Guru in Training

Flavor of the week

2010-03-15T09:55:00.000-07:00

Mid-terms, Comprehensives, Searches, oh my. Some idle speculation on these busy days.

Its funny what a difference scarcity makes even in this bold intangible online frontier. Remember when Google Wave was first rolled out? Everyone was either begging for Invites or rationing them out like it was a bread line? I'm willing to bet half the people asking for them didnt even know what Wave WAS much less why they wanted to use it. All that mattered was being in that shiny circle, to be one of the first to see this newest Google Wundertool.

Now months later please a show of hands, who actually USES Wave? I'm interested what the metrics of use actually are but I know I have a large list of contacts and nobody ever has the little green "Online" ball next to their name.

I am smarmy enough to say that I do actually use it. I run a small online RPG on it with three of my friends playing. It offer a nice venue to run the game at a relaxed pace and all of us ostensibly have fun with it. There is a handy program to roll dice and all the rest is our own prose narrative. Not exactly the Cutting-Edge collaborative environment Google had in mind but we have our fun.

Conversely, who here uses or even liked the idea of Google Buzz? They roll this thing out with little fanfare and opted everybody in and the prevailing response was "What the hell is this?" Perhaps if they'd made it a limited invite only people would have clamored more. Some social network type should capitalize on this, a Social Net like Facebook that you can only get in if you're invited. The online equivalent of the No Girls Allowed Tree Fort.

-G

Research Redux

2010-02-16T17:03:00.000-08:00

Pardon the prolonged silence, final semesters tend to be the busiest and I have not been idle.

Since my graduate school experience is winding down I've changed my intended research project a bit to allow for time to collect and analyze the data before the May deadline. The new project will be examining the woefully understudied intersection of marketing and virtual agents. Virtual agents are any digital representation of a nonhuman entity, usually a computer program but also potentially a brand or a company (Think of Clippy from MS Word, or, more malevolently, HAL 9000.)

One of the things we see often with Facebook and/or Twitter is companies interacting with their consumers on a more individualized level. It may be one very busy person or a team of social network experts but either way, these interactions put a more human face on the company, and often that face is a virtual agent, a digital avatar through which the company interacts. My goal is to see whether the qualities of that avatar affect how people see the company or brand.

It was surprising to see just how little research there was on the subject. I suspect there is simply a backlog of articles on social networks still waiting to be published. One of the joys of the peer evaluation system I suppose. I'll provide periodic updates as things progress. The first step is to get all the IRB work ironed out. Have any opinions on the subject? Ever have a good (or bad) interaction with a company via Facebook or Twitter? Comment away!

A Commercial Holiday

2010-02-09T04:40:00.000-08:00

While only recently have I begun "following" football I've always liked to watch the Super Bowl both for the pageantry of this uniquely American spectacle and for the commercials. This years crop was fairly hit or miss. I can only imagine how much money was invested by the beer companies this year though all their ads seemed to boil down to "find beer; begin party."

There was also far too many unattractive people in underwear (two was two too many) though I wouldn't be any sort of Grad Student if I didn't immediately check into the Free Pants thing.

On that note: I have a birthday coming up next Wednesday so I might have to look into that Denny's breakfast dealie. Haven't been to one in ages but a free meal seems like a good reason to go back. So hey, mission accomplished gentlemen.

The standout favorites for amusement value were the Doritos commercials, especially the one with the weight room and the Doritos samurai armor. Of course I don't eat Doritos and thats certainly not going to get me started.

Whatever you think of government spending, the Census commercial was weak and probably a waste of money. As a stats loving guy I am all for promoting the census but jeez they could have done so much better.

Little bit of misogyny going on with the Dodge commercial. Will Wheton said it best on Twitter: "Buy Dodge, because that bitch you call a wife makes you put the seat down." Little bit of castration going on with the portable TV commercial and the guy who gets dragged shopping during the Super Bowl.

Go Daddy is still annoying. the Betty White commercial was funny but I've already forgotten just what product they were pushing so that's a failure. I'm not touching the Focus on the Family issue but to say that taking one's mom down with a flying tackle was a strange visual message to send. I was already going to see The Last Airbender and I am absolutely going to see Prince of Persia.

