Russell Davies

good rules

Google's Top Ten Rules for working.

Which reminds me - top ten things aren't used enough by agencies etc when presenting. People love them, and they're the perfect structure for things like debriefs, but I don't think I've ever seen a debrief that just said - Top Ten Things To Remember From This Research.

These are good rules from Kodak too - exactly what they should be doing. Shouldn't every brand offer ten top tips for good ways of using their product.

Toy Of The Month - December 2005

I'm very happy with this. Very pleasingly matte. It's a Kubrick Special Force SAS Assault Vehicle. The back door opens and the roof comes off so it's the perfect place for the youth marketing executive in your life to store paperclips. Get them one for Christmas. Made by medicom. This guy likes it too.

end snake and ladders frustration

We bought some 20 sided die at the weekend, presumably designed for Dungeons and Dragons etc, but it occured to me that they'd be perfect for easing the frustrations of the forthcoming board-games season. (What else do you do at Christmas?) Playing board games with a five year-old is always problematic because they don't really have the patience for it, but with a 20 sided dice you can fly through a game without needing to introduce any artificial elements. The one pictured above looks good too, it's a jumbo (which means it's less easy to lose under the table) it's from here.

worship shoes

If you like to do very visual PowerPoint you often find yourself struggling to find a good image as a backdrop for talking about more abstract stuff. I saw these two neon signs in Portland and suspect they'll come in very handy from now on.

blimey

Wow. I installed the statcounter thing a few months back, and promptly forgot about it. I just now discovered that November was my biggest month ever. 38,740 pageloads and 21,856 unique visitors. That just astonishes me. I always think of numbers in the 10s of thousands in terms of the capacity of the City Ground. Which means I'm almost getting the equivalent of a respectable home attendance visiting the site. Coincidentally, Harper Collins have printed about 20,000 copies of the book, so that figures looms large with me at the moment.

polyphony

Time for another middle-of-the-night video, from a jetlag drenched hotel room. Which makes it sound more exciting than it is. It's just me and the beginnings of a theory/metaphor about brands and polyphony. There might be something in it. Let me know what you think.

polyphony About 27MB.

Account Planning School Of The Web - Second Assignment

OK. Here we go. Seconds out. Round Two. Would anyone like to play again?

I'm going to do it slightly differently this time, rather than tackle a whole strategic problem in one go we're going to focus on a particular aspect of the planning process - namely target audiences. I think this'll give everyone a chance to really think, experiment and show-off.

The task is this:

Think of a brand. It could be anything. From any geography. It could be fictional.

Now, I want you to think of a target audience for that product. It doesn't have to be the obvious audience, but it could be. Now, I want you to explain the relationship between the audience and the brand. And I want you to suggest some ways that this relationship could be extended, developed and strengthened.

That's it. I guess it's a bit like a research debrief - but you should focus on thinking and insight rather then on doing actual primary research.

Things to think about.

1. Don't assume your reader will know the brand you choose. You have to explain enough about it that we understand what's interesting about the relationship.

2. Your key job here is to be insightful and interesting about the audience and their relationship to the brand. This means bringing them to life in some way. And it means thinking beyond the obvious transactional relationship - what are the underlying motivations and ideas.

3. Make sure you finish with some recommendations - not in-depth communications plans but key thoughts about how this relationship could be improved.

4. Things to think about with an audience - how do you define them? what are they like? what do they care about? what connects them to the brand? what kind of relationship is it? how should we communicate with these people?

A good piece will be:

1. Easy and interesting to read and digest.
2. Insightful about people and their relationships to brands.
3. Focused, clear and no longer than it has to be.
4. Imaginatively and compellingly written and put together.

I'm hoping this will be fun and that it should make an interesting set of stuff to read because we'll all get to read about different brands and audiences from around the world.

Same rules as before - no more than 1,000 words. Powerpoint or Word. No more than 2MB. Everything to be with me on or before midnight on December 15th (GMT).

Does that all make sense? Seem like an interesting idea? Questions? Thoughts?

speed parenting

This made me smile. A heavily modded Honda with a baby on board sticker. That rear wing could double as a changing table.

flying to portland

Looming skies over Heathrow.

The chair lamp looked kind of sinister.

Sat in Chicago and watched CNN interviewing bloggers via webcam. Very gimmicky. They wouldn't do that with anyone else. Oh well.

10 in the bed

The latest school assembly production was the timeless classic - There Were 10 In The Bed. Arthur acquitted himself with great aplomb. We weren't quite sure what the thing round his neck was supposed to be; it's covered in letters. Apparently it's a speech bubble. Genius.