October 2005 Archives
A graduate student in design turned the redesign of a pill bottle into a national design story.
In April, New York Magazine ran a great feature story about a School of Visual Arts grad student who redesigned the pill bottle. After her grandmother accidentally swallowed the wrong pills, Deborah Adler decided it was time for a change. Her SVA thesis, called Safe Rx, was eventually picked up by Target, who debuted the new pill containers in May. Her design addresses many of the flaws of the old-style bottles, some noticeable, some not. More than anything, though, the redesign is a great design story. As Michael Beirut explains in this Design Observer story:
As someone who has tried for years to interest the general public in graphic design without much success, I can tell you straight out that this story has it all. The subject is a common object with which nearly everyone is familiar, and with which everyone is frustrated to boot. The problem to be solved is not mere ugliness (although an amber-colored prescription bottle is ugly) but literally a matter of life or death. Even the moment of inspiration is appealing: who can't relate to the story of those confused grandparents, and cheer when graphic design comes to the rescue?
The bottle looks great, and it really is a design story people can grab on and relate to.
Also, and what really made me want to write this entry, until November 23rd the School of Visual Arts is running a show titled ClearRX: From Master's Thesis to Medicine Cabinet, so if you live in New York, make sure to check it out. I'll make sure to let you know how it is after I stop by.
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A week in links and links and links and links.
Since I know that people seem to enjoy these link entries, here's a quick roundup of some of my favorite links of the week.
Funny/Strange
Advertising/Marketing
Design
Sports
- Bears play the Lions this weekend in a huge NFC North showdown. But you know that already, right? Since you're all already reading Da' Bears Blog?
That's it for tonight. Happy Halloween. Enjoy yourself. Trick or treat responsibly.
For anyone interested, and if you've made it this far I'll assume you are, I am dressing up as a semi-colon for Halloween.
I am a geek.
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As people become more comfortable with blogs, the term and hype surrounding it will begin to fall away.
When asked about some predictions for next year, I suggested that 2006 is the year that will mark the end of blogging. Obviously I don't mean an end to the millions of people writing on the web daily, but rather the end of the differentiation. Blogging is a meaningless term. The only thing different about a blog and a regular website is the software it runs on. Blogging is a software revolution, and as that software becomes more widespread and people get more comfortable with it, the idea of 'blogging' will fall by the wayside. Think about it. If you visit the Movable Type homepage, is that a blog? Well it's built on the same software that makes this site work. I've spoken about this before and I know it's kind of kicking a dead horse and harping on a semantic issue, but I really can't resist.
I think as more people jump on board the blogging bandwagon, blogging will be exposed like the wizard behind the curtain. You know what? This is a great thing. Because once we move past the terms and the aura, we can really begin to explore the medium. All 'blogs' don't have to look the same, sound the same or dress the same. Just the other day, Kottke pointed to tumblelogs, a kind of retro blog where people stop the absurdly long posts so many of us are guilty of and return to a short, linklog style. For the last year so many people have been too caught up in what a blog should be that they've missed opportunities to do new and different things.
This is everyone's big chance.
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A short rant brought on by someone's comment which implied that my work was all about doing what the client says.
[Editor's Note: This is really just me bitching. Because this is my site, I can do whatever I want. Sometimes that means wasting space with a meaningless rant like the one below. Sorry to waste your time.]
Tonight I had something said to me where it was implied that the work I do at my job is somehow less interesting than the work I do in my personal life. It bothered me quite a bit. While this may be the norm, for people to go to a job where they're told what to do and they do, that is not me. I used to work for a magazine where I pitched and wrote my own stories. I wrote about the things I was interested in, topics like RSS, blogs in politics and street art as a marketing platform. Try to find the line there between my personal and professional life. For anyone that's read this blog for any amount of time they'll recognize that those are just the kind of topics I write about here. That's because I was doing something I was passionate about.
Sure, I wouldn't include everything I wrote while at American Demographics in a portfolio, but it's still work I'm proud of. Since then I've moved to a new company, a marketing agency. Does that mean that all the work I do is purely what the client tells me? The answer is most definitely no. I wouldn't be somewhere like that and I was offended by the implication I would be. I am at a place where I am given the responsibility to come up with ideas that have never been seen before. I do more than just write a few lines of copy, I'm involved in every piece of the puzzle from ideation on.
Not that any of this really matters, and I could have just blown off the comment, but something about it really bothered me. It's like the artist who holds their nose above everyone else because their work is somehow less pure. It's absurdity. Limitations are a part of life.
Working within limitations can often be a far better gauge of just how creative a person is than the limitlessness of 'pure art.'
Sorry, just had to get it off my chest.
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I'm back for my trip. I have photos. I have observations. I have . . .
So, I'm back from Ireland. It was quite a whirlwind tour of the country and I'm feeling recharged. If you happen to be interested, I've posted some photos over at Flickr for your enjoyment.
Rather than giving some boring rundown of my trip, I decided to just copy some observations from my journal. Most of them are completely unrelated to Ireland, but that's the fun, isn't it?
