Coley Porter Bell has a nice wrap on last week's Ogilvy Labs Music Day — specifically highlighting the power of sound in all brand communications. Good to see that Julian Treasure and Ruth Simmons continue to bang the drum for sonic branding. Worth a peek.

There it is: yet another attempt to crack the magical code that will encourage you to buy more of that when you hear more of this.

It's intriguing that we're living in a time when we can measure the neurological impact of pretty much anything, especially what I want to buy. (Hey, even Pandora's mapped the music genome so I can have my next musical discoveries fully planned for me. No need to use my brain anymore.) And I'm fascinated with the opportunity of cracking these codes...

But there's a problem with this, one that some marketers have a hard time getting their heads around because it runs counter to spreadsheet living.

That problem is that we're unpredictable creatures. It's a fundamental part of our nature to be just that: unpredicatable. We're wired that way.

Sometimes we make decisions based on mood. Sometimes it's the personal influence of others, sometimes it's as simple as the weather. Even many of our most banal decisions (left or right? what's for dinner?) are emotional, rather than rational ones. And those emotional decisions don't usually have a scripted outcome.

And although predictablity keeps us by and large a safe and civil world in which we work and live and play, it's unpredictablity that affords us new ideas and adventures: a divergent turn brings us a new restaurant, an unexpected encounter, a new problem in need of a new solution.

We appreciate those happy accidents. Humanity needs it to evolve.

I'm all for exploring the hows and whys behind our individual and cultural behaviors. But the nicely packaged, problem-solved! feeling I get from some neuromarketers—and the tone in which they're revered in some branding books and business press—makes me wonder if we're asking the right questions.

Are we creating more predictable consumers? Or should we be focused simply on making life better for people? 

I'd like to think the latter drives profits — just as the former would want. Perhaps the equation needs to be flipped.

I grew up loving the Montreal Expos. So right off the bat, you know where this is going. Humor me. 

First, because I was a kid, I loved their colors. Then I realized they were a great team. And finally one summer, when I was 18, my brother and I drove the six hours it took to get from Rochester to Montreal and we caught a game 5 rows behind home plate for $20. Drove back home the same night. 

It seemed that nobody of any importance loved this awesome team and the fact that we could score such great seats 10 minutes before the game made it feel like an insider's game, a secret, watching this team. Following them on my boombox. Writing to Gary Carter and Andre Dawson. 

Someday they'll win it all, I assumed, and they'll confirm my superior intelligence, all those years investing time in an underdog when all my friends were arrogant, bandwagony Mets and Yankees fans who could order up a winning season like a burger at a drive-thru fast-food joint. 

I would earn my bragging rights, someday. Or so I thought until 1995. The strike came and I sensed a curse. 

I was right. After my 'Spos led the league in W-L, then got cut off due to the strike, there were times when I wondered if baseball simply hated the Expos. A bit melodramatic, yes. Then, after a change in ownership, it became clear that baseball in all honesty actually did want to dispose of my team. 

Good riddance, I figured. Have your strike and your careless owners. I'm done with baseball, or so I assumed. A few years before I had moved on to New Orleans, where detachment from baseball was easy — they didn't even have AAA ball there at the time. 

Fast forward to 95, when, despite the strike, I was living four blocks from Wrigley Field. A bad time to ignore baseball, strike or not. So despite my disappointment with the Expos and MLB, I hit up a few Cubs games with friends. but with no emotional attachment.

The Cubs were fun, but they weren't my team. I had no team. And that was fine. Baseball was merely a business, teams merely corporations. Name any other brand (other than Apple) with such ridiculous, money-forking devotion. Fanhood was for suckers. 

In the late 90s I moved to San Francisco. Giants were about as exciting as a cow pissing on a flat rock. But one day my wife and I dropped in on the A's and I noticed something: these guys had a plan. It didn't seem like anyone had caught on yet, but they had a plan. 

And they did. They were winning more games each year, then came the playoffs. And Moneyball. Holy geez, I thought, this is an underdog-lover's fantasy — they're the ugly stepchild of the Bay Area and (don't tell anyone) they're buiding a freaking legacy, I thought. 

On top of that, I was scoring last-minute tickets right behind home plate for $20. Sound familiar? 

Heck in 2002 I even bought half a season ticket plan despite what my bank account allowed. That's beautifully irrational—that's fanhood. And I loved it. 

This was wonderful until Schott and Fisher came along and made Beane a partner. 

Not sure why, but everything went downhill after that. Beane seemed (and seems today) much more interested in rolling the dice for the adrenaline rush rather than making a calculated move. 

Wolff clearly hates Oakland — and his ballclub's fans. A tarp on the upper deck? That's just a huge middle finger to anyone who has expectations for this team. Talk about lowering the bar. 

