ThoughtSpurs

Like so many others I am mourning the passing of Paul Newman. I love this clip from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. When you are in an impossible position would you you give up or take a risky option? Here in New Zealand we call it Hobson's Choice, between a rock and a hard place. He was a handsome devil, made great ranch dressing and some good films. He contributed 250 million US dollars to charity from the sales of his products - I'm sure he lost nothing for having done so. Honour a great life… Try to be better tomorrow.

I'm pretty excited. No, not becasue Rachel Hunter has launched a signature range at the budget retailer The Warehouse (hmm, not sure about the ad Rach, weird accent bad synching). No, this Sunday on the Documentary Channel is the film about almost forgotten kiwi motorcycling legend Kim Newcombe. Kim Newcombe (January 2, 1944 - August 14, 1973), was a Grand Prix motorcycle road racer from New Zealand. He competed in the 500cc Grand Prix World Championship finishing second to Phil Read in the 1973 season. Born in the town of Nelson, Newcombe grew up in Auckland, then moved to Australia (first Brisbane, then Melbourne) in 1963, and subsequently moved to Europe in 1968. Along with fellow racer, John Dodd, he developed a motorcycle using a two-stroke boat outboard engine designed by Dieter König. He and the König were the first to challenge the dominance of the MV Agustas after the departure of Honda from Grand Prix competition at the end of the 1967 season. In contrast to his main comp...

Working in an office with no walls isn't so bad. Unless you want to hear yourself think. I'm not sure what it is about 'open-plan' but somewhere along the way , someone decided it would be grand idea to jam as many people as is humanly possible into a barn-like space and snigger at them from the hermetically sealed comfort of their corner office. Actually where I work isn't so bad. At least I have a wall I can stare at when the relentlessly picturesque view of the viaduct harbour gets me down. And, in truth there are no corner offices we are all in the same boat, or barn or whichever metaphor you prefer to describe the battery takes your fancy. Unfortunately we don't have wireless in the office (I don't know why not, but that is how it is) so I can't annex the deck outside. In any case the bright sunshine would make viewing the laptop screen more difficult than it is worth. My real issue is that I am so easily distracted by the conversations of others th...

Nike have a long history of innovative advertising that has contributed to the building of an uberbrand, one that has embedded itself in the psyche of the a vast percentage of the world's populations. It has got to the point where they can pretty well say whatever they want and consumers will accept their message, however weird. Not that it's a bad thing. I like this commercial, not only because it is different but also because I can relate to the idea that the parts of your body seem, in some way, independent of you. I often know that my legs can keep going but my legs have a different point of view. They have come a long way from selling home-made waffle sole shoes from the boot of a car at track meets. The Nike.com site continues to be a cutting edge showcase for interactive technologies and storytelling.

"Thinking flexible, acting flexible… context over dogma." BMW guy in the video. Ponder that. I'll come back to it. Seems an important theme to pursue. "A foolish consisitency is the hobgoblin of little minds." RW Emerson.

I was just watching the Robert Scoble video at Fast Company , discussing using SMS with google to make queries. The interesting thing is the economy and utility of the short format messaging. SMS only allows for 140 characters. Doesn't sound like much, does it? Having worked in advertising all of my working life I guess I'm not phased by the necessity for brevity. It costs a lot for media time - so 30 second commercials are the most common format. In 30 seconds the most words you can choose is approximately 75. That's a pretty densely worded ad. Because TV is a visual medium and humans receive most of our useful data through our eyes there is an argument for being a little more economical with the spoken word. Personally I think you should also avoid relying on titles or supers, but that's another story and some of my colleagues would probably differ in their views. The 140 character format translates to Twitter, the social media microblogging tool (you can see my Twitt...

For some it's Jane Austen, Bukowski or Kundera. For me it's a kind of random wave of books about business, culture, the arts… pretty much anything. Here is what I have on the go at the moment: The Age of Enchantment - Beardsley, Dulac and their Contemporaries 1890-1930 I have a thing about illustration. When I was a kid at high school I made a poster for the annual school production - a play called 'As Long As They're Happy'. I made an image that was a complete rip-off of an Aubrey Beardlsey image - Salome or something. It was a triumph of teenage angst over imitative graphic style. I over-estimated Glenfield College's appetite for Art Nouveau. Brokeback Mountain I got this cheap from the Whitcoulls bookstore's trestle table clearance in the local mall. Five bucks for a collection of stories by Annie Proulx is the bargain of the year. She is one of the best writers I have ever encountered. I soaked up Accordion Crimes and The Shipping News. The over-merchand...

