Battle Royale

The presentation opens with titles from CBS’ television show, “The Big Bang Theory” with a scene from Spike Jonze’s “Fully Flared” spliced in the end. The show itself is relevant to this presentation as it deals with geek culture and an outsider looking in. Similar to the situation we have now with classic and digital agencies. And the skateboarding is more about my personal background... Big Bang Theory http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkabQyzAQn8 Fully Flared http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VGbAOOEego

Hi there. My name is Jeremy Abbett, and I’m a designer and an old-school skateboarder. That’s me in the red shirt from in September’s 1989 issue of Thrasher Magazine. Being published in Thrasher means more to me than winning any advertising award. And that’s the point of this presentation: focus less on advertising and more on what really matters to people.

I’m a partner at Truth Dare Double Dare in Hamburg. We do projects that explore people’s relationship with one another mediated through technology.

One of these projects was exploring ambient technology and was titled “Ambient Awareness”. It was a series of eight projects presented as one.

Such as, a robot that would follow you until you stopped. It would then go the opposite direction.

Or a series of cocoons that imitate breathing. The closer you get the faster it would inhale and exhale like an anxious child.

You can ﬁnd more at http://ambientawareness.org.

“ It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” Charles Darwin English Naturalist Darwin was on to something.

His theory can also be applied to business as well. For example: look what happened to Germany’s biggest and best agency from the 1990’s. Ouch!

Remember this one from 1984? This became an all-purpose phrase questioning the substance of an idea or product. You can see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aISkVvi5iI8

And the agency that made it is also going...

...the way of dinosaurs.

STATUS QUO Our ability to effect change is unprecedented I’m going to start with context and the times we are living in.

SIMPLE TRUTH Moving beyond the 30 second spot, a headline and key visual Then move beyond reach and start thinking about relevance.

SOME PROJECTS A brand is built of successive and connected ideas* Then have a little break to check-out some projects. *Brand Innovation Manifesto - John Grant

YOUR TAKEAWAY Embrace change And lastly, if there’s one thing I’d like you to remember it’s this.

STATUS QUO Our ability to effect change is unprecedented This is section is all about the times we are living in. At no other time in our history have we been able to effect change. If you don’t have believe me just ask this guy...

Obama realized this thereby creating advocates and empowering them to spread the word. Think about it: “take a relatively unknown man. Younger than all of his opponents. Black. With a bad-sounding name (Barack Hussein Obama II). Obama owns the 'change' idea in voters' minds. It didn't matter. Barack Obama had a better marketing strategy than either of them.” img via http://www.terryrichardson.com/IMAGES/pages/TR_Obama_jpg.htm

3 million contributors 6.5 million online donations 93% less than $100 $80 average online donation $500 million raised online A few fundraising facts to give a sense of how successful he was at creating this social movement: 1.7M contributors thru april 2008 2.9M total contributions thru april 2008 93% total contributions under 100 in April 2008 according to Hufﬁngton Post While the campaign doesn’t report on % of contributions received online, anecdotally we know the smaller contributions tend to come online.

When media changes our culture changes "Amusing Ourselves to Death" Neil Postman In 1984 conversations of our culture happen on television. Controlled by the few designed for the masses always entertaining even the serious ones and punctuated by commercials. Alls these conversations collectively create our culture.

The periodical planted the seeds of democracy The periodical made it possible to create democratic thinking and spread thoughts far- and-wide for anyone to consume. Some of my favorite magazines, and consequentally, ones I have subsciptions to as well. Print isn’t dead. Yet ;)

Radio created a celebrity-oriented society Madonna through the years of her celebrity-oriented life. All made possible through radio.

Television homogenized the culture Because of television, we have a mutual cultural bond. A bond through mass media pop- culture. fun fact: television is 200 billion hours a year in the usa alone. 100 million hours a weekend watching the ads.

When media changes our culture changes And now what?

