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This was an interview I gave a while back with Mairi Duthie, a design consultant and contributor to Graphic Magazine.

Whilst the trend needle has long since passed over the blog, it still seems like most people don’t really understand what they are, what they do and how they are effecting things. The piece was written with a web illiterate graphic design audience in mind which is why a lot of it might seem a little basic. That said I think it’s useful to try and reduce the insights down into one comprehensive and simple text.

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Mairi Duthie is interested in exploring the place of the blog in today’s world. Temporary teenage fad, or a profound and longterm shift in communications?

Mairi Duthie spoke to Nicolas Roope, creative director at Poke.

MD:
Blogging seems to be a term that is being rather loosely applied. To untangle what we are talking about from the rest of what’s going on ‘out there’, could we go back to basics with a simple question, ‘What is a blog? Website’s little brother?

ME:
Blog is the shortened version of Web-Log which is just that: a log on the web. The format of a log is content entry over time, a never ending list if you like. The thing that makes a blog special though is the management of content that happens after the user has entered it. The software that runs the blog (e.g. wordpress, moveabletype etc) publishes new content and shuffles older content accordingly, archiving where necessary, categorizing etc. The blog has made it very easy for novices to publish content and users to navigate it easily. Very quickly you have rich sites where the content can be sifted easily by time or genre as the user can apply a lens to pull out what is most important to them.

The reason why the blog has taken off is that the format is better fitted to the way people consume content on the web than conventional print and older web layouts. With print editorial emphasis is created through size, position, typographic treatment etc, yet on the web the hierarchy needs to be different as what is often most pertinent to the user is what’s new. As already mentioned the log is not a new format, it is just one that serves the web particularly well, particularly with the clever management plugged in.

What I’ve described are some of the technical and format issues which are driving the success of the blog but there are also more pervasive and far reaching implications for businesses, agencies and designers. The blog heralds a new kind of communication. The printed page as I’ve talked about is a careful construction of a set of prioritisations and emphasis that communicate above and beyond what the units of content are actually saying. The approach allows incredible control over what is said and THE WAY that it’s said so you get the message’s core information AND a sense of what the deliverer thinks is most critical. The advertising and design communities are very used to this control as for clients this is often felt to be their key objective. However when a user asks “I just want to see what’s new” the format falls down.

The log is a leveler, it makes all content stand at equal status and prevents the inference that comes with the manipulations of special arrangement. It makes a lot of companies panic because they can no longer hide behind their much loved sophisticated, surreptitious, smoke and mirrors.

In the global free content and experience market of the web, currency has become the defining factor. Businesses and content creators have a choice between control and currency and those choosing control are likely to lose. The notion of user centred design isn’t the result of some clever M.I.T. brain permeating the commercial world, it’s a brutal reality already belting it round the head with a hammer.

MD:
How do you think blogs relate to the old-fashioned diary, which was generally perceived to be private and used for personal recollection?

ME:
With the latest coming first, the blog is really just a back-to-front diary. You might still want to track back to certain dates and times, but with the blog you can also look back at things in different ways too.

The privacy element is certainly different. The private becomes broadcast and of course that changes the relationship the author has with the journal. The entries can become more self conscious, more calculating, less open than their paper counterparts. But their function and value to the writer is very different as they become vehicles for egos and interests to flourish, a tool to build identities, make friends, find like minds, effects quite unlike that of the solitary diary. The blog isn’t a unique case of the private becoming public, look at our obsession with Big Brother. This is part of a bigger cultural trend.

MD:
What motivates bloggers to share their stuff with the rest of us?

ME:
At the bottom of it there’s a simple pleasure in expressing yourself. We had writers before we had books, we had musicians before we had records. Formats don’t create art, they merely record and distribute it. But formats are barriers too, so the reason why a lot of people don’t engage in art isn’t because they’re not capable, only that the bar to entry is set too high. The blog is liberating like the camcorder was. People are finding their voice and often their voice is finding an audience and it’s costing them nothing.

Beyond this simple joy though is a great force which is identity. You don’t need to look too far to find clues as to our obsession with the way we look. This is also about identity, i.e. telling the world who we are and where we fit in. Blogging is very much the same but we don’t use clothes and make up, we use imagination, action and access to show our position. By becoming publishers, people become brands that are formed by the choices they make about what to publish, what to say, what to do, who to link to etc, just like a DJ’s brand is about what they play and how they respond to the audience.

There’s a competitive element to all this too. Myspace obsessives show
how these people-brands jostle for dominance like glossy mags on the shelves of newsagents. As users find their blogs grow, often becoming commercial through ads, the link between popularity and income interlock, fuelling more competition.

MD:
Aren’t people competing to have the coolest blogs, and is that why it still largely feels quite ‘youth’?

ME:
Everyone is in competition from Jo Schmo to BP. The will for popularity isn’t exclusive to the web, it is fundamental to social life and for business.

At the individual end of things blog popularity means influence, preferential access to stuff, in some cases income or free things at least. Online popularity is also consummated in the physical world which is often forgotten. Big bloggers get laid just like pop-stars do and for a lot of bloggers that’s an attractive notion.

MD:
That is looking at blogging on a personal level. How about the more corporate and political side of things? You and the team at Poke are responsible for a variety of ‘new media’ based projects and were the proud recipients of two Webbie awards this year. So your work is seen as commercially as well as creatively effective. Blogs seem to sit squarely between the worlds of business and the personal. How does this work? Are businesses just copying what individuals have been doing?

