OK. I'm going to be taking a well-deserved break for a couple of weeks. To keep you entertained, Dead Fish is providing some tunes courtesy of Mixwit and the good old fashioned mix-tape. These are some of my favourite sounds of the moment. Enjoy. And I shall be back before you know it.
Marvellous news. After I responded to his What Not To Wear post by saying that I actually quite liked the shirt he was offering up as his wardrobe nightmare, Rob left me a comment:
"You should know that after your comment on my blog, one of my business partners rang me up in the middle of the night and ORDERED ME to send it to you [and I don't think it's because he has suddenly developed a 'nice' streak]. Anyway, if you send me your address details, I'll happily post you the 'fabric of mass destruction'."
Said shirt is pictured below and I'm looking forward to getting it. Unfortunately I don't think he's going to give me the cat though. I suppose it's only fair that I post a picture of me wearing said shirt when I get it. Who says blogging doesn't bring benefits?
"Essentially a blog, it is a gallery of common place website design/layout/marketing/general annoyances on the Internet. Equally, it is satirical dialogue aimed to get a message across while being frank and outward."
A collection of the images that come up if you type in 'dodgy goatee' to Google images. So proud.
Natty little application I came across over on Dave's blog - a service called MoFuse which allows you to instantly create a mobile site for your blog. Go here, type in your URL, personalise it, and away you go. If your so inclined you can have Dead Fish on your mobile any time you want at http://neilperkin.mofuse.mobi/. I've added a natty little visual in the sidebar down there on the right too.
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When I was writing this piece about the effect of social networks in financial markets, I was reminded about another New Scientist article I'd read a couple of months ago which, in a related fashion, suggested that once human society develops beyond a certain level of complexity it becomes increasingly fragile. Most civilisations in history have grown increasingly complex before collapsing. Rather than the collapse being caused by a one-off force majeure, perhaps it could be considered to be an inevitable characteristic of civilisation itself.
Society grows bigger by solving problems, the theory goes. Such continuous problem-solving adds incrementally to society's complexity as each solution is layered on the last. Success means a bigger population, more organisation, more specialists, more management of resources and information. Increased complexity not only brings increasing costs in energy ('the common currency in all human effort'), but diminishing returns. Until eventually all available resources and energy are directed towards managing the current level of complexity, meaning that society reaches a point where even a relatively minor change event can lead to a collapse of civilisation and the emergence of a smaller, simpler society. Some have drawn a parallel with the natural cycle in ecosystems which, as they become more complex, also become ever more efficient in dealing with the normal range of conditions and ever more vulnerable to a change in those conditions which can lead to collapse and the establishment of a newer, simpler ecosystem.
The interesting point we have reached now, some believe, is one where the hierarchies needed to manage greater levels of complexity have themselves become so complex that they are giving way to networked and decentralised decision-making.
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But does a society which is highly networked make us stronger or more vulnerable? Is a society with distributed decision-making more or less resilient? Some argue that whilst increased interconnectedness helps initially, networked systems become increasingly tightly coupled as connections increase, meaning that the impact of failures can propagate and they "start to transmit shocks rather than absorb them". Worse still, they might actually amplify them, transmitting destabilising effects from one side of the world to another, from one critical industry to the next. You've only to look at some of the theories on how information that flows through social networks has influenced financial market instability to see how this might work.
It's an attractive, if a tad depressing, theory. But before we all go off and become subsistence farmers, I have to say my glass is half-full on this one. One of the great benefits to a networked society I believe, is a fantastically increased capability for innovation and problem-solving which doesn't always lead to increased levels of complexity. As more nodes on the network are added, the power of the network potentially for the benefit of the network increases exponentially. But I do think we haven't even begun to understand the momentous challenges and potential brought by a society where all its inhabitants are connected and networked like never before.
Full article here.
Nice photo gallery over at Wallpaper of fashion show venues without the fashion models. Funny how the context is so different without all the razzamataz, but also how beautiful they are in there own right.
Raf Simons:
Paul Smith:
Prada:
Dries Van Noten:
This is a picture of one of the footballs my twenty quid bought as part of the Great Football Giveaway, moments after it was given to these kids in Uganda. I absolutely love it.
