I’m not a geek. I rarely get a kick out of technology per se. It has always been the possibilities for human social experiences that made me tick.

And cleverly awesome marketing.

The Conan Blimp, just launched onto the skies of the east cost in the USA is the best thing I’ve seen this year. The idea is so brilliant and the execution is so slick, the social media integration is so timely and natural, it’s worth all the millions of words that will be said, twitted, blogged or sang about it very soon. It’s gonna go straight into the hall of fame of a transmedia, post-digital, ___________________ (insert your wanky term here) and the internet of things – blimp that’s gonna be our best friend this October.

Well done Breakfast people. Read this interview if you want to know a little bit more about the brain (and soul) behind the technology.

As they described on the Breakfast site:

“Can you create a trackable experience for Conan O’Brien’s blimp?”

“Sure.”

“Can you have it concepted, designed, wired-up and live by next week?”

“Uhhhh, sure.”

Conan went and got himself a blimp, and decided to joyride it across the eastern seaboard throughout the month of October. To add to the adventure for Mr. Blimp, we’ve wired him up to auto-check-in on Foursquare to his favorite locations as gazes down from above. He’s also the first-ever auto-updating location on Foursquare – meaning if you see him flying high above you, you can check into the floating beast.

Follow all the fun over here.

2008 Tiger walks on water

EA grabs our attention with a very quick, clever and wit response to a youtube video posted by a user of a game who allegedly discovers a ‘glitch’ in the game. It took EA 2-4 weeks to produce and launch this video:

2009 Meerkat rides on twitter waves

The campaign of the year. A stroke of genius peppered with herd and luck makes a surprising talking animal a social media hero. The brand and VCCP were fantastic at responding to the popularity of the meerkat with lots of banter, fun dialouge that extended the character’s personality, most notably their hall-of-fame response to @stephenfry twit-pic of a powercut ordeal. Credit were deserves etc. The meerkat pave the way for what we saw last week.

2010 @oldspice man owns the internet

Unless you were on the moon last week you couldn’t avoid LOLing at the absolute-fuckin-awesomeness of @oldspice. One blogger quite rightly said that for 24hours @oldspice man ‘owned the internet’. I can’t think of a better complement for a marketing activity.

Niiiiice.

I’m feel really fortunate to do what I do at these super exciting times.

Nike Woman from edouard salier on Vimeo.

Human Chain from NikeSportswear on Vimeo.

Yes, I know, I’m falling to the banal plannery / marketing gurus trap of writing best practices through some reverse-engineering of a success story. Easy to spot and articulate when the success has been achieved, damn hard to really make it practical for future briefs. In essence it’s this simple truth:

Be yourself and be great, or be like everyone else and be forgotten.

Now if you want the longer version, go on and read….

So many brands today operate in a crowded territory / category with very little differentiation. Think mobile operators – does anyone really give a toss whether they are on Orange, O2 or T-mobile? Or, can anyone tell the difference between an LG, Motorola, Samsung or Sony Ericsson? There’s loads more examples around consumer electronics, automobile, FMCG, fashion, cosmetics, beauty. It’s quite sad.

So what brands can learn from Lady Gaga?

Lady Gaga is an artist of substance, with tons of character and with a meaningful point to make – something so many brands lack today. Like a modern Warhol (isn’t the House of Gaga the modern The Factory?) or Jeff Koons she operates within pop culture and her work is an ongoing imaginative and provocative commentary on the culture she operates within.

“Pop culture is art. It doesn’t make you cool to hate pop culture, so I embraced it and you hear it all over The Fame. But, it’s a sharable fame. I want to invite you all to the party. I want people to feel a part of this lifestyle.”

Pop music is as crowded and samey as any other consumer category and Gaga managed to rise well above the manufactured blandness. She hasn’t been plucked from a model casting call, she didn’t win a reality TV singing contest. She is the real deal. She got her hands dirty, put herself out there and pushed her way up through the sheer force or creativity.

“I did this the way you are supposed to. I played every club in New York City and I bombed in every club and then killed it in every club and I found myself as an artist. I learned how to survive as an artist, get real, and how to fail and then figure out who I was as singer and performer. I worked hard and, now, I’m just trying to change the world one sequin at a time.”

She is all about breaking the boundaries and being interesting. It’s all about shaking, shaping, redefining her category. Mind you she isn’t super original but that doesn’t matter. She, more than anyone else understands that it’s not just about the music. It’s about the performance, the attitude, the look, the money; it’s everything. Gaga is the first pop singer that perceived herself and act as a brand – tons more than Madonna or Kylie IMHO.

“My goal as an artist is to funnel a pop record to a world in a very interesting way. I wanted to write the female version of Motley Crue’s ‘Girls Girls Girls,’ but with my own twist. I wanted to write a pop song that rockers would like.”

Lady Gaga is the master of mythology and for that I admire her the most. She is a real genius both at storytelling as well as igniting loads of stories around her music, art, customs, etc. Faris talked about brands as Modern Myths and Gaga is a rare example of a real one.

Finally, while she is one of the most exhibitionist, extravagant, visual and provocative artist today she is very, very humble and modest. Everything is communicated through her art and when she takes home 3 Brits awards she is as down to earth as one can be.

Oh yeah, and she totally digs digital.

For all categories- in no particular order

Best albums of the year

1. The phenomenal handclap band – S/T
2. Fontän – Winterhwila
3. Rone – Spanish breakfast
4. JJ – JJ no 2
5. The XX -S/T
6. Jana Hunter – There’s no home
7. Memory Tapes – Seek Magic
8. Fat Freddy’s Drop – Dr. Boondigga & The Big BW
9. Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
10. Bibio – ambivalence Avenue

Best books of the year

1. The End of Mr Y / Scarlett Thomas (2008)
2. War World Z / Mel Brooks (2006)
3. Journey by Moonlight / Antal Szerb (1937)
4. First as Tragedy, Then as Farce / Slavoj Zizek (2009)

Best film of the year

District 9

Best commercial things – no categories, just brilliant work

1. Live Strong chalkbot
2. Caramel bunny digital pop up shops (am a bit biased, yes.)
3. Best job in the world
4. Philips carousel
5. Whopper Sacrifice
6. Love Distance
7. Maison Hermes by Tokujin Yoshioka

Best non-commercial things

1. Cardon copy
2. Hands from Above
3. Sour’s ‘Hibi no Neiro’ UBC video
4. TweenBots
5. Thru you
6. KideoPlayer
7. Learning to love you more
8. Alice and Kev

…and lastly as we did last year, the most hideous trend has to go this year to….Augmented Reality. In might change the game one day but last year 95% of the works were me-too-digs-technology-crapness. The rare exception here is the really great Hidden Park iPhone app.

Send me your stuff please

Happy 2010

Asi x

Tokujin Yoshioka: Maison Hermès window display

This one goes straight to “damn i with i’d think about it” + “inspiration” lists

Enjoy

Some things, like this video below are just so good that even if I don’t have anything meaningful to say about them I still just want them to live on this blog.

Simple, smart, social = beauty

For couple of years now I have this fantasy of taking a year off, go back to academia and do a year long ethnographic research + photo book (although i’m the lousiest photographer on earth) + dedicated blog etc with one of the most fascinating urban tribes/communities – the messengers.

I don’t know if my fascination with the messengers is due to their anarchistic flair, their sense of themselves as part of something greater than a job, the general distinctive style and behaviour, or that mixture of work, rather sporty and physically demanding activity with jackass-like nutcase booze-fulled attitude – probably all of the above.

This community is a goldmine for social psychologist to look at the dynamics of social identity, herd, spread of fads and fashions, rituals, behavioural codes and all those things that make us drool . And of course the way the couriers style diffused and influenced broader popular culture – case in point: the massive spread of the fixies (look around you and you’ll notice 2 out of 5 bicycle in London are single fixed gear)

So I was both delighted and disappointed to find this article by Ben Fincham from the university of Brighton who did exactly what i’ve been dreaming of and wrote a fantastic article on this wonderful subculture of the couriers and their unique balance of work and life. It turns out that these nutters have annual global and local gatherings and races that literally replicate their conditions of work. I have to go to one of these some time.

If you want to read this captivating article (rather academic but fantastic read nevertheless) please email or leave a comment and i’l send it to you.

Take a look at some of these videos from around the world:

Kyotoloco

Courier Tattoo competiton

London Calling

R E S P E C T

Tweenbots is absolutely incredible project by Kacie Kinzer, a student at ITP. You see it / read about it and it makes you want to free-hug someone.

Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.

If you haven’t seen it yet go and take a look now (but please comeback to read the rest of the post )

It really moved me and I’ve been thinking about it the whole evening since I picked it up off twitter (thanks herdmeister). Here are my two comments:

1. Simple and genuine is much more compelling than grandiose and choreographed.

Brilliant idea is the new media budget. Here is yet another example how a personal project of anonymous individual takes off like a storm and gets everyone excited, sharing and talking. I’m not doing justice to this fantastic little experiment by comparing it to advertising but couldn’t resist thinking about all those recent ads that try to convey the feeling that people are good. Think Honda’s Let in Shine or do’er and Orange’s people are good together and more, which are all “about telling stories about the brand and making people again feel an emotional attachment to Honda”. A quick check on twitter reveals over 1500(!) tweets for tweenbots vs. just under 300 for Honda. There are various reasons why people find tweenbots ore exciting than Honda’s let it shine (apology again for comparing schnitzel and fish) but there are very obvious lessons we can learn about what makes people tick and how we should think about designing people into marketing. Tweenbots are simple and genuine and that’s 100 more compelling (personally, i should say) than grandiose and orchestrated.

2. We love stories that remind us of our humanity (even if we are humans to robots)

It’s funny how we cling to a minor anecdotal evidence to restore faith in our good nature. How genuinely excited we can get when someone demonstrates the good-will and kindness of strangers. Skim through the tweets and you’ll read assertions like “something that may make you a shed a small happiness tear”, “I know I’m having an overly emotional day when watching videos of people helping Tweenbots literally makes me cry”, ” it reinvigorates my happiness when it comes to other human beings”, “If you ever find yourself thinking that all people are bad, visit this website”. (Mind you, this is NYC, a fairly alienated city to say the list where the beggars and homeless can go unnoticed for years….)