A blog about brands

A big conservation landmark from a baby elephant at Taronga Zoo

 

I'm delighted to say that this video is the sixth most viewed on Australia's YouTube today. 

It features Thong Dee, an Asian Elephant, and her new baby elephant that was born a few days ago at Taronga Zoo, in Sydney. Please pass it on, spread the good word and help some important conservation work get done. 

This is a first of its kind in Australia - the birth is a massive milestone in the Taronga Zoo Conservation Society's plans for conservation. There are only around 34,000 of these animals left in the wild. 

Taronga Zoo wants people to get involved and help them in their conservation efforts in any way they can. I've had the immense privilege of working with some of the people at the Zoo. They're wonderfully inspiring folk who care about doing the right thing by their conservation goals. The atmosphere there must be incredible. 

It can't be underestinated how a big moment this is in an enormous lot of effort by many very committed and passionate people over a long period of time. It's a magical thing too, being a time and a signpost to great possibilities. 

If you want to help Taronga and its conservation efforts, go to the Taronga Zoo website and find out more, or if you can, go and visit the Zoo, take in the atmosphere yourself, and talk to someone there about what you can do. Thanks for passing it on if you do.

Play, embracing failure, decoration and great learning at the Tinkering School

I saw this on TED. It speaks for itself. Fantastic parallels for just about any grown-up pursuit. Highly inspiring.

Free film about our home planet - Recycle, reuse, and reinvigorate our appetite for doing the right thing by the planet

This is a talk about free film called 'Home' released last week on World Environment Day. 

There are some stunning images and some poignant commentary in this talk by it's creator, Yann Arthus Bertrand. It's completely copyright free. 

Plus see a fascinating study of people across the world at 6 billion others, another project by Bertrand as part of the goodplanet.org site, a non-profit environmental organisation he founded.

A wonderfully generous gesture.

Kesselskramer exhibition in Sydney

I saw this walking to work this morning in Bondi Junction. 

Kesselskramer are a famous dutch creative agency, often mentioned in the company of other great Amsterdam creative agencies like Strawberry Frog, Wieden + Kennedy, Droog and 180. This should be well worth checking out.

Maharishi and messages about doing the right thing

These are printed inside Maharishi clothes on the inside of pockets. A good point of view and a great way to let people know what you think and align with your views in a quiet way. 

For more great CSR see Toms Shoes in the interesting places column, check baggu bags on coolhunting.com and try this link to a howies post i did some time ago.

Another random post invasion

This time a headline about monkey business and Indian railway. Apologies for any confusion.

Errol, ...and this is me. 

Stand for something against the intolerable status quo - give fans assets - start and feed a movement

In this talk at TED, Seth Godin adds weight to the argument that push marketing has had its day – he’s promoting the idea of tribes (the title of his new book) as being the way to go for brands in the connected world we are in.

He suggests that social networking technology has helped tribes form easily around niche interests and galvanize themselves into creating change - sometimes on a world scale.

He gives examples of how change can happen from Al Gore to Tom Shoes (in the interesting places column on this blog).

Status quo challenging ideas from leadership thinking, that become stories or big ideas that a person or a brand stands for are necessary. Then its harness tribes to create a movement and create change individuals couldn’t achieve by themselves.

But thanks to these times of internet connectivity, it seems like power to the fans of ideas that create a better way, is gaining on the power of the mass mindset.

Another good case in point of the influence of the internet and the power of social networks, is in this two minute extract of a talk given by Scott Thomas, which I found on at Coolhunting.com. Scott designed the Obama's digital campaign. Instead of just having people ordering campaign merchandise online, people were able to download Obama branded assets so they could create merchandise of their own.

Net result; Obama's vision of getting people more involved in the political process is achieved - and from involvement comes committment.

 

Here's an image from Seth Godin's TED talk.

A bit of charm from Brazil

I saw this on Coolhunting.com sometime ago and thought it was worth passing on. 

Strangely, another blog invasion has taken place with a post about Oil Painting shipping - not authored by me, but here saying it is from me - i've deleted it now. 

I'm off to try and figure out what's going on and how to stop it - meanwhile, please be aware that all posts here saying they are by me might not be. This one is though. It's something I think exudes all kinds of goodness to learn from and be inspired by. Enjoy. 

Thanks for bearing with any confusion the odd postings may be causing.  

Unknown random blog entries

Not quite sure what happened but two posts appeared at random on my blog saying they were from me - something about mexican flu and an IRS notification - both are now gone. Back to normal hopefully soon. If anyone else has had this weird intrusion/spamming invasion or typepad problems like my search function disappearing, i'd be keen to hear about it.

