Here’s the promise I was hoping Apple would better yesterday.
It’s interesting that Steve Jobs spent most of yesterday’s press conference reminding us how secure and established Apple is.
What’s with the chest beating? He doesn’t need to remind us how many time’s we’ve bought new iPods over the last nine years. We know. I’ve personally replaced my iPod four times due to crappy batteries, busted connections and/or random system errors!
Was this preamble pre-emptive damage control for the potential backlash over the launch of Apple’s latest “revolution”, the iPad?
I’ve yet to see a positive post or review of the iPad. Almost everybody is negative or at best “meh” over the whole thing. It’s surprising because the iPad actually is an attractive, fascinating piece of technology. How did this happen?
Apple let the rumour mill get way out of control on this one. Admittedly, it would’ve been hard to meet expectations on the iPad regardless of the product. However, Apple didn’t meet ANY of the expectations that consumers hoped for and have been raving about over the last 12-18 months.
Spoken or not, fiction or reality, most of us geeks held the belief that the iPad would be revolutionary. In actuality, this might be the ultimate case study for a botched product launch and a lesson in radical trust for Steve Jobs. By withholding specs and design details from brand loyalists and influencers, Apple effectively allowed consumers to fill the vacuum with features that now read like science fiction. I was expecting something that would behave like a digital moleskin notebook as illustrated in the Microsoft Courier video. Now I feel like an idiot assuming and advocating for Apple, having believed the iPad would be better than it is.
Not good Apple. Not good.
iPad won’t even let us run email and a web browser at the same time! How could they have missed this most basic of consumer expectations… multitasking!?. How could they launch a product designed for web surfing without compatibility with Flash? These are deal breakers.
Steve. You have let us down by shutting out Apple’s biggest loyalists, influencers and imagineers from its innovation cycle.
I never thought I’d say this… but Apple is falling behind the times. I’m really looking to see what Google HTC, or even HP have in the slate offering.
Pringle is a schickimicki fashion brand from Scotland. They’ve made cardigan sweaters for nearly 200 years and as such, their advertising is categorically predictable. Think Tilda Swinton in an evening gown spouting incoherent poetry as she stumbles through the woods, scales castle walls, swims out to sea … sigh.
The fashion business has taken itself oh, so seriously for so long that when they take a risk, it pops.
Radical trust can reveal itself in interesting ways. That’s how I came to see the animated short below by David Shrigly. Commissioned by Pringle of Scotland and screened on Jan. 18th 2010, the film was made to celebrate Pringle’s return to Milan Fashion Week.
They trusted this guy to retell the Pringle legacy? Have a watch:
I love it.
I love it because:
it is honest, (but a tad exaggerated)
it is a lot of fun (Scottish accent = funny)
it depicts a web interface that the user can toggle between “Gay” or “Straight”
it holds a mirror to the fashion business. Something they need more of.
it trusts the public to see through the jokes and dry humor, and that we will “get it”
Lesson?
Trust the audience to see it as you do. Say it in a way they would.
A few years ago, Duncan Watts — a network-theory pioneer at Yahoo! Research — wanted to test a theory. He ran a series of tests to see if popular music could be made popular again or if the original success was just plain luck. Watts wondered, can you browbeat people into thinking something is popular when it isn’t? (Sounds like some advertising out there.)
Watts partnered with Matthew Salganik to come up with the right experiment to sort this all out. Their concept? To lie.
They tested some popular music with a sample group that was not familiar with the songs and asked them for their ratings. They then inverted those ratings so that the worst was the best and the best was now the worst, and gave the songs, complete with false ratings, to a different group.
The unsuspecting new group was duped into believing the original ratings were accurate and snubbed the fake-low ranking ones. Apparently, flat-out lying works!
Not so fast.
Over time, the previously top-ranked songs crept back up the charts amongst second group and the previously lower-ranked ones dropped. However, despite the fact that the “good” music eventually did rise to the top, people participating in this topsy-turvy experiment ended up consuming less of everything.
