All about everyonea blog about engagement

Achieving multi-brand engagement: A new type of ARG

I’ve been thinking about ARGs (Alternate Reality Game) recently and how they might be used in ways other than promoting films or TV programmes, which is what they have so far been commercially used for.

There is actually an opportunity for multiple brands to be placed within the structure of ARGs, being actively used as part of the game play; kind of an active brand placement.

The aim would be to engage people with brands in a way that enables participants to trial different products or services. Brands are woven into the ARG in an open way, but actual product engagement is required for the successful completion of game tasks. Brands get to place their products into the framework of the game narrative in a realistic way. Participants have to actively use/trial products in order to complete tasks.

This type of ARG would be part ARG, part scavenger hunt where participants have to engage with brands to complete tasks and continue in the game. This type of approach could be good for brands looking to trial a new product or looking to prove the qualities of a particular product. The great thing about this, is that multiple brands can occupy the same space as each other and they get active use, in a real world environment.

Players have to follow clues and complete tasks. Some clues will lead the game players online, to discover information or further clues. Each game task will involve real world actions.

Participants would be able to download an application that will enable them to use their mobile as a GPS device. Connecting with Google Maps open API (Application Protocol Interface) will enable users to track progress and orient themselves in physical locations. They would also be able to use the mobile app to communicate with other team members, post to social media services (Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, etc) and keep track of other players progress, plus other useful gameplay support functions.

AR tagging could also be used to help participants navigate around a particular location (where the next clue or task is hidden). Switching their mobiles into camera mode would enable players to scan for location-based messages.

Brands get direct product engagement and increased brand awareness, through a long-tail of social network activity. All participants will be required to be plugged into various social networks, as well as keeping a video log of their activities.

FMCG (specifically food and drink) brands can be used physically within the game. Using RFID (Radio Frequency ID) or QR codes embedded within product packaging. Participants simply have to locate the product, through picking up clues. Each task leads to a product, which will unlock the next task, leading to another product, etc. This route is aimed at FMCG brands, such as Pepsico, Unilever, etc.

Using RFID in product packaging, would enable us to communicate with mobile devices, making them ring or sending them messages when in range. We could use this technology (currently used, for example, at check out counters to scan products) to send information to game players, once they have located a product pack containing the next clue or task (i.e. we would send them the next clue this way).

We could utilise free standing display units (FSDU) to embed digital information, using QR codes, which are basically a kind of barcode, that can can be read by the camera in mobile devices, to download information from the web. This allows us the ability to create special display units to promote the game in stores. People could actually sign up to the games at the display unit.

Other types of brands could be used more strategically, as tools with which players have to complete tasks. For instance, a car brand could be used to get a player from one location to another, with a GPS device within the car as well as the cars own bluetooth application being used also. In this way, we are actively using products within the game play, as part of the game. Feedback on product use could be tracked. Participants would not, however, be selling products in any way, rather, just using them as best they can in order to get ahead in the game. Feedback is tracked through usage, not through soliciting player opinion. That would be superficial to the game narrative.

More thought obviously needed as to the actual mechanics of such a game, but hopefully I’ve demonstrated, albeit in a quick and dirty way, that there is a possible way for multiple brands to be used within an ARG format.

If you have any thoughts on this, as always, I’d love to hear them.

Thoughts on social swarming: A model for mobile engagement

I came across Ben Reynhart’s blog, as you do, meandering through the net, looking for whatever. Ben’s in his final year of the Digital Art and Technology degree, at the University of Plymouth. What interested me was what he has been doing in his final year project, based around utilising mobile technology and swarm behaviour.

In short, Ben’s practical aspects of his final year project work is concerned with how swarm theory might translate into social, domestic applications, through the use of mobile networks (for a fuller understanding of Ben’s final year work, see his project microsite here).

Ben initially carried out a ’swarm’ behaviour experiment, using a bunch of people, each with a mobile handset, following a few simple rules of engagement. To quote Ben’s own description:

‘Connections made within the swarm are represented by the camera flash on each persons’ phone. We can see that from just 8 people walking randomly over a period of a few minutes, many person to person connections are established. With current mobile technology and software, these potential connections taking place are in no way exploited in any degree. Mobile phones currently require user interaction to initiate communication via centralised control systems, but what if we could exploit local area user connections on mobile phones, without requiring constant and intimate attention to your device…?’

