tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81118519903284798452024-03-13T03:26:46.570-07:00digit@l shAmanismA Shaman explores the collective unconscious and finds ways to express our pains or desires.
He experiences altered states of consciousness by using music, drugs or.. the web. I love the idea that we can "feel" what's in the air, without hyperrational methods...
This blog is about experiments on the web and experiential marketing.digital shAmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14158516202874600747noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111851990328479845.post-13108258806864525112009-01-15T05:05:00.000-08:002009-01-15T05:36:24.112-08:00Why white collar "knowledge workers" think Malcom Gladwell is worth Plato<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYQ7DMWbej61FJTsyWptuunzdVYrq-P6WNmbvh_TXACeHDAvvT9P1EbhAnM2my1qRKAKc6FORJNInX2e49EefCjFvrlk8q0ulD2T0koN2-PqJ0Pk3WiIwhTq-OwYhN_p83VgyMosMd_Rw/s1600-h/Image+1.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 183px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYQ7DMWbej61FJTsyWptuunzdVYrq-P6WNmbvh_TXACeHDAvvT9P1EbhAnM2my1qRKAKc6FORJNInX2e49EefCjFvrlk8q0ulD2T0koN2-PqJ0Pk3WiIwhTq-OwYhN_p83VgyMosMd_Rw/s320/Image+1.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5291506840973682258" /></a><br />Have you heard of this guy ? I came across this insightful article :<br /><br />"<span style="font-style:italic;">Have you ever had the nagging sense that there's something not quite right with the adulation that follows Malcolm Gladwell - the author of Tipping Point? But you couldn't quite put your finger on it? We're here to help, dear reader.<br /><br />Gladwell gave two vanity "performances" in the West End - prompting fevered adulation from the posh papers - the most amazing being this Guardian editorial, titled In Praise of Malcolm Gladwell.<br /><br />It appears that we have a paradox here. A substantial subclass of white collar "knowledge workers" hails this successful nonfiction author as fantastically intelligent and full of insight - and yet he causes an outbreak of infantalisation. He's better known for his Afro than any big idea, or bold conclusion - and his insights have all the depth and originality of Readers Digest or a Hallmark greeting card. That's pretty odd.</span>"<br /><br /><a href=" http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/30/malcolm_gladwell_no/">Read full article</a>digital shAmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14158516202874600747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111851990328479845.post-26428961970322122622008-12-22T15:51:00.000-08:002008-12-23T07:52:32.406-08:00Nice "amateur" clip (?). I wonder who made that... Could it be the same ?<object width="410" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/3si1JKuoRek&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/3si1JKuoRek&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="410" height="344"></embed></object>digital shAmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14158516202874600747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111851990328479845.post-38948062361692745782008-12-22T15:49:00.000-08:002008-12-23T07:52:55.509-08:00Narcissism is not always bad : personal branding by Lasse Gjertsen<object width="410" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/8ncOAJpr3n0&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/8ncOAJpr3n0&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="410" height="344"></embed></object>digital shAmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14158516202874600747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111851990328479845.post-25423810563432882772008-09-23T03:51:00.000-07:002009-01-04T06:45:58.695-08:00Community Planning is what you get once you've done a good job with Engagement PlanningLast week I was asked why I called a "Community Planning" agency the place where I was an intern. I think it deserves a post. I would call "Community planning" a Planning aimed to build a community of customers. With Engagement Planning you define brand and customers values. But then you have to make those values come to life, and this requires a dynamic community.<br /><br />With Community Planning, you kind of forget about the brand at the beginning of the process. The first thing we used to do was to identify, for a given product or service, all the people involved in the production, the distribution and the consumption of the market segment. The idea is to reveal the underlying social network behind a specific experience and thus, to understand how the conversation about the product/service works.