A while back I was doing this thing called the IPA Excellence Diploma, the culmination of which was a thesis on the FUTURE OF BRANDS.
I ended up writing about the newly participative idea consumer and transmedia planning and that, borrowing heavily from the thinking of Henry Jenkins and other great minds, on the back of which I picked up the President's Prize, which was pretty cool.
They've just published it in Campaign in the UK and I was intending to put it here first in its original form since so much of the thinking was crafted and honed here. But in the end I didn't get around to it.
There is definitely an irony in the fact that the paper preaches treating active online audiences differently, and usually first, that I didn't 'launch' it online.
Ah well.
Anyway – you can download it here – I'd be very interested to know what you think.
[You can get the published version here]
You can see all the other published papers here – enjoy.
18 responses to “I Believe the Children are our Future”
I certainly hope children are our future too, I mean I don’t think the monkeys would be up for the challenge.
see what i did there?
I´ll read it this weekend! I was about to send and email asking for that.
Children are our future because they are the mix of what we have best: repertoire and optmism, past and dream.
Big hug
Mau
Just remember to treat them well and let them lead the way…
Phew!
Just finished reading it on the (delayed, grrr!) train.
Very, very interesting. I was sad when it finished. I wanted more!
Will you be catching up with da kids in 7 years time or someink?
I came along to your talk last night at IPA Stage 1, which was excellent and really interesting.
I was just wondering if you didn’t think there was something of an inconsistency between the idea, which I think we all accept, that Brands are a tool for helping people make choices, and the idea that somehow people will become exclusively active consumers of media. People don’t want too much choice of jam, they don’t want to make that much effort most of the time. Why should they want to make the effort to always choose their media for themselves all of the time?
Is it not the case that while the children do spend more time online than their parents that actually they still spend quite a few hours simply watching the television?
There are times when all people want to interact with media, be participants, explore for themselves, create their own playlists etc, and there are surely other times where they simply like to sit on their arses and watch images flashing on a screen for three hours without thinking. The IPA touchpoints survey has shown that children and teenagers still spend a significant amount of their media time watching and listening to radio and television. Indeed the analysis suggests that the reason they spend less time than their parents watching television is not that they use the time on the internet instead, but that they go out more.
Clearly things are changing, but is there not an argument that the web, Sky+ systems, itunes, youtube and so on will only exist alongside, rather than instead of traditional linear media, which will continue to provide recommendations, information about things consumers would not otherwise know existed, and the opportunity to switch off completely for hours at a time?
Thanks for your really stimulating talk, my apologies if these issues are covered in your thesis, which I have not yet had time to read.
Thanks dudes!
Simon – thanks! Now then – you raise a really good point here.
So – I think you are right – remember when I was talking about the bimodal consumer base? Although I did sort of mean two different kinds of consumer – it’s also the case that although the dominant mode for web enabled kids is active, they will still want to consume passive linear narrative – the form is strong in this one, so to speak.
I think though that thinking about the internet as a supplemental media won’t help much longer – it will simply be the delivery platform for all digital content – video, audio, text, whatever.
Scheduling your own media playlist may seem like a bit of a chore at the moment – although my little brother pretty much only watches stuff he gets via bit torrent – but that’s only because the onus is on you to may choices. The whole choice thing is kind of annoying, as I said with the jam thing, so in a world of infinite on demand content i think we will rely on collaborative filtering – social recommendations like iLike on facebook – or algorithms that do the same thing – like the amazon recommender service – so we’ll leverage our mates and some weak AI software to make scheduling automatic.
Content will simply start appearing on your media server – and space won’t be an issue – Kryder’s Law [the storage analogue of Moore’s Law] will mean that it will be easy to store more content than you could ever consume.
So I guess I think ultimately these sort of behaviours will challenge how things like broadcast work. or something ;-p
And please never apologise for getting involved in the conversation!
Thanks,
Faris
Very interesting.
For me kids aren’t that different these days – the world in which they live is….
The urge to participate is nothing new (particularly for the young). Its another existing human trait further facilitated by the digital world.
Your paper was a very interesting read. As person looking to break into the planning profession, your notion of transmedia planning holds the direction I would love to see planning take. Also, as someone trained in anthropology and psychology the imaginative immersion aspects this model implies are exciting. Hopefully planning will turn to strategic media ecology, helping to create alternate worlds that interact with everyday life on a deeper,more meaningful level. By the way, transmedia planning seems to hold a lot in common with the idea of the “media mix”, especially as it is Japanese media and fan culture. There is an anthropologist by the name of Mimi Ito who has written some excellent papers on these media mixes among Japanese fan cultures and they seem to achieve what transmedia planning would be ideally aiming for. They are along the same lines of Lost and Heroes and such, but they seem to colonize even more media forms and inspire an even more proactive brand inetraction. Check her website out for her papers, they hold a lot of stimulating ideas for transmedia planning in general. Best.
I read your paper in the bath with 10 Malboro Golds and 2 cans of Scrumpy and thoroughly enjoyed it…the paper was impressive also. In particular the need to move measurement metrics on in order to fully understand a convergent/transmedia idea from different angles. I think those who are naturally observant will unconciously note the young growing up with different media and how they interact with it and that passive states are in fact more common than ever before. Lean back platforms online are growing at quite a rate. Nice one dude, gonna steal your graphs and everythin!
I just love how you have made ‘transmedia planning’ a transmedia planning idea…. brillant
hi, really enjoyed this. can i link to it on my blog?
of course you can Paul = and thanks!
brilliant idea…this would work with building planning as well
yes, it’s quite interesting, i agree with patty
Extremely long but very useful and informative article. How i wish i can do all of that in a short period of time. But for sure doing those will produce results. I will try to spread your words through my blog and link it back to you. Thanks a lot for those tips.
Wonderful article, thanks for putting this together! “This is obviously one great post. Thanks for the valuable information and insights you have so provided here. Keep it up!”
Yes this is amazing post i am really happy i chose this wonderful topic , i think dissertation writing and Thesis writing are the key concept in present age, thanks for shearing with us such an interesting thing .