Nitmesh

Clay Shirky 'Cognitive Surplus' Speech Web2.0 Conference

Don't know how to put this in context but Clay Shirky, professor at NYU's interactive telecommunications program, has written this insightful book called Here comes Everybody. Shirky goal 'is to describe the intersection of social tools and social life, helping people to understand both what's happening around them and how tools could be designed that better support social activity' but just watch the web video of his 'Cognitive Surplus' speech at Web 2.0 conference where he compares television viewing attention hours with wikipedias. Twice in the last couple of weeks I have had people say to me, 'Where do you find the time to do all this?' I tell them that I don't watch TV and if I do have it on it's usually live TV and on in the background. UPDATE - Good post from Neil McIntosh here

The Future of Marketing and Advertising

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Meshlining - Off/Online Avatar Maker

This will become a common form of augmented reality, another mix of offlining and onlining or as I'm christening it 'meshlining' or to 'meshline'. True forms of the convergence, fusing into so many still unimagined creative possibilities.

Do you want to construct yourself as the perfect or near perfect avatar? What do you do? You visit the avatar maker shop of course.  This has so so many possibilities. Imagine that you're single and love brazilian girls and want to find a new girlfriend. What do you? You go to the local Avatar shop and build a near perfect face avatar of yourself with a few subtle embellishments, but it's you in face and body. You then join a dating virtual world or probably a realisitic interpretation of our world like google earth. There you can virtually fly to Rio. In virtual Rio you can enter virtual bars, clubs even beaches and chat up Brazilian girls who are in reality near perfect visual face and body interpretations of themselves too. The offline population would suddenly have I'm guessing a hundred times more friends virtually than offline reality. But would they be meshline friends, real virtual friends? Let the blur begin.

The big question is would your meshline friends be their real faces and bodies though? That is going to be an interesting problem to solve and bring value to a virtual world. Will there be completely credible virtual worlds where you can only join it if you can prove who you really are?  Will there be some form of creditable meshlining law to prove you are who you say you are as you switch from one certified virtual world to another where they guarantee that everyone is who they say they are? Will only you be able to control the virtual you? This opens up so many moral dilemmas. What would happen if someone stole your virtual identity? Virtual identity theft in a virtual world, causing virtual havoc. I can't wait to experience this especially when it will no doubt son be generated through your own laptop webcam and not in a shop or will it? via TVinJapan.

UPDATE - the 3D Animated self in any game or video - via trendhunter reporting from CES

Making of Get the Glass campaign

Here's the 'making of' the exquisite 'Get the Glass' milk campaign from Goodby Silverstein and produced by Northern Kingdom. It's only fault being it's slow buffeting - patience is a virtue - LINK

Samsung's new wafer thin (1 centimetre thick) 40in (TV) screen coming to the shops soon. Electronic scroll paper is only around the corner to kill off newspapers. - LINK

Lucid Touch - a multi-touch screen technology where you touch the back of the screen but see your finger movements on the screen without obscuring your view of it. - web video LINK

 

Homogenisation of city boroughs - great blog piece from Zeus Jones about the troubling trend of rich white population taking over NYC neighbourhoods primarily because of rising housing costs. Look at Notting Hill in London as one example. It's becoming an exclusively enclave for young rich white Eurotrash city bankers where the original mix of rich, poor with ethnic minorities is slowly drifting away. Only the council estates are left. How soon until even their inhabitants are bought out to complete the rich enclave. - LINK

Here's Patrick Wilson's lovely song illustrated to animation found by Iain Tait on crackunit.com

Marc Ecko - Genius marketing with one baseball

This is marketing genius. Fashion designer/entrepreneur/pop culture maven Marc Ecko, the man who brought us the tagging viral of air force one, has surpassed himself with his latest marketing venture.

'He bid and won Barry Bond's 756th (it's a new record) home run baseball in an online auction costing him $752,467 and now Ecko is giving the American public the chance to decide what to do with it. He has given them three choices and is now at the centre of the biggest sports debate ever.

"I bought this baseball to democratize the debate over what to do with it," Ecko said. "The idea that some of the best athletes in the country are forced to decide between being competitive and staying natural is troubling."

Visitors to Vote756.com can choose between three options:

1. "BESTOW IT" (as is into the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown)

2. "BRAND IT" (with an asterisk before delivering it to the Hall)

3. "BANISH IT" (by sending it into outer space on a rocketship, never to be seen or heard from again)

Every major sports media outlet in the States is reporting this story and will continue to do so. Whatever the public chooses, Ecko will again make news by honouring the results of the vote.

He has successfully written himself into sports history using his bank account and his brain.'

I have to admit to quoting and plagarizing much of the great Fallon Planning blog for this piece but also Joe Jaffe who makes the point that Ecko 'is democratizing the conversation'. 'He talks about the "collective consciousness" (I think I call it the connected consciousness) and the alignment between his brand and what he stands for with this pop culture moment.'

The crucial point, as Crackunit and Fallon point out, is that 750K could have been spent on a conventional marketing campaign but what Ekco has done is priceless in terms of marketing his brand. This is what we should all be doing with all these new forms of marketing. Finding opportunities to seminally reach your core demo audience in a way that they actually care, join a form of communal storytelling, causing a mass debate across all platforms, spilling out into offline (WOM), compelling the public to interact in the final outcome.

or as Ed Cotton of Influx Insights puts it another way when discussing life beyond Consumer Generated Content  'The killer application is finding a way to tap into consumer thinking and creativity through the social network, but to do it in a way that doesn't involve classical advertising.'

Tim Royes

Rest in Peace and Dance in Paradise.

25th December 1964 - 13th August 2007

True Mass Integrated Brand Advertising Experience

MSNBC.com Newbreaker Experience. Here's a piece of brand advertising that's an interactive game that's played by a packed cinema audience invented by Brand Experience Lab. It's a genius idea. This is true interactive (branded advertising) entertainment. I'm certain this has drawn people to the cinema just for this experience and not just the film. This is clearly a fun future form of a 'conversation with the consumer' and it has so many exciting imaginative possibilities. Going to the cinema (to any mass public big screen event - concerts, ice hockey, World Cup football in public squares) and enjoying the bonding as an audience (and playing another audience in different cinema = maybe see each other?) then enjoying a movie then spreading the WOM...and don't forget the lucky brand...I want to play it!

UPDATE Ilya at the Advertising Lab (MIT) blog has interesting theory about the whole practical concept too.

Portugese Taxi Guerrilla Marketing Campaign

Here's a great idea. So obvious in it's simplicity, it's originality, it's practicality, and it's success through I'm sure, all that drunk WOM. You can take it away and it would be visible and remarkable around the home, workplace, club, pub and restaurant, especially as it's going to live near any phone and will only generate stories amongst all visitors, so much better than those flat direct mail business cards that flood our doormats that only end up in recycling bin.  This is from Michal Pastier's, always great, original and seminal  Adarena. One of the most invaluble European adblogs. I make every London creative I visit, search it out and bookmark it into their browser.

Code Guardian

Before you do anything, watch this now. For an amateur this is pretty good. A compelling CGI short film that completely engaged me. What is it with Italian computer animators? They're all obsessed with robots! It's an Italian view on Godzilla robots at Pearl Harbour. It has it's flaws but you'll forgive them. It's by Cee Gee, an Italian CGI artist. An amateur CGI artist. Enjoy.