It was more than eleven years ago that I started my academic career at the M.Sc.-program for media technology at Linköping Institute of Technology. Way back then, the web was completely different, Google didn’t exist (it was actually founded the same year), and ICQ was the name of the game for communication.

But it wasn’t too long ago that I went to ad school, and now that I think of it, I find a few things about my education there quite strange. While I was there I did a bunch of interesting stuff. Formally, I was a copywriter student at Berghs School of Communication, but in reality I was more into strategy, and I also did one of my internships as an art director at BBH New York (who also have an SEO-questionable big Flash-behemoth as their site by the way). I have always loved trying different things, and this was certainly a great opportunity to do that.

Oh, nostalgia. My desk at BBH New York.

But the copywriting education itself was flawed in one key way – whoever put it together didn’t seem to be aware of something called “the internet”. I never once in two years heard anyone talk about web copy, much less give a lecture on SEO. I’m not sure how it is there today, but if they don’t dedicate time to that, I think it is very strange.

But the problem isn’t just in the schools. I read an article recently in the Swedish advertising magazine Resumé by a young and successful copywriter who said that web copy doesn’t differ very much from traditional copy. This is what he said:

“Jag ställer mig också ibland frågande till definitionen av webbcopy. Skillnaden är inte så stor, det är bara de dramaturgiska förutsättningarna som är lite annorlunda. Men i grunden handlar det om att kunna skriva intresseväckande”.

or in my own humble English translation:

“I sometimes question the definition of web copy. The difference isn’t that big, it’s just the dramaturgical premises that are somewhat different. But basically, it’s all about writing to awaken interest”.

Assuming he was quoted correctly, I find this strange. We can of course have different perspectives on what constitutes a big difference, but I would say that the difference is definitely significant! And more importantly, most copywriters don’t have any knowledge of, or experience from writing for search engines.

Google isn’t like your normal target audience. For one, Google doesn’t read between the lines. Humans understand that a passage like “…the dark mysterious pulse of the the night…” refers to, say, dance or sex, but can Google understand that? Google does, on the other hand, read around the lines, takes context into account, weighs remote links, clusters and evaluates what others have written – stuff that humans have a harder time doing.

I tell copywriters “to write for the hearts of men and the mind of Google”, and that is much harder than just doing one or the other. Good copywriters will need two sets of skills, and will be harder to find, harder to educate, and much more expensive to buy, simply because of the upcoming imbalance between supply and demand of this skill combo.

When I went to ad-school I felt that the school was in many respects molding people into replicas of what ad-people were supposed to be. Now I feel that this is perhaps about to change. The other day I got interview questions from Hyper Island regarding digital trends, and today I got another question from Berghs School of Communication regarding “what the world will look like in 25 years“. And despite the fact that a question like that is hopeless in terms of giving the correct answer, I can try to provide some humble thoughts on the subject.

First, the world will be what we make it. That may sound like an empty phrase, but it’s really quite the opposite. It is a way of living, of working, of acting, and of thinking. If you live by this belief, make decisions and take action, this will not be an empty phrase, but the best estimate of the future that we can produce.

But aside from this answer, I will try to give you an answer to your question that is a little more pragmatic. Looking at what communications will look like in 25 years we can try on two scenarios.

In scenario 1 we make the internet asymmetrical. We let legislation rule what can and cannot be sent across the internet. Material which is not permitted (like “pirated” information for example) will move underground and will be sent using stealth technology. Much of the information flow of the internet will be encrypted jibberish, undecipherable for any sense-making technology wanting to make use of it and invisible to human senses that could otherwise have been used for collaborative sense-making and coordinated collective intelligence.

The goals of those wanting to control certain information based on their nostalgia of the times when they had a lucrative monopoly on distribution will not be reached because of ever improving speed and convenience of stealth technology. Instead, the huge resources that will be put into creating these technologies (love of music for instance is a powerful incentive) will be of great benefit to those who have truly evil intentions but smaller resources, notably terrorists and criminals. Since the only way of stopping “piracy” will be to do so at the infrastructure level (service providers can be real and effective gatekeepers!) this is where we’ll eventually end up, banning encrypted traffic altogether. And presto! The internet as we know it is destroyed.

