CES 2015: And the Winner is… Social Media

Wearable Tech, Autonomous Cars, Connected Homes and Robots. CES 2015 was as big, loud and crazy as ever but what came out on top? All the above, but the winner was social media in all its shapes and forms.

Heading to Vegas last week, I already knew what would provide the main talking points for the industry. I’m not being cocky, but if I didn’t have a damned good idea I wouldn’t be doing my job at Brandwidth and beyond.

Whilst at CES, I wrote about Smartwatches, Wearable Tech and Robots. All three articles took off in a big way on my social channels but some of my other experiences were just as popular. Twitter, Instagram and Vine were the main stalwarts, covering my initial backchat at the ‘State of the Industry’ press conference (including Selfie Stick mockery), through my BMW i8 driving at the superbly organising automotive manufacturer’s experience (complete with Laser Light Show), to the incredible performance by Frankie Moreno in the Gibson tent.

A superb week that I could have gleaned tech industry news from afar via social channels, but being there made all the difference. From outside, the event looks like a barrel full of nerds, from the inside it shows that technology supports the world in which we live but requires the entertainment, engagement and most importantly ‘soul’ of the best innovators and creative minds.

Music, film, TV, publishing, automotive, retail, leisure, museums… and many more. All these industries need to work hand-in-hand with technology as a means to drive forward and make themselves relevant in the places their customers reside. They don’t need to build the hardware or construct the platforms but they damn well need to make great digital content and experiences.

Here are my CES social landmarks…

Scourge of the Selfie Stick

This guy just got bored and is taking selfies in the corner... #CES2015 pic.twitter.com/NR6h1xLKMp

— Dean Johnson (@activrightbrain) January 4, 2015

Numerous reposts and later featured on Mashable

The unsexy s(l)ide of Wearable Tech

How to make #WearableTech / #Wearables look unsexy with just one slide. All the good work undone folks #CES2015 pic.twitter.com/h0zy1XExE3

— Dean Johnson (@activrightbrain) January 4, 2015

Dawn of the DumbWatch

#CES2015: Dawn of the DumbWatch http://t.co/9wTpJ3WzKK #WearableTech #Wearables #Smartwatch pic.twitter.com/CF1FXY7V7D

— Dean Johnson (@activrightbrain) January 5, 2015

Taking the fight to Apple Watch – Sony SmartWatch 3

Taking the fight to #AppleWatch - #Sony #Smartwatch3 Steel & changeable strap available next month #wearabletech #CES2015 #SonyCES #tech #Vegas #Wearables #Smartwatch

A photo posted by Dean Johnson (@activrightbrain) on Jan 5, 2015 at 6:04pm PST

Driving the Future – the BMW i8

Just drove the future around #Vegas - a #BMWi8. Stunning, just stunning. #BMWCES2015 #CES2015 pic.twitter.com/grA50MQFni

— Dean Johnson (@activrightbrain) January 6, 2015

This shit got real! No, virtual…

Frankie Moreno and Gibson prove gadgets aren’t just for geeks

Brilliant high-energy performance from @frankiemoreno at @gibsonguitar. #CES2015 - not just geeks & gadgets! pic.twitter.com/GSJkjuuDr9

— Dean Johnson (@activrightbrain) January 7, 2015

BMW Laser Lights

Stunning #BMWM4 Concept Iconic laser lights (the lights are the stars of the show) #BMWCES2015 #CES2015 #innovation pic.twitter.com/avHTJxijpJ

— Dean Johnson (@activrightbrain) January 7, 2015

Wearables: The Whole Package

#VR & #AR #WearableTech at #CES2015 - #Wearables: The Whole Package http://t.co/mBcIYHnWsb - #Robots tomorrow! pic.twitter.com/qGgtqN9EcN

— Dean Johnson (@activrightbrain) January 8, 2015

Rise of The Machines

You thought #CES2015 was all about #Wearables? Think again... Rise of the Machines http://t.co/IkjUa4ouj9 #robots pic.twitter.com/D5tbcWAVUg

— Dean Johnson (@activrightbrain) January 9, 2015

Rebel With a Cause

A rebel… every business needs one, from tech to finance, automotive to entertainment. Someone compelled to swim against the tide, or in reality, ahead of it.

To many, the idea of a disruptive influence in the midst of a well-oiled machine is the last thing they’d want to encourage. After all, there’s no ‘I’ in team, right? There is a big one in Impact and Instinct and two whoppers in Innovation.

