Yep, it's another post about the boringly brilliant Innocent Drinks Ltd.
Here's a Web preview of their in-house-created TV spot for kids' smoothies.
It's perfect. Hard to know what else to say, really.
Oh go on then...
Admittedly it's a different comms task, but I much prefer the new spot (less scatty, less worthy, more smiley) to the one Lowe 'helped' (???) them make last year:
Now that Innocent have so completely (and repeatedly) debunked the myth that in-house creative doesn't work, do we agency-types need a new excuse to justify our existence?!
Gotta love it when a fancy-pants ambient stunt 'goes viral'...but not quite as planned.
Marketing types should have learned not to play with urban fire (aka graffiti) after the PSP debacle a couple of years back.
The highest profile word-of-mouth balls-up of recent weeks has been Ask.com's Information Revolution campaign. Its backfiring has less to do with ill-conceived wall scribblings and more to do with the fact that Ask.com (the brand whose ambassador used to be a butler) never was and never is going to start an Information Revolution - especially not one that consumers have no appetite for. (Most people want more of Google's genuinely revolutionary applications, not less.)
Painful landing page copy like this doesn't help the Ask.com cause:
"Welcome, person of courage... [cue lots of whinging about Google without actually saying the G word] we've been forced to go underground [what, TV and poster advertising and a crappy microsite?] to get the word out about Ask.com. No one said it would be easy [damn right, and you've failed miserably]. We're glad you could join us [sorry, I only came here to gloat]. Information Revolution Now!"
The cod-soviet grammar of that last sentence is brilliant. Give that man a Lion.
Changing tack slightly, it seems that marketers aren't the only people struggling to meet the challenge posed by P2P distribution. The Onion reports that some of the more serious jounalists at the NY Times were shocked and upset to discover that the newspaper's online readers tend to pass on articles about sex, animals and sex with animals much more than they do stories about Iraq and gender politics:
"I thought my Elizabeth Edwards breast cancer article the other week had a great chance, as it was at the intersection of politics, health, death, and family—and had the word 'breast' in the headline—but it didn't even make the top 10," Nagourney said. "Whatever."
So, what have we learnt about viral? Well, don't try to do it. Don't worry about it. Instead, just focus on making interesting stuff and making it shareable. Blog-happy Diginatives and their bulging Gmail addressbooks will do the rest.
Marketers can never own viral: it's not a medium, it's a mode of distribution, which by its very nature can't be controlled. That doesn't preclude us from observing and learning from it, though. Viral transmission is real behaviour, not reported behaviour. The contents and scale of that transmission comprise a dip-test for the digital age.
And they don't just walk the walk, either. Not on their own, anyway.
No, Innocent are inviting all of you to join them on a branded march to the virtual doorstep of Number 10, where you can voice your protest at the unjust tax legislation affecting their company and it's customers.
And you can bet your bottom dollar that legions (herds?) of Innocent Smoothie fanatics will clamber over each other to sign the e-petition.
Is this the most remarkable packaged-goods brand in the world today?
I watched the first episode of the new series of Peep Show on Channel 4 last night. It was bloody great. Comedy gold, in fact.
However, the thing that stuck in my head (curse you marketing profession) wasn't the witty screenplay, or those internal monologues for which the show is famous.
No, no. The thing I couldn't stop thinking about was this:
Yep, that's right. Peep Show has turned into a half hour advert for Mac computers.
I don't know if the timing of the recent PC vs Mac campaign featuring Mitchell and Webb was pure coincidence or pure genius. Either way, it's been live for just long enough that when Peep Show came on last night my first thought was of PCs and Macs. More precisely, it was of Mitchell's character, Mark, as a metaphor for the PC, and Webb's character, Jez, as a metaphor for the Mac.
And there lies the problem. Neither Mark nor Jez delivers a particularly flattering association. In fact, it's Mark the nerdy cynic, not Jez the insouciant chump, that I find myself strangely endeared to.
So, that's Mark over Jez. Mitchell over Webb. PC over Mac. Oopsy daisy TBWA - that clever bit of casting no longer looks quite so clever.
