livingbrands

10 things we didn't know before the 50th week of 2009

1. The Queen travels to Sandringham by scheduled train each Christmas.
2. The Moon has the coldest place in the Solar System measured by a spacecraft.
3. About 3.8 million cheques were written in the UK every day last year.
4. Australian stingless bees immobilise intruding beetles by mummifying them in resin, wax and mud.
5. The Royal Mail's missed parcel cards are also known as "739" cards.
6. 748 million burgers are sold in the UK annually.
7. Women's touch is more sensitive than men's.
8. The Na'vi language spoken in James Cameron's new film Avatar took four years to write and develop.
9. Female spiders eat their mates despite them being nutritionally poor.
10. Milton Keynes central railway station appeared as a UN building in Superman IV.

(Borrowed from the BBC)

Iron Man 2 trailer is up

Whiplash, Black Widow, Nick Fury and War Machine. Oh yes.

Christmas film from Publicis: what were they thinking?!

The next time someone suggests your agency mimes along to a song (or worse still, actually sings it) for a Youtube film,even if meant ironically, just say NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...

Do you wind or scroll

Language evolves over time as people's associations and uses change. And had a good example last night, which may have been a post-training (and so tired) slip of the tongue, but was interesting nonetheless.

It was really frosty when we came out of the swimming pool at 9pm. And as my son described it to my wife when we got home: "it was so icy we couldn't scroll down the window".

So there you have it: a digital life has killed the fine and ancient art of winding!

In praise of turkeys (of the week)

Not everyone likes our launch commercial for MTV's Viva. And Campaign in particular seem to hate it: they made it turkey of the week when it came out, and elevated this to the no.1 spot of turkeys in their end of year review…

All of which we love, as it means we're doing our job: better polarisation than indifference. Because what do Campaign know anyway (a much asked question!), when the numbers speak for themselves (remembering this was a low spend campaign, with no active investment in making this a viral happening).

At time of writing (and all in just 2 months)…

• Over 600,000 hits on youtube so far
• 100s of user generated remakes
• Over 400 Facebook groups
• The biggest had nearly a million members, before it was shut for some unfortunate flaming incidents
• Over 3m hits on Google for the phrase “up your viva”
• And a nicely trending catchphrase on Twitter as well
• Generating an increase of over 30% in both viewers and ratings (vs the TMF, the essentially identical channel that previous occupied the same slot), and 25% share of viewing

And here's a little compilation we've put together of some of the Youtube mashups that are out there...

As one client said "we think it's bloody brilliant and it has transformed our business". Or more pithily from another "turkey my arse".

So when it comes to Campaign understanding a new youth targeted TV station, it may be a case of "here's the coco and slippers, and get back to Last of the Summer Wine Grandad".

The voice of social media

How true is this...

 

(From Tom Fishburne naturally)  

10 things we didn't know before the 49th week of 2009

1. Kit Kats used to be called Chocolate Crisps.
2. taH pagh taHbe is "To be or not to be" in Klingon
3. And hok-oo means "watch out, other monkeys about!" in monkey language.
4. It's not Tiger, but Eldrick Woods.
5. Procter and Gamble set up a media company in 1933 to promote its detergents in the first "soap operas" - the last in its stable, As The World Turns, has just been cancelled.
6. Eco-light bulbs are designed to be brightest at 25C, and can get dimmer when cooler or hotter than that.
7. eBay's first ever item sold was a broken laser pointer for for $14.83.
8. Douglas Fairbanks and Cary Grant were among the first to repopularise pink as a colour for men.
9. Tipsy people who drink coffee to "sober up" are more like to underestimate how drunk they really are.
10. The German Cold War bunker up for auction is so well protected, it can withstand a jumbo crashing into the mountain it is hidden inside.

 (Borrowed from the BBC)

The beach hut advent calendar

If you happen to be in the Brighton area over the next few weeks, and hanker after something more than opening cardboard doors at the breakfast table in the run up to Christmas, why not check our the beach hut advent calender put together by Beyond.

 

The church in good example of real, tangible hands-on experiential marketing shock. Looks like fun.

The environmental argument for city living

I can find Simon Jenkins a bit reactionary and strident sometimes (strange given he also writes for the Guardian). But I thought he made some interesting pointsin last night's Standard about the environmental argument for city living (vs. building on/living in the country), in terms of energy use and pollution per person.

"We should use more intensively the land area that is already built over, and not spread new settlement across virgin acres of carbon-rich countryside, wherever they may be.

