Citizen Space

I was at the launch of the Home Office’s anti-binge-drinking campaign in Covent Garden yesterday.

It’s an ‘across-the-line’ campaign including TV ads, online ‘viral’ video and, as I saw yesterday, physical/ambient advertising.

The launch ‘event’, such as it was, was centred around an unused shop-front near Covent Garden. The Home Office had rented the space and used the shop windows to display mannequins; however, rather than showcasing fashionable outfits or the latest cookware or whatever else mannequins normally showcase, these had been posed, dressed and made up to represent beautiful people in the throes of drunken idiocy, pain and/or humiliation.

Thus we had girls being sick, guys kicking stereos across rooms and, er, some other things that weren’t as easy to make out. The installations are designed to match up with the TV ads, all centred around
the question ‘you wouldn’t start a night like this so why end it that way?’.

I was pleased to learn from one of the Home Office representatives in attendance that this campaign had been exhaustively researched and put together following consultation with members of the target audience. I know that’s what you’d expect from any large advertising campaign but it’s (sadly) still commendable when government agencies manage to go with the established, proven, successful approach rather than just pleasing the people above them in the political food chain. I was also told that the viral element of the campaign was a far harder sell to ministers; I get the feeling that with long-established things like TV ads, the ‘right way’ to do them and the value of them have gradually permeated through to the slow-changing culture of government, whereas the newer media are still struggling to gain acceptance and understanding. Apparently, the viral had to be reined in a bit before ministers were satisfied to run with it.

Speaking of which, I heard that not everyone was too happy with the setup of the display: an unfortunate aspect of this particular instance of the campaign was that the models had not been lit in their shop windows, which were covered in a reflective black film (to lend an air of ominousness, perhaps?). This meant that, on a bright day like yesterday, it was near-impossible to make out the models. What you could see instead was yourself reflected in the film, alongside the bright and altogether legible strapline (see photos), giving the suggestion that you wouldn’t begin your evening in your current state. I might not have had my gladdest rags on but I still thought that was pretty confusing, to say the least.

Still, it’s fair to say that the faux fashion displays, or perhaps the throng of assembled people looking at the faux fashion displays, were attracting a decent amount of attention from passers-by. The Home Office had interviewers on site to gather people’s first reactions; they’ll also be running recall and other follow-up surveys to measure success, and of course keeping a keen eye on any changes in the trends of binge-drinking and anti-social behaviour. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of response these ads prompt; what do you think?

Binge-drinking ‘guy’ TV ad: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=EuowE1SXNkA

Binge-drinking ‘girl’ TV ad: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=3jftfU30xJg

Binge-drinking viral: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=T8vCUSD6nuc

A bright social media acquaintance of mine, Tim Davies, is running a six-week-long virtual course called Video Change with/for Oxfam on using online video for social change. Watch his promo video below or find out more on his blog.

Find more videos like this on Video Change

We like visualisation tools; here’s a nice one for the more conspiratorial among you: They Rule.

From the site:

They Rule aims to provide a glimpse of some of the relationships of the US ruling class. It takes as its focus the boards of some of the most powerful U.S. companies, which share many of the same directors. Some individuals sit on 5, 6 or 7 of the top 500 companies. It allows users to browse through these interlocking directories and run searches on the boards and companies. A user can save a map of connections complete with their annotations and email links to these maps to others. They Rule is a starting point for research about these powerful individuals and corporations.

The Flash interface isn’t the most intuitive or easy to use but it’s pretty good when you get the hang of it (and it is from 2004 so I should cut them some slack!); have a look at some of the popular saved maps to get a feel for potential applications. Now, this particular site might be pushing its particular (possibly too paranoid) agenda a bit too hard but I think the principle of making it easier to hold powerful people to account is a good one — it’d certainly be intriguing to see some sort of power/relationships map of the movers and shakers in, say, the UK Parliament. Please do let us know if you’ve seen interesting similar things…

The latest attempt to become the home of discussion and debate online comes from Create Debate. Their logo may look like it’s rolled straight off the Web 2.0 logo generator, the whole site’s not that pretty and I’m not sure they’ve hit the critical mass of audience/community yet to get really strong debates going but they do seem to be doing a good job of getting the site noticed, not least thanks to their ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective Internet Users’ diagram.

