#tomas roope

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Our Tom giving a rundown on making digital more emotional. This was following his talk at 'The Future of Advertising 2014'.

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Dug up this film from 2010. The good people at LYNfabrikken flew Tom out to Denmark to talk about our work and aspirations. "I upset my bank manager by not going off and making lots of websites" -Tomas Roope

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A really nice few words our work to introduce Tom as a speaker for It's Nice That's 'Here' symposium.

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Tom Roope, Emma Gibson and Will Hudson represented the UK for the Toffie Pop Culture Conference and Festival 2012 held in Cape Town S.A. They gave talks, workshops and exhibited the UK Team's exhibition piece. More images and info here

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Best of Welsh Design Awards Wonder Talks

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Nice one Tom! Our CD makes the 2012 list

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Came across this video of Tom in 2010 talking to COFA about our work following the interactive music video we produced for The Petshop Boys. Still relevant and full of gems. "If you're not changing you've got a shelf life" being a favourite Tom-ism.

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Tom has a brain download (Jan, 2012)

Our CD Tomas Roope on successful hybrid communication, the mobile frontier, and how brands need to realise they are in competition with peoples friends for attention...

On what successful hybrid communication is:

I suppose it is respecting and understanding the broad range of communication tools. Each tool operates in a different context and thus has a different relationship with the audience. The traditional vs digital argument is not really very helpful, is a spanner better than a hammer? The key is to engage in different ways on different platforms. I expect to have to watch ads on T.V (I understand its transitional nature. I watch 4minutes of ads to see 20 minutes of what I want to see), but when it comes to digital platform the same content just annoys me, what am I getting from it? Digital platforms are mine and engagement is by invitation only. Effective communication on these platforms has to feel like I am getting more than I am giving, a very tricky challenge. On The Rumpus Room approach:

Brands want to see their investment working harder across communication platforms, especially in social spaces, while at the same time people are increasingly wanting to be included, they want to make things that show (and get other people to see) how talented, creative, funny, cool or for/against something they are. We founded The Rumpus Room to harness the power of people building experiences together and align this activity to with brand communication. Here is a nice quote that kind of summarises what we are talking about: "Creating something personal, even of moderate quality, has a different kind of appeal to consuming something made by others, even of a high quality” - Clay Shirky

On the Lilly Allen ‘The Fear’ / Lips Xbox 360 project: We came on board when the performance sourcing tour was already established, in its basic form. It was a classic product experience approach where 3 teams were scheduled to tour for 6 weeks in shopping malls, clubs etc and film people using the game lips (an Xbox based karaoke game). We worked with them to establish what they should do (background colours, lighting etc), and built a database that the touring teams could record the subjective (how good where they?)  and empirical data ( back ground colour, gender etc) for each performance. This was exciting for us, as we had done some similar projects but using web submissions. The problem with this approach is that the only really low barrier to submit content is through a server based streaming capture system, which is reliant on really good connection speeds to get anything like good / stable content. It was really nice to see the results from our software when we were able to use the HD content from the tour, rather than the flakey content we had been capturing from web cams on our previous projects. It was a bit of a scary project because we didn't really get a sense of how it would look until we had finished the touring and Lily shoot, so there was no going back if we had messed up, but luckily it all worked out how we thought. In the end it was a reasonably simple process, as we had already developed some of the hardcore compositional software, but also extremely time consuming (rendering). It is probably the project we have done that has received the most attention, as it really seems to tap into an approach that really embodies an authentic social experience, while resulting in a pretty classic piece of slick & testimonial advertising. We have been working hard at mobile as a way of people capturing film locally and then submitting the film they have captured. This will really improve the quality of the source content, as well as getting the content out of peoples bedrooms.

On brands, mobile and marketing:

Mobile is the new frontier, but for me it is a really tricky environment. If you have a good idea for an application, why would you do it for a brand? Why not just make it and sell it. The barrier to create something you can sell is really low for creative developers, and all brands will do is compromise the experience to up their presence in the experience. It feels like the music or games industry, where advertising has really struggled for the same reasons. Advertising is never really wanted, it just creates want, and struggles when it is up against an industry that is purely focused on satisfying peoples desires. There are of course exceptions, but for me they really prove the rule. Ideas that are going to work need to extend beyond the duration of the usual advertising campaign and provide utility (remember that fun is utility). They need to embody the brand communication so that the idea does not need to be compromised to deliver the brand message, and get clients to pay more for it than you could make if you just made it and sold it.

These are four pretty big hurdles, but are not insurmountable.

On social media and marketing:

The key is to understand that brands are competing with people’s friends. Brands are used to communicating with people in spaces where the audience has no choice but to listen, which is not true in social spaces. Brands need a reality check; they really need to understand how interesting they really are. This must come from a shift of creatives looking at the audience not as the object but the subject of what they make. Brands need to be more relevant and entertaining than my friends for me to bother getting involved.

On collaborating with the audience:

I suppose I am really interested in new was of being a creative author, that harnesses people as co creators rather than just looking at them as them as "the audience". The challenge as an author is to look at chance not as the enemy, but as an intrinsic part of the process. We need to think of how we build responsive platforms, rather than fixed monologues. All very challenging and threatening, but exciting. Brian Eno sums it up really well [Brian Eno talks to Jeremy Paxman on austerity influencing art]

  via Herman Manson for Marklives.com