[Andy Bell from Mint Digital]
Imagine the scene. There is a freak accident in the Channel 4 post room. Instead of being invited to ‘an exclusive webcast of the launch of 4iP’, I’m invited to launch 4iP. I’ve got it in writing. It is a contractual obligation. I’m the boss!
As soon as I get my feet under the desk, I buzz my PA for an iced VitaminWater. I arrange a couple of lunches at hyper-trendy Kazuti. Then I think about my slate. What on earth should I commission? I could start with a couple interactive TV-related games. But crikey, is that innovative enough? I stare out of my corner office window. I feel the panic rising. I buzz for a warmed VitaminWater.
That gets me thinking. What is the web good for? What is Channel 4 good for?
The web
The exiting thing about the web is that it allows for two-way communication. Actually, that is not quite the nub of it. The telephone allows two-way communication. So does email. So does a discotheque. So does a hyper-trendy restaurant (though not Kazuti, because it doesn’t actually exist).
The web opens a whole world of creative opportunity on the continuum between one-way media (like TV, radio or newspapers) and two-way (telephone, email, discotheques, non-fictional restaurants).
Take Wikipedia, for example. 99.99% of the time, I use it to consume information. The other 0.01% is where the magic happens. Because you can create pages and edit them, Wikipedia blooms.
If Wikipedia was purely one-way, it would be the Encyclopaedia Britannica. If it was purely two-way, it would be a couple of people having a conversation about asphalt (or any other of Wikipedia’s 2,494,00 subjects). Wikipedia is interesting because it combines elements of both.
Facebook, Digg, Flickr, Last.fm and pretty much every other web success combine elements of one-way publishing and two-way communication. I’m sure there are many undiscovered possibilities, some of which will prove to be wonderful new forms of mass-participation media.
Channel 4
Future-gazing pundits claim that brands will cut out the broadcasters by creating their own content, reaching customers directly. While this is happen to an increasing extent, there are areas where brands struggle.
Russell Davies gave a tremendous talk at the recent 2gether08. He said that brands typically want their message to be clear. But audiences want messages that are interesting. Interesting messages have depth, humour, irony, anger, romance, drama and ambiguity - but rarely clarity. No one ever left a cinema saying ‘I really loved that film, it was really clear’.
Channel 4 has a great track record of being interesting. Over the last 25 years, it has repeatedly commissioned projects that reflect the national mood in ways that resonate. This understanding of zeitgeist, and the willingness to play with it, is a rare and valuable asset.
What does this mean for 4iP?
The great opportunity for 4iP is to create projects that combine the participation of good websites with Channel 4’s wit and intelligence.
By way of example, here are three projects that fit this bill:
Rock Corps
Carrot Mob
TED
OK, so they have already been done by someone else. But perhaps they serve as templates of what might be possible.
It would be wonderful to make a Carrot Mob-style event that worked on a nationwide scale.
Rock Corps cleverly combines the desire to do good with the power of music. Could this structure be reworked into other new formats?
TED would never work on TV, but it is brilliant on the web. What other events could be covered in a similar way? What if an event was only covered in this way?
(Incidentally, here’s a list of interesting ideas that haven’t yet been done yet.)
One thing all these projects have in common is they encourage real-world activity. So do many of the cross-platform successes in the world of advertising, for instance Innocent Village Fete or Red Bull Flugtag. Clay Shirky points out in Here Comes Everybody that the word ‘organisation’ used to mean both ‘the people being organised’ and ‘the institution doing the organising’. Now, thanks to the web, you can organise without an organisation. I suspect many 4IP projects will grasp this opportunity and cross over into the real world.
Raise a glass to 4iP
4iP comes at a time when people are beginning to understand what is special about the web as a form of media. Channel 4 brings budget, clout and audience, as well as skills at being quirky and interesting. It could well be a killer combination.
So, if you’ll all just pitch me your ideas, I’ll commission the lot. Double VitaminWaters all round!
