.oO Tailwind

I had a reply to my last post from Jamie who is the web editor for Greenpeace, saying that ever since Greenpeace launched their campaign the forums on Dove’s ‘Campaign for Real Beauty’ site have been closed.

COME ON UNILEVER!!!

Engage positively!!!

This is lame and you’re looking like fools.

This smacks of the fake blogging incident by L’Oreal brand Vichy who failed to understand (at first) how to engage with this level of digital subversion. L’Oreal turned it round by positively engaging with the blogging community to create a dialogue.

Unilever have put up their rather un-inspiring, dry, content free retort and are putting their fingers in their ears and saying la la la. I think they might be sitting up there in Unilever Towers looking out the window saying things like “Have they gone yet?” or “Today’s news is tomorrow’s chip wrapping.”

Silly Unilever.

Well done Greenpeace.

It’d be great if you could look at some other ecologically naughty brands / campaigns and entertain us all with some more highlighted irony to deliver important messages.

Beauty? It’s what’s on the inside that counts. What’s inside Dove is ugly.

By Warren Hutchinson

The Greenpeace Orang-Utan’s struck Unilever on Monday and within an hour the blogosphere was rampant with rampaging Orang-Utans, videos, images, stories.

As ever ‘Transparency Tyranny‘ is rife and digital is the driving nemesis of corporation x.

What are Unilever doing in response? And how are they going to engage in this digital onslaught, this citizen journalist propagation and ironic spin of ‘real beauty’?

I’m really interested in the strategy behind all of this and how it unfolds. In the inception of the ‘campaign for real beauty’ I wonder if they thought about defensive strategies should stories (which they MUST have suspected) such as this emerge.

On the Unilever site there is a front page news item titled ‘Sustainable Palm Oil’. Click through and you see a video from their SVP of Communications and Sustainability starting with a statement that:

“We have great sympathy with what Greenpeace are trying to achieve, they are drawing attention to a really important issue” - Gavin Neath, SVP Communications and Sustainability

I find the role of SVP ‘Communications’ (Spin) and ‘Sustainability’ incongruous, but that’s another issue.

Unilever are part of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, or RSPO for short, and unsurprisingly they are playing up to this. Unilever claim to be instrumental in setting up the roundtable for sustainable palm and carrying it forward.

The transcript can be found here.

The response is a step, I’d rather see something directly relating and acknowledging the Greenpeace efforts, an alignment of sorts. They are playing it down, but not explicitly responding.

The ‘Dove in the News’ site is even wetter. Dove is all over the news, but it is not showing here.

Cue fingers in the ears - “la la la”:

The problem is, in order to hear Unilever’s point of view you have to mobilise yourself to go and see their site, navigate and watch a polished corporate video.

I can’t, yet, find any level of engagement by Unilever with the user-generated, mobilised, chatteriffic sphere of blogs, video sites and social networks. Searches for ‘Greenpeace, Unilever, Palm Oil’ only result in links to sites siding with the Greenpeace effort and not Unilever.

Designing a strategy for organic search traffic is required or else people will simply miss Unilever’s point.

I had a quick scan through the Facebook groups and found lots of Unilever corporate groups for ‘Graduates’ and ‘Management Schemes’ but UNSURPRISINGLY I found the Facebook group ‘Dove: Not so clean’.

Okay - it has 12 members so far.

Corporations are really uncomfortable with this stuff and they continue to ignore dealing with it.

And in closing, the final statement by the interviewer:

“Gavin Neath - thank you very much indeed”

smells horribly corporate and reeks of Aunty (The BBC for non-UK readers).

So, Flickr now offers video.

That’s my ‘Photostream’ kiboshed.

They’re offering Pro users storage for up to 90 seconds of video. Not sure if freebies get video or not.

At first I thought this is a bad move, but now I’m not so sure. I’ve read their blog article and decided that I like the idea of sharing ‘long photos’.

