LCCMAd Creative Laboratory

A New Media Approach to Making Ads

This unit asks: in light of new media developments and digital culture, what does the form and content of advertising look like in the future?

We are seeing an emergence of new types of advertising knowledge through new creative practices that exploit the combinatorial and remix affordances of computational and networked technologies. Ad products and services like 'creative data' and new jobs named 'creative technologist' - what do they mean? How has creative direction evolved in this new media environment? And the proliferation of source material everywhere (data) means that everyone have the means to explore and play with the answers. How can studying new media help us to re-think and re-fresh advertising practice? How do advanced networked and mobile communication systems enhance (or constrain) advertising practice? These are the questions that underpin Creative Laboratory: a space in which you are to experiment, make content and engage in practice-research in an area that you find exciting or interesting. And to help your creative juices flow, we will draw from an interdisciplinary range of sources such as new media studies, internet theory, visual culture, aesthetics and their underpinning philosophies.

Welcome to Creative Lab.

Dr Cui Su, Course Leader
LCCMAd: MA Advertising 15/16
London College of Communication

Spring Schedule Timetable

Creative Lab Scheme of Work

Wk 13 Advertising as New Cultural Objects

Tuesday 19.1.16 T901

0930-1030 T901 Lecture - Creative Data as New Cultural Objects

Readings:
Lev Manovich, 2001 "What is New Media?" In Language of New Media, MIT Press, Chapter 1. [see Moodle].
Florian Cramer, 2015. "What is post-digital?" In Computational Aesthetics, Palgrave Macmillan [See Moodle].

Further reading:
A History of the Web's First Banner Ads"
Lev Manovich New Media from Borges to HTML
Jorge Luis Borges's "The Garden of Forking Paths"
Janet Murray's "Inventing the Medium"
Podcast History of "The Web's First Banner Ad"

Additional Online Sources:
Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity's "Creative Data"
Antony Antonellis Impulse 101

1030-1130 T901 Workflow Training Session with John Jackson

What is Workflow? Workflow is a portfolio system which allows you to create custom web pages, and gives you complete control over page sharing. You will use Workflow for documenting your projects this term, collaborating, or sharing work in progress privately with friends or a tutor. You will also be submitting your final work for assessment via Workflow.

To do before attending this session: click on the workflow link above and sign up for an account.

1200-1330 T901 Seminar

Housekeeping: assessment briefs and submissions.
Getting into small groups and setting up your workflow spaces

Discuss the following:
1. Identify recent advertising outputs or artifacts that reflect the new media or post-digital characteristics outlined by Manovich and Cramer? After reading Manovich and Cramer, where would you put the advertising category of creative data on the spectrum between new media and post-digital?

Wednesday 20.1.16

1300-1700 Tech Workshop T901: Introduction to Practice Research

See also Study Trip below.

Readings:Patricia Clough "The Philosophical Carpentry of the App: Criticism and Practice"
Ian Bogost's Alien PhenomenologyIntroduction Chapter

Thursday 21.1.16

Study trip to Big Bang Data exhibition

Homework: A creative data approach to the question 'what is creative data?' A print handout will be provided on the day. Be ready to take notes and take photos

Exhibition venue:

Friday 22.1.16

1000-1300 Agency Management Workshop 1 T303

This would be an initial lecture / interactive session and would cover:
- How agencies work
- Key success factors
-Personnel issues
- The importance of finance
Structure; 45 minute lecture, Quiz, workshop session (team work) on key points, seminar session to discuss these and setting of ‘ homework’ task to prepare for 2nd session

Wk 14 Advertising as Remix

Tuesday 26.1.16

930-1030 Lecture T901 Remixing Advertising Data

Readings:
Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss, 2010. "Mashups, Remix Practices, and the Recombination of Existing Digital Content" [See Moodle]
Monica Tavares. 2015. "Digital Poetics and Remix Culture" [See Moodle]
Lev Manovich's Software Takes Command, Chapter 1 and 2:

Further reading:
Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg's "Personal Dynamic Media"
Lev Manovich, "What comes after remix?"

New York Times article, "Google Remixes Four Classic Campaigns"
Film of Google's Project Rebrief
Google's Art Copy & Code.

