Future Narrative: No Joking Matter

The book is dead, long live the book! The film is dead, long live the film! Attention span is dead, long live social! I could go on, but no genre would be dead and no new platform is without its merits.

I watched the movie ‘Joker’ at the cinema last month. Yes, the cinema. Another one of those outdated platforms that apparently no one considers any more. The two dimensional film, shown in a darkened room with zero distraction or interaction was a masterpiece of storytelling. I respected the creative content – written and directed by Todd Phillips, memorably performed by the film’s sole lead – Joaquin Phoenix, and there was no denying the impact of the powerful cinematography and the dark oppressive soundtrack. But I didn’t really enjoy it.

And that’s my choice, it’s everyone’s choice. I love the beauty of narrative, the long winding journey it can take each and every one of us on. No matter how a film, TV series, book or play is presented, they are open to personal interpretation and what you as an individual take away from them – like art, because that’s what they are. A living, breathing art form.

Some have said Joker is not a superhero movie. I beg to differ, because it features Batman’s nemesis – The Joker – and Batman himself, albeit in the pre-superhero guise of a young Bruce Wayne. Many have insisted the film is about mental health. Yes, it tackles this issue by default because the central character is deeply psychologically disturbed – but he’s hardly the poster boy for mental health awareness. Unless everyone currently jumping on this particular bandwagon is suggesting individuals with ‘issues’ end up like Arthur Fleck – a delusional gun-toting, knife-wielding homicidal maniac?

If cinema isn’t broken, how do we approach future narrative? In 2018 the global box office was worth over $40 Billion and has increased year-on-year for over a decade. It shows no signs of stalling, with ‘Avengers: Endgame’ taking $2.8 billion in cinemas – a new all-time high. Is ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ set to round off the decade with the highest earnings ever?

This leaves future platforms with a tough fight on their hands when trying to convince marketing teams to invest their money in untried and untested technology. When you include home entertainment revenue, the global film industry is worth an additional $100 billion, so audiences are spending a lot of money viewing content on other devices too.

This figure naturally features TV sets, smartphones and tablets. For future audiences this will undoubtedly include VR headsets, AR glasses and autonomous vehicles.

The thinking behind the latter is illustrated by Renault’s 2017 acquisition of a 40% stake in the Pedriel Group, the publishing house that produces the weekly business magazine ‘Challenges’. They clearly recognise the future potential for published content within self-driven mobility. If we’re not absorbing written or audio material, the car interior will offer a multitude of digital surfaces to begin, continue or conclude the narrative of film and TV viewing. Are you all ready to Netflix and chill as your car makes all the decisions for you?

However, future platforms aren’t simply there to provide the same type of material but on a different device. They will inevitably offer this, but where they excel is in adding value. In its simplest terms, a smartphone can provide second screen conversation – leveraged by shows such as BBC’s ‘The Apprentice’ or ITV’s ‘Love Island’ and ‘I’m A Celebrity’ across social channels to drive conversation and generate further awareness and reach.

Others championing new storytelling are Nesta with their ‘Alternarratives’ challenge and Ford’s Developer Programme, looking to innovate the future of the car with ‘Music That Moves You’ in partnership with Capitol Records – leading to some amazing potential for storytelling around music artists and genres.

Many Futurologists or Tech Pundits will talk the talk without ever having walked the walk. I have been fortunate to push boundaries my whole career and with some amazing clients including Warner Music Group, Disney, Apple, BBC, Scientific American, Smithsonian Enterprises, Renault, Pottermore, Guinness World Records and Mark Staufer’s ‘The Numinous Place’. Together we have explored some of the possibilities for future narrative. There are many more to come.

All new forms of digital and physical storytelling should be explored as we don’t yet know where they will lead us. The impact of horror in a VR headset. The ability to bring elements of a story to life seemingly in the world around us through AR. To use Artificial Intelligence to extend and personalise narrative. All have enormous potential for a diverse cross-section of audiences, but they don’t offer replacements, they provide depth, understanding and new creative challenges.

I’ve said many times before, if the opinion that all narrative evolves into something else held water, this would have left books, radio and theatre dead long ago. They’re far from that. In a world of digital depth and diversity – they’re actually flourishing because they bring the focus back to great storytelling.

Without that story and an engaging narrative we would live in a world of meaningless words swirling past us in a fleeting moment, we have Facebook for that.

Despite what you may have been told, the future of narrative isn’t about the technology that surrounds us, it is about the thing right at the centre of everything – the human. If you never lose that focus, you’ll never lose your audience.

E3: The Blockbuster Generation

Hollywood is rejoicing as cinema-goers flock back to the big screen this summer. In recent years the movie theatre experience looked as if it was going the way of the music business, but now the 2015 summer of excess is serving up the blockbusters.