<br /><br />When this is done, your job is to find a proper Media strategy to connect all of them : you make the community possible. The community must allow different levels of engagement (this is the "Engagement Planning" part), because your fans will be much more active than a lambda user. For that you have to build -adaptive or not- categories. Then you have a kind of "open access intranet" and consumers are more likely to share their personal experience and their opinion.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1-KSVWqFnQ4hRMvTowH-Mc0aSBFJrBpZwrKIAuabUqUCZ2P_uakpiLUgF7wjsVJ8vcQ1Ke7NozHthpHdi6Crkr0DrgO74cOerz1rPwuLlL9K3aR64IRmAUEHps-lM2KEjemBNjZi5qEA/s1600-h/community.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1-KSVWqFnQ4hRMvTowH-Mc0aSBFJrBpZwrKIAuabUqUCZ2P_uakpiLUgF7wjsVJ8vcQ1Ke7NozHthpHdi6Crkr0DrgO74cOerz1rPwuLlL9K3aR64IRmAUEHps-lM2KEjemBNjZi5qEA/s320/community.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249719873420172114" border="0" /></a><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />The magic thing is that consumers will be involved in future innovations and they will... do your job.<br /><br />I think that's really what is called Social Media Marketing. But that's not all. The tricky part is to lead the community. A nice thing to do is <span style="font-weight: bold;">to organize events</span>. Indeed, the feeling of solidarity is only virtual on the web. But if you make people meet in "real life", they will clearly realize they're part of something. If your event is clever and offer a well-designed experience associated with what th client sells, you will have press coverage and those who couldn't come will be able to watch videos or to read articles.<br /><br />So, yes, I think that gives a glimpse of what I called "Community Planning".</div>digital shAmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14158516202874600747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111851990328479845.post-48467523720684180792008-09-20T09:11:00.000-07:002008-09-24T15:10:04.593-07:00Nice Ways to Use Melancholy in an Ad ( Epuron & Ikea ) - I Know it's Not exactly Recent but They are my Favourite examples.<div style="text-align: justify;">I don't like the old Advertising paradigm according to which you should only deal with beautiful people or just nice and cumfortable issues. It's probably true that words connoting sadness or tough events immediately affect your mood, but I think the emotional impact is worth if you're subtle enough to build a happy end. Here are two examples I really like ( let's thank <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%20http://www.redux.com/user.profile/5">Nathan Dintenfass</a> for his compilation).<br /></div><br /><br /><object height="344" width="415"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/cQbl1c63Ofo&hl=fr&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/cQbl1c63Ofo&hl=fr&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="415"></embed></object><br /><br /><object height="344" width="415"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/NeyEXt7-0jU&hl=fr&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/NeyEXt7-0jU&hl=fr&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="415"></embed></object>digital shAmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14158516202874600747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111851990328479845.post-1531018291882401312008-09-15T17:24:00.000-07:002008-09-24T15:10:38.769-07:00A Very Short Post About Personal Life and Storytelling in a Schizophrenic World<div style="text-align: justify;">Ok, Ok, I'm a sucker for Bob Dylan. It's no that I'm an "emotional fan" : I don't want to collect his panties or whatsoever, really. I don't even think he's a particularly great singer.<br /><br />But that's the thing about Bob Dylan's fans : we're just attracted, we've watched "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Direction_Home">No Direction Home"</a> by Scorsese dozens of times and afterward we try to justify our fascination with rhetorical bullshit. Just like a sect.<br /><br />Maybe Dylan was just the right man in the right place. I think Dylan is a kind of empirical <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_type">"Ideal Type" (=Pure Type)</a> of Modern Life. As a wannabe, he had fantasies about his own future. As a beginner, he was into Politics. As Establishment, he was a trendsetter. As a human, he thought he could be interested in religion. It's not that simple but, for sure, he's experienced most of the possible psychological states in the contemporary world. He knows about experience.