I like the 90 second cap.

It tally’s nicely with those short mobile videos I capture of my kids and do nothing with. Now, instead of rotting on my phone I can share them with my family.

Lovely.

Initially I thought 90 seconds is short and will hamper adoption, but actually the shortness keeps the idea of video quite pure. It is about ‘long photos’ and not a repository for pirate film and clips. I’d hate to see it used like YouTube which to me is a bit of a chavvy web brand.

Snuck in at the bottom of the blog post is the news that they are doubling the upload image size for Pro users to 20Mb and 10Mb for free users.

I wonder what the Flickr community will make of it.? They can be quite a reactive bunch.

Nice.

This was doing the rounds at my place of employ last week:

Dell using Twitter to communicate offers.

In a nutshell, DellOutlet has a Twitter stream communicating offers and coupons.

Okay, so you only follow if you want to which I guess is fine, but I’m just not a fan of brands entering into this kind of ‘conversation’. It cheapens it and erodes the idea and starts to make me want to get out. To [mis]quote Seth Godin, where is the ‘permission asset’ for Dell?

Regarding the Dell feed I doubt anyone loves Dell so much that they permanently follow DellOutlet on Twitter so I’m curious as to how people discover and then track the offers. How is it making itself known? Word of mouth? Surely people savvy enough to pick up on this aren’t in the market for a Dell machine, I don’t know.

Why is Twitter a valid channel for this over and above a standard RSS offers feed? Maybe it’s due to the fact that Twitter is a web 2.0 darling, albeit from last year’s SXSW and an RSS feed just isn’t out there enough.

Incidentally, a quick hike to the Dell Outlet site shows that the left and the right hands aren’t talking as there is no allusion to the Twitter stream, no list of followers, nothing.

Interestingly (or not), the tone of the Dell Outlet site isn’t chatty like the Twitter feed either.

Either way, I don’t fancy a smidgin’ of ‘ambient intimacy’ with Dell thank you very much.

I shall not be following.

Besides, I’m a Mac fanboy.

All this digital stuff is funny isn’t it? My ‘digital friend’ @Charliegower is more up-to-date with my moods, locations and general activity than my real-life, long term buddy Nick Foster (who’s not plugged in enough to have the Twitteresque ‘@’ prefix on his monicker).

Charlie and I have only met once, we share a mutual friend in Nick, but we’ve hardly met really. Yet somehow, some reason we’re connected on all the usual social properties, Last.fm, Facebook, Flickr, Plaxo, Linked In, Twitter, Plazes, Dopplr etc etc

Twitter in particular interests me at the moment because of what it’s doing to relationships I have with people. The ambient familiarity is an extra layer that I think is only beneficial. It ‘warms the cockles’ as they say to know that:

@drpig (Will Bloor) is making homemade pasta

@brackers (Andy Braxton) is engaged!

@casablance (Phil Whitehouse) is struggling to install his BT Vision box

@melb (Melissa Bezar) is off to another posh London restaurant

@charliegower (Charlie Gower) is (again) procrastinating by going swimming

@gavinedwardsuk (Gavin Edwards) is on the train to Sheffield, again

@stephenbarber (Stephen Barber) is picking up his guitar (which is what he should do more often)

As we all know, Twitter is a broadcast medium where users can announce ‘what they are doing’ via sms, instant messenger or the web. It’s predominantly utilised as a ‘I’m doing…’, ‘I’m feeling…’, ‘I’m thinking…’ medium.

I’ve also used it in a practical means when trying to navigate New York looking for a top-drawer deli for breakfast, but it’s mostly used like Facebook Status, informing your ‘followers’ of what you are are doing.

Personally, I protect my updates a i don’t want people I don’t know seeing that I’m ‘out of my house’ or I’m ‘away on business’. Scamsters could mine a lot of information from active tweeters.

