livingbrands

10 things we didn't know before the 48th week of 2009

2009-12-06T13:09:35+00:00

Mobile numbers 07700 900000 to 900999 are reserved for fictional numbers in TV and films.
Smoking first thing in the morning is worse for you than other times of the day regardless of the number of cigarettes smoked, US research shows.
There is one CCTV camera for every eight people in London.
The world's oceans are believed to absorb about half of the total carbon emissions from human activities.
Italian police have a Lamborghini patrol car worth 165,000-euro (£150,000)
Pubs in England pull about 10 million extra pints when the national football team plays in the World Cup.
Jane Austen probably died of TB - commonly caught from drinking infected milk - when she passed away aged 41.
Feet movements reveal who you are sexual attraction to.
The feet of the blue-footed booby, a bird which is native to the Galápagos Islands and Ecuador, get brighter in colour the less sex it has.
There are just four minarets on mosques in Switzerland.

(Borrowed from the BBC)

Hail the rise of Loser Generated Content

2009-12-06T12:37:32+00:00

Charlie Brooker: you've gotta love him - he's such an arch misanthrope.

Anyway, from Saturday's Guardian Guide, here's his POV on the state of modern advertising (and whatever side of the social media/crowd sourcing fence you sit, no one is safe!)...

"TV advertising used to work like this: you sat on your sofa while creatives were paid to throw a bucket of shit in your face. Today you're expected to sit on the bucket, fill it with your own shit, and tip it over your head while filming yourself on your mobile. Then you upload the video to the creatives. You do the work; they still get paid.

Hail the rise of "loser-generated content"; commercials assembled from footage shot by members of the public coaxed into participating with the promise of TV glory. The advantages to the advertiser are obvious: it saves cash and makes your advert feel like part of some warm, communal celebration rather than the 30-second helping of underlit YouTube dog piss it is".

He then goes on to ritually disembowel the efforts of Oxo, Talk Talk and T-mobile.

And Loser Generated Content? That's us that is!

Obviously, the only contentious point is whether the creatives do still get paid ;o)

Some advertising is just wrong

2009-12-05T08:56:52+00:00

OK, some people would say all advertising is just wrong. But some is definitely wronger than others.

Every morning, as I stand on the Bakerloo Line platform at Marylebone, I am confronted by this ill-conceived promotion of the Canary Islands...

I get the message - go somewhere warm this winter.

But is 'hot' + 'short haul flights' + 'polar bears' really the right equation to be using in this age of climate change, melting polar ice caps and the death of said bears?

Dark Angel: the story of Sophie Lancaster

2009-12-03T14:23:11+00:00

Because respect for and understand of difference is important...

More details at the Sophie Lancaster Foundation.

10 things we didn't know before the 47th week of 2009

2009-11-29T18:23:17+00:00

Jackson's iconic white glove is a modified golf glove.
To be a Beefeater you have to have done 22 years military service.
Seemingly vegetative patients are asked to think of playing tennis while being scanned for evidence of consciousness.
The UK had its first curry restaurant in 1809.
The hamlet of Seathwaite in Borrowdale is, on average, the wettest inhabited place in England.
All British infrastructure, including bridges, is designed to at least withstand the kind of flooding that would happen on average once every 200 years.
Hammerhead sharks can actually see rather well.
And humans use their skin to "hear".
Google will only remove images from its image search facility if legally ordered to do so.
Christmas trees can be dangerous.

(Borrowed from the BBC)

Social media ROI: socialnomics

2009-11-23T17:12:47+00:00

Nice film on the economics of social media. Whizzes through pretty swiftly, so you may have to pause to read the words!

10 things we didn't know before the 46th week of 2009

2009-11-22T14:30:43+00:00

Three of the world's top 5 supercomputers are in the US.
Humans are more likely to be killed by a hippo than a lion.
Teeth grinding is known as bruxism.
Spin doctors were used in the Iron Age.
School phobia is a condition recognised by doctors since the 1960s.
Whisky should be stored upright, unlike wine.
"Wrap rage" is a term coined to describe the anger felt by people trying to get into bonded plastic "clamshell" packaging.
Male and female candidates to be officers in the British Army have to do different amounts of press-ups, but the same number of sit-ups in a physical test.
For three decades, the BBC took a very dim view of Enid Blyton's work.
Swindon has the UK's highest broadband use.

