*supercollider

Over at Parsons they’ve introduced a class where your grade is based on how famous you become on the internet. Young aspiring artists are being rewarded for their ingeniousness in gaming the system. Sounds like both great fun and lawsuit fodder in waiting.

It is also however valid training for the real world these days, where it seems like attention by any cost is a viable strategy for some brands, personal or otherwise.

OK, so outright fraud or even the darker hues of shadiness may not be on the cards for most brands. At least, not unless you want to end up on a list like, say, the 10 Worst Social Campaigns of 2008.

But Tom Asacker’s overview of the economics of attention helps illustrate why many brands will be experimenting with creative tactics for garnering attention amongst social systems large and small in the near future, whether it’s stealth word of mouth in taxicabs or a robot-assisted YouTube campaign all the way to #1. The big question is going to be where the the consumer ends up drawing the ethical line, because you know the more adventurous brands and agencies will keep testing the limits until they find out. Not blatantly lying is a good start. Any other key tips?

I’ll admit to being slightly bummed at the idea that instead of a shiny new world of value-added brand utilities and useful marketing arising from the ashes of interruption based marketing, we could end up falling prey to amped up SEO black-hat tactics instead. But where the money moves, the hustlers inevitably follow. And I suppose the more obviously blatant ways of gaming the system could look like an appealing fall back tactic for marketers unwilling or unable to come up with a really good idea for authentically engaging with consumers, or unwilling to make a long-term commitment to see a real brand-building program through. Sort of like the 2008 version of “buy me a billion banner impressions for this annoying animated MPU so I can put that in my powerpoint and impress my boss who likes big numbers, and won’t question the actual value received to the brand as a result”. Cough.

Generally though, in a world of increasing transparency, I still think brands and people will be rewarded for doing good and often disproportionally punished for doing wrong. So it’s generally just better to try and create cool things and let people who would be interested know they’re out there, rather than trying to blatantly scam the system.

Back to the students at Parsons. Should they decide not to use their lessons in social systems engineering to manage their own brand or that of another, this semester is still not lost yet. Whether making millions from flipping penny stocks, navigating the corporate jungle gym, or getting a good seat on an EasyJet flight, as Rex pointed out recently, life is increasingly being structured as a set of mini-games comprising one big macro ludic adventure. They may be getting tutelage, but everyone’s a player now, like it or not.