Never get out of the boat

Thursday, September 11, 2008

old punks never die....they go and work for apple

We took notice as this week's launch of the new ipod nano unfurled.
Each available variant is illustrated with an album pic in the screen relating to each colour.

The array of current pod-friendly harmless popsters - Clavin harris for yellow, Interpol for red, James Blunt for blue etc etc - is shamelessly disrupted by the inclusion, in the pink model, of...not
'would you?/wouldn't you?' brat poppette 'Pink' (as you may have predicted) but none other than...gnarled, drug-addled grandads of glam-punk ...
THE MIGHTY NEW YORK DOLLS,
THE TOTAL AND UTTER KINGS OF RAWK'N'ROLL AND GREATEST BAND IN HISTORY.

thanks John.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

end of the world pt2

..and DIY giants B&Q are quick off the mark with clever bit of search...

google commemorates the end of the world

nice to see google's traditional 'seasonal-home-page-looks' celebrating one-off events too...
the end of the world for example.

Sunday, September 07, 2008

i met the walrus

This is amazing.

"In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon's every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon's boundless wit, and timeless message."

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Best Practices in Social Media

Mitch Joel - Six Pixels of Separation - has initiated a meme around best practices in social media, i've come across it via servantofchaos.

heres the thinking so far:

Consistency (Mitch Joel)
Embrace your audience (Jason Falls)
Listen and add value (Kipp Bodnar)
Listen (Chris Brogan)
Be human (Kristie Wells)
Reach out to others (Morriss Partee)
Honesty and respect (Paisano)
Watch what people actually do (Liz Strauss)
Provide a platform (Beth Harte)
Tell a story (servant of chaos)

Permission to Play.

I'm adding this. It's a small idea we've been mulling around here lately
around the notion of 'permission to play'

The number of marketing managers etc we speak to who ask 'how can we get into Facebook?' or 'how can we build community round our brand?'

The key for brands is; to know where you have the right to be.

Apart from a few big-boys the blunt fact is that in most cases your brand is not actually welcome within social networks.
Knowing where you have permission to play comes from watching, listening and then, if you can identify a way to help, encourage or empower, there may be a role for you.

I'm tagging Neville Hobson, Benjamin Ellis, and toby moore, as we are all talking about some of this stuff at Social Media in Business in October.

1. Blog it.
2. Link to Mitch’s blog
3. Tag it “social media marketing best practices”
4. And then tag someone else with the meme.

marks out of ten? zero.

As Stan quite rightly points out.
'Have these people never seen a Bond film?
It's double O seven. Not zero zero seven.'

at last...twitter for tv!

Gah! I went blue in the face trying to sell the idea of a Twitter tv widget to TiVO, Directv in the US earlier this year, but to no avail. Maybe my pitch was too narrow... Seemed like a no-brainer to me and ,as it goes, some others now agree.

I've just spotted that Yahoo and Intel have got together to create a 'Widget channel', which will, according to the press release..

The Widget Channel will be powered by the Yahoo! Widget Engine, a fifth-generation applications platform that will enable TV watchers to interact with and enjoy a rich set of "TV Widgets," or small Internet applications designed to complement and enhance the traditional TV watching experience and bring content, information and community features available on the Internet within easy reach of the remote control. The Widget Channel will also allow developers to use JAVASCRIPT®, XML*, HTML* and Adobe Flash® technology to write TV applications for the platform, extending the power and compatibility of PC application developer programs to TV and related CE devices.

Among the initial applications mooted are an ebay widget (quel surprise!) and of course the ubiquitous Twitter.
"Transforming television into an interactive device for sharing real-time updates among friends, family, and other trusted sources is an exciting prospect that extends Twitter's reach into an important arena."
Biz Stone, Co-founder of Twitter.

There's some dissent/scepticism of course, i'm curious to see what devlops though.
Any thoughts?

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

we value your feedback...

from chaosscenario

design the cover for the next Soma records compilation

Glasgow's Soma Records have launched a design competition to create the cover art for its 2008 compilation album.

I've been rediscovering some early 90's techno via blip fm, Dave Clarke, Luke Vibert and god knows what else. Slam and Soma were, of course, very much part of that vibe and continue to innovate in that vein to this day, although they were probably second to Bellboy as Scotland's most important tech-house label ;)

Details and material to get working on the cover can found here.

I'm a bit late picking up on this though, time is tight, submissions are being accepted up until until September 6.

What are the prizes, i hear you ask!:
- a copy of the compilation to be released in December
- every album that has come out on the label during 2008,
- t-shirts
- free 6-month subscription to Soma digital downloads

spotted at flowmi

Monday, September 01, 2008

re: the first law of mass media

In another instance of pure synchronicity I read Seth Godin's post The first law of mass media on Friday morning and the same day was flummoxed by an element of a presentation i heard during a planning session for a car client.