(Borrowed from the BBC)

FutureScoping 85

2009-11-19T10:01:41+00:00

Just to let you know, the latest edition of my trends newsletter is now out: "emerging trends, new ideas and general thought stimulation"...or so it says on the cover.

FutureScoping is now also available as an effective workshop technique, designed to maximise the number of great ideas generated with the minimum use of your valuable time.

What has that got to do with me?

2009-11-18T15:40:00+00:00

Quiet Storm are doing some work with ethical streetwear brand THTC. Here's a little something they did last year with Benjamin Zephaniah...

As Edmund Burke said: "all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing".

Vivienne Westwood on fashion and consumerism

2009-11-16T12:59:41+00:00

“Buy less, choose well. Don’t buy things for the sake of it because then everyone looks alike….I offer no choice but to ask for the end of indiscriminate consumption. If you have to choose something, save up and choose well.”

Buy less. Choose well. Sounds like a good way to live. And that doesn't even mean being as expensive as Vivienne!

They can't steal 'you'

2009-11-16T08:46:52+00:00

There is a modicum of amusing irony in my nicking this quote on uniqueness in comedy from John's blog...

"The secret is to be unique so that they can't steal from you: That's what comics should think about: it's not the jokes; it's about themselves. It's about your personality. They can't appropriate 'you'."

Lessons for us: yes great product and service is vital - without that you have nothing, much as a comedian with no jokes is, well, no joke.

But product and service is also something that can be matched, beaten or offered cheaper. It's rarely sustainable.

Only the passions, beliefs and personality that underpin and drive your business offer a truly unique, ownable and sustainable proposition - why I want to do business with you rather than someone else.

10 things we didn't know before the 45th week of 2009

2009-11-15T10:18:43+00:00

Reading lamps can run off the electricity that comes down a defunct landline socket.
Men's urine is less acidic than women's. (hmmm, nice. Needed to know that - thanks BBC!)
Coral can eat jellyfish.
The first sell-by dates were on milk and cream in the 1950s.
Early flights to India stopped to refuel in Basra.
Porn for the furry community is known as "yiff". (ehhhh?!)
Russia has 11 time zones.
Travelling in a "road train" can cut fuel consumption by 20%.
Canadian Transport Minister John Baird called his cat Thatcher.
Pigtails used to be known as queues.

(Borrowed from the BBC)

10 things we didn't know before the 44th week of 2009

2009-11-09T10:07:51+00:00

Gordon Brown gave up a £2m pension on his first day in office.
At peak times, 32,000 pedestrians cross Oxford Circus junction in one hour.
Lyrics from Jon Bon Jovi's new album are framed and hanging up in the White House.
Journalists visiting Sesame Street are banned from asking Bert and Ernie if they are gay.
The BBC rejected Sesame Street in 1971 because it was "too authoritarian".
Elmo's favourite food is wasabi.
Tall men can have small parents.
Part-time veggies are called flexitarians
A missing child must usually have been missing for at least two years to warrant an age progression image.
French babies cry with an accent.

(Borrowed from the BBC)

We open on the beach of a desert island...

2009-11-06T16:46:17+00:00

…was always the joke made about agencies presenting TV ideas back in the day.

The modern equivalent seems to be "we have an integrated idea where we invite people to star in our next ad/write our next ad/(re)develop our product/some other (vaguely pointless) exercise (delete as appropriate)".

Now before the comment floodgates open, don't get me wrong: I'm a fully signed up member of the people-centric social/digital world. And I always want ideas that can be lived out everywhere. My problem isn't with digital and/or integration, it's with bad ideas (in whatever media) and knee jerk pursuit of the latest 'in' thing without any consideration of whether it is the right 'thing' to do in the first place.

