business

Change the world or go home.
What does it really mean?

Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in the 15th century changed the world, fed the Renaissance and powered the scientific revolution – where once the pre-Copernican earth was a flat disc in a heliocentric universe it was now a mere spherical satellite at the dependent mercy of the ever raging Sun, the death of God, Aristotelian physics, and the triumph of Paine’s Age of Reason.

Gutenberg’s invention also precipitates the archetype of mass communication where publishing power remains squarely in the hands of the elite. If we consider that modern advertising perhaps had its foundation in the military propaganda created during World War One, but was really born through the spread of television in America, propagated through the NBC introduction of the commercial break rather than a single programme sponsor then technologies such as television and radio support elitism & further transform media into commercial opportunity.

The current media overload, saturation, and the whole ad` space shouting match basically means that advertising and marketing has been forced to evolve from the interruptive, intermittent, high frequency, WOW factor linearity of the early Fifties and the ungainly mass media signals of print, billboards, radio-television commercials, and even online banners to Permission based programmes that build upon reciprocal loyalty, and in doing so ethically and respectfully, create greater permission and therefore increasing opportunities.

Intelligent conversational media projects illuminate just how smart, positive and responsive technology becomes socially responsible, or even how mobile technologies, for example an iPhone or digital camera are intrinsically creating new social fabric; that both social change and technology seem to have become reciprocal entities built upon choice, consent, collaboration and inherent networks that grow smarter & faster. The mobile phone may provide the next truly big ad space, and perhaps bolster a new elite in Telecommunications companies.

Social media sites depend upon integrating technology with and creating interaction and conversation between people to build shared-meanings, values, dialogue and to challenge inertia through the power of collaborative conscience (embedded in the web) to create change. Closed social habitats like MySpace hinge upon the almost televisual, hermetic relegation of choice, freedom, movement, compatibility, independence, and transparency to concepts of audience numbers & advertising.

For example Buzz the people is a New Zealand website that makes it very easy to help charities whilst informing New Zealand companies what you think about their advertising, products and service. Have your say on politics and current New Zealand issues, influence media and corporate organisations, win prizes and donate points to the charity of your choice just for giving your views. Great!

This is a very clever method of market research [& unbelievably, positive social engineering] conceived by BuzzChannel, an Auckland agency. Making communication between government, companies and their customers, the general public, seamless, desirable and socially responsible is something to be recommended…

Apart from having a ridiculously pretentious name – which these days sounds about as refreshing as New Labour, or perhaps New Prosthetic – what is it with ambient media?

If used correctly ambient could really challenge traditional forms and create new, dynamic messages. In effect it`s merely the same old advertising in new non-traditional places. At your dentist, on your beermat, bus ticket, plasma screen at airport… The thing is it just cannot deliver on the level of personalisation and control we already expect to encounter and don’t receive in real life or on the interweb. Perhaps it`s too guerilla for some companies, perhaps it’s too  hard to track the impact, make it accountable, deliver the figures, too expensive – it takes a leap of faith….and until supratechnologies such as digital paper, digital air even, universal unlimited bandwidth wi-fi and intelligence/choice/personalisation really arrive, and twist our  heads into knots, still a fucking clumsy old fashioned pile of ugly screens and boxes plastered around the place; it’s the leprosy of the advertising world.

Most ambient hardware quite rightly collects nothing much more than the attention of vandals; kiosks filled with Coca-Cola and chewing gum, dogged with errors and built like monolithic storm trooper Daleks the screens were so high only giants could read their intended messages. Yeah the ambient medium is different but it`s still essentially someone shouting in your face. In this sense all advertising is subliminal programming and will become ever more nefarious in attempts to command our attention.

The mobile phone will probably represent the next breakthrough in advertising space inheriting the internet`s latest “intelligent strategies”. Mobile companies are probably looking forward to a time when their virtual real estate becomes the most sought after. But again there is still no excuse for poor quality advertising even if it is highly targeted – we are resistant to bland, poorly encoded messages.

If I want to be advertised to I`d like it to be so personalised, so INVISIBLE: I choose it myself and moreover when I want it too. Myspace take note, your advertising is crass, vulgar and irritating, it is still SPAM. Anyway, when it comes to selecting a platform for your art think on this: if you want to hide a tree – hide it in a forest. Advertising ceases to become so irritating the moment it is targeted at exactly the right prospect through the right means. But this vision encapsulates a nightmare of Orwellian implications.