The Better Mousetrap

NOW DO WEAR TO THE LEFT, 007

THE CASE FOR KISS KISS BANG BANG

 

 

 

Like an Antony Gormley figure, there is something magnificent about the solitary human form; the James Dean loner; the Jack Bauer or Nicholas Brody lone agent. Stealthy types, moving in the shadows, on the outside – it reads cool off the page and walks cool across our screens. Fleming’s Bond, Ludlum’s Bourne: tough, icy, enigmatic, alone.

Yet most typically during the course of our everyday’s, few of us do “work alone”, independent and at a remove from others. In reality more the opposite is the case.

We get things done by joining forces and working together, which is why the pragmatic innovator in me would like to take this moment to praise the collaborative spirit, because Milton was on the nose. No man really is an island. It’s invariably partnerships and pairings that can make us ‘more’. By way of evidence, I’ll start with a maybe-not-so-lone 007 in the Caribbean.

 

THE CUT OF BOND’S JIB

When Daniel Craig channelled Ursula Andress and rose from the Bahamian blue in Casino Royale, the pupil dilations were of sufficient number for the majority to concur with what producer Barbara Broccoli had always known. Craig was an inspired piece of casting. It didn’t hurt that he was also a damn-fine actor. The innovation equation was clear: Broccoli + Craig = Bond Rebooted.

When Craig later emerged from a roof-top pool in the Shanghai sequence of Skyfall, the major coup for clothing brand Orlebar Brown was that 007 was wearing a pair of their swim shorts.

I discovered Orlebar Brown in 2009 when they featured in Monocle magazine. Their limited edition ‘Monocle Bulldog’ shorts were a partnership with editor-in-chief Tyler Brûlé, one of a series of limited edition pairings from O+B. A Bill Amberg retro capsule of shorts, beach towel and tote bag was another. “No, Simon. It’s possible to over-accessorize”, was my wife’s very clear instruction at the time.

While quite possibly true, I admire the way Orlebar Brown has scaled their brand and ramped their cachet through associations and partnerships. Their ‘premium brand’ accent has been with the help of some shrewdly selected style Sherpa’s.

I’m even tempted to argue that O+B are taking their lead from the Bond movie formula, because while you need to find the right guy for the tux (or swim shorts), this one ingredient alone does not ensure a 50 year franchise.

Consider the narrative Bondian ingredients: girls, gadgets, exotic locations, fast cars, megalomaniac adversaries. Beauty, danger, sex, death; in the singular, they’re all alluring elements, but paired together they become intoxicating. 

The Bond legacy is really just one long line of inspired commercial and creative pairings, the latest expression being Broccoli and half-brother Michael G. Wilson as co-producing double act.

Go wider and consider how any movie gets made. The entire movie industry is built on co-production funding. Creating a pot of cash is an exercise is forecasting likely back-end profit, with an up-front appeal to hearts and minds, inviting movie studio and private investor alike to “buy into the vision”. No one can make a movie, not a good one, singlehandedly.

Of course, I use Bond and the movie-making machine to evidence a broader point. Though to further build a line of exhibits, I may free-associate through a Fleming-esque world of fast cars and fine watches.

 

FAST CARS & FINE WATCHES

 

Bond: Where’s my Bentley?

Q: Oh, it’s had its day, I’m afraid.

Bond: But it never let me down.

Q: M’s orders, 007. You’ll be using this Aston Martin DB5… with modifications.”

Goldfinger (1964)

 

Perhaps 007’s gruff was false front. He would surely have read Fleming’s ‘Goldfinger’ in advance, would have known that his written-word self had been placed behind the wheel of a motor car branding a DB. But had Fleming and then Q not been so insistent, would the Aston Martin DB5 be quite so iconic?

 

EXHIBIT A: A thing of beauty regardless, but the DB5’s Bondian past contributes to its current £350k price tag.

Aston Martin aficionados might however incline to suggest it wasn’t partnering with Bond, but with Brown that made all the difference.

 

“The man who truly put Aston Martin on the map was David Brown, who in 1947 answered a classified advertisement in The Times seeking an owner for “a high-class motor business”. Brown acquired Aston Martin for £20,500.”

Esquire, The Big Black Book, Autumn/Winter 2013

 

EXHIBIT B: Aston Martin + David Brown = Automotive History.

 

Though what would Brown make of the announcement this July that future Aston Martin’s will be powered by Mercedes AMG engines? In this arrangement, Mercedes (more accurately Daimler) will take a 5% stake in Aston Martin, a business that is now co-owned by two Kuwaiti companies and one Italian private equity firm.

Very soon, any Aston with or without a DB will also be kitted out with German engineered electrics and command systems (simply meaning the GPS will accurately plot A to B, and you’ll be able to get there even quicker).

While a German engine in an Aston Martin might feel instinctively wrong, I suspect David Brown (and Q) would have approved. Anyone who’s driven anything propelled by an AMG engine knows Aston Martin’s will be better for it. And faster. And you only have to check to the cyber chatter to see: no one’s complaining.

 

EXHIBIT C: Aston Martin + AMG = Faster & Better.

 

An Anglo-German auto pairing is arguably no different to having a Swiss movement in an Italian watch.

 

EXHIBIT D: Officine Panerai began making over-sized watches in 1860, but only in the last few years have they started making their own movements. Prior, Panerai had always used a Rolex movement.

 

Circling back to Bond’s Bentley that never let him down. Sadly, there was a point when Bentley had become a let-down. Then, in 2003, came the Bentley Continental GT. It revived the aging Bentley marque and reversed the company’s fortunes. Behind its release was a simple fact: Bentley was a company under new ownership.

The Continental GT was a Bentley made by VW (who’d wholly bought the company in 1998), targeted not at former Bentley drivers (an atrophying breed), but at well-heeled 40-something motoring enthusiasts (and premier league footballers).

Check out Breitlingforbentley.com for another shrewd pairing. “British chic, Swiss excellence: Breitling for Bentley combines the best of both worlds” declares the homepage, accompanied by spokesperson David Beckham, kitted out in a version of Sean Connery’s Goldfinger wardrobe.

 

EXHIBIT E: (Bentley + VW + Breitling) x (Brand Beckham) = More Bondian?

 

Where Brietling bought Beckham, Omega bought Bond, writing a cheque of sufficient sway to bump Rolex from 007’s wrist. For me, the Moon is a far richer association for Omega. Their Speedmaster still (quite fairly enough) dines out on being the first watch to step, via Buzz Aldrin, on to the surface of the Moon.

 

EXHIBIT F:

“Just after landing on the Moon, the Lunar Module’s on-board electronic timer broke down. Neil Armstrong left his Speedmaster aboard as a reliable backup. As a result, the first watch worn on the Moon was on Aldrin’s wrist.”

Source: www.omegawatches.com

 

LISTEN TO WILL.I.AM

Thelma and Tom would just be names, but partner them with Louise and Jerry, and they assume famous meanings and vivid narratives. Starsky, Hansel, Fred, Morecambe - add Hutch, Gretal, Ginger and Wise and you have a fun-sounding law or ad agency, plus some serious bellbottoms and dance steps.

