relationships between people and our brands. And yet the way we think about marketing is frequently diametrically opposed to the desired end result.

The vocabulary of marketing is largely one of warfare – with the consumer as enemy combatant, on the receiving end of our merciless attacks. The etymology of the word ‘strategy’ is military – literally meaning ‘the art of a general‘. And it’s just as applicable to the world of marketing as it is to the battlefield.

Think about it. How many times do we start by referring to the ‘target’ when considering audiences? (The fact that we talk about ‘consumers’ rather than simply ‘people’ is another strange beast, as it automatically frames people purely within the context of consumption rather than as the multifaceted human animals that we are, but that’s a whole other issue). So we launch aggressive campaigns carefully designed for maximum impact and to gain captive audiences, thinking about strikeweights and guerilla tactics to do battle, gain market dominance and kill the competition.

Hardly the language of fostering engagement and relationship building, is it?

We all know by now that people aren’t receptacles waiting eagerly for our advertising messages, and very often could quite happily live without whatever we’re trying to sell – but surely trying to conquer the enemy and beat them into submission isn’t the most effective solution? Isn’t trying to earn the right for our brands to be a part of people’s world, rather than trying to force our way in, ultimately going to be more valuable in the longer term?

We’d probably all agree that this is what we’re trying to do, and that a relationship based on permission and trust is far more desirable than one of force and conquest – and yet the language of marketing doesn’t appear to have caught up.

The vocabulary we use undoubtedly affects the way we approach things – both consciously and subconsciously. So if we want to actually develop marketing that’s based on marketing with people rather than to them, awareness of the language we use, and a concerted effort to move away from thinking about marketing as warfare, has got to be a move in the right direction.

[ photo courtesy ]

There is no limit to what can be accomplished if it doesn’t matter who gets the credit.

Normally attributed to either Ralph Waldo Emerson or Harry Truman, this quote is one of my favourites as it’s a pithy reminder of how much more we can achieve through collaboration than through competition. And a reminder of how much we often fail to achieve because we’re so focused on trying to make sure we get the credit.

It’s true in so many walks of life, but sadly particularly true when it comes to agencies’ work. We all talk the talk about integration with agency partners – but when push comes to shove, everyone’s constantly fighting to get the credit. Because in the main, we work within a model that doesn’t really reward collaboration, and in practice rewards singular ownership of ideas. Sure, awards entries may get jointly submitted, but the winner will always claim it as ‘theirs’. And of course the same examples appear in multiple agencies’ creds – and rightly so because good ideas have many fathers (or mothers) – but in each case you’ll generally have each agency claiming each idea as ‘theirs’, relegating agency partners’ contributions to the sidelines.

At Naked a lot of our IMC processes revolve around co-creation with multiple stakeholders, including people from around the client organisation and different agency partners. But when we share examples of work resulting from various IMC programmes with new prospects, we’re frequently met with a response along the lines of ‘yes, but whose idea was it‘.

Ideas are our currency. So it’s totally understandable that we want to protect them, lest they be stolen by a competitor and they claim the credit – with damaging consequences both to our reputations and our bottom lines. But in doing so, we lock great ideas down, stifling the potential of what they could be if we could collaborate instead of competing. And maybe it’s a utopian view that’s incompatible with the stark business realities of our industry, and how much appointments and remuneration are tied with being able to claim ideas as ours.

But just think what we could achieve if we were truly, genuinely able to be more open and collaborative in our day-to-day working practices, instead of worrying about who got the credit?

[ photo (c) LEGO ]

LEGO just get it. And keep doing fantastic stuff to show how much they really do get it.

They recently launched a really natty free iPhone app, LEGO Photo (iTunes link), to Lego-fy your pictures [check out the Flickr group celebrating the awesome stuff you can do with it]

And now they’ve just launched the LEGO CL!CK community, a “collaborative environment designed for inventors, artists and creative enthusiasts to share their vision about new products and toys” – a virtual canvas of shared ideas and quirky stories intended to inspire and delight.

It’s got the usual social boxes ticked, so it’s got Facebook & Twitter functionality, and selected posts with the #legoclick hashtag will appear on the website, and users can offer feedback or submit their own ideas. But the overall idea is to get creative minds talking and sharing ideas about how to use LEGO for play and innovation, which can’t be a bad thing in my book. Unfortunately the actual execution lets it down, in that the site isn’t particularly easy to navigate, which is a real shame – but their heart’s in the right place.

