Fast Strategy

Tomorrow (28th April) is the IPA Strategy's conference: 'Fast Strategy'.

I'm pleased to say that by being part of the IPA Strategy Group, I've had a small part to play in helping get this show off the ground.

It promises to be a lot of fun. We've got three teams (leaders are Mark Earls, Phil Georgiadis and Johnny Hornby). They're taking a COI brief in the morning, to come back with their strategies in the afternoon. In the meantime, the conference attendees can listen to some thoughts and ideas from the great and the good of ad-land, with TBWA, Wiedens, Grand Union, the Times, Naked, and Leo Burnetts all doing a turn.

At £150 a pop, it's actually pretty good value for a day of good speakers. But I know I've not found it easy signing this off (yes even group members have to pay... the IPA aren't going to miss out on any possible income!).

So I hope the attendance is good, the speakers are great and people enjoy the fun and frivolities.

My money's on Mark E's team to crack the COI brief... not sure if anyone's actually running a book though???

What this space for a (not so impartial) review.

The seedy side of Manchester

(Photo credit, holdsy from flickr)

Some might say that every side of Manchester is seedy.

(and no that wasn't supposed to be an oasis reference...).

Anyway, a bunch of geo-anarchists under the group name of 'guerilla geography' have an interesting plan to create a multi-media map of manchester.... they're inviting people to give information about any 'naughty' event that took place in the town-where-it-always-rains. The information will be put on a map and produced as conceptual art for next year.

So if you've ever been in Manchester and had a rock n' roll star moment.... (!)

Electric Dreams (Book Review)

History isn't always written by the winners.




Usually, books with a historical theme have a habit of being quite dull.

Often these books are revisionist texts drawing on multiple references to build a single argument: references the author agrees with and references that they feel they can shoot down.

Or alternatively, the author tries to cover every possible aspect, view and detail that the reader gets bogged down in tedium. (See Peter Ackroyd's books on London and the Thames for a good example of detail obsession)

This book didn't look too promising at first glance:

* it is about 'computers' - I really didn't want to read about the development of fortran and cobal
* it is about computers in 'American' culture - I'm generally very sceptical of American-focused stuff
* there didn't appear to be too many pictures

But I loved this book.

Computers represent the ultimate dialectic of capitalism. They represent power and control, yet they also represent liberation and grass roots activism. Individualism and collectivism. Technology allows for the concentration of the means of production in the hand of the few (think of the use of computers in the City), yet also allows people to connect and share ideas that undermine the very fabric of capitalism. (think terrorist operations and the dispersed yet effective organisation of anti-capitalist action).

This book is wonderful, not only in that it got me thinking about a whole host of dialectic observations (!), but primarily because of how it considers its topic:

It's a cultural reading. Rather than reviewing academic texts or considering primary and secondary sources of consumer research, the author looks at how 'cultural texts' are produced within and without the system. He considers the way in which these texts demonstrate how computers affect and are affected in American culture

What does that mean in English?!!

Well Ted Friedman (the author) has a look at a bunch of letters, films, magazines, games, TV programmes, adverts, websites to see how computers and stories / mythologies surrounding computers' roles are represented.

So we get a look at the films 'the Desk Set', '2001', 'Matrix'. We look at Wired & the Wall Street Journal. We look at Apple's 1984 ad and IBM communications. We look at cyberpunk literature (eg. William Gibson and Kurt Vonneget. We look at Civilisation and Sim City as 'God' games. We look at flash mobs and blogs.

It's a very diverse and informative read, picking up and picking apart multiple threads. (Although it can be a little heavy going in places). Moreover, it takes a potentially turgid topic and litters it with interest.

What's particularly refreshing, is he tries to consider diametrically opposite views (i.e. technology as a good thing vs. technology as a bad thing). And by considering texts produced at a point in time (historical materialism), he avoid too much revisionist thinking.

