ThoughtSpurs

Mucking about with some crayons I got from the French Art Shop in Ponsonby . I managed to get away with spending just five bucks. It's no wonder artists starve - the raw materials are insanely expensive. Come to think of that's probably why they cut off their ears too - to hock them.

The Arctic Monkeys are a band - for those of you who don't know about these things. They came to fame via MySpace . Their latest album Your favourite worst nightmare has shot to number 1 on the UK album charts as soon as it was released. But the interesting thing is that each of the songs on the album have also charted. How? They are all available to be individually download from the web from sites like the Apple iTunes store . Changes to the way sales are accounted for by the music business mean that a physical CD single doesn't have to pass through a high street retailer in order to be counted for the chart. What is also interesting is that this very obvious example of the shift in buyer behaviour makes a mockery of the Record Industry Association's anxiety that downloads will kill their business. According to the BBC Radio 1 DJs interviewed in this story (video) the charts now have new acts that rise through the rankings, rather than meteorically arriving at the top - ...

Before - the sequel. This is the AFTER. Get this shirt here.

I have been pondering my navel. Or rather I would if it hadn't been consumed by my increasingly corpulent midriff. Nothing else for but to invent a T-shirt. Buy the shirt from my shop.

The rituals we observe surrounding death and dying are quite interesting. Never more so than in Hollywood. I heard on the weekend that the actor who played Scotty, the engineer in Star Trek has had some of his ashes sent into space. Hmmm. I won't ask why?; the answer seems blindingly obvious; in the words of PT Barnum "There's a sucker born every minute"...or, in this case dies every minute. Your job is to get your money out the their survivor's grief soaked wallets. Not that the rituals surrounding death have ever really made any sense. Why would Tutankhamen need to be buried with his riches (and hundreds of perfectly healthy retainers)-don't they take Egyptian Express in the afterlife? Ditto the buried army (nice blog images here ). Apparently Walt Disney was cryogenicly frozen. Uncle Walt had a checquered relationship with his animators - alternately locking them out when they struck for better pay and work conditions and dobbing them into to senator McCar...

A couple of random examples of hand-made graphics from mainstream brands that I came across this evening. I'm thinking it is more common than I at first thought.

I have noticed a trend toward hand-made artwork finding its way into advertising and design. It is an interesting trend. A rebellion against the slick, universal precision of computer graphics. I guess some of the influences are street art (graffiti, stenciling etc) and the rise of body art in recent years. I have heard a figure bandied about that 30% of North Americans have a tattoo. Major brands are getting in on the act. In the States Camel and Nike have hired the tattoo artist Scott Campbell to give their promotional material a unique character. In an odd way I wonder whether 'inking'onto the skin of a brand is anything more than stylised decoration or (in the case of Camel) being desperate to have something to 'say' in a category that has no real benefit - which reminds me of the UK campaign for a brand of cigarettes in the 80s as tough regulations began to bite: 'We can't tell you anything about Winstone cigarettes - so here's a tart leaning against a...

There is an Australian advertising consultancy called The Principals that sends out a regular email promotional link to a section of their website called ' Moving Minds '. It's one of the view things I have signed up for that I actually enjoy receiving. Check the archive out...

It's ANZAC Day. A national holiday to commemorate the battles at Gallipoli between New Zealand and Australian forces and the Turks in World War 1. It is an emotional day for many New Zealanders. We are prone to nostalgia. Though New Zealand is remote from the battlefields of Europe we considered ourselves to be the original Little Britain and 'where she went we went'. The casualties were devastating to the small New Zealand population at the time - like European countries engaged in that ridiculous conflict it had a lasting effect; wiping out some of the brightest and the best of an entire generation. Many regard Gallipoli as the moment when the colonies came of age, assuming identity and character of our own. Perhaps. The dawn parade numbers swell each year - almost in inverse numbers to the surviving servicemen of two world wars. RSA members have their annual moment of remembered glory and invoke their canon: They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shal...

Kurt Vonnegut 1922 - 2007 When the last living thing has died on account of us, how poetical it would be if Earth could say, in a voice floating up perhaps from the floor of the Grand Canyon, “It is done.” People did not like it here. -Excerpt from “ Requiem, ” a poem from Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s last book “ A man without a country ”

My jaunts into New Zealand's fantastic Northland holiday spots reminded me of a painting I made of the little house I lived in for a while in Milford, by the beach on Auckland's North Shore - on the wonderfully named Holiday Road. The house has been bowled and it has been replaced by a vulgar demi mansion so loved by the nouveau riche. So it goes.

