herebenotions

Barrack, paper, scissors

I love this! Clever, simple and fun.



The videos all link to each other depending on what move you make, as the guy filmed all the permutations, and for multiple levels too.

Something feel good to start the year

A few interesting things for me as a planner working on this: 
1. The brief was very simple: celebrate the 25th anniversary of VA, but in a way that brings the brand values to life and reminds people why they love flying with VA.
2. Seeing the influence of additional creative stimulus on the final idea.
3. How very, very little has changed from the initial script that was presented.

(Source)

We all know that the music business has a problem with illegal downloads.  For example legal downloads of In Rainbows were far exceeded by illegal torrent downloads of the album. Almost 400,000 illegal torrent downloads were made on the first day and 2.3m in the 25 days following the album’s release, compared with a full-week’s peak of just 158,000 for the next most popular album of the period (source). 

And there is a whole generation growing up without paying for music.  And not seeing anything wrong in that.

What interests me is how slow the TV industry is responding to essentially the same issue.  iplayer is all fine for the BBC which doesn't work on an advertiser funding model, but commerical media companies have a problem; people (in the UK) watching a US produced TV show often don't want to wait even a day longer than people in the USA to watch the latest episode.  And when they can jump online and download a bit-torrent or stream the latest episode through any number of sites, why would they then watch it later when it's broadcast on UK TV? 

People are often surprised when they learn that I work in advertising, but I don't own a TV.  But I don't see why I should when I can't get what I want, when I want; whereas I can get every episode of all my favourite shows instantly online, and see new epsiodes at the same time as my friends in other countries.  I would pay for them, or view them streamed with ads - except most US companies only make their shows downloadable from US itunes or from Hulu or similar which block non-USA IP addresses.  So of course, I don't end up paying, but watch ripped versions instead.  I know I'm not the only one.  US media companies are losing millions of dollars by being short-sighted and trying to protect their big deals with UK media companies.  Both are going to lose out in the long-term. 

TV production companies and media owners need to wake up fast and realise they are living in a global world that is instantly connected, and that if they want to earn their buck they need to treat everyone, everywhere the same, and serve everyone fast.  Or someone else will - for free

Context rules

The good, the bad and the ugly of display advertising

The good.

Yes, everyone has linked to it.  I love it.
Experience wii

And another example of good online advertising from Doritos:



But, don't we all think this at some point?



The Ugly - I can't believe there are still ads like this around.

Soup is fab

I love soup.  It's what I've been looking for for ages.  The simplicity is great.

This is my soup.  I will be mostly over there now.

Get out the vote

Couple of videos of note in the run up to the election

Check-out

A refreshing use of of the supermarket check-out belt.

This is part of a lon-running campaign for Denver Water by Sukle Advertising & Design, USA.  the objective is to get people to reconsider how much water they use.  The line on the orange dividers says "Keep our rivers flowing - Use only what you need".

Unsurprising

Source

People cited online ads from 888.com, Dulux, Ford, Garnier, Halifax and L’Oreal as being particularly annoying or intrusive.

Bugbears included:

• Ads with loud noises
• Pop-ups covering web content
• Ads that were difficult to close, minimise or click away from

Source: 2008 Research by Opinion Matters among 1,046 adults aged 16+.

People are fundamnetally the same, online or offline

Using social media to power business

This is a really interesting interview uberpulse did with Andy Lark from Dell.

One of the most interesting things he says is that he believes most elements of the marketing mix, besides social media, have become more transactional.  Social media has the most strategic importance, and is being used to "power the fundamentals of the business", and he cites examples like customer certified solutions and ideastorm as examples of how they are listening to and harnessing people power to make their business better.

He also noted that when the BBC interviews him the first thing they ask is 'can they podcast this?', whereas newpaper reporters still turn up with paper and pen.  Which led to this, which I thought was apt...

photo from renatotarga @ flickr

An anthropological introduction to YouTube

Two

This blog is now two. 

Two things I have learnt.

1. I like to think in my head, not write stuff down.

2. I want something simpler than a blog to collect interesting stuff, but not just something that bookmarks links.

photo from here

Live by it

Doesn't this make you long for the freedom of the open road...and a Harley?

People can upload their own creeds here.  The Harley-Davidson site is an awesome example of a brand that understands its customers, and delivers interesting and useful content; I dig the rider maps, planner and the rider education courses. Everything just fits the brand perfectly.

