Convergence Culture
Henry Jenkins‘ book “Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide” covers the emergence of participatory media. BigShinyThing has an interview with him getting “the lowdown on his persuasive arguments about fan culture, collaborative production, and the social networking site backlash.”
In the book, I offer two terms to refer to the aesthetic goals of convergence culture.
First, works seek to be cultural attractors. If consumption is now social and communal, then certain works will attract together people of similar interests so that they can begin to pool knowledge together. To do that, they often must tap existing cultural references in the way that Lost or The Matrix or Harry Potter can be said to do.
Second, works seek to be cultural activators. They give audiences something to do — some activity, some roles and goals, some meaningful form of participation. This can be literally the case in terms of the mechanisms of participation that surround reality television or computer games. Or it can simply be the show embeds lots of secrets and thus opens itself up to a prolonged process of decryption, as seems to be the case of Lost. There are plenty of shows that achieve the first, far fewer which achieve the second.
Once you’ve designed a cultural attractor and activator, the next step out would be to provide raw materials which fans then want to recombine in new ways and thus generate new forms of cultural expression. And the final step in this process may be to find ways to monitor and amplify the creative energies of these fan communities to sustain popular interest in your program.
To achieve the first two, you need the skills and creativity of professional creators. To achieve the second two, you have to create a context where grassroots creativity is respected rather than shut down.
Lost would seem to be a show which does very well by the first two criteria: a decade ago, Lost would be a cult show like Twin Peaks was in its time. Now, it is one of the highest rated shows on American television despite the fact that, as Steven Johnson has pointed out, it is also one of the most intellectually demanding shows on American television (or more precisely because it is so demanding.) It is designed in a way to generate constant secrets which we want to uncover and thus providing fuel for the participation of large scale knowledge communities. The map which was flashed across the screen for a split second in a single episode is, as Jason Mittell has noted, emblematic of that new relationship with the consumer.
I’ve written about the complexity of Lost in a previous post. It does appear that the web is an integral aspect of the show’s success. Why? The web is used as a platform for discourse among fans as well as an additional channel for the Lost’s creators to further their story.
Related:
An abstract of a panel discussion covering Steven Johnson’s book “Is Popular Culture Good for You?”
Starbucks vs McDonalds
Nothing beats a succinct information graphic to tell a story. Take for instance the one above. Relatively easy to decipher at a glance. Here’s a text description in case you need it:
This pair of maps show the global presence of Starbucks coffee shops and McDonald’s restaurants. When examined graphically, both companies act as global hubs that connect some of the world’s poorest, most remote countries with some of the wealthiest.
Here’s another info graphic for “The Global Tobacco Trade”.
Psyop
I first met Psyop while I was at Fallon in NYC and they were just getting started in 2001. They came to Fallon to present their work with a big box of fresh Crispy Creme glazed’s and some action figures (one which I still have) vacuum sealed in clear plastic . I believe they were just getting started and making themselves known to the ad agencies.
In the five years since, they’ve come a long way and have still retained a signature style. There latest work for Coca-Cola is incredibly detailed and full of fun. Here’s an interview from Motionongrapher that let’s us see how it all came about.
The Promised Land?
Tony Davidson from W+K London has written a piece in the D&AD Student Annual that is a harbinger of a larger issue within advertising agencies. The issue being: how to deal with people’s consumption of media that is primarily digital in nature when a lot of people in the advertising structure just don’t understand digital. For the advertising industry the debate now is similar to the late 1990′s. Should they buy the execution of ideas or should they try to embed “digital” people in the existing organization. In the end it’s not just about having the creative people in an agency understand how technology is changing habits. This is about having the entire agency understand these changes. Everyone from the CFO to the HR person. Without this an agency will be hard-pressed to succeed.
I also have to think about this when thinking about advertising agencies as idea companies. The model of an advertising agency is evolving and those that fail faster to find the model that works will succeed sooner.
On a related note Advertising Age has an article on the rising costs of digital talent. Fuel for the fire.
14 Days of Fatherhood
I am thoroughly enjoying being a new father. From the distinct baby scent to the noises he makes when sleeping it is all something entirely new to me. Definitely the most fulfilling role I’ve ever had in my life.
Global Warming
If the temperatures start to rise at least we can all bake cookies in our car. MSNBC reports that this New Hampshire woman bakes cookies on the dash of her SUV when the temperature reaches above 95 degrees. Ingenious. [via]
Ford’s Bold Moves
Ford is running a campaign called Bold Moves. Promising to “rip-out the B.S.” it seems Ford is on the Cluetrain tip and going about being ‘brutally honest’ in a move to revive itself. Ads are also being placed on a large amount of popular blogs. BlogAds Copeland believes it’s the “In my view, it’s the most exciting ad to cross Blogads’ servers in our four years of business.” Ford is setting itself apart from the crowd in a big way and here’s to hoping that it works out for them. JWT designed the campaign.
