The People’s History of the Internet by Profero Global

Today’s Guardian Newspaper has this very simple but interesting graphic on The People’s History of the Internet. From the first “digital connection” in 1969 to Twitter and the Trafigura scandal only a last week. Check it out here.

Here’s a really imaginative but simple graphic illustrating the evolution of the Internet in Australia….

avant.interactionconsortium.com/australian_internet/#

I read Rory Sutherland’s engaging blog post in Campaign today validating the continuing need for great copy in advertising. The only thing it was missing was a purposeful discussion on the subject within the digital world, so that’s what I’ll attempt here.

In our digital industry, we are seduced by the ever-expanding list of things technology allows us to do. With the emergence of technologies like Natal, Android and ARG, we exist in a wonderland of visual excitement and pioneering knowledge. It’s a great place to be. Even glancing back for a moment, our industry has been one that has up till now been sustained by audiovisual excitement of subservient poultry, wayward balloons and smartphone apps that really do make it look as if you are drinking that beer. We have been the Willy Wonka to the Cadbury factory of the good old traditional ads.

But social media has brought about one fundamental change and dusted down a discipline that I was worried had almost expired within the so-called ‘new media’ agency.

I doubt very much that readers can point to a piece of digital work whose awards were garnered by its masterful use of copy; the Ogilvys, Bernbachs and Abbotts would have little to detain them if they were to be brought into a judging panel for digital work. Yet, when I flick through my social media accounts, there is one thing that exerts a stopping power so great, I feel like a galloping, excited greyhound that’s just forgotten that it was tethered to a concrete wall.

You can see great copy coming. As you flick down the endless retweets and automatic blog posts, it’s almost like your eye sees the great words before your brain has had time to start reading. Beautiful writing never goes out of fashion, and it’s just about to become very important indeed.

On Twitter, there are certain people whose avatars are a prompt to stop scrolling out of pure habit. Charlie Brooker, Richard Herring and Paul Carr are all people who have the power to captivate you with no more than 140 keystrokes. They make you smile, think, flinch or disappear into a fit of giggles. On the other hand, there are people who should hold far more sway in the digital world who are truly undermined by the high volume and low readability of what they put out there. Please take a bow Robert Scoble, Piers Fawkes and Guy Kawasaki. Don’t get me wrong – once I connect with what these people are on about, they are as compelling as anyone, but words aren’t their forte.

I have seen precious few brands that have invested in a truly arresting voice.  Typically, their social media efforts are a mixture of platitudes, harmless observations and @answers dripping with well-intentioned banality. Granted, Brooker, Herring and Carr all push the boundaries to certain limits, and brands have reputations to manage.  But these same brands manage to approve the creation of advertising campaigns that are just as provocative and arresting as their social media voice should be. They need to develop a voice that is invested with the same brilliance and power as an ad campaign. Only this time, you add spontaneity. If that terrifies you, then it’s good confirmation of how things have changed. In terms of great examples lighting the way, it’s all a bit limited. Aleksandr_Orlov from Compare The Meerkat is only one I can think of, but I’d love to have some more voices to listen to.

So the recommendation is simple. Talking isn’t enough. Brands should actually pluck up the courage to write something involving, human and compelling. And for heaven’s sake, write it well.

Profero Sydney has recently launched a new campaign with Universal Music to promote Canadian artist Anjulie and help break her into the Australian market.

Based on the premise that seeing an artist live is the best way to get punters excited about a new music artist on the scene, we have developed a campaign for Anjulie that ignores the boundaries of geography and distance to give Australian’s a live music experience of an up and coming star.

From July 6th, visitors to the <http://www.anjulielive.com.au> site will be able to discover who Anjulie is as an artist, download tracks, get their VIP concert ticket and share their experience with friends via social networks such as Facebook and MySpace. August 3rd will see the launch of Anjulie’s “online concerts”- fans will be given a live music experience and see Anjulie perform songs from her upcoming album online. “Gigs” will be on twice daily and will have a unique theatre and stage simulation as well as allowing fans to communicate with each other via an innovative “whisper” feature, just like being at a real concert.

An interesting follow up to Uniqlock (thanks Peter for the heads up). A very simple calendar / screen saver with blog parts link, although with random views of the world going on in the background and an easy to listen soundtrack you can spend hours just watching it. Another example that keeping things simple, but executing brilliantly, will produce some of the best work. Does not quite it the heights of Uniqlock though.

There are two reasons that I liked what I read about the Wossy book club – started by Jonathan Ross on twitter, apparently as a response to the end of Richard and Judy`s (in)famous book club – the first being the new and clever use of twitter, and the second being the innovative response of publishers Pan Macmillan.

The announcement of #wossybookclub, and the naming of Men Who Stare At Goats as the first featured book have resulted in:

• Sales of the book on amazon increasing from by 7,000%
• Pan Macmillan allowing free access to the ebook of Men Who Stare At Goats for the duration of the book club
• An unofficial site being set up for the club at www.wossybookclub.com

Macmillan allowed free access to the ebook for one hour on the site Exact Editions, as well as a preview of the first chapter which is still available.

I did not attend the book club – which has now had its second week I believe – and have no idea how well twitter could facilitate any kind of sensible discussion, but I thought it was brilliant that (according to netimperative) twitterers were able to reference their tweets with links to individual pages of the book.

“This is the first time that a trade publisher has made a fiction title freely available to facilitate a live online discussion.”

This is a real nice example of how a simple idea can make huge waves through social media (though in this case it did rely on a high-profile name), and of how a business can respond quickly to offer people something for free to facilitate a movement that is sure to benefit them hugely.