1 2 3 4 Four Communication Revolutions There are only 4 periods in the last 500 years where media can be called a revolution. 1. printing press 2. two way communication, telephone 3. recorded media including photography, vinyl (l.p’s) and ﬁlm 4. sending sound and images through the air

The Fifth Communication Revolution img: Chris Harrison The Internet The ﬁrst medium that has native support for groups and conversations at the same time. The Internet gives us the many to many pattern where as the phone gave us one to one and newspapers etc. gave one to many Members of the former audience can now be producers and not just consumers. via http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/InternetMap/index.html

20th century credit: Clay Shirky How an organization gets out a message to people distributed at the edges of the network. The 20th Century answer: - bundle up the message and send the same message - targeted invidividuals - relative sparse number of producers - very expensive to do so not a lot of competition This is how you reach people

The audience can talk back but... All of that is over. We are increasingly in a landscape where media is: - Global - Social - Ubiquitous - Cheap

21st century The paradigm shift is now: - people are no longer disconnected from one another - former consumers are now producers - audience can talk directly to one another - there are more amateurs than professionals

The size of the network is actually the square of number the participants - when the network grows large it grows very very large As recently as last decade most of the media available for public consumption was produced by professionals. Those days are over. It is the blue lines that are the source of the feed. Consumption and conversation are now hand-in-hand. Slides 26-31 lifted from Clay Shirky. Incidentally, we were on the same panel at SXSW in 2000. He’s gotten quite inﬂuential ;) Find Clay’s talk at: http://blog.ted.com/2009/06/clay_shirky_how.php

Four Eras of Computing To understand why digital is the way it is we also have to take a look at how the relationship between computers and people have evolved. The key point being accessibility.

Mainframe Era, 1960 One computer many users img: http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/cote/54408562/

Personal Computer Era, 1980 One computer per user http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/puckman/247365323/

Mobility Era, 2000 Several computers per user. This is my son, Ellis, when he was a one year-old.

Ubiquity Era, 2020+ One user, thousands of computers. Ubiquitous Interaction (Uix) research group http://citywall.org/pages/about

Ubiquity Era, 2020+ Embedded computer chips will be everywhere. Implant technology is already commonplace in the form of replacement surgery (artiﬁcial joints, pacemakers, etc). The Audio Tooth Implant (ATI) is the ﬁrst commodity based in-body product. Augmenting our body’s communication skills it enables a form of telepathy. A micro-vibration device and a wireless low frequency receiver are implanted in the tooth during routine dental surgery. The tooth communicates with an array of digital devices, such as mobile telephones, radio and computers. A dedicated device (also acts as the long-range receiver) is used to fully customise the set up for each individuals personal requirements. http://www.auger-loizeau.com/projects/ati/pro_ati.html

Four Eras of Computing Find out more via: Being Human: Human-Computer Interaction in the year 2020 Editors: Richard Harper, Tom Rodden, Yvonne Rogers and Abigail Sellen

“ A revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new tools, it happens when society adopts new bahaviors.” Clay Shirky Author of Here Comes Everybody img: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ClayShirkyJI1.jpg

STATUS QUO It is now just as easy to create content as it is to consume it. failure shapes our success

SIMPLE TRUTH Moving beyond the 30 second spot, a headline and key visual What makes a business fail is when it does not adapt to the way that customers are changing or the way that the industry is heading and remain relevant to customer needs. - connected vs separated - platform vs campaign - agile vs rigid - context vs insight - niche vs mass http://blogs.ilog.com/isis/2008/06/agile-vs-rigid-software-development/

The New Scarcity ou rces le s ilab ava available attention It's a simple equation - there's a limited amount of attention in the world, if more of it is going to personal, non-commercial, un-advertised-in media, less of it will go to advertising and advertising will shrink. - Russell Davies

img: http://artofthearcade.tumblr.com/post/ 164840363/title-pitfall-illustration-activision-year Avoiding advertising via Pitfall

Mass vs. Niche Niche vs Mass Speaks to the lowest- Speaks to those that common-denominator are sincerely interested photo: http://www.halfconversation.com Think about the myth that is the brand you are charged with building. Find the brand’s point of view, create the brand’s world. Don’t treat consumers like idiots. Get online and see how people are living – but that doesn’t mean charge and claim a stake in Second Life!

