Up A Down B Left C Right A Start

I have spent the day beautifying the office in preparation for next week's big brainstorm on gaming:


Lots of people...

don't know...

what the hell...

is going on (spot the reference)

But it will all become clear on Tuesday:


Play again? (y/n)

Trail of Breadcrumbs 2: Trust!

Is it the subject matter? Is it the execution? Either way, this thing grabbed me.

Global Gathering have found an interesting way to reveal their lineup this year. Why should this even be an issue?

The truth lies in what it means to host an event. There is nothing, absolutely nothing to draw anyone to a music event, other than who is going to be there and the inpalpable nature of the crowd. The second one is your emotional draw, and is a branding job. The lineup, though. That's your meat. How to take the lid off the silver platter?

Most events have a fairly standard procedure for doing so - reveal most of the 'good' acts before sale date, and allow speculation and fever to build up around the identity of the headliners (promoters' note: this may very well be because the headliner hasn't confirmed, but that's another story). So it's a system of withheld information. But if this is only an strategy of patience, well, how is that interesting?

So GG wove the possibilities of interaction into it. Basically you drive the car, and every checkpoint reveals the identity of another headliner. That also gives you a little extra time, as does picking up fuel. Avoid cars and potholes.



The game is eminently playable. It has 4 buttons and 3 elements - not far from 'AVOID MISSING BALL FOR HIGH SCORE' (thanks Pong). You only go forward. The artists are not revealed in order of 'importance' so there's always motivation to keep trying - and yeah, I left unsatisfied with plenty left to uncover. I did discover the identity of a certain out-of-retirement duo that will guarantee I go, though.

It's simple, playable, and shareable. And there's a hell of a lot of bravery involved here. When was the last time you trusted consumers to use their skill to 'get' a piece of comms, let alone their intelligence>

Good job, Global Gathering!

P.S. I got 30th. Though that's certainly gone down by the time of post...

Let's try this Slideshare thing

...with the presentation I did this morning. Went down okay.

Why Research?

View more presentations from Vituperative. (tags: advertising marketing)

I expect I'm preaching to the converted, but I'm still minded of a comment I received on Scamp:
"Researcher? There's no bigger waste of money. I'd cut that straight away"

I've got news for you, mister - 57% of people Somewhat Disagree or Totally Disagree with you. So there.

got insight?

The APG Training Network kicked off last night, and what a night it was. The next generation of planning (us) seem pretty awesome, extremely friendly, and tenacious as Carol Thatcher in a jam factory (okay, that was rubbish and stale but what're you gonna do).

We had a talk from Jon Steel, superhero of planning and writer of Truth, Lies and Advertising, a bit of a bible on the old discipline. Oh, and he did got milk?, obviously. Like Moses descending from Mount Plan, he offered us idol-worshipping heathens ten insights into planning. A few that stuck out:

-Planning is logic and intuition in perfect harmony.
-Planning is born of anger. (grr!)
-Planning is a story.
-Planning is listening.
-Planning is about creating a sense of possibility.

Food for thought, there. And the structure of the presentation itself was something to think about. The ten-point list is a good way of making people listen as they know exactly how far through the presentation they are and aren't likely to get disheartened. They also provide something to make your notes around, and starting each section with the simple idea makes people want to hear more. All this was greatly aided by an inexhaustible supply of joyful anecdotes, that it would be a dream come true to match.

So cheers Jon.



Afterwards, Ben, Planning Partner at CHI introduced us to the group coursework - and it's a meaty one, got everyone's pulses racing - then plugged his very entertaining website. Cheeky monkey.

You I Know I Love You Really, Dude

The master of causing controversy, as usual :)

Make us a good advert, please

Found this in a bin in Soho.

The times, they are a-changin(g)

Anybody could have told you that - but what gets less emphasis is considering just how much things have changed. Today's task for me is delving into the planning archive folders, scanning for anything we might profitably use. And what a joyous task it is, if I'm quite honest.

Remember when these guys useed to bury time capsules, around the time the Millenium made us all suddenly feel like super-important cogs in the great windup toy of history? Just take a calendar, a copy of the Times, a copy of J17, a tamagotchi, a Polly Pocket, and a Mars bar (without adequate refrigeration), stick them into a shoebox, and BAM! History, baby. But a very contrived form of history, which anyone with a good GCSE history knows is very bad.

Which is why this planning archive project is a beautiful thing - it's written with (presumably) no desire to leave a great legacy here in utopian, food-in-pills 2008. It's hard to tell what the true gems are, though. There are many inspiring missives on branding and positioning that ring true today, and smack of someone shaping the zeitgeist back then. Yay us.

Then there are those beautifully naive bits. The ones that really did, despite acting in the best way possible, miss the point. My favourite is the authoritatively-titled internet facts.doc, a 1999 research piece:

-it's unknown how many business are 'on the internet' but 88 of the FTSE 100 are ooh nice one guys you can probably throw the telegram generator away now

-the exciting prediction of 1999 is 7.5 thats right seven point five MILLION homes with the internet in 2003. Can you imagine such a golden future? Actually yes you can, because the figure turned out to be 12.3m.

-includes the prophecy "Freeserve is not the end of the story. Expect high-speed access through cable modems". Oh yeah? That'll be nice.

(...all of which appear in even starker contract to good ol' 2008 - if you've haven't seen the brilliant Did You Know? 3.0 before, give it 5 minutes of your time)

Obviously I'm being over critical of the sake of the lulz, but isn't it interesting to see where we get it right, and where we don't? An underestimation is quite a departure from the cultural melee of the 70s, where Space 1999, which categorically reassured us that we would be living on the GODDAMN MOON at the turn of the century. Or consider The Jetsons - everyone lives in the sky and has a flying car. Oh, and wizzy food machines which cooked for you, but it was still only ever the wife's duty to operate:

Look closer - despite all that wizardry, she's operating it with a punch card. A bit of thick paper, with holes in. In other scenes, you'll notice that the computers 'still' have vacuum tubes. Both of these anomalies existing for a simple fact: that the production of the Jetsons predates the concept of the microprocessor. Quite simply, it was obviously impossible to run a computer without vacuum tubes and punch cards.

The same thing's happening in these archives. My hunch is that our researchers' underestimated figure was based on, say, the adoption of the TV or phone. And yet the internet had these preexisting media, which helped spread it beyond our expectations.

What's the lesson? That whatever our optimism or imagination, it seems inevitable that the lens of our present reality will make us view the future with certain assumptions.

It seems as if the only thing we're really learning is how much we don't know.

The Golden Gnome

Gotta give a mention to my old work experience, HS&P, who've really pushed some envelopes with their Christmas e-card, the website devoted to their mascot. Creepy little chap, I've often thought!

The site is jammed with articles on how to embrace (or just survive) the season, each one written by different employees. I was there when the project began; it was cool to see everyone get into the spirit of the task. And the videos are hilarious. Like, deliberately hilarious.

Go there!