progressive stories

This is a nice little presentation.

Especially this slide.

going in for service

I keep on reading and hearing things about 'digital spaces being far better use as service channels rather than marketing channels' at the minute. Like this. Seems to be one of those ideas that's in the air.

positive power

A while ago I went on about being positive in the global down turn, the colour yellow and my new watch. So it's kind of nice to see some positivity coming through at the minute.

Aslam told me that the recession's over today, "didn't you get the email?" he said.

lessons in pricing from Marrakech

When Alan Sugar wanted to test his Apprentice's negotiation skills last year he sent them off to Marrakech for the day. The thing about shopping in Marrakech is that there is no fixed price for anything, which means that everything is sold on negotiating. It's a fascinating concept compared to shopping in the UK as it means the price of things is dictated by what you're prepared to pay, not what it's worth.

I had a lot of fun and learnt a lot from my Marrakech negotiations, dealing with the concepts of 'for example price'/ best price/ final price/ your price/ my price/ democratic price and 'both you and me smiling price'. Oh and ASDA price which they seem to have picked up on some how along with the famous pocket tap. 

My favourite price was 'what you like price' though given to me by the driver of my petit taxi back to the airport, a true Radiohead esque approach to negotiations. He did better out of me than any of the others interestingly.

poetics

I went to the cinema last night and witnessed no less than three ads picking up on this new poetry renaissance. The below two and one very good one that was filmed by Rankin about getting out of London for the day, I can't find it online though. Watch out for it if you go to Curzon Soho anytime soon.

Freedom with Skype a..
Watch the ad...

talking shit

(shit talker)

Having read a few of those IBM papers I've come to the conclusion that there's going to be a hell of a lot of shit talking digitally (via RFID and stuff) before long. Cars, plants & cats, trainers, bags, your electricity supply, the lot. All talking, shit. That's a lot of noise that'll need to be filtered.

180 degrees

I overheard our Niels talking about bugaboo push chairs the other day, he's doing some words for them at the minute. Niels was saying how they've found a new bit of research showing it's much better for kids to face their parents when in push chairs (not just prams) and not the direction the push chair is going. Which is good news for bugaboo as they're pretty much the only people who make push chairs that can be switched around. Kind of makes sense that kids would prefer to look at their mums smile rather than the carrots on the bottom shelf of Sainsbury's grocery aisle. And vice versa (the mum not the carrots).

It's surprising what can be achieved when you just turn a problem 180 degrees.

intelligent advertising

This is the best advert I've seen in a very long time. You can't read it here as it's so blurred, you'll have to buy the new copy of UK Wired and turn to page 40 if you want to read it. I like it because it's well placed, intelligent, informed and express's a very definite opinion pushing IBM out as thought leaders. And it's got a barrage of substance behind it which is still to come by the look of it. It made me think and made me change my opinion on IBM. Which I imagine was the objective of it. 

I can imagine a future of even more brands expressing opinions on stuff and leading thought for the better.

Update: I've scanned it now, you can read it here.

re:branded

I discovered a new brand at Maidenhead train station today. It's called Puccino's. They do coffee on train platforms and stuff and used to look like this...

Then they got a bloke called Jim Smith (or waldo pancake) involved and made all their stuff look like that sign hanging below the bad old logo above.

Good eh? If you like that kind of thing.

1: It's good when indivdual artists or illustrators take on a brand not just agencies (like when Marcus did grub). I think it's going to start happening more.

2: It's good to have some fun with things. I hope it's going to start happening some more.

3: It's good.

one, two, three

More often than not technology isn't easy and it's instructions are over complicated. So it was with great joy that I received a new wireless router from talktalk today in simple 1,2,3 packaging and instructions specifically for Mac people. It did include a bit of innocent 'esque 'if you have any little headaches just give our lovely people a call' copy but I'll let them off that.

I'm now wireless. 

Well kind of...

2009 growth strategy

The raised vegetable patch is together, rocket garden is in and the sun is doing it's photosynthesis thing.

I've got particularly high hopes for the carrots, spinach and beetroot this year.

small things, big places

I've got a thing about doing small things in big places at the minute. Like spot the bull is being taken out to the masses this year. It's a really great small idea that has proven it's success as a digital campaign for a few years running, but is now being pushed out bigger.

The other interesting bit of this is that it's pretty old news for people who work in digital or early adopters. But it's going to be new news for the other 98% of the population. Like T-Mobile bringing the flash mob concept to the masses, there is plenty of stuff that has proven it's worth at a relatively small scale in the last few years. Stuff that has the potential to be re-visited with a clever bit of planning and work just as well big.

memory marketing

When I was a youngen' every summer the Radio One Road Show would come to Tenby's South Beach car park for a day. It was the highlight of the summer seeing the likes of Utah Saints miming to top ten hits. I've got some good memories of the Radio One Road Shows. 