The more things change, the more things don't stay the same

This quote comes from a leaked memo Schultz sent to his CEO.  It's a fascinating and clear analysis of the way a number of supposedly small changes, made to increase efficiency as Starbucks grew, have collectively robbed Starbucks of all the important things people loved about the brand and the store.

Frozen

I just love how much fun everyone has with this, and how it's been copied all over the world, like here. 

ImprovEverywhere have done some great stuff.  The Abercombie and Fitch one is also worth checking out.

6.6 billion potential customers

The almighty CEO blogs.  Posts like 'Understanding the TRUTH model' or 'Is love realy ineffable?' are very funnny.

Leaving the question, who's behind it? Reads like a planner.

Who owns culture?

iToor

Off on holiday on Friday.  Starting off in Glasgow so thought I'd kick-off with an iToor.

They say, "Do you want to tap into the essence of a city? Delve into the spirit of a community? Grasp the magic of a particular street? Comprehend the legacy of a particular structure?...[itoors acts as] your personal escort, your friend with the inside scoop, your portal to travel as an artform."

Beyond the flowery language you get high quality, relavant travel programmes on your mp3 player, for a whole range of cities, with content from carefully chosen sponsors.

For Glasgow there are 2 iToors that both sound great.

They also have a nice set of del.icio.us links.

Hyperlink the world

I’ve been interested in semacode for a while. It seems like such a great idea: condense a webpage url down to a small square of code that can be snapped with a mobile camera phone; the software on the phone automatically decodes the semacode and takes you to the webpage.

So, for example a Harry Potter book on Amazon has the following web address...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Harry-Potter-Half-Blood-Prince-Childrens/dp/0747584680/sr=8-3/qid=1160080505/ref=pd_ka_3/026-7768011-7418845?ie=UTF8&s=books

A bit long winded to stick on a poster or flyer and expect someone to type it into their phone or remember it by the time they get home.

But turn it into semacode and you have...a black and white square sematag.

Might not be pretty, but easy to add to communications.  For example, a concert poster which would link you to a page to buy tickets. This is huge in Japan.

But there are so many uses for this beyond immediate sales or vouchering.  It's a great chance to bring the story of a product right to consumers at the point of decision. You could add these to the back of bottles of wine to take people instantly to a site where they can read about the growers and wine region.  Because the semacode design is so simple and scaleable, you can do interesting things like set the lights of a skyscraper's window to create a giant semocde that people can see for miles around.

One other interesting use is in hyperlinking geographical locations.  The main project for this is semapedia. Here you create a semacode link toa wikipedia page about a geographical location.  then go and stick the code up at the location for passers-by to interact with. Quite a nice way to find out what a statue is all about, or what happens in a building.

There's are several groups on flickr where people upload their semacode sightings from around the world...

Mapping the internet

The geek in me just loves this periodic table of the internet.

The internet has already been drawn as a world map, a metro map, a mindmap, a network map & a logo map, even an alternative periodic table exists.

Via Information Aesthetics

The influence of the blogosphere

Back in March, Edelman hosted a breakfast seminar with Jeff Jarvis, a media expert, social media guru and Buzzmachine blogger. Here you can watch Jeff talk about the influence of the blogosphere, the challenges for companies entering into a dialogue with bloggers, his view of emerging communication trends and more in the videos on the Edelman site.

Apparently a large portion of Edelman's USA income come from advising companies on how to blog; seems a shame that more advertising companies aren’t getting in on this game. Brand blogging is all about conversations, getting close to consumers and doing so in a creative and engaging on brand way.

One

This blog is one year old.

This was the first post.

Seems so long ago...

Photo by chrisirmo on flickr

Full of beans

Great crema art. I miss coffee.  3 months and counting since I last had any.  I used to get my daily dose from Flat White in Soho.  Best coffee in London. Do check them out.

Run with the little guy...

Today I'm loving...Jones Soda. A great example of an alternative, cheeky upstart company that puts the consumer at the heart of the brand, and really makes the brand website hit the mark. 

Jones Soda has always been about the consumer and interacting with the consumer. From the ever changing photos on the labels - designed and voted for by consumers, to the choice of flavours - also reviewed and voted for by consumers, to the company's websites: www.jonessoda.com and www.myjones.com, and the recent MyJones Independent Music site, www.myjonesmusic.com.

