Brand ‘me’

I’m not adverse to the idea of ‘brand me’. Chimes nicely with how I see the notion of personal responsibility. After all, when it all comes down to it, we are all ultimately responsible for our own success / failure / something in the middle

It’s innevitable, I get that, but I do wish that ‘brand me’ relied a little less on the most crass and uncomfortable use of self promotion. Sure, we all do it (this is, after all, a blog) but the victim of self promotion is, sadly, humility.

Which is a shame

Climate Change in 2010

Short and sweet. That’s the aim of the game for 2010. Here goes, deep breaths, get stuck in.

Climate change, that’s my tip for 2010. Cos I think it’s going to get interesting. A grumble here, dissenting squeak there, raised eyebrow etc is about as much as has been possible up to now. Anything more and out come the burning crosses, white hoods and a one way ticket to a ‘re-education’ centre. To be a climate change denier was akin to claiming the Jews dreamed up the holocaust, or David Ike is an astute observer of the political structure.

My guess is that the weight of opinion, if not dissent than genuine consideration, on climate change may be reaching a critical level. To a point where such blanket and uncontestable acceptance on the causes and consequences may start to strain. Which will be great. Because if like me you feel a little uncomfortable with the tyrannical and almost Orwellian stance on climate change by the political and scientific elite, the opportunity to explore dissenting opinions on the subject will be rather interesting. Not to say I’m ready to jump head first into a newly fashionable ‘denier’ state, just that the whole thing feels, you know, just that bit like a stitch up.

What’s more interesting is that this ‘denial’ movement is bigger than climate change (which may, in truth, cause its downfall) Climate change denial will become a vehicle for an ideological stand point or belief system which puffs out its chest against what certain people perceive as a comfortable, self serving ideological consensus (combined with a vice like control over those that dare challenge the status quo) on a vast range of subjects, from immigration, welfare, tax and social policy.

To be a climate change denier in 2010 will mean much more than a desire to know more about how much influence we, as humans, have had and can have over the future climate of the globe, instead it’ll mean being a maverick on a quest to fundamentally challenge the norms and, often, lazy thinking on many day to day subjects.

Which while exciting, will, ironically, undermine the actual issue at hand: Is climate change man made? How serious are the consequences of climate change? And more importantly, how much can we actually do about it?

All questions worthy of consideration in 2010

Oddities of outreach…

Haven’t quite thought this through yet, so bear with me while I make a fist of this argument.

There’s a lot to be said for media agencies doing outreach. How it fits within an overall communications plan, the implications upon search and display activity, and the ability to understand the importance of other paid for channels etc.

But that’s not to say we should look at outreach as ‘media’. What I mean by this is not, ‘durr, it’s just PR’, but instead that as soon as we view a blogger as a media owner whose value we judge based upon their reach and influence, it skews the proposition. It comes, in effect, transactional. ‘You have influence and reach. We want that influence and reach. We will give you something in return based upon the level of that influence and reach.’

In short, a media deal.

Now, of course we are all in agreement that a blogger outreach program is founded upon the desire to have individuals of influence within a certain field advocating and discussing our brand, campaign, project etc. But by the very nature of advocacy there has to be an irrational attachment to something. A desire to support it above and beyond the tangible value and utility it has provided you. In short, you can’t put a value on ‘love’ – and the best type of advocacy is exactly that; love. (See Apple fans)

A transactional deal, based upon the tangible value of an individual’s reach and influence will never achieve good advocacy. How can it? Advocacy needs love – and love, as the old adage goes, cannot be bought.

An outreach program should have only one objective; can I make these people fall in love with what we’re doing? The reach and influence is dependent upon yet separate to whether we achieve this – our proposition is simple; love us.

How do we achieve this? Well, what is the one thing that ties all bloggers together? Surely, if anything, it’s a belief in their expertise on a subject. Whether tech, sport or fashion, we blog because we think we have something of value to say on a subject. What we crave is validation. Approval from others that, indeed, what we say is of value, is of interest. To be called an expert is the greatest accolade. Why publish our thoughts if we didn’t want recognition for our thinking.

Understanding this creates the opportunity. If a blogger craves the status of expert, brands are in the strongest possible position to validate this. If Arsene Wenger says I’m an expert on football, Ralph Lauren lauds my fashion knowledge and Steve Jobs praises my design skills, then, my God, I must be doing something right.

And if any of the above asked me, as an expert, to get involved with their latest project, to lend my expertise and specialist knowledge, to be a partner in a project, then I may just say yes. Flattery? Yes, but it taps into the very thing all bloggers crave; recognition. And as we are all aware, involve someone in something that you do, make them feel like they are part owner of it, make them feel as if their expertise is genuinely contributing to something bigger, then they too may even fall in love with it. Oh and then, of course, they may even go and blog about it. But like I said, odd as it sounds, this is kind of separate.

