Design Triptych with Peter Thiel

Freedom is designed to be currupted.

[31m00s onwards]

Sell, Sell, Sell the team.

Invest in fences.

(Peter Thiel was an Exec Producer on Thank you for Smoking and the Angel Investor of Facebook)

The Open Rights Group make a case study of Where are the Joneses?

Last November I was approached by the Open Rights Group about the business model of Where are the Joneses? that Imagination constructed for Ford of Europe. Lured by my use of the Creative Commons BY-SA licence – meaning that there were no commercial restrictions of the use of the media assets produced during the course of the project – ORG recognised that this was as break through for copyright, agencies, brands and media producers alike.

ORG superhero, Michael Holloway (above), who I met a year before at the ORG’s Drunken Brunch meeting of like minded open licence people (I recall meeting Dan Lockton there), interviewed me in November in preparation for a couple of talks I gave last week.

Michael, with Suw Charman-Anderson (in the red top), have been working with the interview to produce a case study for everyone to review and hopefully, use, as a framework for other commercial open media projects/companies/initiatives.

On Monday, Rob Myers (pictured above right), joined me to talk about the use of Creative Commons and it’s relationship to Intellectual Property. Rob and I have been friends since 1992, meeting at art college, and since have discussed how the economics of media production, the downstream of culture, as we learnt at college, is the building blocks for anything today and tomorrow.

The framework of the Joneses project – not the storyline, nor the commercial relationships with Ford of Europe, owes a lot to many many many conversations Rob and I have had over the past 16 years. It’s a very special model that could never have been worked out within the confines of a job, or a hobby, or as artists. The relationship between producers and the audience at large, the communities within communities that wrapped themselves around sections of the Joneses – both agency and public attention – was a mix of perverse curiosity of what this model was and anticipation to see the comedy, the editorial, failing.

The heritage of such a project also owes much to the work of XPT – and in particular, Tim Wright. XPT’s Online Caroline and Tim’s own Oldton project are very close to my heart as a technologist and as a creative. Those who lived with the projects when they we’re alive and kicking have extremely fond memories of the productions – an emotion far removed from serial broadcasting – because the audience made the memories between themselves.

But what inspired the use of Creative Commons as the turnkey solution for the Joneses (it could never have been done under normal copyright models) is that Free Culture is the basis to facilitating a conversation – it’s a giving host, not a prescribing guardian. For the ethos that I wanted Ford of Europe to understand and it’s relationship to its shifting understanding of marketing, the non-30sec-spot 360-channel matching-luggage-prescription that a large network agency uses to manage a global communications campaign erodes the relationship with the intended audience and the client. The care and attention that goes into grading, editing and placing adverts is very agency/brand focused – it’s self gratifying and loses the attention of amplifying an audience who wants to be considered important.

It’s why Imagination was a great place to make WRTJ, we are small and nimble yet large enough to speak our mind about invention instead of waffling on about innovation. Case in example is Ford of Britian’s follow up to the Joneses by Mindshare and Ogilvy – Bite. Big ready made audience from Yahoo and Channel 4, low emotional resonance.

The same applies to Kate Modern, a show used to drop in product placement, focused on young impressionable Bebo minds. And possibly a smart move to enable a lumbering AOL to regain some value. I’ll leave this for another post about my anti-hero Carl Icahn.

An audience without participation, nor the right to control the editorial, is being treated like a herd. Such mentality is why the commissioning model of media results in the pursuit of conversation.

ORG are not a marketing focused organisation in so far as their interest does not cover the interest that brands or advertising are efficient, measurable or actually gain a sale. With the Joneses, ORG, a government backed organisation, has become acutely aware of the damage advertising has on culture – advertising agencies produce more copyright material into the world than any other producer – as a rage to conquer all human attention, especially if we are hitting the peak, a social concern of not just urban/social spam comes into consideration, as we saw in Brazil, but also of the moral consequences of making a world full of unreusable communications, unreusable under legal frameworks that benefit neither audience nor client nor even agency.

Suw is currently pulling together the report and will shortly be available for everyone to review here. I’ll post when it’s ready.