There are over 300,000 labels in the label gallery, and consumers can create custom labels for personal orders too.

It’s been rewarded with a cult following.

Their endline is "Run with the little guy... create some change."

A sweet example of a brand getting on board with the trend for 'consumer-made' goods. Customer-made is the phenomenon of corporations creating goods, services and experiences in close cooperation with experienced and creative consumers, tapping into their intellectual capital, and in exchange giving them a direct say in (and rewarding them for) what actually gets produced, manufactured, developed, designed, serviced, or processed.

Beautiful billboard

A different kind of street art

The National Gallery has placed about 44 famous paintings on walls in the streets of Soho and Covent Garden. They've called it The Grand Tour.

The nicest bit is that there are various audio tours that you can download: like the lunchbreak tour, the lover's tour, the heavy hitter tour.

On till the end of August.

Widgets

Interesting post today by Bernard Warner on how widgets will affect mainstream web media companies. Full post here

Two bits that I thought were particulary pertinent:

"... believes that in five years the typical net user will collect all his relevant data and application feeds from one page. Conventional bookmarks will give way to a single aggregator where headlines from rival newspapers and blog commentators will inform our world."

Five years? 2 max. And brands need to be thinking about this now. How do you communicate your brand when people will be looking at updates to your site via a RSS reader that strips out everything except the words and photos/videos (that's if you can create enough of a relationship with them to get them to add you to their reader in the first place)? Flash sites and pretty skins, and many of the tricks brands currently use, are mostly useless in this world. Every brand will need a blog to tell their stories and have converstaions. So many brands can't create a regular website that people will want to come back to; this is going to be an even greater challenge. But if they can crack it, then it's a great opportunity for the brand to reach the consumer fresh everyday.

"One of the tenets of the widget economy is that it will bring about an unprecedented era of personalisation. This much is true. But it also requires a level of openness not yet seen in the net economy. Websites will have to open themselves up to third-party developers, a radical proposition for established online properties. For news outlets, it will mean delivering news via feeds to the eyeballs rather than the established model of attracting the eyeballs to their news."

Motorola and Burger King have done some interesting widgets for Myspace. Very easy to see effectiveness, in terms of take up. But I'm still having too many conversations with clients along the lines of "but we want people to come to our website, not make something for someone else's". The lack of willingness to open up is worrying, or as expected, depending on your point of view.

LastFM, Twitter, eBay, flickr, TechCrunch are all pretty big 'web2.0' companies who have done widgets for Facebook, and there are loads of widget games etc from developers, but nothing from 'big brands'. I suppose they'll get there eventually: branded games and quizes seem obvious easy wins for most FMCG brands, a mobile company could offer an widget that let you see where selected friends were via GPS and google maps, or that let you send X number of free group texts.

There's more on facebooks openess policy and how it's affected the netowrk's growth and the impact widgets can have on brands in this post.

Want to know a bit more about the trend for widgets? Try this...Year of the widget. Mac users love their widgets...flickr pics of dashboard widgets.
And go to iGoogle for a simple way to get used to widgets (if you're not already exoeriencing the widget frenzy on facebook that is). iGoogle is one of Google's fastest growing products.

Interesting2007

I went to Interesting2007 on the weekend. You can read all about it in Russell Davies Blog. It was, well, very interesting and a nice breathe of fresh air.

My favourite talk was Jack Schulze on comic book meta/design.  You can read the transcript here and here a screen grab of part of it...

I like the way he goes on to talk about "imagery which knows it's part of a substrate: it understands that it's part of the object which it's on."  This is so awesome. Shamelessly ripping off more examples from his talk...

What the world eats

This is fascinating. From Time magazine: What the World Eats. 15 different homes around the globe show the kind and amount of food eaten.

United States: The Revis family of North Carolina
Food expenditure for one week: $341.98
Favorite foods: spaghetti, potatoes, sesame chicken

Egypt: The Ahmed family of Cairo
Food expenditure for one week: 387.85 Egyptian Pounds or $68.53
Family recipe: Okra and mutton

Chad: The Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp
Food expenditure for one week: 685 CFA Francs or $1.23
Favorite foods: soup with fresh sheep meat

Words from...

...Tony Brignull, who came in to give a talk to our creative department the other day, and I snuck in the back to listen.

It was an interesting retrospective, looking back at some of the campaigns he worked on. Mostly because the role of copy was so different.

