ARG promotions and the dark knight.

I caught a midnight showing of The Dark Knight, and was far more than impressed.

However, I don’t do movie reviews here.  So instead I’d like to ramble about something I’ve noticed in myself repeatedly – ARG (alternate reality game) regret.

A short list of creative products I’ve enjoyed, but not participated in the ARG for, include NIN’s Year Zero, Cloverfield, and now The Dark Knight.  Inevitably, the film or album ends, I become enamoured with it, and then I research the ARG, and the world-extension content that was a part of it.

Now, the design of these campaigns is for this to happen in the opposite order.  We’re supposed to build anticipation through the ARG, and therefore share that anticipation and interest with our friends.  But here’s the core problem with that:

I don’t have the time.

I’m not assuming I’m busier than anyone else, or my work is more urgent or important.  I waste a lot of my time on less than intellectual pursuits.  But I can’t imagine how I’d be able to schedule my work and social commitments around random automated phone calls from fictional characters, or scavenger hunts.

But my lack of participation doesn’t matter, because I can read about it online, and think to myself ‘oh, isn’t that cunning.’

I guess my point is, the advertising value of an ARG is likely split along an 80/20 rule: 80% of interest generated by an ARG is in non-participants, through coverage of the campaign or by catching up after the fact online, and 20% is active participants who move the game forward, and aspiring active participants who follow, but don’t actually get to participate for whatever reason.

This is another case of the product being less important that the wider influence the product has on behaviour.  The Dark Knight ARG gets people thinking about the wider world of Batman, even if they aren’t interacting with it.  That’s what matters.

Read more about the Dark Knight ARG here.

thoughts on viral vs brand extension.

I've in the middle of an extended thought-experiment in relation to building a brand in performing arts, in this case music.  It brought to mind an important division in building engagement and a following, that between what is marketing, and what is brand extension.

The example that first comes to mind is the one most often used here - that of the ARG for NIN's Year Zero.  It was marketing in the sense that it attracted attention, created buzz, and built anticipation.  But foremost, what made it special is it had no relation to sales in terms of content.  The Year Zero ARG was a world-expanding exercise - to the extent where understanding of the record was lessened without an understanding of the backstory.

This is what I'm interested in.  Building a backstory, a world, a datashadow, whatever you want to call it, around a creative product.  Not because it build interest, but because it builds context.  Context naturally creates points of association.  That builds discussion, without it being destroyed by too much meddling.

You aren't creating a brand, or a product, anymore.  You're creating a world, and experience, and you need to understand that products will be dragged into this space whether or not you plan on it.  You are sharing your idea with the world.  It would be nice if we were all kind enough to share instructions to go with the idea, a mindset that people can explore to give them the best view of what you are striving for with your creative product.

So, I guess I'm inherently against the idea of intentionally trying to 'go viral' with an ad, despite the vast number of excellent examples that have worked well for brands.  I'm not interested in short term asides that attract the partial attention that online advertising is settling for.  I realize it isn't plausible in every industry, but I want brand building to be inextricably tied to world building.

If what you create, whether it be art, object or solution, can't be explored on a deeper level than what it is, surrounded by intriguing content that doesn't add anything, I have trouble thinking of how you can build a community around it.

And if you can't build a community, I have trouble thinking of a situation in which you are at all secure.

compartmentalization as failure.

Until recently, I was a strong advocate of compartmentalization in most communication. Having a separate team work on each of many fronts does, in principle, result in a finished product that has been reviewed by several teams, each one with specific expertise in the area they are responsible for.

I think the new media landscape, especially for corporate communications / PR / advertising / marketing, makes compartmentalization a dangerous, and arguably foolish option.

I’m hereby advocating a completely integrated communication system, one team, involving experience in internal communications, marketing, advertising, and public relations. I think, in the very near future, the amount of crossover necessary to do any of these things well, will make each role complementary, at the least.

Compartmentalization only makes sense if there are multiple, separate aspects to an operation. Communication no longer works that way, thanks in a large part to the massive internet community that is watching for anything suspicious or sinister. Even with the best oversight, multiple companies means multiple messages. Even assuming you manage to create a brief so comprehensive that the actual content is consistent, you will still get McLuhaned.

McLuhaned – When consistent ideas and messaging come across as not-at-all consistent, do to a difference in medium. (A corollary of ‘The Medium is the Message’)

The previous assumption is based on my observation that PR, Marketing, and Advertising each have a different vernacular, with different conventions. They are each functionally a medium, independent of which media they are disseminated through.

