liquid communication

APG is only a week away so Gareth Kay and I have spent a fair chunk of the last month or so working on our session (you can see a bit of a preview here ). There are a few good seminars going on that week - Zeus Jones , Mark Earls , Domenico Vitale - and hopefully the quality of the people will match (or exceed) that of the formal bits.

In thinking about what we've been doing, it has been striking how immobile our business has become. Everything around us become, for lack of a better word, liquid. Because many institutions, people, companies etc. no longer have time to set before the next change takes place, they keep a form which makes them flexible and flowing. The same cannot be said for a lot of communication.

So what if we thought of our objective as making communication more liquid - flowing through media and around people rather than at them? It is about integrating yourself into someone else's space and not standing in front of them blocking your view. In a way it is a very ambient concept and involves the creation of intrigue, spectacle or useful tools (or at least things you want to interact with) and not information. We see this in the best cases of branding but not in the mindset of most of the people who craft ad pay for it (the later being the most important groups since they really hold the purse strings).

gaming crisis

Recently the president of EA games had a fairly radical admission: " we are boring".

The context of this comment is the fear that gaming is in danger of losing the war for attention to non-console gaming sites and social networks. GigaOm has a very good expose on all the failures of the gaming industry in that regard, but it seems to come down to one core thing: an industry staffed and run by gamers.

When the audience was just hard core gamers, this wasn't an issue. But when growth (and therefore casual gamers) are key, it's a problem, a homogeneity that is dangerous.

Diversity in thinking is key to introduce in a strategic situation. Bringing in non-planners (not trained at VCO or MAA), getting a different kind of creative (e.g. a designer) to be a creative director...all of these things helpk keep us off kilter enough to adapt to new environments.

This is easier said than done - it demands that firms accept a certain amount fo chaos and requestionning. But better you ask the questions than someone else.

the evolution of fat

This is a wonderful little map showing the spread of obesity across the US. Scary, yet beautiful data (and so much better than numbers)

now what?

In browsing through my RSS feeds it seems lots of people are suffering from social media fatigue.With linking and sharing extending to every possible venue and in every possible context, the key question seems to be: "so what do I do with this now?" (other than add more widgets).

IN some cases, that may not be a fair question. We (as in planners/bloggers) may be a little over obsessed with doing things and with active media networks. But the point of something like Facebook or Linked in is that it is a formalized resource -it is there when you need it rather than represent something you constantly work on (like a blog). Otherwise, what distinguishes it from a blog network?

Even if you take a slightly less passive view, a social network could be seen as acting a like a multi-media Google custom "push". It pushes the news, photos, videos and other found objects of those you know/admire down to you. In a sense, it is like a less conscious or involved email newsletter to your friends.

This passive view of networks does not change their value to an individual or marketer. It does however, mean that I expect some kind of power law to account for the activity on these sites (in the same way that it does already for blog posts).

Likemind

Blogging has, all to evidently, been secondary in my life right now for a number of reasons. I'm writing the APG stuff, dealing with three big work assignments, doing some thinking with the folks from Dial House and having knee surgery. Actually, I think the hiatus is doing me good because it's getting me to do different kinds of writing.

Likemind is eternal though. This Friday, 8 am at Cafe de la Presse.

If you make it down, you get to pick an evening for an evening Likemind (because even Bloody Mary's aren't great at 8am).

Voyeur

HBO is in the middle of an interesting project - HBO Voyeur , which is a great piece of transmedia storytelling.

The project is a collection of multi-media stories that HBO has built around the theme of voyeurism. There is a silent film projected onto the side of a NY building, a blog , pictures and a series of online clues.

Two things that are interesting (on the surface. Firstly, HBO as (wisely) chosen to have no subterfuge around the project: despite the fact that there are clues with real working phone numbers that add to the story, they are not trying to do what the Beta-7 project did and make it uncorporate. Secondly, BBDO is all over this -in fact Dave Lubars and Greg Hahn were in the HBO promo (kudos to them all)). How nice that an agency can get so involved and be given some credit!