Human Interaction: Good Vs Bad

Not normally the types to write a post on adverts we don't like, we feel particularly compelled to write this after a conversation on the train this morning.

There are people within advertising that see digital and above the line as two different disciplines, we know people that think its just web banners and Facebook fan pages. This should not be the case.

The internet and digital in general are there to assist human interaction, all the gadgets in the world should only be utilities, after all that is the purpose of the internet. Overall, to us it seems that if you don't really include this basic understanding then your digital or non- digital will not resonate. This leads us to the reason that we are writing this, the horrible T-Mobile flash mobs.



First, these events show the sheer amount of money that T-Mobile have to throw away on adverts rather than spending it on their customer service (bitter customer experience.) Second, these stunts have a very forced nature. We don't care if you pay for Pink to be in the crowd, what we would appreciate much more is if you didn't shove a camera in the face of all those singing away. Now I am not saying that this wasn't an effective idea, but when the idea becomes more focused on getting footage to seed on the internet, than actually have a feeling, then you know you've lost your way.


In comparison we have Tweenbots, a lovely experiment by Kacie Kinzer, a student at ITP. It may be a month or two behind the times now, but it's the best use of thinking we can recall right now. It uses a small robot to impact upon the citizens of NY, giving them a glimpse of something more personal than just a piece of content for a viral.



Tweenbots was an investigation into human nature - into the reactions of the everyday person. The content and films were secondary to the impact upon those affected. Brands don't need to copy this, but they do need to understand that the very essence of this supposedly 'digital' mentality should be to impact/ assist upon people during their day, not to use them as feed for online content.

Oh, just to note. There shouldnt even be a 'digital' mentality, it should just be about a basic understanding of how we all react best with interaction and using whatever method is best to do this.