Hello!
Name is Siobhan, and I'm new to gherkin productions :)
After the last meeting we were discussing to include a flash game whereby the user can manipulate, or change the logo themselves...
This I thought was a little ambitious however suggested we should create a panel of editing buttons which still allows the user to have some level of interactivity and control over the logos image.
Also to enhance this feeling of freedom and creative FUN, suggested changing the cursor to a paintbrush...
Found the Lynda login and password and a brilliant tutorial about how to change the cursor. The action script isn't too hard, so we could go through it on tuesday...
Will post again tomorrow about mcluhan
Siobhan
p.s sorry about the color, the other greens were too similar to yours and I thought it might get confusing...
Thursday, 26 February 2009
Viral Advertising
Hey,
This is going to be brief, I'll go into more details in our next meeting, in Henry Jenkins Convergence Culture he makes many similar comments regarding advertising as the ones you mentioned from Lucas and Dorrian.
He lists how traditional mediums (TV, radio etc) have lost their attraction to brands as being the main place to attract consumers and how many companies have placed more emphasis on the Internet to advertise their products.
He documents how Coca Cola have used the Internet to create "love marks" which represent how companies attempt "to break into peoples hearts and minds. In that order.. We're moving to ideas that elicit emotion and create connections". Coca Cola attempted to do this by including a section of their website "where consumers can share their own personal stories about their relationship with the product, stories that get organized around themes such as "romance" "reminders of family" " by doing so Coca Cola turns the memories of the public into a marketing pitch.
I don't know if you had noticed but Lande has posted some comments on the blog, one of which contains a link to this website which encourages users to make a wish, over the phone which the website then posts on its revolving wall. Users can post whatever they want from the ridiculous " i wish my husband didn't look so much like Bin Laden" to the supposedly sincere " i wish for world peace". Similar to what we mentioned on Tuesday as it doesn't offer a guideline for how or what people should wish for.
See you on Tuesday,
guess it wasn't really that brief then,
Matthew.
This is going to be brief, I'll go into more details in our next meeting, in Henry Jenkins Convergence Culture he makes many similar comments regarding advertising as the ones you mentioned from Lucas and Dorrian.
He lists how traditional mediums (TV, radio etc) have lost their attraction to brands as being the main place to attract consumers and how many companies have placed more emphasis on the Internet to advertise their products.
He documents how Coca Cola have used the Internet to create "love marks" which represent how companies attempt "to break into peoples hearts and minds. In that order.. We're moving to ideas that elicit emotion and create connections". Coca Cola attempted to do this by including a section of their website "where consumers can share their own personal stories about their relationship with the product, stories that get organized around themes such as "romance" "reminders of family" " by doing so Coca Cola turns the memories of the public into a marketing pitch.
I don't know if you had noticed but Lande has posted some comments on the blog, one of which contains a link to this website which encourages users to make a wish, over the phone which the website then posts on its revolving wall. Users can post whatever they want from the ridiculous " i wish my husband didn't look so much like Bin Laden" to the supposedly sincere " i wish for world peace". Similar to what we mentioned on Tuesday as it doesn't offer a guideline for how or what people should wish for.
See you on Tuesday,
guess it wasn't really that brief then,
Matthew.
Wednesday, 25 February 2009
(Not that) Fresh Ideas
Actually, I should have written this note ages ago, but somehow I didn't:) Therefore the ideas aren't that fresh as they should be...
To start with, as Lucas and Dorrian (2006) wrote, the media landscape has changed recently and moved into more interactive and audience engaging. The advertising has also shifted from conventional brand communication such as television spot to approaches which collide with Public Relations. It is no longer a one-way communication in predictable venues; advertisers are now seeking to draw the attention of the people in new surprising ways. As a result, the consumer has become invited to become involved "in something relatively new between the advertiser and consumer: a conversation" (Lucas and Dorrian, 2006:18; emphasis added).
Relating to the trend described by Lucas and Dorrien I think it's good if we also try to engage our audience into a dialogue.
What sort of dialogue could that be? Of course, something moderated by us, a sort of "chat" that would link with the product we want to sell, namely transience. I have checked the exact meaning of transience and it is
To start with, as Lucas and Dorrian (2006) wrote, the media landscape has changed recently and moved into more interactive and audience engaging. The advertising has also shifted from conventional brand communication such as television spot to approaches which collide with Public Relations. It is no longer a one-way communication in predictable venues; advertisers are now seeking to draw the attention of the people in new surprising ways. As a result, the consumer has become invited to become involved "in something relatively new between the advertiser and consumer: a conversation" (Lucas and Dorrian, 2006:18; emphasis added).
Relating to the trend described by Lucas and Dorrien I think it's good if we also try to engage our audience into a dialogue.