Following the Orange train of thought I came across this commercial. And blow me down if it doesn't look like it was shot in New Zealand. The Auckland War Memorial Museum provides the columnade. Toi To grass is unmistakeable and the bungalow is anytown Aotearoa. Ah... the future - those were the days.

I am working on the libretto for a new stage show. Not sure why no one has thought of this before: Coronation Street the Musical. It's sort of Peter Grimes meets,…well Coronation Street. Ena Sharples has a fantastic baritone role and Ashley is the Soprano. Actually I haven't seen an episode of Coronation street since Annie Walker owned the Rover's Return. I guess I was traumatised by it as a child. Hilda Ogden reminded me of my mother. Don't tell my mother. I think it was the hair rollers. Of course for some readers the cultural phenomenon that is Coronation Street is probably as baffling to you as if I were to be writing haiku in Zulu. It is a praticularly British COmmonwealth phenomenon. The Romans had the Pax to hold the empire together. The British had a grimy street in the North of England. As one of the top rating shows on New Zealand Television it is heavily promoted n TV One, so I am exposed to a substantial volume of channel promotion for the show. I must say i...

OurNZ seems to be a couple of likely lads from Aotearoa who are documenting glimpses of the kiwi way of life. Their web site has a good-natured tone that is very authentic (if levened with heavy doses of beer advertising/student humour). I hope it keeps going - a contemporary Country Calendar. Check out the glimpses of Fashion Week as viewed from Eketahuna . Via SpareRoom

Advertising lives in the short-form world. Because mass media is so expensive the 30 second commercial is conventional and because there is so much clutter simplified signals are essential to 'cut through'. One form of communication short-hand used as a default is the stereotype - "A stereotype can be a conventional and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image, based on the assumption that there are attributes that members of the "other group" have in common. Stereotypes are sometimes formed by a previous illusory correlation, a false association between two variables that are loosely correlated if correlated at all. Though generally viewed as negative perceptions, stereotypes may be either positive or negative in tone." In the 1950's and 60's when men dominated advertising stereotypical impressions of women as inferior or subservient were not only commonplace but usual. It was normal to show women as housekeepers, largely because most wer...

I'm not telling you this because it is any kind of revelation or insight, but because it is a plain and simple truth. Boys are different to girls. Today my daughter and I headed South of Auckland city to experience a little outlet shopping mayhem at the Dressmart complex. It has grown since the last time I was there. First we found some sushi, it pays not to shop on an empty stomach. You will need the energy to battle the crowds intent on locating and securing their bargains. Ultimately we found a little store specialising in outfits for tweens. Zoë is such a skinny little thing that it is difficult to find things that fit. Skirts and shorts, supposedly designed for her age group fall comically to the floor when she lets go of the waist-band. Unlike her brother, now 16, when I send Zoë off to the fitting rooms to check whether styles and sizes are a happening thing I wonder if the large hadron collider had, indeed created a black hole and Z had been sucked into it. She takes her ti...

Television has undergone something of a rennaissance, by comparison to the quality of movies. The Sopranoa, Mad Men, Weeds, 24, Six Feet Under and the like are imaginative, finely observed and compelling in a way that Will Farrell movies and endless superhero, comicbook reworkings are not. If you reading nothing else this weekend check out James Woolcott's commentary on the topic over on the Vanity Fair website . Looking forward to seeing: "In AMC’s disturbingly funny and darkly absurdist Breaking Bad , Bryan Cranston, the wacky dad in Malcolm in the Middle , is Walter White, a chemistry teacher with cancer who turns to meth production in order to provide for his family after his approaching death, racing the clock against his own inner rot. He’s an Arthur Miller Everyman transplanted into a sunstruck no-man’s-land in a show that whips along with the laconic fury of Alex Cox’s Repo Man ." and: "And although I haven’t screened it yet, Shirley MacLaine is starring in a...

