back from hols, and Idleness

I'm just back from Secret Garden Party 2007, a festival in the countryside.

I had a brilliant time, and the atmosphere there is pretty unique - it feels like a magical childrens party or something.



image from robjgreen

Apart from obvious factors, like the size of the event, one thing that makes it special is that loads of people there are contributing, not just consuming. There were tonnes of impromptu shows, one-off events, and people going around painting moustaches, as well as the normal big-stage festival stuff.


image from robjgreen

In other words, there's a high ratio of creators to consumers, which gives it a fun, DIY, amateurish feel that brands like Innocent and Howies do so well.

I also got to meet (again) this guy called Tom Hodgkinson, editor of the magazine The Idler the author of the book How to be Idle. This book is probably the biggest reason why I've just quit my full-time job at glue, and it's a great mix of observation, philosophy, how-to, and general wit.

It tied a golden thread through lots of thoughts I've always had, like why I think trading currency derivatives is a bit wrong, and why I hated school, but always loved learning. It's not really about being idle in the sense that people use the word, nor about being lazy, but about taking responsibility for your life and happiness. Highly recommended.

how neurotic R U? xxx

You can tell a lot about someone by how and what they txt. What percentage of your txts say "sorry", "I can't", "oops" or "be late" ?

Do you get friends who only ever SMS you to ask for stuff? Or what about nice ones who text you out the blue to ask how you're feeling? Or who do you always cancel on, and who you send the most X's to?

I just had this idea for an application which scans all your text messages, and does two things:

1. By looking at how many times you use phrases and words like "I'm so", "thanks", "can you", "help", "disaster" and so on, it will give you a personality test, something like this one, (taken from a Facebook questionairre-based personality test):




It could also give you charts and graphs of how miserable or elated you've been over time, based on how many sad or happy faces you've used, or how many exclamation points you use.


2. It would also tell you loads about your relationships with your contacts - it would tell you who your emotional dumping ground is, who always says nice things to you and who texts you loads and whom you never reply to.

It could display all in this in a cool visual way, like a big graphy chart thing, or in a very cutesy neoprint way with halos, devil horns, to appeal to younger audiences.


some neoprints - those Japanese photo booths for kids that print cute stickers of you and your friends


For the technically minded amongst you, you could do in a few ways

* a Java app that you download to your mobile phone

* for mobile operators with web services that let users see their call and text data, it could sit on the web portal

* it could also work for email - be a plug in for Outlook express, or scrape of your gmail, or even be a Facebook widget, seeing who's wall you post on, and what you say, and displaying a readout on your profile


It would get really interesting if the data was all mashed together from different users - it could tell you what the difference in texting habits across nations was, or who the most apologetic person in the UK was!

I think this is a nice idea because it appeals to both typical gender stereotypes:

* geeky boys like anything that crunches numbers and shows them as stats and graphs of things, and visual maps

* girls love doing quizzes about personalities and especially about the relationships between their friends

(I know these are awful stereotypes, but if you look at a lot of MySpace pages and blogs you find lots of evidence that these are kinds of content that are more prevalent to each gender).

If anyone wants to build it give me a shout!

off on holiday to the secret garden party 2007

More Frenchie crowd..., originally uploaded by boutrosmeister.

I'm going away from tomorrow for a week, to the Secret Garden Party, a nice small festival about an hour out of London. We're running the Playtent/Hungamunga area - an art and craft tent with some live music and DJs too. Everyone's welcome - come in and say hi if you're around!

Back on Tuesday the 31st July, but I will have some limited mobile access to Gmail and Facebook.

Hey also, I finally changed the color scheme of this blog to make articles more legible. It took ages, but gave a real sense of satisfaction, like when you fix your own car or the first time you put up some shelves.

digital marketing might help save the planet

One of the most interesting things about digital, is that it has the potential to go beyond just advertising.



Sometimes the work goes to the point of actually making the product better, like Nike's recent Cannes winner for Nike+.

In a way, this is what advertising has always done - ads which made products cool beyond their physical attributes. Like a posh quarterly owners club magazine for a posh brand of car, or slick marketing that makes ordinary training shoes so desirable that you'd steal them.



But this new class of stuff - like the Nike+ application from RGA, is edging on stuff that should come straight out of product development rather than a hired marketing agency.

