Semiotics, cultural theory and media studies

Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. New York: Vintage, 1993.
Barthes’ short passages are prototypical examples of a semiotic critique of culture. The distance between what he does and practical marketing may seem big, but hopefully our course demonstrated this is not the case.

Hall, Sean. This Means This, This Means That: A User’s Guide to Semiotics. London: Laurence King Publishers, 2007.
A lucid visual introduction to semiotics. Compromised of extremely concise essays, each opening with a question using signs and images, followed by a debate of possible answers introducing key semiotic concepts.

McLuhan, Marshal. Understanding Media. New York: Routledge, 2005.
It’s worth travelling beyond the more common text of “the medium is the message” to get better acquainted with McLuhan’s seminal work. He explores the ways we reinvent ourselves through our technologies and make them our extensions, mainly discussing media related technologies and their sociological and psychological implications. Marketing, being a communication based practice, makes these dense, abstract, ideas surprisingly relevant, if not useful.

Marketing & Branding, theory and practice

Armstrong, Gary, and Philip Kotler. Principles of Marketing (13th Edition). Alexandria, VA: Prentice Hall, 2009.
A “canonical”, clear, introduction to old school marketing, the more communication oriented episodes introduce some traditional concepts we’ve touched upon. Bear in mind the critical information provided in the course about situations where these traditional methods break down.

Baker, Michael, and Susan Hart. The Marketing Book, Sixth Edition. St. Louis: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2007.
This book is also great to hit burglars with, as a door stop or as a tool for stunning cattle, in case you’re interested in exploring this more traditional form of branding. This tome is the official manual of the British Marketing Institute. A clear and through survey of up to date marketing theory and methodologies with advanced students and practitioners in mind. Stephen Brown’s slim chapter about postmodern marketing is highly recommended.

Boyett, Jimmie T., and Joseph H. Boyett. The Guru Guide to Marketing: A Concise Guide to the Best Ideas from Today’s Top Marketers. New York, NY: Wiley, 2002.
The best (and occasionally the worse) ideas, trends and hits from marketing best-sellers of the 90′s and early naughties. The authors introduce the kernel of many guru theories and discuss them critically. Slightly superficial, yet a good introduction to the misty lands of commercialised marketing theory.

Kapferer, Jean-Noel. The New Strategic Brand Management: Creating and Sustaining Brand Equity Long Term (New Strategic Brand Management: Creating & Sustaining Brand Equity). London: Kogan Page, 2008.
If you read just one branding manual, read Kapferer. A meticulous survey of brand management from the conceptual to the minute. Solid theory combined with illuminating case studies and, thankfully, almost no propaganda.

Further afield

Gibson, William. Pattern Recognition. New York: Berkley, 2005.
Sophisticated thriller led by a charming heroine, who happens to be an American brand consultant arriving in London on a secret visual identity project. More insights into marketing then most guru books and much more fun.

Gladwell, Malcolm. Blink. boston: Little Brown, 2005.
This readable best-seller explores, among other things, how difficult is it to get useful insights into the minds of audiences and what makes them tick.

Klein, Naomi. No Logo. New York, NY: Picador, 2000.
This much debated tome looks at the dark side of the connection between marketing communications, globalisation and branding. The cases she brings and the fact she misses many of the real villains of the global corporate world while focusing on mass-market, “in the limelight”, brands, is evidence to the power of brands as cultural constructs.

I’ve always rejected the myth of the suits/creatives split. Have always maintained a common language between marketing, design and other media is important and empowering to everyone involved. Hopefully, I can introduce some useful concepts and break some myths.

(And in case it doesn’t come through: OMG!!!!1! I’m so bloody psyched about this!)

Brand strategy reconstructed
How marketing lost the plot and how it might find meaning again

Marketing is a discipline in crisis. For the last decades it has become evident to practitioners and scholars alike that many of the trusted old methods were just not cutting it any more. Worse, it now seems some of them weren’t valid in the first place. This series of contemplative talks brings together ideas from narrative studies, semiotics and cultural theory to drive design thinking in solving the challenges of postmodern marketing. Numerous examples will be given from actual projects, popular culture and recent marketing cases.

The first six talks:

1. Marketing, meaning & decadence: an introduction to the sophistication of marketing sign-systems and their tendency to degenerate.
2. Suspicious minds: the myth of “a consumer subject”.
3. On branding and meaning: can a simplified theoretical tool-box cut through buzzwords and hype?
4. Advanced narrative marketing: the untold story of brand stories.
5. Marketing plots: cultural pattern-recognition as a strategic tool.
6. Embracing the mess: how clients and agencies are changing their work culture and methods to encourage more sustainable marketing strategies.