The current box office takings merely provide the warm up act to this winter’s releases where we’ll see the long-awaited extension to the Star Wars franchise following on from James Bond’s November action in SPECTRE.

I have a point to make here, relating to the millennials amongst us (the kids born this millennium) and my time spent at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in LA this week. Having sat through Avengers: Age of Ultron last month, I came away feeling a little despondent and wondering which came first… the story-less all action ADHD blockbuster or the constantly distracted audience?

I had an interesting conversation in the back of a cab last year. I was heading to the airport having just delivered my TEDx talk in Athens, before jetting off to LA for the next big adventure.

I say the talk was interesting, but I mean ‘challenging’. My esteemed car-sharer was a seasoned TED speaker, with years of experience in the field of human behaviour. He held the view that kids today are bombarded with too much information, especially of the digital variety. He believed that mobile devices should be strictly rationed as they cause more problems for kids than they solve.

I told him that I agreed in principal but ‘all things in moderation’ is a better approach than insisting on a non-digital solution. You don’t filter the noise out by turning it all off, you learn to live with it, categorise it and make use of it.

I’d be the first to admit that my kids don’t lead a normal life. The very nature of my job exposes them to a new piece of tech hardware or delivery platform on a regular basis. They are a fabulous sounding board for the reactions of the next generation of consumers as they’re quick to dismiss and not afraid to speak their minds. They have none of the social or business diplomacy to worry about – it just works or it doesn’t.

They’ve been fascinated by and indifferent to various smart watches and VR headsets over the past couple of years and it’s easy to see that a constant supply of digital watch faces will appeal more than garage door openers and short-form film and games are perfect for VR.

At E3, the audience is hungry for new games, but still prefers the familiarity of a sequel and will happily immerse themselves in a single game for hours on end if the content offers enough variety and a continual challenge.

Minecraft is already huge but Microsoft demonstrated a whole new level of immersion at E3 – on HoloLens. If you’re not familiar with this new platform, it’s Microsoft’s foray into the augmented reality market. projecting seemingly real content into the wearer’s field of vision. I’ll be getting hands-on today and will update this article in a few hours.

So where does this leave our kids? Lost in a digital world of shock and awe, content and distraction? Yes, all of the above and it’s brilliant.

I saw the Disney movie Tomorrowland a couple of weeks ago and I loved it. It touched a creative and technological nerve and moved me to write this article. It’s not an explosion-a-second blockbuster like Age of Ultron as it manages to combine an all-action adventure with something subtly cerebral.

It’s a film with a message. Don’t lose your sense of wonder, investigate new technology and be creative with it. Use it to push boundaries, not live within them. We wouldn’t have reached the moon or built electric cars without a commitment to improve the world in which we live. We can also have fun whilst doing it!

It’s our responsibility to encourage kids to live with and use technology to their advantage, rather than distance themselves from it, and a brighter future.

Making Music at WWDC

If you’re looking for a comprehensive summary of everything covered in today’s WWDC keynote, move along now, there’s nothing to see here. If however you’re after a look behind the scenes of the Moscone memorandum and its impact on developers, brands and consumers over the next 12 months, you’re in the right place.

My day began at 3:15am when my alarm jolted me rudely into consciousness. As my jet-lagged brain took in the surroundings of my shabby-chic San Francisco hotel room, I checked the charge levels of my mobile devices. It was going to be a long day.

Armed with my 15” MacBook Pro, 11” MacBook Air, iPad Mini, iPhone 6, 42mm Apple Watch and a bag full of battery chargers, I made the ten minute cold, dark and lonely cab ride to the Moscone Centre. It was keynote day and to ensure a decent seat I had to begin my queuing ‘experience’ at 4am.

I’m no stranger to the iQueue. In 2010 I stood outside the 5th Avenue Apple Store in New York waiting a mere 12 hours for the launch of the iPad. We were 6th and 7th in line, behind representatives of the four corners of the world… and a guy in a deckchair that waits in ALL the lines. He’s not a developer so isn’t at WWDC.

You’d think 4am would be early enough, right? Not a chance. I began writing this crouched on the floor round the back of the Moscone West Convention Centre, next to the bins. This international globe-trotting ain’t as glamorous as you think. Assuming you think it’s glamorous of course.

To cut a long and rather tedious story short, the Moscone Center doors opened at 7am and the iQueue was directed like a shuffling chain-gang to the inner hall where our next 3 hour wait began.

