The prehistoric human fascination with telling tales!

The attraction of interactive communication is that it is a return
to the prehistoric human fascination with telling tales!

Since the beginnings of any civilised society the market place was the hub of civilisation, a place to which traders returned from remote lands with exotic spices, silks, monkeys, parrots, jewels - and fabulous stories.

Interactive Communication, properly executed, more resembles an ancient bazaar than it fits the business models companies try and impose upon it.

People respond to interactive opportunities because it seems to offer some intangible quality long ‘missing in action’ from modern life. In sharp contrast to the alienation wrought by homogenised broadcast media, interactive opportunities provide a space in which the human voice would be rapidly rediscovered.

Unlike the lockstep conformity imposed by television, advertising, and corporate propaganda, interactive communication gives new legitimacy – and free rein – to play.

People long for more connection between what we do for a living and what we genuinely care about. We long for release from anonymity, to be seen as who we feel ourselves to be rather than the sum of abstract metrics and parameters. We long to be part of a world that makes sense rather than accept the accidental alienation imposed by market forces too large to grasp; to even contemplate.

Remember the market place, of old. Caravans arrived across burning deserts bringing dates and figs, snakes and parrots, monkeys, strange music and stranger tales. The market place was the heart of the city, the kernel, the hub. Like the past and the future it stood at the crossroads. People worked early and went there for coffee and vegetables, eggs and wine, for pots and carpets. They went there to look and listen and to marvel, to buy and to be amused. But mostly they went to meet each other…to talk and interact!

Markets are conversations.
Advertising’s failure!

Conventional advertising has failed the natural human need for social interaction. We have created a media society during the last 30 or 40 years where there is an extraordinary reduction in interaction because of the one-way and more passive form of information that exists. People desire to be taken account of, to affect change, learn and personalise their relationships with their environment. These psychological and sociological factors are part of the incentive to interact with advertising. However, these tend to be minimised in the incentive direct response field, there are a phenomenal number of reasons which cause people to interact which go beyond just giving them things