Shocking.
Two months since my last post proper. There’s no excuse for it.
But there is a good reason for it, though. It’s all because of Twitter. It’s Twitter that made me stop blogging and twittering.

See, it was through a simple Tweet that we found out that MTV and the European Union were trying to build a social-network-type-website to support their joint campaign, raising awareness about the upcoming European Elections.
And because my social-media pal Zuluzulu-slash-wildebees and me had been saying that ‘09 was gonna be the year of collaborations, that our skills were finally going to converge, we wrote an overnight proposal built around existing social media tools like Twitter, Qik and Facebook Connect. 
And we won the pitch.
So this is what took me so long: Can You Hear Me, Europe. 

We worked our socks off (turnaround time: 1 month, in 23 languages), but it’s been a great project and we learnt a lot. Most importantly: people have been using the website in a pretty good way. And, good for us, the site has been getting mentions on BBC, Brand Republic , Politica2.0,… 

It’s been fun. So much that we’re now thinking of a company name and a positioning plan. So we can truly start collaborating.

David Lynch embraces the internet yet again. On June 1 the director/artist will launch Interview Project,  a website that will release a series of 3-5 minute portraits of people that his crews met on a 20,000 mile road-trip round America. 
Watch the trailer and Lynch’s own little Lynch-style plug on the Interview Project website. Entertainment Weekly also has a preview of the first episode.

Would have been great if Lynch himself had interviewed all these people; the extraordinary meets the ordinary meets the extraordinary. Still, this looks like a nice piece of human content being dripfed into our digital brains over the course of a year.

Obviously, that’s all very true and useful and what not, but 2009 is set to be the year of video. On the digital platforms of course.
‘Groundswell‘ already mentioned video as an integral of any good communications strategy, and more and more industry people and blogs are talking about it. What got me thinking was this article on Video Insider, bigging up the importance of video. I particularly agreed with the bit where it mentions that it’s time to be creative with online video.

Creative in production, but very much creative in thinking. So not just re-purposing tv content into shorter ‘webisodes’, but making something that truly complements a tv show.
Not just re-purposing a tv ad into a pre-roll, but creating specific, short, funny, interesting messages that actually make sense in an online environment.
And not commissioning a viral without actively trying to seed it. 
Creative in translating your message for that right environment.  

If you move to a new country and want to integrate, you speak the new language, right? But to me it seems that brands/clients/communicators seem to struggle with or even avoid that new language.
True, it’s far from clear yet what the online video ‘language’ really is. Correction: make that ‘languages’, plural. Because that seems another pre-conception: that there’s one solution. Not necessarily, me thinks: why not have a variety of ‘translations’ of your core message. Another topic that Video Insider writes about very well.
Why not have different versions of online ads, all based on the same message or tagline. And with all the power to measure online behaviour, you must be able to target different varieties of your message to different people. Why not have…

I’ve been involved in quite a few online (video) projects over the last few years and “It’s only for the web” is still a phrase commonly used. And while they say that, they divide the ‘big budget’ by 8 and give that to online. TV STILL seems to be THE one platform where a lot of people want to be.

Shame, because while production costs are much lower than they used to be, I think the development of concepts and ideas are gonna be key in 09, the year of online video.

What’s interesting to see is that labels, who have traditionally been quite averse to embracing internet technology are now realising the digital potential. Big time. Major label commissioner Tim Nash (who won the award for Best commissioner at the recent UK Music video Awards) writes a very entertaining blog about his lovely job and gave an insight in how they deal with the ‘Truth Tube’ and how they’re analyzing the viewing behaviour and the tagging of their videos. Turns out that 52 seconds is the average ’switch-off moment’.

As a fan of creative music videos and with quite a few talented directors in my close circle of friends, my heart breaks and weeps when I read this. It’s scary to see how the big corporations are desperately trying to take the risk and failure out of what we always believed to be a creative industry. Sure, from a commercial point of view you can sort of understand them, but we can only hope that the stats don’t get applied to each and every band.

My prediction is that music videos will become similar to tv commercials. They’re no longer the sine qua non of advertising, but for washing powder (read: hits! hits! hits!) it’ll still work. And for the more aspirational brands (read: more creative artists), the future of ‘music marketing’ will move more towards inventive campaigns like the Oasis one I wrote about before, highly creative material (video, websites,…) that translates the creativity of an artist and personal communication like blogs and documentaries/video blogs that give an insight in the wonderful world of musicians.

So here’s to a creative 09.

Fashion is a notoriously closed-off world, but even this mythical industry is now opening up to its audience. 
SHOWStudio, the brainchild of fashion photographer Nick Knight, has been an internet-based fashion platform for a few years now. Since 2006 Knight’s approach has been to show the creative process as much as possible. Very 2.0 and what-not.

I had kind of forgotten about the project, but I just rediscovered them because of ‘Let There Be Light’, a 3-day fashion shoot that had a live video-stream as well as a Twitter feed. I only just heard about it (2 weeks late), so can’t say how well it went, but judging from the (edited) video excerpts, it looks beautiful and interesting. A great way of inviting the audience into your universe.