It stands to reason, that people ‘Tweet’ when they are doing something interesting or when they are killing downtime in a bus queue or on a train (see my post on living an ‘ALt-Tab’ existence), so you get a skewed view, but it makes entertaining reading nonetheless.

Of course, you would never say ‘Just listening to some Mariah Carey’ (Gavin Edwards) or ‘Having a poo’ or ‘Just had a row with the other half’.

No. That’s too much. You have to filter.

It’s interesting that people whom I work with are the ones I engage a lot with via Twitter. None of my ‘friends’ use it, of course I consider many of my colleagues and ex-colleagues friends, but I also Twitter with clients, friends friends, and as a result I feel like there’s something there, known between us that in some way, sustains or affects the personal relationship. Not in all cases, of course.

Phil WHitehouse wrote Ten Commandments of Twitter, which I wholly disagree with. the only rule should be ‘there are no rules’. Although I HATE people who follow but don’t Tweet. Lurkers. Blurgggh!

So, to wrap up, I could meet @Charliegower down the pub and have a rip-roaring evening of conversation, feeling like I already know him. I know his work situatiion, his exercise habits, his music taste, hi ideas and via Plazes or Dopplr, his location.

That’s all bonkers. But if you keep it real by only using such technologies with real people you are likely to meet, I think it’s quite a nice relationship enhancing tool.

Fancy a beer?
Continue reading ‘My Twitter Chums Know More’

Whilst eating some toast this morning I caught a report on BBC 1 suggesting that we’re not hugging enough. We’re not extending human contact in the form of hugging kissing and touching and we are failing to receive our RDHI (Recommended Daily Hugging Intake).

(Sorry I can’t find a story to link to on the BBC website).

Psychologists behind the report suggest that we are relying far too heavily on non-human-touch methods of communication such as texting, email and ‘pokes’. Hugging makes you happy.

I’ve been arguing for a while that humans require real, genuine and tangible value when it comes to their relationships with other humans and that social networks as they currently stand, fail to satisfy our long-term human needs because they are limited to facilitate only synthetic relationships.

Look at your Facebook account. How many ‘friends’ do you have?

Are you one of those people who accepts every invitation through fear of offence? Or are you one that only accepts invitations from people they actually, really and still know?

Do you consider tenuous links with colleagues you are simply ‘aware’ of? Or do you keep it focussed down into people you actually know? People you are actually friends with?

Social networks tap into out latent need to belong, to be part of a community and to be recognised. They provide us with recognition and allow us to say “I am here and I belong”.

It’s a Maslow thing.

But over a long period of time social networks will fail to deliver real value in the form of tangible, off-line and physical benefit unless they evolve into real space. Doing something, actually being there together, in real terms.

A search on the BBC website reveals this:

A hug is, first of all, a form of non-verbal communication. It brings people together in a feeling of mutual love, comfort and safety. Research suggests that everyone needs physical contact to survive, especially infants. Hugging is an act of giving and receiving support, moral and physical, and love

BBC - Guide to Hugging

Loving the ‘Huggers’, ‘Huger’ and ‘Hugee’ references there.

Great digital ’start-ups’ such as Facebook, MySpace and Last.FM could just be limited by their lack of real physical space and I wonder if this is something they’ll need to evolve in order to survive?

It’s all very well having ‘friends’ on these sites and receiving witty pokes, funwall messages and music recommendations, but I can’t engage with them on a “so how are you doing?” basis. I can’t really and truly care.

I personally have noticed some of my more distant friendships relying on Facebook to stay in touch. We poke, message and send things to each other whereas before we’d phone.

That’s rubbish. I’m changing it. By using Facebook to message each other we’re saying that we don’t really care.

I’ve also observed some friends and family resolving sticky issues via email, text or by writing a message to someone’s Facebook inbox. How sad is that? Complete avoidance of true, emotional disscusion.

What is that doing to society?