Beyond this, internal and external communication need to be in sync. The new reality is that regardless of how many NDA’s you force on your workers, things WILL get leaked, emails WILL get addressed to the wrong people, and the internal and the external WILL get compared. If they don’t line up, you lose trust on every front. Obviously, that’s unacceptable.

I’m hereby claiming this as Crowley’s first rule of modern communication – All that when compared, portrays an entity in a negative light, will eventually be compared. The way the internet works is to guarantee that someone is always watching. Be ready to work with that.

I guess the core point is that transparency is mandatory. And even a transparent company will eventually look as though it’s hiding something if communication is compartmentalized, as (mentioned before) compartmentalization breeds inconsistencies.

Speaking of transparency, I suppose I should finish what I started with ‘Crowley’s first rule’.

I’m Jon Crowley. Nice to meet you.

how to stick it to apple.

So. This is how Microsoft could take over the digital music market, and create a whole new revenue stream in the process:

Before any of this starts, I love Apple to the point where it makes my significant other jealous from time to time. Steve Jobs is one of my heroes, slightly outranked by Fake Steve Jobs. I've bought three iPods, and am planning on a fourth already. My Macbook is necessary in the same way food and oxygen are.

But the approach they've taken to music is hilariously dependent on the labels they are fighting with over control. Luckily, I think Apple considers iTunes a means to the end of selling iPods the world over. This is, mainly, what it does in a manner that is above reproach.

Microsoft has several major advantages that have gone unused, or underused. 1) They are selling a player that has the ability to trade music built in to every unit. 2) Every major music label is looking for a credible place to turn that isn't Apple, and that is more willing to negotiate terms. 3) Microsoft is sitting on a massive user-base who trusts (or at least tolerates) their products. 4) Microsoft is Microsoft.

The music sharing functions on the Zune are crippled by DRM. This is inarguable, and definitely had to be thrust upon the company by the music industry partners they needed to launch the accompanying music service. Still, this is the game changing tool that is needed. Music is social. Music is supposed to be shared, and learned about through social connection, and that requires sharing. There was a time when that meant inviting someone over and playing it for them, but now it involves copies.

This is the main issue that isn't discussed. Music is not what it was. This is no longer a market defined by selling slabs of plastic. It's about offering context and convenience, because the competition is the now normalized act of online piracy. This is the basis of subscription models, which, if memory serves, is what Gates and Co are trying to push.

The first thing Microsoft would have to do is unlock the sharing function. Make it so that any song traded from Zune to Zune is traded permanently. This, obviously, will be a hard sell to anyone in the music industry. So, there's a simple solution. Make one of the requirements of the sharing function is that anyone who is not signed up with the Zune marketplace, or social, or whatever it's called this week, gets files wrapped in timed-delete DRM. Everyone subscribed, go nuts. Free and easy trading to anyone with a subscription, because in a sub-based service, they're getting the music anyways.

However, this is all useless unless you get people to try the damn thing, first. Which is why you need to bundle a year's subscription to every new Zune unit.

Unfettered sharing is a useful thing. So, it has the potential to become addictive. Let it do so. This will require concessions to the labels (as everything does) so offer them, at first, a percentage of the price of each new Zune. That might not be enough, but there are still two things up your sleeve at this point.

Firstly, you're Microsoft. The biggest, strongest, most willing to take a loss in the short term, most likely to break into a market already won and take over company in memory. Honestly, the major battle-cry here should be 'Apple dominates the market, and has defined the category? Well, we've never won in THAT situation before...' Play hardball. Make concessions, but make it clear that this is a no-holds-barred fight for control of the market, and not siding with you is like deciding in advance not to succeed. Artists with clout are already leaving labels and creating their own distribution channels. If a major one takes off, and a label has locked itself out of it for no good reason, well, you end up in the situation the music labels are now, with execs approaching senility wondering if that Fanning boy can still get them a dominant position in the market, like he was talking about back in the day.

Be Microsoft. Make it work, because crossing you is generally idiotic.

Secondly, and most importantly, offer them a whole new revenue stream.

In allowing open sharing between any Zune subscriber, which, at first, means any Zune user, you gain access to data. In something as simple as getting users to give you an email address, and A/S/L info, you gain access to a horrendous amount of information. Not only do you get demographic breakdown of who likes what music, and how it spreads among ages and locations, but you get something truly unprecedented. By tracking sharing, you get an epidemiology of music, information on who the influencers are, who shares music, who is the first in an area or social circle to discover it, and how many people they send it to. You get real time information on the popularity of an artist - not through plays, which though useful are misleading, but through exposure, who is downloading, who is sharing, and who is re-sharing.