Many thanks, apologies for the unintended randomness, Errol.

Beautiful interactivity - mouse lines

This link is to a bit of simple interactivity - a mouse doing nice things from Wildcard Inc.

It's something I've had for a while. I like it because it's a very simple and elegant way of making something that can become pretty workmanlike and cold, a computer, be a source of subtle delight without even trying.

There's a nice lightness of touch and humanity to it. It's interesting because it has no point really either, it's just there to be interacted with. Played with and drifted with. A welcome momentary diversion - a place to stop and reflect for a second.

The point of advertising

Not sure how the psfk ideas salon went, but I'm sure it was a fascinating event. Thinking about PSFK I was reminded about a great talk Mike Byrne gave a couple of years ago at a New York PSFK conference. 

I had the great pleasure and privelege of working with Mike Byrne, now Creative Director at Anomaly NYC, when I was at Wieden + Kennedy in Portland. In this talk at a PSFK conference in New York, Mike talks about advertising as landfill and how we should do something more useful instead. 

Its an inspiring talk. I completely agree with him. Definitely one to share.

PSFK good ideas salon

Happening today in London is this event. It should be good and full of interesting stuff.

Starbucks goes RED

Good to see more corporate giving in these times of economic stress. Well done Starbucks. I'm not sure what the deal is exactly with the contributions to good causes, but at least they've signed up. Signposting good intentions is a positive thing that may inspire others to get involved, so that's a definite win.

Also good to see this once trailblazing brand, flying a flag of philanthropy. Cynics might accuse them of going for a soft CSR sympathy dollar bandwagon but, I'm more optimistic there's a Warren Buffett-esque acting on a socially aware desire to have change for the good, happening here. The battle of good America v. crap America is hotting up perhaps - the popular hope has got to be that good America gets stronger, early Obama signs suggest it might, and that from here on, we all get to help in whatever way we can, to make crap America history.

Obama Wins

Found this on WeFeelFine.org - a great site for seeing how people are feeling. Barrack Obama, becomes the 44th president of the United States.

Edun pop-up store, sustainable fashion in San Francisco and Los Angeles from Bono and Ali Hewson

This picture is from the materials bit of the 'four Edun respects' from Edun website.

This is a link to an article on Treehugger.com about Bono and his wife Ali's socially and environmentally conscious fashion label.

15 percent of total sales from the four-week appearance in two different stores by their fashion label's new collection will go to charities ONEXONE and the H2O Africa Foundation.

In-store activities, including screenings of short documentaries produced by VBS.tv in Uganda for Edun's sister brand, Edun Live.

Edun was founded in 2005. Pop-up stores have been around for some time now, and in the current climate of there being many retail spaces being vacant, I'd expect to see more of this kind of retail and marketing experience. A nice example of caring commercialism and retail becoming a rich brand experience.

Accidental influentials - an interesting theory on how ideas travel in social networks in the Web 2.0 world - the size of a Forest Fire has little to do with the spark that started it, and more to do with the state of the Forest - and other things

This is something I found last year that I think is still relevant when thinking about Web 2.0 successes and strategies.

The idea is that if the network permits the spread of the idea, then virtually anyone can spread it. It's from research by Duncan Watts and colleagues at Columbia University which is an important development on Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point theory of key influential individuals being the ones marketers should seek out and influence to influence others.

Perhaps so called 'influentials' are still ones we should find, understand, enlist in co-creation and help us resonate ideas for brands, because they may be best placed to resonate an idea across networks of their own, but perhaps we would increase our chances of success if we spend more time and effort on making sure the network itself is 'idea-ready'. Like on a tight drum skin, a slight tap can make a great noise, but if the skin is loose, a big sound can still be made, but it takes a lot more effort.

A case in point is Lonelygirl15 from a few years ago, who became a Web 2.0 case study after she achieved webwide coverage for apparently no reason other than she hit a community ready and willing to transport her broadcasts across the globe. Arguably, she wasn't that influential herself, but thanks to the resonance potential of the network, she became famous. Similarly the Free Hugs guy, Juan Mann, may have hit the internet fame magic formula of, good content + tuned network = web 2.0 success.

This is one of the ideas listed on the Harvard Business Review's breakthrough ideas for 2007 in HBR ideacast number 29.

Also on this podcast are sections on:

1. New thoughts on marketing brands from Harry Potter - essentially, brands might be more successful if they grow and mature with their audiences rather than segment audiences by age and attempt to talk to
people only of that age - upside is increased loyalty, less likelihood of switching at key ages and lower costs of acquisition of new consumers.