The Magazine Publishers Association have just announced the finalists in this year's MPA Awards and Idealog is a finalist in the Magazine of the Year category and for design. Developing the idea for the mag with Martin Bell and Vincent Heeringa was an interesting experience. It was surprisingly easy to give birth to the publication because of their experience in the publishing and with them at the helm they have built up a terrific team that produce an excellent product that competes in a extraordinarily difficult category (Hint: don't try to start a new business title on paper and ink in New Zealand - especially one with a highly conceptual sell).

Maybe so, but at least Starbucks offers free wireless access in conjuction with the Telecom, so this is my office for the morning. Sure a couple of doors down there are two or three much funkier cafes but, hey, here I get comfortable chair. It is virtually empty and the music is surprisingly edgy without being the 'doof doof doof' stuff that some of the places around here prefer. I'm working on a plan to figure out how to move out of Auckland, maybe to somewhere like Waipu or the Hokianga and make my living entirely from the internet. I don't quite know how viable it will be and there are issues like children to consider but I am certain that I can work something out. The more I head out of the city on jaunts the more I envy the lifestyle of people who live in the real New Zealand. All I need is a fast web connection and an idea... Papers to mark...post modernism and pop culture...It's a hard life.

The joys of being single.

Stella Artois is one of my favourite brands. I don't like to drink it. Too aromatic and hoppy for my palate. But it has elevated mainstream, volume beer to a higher plane. Stella is the perfect invocation of the story being more important than the product. Not that the story has anything to do with overt representations of quality or tradition. Everything is implicit - or implied. The advertising is sublime (in this market at least - I think we receive the U.K. promotional materials - 'where Britain goes, we go...that's my ANZAC tribute). However, the point of this post is to tell you how much I have been enjoying reading Peter Mayle's 1993 book Expensive Habits in which he chronicles his experiences with the accoutrements of the wealthy. From hand made shoes to mistresses. In his yarn about the joys of Cashmere he begins a paragraph: "It is also reassuringly expensive. Ounce for ounce only vicuna-which comes from a family of privileged camels who live in the mount...

At a time when TVNZ are in disarray and I (for one) am confused about what they are trying to achieve I am delighted to be part of the Joost beta trial. It seems to be the way TV will be heading. My only problem is that it seems to eat my miserly Telecom Xtra bandwidth. There's a limit to the number of times a month I can keep cranking up my plan. How's that for an example of how two rusty old institutions have shown themselves unable to be nimble enough to cope with the speed of change in today's communications market. Irnoically I am reading In Praise of Slow by Carl Honore.

Here's a new tool I think you might find useful. Sign up . It's free. As I am the least organised person on the planet every little might help me. One of the things about applications like Remember the Milk that fascinate me is that they are very much an expression of Web 2.0. For a long time I wondered what people were talking about when they said Web 2.0. I felt anxious and threatened. I had only just come to terms with Web 1.0. Then I grew to enjoy it and ease into the idea that the web isn't an extension of mass media (the eyeballs mentality - we speak, you listen), but something entirely different. A gigantic dialogue. A pluralog - did I just coin a phrase? - feel free to use it). Blogging gave voice to anyone with the energy to tap out a greeting. What a Tsunami of pent up energy there seems to have been. Convergent technologies like cheap digital video and editing helped give rise to the alleged Generation 'C' . C for create (the generation that knows no ag...

One of my favourite Led Zeppelin songs is Kashmir. For years I thought Kashmir was in North Africa and not in the north of the Indian sub-continent. Singer Robert Plant said he wrote the piece in Morroco, the only place in Africa I have ever felt even slightly drawn to; an interest amplified when I read Keith Richards' biography. Morroco must have been very, very cool in the 60s/70s, a time when religion was less factional and made fraught by post 9/11 realpolitick. Dave Grey of Xplane posted a YouTube movie of a traveller's sketch book which is just downright inspirational. When I followed the link back to YT and did a same user search I found the movie above, sketches in a small Moleskin notebook, mainly of people. I love it and am inspired. Journaling is an important exercise, whether in words, or pictures - analog or digital. I have just come home from the beautiful Hokianga Harbour, where my daughter and I hung out for a couple of days. It was absolutely, insanely beautif...

