Holiday Time!

Off on holiday to sunny Australia so there won't be any posts for a couple of weeks. Back early September!

What's Hot This Week #6

Bromance – the picture above was the best-selling shot on Getty Images last month. Following the recent MTV series of the same name, it looks like bromance is “in”.
9 to 5 Brow$er - a conceptual Firefox plugin that calculates how much company money you’re wasting while surfing the net at work. On a similar vain is the Meeting Ticker which aims to do away with pointless meetings by calculating how much money meetings cost.
What Do People Do All Day? – superb infographic from the NY Times which shows how Americans spent their time in 2008.
A Serious Man - if the trailer is anything to go by, be excited about the new Coen brothers film.
Timeline of Internet Memes – pretty much what the title says!
Citysounds.fm – a great website that streams the latest music from the most interesting cities around the world. The most active cities appear at the top of the list and the list is constantly changing as new music is being created.
PDF Newspaper - ok so this isn’t particularly “hot” but it is useful. This site lets you create PDFs from web content. Great for converting blogs to a more readable newspaper format to read on the tube home.
Nerd Boyfriend - really liking this fashion blog. It would be a smart idea for a clothing brand to jump on.... or for the Sartorialist to make even more money.
London Twirls Project - one man’s mission to map the availability of Cadbury Twirls in London.

Everything Is Interesting

I think this same rule applies to advertising as it does to designing; especially for planners.
A while ago I found this thought on the role of a good planner. Unfortunately I can’t remember where I stole it from but it really resonated with me:

“Part of the job of a good planner is to have their eyes and ears and mind open to all conversations, all possibilities and opinion because our primary role is to always be in touch and moving with not just what's going on with the world, but also how people feel about it all. We take in these movements, and then use them to fuel creative thoughts within our teams of writers and art directors and subsequently solve business problems - not always with ads.
In essence, planners are inspired by everything, and we use this inspiration to inspire creatives, who use that inspiration to inspire consumers to act.”

I think this is spot on. It’s the essence of what we do. It’s also what makes the job bloody fantastic.
On that thought here are 8 of my favourite sites for inspiration, ideas and learning about “everything”.

POP!Tech - a one-of-a-kind conference, a community of remarkable people, and an ongoing conversation about science, technology and the future of ideas. I’ve included one of my favourite talks below. It’s by Frank Warren on the story of PostSecret & the spin-off projects it inspired.

@ Yahoo! Video

TED – riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world. As an introduction watch THIS entertaining talk by Joachim de Posada.
Business Innovation Factory – this year’s Innovation Summit brings more than 25 storytellers together for two days of rapid-fire storytelling about what it really takes to innovate. No keynotes. No corporate infomercials. Just real talk about innovating in tough economic times.
Good Experience Live - a conference and community exploring good experience in all its forms: in business, art, society, technology, and life.
BIL - an ad-hoc conference for people changing the world in big ways. It's a place for passionate people to come together to energize, brainstorm, and take action.
ideaCity - 50 Presenters, 3 Legendary Parties, a Ton of Inspiration. ideaCity, also known as 'Canada's Premiere Meeting of the Minds', is an eclectic gathering of artists, adventurers, authors, cosmologists, doctors, designers, entertainers, filmmakers, inventors, magicians, musicians, scientists and technologists.
Sputnik Observatory - educational organization dedicated to the study of contemporary culture.
Fora.TV - the web's largest collection of unmediated video drawn from live events, lectures, and debates going on all the time at the world's top universities, think tanks and conferences.

And if that isn’t enough there are plenty more sources HERE!
Via Mashable.

The Music Industry is Dead: Long Live The Music Industry!

People have been predicting the death of the music industry for longer than I can remember. This article examines the changes in how we listen to music and then explores how record labels are still trying to make money from music sales.

Whilst the fact that we are buying less music now than we did ten years ago is common knowledge, the rate of the decline is quite staggering. According to research by the NPD Group, 13 to 17 year old Americans “acquired 19% less music in 2008 than they did in 2007.” Unsurprisingly CD sales fell at twice the rate of digital sales, down 26% and 13% respectively.

What is also interesting is that people are not only buying less music but also sharing their music less. Indeed the same research from NPD showed the quantity of tracks downloaded from P2P networks fell 6% in 2008 and the number of teens borrowing music to copy, fell by 28%.
The Music Think Tank illustrates the decline in file sharing by looking at the Google search trends for Free Music, Free MP3s and File Sharing, all of which show a clear trend:

So how are teens getting their music? Not surprisingly, sites like Spotify and Last.fm, coupled with technology like the iPhone, are changing the market, as the NY Times put it, “from an acquisition model to an access model”.

