Tuesday 28 July 2009

Stussy Stock City Tee

Stussy is an international veteran of streetwear. What I really like about Stussy as that they have evolved from the shapeless baggy look into more streamlined grown-up work.




This look is everything that Stussy is and what always was about, graf logo and iconic cities....Represent!

Analytics Time!

IBM are buying SPSS for $1.2bn. What does this mean?

Well after they dumped their hardware business and sent out a flare around the importance of predictive analytics is it really too surprising? However the $50 a share they are paying represents a highpoint in SPSS stock which climbed 41% on the back of the news

The way that these guys view this is that SPSS will augment their 'information on demand' strategy. So that means predictive analytics will become part of big businesses day to day working process?

How long before Oracle buys SAS?

Oh my, maybe we are onto something? Big Blue...you know where we are...
Back in the summer of '81 I was young - no cares, just dreams - it was a huge cricket fan (remember that Ashes series?) and a bigger video game destroyer. Ask all the people at the arcade (Pac-man; killed it...count those 9 keys! - Kong; we all jumped through the floor - Q-Bert; i was just too fast). However I am going to go out on a limb here and say that the best video game ever was TRON!



The good news is that Disney are following their 2010 Jeff Bridges movie release TRON Legacy with a game TR2N - if you were around the first time you will here for the next...it defined gaming back in the day and will take geeks to an even higher standing in the community in 2011

Bring on those lightcycles!

Thursday 23 July 2009

Space Over!

I don't usually do this; but I signed up to B-test google wave yesterday. You must know what wave is by now...communication, collaboration all in one place - sign up here!

https://services.google.com/fb/forms/wavesignup/

The reason why I signed up? Easy - sorry people but google just gives us useful stuff, igoogle is great, g-mail gives unlimited space and I am using chrome right now. The thing is; wave integrates all those and IM and could kill twitter and facebook...no, I really think so, am I crazy?



Isn't it a beautiful thing?

Let's face it - all you g-mail users will jump on this and give it the widespread adoption it needs to kill mail, twitter and FB. Also, google is google - the richest company in the world - mix that money, search, and all of its applications (not apps) and it wins! Sign up now

Tuesday 21 July 2009

No idea why i posted this....

...but Stella McCartney has gone all Disney on us in her latest autumn/winter ad campaign. Model Sigrid Agren is surrounded by Bambi characters stealing the shot. Stella has always been outspoken in her ethical stance on animal rights, just like her mum Linda



Say's Stella: “I’m a huge Bambi fan, and the film reminds me of my mum,” said McCartney. “And we wanted to have some fun. The clothes in the campaign are looking quite fierce, and we wanted to contrast them with the innocence of Bambi”.

To be honest I don't know if this is genius or ridiculous but given the amount of advertising space in the September issue of Vogue it is sure to achieve stand-out!

Monday 20 July 2009

Free for Free

Chris Anderson's new book "Free" picks up on the free internet phenonmenon — Google, YouTube, Radiohead albums, analyticsarbitrage..... the problem is that despite the radical nature of the concept he still flogs his book at $26.99 at your local Barnes and Noble. Now thats radical!

Anderson has taken a lot of flak over this, most noticably from Malcolm Gladwell so Chris did the right thing and offered "Free" for free - you can download it directly from wired.com or via spotify.



Advertising is the most powerful way that we have seen free digital content and yes, of course the audiobook is supported by ads in Spotify.

I spent half an hour on sunday morning grabbing it and I suggest you do the same

Friday 17 July 2009

Sorayama eases us into the weekend.....

Everyone from Daft Punk to Van Halen has used Hajime Sorayama. This man defined 80's airbrush chic created 'Sexy Robot'.



Google him now, but be careful of that jump.....must of his stuff would be an office surfing violation! Erotic art at its best!

genius AND cute - Really!

My boys at Visible Measures (love your work Brian) turned me on to Euro RSCGs work for Evian Water. 13m views this week, up 652% week on week...this is viral baby!



Maybe I am showing my age but this juxtaposes really well with their work in the late 90s where babies were swimming under water synchronized style.

