Russell Davies

riot pasta

An Italian restaurant in Central London during the 2001 riots. Shows how quickly the receieved wisdom of globalisation has been absorbed and normalised

merry christmas

Something I noticed in Tokyo just before Christmas; I was in a department store and there was the usual musical background. In this case an electronic version of the tinkling bells of a musical box, playing all sorts of Christmas songs, the Japanese seem very big on Christmas. Then I noticed what one of the tunes actually was - Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence. I wondered what that was all about. Has someone just scanned a database looking for Christmas songs? Does no-one know of the films context? Or are they not worried about it. I can imagine it was a hit in Japan as Sakamoto was the composer. Maybe it's based on a traditional Japanese tune. It certainly sounded very appropriate, a perfect blend of Christmassyness and Orientalness. Hmmm.

biting the hand

Shows the value of a brand which is prepared to stand for something; even prepared to bite the hand that feeds it. Nicely written too.

clever CIA

"A CIA operative who is assigned to read Soviet newspapers during the Cold War notices that a perennially losing soccer team in a small town suddenly starts winning all its matches. Curious, he asks for detailed photos of the area. Close scrutiny reveals a secret nuclear-weapons plant: the steady infusion of workers, it turns out, has been boosting the team's talent pool. While it would be comforting to think that today's intelligence community is similarly on the ball, that's not the point being made by Bradley Hoyt in his article "Early Warning: The Art of Inference" in the January/February 2002 issue of Competitive Intelligence Magazine. Hoyt's message is for business leaders, and it is this: seismic change often creeps in on little cat's feet, and the best way to spot it is to constantly scan for anomalies. Strategists, he insists, must learn both how to look (spotting change is a largely visual process) and where to look (early indications of change come not from within our companies or our industries but from the world at large -- your local Hallmark store is a good place to start)"

clever

Right here's all you need to know about brainstorming. Death Star is clearly a great name. And it clearly wasn't brainstormed by Darth. He wouldn't have done that. The Death Star was a conviction brand, a lighthouse brand. The Empire was not a consensus organisation. It did not look for a lot of stake-holder input.

pretentious

from independent saturday mag interview with chapman brothers:

'I'm reminded of hearing the video artist, bill viola, speak in durham cathedral. He said that the romantic idea of the artist, working away in his solitary studio, was an anomaly; that for most of history the artist had worked in a collective, subordinate to an idea, which, in the middle ages, was god.

Like an agency, subordinate to a brand? Working as a collective rather than as heroic creatives. It'd be true if it wasn't so pretentious

sugar truck

arthur did this, but it's a good idea for a sugar bowl

segmentation

demographic segments from Interface by Stephen Bury (really Neal Stephenson and someone else)

irrelevant mouth breather
400-pound tab drinker
stone-faced urban homeboy
burger-flipping history major
squirrelly winnebago jockey
bible-slinging porch monkey
economic roadkill
pent-up corporate lickspittle
high-metabolism world dominator
midamerican knickknack queen
snuff-hawking basement dweller
postadolescent road warrior
depression-haunted can stacker
pretentious urban-lifestyle slave
formerly respectable bankruptcy survivor
frosty-haired coupon snipper
cynical media manipulator
reticent gun nut
ufos ate my brain
mall-hopping corporate concubine
high-fiber duck squeezer
post-confederate gravy eater
manic third-world entrepeneur
overextending young professional
apartment-dwelling mall staff
trade school metal head
orange county book burner
first-generation beltway black
80's junk-bond parvenue
debt-hounded wage slave
activist tube feeder
toilet-scrubbing ex-steelworker
neo-okie
shit-kicking wrestlemaniac
sunbelt condo commando
rust-belt lumpenpaol
reticent gun nut

what?

this is from the whatif website - "Ideas are often the fun part of innovation - it's making them happen that hurts! Creativity without action is an expensive indulgence. Action without insight is worse!" apart from deploring all the exclamation marks I don't know if I agree with this - action without insight often leads to a more interesting insight.

'consider - act' is less inventive than 'act - reflect'

they also talk about the value of environment. which I agree with and I've been there, and it's a good environment. But it's a cliche. it's all beanbags and children's drawing. it's too comfortable.

Actually that's a thought. Perhaps the problem with whatif and all their stuff is that it's too easy. it's too comfortable. They're so concentrated on getting people to relax and be comfortable with putting ideas forward that they forget to stretch people. What the world needs is an 'extreme brainstorming' company. Because people who are used to having and evaluating ideas find brainstormings deeply frustrating - too much timewasted pursuing dumb thoughts. Because their genuine experience and pattern recognition abilities are there to help them weed stuff out. So you need a way of stretching creativity out of people who are used to being stretched.

What would that environment be like? It would confront you with stuff you'd never seen before. it would allow you to act then reflect; rather than consider then act. I guess it would allow for rapid prototyping. (It would concentrate on quality rather than quantity) (this is problem with brainstorming - it can easily becomes an intellectual game about creating a set number of ideas, so everyone can say look we made 200 ideas - rather than a creative exercise about actually solving problems.)

whatif? are like an outward bound course - taking regular folk out into the wilds. what creative companies need is the equivalent of ray meers - stretching their expertise. or do they? isn't this what makes them good? isn't this what they already do for themselves?

account management

stuff from the mailroom by david rensin

'what's needed' says jeremy zimmer, a william morris mailboy in 1979, who for a time ran the training program at uta, where he is a partner and legend, 'is a person who says, 'hey, i can take care of it,' and then takes care of it.' = page xvii

'working at a talent agency is like working for the cia - you get to know what's going on at the networks, at the studios, you have access to all this talent, on-screen and off. At sony or disney or nbc they only know what they know about themselves. At an agency you know everything about everybody - even in the mailroom.' rob carlson, william morris

the coverage is too long. Do coverage of the coverage. - page 249