Dropping Tools

After 18 fantastic months i’ve decided to leave my first agency job to go traveling for a bit.

I wont be posting here for a while – but I have set up a splinter site dedicated to pictures from my travels.

You can go straight to the Pete Jackson Travel Blog here

If Carlsberg made Wives…

This is such a good idea …

It’s now 17.41 on Sunday and I’m currently 8 hours into my hangover, watching Lewis Hamilton try his best to throw away another world title – there are 53 laps left. But I digress…

The point is, if I were to document the myriad reasons why this works, i’d be posting this, whilst watching the podium ceremony. Take out point – I dont have the time nor inclination.

.

But off the top of my head… it hits the target audience. its simple. its cheap. its innovative. its interesting. its intriguing. its attention-grabbing. its amusing. its on-brand. its viral…

31 laps left

Stop Worrying and Enjoy your Life

Me ol grandad always said “self praise is no recommendation” – so I wont brag too much… but I did see this coming…

I wasn’t surprised that religious advertising would eventually be questioned, but I did not think it’d be Atheists taking up the issue. They have now raised over £100,000 which they are pouring into Bus and Outdoor advertising – they even have a Facebook group dedicated to the cause!

The idea of more religions eating up advertising space in our capital actually makes me less cynical about the whole thing – because its fair. Let them all have a go at it.

And what a great brief for an account planner, imagine the scenario…

Account Planner: Right then, what’s the brief this time?

Account Director: We’re repositioning Judaism…

Account Planner: Come again?

Bohemian Rhapsody

Bored football journalist replaces every word from Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody with a footballer’s name…

Some people have too much time on their hands

Fresh Moves

The Welsh are definately getting more air time…Think Pot Noodle, Tango-Bravia viral etc etc.

Contains tremendous quote:

Religious Advertising

I couldn’t take my eyes of this as i sat on the Picadilly line last Saturday. It’s shocking that whilst advertising to children, promoting fatty foods, racial sterotyping and sexist imagery are all strictly monitored and scrutinised – oppressively advertising particular religious beliefs in public space, and in a city as multicultural as London, cannot be put into question.

Make3D

Convert 2D snaps into 3D worlds

Found a cool website called Make3D – you can submit your pictures and it turns your 2D image into a living, breathing 3D model which you can travel around, in and out of, and mess about with. It was created by some crazy geeks at Stanford University, USA. I tested it out with this picture I took in Krakow last September…

You can see the 3D model of my picture here – click on the link ‘Download Movie’

Granted, it doesn’t quite live up to the billing on the website homepage. But I still can’t help but be impressed; it’s also possibly an indicator of what might be possible in photography – being able to retrospectively travel in and out, and through 3D models of pictures you have taken on holiday. Then converge this with advancements in computer games and virtual reality (Second Life etc) – imagine being able to step back in time, into a picture that you have taken, and being able to retrieve that moment.

Kodak, Fujitsu and Canon would have to devise an alternate proposition: Not ’save your precious memories’ but ‘relive your precious memories’.

Spell with Flickr

I’ve just been knocking about the Plannersphere wiki that Russell Davies has set up – its a kind of wisdom of crowds thing for the planning community. I found this cool tool that spells out words in Flickr pictures – I call this Pete Jackson – the ransom note 12 APril 2008

Nokia’s Green Room

First there were ringtones, then there were polyphonic ringtones. After that came mp3s, and then music videos. Music has featured at every stage in the evolutionary history of the mobile phone, and now it constitutes a major factor in the purchase decision…

How many music files can it hold?? Does it play radio?? What is the sound quality?? Can it synchorise with iTunes?? Every week at the 337 bus stop in Putney i have to put up with groups of excitable, boisterous youths playing Craig David at near noise-polluting levels on their Sony Ericssons. How loud can it go??

The immense populaity of the iPhone characterises the importance of aligning yourself with music in the modern mobile marketing landscape.

It came as little surprise then, to learn that Nokia will be hosting their own music show on T4 for the next 15 weeks. This is a nice move by Nokia – T4 is heavily aligned with British youth culture and particularly music, which will give the show credibility as a purveyor of cool, musical entertainment.

And looking closely at the format, it appears that Nokia have been careful to find out exactly what, pushes the buttons of today’s modern music-hungry. I am talking about this closed-doors/ intimate/ acoustic/ acapella- style zine. The personal gig, off the beaten track – live, unplugged, and very very exclusive.

And everyone seems to be playing everyone elses stuff – Leona covering Snow Patrol, Amy Winehouse covering The Zutons, The Kooks covering the Hoosiers; it wont come as any surprise to me to see snippets of such co-creation indispersed amongst Nokia’s music shows.

I came across a gig on YouTube that Noel Gallagher did in Paris – its absolute gold. The video below is Noel’s take on Wonderwall, its my favourite version, and got me wondering whether their entire works would be enhanced if Liam had grown up to play for Manchester City, opposed to fronting Oasis.

