A break

It has been quite a while since I last had the chance to get on the internet outside of the brick work confounds and IT restrictions I am now apart of. THREE months has past and with the urban nomadic lifestyle I have adhered to has meant a true lack of knowledge of things digital and new that has gone on.

Part of me regrets this, another has felt a new style of ignorance. It was welcomed. Being away from something that many of us have a heroin style relationship with is a good thing in my books.

Addition takes many forms and the past spell of freedom has given me the chance to ponder... consider and reflect.

This post is to request you consider taking a none religious lent from something we all don't consider as an addictive aesthetic. Enjoy other things and shift that un-considered rigid formality

The Freedom of Integration Act 2000 and ...

A lot of people are posting a lot of messages proclaiming the death of the ad agency, this lack of client pie that is eaten by adlands finest. One of many brain child's of the industry is Integration and also the reason why people shouldn't worry.

Are we seeing the industry become fragmented or are we really seeing the industry evolve away from the traditional off line campaign and embrace the opportunity of the diverse. Working on the more eclectic, and considering consumer involvement.

The voice of the person is... sorry scratch that, HAS changed and WILL change again, a point that brings me back to the industries sphere of influence. Change has seen expansion, expansion into campaigns that fuse specialties, that evoke collaboration and in my opinion see more interesting things churned out.

I may be speaking very out of turn but the four father quote that is so widely known; "The medium is the message" is not as relevant as it once was. We should note that it is not the way you say something or what you say, its is the elasticity that infuses the two, that can produce the 'new.' Whilst considering the relevance of the chatter, will it benefit anyone, and not just try to convince people that it will do. Great things do not stay unknown for long, if you produce the great, the rest will fall into place.

Memory like a pot with hols and a Facebook attempt at Twitter

The last week or so of events have been tough on the old top hat, memory is a little frazzled from late nights and featuring on a Channel 5 police show; when we nearly got arrested for postering around brick lane for my house mates exhibition which starts next week, RealrecogniseReal will be one to watch if your into illustration and other lovely art stuff. Anyways I remember reading about two and a half weeks ago about Facebooks attempt at stealing Tweeters!

The name itself leaves nothing to the imagination, it has no creative flare, no new aspects, just facebook but the "essentials," so really it is for the people that have yet to discover twitter properly. Or "don't have time" for Facebook.

Unfortunately it will do well, the reason facebook is more successful than twitter is three fold:

• It was first

• It offers more

And...

• It services most peoples needs for social media

Twitter is great because of all the other stuff that comes through twitter. Facebook lite will hook the Facebookers that have a need for something like twitter but are scared of adoption and not wanting to find out about another site, when FB does what they need.

It is a sad time for social media, I am a fan of twitter, but unfortunately and slight hypocritically I am never on their enough.

Adopt to change

Behavioural traits always surprise me, people who adopt the random interaction with others based on a common interest or entertainment value. Life is good, even when its bad, why not start a movement in the street, worst case, you have a good dance, know one joins, you’ll never see them again and they’ll have a story to tell their friends that night “This weird guy started randomly dancing in the street today ...!!” It is a win win situation.

Why don't we have a dance in a random place every now and then? Well, conditioning for one, many believe that the impression we give off from having a good time like the chap above is could mean we come across as; weird, crazy, "unusual" and/or "special." So what. After living in London for the past two months and observing the ‘heads down, pissed off’ mentality that we all adopt when we leave the house and before we enter a place where we know others. Flash Mobs are great buckers of the trend but even they’re spontaneity is planned. Who knows, but it would be great to see the trend change from planned to true spontaneity mob. You start and I’ll join in!

Lunch break fun and curry

Yet again, Ikea have come up with a brilliant way to portray the simplicity and local thinking of their brand through an effective digital medium. Admittedly it is not an original idea, but Ikea, have made it their own; the site is called Space maker and it aims to help you organize your room to get the most out of the space and your items within it. I feel it is more for the student and career starters that don't have a lot of space to fill and usually a lot of accumulated trinkets that seem to have become irreplaceable in the process of leaving home and starting the uni/career ladder. It even has a bells and whistle based animated explanation, its title "Watch it work" if you can't work it out, a little tip on another subject, tippex is a quick eraser than the delete button, try it out!!!

The brilliance of Ikea is in the simplest part of the brand, the part that whilst browsing through their products (on or off-line) you will at some point look at a piece and think "Why was that not designed like that before, that would be perfect in my living room, dinning room, bedroom, bathroom etc."

