Want to see activist storytelling? Look to Senator Franken.

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) has emerged as one of Congress’ most devastating questioners of the myriad climate science deniers who fill President Donald Trump’s cabinet. And it’s largely because the comedian turned Senator combines two abilities rarely seen together — actual knowledge of climate science and genuine communications chops. Franken knows how to tell a good story, and as the best science communicators will tell you, the best messaging requires storytelling.

Source: Al Franken’s devastating strategy for taking on Trump’s team of climate science deniers

Stimulating familiar memories would lead to more engagement with new options similar to those memories, research suggests.

A computational model explains how memories of past rewards guide value-based choices. Incorporating behavioral and functional MRI evidence, the findings indicate that ‘sampling’ from individual memories of past rewards influences choices.

Source: Sampling memory to make profitable choices : Nature Neuroscience : Nature Research

Volume is up, quality is still equally distributed. Most video is either one-off novelty or single-play creativity that doesn’t engage over the long term. A message is insufficient to start a movement, but every message must rise above the noise to have a chance. Facebook’s video projects have a long way to go, and $3 million webisodes are not the sustainable answer.

Some agencies started using the new auditing capabilities a few months ago and have been stunned to see viewability rates on Facebook video campaigns as low as 20 percent, going up to 30 percent, according to interviews with nine agency execs. That’s way below the average viewability rate for video ads on sites, which is approximately 50 percent, according to Integral Ad Science.

Source: Facebook video ad viewability rates are as low as 20 percent, agencies say – Digiday

Brands are not America’s conscience, but they are part of the debate in a significant new way: Consumer identity is tied up with their spending, which people increasingly want to reflect their values.

In the end, consumers always have more money, though less concentrated than brand budgets. Brands must engage in evolutionary discussions about their plans with the customer and community to be trusted and supported in their goals.

Have brands become America’s conscience? Some are certainly acting like it, judging by a spate of media boycotts that have targeted certain television programmes and even the production of a Shakespeare play.

Source: Social media is forcing brands to flex their muscles

A very worthwhile discussion at The Washington Post about the meaning of free speech and corporate unwillingness to be associated with dissent. Marketers should acknowledge that their refusal to take a stand isn’t taking a stand, that backing away from their country and customers’ discussion of controversial issues makes the company a weaker participant across the entire range of engagements. Positive actions, including taking a stand against art that is objectionable, make impressions more powerful than those created by refraining to fund institutions they have previously supported with no detailed explanations.

Corporations seeking to protect their reputations from hordes of complaining consumers may not examine art this deeply or carefully. From a corporate perspective, support for the arts is generally meant to jazz up the bland images of giant companies and to suggest that they have a civic function beyond merely extracting money from their customers. But if the only art that businesses such as Delta and Bank of America are willing to support is bland to the point of meaninglessness, their timidity merely reinf

Source: In dumping the Public Theater’s ‘Julius Caesar’ over Trump, Bank of America and Delta are making us angrier and dumber – The Washington Post

A good read for thinking about accelerated lives and how they are shared. Deliberation — the idea of a process based on respect and a healthy skepticism but conducted with respect — is the missing ingredient in most facets of public conversation these days. Shouting down the others isn’t advancing anyone’s cause.

Some have suggested Twitter is a sort of crowdsourced poetry, but how many millions of miles is it from Auden: a cacophony of voices, endlessly shouting over each other, splintering what’s left of a “national discussion” into millions of tiny shards.

Source: Prozac Nation Is Now the United States of Xanax – The New York Times

Our friends at ARtillry are tracking  Augmented Reality investments, which we agree will eclipse Virtual Reality investment in the short term. The world is waiting to be annotated with AR experience.

Superdata has recently plotted the trajectory of funding levels so far, as a baseline for predicting what’s to come. Its biggest prediction is similar to one that we’ve made: AR investments will eclipse VR investments and accelerate faster.

Source: Data Point of the Week: Where are VR/AR Investment Dollars Flowing? – ARTILLRY: A PUBLICATION AND INTELLIGENCE FIRM FOR AR & VR

AR apps can extend to new channels, such as out-of-home advertising that triggers AR experience. Think multi-channel. Think telling your story in fragments in one medium that start engagement in another.

Some of the billboards have also been activated as “PokéStops” in the game, where people can catch Pokemon.

Source: Pokemon Go’s Outdoor Ads Celebrate Its Top User Cities on First Anniversary – Print (video) – Creativity Online

This is a case of narratives meeting in multi-channel media, where “fake” contends with truth. We should have an open discussion around this topic, as platforms, though not necessarily Google and Facebook are permanent features of the economy.

But beyond Google and Facebook’s well-meaning efforts to get out the vote, there are plenty of other ways in which these two internet giants can affect an election.

Source: It’s impossible for Google and Facebook to be politically neutral – The Verge

One of the most powerful ways to ignite data storytelling is to help individuals access their own data.

Open to every Icelander, this new initiative follows an Open Notes study with more than 13m participants in the US that showed simply giving access to health data leads to healthier living and reduced healthcare spending, through empowering patients and building stronger relationships with medical professionals.

Source: Digi.me allowing Icelandic citizens to download their own health data in world first | digi.me blog