LBi Mumbai

A museum without walls

Posted by LBi India May 26th, 2011

So the other night I was reading art critic Douglas Crimp’s 1980 essay “On the Museum’s Ruins” (published in “The Anti-aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture”).

Crimp’s subject is the way the emergence of post-modern art in the 1960s and 70s challenged the authority of museums and galleries to decide how art should be organised and presented (bear with me).

By quoting, copying, referencing and mixing up images from different historical eras and contexts, works like Robert Rauschenberg’s screen prints questioned the practice of hanging works of art according to discrete historical periods, art movements or styles.

If one of Rauschenberg’s pictures can contain elements of both “Venus at Her Toilet” by Peter Paul Rubens (c. 1615) and a modern (1960s) street scene, the argument goes, then who’s to say where it should be displayed?

All of a sudden, curation – the selection, caretaking and presentation of works of art by highly trained and trusted experts – became a tricky business.

Of course, everyone is a curator now. Umberto Eco at the Louvre (his theme was The Infinity of Lists). Laurie Anderson, Nick Cave, David Bowie (and others) at the Meltdown Festival. Audiences (especially bohemian ones). Robots. Even boutique shopkeepers (when they’re not getting celebrities to curate things for them).

Plus me and you, every time we like or link to something via facebook or twitter (or create a spotify playlist, or add something to a tumblr, or expand our Last FM library).

As author – and ‘freelance curator’ – Marvin Heiferman puts it “the title curator is increasingly being used to describe anyone who turns a critical eye toward the aggregation or highlighting of whatever content seems to be at hand.”

Which, these days, is all of us.

One argument says that curating things is easier than creating things. It costs less – in terms of time, equipment, and talent for starters. And you get to enjoy a little bit of the glamour associated with creation without doing all that hard work.

However, when there’s far more content than anyone has the time to consume (or even find), curation has become a valuable social act. Valuable because it helps “synchronise communities”, as Clay Shirky argues (though for the first few seconds of the video it looks like he’s about to start playing the harmonica).

And valuable to the people who want to talk to those communities.

But back to Douglas Crimp. As he points out, in a museum or gallery things become defined by the act of being included. They are defined as ‘art’ rather than rubbish, defined as belonging to this artistic movement rather than that one, defined as being part of a particular narrative (how many different ways could we tell the story of the benin bronzes, for example?)

Conversely, when it comes to our online personas, the things that we include – by linking to them or posting them on our Facebook page – define us.

Do I want to be seen as the kind of person who forwards two-year-old viral videos that everyone has already seen, or as someone who provides links to intellectually stimulating pieces of classic postmodern thinking? Should I use twitter to link to the same sort of things that I like on Facebook? And what do those things say about me?

If I’m going to present myself as a commodity, what sort of commodity do I want everyone to think I am?

Context is everything here. Museums and galleries give context to cultural objects. And the cultural objects we link to give context to our online identities.

One more thing that Crimp touches on in his essay:

Gustav Flaubert’s unfinished 1880 novel “Bouvard and Pecuchet” tells the story of two Parisian copy-clerks whose search for intellectual stimulation ultimately teaches them that, among other things, real life is very different to what one can learn from reading books.

Our heroes study landscape gardening, chemistry, anatomy, medicine, biology, geology, archaeology, architecture, literature, aesthetics, politics, love, gymnastics, theology, philosophy, religion, education, music and urban planning.

But whenever they try to apply what they’ve learned, everything goes wrong.

So –at least in one of Flaubert’s sketches for the book’s finale (he died before it was completed) –they go back to their original profession. Like Robert Rauschenberg, they start copying things: “…haphazardly, everything they find… old newspapers, posters, torn books … real items and their imitations…”

And the problem of context? Like the rest of us, at first Bouvard and Pecuchet have trouble “putting each thing in its proper place – and suffer great anxieties about it.” But finally they realise the important thing:

“The page must be filled! Everything is equal, the good and the evil. The farcical and the sublime… the insignificant and the typical, they all become and exaltation of the statistical. There are nothing but facts – and phenomena.”

And lots and lots of stuff.

