That Gormandizer Man

What If... Sleep Cycle

I use the Sleep Cycle app when I go to bed.

This is primarily because I sometimes go through bouts of insomnia. Usually I'm fine, but when work is busy, when there's big stuff going on in my private life, when I'm inspired by some great ideas I find it tough to sleep. Sleep Cycle helps me understand how well I'm sleeping on a nightly basis.

It's really good as it wakes you when it's the right time to wake you, not at a specific time. You give it a half hour window (say, from 7 - 7:30am) and it wakes you up at any point between those times when your body is ready to be woken up, and not when you're heading into a deeper sleep.

This graph here is a typical night's sleep for me:

Most nights during the week I don't really drink. Maybe a glass of wine with a meal or a cheeky ale, but not much. I find I sleep much better when I'm sober rather than when I've had a few drinks as you can see from the graph below.

Last night I had a few pints to celebrate a friend's birthday:

And you can see how different a typical night's sleep is when I'm sober compared to when I'm drunk.

But this is the rub. I've worked out that I don't sleep as well when I'm drunk, not the app.

So.

What If... I could add notes to each night's sleep to say if I've consumed any alcohol? Actually, taking it one step further, why can't Sleep Cycle link with MyFitnessPal and build up a database of the things I consume. Then it could spit out lots of useful and not so useful information. Useful: "You sleep for 1.23 hours more when you don't drink alcohol." Not useful: "You stay in deeper sleep more when you eat less than 4 carrots a day."

What If... I could build up a user profile and tell the app when I'm at a hotel and how firm the bed is, for example, and it spits out what kind of mattress I sleep better on? They could do a deal with a bed brand or a hotel brand and push relevant offers to me based on how right the beds are for me.

What If... I could program the app and give it favourite locations? "Home", "Hannah's" and "Dad's" for example, and it could tell where I was and tell me where I sleep best? Beyond that what about when I go on holiday? It could deduce where I am, what the weather's like and tell me my best sleep ever at the end of every year?

What If... It collects data throughout the different seasons and builds up a picture of how well I sleep in each, then gives me tips on new duvets with different Tog ratings? Then it could tell me what the temperature is likely to be next week and suggest the best one for me?

What If... It linked to my iPod/ Spotify/ iTunes and worked out that I listen to music when I sleep. (I do, I find it relaxing to have some ambient noise in the background.) Then it built up a profile of artists and genres that helped me sleep better than others and spat out a bespoke playlist via a 3rd party for me and then gave me a week's free play before asking me to purchase on iTunes/ Spotify?

What If... just What If...

(Of course all of these are beyond the original build of the app I'm sure, but I love thinking What If...)
(And, as my friend Katy said in response to my post on MyFitnessPal, using these apps as marketing tools would turn some people off.) 

What is Success?

A child constantly asking "Why?" is one of the most annoying things in the world. But that simplest of all questions is also one of the most important tools in the Planner's armoury. I'd specifically like to focus on one incidence of asking "Why?" in this post, and that's the fundamental question to ask your client or your Account Team every time a new piece of work is started: "Why are we doing this activity?"

The answer is usually to achieve something hard or soft.

Hard: To sell more stuff to more people; to sell more stuff to the same people.
Soft: To make more people see my brand; to make more people understand my brand; to make people talk about my brand.

And the fundamental question, the one simple thing every single Planner must always always ask at this critical stage (and remind everyone throughout the whole process) is:

What is Success?
Put simply, what criteria must this work achieve in order for the client's business, the client herself and the agency to all be happy with the result?

