Splendid turnout at coffee morning yesterday. Lots of nice people. Lots of good chat.
Thanks everyone for coming. Especially to Noah who staged a sort of likemind/coffee morning crossover episode. If you don't know if coffee morning is for you, but think it might be, I'd refer you to the Kansas City Coffee Morning FAQ. All particulars hold true except we do it at 11am not 7.30, and you know, it's not in Kansas City, it's in London, at The Breakfast Club.
Yesterday's Campaign thing. About Blag and the blurry future. Click on it and it should get big enough to read.
UPDATE: Here's the original text. I've just realised they took out my DANGER, ADVERTORIAL, DO NOT READ gag, which I thought was quite good. Oh well, they're the boss.
I have a seen the future and it’s a bit blurry. Have you ever read Blag magazine? You should, it’s rather splendid. A stylish combination of music, fashion, photography and interviews. You could imagine it shelved between i-D and Wallpaper. It’s a quarterly, produced by twin sisters, Sally and Sarah Edwards, who do almost everything in the magazine themselves. But the thought-provoking thing about it is that they don’t carry any ads. No regular advertising at all.
It throws you when you first open the magazine, the lack of ads dislocates the expected grammar of magazine reading, freeing you from flicking past the first ten spreads. It’s like watching an American TV programme on the BBC, you fade out for an ad break and then immediately fade back in. It’s odd but rather pleasant, making you realise how much the presence of advertising has coloured our expectations of media. An ad-free magazine feels as startling as a novel with the occasional colour spread.
But Blag isn’t brand-free and the way they integrate brands gives us some hints about the future where advertorials, branded content, branded utility and everything else gets messily blurred together. It’s a future that would horrify the massed bastions of old media editorial, especially those American news organisations that are always bleating about sacred barrier between advertising and editorial. The Blag team don’t worry about that, they’ll create editorial for you, weaving the brand into the magazine in a way that goes far beyond the typically lame advertorial. (And which never carries that big banner saying ADVERTISING which I always think may as well be preceded by DANGER and followed by DO NOT READ).
Of course us old school stalwarts will throw up our liver-spotted hands at this point and wail about the separation of church and state, lamenting the confusion that could befall the innocent reader on finding advertising not clearly labelled as such. But talking to the Blag folk the other week I realised this approach just isn’t going to survive contact with a newer generation and a new communications world. They see this editorial/advertising distinction as completely ridiculous; they preserve the integrity of their magazine by managing the branded-content with the same verve and vision as the rest of the thing. They select brands that make sense for the magazine and create brand content that’ll work for their readership; making for a much more interesting overall product and never risking the kind of car-crash of editorial and advertising you get in so many magazines. As brands become content providers, as interruption gets less effective and as media-owners get more desperate this is a blurry line we’re all going to have to confront.
Last week's Campaign thing. Click on it and it should expand enough to read. Hopefully.
UPDATE: And here's the original I sent them. Fairly similar I think.
It’s my first piece of 2007 so EC columnist regulations dictate I have to write a list of portentous-sounding but ill-conceived predictions. None of which I will ever re-examine or re-consider. So here goes:
1. Urban Spam. 2007 will be the tipping point year for the re-balancing between society at large and the steady encroachment of interruptive marketing. Ad avoidance will move from the personal sphere and into the public one, whether it’s junk food ad bans in Britain or the outlawing of ‘visual pollution’ in Sao Paulo, we’ll have to get used to public authorities setting new limits on how and where brands get to operate. We must accept that we’ve brought this on ourselves through decades of crass behaviour and learn how to be more responsible corporate citizens.
2. Line? What Line? This’ll be the year when channel neutral communications agencies start to get born. Though that’s probably not the right jargon. I mean that we’ll start to see the creation of coherent, effective businesses that are both above and below the line, traditional and digital, upstream and downstream, integrated and specialist. That’s not any clearer is it? I guess I mean we’ll finally see the core team running an agency being made up of representatives of all the modern communications disciplines, without the old hierarchies or the new bitterness. What will the jargon be for that? Don’t know. Let’s make 2007 the year we at least work that out.
3. Back To The Old School. TV advertising will make a huge comeback as people grow out of the need to be reflexively media neutral (and everyone spots how cheap it is). Similarly we’ll see a return of slogans, jingles and animated icons as a new generation of creatives discovers their power and doesn’t feel the need to do something deliberately obtuse and contrary in order to win awards
4. Good Brand. Bad Brand. Most significantly, it’s clear from everything you read and everyone you talk to that this is the moment when green and ethical issues will move to the fore for brands. CSR will stop being an under-funded department and start being an area your customers really care about and a potential differentiator, for good or bad, for your business. The reality of global-warming is permeating the public consciousness and will impact buying decisions, combined with relative affluence and an oversupply of brands with very few meaningful distinctions between them people are bound to start making choices based on perceived ethical credentials.
5. Maybe Rename It Blogsnight? The Prime Ministerial reshuffle will kick off a long general-election phoney war conducted via blogs and online video. Jeremy Paxman will have to get used to saying ‘blogger’ without sneering.
A lot of excitement in the Meat Bracket. When I voted burgers and lamb were 50/50. Blimey. Also interesting to see, as Beeker's pointed out, that Vizu doesn't show a lot of intelligence in pointing you at other polls, assuming that since you've just voted on meat v meat you're now interesting in global affairs. Strange since, let's face it, they're currently hosting a lot of meat-based polls.
but it's so much nicer to come home.
Jonathan's raised the bar. I'm not sure I can compete with this. I'll have to have a go at the weekend but this seems too fast for me.
I'm representing bacon in Jared's Carnivore Project Meat Bracket, taking on the mighty Marcus and 'sasuage' so I thought I'd better make an effort and do a video. If you want to vote, go here and do so. I bet Tim Berners-Lee is dead proud of what we're doing with his internet.
UPDATE: This is the state of play with a few hours to go and 476 votes cast. If you've not voted, you should, the blogosphere is clearly poised on a knife edge.
