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Lee McEwan

Jason - Re: Your comment on the APG Battle of Big Thinking at the start of your post: "I suspect I've missed my moment".

No you haven't! Please write up your thoughts on the day for those of us who couldn't be there ;-)

Lee

Angus Whines

Fabulous post Jason, really really interesting and I agree wholeheartedly with your build and your point re ensuring we don't 'dumb down' communication through not understanding the way people work as a community. Well done.

Mike

Faris just sent me the link to this post, genius stuff.

I remembering hearing Alex Bogusky speak at a conference and he said that "people are social. They find reasons to talk and communicate with each other. We supply the reasons" or something along those lines. Basically on the idea that CP+B is about communications between people and not at people.

I agree, we can't look at consumers as people that just sit back and "consume" all the shit we feed them.

helenltaylor

Excellent, excelllent post Jason!

As a Lost fan, I've been thinking about the different layers of experience it offers. It doesn't matter if the average viewer doesn't get all the references, as long as they don't feel that they're stupid or missing out and still get something out of just watching the episodes. But had't got my thoughts together so coherently.

Am going to have a ponder about how we researchers can address some of these issues. Any thoughts gratefully accepted...

Andrew Hovells

Wow. Erm, I'm sort of at a loss for words. Brilliant, brilliant stuff for us to ponder.Thanks.
I was reading that people don't join religious cults for the religion, but rather they want to belong. What you've written echoes some of that I think.

michaeltakasaki

First of all, I know who David LaChappelle is and also knew that Harry McClintock, rather than Burl Ives, is most closely associated with "The Big Rock Candy Mountain." I'm actually quite a fan of turn-of-the-century hobo ballads. Check out Norman Blake's "Chattanooga Sugar Babe" CD. It's excellent and rife with hobo ballads, both old and new. My favourite is "The Weathered Old Caboose Behind the Train".

As for the points you make, I also couldn't agree more. I think we do our work a disservice when we don't leave those kinds of gaps between media and executions that people can fill in.

I'm reminded a lot of my time spent teaching and getting to understand the different ways different people learn (I.e., that some are visual, some are auditory and some are kinesthetic or physical learners) and the implications that has on how you teach them and design lessons and exercises for specific classes and students. What you discover is that you can't translate a particular exercise directly to suit a different learning style. There are going to be differences in what's taught and what the student takes away. And I think that has some bearing on how trying to have an idea very faithfully translated across different media can be robbing it of some of its power.

What’s also interesting is the motivating effect that incomplete information has. In a language classroom, teachers will often give different students different (and complementary) sets of information because it gives them a genuine reason to communicate. It’s often really hard to get your students to interact, but when they have to bridge those gaps in their knowledge or experience, it becomes a lot easier. There seems to be a very human need to do this that I think your post supports, Jason.

Faris

Hey buddy,

Nice. I'm liking this a lot.

I think that adding depth to communication is essential to maintaining interest - it provides a reward that in itself invites people to engage more.

Have you read that Everything Bad is Good for You book? He talks about how syndication led to more complex programming - because it was those programmes that reward repeat viewings that work best when endlessly repeated.

This is what gives The Simpsons and Lost their power. And this is what triggers fan / brand communities - no one will be able to work every allusion out on their own so conversations naturally happen - especially online, the new home of the fan community.

It seems to be an essentially postmodern way of communicating - loading texts with allusions to other cultural artefacts - not just transmedia but intertextual!

Great Post Jason - I think one of the biggest things we need to overcome as an industry is the tendency to treat 'consumers' as idiots - what Bill Hicks called the Will it play in the midwest problem of media.

olivier blanchard

Wow. I'm going to have to come back here when I have more time and read the entire post.

Edward Cotton

Jason,

Amazing job. Some really great thinking here and a toolset we can steal and build upon.

It poses lots of interesting questions like:

- does every brand have the potential to build community?

- how to agencies get paid for all this new stuff?

- how do you get these ideas out there in the first place?

- what's the role of planning in all this?

Look forward to more debate and discussion on this

Tim Keil

great stuff. really. it just made some of my thoughts fit together. which is very good, because now I have more space for new thoughts. thanks for sharing.