(Not-at-all-cheesy image courtesy of zaraki.kenpachi on Flickr)

In my experience I've usually found there are three kinds of success for every brief:

1) The explicit business and brand Success Criteria.
These are the business goals the activity is hoping to achieve. As stated above they are usually Hard and/ or Soft. Some take time to achieve and some have instant rewards.
Sometimes, these criteria need to be discussed, challenged and debated with the client as they can be contextual to the marketplace or to previous campaigns. It's at this point it's critical for an agency and a Planner to have some kind of understanding of whether the goals are feasible. It's also very important at this stage to debate HOW you're going to measure these criteria, and discuss who will pay for that measurement, but that's a post in itself.
(At some point in my past I was asked by a client to increase sales in a shrinking market during a recession, with a much smaller budget than the market norm, much less budget than the previous year and with no new product to supplement the range. At the same time our key competitors were spending much more, had a better product and were supplementing their range. It's at that point you need an honest discussion about the options you have available to you.)

2) The implicit business, brand and client Success Criteria.
Not to sound too clandestine, but these criteria may never be put onto the briefing form...
You see, these are the criteria the client may allude to when they brief the agency. There's also a role for really good Account Handlers at this stage who know their client as they can really help get under the skin of why they want to do this piece of activity. There's usually a very real reason why (see 1 above) but this is sometimes supplemented with what a client wants to get out of the activity. 
Does your client like 'firsts', or the new technology platform everyone is raving about, or do you know she has had an interview elsewhere with a view to moving on? Each of these gives you an opportunity to help them achieve their own career success criteria. And if you help them do that, you'll be in their good books and that's good for you and your agency.
BUT.
It's essential that any guidance at this level which impacts on the creative and strategic answers is absolutely fundamentally in line with the explicit business and brand success criteria. Failure to comply with that is failure of the project pure and simple. 

3) The agency Success Criteria.
An agency is a business and as such it has its own business success criteria, and when a relationship between an agency and client is a fruitful one it's because the businesses have mutual goals that allow them to work together for the good of each other. Again, these are hard and soft. Agencies like any other business have to make a profit so there's a simple success criteria right there: will this piece of work be profitable for us? And there are soft measures too. If you want to build the profile of the agency you need to work on projects that allow you to do that. Or if you want to attract the best creative talent (beyond salary) then you need to produce amazingly creative work. The same goes for Planners and effective work. So, from an agency point of view, there should always be the question of: "Why are we doing this work?" And as above, sometimes the results from that are immediate (profit), and sometimes they take time (portfolio work, a door-opener to bigger things).
BUT... to repeat myself above.
It's essential that any guidance at this level which impacts on the creative and strategic answers is absolutely fundamentally in line with the explicit business and brand success criteria. Failure to comply with that is failure of the project pure and simple.  

The Sweet Spot

The sweet spot for a long, fruitful and profitable (financially and emotionally) brand, client and agency relationship is that you can hit all three criteria on most pieces of work. That's to say you can achieve business goals, make the client look great and make the agency look great too as well as all making money.

But you'll rarely do any of that if you don't ask that very simple question at the outset, and refer to it when you're critiquing the strategy and creative ideas at every stage.

What is Success?

As with lots of good Planning practices, it's not complicated, but it's profoundly important.

Live and learn horizontally

I'm a horizontal person, and therefore I'm a horizontal planner.

You see, whether we like it or not we're born into a social position and throughout our life that social position changes and evolves as we do. If things don't go to plan sometimes we move to the left, and if things go well we move to the right. We may stay in the same place, but you can bet the things around us are evolving all the time.

And, if you look to the extremes, you'll see that if you work in an agency you're more likely to be further to the right. So let's look to those extremes. 

(This is me drinking craft beers in Seattle. Nice.)

I regularly drink craft beers in Shoreditch. Over the past few weeks I've visited several places around East London and in other parts of London where there is a great selection of craft beers and real ales. Some have their own barbecue oven and some make their own scotch eggs. When I visit these bars there are lots of people there. Most of them dress like me, speak like me and no doubt have a very similar job to me. They're all very brand conscious and genre-conscious - some seemingly having visited a shop in Hackney, pointed at a picture of a Williamsburg hipster on the wall and grunted "One of those"...

(This is Jeremy Kyle... probably just about to be really honest with someone).

