social tvland

image swiped from LA Weekly

One of the most interesting offerings at the banquet that is Social Media Week was a panel hosted by Alan Wolk of KitDigital, intriguingly titled "My Social TV App Thinks I'm My Dad."

Social TV has become a buzzword lately, though "social" misleadingly refers to a phenomenon that's been been around for a while. Mike Monello of Campfire pointed out that TV viewing has always been social. You may watch your favorite shows at night blobbing alone on a sofa, but part of the experience is deconstructing them the next day with coworkers or classmates. The difference is, now you don't have to wait until the next day. You can rant or rave with friends about episodes as they air, via the real time magic of Facebook and Twitter.

Research shows that a critical mass of viewers are now online while they're watching TV. What impact is this having in TV Land? Thanks to the plethora of info disseminated knowingly or unknowingly by users of social networks, entertainment companies and advertisers are far more knowledgeable about viewing behaviors and preferences of audiences. Which means they're shifting dollars to more accurately target spending. One panelist, Dan Neely reported that his company advised a client *not* to buy a halftime ad in the SuperBowl this year, but to air a spot on Walking Dead. Why? Because his social data showed that a critical mass of men don't watch halftime, they switch over to watching the AMC show instead. (Whether or not this resulted in sales, it indisputably saved millions.)

Jim Spare suggested that the biggest opportunity for the industry is to provide a companion structure for the frenzy of consumer activity that's already happening around programming, referred to as "second screen experience." Once this happens, he predicted, commenting on a show via hashtags and posts will seem archaic. And as more viewers become trackable via social media, advertisers will migrate to where the eyeballs are and advertising will support and elevate this experience.

More panel goodness can be found here, in a surprisingly satisfying Livestream experience. Don't miss the excitement about halfway through when Wolk takes on Neely in a showdown fueled by the age-old rivalry between creative and research.

SXSW panel shopping? 13, er, 14 items in my cart

If you're like me, you're inundated with tweets, emails, Facebook messages and spamblasts soliciting your vote on proposed SXSW panels. No wonder. Public "thumbs-up" and comments count for 30 percent of the decision-making process. (Sort of like hinging a college admission on the dubious qualifier of how many letters of recommendation a candidate drums up.) Over 2300 panels were proposed this year. Your two cents counts in deciding which ones are chosen. How to shop through them if you're not a bot? You could start with the ones I'm buying, listed in no particular order:

1. Tweeting On Weekends: Are We Becoming Socially Anti-Social?
As technology allows us to share every moment instantaneously online, are we missing out on what is right in front of us? Posing this question (and presumably answering it) is Ogilvy's Rohit Bhargava, author of the new marketing book, Personality Not Included and writer of Influential Marketing blog.

Recommended For: anyone who's ever been grappled with the question of text-iquette or gotten the stink-eye for tweeting under the table

Vote and/or comment here.

2. Ad Agencies Need a New Mindset to Survive
Will the ad agency survive now that the reins of media have transferred from a few professionals to 2 billion individuals? If so, it will have to revamp its entire way of thinking. How? Find out from Edward Boches, CCO, Mullen who's organizing a panel including Rob Schwartz, CCO, TBWA\CHIAT\DAY, John Winsor, Founder & CEO of Victors & Spoils and Ben Malbon, co-founder of BBH Labs.

Recommended For: marketers, branders, anybody with a job in adland, or looking for one. Great networking possibilities.

Vote and/or comment here.

3. Ladies Claim Digital Strategy is the New Creativity
What makes this panel interesting to me isn't only its topic (what the heck constitutes creativity now?) but the fact that the panelists are all of the female persuasion. Which may be a first at this testosteroned geekfest. Organizer is Ana Andjelic, i [love] marketing blogger and contributor to AdAge. Panelists include former BBH Chairman Cindy Gallop known for her irreverance onstage and off, who I once saw flabbergast into silence a (mostly male) audience by holding up⎯and explaining⎯ a new kind of dildo.

Recommended For: creatives, strategists, planners, social media pundits. With ovaries and without.

Vote and/or comment here.

4. I'm So Productive, I Never Get Anything Done
Hoping that, for my own state of productivity, this one makes it. David Carr, digiculture columnist for New York Times, promises to shed light on a question that hobbles more of us every day: how to get things done when you're busy doing myriad other things. Like, um, writing blog posts. He produced a book. So maybe he knows.

Recommended For: anybody with a to-do list and easy access to interwebs

Vote and/or comment here.