The presenter was excited about the possibility of 'interactive' video (can't fault him there) however the examples showed were 'robot' driven pieces where the character in the vid 'answers' questions the user types in (from some kind of key word recognition gizmo that triggers answers from an FAQ database)

I questioned whether a robot answering was indeed better than a real person - there then folowed some debate about whether 'consumers' found it easy/benefitial to talk to 'real' car dealers.

If this relationship is percieved as broken then surely the task is repair the human relationship?

Seth says:

The public works tirelessly to flee to actual interactions between real people, and our organizations work even more diligently (and with more leverage) to corporatise and anonymise the interactions.

The irony, of course, is that an organization with guts can go in the opposite direction and win.

Friday, August 29, 2008

blip.fm review for Marketing magazine

Here's the 'Digital view' piece I wrote for Marketing magazine about 2 weeks ago. They've still not published it so I figure I should at least let it out here before it's too out of date...
You'll notice the usual freewheelin' style was toned down for a more genteel audience ;)

Blip.fm
Have you seen Blip.fm, the ‘Twitter for music’ service?
That’s it in a nutshell: a tool for suggesting songs - and sharing your story about them - within your network. In true micro-blogging style, blip messages use 150 characters or less.
Like an non-stop request show Blip will grabs songs suggested by your friends (dj’s) from music search engines Seeqpod and Skreemr. Likewise your ‘listeners’ can hear to the songs you post.
Whereas Twitter asks ‘what are you doing, right now?’ Blip.fm asks ‘what are you listening to?’
As an added bonus each ‘blip’ contains a link to Amazon’s music store where the song can actually be purchased.
It's not essentially a new idea - streaming via your friends is around with the likes of LastFM and iLike as well as ‘mix-tape’ services like Mixwit and Muxtape – but Blip’s appeal centres around it’s ‘micro’ nature and seamless integration FriendFeed, Twitter, Pownce, and Tumblr.
As the establishment music business keep looking for the magic formula that will bring the multi-million sellers of yesteryear Blip’s creators, US indie ‘label’ Fuzz.com have embraced the fact that the traditional means of distributing music, and their associated business models, are no longer viable.
Blip wins by empowering the artists (any band is free to load their music into the network) and tapping into existing communities of music fans as the distribution channel.
There’s still some rough edges; the slightly spammy nature of invite process, for one and Blip needs a decent database plugged in for the retail model to have a chance. This is potentially the big opportunity for record labels or, indeed, retailers (HMV? Zavvi?).
Blip is browser-bound at the time of writing but the inevitable Adobe Air desktop app and mobile widget will only add to it’s appeal. One to watch…

Thursday, August 28, 2008

warte bis september

Nils is waiting until September.
You can call him on +49 4022 611 161 to find out why, ask and he'll answer in any language.
You can follow on twitter too.
Minimal and cool as.
hat-tip to charles.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

life instructions pt2: 'how to be an explorer'

i'm collecting these little 'windows to the soul' now.
this one found via makemarketinghistory original by keri smith

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

war on terror board game

Interesting story around Zavvi, the entertainment megastore, who ordered 5000 copies of a 'controversial' boardgame called 'War on Terror' and then reneged (on the very day of release ) on their agreement with the manufacturers to stock the game - sending the makers onto the verge of going under.

After much to and fro Zavvi agreed to stump up for the order and return the stock so the makers who then decided to give away the surplus copies free outside Zavvi's flagship store on Oxford St, thus turning potential financial ruin into word of mouth PR that money can't buy.

And as 'War on Terror' say 'Why not let the public decide if it's 'unsuitable' for them?'

The full story with all the vendor presentations etc here.

UPDATE:
2,500 copies of the game given away in under 1 hour at lunchtime today, with a line right round into tottenham court road. I managed to wrestle through the crowd to grab this pic of the distribution team with attendant news crews, tv bods.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

made in queens - sound systems for bmx bikes

Here's the trailer for 'Made in Queens' - Kids from Queens, NY in a film about their bmx bike pimpage.
The film recently premiered at Edinburgh film festival.
Follow the story here as it builds.

wisdom of crowds

As the new season is upon us...
'The fans make their views clear after yet another goalkeeping error.'
thanks to Al for this.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

nietzche marketing

exerpts from a twitter conversation with @zeroinfluencer

zeroinfluencer: Brands are deities not entities, so have to pray for help. Brands need to be nihilists so that people can prey on them.

me: @zeroinfluencer'Brands need to be nihilists' is it a kind of nietzsche marketing?

zeroinfluencer: @EaonP The nietzsche planner "I speak on behalf of the void, formerly known as your customers."

