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.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
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'.
will blog for food...
To the Coach and Horses in Soho yesterday for a bloggers brunch co-hosted by Chinwag and the Dept of Trade and Investment.
Uk Trade and investment is a government organisation that helps British businesses to develop in overseas markets through various resources and services.
This year they are looking at helping the 'creative' industries ie arts, music, film and the digital media industry.
Full info can be found at www.uktradeinvest.co.uk
By way of an introduction a number of bloggers, podcaster and digital media types were invited for a meet and greet. Presumably the assembled members of the chattering (or twittering) classes were selected as being likely to blab their findings.
No man blogs for free though, and the dti did their chances of a favourable review no harm whatsoever by the inclusion on the buffet menu of...
Fish Finger Sandwiches. Genius.
Thinking of unlikely sandwich combos, I'm reminded of back in the day (in what seems like a previous life) when I was a club dj, after my regular Sunday night gig I would head over to the taxi queue via the all-night baker where a sandwich of a scotch pie between 2 rowies (google it) would be devoured in the cab home. Health city.
Any good sandwich stories out there? (this is drivel - Editor's voice)
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
more on the future of advertising and marketing
Following that last post, in some sort of karmic alignment I stumbled across this excellent presentation - of some considerable panache - by a chap called Paul Isakson. On further digging he's got a pretty impressive blog too, which I will no doubt be dipping into for further nuggets.
Twittering at the back of the class…
I was caught twittering at the back of the class last week at Chinwag's ‘Tomorrow’s Ad Formats’ session.
I suppose I thought it was acceptable after following the entertaining commentary on the Ad Age digital advertising conference by David Armano and Steve Rubel last week.
For me, Twitter is starting to develop and find it’s place this year.
One of it’s interesting uses is as a back channel to events which enables other users to follow events remotely.
I did, however, find the bulk of the content at this particular Chinwag a bit flat and shared the odd tweet to that effect with a couple of other attendees.
I’d hoped to get the usual insight and inspiration that comes out of those sessions but the debate seemed centred around the various forms of interruption based traditional digital advertising - and the merits of this banner vs that pre-roll - rather than new ways for brands to actually engage and involve their customers.
By engage I guess I’m referring to the idea of collaborative marketing, conversation, dialogue, partnership etc rather shouting at people who are not interested.
Wikipedia says: ‘Rather than looking at consumers as passive receivers of messages, engagement marketers believe that consumers should be actively involved in the production and creation of marketing.”
I’m also often prone to wheeling out a slightly older nugget to illustrate this point
Confucious: ‘Tell me and I’ll forget, show me and I might remember but involve me and I’ll understand’
Steven from our place, who was on the panel, fought a valiant battle
(I almost typed ‘shone like a Beacon’) to bring the conversation round to this notion of engagement being key however despite a few gratuitous cluetrain references from some of the others it didn’t fly.
I overheard this stat recently:
The number is flaky, I can’t exactly remember but it went something like…
‘…our research found 25% of users found pre-roll ads less annoying than mid-roll’
Yes he really did say, less annoying!
Friday, March 14, 2008
President Idol
On my brief sojourn stateside i experienced some of the President Idol mania up close.
Interesting that it almost seems a foregone conclusion that the Democratic nominee is going to win the overall contest - I was in NY when the Spitzer story broke which was fun, too.
For us in the UK its hard to work out exactly what the candidates stand for. Hat-tip then to Harry who has a alerted me to this post from Daily Kos - the author has painstakingly gone through the Senate records to identify which bills each candidate has introduced and sponsored to try and shed some light on what our US cousins are actually voting for, aside from the popularity contest. The post has over 650 comments when I last looked.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Purple cow spotted at Denver International Airport
Following on from the horse sculpture story below I enjoyed my brief encounter with Denver Airport.
As well as the mad tent exterior, internally it's been designed with the user in mind. The gates are all in a straight line A,B and C zones connected by a train. It's vrtually impossible to get lost.
And a couple of soft innovations made the - lets face it, normally pretty stressful - experience of airports a bit more pleasant.
The public address system on the gate connecting train was crystal clear perfect sound
and every announcement is spoken by a local celebrity tv babe (can't remember her name but I was told) and introduced by little musical motifs. Boogie-woogie piano for the doors closing announce, twangy guitar for the next stop announce and so on.
Some bright spark has thought, what can we do to add an extra bit of polish to this experience to make it just that bit better? - it's that extra 1% that makes it talkaboutable. Customer service as the new branding or something.
usa tour update 2
This pic was taken out the back of Echostar's building in Englewood nr Denver.
That's only the Rocky mountains in the background.
Denver nugget: Theres a sculpture of a big blue horse outside Denver airport, just been up a couple of weeks. The geezer that sculpted it was actually killed by the sculpture as he was making it - it fell over on top of him. The work was finished off by his son.
Monday, March 10, 2008
usa tour update 1.5
Just going through todays snaps and i liked this one too.