From the site:

CreateDebate is a social tool based entirely on participation and democracy.

You have the power to create debates, add arguments, craft rebuttals and vote with your click.

Check it out for yourself at http://www.createdebate.com/

YouTube have joined forces with BBC London to offer what is surely one of the most ‘mainstreamed’ online public debates yet. Their chosen subject: this year’s London Mayoral elections.

From the site:

Ken, Boris, and Brian answer a lot of questions. Now they could answer yours.

Whether it’s bendy buses, knife crime, plans for the London Olympics or other issues that are on your mind, you can upload a video of your question here.

YouTube has teamed up with BBC London to air a selection of your questions on BBC London news. The interviews with the candidates will air the week commencing the 21st of April and we will post additional details about the timing.

Join the conversation around what matters to you about the city of London.

Broadcast yourself at http://uk.youtube.com/londonmayor08

This is a burgeoning little tool that could be v.useful in the future for online conversations. Basically Seesmic’s schtick is based around video conversations - kinda like a video blog, allowing people to easily post their thoughts online via the power of video. The brains behind the app claim it will be more mainstream than the likes of Twitter as video’s more mainstream, however at present video’s fairly clunky so I dare say they’re future gazing somewhat . . .

For a better understanding of what Seesmic’s about, check out Jemima Kiss’ podcast from SXSW.

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while . . . Mike Huckabee may no longer be in the Republican presidential race, however his legendary viral ad lives on!

Whilst other Presidential candidates have cosied up with the likes of Arnie and Tom X, Huckabee decided to opt for cult star Chuck Norris. The interesting thing about Chuck Norris is that he may not be a traditional A-lister, online he is massive. So from this perspective Huckabee’s advisers have been v.clever, proven by the fact that the video was watched by over 1.8 million people to date.

On the flip side, Mike Huckabee is no longer in the Presidential race, so maybe YouTube isn’t that much of a potent political force after all . . .

If you like talking, then you’ll like Yabb. Yabb’s a new service that allows people interested in specific issues to chat with each other using Skype (or via simple chat boards).

At present there’s a whole load of different topics being discussed, from the political “Boris or Ken?” to the geeky to the political again “Hillary of Obama?”.

Interestingly there’s also a topic called “What person will get the most benefit from using Yabb?” - which is a good question, to which the answers from the existing community weren’t hugely forthcoming.

As a big vision of Yabb, I could see it being a really great debate platform, to let people discuss issues they care about. Politics is an obvious choice. And maybe letting people talk about areas of niche expertise may also be useful - like a version of Yahoo Answers.

Anyway, and have a play and see you find it useful + get it . ..

I picked up on this a while back but never got round to blogging it. Anyway, here’s a flavour of grassroots political campaigning stateside:

Ingredients to successful political campaigning include: hot chic, tight T-shirt, and a healthy dose of cheese. Maybe Hilary should take some pointers . . .

To help bring their message of workable solutions to the problems of climate change to life, Greenpeace have launched a ‘multimedia packed, climate friendly town’: EfficienCity.

They explain their thinking behind the project as follows:

If a picture speaks a thousand words, a multimedia-packed, animation-filled interactive town must speak a million. Which is why we’ve launched EfficienCity - to explain exactly what decentralised energy is and how it works in practice (which can otherwise be a wordy business).

[EfficienCity] shows how pioneering, real world communities around the UK are using decentralised energy… It’s full of video case studies, animations and slideshows that explain exactly how a genuinely clean and efficient energy system works - from wave and tidal power to micro-hydro and anaerobic digestion.

We like seeing contributions to the climate change debate framed in a positive, constructive way and we like the unpretentious pragmatism shown here of doing good work with well-designed multimedia to help communicate more clearly. It’s similar to the approach we took with My Abodo and, while I think about it, I should remember to give equal credit to the people who wrote Defra’s climate challenge communication handbook for that project: it was spot on in setting out how, when it comes to making a point in such a contentious debate, ‘it’s not (just) what you do, it’s the way that you do it’.