Ontario Unlimited

The Globe and Mail reports that TBWA the agency which created the completely inept Toronto Unlimited campaign has been selected to do the same pathetic job for the province of Ontario. Wow it's a really fucking crazy world out there.

But it's easy to understand, think of it as a merry-go-round. You have a group of individuals riding who a part of this little group or circle. They call upon each for help and might even switch horses but it all goes on within this small group of friends. On the outside you have on lookers hoping to get on the ride, commenting that I could ride that horse better. Many on the outside without a doubt can do a better job but you're not on the ride asshole so just shut the fuck up. I suggest someone nuke the ride. What a sad display from the parties involved.

From the Globe and Mail:

An expert on branding from the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto said the mayor broke one of the cardinal rules of marketing by not standing behind his own product, "killing" the $4-million campaign.

"To be spending $4-million out of one hand and then on the other hand to be saying that it's an embarrassment and indefensible, boy that speaks to me as a shocking waste of money," David Dunne said.

But Prof. Dunne said the province made a smart move in selecting the same marketing firm as Toronto even though "David Miller seems to be doing his best to kill [Toronto Unlimited]."

This guy is an expert on branding and a professor too? Now I really understand it, the morons are teaching the morons, then they hire each other. Lets see the campaign is a total embarrassment and this guy believes it's a smart move in selecting the same firm to maintain the consistent stupidity right across the province. The mayors own product? The mayor didn't produce the campaign he might of been convinced buy the so called experts but he has more intelligence then some shit head from the Rottenhead School of Management.

Is it just me thinking that it takes 4 years of higher education to become really stupid.

To Serve and Beat

Today a Toronto police officer was charged with assault for an incident in 2003. Fellow officers packed the courtroom to support their fellow criminal. What is scary about this incident is that if a tourists video had not been discovered the man that was assaulted would be the one with a criminal record today. If they want to lock you up they can, we're the police who they going to believe.

This is not new for the Toronto Police, the CBC did an indepth story last year, Toronto Police: Corrupt Cops

Condom Ads

Link via Boing Boing

Daniel Pink Speaks

I have not purchased Daniel Pink's book A Whole New Mind but if you want a good summary of his ideas listen to his presentation. Two thumbs up and worth your time!

2 Minutes of Silence

After the first bombings in London the city of Toronto officials had all subway trains stop and observe 2 minutes of silence the morning after. Bizarre I thought. What about all the IRA bombings in the past, we didn't have any 2 minutes of silence or how about the bombings in Israel or the daily bombings in Iraq. Aren't innocent people dying.

If you really want to observe 2 minutes of silence it should be for Jean Charles de Menezes a 27 year old Brazilian who was shot by plainclothes police in London. He too was innocent.

Sage Words

The Rise of Design

The latest issue of Business Week about innovation/creativity in business and previous issues of Fast Company are a good indication that the value of design is rising in the business community. But has the value of designers risen? Are they more involved in overall decisions and pulled into the boardroom, are salaries rising to indicate this true value? I have no evidence to indicate that this is true just because of few magazines are covering this topic.

I doubt you shall change the minds of individuals so quickly. How do I change the mind of a 50yr old with a business education who acted as if I had been released from prison for the rape and murder of two girls when I mentioned my background as a designer. Actually this man was also computer illiterate, had been in the same line of work all his life, not very good at it and not too bright. You can't, we can just hope these people quickly leave the workforce and stop hindering business. Businesses are the ones which ultimately lose out with this type of thinking.

If you tell business people that design is powerful almost challenging their genuflecting MBA degrees conflict arises. It's not designers doing the talking about design but business types since they need to control the discussion and will never relinquish much control to axe murders.

Marketing Translation Mistakes

Ever had a "Vandpik" in the morning? Probably if you're a guy but it's not a good name for a Waterpik in Danish.

Logo Trends

I don't like the word trends also since a logo usually sticks around for sometime with occasional refinements in between. LogoLounge has put together trends for 2005.

Architecture on Crack

Design proposal for railyards on the West Side of Manhattan story at Veritas et Venustas. Are these the same people doing the Freedom Tower. I shall call this period of architecture "what you can design with a pirated version of AutoCad"

MurMur Toronto

Around the city of Toronto green ears have been sprouting on poles. Its the murmur project, On each sign there is number you call with your cell phone and you hear a story about the building in front of you or about people who lived there told by Torontonians.

College matters... sometimes

College matters... sometimes post over at Creating Passionate Users is very interesting and so are the great comments. I highly recommend you read it.

I just have one thing to say about it all, HR departments and HR education must change if they want to find those diamonds in the rough, everything else around is changing why not this?

