"The sophistication of modern sport workd against freakish solo-domination. In skill- centred sports rather than purely physical sports, some records are virtually unbreakable"
Which means..
"There truly was a time when great men were greater -but human progress means those days witll never come back, there really will never be another Don Bradman"
Which is immensely sad. It seems like blokes need high mimetic heroes today more than ever.
From 'What Sport Tells Us About Life" by Ed Smith. If you fresh insight into sport,or life for that matter, because sport is really a mirror for everyday life, you should read it.
This also puts the arrogance of planners into sharp focus. It's not that most are genius strategists, it's just that others are even less good.
My career in a nutshell..........
So I went to TEDx Bradford the other week, which was loosely about the future of the internet. TED is a wonderful thing, I can’t remember anything else that offered so many of ideas and fodder for all sorts of stuff for free. The videos from the main events are fantastic, not just for the quality of the idea, but the delivery. The presentations tend to be showstoppers.
TEDx is a little different, these second tier events are orgnanised locally under the TED name. Same principle, but less guarantee of high quality inspiration.
This was my first take-out from the day. There’s an old saying that good ideas should be able to sell themselves. Up to a point that’s true, of course, but I saw a wide variety of aptitude for presenting ideas, not mention styles and it reminded me how important delivery of an idea really is.
There was a, quite brilliant, presentation that was funny, witty and entertaining – the person doing it was a natural performer. But then there was another where she was softly spoken and rather shy, but she was so open and enthusiastic she took us all with her. More importantly, she didn’t do a presentation, she told a story. Humans are hardwired to love storytelling and this really worked for her.
But then there was also an intelligent, focused and energetic talk from a guy who presented through a series of infographics. He was direct and simple, but his ‘props’ transformed the whole experience.
As a rather shy, un-flamboyant person myself, the best advice I was ever given on presentations was to just be myself and find what worked for me. Whenever I’ve tried to do funny, I just look stupid. Whenever I’ve tried to do ‘slick’ I look even dafter.
But I put a lot of work into preparation, people can tell I’ve made a lot of effort, they can see I care and this helps a lot. I tend to look for great video and pictures, not to mention forgoing typed words and using my own handwriting. In other words, I work hard on props. Hopefully never letting them overshadow what I say, but adding weight depth and context. And I try to tell stories.
Anyway.
There were some talks where the speakers actually read out from a script and, despite what they were saying being interesting, you could see the audience fidgeting, twiddling with their phone and generally waiting for it to be over.
Some were too clever by half and instead of getting out the way of their story, they ruined it with gimmicks.
In other words, ideas should sell themselves, but there’s nothing like the (very varied) delivery people.
Second take-out was that people that live in the loose community of digital technologists, marketers and academics need to be careful they don’t disappear up their own behinds. You couldn’t help but notice a particular uniform for the day, which was largely based around skinny jeans, check shirts with national health specs, artfully dishevelled bourgeouis bohemians and the genuinely threadbare, thrown together outfit of the genuine, careless academic. There was an air of self important smugness to much of the day and the sense of a niche community talking to itself, incredibly pleased with it’s own cleverness without any genuine understanding, or care for the context of real people in the real world.
Much of this is fine or course, you need ridiculously clever people to care about the kind of things others don’t in the hope that others can apply their stuff to the everyday eventually. The World Wide Web came directly out of CERN for example and the cathode ray tubes that created TV images came from quantum physics that are still incomprehensible to most of us. Even the orginal algorythm that enabled Google to search so much more effectively came from an apparently useless, publicly funded, project.
But there’s always the danger of believing your own hype. The internet is littered with incredibly clever apps, platforms and other wheezes that no one ever bothers with, because their inventors forgot to put people at the heart of what they do rather than technology.
One thread of the day was the importance of net neutrality and freedom to post what you want and get what you want for free. No one seemed to want to say why, or discuss a point of view where a form of control or rules might be useful. It’s up to you what you think of course, but you can’t make an informed decision unless you see both points of view and the group think of the digital elite doesn’t seem to question itself that much.
Anyway, I’m not going to bother going through every talk. They’ll be published soon for you to see for yourself. I’ll just share the bits I found interesting or useful.
Jane Macdonald talked about Tales of Things. An ongoing project where objects are given their own QR codes and people can attach their stories about them to it. I love this, because so much of how we relate to ‘things’ is based on what we believe about them and what we know of our story. This very month, someone has paid thousands for a piece of old box that has some of Ghandi’s blood on it. The box is worthless, even blood is worthless, it’s because we know this is Ghandi’s blood that it’s so valuable. Just like my Grandmother’s china tea set has untold value to me. She taught how to make tea properly with that set, which was a wedding present to her nearly 100 years ago. Take away the memory of her and it’s just an old fashioned tea set. Daniel Miller in this book compellingly captures how important our relationship with ‘things’ really are and how much that’s about memories and shared history.
This is why A History of the World in a 100 Objects was so popular. We relate to things and their stories in such a powerful way.
She also talked about the possibilty to preserve social history. Imagine a museum where you don’t just get the object, say an antiquated Nokia from the 1990′s, you also also get the stories from people about what it meant to them and how incredible it was to them to have a phone they could carry around, let alone the internet in your pocket.
Imagine going into the V&A and not just being able to admire Dior’s New Look from the 1950′s but actually hear stories from the women that wore them, how it liberated them and enabled them to feel a little more spontaneous and free in very austere times. Imagine what the women in the 1960′s could tell you about their mini skirts, or what people could tell about what their original Sgt. Pepper meant to them, or in my case, what it felt like to get my prized Millenium Falcon replica in 1981 at a time when Star Wars meant more to me than life.
She talked of Oxfam Shelflife, where clothes donors could attach the story of what they were donating to a QR code and the clothes sold out, as people responded to the added value they created for the object.
She forcibly reminded me that the point of digital stuff is finally coming to life, it’s not really about another virtual world, it’s about enriching the one we live in now and much of that is about what it will add to objects. To quote Heidegger, “Objects are points of conversations” what’s amazing about the future that is nearly with us, is that those conversations will live IN those objects.
Mark Graham discussed how knowledge is concentrated geographically and gave evidence that the history of the internet is actually one where this is exacerbated. The pattern of history is one where knowledge production has been concentrated in the richest parts of the world, books, newspapers, periodicals etc have all been more accessable to those in well off areas and the greater education and knowledge reinforces the economic superiority.
