Art is …
July 20, 2008
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Artist Madora Frey’s newest photo essay.
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Wooster Collective points us to a video interview showcasing street artist Joshua Allen Harris. He creates these amazing animated inflatable sculptures that come to life as air flows from passing subway cars drift up through grates in the sidewalk.
Soho House’s “Virtual House”
July 9, 2008
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The Soho House has climbed aboard the Social Media bandwagon and launched its own networking service. ASmallWorld had hitherto been known as the “Soho House of social networks”…
Fifteen Things x 2
July 8, 2008
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Interesting list - some you’d expect (Google, Amazon) and some you wouldn’t (Colbert Nation)
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Gawker lists the The Fifteen Most Useless Internet Euphemisms including their take on The Long Tail. Plus a funny side swipe at boingboing for its selective transparency.
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The company pages of more established agencies are quite revealing. Numbers like most common job titles, gender split and median age, alongside who’s been hired/ promoted are fascinating pictures of where a company is headed and what’s important to them.
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BusinessWeek canvassed the Web’s best and brightest designers—from Khoi Vinh of The New York Times’ Web site to Don Norman, Silicon Valley’s chief usability guru—to find out which site designs they rate — and which ones they hate.
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“We have some wonderful sheds on readersheds.co.uk, but the most quirky ones are the Tardis sheds, full size replicas of the Doctor Who’s famous time machine, but most are used to store garden tools and not travel through space and time.”
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Omnicom has created G23: staffed by senior leaders, all of them women. They will work for G23 while continuing in their agency posts in fields like PR, cultural anthropology, corporate identity, media services, behavioral planning and digital marketing.
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The BBC Sound Index analyses what people are writing about, listening to, watching, downloading and logging on to. It analyses this data to make an instant list of the most popular 1000 artists and tracks on the web.
Pike’s Pique
July 2, 2008
I learn that a backlash is brewing against Starbucks Corp. over its Pike Place Roast coffee, which has perked up the company’s sales by attracting new business, but has alienated a small yet vocal group of longtime patrons. (I confess I personally am not a huge fan of the burnt-tasting acidic coffee served by Starbucks).
Starbucks has also been bitten on the bum a bit by its own social media site … “I am shocked and disappointed that you have abandoned your original vision,” a poster identified as WestPalm wrote on mystarbucksidea.com, the company’s feedback site. “You need to wake up before it’s too late.” Thousands of votes of support for his stance and others like it helped persuade the company to restore a bold coffee variety to the afternoon lineup at about 900 of its locations.
Interestingly, new coffee varietals are not part of the 2009 plan …
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Evidently they will give you $20 for putting the new Sprint Insight in your YouTube video…
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In a mealy-mouthed compromise on bias-free communication planning, many agencies are still tooting their horns about their efforts to inegrate digital into their offering. Woo! I thought we figured this out already?
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With wine consumption up in the U.S., especially among younger adults, merchants and others in the industry are using digital tools like video, blogs and information kiosks to try to demystify what’s still considered by many to be an intimidating product,
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Hasbro and Universal, a unit of General Electric Co., will be rolling the dice on a number of old-time classics, including Monopoly, Candy Land and Ouija. If the projects go well, the companies may even attempt a remake of “Clue.”
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Activating a brand in social media delivers a variety of benefits. Social media’s conversational nature means that a campaign can deliver a lot more than simply message distribution. Social media can give a voice to a brand’s customers.
Brave Noob World
June 29, 2008
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A geophysical survey of the World of Warcraft…
Ride The City
June 28, 2008
Though it’s arguably inferior to many European cities, New York does have a growing network of relatively safe bike lanes (thanks largely in part to Mayor Mike). “Ride the City”, currently in beta form, is a site launched earlier this month to help aid the process.
The blurb on the site explains: “The concept is pretty simple. Just like MapQuest, Google, Microsoft, and other mapping programs, Ride the City finds the shortest distance between two points. But there are two major differences. First, RTC excludes roads that aren’t meant for biking, like the BQE and the Queens Midtown tunnel. Second, RTC tries to locate routes that maximize the use of bike lanes and greenways.”
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Danish Icelandic artist Olafur Eliassons Waterfalls are all spigots finally a-go, this $15 million dollar environmental installation project is set to launch on the banks of NYC’s East River and NY Harbor this Thursday, June 26.
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The strategy was to entice travelers on the European continent with a vision of “New London” and make it “the place to be.” To do so, Eurostar created its own media called Newlondon.fr, an interactive web platform divided into two sections: NLTV and YPES
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Ravensburger, a German puzzle-maker created what appeared to be giant boxes of puzzles around Berlin. They were placed at construction sites with the rubble from the demolition at the foot of the boxes looking like larger-than-life pieces of the puzzle
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Evan Wright’s excellent book about the invasion of Iraq … I hope the film lives up to it.
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Its HR department in NY has set up a flat-screen TV that flashes offenders’ photos with a message that reads, “I haven’t done my timesheet in x weeks.” An agency rep said the tactic is paying off, with some more diligence on the part of the offenders.
Conversation, Voyeur, iCycle, The Cloud, Spore, Moo
June 26, 2008
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In a recent study it was found that, yes, some people do actually want to “have a conversation” with a brand. The study found Consumers not only want to talk to brands, they want to establish a conversation: 55% of consumers want an ongoing dialogue. Maybe Joseph Jaffe is on to something after all …
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Last week in Cannes, BBDO’s campaign for HBO brought home a lot of hardware. Now “Voyeur” is offering a tense look inside the often uncomfortable relationships between ad agencies and digital specialists when it comes to the question of who takes credit.
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PUMA have just released a series of short films exploring bike culture. Produced by Daniel Leeb , the I-Cycle Film Series consists of five videos documenting 5 different influencers and the contributions they’ve made to the bike community.
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“The Cloud” is a new project from MIT’s Experience Lab. It’s a megalithic sculpture for the modern age that responds to human touch and proximity. Located in Florence, The Cloud can vividly express “emotion and behaviors” using light and sound
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Virgin America’s designer Jesse McMillin has collaborated with Sir Richard Branson himself to create a custom character for the new EA videogame Spore. They developed a “carbon-offsetting” creature (sounds riveting)
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Richard Moross started Moo because he was bored with the standard business cards out there, but now his 4-year-old startup is entering the world of the boring head on. Next week, Moo will start selling its own standard-sized business cards.