Through a combination of running, elbowing and misdirection I found a seat in the front row of the ‘non-VIP’ enclosure with a good view of Tim Cook’s kick-off. He took to the stage to deliver the usual stats about global eyeballs and fingertips on iOS and OS X and positive words about Apple Watch.

Others will have summarised word-for-word the minutia of the keynote. As mentioned, I don't intend to do this so here are my top 5 announcements.

Watch Kit 2.0

Apple set the standard for Apple Watch apps early on. We were restricted to a limited feature set, using official Watch Kit designated GUI (Graphical User Interface) and restricted access to the sensors on the watch itself. We made the most of this with our Porsche Car Connect app, launched on Day 1. You can read more about that [here].

This tight control wasn’t out of character for Apple (the original iPhone didn’t even have an App Store at launch) and the idea was to keep the focus firmly on the hardware and its OS, rather than take the Android Wear approach and encourage a free for all.

At WWDC, the development door has been pushed open a little and we now have access to sensors and buttons not previously in our armoury, making the watch a much more interesting proposition when pushing creative barriers, if not breaking them all down just yet.

Consumers will appreciate the new photo watch faces and customisable content but I’m still waiting for full watch faces to make the device truly personal or an easy win for brands.

Apple Music

Hands up if you love iTunes… anyone? Bueller? Yep, it’s been a necessary evil since day one. Poor search (that still applies to the App Store and iBooks Store), cranky UI and little or no encouragement to actually access all your music, movies and books.

Apple wants all that to change with the introduction of Apple Music and Beats1. With the focus firmly on streamed music and playlists or shows curated by humans rather than algorithms, Apple have proved they are probably the only organisation capable of combining all the essential content, features and platforms to deliver an end-to-end music service.

That doesn’t mean everything they offer from the start will be the best but by placing it all in one place, they certainly make it easier. The music labels should also be happy with Apple Music as it offers them a higher profile for both new and established artists and brings music, video and more to an audience likely to pay for both a streaming service and downloadable tracks.

So, farewell to cranky old iTunes on our desktops? No, I'm afraid we'll have to suffer that for a while longer, until the new UI and user experience filters down from Apple Music. It's a shame this isn't a replacement, just an improvement to music discovery, not its storage once purchased.

Apple Music is available soon in the US, UK and Australia and on Android by the end of the year. The first three months access will be free then $9.99 a month. I think the Tide may have just gone out for Jay Z…

Apple News

It will probably be referred to as ‘News’ but whatever it’s called, it looks like a potential Flipboard killer. Having worked with publishers, Apple revealed its digital magazine platform, providing a customisable feed with live interactive content.

The proof will be in the simplicity of integration with online content and how this will be monetised when News looks as good as a regular digital magazine. Publishers or bloggers can now sign up to use ‘News Publisher’ and get their hands on the tools required. Watch this space…

Car Play

Greater integration and wireless connectivity and now Apple Music. All cars should offer both iOS and Android integration as standard in the next few years, adding functionality both in and out of the car so we’re ticking boxes here.

Clearly our Porsche Car Connect app is the perfect example of this but the challenge remains for designers, developers and marketers to make the brand experience as seamless as possible with both technical, lifestyle and service information living in digital harmony within the app ecosystem.

Apple TV 2.0

Only joking, it didn’t make an appearance because Apple hadn’t joined all the dots – hardware, software (including apps) and the big one… content. The content is there, it’s just the issues that remain, such as localisation, advertising and subscription models.

This hasn’t been an easy business for Apple as the direct download and rental models are far less complicated than streaming. Whilst Apple has been trying to own the end-to-end experience, the market has moved on around them with major players such as NetFlix and Amazon making substantial gains. Apple TV is still poised to make the next step very soon…

The two main headlines this year were Apple Watch OS2 and Apple Music. The rest provided interesting updates but nothing to change the world, unless you aim to use these tools to do it yourself.

WWDC is an Apple Event so naturally we all have iPhones and MacBooks of one shape or size. I’m comfortable with this as it’s the right (and in our collective opinion) the best kit for the job. I’m less at ease with the fact we all have Apple Watches. I’ve always worn a watch 1. to tell the time and 2. because I actually like wearing one - as a personal statement. It’s not very personal when everyone has the same thing.

I’ve ordered my personalised strap from Casetify to alleviate some design anxiety but I’m still not happy to run with the crowd. I’ll feature that strap later this week in my new Dawn of The DumbWatch article, alongside the Olio Model One and metal Cogito Classic.

I’m also surrounded by developers wearing the official WWDC15 fleece. I have mine on under a jacket as it feels a little like a school uniform. That and it was freezing next to the bins!

Self Aware, Self Controlled

We yearn for independence, yet struggle to manage increasing levels of communication and distraction. So where do we draw the line and what lies in store for our connected future?

