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The people on your online engagement team
0February 28, 2009 by Colin
Steph Gray has produced a crystal clear and well designed document that clearly identifies the roles and responsibilities of each member of an online engagement team.
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The hope left when a retail icon disappears
1February 24, 2009 by Colin
Two positive takes on the demise of British retailing icon Woolworths:
- a BBC Radio 4 podcast following the fortunes of former Woolies employees in Scotland looking for new jobs; and
- the story of a former Woolies manager in Dorset who is re-opening her store as a “Wellworths” – and hiring back many of her former employees.
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Recession data point eleventy hundred
0February 24, 2009 by Colin
“… The number of containers being shipped from Hong Kong’s ports to other areas of the world fell by 23.2pc in January compared to the previous year, highlighting just how the global slowdown is affecting exports from Asia.
Local experts estimate that some 390 unused container ships are currently anchored mid-water or in harbours around the world, equivalent to around 11pc of the global fleet. In Hong Kong, the glut of empty containers is clogging up much-needed space. There is talk that the disused Kai Tak airport in Kowloon Harbour could be used as a temporary home for the empty steel boxes …”
- Tesco’s International Sourcing – the machine behind the machine (Daily Telegraph)
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How ads are like unpleasant amateur movies
2February 22, 2009 by Colin
“… Neither porn studios nor ad agencies can afford to be complacent. Their dominance has been undermined by the diffusion of DIY technology.
In advertising we call this phenomenon ‘user-created content’, in porn they just call it ‘amateur porn’.
This is especially important for two industries so fundamentally concerned with truth. In this age when a professional studio can fake anything, people implicitly trust the amateur. Anyone with a webcam and access to genitals can make a rudimentary porno – and to make an ad, you don’t even need genitals …
… Gonzo’s rise is assured, not because it’s good, but because its ideal consumer isn’t the consumer, it’s the brand manager. Showing the public loving an advert, within the advert, is the equivalent of the porn queen’s ooh-ya-do-it-to-me schtick …”
Gordon Comstock, in Creative Review.
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Another slap at print media
0February 20, 2009 by Colin
Randall Roberts comments on the vibe felt throughout the print media room at the Grammys:
” … A dying industry covering another dying industry, like a bunch of telegraph operators sending missives about a carburetor convention …” (LA Weekly)
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On the quirks of cartography
0February 19, 2009 by Colin
” … The colour palette used by world maps evokes that same simple universe glimpsed in old Ladybird books. What disorder can there be in a world with countries of Germolene pink, Caramac tan and Parma Violet mauve? …
… Online route-finders and satnav systems offer strangely tunnelled perspectives on the world, giving information only on a need-to-know basis, concealing more than they show. Maps lay out their naked visions of the world for all to see, providing not one route but many and revealing above all a glimpse of the flawed cartographers behind them.”
- Catherine O’Flynn, in Granta 103.
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He invented News Graphics
0February 18, 2009 by Colin
” … Until the [first] war with Iraq, television technology was all about transmission,” says Blank. “The graphic designers were always just the decoration, now we are part of the editorial process …
… I had to sell graphics to them. I had to go around to the programs and get them to use a map here, a nice font there. It was hard going …”
- Ben Blank, one of the creators of television news graphics, in Graphic News, by John Hockenberry. He passed away this month.
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The Babysitting Bullpen
0February 14, 2009 by Colin
“… In other news: our babysitter has a boyfriend, and thus a Valentine’s date; happily, however, she’s a triplet, and was willing to lend us a sister for childcare …”
- Cover Lay Down plans for Valentine’s Day.
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Aspirational Branding Hits A Wall
0February 14, 2009 by Colin
” … Along the way, New Yorkers appear to have reassessed what they value. One of the hallmarks of the boom was the triumph of “aspirational” branding: … Flush with cash (or easy credit), consumers bought the proposition that the brand itself—the status it conferred—was worth a 300 percent markup.