<br /><br />Anyway, this post is about storytelling. How would you tell the life of such a guy ? Todd Haynes is clearly a genius. His movie <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0368794/">"I'm not there"</a> is a breakthrough. His idea is simple : to REALLY tell the story of Bob Dylan, you will need several characters.<br /></div><br /><object height="344" width="415"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/CZGseissqX8&hl=fr&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/CZGseissqX8&hl=fr&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="415"></embed></object><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">And that's it. A cult movie. So, Todd Haynes's target was a easy one : Dylan's fans are.. you know... Like addicts.<br /><br />But how far this principe of storytelling could be valid ? Let's take a basic customer, and your database... What if you consider each of them as Bob Dylan-like ? What would be the consequences on your statistics ?</div>digital shAmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14158516202874600747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111851990328479845.post-47868925739922779622008-09-10T13:16:00.000-07:002008-09-24T15:11:22.863-07:00Would you call a "ShowTime planner" the guy(s) who knew Dexter and Hank Moody from Californication would catch your Mother ?<div style="text-align: justify;">Creating imaginary characters to catch attraction is a thing I find really exciting.<br />I watched all the episodes of both <a href="http://www.sho.com/site/californication/home.do">Californication </a>and <a href="http://www.sho.com/site/dexter/home.do">Dexter</a>. I think Hank Moody and Dexter, the two main characters of these TV Shows, were brilliantly designed to rock.<br /><br />So, what about them ? There should be a guy who is a "planner" in a way at Showtime. Look at Dexter. It's well-known that people are fascinated by serial killers (just check the audience of movies and books dedicated to those guys).<br /><br />Why ? It's not our problem but obviously, for law-abiding and "regular people", it doesn't feel comfortable to be fascinated by serial killers. It's not correct, it's disturbing. There's a barrier. So how would you create a successful TV show about a serial killer without causing embarrassment ?<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">The <span style="font-weight: bold;">first insight</span> they use is that people have an innate sense of justice. So Dexter will only kill criminals.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Second insight</span>: clever people will soon think we promote death penalty. So Dexter will be funny, chaotic and sometimes clumsy. Dexter will experience lose of control and depression. There you go. Blockbuster TV Show.<br /></div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmB8SHl1pye4Rqgu9fZ7gcStvcEAVOIUNMw6JxW-DvZEfeqjnejjlMXt8AentBvGhIYmzd8zx0IeiYjUMaxoSk77CdcL7BNPGTKfi5DgNqvgN8YPBbGdOzGItPd6uewEw9ZWVF7WNKFYU/s1600-h/dexter.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmB8SHl1pye4Rqgu9fZ7gcStvcEAVOIUNMw6JxW-DvZEfeqjnejjlMXt8AentBvGhIYmzd8zx0IeiYjUMaxoSk77CdcL7BNPGTKfi5DgNqvgN8YPBbGdOzGItPd6uewEw9ZWVF7WNKFYU/s320/dexter.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5244490396109164514" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">And Hank Moody ? The same pattern.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">First insight</span> : cynical people who don't give a fuck and spend their lives having fun seem to be charismatic to "regular" people who lead a "normal" life. They're spicy and medias make them look as if they had no constraints at all. That's the way rock stars get their audience. But the fascination could cause embarrassment here too. "It's not correct".<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Second insight</span> : clever people will think we promote operational nihilism and the "not giving a fuck" way of life. So Hank will be like that because he's in love. He will know he destroys himself. It won't be his fault. There you go. Blockbuster TV Show.<br /></div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN7B4uBJ4ngkfREagWrkQRII5RGfbO7Ks0wF_JEzF1BAOvAxiLhgOu2_uE4Quk3r5aOYUkbmr_VieADjAdPhHdkdPslci6Y06qY9vp5MhdEZbyGD_vrtancGQ3EwwtOquUM0slBCMT5PY/s1600-h/hank.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN7B4uBJ4ngkfREagWrkQRII5RGfbO7Ks0wF_JEzF1BAOvAxiLhgOu2_uE4Quk3r5aOYUkbmr_VieADjAdPhHdkdPslci6Y06qY9vp5MhdEZbyGD_vrtancGQ3EwwtOquUM0slBCMT5PY/s320/hank.