Listen, my point is that the brands and agencies alike struggle when it comes to actually come to working out how to engage bloggers. Sending them a few videos and PR statements to re-post doesn’t seem to work. Asking them politely is generally ignored (now that most of the key bloggers receive hundreds of these opportunities) and a freebie here and there no longer holds the value it once did.

And I wonder if we sometimes forget what the aims of a blogger outreach program is. We’re so busy looking at the level of influence and reach of a blog post that we forget that a blogger outreach program has only one aim – to generate advocacy. To make bloggers love what we are doing. To involve them and make them feel like they are part of the whole process, that they are relied on and integral. Because if we do this, the rest will look after itself.

Madness

I think the world has gone mad. Or then again, the world has always been mad. I’ve just been in denial. That’s the thing, denial always partners madness. Firstly denial that life can actually be mad – and then, when realisation dawns and our trust in the logic and rationality of the world around us diminishes, denial that it actually is mad.

It’s the middle phase that’s the bugger.

We have a green button at work. It is placed before a very conventional door that is our exit from our bar area. The door has a handle, one which you pull to open. Nothing remarkable there. But the thing is, this door, one we’ve got quite used to across all aspects of our lives, only becomes a door when this green button is pushed. Otherwise it looks like a door, but is in fact a door shaped wall. Unmoving.

No one knows why we must push a green button to convert what looks like a normal door into an actual fully functional door. No one knows we we can’t just pull the door open as the design, it seems, intended. After all, if one can enter a room without constraint, shouldn’t the same be expected of leaving?

But this is the thing about madness. Up until recently I would have been in denial about it all. I would have presumed there was a perfectly rational and sane reason for its existence. Maybe health and safety, or the foiling of criminals. And in the near future I’ll fall happily into that stage in which denial means that I’ll chose to ignore this madness and look upon this green button as a perfectly logical extension to opening the door while balancing three cups of freshly brewed coffee on my nose.

But right now, and for the forseeable future it seems, I just think it’s mad.

Strolling by Fallon on a summer evening

Watching the new Cadbury Fair Trade spot over the weekend reminded of a rather curious incident some weeks ago. On waiting for a friend near their HQ I overhead the following…

P1: Right then guys, new brief from Cadburys to celebrate their use of Fair Trade cocoa beans. They’re looking for something gritty, dark, disturbingly close to the bone… hahah, only joking. Let’s think life affirming, optimistic and nauseatingly positive. Any ideas?

P2: Hmm, where the beans from?

P1: Think Ivory Coast, Ghana…

P3: Underdeveloped then.

P1: Erm, yes

P2: Okay, okay – so we’re celebrating how the use of Fair Trade cocoa beans improves the lives of producers in Africa. Let’s make a song and dance over it then.. hah

P3: I like it

P1: What?

P3: Song and dance. Think Africa, think black people, think great rhythms, great dancing..

P2: And, and, hysterical amounts of laughter and inane grinning.

P3: Yes! Just like a Bob Sinclair video, or travelling dancing troupes on Blue Peter. Always smiling, singing, dancing… happy little buggers.

P1: Ok, ok.. I’m getting optimistic, life affirming, as if looking at life through a rainbow coloured filter. This is good guys, this is us. But where’s the touch of absurdity. You know, that spark, that…

P2: Witchcraft!

P1: Hang on, that’s all a bit dark and unseemly.

P2: No, no… witchcraft in the good sense. Glitter and fireworks and pretty colours..

P3: Exploding from the limbs of gyrating people in a state of permanent exstasy!

P2: Except it’s a Monday afternoon, and they’re just dancing, and grinning, and singing not for little old Jonny’s Birthday. No, no.. just for the hell of it!

P3: God, those guys are crazy.

P1: Hmm, this all feels mildly racist, doesn’t it? Like Minstrals, or those old Lilt adverts.

P3: No, no, not at all. We’re celebrating the grit and strength of the African people, who even in adversity always find a time and place to party. It’s what they do best, don’t you know.

(Murmurs of agreement)

P1: Ok, ok, but we’re still missing something. Something people can copy. We have kinda built an agency off that..

P2: Air drumming? No, no.. done that.

P3: Dancing?

P2: No, no, these guys are black, remember. We’d have middle class kids from the home counties looking like epileptic robots. Absurd. We bloody struggled with Whigfield, for God’s sake. Let’s stick with face movements – that worked last time.

P3: Tounge flicking? Ear waggling? Winking?

(Deathly, prolonged silence)

P2: Well… how about all of them?

P3/P1: Go on..

P2: We create a huge virtual 3D head which looks like a cross between a tribal mask and a vodoo doll

P1: Erm…

P2: And it, and it… spins around for no apparent reason while everyone dances, and grins, and looks just bloody happy while fireworks shoot from their fingers

P3: Fuck, this is bigger than trucks!

