Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

This month, Esquire Magazine launched their anticipated Augmented Reality issue. The issue features an AR cover, where Robert Downey Jr. performs an intro and also a pitch for his upcoming Sherlock Holmes movie. In addition, there is other content, such as a fashion supplement where the weather changes based on the way the user tilts the magazine and the time of day they access the site.

An augmented reality cover isn't necessarily new. GE and Popular Science paired up back in February for the first ever interactive 3-D cover (Threeminds' "Augmented Reality is a Marketing Reality). But the level to which they have integrated it and in a fun, playful way is something for other traditional magazines to pay attention to, especially in a time where they are desperate for print readership.

Esquire is getting some flack for this issue from people who consider it merely a marketing tactic, and they are the first to admit that it's a gimmick. Being gimmicky is not new to Esquire. There was an E-Ink cover last year and a "mix and match" cover in May that allowed readers to mix the faces of George Clooney, Barack Obama, and Justin Timberlake.

Others claim Esquire has missed the whole point of augmented reality. Because the whole effort for a consumer to set up the issue against their webcam and download the software, it is essential to show they something of value. Jack Benoff had some ideas as to what that could be:

"What if Esquire's "fashion spread" allowed people to overlay images of an article of clothing on themselves ( for example ties) so that they could match (or in my case, learn how to match) them with their existing wardrobe. Editorial content could provide tips, tricks and insights. Now, that might provide some real value to consumers looking to make a purchase..."

The New York Observer goes so far as to say that users are so used to gorgeous Pixar movies that they aren't really interested in the gimmick that augmented reality could provide. Still, Esquire is getting a lot of press for this. And that is probably all they need to increase sales.

Thanks to Yee Peng Chia for the link.

Marta Strickland

Oh Kanye. First you go all meme-ish the other week after the VMAs. Where, predictably, just about all of us with a computer had to go and Photoshop up some sort of spoof of your Taylor "Swift-boating" incident. Some pretty reputable-sounding rumors out there even have you and Jay-Z orchestrating the whole thing. Because everybody in y'all's camp won. His wife Beyonce looked saintly at the end of the show. You get to go on Leno with Jay and Rhianna the next night goosing the ratings for Jay and promoting self. And Jay-Z's new album--which not so coincidentally features guest artists from his latest label imprint, as well as tracks you produced--becomes his 11th album to top the Billboard 200. Thus breaking a record held by Elvis Presley. But I digress.

Mind you, I know. You're smarter than most give you credit for. You're no more a pawn in Jay-Z's master plan than you are the vision of unchecked assholery that others think you are. You think about these things. Maybe not 100% of the time. But certainly in general. And your operational philosophy basically announces to the world that you don't care how many haters you have as long as they know how to spell your name right in their tweets and blog posts. And feed a publicity machine that jumps from social media to mainstream media and back so fast and so often that the release of the above video actually spawned a "trending-topic" flood of "RIP Kanye" tweets this week.

Which makes people watch the video. That is directed in the beautiful and provocative style of one Spike Jonze. Because Spike Jonze directed it. And it's probably promoting something that we're not even aware of yet, in addition to Jonze's box-office-topping film "Where the Wild Things Are" and your song "See You in My Nightmares."

For whatever it's worth, Jonze is saying that you jumped the gun posting the video on your blog before it was finished, before mysteriously taking it down later. But okay, enough of the second person, I'll call you Kanye from now on and act like a reporter or something. From today's New York Times, Jonze had this to say about the leak.

This is the first time it's happened to me and it is a weird feeling, like, 'Wait a second -- I wasn't ready to put that out! That's mine. Uh, no, I guess it's not mine anymore.'

Nonetheless, his enthusiasm for the project was quite evident in the following statement. Jonze continued.

We rehearsed the night before we shot, and talked about trying to get to that raw place, that sad, pathetic, drunken, lost place. I told him, the more shameless it is, the more pathetic it is, the better. He just went for it.

I like Kanye and I care about him. This video is a side of him. I don't know what the reception is going to be, but I love making stuff with him. I love the guy.