The kids are pictured just north of a small town called Kakiri, about 25km north-west of Kampala. I was told that by the guys at Great Football Giveaway who have offered to send a photo to everyone who donated a football. Thing is, they didn't just send me a photo, they gave me the story behind it which was even better:
"We were driving along and saw these kids walking back from school so we just lobbed them a ball and they started legging it to the nearest bit of open ground in order to start a game of footy."
Being able to see your donation in action is a hugely powerful thing. It can't be easy for these guys to photograph, categorise and send out these little vignettes to the thousands of people who donated, but the fact that they have bothered shows how smart they are. It's one of the most powerful pieces of personalised marketing I think I've ever come across.
You can buy footballs and netballs for the next Great Football Giveaway here. I've just bought another two.
David has a particularly excellent blog and writes well, notably about social media, communities and the power of the network. He has produced a snappy 10 slides which I've posted below on "Why Traditional Ad Models Won't Work In Social Networks (and what will)". They make some good points that echo some of the things I've talked about here (I particularly like: "They aren't looking at the stage, they're looking at each other").
I said in my extended rant below on the requirement for business-model innovation about the parallel need for a change in mindset. From limited to free-thinking. From models based on scarcity to those framed by abundance. It feels to me like this is central to the thorny issue of how to generate commercial and advertising models within social networks that are valued and valuable. Perhaps the reason that they have struggled thus far is something to do with Shirky's observation that "when the technology gets boring, the social effects become interesting". Maybe we are yet to see the really seismic effects of everyone being connected. Maybe it needs to get to the point where the ad models require the technology but are not about the technology. Which then can properly mean that your marketing is no longer dependent on a scarce resource (your advertising budget), but on an abundant resource (your customers).
We have moved into the knowledge economy. So perhaps future models will focus on abundant resources (like knowledge), rather than scarce ones (like time and attention). If you can present me with the knowledge I need when I need it then I'll happily receive it. In fact I might even pay for it. Perhaps it is about redefining what media is and does. And redefining an opportunity. As Umair Haque of the Havas Media Lab said recently:
“In an interconnected world, media is everywhere: it’s the stuff that plugs consumption and production together. The opportunities for value creation are greater than ever before - but we must expand our vision of what media is to begin realizing them”
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I'm reading Constantinos Markides' book on Game-changing Strategies right now. Constantinos (Costas) is professor of Strategic and International Management at the London Business School so knows a thing or two about business strategy and if, like me, you've had the good fortune to see him present you'll know he's also a brilliantly engaging speaker. The book is about business-model innovation, a form of innovation which he is at pains to show is a very different beast to product and technological innovation.
His central truth is that without the benefit of a technological innovation, it is extremely difficult for any organisation to enter a market where established players are dominant, let alone usurp them from their preeminant position in the market. The one thing which can help increase the probability of this happening is business-model innovation. Yet established companies find it difficult to innovate in this way and ultimately the majority of business-model innovations end up being introduced by newcomers to the market. Why is this?
This book is interesting in that instead of dealing with how to generate a higher level of innovation within organisations in order to seek out new business models (like reams of other business books do), it deliberately focuses on the difficulty of implementing business model innovation in established businesses. Because, as Costas says:
"The issue is not discovery. The real issue is organisational, and the only advice that can prove helpful to established firms is how to overcome the organisational obstacles that hamper the implementation of new business models."
He hits on what is undoubtedly one such obstacle - the fact that most business model innovations are unattractive because they do not make economic sense for established companies. In this context there is, once again, an interesting parallel to draw between one type of content provider - this time newspapers - and another type of content provision - advertising.
Newspapers are arguably at the sharp end of the internet's effect on traditional media. Printed newspapers once delivered you news you didn't already know. Now that the web is wearing the immediacy crown they are having to transform what they do from the bottom up, and the top down. Its a strange irony that inspite of their image of decline, the output of newsrooms on both sides of the pond is currently read by more people in more places than at any time. But the revenue model which has sustained this output is under attack.
The Project For Excellence In Journalism has conducted a survey using face-to-face interviews in over 250 newsrooms across America. The results are sobering. A smaller newsroom staff, younger, more tech-savvy, more oriented to serve the needs of both print and web, under greater pressure, less institutional memory, less aware of the history of individual beats, less knowledge of the community, of news gathering, fewer editors to catch mistakes. The paper they produce is thinner, has shorter stories, less foreign and national news, less science, arts and features. But fundamentally, newspaper publishers, editors and owners find themselves caught between two competing positions that the web presents their organisation:
"On one hand, financial pressures sap its strength and threaten its very survival. On the other, the rise of the web boosts its competitiveness, opens up innovative new forms of journalism, builds new bridges to readers and offers enormous potential for the future."