And here we are in another roll-the-dice year that, despite what happens in the movie theaters this fall, will define Billy Beane's legacy more than Brad Pitt ever could. Everyone who watches Moneyball the Movie will scratch their heads wondering what went wrong with this guy. And nobody will be able to say with any authority the usual line of "it's our ballpark. It's old." 

So here I am in Colorado now. Still loving the A's, but I'm feeling like I have much better things to do with my time. None of the upper brass in Oakland seems to care—and that's when I'm reminded of why: baseball is merely a business, teams merely corporations. I can't think of one thing they've done to earn my loyalty, and could probably name at least 5 things they've done to lose it. 

So I'm ready to formally acknowledge this business-customer relationship is over. 

Oakland, you even had me for eight years after I left the Bay Area, which is quite a stretch for any long-distance relationship. Pretty impressive. I have to ask not what you've done for me lately, but for any of your existing fans back in Oakland or the Bay Area? What are you doing for the future customer base? 

MC Hammer bobbleheads is nice. But not exactly the cornerstone of an improved customer experience. 

(Check out the Buffalo Sabres of 2011 for an example there: they bought out their AAA affiliate, 60 miles away, so they could grow an organic fan base and do a better job grooming talent. They signed accomplished players in an effort to bolster their team. The owner and his wife travel together when attempting to lure free agents—she connects with players' wives to sell them on the city. Not in my wildest dreams could I imagine Lew Wolff even pretending to be this authentic. Regardless of the team's on-ice success, over the course of a few months Terry Pegula has built not just a product, but a relationship. And the latter will earn him more money than the former.) 

Treating your team like a AAA ballclub—with the two consistents being an absolute lack of pop (yet again) and shuffling through a series of minor-leaguers in tryout mode—won't sell tickets. It won't sell shirts. It won't build a base. With Beane's runaway ego and Wolff's hatred for all things Oakland, I see nothing charming or interesting left with this team. 

if you ever do recover, you're hoping it will be in San Jose with a shiny new stadium. And that will be with a soulless ballpark in a nowhere town with a gaggle of fans whose interest survives only when you're winning, regardless of how hard you try. 

But right now you're not trying. You haven't for years. And this relationship is over. 

The Montrealization of Oakland is well underway. I can't have this happen to me again, Lew and friends, so I'm cutting you off now, before you follow the script you've been writing since the day you signed on as an owner. 

I went to my second MLS soccer game last night here in Denver. Got a great seat at the last minute, right behind the Rapids bench...

I first went to Greg Beck's Experience Achitecture forum at Harvard in 2005. It was a three-day, intimate gathering of forward thinking architects and designers focused on crafting experiential narratives and interactive spaces. (Here's my recap.)

Had a chance to make it back in 2007, and presented with my friend Martyn Ware on the role of sound as a tool for facilitating engagement in physical environments. Loads of fun.

Now I may be headed back again this year. Here's why: rarely do creative professionals get a chance to unplug, get inspired and soak in a swarm of new perspectives. Most conferences promise that, and most blow it with a dazzling lineup of the usual stuff, often at a hectic pace, and there's no slowing down. However the EA forum — retitled this year as "Mediarchitecture" — excels in the quality of the conversations: there's plenty of time to sit and think out loud with people who are advancing their craft.

Attendees number between 20 and 50; it's a casual setting in Harvard's design school; the presentation pace is conversational, not hyped, and nor is it the presentation of a series of papers (yawn); the speakers themselves are world-renowned architects, innovators and storytellers, and hey, it's Boston in the summertime.

Greg still generally draws folks with architecture backgrounds to his forum. But I've always thought it's the perfect opportunity for experience designers, interaction designers, creative technologists and brand strategists to sneak outside their own professional echo chambers and learn what's next.

What more could a curious mind want.

MEDIARCHITECTURE is August 3-5, 2011 in Cambridge, as part of the Harvard Graduate School of Design's Professional Development Program.

Contact Greg at gregorybeck@mac.com for more details. Full program PDF is attached.

-- Noel Franus

Click here to download:

Media_Architecture_2011.pdf (299 KB)

(download)

Click here to download:

Media_Architecture_2011.pdf (299 KB)

The internets are abuzz today re: Peterme’s post on ad agencies not understanding or knowing how to make the most of the user-experience practice.

Yep. All of ‘em. I initially suggested in the comments area that he’s mostly wrong. But that’s an oversimplification; there is, in fact, a ring of truth to some of it—some agencies, of course, don’t get UX at all.

But ad agencies as a whole? That’s a lazy gripe. Bad (or no) design happens everywhere.