He said, "the copy should be as long as the product is important". Hmmm... 'langauge' today is much more visual so this isn't really true. He also talked about how everyone is doing 'verve and style' but few are competing with facts, and how you shouldn't go for copy that says nothing. He also asked people if they could remember lines for several different brands in the past, and then what their current lines were. Very low recall for brands today. He was passionate about the role of stories; and urged creatives to be as ferocious as journalists digging into a political story in Washington in the quest to uncover that key thing that matters to consumers and would give them a reason to buy.

And a couple of bits of advice for planners:
- What a planner should give - '1 words and 1000 facts'
- Never write a brief with the word 'yet'

Mundane visuals

A collection of image mosaics that visually compare peculiar mundane objects in urban space, ranging from office buildings, over fitness equipment devices to detailed car tail lights.

The artist, Mark Luthringer, says, "the typological array’s inherent ability to depict prevalence & repetition make it the perfect technique for examining the excess, redundancy, & meaningless freedom of our current age of consumption."

Via urbancom blog

Turn over a new leaf

Tired of using innocent as a example of using web2.0 media to great effect?  Want another great example, but with the added joy that most of the activity was started and is run by evangelist fans of the brand? Try moleskine.  OK, fairly average website.  So what's the big deal?  Go to the moleskinerie fan blog.  This is visited by about 5000 people a day, and has 9 copycat sites in other languages, and for a long time these were essentially the notebooks only marketing.

The founder of the site has used "web2.0" to great effect.  See the great photos on flickr, fan pages on myspace and facebook, you can visit their squidoo lens and you can check some videos out on youtube, and as always, if you want to know more you can look on wikipedia.

What's even lovelier is the way the official Moleskine team works with, and appreciates, the fans.

And the notebooks are great too...

Broken

I've killed my laptop.

Playing around with the system files was bound to end in tears one day. I can't find the back-up discs. I may be offline for sometime. I'm not sure I can survive.

Music to take you places

Podbop is a great site that's about a year old now, but has finally reached the critical mass needed to make it a really vaulable little tool.

It's a great example of how the web can democratise music discovery. Enter your city and the site shows you the bands coming to your area and links you to free mp3s to check out.  You can even use an RSS feed to automatically download mp3s to you when a band on the system arrives in your area.

The podbop team describe it this way:

"Old way: looking up local concerts on an event site, googling 100 different bands, tracking down an mp3 for each band, then deciding what show you want to go to."

"The podbop way: type in a city, get mp3s, discover a band you like and go see them."

Discovery

The human footprint

Some fascinating facts from Human Footprint...from an average person's lifetime.

There's an article about it in The Daily Telegraph.

And various art installations were made to go with the programme.

Things I'm doing and not doing

Doing...

1. Laughing at this - new york to paris.  Go to Google Maps, select 'Get Directions'. Type in from New York, and to Paris, France.  Scroll down and read direction number 24.

2. Loving the idea of drop shots.  A drop shot is an alternative mailbox where you can find or leave random things for people to discover. You can create or find a dropspot via the site, and you can upload photos of the drop shot, and its evolution, too.  Something for the weekend.

Not doing...writing any of the following blog posts I've been meaning to write for months:

1. How I tried to spend 1 month without Google or any Google Aps (and cracked after 6.5 days)

2. Something about FMCG websites (the good, the bad, the ugly)

3. Michael Wolf's photography

4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. Responses to various blog posts I've found interesting but just haven't had the time to get round to yet.

Talk to me or future me

Two little amusing things...

First, an A.I. creation called Yuichan with a Zen bent.  Entrancing how real the conversation can feel, though once you've 'talked' with it for a bit the 'conversation' can go in circles.

Then there's this site that lets you compose an e-mail to your future self, and it will deliver it to you on any date you chose. Sweet.

There's a book too...

well, yes...

...but they're missing the point somewhat. 

Also being delayed, on the way to New York from Chicago, behind a frieght train - to the tune of 8 hours; on top of an 18 hour time-tabled journey - brought out a whole new kind of rage out in the woman sitting behind me. 

Love the design though: dynamic with lots of movement and a romantically retro-look.

Ghost ads

Waiting for the bus in downtown Seattle this caught my eye.  Not a great example of wall ads but it reminded me of some great flickr groups: ghost signs, wall ads, faded signage, old wall ads.  Interesting how advertising was once so integral to buildings, but now posters are usually limited to designated sites and quickly vanish. It's as if businesses were more confident in the past.  Big displays of who they were painted on their building walls, their business names etched in stone. 

