The Internet is trying very hard to tell us the future of stories
Story telling innovators: Charles Dickens, Jean Luc Godard, Elan Lee
“The Internet is trying very, very hard to tell us.” That quote is from Elan Lee, one of the early pioneers of Alternate Reality Games. Lee created I Love Bees to promote the Xbox game Halo 2, and was part of the 42 Entertainment team (along with Alex Lieu and Susan Bonds) behind Year Zero, which engaged thousands of Nine Inch Nails fans in the creation of a story around the album of the same name.
The quote above quote appears in Frank Rose’s new book, The Art of Immersion, due out in February 2011. Rose, a long time contributing editor at Wired, where he’s covered everything from the fall of the music industry to the impact of digital technology on television, offers an assessment of where story-telling is going in an age when narratives are no longer linear and more often than not are told, or at least informed, by the participation of a consumer community.
Rose labels this “deep media.” Story-telling that offers an immersive experience. It refers to everything from the online audiences that gathered on their own to decipher the convoluted plot line of Lost, to the MadMen fans who hijacked the show’s characters in the form of Twitter personas, playing Don and Betty true to their ‘60s personas.
The Art of Immersion is out in February 2011
To his credit, Rose doesn’t simply regurgitate examples of current entertainment and gaming industry campaigns like Avatar or Grand Theft Auto. He frames the challenges and emerging formulas in light of all the story telling changes that have come before, from the serialized novels of Dickens, to the early breakthroughs created by D.W. Griffith that gave film its own identity as a medium, to the trans-media narratives about which Henry Jenkins writes so intelligently.
Multiple themes emerge in Rose’s book. The first is that conventional entertainment doesn’t work they way it used to. We know that just from looking at the numbers. Box office sales, DVD sales, music sales have all plummeted in recent years.
Secondly, the command and control world of the author (or auteur in the film world) is over. As soon as the audience can step in, create content and direct, the old model crumbles.
Three, stories and games have become more inextricably linked than ever. A game may never be able to offer the full “sensory wallop” of a motion picture, but they certainly allow the viewer to insert himself directly into the experience. Given the desire to participate, games become a magical way to connect and influence.
And four, it’s normal for there to be confusion and even resistance as a new definition of story telling develops and movie makers, publishers and ad agencies all struggle to figure it out.
One of my favorite quotes in the book, memorable to any film student of the 70s or 80s, is from Jean Luc Godard, the French New Wave director whose approach to story telling challenged Hollywood and even French convention. Asked if a story shouldn’t have a beginning, middle and end, he answered, “Of course, just not necessarily in that order.”
Today’s question might be, “Shouldn’t every story have an author?” The answer might be, “Of course, but why limit it to one.”
Gifts of Giving from Facebook and Google
It’s the time of year when all sorts of packages show up at the office. Gourmet popcorns, fruit baskets, Godiva chocolates if you’re lucky. Unfortunately, more often than not the corrugated containers reveal some stupid tchotchke buried beneath environmentally offensive turds of foam core.
Not trying to be a Scrooge, but really, what are people thinking?
Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised when I opened a box from Facebook. It had been sitting on the floor of my office for a week, relegated to a to-be-recycled pile of magazines and stuff. I guess curiosity finally won out.
Here’s what I found. A double-walled porcelain cup, BPA free and microwave safe. True, that qualifies as a branded tchotchke. But at least it’s a useful one. There was also a pocket envelope with the single word “Please” printed on it. The card inside also displayed one word. “Share.” A request that was hard to ignore when you realize you’re also holding a $75.00 gift card redeemable at donorschoose.org.
Five minutes later I’d passed the money on to two different projects, one in need of books for a lower school’s girls’ reading group. Another for an inner city middle school class requesting funds for classroom technology.
Good idea, Facebook. Made me think better of you and did exactly what any marketer should be doing these days – marketing with, not to, its community. It let me participate, introduced me to a worthwhile organization, and inspired me to tell other people about it. I’ll even forgive you for the styrofoam popcorn kernels.
However, Google may have one-upped Facebook when it comes to giving. Between December 15 – 19, the search giant will donate money to a good cause for every tab you open in its Chrome browser, up to 250 tabs a day. You can buy vaccinations, books, clean water, shelter and trees. Open a tab and you’re “contributing” to The Nature Conservancy, Charity: Water, Doctors Without Borders, Un Techo para mi Pais, and Room to Read.
OK, in both these cases Facebook and Google have millions of dollars they can donate to charity. And obviously they were going to give the money away anyway. But as I’ve said here many times, why would any brand do that in the age of social media when you can allocate your money to your community, give them a say, allow them to be part of the experience and encourage them to feel good about themselves as well as your brand.
Congratulations to Facebook and Google, rivals in the market, but allies in the season of social giving.
What if someone confesses suicidal thoughts on your Facebook page?
You have a branded Facebook page. It’s pretty active. Lots of people commenting, interacting, talking about your product, how they use it, what they like about it.
Then out of nowhere someone posts, “I’m so depressed I’m thinking about killing myself.”
I did a fair amount of pro bono work for the Samaritans years ago. One of the first things they teach you is that prior to any suicide attempt there are always signs and that you have to take each and every one seriously. They range from a neglect in personal appearance, to giving away personal items, to voicing depression, to the most serious of all, a mention of suicide.
We have seen cases of people announcing their suicide on Facebook before. But what if it happens on your brand’s page? What do you do? Do you take it seriously? Do you respond? Do you delete it? Or simply disregard it? Tough choice. It could be a joke, or more likely a simple exaggeration.
Then again, what if it’s not? Imagine a scenario in which the person actually commits suicide and it becomes apparent that he posted his intentions on your page but no one responded, offered advice, or shared an 800 number for the Samaritans. Now there’s a PR nightmare.
