This music video is such a joy to watch, taking a ‘mini-swipe’ at the ad boys. It’s by Los Angeles rock band OkGo (produced by Syyn Labs) who are famous for their cleverly choreographed music videos. The premise is nothing new, but they’ve taken it to another level in sheer scale, you can’t help but be dazzled by it.  Next, I’ll rant about T-Mobile and social media…

Click here to view the embedded video.

This groovy website www.hayesdavidson.com/skyline/ allows you to plonk buildings willy, and indeed nilly, into the London skyline. The only thing I would add is a Godzilla option to destroy it all but that’s just me.

Exterior view 1, Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries. Photo: ©Richard Barnes. Courtesy Dia Art Foundation

Many of the pieces have been created specifically for the space: with Michael Heizer’s North, East, South, West and Richard Serra’s Torqued Ellipses being particularly memorable (if not a little distubing, claustrophobics beware). The graphic designer geek inside me also loved the Sol Lewitt wall drawings which occupy several rooms in the gallery.

I was also struck by the specially comissioned work by Zoe Leonard, who was asked to respond the the museum’s collection and location. I thought it was a good example of work that would pass the ‘would you understand the idea if it was described over the phone test’, something we strive to achieve in our work at TP. The piece, You see I am here after all, is made up of several thousand vintage postcards of Niagara Falls. The postcards, which were mostly bought online from sites like eBay, are arranged in a grid and positioned horizontally in accordance to their geographical location and vertically in accordance to the camera angle. The resulting visual impact of the piece is fascinating: a sea of sameness, but also every part a little different.

And then after all that walking, and all that thinking, there was a nice shop and a café at the end. Lovely.

Michael Heizer, North, East, South, West, 1967/2002. Installation at Dia:Beacon, Beacon, NY. Dia Art Foundation; gift of Lannan Foundation. Photo: Tom Vinetz

Richard Serra, Torqued Ellipse II, 1996; Double Torqued Ellipse, 1997. Dia Art Foundation; gift of Louise and Leonard Riggio. 2000, 2000. Installation at Dia:Beacon, Beacon, NY. Dia Art Foundation. Photo: ©Richard Barnes

Six centuries and three years later it’s not unreasonable expect financial services professionals to have built upon that learning, evolved and moved on. So consider this piece in last week’s Marketing Week by Cheryl Toner, Group Marketing and Communications Director at AXA – a contemporary pan-European financial services giant – speaking about a review (presumably lengthy and costly) of their brand positioning, in which she says the following:

“One of our key findings was that trust was key to the relationship with our customers. We have been looking at all the areas where we need to be seen as reliable, which is a key driver of trust in our industry. It’s basically about keeping our promises.”

No shit, Cheryl. You don’t say! Even Sybil Fawlty, whose responsibility for customer experience didn’t extend beyond the outskirts of Torquay, might have found that statement of the bleedin’ obvious a bit too, well, bleedin’ obvious to commit to print.

I mean, come on, this is hardly an original insight in to what makes financial services brands tick, is it? Trust, and therein keeping of promises, is the foundational principle of money itself – “I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of twenty pounds” it says on the British notes in my wallet; “In God We Trust” on a US dollar – not a 21^st Century phenomenon hitherto unseen. For years, centuries and millennia of financial transacting it is a basic and obvious truth. That Axa describe it as a “finding” makes me wonder where they’ve been looking all these years.

My point here is not that Axa is wrong. Sure, trust is important. But it always has been, so unless this is a confession to past untrustworthiness, I really don’t see how or who this helps. It’s not a brand strategy, it’s table-stakes for staying in business. It’s not differentiating, every financial services business in the world is pursuing the same goal. It’s not a ‘big idea’ that will spawn innovations in products, services and customer experience. And it’s not a rallying cry for internal staff or customers to get behind – no one gets excited for very long by the Emperor’s new clothes. So, for me, that’s a waste of time, effort and money because if you’re going to review your brand strategy you should make sure it aims to achieve every single one of those things.

Even if you fail to achieve that, at least try to come up with something that a medieval brand manager would not already have known.

For those of you that don’t know, WEF is an opportunity for those who are at the head of the (board)table to thrash out their views about the state of the World and what they are hoping for in the upcoming year — a big, big deal. I overheard someone in the corridor saying; “If you’re in to politics, this is the place to be.” So no pressure then? Previous years have seen such heavy hitters as Richard Branson, Tony Blair, and even ex-president Bill Clinton attending the event hosted in the small Swiss skiing resort — such is the importance of the WEF conference. With the World economy recovering from crisis, this years WEF focused on the topics of Rethink, Redesign and Rebuild.

We were asked by our client to set up some digital brand communications within their corporate sponsored area. This took the form of a series of branded animations (two animations for each day of the conference) playing across large screens mounted along the walls so that the guests could watch, and follow, the animations as they moved through the space.

