Get Shouty

Fionn from DGM gave a comprehensive and totally accessible presentation at the Bootcamp last week on SEM.

Who knew that effectiveness modelling could be funny?

The term that resonated with me was : Return On Ego.

The context here was making sure that you compartmentalize business decisions in the online space between those that are founded on KPI’s and those that make the Brand team feel good.

I love the concept of being able to analyse the sexy but a bit vapid vs the perhaps a little dull but efficient.

Hot!

Update: Had to share this quote from Philippe over on Sean’s Craphammer site

About ego, always remember the wise words of Baba Ram Dass (a friend of Timothy Leary): “The Ego is an exquisite instrument. Enjoy it, use it–just don’t get lost in it.”

These images are from the Thank You Project, which is truely lovely in it’s sentiment and almost equally as awful in it’s visual and experience design.

 This online exhibition collects and displays thousands of thankyou notes and images. You can browse the gallery (this is cool! check out the Mum messages, or the great teacher messages, or just thanks to the universe messages) or create a thankyou for someone you know.

Like this:

I’m presenting at the  interactive boot camp over the next couple of weeks, the first one on Wednesday,  and have been tasked with giving a bit of a 101: “How to plan great interactive media campaigns”.

My process is this, used to create ‘digital connections’  between consumers and brands:

It’s a continuation of my thoughts on Loveocracy and another post  and some bouncing back and forward with Sean and Gavin.

The centre of the diagram is brought to life with this kind of voice over: 

“digital connections opportunities present themselves when we look for an overlap between the Brand Position and Consumer Interests, what Position unites the two and what Promise can be tactically expressed?  Aiming to be inside this area makes great sense.  It’s the point at which all the vectors unite”

I surround this with robust research (insights), consumer experience design (context) and evaluation modelling (building actionable intelligence) processes.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and get your examples on great interactive media planning.

After I’ve finished the bootcamp I’ll compile it all together and post the presentation for all to share.

Can you make a difference with out coins?

Ripple is a new project that has found a cunning way of  edirecting internet advertising profits to charity.

These clever kids – Melbourne’s Robin Hoods of IT if you will – also have a search bar on Ripple (with down loadable toolbar) which is powered by Google.

This directs revenue to the website for every search run. Click a little here, a little there, run all your searches from it, and all the while you’re donating money to charity. The price of benevolence has never been so low.
 

David Armano’s latest post Blogs Are Free Samples of Your Brand has an interesting, call to action: Stop calling yourself a blogger.

“Blogging is a commodity.  Anyone can do it.  We are human beings with passions and interests that come out in our blogs—not the other way around.  Stop calling yourself a blogger.  You are a… (designer, businessperson, marketer, artist, baker, mother, grandfather, etc).  Calling ourselves bloggers takes away from what makes us unique.”

An article in the New York Times, Sex, Drugs and Updating Your Blog  puts forward that the term might be Artist 2.0:

“It’s possible to see these online trends as Darwinian pressures that will inevitably produce a new breed — call it an Artist 2.0 — and mark the end of the artist as a sensitive, bohemian soul who shuns the spotlight… being a musician is rather like being a business manager, memoirist and group therapist rolled into one, with a politician’s thick hide to boot. “

Joseph Jaffe has a posted a video from his Australian visit, Content + Context, which brings to life Adam Curry’s claim that in 5 years time 50% of all content will be consumer generated.

That’s quite a trend. With over 75 million blogs there are a lot of people who are doing it, a lot of people expressing themselves. Not all of it will be good, sure. But is it vital to define people who create content? Are they artists? Are they bloggers or vloggers or podfathers? Do you define the nature of expression ,or the nature of the person, by the materials used? Just because people had access to pencils, it didn’t make everyone a writer.

Isn’t it more important for people to define themselves? Isn’t this Creation Age all about self definition and self expression?

I believe that the hand of an artisan is shaped by their tools. Sergovia’s hands were undoubtedly those of a classical guitarist, I have a film producer friend that could organise a colony on Mars in two weeks and I can spot a network engineer at ten paces.

I am blogger.

Fundamentally, the resistance I have in turning away from allegiance to the medium is the notion that building something, expressing something (for someone else) is somehow more valid than creating it (for yourself).

I’d have to disagree.

With great respect David: blogging is unique. It’s solitude and time to think in very good company. It provides structure and discipline to create and it provides feedback and authority to just born thought.

Oh, and loads of stuff to Get Shouty about too….

Hanging out at the Water Bar, originally uploaded by josephjaffe.

I believe I was talking about brand minxy-ness here.

The guy to my right has obviously never heard anything like it.

Nice one: GetGoodKarma.org!

Today, most countries, and the world as a whole, are running ecological deficits. The world’s ecological deficit is equal to its ecological overshoot.

While countries can offset ecological deficits through trade or liquidation of national resources, the global ecological deficit cannot be offset through trade. In 2003, humanity’s Footprint exceeded the Earth’s biological capacity by over 25 percent.

