Jeffery a modern day Judas

I went to the book launch of Lord Jeffery Archer's new book, the Gospel According to Judas. It was a bit unlike most book launches I've been to, this crowed were well into their theology and the finer points / philosophical and theological in the book where hotly debated. The book was co-written with Franncis Maloney a theologian and a leading Catholic scholar. I was fascinated by why Archer wrote this book and his reply was that since he was very young he was fascinated by the bit in-between black and white - he should know a thing or two about that. Maloney on the other hand wanted a rigorous and fact based account of Judas instead of the sort of stuff that Dan Brown and Dawkins come up with. I found the whole thing really interesting, here you have a disgraced peer trying to rehabilitate Judas (perhaps himself too in the process - a bit like Carvaggio with the self-portrait of himself as Goliath in the David and Goliath). And on the other hand you have a Catholic scholar who wants the Catholic church's version to be heard by a mass audience (via Archer). What an odd couple. Religion and author motivations aside as I am reading the book right now I am finding myself sympathising and identifying with Judas instead of falling in love with Jesus. It is a very difficult balance to strike as a writer if your reader ends up identifying with the wrong character or failing to be inspired by one. But I do like that a gospel which should be about the good news ends up a version of Christian reality where the relationship between humanity and Christ is less than black and white for a change.

Are you global warming ready?

So guess who is asking this question? Yep it is Diesel in a fine campaign that has enough irony to re-do my entire wardrobe.

Super Bowl goes CGM

I am in NYC at the moment doing some groups. You can't be in NYC during Super Bowl and not fall over the talk about the bigger than movie budget ads they show here. However it is interesting that 'several' of the ads in this advertising block buster prime time, show time and for the first time ever featured ads that were either inspired by consumer generated media or done by consumers. Here's a short report. Interestingly a comment from Tim Calking a Kellog University marketing professor about this year's vintage was: 'This year's ads were a mixed bag with everyone playing it safe, no one was pushing the boundaries of creativity nor taste'. Funny that, if he is right, CGM then becomes one of those things that advertising people do for themselves not their audiences to show how 'in touch they are' - personally I didn't think much of the ads but then again, I am not American.

Reality T.V.

68% of all t.v. aired in the world is reality t.v. Two thirds of 18-25 year old Americans said they would go on a reality t.v. show. One third also said that 'anyone who would go on a reality t.v. show isn't normal'. Young people typically watch 4-5 reality shows a week. These random stats got me thinking the following: 1. Everybody is a Celebrity. Most young people are getting used to the idea of being on a screen of some form, traditional t.v., youTube etc. This may be creating a long tail of celebrities (v products) who would have a fair chance of getting on a screen of some form. This can create new niches of celebrities e.g. Lonelygirl15, Peter the 70 year old from Norlfolk on YouTube, George Gallway -:) But the question is: does this erode the idea of celebrity in the classical sense? i.e. somebody famous for something extraordinary: George Best in football for example. 2. Celebrity is not the same as Legendary. Celebrity is becoming such a commodity, people no longer dream about their 15 minutes of fame but demand it - or blog like hell to get it. The next level of aspiration has to be more than just being famous for being famous it has to have some level of authenticity, grounding and yep talent. Perhaps the next level of fame is that of Legend. Legends are truly iconic, immortal and impossible to miss. Now how many YouTuber's can you name that can sit comfortably next to Churchill, Steve Jobs, Dyson, Tim Berners Lee, Pele, John Grant? Perhaps the new legends will be those that truly change the landscape left behind them and the concept of traditional legend itself will shift with the time, I just hope that tomorrow's legends won't just be those who got the most visitors to their MySpace simply by doing nothing except sitting there all day tagging each other. 3. Lo Dumb Down Culture. Given that nearly 70% of global t.v. programming is reality based is mind numbing. If you wanted anything of cultural, intelligent, artistic or craft based products you probably have to look elsewhere like Banksy's Santa's Grotto on Oxford Street. Grant once mentioned in one of his books that we've become the society of the spectacle. Today we want the sizzle not the steak we want the sensationalism of seeing sex on big brother we want the lowest, basest of human common denominators yep we love trash but perhaps the masses love trash and whoever has the job of giving them or inspiring them with the more deeper, higher, more meaningful and slightly more demanding forms of culture and art simply don't give a toss. This stuff doesn't sell t.v. ratings and doesn't guarantee eyeballs to sell to soap advertisers who crave coverage. Therefore you end up with 70% of t.v. being reality based. The sad thing is this is not new. Theodore Adorno as far back as the 50's lamented the mass produced, dumbed down culture as a threat to higher forms of artistic or entertainment products. Adorno observed that the culture industries for which t.v. and radio at the time were the main organs cultivated false needs driven by capitalist agendas (ratings, revenue etc) while true needs they stipulated were creativity, freedom and happiness. But maybe this won't go on for ever. In the Economist's new year edition an article on post modern marketing highlighted how accessibility of niche products (long tail stuff) and consumerism are allowing people to become 'artists of their own life' people who are capable of building their life, with individuality and sense of self-expression by tapping into what technology and variety provide. However, the question that still bugs me is: where will people get their inspiration from? Sure as hell it ain't going to come from watching big brother. Mainstream inspiration will still play a huge part of how people find out about things to make their life more individual (like everyone else's) ... but somewhere, sometime, some people may just make the effort to side track the whole mainstream dumb down drivel and start discovering, exploring on their own what is genuinely interesting and meaningful to them. Perhaps the biggest tool that they may use to do so is the Internet but I hasten to add there is nothing like actually living in an offline world with genuine face to face interactions with people you've never met and being in places you've never been intellectually, emotionally and physically. Discovering it for your self is by far more rewarding. Arthur Scheopenhauer once said: 'Talent hits a target no one else can hit, genius hits a target no one else can see'. Perhaps it is too optimistic to expect modern day culture industries to show us the genius stuff that we have to find out for ourselves.