Without going into lots of information about the animations themselves, I thought I’d treat you to a video of my non-scripted ramblings via a Flip video camera that I recorded whilst I was there.

(Expect some mild expletives and some general poo-pooing of every other branding scheme…)

Click here to view the embedded video.

For the last week I’ve been feverishly awaiting the new Toy Story 3 trailer to appear online. I’ve been a film nerd since I was a kid and luckily for nerds like me the internet has given a shot in the arm to an often overlooked art form: the film trailer. When a trailer is good, it’s a minor masterpiece in its own right. When it’s really good, a trailer is better than the actual film it’s selling.

This was never more apparent than when George Lucas unwisely decided to dust off his Star Wars franchise and give an undeserving world ‘The Phantom Menace’. In probably the most hyped movie trailer of all time, nerds the world over had a collective geekgasm over the seismic significance of a double-ended, that’s right kids, double- ended light sabre. In fact, it was a meticulously orchestrated trailer. When Lucas’ misguided vision finally vomited from the screen into our innocent laps the yawning gulf between trailer and final film was laid bare. Ten years later and I’m still wringing figurative galactic space puke from my smalls.

For the record, my top three film trailers (that’s right, I have favourite trailers) are:
Psycho – in which Alfred Hitchcock gives us a personal tour of the Bates Motel

Click here to view the embedded video.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail – which barely has anything to do with the actual film

Click here to view the embedded video.

And my all time  favourite; Alien, which conjures up more sweaty panic in its wordless two minutes than almost anything I’ve seen at the cinema. Apart from Jar-Jar Binks of course.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you’d just landed from Mars you’d think that the business of marketing was about finding new and innovative ways to apologise (sorry, my UFO has left an intricate circle in your field). Which, for many marketeers, is probably not so far from the truth. It’s a symptom of a problem that many marketing departments have.

In too many organisations the marketing function is no more than the wagging tail of a much larger dog. It can only go where the dog goes, diligently following, hoping that the dog is good. When the dog behaves, the wagging tail may earn the dog a biscuit. But when the biscuit-giver gets bitten, no amount of wagging saves the dog from the kick that it will receive instead. When a business fouls up, no amount of saying sorry is going to make it better.

Where marketing departments need to be is in the creature’s brain. They need to be part of the decision about how to behave. And because marketing is about understanding behaviour, and the implications of that behaviour, it will therefore allow the brain to evolve. The creature becomes no longer a dumb dog but something much smarter. Something too intelligent than to bite the hand that feeds. I know I say this a lot, but for a business to truly succeed it must embrace marketing and creativity as board-level disciplines, fundamental to strategy and operations as a whole.

Of course even such creatively evolved businesses as Apple or Google will still make mistakes. But, as we’ve seen with the launch of Google Buzz this week, when things don’t go according to plan a profusion of apologies doesn’t need to follow. When your brain works as fast and as brilliantly as theirs, you can be forgiven the odd little nip.

So, to Toyota, Eurostar, Woods, Terry, Daily Mail, Vodafone, Toyota (again), Eurostar (again), RBS, HBOS et al, I make no apologies for sharing this point of view.

I’m impressed with the number of apps out there, but unlike some, I just can’t muster the enthusiasm to trawl through the lists until I find something that I like the look of, want to download and then actually play with for more than five minutes. I am somewhat app-athetic <boom boom> when it comes to apps.

Instead I prefer to swan around the studio pestering everyone to tell me what apps I should/shouldn’t have on my iPhone. Having done this fairly recently I thought I would quickly post a list of the top recommendations – from the folk at TP – so that you can also benefit from my app-athy.

So, in no particular order (although No.1 did actually obtain the most recommendations from the fattie food-junkies housed here)…

1. Jamie Oliver’s 20 Minute Meals – does what it says on the tin. Quick recipes with accompanying shopping lists so you know what to buy.

Our wee Jack, who’s renowned for her intolerance of swear words in blogs, made her own personal recommendation for this “My fav was called Tuna and Tomato Rigatoni, it was f*cking amazing! Also good that I’ve tried so far was Veg Jalfrezi, magic! Prawn and Pea Risotto, brilliant! Tonight I’m having the Cauliflower and Cheese Risotto… I’ll let you know how I get on.”

I think it’s fair to say she’s a fan.

2. My Fitness Pal - OK, so we’re all food-junkies but some of us like to think our bodies are temples too. <Warning – can potentially make you calorie-counting stinking bore – like me now. sob>

Our Miranda, the half-marathon running whizz-kid made this recommendation “You plug in your age, height, weight, how much you exercise, how much weight you want to lose etc. It then tells you your calorie limit per day. All you have to do then is keep a diary of what you eat (it does all the boring calorie calculations for you) and this wonderful app then tells you to stop eating like a glutton and get off your arse. It even provides little charts to tell you this. For free!”

