Hill+Knowlton Strategies

“Seasons of mist and mellow fruitfulness; close bosom friend of the maturing sun…” – or that’s what Keats said. Personally speaking, I think Keats can do one, as can September and Autumn in general. Everything smells of wet dog and regret, it’s cold and miserable and it’s now just the long, slow trudge towards another season of crass mass-consumerism and endless, interminable, incomprehensible perfume adverts (NB – anyone who works in advertising who reads this, please feel free to explain to me why perfume advertising is so oblique, as I have literally no idea).

Think, then, of this edition of Web Curios as the lightbox to your SAD, the plaster to your axewound (for future reference, an unpleasant conjunction of words to Google), the United Nations to your genocide. I’m here to help. To that end, here are some recommendations for awesome stuff you can do in London over the next few months (NB – that last link is one of the best things I’ve seen in years, very much recommended. Oh, and for an interesting take on Libya, you could do worse than read this). In the real world! NOT ON THE INTERNET! Crazy but true.

But for now it’s still all about the internet. Well, on this particular blog it is, anyway. If you don’t like it, you know what you can do (though I’d prefer it if you didn’t; I’m needy, and low-to-moderate traffic figures are all that’s standing between me and a P45).

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Guess who’s back? NO, IT IS NOT EMINEM! IT IS ME! (Though in fairness our level of musical / performing talent is comparable) Stop gawping at the back – I AM NOT DEAD! I wish that there was some sort of exciting reason for Web Curios’ long absence – an enthralling, Willy Fog-esque journey, an unexpected temporary career change, an unforeseen visit to chokey…but no, nothing so thrilling. Like Schrodinger’s Cat, Web Curios’ existence was momentarily uncertain – but now I am most definitely here. I think.

Anyway, there’s a lot to catch up on. Some people’s phones got hacked and everyone got VERY ANGRY; the most powerful man in the world turned 50; my new favourite rapper released a mixtape; I went to Boston and saw none of it (but did get to fly business class and thus received a pair of complimentary pyjamas – THANKS VIRGIN –  which was well worth the £3,000 that the flights apparently cost); oh, God, loads of things.

None of that matters, though. What does matter is that you immediately click on this link and donate money to stop people dying of starvation in Somalia. Thanks.

Frankly nothing that you’re going to read from hereon in matters one iota compared to the above, but it’s probably going to be marginally more cheering. Read on, and make your Friday afternoon of wageslavery marginally less soul-crushingly worthless than it might otherwise be.

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I had an opening riff all worked out for this week, webmongs, but that was before I saw this amazing news story. Poor the confused,  sweaty-palmed masturbators! That aside, though, it’s been a relatively uneventful 4-day week, apart from the British press redeeming itself slightly for Gareth Barry John Terry Ryan Giggs-gate by actually doing some proper investigative journalism – which, inevitably, led to literally nothing changing whatsoever in the no-way-at-all-corrupt HQ of world football; and perhaps from the best story likely to appear in print anywhere in the world in 2011. Oh, and if you were traumatised by goats as a child (and let’s be honest, which of us hasn’t been) then THIS IS YOUR MONTH.

The rest of you, though, for whom it is NOT your month, will simply have to content yourselves with the following collection of webthings. Apart from The Man – for it is always his month.

Alice Was A Lot Less Innocent Than Is Often Presumed

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Contrary to what you may have feared, I AM NOT DEAD! Put away your wreaths, unveil your faces and break out the bunting, for Web Curios is BACK (I just tried doing a Google Image search for Web Curios – beautifully, several of the initial results are pictures of The Man. Hello, The Man!). Admittedly it’s only back for a week, as I am on HOLIDAY next Friday, but frankly you should be grateful for whatever you’re given at this stage.

