She unleashed the hip-hop virus

The photojournalist Martha Cooper has specialized in art and anthropology. She is the most significant contributor to the methodically documentation of the subway graffiti during the 1970s and 1980s. There was this great TV-documentary the other day. It was fascinating to see her influence on the rise of the hip-hop culture from underground phenomenon in NYC to global mainstream. Here is a great little interview with her.
http://www.at149st.com/cooper2.html

Christmas present with nice motto

This is maybe my new favourite T-shirt. What a great motto to look at in the morning mirror.

Ain't No Cure For Human Insight

I just picked up the essential Leonard Cohen album. It has been so long since I’ve heard it.

And it strikes me what really is essential is the insights presented so simple and profound…he works as most of us strategist would love to. He capsules everything in a few verses (1/3 size of a CREATIVE BRIEF) – lyrics that are derived from large notebooks, his vast experiences, the whole history of mankind and that sort of stuff. “Everybody Knows” for instance could be interpreted to a lot touching communication…

Everybody Knows (first 4 verses)

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died

Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows

Everybody knows that you love me baby
Everybody knows that you really do
Everybody knows that you've been faithful
Ah give or take a night or two
Everybody knows you've been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Without your clothes
And everybody knows

Time in print

Yugo Nakamura is a Tokyo based creative director/designer/engineer exploring and experimenting with various forms of interactive system in digital and networked environment. He has won awards including Cannes Lions, Clio and the One Show and has been shown in Paris’ Centre Pompidou, Vienna’s Kunstlerhaus and London’s Design Museum.

His latest work is a handheld version of a watch in print. Cool stuff.

http://www.lares.dti.ne.jp/%7Eyugo/storage/monocrafts_ver3/03/

Here’s his website

http://yugop.com/

Reinvention of a childhood icon

I just bought this book as a present for some friends of mine’s kid. It’s the story of Christmas retold with Lego bricks.

It wasn’t made by Lego off course. It was made by a graphic designer.

It made me think why Lego don’t reinvent the platforms from where their iconic bricks are made relevant to today’s more technique savvy kids.

Lego’s current economical troubles come from their failed attempts to attract attention to these young consumers. Young consumers that wants more interactive storytelling that could come from Lego bricks occurring in video games, cartoons and even good old fashioned books (It has to be said that Lego are doing a lot of innovative stuff with their Bionicle series for pre-teens but that’s another story).

Miss Sixty the next lovebrand?

The Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts are preaching his Lovebrand evangelism to a huge branding loving audience.

It seems like the guys at the growing fashion brand Miss Sixty have been listening and dedicated their whole Christmas campaign to love messages. So I guess that’s the trick talk about love and people will love you.

Stupid advertising influenced parking

Or maybe it’s just a perfect example of a clear good old product USP very well communicated. Or maybe there were just two cars on the sides of this car right before I captured this picture.

Smart parking

smart

The religious iPod spoof

This is one of the funnier spoofs I’ve seen. I saw it outside London’s St. Lukes church.

Must get gloves

Winter came with frost and snow the other day. Traffic stops. People embrace nature for a little while. Kids are enthusiastic. It’s such a nice part of the year. Then Christmas hysteria begins.

We will win next year

There’s nothing like the good spirits of amateur sports. Personally the soccer team I play on didn’t win the tournament this year. We where close though. We lost in the final round and finished in third position. (No, need to say number one and two got to play the national championships at our level…)

I think there is tons of insights that sport marketers could fire off from amateur sport. In the new funny Nike Shox spots they have captured the potential of Mr. Average in a running challenge with a Hot-Dog stand. Funny too see that it also works for Nike without no high-profiled stars. More of these amateur moments please.

Talk is silver, silence is gold

The world is so noisy so either you’ll have to scream louder or do something completely opposite –e.g. Take the silent approach. I’ll like some more arresting images and room for reflection and perception without noise.

The new paradigm in ad testing suggests testing not only the explicit memory but also the implicit memory. New research methods will more easily show the effects of more silent advertising. And hopefully show that you can evoke strong instinctive, cognitive and emotional feelings even without the screaming.

Let them sing it for you

The Swede Erik Bünger has made this sound project where he let’s famous singers sing whatever words (over 1400 different ones) you put together.

http://www.sr.se/cgi-bin/p1/src/sing/default.asp?key=41O1Y29I

Mr. Way to Creative

I just stumbled over this car. The man behind seamlessly has a creative and innovation company that can either be understood as “All for the creative” or” Way To creative” in Danish.