The embed function has been disabled on Youtube so you’ll have to follow this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc2vvQx-ibM

Save to Del.icio.us……… Add to Technorati Favorites

Pastures New

Just moved the old blog over from Blogger. WordPress is a lot more user-friendly for the web-mal-co-ordinated. Good Eggs.

Robert are you cheating?

Apparently Zimbabwe is having troubles counting up the votes for its general election…is this possibly because Mugabe is so far behind that he is making last ditch attempts to increase the levels of his skullduggery????

I’ve just read on the BBC website that he is due to stand down anyway…

But that isn’t the point of this post.

Americans scoff at countries like Zimbabwe and China and (Iraq) for the lack of, what they band about daily in their classrooms – freedom.

Remind me, for a country with a population of 300 million people, how truly free are your decisions, when your president is a guy whos dad also did it, and another presidential hopeful is the wife of another guy who did it???

This year, even social networking is playing its part in deciding the presedential candidates – the music video below, produced by Black eyed Peas star Will.i.Am returns 39,700 entries in YouTube, a top video watched by more than 6 million viewers and user generated spin offs that have been viewed by many more. The success of the videos on Youtube, chronologically, has neatly reflected Obama’s real-life surge – first in opinion polls, and now in democratic nominations.

How free is a country who’s presedential options are narrowed down to those who can financially afford to campaign??

How intelligent, democratic, and free thinking is a country when its presidents are potentially chosen on the back of a music video??

Censored Expression

Blogging, social networking, myspace, facebook, flickr…

At their core, the attraction of these websites to youngsters and some older users – is the ability to express one’s self, through sharing thoughts, opinions, experiences and many many photographs. This would be unsurprising to psychologists who explain the ego-centric selfishness of teenage angst as a functional introspective period of ‘defining one’s identity’.

However, how do you explain the attraction of self-expression in countries that are inherently censored, highly vigilant and sensitive to ‘controversial’ editorial??

According to the China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC) there are between 10 and 30 miilion bloggers in China – constituting around a fifth of the world’s blogging community, and this from a country that has a broadband penetration level of around 4%.

According to CNNIC, the popularity of blogging is increasing three times faster that the overall rate of internet adoption.

So why is it so popular? Blogging has certainly taken some hits since its inception in China. The 50,000 strong internet police has shut down multiple blogs, even imprisoning some ‘extreme’ perpertrators of free speech. This has led Chinese bloggers to speak out against this infringement of self-expression, and not just against the Chinese state. In an open letter to Google, Chinese blogger Isaac Mao berated the US-based internet giant for bowing to Chinese censorship laws in order to get their search engine into the lucrative Chinese market.

It is possible that Chinese internet users are just excited by the internet, and want to express their excitement through blogging. More interesting though, is the possibility that years of censorship in China has fostered a community of people desperate to express themselves freely, and are finding the carthartic outlet of the world-wide web, a refreshing change to the media-opressed offline world that they live in.

Back in West, it seems we are all getting tired of Facebook – the social network has failed to grow new subscribers month-on-month for the first time. It has even got its own adbusting pantomime dedicated to it, on another web 2.0 site YouTube…oh the irony.

3rd most watched video this month…

The Swanky Store

If I owned a stuck up shop I would ring the following innovations…

1. Extra ’slammy’ doors: doors that slam without warning prompting a horrible self-conscious arrival and departure
2. Extra ‘clompy’ floors: exacerbate all walking noises – reinforcing the desired effects above
3. Extra ’squeeky’ floors: as above – but for the sneaker-wearing proletariat
4. Extra good looking staff: constant reminder of your physical as well as financial shortcomings
5. Extra extra space: no rows of hangers to hide behind
6. Extra strings: only classical music
7. Extras: rolling video footage of this scene from Ricky Gervais’ Extras

Naomi Klein – No Logo

So i’ve just decided to read Naomi Klein’s book ‘No Logo’ for what essentially is the third time…

I’ve just finished the chapter ‘No Space’. It describes how corporations have invaded every minute aspect of our lives in the quest for owning pieces of our minds. Now, not only can we convey our opinions, lifestyles and political persuassion through the simple adorning of nylon garments bearing block letters and small horses, we can also convey our anarchtic rebellion against these ‘evils’ … by adorning or consuming brands. Klein points out that no area of life is left unbranded – tourists who go “off the beaten track” for example, are not rat-race rebelling individualists seeking out new canvases for life’s experience, but experience-marketing’s victums of pre-packaged adventure designed as a short cut to feelings of freedom and self-actualisation.

It got me thinking that it would be interesting to know Klein’s view of how web 2.0 and the user-generated blogosphere is affecting marketed space. Yes, messers facebook and youtube provide advertisers with yet another arrow to add to the marketing arsenal, but it is also possible that these sites provide escapism from everyday branded life; Chinese kids in their bedrooms playing guitar compete with America’s pop idols whilst Highschool dance-offs eclipse Michael Jackson videos. In the media-owned world, we are talked at by advertisers and told whats cool, in the media-generated world, the cream rises to the top by its own fruition – untainted, un-corrupted, and unbranded.

Case in point below, now up to 80 million views!