Playing political games

There's a slew of interactive tools and quizzes emerging, aimed at those in need of a little election guidance, notes Crowd DNA insight exec Charu Agarwal, with young voters a particular target...

With April comes plenty of sunshine, the Apple Watch and the lively onslaught of political campaigns as the UK general election nears.

Those wishing to avoid the inevitable “Who’re you voting for?” might struggle while manifesto madness is in full swing, padding out news feeds and social media. I’ve certainly enjoyed the swell of Farage memes appearing alongside the usual food-stagrams and festival chatter.

But speaking as a millennial, while it’s fun to joke, rest assured we’re still very serious about our vote…  

At Crowd DNA, we know well that the young voters’ disillusionment with current government isn’t apathy towards politics as a whole. This past year has seen the rise of the Activist youth tribe and online arenas such as Facebook and Twitter expanding as places for expression and discussion.

The wider internet has in turn reacted with new offerings. A number of interactive tools and quizzes have been rearing their heads, aimed at those in need of a little guidance. Here’s a run-down of some of the emerging players… 

Verto

Verto is a tool designed with young people in mind. You’re shown three policy statements per topic (eg education). It’s Tinder-esque format lets you swipe left to agree and right to disagree – the more swipes you do, the bigger a picture it builds about the parties that relate best to your values. It also uses your location to compare results with nearby users and the national average.

The brains behind Verto is democratic movement, Bite The Ballot, whose aim is to get more young people voting. They’re taking steps in the right direction by condensing policies into easily digestible, bitesize sentences. However, when it comes to building an accurate picture of someone’s political makeup, the ‘less is more’ approach may limit how insightful, and ultimately useful, it actually is.

PositionDial

Another site, PositionDial, gives a more colourful analysis of where your views lie on the political spectrum. You’re shown a series of statements – eg I support the Human Rights Act UK – and asked to rate them on a scale of strongly agree to strongly disagree.

Beyond calculating which party you sit in, it also intends to educate its users by personalising the feed with news based on your attitudes as well as opposing views.

Voteforpolicies

The website’s tagline of ‘Vote for policies, not personalities…’ sums up how it functions. You simply pick the topics you’re interested in, it anonymously lists all the policies and you pick your favourites.

It’s one of the more recognised options, having been around in the 2010 election. This time around, they’ve embellished it with lots of interactive tickboxes and visuals. While three or four topics is more than enough to get your head spinning circles, it seems like the best tool for genuinely helping users compare parties and make an informed decision about their vote.

The conclusion? Gamified tools like these seem to be taking steps in the right direction. Potential for shareability is high, especially among young people with limited knowledge but a desire to be heard. They’re clearly making politics more accessible. So while the future of online democracy is yet to be fully determined, let’s give it a vote of confidence for now.

UK Tribes 2015!

Get set for the 2015 UK Tribes refresh...

Exciting times as the latest re-rub of UK Tribes, our on-going study of youth culture for Channel 4, gets ready to roll. The fieldwork is wrapped and a host of new tribes and trends have been identified.

Channel 4 will be sharing more info in due course. But, for now, here’s a little taster vid of some of the road trip adventures of the UK Tribes team at Crowd.

Whoop, happy birthday The Breakfast Club! Er, why the whooping, you might be asking...

At Crowd DNA, we’re fairly obsessed with cultural tribes, and particularly in terms of how they shape attitudes and behaviours among younger audiences. And though by no means the first, nor the last, teen film to explore tribes, John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club succeeded in doing so in a particularly well observed manner.

OK, it creaks a bit under 1980s affectations, but it nails a lot of the basics around tribal identity with pinpoint accuracy. We’ll even forgive it for propelling Simple Minds’ ‘Don’t You Forget About Me’ to global domination.

 

New Hires & Promotions

Here's some new people to introduce. And some 'old people' in new roles...

It’s been a busy time for changes at Crowd DNA, with a mix of new recruits and promotions. Here’s the low-down.

