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The internet is essentially a relevance engine. It allows you to navigate a path of your choosing, digging deeper into topics that interest you and bypassing the things that don’t.

So, when it comes to trying to tell people about your product or service, relevance is your secret weapon.

You should do solutions and not ads. You need to think like an inventor and a storyteller.

Do a demonstration

A collective action

A creative platform

A phone app

An interactive video

A tool

A product

A game

A character

A world

A visulisation

An experience money can’t buy…

In-fact, an ad should be the last thing you should be doing.

Do something RELEVANT to the medium

The above is a TV ad done by the agency I used to work out.

This is a digital execution of the same thought.  We could have just created some banner ads with the funny looking kid and the same endline. This lazy approach to digital advertising is known as “Matching luggage”, and should be avoided as a rule.

Here are some other examples as you how you can make ideas relevant to the medium.

Be interactive

Subservient Chicken is a legendary example of an interactive campaign. It needed you to interact with it to bring it to life. It was unexpected, discoverable, bizarrely hilarious and super successful.

This Skittles You Tube video also asks for your interaction to close the loop in an unexpected and surreal way.

Put the audience inside the idea

Burger King’s Whopper Sacrifice gave you more than just a free burger for offing your sham Facebook friends, it gave you a story, kudos for calling bullshit on the whole competitive Facebook friending phenomenon. It put you inside the idea, and the story of your participation became yours to tell. The fact they turned Facebook shutting it down into PR victory, doubles the genius of this legendary campaign.

My agency did Remote Control Tourist last year. It put our audience in charge of the story and where it went.

Museum of Me literally built your personalised story using your own Facebook information. As well as being an incredible technical achievement, its true cleverness lies in creatively feeding back on everyone’s favourite topic – themselves.

Do a product demonstration

This is a project I worked on a few years back. We were luckily given a product that had a unique feature which allowed you to send prints to a printer from anywhere via email. So we demonstrated this capability by sticking it into an art museum and turned it into an inclusive art project.

Orcon Broadband in New Zealand could have just said our broadband is fast, instead, they did this.

Be useful

The brief for this project was to show that the Yellow Pages is still useful, so we used its API and catch-up TV of a renovation show to create a whole new way of using it.

Everyone got a bit carried away the promise of Augmented Reality a few years back. USPS using it to size-up parcels was a perfect application.

Bring data to life

Wearable tech is coming in all shapes and sizes, which means we will be able to feedback on peoples behaviour in new a meaningful ways.

Create a product

Make your idea relevant by adding to what is already going on rather than distracting from it.

Stay Smart, America! from Ben Jones on Vimeo.

Did you know that Dolly Parton wrote the songs “Joelene” and “I will always love you” on the same night?

Also, legendary Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr wrote the indie classics “This Charming Man”, “Still Ill” and “Pretty Girls Make Graves” in a single evening because they needed songs for a John Peel session.

Wish I had nights like that.

I should also stop listening to such campy music.

I am teaching a workshop later this month for AWARD on writing for digital and social media called Giving Data A Soul.

A big part of this will be equipping those who come with some valuable online resources.  So at the end of the course, they can actively keep updated on the ever-changing world of ads, ideas and innovations.

I have my own lists of sites and people I follow, but greedily, I want yours so it’s a much-rounded resource. Each contribution will be gratefully credited.

So if you’ll indulge me, can I ask for:

1. Your top three blogs for ads, ideas, online?

2. The top three people you follow in social media for up to date and relevant knowledge.

Post them below.

Thanks. You rule.

I am very excited to be teaching two day intensive workshop for AWARD later this month.

It’s a practical field guide built out of my own experience as a Senior Copywriter/Digital Creative Director in the digital space over the last nine years, and my time as web designer and developer several years before that.

Because the truth is, although the roles of strategists, UX specialists and technologists have become essential. The role of the creative storyteller to give digital work a relevance and humanity is more valuable than ever.

Or to put it another way, we need Copywriters to give data a soul.

This workshop is for anyone working as an agency copywriter/communications specialist who uses writing, ideas and online to create their work.

Enrol here, or feel free to ask me any questions below.

This Saturday, our client NAB has trained ten commentary teams to call the AFL Grand Final in their native language live via Footify FM.

Whatever happens, it’s great to know that we’ve won over one skeptic, and our idea has been embraced in the inclusive spirit in which it was intended.

Might send my Mum this article.

High Street Northcote has two tattoo removal shops.

In the same way the trend of getting tattoos originated from this hipster enclave, the trend of removing them seems to be starting from the same place.

Years ago I asked someone who worked in finance how i could invest in tattoo removal. He just looked at me strangely.

I wished I’d asked someone else.

I’m  still thinking I might invest in a Tattoo removal franchise before they get popular in Doncaster.

Then I can invite you all to have a money fight on my yacht.

I’ve joined my friends Matt, Rhys and Bruno in their remarkable idea for a businesses.

They are taking everything they know about design, software and mechatronics and creating a company that makes it possible for people with great ideas, to make those ideas happen.

Here’s a short film I made about their recent Laneway Learning session.

The latest Adobe stunt doing the rounds.

Our NAB campaign from last year.

An amazing TED Talk which answers how artists and musicians can make a living in a world where we no longer pay for the things they create.