social-creature

Image: Jordan Chesney
I wrote a post recently about how Your Life Is A Transmedia Experience, which included the example of Bret Easton Ellis’s latest novel, Imperial Bedrooms, the 25-years-later sequel to his debut, Less Than Zero, which creates a sort of closed-circuit loop by bringing both the original novel as well as the 1987 [...]

A year ago I wrote a piece called “Your Lifestyle Is An Alternate Reality Game.” An ARG, for short, is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants’ ideas or actions. Lifestyle, I suggested, [...]

HBO has created a monster with the promotional campaign for True Blood, a new TV series from the creator of Six Feet Under, set to premiere September 7th.
AdAge (which has a nice little video about the campaign here, but no way to embed it elsewhere) explains:

While they’re only one part of the larger campaign launching [...]

In Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between Who We Are and What We Buy, Rob Walker talks about “underground brands”–lifestyle symbols created by independent entrepreneurs. In fact, I actually think it’s easier to think of underground brands as “independent brands,” (cuz what does “underground” really mean, anyway?) much like independent music:
In popular music, independent music, [...]

Have you seen these billboards?

They’re all over the place:

Been wondering what the hell that’s all about, maybe?

Well, answer #1 goes like this:
Hope people have been seeing the billboards that I have put up around town. I think its important everyone knows how much Sarah Marshall SUCKS! How she does look fat in those jeans! [...]

last week i was on the marketing 101 panel at the startupLA conference. it was
actually a lot of fun, and there were some great questions afterwards. here’s some of my favorites, and my answers:
Q. what’s the fastest way for a new company to get exposure?
A. look for existing communities that are comprised of your target [...]

yesterday a new client pointed me in the direction of reverbnation.com, and while i don’t usually write about websites, this is different–i can’t even help it. launched just under a year ago, “ReverbNation.com is a Music 2.0 company that is responding to the changing music business paradigm.” except, when they say it, this isn’t [...]

photo by: anearthling

One of usability’s most hard-earned lessons is that “you are not the user.” If you work on a development project, you’re atypical by definition. Design to optimize the user experience for outsiders, not insiders.
- jakob nielsen
much the same way that the developer is not the user, the marketer is not the [...]

i don’t have much time to write here at the moment (and there’s a very good reason for that, which should be ready by next week) but i just saw something in a business week blog that begged to be mentioned.
at a very interesting meeting with ignited earlier this week, when i presented my perspective [...]