Staying on the theme of outrageous wardrobes and rocking backing tracks, let’s consider the music world. Elton John is Elton John… because of writer Bernie Taupin, and Will.I.Am is Will.I.Am… because of his truly open-minded approach to music-making.

 

“In collaborations and with the Black Eyed Peas, Will.I.Am has a total of 34 Top 40 entries on the UK Singles Chart since 1998, and has sold 9.4 million singles in the UK.”

Source: Wikipedia

 

EXHIBIT G: I really enjoy how Will.I.Am has built his brand through “featuring”. His creative partnerships often seem incongruous, but they create sounds that feel progressive and compel:  

• Flo Rida, featuring Wil.I.Am, gave us “In the Ayer”: a US double platinum and the Summer anthem of 2008. Everyone now: “Oh hot damn, this is my jam”.
• Post “Girls Aloud”, Cheryl Cole gave Wil.I.Am full creative control on what became her triple platinum debut, “3 Words”. He remains Cole’s co-manager.
• “O.M.G.” was written, produced and features Wil.I.Am, but lives on R&B artist Usher’s sixth studio album, Raymond vs. Raymond. It went double-platinum.
• And then there’s also Will.I.Am’s collaborations with Nicki Minaj, JayLo, Jagger, Justin Bieber, Britney, and Bazz Luhrmann, begging the question, does the guy ever sleep?

 

Collaborations can make beautiful music - which, for want of discursive symmetry, returns me to Bond. The Bond Song has always been fundamental to the formula and has always been a hit or miss matter of partnerships. McCartney and Live & Let Die. Duran Duran and View to a Kill. Successes.

General consensus would have it that Jake Black and Alicia Keys crooned a recent dud (‘Another Way to Die’), but no question inviting Adele to the Skyfall party was a centre-of-heart winner.

Some codes can be enigmatic. Certain formulas can seem closer to alchemy. I don’t look upon The Collaboration Code, The Featuring Formula, as a thing of mystery. It’s about being open-minded and giving.

Co-creation doesn’t have to be dilutive. One plus one can equal three, the procreation equation, the genesis of something new. No one should get into bed with just anyone, but everyone should be on the lookout for the right cuddle buddy.

I once had a boss who believed the only good ideas were his. It also didn’t matter whether the idea had started as someone else’s. Ended up his. My only point is that it wasn’t the most generous or inclusive kind of perspective. ‘Not invented by Me’ dead-ends collaborative creativity. I rather prefer Will.I.Am’s way of doing things. I believe we can learn much from a world of Fleming and 007, from our luxury brands and music’s megastars.

Fleming once described his novels as "pillow fantasies of the bang-bang, kiss-kiss variety".  

Writing this while listening to Will.I.Am’s latest ‘Bang Bang’, there’s 20’s Charelston, some Cher, a touch of Louis Armstrong, extra vocals from both Shelby Spalione and Nicole Scherzinger, all kinds of talent in the mash. It’s an exercise in creative polygamy.

“Kiss Kiss Bang Bang”?

Join forces, snuggle up, and who knows what might happen? Something brilliant? Something explosive? Whether you preference a Walther or a Berretta, it feels like a formula that’s worth a shot.

SP.

Article as also appears in Business 2 Community.

Savouring the Metaphorical Sunsets (an interview with Riffle)

 

Have you checked out Riffle Books (www.rifflebooks.com) yet? Their site's great and I'm a big fan of what Riffle are up to. And they kindly wanted to ask me a few questions. The interview is below, and also lives here on their blog.

 

1. How did 'Digital State' start? Why did you take on this particular book project?

 

The book started as a conversation with my publisher, Matthew Smith, at Kogan Page. We were talking around how the digital age is reshaping society, how we all have a data trail, how it’s a fine line, razor sharp in fact, between a transparent world and one that invades privacy and civil liberty.

 

There was then another conversation over supper with Helen Kogan, about how different (or not) Facebook is to being a teenager hanging out at night by the bus stop. It’s a long story, from a very social night. But long-short, these two conversations sowed seeds and triggered questions like:

 

How is society evolving, as a consequence of technological change? How has this invisible technology, “digital”, become this cultural contagion that we’ve all bought into but also can’t escape? How has the very idea of the Nation State changed, been usurped even by this “Digital State” we’re in?

 

Once these questions started fizzing around, there was no real turning back. You have to look for answers, otherwise it becomes a set of whispers that can send you crazy.

 

2. What did the experience of writing this book teach you about your writing/writing process?

 

Before ‘Digital State’, I’d written one novel and one other non-fiction title.

 

My novel, ‘Remember to Breathe’, is 90’s set, in a time “Before Facebook”. It’s part rom-com, part rites of passage, part gender satire - which sort of nets out at genre-bending. My previous non-fiction title, ‘The Better Mousetrap’, is all about how brands must keep re-inventing if they are to retain fame and consumer following.

 

This new book, ‘Digital State’, was a very different experience to the other two. Where my first two books were personal journeys - though the content of each coming from very different places - Digital State is an anthology. 16 chapters, 14 contributors. My role was as writer and editor. It was a shared journey; an ever-so precarious adventure more akin to forming a garage band.

 

3. So, the idea of ‘Digital State’ following an anthology-album felt important?

 

Yes, very much so. Tim Berners-Lee described the internet as a “collaborative play-space”. Very simply, I wanted the format to reflect the theme, to be a collaborative discourse. And so I sourced my own crowd; loved the idea of inviting people I know (friends and experts in their respective fields) to form our own band and see what kind of album we could make.

 

I figured there was one future where we might go multi-Platinum, and another where there’d be blood on the garage floor - y'know, mixing in with the puddles of engine oil. 

 

4. Which writers or books have had a significant impact on you and how?

 

‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ and ‘1984’: for me, two novels that example fiction at its most profound and fundamental. They’re almost a kind of companion-set and commentary on human nature and our potential for good and otherwise. I first read both in my teens, in the same year, and they were massively influential and informing, part of my reading rites of passage.

 

Stephen King and Carl Hiassen were also serial contributors to my rites of passage. No one builds suspense like King. No one does Florida odd-ball better than Hiassen.

 

Luke Rhinehart (for The Dice Man), Stephen Fry, and Iain Banks: all essential mentions for the impact they’ve had on me. And I’d add into the mix two debuts: J. McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City and Bret Easton Ellis’s Less Than Zero.

 

For pure escapism, that doesn’t get more rich, vivid or downright stylish: anything and everything by Philip Pullman and Ian Fleming.

 

And I always feel a little smarter and a lot humbled reading Norman Mailer. ‘The Fight’ is as good as (sports) writing gets.

 

5. Are there any talents or skills you are currently cultivating?

 

This is where I’d like to say something that sounds cool and snappy, like, I’m learning sax, or, I’m teaching myself Mandarin. Only, I’m not learning sax. I’m borderline tone deaf, was told to mime playing the recorder as a kid, and the closest I’ve got to mandarin is eating one.

 

I think being the better version of yourself is a fairly planet-sized challenge that’s healthy to look straight in the eye once in a while. Being a parent, and trying to do a good job at it, is a lifelong challenge. Trying to strike the right kind of work-life balance can be damned hard too, because it’s too easy to get sucked into projects where it’s hard to step back.

