Adland – one of the most influential ad blogs in the world, has come up with the “Battle of the Blogs” a virtual award show in different ad blog categories.
To my very big surprise I just returned to my inbox with the discovery that this little blog is nominated in the planner/theorist category.
So give me your vote here. And never mind that some of the competition in this category comes from the very best planners out there. 
Ronaldinho, Messi, Puyol, Valdés, Belletti, Márquez, Larsson, Giuly, Maxi, Gio, Ezquerro, Edmílson, Sylvinho, Van Bommel, Gabri, Oleguer, Iniesta, Jorquera. Not to mention the modern day Coliseum that is Camp Nou, delicious tapas, Cerveza San Miguel, Great bars, lot’s of walking (which also included a little bit of more upstream cultural impact in the form of an exiting exhibition in the Macba – The Museum of Contemporary Art) and an overall charming city
This weekend I joined ten of my best friends for an amazing trip to Barcelona. We left the girlfriends at home so we could concentrate on nothing but pure enthusiasm for the Catalonian dream team. El Barca bested Alaves 2-0 and we saw sparks of genuine geniality from the world best player - the magical Ronaldinho. Our collective regret was that none of us made it as a sports commentator flying around the world just watching spectacular football like this.
One marketing insight occurred to me during the stay at Camp Nou and that is how strong football is in the era of battle for the best content on our multiple media platforms. Nike is present everywhere in the stadium area and they are also using Ronaldinho very cleverly in a lot of their advertising both traditionally and virally. But I think Ronaldinho and others could be used even more in the area of branded entertainment and even for more serious educational purposes. Why not have “Ronaldinhos Football School” presented by Nike and with a heavy presence online. Who knows maybe I’m not the only one wanting to learn from his tricks and tips.
I just bought this very funny cross-over between a magazine and an art project. It’s by an artist called Brendan Michael Carey. This first issue has been made in over 17.000 unique versions (over the past 30 months) of these wooden magazines (it’s just different pieces of wood) in all shapes and forms. Mine is one of the rare versions called “The Fashion Shoot Issue” where he has shot a hole through the magazine accompanied by the actual bullet. The second issue is going to bee a magazine made on different mirrors so the buyers themselves are the front cover superstars. It’s an interesting project and quite provocative in it’s questioning of our obsession with the glossy surfaces of fashion and the cutting edge media.
I visited one of the Size sneaker shops in London last week. The store has a room that’s permanently used for certain advertisers to do small installations and exhibitions – in this case the Nike Air Max 95. It’s a great example of embracing the depth, nuance and complexity of a brand. Of course it’s not all brands that have such an interesting story about how a shoe was developed through explorations of bone musculatures. But most brands have more to tell than a simple endline - especially if the audience is experiencing the brand outside of the boundaries of TV advertising.
A lot of the coolest initiatives on the web come from savvy audiences that embrace brands just as other cultural phenomena’s. The Polanoid.net site: is a great example of an audience loving this special depth and quality that a Polaroid has and has decided that the world should share their “instant moment” just as people are doing in the digital picture sphere. The results so far are more than 7.000 pictures.
One of the other guys on my Barcelona trip shot this great picture outside of the Macba Museum of Contemporary Art. The square outside of the museum looked like it was the local skater hang-out supreme. It’s nice to see different celebrations of urban culture gathered in the very same place. 
On my way to work I passed by Christianshavn (an area of Copenhagen very similar to the Amsterdam canals). It has a very charming atmosphere with a combination of old navy folks, hippies (most of them living in Christiania - the famous free city community) and the still more affluent regular citizens. The canals are filled with different boats – several of them house boats (which looks kind of cold in the icy waters). It made me think of the everyday equivalents to our choices in the communications industry.
Saw this funny little place in Barcelona. Found out its Camper’s version of a fast food joint - placed near their Casa Camper Hotel. The food is more organic and less fat, mostly formed like balls, built on rice and vegetables and is actually not meant to be very fast. I think this brand extension into the restaurant business is in fine conjunction with the Camper brand, which is all about authenticity and sticking to the shoe companies roots. It uniquely positions itself around a slower, gentle and more considered world that is not so obsessed with fast-paced modern technology. Embodied in the company endline and philosophy “walk, don’t run”. 
Adland – one of the most influential ad blogs in the world, has come up with the “Battle of the Blogs” a virtual award show in different ad blog categories.
Ronaldinho, Messi, Puyol, Valdés, Belletti, Márquez, Larsson, Giuly, Maxi, Gio, Ezquerro, Edmílson, Sylvinho, Van Bommel, Gabri, Oleguer, Iniesta, Jorquera. Not to mention the modern day Coliseum that is Camp Nou, delicious tapas, Cerveza San Miguel, Great bars, lot’s of walking (which also included a little bit of more upstream cultural impact in the form of an exiting exhibition in the Macba – The Museum of Contemporary Art) and an overall charming city
I just bought this very funny cross-over between a magazine and an art project. It’s by an artist called Brendan Michael Carey. This first issue has been made in over 17.000 unique versions (over the past 30 months) of these wooden magazines (it’s just different pieces of wood) in all shapes and forms. Mine is one of the rare versions called “The Fashion Shoot Issue” where he has shot a hole through the magazine accompanied by the actual bullet. The second issue is going to bee a magazine made on different mirrors so the buyers themselves are the front cover superstars. It’s an interesting project and quite provocative in it’s questioning of our obsession with the glossy surfaces of fashion and the cutting edge media. 
I visited one of the Size sneaker shops in London last week. The store has a room that’s permanently used for certain advertisers to do small installations and exhibitions – in this case the Nike Air Max 95. It’s a great example of embracing the depth, nuance and complexity of a brand. Of course it’s not all brands that have such an interesting story about how a shoe was developed through explorations of bone musculatures. But most brands have more to tell than a simple endline - especially if the audience is experiencing the brand outside of the boundaries of TV advertising. 
A lot of the coolest initiatives on the web come from savvy audiences that embrace brands just as other cultural phenomena’s. The Polanoid.net site: is a great example of an audience loving this special depth and quality that a Polaroid has and has decided that the world should share their “instant moment” just as people are doing in the digital picture sphere. The results so far are more than 7.000 pictures.