The Matrix, Experience Channels, and THE WINE PACKAGING OF TOMORROW!!!

Andy Warhol said that in the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. He was wrong. In fact, in the future, everyone will be an advert for fifteen minutes. That’s because it’s in the nature of experience channels to allow just about anyone to share their impressions of a particular brand in a way that’s very public, very credible, and thus very good for the brand.

Whenever that happens, I’m reminded of ‘The Matrix’, and in particular the way that the men-in-black security agents possess people. Someone perfectly normal is walking down the street; all of a sudden, they get zapped, turn into a man in black, and start chasing their target; all of a sudden, the chase has moved on, and a rather puzzled citizen is left to be themselves again. When you watch that, you’re not watching fantasy; you’re watching a very astute metaphor for the ad agency of the future.

And now it’s my turn to step into the chase and become an advert, because the rather lovely people at FreshCase have sent me a couple of boxes of Hardys Nottage Hill wine to try out – a Cabernet Shiraz and a Sauvignon. Rather than write about it, I thought I’d make a quick videoblog – so, here’s my own small contribution to their rapidly growing experience channel:

And how’s the FreshCase experience channel coming along? Well, if you google FreshCase then the first page you get balances more formal news stories with a number of bloggers talking about the product. It’s not at Red Bull levels yet, but it is an impressive demonstration of just how impactful a well curated web presence – rather than a website – can be. A whole page of positive mentions from varied sources will always trump one or two search results pointing to a single site, no matter how well placed those results are.

What’s interesting, though, is how FreshCase’s experience channel can develop. It’s doing very well on the blogs, but those rather funky wine boxes haven’t yet metamorphosed into the fully fledged social objects that they could so easily become. As a result, the FreshCase experience channel isn’t yet fully mature; the various film and video sites are still waiting to be populated with content that records the social drinking of FreshCase wine, rather than just the more individual testing of it.

There’s a very interesting opportunity there. I’d look to follow the example of Hugh Macleod’s work with Stormhoek; by getting 100 Dinners going, he created an experience channel based on authentic real world fun, that both generated substantial online content for the brand, and helped a lot of people have a really good time so doing. Oh, and increased sales by five in less than two years!

I wonder what the FreshCase equivalent would be? I’m not quite sure, because I’m not really close enough to the brand to judge. If you put me up against a wall and threatened to shoot me, though, I’d be tempted to think in terms of FreshCase soirees / salons; I’d get some interesting folk along, maybe a little performance of some description, lots of conversation, a FreshCase box on every table, make sure there’s wireless, and let the social media generate itself. And of course I’d run them over a very specific six week period, because that’s how long wine lasts in a FreshCase box.

And in the meantime, I’m off to have another glass of wine. One tip, though – the wine doesn’t breathe as well as it could, precisely because the box is so effectively airtight. That’s not a problem for the white, but we’ve been decanting the red and letting it sit for a bit before drinking. Chin chin!

What is an Experience Channel?

Having introduced the idea of an Experience Channel in a previous post, I thought I’d sketch out what I meant by it in a little more detail. So, a few more thoughts on what exactly I think an Experience Channel is:

Poly communication

In an Experience Channel, communication isn’t one way or two way, but multi-way. Anyone can talk with anyone, whenever they want to. Interaction opportunities are created from as many different kinds of media as possible. Coherence develops from a single theme or set of themes shared across multiple platforms, rather than from use of a single, central content platform.

Three degrees of channel engagement

There are three different ways of engaging with an Experience Channel; as a content creator, a poster or a lurker. Content creators create or add new content. Posters comment on existing material. Lurkers are an audience in the traditional sense; although they could interact if they wanted to, they choose to sit back and watch the Channel develop.

Web presence, not website

An Experience Channel’s front end isn’t really a particular website; it’s a page of search engine results. It does not use a single, exclusive site as a platform. It can be accessed through multiple portals, and exists on multiple sites. Everyone who engages with it is free to pick and choose from these different portals / sites, mixing up their own personal version of the experience Channel.

Evolution through interaction

Experience Channels are in a constant state of evolution. They develop through conversation between content creators and posters. Ideally, regular new content should constantly be triggering new bursts of conversation, to both inspire existing content creators / posters / lurkers, and bring in new ones. As much as possible, evolution should be open and unmoderated – it’s the community that creates and steers the channel, not one single channel owner.

Keeping it real

Experience Channels exist in the offline world too; they’re not just about virtual engagement. Formal and informal events bring together channel members to meet and engage with each other, and share relevant experiences. These experiences are then recorded / talked about online, providing a further basis for Experience Channel evolution.