Dan

Wow. It's not very often that one stumbles upon a new idea and genuinely new thinking in advertising planning. But how you've extended the idea of transmedia planning to individual pieces of communication totally blew me away. Extremely interesting. Thank you!

Vando

Jason, I've finally got around to reading this and Faris's posts thoroughly and it's an excellent thought process.....some real food for thought come the next brief. Thanks for sharing and thinking so thoroughly through this.

The key questions you ask at the end of your posts should be mandatory as part of all briefs. Can we engage a community or create one?

My background is mostly client side FMCG so I'm trying to think how this applies to low involvement &/or high volume brands, small ad budgets, trade offs etc.

This raises a whole heap of thoughts about how this approach relates to certain situations - think I might jot down a few at some point over at the Recliner.

giles

Transmedia planning surley a case of the emperors new clothes? The 360 model aint broke just they way people have been deploying it.

giles

http://interactivemarketingtrends.blogspot.com/2006/11/transmedia-planning-my-arse.html

Jason

Thanks for the feedback everyone, and all the supportive comments. Happy this idea connected with so many of you. Please keep contributing to the discussion.

Ed & Vando -
Great questions. That's the kind of stuff I'm thinking about now too. Not sure I have any answers yet. But here are some thoughts on low-interest brands/FMCG. At Leo Burnett many of our clients are FMCG (P&G, Kelloggs, Coca-Cola), and among them some clients that are super-low-involvement, like Wrigley's chewing gum. So I've been thinking about this a lot. It is easier, for sure, to create communities and debate and discussion around high-value/high-interest products like iPods and cars, but look at the meaning that Dove has built up around a soap brand, or Axe with deodorant, which are both pretty low-involvement purchases. Or check out this viral bit for Charmin bathroom tissue , probably the lowest involvement category there is, from Publicis UK. So it can be done. I guess these three examples have started by looking at what are some interesting, provocative, topical cultural issues that are linked with using those products, and played with them. So they've started by asking "what's interesting about this brand/category" rather than "what's our USP/message?" That seems to be a good way in.

Giles -
You have a point, often the issues with the 360 model (as with many other things in marketing) come from it not being implemented very well. But there are a few things that I think it doesn't address - or at least not inherently in the model. Of course, smart practicioners always figure out ways to address them.
But I think a strong model needs to be a bit directive and force anyone using it to think differently, rather than relying on someone to notice and add what's missing. As I mention above, what interests me about this transmedia model is that it addresses two weaknesses I see in the 360 model:
1) it isn't about everything expressing the same idea, which the 360 model is. It is more clear that individual pieces can be used in different ways, to do whatever they do best (but still tied together by a strategic direction), and sometimes do completely different things. As Faris says it doesn't have to be "one idea iterated different ways."
2) it factors in the idea of community and social relationships, which the 360 model doesn't speak to. This is the more important part, and the big innovation for me. Of course social stuff can be factored into 360 thinking, but it's not inherent to the model, and I think it's an important addition to force us to ask the questions like "How can I provoke or faciliate conversations? How can I feed communities?"

Paul McEnany

Jason- Great post. I'm a little annoyed I missed it the first time around, but, luckily, Russell Davies has brought us back together. :)

mike

check out interview with faris on rm116

http://www.rm116.com/2006/11/transmedia_plan.html

Charles Edward Frith

Big rock candy is also a track in 'Oh brother where art thou', which to my mind reflects a yearning in U.S. culture for the simpler life of naieve expedition and serendipity, a hankering for days gone by.

sean Moffitt

Jason,

I can see your passion palpably zip through your piece on Convergence Culture and there are some great takeaways around the importance of community, the need for communication to get people to talk and the role of your different media constituents to operate differently.

Unfortunately, I take this model the other way...the specific role of the marketing/agency professional is to stir the conversation and provide the reasons for conversation not provide the world thousands of tiny conversations (let your audience do that--you provide the tools).

Given an attention and time-starved world, focusing on producing widely-differing individual paid executions is nevermin d a costly exercise but seems to create a cacophony of stuff that may cause more dissonance than conversation.

Mozilla Firefox is a great example of organizing an entire business around getting their community involved - they couldn't exist by producing it all themselves - I think only 18 people are one the payroll. Even though they have farmed out nearly every key role to their community, they still have a strong sense of self.