I have just heard the news that the New Zealand government programme funding agency NZ OnAir has announced that, effective immediately, the scheme of revenue splitting between the producer and the agency for subsequent distribution of a work will be turned into a mirror image of itself. Instead of 75% of future earnings for a TV show being returned to NZ OnAir, leaving 25% for the producer. Now the producer will receive 75% of the future earnings. I believe this will generate a surge in revenues for the New Zealand producers, who are key players in the creative economy. The motivation of the producer to find markets and outlets will be dramatically amplified. With 'long tail' distribution outlets now important considerations (rather than mass media) there is a correspondent increase in the number of commercial opportunities. While the government agency would be unable to economically pursue deals on a micro scale, the same cannot be said of the copyright owner, especially when...

Is it any surprise that playfulness and a sense of fun are associated with creativity and innovation? Plenty of experts have said time and again that ideas and innovation rarely come from serendipity or 'the muses'. I teach this doctrine myself to my advertising class at Massey University. Great works come from work - hence magnum opus (great work), opera, operation. I have always found it to be true. Sitting in a catatonic state worrying about where my next idea was coming from generally produced nothing. The popular myth is that if you 'put junk in you get junk out' . Let's think about about that for a second (or longer if you need the extra time - it's not a competition). What is the alternative to putting junk in? Or thinking a little different, how do you know what you are putting in is junk? what is the junk metric? And what is the alternative? Acquiring facts might mean that you end up with a load of facts. When I worked as an advertising writer I would h...

Some time ago I went for a walk with a friend on Piha beach. She found an exceptionally long strand of seaweed washed up on the black sand. As we walked she dragged it along behind her. Being a creative sort she made it into a ball - a slick salty black ball of kelp (I think). I kept it but it has begun to go mouldy and, I have to say, smell bad. So, I made a quick record of it for posterity and amusement. No great meaning or significance. But isn't it funny how a small artifact can evoke pleasant memories. I suppose that is why we buy nasty little souvenirs when on holiday? The original? It had to go. It is composting in the garden. It pales by comparison to this ball, a public sculpture in Berlin ( see more Strange Statues from around the world here...)

My last two post have been a little serious. So here's one to make you smile. (From BrandDNA , always good for interesting diversions).

Here's an interesting idea. Open-source film. Stray cinema allows you to download wild footage, shot in London. You then use your editing software to mash it up, add your own narrative, music, effects etc. Then you upload your movie to the Stray Cinema site. Viewers can vote for their preferences. There is a useful links page that includes free editing software and other resources. It fascinates me that so many different interpretations and narratives can be derived from the same raw materials. Could there be something in the idea for advertisers. Shoot the raw materials, make them available to consumers, allow them to decide which is best - reward them...Not sure what kind of result you'll get but I'm sure it could be fun. Stray cinema On a more cerebral plane: another interesting talk from the TED conference (thanks to Linds Redding of The Department of Motion Graphics for the heads up). The digital revolution is over...we won! What happens after computing? TED Talks

I'm a fan of Rocketboom. In part because it is amusing. The presenter is engaging and it has a sense of playfulness and irony that I enjoy. It is also short and easy to digest. The show curates stuff from the web and presents it in the fashion of a news show, but with attitude. And whaddaya know it is informative too. I enjoyed Thursday's episode (I save them for the weekend) with its theme of logic , or more precisely logical fallacies . The clips demonstrate the ideas with surgical precision. Ok, some of them are loosely shoehorned in to a make the point, but none are entirely irrelevant. Here are the Cliff's Notes on the points made (with some bonuses) on the show - based on a book called: Reasoning with Symbolic Logic by David Kelley. Ad Hominem: Using a negative trait of a speaker as evidence that his statement is false, or his argument weak. Appeal to Majority: Using the fact that large numbers of people believe a proposition to be true, as evidence of its truth. P...

As the weather gets more winterish (hardly arctic, but you notice things in subtropical climes), I feel the need to hibernate a little. I would rather be at home with a good book than out and about. Even the books I have piled up are comfort books, essays about music and pop culture. Not contemporary stuff, nostalgic turns from old Rolling Stone editions. I've even been drawn to books about cottages - the idea of a small place nestled among some trees appeals. It is all fantasy, of course. It doesn't reflect my real life at all. Escapism. I have made a decision to attempt to lose weight. Not that I have any particular obsession with body image or anything quite so radical. A health matter really. So I am guessing comfort food will be going out the window and wine will be off the menu. The swimming pool is calling me - the only excercise I enjoy. My goal is 84 kilos from 90. It is the school holidays, the university is out and I have a week with my daughter. Thinking of heading ...