These days, digital maps shape our knowledge of places and the people that live in them, from Googlemaps to Wikipedia, from Twitter feeds to the weight of personal blogs and reviews, not to mention visual history – Flickr, Facebook Instragram and so on. But, like print beforehand, because digital technology is distributed so unnevenly, history is still being written by the winners. Most people in the world can’t access the internet and even where they can, broadband, fast laptops and smartphones are a distant dream.
So there is more user generated content about Tolkien’s Middle Earth than most places in the developing world. There are more edits of Wikipedia from Hong Kong that all of Africa put together and more from Israel than the rest of the Middle East put together.
Makmende was an East African viral hit that couldn’t get an official listing on Wikipedia because the editors were all so removed from the region, geographically, socially and econimically that they didn’t believe it was genuine, and certainly didn’t understand it.
Why does this matter to me? Because as someone who grew up studying social sciences, and learned to question EVERY peice of source material, something I think is massively important for research for what I do now, it reminds me to never believe what I read on the internet until I get some proper proof. I see many strategy and research types presenting ‘researched’ ideas when what they really have is some desk research from social media or articles and such. If you want to understand what’s going on in any culture, any social group or anyone;’s head, you have to actually go out and meet them.
This is even more important if you do global stuff, which is what is taking up most of my days at the moment. You won’t get much insight from the web about most of the world because it’s written from the point of view of people like you, not them.
Even looking at what people do and say on your large Facebook fanbase, if you’re lucky to have one, isn’t of massive use because social media is digital showing off, it’s not what we’re really like, it’s what we want people to think we’re like. Not to mention, these ‘visible consumers’ are only the weird ones that can be bothered to spend time with a brand instead of their peers, this is not representative of both the brands buyers or normal human beings at large. Going back to my sad Star Wars obsession, if the importance of friends and family in the lives of most people is the size of the Death Star, the size of real entertainment and fun stuff is roughly the size of Darth Vader’s Star Destroyer, so the size of brands probably equates to the size of the Millenium Falcon.
Finally, Dr Kieran Hulse did a talk on the history of mixtapes and editing your own music – from the classic cassette mixtape through to new streaming services like LastFM and Spotify. He showed how the original mixtapes were, more often or not, acts of romance and ways of forming and cementing relationships. Personally, I spent far too many hours as a teenager making tapes for girlfriends and friends alike. They always had the person and the relationship in mind, but they were also me telling others something about myself in a very subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) way. They were about basic human needs to share and communicate (and non-verbal communications tend to be more powerful that what we actually say), not to mention the objects with specific stories to them.
I know for a fact that an old girlfriend (we’re still good friends) has a few I made for her over twenty years ago, least importantly because she likes some of the songs, overwhelmingly because they’re a sweet reminder of our shared story and, dare I say, the person I was back then, naive, earnest and slightly odd (not much changes).
CD’s began to kill all that, then along came Itunes and suddenly it all became personal. Your playlists became your own mixtape, but they were rarely shared.
But along came streaming sites and we’re gone back to the sharing, personal side of things. But amplified a million times. Now we can make mixtapes of anything, through playlists, and share them with anyone. Not just our friends, but anyone. We can find new music thanks to sharing with people who like what we like – some say the web is killing serendipity, perhaps this is example of why it doesn’t have to be like that.
That’s the main point I got from this, but there is another. Technology is changing faster than we can keep up,which in turn is changing culture in many ways. Some good, some bad. But human nature took millions of years to evolve, billions in fact, since much of what it is in us originated in tiny mammals evading dinosaurs and the first fish that crawled on land way before that.
The fundamentals of who we are, what motivates us and what we need does not change, it just responds to what is around it in different ways. The need for sharing, for community, to have our senses stirred by stuff like music, for love and companionship and for a story (in mixtapes and other objects) are universal. And because the fundamentals of human behaviour does not change, that’s what we as marketing and/or technology folk need to address first, rather than be blinded by the latest innovation, trend or fad.
Coming back to slight self-congratulatory tone of the day, I hope that’s something everyone took on board.
If you're not from the UK, you won't be familiar with Children In Need, the annual TV telethon that raises money for kids that desperately need it.
What's striking about it, apart from the generosity of people, is the way millions of normally reserved and emotionally retarded British people join together to have fun, do daft things and share their feelings. There isn't a soupcon of irony in sight. This isn't supposed to happen.
As Kate Fox points out in the brilliant watching the English, we're a culture built on our chronic social inhibitions and handicaps. It makes us appalingly modest and suspicious and champions of moderation, it leads to particular self deprecating humour and the cynical, ironic brand of comedy that dominates much of our popular culture. We're Eeyoreish and don't take well to earnestness, public displays of emotion and excess.
This explains the curious British love affair of home ownership - we crave a private haven away from other people, it de-mystifies our fear of public transport - we prefer to not be around people we don't know and we're terribly bad at small talk. So how come we all go bonkers over children in need?
It's an outlet. All that pent up need for a bit of joy without agenda, for an ice breaker that gets past our social inhibitions...when it comes we let off steam. Just like the quadrennial Football World Cup, or the death of Diana..it allows us to let off some steam. It even explains the British behaviour with booze, namely getting as drunk and disorderly as possible, it's a social crutch that the more garrulous cultures don't need. We can't have fun unless something quells our inhibitions for us.
That's why we miss event television like Morecambe and Wise and why we love X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing - pure, unadulterated, unsophisticated fun that lets us laugh, shout and even weep together.
Finally, it even explains our love of the chip (or fry or fritte if you like). It's the only national food we have that is perfect for sharing. We tend to share the dish, picking the little fatty/carb bombs up with our fingers, smothered in salt, vinegar and ketchup. It's a social food, a communal one and boy do we need those.
I went to Interesting North on Saturday. There is much I can say, but there's little need when you'll be able to see the videos and stuff in due course. In any case, other people are reporting already, here too.
I really liked it though. The speakers were excellent and it reminded me how important it is for planning type peopl to collect interestingness - the day was full of all sorts of stuff that will come in handy some day.
I liked the fact this was full of more techy and arty people, there really weren't too many planning types, which was a good thing. I also liked the fact that people were there because they were interested, rather than wanting to be around the cool kids. There was a distinct lack of smugness and posturing to the day.
The only talk I'll quickly touch upon was Marcus. He was brilliant, as you would expect, but not how you'd expect. You'll know he has too much imagination and simple need to DO stuff to be contained in a single blog, which leaves the web littered with his projects and personas. They're hard to keep up with and sometimes confusing, but you always know Marcus will be up to something. And most of us expected a talk around this stuff.