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

the boat goes mobile

You may have noticed the 'mobile' button over there on the right sidebar.
Yes, this blog is now fully mobile, coutesy of mofuse
So to get 'the boat' on the move simply point your phone's browser to http://theboat.mofuse.mobi/

Monday, August 11, 2008

unified list of top 100 novels

As a list geek i was interested to scan this list of top 100 novels, compiled by neil bowers
Here's his methodology which seems fairly credible to me.

heres the top 10, not too many surprises:

1. Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell
2. The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. The Grapes Of Wrath John Steinbeck
4. The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger
5. Catch-22 Joseph Heller
6. One Hundred Years Of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez
7. Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell
8. Ulysses James Joyce
9. On The Road Jack Kerouac
10. The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien

The first novel I recognise of recent years pops up at no 40 - Memoirs Of A Geisha by Arthur Golden.

Thursday, August 07, 2008

search online for 'i am'

what's wrong with this picture?

i particularly like the 2nd sponsored link.
'i am a lippi selk bag...i am awesome'

Steven King's 'N' - mobile graphic novel

More widget-ness, as Stephen King's latest novel 'N' is previewed as 25 video webi-isodes, as a pre-lude to what is believed to be 'the first comic-style book adaptation specifically developed and produced for viewing on today's most popular small screen platforms' ie mobile devices.

Ideal accompaniment to the horror of your commute?
full story here

adidas/ultravioletsound free album widgetyness

Hot on the heels of Converse's ultra-cool 'My drive thru' free music download featuring a track by N*E*R*D and Julian Casablancas from the Strokes comes this Adidas Originals 'add value through content' incentive featuring (marginally less cred) dance/pop puppets UltravioletSound.

Via the 'Ultraviolet Sound widget' - which fans are encouraged to place the widget on their myspace, facebooks for maximumum 'viral-ness' - they get access to a free 11 track UltravioletSound album and 30% discount on Adidas Originals clobber (as worn by the band - au naturelement)

via greasyguide

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

scenes from an italian restaurant

Carmine's - a small traditional Italian cafe/restaurant in my old home town of Aberdeen - small menu, but brilliant at two things – pizza and pasta.

I first went there about nearly 20 years ago with the now MrsP. After our lunch Carmine told me 'this girl is a-nice, you bring her again, not that other one' (refering to another not so polite girl i had brought in the previous week!)

The reasons we love Carmine's are:

- the tinny cassette player blaring out Opera...
- Carmine does the cooking and serving himself while singing along...
- We were poor so Carmine brought sneaky glasses of wine (it's unlicensed) when we couldn't afford to bring our own in...
- The size of portion you were given was directly proportionate to your own size (huge Calzone for me)...
- Carmine comes over and shouts at you if you don't finish all your pizza...
- Despite being a regular for 10 years I was still called 'Ronnie' even though he knew fine what my real name was...
- Potential customers who only wanted coffee were chased out of the door...
- 'Poison' coffee (sneaky Sambuka!)...
- The cafe was across the road from the main Theatre in Aberdeen. The cast of whatever was on were often in there between performances (the walls were covered in signed photographs)...
- He closed at 7pm - daytime trade only so no bother from drunks etc...

lessons for marketing?

Carmine never advertised, ever - All w-o-m.
The turned-on-it's-head 'customer service' was legendary - people lined up just to get shouted at.
The one-size-fits-one approach to portions!
He never pandered. If you don't like it go to pizza hut.
People love authenticity.
The opposite of great is not 'bad', it's average. Average is invisible.

Anyway, I heard that Carmine is retiring this year. It will be a sad day when the last customer is chased out the door.

apologies for the blantant use of a Billy Joel reference as the title (I'm on a rediscovery of early Billy Joel, it's a phase that will pass, i'm sure).

Saturday, August 02, 2008

MS Word spellcheck...

curious. hat tip to meandmybigmouth

Friday, August 01, 2008

guinness viral

via utalkmarketing

A spokesman said, “Please be assured that Guinness is in no way associated with this video, and has approached YouTube to have it removed'

yeah, right...

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

am i missing something?

Monday, July 28, 2008

'disposable' phones?

Bic - the makers of disposable pens and razors - and Orange France have introduced a disposable mobile phone.
hat-tip to brand dna

When we say 'disposable' I'm supposing that means 'use it and chuck it away'.
Not strictly true here as the phones can be topped up after the initial 'free' 60mins have been used.

