PSFK - San Francisco

The PSFK roadshow is gathering steam landing in San Francisco last week and in some ways it kind of felt like PSFK was home. A few moons ago I was stuck in Asia and working on some business that required some Korean insights and trends. I was struggling to deep dive the search engines to find anything new or relevant on the topic and I found success with the PSFK website which was still relatively unknown out in Asia, and I've been a fan ever since.

I was struck by the British planner contingent at PSFK San Francisco, residing in the United States starting off with Ed Cotton from BSSP/Influx Insights who opened up the day with a great presentation on whether we should care about trends and most importantly pointing that getting out of context is where identifying and implementing trends can be most stimulating. PSFK now live blog these events with much better writers than me and and you can check Ed out over here.

Next up was a panel with Colin Nagy (Attention), Kevin Allison (Financial Times), Liz Dunn (Funny or Die), Jeremy Townsend (Ghetto Gourmet), and Amit Gupta (Photojojo, Jelly) talk about being inspired by SF culture. If there is one overwhelming impression for me of San Francisco it's the uniqueness of the place. Somewhat like a European oasis in America in terms of architecture and sensibility but equally nothing like Europe from an innovation and friendliness perspective. I particularly liked Liz Dunn from Funny or Die pointing out that if you're working 14/15 hours a day you're probably not good at your job. We're kind of choking on growth and the only effort that requires that sort of work is something to restrict the growth if that makes any sense.

Next up was the second British planner of the day. Former W&K planner Chris Riley who now works for Apple. Chris talked about three people that inspired him from the bay area and I have to say he chose something quite close to my heart because arriving early in the day at the Fort Mason Centre I noticed next door to the conference centre was the Long Now Project which is an idea built on the premise that we're so anxious about what the future offers we no longer wish to know what it will be like in twenty or fifty years time. I can share that growing up as a young boy in the 70's, that wasn't the case and that as kids we all fantasized about what the future held in store.

The Long Now project resolves this tension in part with great ideas such as placing a 0 in front of the year so this year is actually 02008... Feels better doesn't it? I had no idea that the Long Now Project would be next door from PSFK in San Francisco, after I first read about them in London some time back and furthermore that Chris would talk about his inspiration taken from a founder of the Long Now Project, Stuart Brand. Chris also talked about Alison Waters and Paul Hawken. Two people who have been progressive thinkers in their respective fields and reside in the bay area.

Next up Jen Beckman gave one of the best talks on art and and technology with her site for budding photographers called Hey Hotshot and 20x200. I knew Lauren would dig this lady the most because she took her art seriously and yet also was genuinely passionate about making it accesible and affordable to all, saying that she felt the photography on Hey Hotshot was to her the 'gateway drug' to art she was proud to deal in. I loved that and furthermore was pretty blown away that she discovered one of the most heart wrenching photographers of the decade, Nina Berman, who has been shooting returning gulf war veterans including the memorable photograph from the International Herald Tribune with a returning sergeant marrying his bride in what was clearly an awful car crash of 21st century expectations of love and the reality of matrimony and societal expecations. Let me show you the photograph because I bookmarked it many months ago. You can read all about it over here.

After Jen Beckman we had Ezra Cooperstein (Current TV) and Andrew Hoppin (NASA) talk about collaborating with consumers and navigating bureaucratic systems to make them more agile. I'm not sure it was working having someone from the entertainments/information industry and a grown up from NASA but only because they were both interesting in their own right but met in the middle on a slim branch. Andrew Hoppin did point out that NASA was losing its luster as a sexy place to work and I think that's because their mission is all fucked up. If anyone at NASA had balls they would be charged with both documenting climate change around the planet to the Nth degree and equally place in charge of something as radical as putting the human race into space. Because only a limited guest list of say 20 000 human beings with a VIP ticket into space leaving behind a shrivelled planet much like the moon, might make people wake up and realise that we only have one planet Earth. But hey, I"m not running NASA right?