It was only when I walked past south beach car park the other day that I realised the Radio One Road Show was a marketing exercise. Like all branded events are. But that to me was the genius of it, people had a good time, picked up the brand association and felt warm about Radio One. To this day I feel I have a moral obligation to like Radio One over other radio stations purely for the fact they put on a good party on my local beach every year when I was growing up. Memories eh.

i want some grub

Great Grub. Packaging by Marcus. Nuff said.

what goes around comes around

A couple of years ago I bought a shed and got a house and garden thrown in on the deal. Then the house sprung a leak and I had to move out while it was sawn in half. Now it's nice and new again and I'm about to move back in almost 2 years to the day when I first moved in. 

Not much that brands can learn from this though I'm afraid. I'm just saying like.

my true colours shining through

The computer said I was red and yellow and green and blue but I think I should be yellow and red and green and blue.

 

ski sunday

I was taking to my friendly neighbourhood financial advisor this week about finding a good place to put my money for the next few years. Somewhere that might be a better return than the 1% I get from the bank at the minute. In order to do this he first had to find my attitude to risk. A facinating task I'd compare to choosing a ski run on a mountain. Lots of different risk factors, ability levels and levels of return to be chosen from.

I got to thinking the same metaphor could be applied to committing marketing and advertising campaigns. When embarking on a campaign you can choose a safe pedestrain route (green run) and not get a huge thrill from it. Or go straight for an edgier stand out solution (black run) and run the risk of having to be carried off the slopes in a stretcher or getting to the destination very quickly with a beating heart.

Or you could choose to just go off piste and invent your own way down.

That's this week's metaphor of the week done and dusted.

novel idea

Blackwell's on Charing Cross Road has just installed an expresso book machine that will print you a book on demand while you wait. How very two point oh.

on failure & madness

 

Zorba: Damn it boss, I like you too much not to say it. You've got everything except one thing: madness. A man needs a little madness or else... 

Basil: Or else? 

Zorba: He never dares cut the rope and be free.

Zorba and the Greek.

my new micro-payment idea

It's an oyster card elastic banded to an ipod touch. Oyster card technology is pretty small in fact so it wouldn't take much to put the chip inside the ipod and do away with the elastic band. Then once that was up and running you'd have a brand new payment channel, the best thing since the invention of visa card (or the invention of visa card with a built in oyster card).

Think about it, apple are making a mint from micro-payments on music and apps with itunes at the minute and people are getting more and more comfortable with these transactions (I've personally spent over £30 in £10 or less transactions on itunes in the last 30 days). And Oyster has the very realistic potential to expand out of purely London travel transactions into a whole host of small to mid size payments just has has happened with Hong Kong's Octapus card. Like Oyster have just started to do with Evening Standard offers.

And combining both would also give users the opportunity to life track their spending via specific applications like nike+ but for things you buy. Which would be fascinating I think.

what brands can learn from the simon bolivar youth orchestra

I went to see various groups from the simon bolivar youth orchestra this week. So here's what brands can learn from the simon bolivar youth orchestra...

The simon bolivar orchestra.

The simon bolivar brass ensemble.

The simon bolivar string quartet.

Teams come in various sizes, whole companies, departments and small groups. All can deliver results greater than the sum of their parts when they're working well together.

An inspiration leader will get you places.

And having a great system in place will let you grow.

That's all from what brands can learn from the simon bolivar youth orchestra.

snap shot of things to come

Here's something I think we'll be seeing more and more of. Micro transactions via Oyster cards and getting a better value deals for doing so. Hong Kong's Octopus card is already streets ahead in this area.

I was reading a really interesting piece in the RSA Journal about consumers differing behaviours in spending with cash or card. People are far more frivolous when it comes to non-cash transactions basically. The above system can take full advantage of this, especially with micro payments, to get consumer spending going again.

where the puck are things going?

One of my favourite metaphors at the minute is about forecasting and ice hockey. It goes 'the best ice hockey players skate to where the puck is going to, not where it is'. With that in mind I went off to this thing at the RSA on Wednesday night to try and find out where the pucks going.

The 3 ways to monetise on the internet: transactions, subscriptions and sponsorship. To me it looks like the biggest area of growth in these 3 is subscriptions. A milk man's salary is paid for by subscriptions. Spotify is a subscription based model, as is Album Club as is using an Oyster card as is a lot more of the video content on i-tunes these days. Subscriptions let you turn short term customers into long term customers, and let you and let you lock in your loyalists. Is there anything you can offer as a subscription?

Events are bigger than pre-produced conent. The man from i-Player said that they're seeing more future in events based content (football games, Obama speeches, olympics coverage) than traditional pre-produced content like films and tv series's. Fundamentally because the former is a lot harder to pirate and duplicate than the later. The same argument seems true for music where live concerts are now overtaking traditional CD sales as artists main revenue streams (again it's a lot harder to pirate a concert). There's also interesting conitations of society 'going live' with twitter's argument that their search is a live based search where as google's in an archived version.

Anyone fancy starting up an events subscriptions business?

the lets be human beings show

Here's a lets be human beings 'best of the blog' presentation I gave to the students of Bucks New University on Friday as part of my being paired up with a medium sized shire. It's missing a couple of videos and won't mean much at all without me standing next to it waffling. Let me know if you'd be interested in having me stand next to it and waffling and we might be able to sort something out.

people talking about their jobs

I went to this how to find a job you love thing last night. The speakers were a scientist, motivational speaker, writer, furniture maker, guerilla gardener/ advertising accounts man and social entrepreneur. Here's some stuff I picked up.