Is music ownership now a thing of the past? Has there been a fundamental shift in how we perceive music, from a thing that we own to a service that we can use whenever and wherever we are? Certainly the British research illustrated the beginnings of such a shift, with two-thirds of teens now listen to streaming music “regularly” and nearly a third listen to it every day.

So how are record labels making money? Revenues made by the British music industry from live music increased 13% on last year to £1.4bn. In London alone the number of licences for events of more than 5,000 people has risen from 40 in 2005 to about 200 today. But that revenue only makes up 39% of the total. Hence actual music sales are crucial to the survival of the music industry.

In the face of sites like Spotify, how can bands and their labels continue to sell music? The answer according to a recent article in Wired is to reinvent the distribution model. Below are 5 of the more interesting ways record labels are changing how they sell their music:

Capitalising on YouTube sensations



With over 15 million views on YouTube last time I checked, the Wedding Dance video is the current viral hit. Rather than sit back planning legal action over the bride and groom for using their song, Sony Music made a smart move to capitalise on the use of the Chris Brown song "Forever" in the video. According to the YouTube blog “The rights holders for "Forever" used these tools to claim and monetize the song, as well as to start running Click-to-Buy links over the video, giving viewers the opportunity to purchase the music track on Amazon and iTunes.” The result of this was that even over a year after its release, “Forever” reached number 4 in the iTunes singles charts and number 3 on Amazon’s best selling MP3 list.

Music discovery – I love this idea from the music company Ghostly International. To get people to explore more of the artists on their record label they created a free app called Ghostly Discovery. Unlike Last.fm the recommendations are based on your mood which you select using a colour wheel. You can then select the style by choosing between Digital and Organic and Fast and Slow. If you like any of the songs on the custom playlist you can then add it to your favourites or buy on iTunes.

Sell more than just a CD - Mos Def sold his latest album in the form of a T Shirt that contained a download code for getting the tracks online.

Collaborate - DJ Danger Mouse’s latest album, Dark Night of The Soul, involved a collaboration with director David Lynch as well as a host of other stars. Unfortunately the album was blocked by EMI for legal reasons. Not one to shy away from controversy he subsequently released a limited run of blank CDs, asking fans to find the music “by whatever means”… The CDs were limited to a run of 5000, and each copy came with a poster and a 100 page book with photographs by David Lynch.

Brand partnerships – certainly not a new idea but there are right and wrong ways of doing it. One of the best examples was the Nike and De La Soul tie up earlier this year. The partnership resulted in the album “Are You in?: Nike+ Original Run,” a 44-minute workout LP, which forms part of Nike’s SportMusic range.

UPDATE

More examples of how bands are trying to sell their music over on Trendplanner's blog.

New On Slideshare

This week’s addition to SaatchiPlanning’s Slideshare is a presentation looking at the future of advertising.

What’s Next In Marketing and Advertising 2009 by Paul Isakson

Ok so it’s a topic that’s been done to death (I’ve already posted David Armano’s presentation The Future of Advertising. WTF?). But what I really liked about Paul’s presentation is that he’s managed to edit it down to the key points with a single great example to back up each of his predictions. Oh and there’s a nod to the T-Mobile work which always helps.

"Bottled water causes blindness in puppies"

Love this idea from the anti-bottle water group Tappening. The group were angered by the dishonest advertising tactics used in the industry, with many bottled water companies not listing their sources yet showing water “cascading over pristine mountaintops”. So in their latest campaign they decided to encourage people to “start a lie” about the bottled water industry in order to even the playing field. But rather than cover up their lies they’re bragging about them with the message “If bottled water companies can lie, we can too”.
People are encouraged to start and spread their own lies at the Start a Lie site. So far entries have ranged from “Bottled water shot the sheriff and the deputy” to “Bottle water gave me swine flu”.

Fast Thinking

The car rental company Sixt have done it again. Earlier this year they did a great campaign using guerilla wi-fi, which is well worth watching HERE if you haven’t seen it.
Their latest campaign is a great example of brands leveraging current affairs to their advantage.
When German politician Ulla Schmitt created her own little expenses scandal, by using her government-paid car whilst on holiday, Sixt were quick to respond with the following ad which reads:

“Why take the company car on your vacation? Sixt also rents cars in Alicante for 29 EUR a day.”


A great way of giving the brand some personality and generating word of mouth.

Via Cultural Fuel.