Mondays@17:00, Starting May 18th, excluding 25/5 (bank holiday) and 8/6 (prior obligation).

To my non-UK readers: London College of Communication, formerly London College of Printing, is the largest constituent College of the University of the Arts London, Europe’s largest university dedicated to art, communication, design and related technologies.
Two graduates Israeli readers will know are David Tartakover & Alex Livak.

Recovery, Java, Latency, Change, Art, RSS, Socialism, Elvis, Economics, Rotis, Analog, Location, Design, Snackr, Diversity, Violence, Prishtina, Enterprise search, Music, Elvis (again!), Prishtina (again), Matter (duh), The Pentagon (shiver), Elvis (lives!), Evolution, Ingrid Michaelson (lucky lady), Wildlife, Firefox, Elvis (never underestimate him ever again), Corruption.

End of page three, but it stays interesting.

There’s a web art installation waiting to happen here somewhere.

In the meantime – happy holidays and a happy new year.

(good night and good luck)

This post is a "sound bite version" of a more elaborate piece, based on a talk titled "Emerging practices in Branding".

This blog has been dormant for a while, and I expect it will stay low frequency. I still hope this will get some attention, as it summarises so much of my work and thoughts of the last years. Not a very web-like time-scale, I guess…

Background:
On September 25th, I gave a talk at the Strategic Branding forum in Romania. I was asked to speak about "The Future of Branding". I used the opportunity to bring together some of Brandinstinct’s and my ideas about how branding should be practiced. This is stuff that has been dominant in the way my team(s) and me do things over the last couple of years. These are also trends I recognise increasingly among leading members of the creative industry.

The full article deals with 5 important aspects of branding work (methodology, relationship, culture, identity and engagement) and, "to put money where my mouth is", uses examples from some of the Brandinstinct projects I managed (From the projects used, the Sohar project is the only one I didn’t lead.). In this short version, I’ve left the examples out and focused on summarising the principles.

1. Methodology: Use an emergent theory approach to replace black box limbo
   The marketing of marketing has hijacked many agencies, companies and marketing endeavours. Beware an agency who has THE METHODOLOGY™. Methodological dogmas are more dangerous than ever.
   Reality is too messy, complex, sophisticated and unique to fit into black boxes and templates.
   Instead, take an emergent theory approach to discover the hidden meaning. Let the uniqueness of the situation direct what you’re picking out of your eclectic and proven tool-box.

2. Relationships: Let go of outdated "chain of command" structures and collaborate
   Old school / Big agencies have collected unnecessary etiquette protocols creating disconnection from clients and among themselves. Meaning is lost along the way.
   Instead, getting both client and the full team to work together and often directly, even if their agendas are conflicting, eliminates political tensions and increases the chance to produce breakthrough ideas.
3. Culture: Embrace local insights to make a bigger difference
   What works in some countries isn’t automatically right for others. This may sound redundant, but some consultants (and designers) are still marching into new cultures like conquistadors whose international-marketing-guru knowledge cannot fail .
   You can’t have enough respect for the delicate ecology created when local and global cultures interact. That’s why we try to combine our international experience with local insight. In my experience, it is usually the local parts which triggers true differentiation and relevancy, which pulls it all together and makes it work.
   (The above is not only true for geographical/ethnic cultural diversity but for any tribe/community)
4. Identity: Deal with the full range of business needs
   Branding has become the "prima donna" of marketing. Over time, it emerged more and more as a practice that handles the "higher needs" of marketing communications. Shying away from "the dirty work" and leaving it for sales and advertising is one of the main reasons many branding programmes do not achieve the ROI they should.
   Create brand identities as systems which support everyday business needs, not just the "aspirational" stuff.
5. Engagement: Engage the entire organisation
   Most branding failures happen on implementation because the organisation won’t get behind a programme people don’t believe in.
   Instead, we recommend engaging the entire organisation from day one of the programme and increasing this engagement after launch.

The common thread:
Embrace the messiness to find meaning, instead of trying to fight it. Life is messy. Markets and marketing are getting messier and messier. By recognising the messiness, you don’t give up meaning, but actually improve your chances of finding unique, authentic solutions.
Prefer to be systemic, not systematic . Instead of a purely analytical, "modernist", approach that claims to paint a full, rational, map of a situation and then attacks a single aspect, try to see the whole hidden in the parts, and create a state of flow that is in harmony with the basic interconnectedness of all things.

When you appreciate it’s all connected, you can create sustainable brands.

You can read a long(ish) post summarising the talk here, or download it as a PDF article.
Both have links to further project case studies and longer posts.