Mostly Non-Irish Observations
- With so many people using cellphones as a watch, when you get onto a plane and can't use it, no one knows the damn time. It's crazy. I couldn't find anyone around to let me know how long we'd been flying.
- All of Ireland is under construction.
- The hacker and designer are kind of parallel figures. Both are looking to achieve a certain elegance in what they do, whether it be code or design. They are trying to do as much as possible with only as much as they need. (As a side note, less is not more. Less is more implies less for less' sake. The goal is not less, but rather elegance -- a point inspired by Neal Stephenson's excellent The Diamond Age.)
- There seem to be fewer pay phones than ever because everyone has a cellphone. That's a serious problem for travelers. It seems like a good opportunity for a low priced mobile phone rental business. Imagine if you could rent a shitty phone for like $50 and it included something like 200 minutes to America. I'd do it. Not sure if it's viable, but it seems like it shouldn't be that unreasonable. (That's probably completely untrue.)
- There are a lot of bars in Ireland.
Thanks a bunch to my mom for covering for me while I was gone . . . you did an excellent job. Now that I'm back all you readers can expect a return to the regularly scheduled boredom. Hope you enjoyed the hiatus.
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My thoughts on just what may lay in the future for the iPod video.
If you're a sports fan, make sure you read this. It could change your life . . . well, I don't think this entry will necessarily, but if the predictions come true it could.
Why video?
Why not? That's the beauty of the move. By making video standard as part of the iPod and not raising the price Apple has absolutely nothing to lose. Steve Jobs has said in the past that video is not an interesting market to him and that he didn't think a portable video player was a good idea because watching must be a primary activity (versus listening, which can be secondary). So what does he do? Make an iPod that just happens to play video. People are going to buy iPods because they are the best MP3 player on the market. Now, they just happen to play video as well. It's a can't lose situation and those are always good.
Why Disney?
Because Disney's the only entertainment company out there who wants something Jobs has. He could never waltz into Viacom or News Corporation and ask them to let him sell their shows for $1.99, they'd never go for it. Not with a single song selling on iTunes for $.99. So what Jobs does is approach Robert Iger, new chief of Disney, whose major goal is to re-up their distribution deal with Jobs' Pixar. Jobs holds all the cards and gets Iger to sign up ABC and two of America's most popular television shows (Lost and Desperate Housewives). Now, assuming it does well, Apple has set the price themselves and other companies will have no choice but to jump onboard at $1.99.
That's it?
Nope. There's much more to the Disney story, and this is where it gets really interesting. Disney also owns ESPN, the be-all-and-end-all of sports broadcasting who is looking to extend their brand. Sports is where mobile video really makes sense. Imagine this scenario: You're a commuter and a sports fan (as many American men are). Every morning you get on the train and hit play on SportsCenter, ESPN's hugely popular daily sports highlight show. One hour train rides have never been so good. What would you pay for this? I say $20 easy. I mean, if I had an hour commute and an opportunity to watch SportsCenter on it, commercial free, every morning I'd jump at it. I expect there are a lot of other sports fans who would agree. It's a cash cow. It'd be reason enough to buy an iPod (which I don't own, by the way). And it doesn't seem that unreasonable, does it?
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We all need someone who genuinely listens, supports and encourages our personal and/or professional growth.
By Barbara Rubin Brier
In my last post, which I intended to be about mentoring, I got waylaid by a connection that took me by surprise. What I learned from that is that blogging can be a very self-indulgent enterprise. Self-indulgence is certainly nothing to be sneezed at – who better to indulge? But on reflection, I realized that there was something I really wanted to say about mentoring before my days as Noah’s guest blogger expired.
As I said, after close to a year of research on principal mentoring, it all really came down to this: having someone who genuinely listens, supports and encourages your personal and/or professional growth is invaluable. Not to belabor the point, but … duh!!! It’s all about the relationship. What we seem to forget is that it’s always been all about the relationship, whether we’re students, teachers or principals.
Here’s my point: it is ironic -- and extremely unfortunate -- that schools can’t seem to retain that information. They’re always looking for a magic bullet here or there, when we all know that a good teacher and/or mentor (they’re often synonymous) can change a student’s life. The movie, In and Out, springs immediately to mind: a former student, receiving an academy award, thanks his high school English teacher. The movie may be about the accidental outing of the Kevin Kline character, but the situation – thanking a teacher in a time of personal accomplishment – is pretty ubiquitous. (It works in the reverse as well, witness Noah’s previous post.)
Sadly, being an educational change consultant, I see school improvement initiatives come and go all the time -- so often, in fact, that veteran teachers generally respond to new ideas with the attitude that ‘this too shall pass.’ (The upside of this attitude is that it’s enabled many educators to withstand the stress of No Child Left Behind – hopefully, it will pass soon!)
But skeptical as I may be, I applaud the growing interest in principal mentoring and sincerely hope schools and school districts heed the need for leadership support. (It wouldn’t hurt if the typical central office bureaucrats assumed some responsibility for this, either!)