Imagine if all that marketing spend was a gift from the brand.

Brands spend extraordinary amounts of money advertising themselves. Imagine if instead of plugging all this money into 'communications' they instead created, cultural products, entertainment, services, innovations, applications of their brand idea. In other words they did stuff instead of said stuff. Brands should do more and say less.

Un-natural way of getting natural ideas.

There is a nice quote in Inspired about how a guy in a black polo neck shirt, tucked into his black chinos with a word 'imagine' stuck on his chest went around the room and asked the participants in an innovation workshop 'what's your fear?' - somebody replied - 'you'.

You can't force ideas out of a structured process real ideas hardly come out of those highly structured manufactured workshops. They come out of something else: conversation and conflict.

I am yet to meet an artist who organises brainstorms to come up with ideas and yet to find a great ad or brand idea that came out of an amazing workshop if you know of any let me know.

C'mmon Branson

Previously, Branson pledged huge amounts of money to fight global warming. Today it was announced that him and Stelious and some other Asian gizza are planning to launch the world's first global lo cost airline. Isn't this a bit hypocritical?

Steve Job's Speech in Stanford Ceremony

This is an amazing speech by Steve Jobs in Stanford University's graduation ceremony!

God gets a MySpace page

Cool brand study on neave.tv

Check it out here

The intersection of VIDEO, 3D and Interactive

Thanks to OF for this neat example of web tv and here is another example of 3D enviornments online. The future of the web and web design is likely to be at the intersection of VIDEO, 3D and video. Now are we thinking enough about what this means?

Planner as Politician

I reckon as well as looking for curiosity, intuition, creativity and all those things you look for in a young planner you need someone who can be a statesman/woman too.The more you go up you enter into boardroom level selling where the real selling happens as well as managing the in-evitable complex iceberg agendas floating about. Nevertheless, integrity and truth continue to be the ultimate planner weapons.

Brands & 2.0

Parkour is soo Un-Cool

Lots of 'officially' cool brands try and copy and paste the latest cool thing in some culture or sub-culture and dress it up with their me too brands. A quick glance at a leading Parkour outfit (will remain nameless it is un-fair) in the UK revealed no less than 25 projects for BRANDS in the form of ads and events since January 2006. I swear, if I see another dumb ass sports shoes brand doing a Parkour ad again I will run away barefoot in disgust. The point is not to slap your logo on a bit of subculture but to borrow the ethos and the values of that subculture and create your own interpretation of it otherwise those who know anything about Parkour in the UK would have seen the same crew in 25 different ads this year how un-cool is that...

Show and Tell

Every agency I'ever worked in had some form of show and tell. Wouldn't it be great if you didn't need to do show and tells because everybody is involved somehow and already knows what is going on? For example if every person had to contribute an interpretation of or a thought on an idea that each account is working on...ah I can dream on.

The eleventh P

Tom at i-WISDOM posted the web paradigms below and pointed out that I could be missing two more P's: passion and porn. Agree on both of-course and actually when I do this presentation I do mention porn as the surprise surprise bit. Tom also had this great link to a video from Clo Willaerts about how porn technologies and models are in-fact the the pre-cursors to tomorrow's innovations.

Web (P)aradigms...

INSIDER OUTSIDER INNOVATION

Inspired by John's entry here about the Guardian's weekend piece on Web 2.0 innovators. Looking at the spectrum of innovators some of them are INSIDERS so close to the technology that they can see opportunities that no one outside the coal face could spot. A fair few are computer programmers who became entrepreneurs and some like Joshua Schachter are OUTSIDERS he built Deli.icio.us because as he put it: 'I built it because I wanted it, not because I thought it was a business or whatever'. Now this leads me to an interesting debate I had with a friend recently. To do innovation you need to be able to harness the impossible to spot insights deep into the 'thing' you are working on but you also need to have the genius of a complete outsider who spots a big whole - a painful need - in a market and do something about it. Now I wonder how many 3M's What if's, GE's HP's are staffed by a magic mix between INSIDERS and OUTSIDERS?

BUGA's

Ladies and gentlemen we now have an award for the top British user generated content...well will soon have champion consumers as well as creative geniuses but the question in my head is how will professional creatives justify their existence when there is ample and often better ideas made by consumers? I realise of-course that the good UGC stuff tends to be one hit wonders but sooner or later somebody is going to work out how to do it properly, here's a random selection of UGC stuff making the rounds not quite sure yet whether I've seen something that is actually amazing... Followfinger Itsyourshowtv Joga iCoke Coke Google Mentos Jones Firefox Doritos PS Freedom Flux Trouble iFilm Yourkindatv Pepsi Underground Summerbingo

Your help please

I've been asked to speak in a conference about Leveraging content to access younger audiences and early adopters on digital platforms. Any thoughts on what you think the do's and don't are welcome...and any reflections or examples on/for my 5 starters below are extremely welcome: 1. Create a culture around the brand not just a campaign or a message. 2. Give them an experience and don't chase exposure for expoure's sake, do not say. 3. Give them something that they can participate in - not treating them like a passive audience. 4. Be authentic not didactic. 5. Allow them to carry your idea forward - their way.