 

The French poet Anatole France once said, “Our passions are ourselves.” I’ve always loved that line. Our passions define us. By extension, I think ‘Our obsessions are ourselves.” They not only explain us but help explain what we accomplish. I think any success comes in part from being obsessive - but the trick is to not sacrifice all else when you’re in that obsessive place.

 

Perspective, balance, priority; I’m trying to cultivate abilities in all three. I figure I’m a permanent work-in-progress.    

 

6. Is there any technology to which you find you are particularly addicted?

 

This question is, of course, very pertinent to some of the themes in Digital State.

 

It’s fascinating to me that technology has even become a thing of potential addiction, a 21^st century narcotic for most of us. We’ve suddenly all become technophiles.

 

This sensation of not feeling connected, of not being with our mobile phone or an internet connection, is creating a very new sense of estrangement and alienation. At the same time, having that connection is potentially disconnecting us from the physical and emotional moment. With social media, we run the risk of developing a ‘curators conceit’ and turning ourselves into the biographers and chroniclers of our own digitally abridged and polished life-narratives.

 

I’m coaching myself to try and feel good about being out of wi-fi area once in a while.

 

7. If you could instantly change one thing about the internet, what would it be?

 

The internet is changing all the time – so we really have that very opportunity. The important message is: whatever the internet is today, we can change it, can improve it. The internet is a reflection of who we are, good and bad. We’re really holding a mirror up to ourselves. So the challenge and invitation is that the internet reflects us at our best; that we ensure it brings out the best in us.

 

Open-source isn’t the same as laissez-faire and I don’t think the internet should be all laissez-faire and self-regulation. There have to be some checks and measures in place, some stewardship and good governance. Ensuring the global digital super-brands like Google don’t become global monopolies but remain answerable and accountable would be one “instant change” that’s easier said than implemented. Ensuring young people have more anonymity and greater protection when online also requires swift and decisive attention and action.

 

The internet is still in its Wild West years, with some panhandling and others trying to sell us snake oil. It’s all very exciting, but not all gunslingers are good guys. We need to have a much clearer sense of who’s wearing the white hats and who’s dressed in black.

 

8. What do you consider your greatest achievement?

 

My children. No question. Easy answer. I know almost anyone can do it, become a parent; that almost all of us are made biologically capable… but I still find the concept of having children remarkable. You become a parent, and your only point of former reference is when you were a child yourself. No one - outside of the caring professions - is equipped with any previous experience. So from day one, it’s a crash course… in what can feel like free falling.

 

Getting to witness and be part of my children’s lives is amazing, the greatest privilege... and yes, a fairly frequent test of patience.   

 

9. Finish this sentence: When I was a kid, I wanted to grow up to be. . .

 

Y’know, this question always worried me when I was a kid. Because I had no idea. At least, no realistic idea. James Bond looked like he was having a pretty good time, but beyond a life of romantic espionage, exotic travel and alluring femme fatales, I had no clear back-up plan. So if you’d asked my 12 year old self to finish the sentence, I’d have drawn a troubled blank. By the time I hit my late teens, I knew what I really wanted to be was a writer, but I’ve always looked upon writing as more of a passion and vocation, rather than any sure-fire way of paying the mortgage.

 

Stephen King’s line in ‘On Writing’ is genius, where he says, “Writers write.” In other words, doing is being. I love that, because it kills any doubts, cuts through the crap and tells you to get on with it, or get on with something else. Advice rarely gets more sage.   

 

10. If you could give your past self one piece of advice, what would it be?

 

Savour the moments, as they happen, when they happen. Truly, feel them. ‘The Present’ is a tense I think many of us could live in more. It’s so easy and tempting to be looking forward or reflecting back. We live in ‘The Past’, nostalgically, regretfully, re-running, even re-writing. We live in ‘The Future’, planning, worrying about the ‘what if?’ and aspiring to the ‘what might be?’

 

A little clichéd as motifs go, but I find sunrises and sunsets provide jarringly poignant moments of ‘Right Now’. I still need to heed my own advice much more – because I can get carried away thinking forward – but I’m trying to savour the metaphorical sunsets.

SP.

BALL & FLINT - TRANSMEDIA IN 90 SECONDS

 

I rather liked the idea of taking a very thin slice from between the pages of 'Digital State', and turning it into a piece of promotional content, that was both a single idea and (hopefully) held a little value in its own right.

The result was 'Ball & Flint'.

It's about storytelling in a digital world... expressed in 90 seconds... through a metaphor. 

Yeah, it'll make more sense just watching it.

 

 

 

Director & Producer: Babis Tsoutsas
Motion & Graphic Design: George Zestanakis
Script & Narration: Simon Pont

And to Babis and George, massive thanks.

SP.

SCREAM, DON’T SCREAM, EITHER WAY: WE’RE GOING FASTER

 

 

You’re in it. I’m in it. We’re in it. Together. Riding this light cycle. VZUMMMM! And you betcha, it’s a rush. Knuckles white. Eyes wide. Unblinking.

Only, it’s not clear who’s driving... or indeed if anyone is.

 

Park the metaphor. Curb the light bike. And what am I talking about? I’m talking about CHANGE, and the state it’s in, accelerating, ever faster, zigging and zagging like hell. I’m talking about our ‘HERE & NOW’, this revolution in our lifetime, turbo-charged, where social, cultural and commercial change is “technology-driven” and definition-destroying.

 

Boil it down to its absolute binary simplicity, to its zeros and ones, and I’m talking about this crazy pace and the place we all live in – the Digital State.

 

THEN...

 

Let’s back it up, to when the cyber cycle was physical, petrol, pedals and all, a tangible illustration of something pretty conventional to ride and collectively understood. We once lived in a relatively fixed bearing world. The compass points were set, meaning we could triangulate within the frame. Navigation, the way ahead, was clear. “Conventions” were time-honoured because they worked, had proven themselves, had stood the test of time. “Practices” - formal and informal ways of doing things - came with a comfortably predictable level of likely outcome. “Things” had names and definitions that were commonly understood by all.  

 

THEN, EVERYTHING CHANGED.

 

Or at least, that’s kind of how it felt.

 

We awoke one morning to a digital dawn where it felt, just a little, like we’d arrived and were now eating breakfast in the future. We’d all become Buck Rogers, stirred from cryogenic slumber, with “recent memory” suddenly appearing rather greasy-lensed and sepia.

 

Because “today” is a place where technology knows no bounds. And that’s the first big point: technology isn't what it used to be. Isn't what it once meant to people, to me, to you, to all of us.

 

“Technology” was once a thing (mostly) confined to physical form. A top-loader. A set-top box. Technology was wires and transistors on the inside, contained in metal or plastic. Technology was something you could hold in your hand, could get your head around: a VCR say, or the light bulb, each liberating, each causing lifestyle changing ripples in their respective small and big ways, but simple and tangible.

 

Then Jobs and Dyson came along and made tech look good, married higher function to curvy, desirable form. And suddenly technology had sass and sex appeal, where having and using it made you feel good. And that was a sizeable evolutionary moment: when technology stopped being technical and contributed to how it made us look on the outside and feel on the inside. Suddenly, we all became technophiles. But that was only a precursor to the Digital State, just a teaser trailer with an early advance poster.