And that's all I can remember at top of mind without looking back at the commercial lists so obviously all the rest failed to get my attention.

(I've decided to move this What I Learned experiment to Twitter, seems like a better place to share links and info. I'll stick to full length posts here.)

What I Learned 2/3/2010

2010-02-03T13:31:00.000-08:00

1) Google and Apple are having a hissy-fit at one another. Google is implementing multi-touch into their Nexus One despite a supposed "gentleman's agreement" that they would not be implementing this technology. Apple meanwhile is locking out Flash, ChromeOS, and other "unsoftware" from the iPad, continuing their trend of controlling their content as much as possible. Also there is rumor of a Google Tablet device in the works. As I've mentioned I am a Google fanboy so I obviously have a clear preference, on the whole though, competition is good for the consumer.

2) It is apparently Social Media Week which makes me wish, not for the first time, that I was in New York right now. There was an interesting panel at JWT in NYC which contained a couple of names from my Twitter feed that I was looking forward to hearing from. The panel was on crowdsourcing, which can be briefly defined as letting consumers come up with advertising/marketing messages for ones brand (Think of it as a "Design our new logo" contest on a larger scale.) The panel was quite interesting to watch (the video can be found here for those who are interested. It can best be summed up with this quote from Michael Liebowitz "I like the wisdom of crowds, I don't like the output of crowds."

3) RPG Publishing company White Wolf, who make some of my favorite TT role playing games, seems to be transitioning to a pdf based business model. They have not released many new physical books the last few months but there have been a plethora of more narrowly targeted pdfs being put out, with the newest one today being a pamphlet given out for fictional soldiers in their Exalted setting. There's some debate as to whether White Wolf is pioneering the future of the RPG industry or merely floundering and unable to put out the products they were once known for. The optimist in me leans toward the latter. TT RPGs are a niche industry to begin with and putting out pdfs is a hell of a lot less overhead than a print run of physical books would be. It also lets them produce these narrow-focused products that would be too expensive and risky to do as physical books. The fact that this is another brick in the foundation of digital books being the future is purely coincidental I am sure.

Sufficiently Advanced Technology

2010-02-02T07:51:00.000-08:00

Remember in the Harry Potter movies how all the pictures in photographs and newspapers would move and wave at you? Or in any sci-fi setting where they had datapads of the latest newspapers and magazines? One of the visual design decisions made for Star Wars was that there shouldn't be any paper to reinforce the futuristic feel (A Long Time Ago). Thats what I first thought of when I heard about the iPad. This article by jawbone (tweeted to me by BBH Labs) about Augmented Books seems to be coming at it in a different direction though one no less interesting. Using a simple setup (which helps with immersion/presence) they add some digital animations to picture books to enhance whats on the written page. Its only a matter of time before some innovating (and enterprising) author releases a book intended solely for e-readers that has these sorts of animations fully embedded and integrated into the narrative. Faris recently had an entry where he mentioned that a young child looked at her father's Kindle and called it Daddy's Book. All this conjures up images of a parent reading a bed time story to their child, nestled together around the glow of a touch screen as a Hungry Little Caterpillar munches on various foodstuffs across the screen.

What I Learned 2/1/2010

2010-02-01T08:27:00.000-08:00

So here are the ground rules I'm laying for myself. On days where I don't have a full entry I'm going to have a "What I Learned" post. Each such post will contain three bits of information I learned that day, ideally relating to media, marketing, or tech (or all three these days.) I'll also post some of my own thoughts or reactions to each tidbit to train myself to think critically about what I am reading. To my loyal audience (both of you) by all means toss in your own comments and opinions about whatever I end up posting. So without further ado:

What I Learned Today

1) Bravo TV is teaming up with FourSquare to get people engaged with the network. When people go to certain locations significant to Bravo TV shows they get special badges and potentially some benefits/coupons from certain advertisers. Seems like a neat way to drum up interest in the network though I'd imagine it would only really speak to people who were already loyal Bravo watchers. Still I'd be interested to hear how it works for them and I am ALL in favor of media companies making use of Social Networks intelligently. Would set a good precedent and gets people thinking of new ways to utilize these resources.

