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.

I thought for a while about where to post this post because it’s really as personal as it is professional, but eventually I decided to post it here instead of on my personal blog. It is a post about inspiration.

I’m going to show you a film clip here that is not exactly new (or, well, it was posted in May this year), but it, and the clips preceding it, have been very important to me for several reasons.

But first a little bit of back story. At the university where I got my Master of Science-degree in Media Technology we had a virtual reality lab. It contained crazy expensive equipment where you could simulate different things in 3-dimentional virtual reality (even 4-dimentional if you include haptic feedback). One of the more memorable moments was when some of my class mates created a Jedi-training simulator where you actually held a “real” light sabre in your hands fighting off attackers.

What always bothered me about the lab though was that it was so expensive. How could we ever make anything there that we could actually use outside of that environment? At least within a reasonable timespan?

Then one day, I saw something that was posted on the internet. Someone had taken a $50 Nintendo Wii-remote and written a piece of software so that it could basically do what our super expensive lab could do. More than that, he released the software on his site, and the technology actually got implemented in real games, making the time from the lab to a commercial product ridiculously short. This guys name was Johnny Lee, and he was a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University.

What had happened here? Well – two things. First of all Johnny had taken an invention and transformed it into something entirely different. The inventors of the Wii remote didn’t know what they had invented, and the product development was democratized, or rather, collaborative. That is what I think will happen to a lot of product development. It’s basically a high tech mash-up. Secondly, the technology was released for free on the internet and developed by others in a collaborative way. Had Johnny, like a lot of people would, tried to protect his invention and keep it secret, it would never have gotten this important this quickly.

To me personally, this is one of the most inspiring things I have seen. I frequently go back to this video to remind myself that anything is possible, and that the seed for something fantastic might sit right under my nose, in my fridge, in my closet or somewhere else where I never expected to see it. It has already changed my life, and I know that many more great things lay ahead.

Now go look in your own fridge.

The prosumer revolution is no joke. And it has been brought about by different factors. One, obviously, is the ease of publishing and distribution along with its the radical drop in cost. Another is the set of psychological incentives activated by social media. And yet another is the dramatic democratization of production equipment, which is what I would like you to consider in this following example. Because while prices drop on professional media production equipment, the consumer models are becoming so good that the singulatiry where equipment is no longer a barrier of entry is near.

Consider this example. In this article, a $40,000 Hasselblad camera and Phase One 39 Megapixel back (pretty much the top of the line in digital photography) is compared side by side with a $500 Canon G10 point and shoot digital pocket camera.

And the results are staggering. Sure, I don’t mean that the G10 would suffice for any situation, but just the fact that they are so close in this test that the best person in the test group could only get 60% right answers when comparing prints from the two cameras should raise some questions. They might as well have flipped a coin.

I think I’ll head down to the camera store and buy a G10 today.

Organization of creativity and innovation is one of my favorite topics. I haven’t written about it much here, but I actually wrote my masters thesis on the subject for my M.Sc. in Media Technology back in 2003.

More advanced organizational principles and technological aids for innovation are rare in the media industry, at least in Sweden. It’s not easy to get these things to work, so I really can’t blame anybody, but still I believe there should be more attempts made. If successfully inlemented it could be massively profitable.

Today I found out that Aftonbladet are actually instituting an innovation officer to work on these things, with the ambition to activate the most innovation capacity from the entire organization. Her name is Agnes Sävenstedt, and interestingly enough, she also has an M.Sc. in Media Technology. I guess we just like innovation.

Anyway, it’s an interesting move from Aftonbladet, who I think are big enough to make something like this work.

Read more about it here.

We all hate memorizing passwords. I do too. Computer Security was one of the last advanced courses I took before getting my media technology M.Sc., and still, I’m as bad as anyone at maintaining good password security routines. It’s just a pain.

Enter ObPwd, another achronym representing “Object-Based Passwords”. What if a song, a picture or some other object could replace your passwords? Much easier to remember a song or a picture than a password, right? Check it out here, here and here. Also check out the Firefox-plugin here.