This is the presentation on SlideShare, with full picture credits and links on the last slide (visible in full screen mode).

An apologetic aside: I’m often told that when expressing my views about the state of marketing, I tend to sound a little negative. Indeed, even this blog’s central metaphor’s opening point looks first at the trouble we’re in. But this time, it’s about what I believe the alternative is. This is probably because when I work, I’m in a much more progressive/appreciative state of mind, which is crucial in order to be creative. If I tend to be critical, it is because, like many dreamers, I have a very clear view of the way things should be ; while the reality of our world, and what major effects of the marketing discipline inflict on it, is so far from it.

You can quickly flick through it on Slideshare, or if you want the fully annotated PPT file, get it from esnips.

Vincent’s photo by Calos Luis
This presentation was given as part of Tinylove’s distributor event in Koln (Cologne), Germany, September 2006.
It was not modified for the web or this blog. Only the annotations were made more elaborate so people can understand more or less how it went and what it tries to say.
The annotations is not the exact script. There isn’t one.

Some parts may seem obvious or too “educational” to some of you out there. If they are, I’m sorry, this was to help the audience follow the ideas.
Also, note that this is a “fun” presentation as the distributor event is largely an evening “recreational” event. To avoid being “the heavy bit”, I did my best to make this presentation light and engaging.
I still tried to bust some viral marketing myths along the way, which is a part some of you may wish to skip to.

Tinylove, are a client of mine who create meticulously designed developmental toys for babies. Their main target audience is parents, specifically “Generation-X parents”. The focus of my work with them was how to better reach this audience through the web. It covered their site, SEO/M, community marketing and more. The implementation of those recommendations is currently still a work in progress and is, obviously, much wider and deeper then the aspects mentioned in this presentation.
Their blog is here.If this presentation is absolutely useless to you, maybe it be can useful to someone you know. Or – at least you may enjoy the work of the talented flickr photographers used to make it.

Anyway – enjoy the show.

CC (on the textual content only) – some rights reserved. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Technorati Tags: communications, marketing communications, viral marketing, marketing, storytelling, web communities, networked communities

1. Assi Sharabi is an anthropologistsocial-psychologist-come-planner, who keeps getting cool ideas like analysing the youtube leader board.
2. Anecdote is narrative lead organisational consulting group-blog from Australia.
3. Nova Spivack writes dense musings about the web and points to thought provoking science news.
4. Raph Koster’s ideas about gaming are too good to be kept just for that. Let’s steal them for marketing.
5. Ben Hammresley is renaissance action guy. Coding for the guardian, Snapping in Afghanistan and writing. I’m sure his upcoming Octet book will kick ass.

For Hebrew recommendations, I have another blogday post in my Hebrew blog.

Technorati Tags: blogday, blogday2006

There is no “unified purpose”, but purposes matter
I do not think for a moment that there is a unified purpose for blogs, nor that there should be. There are many different blogging subjects and blog genres. However, I do think that a closer look at the dynamics of each genre by itself is valuable.
This is something that isn’t happening often, as most quantitative analysis is “content neutral” by nature, and most of the other conversation in the centre of the public debate is heavily focused on: meta-blogging, PR, technology, media and other familiar subjects.

I also believe that while blogging, micropublishing and online identity management affects society as a whole regardless of content, “not all genres are created equal” and that some genres have a bigger implication on the face of blogging as a phenomena and on culture in general.
With that in mind, I mentioned in my talk some genres which I personally find interesting, and that are quite prominent, starting with personal journals (also mentioning creative writing blogs), and moving on to talk about the “blogging professional” phenomena (not blogging for money, but professionals who blog about their field). That last genre is where the discussion stayed. Maybe because of the people who attended, but at no point did I claim “This is what it is/should be about”.

“The conversational middle” can sometimes discourage change
I totally agree with the picture that emerges from the figures Mary so meticulously analyses – As the blogosphere becomes bigger, more and more activity will happen down the “long tail” in the appropriately named “conversational middle” where smaller communities engage in discussions that are important to them.
My concerns however, aren’t simply a lament of the difficulty to become a “broadcast” blogger, because i do not care about that at all. I only wish to point out that some of the things that were possible/relatively easy to achieve so far, will not stay that way. This is about recognising what is lost without realtion to what is won. It is especially easy to see such things in the blogging professionals genre, which is a group that had a big impact on the blogging cultural phenomena.
So far, it has been relatively easy to build readership, not to broadcast level, but to a couple of hundreds ; It has been quite easy to be heard in the conversation near the top of the tail ; It has been relatively easy to use “first mover” advantage if you were of the first of your field to blog, and become an expert ; the list goes on (and probably changes according to genre).
This will diminish as the blogosphere matures. When you are the 1000th blogger in your field, it’s not the same as being the 100th, and certainly different than being one of the first 20…