I could go on about Babies and Evian symbolising purity naturally... but lets enjoy this for exactly what it is - babies breakdancing on rollerskates, rappers delight by Dan the Automator and Central Park....what's not to like?

Zevs in HK

In case you hadn't read it, I love Zevs. French urban artist that twists brands' logos and blends them into the cityscape.

However if you get down to Art Statements Gallery in Hong Kong you can catch his "Liquidated Logos" exhibition. This showcase is located in the very high end “Central” shopping district so his take on Murakami x LV coloured logos could sit nicely with the surroundings



In fact he blended in so well he was reported for vandalism!



....oh yeah, the opening party was a lot of fun too!

Wednesday 15 July 2009

Ping Pong Door

No space in your apartment but want to beat your friends into ping pong submission? The Ping Ping Door is what you have been waiting for!



It fits into a regular door space - Just take out the old one, stick this one in, add a net and turn off the wii. The PingPong Table can be flipped open in a second allowing you to play between rooms. Yes, the size is smaller, and you will hit the door frame if you are a spinmaster....will you really care?. This game is fun!

Designed by Tobias Fraenzel, it will be in production this year

Tuesday 14 July 2009

Twitter Sentiment

We are doing a lot of work trying to get a steer on word of mouth and its impact on brand sales and loyalty. All you analytics heads out there have been grappling with this 'baseline sales' thing and busking when your clients have asked about it forever.

The great thing about the online world is capturing stream of consciousness. If you don't like Lady Ga Ga (does anyone...really?) just bitch her out on your blog or twitter. And what's so good about it is that people really do do that!

Tweetfeel has been launched to track the sentiment on twitter. So you can track any hot issue and watch that trend.



TweetFeel counts tweets in real-time on whatever you write in the box for positive and negative feelings. It sets up the positive and negative sentiment and TweetFeel gives you a promoter score

Its not perfect but you could check how people think about your brand, how your PR campaign is performing or how your competitors are doing


If you are feeling really brave you can just enter your name and see what people really think about you.

Monday 6 July 2009

Things have changed since snake!

Call this jealousy but I don't understand why the phone has all these apps? There are more than 50,000 applications ranging from Sonic the Hedgehog (yes Ella...I know, Sonic is better than Brickbreaker) to the hopeless LolCat. Oh and yes, the 3GS makes them even better

So I started looking for cool apps for my BlackBerry Storm (and stopped as playing them will kill the battery). There are loads of development applications out there for all the new phones - great...now those iphone users can't be so smug!

But wait, so now we have a bucketload of applications that are developed for handsets and not networks. How did that happen? Networks know where you are, can provide interactivity through messaging and second by second billing for acquiring power-ups

Did I miss something?

Thursday 2 July 2009

RSSzzzzzzz.......

I realised I don't really use my RSS feeds any more. I found that I had too many feeds and was missing really interesting content in the race to kill the content on the feed. So much good stuff and so little time - the filter and aggregator concept of RSS just wasn't working

All that research about trusting our "friends" (you have got to use that term loosely these days) means that you probably dont need that RSS. One of my colleagues asked me if I saw that McKinsey Quarterly article on sales funnels. I hadn't, yet in came into my RSS three times and appeared on my Facebook!

That incident and Michael Jackson (Billie Jean is now OFF heavy rotation in the office) probably means you won't miss the truly useful content if you just listen to your "friends", their blogs and twitterfeeds. After all we are all content aggregators these days!

I suppose in order to sort through the wheat from the chaff you have to follow and engage with the right people. I don't think we have to subscribe to every episode of a particular Podcast (has anyone actually tried the TED podcast and listened to them?), but instead just make sure you are told by your group of people you respect which episodes were worth checking out?

Is that the future of Twitter? Maybe Twitter is actually a people-powered RSS feed?

Wednesday 1 July 2009

Free Running Nike Style

Combined with deliberate old school views of the 70s cities, Nike's "Exploit Yourself" commercial is all about pushing yourself to the limits .... aided by Nike shoes naturally

The robot is all Matrix meets Mirror's Edge and the guys behind it did some work on the Transformers movie. Very cool in a technology, design and sports way



Who wouldn't want to run after that?