A Morning at the Tuttle Club

Lloyd Davis is interesting.

Lloyd defines himself online as an Artist and Entrepreneur, though his business card more specifically reads ‘Social Artist and Master Community Builder’. He was worked closely with major organisations like BP, The British Council and the UK Ministry of Justice, who have used his social media, blogging and community engagement expertise. Currently, he lives a nomadic lifestyle with no fixed abode, relying on his vast network of contacts for lodging and his skills and reputation for income.

Around 2006, Lloyd set up the Tuttle Club to host leading thinkers in social media. It has a number of branches, and Red Ant wanted to attend the London club to see what it was all about.

The Tuttle Club runs at the Centre for Creative Collaboration, which is a space made up of academic and business startups coming together for the sake of ‘open innovation’. Running from 10-12 every Friday, the setup is refreshingly informal: you turn up when you like, there’s no closed meeting room, no agenda or set topic, no Powerpoint presentation. It sounded rather like an over-sized focus group, but without the focus.
Arriving and contributing to the coffee and biscuit fund, I took my seat amongst six others. The first thing that any new-comer would notice is that: 1) individuals prompt conversation when they feel moved to and 2) there is no sense of hierarchy – it’s run a bit like a Quaker church service. The result was that whatever came out of anyone’s mouth was intended, rather than forced.

Getting into the flow of conversation, subjects were wide ranging and always interesting. We touched on the recent Future Everything Festival in Manchester, and in particular the innovative work of the artist group Blast Theory. Surprisingly, we moved onto the topic of a rising trends in Buddhism apps, which echoed the recent Radio 4 ‘Digital Human’ podcast, pointing out the growing popularity of religion and online. It seemed possible that this online trend might help normalise an activity that is seen as out of the norm nowadays.

One woman, who spent up to 12 hours a day online, wondered what would happen after Facebook following its recent flotation - whether people would ever migrate elsewhere and what that ‘elsewhere’ would be (answer: somewhere with a purer conversation focus, but no migration will happen for a long while). Conversation got deeper, discussing to what extent digital technology in the form of live hashtagging and capturing large quantities of photos enhanced our experience of life and whether the recent press around ‘digital dieting’ held water. The feeling was that the younger and more digitally confident you are, the more likely that digital enhances; the older and less digitally confident, the more likely that digital detracts: learnings to bear in mind when marketing to different types of audience.

After an hour, the effect of a strong Tuttle coffee had worn off and I had to head to a meeting. Making my ‘thank yous’ and walking towards Kings Cross, I reflected that not only was this group ahead of the curve with social media thought leadership and community engagement, but their focus on collaboration and innovation for the benefit of the end user could only be good news for the advancing social media.

If you want to find out more, go to the Tuttle Club’s website, search for the hashtag #Tuttle and read Lloyd’s blog, the Perfect Path.

I look forward to reporting back on any future meetings with this (or any other) thought-leading communities.


This blog post was originally posted on the Red Ant blog on 29.05.2012

One User Experience: a Monday Morning Vision

One faceless user experience, please

Hidden content providers and aggregators too
(Put providers at the back end, not front end)

An appless world

Be Intelligent. Be people friendly. Think of the end user

(It's not all about showing the world all that you can produce. People don't have the time)

Remember: "Getting information off the internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant" - Mitchell Kapor

Our minds are frazzled, we can't deal with it all. We shouldn't have to

(I spent an hour of my Sunday unsubscribing from newsletters I didn't realise I had signed up for. Fuck me.)

Microsoft have released So.Cl. Not another social network?!

63 aggregators listed on Wiki. We need an aggregator to aggregate the aggregtors

I think that We need time to digest and experience life
(Watch this, notably the end bit)

We need a digital diet 

We are Mr Creisote: one wafer thin piece of data away from exploding

We should learn to say 'no'

We need less, not more

We need one, appless, faceless user experience, please

Be Different: Provocative Research

I was asked to write the following post below for a newsletter and was given the title 'Provocative Research'. You might have heard it all before and it repurposes some of Richard Huntington's and Siamack Salari's outputs,  but I thought I would put it up in case it provokes any chatter. Looking back at the article, the bit I feel is most important is avoiding a 'research-by-Google' approach to work.

At the time of writing, Internet Blackout Day is happening. It means that some websites are unavailable, in protest to the threat of two internet censorship bills passing into U.S. law. For marketing agencies, it has meant that those relying on the likes of Wikipedia to deliver research information may well be struggling to get what they want. And I would argue this is no bad thing either because over-relying on the worldwide web for research is a lazy form of research. It lacks originality and sufficient effort and agencies should be looking to various sources for their research. What is needed in its place then is a more ‘provocative research’ attitude (a term coined by agency Napier).

‘Provocative research’ leads to the best kinds of insights and creative. Contrastingly, ‘lazy research’ – relying almost entirely on Google and a finger-in-the-wind attitude – leads to mediocre research findings, bland insights and underwhelming creative.

I believe research should be a vibrant and exciting process and should embrace the many research approaches available. Firstly, the research process should start with your experience and your gut. It should extend to online for building hypotheses and assessing a top level view of news and trends. But research should extend far beyond this.