Today some of us at Mullen went through this exercise. Here’s where we netted out.
We would choose not to respond publicly in the stream. Instead, if the user had his email permissions on, we would immediately send an email saying we hoped that he was OK and that if he wanted to talk about things we know people who are there to listen. We’d then include a number for the Samaritans. We would also alert the Samaritans to the fact that we were doing this. (The Samaritans actually have a page on Facebook.) Chances are they’d have a recommendation as well.
If his permissions were off, we thought it might be wise for a brand to create an individual (personal) user page and friend the person in order to send him an email with the above message. To be honest, we’re not entirely sure of this approach as a marketer could suddenly find himself in the middle of an online conversation or relationship that he’s ill-equipped to deal with. Then again, if you were seeking help or attention, would you have your email permissions turned off?
We’d obviously monitor the stream to see if there were additional comments or expressions of depression or if others joined the conversation. And finally we would alert Facebook and request their recommended protocol for dealing with this kind of situation.
David Meerman Scott in his new book Real Time Marketing and PR tells us that we have to respond to all things social within moments of their happening or risk the consequences. Not sure there’s an easy solution for something that might be this serious. How would you handle the situation?
Related links: Facebook adds to loneliness
Wired’s iPad version gets an upgrade
A mock up for an interactive Revlon ad
Wired magazine stopped by today to show off the newest capabilities for advertisers buying space in its iPad version. It was great to see that Conde Nast continues to aggressively develop what is already its most popular iPad property.
If you’ve played with previous issues you know that the depth of content and interactive features offered on this new platform are taking what we once called “print” to a whole new place.
Granted Wired’s app has been buggy. But despite some harsh reviews on iTunes, an awful lot of readers appear more than willing to pony up $3.99 every month for the video, slide shows and rich media that make the experience so much more promising than print.
According to Wired, users are downloading nearly 40,000 iPad versions each month without so much as making a dent in newsstand sales, which remain steady at 80,000 per issue. That can only mean that Wired’s iPad app is either attracting new readers, getting online browsers to pay, or inducing subscribers of the print version to augment their fix with some digital pleasure as well.
And it looks like the experience is about to get even better. Especially for advertisers. In the next month we’ll start to see inline video, opportunities for data capture, audio (originally available only for editorial), animation, information hot spots, in-app Twitter feeds, a look builder and a really nifty 360-degree explore feature that lets you move around an entire environment.
The different ways in which consumers can now interact with an ad will soon be infinite. In the above mock-up for Revlon a reader can apply different make-up – lip glosses, eye shadow, blush – and explore different looks in real time. With a look-builder retailers can let customers slide tops and bottoms across the screen to compose varying outfits. And by creating ads with HTML5 ad developers can add all kinds of rich media to the experience. When Apple increases processing power in the next generation of iPads we’ll see even more.
It would be hard for a creative person to sit through a demo of what’s coming for iPad ads and not get excited. Video, 360-degree views, pages that extend below the fold and embedded social media invite new kinds of experiences. Warning: do not put a :30 TV spot in your iPad ad; readers hate when you do that, expecting you to create unique content for the environment.
True, every capability you incorporate adds more to an already hefty price tag for running an ad in a medium where you’re paying a premium for the cache of it all. Then again, according to Wired anyway, the average reader spends an hour more each month with the iPad version of Wired than with the printed version. If you get your fair share of that time, perhaps it’s worth it.
It’s too soon to tell whether digital pads will make traditional print obsolete and unnecessary. But it’s definitely going to make traditional print ads look even older than they already do.
After all, do you want to read, or watch, or encounter an ad that you can’t interact with?
Syd Mead defines the creative person
Syd Mead, the visual futurist and concept artist best know for his work on films like Blade Runner, Aliens and Tron, has a new film out – A Future Imagined. This one, however, lasts all of seven minutes and plays primarily on Vimeo where it’s been viewed nearly 100,000 times in the week and a half since it’s been uploaded.
No doubt Mead has a lot of fans and followers. Car buffs admire his futuristic look at transportation. Architects analyze his buildings. Urban planners consider ideas based on his view of evolving cities. And, of course, set designers study his visionary film work.
A 1958 student sketch
But it might be wise for anyone in the advertising and marketing business to pay attention to his new short. For it’s actually less about the future and more about imagination and the process of creativity.
Of course Mead makes a few predictions. Among them is a suggestion that the future of transportation will be personal mobility systems rather than automobiles as we know them, an idea that makes a lot of sense given that 50 percent of the world’s population will soon live in the confined geography of a city. Let’s hope he’s right on that one.
But more interestingly he talks about what really matters – human imagination. “Imagination is essentially memory. It’s recording and memorizing what you’ve seen so you have experience. Then it’s assembling those experiences in different combinations. This is true whether you’re writing music, code or a new formula. Imagination of the process of arranging knowledge into new formats.” Pretty simple when you think about it.
My favorite part is his reminder that to be creative today we need to be three different people. You have to be the person who’s conceiving the idea that solves a problem in the first place. You have to be a technician in order that your solution is actually usable. And you have to be a detached observer of the first two “people,” able to be objective. “If you can’t do that you will never do good work,” insists Mead. You’ll become too fascinated with what you are doing. “Hubris kill.”
Inside most companies it takes three people to do what Mead suggests one person should do. There’s a problem solver or designer; a creative technologist of programmer; and a creative director or decision maker.
But I think he’s on to something suggesting that we have to be all three things ourselves. Or at least try. If nothing more it will make us better collaborators, closer to that T-shaped person that so many companies now want. What do you think? Does Syd Mead have the future definition of a creative person right?