2. 'Conflicted consumers' - an interesting idea that beneath the loyalty figures in most companies, there is a stealth segment of consumers who have ethical concerns about the company and are poised to bolt if a competitor comes along with a more viable alternative emerges - apparently 1 in 4 consumers bought things from companies whose ethical reputation they deemed to poor or very poor but unlike hardcore ethical consumers who go green or go without, they continue to purchase but have a latent potential to be an upsurge of bad word of mouth. Lesson here for me is stay ahead of the ethical trends and take leadership - catch-up or staying with the pace of trend may be going too slow to stay in the game.

3. An observation that people who are political or social conservatives tend to have more children, who in turn have more children, which means consumer culture demographics

4. The folly of accountable-ism is the last idea - the increasing bureaucratisation of morality and how that ends up working against efforts to maintain moral and ethical behaviour in an organisation.

Beijing Olympics quote

I was reminded of a good quote today which is Chinese. It connected to my last post in the Tokyo Olympiad film, and it was about complacency to a point, which connected to the Anti-Complacency League sentiment in the Paul Weller post. Here it is.

'If you are thinking of one year's time, plant a seed,
if you are thinking ten years time, plant a tree,
if you are thinking one hundred years time, educate the people'.

The best film of the Olympics ever made

Many would say the best film of the Olympics ever made is Kon Ichikawa's 1965 documentary, 'Tokyo Olympiad'. I'd agree with that.

Comedic, respectful of elite athleticism and dedication, tragic, beautiful, charming, disturbing, lonely, very human, weirdly not as uplifting as you might expect, something for the time capsule, something to show every new generation, arguably something for everyone. Here are two clips from YouTube.

Racewalking.

and Marathon.

Paul Weller, the Modfather, in Sydney

This week Paul Weller is in Sydney. This is him from when he was in The Jam back in the seventies. In late seventies Britain, Paul Weller was a powerful pop culture voice and sound of the suburbs - a supporter of left-wing politics in Thatcher's right-wing Conservative, 'Get on yer bike' (and go and find a job) Britain. I think there are some good insights and observations about a youth culture under pressure to be more commercial and selfish, and less social and altruistic, both in this, and many other songs by The Jam - 'getting a cab and traveling on buses, reading the graffiti about slash seats or fares - that's entertainment'.

It's well known that much of the seventies New Wave and Punk owes a lot to the sixties Mods and bands like The Small Faces, The Kinks, The Yardbirds, The Byrds, The Rolling Stones and The Who. Those bands amongst others took a mix of psychedelia, blues and rock and gave it an anti-establishment voice for a new post-war generation in Britain, who was being told by the government of the time that they'd 'never had it so good'. In cash terms maybe they could believe that, but socially, society was still narrow minded and conservative.

Oasis and Blur and other Britpop bands like Pulp pay good homage to the Mod days. Blur had Phil Daniels do vocals in their iconic 'Parklife', Paul Weller plays lead guitar on Oasis' 'Champagne Supernova'. The family line and intertwining goes on in Paul Weller's new albums '22 Dreams' where he has Graham Coxon, ex Blur and Noel Gallagher featuring on tracks.

There is a lot of learning and parallels for me on brands in this. There's clearly something about lineage, dedication and high ideals that separates the greats from the rest. Genius is sometimes defined as taking an expertise in something to a higher level. There's a school of thought about a '10,000 hour rule' which means that only if you spend 10,000 hours on something can you hope to be expert enough to then take it to the next level. Weller takes an 'I do what I do' attitude to keeping on putting in the hours and taking his art to new places. In the interviews below he talks about exploring new musical areas in future and getting contributing musicians to do things outside their normal areas of brilliance - Graham Coxon plays drums on 22 Dreams, and Weller gets Noel Gallagher to play melotron and other keyboards.

In this video for 'Town Called Malice' I think his big ideal is simply revealed, and it's to do with 'struggle, year after year' and a signing up to a lifelong 'Anti Complacency League' attitude. He is certainly very highly regarded in the music scene in the UK as an authentic working class voice of the modern world and a great musical legend. I was completely knocked last night when I saw him play at the Enmore Theatre, it was a great gig, one of those gigs where you keep finding yourself saying, 'That was brilliant, that was absolutely fantastic.'. He and the band looked like they were having a great time too.

This is him (in two parts) in an interview from XFM in the UK, talking about the new album, the legacy he'd like to leave, and various other things.

Cool animation for cool Converse work

This is a direct link to the work above Psyop did for the Converse campaign by Anomaly NYC on Psyop's site. Great energy, edginess and authenticity. Also good to see are the interviews with Pharrell Williams and Santogold on YouTube.