I guess in the old days we used to write letters but I don’t consider that the same thing. Letters unlike email/text etc, take time. They take effort and flow from the end of your pen in an emotional, stream of consciousness kind of way.

Email is synthetic, easy and impersonal.

We all know that teenagers don’t use it.

Emoticons were invented to try and bridge this emotionless communication. ] :p :s =|

(My blog tool has probably ‘emoticonned’ some of those).

I remember back in 1996, when I started using IRC (internet Relay Chat) in the form of Foothills and Resort, we communicated using a telnet window using text only using the ‘emote’ command to show emotion.

Warren> Emote is happy.

‘Warren is happy.’

Fundamentally, even though the technology has evolved the need hasn’t changed and the need hasn’t be fulfilled.

When we are born and as babies we learn primitive methods of communication such as touch and hugging. But as we progress to our teenage years the level of non-family touch drops away considerably.

I don’t know about you but on a personal level I’m getting bored of social networks. On a professional level I’m still enjoying the challenges of seeding a community and designing tools for them, but I have to say, I’m not really seeing any great value.

I could talk about Twitter here, but that’s for another day. this post is already too long, if you got this far, well done and thanks.

As I write this post I can’t help but laugh at the fact that next to me on the train into London, there is a couple smooching, kissing ad making lip-smaking noises, cooing and warbling together like teenagers.

They are in their late thirties and it’s irritating the hell out of me!
xx

Image credits: Dina_Mehta

Technorati Tags:
social networks, community, backlash, behaviours, emotion

Wow.

That was the network effect in full, errrm, effect. At the time of writing some 11750 people have signed a petition stating:

We, the undersigned, call on the London Olympic committee to scrap and change the ridiculous logo unveiled for the London 2012 Olympics.

Whilst over on the BBC 606 website there have been some 2799 comments, and very few of them are complementary.

Now, before you carry on reading, I want you to go and watch these 2 videos. It will take a few minutes of your time. 5 max. Then we can carry on.

1. Video 1 - An animation aimed at depicting the energy of the brand
2. Video 2 - The ‘brand video’ aimed at depicting the qualities of the brand

Watched them…?

Good. Now we have a little context which most of the petitioners probably have no interest in attaining.

How do you feel?

Put aside the fact that the logo/lock-up/identity is super-crazy-manic and concentrate on how you feel about what you just saw.

Do phrases such as ‘rubbish’, ‘obvious’, ‘disgraceful’ and the like come to mind? Or do you feel a little bit charged, a little bit hopeful?

I’ve been working on this project since December and I’ve been working with the involved agencies and of course the London Organising Committee and I have to say that, for me, this brand works. Or at least it will work once we get past the initial cynacism and reaction. It embodies the energy, the vibrancy and the difference that this Olympic vehicle is hopefully going to be about and I’m writing this post as my way of saying to the teams I’ve worked with ‘Great job’.

It certainly inspired and stimulated a reaction, we’re all participating in this one and thanks to the network effect everyone is included.

The double-edged sword of web 2.0 in full swing.

Brands are not just logos of course, so today’s reaction is to an image. Further, I suspect that most people who have signed the petition or voiced their disapproval haven’t yet explored the story or the videos I’ve linked to and have been harbouring resentment ever since London won the opportunity to host.

It’s true that dissatisfaction and resentment always air more readily than satisfaction and support, but today did surprise me somewhat. I suspected that there would be a body of responses in the vein of ‘I don’t get it’, ‘My 5 year old could do better’, ‘What a waste of money’ etc because these things are always levelled at identities of this nature.

I wonder why people feel the need to expunge such vitriol when in doing so they are dismanteling the need for an emblem of hope, of change of being the best you can be, of being Olympic. It’s not about what it looks like, it’s about what it stands for and that’s what I think hasn’t yet been understood.

Over the next 5 years we’ll see exactly what this means, we’ll feel the experience of London 2012 and we’ll see change happen.

