The challenge is on!  This morning Evan Davis and the Today programme team have challenged Rubber Republic to make a viral campaign to test the concept of viral marketing.  As part of the feature on viral – inspired by Cadbury’s Dancing Eyebrows – the Today programme are running an experiment to see if we can make Evan and his co-horts go viral.  The campaign’s being put together over the next few weeks, and we’ll see if we can turn radio star into internet star .  . .

Is it OK to be sick of Apple? I know we are all supposed to admire for their chic industrial-design and oh-so tasteful advertising. One reason Apple stand out so boldly from their competition is that most technology is advertised so badly which is why I instantly take-note when some other tech company manages to churn out a good campaign: Take Microsoft’s People Ready campaign. It’s a real improvement from the company which previously gave us the comic duo of Gates & Seinfeld.

This innovative ad is intended to promote Microsoft’s extensive range of business products – a line that is increasingly under threat from commercial and free rivals. Given that there’s a free alternative to just about every one of Microsoft’s commercial products it makes sense that they talk more about the solutions to which their products can be put to rather than fussing about the products themselves. This reminds me of how IBM’s marketing had to transform over the 90′s: Like Microsoft today IBM realized that they were loosing their monopoly – they could no longer be profitable simply by selling shrink-wrapped software products.

 Even if it’s not immediately clear what exactly what product or service Microsoft are advertising here, the campaign positions Microsoft as an enabler behind some of the world’s most interesting companies. It has a kind of silicon-valley start-up energy, and it’s not at all the sort of thing I’d expect to see from a gargantuan megacorp. Having worked for some of the world’s largest IT companies, I’ve noticed a trend towards ultra-conservative advertising: It usually starts with risk-averse brand-managers but is compounded by agency staff who do not understand the products or are simply not interested in all that “techie” stuff. It’s no surprise that there are so few award-winning IT business ads.

There’s a widely-held belief that b2b advertising has to be corporate and dull in order to work. Complete and utter nonsense. Business people are also ‘normal’ people with a creative side and a sense of humour. They do not leave their ‘souls’ at the office door when they enter the corporate world. A great advert like this can only come-about about when a confident brand-manager has the courage to let their agency work outside the shackles of convention. They have to really want to stand out, something that most IT people seem to find hard to do.

It’s great to see Microsoft acting as an equal in the playground. Its about time they stopped looking up at Apple and started acting as a leader they really are.

New voices are emerging from the universe of Twitter, and just like YouTube and MySpace have spawned their own celebrities, the micro-blogging service may be breeding fame for some. Unlike the real celebrities that Twitter, these are quirky talents that have mastered the new medium.

Crass, littered with profanity and kind of like getting obscene
updates from someone’s angry evil inner-self, Twitter’s yelling_bird  has 3,500+ followers. Yelling_bird follows no
one, and takes no criticism for insulting followers. Delivered in SCREAMING all
capital letters, you’ll enjoy the updates if you can stomach it.

But be forewarned, as yelling_bird says: THANKS FOR
FOLLOWING ME, YOU PATHETIC, GULLIBLE, EASILY-LED SIMPLETONS: YOU OUGHT TO BE
ASHAMED OF YOURSELVES

Another favourite is DarthVader, with 39,000+ followers. Got to love someone that
writes: Come to the Dark Side: We have Cake

Appreciating the Twitter stars,

-Lisa

Two days after criticising Facebook users for their pathetic protest attempts, the masses, rather emphatically, proved me wrong, creating a big enough stir to get CEO Mark Zuckerberg to stammer and stumble his way out of another privacy issue.

Egg on the face actually tastes pretty good, I should be wrong more often.

Anyways, earlier this week, Zuckerberg provoked a storm of controversy after releasing updated terms of service for the social networking site.

Under the new terms, a clause that allows users to permanently delete any uploaded content was removed, which critics claimed granted Facebook lifelong ownership rights to user photos, videos, written content and music, even if their profile had been deleted.

Within a day, a number of Facebook groups were launched to protest the changes and the story appeared across national newspapers, while bloggers fervently expressed their opposition to the new terms online.

Apparently, the one thing Facebook users are universally passionate about, is indeed Facebook. But I guess they proved that with Beacon two years ago.

A brief statement from Zuckerberg on Monday attempted to quell the storm asking for users to “trust” Facebook, with the analogy: “When a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are created — one in the person’s sent messages box and the other in their friend’s inbox.
“Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message. We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with how other services like email work.

“One of the reasons we updated our terms was to make this more clear.”

However yesterday, after Zuckerberg’s statement drew even more criticism from users, the company decided to revert back to its old terms while it “resolves the issue that people have raised” promising the new terms “will be written clearly in a language everyone can understand”.

The new finalised terms are expected to be released within a number of weeks and will be allowed to be scrutinised by Facebook users.

