HEAD BLOG

The tipping point for the e-book is here. Despite the grumblings over multitasking, webcams and closed systems the launch of the iPad is already making waves.

Amazon, once the pioneer in this market and the company who brought book buying into our homes, has taken the knock as many pioneers can: by being too focussed on a single business model. Books were their stock-in-trade and, surprisingly perhaps given their successful   expansion into the wider world of online retail, books is where they chose to stay.

Now, against the backlit elegance of the iPad, Amazon’s Kindle looks as dusty and old fashioned as the books it sought to replace. The lessons it has learnt and the markets it opened are there for all to see; especially brighter, more visionary companies like Apple.

Apple have just forced Amazon to concede its persistent and historic advantage, price. By switching places, by adopting the pricing freedom which Amazon once used to undermine that of iTunes, Apple have ensured the co-operation of the major publishers whilst starting off (before they’ve really even started) on the right foot, namely a profitable and sustainable pricing model. Apple want no loss-leaders of the sort which have hamstrung the likes of Microsoft, Sony and Amazon. The future path of publishing will, it seems, be found by avoiding the potholes of other content digitisation.

The not-so-secret cheers at the first signs of Apple’s success can be heard from newspaper offices to games programmers because, much as we all love the idea of free it’s not so great when you have something you have to sell.

Had Amazon understood that getting their over-the-air delivery model right would lead to people wanting more from the technology then perhaps they wouldn’t have been so eager to adopt the digital ink format that has limited their selling power to books. Think small may be a great maxim for makers of chips but Pandora’s box of online shopping was opened a long time ago and our expectations exceed current capabilities (seriously, where is my jetpack?). We don’t so much see capability as we do potential. So reading books=great, but I’d like to watch video, look up references and buy presents for the kids too.

The iPad (and whatever personalised devices come after) aren’t so much about whether you can work on them (one editor told me she would only buy one once she could edit on it, and I’m sure there will be an App for that) but how can spend our leisure time on it.

And so we come back to the e-book as the notion of leisure time ends where it started, with a good book in front of the fire.

Digital books will pay dividends for the casual market, not because the screen is easier on the eye (it isn’t) or because they are cheaper (they aren’t), but because they are convenient. Much as I might prefer the sensual feel of paper flicking across my thumb and much as I want to scream and rebel at the idea of Apple being the gatekeeper of our leisure time, restricting and dictating the content to fit with a single person’s idea of “brand values”, I can’t help but notice that I’m changing. I’m demanding more from my books even as I read them. Engrossed as I was in Late Night On Twisted River (John Irving, 2009) I found myself pausing at moments and reaching for Wikipedia just to probe the border between reality and imagination. Irving is a master of blurring this border and whilst I was happy to be carried along with bears and prostitutes I couldn’t help but wonder more about the man behind the deaths of so many beautiful, innocent children.

In short, I wanted more, not less from the experience of reading.

David Hewson recently posted a number of photographs on his blog. He also tweeted about them. The photographs were of the places he had researched for his latest novel (The Blue Demon, available now at Amazon). On his blog he demonstrates how he took them and also why.

At the back of her books, Jodi Picoult devotes a few pages to the book club concept. She poses a list of questions people might want to consider when discussing her book.

Chicken House point would-be readers of their books to a specific passage using the bold statement “Read it! Try page…”. It’s an expansion on the old marketing trick of relating a unique selling point to salespeople by which they can enthuse about a product. The marked passage encourages readers firstly  to pick up the book and then open it. If the passage is picked properly then that provides the last link in the chain that has us hooked.

We want more, not less, from our books. With e-books (or books, as I believe we will one day call them) this won’t change.

The challenge will be in ensuring the tipping point doesn’t send us all downhill.

Nothing says “I don’t really care” like an e-card. After their initial novelty veneer wore thin, the e-card became confined to businesses  who wanted to trumpet 1) that they can save money by donating to charity but really can’t be bothered 2) that they are now taking a low-carbon approach but really can’t be bothered or 3) that their MD received one from his son (who couldn’t be bothered) and who thinks it represents the future. Of not being bothered.