This information alone is worth losing money for a few years for. Not just to target advertising, but from a logistics perspective. Imagine the ability to plan a tour to maximize attendance, and therefore profit, at every stop - every single show in a place where the artist is at the peak of popularity. Imagine creating a market for selling this information to touring bands, imagine offering it to managers, to labels, etc, for either money or cooperation. This works for indie acts, as well. They more than anyone need a good turnout at shows, just to make money - price it on a sliding scale, and this information suddenly gets indie acts working with majors on a regular basis, for survival.

Imagine targeting advertising for an artist, or similar artists, to areas where they are right near a breaking point. Imagine trackable word of mouth.

This is ignoring completely random ideas, such as taking the influencers identified for this information, and slipping them preview tracks for new albums or artists. If they like, it, it gets distributed and re-distributed. Completely organic buzz and anticipation, kicked off from a concrete, calculated standpoint.

I've worked out further uses, and further details to make the plan work smoothly, but it's a moot point, as I don't run the Zune division of Microsoft. Other companies could technically do the same thing, but they either lack the software influence, the compatible hardware, or the influence to do it in a game-changing way. This is a method of offering something superior in user experience to a generation used to free music with minor hassle. They need something to play it on. And if Microsoft has taught us anything from the Xbox, it's that taking a loss in the short term, or even the shorter long term, is worth having serious sway in the market.

This is one way to do it.

radiohead gets it.

I should be sleeping. I have to wake up in a little over 6 hours. But, there are things afoot. Things that cause bliss.

Thom Yorke and Company UNDERSTAND.

I've been rambling for a little less than a year about the separation between object and content. In relation to the music business, the point is simple: somewhere along the way, everyone forgot that the business was based on selling music, and assumed it was based on selling plastic discs. This more or less made sense when the plastic disc was the only method of moving music. Insert one massive digital revolution, and voila, an industry that thinks selling music means selling slabs of plastic begins to fail horribly.

The two best ways to deal with the separation between object and content in the music business are fairly simple: 1) recognise that to be worth money, you better have a slab of plastic that offers value beyond just the music, and 2) acknowledge that the music is really just a promotional tool for selling other, related products (slabs of plastic, tshirts, concert tickets, dvds, ringtones, etc.)

So what does radiohead to, when not tied to any old-distribution label paradigm?

They offer the album for sale, on the web, in a glorious package. 2 discs, vinyl, attractive packaging that realises the product IS A SLAB OF PLASTIC, and makes it the sexiest plastic they can. At the same time, they make digital downloads available for free to anyone who buys the meatspace version of the record.

The real brilliant move? The digital download by itself is available for a price of you-call-it. By you call it, I mean radiohead lets you add the album to your outbox from the exclusive retailer, and you get to decide how much it costs.

Not only is this invaluable research for a band in control of it's own pricing and sales, it provides a reasonable, DRM free option for sane consumers. As someone who actually downloads albums they already own, just for simplicity, this speaks volumes. Radiohead UNDERSTANDS, better than any other album release has ever indicated, that music cannot be sold as though it is still contained in plastic slabs.

This is the one record no one can justifiably download illegally. They are meeting you so far past half-way that you can't really bitch. At the very least, give the the data. Let them know you want it free, or for a cent, or what have you.

Several months ago, I was ecstatic when the iTunes music store began selling DRM free (sorta) downloads. That was premature, and I apologise. Assuming this isn't a hoax, radiohead have just (again) knocked the music industry on it's ass. It's so rare to see innovation even musically, but this group of consistent innovators are trying something legitimately new, and inarguably well-informed.

Shall we make it worth their while?

[this is ignoring the fact the album comes out in 10 days, and they have created nearly unlimited press just by setting a tight deadline, and doing something logical, but unheard of.]

what love?

Of all the things to bring me out of a blogging slump, Microsoft for the win. Who expected that? Anyways this 'Bring the love back' video and probable campaign is a very interesting beast.

First things first. Well done, kinda funny, but hardly a new message. Reading the project blog that I linked, the idea of conversation as the 'new' thing in the world of reaching customers online is floated at the end of april. This is not remotely a new idea. I can't even being to come up with the correct person to connect the idea to, but the internet as medium for conversation, and conversation as a medium for reaching consumers, is spoken about ad nauseum online. Not that it isn't completely true, but still.

The interesting part, however, is what is presented. It felt, to an extent, like an anti-advertising screed. The consumer complains about being ignored, is shown to be considered as only a section of a demographic, and desires something more than a discounted price or other form of 'bribery' for loyalty. Up until this point, it felt something like reading Adbusters. Advertising is the soulless pretty boy who doesn't care about the consumer at all, and the consumer has had enough. Except this isn't about rejecting marketing in all of it's forms, and arguing against urban spam. This is entirely about what messages are being shown to you via the channels you choose. This is about the tailoring of the message to the consumer.

