Context is content

re: Context is content

Kevin Gordon — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 11:14:55 GMT

Yes stacey, contex is the Kingdom

Content is Cupid.

His arrow's name is attention,

directed by interest,

fired by desire,

piercing by action.

So what do we call the bow?

Lovemarks?

re: Context is content

Stacey Knight — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:13:21 GMT

If 'Content is king' aguably Context is the kingdom, it provides the meat to the bones, the chalk to the cheese (etc etc) yet what I would argue is that the interesting area is in fact the emotion certain environments/context emit. As Kevin Roberts states '"Only emotion excites people to action. If you’re trying to be persuasive what are you going to do? Give your consumer a list? Or give them a dream? Martin Luther King did not say: “I have a mission statement” so true

re: Context is content

Kevin Gordon — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 11:37:07 GMT

Hi Dave,

Now you mention it, I remember a Mazda ad with a red car with two or three snow lines whizzing through it too. I think it may have had something to do with "An unmissable offer from Mazda you'll have to play back and listen to again".

I guess that's when recording films on TV was at it's height before CD format.

What would be intriguing is how to record sound FF and play it back without any glitches, but I wouldn't like to carry the lady beyond the river on that one.

Clients?, I guess anyone who likes an idea enough will stump up the cash for it. Maybe TiVo would be interested. Everyone could fast forward through the 'B' Films, critics reviews, product placements and all the other sponsors and get to some meat. An ad with impact.

As for the cost of booking space on media ???

This one's for all you Media Directors desperately chasing media deals out there:

"Don't shoot me, I'm only the piano player" by Elton John.

re: Context is content

Chris Gosling — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 06:21:35 GMT

Don't ads need to have have a real relationship with whatever they're fitted within?

The most popular of the little TV shows I make are filled, literally filled, with specific, relevant and completely targeted ads aimed at their viewing audience. They are completely within their context. The viewers don't have any problem with them, because they are in line with the programme's topic.

re: Context is content

John W. — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:33:21 GMT

There are those who ignore the message. whatever and wherever it is? Isn't it just our job to put it out there, wherever 'there' is?

re: Context is content

Michael — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:40:22 GMT

RE: But you do need a client who can afford it.

So compromise: make a 60 sec. slomo ad ("only" twice the cost) which plays 6 sec. at FF. And use the slomo to your advantage somehow; still make it your primary vehicle.

I know that FOX a couple years back made a show of running 5 sec. "quicky" ads to foil users from fast-forwarding through them (Here, Google found something for us, www.nytimes.com/.../18adco.html). And I like the miniature scale that this line of thinking is taking very, very much. Very Borgesian in that – which means we are close to the zeitgeist IMVHO. Note: the 10X ratio is round and off the top of my head. Maybe it is only 2X?

Note also: I am thinking, is there any sound at fast forward? Dang, I think not. I remember a Dave blog from some weeks back on the primacy of music in delivering/melding the message to the user. Looks like in this context one would need to use silence to one’s advantage somehow.

Note also: any stroboscopic effects to be had designing at two speeds? Particularly reverse rotational, a.k.a. "stagecoach-wheel", effects. Just playing here.

G'morning.

re: Context is content

Dave Trott — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:23:23 GMT

I think I remember HHCL doing something like that about 10 years ago on Mazda(?). An ad designed to be watched on FF.

re: Context is content

Dave Trott — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:21:48 GMT

Really nice idea Kevin,

But you do need a client who can afford it.

You'd also have to pay 10 times the media, so for a 30" spot you'd get a 3" ad on FF.

Good idea though.

re: Context is content

Kevin Gordon — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:55:48 GMT

Michael,

This is a great opportunity to film ads 10 times slower, so that when they get ored they run ads at normal speed when they fast forward. It would mean their own boredom enlightens them, and your ad could be the first to provide content within the context of changing minds. You can't get accused of subliminal thinking, because when played at normal speed, nobody will get it. It could bee a hoot !

re: Context is content

Ant Melder — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 15:44:48 GMT

Hi Jack.

