SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday June 8th, 2009
I know; social media again. I bring it up a lot and I am truly sorry. I will move on soon. Unfortunately I have it in my head that Twitter is changing the universe.
The reason that Twitter and, in a lot of ways, Facebook are changing the way we live our lives is targeted information.
I came to this realization while being a captive audience at a conference in Toronto. I am here with writers, editors, advertising and design folks who all contribute to the world of magazines. Now, around every corner and outside every room there are booths set up where some big league players in terms of corporations are selling their wares.
Markets Initiative will help you learn to go green. Quebecor can provide environmentally friendly and really excellent quality paper for your mass distribution needs.
The News Group can mass market your magazines. BPA Worldwide can audit your entire corporate structure from a media point of view and help you achieve maximum efficiency. Ryerson University will offer you continuing education. Texterity will help you publish digitally.
Transcontinental Paper, Rogers Communications, IBM Global Software, you get the picture.
The point is, this is stuff people in the magazine industry really care about -- and here it is gathered together under one roof, not as a trade show, but because they know the people who buy their products are going to be walking the halls.
It really got me thinking about how most of us do not use targeted information and marketing the way we should.
The only people that do it better are social media organizations. Google ads change their content based on what web searches you do, Facebook targets ads based on locale and group status, Twitter is based entirely on the idea of transmitting targeted information to specific groups of people.
And yet, we fail miserably at this ourselves.
I blame political correctness and lack of risk taking.
In order to truly target a market you need to do a lot of homework, that is a given. Research what it is people want, research the demographics in the area, research the viability of products and lifespan of purchase decisions . . . but then, ultimately, you have to take a risk.
Every company here has gambled on two unexpected things: quality and the environment.
Given that we are in an economic recession, and given that digital media is outpacing print media; the idea that people will want to pay more for environmentally friendly products, and buy "the best" for their employees is frankly a risky gamble. Mind you, by setting up booths in the same place where the awards for best magazine of the year are happening, you sort of win by association. It is hard not to make the assumption that The Beaver, having won an award, uses Quebecor ink. After all, it is right there outside the door, and they say it is the best too.
What I am trying to say is that taking the risk will probably pay off for that company because of association.
Now, aside from helping you to see the many ways that advertising and marketing approaches create false reality which makes the consumer make assumptions; I am trying to make a point about the average Jane and Joe; that point being, we could make our way through the world much more easily by adopting some risk taking targeted approaches.
We need to make assumptions and target our approach to the person we are interacting with. If someone looks tired, sad, lonely, happy, or bored, how you approach them will make all the difference. We really need to stop assuming that everyone is equal and not waste our time on approaches that will not work.
This is a lesson for local business owners, for government officials, for churches, and for each and every one of us who goes out into the world today trying to accomplish something.
If you are passionate about animal rights, for example, how you talk to a hunter has to be different than how you talk to a vegetarian. I am not arguing against authenticity, simply arguing for recognizing diversity in the way our world functions and people think. You need to be able to target your approach no matter whether you are meeting in a bar, a grocery store line-up, or at the bus stop.
So I am going to go out on a limb and suggest a way that a group of us writers determined to quickly judge target audiences in any group: Shoes. Specifically, compare shoes with clothing and situation and you can make an almost completely accurate prediction of the person.
I know I will get in trouble for saying something that sounds so banal and simple; but try it out yourself and you will see.
A group of us did it at a reception at the conference. For example, I was wearing a blue oxford shirt, khaki pants, and black Doc Martins. My colleague, who I had never previously met, made this assumption: "You are sort of confused about identity, wishing you were more rebellious than you are, but because they are real Doc Martins, you are authentic about it."
Now, anyone who knows me at all will totally agree with this summary and wonder why we pay psychoanalysts $100 per hour. Her turn, she was wearing toe thong sandals, jeans, a purple satin shirt, faux amethyst necklace and was drinking a vodka and tonic. My guess: "free spirited non-conformist who is extremely creative and wants to be noticed." Again, this pretty much coincided with what her friends would have said.