Russell Davies has suggested that a crop of small ideas united by a multifarious and organic Brand Voice should in some cases be preferred to the tyrannical Big Idea. (Check out Russell's Honda APG paper for a case in point.)
I've been thinking about how all of this might apply to brands on the web. More precisely, I've been thinking about the following question:
'How can a Brand Voice manifest itself online?'
To answer that question I'll need to fork off on a couple of tangents: the first will concern the humble web portal, and the second a marketing trend dubbed Brand Curation. Stick with me as I veer off-piste - the examples and conclusions that follow are worth the wait.
PORTALS: A BRIEF HISTORY
Before Google came along, web-enthusiasts obsessed over things called 'portals', not things called 'search engines'. The default way to discover stuff online was through exploration of the Yahoo, Lycos or Excite portals, not by whacking keywords into search boxes.
The concept of a portal that I have in mind is similar to that of a newspaper or magazine: each comprises a collection of content with a specific domain of interest and a defined editorial voice. (Note how the web presence of most newspapers and magazines is portal-like in look and feel. My favourite UK press brand, The Guardian, has used its Guardian.co.uk portal to morph into a global multi-media brand.)
In addition to collecting content, portals - again, like newspapers and magazines - tend to point to relevant third-party content with which they share a domain of interest, if not always an editorial voice. It's hard to imagine now, but the Yahoo portal started life as an outward-looking web directory, only building in naval-gazing proprietary applications and content over time.
For more on the history of portals and search, John Batelle's book and blog are essential reading.
Right. That's enough about portals for now. On to tangent two...
BRAND CURATION
As the web continues to grow exponentially, and the value of filtering, aggregation and recommendation mechanisms grows with it, a viable role for brands online would seem to be that of curator - either of branded content or third-party content, or both.
Contagious Magazine recently noted the Brand Curation trend, but mainly in reference to brand involvement with real world arts events. I'm interested in the virtual world (specifically the WWW), and in a more engaging and dynamic form of curation; a form of curation where the brand directly presents consumers with curated content in a bespoke and interactive branded context, and then points - or in some cases, leads - them to web destinations where they can find more content like it. In short, I'm interested in Brand Portals.
Referring back to my definition of a portal, all a brand need do to create one is collect (or curate) content with a specific domain of interest and a unique editorial voice. This editorial voice is of course the Brand Voice touched upon earlier. And so the question 'Howdoes a Brand Voice manifest itself online?' can be answered, 'Through a Brand Portal'.
EXEMPLAR BRAND PORTALS
So, who's doing the Brand Portal thing? And more importantly, who's doing it well?
Part of the reason I wanted to write something about Brand Portals is that some of the most likeable and successful brands around today have utilised them - particularly those brands who are liked and successful in the digital sphere.
The first brand I ought to mention here is Absolut. In recent years, Absolut and their interactive agency Great Works have created a series of capsule campaigns, some (Bling Bling, Ruby Red) to support new product launches, and others (Lomo, 100 Absolutes) to progress the master-brand. For the purposes of this post, it's not these apparently disparate campaigns that I'm interested in, but rather the coherent Brand Voice they all share and the Absolut.com Brand Portal whose nifty carousel interface organises them for consumers.
Absolut's Brand Portal is more new-Yahoo than old-Yahoo: it is navel-gazing not outward-looking, with a focus on own-brand content. That's okay for an iconic drinks brand with an arty pedigree, but for other brands, the old-Yahoo approach is more appropriate.
Onitsuka Tiger's Made of Japan campaign has been noted and applauded by various commentators in recent weeks. The website element of this campaign epitomises the old-Yahoo approach to Brand Portals. By clicking on one of the hundreds of tiles that make up an interactive trainer mosaic, users are transported to an authentic Japanese blog or website.
Whilst the content aggregated by Onitsuka's portal is all third-party, it still fits within the parameters of a single, albeit multifarious, Brand Voice. In fact, it is this third-party content that adds colour and nuance to the Brand Voice, rooting it in the everyday lives of natural brand advocates.
Contrast this with the Guardian.co.uk portal mentioned earlier, which links to content that betrays its Brand Voice. Paradoxically, this betrayal is a crucial component of a media brand's voice. Unlike your average consumer brand, media brands must reference some off-voice sources to retain integrity.
