The reward for my work, which I have never solicited payment for and do entirely for free covering a lot of ground that gets a lot of hate mail, is that I get to find out what writing styles and topics work best. Which key words drive the most traffic with different demographics and so forth. This is what you would expect from a former advertising guy whose best work was 73% increase year-on-year sales for Coca-Cola China.
In plain language that's a lot of sugared water sales growth, and the primary reason I retired for the second time to become a beach bum in Thailand [expanding childhood obesity for the largest population on earth is not my measure of a successful life)
That's not the same reason why I subsequently overstayed my visa by SIX years till bailing out to Hong Kong but it's worth sharing so I'll drop that one day.
Enjoy the show
Sadly, another 'Lethal Injection' Death Sentence! Seline Ismaeli is a 17-year-old German Athlete who suffers from a severe autoimmune disease (myasthenia gravis) following her second Jab. #VaccineRoulettehttps://t.co/jxZlWxsIyf
While I think it's a sweet execution, isn't it just crypto neuro marketing? Or is it coincidental that this was one of the biggest spreadable media (viral) content successes of the internet? Here's an updated version.
I was having a brilliant lunch with Rob last week and I realised that just shooting the breeze with him is solid gold planning lessons that ordinairly he invoices interesting brands for. So if ever there is a good reason to get blogging and get involved in the conversation instead of just reading or lurking on blogs, here it is because I've gotten to know Rob and pester him for lunch through blogging. Though of course it's OK if you just like to observe.
Anyway I got talking about my experience on the success of a Coca-cola drink brand called Qoo across Asia some years back because I met the Japanese creatives at Hakuhodo in Tokyo who came up with the creative concept and discovered a secret. Qoo is an expression that the Japanese make when taking a cold drink on a hot day. The beverage was named Qoo and a brand cartoon character was developed to appeal to children.
I learned that, much like the dancing babies above, the Qoo character is largely a neurological hook; particularly for children. The cartoon character was designed sketched and refined 'on-the-fly' in focus groups with bits of paper going back and forth between the illustrator and the kids and it was seen that using traits such as a big head, baby eyes and a small body appealed to children most and there was no doubt at all which character made the kids most excited. The winning design formula had an unmistakably positive response to say the least.
This is why the product used to fly off the shelves in Asian markets. Strategically it's an RTD (ready to drink) low juice, sugared soda with a few vitamins added for marketing to mothers at a rational level, and the Qoo character for children at an emotionally responsive level. It was quite a learning experience discovering the design gestation process and seeing how well it performed with commercials as short as 15 seconds in the China market. I wrote about one execution I worked on in Hong Kong and Shanghai over here.
I find it deeply human to know that my consciousness is somewhat analogous to the broadband internet connection I'm using to write this (and download (illegally of course) The Wire and Family Guy with a P2P bit torrent utility). What is amazing is that to concentrate, I'm also ignoring the roughly-equivalent data-bandwidth of the whole 70 story apartment building block overlooking Victoria Harbour in Tung Chung (is that right?) and Chek Lap Kok airport.
Basically our brains are a vast filtering system designed to keep us focused and with enough back office processing to have an imagination too. This very short video is brilliant and comes via the formidable Katie Chatfield who along with Gavin were top of my Australia visit-list (and of course Angus) before all this Dacoity/Detective Inspector Clouseaustuff that I'm hoping will make some progress very shortly.
Check out Sputnik Observatory for more hardcore info-porn over here.