Platform for art

A nice little something from London Underground’s 'Platform For Art'; which is a great use of space and brightens up the daily commute.

Gloucester Road Tube station has just started to show the work of artist Chiho Aoshima. City Glow, Mountain Whisper, (digital prints on vinyl) is on display until the end of the month and is Aoshima's first solo exhibition. The landscape she has created runs along all 17 archways which sees the scene graduate from day to night and from urban to rural.  On display until the end of March.

Hot news

Very funny article in The Times on Saturday. 

For those that fancy old-fashioned newsprint, there's a copy of the article under the cut...

Mobile arcade

Via this post by iain tate I crackunit.

Like Iain, I just love the idea of this. Maybe because it's got a low-tech finish which is quite refreshing, or maybe it just looks like fun.

e-relationships

At podlove you can find a quirky series of short documentaries about relationships and technology in the 21st century. 

I like the treatment of 'I love like blood'. 

 

Web2.0 is...

From vidipedia

Stumbling

Back in November I stumbled upon stumbleupon.  This is another great web2.0 company that crosses search with social networking. 

I love the site, it's made me fall in love with the web in a new way.  I love the randomness, the unexpected stuff it throws up that I'd never see otherwise.

So how does it work?

Download a toolbar that sits in your browser, and any time you fancy you hit the stumble button and you'll be taken to a new webpage. The pages you are shown depend on the interests you've previously stated (over 500 options), the friends you've made and stumbleupon learns from the likes and dislikes you state with one click as you browse.  All pages have been recommended by other stumblers, so it neatly sidesteps all the companies that pay search engines to get on the first few pages, and you tend to get interesting, high-quality sites. 

The blogging feature is easy to use; you can add comments to any webpage that are copied to your blog, and even if you don't want to comment on a page you can review everyone else's comments. You can recall the full list of sites you've given the thumbs up or down to. It's also a lot quicker than 'proper' grown-up blogging, so I've tended to switch to that for capturing a lot of the random, little things that catch my eye. 

You can browse stumblers by their interests, or see who liked the page you're on, and send stumbles to your friends (this is easily the best social networking feature). 

Some of my stumbles are blogged on my stumbleupon homepage.  There's the odd gem, but a lot of totally random stuff like oneword, footprints in the sand and weirdly pretty odd too.

Musicovery

Musicovery is a very nifty little music search engine that lets you search for music to suit your mood, and by genre. 

And it lets you listen to whole tracks, free, and skip instantly if you don't like something. 

Not a massive selection of tracks, and with no way to upload your own playlists, it's a nice but limited idea.

The naviagation is interesting, but lacks full scrollability, it would be better if you could browse down the music 'branches'.

Basic business model in that there are simple links to itunes and amazon music for the track that is playing.

Musicovery isn't 'intelligent', and does serve up a pretty random selection of tracks.  I rather like that, but if you fancy something more personalised then Last.fm claims to be leading the 'social music revolution'. 

You type in a track you like and it serves you up something similar.  You can rate whether you like it or not, and it'll learn your preferences.  It crosses search with social networking, in that you can create a profile, and see what your friends are listening too.

Traffic jam?

It's getting pretty crowed out there.

In 2005, about 10 exabytes (1 exabyte = 1018 bytes) of new information was produced and stored worldwide, roughly equal to 74,000 times the 17 million books in the United States Library of Congress.

Compare this to the estimate that in 1999 the sum total of recorded human knowledge, music, images and words amounted to only 12 exabytes.*

These figures are pretty mind-blowing. 

With the take-up of broadband people are really starting to upload content to the web, rather than just consume it.  The problem is computers and networks weren't designed for people to upload large files (compare the upload and download specs on your computer).  When the protocols were decided, no-one imagined what possibilities digital technology would release.  How the 'network constraints' will cope with the flood of consumer generated content is something of a headache for the boffins and companies like YouTube.

(*Source: UC Berkeley, School of Information Management and Systems)

Finding a good match

Been meaning to write about this since October...retrievr is an experimental service which lets you search and explore a selection of Flickr images by drawing a rough sketch.

Retrievr makes use of a Flickr API, which allows outside developers to incorporate Flickr functions and data into their own applications.

Read more in this Wall Street Journal article.