HP PONG: Advertising's Atom Smasher

Sorry this used to be animated and fully interactive. Thank you, Digital Dark Ages!

HP PONG: Advertising's Atom Smasher

In 1996, at Red Sky Interactive, in partnership with a rebellious band of talented individuals, I developed the HP PONG Banner Ad: the first interactive banner ad on the net, and the web's first example of "rich media".  But behind the scenes, that banner was an atom-smasher, revealing the very principles of interactive advertising- and sweeping industry changes yet to come.    

The HP Pong Banner was created in service to Hewlett-Packard's campaign at the time: “Built by Engineers, used by Normal People” (by Goodby, Silverstien & Partners). As you can hopefully see, it was a full-working version of the classic video game Pong, coded into a banner. GS&P's campaign was smart and put the focus on the brilliant, if often eccentric, HP engineers, and as represented, the Pong banner was created by an Engineer named "Jerry", after drinking quite a lot of coffee.

But GS&P had only hired Red Sky to do what everyone else was doing at the time - create static and, if we could manage within the budget, animated banners (GIF 89 files).

In those days Red Sky Interactive was a little like Fantasy Island, you know, you came in thinking you wanted "X", and Mr. Roarke sent you off with what you needed - usually not "X".  That was Red Sky's DNA. And the HP PONG Banner was one of those instances. Actually, it wasn't an easy sell. No one had done anything like it before, and if you are in anyway involved with deploying ads online today, then you know how restrictive the media owners can be with regard to formats and "unusual" technology.  None of which helped us in making the case to Goodby and HP.

Ultimately, Goodby and HP bought the idea - and together we all fought the fight to strike agreements with the media owners to get it posted.

By video game standards, the banner was mildly entertaining, it was only Pong after all. But after it’s release MSNBC and CNET both reported that it had the highest click-through of any other banner on the Internet for it's three month deployment (Yeah I know - that's back when we measured click-through, sue me). It’s admittedly possible that a good percentage of those click-throughs were merely users confronting banner interactivity for the first time, but it was nevertheless considered a success for those involved.

I don't think this banner does much eyebrow raising today, but at the time, it seemed as though few had considered degrees of interactivity within a banner. My argument in defense of the model back then had been that a longer, narrower stage didn’t mean a user couldn’t have a deeper experience that lasted as long as the user wanted. I am surprised that the creators of banner ads today still have yet to take this basic conceit to it’s most valuable extreme.

After the Pong Banner’s initial attention, we assumed that was about as much as we would see from that.But what happened next was a turning point for those of us at Red Sky.

We began to see the Pong banner stolen. No kidding, users were digging through thier cache folders, copying the .dcr file (Shockwave) and posting it to sites outside the media buy. And maybe more profoundly, they were attaching it to e-mails and sending it to their friends. Keep in mind - this behavior wasn't easily done - it took some effort and technical know-how. There was no such thing as "viral marketing" in 1996 (actually, there still isn't - that's another posting). Nor was there such thing as "Word of Mouth" as in today's popular online nomenclature. No one put buttons on web sites that said "Send to a friend". No one was making games-as-advertisements; this was before all that. Or rather, this revealed all that.

Not entirely unlike it’s contemporaries of the time (and boy am I dating myself), the “Dancing Baby”, or the “Nieman Marcus Cookie Recipe” (told you) the Pong Banner spread. Not because it had a funny tag-line, or the HP logo, but because it provided value to an online audience. Was it a novelty? Absolutely. But it was novel enough to want to share.

It's important now to stop and talk about value.  I'm not talking about the kind of value you get from finding a good sale price, I'm talking about something that's either: entertainment, information, or a service.

Let me further qualify those words with the following semantics: a feature film is "entertainment", a dictionary is "information", a cell phone is "a service".  Where does traditional advertising sit on that spectrum?  Well, it sort of doesn't.  And that's the point.

In answer to this question, more often than not, advertisers will tell you that advertising is entertaining.  Hard-core advertisers will tell you it's a mixture of all three.  And while the case can be intelligently argued, that ads are entertaining, and /or that they provide information and that in doing so provide a service, let's draw a relevant (if my own bias) distinction:

Ads may be "entertaining", but they are not "entertainment".