Seriously, try it out. But even if you find my approach a little too weird, remember, choose how you interact carefully, targeting what you say and do. It can make all the difference.
Showing posts with label twitter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label twitter. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Technology and literature are changing
SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday March 30th, 2009
The other day a friend and I went to see the movie "The Watchmen."
I am a bit of a superhero geek; always have been. I wanted to grow up to be Wolverine for most of my life. Perhaps I still do. It was interesting because we met for a drink before hand and the waiter asked us what we were going to see. When we replied "Watchmen" he gave us this blank stare that seemed to last a couple of minutes until finally something broke the spell and he said "Oh yeah, great movie!"
It was strange; until we saw the movie.
My friend turned to me after and said, "Now I understand the blank stare." After a few moments we came up with the answer for when people asked us how it was: "If you are into the apocalypse, dismemberment, and practically constant full frontal male nudity, it was great!"
In truth, however, it was a fabulous movie. The fact that it was science fiction, as I have argued before, allowed the writers to make a graphic novel about American foreign policy, manifest destiny, aging, love, finding your life purpose, and the depths of society in a way that normally does not register.
Now, I went home from the movie and began to read the graphic novel. I have read comic books all my life, mostly as escapist fun; but have never read a graphic novel. For those who don't know, that means it is an adult oriented, up scaled, comic book.
I was brought up in a bit of an elitist way and I always thought that literature was literature and trash was trash. In fact, I have made some snide comments to Brian Cormier for taking American Idol seriously enough to write about it. It is half in jest, but seriously, I have never allowed myself to watch any reality television for the same reason I have never read a graphic novel; there are correct and meaningful ways to do art, and there are cheap and degrading ways. Or so I have always been led to believe.
I think I owe the world an apology.
Having read the Watchmen, which, in case you have not, has a better ending than the movie although the movie is remarkably faithful to the book; I can honestly say it is one of the best novels I have read; and I have read a lot.
It is sort of like rock music. My father thought Billy Joel was the end all and be all of musical genius. Billy could rock out the sentiments that went on in his baby boomer mind in an emotionally jarring way; sort of the way Third Eye Blind does for me.
My dad would hate Third Eye Blind. His father hated Billy Joel. Music adapts, it grows, it is reinterpreted. As are novels, as are films, as are paintings.
The thing is that if we ignore the new medium and its power over the current generation, we do so at our peril.
Imagine this, for example. Would Vietnam have engendered the protests it did were it not for the television broadcasting the war into the living rooms of the United States?
The way we interact with the world and with each other is constantly changing, it is evolving and at the core of that evolution has always been the way we tell stories.
Ashton Kutcher, of all people, recently wrote this comment on Twitter: "I strongly believe that social media, search, and Web sourcing is a hell of a lot more valuable these days than the Dewey decimal system."
He later replied, "It's not an underestimation of the value of literature it's an adaptation of the way we source it. Educational Darwinism."
Twitter, for those who don't know, is a way to communicate random bits of information. I have a program called tweetdeck on my computer, and I have a list of contacts who I think are "interesting" for one reason or another. Whenever they think to type 140 characters about life, it shows up on my screen; which is how I got the above quote from a famous movie star.
I have a mixed bag of folks -- actors, writers, comic book illustrators for Marvel, philosophers, the CEO of Ecko clothing. By being able to watch their random thought process my mind is enlightened, or amused, or changed.
Then I copy the stuff onto my Facebook page or print it in a newspaper, text it to someone on my phone, or write it on my blog.
Communication is now far more instant, far more personal, and far more universal than it has ever been. And like Mr. Kutcher says, it is changing everything.
Are we going to adapt, or are we going to go the way of the Dodo and Dinosaur before them? That is the real issue.
That, and who watches the watchmen. . .
