Sunday 1 November 2009

Google Connect

One of the great things about social media is the sheer flexibility of it all. I don't have any rules and I'm completely entitled to change my mind at any moment as to how I run this blog. Management reserves the right to be an arse hole and so forth. 


However, as a fully paid up "data junkie" I had an epiphany the other day while thinking why so many of the people on Twitter are in some sort of cluster link fuck fest and yet fail to really engage in what makes Twitter delightful. So, I've decided I'm going to remove some of the social networking tools at the side of this blog (as well as pipe some of you who just link on Twitter into Friendfeed) so this is really the last chance to make it easy for yourself and join Google connect. I'll still be on it but it wont be on display as I'm cleaning up my data streams or rather going for a full on tweak that is really never ending. Click below and join in or don't. It's all good :)





For Fox Sake

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
For Fox Sake!
www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor
Health Care Crisis

Long before it was safe to do so, when the United States was reeling from the sky scraping collapse of three buildings in New York and any suggestion of even handed analysis or    probing and difficult questions was yelled down by people screaming 'they hate our freedoms'. I made my political position clear although you might be surprised to find I'm neither Democrat or Republican.


What annoys me is that those same people baying for blood invariably couldn't point to Iran on a map and are unaware of having their political opinions shaped by the media and its business driven agenda (industrial military and media complex and so forth or MIC as its often known). FOX is most certainly part of this machine as is CNN although they are both complicit in addressing real issues.


Noam Chomsky made clear this complex communication topic of media manipulation in his 'Manufacturing Consent' book. During that post 9/11 I was unpopular and (I lost friends over it) specifically yelling (to the TV) at the disgraceful cowardice of the White House Press Corps as they group fellated then POTUS Bush 43. I've also made clear my views on FOX NEWS (Fair and Balanced) over here but I think it's important that if you haven't watched how media really works that you take the time out to watch the Manufacturing Consent Video below.


There really is no excuse for not being informed and if you find it dull. Perhaps you need to  back to your day job because being part of the solution and not the problem is only for the sentient classes.


Disclaimer: Noam Chomsky is my favourite Jewish Person. I imagine if he lived a couple of thousand years ago, that with legendary embellishment he could easily morph into that other profoundly important Jewish figure..Jesus Christ. Watch this and see why he's on another level. I know of no other person who cuts through issues with such compelling truth that it leaves me bewildered as to how he made the lonely journey to what become self evident conclusions.





Green Is Green




I was taking an early morning swim yesterday. It's a good time for me to think, and as ever when I'm surrounded by the sun, the sea and the sand I'm reminded how beautiful nature is and that we're really confronted by a logic bomb when considering how the system we all conspire to take part in, points at the asymmetry of global finite resources and our wasteful production (most products don't exist within six months of their manufacture) and of course our decadent disposable lifestyles. There's a way out of this and advertising or communications has a powerful and wealth creating role to contribute towards a virtuous solution but I've written about that extensively elsewhere (and here) although intend to probably recap on some of John Grant's The Green Marketing Manifesto at some point because many of those issues were thrashed out then.


In any case, I can quickly highlight that the behavioural changes required to make a sustainable lifestyle are largely a marketing problem and where there's a marketing problem there's a business solution if supply side economics are given the credence we already do.


Anyway I was dipping a few toes into the sea and I suddenly recalled that JWT's future trends watcher Marian Salzman was predicting back in 1988 that Blue was the new Green. That we'd be seeing the environment issue as a blue one where it was once green. A lot of us didn't like it at the time because many people from the consumption classes (I use that term deliberately) are still confused as to the extent of change needed and the last thing the communication classes should be doing is confusing them with bogus rebranding efforts. Anyway, Marian was wrong as most future trend watchers are. I've enjoyed some of her work in the past but frankly I think it's time that these charlatans should put their hands up and admit their error rather than just concentrating on their successes. Don't you?


You can read how common sense and Green won the day over here, here, here and here.

Thursday 29 October 2009

Silhouette




China's ability to make knock off copies on luxury goods is sometimes frighteningly close or at least visually. I bought this iPod copy recently for US$37 (8 Gigabyte) and while it's got lots of drawbacks such as slow boot up, quicker battery fade and slow processing plus no interface. It does  have a few advantages. It's got a radio and I couldn't care less if it was stolen like my last two were in Hong Kong. No shadow of a doubt.





