In an effort to expand my worldviews on things, I have started trying to go down stairs 2 or 3 at a time (when noone is watching). Whilst I have always prided myself on being able to run down stairs really fast one at a time, this new approach is a little bit nerveracking once you start to pick up some knots. Avidly watching where each of your feet is landing on steps is very strange!
My goal is to be able to hammer a whole big London Tube escalator 3-4 steps at a time, as fast as possible.
I have been aware of this for a while, but one of my name doubles, "Anthony Goh" is the President of the US Wushu Federation. Wushu is a flashy, gymnastics-esque kindof kung fu.
Here is some wushu - good stuff.
It appears that recently at the US Wushu Junior Team Trials, the fairness of the judging process has been called into question, with accusations of judges favourably selecting their own students. As a result, I have a number of emails, aimed at the Wushu Anthony Goh, pleading for me to intervene, "Please do something; for Wushu, for USA Wushu, for those young athletes, for all the people who loves Wushu ...... for the justice, for the spirit which should remain in the Wushu competition! An Angry Parent."
I'm not really sure what to do, so I am turning to you guys for help. Should I...
a) ignore b) send a very perfunctory response saying wrong email c) send a wrong email response with added moral guidance - what form? d) go with it and send a response saying I'm going to use my Wushu skills to sort it out e) none of the above?
...has this little book at the till, where people can write things. Some people are slags, some are going to see Craig David, and someone else has drawn a picture of a cat thing with a coffee. I wonder what they do with these books afterwards? When I open the first dead insect store, I will have a computer with a paint like application and guestbook, all linked up the website.
I really like sales promotion - my first real job was at a place that used to be a primarily SP agency. It was great, as their entire creative process was getting literally everyone into a brightly coloured room and thinking up the zaniest possible ideas for what they could give away via a bag of crisps. Very different to process driven ad agencies, and generally good.
Here's a great thing I saw in a petrol station the other day. I like the blend of ideas+pragmatism needed for a good SP campaign:
Forget winning a bus ride to a 5-star hotel in Germany to see the World Cup, win a whole pub for an evening for you and your mates.
As well as being my tip for the hottest pop song for the next couple of months, Shakira's Hips Don't Lie has the best video ever.
Baila en la calle de noche, Baila en la calle de dia...
They simply got people to send in 30 second clips of themselves shaking their hips, and comp'd them together in a very amateurish way into the "Fans Only" version of the video, which is now all over the Internet. People are watching it on YouTube and embedding it into their MySpace pages.
It's perfect for the whole brand of Shakira-connecting-the-Latin-world-through-music-and-dance, and makes utterly compelling viewing if you're at all into ass shaking culture. A rare example of a "send us your videos" style campaign that has done really well. I believe the reason it's done well is context - people knew exactly what they were supposed to do, and what success would look like, and it's also credible and do-able for both the audience and the brand.
Don't know about the rest of the country, but Magners is now literally everywhere (from nowhere). It's my drink of choice because for some utterly unknown reason, I decided it was less fatty than lager. Plus the ice is way refreshing. Suddenly I realised that I kept taking pics of Magners-related stuff, so I might try and channel these energies positively.
The other day I was ridiculously early to a morning meeting, so I read the Express for about 30 minutes, while I had McDonalds pancakes with sausage and syrup. Was the first time I'd had these pancakes with the sausage, which turns out to a little unnecessary.
What does foreign even mean in this context? Also it's really interesting to note what interactivity does, and how powerful it is. So without it, you'd have an article with some point of view, which people can read and agree with or not. But, the simple addition of this vote box forces people to take a side and externalise how they feel - rallying people together and enforcing the strength of their convictions.
The Ice Cream Alliance - why were these guys not on the graduate jobs milkround? Conjures up brilliant Monty Python images of guys in white coats. What a brilliant and silly, but sincere thing to bring life, personality and community to a product/category. More really nice alliances/coalitions please.
Picture from mid clean up from our house party. MnS brand 'Stella' next to a TrampJuice cider. Nice contrast, like the Asda George stuff that gets featured in Vogue.
I like the honesty of the Ace packaging much better. The M+S Stella - why not just be more honest with it? The whole Etoile D'Or brand isn't going anywhere. The guys who bought the lager at M+S happily buy M+S brand sandwiches, bread, oysters, fine cheese, and given the right kind of build up, would definitely accept M+S wine and beer.
It's taken me about 2 weeks, and 6 visits to bike shops to get this thing going, but I have finally nailed it.
Sometimes, when you blog about adverts and brands for too long, you don't feel very useful or manly. However when you take apart the entire drive train of a bicycle, properly utilising every tool in your cycling-related toolkit, degrease bits, replace bearings, align cogs and have meaningful chats in shops to people with aprons on, you feel a bit better. (Til you blog about it.)
I won't bore you with the details, but the 2nd most fun thing about it is the knowing nods which come from other singlespeed riders. Like when the very first people with iPods would iPod-nod at each other when they saw the white headphones.
Another semi-interesting thing is the insulating tape around the frame. Traditional wisdom says this is to hide the name and deter thieves, and protect the tubes from scratches. I get the distinct feeling that it's now just part of the 'look', and to be honest, most of the well kept bikes with black tape around their obviously expensive frame just stand out a mile. I think this is an example of something that's gone from function to style in the space of a few years.
I've recently been getting quite a lot of unsolicited emails which have random subject lines like
woke evil -
and
parasite office -
Anyway, the emails consist of a gif image of text, which is a press release about a new defence technology and driving you to Yahoo! financial and read up on Cyberhand Technologies.
My reason behind creating this post is to see if there are any people out there who are utterly bemused by this marketing as I am - normally spam has a direct response element, so people can see it's working - but this doesn't. If they can somehow measure the uplift on stock price/buy/sell activity from this email campaign, then they are the most sophisticated econometric modellers on the planet.
Otherwise they're simply trusting spam to do a brand job.
Anyway I'd love to know if there are people out there who:
a) have been annoyed by these emails b) have been bemused and kind of enjoyed the emails c) have looked up Cyberhand Technologies d) have wanted to buy Cyberhand Technologies stock as a result e) wtf
I really like following signs. That feeling you get when you're lost driving round the countryside and suddenly you pick up signs back to the motorway - really good.
I was thinking about computer fairs in the London area, so when I saw these signs, duct taped to the walls on Tottenham Court Raod, I had to follow.
The computer market wasn't interesting as I refused to pay a pound for entry, but the journey of following signs round the back of the theatre, seeing things I wouldn't normally see, like the cast of some show all punked having a fag break, and so on, made it worthwhile.
I'd like to do a photo journey where you somehow have keywords, like e.g. fair, field, cheap, and you then have to follow every sign you see that contains these keywords. I'd use a bicycle and start around Leicester Square or Dalston. Not sure exactly how the mechanic would work yet.