On the other extreme, I watch Jeremy Kyle. And read the reader comments in the Daily Mail online regularly. And although it galls me to sometimes, I am interested in both. On Jeremy Kyle you don't see the people I rub shoulders with in my favourite bars. You don't see people like me. You see a different social class interested in different ways of life. They speak different, act different and although they are as brand conscious as those above, the brands they see as aspirational are slightly different. They too may have walked into a local clothes shop, spotted a picture of a celebrity falling out of a nightclub and pointed to the wall saying "One of those"...

(I've been provocatively stereotypical in the descriptions above, I know).

I don't live either life vertically (fully in one silo), as I prefer to touch on both (and everything in between) and live horizontally across lots of different social groups.

As planners we're the voice of the consumer, and whilst the consumer may be one of the stereotypes above there's a very simple statement I'm going to make: The people above are not representative of the population. They're not representative because they are the extremes. ('Extreme' is of course contextual and I could talk about people living in poverty as much as I could talk about billionaires).

So where am I going with this? Well, if you're a planner and you live any of these lifestyles vertically, you're missing out on a whole spectrum of learning.

(Thanks to @eaonp for tweeting this earlier)

As human beings, we like to surround ourselves with people we have an affinity to. If we have friends from different socio-economic backgrounds it can sometimes be really interesting and rewarding and it can sometimes cause tensions. (Another program I like watching is Come Dine With Me for that exact reason as you get to observe how human beings from different backgrounds cope with engaging with people outside their comfort zone).

So what I try to do every day of my life is to live across several silos, and learn from them all.

I go to craft beer bars and spend £4.95 for half an 11% Nigerian stout. I go to the social club with my dad in Hartlepool and speak to people who have never lived outside their hometown. I watch my dad and all his friends drink Carling whilst I drink bitter. I walk along Ridley Road market and rub shoulders with hipsters, cockneys and people from all over the world. I visit Shoreditch House and rub shoulders with people who live a completely different life to me. I stay in 5* hotels and I stay in budget hotels. I shop at independent butchers and I shop at Iceland. I visit Tokyo, the USA and India as well as Milton Keynes, Hartlepool and Brighton. I actively eat vegetarian meals regularly and also eat ribs too. I sometimes fly business class and I sometimes fly Ryanair. And in every single one of those experiences I observe what's going on around me.

If I only experienced one of the above disproportionately to the others (or any other kind of experience) then I'm not the kind of planner I'd like to be. This is because a key part of learning about people and society is to be that person.

There's only so much you can garner from focus groups and from TGI (and we can discuss their merits at all but that's a different question for a different time). In my opinion it's imperative you actually live as the people you are interested in. And a good start to doing that is to live horizontally a little across many different lifestyles. You shouldn't surround yourself with people like you any more than you should surround yourself with people not like you. Mix it up. Experience them all.

If you spend all day in an office surrounded by marketing types and then spend most of your free time in Shoreditch House you're deluding yourself if you think you are good at understanding people.

By living horizontally you'll be learning throughout every moment of your life, not simply when you're at work 'doing research' because every moment in life is research.

 

Turning a NO into a YES

Last night I visited LBi for a Creative Social evening entitled NO! It was good fun and the talks were varied - some more fun and others more useful.

I'm not going to write up the whole evening, but I'd like to focus on Becky Power's talk a little. (In truth the following is an amalgamation of a few of the talks, but using her talk as a template is useful).

Becky talked about the frustrations we all have when we think we have an amazing idea that is creative, compelling, relevant and will be successful... only for the client to say NO! She showed this video of one of her favourite campaigns:

Becky didn't work on the campaign but recently contacted the then client to find out some details of how the campaign came to life. The client said he hadn't bought it first time, but eventually did.

The client was also the chap that bought this:

So what made him change his mind with these pieces of work? What compelled him to buy these (relatively) risky campaigns? Crucially, how did the agency turn a NO into a YES?

He gave Becky some pointers on how an agency could do that. (These tips are never gospel and different people have different opinions so I've added my own little opinions too. The list below is not what Becky said - I've built on it).