There is a new edition of Idealog on the bookstore shelves from Monday. The contents are interesting . I'm looking forward to the discussion about brand Maori and finding out what happened at Silverscreen (who provided me with two of the best after dinner advertising yarns I have - but you'll have to invite me to dinner to hear). Go get it.

Well, you asked.

Some things are so ubiquitous that you just stop noticing them. Helvetica is a typeface that is almost omnipresent. It represents modernist, calvanic utility. Well it does to me. The thing about Helvetica is that it is hard to have an opinion about it. Now you might find it harder to believe that I have no opinion about something, but in this case I think it would be like having an opinion about breathing - interesting but pointless. In the world of point sizes that point might just be a little more than stretched by the film: Helvetica . That's right, the font is now a film. I like the poster (above), who would have thought? The cast is quite a line up of characters - excuse my lame little type joke there. I'm intrigued. I want to see it. The challenge will be to take something that seems banal and make it entertaining. Mind you, I did enjoy the documentary about Frank Gehry and enjoyed the Line King documentary about Al Hershfeld...so I may actually find myself in my element....

A little ditty from the otherwise serious and always interesting Simon Law Blog

'Hacker' is a term that seems to cause a constriction of the blood vessels in most people in business and government. To them it implies that their private universe is vulnerable to attack from unseen, unknown and unexpected enemies - whose motivation to cause havoc might well be vandalism rather than malice. Others take a broader and, I have to say, more benign view of hackers. Try this definition for size: A hacker is someone who thinks outside the box. It's someone who discards conventional wisdom, and does something else instead. It's someone who looks at the edge and wonders what's beyond. It's someone who sees a set of rules and wonders what happens if you don't follow them. A hacker is someone who experiments with the limitations of systems for intellectual curiosity. Bruce Schneier - internationally renowned security technologist and author. Yesterday I was interviewed about my attitudes to being an entrepreneur and the start-ups I have been involve...

Time is the best teacher; unfortunately, it kills all its students. Then there is... The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. - Alvin Toffler Which is probably better because it is attributed. Owned words are better than anonymous.

I wrote a post - Ticked Off - about McDonald's getting the Heart Foundation Tick in Australia . Well the other day I was horrified to see an Eating Well commercial for, that's right...McDonald's. They have introduced a pasta shapes Happy Meal. And good for them. The problem is that McD's still pump tons of fries and burgers into the population. The brand stands for that, not good nutrition (well in my mind - and let's not forget 'the consumer owns the brand'). The presence of McDonald's products in Eating Well undermines the whole propositon. If I was an advertiser like Healtheries I would be unhappy being housed in the same stable. A principle isn't a principle until it costs you some money. By the way, I stopped at McDonald's on the way up North with Zoë...she likes the Pasta Zoo shapes. I am so conflicted...

It fascinates me that the interest in guerrilla marketing techniques has increased exponentially in the past few years. The kind of gimmicks that were once favoured by direct marketing agencies have become a part of the mainstream. Of course stunts that are created to surprise a relatively few consumers as they go about their business on city streets will always have a limited effect, especially on New Zealand's streets where foot traffic counts are hardly what you might expect in Times Square or Oxford Street. The trick is to generate a media buzz around the idea and be talked bout via the news. As editors wise up to the situation this gets harder and (cynical flacks) that they sometimes are featuring in a story can mean enduring a negative counterspin. Still, the ideas can be stimulating...here are a few sent to me by a colleague from BrandWorld: What do you think?

I really must get myself a digital camera - these images come from the built in camera on my lap-top. In the mean-time here's a shot from my break away in Waipu. The view from the deck, through the large rubber tree's leaves. The trees on the ridge in the distance are on the left I (if you were wondering what that smudge is). I like Waipu, it is a couple of hours from Auckland the beaches are beautiful, white sands. I preferred Uratiti to Waipu Cove because it is surrounded by conservation land rather than tacky real estate. Apparently it is also a nudist beach, but since Easter is really summer's last gasp, it was a little cool for those who prefer to let it all hang out. It has just struck me that I have two weeks without having to deliver lectures, ah the academic calendar...I could get used to it. The break will give me a chance to get on top of some of the client projects I have on the go.

