I’ve got a new ringtone that doesn’t fail to bring confusion and smiles to the people around me, thanks to the guys at You Look Nice Today.

Just over a month ago, in a podcast, they slipped in a short little sound bite that essentially went like this:

Boop Boop Boop Be-Doop Be-Doop Boop

On its own, it was a promising ditty. But then a fan got involved, and created a ringtone.

Others stepped up to the plate, and now there are TWENTY SEVEN different versions available, including techno, party, chase and Atari 2600 versions.

All in the comments to one blog post.

Now that is co-creation. No bullshit marketers trying to create an environment where consumers - sorry, I meant users - can help a brand leverage its product with the help of wacky online twists to the brand identity. As long as we don’t stray too far from the brand manual!

The one I picked has cowbell. I’m retro that way. Cowbell is SO 2005

What is the connection between badgers and webcams? If only I had known about the badger watch sooner, I would have had an effective and historically accurate retort to every person who questioned the entertainment value of webcams.

Get your minds out of the gutter! I mean webcams circa 2000 - before countless entrepreneurs hit upon the “lonely mom, university student or flatmates with a cam” business model.

Instead, I’m talking about the coffee cam, Jersey Shore Cam, the baby hawk cam and the Hooters Cam.

The sort of online camera where you could watch for hours without anything interesting happening.

Which sounds a lot like the hobby of badger watching, which apparently has some followers in Britain. Badger watching involves sitting very still for quite a long time, waiting for badgers to appear. And when they do appear, they may just rummage around for a few minutes and then return to their burrow.

And, yet, people will pay 10 Euros for a good night of badger watching. And there I was, criticized for running a cam window in the background during work hours. Sure, it was on dial-up with per-minute access charges, but it wasn’t dirty!!

By the way. This just in from the “issues and activism for everyone” desk: there is quite a controversy about badgers brewing in Britain. It seems some cattle farmers claim badgers carry bovine tuberculosis. Problem is, badgers are a protected species. Here’s one comment found at the end of a Telegraph story on the dispute:

“I do have a very easy solution to the badger problem, shoot them and distribute the meat free to the elderly. There that solving 2 problems. I’m sure [Gordon] Ramsey’s Kitchen can come up with a Badger menu!!Posted by Tristian ry on October 29, 2007 6:15 PM

Technorati Tags: badger, cams, webcams, hoot, hooters, Gordon Ramsay, activism, British hobbies

Barbara Faga is an urban planner who has participated in hundreds and hundreds of public meetings - meetings that attempt to build a dialogue among many different factions on a highly sensitive issue: what will be built/destroyed/grown/paved over near my house or business?

Imagine two ferocious Not In My BackYard opponents chained together and locked in a 900 square foot room - with bad coffee. That’s right. A NIMBY faceoff of epic proportions.

And you are the referee.

Barbara Faga is well-acquainted with this environment. Which is why she was well-qualified to write this blog post last month: A guide to Taser-free public meetings.

She has also written a much longer book, Designing Public Consensus, that discusses the process of urban design and public consultation. Of particular interest is her observation that a good public consultation will stray from a linear, factual and dogmatic presentation of the proposal and options.

“…Rather than a scripted reading, managing a public process is much more a continuous improvisation. This is another image that came to me in Boston, about halfway through the 19 months it took to get final approval of our design for the Wharf District Park. As we debriefed after a particularly fractious meeting, our colleague, Lynn Wolff, insightfully described this series of public meetings as a form of “civic theater,” an entertaining way for involved and curious citizens to spend an evening.

At this point, we felt like lion fodder in the Roman Coliseum, so the metaphor seemed particularly apt. The power plays, emotional outbursts, bitter arguments, tiresome soliloquies, comic relief, sudden plot twists, and dramatic resolutions of the typical public process somehow seem better suited to the stage than to the hardheaded realities of designing and building our public spaces.

As I participated in the public drama that played out in Boston, I couldn’t help noticing the strong parallels to soap opera, Kabuki, and a three-ring circus. Some of our most important work will be performing (not acting, precisely, though a little dramatic flair doesn’t hurt) for audiences we have to win over. If we design and planning professionals think we can stay safely in the wings, ensconced at our comfy desks or drafting tables, we’ve got it wrong.

It’s like the old vaudeville act in which the guy gets all those plates spinning at once, in time to the music. That guy has nothing on us. (Foreword, Designing Public Consensus)

Technorati Tags: consultation, public meetings, town hall, public debate

Recognizing that today is election day in the United States, and that November 13 is municipal election day in Ontario, I hereby present a list of poor Get Out The Vote ideas:

• Door knocking by the Blue Man Group
• Telephone outreach by Tom Carvel and Harvey Fierstein
• Street Teams - composed entirely of mimes
• Voting guides - printed co-op with the local greek take-out place
• Indictment and/or disbarment of your candidate
• Providing shuttle service to the polls - on recumbent bicycles
• “Get to know your post-election appellate lawyer” meetings for party faithful in tight races
• Voter micro-targeting - based on an analysis of old usenet postings
• Localized� comment spam� on community-based blogs
• Catering your voter rallies with� Belmont Steaks*
• Losing a land war in Asia

For your enjoyment: a vintage Carvel ice cream radio ad.

