Nice Touch

I was walking past Evans Cycles just on Rathbone St yesterday and I noticed a nice gesture - they had placed a track pump outside the shop chained to the heavy signage so that any passing cyclist in need of a bit of air could stop by and use ther pump. Not only does this probably save the staff in the shop a considerable amounbt of time not being asked for a pump, its a great gesture and you would hope that people will remember it and frequent the shop with their patronage. Anyway, I just liked the thoughtful nature of it and will keep a look out for other similar gestures - I once saw a pub that had a mobile phone charging station complete with about 6 different chargers again it shows a certain affinity with the customers.

A world without Advertising?

The 'Credit Crunch' appears to be having an effect on cross track and outdoor. I've seen the same posters at Warren St Tube station now for almost 6 months - some advertising TV programs that have long since come and gone. Now things seem to have got really bad as for the last 10 days Warren St Tube billboards have looked like this.



I never thought it but I prefer the world with advertising than without it.

The Twitter Experiment

I personally can't think of anything less interesting than Twitter, the minutiae of someone's life is not that interesting, do I care if Stephen Fry was stuck in a lift, do I care if some idiot twitters about the town a big client is located in and gets in trouble - no.

However, I do think there is a role for the right application of Twitter for a brand - not necessarily the brand taking part although this is possible if its done correctly.

More from a monitoring and research perspective. So it doesn't surprise me at all to see today an incredibly talented and clever guy like my old colleague Ashley Friedlein and his crew of Uber experts at E-consultancy have come up with something really interesting called the Twitter experiment.



They have written some code using the open api of twitter to publish live on their home page all twitter references to e-consultancy. It's great I'll be sending a copy to all of my clients and I wonder if any will be brave enough to try the same thing on their sites about themselves...go on I dare you.

Nostalgic connections

This map showing cables running over the world in 1906 really shows Britain at the hub of the world - the empire and the special relationship.

Funny looking at something like this today it reminds you of a social network and how technology and connections have been hand in hand for many years - maybe there is a new type of social anthropology and technology discipline that people will be learning about in a few years.

Anyway its retro and cool.

Cool Ice sculpture - NPD

I love this - low tech promotion of hi tech stuff - cool ice sculpture

Where's the pot of gold?

This photo is awesome but it made me a little bit sad, they say never meet your hero's, and far to often in life expectations are set far higher than the reality.

New product launches are on my mind today as we have been meeting a potential client about a new product launch. We strongly believe that in this new idea economy its not just what you say online but how your brand behaves that matters and never is this more important than with a new product or service.

Communications have to work hard to cut through but there is a fine line to tread in terms of over promising and under delivering. Consumer expectations are high and they are set in parallel industries and brands from far flung corners of the world. When something is new or never seen before it captures imagination but if you aren't careful you can shoot yourself in the foot.

Anyway enough of that I'm sure this product will be gold, but we just have to be careful if we win it not to over promise to the customer, and the client.

How many times did they swear in the Sopranos?

Probably a lot I'd say, and most other people would probably agree.

NJ gangsters probably have an propensity to swear a lot especially fictional ones. You would have thought that might be enough for most people but someone has taken a lot of time to put every single swear word together in a video in chronological order as they appeared in the series.

Fuck seems to be the word of choice with a smattering of shit, and the odd c word - but can you guess how long the video is - bearing in mind there were 6 series and 6 episodes per series - 36 hours of footage: 27 minutes that is just over 1% of the series devoted to prophanity.

Some how the little boy inside me still thinks this is funny - why I'm not sure.