Then, if we could develop more comprehensive teacher and student mentoring programs, and remember that having someone who genuinely listens, supports and encourages your personal and/or professional growth is invaluable, we might actually be able to make a consistent difference in young people’s lives.
As I’ve said before, in the long run, I think that the role of secondary school teachers will focus more on things like mentoring and facilitating higher order thinking. But until then, what we desperately need in our poorer communities and urban centers are teachers, administrators and people like you and me – people who care about kids and are willing to be there for them – to facilitate their learning based on their individual needs (which often have nothing to do with academics!)
So become a mentor! It offers as many rewards to the mentor as it does to the mentee. My sister just signed up with an organization called iMentor, which operates in the New York metropolitan area and is specifically geared to electronic interaction, but almost every major school system has some sort of student mentoring program. Just call your local school, district office or board of education to find out and sign up. That's it -- that's what I wanted to say about mentoring.
P.S. This is my final entry as Noah’s guest blogger, as I’m off to GWU for parents’ weekend and then to Providence for a conference. So I’d like to thank Noah for trusting me with this. It is all about the relationship -- and it means the world to me.
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My college entrance essay about an event that changd my thinking when I was 14-years-old.
[Editor's Note: Since I'm currently away on vacation and don't have anything to write at the moment, I decided to post my college entrance essay. My mom recently emailed it to me and I think it really explains a lot about the way I think. I hope you enjoy and that everything's going okay here while I'm gone.]
Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, or risk that you have taken and its impact on you.
Question everything. It’s a lesson I learned in the eighth grade and it has really helped shape the way I think. The setting: U.S. History class, the day before winter vacation. The teacher: Mr. Bauer, a 28-year veteran who asked the same bonus question every year and then swore his students to secrecy. The question: What woman accompanied the three Americans involved in the XYZ affair to their meeting with Tallyrand? The reward: the first student to bring in the correct answer and source would receive an automatic A for the third quarter. I really wanted to be on vacation, but the idea of no homework or tests in history for a whole quarter was very tempting. As soon as I got home, I asked my mother to drive me to the library.
Others had obviously beaten me there. The only reference I could find said nothing about a woman. I looked through a couple of encyclopedias, nothing there either. I convinced my mother to take me to a library in another town. There I found a whole book just on the XYZ Affair. I was so confident I’d find what I needed I checked it out and went home. But again, no woman. I found the reference at a third library the next day.
As happy as I was, something was bothering me. Why had the answer only been in that one book? It seemed like a pretty important point; it just didn’t make sense. I noticed that the book with the answer seemed much older than the other. I looked at the copyright dates. The book with the answer had been published some time in the fifties, the one called The XYZ Affair in 1981. Now I was even more puzzled. Why would a more recent book, written specifically about the incident, not mention this important detail?
The only thing I could think of doing was to ask the author. But if I wrote a letter through the publisher, I’d never have the information back in time to be first at school. That’s when I noticed that the flyleaf said the author, William Stinchcombe, was a professor at Syracuse University. I decided to call and find out if he still worked there, figuring I’d ask for an e-mail address. Much to my astonishment, the operator told me to hold on and she’d connect me. When the voice on the other end of the line said, “Bill Stinchcombe,� I somehow managed to mumble something about why I was calling. At first, I didn’t even mention my name. (It was rather intimidating to talk to a college professor.) I have no idea what he must have thought about a kid calling to ask a question like that, but his answer was really direct. He not only told me my teacher was wrong, he told me where I could find the proof. I asked if he would mind sending me an e-mail because I was afraid Mr. Bauer would think I was lying.
There were five people ahead of me on the first day back after vacation, but I was the only one who could prove the question was wrong. Mr. Bauer gave the A to the first person on line with the ‘correct’ answer. He also gave me one -- and never asked that question again. (A copy of the e-mail I received from Professor Stinchcombe is attached.) [Ed: Not to this blog post.]
Update (10/24/05): My mother was nice enough to type up the email I received from Professor Stinchcombe:
Mr. Brier:
I am a professor of history at Syracuse specializing in United States Diplomatic history.
It is absolutely clear that Madame Villette never accompanied the three American diplomats in their infrequent meetings with Tallyrand.
Madame Villete was never in the picture until they met W (Nicholas Hubbard), X Jean Hottinguer, Y Pierre Bellamy, and Z Lucien Hauteval. This is clear from two sources: the dispatches sent back to Secretary of State Timothy Pickering and in the Marshall Journal. Both sources are in The Papers of John Marshall, vol. 3, which I edited.
Another source is the article of mine "THe Diplomacy of the WXYZ Affair," which appeared in the William and Mary Quarterly in 1977.
My guess is that Mr. Bauer is reciting the old, and quite discredited, view that Madame Villette approached Charles C. Pinckney at a party. This rumor is taken care of in the article mentioned above.
I am sorry to quote only myself but on this issue my work is the most definitive.
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Blogging has me making new connections ... amazing stuff!