What I love about LEGO is how they’re so comfortable in both the physical and virtual worlds – as demonstrated through their video games, the forthcoming LEGO Universe MMOG – or indeed bridging the two, through such initiatives as LEGO DesignByMe or LEGO Mindstorms.

Because actually, LEGO aren’t a company who sell plastic bricks – they’re a company who sell play and tools to spark your imagination. They seem to get the difference – unlike the likes of Polaroid who didn’t realise they were in the ‘telling stories through pictures’ business, rather than ‘manufacturing film & cameras’ business until it was too late.

And if all that lovely LEGO goodness wasn’t enough for LEGO geeks like me, they’ve created a delightful little film to celebrate the eureka moment when great ideas are generated – what they call a ‘Click moment’. Lovely stuff.

[ image courtesy hugh ]

On-demand programming is ace. I love iPlayer (especially now I can access it on our Wii), 4OD, Apple TV, Virgin Media On Demand and so on. I can’t wait for Hulu and Boxee to come to the UK, and the (eventual) launch of the long-awaited Project Canvas. We get to watch what we want, when we want, personalised to our own tastes. Brilliant.

But one of the more interesting debates around the shift towards on-demand is around the thorny issue of public service programming and content. It used to be (and still, in the main, is) public service broadcasting, but now of course it’s not just a case of mass national broadcast.

And of course content – public service or otherwise – takes many forms. We consume content in myriad ways, with an ever expanding choice of outlets to satisfy our desires. But when we choose to consume what we want, when we want, we’re by definition playing to our own personal biases – our cultural choices are dictated and shaped by our own experiences, tastes and points of view. And we usually choose to consume content that satisfies these cultural mores. And more often than not, that’s content that chimes with our own personal perspectives and opinions.

I recently listened to the Episode 7 of the fabulous Shift Run Stop podcast from the ingenious and supremely talented Leila Johnston and Roo Reynolds, featuring a fascinating interview with Adam Curtis (of The Power of Nightmares and It Felt Like a Kiss fame). I’d recommend the series generally if you like geek culture, games, comedy and the like, but even if that’s not really your thing, I’d definitely recommend this particular episode for Adam Curtis’ provocative points of view.

He touches on his disenchantment with our fascination with recombinant culture, bemoaning the observation that in our endless remixing of the past, we’re failing to make cultural progress and come up with anything entirely new (although it’s worth pointing out that he also charges himself as guilty) – and that it’s symptomatic of a larger societal malaise and lack of progress, and a sense that we’re simply standing still.

Roo brought up Jane McGonigal’s World Without Oil – an ARG designed to tackle the very real-world problem of oil dependency (funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) – as an example of a new form of cultural content designed to forge genuine progress. Curtis responded that actually this wasn’t anything groundbreaking, that there were people in the 70s who tried to imagine what a life without oil would be like, and they were called hippies, who went to live in Buckminster Fuller domes to explore a different way of life, which wasn’t dependent on oil. The point he made was that the 70s hippies carried out their lifestyle experiment, but never “worked out how to challenge the the structure of power to change the world to get what they wanted” – their experiments quite literally took place in a bubble, with little effect on wider society. And that the kind of people playing a World Without Oil were likely to be people who were already interested in exploring the issues in question – and that it was preaching to the converted.

Whether or not you agree with his view is academic: for my money the most salient observation that Curtis made was that if you want to change the world, you have to change how other people think who don’t necessarily share your beliefs – and our own views are continually being reinforced because cultural content is being divided and subdivided so that it’s only playing to people who already believe in what you’re saying.

Being able to consume the content we want, when we want, how we want is great – except that unless we actively seek out the unknown, we’re less likely to end up seeing, hearing or experiencing the unexpected. Which is a shame from an individual perspective of experiencing culture, but also potentially damaging from the perspective of a well-informed and progressive citizenry.

Curtis said that he came into the world of broadcast TV because he wanted the opportunity to get his point across to people who didn’t already agree with him. I don’t know that simply maintaining public service broadcasting is enough to break out of the echo chamber – the array of content available is so extensive that even if broadcast TV has the potential to reach the masses, there’s less likelihood that they’ll be watching (see the 2009 Ofcom PSB report).

I personally don’t agree with Curtis’ view that intiatives like World Without Oil are simply “playing in the sandbox” (his words, not mine) – and I believe that game based learning will continue to be a crucial tool to educate, inform and encourage behaviour change. But the underlying issue is a fascinating, and scary, conundrum – how do we encourage people to choose to consume content that they might not agree with. How do we break out of our echo-chamber?