Holding initial conversations with people you know in the target audience is important next step (ad-hoc conversations can be had internally or via connections externally). Setting up (at least) two focus groups, depth interviews or creating an online forum are all very helpful research approaches. Be adventurous even and look at co-creating concepts with the audience alongside the agency and client.

Undertake mystery shops on and offline too; these can be highly insightful experiences about how a brand really behaves. Then read some books. Read weird stuff even and books not linked to one category. Look at completely different categories and see what can be learnt. 

Importantly, try and immerse yourself in the world of the target audience. There is nothing better than first hand experience with your target audience. Use a Smartphone to take videos, photos and audio, and be prepared to write detailed notes on observations. Spend some long, quality time in their environment. Go native.

Below is an example of strong research tool that makes quality research easier to achieve. For only £6.99, there is an ethnographic iPhone app called EDL app that allows images, video, audio and text to be captured and upload to a remote website where data can be stored, tagged and themed. Not bad for under £10.

But the real value of adventurous research is how it can greatly inform the creative process. Quality research should deliver great insights and insights that are ‘revelations’ (see Richard Huntington’s Adliterate article). That is, an observation that is posing as an insight. I mean an insight that dramatically changes the grounding for a strategy and creative idea based on great research. The insight should be (according to Huntington) “an astonishing disclosure about real people, the brands they use, or the world they live in that compels a change in behaviour”. Remember Pot Noodle’s “The Slag of all Snacks”? The insight was that Pot Noodles are “the culinary equivalent to masturbation”. Provocative, revelatory. And true.

Lazy research is unhelpful and can be the enemy of outstanding creativity. Lazy research would not have inspired ‘The slag of all snacks’ in a million years. I would even argue that relying on ‘www-click-research’ should be unacceptable practice in any agency: clients shouldn’t pay for work they could do from their office desk.

Provocative research, however, should be integral to any agency with ‘creative’ as its lifeblood. It should be embedded in its culture. Long live provocative research, non?. 

My First Green Doodle

My first stab at a satirical doodle. Should I give up my day job? Je suis un artiste, non?

Showcasing Neat Creative Ideas: Pack for Alzheimer's Research UK

As creative ideas go, I think this one by Beautiful World is top notch. The execution might not seem to be the latest Heineken ad, but this being a wholly different brief is an example of some sharp thinking resulting in a effective piece of communication.

The thinking behind is cut and paste from the Beautiful World's own web page because I am too lazy to paraphrase and the kettle has just boiled.

"Alzheimer’s Research UK wanted to recruit a cohort of very high value donors, so we developed a high value campaign to help fund its ongoing research to find a cure for Alzheimer’s.

We created a pack which focussed on a major dilemma for the charity – the fact that they can only afford to fund one in three research applications. The pack asked the prospective donor to choose one of three research applications to fund.  In asking for a donation towards the funding it also offered donors the option to fund all three research projects.

The pack also helped to educate people about Alzheimer’s – a problem on an almost unimaginable scale, yet most people remain relatively unaware of it.  We brought people closer to the researchers by including an in depth interview with a leading neurologist, Dr Schott, who was able to encapsulate the problem in brilliantly simple terms.

Dramatizing the dilemma in this way (what if you made the wrong choice and ignored a research project that could provide a cure?) had the overall effect of uplifting donations.  Most people wanted to support all the applications – so they gave more.  One donor chose to fund an entire research project and gave £35,000!"

Consumers win as Solar PV firms loose

I won't lie. It's been a while since my last blog post.

There's been a very good reason though and this is because I have been doing quite a bit of work into renewable energy companies to better understand what this sectors' 'needs' were.

When I attended the Renewables Roadshow at Wembley last month, I was  inspired to hear about the growing need for marketing. Renewables companies seemed to want to develop less of a 'sales' only mentality and wanted to develop their 'marketing' mentality. I was just less sure there was the money to do it.

And this was particularly true of Installers (according to the wholesalers/manufacturers/trade/training bodies that is). They consistently told me installers were needing to increase their reach to wider audiences and compete within a growing Renewable energy market - but there was not always the knowledge and money to do so. This was especially true of Solar PV companies where some felt the market was becoming very saturated and they needed to stand out against the competition. (Interestingly, it was felt that  Biomass and Rainwater Harvesting were not saturated markets at all and would see great growth in the near future - but it needed some time and public awareness raising to get it there.)

As a side point, for a sector that is so critical for delivering reductions in the UK's carbon emissions, it was encouraging that people were - for a want of better word - 'nice'. And they were not just good people, they knew their stuff. But if there was something they didn't know, it was the uncertainty about direction from the UK government for Renewable Energy and threats to cuts next April to 'green' grants (notably the RHI). It seemed a number of manufacturers were holding their breath's till then.

