Ten Stories We Have Enjoyed This Week

27th May 2019

‘Hey you! Look at this sleek piece of branding. This is an ad for a direct-to-consumer product. Now, you’re going to look at it, and at no point will you fully understand what is going on…’ This is an ad targeted at millennials…. 

From Adweek. How AI will change the insights you’ll get from social media. A 3-Minute cheat sheet on the future of social media intelligence. Download the ebook here.

‘For 57 years, D&AD has stimulated and celebrated creative excellence in commercial creativity. Symbolising all of this is the iconic D&AD Pencil. For those who achieve one, it is career-defining’. Here are this year’s winners.

The Importance of Diffusion. ‘Networks rule our world. From the chemical reaction pathways inside a cell, to the web of relationships in an ecosystem, to the trade and political networks that shape the course of history.’ This essay is interactive, there are sliders to pull, buttons to push, and things that dance around on the screen.

This week saw the return of Google Firestarters. This session was based around seven rapid-fire provocations on the theme (subtitled ‘The Magnificent Seven’) of Ever-Changing
Marketing. 

‘Think of the world as a series of transactions and interactions. Transactions are mechanistic. Interactions are organic. Transactions are the way of the industrial era, interactions the way of the Digital era. They are scalable, repeatable. ‘Being on Facebook is not the same as being in the pub. Uber isn’t the same as phoning up the local taxi firm. Amazon isn’t like going into a great local market.’ That’s because all of these businesses are converting interactions into transactions.

A couple of nice pieces from @faris. ‘Advertisers want your attention, but how do they know they have it? Drawing attention to advertising powers the likes of Google and Facebook – but in the digital age, measuring it remains shockingly fuzzy.’ and… this piece looks at the corrosive impact of the concept of storytelling, on the assessment of advertising effectiveness – Of Fictions and Funnels.

Punchy and pithy Scott Galloway video piece on Amazon – ‘Well, there’s been a culling of the herd, because the old and the weak have been taken out by this opportunistic infection called Amazon’. SG starts at 1’46” in. 

Always interesting to see some stats from Statista. Here are charts – showing the most visited museums in the world; and the % of words spoken by men in Game Of Thrones – season eight was the highest so far, at 78%. Think a good chunk of this was down to Tyrion warbling on…

Still with #GOTR – here, apparently, is the real reason fans hated the last season of Game of Thrones. ”It’s not just bad storytelling—it’s because the storytelling style changed from sociological to psychological.’

A little unsettling, but ultimately charming Vimeo Pick Of The Week – The Coldest Race On Earth. ‘Always Last’, embarks on an adventurous marathon through the ice cold landscape of Lapland. But she soon discovers that the run is not going to be a straight line between start and finish. Finally, it is not about winning or losing. The risk is losing yourself.(A seven minute animated short.)

‘Count Cesare Mattei was not technically a king, but he was the king of his own castle in Italy’s Northern Apennines. The inventor of a homeopathic treatment for pain using the physical energy of plants, Count Mattei began building Rocchetta Mattei on a scenic hilltop in 1850 and didn’t step foot outside the castle for the last 20 years of his life.’

Video Of The Week

30th November 2019

Oh dear…Armour glass’ windows on new Tesla Cybertruck shatter during demonstration (and Elon Musk’s net worth plunges $768m in a day)

 

Life Clubs ‘Host Of The Week’ – Jo Henwood

This piece courtesy of Nina Grunfeld of Life Clubs

Grab a mug of your favourite tea, settle into your favourite chair and take some time to think about you…

… and meet another wonderful human being –

‘Hey Jo’,

Jo is a wonderful laugher. I love it… She laughs all the time – loudly and contagiously – and so Jo seemed a perfect Life Clubs host to introduce you too in the week of the International Day of Happiness. Jo runs the club in Leatherhead and really hopes you’ll join her or tell all your friends about her (if they live near Leatherhead, that is). Anyone will get a warm and wonderful welcome.

We asked Jo a few questions so that you could get to know her better. Also Jo’s next workshop is on April 4th in the evening, kick-starting our Eliminating Problems month.

1. What would your perfect holiday be?
I have 3 teenage boys who get on really well together, and aren’t yet much interested in girls or parties so are still happy to come on holiday with their Mum and Dad. So holidays, even days out, with the family are my top favourite.

I also have an amazing group of close friends nicknamed ‘The Squad’ and we go away together for birthday celebrations and any other excuse we can find. Always very fun happy days with those guys.

