DigitalAgency

Cards on the Table:

A while back I noticed that some people where kind enough to go on Twitter, to tweet nice things about me, after I gave social business workshops within companies, and one-on-one social media mentoring sessions to senior executives.

So.

1. I did screen grabs of my favourite Tweets from those people bigging me up on Twitter.
2. I imported them to Flickr.
3. I pointed Moo.com the online business card service, that prints different images on the back of individual business cards, at my Flickr set. 
4. I got a great set of 50 business cards back in 4 days, all with different recommendations from clients on them, all for under a tenner.

Find me on Google+

Social Media Week @MotherLondon.

I just dug this out from 2010 when I was lucky enough to be invited by @MotherLondon to host a series of daily events during Social Media Week, cumulating in an awesome social media quiz of the year, compared by James Brown of @SabotageTimes. I set the questions, took the shots, didn't get the t-shirt.

Honda Whoosh; Wow, Woo & Hoo:

I really like this TV spot for Honda from DraftFCB Melbourne.

(Probably because it reminds me of a flying dream I have had on and off for donkeys years. But perhaps we shouldn't delve too deeply into the content of my dreams too much ;-)

Unsurprisingly, but wisely, the idea behind the ad fits very comfortably with the 'Power of Dreams' line.

And if I can get a bit philosophical on you for a moment, (and why not? This is MY flippin' blog after all), I'd like to remind you and close with Apollinaire's wonderful quote:

“Come to the edge, he said.

They said:

We are afraid.

Come to the edge, he said.

They came.

He pushed them and they flew.”

This guy is good. But this good?

No.

(A longer more thoughtful post to come, but I'm dashing out now. While you wait though, please make yourself comfortable, and read the original FastCompany article here.)

The grande old dame & The Bearded Prophet:

I like Campaign magazine. (The weekly advertising trade paper in the UK if you don't know.) I like it a lot.

Like any old friend, it makes me laugh . (Sometimes intentionally, other times accidentally.)

On occasion I feel it can be a bit pompous, old-fashioned, bossy and indignant. (But then can't we all.)

Yet in the main, I look forward to it every week, just as much as when I was a trainee copywriter nicking into the creative director's office to half-inch that pristine, shrunk wrapped Thursday morning copy before he arrived. Creative Review too every month illicited a similarly kleptomanical streak in me. (Though I'm not too wild about the recent re-design. Typical, now I'm paying for my own copies.)

The Bearded Prophet however is no such sentimental fool.  Being an out and out digital animal he much prefers NMA. (Oh dear.) He still claims Wired to be the dogs. (Double, oh dear.) And, conversely and perversely to his print consumption, he goes on to claim that he gets 95% of his industry news today from rss feeds.

And his sandwich board comment below?

Well the story behind that is my fault. I related to the BP that it was a quote I picked up from a creative director I was trying to impress back in the days of flared trousers, tank-tops and kickers. (First time round.)

So the line; about Campaign getting two things right on the front page. The date and the price. Is alas not mine, but David Abbott's.

I was showing him my book and in the course of the conversation I asked what it was like to be front page news on Campaign, what seemed like very week. (He'd just started Abbott Mead Vickers, AMV to you youngsters of today. He and his agency were constantly in the news.)

He was/is one of the most awarded, admired and emulated copywriters in the history of British advertising. (And the US come to that, see OneShow archives.)

His work for Volvo, The Economist and Sainsbury's was/is awesome.

But he carried his greatness lightly, and as his Campaign quote testified, good humour and good nature were hallmarks of his work.

So, in a way Campaign is for me, not just a link to the past but a bridge to the future. A glance at recent copies and you'll see the way it rightly gives the appropriate amount of coverage to the ever-growing digital world as it unfolds around us and we endeavour to latch on/understand it. Yet this illustrious organ also gives a platform to a writer that preceded even David Abbott, in the shape of Jeremy Bullmore.

And whose writing is as fresh and vigorous as anything you'll read anywhere today.

