How to become a sociometric star - viral 2.0

Last night I went to a talk given by Duncan Watts at the Fast Company's snazzy offices in downtown NY. I think a lot has been written on Watts having a pop at Malcolms Gladwell's tippiing point and the idea of influencers (Sociometric Stars!)in this digital age but it was very interesting to see the debate aired in public. 

Watts made a good point that as marketers we should only pick highly connected people to spread the word when we literally have nothing else to go on. He said that if you wanted to get an idea across that had something to do with Russia you would first speak to someone who could speak Russian or who lived in Russia - if all else failed you would go 'blind' to someone who knew a lot of people. I buy this. 

Another good analogy was that it makes no difference what sort of match one uses to start a forest fire - if the conditions are right it will spread. It's crazy to spend lots of money on trying to find the perfect match if it's been raining or there has recently been a fire.

The thing to do is to look for where the chain is vulnerable and work out how you can aid the spread, build bridges and stuff like that. And far better to give your message to someone, anyone, who actually talks to their close friends regularly and meaningfully than some uber blogger who probably gets loads of freebies every day. And in this day and age isn't it cooler to do things that no one else does - ie not spread the word?

All good interesting stuff. It was also nice to see a few faces from London there. I swapped wild US bureaucracy strories with Faris and spied Ajaz from AKQA lurking in the corner. This led one of the Fast Compmay writers to ask if there was a brain drain going on. I said I couldn't possibly comment. 

Listen up, homes.

You know when you have presented an idea to various different clients at one point or another and it never goes through and then you see someone else has done it? That happened to me last night.

I was on the subway and saw a big poster for a John Legend promotion with Target stores. Right in the middle of it is a jack into which you can plug your headphones and listen to his new album.

I've lost count of the number of times I've presented this idea to SonyEricsson, Vodafone, ITV over the last few year. I can actually see about ten different scamps in my head. But here's the thing. I stopped took a photo of this promotion but did I plug my headphones in, did I f**k. Perhaps it was the location, pretty damp subway passage so both dirty and right in the middle of my way home, perhaps it was the music, or perhaps it's just not that good an idea when it comes to the practicalities.

Headphones are pretty personal. Even though there is rationally there is no difference putting your jack in a hole in the subway than anywhere else it all just feels a bit euuuuccchh.

So then you get onto the old 'bluetooth' transmission idea. Much cleaner, can go to multiple people at one time etc etc. I think I have the same amount of bluetooth listening post scamps buried somewhere too.

But part of me - the real part - just thinks would anyone ever do this? I'd love to see the stats. I guess it could just be a pereception thing. It's still a poster it still 'works' in that way and both Target and John Legend look a bit more with it. I dunno. 

If anyone is coming over to New York soon please come and slap me I think I a becoming a client. :)

How I won the superbowl.

So, I arrive in New York then 7 days later the New York Giants win the superbowl - against all odds - in what many commentators are calling the best Superbowl ever. Coincidence. Maybe. Maybe not. But you've got about as much chance as proving my connection to their victory as you have in proving that a $5m spot sells anything. But there is loads of stuff about that everywhere.

A couple of things I noticed. The ads ARE a big deal. A really big deal. Ok, I watched it with a load of media whores whose job it is to slag off rubbish TV ads but this lovely spot from Miller does a good job of showing how the man on the street - supposedly - talks about them too. This could be a good thing or a bad thing.

I was watching on Fox. To watch the ads instead of pushing a url for fox sports every other five minutes they used a myspace link. Fox is owned by Murdoch and Murdoch owns MySpace. I wondered if that was a little bit deseperate to get traffic to an ailing site? Cos Fox doesn't need the hits, Myspace does. Maybe.

One interesing thing I saw that may have passed you by is that some dude used twitter to assess the buzz the ads were making as they got aired. He only got about 3k responses but you can see how twitter could possibly be used in the future for research.

Also yesterday was Super Tuesday. Loads more people vote over here than back home. They take it quite seriously. Makes a change. More on that next time.

Suck. Then Stuck.

After a little over a month and half off (just do it - stop moaning, take some time off!) I am back working for Another Anomaly here in New York City. I'm not sure what direction this blog is going to take from here on in.

Being a digital creative director in London automatically lent itself to easy subjects; slagging off ad agencies, slagging off other digital agencies, totally ignoring DM agencies - the usual stuff. But now that I am working for an anomaly it's all rather different. I think I'll spare you the whole 'Englishman in New York' routine because that's been done before, by much more talented people than myself. 

For the next few weeks I think I'll just sit back for a bit and suck it all in and then get stuck in.  

The one thing that has struck me so far is that watching TV over here, it's really hard to work out if ads are taking the p*** or not. Actually you then realise that they are mostly not and what any sane person would regard as a complete load of utter nonsense is actually a bona fide product promotion. In that vein I leave you with a link for an interesting piece of office furniture that someone sent round the other day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9_amg-Aos4 

For those of you who used to the read the blog when I was in London, please stay in touch it was always nice to hear from you. 

More soon.