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behind the image
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Monday, 16 March 2009 00:19 |
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I visited Canberra for four days to take photos to NSW Tourism's specs. It wasn't a commissioned shoot but I ended up selling them enough photos to make it worth my while. Trying to fit a large number of good photos into four days isn't much fun - you're either doing reconnaisance or racing from location to location during periods of good light - daily work hours of 5am to 11pm. On one of those days I was at the Australian War Memorial, in the middle of the day (bad for light except for some cloud cover) and without a shot in mind. Standing there wondering whether I was wasting my time, a dignified veteran arrived with his grandson and kindly agreed to be involved. Between busloads of tourists and periods of harsh sunlight we captured these two images over perhaps half an hour. I connect with both of these images, particularly that of the grandson whose benign expression and direct eye contact are more powerful than I could have hoped. So powerful that only now - after ten years - have I realised that his right hand is clenched. I never left his eyes long enough to see it. Originally I tried to photoshop out the brand name on the grandson's sweater but (having failed to make the end result look natural) I realised that they link to the veteran's war medals - there's certainly a visual link and one could argue that as this veteran's life is (no doubt) defined by his military service and brotherhood with those who served, ours is defined by commercialism and brand tribalism. You might say that we have been made free by those who served, only to enslave ourselves in other ways. I remain frustrated that in this second image we couldn't get a background free of tourists - they came by the busload, each new group arriving before the last had meandered out of view. After unsuccessfully waiting at length for a clear background I felt I'd crossed the bounds of politeness in using this gentleman's time, thanked him and watched him walk with his grandson into the war memorial.
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catalyst blog
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Monday, 02 March 2009 04:00 |
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Doritos is running a series of TVCs in Australia to induce some User-Generated Content (UGC):
I suggest that there are two types of UGC - Natural & Induced. Natural UGC is the spontaneous user response to a product or service that they love. This is the best form of UGC because:
Passionate users do what they do for the sheer joy of being associated with the brand, particularly if the brand publicly acknowledges them - consider the iPod touch or Star Wars.
Creators of Natural UGC are users who selflessly share their love for a product are entirely credible while advertisers are not. .
By comparison, Induced UGC is what's generated when companies seek UGC by offering inducements - prizes or offers of recognition. Given the benefits of Natural UGC, it's clear to see why Induced UGC's of interest to a corporation - it also allows for a sense of involvement, connection and collaboration between brand and user. There are problems, however with Induced UGC:
Credibility is lost the instant you offer a reward - love and money don't mix well.
"Sheer joy" simply doesn't apply to most products, in which case an Induced UGC campaign is probably a meatball sundae. (The solution isn't to reverse engineer passion for your existing brand and products, it's to make your brand and products worth being passionate about.) Most Induced UGC campaigns attempt to have two bites of the cherry: 1) kudos from everyone (users and non-users) for running the campaign/competition, and? 2) kudos from the UGC generated. I suspect that many campaigns would have more impact if the campaign was run privately with their tribe of customers and non-customers saw only the end result, the UGC?that invites them to join the tribe as well.
As for this Australian Doritos UGC campaign, I'm concerned that it's likely to detract from the brand:
If marketers sell stories, selling the story of "we can't think of a reason to buy Doritos - can you help us?" is dangerously poor. If Doritos marketers have identified that their 16-24 year old demographic wants 'belongingness', this is a call to belong to ... nothing.
The all-too-common ad storyline of 'ad people making an ad' is self-indulgent - advertising creatives need to create stories that prospective customers relate to, not ones that remind them of bad days at the office. At the very least they could have made a TVC about teenagers making their own Doritos ad, selling both the competition and the bigger Doritos story in one hit.
Together this might explain why the Doritos UGC campaign is on TV -?you can buy TV time whereas on the internet (where 16-24 year olds are) you need to earn it (and you have to do a lot better than this).
No doubt this campaign is an attempt to replicate the response to the US Crash the Super Bowl Doritos campaign which this year promised "win $1 Million by taking down the ad pros with a Super Bowl commercial written, directed, and made by you". It's an audacious competition, aspirational prize and accordingly in 2007 it resulted in 2 million visitors to the Dorito website. The only problem is that even in 2007 the Super Bowl spot cost USD2.6M - the whole campaign probably cost $1.50 per website visit. Now in 2009 they've added a $1M prize - if your strategy is to pay people to turn up, you'll need to increase the payments to sustain novelty until it's no longer economically viable.
Buying yourself a tribe by Induced UGC or any other means is a short-term and unsustainable approach. Businesses need to take a much longer term view - cultivating a brand worth following, a tribe that follows it and ways for individuals in that tribe to share their love. |
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behind the image
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Monday, 02 March 2009 03:00 |
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In 2003 we drove from Broome, Western Australia to Darwin in the Northern Territory. Along the way we visited friends in Derby who live near an expansive mud flat subject to the world's second largest tide. They also have a decent front fence "to keep the crocodiles out", but I think they might have been pulling my leg. In the late afternoon we wandered out onto the mud flat which had been dry for a number of months, giving it this cracked appearance. I took this image looking straight down with a 28mm lens - it's as wide a view as I could take using my 6'4" frame. Then the tide came in - at walking pace. We walked with the tide for a while until the sun set and went home for a sensational barramundi dinner from the restaurant on the pier. |
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catalyst blog
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Friday, 27 February 2009 10:01 |
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If you're a manufacturer wanting to incorporate a Blu-Ray device in your product, you need to negotiate a license with each of the three bodies that represent the various patent holders - 18 in total.