Next: the interactive Twitter-Skype-controlled fashion shoot. “Agyness, can you give me that look again, straight into the web-camera”. 

Two weeks ago I wrote about how I liked the Transport For London ‘Do The Test’ campaign. And it seems like the Observer liked it too, because they did a half-page spread on it in last week’s paper (online version here). That’s pretty good column inches for an ad campaign (is this what they mean with blurring the boundaries between advertising and PR?). 
But in the article, Fergus Adam from advertising agency WCRS (who created the spots), says that this kind of viral marketing is pretty much over, because people are less likely to forward clips and jokes. 

Does anybody know of any statistics that support that statement, because this totally surprises me. I agree with him that clients asking for “a viral that gets 5 million hits” are a bit naive. It’s not that simple. And I also think that the word ‘viral’ still gets used to justify lower production budgets (”but it’s only for the internet”). 
But if something’s good, surely it’ll be passed on, talked about and shared? No matter what platform it was originally made for. No matter whether it was ‘marketed’. Sharing has become such an easy part of communication that if you have a good product or make something that’s worth watching/reading/listening to, then I’m gonna tell my friends about it. 
Surely?

One of the most intriguing artists that has used, abused and appropriated the www with freshness and creativity is Han Hoogerbrugge. Artist, animator, designer, interactivist, call him what you want, but he’s always been intriguing, if only for his constant consistent attire of pin-striped suit.

And this week seems to be Hoogerbrugge’s week.

If you happen to be in Rotterdam, go check out his interactive installation ‘What You Say Is What You Get’, commissioned by the Boymans van Beuningen museum. He’s been developing a keen interest in installations recently and this is a next step. 

And then there’s the release of ‘Modern Living’, a book-cum-DVD all about Han and his wide range of work. A monograph as they say. It’s been a while in the making, but it’s all yours now. Check out Submarine Channel for more info.

And if you like the darker side of Han’s work, you should visit his new project, Prostress 2.0, an intriguing series of  ”Daily fresh servings of professional stress”. Different, as they say. 

I like the man. 

Here’s an online advertising campaign that will get some attention, taking interactivity to ‘another level’. Only in Scandinavia can you get away with that; imagine this happening in the UK. 
Made by Stockholm agency Dallas.

I was chatting with my friend ZuluZulu the other day about digital media (he’s a bit of an old school new media dude; you know the ones; they were programming CD-ROMS when I was still impressed by Word and survived the dotcom-crash) and got talking about Joost, the much-hyped, long-forgotten Future of TV. The application that was going to change the way we watched tv. Or content, I should say. 
Whatever happened to them, we wondered? And shouldn’t they be doing something with a browser (it was the day that Google released Chrome), incorporate their software into a more user-friendly website. 

Well, speak of the devil etc etc. Turns out that Joost is no longer focusing on letting you download a software application, but are integrating their p2p technology into a website and the browser, thus bringing it closer to the likes of YouTube.
It looks pretty nice and seems to focus a lot on community (something they’ve been talking about for ages), but there’s still the million dollar question. Or two. While ZuluZulu is worried the ISPs may get a bit iffy, my main issue is still content.
I talked to Joost more than 2 years ago about sourcing (more left-of-centre) content for them and while at the time they were very close to signing some big players, it must be going slower than they expected. Admittedly, they are getting deals with the CNNs and the Warners of this world and there’s some decent stuff in their catalogue, but we’re not yet seeing the top raters like The Wire or an international sports event. Which I think they may need to get that all-important ‘critical mass’.

Let’s see how much more money the owners want to throw at it. They have a lot (remember they sold Skype and Kazaa), but I hope it does well, because I always thought Joost was going to make a difference. 

More info and pictures at Techcrunch. 

When bands ask their audience to participate in their new music video, it generally doesn’t get much further than a cameo in the audience of the ‘club-performance’ or at best, the chance to use the artists music to send in your own creation. Apart from the fact that cynics see it as a cheap way of getting result, it’s pretty standard fare. But here’s an interesting one: a music video project that’s based on technology and a global community of UGC-makers.

For their next video, Chemical Brothers and Nexus Productions are asking people around the world to upload a still or short video, documenting “the insanity that goes on at the stroke of midnight”. That’s a nice idea in itself, but the makers want to have material that’s “related to the specific point of origin”, so it can be uploaded and tracked via Google Earth. 

Collaborative, open, global and creative. Who knows what the end result will be, but I like the idea of it already.  

For the full brief, go here (open until August 25).

But where has this gone since then? A few weeks ago, a friend who works in business consultancy pointed me to Jacques Bughin, a media consultant his company uses a lot. And his thoughts on the whole mobile thing just seem ancient right now. Where are the ‘mobisodes’ from yesteryear? Where are those music videos created specifically for mobile viewing? Is anyone still watching?
The figures from the BBC seem to suggest the audience is switching off. But is that because of crap content? Or tedious technology?

On a content-level mobile tv is quite often a cut-down version of existing programs. I can imagine people logging on when it’s exclusive content though. I remember the UK network 3 getting an exclusive premiere on a Robbie Williams video and I’m sure that did very well.