I find this so amusing, because in essence, it's an anti-advertising clip, by Microsoft, and it might as well be a big ball of praise for Google.

The blog for this clip makes a comment about wanting to offer the "unique assets [...] to help advertisers to reconnect with today’s consumer (look at in-game advertising, personal expressions in messenger, Xbox, etc)" but these are doors already opened. I like the idea (and constant repetition) of the importance of creating a conversation as a means of reaching people, but at the same time, I feel this one is started under false pretenses, essentially an argument that consumer don't want discounts, and the 'same old' advertising practices, but instead deeply desire losing every last refuge from advertising, including in-game worlds, personal messages and emails, etc. For some reason, I doubt that being out of touch with your consumer base is something that is changed by the medium you choose to reach them. The first thing that pops to mind while looking into this 'Bring the love back' idea is that the conversation would be just as unsatisfying for the consumer whether it had been face to face, on Live Messenger, in email, written in a letter, through a tv screen, on a blog, or via messenger pigeon.

It doesn't matter how closely you stalk someone's interests in the attempt to find a new arena to throw your message at them. What matters is actually creating messages carefully tailored to the current interests and habits of the individuals in question. The 'Bring back the love' clip alludes to that. Google does it every time I check my email.

on boundaries of content.

It's become fairly accepted of late that advertising has started to require the creation of compelling content, rather than just an image of a compelling product with some vaguely interesting copy. The public-as-consumers has begun to demand a reason to pay attention to advertising, both consciously and unconsciously. This is the whole point of the viral explosion, that is someone can create content to interesting it's self-distributing, it doesn't matter if it's a commercial. My favourite example is the deep love my mother has for the recent Tim Horton's spot which features an old man and his son discussing family and hockey while watching the grandson play, all over a hot double double. My mother actually stops conversations, and silences the family to watch this. (I spent 30 minutes scouring youtube, no luck. Sorry.)

So, advertising is supposed to be compelling content. This is painfully obvious, and yet, people still seem to be screwing it up. Which is how we end up here...

Long story short, a band is found to have been created by an advertising firm (Saatchi & Saatchi) specifically for use as a promotions platform. Part of me likes this idea, that someone looks at the commodification of music and goes 'well, better than having to argue with a real band about compensation'. This could have worked, but the same damn mistake that Sony made over the Christmas season with an attempted viral campaign. There are enough people, with enough time, on the internet to find out whether or not anything in popular culture is genuine, or authentic, or an attempt to get them to buy something crappy. I don't know if the hair products being promoted by phony bands are any good. I actually WANT a PSP for myself. But if those responsible for advertising the product are so desperate for positive associations that they create fake people or artists to draw attention to them, it makes sense to assume they suck.

The thing that kills me is this. The music is question was good enough to be played repeatedly on the radio. It caught interest, developed a reasonable enough following to crack that massive barrier. All of this indicates, to me, that if those in charge had been clear about the fact this was a promotional tool, and been very transparent about it, it could have been very successful. Hell, that damn Snakes on a Plane song got radio play, and it was very blatantly about a movie. The difference is, there was no attempt to dupe anyone into thinking it was a coincidental work of art.

Adbusters demographic aside, the issue isn't that consumers hate anything phony. If they did, advertising would not exist, and no advertising related character would ever become popular. It is more or less totally acceptable for something to be completely fake, as long as there is no pretense of reality about the thing itself. What people hate is being told something is genuine, when it is not. They either a) see right through the attempted deception and resent the campaign and product, or b) find out later that they were deceived, feel stupid, and REALLY resent the campaign and product.

Baudrillard was wrong about many things, but he was right about this; if a simulation is PERFECT, then it is effectively reality. What are the chances of a band put together by an ad agency being that perfect? And why risk it when, in all likelihood, a quality product that is openly a promotional tool could reach a more interested, and self-propagating audience through distribution online, in audio, video, podcast, etc. formats.

I understand the rationale behind the move here, but at the same time, it's a little embarrassing that in a world where so much is spent on advertising, no one considered that with quality content, it doesn't really matter to a large segment of consumers if the purpose is also to sell something. There's no inherent need for adverts to be invasive, or annoying. Therefore there's no real reason to be ashamed that the content produced is an ad. My mother is fully aware that the charming elderly asian man is an actor hired to sell her coffee. She doesn't care, because when he says 'Gimme my picture back' it makes her laugh and smile all the same.