There are huge advantages to seeing a city with a local. Samuel showed me this stately picasso which I was subsequently able to show off to two other New Yorkers - who'd never known it was there.
he's done it again
Richard doesn't post all that often but when he does it's always brilliant. This picture under the heading 'the truth about great planning' and accompanied by the Einsein quote 'Theory cannot be fabricated out of the results of observations - it can only be invented' sums up in one image most of what I've been trying to say for the last five years.
It's doubled my intent to get these t-shirts made when I get back to London. Look for them soon.
24 hours of coffee
The more observant (or bored) among you will have noticed that there's a new little linklist over on the left. It's all the various coffee morning-like events that I know about. Some of them don't happen every week, or may never happen again, but you should be able to find your way from there to the most relevant info. If people think they're going to do it regularly and can provide me with a non-changing url I'll happily stick that up. Is there anyone I've missed? Marcus, will Germany happen again do you think?
I now have a vision of 24 hours of coffee, which may involve Sydney sitting in a cafe for 12 hours, but it's a noble dream.
This coming Saturday there will be coffee morning in New York, 11am, at sNice.
youtubification of politics
I was sitting last night watching the US election results coming in and it occurs to me that there's maybe something to write about for my next Campaign piece about the youtubufucation of advertising - as seen in political advertising.
Most of the ads I've seen in the last 10 days are absolutely, appallingly, awful. LIke they always are. Insulting to the intelligence, ill-conceived and badly made. But they're not quite as bad as they used to be. And they're bad in a slightly different way than they used to be. There are more ads trying to be funny, more ads based on parodies of pop culture themes and more ads trying, vaguely, to be 'conceptual'.
And some of this must be down to political campaigns spotting the communications potential of YouTube (and all the other video sites). They realise that if they're funny or interesting in some way they might get some kind of viral effect and get infront of more voters. (And, of course, they might get news coverage if they get popular enough).
Of course this all raises interesting possibilities for the next election in the UK but I think it also points at a future for marketing generally. As user-driven media ( as opposed to user-created media) picks up then the quality of branded creative work is bound to slowly increase. Surely.
Or am I missing something?
And I'm sure this is something that other people, smarter, more informed people, than me have written about but I can't find it. Partly because I never read political blogs. (Apart from Steve's) Does anyone know of anything anyone's written about this?
PS - I'm starting to find it really hard to let a post go up without a visual. So I'm now collecting generic images which will fit with anything. I've got a few that say 'post', what I need now is for people to start writing the word 'blog' or 'opinion' or 'waffle' on the streets.
mechanical genius
James Taylor's built himself a mechanical drum machine. From the New York Times. (Some restrictions apply.)