For me the Joneses has been lingering around for months but I’ve enjoyed watching the amount of commentary about the project. There is much behind the scenes about how it was managed and the micro conversations between users that I was privileged to participate in.

I will compete a longer essay about the project when time becomes available. In the meanwhile, it’s lovely to spend time doing Questions and Answers about the project – especially to new audiences such as the one ORG arranged.

Again, many thanks to Suw and Michael (and Becky Hogge) for acknowledging the project.

Do check out the ORG wiki, especially the other case studies presented alongside the WRTJ – namely Tom Reynolds: Blood, Sweat and Tea and John Buckman: Magnatune.

Photo credits to Marc Hankins, who released the session photos under CC-BY-SA.

Design Triptych with Christopher Walken

Identify and promote the anomaly.

(If you have a fever and need more cowbell, the original dosage is here)

If you have to work with a FatBoySlim tack, make the most of it.

Question authority.

The Age of Conversation – The Sequel

Second albums are always the hardest, so I was thrilled to be called into help Gavin and Drew make the Age of Conversation sequel even better. I’ll be nestled in amongst 275 other meddlers of marketing, adding a little salt with an article on how to give away your intellectual property and profit/win an audience/make better products/sleep well at night.

The book will be themed ‘Why don’t they get it?’ – alluding to clients who either refuse to accept that the audiences are in control of commercial communications (in design, distribution and production) or who believe that all this web2.0 malarkey will just go away some day…

So in true collaboration style, Gavin and Drew handed out 7 topics for us to pick from and write under.

They are : –

• Conversation to Action
• Manifesto
• My Marketing Tragedy
• Business Models
• Keeping Secrets
• Life in the Conversation Lane
• A New Brand of Creative

You can see who’s writing about which topic here.

I’ll be sketching out my article on my wiki, here.

To be honest, I haven’t a foggest who most of my fellow writers/bloggers/evangelists are, so I’m going to have spend some time going through this lot :-