But he didn't do that. He talked about a deeply personal time in his life when he thought he was going mad. It was incredibly brave to do that in front of all those people and it just worked. There isn't enough stuff in this world that makes you feel something, there are not enough storytellers, there are not enough people willing to talk about stuff that actually matters.
Marcus reminded us all that we were at an event full of people too clever for their own good, and that the bollocks we all do is irrelevant next to real stories about real people. He reminded us all that good writing should be treasured and people who can perform their works, rather than just read them out should be treasured too.
Marcus, we salute you.
Gaping Void at brilliantly simple best
Heather's posted the Annual Planner Survey. You should have a read.
Incidentally, someone with my name seems to have made the list of unsung heroes . I can only assume there are two planners with the name Andrew Hovells.
If you're a client going through ten chemistry meetings, you're bound to receive eleven different versions of 'we seek to understand what makes people tick'. If you meet any planner, they'll hopefully remember that amidst the billion things the job seems to require these days, their primary role isn't to be shrill for the work, it's to build strategy to influence what real people do in real lives...in short, suits make the work happen, creatives make the work good, planners make the work, ahem, work.
(picture from We Are What We Do)
Yet how many agencies and their planners REALLY understand people. I don't mean unreliable findings from the biggest mouth in a focus group, or a bit of profiling on TGI (TGI's good by the way, it's actually a qual tool, not quant, enabling you to get a feel for the people you need to engage with and know there's enough of them - but it only gets to generalisations, you need to dig a lot deeper than that), I mean knowing what really influences and motivates them.
I think half of that is going out and meeting them - part anthropologist - in their own environment. People are useless at describing what they did and why, or even how they felt. The only reliable way is to be there as it happens. That's why even co-creation in an artificial environment is bollocks, people won't act on genuine instinct, they'll be developing stuff based on their own generalisations of other people, and what they THINK the brand wants, not what they REALLY want...they don't really know what they want.
The other half of that is amateur psychology. Bill Bernbach said 'there's nothing so powerful as an insight into human nature' and that still holds true. There are universal truths about how people behave and what motivates them. They more you understand about this, the better. I don't mean playing back these truths to people, that's useless. I do means understanding what role you can play, what problem you can solve in people's lives.
There's a lot to be said for this tool, I think MC Saatchi still use a variation on this.
I can't abide all that 'brutal simplicity of thought' stuff, but finding a connection between a truth about people (not 'consumers') and what the brand is about, or what it can deliver can be really powerful. This work is all based on the connection between the truth that we all respect people who can do what we cannot and the fact that most people are not cut out to be a police officer:
As other people have said, it's really powerful to relieve a genuine tension in culture, in what goes on people's lives.
Johnie Walker relieves the contradiction between the masculine need for success and a growing distaste for conspicuous consumptions by re framing male success as personal progress, rather than having arrived ( and that in Asia that requires referencing brotherhood and belonging, rather than 'me'.
Pepsi knows that every generation feels like they want to change the world, but that they have a chance to change things, they just get to protest a lot and then grow up.
Anyway, here's ten great insights from psychology worth putting in your scapbook.
Following on from this post about need to ask advice no matter how good you think your are, here's an excellent (old) article from the New York times about the danger of praise.
As a father, it's good to know that praising a child's results makes actually harms them in long term, creating unrealistic expectations for themselves and eventually making them lazy - while praising effort means they never feel demolished by doing bad and learn to love trying hard.
This has something to teach our industry's star system. Most agencies has a few untouchable golden children who cannot be questioned - usually because they've won an award - something that praises how clever you were, not how hard you tried, and end up over indulged, un-collaborative and intellectually lazy.
Star systems work against true success, which usually comes from a shared, communal working environment (think Ghana's football team V England's Golden generation)- to quote Gladwell in this article which you should read, about how the talent system brought down Enron, "If you always have to think outside the box, it's time to fix the box"
Take this New York Times article with a pinch of salt.
It's certainly true to say that there's a bigger conflict now between Dad the worker and Dad the caring, involved parent, or at least amongst the Dad's I know (including me) - I'm not even going to go there on 'unappreciated Dad contributions' Mrs Northern reads this occasionally.
I'm reading Gladwell's What the Dog Saw, despite the fact I've alread read most of the articles and they're freely available online. There's just something about the collecting them in tactile object of a book that makes it more satisfying and concentrated - the comfort of a thing.
Anway, I enjoyed re-reading this article on hair dye, how it's advertised and what it says about women. If you can't be bothered reading those posts I did on women's hair (here, here and here), just read this.
The stories of Shirley Polykoff, Ilon Specht tell us so much about cultural significance and understanding the role of product/brand in people's lives, and the heroism of those women who found their voice in world made by, and for, men.
I went a big mad on Amazon last week, it's just how I roll sometimes.
As is usual with me, I managed to lace something simple with a flavour of muppetry and embarrassment. How? By forgetting to put my name on the delivery address.
That would have been find if it was just one parcel, but on no sir, not me. I bought from a smorgasbord of third parties, resulting in 7 parcels dripping in over 5 days, all arriving at work's reception with no name, meaning I had to continually do the walk of shame to pick them up, in answer to the 'all users' email, "Has some muppet ordered from Amazon without a name, who isn't Andrew?".
Moving on.
Two highlights. One is Baked In by Bokuskyof Crispin Porter fame. Have a look at their site for 28 recipes for modern marketing thinky stuff. I don't usually read or recommend 'work related' books, but this is worth a look. The site is a good example of 'un-book' too.
Another arrival worth sharing is the book of 'We Feel Fine'. The site is beautiful, but the book is thoughtful, moving and ably demonstrates how screeny, flashy, electronic stuff is all well and good, but there's nothing like touching something real. I love social study type things, this is one of them that works really well.
I was in London for something or other yesterday, Shoreditch to be precise.
That meant a walk from Liverpool Street Tube, through the Square Mile to Shoreditch.
It was funny to watch how, in the space of 400 yards, I walked through a sea of pinstripe suits, shiny chrome (and disappearing taxes).
Then passing through some sort of invisible forcefield, immediately entering a world of irony, knowingly sparse and shabby streets, creative types, T4 presenters in general extras from The Mighty Boosh.
Funny how two completely opposite worlds co-exist next to each other, one the complete antithesis of the other. That amazes me about cities, the way they self organise like that. In the small of a few footsteps, everything changes.