Consider for a second some of the great disruptors, from Galileo and Socrates to Darwin and Jobs, we remember the plaudits and success but they faced their fair share of obstruction, ridicule and uncertainty. They stood their ground (often to their own detriment) but achieved greatness – not for themselves, but the advancement of mankind.

Their contribution to the world we live in was only given meaning through a willingness, a compulsion, to run before they could walk. They faced failure but learnt from this and channeled their energy into ever greater statements of intent.

The Apple ad from 1997 perfectly summed up this sentiment – “The ones who think they are crazy enough to change the world… are the ones who do”.

This spot was released to initiate the Think Different campaign in 1997. Here's to the reasons we stick with Apple through the ups and downs.

Now, I’m not claiming for a second that I have any right to share a platform with the greats mentioned above but I am a rebel and proud of it. 

My wife used to say the words to the Garth Brooks song ‘Standing Outside the Fire’ could have been written for me… “life is not tried, it is merely survived when you’re standing outside the fire”. It’s true, it’s hot in here, at times frickin’ uncomfortable and rarely involves sleep. It’s more rewarding than simply keeping your head down and merely getting on with it.

There is a careful balance to be achieved here. A business formed entirely of rebels is doomed to failure. My ‘Ultimate Agency’ post from 2010 is an example of a fantasy creative agency but imagine a top table featuring the likes of the late Steve Jobs and Wally Olins, to Stephen Fry, Mitch Joel, Marc Newson and Thomas Heatherwick. The Ultimate Agency would descend into anarchy without an army of ‘responsible adults’

My talk at TEDx Athens last weekend focused on the importance of balance. I spoke about the need for ‘seamless narrative’ and how without a clear understanding of this, you were unable to create ‘meaningful disruption’.

I gave the capacity audience their first taste of my rebellious disruption by equipping every delegate at the stunning Onassis Cultural Centre with our Brandwidth Innovation Lab app (iOS and Android) the audio-watermarked musical opening to my presentation triggered the digital performance, with each phone or tablet screen turning into an individual pixel to deliver a stunning light show – a 4D experience culminating with each handset vibrating as one for the final crescendo.

In the grand scheme of things, this was the equivalent to a digital firework display or waving lighters in the air at a concert. I still had a serious point to make. Communication on every level, on every device, no matter what kind of brand, business or individual needs to master the basic art of seamless narrative. Conversation and a clear personality needs a manageable change of pace. Merely shouting at an audience doesn’t work when everyone adopts the same volume or this just becomes white noise. Maintaining consistency is essential when adding impact to the meaningful messages.

My presentation is now available on Slideshare (although I had to convert this from Keynote to Power frickin’ point to upload) but please download for the full experience containing the embedded audio and video.

Disrupting Seamless Narrative from Dean Johnson

Here's the full TEDx video of my talk, complete with app-controlled 4D light show.

TEDx Athens was a wonderful experience, run by a passionate team lead by Dimitrios Kalavros-Gousiou and I was fortunate to catch some of the city sights thanks to Big Olive City Walks.

I wish I could have stayed longer but I’ve already flown from Athens to London, to San Francisco to Cupertino to LA in the past 48 hours, leaving disruption in my wake.

What a rebel.

May The Force, Maleficent, Bernhoft... and Moondog be with you!

In the past ten days, the English have demonstrated both extremes of the effort and achievement scale. At one end (the bottom) we have the English football squad. unceremoniously dumping themselves out of the World Cup. At the other, we have our award-winning team at Brandwidth.

I hate for my writing to turn into the agency equivalent of a party political broadcast, but sod it – we’re passionate, we’re dedicated and we’re brilliant. Not a particularly British attitude (we’re supposed to be all politeness and deference) but when most of the conversation on our own fair shores revolves around a failed football team and a shortlist of the same old agencies and developers, someone has to fly the flag. We're responsible for the current US number one Entertainment app and Multi-Touch book – I'm pretty sure we're the first developer in the world to achieve this.

So, what have I got to shout about? In a nutshell, having returned from speaking at the Mobile Show in Dubai, I spent a week in the US covering WWDC in San Francisco, visits to Apple in Cupertino and meetings in LA, I touched down briefly in the UK, only to head off to Poland.

“Why Poland?” I hear you cry... I spoke at the brilliant ‘Bitspiration’ Conference in Krakow, an amazing gathering of the great and the good from the worlds of music, digital innovation and start-ups. I couldn’t have been more pleased to be attending when our latest multi-touch book for Disney Studios ‘Maleficent’ was the number one Entertainment title in the US iBooks Store! I was also happy to reveal the incredible ‘Bernhoft Islander’ app and announce our forthcoming ‘Star Wars Scene Maker’ app. More on those later...