By: Owen Booth, LBi London

Tags: content strategy, curation, Facebook, Social Media, social networks, Twitter

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LBi and bigmouthmedia release their Innovations in Retail whitepaper

Posted by LBi India May 23rd, 2011

Today LBi and bigmouthmedia release their Innovations in Retail whitepaper, covering the impact of digital technologies on retailers in 2011. The paper highlights how rapidly the internet is changing expectations within the retail sector and provides a really strong summary of some of the opportunities that exist for those able to rapidly innovate.

Just yesterday Apple celebrated their tenth year in retail with a store makeover that put the iPad 2 at the forefront of the shopping experience, acting as the product price label and spec sheets. What’s more, the iPad’s enable you to hail an Apple Specialist and compare products as well as enabling Apple to centrally update prices worldwide instantly. It isn’t an option yet it will be would be much of a surprise to see if the iPads offering ‘I want this!’ style social sharing, direct from a traditional retail environment.

Of course, the LBi and bigmouthmedia whitepaper contains plenty of talk about smart phones, tablet devices and internet connected TVs but what is interesting is that the paper steers clear of the standard ‘more people are buying stuff on a mobile’ vernacular and highlights some of the less obvious behaviours such technologies create amongst consumers.

I myself am what is now dubbed a ‘digital shoplifter’. I enjoy the ability to browse a real physical retail environment yet when I find something I want to buy my first reaction is to check the price online via my iPhone. If the price difference is greater than my perceived ‘instant gratification’ value, then I’ll just leave the shop and order online.

This clearly represents a challenge for bricks and mortar retailers, but it also suggests a shortcoming amongst online retailers too – they still are not able compete with the feeling of holding a product in your hands. And cruciually, outside of entertainments and media where digital downloads get you close enough, no-one can get delivery times down to zero. There will always be a desire to get things sooner!

Also as important for retail is the impact of technologies that bridge the physical and the digital. Much more than allowing consumers to pay for items by flashing their phones, the impact of mobile technology within a retail environment could be huge. Imagine offering users instant in store recommendations based on their online purchase habits or instant credit via QR or NFC (Near Field Communication) for checking in via social platforms.

Social media is also becoming hugely disruptive within retail, as the paper points out. The move towards customer service within a social environment will almost certainly have its winners and losers – only by sharing customer service and support tasks with their most engaged customers will retailers truly get the most from social channels.

It is clear that consumers’ expectations are on the rise and that retailers will need to continue to search for ways to reward loyal, engaged customers with unique and surprising experiences. Take a look at the full paper to find out how – it is available for free online now.

Tags: apple, bigmouthmedia, innovation, innovations in retail, iPad, LBi, Lost Boys International, mobile, nfc, qr, research, retail, Social Media, white paper, whitepaper

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From Shop to Swap?

Posted by LBi India May 9th, 2011

As we begin to peek out from under the veil of recession, a new movement is stirring. An innovative business model is evolving that has the potential to change how we live our lives as well as how we do business. Time Magazine has listed it as one of the top 10 ideas that will change the world. So what exactly is this mystery movement?

Rachel Botsman, social innovator and writer, has aptly named it Collaborative Consumption. It began with a natural shift in customer behaviour from shopping to swapping and from buying to renting, ultimately moving away from the hyper-consumption that got us into so much trouble in the first place. This simple video from www.collaborativeconsumption.com sums it up nicely:

WHAT’S MINE IS YOURS from rachel botsman on Vimeo.

Both Rachel Botsman and Lisa Ganksy (author of The Mesh: Why the Future of Business Is Sharing) make some really interesting points on the impact that Collaborative Consumption could have for brands, marketers and consumers alike. I have picked two key points as food for thought;

1) The success of Collaborative Consumption hinges on trust (TED Talk ‘The case for Collaborative Consumption) and while there has been a lot of focus in the last year on influencers and metrics such as Klout score and Peerindex, it may be time for businesses and consumers to start thinking about reputation. In Botsman’s words “Reputation capital will determine our access to collaborative consumption. It’s a new social currency, so to speak, that could become as powerful as our credit rating”.

2) To avoid being left out of these new conversations that are forming in a peer to peer environment and to take advantage of new opportunities to engage consumers, brands need to get creative about adapting their business models. This could be through enabling sharing (e.g. Netflix), building communities that offer shared experiences and then providing ancillary services to these communities (e.g. Nike Plus) or simply adapting their traditional business model to incorporate sharing (e.g. DriveNow from BMW).

