Something Burning

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For years, Scratch has studied the compression of time and space between, say, a good idea and a better one; a thriving company and a dead one; instant success and precipitous failure and then (often in a reality show?) premeditated redemption.

“Time’s moving faster than ever,” right? Sure it is, or at least if feels like that, depending on how much (food, content, stimulus, etc) you consume in a given period of time. But those who stop right there and land on “we’ve just got to move faster to keep up” — are missing the point and will face extinction.

The winners of the 21st century, so far, are those who obsessively pursue a deeper understanding of the ways in which Millennial consumers are calibrating their speed at every turn. Slow food and binge viewing; nap pods and Adderall; apps to consume more in less time and apps to fight distraction, the quantified self and the self #unplugged.

Yesterday, Viacom’s blog featured a post by Tiffany Knighten about CADENCE, a project Scratch kicked off last month to present new perspectives on the speed of life in 2014:

“Open to teams across the company, as well as select partners and clients, the month-long installation – part research presentation, part museum exhibit, part art gallery – brought Viacom’s consumer insights to life in a new way. Cadence was designed to help visitors experience the unique approaches programmers, content creators, marketers and brands are taking to calibrate their moves in a culture that’s compressing time and space in more and more complicated ways.”

I’ve been excited about this for a while, for a few reasons:

It’s impossible to perform at a high level in the media business without a nuanced understanding of the velocities of culture. That sounds like a media executive taking himself too seriously on his own blog, but it’s true. Most of us get it wrong, most of the time — we’re either ahead of the game, patting ourselves on the back prematurely, or we’re behind it, fighting irrelevance. Stepping back to measure the distance gives us all a chance to catch our breath and look at things with colleagues and partners in a new way. Then apply what we learn to our daily work, whether we’re writers, programmers, developers, marketers, designers, strategists, planners or anything in between.

Speaking of a new way… it’s exciting to see research served up to make participants feel the information as they move through it. Anne Hubert, Senior Vice President at Scratch, describes CADENCE as “truly immersive, a chance to experience life at Millennial speed, and to apply that understanding to everything we do.” Watching participants take it all in, explore the subject and raise new questions, I could see the need and the potential for bringing more subjects to light in new and exciting ways.

An enterprising team of people from Scratch made this happen…from scratch. It’s what can happen when provocative material doesn’t want to live locked up in a PowerPoint deck in a conference room. The content itself inspired innovation in the way it could be manifest.

You can read more about the CADENCE project on the Viacom blog. And for more information, email scratch@viacom.com.

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The “Millennial Disruption Index” On Bloomberg TV’s Market Makers This Morning

June 13, 2014

I was a guest this morning on Bloomberg TV’s show “Market Makers,” hosted by Stephanie Ruhle and Erik Shatzker, where I talked about THE MILLENNIAL DISRUPTION INDEX. It continues the discussion Scratch and Viacom started about the ongoing transformation we see in financial services at the hands of the largest generation in American history, which was first covered in Fast Company and Time Magazine.

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Happy Holidays

December 5, 2013 — 1

I had some fun making a video for my team as a warm-up for our holiday party, tonight. I’m so proud of everyone at Scratch for their incredible work this year — our biggest and best ever. This represents the first time I’ve ever been turned into a Belgian action star from the 90’s…

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Cannes 2013: My Conversation On Creativity With OK Go Lead Singer Damian Kulash

June 28, 2013 — 0

As part of Viacom’s trip to this year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, I sat down for a conversation with Damian Kulash, lead singer of OK Go. Last year, Damian and the band won 7 Cannes Lions, 4 of which were gold. Here’s an excerpt from our chat:

Also check out OK Go’s new app, which is super fun to play and shot to the top on iTunes. Here’s the video the band made to explain how it works:

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Amy Chozick’s New York Times Story On General Motors & Scratch

March 22, 2012 — 0

Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times

Ross Martin, left, of Viacom’s creative strategy unit, is working with General Motors to help revive interest in cars among young consumers. Mr. Martin and John McFarland of Chevrolet are shown in G.M.’s headquarters in Detroit.

