We should all do a start-up project and change the world
by Tim Malbon / September 14, 2011
A wonderful debate is raging. Can agencies make stuff? Stuff like products and services, that is, instead of ads. Or put another way, as London-based freelance mobile UX designer Murat put it:
“Do clients and agencies want to keep creating branded fluff or do they want to build temples?
Murat wrote this on his personal blog, Mobile Inc, and the title of his post was actually, “Can The Next Instagram/Hipstamatic/Klout/Angry Birds Be Born Within An Agency?”
It’s an interesting question, kind of.
I’m sure it’s *possible* that the next smash-hit social platform or game might come out of an agency, but don’t hold your breath. Perhaps we should set our sights a little lower? Do we really need to create the next blockbuster success to feel the undoubted benefits of making? Going straight in at number one all feels a bit, well… ‘advertising’.
Making something – anything – together, that’s not for a client and not an ad, but is meaningful, playful, useful, fun… well, that’s what we’re really talking about isn’t it?
And of course, this doesn’t just apply to agencies.
No siree, it just happens that this conversation about making and experiential shift is happening within agencies, who are now wonderfully networked together thanks to good old social technology.
I know this may be hard for some to imagine, but this is a lot bigger than than ‘agencies’. Yeah, it’s *that* big people… I’m going out on a bit of a limb here, but I think it’s bigger even than agencies and brands.
OMFG. What?
It’s about empowered people, human beings, citizens – and the things they can do together, and the unexpected side-effects of being networked together at an entirely new scale with awesome new super-powers of making and creating powerful shared experiences.
Heidi Hackemer’s brilliant blog post yesterday really made this click inside my head. Her Six Items Or Less initiative – just like Sheena Mathieken’s amazing Uniform Project, and @lacreid‘s super-human Don’t Feed the Planner project for 50/50 Make or Break - would not have worked in the same way without the Internet. Each of these projects is a little Internet start-up – of a kind. Each involves a community of contributors, participants and supporters. And each creates an intense and shared experience that shifts the way we all think and behave.
Heidi calls it, “An experiential shift to drive real empathy and change”
We may not all make the next Instagram, Tumblr or Angry Birds but we can now all make big changes that inspire and transform everyone around us, and our world.
It used to be a book that everyone had inside them, but today it’s a collaborative, start-up project. What’s stopping you from starting?
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