Wednesday 28 October 2009

What I'm Listening To



I've long been a fan of DJ Stewarts mixes from Bed Supperclubs Electrofrequencies in Bangkok on Monday night to his latest sets on UB Radio. To be frank. He's on fire at the moment with some of the best mixes I've heard him make in all the years I've been rating him as one of the finest DJ's in the business. You can download his UB Radio Sets over here. Breaks, House and Tech for those who need some taxonomy (or ontology if like me you're struggling to separate the two).


There's a feed over here you can pop into your iTunes for the cream. It's free..... as indeed "Everything should be (free)"  and which one of the sets (Flamgini at Funky Dojo) asserts.

Feedburner Statistics


A Star Is Born


Sunday 25 October 2009

Cool Bananas



I just got back from another stunning bike ride round the island I'm living on. I'm very conscious these days that as oil prices spike and the threat of hyperinflation from printing money in the United States and the United Kingdom leaves us potentially looking at an impending breakdown in the food distribution system. It leaves city dwellers with enough food for two days as explained in this TED video I blogged about a week or so ago and so any opportunity to reconnect with nature is fascinating me at the moment and I"m slowly researching what kind of foods I could grow on the island as well as what is available in the wild such as these bananas. Even if my instinct is wrong and my views are alarmist, I just think it makes good frugal sense to see what can be relied upon and so I'm usually taking a bunch of these home with me for the return cycle journey. 


It's very satisfying and strangely I seem to be leaning towards a vegetarian diet or at least one with a 100 or so grammes of meat a week. I also understand from a tweet earlier that a vegan in a Hummer has a lower carbon footprint than a beef eater in a Prius because of the intensive farming required to breed cows for food.


I'd like to raise chickens here but after the last round of avian flu the government has put strict rules in place to prevent this. I'm sure that will be ignored if events take over legislation. In any case it's very rewarding as these bike rides for wild growing bananas take me through some of the steepest inclines on the south side of the island and I'm in better shape than I have been for at least five years when I last visited the Gym regularly. I look a bit like a Frenchman sometimes when I come home on the KLEIN bearing bananas instead of onions. Tropical living my friends ;)






Saturday 24 October 2009

Google Wave





I've been invited on Google Wave and I'd quite like to road test it. For those of you who don't have my gmail address and wish to have a go at using it, just drop me an email to my spam account which is cefrith at hotmail dot bomb. 

On Success and Failure


This may be a minority view that is indulgently and definitively littered with self referential contradiction, but I do know that Mr Armano has a similar perspective, so I'm not alone on this and so here goes. 


The propensity to indiscriminately use the word FAIL on twitter is surely incongruous with our times? Don't the brilliant (and arguably culturally important) W&K urge us to embrace failure


Surely there's so much to be critical and deeply concerned with in these pressing times that deserve a real sense of urgency and even justified anger?


What like?


Well, there's a strong case for George Bush and Tony Blair to face a war crimes tribunal for a judgement of truth about weapons of mass delusion? ..FAIL.. 


We appear to be living in a consumption frenzy (particularly in consumer Consumer CONSUMER electronics) that logically concludes with our species consuming ourselves. 


Haven't thought about that? BIG FAILURE$


Aren't you mad with the Burmese authorities preventing aid getting to their people after a devastating cyclone? FAIL....


What's your view on the earthquakes in Indonesia happening so alarmingly frequently that hardly anyone comments on them? 


Not important?  *FAIL*


What about serial typhoons in the Philippines then. Is that a {FAIL}? 


OK, then what's your view on our melting ice caps that will take out the Maldives alarmingly soon while our our internet carboon footprint exceeds that of the aviation business globally? ~ FAIL~. 


Something a bit closer to home and perversely a bit more intangible? What about the printing presses floating Sterling and Dollar currencies so we can hold the undeveloped world in an economic hologram trap of poverty and squalor? Ever thought about money as simulacrum? You should do. You really should and thus.....FAIL$ 


A toothless United Nations? FAIL# 


US & Israeli (both nuclear powers) largest ever war exercises under the leadership of a Nobel Peace Prize winner...Not bothered? FAIL%%%


Look around you. Noticed the greed, obesity and commensurate starvation? ^FAIL^


The list goes on and on doesn't it.


Shouldn't these be the issues we need to be indignant about? The ones we should SHOUT and CAPITALIZE our tweets for instead of a failed iPhone app or a subjective and erroneous view on a logo that is fully explained here and here but not here.


I don't care if your consumer electronics FAIL on YOU.