2) The overwhelming bulk of literature suggests that people find hard copy text easier to read and more understandable than electronic text. To have a study worth doing I'd need something new to contribute to this body of work and I am not entirely sure yet. I WISH I had an e-reader or funding to use one. I'm willing to bet there's little to no research done on those...or at least none published yet.

3) Steve Jobs is very unhappy with Google and their Nexus One phone. As a Google fanboy that makes me laugh. I'm still waiting to see what the shakedown between the iPhone, Droid, and Nexus One will be. Currently I'd want a Nexus One on principle alone since I trust Google to deliver a good product even if they are sniffing at all my packets. Of course nothing is going to happen until they all get a deal with Verizon (and I get the ability to pay that monthly bill.)

Non IRB Approved Qual Research - BBH Labs

2010-01-31T12:26:00.000-08:00

Today's Non IRB approved qualitative research comes from Mel Exon, Managing Partner of BBH Labs who, along with Ben Malbon (who kindly passed my questions along) and Patricia McDonald, talk about new models of engaging brands and audiences. Read on!

Guru in Training: Before making a blog post it helps to have something to write about. So, how do you find your news? What are your sources of information both online and off?

Mel Exon: A real mix between work and thinking that bubbles up across the year at Labs and BBH around the world, plus an ever-growing, broad range of favourite blogs and sites whose latest posts are sucked onto my desktop via Snackr. I have other sources like Delicious, Google Reader and RSS etc, but Snackr is a tailor-made, live ticker tape of new content running along my desk top, impossible to ignore. Then Twitter of course for latest snippets of what's interesting out there, a real-time stream of opinion and news from a much broader group of interesting people we follow.

GiT: There's only so much content you can squeeze into an entry. How do you decide which piece of news or personal experience makes the cut as being "blog-worthy?"

ME: Tough one, but we tend to only blog about "news" if we're very early to it or we have a point of view that's not been heard yet. It's got to have some relevance to brands and commercial creativity. We'll usually have some key points or provocations we are interested in hearing people's opinion on. We are pretty disciplined in the topics we write about - see below.

GiT: Some people use blogs as personal journals, some as news sources, others as hubs for discussion. What role do you see your blog as having or what goals do you have for it? What sort of audience do you have in mind as you write?

ME: BBH Labs blog is where we share stuff we've found provocative or inspiring. It's also where we share emerging thinking, opinion and new work for discussion and debate. Its focus is wholly around innovation: new and emerging agency models, creative outputs, platforms, tech, processes - from inside and outside the marketing industry.

In terms of goals, the ensuing debate around our posts always improves the quality of our own output and, we hope, contributes to industry debate and the solving of broader questions facing us all. The blog also builds a reputation for Labs as a source of all the above for our core audience: a broad range of other like-minded agencies, collaborators and partners, ad schools, clients and our friends inside BBH around the world.

It's also strictly business. I have a personal blog melex.posterous.com which is where I stick the stuff I've come across, like and don't want to lose, or personal material I want to share. There's some cross over with work, possibly we take a longer term view for Labs, my personal blog is a lot lighter.

Git: Considering the name and goal of this blog, Guru In Training: How did you get your start in Marketing and Technology and what advice would you give to someone trying to enter the field?

ME: Keep your eyes and your mind open. Vary your stimuli and more interesting things happen. Right now, when it's often hard to know where to start however experienced you may be (in fact this may be *more* true the more experienced you are), I think it's useful advice to "try to learn something about everything and everything about something" (Thomas H Huxley).

Git: And finally, how did you decide on the name for your blog?

