slow media to be enjoyed by the wayside

The world spins on its axis in twenty four hours.

We expect our news much faster than that these days. While i'm on Twitter, i get real time updates from my fellow human beings halfway across the world. I am twelve hours ahead of them. Not counting the things I get to read of blogs, news sites, video sites and pictures.

I guess it can be perceived that the world is getting smaller, or as Thomas Friedman says, The World Is Flat.

I say, learn to slow down every now and then. While the earth keeps spinning, perhaps twice as fast these days in the social media universe, there is a whole other world that still sticks to the same 24 hours we've always had.

You want to achieve work life balance, unplug yourself and start appreciating the world as you know it, not just through the social media's lenses.

Social media is best utilised to achieve a pulse on trends, communities, ideas, connections. but it backfires when you face an information overload. I think our brains can take it, but..

you also have to train your brain to not just consume information, but actually derive some value from it.

It's not just about how much you consume, it's how you interpret data, apply it, make it work for you, your counterparts, your businesses.

And that's why i still value "slow media". when you sacrifice speed for a great media product. a craft, where time and energy has been invested to make something easily understood so that MORE may understand and enjoy.

So what is slow media?


Image credit: Crackskullbob

For now, I'll define it as media that has large investments in time, energies, manpower, conceptualisation, production and even channel planning to maximise exposure to said media product.

Slow media can be social media. Slow media is purposeful, intricate cuisine, as opposed to fast food.

Fast food's a quick fix, fills your stomach, perhaps rough around the edges, not made from the best ingredients, perhaps even for mass consumption but with little value.

You just feel satisfied, and better about yourself and your surroundings when you consume slow media without rushing through it. when you come out of it, knowing more, eager to tell your peers just where you had this gastronomical epiphany.

And that my friends, is how i see "slow media". I guess the fact that i'm about to start looking for lunch had something to do with this post.

Does The Net Encourage Good Reading?

i did something rather unfamiliar today, i bought two magazines, Wired and Fast Company to be exact.

in an age where print mediums are going extinct as fast as dinosaurs, many are moving online, finding an 'afterlife' in the cloud, the net, the web.. whatever you want to call it.

"all print goes online" as akin to "all dogs go to heaven"

but i bought two magazines, on the strength of their cover story. take a look at these two cover stories for the month of December:

Wired: Saving Microsoft - Can Ray Ozzie fix the house that Bill Built? By Steven Levy



Fast Company: CISCO Gets Radical - How CEO John Chambers is turning the Tech Giant into a Socialist Enterprise. By Ellen McGirt



if online is the afterlife for print publications, why did they die?
- falling circulation numbers
- falling subscribers
- they all lead to falling advertisement revenue and as a business, print cannot survive.

And yet i picked up these two magazines, and i'm going to make it a habit to read habitually from this medium for the following reasons:

1. the strength of their journalism
- aggregated content, not just an opinion, but a valued piece of content from some of the best writers, best editors, who can spot trends, aggregate information and cut through the clutter. in other words, i value the opinion of the writer the same way i value my web heroes, so what else is there?

2. the reliability of the medium
- as long as the publication stays in business, you can expect it in your news stands at the stipulated date each day / week / month. furthermore, i'm not reliant on connectivity, power.. if i see something worth reading, i pass the magazine to my friend (without needing to tag it on delicious, or any other "share this" option.)

3. the form factor of print
- until the day we develop electronic paper, what i have in my hands is not something as cumbersome as a desktop, heavy as a laptop, but something light i can fit in my bag without needing to squint my eyes on an iPhone sized screen. it's portable enough to take anywhere, and i can still interact with it in a variety of non-digital ways.

- content also comes into play here. good, incisive writing that has been trained or designed to be read slowly and carefully. not the haphazard plageristic or schizophrenic writing style that plagues so many dime-a-dozen bloggers. in the speed it takes to beat someone else to news, we just don't take our time to carefully measure our words for maximum impact. it's a celebration of everything that made writing great to begin with! slow reading on a sunday afternoon with a book, newspaper or magazine just isn't the same if it were on a laptop (but you might argue that as my personal preference.)

4. only the best survive
- i sure hope this is true. that good publications stay in print so long as collectively we deem them worthy to be read by the masses (though i will argue that sometimes the masses just aren't always right.) but so far, we've undeservingly lost some great publications, but there are plenty that are still in circulation.

- my contention is that we have so many newspapers, magazines, blogs, videos, microblogs and social networks.. that we've inflicted this tough competition of media channels on ourselves. human consumption and consumerism has bred so many magazines that should never have been published in the first place, and on a more amplified level, the number of online publications and blogs. Anyone can publish - i won't take that right away.. but i sure as hell am keeping my right of reading what i want.

my closing thoughts are these, learn to enjoy reading and making meaning of what you read. maybe print isn't for everyone. i don't know if my children will grow up without ever knowing what print is.. but i think there's a cultural price to all this.. to not take your time to read AND write. if we don't make meaning from these basic forms of media, will the quality of media suffer drastically? so what if you have the power of hyperlinks or multimedia if content suffers?

as a special feature, you can read the Wired cover story here, and if you do get your hands on the magazine, you can tell me if you find it any different -)

Wired: 16.12 Ray Ozzie Wants To Push Microsoft Back Into Startup Mode

Digital solutions don't always solve your traditional problems

one of my main gripes is, people expecting a digital influence strategy to be the miracle pill to all your business woes.

