furtherandfaster

Festival tendencies

Every year I go to the Greenbelt arts festival.  And there's always an interesting tango with work even while the festival is on. One year I had to take a call related to Chrysler in Detroit at the point when a fair trade march was processing rather noisily round the site. There was the time I had to do a planning session in the car on the way home for a workshop I was due to run later in the autumn for the Goodwood estate. This year my thoughts were about a piece of work for a supermarket hardly helped by the T shirt stall with a rather familiar logo and the name Fiasco emblazoned on the front. Nothing like being in different places to get a perspective on work.

A highlight of the weekend was seeing Coldcut in action. I rather like the idea of  VJing so seeing quite how elaborate they could get with video and audio samples was a revelation.

Also on the billing Bily Brag and Soweto Kinch - who were great. And I missed Aqualung and John Tavener and passed on Chas and Dave.

There was a circus production to a drum and bass accompaninment called Advertigo which was supposed to be having a pop at the advertising business. I get mystified by most attacks on advertising which seem to be wide of the mark about what we actually do. The assumption seems to be that we ad people set out to deceive and are rather proud of doing so. Also that advertising is shallow and disposable. All of which bounces off us because we take it (very) far too seriously - are remarkably free from cynicism about what advertising actually does. And we suffer from short term memory loss because the evident disposability of advertising work (can you remember what were you working on 6 months ago?) passes us by.  Well I foiled the attack with ease and just enjoyed all the acrobatics and high wire activity. Ignoring the screens with dodgy puns on well known logos.

Heavenly books

I haven't visited the exhibition of Sacred books at the British Library yet this summer but I plan to. There's a fantastic application here where you can turn the pages of the books on the website and use a magnifying glass to get up close. Try it if your internet connection is fast enough. Last week end I was talking to Chas Bayfield (who works at Dave these days) about books in particular a campaign we had worked on together for the Scottish Bible society. A poster campaign created the interest in particular Bible stories using contemporary photography - none of that stained glass stuff. And people could go the website to read the rest of the story. Or order (and pay for) a book of the Bible story which had the same art direction as the posters. We were talking about taking the idea to another level. Imagine if you well an online book ornately decorated like the Lindisfarne gospels. With animated drawing and movies of people telling the story in their own words. Embedded right alongside the text. With spaces so those browsing could add their own commentary and notes in the margins. It wouldn't be that difficult to do - a kind of organic wikipedia full of visual links and tools. When I master Flash I'm going to try to build a page like it.

For now you'll just have to play with the application at the British Library. 

facebookers - a new kind of holiday cover

Its always the way - I clear my desk for a holiday and the phone starts ringing. So far I'm one workshop and one research project down. At least 10K's worth. It had better be a good holiday :-} As is my wont I try to find other people to cover the work I can't do. And this time for the first time I used facebook to see what everyone was up to. Very odd to be talking with bogus confidence to the would be hirer about who was in and who was out and about. 

Perfect day..

Into London to get into the office in good time without rail/tube chaos. AT lunch time I dashed to another agency round the corner for a status meeting about a research project.  Fascinating conversation with the chief exec of a communications group about how to create synergies between the companies they keep acquiring - so much more difficult to actually get everyone working together instead of paying lipservice. A technical debate about a knotty research problem which needed teasing out. Finished the work I had set myself to do for the day. Then a swift beer with a planning head from a third agency about where comms planning is going and how to organise a clutch of different planners around an integrated pitch. Once back home I found myself wandering round the garden eating fruit off the trees as the sun went down. Thinking you lucky bastard there has to be payback time - life can't really be this good.

Votes for (aggressive) women - please - a cry for help

I am an aficionado of I Want One of Those (www.iwoot.com) for short with the irresistable tagline For things you don't need but really really want. Last year I made a film of my daughters knocking 7 bells out of each other with giant boxing gloves on the trampoline to the sound of the Matrix heavy metal soundrack. Sensing a promotional opportunity I sent these guys the film. And at long last they've put it into a competition with other trivial pursuits finalists who have all made movies about IWOOT products. Please take the time to go and look at Rumble - that's the name of the film and vote for it. and tell your friends to do the same. As you can see there's lots of yummy prizes and my daughters are promotionally very sensitive and aggressive with it - all help welcome. Here's the link.