photo: http://www.halfconversation.com

img: http://blacknerdsnetwork.blogspot.com Black Nerds Network is a collective formed to readdress the words, Black and Nerd. we are aimed at fashion thinking book reading kite ﬂying Nerds. http://desedo.com/blog/black-nerds/ http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/52025/ http://www.villagevoice.com/2002-07-30/news/the-rise-of-the-black-nerd/ http://thenublack.wordpress.com/

Campaign vs. Platform Set for a specific time, Grows over time, built based on interruption to last, rooted in utility (advertising cycle) traditional advertising process is established around discontinuous cycles. I'm a big brand, I do two bursts of TV a year. I'm a product launch, and I make a big noise around the time that I launch to make as many people aware of me as possible. Digital models of-course work differently. Digital is all about experimentation, adpatability, optimisation, beta. What Mark would call 'lighting lots of fires'. Being flexible, seeding many ideas, optimising the best ones. Digital also allows for adpative change. Instead of coming up with a grand idea, researching it to death and presenting it to the world, it allows for a continuous cycle of development and improvement.

img: http://www.fromkeetra.com/posts.php?post=031 nike +

nike +

Three Agency Models Today Communications CAMPAIGNS Short-lived messages, media Relationships PROGRAMS Ongoing-Iterative dialogue / channels / communities Systems of Interaction PLATFORMS Longer-lasting service / products / applications / interfaces credit: RGA, The Way Forward R/GA, The Way Forward http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsRpXZML5YU 00:31:00

Diversity of Output Crispin Creative In-house Campaigns Goodby Production out-of-house Creative In-house Draft FCB Campaigns + Analytics In-house Rapp Programs Production out-of-house R/GA Campaigns + Creative In-house AKQA Programs + Analytics In-house Razorﬁsh Platforms Production In-house credit: RGA, The Way Forward All agencies need to map themselves in this unfolding landscape

THE RIGHT TALENT THINKING Writer & Art Director STORY SYSTEM/ INTEGRATION Digerati DOING credit: RGA, The Way Forward R/GA, The Way Forward http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsRpXZML5YU 00:31:00

“ The new thing is never as good as the old thing, at least right now. Soon, the new thing will be better than the old will be. But if you wait until then it’s going to be too late.” Sara Lloyd Digital Director at PanMacmillan http://www.thebookseller.com/news/99853-toc-frankfurtsara-lloyd-digital-world-is-the-present.html http://thedigitalist.net/?p=714 img: http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/x180/3270162783/sizes/l/in/photostream/

SIMPLE TRUTH People own your brand There's no incentive to change. When your life is based on broadcast and print CPMs, the only ad model you see is, well, CPMs." This is on both sides of the coin (both publisher and agency). Things are still all about scale (even more than ever now that media agencies are increasingly moving away from models based on taking a cut of spend). I've said it once and I'll say it again, the web works best when it's not used as a scale medium. Sure, it works sometimes (Barbarian Group is responsible for one of the more famous successes), but the more consistent and long term solution is to build great experiences for a very speciﬁc group of people, plain and simple (and scalable, actually, just not scalable in the same way a television buy is). http://www.noahbrier.com/archives/2009/02/ random_thoughts_on_online_advertising.php

SOME PROJECTS A brand is built of successive and connected ideas* The interface determines the behaviour - rory sutherland 11:30 ted video *Brand Innovation Manifesto - John Grant

Brand Innovation Manifesto - John Grant http://planner.wordpress.com/2007/01/30/the-john-grant-manifesto/

“ Great campaign, one of those ‘make you look twice’ things. Nice that those brands went along with it too, there's a good variation in them and like you say, everyone gets something for being involved.” Alexa Comment on Creative Review To promote last fall's edgy vampire series True Blood, HBO created fake "Tru:Blood" beverage ads, vampire tolerance PSAs on YouTube, and a seemingly functional vampire-human dating site called LoveBitten.net. The stunts helped True Blood's Sunday night viewership grow 66% over the course of its ﬁrst season -- faster than The Sopranos did. http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=107103