I've always worked on challenger brands, with one exception. Challengers are much better than number ones - more fun, more interesting, less complacency.
So naturally, I've joined Eatbigfish's Challenger Project community. You should too. And if you haven't read Eating the Big Fish by Adam Morgan yet, you should do that too, it's one of two genuine essentials for planners. As far as other books are concerned, the less they are 'planning books' the better. Fish where others do not.
Anyway, it doesn't matter if you work for number one's or not, these days, the best way to stay a number one is tothink like challenger. That's why I think Nike has stayed ahead all these years - they wouldn't do work like this otherwise. Compare that to big lumbering L'oreal,
or Gillette who need god knows how much quant to hit on the shallow observation that men like to be treated as individuals (they don't by the way, they just think they do). Or the clunky champions stuff..
By the way, I quite the 'best a man can get' stuff
- I remember it for starters and it was particular view on manhood that isn't really different to Old Spice
or Dove today.......
....a real man is experienced - it was just executed in a different time, before Americans got irony, or found out that Europeans did.
Anyway, that was the disappointment with the number one I did work on, they'd become complacent, lazy and believed their own hype.
So I suggest you join in (it's free) there's plenty to read and watch.
For starters, here's Naresh Ramchamdani's observation that digital, cheaper media is the same as expensive media and firepower - people know when you've made an effort to do something special and reward you with engagement (you'll have to join first which will take seconds)
And here's Russell's take on post digital, the internet of thingsand the general 'digitalisation' of physical objects (on another note, of you want to know about the important of 'things' in our lives I would read this first, then decide what making them part of the fabric of the web could/should mean.
Oke Doke, as promised it's time to finish communications planning. For previous posts, go here, here and then here.
When we left it, we were at the point when we'd worked out the task for communications - what actions do you want your audience to take - the thing communications can influence people to do to best contribute to the business goal.
Grow impulse purchases by getting top of mind with young buyers...
That's more than half the battle - really defining the task is the best thing you can do, in some agencies, planning stops there - you'll see the proposition as a task in many briefs, JWT focuses on what we want people to think and then opens up the process to everyone. I must admit, that's how I would prefer to work, but most agencies still have a wall between creative and planning and you can't shape the rest of the process as a team everywhere.
However and wherever you work, it's critical to make sure you don't stick to 'advertising's the answer, what's the question'. Knowing when and where to show up in your audiences lives is not only a must now the web enabled, marketing savvy consumer can filter ads out if they want to, it can actually form part of the actual idea.
So you need to answer the following question - when and where, and in what circumstance will our target be most receptive to our communications? You need to thinks about:
What media do they consume, why and how? What else do they interact with that isn't strictly 'media'?
What role does different possible connection points play in their lives? What do they pay attention to during the day? What are they doing at the time? Are they looking for entertainment? Information? Companionship?
How does the competition connect to the audience? Are their opportunities to find different connection points? Should we use the same but in a very different way?
Think again about what role the category plays in their real lives? When are they most in need of what they're offering? When could we make the most difference or be of the most use?
When and where does the brand vision and personality fit the most?
Think again about the purchase process - what does that tell you about when and where to show up?
Of course, TV is still a great medium, but you're deluded if you think all you have to do is put a logical ad up there and that's it. It's harder to stand out now, so relevance is critical, and you need to think of this as part of multiple touch points in story - in store, on-line, PR events and other media you want to invent.
Coming back to the Gorilla, they knew that the ad had to be something viral, that would get people talking and sharing on Youtube.
Axe in Japan (I think) needed to increase usage in the morning and discovered that males there use their phones as an alarm clock - so the moment became when they woke up..with sexy alarm calls from the girl of your choice.
Orange engaged with a younger audience through film - and picked a couple of moments. One was the actual film experience itself, this one was even more specific - engagement with Star Wars fans.
Another was a night of the week to share a film with a mate.
Sainsburys conceptually is about that rainy Tuesday night when you can't think of anything to cook - Try something new today.
Ghd focuses on the ritual of getting ready, and the hidden desires inside every woman.
But then there's TBWA London's work to make young women aware of the dangers of having your drink spiked - by actually spiking their drink with a specially made cocktail umbrella.
A word of caution. Be sure what you're doing will the reach the number of people you need to. Stunts etc are waste of time if they reach 100 people when you need to generate trial with 10,000.
Then consider the experience you want people to have, maybe think of it as a reward. What you're going to say, do etc to make people end up acting as you want, this ends up as the proposition in the creative brief.
Consider functional - Ariel makes whites whiter. And don't be afraid of telling people about a unique product benefit if there is one.
This ad is just telling you that a Sony Bravia has better colour, the rest is how that is delivered.
Just bear in mind, it's how you deliver that message that counts and thought and input on that is needed - it usually and should come from the brand vision/tone etc, but we'll come to that.
It can also come from knowing what the experience is of th medium - only an idiot produces a cinema ad that doesn't entertain, but you can interact with a small crowd here too.
Purified so it tasted fresher
Sensory/emotional benefit....freedom, power, confidence.
Independence..
Belonging
Expressive - being to communicate to others that you are experienced..
Intelligent..
A great mother..
How do you choose the right focus? Think why the audience isn't doing what you want, find the blockage, judge your solution by how much it will overcome it.
You should think about support- give the reasons why the target should believe what you're saying. This should really be the actual stuff of the communication.
You can be literal - 9 out out of ten cats prefer Whiskas
British Airways brings more people together than anyone else..
Honda used their hatred of diesel engines to spur them to make one they could love.
Demonstration...
The Accord just works
..or dramatise it.
Women enjoy Yorkie's even thought they're masculine.
Check your logic - how does the action, the reward and the support fit together - a useful check is to complete the following sentence from the audience point of view:
"When I (intended action), I will (reward), because (support).
Now, traditionally tone of voice etc comes last - you would hope because this is already set and agreed, everyone is clear about the brand idea, the personality etc. Other people have talked betterthan I could about why this matters (and offer alternatives to this way of comms planning, but remember, these are the basics, know the rules, do them well before you break them).
Anyway, you must say, behave etc in a way that people will FEEL it. Just telling people will mean they won't listen. Nothing will happen.
Every piece of comms says something about the brand, like it or not. It needs to be appropriate for the brand and the audience. You need to be clear about this, and agree it with client especially creatives.
Too often, a creative is briefed really well, but tone is left out. Or even worse, it's not and they ignore it, because they believe it's up to them to decide how communication is delivered. It is up to a point. But it was Boddingtons - it MUST have been delivered creamily with a Mancunian twist.