By Barbara Rubin Brier
A good deal of my professional time in the past year has been spent on principal mentoring, i.e., supporting aspiring and new principals as they take on the extraordinarily demanding responsibility of running a school. Never easy, the stress of this complex role has become unbearable for many in this era of ‘No Child Left Behind.’ As a result, there have been more retirees and fewer potential candidates for their jobs in recent years, which has led to an explosion of ‘new’ programs [such as mentoring] to identify, train and retain principals.
Having written what feels like hundreds of pages on the theory and practice of mentoring, I have to say that it really comes down to this: having someone who genuinely listens, supports and encourages your personal and/or professional growth is invaluable.
You might have guessed that what set me on this train of thought was writing for this blog – forcing myself to reflect on what I wanted to make public – and I am struck by how deeply it has encouraged me to drill down. I started by making the connection to mentoring from what I said in my last post about learning from Noah. But then the layers of my life started peeling away. I was all the way back to my first art professor’s thesis on contour drawing -- and had even googled his name (Robert Kaupelis) – when I realized that I was conducting a networked search. It is too cool that the internet is a metaphor for the way we think; it just blows me away!
By the way, Kaupelis’ thesis was that contour drawing – drawing without looking at the paper – forced you to really see what you were drawing rather than fall back on the image of ‘flower’, ‘face’, or ‘waterfall’ that is stored in your brain as a kind of caricature – a visual ‘tag,’ if you will. Quite the connection, no?
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Noah's mom takes a stab at temporarily filling his shoes ... (oh my!)
By Barbara Rubin Brier
I can’t believe how daunting it feels to have been entrusted with writing for Noah’s blog! And the ‘brilliant’ billing certainly didn’t help -- I can’t remember when I’ve felt so at a loss. I’ve been racking my brain, trying to come up with something pithy (I LOVE that word!), reminding myself that that’s not what blogging is about, writing something but re-reading and finding it uninspiring … you get my drift. Then I opened an e-mail from a friend who happens to read Noah’s blog – who I actually met though Noah’s blog – who I told how nervous I was -- and she said:
“I don't know if I mentioned this to you, but I'm pretty close to starting a blog, but I'm still too nervous, for the reasons you mentioned re your contribution to Noah's blog. I think there is a definite process involved in getting comfortable with thinking that what you have to say is *important* enough or *cool* enough for others to read and not think it's a waste of time...�
So I’ve decided to tell you the story of how I met Andrea. It is, at the very least, an interesting twist on making connections. (Please be patient if I screw up the linking process!)
Some months ago, Noah posted a blog on thinking and tagging that really struck me, and I posted a comment, as I often do. In my post, I mentioned having enjoyed a post on tags by Jakob Lodwick, which Noah had linked to. I also wrote enough gushy mother stuff that Noah responded to my comment with two words: “Thanks mom.�
Later that day, I got an e-mail from someone named Andrea who began her note by saying, “I enjoyed your son Noah's post about tagging and I really enjoyed your response. You see, I am Jakob Lodwick's mom (he of the tagwebs essay)�, and concluded it with, “I just thought you might enjoy hearing from another proud mother-of-an-adult-child-on-display-on-the-internet.�
In fact, I was tickled pink to hear from Andrea, and responded (in part): “I loved getting your e-mail --both as a proud mom and as an ardent admirer of people who actively think about the impact of digital technology. You're right; not too many years ago, we would have had to depend on occasional visits and phone calls to keep up with our kids' lives. Now we have this special window that gives us access to what they really think about, know and do. More important, they're comfortable with that transparency in their lives, a characteristic I think is bred by a combination of their instinctive(?), reflective natures and their exposure to this extraordinary new digital world.�
I don’t know how many parents talk about this dimension of blogging, and I suspect some are less than thrilled with what their children post. But for me, Noah’s blog has reinforced our relationship during a period in his life when communication between us might well have dwindled. Blogging, and the internet, have given me an opportunity to learn from my son. As a result, it has expanded the scope of our relationship in a way that I'm not sure would have been possible otherwise. That's really something ...
AND I made a new friend! (Last week, Andrea and I spent a day together in NYC, getting to know each other.)
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Answering all the questions you want and don't want to know about my upcoming vacation.
I haven't exactly been on my best posting behavior lately, it's been spurts of posts and then none. I've got some good excuses, though, I swear. Lots of work, personal stuff (one-year anniversary with my girlfriend, etc.), random web stuff for other people (designing sites and setting up others) and, last but not least, my upcoming vacation. The majority of you probably don't know, but on Thursday I will be departing for nine days and eight nights in beautiful Ireland (I've heard it's beautiful at least). This is a much needed vacation and I'm definitely looking forward to it. But there are some things were going to have to go through before I leave, so I've written:
The Official NoahBrier.com Vacation FAQ
Without any further delay, here are the answers to the questions you (probably don't) want to know.
Q: Will your site still work while your gone?
A: Yup, probably better actually, since it won't have to deal with the bandwidth of me constantly visiting it to see if there are any new comments.