 

BECAUSE THEN TECHNOLOGY VANISHED.

 

Because then... “technology” crossed the divide, went digital, became invisible. “Post aesthetic”; a bigger evolutionary leap.

 

Technology went from having a place and knowing its place, and became everyplace, disappearing by virtue of ubiquity, becoming everywhere and nowhere. Our photos and films and CD collections: now binary wisps of ephemera, where we feel reassured and take thrill in the thought of our “content” being backed-up and cloud-based. Because it sounds cool, our invisible stuff, living in an invisible cloud, as if we’re the cool-cat citizens of Lando Calrissian’s Disco City in the Sky. 

 

Now that technology has broken free of its physical form, gone airborne, fully mutated, it’s become a cultural contagion and a bug we've all been bitten by.

 

AND WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

 

It means we now live in a DIGITAL STATE, this fusion of physical and digital worlds, where we no longer do the simplest things the way we used to, where we no longer jog the way we used to, socialise the way we used to, or even listen to music the way we used to.

 

It means the simplest words don’t mean what they used to. Ever so quickly, let’s just consider three...

 

VIDEO: once a prefix for tape or cassette, but that we now think of in terms of movie clips and YouTube, and where “Roll the tape” is a nostalgic but ultimately nonsensical expression. Because, of course, there is no tape.

 

TV: something that once described the physical box in the corner of your sitting room... that still describes the flat panel perhaps hanging on your wall... but that might as likely describe programme “CONTENT” that you potentially watch on your... phone.

 

And this strange catch-all, shape-shifting noun - “CONTENT” – promoted, career fast-tracked in a world under digital management, to encompass so many meanings... where the challenge is for two people to sit down and talk about content... and for them to both mean the same thing.

 

Three once simple words – VIDEO, TV, CONTENT - now not so simple. Our words and our understanding of things and our “ways of living”, they have all undergone radical change. Sitting behind these three simple words are billion dollar global industries in massive flux. 

 

“There is nothing sacred about convention; the fact that a convention exists simply indicates that a way of living has been devised capable of maintaining itself.”  

George Santayana, philosopher, poet, novelist.  

 

We only have to flip Santayana’s observation around to appreciate the implications and relevance to our “Right Now”. For businesses to thrive, they can no longer behave the way they used to. They can no longer survive the way they used to. To maintain themselves, they must adapt.

 

Our digital age is only just entering its second act; now maturing, again mutating, and demanding that we all get wiser about it and wiser with it. For the commercial world, the “state” cannot be one of stasis or procrastination, of self-imposed paralysis or sit-back-and-wait-and-see. Those businesses that do will get left behind, out in the cold, stuck in the tar like over-sized out-of-time dinosaurs. Stuck. Left. ‘The End’.

 

All businesses are now digital businesses, because we all operate in a digital world. Originally, one would reflexively think of “digital businesses” as tech start-ups. Social Media brands and apps companies and outfits with a Mountain View zip code would jump to mind. But these new entrants have in fact become keyholes, revealing the form and shape that all business must adopt. The adopted behaviour is constant adaptation. Where those original “digital businesses” started off with one vision and business plan, they quickly morphed into something else, and they were happy to do so. And they will keep morphing. This is the game they are in. This is now everyone’s game, where we are all a permanent work in progress. I was talking to a friend the other day, Stewart Easterbrook (CEO at SMG UK), who simply nailed it with: “It’s a world in beta.”

 

Vincent

Now we gotta make the best of it, improvise, adapt to the environment. Darwin, shit happens, I Ching, whatever man, we gotta roll with it.

Source: Collateral (2004)

 

The consensus in most boardrooms today is that whatever industry vertical you’re in, your (current) industry is going to be unrecognisable 5 years from now. Our status quo is one of ‘status: shift’, a Darwin thing, which has taken the form of a digital thing. And to quote an in-character Tom Cruise, we all gotta learn how to roll with it.

Welcome to the Digital State.

SP.

 

For the chance to win a free signed copy of 'Digital State', go to MediaTel by clicking HERE.

To read reviews for 'Digital State', click HERE.

And to buy a copy, try HERE.

Above article as also appears in The Huffington Post.

 

THE BOOKBAG INTERVIEW

 

Here's a copy of an interview I did recently with the very lovely people at The Bookbag...

 

When you close your eyes and imagine your readers, who do you see?

 

It’s a lovely question, though the shape and form of “who” isn’t exact to me. I wrote ‘Remember to Breathe’ for people who love fiction, who enjoy characters and love the escape and fun they can give; whether it’s being in the moment when you’re lying on a beach, bending the pages of a paperback with that smell of warm skin and sun cream in your nose, or whether it’s being taken out of the moment when you’re riding the District Line into work on a grizzly day. I know that all might sound a bit lyrical, but what I’m trying to say, is that when I close my eyes, the images are less of who and more of where, of where people are reading. That’s what I see.  

I’ve got to ask: how much of your hero, Samuel Grant, is autobiographical? And if so, do you have any regrets?

 

You’re not the first to ask. Well, they do say you should write about what you know... and by extension, who you know. There’s a lot of people I’ve met and know who provided starting points for the characters. And I of course include myself in that line-up. But then, it was just a case of going to town, exaggerating like hell, and letting all of the characters come to life and show me their stories.

 

And while, sure, there’s some of me and a whole lot of other folk I know in Samuel Grant... I think there’s a little bit of Samuel Grant in all of us. My hope was to try and create an archetypal male character, someone that reflects his time, an anti-heroic type who’s trying to be heroic. And I think Sam’s originality stems from his self-awareness, and his ability to emotionally articulate, and be so honest. Male characters are so often stereotypes. Think: strong, silent, matinee-idol throwbacks. By contrast, I think Sam holds his own exploits in ironic disdain... yet he still wants to come out a hero and a winner and a good guy. It’s in creating these dynamic tensions and contradictions that hopefully makes Sam feel very real to readers – and then also leaves them a little conflicted as to how they should feel about him.   

And no, no regrets. At least, not yet.

 

Is Adland really like that?

 

Adland is no different to any other industry badlands, in that there are lunatics and rednecks with shotguns, just like every industry, and maybe some hungry tigers too. But adland is more good than bad and arguably closer to a Narnia, a place of friendly lions where new frontiers are forming all the time.

 

I love advertising, when it’s done right, where it’s a case of some very creative, intelligent people being intelligent and creative and achieving brilliant things.

 

On the flipside, I think “workplace nonsense” is over-ripe for full-tilt parody and derision. In RTB, the depiction is a thin slice of the dark side, skewed, Sisyphean – and it is a side that also rings true for people. 

  

I’ve always associated your name with non-fiction writing. What persuaded you to move into fiction?

 

Funnily enough, it’s actually the other way around. Writing non-fiction was actually a bit of a later-dawning epiphany, that came after I’d written ‘Remember to Breathe’. The novel predates the non-fiction titles, and I kind of persuaded myself to write a book on brands and media.

 

As people would imagine, writing fiction and non-fiction are very different endeavours. Creatively, they come from a different place. For me, writing fiction takes up a lot more head and heart space, where it’s not so easy to switch off - but also, where you don’t necessarily want to switch off.