5. Why Doesn't This TV Have a Pause Button?
Kids are growing up in a world where connectivity is as taken for granted as air. How will this affect the future of media? Spatial relationships? Multi-tasking? Panel features experts on this topic⎯kids. Moderated by Alan Wolk of KickApps, writer of acclaimed blog ToadStool⎯and dad.

Recommended For: Anyone who plans to be around in the future.

Vote and/or comment here.

6. Genius Steals: Remix Culture IS Culture
According to Faris Yakob, MDC Partners, the only way to achieve new is to remix the old. In fact, he says, recombinant processes are the only source of novelty, from sexual reproduction to idea creation to technology. Faris is a thoughtful and riveting presenter, more fun than you'd think a guy with a doctorate from Oxford would be, and I look forward to the originality with which he's sure to support his assertion that Originality is a Myth.

Recommended For: writers, strategists, creatives, thinkers, content creators

Vote and/or comment here.

7. Community Thunderdome--Branded vs Unbranded, You Decide
This panel was given last year and I was going to blow it off. It was on the last day I was there, it was early and I was exhausted. But it turned out to be one of the best I attended. Ostensibly, its subject is serious: how can brands harness crowds and collaborate with communities to find meaning within culture and market products? But more compellingly⎯it's a lot of fun. Sitting back and watching fantastic collection of entertainments compiled by Bud Caddell (creator of Bucket Brigade publishing project) and Mike Arauz (Undercurrent) provides much needed respite from talking heads.

Recommended For: anyone afloat in the information-overload that is SXSWi

Vote and/or comment here.

8. Keds. The Original Sneaker, Relaunched
What's great about SXSW is how many ideas are discussed, how many assumptions challenged. But sometimes you need a break from the headiness, to sink your teeth into a meaty case study. Darren Paul tells the story of how his interactive shop Night Agency succeeded in making a century-old brand relavent again. The tale isn't just about creativity. It's about strategies for aligning the forces of three brands with seemingly little in common⎯Bloomingdales, Keds and the Whitney Museum.

Recommended For: marketers, branders, advertisers, anybody with something to sell

Vote and/or comment here.

9. Better Crowdsourcing: Lessons Learned from the 3six5 Project
One of the most innovative crowd-fueled ideas I know: diary of a year as told from 365 points of view. Imagine having to rally, coach, edit and proofread a different writer every day. (Disclosure: I am honored to be one of those writers.) Take a peek into amazing collective consciousness created so far. I look forward to hearing behind-the-scenes stories and learning from the3six5 creators Len Kendall and Daniel Honigman as they talk about mistakes and revelations.

Recommended For: content creators, nonfiction writers, publishers, digital strategists, rabble-rousers

Vote and/or comment here.

10. Futureproof Publishing: Interactivity, Magazines, Journalism and Augmented Reality
Does the internet need to kill journalism and quality publishing or might it be what saves the industry by creating a new kind of interactive magazine? As an industry that survives on marketing dollars, how can interactivity make the publishing industry more attractive to marketers? These and other questions impacting the future of publishing will be explored in a panel moderated by Benjamin Palmer, co-founder of The Barbarian Group which has recently made interesting forays into futureproofing corporate communication.

Recommended For: writers, publishers, journalists, digital strategists, content creators, storymakers

Vote and/or comment here.

11. Interactive Narratives: Creating the Future of Literature
Oh, yea. The emerging field of creating new narratives is a topic in which I am very interested. Razorfish's Andrew Lewellen is putting together a panel of experts to explore how technologies like augmented reality, transmedia storytelling and interactive stories offer new ways for narratives to be created and experienced. What's more, he promises insights into how writers and developers can work together to go so far as to create new forms of literature.

Recommended For: writers, AR creatives, transmedia tellers, content creators, creative technologists, readers of all persuasions

Vote and/or comment here

12. Transmedia Artists Guild: New Media Needs New Representation
And who'll represent the interest of players emerging onto this new field? At SXSW last year, a group of transmedia, ARG and net-native story designers formed a new advocacy organization, representing individual producers and artists working in this still-hazily-defined world: the Transmedia Artists Guild. TAG seeks to fulfill needs that are currently overlooked by established creative guilds and advocacy organizations. What is it and how can it transform your career? Panel organized by Jay Bushman, with whom I shared a fun panel at Digital Hollywood, so I can vouch for his entertainment skills.

