Choice simulation

There seems to be a general consensus these days that there is a potential downside to the incredible choice in the modern world. That having 75 different crisp flavours to choose from just makes it harder for us to choose and that when we do finally pick, we're left more anxious about whether we made the right decision. After all, what are the chances we picked the best one out of all those 75 options?

It's been suggested that people who have grown up with this find it harder to make choices, so either pick without conviction, or fail to make a decision at all.

What's interesting for me is that there seems to be a new craze in computer games, that potentially reflects this. Games that allow you to make a choice and live out those consequences - sometimes even across multiple games.


Now this is partly about games doing what they do best. Making choices is just another way of giving the player power within the virtual world, and helping them to make their own interactive story.

But games are also often about being able to do the things you can't in real life. Fight in a war, compete in an extreme sport, leap across rooftops. So is the recent popularity of games that show the consequences of your decisions actually about giving people a virtual environment, in which they can make a decision and go along with the result, in a way they simply couldn't handle in the real world. Are these games just a reflection of a generation unable to make big decisions and stick with them?

When we are so aware of all the potential jobs out there, the potential partners out there, that we can never be totally happy with the choices we've made - maybe it's nice to have a Sim live a life of conviction. You can live it all the way through, happy in the knowledge that you can always play again and try out those other options.

Maybe it's just a matter of time before we get Walker's Crisps Flavour Picker: The Game.

The un-canine valley

So there's an Andrex advert now with dogs playing instruments.

There's a lot to be said for the range of messages you can deliver and memorable situations you can set up with a CGI dog. Why I find it a strange route for Andrex, is that one of the only things that fake dogs will struggle to do, is look as soft and cuddly as the real thing. When that was the whole point of the dog's existence, it seems like a strange move.

This brings me on to one of my favourite crazy psychological topics. The uncanny valley.

The theory goes that we like to see human elements in animals, cartoons, robots etc. The more big and human a dog's eyes, the cuter it looks. However, there is a point where things start to look so human, that instead of focusing on the bits that make them look like us, we start to focus on the inhuman elements. This tipping point turns our love into repulsion, thus Terminator = scary.

Potentially this is an evolutionary tactic to help us stay alive. If we see someone looking particularly diseased, we'll be repulsed by them and keep a healthy disease free distance.

Pixar, who have successfully monetised cuteness, have long known about the uncanny valley. This is why their backgrounds look as good as lifelike, but the humans are odd, smooth skinned caricatures.

Our CGI skills are good, but not good enough to create something realistically human that doesn't make us want to be sick. There are plenty examples of this rule being ignored with horrific results - such as the cold dead eyes of the kid from Polar Express.

Amazingly, even monkeys seem to suffer from this. If shown 3 pictures - One a photo of a monkey, one a cartoon monkey, and one a realistic CGI monkey, they will like the photo and the cartoon, but be repulsed by the CGI.

Exactly how far this works cross-species I don't know, but I think it's safe to say that taking a dog who was designed to be a metaphor for softness and playing with the uncanny valley is a dangerous move.

Just look at how lovable the real thing is!

What a tool

Brands spend an incredible amount of time, money and effort turning their products into a story they think consumers will want to engage with, to learn about, to share. Often the messages are few and really quite simple. So why does nobody bother to investigate?

Of course everyone is busy, there are all these new types of media etc. These are all very valid and old points, but I think often consumers just aren't given a credible reason and the motivation to follow what brands want to say.

As my old friend Shigsy (the creator of Super Mario) once said about computer game story telling - you don't write a story and tell people to follow it. You create a world (product) and give people the tools they need to explore it and understand it themselves.

The other day some clever people from the BBC came in to work to talk about their 'History of the World in 100 objects' series. Brands find it hard to get people to contemplate their single new feature - imagine trying to get people motivated enough to want to investigate the entire history of the world.

The answer for them was deceptively simple. Make it about objects.

Everyone has an object that tells a story. About them, about others, about places, about the history of the world. By using objects as the tool through which the BBC could tell the story, it gave everyone the tools to relate to the stories, to tell their own and get involved in the series.

I think what's key is how closely this fitted with the series (product), but still gave room for the tool to be taken out into the wider world, to explore other issues. This is when things can ingrain themselves in culture.

In the same meeting, Marmite was mentioned. Again, the Love/Hate thing is undoubtedly linked to the product, but as a tool it can be used outside of the campaign, giving Marmite the kind of cultural power that still gets it mentioned on Britain's Got Talent all these years later. People are using the Love/Hate tool, but every single time, it is linked back to the product. Magic.