Next up was yet another British Planner Gareth Kay from Modernista who I didn't get a chance to say hello to although I was keen to find out a little more about their Hummer work which friends of mine rate highly. Gareth chaired a panel including Eric Corey Freed (organicARCHITECT), Josh Morenstein (fuseproject), and Frank Striefler (TBWA\Chiat\Day & Media Arts Lab) on how you take inspiration and create change. I'm easily inspired but if you're in need of some hints you can read more about it over on the PSFK blog.

Later on we had Charles Ogilvie (Virgin America, but now working for Panasonic) about redesigning the airline experience. I thought the best question of the day came from Matthias Weber of PSFK who asked how the work could all relate to train travel. Air travel is about to get a lot more expensive.

Following on from Charles and including yet another two British planners was my mate George Parker (AdScam/MadScam), Rohit Bhargava (Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence), Lynn Casey (Team Noesis), Adrian Ho (Zeus Jones), and Mark Lewis (DDB SF, Planning from the Outside) about how genuine consumer dialogue can improve sales.

Next up we had George Murphy (Modo Group) and John Pollard (Microsoft) about physical brand experiences. I got the impression that Microsoft are floundering when it comes to understanding how radically they need to overhaul their business to make a difference. I'd even go as far as to say I think that they need to lose some blood to gain some in the future.

Finally we ended the day with Josh Handy and Nate Pence (Method) on how design can mirror and shape an organization. Josh and Nate are responsible for the enviromentally friendly products by Method and it was a sweet way to end the day with the spirit of how design is crucial to reinventing both the world around us and how we communicate it to build a sustainable wealth creation model.

I think one of the best things about PSFK apart from the interesting people they invite to share their work is the informal and fun networking through the day and in the bar afterwards. During the evening we ended up at Otis with generous complimentary drinks paid for by Behance and I ended up getting 'arseholed' with George Parker and a few others. ;)

I've got a strong feeling that the PSFK format is going to be a big hit for their next gig in Singapore where they can bring some of their West Coast vibe, NY hipness and London intellectual credentials to play. Keep an eye open for it.

SoCal

Lots of intense political discussions with old friends, catching up with some 2.0 people, Mexico this weekend, San Fran/PSFK next week and Beijing on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

It feels like a bubble here; particularly the Hummers. Completely removed from the the outside world and yet the ever present reminder of oil pumps and real estate for sale looms large.

Southern Californians though have to be some of the most generous and helpful on the planet. Pretty much every transaction or interaction is seamless and delightful.

Branded Utility

One of the reasons why I like the folk at Anomaly in New York, Piers at PSFK and Zeus Jones in Minneapolis is because of their understanding of where our business is heading. Way too many advertising people are in a state of delusion when it comes to the overall efficacy of the marketing communications that we do. I'd argue that a lot of the wallpaper we paste up conveys a given amount of trust because there's an implicit cost factor when viewing paid up media space. Something along the lines of "If you can purchase that media space and come up with some reasonable production values, then you must be a reasonably reliable brand". That's it folks. We buy trust most of the time.

Most wallpaper is reassuring. If you're not convinced then live in a room stripped of it for a while.

So on Friday after a quintessentially self indulgent and non engaging advertising awards ceremony that almost defined how sclerotic our business has become, I came across a terrific quote on Dino's de.licio.us bookmarks for Robert Stephens, the founder of Geek Squad as saying

"Advertising is a tax you pay for unremarkable thinking."

I'd be inclined to agree. However there is a momentum in the beginning of this third millennium for marketing as doing. The digital era seems to be ushering in a breed of young folk who have no time for crafted messaging and are intolerant of not getting the information they need in the quickest way possible. I've never seen anything like it before. It only takes a browser to crash a few times and the digital savvy young folk of today delete the free software as if its a cancerous tumour. What happens when Wikipedia or Google's new idea Knol start to do product evaluation? The kids who are mostly digital natives, only want the information and that is a trend that those of us who grew up in the propaganda age (frequency and penetration) of marketing communications need to think long and hard about. The middle path is marketing as doing and there are some great ideas that have been put forward by the folk I mentioned at the beginning, in posts over here, here and here. That doesn't mean I'm anti advertising. It means I'm against bad advertising and for good information delivered cleanly and with the minimum of fuss.

