Creative Economy Blog

Advertising cool cats at Kittencamp

Jon Kingsbury - 12.05.2010

No doubt that in years to come – probably with family and friends over a small glass of wine – someone will ask “Where were you when Gordon Brown left Number 10?”

I will reply sheepishly that at 8pm on May 11^th 2010 unlike the 10 million or so who tuned into the live TV coverage on BBC 1, I was, instead, in a small underground bar in London’s Soho, watching a man in a cat costume give a talk about Top 10 media Memes of the month.

The man, dressed as “Jess” from Postman Pat, was the delightful Chris Quigly from Rubber Republic. The event, Kittencamp , (#Kittencamp on Twitter), was an inaugural meeting of digital media advertising types looking at trending memes.

Rubber have published the full list for you to take a look at too. They range from home-made videos of cats, Hitler parodies and the use of the chain reaction meme in pop videos and adverts for Google Chrome.

The whole evening was a fun gathering of some of the most talented Madmen and women in town. But there’s more here than a trivial celebration of feline fun.

If cultural economist David Throsby wanted to prove his point that creative expression is the driver of a healthy, vibrant and ultimately prosperous creative economy, then he could have used these videos as prime examples. For these memes show that from the high-art of Fischli/Weiss to the re-tuning of pop music into the 8-bit games meme, original expression rapidly gets assimilated into commercial culture.

The UK ad industry, through a mix of playful creativity (man in a cat costume?) and an appetite to eschew cultural snobbery in favour of audience insight (meme hunting), has an enviable capacity to absorb, re-mix and develop effective campaigns which reflect and stretch cultural stereotypes. This is commercial and creative innovation happening at 1000 miles an hour.

The final speakers of the evening were no less fun, but their subject matter was of a more serious intent.

We’ve heard a lot over the general election campaign about the failure of social media to develop political impact on the electorate. NESTA published some research and ran an event confirming that, this time at least, that it isn’t quite the Web Wot Won It.

However, as our speaker John Plackett from Albion London pointed out, while social media did its best for the chattering classes, the general public were playing Slapometer in droves. Jon Burkhart at Iris spoke about how some of the most effective political or commercial campaigns online were those that parodied the efforts of the real parties. BNP Marmite anyone?

 So, I missed the powerful and touching events that unfolded in Downing Street, only to catch it later on iPlayer, before going on to Google “Standing Cat”.

Best,

Jon