Which sort of brings me I suppose to my fundamental point:

With the relentless rise of digital, we keep hearing about how traditional advertising is dead, that creativity is increasingly becoming the domain of the young, and how the older ad-fuddy-duds, have had their day.

However I think that those who claim this is a game primarily for youth of today are getting there adjectives muddled.

Digital as the domain of the young? No. The youthful? Yes.

24 HOURS WITH....

   
Midnight Back home from yet another Web 2.0 Mashuppy, BarCampy, Un-conference.

Check feeds, (web not baby’s.) Then, at last; Bed.

4.00am Quick look in on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn on way to loo.

4.30am Go back to bed, (forgot to go to loo).

7.00am Up and at ‘em. Check my LinkedIn account: 2 business leads in 3 years. This site is incredible. W00t! w00t!

7.45am Select my latest ‘ironic’ Threadless, 'DeadHead' homage T-Shirt out of wardrobe then; ‘Hi Ho, hi, ho,.it’s off to…(etc.)

9.00am Office, coffee, log onto FaceBook to see the latest 'status' of my 4,867 'friends'. I am immediately poked by someone I've never met, have a sheep thrown at me from a dustman in Vancouver, and am sent a Mojito from a bloke named Inga in Amsterdam. - Hilarious! Why aren't more clients and their staff using this essential productivity tool. (Oh? They are.)

10.10am Re-check my Twitter feed. Read 279 tweets before I find anything remotely interesting. So it's such a relief to know that a woman I've never met in Bromsgrove has just had her second lovely cup of coffee, is now writing emails, has cryptically given the answer to a question one person asked, but that every other one of her 1,123 followers weren’t privy to, and has posted a 'great' link via tinyurl that doesn't give anyone the foggiest inclination about what it might be for. Fantastic stuff! Why aren't more clients and their staff using this essential productivity tool. Amazing.

11.20am Spend 2 hours watching Seesmic p2p videos. How I love this cutting edge liberating technology. No matter that most of the content is rambling, inane, unedited nonsense shot on poor-quality, built-in laptop cameras in low light and delivered by often unwatchably shabby conversion. Decide to overlook this and tell myself; 'see the bigger picture man.' Anything goes in Web 2.0. There are no rules. Viva Che! Rock! And roll.

11.45am Now I got to log onto Qik, pronto, to see some similarly, unscripted, unedited, production-values be damned, user-generated tosh that is "revolutionising" our industry. Why, oh why, oh why, oh why aren't more clients using this essential productivity tool? Way to go cam-heads!

Noon Withdrawal symptoms. Really need to check my twitter feed again.

1.00pm Poke my PA. (Which reminds me of why I hired her in the first place.) Priceless. This is GREAT! (And how brilliant of Poke to get Mark Zuckerberg to give them so much free branding on the site. A coup!)

3.13pm Begrudgingly and enviously read Russell Davies' Column in Campaign, catch upon Iain’s latest CrackUnit posts, check-out James Cherkoff and Johnnie Moore's latest stuff, not forgetting Forrester's  Jeremiah Owyang's weekly SocialMedia digest, Steve Rubel's terrific MicroPersuasion, and of course Coffee Morn's very own Ewan. (Bookmarks all round. And make them large ones!)

3.30pm SMS myself reminder to use a lot of their insights in my next client presentation, with additional note to self to remember to forget to credit them and put my own Bearded Prophet Copyright symbol on all quotes used.

4.00pm What a day! Knackered. Curl up in a ball under my desk and wait until it’s time to go to the pub. Keep my 5G iPhone handy though. (iJailbreak, I love you.) Dream about how social media rocks and advertising is dead.

5.55pm Woken up by my Boss, the youthful, urbane, unflappable, cultured, drop-dead gorgeous Mike Coulter, founder of DigitalAgency.com He asks me into the boardroom. He fires me. He tells me I'm a non-essential, non-productive, Web 2.0 tool.

Way to go!