Just hours after installing the new super one hour photo developing machine, everbody’s grandmother went digital consigning vast towers of squeaky paper and “leather” bound photo albums to the warehouse of oddities last seen in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Suddenly we could all take as many rubbish photos as we liked without some sixteen year old slapping a sticker on our faces telling us to do better.

Websites such as Photobox (Flickr capitalised late on this) sprang up to turn those digital files back into “product” and find a use for all the paper we thought we’d saved.

There are, of course, lessons to be learned from the e-card and the sudden collapse of entire film-to-print industry. We clearly wanted to carry on taking photos and share them with family and friends. We also enjoyed the freedom to “get creative” with our work. Especially when it came to personalisation.

Which is exactly what Moonpig saw and capitalised on to great effect. From out of nowhere came a brand with no real world value. Moonpig just created a great product at the right price and it caught on.

It must have caught the stalwarts of the greeting card industry by surprise. Just as Kodak were caught out by the rapid take-up of digital, so were Hallmark and their heavyweight counterparts. To the outside observer they seemed unfazed by Moonpig’s success even though it was clear from the start that this was an idea which would grow and grow.

Unfazed or calm.

Business strategy is a difficult beast to pin down. Those of us who press our noses up against the windows of other businesses like to weigh in on the decisions made by marketers.

I’m no exception.

Often it’s a good exercise, a sort of what-would-I-do thought experiment that sharpens the mind. Or distracts from real work.

In the case of Moonpig, I’ve often wondered why the big boys didn’t jump all over them immediately. They have the resources to protect their business on and off-line so were they being slow and out of touch with the way the Internet was shaping business or did they have a much larger strategy at hand?

We’ll never truly know of course and perhaps it doesn’t even matter because what they have established looks pretty good. It will appeal to the “rest” of us who are slower to adopt new ideas. Those of us who waited for Boots to begin processing digital films again.

The gut reaction (from what I’ve heard) is that Hallmark were just slow to react, caught with their pants down. And I’d be happy to go along with that if I wasn’t regularly having to think different about what my own industry perceives as good and bad packaging.

Because I don’t think it’s that simple. And thinking like this makes me want to look at things differently.

I can see a good business case for Hallmark waiting. Their name and reputation wasn’t going to disappear overnight and so, if they were fazed by the Internet explosion, it didn’t need to matter too much. They could afford to wait. They could afford to let Moonpig take all the risk, spend all the money and get people used to the concept of ordering and personalising cards online. After all, it’s an approach which works well for Apple who often wait to see how people access new technologies before jumping in and “innovating”.

Hallmark are now advertising on TV. They are doing it in a very “Moonpig” sort of way but with the Hallmark brand. If they go the whole… hog… then they should tie in deals with Boots and use their stores to carry the message back out into the real world where its customer base still live and shop.

A guy in the office owns a Blackberry.

He traded in his iPhone for a Blackberry. I have to remember that detail because it’s that which makes the least amount of sense.

I don’t understand the Blackberry. A tiny screen. A tiny keyboard. A confusing menu system and connectivity that is a pain to set up.

My colleague can’t give me an answer to explain his decision because I tend to shout at him when the topic rears its head.

I’m sure it has a future but deep down my feeling is that future will increasingly be shaped like an iPhone.

* * *

My wife does our food shopping. Each week she comes home angrier and angrier, telling me that yet another product range has been taken over by the Tesco own label brand. Where once she was loyal to a particular brand (remember when brands were simply “makes”?) now she is being forced into the arms of Mr Tesco.

She’s angry that Tesco create vast walls of a product which looks almost like the old, more established one.

The future is being shaped into a Tesco logo.

* * *

We are all guilty of wanting a simpler world. In the realm of the world-wide-web and even the wider world of email, we gravitate towards a simpler way of doing things. Often this means preferring to only buy our books from one place because we either see no value in personal service or else believe everybody is selling the same product anyway.