So many editors see the industry's future as effectively a race between these two forces, and are torn between the advantages and potential afforded by the web and the threat it poses to traditional models and standards. Their web readership may be growing, but their challenge is to find a way to monetize it before newsroom staff cuts irretrievably weaken their their competitive advantage.
Product innovation is not enough. What is needed is business-model innovation. This is tough when (to quote Costas) "a pre-requisite to creativity is a fundamental questioning of the firm's existing business model", a model which is no doubt still supporting the majority of incoming revenue. Meaning that there is little short-term economic incentive to innovate. The pressure to hit the next quarter's number does not go away, and the average ad revenue per user for the newspaper's online properties is likely to be a fraction of the average ad revenue per print reader. So this means revenue diversification, yes, but it could and should also mean a complete rethink of how they do what they do. At best it means a tricky balance between two business models, between "the benefits of keeping the two models separate while at the same time integrating them enough so as to allow them to exploit synergies with one another" (Costas)
There are encouraging signs, notably in the UK with the recent Future of Journalism conference run by The Guardian (and Jeff Jarvis' excellent talk on "10 Questions We Should Be Asking Now"). But all content producers need to understand that the new world operates not only from a different model, but from a different mindset. Just as models founded on scarcity are giving way to models based on ubiquity, so limited thinking needs to be replaced by free-thinking that is framed by abundance.
And this, to a large extent, is where advertising finds itself. Caught between the threat that the web poses to the very model of how advertising traditionally works, and seeing it as the biggest potential opportunity to do what it does exponentially better. Consider this - advertising activity has traditionally been concentrated in bursts of intensity since it is cost-prohibitive at the kind of weight typically deployed to advertise continuously in traditional media. For this reason, the vast majority of ad campaigns still have a beginning, middle and an end. In the beginning we define our objectives, what it is we want to say, and how we are going to say it. At the end, look at what has been acheived and attempt to understand how successful we've been. And then we start all over again.
But people don't work in this way. The web doesn't work in this way. Your customers can talk about your brand, and interact directly with you whenever they want. The web enables not only a continous conversation but the opportunity to build value through interactions steadily over time. It allows you to test and refine. To have real-time feedback. To continously improve and optimise what you do and how you do it. A conversation doesn't stop after you've introduced yourself.
The opportunity that agencies have can only be fulfilled through business-model innovation. Costas makes the point that the implementation of a new, game-changing model can be highly profitable for the company that introduces it because it redefines and enlarges the market. And in order to redefine the market, you first have to redefine yourself.
This place is five minutes drive from where I live. It's called 'Temple Of The Winds'. Great name.
Wow, is all I can say about this. Produced by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett (of Gorillaz), and based on the classical Chinese novel, "Journey to the West", it will be used to introduce coverage of the Olympics on BBC Sport. It debuted last night apparently (I missed it). Anyway, it's a bit mental, but all the better for it.
Outstanding promotional creativity to support programming. Again.
Regular readers of this blog will already know my views on campaigns which reproduce creative concepts from elsewhere without at least enhancing or building on the idea in some way. Creative Review have just posted about the new Fiat Grande Punto ad which unashamedly uses Roel Wouters’ brilliant Grip music video for zZz:
And here's the ad:
Thing is, it seems that the agency contacted Wouters' production company and voluntarily paid a license fee to use the idea (when in theory they didn't have to). So does that make it OK? The ad is so similar to the original film that it is almost a copy. Wouters himself is quoted by CR as saying that although the degree of similarity is a little wierd, "it gives the feeling of a sincere tribute". But then he's also quoted as saying that the treatment of the idea is not as strong, and that "the content seems to be disconnected from the form".
I'm really not sure. I applaud the fact that Wouters was paid a fee, and he will likely benefit from wider exposure of his idea, but this still leaves me feeling uncomfortable. It's just so similar, and there's little attempt at interpreting or building on the original idea here and so the creative input is limited. And most people who are exposed to this ad will likely not be familiar with the original film, so can it have real value as a tribute?