So it’s that time of year when we make resolutions about things we’d like to do over the coming year (which we then utterly fail to achieve), make predictions about the year ahead that are either so obvious they’ll blatantly come to pass (or so inaccurate we ignore the fact we ever made them), and make top-10 lists of upcoming bands, artists, films etc.

Although this blog was very much personal writing (and links) between 2000 and 2004, since relaunching in 2007 I’ve mostly kept the indulgent personal stuff out. Until now, so apologies dear reader, but this is a thoroughly indulgent personal post, written primarily for my own benefit, in the hope that by committing to these publicly, I might feel guiltier about failing to stick to them.

So, what do I hope 2010 will bring? Apart from the obvious stuff like world peace, an end to world hunger, and the Apple tablet, selfishly these are the things I’d like to try and do more (or less) of over the next 12 months:

Take more pictures

[ photo courtesy ben terrett ]

I love how Tom and Tom’s Noticin.gs game encourages you to pay more attention to the world around you. Capturing those random noticings makes you so much more aware of your surroundings. I also really really liked Ben’s Flickr 366 project, whereby he tried to take a photo every day of the year. And they’re awesome.

I’ve got a camera on me at all times. I’ve got some lovely apps (incl. Best Camera, CameraBag, QuadCamera, Hipstamatic, TiltShiftGen) to indulge myself with. So now I just need to actually take more photos.

Take back control of my health

[ photo courtesy ]

I have a bit of a dodgy back. I smashed it up a long time ago, and ended up having surgery to remove big chunks of my spine a few years ago. It’s loads better than it was, but still very painful to sit for long periods of time. So to keep the pain under control, and be less reliant on medication, I have to try and manage my lifestyle. Less sitting (so less time sitting at my desk), more core & strength training, generally taking better care of myself.

I didn’t manage my health very well in 2009. Lots of pain and lots of medication and not ending up in a very good place. I don’t want to repeat this in 2010. This year I’m determined to take back control – and stop letting my pain control me.

Do More (Good) Shit

[ photo courtesy ]

It might sound trite, but the School of Life’s How to Live Well in 2010 has some pretty sound advice:

Work to live, don’t live to work. Cleanthes, who was a Stoic philosopher and also known as the water-carrier, worked by night so that he could do philosophy by day. He was clear that he would work enough, and only enough, to support his real passion, the thinking and writing. His story is timely, for in a year that will be marked by more job insecurity and credit crises, it will be even easier to work so hard that you miss what you want.

Talking about getting a better work/life balance is par for the course, and I can’t disagree with that as a lofty goal. But it’s not just about fewer late nights and taking work home. For me, it’s about trying to stem the bloat of infobesity – enjoy the stream, the feeds, the tweets and so on, but realise that you can’t consume it all, and it’s not helpful to try to.

Streamlining what I do on-screen and doing more good shit off the screen. Great, wonderful real life stuff to feed the heart and mind. Fixing up our first house and making a home (and a new life) together. Hear more inspirational people speak. Actually attend the exhibitions I want to see. Get back into going to the theatre more. See more live comedy. Enjoying this fantastic city I’m lucky enough to live in.

There’s loads of other things big and small – from the obvious ones like getting fitter and eating better, to the random ones like listening to more podcasts and getting my robot tattoo (although I still haven’t decided on this one!). But I’m hoping that committing to them like this will give me the boost to actually stick to them. Roll on 2010…

[ image courtesy ]

So after my previous posts about GoViral, they contacted me to ask if I’d consider posting a video from TFL highlighting the dangers of illegal minicabs, in return for payment (based on the same pay per view basis discussed below). As I’ve said before, this is not a brothel, there are no prostitutes here, but then I thought, well, I don’t like the idea of taking money, but then I thought, I wonder if we could we turn a straightforward paid media placement into something a bit more worthwhile.

In the spirit of full disclosure, every view of the below video generates payment. And given the nature of the issue, I would like to use any payment generated to donate to Rape Crisis. And because it’s the season of goodwill, in the spirit of giving, I will also personally match any revenue generated to double the donation to what I think is a very worthy cause.  If you’d also like to support this cause directly, you can donate here. Or you can view the video. Or ideally both.

