October 1, 2009

Thoughts on Social-Media Revolution v. Advertising

So last night I was watching TV, critiquing commercials via my inner monologue, as per usual, when I noticed something which is likely glaringly obvious to many but which I had only just realized: there is a disparity, a huge one, between the “social media revolution” that we’ve been inundated with these last couple years and traditional advertising.

Television advertising has largely stayed the same (discounting all the ads capitalizing on the trend towards living “green”): create a problem—real or imaginary—and present your solution to said problem, all the while appealing to your potential consumer, speaking to them about them. The most obvious of the me-centric advert format is the US Army campaign “Army of One”. Now, the army is a bit unique compared to the other me-centric ad campaigns, nevertheless completely exemplary of how television advertising and almost 100% of television programs are geared towards appealing to and enforcing the self-centered attitude that recent generations have been exposed to. Television in America teaches you that you are special, unique, you deserve whatever you want and you deserve the best. Life is about you and no one else—you are what matters most.

The interesting thing is comparing that with current trends in online media. Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, youtube, this very blog: all aimed at “sharing” with others, creating “community” (virtual as it may be). Facebook even changed the submit button on its status-input field to “share” rather than “post.” Social media is about (supposedly) connecting people (“connect” being another term that is thrown around a lot), creating connections where there were none before. On the surface, social media is about bringing down the walls that separated people, whether they be businesses and consumers, or simply peer groups. But the contrast between advertising and social media makes me wonder what is really at the core of this “revolution.”

Now, I’m not going to be stingy: social media has affected behavior, no doubt. It is being leveraged very well for purposes of creating customers and furthering companies’ brands, but is it really a “revolution?” I now know exactly where my friends are at any given time (Foursquare app on iPhone) should they decide to share that information. According to the good folks at Merriam-Webster, a revolution necessitates a complete and fundamental change of paradigm. It affects the way of thinking as well as the behavior.

But, if in spite of the social media “revolution,” the tendency towards self-absorption is still at the core, then what we’re talking about as it relates to social media is less a social revolution and more of a technological revolution. It has simply provided a new medium for our boundless narcissism to occupy. Even using the term “revolution” insinuates it is something very special, and you will, by association, be special if you become involved in it.

So why the gulf between TV ads like “Army of One” and the social? It’s simple: television advertising hasn’t veered away from its me-focused approach during the course of this social media revolution because it hasn’t had to. People are less focused on sharing and creating genuine community and more concerned with how they will personally be affected by things, and how best they can be served and satisfied. After all, we’re all very special.

***

Note: Ok, yeah there are commercials appealing to community, but not the vast majority of them. And despite the tone of this entry, I friggin love twitter and facebook and will be broadcasting this bloggins via social media.

10:38am  |   URL: http://designwithmeaning.tumblr.com/post/201822280/thoughts-on-social-media-revolution-v-advertising
June 30, 2009

Thoughts on “Slow Marketing”

So I feel like this blog has been taking on a very negative tone, and I apologize for that. Perhaps it’s because of the hard economic times we live in, which seems very acute at the moment in the interactive/marketing realm, but there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon.

This article was published in Ad Age today, and I’m thankful that I’m not the only person that feels the juggernaut we know as “social media” has taken focus off of the fundamentals. I think the beta site released by CP+B is a good example of this. I was pretty taken aback when I saw it, although it is just a beta site so my hope is that it will be given a bit more visual appeal.

With sites like this, I see function being given dominion over form—for instance, the CPB site has very little form. A few monochromatic shades of greyish-brown and a hodgepodge of “social media” garbage. It seems that any traditional sense of visual hierarchy has been thrown out, the focus is on the youtube video, and it all begs the question “Okay, you’ve incorporated ‘social media’ features into the site. Very trendy, nice. But why does your audience care?”  Is it a megaphone with which to shout your relevance from the rooftops?

As with company blogs becoming the hot trend several years ago, such has been the case with youtube channels, facebook pages and twitter accounts (which, mind you, have something like a 65% abandonment rate). While the influence of these types of sites is well-deserved and well-leveraged in terms of functionality and inclusivity, it seems that the dressed-down designs of these sites has also been adopted into the modern design lexicon, perhaps to make users feel more comfortable with the site?