1200-1330 T901 Seminar

Wednesday 27.1.16

1300-1700 Tech workshop T901: PC App Practice Research 1

2016 may be the year of VR or wearables or… but that just goes to show how much "apps are the new normal". A few years ago every new year pundit and academic was proclaiming the move to small packages/objects of code, locked into walled gardens was the future, now perhaps the app economy is so entwined with the digital economy, such distinctions/hype are irrelevant. If so, all the more reason that we as advertising professionals should understand the affordances of apps, how they work and what the implications are. We should be able to map the app across techno-capitalism and remix/improv culture and the glance economy so we can advise our clients and develop communications solutions for them. This workshop explores some of those issues by building an app. Through a step-by-step process we will build a "web app" and along the way trace issues of globalisations, data, technology, objects and power. Bring your laptop and an HTML editor (http://brackets.io/)… and your critical eye.

Readings:
Caplan, P., 2015, The app-object economy: We're all remix artists now, First Monday, 20(5).
Patricia Clough, "The Philosophical Carpentry of the App: Criticism and Practice"

Further reading
Programmable Web, "What are APIs and how do they work?"
Caplan, P., 2013, Software Tunnels Through the Rags 'n Refuse: Object Oriented Software Studies and Platform Politics, Culture Machine, 14, pp. 1-22.
Ian Bogost's Alien PhenomenologyIntroduction Chapter

Wk 15 Advertising as Transmedia

Tuesday 2.2.16

0930-1030 Lecture T901 - Transmedia and The Next Wave of Digital Storytelling

Readings:
Paul Grainge and Catherine Johnson. 2015. "Television: Transmedia Promotion and Second Screens" In Promotional Screen Industries. London: Routledge, pp.119-147.[see Moodle]
Bryan Alexander, New Digital Storytelling. Chapter 2 and Chapter 9.[see Moodle]
Ian Bogost and Nick Monfort's "Platform Studies: Frequently Questioned Answers"

Further reading:
Medium Specificity
BBC CoP podcast: Transmedia Storytelling
Evans L. 2015. "Transmedia: Engagement across platforms" Available online
Wired UK, "Transmedia: Entertainment Reimagined"

1200-1330 T901 Seminar

Wednesday 3.2.16

1430-1700 Tech workshop T901: PC App Practice Research 2

At the end of Session 1, you'll be set a Brief… This session will be a crit. Remember this is practice hyphen research, it doesn’t matter if what you have built is ugly, doesn't work or is just plain rubbish! What matters is what you learned by delving into code, APIs, the materiality of the Internet and… well everything else. So bring you app but also bring your notebook.

Friday 5.2.16

1000-1300 Agency Management Workshop 2 T303

This would be an interactive session where teams are given a number of tasks to complete in order to establish a new agency. This session will build on the information and discussions in session one and on the research that students have had to complete. At the end of this session they will have looked at some of the fundamental factors needed before setting on an agency.

Wk 16 Advertising as Locative

Tuesday 9.2.16

930-1130 Lecture - Location and Interactivity

Readings:
Ritchie, J. 2014. "The Affordances and Constraints of Mobile Locative Narratives". In Farman, J. The Mobile Story: Narrative Practices with Locative Technologies New York: Routledge, Part II, Chapter 4. [available as ebook in LCC library]
Sherry Turkle's Alone Together, Chapters 8 & 10.[Available as e-book in LCC library]

Further reading:
Gordon, E. 2008. "Towards a Theory of Network Locality". In First Monday, 13(10).
IAB's white paper,"Location Based Advertising on Mobile"
Nathan Jurgenson's The Disconnectionists"
Middleton, C. 2007. "Illusions of Balance and Control in an Always-On Environment: A Case Study of Blackberry Users" In Ted Rogers School of Information Technology Management Publications and Research, Paper 4. Available here

1200-1330 T901 Seminar

Wednesday 10.2.16

1300-1700 Tech Workshop - Branded Stories by Anthony Tasgal

Brand Storytelling Trailer: Coming Soon ……Much of what brands communicate goes into mental “attention spam”: filtered out before it gets a chance to reach consciousness and consideration.Tas will be running a session on Wednesday February 10th at 1pm. He will talk about why in a world that is DRIP [Data Rich, Insight Poor] brands and agencies need to move from Messaging to Massaging and understand the rules of storytelling. He will be showing some examples of how to do it and then encourage you to apply it to your current project.
Tas worked for over 15 years as an Account Planner in ad agencies such as BBDO, DMBB and Euro RSCG and on international blue-chips from Amex to KFC, Peugeot to Ford, Glenfiddich to Unilever on big strategic and comms issues.