Last year a post by Seth Godin led Dave Trott to argue that the “perfect” social number of 150 (the number of meaningful relationships an individual can realistically maintain) could be extended to Twitter. I didn’t agree because I see Twitter as something to dip into rather than collect. But Seth’s précis of Dunbar’s Number is important for the way we develop socially on and off the web. As individuals and as groups we interact with only a small number of brands and as the web becomes bigger and bigger I believe, commercially at least, we search out fewer and fewer brands to interact with. These might shift as alliances are formed and broken or as new products come online but, by and large, we’ll continue to buy our books from Amazon over choosing the smaller bookshop; we’ll look to consolidate all our data in one area of the cloud; choose our clothes from just a small number of retailers and wait patiently for the single device which enables the vast majority of us to pursue our relatively simple pleasures.

Of course there are exceptions just as there are varied tastes there will always be a variety of stores and services. Just not as many as the global aspect of the Internet could allow for and not half as many as we might think.

There will be the Blackberry and there will be the iPhone and some may ask what the difference really is.

With or without the release of the iSlate, the world would be facing exactly this situation but it suits my sense of drama to aim for the high note and claim Apple are ushering in Skynet whilst the rest of us reach deep into our sofas for the chunk of change it’s likely to cost.

Talk about saving for your own funeral. Maybe they will get June Whitfield to front the ads.

I’m only half joking. The iSlate is just the pinnacle of where tech has been headed these past few years; someone was bound to do it sooner or later. It’s just that Apple are perfectly poised to deliver the technology wrapped neatly into the consumer dream.

Because that, it seems to me, is what Apple trades in. Unlike Microsoft, Apple don’t deal with computers. It’s all about the consumer dream. Name another hardware manufacturer, be they HP or Sony or even the affordable semi-pioneers such as Asus and you have a collective that deals in computers, in technology.

Not so Apple. Cupertino asks what we dream of as consumers. The answers are brought to us courtesy of the technology but it’s the concept we buy into.

So how can we hold Apple in anything other than the best of regards?

Like Google, their image is one of purest ‘cool’ – if cool were a commodity worth billions and capable of keeping us in a blissful state of perpetual purchasing.

And the Google analogy isn’t accidental or merely convenient either.

Both companies are currently engaged in activities that have far reaching and potentially damaging consequences for freedom. They show us, in dramatic tones, just how far out of touch our notion of the Nation State really is. We may gripe about unelected officials being handed authority but really it is Google, Apple and, to a lesser extent even Amazon that we should really be examining.

In the pursuit of creating the ultimate in companion devices, Apple are aiming above the heads of Amazon and Google. A single device upon which we can buy books, films, music and games is a fine old dream as far as consumer dreams go but it comes with provisos attached.

Controlling the gateways to these entertainment hubs is more than just savvy business, it’s a political and economic wakeup call. The iPhone has stimulated enormous activity in development circles and led to Apple’s latest $3.3 billion dollar profit. I’ll just qualify that; first quarter profit. That’s a great achievement and the global economy must be, to no small extent, thankful.

But what longterm damage is it doing? What affect will it have on bricks and mortar retail? Unlike the threat of Internet shopping, Apple have created a system by which there need be no rival shops.

Their proprietary approach means that each of those 2 billion Apps we’ve all been busy downloading (and happily agreeing to call Apps) have been downloaded through Apple. There can be no competition to sell them just as there can be no competition to put them up for sale; even the type of application on sale to us is tightly controlled by Apple.

Of course that’s not to say it is only Apple doing this. There is competition, of a sort. Amazon is trying to control the way in which we access books – an aim which could now fail thanks to Apple who want the whole publishing pie. Google too, want in on that and it remains to be seen who will win out. Google are interesting because they have the veneer of open source to make us believe their motives are somehow purer. The recent spats over the book agreement reveals a different side.

But why does it matter? We have to buy our books, our music, our pleasures somewhere don’t we?

We do. We also need to work somewhere. Imagine a world devoid of high streets; where there is no HMV or Waterstones. A great world perhaps but they have, between them, mopped up the choice we used to have.

Independant stores are a dying breed, concentrating the hunt for jobs into fewer and fewer hands. The benefit to local economies dies with them and it’s not so much of a stretch to see a world, ten years hence, where the big shops are just online. At best.