Because if I hear another lame and lazy "let's get the consumer to do it for us" idea (or the suggestion that ideas which don't have this quality are somehow doomed to failure simply for bein 'old fashioned') I think I'll scream.

Let's face it, for every Walker's Do Us A Flavour there are 99 ideas (maybe 999) that people couldn't give a stuff about (which applies to conventional advertising as well, natch).

Take the Oxo Factor, which came up in a recent meeting as an example of a great comms idea - be the star of our next ad (yawn…wake me up when it's over).

Now I could be doing Oxo and its agency a huge disservice (happy to be told I'm wrong), but I had never heard of this idea (so much for PR). And as far as I could tell from the website, only about 40 people had been bothered entered. And we were already being asked to vote on the winner from a final 5 shortlist (all pretty poor)

And that's the problem with most of these ideas: integrated they may be, but often people just can't be arsed (only 1000 entries for the high profile Peperami brief, most from art colleges probably). So you end up chucking your money away on a bad idea simply because it ticks all the right 'cool and now' boxes on the comms check list.

But at the end of the day life's just too short for most of us, and if you can't answer 'what's in it for me' we just won't bother (Walkers' Do Us A Flavour worked because huge sums of money were on offer).

Personally, I would rather have an idea, of whatever format/media (old school or new school), that effectively met client objectives, than slavishly trot out the latest new thing as the only possible answer, even if the idea itself is clearly pants and/or the approach isn't right for the audience/brand (cos, shock horror, not everyone spends their day on Twitter and Facebook).

Case in point: Richmond Sausages - a good old fashioned TV commercial (and not even the most 'creative' idea you will have seen on the box recently) which has generated amongst the highest ROI OHAL have ever measured in the food sector, helping drive sales over the £100m mark.

Because it was on brand and connected with its audience.

And not an iPhone app, Facebook group or UCG 'opportunity' in sight ;o)

Up Your Viva...with horses!

2009-11-02T08:37:49+00:00

I will do a proper mop up on the social media impact of Up Your Viva (interesting mainly because it has just happened rather being something planned...which I guess is how it should be - over 200k fans now, on what was a punter-started page).

In the meantime, I give you an emerging sub-genre on Youtube which is making me chuckle: Up Your Viva...with horses (wonder why that is!)

10 things we didn't know before the 43rd week of 2009

2009-11-02T08:27:21+00:00

The city of Bath, in Somerset, was referred to as "The Bath" until the 19th Century.
Bears don't like honey, and aren't even very keen on berries and nuts.
Scouts can deliver post.
Barbara Windsor was the second actress to play Peggy Mitchell in Eastenders.
Tattoos can be done with a person's ashes.
The average American spends $66.45 (£40) on Halloween.
When a shark pup is born its liver makes up 20% of its body mass.
The world's oldest dog is 20.
The secret to a happy marriage for men is choosing a wife who is smarter and at least five years younger.
A man has been sent to jail for driving the motorised chair while drunk.

(Borrowed from the BBC)

10 things we didn't know before the 42nd week of 2009

2009-10-25T09:45:09+00:00

Humpback whales' mating rituals can be deadly.
Galaxies that are 10.2 billion light-years away can be seen through telescopes.
Wine gums have the names of alcoholic drinks on them.
People spent £37m on cup cakes in the UK last year.
The spread of cupcake shops has been used to map urban gentrification in the US.
Bagged salad is photographed 4,000 times a second.
The most available time of week for a meeting is Tuesday at 3pm.
GPS locates the Prime Meridian 100m to the east of Greenwich Observatory.
Sales of Asterix books number 325 million.
The first watches appeared shortly after 1500 in Germany.

(Borrowed from the BBC)

Up Your Viva!

2009-10-23T08:36:57+01:00

We've been working with MTV on the rebrand of TMF, their Freeview offering.

The new station, Viva, is out next week, and our work broke earlier this week.

The brief: get Viva noticed, and establish a clear personality for the station which resonates with its 16-35 year old audience, so that they'll check it out in what is a cluttered market.