I wouldn’t give him a call.

Architecture as a main branding tool

The great blog http://influxinsights.com/ recently wrote about a tiny coffee shop in New York that is differentiating them from big corporate competitors by using architecture as the main tool.

Few big retailers have really seized the potential of a profound belief in architecture.

Of course some fashion retailers have impressing flagship architecture and also Apple have grasped the potential. But I guess many more ordinary and non-lifestyle chic brands could get their uniqueness from this. Maybe even a funny building for a Toy-store could work.

I’m digging a hole

I believe in the power of lateral thinking as the most lethal disruptive weapon into breaking barriers in terms of media and cross cultural target groups.

The great thinker Edward De Bono says: "You cannot dig a hole in a different place by digging the same hole deeper"

Do it yourselfish

Despite the fact that most men accept the whole equal rights issue between the sexes there are little corners of modern living we as men like to have for ourselves!

“The sports wisdom conversation”, Silly competitions, “The praise, mysteries and frustrations over women at bars at night conversation“, playing cards, automotive knowledge, and last but not least the very self-realization of us as male species - the almighty do-it-yourself capabilities.
When we put on our tool belt you women shouldn’t bother to be smarter than us or tell us what to do.

So give us this one chance to believe we can create, build, construct on our own.

Most powerful opening narrator ever

There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie Boy and Dim. And we sat in the Korova Milk Bar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening. The Korova Milk Bar sold milk plus - milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old Ultra-Violence.
(The opening of Clockwork Orange with the voice of Malcolm McDowell)

Rock'n'roll & Advertising

In the vast world of buzzword marketing - whether it’s called branded content, brand synergies, new media alliances, brand integration, Madison + Vine - one of the most obvious and well thought alliances is the new iPod + U2 campaign.

What a smart move to make the special edition black iPod with the automatic loading of the album. I even find the first single Vertigo one of the more explosive U2 numbers in years.

The extended 2 minute video/ad that only figures in the iTunes Music Store is actually a better video then the real MTV video.

Birth of the cool

I went to this exhibition featuring the Ulm movement which was the predecessor to Bauhaus after the Second World War. Really cool stuff for companies like Audi, Lufthansa, Braun and others.

But most interestingly with a clear status as the inspirational source for the current Apple design extravagance.

I’m beginning to see the light

Like a growing number of cities Copenhagen has its annual culture night, this year it was last Friday. This means museums, governmental building, shops, tourist attractions, companies, galleries even a few churches open until midnight.

Such a great idea seeing all these places you would normally never go.

This year’s additional theme was light installations. Buildings wrapped in a new light, art on buildings, major game consol displays. All in al a super show.

Fanta’stic Comeback ?

For me Fanta is such an iconic beverage brand dating back to eternal childhood summers.

Today I would never dream of ordering a Fanta – it has this childish feel to it and their advertising only makes it worse. I could order an Orangina a Schweppes or even a Tango. But no place for Fanta on my mental brand preference list.

But then I thought what if the old Raymond Loewy bottle was relaunched. Could that make Fanta a more relevant and acceptable choice in cafes and restaurants among other than the 12 year old crowd. I’m positive.

But off-course Fanta might continue sleeping within their lucky co-distribution with Coca Cola.

Stop Cleaning. Get a Swiffer

26

We Are Family

Sister Sledge was probably unaware of the wisdom in their disco song.

In the journal Nature, scientists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale University are claiming that all living human beings can be traced back to one guy in Asia 1500 B.C.

Zoologist meets Computer Geek

zoo

We Are Not In The Tailor Business

If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
Albert Einstein

The First Event Marketing Man

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
Confucius

Bands are great brands

Just think about how lucky the happy owners of bands are. Everybody is interested in them – they have fans that are craving for brand knowledge and interaction.

They can get away with inconsistency - people even tend to worship them reinventing themselves from campaign to campaign (or album to album).

They can get away with silly names for their brands and their sub-brands (albums) are being virally distributed even before they are launched.

Turn Table 2.0

Wouldn’t it be great if you could have the best off two worlds?

A Turn Table with the possibility to run your own personal DJ-thing with your old 45’s. And a devise to connect to you’re Ipod. You could even have a program that would make it possible to mix between the two…maybe it’s already outthere.