Brand: Radiohead
Initiative: Nude Re-Mix
Markets: Global
Dates: April 2008

Background
Radiohead are an English alternative rock band from Oxfordshire whose international fame didn’t arrive until the launch of their third album in 1997, ‘OK Computer’, which has been acclaimed as a landmark record of the 1990s. After a major fall-out with one of the biggest record labels worldwide, EMI, in 2007 Radiohead independently released their seventh album, In Rainbows, originally as a digital download for which each customer could set their own price, later in stores, to critical and chart success. Radiohead have sold approximately 30 million albums as of 2008.

Challenge
After a groundbreaking marketing initiative with the ‘pay-as-much-as-you-want’ album launch, what could Radiohead do to once again connect with their fans but at the same time promote their music in a new creative way

Approach
To promote the new single NUDE far from any promotion involving their already acclaimed album, Radiohead decided to give their fans a platform to re-mix the new song and create a new ‘entertainment-movement’ around sharing and creation of original music content

The Idea

• Users could download from iTunes all the stems from the single NUDE, including bass, voice, guitar, strings/fx and drums for $5.99
• Once downloaded, you could mix them in any way you liked, either by adding your own beats and instrumentation, or just remixing the original parts.
• Although the Apple Garageband software was not required to remix the songs, if you purchased all five ’stems’ from iTunes during the first week they were available, you’d be sent an access code to a GarageBand file ready to open in GarageBand or Logic. (Smart partnership here to demo the programs)
• Once mixes were completed, they could be uploaded within the new RadioheadRemix website dedicated to the initiative – where the public could listen and vote for their favourite remix
• Also, users could create a widget allowing votes from their own website, Facebook or MySpace page to be counted as ‘mix votes’ back on radioheadremix.com.

The Results

• Overall the website received 6,193,776 unique visitors
• 2,252 was the number of mixes submitted
• 461,090 votes were casted
• 1,745,304 was the final number of track listened by the end of the campaign
• The single was sold incredibly well that “Nude” was Radiohead’s first entry in the Billboard Hot 100 in twelve years.
• The initiative was so well received that the English band is ‘doing it again’. With only $0.99 cents to buy all 6 of the stems, they have started a second remix contest, this time for their song “Reckoner”

The Learnings

• Cut down the barriers  / Initiatives like this where content creation is solely up to the consumer, barriers to entry must be particularly low. Make it as simple, appealing and rewarding as possible and your consumers will give it a go.
• Don’t leave me out! / Establishing a solid relationship with your core audience is always a must and your initiatives may sometimes only include this group. However, when barriers to entry are pretty low and the campaign is talking to a broader audience you may potentially reach new acquisitions from users who may have never been interested in your service or product (in this case your music)
• Stay truthful to your objectives / If we analyze the results, ‘only’ 0.04% entered remixes and 28% listened to the song. Although this may sound low 0.04% isn’t so insignificant when it’s 2,252 mixes. Because the ultimate objective was to solely bring attention to their single outside of the context of their already previously promoted album ‘In Rainbows’, the success is in the 6 million people who engaged with the song in any way, and that enough people interacted with the site in some way to influence their networks and generate a viral growth for the site.
• Create timelines and ‘Virability’ / You should always structure your campaign/competition so that you give a set time for usership to build and grow – set deadlines, sharable tools  and different phases to a concept are going to give enough time for people to bond with the idea and for words to spread ‘virally’

Loving this from Radiohead. Taking all the great ingredients from the work that we have been seeing in work out of Japan for the likes of Uniqlo and applying it to big concert performance. Just like Uniqlock something that you want to watch and more importantly want to share. If you cannot speak Japanese may want to connect straight to the special page here.

It is interesting to see what the independent big bands like Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead are doing to promote themselves and monetise their music as it is leading to real innovation across the music industry. Here is a great case study of what Trent Renor and NIN have been doing to redefine the music business model:

I really like the formula Michael Masnick presents which is:
CwF + RtB = $$$$$
where CwF = Connecting with Fans and RtB = Reason to buy

Most impressive stat is that despite giving away Ghosts I – IV for free it actually generated $1.6m in its first week (through add on and limited edition products) and was one of the most downloaded tunes on ITunes in 2008.

However I think it would be foolish to think that this formula is limited to the music industry and really reflects the change in the marketing industry and applies to most advertisers.

This campaign, developed for Universal Music Australia, was originally destined to be a rich media display campaign to support the ongoing hype around The Presets album “Apocalypso” and third single “Talk Like That”, in the lead up to the ARIAS (Australian Recording Industry Awards). As a result of an innovative concept and a lot of client coaxing, an integrated social media campaign was developed to tie in with the display activity.

The creative execution was based around a reworked version of the Talk Like That video and allowed users to type in a message that was dynamically updated across all display units, widgets and the campaign microsite talklikethat.com. Ultimately, the campaign was focused around a competition where users needed to figure out cryptic clues and type them into the chat window to unlock prizes. The campaign featured display units across major music sites, a Facebook group that was used to communicate competition clues to members, and widget seeding to influential blogs.

Within an industry that typically regards the internet as an adversary to album sales and facilitator of music theft, such a campaign has paved the way for digital advertising and promotion of artists and their music. It also shows that engagement and interaction with a target audience, especially those that exhibit the fickle online behaviours of digital natives, is now a vital part of an online campaign.

The Presets campaign has also received high recognition within the Australian Music industry for its innovative nature and user engagements. TMN, a well respected industry publication in Australia, has named the campaign “The pinnacle of Australian digital music innovation”. See the full write up here. Additionally, the campaign was picked up in a number of blogs such as here and here. Such recognition for a campaign that pushes the boundaries of online music promotion can only help to encourage music labels and the recording industry to take a leap of faith in engaging directly with their audience and realising the potential of social media.