Five things on Friday #256

Have you seen DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE (easily the best sequel in the entire franchise)?

Know that whole ‘let’s rob the federal reserve and steal it all with dump trucks’ bit? Yeah, the writer’s work on the subject was so good that the FBI was called in to investigate just how the writer, Jonathan Hensleigh, knew so much about it.

Brilliant.

If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while (or if you know a bit about me and my work) you’ll know that about two years ago now, I started dicking about with building chatbots. I built one for the building I work in (if you ever visit Ogilvy London, search Messenger for ‘Roombot’) and subsequently wrote the strategic POV for the agency and launched a bot building practice/framework to help figure out how this new technology could be applied to solve consumer and client problems.

I wrote about it two trends decks ago and, in the most recent one, reviewed my prediction of ‘The chatbot gold rush’ as a ‘B+’ for effort while remarking that ‘it was less of a rush, more a leisurely jog’.

In short: bots arrived but they didn’t exactly set the world alight and, like multitudes of new technologies as and when they’ve appeared, it takes a bit of time to figure exactly how to apply them.

This article (and the title for this section) is a really good dip on where we are with bots today.

It goes some way in addressing the whole mis-naming problem that’s gone on with chatbots/bots etc… ‘Message app’ or ‘Message service’ is probably an easier and more accurate sell.

We’re still building bots for clients (we’ve run Stoptober on Messenger for Public Health England the past two years and, most recently, built the messenger solution for Reuters) – with more to follow v soon.

I guess our golden rule is a combination of framing vs pointy-problem-solving. In reverse order: what is the pointy problem we’re trying to solve and, when we’ve worked that out, how do we frame the messenger-based solution correctly to the consumer to encourage participation.

One to noodle on…

Three this week: 

• Asia Argentino – for The Guardian.
• Asking ‘Sugar Daddies’ about Me Too.
• Hey Japan, you’re next! 
• Google made this data vis: ‘Me Too Rising‘. 

BEEE-OH-EN-OH-ESSS.

• Spotted some great AR stuff in the wild this week. First up, new PlayStation game GOD OF WAR (more on this shortly) launched an AR map that you can just pop down on any flat surface and look around. I put it on a table at work - and it looked great. The second thing I saw was this INCREDIBLE IKEA ‘door’ execution. I love what kind of promise this shows. Can you imagine te-telling The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe in this way? Immense. 
• Speaking of GOD OF WAR (my reward for getting this newsletter out on time tonight is to open the copy of the game I’ve got sat here next to me), this brand new and incredibly high-rated game is out today. This is a reaction video from the director of the game after he saw the first scores come in after the embargo lifted. It’s beautiful.
• I love this postcard.
• The world isn’t as horrific as you think.
• Sun’s out, tunes out - here’s a bunch of summer playlists for your ears.
• Creativity’s female future (this is great).
• F*** YOUR LIBRARY (not sure about this but OK).