Laura Warby joins us as a senior consultant from Tonic. She’s launched straight into work for Channel 4 and Sony Music.

Milly Derbyshire, meanwhile, has come on board as a consultant. Previously at Added Value, she’s getting busy on our Peroni Agenda account, plus providing jolly good thinking around semiotics and culture codes for a new piece we’re pitching for

Sarah Brierley has been promoted to business and strategy director, taking a lead on all things from client relations and project design, to developing new IP and, obviously, communicating just how utterly ace an agency we are

Will Moxham joins Sarah on the commercial side of things, making the switch from exec to client services consultant

Aurelie Jamard has been promoted to associate director, heading up our innovation lab – via which we make our Crowd In and Crowd Out approaches available to clients

That’s it for now, but several more new recruits on the horizon. Time for a bigger office – and we’re working on that, too.

Magazines That Matter

Crowd DNA's Andy Crysell checks in on Print Is Dead. Long Live Print - a new read exploring the emerging school of high quality DIY titles that's shaking up the tried and tested ways of magazine publishing...

Writer Ruth Jamieson’s new book, Print Is Dead. Long Live Print, takes a thorough and thoughtful look at how the magazine industry – one that’s been written off as dead and buried in many quarters – is finding new energy from independent titles that are generally fashioned around specific cultural touchpoints. It’s an ecosystem of hundreds of mags speaking to hundreds of tribes, such as the slow living and traditional skills found in Hole & Corner, the food and drink creativity celebrated by The Gourmand, Manzine‘s anti-men’s mag stance, The Green Soccer Journal (putting the beautiful in the beautiful game),  the music and wine musings of Noble Rot, authentic style aficionados Jocks & Nerds and the intimacy of understated women’s title Oh Comely.

Print is Dead. Long Live Print
Print is Dead. Long Live Print

So it’s out with old cultural stalwarts, independent or otherwise, like The Face, Sleazenation and Spin (to name just a few of the titles to have failed to survive the dominance of digital) and in with a new form of DIY publisher. New form because whereas DIY once meant fanzine aesthetics and a passionate but lo-fi tonality, the new independent offerings go big on attention to detail and cultural credibility. As Jamieson puts it, ‘they revel in the physicality of the magazine. They play with format… They lovingly craft issues that are beautiful, collectable and timeless objects.’

It’s a field in which innovation is crucial: new business models and distribution channels are being sought; as are different ways to connect print with digital and, most importantly, magazine brand with reader. It will be interesting to see what the major league publishers learn from these independents. The multi-dimensional success of Monocle indicates that it is possible to scale fresh approaches to making publishing pay. Purposefulness, audience affinity and a good dose of lateral thinking can really take you places.

 

New Roles At Crowd DNA

Here’s a round up of new roles we’re recruiting for at Crowd DNA - all designed to put us in a good place for ambitious growth plans and for a flurry of exciting global projects, in which culture and strategy, better thinking and powerful storytelling, all come together as a well formed one...

TRENDS & CONTENT DIRECTOR (LONDON)

We’re recruiting for a director to head up a newly formed trends and content wing. This is a key role in an exciting agency – tailor-made for a commercially focused, creatively minded individual who’s looking for a unique challenge and to adopt a start up mentality. Find our more here

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR/SENIOR DIRECTOR  (QUAL, LONDON)

We’re seeking a senior end hire to join our insight and innovation team, taking a key role in leading our most significant projects, with a focus on first rate team and client management, a receptivity to developing new methods and approaches, input on business development and a natural flair for inspiring others, creating powerful stories and grappling with fascinating challenges at the intersection of business and culture.

SENIOR CONSULTANT/ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR (QUANT, LONDON)

Associate director and senior consultant roles at Crowd DNA for those passionate about managing fascinating and challenging multi-market work for an exceptional range of clients. The associate director role include hands-on method work and team management, with a leaning towards the latter; and vice versa for the senior consultant role. Both require a tangible enthusiasm for presenting work in highly compelling ways, combining creativity with strong business problem solving skills.