I'm digressing again. Back to the examples.
So, I've looked at a Brand Portal that takes a new-Yahoo approach, collating purely own-brand content. I've also looked at a Brand Portal that takes an old-Yahoo approach, aggregating on-voice third-party content. There's two further examples I'd like to discuss: a Brand Portal that takes a mixed approach, gathering both own-brand and third-party content, and a Brand Portal that isn't tied to a brand website.
First up, the mixed portal.
Now, whilst conceiving a marketing trend that doesn't reference Innocent Smoothies is certainly an ambition of mine, it's not one I can fulfil here. Innocent have mastered the Brand Portal.
The most recent example of Innocent's portal mastery is the Innocent Pinboard. The Pinboard metaphor is a great excuse to gather content produced by Innocent consumers and third-parties, as well as stuff from the company's prolific in-house creative department. The April 12th pinboard I'm looking at (Innocent update it daily) features an animated tip of the day, a fruit fact of the day, plus consumer photos of a customised lunchbox and a dog playing with an innocent carton. There's also a widget linking to the Innocent Flickr group. It's a truly mixed Brand Portal.
What the Innocent Pinboard doesn't do is stretch the Innocent Brand Voice - certainly not in the same way as the Onitsuka portal does. Whilst the Pinboard incorporates consumer-generated and third-party content, this content is largely (though not entirely) product-centric. It's mostly about fruit and Innocent smoothies.
Another Innocent portal initiative does a better job of exploring the full range of the brand's Voice.
Every Thursday morning, tens of thousands of people receive an Innocent newsletter in email format. It's mostly composed of product and packaging updates, with a whimsical tale or two from Fruit Towers thrown in for good measure. But it's the little section at the foot of the newsletter that I really look forward to. 'Other stuff...' is where you'll find a handful of bulleted headlines that link to weird and wonderful things located in distant corners of the interweb. Whether it's space pics, brain facts or pet vids, the Brand Voice is unmistakeably Innocent. It's a great example of how to play portal in an off-site context.
I'm conscious of case study overkill, so I won't analyse the Milwaukee Light portal here. (An old-Yahoo-style 'point' will do.)
However, I do want to leave behind a slideshow featuring my favourite example of a Brand Portal: the White Rabbit banner trail created for Mini. This comprised a series of linked banners that led consumers on a journey through obscure third-party websites that share Mini's playfully eccentric Brand Voice. It's another off-site portal, and one that cleverly subverts the standard banner campaign.
Enjoy:
So, to summarise:
Brand Portals are a bit like Brand Curation, except better, and on the web
They can showcase the full range of a multifarious Brand Voice
There are new-Yahoo-style Brand Portals like Absolut's
There are old-Yahoo-style Brand Portals like Onitsuka's
There are mixed portals like Innocent Pinboard
And there are off-site portals like Innocent's 'Other stuff...' and Mini's White Rabbit banner trail
I appreciate that the whole Brand Portal thing is conceptually quite raw at present, so feel free to comment, critique and add flesh to my bones.
If, however, you think it all makes perfect sense, then please direct me to any other Brand Portals you've stumbled across on your e-travels.
Interesting to see Adidas focusing on premium, athlete-generated content - as opposed to rough 'n' ready, consumer-generated content - with a new microsite supported by video teasers on YouTube. This gives the campaign a human feel without the tackiness that CGC so often imbues. (The bog-standard CGC venture is starting to look more than a little tired, even from the creatively-empowered Diginative consumer perspective).
The fact that the athletes featured in the 2007 Impossible is Nothing campaign are taking a step back from their sports to do something thoughtful and arty (but not overly pretentious) helps to keep the campaign on-brand without resorting to product-centric mundanity. Of the individual performances, David Beckham impresses with emo-like candour and sincerity, whilst Lionel Messi's revelation of childhood growth hormone issues is genuinely touching.
From a design perspective, I like the use of an urban studio scene as background: it's a nice brand fit, and makes sense as a holding device for the athletes and their artwork. I also like the video player interface - simple but stylised. I'm not so keen on the pop-up landing page - it's far from simple to bookmark and I REALLY don't like advertisers - or anyone else, for that matter - messing with my browser toolbar.