Even things like Carlsberg - Probably the best lager. The sheer quantity of fake Carlsberg ads online is a testament to the tool they created of 'making dream versions of every day things'.

I pick these two examples in particular as, being a massive geek, I naturally see apps and online as a way of creating tools for people to interact with and explore brand stories. However, I think it's important to know that traditional advertising can still achieve this - it just needs to recognise that consumers need a way in to their story. A tool which makes exploring the brand fun, which brings to life the story, but has the legs to be used outside of what are usually quite boring and irrelevant product categories.

The danger is if you make your tool purely about your product. Then you end up with Alan Hansen talking to you about the HOT TOPIC of whether you can look professional while chewing gum. I'd personally have liked to have seen this Good side / Bad side idea stretched further, with gum merely the way into it. As Marmite has shown, this wider focus can improve the product link, not necessarily come at the expense of it.

Having said that, I'm sure the people who made those ads know more about the gum world than me. I'm too professional to chew.

Everything is interesting, including pencils

A really good way to look intelligent is to know the Latin origin of words, so that you can express the deeper meaning of a name. Unfortunately, 'pencil' is based on the Latin word for 'little tail'. So, instead of looking like Stephen Fry, I get to share the insight that you can make a pencil look like a small tail if you hold it near your buttocks. Excellent.
Apparently pencils were invented when a big pile of graphite was found in England and we decided to do stuff with it. It seems such pure graphite was rare, so we cunningly flooded the mine so no one could steal it. This is a wonderful defensive move and one which really should be used more often. Why don't we flood our offices at night to protect our computers? A quick drain before 9am and we're good to go.

Because of this brilliant move to protect our glorious graphite, England briefly had a monopoly on pencils. How this has never been made into a film, or long-running TV series I'll never know. Bastard pencil barons going to extreme measures to save their resources, while mocking the rest of the world for their lack of pencils. I'd watch it.

Questionable Wikipedia Fact Alert: Pencils are covered in wood to protect the weak and pathetic graphite inside. But at one point, the wood they used was in such short supply that pencil sharpeners were made illegal, to stop illegitimate and wasteful sharpenings. We sure do some extreme things to protect our pencils...

The colours coating the wood vary across the world. The market leader in each country picked a colour and then the lesser pencil producers copied it to look good. It's nice to know that cheap knock-offs have always been around. This is also why most pencils on TV are yellow, as this was America's classiest colour.

Pencils are also notable for using my least favourite system of categorisation.

Pencils are graded in terms of their hardness, or H. Also, their blackness, or B. Also there's a single rogue F for some reason. Why can't they pick a single unit of measurement and stick with it!

Unfortunately, most of my best pencil wielding years are behind me. They were of course used as training pens in schools, probably because they're mildly less dangerous (ignoring the common rumours that they were poisonous killers) and easier to erase than pens. When I think about it, there really is no need for pens. It's like we got overly cocky about our writing ability and decided we would do it without the safety of erasability. Like when kids don't want to wear a helmet while riding a bike.

Because of this test-pen status, I always think someone must be a bit childish and stupid when using a pencil. Like if they turned up to work with a Fireman Sam lunchbox. What have we done to the poor pencil! It was our oil. And now we've made it look pathetic.

There's still some love for pencils though. A quick Twitter sentiment test shows 61% of posts were positive. The rest were seemingly about losing pencils or jabbing themselves/someone else in the eye/thigh with one.

One advantage of being around so long is that they've worked their way into many a common phrase. So they don't just allow us to create beautiful things, they inspire it. For instance, just today there are two examples of people saying "Life without you would be like a broken pencil...pointless" to a loved one.

The sad thing of course, is that they sent that message over Twitter, so they don't actually need a pencil. In many respects, they are merely telling their dearest sweetheart that life is pointless with or without them.

Without pencils, there can be no romance!

Yes, the golden age of pencils are over. Replaced by a keyboard that no one would flood a mine, or make outrageous laws to protect. Pencils are now only to be used by artists, who look like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle loving idiots while doing so. Research does not lie!

Everything is interesting, including sweater vests

The good thing about working on one account, is being able to really get under the skin of every area of the business. However, I do quite miss the joy of researching completely new industries/companies/products. It's like there's no need for Google any more.


So, as some kind of brilliant (not stolen) cross between what Northern Planner is doing and Wikipedia, I'm going to research random things and hope that they're actually interesting. This really will be entertainment at its best.

