I have a terrible memory. People’s names? Terrible. Faces? OK-ish. “That time when we…”? Gone.
This is not to say I am forgetful. I can remember a particular market share stat or nuances of the politics surrounding a strategy I wrote ten years ago and still forget what I did last Thursday.
This is odd, as for me, growing up seemed to be all about remembering. School was one big memory challenge. We’d be taught “ends”: dates, times, places, events, famous people’s names—and with the popularity of multiple choice tests back then, your memory became your grade.
Looking back, it strikes me that adults controlled the public memory, and the end was what mattered.
One of our Sisters, Taryn, did a great post last week titled “Mobile Uploads,” and it got me thinking about how different things are today.
Today, there’s the Internet. It remembers everything, for all of us. And with Wikipedia, my parents would no longer have to update the encyclopedia every year for fear that their son would do his book report using old information.
But not only is memory itself infinite; now the ability to decide what gets remembered is, too. Devices of all shapes and sizes, from Flips to iPods, can help you capture and input moments, and even the moments between moments, into memory. Just like Taryn’s shot of her brother and father in 3D glasses—an instant family classic.
This allows for a much richer tapestry of our life to be documented. Our internal memories are public and shareable. Our unique perspective and treasures are there for all to share. The public memory has been democratized.
It reminds me of some work (I think it was for Kodak) done with teens and adults in the area of photography. They gave both groups cameras and asked them to document their life for a few weeks.
The semiology was fascinating. The majority of the adult photos were staged shots featuring people looking at the camera and saying “cheese.” Their photos were all “ends.” The teens, on the other hand, had taken photos of people and things largely in between these staged moments, then printed them out and used them to create collages with added text and images from magazines. Their photos were “beginnings.”
Why is this important? It is very easy to believe, even as a parent today, that being a teen is no different now than it was in our day. While that is debatable, what is not is that adults and teens forever see the world differently.
As brand owners, we are at a unique moment. We finally have the tools to see, understand, listen to and appreciate one another’s point of view. So why do most brands continue to choose to “research” teens or “communicate to” them, rather than collaborate and co-create better results together?
Instead of listening to Jeff, looking down the camera and saying “I am not smarter than a fifth grader,” by working with The Sisterhood, today’s brands can instead don some 3D glasses and co-create some new beginnings.
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