livingbrands

Mr Hopkinson's Computer

Vocoder + plinkity-plonk keyboards + strangely excellent covers of The Stone Roses, Pixes, Portishead and Radiohead take your fancy?

Then you need Mr Hopkinson's Computer. And there's some bonus tracks here.

And if these work for you, check out the duets with his 'girlfriend' Audrey 3000, including Fairytale of New York (oh yes).

Thanks to Cool Hunting for the original nod.

10 things we didn't know before the 21st week of 2007

1. Pizza was known as “Italian Welsh rarebit” in 1950s Britain.
2. Using a gas-fired patio heater for just one hour can waste enough energy to make 400 cups of tea, according to Friends of the Earth.
3. Laurence Olivier and Tintin's creator Herge were born on the same day.
4. A swarm of bees can ground a Boeing 737.
5. On the first day of filming Star Wars in the deserts of Tunisia, the country experienced its first major rainstorm in 50 years and a rest day had to be called.
6. Sharks have virgin births.
7. Articles of 50,000 words - parliamentary reports in particular - were common in the Times in the early 1890s, just as the first tabloid newspapers came into being.
8. Japanese whalers in the 17th Century buried the foetuses of the pregnant whales they caught in a special graveyard facing out to sea.
9. One in four house sales fall through.
10. Captive elephants often don’t know how to look after their young because they don’t work on instinct – in the wild, calves are looked after by the herd and this is how young females learn mothering skills.).

(Source: BBC)

FutureScope 65

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.

Archetypes revisited

Some years ago I got really interested in Jungian psychology, and how you might use personality archetypes as a brand development tool. I wrote some articles, spoke at some conferences, and tried to get a bit of a methodology off the ground.

Sadly all to no avail. It kind of conflicted with the day job, and the agency I worked for at the time wasn't that interested. I also started thinking more broadly in terms of brands' stories (whether literal or imagined) rather than just their character. And all the archetype stuff ended up getting stuffed in that rather full drawer titled 'things I will finally get round to doing something about when I work for myself...eventually'. Sure you've got one as well.

Then, out of the blue, I had 3 calls in the last 2 weeks to ask if I'm still getting all archetypal on brands. No, being the reply.

But coincidence, serendipity, destiny and all that. And following your bliss, or whatever it was that Joseph Campbell used to bang on about.

So whilst I'm still not working for myself, maybe I'll dust down the archetypes files, see if they make any sense (or sound like a load of old nonsense), and take things from there.

Boys and Girls in America

Is the title of my current 'can't stop listening' album by The Hold Steady.

Think a modern American concept album (in that it has a loose theme holding the tracks together, a la Green Day's American Idiot, rather than in a 'crap 1970s prog rock album' sense), with shades of early Springsteen in style and lyrics, and a voice reminiscent of Husker Du's Bob Mould.

Patti Smith's Teen Spirit

Now in its 29th (!!!) series, Later...with Jools Holland remains the best music show on TV by some long way (at least if you live in the UK). And Friday night was no exception.

Highlight was Patti Smith (looking some crazed grandma from hell....and all the cooler for it) ripping thru some of the tracks from her new covers album, 12.

And whether a one off, or a new feature, you can see her version of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit as an exclusive on the Beeb website.

10 things we didn't know before the 20th week of 2007

1. Hair loss in humans might be reversible.
2. Almost one-third of men are balding by the time they reach 30.
3. 14% of Rolls-Royce owners also own a private jet.
4. Dirty Harry and The Exorcist III are based on a spate of unsolved murders in San Francisco in the late 1960s.
5. Jose Mourinho has a Yorkshire terrier called Gullit, named after the Dutch footballer Ruud Gullit.
6. Nearly half of pregnancies are unplanned.
7. The UK has the most post offices in Europe.
8. The insults "moron", "idiot", "imbecile" and "cretin" were once official medical diagnoses.
9. There were no sperm donors in Northern Ireland, until recently, and only 208 in the UK.
10. Cranes disappeared from the UK 400 years ago because the East Anglian fenland was drained. They recently returned.

(Source: BBC)

We will not be silenced

Been hunting around for some good examples of how typography can be used in a commercial to bring your message to life on screen, and was reminded of this that I came across last year. And now there's an ace follow up. The originals are here and here (which are better quality), or you can watch these Youtube version (actually, I would go and watch the originals, as the Youtube definition ain't great).

Anyway, powerful, powerful stuff...

(PS: when it comes to my view of what Christianity is all about on the social justice front, I'm with this guy!)

Advertising: is it really all so bad?

Thanks to David for pointing out this rather entertaining film on the issues facing advertising today

But fun as it is, I would just make a couple of points...

1. as someone working in what is still quaintly called an ad agency, I would say 'enough already'. We've heard. There may still be some old dinosaurs out there, but most of us, individually and corporately, embraced the changes and moved on some while ago. And I would add that, in my experience, what ad agencies lack in technical ability and understanding of these new areas, they often make up for in (a better) quality of idea.
2. is it just me who finds it ironic that a good old fashioned ad is being used to make this point (the fact it's online is just a channel choice)? Shouldn't it be some community-based, interactive UGC kind of thing? No one's denying that advertising does a lot that's wrong; or that ad agencies can still have a tendency to arrogance. But there's no escaping the fact that a great ad is still so much better at doing some things than the other comms tools at our disposal.

For more thoughts on advertising, you may want to have a look here. Afraid it's a bit long, and got a bit ranty in places, but think the points are valid.

Johann vs Vilfredo

Finally got round to reading a piece on John Hagel's blog on the implications of our shift from a (Johann) Gaussian world of bell curves, predictability and averages, to a (Vilfredo) Paretian world of 80:20 rules, long tails and extreme events.

Worth a read, if you're interested in all the Black Swan stuff doing the rounds at the moment. And suggests that these extreme events aren't as unpredictable as we might think. Superficially, a Paretian world seems complex and unknowable, but there are deep structures involve which, fractal like, replicate with simplicity and stability at all levels below the surface chaos. And if you can grapple with these, you are on to a winner in terms of being ahead of the curve (to slip momentarily back into Gaussian metaphors) on the next-big-things.