With these phones Bic have kinda got it right as a brand extension but they have got it way wrong if they are not 100% recyclable.

Or maybe we don't actually care as it seems that only 3% of mobile phones are recycled anyway.

thought for monday - here's to the ladies...

'It is my fact-based conviction that women's increasing power - with their leadership skills and purchasing power - is the strongest and most dynamic force at work in the [American] economy today....even bigger than the internet.'

Tom Peters, Re-imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age(2003)

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

have tivo and amazon unearthed the holy grail of interactive tv?

There's been umpteen retail models developed around interactive tv over the years, none of them have paid off to any great degree as far as I can remember.
And I should know, I've crashed and burned with quite a few.

TiVO may just have cracked it though with the just announced extension of their partnership with Amazon.

For a wee while, TiVo users have been able to download movies and tv shows via Amazon’s digital on demand video store. Now that experiment has been extend to include other products.

'Product purchase' as the new feature is known - available on Tuesdays initially - links to products guests are plugging on the likes of Oprah and David Letterman.

If the viewer chooses to buy something during a show, TiVo records the rest of the programme so the viewer can pick up where they left off (as you would expect) - but here's the nifty bit. TiVo users are also able to save their items in their Amazon account basket and finish up later.

Taking the web and TV and weaving together their strengths?

The real holy grail however will come when the product purchase feature rolls out during ads (assuming they are not being skipped) and where shows feature product placement.

NY Times article here. Thanks to my old chum Brian at TiVO NY who alerted us.

Monday, July 07, 2008

special k summer challenge

Kellogg's Special K ..
Watch the ad...

Amid the kerfuffle around the Heinz NY deli style mayo ad I must say this one for the Special K Summer challenge is potentially far more 'dangerous'.

- To recap, there has been an outcry from certain reactionary quarters over the Heinz ad which features a 'family' at breakfast. The place of 'mother' is taken by a big NY deli style chef character who prepares the family's sandwiches. The dad gives the 'mum' a kiss at the end of the ad. Heinz pulled the ad temporarily after complaints from conservatives that the ad promotes homosexuality -

No outcry, however, over this Kelloggs ad which features a woman hiding herself to avoid being photographed on holiday, as she is embarrassed to be pictured in a red swimsuit.

The problem with this scenario, as you will see, is - she is not fat. Not even chubby. In fact, by all accounts she's pretty fit.

According to eating disorders information site Disordered Eating the number of people receiving treatment for anorexia or bulimia in the UK is around 90,000, while many more people have eating disorders undiagnosed, in particular those with bulimia nervosa.

This kind of thing does not help.

Saturday, July 05, 2008

mediacamplondon

On the off chance you're winding down friday afternoon with a quick trawl through your feed reader and chance upon this post, a quick reminder that MediaCampLondon is on tomorrow (Saturday) at:

SAE Institute North Road, Islington, London, N7 9DP
2mins from Caledonian Road tube.
from 10am.

Registration is still open at the wiki
and at the time of writing there are still a couple of slots open for sessions.

Friday, July 04, 2008

catch the pidgeon

spotted in barber shop window off Wardour St.

04/07 UPDATE
My eagle eyed brother, Al, (see comments) has spotted this is in fact a take off of a piece by Weegie artist David Shrigley, heres his original below.
Among his other notable credits are; the title sequence for the feature film HALLAM FOE and album cover art for the likes of Malcolm Middleton.

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

life instructions

this is great. don't remember where i found it, if anyone knows (and if are there others like it?) please let me know.

billy boy and predictably irrational

The latest developments in energy drinks move the focus from sports to other energy sapping activities.
Among the myriad of products in the sex-drive boosting drinks market are:
SexDrive (does what it says on the tin), Slumpbuster and...wait for it...Deep Throat.

The one that caught my eye (courtesy of trendhunter) is Billy Boy (see pic).
Each can comes wrapped with an individual condom attached.
The German firm that makes it are actually in the condom business so the drink is an added extra.

With that in mind I was interested to hear behavioural economist Dan Ariely talking about his new book 'Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions' on a recent episode of business book podcast Foreword Thinking. Among the questions asked in the book are; 'Do you know why we sometimes find ourselves excitedly buying things we don’t really need?'

Airley conducted various experiments in the research including some fairly unsavoury research around how sexually aroused male college students decision making processes were altered by their state of arousal.

Note: One handed computer keyboards were integral to the experiment.

According to review site bevnet Billy Boy doesn't actually taste that great but when theres a job to be done taste is the least of considerations...

Thursday, June 26, 2008

joss stone - new marketing guru

Content wants to be free, piracy can be a business model. And pop-soul karaoke star Joss Stone agrees.