But what I am sure of is that this abandonment and lack of visual appeal is not going to last in its current form cause, let’s face it: what does these days? The social-media craze has grown extremely big, extremely fast, and lots of marketers have jumped on the band-wagon with little regard for its implications further down the road—when all these companies have abandoned their twitter or facebook pages for more traditional, targetable means of effective communication.

It’s not nearly enough to focus solely on form or solely on function, they must all work together and support one another. That’s what we call a “fundamental,” and there is no reason that fundamentals and exciting new technology can’t co-exist.

2:21pm  |   URL: http://designwithmeaning.tumblr.com/post/133075632/thoughts-on-slow-marketing
June 24, 2009

Design With(out) Meaning

I’ve been getting steadily more aggravated lately with my own field. A few months back—usually the standard shelf-life of any interactive design trend—a number of agencies with high visibility began moving away from all flash agency sites in lieu of sites that, if not built on an actual blog platform, at the very least looked “bloggy”.  Why? Well the reasons are legion, some of which being they are highly malleable (to a degree), they are much more SEO friendly (which research and IA people love), and they have very little overhead; little to no time to develop and re-skinning them is easy. These all sound like great things, and they are. As some people have pointed out the all-flash site is a dying breed (though this is debatable, and don’t bring it up to an AS3 developer unless you’re ready for a fight).

The problem, at least to me, is because of the nature of interactive design it is extremely susceptible to design trends. Don’t get me wrong, design trends aren’t a terrible thing. But they become a problem when they are no longer justified in their use and, instead, employed because some other, bigger, cooler company decided it was right for them. Emulating (well, copying) another company does not guarantee you will have the same success as them and may just promise the very opposite.

We can’t forget what makes a “creative” agency successful. It’s not just a product; a design; a block of copy. It is the ingenuity of the group. It’s their approach to problem solving—their own unique solution and attitude that sets them apart. That’s what clients are paying for. So why would an agency position themselves as anything other than unique?

As for the “bloggy” agency site trend itself, sure, it serves its purpose fine. It is updatable. It is simple. It is SEO friendly. And that’s great—if you want to design blogs for your clients. But what it doesn’t do is leverage the creativity of the group and communicate to clients, potential and otherwise, why your company is unique.

Additionally, it puts function over form. I was taught, during my days in art school, that the elements of a design should support each other. If one element of a composition did nothing to support the rest of the composition, it was superfluous and served to distract—it should be removed. And in the same way, it’s a distraction to see sites whose design seems more of an afterthought or a formality rather than something to support and strengthen the content and the over-arching concept.

In the end, if we all choose to do the same thing, then we have trivialized creativity and, essentially, said that it is no longer relevant in our field, or that it has no inherent value to clients.  It doesn’t take a lot of creativity to say “Well, they are doing that whole blog approach, so let’s just do that.”  This is ironic to me as the opportunity to be creative in the interactive space is what attracted me—and I assume others—to this field in the beginning.

1:18pm  |   URL: http://designwithmeaning.tumblr.com/post/129485450/design-with-out-meaning
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June 23, 2009

Bad Design

Being an art director/designer at a small interactive shop, I get to interview my fair share of potential interns. It goes with the territory. But, recently I’ve become very disconcerted with a trend I see emerging from these interviews. Bad design. Now, yes, we’re talking about interns here who likely only have student work in their book so of course some of it is going to be very rough—that’s not what I’m referring to. Looking at someone’s book at least tells you about their potential and their character, as well as where their passion lies (presuming that they have any passion in the first place).

So I am going to attempt to rationalize this trend by attributing it to four culprits: understanding, education, technology, and entitlement.

Understanding.

It all begins here, with understanding. The advertising industry has been glorified for many years as a profession where rules don’t exist and imaginations roam free like the wild buffalo of the midwestern prairie. Where people work hard and party even harder (okay this is more or less true), and the more crass and politically incorrect you are, the more successful you will be. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a job at one of these places affording you can condescend to your friends that they sit in cubes and your office is an open environment full of colors and  completely devoid of any fluorescent lighting. And you may get lucky some day.

The problem with this understanding is that it doesn’t include the design part of being a designer. It does, however, include the part about having thick-framed glasses to augment the tight jeans and afghan look while carrying around a Moleskine journal for documenting fantastically creative ideas (a journal which likely remains suspiciously empty).