Democratic Art

Just found these pictures off the Internet, where the artist had made them ready to download for everyone to display at home.
I mean there you have some sort of consequence behind a wish to share your work with the world un-like let’s say a few record company bosses and others.

Sneakers from hell

It’s funny how the wonderful game of bowling seems to be the only places where we accept total absence of our fashion consciousness for a little while…I wonder if people would do the same in other more fancy social contexts

Metro Pole ?

I recently took a ride on Copenhagens Underground (It’s called The Metro in Danish) and even though it currently only connects 17 stations it’s rather impressive and it made me think of my city as a true metro pole. So I thought of some argumentation that Copenhagen actually had become a metro pole.

1. The Underground obviously

2. The City is finally becoming multi-ethnic and slowly adapting the international atmosphere that is needed if we want to attract clever minds from all over the world

3. We have big events coming – The European MTV Awards are probably coming to Copenhagen in 2006, in 2005 we will have the celebration of Hans Christian Andersen 100 years birthday

4. The city is growing and new hotels and conference facilities are popping up all the time

5. It’s becoming a centre for creativity

Architecture – The new architectural firm PLOT just bested Frank Gehry, Daniel Liebeskind and others at the Biennale in Venice and revitalized our proud traditions from the likes of e.g. Jørn Utzon, Henning Larsen, and Arne Jacobsen

Film – with the foundation of the “Dogme” movement Lars Von Trier and his fellow Danish filmmakers are continuously doing great films with good ticket sales all over Europe.

Games – IO Interactive in the front with their international blockbusters Hitman 1 & 2 and Freedom/ Soldiers of Liberty. Denmark are about to become an important “player” in the fast growing game-market.

Design – we have a proud tradition all the way back from the fifties modernists with Arne Jacobsen, Poul Kjærholm, Hans Wegner Verner Panton. Now we have lots of new names emerging.

Fashion - Copenhagen have with a lot of new exiting designers become the third or fourth largest Fashion week in the world.

Only in advertising Copenhagen seems to be lacking behind we don’t have any substantial international assignments not even the international Danish brands like Carlsberg., Lego, B&O & Ecco or even any Scandinavian accounts like SAAB, Volvo, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Absolut & Ikea. With the advertisng we do we don’t even seem to get any critical acclaim at the awards shows.

White men can’t jump and a guy from Fiji is the best golfer right now

In the world of sports, competition is king but only your talent and capabilities determine your status, not your financial or demographic background.

Sport is the field where an affluent western kid is not more likely to succeed than a poor street raised South American kid.

So if you can bend it like Beckham or shoot it like Shaq the sky is the limit.

Sport = the power of equality

FADS means Fashion ADS

Am I the only one that wonders why so few fashion advertisers really seam to care about building long term brand equity.

It's understandable that some high fashion haute couture companies only have to scoop the season’s photographer and model and let their clothes speak for themselves.

What I can't understand is so few brands try to make some sort of consistency.

You can imagine some of them saying “we want advertising as fresh as the seasons clothing”. But I truly believe you can have something fresh within a concept, an attitude, a style and tone, a universe. But off course there are good examples like some of the jeans brands especially Diesel but also Lee and Levis. Also Benetton, Miss Sixty, H&M, Tommy Hilfiger, Louis Vuitton, Björn Borg, Nike, Adidas are consistent …

Hanging out

Thought it was a good visual brief to what tea drinking is all about.

On one hand the significant physical attributes of the product and on the other hand the obvious social context in which the product is always used.

1000 dollar exhibit

I receive an idea a day for free from
http://www.idea-a-day.com
I thought today’s could be used for various empty store spaces around the worlds metro poles.

Open the Museum of One Thousand Dollars. Each exhibit would be an example of what one thousand dollars can buy. Items on display might include a used car, a heap of chocolate bars or a Cartier cigarette lighter. The exhibits would change regularly to reflect current trends and prices.

day 1478 by Casey Morello

Generation Lego

Just read through the booklet from Michel Gondry’s DVD collection. Among many funny and original explanations he talks about the White Stripes “Fell in love with a girl” video and his inspiration.

He refers to his generation as the “Generation Lego” – explained with the toys very basic foundation for creativity and its ability to construct an idea from zero, all by association.

I guess the 10-25 year olds are the “Generation Playstation” where creativity are not developed from zero but within the ability to deconstruct, merge, mix & match, sample.

