29th June 2015

1) (Another) great piece from @adliterate – Does Every Brand need A Purpose?

“The positive business and marketing environment now makes it easy-peasy to sell a purpose led approach to the client and through the client organisation because the trail blazers blazed the trail and now it’s supremely easy to follow. And so everybody does, regardless of whether it’s a remotely good idea or not.”

2) The Cannes Advertising Festival is upon us . Use this handy ‘Grand Prix Generator’ device to identify who will be among the winners. This is much more fun – what if Cannes celebrated the worst ads instead of the best?

3) Taylor Swift – One …. Apple Music – Nil. From the BBC, How Taylor Swift is Changing the World.

4) More evidence that those in Social Media will be future players in the world of content creation. Twitter is hiring people with ‘newsroom backgrounds’ as real-time curators and

5) Apparently we reach our academic apogee at 25. After that it is all down hill in terms of brain power…. Thankfully there are some ways you can reduce the effects of this process. Here is what it takes to change your brain patterns after age 25.

6) Working a fair bit on both sides of the Atlantic, this is something you really tend to notice; between the UK and the US – very different approaches to dental and oral aesthetics. I’m not saying there is a right and wrong here, but it is an interesting dynamic. From NY Magazine. Why is America obsessed with perfecting its teeth?

7) Apple and Google are in a race to see who can kill the App first.

8) Amazon mixes up the writing and reading game once again –What if authors were paid every time someone turns a page? I guess this could end up being what Spotify is to music, but even more granular? I touched on Amazon’s impact on the world of reading in a recent blog post here – How We Read Today.

9) The Fallen Woman. A slightly different subject from the one we normally include but well worth mentioning. The fabulous Foundling Museum is seeking funding for their autumn exhibition , which is seeking to reveal for the first time, the fascinating stories of the Victorian women who gave up their babies to the hospital. This is well worth supporting and well worth visiting, if you haven’t been. One of our favourite bands, The Unthanks, covered the hospital wonderfully, in one of their recent songs.

10) Regardless of your gender or persuasion , I defy you to find this not in the least bit stimulating – A man enthusiastically jacks up his car to Eric Prydz’s Call on Me.

… and finally, the plant that can eat 6,000 insects in an hour.