WriteRoom is for MacOS. A very simple, no distractions word processor that's more like a typewriter. DarkRoom is the Windows version.
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history matters
A fantastic article by Stephen Fry in today's Observer. Well, actually, it's a speech he gave at the launch of History Matters. You should read it. Because if planning isn't about learning from the past to try and think about the present and the future then what is it about?
I studied history at university, I didn't enjoy it, partly because I was lazy and stupid, partly because it was really badly taught but I've always thought its breadth makes it the perfect discipline for a planner. Anyway, whatever you think of history you should read Mr Fry's piece, because it's beautifully written, smartly argued and true.
off the list
I'm excited to announce that Kevin Rothermel is coming off the Hire These People list (over there on the right). He's got himself a job at McKinney-Silver. Congratulations to them and well done to Kevin. That's brilliant. Anyone else want to leave or join the list?
coffee morning two and other things
Coffee morning two was top fun. Dave was first to arrive. (You should check out the simple genius of his brand vs brand thing, it's slightly addictive.) Then came Jason, who'd I also seen on Wednesday at the WARC conference thing.
Then a slew of people arrived, Rich (far left), then Paul, with Lebowski inevitably in tow (far right). (They blundered in rather loudly in the middle of the two-minute silence and were more embarrassed than I've seen anyone embarrassed for a long time.) At the back of the peloton was Picklin Paul, who to the regret of all brought no piccalilli.
And almost lastly was Henry. And as I type this I've remembered that he requested a mocha when I was getting some drinks in and I completely forgot. Sorry Henry.
Topics of conversation - Paul's fencing and running (and bleeding). How apparently PSFK isn't some gleaming corporate machine. How to make pickles. The future of Google. What a great place Canada is. How it was a shame that coffee was all blokes this week. And other things.
Jeffre arrived too late for much conversation. But here he is, later that day, watching The Batman with Arthur.
School of the Web - the World Cup assignment
As you might have noticed, I've been rather enjoying the world cup, there's been drama, joy and decent football. And there seems to have been lots of bad design.
So, while we're working on marking Assignment 7, I thought I'd set Assignment 8.
I'd like you to write a design brief for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. You decide what that should incude. Logo? Mascot? Opening ceremony? Special stupid rules for Sepp Blatter to suggest?
Why?
1. Because effective communications planners are going to have to learn how to brief design.
2. Because it's football. It's fun.
3. Because The Design Conspiracy have splendidly volunteered to help me mark it, and do some designs to the winning brief. (And that's your fabulous prize.)
Minimal rules and clues this time - but you should know by now what we feel about concision and direction. Deadline, end of July. No file bigger than 3MB. Have at it.
IT conversations on Thursday 8
Hey all you Continuous Partial Attention junkies. Here's who invented it - Linda Stone with a fantastic presentation from Emerging Technology 2006.
what next? brother beyond to tour?
Thousands of years ago I was a 'Head Of Interactive' trying to convince Leo Burnett that the internet was going to be quite popular. It didn't work. And Steve Bowbrick and Ivan Pope were starting Webmedia, inventing everything and being two of the British faces of Bubble 1.0. (Though obviously we didn't know it was 1.0 then, or a bubble.) I didn't know them, but I used to pretend I did.
Then they went their separate ways and I had the occasional coffee with Steve and swapped the occasional comment with Ivan. Both very nice blokes. And then I saw on bowblog that they're back in business together, with a really interesting thing called snipperoo. It made me feel all warm and nostalgic, like when Madness reformed for that first Finsbury Park gig. Ivan's got a great post about the differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 here and I liked this glum picture of Steve. The best of British Bubble luck to them both.
engagement and attention 3
Stu was brilliant. As usual. Read his APG paper. (Go here and go to 'downloads'.) Lots of other interesting stuff this afternoon but I couldn't get the wifi to work and I can't go back on it now.