 - A good idea is not enough -

Clients love good ideas, but 'good' is totally subjective so it's vital to prove why the work is right for the business challenge in hand, why it's right for the consumer and why it's distinctive in market. When you can prove it's right, then you can say it's good. (I touched on this a little here).

 - People present stuff that is completely buried in waffle - 

Being a Planner, I'm obviously keen to explain to a client why we're doing what we're doing, and to explain why it's right for the task in hand. So whilst it's vital to explain the stuff above, it's just as vital not to let it overshadow the creative idea. I am passionate about keeping things simple, but I'm ashamed to say I've been in pitches before where the client needed a natural break when we were presenting the strategy as it took so long. (I must say I didn't write that deck...) This simply isn't good enough and it's not needed. If that's the way your presentation is looking then you need to think of a different way of presenting.

 - The client is not an idiot -

The client probably knows more about their brand and business than you. They probably know more about their sector than you. They probably know more about how easy it will be to obtain internal buy-in for any specific idea. Think about how you broach these subjects and how you talk about them. Be humble. This is an interesting one to me, as one of the examples given was about not recounting the brief back to the client. (He/ she knows the brief as they wrote it!) I'm not sure about this, and I always find it useful to do this to keep the responses in context and on track. 

 - The client views their brand differently to you -

I found this interesting: "Clients view the brands as they'd like them to be, agencies view them as they are now." I think that's an interesting point and one I agree with to a certain degree. I do believe, however, that it's the role and obligation of the agency to put the client view of their brands into the context of the consumer more. The fact is they know their brand inside out and where it sits in the market. But one role I love to discuss is where that brand sits in the mindset and daily life of a person. Of you. Of me. Of the bloke you sat next to on the bus earlier. Because you can bet your life the bloke you sat next to on the bus doesn't care as much about your client's brand as your client thinks he does. (I call this client perspective Brand Blindness, and it's totally natural. Agency types are the same - when you spend so much time focusing on one thing it's easy to lose perspective on the bigger picture. So, sorry everyone, that Aurasma thing you did in Shoreditch that everyone was pinning on Pinterest? No-one outside of your bubble gives a shit - you're targeting people like you). 

[Edited after Becky put me right about something I got wrong!]

 - Build a relationship and establish trust -

This was the most compelling comment for me as it talks about longer term relationships and how building them benefits everyone. And although it may not please the GAD, this is about the client building relationships with people... creative people and strategic people. This allows for greater collaboration between agency and client and gives the client an insight into how the agency works. There's only so much that can happen if a client meets an Account Team member every time, and only meets creative and strategic thinkers when there's a key presentation. Apparently the 'Slag of all snacks' work up there only went through because the client had a good relationship with the creatives and he trusted their judgement. It's difficult to build that relationship when you rarely meet the client.

As I said, there isn't a magic formula for this, but I thought there was some interesting stuff in there. Thanks Becky.

Don't say you're good. Just be good.

I've started using a new blog writing app recently. It's called MarsEdit and it's very good.

I always get a buzz when I start using a new app. When the UX is well thought out in an app it makes using it not only painless but actually enjoyable.

I am currently using the 30 day free trial, and it eventually costs £27.99. In my mind that is not cheap for what it is. In fact, I'd be so bold as to say the product itself isn't worth that money.

(The notion of value for apps is a really interesting subject I think. With the proliferation of freeware, freemium, shareware and paid apps the whole market has been blown open. It's a far cry from when I owned my Amiga and all games were roughly the same price.)

Here are a couple of examples of improvements I would make to the product:

 - I'd improve the use of colour -

That's the list of blog topics in the main window, but you can't tell which have been posted and which are drafts.

What If... There was a simple colour coded system that showed me quickly which had been published and which were drafts on the server so I could negotiate them quicker and remind me of drafts I had yet to write.

- I'd use dynamic naming - 

When you're writing a post you can either save it locally as a draft ('Save as Draft') or you can save it remotely on your blog's server. As I use more than one mac I like to keep things in the cloud so I can access them across multiple machines. However, when you want to save as a draft remotely the 'Send to Blog' button remains the same. I have to check more than once that I am saving a draft and not actually publishing a post when it's half written. Plus, when you save your draft by clicking 'Send to Blog' it automatically closes the post.