Q: But is it even going to be worth visiting? Will there be any new content?
A: A fine question my imaginary friend. As a matter of fact there will be some new content while I'm gone. Not only am I going to (try to) write some entries to automatically post while I'm drinking myself silly, but I've also set up a guest writer to fill in for me while I'm gone. (Plus, I'm going to try and write an update or two while I'm away, just to let you know I'm still alive.)
Q: Guest author? Who would you ever entrust such a wonderful page to?
A: Stop, stop. You're too kind. I've enlisted my mother's writing skills. If you're familiar with NoahBrier.com, you've probably read some of her (Barbara Rubin Brier's) stuff before. If not, here are a few links for you to get familiar with her style. Since she's an educational change consultant, you can probably expect an education/learning slant to what she's got to say, but she's a brilliant lady, so you never know what you might get (and I'm not just saying that because she's my mom). Just don't ask her to sing, trust me.
Q: Alright, I'm feeling a little better. But what happens in an emergency, what if I just must have more content?
A: Don't worry too much, there are lots of great bloggers out there to read and lucky for you, I happened to just have compiled my list of favorites, so if you're really in a bind (or just want some more good stuff to read), click away. (To be honest, they're the inspiration for most of my content anyway.)
Q: Will you get me something Irish
A: Ummmm . . . probably not. No offense, but if I got all eight readers of this page something Irish, I'd be out at least $10.
Q: Are you going away because you don't love us anymore?
A: No, that's not it at all. Sometimes Daddy just needs to take a vacation to get away from real life.
Q: Can you at least take some pictures for us?
A: Alright, so I made this one up, no one actually wants to look at my vacation photos. BUT YOU'RE GONNA HAVE TO ANYWAY!
So I think I've covered everything. I'll keep everyone informed of what's going on. Thanks in advance for sticking around and watching the place while I'm gone. Toodaloo.
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Looking for a couple bloggers who spend a lot of time out.
At work we're looking for some talented bloggers for a project we're working on. Here's the writeup:
We are staring a national nightlife blog, and need someone in LA and Miami.
We'd prefer a female, as we already have enough guys writing for us. We are
seeking Bloggers that like to write and go out a lot.
We're looking for about 5 posts a week for 12 weeks (starting immediately).
Our blog will go beyond clubs, and encompass many late-night activities in
these cities. This can of course include clubs, bars and live music, but we
also want some of the more quirky and unusual events/venues as well (secret
societies, transvestite scrabble slams, 24hr dimsum restaurant with
heroin-chic design appeal, the corner deli with the best hot-pink cream puff
pinwheel in the city, etc).
There is compensation, and while I can't say quite what it is, I can say that's it's pretty damn sweet. So if you are this person, or now this person, let me know. This is a pretty immediate need, so please please please let me know as soon as possible.
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A remixed horror trailer, NYC street art and social software. What do these things have in common?
There were a couple links today that I wanted to bring special attention to:
1. There's an awesome remix of The Shining trailer by a guy named Robert Ryang. As part of a contest, Ryang recut the Shining trailer to make it a new genre. All visuals are straight from the movie, the dialog's been edited and a new narration's been added. I just saw The Shining this weekend and loved it, so it's especially fun for me to see, but seriously watch the video, it's fantastic. While you're at it, read The New York Times coverage of it.
2. Skewville does some pretty amazing New York City street art (check out some photos on Flickr). They've opened their NYC "basement laboratory" to the public. Definitely something I've got to check out, and I expect you all should too.
(Bonus Link): Ning is a new online social software playground. As I understand it allows code laymen (like myself) to realize their ideas for social software. Haven't played with it enough to say much more than that, but it certainly sounds like an amazing idea.
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This next generation of the web is all about packaging information in ways that makes closing the loop easy.
Everybody's talking about it. So just what is web 2.0? Let me start off with one reminder before I get going:
It's just a word.
That's all. Really. Let's not let ourselves get held back by whether this or that is web 2.0 or not. I think that's the most important thing to remember.
With that said, I think Steven Johnson comes closer than anyone else I've read. In not so few words, he explains:
Web 2.0 closes the loop.
(Yes, just a few weeks ago I wrote RSS closes the loop, but it's all part of the same thing.) Seriously though. I think it's that simple. Web 1.0 was the one-way linking web. As Johnson explains so well in Emergence
, hyperlinks are not built for a feedback system. There's no easy way to tell when you've been linked to. Conversations could never really happen. Now everything's changed. Nothing is wasted anymore. RSS distributes the information to bloggers who blog it and, in turn, distribute their own information via RSS. But that's just one example of what's happening all over the web at the moment. In Web 2.0 information is reproductive. Everything's ready to be repurposed and remixed into something entirely different. Web 2.0 is the evolution of information delivery online. Steven Johnson sums it all up nicely:
Think of information as the energy of the Web’s ecosystem. Those Web 1.0 pages with their crude hyperlinks are like the sun’s rays falling on a desert. A few stragglers are lucky enough to stumble across them, and thus some of that information might get reused if one then decides to e-mail the URL to a friend or to quote from it on another page. But most of the information goes to waste. In the Web 2.0 model, we have thousands of services scrutinizing each new piece of information online, grabbing interesting bits, remixing them in new ways, and passing them along to other services. Each new addition to the mix can be exploited in countless new ways, both by human bloggers and by the software programs that track changes in the overall state of the Web. Information in this new model is analyzed, repackaged, digested, and passed on down to the next link in the chain. It flows.