That’s a very basic definition of a what an Experience Channel is; but why are they useful? What’s an Experience Channel for? Well, some thoughts on that -

Engagement

Experience Channels facilitate in-depth audience engagement with your brand, organisation, or even just your particular, personal obsession. They make it easier to reach relevant content by making it more pervasive, and they accommodate multiple browsing styles (the random Googler who just wants to check out a website, the committed Tweeter who wants ongoing updates on their iPhone, the blog poster who loves chatting with like minded people, etc).

Education

They make it easy to share rich information about your brand, organisation or whatever in a wide variety of formats. They also ensure that that information doesn’t just come from you; external Experience Channel Content Creators / Posters add to the liveliness and variety of the channel, in effect advocating on your behalf. Lurkers might even help bring new eyes in. They won’t be taking part in the conversation, but they could well be forwarding links to their own online networks.

Conversation

Constructive conversation is always a good thing. At their best, a fully functioning Experience Channel allows you to support and become a member of a group of committed, creative people who share your obsessions, and are willing to constructively engage with them on an ongoing basis. At a more basic level, they give people who want to talk and share information about your brand / organisation / obsessions the tools to do so.

So, that’s the initial Experience Channel definition. I’ve touched on one below – the Red Bull Experience – but in my next post, I’m going to dig up some more practical examples.

There’s one EC I’m definitely going to include in there; the one built around everyone’s favourite meerkat, Aleksandr Orlov. VCCP have done a superb job there – more on exactly why I think it’s so good when I get a moment to sit down and write about it!

WriteClub comes to London

For a little while now, I’ve been chatting to Leif Kendall, Brighton copywriter and organiser of the rather wonderful Brighton writers’ meetup WriteClub, about doing a London version. Well, it’s happening!

We’ll be at The Yorkshire Grey at 7.30 on Tuesday 1 December at 19:30. Here’s a map; address as follows:

46 Langham Street
London
W1W 7AX

You’ll know Leif by his copy of Don Quixote. To complement the prose – and salute Ezra Pound, who used to live next door – I’ll be sat there with a copy of his epic poetic tome, The Cantos.

Here’s Leif’s post about the evening. It’s going to be a very open, friendly night; so, if you’re any sort of writer, and fancy chatting about fiction, non-fiction, copywriting, screenwriting, in an on-line, off-line or broadcast context (or indeed whatever else takes your fancy) look forward to seeing you there!

Red Bull gives me wings

I had a bit of an odd experience a couple of weeks back at the Media140 Conference, because Red Bull and an upcoming BBC documentary came together to help me understand exactly what it is we at Tuttle produce for people. In particular, that’s fed into an understanding of what we are beginning to do for Counterpoint and – through them – the British Council.

Inspiration kicked off with Red Bull. A whole section of the conference was dedicated to what they’re up to; watching slides about their Flugtags, Air Races, X-Fighters, and so on, I realised that they had moved from being a product brand to a grouped set of related experiences. As one of the speakers pointed out, ‘the marketing becomes the product’.

It’s possible to read that as a kind of Ballardian condemnation of Red Bull, but I think to do so is missing the point. In Red Bull’s case, ‘the marketing becomes the product’ doesn’t mean that the reality of a consumer good has been replaced by the ephemerality of marketing activity. Rather, it’s a comment about what’s available for Red Bull consumers to invest their money and time in.

Red Bull began as an energy drink; people buying Red Bull brought liquid in a can. Marketing activity – designed to amplify the drink’s energy positioning – became more and more elaborate. Now, if people want to buy into the Red Bull brand, they can do so by enjoying a wide variety of different events.

That creates a deep change in what Red Bull is. It no longer sells you a drink that makes you dynamic; rather, it sells the experience of dynamism in a variety of formats. Given that, it seemed to me to be no longer enough to call Red Bull a consumer brand. Rather, (I thought) it has become a highly profitable experience channel. But what is an experience channel?

Next up to speak were Innocent; they provided a little more inspiration. They’re renowned for their ability to engage consumers, by making them feel that they’re personally engaged with the brand. That sense of personal engagement is very important. Consumer brands communicate through monologues. Experience channels, however, are much more two way. Ideally, they’re all about conversation.

That sense of conversation led me away from what you’d traditionally call a brand, and towards the BBC. A little while back, I went to the launch of Digital Revolution, a partially crowd-sourced documentary series. The team there have been filtering traditional documentary making methods through online conversation and engagement. They’ve turned the documentary development and production process itself into an experience channel; one that a variety of very savvy, and very engaged, web denizens have been deeply engaging with.

Thinking about these three led me to a basic definition of what an experience channel is. That’s something I’ve been jotting down notes about over the last week or so. Rather than go into full details here – and create a truly epic post – I’m going to do some more jotting, and post a basic experience channel definition at some point over the next few days. Don’t touch that dial! (as I would say if I were a radio host).

Media 140 Monday!