If it's Apple, it must be simple and human.
You might want to be consistent with how you're perceived already, you might want to play up an element of what the brand's about, you might want to shift perceptions a little of what the brand's about.
In the end, it's got to be appropriate for the objective, brand and audience - but creatives don't own tone and manner and the sooner you talk about it and the more work is put into getting it right, the better.
I've only shown TV here because it's easy to get hold of Youtub video, more and more that will be less of what we do...but TV's real long term benefit is building up how people feel about the brand. You need to make sure they feel the right things.
And that, as they say, is that, hope it's useful.
After months and months languishing on Sky + I finally watced Marcel Theroux's 'In Search of Wabi Sabi'.
In case you can't be bothered to watch or follow the links, Wabi Sabi is a japanese theory to aesthetics and transience as the touchstone of beauty. Now I think the basics of that are worth whole series of posts, how flaws and wrongness are much more attractive than elaborate or even pristine, minimalist design. I personally dislike the design directions of Apple, I know it taps into human needs to simplicity etc, but to me it's too hard, too obviously 'designed' too hard.
Aaanywaaay....
That's not really the point. Wabi Sabi is actually a much more complex ideas than that. Even though most of the people Theroux meets in Japan know what Wabi Sabi is, they find it difficult to describe. It has all sorts of roots and expressions. From the tea ceremony to Haiku. From Zen Buddhism to rugged potter - it's so rooted in culture, they're so used to it, you might as well ask what red looks like.
I think there's a number of themes in this:
Sometimes language simply isn't enough, you can only get to some sort of approximation to describe whole load of fuzzy associations, feelings and experiences - you need to find other ways to express it. That's the problem with brand onions etc, that can be the problem with single minded propositions for multi-touchpoint campaigns...and trying to describe why you love someone.
Rituals are terribly important in our lives, they civilise us, they help us get in touch with each other, with ourselves, and can be a constant in an ever transient world - we all need some ballast.
Perfection isn't necessary, and maybe shouldn't be sought after, but being a purist about things is no bad thing in a world (our industry in particular) chase other's approval and fall for fads all the time.
There's a world of difference between admiring something and feeling genuine affection for it. I really admire some films, like Zodiac, but didn't really enjoy it. The same can be said for lots of clever advertising that's very impressive, but doesn't make you FEEL. Baking in warmth and depth to all sorts of stuff is really important.
Complexity is important, but I like the idea of stripping out what isn't necessary. There are about 20 buttons on my DVD remote I never use for example. So many presentations are really boring because some git wants to show off rather than tell me something interesting. And so many pieces of design, music or film just look like they're trying too hard - sometimes trying to be simple.
The japanese are more like the English than I thought -we both have a deep love for tea and gardening.
Scottish parliament becomes concerned about people drinking too much and so a law is passed to force pubs to close at 9pm. The year? 1436
I mentioned I'm reading Richard Wiseman's 59 Seconds. Mostly in the cause of learning about brevity and some psychology quirks to log for a brief one day. However, lots of it seems quite useful.
There's stuff you already know, like performing small acts of kindness can make you really happy - I'm well up on that score with the amount of tea I make but I'm sure I can do better.
One thing I like is getting into the habit of counting your blessings. Taking the time to appreciate the perfectly brilliant things in your life that get taken for granted.
For example, it amazes me how wer'e becoming used to things appearing in our lives that seem almost beyond science fiction and pure magery. My Ipod not only stores most of my over-large CD collection, I can get to any track in two seconds, I can create any playlist for any mood, I can even shoot a quick video and share it with the world in 15 minutes.
I grew up with cassette tapes and vinyl, even 10 years ago, what I can do now would have seemed pure fantasy.
And then there's moving jobs. Every day I have at least an extra two hours, for more swimming, more Will
and anything else I want. Yet I'm already getting used to it and moaning about having no time.
And then there's making the effort to write down thing that went well in your day, every day for a week. Think I might have a go at that.
So here's the first episode.
This morning I got up at just after 6 and went swimming. It was one of those mornings when I really wanted to just sleep in, but managed to haul myself to the pool. Only to find the fast lane dominated by a huge, twenty something powerhouse who looked very, very fast. Being slightly competitive, I hate swimming with people who are much faster than me, and I don't like getting in people's way.
But when I got in, I found that while I wasn't quite keeping up, he wasn't quite pulling ahead much either. It was little victory of age over beauty, but to be honest, it was just nice to know that I'm faster than I think I am.
Not to mention I did 1,500 meters in 20 minutes. That's the fastest yet this year, and, to be honest, the fastest I've gone since I was 20, mostly down to the fact I didn't do 1,500's if I could help it, but also because my body's beginning to do what it's told.
Wonder what will go well tomorrow?
The more you try not to think about a problem, the more it gets lodged in your brain. Here's an experiment. Don't picture Rob Campbell in a Tutu, Don't think about it, don't imagine the matching leggings and pretty ballet shoes. Go on.
That's going to ruin your weekend.
The more you try not to think about chocolate, the more the stuff gets stuck in your mind.
In other words, there's no point pretending something isn't happening, or everything's okay. It just makes it worse, rather than finding a way to deal with it.
That's what certain agencies I could mention don't seem to get. If there's a rumour, an issue or some bad news, there is absolutely no point not being straight and fair with your staff. It will only stress them out and make things worse.
I bought 59 seconds by Richard Wiseman, but Amazon took forever to deliver it, so the lovely Helen had to post it from new work to old work.
She also took the opportunity to share the news that she's in my old desk and making tea properly. So that's good and the desk couldn't have gone to a nicer person (I miss my old department, despite the bullying over drinking coffee).
Anyway, I haven't had a chance to read it, obviously, since it arrived today, but I wanted to see how good he was as compressing useful stuff into digestible, doable chunks, since that's what I'm supposed to do for a living.
There's a good little epilogue at the back, very Behavioural Economicsy. There's a short paragraph that advises you get suspected liars to email you, people are 20% less likely to fib if they have to commit it to paper. I knew open plan offices were daft. I'm going demand my own office and shiny Yale padlock.
Good stuff on QR codes from Mashable
So yes, following on from post 1 about women, hair and stuff.... hair really matters, it impacts on a woman's self esteem, confidence and probably her actual life chances.
Mostly, brands etc play on women's weakness to hope for miracles and give them unnatainable images and lifestyles to buy into. Some get the confidence thing and make a good fist of it. But there is lots more going on.