I think my thing was OK. It's not polished or really thought through but I think there's some stuff worth building on in there. Many thanks to everyone for the help. Jamesb - I was careful to dissociate you from anything that wasn't good.
Respect and thanks to the blogs I quoted: betapundit, Jonathan Schwartz, Team IE, Innocent drinks, Church of the Customer, McChronicles.
Here's, roughly what I said:
I know a bit about brands. I know something about blogs, but only because I'm a blogger, I've never really thought about them, or presented about them 'professionally'. So I'm thinking out loud here.
This is the only element that I've used before in a previous presentation. (I've been boring people rigid with this stuff since Paul Feldwick introduced me to it at a conference Chris organised about three years ago.) It was to try and make a point about the roles for different layers of communication and to define some terms. I believe that the best, probably the only job, for TV advertising, is to wrap a bundle of feelings and associations around the brand. Good advertising is very good at doing this. (Not that there's a lot of good advertising around.)
That's not my topic for today though, the conversation today is more about brands engaging in two way conversation - not broadcasting. Or something. This bit was a bit wooly.
I basically said what I said here.
Then I did a lot of this stuff. But not the 'characteristics of a good blog' stuff which was too much like a tedious brand onion. This is where I referenced the blogs and stories mentioned above.
Then into:
I quite liked this bit. I got the interesting test down to this:
I think that's quite good. This is all to Jeffre's points about interestingness, if there's nothing interesting about you you're buggered. If there is something, to someone, then you should blog about that. If you do it honestly and openly, you'll be fine.
Don't think I was very clear about this.
I have a sense that at the moment the world of marketing etc is groping towards a marketing/branding/comunication version 2.0. And hurrah for that. But we know nothing works properly until we get to version 3.1. And I think this is true here too.
(Sidenote, not mentioned in the speech: Many of the theoreticians - for want of a better word - who presented in the morning reminded me that our new understandings of how brains, minds, people and society work are completely overturning the theoretical models we have about how communications and brands work. For all the great work being done in creating 2.0; innovative practises, more respectful organisation of relationships, bolder, more realistic media practises, this hasn't really been wedded to the implications of the thinking of people like Damasio. Many of the 2.0 people are doing tactics, and they're doing them splendidly, but they're not thinking about low-attention processing, implicit memory, humans as herds, all that. Their theories of communication are still growing out of USPs, messaging, etc. When these energetic, respectful new tactics get married to this exciting new thinking - then we'll have 3.1.)
Anyway...
My actual point was that a blog is a great way to learn some of the skills you'll need to manage a brand in this engaged environment. One of those skills:
My examples were this and this.
Oh yeah, this is my other point about 3.1 (or whatever jargon one might come up with).
Let's assume that the 1.0 era - of messaging - is dead. And I think we can. The media reality makes it impossible and our new understanding of how brands/brains work makes it pointless.
Version 2.0 is supposed to be all about engagement, involvement, participation. Which is fine. But this is where we need to beware of...
Brands are not that important. They're not that exciting to people. Just because we've decided to engage, and entertain and participate doesn't mean anyone wants us to. While not many brands are behaving like this, it's quite effective, it's new, it's interesting, when everyone's doing it, it's less so.
Which makes me think about things like this. There are a few examples of this kind of thing out there and they make me wonder whether one strand of the future for marketing is to provide genuinely useful services, and do the delivery of associations and feelings around the edges.
I'm not quite sure what I'm struggling to say here. I know it looks kind of obvious just stated like this, but I think there's something more interesting buried in there, I'll try and dig it out soon.
As you can tell, I was petering out at this point.
But this was my big finish and I was pleased and proud to put it up. I've really enjoyed the process of writing this stuff and I'm really grateful for everyone's help.
Right now this whole thing is a pre-beta, version 0.1, bit of thinking, as soon as it gets to be a respectable beta I'll stick it on video and share with y'all. I'm really more excited than I should be to be exposing my doubts and inadequacies in public.