Just got out of a seminar where John Battelle was the guy on stage saying the smartest things. The rest of our team is over at the Google Sandbox or maybe looking for the Twitter Beach Lounge. Tomorrow, I scored a ticket to the Facebook reception but our client Say Media is putting on a bigger party with the hot electro dance punk band Friendly Fires.
SXSW? No. Welcome to Cannes Lions 2011 where there are as many people attending from the lands known as Silicon Valley (or Tech City) as from some actual countries.
Invasion of the Attention Snatchers
Of course, this has been going on for a while. As consumers have transformed into users, marketers must follow. As the audience’s attention has wandered far from the telly ad and deep into their iPad, agencies have added talent that know what heat mapping and usability testing mean.
Our own H&K seminar tomorrow features a creative powerhouse with an addiction factor all brands would die for. By bringing Peter Vesterbacka, the Mighty Eagle of Rovio Mobile, to the Debussy Theatre, we hope to share a little of the pixel dust that make Angry Birds such a magically success story. Please join us on 21 Tuesday at 5:30pm in Cannes or via Twitter everywhere.
I awoke this morning feeling wonderful – the weather was a bit pony, admittedly, but it was FRIDAY and I had 2 days of pseudo-freedom to look forward to before reapplying the shackles of gainful employment. Things were looking good, webmongs…and then I had an 8:30am conference call which pretty much screwed my day entirely. It’s hard to explain its effect without resorting to cheap hyperbole, so I shan’t try; suffice it to say that it was the psychological equivalent of making a series of small but well-placed papercuts between each of my toes and then taking a saline foot-bath; of flaying the skin from my bones and then rolling across the great Salt Lake Desert.
But! It’s not just about me (it is, actually, but let’s pretend). What’s been going on in the world since we last spoke? Oh, loads of stuff. Old Spice did THE BEST THING ON THE INTERNET EVER – or at least that’s what a bunch of generic media idiots think; real people, on the other hand, remained utterly oblivious to the fact that a man with his shirt off was massaging the egos of a host of people on Twitter. They also remained reluctant to purchase the frankly horrifyingly-scented product in question (though a note to all the PR/marketing gurus/ninjas/mavens (*vomits*) who are running around shouting FAIL! – let’s look at figures in a year’s time and then judge the campaign, eh? And frankly I’m sure that the fine folk at W&K will be crying into their vintage Veuve at Cannes this time next year when they’re hoovering cocaine from the tanned midriff s of teenage models whilst clutching multiple Lions of varying hues).
I was away. Now I am back. Try and contain your joy (I know it’s hard, but for Christ’s sakes show some backbone, will you?).
So when we last spoke I was about to go on holiday here – unfortunately, I ended up somewhere that looks a lot more like here. It all went to tits, webmongs, and frankly it’s still a bit raw and painful. Suffice it to say that I will not be buying the US Department of Homeland Security a Christmas card this year.
Oh, who am I trying to kid? I totally failed to go on holiday and spent a week slumped in front of the (really, really mediocre) football, dulling my frontal lobes with drink and drugs in an attempt to numb the pain as big salty tears trickled down my cheeks. England could well jam their way to winning the World Cup, forcing me to emigrate. The weather may be nice, but I’m a wageslave officemonkey who’s chained to his desk for hours at a time so I can’t enjoy it. And I’m obviously not at Glastonbury. Modern Life Is Rubbish, and so is the blog this week. Suck it up.
LOOK AT THE WEATHER! IT’S AMAZING! For the three of you who read this who aren’t in London, feel free to look at your own weather and marvel; everyone else, grab a Cornetto (or other iced treat of your choice – Web Curios does not represent any ice cream manufacturers as yet, but is happy to enter into sponsorship negotiations with anyone who’s interested. Haagen Dazs, for preference) and settle in for this week’s roundup of good stuff made by people far more talented than me (and in all probablity you too – stop looking smug).
It’s been a bit of a truncated week, this one, what with the Bank Holiday and then being in Geneva all day Tuesday (they’re still advertising this watch at the airport, by the way – who in the name of Christ actually buys this crap?), so this Web Curios is going to be pretty light on anything related to my actual job. Like you care. Frankly I couldn’t really care less either – I’m going on holiday next week (to New York, seeing as none of you asked – anyone with tips of anything to see or do feel free to tweet them to me or leave them in the comments below), and am basically just killing time and pretending to look busy til then (NOTE TO MY PAYMASTERS – THIS IS OBVIOUSLY NOT TRUE, I AM DISPLAYING MY USUAL STAKHANOVITE DEDICATION). Which means that Web Curios will be absent for a week or so. Deal with it, and enjoy this week’s fix.
To get the party started, we are inviting bloggers, media peeps and agency friends to our place to raise a glass of rosé together in toast to the creative spirit. If you follow Cannes, do join us on Wednesday 9 June from 6:00ish – 9:00pm. DM me or email Poppy to request an invite. We’ll have a bit of food, lots of drink and a perhaps a fun debate on why the week is still titled just ‘Advertising’ Festival.
Webmongs! In a show of MASSIVE DEFIANCE I am today saying XXXX XXX (use your nous and creativity to establish exactly which expletive I am masking behind those cunning Xs) to my workload and instead channeling all my energies into bringing you some stuff off the web. You hear that, The Man? YOU HEAR THAT???? Eh? Oh.
Strangely enough, The Man’s ambivalence to my defiance is pretty analogue to my feelings about the new toy for grown-ups which has been launched today (as an aside, may I just quote the ever-wonderful Saul Williams here and reference the conspiracy-theorists’ anti-Apple belief…”no one seems to recognize the symbols come to life / The bitten apple on the screen, and Jesus had a wife…”…JUST SAYING, is all) – for a full, unexpurgated viewpoint click here (WARNING – BAD WORDS).
