How to Stage B2B. Scania – The Best Driver in the World.

März 1st, 2012 • Ads, Ideas
Tags: B2B, Cool, CPB, Creativity, Ideas, Scania, We like

I just stumbled upon this (a bit longish) video by Crispin Porter at the site of my friends from Creative Criminals. The film shows how exciting B2B can be if you let it. The task is simple: Swedish truck manufacturer Scania created a competition for truck drivers. The goal is to find the most skilled driver in the world. And this is how it looks like…

Early Adoption. OK Computer, 1997.

Februar 19th, 2012 • Experimental, People
Tags: 1990s, Cool, Creativity, Experimental, Music, okay computer, radiohead

Via Retronaut

Hooked. Alex Wipf: A Strategy of Flight.

Februar 1st, 2012 • Allgemein, Hooked, Interview
Tags: Agencies, Alex Wipf, Creativity, Hooked, Ideas, Interview, Leo Burnett, People, Strategy, Truth

Last year I started to conduct a series of interviews with some of the most interesting Marketing peeps I met so far.

I somehow wanted to take this concept one step further.My new series of interviews is called ‘Hooked’. Hooked is about leading Strategists and their hobby or a side-project. Hooked is about what people can learn for Strategy while they actually love to fly, cook, swim or whatever they do to become the interesting people that most of them are.

The first Person to be part of Hooked is Alexander Wipf – my long-time friend and all-round awesome guy. Alex is Head of Strategy at Leo Burnett, Frankfurt. And besides being one of the few truly digital Marketing Pioneers in Germany, besides being an awesome Photographer, young dad and many other things, he is in possession of a Private Pilot License. In other words: He is a passionate flier.

Irrelevant for his thinking as a Strategy Dude? I don’t think so. Get to know Mister Wipf.

You have a pilot license and you are Head of Strategy at Leo Burnett and started off as a user experience designer. I know you have an interesting theory about flying and UX. Tell me about it.

As machinery and technology get more and more complex, our susceptibility to allow technology or its interfaces to control us increases as well. As Günther Anders already noted in the 1950s (in “The Outdatedness of Human Beings 1. On the Soul in the Era of the Second Industrial Revolution,” 1956) at some point after WWII human technology had reached a tipping point when technologies weren’t just simple tools or extensions of ourselves, but rather complex systems that makes human capacity look outdated and miniscule. Being a thinker during the atomic age, his example for this was the invention of nuclear energy, which has a hazardous waste-product that has a half-life that will last longer than our species will be on this planet.

Trying to wrap your head around this fact is just mind-boggling. Essentially, we have created things that are simply bigger than ourselves and the consequences of which we aren’t really in control of anymore. Of course this is an extreme example, and it’s not a matter of us necessarily wanting to be controlled or hindered by the technology we create, but we implicitly accept it as necessary evil.

So, in order to cope with this, we create more technology that, in turn, controls the other technology we have. And we accept this largely because there is no way back.

As we have moved from the industrial (and atomic) age to the information age, the same forces are at play, only that the context is no longer the industrial and physical realm, but rather the informational and virtual.

Due to digital technologies, we have more information at our fingertips than ever before, and, again, we are unable to deal with it all, so, again, after a few decades of information technologies being created to create, disseminate and store information, we are now inventing technologies to filter this information. The question is, are our interfaces designed with us in mind?

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The Next Big Thing. Strange Cooking Shows.

Januar 15th, 2012 • Ideas, Trends
Tags: Cooking, Cool, Creativity, Funny, Memes, Videos, youtube

The world of Meme patterns is a rich one. My trusted helper to find out what’s so funny about advice dog or Tim Tebow is knowyourmeme.com. Not yet on the list is the apparent new trend stage really really niche topical cooking shows on Youtube. The following shows are highly recommened.

Vegan Black Metal Chef – Seriously funny. Brian Manowitz from Norway mixes Vegan food and Black Metal. What could go wrong?

Here is the link to more recipes and here is an interview with Brian himself.

Culinary Propaganda Chef – Szef Bartek is a new competitor of Vegan Black Metal Chef and obviously not yet quite decided if he wants to be rather Stalin or Batman. Check it out here.

Depression Cooking – Depression cooking is not quite what you think: Clara is 94 and she gives advice on how to cook like back during the Great Depression. The lovely elderly Lady has started quite a successful concept with Depression Cooking. She sells her own DVD and I am quite sure she sells here cook book somewhere on amazon.