2008 titles trueblood

lovebitten.com

2008 at comic con http://www.flickr.com/photos/thegr/2729668327/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/slworking/3911097547/sizes/l/

trublood.com

http://www.flickr.com/photos/malkoff

lovebitten.com

2009 titles trueblood

This brilliantly innovative billboard has been launched recently in New Zealand and takes ambient media to potentially dangerous new extremes, for vampires at least. img ﬂickr user: antony8627

“ Total connection with brand and full personalization options...You can design and buy your shoes from everwhere. Great!” Mikeelrapido Comment on blog http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/alistairhall The process of buying the product is the ad

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ layuetsai/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattr/214270561/sizes/l/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gaspar/2555807430/sizes/o/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/antimega

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattr/214270561/sizes/l/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alistairhall/

Marketing a car doesn’t simply have to be about marketing a car – promoting its performance and efﬁciency virtures. VolksWagen has launched new grass roots experiential initiative in Sweden, which is encouraging local consumers to live leaner and greener lives We believe that the easiest way to change people's behaviour for the better is by making it fun to do. We call it The fun theory. Do you have an idea that uses fun to change behaviour? Enter now for the chance to win €2500 http:// www.thefuntheory.com

6 million views on YouTube We believe that the easiest way to change people's behaviour for the better is by making it fun to do. We call it The fun theory. Do you have an idea that uses fun to change behaviour? Enter now for the chance to win €2500 http://www.thefuntheory.com

CNN T-Shirts CNN had recently re-launched its website with lots more video content. As part of that effort, they unveiled the tagline “I just saw it on CNN.com.” in an attempt to draw attention to and help people uncover the newly reorganized and video-rich content on CNN.com. While the tagline was resonating, they were looking for a bit more oomph behind the marketing efforts. CNN needed to increase buzz, awareness and most importantly traffic to these new videos. They launched a search for an agency that could help them in their task. The Barbarians responded with just the kind of thinking they were looking for and were selected for the assignment. http://edition.cnn.com/tshirt/index.html

CNN T-Shirts What We Did to Make it Awesome The premise of our idea was simple. We wanted to add a t-shirt icon next to video-related headlines in the Latest News section of the front page of CNN.com. We made no real mention of the t-shirts other than adding this little icon. We knew that the massive amount of traffic would ensure that a good number of people would click on the icon out of pure curiosity. http://edition.cnn.com/tshirt/index.html

CNN T-Shirts We planned to play off of this curiosity two-fold. Once a regular CNN.com user was intrigued by the t-shirt icon they would be simultaneously informed about the videos. Clicking on the icon would lead them to a custom t-shirt shop, which we created in partnership with Spreadshirt. Here you could purchase a t-shirt with the headline on it. The shirts were emblazoned with the “I just saw it on CNN.com” tagline, along with the date and time of the headline. You could also seamlessly launch right into the video on CNN.com at any point in this experience. Not only would this sort-of-unprecedented marketing effort be sure to get people talking, but it would also tap into a secondary viral marketing effect as people wore the shirts out and about and shared them with their friends or broadcasted their purchase on their Facebook News Feed. People could choose shirts with headlines they were happy about, appalled about, found surreal, or just whimsical. http://edition.cnn.com/tshirt/index.html

CNN T-Shirts The Results The program rolled out in full on April 21, 2008 with minimal industry PR. In the next six weeks, we’ve had almost 2 million pageviews, and tons of blog mentions, including leaders such as TechCrunch, PSFK, and 37 Signals, as well as a write up in the New York Times. We’ve also sold a lot of shirts, weirdly, though that was never the real goal. The goal, as we said, was about awareness, and we’ve succeeded roundly on that front. http://edition.cnn.com/tshirt/index.html