Having said all this I feel that there is still some work to be done to integrate it. It's one thing producing something great, its another, getting people to use it. I look forward to see how they intend to launch the platform fully; PR, social media, university drive (on and off-line), giant rubber Swedish animal, with lazer beams for eyes, or have I seen that before...

Hope the weathers better where you are, London is as muggy as a sweaty robber! But left-over curry makes lunch happy days.

Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web

% of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees….80%

Social media is powerhouse, data is a scary thing and not one to be taken lightly

Courtesy of socialnomics, and my collegue craig!

Bankrupt businesses infographically

Sourced from Good

This is a really lovely representation of the companies that have gone south in the last 22 years, interestingly though, 8 of the top 20 largest sinking ships have sunk in the last 2 years. We have been subject to much change since the whispered 'R' word was first mentioned, what will be really interesting is how we come out of this.

Whether buyers confidence increases and the markets pick up from there (leaving us with no learning's) or we realise that change is the true way forward, our insatiable over consumption of everything does not lead where we want it to lead us. We started off wanting, we lost ourselves on the way, and now, maybe we might have the chance to get back on track. Hopes and dreams, passion and thirst, these are the food for thought. And I'm hungry...

Megawoosh

Lovely idea for a viral, takes me back to the days of water slides as a child, shame I don't speak german so not 100% what Megawoosh is selling!

Disappointment guys

Absolute and TBWA/Chiat day NY found a folk band to pocket their integrity long enough to cash the cheque and build Absoluts tag line, I love Absolut as a brand, but I am disappointed by this, there print ads are legendary and this just doesn't cut the bacon. What might have been better was not to try to a mixture better Heart FMs old ads and Orange's blow up animals on a beach, shame. 6/10 for this and I'm being generous

Although I will add, the cinematography when the shot doesn't have inflatable words in it is quite nice, good job on that front

4320, Extreme Tweeting

Twitter is to be used for a whole new endurance exercise with this latest creation from Droga5 Syndey for V Austrailia. What lengths will you go to, to get a free weekend in LA? Well considering recent events I think there are a lot of people that want to head over. Not sure its for the scenery though. Could this be an epic, publically aware, mass fainting experience!


I like it but only due to its testing quality, possibly could have done with more depth to the concept. Tweeting for a more constructive purpose or if it was in england, tweet at MPs for spending lots of money on duck huts (old news, still as sore)

It been a while

Oh my goodness gracious, what an eventful couple of weeks. Final major project and degree show over and done with, you would have thought that things would ease up for a little bit...

Urgh No!

I moved back home for about 4 days! Nice to see people and enjoy the limited sunshine, then it was Glasto time! This year was my seventh but my second as a paying customer. I always loved the mud and the urge to get dirty for a couple days but this year was short of this:


What a good festival it was this year; some good bands, some good laughs, a couple naked runs from people (not me) and way too much cider! Oh and a 4.5 hour commute back in the wee hours of Monday morning (I live 10 minutes from the site) it was hell and laughs all at the same time.

I literally had about 14 hours to recover and then it was up to Farnham (uni) for graduation. Love the tradition but it was kind of like having sex for the first time; not really sure what your doing and then its over way to quickly! But we had a party that night to keep the spirits high (some higher than others) and then followed it by a lazy couple hours on a beach next to lake the day after. Relaxing you say, not for long as the next day, I was working and then packing ready to move up to London on the Sunday.




Victor Stone, now they were lovely before they got our money for the house and then rubbish afterwards, which I found out when I drove up to get the keys on Sunday only to find they weren't there! It all ended well and I got into the house and put the fish back in their tank. It was then time to think about the scary process of starting my placement at Nextdoor Thinking.


Their a new start up digital agency based in Holborn, and have very kindly set me up for a 3 month unpaid placement. It's now the third day in and excluding the usual first day computer problems its been quite interesting, you'll have to keep an ear out to find out more of what I'm doing whilst I'm here

Now that’s what I call beer:

It’s the age-old ad trick of sex sells, this just happens to be a nice adaptation of it. We all
(lads that is) I’m sure remember the first time you went to a French market at about 13 years old; French bangers and pens with women on them that strip when you turn it upside down, defiantly one of the highlights of my time in lower school. I never thought that I would see a beer bottle that did the same thing. Skinny Blonde is an Australian beer, which has female mascots on the bottles. When the bottle changes temperature as you hold it, the lovely ladies lose their tops.

They also have a nice but simple site that offers the same service as the bottles. Some would say this is crude, and unnecessary, I like it. Only problem, it will be a defiantly hit from the start but will it last? I’m not sure, although in these testing times it might be a nice, light hearted edition to going out for a beer.