INSIGHT & INNOVATION EXECUTIVE (AMSTERDAM)

An entry level role in our Amsterdam office for someone who demonstrates a passion for/willingness to learn about insight and strategy, with a likely focus on desk research, trends work and assisting on business development. Work experience – either paid or interning – within the broader marketing/comms field would be a definite advantage, as would an enthusiasm for brands, media, innovation and how culture impacts on that lot! This is an exciting opportunity for a self starter who’s keen to learn quickly and take ownership of new challenges.

VARIOUS! (SAN FRANCISCO)

Following our successful launch in Amsterdam, we’re now set on opening Crowd DNA in the US, and in San Francisco specifically. We’re keen to start conversations with those who we may be able to work with – by which we mean potential recruits (at all levels of experience/seniority), freelancers, suppliers, partner companies and assorted specialists. Yes, we know, we’re not exactly narrowing things down there, but now’s the time to cast a wide net. 

All roles come with competitive salaries and a range of further benefits. Get in touch with a CV

Time to de-stress and solve some problems, as strategic initiatives director Sarah Brierley explores what mindfulness means for insight and creativity...

Mindfulness is having a moment. As a quick Google search attests, it’s a bone fide trend (some say movement) – recent articles abound from the likes of the Huffington Post, Telegraph, Spectator, Jezebel and NY Times (not all of them positive).

Put simply, mindfulness is the practice of ‘being in the present moment’ or, as Wikipedia puts it: ‘the intentional, accepting and non-judgmental focus of one’s attention on the emotions, thoughts and sensations occurring in the present moment, which can be trained by meditational practices derived from Buddhist anapanasati.’

Mindfulness is praised for improving creativity, lowering stress levels, improving problem solving, even relieving pain, anxiety and depression. But it has its critics too: some question its efficacy, others say it’s a poor replacement by our atheist society for religion, and so on.

There are mindfulness courses and apps and retreats. It’s much discussed in business and marketing circles – as both a corporate and consumer trend. And it’s becoming a buzzword in insight, too.

Curiosity duly piqued, I recently went to Roy Langmaid’s workshop ‘From Mindfulness To Insight’, pitched as follows:

‘Let’s face it, while a clear mind might be desirable, most of us have to mobilise very busy minds to gain insights… I have distilled and applied the most useful techniques from meditation and the thinking practices that make up mindfulness to our work in commercial insight-seeking.’

Using a series of exercises, Roy taught us (mostly insight professionals but a couple from other professions, too) what it is to be mindful – being in the present moment – and how we can use mindfulness practice to reach insight.

Some of the exercises (eg breathing awareness, the tangerine exercise, body scan) were simple ways of practising being mindful – techniques that encourage you to be in the present moment, notice when your mind wanders and gently bring your attention back to the exercise.

Once we’d got the basics, we looked at how mindfulness practice can be used to gain insight. As Roy explains:

“I often notice insight arises in three main ways:

  • 1) From learning (new information)
  • 2) From reflection (from thinking about the issue)
  • 3) From meditation (from allowing the issue to be there and seeing what comes).”

So, using a real-life problem – anything from a research project to a personal quandary – Roy walked us through an exercise. This involved viewing our problem from five different perspectives (material form, feelings, perception, mental formations and consciousness) in order to reach helpful new interpretations, giving rise to creative solutions to the problem. These different perspectives help you question your thinking, spot connections and expose ‘faulty’ conclusions you may be making – perhaps as a result of the cognitive biases we’re all subject to. It was an interesting new approach to reaching insight, another tool to add to the kit.

But for me, my biggest take out from mindfulness practice is how beautifully it links with much of the thinking around creativity – how allowing your mind to wander away from a problem can lead to moments of insight and let your greatest ideas pop into existence. Put differently, it’s a good route to tapping into system one thinking, allowing your emotional brain to take over from the logical one for a bit and letting it graft stealthily while you focus on something else like swimming, or day dreaming, or indeed the practice of mindfulness.