'Music should be shared. I believe that this is how music turned into like, some crazy business. The only part about music that I dislike is the business that is attached to it. Now, if music is free, then there is no business, there is just music...
...As long as you come to my show, and have a great time listening to the live show it’s totally cool, I don’t mind'

She understands that the tour-to-promote-album music biz model is now flipped on its head and a digital, easily distributed (ie shared) product is now the marketing for the live experience.

And who knows, make a special cd in a nice box with a free tshirt or something and fans may even buy the physical product too.

joss quote via mashable

how to do merchandising

from rob mosley's blog

This is how you do merchandising:
- catch people's eyes
- demonstrate the product's key feature (its big)
- don't put 'orrible big signs up that scream prices/benefits at people

Design coding by The Poetic Prophet (AKA The SEO Rapper)

Just discovered this guy.

thought for the day

This excerpt from 'How to Become a Social Media Expert' by CS Penn struck a chord.

'..the measurements that count most to you will likely have nothing to do with friends, followers, betas, or invitations, but with differences and positive changes made, accomplishments logged'

full article here

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

You talk the talk. Do you walk the walk?

As some of you may already know, I'm off to pastures new having resigned form my current job a few weeks ago. I've got another 5 weeks or so to go before I embark on a new phase of my career. More details on that a bit nearer the time, but suffice to say I'm very excited about the challenge that awaits.

One of the questions I was asked during the interview process was around this idea of 'how [am I] going to implement [my ideas] in [the new role]?'
The simple answer is 'walk the talk'.

In this business, how can we expect our clients to embrace the changes in how media is produced, distributed, consumed etc if we (in agencies) don't demonstrate this ourselves?
It's kind of what Jaffe calls 'use new marketing to prove new marketing'.

And what better way to walk the talk, than in a pair of shiny gold hand-made brogues from Church's in Piccadilly?

I'm a size 11, by the way, in case they are reading.

carling 'barslide'

I liked this point of purchase iphone app for Carling lager from BMB.

Its a skill based game where players attempt to 'slide' a pint to their mate along the bar by tilting their mobile use the handset’s inbuilt 3 dimentional motion detection. A successful slide wins an iPint, which fills up the screen just like a real pint. You can then ‘drink’ the virtual pint.

hat-tip to @jamiec.

UPDATE:
Sorry it looks like BMB have taken their link down.

Monday, June 23, 2008

variations on a meme

There's a mini-meme a-brewing round the Droga5/Net 10 - what is the role of the agency? - ad-google-purchase - conundrum stirred up by Alan Wolk, elaborated on by Cam Beck, amongst others and mentioned here a couple of posts back.

To recap: Droga5 make cool viral and :30 for US mobile operator Net10. Net10 claim in ads that other providers are evil. Cursory googling of Net10 customer reviews reveals Net10 customer service etc to be pretty average at best in the eyes of users.
Many of the comments on Scamp (where the debate started) reckon agency make ads, duff products are nowt to do with us.

Alan says: 'too many agencies can’t even be bothered to use Google to see if the product actually lives up to the brief. Can’t be bothered to realize that for most non packaged-goods items, the consumer pattern is now ad -Google-purchase.'

Semi anonymous commenter bg adds:
'I think one group escapes blame here: brands. [Brands] are just as responsible for the fragmentation of advertising and marketing responsibilities as anyone...'

Mulling this around on the train home while listening to Elvis Costello's classic '89 album 'Spike' a lyrical couplet resonated somewhat.

'One day you're going to have to face
A deep dark truthful mirror
And it's going to tell you things that I still love
you too much to say'
Elvis Costello 'Deep dark truthful mirror'

We recently worked with [Brand X] on a project involving user generated content.
The project ended up being compromised a bit by the reluctance of the client to incorporate some of the (most basic) social elements to the project. The reason for this was; that some students had conducted experiments with [Brand X] product - the results cast a shadow on the integrity of some the the claims about the product.
[Brand X] then had to take a serious look at their product (and into the deep dark truthful mirror)and get it fixed.

Seems to me the same connundrum here.

Brands need to be aware that not only is the adage 'you're brand is not what you say it is, it's what google says it is' ringing true - its also what google potentially says it is once the eager pro-sumers have finished conducting their experiments.

Wii tennis at Waterloo station

Spotted these Wii tennis stations set up on the concourse at Waterloo this morning - at the start of Wimbledon week.

Part experiential, part 'tryvertising' (i guess it's semi contextual as Wimbledon bound punters will be going via Waterloo).