As Young Lose Interest in Cars, G.M. Turns to MTV for Help

By AMY CHOZICK

DETROIT — Ross Martin, 37, is a published poet and a former drummer in an alternative rock band. Wearing Nike high tops and loosefitting jeans, he is the kind of figure who wouldn’t attract a second glance on the streets of Brooklyn, where he lives.

But on a chilly afternoon here last month he managed to attract a few odd looks as he walked across the 24th floor of General Motors’ global headquarters. Mr. Martin is the executive vice president of MTV Scratch, a unit of the giant media company Viacom that consults with brands about connecting with consumers.

He and his team are trying to help General Motors solve one of the most vexing problems facing the car industry: many young consumers today just do not care that much about cars.

That is a major shift from the days when the car stood at the center of youth culture and wheels served as the ultimate gateway to freedom and independence. Young drivers proudly parked Impalas at a drive-in movie theater, lusted over cherry red Camaros as the ultimate sign of rebellion or saved up for a Volkswagen Beetle on which to splash bumper stickers and peace signs. Today Facebook, Twitter and text messaging allow teenagers and 20-somethings to connect without wheels. High gas prices and environmental concerns don’t help matters.

“They think of a car as a giant bummer,” said Mr. Martin. “Think about your dashboard. It’s filled with nothing but bad news.”

There is data to support Mr. Martin’s observations. In 2008, 46.3 percent of potential drivers 19 years old and younger had drivers’ licenses, compared with 64.4 percent in 1998, according to the Federal Highway Administration, and drivers ages 21 to 30 drove 12 percent fewer miles in 2009 than they did in 1995.

Forty-six percent of drivers aged 18 to 24 said they would choose Internet access over owning a car, according to the research firm Gartner.

Cars are still essential to drivers of all ages, and car cultures still endure in swaths of suburban and rural areas. But automobiles have fallen in the public estimation of younger people. In a survey of 3,000 consumers born from 1981 to 2000 — a generation marketers call “millennials”— Scratch asked which of 31 brands they preferred. Not one car brand ranked in the top 10, lagging far behind companies like Google and Nike.

The five-year strategic vision that Scratch has developed for Chevrolet, kept quiet until now, stretches beyond marketing to a rethinking of the company’s corporate culture. The strategy is to infuse General Motors with

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“Sleep No More” Isn’t Content, It’s User Experience

January 26, 2012 — 0

I spent half the day today with the leaders of our digital music group, at the space where Sleep No More is running. An inspiring background for us, as we planned some crazy shit for later this year.

(Take an interactive tour of the space, here)

It gave me a chance to consider what we’re trying to accomplish in digital in a new, disembodied way. As Sleep No More‘s director helped break the show down to its component parts, I thought about the visceral connection audiences have with a breakthrough interactive experience. What those ~~audiences~~ users give, and what they take away.

From a social perspective, Sleep No More raises questions all programmers, developers, storytellers and marketers must struggle with, now more than ever:

– Why beginnings, middles and ends?

– How do we hold space for viewers to co-create the narrative, and why is that so important?

– Which variables must we control so that we don’t have to control the ones we shouldn’t?

– How do we provoke emotionally satisfying experiences for audiences who wonder if something more compelling is happening in the next “room.”

– How do we “share” an experience?

The storytellers we love most don’t strive to create “content.” That’s because content = matter. And matter doesn’t move you. Experiences do.

Experiences are moments in time and space that are here, then gone. They are “never before” and they are “never again.” The greats — Homer, Shakepeare — gift us experiences that cause change in the universe and in our selves.

What Sleep No More ~~teaches~~ reminds us is that the path we take through an experience is the experience. And when we preserve the order of our perception, we can come close to remembering what it felt like.

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