If you're in the 'great brands have a point of view on culture' camp (hope you are), this is where it gets interesting.
As we've said, a woman's looks have an instant effect on how others percieve her, not just physically, but her talents, personality, the lot. Basically, how a women chooses to look creates her actual identity in other's eyes.
Thanks to the feminist revolution etc, there are all sorts of freedoms for a woman that were not there 40 years ago. That's not just true of women, it's true of life too. Society is porous these days, there's more fluidity, more open boundaries. There's more to do and more to 'be'.
So it follows that the 'self' is more porous too. There is no set 'individual' like there used to be, rather there is a series of 'selves' as the person adapts to and explores the possibilities the modern world offers. People create their own identities and assert the right of self-authorship rather than being told who to be, or even being consistent.
The possibility of altering hair therefore presents opportunity for genuine transformation for a women. Doing more and being more - exploring all the elements of 'self' and what that self can do in the world.
The more freedom to change appearance means more freedom to change how you're percieved and create whatever identity you want.
If she wants to be taken seriously as a professional, she can create a no nonsense bob. The big hair suggests the vamp, the blond has more fun etc. The more possibility for hair, the more possibility for women. But.........
All a woman is really doing is conforming to the stereotype that society sets her. It's good that she can now fulfill some those expectations, but they are other people's expectations none the less.
Let's dwell on this a second and look at it from another angle. How 'free' are women really? She may be doing the same job as a man, but she gets payed less for it. She may be going out to work, but she does the lions share of the housework, she is still the primary carer of the children. In short, she is expected to carry out multiple roles. Freedom seems to entail taking on more and she can't help herself.
While men's primary urges are all about things, winning and 'me', women can't help wanting to for, groups,nurture others, create safe environments for love ones, on top of all those personal desires and needs to do something for herself. She's conflicted.
But that complexity can be made to work for her. She fulfills many roles, she has many sides. So underneath that business suit there might be the vamp wanting to come out, the vamp probably wants to be taken a little seriously. In short, if she wants, she can play society at its own game and play with her own identity - projecting whatever identity she chooses, become whatever version of herself is required.
This is far more interesting and more true about what is going on. Rather than help women conform and do what it expected, there's an opportunity to have a conversation about their multiple roles, help them create themselves anew whenever they fancy, possibly even liberate them from the the expectations placed upon them. In short, hair as a source of endless transformation, the opportunity to play how others see you rather than fit in with what they want.
A a woman is never 100% anything. Never totally professional, never totally carefree, never just a Mum, never just a wife, never completely naughty or nice. There are shades, degrees, many sides to her. Hair and its accompaniments can enable her to reveal which sides she wants when she chooses.
Put another way, in a world that too often holds them back and expects them to accept passiveley what life brings,women who manipulate their identity to create opportunities can almost seem like rebels, resisting the narrow role life tries to place them in and in many ways, beating it at its own game. But............
In the end, that is still acknowledging those stereotypes and reinforcing them. Much of the debates around modern feminism centre on beauty v brains. Is a woman using her looks to get what she wants liberated or merely reinforcing an age old system? Time to move beyond that.
Only when women are really free from stereotypical expectations of their appearance, their nature and their abilities can they really enjoy their looks. And simple enjoyment is really the point, and something that often gets missed in a froth of over thinking.
Look at fashion. The intellectuals can debate how much fashion enslaves women and makes them feel bad, the couture designers and Vogue can lose themselves in a world of self importance if they want. Both don't get it. Clothes and dressing up is fun, it's a deep pleasure, a release from the banality of the world.There is nothing to figure out about shoes...it's just fun, it's dressing up, it makes a woman feel good. It's escapism...
It's the same with make-up and, but hair is the most extreme example.
It's magical, both public and deeply personal, growing out of the body and (hopefully with the right products) moulded to personal desire. Fun, sensuous pleasure, an outlet for creativity. It can be changed in an instant.
I've read all sorts on women and beauty, on clothes etc. One true story cuts through all of that. It's the story of Belsen. If you can't be bothered to open the link, a genius put some lipstick into the supplies for newly liberated concentration camp interns at the end of the Second World War. The food gave them sustenance, but it was the lipstick that gave them their humanity. The lipstick made them a person, not a number in a way that nothing else could. These emaciated women, starving, barely human anymore, still had a driving desire to look pretty. It brought them back to themselves. That shows the basic, primal desire to look pretty. It doesn't require explanation, it's an end in itself. It brings joy.
Just as Christian Dior's 'New Look' liberated women from drab postwar austerity, reminding women to please themselves, so simply transforming hair brings uncomplicated joy. Yes, it's playing with identity, but the key work there is 'play'.
Taking pleasure in playing with appearance lies at the heart of this overlong post.
You'll have seen lots of stuff from brands that does the 'ta dah!' moment.
You'll have seen less of, but much better work about confidence and 'destiny'.
But there has not been enough about identity creation or the independence that brings.
I would want to go further than that, rather than reinforcing stereptypes, I'd like to see more conversations about taking simple pleasure in playing how you look. The positive lift that gives, the pleasure in escapism.
Sex and the City is brilliant. There,I've said it. At it's heart is four independent women who enjoy how they look. That's it. It's not complex, it just captures a certain feminine confidence, independence and the simple joy of dressing up.
This ad captures all that brilliantly. Women getting dressed up because it's fun and it makes them feel nice. It captures pleasing themselves, not pleasing a man or prescribed idea of what they should look like.
For a moment, when a women runs a ghd through her hair, when she steps out of a salon, or even when she's washing her hair for a big night out. She ceases to be a mother, an employee, a wife, girlfriend, daughter or whatever. For a moment she is none of those things. She is herself, but more alive than ever, taking simple, uncomplex pleasure in transforming her looks.
But it doesn't have to be simple. It isn't simple....and comes back to freedom.
The more control women gain over their lives, the more freedom they will have to truly enjoy their hair. Appearance, of which hair is a focal point, can become the simple pleasure it should be when appearance ceases to be such a core part of how a women can control her own destiny.
When women are evaluated on personality and achievements, it doesn't preclude them enjoying their looks, it frees them up to do that on their own terms. That feels like an interesting place to be in. Going beyond confidence and even identity creation to pleasing yourself a little more, doing things that make you happy and give you pleasure, rather than what it expected or what you should.
Freedom to do whatever you bloody well like.
If you're the 'brand out' kind of strategist, all of this is no use of course. It just gives you the context, the fun will be to find something credible for your brand to say about all this, but that's what makes it all fun doesn't it?