I hope South West Trains will be providing the Wii demonstrators with free strawberries and cream as a thankyou for keeping irate travellers occupied during the inevitable cancellations and delays.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

social media in plain english

by commoncraft

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Is there any point to great 'advertising' if the product is flawed/suspect/crap?

In this post on Scamp about Net10's 'evil' campaign - featuring firstly that clip of the mobile phone in the microwave and then the full on cartoon tv spots - there was much debate about the whys and wherefores of the ad idea and execution but, for me, it only gets going when commenter Alan Wolk aka tangerinetoad wades in with this nugget.

'I'd like to suggest, as an experiment, that all of you who like this commercial and/or campaign do what the average consumer will do upon seeing it, which is to go over to Google and enter this phrase:

net10 phone service reviews

Then click on the first couple of results. Including the one from Amazon.com

You'll quickly see why the serious problem with these ads, and why, given the online comments about Net10s customer service (or lack thereof) they probably have a net negative effect.'

The response from other comments was along the lines of 'what can the agency do if the product is broken? we just do the advertising?'

This approach to advertising has had it. Finished.

It's basic insight stuff. Anyone can now search for real reviews and get a picture of the reality of the product. The agency should do this first then review the strategy to address real perceptions from real customers (or ex-customers).

This is not brain surgery.

But that might interfere with the making of smartypants ads to win industry back-slapping awards. Which is sadly often the case.

Don't get me wrong, the 'ads' are great - just for the wrong product it would seem.
And thats where it all falls over.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

thought for the day

'If you dont like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less'
General Eric Shinseki, Chief of Staff, US Army

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

hey! bo diddley - RIP

Goodbye to a rock'n'roll legend - originator of the Bo Diddley beat, probably more famous due to the likes of The Who's Magic Bus than his own tunes.
According to punky lore, while on tour with the Clash in 79, Bo let his guitar sleep on the bunk in the bus while he kipped in the chair, re-inforcing the legend with Strummer and co.

Sunday, June 01, 2008

book club - mark e smith 'renegade'

'I hope this book turns out like Mein Kampf for the Hollyoaks generation'

Ive just read this.
Less an autobiography and more a loosely collated stream of ramblings stitched together and interspersed with prose ‘chapters’
It’s a a whisky, beer and sulphate soaked journey through 30-odd albums, umpteen band members, fighting, prison, ballet, dead popes, voting Tory, and reading the scores on Grandstand.
It’s not the definitive biography – it’s what Smith wants you to know.

Threre’s a lot in common with Dylan’s ‘Chronicles’ though Smith would baulk at that as Dylan is one of the sacred cows who get’s a mauling.

None shall escape the judgement as MES lets rip at everyone from Elton John, John Lennon to Jo Whiley and anyone at all from Brighton – but with a fluency and brutal honesty that persuades you to go along with even the most scathing and unreasonable theories.

To be fair though I drew the line at the idea that the Glitter Band were more influential than the Sex Pistols.

Friday, May 30, 2008

add value through content

Waterstone's the booksellers have just about got it spot on with this 'What's Your Story' campaign.

To celebrate the National UK Reading Year they are challenging budding writers to compose a short story and submit it to the Wys site.

The best entries are being published in an online gallery and in stores - alongside a collection of specially commisioned stories written by some top authors.

3 winning stories will be published in a postcard book alonside the 'real' authors including Doris Lessing, Michael Rosen, Nick Hornby, Sebastian Faulks, Lauren Child, Tom Stoppard and Irvine Welsh and of course...
JK Rowling, who has supplied an exclusive 800-word, hand-written prequel to the Harry Potter series.

Value, content, participation, community, partnership, branding.

I've been debating with a few twitter buddies whether the likes of Amazon have the same ability to generate that fuzzy feeling around their brand as the likes of Waterstones.

In the book market I will always prefer to shop with Waterstones if I can rather than Amazon. Why? Because of stuff like this. The cold aggregation of the likes of Amazon doesn't tickle me.
OK there's the long tail and the user reviews, the super fast service etc- but I find something more re-assuring about a brand that actually 'cares' about it's product.
Half of the staff are authors.
And actively working for good in the community - Neil Perkin talks about this here - kind of inspired this post.

Plus they are British...

The campaign and microsite was developed by Manchester digital agency Code Computerlove

Thursday, May 29, 2008

quality check

Just spotted this in E1. The street art/graffiti fraternity self-organising to bring a bit of quality control to the streets? Or maybe it's part of Boris' new broom?

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

the product is the marketing - malmaison

On a recent jaunt to Edinburgh I stayed at the Malmaison by Leith docks.

First off, it's about 15 years since I've been round Leith, what a change.
Back in the day it was a bit of a no-go area but it's now been 'regenerated'- lots of nice bars and restaurants and half a million quid apartments etc.