It’s an interesting juxtaposition, though, to think about what a more engaging proposition might be. The aim of the campaign is to generate views & raise awareness of the dangers of illegal minicabs through viewing the film. And so to extend the reach of the TV and Cinema campaign, TFL are also looking at paid-for video placements via the GoViral network. So far so good, a pretty bog standard bought media campaign, which I’m sure will do a fine job. And at 3.5p a view, it’s cheap as chips when you compare the cost per impact against TV & Cinema. So fair enough, as far as it goes. Although it’s worth noting, as Rachel Clarke observes, that at no point do GoViral ask bloggers to actively disclose that the video is a paid-for placement, as the fact that the GoViral player says ‘sponsored’ at the beginning is supposed to do the trick. So compliant but not exactly ethical, one might say.

But imagine this. And obviously please note that TFL aren’t my client, I don’t work for them, don’t know anyone who does work for them, and don’t know what their current plans are for the campaign outside the bought activity. So treat this purely as the rambling mind of a curious bystander, musing on possibilities, not making recommendations.

Imagine that a proportion of the media budget was ringfenced and instead of being used to buy media directly, it was used as an incentive to earn media. For example, instead of paying bloggers as media owners, and paying them for the real estate to host the video player on their blog, what about if bloggers were asked to share the video in return for the paid media equivalent being donated to a relevant charity. A bit like I’ve done here. I wonder if a cash-for-good-cause route would be more likely to earn media than a cash-for-views route? And whether the eventual outcome of greater genuine earned media in terms of positive word of mouth, trust and overall engagement would be greater and more valuable than through paid alone?

I genuinely don’t know the answer to this. Whilst I’d like to think that the incremental effect of the earned route would be more valuable than the equivalent budget invested in incremental direct paid-for media, this might just be a flight of fancy. But I’d love to think it would be true.

In the mean time, let’s try our own experiment and try and raise some money for charity. Let’s make something paid into something much better. Please support this very good cause by donating, or viewing, (or both).

[ photo courtesy ]

So my previous post ruffled a few feathers. And Claus at GoViral was kind enough to respond to my questions via email, for which I’m very grateful.

The GoViral video player itself is branded as providing sponsored content, and if you want to get paid, you have to embed the GoViral player, so disclosure box ticked there. But my worries were around the additional activity that GoViral were happy to fund:

There is additional budget available for posting, commenting, tweeting, social bookmarking the videos as well as writing articles, creating a page and uploading the content on other websites so that users can interact and comment on the videos. Let us know if you are keen for any of these options as well.

Blog posts, comments and tweets aren’t controlled by GoViral, and dependent on the publishers (as GoViral calls the bloggers it recruits) to include the relevant disclosure. So my question was whether it was a mandatory part of the agreement between GoViral and its publishers that they were obliged to disclose that these blog posts, comments and tweets had been paid for by the brand in question.

Because, if not, then they’d be breaking the law.

Schedule 11 of The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 states that: “Using editorial content in the media to promote a product where a trader has paid for the promotion without making that clear in the content or by images or sounds clearly identifiable by the consumer” is considered an unfair trading practice (see here for IPA briefing note on the implications of the act for advertisers).

As Rachel Clarke’s Guardian article points out, this is also the case across the EU. And that new FTC regulations in the US went even further

The FTC has approached social media marketing from a different angle to the UK, bringing it all under the updated guidelines about endorsements. The 81-page document carries a lot of information about using celebrities and experts to promote your product. Sprinkled throughout – and taking a lot of space in the introductory commentary – is the digital world of blogging and social networks. This seems to go far further than the EU laws.

There appear to be three main areas of impact:

• A blogger can be considered an endorser of a product if he is directly paid, if the value of the product/service is “high” (although no guidance given) or if he regularly receives free products for review due to his online influence. This includes people who are part of buzz networks, signing up to receive products for review.

 

• Both bloggers and advertisers are responsible for statements made. A blogger can be held liable for any false claims.

 

• It is the endorser’s responsibility to disclose all relationships, although advertisers have to monitor disclosures and take steps if they are not happening.

Transparency and disclosure are therefore not only considered to be a given by the likes of Forrester when praising the merits of sponsored conversation, they’re mandatory under the law.

I don’t particularly like what the likes of PayPerPost do – and would question the value of sponsored conversation for brands in the first place – but at the very least they make it crystal clear that disclosure is absolutely fundamental:

Mandatory Disclosure

Every sponsored conversation facilitated directly by PayPerPost or through one of our services is required to have disclosure. Bloggers that do not disclose are not permitted to participate in any PayPerPost sponsored conversation and will be removed from our network.