Good designers require more than just a uniform and a few key accessories. They require creativity and a unique perspective. They require discipline, passion, devotion to finding the right solution to the problem they face, and an open mind to try new ways to solve those problems.

Design should not be trivialized and reduced to some 19-year-old’s chic, hipster idea of what being a designer should look like and face the reality of what being a designer actually is.

Now that we understand the root of this problem we can move on to the second issue..

Technology.

If you’re like me, you’ve noticed the number of “designers” growing exponentially. It seems that there are more and more of them graduating each year and I think one of the most obvious reasons for this is the ease and accessibility to the industry that Adobe has afforded so many over the last decade. As the programs became more sophisticated and intuitive, the number of people that decided they could be a designer cause they got a pirated copy and did a logo for their cousin’s band back in high school sky-rocketed. Unfortunately, knowing about Photoshop filters doesn’t make you a designer. The number of graduating design majors would be drastically reduced if design was done the way it was 20 years ago—with elbow grease and much swearing.

The other issue with technology is this: it seems that a lot of schools, even design schools, focus much more on how to use these programs and how to be technically savvy rather than stressing craft. These programs are just tools; a means to an end, and shouldn’t serve as a distraction. Knowing all the keyboard shortcuts doesn’t make you better at your craft.

Education.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that, despite the marketing industry relying heavily on interactive design, social media and other applications, the art schools seem to be lagging in formalizing degree programs geared towards this. The fact of the matter is that the topography of the interactive marketing terrain is changing so fast with every passing day that it can’t be ignored. This poses a challenge, not only for institutions of higher learning, but also towards the agencies that produce the work. This is why it’s not enough to just want to be a designer for the perceived glamour and pretentiousness of it, but it requires a high level of devotion. Reading about it, thinking about it, and constantly trying new things to realize their potential are necessary, daily practices for a designer if they want to stay relevant in a field this dynamic.

This should be drilled into the young designers’ mind, in school and in professional practice.

Entitlement.

The last factor I’ll discuss is a perceived sense of entitlement by a lot of young “creatives.” It consists of an attitude that seems to say “I got my degree from the College of Being Awesome and Creative and Having a Bad-ass Job” so now that I’ve graduated, please hand me my job. Unfortunately, that is not how it works. Again, this is where passion becomes a necessary trait for the young designer. If  you want something (like that dream job), you are going to have to put up a fight for it. Be confident and maybe even a little arrogant. Show the world that you believe in your work and your way of viewing problems. Show the world that you have a unique perspective on design and are willing to experiment—essentially, that you are willing to be creative. After all, that’s why you wanted to be a designer in the first place…I hope.

*Note: This isn’t intended to come off cocky, nor is it intended to make it sound like I believe I have mastered my craft. On the contrary, I am learning every day and am just as guilty of making bad design-decisions as anyone else. The important thing to take away from this rant is to focus on learning and having a drive to improve. There will always be a designer that is better than you. If you’re smart, you might put your ego aside and try to learn from them.

As the great Paul Rand once said: “Don’t try to be original, just try to be good.”

5:16pm  |   URL: http://designwithmeaning.tumblr.com/post/128968577/bad-design
June 15, 2009

“Stay Current or Die”

I ran across this bit of insight from a user on site I frequent and must say I agreecompletely and have believed this for a while.

“Print, broadcast, interactive…I think all of these will soon be one cohesive medium. Technology changes everyday. Interactive is expanding rilly fast. UI doesn’t even touch the face of it and is such a broad topic.

Right now I think these things are what’s already here or what’s upcoming. The next big boom so to speak:

Mobile (Been here but will be exploding very soon. I’m talking more than just iPhone apps).

Augmented Reality (With all the new motion capture shit going on, I think this tech will be getting REAL popular really soon. I can see this technology getting integrated with broadcast too).

Interactive TV (Just starting to get here. This is where I believe everything will be soon. Lazy folks like me would rather be on a couch watching TV than in an office chair in front of a computer monitor. I can see mobile and augmented reality being a big part of this as well).

I think designers need to know more about dev and technology…If you can’t hang, expect to get paid McWages. Gotta stay current or die. “

4:17pm  |   URL: http://designwithmeaning.tumblr.com/post/124166045/stay-current-or-die