Pete Jackson, junior planner at a London-based marketing communications agency, and formerly Britains 12th most celebrated Duck Hitman - documents his cerebrations on branded life, and his journey up the agency ladder.
Blogging, social networking, myspace, facebook, flickr...
At their core, the attraction of these many websites to many youngsters and some older users - is the ability to express one's self online, through sharing thoughts, opinions, experiences and many many many photographs. This would be unsurprising to the many psychologists who explain the ego-centric selfishness of teenage angst as a functional introspective period of 'defining one's identity'.
However, how do you explain the attraction of self-expression in countries that are inherently sensored, highly vigilant and sensitive to 'controversial' editorial??
According to the China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC) there are between 10 and 30 miilion bloggers in China - almost constituting around a fifth of the world's blogging community, and this from a country that has a broadband penetration level of around 4%. According to CNNIC, the popularity of blogging is increasing three times faster that the overall rate of internet adoption.
So why is it so popular? Blogging has certainly hit some pretty hard walls since its inception in China. The 50,000 strong internet police has shut many blogs down, imprisoning some 'extreme' perpertrators of free speach. This has led many Chinese bloggers to speak out against this infringement of self-expression, and not just against the Chinese state. In an open letter to Google, famed Chinese blogger Isaac Mao berated the American giant for bowing to Chinese censorship laws in order to get their search engine into China.
It is possible that Chinese internet users are just excited by the internet, and want to express their excitement through their blogs. More interesting though, is the possibility that years of censorship in China has fostered a community of people desperate to express themselves freely, and are finding this carthartic outlet within the web's blogging craze.
Back in West, it seems we are all getting tired of Facebook - the social network giant has received another large wad of cash from Hong Kong, but has failed to grow new subscribers month-on-month for the first time this year, and has even got its own pantomime homage (see link below) on another web 2.0 site, youtube...oh the irony.
So i've decided to read Naomi Klein's book No Logo for what essentially is the third time...
I've just finished the chapter 'No Space'. It describes how corporations have invaded every minute aspect of our lives in the quest for owning pieces of our minds. Now, not only can we convey our opinions, lifestyles and political persuassion through the simple adorning of nylon garments bearing block letters and small horses, we can also convey our anarchtic rebellion against these 'evils' ... by adorning or consuming brands. Klein points out that no area of life is left unbranded - tourists who go "off the beaten track" for example, are not rat-race rebelling individualists seeking out new canvases for life's experience, but experience-marketing's victums of pre-packaged adventure designed as a short cut to feelings of freedom and self-actualisation.
It got me thinking that it would be interesting to know Klein's view of how web 2.0 and the user-generated blogosphere is affecting marketed space. Yes, messers facebook and youtube provide advertisers with yet another arrow to add to the marketing arsenal, but it is also possible that these sites provide escapism from everyday branded life; Chinese kids in their bedrooms playing guitar compete with America's pop idols whilst Highschool dance-offs eclipse Michael Jackson videos. In the media-owned world, we are talked at by advertisers and told whats cool, in the media-generated world, the cream rises to the top by its own fruition - untainted, un-corrupted, and unbranded.
To have a great idea, have a lot of them - Thomas Edison
Earning your stripes in the agency world can be a daunting experience. Billed as truth seekers and problem solvers, planners are held up as the strategic heartbeat of project adland. In the plannersphere, the junior planner, over and above functional and robotic duties (research, information gathering etc) - may find it difficult to add value in the strategic sense, given a lack of experience and authority.
However juniors are potentially a weapon of considerable value. Free from the blinkering shackles of routine, habit and process, they should be the incorrigibly questioning devils advocate, the breath of fresh air that queries the norm, providing the platform for pioneering and visionary new practice and ideas in the agency.
However such logical theorem proposed within the comfortable confines of a blog, is harder to replicate in practice within the very real day-to-day agency grind. With hope i refer to Edison's councel as quoted above. It was his mantra, that truly great ideas were the product of hundreds.
As such, the junior planner should be a mechanical 'why?' machine, churning out 'why?s' like rounds from a Tommy Gun, hoovering up learnings from the 'obvious' and pouncing on crumbs of opportunity when the 'whys' can not be answered.
This blog will be a homage to the 'why?', and a cartartic outlet for real-world observations about account planning, the behaviour of brands, and agency life in London.
Blogging, social networking, myspace, facebook, flickr...
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