A talk given at the IAB France & Hyper Island Workshop in Paris, 27th November 2012

1. john v willshire
smithery LTD
@willsh

2. Bonjour

3. 7 years at PHD Media in London,
latterly As Chief Innovation Officer

4. let me take
you back to
the Glasgow
2012
olympics...

5. North korea and
south korea have
been enemies for
over 70 years

6. so It’s a
probably not
a good idea
to mix their
flags up

7. Merde.

8. Wednesday 15th July, Hampden Park, Glasgow
North Korea Vs Columbia

9. NOT HAPPY

10. REALLY
not happy

11. The players come back
out, eventually.
North korea win 2-0.

12. and then, the strangest
of apologies is issued...

13. “ It wasn't a real flag, it was
a flag on a video graphic
”
Paul deighton, locog chief executive

14. Real not Real
eh?

15. this story tells us
two things

16. 1. Scottish
people aren’t
afraid of
north korea

17. 2. digital and physical aren’t
different ‘things’...

18. “
all our metaphors are broken.
The network is not a space, and
it’s not time, it is some other
kind of dimension entirely.
”
@jamesbridle
http://booktwo.org/notebook/sxaesthetic/

19. “
all our metaphors are broken.
The network is not a space, and
”
it’s not time, it is some other
kind of dimension entirely.
@jamesbridle
http://booktwo.org/notebook/sxaesthetic/

20. let’s think about
Product, Brand and
media metaphors...

22. The factory makes
an end product...

23. end product implies
stasis, or even death

24. We have made a thing,
and it is finished

25. products today are
never finished.
They’re just
platforms for
people to build on...

27. “A brand is simply a
collection of perceptions
in the mind of the
consumer”
Feldwick, 1991

28. hey, let’s find out what
these perceptions are and
put them in an onion...

31. if your brand is a bit shit,
coat it with other stuff too
Oh look, it’s a bruce Lee Nokia N96

32. A brand today is more
like a bittorrent file...

34. “ a mechanical metaphor,
the infamous
transmission model ”
Prof. Mark Hobart, SOAS, on the dominant media metaphor
http://mediasocialchange.net/2011/05/06/metaphors-of-media-and-social-change/

35. media:
let’s shout
at people

36. media:
a rented
home for a
fixed idea...

37. make
product
efficiently

38. innovation as
incremental
improvement

39. Six Sigma seeks to improve
the quality of process
outputs by identifying and
removing the causes of
defects and minimizing
variability in manufacturing
and business processes. Wikipedia

40. make
product
efficiently
make brand
vaguely
interesting
& buy loads
of media

41. “The best minds of my generation
are thinking about how to make
people click ads”
”
Jeff Hammerbacher

42. we need to
find new
metaphors...

43. “ media is the
connective
tissue of society ”
clay shirky,
cognitive surplus

44. “ media is a
vehicle for
knowledge ”
cesar hidalgo
MIT media lab

45. “ just like
Mediabuildings, devices,
is hybrid,
spaces, events etc.
Nothing is all-digital any more
that it’s all-physical.
”
Dan Hill, @cityofsound

46. edia is product is brand is med
oduct is brand is media is produ
rand is media is product is bran
edia is product is brand is med
oduct is brand is media is produ
rand is media is product is bran
edia is product is brand is med
oduct is brand is media is produ
rand is media is product is bran

47. we need new
metaphors to
deal with what
comes next

48. 1. more clients will be
making things locally

49. rebalancing
economies towards
manufacture

50. “reshoring”
shipping costs up?
labour costs as % down?
Then you bring it back home
http://www.inc.com/eric-markowitz/the-long-journey-home-why-manufacturing-is-returning-to-the-usa.html

51. 2. people care more
about what they buy

52. “ The internet is biased
towards fact.
People don’t care about your
brand mythology, they care about
where your product is made and
what’s in it.
”
douglas rushkoff

54. 3. the things are...
ALIVE!!!!

55. “ SPIMES: Material
Instantiations of an
immaterial system
”
Bruce Sterling

56. “
Physical things directly connected to
their metadata about use
and constructioN
” Matt Jones, Berg

57. media ships as part
of every product

58. “My
Tuna is
a spime”
Dan
Williams
@iamdanw

60. the infrastructure
is evolving quickly

61. it will only
get a lot,
lot
stranger

62. The NEw yorker, 1946

63. 1. Clients will be closer to
making things...
2. people will look more closely
at the things they buy...
3. Things contain media for
agencies to create for...

64. but what do
clients & agencies
know about
making things?

65. you are the
ruiners of all
things
good bill hicks on marketers

67. C3po
demeans
himself
for a washing
machine

68. really?

69. The Star
Wars
Holiday
Special
looks
classy in
comparison

70. you are the
ruiners of all
things
good

71. though actually...

72. people stopped
caring in
1999

73. so what is actually being ruined here?

74. WHY RUIN your brand
WITH STAR WARS?

76. there is
nothing in
here that’s
interesting
get me
Darth Vadar

77. you are the
ruiners of all
things
good

78. So how might you go
about it instead?

79. less world building
world borrowing
more

80. the labour
theory of value

81. developed ...and
by adam later by
smith... karl
marx

82. modern economics:
the value of a thing is
determined by what one
is willing to give up to
obtain the thing

83. The labour theory of value
the value of something is
determined by the labour
that went into its
production

84. Field Notes

85. £0.99 £3.33
per pad per pad

86. We’d rather
buy this world...

87. ...than
this world

88. “marketing is
world building.
With unlimited
bandwidth we
can now show
you the world.”
@TobyBarnes

89. To Do a common thing
uncommonly well
brings success
henry john heinz

90. “ I’m really interested in
the making of ‘it’ -where
the making is part of the
”
story of the ‘it’...
thomas heatherwick

91. Marx was
half right...

92. it’s not about the
means
of production
http://www.voyoslo.com/wp-content/uploads/
2012/10/Means-of-Production-PLAYFUL12.006.jpg

93. it’s about the
meaning
in production

94. upon
layer
upon
layer
upon
layer
upon

95. Labour theory
of brand value:
make every product with
the infinite canvas of
the internet in mind
Picture: Greg Petchkovsky
http://vimeo.com/43442146

96. make
people
want
things

97. make
things
people
want

98. Merci
john@smithery.co
@willsh
http://smithery.co
http://shop.smithery.co