We’ve been here before of course. The Industrial Revolution has lessons to learn from in this regard of the dangers of concentrating power in too few hands.

But we survived that, right?

Maybe.

Huge areas of poverty, inequality and unemployement followed the Industrial Revolution and it gave rise to the concept of the sweatshop, whether it be in a factory or across an entire continent. Once we allow our consumer desires to be our needs then little stands in the way of making that a reality. Once we allow Apple to be the one stop shop we ease the way for any measure which can streamline that process even further.

It doesn’t stop there either. We have already seen Amazon withdraw books for sale after they’ve been bought, reaching into the digital home and removing a publication (ironically it was 1984) from the Kindle (remember that?). Can that ever be a good thing? It’s an activity we surely associate with repressive Nations.

And that’s just what can happen to existing publications. It’s not a work of fiction that deciding what can and can’t be published in the first place has terrible ramifications.

Much applause has been given to the return of the bedroom coder. With the iPhone we saw game development break away from the huge coding conglomerates that had built up around the walls of the super publishers. The bedroom coder was back and that meant more power, more control and ultimately more money in the hands of the craftsman. But this is somewhat misleading. Because where is the self-publisher? The sole coder has full control of his own vision, up to the point when Apple becomes involved. Then it is judge and jury time. You’ve funded yourself, you’ve been creative, they say. Now it’s time to accept our payment terms – no negotiation, no choice. And that’s if we decide your creative vision is appropriate and in line with ours.

Again, we’ve seen this before. Apple aren’t reinventing the wheel, merely tightening the reins. Walmart has come under frequent fire for using it’s commercial position to dictate content to artists.

So are Apple switching on Skynet here?are we witnessing the end of control and the demise of the Nation State?

Yes.

There is, however, the chance that it will fail.

The open standards of the world wide web could be the only challenge to the monopolization of data. As long as Apple keep a web browser as part of their devices the opportunity for new ideas to seep through because anybody can publish on the Internet. Any ideas, any music, any games can all be delivered free to air through the old WWW.

But even the Internet is beginning to look a bit too unwieldy, a bit too big. How much longer before we’d rather use the Amazon App than the Amazon website? How much longer until our research is done within a single, cleverly cross-reference App with access to every book available through Apple? How much longer before it’s just easier and less confusing to altogether skip the Internet as we understand it today?

In the end we tend to take the path of least resistance and maybe that’s the problem. Who will step in whilst we get swept along? Will we see a repeat of the anti-trust suits that marred Microsoft’s rise to dominance in the 80s and 90s and in which case will they be fought on a national level or will we see the emergence of the World State in a bid to counterbalance the power.

Whatever happens with the iSlate, iPad or iTablet – we shouldn’t just suck it and see.

The issue of how to create exciting packaging is one that comes up, from time to time, here at Head First. As one of the leading agencies responsible for creating the “look” of video games we wrestle with what, exactly constitutes good packaging.

Of course this is nothing unique to video games. Designers of every discipline struggle with this one and there are many answers. For us it’s a balance between creating an aesthetically pleasing image and ensuring that it serves its primary purpose – getting noticed. If it came down to laying down cover art with a big star and the words “contains cheaper thrills than Halo” then as long as we were convinced it would help sell more units we’d probably propose it. We might have to weep silently into our pillows at night or silence the artist within but we’d have to admit that advertising & design has a job to do. Aesthetics is just one part of that job.

So when this article appeared over on Kotaku it got us talking.

Without a doubt the European packaging is pretty cool. It’s intriguing stuff that draws you in.

Then there is the Japanese version; different approach but still intriguing. Kotaku don’t seem terribly impressed but that’s where these sort of appraisals start to blur. Where does prior knowledge of a game begin to inform and even pollute opinion of what makes packaging effective?

And finally, the US packaging. Despised, it seems, by all – an opinion not difficult to fall in line with all things considered.

But why is the intriguing style of the European art “better” than that of the US? Is it more effective because it’s more stylish?

These are questions which can only really be answered with hindsight but there are things to consider.

Target market. Is the European target market more sophisticated? Will they be likely to respond positively to the neat, origami style and subtle blood stain?