And if you can, use the strangest looking bloke in advertising (actually, that was our idea)...

Showing the power of polarisation, we're creating waves and even getting some trending action on Twitter already despite a low spend.

UP YOUR VIVA!!

Deletion isn't permanent

2009-10-22T08:46:47+01:00

A while ago I wrote something online that I came to regret. It was meant as a silly, off the cuff comment…but one I hadn't expected to be seen in certain quarters. It was.

Apologies and deletions later, we have moved on.

And that is probably a typical strategy to a life lived on line - chuck it out there; delete later if necessary.

But is this actually a wise approach? Particularly when you read something that suggests deletion is no defence (probably in multiple senses of the word).

The article in question (in The Independent a few weeks ago) highlights the memory capacity of the net, and it's ability to never forget…despite our best efforts otherwise.

The experience of one person covered in the article dramatises this truth powerfully…

"In 2006, on his way to pick up a friend from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, [Feldmar - a well-respected Canadian psychotherapist] tried to cross the US/Canadian border, as he had done over 100 times before. This time, however, a border guard queried an internet search engine for “Feldmar”. Out popped an article Feldmar had written for an interdisciplinary journal in 2001, in which he mentioned that he had taken LSD in the 1960s. Feldmar was held for four hours, fingerprinted and, after signing a statement that he had taken drugs almost four decades ago, was barred from further entry into the United States."

So maybe it really is a case of publish and be damned, because it seems there is no going back.

Or maybe we simply need to start thinking just that little bit more careful before we hit those publish and upload buttons…even if that does take away some of the fun!

Things you most regret putting online - suggestions anyone?

(Thanks to Kester Brewin for the original link)

10 things we didn't know before the 41st week of 2009

2009-10-18T15:18:14+01:00

Earth's warmest year was 1998
Morecambe and Wise nearly split up, before they had even got on television.
Sailors in Tudor times had man bags.
Some spiders are vegetarian.
Each person has 1.5kg of probiotic bacteria in their digestive system, on average.
The placebo effect is real.
Boyzone sold more singles than Take That in the 1990s.
Culled rabbits are used to heat homes in Sweden.
William Pitt's dying words were about House of Commons catering.
Jeremy Clarkson's father was friends with the Monty Python team.

(Borrowed from the BBC)

10 things we didn't know before the 40th week of 2009

2009-10-11T20:18:58+01:00

Male life expectancy in the UK goes up by about three months every year.
Fidel Castro stopped smoking cigars in 1985.
In the early days of barcodes there was a plan for round ones.
In the UK, 26 million addresses get post.
Japan has a theme park where children pretend to be fast food workers.
Only two serving US presidents won the Nobel peace prize before Barack Obama - Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 and Woodrow Wilson in 1919.
The flash on David Bowie's Aladdin Sane album cover was inspired by the logo from a rice cooker.
Wild animals in zoos in Gaza have to be smuggled in tunnels under the border.
There was a royal blood disorder.
Low-quality females prefer low-quality males. In the world of zebra finches at least.

(Borrowed from the BBC)

Say no to stuff

2009-10-07T13:24:31+01:00

In Monday's Guardian, Charlie Brooker (as is his way) had a pop at 'stuff': "There's too much stuff. We live in a stuff-a-lanche. It's time for a cultural diet".

As he says at one point...

"Every day we humans gleefully churn out yet more books and films and TV shows and videogames and websites and magazine articles and blog posts and emails and text messages, all of it hanging around, competing for attention. Without leaving my seat I can access virtually any piece of music ever recorded, download any film ever made, order any book ever written. And the end result is that I hardly experience any of it. It's too much. I've had it with choice. It makes my head spin."

So have a read. And maybe it is time we said 'no more' to the stuff-a-lanche.

Don't call your son James

2009-10-07T13:06:55+01:00

My son's school has done one of those 'snapshot' studies that can be of vague cultural interest: a breakdown of first names amongst the 1300 or so pupils (remembering that it's an all boys (state) grammar school in the South East). For the sake of brevity, I've drawn a line at 5 incidences...

