They Tell Stories
Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Six To Start, the creative/interactive agency founded by Dan and Adrian have just released their first game-slash-thing: We Tell Stories, for Penguin Books.



Let us follow along and see what unfolds! Oh, you can win 1300 books too, which is pretty cool. I have to say, I do like the stuff that Penguin get involved with. I'm sure it'll horrify some ROI-focused beancounter somewhere, but there's a relaxed spirit of experimentation at play, in contrast with other brands that create the impression they're desperately chasing the next big thing. Without disparaging Jeremy's strategic brilliance, it's much more like "Get people to write a novel in wiki format? Yeah, why not eh? Whack something into Second Life? It'd be a shame not to!" And actually this goes beyond digital (and even their great blog) into loads of their stuff (I know it's technically marketing, but it feels more like stuff) , like the "design a cover" thing and their pretty embossed Great Ideas and the re-emergence of their classic livery or what have you. It's all done in quite a light, gleeful way. Well done Penguins.

PS: This is long to compensate for the fact that in an ideal world I'd have blogged about all these things individually.

Labels: arg, penguin, six to start, this is good

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Good post bad post
Friday, July 20, 2007

Good post on Culture Making about the shift in corporate discourse from the stuffy and jargon-filled to the happy, smiley Innocent (tm) tone of voice. Namely: it's starting to get a bit annoying. My take is that Innocent is a bit like one of those genuinely great people you meet and want to be a bit more like. But they aren't cool because of what they do or what they wear or the jokes they crack* - they're cool because they're sincerely themselves. The real lesson is that if you're a good company doing good work, relax, and speak from the heart. If you've got something to hide, feel free to try and hide behind meaningless biz-speak, or as seems to be more and more the case, a lovely but equally meaningless cute sweet pile of sugar and daisies and flowers and stuff.

Bad post on the usually great Penguin Blog in reaction to the guy who sent out thinly-disguised versions of Jane Austen's work to publishers, most of whom (including Penguin) just sent him form rejection letters. (Article.) Massive sense of humour failure in this point-by-point dissection - the response Colin was looking for was "Haha, blimey, sort of embarassing from one angle, but on the other hand, it's pretty much the industry standard to send out form letters to any and all rejected manuscripts, so I wouldn't read too much into it if I were you." Instead it comes off as a bit of a curmudgeonly response to a kooky And Finally... news item. Hilarious response in the comments, though:

Jokes. Does Lassman really think publishing companies can take a joke at their own expense? Well, maybe he does. But he's wrong. We can't.
WE CAN'T!

Labels: branding, culture making, innocent, penguin, publishing

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