Is the US audience just looking for a pack that says action, and team based action at that? I can’t say that the posing of the characters or their rendering conveys what I think the designers were hoping for (but there will be many reasons why that is so let’s not blame any individual for that) but it is clear that a specific genre is being sold to the viewer.

Placement. Is the pack going into retail stores or online? Often cover art will be produced with the player in mind. But they won’t always be the person who is actually buying the game. In-store purchases can be made by mums, dads, grandparents or any number of “well-meaning” people. The way they choose a game will be vastly different to the way in which the gamer will choose one. Books are a great model for this. Look at the number of books that reflect the style of the Harry Potter books (and then look at the different covers available for Harry Potter). Publishers understand that people who buy books will sometimes look for something “in the style of”.

Maybe that’s what the US publishers of Heavy Rain were going for. Maybe they knew that the gamers would buy the game because they’d read about it online, seen the trailers and experienced, firsthand, the hype. So maybe the packaging was simply an attempt to tell Mum that here is a game of the style she has seen lying beneath a pile of boxer shorts on her son’s bedroom floor. Mum won’t know that it’s a great game or a poor game (unless there are clear stars on there saying “contains cheaper thrills than Halo”) so she’ll be looking for a gift that shows she knows him.

And that can mean playing it safe and sticking to styles she’s seen before.

Nothing wrong with that.

If anything it says more about the wider state of packaging video games than it does the choices made for Heavy Rain. Line up all the different World War II games and judge which one stands out (you’d be picking ours for Brothers In Arms of course).

But even when all packaging follows a certain style it still has to stand out and get noticed. It needs something that is louder, more colourful, sexier, than the rest of the pack.

In the end it comes down to creating packaging for a purpose – and knowing what that purpose is, being honest about it and identifying the real target market – not for the game but for the packaging.

With Xmas well and truly over and the consequences clearly showing, everybody at Head First is eating healthy foods at the moment. But Winter being Winter means that as well as healthy it has to be warming and nourishing. No salad leaves and carrot sticks for us.

With that in mind, Jeni spent an evening making tomato soup which she brought in for her lunches. I did the same but I have to admit, hers was marginally tastier than mine. So here is her recipe.

Ingredients (serves 2)

1 small onion
1 garlic clove
olive oil
I stick of celery (& leaves)
I large Carrot
2 large ripe tomatoes
Half of red pepper
1/2 Chopped red chilli
Sun Dried tomatoes
Roasted red pepper
Tomato puree
Basil
Parsley
pinch of sugar
Salt & Black pepper
Veg Stock

Sweat onions, garlic, red pepper & chilli in a pan for 5 mins. Add carrots & celery (with leaves) and sweat for a further 5 minutes.
Add Veg stock (about 1 and half pints of hot water). Boil for 5 or 10 minutes then add sun dried tomatoes, roasted red peppers, tomato puree, sugar, basil and parsley and simmer untl veg has softened. Add salt & pepper to taste before blending. Add more boiling water if perferable.

Serve (if you want a non healthy version, add single cream).

An eye on the future

Natal is exciting.

I was excited when the Wii was announced (and remain so to this day) but Natal is something else entirely. A hands-free approach to gaming which can change everything.

At Head First, where we strive to find what is exciting about any product, that’s something to sit up and pay attention to.

What’s more exciting, however, is how Microsoft are beginning to crank up the interest in it.

On Wednesday, Sony issued a press release to inform the world that their version of the Wii motion sensor was delayed. For those of you who aren’t glued to video games, Sony are entering the same market as Nintendo Wii motion and Microsoft’s Natal system. Their answer, announced last year will arrive in the form of a wand device which would be tracked by cameras similar to those on the Nintendo Wii.

On its own that would have been impressive.

But then Microsoft blew everyone out of the water with Natal. If that were me, I’d have taken my wand home and sulked for a while, muttering about not being understood.

To their credit, Sony haven’t done that and without getting a hands-on experience I can’t tell whether it won’t be even more successful than Natal. I certainly hope it competes because I love what Sony does.

So what’s exciting about Microsoft’s approach?