Adam Crowe
Adrian Ho
Aki Spicer
Alex Henault
Amy Jussel
Andrew Odom
Andy Nulman
Andy Sernovitz
Andy Whitlock
Angela Maiers
Ann Handley
Anna Farmery
Armando Alves
Arun Rajagopal
Asi Sharabi
Becky Carroll
Becky McCray
Bernie Scheffler
Bill Gammell
Bob Carlton
Bob LeDrew
Brad Shorr
Bradley Spitzer
Brandon Murphy
Branislav Peric
Brent Dixon
Brett Macfarlane
Brian Reich
C.C. Chapman
Cam Beck
Casper Willer
Cathleen Rittereiser
Cathryn Hrudicka
Cedric Giorgi
Charles Sipe
Chris Kieff
Chris Cree
Chris Wilson
Christina Kerley
C.B. Whittemore
Clay Parker Jones
Chris Brown
Colin McKay
Connie Bensen
Connie Reece
Cord Silverstein
Corentin Monot
Craig Wilson
Daniel Honigman
Dan Goldstein
Dan Schawbel
Dana VanDen Heuvel
Dan Sitter
Daria Radota Rasmussen
Darren Herman
Darryl Patterson
Dave Davison
Dave Origano
David Armano
David Bausola
David Berkowitz
David Brazeal
David Koopmans
David Meerman Scott
David Petherick
David Reich
David Weinfeld
David Zinger
Deanna Gernert
Deborah Brown
Dennis Price
Derrick Kwa
Dino Demopoulos
Doug Haslam
Doug Meacham
Doug Mitchell
Douglas Hanna
Douglas Karr
Drew McLellan
Duane Brown
Dustin Jacobsen
Dylan Viner
Ed Brenegar
Ed Cotton
Efrain Mendicuti
Ellen Weber
Emily Reed
Eric Peterson
Eric Nehrlich
Ernie Mosteller
Faris Yakob
Fernanda Romano
Francis Anderson
G. Kofi Annan
Gareth Kay
Gary Cohen
Gaurav Mishra
Gavin Heaton
Geert Desager
George Jenkins
G.L. Hoffman
Gianandrea Facchini
Gordon Whitehead
Graham Hill
Greg Verdino
Gretel Going & Kathryn Fleming
Hillel Cooperman
Hugh Weber
J. Erik Potter
J.C. Hutchins
James Gordon-Macintosh
Jamey Shiels
Jasmin Tragas
Jason Oke
Jay Ehret
Jeanne Dininni
Jeff De Cagna
Jeff Gwynne
Jeff Noble
Jeff Wallace
Jennifer Warwick
Jenny Meade
Jeremy Fuksa
Jeremy Heilpern
Jeremy Middleton
Jeroen Verkroost
Jessica Hagy
Joanna Young
Joe Pulizzi
Joe Talbott
John Herrington
John Jantsch
John Moore
John Rosen
John Todor
Jon Burg
Jon Swanson
Jonathan Trenn
Jordan Behan
Julie Fleischer
Justin Flowers
Justin Foster
Karl Turley
Kate Trgovac
Katie Chatfield
Katie Konrath
Kenny Lauer
Keri Willenborg
Kevin Jessop
Kris Hoet
Krishna De
Kristin Gorski
Laura Fitton
Laurence Helene Borei
Lewis Green
Lois Kelly
Lori Magno
Louise Barnes-Johnston
Louise Mangan
Louise Manning
Luc Debaisieux
Marcus Brown
Mario Vellandi
Mark Blair
Mark Earls
Mark Goren
Mark Hancock
Mark Lewis
Mark McGuinness
Mark McSpadden
Matt Dickman
Matt J. McDonald
Matt Moore
Michael Hawkins
Michael Karnjanaprakorn
Michelle Lamar
Mike Arauz
Mike McAllen
Mike Sansone
Mitch Joel
Monica Wright
Nathan Gilliatt
Nathan Snell
Neil Perkin
Nettie Hartsock
Nick Rice
Oleksandr Skorokhod
Ozgur Alaz
Paul Chaney
Paul Hebert
Paul Isakson
Paul Marobella
Paul McEnany
Paul Tedesco
Paul Williams
Pet Campbell
Pete Deutschman
Peter Corbett
Phil Gerbyshak
Phil Lewis
Phil Soden
Piet Wulleman
Rachel Steiner
Sreeraj Menon
Reginald Adkins
Richard Huntington
Rishi Desai
R.J. Northam
Rob Mortimer
Robert Hruzek
Roberta Rosenberg
Robyn McMaster
Roger von Oech
Rohit Bhargava
Ron Shevlin
Ryan Barrett
Ryan Karpeles
Ryan Rasmussen
Sam Huleatt
Sandy Renshaw
Scott Goodson
Scott Monty
Scott Townsend
Scott White
Sean Howard
Sean Scott
Seni Thomas
Seth Gaffney
Shama Hyder
Sheila Scarborough
Sheryl Steadman
Simon Payn
Sonia Simone
Spike Jones
Stanley Johnson
Stephen Collins
Stephen Cribbett
Stephen Landau
Stephen Smith
Steve Bannister
Steve Hardy
Steve Portigal
Steve Roesler
Steven Verbruggen
Steve Woodruff
Sue Edworthy
Susan Bird
Susan Gunelius
Susan Heywood
Tammy Lenski
Terrell Meek
Thomas Clifford
Thomas Knoll
Tiffany Kenyon
Tim Brunelle
Tim Buesing
Tim Connor
Tim Jackson
Tim Longhurst
Tim Mannveille
Tim Tyler
Timothy Johnson
Tinu Abayomi-Paul
Toby Bloomberg
Todd Andrlik
Troy Rutter
Troy Worman
Uwe Hook
Valeria Maltoni
Vandana Ahuja
Vanessa DiMauro
Veronique Rabuteau
Wayne Buckhanan
William Azaroff
Yves Van Landeghem

And if you haven’t picked yourself up a copy of the original book, there’s a ‘crowdsource-mega-bum-rush’ on the 29th March – details here. Go on – join the conversation…