Very bad karma.

NEWS Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch has announced a dramatic shake-up to make all the company’s businesses carbon neutral within the next four years, to combat the “clear, catastrophic threats” posed by climate change.  

“We must transform the way we use energy … this is about changing the DNA of our business.”

News Corp has joined the Climate Group of businesses and governments working to combat the effects of climate change.

Mr Murdoch said the greatest impact the company could have was through inspiring its audiences to reduce their own climate impact. “The climate change problem will not be solved without mass participation by the general public in countries around the globe. Our audience’s carbon footprint is 10,000 times bigger than ours … that’s the carbon footprint we want to conquer”

I love the idea of transformation and inspiration.

Change your energy DNA: calculate your carbon footprint here, here or here.

Explore ways to become carbon neutral here and here.

As many of you know CK, who has passion and almost undefeatable energy for the blogging community, has suffered a terrible loss quite recently.

I’m a big believer that your greatest legacy is the light and energy you leave behind and in your ability to make the world a better, warmer place than when you found it. CK is such a gift to us all and the stories that she has generously shared about her Mom leave me in no doubt that Sandra burns brightly still.

To honor both CK and her Mom, a group of her supporters and fans have put together this Web site to collect donations for Habitat for Humanity in Sandra’s name.

Click on the image above or the “Tip Jar” on the right to donate.

Thanks to David, Drew, Gavin, Mack, Ann, Roger, Cam and Lewis for driving this initiative.

I do love having clever friends.

I was lucky enough to catch up with the lovely Helen after her book tour of the States. The subject of her latest book is one of my favourite designers Florence Broadhurst. This ‘Australian’ designer had an amazing capacity to reinvent herself and her biography encapsulates some of my favourite things about her- great design,  never letting the truth get in the way of a great story and a woman far ahead of her time.

Helen O’Neill describes her quest: 

“Researching Florence Broadhurst’s life was a roller coaster. She led a series of lives in different countries, musing different names and inventing different histories for each. Getting to the bottom of her life – and the genesis of her extraordinary designs – involved approaching everybody from the titled wives of former prime ministers to convicted criminals. The result is a story that has to be read to be believed.”

You can buy it here or here. If you’re in Australia you can buy it here or here.

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Joseph Jaffe was in town this week. He dropped his balls (you had to be there), fought some dinosaurs (hooray!) and held court in his self depreciating chap-tastic fashion.  Interested and interesting wins in my book,  and he has had double servings of both for breakfast.

It was quite an experience to watch him skillfully acknowledging the old school resists to his message, while still challenging the assumptions and prompting innovation testing.

It seems that marketers do want to do something different and join the conversation. Unsurprisingly they don’t want to spend their budgets on projects that might not get results. 

What they want to do most is create the old sales spike. Not a long term brand building proposition sure, but when the average tenure of a CMO is 23.2 months there doesn’t seem to be much incentive to create long term value.

Evaluation modelling is really the key here- which combination of the digital channels, or as Jaffe would say, which of the 93 crayons can you use to create the best picture for your brand?

I’m a maths fiend. I love how you can make numbers dance and tell a story and there’s a creativity to crafting a series of premises that a financially driven board can follow. I’m looking forward to new metrics on a brand by brand basis beyond TARPS and CPM.

The only figure worth a damn is TWB (time with brand). You win if people choose to hang out with you and you loose if they ignore you. Thanks for the juice Mr Jaffe!

Thanks XKCD for the pic.

Thanks also to Paul for last name vigilance.

Single Origin Roasters is a story of four friends who have fab hospitality, fair trade coffee and a roasting machine from Turkey called Boris. Their website almost as beautiful as their customer service.

I’m a huge fan. You can see the cafe from my office window and the neighbourhood is blessed by the smell of the beans being roasted to perfection. It’s also the home of our weekly Sydney Coffee Morning. One morning it was a little chilly and not only did the guys get the outdoor heaters going for me- Gavin even gave me his jacket to wear. Lovely!

Single Origin are coffee fanatics, but they won’t go near even the creamiest ristretto if it isn’t “Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance, Organic or Forest Friendly”. As part of the sack celebrations, Costa Rican coffee farmer Guillermo Vargas will be on hand to chat, HG Nelson will commentate and the utterly fabulous Fair Trade Ambassador Kylie Kwong will be there amongst live music, giveaways and a sack-style ‘Jackass’.
 
SINGLE ORIGIN ROASTERS
60-64 RESERVOIR ST, SURRY HILLS

WHEN:WEDNESDAY MAY 9, 4PM-6PM
HOW MUCH: FREE, JUST RSVP INFO@SINGLEORIGIN.COM.AU

Thanks to TwoThousand.

The Akina team is delightful.

They have lovingly crafted a hand bound book of twisted tales called Fairytale Villains.

Each of these books is handmade to order. You might like to do so here.