If I was an upscale urban hipster cycling daily through the metropolis I would certainly be having one of these stylish and talk-about-able cycling helmet covers by Yakkay.
They call it 'Brainwear for smart people'.
Might just get one anyway for when I'm taking my tractor out for a spin.
The khaki 'Tokyo' is doing it for me, would go with my colonial Daktari safari suit.
hat-tip (literally) to Becky in the office.
Sam has kindly given me his free 2nd copy of Hugh MacLeod's book 'Ignore Everybody'.
Looking forward to devouring it over the course of a few commutes.
Simple 'viral' idea. Pre-orders (US) got an extra free copy to pass on to a friend.
Fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa.. better.
Interesting piece in this mornings Harvard Business blog by Anthony Tjan on Psychographics.
Anthony says; 'Psychographic information reveals far more [than traditional demographics] about customers' preferences and purchasing habits.'
'If you understand how your customers interact with the world and what they value most, you are far more likely to be able to give them what they want. Ask them questions geared at their personalities and preferences. Use association-based questions, such as "If you were a car, what kind of car would you be?" The answers will help you better profile your customers so you understand which products they want and how to market them.'
Exactly.
This is why You can learn more about a person and their worldview from asking them their 3 favourite bands or movies than anything you can glean from their age, where they live or how much money they make.
Context. Or People, Passions and Situations - as I have mentioned before.
'In my life, why do I give valuable time, to people who don't care if I live or die...?"
A Morrissey nugget that encapsulates the marketer's dilemma as sagely reported by Doddsy, as follows.
'I heard industry practitioners speaking of clients worried about losing control of their messaging, obsessed with identifying those mythical influencers and, best of all, of the opinion that "the internet was only for people who love us or hate us - when we should surely be focussing on the indifferent masses."
Found myself agreeing with Nigel Walley in last weeks new media age.
The word 'digital' in marketing has started to lose it's meaning.
He says; 'The minute a word shifts from adjective to noun you know it has had its day'.
Very true.
Digital newspapers, digital tv, digital music, everything online, and of course the mobile device makes everthing potentially interactive.
In fact just about every form of media you can think of is now created, distributed and consumed via digital 'channels'. Like the word 'viral'before it, 'digital' is now irrelevant. It's just media and things.
Worse still, now I think about it my own job title is now largely irrelevant.
Head of Digital is the equivalent of Head of knitted, or Head of pieces of paper or something.
'It's ironic that retailers and restaurants live or die on customer service, yet their employees have some of the lowest pay and worst benefits of any industry. That's one reason so many retail experiences are mediocre for the public.'
Howard Schultz : Starbucks Coffee Chairman
Relax Howard, the Goodge St branch are doing a good job.
The best answers are always preceded by intelligent, challenging questions.
Challenge yourself, challenge your brief, challenge the market, challenge conventions, challenge your client.
Understand different businesses have different strategic challenges and priorities.
We live in the real world, and this world is a combination of the analogue, digital, experiential, participatory, direct, indirect, active, passive, interruptive (!), and collaborative.
Any Tom, Dick, Harry or Social media expert can wheel out the latest 'shiny object' technology or platform, but to understand how and why people want to search, engage with brands, make decisions, transact and participate and consume means asking the right questions.
Especially of yourself and your own motivations.
(HT to Scott in our office who started this thought this morning)
Awesome piece of silliness from Never Get Out of the Boat's favourite mash up genius Mark Vidler aka Go Home Productions.
Heavily featuring the Dickies '79 punk-pop classic cover of the 'Theme from Banana Splits' it's a virtual 7inch single on Yellow vinyl, cut up and pasted up with numerous other samples (most notably a Rod Stewart cameo. Mark describes it as 'created under the influence of The Jamms / KLF / Coldcut / Steinski.'
Mark also has his new album out on 22nd July, titled "The Future, The Past & The Present Tension" it will be available as a free download form the main Go Home Productions site.
'I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered.