Web 2.0 is all about the backend, in the same way that tags allow ad-hoc communities to pop-up with no additional infrastructure, web 2.0 delivers information in ways that make it easy to release, repurpose and remix. It's all ready for reproduction.
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Everyone calls it viral marketing, but if it doesn’t spread your idea is dead.
[Editor's Note: This is a DRAFT of an article that is published in the October issue of Admap Magazine. Apparently I'm allowed to post a draft as long as I make it clear that it's just that. Some of you may remember a shorter version of this article I linked to about a month ago. This is a far more complete version. Hope you enjoy.]
The advertising industry has caught an infectious bug. It’s considered highly contagious and shouldn’t be ignored. They’re calling it viral marketing and ever since Crispin Porter + Bogusky created the now-famous Subservient Chicken, every marketer worth their salt has promised to include a viral component as part of a client’s next campaign. The thing is, while the dream of viral marketing is a nice one, the reality of producing a viral element, one that effectively spreads through one-to-one exchanges, is often an unpleasant one.
That's not to say viral is dead, quite the contrary. Still, as with any element of a campaign, viral must be understood for what it is: a gamble. True, most often it's a cheap bet. But it's a bet nonetheless, and as any good gambler knows, the odds favor the house. A successful viral piece depends on a nearly infinite number of variables, the most important of which is distribution. When a marketer creates a print-ad or online banner, the means of distribution have been decided; well-received or not, there is little question that the advertisement will reach the target defined by the outlet. Viral is another story altogether.
In fact, just calling it viral is problematic. After all, isn’t the goal of all marketing to be viral? When creating an advertisement, the hope is that the message will infect the consumer and replicate itself inside them, thereby connecting the brand and the individual. The only online elements considered viral are those that find success. That’s because, as every good virus knows, it’s either spread or be dead.
By concentrating on the long-term goal of virality, marketers often lose sight of the narrower objectives and strategies specifically attached to online viral advertising. The strategy of a successful online viral marketing element concentrates not on incubating a message, but rather on spreading it. In other words, the viral message has to be contagious. In fact, contagious marketing is probably a much more appropriate term. Every time one of these elements is created, the hope is that one person will feel compelled to pass it to another, or better yet, many others.
It doesn’t matter how original, revolutionary or amusing your message is if no one sees it. And with ‘viral’ marketing, there’s no guarantee anyone will. After all, there’s no formal distribution channel, just those people you hope will email, water cooler, instant message and blog your idea. Seldom asked, however, is just who those people are. Really knowing your audience is an important part of any campaign, but it's even more integral for ‘viral.’ Keep in mind, you're not just trying to talk to these people; you're trying to convince them to be a proactive co-marketer. If you don’t have keen insight into what gets your target consumer excited, then there’s no way you’re going to be able to craft a contagious idea that they will find worthy of passing along.
There are lots of things to think about when it comes to a ‘viral’ target, but few are more important than what they’re doing when you expect them to help you spread your seed. Are you targeting college-educated 24 to 35-year-old males who make $100,000 plus? Well then, you better know that the majority of these people will be at work when they read/see/hear your message. They're doing things like working on spreadsheets and chatting with buddies. They're not interested in sound (because the guy in the cubicle next to them would probably not appreciate it) and they need something with a punchline that will pay off almost immediately. The most important thing to remember, though, is that at some point they'll be bored. They'll save that spreadsheet, polish off that PowerPoint and be left to their own devices, if only for a moment or two. Here’s your opening, this is prime time for contagious marketing: the time of the day we all face at some point, when we click aimlessly, hoping to find something to amuse ourselves that can quickly be closed should the boss come around.
Appropriately enough, Jonah Paretti, director of R&D at Eyebeam, calls people engaging in these non-work activities the ‘bored-at-work network’ (BWN for short). Its members have the power of millions and can spread links faster than any television network ever could. They range in age, income, gender and race, but they all have one thing in common: They’re looking to be engaged. Of course, that’s easier said than done. Often, the most unexpected things are the ones that end up picking up steam and taking on a life of their own. But that’s the real beauty of it, right? It could be anything; a video of a middle school kid pretending to wield a light saber or a commercial where Honda parts are used to make a Rube Goldberg-esque sequence. It’s almost impossible to gauge how contagious something will be until you put it out there. But when you get it right, it can spread faster than a middle school rumor.