A couple of thoughts. First, I'm pretty sure that the reception will partition folks into their usual camps: those who dig Kanye, those who dig his art but find him to be a bit of a douche, and those who hate his ass with passion and find him to be a total douche. But personally, I'm starting to think he's working an angle that's much more actively thought through than most people give him credit for.

This short film--about fighting inner demons--was in the works for months. And seemingly leads one down a trail that has been mapped out. With plenty of layovers on the social-media world tour. If you ask me, I'm guessing that it leads to a place where Kanyeeze will be pitching us an elaborate musical story about the personal salvation that comes after acute heartbreak. Just hazarding a guess here, but maybe all of these antics are just prep work for an even more elaborate pitch for public redemption.

Either way, we'll know about it. Because whether they love Kanye or revile him, fans, influencers, and even detractors will all be working hard to get the word out.

Daniel Turman

Knitting and social media does it get better, yes, when you use different colored yarn. However, Hilary Grant is working with Distance Lab on Social Knitworking, taking our conversations and turning them into an ugly scarf that nobody would wear.

"The intention is to provide a way to celebrate our online friendships by taking an abstract overview of our everyday conversations and drawing upon conversational and syntactical patterns to create a knitted keepsake." Hilary Grant, Stefan Agamanolis

How it works: A computer program analyzes your social interactions (IMs and Emails). They take those conversations and find the patterns such as frequently used phrases or sentiments, emotional characteristics, and other features. Then the program outputs an abstract knitting pattern that is downloaded into a computer-controlled knitting machine where it can be knitted as a simple piece of clothing or accessory.

It would be nice if you could add your twitter, facebook, etc. and have a pattern that you could knit by hand.

Kari Girarde

BBC Blast is the popular UK broadcast company's network of "creative teenagers". The goal is to mentor young people by providing them with opportunities to showcase their talent through contests, work experiences, free events, and an online community.

The website has always been a highly interactive place where people can upload their work and find out more about events in their area, but the BBC recently took the online experience to the next level by combining the virtual with a real time real world installation.

"The Blast Studio, a real time interactive installation, gave young people the opportunity to experiment in the Topolski Studio at the Southbank Centre, whilst making the kind of mess they¹d never get away with at home.

"But somewhere between the flinging paint and ever-evolving sculptural ooze is a serious attempt to bring a young community together and encourage them to unleash their creativity."

Thanks to Dave Knoph for the link.

Marta Strickland

Eagle Point Dr, Sherwood, Pulaski, Arkansas

On the blog Art Fag City, there is a fantastic photo essay from the IMG MGMT series featuring a recent work by Jon Rafman, a Canadian artist previously known for his Kool-Aid Main in Second Life project. His current series called the Nine Eyes of Google Street View features specially curated imagery extracted purely from Google Street View.

"The world captured by Google appears to be more truthful and more transparent... Street View collections represent our experience of the modern world, and in particular, the tension they express between our uncaring, indifferent universe and our search for connectedness and significance."

In his essay, Jon Rafman wavers between speaking from the perspective of himself to commenting on the perspective of Google. He starts his essay being a mesmerized spectator, similar to a photojournalist who is able to capture imagery of an emerging event or a documentary-style artist who is entranced by the powerful emotions of "nostalgia, yearning and loss" that manages to come through these images.

58 Lungomare 9 Maggio, Bari, Puglia, Italy

But soon begins to comment on both the power and detachment of Google's omnipotent gaze. Google has a perspective that artists rarely get the benefit to express. They are able to draw focus to the raw material of our everyday lives without overwhelming that reality. But at the same time such power, in the words of the author, gives them the aura of "an indifferent Being".

"The collections of Street Views both celebrate and critique the current world. To deny Google's power over framing our perceptions would be delusional, but the curator, in seeking out frames within these frames, reminds us of our humanity. The artist/curator, in reasserting the significance of the human gaze within Street View, recognizes the pain and disempowerment in being declared insignificant. The artist/curator challenges Google's imperial claims and questions the company's right to be the only one framing our cognitions and perceptions."

Thanks to Elizabeth Stewart for the link.