My life is my own, I am not a number, I am a person.'
note: I see the remake of The Prisoner is scheduled for November in the US and early 2010 for the UK. Sir Ian McKellen is number 2 with James Caviezel (strange choice..?) in the McGoohan role as number 6.
Ther's a curious teaser site Seek the Six. I'm not quite sure what it's supposed to do.
The update is...there is no update.
I reported on the giant hole in the ground back in October last year.
It's still a giant hole in the ground...
This iphone app (i can't link to it as it's US only on the itunes store, sorry) created for US rapper Soulja Boy Tell'Em allows fans 'remix' three songs and add extra samples, so they can be saved out as mp3s and then shared amongst other fans.
The interesting thing is - the app sells for $5 USD on itunes. Five times the price of a regular mp3 track. For the added value it's worth it for fans.
The trick is - you need the app to do the thing and the sharing.
Connect with fans + reason to buy = business model....again.
via Wired.
I'm getting impatient for the new football season, so had to dig out this clip again.
Classic nugget 'Tottenham Hotspur postponed-uh, West Ham United 1H - uh'
It's in the nature of social networks, subcultures, communities of purpose or whatever you want to call them, to be both mutually supportive, and commercial at the same time.
Brands looking to be attractive need to know where to play.
This is not just about online either. It's about being purpose-driven not technology-driven.
The simplest and best option is to look for situations and create value.
Through content, utility, helping people get to where they want to be, giving them something to do or a story to tell.
A few questions regarding the report published this week by Morgan Stanley Bank on media habits of teenagers.
The report was written by one of their summer interns, aged 15, and based on the media consumption of him and his friends. Clearly a representative sample of all teenagers.
Top-line nuggets:
They consume more media, but are not keen to pay for it.
They don't like intrusive advertising.
They are happy to chase content and music across platforms
and devices (iPods, mobiles, streaming sites).
Newspapers and printed media are viewed as irrelevant.
Events (cinema, concerts etc.) remain popular and will be paid for.
The convergence of gaming, TV, mobile and Internet is accelerating.
High-end smartphones are desirable but too expensive.
Texting is still key and use of data services limited due to cost.
As a source of insight, it has no real value, however.
Who are these teenagers?
White kids? Black kids? Asian kids?
13, 14, 15, 16, 17?
Middle class? Working class?
Do they live in cities? towns? villages?
Are they hip-hoppers, skaters, football hooligans, ballet dancers?
Are they posh kids who spend their summers working in banks or do they run around smashing windows and sniffing glue?
These kind of reports are interesting to a point but from a marketing perspective it tells you nothing.
Generational segmentation has long been a dead end.
A bunch of kids dressed in black with Converse and eye make up at a My Chemical Romance gig tells you something about fashion, culture, worldview and behaviour of a group.
That's a situation. Situations are something to market to, not demographics.
Pic courtesy of emo fashion
It's not necessary to be liked by everyone. In fact, that is a hinderance.
It's not about 'how many' you can 'reach' it's 'who' connects with the idea.
And often the key is not what you are 'for' it's about what you are 'against'.
In 1977 Malcolm and the Pistols were essentially 'against' everything else.
To the pr company or social media experts on the #moonfruit twitter trending thing, you are probably all slapping each other on the back right now.
No 1 trending topic on twitter!
Twitter users have been bribed to mention #moonfruit hashtagged in every tweet for a chance to win a laptop every week for 10 weeks.
But i have to tell you - this is empty, useless, devoid of any engagement, pure eyeball harvesting, impression delivering same old same old, just using the tool de jour.
At the end of the ten weeks you will be back to square one.
No-one gives a shit. And you are ten laptops down.
Sad.
The real trending topic on twitter (though less visible than #moonfruit) is what some people are calling 'the corporatisation of twitter' (aka jumping the shark).
The stampede of brands apeing the celebrity-broadcast model - even PAYING for followers FFS - continues onto the platform.
It was good while it lasted, but i'm sending the wolf...
I like what the guy from Poke says about the new site they have just made for Manchester City Football Club.