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5244490655743397250" border="0" /></a>digital shAmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14158516202874600747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111851990328479845.post-62459319842364852042008-09-09T04:32:00.000-07:002008-09-24T15:42:00.805-07:00The "Social Media" Thing is Not About Technology, It's About the Mind : Cities Are Social Medias Too<div style="text-align: justify;">I've just came across a post by Ben Carr, "It's time We Define Social Media", an invitation to clarify what we mean by "social media". I must say I don't totally agree with his definition of social media, but it's a nice starting point. Here is it :<br /><br />" Social Media is the use of electronic and Internet tools for the purpose of sharing and discussing information and experiences with other human beings in more efficient ways."<br /><br />I'm probably too Sociology-focused but there's something crucial missing there : the nature of human interactions. According to my humble definition, cities are social medias as well and what's happening with the web already happened with the emergence of metropolies to some extent.<br /><br />Sociologist Georg Simmel wrote a very nice text in 1903 called "The Metropolis and Mental life" in which he notoriously defined the notion of blasé. But more interesting, he claimed that cities reshaped social interactions and had an impact on individual minds. Indeed, anecdotal things such as seeing hundreds of faces everyday, not knowing your neighboors, being anonymous, changed our perception of life, of others...and the way we think about action.<br /><br />Now, that's also what's happening with the web. The web modifies social interactions and ties. Following your friends on Twitter and reading their status on Facebook stimulate your nervous system in radically new ways. It's changing the way we think about others.<br />We're just so aware of what everybody's doing it's insane.<br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrbvMhajqPLZDfIyJy6IhcbhsXvqwMjnWbPguMlTwNPHfe4wLQPxaJCiUlFfab3ufFobNWAkkHiFFLvv8lji2k7MXyI7H0qvzI4ofIBN_je5yiourkeeMO-ZixAywO8J3WKKGwLlwz_0Y/s1600-h/2192620905_06ca5392e1_o.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrbvMhajqPLZDfIyJy6IhcbhsXvqwMjnWbPguMlTwNPHfe4wLQPxaJCiUlFfab3ufFobNWAkkHiFFLvv8lji2k7MXyI7H0qvzI4ofIBN_je5yiourkeeMO-ZixAywO8J3WKKGwLlwz_0Y/s320/2192620905_06ca5392e1_o.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249720367238047586" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">So, Ok, the web is a technology, a city is not a technology. But both are Social Medias.<br /><br />Let's try a first definition of my own :<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">A Social Media is a set of rules shaping social interactions both quantitatively and qualitatively. It defines the emotional or physical "distance" between each of us. Social Medias have an impact on the way we think about others and thus collective actions.</span><br /><br />According to this definition, both cities and the web are Social Medias.<br /><br />If you want to know more about Urban Sociology, check out the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_school_%28sociology%29">Chicago School</a> on Wikipedia.</div>digital shAmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14158516202874600747noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111851990328479845.post-70206082561495852452008-09-09T02:23:00.000-07:002008-09-24T15:12:50.748-07:00The Second Dot-Com Bubble = Bankers don't know anything about Web 2.0<div style="text-align: justify;">Recently I've been reading some articles about the second dot-com bubble for a paper I'm writing. I studied just a bit of Economics and I'm clearly not an expert in that field, but I wonder if statisticians are the right people for speculating on the web 2.0. Of course it's not my money but still... The profitability of social medias for investors rests on advertising and marketing and this is my industry.<br /><br />To me "<span style="font-style: italic;">speculating on web 2.0</span>" means trying to answer the question "<span style="font-style: italic;">will mankind really go digital?</span>", and this sounds more like an anthropological problem.<br /><br />I use a tag I called "limits" on my <a href="http://delicious.com/madshaman">Delicious account</a> and this is for collecting data that tend to cool you down when you're one of those dreaming of a new world derived from the cyberspace.