As you point out, “deconstruction’ and ‘Deconstruction’ are two very different things. But I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone confuse one for the other. The Derrida stuff is really interesting. One of my favourite writers, Dennis Potter, once wrote, “Words themselves - the very material of our discourse - increasingly take on masks or disguises.”

re: Context is content

Michael — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:37:53 GMT

Kevin – I like the direction you went with this; the whole concept of subliminal messaging. But I want to make sure I am clear on what I posted earlier. With the widespread adoption of new technologies like TIVO, commercials on TV are more and more being run at home in fast motion. I think TIVO's share of the digital video recorder market is something north of 50% of the market here in the US. But even with standard video recording, users are increasing manually fast forwarding

through the commercials.

That is the real world context. The ads are still there, and they are

still being viewed, just at 10X speed.

This means that ads have to function – logos need to remain visible, the narrative needs to remain consistent - at both normal playing speed and at fast forward. The goal of the focus sessions, as I understand it, was to insure that even at fast speeds the message of the ads was being communicated.

What I got from your post was a whole other idea that <i>separate</i>

content could be communicated at different speed/context; the fast message being, for example, “for those of us too busy to wait for a commercial to play, we laugh as we use product x”, or “for those of us savvy enough to hook up their own TIVO player, we need product y to gloat to our neighbors”, etc.

I think I’ll put Koyaanisqatsi on the DVD-player tonight. It’s been a

while since I’ve watched this film and I’ve always admired its imaginative use of time-lapse photography; but then again, maybe it is just the topnotch Phillip Glass score which makes the film so great.

Cheers,

re: Context is content

Jack Gardner — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:20:56 GMT

Strange Ant as I do write a bit in Japan and, as you'll have seen in my books, I am interested in Zen. But the person my work is most often likened to is Jacques Derrida. I don't mind the comparison other than I rather pride myself on my book titles and he didn't seem to care at all. Of Grammatology must be the worst book title of all time. No wonder it didn't sell that well. However he must have been well pissed off, as I would be, by everyone using his invention, Deconstruction, wrongly. I've seen people use it on this blog and many others to mean take apart, rather as you might take a car apart in the order in which it was made, in fact to reverse construct it. I laugh out loud sometimes as this is nothing close to what Derrida meant by Deconstruction at all. It's really much simpler than that. It's to do with uncovering and unsettling the dichotomies that lurk within any use of language. Next time you hear someone say deconstruct have a little laugh up your sleeve on me Ant. Oh *** are you the one that goes on about being working class? If so please ignore the above as I know people pride themselves on such status and I wouldn't want to talk over someone's head and appear patronising.

re: Context is content

Ant Melder — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:41:22 GMT

Hi Jack. That reminds me of something I read in a Mishima novel - "Don't paint the walls of your prison - escape it."

re: Context is content

Jack Gardner — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:00:03 GMT

Freedom is the ability to choose your own prison. Yesterdays poem.

thebasildonbloggerstrikesagain.com

re: Context is content

Kevin Gordon — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 07:20:03 GMT

Hi Michael,

I guess you're picking-up on Jack's point about camouflage. Subliminal messages are extremely powerful. I think I'm right in saying this method of branding was outlawed quite some time ago in the UK after it was used in horror films. They used to add a frame with a skull and crossbones to terrify the audiences at the time. It worked because it leapt over the conscious mind straight into the sub-conscious.

However, such techniques are more appropriate at places like Porton Down or Guantanamo Bay than they are on terrestial television It was such a powerful tool, the ad industry outlawed it for advertising feeling it crossed the boundaries of decency taking us closer to George Orwell's vision of 1984, or Kubrick's banned film 'A Clockwork Orange'. I think tbey were right. Entering the human subconscious with subversive messages uninvited is an extremely dangerous exercise. It's a very fine line, but it is also a very important one.

Ironically, one day last year I stood at my local station and counted the number of CCTV cameras from the spot I was standing on. 17 in all. One step to the left, 11.

Banksy did a great painting of this with CCTV camers in the middle of a Constable type landscape. This painting has a very strong message. From home to Charing Cross, I decided to count how many cameras were at each station when the train pulled up. The number was always between 11-20. At Charing Cross I counted 44.

Sometimes small things can happen so slowly, we barely see them because they are camouflaged out of sight from us, buried in the context, then one day when we look around with fresh eyes, we really see what is happening. I guess this is what Dave has been doing all his life. Trying to get everyone to see what he sees, the missed opportunities, the unobvious obvious that startes us all in the face every day, and if there's one industry that should be taking full advantage of all these God-given free ideas around us, it's us.

It's about being able to see the Tiger in the Woods rather than Woods in the Tiger.