19th December 2020

From NYT. The Year In Pictures. ‘Certain years are so eventful they are regarded as pivotal in history, years when wars and slavery ended and deep generational fissures burst into the open — 1865, 1945 and 1968 among them. The year 2020 will certainly join this list. It will long be remembered and studied as a time when more than 1.5 million people globally died during a pandemic, racial unrest gripped the world, and democracy itself faced extraordinary tests.’ (reg may be necessary)

Little Black Book’s visual and video anatomy of 2020. ‘The scramble towards the end of 2020 is nearly over, so LBB takes a momentary breather to look back over the creative and production trends that no one was expecting back in January.’ 

From Planning Dirty. The Cogs of Marketing Effectiveness. ‘It is hard to grasp how all marketing metrics work together, the analogy of a wheel of cogs came to mind to explain the relationship between the different measurement elements. Some metrics you can move straight away but the big cogs will take more time to see change. The following is an explanation of the different cogs and how they all relate.’ And..also from Planning Dirty, here is a deck that provides scientific proof for Communications Planning.

The Year on TikTok: ‘Brands that inspired us.‘

A couple of decks from last week’s Most Contagious conference. 3 key themes from the two day event were – Embracing discomfort : The root of brand bravery; Having belief in your idea and product; and the pro’s and cons of brand activism. With specific reference to the travel and tourism sector – Travel Revolution looked at ‘5 ways technology will be a booster shot to revive travel’.

My piece with the Just Breathe Project this week – The Mindful Tourist.

From Thai Health and BBDO Bangkok. Covidman is funny but with a serious message about a different kind of pandemic (1’51”).

Tree.fm lets you listen in on forests around the world, at random. Escape, relax & preserve. 

Jumpei Mitsui, the youngest-ever Lego Certified Professional, has created a Lego version of Hokusai’s iconic woodblock print, The Great Wave off Kanagawa. The Great Wave is perhaps the most recognisable (and most covered) Japanese artwork in the world. Mitsui’s Lego rendering is composed of 50,000 pieces and took 400 hours to build.

Great fun. Create your own opera inspired song with Blob Opera – no music skills required. A machine learning experiment by David Li in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture.