Widgets on blogs can be fun, even interesting at times, but in truth generally dull within minutes of discovery. The Uniglo dancing girls I did think was really funny, until I couldn't get the bugger to stop its music loop playing! ooh and slowing the load times on this blog didn't really help either, still fun while it lasted. There is an interesting bit on e-consultancy HERE about photo sites booming as a result of blog widgets.
metaphor of the day.
'..Working in Marketing is like out running a rain cloud. Slightly pointless but satisfying to be successful..'
Today started with the BBC saying showers were coming and a dark cloud sat above our house...but its a sticky 20c and full wet weather motorcycle gear is very hot. So to give Monday a lively start I put on summer body armour (lots of padding held together by mesh, water proof as tissue paper) and drove like a nutter into central London to 'ta da' successfully out run a rain cloud. Pointless but fun. - or rather a way of avoided the obvious concerns regarding car bombs masquerading as minicabs
Top day out
In a rather charming reversal of the traditional agency entertaining client masquerading as sales pitch. 
Our new client invited us to a day at the cricket in his box. Ebullient entertainment followed. All in all it was quite an experience (oh and Surrey won)
Links for a footloose Monday
A whole bunch of research for a tourist authority we are designing a new web portal for has resulted in a range of rather interesting found links.
Great picture viewer here = letstakepictures
Top navigation and cool music = Konspiracy
Great illustrations = Overmode
Nice menu and navigation = Leitwerk
Clever design company = Upwithg
Another design/web cleverness = Soleilnoir.net
Bunch of rather smart creatives who work at the above = Creaktif
Good info, articles and links = lastickerie
Small but perfectly formed site (its about Burmese cooking) = Hsaba
Finally an almost Last.fm, MTV.com type cross over = musicmesh
Silly but rather fun
If you take a look down the left hand side bar you will see a rather fun little clock/video graphic thing. A promo blog widject clock or 'uniqlock' from the Japanese discount retailer brand Uniglo. A rather sweet bit of subtle brand 
advertising that may burn bright for a few months across the blogs of the world. A very neat interface has been designed including a bit of sales promotion to win a watch. Good idea of the day
Red Bull have a great charity idea running at the moment. For £10 you can sponsor a F1 car at the British Grand Prix.
Well in truth your tenner does only buy a 20mm square but considering Vodafone paid $40 Million to put there logo on the Ferrari its not bad value. See results of my attempt HERE. The web site by Less Rain is pretty good with some sparkling copy. www.facesforcharity.com
Moving around
Kia is a car brand that promises 'The power to surprise' . The Kia Carnival I've just spent a couple of weeks with has made me wonder if there is not a mould breaking campaign hidden within. The current Kia brand advertising has always appeared to me to massively over promise what is after all simple cheap cars for non-petrolheads. Even with such high(!) expectations of the brand I was still massively disappointed when handed the keys, 
(It did have an F1 team sticker which was sort of neat) more really because the Kia engineers had obviously spent ages fitting in extra cup holders and handbag clips, double sets of aircon controls etc, but had singularly failed to spend any time on the steering (vague in the extreme) or brakes (soft to the point of non-existent) But after a cavalcade of sub-TopGear criticism I did start to think maybe I had got it all wrong and it wasn't supposed to be a Renault Espace substitute (thanks Hertz) but was simple 'a way of moving around' not a car brand after all. The brand promise for the Carnival of 'pleasure of life' may also be taken another way. Its not about the drive more the fact your going some where better (when you get out the car). The Kia brand could be the antichrist to the god of BMW. 
The Kia brand could speak of travel, moving around and how great an advantage mobility is. The fact it involves poorly assembled wafer thin steel and oceans of grey plastic are kind of by the by. Its a brand for people who want to move around but don't like the idea of cars, sort of like a bus you drive yourself. Kia. We are Transport.
Last day
Yippee, last day before I decamp to northern Spain for two weeks. 
How can this not be a good day? London is looking great, the city shimmered in sunlight this morning as I blasted over Waterloo Bridge. Plus a creatively challenging set of meetings awaits. Kicking off with final discussions between client, media owner and us about the epic online music project we have planned for the autumn. Lunchtime and its a conference call with the airline, we have a new campaign that everyone seems chuffed with, plus a bunch of new online ideas and potentially a shoot in NY to sort. The day rounds off in Soho House discussing lingerie, - now tell me how is this not going to be good?
Two for one
Weird week, two new clients seeking help, spookily linked by theme. Client one: A leading cosmetic surgery clinic looking to sharpen its brand positioning and overhaul its identity. Client two: A real top end lingerie brand looking for an eye catching new ad campaign. I really can't help thinking there's a joint promotion in there somewhere.
Banner ads as branding
We have been discussing the changing role of banners and sky scrapers recently. Click thro'' rates are so low at present the old purpose of a banner ad to generate clicks appears out dated. Question is what are they for? Well rather a lot of debate about there value as branding tools. Subconsciously building a warm feeling about a brand via repeated but not insistent viewings. This was all a hunch really in conjunction with Genna at AW Media, until Kevin sent me this great article "The Mere Exposure Effect" by Xiang Fang a professor at Oklahoma State University. In it he talks about evaluative judgements and perceptual fluency. Press release about it HERE. Very interesting to consider when looking at the true value of online brand spend. John Timmer at Ars Technica also covered it.
A Good day Ahead
Brand London looked tip top this morning. Bright sunshine while roaring across Waterloo bridge and down into the Kingsway tunnel (via a cheeky blast up the inside of a bending bus) Wow the clients are going to get good service today! I feel fine.