66 x James
55 x Thomas
44 x Alexander
41 x Matthew
36 x Daniel
33 x Benjamin
33 x William
28 x Oliver
25 x Joshua
24 x Jack
23 x Samuel
22 x Christopher
22 x Joseph
19 x Edward
19 x Jonathan
17 x George
16 x Michael
15 x Nicholas
13 x Henry
13 x Robert
13 x Timothy
12 x Harry
11 x Adam
11 x Dominic
11 x Luke
10 x Andrew
10 x David
10 x Elliot
9 x Charles
9 x Mohammed
9 x Richard
8 x Cameron
8 x Jamie
8 x Lewis
8 x Sebastian
8 x Zachary
7 x Callum
7 x Jacob
7 x John
7 x Jordan
7 x Marcus
7 x Max
7 x Peter
6 x Ali
6 x Connor
6 x Simon
5 x Alastair
5 x Frederick
5 x Harrison
5 x Jake
5 x Mark
5 x Owen
5 x Ryan
5 x Tom

Changing behaviour

2009-10-06T09:47:32+01:00

How great is this: give people something engaging to do and they’ll change their behaviour accordingly...

(Thanks to Charles for the spot)

10 things we didn't know before the 39th week of 2009

2009-10-04T15:05:48+01:00

The UK produces 8% of the world's scientific papers, the third most behind the US and China.
Ken Livingstone was twice rejected for a cameo in EastEnders.
Colin Powell speaks Yiddish.
Tesco sells two sewing machines every minute.
Homes are 4C warmer, on average, than they were 50 years ago.
Turtles can swim 900km (559 miles) in a month.
Coffins can be made out of banana leaves. Keith Floyd was buried in one.
Michael Jackson had tattooed eyebrows and lips.
The most common names for swingers are Paul and Catherine.
There are about 100 million bubbles in a bottle of champagne.

(Borrowed from the BBC)

Living by the Golden Rule

2009-10-01T09:03:51+01:00

Much as there is truth in the claim that guns don't kill, people do, they same can be said of the many ills that are laid at the door of both religion (and rational atheism).

It's people who are the problem...whether misguided or pursuing their own ends 'in the name of...'

Which is maybe why all major religions have at their heart a common Golden Rule that no humanist could disagree with; a rule for life that recognises our intrinsic selfishness (whatever we might like to think of ourselves) and inability to do the right thing whatever our good intentions…

Hinduism: 'never do to others what would pain you' (Panchatantra 3.140)
Buddhism: 'hurt not others with that which hurts yourself' (Udana 5.18)
Zoroastrianism: 'do not to others what is not well for oneself' (Shayast-na-shaysat 13.29)
Jainism: 'one who neglects existence disregards their own existance' (Mahavira)
Confucianism: 'do not impose on others what you do not yourself desire' (Analects 12.2)
Taoism: 'regard your neighbour's loss or gain as your own loss or gain' (Tai Shang Kan Ying Pien)
Baha'l: 'desire not for anyone the thing you would not for yourself' (Baha'Ullah 66)
Judaism: 'what is hateful to you do not do to your neighbour' (Talmud, Shabbat, 31a)
Christianity: 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you' (Matthew 7.12)
Islam: 'do unto all people as you would they should do to you' (Mishkat-el-Masabih)
Sikhism: 'treat others as you would be treated yourself' (Adi Granth)

So whether spiritual or rational in outlook, and in whatever we might be doing, how do we so embed the Golden Rule in our beliefs and behaviour that it overcomes our natural inclination to care only about our own needs?

Well that ended up all a bit 'thought for the day' ;o)

Waitrose can't cook

2009-09-30T09:06:19+01:00

Apologies for the quality of the photo, but there was a sea of commuters breaking around me. But I see this everyday on my way home, and it has started to annoy me.

The objective of this new Waitrose campaign is clearly to promote their new, good value Essentials range, without undermining the brands foodie credentials. Fair enough.

But you don't need to be a Masterchef contestant to realise there's a flaw...

