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...