the audience exists online right? so why not just reach out to them there? yeah, the proof is in the pudding, but i'm sure every marketer and advertiser has also seen the charts that indicate, the money simply isn't going into digital. markets in Singapore are still holding on very tightly into investing their marketing dollars into traditional media, a paradigm that is slowly losing its audience to a fragmented media landscape.(but constantly evolving, more on that next time)

so anyway, say you do intend to put your money where your mouth is, and invest into digital strategies. you've made the right first step, but digital isn't just a digital carbon copy of traditional strategies. if i may mention seth godin's analogy of the meatball sundae.

traditional marketing, advertising and PR is your meatball. it tastes great, it works well, it's been established that these are the best practices to approaching each discipline. However, using an un-thought digital strategy is like putting whipped cream, cherries, hot fudge and a waffle to your meatball. the toppings taste great, but they really don't make the product any more palatable.

what you want, is a digital strategy that works more like meatball sauce, or spagetti to go with your meatballs, or change your practices, products, organisational structures to become more like a vanilla ice-cream. that's when instead of just getting a single meatball or a single scoop of ice-cream, you get a much richer and fulfilling brand.

so that's all fine and dandy, yeah, great analogy Seth, but what next? (i havent read that far into his book yet, but i'm going to hazard my opinions and guess here.)

in my line of work, i can reach out to bloggers, i can talk on forums, i can get stuff onto facebook, i can do a lot of things that gets the word out to people who are influential and where certain niche audiences exist. but sometimes, we still have a certain old mass media mentality. we want EVERYTHING. and we end up cluttering the web, adding noise to signal, telling stories to people who don't want to hear it.

i suggest, targeting specifically the key influencers for any project, and be open and transparent with them. the advent of this digital age, is that we should no longer need to read between the lines of press releases, or the hidden agendas of media publications.

the blogger is unique, in the sense that, he/she is doing it for himself, whatever their motivations are. but its so deeply personal that hidden agendas can easily become the public scrutiny.

so hence this changes for PR, direct communication. listening to what people are actually saying after you tell them a problem. are we really listening to what people really want to say? i've always believed that by asking the right questions, you'll get the right answer. don't just ask generic things, ask what's really pressing in today's fragmented media. people are calling out for more transparency, more realism, more entertainment, more interactivity. and we've shortchanged them more than we have listened to them

in terms of advertising, was talking to a few creative people in my agency, we all know banner ads are dead. if your marketing dollars are simply going into banner ads, fire your media agency, they obviously are holding on to old-world vestiges.

we talked about interactive microsites, mini games, in-game advertising (think WOW, racing sims, sport sims, metauniverses) but above and beyond, Digital solutions don't always solve your traditional problems. the general evolution of advertising will somehow find its way to be more targeted, so that when you see an ad, it makes perfect sense to you, it doesn't piss you off. it's more like a personal assistant or friend that recommends you something you might have forgotten, or not known about. i guess it's sort of like having a girlfriend who buys you gifts, and if she understands you, she'll get stuff you like. (not she likes)

this evolution can come from the traditional sense, it doesn't always have to be digital. because the problem is not always about where the audience is, but how the audience is perceiving the media around them. HENCE, marketing, advertising and PR all have to meet this mindset change.

people are changing, mass media is probably going to give way to mass micro media. content providers have to deal with smaller audiences, but really serve their audiences, and prove that the audience they're reaching really pertains to what media buyers should be putting their money into. hence.. the conglomerate might be dying it, specialised units is the way of the future. it's easy really, as the market fragments, shouldnt our strategies as well?

vote for Theory. Is The Reason!

okay, i really have to support one of the coolest people i know. virtually.

haha, i actually got to know of kevin lim's blog, theory is the reason by sheer luck while surfing ping.sg, but the quality of his content always kept bringing me back to his blog. i must admit, communications theory has always intrigued me, and maybe that's why i'm also currently doing what i'm doing, engaging people on the online space.

i was initially inspired to blog by two bloggers, yongfook and styra back in 2003, but lately it's been kevin that really inspires me to always think of the future of communications and what possibilities lie across the horizon.

so i must admit that i was stoked when i read this off his blog. a blogging scholarship! support kevin's work! vote now!

how web 2.0 is changing the internet - videos!

hey gang, for those of you who are rather astute, you'll noticed that i've finally added an RSS subscription button, and here to tell you all about it are the kind folk from the common craft.



and you'll also notice on the sidebar, my del.icio.us account. if you want to know why del.icio.us is one of my favourite web 2.0 applications, watch this video at your own peril!



i hope these videos helped you in your adoption of the more recent web 2.0 applications, and how you can use them to your benefit if you're running a more professional blog, or even a social one. it doesn't really matter, just think of the new ways you can connect to your readers!

and if you're an avid RSS user like myself, please subscribe to my feed! haha, because heaven knows i've probably already subscribed to yours!

fairness comes with a not so fair price


oooohhh.. you have to watch this. it's in such stark contrast to the anti smoking campaigns singapore has been putting out. (i'll embed the australian version since they're similar)



it's interesting init? the way opinions changed over the last 40 years. now we think we're right that smoking is harmful, i wonder what things will be like 20 years down the road? maybe it will be car emissions destroying the planet we live in, and they'll use scare tactics for that.

my point is simple, that such media articles affect the way we form our opinions. nobody was thinking of throat cancer 60 years ago, and while we're concerned about CFC emissions, no one's really taking it seriously yes either. not until the next shocking advert. so how're you gonna subvert all these messages flying at you?

Shiny Unhappy People
"A contemplative silence settles as we drive through Hartford. If you've never driven through Hartford, the effect can be duplicated in the comfort and safety of your home by going to sleep."

by Andrew Mueller for NME, 1995, p.32