For an example, a product that I'd talked about before, webkinz (collectible stuffed animals with a unique code that brings them to life in an online world - think Beanie Babies plus Second Life) is another example of where digital add-ons can enhance the life of a product. While previously kids would buy more toy accessories at Woolworths, or simply tire of the stuffed toy, they can now interact with other toy users on the web, and even purchase digital accessories for their toy's avatar.


Image from Willow Tree


There are 2 points I'd like to make then:

1. That the line between advertising, digital stuff, marketing and product development, and even business plans, is very blurred right now.

It isn't a useful line, and certainly not a line which helps make products and communications creatively better. My feeling is that the agencies and companies that will do best are the ones who'll try to get stuck in as much as possible, and not the ones who sit around trying to decide what is and what isn't cricket.

When I say do best, I mean the ones who are remembered for redefining whole periods of marketing, like David Ogilvy, myabe Crispin Porter Bogusky and maybe Innocent. Everyone else is talking about this, so I won't go on too much.


2. I really think that digital marketing might help save the planet.

On Russell Davies blog, they're talking about un-product, or maximum idea, minimum (physical) stuff.

"So I'm wondering whether we can persuade people to consume more branded ideas and less branded stuff, in the same way we might sometimes be able to substitute connected technology for cars."

This is exactly what digital can do, and is the existing business model for huge online communities like Habbo Hotel and the Korean CyWorld. They make money from selling virtual clothes and furniture to people.

So this could be one way of making people consume less stuff - extending the purchase cycle so people buy your physical product less often, but you still make more money.

I have some more ways which aren't quite formulated in my head yet, which I'll post later. I can feel a list coming on!

google mindreading

picture from beyondmagic

I saw this really neat post on HyperHappen's blog. The gist of it is that whenever anything happens, before anyone has even written any news about it, Google already knows about it due to incoming searches.

“When there is a blackout in New York, the first articles appear [on the web] in 15 minutes; we get queries in two seconds”.
Google

The second point is, I guess, can this information be used as news somehow? As microblogging takes off, maybe a bunch of microblog posts put together will form a half decent news article?

Link to a global visual representation of people microblogging via Twitter.

kerry katona burgled, an idea

Kerry Katona, of Atomic Kitten and Iceland ads fame, was threatened at knifepoint whilst masked men ransacked her home.

Link to the BBC news article

This is obviously not a nice thing to happen to anyone, but I am guessing that a lot people out there will have very little sympathy, purely because she's rich and some people find her annoying.

The BBC article is a bit loaded too -

"Police have removed a Porsche and an Aston Martin from the front of the property.

The cars are to be forensically examined to see if the robbers left any clues when they stole the BMW which was also parked at the house."

- this isn't necessary, and just creates vitriol - why does a family need a Porsche, Aston and BMW anyway?

Anyway, my thought was, is that say the robbers anonymously stated what they'd be using the money for a worthy cause? Like a modern day Robin Hood. I wonder what level of support they would garner from the public?

If they only targeted easily hatable celebrities - for example:

Stealing money from Pete Doherty, to give to drug abuse charities

Stealing one of Jeremy Clarkson's large-engined cars and selling it to pay for solar water heating in developing nations?



I also wonder what the media reaction to them would be like. Since I wouldn't advocate crime in any way, would there be any legal and less extreme ways to do this?

For example, a TV show where aggravating celebs go on trial for their excessive ways and get made to change their behaviour or face fines?

With all respect to celebs, our world is facing a basic problem of everyone in the West leading excessive, wasteful lives, that no amount of recycling plastic bags is going to solve. We need to work out a way of making irresponsible excess, and those who glamourise it, uncool.

coracle regatta, hackney

On Sunday, I was picking up a paper in my local newsagent when I saw a flyer for a coracle regatta, about 2 mins away from my house. My friend was coming over from SW London, so I thought it would be a nice taste of the arty, bohemian East End to go check it out.

So me and Hal donned our "struggling-artist-look" tops (no-one understands his work), and strolled over with a big caipirinha jug.

It was by the canal in Hackney, and was generally a jolly good show, with a BBQ, a very free have-a-go attitude. I fell in.


hal in a coracle


other regatta dilettantes

It was organised by a nice guy called Harry, who also built the coracles. What a dude.

goodbye glue, hello world

As most of you know by now, I'm leaving glue London after almost 2 and half years of working here as a planner.

I've had a lot of fun here, done some really interesting work, and to be honest I can attribute a lot of the good stuff in my life right now somehow or other to glue people.



This is my glue animated gif head, which bobs away in its hoodie. Everyone who works at glue gets an animated pixel head.

