Seriously. Beats two and four. Two and four. Got it? But what are you doing clapping along anyway? You’re only going to get out of time – forcing the drummer to bust out some Gloria Estefan-inspired dropping of rhythms to turn the beat around. Clapping during songs – just say no.

The same goes for trying to sing along with the only bit of the one song you know – badly. Maybe stop to consider that there’s a pretty good chance that oh, you know, most of the people around you are there to hear the actual singer sing. It’s not Karaoke night at your local. Geebus.

And finally, watching the band that’s ripping it up on stage in front of you via your phone’s camera and screen is a pretty underwhelming experience. Really. Not every moment of your life needs to be recorded for posterity and bragging rights. So why not try fully enjoying the moment as it happens – live music is about more than just status updates, blurry photos and muffled videos.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t really get into and feel the music, nor am I wishing every gig was performed in a silent, seated concert hall. There’s just been a few too many gigs I’ve been at lately where a handful of punters could have been mindful that not everyone was as much of a mouthbreather as they were.

Damn mouthbreathers. That is all.

End rant.

// Feel free to give me some high-brow, music-snob grief or add your own advice in the comments. That is, if people even use blog comments anymore. Cheers! //

But given the hours you’ve invested in mastering these new abilities, wouldn’t you hate it if they then became redundant. With newer technologies the main protagonist. So today, I’d like to pay tribute to the skills no longer needed to pay the bills. While they may not have required years of commitment to master, we should pause and reflect on the fallen.

Here are some of my favourite superseded skills:

• Winding the cassette tape back into shape with a biro.
• For that matter, even making a mix tape. With bonus points awarded for correctly pre-emptively hitting the record button to avoid chopping the start of the song. And bonus-bonus points for timing your mix to fit exactly on a single side.
• Sending a fax. Actually, who am I kidding – I never mastered that. Do I need to dial zero first? Do I need to put in the area code? Bah… too hard.
• Blowing the top of the Nintendo game cartridge to make it load properly. This skill was a mandatory in the lounge room for many years.
• Locking the front passenger car door by pushing the button down AND pushing it shut while holding the handle up. Kids these days don’t even know…
• Art Directors – how are your Letraset skills these days?
• And finally, signatures. I’ve almost forgotten what mine looks like. A skill that is literally, no longer required to pay the bills.

What about you? Any redundant skills you’d like to pay tribute to? Feel free to add yours in the comments.

{First published on BCM’s Two Cents blog}

While I’m sure the boffins will protest against my simplification, NFC is basically a way of conducting secure data transfers between two devices held close together – hence the ‘Near Field’ in NFC. Essentially an extension/hybrid of technologies like Bluetooth and QR Codes, NFC allows for sharing, pairing and transactions to occur between NFC-enabled items like smartphones. Simple.

If you’ve begun to notice ‘tap to pay’ eftpos terminals appearing at checkouts, that’s the beginning of NFC payments starting to roll out with chip-enabled credit cards. The same goes for any electronic ticketing systems you might have used on public transport. And the recent announcement of Google Wallet has definitely turned the spotlight onto the approaching reality of mobile payments and transactions.

So what does NFC mean for advertisers and marketers?

I guess it could well be the catalyst for fast interactions that tick the mobile, location-based, personalised and data-driven boxes. It might be an NFC-tagged poster or sticker that you tap your phone on to collect a voucher, and then an alert that tells you where the nearest store is to redeem it.  Or a reminder of your available loyalty points and a shopping list appearing because you’d walked into the supermarket.

Or imagine if every product on the shelf had a little chip that you could scan with your phone to find the latest reviews, prices and promotions. Or perhaps a supermarket trolley that was aware of the products you were adding to it and then offered suggestions for other items based on a mix of recipes that used the ingredients you have and your recent shopping history.

Or perhaps even a trolley that simply counted off the remaining items left to buy based on the shopping list stored on your phone – and once you’ve finished shopping, you conveniently walk straight out to the carpark with payment occurring automatically as you walk past the checkout area.

Or maybe it’ll be an outdoor poster that simply provides you with a song/photo/game/website in return for an element of social sharing or automated data transfer. Or perhaps even an outdoor poster that changes what product or offer is being displayed – based on where you are now, where you’ve been, your personal information and your shopping history.

Or maybe… maybe we should all just watch Minority Report again! Seems we’re not all that far off the advertising future envisioned in Spielberg’s 2002 flick.

What do you think? Am I on track with my future-gazing? What are your thoughts on how this technology could be implemented?

{First published on BCM’s Two Cents blog}

For those that haven’t read much into it yet, Google Wallet is basically a phone app that stores virtual versions of the plastic cards (including loyalty and credit cards) that you have in your wallet, combined with the ‘tap to pay’ functionality that’s started to be implemented at checkouts, and the benefits of location-driven retail offers. It’s going to be rad.

From Google’s vision: This is just the beginning, but we believe that, in time, your phone with Google Wallet will be the one thing that holds everything you need to carry.

Everything? Sure, combined with remote-unlocking apps that have started to appear, it really does negate the three-point ‘keys, wallet, phone’ check. But is that everything? Maybe it is. Add a few tunes, a few e-books, some games, nifty cameras, maps and throw in a few cloud-based features… seems our phones really will be the only things we need with us soon.