Recommended For: writers and creators of fictional worlds that spin off from the page or screen where they first combusted

Vote and/or comment here

13. Saying It Short: Writing Workshop with @BettyDraper
Yup, this is my own session. (If you can't sell yourself, how can you hope to sell anything else?) It's on a topic I hope interests others as much as it does me: how our definition of good writing is evolving in an age ruled by search engines and character counts. I'll take what I've learned winning writing awards in three areas (advertising, social media, litworld), pull out teaching chops (one student went on to become Lady Gaga) and, with the help of like-minded others (you!), put on a show that's interactive, informative, learning-based entertainment.

Recommended For: anyone writing today, which is to say pretty much everyone

Vote and/or comment here.

Let me know if I've missed any unadvertised specials. Shopping ends Friday, 11:59 CDT, geektime. Your two cents matters even if you can't be at the conference. SXSW releases podcasts of presentations, so you don't have to miss them even if you don't make the digipalooza in person.

UPDATE: How, in my original post, did I omit the timely Is Facebook Skynet? which explores the all-too-real possibility that as in Terminator (remember?) the platform is growing progressively smart enough to annhiliate the whole human race. (Already, it's terminated life as we knew it.) Panel led by Ian Schafer, CEO of Mad Men agency Deep Focus, who is touting it with Draperly genius: a trailer.

Recommended For: 500 million Facebook players and marketers who love them

Vote and/or comment here.

Hive Awards launch at SXSW

For me the best opening party of SXSWi last night was the first annual Hive Awards show held "to honor the unsung heroes of the internet." The show was inaugurated to give props to those who innovate and create on the web but rarely get credit: coders, programmers, information architects, and others. It was the brainchild of Alan Wolk of Toadstool fame and former creative director from FCB. Ironic to me that it took a renegade from traditional advertising to come up with a way to acknowledge creators of digital.

The party was a rambunctious, live-streamed gathering of SXSW campers at Red 7, a fun bar near Convention Center. I'd thought a launch ceremony would be pretty barebones, and was pleasantly surprised by free drinks, catered eats (including local treats like chicken fried chicken which impressed my local friend who is hosting me here), a bona fide stage and comfortable seating. Alan, master of ceremonies wore a Mad Men-era tux, which contrasted dashingly with the crowd of ironic t-shirts.

Slickly produced programs were provided on chairs, but it was too dark for ad broads to read, even by the light of their iphones. So I had no idea that Ad Broad was a finalist. Honestly, hadn't seriously considered that a blogspotter who can't speak a speck of html could be thought of as a "hero of the internet." Halfway through the ceremony, my companion and housing host announced she wasn't well (maybe the chicken-fried chicken?) and I drove her home. What a thrill to receive news (via twitter of course) that Ad Broad won in the Advertising blog category.

Congrats to all winners including Deep Focus, Firstborn, RGA and others. Lucky for us and appropriate to the category that prizes are items more practical than dust-gathering engraved statuettes: flash drives.

transmedia messaging--Santa's been doing it for years

Typical shoemaker's-kids-going-barefoot-problem: Haven't had time lately to update my own blog, but happily made time to update someone else's. Alan Wolk, creator of the new Hive Awards, kindly invited me to contribute to the show's excellent site. I wrote about how transmedia messaging (or deep media as some call it) may appear to be a new and complex marketing idea...but, really it's as old and simple as the selling of Santa. Read full article here.

new award show praises unsung heroes of the internet

The first annual Hive Awards went live yesterday. So named because of the "hive mentality" inherent in building a web site or application. It's the first show created to honor "the unsung heroes of the internet." Conceived by Alan Wolk (of Toadstool fame) to reward excellence in categories that haven't been given the stage before: information architecture, content strategy, coding, APIs and a other jobs rudely referred to as "backend." Entries are divided by industry category, allowing separate judging for each. Admirably levelling the playing field for contenders from categories as diverse as beer vs. pharma. Wish established award shows would make this distinction. Perhaps CLIO is leading the way, with its inaugural CLIO Healthcare awards ceremony taking place in New York tomorrow.

why make it so hard for kids to crash the party?

Attendance was down at the Clios this year, confirmed by Nielsen's Director of Events Karl Vontz who added, sounding upbeat, that the quality of attendees was better--meaning that those able to wangle expenses from lean travel departments were execs higher on agency hierarchies.

Notably diminished in number were the eager young who swarm shows, making no secret they're trying to jump levels or jump shop.

One junior team came at their own expense--which didn't include the price of the $1550+ tickets. A freelance writer and AD from San Francisco anointed themselves "Crash the Clios."