Stop and think about the things, services and spaces in which you live today. There are loads of product design firms that fail miserably at creating sensible products; plenty of architecture firms that completely ignore the concept of flow or experiential narrative; and there are even a hefty number of ‘user experience’ firms that focus solely on one element—usability for usability’s sake—and miss the big picture that is the larger goal of making meaning. And what it takes to do that across the myriad touchpoints in which brands and people intersect.

My nearly 15-year UX journey brought me to CP+B because we have our clients’ faith and budgets to do just that: make meaning, change culture, no bullshit. Our palette spans, among other things, online, mobile, retail spaces, public places, new products, and, of course, that medium everybody loves to hate, but still can’t live without: television.

Proof: check our Bcycle bike-sharing program. Best Buy’s Movie Mode app. Our spankin’ new Tron mobile AR game. Carrots vending machines in public schools. Nearly all things digital for Amex's OPEN Forum. Or our work that helped an angel give birth inside Stephen Colbert’s mouth.

Useful. Fun. Effective. Yeah, sometimes silly. And that’s why I’m here — great ideas know no boundaries. And the art and craft of weaving them across those touchpoints, spanning the larger continuum of experience, takes a lot of work. That’s the role of UX here at Crispin.

Personally I'm more interested in changing the future than I am in ranting about business models I disagree with. Maybe that’s my problem—my glass is eternally half full.

Professionally, if you're a like-minded UX practicioner, then I'm not shy, I want you to join me here at CP+B.

Because it’s easy to gripe. Harder to change. I’m down with the latter.

Three weeks back I asked the internets a simple question. "What's your favorite sound?"

It's the kind of question you either have have a stock answer for (guilty), or you've gotta think for a few seconds, scratching head, maybe even stopping and listening more often than usual, focusing on the acoustic ecology in your life.

Acoustic ecology? It's a ten-cent term for the study of sound in our immersive world...which, hey, you do know something about. Most of us have ears. And most of us use them regularly.

So what happens when we peek behind the sonic curtain and poke around? That's what you did, to entertaining effect.

Let's go straight to the data. I've taken some sloppy liberties with categories. Please excuse.

And if you have more music, sound, voice or silence to add, by all means, let it rip. Or roar.

AMBIENT NOISE

• @laurielamar: one of my favorite sounds is after a band goes onstage but before the band plays its first song. Highly contextual.
• D. Kirby: trains on train track is pretty cool. Announcements on pa system - uncool.
• J. Van Fleteren: Frogs
• J Gorman: Dogs snoring
• J. Franus: Song birds in the morning.
• T. Geoghegan: Yo you can't forget crickets yo. They're the crick-schizzle.
• A. Mayher: The waves of the ocean
• E. Reed: My toddler humming while he eats
• E. Reed: Cat purring
• E. Reed: The bird outside our window in Sydney that sang at night
• E. Reed: My Dad whistling in his shop
• E. Reed: The windchimes on my Grandma's porch

FOREGROUND SOUND

• J. Franus: The sound of our kids genuine laughter
• L. McPherson: My kids laughing
• D. O'Leary: Gavin (son) saying new phrases.
• C. Gibbon: My dog sighing.
• E. Reed: Really good tap dancers

SONIC INTERACTION

• @laurielamar: Another favorite sound is at 9000 feet, the wind sieving through sibilant pine trees, my skis hissing along snowy nordic tracks.
• D. Kirby: Stylus hitting the groove
• D. Kirby: Leather on willow (from the Brit posse)
• J. Gorman: The sound of a breaking york peppermint patty
• S. DiMattia: Breaking water with my paddle blade
• G. Fogarty: The sweet beep of our coffee maker letting me know it's ready!
• D. O'Leary: The pouring of beer from a bottle into a glass
• T. McBrien: A steamy hiss coming out of the magic soy latte machine in the kitchen.
• E. Reed: The bleep of a new message on my phone
• E. Reed: Pitch on a fire
• E. Reed: Popcorn (popping)
• E. Reed: Plastic packaging bubbles
• E. Reed: Wine cork popping

MUSIC

• J. Forte: Guitar
• H. Waud: The sound of the kids sleeping. And Duran Duran! (NF: all at once? Love it.)

That's it. Insights to come later. This is side-prep for a session I'm devising for SATE 2010 / Storytelling, Architecture, Technology, Experience this fall.

And special thanks to Emily and Dan for being so prolific—and entertaining,

-- Noel Franus

Good conversation picking up at the LinkedIn group for sonic branding and identity: how do we solve the problem of silent hybrids and electric vehicles?

You'd think this is an issue that one or two distant labs would be slowly addressing, but you'd be wrong. Turns out there's more than a handful of us focusing on this very thing. Here's more.

WFMU's Beware of the Blog posted a great story on tracking down the source of a dance and melody. Who needs social media when both the medium and the contents have 'sociality' inherently built in?

Go: Around the World: Waka Waka Hey!