To start off, I'll write about something very dear to my heart; the sweater vest.





Let's start by saying, yes, it is technically a tank top. However, I've always prefered the American name for it myself, especially as the name tank top has its origins in women's swimsuits (swimming tank). It just doesn't sit right with what is the most manly item of clothing ever produced.

So, what is it that makes a sweater with the sleaves cut off so spectacularly cool? Well, according to a slightly suspicious looking Wikipedia article, the answer is Afghan rap superstar Akbar Zaki.

I have my own theories.


The first is based on the experience of going to interviews for advertising jobs. Interviewers' styles can range anywhere between the t-shirted hobo look and the well suited, silently judging my shoes look. The magic of the sweater vest is that it can fill a position anywhere between 'semi formal' and 'formal', with a brief stop off at 'sports casual'.


Secondly, the sweater vest has a moderate success rate at hiding poorly ironed shirts.


Thirdly, Chandler Bing wore one.

Now, while my fashion sense has been described as Primarkable. It appears the hip kids of today also enjoy a spot of sweater vesting. For example, Urban Dictionary defines a sweater vest as "An article of clothing often worn by 'ridiculously' good looking teachers that make them somehow even better looking."

A quick sentiment analysis of Twitter also shows that 74% of posts about sweater vests are positive. The other 26% are wrong.

What are people saying about them though? Well, someone called Caroline made this announcement; "My boyfriend has a sweater vest. I love life."


Unfortunately, not all of the posts are about sweater vests single handedly saving relationships. One lovely young gentleman named Anthony states: "nice sweater vest faggot". Now putting aside the fact this post was listed as 'positive', Anthony seems to have misread the situation, like only a person who describes things as 'sick' can.

Does a man wanting to look quite formal, but not too formal make him a faggot? No. It makes him a sexy, wisecracking, Afghan rap star. Research does not lie!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp3Txy0dA6Y

When computer game design enters the real world

A long rooftop followed by a ramp to nowhere? I felt like I was in Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2.

This is by far the nerdiest thing I've ever written. And I make nerdiness a criteria for all my posts.

She was a candle in the wind. Unreliable

I always thought Channel 4 was the most digital savvy of all the channels. But apparently this doesn't stop them from making a mistake so short sighted that I'm shocked it still happens after all these years.

A little example of their latest initiative involves Garth Marenghi's Dark Place. A great, original, but criminally under-watched show that I love to share with anyone who'll listen. Or at least look like they're listening.

To help share this show, and encourage people to buy the DVD, I show people two clips. One is of the intro, which brilliant sums up the faux-80s TV show appeal and the other is a user made 3 minute version of a song from the series called 'One Track Lover'.

None of these are a replacement for buying the DVD, but crucially, they are great tools for selling the DVD. So why Channel 4 has decided to remove them from Youtube I simply do not know. The content works better than any viral campaign an agency could come up with.

At this point I should make it clear that I don't think this post is making any points that haven't been made a hundred times before (I probably should have opened with that and saved everyone some time). However, it's the very obvious nature of this thinking that makes me wonder how great creative companies can take this kind of action.

Now if I want to tell people about the show, I have to link them to videos that might actually act as a replacement to buying the DVD http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4073600336827045127#docid=5549328067719771845

Find out what this post is about by reading it

I saw a lot of adverts for that Seven Days programme on Channel 4 recently. A lot of adverts.

I saw posters that stated it was a new kind of reality show. However, it didn't tell me what it actually was. A teaser poster you could say.

I then saw a TV advert for that Seven Days programme on Channel 4. A lot of TV adverts. They said it was a new kind of reality show. However, it didn't tell me what it actually was.

When it came to the show starting, I watched an episode of Friends. A lot of episodes of Friends

What kind of freak has a default state of being interested in anything they see or read or hear in an ad? Yet I've seen quite a few examples recently of teaser style ads that have made no attempt to get me interested in what they have to say, they just assume I'm going to take time out of my busy day (of watching that episode where David Schwimmer says 'pivot' a lot) to research their campaign.

I would give examples of these other ads, but I cant remember who or what they were for... if indeed I ever knew.

Sir Sell-a-lot

The other day I bought some shoes. True story.

As I was trying them on, a shop assistant edged their way over to me, like some kind of professionally uniformed crab. Normally I don't like shop assistants coming up to me and distracting me from a good browsing, but I like it even less when they hover around, waiting for the moment I look remotely confused.

I have found this much worse since I've moved to London, with all these empty brand heavy stores. Assistants are part of the brand, so they leap at you, and there's no place to hide!