What sort of dialogue could that be? Of course, something moderated by us, a sort of "chat" that would link with the product we want to sell, namely transience. I have checked the exact meaning of transience and it is
1. an impermanence that suggests the inevitability of ending or
dying
2. the attribute of being brief or fleeting [syn: brevity]
( http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/transience)
It got me thinking about... OK, it will sound trivial and silly, but I started thinking about life that we often take it for granted and forget that it might end abruptly tomorrow or any other day. Therefore we should start enjoy it consciously ASAP! And don't listen to all the advertisements which try to lure us that happiness is impossible without product X or product Y. Hey, my observation is that the less we have (in material sphere), the happier we are (or is it just me?!) Instead of thinking about what we still need to purchase, why don't we focus on small things that give us pleasure and joy? CARPE DIEM, seize the day, start living your life fully today.
It instantly made me think of the optimistic philosophy of Epicurus (I will elaborate on this next time and will try to deploy some useful material. Now, just to provide a link: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epicurus/)
My idea now is to sell the prospect of happiness/joy which can be attained NOT due to consumption of a particular goods as advertisers would like to convince us. I should develop this concept soon in relation to SUBVERSIVE ADVERTISING.
Also, I was thinking about the promotion of our online campaign. I think we could use similar way as Crispin Porter and Bogusky (http://cpbgroup.com/) agency in Burger King campaign in 2004. The link to the Subservient Chicken (www.subservientchicken.com) was sent to 30 people who in turn sent it to their friends and after few days the website was seen by thousands. After we create our campaign and place it online (ideally at least few days before the deadline) we could send an message to friends on Facebook and invite them to have a look at the link & forward it if they like it. We can also send an e-mail to everyone at uni to encourage traffic to our online campaign.
Two more things. First one is already mentioned WIKI. I really think it's cool if we set up a wiki where the users can generate and edit content. One of us will have to take care of it and moderate it. The other thing is about the stencil as in case of The Bubble Project mentioned before. As we agreed together, we will produce a stencil of an arrow which can be used by the audience to take pictures presenting the small things etc. that give them joy. The pics will be published at the website, also it would be cool if one of us takes care of receiving & placing them online. But I'm sure we will sort it out along the way.
That's it for now.
Best,
EB
ps. reference of the book:
Lucas, G. and Dorrien, M. (2006) Guerilla Advertising. Unconventional Brand Communication. London: Laurence King Publishing.
Tuesday, 17 February 2009
Selling Transcience
Sorry,
Juan and I decided to leave after we had waited for a while. We did however attempt to mould our ideas into a brief which we could use as a basis for our work from this point on. As we had previously discussed we are selling transience through the medium of a self destructing website. The website itself will have a logo which can be changed through user interaction (if a game could be made which allows us to do this great, if not no worries), and would encourage the user to create work which relates to transience and the benefits of transience therefore encouraging communicative interaction.
Simple enough.
I think we could maybe try incorporating some of our own short videos/photo's which play around with the idea of transience to demonstrate the multimedia aspect of the website. These could range from fairly simple pun based images like the piece of work we saw today or short films supposedly promoting transience, whatever, the point is that we may have to generate work through some other mediums to ensure we meet the criteria.
Found a piece on advertising called the seven sins of memory, one of which being.. The Sin of Transience, here is the link, the document lists ways to improve memory and recognition of adverts amongst consumers, in regards to some multimedia content we could create a set of rules which would decrease it in the form of an advertising advice document,
Hope you are all well,
Farewell Pilgrims..
M.A. Barrington
Juan and I decided to leave after we had waited for a while. We did however attempt to mould our ideas into a brief which we could use as a basis for our work from this point on. As we had previously discussed we are selling transience through the medium of a self destructing website. The website itself will have a logo which can be changed through user interaction (if a game could be made which allows us to do this great, if not no worries), and would encourage the user to create work which relates to transience and the benefits of transience therefore encouraging communicative interaction.
Simple enough.
I think we could maybe try incorporating some of our own short videos/photo's which play around with the idea of transience to demonstrate the multimedia aspect of the website. These could range from fairly simple pun based images like the piece of work we saw today or short films supposedly promoting transience, whatever, the point is that we may have to generate work through some other mediums to ensure we meet the criteria.
Found a piece on advertising called the seven sins of memory, one of which being.. The Sin of Transience, here is the link, the document lists ways to improve memory and recognition of adverts amongst consumers, in regards to some multimedia content we could create a set of rules which would decrease it in the form of an advertising advice document,
Hope you are all well,
Farewell Pilgrims..