In my absence, webmongs, I have seen things of which you can only dream. I have seen Slough and a Tesco’s so large that approaching it is like that opening bit in the first Star Wars film with the massive spaceship that goes on and on and on and (Slough FACT: there’s a pun in Slough town centre called the Wernham Hogg, named after the fictional company in The Office (which was of course set in Slough); I can’t work out whether this is a brilliant piece of self-satirisation or actually one of the saddest things ever, though I know which way I intuitively lean). I have been to Barcelona on a stag party, accompanied (amongst others) by a charming man known as ‘Big Sam’ who was recently cleared of common assault after breaking a man’s jaw on the fotball pitch (needless to say Big Sam and I didn’t really have much in common), where I danced to techno like a teenager and was thrown out of a nightclub (I came back in again 5 minutes later though).  Oh, and I’ve done work as well, some of it actually not that bad.

Obviously, though, this is all utterly immaterial in the face of the world’s continued descent into what appears to be total chaos. Better people than me have written at length about everything that’s been going on over the past month (and worse people – check out this spectacular piece of ad placement from last week’s Metro), but can I suggest that you perhaps donate some money to the relief effort in Japan? Or if you prefer music, maybe buy tickets for this? Oh, and if you’re interested in the geopolitical upheaval sweeping the Middle East and its potential implications for China you could do worse than read this piece by Francis Fukuyama in the Wall Street Journal this week (don’t get smug, though, Franky – you were still totally wrong about the END OF HISTORY thing). Or, if you prefer your commentary a little more raw, there are few people more on the money about conflict than The War Nerd.

Oh, and one last thing before I wang on about the internet and cats and stuff. I was reminded this week about the way in which Facebook is used as a tribute site when people die, particularly in the case of the young. This is, of course, perfectly fine. As someone who relatively recently had to administer the page of someone young who died, though, can I please point out that WHAT YOU WRITE MATTERS. I don’t mean to come across as stuffy (HEAVEN FORFEND) but I’m not entirely convinced that the term ‘RIP’ benefits from an exclamation mark (hey, kids, punctuation changes emphasis. You idiots) or indeed that a sad smiley is an adequate response to death. Just saying, like.

Ahem. Oh, and one last thing – Web Curios this week contains no Rebecca Black whatsoever. You can thank me in the comments.

One of a series of posters designed to commemorate the Fukushima earthquake. Click for more.

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Happy Friday everyone.
Well you can thank the lovely Matt Muir for this post – he sent me the new Audi 8 ad, by Venables Bell & Partners to review.   A fairy tale world of ‘goodnight’ to greed, flash, unnecessary, old-fashioned living (+ your Mercedes – how very cheeky!) And ‘good morning’ to Audi, innovation and inspiration.  So here it is in all its glory. I’m not sure whether it will air in the UK.

To quote SJP in Sex in the City…”it got me thinking.”

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Update: The people have been heard. Gap returns to old logo

What’s a brand to do when a parody is more creative than the real thing? I can’t help but feel sorry for the PR people at Gap Towers this week. The scurrying is palatable even 6000 miles away. Thrown into a mess they probably had no hand in creating. Forced to watch on the fancy online buzz monitors as this User Generated Critique of their silly logo redesign bounces to mainstream media.

Do you ignore? Embrace ‘the conversation’? Respond? Crowd source! Oh noz. Has nobody noticed it is the professional design community who are the loudest logo haters? Hey, maybe the whole thing was a stunt?? Did someone in marketing demand ‘a viral‘???

Well this certainly showed the dark side of user generated content spreading in record Internet time. And it is this cyber speed that captivates me. As well as the quality of the snark.

Like @BPGlobalPR before it, the secret to the success of @GapLogo is creativity. Witty, informed, in touch with the times. Clever, fresh, fun. Add your own adjective below. Alas, the logo itself is none of these. Perhaps inspirational — if inspiring ridicule was a KPI.

Make Your Own Gap Logo by @jamesjyu is a LOL piece of code. Gapify by @joeippolito plays the joke a different way. But the mashup below is my favorite. (I’d feel sorry for the Apple PRs too, except they are miles above caring — bless them.)

