one part truth, two parts mixer

All quiet on the blog front

I'll be here for the next two weeks:

I love the power of photos to distort. The Mumbai I visit looks nothing like that. And yes, that haze is smog. Lovely. 

The magic number

The only good thing about being ill is that you get to finally catch up with all that stuff you've meant to read. Came across this in last month's Wired. Humour me and play along...

Think of a number.

Double it.

Add 12.

Divide it by 2.

Subtract the original number.

What's the number you've got? 6? I thought so.

I remember stuff like that from the playground. But it still has the capacity to make me smile. Simple magic and reason tricks, things that delight, equations that equal 'boobless' on calcuators - need to find a place for these in my adult life. But I always thought that 3 was the magic number?

Linked gameworlds

I realise that Johnny meant this as a joke:

But, why not? If there is one Zynga universe in which you have one wallet but lots of different ways of earning cash (via different games), are people more likely to play two games? They currently just try and spam you into doing it. I must admit here, that I am mildy addicted to Farmville. I find a Cyworld/Habbo-like pleasure in my little farm. Yes, I'm sad. You never have to speak to me again.

Carrots

I was discussing school trips with Mellie the other day, and a funny thing struck me about the school trips at my secondary school, Latymer. Let me list out the ones I can remember:

Latin - Florence, Rome, Sorrento
Art - rotating between Bilbao and New York/Washington
Geography - Iceland
RE - Israel
PE - Barbados (?!?)
Media Studies - Hollywood (started after I'd left, or else I blatantly would have done Media Studies A-level)

History may have gone to Normandy, I can't remember. It strikes me that there is more incentive to do the leftfield, less academic subjects. I'm not really sure what the reasoning is behind this. Studying classic subjects is reward in itself? If you didn't do Media Studies at A-level, you'll probably get a place at a better university and therefore probably do better in life, so who needs a trip to LA when you're 17? Although I'm not sure students think like that.

Which got me thinking, that if we want kids to take up science and maths shouldn't we making them more attractive options? I'm not just saying throw a trip to Brazil into the curriculum (although it couldn't hurt), and I realise a straw poll of one, slightly odd school is not going to back anything up, but shouldn't the classical faculties look at offering, ahem, bribes of some sort. They might be the straw that gets an able but multi-talented student to choose maths over PE.

Model making

Finally catching up with my RSS. I have been doing a lot of 'mark all as read', but obviously not for today and tomorrow, where I found this gem (funny how 1,000+ unread posts makes you evaluate which blogs you really like). Amazing papercraft heads by Eric Testroete:

 

A revolution

I finally made it down to the SHOWstudio exhibition at Somerset House (it ends on the 20 December). Fashion exhibitions are generally a bit weird, because a gallery isn't necessarily the best place to experience fashion - it's not a static medium and means less once removed from humans, but... SHOWstudio are one of the most interesting conceptual forces in fashion, and the exhibition raised some interesting bits and pieces. One of the key things about SHOWstudio is that they demystify the creative process by making it visible.

I loved the 'Banquet' project, a 'lavish fashion performance, based around a twenty-three course banquet cooked by ... Heston Blumenthal'. While it was being shot, viewers could see live footage each plate setting from directly above and hear audio from hidden mics - and then try and guess who was round for dinner. For the magazine (W) that commissioned it was a set of reportage shots by Nick Knight (see image below), but I love the game-like aspect created while the shoot was going on. The viewers of the live footage must have been the first to pick up the magazine when it hit the stands in order to find out who was involved (amongst others, Aimee Mullins, Dita von Teese, Liberty Ross and NOKI).

Cheeky course from 'Banquet', Heston Blumenthal/Ed Griffiths, 2004

I'd never come across the Design_Download project before, but it's brilliant - but also for people who are more talented with the sewing machine than me. Through the project you can download patterns by designers such as Alexander McQueen, Gareth Pugh and Junya Watanabe. Those who have made their own versions can send in photos which are posted on the SHOWstudio website. Very cool.

Casting reminded me a bit of the Liberty window display that they did a couple of years ago. It's a nice way to get people involved in the exhibition, have a reason to check out the SHOWstudio website (all the pictures are posted) and have the chance to appear in a live shoot as part of the exhibition.


Any quoted bits are from exhibition catalogue

Red herring?

I would be surprised if you haven't heard the words 'behavioural economics' banded about over the last six months. Rory Sutherland has made it the cornerstone of his IPA presidency, and with Thaler and Sunstein the writers du jour, it is undeniably the hot topic.

I went to 44 Club talk back in June where Sutherland and Matthew Taylor from the RSA introduced behavioural theory and it's implications for advertising. I remember being massively impressed and incredibly excited by the possibility, and have kept an eye on the project as it evolves.