Being a semi-amateur photographer and a professional-hack-writer, it caused little concern in me, but really I could care less. All my good photographs are diverted into the less-cloistered Flickr, and as far as I know, my rights are protected. Similarly, with Livejournal, I reserve my right to remove any of the content I’ve loaded up there.

And I can see Z’berg’s point, and frankly I don’t understand why the furore was so large, and swift, impressive as it may be.

Professional photogs definitely have a reason to be angry, but the other 175m users with their stupid “night-out” albums, which, who are we kidding, is really just an excuse for girls to take pictures of themselves with two friends squished into their cheeks, not so much. Unless Facebook has plans for a super-PG Girls Gone Wild spinoff in the near future.

Users should realise that Facebook is a service, and a business, not just some namby-pamby social portal, and it reserves the right to stick it to you if it wants. If you don’t like it, don’t use it.

I’ve never been too fond of Facebook to begin with, all seemed a bit of a platform to show off your various wares and tales rather than a place to relax and connect with chums, isn’t that what the pub is for, but of course not everyone is a bitter recluse like myself.

Undoubtedly this sets an eerie precedent for user rights and online copyright terms. While other social networking sites are shaking in their boots, I bet they’re glad Facebook bit the bullet on this one (again).

The people have spoken, but who knew it would be so damned loud?

On the back of Adweek giving R/GA digital Agency of the Year Mark Wnek wrote a drug like rant about the whole awards system and it being bullshit.

I have to say I know a lot of people don’t like him (don’t really know why, or care, little before my time) but I think he’s spot on. I have cut and pasted the full text from Brian Morrissey’s blog, which is very good for those of you wanting to know what’s going on in the US digital scene. I haven’t changed the formatting at all. I think a good narcesque fueled peice of prose should just come as it is…

“I have flu and am bored so here’s
a feverish rant for you: there is a big problem with the (Anglo-?)
American/capitalist need for winners and losers. Somewhere along the
line advertising got ensnared in the Oscars/Hall of Fame mentality of
ostentatiously awarding skin-deep flashiness as opposed to true,
largely unsung fundamental business-affecting performance. Most of the
conversations I have with anybody connected to the so-called creative
community in ad agencies come around to awards or award-winning work at
some point. It has come to the point where agencies at the very least
equally develop work for the consideration of advertising juries as for
clients and consumers.

“There are creative people in the ad industry who
are famous. Are there any famous people in other trades like building
or plumbing? The digital community hasn’t grown out of this utter
bullshit. The digital community has grown up via solving genuine
business problems and has an undiluted dedication to creating concrete,
game-changing and lasting platforms and connections. Frankly, the
medium is irrelevant. The only thing that is relevant is coming up with
the right solution at the right time in the right way while being
beholden to nothing – BUT NOTHING – but the
business/communications/consumer/reputational challenge the paying
client is struggling with.

“Such solutions are most often unglamorous.
Particularly in the short term – which is why all the best digital
people use the word ‘lasting’ a lot. The great thing about Bob G and
R/GA is not Nike Plus. Nike Plus is just a natural outcome of a company
that has been thinking deeply and unostentatiously about helping
clients with their business for years rather than playing to the crowd
(something which, by the way, Crispin were also doing for years before
anybody was even talking about them). As a grown-up I would LOVE to see
agencies honored for genuinely thinking about (if not feeling for)
their clients and their problems rather than being good at promoting
themselves via awards junkets.

“Olive Garden (yes, Olive Garden) has a
positioning which, as you know, is ‘when you’re here, you’re family’. I
don’t see anyone jumping up and down and claiming credit for that. It’s
not Nike, of course. But Olive Garden has had 54 uninterrupted quarters
of growth. 54. Clearly there’s a business situation at work and a whole
collection of supplier (yep, that’s what we are, suppliers, not
superstars) relationships that is well and truly working. So what I
would dearly like to see someone have the balls to do is to have one
Agency of the Year and reveal the whole range of complex, unsung,
lasting, bottom-line affecting ideas and behaviors – strategic,
technological or otherwise – that it brought to bear. Man these
antibiotics are weird.“

You go Mark. I’ll try to remember that while I judge some awards this week. 

One side effect of Le Crunch (resorting to French for a fresh descriptor) is a boon in the discount voucher market online which has helped keep restaurants like Pizza Express full in the dog days of January with two for one and three courses for £10 offers.

Playing the discount voucher game is therefore an attractive option for restaurateurs with a cold wind on their back but there is a danger that in the frenzy to keep tables full, established, loyal customers may be ignored. If no distinction is made between them and the fly-by-night, voucher clutching one timers, what are you saying to your regular customers about how you value them?

