brand surface area

Following on from the soft fascination thing from the other day, I was really interested in this. I like the focus on brand experiences rather than brand messages. Hence the Virgin America safety video. There's things I'd like to say about it, but I can't articulate them yet. So I'll just point to it again and quote this: "Rather than constantly thinking of new ways to infiltrate every corner of the audience’s daily lives, brands should first consider all the corners of its own to identify existing surface area as prime media real estate...turn[ing] touchpoints for first time and loyal consumers into differentiating brand experiences, bringing their brand beliefs to life in a way that their audience can grasp." Lovely.

paper view

Lots of things about paper have been popping up around the interwebs recently. Russell's written some really interesting stuff about turning digital things into real, physical things. Then there's the newspaper that the Really Interesting Group did. It was called Things Our Friends Have Written On The Internet 2008. Looked really interesting to me. I buy into the post-digitalness of it, I think. Still, I haven't seen a copy, so I can't really comment. But then Rishi wasn't particularly keen. Thanks to a tweet from Kristian, I saw Clay Shirky's take on newspapers and the business models they are trying to use online. Which is to say that they are trying to transfer old business models to a space where they can't work. There's this PSFK interview with Jonah Bloom about why Advertising Age have pulled an issue in March. And may consider doing more in future. And, lastly, another PSFK interview with Nick Bilton, editor in the New York Times research and development lab. Which sounds like a great job. "Paper is just a device," he says. Which goes back to something Shirky has said, in the post mentioned and elsewhere. To paraphrase, we need journalism, not newspapers. And there's no simple transition from business model A to model B. It's more like business models A to Z. Or maybe it was one to 100. I can't remember. And all of this is probably a long-winded, non-committal and aggregated way of saying: paper. It's the future of some things, and the past of others. If I was to hazard an unpolished thought, I'd say something like this. Paper: it's one of the future faces of distributed personality. It could be a mass audience thing, or a more intimate thing. But it might work better in future as the vehicle of individual expression rather than that of an institution of some kind. Which could also be completely wrong. Ho hum.

three, no four, interesting things

Ian "Crack Unit" Tait blogging about the trend for brands trying to cash in on the idea of collaborating and sharing. Keep reading up the page to see the mini-storm and the interesting qualifications he made. (For my money, the T-Mobile ad leaves me a bit cold. Can't help feeling that it will take the fun out of flashmobs forever more. That said, plenty of people I know love it.) Faris writing about advertising as distributed content. You know when someone says something you're thinking? That's how this felt. And Stephen Fry blogging about Twitter etiquette. Oh, and Matt Jones of Dopplr reviewed at the PSFK Good Ideas Salon (wish I could have afforded a ticket) talking about good ideas for mobile. Feeling pretty interested by Dopplr recently, no doubt helped along by sight of Rishi's Dopplr annual report. Don't know what on earth the thread could be, but all of these things feel connected in some way. Any ideas? (Pic courtesy of this person.)

augmented reality ad for mini

Picked this up just now via PSFK whilst listening to this - it's Milo's last feed of the day. Like it as a sort of future-of-the-print-and-digital-relationship kinda thing - although I think there's a killer creative idea out there that's still waiting to be found for it.