I find New Zealand's observance of a partially commerce free Good Friday at odds with the idea of being a secular society. Why can't I buy groceries today? I don't share the supernatural delusions of Christians (I'm sorry, but people don't rise from the dead - unless they are not actually dead in the first place). If you choose to observe some other faith, then too bad you're stuffed too, not only is it a public holiday but shopkeepers stand to be fined if they prefer to worship Mammon instead. While I fast (haven't got a thing in the house to eat) I will read my pile of books. Thoroughly enjoying The Culture Code by Clotaire Rapaille - I 'hear' the words in an outrageous French accent, which is curious - linked to watching the video of C.R. in The Persuaders documentary featured on PBS' website. I like the simplicity of his theory. He is a fascinating fellow. Equally interested in the fact that he has patented his methodology. Surely once the...

I have commented before about the odd loneliness of blogging. Sitting at the computer writing about everything and nothing without ever really know who you talking to or where they live...it is an odd experience - but one that years of writing ads prepared me for. Often the only direct contact with members of the 'target audience' was observing them through a one way mirror in focus group situations. Tools like the Clustermap (shown above and regularly stuck down on the bottom right) offer at least some kind of feedback - as do the statisitics I get from Statcounter.com (below) But statistics aside - the feedback I enjoy most is the human contact from individuals who sometimes leave remarks. It's nice to know you're not alone. Easter is coming so, here's a little something from my inbox...

Do you ever feel as though you are in a creative slump? One of my students flat out told me that she hadn't done any work on an assignment to create a portfolio of six ad campaigns because she didn't have any ideas.'None?' I asked. 'Not one.' she replied. Curious, I asked what she had done to attempt to find some ideas. Had she looked down the back of the couch? Had she dropped a tab of acid?...or perhaps something a little more mundane like reading the brief carefully and looking for clues in the products themselves? The truth was she didn't have any ideas because she hadn't done any work. Laziness is not conducive to having ideas and certainly not useful in exploring where they might develop (too many people stop when they think they an idea that might work - but I subscribe to thought that nothing is more dangerous than an idea-if it is the only one you have). The bottom line is that creativity is work (magnum opus, opera, operation...). Forget about ...

The Campaign Brief magazine is hosting this tribute to Mo - it's Fair Dinkum....

When I worked at the coalface of advertising I had disdain for jingles. One of my favourite promos was a Christmas card by the once great Chiat Day in Los Angeles that read. ----- Bells ----- Bells ----- Bells ...we don't do jingles. But I read today that Alan Morris - the Mo in Mojo - died from cancer. He was an important (maybe definitive) figure in mapping the Australian national character. I met him at the Caxton awards one year. To say he was larger than life is like saying Australia is a little island off the coast of New Zealand. Sad news. Read the tribute from Stan Lee on his Brand DNA blog. Morris and Johnstone wrote this over twenty years ago...and it's still running today: Meadow Lea entered legend when the pair decided people were sick of hearing about the health benefits of margarines and found the only word that rhymed with "polyunsaturated" - from News.com.au Populism is at the heart of good advertising, says Alan Morris, the copywriter who as one half ...

I have an Apple MacBook Pro. I love almost everything about it. But I have a couple of niggles. Firstup: The area where my hand rests...the coating is wearing off - do I use the machine too much? Second: there is a lip in front of the spacebar that, for some reason, has a painted coating, it is becoming scratched and worn - very 70's. Not good enough on a premium priced machine. I didn't plan on saying this but there's a third: The light up keyboard that I though was a cool function is erratic. Sometimes it works, other times it flickers.

Last week I delivered a lecture to my Massey University class based on chapter 2 of David Ogilvy's 1983 book Ogilvy on Advertising - How to create advertising that sells. It had struck me that, while the references to early figures in advertising seemed quaint, the core of the conversation remained as pertinent today as they were back when Ogilvy was active. His references to the practices of 'direct marketing' could easily be updated to read 'Internet marketing' (or some other all embracing term). One of the most obvious pieces of advice that Ogilvy dispenses with curmudgeonly charm is that, when creating ads, there is no substitute for doing your homework. He talks about his disdain for the word creativity (and says it did not appear anywhere in his 18 volume set of the Oxford Dictionary). For him creativity was simply the work to be done between receiving the brief and the deadline for presenting it. I suppose that is a fair description. The term 'creativity...