 

Though there are cross-overs too, in that I look to write non-fiction with a strong authorial voice and writing style, and where the ideas and themes hang off cultural pegs that people are hopefully familiar with. I think the challenge with non-fiction is to give it pace, to frame the subject matter in a way that’s very accessible and page-turning.  

 

Quite a few people have asked if we’re going to hear more about Sam Grant. Are you planning a sequel?

 

When I finished Remember to Breathe, I actually, very genuinely missed the characters. The novel is character-driven, and one of the greatest pleasures for me, and a kind of proof that it works, is that people who read it typically ask, “What happened next? What happened to Sam, to Tam, to Jamie?” When I completed the novel, I remember wondering the same thing.

 

There is an appetite for a sequel. It would be fascinating to contemporise what is a nostalgically-set group of people; to turn pre-Facebook Twenty-somethings into present-day Forty-somethings.

 

Some have even suggested a prequel, maybe an early-90s university year’s story. Whether a sequel or prequel, the creative challenge, I think, would be achieve the right balance of character and narrative. Because we now know the characters, their core personalities, and so that initial novelty is gone. So there would have to be more external story, throw more slings and arrows at Sam. And the trick would be to do it in a way that was still original, without turning proceedings into a rom-com farce or faux “on-the-run” thriller. Pitfalls aside, working it all out would be huge fun.

  

I was very nearly put off reading the book by the comparison to Bridget Jones.  How do you feel about it?

 

In all honesty, it kinda worries me. The Bridget Jones comparison is nothing more than a reference point that’s immediate for people – a promotional device, to cite a familiar literary character where some parallels could be drawn. The danger, of course, is that then some may suspect Sam is some kind of rip-off, or was somehow “inspired by”. Maybe if Bridget Jones and Patrick Bateman had a love child, you’d net out at somewhere near Samuel Grant. But again, I’m reaching.

 

The fact is, Samuel Grant isn’t born from other literary places. He doesn’t come out of fiction. He comes from life, a creation I wanted to capture in fiction.

 

Where and how do you write? With or without music?

  

I can write pretty much anywhere. Which is more out of necessity than anything. I have three young children, so time and time to write isn’t in abundant supply. But my wife is very supportive and helps me carve out space. And then, it’s also about being active in the down-time. I’ll write “emails” to myself on my Blackberry. Smartphones with touchscreens don’t work for me. I like real, physical, very analogue buttons. I can rattle out paragraphs on my Blackberry that I then email to myself, where I’ll later throw it into a Word document and see where it takes me.

 

But ideally, my lap top, a little peace and quiet and a second coffee-of-the-day at my side, and I’m a very happy guy.

 

Though curiously, I find music distracting.  

What are you reading at the moment?  What’s your desert island book?

At the moment: William Boyd’s ‘Waiting for Sunrise’. I’m really enjoying it – I love the historical 1913/14/15 context - though I’d have loved him to reconsider the title. Personally, ‘Waiting for Sunrise’ is generically forgettable. But then, his previous, ‘Ordinary Thunderstorms’, was a great title but I found it a less satisfying read.

 

And if I was packing for a desert island, I might just have to find room for two; simply pack fewer shorts. As some sort of record, how about ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ and ‘1984’, a kind of companion-set and commentary on human nature and our potential for good and otherwise. Both novels example fiction at its most profound and fundamental. I first read both in my teens, and they were massively influential and informing, part of my reading rites of passage.

 

Of course, if my other suitcase washed up on shore, the one with all the books packed in it, then all sorts of guys would spill out onto the sand: Norman Mailer, Stephen King, Carl Hiaasen, Luke Rhinehart, Ian Fleming, Stephen Fry, Philip Pullman, Iain Banks.

 

You’ve got one wish - what’s it to be?

 

Health and happiness; what else is there?

  

What’s next for Simon Pont?

 

Summer with the children. Sunshine. Family time. New schools and back-to-work in the Autumn. And, with hope, a clear intention on the next writing project. At present I’m juggling and torn (makes coordination hard) on which way to go. Non-fiction or developing a new novel? But I don’t mind admitting, it’s a nice problem to have.  

SP.

Music at the Digital Crossroads

 

 

I recently (April 8, 2013) gave an interview with Music Forecasting, a US-based consultancy group who advise the music industry. They'd read 'The Better Mousetrap', enjoyed it, saw themes and parallels that play into their view of the world, and asked if they could have a chat. Here's what followed...

 

1. Do the concepts you outline in your book apply to music artists?
 
Without hesitation, music artists should think of themselves as brands. Of course, I appreciate that many do.
 
A brand is only as successful as its ability to entice, excite and thrill audiences. A brand aspires to fame, and needs to both retain its existing followers and draw new fans into its fold. The principles of how a brand does this, particularly in our digital age, are hugely informing and relevant to music artists.
 
Brands and music artists are in the same game, one of fame, fans and following.

 

2. What advice would give to a music artist on how to define their brand?

Think very clearly about how you’d describe yourself as an artist. Could you describe yourself in a headline sentence? What about if you had just 30 seconds to define who you are, what you do and why you’re different? And what might your strap line be; say, your own version of “Just Do It” or “Think Different”?

This would just be my start-point, but it’s a crucial start-point, because effective communication is about concision and punch. “Who are you and what do you want to mean to the world?” You have 30 seconds.

3. In your book, you state that brands must work harder today than ever before. Does that hold true for music artists?

Brands, music artists, quite honestly, everybody - everybody has to work harder, if they want to truly succeed and stand-out. The simple, and maybe slightly brutal truth, is that success is the consequence of being utterly determined and unrelenting.

The brands that succeed are the brands that never sleep. They continue to consider new ways of doing things, talking “with” rather than “to” audiences. They look to build two-way conversations. They look to re-enforce how audiences perceive them, and they look to subvert audience expectations of them.

Brands and music artists alike need to keep fans on their toes, have different kinds of conversations, build different kinds of rapports, stand-out by not fitting in, by not adhering to category conventions. Certainly, aspiring to be “original” and authentic is hard work – but it can only and always be worth the effort.

4. If a music artist’s brand belongs to the consumer, and in many ways the consumer is in charge—what advice do you have for artists to maximize their success in this new environment?

A brand's "health" will be tracked and trended against metrics like, "A brand for me". The language, the implication, is important. It's possessive. "Mine." "My brand." That sense of ownership rests with the consumer, not the marketing folks sitting around a big table at Abercrombie or American Apparel. And "brand for me" is no different to a “band for me," or "my team."

Sports fans talk about how their team performed in the first-person collective sense of "we," as if they too were in the locker room or on the field. Being a fan is mostly about the emotion, about feeling on the inside, of feeling and therefore being part of it all.

So you bet, the music we listen to, the bands and artists we follow, this reflects our taste and helps define who we are as human beings. Therefore, first and foremost, an artist’s brand being “in consumers hands” is the ideal place for it to be.

And then once you’re in that place, then it’s a lot about learning to let go, because you can’t control those Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) conversations. But here’s the thing - you don’t even want to control those conversation.

The biggest brands and music artists in the world are the ones that are talked about – where consumers, fans, talk to each other. As the line from Oscar Wilde goes, “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that’s not being talked about.”

