Dazzle Ships

Time to Gear up

We're getting used to the fact now that the biggest entertainment releases are console games, not movies. This November will see the release of the highly-anticipated Gears of War 2, the sequel to the game that pretty much established Xbox 360's reputation in the early days.

The trailer for the game is recently released. Nicely put together, but fairly standard fayre really. And the game's website I found a bit of a disappointment, just being fairly ordinary character biogs, wallpapers and forum stuff.

It certainly has a long way to go to get to the dizzy heights of the fantastic 'Believe' site for the launch of Halo 3 last year. If you didn't explore it the first time, have a look. Beautifully put together, and the video stuff in particular really draws you into the fantasy.

It'll be interesting to see if they step up their efforts behind GOW2 and get into a big marketing campaign behind it. Or are anticipated console games so highly anticipated these days that they don't really need to bother marketing them much - just let the queues outside Game do the work for you?

-- Alex

Whatever you do, don't employ talented people

This morning I finally got round to reading The New York Times supplement of The Observer, dated 20th July, which had the front page title; 'Persuasion Tactics'.  The section that I thought I would pass on was a little random bit about talent that appealed to the Paul Arden in me. The article was written by Janet Rae-Dupree.

Carol Dweck, a psychologist at Stanford University, has been doing research in to why some people reach their creative potential, while others do not.  Her conclusion is that it comes down to the way individuals think about their own intelligence and talent. People that believe that they have a natural or innate ability that they are born with, are less likely to maximise their potential.  These people are more likely to want to look smart, avoid mistakes and defend their status - they have a 'fixed mindset'. 

On the flip side, people that believe talent can be acquired, learnt and built, are likely to have a 'growth mind set'.  These people tend to be the ones that challenge conventions, confront and embrace their mistakes, and thus build on them. 

 

To steal words from Kate Monster from Avenue Q, no doubt 'everyone's a little bit racist sometimes', but it did make me think about companies that focus on attracting the 'brightest people' from the 'best schools and universities'.  True these people may fulfil their potential, but likewise they may also be the ones most fearful of falling from grace. 

The question is then; how do employers predict the future success of people?  Obviously we have interviews, psychometric tests, workshop days and more to try and get round it, but it is interesting that the one thing that doesn't help is the CV - the very first judgement hurdle. I am sure we all know stories of creative individuals that have got round the CV issue and applied the thinking above creatively. Hopefully they didn't take it quite as far as good old Aleksey Vayner mind you.   

Apparently Scott Forstall of Apple spoke to Dweck about her research after he chose his iPhone development team.  Rather than look for the brightest people, he chose those internally that were most hungry to be involved.  As our wonderful Ignition team often say, If you send an email out to loads of people asking for help, you don't wait for the cleverest people to respond, you should go with those that are most enthusiastic and keen to work with you.  Similarly, I once heard Richard Hytner of Saatchi & Saatchi state that in order to enjoy work life you need to surround yourself with Zappers, not Sappers.

Given that creativity can come from anything, anyone and anywhere, maybe we need a new approach to recruitment.  Ideas, solutions, suggestions and answers on a postcard please!

- Sam

GI Zombie

In what is unquestionably the best use of one of our clients' products in a music video, check out this effort for a single from electronic outfit Zombie Zombie. It's a homage to the classic John Carpenter film 'The Thing' using GI Joe toy characters.

It all manages to build up claustrophobic tension magnificently. Very nice work indeed.

-- Alex

The Hijack

Earlier on the blog, Toby highlighted the challenges of drawing consumers to branded communication online and the very real danger of building the best kept secret on the internet.

So with this in mind, I thought I would point out what is one of the best pieces of comms online right now and it's rather neat use of a technique we we have dubbed "The Hijack".

The company in question is called Blendtec and as the name suggests they make blenders, very good blenders by the look of it. To prove this point, they have made a film which has currently delivered over 5 million views on You Tube (thats spanks Cadbury's Gorilla which had a measly 1.5 million in comparison) of them blending an iPhone. It ranks as the the second most viewed piece on You Tube about the iPhone, which is not a small search category. Blendtec's approach seems to rely on this fact. They look for what people are searching for and then they blend it. The beauty of this approach is that it can be consistently recreated.  Other stuff they have blended includes GTA4, hearing aids, Halo 3, an iPod, a rubix cube and even Chuck Norris, well a Chuck action figure (Chuck obviously didn't belend). In total Blendtec's videos have combined viewings of over 30 million (thats more than the Ronaldinho film).

The reason that this is genius is its simplicity. A media budget of £0, where other brands communication activity or just consumer interest in a topic, drives consumers in Blendtec's direction.  The content is amusing and more importantly illustrates a very tangible product benefit (it blends really well).  Whats more, they even make it relevant to the iPhone generation by using the rather poncey "Smoothie Setting" for the blending.

Love it

Ben

Welcome to the Whedonverse, Dr Horrible

"In five years the idea of broadcast will be gone" Tim Kring, creator of Heroes, said recently.  He is refering to the fact that increasingly we will be watching content everywhere and anywhere.  It is a view expressed by the wider rat pack of American television that includes Damon Linelof, JJ Abrams, Rob Letterman and more, in an interesting article by David Kushner called 'Rebel Alliance' . 

In the article, the leaders of the US TV youth market go on to herald Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy, Firefly, Serentity and  more, as their 'leader'.  The interesting thing about Joss, is that he doesn't measure the success of his shows by the ratings and ad revenue they make.  He measures the success of the shows by  'the aftermarket' (how deeply his fans get in to the story) and the back end sales he makes.  In effect, he embraces the long tail of engagement, immersing fans in circular stories that go beyond the regular TV series, making money out of that as a result. 

It's an approach that inspired the endless  worm holes that appeared around Lost, be it Comics, books, Podcasts, songs, blogs, YouTube videos, chocolate, Lostpedia and more, that filled the gaps the series could not. 

As it happens Joss wasn't twiddling his thumbs during the writers strike either.  His latest offering is Dr. Horribles sing along blog. Yesterday, at drhorrible.com the first of a three part musical mini series blog was open to his fans. The next two are tomorrow and Saturday.    Embracing his own philosophy, obviously you can find out more about it on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and YouTube. 

So what can we learn from Dr Horrible?  Well, clearly Joss is taking a different approach to mass market TV.  Rather than spend huge sums on pilots, he is leveraging his advocates to seed in ideas at a low cost.  In doing so, he gets to see which ones generate the excitement and aftermarket he is after.  If Dr Horrible is a huge success online, I would not be surprised to see on a TV screen near you in the future. 

So, for Joss, TV is relegated down the adoption proccess.  In the Whedonverse, it is simply a means to pull people in to a deeper world he values. It is a distribution point that is getting less and less important.  Rather than broadcast media, he is using his advocates to help pull more people in.  It's an interesting approach we can learn from.

- Sam