I got thinking about this because I just happened to pass a blood giving bus close to the Xidan shopping area above, and I thought how smart the location was and doing this with a mobile blood donor unit. Somewhere to lie down for 10 minutes and give blood without really interrupting the day, I wanted to donate myself but the nurses didn't speak English. Then I got thinking if Nokia was a brand that could get involved in branded utility activity like this, given that its not too far removed from the traveling roadshows around the rural and semi urban areas that are often done in the mobile phone category over here. You know, communicating a need and helping encourage trial and action.

Later on at Wangfujing I saw them once more. So I thought about it again. I mulled over the notion of 'Connecting People' and it occurred to me that there probably isn't any greater connection than the one being done in the bus above. Probably that's an idea that is too visceral for most people's taste but the notion that the way a brand speaks is the only thing that matters, is the gravy train thinking of 20th century marketing and it's coming to an end as we see people controlling the information they want and continued digital emancipation taking place. I'm guessing the half a billion or so people whose first internet experience will be via the mobile phone will be equally intolerant of dishonest attempts to be interesting as I find people like Sam, Charlie and Adam now are.

I'm sure this makes me seem like I'm taking myself way too seriously and I probably am, so in the interests of not disappearing up my own bottom, here's a couple of pics from last nights clubbing action. First off is Puff Charlie keeping it real for y'all in the White Rabbit China town Lucky Street hood. Stayin' tuff all through the night and standing ma ground outside.

I know Sam can do a much better Ali G than I can but he's not here so that will have to make do. It was looking well mean down in the basement of the club. White riot everywhere and even the bitches were packing heat.

I ask you what has clubbing come to? Seriously though it wasn't a bad night but a less hipper crowd than I was hoping for. The music was better than the previous Friday, and we even slipped out for some of those ace kebabs that the folk from the far Western provinces of China rustle up in the Sanlitun area. They are easily the tastiest meat things on a stick I've ever eaten. I also noticed some stuff about the affluent local Chinese that was worth hanging around for. The Beijing crowd are very much different from the Shanghai lot and I don't think it's reflected in the way advertising is created for them.

PSFK Conference - Niku Banaie

Niku Banaie, Managing Partner of Naked Communications did a heartwarming presentation that explored some of the more pressing humanist dimensions of digital life today. Niku's grandfather was one of the early entrepreneurs of arcade and pinball games in the UK and the lesson learned by him that a fundamental human characteristic of playfulness is a key driver of all activity was not lost. Niku outlined a guideline of five universal needs for successful understanding on interaction that apply not just to life but cascade down into winning people over in general social intercourse.

• Need for love
• Need to learn
• Need to give back
• Need for simplicity
• Need for play

Niku talked about the sense of loneliness on the net and how face to face interplay is still a hard wired necessity. He talked about how The Guardian, the worlds leading liberal voice, makes most of its revenue from Guardian soulmates by putting like minded individuals together. The irony of this massively connected world is the absence of love and how so many people are facing increasing levels of loneliness. Its remarkable how important it is for science to put a tactile face on its output and yet so often the results are engineered for efficacy rather than satisfaction. On learning Niku discussed the availability of MIT open course ware, a revolutionary sharing approach to putting the best lectures and learning materials in the world on the net. Self education with the aid of an internet connection really does open up the potential for people to explore and fulfill our learning instinct. When quality content and flat distribution are coupled, the potential for unlikely people to enable themselves is nothing short of magic.

The need to give back was best exemplified by an example of the Patagonia company I talked about in an earlier post and which if you listen to the podcast gives a number of heart lifting examples on how giving back supports a virtuous circle other than just profit. Niku talked about how the founder allows all his staff to get involved with environmental activism with the company paying for a get out of jail free card that will honour any amount of bail that is set for for related civil disobedience. Yep, Patagonia encourage their employees to break the law and put their money where their mouth is. Yvon Chouinard also discusses in that podcast how the company provides day care facilities for mothers and has a retention rate for his employees that exceeds anywhere else, thus limiting the expense of having to replace valuable human resources that other companies factor-in massive amounts of dollars to keep. Patagonia's problem he jests is letting people go even after they hit retirement age. Stability is a wonderful foundation block if companies begin the process by giving back to their employees.