The 7th Floor
For awhile now I have been acting as Creative Director to a company called The 7th Floor, part of my role has been to sort out a new positioning and online presence. An intriguing sub-plot has been finding that there are simply loads of other agencies called The 7th Floor, not to mention film makers, bands, trendsetters, bloggers even a porn site. So in celebration of everyone works, lives, performs or posts on the 7th Floor we've set up a blog. allthe7thfloors.com (not live yet) a sort of federation of 7th floorer's.There is also the beginnings of a flickr set HEREUpdate on 2007-05-21 09:57 by Philip
All The 7th Floors is now up and running! yippee. It has also been pointed out the Ukrainian site we described as soft porn is in fact Black & White stylish photography, just happens to only feature naked women. We also missed out a number of flooring contractors with offices on 7th Floor's including a tiling trade event
It seems like ages
Sort of been doing a million things and not got round to writing a post for weeks. There are a load of things I'd like to write about, too much really so as a half way house and a way of getting to bed at a reasonable time tonight here is a list of things I may or may not write in the coming week to catch up. (in no order whatsoever)
1. Odd brainstorm style pitch for beer brand, gutted to be unsuccessful, winning agency's blog HERE
2. Dove poster campaign that looks spookily like the Uswitch TV spots
3. Our own TV spot coming unstuck at the BACC, air date now late summer
4. Iris's inspiration event/pub crawl that ended in cocktails with Andy from Manumission.
5. Still not using or talking about Twitter.
6. Easter; Children and chocolate in Woolworths versus the story of the crucifixion
7. MCCA Best Awards presented by Dave Gorman. A big night in so many ways, DG's bespoke act about marketing was inspired
8. Ireland's APMC awards, very glam evening in a fab venue, exuberant hospitality
9. Fish getting her work into a gallery in The Burlington Arcade and (finally) launching her web site
10. Moving from a Sony Errisson to a Blackberry Pearl and getting it to sync with a Mac -just. This post by Matt Haughey on the subject got 183 comments!
Size (and speed) matters
We are whizzing a whole bunch of massive photographic files to and from the States at present. Its the first time I've regularly used web file transfer services and am mighty impressed by both snapdrive and dropboks. Snapdrive appears the more pro' service (100m files, upto 50 GB storage) but has an ugly looking interface designed around the ubiquitous Google Ad serves. Snapdrive currently have a member get member offer to win extra capacity (10GB per), which is a pretty good deal all in all. Drop Boks (1GB) is all together nicer looking as they've skipped ads in favour of a request for a $3 donation.
On the subject of online file storage etc. There is a fantastic debate ranging (lifehack amongst others) over desktop Vs online applications and use. basically a privacy and control versus convenience and portability. I can the see the advantages of both sides if I was organised enough a data key and a web cafe does look appealing BUT I like the randomness of paper/books and a laptop. The whole issue of privacy and access I'll cover later, as I want to ponder that more. But an added bonus of staying in an office is I can regulate my caffeine intake (we're 7 floors above street level, and i'm still avoiding the lift)
Lets talk
I attended the new MCCA creative directors forum tonight. A great discussion rather than the expected soap boxing. Just goes to show the new openness we're pushing on our clients does actually work for ourselves. By the way it goes without 
saying that 90% turned up wearing black (me included for a change) also as Nick was hosting it, a supremely stylish room was provided. Marketing 2.1 is about blended disciplines, fluid teams and passionate people giving brands a voice. Part of this is sharing experiences to better our industry. Scott at the MCCA deserves a lot of credit for bringing us all together.
Job done
Six days of shooting in airports and on board planes has come to an end. It was all in all great fun and an experience in how long your body can keep going on caffeine, stress and large doses of airline food. We did however learn some interesting things.
1. American immigration is still two hours of misery, fast lane included. -and the British habit of trying to lighten the mood with a joke when you do finally get to the front of the queue REALLY REALLY does not work.
2. Soldiers in desert storm camo' in JFK got our attention
3. The public face of American security looks water tight, including 'close' body searches, however it needn't get in the way of some damn fine photography.
4. London Stansted security was a whole different ball game. They weren't even on high alert, Everyone was very charming, just very very keen at there jobs. One even told me as an ex-prison officer he knew hiding places I could never dream of -nice.
5. We're all kids at heart. First thing we do when given the run of a 767? yup. go sit in the cockpit.
Update on 2007-04-02 22:54 by Philip
Forgot to say we also learnt that even the calmest photographers crack in the end.
Shooting the blog
This is a live post from the laptop (being used as a prop) in a shot we are currently doing at London Stansted airport.
Great media buying
Fantastic bit of media placement in JFK, You can imagine the Grey Goose creatives having come up with the ice wall back
ground thinking ooh no don't Chivas use that graphic device? well yes, but no ones ever going to see them side by side, are they?
Doing your expenses
Best found item of the trip so far. Pinned on a noticed board in an office, a bunch of receipts awaiting attention, including this one from a gas station, I draw your attention to the volume of fuel delivered 12,000 litres!! that's alot of Nectar points.Shooting at JFK
Having a whole a bunch of fun negotiating security issues 
while taking pictures in the terminals at JFK airport. Before 9/11 a press pass and a smile would get you just about anywhere in an airport but for obvious reasons its a whole lot harder now. My chief feeling is being in New York but NOT, Kinda like standing outside a shut bar. as the picture shows.
Update on 2007-03-28 21:13 by Philip
The above is the vanilla version of actually a hugely entertaining time because while security is as tight as a gnats chuff, there are ways and means to achieve what you need and a whole load of very accommodating JFK staff put themselves out of there way to aid our progress. Its just for legal reasons even on a blog I've been told I can never say how we got the shots we did.