As if that wasn’t enough, we had just updated our classic ‘Top 100 Albums’ app for Amber Books in stunning Retina detail and a new FREE cover price. I challenge anyone with an interest in any genre of music to find a reason not to download!

Despite the superstitious overtones, I returned home safely from Poland late on Friday 13th and caught up with the wonderful Nikki Bedi on her BBC London 94.9 show on Saturday evening. My role as ‘Inspector Gadget’ allows me the freedom to talk about the latest tech from around the world, discuss Harrison Ford’s injured foot and further tease the Star Wars and Bernhoft projects.

A big digital product launch usually delivers a mix of extraordinary highs and monumental lows. I’m glad to say, the arrival of ‘Star Wars Scene Maker’ last Thursday offered many more highs than lows. The Brandwidth team has been working closely with Lucasfilm and Disney for nearly a year, with the mission to bring storytelling bang up to date – and take it kicking and screaming into the future.

Who wouldn’t want to step into George Lucas' or JJ Abrams' shoes and direct the iconic scenes from all six movies, then take the reins from Episode VII and beyond? I have worked in publishing, design and technology for nearly thirty years (I started young!) and this project delivers in all areas. Don’t tell me publishing is dead when this is the result – storytelling and interactive narrative taken to digital extremes.

I’m happy to say we’re not stopping here. This is a living, breathing product with a healthy future of enhancements and updates, platform and content opportunities. Oh, and a lot of fun!

Speaking of living and breathing products, another Brandwidth blockbuster is now available – ‘Bernhoft Islander’. We had an incredible opportunity to collaborate with HD360 and Jarle Bernhoft and bring his hypnotic blend of contemporary soul music to life in an encapsulated album app. We’ve worked with a number of digital formats for artists such as The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Demi Lovato, Michael Bublé and the aforementioned Top 100 Albums app but Islander is the first app to launch globally alongside the main album, providing a genuine HD experience, with all music embedded at the quality it originally left the recording studio.

360º video, the Loop Station, an interactive Studio, all create a unique approach for a unique artist and a genuine premium product. Don’t take my word for it, here’s the man himself...

As I’m still on a music theme, the clock is ticking on a superb Kickstarter campaign, ‘The Viking of 6th Avenue’ Documentary. In their own words:

"The inspirational true story of Moondog, the legendary musician and New York icon whose life was an unexpected, outrageous adventure. 

Charlie Parker and Benny Goodman hung out with him. Philip Glass lived with him, Janis Joplin covered his music, Allen Ginsberg stuck it on his fridge, Diane Arbus took his picture and Andy Warhol’s mother designed one of his album covers. Merv Griffin interviewed him, Lenny Bruce shared the bill, Phillippe Starck named a building after him, Elvis Costello brought him to London and fashion designers have created entire collections around his look."

I’m not directly involved but Holly Elson is a brilliant documentary film maker and the Moondog story deserves to be told. At the time of writing, there are 3 days remaining and around $40,000 still to raise. It’s all or nothing – Kickstarter and the Viking of 6th Avenue are only a click away!

So that’s it then? Nope, we’re on a roll. Apart from the rest of the Brandwidth business, providing digital infrastructure and mobile solutions to the automotive sector, enterprise level websites, amazing experiential environments and all the data analytics you can eat, we have a stunning title ready to launch for Taschen later this month followed by many many more. It’s going to be a long hot summer where you’ll hear all about our amazing products, even if you don’t hear about Brandwidth.

There's an app for that?

My original Jan 2013 Computer Arts Column: now revised, updated and on ARB

​The internet gave us clients demanding their own version of Amazon.com. Social networks gave us clients demanding their own version of Facebook. Now they all want apps that combine Flipboard, Instagram and Angry Birds. Stop. Just stop. Take a second, slam your fingers in your desk drawer, then we'll talk.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating digital (fingers, not pixels) dismemberment because I don’t like apps. Quite the opposite – I love ‘em. It’s this intimate connection on a personal device that drives millions of smartphone and tablet owners to interact with them on a daily, if not hourly basis.

There are very few situations where an app is less-effective than a website when trying to access information or engage an audience. However, if your website isn’t optimised for mobile browsing or your information would be better suited to a PDF, HTML5 web app or even an iBook, then you shouldn’t be thinking about a native app first.

