Over the past year, I've been living almost exclusively online. If I had to guess, I would estimate I've watched more than 200 movies and competed a dozen series. I wrote and recorded a bunch. I've played video games and scrolled multiple marathons distance on Twitter. And then came TikTok. Oh boy, Clubhouse.
In marketing, advertising, whatever, we call them 'experiences' (myself included) but I think that is what the youth would call "bullshit". It's amazing how little of that screen time I have memories of. It has all blurred together. My memories are all of physical, real-world experiences. I'm not sure how many of those movies that I watched that I could name at the moment, through some were excellent.
This weekend, I drove to a store to buy something for less than $10 that Amazon probably could have delivered in the same day because I couldn't stand looking at a screen any more. Going to Home Depot is no exciting feat, but I found myself looking forward to it, if for no other reason than it was a change of scenery. An experience (sort of), but not much more memorable than scrolling Netflix or Twitter. And when I had the product I needed, I had to check myself out. Ultimately, it was still me and a screen.
I wonder when this is all over what the collective drive to escape screen experiences is going to do to our lives and culture. There will certainly a burst of imaginative events and retail, and I wonder how much they'll end up being odd fads versus long-term trends shaped by this odd year we 'experienced' together.
This week, I have the fantastic James Gregson, digital creative director at LEGO, one of my favorite brands. I learned to love LEGO as a child, but continued loving it playing their video games and then assembling models with my own children. I followed James on (virtual) stage at a Brand Innovators event and was captivated by his point of view. He was kind enough to join me for this talk about combining the online and offline.
Read the transcript for this episode here: http://adampierno.com/james-gregson-puts-it-together/
James Gregson puts it together