Honesty of Opinion

Bloggers are free to write or say whatever they want. PayPerPost has no restrictions on how bloggers express their genuine thoughts on an advertiser’s product or service. PayPerPost will neither withhold payment based on a negative conversation, nor do we allow advertisers to force bloggers to edit their post to remove critical statements, ever.

Claus was kind enough to answer my questions, and the below is copied from his email (NB please also note that I advised that I wanted to publish his answers on the blog, and that I preferred to use his own words so that I did not misrepresent him, therefore he was fully aware that I wanted to make this correspondence public before responding):

At the end of the day though I guess it is also up to the publishers as we don’t control their sites they do. We can flag it in the player, but they decide how to implement content on their sites… I don’t think there is such a mandatory actually, not sure of the legalities to be honest. We flag it in the player so don’t know if that would be required as well. I am not a legal expert

To his credit, Claus also admitted that “it does makes sense to make it clear in the T&Cs that publishers has responsibility flagging it” and that he had advised the GoViral publishing department to look at changing their T&Cs to include this. He has stated they “want to act within the law of course and are of course also happy to disclose that it’s sponsored content”, and that whilst the “2008 act has been considered in relation to the “sponsored by” on the player that is not to say that what we do is exhaustive, there might be room for improvement.”

Props to GoViral for admitting that things could be improved, and I appreciate that they’re looking into changing their T&Cs. And it doesn’t appear that the non disclosure is wilful. But it’s not as though these are nice-to-have ethics, it’s fundamentally about legal compliance as much as doing the right thing. And as it currently stands, if GoViral publishers are blogging, commenting and tweeting about Stella Artois without disclosing that they’re being paid, it would appear to my non-legal expert mind that according to the aforementioned consumer protection act, Stella would be breaking the law (however if brighter legal eagles than I can advise if I’m misinterpreting the regulations, I’d be hugely grateful).

It worries me that as marketing departments are frantically trying to work out what their ‘social media strategy’ is, and as many struggle with the contrast between the slow-build, non-guaranteed world of earned media vs the quick-build, guaranteed-reach world of paid media, that the temptation to go for the easy route of pay per post will be strongly appealing. And whilst I would always strongly advise my clients against the sponsored conversation route, if brands do decide to go down this route, as long as they’re looking at full disclosure, then it’s at the very least compliant and broadly ‘ethical’.

But it’s far from inconceivable that the more quick fixes that are sought, the more non-compliant, unethical posts, comments & tweets that may slip through the net (whether knowingly or otherwise).

Ciaran pointed out at last night’s IAB debate, paid media is paid, and earned is earned, and you can’t confuse the two. I’d like to think that’s true, but I suspect it’s more than you shouldn’t confuse the two, not that you can’t…

So yesterday I saw some brilliant talks at the APG Battle of Big Thinking (highlights included Justin Basini’s Escaping the Matrix – some brilliant thoughts about conservation economics, fantastic turns from John, Jeremy & Amelia, plus a thoroughly worthy winner in my category in the fantastic James Mitchell). For anyone interested, my deck is up on slideshare, (although the eagle eyed will notice more than a little crossover with my Social Media 09 presentation).

The winner in the ‘Big Thinking in the Free Space’ was Claus Moseholm, the founder of GoViral, a “branded content distribution company”, who argued that nothing is truly free, but that the value of earned media was huge in comparison to bought media.

I wouldn’t disagree with any of this. At Naked we’ve spent many years working with clients to understand how to get the most out of their owned spaces (every brand touchpoint, from product to packaging, not just their owned ‘media’) as well as their bought media, to gain valuable advantage in the earned space. If you’re not familiar with the Bought / Owned / Earned model, I’d strongly recommend this excellent post by Daniel Goodall for a clear and succinct overview. Earned ‘media’ (I think media is a slightly misleading term as it suggests it’s just another media channel, but it’s a well-understood term and I haven’t yet come up with anything better…) is arguably the most valuable as it demonstrates trust in your brand, and that people are truly engaged with you (on their terms). So when you do something that gets positively talked about, discussed, shared and passed on, you know you’ve done something pretty good.

Or have you?

Now, we all know that the best thing for brands is not to have a social media strategy, but just to make really good stuff. Make really fantastic stuff and people will want to talk about it. Amelia and I have both talked about the importance of social ideas. Meg Pickard wrote a fantastic post about means, motive and opportunity in the earned space:

The echo-chamber of social media marketeers spends a lot of time thinking about the Means (ability, access, tools) and Opportunity (social graph, stimulus, habits, behaviours) for people to get involved in or pay attention to social activity online, but not nearly enough time thinking about Motive.