Marta Strickland

Murmur Study from Christopher Baker on Vimeo.

Consider it a real life version of Twistori, an online social experiment that aggregates all the status updates on twitter associated with common human phrases (i love, i hate, i think, i feel), or similar site We Feel Fine. Christopher Baker's Murmur Study also searches Twitter and Facebook status updates for common phrases (argh, meh, oooo), but goes a step further by printing out these updates in real time into a long ticker tape waterfall that rolls up into piles along the floor of the installation.

While We Feel Fine and Twistori aim to make the diverse online community seem more connected to each other and embrace people's desire to share life's ups and downs in the digital space, Murmur Study does quite the opposite. By bringing our digital thoughts into the real world, by physically printing them out on ticker tape, the study hopes to highlight how our seemingly personal thoughts are collected, sorted, and archived by corporations, without us really paying attention to it.

Thanks to Bonnie Chu for the link, who was impressed with the "nebulous notion of turning online buzz tracking into something tactical which we can all see, hear, and touch".

Marta Strickland

Three NBA players recently took part in a week-long tour of China courtesy of shoe and sportswear manufacturer Li Ning: Shaquille O'Neal (above), Baron Davis, and Jose Calderon. The tour showcased a campaign that associated each player with a spirit animal. Yes, their spirit animal. And if that isn't awesome enough, once the spirit animal was successfully devined, Beijing-based agency, Creatim, ratcheted up the awesome another notch by way of the art direction shown above. Look again.

Shaq, not only jumping the shark, but jumping over and dunking on the shark, while apparently playing ball on an offshore oil rig in the South China Sea. Kudos to you Creatim creative director, Liu Fang. You have created a twin stream of envy within me. Not only for the campaign and the creativity--because in a million brainstorms I could not have come up with this one--but also for the athletes themselves. Frankly, now I too want an awesome spirit animal. And some rad airbrushing of myself with same. So I could get it reproduced on the side of a 1974 Ford Econoline E100 Super Van. But I digress. Here's the simple piece of press about the campaign from Creatim.

In July 2009, Li Ning will hold Style Fighter 3+1 Basketball Challenge and NBA Stars' Meet in Beijing, Zhengzhou, Shijiazhuang, Changsha and Chengdu. Three different thematic basketball courts will be set up representing the styles of Shaq O'Neal, Baron Davis and Jose Calderon respectively. Considering various interest of young basketball fans, different competitions are designed for them, including 3+1 contest, one-to-one contest, slam dunk competition, skill competition, and so on. It is a good opportunity for the youth to learn from the NBA stars.

Following some of these guys on Twitter during the trip was really pretty fascinating. And given that Baron is a digital-minded fellow, there's also a pretty interesting Flickr stream for viewing too. But still, I need an awesome spirit animal.

I really, really do.

Daniel Turman

Forget what you know about typography. Two Brussels-based designers, Damien and Pierre from Pleaseletmedesign, decided to find a completely innovative new way to create a font... by using a car (specifically the Toyota iQ) as a stylus. In order to do this, they employed professional driver Stef van Campenhoudt to do incredible automotive acrobatics, as they tracked the motion of the car with four large colored dots, a camera, and custom motion tracking software called Open Frameworks.

They turned the results into a fun font called iQ font. The font can be downloaded at iqfont.com. More photos are available on Flickr.

Thanks to Evan Cordes for the link.

Marta Strickland

Have you heard of Layer Tennis? In short it's two creatives going head to head in battle of skills. The match involves both combatants swapping a single file back & forth in realtime with 15 minutes to complete their "volley". After each volley, commentary is provided by an independent 3rd party. Winners are determined by voting via Twitter by including the #LYT hastah + the contestant of choice.

Friday's match featured Shaun Inman vs. Aaron Scamihorn, and was won by Shaun Inman with his final "volley": Sheep Not Found aka Layer 10. If you're interested the semi-finals are scheduled to kick off tomorrow, June 26th, and the finals will be on July 10th.

Very fun to follow along. Also - as an FYI, Layer Tennis is sponsored by Adobe Creative Suite 4.

Patrick Dunphy