...and go easy on the gratuitous linking too because guess what? The information age means there's far more interesting stuff on the net than a person could ever hope to devour. It's the real reason you've stopped reading books isn't it?

If you like something. I'm happy for you. If something is pissing you off write a blog post or something but please stop filling up my twitter stream with garbage sentiment and garbage subjectivity and do share with me more of the trivial stuff like if you're having a nice cup of tea or have just broken wind in a lift. 


And please.......don't ever capitalize those letters with the solipsist rage of an ostensibly pampered and self indulgent confusion with tardy marketing comprehension.

Update: I see the infinitely more authoritative Anil Dash has similar feelings.

Thursday 22 October 2009

Synovate in Sok Kwu Wan


I've had my problems with Synovate in Asia. The first time I commissioned them (actually it was Asia Market Research who they bought out during the project we worked together on)  to do qualitative research followed by U&A studies for the Volkswagen brand. 


The groups were a disaster. Poorly turned out, we were actually down to two respondents in one final group in which I quickly realised that the two female respondents had different models of the VW Passat. One old and one new. This is an unmitigated catastrophe for a neutral research setting in deeply hierarchical Thailand where animistic Buddhist tradition teaches that people have better lives (such as owning a new car model and not the old car one) because they were better people in their last lives. 


In any case mistakes happen but I had no option other than to recommission the research. Unhappy client, unhappy agency, grumpy researchers.

On the upside, a lot of those learnings contributed to my belief that there is a better way to do meaningful research and which I have written about more fully over here. However I was sorely reminded of the research mindset (or the type of people that research companies frequently hire (often creative wannabes without a creative flair) when I stood in for Rob at the emerging markets presentation last year where I talked about the social communication mobility opportunities for low income customers. One speaker from Synovate stood at the podium as if she was delivering a lecture and reeled out a papyrus dry presentation that reminded me of every reason why square duffers should be kept at  strict arms length from the creative industries.

Even in dull data there is a story to be told which can be brought to life. If I recall correctly the presentation by Mindshare was much more engaging and I discovered killer facts such as many young Thai people  in upcountry (rural) Thailand often buy magazines more for display value than for reading. Something I never knew before and I have more than a cursory understanding of the culture as I speak reasonably fluent Thai (along with a smattering of Khmer, Laos and Burmese) and have traveled extensively throughout the kingdom. Anyway, isn't this topic of magazine display much like a whole generation of iPod fans who don't even really like music yet love to have the badges of modernity with white ear buds and so forth on display?

But I've had reason to think there is hope for Synovate recently. A few weeks back I saw something really clever that I really really like from them. I was cycling around the island I live on and stumbled on the fishing village of Sok Kwu Wan pictured above from afar. 


In one of the outdoor restaurants there was a poster which blew me away. Context is everything and you need to picture this quaint little fishing village with lots of Chinese day visitors and the occasional Caucasian including me milling about to appreciate a great example of connection planning. We're not talking hyper commercial setting and yet I felt it was one of the best ads I've seen in ages. Now we can quibble about the message style, but I think it's brilliant. Imagine if you will. I've just taken a cycle trip to God knows where (I"m still exploring the island) on the southern and less populated part, and out of nowhere I stumble across a research company that I am very familiar with. At first I was confused. Did they have a satellite office in nowheresville?




The copy reads.




Brilliant isn't it? A two bit village on a largely ignored island and I come across some copy which applauds not only people like me who really can't help but sniff around the corners of the planet or the internet but also applauds the sort of clients who prefer to take an unusual boat trip or ferry to somewhere isolated for famous seafood and setting. It's like climbing mount Everest and finding a flag at the top with "Synovate woz 'ere but we respect your mountain climing skillz"


Just so you know, the only way to get here really is mountainous bike riding with gorgeous scenes such as this.



Descending the steep paths at speeds which I intend to film they're so scary and difficult to describe and then finally enter quaint fishing villages peppered with boats and restaurants or take a ferry from Central or Aberdeen on Hong Kong main Island.




I was impressed and even though I still think the research industry is largely conning the advertising industries clients by selling safety management and not risk management (I've written about it extensively and commented on it recently over at a Simon Kendrick's 'Curiously Persistent' blog here). 


Simon is a researcher who I do have respect for as he's not frightened to concur with what is self evident to a lot of people who are desperate not to drop the ball during their 18 month tenure of a marketing position. I don't mind that this is the modus operandi of most marketing clients but please don't try and talk up the creativity game when we all know it's not creative to knock out 95% of the advertising vying for our attention during the ad break. And most importantly because wanna be creative stiffs annoy me, keep the research people from whittling away a reasonably idea down to a bland idea with squares who should be actuaries or accountants. Anyway good start Synovate. What's your next move?