Kiva was the next great example of giving back. They are a web interface that allows people to sponsor entrepreneurs in developing companies with loans that save lives. By putting people in touch with specific entrepreneurs a direct connection is made, cutting through the bureaucratic and less rewarding transaction of just giving to charity. If you take a look at the link you can see how Meas Sokheang of Phnom Penh is only $150 dollars short of raising the $1000 dollars needed to buy a motorbike and pigs to take to the market. We can chip in with a minimum of 25 bucks but its a loan and not just a donation. Its repaid back with interest but the satisfaction of knowing that a real vetted loan candidate is going to be given a fishing rod with which to fish and not just the food to see her through the day. When I first went to Cambodia many years ago nobody can be unshaken by the genocide that took place there and the barbaric torture that took place in Tuol Sleng. But one thing that lifts the soul each time I return is the kids who increasingly look less grubby and frankly don't have any recollection of the Khmer Rouge years that wiped out a generation and left a stain on a par with Nazism or the Hutu Tutsi conflict of Rwanda. Here's a chance to change and observe the process by giving back and you can also meet a bunch of other people (all from the U.S.) who are putting Meas Sokheang back on her feet with a loan that she will pay back over 21 months. This site is awesome and puts facebook social networking to shame. The world really is flat in this instance. As I write this post I see that Meas has raised the money needed but that Victoria Terko from Ghana is just 25 Bucks short of her crafts business she dreams of.

On simplicity Niku Banaie highlighted how massively successful interfaces such as Google and Craigslist have become by streamlining the information we are exposed to and the number of linked options they can provide. He talked about the Sugar graphical user interface for the 100 dollar laptop that is set to launch in developing economies and how it is built around real life groups and communities, around the projects they work on the interaction between those groups. An intuitive dramatisation of first life communications on a screen if you like. The uncomfortable truth is as Asi has pointed out that our lives have become unmanageably full and we have too much to deal with. Niku talked about John Maeda's laws of simplicity: Shrink, Hide and Embody. A great example was the Wi Fi connected umbrella that alerts us to potential rain before leaving the house although the umbrella that can wail out when I've left it again would suit me. My record for losing one is five minutes after buying it. I hadn't even used it.

Niku finished up with the human need for play and gave us a bunch of examples that highlighted this important ability for positive reciprocity that all humans have and can leverage. Examples given were the climbing centre in Japan that 'reframed' the idea of simulacra rock environments and used old household objects such as picture frames and bric-a-brac to enable climbers to scale walls and a Danish school environment that had been designed around the understanding that different modes of learning included play, activity, reflection and collaboration but crucially in a manner conducive to knowledge absorption unlike that from didactic monologue.

I need also at this point, to highlight that while looking for some photos for these posts on the PSFK conference I came into contact with Lynette Webb who is also a user of Google docs & spreadsheets which allows us to share and edit in an open source manner on the PSFK conference for example. You can find the link to her notes here and I hope to be doing a post about online collaborative working with Lynette using the tools that are available to everyone. Check out Lynettes blog interesting snippets in the mean time.

PSFK - Mind The Gap

The picture above is one I took while strolling one Sunday along Wimbledon Common a few weeks back. The guy was taking macro photography pictures of new appearances in insect life that hadn't been previously recorded and were appearing due to the changes in the British climate disrupting the ecosystem. Specifically, he was capturing a wasp like creature killing a dung-beetle like insect. Most people welcome a bit of warmer weather in the UK but the reality is that if we blindly continue with the current consumption is king economy, based on infinite growth, we can look forward to less acceptable changes in British flora and fauna. In my experience of the tropics its the snakes, large spiders and golf ball sized hornets that flip most people out.

