Discover the H-code with Uma Thurman's dad. Scriff File 241

Got a letter in the post this week which wasn't a household bill.
The 5th Annual Conference on Happiness and Its Causes is on in Sydney in May.
And Edward de Bono, Dr Robert Thurman (that's Uma's dad), Naomi Wolf (Author of The Beauty Myth), Hugh Mackay - even Natasha Stott Despoja (the former leader of the Democrats) are speaking about how are we to live.
It's a great question. I was thinking about this as I flew over my beautiful city at night.
Flying over Brisbane always makes me happy and sad - because you see all the sprawling chaos.

At night, all you see are roads and buildings and electric lights.
All the electricity being burned on a Saturday night just for security purposes in empty warehouses.
Lovely to gaze down upon. All taken for granted. But can we afford it?

The financial woes pressing down on world economies are tied up with scarcity - the scarcity of bare necessities.
If people aren't working - there's less taxes, less money for health and infrastructure.

Everybody's tied up with details on the ground too busy to pull back and see the big picture.
Maybe this conference would be a great opportunity to do just that.


Happiness seems to be a recurring theme for me at the moment.
Coca-Cola is also seeking to associate itself with Happiness.
I went through the motions of creating a digital campaign which I had intended to enter in the Content 360 competition that MIPTV.


MIPTV is the famous Cannes (as in South of France) annual gathering of the world's TV industry for a huge trade show - if you want to buy or sell TV to the world this is where you come.
But in recent years they've been interested in digital content and this year Coca-Cola and the ad agency Ogilvy lay down the challenge to create an idea for branded content that engages teenagers: a TV show, a web movie series, a mobile application.
I came up with: Discover the H-code.
The code for Happiness.

But I didn't submit it because it really disturbed me.
It was like I was Anakin Skywalker flirting with the dark side.
And in the end I abandoned the project - I could not turn.

This whole concept of branded entertainment is something I've been interested in for a while in story design.
At the Media 2010 conference last Friday I listened to the aspirations of top companies in this regard:  
Richard Titus, CEO of Britain's Associated Northcliffe Digital, is a very clever and creative man.
He's been at the forefront of digital media since the beginning.
He has his people now creating a single user profile for their customers across the group which includes The Daily Mail newspaper, jobsite and many other data and content businesses.

If you look for a job on their jobsite website they can cross reference the data they have when you start looking for real estate on their other website and they build a whole profile on you.
It's not new - everyone's doing it.
And they do want to install a prompt to pop up and allow you to edit the profile on you - if you wish.

The reason they want to know all about you is so they can "create an experience to delight the customer" in order to sell you stuff.
In other words it's all ADVERTISING - making a world that fits you like a glove, allaying all your fears so that you feel comfortable with buying stuff - their stuff.
Much more powerful advertising than we've ever seen before.

Now, if people are fully aware of what's going on and they can factor that into their thinking (ie they are educated and the process is transparent) then that seems fine.
But if we're marketing to teenagers who just go along for the ride (like the slug humans in Wall-E who spend their lives glued to screens and consuming) that's not fine.
It's not so much about government regulation as it is about education and awareness.
It's like technology is moving so much faster than governments, education and a lot of parents - who are probably even more vulnerable than their digitally literate children.
Don't take my word for it go to talk to an informed pediatrician who deals with kids whose lives have been jumbled by media consumption:
i-Kids: Children & the Media

Happiness is tied up with social and digital media these days: the mobile phone, the internet, Facebook.
We need to look at ALL the angles.
Just like big business is doing.

What do you think?