So the existentialistic question is which basic skills are the one’s needed to be creative in our society today.

Just Add Spices

I can’t stand seeing more usage of famous people in ads, reality-shows and media in general. When it’s just endorsers without any relevance it’s only superficial spicing – I prefer more substance based on real ideas

Spices are good if used right but doesn’t cure bad meat…

Doggy Love

Sarah Silverman is like most talented comedians an excellent strategic planner in terms of pin-pointing insights on the human nature.
These two doggy quotes are funny:

“Every little human quality your dog has that’s so fucking cute – remember, people have them too (Asshole.)”

“Your dog doesn’t really love you. He loves that you feet him. But you can see as love if it helps you not kill yourself (I do.)”

Consumer Insight gone mad ?

An Australian woman has through thousands of interviews concluded that women want panties with no visible panty line.

“Fine a g-string is not invisible enough ok then maybe you should go commando”

No says Ms. Jan Digney – she has constructed these panties (the Pert Backless Brief) that are bonded together underneath the bottom. I would be surprised if they sell - but hey maybe that’s what woman want.

Viral music promo from the psychedelic choir

The Polyphonic Spree has made this very time consuming game-song-viralpromotion-site. It’s quite original like their music. Warning - took me 20 minutes to get through.

http://questfortherest.com/

Beer & Women

Two things seem to bring most men together in beautiful harmony. We can agree that nothing beats beer & women. So let’s combine these two things one ad guy or another obviously has been thinking. I think I laughed at that trick myself once or twice. But let’s see another insight to beer drinking used just once.

Then how about some genuine male bonding – wassup dude that is also used.

Ok but how about seeing the world with “beer goggles” – the world sure looks different from the imaginary goggles I get from drinking the usual 10 lager. The world is such a funny place when you have that good buzz let’s capture that. That could even include how that bird looked at night and then again next morning.

Me, myself & the guitar #1

It’s funny how guitar playing is something that is natural when you’re either down and blue or on top of the world. All those many days that are just in between the guitar just seems out of tune.

Free Wheeling is the new yoga

In Copenhagen we have free city bikes. Tourist loves them even though you sit very poorly.

Free wheeling is a new meditative exercise I can highly recommend.

It’s very simple you go on your bike put on your favourite playlist on the IPod (or your Discman if you’re an old school’er) you constantly drive the opposite direction of the road you know. You’ll find yourself in places you have never seen before with the world just passing by in the most relaxing way.

Face off

No nostalgia but it’s always sad to loose another source to urban living. Guess it’s going to be the future equivalent to highly prized vintage numbers of Life Magazine.

Sponging

How do you invent those new cutting edge running shoes, the next marketing plan, state-of-the art ad campaign.

To Bryan Finke of Nike the road to innovation comes from this simple definition:

“get out, be a sponge, gain insight, translate that into innovation in everything you do”.

Taken from the on-line magazine- Reveries.com

Flat feeling

Am I the only being a bit tired of all the flat screen mania. Dealing on a daily basis with an account just about to launch a flat 42” (a really nice and unique one though) I wonder if the TV-design DNA of most companies are disappearing.

What happened to the good old telly. My old cherry tree B&O sure is not flat but it has something that most flat screens don’t have- personality

Action speaks louder than words

It’s beautiful to see such simple wisdom displayed on a piece of art.

Op Art = good advertising

I’m a big fan of Op Art. It’s all over the place right now in fashion, graphic design and art off course. But the funny thing is that it’s sort of the same as good advertising. Simple on the outside but so full of good layers that there is always new ways of experiencing it.

Get a haircut instead

The quality of shampoo varies but basically the biggest difference is smell and texture. On the other hand your hair style is much more depended on the person cutting your hair. Shampoo at reasonably prices should instead give you the freedom to spend your money on what really counts - a good haircut.

8. Wonder

We We often define the big steps for mankind in terms of monumental buildings, constructions, discoveries. But if you ask me the real magic on our little planet is all the more subtle inventions and individuals. People that with e.g. a simple pop song can make the whole world smile for decades.

I even set up small party to celebrate the 8. Wonder of the world – my brother made a lot of paintings of all the iconic musicians that made the big steps for music and mankind.

View to kill for

The view from my desk. Overlooking the landside of Denmarks famous hippie commune Christania. Lunch sometimes extends the 1/2 hour in the summertime