One of the less obvious dimensions about the business of saving our own skins as the planet warms up is that a shed load of money is to be made in reshaping the existing wealth creation business model. The PSFK conference last Friday held a panel to discuss the topic with Karen Fraser from The Ethical Index chairing the discussion with John Grant (Greenormal), Diana Verde Nieto (Clown Fish) and Tamara Giltsoff (Ozolab). Not so long back I took some time out to study a bit about propaganda because it seemed obvious to me that there was no way that after the failure of Kyoto and the growth of China and India that the neoliberal capitalist model was going to rein in the excesses of marketing communications credo of sell more despite it 'getting hot in here' (so take off all your clothes). Actually I was pretty much floored by the release of the Stern Review Report on climate change which I had no expectation to see in my lifetime. If the human race can make a global business out of something like World Wrestling, Hello Magazine and Blue Tooth Headgear for anyone other than taxi drivers then I'm sure we can make a buck from shifting something not from A to B, but say from A to C. It really is as simple as that.

John Grant kicked off and although we've met in firstlife and talked bundles on his greenormal blog I only realised at the PSFK gig why he really does kick ass. John talks coherently in compelling joined up paragraphs and really could use an hour or two on his own to take us through a journey from sinners-in-denial to messianic converts. I think he's a national asset and at some point the British should collectively chip in to give him our spare carbon points because we need him out on the road and 'representing' for the U.K. around the globe since he practices what he preaches and only flies when only absolutely necessary. John opened with some breaking market research that aviation brands are the new dirty word. Can we anticipate a renaissance for the great British seaside holiday and the rise of the guest house again? Flying seemed to lose its sex appeal around about the time Pan Am were shot out of the sky in 1991, but its official now; only losers and drink drivers fly unnecessarily.

I urge you to buy John's about to be published book The Green Marketing Manifesto when it comes out, for all the juicy bits about how to do green marketing. He did talk about how the green (sustainable living) movement is in its early stages right now like digital was in 1995, and that there's a real opportunity for all marketing folk to get into this and start changing the senseless waste of that indulgent age 'The Consumer Society' and make good money out of it. Money and Green are not incommensurate, and one idea I liked was the movement to get children walking to school with a kagoul brand perhaps getting involved. However if you do check out one website to wet the whistle and that John has championed before, take a look at freecycle. Because sharing and recycling is the new Sexy black as I mentioned back here.

Tamara Giltsoff also chimed in with a similarly reasoned argument that a new sustainable business model is emerging and that its a front end change that we should be putting our marketing brain cells to, not short sharp shock. She also championed the need to put marketing and corporate responsibility (C.R.) together. We need to urgently be speaking to each other because doing good is actually something that sets products and services apart. Its not exactly rocket science is it? I did like the way that Tamara implied that SUV's were now approaching the social pariah status of something like a Chavmobile.

Diane Verde Nieto of Clownfish made a great observation for those in attendance, that modern communications professionals should be able to handle the schizophrenia of leading two agendas. One to sell our clients products and services and the other to build sustainability into the way they work. Again they are not incommensurate but it takes a twin track mind to handle the conflict in the transition stage. She also drew our attention to London's aim to be a sustainable city by 2020 which was something I wasn't aware of and will surely be a terrific motivator for business to reshape and retool. In addition Diane pointed out the Ariel low temperature wash cycle campaign(30 degrees) and that the internet is a heavy user of electricity impacting on the environment through huge data centers that are sprouting up around the world, as well as the costly running of computers and servers. Water, she alerted us, is going to be the next big challenge after carbon footprint responsibility takes hold. This makes complete sense for those who follow geopolitics around the globe and is a timely reminder for Sci-fi fans to reread Dune. Lastly Diane used a bleak euphemism for the business of carbon offset trading described as the equivalent for the environment of the morning after pill.

The Usual Suspects

Faris Yacob

Jenny Owen & Hugh MacLeod

George Parker

Charles - The White Album

Faris George Jenny & Hugh

Regine Debatty - We Make Money Not Art

Regine Debatty

Regine Debatty stepped onstage looking breezily stylish and was soon taking us down the path of biotechnology and art related projects. I've been meaning to check out her blog, We make money not art for some time now but within a few seconds of her presentation I'd resolved to add her RSS feed to my daily intake. Regina conveyed the importance of understanding what biotechnology really means and its impact on the human race. Examples given such as the victim less leather jacket grown from a combination of mice and human cells really got me thinking about what we define as norms and how science can make the mundane and inhumane (killing animals for their skin) appear to be more digestible than artificially growing biological organs such as skin. Regine asked us if this was the future of farming and its a good question for us to consider. Up next, Regina highlighted the potential for growing human hair from a deceased person as a way of drawing comfort from those we were close too and if that seems disjointed, as was later brought up, why would we not draw a parallel with the business of renting pets.