*For those of you too young to remember, Belmont Steaks was the name on the cab of the truck delivering food supplies to the summer camp in the movie Meatballs. Anyone remember what the truck was carrying?

It’s always a daunting challenge: explaining an ever-fragmenting market to your clients while building your consultancy’s intellectual capital. That old stand-by of risk-shy and ad-aware behaviour, the middle class, seems to be disappearing into smaller niches characterized by individualistic behaviour and apparently irrational market behaviour.

“The old class-based definitions have become redundant. We need new, sharper tools to distinguish the nuances and subtleties of the recently enlarged middle classes,’ [Dan Halliday, the managing director of the brand communications agency TheFishCanSing,] adds.

‘We characterise ourselves almost exclusively with regard to taste, in particular taste as defined by consumer choice; more specifically still, taste as defined by brand loyalties.”(Campaign magazine, via TMC)

Halliday’s shop has put together The Class of 2006. A Guide to the New Middle Class, which attempts to break down the British middle class into market segments. The names are witty and will ring a sociological bell if you’re at all familiar with British society:

· THE DOING VERY NICELY THANKYOUS
· POSH CHAVS AND AGA LOUTS
· WHITE VAIN MAN AND NO SUGAR BABE
· NORMAL ACTUALLYS
· (JAMIE) OLIVER’S ARMY
· LOFT WINGERS

Campaign’s piece offers highlights of each segment, but the report goes into more detail with many illustrations. it also attempts to forecast where these segments may play on trends currently developing in general society. One example:

Put a blog in it: the new citizen media

Blogging, the axis-point of being very opinionated and having too much time on your hands, should be fundamentally middle-class. But not every tribe is doing it. Some, like the Normal Actuallys, are by nature suspicious of new trends, and frequently entirely ignorant of them. Others, like White Vain Man, just aren’t burdened by the
desire to read or be read by anyone outside their set.

Some tribes took to citizen media immediately, though. Both Doing Very Nicely Thankyous have erudite professional blogs like Phosita or Law Blog. The Hornby Set blog about politics and culture, and their comments sections are a litany of feuds between members of the Berliner and Independable sub-groups. Initially fans of the lively, up-to-the-second and media-rich blogs of Loft Wingers, the Hornby Set now find that the young turks’ posts make them self-conscious of their own efforts, and read only other Hornby Set blogs.

For their part the Loft Wingers read Holy Moly and make a great deal of noise about getting all their news from ohmynews.com or Indymedia – unless something important has happened, in which case they go to the BBC website like everyone else. Stephanie Oliver’s Army has a passing interest in photography, and has a stream for their local area on flickr.com (which is in reality a series of photos of garden birds, her dog or her car).

The Fair to Middlings were fascinated when their grown-up children introduced them to flickr, and now post pictures of their grandchildren online after every family get-together. The Fair to Militants, meanwhile, are coming to embrace the new media landscape with sites like The Grey Vote. Expect citizen media, and blogging in particular, to rise in proportion to middle-class disillusionment.

Wondering where you might fit into this new brand-relevant grouping? Try out the quick quiz at the back end of the report/deck (found at a specialist site)

The Ghostbusters may have been motivated by a desire to rid New York City of supernatural pests (and a little cash on the side), but what about poor misunderstood Walter Peck? Who’s going to stand up for the EPA?

Christine Alice Corcos, that’s who. In 1997 (I know, a little old), she used Ghostbusters as an analogy for the environmental regulation debate in “Who ya gonna c(s)ite? Ghostbusters and the environmental regulation debate.

“… Ghostbusters demonstrates the impact of concentrating massive amounts of waste in a small area to allow the greatest good for the greatest number. The vapors, entities, and slimers that the Ghostbusters accumulate in their storage facility represent the tragedy of the commons and are the ghosts of our past environmental misdeeds; out of sight, and presumably out of mind. That the EPA official who investigates their operation does not believe in the existence of psychic phenomena, preferring to believe the Ghost busters’ services are a fraud, emphasizes the communication problems between individuals and government. …”

Okay, okay. It’s a little bit long-winded, doesn’t translate very well for simple public relations folk, and her jokes are relatively terrible. Still, a funny read for a crisis communications specialist - or a lawyer.

Included in the analysis:

“D. Acts of Gods Defense
One party who is unlikely to be brought into court is “Gozer the Destructor” in any of its manifestations. As in the case of Satan, service of process on Gozer is, as a practical matter, impossible without serious loss of life. Whether Gozer is entitled to due process is questionable ….”