By Brady Polkinghorne In my personal opinion, much like everything in this universe, there’s nothing quite like the real thing. Grass, se...

Conversations

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By Brady Polkinghorne

In my personal opinion, much like everything in this universe, there’s nothing quite like the real thing. Grass, seawater, stars, emotions and at the risk of sounding crass, even breasts. So is the case with conversations.

Over time conversations and communications have evolved to reflect a need, a necessity for evolution and furthering our race. To start with humans began to evolve more complex social groups only by developing their language. Another example demonstrated the printing press becoming vital during the renaissance as it allowed scholars and the like to share their thoughts. Now, we’re seeing collaboration tools enabled by the web that are hastening this communication process. This is where my interest lies in the matter because due to these tools constantly making conversations easier – never in history has it been so easy for an idea to spread!! But with this in mind, how does a virtual conversation differ, or ultimately compare to the real thing?

An interesting albeit slightly long-winded take on this topic can be seen here: Networked Society: "On the Brink" There are some fascinating thoughts and predictions from market leaders who have ‘made’ it’ in this online realm by enabling various forms of conversations themselves. Case in point would be Eric Wahlforss, co-founder of Soundcloud which enables sound to be hosted in a visual manner which then encourages conversations within the track itself.

Social media, online forums and a plethora of other platforms in which we now communicate are all great due to the speed, convenience and reach factors, essentially a modern marvel in their own right. But despite the technological advances, it’s still slightly stilted. There’s a certain fluidity that comes with a real conversation that just can’t be beaten. Even with the likes of Skype, the Heytell social walkie-talkie app and Facetime, it still seems very hard to recreate the real thing. Things are missing that make conversations so significant such as interpreting full body language, physical interaction and something as simple as looking the person in the eyes. It seems like we will have to treasure the real interactions as they happen with our online conversations becoming the important day-to-day form of communication.  For the moment, they are still impersonal and thanks to hiding behind 1’s and 0’s, people are often more brazen and honest than they might be in ‘real-life’. So with constant development ushering our real world online, what weight does this hold for us personally, but more importantly for those in the industry, where does this place our audience and how do we effectively become a part of these conversations that will soon be in the clouds?

Discussions and conversations have become the power behind a brand’s digital presence, shown in the huge growth in review sites (e.g.TripAdvisor) and brands now using Twitter as a glorified Customer Service solution. Conversations will need to be adapted accordingly to ensure the most powerful tool in advertising or marketing stays fresh and front of mind within the industry – the tool being storytelling.. Now the burning question is; how can the master mechanic that has worked across all advertising mediums live within this space? Tune in for the next edition as we look at how storytelling becomes all more important within online conversations with examples of the good, the bad and the promising.


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