Thankfully, it’s not an either or situation, restaurateurs can combine discount vouchers with rewards for loyalty. This could be as simple as mailing your existing customer base and offering a reward for passing on the discount vouchers to friends. Email and social media make this a wildfire solution for spreading the word if the offer is attractive enough.
However it is executed, rewarding customer loyalty, rather than purely commoditising the offer will put restaurants and other retailers using vouchers in a stronger position come the financial thaw.

It’s difficult to extol the power of protest without saintly praise of the godfather of grumble, Bob Dylan.

I remain a big fan of the man, despite his recent, bewildering shills, and the fact that ‘Blown’ in the Wind’ is pretty tepid by today’s standards, a song probably somehow more synonymous with the artist and the time than the infinitely superior ‘Masters of War’, but the truth remains the man could invoke a decent protest.

With his trademark warble and Martin dreadnought, Dylan — and I shudder at the thought of using such a hackneyed phrase — inspired a generation.

1963 was obviously a different time than 2009, one ripe with “change” (where have I heard that word before?) and “hope” (huh), but I daresay the problems facing the Love Generation® — Vietnam, Watergate, feminism and civil rights — in no way pale to the issues facing today’s.

Afghanistan/Iraq, the Bush-hangover, global warming, obesity and the economy, where the hell are our protest songs? Or protests? Even a little unchannelled anger?

You don’t have to look too far actually, just check out Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and the like.

Instead of swaying the masses with a few biting chords and with some hissing, angry lyrics, today’s Lazy Generation® has the click of a mouse, and the well, that’s about all. Oh sorry, I forgot, a smug feeling of unearned satisfaction.

Okay, Peta still does its thing, but it has become such a caricature of itself that I can’t take it seriously anymore. And, protests do still occur, in most recent in memory the much-ballyhooed break-in and sit-in of the Stansted runway in December.

Things got pretty hairy in Athens a while back I guess, but I’m willing to bet those protesters didn’t have broadband internet access.

Why risk your neck, enduring the cold, hard crack of the billy club and the steely temperament of a pair of handcuffs around your wrists, when you can inch that same supple wrist around a computer monitor and join the Facebook group ’100,000 strong for orphaned Gaza puppies’ and ‘The John Sargeant was hosed petition!’

Is this what settles for action in today’s generation? You can argue that these menial little groups and boycotts raise the profile for certain causes, but with our 24-hour news cycles, blogs, feeds, tweets, etc., I’m not sure how much higher the profile can be raised.

Being relatively media literate, I have a fair idea what’s going on the world. I’m vaguely aware of the stupidest, smallest issues decaying the dustiest corners of the world.

So the question is: has social media killed the protest? Are we really this lazy, or has oversaturation numbed the senses?

The latest example brought to my attention, and likely soon to yours, is the New Zealand Internet Blackout against the Guilt Upon Accusation law — a law calling for internet disconnection based on accusations of copyright infringement without trial or court sanctified evidence.

Yikes, serious stuff.

It is bullshit, obviously, don’t get me started on this whole copyright infringement, RIAA, ISP fiasco we have on our hands.

But what’s more concerning is the ‘Blackout’ part of the New Zealand cause. The directing website asks internet users to ‘blackout’ their profile photos, or avatars on various sites, including Twitter, MySpace and Facebook, until February 23.

That’s it. They even provide the black avatar, all you have to do is right-click, and save-as.

Oh sorry, and your supposed to say “(your name) is blacked out: Stand up against “Guilt Upon Accusation” for New Zealand” on whatever social vice your networking with at the time.

Okay, now that’s it. I’ve noticed a few of my Twitter followers have already complied, showing their support, likely, before taking another swig of their skinny lattes and changing pages to have a chuckle on Digg, forgetting about the issue altogether.

Really? That’s what passes for a protest these days? I’m shocked. I’m appalled. I’m blogging.

It’s a cause that I believe in, but really, this doesn’t cut it. I can’t imagine the shady heads-of-state, high in the cozy, ivory towers of New Zealand are going to be too badly shaken by such an act, a bunch of black pixels.

I understand the irony of complaining about a protest, saying it’s not protest-y enough, but it’s true. Get some guitars, some angry masses and go blockade some government institution, with the tear gas and the balaclavas, tear down some satellites, I don’t know, just don’t just click.

Where’s Mr. Dylan when you need him? Besides idling his Cadillac Escalade in the parking lot of the Co-op while shopping for baby seal-skins and low efficiency lightbulbs.

What we need, and what New Zealand needs, is a new anti-hero, and by god, we aren’t going to find him or her on Twitter or Facebook.

You’re Embarrassed

By Lisa Devaney // 12 February, 2009 – 2:03 pm // No comments

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Sanford Meisner taught that “the seed to the craft of acting is the reality of doing” and his
simple truths and approaches to the field have inspired generations of actors,
including Diane Keaton, Jeff Goldblum and Sydney Pollack.