Why do people get excited and talk about stuff?
Because they care about it.
Because it’s good.
Because it’s worth talking about.

I wish product makers and media owners would spend a little less time thinking about manipulating audiences, and a little more time thinking about making good things to begin with.

But we also know that brands are frequently reluctant to rely on the ‘make great stuff and keep their fingers crossed people start talking’ approach. They usually want to try and help things along, and make sure that enough people know about it in the first place, to give them the best shot of generating earned media. And we know that brands have long courted bloggers (and now Twitterers) with ‘social media outreach’ programmes to try and generate valuable earned media. PR is nothing new, and money’s always changed hands in some form, although usually through the exchange of goods and services rather than hard cash, When it’s done openly and honestly with full disclosure, I think it’s all above board – as long as the blogger is under no obligation, as long as they’re free to write what they choose (and not what the brand chooses) and crucially when they admit any involvement. Iain Tait’s completely open about wanting free T-shirts, and those brands who send him a T-shirt know what the score is – and most importantly, so do Iain’s readers.

But what about when the relationship isn’t one of courting and persuasion, of attempting to ‘earn’ through bringing genuine value? What about when the exchange isn’t one of value for mutual benefit? What if the earned media is really no different to bought media?

The CAP code, which regulates all UK non-broadcast marketing communication (excluding online), says that all paid-for editorial content must be strictly labelled as such:

23.1 Advertisement features, announcements or promotions, sometimes referred to as “advertorials”, that are disseminated in exchange for a payment or other reciprocal arrangement should comply with the Code if their content is controlled by the marketers rather than the publishers.

23.2 Marketers and publishers should make clear that advertisement features are advertisements, for example by heading them “advertisement feature”.

L’Oreal got themselves in hot water with the ASA for misleading the public when they failed to disclose that Penelope Cruz’s fantastic-looking lashes weren’t in fact exclusively the result of the mascara they were peddling, but were in fact falsies. L’Oreal now have to disclose to the public that Cheryl Cole’s lustrous locks are actually full and glossy due to the hair extensions she wears, and not just the shampoo she’s advertising – though the type is so minute that although the ad was cleared by the ASA, L’Oreal are still being criticised for misleading the public.

We don’t like being misled. We know that brands want to sell to us. We know that we live in a world of advertising. But we want to know when we’re being sold to.

So I find it utterly disingenuous for Claus Moseholm to extol the virtues of earned media over bought media, when his company misleads people by trying to disguise bought media under the guise of earned.

I got the below email from GoViral earlier this week, offering to pay me cold hard cash in return for posting a video for one of their clients on my blog – with the possibility to earn more cash for additional blogging, tweeting etc:

[ click to see full-size image ]

Like many bloggers, I get lots of emails from PR and agency people trying to get me to plug their product or service. Most aren’t personalised in any way, and don’t indicate any reason why they think I’d be interested in their brand, or why it would be something I’d want to write about – they’re normally just very generic mass mailouts. And this was no exception – except that I’d never before received such a blatant attempt to buy my endorsement.

Curious, I emailed back to ask how the whole bought-masquerading-as-earned thing worked. How much did they you pay bloggers? How did they work out how much to pay individuals – did they have a ratecard for an individual post or tweet, or did the amount vary depending on the level of influence of the blogger or site traffic? Did they insist on approving blog posts or tweets first?

And got this response:

[ click to see full-size image ]

So they have a cost per view budget for the campaign, and will pay me a stonking £300 for 10,000 UK views, and they have extra budget available for pretty much anything I’m willing to do to promote the brand:

We’re considering social media spread, branded twitter pages, anything like that will allow us to grant extra budget to you

According to the GoViral publisher guidelines, if you take their cash, you should “suggest [the video content] to the user using links, suggestions and featuring” and cannot “subject [GoViral content] to hateful or similar brand-damaging metadata, tags or similar” – although you can “feel free to do creative and funny things with the material, show spoofs of it etc”.

Nowhere in the FAQ or T&Cs does it say that you should disclose that you’ve been paid to recommend the content in question. It doesn’t say that publishers can’t disclose this information, and I’d be interested to understand how GoViral would (or do) deal with that.

When bloggers decide to feature advertising on their blogs, the banners or text ads are clearly marked as ads. What GoViral proposed is plain and simple bought media, pretending to be earned.