Before you go there, I've probably heard it. That "lots of people read the fashion magazines for the ads", that "so many people watch the SuperBowl for the spots", and that "people in Europe go to the movies early for the commercials". These are memes that have circulated the ad industry since before the dawn of the commercial Internet.  Old industry lore, a small collection of unscalable, partially true, case-studies that serve to keep a lot of industry executives and creatives engaged everyday while they generate a bell curve that rather doesn't reflect these stories.

For better or worse, interactive media and the audiences that wield it, don't hold any respect for our sense of self-worth and the selectively adjusted context that we, as an industry, have constructed to nobelize our efforts. In fact, for the most part, we are in interactive audiences' way.

Those of us in advertising today, now more than ever before in our industry's history, have the sober responsibility to shake off any ancient, self aggrandizing dust, stare coldly at our body of work, and remind ourselves of this basic conceit:  That advertising, for all it's creativity and arguable value, serves a master other than our audience, other than the creative muse, other than  our King, and is therefore starting from a deeply compromised position, where we must wield our very best creative powers just to make up the deficit.

Nowhere is this more urgently drawn than online, where the User is King. Where an interruption of any kind in our King's desired path, be it a timed delay, or an occupation of screen real estate that might have otherwise been filled with His chosen content, is utterly, patently inauthentic. This is, in part, why we must compensate the King with such excessive value.

And here's the main argument of this section: set against a traditional media landscape of pre-aggregated audiences and interruptive tactics where we'd become an industry of messagers- of communicators of value, that now, with the advent of interactive media, with the ubiquitous penetration of audiences in control, have no choice but to become an industry of value creators.  To cease merely communicating value, and to actually, honest-to-goodness provide it.  To start creating the kind of value that audiences will seek out. More than that, to start creating value that audiences will pay for, short of it being funded by an advertiser.

More specifically, and with respect to my semantic comments earlier, this means that successful interactive "advertisements" must take the form of content, products and services.

In contrast, over the years since Pong, our response to the amazing potential of interactive media has been incremental. Our ways are well traveled, and as an industry, due to size, maturity, experience, training, and so many other factors, we are loathe to rethink such sweeping, integral components, though everyone I know says they are.

Traditionally, advertising's creative bar has been set at a level that requires creative teams to produce work that, at its base, will keep audiences from looking away. Our audience has always been collected for us. You might say we've been spoiled by that. The very existence of "art director & copywriter" teams, by definition, are in place to produce messages that meet this bar, not reach the greater value we're contemplating here. Soon, this team structure will change. And so will many other elements, including our relationships with media owners, clients, our compensation models, our planning methods, deliverables, our training and staffing. And this must seem daunting. But the other side of the coin is exciting.

If you do this right,  you will find that you are no longer in the business of highly-creative communication, if you do this right you are in the business of entrepreneurialism. You will develop valuable offerings that squarely compete in an entrepreneurial landscape.  You will be creating products that compete, side-by-side, against the product companies.  You will be creating service-oriented businesses that effectively compete in the service industry.  And yes, you will also create content that competes with for-pay television, movies, books, etc.

And this (not messaging) is the future of advertising.

This doesn't mean we cease to employ any of our existing skills, really, it's a different type of communication.  Remember the old writers' adage, "Show, don't tell?"  This new era in advertising will be "Be, don't show."

The art of advertising at that point will be in conceiving business propositions that, through their very existence, stemming from the very process and product of this parallel business, will embody the client's brand values while measurably expanding it's business, and even forming new profit centers. Profit centers that the agency would most certainly be justified in participating in.

I call this type of value-based ad a "symbiotic business unit" (SBU).  A fully functioning business proposition that integrates at some level with the client's core business. Funded by ad dollars, these executions will be particularly well adept at attracting the target audience digitally, and then dovetailing them into the advertiser's primary offering.