Just for the sake of saying it out loud, an entire comic book premised on a quote from a Roman poet who wrote at the end of the first century, in his work The Satires, "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes".
Who says literature is dead?
The other day a friend and I went to see the movie "The Watchmen."
I am a bit of a superhero geek; always have been. I wanted to grow up to be Wolverine for most of my life. Perhaps I still do. It was interesting because we met for a drink before hand and the waiter asked us what we were going to see. When we replied "Watchmen" he gave us this blank stare that seemed to last a couple of minutes until finally something broke the spell and he said "Oh yeah, great movie!"
It was strange; until we saw the movie.
My friend turned to me after and said, "Now I understand the blank stare." After a few moments we came up with the answer for when people asked us how it was: "If you are into the apocalypse, dismemberment, and practically constant full frontal male nudity, it was great!"
In truth, however, it was a fabulous movie. The fact that it was science fiction, as I have argued before, allowed the writers to make a graphic novel about American foreign policy, manifest destiny, aging, love, finding your life purpose, and the depths of society in a way that normally does not register.
Now, I went home from the movie and began to read the graphic novel. I have read comic books all my life, mostly as escapist fun; but have never read a graphic novel. For those who don't know, that means it is an adult oriented, up scaled, comic book.
I was brought up in a bit of an elitist way and I always thought that literature was literature and trash was trash. In fact, I have made some snide comments to Brian Cormier for taking American Idol seriously enough to write about it. It is half in jest, but seriously, I have never allowed myself to watch any reality television for the same reason I have never read a graphic novel; there are correct and meaningful ways to do art, and there are cheap and degrading ways. Or so I have always been led to believe.
I think I owe the world an apology.
Having read the Watchmen, which, in case you have not, has a better ending than the movie although the movie is remarkably faithful to the book; I can honestly say it is one of the best novels I have read; and I have read a lot.
It is sort of like rock music. My father thought Billy Joel was the end all and be all of musical genius. Billy could rock out the sentiments that went on in his baby boomer mind in an emotionally jarring way; sort of the way Third Eye Blind does for me.
My dad would hate Third Eye Blind. His father hated Billy Joel. Music adapts, it grows, it is reinterpreted. As are novels, as are films, as are paintings.
The thing is that if we ignore the new medium and its power over the current generation, we do so at our peril.
Imagine this, for example. Would Vietnam have engendered the protests it did were it not for the television broadcasting the war into the living rooms of the United States?
The way we interact with the world and with each other is constantly changing, it is evolving and at the core of that evolution has always been the way we tell stories.
Ashton Kutcher, of all people, recently wrote this comment on Twitter: "I strongly believe that social media, search, and Web sourcing is a hell of a lot more valuable these days than the Dewey decimal system."
He later replied, "It's not an underestimation of the value of literature it's an adaptation of the way we source it. Educational Darwinism."
Twitter, for those who don't know, is a way to communicate random bits of information. I have a program called tweetdeck on my computer, and I have a list of contacts who I think are "interesting" for one reason or another. Whenever they think to type 140 characters about life, it shows up on my screen; which is how I got the above quote from a famous movie star.
I have a mixed bag of folks -- actors, writers, comic book illustrators for Marvel, philosophers, the CEO of Ecko clothing. By being able to watch their random thought process my mind is enlightened, or amused, or changed.
Then I copy the stuff onto my Facebook page or print it in a newspaper, text it to someone on my phone, or write it on my blog.
Communication is now far more instant, far more personal, and far more universal than it has ever been. And like Mr. Kutcher says, it is changing everything.
Are we going to adapt, or are we going to go the way of the Dodo and Dinosaur before them? That is the real issue.
That, and who watches the watchmen. . .
Just for the sake of saying it out loud, an entire comic book premised on a quote from a Roman poet who wrote at the end of the first century, in his work The Satires, "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes".
Who says literature is dead?
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