As part of research I am doing for an MA, I have started a project that I would call democratic brand development. The question is can a brand be determined by mass collaboration? So, as an experiment I have started a group on Facebook called ‘The Blank Page’. The concept is that people bring meaning to brands not brands bring meaning to people. Whether this will work or not is also part of the experiment. It may be dependent on one or two things.
In Maclom Gladwells book Tipping Point, he maps out a complex chain of events that need to happen in order for something to take off. There are specific players in all of these events. If we were to take Gladwells ideas and apply them to Arctic Monkeys for instance, we would (in theory) find that there is one person who is responsible for breaking that band. That one person is a communicator. They would know a lot of people and have an innate ability to persuade them. So perhaps there was one guy or girl who loved Arctic Monkeys. They also had a page on Myspace which had potentially thousands of ‘friends’ and for what ever reason that person got into the band. They then used the internet to broadcast that they had found this great band and everybody should hear about them. In the process they managed to persuade and influence a lot of people that this band was (in the vernacular of Paris Hilton) ‘Hot’.
Arctic Monkeys catch fire.
So what is likely to happen with my little experiment here do you think?
More and more I am seeing a theme of complete reversal in society. The old maxim ‘form follows function’ has been turned on its head and its spitting out some interesting results in the process. So is there a way of harnessing the power of the internet as a tool of creation? Don Tapscott hints at this idea when he talks about motorcycle manufacturing over the internet. So if the future of industry is mass collaboration, what is the future of branding?
In the meantime, if anyone out there feels as though they have strong powers of persuasion and know a lot of people, we’d like to hear from you.
This graff was taken from an article on the site Hitwise by Heather Hopkins. The article was written in 2005 so a little while ago. We’re all fascinated by the story of Arctic Monkeys and it has been wheeled out time and time again as an example of the internet’s unbridled power as distributor and communicator.
I was having a drink with a friend who works in the music industry. We got talking about various things, a lot of which related to David Byrnes article and Chris Anderson’s Long Tail. He explained to me the story behind the rise of Arctic Monkeys. I hate to bore those of you who already are in the know but in any case here it is.
Arctic Monkey’s success began when they were picked up by heavy hitting management company, Wildlife. Wildlife then represented the band and were picked up by Domino Records (one of the largest independent labels in the world) whom were no doubt wetting their pants at the thoughts of signing a band with an already loyal fan base.
The big question however is what tipped it for the band? At what point did the band become an irresistible venture for Wildlife? The flip side of this is that Wildlife were pretty quick off the blocks in reacting to the bands on line success and may have been able to use the internet as a sort of cyber barometer.
What we can see from the graff is how AM went from having moderate success on line to being a massive selling band.
What Heather Hopkins over looks in her article is that in effect it was the music industry that was behind the bands success, not necessarily the internet.
I’m not disputing the bands on line success, what I am disputing is the Chicken or the Egg. If the internet is as powerful a tool as people like David Byrne or even Tapscott are claiming, why haven’t we seen multiple stories like this one? With the exception of Arcade Fire, Arctic Monkeys are the only band I know of that are touted as having ‘made it’ on the internet.
Can anyone name me more?
Regardless of how the band made it, their story is a very convenient brand story. Initial success on line may well have been there to begin with but in addition to this both Wildlife and Domino obviously saw the massive potential in selling an act that had already developed their very own ‘Band Story’.
People generally don’t associate the written word with sound but for type designers and typographers this is an obvious extension of their medium. I love Typradio. I think it’s a fascinating resource for a very niche market (another blip on the long tail). There are one or two stand out interviews but one of my favorites has to be William de Ridder telling stories. Listen to these if you dare. It may change your mind.
Don Tapscott talks about the arguments in his book Wikinomics at ‘Google Talks’. Don raises some very interesting examples of how democracy on the Web can be used to great effect.
Early on in the talk Tapscott lays out the ground map when he says:
“You put a technology revolution with a demographic revolution, you get a social revolution”
He later goes on to apply this model to political democracy. Tapscott talks about the work he was doing with the Clinton administration that could have changed American politics for ever. These ideas suggest a change in humanity. After Gutenberg, the way people thought was changed for ever by the written word. Now the internet has changed the way people think and interact. It’s exciting times.
However, during the industrial revolution there were the Luddites. It will be very interesting to see what form the contemporary version takes (open source saboteurs maybe?).
I found myself having a rather tedious discussion recently with someone who argued that ‘it is important to consider the negative consequences of technology, that it couldn’t all be good’. Perhaps I was talking to an incarnation of a modern day Luddite but this sort of attitude exemplifies the usual sound bites people trot out in the pub. The next step of the argument generally slides into ‘did you know Google are collecting all this information on everybody?’ to which I usually reply ‘I’ve thought about this and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not that important’. Only a narcissist could feel threatened with the concept of shared information.
This rambling text has reminded me of a story my girlfriend told me about someone she knew going to Holland on holiday from France and being shocked at the open nature of some of the Dutch houses who sported no curtains and whos content was left exposed for all to see. This may be a good analogy for Web 2.0. As Tapscott says if you’re going to be seen naked you’d want to be pretty fit and in some way it raises the bar of existence.So how will all of this thinking, this revolution effect humanity? Is it possible that democracy on the internet could cure the common cold?
Chris Anderson (editor of Wired Magazine & author of The Long Tail) has some very interesting theories on future business models. He argues that the future is free. Recently someone passed me on this Wired article written by David Byrne on similar models for the future of the music business.
David Byrne suggests that (like Anderson’s concept) in the future, musicians will distribute all of their music for free (com Radio Head). Byrne borrows from Anderson’s argument that if the value of something that once was your main staple has been reduced to almost zero, make it free and figure out how to make money around it.
This concept made me think back on something else I had been looking into, the emergence of beach culture in the late 19th century. Relating it to this historic likening, beaches all over Britain were aided with the advent of yet another distribution channel; the railway. The advantage the beaches had of course was that they were free and open to every body, providing the honey pot around which all sorts of other industry could be based.
The one problem I have with David Byrne’s rhetoric is that there is something missing. True, digital distribution has opened up all sorts of possibilities but in order for this to become a level playing field, start up musicians need that other one vital component; marketing.
Having been at one point a full time musician myself, I am aware of the complexities involved in keeping a band off the ground. There are many other overheads to be considered besides recording and distribution. You can’t run the most basic of musical operations on just thin air.
How can Byrne’s model be applied to music makers successfully?
This January I am heading over to Holland and Amsterdam where I will be teaming up with some fellow Type fanatics to check out the new possibilities brought to us by MITs Fablab.
I have no idea what to expect from Fablab. This technology could transform all of our working lives. Fablab was originally intended for developing countries, enabling people to create objects normally attributed to large scale production. Examples of what Fablab is capable of is given in a piece in Wired magazine:
“In India, farmers created measurement tools to ensure a safe milk supply and measure fat content, and women found a way to scan and print carved wooden blocks used for a local kind of embroidery. In a separate project, villagers designed small LED lights for use in areas lacking electricity.
Villagers in Ghana, meanwhile, harnessed solar power to make electricity and cook food rather than relying on firewood.”
With the development of things like Fablab, it looks now as though the gap between what we make with our hands and what we produce using technology is rapidly closing.
The title of this blog is borrowed from the Japanese product designer Naoto Fukasawa. Naoto Fukasawa is perhaps best known for some of his contributions to MUJI and for inspiring Apple’s Jonathan Ives (designer of the ipod and all things Mac).
I’m hoping to generate some discussion relating to the field of Design as a whole and ask questions that I hope provoke answers.
I encourage anyone out there reading to contribute to this discussion.