At LeWeb in Paris last December, the term ‘Enchanted Objects’ was used to describe Wearable Technology. It’s a nice phrase and covers the interaction and solution as well as the hardware.

Others stated that wearables were all about data, its delivery and the results. However, that's like saying everyone bases their smartphone, tablet or laptop buying decision on the operating system alone. The smartwatch market has to deliver on all counts: to look and feel special AND tell the time for at least 24 hours.

Not a great start for the Apple Watch with a maximum of 18 hours then? Not perfect by any means but Apple’s new device (and the consumer/media scrum surrounding it) is likely to light the blue touch paper under the wearable tech industry.

To make the point, Wearables and Jeremy Clarkson captured a lot of the headlines last week, with Apple’s Spring keynote revealing the features, price and launch date of the Apple Watch plus the Wearable Technology Show bringing the great and the good of the industry together at ExCeL in London, where I was fortunate enough to speak on the opening panel and host the second day of the Augmented and Virtual Reality track.

So what can we expect from our Enchanted Objects in the not-too-distant future? CES and MWC offered a raft of products and platforms, so I’ve highlighted four key areas where devices, sensors and data need to play nice to deliver a seamless (and often invisible) experience. We don’t want to do more things, we need things to do more.

The Car

The temptation is to use the screens we carry as extensions of the dashboard. Don’t. Automotive designers spend years training and honing their skills. They design and build an ergonomically sound environment, with information displayed at the right size in the right place. As soon as you add a randomly-placed small phone screen or attempt to glance at your wrist, all the good work is undone.

Leave the screen, continue the journey – that’s the message to drive home (no pun intended). Our connected devices should talk to each other without our prompting, be aware of their surroundings and our habits. Mid-track streamed music and telephone conversations are already transferrable when we sit in some manufacturers’ vehicles. Social channel conversation and navigation on foot then on wheels are the next step. Take a half-written Twitter message, finish and send it via voice instructions and have the responses fed back through audio rather than visual channels.

The autonomous cars of the ‘future’ are with us already, they’re just not available to buy yet. The issues over screen distraction will take a back seat (again, no pun, etc) so we’ll find more to keep us occupied, but that won’t be car-specific – it will be the same interaction and distractions we experience outside the vehicle! I’m not saying anything about Apple Car, yet…

The Mall

Location, location, location. The infrastructure still has some way to go but our devices need to talk to retailers before we even leave the house, then the location-specific content kicks in via GPS or iBeacon. Find our parking space, log our arrival time and reimburse our fees if we’ve spent the right amount in the right places.

When we’re in, direct us to offers we’ll find attractive from brands we follow, guide us to the right in-store concession, then allow us to pay for it or order it if there’s no stock available. Also offer alternative local stores to continue the experience.

This should be a brand-agnostic experience. We need to see everything relevant as no one wants to fill their phone or watch with apps for each brand or service.

The House

“Why is the fridge empty?” “because it forgot to reorder groceries”. How long before we’re blaming our devices for the things we used to take responsibility for? This is an important section to cover in the ‘Internet of Things (IoT)’ but manufacturers have made a lot of progress here, we just haven’t adopted it all yet. Our phones can tell our thermostats we’re nearly home ensuring optimal temperature upon our arrival, saving energy and avoiding discomfort. We can control all the lights with an app and the full entertainment system can deliver playlisted content from dusk till dawn.

I have a wifi-enabled kettle controlled by an app. Do I need it? No. Do I want it? Yes, but I’m not normal. The challenge ahead is the same faced by auto manufacturers – what to leave out. We can automate almost anything but some things just don’t need to be connected.

The Event

Let’s talk music. You buy an album, or maybe you don’t. You stream the album without paying for it, you follow your favourite band but where’s the depth? Well, there’s the concert but this is hardly a regular occurrence so the future for connecting artists with their audiences lies in the ability of devices to extend the main event throughout our daily routines.

Audio watermarking offers an incredible opportunity to not only deliver stunning live light shows at venues and through second screen interaction, but also monitor listening habits and reward fans based on music played and ‘collected’.

Connected devices should steer us to the music we want, help us buy, build or consume, then lead us to performances with specific ‘money-can’t-buy’ rewards to keep us coming back for more.

Voice activation is one input method that spans all the above. In a perfect world, this form of interaction could offer the best solution for hands-free, platform and device agnostic progress. In reality, we have social boundaries to cross and habits to break before verbal outbursts on train platforms or in the office are acceptable. It’s less of an issue in the home or car, but we’re not happy to shout at our devices in public. I give it five years, but let’s avoid innovation for innovation’s sake.