Are these blog posts and tweets genuine praise for the music video in question, or are they simply paid-for placements in disguise?

I don’t have a huge problem with the business model – I personally wouldn’t do it, and I don’t like the idea of blogging or tweeting to order, but I know it happens. If bloggers want to make money by writing about brands in return for money, fair enough I guess, as long as they disclose that they’re being paid (although as my good friend Tom writes, this is not a brothel: there are no prostitutes here). What I object to is how dishonest it is. There’s no way of distinguishing genuine earned conversations from paid-for ones. It’s totally deceitful. It’s exactly why people think marketers are a bunch of immoral cocks.

So I’m sorry Claus, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t sing the praises of earned media over bought, whilst at the same time making profit out of bought media pretending to be earned. There’s a distinct smell of burning underwear, and frankly, it stinks.

[ PS: if this negativity is all too much, check out the inspirational (and awesomely-naked Duke Stump on Bonfire Brands ]

John’s been using the metaphor of fireworks and bonfires for traditional advertising and social communication, which I love, as I think it’s a really helpful way of visualising both the differences and how they complement each other. He’s extended this further with a series of conversations with ‘bonfire builders‘ – people who believe passionately in working together to create successful, conversational communications.

A bonfire is an incredibly rich and seductive image, because it’s bright, vibrant and draws people in.

So it’s particularly appropriate that it should be equally symbolic and descriptive in another context – in this case, it’s just not referencing communication, but brands themselves.

The wonderfully-named Duke Stamp talks about bonfire brands – brands with soul, that draw people in like a bonfire, which encourage people to sit round that fire together, talking about their shared experiences, values and desire – brands which value community:

What ignites a greater sense of possibility and emotion – building a brand, or building a bonfire brand? A bonfire brand is something that galvanizes and mobilizes your evangelists. So ask yourself the following: Are folks gathering to talk about your brand? Do they defend your brand? Does your brand have evangelists that tell your story for you? … If your brand is not a bonfire brand, then you need to be concerned, incredibly concerned. You are in essence replaceable.

John’s excellent presentation highlights one of the most important things about bonfire-building: it takes time and effort – if you try to cut corners, you’re unlikely to end up with a bonfire that will burn brightly and draw people in. And as Duke so rightly points out, the best thing about bonfires is when people join in to keep the fire burning:

If you are as good as you say you are then people will be drawn to you. They will in essence bring the wood for the bonfire and stoke the flames. You will become a beacon and folks will engage in the bonfire. So for Christ’s sake stop watering down your story to make it mainstream. Let them come to you versus chasing them. You’ll stay true to your core and chances are, you’ll be stronger because of it.

You can’t fake this. Bonfire brands are built from the inside out. They have passionate internal cultures united around a single vision and purpose. They build relationships with people, rather than just trying to sell to them.

I love the point that Duke makes about bonfire brands who “embrace glorious mistakes” – because you have to fail to innovate, and it’s only by failing that you move forward. When you’re afraid to fail, you stagnate. Bonfire brands live in fear of standing still. And recognise that failing to try is trying to fail.

His 2009 Do Lecture is now up for the world to see, so I’d strongly recommend checking out the below (as well as the other awesome Big Do’s) for some bonfire branding inspiration:

The lovely folks at Mashup* asked if I would do a brief intro to social, to set up the afternoon of case studies and presentations at Social Media 09. The deck is on slideshare and the full presentation is here, if you’d like to see how to raise a gasp from a room of ‘social media specialists‘.

There were some cracking presentations – I heartily recommend checking out Chris Thorpe’s ‘On the horizon of a real-time networked society ‘ for some fantastic insight, and also Jonathan Akwe’s ‘Social Media in Government‘ for a brief overview of how the social web can be used for genuine citizen engagement.

As part of the day, we were also asked to suggest 4.5 trends for 2010 – 4 things we thought would go up, and one which would go down. Nothing radically new here, but here’s my two-penneth:

Going up

• Social will expand beyond the remit of the marketing department – as it already has within the most successful social brands. Whilst brands will still continue to work with their agencies for social communication within a marketing context, businesses will increase their investment of human capital to deliver social throughout their organisation – with social playing a greater role in customer service, product & service development, research & insight and beyond.

 

• We’ll see a greater focus on return on engagement rather than direct return on investment when measuring the value of social communication – moving away from the fruitless struggle to apply the traditional metrics for paid-for marketing, we’ll see greater attention paid to trying to measure how greater engagement and deeper relationships deliver brand and business value (rather than trying to attribute a direct link between social relationships and immediate payback).