In my world of word of mouth, your first chance is you biggest one to make an impression - rather than spend on a whackload of anything sticks, I would project out an inspiring lifestyle statement, big edgy idea or purple cow product and get out of the way and let people talk (although not completely out of the way - becoming a part of the conversation is quite helpful too).

If I look at the world of communication right now, it's not a lack of integrated media approaches or brilliant individual executions, it's the absence of brave, inspiring big ideas that start the conversation and a system to support that effort that have afflicted performance -

I'd hold out Dove, lululemon and Axe as three Canadian-relevant brands that have a strong sense of self, a big idea that allow their biggest stakeholders and a forum for their customers to own a piece of that.

Strangely, we're probably more in agreement than not, with maybe two key differences:

- who should be producing all these multiple appendages of community and conversation?

- what is the role of the people who offciially lead/steer the brand in creating this sense of community?

Personal opinion - I think your adaptation of the original model is a good one but leans to a different point - how does each execution build engagement by creating layers of talk value? I think its great guidance...it may be a different point to how to orchestrate media across the board.

Anyway, love to have a coffee about this one day and debate it...great exploration of a topic ad agencies should be having more of...sometimes posing the question is more important than having the right answer. Cheers


sean Moffitt

Jason,

I can see your passion palpably zip through your piece on Convergence Culture and there are some great takeaways around the importance of community, the need for communication to get people to talk and the role of your different media constituents to operate differently.

Unfortunately, I take this model the other way...the specific role of the marketing/agency professional is to stir the conversation and provide the reasons for conversation not provide the world thousands of tiny conversations (let your audience do that--you provide the tools).

Given an attention and time-starved world, focusing on producing widely-differing individual paid executions is nevermin d a costly exercise but seems to create a cacophony of stuff that may cause more dissonance than conversation.

Mozilla Firefox is a great example of organizing an entire business around getting their community involved - they couldn't exist by producing it all themselves - I think only 18 people are one the payroll. Even though they have farmed out nearly every key role to their community, they still have a strong sense of self.

In my world of word of mouth, your first chance is you biggest one to make an impression - rather than spend on a whackload of anything sticks, I would project out an inspiring lifestyle statement, big edgy idea or purple cow product and get out of the way and let people talk (although not completely out of the way - becoming a part of the conversation is quite helpful too).

If I look at the world of communication right now, it's not a lack of integrated media approaches or brilliant individual executions, it's the absence of brave, inspiring big ideas that start the conversation and a system to support that effort that have afflicted performance -

I'd hold out Dove, lululemon and Axe as three Canadian-relevant brands that have a strong sense of self, a big idea that allow their biggest stakeholders and a forum for their customers to own a piece of that.

Strangely, we're probably more in agreement than not, with maybe two key differences:

- who should be producing all these multiple appendages of community and conversation?

- what is the role of the people who offciially lead/steer the brand in creating this sense of community?

Personal opinion - I think your adaptation of the original model is a good one but leans to a different point - how does each execution build engagement by creating layers of talk value? I think its great guidance...it may be a different point to how to orchestrate media across the board.

Anyway, love to have a coffee about this one day and debate it...great exploration of a topic ad agencies should be having more of...sometimes posing the question is more important than having the right answer. Cheers


sohbet

Okay, I placed a link to you in my Blog. Let's see what happens. Also, who is
Meme? Is she cute? :)
siir odasi
sohbet
ozel sohbet

serkan

Anyway, love to have a coffee about this one day and debate it...great
exploration of a topic ad agencies should be having more of...sometimes posing
the question is more important than having the right answer. Cheers

sohbet mynet

Kurye

Thanks for this informations. yararli bilgiler icin cok tesekkurler. (escuse me my english is bad.)

Bayo Adekanmbi

The interconnectedness of the consumer world as an evolving TRANSUMER who is largely driven by experiences, discovery and fighting boredom (TrendWatch) supports the possibility of “smashing” the brand story into an unending soap opera perfectly integrated as a continuum deployed through different media aperture

The sustainability of this multi-channel integration is the holding power created by the wildfire effect of the big idea narrative within social communities

cicicocuk

oyun
bedava oyunlar
kız oyunları
thanks you all

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