MOVING FORWARD

If you're an agency - start thinking in terms of building a start-up team, staffed with strong business minds, consultant types with a background in launching products and services of their own. Don't wait for your client to request this- charge this new team with developing the odd SBU proposal for the right clients, unsolicited, in addition to your current deliverables. Based on their concept, consider what the agency is willing to invest in the SBU, and contemplate contracts in advance of the proposal that either:

a) procure some ongoing percentage of related new revenue,

b) retain ownership of the underlying intellectual property (software, systems, etc),

c) retain a degree of non-exclusivity such that you can redeploy the SBU on behalf of other clients, or such that you can take the product straight to consumer after some agreeable period of exclusivity,

d) consider filing patents - I doubt many ad agencies have actually gone to the effort of writing a patent for anything, but it's a key part of operating any newly invented business. Be aware of the recent availability of "Business Method Patents", a relatively new but highly relevant tool within the landscape of sweeping new technologies and their application to new businesses and innovation.

As you determine pricing for your client, do so such that you are indifferent as to which option the client agrees to (buy Vs lease for example). And if you're walking in the door with a sound business plan, that shows skin in the game and tells a story of growth and expansion, they'll agree.

Yeah, HP Pong was just a banner-based game, but I can report to you with sincerity that this vision is what it showed us all, with vivid clarity, back in 1996.

In case you were watching.

The Digital Dark Ages

The Digital Dark Ages

I have been developing Interactive work for over 15 years, and sadly, my son may never see any of it. That's because we are living in what future generations will undoubtedly call: The Digital Dark Ages.

This all came to a head with renewed force for me a few weeks ago, when an interactive agency contacted me as part of a vendor pitch. They were very proud of themselves for having "innovated a brand new kind of banner ad". One that allowed the user to interact with the brand/store/product within the banner itself, all  without leaving page the banner was on.  They went on to imply that it was the first time this had ever been done, and wasn't it a brilliant solution.

I generally agreed with it being the right direction - well, righter than the static alternative - except that it had been done before, and frankly, many times.  I know because, my old company, Red Sky Interactive, did it, to name one.  A lot.  And as far back as 10 years ago.  And it worked then.

This isn't the first time I've come across such a disconnect from past efforts.  Especially in advertising.  It seems to me that advertisers "discover" the same basic, big ideas, a couple times each decade.  And each time it's hailed as a "truly innovative solution" all over again, as if it hadn't happened the first time.  This doesn't just happen with banner ads either, but all sorts of basic interactive principles, interface techniques, and solutions based on newly observed user-behavior.  I honestly don't think this is a case of selective memory, to their credit I think they truly believe they invented the idea.  In part because they probably had to.  Redundant though it may have been.

---

Many years ago I was working on a project and needed to reference what I recalled was some aesthetically innovative interactive work in its time.  I had the CD-ROM on my bookshelf - "The Dark Eye".  It was an awesome piece of work, created by animator Doug Beswick and featured really ground-breaking components including beautifully designed stop-motion puppets.  The packaging still looked awesome.  Looks innovative even still by today's standards.  It was created in 1995,  and when I attempted to run it, ..."the application that created it could not be found".  I realized with some degree of concern that I had created a fair number of projects around that time, and before.  I saved those old interactive projects- all manner of files, dutifully copied and transferred and burned, from machine to machine over the years- because they represented the bulk of my own body of work, and contained ideas and experiences that I wanted to keep for posterity.  Many were first of kind innovations that won coveted awards and in some cases set industry bars.  

I held my breath and double-clicked one of the pieces I was most proud of, and discovered that neither could it's application be found.  I tried every way at my access to open it, and only then fuzzily remembered that I'd created it with a program called "Video Works II" - long before its name was changed to Macromind Director - which was incidentally before the company changed it's name to Macromedia, before the popular Internet, most certainly before Shockwave plugins, not to mention the arrival of Flash, and it's subsequent acquisition by Adobe.  Needless to say, I no longer had the tools that I'd created the piece with. 

The implications slowly setting in, I rapidly double-clicked, and watched in breathless horror as project after coveted project sadly faded into digital abstraction- unreadable data- like film trapped on a reel.  That the only way they might see the light of day again is if I went to tremendous effort to, technologically, go back in time and bring them forward with me, version-by-version, adjusting code along the way.  The most recent of the "lost" pieces were roughly 5 years old.  

That's the day I decided I lived in the Digital Dark Ages.