A couple of things made my stay worth remarking upon.

All Malmaison hotels offer free, gratis broadband in the rooms. So what? I hear you say. Well try getting free web access in any other hotel chain. Unlikely.

In the bathroom theres a wee sign beside all the toiletries - posh body wash, moisturising pads, breath freshner, the lot - saying 'please take these away with you'.
Everyone nabs the bits from the bathroom in hotels anyway, but a nice touch to say 'go ahead'. Power showers too. Theres nothing worse than the dribbly weak showers you often encounter in hotels.

I ordered dinner in my room - posh burger and chips - the chips come in a tall cup thing wrapped in Malmaison greaseproof paper. A little design touch that tickled me.

I also loved the milk jugs at breakfast, it's a tall vase shaped white jug with 'cow' spots printed on it.

I could have stayed at the Holiday Inn accross the road and it would have been perfectly acceptable, but i would not have mentioned it to anyone after.
It's the micro-touches that make an experience worth talking about.

Good enough is no longer good enough, it needs to be better than that.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

i am a muppet

Here's a tip for you.

Don't let your domain expire, as I have just done.
I received several reminder emails from my hosting service, the latest one last week warned me that it would expire within 25 days.
So today I find that its gone already! Thats well within the 25 days. They don't mess about.

I've paid up and the site will be back within 24 hours, however anyone who attemps to go there during these 24 hours is going to mark me down. Lesson learned.

Thursday, May 08, 2008

baby badger...

Belated congratulations to Dan from the way of the web aka @badgergravling on the arrival of baby Oscar the other week. A new recruit for the twitter junior section?
Also I'm due him a link as his technorati rank has crashed since shifting his blog about.

Saturday, May 03, 2008

ghp - spliced crispies

I rave about gohomeproductions all the time here. Maybe there's some sort of affinity as I'm a former Watford resident myself.

Despite recently announcing his retirement from the bootleg business to concentrate on 'proper' tracks he's done a new collection of 11 mash-ups 'Spliced Crispies'.
This time theres videos to go along with them.

My personal favourite is the Ce Ce Penniston/Sex Pistols fusion 'Finally Did you no wrong'. see below.

Friday, May 02, 2008

on positivity...a thought for the day

When I'm having those HEAD>BRICK WALL moments I'm always glad of this nugget from author and historian David Landes...

'In this world the optimists have it, not because they are always right but because they are always positive. Even when wrong, they are positive...and that is the way to achievement'

Thursday, May 01, 2008

geekdinner social cookbook update

There been a bit of interest though the recipies are slow in coming through.
Perhaps this diagram in the style of Armano will help to clarify.

heres the link again geekdinner.blogspot.com

Saturday, April 26, 2008

generation Y-ers? this is the way we we roll.

For all you Generation Y hopefuls. Take a tip from Sam. The bar has officially been RAISED. Want the money? the status? don't want to pay yer dues? You better be SMARTER than this then. Stuff of legends.

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Saturday, April 19, 2008

geek dinner social cookbook

I was looking at my google stats for this blog the other day and noticed that the most read article was none of the advertising/marketing/pop stuff but a recipe for beef braciole (the result of a desperate posting of some content or other during a barren spell).

Anyway, it got me thinking. Like novels, everyone has at least one recipe in them. A signature dish, lets call it. What I hope will happen with 'geek dinner'is that you, the reader of this and no doubt the author of your own blog, will send me the following:

1 - your recipe
2 - the story that goes with it
3 - a brief bio
4 - your linkage
5 - a pic of yourself in the kitchen

send all to geekdinnerblog at gmail dot com

Ive set up the blog over at geekdinner.blogspot.com.

Once we have a decent amount of content (I'm thinking 100-150 recipies) I'd like to do an actual book using lulu or something, sell them and be able to donate the proceeds to a hunger related charity, maybe? I'm open to suggestions from you.

Thanks in advance.
Ive tagged a few candidates

Thursday, April 17, 2008

dastardly and motley

This caught my eye as an interesting nugget of distribution innovation.
Glam metal veterans Motley Crue have regrouped to release their new 'single' - via Xbox's Live platform and Playstation's store - through the game 'Rock Band', the big brother of Friday afternoon office fave 'Guitar Hero'.

According to MTVGames 'Rock Band went on sale last November and now has more than 80 tracks available for download in addition to the 58 tracks in the original game. MTV Games said players have bought more than 6 million downloadable songs for Rock Band.'

Reuters story here.

As well as highlighting the potential of video games as a get out of jail card for the ailing music industry, this is a good example of getting the product where the audience is at.