What If... When I ticked the 'Draft' button (not pictured) the 'Send to Blog' button changed to 'Save to Server' - then I'd know I wasn't publishing it instantly, and it'd know I don't necessarily want the post closed - I may just be saving the latest changes.

So those are just two small improvements I'd make to the app, and due to those factors I don't think it's worth £27.99. And, I can probably get it online somewhere for free if I wanted to do a little searching to get around the charge and continue using the app.

But I think MarsEdit is worth every penny and I'm going to pay it.

And this is why.

When I started using the app I thought I would send the developers some feedback via Twitter:

And they responded quickly. (Read the following from the bottom up).

They answered my question quickly and they took the constructive feedback in a positive way. And their tone of voice is one of a company that is constantly improving, of wanting to improve their product.

The way companies operate, and their product/ service being at the heart of their proposition is something Katy and I were discussing a while back on Twitter:

We were discussing how lots of brands say they are something with large communications positionings, yet their core proposition - what they actually are as a product or service - is very different. Katy's very interested in this, and I am too.

And it's this business mantra, why a business does what it does, that is interesting. Because, as I said up there, great communications are nice but if they're so different from the reality of the product or service, people will be let down. (I discussed this when I recently traveled on a Virgin Holiday here.)

And, this is why I'm going to pay the £27.99 for MarsEdit. I'm going to pay it because whilst I feel their product may not be worth the price, their service is. Their service is adding enough value to warrant the cost.

They don't have huge budgets to put an ad on TV to convince me the product is worth the money. They aren't sponsoring a global sporting event to shove their logo under my nose at every opportunity. They aren't bombarding me with numerous emails talking about what turns them on that week. Because all of that is meaningless if the product/ service lets me down.

No, they aren't manufacturing any stories to provide a spurious strategy to engage with me. They're simply being good, being valuable and adding value through their service, and not through communications.

Their service is their communications.

It's a very simple thought, but one we should all revisit every time we work on a new campaign. A little question for all of us during every project:

"Is this campaign highlighting a great product/ service, or is it trying to create desire for an average product/ service?"

What If... MyFitnessPal

There are some products and services that are a joy to experience. For example, I actively enjoy using my iPhone and look forward to my apps having updates for me to install because the apps are enjoyable to use and the update process fills me with anticipation. (I know how geeky I sound, but I'm sure of you will be the same... just be honest about it!)

This isn't something we should take for granted. I can remember years ago when I was looking after the IT system for a small business and I had to install updates for Microsoft Windows XP across a dozen machines. That wasn't fun and I certainly didn't anticipate it with fondness.

In a world where products are beautifully designed and as enjoyable to use as, say, Ommwriter or Things (two of my favourites) there are bound to be a few that are less successful, yet still very useful.

Recently I've started tracking what I eat to lose a little weight but also to build up a profile of my diet data to see if anything interesting comes out. (Mother touched on this obsession with personal data in their recent SFTW newsletter).

So I  downloaded MyFitnessPal. And it's great - that's why it's got five stars.

But I'm a bit of a perfectionist so I've got a few ideas on how I think they can make it a little better.

 - (1) Separate my exercise to motivate me more -

When I exercise I input how many calories I've burned and it deducts those from my daily totals. But, they don't show up on my Weekly Totals. I work hard running but I don't even get the reward of seeing it on my main screen, I only get to see it on the daily screen.

What If... The calories I've burned off were shown below the zero to show and celebrate my efforts instead of just accruing calories. That way I get to pat myself on the back when I see all the calories I've burned off that week.

 - (2) Utilise open APIs -

When I run I use my Garmin. Lots of people use their Nike+ or their miCoach. I note down the calories burned and input them manually into MyFitnessPal. Also, my Garmin has a health section where I update my weight and I have to repeat this action too.

