New Year's Eve is the last day of polaroid production. I think I'm going to plan on making it a Polaroid Day for me. Just because, you know. And maybe we could make a flickr pool doodah if you fancy dragging that old camera from that bottom drawer in the kitchen and joining in. Then we won't just be getting pissed, we'll be taking part in a worldwide art thingy too.
Went to a brilliant event last night - This Happened. Short talks about interesting Intereaction Design stuff presented with a refreshing openness you don't get in marketing and adland, where case studies are normally presented as inevitable and insightful marches to success. A lot of this seems to be an explicit aim of the organisers. The speaker guidelines include:
"We want to know how a project has evolved - the process. You should tell us the story, not just the result...We also like failed projects, a polished end result is not as important as the process. What did you learn from the project that you didn't know before?"
I'd love to hear more about failed projects. That could be a good idea for a conference, a day of failed projects. And not the sort of failures that somehow make you look, but out and out failures. Anyway. Tangent. Sorry. The splendid thing was that, although there was much talk of failure and side-roads and things that didn't work, everything talked about was very good.
Jussi's project illustrated the dangers of not being allowed to get your hands dirty yourself but is ending up as a rather beautiful thing. Jack was clever and funny about Olinda, and Kenichi's (and Chris') Animal Superpowers project managed to be brilliantly thoughtful and childish at the same time. But the really eye-opening thing was the Snug and Outdoor Snugkit. Partly because it was physical interaction design, no screens and batteries and Processing. Partly because we've been thinking about playgrounds a bit at home. But mostly because Snug seems to be a product of 20 years of thinking and studying and trying, and that seems to be the really valuable lesson; ideas are easy. Making them happen is hard. But worth it.
I met a bunch of doers at the Howies thing last week, we suggested they use every avenue they could think of to promote their cause and they're wasting no time. Helen emailed to ask me to mention this benefit gig she's organising in aid of The Sumatran Orangutan Society. The 14th of May at the Lyceum. It's got very funny people and it's a very splendid cause. You should go.
And are their any designers out there who could spend two minutes making this into a slightly more blog-friendly graphic for them? They've not asked but I thought that might be a nice thing to do if anyone else wanted to post this. I tried but I can only really operate PowerPoint.
I'm going to be at both of these things, I suspect both might be quite good. The VCU one is in Richmond in June. The Wildfire one's in London in April. My only problem with this one is that Ze Frank's speaking as well. He's brilliant obviously, but this, is normally a key example I show when I'm talking about the way businesses need to learn to behave. Which will be slightly embarrassing if he's right there.
If you're not doing anything tomorrow there's an exciting opportunity to see three eccentrically coiffed tallish people talk about brands at the Warc Creativity In Advertising conference - me, John Shaw and John Grant. I'll be doing a version of schtick 2.0 but I bet John and John will be good and there's other interesting people like Tess Alps and Matt Smith. Details here.
There are many reasons why I'm exactly the wrong person to be writing this blog. I can't spell or punctuate. I'm starting to be horribly exhausted by the sight of the word 'brand'. But perhaps, most damningly, I absolutely cannot bear any form of disagreement. I'm massively conflict-averse. So I've not read any of the debate about whether blogging's killing planning. And I'm not going to the IPA to see the fractiousness live.
But that's a personal failing, you may be less squeamish, and Rob asked me to post the details. So here they are. Hope it's good.
The APG is doing some great stuff at the moment. Much better than when I was doing it. The Creative Strategy Awards have had a smart overhaul and now feature a huge cash prize. I suggest you enter. And the evening meetings are going from strength to strength, first Jon Steel, then Megan Thompson talking about M&S and now Paul Feldwick talking about planning and poetry. Brilliant. Here's the description from the APG email:
Paul will discuss how poetry can reveal for planners some aspects of what we do in the ad business that we may not have fully appreciated. Including...
~ the nature of the imaginative or creative process, and how to encourage it
~ the possibilities of language – sounds, rhythm, rhyme, incantations, spells, laments….
~ how words can be used to create feelings and evoke all five senses
~ the power of ambiguity (and even nonsense) – the multivalent image
Paul Feldwick started his career as an account executive and became one of BMP's and London's most highly regarded planners. He went on to run the hugely successful planning function at BMP and over the years increasingly worked for DDB as a global network, developing a global framework for planning advertising and helping to found DDB University. He was Convenor of Judges for the IPA Effectiveness Awards in 1988/90, and has written and lectured extensively on how advertising works and brand equity, amongst other things. His book, What Is Brand Equity Anyway?, was published in 2002. Paul has also been Chairman of the APG and the AQR, and is a Fellow of the IPA and of the MRS.
Date: Thursday 8th March 2007
Time: 6.45pm for a 7pm start (finish about 8.15pm)
Venue: M&C Saatchi, 36 Golden Square, London W1
All welcome: but pls email so we can get an idea of numbers steve at apg.org.uk
If you can you must go to this. Mr Feldwick is the real planning deal, an ingenious, rigorous thinker and a nice man. Of course, I can't go, so can someone record it for me?
So well done the APG. The only remaining things to fix is the website, but I think that might actually be my fault.