I went for a trundle in the car this morning to Matakana, just north of Auckland with Zoe, my daughter. We skipped fencing club this morning. The big Z is feeling discouraged because she is smaller than the other girls in the class and the boys her size are a little confused by the whole point of the exercise - a little too much Jedi knight/light sabre action happening there. The weather was perfect - for the first time in weeks. Zoe and I had had a contretemps the day before. The mood today was like a clear day, figuratively, after a storm. She is reading the first Trixie Beldon book and described the chapters she had read (since last night) in great and elaborate detail. The book seems to contain a character who sucks poison from a wound inflicted by a copperhead. I guessed it was a snake variety and ventured that hypothesis. 'Of course it's a snake…what else could it be?' 'Well, it could be a nail.' 'what, like a fingernail.' 'No, like a hammerin'...

I am glad to see the controversial Toyota RAV 4 commercial has returned to the airwaves. I love it, classic, old school advertising, the likes of which is rarely seen these days. Reminds me of the Danny de Vito directed War of the Roses. Maybe there is just too much piety in advertising today, guided by post-modern louche irony and political correctness.

A new version of the Uniqlock - the nicest way of selling T-Shirts in the world. You have to check it out. Hypnotic. Tripnotic.

Ok, so…I don't want you to have the impression that I am obsessive about the state of the Nation. I'm not. I write my bog in between all the same mundus that you endure. But I have interests and desires that are fickle, sometimes base or frivolous - the things that prove my humanity. I confess to a certain grumpy-ness these past few weeks. But I find pleasure in the bleak foment of life in simple things: my children, music, swimming, hope. Same as you, with inevitable variation. I just watched this again. It always lifts my spirits. That's what culture does, whether it is country music (love it - sometimes) or contemporary (ditto) - or a shakespeare chorus ("oh for a muse of fire that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention…") or a rambling verse from Sam Hunt (gave a colleague a copy of the Kiwi Bard's latest anthology as a birthday gift and suffered post-partum depression straight-away). So, ladies and gentlemen, without further ado…the Penguin Cafe ...

Been there. Better now. Gnarls Barkley - "Who's Gonna Save My Soul?" Finely observed.

A regular reader has suggested my post have become a little 'dark'. I suppose the politics filling the media is so distrbing I have felt the need to comment. So, deep breath…Here are some interesting design blogs i thought you might find useful: LuxuryCulture A Daily Dose of Architecture Desire to Inspire Treehugger BLDGBLog CoolBoom ReModelista The Style Files Dezeen You like?

I often feel nostalgic for a car I used to own - a BMW 3.0 csi. It was the 1975 model, the last year it was produced. These big, beautiful coupes were sensational. Mine was a stick shift. It uttered the most sensation howl from its 3 litre, six cylinder powerplant. At the time I lived in the country, not far from Auckland city and loved the ride home. And, yes, it would reach close to the 150 mile per hour mark (I assume there is a statute of limitations?) So, combining my love of art and BMW 3.0 coupes from the era before sound deadening and the padded luxury for the rich ponce market kicked in, here is a redux of the Frank Stella car that I waxed (lyrically) about before . I would own another in a Nürburgring moment.

Last year I developed a brand concept for a client who specializes in professional training. It's live now . The interesting thing about the project was the willingness of the client to adopt the brand name SuperStar. It is a training programme for top sales people. Superstar will contract to train individuals from one organization in a category. My recommendation was to avoid selling the secret recipe to competitors. How can you gain a strategic advantage over rivals if you are all behaving the same way, using the same tools and, effectively canceling each other out - what is the point? I also have an issue with cookie cutter business degrees. Singing from the same hymnal means the opportunity to strike shock and awe into the hearts of competitors is homogenized. I recommend you get in touch with Martin Fenwick and see if he'll accept you into the program. It's time for some Asymmetric Warfare .

The voice of American movie trailers has died. What a terrific example of a One & Only brand. Immediately recognizable even though he was endlessly imitated. There are some sad ironies at the end of this clip.