What If... MyFitnessPal exploited open APIs and automatically fed this data into the app for me. (As my Garmin tracks my route it could spit out all manner of interesting data: "Well done - your run around Victoria Park means you burned off your whole breakfast.")

 - (3) Make meals inspiring -

There is a section in the app for meals. I haven't used it yet, partly because I don't really know how to and because it seems a little daunting. But there's an insight here that when you're tracking your calories you don't think about what you want to eat, you think about what you can eat. And thus you don't think of ingredients from a quality and taste point of you, it's very much from a quantity and calories point of view.

What If... MyFitnessPal created a content partnership with a major mult. They could then see the kinds of foods I'm entering into it and push recipe suggests to me, with offers. Your Heston's and Delia's of this world could push out a range of meals under 500 calories, or meals that use my regular ingredients.

 - (4) Use time and place more -

So there we are and this is now. I have 216 calories left to use if I want to today. But I'm not really tempted to. The app knows what time it is, can see where I am and knows when I've exercised so why doesn't it use that data intelligently?

What If... The same content partnership from above was used to entice me and motivate me in equal measure. The app could easily push me a message telling me where my local store is and push a relevant offer. "Nearly time for bed Mark. Use this voucher at your local Tesco (123 metres away on Smith Street) to celebrate your 1kg loss this week on any of our Be Good To Yourself range and get yourself something good for breakfast. Well done!"

What If... just What if...

 

Giveashitability

There's been a huge shift in how brands communicate with people over recent years. Fundamentally we've moved from interrupting someone and shouting at them, to engaging with someone and giving them something entertaining or useful.

This isn't an insight, and I'm stating the obvious. But.

As the nature of communications has changed, and the way in which they are received by consumers is different to the past, it's worth revisiting a key question and how it is framed moving forward:

What makes a good idea?

Given society itself and the digital social ecosystem has evolved to embrace new technologies and ways of communicating, it's a question that needs constant reassessment, and if you're reading this post in the future you may want to disregard it as out of date.

In the past, the process of critiquing was agreeing to what degree an idea could interrupt and change the behaviour of a consumer, and for some media channels one could continue to argue the virtues of that. But not for all, and specifically Social Media.

And that's because of a very simple truth: people need to want to engage with something on Social Media, they're not forced to view it as they are with some traditional ATL media.

Giveashitability.

There's a simple test that I use when critiquing ideas (regardless of media channel) and I find it very useful.

Giveashitability. Does anyone care, and will anyone share?

(I'm not 100% sure when I first started using this terminology. A cursory glance of google shows me my friend Chungaiz blogged about it here and linked to the old digital arm of Engine (where I worked for a while). So maybe I picked it up there? There is also a blog post where my friend James uses it too so maybe I picked it up from him and the Engine thing is a coincidence? Regardless I am not claiming ownership, merely stating I use the term.)

It's a very simple test and one that requires honesty and objectivity, and clients and creatives sometimes don't like to hear it. But as a Planner it's our job to be the voice of the consumer. And be that voice we must. Objectively, not subjectively.

Will they care?

You see, when people are bombarded with branded messages (the cliché is about 3000 times a day) then there has to be something really clever to cut through to make them notice, and if you're really lucky to make a positive impact with them.

And the first part of that is really simple - does the audience give a shit about what you're showing them? If so, why?

It's key this question is thought about from the point of view of the target audience and with critical reasoning. Dave Trott makes a great argument for this in his book Creative Mischief:

(Thanks to my friend Gemma for pointing me toward this)

He talks about the difference between being objective and being subjective when critiquing creative ideas and introduces a simple model. Don't say "I like it...", but start all comments with "It'll work because" or "It won't work because" as it forces you to be the consumer (not yourself), and give critical reasoning for your statement - not just emotional subjective feedback.

If you do this, and you're honest and have a good old heated debate backed up with evidence then you're going in the right direction.

Will they share?

Once you've got past the stage and (hopefully) all agree that the right people will give a shit about the creative idea, then there's the question of sharing. Now, whilst not all briefs require an element of sharing, it's usually not something anyone will argue with as it amplifies any activity and adds an element of trust as it's usually your friends that share stuff with you. (Your trusted curators of Facebook or Twitter, for example.)