What will see them through to fully adoption lies in their follow up, they have something potentially good but also a potential fad.

We will just have to see.

Its been a while, why not tweet a fart

Its been a spell since I was last able to check up on my mandatory sites for cool stuff and information. This is a production that was released a while ago but I am behind the times and are still on internet catch up. Actually, is that possible? It all happens so fast. Anyway, back to the actual post; since the Tweet Bakery, which is amazing, of course, but there is now something even better...
(Although, it is possible that this was before the Bakery but I haven't found it until now)

What could be better when your working hard and don't have enough time to get onto Twitter to post something cool, you could get your chair to do it for you.

To top it off, why not have it tweet whenever you fart.

Top Knotch internet loveliness, Thumbs up

There's an APP for that.

This was a really wicked vid that someone has put together which sums up some of my feelings towards to iPhone. They are great but sometimes there is too much of a good thing. Enjoy

Hold your tongue people

Watch what you say online because Branson is listening. Virgin has this nifty little section on their site that constantly scans the net searching, collating and displaying every message that mentions any of the Virgin brands! scary stuff! They have aptly called it the eye, it just reminds me of the Lord of the Rings (got to do another LOTRs day,epic.)



See what you think, for me, I just think it looks rather cool. No harm in that I suppose, although having said that, I think my tone and opinion would have been different if it wasn't someone I respected. Funny that.

WE WILL. WE WILL. RUIN THE AD AT THE END!



So this is what attraction is like in the Intel world. Based on success! Nice!

Why can't we all work on things like this

Well... We all know sex sells, the most recent and prominent in my mind, was Kylie on a velvet bucking bronco (god that was good). Kylie on a bronco... sorry!

This is a very interesting connection to the old school style, but it's that Friday night feeling (or at least now it is!) and, I'm liking it! Lets hope that over the next year I miraculously become at home in the shoes of a producer and jobs like this just get thrown at me (sorry stepped into dream world for a second...)



Well I thought, at the very least it was a good thing to start the weekend with.

Sourced from here

Nice Font

I have just found a really nice font;
SF iron Gothic,
thought i would take a few minutes out to write my name.
Never seem to do it much so fancied having a play.

Highlight online

This is a really cool new bookmark app thing, ma giggy wiggy. It is aptly titled Markit and you literally drag the icon onto your bookmarks and then highlight to your hearts content. Any website, on anything, execpt flash, but this is flash for you. It is also slightly similar to delicious in the way that it stores all your marked stuff so you can go back through it all and find things that you knew you would forget and markit so you didn't. Thumbs up from me

Flowing with creative juices

This is just lovely. No better word could describe it, it made me smile and for that I thank them and blog them!


EepyBird's Sticky Note experiment from Eepybird on Vimeo.


Think I might go an bankrupt myself (even more) and buy a shed full of sticky lovelies!

Opening of the Facebook gates

Facebook is to open its gates as of tomorrow at 4pm to allow developers to gain access to information that they were previous not privy to. This comes just as Twitter is gain massive amounts of traffic and becoming the new emerging social medium of communications.

Facebooks retaliation to this is to let developers build websites, apps and other online content on top of their model instead of inside the wall and confines of their rules and restrictions.

This has the opportunity to explode how brands interact with consumers on the social networking site and increase the amount of innovative and also pointless extra content that will be created on top of the Facebook band wagon. I see it going not either way (innovative or pointless) but both, what will mark the difference between good branded content is the use value attached to said piece.

Information source

Pitch @ 25'000 ft

Richard Branson is now fronting a new campaign to get entrepreneurs involved in pitching their new business ideas to people whilst they fly. This sounds strange, definitely sounds 'Branson' style, the idea involves people uploading their business ideas to a section of the virgin website. The most voted vid's will then be played to business flyers, who can then get in contact with the people if they like the business plan.

Interesting... Definitely. Realistic... Not so sure.


One (of many I'm sure they'll come across) problem; Mental Capital, who can vet the system to make sure there is no ideas stealing.

Phillips goes circular

I just saw this on another blog, it's a new ad for Phillips. It is titled Carousel, and like the fair ground ride is circular in design. It is also played on a loop somewhere on their website, which is quite a nice idea. It a Tribal DDB creation and is a great way to show off the Phillips HD TVs.

Thumbs up to poppets that produced this one!

Re-mixed "do ray me far so la ti da" in a station

Sometimes it is nice to see something that is done without an global brand slapped on top of it. Good stuff dancers in Antwerpen central station.

New design, What do you think

Why not make this a conversation instead of the usual one voice