A lot of chins have been flapping over the possibilities of crowdsourcing recently, with new mobile applications being set up to try and harness people en-masse (the navigation app Waze, being one). Also, there is increasing use of AI in mobile applications (My6Sense, for iPhone being one), albeit on a fairly simplistic level, but nonetheless, forays into this area are increasing, seeking to establish some kind of learning principle (intelligent, ‘learning’ search engines, such as Wolfram Alpha, and, to a lesser extent, Microsoft’s Bing).

Increasingly, there is a focus on filtering data, rather than searching for it. Searching we can do, finding is another thing altogether. So, back to the what if. What if mobile networks could learn from our behaviour and apply this to how we enagage with our environments, one another, products?

Well, firstly, a mobile application with AI, that learned from our behaviour (what we did with it, what we did while it is with us) would be reacting to our actions, then feeding back to us, and so on. If it could also learn from others behaviour (our friends, people within our networks, anyone), would be an awfully powerful application. This kind of background, reactionary, behaviour-augmented communication could have several profound effects on the way we engage with one another. Firstly, to the way we behave in groups, whether locally or remotely connected, secondly as individuals reacting to our environments, and thirdly, to the way we behave as consumers, in relation to products and brands.

A few applications that spring to mind are: Crowd-control, traffic congestion and routing, real-time opinion gathering, crisis response, (flooding, for instance) product sales (triggered by crowd behaviour to weather or other conditions), real-time trend analysis, I could go on, and probably will.

How about an automatically created playlist – for a party, dependent upon the listening habits of all of your house guests, triggered by their proximity to the venue, so constantly tailored to your guests tastes (could be awful for a few perhaps?) or the automatic creation of shopping lists, recipe suggestions, event planning, resource marshalling, yada, yada, ya.

I could imagine whole new ways to interact with one another en-masse, at social gatherings like concerts, festivals, rallies and clubs. This kind of aplication  could totally change how we interact with each other at events, as well as exponentially increasing the opportunities for co-creation and collaboration Marshalling people in order to get a group task done might also be a whole lot easier.

Looking at this in terms of how brands and consumers might better engage with one another, I can similarly see benefits of applying a swarm approach. Realtime feedback on consumer behaviour with products themselves (products talking to mobiles, about how they are being used, or even whether they are being used) could throw up some very intereresting CRM prospects for brands. For instance, the ability to target consumers who aren’t getting the full benefit from a product, or could do with a service upgrade.

And what aboiut the greater good? Getting people to lower their carbon emmissions or energy consumption in a particular area, being able to evoke help or support locally, local government services reacting to the local populous better, better emergency response, live calls to action within communities, based on audience behaviour? Urban planning anyone? Policing? Surely there are many more areas where a mobile, swarm behavioural technology could be made good use of?

New forms of social, experiential entertainment could also be brought about by the use of this kind of approach. Shared, group-based entertainment, narratives being shaped in real-time by participants behaviour.

Whoa! I’m going to stop now. But I’d love to hear anyone else’s thoughts or ideas on this.

The Cluetrain Manifesto: 10 years young…

I only found this today, via an article on Wikipedia. The slide show above is just a summary of the points raised in the actual collection of 95 theses written as part of the original Cluetrain Manifesto (which I am still reading).

The Cluetrain Manifesto was written in 1999. I think what this amazingly insightful group of texts reveals, is that people’s perceptions about how brands treat them has not changed much (sceptical, dissatisfied, generally negative), but also that, our insights into the what and how of our engagement with brands hasn’t really evolved much in ten years, either. Does this suggest that our perceptions of change are more idealistic (and much of what we hear about perceived change is written by the hopeful), mine included, than prophetic. Or simply that socio-economic change is slower than technological change, for what should perhaps be obvious reasons (resistance from current heirarchical, capitalist power holders).