As for Solar PV, I was left feeling a challenge facing this type of renewable was having the financial luxury of thinking more strategically about how to market and grow - and stop thinking less tactical/sales-y. However, I also felt that a saturated market place for solar PV  - a market place that has become dominated by too many 'two-man-bands' looking to make a quick buck, discount prices and reducing margins for everyone else - means there is no finance to invest in proper marketing at all. My gut feeling is marketing - beyond a website and a press ad - will have to wait until more companies pull out/go bust in the solar PV race.

Then again there is a silver lining: at least the consumer can get the possible best price, which should increase demand of course. Which is also a good thing for the environment.

Trevor Donnelly on 4thought.tv

Our local Reverend for the Church of Ascension Blackheath is Reverend Trevor Donnelly.

He is more than worth mentioning for his superb thought-piece on 4thought.tv on Monday night (and also because he's a very decent bloke). This is a regular 2 minute slot where you get some bright spark sharing their opinion on a topical spiritual issue. Well, on Monday it was our local rev. who makes a complex argument about the thorny issue of gay Anglican bishops a simple and powerful one. I have can't embed the clip but do click here and I urge you to watch it whether you're into the man upstairs thing or not.

A Pear Celebration

All I wanted to do is randomly share with you this delicious pear I got from our local Fruit & Veg shop, The Creaky Shed. (I hasten to add, it has since been consumed.)

You won't get anything this size, taste, colour and irregularly-shaped from the supermarkets. Plus it's locally sourced and inexpensive. 

I mean compare it with this tiddly, unhealthy-looking Tesco Conference pear that I came across last weekend. And it's carbon footprint isn't great as I believe it comes from Holland. The two just don't com-pear. 

Nature, Time and Professor Cox

I don't know if you saw Professor Brian Cox's the Wonders of the Universe? If you didn't and especially if you're not a science pro like me, then I would go out and buy a copy (or look at the very least take a look at YouTube for snippet).

This clip pasted below, really got my noggin running. Via a useful sandcastle analogy, Professor Brian Cox describes how nature, propelled by the arrow of time, goes from a state of order into one of choas (based on the 2nd law of thermodynamics). It is almost infinitely unlikely that an object in our world could rearrange its molecules to what it once was and ever be the same again. From stardust we come, to stardust we go. Yikes.



Later in this episode (and a clip not on YouTube), Prof. Cox tells us that eventually the earth will be consumed by the sun, the universe will be consumed by black holes and nothing well exist forever and ever and ever and ever. Time will cease to exist for good. Yikes again.

At this point, I was contemplating loading a shotgun loaded and topping myself by eating a Spanish cucumber or some German bean sprouts, but something the Professor said took me even more by surprise. To paraphrase what he said (and again I can't find a YouTube clip for this): the human race will only have been around for something like 1 billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billionth of the entire history of the universe. (BTW, I think that's the right number of billions but you got the gist that it's an awfully short amount of time).

And going from despair to hope, it makes me think how bloody lucky we are to be here, to catch a glimpse of life that is so unlikely and fleeting. Believing in God or not, surely the take out is that we have the ability to not only appreciate what is in front of our eyes, but also we have an obligation to look after it as well as one another.

Maybe a rather worthy post this one, but Professor Cox certainly struck a chord with me (slightly better than he did with D:Ream).

Switch the Fish

It's always pleasing to celebrate the good, instead of barking about the bad and ugly sides of marketing initiatives. Especially, when they are 'green' marketing initiatives.

Take Sainsbury's new Switch the Fish campaign, for example. Using the face of Jamie Oliver, the idea is to inspire shoppers to reduce consumption of the 'big-5' fish we have grown accustomed to in the UK (i.e. tuna, cod, prawns, haddock, salmon) to less familiar, equally tasty fish that won't deplete fish stocks so heavily.

This campaign serves to remind again  how we really are such creatures of familiarity. I didn't appreciate that as much as  80% of fish we consume in the UK is made up of the 'big-5' fish. Pretty unadventurous. No wonder the French think our food is boring.

And what's more Jamie is there to give us ideas with video recipes, so we don't buy a megrim out of good intentions, stick it in the fridge, neglect it for two days, and feed it to the cat when it starts to smell a bit odd.

Good going Sainsbury's.

Putting a number on nature

What’s nature worth? It’s a strange question – we all know te value of the natural environment in our lives, but putting a figure on it in pounds and pence doesn’t quite seem right. Nature lovers, then, will be forgiven for feeling suspicious of the UK’s National Ecosystem Assessment (NEA) report, which has sought to do just that.


The authors of the report, released last week, have assessed the “wellbeing” of the UK’s ecosystem on economic, social and health values. They describe the report as “a first attempt to assess the stocks of natural ecosystem resources, their state and the trends in their development”. It is built on a combination of secondary and primary research using qualitative and quantitative data to deliver sound strategic direction. However, it is the quantitative, economic figures placing a value on the UK’s ecosystem that have got the most press. Given that just two of the 27 chapters in the report are dedicated to these, it is a reminder of the impact that only a few figures can make in building a compelling argument.


Read the full article at Research-live.com's website.

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Why 'The Big Apricot'?

My mother giggled when I was ten because I assured her that New York was really nicknamed 'The Big Apricot', (not 'The Big Apple').