My first piece of advice to any artist would be to feel very good about being talked about.

To then maximize all that noise, all that chatter, music artists should consider how they give their audiences a role. Consider reality talent shows like ‘American Idol’ and ‘X-Factor’. Audiences have a clear role in the process. They bear witness to performances, they pass judgment with their voting, and ultimately, they go on that “emotional” journey with the contestants. Long-short: they’re part of it all. Even if it’s just in some small way.

An alternative, and much more retro, example...

The track, “Cum on Feel the Noize” was a huge hit for Slade, with subsequent and hugely successful covers, by Quiet Riot, Epic and Oasis. Now, I love this track, but for me, what I perhaps like best of all, is what inspired Slade to write it in the first place. It was an attempt, lyrically, to write the crowd into a song. Slade wanted to write a song about the experience of playing to an audience, to acknowledge that the audience defined the experience and their music. If they were just a bunch of guys up on stage, singing to themselves in an empty room, then none of it mattered.

The fans and the artist, like consumers and brands; this is a symbiotic relationship, a relationship between soul mates.

5. As a branding guy, what would you like to do with a musical artist that’s never been done before?

I’d love to stage something with a musical artist that plays on multi-sensory experiences. And weave that into some kind of experiential narrative, where the audience experiences a very deep, immersive, visceral, emotional experience… BUT where there’s a defined story architecture sitting behind it all.

Imagine: the feeling of being inside a Hollywood movie, with the kind of added stimulus experiences of being at a gig and an art exhibition. Sound, vision, scent, and story, all working together, aligning. The scientists call it “cross-modal” perception.

Of course, I haven’t quite worked out the details or the small print! But I conceptually love the idea, and I’d imagine the whole thing being linked by our personal tech devices, like our smartphones, where there’d be some kind of augmented reality graft on the “real time” elements, and our social networks would link and drop crumbs in the build-up to the event. It would be very cool.

6. Do you have advice for the music business in general on how to increase their business in the new digital age?

In terms of advice, it’s a positive message. The music business needs to keep doing what it is doing. Which is to say, it needs to keep adapting and trying to work it all out.

Music, and a love of music, is eternal. I love Nietzsche’s quote, “Without music, life would be a mistake.” No one’s proposing making a mistake anytime soon. Quite the opposite, the social media feeds show that “music” is in bionic shape. Fans sent over 14 million tweets during the 2013 Grammys. Grammy-related content generated 43 million likes and comments on Facebook. Soundcloud recently announced that they’re seeing 10 hours of audio being uploaded every minute, with 180 million people accessing their platform every month.

I think by being one of the first industries to stare into the digital void, the music industry is amongst the first to start seeing silver linings. The music industry has now been wrestling ‘The Big Digital Dilemma’ for the last 14 years - and in that wrestling, in being compelled to innovate, there are so many examples of artists demonstrating brilliant adaption.

Simply, I think we’re seeing music artists being more open-minded and opportunistic. We’re seeing the power of celebrity meet “brand stretch”, and the various ways that can consequently manifest...

Consider a recently-turned-40 Liam Gallagher and his very successful “Pretty Green” clothing range. Consider the “Official Justin Bieber Fragrances Channel” you can watch on YouTube. Consider Alicia Keys unveiling her 21 Pinterest boards, named after the tracks from her album ‘Girl on Fire’, the boards a visual expression of the themes within the album. Consider almost everything about One Direction. Those guys only finished third in 2010’s ‘The X Factor’ (UK), but they’ve now sold over 14 million singles and 8 million albums, contributing to a business empire worth over $50M. Morgan Spurlock is currently directing them in a 3-D movie.

Across the music business, there are many examples of “go-your-own way” behavior. My Bloody Valentine chose to sell their most recent album, ‘mbv’, directly to fans. And they were simply following in the footsteps of Radiohead. The launch of 2007’s ‘In Rainbows’, a digital download where consumers could pay what they wanted to, made self-releasing albums an act of innovation rather than desperation.

Forging new associations and partnerships with brands, extending into clothing lines, making 3-D movies: I’d firmly argue that none of this is “selling out”, where once upon a time it might have been seen as such. Today, there’s less sense of formal pigeon-holing, about how a band or an artist “must” or “should” or “ought to” behave.

British Luxury brand Burberry has recently taken 18 year old Jake Bugg under its wing, hosting live events for the singer to perform at their flagship store in London. I’d suggest it’s a union based on enlightened self-interest. Both parties benefit, with no apparent down-side. Adele saying “Yes” to Bond has just earned the movie franchise its first Oscar in 47 years, while the track topped the iTunes chart inside 10 hours of its release (5 October 2012).

Amanda Palmer’s “record, art book and tour” appeal through Kickstarter generated nearly 25,000 backers and $1.19M in pledged funding. True, there was also a backlash, suggesting that Palmer was being exploitative, but $1.19M speaks volumes.

Ours is now a world where artists need to become entrepreneurs, and where collaborators (and cold, hard cash) can be crowd-sourced. Approached in the right way, the opportunities might just be limitless.

SP.

Simon Pont on Transmedia (2013)

 

Convergence Culture, 'The Monster', Jaws, District 9, Limitless, The Dark Knight Rises, Prometheus and the Mariana trench.

Here's a 9 minute excerpt from my keynote at Meg13, discussing the theory and practice of Transmedia story-telling. 

 

Recorded by SVT on March 7, 2013 @ MEG, Sweden.

 

Massive call-out thanks to agency F&B and to Meg for the very kind invitation.

To watch the full length 30 minute keynote, click here.

SP.

The Better Mousetrap Interview by Bob Morris

 

 

In interview with Bob Morris (February 2013):

 

Morris: Before discussing The Better Mousetrap, a few general questions. First, who has had the greatest influence on your professional development? How so?

 

Pont: You know, there’s never been one stand-out Mr. Miyagi type figure in my career, radiating warmth and charisma and setting the standard. There have been a couple of Buddy Ackerman types – and there’s no need to name real names – but what I am very conscious of is that overall, I’ve actually been very fortunate. There’s been a sizeable cast of characters, mostly very good and only a few questionable, who I’ve learned from. And that’s been hugely instructive in helping me decide what kind of professional I want to be, and the kind that I don’t. But to name a few names for all the right reasons, I’d happily cite Moray MacLennan, Hans Andersson, Jon Wilkins, Greg Grimmer, and Hamish Davies. In each case, and each in their own way, we’re talking about hugely impressive, inspiring, and fundamentally very decent human beings.

 

Morris: Years ago, was there a turning point (if not an epiphany) that set you on the career course you continue to follow? Please explain.

 

Pont: I don’t think there’s ever been just one! I think careers are twisty-turny things full of great highlights, 50-50 judgements calls, and a few near-disasters. Along that road, with hope, you bump into a fair few moments of revelation.

 

Morris: What do you know now about the business world that you wish you knew when you started working full-time? Why?