On Saturday, The Guardian kindly updated us on the progress of Google's mission to digitise the world's books. Meanwhile, in The Economist's Technology Quarterly, there's an interview with Tim Berners-Lee, the guy who invented the web (nice claim to fame), which discusses his lack of excitement about Web 2.0 - the web was designed for user participation from day one - and his vision for the Semantic Web.
I imagine the Google Books project will go hand in hand with the development of semantic search functionality. With the world's books at my fingertips, it would certainly be nice to run searches like "memorable quotes by male protagonists in 19th century gothic novels set in london". To successfully deal with such a search would undoubtedly require a layer of computer-readable meta-data (the so-called 'semantics' of the Semantic Web).
Is nothing sacred? Seemingly not. Every Diginative's favourite childhood movie, The Goonies, has been brand-washed by Jeep.
The Jeep/Goonies advergame takes pride of place on a fancy-looking microsite. But as the old saying goes, looks ain't everything. The first level of the game requires the player to drive round (and round, and round) in a jeep doing not very much. I ran out of time and - shock horror - opted not to 'play again'.
There's also a cringe-worthy trailor for the game featuring... well, Jeep, for the most part. Good job I didn't watch it until after I played the game. Or maybe bad job - that trailor could have saved me the 5 minutes I spent 'engaging' with the Jeep brand (for 'engaging', read 'learning to hate').
A couple of basic-but-golden rules for branded content: (1) make sure the content doesn't disappoint, i.e. make it funny/sexy/challenging/useful/something other than dull (2) take a brands-off approach, plumping for relevence and depth of engagement over explicit branding.
Jeep scores 0 out of 2 in my books.
No doubt Jeep's agency thought reaching Diginatives by combining their favourite film property (The Goonies) and their favourite media platform (online) was an easy win. But playing around with people's favourite things is a dangerous game. The result of that game may well be a shock defeat, unless your average Goonies fan has superior advergame skillz to yours truly (quite likely) and a penchant for heavy branding (less likely).
This week, Emarketer and Techonology Guardian, amongst others, have been getting rather excited about an IDC report which analyses and forecasts the world's digital data output.
The findings are impressive and scary in equal measures. Emarketer notes that 'the amount of information created and replicated in 2007 (255 exabytes) will be greater, for the first time, than available storage capacity (246 exabytes)'. So the economics of data storage (scarce supply, insatiable demand) are about to get interesting. Well, maybe not quite yet: lots of that data will get deleted, and hard drives will get more efficient, apparently. But how long before the rate of production (minus deletion) outstrips the rate of efficient storage creation? Now that HD and Blueray DVD protection has been cracked, it won't be long before bloated BitTorrents flood the net. And then there's Joost. Uh oh.
Technology Guardian is more interested in looking backwards, and finds a great shock-stat of its own buried deep in the report (i.e. beyond the executive summary):
'The sheer amount of data that has been created by the digital age becomes clear when comparing it with the spoken word. Experts estimate that all human language since the dawn of time would take up about 5 exabytes if stored in digital form. In comparison, last year's email traffic accounted for 6 exabytes.'
As anyone with a passing interest in digital media will confirm, the data burden is becoming ever more unmanageable. Despite the best efforts of Google, Technorati, Digg and their legions of paid and unpaid contributors, the data mountain is growing too fast and too vast for humans to sort through. Step forward the Semantic Web: a brave new world wide web where computers get on with it and we get exactly what we want. What started out as a quixotic vision is now one step closer to becoming a reality thanks to pioneering projects like Freebase, which - with a little bit of help from the online community - hopes to map the inter-relationships between all online data in a language that computers can 'understand'. (Think of it as a structured, supersized wikipedia that fills in the gaps for you).
The Semantic Web is kind of like artificial intelligence lite, which has got the uber-nerds excited. But, as O'Reilly comments, projects like Freebase are still 'very much in Alpha'. Whether the Semantic Web will save Diginatives from a life of digislavery has yet to be seen.