On Wednesday night, the 44 Club held another event, billed as examples of practical application of the theory. I have mixed feelings about the night. One one hand I came away feeling that behavioural economics is a fancy name for best practice advertising thinking (that is already going on), and on the other, armed with some interesting examples of human nature. For example, one of the practical examples of choice architecture is that choice and availability has more of an impact on preference than taste, a fact that is the driving force behind brands wanting to be the shelf of every supermarket in the land, but not a particularly new thought. Some of the advice was 'don't rip people off because they won't come back' and see people as smart, not stupid, i.e. respect the fact that they just bought something 'because I did...' - things that we as an industry should never be doing anyway.

Sutherland feels that behavioural economics is so timely because as an industry the time we spend marketing things with a relatively low behavioural element (FMCGs) is falling, and we are increasingly being asked to step up to challenges with a high behavioural element, for example, getting people to switch to Streetcar.

While I realise he wasn't being completely serious, in part of Sutherland's set up he enthused about how behavioural economics could provide our industry with a set of impressive jargon (this did spring to mind). Maybe I'm just young and naïve, but shouldn't we be looking for new ways to genuinely understand people and what influences decisions rather than a rationale to impress our clients with?

Anyway, the key take out was probably that context is more powerful than preference. And also that as a species we're bloody good at post-rationalising things. The likely consequence of a decision has little bearing on what decision we make, i.e. we don't act rationally, but we use rational reasons to justify our actions in hindsight. Isn't that part of the role of advertising, to provide the rational reason as to why we bought/did something?

As I said before there was some stuff that I liked/found useful:

• That it might be a better idea to study the market/competition in detail rather than knowing your brand inside out because that's how consumers see it
• Teens eat at Pizza Hut, etc, because they know what's going to happen and therefore avoid embarrassment
• That the power of massive brands such as Ford, M&S is actually a license to innovate. Gave the sad example that Britain has 9% of Europe's population but eats 50% (?) of its ready meals, which was down to M&S offering them and making it acceptable
• The idea that we should be challenging metrics (again, something that we should be doing anyway). I liked the idea that trains are being made more punctual because that's what customer research says, but things like wi-fi aren't considered because noone says it

A lot of the examples being given fall under the umbrella of product development and design, i.e. making forms easier to fill in, or making the last pills of a course of antibiotics blue so that patients finish it ("take the 4 white ones, followed by the 3 blue ones"). Weren't advertisers traditionally more involved with NPD back in the day? The ideas of branded utility/service marketing show that we are headed back that way.

It's beginning to feel that behavioural economics might just be a neat wrapper for the theory and practice that already makes good advertising, and that we will just be hearing the same speech in various guises over the coming year. This may be an unfair criticism at this early point in the IPA's exploration into the theory - the IPA's BETT (Beahvioural Economics Think Tank) is planning to work on some live briefs over the next two years - but I couldn't help but feel underwhelmed. I hope I'm proven wrong.

In the meantime, the IPA have made a PDF of their thinking up to date, which will bring you up to speed with where BETT are up to in their thinking: Download BE_short_FINAL_Animated

Busy

I am incredibly busy, not in an important way, just in the way that people in creative industries get from time to time. Here is a picture of a snow leopard stolen from the BBC's amazing Wildlife Finder (please don't sue me!).

What a beautiful animal.

A little more carnivalesque

Went to the Canvas8 event 'Sizing up the retail consumer: the new rules of engagement' on Monday. It was a bit of letdown in terms of content, with a lot of stuff that you would hope that the audience (mainly advertising and marketing people) should know already, but Dr. Alex Gordon gave a bit of respite talking about how physical retail experiences needed to appropriate more of the 'carnivalesque' (a term coined by Bakhtin). He articulated and put context around a couple of things that I've been thinking about. A couple of points:

• I liked the quote that 'Westfield was outdated the minute it was created'
• When it comes to malls, the choice of stores narrows because of rent, etc creating a homogenous shopping landscape. At the same time the online retail space embraces diversity
• One of the ways he suggested that retail spaces could be improved was the introduction of ludic/cryptic messages. I liked the idea that online and offline retail environments could be linked with puzzles that could be solved in either world
• Was obviously supportive of the idea that 'childish play' needs to be incorporated into the retail environment
• Also intrigued by the idea of 'active physical involvement' with the retail space. I think the examples were of instore gyms and stuff (which might not be the way forward if Dave Trott's HMV/Virgin example rings true)

Anyway, some interesting bits and pieces. I think the presentations are going up on SlideShare at some point, so watch out for that.

Automatic updates

Just read about Last Night's Check-ins on Noah Brier's blog. It's a service that sends you a daily email summary of your Foursquare check-ins from the night before. It's a useful service, but only if you remember to check-in via Foursquare in the first place!

For me personally technology plays second fiddle to humans, and unless someone not present might need directions, my phone is generally hidden away and forgotten the minute I meet people. I like the idea of Foursquare, but to fully engage with it I need to create a new habit, and we all know how hard behavioural change is to implement. 

Could you build in an automatic update function, whereby if you're in the same place for 30 minutes your phone automatically lets Foursquare know where you are? Or how do I train myself to check-in?