I’m hopeful. I’m confident. I’ve seen the people at London 2012 at work and I for one believe in their passion to do things differently.

But then, that is just my opinion and I’m just throwing my hat into the ring of network effect.

The company I work for didn’t develop the identity, we delivered the range of London 2012 websitea. But I say this not because I want to distance myself from the furor surrounding the identity but because actually I’m quite jealous that were not more closely aligned with this controversy. Our team have done a fantastic job in taking an incredibly challenging brand world and rolling it out as an accessible website given the logo, colour palette, typography and I think it achieves almost everything we wanted to.

It’s clear, legible, bright, energetic and engaging.

But I have to hold my hat off to the team at Wolf Olins and to Locog for trying something so daring, something so brave. Particularly given that in many sense as a design challenge developing Olympic brands is pretty much a poison chalice as everyone seems to love berating it, whatever has been done.

This is brave work particularly given how precious the Olympics is to people and particularly to Londoners at this present time.

Compare it to other Olympic marks of the past. They are dull, meaningless, formulaic and uninsprational, inunispiring, non-inclusive and not particularly stimulating.

.

Click here to see them close-up.

Beijing is the next host city and their identity is about celebrating China and about Chinese culture. A statement on their websites says:

Every emblem of the Olympics tells a story. The Beijing 2008 Olympic Games emblem “Chinese Seal, Dancing Beijing” is filled with Beijing’s hospitality and hopes, and carries the city’s commitment to the world.

It’s all about Beijing and that kind of inward looking presentation wouldn’t befit London. Largely because London is a city of cultural diversity and is overtly outward facing but also beacuse London sees itself as a world stage. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s very appropriate for Beijing. I like it, particularly the Fuva who are there to carry a message of friendship and peace — and good wishes from China — to children all over the world.

Argue the toss about whether or not this brand delivers that, but I say it delivers a statment of intent - that this is going to be different and that this is about taking part. You can say one thing, this has not been designed to sit smartly on a polo shirt or coffee mug. In the context of Olympic branding history it screams change.

Right on.

The brand story is about passion, inspiration, participation and stimulation.

I watch those videos and I feel that. I watched them with my wife and she felt that too. Idon’t mind saying that I felt emotional in a good way. It was lump in the throat stuff and I’m proud to be part of it.

By the time the Games arrives, everyone should fel proud because everyone will have the chance to join in.

I hope that everyone feels something when they see those videos and that they start to consider that this is an emblem for something and that bashing it is like bashing that person riding the bike, the granny and her karate, the kid and the horse.

Let the discussion continue.

Quick one this morning as I’m just about to leave the house to buy my sister a birthday present (too much information).

Two things, firstly Google is planning to buy Panaramio the geo-tagging photo service that you often see in Google Earth. It’s curious to me that they’re planning to buy Panaramio rather than build geo-tagging functionality into Picasa.

Very strange.

Also, check out the Street Level features now available in major US cities on Google Maps.

You can now zoom down to street level and drag/pan/zoom your way along the street and see building fronts all the way. Zoom in and you can even read signs.

This is cool and it’s interesting to think where this might go when you consider the Panaramio purchase. These pictures in Street Level are obviously bespoke, geo-tagged shots commissioned by Google. But Panaramio opens the doors to user generated content filling the gaps.

I can’t see Google paying for the shots in my home town, so maybe UGC via Panaramio will will that gap.

The gap between online mapping services and 3D virtual globes continues to fuzz.

[Xposted: Frankandpat]

First seen by Barbd, Ex.plode.us allows you to search social spaces for people’s profiles and it draws them together.

You can run a search for Warren Hutchinson and Snowbadger (My alterego) and get different results.

This make it easier for people to ‘dig up’ the real me. Eeek.

I worry about advertising here.

I wonder what this does for the privacy, professional / social persona debate I mentioned in an earlier post.?

Here’s a list of me and my friends… It’s interesting that Snowbadger has more friends than Warren hutchinson.