Which means it’s going to really, really, really suck if you lose it in the back of a cab on a night out. Effectively losing what in the past would have been a whole handbag (or manbag) full of personal items.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for the convergence of devices. And anything that helps stop my jeans from falling down from having too much stuff jammed into my pockets is surely a win for everyone.

But let’s take it even further. What’s missing? What would you like to see added to your phone to truly make it the one thing you ever needed to carry?

{First published on BCM’s Two Cents blog}

Like the following gem from this tongue-firmly-in-cheek site:

Brand-scaping the social ludosphere with narrative rhizomes to maximise attention-harvest from high-advocacy end-product enjoyers.

Boom. Don Watson would love it. And so do I.

But what I enjoy even more is making up new words. Jumbling them around. Mashing them together to create unusual meanings, to form new phrases. And often, rad new buzzwords.

A wise writerly-type once told me that these words are called neologisms and that if formed correctly, they can be used to encapsulate a feeling, or an otherwise difficult to express idea – in just a single word. Neat, huh?

Here are a few favourites I’ve recently come across:

“Radvertising”. There’s advertising. And then there’s RADvertising.

Ever suffered from “Infobesity”? Do you indulge in too much unhealthy snacking of information via the internet, without actually comprehending it?

Or maybe you have a “Googleganger”? I have one. His name is Scot X Esdaile – he’s always getting up in my Google alert grill.

What if you took the power of “extreme” and added the goodness of “maximum” to create… “maxtreme”?

Or my wife’s favourite for when her dresses/skirts/jeans have fake pockets stitched on… “fockets” (note: can be easily misheard).

And finally, the “mindgasm” for when your mind experiences something sublime. Although this one seems to be open to interpretation.

So in the interests of pseudo-etymology and helping to push these and similarly clever coined words and terms out into the mainstream – what are some of your favourites? Feel free to leave them in the comments and I’ll do my best to seamlessly drop each one Kanye West style into a sentence tomorrow. Get your buzzword bingo cards ready.

{First published on BCM’s Two Cents blog}

But you can only view it by using an Augmented Reality marker card that you find after liking a Facebook page that then leads you on a foursquare-driven treasure hunt to find the AR card that then directs you to use it on a Tumblr site where it’s actually a non-linear series of annotated YouTube clips where you can enter a phrase via a custom iPhone app that you want to see acted out by an indie band riding fixie bikes, as well as upload your own video for your chance to win something mildly exclusive or underwhelmingly amazing.

Rather than being guitar soloists in the spotlight, planners should strive to be more like jazz musicians by being exploratory, sensing who they’re addressing in their presentations, and opening up their insights to negotiation.

Of course I’m biased, but I reckon it’s a spot on comparison. So I’ve taken the liberty of extending the analogy further: jazz is about simultaneously looking backwards with a nod to past styles, players and theories, while also looking forward and striving for new approaches, new sounds and new ideas. It’s an evolving art form – constantly absorbing the songs and sounds of popular culture and reinterpreting it (such as Herbie Hancock’s recent collaborations), and increasingly difficult to box in as a defined ‘sound’ – where ‘jazz’ stops and genres like rock, classical, funk, soul starts is not clearly outlined anymore.

Much like the world of advertising – which is essentially about looking backwards to inform the way forward, while striving to break new territory; it’s constantly evolving as a discipline, and it’s increasingly difficult to simply define where advertising stops and where PR, marketing, content creation, entertainment outlets… begin.

And to stretch the analogy between advertising strategists/planners and jazz musicians even further: the reason why I love improvised music so much, listen to it for hours each day and have spent so much time studying and performing it, lies in the many contrasting skills involved.

For me, it’s a mix of discipline and creative curiosity; formula and intuition; rote-learned technical skill and spontaneity; and detailed theoretical knowledge and imagination – all to produce an engaging and stimulating experience for the listener (consumer).

Which could also fairly accurately describe the approach and mindset required for successful strategic planning.

Now if only I could use the agency’s video-editing suite or boardrooms as a practice/jam room – that would truly combine the worlds of advertising and jazz. And it would just be rad. Maybe a tad noisy. But amazing anyway.

Heckling courtesy of Brooke.

Only a few years back, you’d read a blog post and if you liked it, or had something to contribute, you’d leave a comment.

But now, if you like it, you’ll share it – with the comments and conversation continuing outside the original blog via the likes of Twitter, Google Reader and Facebook (which is particularly being driven by their recent global ‘like’ button).

It also doesn’t help that many blog comments are fully-moderated as a defence against the incessant, daily spam – which unfortunately, also stifles real-time visitor discussions after reading an article. Although when blogs are left open, they can often deteriorate into snarky anonymous comments and link-bait anyway.

Too often, we judge the quality of an article on the number of comments it generates, but that’s not really valid anymore is it?

I’d ask you to add your thoughts by leaving a comment, but well, I’ll just be happy if I’ve prompted a discussion on this in any arena. And that’s all for my commentary.

{First published on BCM’s Two Cents blog}