Update: I see Synovate Hong Kong were voted best market research agency by the industry.

Russell Davies - Newspapers 101



I've been meaning to do a write up on one of Russell Davies signature posts recently about small pocketable items. Stuff we like to carry round in our pockets with memento or souvenir value and which may also have a utility of some sort. It's a lovely post because it touches on some thoughts I'd been having about minimalist lives which in principle amounts to humans, the clothes we wear and a thing. The thing would be the artificial extension of man. The thing that separates us most from other species in that we utilize tools (and more complexly social objects). It would be a smart device and we're already seeing the emergence of such a device with increasingly powerful iPhones that have the ability to process augmented reality and do quality fry ups. OK I"m kidding on that last point but the collision of Smart Phone and Netbook design is a hint at the future and I suspect that some collision of recombinant-culture-technological-forces, with ever increasing miniaturisation points towards the likely utility of that, and which we will likely carry around in our pockets. I'm guessing hand bags will probably be extraneous accessories which females are unlikely to dispense with and frankly I'm quite fond of bags myself but in principle the clothes aren't so necessary in a hot climate. Or at least less of them.

In any case go and read Russells excellent blog and some of his seminal posts such as this recent candid and very funny post on dancing which is quintessential Russell, as well as 'more ideas, less stuff' or brand polyphony which back in the day (some four years or so years ago) was a real challenge to the traditional received wisdom of how marketing communications worked and when the reliance on USP or proposition testing was ubiquitously held as the most effective and valid methodology.


In any case the reason for this post is that Russell has unearthed a gem of a book for young people on the newspaper industry, by Ladybird and which chimes just nicely with todays business model for a business in transition (to put it mildly).





Brilliant isn't it? I know I shouldn't but this Ladybird parody arrived in my email via Cambodia of all places not so long back and I think it echoes quite nicely with what that whole straightforward and clear renaissance in language theme which is the signature of progressive marketing communications in London. I love it very much, but which of course in this instance is meant to be (and is) hugely funny. I'm very fond of progressive London's aversion to business bullshit, and which of course I was most certainly guilty of at one stage in my career although I never repeated that grubby little number 'heads up' because it's just annoys the hell out of me as if someone is doing me a favour sharing information that they otherwise wouldn't. Anyway, this is more charming I think.







Real Time Search



Tuesday 20 October 2009

Shameless Self Promotion


I've just discovered that my Campaign magazine mention for Top Ten advertising blogs last year isn't on my blog. I've put it here to send a link out rather than upload the scan every time. It was terrific to have the vote from my peers in London and I appreciate your interest in my thinking and writing.

Christian Poveda



I'm a heavy consumer of podcasts and this radio obituary for the award winning photographer Christian Poveda is a definitive reason why BBC World Service is in a class of its own.

Monday 19 October 2009

Creative Brief - 1969



When toying with the idea of going client side, rather than immediately changing the agency and fixing something that isn't broken (Like Camper Shoes) I've often thought I'd just let the professionals get on with their job. Much like this brief from Mick Jagger to Andy Warhol.


Via Garrick

Thursday 15 October 2009

Rory Sutherland


Advertising is in good shape with Rory at the helm of the IPA. Possibly the best-fun lunch companion a bloke could hope for (or at least he covered my disreputable ass, with deliciously wobbly London Underground noises, while I was bunking off one memorable afternoon from JWT in Docklands). Thanks for doing the, I'm-on-the-tube background-noises-blag, when my boss called to ask where the hell I was Rory.


 Anyway, you can find out for yourselves with this TED video quite why he's a true anarchical thinker. Exactly what we need..... and just in the nick of time.


NB: I also saw Rory speak at the launch of Stephen King's book where he turned up with ostensibly no notes and cleaned up with the crowd in JWT's bar at Knightsbridge. Here's more of one of Adland's best. We're lucky.

Wednesday 14 October 2009

Never Hide


Ray-Ban have my absolutely all time favourite brand positioning. Even though I had my Chanel and Ferragamo sunglasses both stolen in Hong Kong in the last four months so I'm currently on the cheapos I bought from Monkgok market though I'm not sure about them. 


The music in the spreadable media above, is my kinda tune too. Does anyone else know the  rationale behind the never hide endline/positioning for a sunglasses brand? I'd be interested to know if I'm way off.