friday stroll

We're very fortunate to be given Friday afternoons off during the summer, although I have to say that it often ends up that I stay on finish things u at the office. But when I do get the chance I use that extra time to wander around the City and find various odd/interesting things.

Last Friday we (our planning intern Dibakar and I) were actually working, wondering around interviewing mechanics, when we stumbled upon this shoe (those are computer keys on there in case my horrible photo did make that clear) and various other exhibits in a store window.

Even better, they are dam comfortable!



It turns out that the store belongs to Keetsa an eco friendly mattress shop owned by the artist who created the shoe. They make the mattresses using mostly recycled foam and other material (including springs). Even better, because of the design the mattresses can fold up into a box which is 4'x2'x2', which means less packaging material and transportation resources.

lil wayne

Lil Wayne has just put out his new album - The Carter III. But in between his last album and this one, he has released hundreds of songs for free on various mix tapes out on the street, as part of what amount to a three year promotional campaign for this new album. All of this just built up the hype for the big new album with featuring lots of guests and full on productions.



The moral of the story is a) having the longer timeline paid off in the end and b) giving stuff away does not mean not lead to making a loss (for the record company or Wayne)

The Future of Planning at the AAAA

Two planning gurus - Domenico Vitale and Mark Earls are looking for input for a session they will be running at this year's AAAA Planning Conference.

They want to crowd-source what people would like to lose and keep from account planning. Go help them out and help us collectively figure out what this thing calld planning should be at this wiki.

random images

I think this could double as a good employee interview technique ...







Vegetables...be free

eunuch planning

Heather Lefevre has done the industry a big favor and completed another planning study. One stat stood for me in particular...

71% of planners have no kids

Ok, this may not be all together surprising: the are fewer senior positions in the industry and this correlates with age. And it means the industry can function with 76% of planners say they are stressed in their jobs but manage.

But the implication here is that there is an enormous talent drain - lots of people are leaving (I suspect) to find similar work with more control or even exploring different fields. This creates a to of risk, particularly for existing (mid to large size) agencies that don;t adapt to the new way of working.

(for another solution, see this )

launching to fail

There's a very interesting article published by David Vinjamuri, author of "Accidental Branding" , in AdAge the other week.

In addition to have a go at the way new products are researched and developed by many packaged good companies, he points out how entrepreneurs (the engine of the economy) actually do it - by trying lots of things and failing. this is one of my favorite quotes:

"I was sitting on the deck at Clif Bar founder Gary Erickson's Napa Valley house...I asked Erickson what was the single most valuable lesson he had learned in his 16 years at Clif Bar. He shook his head, saying: "I haven't gotten any better at knowing which new products will succeed and which will fail. The most important thing I've learned is how to launch products quickly and cheaply so I can afford to fail and still keep innovating."

brands as shared objects

A post on PSFK sparked some thought in my head about how to shift corporations perspectives on marketing - or at the very least where the mental block is.

The article was really an interview with High McLeod (of Gaping Void , where he talked about social sites (e.g. Flickr) being a place for social objects or social markers left by people.

If brands are to participate in the changes social media as bringing about, that means they need to be social to - as some would put it, they need to be part of the conversation. Right now, most corporations have done this by inviting consumers in - often via consumer generated content or by giving them something to share/publish (enabling social conversation).

But is conversation really want people want? Yes, it's a great service tool, but I would argue that what people want from companies and brands is a sense of ownership. Not necessarily the ownership that comes from being a huge fan of the brand, but ownership that comes from feeling closer to how the brand acts or is acted upon. One way for this is to happen is for the brand to truly become shared property.

Technically, a brand is shared property: we do what we want (pretty much) with the physical manifestations of the brand. And truly open-source brands (like Linux or Wikipedia) operate in this way. But such brands start from scratch and from way outside of most corporations. Companies act as though they are the sole owner of a brand (because well...they are). Talking to clients about how they start sharing the brand with others or making it a shared object make help lead them to a new way of thinking about how to enter the marketplace.

Ideally, it may lead to new kinds of brands and business models: ones where the brand provides raw materials and or finished objects (not just a platform as with Facebook) and consumers can create on top of this.

thou shalt always kill

This is utterly billiant, infuriatingly catchy, half song, half cultural commentary (as all the best songs are). Catch Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip - 2 Essex boys with a lot more to offer than Becks and Posh - in SF at Cafe du Nord on Sunday or at Coachella.

measuring your net-work

Fast Company's article covering on Duncan Watt's influencer research there has re-sparked interest/discussion in this research. It's a theory I personally have heart because of it's implications for the power of randomness. But some observations from Grant McCracken got me thinking. It's not how many influentials you talk to or reach that matter in terms of whether information gets passed on. But you do have to make sure that where you seed has network "length."

Look at it this way. If an idea is seeded in one branch/cluster of a network, there is a chance (maybe even a good one) that the people form a circle off friends that is limited - cut off from to many others. This becomes even more of a risk/issue if this little network is sick of passing in info or just doesn't as a matter of principal (so you better have pure gold as content.

The implication is that it is better to seed in as many places as possible, and that you still have to make sure the people you seed it with have many different kinds of links. they don't have to be an influencer, or a maven. There just have to be connected to many different clusters. This makes the potential path of the idea as long as possible.

How do you measure this? They may be some kinds of groups/people/communities that are more predisposed to be part of longer paths. Again, not influencers or connectors. Perhaps more like crossroads.