ME: It's named after the business, so that was easy. We did debate whether to call Labs something else, our code name before launch was Black Labs - Black for black/secret ops (tongue-firmly-in-cheek); Labs for experimental, forward reconaissance unit. BBH also has a thing for the word 'black' - it means uncompromising, "great, not good" in our culture. There are a one or two bits of trivia from that pre-launch stage, the black dog that is our twitter avatar is a limited edition black labrador toy from Germany that I gave Ben when we launched, for example. We went with BBH Labs as a name in the end, it seemed to make sense to us to leverage the agency's name and we wanted to be as nimble as possible, so were keen to avoid any trademark-related red tape.

______________________________________________________________________________

Thank you to Mel, Ben, and Patricia for your time and insights! It's been quite interesting to see how bloggers think about their blogs, entries, and audience. Not mention that twice now I have been encouraged to always be reading and always learn something new. I plan to take this to heart and energize my own blog by making a daily record of new and interesting things I've seen, read, or been part that relates to media, technology, or life. Keeps me writing, thinking, and hopefully interesting.

The Next 5 Months

2010-01-27T09:57:00.000-08:00

The next 5 months promise to be busy. I have a research project to manage, comprehensive exams to study for, my final semester to finish, a wedding to plan and a job hunt to boot. And of course a blog to update. Out of that list I can currently finish at least one of those now and so here I am. Today I'll talk a little bit about the research I am hoping to finish in the next few months.

My primary interest is in how people are using technology. I've been a techie all my life since my father first let me log onto his old Prodigy account. I am fortunate to have grown up with the Internet and see the way it has changed the way people interact and I've been drawn back time and again to thinking about just HOW are we talking differently now? What's new? What no longer works? What HASN'T changed?

Of course lacking funding or grant money I can only take a narrow look but hopefully one that is significant all the same. I'm hoping to get some data on how people are using electronic documents versus paper hard-copy. The idea is to see whether messages are interpreted differently when we read them on the computer screen. Are we more likely to remember e-text? More likely to be persuaded? Current research has shown people prefer hard-copy for things like taking tests or reading a book but few (that I've seen at least) look beyond what people think of these media and examine how they are impacted.

So, blogosphere, give me your Qual data. What do you like in your electronic documents? What do you like about physical copies? Those of you with Kindles and Nooks, how do you like them?

The Year We Made Contact

2010-01-05T12:49:00.000-08:00

Happy 2010 blogosphere. I'd like to take this chance to look back at some of my favorite GiT posts from 2009...oh right there's only three. I hope everyone's holidays were most excellent. My own were spent eating entirely too much, drinking entirely too little, and spending just the right amount of time with my two families.

To my continuing shame I do not yet have a smart phone. I don't care for AT&T's service but even if I did both an iPhone and a Droid are beyond my current means to afford. The real irony of going to grad school to study how people use technology is that I can't afford to use any of my own. Google recently announced a phone of their own and maybe by the time its available through Verizon I'll be able to afford it.

One (of many) interesting things Faris mentioned when he so kindly answered my questions is that he uses his blog for personal thoughts and Twitter to share links. That got me thinking about what I use my own social outlets for. There's a Communication theory called Uses and Gratifications which claims we choose what media to use based on how it best fulfills out needs which seems to apply here. My typical divide seems to be Facebook for personal information, Twitter to share interesting links, and this blog to faff about with whatever is on my mind. I notice that a number of my friends will simply cross post their statuses to both Facebook and Twitter. So I wonder, How do you, gentle readers (all three of you), use your various social nets?

Non IRB Approved Qual Research - Faris Yakob TIGS

2009-12-21T13:16:00.000-08:00

Amazing what can happen when you simply ask, responses to my extremely non IRB approved qualitative research have begun to come in. First up is Faris Yakob(@faris) of Talent Imitates, Genius Steals. Faris is the EVP Chief Technology Strategist at McCann Erickson New York and has kindly agreed to answer my questions about how to be a better media blogger.

Guru In Training(I just realized my blog acronym is GiT): Before making a blog post it helps to have something to write about. So, how do you find your news? What are your favorite sources of information both online and off?