So, it's worth bearing this in mind when you're looking at ideas too. I referred to it as Distraction Bias when I was thinking about this the other day, as it's something you're putting out there to hope your friends see it. You want them to be distracted from what they're doing and engage with (and further share) the content you're sharing with them.

And again, that's not a science, but you must think about it from the point of view of the consumer, not from your point of view as a marketer.

A simple thing to try.

So next time you think you've got an idea, or you are critiquing an idea just have this simple question to hand, and think from the consumer's point of view. The Creative Director may not like all your feedback, but if you back it up with critical reasoning it'll be difficult for him or her to argue against it. This isn't a crusade against emotional ideas - far from it - it's just adding some objective thinking to the process.

And, remember, the fundamental reason for this is to interrogate an idea to give it the best possible chance of being successful when it's unleashed into the wild... that's what your Creative Director wants, it's what you want and crucially it's what your clients want.

 

The Second Interest Layer

I've recently bought a book I used to own when I was younger.

It's this:

I used to really enjoy looking at it. It has some great illustrations in it, and highlights key moments in football to exemplify coaching techniques. Great pieces of play like the amazing save Gordon Banks makes against Pele:

(Aren't those illustrations amazing?)

When I was a kid I used to look at these illustrations in wonderment. I used to imagine how good the saves were in real life, and hope that one day I'd see them on a TV show or compilation VHS I could borrow from a friend. The Gordon Banks save is very famous, so I did get to see that at the time I think.

You see, at that time there was no YouTube. There was no internet. The only chance I had of finding those clips was by chance. There was much more chance of the content being pushed to me, as I didn't know where to ask to get the content and thus there was little chance of me pulling it toward me.

But now the world is different. And pretty much everything is at my fingertips.

The other day I remembered this book and bought it second hand on Amazon. I wanted to see the illustrations again, but more than that I wanted to make it a book for now. And add another layer to it. To add a Second Interest Layer.

(Whilst we've all got an opinion on QR codes and how good (or not) they are, it serves a purpose for this.)

I now have an exciting experience ahead of me of searching YouTube for the myriad amazing footballing moments the book covers. And with a simple QR code I can make the book a lot more interactive.

This not only adds another layer of interest for my experience, but it makes it a little more interesting for other people looking at the book for the first time.

And this got me thinking... why can't we do this with everything? Why can't we make every second hand product more interactive and add another layer of interest to it? (I touched on this here)

What If... a second hand musical instrument could tell you who owned it, where it had travelled, the venues it had played, the genres it had been used for?

What If... a second hand piece of clothing could tell you how many times it had been washed, when it was manufactured and what that stain was?

What If... a second hand book had the thoughts and comments of the previous owner sitting in the margins?

These are just some bad examples of a Second Interest Layer I'm interested in. The inherent history and emotions associated with a product. Howies looked at something similar for their Hand Me Down range.

What If... all these stories were kept in one place?

One website where I enter a code (or take a pic of my object, scan a barcode or RFID tag etc) and it explains the Second Interest Layer to me. This would depend upon the owner inputting the data for products already manufactured but any new products could have this built into them, whether it be an RFID tag or some other smart chip. As I mentioned here in Contagious, some objects like smart phones have amazing capabilities to enable clever things to happen automatically. (And we know they can, even if we don't want them to.)

What If... just What If...

Lovely little bit of UX

I just wanted to post this here for future reference. I'm using a new piece of software to blog from - MarsEdit - and am getting to grips with it.

I thought this little UX touch was lovely:

It's the little things that can make a big difference.

Noam Chomsky on Social Media

I was skipping through the Guardian's G2 magazine yesterday and stumbled upon this article where Noam Chomsky is being interviewed by some supporters of the Occupy Movement.

This section really jumped out at me:

 

It struck me as a nice way to discuss the differences between using compelling and relevant content to engage with people via Social Media rather than the traditional route of shouting at them via ATL media.