 

Pont: Stop playing at being a grown-up and just be a grown-up. I think that’s fair advice to anyone in the early days of their career. By definition, when you start out in business, you’re naive, because your only former points of reference are academia and being a student; in most respects, being a “kid”. And it’s only experience that takes the edge off that immaturity. But there is a ‘but’. Once you’ve entered the business world, you’ve entered it, so you might as well stop “pretending”, stop play-acting, drop the pretence, and go at it full-tilt. I think real credibility and success comes from believing in yourself and what you’re capable of, even if you don’t have so much “experience” to draw upon. It’s not an easy message, of course, but self-doubt only gets in your way. So don’t have any. Or at least, work on editing it.

 

Morris: Of all the films that you have seen, which – in your opinion – best dramatizes important business principles? Please explain.

 

Pont: That’s a terrific question. I’m a big film fan. Swimming with Sharks and Wall Street are brilliant yesteryear windows on the working world. Margin Call, from 2011, is another great snapshot on a particular moment in time – but that’s not what you’re asking. Citing movies about the work-place isn’t the same as a movie that necessarily dramatizes business principles.

 

I’ve half-joked that I’d like to use the practices of Jack Bauer in 24 as a model for assertive leadership and an approach to decision-making. Jack could be accused of many things, but procrastination is not one of them. There’s an argument that indecision and atrophy are amongst the very worst business principles. Business, like life, should be about affirmative action. Just imagine: Jack Bauer’s Guide to being CEO.

Morris: Here are several of my favorite quotations to which I ask you to respond. First, from Oscar Wilde: “Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.”

Pont: And, of course, the real trick is knowing who that is! Self-awareness, self-understanding – it’s a lifelong journey for pretty much everyone. That’s my belief, at least. I do think we can learn a lot from others, how they do things, the examples they set. These examples inform the kind of person we want to be, the kind of husband, the kind of parent, the kind of friend and colleague. “Be yourself” is about making and committing to a whole load of decisions… and then accepting that life can only be a permanent work-in-progress.

 

Morris: From Albert Einstein: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

 

Pont: Problem-making and problem-solving are certainly different mind-sets. Not just different, they’re mental inversions of each other. It’s how we look upon the water in the glass. You need to look on it as half full… in order to then work out how to fill the remaining half.

 

Morris: Finally, from Peter Drucker: “There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.”

 

Pont: This is a lovely quote. I love its darkness; the wonderful pathetic-ness of being highly adept at a pointless act. I imagine Drucker received a parking fine or a letter from the tax man the day he penned this dark gem. The quote could be stapled to an internal memo shared amongst a legion of bureaucrats and pen-pushers – whose job it is to file tax returns and serve out parking fines.

 

Morris: In Tom Davenport’s latest book, Judgment Calls, he and co-author Brooke Manville offer “an antidote for the Great Man theory of decision making and organizational performance”:organizational judgment. That is, “the collective capacity to make good calls and wise moves when the need for them exceeds the scope of any single leader’s direct control.” What do you think?

 

Pont: I applaud the sentiment, that it’s a ‘team responsibility’ to do the heavy lifting.

At a practical level, ‘effective leadership’ falls quickly off a cliff if it ends with the ‘leadership team’, as opposed to being something acted upon, that then cascades down to the rest of the organization. So I’d wholly agree with the statement in regards to ‘organizational performance’. Where the logic is potentially more questionable is around a team’s ability to make decisions. I’ve never been a huge fan of decision-by-committee. Multiple agenda’s too often get in the way. And ‘Group Think’ dynamics can also lead to decisions (and then outcomes) that can go seriously south. Part of being a great leader is choosing your team well, picking the kind of expertise and personality blend that can most appropriately advise. But leaving the team to make the call – that’s weak leadership.

Morris: Here’s a brief excerpt from Paul Shoemaker’s latest book, Brilliant Mistakes: “The key question companies need to address is not ‘Should we make mistakes?’ but rather ‘Which mistakes should we make in order to test our deeply held assumptions?’” Your response?

 

Pont: “Brilliant mistakes” is a catchy contradiction. It brings to mind Charles Saatchi’s book from last year, Be The Worst You Can Be”.

 

Of course, no one tries to make mistakes; rather some mistakes are sadly inevitable. Shoemaker’s fundamental message is one I wholly agree with. Companies shouldn’t be so scared to mess up once in a while that, by consequence, they don’t push themselves. It’s a fear of potential failure which causes organisational (read: managerial) paralysis. And the irony is that our world now moves at binary speed, and too many companies move at a human speed set to “risk aversion”. We need to make “indecision and non-commitment” more unacceptable, more unforgivable in fact, than the odd mistake born of trying. And I’m a major believer in testing deeply held assumptions, because quite frankly, even if they were rock-solid yesterday, or even today, there’s no guarantee or given they’ll be effective tomorrow. Our world is just moving too damned fast, and the “digital age” is continually usurping our definitions and understanding of things.

Morris: The greatest leaders throughout history (with rare exception) were great storytellers. What do you make of that?

 

Pont: “Story” is eternal. It’s the definitive way to package a thought or sell-in a vision, because it plays to the biggest rule there is: “know your audience”.

However big or sweeping or grand the theme or thought, anchoring it in narrative and, in particular, the minutia of “human interest” is how we, “The Audience”, can relate and comprehend and ultimately care.

H.G. Wells could have written War of the Worlds any number of ways, could have gone large, as a story across a global tableau, but he didn’t. He wrote it as a first-person experience. He kept a very big idea very small, human, and accessible. And in “that smallness” lies the power of the bigger thought. Great leaders, great story-tellers, they know how to rally people, by addressing issues in a way that makes us instinctively care, because they put us, as individuals, at the heart of the matter.

 

To read the full interview, click here: The Better Mousetrap Interview

 

And to read Bob Morris's review of The Better Mousetrap, click here: US review

Hunting Knives & Cooling Virals

 

 

The below piece featured this December in Sabotage Times. Hope you enjoy it. 

*

 

I wrote a novel. Get me. But I'm not saying in the way saying can be bragging. Honest. I wrote a novel, and I then had the good fortune of finding someone who liked it enough to publish it.

 

Of course "good enough to publish" is a debatable point. The world is full of novels, good novels, that don't find a publisher, and the book shelves of the world are stocked with the occasional novel that could fairly be termed absolute shit. Taste and opinion are points of individual entitlement, of course, but I mean ‘absolute shit’ by fairly objective criteria, like poorly written, strangled syntax, clichéd diatribes; that variant of absolute shit. But this point is not the point I want to make. Let's get back to where I was going.

 

I'd doubled-up, written a novel and found a publisher. One friend suggested the latter was the more genuine accomplishment, and to a degree, they were right. A bona fide publisher, over 20 years experience in publishing, had said, "Yeah, I dig this, let's share it with the world."

 

And so by publishing and sharing, various friends got to read my novel, which was, being very honest, quite amazing, because then I was getting to have very real conversations about characters and the moments I'd put them in, and they had become “vivid and real” mind-clips for other people.

 

It's quite a mental thought, how a book can transfer your imagination to someone else, and then the two of you can kick-back and chat about a character as if they’re a mutual friend.   

 

The double-edge later came when folk would kindly enough ask, "How are book sales going?" - because my instinctive reaction was to stab them in the throat, ideally with a large hunting knife. I'm not even a particularly violent person, and I don't even own a knife collection. Simply, when you're white-knuckle keen for something to do well, your sensitivities are upper-epidermal.