For those of you, though, who are fully intending to line Steve Jobs’ pockets even further and sit about stroking your new i-pets to the appreciative breathy moans of your i-onanist colleagues, can I suggest that you all get the Scrabble app, which is the best thing I’ve yet seen on the iPad. Apart, actually, from a demo of the Telegraph’s forthcoming app, which looks very shiny indeed (it won’t actually make reading the news any better, but it will make it prettier – and that’s what counts, eh? I despair, I really do).
Anyway, enough bitter misanthropy. Or maybe not; we’ll see how we go.
It’s Spring. Even in London, where it seems the lion doesn’t ever give way to the lamb. Which is an added reason I am so psyched to be going to the Cannes Lions Festival next month.
Winning a Lion is the holy grail of the annual crusade to Cannes. But creatives and clients alike flock to selected seminars in order to bring back some useful inspiration in addition to rosé colored memories.
For the H&K seminar, we wanted to contribute something that would literally get the delegates up off their seats. So we invited Charlie Todd, founder of Improv Everywhere to help us get interactive IRL. His work has inspired me (and many others) for years. It will be even more amazing to be a part of it.
Are you going to Cannes? We need your help. Please rsvp to our event on Facebook, follow me or H&K on Twitter, or simply show up on Tuesday 22 June at 11am in Debussy where Charlie will prep us for action.
Like any social application that gets better and better the more people use it, our mission in Cannes will need all our friends to make it huge. Having the biggest concentration of creative extroverts in the world mashed up with Charlie’s inventive direction is guaranteed to produce some fun.
For now, here’s a couple of Improv Everywhere classics to hold us until June.
With a cosmic bit of serendipity, my first trip to this holy ground was last year when H&K brought Biz Stone to our seminar. We held the first ever Tweetup at Cannes. Biz answered live tweets from the audience and how he describes Twitter is worth reviewing. Here are a couple of clips but the whole seminar is on our YouTube channel. Enjoy and stay tuned as we start to talk about what adventures this year’s seminar will bring.
You! Yes, you! Welcome, once again (presuming that you’ve been here before – if you’ve stumbled across this whilst searching for pornography then I apologise in advance for the lack of nudity but offer you a sincere first-timers’ welcome) to Web Curios.
God, that was a desperately poor intro. Sorry. What can I say? It’s Friday afternoon, and I’ve spent the entire week feeling a bit hungover under the weather. Not to mention the impact on my mood that this has had. It’s hard sometimes being a webmong (as you will well know). Nonetheless, I am putting my personal feelings of exhaustion and ennui to one side to bring you another selection of stuff I found online this week that one or two of you could conceivably find moderately interesting.
(It should be apparent by now that I am not a salesman).
We begin, this week, with a video – If you do nothing else here this week, watch this. It’s 5 minutes long, and is by far and away the best description I have yet seen of how virality works. Ignore the scaremongering undertones, and just think about how the meme below spreads. Oh, and for the non-geeks among you, a quick explanation of what 4chan is – you know all the stuff that features on those lists of the ‘biggest viral sensations EVER’? Stuff like RickRolling, the Numa Numa kid, Chocolate Rain and YouTube Porn Day? They all start at 4chan (WARNING – that link is direct to 4chan; the landing page is safe but I take no responsibility for what you might find beyond that (clue: porn and swearing)). It’s…just mental, really. Anyway, the video….
Oh Nestle… – Other ’social media gurus/mavens/experts/(insert meaningless title of your choice)’ will do this at length over the next few hours / days, but it doesn’t take a genius to work out that the tone of Nestle’s reponses to comments on their Facebook page probably didn’t do them any favours… Of course, as my esteemed colleague Dan Leach pointed out, it could all be very clever work by Greenpeace…
Twitter Announces @anywhere – Ok, so what this is (massively simplified) is Twitter’s next step in terms of integrating itself with other, 3rd party websites. The TechCrunch piece linked to in the title is a decent overview (and this is a shorter one)- what it doesn’t seemingly touch on, though, is the potential implications for the development of a ‘universal’ online identity. Could this be a first step into the creation of a one login / username culture, integrated across all platforms? The BBC’s announcement yesterday of greater integration with both Facebook and Twitter would suggest it could be…Oh, and at the same time Twitter also declared that it wanted to be ‘A Force For Good’. Isn’t that nice? And…er…haven’t we heard that before somewhere?
I WANT THIS TABLE IN OUR OFFICES. IN THE UNLIKELY EVENT THAT SOMEONE IMPORTANT IS READING THIS, CAN YOU MAKE IT HAPPEN PLEASE? THANKS.
What a magazine on the iPad might look like- Women’s digital magazine Viv put together this shiny demo, showcasing how their content might work on an iPad. My first thoughts? Content for people who really enjoyed Sin Citybut who don’t actually like reading very much.
Skittles for Valentine’s Day – Part of the ongoing trend in giving people real-life (cool) stuff in exchange for engagement with brands on social media (see also the Marmarati)
And, to finish (I know, I know, tldr), this week’s video selection:
1)Losers – ‘Flush’ feat Riz MC & Envy: Great track, great video and Envy is set to be huge this year (obviously if she isn’t then I never said that)
2) I went to see this lot on Tuesday. Great gig, though I did actually cause someone to leave the venue towards the end. In the unlikely event that you ever read this: sorry, Annoying Pair of Girls, but you were really getting on my tits:
3) The Internet of Things: how the planet is developing a central nervous system. 5 minutes of frankly insane futurology here from IBM:
4) Finally, a music video of near-Gaga levels of insanity. WHY THE SELLOTAPE???