If the future belongs to infinite communities, talking among themselves, the network becomes more complex, and more distributed, and there is no guarantee that memes can cross from one community to the other and reach the wide public. (even the public of a specific discipline / subject / genre, once there is enough mass)

Since the community talking among itself will be a very strong requirement to get any attention at all, isn’t there a built-in “meme segregation risk”? (maybe not every time, but surely at least sometimes)

You can dismiss this view and say “so what? this what blogging will and should become, as it is inherent to the conversational nature of blogs.”
That may be right, but it doesn’t change the fact that some things are going to change, and they will have a ripple effect, among other things – on the motivation to blog at all, on the blogging meme itself (why is it good to blog? What can happen? What can blogs do to society? What can they do to the individual – a central engine to all the growth), and on current democratisation of being able to become influential and leave your mark (again, I’m not referring to dreaming on being an a-list blogger, just being able to contribute to your peer group).
It may even lead to a situation where with some genres bloggers prefer other identity management formats to blogging as we know it (myspace anyone?), becuase all that writing “won’t be worth it” in those contexts …

This influence goal, I believe, is not a mere male power fantasy, it’s what every ambition for change is about, and I’m not sure that what we’ll end up with, won’t be closer to current “real life”dynamics, that some of us may be under the impression blogs released us from.
Democracy is great, but it is not a magical solution, there is often a tyranny of the majority/masses side-effect, which is a major power behind the traditional broadcast culture, and I personally can see how it can undermine the narrowcast culture that is often envisioned as an alternative to what we have now.

Update: relevant post from Hugh.

Technorati Tags: blogs, blogging, blogosphere, conversationalmiddle, longtail, kinnernet, kinnernet2006

(blogged while on a biz trip to Moscow, comment reply time may vary)

I spent the last week ill, and it’s getting late…
I do intend to spend the next couple of posts going deeper into some of the content, but Kinnernet (this one was my third) is essentially a “all things weird & wonderful” salad experience and I want to try and relate a bit of the unique atmoshphere of that event.

The setting:
Ohalo is a “youth village”, which means it is quite modest in terms of luxury, but this just emphasises the beautiful “Sea of Galilee” = Lake Kinneret.
Basically, Israel has two seasons – a short wet & mildly chilly winter, and a hot, heavy & mostly humid summer, so It was a great pleasure to spend Kinnernet inside the 10 or so days of spring that Israelis get each year. The visitors from California could feel right at home, but I wonder if they could appreciate it like us – Usually, we’re not as lucky. (not counting the storm that hit us towards the end of the last day)

Who:
There were a lot more people this year, with a many more guests from abroad, and that made a real difference, while some of the intimacy of the first camps was lost, we had the chance to listen and talk to some brilliant people who gave us new perspectives.
There is a good mix of geeks: hardware, software, design, art, ideas, entrepreneurs etc. And the reaction where those people meet is where the more interesting bits of the camp happen. Personally I would like to see more “idea geeks” but that’s just my personal taste. I should note that I felt some Israeli figures who could have made a great contribution were missing, but I don’t envy those who need to create the list of attendees.

Some highlights:

• Kevin Slavin’s fascinating “Big Games” presentation demonstrates how simple is the technology that is actually needed to create massive multiplayer real world games, you can see examples on his site, the power of combining simple powerful ideas with social interaction.
• I was familiar with Project Blinkenlights (interactive lighting of public building’s windows), but it was incredible to learn about the amount of work and thought that went behind the deceivingly minimalist results. One bit stuck in my mind – a member of the team standing outside and using his mobile phone to switch lights on and off In every window as a debugging tool. The sheer brilliancy is emphasised by him telling the camera “this is obviously the best way to do it”. Obviously.
• Fear & Loathing in silicone valley was a talk carried by the VC visitors, and raised some of the traditional tensions between entrepreneurs and investors (will be discussed in a separate post) another session the next day returned to the same themes.
• My friend and partner in crime, Jordan Levinsky, had a terrific talk about attention and information anxiety, he posted a summary in Hebrew to his blog.
• Maya lotan presented “Urban Seeder” her design project of a social romance site that emphasises flirting and “slow matching”, which was interesting as a contrast to the “speed dating” dynamic of most dating sites.

Some weird and wonderful stuff: (too much to mention, how can you describe a place where Yossi Vardi belly dancing is actually one of the tame moments?!)