Yesterday was a fascinating day, as I hit the Media 140 conference at RIBA. Some very interesting speeches by some very interesting speakers; so much so, that I was inspired to videoblog while walking between the conference venue and the after conference party. So here’s me, wandering around somewhere near Oxford Circus, with some of my favourite insights from the day:

(and apologies for not crediting insights to speakers – alas, my note taking was a little *unsophisticated* on that front! So, once again, thanks to all at Media 140 London for a great day and evening.)

Watching the 20th Century

Well, it’s been another very hectic few weeks, so another period of hiatus on the blog! Not to worry, I am taking myself in hand (as they say) and should be reverting to a more regular publishing schedule from now on. And, of course, the reasons for the hiatus have been rather exciting. First of all, I’ve started writing the next novel – details of that over at allumination – and secondly, I’ve been doing some really fascinating work with the Counterpoint team at the British Council, which is just starting to go live.

First of all, some introductions. Counterpoint is the British Council’s thinktank; their website here. To celebrate both their recent relaunch and – more broadly – the British Council’s 75th anniversary, they are developing four project streams – ‘Identities and the self’, ‘Cultures’, ‘Radicalisms’ and ‘Social Planet’. Taken together, all deal with the great modern question; how can we balance the individual with the social in a world that combines more-militant-than-ever senses of self with a historically unprecedented ability (and need) to come together in mass social groups?

I’ve become involved with this very fascinating debate through the Tuttle Club. In broad terms, we’re helping Counterpoint and the British Council explore the possibilities of social media. In specific terms, along with Lloyd Davis I’m rooting through the British Council’s media history, exploring its film holdings at the BFI and blogging about what I find. You can read what I’ve been up to so far here – over the next few weeks, this will be extended with more posts, videoblogs, interviews and so on, and should also be mirrored on the main Counterpoint website.

So far, it’s been a fascinating process, and I’ve barely begun. I’m looking forward to getting stuck into the main body of the British Council / BFI film holdings, exploring the administrative history of the British Council film division, and so on, over the next few weeks. That’s all going to be on the project blog, so I won’t be talking about it in detail here. I’ve also ended up spending a lot of time engaging with the BFI – they’re a really interesting organisation, and in some ways ideally placed to take advantage of our modern digital media age. There will be an upcoming blog post on that, when I get a moment!

So, for now, that’s what’s lain behind the hiatus. I’m going to keep watching the 30s, 40s and 50s; if you’re as fascinated by it all as I am, then make sure you bookmark the ‘British Council at 75′ blog where that will be happening, and I’ll see you over there!

August – quiet on the blog, busy elsewhere

A quiet six weeks or so on the blog; partially, I’ve been very busy with some really interesting work, partially my digital time has been going elsewhere, and partially because I thought I’d take a bit of a summer break. Of course, as soon as I decided to spend less time at the laptop and more time outside it immediately chucked it down for a month non-stop, but that’s the English summer for you.

So, apart from getting soggy, what have I been up to? Well, first of all some fascinating work for drugs policy foundation Transform, which is already bearing fruit here at Reuters, and (in a less direct way) here at the New Scientist. More’s upcoming in November, when I’ll go into more detail about it all.

I’ve also been helping London Livery Guild The Tallow Chandlers define themselves. I’m a member myself; I wrote our current website a few years back. It’s now looking pretty tired and so – as part of a general website update and brand polishing plan – I’ve been polling other members as to how they see the Tallow Chandlers, and how the company should present itself to the world. We’re meeting to talk the results through tomorrow, and should have a new, much improved site up and running by the end of the year.

More personally, I’ve been teaching myself the basics of HTML, XHTML and CSS. That too has been fascinating; I’m particularly impressed by how flexible and responsive a language each is. Very logical and easy to read, too; in fact, working with it has taken me right back to my 1980s obsession with BBC Basic. Anyway, that should hopefully bear fruit in a new improved website / blog hosting set up, again going live over the next couple of months.

And finally, there’s the creative stuff – so far, more work on the upcoming book (I’m currently working out exactly how a trans-Solar System economy would work in about 2300AD), a couple of Graan gigs (a highly enjoyable jaunt to Southampton, and an opportunity to get stuck into the fantastic sound system at the Corsica Studios, while supporting the wonderful Nadja), and a mysterious film project that will hopefully lead to much interestingness.

So, all in all, a busy summer; September and October will I hope be equally busy (if all goes according to plan I’ll be spending some work time in Japan, and watching lots of documentaries – more on this as it happens), and I’ll be blogging about it all here – so, see you at the next post!

Sponsoring Clarion West

When I’m not busy being a media geek / web urchin, I’m a writer – and I’m currently taking part in the Clarion West Writeathon, in support of Clarion West, which is a six week long speculative fiction workshop which happens in Seattle every year.