 

• Adoption of mobile geolocation services will tip into the mainstream, and more traditional brands will begin to dip their toe into the development of services and applications utilising geolocation technology to interact with people on a much more personal level.

 

• As the thingfrastructure (Matt Jones’ brilliant description for the internet of things) develops we’ll see more physical objects becoming social – as more and more physical objects become internet enabled and technology such as RFID become more ubiquitous, we’ll see social communication moving away from the screen and into the physical world around us.

Going down

• As greater integration between different social platforms increases, enabling you to automate the sharing your lifestream across multiple platforms, I predict we’ll feel increasingly overwhelmed by the deluge of updates across an ever-increasing number of platforms – and instead of trying to maintain a presence everywhere, we’ll focus our attention into a smaller number of platforms and communities, become both more discreet and discrete regarding how, what and where we share.

My pick is actually a reasonably new publication, having been first published in 2008, so not sure if longevity is a pre requisite for being a ‘timeless’ classic, but I think it’s an absolutely essential read for any planner, or indeed anyone who wants to understand more about people.

Marketing may change, brand communication may change, but human behaviour remains startingly constant over time. As human animals we are by our very nature consistent in our irrationality – and the patterns within this are such that in many ways we’re predictably irrational. Have been, are, and likely will continue to be. Hence unless the human condition changes dramatically, I’d bet that Ariely’s book will be relevant for many years to come.

We’re hiring at Naked London, looking for a kick-arse strategist to get Naked and join our band of merry men + women.

The hiring policy at Naked is ‘brilliant misfits’ – our people think a bit differently, like to challenge the status quo, and are generally bloody awesome (well, my colleagues definitely are, present company possibly excepted).

Naked people come from a wide range of backgrounds – including ex-media planners, ex-brand and account planners, ex-research and insights people, ex-management consultants. And our people have a range of pretty amazing skills – amongst other things, Naked people are life coaches, hypnotherapists, stand-up comedians, DJs, run their own record labels and clothing companies and more. So we’re a pretty eclectic bunch.

We have three pillars at Naked – which are centres of gravity, rather than silos, as we all work in some capacity across all three pillars. We’re recruiting for a totally awesome strategist whose centre of gravity will be Naked’s heartland pillar – Total Comms Planning.

The role will include comms planning for COI, so you’ll need to have media planning experience (and be familiar with the UK market), with more traditional channel planning as a string to your bow. You’ll be comfortable in the dirty world of GRPs and effective frequency, but this will just be one of your skills, and ultimately a small (but necessary) aspect of this particular role. Fundamentally we’re after amazing strategic and creative thinkers, who will help our clients think about the most effective way to communicate – across every comms touchpoint, from advertising to events to packaging to in-store to customer service and beyond. Your other client responsibilities will depend on best fit – other Naked clients include Vodafone, Nokia, Sony and Coca Cola, as well as numerous ad hoc projects, so you’ll get the opportunity to work on different bits of business, with different people, and flex your strategic muscle in different ways.

We’re not big on hierarchy or box-ticking, but you’ll be passionate about challenging the traditional view of communications and comfortable planning across ALL channels, you’ll probably have at least two years comms planning under your belt, and will be a confident self-starter who’s eager to get stuck in.

It also helps if you’re not scared of a bunch of nutters. Being a nutter helps, to be honest. Life at Naked Towers is pretty random, and if you want to work somewhere that’s all about formal process and corporate culture, then we’re probably not for you. But if you think that that you’d be a great fit for this role, and would like join somewhere which Fast Company named as one of its top 5 most innovative companies in advertising and marketing in 2009, please do get in touch

I was lucky enough to speak at Playful 09 alongside some truly awesome speakers – I’ve put the deck up on Slideshare, but because of a bug in the youtube-video-uploading-feature, the speaker notes got a bit messed up, with the notes attached to the wrong slides. Which isn’t that helpful. So I thought it might be helpful to bung the talk up on the blog with the notes with the correct slides.

The day itself was absolutely awesome, and it was a real honour to be a part of such a cracking event – more on that to follow. In the mean time, if my ramblings about game mechanics, play and behaviour change sound of vague interest, you can find the full talk here.

I did a talk about robots at Interesting 2009, and have finally got round to posting the full deck up, along with an extended disco remix of some extra bonus material – full presentation here