ME:
Corporate blogging which is very much on the rise also draws motivation from the blog’s brand-building power. Whilst the control of the printed page is secure home turf for big businesses there’s a growing understanding in their world that customers have x-ray specs to their prescribed and expensive messaging. The blog is seen as a way to be “real” in the eyes of the user, a way of dropping rhetoric for sleeves-rolled-up honesty, because action now speaks a lot louder than the advertiser’s promise. A guy called Scoble who runs the Scobleizer has probably had more impact on Microsoft’s corporate image recently than all their conventional advertising and PR put together. He was just an employee running his own blog that went big and now sits the MS board as the representative of the MS customer. This happened because users felt it was the only channel to trust as Scoble’s internal view was honest, balanced, and fallible, acknowledging where they’d got it right and where others had done better. For the first time in a long time people were listening because they were interested in what MS were doing again. A massive impact for an insignificant coder in the depths of Portland’s mammoth nerd-nest.

The leveling nature of the format has attracted many other corporates to the party in response to these success stories. However many aren’t ready to get naked, realising all those pounds they put on and the weeping soars they’ve left untended are on display for all to see. Needless to say that all attempts conclude in success stories.

James Cherkoff from Collaborate Marketing offers corporate blogger coaching to clients. As a seasoned publicist and savvy web consultant he knows the issues involved in projecting corporate image through conventional PR and what works in the web context. Adriana Lukas also consults with corporations on their blogging strategy under the name of the Big Blog Company. It’s a growing business.

Popularity is also a great issue for business as it is with users. In a business context then the volume of customers exposed to your products or messages relate closely to success. Of course the amount of people passing through your showroom will effect the amount of cars you sell.

But volume isn’t the most important consideration in all cases. One thing we’re very aware of at Poke is that bloggers and their visitors are the very same illusive cognoscente that we hear so much about in client briefs. As the most networked, fastest, most connected floor-to-ceiling medium, it’s where the bleeding edge lives and therefore where opinions are formed and exchanged between leading thinkers and doers. If advertising is ultimately about influence then you can see why blogs are becoming a threat. These days you can’t hook people into an idea by showing them a clever ad.

The media in general too is under threat for the very same reasons. The old trade-offs between advertising, PR, and the press has led in many places to poor quality and reporting biased by the interests of sponsors. But users aren’t fooled so easily so for example 70% of film goers decisions in the US are driven by ‘unofficial’ editorial sites run by unpaid enthusiasts who can really offer neutral opinion. The professional critical community are no longer controlling the airwaves.

MD:
So is this where the more serious ‘grown-up’ side to it all comes in?

ME:
Absolutely. You often hear people talking about this stuff like it’s limited to the bedrooms of teenagers age 15 – 19 and of no consequence to the adult world. But you don’t need to look far to see examples of how this low level reporting and engagement is shifting the fabric of society.

No-one runs in the US election unless they’re backed by millions. That was until Howard Dean became a front runner in the last elections, running on the financial fuel of grass roots fundraising of average $100 donations. This support was all run through blogs and through moveon, a small and relatively inexpensive campaigning site. Changing governments is grown up.

We’re seeing more and more serious journalists starting their own presences and changing the landscape of news reporting and commentary. We’re seeing media companies trying to reform around these informal properties where all the action is. Only last month MTV announced a new user generated channel which hoped to capitalise on the phenomenon but probably more importantly stay relevant to a generation they’re losing to Bebo and Myspace. Notebook Magazine launched a few weeks ago in Switzerland is also user generated

Murdock paying $580M for Myspace.com a networking site AND blog also doesn’t suggest childsplay.

MD:
So when Poke are designing a new website, or advising a company on their communications, these views on the power of blogging are incorporated?

ME:
Our approach is not so much about blogging specifically but more about creating something that fits the context really well. The context in many cases however is one where a blog or blog-like format is appropriate. We just redesigned Topshop due to launch any time. We know visitors want to see what’s new, we know that there are some visitors who come every half an hour and some that comes once a month. The ‘newest at the top’ format serves both users very well. The first knows instantly when there’s new stuff, the second can wade through every post since they last visited. It’s a great fit. When we worked with Jamie Oliver we noticed the online diary he’d been keeping up to date for a couple of years was the most visited page even though it was five layers deep. So we brought it up to the front page and reversed the format. When we looked at how to improve Topgear we said the conventional format wasn’t allowing spontaneity through, something we thought was really important in delivering the brands much loved irreverence. So we worked a blog into the page. When ZOO asked us to amplify their recent ads we built a blog and put all the movies on Zootube which generated over 600 000 user exposures at very little cost. When we created Orange Talking Point we weren’t creating a blog but a discussion that would reach into the informal web community, stimulating bloggers to talk further, react and drive readers back to our site. We run our own blogs too and have done for some time. They’re not official poke, just informal things that teach us what it’s all about.

MD:
Just how addictive is blogging? Going back to the personal, what other effects do you see on the daily lives of people dealing with all this? Can you start your day without checking out your top two or three?

ME:
The addictive thing about blogging relates to them as identifiers and as expressions. Pop stars often complain about the come-down after tours which is because the elation experienced when performing and expressing themselves to fans withdraws. The blogger is in the same relationship as the singer, broadcasting their ideas to their readers / fans. They have a connection with their readers and build a reliance on this attention and in turn fear it will dissipate. Don’t you ever get the feeling you’ll lose out if you don’t check the email again even if you checked it two minutes ago?

Iain who’s strategy stroke creative person here had someone babysit crackunit whilst he was away last week. You might say that’s sad but then if any other media operation took a holiday someone would be expected to keep things rolling along.