Still, there are ways to increase the odds for this kind of contagious marketing, however. Just as a card counter uses what she knows to gain a small advantage against the house, marketers can utilize the lessons of others’ past successes and failures to help them beat the odds. Of course, the strategies behind these questions aren’t written in stone, nor should they be, but taking them into consideration as a means of evaluating your contagious element can’t hurt.
- Did you heed the connectors? There are millions of them out there writing blogs, telling marketers exactly what they like and don’t like. People listen to them and they love to be at the forefront. Find them (Technorati.com is a good place to look), listen to them, engage them and let them help you.
- Did you ask people you know? Most likely lots of people you know are part of the BWN. Ask them what they think. See if they’d pass the link around. The more of a connector they are, the more valuable their opinion. The beauty of contagious marketing is that the potential carriers are not hard to find, they’re all around us.
- Is it honest? If you’re pretending to be something you’re not and you get caught, that negative publicity can be just as contagious as any viral piece, possibly even more so. Think about what you’re risking by presenting yourself dishonestly to the very people you hope to reach and what the ultimate impact of that action may be.
- Did you have fun? It’s pretty simple, if you didn’t have a good time doing it, then it’s probably not going to go viral. Why would someone else enjoy something you didn’t? Yeah, this question probably works for all marketing, but seems even more relevant when you want to go viral.
In the end, though, the most important rule to remember is that there are no rules. That is the beauty of this kind of marketing. It’s attention you’re vying for, and if you create something contagious you’ve done your job, no matter what approach you may have taken. Everyone in the advertising business knows about Subservient Chicken, and just about all of them have tried to model a ‘viral’ element in the image of the feathered one. In doing so, many lose touch with the fact that anything can be ‘viral.’
There’s even a whole other kind of ‘viral marketing’: The kind the consumer spreads unknowingly. In point of fact, the ‘viral’ concept existed before Subservient Chicken, and companies thrived using ‘viral marketing’ tactics that didn’t necessarily involve a bunch of people clicking a “tell a friend� button. Take Hotmail, for example. The free web-based email service built a customer base by including a message at the bottom of every outbound email informing the recipient that the message had been sent from Hotmail.
Although on first glance it may not seem it, Hotmail was using ‘viral’ advertising. While we tend to believe that ‘viral’ needs to meet certain criteria, really, it can be anything that uses ordinary people’s online connections as its platform. There’s no reason we should limit ‘viral’ to videos or interactive games. As shown by Hotmail, something can go ‘viral’ by utilizing the medium in new and exciting ways. Of course, most marketers are not in a position to create an application which will insert their message directly into their target network and replicate it without their knowledge. However, it does show that there are other, worthwhile ways to think about contagious marketing.
Sometimes finding those new and exciting approaches, however, means exiting your comfort zone. The old marketing maxim of “staying stupid� seems incredibly appropriate here. By leaving your mind uncluttered by “what works� and “what doesn’t,� it’s easier to find new answers to old questions.
It’s for this reason we need to remember the purpose (contagiousness), the audience (often those people who are bored at work) and the medium (the internet and, increasingly, mobile devices). In reality, it all boils down to one simple rule that can be applied to almost any marketing project: Start with what you know and work your way to a big idea, not vice-versa. Depending on the path you choose, the questions here may be helpful, but there’s no guarantee. With viral, there’s never just one answer. Pass that on.
About the Author:
Noah Brier is a writer at Renegade Marketing Group, the agency responsibly for PeopleAgainstFun.org, the HSBC Bank Cab and other viral successes. For more on Renegade, visit www.renegademarketing.com.
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A list of my favorite blogs, all 50-plus of them.
I've been meaning to do this for a while. Rather than listing out my top 10 favorite blogs, here's a (pretty) full list of the blogs I enjoy the most. I've been working on this list over many weeks so it's quite possible I've missed something. If you think so or have a suggestion leave a comment or email me.
43 Folders: Merlin Mann shares with fellow netizens his world of lifehacks, Getting Things Done and Apple geekery.
Advertising/Design Goodness: Dubbed as "the best and sometimes the worst around the globe," this is the site of design/art director Frederik Samuel. There's lots of inspiring advertising here (that kind of feels like a strange thing to say).
AndrewTeman.org: He calls it an "international superblog." Who am I to disagree?
Anil Dash: He's a VP at Six Apart who (not surprisingly) likes to talk about blogging and digital culture.
Attention Trust Blog: Attention from the people that helped bring up the whole conversation.
Blogaholics: The name is completely appropriate. These two love to blog.
Bokardo: Josh Porter's blog about web design and usability. This guy knows his stuff.
Brand New: Gareth Kay works as a planner for an ad agency called Modernista! and writes about branding and communications.
cityofsound: Dan Hill's a London-based designer, he describes cityofsound as a "weblog on what information designers and information architects could learn from the way cities and buildings work, with particular reference points around adaptive design, architecture, interaction design, the user experiences around music and radio, emergence, new media colliding with old media, e-government - that sort of thing."
Connectivism Blog: George Siemens' blog about connectivism, a learning theory for the digital age.