M.A. Barrington
Changeable Logo
Hey,
Having read the handouts, looked around the various links posted on blackboard by Linda and reading your last two posts we seem to be close to determining what we are actually going to do. As Juan pointed out physical interaction simply appears to being pointing and clicking without affecting the meaning, which is evident here on the TalkToFrank website where nothing is challenged or changed.
Including a simple form of physical interaction which allows the user an increased input and communicative interaction, seems to be the way to go. The magazine we looked at last week, Adbusters, has a website which encourages communicative interaction through grass roots subversive advertising, here is the link. The website mainly deals with culture jamming and invites users to submit their pieces of work which they then showcase. There is a lot of material on here some good some bad but it is worth a look.
I looked through the links on your previous posts i.e. bubble project, postsecret. I liked the simplicity of allowing users to generate the content, however the effectiveness of such sites is limited to the amount of content their users generate as well as the quality of such content. If we to go down the route of a highly user generated content then getting it viewed and used would be of high importance.
I think the idea of disrupting the link between actual and virtual modalities is an interesting one and would propose we develop the ideas of the changeable logo, advertising a concept and temporary website as they reflect a disruption of expectation regarding the practices of advertising.
Hope everyone is well,
farewell pilgrims,
M.A. Barrington.
Sunday, 15 February 2009
some thoughts on interactivity
hi,
I think we should definitely go ahead with the changeable/interactive logo idea, as from a semiotic point of view even the smallest of alterations to an image can alter the potential meanings and values that image can possess. This idea alone seems quite subversive as the purpose of an advert or brand image is to convey a very clear idea about a product; to have as little possible alteration between encoding and decoding, where as we will want to be encouraging people to encode their own message, to shape the brand around themselves.
After reading the interactivity article it seems that most of what is considered to be interactive is merely physical interaction, that seems to come down to point and click selections that don’t often have much of an effect on the communicative interaction, i.e. it doesn’t affect the meaning of the content. All of the innovation and development of computers and interactive media just seems to be bringing the virtual/digital world in line with the real world, so that there is a unity with how things might react to you on a computer and with more tangible objects. I think this even applies in a tactile sense with how our understanding is shaped by how things are associated with physical actions; deleted files going into the recycling bin etc. It might then be fun to play around with physical interaction in counter-intuitive ways, especially if we are looking to brand something such as chaos or confusion.
I guess what would be required is the separation of our experience of actual and virtual modalities, or at least to confuse the meanings that connect and coordinate them, in order to play around with the potential of digital interaction. By making something interactive in this way it should able to highlight the constructed and arbitrary nature of our project and advertising/branding in general, disrupting the normalising and naturalising association between product and cultural meaning and values that most advertising aims for.
Juan PdR
Wednesday, 11 February 2009
interactivity ideas
Hi,
Here's Ewa and in order to differentiate my posts I will use this tasty colour of olive oil. Few notes to keep up.
1) I like the idea of a temporary website and appreciate the link between transience and temporariness of the website. Fun!:)
2) I'm still reading about the interactivity to grasp the essence of the concept. I borrowed a book on Guerrilla advertising and I am full of hope to find some inspirations; expect some entries soon:)
3) Just wanted to add a useful link if you feel like watching some ads in spare time. http://adsoftheworld.com/ It might be useful in expanding "the visual library" and ideas.
4) And I genuinely like the postcards from the postsecretblog, they're aesthetically appealing to me. Maybe we could also try to encourage our audience to produce something, for instance their version of logo of our brand and then it would be published (as we discussed it recently).
5) Or maybe we could present a stencil/template that audience could use and send their pics/videos? I found such idea on www.thebubbleproject.com. People can download a comic-style bubble that needs to be printed and cut. Then folks can write their commentaries in the bubble and make a photo or create a video which can be posted on the Bubbleproject blog by submitting a facebook/flickr/youtube link. The Bubbleproject.com is integrated with these tools and in my opinion this is a goood example of real interactivity. As so far I have used Facebook in a fairly limited way, I will research into groups and other features which might be useful for our project.
6) We should also think of using a wiki we could embed in our project as well. This could help us in achieving a satisfying level of interactivity. WIKIPEDIA is probably the biggest wiki in the Internet and it defines wiki as a "a type of website that allows users to add, remove, or
otherwise edit and change most content very quickly and easily via website."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki)
Yours sincerely,
EB
Here's Ewa and in order to differentiate my posts I will use this tasty colour of olive oil. Few notes to keep up.
1) I like the idea of a temporary website and appreciate the link between transience and temporariness of the website. Fun!:)
2) I'm still reading about the interactivity to grasp the essence of the concept. I borrowed a book on Guerrilla advertising and I am full of hope to find some inspirations; expect some entries soon:)
3) Just wanted to add a useful link if you feel like watching some ads in spare time. http://adsoftheworld.com/ It might be useful in expanding "the visual library" and ideas.
