Social Hallucinations

Connected Silos

Online vs. offline, digital vs. analog - two different and opposite elements of the communication world. The media thinking is stigmatized by dualism that makes us perceive and understand the world as being divided into two categories that can't connect, but just exist one next to another divided by a silent wall of the silo thinking. Silos are easy to control and manage. Silos allows the regime of truth and can't surprise. When something came in, something must come out at the other end. But digital is not a silo. Every media have digital component and can be connected one with another.

1+1 =3

Connected silos that can communicate and connect online with offline reality creating the new immerse experiences. Two different elements that put together, create the new reality. The connected silos aren't the humans' extension they create the new dynamic structure, which we become a part of.

Does it exist, one may ask? See yourself.

I Belong therefore I Am

Image by michael.heiss via Flickr

The need for belonging is one the most powerful needs we share. Being with others people, being social is what our nature demands to function. Some wise-men even claimed that the secret of a good life lies in the harmony between social and personal feelings.
We are herd species and we want to belong something bigger than us. Danes proved it when Anders Colding-Jørgensen Internet psychologist from the University of Copenhagen made an experiment on Facebook. He created a group called 'No to demolition of Stork Fountain' (Storkespringvandet - fountain in Copenhagen). There was nothing strange in it, except the fact that no one wanted to demolish the fountain.
He sent invitation to the group to all his approx. 120 Facebook friends with a message that there was an experiment and asked them to join in. First, the group began to grow quietly. On the second day was reached small 300 members. Then went the stronger and after a little week, reached the 10,000 members. The group has around 25,000 members and is growing fairly stable with approximately 2 members in a minute!

Despite the fake cause, there were 25.000 people who joined and were against something what wasn't suppose to happen. The conclusion - the people didn't join the group to protest against the demolition of the fountain, they joined to be a part of something bigger than them, something that connected them with other people and gave them feeling of joint cause and belonging. This the same as with the groups that protest against new FB layouts. It is not about layout, it is about being part of something bigger than ourselves.

Belonging, being part of something bigger is the one of the most powerful needs you need to consider while working on your digital strategy.

PS. FB group changed its name to "I love Stork fountain" after experiment was done. And it has now over 27.000 users.

How To Get Ideas?

Image via Wikipedia

I've been away for a quite some time because of huge work pressure and projects that have been falling down on me. Projects that required ideas, projects that required stepping outside the lines and getting back with eye-opener and breakthrough thinking. I've been through a couple workshops and discussion that showed me the power finding a "spring-board" thought / insight that will help you to jump over the average, touch the sky and come up with something exceptional. Having such an spring-board tough makes the whole process easier and more understandable. Suddenly ideas give a meaning as a means to success.

This is a good example from Zeus Jones - Use More concept.

Spending time on getting and idea is rather waste of time. Spend rather your time on finding out what drives people, what are their needs - when you get sharp conclusion on this, ideas will come.

"Ideas are like fish.
If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you've got to go down deeper.
Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They're huge and abstract. And they're very beautiful." 
(David Lynch)

Weekend Quote

Magic Photography

I did today some online digging in search for photographic inspiration and I stumbled upon the site for
Christophe Huet who is a french photo magician. He's created ads for Playstation, Nike and many other. You can find his works on the website. Photographies are fascinating and inspirational. I like a lot "Making of" section where you get a taste of how the pictures are created.
Amazing!

Repair Manifesto

4375-454-803
Originally uploaded by ed100

There is always place for improvement. Resting on your laurels will not bring the success.

120 - Dunbar's Number

Image via Wikipedia

Update on Dunbars Number

Social media may get us more connected but they still haven't made us increase the size of our social network. Social media may create a huge potential but the neocortex is still the limit.

Facebook inhouse sociologist Cameron Marlow crunched a few numbers to test Dunbar's thesis and he found out that despite the possibilities and accessibiity, the circle of our interactions is relatively small and stable.