So why do I write about this on my advertising blog? Well – besides the obvious need for secure handling of client data, this is also an extremely common area where ordinary people could use some help. That means it’s an obvious area where we could get some branded utility going. Why aren’t companies like lock-maker ABUS, one of the home security companies or even one of the banks helping their clients out with this problem instead of pushing out trad-ad outdoor and prints.

There is a lot of talk about branded content and branded utility, but when push comes to shove we’re all reaching for the expensive photo shoot instead. Come on now, I’m giving you this one for free.

There was A LOT of talk about technology at Cannes this year. A lot of talk about social networks. And mobile. I think there is much confusion about technology.

Being an old media technology engineer, I guess I should embrace and defend technology, but even though I love technology, I don’t view it as an entity of its own. Technology is nothing more than an enabler of communication. This year in Cannes, people seemed a bit blinded by technology. They seemed to have forgotten about purpose and relevance. The whole idea was in some cases a “cool” technical solution, completely off topic and irrelevant to the brand. I call it technology clowning.

We must understand that the changes taking place are not in technology as such, but in people’s behavior and maturity in using technology. We’ve had computers and the Internet for a while now. That’s not new. We’ve had social networks for many years too, but only now have the masses matured enough to make use of it on a big scale. Why? Several reasons, but these reasons have very little to do with technology and very much to do with psychology.

Sure there are technology leaps that are important, but they are rare. One that is coming up now is useful mobile internet. My guess is that this is going to be the big hype at Cannes 2009. And again the lion raking conservatives will put up mobile solutions crammed with technology, but without the psychology. And they will win lions.

I hope I’m wrong about this.

“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.

Yeehj! The presentation of my masters thesis went great, and I’m now just a signature away from my M.Sc. (civilingenjör) in Media Technology. Took me ten years, but hey… I’ve been busy working for god sake!

After taking the train back to Stockholm I met up with the amazing Sara for some chilled Pol Roger at some Levi’s event. Perfect timing.

Erik was the host.

Then we grabbed a taxi and headed over to the sneak premier of Grill.

Melker held a speach about his new place.

Mary-Lee was there in all her beauty.

My favorite police officer was staking out the place.

We switched glasses, but really I didn’t quite dig her new school teacher look, so we switched back.

We went for a quick drink at Inferno…

…and then went back to play some more with our friends.

Sara was the funniest.

The night ended at Riche for me, but I made it an early night since I had a client meeting in the morning. After the meeting and some some other work I hooked up with Sara again for a late afternoon burger at Gondolen. Tres bon!

Life is good.

I have an L.A-friend, who is one of the smartest guys I know. We went to college together to get our M.Sc’s in Media Technology, started a Magazine together, and basically had a lot of fun for four years. He ended up in Hollywood making all these cool superhero-films at Sony Imageworks, and I ended up here. Now, with the Swedish December-weather, that doesn’t seem all fair now does it?

But anyway, since he doesn’t have a blog, I’ll try to recap what he said about Facebook today:

“Friend spammers”. What is that? It’s those “friends” that you haven’t seen since grade school, but now they’ve tracked you down on Facebook. You accept them adding you and – BOOM – all of a sudden all these messages start dropping in “…send this to all you friends or you’ll be eaten by a hamster…” or other such garbage. WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU!
1. You STILL haven’t learned to distinguish spam from content and
3. Is that REALLY the first impression you want to give me after 15 years?!?
(Number 2 is “You’re an idiot”, but I try to keep a professional tone on my blog.)

I would say that these “friends” are spam in themselves and should be treated as such.

This calls for new functionality on Facebook:
There needs to be 2 ways to drop friends. Soft drop and hard drop.

Soft drop is for those that you just discreetly don’t want in your life. They haven’t necessarily done anything wrong, but for some reason or another you don’t feel that they contribute to your life, and you don’t have anything to contribute to theirs. Don’t keep them. Soft drop. They probably won’t even notice.

Hard drop on the other hand is for those mentioned above. THE IDIOTS!!! (Sorry, lost it there for a while). You drop them and they get a message, or better, a film with you howling “YOU’VE BEEN ERASED, because you’re an idiot”. Let me give you an example:

Arnold Schwartzeneger style, yeah!

Maybe I’ll just write that app for Facebook tonight actually…