Design and Business

"Really, what we're doing as designers is, ultimately, and inevitably, designing the business of the companies that we're working for. Whether you like it or not, the more innovative you try to be, the more you are going to affect the business and the business model." -Tim Brown, CEO Ideo

Harry Potter the new marketing bible

If you need a good reason to read Harry Potter then Stephen Brown a professor of marketing might have some reasons:

"The basic argument is that Rowling, far from being hijacked by the marketing sorcerers who have exploited her innocence, is actually something of a marketing professor herself, even if she has never had a day's academic education in the subject. She has created Harry Potter using branding techniques and the books themselves are full of brilliantly invented brands, corporate strategies, advertising campaigns and every element of the marketing mix. In effect, they make a textbook case for marketing." more

Now if someone could tell me which Harry Potter book I should read first.

Competing Mediums

The other evening I watched presentations made at Idea City ‘04 on television. Every year Idea City hosts some interesting people to present interesting ideas, "meeting of minds".

One presenter focused on how valuable an individuals time has become. He brought up the topic of newspapers and specifically USA Today which in the 1980’s had redesigned their newspaper. The design had a lot of pictures, graphs, colour and small tidbits of news which could easily be read. The point he made was that newspapers were fighting television so in order to compete with them they surrendered and made their publication look like printed television. What happened to USA Today was that readership went downhill. On the other hand newspapers like the Globe and Mail made their publication as simple as possibly, just mainly text. The Globes readership went up after this redesign.

A few weeks ago someone leaves me a message asking why I had not renewed my subscription to their magazine and if I could call Mr. X at the following number to explain why. Yeah right I was going to do that, waste my time for people who don’t value mine and all for what? I’ve cancelled subscriptions to magazines before and was curious why they even called, did they have a lot of people who cancelled also. When I subscribed to this magazine, actually is was a newspaper who called itself a magazine. This publication focused on marketing and was very simple in design, all text very few images and almost no advertisements. Then they announced they were redesigning the magazine. They new design was now printed like any other glossy magazine, no more newsprint. But the new design made things difficult to read, lots of graphics and advertisements. Can you guess who they were competing against? Their competition was the internet and all the pages in the magazine now began to resemble a bunch of web sites. They too had surrendered to the internet. But what really turned me off was the content. After reading a few articles I began to feel insulted, bull shit was their new strategy. This was a publication I looked to for insightful and intelligent opinions about marketing, this too had changed. Don’t compete with mediums compete with content.

Also I don’t think it’s a very good idea to insult yours readers then call them to find out why you cancelled your subscription when your mag is a big waste of time.

Toronto Unlimited is Limited

The city of Toronto recently spent millions of dollars in trying to create a new brand image for itself. Now that the campaigns have been launched the reviews are coming in:

"Mayor David Miller has pronounced the Toronto Unlimited campaign 'indefensible' and 'an embarrassment."
"Martin Goldfarb says the Toronto Unlimited campaign fails on virtually every level. The logo isn't memorable. The slogan is meaningless. And worst of all, it makes no promise."

I have not seen the campaign but viewed some logos on the Toronto Unlimited site which in my opinion are rudimentary and uninspiring. The first thing that indicated that this was not going to work was the tagline "Toronto Unlimited". When the mayor said those words I thought the city was setting up a new division or company for who knows what. The question to ask, do great cities need an advertising campaign? Do people visit Rome, Paris or decided to spend the weekend in Las Vegas because of a brilliant ad campaign. Can marketers sucker people in to visit a not so great city or read a book? The city itself is the ad campaign and people visiting become ambassadors who rally together to spread the message. You should visit....!

Crazy about Harry Potter

This quote from the Financial Times:

"...So is the whole phenomenon nothing more than a triumph of marketing? Would that it were so, for then you could sell anything.

But although a lot of clever marketing has gone into the Harry Potter brand - the decision to use Joanne Rowling's initials instead of her first name to avoid putting off boy readers, the secrecy over the plots, the midnight launches - children do not read long works of fiction and recommend them to friends because they have been suckered by the marketers. They do it because they enjoy them." more

Link NevOn

Robot camel jockeys

Link via Smart Mobs

Guess-the-google

Flex your mind. PLAY

Why computers are like the weather

Every get the feeling that your computer is sometimes a little under the weather, not performing well. New research shows that this is probably true. I knew something was wrong with my computer and I thought it was Bill Gates.

"IF YOU think the complex microchips that drive modern computers are models of deterministic precision, think again. Their behaviour is inherently unpredictable and chaotic, a property one normally associates with the weather." more

Wisdom of Business Crowds

The BusinessPundit is trying an experiment, the question he asks: can the blogsphere build and run a real business? This idea came from reading the Wisdom of Crowds.

Wikification

Reading other blogs about the London bombings I was directed to Wikinews who was first to provide details regarding the bombings evening beating CNN. Wikinews is contributed to by its readers thus its really shaped and controlled by the users. The same thing is happening to brands which are taking customer suggestions in developing new products and services, referred to as wikification.

