I’ve been recently intrigued by the idea of getting the Matter subscribers to do a single jigsaw puzzle. I like the idea of everyone (notice how I avoided the over-used word community) collectively create something and I’m particularly fascinated by the things inside Matter moving from the private experience into a more public one.
The easy and more obvious way to do this would to do it online, but web puzzles seem to be a bit twee and, frankly, a little unrewarding. But, maybe that’s just the ones I’ve seen. More dramatic and exciting is the prospect of getting all the Matter subscribers to ‘do’ the puzzle in real life. Obviously, this wouldn’t be easy, not least of the challenges would be getting people to physically do the puzzle and how could we avoid the inevitable frustration if one person failed to turn up with their piece?
Leave aside the politics, the Freedom Not Fear campaign created this collage of our leader from CCTV images, which goes some way to illustrating how this might work.
Could we do the same but for purely entertaining reasons?
Photo: Felix Cohen (on Flickr)
We sent an email to all our subscribers on Thursday which, from the replies, might have confused a few people.
Quite understandably, some of you, even though you’re pleased to hear another Matter box is coming, are wondering why you didn’t get the first edition.
Matter is published like a magazine (in limited numbers), so they all go out at the same time. The pilot edition went out to a very limited audience (944) in February. The next (which is really the first) edition–which was originally planned for the summer–is coming in October. A bit longer than anticipated.
The problem would seem to be semantic. I think we confused people by not making clear the distinction between the pilot edition–which had already gone out and was no longer available–and the first edition, which was (and is still) yet to come.
The Americans faced this problem with Hurricanes; it was difficult to keep track of various storms by date and location and much easier when they were given names. This problem only became evident after years of suffering numerous storms. We’ve managed it with one box.
Maybe to reduce the confusion, maybe we’d better give the next one a name.
Picture by Petroleumjelliffe reproduced under a Creative Commons licence.
Matter is a new channel. It challenges all sorts of accepted wisdom about advertising and communications. The idea was so new there wasn’t much to point at to say whether it would work or not.
The first question was whether there’d be any interest in it. The original concept was to create Matter boxes for specific audiences we could identify with existing data. While we knew we people would like it when they got it, we didn’t believe we could get lots of people (who weren’t graphic designers) to voluntarily sign up to get Matter. We were wrong.
We ran the pilot edition earlier this year to test the concept and see how people reacted to it. We sent out 944 boxes and within two weeks, 20,000 people had signed up for the next edition and our initial plans were redundant. (There’s 30,000 of you now).
We knew we wanted to create different Matter editions tailored for different audiences, but we needed to know who was within our (now all-subscriber) audience.
So, before we make more targeted boxes, we’re sending the next edition to everyone who’s subscribed (even if you’re not the young male it’s notionally aimed at). To help us make better boxes geared for different people, we’re asking a few more questions about what people do and what they like. If you’re already a subscriber, it’d be really helpful if you could go back into your profile and answer the questions (you’ll need to log-in with your user name and password to get to your profile).
Creating a new channel is very exciting because we have a completely clean sheet of paper, but it also means there’s a lot to do. So, to make it better (and easier), Matter is now part of Royal Mail who’ll bring their huge network and considerable resources, leaving me free to concentrate on creating great boxes people will like getting.
We’ll detail the ups and downs of developing Matter here, along with anything else we think you might be interested in hearing about. More soon…
Picture of a Golf Ball Rocket reproduced with thanks under Creative Commons Licence from Juvetson
I’ve noticed a pattern, both from people I’ve spoken to and from many of the blogs and reviews. Everyone who got the box seems to have one item they seem to really like and one they don’t. They all seem to feel quite strongly about their choices–which is fantastic–and of course, they’ve all got different ideas as to why the pieces are good / bad / pointless. Curiously, almost all the pieces in the box manage to be someone’s most / least favourite at least once.
I think this is quite unusual. Given that we’ve worked with different agencies, people and companies, isn’t it odd that all of the items come out with a similar chance of being someone’s most / least favourite? Now, true, the point of Matter is that we bring a pretty clear idea of what we want the whole thing to feel like, but, in the normal course of things, you’d still expect one or two clear winners and one or two obvious turkeys.
Isn’t that normally what happens?
I’ve been asked by a couple of agencies to come in and introduce Matter.
Today, it was the nice people at PHD in London, one of whom, John V Willshire had received his Matter box and kindly invited me to come in and run through what we’d learned so far. As is often the case, people come in and out and I leave the box on the table for everyone to have a rummage through its contents.
I’ve always believed that people’s engagement with objects is universal; that people like to touch and hold real things no matter who they are. Someone commented that this “was probably what the recipients did when they got it”. I think that’s exactly right.
I always try and avoid the word ‘launch’.
It implies a whole level of activity that’s way beyond my organisational capabilities. So, a week after we gently eased Matter on the world, what was supposed to be a low-key evaluation has generated a minor frenzy of blogging and some very enthusiastic reviews from people like notcot, proteinOS, Roo.Reynolds, Nick Burcher, i Noted (”so, everyone is talking about the Matter box…”), notkindacool and a splendid mention on Springwise. Charlie Gower and Bobbie Johnson were more critical but remained intrigued enough to say they’ll still want to get it.
The response to Matter has been overwhelming to be truthful. I’d expected it all to have centred around the “fairly interesting” level–sort of like a three or a four on a numerical scale (which would have included quite a few negative respones too, but, I’ve had only one negative comment). Overall, the level seems to be more around the “really interesting” level–more like an eight or a nine. Blimey.
Photos: roo.reynolds, spiffea, Axis Sound System. Thank you.
We’re curious to know what’s happened to the Matter boxes in the few days since they were delivered. We’d love to hear from you about what you’ve done with your box and where it is now.You can join the Matterbox group on flickr where you can post a picture and a description of where it is now and what’s happened to the contents.Or you can tell us here…
I’ve been somewhat pre-occupied with getting the content together for the very first Matter box, and realised I haven’t put anything on here about the trial and how the project is progressing.
The talking-to-people phase is coming to an end and soon the real fun of making real stuff will begin. Just as well since my prototype is looking pretty tired and dog-eared (see above). The whole project is getting that slight tingle of anticipation about it now, and though I’ve got a hiideous amount of work to do in putting the consumer trial together, it’s starting to gather momentum. I’ve got most of the items and brands in place now (I’ll post a full list once all are completely in place) and the best thing is that the mix of brands, ideas and things is every bit as good as I hoped.
The Matter trial is available to anyone who wants to get one, all you have to sign up to get one. It’ll be delivered Saturday February 2nd. 2008.
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