The sentiments in the slides resonate with what I think about this subject. I do believe that there is a real opportunity for positive change in this area (there’s the hope thing again), so that we have a more humane approach to transactional behaviour, between brands/companies and individuals. But I need to read more to see exactly how relevant the Cluetrain Manifesto remains relevant. At first glance though, it appears to be growing in relevancy and probability then the other way around.

If you’ve read it, or are familiar with any of the thesis in it, I’d love to know your thoughts.

You can read the full text here.

The Quiet Revolution: Part Two

Leaving off from Part One of these two posts, I was talking about ROI (yawn, I know). But to continue with that fascinating subject, when brands talk about ROI, they are invariably still referring to commodity sales (no shit?). But the increase in peoples connections, through digital media, has had a profound and, perhaps, slightly anti-commercial effect within capitalist cultural systems. What has emerged hasn’t just been a straight transfer of the high street shopping experience, whereby people walk into stores and pay money for products. A subversion of the the linearity of the offline experience has inflected the business of selling things. Certainly, the initial question for brands and advertisers moving onto the web has been: How do we transfer what we are doing over here to over there? And for some, ok, most, enough success has been proven by replicating offline methodologies. But there’s no getting around the fact that brands, however hard they might try to retain the linearity of the high street, are now faced with a much less controllable environment.

With a greater stake in our own method of consumption, or at least with a much more closely listened to voice, we now have the ability to become more active in how we engage with brands. This opens up questions about value and currency that brands have previously only toyed with the edges of. There are new currencies to be explored for brands when it comes to engaging with people. Participation, time, advocacy, reaction, feedback, personality, collaboration, exchange, advocacy, criticism, experience, knowledge, creativity, ideas, escape, identity, support, labour, effort, education, the new and the old. As consumers we exist within financial constraints, but as people we exist beyond those constraints. We yearn for social contact, for positive or challenging experiences. Brands can help provide these experiences, but they need to connect at a human level and not at a commodity sales level, if they truly want to connect with people.

In the following post I will look at some emergent forms of digital, social engagement, the role of creativity, narrative and collaboration, and try to work out what role brands can or should have in these types of engagement.

Pubsubhubbub: Flow presentation

In reference to Nick’s previous post, Pubsubhubbub vs RSS Cloud, here’s a flow presentation of how Pubsubhubbub works (hasn’t someone come up with an abreviation for it yet? How about PSHB?).

The quiet revolution: Part one

One of the things that really interests me is how changes in the way we communicate effect changes in the way we do things, especially with regard to the way we behave in a capitalist, consumer-driven culture.

In the first of two posts examining how our relationship with brands is changing, I want to look at how the way we consume is intrinsically tied to the way we communicate and how current changes in the way we communicate is revolutionising how brands behave. In the second of these posts, I will look at emergent trends in digital engagement and suggest new ways in which brands can return value from engaging with people, that will be mutually beneficial to them and us.

At the moment, a one-to-many approach to communication (advertising), to sell products or services, is still the dominant form of brand communication. Also, most brand engagement is brand-led and brand-controlled. The emergence of multi-participant (many-to-many) forms of communication, has led to what is now becoming apparent as something of an evolution for brand engagement and quite possibly the extinction of traditional forms of one-to-many forms of brand-to consumer communication.

As consumers, we have flocked to digital media, moving away from papers, magazines, television and radio, towards mobiles, social networks, the web. Brands have had little option but to follow us. With no us there is no them. And as brands open the doors to their bright, shiny new shops in their new socially networked neighbourhoods, they are quickly realising they can no longer close the door. In-fact, the door is disappearing altogether.

If consumers now have a greater stake in the process of how they consume, brands need to start seeing consumers as within their business rather than outside of it because, like it or not, that is going to be an increasing expectation. Brands need to start to see engagement with them as more than just a potential sale.