Following on from my post about the personalisation trend, here's a quote from the pre-launch FAQ for Joost, a revolutionary social-TV application from the guys behind Skype and Kazaa:
"Why am I being asked for personal information? What will you do with it? The only information we absolutely require from you is a username and password to log you into the system. But if you'd like to give us more information about yourself, it will help us to provide you with a better and more personal TV experience - we'll be able to recommend particular features that we think you'll like, for example, and show you adverts that are more relevant to you.
You can give us as much or as little information about yourself as you like. However much you choose to share with us, we will never reveal it to any third parties without your express permission."
Putting consumers in control of personalisation is a smart move. It's the covert nature of targeting that many find unsettling, so Joost's transparent and customisable approach should help smooth the transition to personalised ads.
For Diginative teens and students who can't spend enough time glued to their PC screens, Joost is bound to be a massive hit. The combination of full-screen quality, total controllability and real-time community features (chat, messaging) really is a step-change for web-based TV, and proof that convergence ain't all about that big screen in the lounge.
So when will Joost land? Well, it's currently only available as a private Beta test (join the queue), but in the mean time, the screenshots look rather lush:
Those recommended books that pop up on Amazon; those Just for You tracks suggested by the iTunes Music Store- they can be a little spooky at first. How did they know I'd love Richard Dawkins athiest polemic, or track 6 from the Punk Rock Power Ballads compilation?
Fans of the popular social-music application LastFM will be familiar with intelligent recommendation systems of this sort, which compare an individual user's inputs with the historic inputs of a huge database of users to generate related results that are likely to be of interest to that individual. For more on social-music, check out Johnny Dee's article in The Guardian Guide, which offers a neat overview of the movement and its key protagonists.
Recommendation services are just one example of the personalisation trend that's sweeping the web. And not before time. Left unfiltered, the Long Tail dream can quickly turn into a nightmare of excess content and choice-anxiety. Hence, as we're slowly coming to realise, the Amazons and iTunes of this world are doing us a favour. They pick strands from the Tail that suit our tastes and save our sanity. (Obviously there's a sales incentive for these retail behemoths, and we will increasingly find that they pursue us with so-called 'remarketing' tactics, but for now, at least, they're kind of on our side.)
And you know what? Those recommendations are pretty good. They're not always right, nor anywhere near. But they are right perhaps 3 or 4 times out of 10, which is enough to be useful. Moreover, this ratio will only get better as systems swell with ever more hard data on the likes and dislikes of people like you.
In his new year article for Ad Age, Steve Rubel predicts a change in how we perceive and manipulate the web. Whereas 2006 saw the continued explosion of web content, 2007 will be the year of a great implosion, Rubel predicts. Whilst the amount and variety of content available will continue to grow, increasingly sophisticated micro-chunking technologies like RSS will allow us to select just those slithers of content that really interest us.
There is a catch. In order to benefit from recommendation services and micro-chunking technologies, we consumers must give up a little of our privacy. By browsing our personalised picks, we tacitly agree to the exploitation of past click-streams. To solicit niche content one must volunteer personal details, and deal in the revealing currency of tags and keywords.
It seems that we are increasingly happy with this settlement. As eMarketer reports, both our positive view of personalisation and our hunger for help in tackling the Long Tail, even at the cost of privacy, are reflected in the results of a recent ChoiceStream survey. 79% of US adults who responded to the survey expressed an interest in receiving personalised content (83% amongst the Diginative-biased 18-34 age group, presumably due to their increased familiarity with personalisation, and their grasp of its benefits). And as the tables below demonstrate, the willingness of these adults to exchange personal details and click-streams in order to gain the desired personalised content has risen significantly since 2005:
Most interestingly for marketers, more than a third of all US adults and a majority of the 18-34 age-group profess their enthusiasm for personalisation in the realm of advertising:
This widespread pre-acceptance of personalised ads is a surprise. One might have expected the increased salience of civil liberties issues to prevent digital marketers from exploiting the inherent bidirectionality and addressability of some digital technologies to deliver personalised communications.
The special enthusiasm of Diginatives for personalisation is particularly pleasing, and allows marketers to begin planning for a super-targeted future.