That's a bit about I know about women and their hair. Kind of perverse coming from a bald man with no fashion sense eh?
I've been thinking about the Tamagotchi Gesture for something or other to do with work.
I like the thought that 'by adding something that requires care and concentration we are nourished'.
That's so important in a world that's all about now, instant gratification and disposability.
I guess that's the point of making tea in the pot, or cooking properly rather than zapping something in a microwave.
It's also the point of swimming everyday. I can't find a better word that 'realness', 'being present'.
Anyway, funny how stuff that slows you down actually makes you better. That's why i reject computer mind-maps and planning as a linear process.
There's something about the squeak of marker on a letraset, or scratching away on a Moleskin that just works better. Maybe it's arranging post it notes on a board, but an organic, slightly chaotic process requires organic tools. And don't pretend planning isn't chaotic and hit and miss please, you know process is only there to justify fees and create the illusion of predictability....
I'm in the middle of reading Andre Agassi's 'Open'. As you might expect. Apparently he wrote it himself and if so, that's amazing. It's a beautiful, tautly written book. Sport is so much more than the performance, it's a freakish, lonely life. This book captures that.
Anyway, at the heart of the book is a contradiction. He hated tennis but couldn't stop. 'I want this to be over' 'I'm not ready for this to be over'. I think this captures a truth that isn't just about sport, but about anything that's worth doing. It's conflicted and un-simple.
In George Orwell's 1984 we have double think. The idea of holding two contradictory arguments in your head at the same time. I think there's power in conflict and contradiction. There's real power in tension. Not the resolution of tension or conflict, as much of advertising tries to work to, but a fuzzy spot in the middle of both.
In sport, proper sport that requires pain and sacrifice, athletes at once love it and hate it. Pain brings joy, joy in effort etc. You want the pain to stop, but rejoice in forcing yourself to carry on. Every single training session is redemption and escape from your own personal limits. There is no joy without pain. They are two sides of the same coin and need to be allowed to co-exist.
This is true of so much in life. Most people in agencies for example at once hate it and love it. They hate the hours, the constant grind, the stress, the unpredictability. But they also love that stress, it makes them feel alive. It's addictive. And the effort and trial and tribulation make the end result so much sweeter. Even that's bitter sweet, there's nothing at once euphoric and sad as coming to the end of a book and having to start again. Much of agency life is like that, much of LIFE is like that.
Anyone that tells you that a having a baby is simple joy is offering falsehood. It's hard, stressful and restrictive. But there's an intense joy in that effort, doing something for someone else, at the mercy of your own instinctive need to care for your own flesh and blood. And amidst all that is the first smile, the first giggle and the holding him in your arms and just loving him.
Yep, there's power in contradiction, not necessarily in its resolution, sometimes (mostly) in NOt resolving it.
This was an incredibly popular campaignback in the late 1990's. It spawned a number 1 hit single and God knows how many toy Flat Erics.
But what were they trying to do?
Let's roll back to the 1980's and the launch of Levi's Laundrette,followed by some of my favourite ads ever including Creek and Drugstore. They knew what they wanted to do, rather than have a jeans brand about fashion or style, have one with real meaning with their chosen audience.
That chosen audience was young people. Their observation was that people this age are non-conformist, rebellious and reject the establishment - 'The man'. So they wanted to make Levis the ant-establishment brand.
One problem, were very cynical about America in the UK then (and now). Anything to do with contemporary America was likely to fail. BUT - we loved, and love American heritage. That might mean the America of the fifties, the pioneers that conquered the American West and everything in between. Levis were the original jeans, they has been there since the days of the Wild West, they were part of American history. Part of that pioneering spirit.
So that's how they brought the rebellious spirit to life - they told stories of young people challenging authority in America's past, not right now. The Hollywood version rather than the 9 'o' clock news one.
And my God it worked. But the problem with becoming the brand for a generation is that the next one coming behind wants to do the exact opposite of the one before - like Punk rejecting Rock and the New Romantics then rejecting Punk.
Levis had to make their anti-authority DNA relevant to new generation which meant a break with their own recent past. So rather than the sweeping, filmic grandeur with the soundtrack of American music history, they moved to something contemporary. With a new hero product - Sta Prest, that was only intended to be short term, and really make most people feel different about buying the core jeans range.
I guess I'm saying they were still following the strategy of building meaning into the brand, selling the same attitude to the same audience, but they had to modernize how they brought that to life, so a new generation could feel like they were rejecting the one that came before.
And then they reinvented again with Twisted, and yet again with anti-fit. But then they ran into a new challenge, which I reckon I'd like to cover next time.
I'm in the middle of reading Pies and Prejudice by Stuart Maconie. Not only is it fun, he manages to get an incredible amount of detail into everything. Really worth looking at if you want to understand what people are like Up North - and if you're a planner in London, isn't that essential?
This book is pretty essential for anyone involved with communicating to the English. In 'Watching the English', Kate Fox, a 'proper' anthropologist, has looked at all aspects of English behaviour, from food rules to dress rules, from our houses to why we always talk about the weather. Much of planning is understanding why people behave as they do, this book gives you lots of hidden behaviours that will help.
If you've seen the Matrix, and I presume you have, you'll be familiar with the moment Morpheus offers a choice of the red pill or the blue pill to Neo. The blue pill will result in forgetting the whole thing and going back to daily life, but the other offers the truth - no promises of happiness or anything else, just the truth.
As you know, he wakes up to find himself a human battery and the first words he hears are, "Welcome to the real world". The ultimate dose of reality, and yes it may be science fiction, but it's rooted in a deep truth about us humans that either makes disappointment and frustration inevitable, or keeps us sane and happy depending on your point of view.
We have all experienced moments of reality, that feeling of being jolted, like being slapped around the face with a wet fish, when something we strongly believed in, took for granted, or longed for is shredded before our eyes.
It can be all sorts of things, such as realising that somebody doesn't love you, that you will be made redundant, that the career you have built for all those years is not for you. It may be as profound as loved one dying, or realising that your parents are not perfect, it could be realising that you've run up too much debt on you credit card.
Seems to me that ad agencies will get one soon when they finally realise that they can't work the same way they have done. Clients see through the bollocks now, telly alone isn't good enough and the old brand models we're probably wrong and certainly don't work now.
Probably, ivory tower creatives will get a shock when the molly coddling ends.