Can a company Parody Proof their brand? I wish they could for my clients’ sake. But I doubt it.

ps: Lots of logos here for next time

I have been doing a lot of thinking about the attributes and skills of a Community Manager. Mostly on behalf of clients, but in truth I also use my own experiences being on the team here at H&K managing Twitter and other social spaces. I’m the one who likes to play with visualization tools. Just trying Mentionmap but can’t get it to embed on the blog correctly. So click here to see what it looks like for HK_London today.

When the bees die, we all die. Well, about five years afterwards according to people who know… which is slightly worrying as it turns out the bees are dying and the decline started in 2006.

This is not a honey bee, it's an ice-cream ad

Still, setting aside the impending global disaster, I like what Haagen-Dazs are doing about it. I have fond memories of their classic ‘ice-cream = sex’ ads from the 90s but this is more of a foray into Ben & Jerry’s territory. Makes perfect sense as an issue for them and the activity from trying to come up with serious, meaningful solutions to on-pack promotion and activating consumer support is nicely done. The way forward for social marketing.

That's a honey bee

Personally I’m more of a Ben & Jerry’s girl, originally converted by Chunky Monkey. Top three flavours: Phish Food, the alltime classic of Chubby Hubby and frozen yogurt, Cherry Garcia … although Fairly Nuts is now a contender.

Fill in your own punchline.

Never in living memory has there been so much conversation about communication. Marketing and Technology both had plenty of industry conferences in the past. Since they’ve mashed up, it feels like we are all now in the event business. Speaking, attending, following. *Exhausting*. You can even track the trends just by watching the new titles roll out from professional event companies like Haymarket and DMG.

Always on hashtags
But there is a lovely twist to this all you can eat symposium smorgasbord. Several of the more grassrootsy events are true communities rather than trade shows. More Burning Man, than ad:tech.
For most events, the hashtag comes and goes. Twitter search won’t pull up tweets more than a few days old. With serial events like #media140, #140conf, and the aptly named #LikeMinds, the hashtag is always fresh. Not only are they based on a series of conferences, they have meetups, tweetups, and lots of @ing in-between. It’s lovely.

Active attendees
Private, participatory events, like WPP’s Stream, share this belief that the community makes the unconference. Mega events, like the ever more popular SXSW,  take it to the people via their Panel Picker. While SXSW is not until March, the blogosphere is alive with buzz right now as we all canvas for votes from our peers. Me too. More on that next post.

With luck I will see y’all in Texas, but it could be equally inspiring to meetup right here.

Finding the emotional connection… that link between the issue and the individual that inspires change and commitment to change… is key in communications. It’s always been the challenge when we talk about the environment. It seems so much easier to get that personal connection when you’re talking about children or disease.

Climate change started out with the polar bears. Over time, the focus has shifted as communicators decided that the issue was too big for us to get motivated by and we needed to focus on practical bite-sized chunks – bring in energy efficiency. Recently the trend has been to focus on the practical motivation – the ’saving money’ message associated with saving energy. No problem with that (and for some it’s the most effective motivator) and I absolutely agree that we need to save energy but it’s not exactly hearts and minds is it? 

Polar bear

Oxfam’s campaign clearly connects climate change with its human cost, calling it ‘first and foremost a human story.’ But why isn’t the cost to nature itself enough for us to do something about it? 

I’m about to wildly paraphrase Alberto Villoldo, an inspirational man (I hope my paraphrasing is not too wild and stays true to the original). In Western culture, we see Nature and the Earth as being here to serve us. Add the forced exodus from the Garden of Eden and we have a pretty messed up relationship with Nature and the Earth. In contrast, other cultures see our role as humans to be stewards and help take care of the Earth, rather than use and abuse it for our own purposes. All of which makes me wonder… is that why we struggle in finding the emotional connection that we need to when making the environment a hearts and minds issue? Does the way that we think about Nature need to change before we can really change our behaviour?