Oh well. To the future then, I'm going to be spending my time:

* freelancing in other digital and traditional agencies (if you know anyone looking let me know!)


* exploring a lot of different kinds of work and hobbies from eco-building to modding my chopper



photo from JC


* doing some marketing consulting for smaller companies.




My first job of this kind has been working for small social network called WAYN which my friend Tom works for. It's been really enjoyable and interesting - I've been working on helping them define their brand a bit - i.e. "what is it exactly you do? and who for?".

So broadly, I'm a bit nervous, but excited and looking forward to speaking to loads of different people and companies in the quest to find a few interesting things to do.

recycled art party this Tuesday 17th July

originally uploaded by dead insect \ /.

We're back again at Favela Chic for the Hungamunga recycled art party.

The idea is you bring scraps, cereal boxes, general junk, and we provide paints, glue and material for you to turn it into beautiful art. More details on the club myspace.

Live bands and DJs play too, and at some point, you dance.

Check out pictures from the last one on my flickr here.

monster pro wrestling: kaiju big battel (sic)

photo from varmazis

This is the most fantastically silly thing I've heard about for ages. Essentially, men in Godzilla and Ultraman (70's Japanese rubber suit monster movies) do pro wrestling, but with added props, such as cardboard cities to destroy.

Here's a highlight reel of a Brooklyn event:

link to youtube

I'm utterly enthralled, and with my new found unemployment, I'm keen to get an event (albeit a very small one) going in the UK. It's another great example of the mix of film, entertainment and sport that's springing up at a grassroots level all over the world - it's the kind of thing brands should be doing, rather than paying people to find out about and copy.

I find it a fantastic mix of cultures, from US pro wrestling, Japanese Monster movies, and I think it would fit really nicely with the whole England summer festival vibe - perhaps first demo bout at Bestival this year?

If you'd like to help organise an event, please get in touch. We need:

Atheletes - people with wrestling, MMA, martial arts or gymnastics backgrounds, but most of all with a love of pro wrestling.

Costume and prop builders - balsa wood, pvc, theatre costumes, ring builders, all sorts

Creatives - with an interest in the genre to help with character concepts, storylines and general shenanigans.

Enthusiasts - anyone from ring girls, to spectators, to just helping out.


Please get in touch if you're interested, or pass on to people you think might dig this kind of silliness. We'll be starting low key - think 4 atheletes and simple rope ring with mats and a cardboard London Eye and Big Ben to destroy.

Remember, Tokyo wasn't destroyed by monsters in a day!

magic wheel

I don't know why people haven't though of this before, but here we go. The Magic Wheel.


direct link to youtube

My guess is that it might be pretty good for getting around - combining the stability and smooth running of a bike wheel, with the carry-ability of a skateboard. And the dorkiness of a unicycle.

Having said that though, I've seen a group of local Hackney youths unicycling around Victoria Park, London, complete with grime music playing from their phones. If I had to take a punt at guessing a meaningless trend, it's that unicycling might be in again.

definition of web2.0 in one sentence

Web 2.0:

"you make all the content. they keep all the revenue."

source: http://bash.org/?779320


I also heard another good, more serious one, can't remember where this is from though.

"websites that get better with more people"

If you want to read more useful information about what web2.0 is, you could go here.

7-11 Kwik-e-Mart promotion in the US

photo from flickr

I read about this ages ago, but never thought they'd actually do it. To promote the launch of the Simpsons movie, they've turned some 7-11 shops into Kwik-e-Marts, complete with fake brands (re-named Slurpee as Squishee) and so on.


photo from flickr

7-11 footed the bill, which people guess is into the single millions. Hats off to them for doing something very daring and different in retail. If only Happy Shopper had had the courage to do something like this they might still be here today.

Full story on Yahoo! here
More pics from flickr here

I'll end with a video of Bumblebee Man from YouTube. Nothing to do with the story but he is my favourite Simpsons character.

schmap city guides - harnessing amateur content effectively

I got a message via Flickr (a photo sharing website) asking if schamp could use one of my pictures (one I'd taken in Hackney City Farm). As far as I can work out, schmap is a city guide with a map mash-up.

The whole thing is dead smart for 3 reasons:

1. It saves them having to buy photos or pay people to take them
2. They had a very slick system where I could just click to say if I was ok with them using the picture or not
3. I am now definitely going to tell people about my picture being used on schmap, which gives them a powerful boost to their for word-of-mouth activity

Link to the schmap page here.