“Shipping Out” is a documentary using new media and online technology to tell the real-life story of Rafael Aboulafia. Born in Palestine in 1893, Abulafia volunteered to serve in the British Army in World War One, hoping to help the British Empire conquer his homeland from the Ottomans whom he saw as a cruel enemy. But war had other plans for him. In April 1915 he shipped out of Alexandria to fight in Turkey in the Galipoli Campaign, one of history’s bloodiest battles. It was then, that he started keeping a diary. “Shipping Out” brings these events back to life, after exactly 95 years, as an interactive, digital, daily updated, blog experience.
The project’s creators, Roni Aboulafia and Shiri Perciger-Cohen, describe “Shipping Out” as an innovative experiment in memory, preservation and, no less important, an experiment in anachronistic media.
Roni’s story in his latest post reminded me of what was probably the most dramatic moment in my 15+ years of facilitating innovation. I’ve told this to people a few times (not many, because I am pretty ashamed of my role in the event), and they often don’t believe me, but I swear that this happened exactly as it is told here.
It was a pro-bono session in a city in the US MidWest, and the objective was to find innovative ways to improve communications and understanding in the local community, which had been stressed to the point of intermittent violence. The organizers had attempted to statistically represent, within the 16 participants, all segments of the local population according to race, religion, gender, sexual orientation and what not, and had done an excellent job. It was the heterogeneous-est group you could imagine, all of them good intentioned active citizens.
The first day went well, and on the morning of the second day, we opened with an exercise: the group sat on chairs in a circle, except for one person who stood in the middle. This person was asked by me to mention something he remembered from the first day, then pick another participant, ask them to stand up, and sit in their place, and so on.
The book “Thinkertoys” by Michael Michalko mentions a story on page 7 about a group of scientists who visited a tribe in New Guinea who believed that the world ended at a river nearby.
When one of the scientists had to leave, he crossed the river and waved to the tribesmen as he got to the other side. The tribesmen didn’t respond. When the other scientists asked why they hadn’t responded, they said that they hadn’t seen anyone across the river.
Their belief about the end of the world was so strong that it actually blinded them.
Do you think this happens just to people disconnected from the modern world? Well, I think this happens to all of us all the time. We simply can’t see what we don’t expect to see.
Sometimes it’s worth breaking your usual habits. This is a recurring message that we at SIT share. We decided to take our own advice, and make an exception to one of our (infamous) customs – we proactively set out to advertise our services. Our saving grace was that, at least, we wouldn’t do it in a conventional manner.
We recruited Eliyahu, a young MBA student, who has found an interesting way to make a living: Eliyahu promotes advertising campaigns on his shirt. While seemingly a familiar concept (after all, don’t most of our shirts have company logos and advertising messages on them?), Eliyahu took this banal idea and gave it a twist: You can literally buy the shirt for his back. For a fee, Eliyahu sells a “day” in his calendar on which he’ll wear a shirt sent to him by the procurer of his services. Eliyahu films himself wearing the shirt and then uploads the video to youtube along with a post about the brand/event/message in his blog, Twitter, and Facebook. There is already a hype around his t-shirt campaigns, and his follower base keeps growing.
Theoretically, Eliyahu’s advertising idea is perfect for small companies with tight budgets. But there is actually a hidden opportunity for larger companies as well, especially if they spread “Eliyahu’s” word to the masses. Think of the impact if an established Fortune 500 company would hire Eliyahu’s services, rather than the corner falafel store or Joe’s Printing Services (no offense intended). This has the Continue reading ‘The “wear about” of marketing innovation’
real-life story of Rafael Aboulafia. Born in Palestine in 1893, Abulafia volunteered to serve in the British Army in World War One, hoping to help the British Empire conquer his homeland from the Ottomans whom he saw as a cruel enemy. But war had other plans for him. In April 1915 he shipped out of Alexandria to fight in Turkey in the Galipoli Campaign, one of history’s bloodiest battles. It was then, that he started keeping a diary. “Shipping Out” brings these events back to life, after exactly 95 years, as an interactive, digital, daily updated, blog experience. 