Apparently during the Crue's heyday in the mid-80s, they were once holed up in a Hollywood hotel on tour - lounging by the pool surrounded by semi-naked bimbos and generally having it large on the JD and narcotics. Word arrived that drug legend Ozzy Osborne had checked into the hotel - much to the excitement of apprentice hellraisers, the Crue.

Ozzy staggered out to the pool, bent down to where a glass of something had been spilled and proceeded to snort a 'line' of ants that had gathered around the spilled beverage.

Motley Crue split up shortly afterwards, no doubt realising they could never reach the dizzy heights of rock'n'roll excess as demonstrated by the true master.

Friday, April 11, 2008

when the product is the marketing pt 2

I'm liking these flip-over powder coated steel coathook/hanger things by Swiss designer Nicola Enrico Stäubli.
Another example of soft innovation turning a relatively oridinary product into something worth talking about.

I also love her product description:
'This new type of coat hanger sticks to a conventional towel rail and provides it with an additional task outside the bathroom. Once flipped over it turns into a coat hook. Source of inspiration for the design of this little aide for everyday life was the stick insect. The coloring is borrowed from the tropical flora, the habitat of this giant insect.'

when the product is the marketing...

As Seth Godin says:
'Remarkable marketing is the art of building things worth noticing right into your product or service'

The Auntie Bessies sausage and mash cone is not for everyone. If it was it would be a bit boring.

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

I'm on the pavement, tweeting with the government

The twit-osphere has been literally a-tweet with debate around the recent entry into the conversation, on Twitter, of the Prime Minister's office.

No.10 have a dedicated twitterstream, you can follow by adding @downingstreet to your 'following' list. Full marks to Downing Street for 'following back' most of their followers, and on occasion actually engaging fellow twitters on a one-to-one basis.

It would have been easy for No.10 to simply 'broadcast'.

Interestingly there seem to be a number of closet Tories creeping out of the woodwork on Twitter leading to some heckling and derision of @downingstreet- I have no truck with this and welcome the government dept of spin with open arms. I even put myself on the line defending their right to be present, however my requests for an honorary MBE - for services rendered - where politely declined...

it aint where you're from, it's where you're at?

In the absence of anything of my own - of any substance - to share, I'm going to occasionally cross post things I've read of interest.

Advergirl is in my google reader - always quality - and in a recent post she has has recommended Who's your City or How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life by Richard Florida - which I shall be checking out.

She summarises '(Florida's) aim is largely to defend the importance of a sense of place vs. the encroaching genericism of globalization. Where you live does matter and is part of who you are.'

This neatly articulates something Ive been mulling around for a while.

Here's an excerpt: 'Finding the right place is as important as - if not more important than - finding the right job or partner because it not only influences those choices but also determines how easy or hard it will be to correct mistakes made along the way. ...The place we choose to live affects every aspect of our being. It can determine the income we earn, the people we meet, the friends we make, the partners we choose, and the options available to our children and families. People are not equally happy everywhere...'

I get the feeling that the US has a number of 'centers' whereas in the UK there are fewer and we tend to be London-centric in regard to 'creative' industries.

Advergirl's synopsis boils it down to five key themes/questions.

1 How do you like the place you're living now?

2 Is it somewhere you really want to be?

3 Does it give you energy? When you walk out onto the street or the country lane, in the morning, does it fill you with inspiration, or stress?

4 Does it allow you to be the person you really want to be? Are you achieving your personal goals?

5 Is it a place you would recommend to your relatives and friends?

I live in the country but work in the city (the rationale was - best of both worlds)so not sure how best to answer, what do we reckon?

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

mediacamp 08

Date for your diaries - Saturday 17th May 2008.
Register here - start getting your presentation together now...

a couple thoughts on remix radiohead

Radiohead will be gaining more plaudits for innovation in the music biz for making thir new single/track/whatever available on in 5 component parts for fans to 'remix' themselves. Budding remixers are also encouraged to add their own parts to the soup, so i'll be hoping for some genre crossing ideas and mashups, a bit of c&w, polka or calypso might be fun.

Hip-hoppers, will be familiar with the, albeit unnofficial, jayz construction set from 04 - inspired by Dangermouse's 'Grey Album' (a mash up of JayZ's 'Black Album' and the Beatles 'White Album')

Even further back in time, in 91, Aberdeen' finest The Shamen issued a CD with all the parts of their hit 'Progen'- which was in the Top 10 at the time - for fans to remix.

Also, one of my first records for Bellboy Records - 'Bring it on Down' as the Turnbull AC's in 94, was constructed entirely from parts from a George Clinton sample cd plus a drum loop from The Emotions 'Best of my Love'.