3. Moodagent – I’ve yet to download this but I’m actually quite excited to.

Our gadget-daddy and all over tech-pimp Kev recommended this one “Neat little app that makes playlists for you based on your iPhone/iPod touch library. The app presents you with 5 sliders: sensual, tender, joy, aggressive, tempo, which you can pull and push, depending on your mood – and some how, as if by magic, it makes new playlists. Crikey knows how it works it out but the mixes are pretty good and you can save them to use when you aren’t using the app.”

4. My Pantone - yeah, yeah, yeah, what’d you expect? There ARE a lot of designers here after all…

Our guru and design-deity Greg Q made this (gushing) recommendation “Pantone  - £5 and never used… But I know I will one day!!!”

Thanks Greg. Errrr…

5. Eliss – A ‘classic’ game on the iPhone apparently. Looks very unsophisticated in its design however I’m lead to believe it’s ROCK hard.

Once again, daddy of tech-cool Kev made this recommendation “This was one of the first apps when the app store launched, yet it still feels fresh and it’s still blooming hard. The principle of eliss is simple. Resize the coloured dots, either by merging them or by dividing them, whilst avoiding different colour dots. What at first seems like a two fingered treat (steady…), soon turns into a 6 fingered freak out, holding and moving dots together at a frantic speed. Don’t let its cute retro graphics and ‘plinky-plonky’ music lead you into a false sense of security – this game is very, very, hard but very addictive.”

6. TuneIn Radio – enables you to listen to (and record!) over 30,000 radio stations – As long as it’s got Radio 4 this blogger will be a happy lass. (plus it’s got a very sweet icon)

Another verbose and lengthy recommendation. This time from our Nick E “Internet radio – simple, looks good”

Nice one Nick. Nice one.

7. Dropbox - AT LAST! I finally have an app that allows me to store docs on my iPhone. Didn’t realise quite what I was missing until now.

Our lovely Tim brought this wonder to my attention with his recommendation “Saving files to and from iPhone is something they should have implemented in the first place. So this is nice and handy. Saving PDFs, movies, music etc, to your phone without having to go thru’ the painful mediocrity of iTunes.”

That’s it for now I’m afraid. There are more, but quite frankly the ol’ app-athy (ok, ok, I’ll stop) is starting to set in and I need to get back to staring out of the window. Do leave your comments and recommendations for any of your favourite apps and save me making the effort to find more myself. Thanks.

I probably should also note that all of these apps are available from the iTunes app store through your iPhone/iTouch or computer. Or click here to go to Apple’s website store.

Helen.

Ever since Jobs and Co. created the iPhone, there has been intense speculation that Apple were going to re-invent the Newton, with all kind of rumours about what the device would be and what it would be capable of.

For those of you that have been living in a bunker, the iPad is what Apple describes as a bridge between the world of the smartphone and the laptop — a third ‘mobile’ space that sits between the two. Indeed, at first glance, the iPad looks nothing more than a giant iPhone — it features the same glass multi-touch display (albeit a huge one at 9 1/2 inches), the same buttons – it can even run the same applications.

So many are wondering, well, what’s the difference; “Why do I need one of these shiny new toys when I have an iPhone and a laptop?… I was expecting an all-singing and dancing device that could read my thoughts and intiate command for me on the impulse of a brain wave! …This isn’t the JesusPad I wanted!” Yes, many of these points are true. But what people are forgetting to remember is that content is king, and just like the iPhone and the iPod before it, if the content is good, (in the case of the iPod; huge libaries of mp3’s versus a cd, and the iPhone with the app store full of entertainment and usefulness), then it will be a must-have product.

So let’s look at the killer app, and with a screen this size, it has to be publishing — anything from books to newspapers and magazines. Both Sony and Amazon (with the Kindle) have made significant inroads in to this new area with eBook readers: devices that are like carrying whole libaries in the space of a paperback. But these devices look a generation old compared to the user experience of the iPad – gimicky it may look, but simply turning and flicking a page on the iPad instantly feels more real. The printed book is all good and well, but it’s in the magazine and newspaper area where this product will excel. Take a look at this digital version of the Sports Illustrated magazine and try to say to yourself that you’d rather have a traditional magazine:

It’s been forecast for many years that the ‘death of print’ cometh. Maybe with the iPad and devices like it, we’re at the beginning to this new era. This fuzing of new-media and traditional print publishing into a new and interactive form is going to be exciting for both consumers and designers alike, hopefully reigniting what is a shrinking industry. Take a look at this concept video for a product called Mag+ by Bonnier R&D and their digital design partners BERG – it shows off the potential experience for what a product like the iPad can deliver:

No doubt the iPad will open the flood gates to millions of copycat tablet computers, all hoping to do the same thing. Will I be getting one? Well, I’ve always said; never buy the first gen of any Apple product; but if content as rich as this comes out, I might have to change my mind.