Creating Passionate Users: A site about how to instill passion in the people who use your product. They write some amazing stuff.
creativebits: A site for designers (or those interested in design) who work on a Mac. Lots of good links and OS X tips.
Da' Bears Blog: A site by Bears fans for Bears fans. (Come on, I have to plug my own sites.)
Dan Dickinson: The Primary Vivid Weblog: Dan's more than just a Quicksilver savant (although he's that too).
Eide Neurolearning Blog: Two doctors write about learning and the brain.
Evhead: He created Blogger and now he's at it again with Odeo. He writes about the trials and tribulations of an early startup as well as lots of other random fun.
Fimoculous: Rex has more great links than he knows what to do with.
Functioning Form: Luke Wroblewski's blog on interface design.
Garrett Dimon: He's a CSS guru, design lover, pro-good writing as well as being a generally smart and interesting guy.
Hublog: Hacks lots of things together that range from very interesting to me all the way down to not the slightest bit interesting to me.
Incoming Signals: Lots of random links. Seriously, I'm pretty sure there's no method to his madness.
Information Aesthetics: Amazing blog that looks at the amazing ways people find to visualize information.
JLuster.org: Jonas Luster works for Technorati. He likes blogs and technology.
Kareem Mayan's Weblog: "A blog about customer experience, media, and emerging technologies," by a guy who used to work at ESPN.com and now works at Fox Interactive.
Kottke.org: Next.
Lifehack.org: Their description: "Daily digest and pointer on productivity, getting things done and lifehacks."
Lifehacker: My personal favorite of the lifehack sites.
Maeda's SIMPLICITY: Famous designer/programmer John Maeda writes about simplicity (mostly in design).
Manhattan Transfer: Two parts booze. One part New York City.
Many-to-Many: A group blog about social software by Clay Shirky, Ross Mayfield, Danah Boyd and many more.
More Cowbell: The best way to keep up with what musical act is on tour where.
Movalog: A great resource for Movable Type plugins/tips.
My Blog is Poop: Because poop jokes never get old.
PC4Media: Peter Caputa writes about what it's like to build an internet company and just about any other web-related topic you can imagine.
Plasticbag.org: As he describes it: "The personal site of Tom Coates, a London-based gay man interested in personal publishing, online communities/social software, collaborative media consumption, graphic design and technology..."
Pomo Blog: Terry Heaton talks about postmodernism, especially as it relates to the media.
RC3.org: Rafe Colburn's personal blog about technology, politics and some other random topics.
Read/Write Web: Richard McManus sounds off on web 2.0.
RSS Weblog: Fairly self explanatory. Member of the Weblogs, Inc. family.
Rushkoff.blog: Douglas Rushkoff's doesn't write here all that often, but when he does it's quite enjoyable.
SAW a Good Idea: The blog my company (Renegade Marketing) keeps. Lots of cool ideas on here.
Scobleizer: Robert Scoble, Microsoft geek blogger.
Scott Rafer's Mobile Chair: Scott's moved his attention away from the RSS space and into mobile, that means it's a good place to pay attention to.
ShaunInman.com: Designer Shaun Inman riffs on design, css, javascript and lots of other fun stuff.
Signal vs. Noise: The blog of 37signals. Revolves around web applications, design and business.
SimpleBits: Dan Cedarholm is a blogging CSS and web design guru.
Speak Up: Under Consideration's blog about graphic design.
Stopdesign: Because you can't possibly get enough talk about CSS and web design.
Speak Up: This is my favorite design commentary blog. It has a good amount of posts a day, not too many, not too few. Some of the writing is quite insightful, while other entries are just light and fun. I pretty much read every entry posted 'cause it's good like 'dat.
swissmiss: Tina Roth is a Swiss designer working in New York who finds many amazing design links every day.
taleoftwocities: One's in LA, one's in NYC, both party a lot.
This is Broken: Bad cusomter experiences documented.
Three Minds: Customer experience blog from Organic.
Tricks of the Trade: "Professional secrets from those in the know." Well said.
The Unofficial Apple Weblog: More Apple links than you could shake a stick at.
Veer: The Skinny: Veer sells "visual elements for creatives." Their blog, not surprisingly, features visual elements by creatives. Great links to videos, portfolios and the like.
Wages of Wins Journal: All about using statistical analysis to judge athletes.
Waxy.org Links: This is the first place I click when I open my browser. I would guess around 40% of the links you see on this site come from Andy. (I'd include his blog on this list but it's hardly ever updated.)
Welcome to Optimism: London-based advertising agency, Wieden + Kennedy's group blog. It's just a fun place where they talk about whatever the hell they feel like.
Whitespace: A blog about web design by Paul Scrivens, 9rules, Inc. CEO.
Wooster Collective: An awesome collection of street art photos from around the world.
xBlog: The "visual thinking weblog" by XPLANE, a company that specializes in information visualization.
Update (11/30/05): Added a few more blogs based on this entry highlighting eight design blogs I enjoy.
Update (6/14/06): More additions from this entry.
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