10 Question for Seth Goldin
Guy Kawasaki asks ten questions. Question number two is: What is an example of company that created a brand by conducting a dialogue with customers?
I think that while markets are conversations, marketing is a story. Starbucks creates conversations among customers, so does Apple. The NYSE makes a fortune permitting people to interact with each other. But great marketing is storytelling.
Exactly! We are storytellers and only the most relevant stories will be heard.
Open Intelligence
Piers from iF! interviews Russell Davies and his new partners in their new venture Open Intelligence Agency. On who they want to work with:
Individuals working within organizations that see an opportunity, but for whatever reason, haven’t been successful at persuading management to try a something new. This is one place we can help. Also, people who recognize creativity as the difference between a hugely successful strategy and an incrementally better one.
There’s no point working with brands who are doing well already – we want to work with brands with real problems.
August Links
Shots from film
Competitive analysis
A “how-to” of sorts
Flickr Map
An easy way to “geo code” images on Flickr.
Chumby
This looks like it could be fun for some prototyping.
Gucci has a brand spanking new site. Notice how the Flash-like transitions load quick? Flash-like because its all done in DHTML. This is just the hook to a great story. The real story being: the site was done by the three person agency wollzelle. [via]
A Gallery of Virtual “Firsts” from Second Life
Adding even more credibility has been the ability for Linden Labs to continually partner and create new “firsts” for their virtual world.
Culture Spy
Here at Culture Spy we keep an eye on companies that claim to know all about teenagers. [via]
denCity
A mix of QR-codes, architecture and mobiles phones get you virtual networks of real places.
workFRIENDLY
A Microsoft Word cover for browsing websites in stealth.
Ikea closets
Entertaining site for the Ikea line of closets.
ThisNext
ThisNext is a shopcasting network where you can discover, recommend and share things you love. Everything on ThisNext was recommended by real people. [via]
Game Makers Roundtable
Will Wright and others.
P&G’s Tremor
Cracking the code on word-of-mouth
FITC videos from 2006
Goodness with the likes of Chuck Anderson and Geoff McFetridge, Jens Karlsson and Mike Kellogg, Colin Moock and Mike Downey, Joshua Davis and Stefan Sagmesiter.
Web 2.0 Traffic List
…most of these companies are, as the wikipedia says, sites that “let people collaborate and share information online in a new way.”
Indexed
Using index cards and drawn diagrams to explain things. Cute!
Go to and learn
Tutorials for Flash and other front-end goodness.
WikiMapia
WikiMapia is a project to describe the whole planet Earth. Great info if your going to travel to an unknown land.
Agencies are adapting their services
A study by the Winterberry Group based on interviews with 70 senior agency executives [via]
Stomp
Simple but sweet animations.
PodTube
Downloads and transcodes YouTube videos for your iPod
Stijl
Ringtone movies out of Japan.[via]
W+K Portland Blog
Just waiting for the Japan office to blog and it will be complete. *Sigh* what might have been…
Show Me Where: Easily Create and Share Google Maps
A point-and-click interface to creating customized Google Maps [via]
Tiny Eyes
In the first few months of life your child sees the world very differently to you. For the first time ever, using the Tiny Eyes engine, you can see the world through their eyes!
JWT ahead of Leo Burnett
In Alexa’s ranking of agencies, JWT moves up a spot ahead of Leo Burnett.
Specialized
Cute movie promoting the Stumpjumper. [via]
Web 2.0 outside USA
Business week reviews Web 2.0 projects outside the USA.
AOL releases search data.
AOL has released search data to the public. This includes over 20 million search queries from 658,000 of AOL’s users. Apparently 658,000 AOL users are estimated to be around 1.5% of the total Google search population. This data is from March 1 2006 – June 1 2006.
Time Fountain
Beyond geeky, but kinda cool none-the-less.
The Google Maps flight simulator
This is quite fun!
Paul and Joe
Parisian designers doing some clothes for Target
The Brand Underground
A keen awareness of and cynicism toward this core fact of commercial persuasion — and the absurd lengths that corporations will go to in the effort to infuse their goods with, say, rebelliousness or youthful cool — is precisely the thing that is supposed to define the modern consumer. We all know that corporate branding is fundamentally a hustle. [via]
Lee Clow
The hipster-grandaddy of great creative in advertising.
Sony Bravia
The new ads look very promising! view 1 2