God knows, we're getting one at the moment with a worldwide recession. Even for the lucky ones who's income and mental health remain OK, you wonder how much self indulgence and 'have it now' culture has been given a rude awakening.
Every now and then, we are given the red pill, irrespective of whether we want it or not.
How does this happen? Why are these things such a shock? They happen all the time, to lots of people and even if they've happened to us before, and why are we are still bemused when they happen again?
I think it's because we con ourselves. This happens in so many ways.
Firstly, we're incedibly good at post rationalization. After the event, we convine ourselves that things didn't happen as they actually did, usually making ourselves come out a lot better than we should. You were not happy with the partner that dumped you anyway and you never were, someone else was to blame for that disaster at work, I wasn't sacked for being useless it was politics, my point at that meeting was clear but no one wanted to listen. So we don't learn from our mistakes and are doomed to repeat them.
Deep down, we know a relationship isn't working, we know when our job isn't going well, we know we'll never be a film star, we know we'll never go home with the prom queen, we know how much money we need to spend. But we're constantly post rationalizing every situation, or skewing our knowledge of the future to fit what we want to believe.
So when we're dumped, demoted, sacked, find we can't pay the bills or amazed we're going home alone, what we should have prepared for as inevitable, we see as bad luck, unfair or punishment from the fates.
You could argue this is a good thing, it protects us from feeling too bad it stops our confidence being shot forever, or you could argue it stops you understanding your reality a little better and living a happier life in the future.
This curious optimism appears in other ways. In western society a, largely wrong, belief that humans exist as individuals enables us to believe that terrible things that happen won't happen to us. We won't ever get divorced, we won't work in a recession, we'll succeed where others have not. All because, despite the experiences of others showing otherwise, we believe we're different, so it won't happen to us. Despite the fact we're 99.9% the same as every other human being in the world.
This optimism means we're not so good at recognising luck. When good things happen, it was down to us, rather than the truth that fortune affects everything. In Outliers, Gladwell shows that even world famous geniuses got lucky. We only seem to believe in bad luck, when something bad happens we take it much harder because it isn't balanced by us recognising good fortune.
We're always going to get a dose of the red pill, but the more we can prepare for it by understanding that things just happen - it's the way of the world, the better.
I don't mean just accepting your fate, I mean be realistic about it. There's plenty of room for optimism, but it needs to be based on a true picture of what we're like and what we can do, forcing ourselves to learn from what happens to us, rather than post rationalizing events. We're all great in our own way, we all have chronic faults. I don't think we would be happier by being less optimistic,I do think we would be better off understanding and appreciating our true selves, making the very best we can of what we have.
I have one suit and that's it. It's a good one, bought for my wedding. It's cut to be quite fitted, it makes me look taller.
Every now and then it gets trotted out for other people's weddings, christenings and the like, but that's it. But I love wearing it, it's nice to dress up every now and then, pretend to be a grown up, feels special in a way wearing suits every day just don't. That's when they become a uniform.
You certainly won't find me wearing it for work; I'm the quintessential planning cliche, that calculated shambolic look. Pretty soon I'll be too old for the ironic t-shirts and trainers but not right now.
But last week, Claire and I had a particularly important meeting. It mattered, the work was great, we'd worked hard. But sometimes being prepared isn't enough, you need an added boost. So we power dressed, we sarcastically smart.
The suit came out, I came as Don Draper. Claire was a beautiful picture of Madison Avenue perfection.
And I wasn't just dressed as Don Draper, I BECAME him. The meeting went swimmingly, I got back to the agency and simmered with untold depths. It felt great to become someone else for a day (even if I didn't have a three Martini lunch or take advantage of any quivering dames).
That's the thing about dressing up and using clothes to play with your outward identity, it doesn't just alter the outside. To have depths, you must have a surface......what you do to that surface affects what happens underneath. It's primal, it's Darwinian - we've evolved to believe that looks are signifier of fitness, we show the world an image of ourselves we want to project and they respond in kind.
That's why superheroes are alter egos of their normal selves. Bruce Wayne only becomes the Dark Knight when he puts on the mask, Peter Parker is struggling, awkward, shy photographer until he puts on the suit. Superman is even more interesting - his natural state is superhero, his costume is actually human clothes - and he BECOMES a feckless, clumsy oaf.
Disguise is incredibly liberating, it enables you to become different people. In fact scratch that, it lets you disover a part of yourself you didn't know was there. That's why it's a little silly to mock anyone with an interest in clothes and their appearance - what is more liberating and interesting than playing with your identity? What could be more fun?
As David Vreeland puts it, "Fashion must be the intoxicating release from the banality of the world".
There is no point watching 22 men kick an inflated ball around a field, sometimes getting it between two sticks. There's no point spending hours reading hundreds of pages of lies. But football and fiction books provide incredible pleasure, they provide an escape from our mundane lives.
Clothes, shoes, hair and the like are just as pleasurable and even more powerful. It's being allowed to dream for a second, to escape the narrow confines of what life has dealt you and explore. To feel alive, to feel more than you are, or even just acknowledge your potential.
And what is wrong with doing something that makes you really happy? Like Belsen.
Anyway, more to the point, who should I pretend to be next (not GI Jane Andy).
This is worth a regular look if you work on anything UK-ish. I mostly think planning's about making new connections between stuff. Mark Easton's blog is full of interesting, but random stuff that might come in handy.
I enjoyed seeing the the Rose Hilton Exhibition at Tate St Ives last week.
The Beauty of Ordinary Things shows a style I like that resides somewhere between abstract and a figurative, but what I really like is the way she brings the things that we everyday back to our full attention, capturing the the brilliance and beauty in everyday life. We gloss over too many perfectly brilliant things that happen to us day in day out - like the sheer joy of a good cup of tea.
That's sort of why I like missing Mrs Northern when either of us is away. Reminds me how I couldn't manage without her. Or watching her affect on other people, how they can't help being affected by her sunny disposition (in sharp contrast to my grumpy one) - I forget how lucky I am to be around her everyday.
I'm devouring Clay Shirky's 'Here Come Everybody' which to gets underneath what's really happening as a result of our new online social tools. He mentions that internet stuff is becoming like mobiles - we're forgetting it's there.
I like the idea of technology only becoming interesting when the technology itself is no longer novel - when it's so ubiquitous everyone uses it without thinking. That's what's happening with online social tools for the young - it's just how they go about things. Maybe ordinary stuff is only truly great when we forget it's there, but that's a shame. That's how those paintings at the start of this surprisingly rambling post - that started off as quicky - made me feel.
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