An article in this week's Guardian Technology supplement discusses the impact of the internet on both top-down and bottom-up music distribution. Taking pride of place on the cover of the supplement is a stunning graphic that shows how various parties, including the search behemoth Google, the social-network MySpace, and the online retailer Play.com, are connected via user clickstreams (The sites with the most upstream clicks are centralised, with bigger nodes):
Both the article and the graphic were inspired by a Heather Hopkins blog post for Hitwise.co.uk, which included additional graphics looking at the downstream clicks from Myspace and Bebo:
Whilst the detail in these graphics may be difficult to discern (visit the links in Heather's blog for full-size versions), the general message is clear: existing models for music distribution and promotion have been turned upside down and shaken about as Diginative music lovers increasingly seek to explore their passion through the medium of online community. The learnings for music marketers - and marketers of all high interest goods, which are, by definition, likely to be the subject of community discussion - are profound and multitudinous. I'll have a think about them and report back!
Depressingly, for any marketer who doesn't work at Wieden and Kennedy London, it looks like Honda have done it again with their latest brand campaign starring the uber-cute Asimo robot.
Asimo (A Study In MObility) is the focus of a 20 year Honda research project. He's also the perfect embodiment of The Power of Dreams - Honda's inspirational mantra - and the warm technology idea that defines the Japanese car manufacturer's brand strategy.
W&K introduced the campaign on Monday with a post on their agency blog. On the same day, Asimo attracted attention in the Guardian and Independent media supplements. This pre-TVC publicity echoes that of the recent Sony Bravia 'Paint' ad, which was widely reported in the press. Like Sony, Honda are hoping to leverage web-based viral marketing with 6 short films released at Honda.co.uk/asimo over the course of this week for streaming and download. The films will also be available as video podcasts from the iTunes music store. Here's the first of them, entitled 'Who is Asimo?':
Creating hype around the premiere of a TVC is an interesting piece of channel strategy. The PR and online activity is designed to elevate the commercial to appointment-to-view TV status, which is perhaps appropriate for a blockbuster brand ad. Trainspotters will recall that Chanel employed similar tactics for the launch of Baz Luhrman's £18m perfume ad starring Nicole Kidman, which debuted in the first ad break of Moulin Rouge - a specially orchestrated media context. The Chanel ad's Hollywood credentials and relentless PR even earned it the right to a Peter Bradshaw review and a place in TV listings publications.
As part of Ogilvy's pitch for a global vodka brand, I creating a mood film about a typical vodka night out. The result is a little rough around the edges, but hey, so is the average vodka night out in London.
Enjoy:
You can see more films by like-minded types from Ogilvy offices in Paris, Milan, Warsaw and Mexico City at the Ogilvy Maven Network youtube group.
There's also an Ogilvy Maven Network Flickr group, where global members have shared photos and comments about cultural sampling in their cities. (Cultural sampling was a trend we explored in the pitch - it's kind of a mixture of two other behavioural trends, Transuming and Authenti-seeking, both of which are discussed on Trendwatching.com.
The mash-up megatrend is particularly prevalent amongst young consumers empowered by their early experience of digital technology, which tends to facillitate customisation and breadth of choice. Diginatives don't want THIS or THAT, they want THIT - note the instant cult-status of any web 2.0 mash-up.
Nike Labs new mash-up initiative explores the idea of Hybridization - a creatively rich concept if ever there was one; as evidenced by a bloggable and downloadable three episode viral series which explores the notion though the medium of uber-cute animation:
Arstechnica reports that Warner Music is set to offer youtubers the freedom of its back catalogue.
Distibuting official music videos via youtube is a brave step. Allowing consumers to soundtrack their home-made video with Warner's premium audio content is a flea-like leap into the unknown.
But, like fortune, Diginatives favour the brave (and adore the flea-like). When a youtube user integrates a Warner artist's music into his or her creation, that artist will become a contributor, or even a co-creator. The positive experience of creating that content will, in part, be a positive experience of the artist's brand, and that brand will forever be associated with a moment of inspiration, creativity and pride. Not bad for zero work, plus a pay cheque and a bit of free advertising every time the video is viewed!
Of course there is the risk of Warner's music being included in, and associated with, some truly awful and amateurish content. Worse still, it is only a matter of time before an artist is the target of a vicious video polemic to which he or she provides the soundtrack. But this is the nature of web 2.0: consumers are in the driving seat, and brands can either buckle up and enjoy the ride, or readjust their blinkers and keep walking... until a similarly vicious blog post bounces them into the gutter.