Identity Freud

This is a terrible confession to make and really I haven't done it in ever so long. But last night I googled John Griffiths and discovered that I had 2 entries in the top 10. One for the website and one for this blog. Must be August. Will posting this item get me promoted even furth I wonder? Anyway looking around the top 10 I discovered egriff - and have had an exchange with another John Griffiths - who in his time has met a few other John Griffiths including one called John griffiths 6 -apparently BT had so many John Griffiths (another mention for the search engine) that they numbered them all. It is all rather weird. I'm not used to having alter egos and of course I don't. But the thing about the internet is that we're all wanting a piece of the same identity. You can't type in I want John Griffiths you know the one who shared a flat with Phil in 1994 - and get anything very coherent out of Google. So alongside the oedipus complex I think we should posit the google same name complex.

Gardeners question time

It was a bit on the hoof - or should that be the welly boot? But I ended up researching two lots of gardeners today. And came away with the feeling that I wasn't asking them to find out what they thought but almost that we were spinning something together that was interesting all of us as it emerged. The creative material was OK but what came from the exchange was much richer.

How to do insight - course

Just to tip you off that I'm running a course on the 14th of September in London with Mike Imms entitled How to do Insight.  All about how to reduce the uncertainties of locating research insights. I've attached our promo piece about it if you're interested in coming. Download insightpromo.doc

I don't think you wanted to do that....

Last October I was working on a pitch to promote a calf vaccine to farmers.  The client was Merial. We lost. What a relief.

Although I suppose persuading farmers to buy Merial products could become one of the great marketing challenges. If you're from a part of the planet which hasn't heard the story about the biolab which leaked a virus then by all means read it here.

Social networking - and how to clear the room

I'm a bit grumpy today. I've been trying for the best part of a week to get a piece of research using social marketing off the ground finding a digital research partner. And no digital research agency is interested. Too busy building online panels and going to conferences to tell everyone how social marketing is the future. To actually do it. Here's the thing. Social marketing is about tapping into existing networks. Its a bit like raving about how great cars are as long as they're allowed to build the motorways too. I think I'm just going to have to get on and do it myself..

Makes me want to

Tue 07/08/2007 12:52 07082007(002)

I've never wanted to sit on the wall at my local shopping centre till they got the builders in and started issuing directives. But that's communications for you.

Planning drinks at the Crown and Two Chairmen Soho

  Organised by Mark Hancock head planning honcho at Proximity. With a turn out from al of this department we hung out round the side of the Crown and Two with a minder pushing us back on the pavement - lots of puns about moving across the line. Al and David turned up from Imagination. Will Humphrey also made an appearance. I met the head of research from BBDO - and the talk turned to people she knew in Bucharest. Alex James the semiotician was also there. Sorry if I've left anyone unattributed! With beer on tap thanks to Proximity a merry evening was had by all.  No such thing as a free drink so a couple of times a camcorder was produced and questions address to the throng for an impromptu debate which was set to be dropped onto a blog somewhere sometime.  Proximity have been running a study about personal identity as mediated through the web. You can read about it on Facebook if you track down Mark Hancock's Metaverse group They have used semiotics, discourse analysis and anthropology as well as mildly more conventional tools. And it is raising big questions for them about how brands are supposed to relate to us digital prosthetically enhanced human beings. I've been asked to recall what we talked about there. Which I will.. when I remember!  Belgian beer is bad for recall - somebody tell Millward Brown. Caught the last train home by running. Will Humphrey wasn't so lucky and got into a scrape losing mobile and watch.

One of our conversations was about planning. I remember that bit - the exponential growth of the planning industry. Planning is growing way faster than anyone could have ex pected. And the UK advertising bit is getting proportionately smaller all the time. Only a couple of those present would describe themselves as ad planners.

Power of Dreams

When I worked on Honda I was always mad keen to encourage umbrellas as a free display medium -and the client was always too cheap to do anything about it. Nice to see that these days when you sleep rough you can do so under the power of dreams. Not quite what the marketing manager ordered methinks.

work work work

Busy couple of days picking up 3 projects no less - autumn is looking good with no pause for breath after the August holiday I'm planning to take. I'm a little worried that there just isn't time for the normal filing and tidying up mid year. But funny how when you're on call - all of that disappears - just like a retriever you just point on command.