We are not afraid of intimacy at least, as we have no problems with streaming our lived through updates, photos to broad audience, but we are not keen on investing in creating more meaningful interactions.
I wonder whether we don't use the whole potential social media are giving us because we can't process it or rather cause aren't interested in interacting with too many people.

Read the whole article on The Economist - Primates on Facebook

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Do you recall Dunbar's number that describes the the number of people with whom one can maintain social relationships: knows who each person is and how that person relates to others. Dunbar's number is 150. It is interesting to see the number of friends average user has on Facebook.

Average user has 120 friends on Facebook.

It is defintely below 150 . Not everyone is Alpha Friender. Some are just use social networks to maintain and extend their offline relationships.

Find more Facebook statistics here.

Signs

Signs are omnious in our life. They are everywhere conveying the messages, information and ideas. Signs make people communicate. Signs help us to uderstand the world. Signs connect people. Sometimes we oversee the signs, sometimes we seek for them hoping to find the answer or happiness. I've spent the last couple of weeks searching for signs to tell me everything is going be fine. I found signs that made me strong. Sometimes you just have to watch more carefully around...

Ideas Generation / Brainstorming Sessions

This is the first guest post on my blog by great and very creative guy Michael Trenerry who have chosen Finland over Australia. You can read more about Michael and his company iKONIC here as well as follow him on Twitter and read his blog to get more of his wisdom. Enjoy!

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Over my time I have sat in many idea generation or brainstorming sessions both within media and advertising agencies, hotshops and on the client side or with the client. These sessions can be to generate ideas for an individual campaign, a long-term strategy, a product launch or they might very well be for your next new business pitch.

Amongst these sessions though, only very few have been in my opinion highly successful. The reason is quite simple. There has been a lacking brief, lack of structure, no leadership and no real collaboration.

The Brief
Mentioned in my earlier blog, the brief is vital. What exactly are we aiming to achieve from the session. What are our objectives & what do we already know. Sessions take time and that means money for you, so lets be sure that we have a good brief that outlays exactly what we intend to achieve during the session.

Structure and Process
I don’t want to take the fun out of these sessions because that is what they are all about but you do need some structure to tackle the brief. The structure does a few things. It ensures we maximise the time we spend in these sessions constructively. It ensures everybody gets to put ideas in. It ensures we cover all the points we need to and most of all it ensures that when we leave & finish the meeting, we leave with an action list of clear indicators & the key persons involved in ensuring those tasks are met.

A good session while structured doesn’t really feel structured. Like the term brainstorm, we start by dumping down lots of ideas. From these ideas we decide which are the most innovative and interesting and which best meet the objectives of the brief. When we have a few good ideas we can move forward – expand them, dig deeper, pull out insights, and create example case studies and so on until we feel we have our winning idea. The winning idea will often come in a second or third session after we have analyzed our key ideas in more detail.

Make sure in all cases before a meeting is over that everybody who has attended agrees with the idea & that everybody is cleary aware of what they are required to do to get to the next stage.

Session leader
In all cases, there should be a person in the session that is the session leader – the person who structures the workshop, understands the brief in minute detail, a person that listens to others, mediates and writes ideas down. This person should be skilled in running ideas/brainstorming sessions and a creative mind. The person should help the group move along in a clearly structured manner.

Without this person, we essentially normally end up having lots of ideas but no central focus – people walk away from the session with a smile but when they sit down, they don’t really know what next…

Collaboration
I have been involved with many new business pitches. The great ones show real collaboration, they show that the team worked brilliantly together and they all believe in the idea and their ability to deliver it. The successful sessions are fun, a birth of great ideas from everybody and in the end a united approach that shows very clear collaboration. The unsuccessful ones seem to have people working in modules – one digital guy creating digital ideas, one print person creating print ideas and one television person creating television ideas – no integration between the overall idea. The idea should show that all parties have worked together seemlessly on all aspects of the project.

I could continue to write more about good and bad sessions but to wrap it up, just remember what these sessions are for! Its business, we all have limited time and resources so plan & think strategically at all times BUT also remember to be super creative – don’t let the structure and process ruin the creativity required to build great ideas…