CNN T-Shirts http://edition.cnn.com/tshirt/index.html

Lance Armstrong's Livestrong campaign, which focuses on inspiring and assisting cancer patients, has teamed up with Nike and software developer Deeplocal to develop the Chalkbot. This robot is programmed to paint text messages in yellow chalk along the 2,200 mile route of the Tour de France bicycle race. Up to 100,000 messages of "courage, hope and action" will be chalked along the route, Nike expects. You can submit your very own message by texting "LIVESTRONG," followed by your message, to 36453, or by visiting the ofﬁcial site.

baker tweet http://www.bakertweet.com

http:// www.moldover.com

I had been wanting to work at Crispin Porter + Bogusky since I got interested in advertising a few years ago. The problem was that every other young creative wanted to work there too. I came up with an idea to write a Request for Employment and have people send the link via Twitter to Alex Bogusky and Jeff Benjamin of CP+B. For each of the ﬁrst 200 tweets sent on my behalf I promised to donate $1 to one of two great causes: The James Lee Foundation and The MS Society of Canada. The ﬁrst day I sent tweets to a few ad industry twitterers who then copy and pasted tweets from my site to @bogusky and @cpbjeff. After just over a week I had 80 tweets sent on my behalf from people all over the Twitterverse and 10,000 unique visitors checked out the project site. It was amazing watching this thing unfold and how people reacted to it. Beyond sending the RFE tweets, people just wanted to talk about it and hundreds of project related tweets were sent. Most people thought it was great, others not so much. It was just great to see people talking about how we use Twitter. Lucky for me CP+B loved the project and offered me a position, which I accepted. May 2009 Blogging about Tweet my RFE to CP+B:

“ I don’t have to control the conversation to beneﬁt from their interest in my product. The key is to produce something that both pulls people together and gives them something to do.” Henry Jenkins Professor of Comparative Studies, M.I.T.

PROJECTS Create a great experience for a speciﬁc group of people

YOUR TAKEAWAY Embrace change

The New Scarcity ou rces le s ilab ava available attention What makes a business fail is when it does not adapt to the way that customers are changing or the way that the industry is heading and remain relevant to customer needs.

People (consumers) have more choice, bigger voice and more control. agencies have lost track of the change. you have to constantly think, what will the consumer do. - more choice, larger voice, and more in control current agencies are not designed to take advantage of this change w/out taking fundamental and structural changes in their agency model

The digital space is getting more complicated which in turn demands more collaboration Combination of people/ talent that are - thinkers - doers - conceptual the combination in the digital space is getting more complicated becoming a complicated integration of people and ideas that has never has happened before huge talent gap the way forward for agencies is something that’s been missing for a long time - dna capabilites in collaboration - agencies are more ﬁercely competitive

“ If I choose to tell my friend about your brand, it’s not because I like your brand, but rather because I like my friend.” Mike Arauz Strategist at Undercurrent http://www.thebookseller.com/news/99853-toc-frankfurtsara-lloyd-digital-world-is-the-present.html http://thedigitalist.net/?p=714 img: http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/x180/3270162783/sizes/l/in/photostream/

STATUS QUO It is now just as easy to create content as it is to consume it. failure shapes our success

SIMPLE TRUTH People own your brand There's no incentive to change. When your life is based on broadcast and print CPMs, the only ad model you see is, well, CPMs." This is on both sides of the coin (both publisher and agency). Things are still all about scale (even more than ever now that media agencies are increasingly moving away from models based on taking a cut of spend). I've said it once and I'll say it again, the web works best when it's not used as a scale medium. Sure, it works sometimes (Barbarian Group is responsible for one of the more famous successes), but the more consistent and long term solution is to build great experiences for a very speciﬁc group of people, plain and simple (and scalable, actually, just not scalable in the same way a television buy is). http://www.noahbrier.com/archives/2009/02/ random_thoughts_on_online_advertising.php

PROJECTS Create a great experience for a speciﬁc group of people

THANK YOU jeremy.abbett.net twitter.com/jeremytai friendfeed.com/jeremytai slideshare.net/jeremytai www.truthdare.de img: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xffQBxfKJg

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Battle Royale

by Jeremy Abbett on Nov 24, 2009

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Battle Royale — Document Transcript