This is an example of the gridlock economy, the problem caused by ownership distributed between multiple parties.
It's a form of complexity that increases the cost and risk to your customers, reducing the benefits they receive (and in turn the price they're prepared pay you!).
And it's a hurdle that prevents your customers from making your product a raging success (because you can't and only they can).
Fortunately, three years after the Blu-Ray product was first launched, the patent holders have announced a one stop licensing shop. The expensive lesson here is to make the end-to-end user experience of your product a priority from day one - don't wait until it hurts your business.
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catalyst blog
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Monday, 23 February 2009 11:57 |
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We shouldn't be surprised that road safety authorities are obsessed with speeding - it's an easily measured safety factor in a sea of possible factors (fatigue, distractions, blood alcohol, skill, training, conditions and vehicle maintenance to name a few) that are not. It was then only a short step to attribute meaning to that limited data set and blame speeding for almost everything. This long-running road safety TVC is a particularly good example of this, blaming speed for three dangerous behaviours that include no speeding at all:
Humans are particularly good at recognising patterns and applying meaning to data no matter how poor our data sets are - consider astrology, for example. Ensure, therefore, that you go well beyond the easily measurable data - consider instead what factors might be meaningful and find new ways to measure them.
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catalyst blog
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Friday, 20 February 2009 12:01 |
A conversation with a salesperson at my front door last night:
Hi.
G'day.
I'm with [a company offering phone + internet packages] but you're with Telstra.
Yeah.
Who do you use for internet?
TPG.
Which package?
Fifty gig.
Oh - I can't beat that ...
No.
You use it all each month?
Yeah.
It's good isn't it - I'm on TPG's seventy gig plan.
Sorry?!?
Yeah, don't tell anyone ... [walking away, grinning sheepishly]. See you.
'Night ...
Doing something that you can't believe in makes it difficult to succeed. Worse, it's corrosive to your self-esteem. Get out as quickly as you can. |
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behind the image
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Monday, 16 February 2009 13:38 |
'Hammer' was the last shot at the end of a long and, at times, stressful day. The last location was Granville, apparently only metres from where the Granville rail disaster took place. By this time the light was fading fast - fortunately I had purchased a ridiculously long power cord the day prior and the very obliging owner of an adjacent workshop allowed me to power my studio flash unit. Originally the image was of just the model and building behind (no hammer) and it lacked the strength I was looking for. Then the word 'perestroika' hit me and I went back to ask the very obliging workshop owner for 'a large tool, preferably a hammer'.
As this image was for my portfolio, I had arranged a contra deal with the modelling agency - use of a model in return for images for her portfolio. Proudly showing the agent the final images, I found that she disliked all of them except one - after a day of shooting 100 frames of 6x7 film I had, to my embarrassment, taken only one of her smiling. |
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learning resources
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Tuesday, 10 February 2009 10:16 |
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A modest investment in user experience (UX) design can deliver products and services that your customers love to use and recommend to others. Here are some excellent learning resources on the topic:
Adaptive Path Consulting firm Adaptive Path runs a number of excellent UX events each year and publishes all of them on its podcast, along with a number of interviews with stakeholders from their client base. The MX talks are generally for management and UX talks for designers but there's good crossover - I usually recommend that people start with MX Conference 2007 talks and then follow their interests. IDEO Give IDEO a 'product, service or environment' challenge and they'll create an empathic design for you. They're generous with their methods and are prolific writers & speakers.
Boxes and Arrows
B&A run a journal for the information architecture community which contains good UX and usability design information, often recast from other sources. They also provide a useful entry point to a wide range of other user experience resources if you're looking for more.
ClearLeft
ClearLeft are UK-based web site accessibility and user experience design consulting firm who run the dConstruct conference.
Information & Design This small Australian usability consultancy produces the UXpod podcast on which I've found some useful talks.
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behind the image
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Monday, 09 February 2009 00:45 |
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My wife and I visited Bryce Canyon, Utah on a drive from Santa Fe to LA - what's left of Route 66. I had failed to set our alarm successfully (on our only morning in the park) and as a result we slept in, missing the moment that the sun breached the horizon. All was not lost, however, and we spent the morning taking in the canyon in its morning glory. Given the depth of the amazing 'hoodoo' formations, I was trying to take all of my images in stereo - a process of taking two images from slightly different perspectives on transparency (slide) film to provide a 3D view. When done correctly the effects are stunning - holding the two slides up to your left and right eyes in separate slide viewers gives the feeling of looking at a miniature model of the subject. I was looking for a 'spark' for an image and found this ranger who was on his radio, advising workers on the track below of approaching tourists. At the time I was mostly annoyed that he wouldn't stand still long enough for me to take a stereo pair and almost didn't take the shot. It turns out that this was the best image of our visit. And yes, the colours are real. |
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catalyst blog
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Friday, 06 February 2009 19:01 |
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Some quick housekeeping:
I've redeveloped www.andrewmackie.com.au to host all of my content, including this blog. I'll shut down my typepad-based blog shortly.
This year I'm offering three new types of content in addition to the catalyst blog - details can be found on the subscription page of the new site. The catalyst feed (that was used on my typepad site) will remain unchanged - you may wish to receive all four kinds of content by subscribing to the all posts feed instead, or add a subscription to one or more other types of content.
As of 2009 I'm starting a consulting practice and am developing some collaborative projects - news will be posted to the catalyst blog feed. If in the meantime you'd like to discuss consulting or collaborating, please contact me.
Thanks for subscribing. Andrew |
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