Astroturfing (fake grassroots) is the worst crime you can commit in social marketing. Although lying in this space may get you a short-term gain, the long-term forecast is lower sales and probably (hopefully) a damaged reputation.
“Ink” is a high-concept visual thriller that movie buffs might rank alongside Brazil, Dark City, Being John Malkovichand Pan’s Labyrinth. Husband and wife team, writer/director Jamin Winans and producer Kiowa Winans, created the feature-length digital picture on a shoestring budget with no support from Hollywood in terms of production or distribution.
Upon completion of Ink, the Winans couldn’t find a big studio to sign on to a theatrical or home distribution campaign. So they pitched it themselves to independent cinemas and to DVD, Blu-ray and online distributors.
After its release in November 2009, Ink found its way to the file-sharing torrent sites and was subsequently downloaded an astonishing 500, 000+ times. This exposure placed the film on IMDB’s top 20 list and sales increased four-fold.
Kiowa Winans was stunned. It seemed that the sales jump could be correlated to the number of downloads which itself seemed counter-intuitive. She’s participated in a Reddit.com thread to remain transparent about her motives and she also started a blog.
In it she writes:
“Amazing exposure? Heck yes.
No question here that Ink wouldn’t be abuzz across many forums, blogs and film websites this week without the enormous boost to #16 on the IMDb MovieMeter due to the piracy.
Raking in the dough? Yes and no.
Our direct sales have quadrupled and a decent number of donations (still nothing comparable to 500,000 downloads) have poured into our website, which we are very thankful for. Unfortunately there is no way to tell if the direct sales are coming from those who downloaded or those who saw it on Netflix and want to own a copy. Still, if each person who downloaded the film would come and contribute $1, we could pay off this film and have a budget for the next one.
Still to early to tell the effects of this? Absolutely.
Nothing in the film world ultimately happens over night and it will take several months to a year to quantify all of this so it’s entirely too early to take a solid stance either way, but I do think there’s some value in getting the discussion going about piracy which is why I’m spending time on Reddit.com and writing this blog.”
She goes on to suggest that the downloads have proven unequivocally that Ink has an audience, but the US distribution chain wouldn’t dare step up to validate the so-called “pirate” groups as an audience. Winans continues:
“So this is the real issue I’m grappling with. What is piracy all about? I’ve come up with three ideas: 1.) People want stuff for free, and/or 2.) People want instant and easy access, and/or 3.) People will only pay for what they like. Which one of these is true? I encourage anyone who has illegally downloaded a film to step up with your thoughts. The unfortunate truth in the music industry is that, for the most part, people just want things for free. Is this also true with movie downloads? How will it impact both in the long run?”
Whatever comes next for the Winans, I hope they stop chasing the Hollywood rainbow and find a way to embrace this radical decentralization model. Who cares what Hollywood thinks or does? Keep making great movies and should Hollywood come calling, milk the crap out of it. That isn’t radical trust… That’s just what all parties deserve.
If you downloaded Ink and would like to make a donation ($1 suggested by film makers), you can do so here. Otherwise you can find it at:
Although this time has yet to pass, it’s clear that the next five years will see a great shift towards innovative media. Soon, (if not already) the amount of content on the web generated by individuals will vastly outnumber that which is created by organizations, corporations and governments. With this as the new norm, “social media” may actually cease to exist in the popular lexicon and be replaced or absorbed into every day language through new labels for specific behaviours. It’s already happening: “I’ll Facebook you tonight”, “Tweet me when the movie is over” or “Google it”. When these brand names are used as verbs, it’s no longer about technology or being part of a new movement. It’s something you simply do.
The APIs (Application Programing Interface) for leading publishing sites sites will continue to allow content to be remixed and mashed up into other sites and applications. Established publishers like the New York Times, CNN, the CBC and the BBC may decide to produce less content inhouse and explore the notion of remixing outside content for their own offerings.