It reminded me of Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins (another very excellent book). Jenkins also looks at culture to consider changes in the world of media and entertainment. (His texts being The Matrix, American Idol, Star Wars, and Harry Potter amongst others)

Actually, check out Jenkins' blog if you have a spare few hours (pithy, he is not)

But anyway, back to Electric Dreams...

There is no central argument per se, although Friedman is certainly of the view that technology is a great liberator rather than something that should be suppressed and controlled. He is in the optimism camp, where all possible worlds should be dreamed and imagined and can be fulfilled by technology. The language he uses gives him away as someone who has been trained in Marxist ideology and one who believes in a lot of it.

But hell, this blog isn't called commune for nothing...

Glass is half empty productions

In an ad break yesterday:

1. Dairy Milk 'Trucks' ad: 90 seconds of averageness
2. National Lottery ad: 20 seconds of pure joy

Fallon 0
AMV 1

(though AMV must be gutted about the repitch)

Sausages (Book Review)

Unless your product or service is actually useful in some way to somebody, you're wasting your time and money with loads of marketing guff...





David Taylor has written quite a few books about brand marketing - brand gym and brand vision to name a couple.

Those other two books are worthy guides to brand marketing, full of bullet points, ten-point guides and other stuff that you can copy into presentations.

But 'never mind the sizzle...' is a much nicer read. It's told as fiction - a story of a guy from sales on a year placement in marketing at a flailing UK company who make sausages.

Bob (our hero) discovers the marketing team developing a product extension (pizzas with sausage on top), wasting time and money with an expensive ad agency. Brand diamonds, meaningless focus groups, media stunts, celebrities, over-the-top ad shoots and a ridiculous tag-line prevail....

But Bob sees the value in their core brand, reigniting it with solid research, genuine insight, and connecting to real people. Oh, and he gets a great job done by a hungry small design agency with no fat expense account.

It's an obvious story where Bob saves the day, the marketing director loses the plot and the ad agency drown in champagne at their soho members club.

But entertaining and strangely instructive nonetheless.

And to be honest, it's a valuable reminder to all of us in ad-land to take a step back on what we're doing and think about how absurd it all is. And that we really are meant to providing a service to people...

Rather sadly, I give you two recent examples....

• My girlfriend works at an agency who have a large mobile phone handset company as a client. She was in a focus group the other day where people asked after about 1/2 hour -
  'can you actually use it as a phone?'

• I sat in a meeting last week where we (yes, I'm complicit in this one), honestly recommended 'getting cool people to create art that symbolises the product'.
  

So heed the warning, ad agency folk. If clients read this book, watch out.

Gage's Library

People who know me know that I read a lot of books. Amazon Prime is made for me, and not a week goes past without the aesthetic beauty of the brown cardboard box landing on my desk at work.

I promised Jo at work that I would write some reviews and overviews on my blog. Most people don't have the time to read some of the crap that I do. And let's be honest, most books can be easily summarised:

The Long Tail - fewer numbers of people like stuff that's less popular, but the web means that even the least popular things can be matched up to the weirdos that like them.

The Tipping Point - a few people influence loads of others. Get them and you're made. The web makes this easier.

Wisdom of Crowds - lots of average people together are better than individual experts. The web makes this easier.

Herd - people do stuff instinctively and there's no 'maven' or 'leader' required.

Blink - your first thoughts and ideas are usually right.

Purple Cow - unless your product or service is different, you're buggered.

Brand Innovation Manifesto - unless your product or service is different (in one of xx helpful types defined by John), you're buggered.

Green Marketing Manifesto - unless your product or service green and normal (in one of xx helpful types defined by John), you're buggered.

The Black Swan - there's no point predicting anything. Ever. Other than unpredictability. (400 pages down to one line there, now that's being succinct)


This saves time and hopefully means more people can spraff on like planners in meetings...

(remember to cross your legs, put your fingers into a steeple, and close your eyes whilst musing....)