A million penguins (and a bunch of bananas)

Met the charming Jeremy Ettinghausen, Marketing bod at Penguin, at the Nesta do last week. He’s responsible for among other things a fantastic social experiment in co-creation – essentially a novel (actually think it’s now 12 novels) written through mass online collaboration. Much like Russell’s genius Plannersphere, it’s a wiki that’s proved immensely popular with it’s natural constituency. At one point 10 individuals/second were logging in.

Of course, like all mass activities, some folk enjoy trying to bring the co-operation down. 25 individuals have been banned and there are at least 100 regular ‘vandals’. My favourite – it would be, wouldn’t it? – is the rather serious surrealism of the banana* version. The word banana kept appearing in the wiki edits and eventually the editors gave up trying to remove banana mentions.

Not only is this experiment a great marketing ‘behaviour’ (as I call it) but it also reveals some important truths – nice and less so – about mass-behaviour…go have a rummage and see what you think.

*Go here to see why I like the surreal banana thing…