 

Because unless you get on a short-list or win a gong or stumble into being a "phenomenon", then the art of book selling is a thorny, sticky, elusive business; as well as being a game of patience.

 

For every business built on an analogue model, like publishing, the digital age has pulled up the rug, ripped the heart out of almost all formerly rock-solid definitions, and made “the professionals” eat their once sacrosanct rule books.

 

Take a literal, simple example. Take the “dictionary definition” of a "book", as in "a portable written or printed treatise filling a number of sheets, fastened together, sewn, or pasted hinge wise.” (Oxford Dictionary)

 

Now a book is no longer just a book - in that it's no longer limited to the physically-bound pages of a spine. A book can now be “themes and ideas” that extend to all kinds of physical and digital places, consumed on all manner of screens and devices. (Consider how you're reading these words. Is it actually printed word on paper?)

 

More than ever before, not being able to touch something no longer dictates whether or not it is real. We're overcoming our need for physical possession. That once proud (possibly alphabetised) CD collection is now becoming dusty clutter. We're getting very comfortable with owning the “invisible”, of our beloved music and movies and books becoming so many binary wisps, accessed through portable slivers of screen, and backed-up in a cloud.

 

But by curious contrast, where the once-physical has now become abstract (a CD collection now a Spotify "playlist"; a book library now a Kindle collection), our formerly ephemeral recommendations are becoming recorded and preserved points of fact. Our commentaries have never been more searchable and solid.  

 

Our "words-of-mouth" are becoming the translation of finger-touch, a type or a "like", the once "said and gone" now "expressed and documented", exhibited, track-able, so many pixelated crumbs along our always growing digital path.

 

Which takes me back to the book sales question; I hadn't forgotten.

 

Once my novel was out, I'd ever-so-slightly started to live the fluctuations of its throughout-the-day Amazon ranking. To me, the Amazon algorithm (that determines the ranking) was either the work of a very beautiful mind, or an utter cretin. It depended on how sales performed on any given day.

 

Hitting 10 customer reviews was a giddy moment. Because that's the thing: when asked, "How are book sales going?", you can never snap back, "Dunno, how many people have you recommended it to?" But that's the rub of it, the new rules of the changing game. While you want to say that the novel's ad campaign is going great guns, that the TV spot in X-Factor reached half the country, and the ruddy great big posters down at Waterloo look very awesome and will ensure Christmas sales are very merry, the (cold business) reality is no publisher can afford the kind of campaign that helps keep Nike and Apple iconic and coveted. Where you do see poster ads for books, they're for the bankable stars with built-in following, the big guns like King, Child, McEwan, and Amiss.

 

You might have noticed that 50 Shades of Grey was marketed with big glossy posters everywhere, but that was after the phenomenon-fact. 50 shades was already big, had “gone viral”, hit the masses; a sure-fire commercial hit. Those posters were just finishing the job off, taking it super-mainstream, prompting the remaining thick-edge of the late-majority wedge into a clit-lit purchase the next time they walked down their supermarket's book aisle.      

 

EL James couldn't have dared imagine becoming a literary craze and millionaire. Because here’s a fact, fact-fans: no one can rig the game so they "go viral".

 

Anyone who declares they're making a viral anything (film, book, animation, thought) is an idiot. “Going viral" might be their hope, and you can load the odds a little, but success is never guaranteed. Outcome cannot be stage-managed. Like good novels without a publisher, the world is also full of entertaining video content, uploaded, and summarily... ignored, so many "digital ghost ships" sailing through a thick binary mist, a crew of entertainers with no one to perform to. Because how do you know those ghost ships are out there? How do you thin the fog and find them? You can't, not really.

 

The only answer, which may be on the tip of your tongue, is that the ghost ships find you; that your friends tell you about them... and you tell your friends. Which is why words like "propagation" and "viral" have entered the lexicon of modern marketing speak. Only, “viral” evokes thoughts of “contagion” and zombie movies where wild-fire swathes of red swarm across the globe, pandemic-like, cities overcome, the only up-side being that you might be saved by Milla Jovovich.

 

In marketing terms, dialling-up viral communicability is damned-hard – because unless it’s content that’s massively must-see, say grossly salacious, or whimsically trivia and takes no more than 5 seconds of someone’s time, then you’re going to come up against a likely barrier of “can’t really be arsed”.

 

While “word-of-mouth” can play forward with increasing heat and feverish intensity, the reverse is more likely to happen. I had a novel published, which was exciting for me, and for my family and some of my immediate friends. Some of them then told their friends, where some excitement stayed in the mix, but mute by comparison.

 

At around the second degree of separation, momentum tends to fall off a cliff and the virus burns itself out. And at that point, my publisher started telling me to stop looking at the Amazon ranking’s, because these digital days, publishing is a slow burn, long-tail affair. 50 Shades built a following over a good 18 month period. The latest Costa Book UK award winner, Pure, spent its first year in print only available through Amazon, because the likes of WH Smith refused to stock it.

 

With a little help from my friends, I’m now coaching myself to chill, to cool my boots and jets, to even let go a little. To let things happen (and not happen) and not go potentially ‘postal’ if they don’t, it’s not easy. The trick is to care in all the right ways, and none of the crazy ones. But that's quite a trick. I find remembering to breathe is sage advice. 

SP. 

From J.K. to E.L.

 

“On 1 August 2012, amazon.co.uk announced that they had sold more copies of Fifty Shades of Grey than they had the entire Harry Potter series combined, making E.L. James their best-selling author ever, overtaking J.K. Rowling.”

Source: Wikipedia

 

Well-written, well-paced tales of a school-boy wizard, I think few would claim much real surprise to the ultimate appeal of Master Potter and his chums (even if it was the thirteenth publisher, Bloomsbury, who ultimately said yes to J.K. and her Philosopher’s Stone). 

But female erotica, formerly print-on-purchase “fan fiction” (based on Stephenie Meyer's Twilight characters), who figured on the from-underground-to-epic rise of “Mommy Porn”?

In 2012, Fifty Shades of Grey is the publishing phenomenon that has just about everyone talking. Indeed, its success has everything to do with being such a Word-of-Mouth cultural juggernaut.

A heavy-loader that maybe no one saw coming, 50 Shades has caught on, captured the imagination, and became Absolutely Huge.

In hindsight, the Success Formula is wonderfully obvious. E.L. James has written something that titillates, deemed “naughty but nice” by the middle classes, giving them something beyond Wimbledon and the Olympics to whisper about through the Summer months. It’s satisfyingly risqué, while falling just the right side of risqué to have mainstream potential. And many have remarked that the real thrill in reading it is being able to read it without embarrassment, inconspicuously, but in public, on a Kindle.

And by the time enough Kindle-readers had excitedly eulogised and giggled with friends about how clit-lit was really hitting their spot, Fifty Shades had reached a critical enough mass to be mass-market, permissible, and ok to buy in Waitrose without danger of blushing at the check-out. While for those too easily prone to embarrassment, Amazon represents the purchase without stuttering excuse or comeback.

In an analogue world, E.L. James would never have become a multi-millionaire, would very likely have remained a wannabee Black Lace novelist. As it is, Fifty Shades of Grey might just be the first great Digital Novel. 

 SP.