livingbrands

Text 2.0: changing the way we read (apparently)

Technies and the digerati will love this. And I'm sure in 10 years time we will all be wondering how we ever did without.

So call me old fashioned if I say that I like the tangibility and 'static' (what happened to using your imagination?) nature of the written word, and the fact that it challenges you and asks you questions without giving you all the answers on a plate.

But what do I know about the future...

Paul Smith's design rules

"My whole life is about being childlike; not childish, but childlike. Which means you have a lateral mind; a lateral way of thinking. You are curious.

If you are looking at what other designers are doing, or what other products are out there, then you are already buying yesterday's news...and yesterday's news nobody wants"

(Youtube)

10 things we didn't know before the 12th week of 2010

1. Eighty-two million people play Farmville.
2. The name "scrumpy" comes from a word meaning small and shrivelled.
3. Rudyard Kipling turned down the Order of Merit - twice.
4. In The Wizard of Oz, Toto was played by a dog called Terry.
5. Pine that is grown in a cold climate has greater durability.
6. The Bill began life as a one-off drama called Woodentop.
7. The world's most complex mathematical problem is called the Poincare Conjecture.
8. There are only about 10 Pagani Zonda S supercars produced each year.
9. Teachers sometimes get lavish gifts from their pupils like a Tiffany bracelet.
10. Over 260 species of marine wildlife become entangled in litter or mistake it for food.

(Borrowed from the BBC)

Pepsi Max: next step, rohypnol

At one level, it IS funny. But as Ruby P correctly points out to us chaps, there is something just a little bit wrong about this...

Another Nestle social media fail

For a whole generation of left-leaning students from the the early to mid 80s, Barclays and Nestle were synonymous with Corporate Evil (tm). So (if we forgive and forget the global financial meltdown) it's good to see at least one of them remaining true to their core ethos.

Much has been written about the Nestle/Greenpeace/Facebook debacle, so I won't rake over those particular coals again (instead, try these two for a quick catch up).

Instead, here's another Nestle social media fail that just confirms how little some big corps get the digital space.

In reading around the Facebook story, I also came across the case of MumsOnline (which for us brits appears to be akin to that poster child for social media power - Mumsnet).

In short hand form, the story goes thus...

MumsOnline have apparently long been a thorn in Nestles side, over in the US. They had also been trying to acquire the .com version of their url from a third party. When the registration for this lapsed, they were on the verge of taking ownership of their own name. Only to be gazumped by Nestle at the last moment. Who then pointed the url to their own site (try it and see: http://www.mumsonline.com/).

As well as being another brilliant example of how not to engage with detractors on-line, confirming Nestle's corporate bully status, all their action seems to have done is antogonise MumsOnline further.

So an own goal in all sorts of ways.

Big Corp: the digital world is not the same as the (old) 'real' world…and how you behaved their was wrong in the extreme more often than not.

Get with the programme or die.

prePOSTEROUS

Over the years, I have developed a nice crop of blogs that I follow. But now, having dived into Posterous, I realise there’s another hugely-impossible-to-follow world out there.

Any must follow Posterous recommendations, let me know.

10 things we didn't know before the 11th week of 2010

1. Plastic surgeons in the US are doing lip grafts using muscle from the neck to make lips fuller.
2. For almost 30 years, the Virgin Mary has been said to appear daily in the Bosnian town of Medjugorje.
3. The mafia use Facebook.
4. The flat-headed cat has webbed feet.
5. Bono, Nick Cave and Jarvis Cocker sing sea shanties.
6. A "labile" vitamin means it is easily destroyed.
7. Straightening irons outsell hairdryers.
8. Dolphins can swim up to 50 miles a day.
9. Fried tarantula tastes like liver.
10. The Achilles tendon usually breaks with a loud snap.

(Borrowed from the BBC)

The film of the book

I guess this is what they call transmedia story telling. But whatever the name, I really like the idea of doing what are effectively trailers for movies that don't exist to sell books that might end up inspiring those same films.

And it's more evidence, for all the patent 'the future is 100% digital' nonsense, that there is life in the old publishing dog yet (people like tangibility).

Though it probably helps when the names of the books you're promoting are 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies', and 'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter'...

Interviewed by the Independent

I'm in the Independent today talking about the dark arts of food advertising, when it comes to talking with men and women...basically cos the journo liked our Mr Brains ad!

You can tell which bit, as our new biz director has helpfully pointed to it (he also made me use my full name that I never use)...

Of Passing Interest

Where to put 'stuff', that is the question.

Some of the web randomness I come across can sit here.

But a lot would just feel out of place.

Which is why I'm now using Posterous as my stuff repository.

This blog will remain the place for more long form writing, but for things that are just of passing interest, check out Passing Interest.