I pulled quotes representing some essential insights from Martin Weigert’s article on how smart wearables (specifically the Apple Watch) will accelerate mass surveillance. It’s arguable that the tech press has done an about-face on this issue. As Weigert remarks:
“[M]any of the people who have expressed their concerns about systematic mass surveillance now eagerly line up for an Apple Watch [even though] a universal wearable like that is one more major step towards a world of constant and ubiquitous surveillance.”
Perhaps people trust Apple enough that they’re not worried? Tim Cook is explicitly pro-privacy and Apple has been decent about keeping user information safe. But it’s more likely that people don’t actually care about day-to-day surveillance. I mean, I’m apathetic personally, just not politically.
IMO, mass surveillance by the public of the public would be a good thing. Everyone watching everyone would be okay if all the data was publicly available and publicly negotiated. However, the world where people with power surveil little-suspecting citizens and privately hoard the reams of data is terrifying. Corporations and government bodies don’t have a good track record re: human rights.
To be clear, this is not an abstract future. We already live in a plutocratic oligarchy of citizen data, or rather we live in sets of overlapping plutocracies and oligarchies. Google shares with the CIA and shrugs off the tiny PR hit whenever journalists try to remind people ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Weigert gives an example of how law enforcement agencies could use the body data that wearables collect:
“A person for whom the algorithm finds slightly suspicious online behaviour, and whose body values indicate a high level of unusual stress? Flagged for closer examination.”
Lest you scoff at the proposed ubiquity of wearables, Weigert reminds the naysayers who expect the Apple Watch to fail:
“While smartwatches do not seem essential from the get-go to many, the history of the digital age taught us that we usually suck at evaluating the future perceived or actual value of new technology.”
The Apple Watch is here, possibly here to stay, and there’s a high likelihood that we should be worried. This device is not the first of its kind, and surely not the last.
I compiled a zine for the SideQuest Gallery show Femme 4ever. Originally it was going to be printed in glorious color, but then I made a hasty ink-purchasing decision and screwed that up completely. ($45, down the drain. Four and a half hours of my life. ARGH.) Luckily, color is cheap on the internet, so here’s a digital version:
Mike Licht has made and posted a million of these for some reason.
Necessary context for the upcoming screenshot: Ben Thompson is a popular tech blogger who offers an exclusive email newsletter for $10 per month. Recently some kind of bug inserted a couple of subscriber-only posts into the blog’s public RSS feed. Here’s a brief Twitter exchange between subscriber Blaine Wilson and Thompson:
Wilson: “Hey Ben, I’m interested to know if the RSS leak lead to any sort of upside in update subscriptions as people got a taste.” Thompson: “I’ve learned that RSS users aren’t really the types to pay for content :)”
I don’t have any substantive commentary on Thompson’s observation, but I think it’s worth noting. (Obviously, considering that here I am noting it.)
Here are two pieces of feedback that I got about my billboard manifesto: 1) “Sonya, more people have watched Office Space than you think.” 2) “This post is like the billboards that you’re criticizing.” Although I had good points (if I do say so myself, which I do), my suggestions weren’t presented in a clear, actionable manner. Hopefully this post will amend that. Most of the following design ideas apply to other types of display ads, like magazine ads or even web ads, but my specific aim is to improve billboards.
The process is slightly different for new brands versus established brands. (You are a new brand if most people have never heard of your company/product. You are an established brand if everyone already knows who you are and what you do.) The advice for new brands largely also applies to established brands, but not vice versa.
#1: Define your objective. What do you want people to do after they view your billboard? Do you want them to visit your website? Buy your product next time they see it at Target? Simply remember your company when they’re prompted to think of your industry? It’s important to pin this down so that later you can evaluate whether the billboard accomplishes what it’s supposed to. Keep in mind, as a new brand, that getting your name/logo/image in people’s brains is CRUCIAL before you can expect anything else.
#2: Include essential information. These things MUST be on your billboard, and they must be big and readable: the name of your company, what your product is/does (if there’s room, also why people should want it), and where people can get it. Textually, here’s an example:
Safer Dog Leashes made by Company Name available at companyleash.com
Accompanying the text would be a picture of the dog leash. That’s it. Simple is good! People need to be able to process the information quickly, with little attention and zero intention. Prioritize clarity, and when in doubt, enlarge the font!
#1 is the same: Define your objective. How do you want people to react to your billboard? What do you want them to do? As an established brand, you may be playing a longer game, oriented toward perception as well as action. Do you want people to start associating your product with luxury, business, fun? Etc, etc.
#2: Signal your brand. You don’t need to lay out everything about the company and what you do, but you still need to show whose billboard this is. In a legible way! Depending on how well-known you are, this can mean putting your company’s name in a corner, or in some cases just the logo. Make sure that people can tell, from far away, what brand the billboard represents.
#3: Core message. Suppress your desire to be clever. Jokey or sarcastic billboards can be done well, but it’s so infrequent that statistically speaking, you’d do better not to even try. Be straightforward. To use the example of “Shot on iPhone 6”, the core message is, “The iPhone 6 has a really good camera.” Boil down your core message to be as simple as possible. If you use text, use LARGE text.
Now I gotta backtrack. Before you do anything: Step zero in any kind of marketing endeavor is to consider, “Is our [product/service] valuable? Why should people want it?” If whatever you’re offering isn’t useful and desirable, go back to the drawing board before you try to sell it. If you’re in a position where you can’t amend the product to make it better, your job is going to be a hell of a lot harder. More on that here: “The single worst marketing decision you can make” by Ryan Holiday. Also, this memo from Stewart Butterfield to the internal team at Slack (a workplace communications system) is a must-read. Salient quote:
“Just as much as our job is to build something genuinely useful, something which really does make people’s working lives simpler, more pleasant and more productive, our job is also to understand what people think they want and then translate the value of [our product] into their terms.
A good part of that is ‘just marketing,’ but even the best slogans, ads, landing pages, PR campaigns, etc., will fall down if they are not supported by the experience people have when they hit our site, when they sign up for an account, when they first begin using the product and when they start using it day in, day out.”
That’s it! Let me know in the comments, on Twitter, or via email (sonyaellenmann@gmail.com) whether you think this post is correct, super wrong, or how it could be more helpful. Feedback is welcome. Thank you!
Writing about the fallibility of recorded memory, Walter Kirn cautions, “Despite our tendency in the computer age to think of ourselves as soft machines, the human mind is not a hard drive, a neutral repository of information.” Rather, “Memory is an imaginative act; first we imagine what we’ll want to keep and then we fashion stories from what we’ve kept. Memories don’t just happen, they are built.”
Beautifully put, and very true. We do not impartially, objectively store all of the information gathered by our senses (at least not in a retrievable way). We pick and choose the images and conversations that will create narratives, often self-serving ones, and reconstruct our stories every time we recall them.
Graffiti spotted in Portland, OR… if I remember rightly.
You can only trust your mind when it’s skeptical of its own results. Even then, are you sure that you’re sure? This is why eye-witness testimony is dangerous.
Dave Pell ruefully describes giving his son “paparazzi” treatment at the toddler’s birthday party, positing, “The digital age gives a new (and almost opposite) meaning to having a photographic memory. The experience of the moment has become the experience of the photo.”
What are we sacrificing when we save so many snapshots?
“The process of interpretation occurs at the very formation of memory—thus introducing distortion from the beginning. […] Rarely do we tell a story or recount events without a purpose. Every act of telling and retelling is tailored to a particular listener[.]”
“[T]he mere fault of being human results in distorted memory and inaccurate testimony.”
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