I believe that future generations will look back at these days, and except for those few who are trying to "archive" portions and thin, top layers of the Internet, will have little idea of what was actually happening in Interactive media today.  There will simply be a hole in our history, and no physical artifacts to remember it by.  Lessons will be lost, only to be relearned.  When you consider the mass of interactive work being created daily, it's virtually unreasonable to think that all of that innovation will be effectively captured en-masse and stored in a form that can be meaningfully revisited across a changing medium.

Our language, messages and artwork, are only made possible through tools and platforms that will relentlessly evolve out from under our work.  Confronted with this scenario, a surprising number of people have suggested "video taping my work for posterity".  But to me - an Interactivist, that entirely defeats the purpose.  This is interactive work.  You haven't experienced it unless you interact with it.  Frankly, at the moment, it's interactive work that requires a mouse and keyboard.  But even this hardware- the mouse- is on its way out.  If we don't purposefully pursue a solution, we will need to admit that it's okay to let our place in History diminish with our work.

When I created it, I had imagined, years from now, finding myself contemplating my waning life, but being able to look back at the great work I'd created. To show my son.  I'd hoped naively, that like the painters, sculptors, writers, film-makers of the past, that perhaps my work would persist for future generations, and maybe even serve as a touch point in instances.  I see now that that isn't likely for any of us.

There are a few possible solutions to this issue:

1. Update.  Commit to regularly upgrading work, advancing it into new platforms.  This would require a scheduled effort, and will require re-coding as a frequent measure.  As platforms change, creators will have to rethink interface elements.  Admittedly, this solution becomes exponentially more difficult over time. 

2. Emulate.  It may yet be possible - and hopefully will be in the future- to load any OS and software configuration from the past into what will undoubtedly be very capable computing environments.  Hardware will have to be emulated as well... which poses some interesting design challenges, but hey - I can run Windows on my Mac, so maybe this isn't too far fetched. I expect this is still a way off however.

3. Museum.  A museum of old systems/platforms could potentially display key work to future audiences.  And I'll admit, that's how I view some of my work today.  Unfortunately this does not extend well, and is restricted by physical limitations.

4. Let go.  It now appears to me that, as Interactivists, we may be working much closer to live performance than we had ever imagined.  Technology is merely our stage.  Perhaps we need to cozy up to that idea, and walk in with our eyes wide open.  The illusion of "persistent content" comes with the ability to "Save", "Duplicate" and "Burn". But in fact, Interactive work rests on a flowing stream of technology - a stream that ultimately carries it away, even while traditional media persists.

5. There is a 5th option.  Development of the Human Computer Interface Preservation Society.  This effort is underway, and we will announce details as they become available.

In the mean time, interactive media, and more specifically, the language of interactivity, is still hovering in this awkward adolescent stage, a position it's been in for over a decade.  The most expedient way that we'll move beyond this state is if the innovative efforts of our current crop of talent, industry creatives and engineers, more decisively builds off of what was done before - not replicate it.  

My advice to younger Interactive developers: find and interact with a seasoned mentor(s).  They're out there, and I'm sure you'll find them willing to recall hidden efforts.  Unlike any other "recorded medium", the Charlie Chaplins, the Leonardo DaVincis, the relative "masters" of Interactive media are still alive today, and for better or worse, the best, most complete source of information on the subject rests with them, not on the net in circulation.  At least in the short-term it's the only way we can effectively build off the innovation and invention that came before us.

Tooth Hackers & The Ultimate Technology

Tooth Hackers & The Ultimate Technology

Some time ago, I found myself thinking about all our amazing technical advances - especially those that beg moral questions- and I began a journey that changed the way I approach technology, and changed how I think of humanity... and headphones.  

"Should we be doing that?"  I thought.

Should we be cloning humans?  Developing implantable chips, artificial intelligence or nano-technology that may some day advance beyond our control?  Will our technology unquestionably remain at our service?  Will it's advance really improve our odds of survival, or will it just change it?

Is technology good?  

Virtually every really bad doomsday movie launched from this string of questions.  But even so, there are few certainties in life.  Death being one.  And, I need to add one other absolute certainty to that short-list: 

  -  Man-made technology fails. 

I have never used a technology that was perfect.   It always breaks - it always reveals vulnerabilities - it always, always fails at some point.  The safety features have safety features, and yet they still experience absolute breakage and miscalculation, and breeches, and failures.  We humans have never- ever - created a technology that does not ultimately fail in totality.  