Apart from the technology, which sounds amazing, it comes down to Wednesday and Sony’s press release.

Microsoft took their time, all of a handful of hours, and responded with a bold claim about Natal.

It was, they said, “fraught with risk“.

This is a great thing to say. Put yourself in a movie for a minute and listen to the dialogue when two heroes are faced with an almost impossible situation. They think of a plan. “It’s risky, ” they say, “but it might just work”.

That’s what Microsoft have effectively done. Showing great confidence in their product by making claims to the contrary.

It sounds like they aren’t going in quiet on this one.

Just days after seeing (and commenting) on this neat viral ad for the Swedish TV licence, I came across a similar concept for Adidas’s range of Star Wars branded trainers. What is interesting to me is my reaction to both ads.

With the former I was spurred on to write about positivity in advertising and bemoan the often gloomy approach to social change advertising in this country (a state that came back to mind during a debate on Newsnight where all the questions centred around whether setting a minimum price for alcohol was likely to help curb the culture of binge drinking – my observation at the time was to wonder why nobody was asking why people felt compelled to drink to inebriation in the first place – but I digress).

With the latter ad (the Adidas one in case my digression has jolted you out of space and time) I found myself thinking about the technology which pulled in images from a Facebook account and incorporated them into the video.

I’ve seen this done before of course, and even proposed it for a campaign before today. Sometimes it has been done well, sometimes, not so well.
I’d argue that the Adidas campaign falls into the second group.

The biggest draw, the biggest point of interest in the ad was Star Wars. That was its entire appeal. The “personalisation” elements were added in because, well, we’re social now. It’s not that they were jarring, just redundant. A “share with Facebook” button would have probably sufficed.

And all this got me thinking about virals and technology and how we’re supposed to believe that everything has changed now because of the internet.

And yet, how little has changed.

Because, it seems to me, a viral ad is just an ad done correctly.

I wouldn’t pass the Star Wars ad on to friends because of the social aspect. Seeing my photos in it wasn’t new anymore and didn’t fit into the ad’s message any more than augmented reality technology is fitting into the many application it is being forced into.

Novelty is a technique, not a message.

Facebook connect (and technologies like it) are incredible. It’s easy to see appeal and it’s understandable to want to use it to facilitate word-of-mouth.
But the danger is that it can overshadow the message.

And it is the message which, when novelty fades, which goes viral.

And message isn’t reliant upon technology.

If the message is strong then tongues will wag, real or digital.

At Head First we are firm believers in excitement. We feel there is
always something exciting about a product, no matter how ordinary it
may be on the surface.

Engaged, as we often are, in creating advertising strategy for video
games it seems a natural approach for us.

Sir, we might say, yes you, you at the back. I can tell this
dishwasher is something you can get excited about because by owning
it, it will surely change your life.

And then we would continue, relating to the gentleman who once stood
at the back of a small crowd but who now finds himself facing that
assemblage as all around turn to see the man who finds dishwashers
exciting. Not inevitable, not necessary, but exciting.

And we see the look of alarm in his eyes turn to interest as he
listens the the reason, the single reason why he should buy a
dishwasher.

And yes, we do believe that gentleman is getting excited.

He’s seen the light. He knows what we mean. It’s not just a dishwasher anymore, it’s an exciting device; as much a lifestyle purchase as SkyHD or an iPhone.

Dishwasher sold. Anyone for soil?

In this country we like to focus on the negative.

Don’t speed or you’ll kill someone.

Don’t try to claim benefits because we’re always watching you.

Give us £2 a week or children will continue to be hurt.

Ironically, the one ad I saw that was positive was for ID cards which said that if you carried an ID card, you could prove how old you were. Presumably this was the Government’s way of helping young looking 18 year olds to start binge drinking.

It’s as though we respond better to the stick than the carrot. And that might be true.

But it might not be.

Because if there is one thing I have learned it’s never to take other people’s research or “facts” for granted.

Contrast it with this neat viral for TV Licences over in in Sweden. I don’t know how effective it has been but it made me smile. I don’t know if it would make me change my behaviour because I pay the fee now but I think I’d feel good about it.

It’s different.

It’s positive.