Hmmm.

Our company is currently going through a bit of a change after some fairly heavyweight mergers. Firstly Oyster with Framfab and then Framfab with LBicon. The group is now an 1800 person, multinational full service design agency. It’s essentially a rollup of Oyster, Framfab, LBicon, Lost Boys, Wheel, MetaDesign, Scient, iXL and some bits of Razorfish.

We now have offices in the UK, US, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Italy and China (!). Pretty huge I’d say.

But with this growth there are the inevitable challenges such as knowledge sharing, creative agility, familiarity and moreover team culture and individual identity. Certainly in the London office where I work.

I wrote about the begining of this challenge, here and here.

The team culture has no doubt been impacted which breeds some questions around personal identity and the sense of place an individual has within the whole. On the whole everything is positive, there are just some interesting challenges afoot. there are also some very interesting opportunities afoot in cross-polinating the disciplines from one country to the next as there is so much to learn.

I’ve already been part of a knowledge exchange with out Dutch counterparts at Lost Boys in Amsterdam. Cool bunch they are too.

Anyway, in order to deal with this the London outfit has arranged into ‘ecosystems’ and these groups seek to deliver small group thinking, sharing and agility within a large, well supported network. The are teams of about 60 people grouped around clients with a natural affinity.

Growth brings process as process is required to control the new chaos. Process can all too often equate to bureaucracy and bureaucracy is an innovation killer in my book. So we’re working on ways to reintroduce chaos (a bit anyway), to reinvigorate a mistake-embracing culture where it’s okay to try new things and get it wrong.

This is design. It’s about invention and experimentation.

All this starts with people and my key observation about agency culture after a few years first hand experience is that very talented people join to work on ‘cool’ brands. Those same talented people are used on projects from week to week, month to month so that all the ‘learning’ takes place on-he-job. Yes there are training course and development packages etc.. but that’s all too often structured around a skill-deficit and is rarely about just trying things out.

I don’t like that and I think that it’s wrong. Who has ever been on a course where they say “Just play. make and break stuff, be curious”?

My colleagues at LBi who lead our ecosystem also agree so we are currently introducing an 80/20 culture to our team.

80% on billed client work. 20% making mistakes working on things that excite them.

It’s not new but the reasons for pursuing it are obvious. It is all about creating an innovation culture where people are challenged and encouraged to work on subjects that intrinsically motivate them. To create a sense of ‘play’ in our workplace.

Any professional service company worth its salt has this approach but I haven’t heard of anything similar in a digital design agency. Yes in product design, but not in digital and certainly at none of our competitors.

I’ve always said that our discipline has a lot to learn from other design disciplines, being the new kid on the block and I stick to that.

So. 80/20. How do we make it happen?

Well there are 2 challenges to deal with from the off:

1. In a culture of 100% billable, creating breathing space for the ‘20′ to happen
2. Finding out what topics individuals should work on and what the prospective projects might be

Firstly we can consider blocking out sometime each week where we switch mode from billed work to private work. I like the idea of this all happening at the same time each week as I think it will create a nice buzz in the team to have everyone on ‘pet projects’ at the same time.

To get started we’re thinking of setting ‘Design Challenges’ to run for a time-boxed period just to introduce the 80/20 way of life. 80% on projects, 20% on other stuff.

We can let this run for a while, enjoy the distraction and nurture our capacity planning to accommodate the new activity.

While we are re-engineering ‘how’ we do things we can be thinking about those ‘pet projects’, what they are, what interests us all as individuals. Some people can team up and start making, trying and developing ’stuff’. The Design Challenges will help us establish the time slot and be a conduit for developing some personal ideas.

I’m always up for feeling our way towards this by trying things out rather than talking talking talking too much.

We’ll let you know how it goes.

We’ve discussed it and it’s all systems go on our new innovative, mistake embracing, creative, fun, developmental culture.

Yay.