P2: And then, then, cocoa beans start shooting from the head as it winks, squints, pull it’s own ear off, showering the townsfolk in a symbolic scent of success… coca beans which are, are, are..

P3: Grinning!

P2: Yes! Grinning cocoa beans shooting off in all directions from this great oversized tribal head, infecting people with absurd amounts of happiness!

P3: Shitting hell, I can already see YouTube filled with people making absurd facial expressions while their mates pour bowls of cocoa pops over their heads. It’s going to be bigger than eyebrows!

P1: I’m going to lie down

And then my mate turned up, and I had to leave. Knowing what I do know, I would have asked to hang about a bit longer… being privy to such a stream of creative brilliance.

Better Never than Late

Good blogs are hard to come by. Ironically, I think I’m bit of a ‘better late than never’ in this case (I saw it in the bloody Guardian, for God’s sake) but I’m still going to shout it from the rooftops.

Better Never than Late is as simple as it gets. Aggregate the posts from several excellent bloggers with their nose close to ground in UK street trends, and hey presto!

Life’s News Feed

For all, events, mini trends, and other phenomena often come to represent aspects or periods of your life. Italia 90, for one. Or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The funny thing about Facebook is that it feels a bit more than this. I know it’s just a tool to capture and share events, phenomena etc, but when I think about University nights out, I think of the Facebook photo upload and tagging marathon the day after. I’m sure you do too.

As the social glue, Facebook (or more importantly, the News Feed) feels synonymous with a broad range of defining life periods. And it’s getting broader.

The reason behind these musings is my noting, on a recent glance over my News Feed, a series of photos uploaded from the fifth annual ‘Tour De Lash’, an event which involves men, bikes and many pubs. I remember the photos appearing from the inaugural Tour, fresh faced enthusiasm personified.

Not much had changed, in truth. Old school friends with broader waste lines, departing hair lines, girlfriends and wives in tow. The evidence of a few more years on the jolly bender known as life.

I sometimes think that it’d be quite fun to capture periodic screen grabs of your News Feed from the first Facebook forays to today’s occasional glimpses. For those, like me, careering towards 30, I’m sure there would be a depressing familiarity about it all. First the manic photo uploading and tagging marathon of snake bite stained lips and Wednesday night debauchery followed by commentary chitter chatter of students poking, scarbulousing and graffiting around.

Then, without warning, the nights out photos stop (or are replaced by dinner and after work sneakys), the ‘miss you’s’ dry up and on the first glimpses of Summer our eyes are confronted with wedding dresses, confetti and first dances.

An occasional new born pops into view. Suddenly it’s albums worth of first smiles and congratulatory wall posts. In the blink of an eye your News Feed has shifted from a stream of debauched hedonistic filth to picnics and family day outs.

What next? First day at school? New house? Kids wedding? Grandchildren? And then what, death? A newsfeed of funeral photos and sympathetic clucking?

No doubt we won’t even remember what Facebook was as death bells begin to toll – considering the uptake of the site by parents, employers and old teachers, I wonder what legs it has now. But even so, there’s something about the Facebook News Feed which, quite subconciousely, as come to represent so many of those standard life changes that we all, and through every generation passes.

Climate Change

Did you see that ‘Home’ thing on YouTube?

That documentary about how we’re killing the world? Did you notice that it was only sponsored by bloody Chanel??!

How bizarre is that. Genuinely.

The one thing that I find baffling, regardless of your views on climate change, is the fallacy that we’re killing the planet. Because we’re not. Humanity may be under threat, that much I can concede, but please can we at least start admitting to ourselves that the Earth will continue to function quite happily (although in a differing capacity) regardless of the climate (See Ice Age)

In truth, it is only human kind that may struggle a bit under differing climate. We may all get a smidgen hot and have to hide under a rock. Or learn to swim. So if we accept climate change, we do so because we’re attempting to save our own bacon – not the Earths. She’ll do quite fine, thank you very much.

Get your Basketball on

Brands can be very serious sometimes. So it’s nice to see a campaign which is, well, just an awful lot of silly fun.

This from Nike, merges Mr Motivater and Rick James into a fully fictional basketball player called Leeroy Smith.

And it’s great. Loads of very funny content, games, opportunities to get involved across all social platforms etc.

And it’s fun to see a real story being built around this one fictional character – fingers crossed it will continue and evolve for a period of time. My only complaint; not enough people participation. Surely this is crying out for a full and proper Leeroy James fitness videos, Leeroy James gym partnerships, 2 on 2 competition etc etc

Maybe I’d even be willing to get involved…

Enjoy it here

Go (Wild)cats!

A girl at work has entered her cat into a Whiskas competition. I’m sure she is going to win. Neh, certain. Her name is Gypsy, and I really hope she talks

Oh, vote for her here!