But I personally think technology is inadequately developed (yet) to get a major impact. I just tried accessing some video footage from the Albarn & Hewlett produced opening titles for the BBC Olympics coverage. And gave up. Too slow, too messy interface,… And with mobile phones moving more and more towards computers (IPhone et al), wouldn’t people expect to watch things ‘online’, i.e. decent quality at decent speeds? Or not watch at all. 

I’m sure there are good examples of mobile video, but I don’t know them. And I definitely think it’s an interesting aspect of the media. So if anyone has any suggestions on good blogs/websites about mobile communication, then do let me know.

After my post 2 weeks ago about the use of split screen, I received another example from Straighty 180, a production company in Sydney, who made this music video last year. On the first level it’s just a normal, narrative music promo, but part of the concept was a website where the original video would play splitscreen with another video, together revealing more about the storyline.  
Not as interactive as the Pop Levi experiment, but nevertheless a pretty interesting example of cross-platform approach, still quite rare in music video land. 

Bloody Radiohead. They’ve done it again.

While the music video industry is nervously looking around, trying to avoid gloomy nose-dive scenarios, those Radiohead fuckers do something no one else has done before. Again. 
An interactive, no-camera-just-code, ready-to-remix video experiment.
Genius, right? Or is it just another marketing ploy, as cynics were keen to point out  last year when the band gave away their album on a pay-as-want basis?

I think you can judge from a few angles. 

From a creative point of view, I feel it scores well.
Apart from the fact that I’ve never really seen anything like it, it’s a great piece of visual expression that is typical for the band/brand Radiohead.
I also think that as a piece of filmmaking it does have its values. I watch a lot of music videos and my attention span is close to that of a goldfish, but this video kept me watching. Quite a feat. 

From an interactive point of view it’s a bit limited. The fact that it’s open source is obviously a genius thing. But unless you’re quite a geek -and let’s be honest, not that many of us are- it’s hard to interact with the work. In that way, Arcade Fire’s attempt last year was more successful, be it less aspirational. 

Technologically I’m sure it’s all great, but I personally couldn’t care less. Velodyne Lidar technology, whatever. 

And marketing-wise? A success, no doubt. After 3 days it’s already racked up more views on YouTube than a lot of it the band’s older videos. And which music video has recently received that much attention in the broadsheet media (ok – it’s the online version, but still). And has a collaboration with Google. 
But is that because Radiohead had a clever marketing plan? Or because it’s a great piece of work and worth the attention? 

One last point. Is this the solution to the flailing music video business? Obviously not. Although I’m sure production companies are already thinking about how to ‘implement’ this and score a YouTube hit themselves, this video really is just one example of doing something creative that also gets noticed.
Afetr all, even Robbie Williams made ‘interactive videos’ 5 years ago. 

In the category ‘pretty-useless-but-absolutely-great websites’: I So Wish. 
Although tagging it as ‘useless’ is maybe a little harsh. Especially for the makers.
Because creator Andrew Dubber, one of the leading bloggers about the music industry (check out New Music Strategies) started it ‘to make money while sleeping’.

In his recent post about how he and his programmer friend made this site, he extrapolates his concept to the field of the music industry. He pretty much recommends musicians to come up with a similar ‘cash machine’, instead of chasing the rock ‘n’ roll dream of getting signed to a record label, tour the world and make/burn heaps of cash. If they want to be creative, that is. 

Which makes total sense to me. Creativity’s success is all too often measured by the amount of money it generates. Which means that lots of creatives (musicians, filmmakers, artists,…) are having to compromise their output in order to make sure they can pay their rent and that can of ravioli. When they should be focusing on what they do best: make nice stuff that no one else makes. Whether that makes money or not. 

Actually, let’s make that ‘most people’. Because everyone has a non-professional passion and a story to tell. 
In Belgium (where I grew up) there’s actually a small political party that wants to get rid of social security and give everyone a basic income, unconditional. So people can do whatever they want. Make more money. Or be creative. I always thought that was an interesting concept. 

Having said that: there are no 6 billion ideas like this.  
Still, I may just get together a few of my friends and and see what we come up with!

I’ve always been a bit skeptical about banners. Last year, Han Hoogerbrugge, an animator/director I work with at my agency Pixelspew, was asked to design an interactive banner for American communication giant Comcast. Despite the fact that the result was fun and playful, we were both wondering who actually clicks on these things. Judging by the agency’s reasonable budget, it had to be quite a few people, but we couldn’t help thinking that the whole banner thing wasn’t really communicating clearly. 

But this ad (for a credit card) does its job well. The reason is that it plays with the boundaries of the banner. There isn’t a direct link, but you see a guy handcuffed to the edges of the banner, trying to free himself. Very visual and you can’t help but notice him. And then he pulls another screen across the banner to reveal the message. Pretty clever. Shame though that the ad wasn’t interactive. But still, I made the Guardian a bit of money today.

So welcome to this blog. Hopefully we can share some thoughts on all things creative. On the beautiful, exciting, interesting, funny examples, but also on the ever-changing media landscape and the role creativity can play in that.

Fill me in, contradict me, give me a shout.