If you can't make it out thru the blur, that's the essential ingredients for a chilli con carne - mince, tomatoes, chilli beans and rice.

Now I know that (strickly speaking) onions and (duh) chillis/chilli powder may not be in the Essentials range, but come on guys!

Pepsi to cease advertising

2009-09-29T09:01:35+01:00

This made me laugh. And also reflect on some of the points made, and wonder whether there was a better world out there if we just looked at things differently. All that was required for complete verisimilitude (word of the day!) was some comment about social media being the future ;o)

PepsiCo sent shockwaves through the carbonated beverage industry Monday when the multibillion dollar corporation announced that it would cease all advertising of its popular soda product, effective immediately.

"We know it's good, and everyone's pretty happy with the overall taste, so why spend all our time worrying about what other people think?" PepsiCo CEO Indra K. Nooyi told reporters during a press conference at the company's corporate headquarters. "Frankly, it just feels sort of weird and desperate to put all this energy into telling people what to drink. If they don't like it, then they don't like it."

Added Nooyi, "That's not really any of our business anyway." According to Nooyi, top PepsiCo brass held a series of meetings over the past several months before unanimously agreeing Monday that they all enjoyed Pepsi, and that the company's century-old history of massive, high-budget ad campaigns, cross-promotional tie-ins, merchandising, and Super Bowl halftime extravaganzas had been "a big mistake."

Executives then released a statement to shareholders declaring that PepsiCo is now "what it should have been all along: a company that just makes soda, and doesn't get caught up in trying to make everyone like it."

In response to a question about whether the elimination of Pepsi's marketing and advertising divisions would hurt the company's ability to compete with rival soda manufacturer Coca-Cola, Nooyi expressed no concern.

"Vying for the greatest market share shouldn't be a soft drink company's be-all and end-all," said Nooyi, who added that if she's happy at the end of the day, that's what really matters. "After all, it's not like this is some kind of Cola War or anything."

"Look, Coca-Cola is a terrific product," Nooyi continued. "Millions of people choose it over Pepsi every day. Are those people wrong? Of course not. Concepts like 'right' and 'wrong' shouldn't even apply. It's a soft drink."

Nooyi told reporters the company's $1.3 billion annual advertising budget would be put into Pepsi's savings account, spread among various charitable organizations, and divvied up into generous bonuses for the company's minimum-wage factory employees.

Claiming that "taste is subjective," Nooyi further stated that those who hadn't already heard of Pepsi were unlikely to begin drinking it now, and that the company was perfectly content to rely on word of mouth to sell its product.

"You can't taste an ad, anyway," Nooyi said. "People are going to make up their own minds regardless of whether we spend millions trying to inform them that Taylor Swift drinks Pepsi. I mean, seriously, does it really matter if Taylor Swift drinks Pepsi? She's just a human being like everybody else."

Concluding the press conference, Nooyi stated that she wasn't even sure why she was talking about any of this in the first place, asked the assembled reporters whether they didn't have better uses for their time, and suggested that everybody just go home, hug their loving spouses, and play—really, truly play—with their children before life passes them by.

"Hey, there's a slogan for you," Nooyi said. "Spend more time with your families."

From the Onion, obviously.

10 things we didn't know before the 38th week of 2009

2009-09-27T18:14:12+01:00

Banana skins can take two years to biodegrade.
The longest speech at the United Nations lasted almost eight hours.
Brazil always speaks first at the UN General Assembly, according to long-standing protocol, and is followed by the host country.
Jay-Z has Barack Obama's mobile phone number.
Swine flu gel can get you drunk.
British heroin comes from Hampshire.
Gambon, star of the Harry Potter films, has never read any of the books.
The only woman ever in the French Foreign Legion is British.
Ceefax was created by accident.
Fifteen of IKEA'S Billy bookcases are made every minute.

(Borrowed from the BBC)

Some Campaign fame for my outsourcing post

2009-09-25T14:25:37+01:00

I added my POV to the Peperami outsourcing debate recently, and it's been picked up by Campaign this week. Which is nice.