So, the ultimate brand store should look a little like this:

Yes, the Robot Wars arena.

Notice the Corner Patrol Zones (CPZs). If you enter one, the House Robots are allowed to attack.

Truly this is the ultimate shoe buying layout. Staff don't need to stare at customers to check if they look confused, and shoppers can browse freely!

Thank you Sgt. Bash, for showing us the light.

FTEW

I have been waiting for the Epic Win app for many years. Pretty much since the original 'Sims' came out actually. Something that rewards the dull and fruitless things in life with pointless experience points and irrelevant rewards!



It always seemed strange to me that people would get a computer character to read a book, in the hope that they would learn enough to get a new job, yet they wouldn't read a book themselves.

Unfortunately most things in life take a lot of time and effort to achieve, so a visual way of showing how every step makes you better is actually a potentially powerful tool.

Of course, this is only likely to be the case when you set the app to reward things with a clear goal at the end, but as FarmVille and World of Warcraft have shown, some people will do anything for a virtual reward.

So I look forward to seeing how successful this becomes. I think there's a slight lack of enthusiasm for interactive experiences that reward users in advertising, but if this app manages to make people happy about doing the washing up, why can't an app make them change their brand of washing up liquid?

Super Marmite World

Here is legendary computer game designer Shigeru Miyamoto talking about how he creates worlds for players to experiment in. I often talk about how this should be the basis of interactive advertising campaigns, but unfortunately he has managed to put it into words far better than I could with my previous 72 posts...

"If they have a natural acceptance of the rules and of what's happening in this world that's been created, then that bond between creator and player becomes that much stronger and that much more important."

"And then what happens is as the player begins to understand the world that they're playing in, then they're going to begin to think about ways that they can play within that world; they use their own creativity and their own imagination to tell the story or to come up with their own parts of the story, and at the same time they come up with new ways to play in this world that has been created for them."

"As a developer then, we have to try to predict some of the ways that players will try to play in that world, and give them reactions or responses or rewards for using their own creativity for finding new ways to interact within that environment."

Why did Mario cross the road/bridge of death?

I've just read this interesting article about new feedback loops in game design http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/feedback-loop-article

It's funny how much it all sounds like using Google Analytics on a website, and I'd be quite interested to have a gander at data for something like Super Mario World. Did everyone else die on that damn cheese bridge level?

Anyway, with this stuff standard behaviour for websites designers, and now games going at it, I wonder how long until we start seeing widespread tweaking of TV ads based on people ranting online.

Don't think "There's method in the Magners?", well we think you'll love "How do you get to Magners? Practice!"

Navigate-gate

There's a funny thing in the computer game world, where a trailer for a game looks completely different before and after you play the actual product. (Yes it's a post that vaguely links computer games to advertising - I've found my niche gosh darn it)

Before you play the game, a video of it looks amazing. Characters running around, performing outrageous actions - leaping, diving, shooting - you have complete control of a relentless killing machine.



The strange thing is, when you come back to a video after playing it (which admittedly rarely happens), you suddenly see those movements differently. He's no longer leaping, but some one's pressing 'X'. He's no longer diving, but initialising pre-set diving animation 1. Suddenly you see the strings and you're snapped right out of the moment.

Sometimes this can be how it feels with campaign sites. They can be wrapped in the most creative skin, but it still looks and feels like an average website. You still navigate and move around in the same way you would on a news site, or a site about lovely socks.

I think this is why the digital campaigns that I really remember fondly are those that weren't set up in the usual way. Cloverfield for instance - spreading bits of an introduction to the story across several sites and social media. People certainly got lost and couldn't find all the story, but I bet they felt more involved than they would have reading a full and thorough 'About' section.

Of course, this can't work for 99% of campaigns and usability is quite rightly regarded very highly. But sometimes, for certain brands, helping a user navigate is good, but helping them get lost is better.

Russian Standard

When you're trying to come up with new ideas for digital campaigns, it's easy to look for the latest technology, or the latest social network and try to be the first to take advantage of their sparkly new features.

So it's nice to have recently found two interesting twists on an old idea, from an old peice of technology. The first one looks at it from a new angle, while the second just makes it evil.

The internet's broken pottery

Visiting MySpace these days is a surreal experience. I bit like walking around in a post-apocalyptic Earth. Exactly like that.

Having been right in MySpace's target market during its golden age and then the target of Facebook's early push in the UK, I always thought it was a slow shift of people to the latter, with conversations gradually moving over.