A couple of cute Zune films are available here. Both communicate the idea of dueting, which is what Microsoft are calling Zune's wireless sharing functionality.
The future of peer-to-peer communication and content-sharing is wireless and portable. Or so thinks Sony and Microsoft, if their forthcoming devices are anything to go by.
According to widespread rumour, Microsoft's iPod killer, the Zune, which is due for release later this year, will allow users to share downloaded music via a wireless connection. Sharing here equates to borrowing, as transferred tunes will need to be purchased from an itunes-esque music store within 24 hours for the borrower to enjoy permanent playback.
Meanwhile, Sony's newly released Mylo, whose title is a cringe-worthy acronymn of My Life Online, has an impressive range of wireless communication options. After selecting a friend from a list of avatars, a Mylo user can converse using either Yahoo's or Google's email or instant messaging applications. Alternatively, he or she can make free VOIP calls using Skype software. If that's not enough, a full HTML web browser with innovative zoom functionality can provide access to social networking websites like Myspace. In order to utilise these features, Mylo users must first locate a WiFi hotspot where they can access a wireless broadband internet connection - thankfully, a further application provided by JiWire is on hand to help them find one nearby. In addition to online wireless capability, the Mylo allows for offline wireless text-based communication with in-range friends, and Zune-style music sharing.
So, that's what Zune and Mylo can do. But is it what the Diginative masses, and not merely the innovators and early adopters, want to do?
I'm not entirely convinced. With regards to the Sony Mylo, mobile phones cater perfectly well for functional on-the-go communication needs with voice calls and SMS. They are surely too ubiquitous and too convenient to be usurped by a new and relatively bulky device such as the Mylo. Moreover, Mylo requires users to get off-the-go and find a Wi Fi hotspot, which kind of defeats the object of a device intended for functional on-the-go communication.
But what about recreational communication? Is the prospect of Diginatives sat in WiFi-enabled cafes chatting via Yahoo messenger, Gmail, Skype or Myspace a plausible one? Again, I'm not convinced. Sitting in front of a hi-tech PC in the comfort of your own bedroom is one thing, but sitting in front of a handheld device with limited functionality in a busy cafe is quite another. Until the advent of city-wide WiFi zones, it seems unlikely that millions of young people will choose ultra-public spaces to service their online communication needs.
The Zune/Mylo music sharing initiative is perhaps more plausible. Whilst mobile phones allow for basic mobile communication, they are limited in their ability to send and receive content. The consumer demand for simple download-swapping in a playground/common room/pub scenario has not yet been met.
So, will these devices be a hit or a miss with Diginatives? In the case of Mylo, I think it's functionality is one-step ahead of current wireless infrastructure. In the case of Zune, the signs are more promising, although talk of Apple-style coercion relating to the use of Microsoft's proprietary WMA music format is worrying. Consumer needs, and not the bottom line, will surely need to be prioritised if Zune is to challenge its iPod and 3G handset rivals in the mobile music player market.
On 05 September The Guardian reported that Myspace is planning to shortcut record labels by giving artists the chance to sell their music direct to consumers via the popular social-networking site.
Whereas previous generations of artists required agents, managers and labels to publish and promote their music, it seems likely that the content-generating generation will relish the opportunity to take control of their artistic destiny.
Online infrastructure has empowered people in many ways. It has enabled them to wrestle back control of their media consumption from broadcasters, to engage in small-scale commerce without overheads, to express uncensored opinion as citizen journalists. Diginative Myspace artists who have grown-up with these new powers and freedoms will surely relish the opportunity to apply eBay and Adwords-taught marketing methods to their own creative product.
Record labels everywhere should be afraid. Very afraid. The chace to vastly increase their share of sales revenue will be too good for many up-and-coming bands to resist.
BBC Musicubes is a pretty cool slice of interactive content for the MTV Overdrive generation. Users can create a visual expression of their musical DNA using the constructor tool, and then link/blog it wherever they like.
Yep, it's another post about the boringly brilliant Innocent Drinks Ltd.