I thought that Regine made the point that scientists are now much more creative than the artists when it comes to biotechnology related disciplines although I'd like to double check this point as it seemed to me that the art collectives can't wait to get their hands on the laboratory test tubes and petri dishes. Other topics covered were the potential for biotechnology created armies, replacement kidney supermarkets which are already a reality and being harvested from prisoners in China for wealthy people. Coincidentally the day before the conference, China's leading kidney transplant expert in Shanghai accused of organ harvesting from the outlawed Falun Gong, committed suicide by jumping out of a hospital window. On the subject of mass harvesting take a look at this to see how mechanization of biological processes is already taking place.

Regine also covered the idea of rapid prototyping, which is a concept I'd come across before in a Poptech podcast by Neil Gershenfeld of MIT about the Fablab which uses incredible technology in ways which can dramatically change the lives of people through concepts like making perfect stuff out of imperfect stuff.

Other topics covered were Spimes, which will challenge our definition of what an object really is once it can be tracked before development and after manufacture. One amusing anecdote that Regine related was a tale of a friend whose luggage was on the wrong plane and that it was the passenger who had to disembark and follow the luggage on the wrong plane even though or possibly because it had radio frequency identification (RFID) tagging which is a technology that will intervene in our lives and is already making headway in Prada's 40 million Dollar flagship store in Manhatten. RFID is a technology that like barcodes is going to become ubiquitous due to the falling cost of technology. If you can imagine what the falling cost of processors and storage has done for computing than take some time out to imagine a world where everything ever made and those that use them can be tracked.

Timo Veikkola - Nokia

Kjirstin

I went to PSFK's conference yesterday in London. It was billed as a morning of trends and ideas, and an afternoon of new marketing. The whole day was hugely enjoyable and I'm not just saying that because PSFK put me up at the Metropolitan and paid for those Cannes tickets I was moaning about. I made some notes of the thoughts and ideas that made sense to me or even didn't make sense but somehow needed to be taken down. Here they are.

The first speaker was Timo Veikkola (picture by lynetter) who is a future specialist at Nokia (what a great job), and seems to have a similarly exciting position as Jan Chipchase. Timo is one of those social science types that the Scandinavian countries excel at integrating into big business much more sympathetically than many U.S. corporations. His goal is to make communications as natural as possible while picking up on future trends to integrate into Nokia products and usability. Timo pointed out that there is no other stimulant like travel and I'd fully agree with him there. Anything else is just Disneyland really. Timo is currently planning for the year 2010, and reminded us of the question "can the human mind master what the human mind has made?" (Zygmnunt Bauman). For a Clinton Kid like me, the last 6 years have been quite depressing and Timo underlined how war is thematic for this decade despite the number of casualities at this moment in time. He talked how these visuals of the oxymoron 'war on terror' have started to seep into culture and may also explain why there is a considerable counter movement for the honest, fun and simple.

Many years ago I was in Vietnam and noticed that despite all the efforts of the mighty U.S. military machine it was Coca-Cola that had really won the war. One slide by Timo of a car covered in Arabic text reminded me that if we look at the population growth demographics for Islamic countries it shouldn't be too long before, along with India and China we should in the future begin to see more Arabic text creeping into our culture. I always find text fascinating and have even etched a few Khmer and Siamese tattoos on my body. I can think of nothing more exciting than nipping up to the Turk, Sri Lankan, Kurdish and Tamil supermarkets where I'm living and looking at 'foreign stuff'. Somehow Coconut Milk from Southern India is much more romantic and kosher than something packaged by one of the supermarkets. I am also quite frankly bored with all the web 2.0 cuddly logos sprouting, although I do realise that style is more important and useful than identity in this overloaded logo world.