"Why are we doing this," they asked on their blog. (Of course--they had a blog.) Because no one is going to send us... because it’s the 50th anniversary... because we feel all you need in advertising to make it is cojones and a good story. Truth was, they were there for the same reason many others were: to make connections that could lead to work.

At first, their attempts to infiltrate were thwarted by hotel security. The show was held at the Hard Rock Hotel, host to Rehab TV shoots for which security is tantamount to training for the old KGB. But thanks to intervention of Agency Spy, they managed to procure passes and spent the next couple of days live-tweeting, milling about and generally contributing to conversation.

My question is--why were they so resented? When Agency Spy posted about their presence, comments ranged from nasty: The last things creatives want to do at award shows is meet eager people looking for a job to vitriolic: Rather than sending some naive kids into the clios to pester folks who paid good money to be there, howsabout going and doing YOUR damn job and getting us the skinny on what's happening out there?


Have we become the type of business that eats its young? OK, financial investing in the next generation may be a thing of the past (remember paid internships and executive training sessions?) but a word of advice or encouragement costs nothing--yet proves invaluable to those launching careers. Remember?

Did the reaction have to do with a new meanspiritedness on Madison Avenue that Alan Wolk observed recently? Or did people unconsciously feel they were doing a favor by imparting the lesson most needed to succeed in this business: overcoming rejection.
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UPDATE--DISCLOSURE
Crash the Clios Team comes out of hiding to disclose contact info. (Now that they're safely back in SF and no longer in fear of retribution by Hard Rock security goons.) Good luck to art director Patrice Speed and copywriter Christopher Ryan. Hope your ingenuity and chutzpah pays off in card keys.

social media is like sex

I was trying to explain social media to a friend in advertising the other day. She's one of the smartest art directors I know, who can ferret out meaning from the most obtusely written brief.

"I don't get social media," she said. "What the heck is it, anyway?"

I told my friend not to feel bad. Lots people still don't get social media. Even those who claim that they do. I quoted something making the rounds on twitter recently: Social media is like teen sex. Everyone says they're getting it, but few really do. (An adaptation of another tweet from a Google analytics guru.)

As I began describing Twitter streams and Facebook widgets and analytics and vlogs, her eyes glazed over. And I realized another reason social media is like sex. You can talk all you want about the mechanics to people. But until they do it, they can't know what all the fuss is about.

Last week Joseph Jaffee wrote a piece on social media for Adweek. Many commenters accused him of being condescending to ad agency types by writing a primer too basic for them. Some of the comments were personally insulting and Alan Wolk referred to this backlash in an article on a new era of meanspiritedness on Madison Avenue. Surely, for negative commenters, the piece was too basic. But I think those of us immersed in SM often overestimate the degree of conversance normal people have with it.

Ad agency revenue models are still tied to client spending on media. And social media is still perceived to be free. (Fred Wilson called it "earned" media, but isn't that PR? How about the more robust CGM--Consumer Generated Media.) Not surprising if creatives at global AORs are still encouraged to think of social media as just one more shiny charm to add to their campaign bracelet.

twestival

Seems all New Yorkers who twitter were at Twestival last night. (Or had at least sent in $20 for the charity it supported.) It was a club-like venue that was already packed when I arrived with Peggy Olson a few minutes after it started. As soon as people entered, they pulled out their iphones (i hate my centro) and began tweeting to find out if they had friends there. If you coded your tweet with #nyctwestival, it appeared on a giant screen showing n a continuous scroll of posts like @ me if you are here and @adbroad, I am near the yellow jerry cans in the center. Which is how I had the good fortune to meet Alan Wolk in person. No, he's not the breakdancing astronaut. That's Mat Man who was a finalist for a Shorty Award in the, um, Weird category. For an event inspired by a platform for conversation, odd that the music was so LOUD you couldn't talk except directly into someone's ear. Which made conversation so exhausting, lots of people gave up and stood silently sipping $16 drinks, tweeting people who weren't there. 

if obama doesn't win, it's alan wolk's fault

As any well-informed reader of ad blogs knows, Alan Wolk (aka Tangerine Toad) is vacationing in Disney World this week. While that may bode well for his family relations, Wolk's absence from the polls on Tuesday could have huge ramifications for the rest of us, as this video shows. No doubt you'll be receiving your own personalized copy  soon, if you haven't already. (Reason #2355 why Barak Obama won landslide victory for Ad Age Marketer of the Year.) Don't forget to vote.


found by The Finder, KLR