API mash-ups will be the norm. How could this work for advertisers?
Each program (or campaign) acts like a mini social network spread across multiple platforms (Facebook, Twitter etc). Each platform gives the user a chance to view and interact with the content, thereby generating word-of-mouth within the user’s personal social network. This radical decentralization, remixing and re-telling of a campaign will spawn creative ideas that Cannes won’t even have Lions for. Sure, some of these mash-ups already exist, but I think we can expect this to improve beyond the current Frankenstein model to very sexy component-based campaign systems.
For example: User Generated Content from platforms like foursquare.com will be remixed with photos from Flickr and Google, videos from Youtube, perhaps fan page content from Facebook and consumer reviews from Amazon; combined with GPS and other metadata, all front-ended by an augmented reality engine on your mobile device.
The brand agency by 2015 as I see it:
We will see the 80/20 rule flip to 20/80. In other words, the spend for a campaign will change from an 80% media / 20% creative to 20% media / 80% creative.
We will see a shift away from data-informed insights, replacing opinion-driven decision making. Big ideas will be a collaboration from all stakeholders on the agency, client and consumer sides.
Agencies of tomorrow will be curators for communication of sorts . We’ll move from the agency-client model to an agency-consumer-client model. Agencies will create messages, utilities, applications, conversations and experiences that consumers will find useful enough to remix and share, leading to further credibility and awareness for the client.
The agency will act as the purveyor of brand ideas and as guardians of brand behaviour. Stronger relationships between advertising, digital and public relation agencies will create more flexibility and better response to clients’ needs. When this is done, clients will be more responsive to agency recommendations. Given this new direction, agencies of 2010-2015 will begin to look more like consultants. They will advise brands in customer engagement, build community around products/services, and enable advocates to carry the brand message broadly.
Trust is the biggest variable. By 2015 the best of us left will be the ones who balanced consumer needs and motivations with client needs and motivation.
How?
Big agency’s 2015 deliverables will be insights, innovation and creative.
If that is adopted all else will follow.
The Crystal Ball
Since this is all speculation, allow me to indulge in some ideas from the fringe that may or may not have significant impact in the world over the next five years. There is little doubt that the U.S. elections slated for 2012 will see social media amplified and incorporated in unprecedented ways, but what about social media for other social causes?
In Social Justice
Combine the proliferation of Wi-Fi and 3G networks with very cheap video/picture-enabled tools like mobile phones and Flip Camcorders, would it be possible for NGOs to air-drop tens of thousands of devices throughout unstable regions of the world? Would the West be able to ignore thousands of videos and photos uploaded to YouTube and Flickr? Could visual knowledge prevent a situation like the 1994 genocide in Rwanda or the conflicts and crimes against humanity that continue to this day?
In Medical Research
Will the world’s medical researchers be able to explore beyond their patent-hungry pharma employers and work with charity foundations towards a cure? What if researchers shared their data and research on a wiki or developed their own mass collaboration tool? Could the cure for cancer be found? How about aids? Or heart disease? What if the same model was applied to the development of new energy sources like it was with the hydrogen car in Holland?
In Global Warming
Beyond 2015, we may be looking at a world much different than what we’re used to today. What happens when we reach peak oil? What happens if the planes are grounded and gas hits $40-$50 a gallon? Will innovative and immersive media be the only affordable way to explore the world we currently take for granted?
Questions of radical trust indeed, and a possible future where digital media is not about the latest app for your iPhone or Twitter client, but rather it’s about remaining connected to loved ones across town and around the world.
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, would it be possible for NGOs to air-drop tens of thousands of devices throughout unstable regions of the world? Would the West be able to ignore thousands of videos and photos uploaded to YouTube and Flickr? Could visual knowledge prevent a situation like the 1994 genocide in Rwanda or the conflicts and crimes against humanity that continue to this day?