'The ‘big ideas’ and principles of the site are tucked away – and they’re things that have been decided, with the client, for the sake of the fans (no display advertising, no paid for video, integrated ticketing / shopping basket). But it works. For real people. In ways that they understand and will actually use.'
The fans love it too.
Take note Aberdeen FC. In fact give me a call and i'll explain.
'All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.' Albert Einstein
Ex-Devo (and NiN amonst others) drummer Josh Freese has taken a nod fron Trent with the marketing of his new album 'Since 1972'.
As we reported back in Feb, among the many and varied fan packages available include one (only) for $10,000 which includes:
- Signed CD/DVD and digital download.
- T-shirt
- A spot on on Joe Escalante's Indie 103.1 radio show and talk about the package you just purchased. Maybe even play a few hot tracks.
- Signed DW snare drum from A Perfect Circle tour 2000-2001.
- Drum lesson or his and hers foot/back massage.
- We go to lunch at "Club 33" (super exclusive, private restaurant at Disneyland located above the Pirates Of The Caribean) and hit a couple rides afterwards (preferably the "Tower Of Terror, The TIki Room and The Haunted Mansion")
and...
- At the end of the day at Disneyland drive away in [my] Volvo. It's all yours.....take it. Just drop me off at home on your way out though please.
And if you are still not convinced, here's his ad for the Volvo.
Following yesterdays blip into hippiedom with the chillis ramble, normal service is resumed with this zenpunksocialist nugget from Joe Strummer.
'It's all of us or none..'
Take 5 mins to read this by Umair Haque on 'a zombieconomy, where little net value is created.'
excerpt:
'If the world's biggest pop star only made $25 million a year in total, something's very, very wrong. Where's the rest of the money? Why can't a resource as scarce as the King of Pop capture more value?
The world's top hedge fund 'managers' regularly pull in hundreds of millions. That's an order of magnitude difference.
No wonder everyone wants to be a banker, investor, or beancounter. There's no money left in anything else.
That's the big problem...We don't reward people for creating, growing, nurturing, or even remixing assets. We just reward them for allocating the same old assets.'
In Seth's blog the other day he discussed Malcolm Gladwells challenge to the business model thinking in the new Chris Anderson book 'Free' ie In the digital marketplace, the most effective price is no price at all.
Gladwell asked 'how will this new business model support the world as we know it today?'
Seth says: 'Who cares if it does? It is. It's happening. The world will change around it, because the world has no choice. I'm sorry if that's inconvenient, but it's true.'
True.
If, like me, you spend a lot of time trying to propogate ideas that challenge the way that things have been done for a long time you invariably encounter strong resistance from those with agendas or processes that are inflexible or those for whom it suits to maintain the status quo. Thats they way of things and theres no point getting hung up about it.
Here's a thing.
Beside my desk at G-Towers has the sunny-est aspect, and is in effect a greenhouse of sorts, so is the ideal spot for the office chilli garden. There's 8 plants of different varieties.
Each plant was grown from seed.
One seed has within it the inherent potential, with the correct nuturing (light, feed, water) to turn into a plant that may produce a hundred or more chillis - each containing enough seeds to grow dozens more plants.
Once the plant flowers it's important to give it a shake in order to ensure the flowers pollonate themselves to turn into the spicy treats.
This acts as a constant reminder to me that the most important thing to do when trying to nurture the ideas we want to spread is to plant the seeds.
Then keep an eye on the ones that germinate, feed them and keep giving them a shake from time to time to make sure they grow the fruits. Once you've got a hot one then you know that contained within is the potential for further propogation that will happen all by itself...
The world will change...because the world has no choice.
Twitter feed hits the $2 million mark for Dell http://ow.ly/gb2Z
I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream [twitter utility] http://bit.ly/ukVoa via @splendidcomms ta
YouTube - DEADLINE post-it stop motion http://ow.ly/gaho
'The last thing marketers want to be doing is wasting their budgets on loyal consumers' http://bit.ly/IWL8i via @mrnews #analystFAIL
RT @Armano http://twurl.nl/h76gvf most coveted prize at Cannes went to an ad not made for TV + PR campaign broke record for most Grand Prix