Also in this asymmetrical scenario, we will start charging for the use of bandwidth. Me, being a strong believer in free markets and competition, opposing this kind of asymmetrical access to the internet based on resources may sound incongruent, but it really isn’t. Much in the same way roads and  equality to the law are the basis for efficient competition (imagine the transaction costs of paying different prices for different levels of use of different roads), I think that access to the internet should be considered public infrastructure that will benefit competition, production, innovation, and market efficiency. But in the asymmetrical scenario, this will not be true anymore, and instead old business models and old distribution monopolies can be recreated by content companies using their funds to squat certain infrastructure lines and only provide access to their content through these. This may perhaps sound fair, but what will happen is that the abundance paradigm of the internet, the free flow of information, the “to each according to his ability” (the reverse of the famously Marxist slogan), and the rise of man through collective intelligence will stop.

I’m an optimist. I don’t think that this will happen.

In scenario 2 we retain the symmetry of the internet. We treat it like infrastructure in place to make markets and information flow efficient. Like a great system of streets and water pipes. In this scenario innovation will flourish because we can all do what we have always done, build on each others innovations, but we can do it with unprecedented efficiency. We can try and fail to a very low cost, we can learn from the mistakes of others, which boosts human efficiency enormously. This increase in efficiency, just like earlier technology leaps such as industrial farming, will create vast amounts of cognitive surplus that we can use for further innovation and production. Note that even resources that seem to be wasted on chatting with friends and Twittering create value in the form of information coordination and add to the collective intelligence. We can learn how people talk, we can cluster information, we can find new synergies and draw new conclusions.

Gossip will become hugely more efficient in this transparent world of efficient communication. This will lead to vengeance and gratitude being distributed with much more precision in answer to bad or good behavior and will make us all behave better and cheat less.

Digitally replicable products will not be products, they will be marketing for products where there is still tension between supply and demand. Musicians will try to get their music redistributed as quickly and widely as possible in order to fill venues and cut deals with brands, authors will do the same with their audiobooks to get speaking opportunities and sell hardcovers, filmmakers will use their films as vehicles for brand building and profit off of their brand, while also providing vehicles for other brands. Ludicrous legislation regarding this will be laughed at in 25 years. So will the crude methods of product placement of our age. The cinema experience cannot be pirated and we will see huge product development in terms of widening this experience. Their temporary monopoly on the film itself has made them lazy in this respect.

There will not be a difference between our digital identity and our physical one. All interaction with us will be permission based, and we will grant permission to those that we like and receive value from. Interuption marketing will be long since dead. The notion of publicly reachable phone numbers and email adresses will be laughed at as cute relics of the past. Our identity will be our identity and we will call people, not numbers, by whatever means is most efficient at the time, voice, video, text, images. By default our precense in the digital and analogue world will be publicly available. The benefits of this will outweigh the drawbacks. At times we will switch this off, just like we close the door when we want to sleep.

The semantic web will be obvious, and we’ll look back at how the internet was and smile at how we had so many copies of everything and how inefficient everything was. Of course each object will only be available in one absolute, so that any update will only have to be done once. Of course each of these will contain data representations fit for each semantic understanding of that particular data. We will be able to search, deploy scripts to ask questions and make calculations, and switch between real time representations and the historic dimension. This will all be very intuitive.

Since you are asking me to describe what the world will look like in 25 years, it is a bit ambitious to think that one blog post will answer it all, but these are some ideas of how things will be. If that’s what we decide to make them into. Because still, I think that my first answer is the best one – the world will be what we make it.

Rock n’ roll is dead, order and neatness is here. The economic downturn puts us all in a different spot. And what does it mean for our business? Well, reason would suggest two things – first, people will need to change their priorities. New business will be a tougher job, and there will be less cash in each gig. This will leave less time for activities like blogging. Unless of course the blog is a source of income, which is not the case for most. I can see this in my own blog. There is less luxury time to give away thoughts for free. But I promise you I will try my best. Second, more efficient activities like Twitter will grow bigger. Tweets
are shorter and take less time both to write and to read. And when looking at it, Twitter is rising very quickly in Sweden right now, pushing competition like Jaiku and Bloggy out of it’s way. (Again, it’s not efficient to have more than one microblogging platform).

For our own agency, this crisis also means two things. Our product is better positioned than before (with it’s relatively high cost efficiency), but there is a smaller total bag of gold in client budgets. This means we have to be very good at informing about what’s going on, and what we can do to boost relative ROI. This is in conflict with what I said above about less time for blogging and lecturing. So I guess this means I’ll keep putting in long days working, but also lecturing and blogging. I promise more frequent updates.