ESB from 42nd st through the trees and snazzy motor in the foreground.
usa tour update
Arrived in New York last night. I must commend Virgin Atlantic, fantastic service even in cattle class - on demand movies and all that. I watched Brick Lane and about half of Control, the Ian Curtis biopic.
It was a beautiful day today so I walked down to the east village looking for the CBGB's shop, found it but it was closed, and had my ritual NY breakfast of Eggs Benedict at Virage on 2nd beside St Marks while contemplating tattoo shops on 8th St.
Couldn't find my favourite hat shop, maybe it's gone?
I was half-supposed to try and catch an old mate who I haven't seen for 10 years or so at Shelter, an 'after-hours' that starts at 10am a bit further downtown. I took the view that going to a club at that time of the morning was just too dangerous at my age so gave it a miss and took the healthy option. A long walk up 5th Ave to the Guggenheim - promptly about turning when I got to the door due to the queue - and instead took in Central Park for a couple of hours then window shopping.
Meetings in NY tomorrow then flying out to Denver Tuesday morning.
Snapped the pond in Central Park below.
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
8 things you might not know about me...
Following a trail from Thayer via Chris Hambly (who tagged me) by way of Dan Hon (who I don't know , but apparently started it), heres 8 random snippets about me.
The idea here is you reveal 8 random things about yourself then tag 8 other bods who reciprocate with there own revelations.
It's in the spirit of 'getting to know you' I suppose.
1. I'm a passionate supporter of Aberdeen FC. Once feared throughout Europe (80's) now feared throughout Aberdeenshire.
2. Before getting into this advertising mularkey I was in the music biz. I was a club DJ of some note in the late 80's early 90's in the Balearic Beats stylee before moving into techno/house. I co-founded a couple of labels (Hook/Bellboy) and released a number of 12" disco biscuits. My biggest hit was 'Pricks' in '94 which was a club smasheroonie across Europe and was licenced to labels in Germany, Belgium and Italy.
3. I'm a disciple of the works of Seth Godin. Psst don't tell anyone, but most of the stuff I spout about in meetings etc comes from him originally.
4. I've recently started practising the Buddhism of Nichiren Daishonin. It's not religion, its more like a life philosophy and science hybrid. It works.
5. When I'm cooking I use every pan in the house.
6. I'm a phoney Italian-American. I wear vests and a cross on a chain, brown shoes with a dark suit - the full monty. When we go on holiday it's usually Italy. I was even thinking of sticking an o on the end of my name to sound more Italian. What you gonna do? Ive got the dark complexion anyway (though that's the Welsh in me)
7. At the weekends you'll never catch me as we spend most of the time out with our boots on up the hills or in the woods. Weekends are unplugged.
8. I'm obsessed with music - all kinds - though especially 60's/70's soul/funk, vintage reggae and ska (all the stuff SoulJazz re-issue) and everything from the punky times 76-79 plus everything Paul Weller has done. To be fair, I am a mod deep down.
There you go.
Now it's over to you...(some I know, some I'd like to know a bit better)
Neil Perkin
Harry Bishop
James Cherkoff
Will Humphrey
DYKC
Chris Penn
Jamie C
John Dodds
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Madmen
After the end of the Sopranos we have been without a weekend TV ritual in my house.
We've been catching up with 'House' but following the first episode in the UK of 'Madmen' at the weekend I'm hooked.
Set in early 60s Madison Avenue in the glamorous, chain-smoking, sexist (everything-ist, to be fair) heyday of advertising, the story follows damaged Creative Director Dan Draper and 'new girl'Peggy Olsen who is looking to break into the male dominated adland.
The way it blends in snippets of history/Americana/advertising folklore gives the plot extra resonance - Lucky Strike 'It’s toasted' and 'plink plink fizz' to name but two in episode 1.
Theres a temptation to have a snidey laugh - 'look how backward people were' - but I'm sure that theres those in contemporary adland who would happily roll back to those heady days. In fact it's more curious to note how little some things have changed in 50 years!
Personally I look back and think, at least Adland knew how to dress themselves back in '61. Not a blue flannel shirt and chinos in sight. Sharp suits and haircuts for the boys, taffeta, high heels and hairspray for the girls.
As an aside: interestingly ,the US final episode - it finished back in October - ran with no ad breaks.
I've found the torrent, so thats me sorted for tv for the next few weeks anyway.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
a revolution is not a bed of roses...
As Fidel Castro steps down - the old fella has led Cuba since the revolution in 1959 - I'm reminded of an excellent rock'n'roll story.
Welsh prole rockers, the Manic Street Preachers planned an album launch in Cuba a few years back, at the National Stadium or something. In true Manics style they invited Mr Castro to attend.
Record company bods asked the aging President if he would like earplugs for the show as the Manic's might be a bit loud.
'Are they louder than WAR?' asked Fidel...
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