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Wonderfully Herd-like feature in this weeks New Scientist talking about the inner workings of financial markets and theorising about the inadequacies of prevalent economic theory and the potential real causes behind the current financial malaise.
Traditional economic theory posits that markets operate in 'equilibrium'. They are affected by changes in surrounding forces - good news about a company creates increased demand for its stock and the price goes up, bad news decreases demand and it goes down. Financial markets are shaped by the tendency of company stocks to find their 'proper' values, driven by the incentive of investors to identify the real value so that they don't pay too much for the stock or sell it for too little. With millions of investors acting in this way, any stock soon finds its 'true' value and any mispricing (however temporary) is corrected by market forces. In this way, drammatic swings in the market can only follow from correspondingly drammatic causes such as a significant piece of news, good or bad.
Sounds logical, right? Except that its not. Physicist Jean-Philippe Bouchand analysed over 90,000 news items over two years (relevant to hundreds of stocks) from Reuters and Dow Jones who produce real-time news feeds to investors. They were looking for the direct link between the news stories and corresponding jumps in stock price. There wasn't one. They found that "neither idiosyncratic news nor market wide news can explain the frequency and amplitude of price jumps". Instead jumps seemed to "occur for no identifiable reason". The markets seemed to have an internal dynamic all their own.
This is born out by recent experience. The 2007 global plunge in stocks seemed to be characterised by the emotive forces which drove it, with words like 'fear' being often used as a situational descriptive at the time. When, in a previous study, Bouchand looked at the accuracy of analysts market predictions he found that not only did they have a tendency to be over-optimistic but that their predictions were often similar to those already made public by other analysts even when this went against prevailing information.
And contrary to the normal distribution of random events characterised by the bell curve financial fluctuations have a tendency to have 'fat tails', meaning that large price fluctuations are more likely than expected to occur and their likelihood often underestimated by those employing equilibrium thinking. The New Scientist argues that perhaps we should have seen this coming:
"Some ecomonists have long argued that the movement of opinions and information between people tends to amplify market movements, leading inevitably to fat tails."
Paradoxically, it can be the attempt of investors to learn the relevance of new information (often by watching others) that can amplify price swings. Work done by Didier Sornette, an econophysicist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, showed that whilst public and private information tended to keep prices around realistic values, the information which flows through social networks and gets spread by word of mouth tends to create groups of people co-ordinated in their actions "which in turn leads to bubbles - stocks that become priced too high or low". These bubbles can be triggered by random pieces of news which get amplified through the social network. In this way, rather than being precedented by a major event, market crashes can have more to do with "a progressive linking together of investors' decisions and expectations over months or years". This contributes to market instability, leading to a high likelihood of a crash occuring, which can eventually be triggered by relatively minor contributory factors.
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A new generation of financial market simulations is attempting to take account of this 'financial flocking' - including detail on what makes people trade and how the actions of one investor can influence others, and even going so far as building computer models to predict market dynamics populated by artificially intelligent 'agents' that mimick the activity of real markets. Such models have had some impressive successes at reproducing stock histories.
But it is notable that as highly leveraged trades (notably hedge funds borrowing from the banks) increase the amount of leverage in the market, the risk of a cascade of failures increases exponentially with higher levels of credit creating stronger links between players in the market which in turn heightens the avalanche effect.
So it is perhaps the increasing access to easy money which is the single most destabilising factor. As the article points out, it is common for financial incentives to induce people to act for their own short-term benefit whilst saddling someone else (the client, or the company they work for) with the longer-term risks. As the sub-prime situation has shown, this thinking works fine if you believe in equilibrium economics. It's entirely another matter however, if you believe in the power of the rapid spread of ideas amongst groups of people.
Full article here
Ray LaMontagne: Till the Sun Turns Black
...climbing mountains
Elbow: Asleep in the Back
...Powder Blue
Clay Shirky: Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (****)
Don Tapscott: Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything (***)
Ian McEwan: On Chesil Beach (****)
Jon Steel: Perfect Pitch (****)
Kate Fox: Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour (****)
Lauren Child: I Will Never Not Ever Eat a Tomato (Charlie and Lola) (***)
Mark Earls: Herd (****)
Rajiv Chandrasekaran: Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Baghdad's Green Zone (****)
Rex Briggs: What Sticks (***)
Seth Godin: Purple Cow (****)