For lectures there is one at Berghs coming up, one at a major Swedish corporation and one at a conference on the west coast. Perhaps I’ll see you there!

I recently read about a study from 1999 where the Israeli research team had studied 200 highly regarded advertisments – ads that were all finalists and winners in top advertising competitions. When analyzing these ads, they realized that most of them (89%) could be categorized into one of 6 different categories or templates (example: “Extreme Consequenses”). THAT is interesting in itself, but it gets worse.

Next they brought in three different groups of novices and gave them each three briefs; for a shampoo, for a diet-food item, and for a sneaker. Now these three groups recieved three different training.

The first group recieved no training at all, but started generating ads immediately, the second group got two hours of standard creativity training (free-association brainstorming and such techniques), and the third group got a two hour brief on the six categories mentioned above.

The ads where screened and sifted by an experienced creative director and put to standard testing.

And the results? The second group performed slightly better than the first, but they were still considered “annoying” and “uncreative” by the test groups. The third group however was an entirely different story. These ads were rated as 50% more creative and produced a 55% more positive attitude towards the products advertised.

And this, my friends, is after a two hour study of these six templates. Berghs SoC advertising school for example will take you two years, and their tagline reads “2 cm From Reality” (or was that just for the kick off-week?).

Maybe you should consider going to the “2 Hours From Reality” copy cat school of communication instead? It’s much cheaper.

Lunch down at the JC Decaux beach site consisted of two crossed asparagus and champange. In the company of Manne Schagerström (of Berghs fame) and Johan Fredrikzon from Ruth.

“Winning” is a concept that fascinates us humans. Especially men seem to be fascinated by it, and have been since we were still just mamals butting heads. But there are really three types of winning.

The first type is when you compete with your friends, family, spouse, girl-/boyfriend, or even kids. Not a very rewarding type of winning. Even destructive to many relationships.

The second type is when you compete with strangers, standards, or norms. Not very rewarding either. What are you going to say at the end of your life? “Well – I still beat a lot of people”. Often these people don’t care if they win by being good or by somebody else being bad. As long as they win.

The third type is awesome on the other hand. It’s the type where you set a goal for yourself and achieve it. I’ve had three such big wins in my life.

The first one was the Stockholm Marathon. I trained for eight months with extreme dedication. I got injured. I recovered. I got to the start. I had increadible stomach pains through 30 of the 42 kilometers. But I made it through. And crossing that finish line was just a fantastic moment.

The second one was when I’d set a goal to see central Europe by train. I planned it. I went. I got robbed. I survived. A great memory of my life. I was super happy when I came back.

The third one came yesterday and looked like this:

This is my diploma for my Master of Science degree in Media Technology and Engineering. I started out with this project in 1998 – ten years ago.

But after having kept the pace and gone through all the courses and 80% of my masters thesis, I started working in the television industry. Great fun, and extremely rewarding. One thing led to another, and suddenly I was running my own company and things just rolled along.

I changed my line of business to advertising and went for two years to Berghs School of Communication getting a diploma in advertising and copywriting (I charish it too, even though I don’t have it in my top three), and then went on to working in the brand communication business with passion. This whole time my masters thesis was in a shoe box.

But one day my friend Sara came along and suggested I should start wrapping up unfinished threads, and I decided to go for it. I finished my thesis in a few days and went down to Linköping Intstitute of Technology to present it. And here I am. And it feels amazing. My biggest win yet. And really – these kinds of wins, where you win over your own percieved limitations, are the only ones that matter.

So I read that the Finnish agency 358 are drafting players from agencies like KesselsKramer, CPB and 180 (was with all these number names?). I also read that they’re going to work with ideas rather than advertising. Hmm… ideas rather than advertising…

It sound ridiculous, but you know – I think they’re right in wording it that way. Many agencies don’t really work with ideas, but rather with execution. Many of the “ideas” we’ve seen have been done before or are just plain unimaginative (look at some of the Guldägget work and you’ll see). 358 are saying that a solution can just as well be a product development, a new sport, or a clothing line as long as it makes people like the brand more (sounds like Anomaly or Naked doesn’t it?). I like that statement. Of course that’s how you should work. That’s our job. The fact that you even have to say this is disturbing.

I think a lot of people get into this business for the wrong reasons. They get in here for the lattes, the cool parties, the people, and slick offices (all of which I love, but that’s not the point). Very few are even interested in psychology or business development. Not all have to be, but the concept developers certainly do. And they don’t.