Not any more. Not only are real designer bags hard to move off the shelves but the Canal Street knockoff market is in free fall too. A zebra-patterned fake Versace bag, which used to sell for $45 in the summer, now barely fetches $25. With the arrival of the crisis, the price tag on status has come up for renegotiation. Today’s consumer is demanding less and better at the same time …”
Freakoutonomics, New York Magazine
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Don’t be part of the herd
0February 13, 2009 by Colin
“It sounds like you had a moment when you realized that humans approach the world with a pattern of thinking and behavior and you wanted to know how to shock us out of that behavior. Is this the root of your Think Wrong process?
Yes, there was definitely a lightbulb and it came from a client, an investment firm. They had hired a behavioral scientist to look at how other investment managers were basically victims of their own synaptic connections. There is a thing called “overweighting information” that all humans do. If there’s a shark attack off the coast of Santa Cruz and it’s well publicized, people in New Jersey will stay out of the water. They are overweighting that catastrophic incident. Even though intellectually there’s no correlation between the two coasts, it changes our behavior anyway.
To me that was just so smart. I thought. “How am I a victim of that same kind of principle?” That’s what led to Thinking Wrong. A lot of what we do for clients at our firm is not design, it’s more what we call Think Wrong Tanks.”
John Bielenberg, in Metropolis.
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Ernesto con queso
0February 13, 2009 by Colin
” … The staff is put through a rigorous Borgnine School upon hiring …”
Ernest Borgnine is a good sport about a West Village taco bar’s obsession with him.
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Creativity in 2.0: Slow Boat to China
0February 12, 2009 by Colin
” … We’re not all in the position to spend three weeks floating across the ocean on our own industrial versions of Walden Pond, but I think these types of retreats are only going to get more appealing. And while we might not be able to change our minds’ ability to deal with an overwhelming amount of information, we can do things to force ourselves into environments and situations better suited for reflection. …”
Jack Cheng, reflecting on Hollywood screenwriter Rob Long‘s decision to book a three week voyage on a container ship to China so he would have uninterrupted time to finish his work.
This from Long’s podcast:
” … No, the right thing to do is what I’ve done. Book passage on the Hanjin Boston, from Seattle to Shanghai, face King Neptune and write the damn script.” …”
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Brutal Lessons in Car Sales
0February 7, 2009 by Colin
A 35% drop in auto sales. That was January in Canada. I can understand why it was a tough month, and why the future doesn’t seem to be improving for North American auto manufacturers.
I happen to be in the market for a car, and I’ve spent quite a few hours around car dealerships in the past few days. The facilities themselves are nice; the salespeople I’ve dealt with are personable and extremely professional.
It’s the others in the dealership that are harshing my buzz, man. Like these folks:
- the four taking their smoke break right in front of the customer door
- the car jockey that cut me off as I left the lot
- the salesman – who didn’t have a customer on the floor – who gave me the fish eye when he came back from the bathroom
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I think Macy’s is trying to put the moves on me!
0February 7, 2009 by Colin
“The mall is the stalwart spouse that hasn’t learned any new moves in a decade.”
(New York Times, “Our Love Affair With Malls Is On The Rocks“)
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Twitter Turn Ons
0February 4, 2009 by Colin
Canuckflack
… Colin McKay has some thoughts about design, data, management, government and oddities … written in Canada!
Tumblr Goodness
Blood Stains from the slaine Monks of Lindisfarne in the Viking attack of 793AD. Folios 191v and 192r of the Lindisfarne Gospels - written and illuminated by the Anglo-Saxon Bishop Eadfrith in 698AD.
Liber generationis Jesu Christi
“Lo, it is nearly 350 years that we and our fathers have inhabited this most lovely land, and never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race, nor was it thought that such an inroad from the sea could be made. Behold, the church of St. Cuthbert spattered with the blood of the priests of God, despoiled of all its ornaments; a place more venerable than all in Britain is given as a prey to pagan peoples.”
Alcuin, Letter to Ethelred, King of Northumbria
Images: British Library
I had a Brooks Brothers 15 1/2 - 35 shirt and we used its front pocket to determine when the Pilot design was “pocket sized” - Joel Jewitt, discussing the invention of the Palm Pilot
http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130408043926-7298-early-employees-joel-jewitt-palm
Before I discovered the Internet
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