Oh, and headphones suck.

When I was 12 I got my first Walkman.  That's back when it was the Walkman.  If your family owned a B&W TV, then I bet you remember this moment too - trying it in the store and putting those small headphones to your ears and being stunned at the audio quality.  It really was rich and vibrant.  A huge improvement over the big ostrich egg headphones of the previous decade.  A few weeks ago it occurred to me that the headphones I have attached to my computer today are roughly identical to the pair that came bundled with my Walkman in the early 80s.  Actually, my new ones are a little clunkier.  That was almost 30 years ago.  30 years.

I mean, I see people walking down the street today with headphones on, wires dangling, twisted, draped into some inner pocket, and the whole thing looks so ..a-really-long-time-ago-ish.  Definitely not futuristic.  Definitely not the audio equivalent of, say, the iPhone.  Oh, so now you can shove them in your ear.  Hi-tech.

And then there's the blocky blinky blue wireless light that the really important high-powered executives opt for.  Cyborg Lawyering their way through lunch.  As an aside - is there anything more passively annoying than those guys that leave their little blinky Bluetooth headsets hanging over their ears when they're not even talking to anyone?  Eesh. It's always guys in suits with the WSJ. The look-at-my-cell-phone-attached-to-my-belt-guy, ten years later.  "No no, you look really cool."

Anyway, then I read about a chip that could be implanted into my tooth, like a filling, and this chip would receive a WiFi signal, vibrate my jaw bone, which is very, very close to my inner ear, and I would hear crystal clear music, and make invisible phone calls.  My first thought was that the brand "Bluetooth" was wasted on the current state, and that blinky, blue teeth might be kind of cool at a concert.  But my second thought was that this type of implant must be the inevitable advancement of headsets - the shedding of a "thing" that I need to carry altogether.  And maybe that's still right.  Seems like a logical progression.  I mean, I would never do it, but I'm a technical immigrant.  My son, who was born the same month as the first iPhone?  He will, despite my protests.

And that's where these two strings reconnect for me - that chip in your tooth is going to go bad.  Or worse - maybe some complete ass with a good sense of humor decides to hack it.  You know, hacking isn't something you can stop.  If it is decided that a thing should be hacked, it will be.  And someone will most certainly wish to hack all the literal blueteeth that all the futurey people use to listen to their iThings.  I imagine a large percentage of the population suddenly doubling over in pain as that scene from Superman The Movie involuntarily blasts through their jaws.  "Only one thing alive with less than four legs can hear this frequency, Superman..."  

My son will still get one.   ...and yeah, that was Lex Luthor.

But this thread caused me to realize that all of this - is inevitable.  Technical development does not stop.   It can't, because it's flawed.  Or rather, we are.  And we have to fix it, or us rather.  Because technological development is an inexorable part of being human - a primal, fundamental outgrowth of tool-use, our instinctual drive to decrease pain and seek pleasure as a means to survival - linked to our very biology.  Our minds are tools that we can't turn off or put away, and with reason, and with creativity, comes the ability to envision improvements in our condition.  It's not limited to culture or time. 

We all contribute to the advance of technology - with every thermostatic adjustment, every new pair of shoes, and how much Air makes them soft enough? -  we continuously try to improve our condition through the use of our tools, no matter where on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs we sit.  It is the very basis of human existence, and our life's activity until death, and if only we could put that off a little longer, and then maybe a little longer still, and you quickly find yourself wondering where all the advancement ends.

 At what point have we achieved perfection, such that no further technical development is necessary?  Incidentally, the answer to that can be found embedded deeply in virtually every religion.

When we live forever, in eternally-increasing ecstasy.  The ideal state.  Then we'll be done.

Until we reach that state of being - you know, we will always see room for improvement in our current technology.

Can we stop the advancement of technology?  To consider such an idea is to contemplate the end of humanity.  There is no line separating human from technology.  And there is no line separating technical advancement from survival of the individual, or the species.

As we survive, we use technology.  As we imagine, we advance technology.

Should we be doing that?  I don't think we have a choice.  The advance of technology is a law of humanity.

Technology is not good or bad.  It is us.