There is a fundamental shift taking place in the way brands and consumers behave together. As brands strive to become more connected to us, they are knowingly or not creating a relationship that has the very real potential for revolutionising what brands are.  As brands open up more and more connections between them and us, the border between them and us becomes increasingly blurred. Brands are making themselves more transparent.  The really interesting thing is that, as brands become more open to us, we increasingly become more influential to their development, to what they do. This change is sociological in nature but technologically driven. The fact that brands are increasingly entering into direct connections with consumers means that consumers increasingly have a say in what brands do, how they develop. Conversations are also open. Brands cannot control what you are going to say, but they will certainly be listening and if they wish to be successful, they will be responding, with change. Consumers have never before been so close and so potentially influential to brands than they are now.

Our greater connection to brands is also changing the means of production. Consumers and brands are beginning to collaborate increasingly, in the means of production. Social networks have demonstrated how we can be both producer and audience to. In digital media terms, we are now creating our own products, as well as others. Brands are not involved in a lot of this production, but they want our attention, so they are trying to be. This is creating another profound change in the way brands behave. Consumers are increasingly becoming involved in producing what brands say and so are increasingly having a say in what brands are.

But if this is, ultimately, a revolutionary phase for brands, it is a very quiet one. It’s as if brands are unaware of what they are entering into. By opening themselves up in an effort to get consumers to spend time with them, they are quite possibly getting more than they bargained for, but there’s no real grand debate going on. Not really any visible hand wringing, or skirmishes to be spoken of. It’s all very orderly. I wonder whether brands really do understand the extent of what may happen to their businesses, which could well mean a lot more than just rethinking marketing strategies.

Even if brands are enlightened to the impact their increasing connection with consumers will have on them, as we move out of an age of one-way brand-to-consumer communication into an age of always-on dialogue, how do brands continue to market their products? The interruption method of advertising is fast becoming a very blunt tool, in the face of a very much more diverse, yet ever more connected, consumer landscape.

When brands talk about ROI, they mean sales: How does this translate into sales for me? I would argue that the term ROI needs to be broadened, quite substantially. Now brands can generate value that is beneficial to their business but that doesn’t necessarily equate to a sale. Usually, word of mouth is thrown in at this point as the only other possible form of value a brand should consider. There are new currencies to be explored for brands when it comes to engaging with people.

Brands need to look beyond simply advertising toward more meaningful ways to engage with people. We now have the opportunity to find new, more mutually beneficial ways to engage with brands. To use the closer proximity of us to them, the fact that we can talk to each other, even create with each other, to evolve a more valuable means of exchange.

In the next post, I’ll explore emergent trends in digital engagement and look at new ways in which brands as, well as us, can return value from engaging more fully.

The Beast: One of the first widely successful ARGs

The Beast ARG Presentation 10.2.08

So, Nick’s post about the ‘Why so Serious’ ARG of 2008 (see previous post below) made me remember this ARG, created similarly to promote a film, this time Steven Spielberg’s A.I. This ran for twelve weeks in the spring and early summer of 2001, and was one of the earliest, widely participated in ARGs. It was created by Microsoft in association with Spielberg’s production company, Dreamworks.

Dark Knight ARG strategy case study

One of the best examples of a very successful fully immersive ARG supporting a brand. 42 Entertainment’s work for the Dark Knight release spanned digital media and prompted enormous interaction globally over 12 weeks.

Taking a trip to Liver Land: Collaborative play, participatory storytelling and social engagement

I shot this short video of my children, Nye and Tove, playing together, because I wanted to illustrate how children work together to create narrative structures during imaginative play, making the connection between how we first learn to engage with one another and how we use social networks in much the same way.

The only problem was, in the video, Nye tends to lead much of the play. He is the older of the two. Tove, on the other hand, is quite happy to be involved in a less dominant fashion. She looks up to Nye and as a close, younger sibling, is naturally influenced by her older brother’s behaviour.

I could have recorded their play another time, when both of them were actively engaged on a more equal footing, but after watching the video I realised that the way Nye and Tove were playing was still relevant to a comparison to how we use digital, social systems, perhaps more so.

Like Nye and Tove’s game, a social network is a shared venture. In order for it to work, participants must actively work to create stories by taking on the roles of both author and audience. The roles have to be fluid and instantaneously interchangeable. Each protagonist must be both actor and audience.