New settlements, however many times you prefix them with "eco-", are all carbon belchers. They are low density and require high mobility to service them.

Most people think of cities as ecological disaster areas, seething swamps of concrete and tarmac, fuming traffic and throbbing central heating. (Whereas) Greens are seen as inhabiting a virtuous Hobbit-state of woodland cottages, where people dig potatoes, sing folksongs and cycle everywhere...

...(But) Londoners...use space intensively and energy efficiently. They mostly occupy long-constructed buildings, sharing walls, roofs, ceilings and heating systems with others. They also share transport, street lights and entertainment. They walk, cycle or use public transport (mostly electric) to get to work or play. Londoners crowd roads, shops, restaurants, theatres, pubs. They communicate with each other without having to take long journeys.

They do not heat, light and cook in isolated homesteads, where almost every journey requires the carbon emissions of an internal combustion engine."

Now there are obviously environmental and social negatives a plenty to do with city living that Jenkins chooses to ignore. And he is talking about a certain kind of city - London or New York rather than Mexico City or Beijing. But I think he makes some useful points that dovetail well with trends like urban farming.

That said, I have always been and remain an outdoors type and country boy who has never lived in the Big City, with a desire to move to the West Country as soon as is reasonable, where I shall, in Simon's mind, increase my carbon footprint.

When not surfing. Or feeding my chickens ;o)

The 5 foundations of morality

TED talk by psychologist Jonathan Haidt, where he examines the cornerstones of morality.

turns out there are 5...

• An antipathy to harm of others
• Sense of fairness/reciprocity
• Loyalty to your group
• Respect for authority
• Desire for purity/sanctity

In terms of perceived importance, liberals tend to score highly on the first two and low on the others, whereas conservatives score similarly on each (tho lower than liberals on 'harm' and 'fairness' measures).

Although, even here 'perceived' is the important word - liberals may disagree with conservatives on 'purity' when it comes to sexual morality, but might consider it very important when it comes to food for instance.

Unsurprisingly tho, it is in the areas of loyalty, authority and purity that most moral disagreements and debates happen.

But Haidt's argument is that these different moral priorities are neither right or wrong, they are simply different. And that it is only in recognising these different priorities, rather than demonising them, that constructive dialogue and progress can happen.

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

1. Mobile numbers 07700 900000 to 900999 are reserved for fictional numbers in TV and films.
2. 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.
3. There is one CCTV camera for every eight people in London.
4. The world's oceans are believed to absorb about half of the total carbon emissions from human activities.
5. Italian police have a Lamborghini patrol car worth 165,000-euro (£150,000)
6. Pubs in England pull about 10 million extra pints when the national football team plays in the World Cup.
7. Jane Austen probably died of TB - commonly caught from drinking infected milk - when she passed away aged 41.
8. Feet movements reveal who you are sexual attraction to.
9. 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.
10. There are just four minarets on mosques in Switzerland.

 (Borrowed from the BBC)

Hail the rise of Loser Generated Content

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

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

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

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

 (Borrowed from the BBC)

Social media ROI: socialnomics

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

1. Three of the world's top 5 supercomputers are in the US.
2. Humans are more likely to be killed by a hippo than a lion.
3. Teeth grinding is known as bruxism.
4. Spin doctors were used in the Iron Age.
5. School phobia is a condition recognised by doctors since the 1960s.
6. Whisky should be stored upright, unlike wine.
7. "Wrap rage" is a term coined to describe the anger felt by people trying to get into bonded plastic "clamshell" packaging.
8. 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.
9. For three decades, the BBC took a very dim view of Enid Blyton's work.
10. Swindon has the UK's highest broadband use.

 (Borrowed from the BBC)

FutureScoping 85

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?

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

“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'

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

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

 (Borrowed from the BBC)

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

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

 (Borrowed from the BBC)

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

…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!

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

1. The city of Bath, in Somerset, was referred to as "The Bath" until the 19th Century.
2. Bears don't like honey, and aren't even very keen on berries and nuts.
3. Scouts can deliver post.
4. Barbara Windsor was the second actress to play Peggy Mitchell in Eastenders.
5. Tattoos can be done with a person's ashes.
6. The average American spends $66.45 (£40) on Halloween.
7. When a shark pup is born its liver makes up 20% of its body mass.
8. The world's oldest dog is 20.
9. The secret to a happy marriage for men is choosing a wife who is smarter and at least five years younger.
10. 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

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

 (Borrowed from the BBC)

Up Your Viva!

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

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

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

 (Borrowed from the BBC)