2. What type of music do you like?
I love high energy, happy, dance-y music. I was a big clubber in my youth and, if I can muster the energy, I am now and again these days as well, although I tend to wear trainers otherwise my feet hurt! I love Ibiza chill music and Hed Kandi dance music and artists like Alexander O’Neal and Daft Punk.

3. What type of books do you like to read?
I always remember Daniel Pink saying you know what you really want to do for work if you look at what you do and read in your spare time. In my corporate role I always read books about spirituality, psychology and behavioural economics. Now that I work for myself – and Life Clubs – I am able to activate these learnings in my work. I am currently reading Brendan Burchard’s book High Performance Habits where he shares his lessons on coaching senior executives.

4. What is your favourite sport?
With a house full of men and boys there is sport showing most of the time on the TV or radio. My husband does a lot of work with destinations in the US so we are layering American sports on top of the British ones. Two of my sons play rugby and football and I watch them play as much as I can.

I am a regular at the gym preferring (no surprises) the dance type classes. I am also a member at the local tennis club and play when I can. Cardio tennis is a relatively new activity that is really fun and reminds me of school PE lessons where you have to line up a lot – but in this case we are allowed to chat.

5. One thing we should know about you?
I also own and play the bongos and have a fine selection of percussion instruments which go back to my clubbing days when I went out with a percussionist who both taught me to play, and who I accompanied on stage at times when we used to duet – he played the Congas and I played the bongos.

Thank you, Jo.

If you’re an entrepreneur, a wannabe entrepreneur or a freelancer, book now for an incredible day workshop, Full Steam Ahead, to be run on Saturday 28th April by Sarah Thornton.

Luxembourg is still hosting our Building Better Habits workshop this weekend – book your train now…, otherwise we’ve moved into our April calendar and Eliminating Problems workshop.

Our very best wishes for a great week from Annie, Damaris, Ingrid, Jean Michel, Jo, Katharine, Louisa, Natanje, Sarah and me.

Really looking forward to seeing you soon.

Nina

Ten Stories We Have Enjoyed This Week

28th July 2017

So Jeff Bezos is now the richest man in the world. I love this before/after image showing how Jeff has changed, physically, over time in a remarkable example of #digitaltransformation. With all the positive talk around Amazon, according to TechCrunch, they wouldn’t be making any money if it wasn’t for AWS (Amazon Web Services).

Concerned about issues of immigration? According to this piece from @wired everyone on Earth is a migrant. We are all ‘extragalactic immigrants’ made up of matter from other galaxies.

Still up in the Heavens, this real world ‘Space Opera’ lets you become the Hubble telescope

I took a trip down memory lane recently when I attended a talk, by Information is Beautiful founder David McCandless, at the The Royal Institution. I vividly recall visiting on a school trip and watching a scientist drop grapes into liquid nitrogen and then smash them with a hammer. This time round David entertained a full amphitheatre with his latest take on infographics and data journalism.

Here is a rather wonderful recent TED talk from the very charming and inspiring Steve Chapman (friend of the Filter). Well worth  a watch. ‘This talk isn’t very good, dancing with my inner critic.’ 

From Adweek. During every minute on the Internet (an infographic).

I wouldn’t agree with this all of this, but this is an interesting perspective nevertheless. From the Outline – ‘Twitter is Dying.’ ‘Twitter announced its earnings for Q2 Thursday morning and said that it has 328 million users. Problem is, that’s exactly the same number the social media platform reported for total users last quarter, Meaning that it added exactly… zero people. None of this is good news for Twitter. But maybe it is good news for… people. As a platform it is increasingly seen as a gathering place for Nazi sympathisers and used as a daily megaphone for political rants.‘

‘Why we need more useless knowledge’, by Beth Comstock. ‘Turns out that’s not how innovation really works. We need to be relentless, and keep our eye on the competition, but there also needs to be give and take between exploring for fun and exploring to find a leg up. Theory and application, art and science, work and play, don’t have set boundaries.

BBH Labs on connections between consumers and brands. ‘Don’t worry so much about what they’ll think about you when they do. Worry more about them thinking of you at all. What’s love got to do with it?’

Have you seen Dunkirk? What did you think about Hans Zimmer’s powerful soundtrack? Here’s an interesting video piece from Digg on how, in sections of the film, the sound seems to be continually increasing (along with ever greater impact on the audience) when in fact this is not the case. Apparently it’s all down to the use of an auditory illusion called a Shepard Tone. 

Video Of The Week

21st September 2018

A short film about an introvert and how his time alone makes him a better friend. In collaboration with Alain de Botton for The School Of Life.