At our current rate of app proliferation, in a couple of years I’ll be discussing the merits of the latest Crimewatch-sponsored Photo Fit Fat Booth or Gillian McKeith’s Turds With Friends. Brands need to focus and spend their money in the right places but designers and developers also need to push back and tell them where to stick it. So to speak.

This ill-conceived digital targeting hit home when I spoke at the Mobile World conference in Dubai last year. One of the more bizarre moments was a debate between mobile network providers (incidentally, big sponsors of the event) and developers. The premise of the debate was “should Telecommunications companies operate their own app stores?” And this set the alarm bells ringing, in my head, not at the venue.

The Telcos argued they should be able to operate outside the official app stores to avoid 30% loss of revenue and set up their own digital retail outlets. The developers wanted to sell individual apps without a store at all. With no one to physically restrain me, I was free to heckle the panel and inform them they were all idiots and not a single one of them was taking the consumer into consideration. 

Something I frequently tell developers is "Consumers don't give a crap about how complicated it is to build an app, collate all the assets, co-ordinate the contributing parties and steer the product through the Apple review process. They just want to know the end result is stable, looks and works beautifully, features appropriate content and is available through a trusted platform with a single touch and a password". As a result, I don’t get many Christmas cards from developers, but we deliver amazing results by avoiding complacency and putting the consumer first.

We’ve now reached an interesting point in the evolution of the app. On one hand we have a market voraciously pursuing the development of apps for any brand and any subject at any cost. On the other, we have those that think apps are merely a stepping stone to the next big thing.

As a designer, I spent many years defending Apple during the Jobsless wilderness years with PC devotees mocking me like a child with a melting ice lolly "Apple won't be around this time next year", "Everyone uses PCs, Macs are for the minority (designers)", "You can get Adobe software and Quark on a PC, so why would you use a Mac at twice the price?"

Anyone with a similarly negative opinion of mobile applications needs to sit back and think about what they’re really saying. Apps are neatly packaged software titles and no one in their right mind should be betting against software as a long-term investment. Consumers want the instant gratification of downloading a product direct to their device and syncing content across smartphone, tablet, desktop and TV.

If we take a sensible approach to the way we develop and the digital strategies we adopt, apps will continue to provide ‘a’ solution, not ‘the’ solution. Designers and developers must also be consultants, demonstrate a willingness to reject a bad idea and steer clients to the most appropriate digital platform – which may not always be an app.

​UPDATE: When is an app not an app? When it's an iBook of course.

To illustrate the above example, Brandwidth recently launched 'Led Zeppelin: Sound and Fury' with Rhino and Neal Preston.​

When we were tasked with finding the ‘best platform’ for ‘the best photographs’ of ‘the best rock band in the world’ we turned to iBooks Author for ‘the best coffee table book’.

We began working with Warner Music Group eighteen months prior to launch and ahead of the introduction of iBooks Author production software. We soon saw the shortcomings of our initial app build and the benefits of an iBook and swapped platform at a critical time.

Neal Preston’s stunning photography was ideally suited to full screen pinch-zoomed enlargements and galleries within the iBook and we brought the Led Zeppelin portfolio to life with bespoke audio commentary and additional video interviews by Neal and key industry figures.

With over 250 photos, 80 contact sheets, 25 audio commentaries, 11 video interviews, 24 Led Zeppelin set lists and many samples of ephemera and memorabilia our greatest challenge was one of logistics and effective curation.

We created a unique character for the entire project and wrapped the engaging contents in a recognisable brand that would sit comfortably with the army of existing Led Zeppelin fans and those newly introduced via Apple’s iBookstore and iPad range.

This title also introduces in-book music preview and purchase for the first time within an iBook project – just one of many boundaries pushed.

So when is an app still an app? When it's a Door!

Well, 'The Doors' to be exact. An app offered the only framework flexible enough to accommodate the high technological standards of our client – Jac Holzman, one of the world's greatest living innovators and someone we've lived and breathed this project with for over a year.

Jac founded Elektra Records and signed The Doors to the label in 1966 (amongst other highly-respected recording artists) and this app tells the story of the band through an unrivalled collection of ephemera, music and stories with over 45,000 words of text, a graphic novel depicting Jim's arrest in Miami, FBI files, an interactive timeline and map, hundreds of images and, of course... music.

​It's a major step on the road to the evolution of the music box set, but don't take my word for it... here's a superb article by Stuart Dredge for The Guardian and a few words from Jac in the video below.