Nice Visual, But What’s Your Story?
There are hot debates here at Organic, as our creative minds passionately discuss and share points-of-view on trends, tactics and technology; media, messaging and all-things marketing. The latest debate centered around the Canadian National Film Board’s web site for their new film, “Waterlife.”
The film hopes to create awareness of the deteriorating quality and bleak future of the Great Lakes, telling “The story of the last great supply of fresh drinking water on Earth.”
Know Your Purpose
The purpose of the web site is to a) generate awareness and interest in the film; and b) start to tell the story and plant the seed of change in people’s minds. Mark Rozeluk described it as “probably one of the most compelling and nicely executed sites I have seen in a long while, leveraging a lot of really cool technological tricks and story-telling chops… it’s hard to believe it’s ‘just a website’ to promote a film.”
But there are a lot of big basic misses here, I think.
I admit I’m interested in the film, and I don’t make the claim that the web site is a complete failure, but I have to think for a minute, along with, I imagine, many Canadians, about what the NFB is. This site doesn’t tell me what the NFB is, nor does it tell me through the main copy “The Story of the last great supply…” that this is site for a film. It hard to tell unless I track down the “About the Film” grey-on-black type at the bottom of the screen.
I agree they’re making an attempt at storytelling, but there’s no beginning and ending… which is critical for a story. I don’t know where it starts or where it ends. Have I seen everything? Are those photos flying around? How do I get to them?
Nick Sternberg dove right in the conversation, stating he’d like to see the end of the “rather tired trend of using a Flash/PV3D technique serving up a nicely designed pile of things for me to ‘explore.’”
“I’m thirsty,” he continues, “for hierarchy, for story, for an experience that takes a position and sells it. I’m tired of sifting for it. I don’t even care if I can share or follow or do anything social with it. Just give me something to chew on. And serve it on a plate.”
Make It Shareable
But, as the truly social web starts to define our purchasing decisions, and as trusted recommendations become the primary vehicle by which we discover new media, marketers and movie makers must ask: how do I share this with people? What do I share? I would ask how the public will find out about this. Probably through a blog, or in this case, through email. But, bloggers don’t know what to take from here… there’s no embeddable elements or video, and for non-bloggers, the Facebook “Share button” (if you can find it) offers me this:
Or worse, for the Twitter button, this:
When I really want to share deeper content than that.
We have to look at what drove Mark to share this link – that defines the social currency value for him. This is an exceptional example, we can agree, of visual and technological production. That is, he’s admiring, as we do in this industry, the medium of the message. On the other hand, the average movie-goer or environmentalist-to-be or joe-on-the-information-superhighway is more interested in sharing the message, or the most compelling part of it.
There’s so much here, that I would share, but can’t. Each new user, as Nick points out, has to explore and really fish.
Encourage Full Immersion
On top of all of this, the wave of single-pixel navigation points at the bottom of the screen couldn’t be more difficult and confusing to use.
The one thing we forget is that the web is interactive. Sites need to do more than just react in a fun way when I mouseover something. They need to encourage my deeper engagement and compel me to interact with others.
Make Social An Integrated Priority
This is visually compelling and has a great feel, but the glass is half-full on this one. They’ve polluted the life-giving waters of the social web by diluting the word-of-mouth tools to a greyed-out, oversimplified, top-level URL widget that doesn’t take in to account how web publishers and sharers might benefit from propagating this information and experience throughout their communities.
It’s a Great Lake, but the watershed is kinda dry.
Comments
Connections
I think we agree to disagree on this one as we clearly view sites in different ways. The takeaway for me is the story, the design, and how a site that pushes full-screen video and Papervision loads so quickly. Furthermore, it breaks the mold of a conventional film site (it’s more of an interactive keynote presentation ala “An Inconvenient Truth”) and that has to be noted as something refreshing.
Your claim that most Canadians don’t know what the NFB is presumptuous and embarrassing. i think you’re alone there. Look them up – they’ve been around since before the internets.
mr.
Thanks for the continued discussion, Mark. I’m glad we agree that the speed and fluidity of the animation is exceptional. It is the challenging interface and the lack of social mechanism (on a site that hopes to build a social movement) that is disappointing.
I think the very act of attempting to use your left brain to experience this site misses the point entirely.
What’s also funny is the fact that if the original designers of the site followed your recommendations around coherence and usability, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation. It would have disappeared in the ocean of Flashturbation sites completely unnoticed.
If the original point of the website was to generate interest in the “cause” and therefore to come and see the film, then consider it accomplished. It is a “hook” with a lot of bait intertwined to make one interested in actually seeing the movie. As far as social currency goes, we have been discussing this site endlessly for days on end now – getting more and more people engaged with the site and content. It even made it to this post. So…doesn’t that count for something? ;o)
@Tomas I think we define these types of sites differently. It’s precisely this type of site, wherein the user must “interpret and discover” a new type of navigation that I define as flashturbation. Usability can be beautiful.
@Paulette I agree, there’s a lot of bait, but it’s just so difficult to consume. Moreover, I can’t imagine that the marketers of Waterlife would appreciate this type of conversation — focused on the form of the piece — more than a broader, viral conversation about the deep, engaging, compelling and inspiring content that could have been…