Wk 17 Advertising as Small Screen Aesthetic

Tuesday 16.2.16

930-1130 Lecture - Media Snacking and Small Screen Aesthetics

Readings:
Hudson Moura's "Sharing Bites on Global Screens: The Emergence of Snack Culture"
Creeber, G. 2013. "Web TV: The New Small Screen" In Small Screen Aesthetics BFI: Palgrave Macmillan,pp.116-136 [See Moodle]

Wednesday 17.2.16

1400-1800 Tech Workshop with Lab Mo Ky T901: Making Branded Short Film I

Introduction to course brief and Branded Content
Watch references
Refresher on filmmaking
Develop script ideas for film

Online resources and references:
Short of the Week's Branded Content
Jude Law for Southern Comfort
Sapeurs by Guinness.
Brand Perfect's 13 Films from Brands

Friday 19.2.16

1000-1300 Agency Management Workshop 3 T1104

In the third session (another workshop session, with presentations and group work) the idea is to take the ‘business’ teams have created in part 2 and start to market their agency. This will require them to get creative and ‘brand’ their agency, to work out its positioning and then to build a credentials presentation during the session (in PowerPoint, Prezi or similar) and make a presentation to a prospective client to conclude the session.

Wk 18 Advertising as the Mobilisation of Emotions

Tuesday 23.2.16

930-1130 Lecture - Post-digital Emotions: From Lovemarks to FOMO

Readings:
Joseph Reagle, 2015. "Following the Joneses: FOMO and conspicuous sociality". In First Monday
The New Inquiry, "Tinderization of Feeling"

Further reading:
Guy Debord's Society of the Spectable

Wednesday 24.2.16

1400-1800 Tech Workshop with Lab Mo Ky T901: Making Branded Short Film II

Preproduction including: scheduling, hunting for location, production design
Finalize scripts and shoot as homework

Wk 19 Advertising as Performance

Tuesday 1.3.16

930-1130 Lecture - Images and Play: from Selfies to Trolls

Readings:
Chapter 14, in book Mobile Media Making in the Age of Smartphones available as e-book in LCC library -> click here
Mischief and Mayhem in Social Computing
Selfies as Charitable Meme

Wednesday 2.3.16

1300-1800 Tech Workshop with Lab Mo Ky W212: Making Branded Short Film III

Edit Footage

Wk 20 Advertising as Gaming

Tuesday 8.3.16

930-1130 Lecture T901 - Guest speaker Dr Mark Passera: Advertising as Gaming

Readings:
Kampmann, Bo. 2003. "Playing and Gaming: Reflections and Classifications" In Game Studies
Ian Bogost, 2010. "Advertising" In Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames, Chapters 5-7, MIT Press. [See Moodle]
Juho Hamari, Kai Huotari & Juha Tolvanen. 2014. "Gamification and Economics" In The Gameful World: Approaches, Issues, Applications, MIT Press.[See Moodle]
Ian Bogost How to do things with videogames?Chapter 7.

Further reading:
Mcgonigal J. 2011. "What exactly is a game?" In, Reality is Broken: Why Games Makes Us Better and How They Can Change the World. Penguin Press, Chapter One.[see Moodle]

1200-1330 Seminar

Wednesday 9.3.16

1300-1700 Tech Workshop T901: Independent studio time. No taught tech workshop this week.

Wk 22 No Lectures this week - Essay Tutorials

Tuesday 19.4.16

Book your tutorial slot via the doodle links provided below

http://doodle.com/poll/8zbhwqgeeft9mi42

Assessment

1. A New Media Approach to Making Ads (50% of your final grade)

Working collaboratively in small groups, create a branded multi-media story or campaign that would include the use of a mobile application. The creative and media strategy for this story or campaign should be created as a multimedia 'specification document' that includes no less than 3000 words, aimed for use by creative technologists and / or techie creatives.

Some questions to think about for the 3000 words:

what opportunity or problem are you responding to?
what new media objects (elaborate on both form and content) you are proposing?
what is your strategy?
drawing from your lectures, which new media techniques or approaches does your story or campaign demonstrate?
what are the cultural and technical 'layers' and how they work with each other
who is your target audience?
what kind of user/audience interactions and behaviours are you anticipating

2. 3500 word Critical Essay (50% of your final grade)

Choose ONE from the following essay questions:

1. What is creative data? Discuss the potentials and dangers of creative data on advertising creativity.

2. Critically evaluate the notion of interactivity in relation to advertising campaigns. Elaborate on this using clear examples.

3. Give a critical discussion of branded content and its cultural significance. Support using clear examples.

4. What is the difference between play and gamification? Discuss this in relation to their applications in advertising.

5. Critically discuss the technological and cultural affordances of locative media and what they mean for advertising creative development.

Remember: treat this as an academic essay assignment and you are writing as an objective practice-researcher. Your essay should demonstrate a clear argument, critical thinking, reference both academic literature and industry sources and your ideas should be organised clearly and coherently.

Mail: Cui Su

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