We bring in planners from Stockholm School of Economics to legitimize the business side of the quirky ideas we bring in from Berghs, when we should really bring in people who can call up concepts built on business development, psychology, and innovation. At the end of the day, if we don’t get people to like the brand more and buy the f*#%! product we are merely painters and poets (btw, I also love painters and poets). I hope that 358 will deliver. I think they might.

Kan någon förklara de här kampanjerna/designlösningarna för mig?

Vi börjar med Försvarets Hudsalva:

Jag har själv jobbat med en strategi för det här varumärket när jag gick på Berghs. Den handlade om att förvalta känslan av original, göra produkten mer användbar och förflytta den känslomässigt. Jag är fortfarande väldigt nöjd med den strategin vi tog fram, och den renderade högsta betyg och lovord på Berghs. Det som nu har gjorts är tvärtemot vår strategi. Man har Disneyfierat produkten med en cammofärgad pappersgördel = oanvändbart, klyschigt och övertydligt. Jag fattar inget.

Nästa exempel är den här kampanjen:

Väcker uppseende i viss mån – visst – men var i hela hissingen är relevansen? Ödla? Kampanjen är för val till gymnasieskolan. Qui?

Till slut detta:

Vad… är detta? Varför gör man såhär?
Svag idé, svag design och risig produktion. Världen och mjölkhyllan blev precis lite fulare.

(Edit: Igår stod jag vid mjölkhyllan och hörde en i personalen beklaga sig över hur svårt det var att hitta bland förpackningarna. Och då JOBBAR han ändå med förpackningarna varje dag!)

Annonserna tänker jag inte ens nämna… men kanske visa:

I ny förpackning. Japp. Check. Då vet jag.

So. Thursday. For me Thursday was the last real day of Fashion Week. I decided to spend friday night drinking tea, reading books and doing some writing – which is, as a matter of fact, exactly what I’m doing right now.

Thursday was kicked off by meeting up with a couple of Sweden’s top fashion bloggers, Sigrid (on the left) and Michaela, also known as Rar. Sigrid took off for some MySpace event, while me and Michaela went to the Nakkna show.

I got lousy pics from the show (it was all REALLY Nakkna though), but I met this awesome girl…

…wearing these awesome shoes…

…and also spotted a model with a fork hidden in her purse.

I won’t say who, but it was one of these two who had the fork.

After the show I went for a quick but hot (hmm…sounds familiar…) Thai dinner with an old friend. Then I stopped by Berghs to meet some friends and have a beer with them. I also found these amazing talents. Not a bad catch.

Then I hooked up with up n’ coming electro pop star Cornelia and headed down to Absolut Vodka’s “Machines”-party at PUB.

Here I met another awesome pop star, Rosanna, who also happens to be my neighbor. Gotta’ love her.

I also met some robots whom I wouldn’t want as neighbors for obvious reasons. Imagine the afterparties…

Jörgen Brennicke, an incredibely cool guy, and an almost magical photographer was there (hi Jörgen!).

I realized how short Cornelia is…

…how busy Rosanna is…

…and how easy it is to spice up a party!

Then I took off with Rosanna for the next party.

The +46 party was hosted by Thomas Rajnai and Calle Tollmar of Odd. Always awesome hosts.

To get to the VIP-party we had to take an elevator…

…but Jessica and Gustav were there, so I felt safe.

One of my favorite ad-people Stefan (who ALSO happens to be my neighbor) and Sebastian of Garbergs were also there mingeling with the stars.

This was some designer girl who I don’t know, but she looked cool.

Me Chrystelle, Sandra and Val. BFF.

And of course – Super Strikers were there. Hi guys!

The party went to Berns, where Bon kicked things off in grand style. That girl in the cab is up to something sketchy, wouldn’t you say?

From here on things just derailed. I’ll let the pics speak for themselves. Thanks to all for a great night!

Tap dancing.

The guardians of Fifth Avenue Shoe Repair.

The always mad geniuses of Social Club.

The superstars of… Stockholm.

And the evil of Rodeo Magazine.

Kickin’

En liten fråga bara:
Var det slump eller en sjukt begåvad mediaplacering att Berghs bladade in sin lilla broschyr i Resumé just igår när Resumébaren var på Hyper Island? Berghsreklamen var iallafall utspridd över hela hyperön.