Talent Imitates, Genius Steals:I used to scan through hundreds of RSS feeds everyday. Now I just let Twitter tell me what I need to know. That said, I very rarely post anything on TIGS that I have discovered via Twitter - everyone already knows. Other things I like are books. Reading is for awesome people. Also people send me stuff all the time - sometimes bad [terrible for IMMMEIDATE RELEASE PR legacy missives from another era] sometimes awesome [excellent thoughtful polite personal emails about stuff I'm actually into]. Plus I read Wired and Fast Company, but again I rarely post from them.

GiT: There's only so much content you can squeeze into an entry. How do you decide which piece of news or personal experience makes the cut as being"blog-worthy?"

TIGS: To me it's pretty simple - I only post stuff on TIGS if I feel I have something original to contribute. I share via twitter and Tumblr - TIGS is for thinking.

GiT: Some people use blogs as personal journals, some as news sources, others as hubs for discussion. What role do you see your blog as having? Do you have a specific audience in mind as you write?

TIGS: As I mention above TIGS has a specific role - it's where I do my thinking and ask the audience to test it out. I think over the years I have begun to understand the audience, but it's not specific - I don't just write for the advertising industry, for example, rather anyone interested in culture, media, communications, technology and that.

GiT: Considering the name and goal of this blog: do you have any advice to give to someone aspiring to be media/tech savvy?

TIGS: Read a lot. Remember that if you didn't learn something today, you are behind. And if you don't love media and tech, then don't bother.

GiT: And finally, how did you decide on the name for your blog?

TIGS: Talent imitates, Genius Steals started out as something cool to put at the top of my blog and became the expression which distills my belief in recombinant culture - more on that here:

http://farisyakob.typepad.com/blog/2008/11/interesting-a-history-of-recombinant-culture.html

GiT: Thanks so much for taking the time to answer!

Scientific Methods

2009-12-18T09:38:00.000-08:00

Part of my job as a TA for a social science course is turning complex scientific jargon into something understandable to new undergraduates. Academic speech might as well be a whole new language. For all that parsimony is valued in academic writing, journal article seem to enjoy using long words and complex language (like parsimony, those highfalutin bastards.)* So if I were to try to explain a theory I'd break it down into it's components while also giving examples of how it is applied. Perhaps one in ten of those students might become TAs themselves one day and then pass along theory to the next generation. Its like the Circle of Life with more stat tests and fewer giraffes.

But as is so often the case things get more muddled in the world outside the tower. How do you learn about the newest technologies? Who tells you what marketing tools are best? How, in short, do you become an authority when there's no academic journals to digest the information at you?

One of my goals for this blog is to educate myself about the field of work I'll soon be entering. One of my goals is also to NOT just rehash old news and AP bulletins. So I'm going to engage in a little qualitative research and ask the blogging and podcasting pros how THEY do it. Where do they get their news? How do they decide what to blog about? Interesting AND educational. So follow along and lets see where this takes us. And if anyone has suggested bloggers to ask feel free to leave a comment.

*It means brevity.

Streams of Data and Conciousness

2009-12-16T10:25:00.000-08:00

Its an interesting phenomenon that as the net is getting exponentially bigger, it is also becoming more personal. Everyone has their own little corner of the net to call their own these days whether it be a Facebook page, twitter feed, or blog-roll. Some of us technophiles have all three and more. Lots of theories exist that try to explain why we use these things but most of them boil down to us wanting wanting to be in charge and be thought of well. I suspect that is why blogs are so popular.

It took me forever to start this blog and even longer to start writing in it because I didn't really feel like what I had to say was any more important than anybody else. Entirely too many years in academia have said that your personal opinions don't matter if they aren't backed up by someone else who has already been published in standard APA citation. I'd like to extend my thanks to my good friend Mike for making me realize that all the scholarly giants, media-savvy marketers, and cults of personality all had to start writing somewhere.

Subsequent posts will be filled with more crunchy info and I will try my best to not end up like so many other abandoned blogs out there in the intertubes. I hope to use this blog as way to sound off on what I think and do, a time honored blogger tradition. But I also hope to use the motivation to write something substantial as a way to help educate myself more on media, technology, marketing, entertainment, and all the other 0's and 1's that make up popular culture.