<br /><br />The most obvious limit to digitalisation is probably the time it takes to really use social medias (<a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/real_people_dont_have_time_for_social_media.php">see this article from Sarah Perez</a>). More and more companies tend to forbid access to Facebook because it makes them lose tons of money. Hehe. So what's going on ? Are we all going to wake up with a hangover ? Are we high ? I think it's something you should be interested in if you really want to understand what the web will be like in 10 years.<br /><br />It's a possibility (among hundreds of others) that <a href="http://allpsych.com/journal/internetaddiction.html">Internet addicts</a> are avant-guardists after all, people so involved that they warn us of what it could be like if we all go digital. That's why I try not to forget what <a href="http://www.pourquoitucours.fr/indexgb.htm">my first mentor</a> used to tell me : "<span style="font-style: italic;">the web is designed to help people meet in real life</span>". I don't totally agree, as I have some 100% digital good friends but he made a point.<br /><br />Actually one of them is taking a PhD in Clinical Psychology in Lyon. We chatted about Facebook last week. He thinks Facebook is fundamentally dirty, exploiting obvious flaws of humans such as perverted narcissism (going to a party just to be shot by a camera just to be able to post a pic on my profile) and voyeurism (spying on your friends and friends of friends). This is well-known.<br /><br />I don't mean that digital is bad, because I breathe digital, but there are issues to watch carefully.<br /><br />My point was just that I really don't understand why major firms invest so much money in web 2.0 on basis of mere quantitative data. Well, they probably get in touch with people involved in Anthropology or Psychology but do they really care? ... What do you think ?</div>digital shAmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14158516202874600747noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8111851990328479845.post-56734191768634371472008-08-30T01:34:00.000-07:002008-09-24T15:13:36.412-07:00Intrusive Marketing is not always Dirty : What about this "Happening" ?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKl9lJKAwDFl4w1U-WsG5Q2y-Z79t9kpkXjmKEWvKeBZaWG0WkzPN0pdkxjER-MxsBpiXavpxilYvDbpi4Mfmkjd6hfZ1-3j1Y7ml8x4trEquPZYqYURFZ-qkn5nzd1qCLuxzFmLjbmnI/s1600-h/google"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKl9lJKAwDFl4w1U-WsG5Q2y-Z79t9kpkXjmKEWvKeBZaWG0WkzPN0pdkxjER-MxsBpiXavpxilYvDbpi4Mfmkjd6hfZ1-3j1Y7ml8x4trEquPZYqYURFZ-qkn5nzd1qCLuxzFmLjbmnI/s320/google" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5240232288801676402" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Christophe Bruno is a net artist. His experiment is intrusive. People don't opt-in, it's a "happening". But what he does has nothing to do with spamming or boring you with a bloody pop-up.<br /><br />He calls it "poetry advertisment" and I must admit I like it very much. He bought adwords and spoiled the economic and cold mechanisms of Google. In this experiment, if you typed "<span style="font-style: italic;">money</span>", the message "<span style="font-style: italic;">Arrghhh ! Don't do that again !</span>" appeared.<br /><br />See more details here : <a href="http://www.iterature.com/adwords/">adwords experiment (christophe bruno)</a><br /><br />So, is that intrusive ? yes. But it's worth. Now, why ? Actually it's difficult to justify. Just because he's an artist, standing on the margins, and more able to reveal underlying issues I guess (oh, yes, i forgot to mention, he's French).<br /><br />He's just here to remind you were typing "money" or "sex", or both, in Google...<br /><br />But, more interesting, I think he tried to tell us that Google is not something merely "useful". What we type in Google is sometimes irrational.. We expect big answers from big questions..<br /><br />Google is also like a hole, an universal psychoanalyst where we all type our hidden desires..<br />Google, tell me what's the meaning of life... !<br /><br />The firts adword he bought ? "Symptom"<br /><br />I wonder if "happenings" can be used in advertising, and under what circumstances... I'm not sure we really have to be obsessed with "opt-in advertising". But, for sure, to be intrusive, you have to be more than excellent... What do you think ?</div>digital shAmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14158516202874600747noreply@blogger.com0