Did I miss a strange cooking show on Youtube that must be on the list? Let me know.

LEGO Occupy Wallstreet? Shut up and take my money!

Dezember 22nd, 2011 • Brands, Fake
Tags: 2011, Ads, Creativity, Fake, Funny, Ideas, Lego, Occupywallstreet, Politics, Toys, Truth

After months of demonstrations by the Occupy Wall Street movement, Slate V imagines a special edition Lego set just in time for the holidays. And with the Arab Spring upgrade soon…or North Korea.

via Laughing Squid

Rock Bottom. Droga 5 has possibly created the worst campaign ever.

Dezember 8th, 2011 • 3 comments Games
Tags: Ads, Agencies, Brands, Creativity, droga 5, Ethics, Gaming, Ideas, Industry, Politics, World

If the following video is no hoax it has the realistic chance to become one of the most disgusting, cyncical pieces of marketing I have ever seen. I thought the ‘concept campaign’ White Bull Army was pathetic. But the crap idea that Droga 5 is about to launch for gaming headset brand Turtle Beach is hard to bear.

Check out the video

Quote: “Gamers want the immersive feeling of being in a warzone. Turtle Beach takes you there.” Even if it is a hoax (it will be in the end): Putting a first person shooter into the same context as a war zone where thousands of people died and millions suffer every day makes me want to spit out.

And no, I disagree. Not any PR is good PR. This is shit. Cynical, pathetic shit. I am ashamed to work in the same industry as the guy who came up with this. (via adverblog)

We definitely like: Chevrolet’s ‘True Story’.

November 25th, 2011 • Ads, We like
Tags: Ads, Automotive, Brands, Creativity, history, People, Storytelling, We like

Fantastic commercial, Chevy. With 5 minutes it is a bit too long to enthuse everyone. But dear Chevrolet: Do yourself a favour and turn your boring Youtube channel into a hub for your consumer’s childhood memories. That’s a great story. And even though I as a European have no personal memories of Chevy – I guess a lot of Americans do.

Thx to Creative Criminals. More ‘stuff we like’ here.

Meanwhile in Japan. A Kinect Hack a Day keeps the Doctor away.

November 21st, 2011 • Tech
Tags: 3D, Cool, Creativity, Experimental, Funny, Hack, japan, Kinect, prank, Tech, visual, World

This fantastic looking little Kinect hack is almost too typical Japanese. At least if you consider that it seems to be completely normal (after a little surprise) for Japanese people to pose with your evil Manga-twin in the mirror…

Stuff We Like. Selfcontrolfreak’s Interactive Videos.

Oktober 20th, 2011 • Experimental, People, Tech, We like
Tags: Amsterdam, Cool, Creativity, Experimental, Funny, Gaming, intelligent, Pechakuchanight, People, selfcontrolfreak, Tech, video, visual, We like

Last night I attended Amsterdam’s Pechakucha Night at Roest. Most of you probably know the concept: Random people present their business concept/idea/art theory/whatever on 20 slides and they only have 20 seconds for each page before a heartless Powerpoint algorithm switches to the next one. The one person that definitely stood out for me was Olivier Otten – a young Dutch Creative/Developer who tries to play with very playful ways to interact with video under the name Selfcontrolfreak.

I don’t want to say much more. Just one thing. Gamification is not about badges and check-ins. Traditional playful, interactive metaphors have been around since the 1990s. But even two decades later I know of few platforms which are as much fun as this one.

Check out his 22 simple, playful video examples and start playing with Selfcontrolfreak.

Anrealage. An 8-Bit Showroom in Tokyo.

Oktober 10th, 2011 • Experimental, Retail
Tags: anrealage, Cool, Creativity, Design, diesign, Experimental, Fashion, Ideas, japan, Kunihiko Morinaga, Lifestyle, People, Presentation, Retail, tokyo, visual, World

8-Bit? Yawn. We have seen pretty much everything in 8 Bit already. Except a store concept. Experimental Japanese designer Kunihiko Morinaga has built this showroom for the F/W collection of his label Anrealage in Tokyo. I think 8-bit is pretty close to getting buried very soon – but I think Mr Morinaga’s showroom is a fantastic final scream.

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