"Customers are taking charge of almost every aspect of a brand, even to the extent of product development. ''A growing body of empirical work shows that users are the first to develop many, and perhaps most, new industrial and consumer products,'' notes Eric von Hippel, head of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Turning your brand over to customers can produce pays off. In a study at 3M, von Hippel found that product ideas from customers generated $146 million in revenue. By contrast, sales from internal ideas only generated $18 million." more at Fusion Branding

Lapjuicer

When you think you have seen and heard it all, along comes the Lapjuicer. I'm amazed at human ingenuity. Link via Boing Boing.

Pop-Up Shops Are Hot

Shops that pop-up for a few months and then vanish is the idea behind retailer Vacant which will be opening a store in Chicago July 25 and soon in Toronto. They rely on buzz marketing and don't announce store openings. Link via Brand Noise

The "pop-up" store concept -- which blends retail with event marketing -- was born three years ago when cutting-edge retailer Vacant opened a shop in London for just a month. Now a variety of companies are using pop-ups to build buzz on the cheap; Method found that opening a temporary store cost no more than putting up a billboard. "Pop-up stores are the newest trend in guerrilla marketing," says Wendy Liebmann, president of WSL Strategic Retail. "We'll see a lot more of these in the future." Trendwatching

Lenny Kravitz Interior Design

Rocker Lenny Kravitz has started his own design firm in Miami. I'll tell you one thing I would prefer to work in an interior design office than any other type of design office. Have you ever seen some of the beautiful women that work in these places. I sometimes watch HGTV's Kitchen Equipped just because of Stacy McLennan.

French Think Different

From France we get this McDonalds ad, tagline: "I'll explain that to you at McDonalds." Link Boing Boing

2012 Olympics à la Live 8

Today they announced that London will be host of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games. I've always thought cities and governments could better spend their money on better things (poverty, homeless, education, health care). Why build the same venues in every major city when existing facilities around the world could be used. The Olympics should be put on like Live 8 and broadcast from different cities around the world. Cities with existing facilities would compete to host swimming events others track etc. If a particular city didn't have a venue then they could build just that one facility like a velodrome. Opening and closing ceremonies with be held in every city participating. Spread the wealth, don't focus it in one little corner. If we really wanted to end poverty in Africa or anywhere else there is no doubt the money is there.

Tom Cruise Is Nuts

Say a few stupid things, talk about vitamins, offend your actress friend and they dedicate a site just for you. Talk about consumer fan clubs. Your fans even make it easy to find the site by calling it TomCruiseIsNuts.

Apple Marketing

Who is Apple targeting A.) Already intend to buy a Mac or B.) Are especially computer savvy. more

Link TUAW

Marveling at Deep Impact

Launch a coffee table size craft into space, have it travel 83 million miles to collide with a piece of moving rock dead on while beaming images of the impact back to earth and measuring the light spectrum passing through the particles to understand its make-up. Now that takes some brains, they can't even find Osama Bin Laden on this planet.

Little Red Corvette?

I heard it arrives in the mail in a cardboard box. Sir, did you get that car we mailed you?

MTV You Suck

I have heard about MTV's poor coverage of Live 8 and the Vodkapundit has a message for MTV.

Dear MTV,

After seeing your "coverage" of yesterday's Live 8 concert, I have come to the conclusion that your network sucks like a turbocharged Electrolux. more

Kill Your Brand

"Wal-Mart is good at price but bad at meaning. It can “pile em high and sell em cheap.” But in the process it reduces the brand to a commodity and the retail experience to a trudge through tedium. Placed in the Wal-Marts , brands created to deliver potent meanings, fashion, locality, individuality and lifestyle, are diminished or missing. Wal-Mart actually manages to wick away the very meanings that add value to the product and the life of the consumer." more

Afraid of IKEA

How many times have you attempted to find the exit sign at IKEA only to find yourself roaming around for hours with no hope. That's why they have sofas and chairs so you can rest while you finally find the exit. Paul Davidson gives us this amusing post about why "I am afraid of IKEA"

Art and Science of Web Design

Jeffrey Veen wrote The Art and Science of Web Design five years ago. To celeberate he is offering the book as a free pdf.

Consumer Fan Clubs

In Seth Godin's What Every Good Marketer Knows he mentions how traditional ways (TV ads, trade show booths, junk mail) are losing their cost-effectiveness. Here is an example of something cost-effective and possibly going on unknown to the company. Yes, the company could be playing a part in this, looks like a great catalogue to me.

2005 Industrial Design Excellence Award

IDEA have teamed up with Business Week to showcase the winners. What happens when all companies embrace great design, will it become a commodity too. What will distinguish one great product from other well designed products?

Potty Mouth

"It may take a strong stomach to eat curry or chocolate ice cream out of a toilet bowl, but a commode-themed restaurant in Taiwan does booming business serving up just that."more

Well the best thing about this is you don't have to excuse yourself to go the bathroom anymore.

Link via Feld Thoughts