During social, participatory play, children actively take on roles within the story, in order to create it. The children involved often play in groups of two or more, although just as often by themselves, without any adult involvement. So, the children are the audience as well as the authors and the one does not exist without the other. Even in singular play, we consume our stories as we create them.

In online social networks, more participants are generally needed to watch, listen and support than they are to create and publish for the systems to flourish. The two roles of author and audience feed off each other. Engaging authorship gets rewarded with a supportive audience. And, like Nye and Toves collaborative play, the audience can be the author and the author can be the audience, simultaneously.

Nye and Tove’s engagement with each other to create a story, played out, heightens the quality of experience. Their joint involvement also adds an element of the unknown for each, an element of serendipity. In this way, Nye and Tove’s shared story becomes more than the sum of it’s parts.

Social networks exist upon a similar framework to that of Nye and Tove’s social play. They are set up to enable the communication and sharing of ideas and stories. Nye and Tove’s framework is the room and the objects within it. Social networks similarly provide us with props, platforms, and shared objects for us to connect over.

Mostly, we inhabit social networks in much the same way as Nye and Tove inhabit their story space. We actively author our own stories, and are active in the process of telling other peoples stories, by forwarding links, content and comments.

Watching how Nye and Tove play together, using imaginative, participatory storytelling, also made me think about how we use collaborative play in order to realise new ideas and experiment with a shared sense of reality. It struck me that we never really lose the desire to do this.

Social gaming has been developing for some time now. From the popular MMORPG environments of Second Life and World of Warcraft, to ARG gaming and participation dramas, such as The Truth about Marika.

Social gaming is a rapidly expanding area, with more and more start-ups appearing. For me, the development of this area, specifically around ARG related development, represents an opportunity to start seeing how virtual, digital systems can change our physical, social engagement.

At the moment ARG is about gaming, but there are increasing attempts to use this format in other ways. Serious ARG games have started appearing, so called because they attempt to bring real world issues into play, so to speak, in order to try and deal with real issues. Nye and Tove’s play is, of course, fun, but this is also how they learn.

It’s going to be interesting to see how things develop in the intersection of physical and virtual collaborative engagement, especially beyond the realm of gaming.

PubSubHubbub vs RSSCloud

Real time updates have become the cause celeb of the internet recently, as the growth of micro blogging service Twitter can attest. Until just recently the approach to delivering realtime updates has been via the use of specific services, Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and the ability to provide these services was limited to those with the financial muscle to put together expensive infrastructure.

Google with Facebook acquired FriendFeed and Wordpress have both launched new content distribution models utilising two different protocols which enable real time updates to subscribers.

This week the most popular blogging engine – Wordpress – turned on support for RSS Cloud on all wordpress.com and wordpress.org hosted sites – immediately making it available on 7.5 million blogs, and WP also made a new plugin available which adds support for RSS Cloud to RSS feeds.

Google in association with Facebook acquired FriendFeed have created a protocol called PubSubHubbub which they have made completely open, and shared .

Both of these protocols make use of the Cloud, which gives cheap and easy access to high powered, scalable architecture that until the advent of cloud based computing was out of reach of most companies let alone individuals.

The idea is that the Publisher creates content and publishes it, a subscriber who has subscribed to the publishers content will be notified via a service that runs in the Cloud that the content has been updated, all this happens in real time – or in under a second. The link to the content is delivered via a push notification to the client, there is currently only one client that supports RSS Cloud but this will change. PubSubHubBub have created a bunch of client code examples and plugins (including one for wordpress).

The difference between these two protocols is minor in concept, both are open in nature, both are designed to deliver push notification and both utilise the cloud. The essential difference is that PubSubHubbub is focused on Atom and RSS Cloud, as the name suggests, on RSS. There will undoubtedly be conflicting opinions on which is best but it’s early days yet and it will be the successful implementation of clients that will determine the outcome of that argument.

What these new protocols deliver though is the opportunity to create richer and deeper real time conversations that support images and video natively, meaning a greater chance to understand what is happening right now. The potential for truly interactive news channels is what sprang to my mind with the possibility of combining multiple content channels into one stream,  with sound video and opinion being blended and controlled by the user rather than the publisher.