chroma

Media Mix

Very interesting media experiment from the Fox crew, who will be running reruns of a couple of old shows on a split screen which will include Twitter updates from actors/crew and fans.

I like seeing interesting new ways of designing media experiences that blend the old with the new. I think there is a lot of potential to use digital media/tools to enhance and augment the consumption of (old) media (that's what I love about the Dub Siren application that I wrote about yesterday).

I have no idea if these shows are popular enough to have success with this, but I suspect that we will be seeing a lot more of this sort of fusion from the major networks (and not just on the "social" television online environments).

You can change the news

 @MCHammer: With Social Media You don't have to holler at the NEWS !!!..YOU Can Change The NEWS !!!!!

That is well said, Hammer.

Pocket Reggae DJ

I download a ton of apps that only ever get used once. But I LOVE the Dub Siren application. It combines a great reggae radio station tuner with a suite of reggae effects (either analogue waves from the old school or full on dancehall plugs, like a truck or police siren). It's amazing. And if I can offer a humble DJ tip, always remember that less is more ;)

Dusting off the Chroma keys

I have been meaning to check back in here for ages. I had a post half written in my head with all sorts of justifications for why the posts suddenly ended (too busy at work, shoving everything to delicious/twitter/tumblr and other bad and boring excuses). But the truth is, I just didn't feel up to it, and I figured that I had absolutely nothing new to say about the usual topics that reverberate through the echo chamber (Social Media!).

But you know what? A few months away from this and I've started to really miss it. As much as anything, I miss the exchange of ideas, which is much different than the exchange of links. Ambient intimacy is cool, but some times it's not enough.
I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope that my resolution to write here won't suffer the same fate as my New Year resolution to lose 15 pounds.

Maybe it's an "end of August, back to school vibe" sort of thing. We'll see. But for now, thank you for checking in, and hanging in. Now please keep me away from those onion rings.

Cabinet of Curiosities

Quick note to tip you off to the new Tumble thingy I just started. Too time pressed to post much around here, and there's a lot of (often silly) stuff I want to point to but doesn't belong in de.li.cious.

How to deal with fans

Love this solution that the clever Monty Python crew came up with in response to You Tubers posting old clips online. They took the most popular ones, put together their own You Tube channel and posted high definition versions for fans

In the process, they promoted the Monty Python DVD collection, and saw a huge lift in sales.
It isn't that hard, is it?
Treat your fans like people, co-create value together and everyone's happy.

They make it look easy.

via the recently discovered but much liked propagation planning blog.

Spreading the message

Great story of the now legendary Shepard Fairey Obama poster. Love the answer he gave Obama when asked how he spread it so fast ("well there's the internet, and you're a really popular guy!").

Way of Life

You probably have already seen this new work for T Mobile.
I must confess, I heard about it a while ago but kept avoiding actually watching it. I think I was being a bit stubborn, I didn't want to see a commercial that lifted an idea from the Improv Everywhere crew, no matter how well done (it may be the wily underground DJ/producer side of me that cringes at glossy commercial versions of grittier undergound thing.

Iain at Crackunit has written an excellent post about this, so at least I know it's not just me. Thanks Iain, for a very well articulated insight (it had been bothering me trying to figure out why it was bothering me, if you know what I mean).

Perhaps stories of togetherness and collaboration are best told in places where people are together, collaborating. And perhaps they should be told in ways that reflect the brilliance, excitement and usefulness of what doing things together using tools and technologies - not metaphors - is actually all about.

Or maybe in those places it’s not about telling stories at all

Storytelling and metaphors. Where would advertising be without them?

Love this tweet from Charlie Todd, founder of Improv Everywhere

Process not Product

How do we make the things we put out there (communications, experiences) the start of the process, and not the end of it? How do develop those sparks that lead to further participation, activity and sharing? If you've been reading Faris' recents posts, it's very much about "creating stuff the internet likes" and encouraging the remixing and recombining that leads to sharing. (This could be a record for the number of links to Faris in one post?)
While marketers get very hung up on the fear of "losing control", I am really fascinated with how other media and in particular newspapers are tackling this. Substitute "news" and "content" for "brand" and the parallels are clear. Here is an interesting take on how this thinking is evolving in some circles.

“Networked journalism” means opening up the production process from start to finish - and beyond. It already has the tools: email, mobile-phones, digital cameras, online editing, web-cams, texting, and remote controls. This is channelled through new communication processes like crowd-sourcing, Twitter, YouTube, and wikis as well as blogs and Internet Protocol Television (IPTV).

Networked journalism is a process not a product. The journalist still reports, edits, packages the news. But the process is continually shared. The networked journalist changes from being a gatekeeper who delivers to a facilitator who connects.

It is obviously a huge shift from being authorities and the authors of news PRODUCTS to being nodes in the stream of PROCESS that involves readers and a wider ecosystem. But this is already what has happened with Wikipedia as it has evolved to a living, real time collaborative news source. I guess the point is that these connected ecosystems that facilitate the shaping and reshaping of news/brands/content will emerge whether we like it or not. The question is whether marketers will step up to be the facilitator who connects or not?

Smart Facebook Application. Seriously!

Finally there is a Facebook application that is actually good.

Whopper Sacrifice asks you to pick 10 friends to defriend and in exchange you get a free whopper. Yes, a free whopper for ten former friends.

For the first time (I think) someone has bothered to take the time to think about what Facebook users actually do (not much it appears, other than making friends and then periodically reviewing the list to see who you can scratch off) and made a fun sport of it.