 

This week I found that the teachings of Meisner live on in
the UK, when I went along to learn the basics of Meisner’s approach at The
Actors Temple, to take a class taught by Mark
Wakeling, a co-director at this theatre school. The session was organized by
the group Artists Anonymous, offering bargain rates for theatre classes and
networking events in London.

 

Wakeling led the class of 20 through the early thought
processes of Meisner’s teachings, that aims to teach you how to use the tool
that is your emotional and intellectual mind to get to the point of
realization where, as Meisner said, you are “living truthfully under the given
imaginary circumstances.” Wakeling helped participants work toward being in the
moment and concentrating on that moment to reveal the truth of how you, and the
person you are interacting with on stage, really are.

 

The process involved an exercise in repetition with a
performance partner, with each person stating a truth about the other and then
parroting the statement back to the other. The set-up, sometimes adversarial in
nature, produced banter that heard participants proclaiming, “you’re defensive,
you’re nervous, you’re embarrassed!”

 

Uncomfortable in some instances, the exercises proved that
living in the truth is harsh to face and, as Wakeling pointed out, if everyone
lived in full truth there would be anarchy.

 

The class gave me new respect for the difficult job that is
the craft of acting. If you are interested in coming along to one of Artists
Anonymous happenings, join their group on Facebook, or visit the website. Next week’s class is Page to Stage, a script
development program, being held Wednesday, February 18.

 

Learned some new tricks,

-Lisa

 

Famous Meisner Quotes

 

“Acting is the ability to live truthfully under
imaginary circumstances.”

 

“The foundation of acting is the reality of
doing.”

 

“You know it’s all right to be wrong, but it’s not all
right not to try.”

 

“There’s no such thing as nothing.”

 

“Less is more!”

 

“An ounce of behaviour is worth more than a pound of
words.”

 

“Silence has a myriad of meanings. In the theatre,
silence is an absence of words, but never an absence of meaning.”

 

“May I say as the world’s oldest living teacher, ‘Fuck
Polite!’”

 

“Acting can be fun. Don’t let it get around.”

 

Who will be the Digital David Ogilvy?

By James Cooper // 11 February, 2009 – 11:04 pm // 19 Comments

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It’s been a while since i posted here, been busy in NY helping Dare set up and all that jazz. Anyway, there is an interestng debate going on over these parts about whether digital creativity is up to scratch or not. Randy Rothenberg, president of the IAB no less, has weighed in saying he thinks we are all sub par and will never reach the level of David Ogilvy or Bill Bernbach. Is he right?

 

Course he’s not. Randy’s
notion that digital creativity sucks is a pretty weak argument. Who is
to say who will be the Bernbachs or the Ogilvy’s of digital? It’s
pretty unlikely that there will be *no one* – the odds just don’t stack
up.

 

Someone will become that famous, at the time DO and BB were not
gods, merely people running their own agencies. They became gods in
history. It’s so much easier to look back and say there was all this
great work but for every ‘Lemon’ there were a million real lemons – bad
press ads, bad commercials, that no one ever talks about.

 

I should imagine the percentage of ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ digital work
is identical to the percentage of ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ work in every
other media in every other era. It just so happens that we are in the
middle of a new era so it’s easier to scrutinize / criticize.

 

We can have a sensible debate (if talking about meaningless stuff
that sells meaningless products could ever be described as sensible!)
in 10, maybe 20 years time.

 

In the meantime it’s always fun to guess though isn’t it? So who would you think is the person most likely to be remembered as the digital daddy? At the moment my money would be either on the artist Jonathan Harris or Ben Palmer from Barbarian, with an each way bet on me and Flo

 

 

 

Twitter’s UK traffic trebles in a month

By Robin Grant // 11 February, 2009 – 2:33 pm // 3 Comments

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Compared to the graph covering the 12 months up until January, that’s astounding growth (as that itself was just a few weeks ago):

To quote Hitwise’s Robin Goad:

Last week Twitter became one of the 100 most visited websites in the UK for the first time. It ranked 91st, placing above online heavyweights such as Expedia UK (96), Gumtree (100), easyJet (101), Digital Spy (103) and Money Supermarket (105).

 

However, the service is likely even more popular than our numbers imply, as we are only measuring traffic to the main Twitter website. If the people accessing their Twitter accounts via mobile phones and third party applications (such as Twitterrific, Twitterfeed and Tweetdeck) were included, the numbers would be even higher.

 

Now of course, you might think this was down to the Stephen Fry effect, but we couldn’t possibly comment.*

 

What will be interesting if Twitter really does go mainstream (which until today, I can’t say I really thought was going to happen), is that, unlike Facebook, Twitter seems to exhibit the same sort of power law relationships as blogs do. Which means the bigger it gets, the more effective work we’ll be able to do for our clients through it…

 

*disclosure: Stephen is a client of ours and we helped get him going on Twitter.

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