The scientist liked his job because he's in a gang. Gangs are good. He's also doing some really interesting research into self healing materials (materials that fix themselves when broke like your skin) and setting up a materials library.

The motivational speaker makes 130k a year motivating people with lots of money but not so much motivation. She told a story about fixing a team who weren't getting on very well with each other by getting them all to tell each other why they're great. She made a good point that we only tend to genuinely say why we think someone is great when we have to sign their leaving cards or when the die. She seemed like a mum to business people with lots of educational intelligence but not so much emotional intelligence. The fact that she's doing so well out of it says a lot about business's I think.

The guerilla gardener now works 3 days a week in advertising for a decent salary and spends the other 4 throwing seeds about and planting stuff. He seemed pretty happy about this.

The writer made 290k from his books last year. He likes writing books that capture a current social mood or trend or aspect of society that has otherwise been undocumented. Like work or status or travel or love. He compared this to 'catching a butterfly'. I liked his turn of phrase. I think blogging can be a bit like butterfly catching sometimes.

And finally my favourite was the French furniture maker. He's set up his own custom made furniture making shop on Brick Lane where he has broken the norm of having to have a separate factory, warehouse and retail outlet and put them all together in one small place. He said his business plan is a book they keep called 'all the mistakes we have made', once this book is full up he'll be able to open other shops using the same concept but skipping the mistakes. He also told a nice story about the moment he most felt things were coming together when one of his customers brought a friend to his shop and gave them a tour of how the concept works. He said that the customer was describing the shop and concept to his friend as if it was his own though, as if by finding it he had taken some ownership of it like a business angel. This is probably customer advocacy nirvana. 

He was also wearing shoes covered in saw dust, which I liked.

on failure

Here's a good quote from an interview with Robin Pecknold from Fleet Foxes in the Sunday Times. Wise beyond his 23 years.

Vaguely related post: your daily aphorisms.

marketeers of the years

My favourite marketeers at the minute, in no particular order..

Radiohead. Do marketing in the very best way possible, without even thinking about it and by being themselves.

Peter Kay. Sold exactly the same stand up show on DVD three times over without anyone noticing and then found out how to get into the top 10 of the pop charts and made some more money doing that.

Tibetan market stall holders. If you ever go to the market in Lhasa you'll find that Tibetan market stall holders are some of the best marketeers in the world. Using the winning combination of cowboy hats, gold teeth, genuine smiles & warmth and the ultimate lead in for new prospects "looky, looky, cheapy, cheapy".

from the miraculous to the mundane

Here's a very quick thought spurred from watching Evan Williams TED talk on the tube this morning.

"Twitter lets people talk about everything from the miraculous to the mundane", for example...

miraculous

mundane

The mundane outweighs the miraculous by quite a bit though, life by its very nature is filled with more mundane events than miraculous. 

Most brands prefer to talk about the miraculous rather than the mundane though (big telly ads are miraculous), they're the ones struggling with social media. The ones who are quite happy to talk about the mundane (and do it with frequency) are the ones flourishing. Like those Zappos folk.

more democratised donation

Here's a good bit of democratised donation I spotted at Waitrose last night. Every one who buys something gets a green token and can choose to vote for which local community project they'd like Waitrose to support.

They're doing something very similar at the new gorilla kingdom bit of London Zoo at the minute about gorilla projects, but I didn't take a photo of that I'm afraid.

what's your frequency kenneth?

 

I was thinking about frequency the other day whilst catching up with my RSS feeds. Particularly how some feeds have different frequencies to others. Seth's blog for example comes at you thick and fast and I don't always have time to keep up with it. Which is a shame as I'm missing some good thinking (that's my fault not his though).

It made me wonder if frequency is ever considered as an objective for a communications brief, and if not should it be? 'What's the best frequency for this messaging?' type of stuff. For example at innocent we try to stick to making one blog post per day as a rule, we won't post stuff for the sake of it to just meet the rule but that's our blog's general frequency. Stuff like twitter has a much higher frequency but can also be very sporadic.

I'm kind of noticing that the people I'm following are turning down their blogging frequencies and upping their twittering frequencies. Kind of a sign of the times I imagine but I miss reading blog posts with pictures and longer formed thoughts and stuff.

It's also been making me think about sustainable frequencies. I've spoken about wearing stuff in and not out before, and long term 'always on' type communications. These also take long term resource commitments though particularly suited to in-house teams. What about stuff like the compare the meerkat twitter feed? Is this a sustainable frequency? I kind of assume it's being maintained by a copy writer in an agency so unless the client is prepared to keep funding it it's going to have to be turned off one day. But if it's continuing to get engagement why would they? I suppose the question is where is the line drawn when it's no longer worth the investment and you let the followers go. The vast majority for campaigns are time specific these days, so by their very nature have to come on an end. Or perhaps this is changing?

Anyway my own frequency for this blog tends to be once a week at the minute. Until next week.