• Yedidia Vardi, Yossi’s brother, built an amazing life size rube goldberg machine. Someone promised to post a video oif the machine in action, but I don’t have the link yet.
• Someone tied a rocket to a surfboard. Wicked.
• Vladimir Zviagintsev flew a kite to eternity and back using a special long-distance cord contraption, he also sailed on a raft made of tubes.
• David Frenkiel’s Live coding/storytelling presentation was awe inspiring – as he told us the true life story of how his wife went to labour and he took care of the coding obviously needed to aid the delivery. It’s a pity this presentation isn’t available online as it is pure boing-boing ,mateirl.
• Genesis book crossing: Genesis Partners (disclosure: previous client) was one of the sponsors, and found a fantastic way to do it – the released 200 books (of the sort that interests techies, geeks & bloggers) via book crossing. Bang-on audience culture.

My bits:

• My discussion about the limits of blogging will be discussed in a separate post.
• I also had a fluke – someone didn’t show up and I was asked by the audience to step in, I used the opportunity to raise some issue about the viral nature of blogging as a cultural and media phenomena and how those issues work differently in Israel. Luckily, there were various European and American visitors in the room and we heard interesting different perspectives (will also get a separate post).
• Finally, on Friday night, I made a tongue in cheek 5 minute(ish) presentation demonstrating the move from communism to consumerism in three steps, using Estonian TV adverts from the 80s. Admittedly, some people were left puzzled, but at least the adverts were amusing.

On blogging Kinnernet:
Kinnernet is a private, by invitation only,closed event because otherwise, it’s format will not work. However, I think most of the attendees will agree that we do want the ideas and discussions to reach out to the more public domain. Personally, Kinnernet inspires me, and I wish it could inspire others – beyond those who were there. The way to do that is for attendees to share their experiences and thoughts, and that can’t happen enough. If you led a discussion or attended and you have a blog – use it.
(that said, I do think the privacy of the attendees is sacred, and hope I didn’t go out of line with this post)

What I learned from past camps:

1. Balance brain/tickle: Don’t let the weirdness and activities overwhelm you, the important stuff happens in the classrooms and talking to people in between.
2. Balance Give/Take: the real opportunity at Kinnernet is meeting the other attendees. When people share something they are passionate about, they sometimes tend to switch to evangelist/broadcast/presenting mode. The best advice I can give to attendees is to have discussions, and not waste the entire session on a presentation/lecture. This is what I attempted to do this year, admittedly, with modest success, because of bad timing of my discussion (while most of the camp was busy shooting each other), but I’m definitely going on in that direction next year.

Bottom line:
While the brain/tickle balance was a bit too much into the tickle end of the spectrum for me this year (especially on the last day, where some of the action drowned out the more cerebral activities), this is still a great experience. Kinnernet is a delightfully eclectic, occasionally eccentric place where you can come across wonderful ideas. Coming to think of it, this is a quite a good description of the brains of the founders.

Links to others who blogged kinnernet:

Tim Pritlove’s Kinnernet podcasts (overall the meatiest)
Jeff Pulver
Ed Sim
Tom Evslin
Mark Pincus
Boaz Rimmer & Gadi Simshon (In Hebrew)
More Words
More Pictures

TheMarker’s “Comvention” followed up without a break, nearly as hectic, mainly due to people “asking to borrow my brain for a couple of minutes” (always good fun).

So this entire trip had nearly zero-downtime, and now I’m back at my desk (and so-called life) catching up etc. I promise to get around to it soon. If you want to make sure you don’t miss it – subscribe by RSS or mail from the right hand column. This is a low(ish) traffic blog, so it shouldn’t cause you too much trouble.

“BRB”

Watch the Kinnernet and Kinnernet2006 tags on flickr for pictures. I’ve also put some favs on my own flickr.

1. The dynamics of the Israeli blogosphere and what causes it to be different (and I suspect some things there are true for blogs in small markets in general).
2. A critical look at the limits of blogging. I feel that often, the evangelists of blogging are so busy preaching, that some issues are neglected. This is an opportunity for the choir to sit together for a critique/reality check.
3. A marketing workshop for geeks – looking at the connection between product, brand and experience. To a certain degree, Web based applications ARE communication. I wanted to suggest a framework for figuring out what the brand is about / what’s the story of the product, using it to focus the product, user experience and marketing efforts.

Having to choose one subject I had no idea what to do. Eventually, I realised I should choose the one with the maximum combination between my contribution, and what the attendees can give me, since giving & receiving is what this event’s format is about. So I chose number 2. The other two will probably be introduced gradually in this blog.

And yes – I plan to blog aboout Kinnernet. Watch this space.