Timo talked about how protest and political statement will likely be more present in design of the future and this was reinforced later by the sustainable design panel. I can certainly see a future where homogeneous brands, products and services are more likely to differentiate themselves by what they stand for - their values as it were. Timo also described that we seem to be living in almost biblical Revelations-like times with famine, pestilence, disease and floods from things like SARS, Hurricanes and Tsunamis, he then talked about the move from a celebrity culture to a knowledge culture which simply can't come soon enough for me.

Many moons ago on a hardcore right wing political chat channel that I liked to sharpen my teeth on I was arguing (or rather being shouted down) about the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of driving SUV's in a world with rapidly diminishing oil and young Americans and British people dying for it while serving in the armed forces in Iraq which everyone knows (except the oil addicts) was invaded for its oil reserves and the Green Zone that will administer it. The one weapon that unsettled the frothy mouthed right-wing-nuts in the debate (95% of the channel) was the question, would Jesus drive an SUV? The unholy alliance between the Neo-Conservatives and the Christian fundamentalists is always unsettled by this simple question and mark my words for the future of sustainable consumption, religion and culture will be huge factors in the war of ideas. Ask yourself if Jesus would purchase an SUV, because it looks to me from the picture above that Mohamed wouldn't have minded a Big Mac. That is every reason for being optimistic about the future...... which according to Arthur C Clarke is going to be 'utterly fantastic'.

George Parker

George Parker is the dog's bollocks. If you aren't reading him as he chronicles the feral decline of the fat cats of old school advertising you're missing out on the funniest and bloodiest, bare-knuckle-writer on the net. I would not like to be on the receiving end of his penmanship but we're having a pint next month when he comes over to London for the PSFK thing so I'm looking forward to that. Take time to cut and paste his RSS feed into your reader and make sure you buy his excellent book.

PSFK & London

Hughes Leglise-Bataille

It only seems like yesterday that a young planner asked me to take a look over her presentation for trends in South Korea, a country which has a large influence over many countries in S.E. Asia. While digging around on the net for more resources, deep diving down in Google's listing I came across the still relatively unknown PSFK for the first time. What a find, it's saved my 'I-need-to-be-interesting-today-ass" more than once, and in part its responsible for me blogging today. From those early links to PSFK I discovered Russell Davies and suddenly all those years of doing often isolated Bedouin planning around the world melted away and I was straight back in the thick of easily the best conversation about the business I've ever come across. I'm now digesting 200 plus RSS feeds at a rate that is a daily gallop, and I've never felt more on top of my game. But yes an an addiction too. Some of those feeds post up to 50 times a day (my politics obsession) and I'm slowly but surely mastering the art of blur reading. Its not for everyone and there's an awful lot of skimming but PSFK holds the attention for quality with only one minor regret. The sheer volume of good stuff they pump out means there is little time to wade in and get some conversation going as much as I'd like to.

Not so long back PSFK had a conference in New York and the guest list was frankly turkey-free which is not an easy achievement if you take a look at the other events tired old approach to these get togethers on offer. I'd have paid good money just to see the one and only George Parker speak on that occasion. But getting back onto why it's important, there probably are, two broad currents that confront all planners in this business on a potentially apocalyptic scale, and the first is the ability to adapt, shape, invent and swim with the soon to be 'revolution' in marketing. Gill Scott Heron was right when he said the revolution will not be televised, it's going to be on the net and more likely twittered. The other landslide about to take place is putting the heart of planet friendly marketing, right in the nucleus of the wealth creation business model. It's probably the single most exciting time to be in advertising ever and there are days when I sense the tipping point looming, all wide eyed and eager anticipation of a frothy mouthed Christian fundementalist tipped off about the second coming. The action is going to be sweet.... If you like a rough ride.

Well, the PSFK gang are holding their London conference on June 1st next month, and it's more than a pleasure to remind people of a gathering of the hippest and intellectually most coherent thinkers in the business getting together to share ideas and trends around those two crucial broad currents, of new and ethical marketing. John Grant, Russell Davies, Faris Yacob, Hugh MacLeod, Johnnie Vulcan, the fearless George Parker, and a day-long list of others will be there. If you can't go then I'd urge you to make sure you know someone who is going, and if you can't arrange that, then there's a strong possibility I'll be blogging the day. For you, for me, for us.