Looking at all the profiles now though, It's like a bomb went off in 2007 and killed everything dead. In social media world, a month seems like a ridiculous amount of time to go without an update, and yet there I am on MySpace, apparently in the first year of university. As are most of the friends I have on there.

The thing is, I don't want to update it now. Mostly because I probably won't venture back on there until 2013, but also because it kind of feels like a Time Team excavation, with everything preserved as it was three or four years ago.

All the conversations, the stories, the fads. What feels like an entire eco-system just stopped, while the rest of the internet kept on, and keeps on updating. So much about being a Planner seems to be investigating the hidden stories behind actions and a social network frozen in time is a gold mine of interesting tales.

And there I was, an idiot, being an idiot. It's reassuring to know that the working life hasn't changed me.

I think I counted five, maybe six logos

Lovely short film called Logorama http://vimeo.com/10149605

You know what was awesome? The Recession

The recession was a glorious time. Businesses loved us! They were good friends who would always tell us how much they felt our pain and cut prices to help us.

Supermarkets for instance. They cared about the environment and they cared about our difficult financial situations. They said NO to But One Get One Free offers, as they encouraged waste and over spending. In their place were simple money off offers like half price McCoys crisps - because supermarkets cared.

Then the recession (apparently) ended. Suddenly supermarkets weren't under pressure to care, so they didn't care. And so McCoys became 3 for £3. In fact, everything in Sainsbury's became 3 for £3. They thought we wouldn't notice, because all is rosy with the economy again. Well I noticed Sainsbury's. I noticed!

To me, the way the supermarkets have acted highlights the worst of brand behaviour. A good brand should have a core set of beliefs that it then applies to each situation to form a point of view. You should be able to look at a brand and be able to guess how it feels about certain subjects. That's how you create brands that people care about and that they can believe in.

What's happened here is that the supermarkets have seen an opportunity, made a big fuss about their 'beliefs' and their 'values', then abandoned them as soon as they feel it's not necessary.

To many it may be 3 loaves of bread for £3, but for me it's Jamie Oliver teaching kids how to order a Big Mac.

Actual product may not include what we're selling you

Time for one of my favourite subjects - How Mass Effect promotional material annoys me.

I loved the original Mass Effect game. It was all about space adventuring, with a character you designed yourself and whose personality you shaped with the decisions you made.

Mass Effect 2 takes the character you made in the first game and continues to play out the consequences of the decisions you made in the first game, while adding extra levels of story and personality to your character.

So, given the very personal and unique nature of each character, surely the last thing you would want to do is focus all of your marketing and packaging material on a generic version of this character that won't actually appear in anyone's game.

It just seems like a complete waste, considering all that the product has to offer. No thought has gone into what makes games and customisable experiences like this different from film advertising (which this seems to aspire to).

Customisation is becoming such a big part of all products these days, but especially computer games. I understand that from a marketing point of view we're used to working with and selling linear stories, but as more and more games innovate away from this, I can't help but feel that the advertising is holding them back, by clinging on to traditional story telling methods.

Mass Effect is about travelling the universe and changing it with the decisions you make. That's not an easy story to tell, but it's a lot more interesting than being told the story of a man you won't even see in the game.

Go away

Now the big move to London is over, it's time to kick start some blogging again. I'll start with an exciting story of my time in London.

The other day, I thought I'd purchase some tickets for the Hot Chip gig at Brixton Academy. So off I go to the website and click the "order tickets" button.

What it linked to was this:

Which is awsome.

It laughs in the face of CRM, usabilty, and many other words to do with making me, the all powerful consumer, happy.

In fact, it was such a hilariously bad way of giving bad news, that I found it hard to get angry at them.

So, I hope to continue experiments in treating consumers so badly that they decide it's too funny to get mad about. That's the dream...

No Daves (We're allowed one)

Brands being able to have conversations with their consumers around the world is brilliant. But far from giving them the power to appear more active towards individual concerns, some companies are using social media to appear more distant than ever.

The fact is, most big brands are only talking to their American fans, and it can feel like those of us in Europe are just rude passers by, listening in with a cup against the door.

I can see why brands would want one world voice, but when they get people to post great deals on social networks for their online store, only for it to be exclusive to American users, that's not good enough.

It creates a kind of second class consumer, who can see great deals and great bonuses, but isn't allowed near them. If you're a fan enough of a company to follow them on Twitter or Facebook, then being treated like this is a massive kick in the teeth.

So lets get some more localised brand voices can we?