More details of what I’ve been up to here at allumination, my fiction / music / poetry blog; and if you want to find out more about Clarion West, you can go straight to their website here. And finally, to donate, visit my writeathon page – all goes to help support the workshop itself, and any attendees who need help to attend.

Getting informal at the BBC

Well, a fascinating Friday afternoon at the BBC Web at 20 documentary launch, surrounded by true web royalty, from Sir Tim Berners Lee down. Having been appropriately awed by said royalty, I decided that I am in fact a web urchin, and then sat down to enjoy the show.

There doesn’t seem to be too much point in rehashing the content – you can catch much of it here and here, and it’s been well commented on all over the place – so instead, I’m just going to make a note of a perception about formal and informal media that really leapt out at me as I sat there.

As the introductory video began, with Fatboy Slim pounding out as background music, it struck me that there’s a big difference between the kind of professionally produced content that fills the traditional mediasphere, and the more informal creative work that thrives online.

The Fatboy Slim track was a first cue to formality. If I wanted to use it in a short film, I wouldn’t be able to; I couldn’t afford the licensing costs (in fact, I ran into licensing issues at the Tate only last week). The BBC, of course, can – and so its presence here became for me a signifier of the BBC’s commercial and creative heft, its status as the kind of organisation that works with, and creates, formal, rather than informal, media.

Then, there was the editing of the video itself. It was wonderfully crafted, clearly the product of a highly skilled professional; but again, the  sheen that that professionalism gave it very firmly placed it in the formal media camp. It didn’t feel like the product of a personal obsession, of someone working out a tool as they went along in order to use it to say what they desperately needed to say.

That sense of formality was also present in the broader structure of the event. The main speakers – Sir Tim Berners Lee, Bill Thompson and Susan Greenfield, MC’d by event and programme host Aleks Krotoski – sat on a little podium, variously giving speeches, talking with each other, and responding to questions. The questioners sat on bar stools off to one side; Chris Anderson beamed down from a video screen. We – as audience – audienced before them.

It was a physical structure that mimicked the audience / content relationships of traditional media forms. Experts talked; other experts interacted with them; and everyone else observed. Chances to interrupt the smooth flow of expertise (although in the case of Susan Greenfield, I use that term in its loosest possible sense) were few and far between; chances for informal conversation, rather than formal Q&A, were non-existent.

This formality contrasted very strongly with the various Web inspired events that have been becoming more and more popular. Unconferences, Tuttle Crowd / Tribe / Team workshops, meet ups of one kind or another, and even more traditional conferences and exhibitions – all have made a virtue of open, conversational informality, and deliberately created spaces within which hierarchy is erased and content follows shared personal obsessions.

Of course, that happened at the Web At 20 event – but it happened afterwards, when everyone was chatting over drinks, and felt very separate from the main flow of things. I felt very distant from the main event itself; in fact, I felt like I was watching it on television, rather than actually present. I didn’t even manage to get an audience question in, which is very rare indeed!

And of course, that’s not to say that it wasn’t a very enjoyable event; who couldn’t enjoy really interesting people talking about really interesting things? But it was very formal indeed, and for me it highlighted a fascinating problem that the Web at Twenty production team are going to have to deal with over the next few months.

The BBC – by definition – demands formal content; but the web thrives on informality. Web at Twenty is a BBC production about the web, so it’s going to have to engage with both the crafted professionalism of its parent and the obsessive amateurism of the online world. How’s it going to mediate between the two?

Will interviews be shot by professional cameramen, or by Zi6 wielding researchers? Will the final edit of each show happen in a BBC edit suite, or on a laptop running iMovie or Windows Movie Maker? Will incidental music come from Fatboy Slim, or Golders Green’s finest bedroom kosmische guitarist?

Will all footage come from the production team, or will people pop up online with invaluable content they’ve shot themselves? Once it’s all coming together, will people be able to remix Web at 20 content any way they want to, or will it be licensed in such a way that that’s impossible? Assuming it happens, how’s all that remixed content going to interact with the broader BBC web presence?

The Web at 20 production team are a very creative, seriously sharp bunch, so I suspect that their answers to the above are going to be fascinating. And the launch event? In the end – and despite the above – I think it was a very positive achievement.

It didn’t fully embody the informality of the web, but it’s content did do a very good job of introducing the concept of it to the BBC. It planted an informal media seed, and from now on, that seed’s going to grow. Of course, we can all be a part of its growth, following it and engaging with it here. It should be very exciting watching it develop!

An observation on observation

Johnnie Moore uses this video to make a rather wonderful point about the need to notice what’s round us, without constriction. Certainly, it taught me a thing or two about how unobservant I can be:

JM quotes Castaneda to support his point; I couldn’t help thinking of a William Blake line, ‘the eye sees more than the heart knows’, which concisely summarises our frequent, shared inability to find anything more in the outside world than what we already contain within ourselves.