This is just the beginning of the discussion and only time will tell how big and far reaching Collaborative Consumption will become. The technology to support this entirely new class of commerce is developing rapidly and with brands such as Zipcar and Netflix growing at such a fast pace, it doesn’t look like it’s going away any time soon. So, maybe it’s time to get the thinking caps on?

Tags: Collaborative Consumption, CRM, Engagement, Influencers, Reputation, Technology, TED

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Public displays of Privacy

Posted by LBi India May 4th, 2011

Musician and all-round clever person David Byrne explains in his Bicycle Diaries that getting around cities on two wheels is a great way to take in the urban environment.  And one of the things I’ve been noticing on my regular commute is the appearance of matt-black stealth wraps on cars.  This slow-burning craze speaks to the wonderfully mixed up attitudes to privacy that surround debate on everything from iPhone tracking to behavioural targeting.

Stealth wraps cover a car in a kind of matt black coating, similar to the kind of paint used on top-secret military planes that had to evade radar. Of course, it’s doubtful these wraps can help you escape a speed camera, but that’s not the point. Over and above any Batmobile connotations these paint jobs are, like blacked-out windows, conspicuous statements of privacy. Oh and they can look cool, too.

The idea that “I am important enough to require privacy” is being given extra energy by stories of super-injunctions – especially after national treasure Andrew Marr confessed to a bit of gagging in the past.  As John Naughton commented recently, there are two universes developing. In the first, important people get to – officially at least – protect their privacy while in the other everyone else’s personal data is up for grabs.

Tooling around in a large car covered in black paint is like a celebrity declaring – once again – they just want to be left alone. But why shouldn’t consumers be inconsistent and situational about their privacy?  One day it’s cool and useful to receive ads according to where I am or what I’ve done. The next day it feels creepy and inappropriate.  Consumers like to make a noise about protecting their privacy but their public statements often tend to be more about what they think in principle than do in in practice. Only a minority religiously delete cookies, cover their traces or want to spurn ad-funded services.

Sensible brands are already taking a close look at their privacy policies, particularly with the implementation of the EU’s ePrivacy Directive. It’s likely that consumers in the UK will have to opt-out of cookies rather than opt-in. But whatever consumers do in social media or on their phones they need to feel that, like a stealth paint job, they’re the ones in control of their public identity.”

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Gaze control – the look of things to come?

Posted by LBi India March 15th, 2011

The recent blog ‘Ten tips for touch’ may have to updated to become the ‘Ten tips for gazing’ when it comes to performing many computer tasks, if a press report is to be believed.

A Swedish company, Tobii Technology, has invented a prototype laptop that can carry out 100 or so simple commands by using your eyes in what the makers call ‘gaze control’.

Recently showcased at the CeBit technology fair earlier this month in Hanover, the technology works by reflecting infrared light off your corneas, enabling inbuilt sensors to detect to within a few millimetres where your eyes are looking at.  To activate gaze control you have to hold down the Alt key so not to inadvertently activate wayward looks or movements. For example it can follow your gaze to automatically scroll down a document that’s being read or open and select from drop down menus or carry out other previously mouse activated commands such as opening bookmarks.

While eye-tracking capabilities have been around for a while, this is the first time it has been installed in a consumer friendly computer.  Still in the early stages of development further refinement is required in terms of design, performance and production at an affordable cost.

While it is intended to remove up to 80% of the times you need to click, the makers say it is intended to supplement rather than supplant the mouse or keyboard to speed up and make easier a range of common tasks.

Given the advent of gesture activated devices such as the Xbox Kinect and the continued development of voice activated software beyond the world of HAL to ease inputting content through dictation, I wonder how long it will be before look, gesture and voice interface technologies converge to provide even richer more time efficient digital applications and experiences?

For digital agencies, the challenge will be in how to best harness this to the benefit of brands, businesses and end users through evolving, inventing and blending their skillsets and intellectual know-how.

Just in the same way that giving a film the 3D treatment doesn’t automatically make for a better film, both intelligent application and a good plot is essential. After all sizzle by itself cannot make up for an unsavoury sausage.

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