4) And I genuinely like the postcards from the postsecretblog, they're aesthetically appealing to me. Maybe we could also try to encourage our audience to produce something, for instance their version of logo of our brand and then it would be published (as we discussed it recently).
5) Or maybe we could present a stencil/template that audience could use and send their pics/videos? I found such idea on www.thebubbleproject.com. People can download a comic-style bubble that needs to be printed and cut. Then folks can write their commentaries in the bubble and make a photo or create a video which can be posted on the Bubbleproject blog by submitting a facebook/flickr/youtube link. The Bubbleproject.com is integrated with these tools and in my opinion this is a goood example of real interactivity. As so far I have used Facebook in a fairly limited way, I will research into groups and other features which might be useful for our project.
6) We should also think of using a wiki we could embed in our project as well. This could help us in achieving a satisfying level of interactivity. WIKIPEDIA is probably the biggest wiki in the Internet and it defines wiki as a "a type of website that allows users to add, remove, or
otherwise edit and change most content very quickly and easily via website."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki)
I think we can benefit a lot if we learn how to embed an HTML file into Flash and place a wiki in our product. Of course, this is just an initial idea and I will work on it to present some possible directions.
Anyway, that's it for now.Yours sincerely,
EB
The End is Nigh
hello,
i think what really makes something interactive is the ability to allow people to contribute in their own way. it might be interesting to see what people come up with on a site they know is going to disappear soon; pictures, short stories even secrets, who knows.
for an idea of such potential content you may want to check out these sites.
Juan PdR
Gotta Love Google!
Hello,
I am aware I have posted something on here today already but I have allocated this period on Wednesday to the Multimedia module so have been researching through various Internet resources as well as the many links under the Multimedia module sectioned starting on my sketch book, but anyway during my Internet research I stumbled upon this link. I haven't really looked into yet but it could be useful, or not. It appears to link the destruction of a website to a timer rather than based on a counter however I'm sure that could be changed.
Farewell,
M.A. Barrington.
I am aware I have posted something on here today already but I have allocated this period on Wednesday to the Multimedia module so have been researching through various Internet resources as well as the many links under the Multimedia module sectioned starting on my sketch book, but anyway during my Internet research I stumbled upon this link. I haven't really looked into yet but it could be useful, or not. It appears to link the destruction of a website to a timer rather than based on a counter however I'm sure that could be changed.
Farewell,
M.A. Barrington.
New Pepsi Logo
Hello,
from now on I will signature all of my future blog entries with my initials, as it will make it easier to tell me apart from the other members of our group.
I have also taken the dramatic decision to type my text in green.
This is a link to a document which claims to represent the thinking behind the new Pepsi logo, which for anyone not in the know as to how the new logo will appear, above are a few images of the new Pepsi bottles and cans.
I really doubt this is an authentic document, it claims to have been leaked from a "freelancer in the industry", however as a hoax it satirizes the elaborate processes and absurdities of logo design.
M.A. Barrington
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
Some ideas for the opening of the Gherkin
Despite our name (Gherkin) we do not sell vegetables or salads or any other type of foods. What is more, we do not want to sell you anything apart from our ideas. We simply want to get you interested in what we are offering to you. We want YOU to get involved in our interactive campaign. (if we had an audio option here, we would play a sound of gong or something similar to underscore the significance of this statement).
As my colleague wrote in his post, we would like to create a sort of spoof campaign that would promote war. But later I came up with some other things we could advertise. Things that you would not even think someone might be interested in. Like some abstract concepts such as mediocrity, chaos, botch.. But this is just a loose suggestion.
OK, I am getting down to read the text and will post some further comments afterwards.
EB
As my colleague wrote in his post, we would like to create a sort of spoof campaign that would promote war. But later I came up with some other things we could advertise. Things that you would not even think someone might be interested in. Like some abstract concepts such as mediocrity, chaos, botch.. But this is just a loose suggestion.
OK, I am getting down to read the text and will post some further comments afterwards.
EB
The First Entry onto the Gherkin!
Just wanted to sum up the comments and ideas made in todays class,
1. Of the three briefs we decided on Culture Jamming & Interactive Branding.
2. We wanted to create a website which focused on the idea of selling War.
3. To represent Interacivity and to represent the theme of destruction we wanted to attempt to have users contribute to the destruction of the website.
So glad I was able to make the first post!
M.A. Barrington
1. Of the three briefs we decided on Culture Jamming & Interactive Branding.
2. We wanted to create a website which focused on the idea of selling War.
3. To represent Interacivity and to represent the theme of destruction we wanted to attempt to have users contribute to the destruction of the website.
So glad I was able to make the first post!
M.A. Barrington
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