brand new

Depth and surprise (updated with even more)

2010-01-28T14:54:29-05:00

This is brilliant - 'Lost' easter egg on Kayak site. Search Kayak.com for a one way flight Sydney to LAX on 9/22/2010. This is the result you get.

Genius fan based transmedia in action.

UPDATE: There's a second easter egg. The easter egg references a flight from LAX to Guam. If you search for it on Kayak (one way) for the date Jan 21, 2011- a mythical airline called AJIRIA will offer you a fare at for $4839 which is the beginning of the secret code that keeps appearing on LOST.

If you click on the airline you get sent to the AJIRIA site.

In about 30 minutes

2010-01-27T12:37:28-05:00

Steve Jobs will take to the stage about a dozen blocks from where I'm sitting and share 'their latest creation'. I'm no wiser than anyone else, but if the rumors of the iSlate/iPad/new thingy are true then I'm very excited. Partly it's sheer industrial design lust but more importantly it's about how it's going to change the nature of content. This seems to be the really big possibility as Wired pointed out yesterday.

It's going to be interesting to see if we can start thinking about 'print' as a dynamic rather than static medium, one that is now interactive and real time (more proof that everything will soon be digital in some way or another). It's going to be interesting to see if we will be able to create experience that are simultaneously one-to-one and one-to-many. It's going to be fun to see if we can create experiences that live on a shared environment (the tablet) but are controlled and/or heightened by individuals' other devices (the iPhone).

I guess that's what I'm really excited about.

Cars get soft

2010-01-15T00:37:22-05:00

Ford have announced the launch of their new MyFord Touch operating system. There's a quick walk around it here:

It seems that with the increasing use of software as differentiation (think Fiat EcoDrive) in increasingly mass products we're quickly entering the postdigital era. And we're entering a world where it'll be the bits and bytes that make the physical magical.

Spur - the final episode

2010-01-05T22:13:27-05:00

The fifth and final part of Spur and I think probably the best. Thanks to Redscout and psfk for making this happen. Hope it kicks off some debate, and more importantly, planners trying some new stuff. Happy 2010:)

End of another year

2009-12-23T01:00:55-05:00

So, another end of year approaches. Haven't blogged anyway near enough recently which I fear means I'm thinking and doing less stuff than in the past. Need to remedy that next year.

Anyway, I'm heading back to Blighty for a week or so. Will try and get blogging again properly in 2010. If you happen to be in London with nothing much to do on Monday January 4th I'm going to grab a cuppa with some friends at The Breakfast Club in Hoxton around 10am. Feel free to come and say hello.

One thought/resolution for 2010 from a great Economist article - we tend to aim at the 'missing middle' of the market far too often whether we realize it or not. And that is a rather empty and unsuccessful thing to shoot at.

Happy Holidays and a terrific New Year to everyone.

Time to leave SF for a few days

2009-12-18T00:57:08-05:00

I guess it's time to leave San Francisco for Xmas when your wife stumbles across this 'brilliant' Xmas promotion. It's got every marketing trend of the decade built in - participation, value exchange and a big social mission. I wonder if Dave Knockles has found himself a new job?

We're heading back to the UK for a few weeks. May well do coffee in London on Monday January 4th. Details to follow in case you're so inclined.

Mag+

2009-12-18T00:48:41-05:00

The thinking around the possibilities for user experiences and interfaces seems to be one of the most exciting things to me at the moment. And here's some more quite brilliant thinking from BERG about how technology can revitalize magazines.

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

Spur episode 4 - what's the real value of planning?

2009-12-15T16:33:52-05:00

Gareth Kay

Chief Culture Officer

2009-12-02T02:24:20-05:00

Grant McCracken is one of my heroes. He's got a different perspective and depth of thought that has helped me think differently and more critically about people, brands and culture. His last couple of books have shaped my thinking and his blog is a must read.

Anyway, he has a new book - Chief Culture Officer - that has just come out. It makes the argument that business doesn't take the business of culture very seriously. Too often it's outsourced (often to an ad agency) or becomes a niche of one siloed discipline (eg marketing) and to make it an integral part of an organization every company needs a Chief Culture Officer.

It's perhaps his most accessible and important book so far. It builds a case for a Chief Culture Officer and then describes the tools that role will need. The chapter on slow and fast culture, and our tendency to obsess about the latter and ignore the more critical former, is a must read.

If you work in advertising or marketing, you work in the culture business, whether you like it or not. And this is a must read.

Are Planners just glorified researchers?

2009-12-02T01:55:48-05:00

Part 3 of Spur, the film on planners from Redscout, is now up on psfk.

Wake up call

2009-11-17T17:10:00-05:00

Some new-ish Comscore data feels like a rather big wake-up call. If 8% of internet users account for 85% of clicks, why do we ignore the vast majority of web users in our metrics for display ads? We are still, far too often, applying old DR methodology to non-DR communication. We really need to begin to build better metrics, not just in terms of 'brand effect' but also in what people do offline not simply online. It's something CMOs are looking for - a recent survey by the CMO Club shows that nearly 2/3 of CMOs say their most significant challenge with digital is understanding how online marketing programs impact people offline. Yet we still treat 'online' as it's own discrete world far too often. Yes, online is fantastic in part because it is measurable, but just because we can measure something doesn't mean it's always the right thing to measure.

Band as franchise

2009-11-17T16:47:00-05:00

Following on a musical vein, I was a little shocked last week to see that the Sugababes, a fairly big band in the UK, have lost their last remaining original member but are carrying on to make a new album. You could argue that this is merely the natural conclusion of how the music industry has treated brands as entertainment franchises. I rather prefer the thought someone left on their wikipedia entry: "a hollow, machine-like representation of the music industry's deconstruction of music as an art form". Maybe this is all OK if we believe bands are brands but when the product's fundamentally different surely the brand should be as well?

Time to get out of the distribution business

2009-11-17T14:24:00-05:00

Really interesting piece of analysis by The Times Lab on the changing landscape of revenue in the music business (in the UK) between artists and the industry.

A few things jumped out at me:

1. It's the graph the music industry doesn't want you to see. It shows how artist revenues have actually increased in the era of file sharing while the revenue going to the industry has decreased. So, if you're business model is purely one of content distribution it's perhaps time to exit.

2. The fastest growing area of revenue is that of live shows. As the post points out, "at some point next year revenues from gigs payable to artists will for the first time overtake revenues accrued by labels from sales of recorded music". Not sure if this is a case of more people going to shows, more shows occurring or more profitable deals for artists, but it does suggest to me that this is perhaps evidence of the fact that we tend to enjoy doing stuff together. Perhaps music is the ultimate social good, rather than the private good record labels would like it to be.

3. Arguably, the last century of recorded music has been an anomaly in how we consume music and we're going back to how we have always enjoyed it - live and together. The content distributed is perhaps really no more than a calling card and artifact of something far bigger and more powerful.

Talent

2009-11-17T13:18:50-05:00

The second installment of Spur from psfk and Redscout is all about talent, or what a bunch of us are looking for in planners today.

Is planning impotent?

2009-11-04T11:45:17-05:00

That's the question posed in the first installment of Spur, from Redscout and psfk. Does the way we think about and practice planning make us impotent or are we neutered by the factory like structure of some agencies?